This can sometimes be overwhelming as there are obviously thousands and thousands of products to choose from, but what I would recommend in the beginning is to pick something you know a little about.
Maybe you have a hobby such as martial arts or horse riding or you’re a keen gardener. When you have a natural interest in something, it will always be more enjoyable to run a business related to it and you can also use your knowledge and experience.
However, this ultimately is about selling products online and if your particular interest has very few followers then it may not be suitable to set up a business around it. It’s all about supply and demand and if there is little demand for your products or service then you can’t expect to be highly successful.
Here are some useful things to consider when thinking of what you would like to sell online:
- Can it be easily sent by post?
- If it can be sent by post, is it liable to get there in one piece?
- How much room does the product take up and will you have room to store it?
- Do other people buy the product online and would you?
- Are there a good variety of related products you can also sell?
- Is the product liable to generate repeat sales or is it a onetime deal?
- Will the product frequently change and need to be updated, i.e. Electronics?
All these things are worth thinking about before you go steaming in building an ecommerce store ready to start selling.
If you don’t really have any particular hobbies or interests and are completely stuck for ideas of what to sell then here is a great place to give you some ideas:
Ebay sell just about everything there is to sell so you will certainly find something there that you might like to sell.
In the next Module we will run through Market research which will give you a thorough grounding on how to almost guarantee your success at finding products that successfully sell online and that you can to.
Video Transcription
Okay, one of the first things that you’re going to need to think about is exactly what it is you’re going to sell online. And there are some things you need to take into consideration.
First thing, is can the products be easily sent by post? Obviously, if you’re selling something like a grandfather clock, that’s going to be a terrible thing to post. And you’re going to need a very reliable courier, probably a specialist courier at that.
And the chances of the grandfather clock actually getting there in one piece is pretty slim.
So you need to think about whether the item’s easy to send or not. And also whether it’s liable to get damaged in transit, which causes all kinds of problems. Returns, filling out forms, and claiming from your courier—it’s not fun.
The next thing is, if you have to store any of the products at your home, if you’re working from home or a small office, will you have room to store any of them? Obviously, again, something large like a plasma TV or grandfather clocks, you don’t want to have too many of those in your house before it gets filled up.
The next thing is, do other people buy the product online, and would you?
For example, would you go and buy a bed online? A bed is something which normally people like to actually go and try out, and have a lie on there to see if it’s comfortable. You wouldn’t necessarily go online and buy the mattress or the bed without first wanting to try it.
So think about whether it’s a product that is usually bought online. If you’re thinking about a product, ask friends and family if they’d buy one of those online and get some feedback.
Also, you need to think about, is there a good variety of related products? You don’t want to really sell one product, where there’s really nothing else related to it that you can sell your existing customers.
Again, with a plasma TV, there’s not an awful lot of things that you can sell with that. Once they’ve bought the screen, there’s really just a few cables and bits and pieces like that you can sell with it, but not an awful lot else.
Is the product liable to generate repeat sales, or is it just a one time thing? Usually, again if somebody buys for example a bed, they’re not going to be buying those beds off you regularly. It’s a once every 5 possibly even 10 year purchase, of if they have another room that needs a bed. So it’s not a repeat sale business.
Whereas something like vitamin pills, muscle building powder, something like that, this is something which can be sold again and again to the same customer. Once you’ve got that customer, that customer is potentially yours for years if you give them good customer service. And you don’t have to re-advertise to get that customer.
So some products which are consumable or liable to be continually purchased are very, very good products.
The next thing is, will the product change and need to be frequently updated. I think, for example, if you’re selling electronics, which I’ve done in the past, it can be a real pain to keep up to date with the latest models that come out. You’re going to have to frequently update your ecommerce website with all the latest technical descriptions.
Cameras, digital cameras for example, they come out, really new models come out every few weeks. So in order for you to be competitive, you’re going to have to have all the latest models on your website, and to do that takes a lot of time to manage and keep the website updated.
So think about whether the products need regular updating.
So to summarize then, the ideal products, easy to post, unlikely to break during shipping, not too large if you don’t have much space at home or in your office to store them.
Are in a niche, because it’s easier to set up a website that targets a niche rather than a huge broad range market. Because they’ll probably be some big players in the big markets already. But if you go for a niche, then you’ve got a high chance of being able to dominate.
But you also need related products. And again, the products that generate repeat products are ideal. But that’s not to say that you can’t make a lot of money selling one-time deal products. I again sold many plasma TVs and LCD TVs as one of my first ecommerce websites. And it did brilliantly.
So what we mentioned earlier, we don’t want to have products that keep changing or need updating regularly.
So there’s a summary of things you need to think about when choosing what you’d like to sell online.
