If you’re not sure what to sell online, but know you want to open an ecommerce site, you’ve come to the right place – this guide is designed to cover everything you need to know to pick the right ecommerce products to sell online.
Want to open an online store, but not certain what to sell?
But wait. What products are you going to sell online? Where do you start when it comes to choosing things that people will buy? How do you get the products in your hands? Do you have an ecommerce business plan? Clearly, there’s a lot to think about when making this decision, as it lays the foundation for your store’s success.
Fortunately, all you need is a little guidance, which is why we put together this comprehensive guide to finding products to sell online – and updated it for 2019!
Sit tight, because we’ll be covering quite a bit of material. Whether you read the entire guide, or are just looking to reference specific sections, feel free to print this out, bookmark it and/or share with your social networks!
Why is it so important to choose your ecommerce products carefully?
Your online business will have many separate parts that all need to work together, such as marketing, inventory, and finances. Each part is directly affected and influenced by the type of products you’re selling. This means that without a solid product line, your business faces an uphill battle before it even starts – if you don’t know what you’re selling, you can’t plan the other aspects of your online store.
It’s true that deciding what products to sell can be rather difficult, as there are literally millions of options to choose from. Not only that, you need to ensure there’s a market for your products and that you can actually make money from selling them. (After all, we’re all in business to make money, right?)
Even more, the products you sell are a prime factor in shaping other details that impact your online business. For example, if you decide to sell refrigerators, how will you ship this massive item across the country? Or, if you’re selling wine, what legal restrictions do you face when selling to different states and geographies? Are there any additional taxes that need to be paid?
At the end of the day, the products you sell online directly impact the following:
- Branding & design: If you’re selling auto parts, you probably wouldn’t want to give your website a pink background and frilly logo, right? Your brand should reinforce your product line, so make sure they match well. Check out your competitors to see what sort of designs they’re using.
- Marketing: The marketing outlets you choose, along with your marketing budgets, are dependent on your target audience, which is fully determined by your product offering. For best results, make a plan to market across more than one channel, such as advertising on Facebook and within search results pages.
- Your sanity: Keep in mind that you’ll be spending lots of time with these products, so only sell something if you find it interesting and won’t get bored with it soon.
Figuring out what to sell online and who to target is a decision that shouldn’t be taken lightly. That’s why conducting thorough product and market research is so important, so let’s look at that a little more closely.
Product Research Basics
If you’re brand-new to product research, don’t fear – here’s a list of questions to ask about each product. These will help you make sure that the product is sourceable, shippable, and most importantly, profitable. These questions work best if you already have some products or a niche in mind. If you’re not certain where to look for product ideas and want some examples, check out our list of trending products that have gone mostly overlooked in 2019, or check out this list of cheap ways to do market research.
Is there demand for the product? Obviously, you’ll want to know if anyone’s buying a product before you sell it. To help you figure out if your product is something people are buying, use a sales estimator (like this one from JungleScout). For items under $100, you’ll probably want to pick a product with at least 4-500 sales per month. For items over $100, you can get by with products with 2-300 sales per month. Use our profit margin calculator to see how much profit you’ll make on each sale. Your profit on each item will be more important than the overall value of the product, so be sure to balance your profit margins with the number of sales you can expect to make.
Is the product easily sourceable? If you aren’t able to get a consistent supply of your product at a reasonable price, your sales may come to a screeching halt just as you start to build momentum. We cover the three most common ways to source ecommerce products later in this article, so make sure to find a supplier early in your product research process.
Is your product easily shippable? In the age of Amazon, customers have come to expect cheap, fast shipping. This means that the overall size, weight, and dimensions of your product will be a major factor when choosing a product to sell. Make sure to calculate the dimensional shipping weight of your products before making a final decision. If you are shipping larger products, you’ll likely want to increase your overall profit markup to help offset the costs of shipping.
Will the product be profitable? After you’ve done the research on what you plan to sell, how you’ll source it, and how you’ll ship it, it’s time to ask the most important question of all: Will this product be profitable? Our profit margin calculator will help you figure out how much markup you’ll need on each product in order to stay profitable – just don’t forget to factor in your costs of storing, shipping, and marketing the product as well.
