If you review our previous posts you will see that I most focus on two types of posts:

- Real life dropship case studies – what people dropship, how they promote and what they earn.
- Ideas for products to dropship – bratz dropship and blue ray DVD dropship are a few examples.

I have never turned to seasonal products yet – and to tell the truth, I have no experience with that type of products. Say – bicycle dropshipping. I am sure that there is demand for that type of products – to make sure I will check with a few tools. We see those search demand waves reminding us that we really deal with a seasonal type of product.

What about the supply? It makes no sense to move further if you are not sure you have a selection of verified dropshippers – I do not mean those that you get in Google when you type in ‘bicycle dropshippper’. I talk about the companies that are experienced with dropshipping and have some track record

I turn to the lists of reputable dropshippers and see that one lists no products I need and another offers them in abundance:

Along with the number of supplies I get some cool online market research – demand, competition, auction and retail pricing numbers. I do not rely on this data only, but it is really of great help to have a look into the product category where you have no experience.

Next – I turn to another dropship list and see six more potential bicycle dropship merchants that are presented in this way:

Bicycle Supplier – Join for Supplier Name & Website
Visit Website | More Information
Products: Summit Adult Trike, Kruzer King, Summit Industrial Bike.
Description: Distributor of bicycle products representing the top names in the industry, like Shimano, SRAM, Thomson.

Then I need to develop a marketing strategy. In my case I am not in a hurry with this project and I do not have a large budget at the moment. So, I would choose one of the cheap online bicycle dropship business strategies:

Launch a separate e-commerce website adding a few incoming links and growing content by 3-4 pages monthly. No PPC advertising, no e-mail marketing, no CPM banner advertising, no eBay auctions. I will start the website and assign min monthly time to update/ promote it. I hope the site will be properly indexed and gain some search engine rankings for the next peak of bicycle sales – in Jule 2010.

In the previous bratz dropship post I have mentioned the idea (though it is not original) to focus/ never stop researching for new hot products emerging on the market.

It is evident that you can’t cover all industries and follow news and trends in every consumer niche, so you need choose one-two where you were/ are successful and feel comfortable or you have personal liking to or some other reasons you feel you would like to give that industry your time and resources priority.

How you follow that industry trends is up to you. You can use tools mentioned in the previous articles, you need to read industry magazines and websites, watch industry TV programs, etc. The goal is simple – to be on the alert for opening opportunities in that niche.

Let’s turn to some examples. Electronics is no doubt the most popular online product category (with LOTS of demand and the same amount of supply). And this industry develops fast. Consider blue-ray discs. They are not the latest invention and sell for a few years now, but they are relatively new compared to CD’s and DVD’s.

Blu-ray Disc (also known as Blu-ray or BD) is an optical disc storage medium designed by Sony to supersede the standard DVD format. Its main uses are high-definition video and data storage with 50GB per disc. The disc has the same physical dimensions as standard DVDs and CDs.

[definition by Wikipedia]

So, how do you feel about blueray DVD’s dropship? Let’s use one of free and reliable tools to define the product demand You get the idea about the product demand over the years, you see that it is still top product in the United States, you get a list of popular search terms and most important – you get a list of rising searches.

Studying those rising searches you get more ideas about blue-ray related products that are in demand on the market and consequently are worth your time of deeper research.

Rising searches

Before making a thorough product research make sure you will have access to blueray dvd’s and other products dropshippers. Quick check of some dropship sourcing catalogs where you can browse catalog by categories and get a free trial access for a week if you see the products you need listed or you can browse other dropship catalogs offering free preview and tours

Finding profitable products is crucial to any business including online dropship business. There are special tools available on the market that can help you with your research. A few samples:

• Hot Selling eBay Products Tool
• Drop Ship Focus (free videos)
• Market research tool (comes with access to the largest database of verified dropshippers)
• Keyword research tools

You can supplement them with free resources like:

• eBay Pulse
• Google Insights for Search
• Google Trends

Armed with this entire arsenal you need to just assign some time to regularly monitor the market for new products appearing and getting huge demand (= new opportunities to your business).

Recently I have noticed one popular product using this approach – bratz. I was completely unfamiliar with this. Then I discover that this is toys – dolls with large heads and wide eyes.

I have checked the lists of the verified dropshippers to identify the product suppliers to dropship Bratz I was certainly looking for free Bratz dropshippers with no minimum. Once I have detected Bratz dropship suppliers I could do another, this time more detailed, product research.

The product looks promising, but digging deeper I discover that there is also a Bratz video game that is actually most researched online of all Bratz products (it means the huge Bratz demand is not focused on Bratz dolls, but covers a wide range of miscellaneous products). Another check – this time with Google Insights for Search – and I see that I am likely to be late to the party – the demand peak is declining and Bratz products are popular in some countries where I do not have plans to promote to – Australia, Albania, Mexico.

I do not state that it is impossible to make money drop shipping Bratz products, but it does not look that appealing to me.

This is my simple method to identify those profitable products monitoring online product demand and then making a 30 minutes or longer research to discover any proof signs of the product potential or lack of that.