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Tips for Selling Products Online From Home

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Finding the right products to sell online can be a very challenging process. Without a plan it will likely be very frustrating with seemingly endless brainstorming and little progress. Taking a careful approach to finding your niche may be the key to your success.

 

First, create a guideline for your product selection. Playing it safe to start may be a smart route to take to begin your online business.

 

  • Make sure the product is easy to ship, non-fragile. You don’t want trouble yourself with broken inventory.

  • Avoid selling season-specific products. Choose products that can be sold all year round.

  • Sell goods that are not too expensive, yet not too cheap. $15-$200 is the best range.

  • Avoid selling products that are too large, you often have to keep your own inventory and will need space.

  • Avoid items that have common knowledge price tags, this way you can set the price and you may have less competition.

 

Starting to get an idea on what to sell? Try to ask yourself some of the following questions and you may even get a more clear picture.

 

  • Are you in a position to sell your product in bulk? If your orders can attract more than one quantity, you are at a bigger advantage.

  • Can you personalize your products? Personalizing a product for the buyer will increase the price tag.

  • Is there a fan base for your products? Selling something related to something already popular guarantees an instant customer base.

  • Are the products you have in mind expandable into more than one market? If you don’t have to keep it one-dimensional, expand it.

  • Do you plan on selling consumables? Consumables often bring more stable, repeat customers.

  • Can you optimize the content of your product base? Search engine optimization is always a great source of traffic.

  • Are you offering upsells? Many business thrive on add-on/upsell items to go along with their primary inventory.

 

There are many options when it comes to where you can sell your products online. Not everyone is prepared to or sees the need to create their own personal independent online store.

 

Amazon has become a standard in American online shopping. Amazon sales data can be very important information for understanding overall demand with online shopping. Every item sold on Amazon is assigned a best sellers rank, this number shows how well a product is selling compared to others within the same category on Amazon. By checking an item's “best sellers rank”, you can get a pretty good idea on how many units per day that particular item is selling. A best sellers rank of 7228 is roughly 10 units sold per day.

 

eBay is also a great place to sell your online products. Although Amazon has a larger market, there is no need to limit your sales to only one platform. A large number of sellers import bulk products from Asia to sell on eBay, though it can be often difficult to make a good profit with the high selling fees eBay has. Google shopping is another viable option. Google is the largest search engine in the world and many people go straight to google for their online shopping needs.

 

Sourcing products and finding vendors is another major part of your online business. Once you know what you want to sell, you need to find out where to get it. Do you want the lowest cost for your products? If so, you may want to consider Asia to source your items. Most things are in fact made there and you will have the best profit margins available. Dealing with vendors in your home country may be easier, but the manufacturing cost is higher which makes your profit margin lower.

 

If you don’t have the space to hold your own inventory, you can consider dropshipping. Dropshipping is a system where you are only responsible for taking the orders and dealing with the customers directly, and the vendor will handle the shipping and delivery of the product. If you choose dropshipping, make sure the vendor is reliable, the reputation of your business will depend on it.

 

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