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Finding nichesLesson 5 of 8

Finding niches, Method 5: SaaS and AI tool marketplaces

Reverse-engineering profitable SaaS, AI-tool, and app niches from marketplaces built for that stack: Acquire.com, Product Hunt, AppSumo, and the Chrome Web Store.

human reviewedAhmed Raza2 min

Taught by Sir Tanveer Nandla.

The marketplace-reverse-engineering method (see Finding niches, Method 1) extends to SaaS, AI tools, and apps too; it just needs a different set of marketplaces, since Flippa and Empire Flippers skew toward content sites.

Acquire.com

The SaaS equivalent of Flippa: a marketplace for buying and selling startups and SaaS products.

  1. Browse listings and screenshot ones that look promising.
  2. Give the screenshot to ChatGPT or Claude and ask it to identify the product (its name or URL) or, if it can't, to describe a business that would replicate the same idea.
  3. Once you have a URL (found or replicated), reverse-engineer it: check where its traffic actually comes from.

Product Hunt

Browse for launched product ideas. As with Acquire.com, giving Product Hunt's URL (or a specific listing) to an AI assistant and asking it to find replicable products works as a shortcut to manual browsing.

AppSumo

Browse lifetime-deal products. The useful signal here is in the reviews: a product with a mix of 3 to 4 star reviews usually means real users exist but have an unresolved complaint. A 5-star product has no visible gap left to build into, and a 1-star product usually means the whole idea is broken, not just one feature of it. A 3 to 4 star spread is the sweet spot: real paying demand, with a specific, nameable flaw. That gap, the specific issue reviewers keep raising, is the opportunity: build a version that fixes it, and it can be sold on the same platform to the same audience already looking for it.

Chrome Web Store

Browsing extensions surfaces a similar range of small, focused product ideas worth validating the same way: an extension is typically small enough in scope that a gap in one is quick to spot and quick to rebuild without it.

Shopify app ideas

The Shopify app ecosystem is another source of product niches: every store owner on the platform is a potential buyer for a tool that solves one specific operational problem, which makes it a different kind of marketplace from the first three (a real installed user base already paying for software, rather than websites being bought and sold outright). Ask an AI assistant to help identify demand and gaps for a Shopify app idea before building one.

Class infographic

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More in this chapter7

  1. LessonFinding niches, Method 1: reverse-engineering marketplacesFinding a profitable niche by browsing site-selling marketplaces, reverse-engineering a successful site's keywords, and watching for brand hijacking.Read lesson
  2. LessonFinding niches, Method 2: the Ahrefs/SEMrush filter methodFinding a low-competition niche directly inside a keyword-research tool, using volume, DR, and word-count filters.Read lesson
  3. LessonFinding niches, Method 3: AI tools and NLP categoriesUsing ChatGPT prompts and Google's NLP content categories to brainstorm low-competition niche and sub-niche ideas.Read lesson
  4. LessonFinding niches, Method 4: backlink mining and UGC intent mismatchesMining a giant authority site's newest backlinks to find fresh niche sites worth replicating, and using UGC sites like Reddit and Quora to spot intent mismatches worth building for.Read lesson
  5. LessonFinding niches, Method 6: replicating one strong page from Ahrefs Content ExplorerUsing Ahrefs Content Explorer with a language filter and a low DR filter to find high-traffic pages, then building a dedicated website around one page rather than copying the whole site.Read lesson
  6. LessonFinding niches, Method 7: a topic search in Ahrefs Content Explorer, then reverse engineeringSearching a topic "everywhere" in Ahrefs Content Explorer, filtering to Domain Rating 0 to 20, and reverse engineering the best site's organic keywords and its competitors to find goldmine niches.Read lesson
  7. LessonAutomating niche research: Ahrefs MCP connected to ClaudeConnecting the Ahrefs MCP server to Claude so that the assistant finds goldmine keywords (DR under 20, AI related) and reverse engineers a site you want to replicate, with a better prompt giving a better answer.Read lesson

Finding niches, Method 4: backlink mining and UGC intent mismatches

Mining a giant authority site's newest backlinks to find fresh niche sites worth replicating, and using UGC sites like Reddit and Quora to spot intent mismatches worth building for.

Finding niches, Method 6: replicating one strong page from Ahrefs Content Explorer

Using Ahrefs Content Explorer with a language filter and a low DR filter to find high-traffic pages, then building a dedicated website around one page rather than copying the whole site.