So you want to make a dropshipping store, but there’s just one problem: You have no idea what you should sell.
Deciding what to sell can be an intimidating process. You don’t want to choose the wrong product, but you also want to pick something you’re confident you can sell. Do you choose a trending product or something that has longevity? Something that’s cheap or a big-ticket item?
If you’re struggling to find your feet in the dropshipping market, we might be able to help.
After digging into our most recent data, we’ve found the top five categories that made merchants the most revenue – or “merchant GMV” – between September 1, 2019, and November 18, 2019.
From there we dug even deeper to find the top five niches in each of those categories to produce a monster list of 25 niches that have huge potential right now.
So whether you’re building your very first dropshipping store and want to choose a proven niche, or you want to add a few hot products to your Black Friday campaign, you’ll be able to find it on this list. Let’s get into it.
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First: What is a Niche?
New to dropshipping and have no clue what a niche is? Don’t worry, we’ve got you.
When we talk about niches concerning dropshipping, we’re talking about a smaller, more specific section of a wider category. For example, pet products is a niche within the home and garden category, and necklaces is a niche within the jewelry category.
You can get even deeper into niches by finding niche products that will appeal to a very specific audience – such as fishbowl ornaments or star sign pendants.
The idea behind honing in on a niche or niche product is that you can really get to know your target audience – your niche market. You might even be able to tap into a niche market that’s currently underserved, giving you a lot of opportunities. However, because your audience is smaller, it’s also important to choose a niche with a lot of potential – that’s where this list comes in.
Home & Garden
In the period from September 1 until November 18, it was the Home & Garden category that made dropshipping merchants the most money. In fact, it made merchants almost 54 percent more revenue than the next closest category, Jewelry & Accessories.
While Home & Garden isn’t the category with the highest volume of orders – that honor does belong to Jewelry & Accessories – it goes to show that products in this category are generally sold at a higher price point than many of the others.
1. Pet Products
Out in front – and making more money than any other niche on this list – was the Pet Products niche. It’s no surprise that people love spending money on their pets and the trend doesn’t seem to be slowing down. The global pet care market is projected to hit almost $270 billion by 2025. That’s a lot of kibbles up for grabs.
Big sellers in this niche included products such as cat litter mats, pet beds, car seat covers, flea combs, and chew toys.
2. Kitchen, Dining & Bar
Kitchen, Dining & Bar is the next up on the list of the top niches in 2020. You can sell kitchen equipment online to make a decent profit every month. While most of the best sellers in this niche are practical products, such as knives and food storage solutions, there are also a couple of novelty items – like a self-stirring mug – that are incredibly popular. This could be good to keep in mind as we enter the holiday shopping season.
By far the best seller in this category was a multi-function tool for opening cans and jars, proof that finding a unique item that solves a problem is a great way to find a winning product.
3. Home Textile
I’m not sure what I expected to see in the bestseller list for the Home Textile niche, but it certainly wasn’t sofa covers. However, it turns out that there’s a huge appetite for sofa and chair covers and they’ve generated a lot of money for dropshipping merchants over the last few months. Memory foam cushions and pillows were also up there, as well as a hilarious-looking travel pillow.
4. Festive & Party Supplies
Considering we compiled this list with data from September 1 onwards, it shouldn’t be a surprise that Halloween products have dominated this niche. Giant decorative spiders generated by far the most revenue in this niche, but other items like foil-plated roses also made a lot of cash for many merchants, demonstrating that you don’t necessarily need to tie a romantic product to Valentine’s Day to sell well.
5. Housekeeping & Organization
Items to keep your home clean and tidy were also big sellers from September to November, and microwave cleaners, brooms, and cleaning gloves all proved popular. The items in this niche may not be super sexy, but they are practical – and that sells.
Jewelry & Accessories
The Jewelry & Accessories category is generally always one of the top earning categories, and between September 1 and November 18 it generated the second highest amount of revenue for dropshipping merchants.
Although this category made less than Home & Garden, it sold more items, indicating that while selling jewelry might not generate as much revenue, it’s an incredibly popular category.
1. Necklaces & Pendants
This niche has been a top performer for many years, likely because there are so many different products to choose from – and they’re all relatively cheap to buy from suppliers.
Many of the necklaces that made the most money have pendants that have obvious unique selling points – such as name necklaces or star sign pendants – while others had sweet messages that made them perfect for friends or partners to buy for their loved ones.
2. Bracelets & Bangles
Close on the heels of necklaces is the Bracelets & Bangles niche. There was a spread of popular items being snapped up over the last couple of months, including those with colorful stones and charms, as well as bracelets that come as pairs – perfect for couples or best friends.
3. Jewelry Sets & More
This is an interesting niche because it includes things like the necklace and bracelet sets you might expect, through to keychains and novelty pins. Basically, there’s something for everyone and it could contain a lot of products that are great impulse buys.
4. Rings
An ever-popular niche, rings are cheap to buy, but if you have the right product and supplier they can easily be sold for much more – think 200-800 percent more. And, being so small and inexpensive, rings could also make the perfect item to cross-sell if you have a complementary product
5. Wedding & Engagement Jewelry
Anything connected to weddings can command a higher-than-normal price, so a top five appearance from this niche makes complete sense. Jewelry in this niche includes items with romantic messages, the quintessential “diamond” (read: cubic zirconia) engagement rings, and a cute rose motif.
Beauty & Health
With the beauty industry being worth over $532 billion worldwide, it’s easy to understand why the Beauty & Health category is the third-highest earner for dropshipping merchants. Products found in this category can command a fairly high price, especially for items that will genuinely help common problems or concerns.
1. Health Care
For better or worse, almost everyone has something they’d like to fix or improve about themselves, which is why health care is the highest-earning niche in this category. Products like anti-snore clips, slimming patches, posture correctors, and muscle stimulators all came out as top products in terms of both revenue and order numbers.
