You Need a Niche: How to Identify the Ideal Products for Your Glowforge Business

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Note: make sure you grab the worksheet at the bottom of the post to figure out your niche!

Newbie Glowforge users are often all over the place when it comes to product offerings.

They want to make sure they have something to offer to any customer, no matter what it might be. They are so worried about starting to make money that they don’t want to miss a single sale.

In fact, let me call myself out here for a second: when I first started, I offered engraved baby name rounds, wedding place cards, DIY kits, engraved cutting boards, and about a million other things.

What’s wrong with that? Well, on the surface, nothing—I had something to offer to just about anyone who might stop by my shop.

However, I quickly realized that in my particular phase of life as a new mother, I really enjoyed making products for the mothers of babies and little kids.

I knew this market inside and out (since I’m a member of that market), I already hung out in the spaces that my ideal customers were hanging out and purchasing (did you know there are about a million buy/sell/trade groups for little kid items?), and I had a similar style/vibe as my customers. I was filled with ideas for products I myself would love for my daughter, and as it turned out—so did my customers.

I quickly narrowed my focus, and to my surprise, my business grew quickly when I offered fewer products.

As I learned more and more about business, I realized that I sort of lucked into one of the key strategies the gurus teach: Nailing Your Niche (I truly hate that buzzword-y phrase, but it really applies!).

As it turns out, when you make products for a very specific group of people, you can target messaging more precisely and each of your ideal customers feels that you’re speaking directly to them.

Consider the difference between

“[Your Shop Name]: for all your laser engraved needs!” (who really has laser engraved needs?)

and

“[Your Shop Name]: decorate the farmhouse of your dreams”

Are you excluding a lot of people with the second message? Yep! You sure are.

But your ideal customers (in this example, those who love farmhouse decor—actually a HUGE market) know immediately that your shop is going to be their new favorite place to shop.

Rather than making sure your business has one or two items anybody might like, consider finding your own niche and designing for just one type of person.

There’s a marketing adage that’s been attributed to about a million different people:

“When you sell to everybody, you sell to nobody.”

It sounds counter-intuitive, but in my experience it is 100% true.

Have I convinced you? Great! Let’s figure out what your niche should be.

Get my You Need a Niche worksheet below. Block out a chunk of time when you can focus (in my case, that meant making sure my toddler wasn’t hanging off of my arm). You can either print the worksheet or just grab a notebook, but you’ll want to really do the work rather than just skimming through it.

I would love to hear from you about your own niche! Still not convinced you need to niche down? Did you find one you love? Do you still need help figuring out your own niche? Send me an email at jacquelyn@thefabletree and let’s chat about it.

Feel free to share this post with your biz friends that need to niche!

The image below is perfect for sharing via Pinterest.

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One File, Three Looks: Choosing the Right Materials for Your Glowforge Project