The eCommerce industry is absolutely massive. Worldwide, it’s an industry that is looking to top $4 trillion in sales by the year 2020! If you’re someone who has been thinking about opening their own online business, the time is now.

Join us as we look at some tips for finding the best products for your online retail store, and some examples of products that have been known to perform in the past.

Tips For Finding Ideal Products For Your Niche

Every online retailer works within a niche. This is the place you’ve carved out for yourself within a larger industry. If you sell electronics, then you’ll probably narrow that down to video games or movies. From there, you can offer exclusively retro items that fetch a high price from collectors.

Finding a detailed niche that isn’t overcrowded is the first step on any eCommerce store’s journey. From there, you need to establish some guidelines for how you’ll choose and sell products.

Here are some things to consider:

• You should choose something that isn’t too fragile and can be shipped easily
• Choose products without a set value. Collectables, sentimental items, etc.
• It’s best to sell evergreen items. Things that don’t have a drastically falling value
• Try to avoid seasonal items as they don’t have legs to them
• Set your prices between $15 and $200 (depending on your items)
• Brand your store with potential to expand into other aspects of your niche
• Look for products that people tend to order in bulk
• Consider consumables, which have a high repeat sale potential
• Choose a niche that lends itself to content creation with a blog. This is great for exposure and SEO.

It’s also important to see how similar products in your niche are selling on other platforms. Check Amazon and eBay to find out how products are performing. With Amazon, you can see the item’s rank within its respective categories. You can also use a tool like JungleScout to pull all the sales data you need for research purposes.

On eBay, you can narrow your search by checking the “sold listings” box on the left side of the page. This will give you a look at items that sold in your search, and what price they managed to fetch. Tools like TeraPeak will scrape this data for you and present it in an organized fashion.

Now that you’ve done your research and considered the data you have, the next step is to think about how you’ll apply it to your products.

You can test out your niche pretty easily by selling your products on marketplaces to start. It may seem counterproductive, but if you think about it, these places offer a lot for your growing business:

Instant trust – If you’re on a big marketplace like Amazon, people will immediately have a level of trust because of that brand.

• Customer acquisition – Earn customers that will follow your brand (and may not have found you otherwise)
• SEO – leveraging the power of places like Amazon gives you an edge in exposure for your brand.
• Sales – Of course, we have to consider the potential for sales when you’re using a marketplace. There’s a lot of traffic here, which makes it easier to get off the ground.

Consider some of today’s big marketplaces as the perfect spot to get your eCommerce brand up off the ground before you start a website as well.

Five  Examples of Products That Sell Well Online
While there’s no such thing as a “one-size-fits-all” approach to selling products online, here are five categories of items that tend to do really well:

1. Jewelry
While not the cheapest market, jewelry does well because of its inherent creative value. With online shops like Etsy empowering people to sell their creations, you can sell everything from high-quality items that are imbued with gemstones, to handmade bracelets, necklaces and rings.

2. Spices, Seasoning, and Condiments
While not a gigantic market, no dish is complete without some kind of seasoning, sauce, or condiment. In many cases, these items are easy to ship, and if you have a winning recipe for seasoning, you’re already halfway there! Try breaking out your grandmother’s Rolodex of family recipes and see what you can come up with for your store!

3. Health and Beauty
People in today’s world are more conscious than ever of how they look and feel. Health and beauty go hand-in-hand, and it’s a market where you can really do well if you focus on the right options.  Things that cater to specific diets like gluten-free, vegan, and vegetarian are a great start.

Furthermore, beauty products that aren’t  tested on animals and don’t contain parabens, sulphates, or other harmful chemical tend to do really well. Building your brand around promises like these will make your products stand out from the rest.

4. Consumer Electronics
This industry has a lot of potential niches for your business. For example, you could buy and resell rare video games for huge profits. The same goes for specific movies that are hard to find. You can even expand into equipment, both new and used, to find all kinds of opportunities for your business.

5. Software
A vast majority of today’s online software can be downloaded (which eliminates shipping costs, may I add). People use software for everything they do online. Whether it’s collecting information, making their lives easier, or just automating tasks, you can build a huge business around selling various types of software.

Even if you begin as an affiliate writing articles and linking to other sites that sell the software, the profit potential is huge.

Final Thoughts…
Making money online is easier than it has ever been. The eCommerce industry welcomes entrepreneurs who do their research and offer a great experience for their customers. How do you decide which products to sell online? Let us know in the comments!

Credit: Article by eCommerce wizard Gerry Lewis who has helped countless businesses find their place in the online world!