by Choosing a product to sell on Amazon is the most important determinant for your success. Everything about your business and the decisions you make depends on your product, so you can see why choosing your product is an important decision.
If you pick a bad product (i.e it doesn’t meet the criteria for a profitable product), it doesn’t matter what else you get right – finding a great supplier, settling on a good price, your product is of great quality, your listing is awesome – you’re going to lose money and your business will most likely fail.
It’s imperative that you spend enough time fishing around for a product that’s likely to give you the chance to succeed as an Amazon seller.
The key is to look for profitable products, rather than to search for a profitable niche. If you begin your search for a profitable product by trying to find an entire niche to operate in, you’ll be submerged in information, and not all of it will be relevant. You need to start with one product, and make sure it’s one that’s going to sell.
So now that you’re only looking for one product to sell, it’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with what constitutes as a “good” (read: profitable) product.
Average Product Sale Price.
This should be between around £5 and £30. This is the optimum price for products to sell quickly and at a high volume. Most people will be easily drawn to products with this kind of price tag, which means lots of impulse purchases.
This kind of price is just low enough that people won’t worry about doing any research to find lower prices. The amount of money they’re risking losing is small, so the consumer buying decision is accelerated – they’re not losing too much money if the product is bad.
When buying large items, such as a new fridge or a TV, people aren’t going to make impulse decisions or buy without doing extensive research, but with small items, they’re much more likely to purchase without looking around for other options.
Small and light.
The smaller and lighter your product, the cheaper it’ll be to ship, and the higher your profit margins will be. You should look at products that weigh 5lb maximum. Anything heavier will be too costly – and that includes the product itself, any packing materials and the shipping box. Get an estimated product weight from your supplier so you can make your own estimates of how much each product is going to cost you to sell ship.
Simple and sturdy.
If you pick a product that’s simple and unlikely to be broken in transit, you’re going to save a lot on returns. No one likes receiving broken items. If you pick something that has a fixtures, or loose or fragile components, it’s far more likely to be damaged than, say, a t-shirt.
Electronics are best to avoid. Go for things like coasters, keyrings, mousemats – things that are not electronic and are composed of one item. It’s also far easier to find a supplier if you have a simple product because you don’t have to face the prospect of having to source more than one supplier for various components of your product.
Supply and Demand.
There’s no point in selling a product that either has no demand or has too much supply. Browse Amazon for the products you’re thinking of selling before you buy any stock because you could find that the market is over saturated with suppliers who are already selling your product.
Check the “Best Sellers” tab on Amazon to get an idea of the most popular products on the site.
You can also use keyword selector tools to identify the kind of search traffic Amazon products get. Simply type the products you’re looking for into the search bar of something like Keyword Tool Dominator will tell you how popular those search terms are.
Choosing a product to sell on Amazon is the most important determinant for your success. Everything about your business and the decisions you make depends on your product – so you can see why choosing your product is an important decision. Make sure you thoroughly research your product before you make a decision to stock up and sell it online.
Jodie Pride is a marketer at Veeqo, an inventory management, order and shipping software for online merchants based in Swansea, Wales.
