Knowing where to start can prove difficult. Not to mention, you also need to decide what form your product will take. Will it be a physical product you sell through an affiliate program or your online store? Will it be an informational product you create in response to a customer need? There’s a lot to think about.
Finding any product to sell online involves identifying customer pain points and creating a product that caters to those pain points. It is through following certain strategies that you’ll be able to identify these customers’ needs. Here are five strategies you can use to find the perfect product to sell online.
A few quick notes before I proceed:
- Focus on customer needs.
- Look for potential in certain product categories.
- Consider new markets, features, and ways to use products.
- Concentrate on specific niches as opposed to general product categories with mass appeal. While it’s harder to identify niches, there’s less competition and it’s more profitable.
Now let’s looks at those five strategies…
#1 Identify Niche Opportunities via Keyword Research
By conducting keyword research you can find a product or niche based on customer searches. You can then focus on ranking for those keywords to drive traffic to your site and grow your business. Because 70% of keyword searches are long tail (three to four phrases highly targeted to what you’re selling), it would be wise to hone in on those.
So, use a tool like Keyword Planner to look at the volume and competition for keywords relating to a specific industry. For example, if there’s low competition for keywords – but volumes of searches are high – it presents a unique opportunity.
Not only will you have a highly captive market, but it’ll be easier to rank for those keywords in search engines and drive traffic to your site. The latter strategy works well if you plan to drop ship products because margins are low, making it difficult to use paid advertising.
#2 Find Opportunities in Facebook Groups
I’m talking from experience. As a freelance writer, I’m part of a Facebook writing group of 2000 members. In the writing group, people ask questions when they need help with something. It’s from these questions, that myself and three other writers were able to identify an opportunity.
We noticed that many of the people asking questions in the group were freelance writers who use English as a second language. There were many pain points unique to this group of people.
Seeing a huge demand, we conducted research to see if there were any websites that catered for this group. Surprisingly there were none. WriteWorldwide was born. It’s an online resource helping freelance writers who use English as a second language kickstart their writing careers.
In this instance, our focus will be in driving traffic through blogging. In the long run, we’ll grow our business through the creation of information products tailored to our audience. We have a growing subscriber list that we can also tap into to gauge what products they want.
#3 Scour Quora For Advice
Upon initial inspection, using Quora to find products to sell online, may surprise you. But if you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Quora is a community of people who ask and answer questions.
I mean, in compiling this post I scoured the pages of Quora and found a question that read, “How do I figure out What Products to Sell Online”?
Not only did it provide useful information for this post, but by searching the pages of Quora you can find other ways to find products to sell.
The answers to the above question were a goldmine of advice, links to articles, and strategies. Advice included:
- Selling a product that hasn’t reached your market yet e.g. research products that are popular in one country and see if they can sell locally.
- Links to many articles on the topic like 10 Best Places ECommerce Entrepreneurs go to Find Product Ideas.
- Analyzing the best-selling products across major platforms like eBay and Amazon. Leverage the success of those products by offering them as part of your online store’s products.
#4 Use Online Consumer Trend Publications to Monitor Trends
Paying attention to the latest trends helps you identify unique opportunities. Use online trend publications to see what products are currently on the market and will be in the future.
Trend publications also expose you to new product categories that you’ve never heard of. Below are four trend publications you should consult:
- Trend Watching is an independent firm that scans the world for promising consumer trends and insights.
- Trend Hunter is the largest trend community and a source of inspiration for industry leaders and entrepreneurs. They provide you with daily innovative ideas.
- Google Trends explores trending topics and shopping trends.
- Springwise has a network of global trend-spotters that curates and publishes global innovations.
#5 Use Instagram
Instagram is a great place to find inspiration for products ideas. The photo-based social network lets you scan through photos and ideas.
There are many accounts on Instagram that post curated content related to your niche. Find those accounts and scour them for ideas. For example, visit the Shopify Instagram Account for curated content across their 90 000 + online stores.
Also, search for an applicable hashtag that relates to your category of interest, or gauge the level of buyer interest with a hashtag like #want.
Indeed, gauging buyer interest is a good place to start when trying to find the perfect product to sell online. By using these five strategies you’ll be able to identify those customer pain points more effectively.
What strategies have you used to find a product to sell online?