Hi Dave!
Congrats on choosing to take action by setting up an online store, just in time for the holiday season
Best advice I can give you to help pick out a niche to target is to not reinvent the wheel. Find a product that people are already looking to buy online.
You'll want to sell things that are both in demand
and of interest to you. You don't want to be working with scuba diving gear if you hate the idea of being underwater. Know what i mean?
Here are 2 ways to get an idea of what's selling right now.
First place to look is
eBay pulse.
Don't just look at the overall list. Choose a category that's of interest to you, then see what the popular searches are for that particular niche.
Second way: the
top searches on shopping.com
Gives you the top 100 niches, and the keywords people use to search to get there. Pretty useful stuff when you're competing in a big market. Example, if you like car audio you'll want to target something smaller inside that niche, this list says that the top keyword used was kenwood. That's the niche you'll want to go after, the Kenwood --not the car audio.
There you go! Once you've got your niche, you're ready to move to the next step of getting yourself online and selling.