Gaming Niche - Is it possible to have a unique item to sell

Is the gaming niche really that difficult to crack into and make a good amount of sales? Well, I guess that really depends on what you plan on selling, doesn't it? You can go around selling video games that you bought for a few dollars and make a small profit if you can find the right buyers. Or you can go out and innovate something that is already in the gaming world to make it better or your own. A lot of pop-up businesses that start making an item for themselves will usually start selling it online if it's easy enough to produce. Small start-ups usually start with smaller items and not an entire gaming system. Selling smaller items will increase your revenue and reduce your risk since more people can purchase them and if you do get a fraudulent purchase you won't have a lot of money tied up when the bank is dealing with the payments.


Innovate something that fits in
When you're thinking about cracking into the gaming niche with your own product you'll need to be unique and at the same time offer value to the gamers, and time spent playing their game. If you are just making stickers to go on a controller or a gaming system, you might not have the best results since no one really wants to hold a sticker while playing or slap it on their system.

A good example of a great innovation is this small company that wanted to make joystick extensions for PS3, PS4, Xbox, and Xbox 1 controllers so that people could have better control when playing certain games, mainly fps games. This company is called Kontrol Freek and they are now a massive company that sponsors professional players to use their products when playing the video games of their choice. I actually own a few pairs of these Kontrol Freek joystick extenders and I absolutely love them. They give me more grip on the joystick so I'm not slipping off the controller when moving around a lot, which is great for fps games. Kontrol Freek made a product for people that were needed it, and people didn't even know they needed it until they tried it out for the first time!


If you can't innovate, outmatch
If you don't have a unique idea to make an item then what you'll need to do is partner up with a company that does and then you need to outmatch your competition. To partner up for something like this you'll usually need a good amount of business capital in order to get the attention of the company that is selling its own product. This way you can buy into the company and become a board member in order to make decisions to push the company in the direction of your choosing or even develop your own ideas later on.

This is a much more expensive way to do things, but since you don't have a unique idea it's the only way to sell a physical product that is your own, besides rebranding which I'll go over next.

Rebranding an item you find for resale
When you rebrand an item you're basically purchasing an item that is already made but you're putting your own logos and tags on it. You're making it your own when you do this and you can build your brand around this. There are plenty of online marketers that go this route because they don't have to focus on the production of the items and they can just focus on getting people to their pages to make a sale.

Rebranding is a great way to get your own items out there if you can afford it. This method is cheaper than partnering with an already established company but more expensive than producing your own products (usually). It's the middle-priced method because you will usually have to buy in bulk in order for the manufacturer to put your own logos on the items. Buying in bulk within the gaming niche could me $1,000's of an upfront investment, and that's on the low end.


In conclusion, starting up the production of your own item can actually be cheaper in the beginning if you start small, but it could be a lot more work. You can partner up with an already successful company, but it's difficult to find one that is letting in investors/board members. And you can also go the route of rebranding an item to make it your own, but you'll need to purchase in bulk to get a deal with the manufacturer.