Being successful on Amazon has a lot to do with the kind of product you sell, along with pricing it competitively. But how do you know which is the perfect product to sell on Amazon? We’ve got the answer!
Knowing Why you’re Searching for the Perfect Product
We can talk until we’re blue in the face about awesome product ideas, but unless you know how to use them correctly, the actual item won’t make any difference.
Amazon is a place where you want to create and grow a business, not treat it like a yard sale. That means if your attitude is to suss out super-cheap items and turn them around for a tidy profit on Amazon, things are probably not going to work out.
That’s not to say you can’t go after cheap products, like those on Alibaba, but to keep your primary focus on cultivating a healthy business and creating your own brand. Okay, cool — got that? Great, let’s learn about how to get to that point.
What the Perfect Product Looks Like
Before you start scribbling down a list of product ideas, use this checklist to make sure any potential products fit them. If you follow this checklist, you’ll have a much better chance of hitting a home run right off the bat.
- Product that can be used all year instead of seasonally
- Product with a price between $10-50 and the weight of a laptop or less
- Products that’s durable and sturdy, but also something people can buy more of multiple times
- Products that’s similar to what’s on eBay and/or not easy to outsource in China
- Products that doesn’t have a brand name on it
- Products that can be easily upsold or cross-sold with other products
- Products that can allow for product descriptions to be optimized and improved in the future
- Products that won’t cost you more than 25% of the sale price to make
But we also want to stress that if your product ideas don’t exactly match this checklist, don’t sweat it. The idea isn’t to find that one thing that’s exactly perfect, but an inventory of items that are popular, profitable, and simple to work with.
Importance of the Checklist
Some of the above points may seem pretty self-explanatory, like the importance of selecting items that are also sold on eBay (i.e. the potential visibility is higher and you won’t have to fight as hard at convincing buyers that this item is worth getting).
But some of the other points may need a bit more background. Take the price, for example. You see manufacturers selling things for high prices all the time, like Kindle e-books or Apple iPads. So, why not copy their lead and try and earn a higher profit?
That’s because while buyers buy those items, they won’t buy them very often and you’ll lose more in sales over the long term. Switching to a $10-50 price plan makes your items more attractively affordable, plus lessens the risk for them if they feel they’ve made a bad purchase.
The brand names point is an interesting one because many merchants will understandably argue that a brand name is more familiar to buyers, whereas a ‘blank’ item doesn’t have the same weight behind it.
Final Thoughts
Above all else, find products you’re interested in and can get better at knowing about.
