Products To Sell Through Your Online Store

 An obvious first step to starting an online store is figuring out what you are going to sell. Perhaps you already know what that product is. And, maybe it is an item that you manufacture yourself. If you have your product choice all figured out, you may want to skip to the next section. But, for those of you who are still trying to figure out what to sell, I have some pointers to offer you and I also have a few things for you to think through.

Is There a Market Niche That Interests You?

 

 Start off by thinking about things you know well and that are of interest to you. Carefully consider your area of personal interest and try to remember whether you have ever felt that you were in need of a particular product that you couldn't easily find. If so, you may be onto an underserved niche and therefore a step closer to figuring out what to sell. Operating within a market niche has a meaningful advantage when it comes to selling products through a website. This is simply because there are so many people selling on the web these days. So, if you pick a type of product to sell that is very common or mainstream, you are going to have to work extra hard to effectively compete.

What Product Price Range Should You Target?

  Give some thought as to whether you will sell expensive products or inexpensive products. Though this may seem like a trivial discussion point, there are very important ramifications based upon which way you go. Specifically, it can take a long time for a new website to garner a meaningful amount of traffic. So, if you are selling low-cost products, it may take a very long time before you are achieving enough sales volume to be generating a reasonable level of cashflow. On the other hand, if you are selling a more costly product, you might be able to sell just one or a few items each month and still be making a decent income. Of course, this is all highly dependent upon your personal budget and the timeframe within which you are wanting or needing to become successful with your new online store.

Can You Sell Products That You Don't Have to Buy in Advance With Your Own Money?

  Consider if you are going to buy bulk product stock in advance and do your own packaging/shipping. Or, are you going to be more of a virtual retailer who markets and sells products that you don't actually carry, but rather, that get shipped from a third-party distributor directly to your customers, on your behalf, whenever your online store makes a sale? You may already know that this process is called "drop-shipping". Both of these online store operating methods have pluses and minuses. And, there are lot's of people out there who've been successful with either method.

 Going the drop-shipping route provides the obvious financial benefit of not having to front money to acquire products that you then have to store somewhere in advance of making sales. But, a significant downside is that you are putting a critical aspect of customer service in the hands of a third-party. Specifically, by having a distributor ship product directly to your customers, you are trusting that the distributor will properly package the goods you have sold and that they will ship the items in a timely manner to your customer. Proper packaging and fast order turnaround times are both highly critical aspects of getting repeat business and referral business from your customers. So, if you do go the drop-shipping route, be sure that you are working with a reputable, efficient distributor. After all, by shipping directly to your customers, the third-party distributor is controlling a tremendously important part of your business. Basically, it is a bit of a downside to the drop-shipping method in that you are giving up some control of the customer service process. However, you can mitigate this by being highly selective of your drop-ship partners.

  In addition to not having to front money to acquire and store products, the drop-ship operating model also has a huge advantage in that it allows you to build a seemingly gigantic online store, even if it's really just you operating in the background at home. Specifically, you could literally list thousands of products in your online store and then spend your days coordinating with multiple drop-ship distribution warehouses as customers make purchases through your site. A friend of mine started doing this with consumer electronics several years ago. Initially, his company was very small infrastructure-wise. However, from almost day 1, it looked huge online because he was seemingly carrying hundreds of different products. But now, after years of steady sales growth, his company truly is big and he has over 50 full-time employees working for him.

  As a final note about drop-shipping, there is yet another downside to mention. It is the fact that the vast majority of products that are available for drop-shipping are already being marketed by hundreds (if not thousands) of websites. This is simply because there are a lot of people who like the idea of selling products that they don't have to purchase and store in advance of sales. So, it somewhat challenging to identify a product niche, without a lot of competing sellers, that is available for drop-shipping. It's challenging, but definitely not impossible. And, if you have the resources, timeline, and strategic cunning to be able to compete with other businesses, it might actually be acceptable to you to sell drop-shipped products in a competitive market segment.