Here is a little trick that is simple, yet powerful when it comes to generating online niche market ideas that you can use to help you identify what you can sell in an online store. The best thing. Its free.

Using Google’s search box, start typing a general search term. For example, I started typing Dog into the search box and the auto-suggest started providing related search terms. When I typed dog, I started getting suggestions such as:

Dog Agility Training
Dog Training
Dog Games
Dog Tags
Dog Treat Recipes
Dog Toys
Dog Tags
and so on.

While these may not pick out which niche markets are popular (there are other tools for that), it does give you some great ideas as well as show you what common search terms are being used. For example, dog toys could be a possibility for a niche as could agility training supplies. Other niche ideas could be custom dog tags, or homemade dog treats. These are just some ideas to help fuel your brain and get it thinking about what you can sell.

Obviously, further investigation such as niche viability, traffic analysis, and the abilty to source products still needs to be done, but the important thing is that Google suggested several items and got the creative juices flowing.

If you sign up for a Google Adwords account, you can get traffic estimation on your keywords. There are also premium tools on the market (many overpriced for what they do) that gather search engine keywords, provide keyword suggestions, as well as estimated search volumes, but this little technique I described can get you off to a great start. Most of the premium services are just providing time saving services, but provide information that can be found for free if you know where to look.