Step-by-Step Guide on How To Find A Profitable Product

Step-by-Step Guide on How To Find A Profitable Product

This post is a follow-up to How You Can Make Big Money Importing From China – The Rise and Fall of My Empire… In my last post, I showed you... 05:42

This post is a follow-up to How You Can Make Big Money Importing From China – The Rise and Fall of My Empire… In my last post, I showed you all how you can create your own importing business on the side. I got an overwhelming amount of positive feedback and great questions from that article, and I can’t explain how much I appreciate it – thank you all! But ultimately, my last article did not go far enough in showing you how to get started… Where I Failed Too many products Though my last article did help a lot of people, I got a TON of questions from readers asking how to find a good product to sell. Out of all of the questions I got, 90% of them must have been asking for help with some part of the product selection and buying process. What this means is that I failed to explain this part of the process well enough in my last post; which is terrible, because that is the most important part! Though I answered everybody’s questions as well as I could, there were undoubtedly many confused people who did not have the time to email me or comment. I decided to put all the responses I sent to fellow entrepreneurs together and craft them into a (hopefully) beautiful Step-by-Step guide, which you should all know by now I love. So without further ado, here is the Step-by-Step Guide on How To Find a Profitable Product To Sell… Step 1: Prepare – What’s a Good Product? If you haven’t read my previous post on importing, I would highly suggest doing that before going any further, as it really ties the whole concept together. After you’ve done that, you can move on… … Done? Alright. Now what we have to do is understand what I actually mean when I say “product” I talked to one person who asked me if I thought he would make money if he sold towels… That is not what I meant when I said product! So let me explain… What’s a product? When I first started my importing business, that “big niche” kind of thinking caused me to lose money hand over fist. Every “niche” I tried I lost money in. Samples were causing me a fortune and it seemed that the only way out was to quit. In a desperation move, I started only buying products I was selling consistently and making money on. What I discovered was that there was no profitable “niche” per se, but many profitable products! You see, you need to be looking for a single profitable product to sell, not a profitable product niche to operate in. If you are looking for a profitable product niche, you are never going to be looking for the right thing. You are going to be completely overwhelmed from the beginning looking at mountains of data that are not at all relevant to what you’re trying to do. The one exception to this is if you want to create a brand and branch out. But even then, you probably still want to start with one product, the one that will be your most profitable. If you are trying to make some nice easy side income for yourself, then you don’t need to worry about branding or branching out into new products yet. All you need to worry about is finding a single profitable product to sell, and selling it. What makes a good product? Now that you know you are only looking for one single product to sell, you need to know a few things about what qualifies a product to be “good”. There is a specific sweet spot that you should be looking for. I would suggest you read over the following list a couple of times before moving forward, and really grasp all these points and why I put them there. Good products are… Good Products Small and light enough to be easily picked up – The bigger and heavier it is, the more it costs to ship both in and out (not to mention any returns and storage). I’ve never tried dealing with any product I can’t easily pick up, so I can’t suggest you do… Specific, niche products (usually) – Again, you aren’t going to be selling things like “Necklaces” or even “Clock Necklaces”. You want to find one specific product, like “Silver Owl Pendant Clock Necklace”. Selling to consumers for $10-200 - I am sure there is plenty of money to be made in products over this range, but it is going to take a lot of capital to get started. You can certainly try, just know it’s just going to be riskier. Most items under $10 are even tougher, as most markets don’t have enough volume to create any sizable revenue. Furthermore, any markets that do have volume under $10 are typically going to be run by big importers who can work on low margins. Consistent stream of buyers – You want something that is going to sell consistently all year long and for the foreseeable future. So don’t get into iPhone 2 cases just because you got a great price – that product will have an ever decreasing base of buyers. You also don’t want to get into super seasonal stuff, like Halloween Costumes or Christmas Ornaments Selling for twice as much as your buy price – I would not even look at a product with less than a 100% markup, which is a 50% margin. That means if I cant double the price, I am not looking at it. I suggest you use your worst estimates here, which I’ll explain further below. Bad products are… Bad Products Mechanical and demand high quality standards and great warranties – Hoping this one is self-explanatory, but you definitely don’t want to be dealing with things like table saws, hydraulic lifts, and manufacturing machinery. That is just a headache waiting to happen (probably much worse than a headache though…) Sold at Wal-Mart or Best Buy - If you are thinking about a product that is being imported by GIANT retailers, you are missing the point. We are trying to find a single deep-niche item with consistent buyers that we can undercut the current selling prices on. This is the best way to reduce risk. Fragile and require perfect shipping practices - Not a headache, but a nightmare waiting to happen. Have multiple “Powersellers” already selling large volume - If you are thinking about doing something like headphones, you don’t want to pick the headphones that have 10 powersellers who sell thousands of units a month already. These are businesses built to run on eBay, and you won’t be able to compete with them. You need to find products that don’t have a ton of sellers, but the ones there are selling consistently. Don’t let a little competition discourage you, but also don’t try to start selling socks and be able to compete with the 20 companies on eBay already selling 20,000 socks a month factory direct. You gotta get more out of the box. Trademarked and will get you sued – Don’t buy anything with any trademark on it. This means counterfeit purses and wallets, as well as Snoopy and Twilight toys. Anything with big US trademarks on it won’t get you too far. Note that these are just my recommendations based on how I wanted my importing business to run. I am sure there is money to be made in products that break every rule set above, but I can only help readers with what I know works from my experiences. Even when I was making a fortune importing airsoft guns, there were only a couple of products I made good money on. I could only make money on metal gearbox electric rifles and bolt action sniper rifles. I tried multiple times to get into accessories, pistols, tactical gear – pretty much everything I could think of. I could only compete on eBay and Amazon with a few specific products, and I made a KILLING with just those. Notice that even the products I didn’t have success with fit perfectly into all of my requirements I listed above. The list above is just a framework to guide your thinking, a set of filters to run your ideas through before researching to save time. You will still have to get your hands dirty with some data to know what products might actually make you money, so let me attempt to show you how I do it…