May 18th, 2009
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:
You can supplement them with free resources like:
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.
Posted in Toys Dropshippers, Video Game Dropshippers | 4 Comments »
February 17th, 2009
Looking for potential products to dropship off eBay or your own e-commerce website we have recently reasearched a few products that might be good candidates for an online venture:
coffee dropship
feng shui drop ship
diaper bags drop ship
Undoubtedly, you have a much bigger selection of products to choose from – say, what about jigsaw puzzle drop shipping?
We have a few free tools to help us with our initial research (there are also paid options, but I think it is not yet the time for any advanced research).
As we check with Google Insights for Search we see that the amount of searches for this product is rather steady over years with some peaks at the Christmas holidays. To tell the truth, I expected a growing demand…
Rising searches (at the time of writing) can also show you the proper direction and what it is popular right now:
Rising searches
Make notes of anything that catches your eyes… I see that online puzzle games are popular and it is a sign that the product might be on the decline – people move online and stop buying many offline items they used to buy – newspapers is a good example.
You should not ignore eBay Pulse for this sort of research – it is a must to check for hot selling products in the relevant category. And what other products compete or try to substitute the product of your research – it is a good way to spot other hot products that might be more profitable.
Now we move to keyword research tools. Here we discover quite limited amount of searched keywords, but most have a sweet KEI (ratio of demand vs supply):
KeywordDiscovery, WordTracker and other keyword research tools offer free and trial versions that should help you to expand the list and look deeper into the needs of the potential clients.
Competition check is a must. Better – if you make a research, but from own experience know than it is hard to evaluate the level of competition until you try to promote the products. The narrower niche you choose the more chances you have to succeed – people tend to buy general products from established and well known retailers.
Also remember to get subscribed to at least one reputable product sourcing list to know if you will be able to get the products you need dropshipped…
Posted in Toys Dropshippers | 2 Comments »
November 12th, 2008
I would like to discuss today what steps you can take once you have spotted a cool hot selling product. It is not a secret that any business idea check starts with market research – demand, customers, market, etc.
Let’s assume you have done all that properly and discovered that Lego toys are really hot with eBay right now. You see an opportunity, but the problem is you need some reliable Lego dropship merchant. And you don’t want to spend money on all those lists of dropshippers available online
So, you can do your own research for dropshippers – but you need to remember that you are not protected against scam, that the prices can be uncompetitive, etc.
Nonetheless, this idea of a direct and free dropshipper search is a good one. Once you are through with 5 Google search result pages you feel that something does not work – you come across either those dropship lists that you do not want to pay for right now or across some unrelated stuff – eBay auctions, YouTube videos and other crap.
Why do not you find dropship merchants with their Lego listings? There are various reasons – those companies do not use Internet to that extent yet, they do not want to be visible to the public with this product category, etc…
Step by step you are back to the idea to give a try to those lists of verified dropshippers So you check the reputation and feedback – are you likely to get another scam product? Then you need to choose one – you can’t afford buying all lists.
At this stage it is reasonable to use free trial offers or free previews Once you have tried that and did not find what you need for your home business – time to invest some money into those lists that are not labeled as scam, but do not offer any free trial or preview.
Before entering your card data shoot an e-mail and ask the list seller if they have any Lego dropshippers. No reply received? It is better to forget about that dropship list.
Otherwise it is time to do some ivestments into your online business. In case those lists do not deliver what they promise – feel free to ask for a full refund. The seller will have no choice, but reimburse you in full.
Posted in Toys Dropshippers | No Comments »