What Should I Sell Online?

Ideas for Choosing Product Lines

By: Chris Malta
From: www.practicalecommerce.com

Everyone who starts an ebiz faces the question: What do I sell? And most everyone seems to make two classic mistakes in the beginning:

1. They try to sell what everyone else is selling ? DVDs, electronics and designer clothing. The problem they encounter is that the market is already saturated with these products and the suppliers typically do not work in small quantity. To make any profit at all, they'd have to buy huge quantities.


2. try to sell what they know and love. Unfortunately, unless there is a significant demand for what they know and love, they are going to be stuck with a lot of product they can appreciate but can't move.

What's an IDEA HOTSPOT?

Lisa Suttora of www.whatdoisell.com coined the term "idea hotspot" to refer to anything, any place or person that "provide[s] you with an unending source of new product ideas, of market trends, of developing niches and product line education?It is a fertile ground for product ideas." These hotspots keep you in touch with what people are buying, what things are up-and-coming, and what things are on their way out.
If your ideas all come from one or two places, you are limiting yourself. Expand your thinking?you might consider looking at one of these "hotspots" for inspiration:

• Newspapers. You can get an idea of what is on the minds of consumers by simply reading the lifestyle section, the business section, or looking at the advertisements the big stores are putting out.


• Consumer Publications. There are hundreds of magazines designed around niche products, niche hobbies and niche markets. They are a terrific resource for building niche product lines.


• Malls/brick-and-mortar stores. Talk to the salespeople, find out what is selling. You can even source your suppliers off the boxes. Get the manufacturer's name, call them up, and ask who their local distributor is in your area.


• Trend-spotting websites, such as www.trendwatching.com, www.influxinsights.com and www.trendhunter.com.


• The entertainment industry ? movies and TV drive product trends. If you know what is coming out in the movie industry, you can start sourcing related products before the trend begins. Imdb.com maintains a list of movies that are going to be released in the coming year. So if you know now that a particular movie is going to be coming out, you can start stocking up on relevant products before they become pricey ? such as Batman, Superman, Curious George and Star Wars.

Write It Down

Suttora strongly suggests carrying a product sourcing notebook, be it a PDA or hand-held notebook, to keep track of your ideas as they come. She warns, "Ninety percent of ideas that you don't write down will get lost?When you're at these idea hotspots, if you see a hundred ideas for products to sell, you won't be able to remember those. You've got to write them down in your product sourcing notebook and then go back and start researching them."

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What's Selling, What's Hot and How to Find It

$12,470 of thread sold on eBay, 1,069 listings

By: Mitch Bettis
From: http://www.practicalecommerce.com

Are you searching for the next trendy gadget to sell at your online store? Many people are looking to catch lightning in a bottle, but locating trends in the marketplace requires thought, research and analysis.

Find Clues to New Trends

There are resources for online entrepreneurs who are searching for products to sell, but the next big thing might be right under your nose according to Lisa Suttora, founder and CEO of WhatDoISell.com™ and co-author of What to Sell On eBay and Where to Get It.

“To find clues to new trends, you need to get out in the world and begin looking and listening in order to learn what people are thinking and doing,” Suttora said. “It’s a process of gathering clues to new niches and putting together pieces of the puzzle. It’s about connecting the dots to things. You start seeing opportunities everywhere.

Turn On Your Radar

In her book as well as during free, online eBay forums and at workshops, Suttora counsels business owners to turn on their radar and develop the “Product Sourcing Mindset™” (a term trademarked by Suttora). She advises etailers to put everything they encounter in a day’s time through a product-sourcing filter.

When you’re reading a newspaper, sitting in a dentist’s office looking at old magazines, walking down the aisle at a grocery store or watching your child play soccer, study your surroundings and be open to new ideas and new trends. When you observe something, write it down in what she calls a “Product Sourcing Notebook™” (another term she trademarked). This is simply a small, portable notebook where you can write down ideas. For you high-tech types, a PDA will suffice; just write it down.

“You should always be looking at products and ways to add to your product line, but do it in the routine of daily activity,” Suttora said. Many people, she said, try to think of new products to sell by plopping in front of their computer and plowing through search engines. According to Suttora, you’ll have greater success if you turn outward and begin evaluating what’s happening around you.

In her book, she outlines many free ideas to help identify new products and trends in the marketplace. Some of the things she suggests for creative online product-sourcing strategies include:

• Sign up for Google Alerts for a particular topic. When a new story is released in your area of interest, and the search engine captures the story, it will be emailed to you.


• Watch television programs and be attuned to other media within your niche. If you have an online site with home and garden products, you should be watching Home and Garden Television or DIY Network on a regular basis. When you see new products featured, take note. There’s a good chance they will be hot sales items.


• Sign up for free newsletters from trade associations in your niche market as they are full of new trends in the industry.

Suttora says “Idea Hotspots™,” like trade shows, trade organizations, magazines, consumer catalogs and newspapers, are resources where people can get an unending supply of product-sourcing ideas.
Once you’ve narrowed down products that you are interested in selling, you’ll be well served to capture as much quantifiable data on the product and the marketplace that you can. That’s where a company like Terapeak (www.terapeak.com) comes in.

Find Easy-to-access Market Research

Terapeak is an eBay Certified Service Provider that offers in-depth, easy-to-access market research. Do you want to know if sewing thread is moving on eBay? Terapeak showcases a tremendous amount of data, including: average sales price; average starting price; average listing duration; quantities sold on each day of the week; whether it was more successfully sold at a bid auction, fixed price or multi-item; if a bold listing moved the product more quickly, etc. You can see there was $12,470 of thread sold on eBay on Tuesday, May 2 on 1,069 listings and $15,187 in sales on 1,340 listings on Sunday, April 30.

A particularly handy feature is the “sell-through rate,” which tells business owners the percentage of listed products sold. (In case you’re wondering, 47 percent of listed threads were sold on May 2 compared to 27 percent of the 1,558 listings of black iPod Nanos on the same date.)

Evaluate Opportunities

“Terapeak can help an online entrepreneur evaluate an opportunity and the potential of that niche,” said David Frey, Brand Manager for Terrapin. “It lets you get in and see the trends and do the research. By combining Terapeak data with what’s going on in the real world, businesses can make an educated decision on products.”

Terapeak analyzes eBay’s data and packages it as an easy-to-understand tool for people looking for product trends. Its graphing option allows entrepreneurs to take a longitudinal view of sales activity so they can closely monitor where the item is in its product cycle.

Frey said their “Hot List” is one of the site’s more popular offerings.

There is a $16.95 monthly fee for the service. Its data covers 100 percent of the traffic on eBay outside of eBay Motors and Real Estate. Like Terapeak, eBay itself also sells marketplace data and provides three tiers of pricing options. The general data is the same as Terapeak’s, but it’s not presented in the same form. Terapeak also includes features like its “Hot List.”

To make it in the highly competitive online marketplace, a successful merchant must employ various tools to ensure success. Some, like Suttora noted, are free, and others are paid resources.

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