2. Skin Care
Skin health can be a major concern for many people, so it’s no wonder that skin care is a big money-making niche. From blemishes to aging, this niche has many products that address major concerns people have. Some of the biggest sellers over the last few weeks include pore vacuums, a wrinkle and acne laser remover, and anti-wrinkle face pads.
3. Hair Care & Styling
Coming in as the third biggest niche in this category, it’s clear that plenty of people are prepared to spend big to keep their tresses healthy and lookin’ good. And glancing at the top items in this niche, it’s clear that hair care is way more than ponytail holders and hair clips. Products like ionic hairbrushes and volumizing combs are incredibly popular – and even temporary hair dye.
4. Beauty Essentials
While you might be wondering what constitutes a “beauty essential,” it boils down to makeup and false eyelashes. These are items that would be great to showcase in video demonstrations to show how well they work, or to sell with the help of influencers.
5. Oral Hygiene
Dental beauty and health is often a big concern for people, with many seeking the gleaming white teeth of celebrities. With that in mind, it should be no surprise that products like dental bleaching kits and scaling tools have generated some big sales numbers for merchants. Meanwhile, biodegradable toothbrushes are another item that is selling big time.
Consumer Electronics
Although it’s number four on the list of top-earning categories in the last few weeks, what’s interesting about Consumer Electronics is that it sold the fewest products of all five categories – by far. For example, although the Consumer Electronics category sold 66 percent fewer products than the Jewelry & Accessories category, it only earned 19 percent less.
All of this is to say that items in the Consumer Electronics category can command a higher price than any other category on this list, so while you might not sell as many items, you could certainly still make a tidy amount from what you do sell.
1. Smart Electronics
The biggest niche in Consumer Electronics is smart electronics. This shouldn’t really be surprising seeing as smartwatches are so popular at the moment and they dominate this entire niche. Whether it’s a waterproof Bluetooth watch, a heart rate monitor, activity tracker, or all of the above, it’s all hot and has generated almost 66 percent of the revenue in this category.
2. Home Audio & Video
There are just two products that have earned this niche its spot and they are mini projectors and projector screens. The two products make up the perfect bundle deal and have generated a lot of cash over the last couple of months. Coming into winter now is the perfect time to market these items to customers.
3. Camera & Photo
Tiny cameras and beauty lights make up the bulk of the sales in the Cameras & Photo niche. With most people having excellent cameras on their phones, you have to get creative when thinking about what photo-related products you sell so items like beauty ring lights and security cameras are perfect.
4. Accessories & Parts
Next up is the Accessories and Parts niche, which appears to be extremely small in terms of money-making products. The item generating the most sales and money in this niche was a photography bag. This makes total sense as photographers won’t hesitate to pay top dollar for products that will protect their expensive equipment and cameras.
5. Portable Audio & Video
Practical items made the top revenue-generating products in the Portable Audio & Video niche. Products such as an instant speech translator and an audio recording pen drive both made big sales – as did accessories to improve or decorate AirPods containers. With the recent release of the new AirPods, this could be a timely product to jump on.
Women’s Clothing & Accessories
Moving onto the fifth category and we have Women’s Clothing & Accessories. This category is always a big one, ranking the number one category in both 2017 and 2018. From September 1 until November 18, Women’s Clothing & Accessories was the fifth-best in terms of the revenue made by merchants and the fourth-best in terms of order numbers.
1. Intimates
Covering all the clothing you wear under your actual clothes, intimates a super popular niche amongst dropshipping merchants. In fact, nearly 50 percent of the revenue generated in this category was from the intimates niche.
2. Tops & Tees
The second biggest revenue-generating niche in this category is Tops & Tees. This is a niche that you can truly find a shirt for any interest or taste. If you have a fashion store then you could have a wide variety of different shirts, but on the flip side, if you have a store with a specific theme there’s a high probability you’ll be able to find well-suited shirts.
3. Bottoms
It might not come as a surprise that leggings are a huge seller in the Bottoms niche, with regular leggings, push up leggings, and reflective leggings all coming in as big sellers. But aside from the onslaught of leggings, plaid patch pants also made an appearance as a top-selling alternative to all that tight spandex.
4. Jackets & Coats
This is a niche that we predict will only grow over the coming months as winter sets in. With jackets often being a more technical piece of clothing (think: hoods, linings, zips, belts, and pockets), you can command a higher price for these items. In fact, jackets sold for almost three times as much as any other product in the Women’s Clothing & Accessories category.
5. Hoodies & Sweatshirts
If jackets are going to be big sellers over the coming months, hoodies and sweatshirts are bound to be right up there as well. Much like t-shirts, there are so many different colors and varieties of sweatshirts to choose from, meaning there’s bound to be a style or design for everyone.
Wrapping Up
And there you have it, the top five niches within each of the top five categories that made the merchants the most cash from September 1 to November 18.
Hopefully, after scrolling through all of these niches and products, something caught your eye. But it’s worth remembering that the niche you choose shouldn’t be entirely based on how much cash you can make, it should also be something you’re at least vaguely interested in.
After all, if there’s one way to lose interest in a store quickly, it’s selling stuff you don’t actually care about.
While this data is useful stuff, it’s also noting that it doesn’t show us absolutely everything. For example, there may be niches in low-performing categories that out-perform some of the niches in this list. And, as we’ve mentioned, these numbers only come 11 weeks, not the entire year. Because some niches are more seasonal than others, they might peak at other times – think swimwear or winter wear.
However, if you’re trying to decide what you should sell – in a new or existing store – you should keep these niches in mind. After all, they made this list for a reason and they all have plenty of cash-making potential.