Product selection is crucial to your succeeding in dropshipping. I say this all the time and it is obvious without repeating.

What do you expect from your product research?

• To spot a good online seller (high demand and proper for e-commerce)
• To see moderate competition
• To make sure of the lasting nature of product (I mean it is likely to be in demand and on the market for years to come)
• To set up reliable product sourcing with competitive prices
• To have some personal liking (or at least you should learn to like the products you promote)

We reviewed a number of products in the past, some examples include:

• Candle Drop Ship
• Bicycle Dropshipper
• Bluray DVD Dropshipper
• Bratz Dropship

Today we will have a look at dropshipping skateboards. Skateboards no doubt meet our initial requirement – good online sellers – people buy this product online and they do not need to touch or smell it (though we know that everything sells online now).

What about demand?

About 2 000 keywords. Not that huge as we wished to see it, but quite big. You should keep in mind that keyword tools do not provide 100% exact information. Another point to remember – many searches are of browsing nature and only some tiny share of search phrases are of buying kind.

Google Insights For Search say that there is a gradual decline of ’skateboard’ searches over time with the primary product market still in the United States (yes, this tool is great to define key markets and top searches in addition to the general demand trend).

How do you check competition? Most keyword research tools provide this feature. Probably, the easiest way is to check the number of Google results returned for the term ‘skateboard’, but you need to compare it to something you are familiar with. And it makes sense to enter less general terms.

If you think of the lasting nature of the product it is likely to stay on the market.

What about skateboard dropship merchants? You need verified, reliable, competitively priced. A few sources that are worth your time include Salehoo, Worldwide Brands, Doba – you can see them compared here. Fast check shows that you will have a choice of suppliers:

Our research is not a final answer to the question – should I give a try to dropship skateboards. It is sort of initial steps. You should make a much deeper research using your own extra techniques or applications available on the market similar to finding hot selling eBay goods or in-built market research tool

Well, you can do candle drop ship or set up relations with video game drop ship wholesaler or with any other wholesale drop ship companies, but it does not guarantee your succeeding in dropshipping

As you know browsing our large drop ship case study section dropship websites are different. Some make pennies, others are such a success that provide their owners with a decent revenue.

What is the size of that decent revenue that successful dropship websites make? We have revised our dropship case studies to make the below list (includes large dropship businesses and smaller scaled ones):

Industry – Cars
Niche – Auto Parts
Monthly Revenue – $141 000
Details…

Industry – Department Stores
Niche – Beauty Products, Sporting Equipment & more…
Monthly Revenue – $100 000
Details…

Industry – Books
Niche – College Textbooks
Monthly Revenue – $10 000
Details…

Industry – Apparel
Niche – Halloween Costumes
Monthly Revenue – $10 000
Details…

Industry – Electronics
Niche – Cell Phone SIM Cards
Monthly Revenue – $10 000
Details…

Industry – Apparel
Niche – Socks
Monthly Revenue – $20 000
Details…

Industry – Electronics
Niche – MP3/ MP4 Players, etc
Monthly Revenue – $21 000
Details…

Industry – Consumer Products
Niche – Handbags
Monthly Revenue - $20 000
Details…

Industry – Electronics
Niche – TV’s, Home Audio, etc
Monthly Revenue – $13 000
Details…

Industry – Electronics
Niche – Ink and Toner
Monthly Revenue – $12 900
Details…

Industry – Home Improvement
Niche – Canvas Paintings
Monthly Revenue - $23 000
Details…

Industry – Perfume
Niche – Fragrances
Monthly Revenue – $37 000
Details…

Industry – Sports Goods
Niche – Pool Products
Monthly Revenue – $10 000
Details…

If you feel inspired and like entering dropship business to achieve that level of income off just one dropshipping website you need to do a proper market research for products where you can compete with big retailers and generate enough sales. A few tools that will help you with that (include both: free and paid):

Popular eBay products (more free eBay research tools are here)
Hot selling eBay products
Demand fluctuations over years (includes geo and seasonality aspects)
Built-in market research tool (online demand vs competition and more…)
Keyword research tool

Once you have defined the idea of products that might be good sellers in your case it is time to see what product sourcing providers have to offer and join one or two:

Over 6 000 000 products + free training & videos + in-built market research tool
Over 8 000 verified wholesale dropshippers with ratings + free training + member forums

A few more product sourcing options are compared here

Well, I guess our dropship case studies section lists tens if not hundreds of products that online entrepreneurs have success selling online. But the list is not final and we try to discover more products that might fit your dropship business. Candle dropship is another product that sells well online by dropship merchants.

If you are good at promoting and capitalizing from seasonal sales then candle drop ship is probably your product. If you take a look at the candle online search demand you will see that it is on the decline for a couple of the past years with the peaks at the Christmas time. A positive sign is that the United States tops the list of regional interest for candles – so, it is still the main online candle market.

OK, what about dropship suppliers? We turn to our comparison table of a few top outsourcing supplier list providers to see if we have a choice. Our check of Worldwide Brands list shows that we can go on with our research as candle dropshippers are available in a good amount:

What I like about WorldWide Brands product is their huge database of dropshippers and lots of extras like Built-In Market Research tool that provides you with the information if it is hard to promote and sell the product of your choice online. Let’s see what it has to say about ‘candle drop ship’:

Analysis: What are your chances of success in selling that product online?

Difficult

Market trends and product demand change constantly. Based on the keyword terms you have entered, this product may be difficult to sell online at this time.

If you decide to keep researching this product or product line, you should also try adjusting your keywords to include specific information about the product. (such as: Brand Name, colors, model types and etc.)

Competition

How many people are selling using the term: candle

Yahoo!
There are currently 2,571 products using your Terms.

eBay
There are currently 14,007 stores using your Terms.
There are currently 11,007 products listed using your Terms.

Google
There are currently 25,300,000 pages found on Google using your Terms.

Yes, this is the way you can start and run your dropship business nowadays:

• you get access to a huge database of verified dropshippers, drop ship warehouse wholesale suppliers
• you get access to free videos and other training stuff showing you how to choose what to sell online and how to promote it
• you get access to the in-built marketing research tools and see demand/ competition/ retail pricing/ auction pricing & more…

With the progress of dropship business tools we should also mention that online e-commerce scene has changed greatly over the past years.

When it comes to online retail business I have always been a fan of running your own online store. Unlike auction sales you keep control of the situation and avoid paying high fees. Unfortunately, the online scene changes fast, and with every passing year it leaves much less space for small entrepreneurs.

Online marketing techniques get very expensive. PPC (pay-per-click) is costly. You can advertise with some second tier pay-per-click search engines, but click fraud is high & ROI (return on investment) is poor. And MSN AdCenter, Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing rates are really high – you can’t bid the same level as big companies.

CPM advertising is not efficient, used for branding primarily nowadays and require a huge budget.

SEO (search engine optimization) takes months if not years and also requires a considerable budget.

e-Mail marketing is not so powerful as it used to be in the past due to SPAM issues.

Now it is easier to discover reliable wholesale dropship companies, but much harder to sell their products.