Can you and your friend have profitable businesses in the same niche?

Well there’s plenty of business to go around.

Even these days, when so much of our shopping is done online.

Even though we’re buying products made on the other side of the world, sold by people living sometimes thousands of miles from us.

Even though for a few months in 2020 none of us visited a shop.

Despite all of these things, when we think of selling, we think of a brick and mortar store.

And yeah, it would really suck if you and your friend opened two separate stores that sell the same things, in the same city center.

And that’s how most of us see Etsy stores – there’s a limited amount of prospective customers who pass through, and those who buy from your friend won’t buy from you (and vice versa).

But this is not true with online businesses.

First of all, the amount of customers you could sell to (provided you’re picking a profitable niche) is almost limitless. We’re talking hundreds of thousands, millions.

You only need a tiny fraction of a fraction of that to do really well.

Both you and your friend could sell the exact same product to the exact same customer base, and you could both do very well.

Secondly, you could sell the same product but brand it differently, and sell to a different customer base.

For instance, you could sell the exact same coffee, but brand it one way to attract a no-fuss crowd that just wants to drink their coffee and get on with their day. And a completely different way to a hipster crowd that cares about where the coffee is from, how it was made etc.

In the online market, there are literally billions of prospective customers. You and your friend are less than a drop in that bucket. You could both do very well, and I hope you both will.

Hope that helps.

Jon