5 eCommerce Dropshipping Product Research Methods [How To Find 7-Figure Product Ideas]

5 eCommerce Dropshipping Product Research Methods

There are not a lot of moving bits and pieces when it comes to building an eCommerce business - especially if you're starting with the dropshipping method.

That makes it a great place to start for any entrepreneur looking to start their first or next venture.

With massive potential for scale and a simple beginning, eCommerce businesses have been popping up all over the world, and are only going to keep growing.

However, one of the biggest challenges eCommerce entrepreneurs face is, "what product should I sell?"

"How do I find good products, where do I even begin?"

There are so many things that can stop entrepreneurs from starting their business, and it's usually small things like what product to sell.

To make this easier, I've compiled a list of 4-5 things you can start doing in order to find products to sell, quickly.

Here are 5 eCommerce dropshipping product research methods.

Think for yourself

Before we get into the official product research methods, I'd like to give a quick piece of advice.

Amazon sells $10s of millions per month worth of paper. Yes, plain old printing paper.

Their basic desktop chairs sell $4 million+ per month.

The Amazon basics collection makes Amazon $100s of millions per year in extra revenue.

You can sell almost anything and make a lot of money from it.

Wherever demand and good-quality collide, money is left in the aftermath.

Although there are products that are better than others, you don't need to overthink this process.

You can even think of something you've always felt like selling.

Maybe you've wanted to sell glasses - what niche in the glasses industry could you enter to have the best chance of success?

Because in each industry, there are small pockets of opportunity waiting to be discovered.

Sometimes you don't need to take weeks to find the 'perfect' product.

Sometimes, that 7, 8, or 9 figure idea is sitting idol in your mind.

Amazon

The first product research method is probably my favorite one.

Did you know that, on average, Amazon sellers across the globe make $300,000 per year?

Amazon is responsible for over 40,000 millionaires being created simply by using Amazon as a sales channel for their businesses.

This makes it one of the best places to go for online commerce.

Amazon has a catalog of over 12 million products being sold at a single time and so we could use this to our advantage.

The amazing thing about Amazon is that there are different ways of using it.

Amazon has different categories for some of its top products.

These categories include:

• Movers and shakers

These are products that have been moving up in Amazon's rankings and making a lot of sales, potentially meaning that they've also been the reason others started to sell the same product.

• Bestsellers 

Bestsellers are... well, bestselling products. This is a great place to see what's currently selling, and what you could potentially sell in order to make money.

You'll want to cross-check this to make sure that these are not only seasonal or trending products - you'll always want evergreen products, as our criteria outlines.

• New releases

There are always new products being sold on Amazon.

If you check on here regularly, you'll be able to find new product opportunities that may not be very competitive yet.

• Bestsellers new releases

This is a mixture of the two above.

It's also likely the best category to check because they're going to be new releases that are already selling like crazy.

Start looking around for products and keep tabs on the ones you really like.

Whenever you make a product search, you can then use a tool like Helium 10 or Junglescout in order to check those products.

You're able to check a lot of information like the number of sales, revenue, reviews, ratings, trends, seller type, etc.

These are great tools to help you get a better idea of what is really selling, and what you might want to avoid.

When you use this tool, you'll also realise that wherever you look, there are products making a bunch of money.

Combine everything we've spoken about here with the winning product criteria.

Within a week, you should have a ton of ideas for products you can sell.

Online adverts

No matter how hard we try, we're always going to find ourselves on social media.

The farther we go into the future, the more and more our lives will be interlinked with social media.

It's slowly becoming harder to avoid it as a whole, and it's becoming part of our everyday lives.

Work, in general, has shifted to this digital landscape.

People are now working from home more than they ever did before.

Computers are part of almost every profession - this change is inevitable.

With this change comes a lot of opportunities that the majority of people will simply overlook.

However, if you're reading this, you're part of the lucky bunch of people who has the chance to take advantage of social media for their own benefit.

Over the last decade or so, social platforms have evolved massively.

Things like Facebook adverts, Google adverts, etc, are all getting stronger and smarter, day after day, making marketing easier and more effective online.

We have cookies that follow us around the entire internet, tracking what we do, how we do it, our habits, our interests, our hobbies, etc.

This data is compiled and sold to advertisers who are able to market to the people they want - narrowed down to the smallest detail.

With that said, you're going to come across a lot of adverts whilst on social media, adverts that are not mere nuisances, but opportunities for products that you could sell.

Sometimes, you'll be able to get some great product ideas by just seeing what other people are selling and marketing.

If people are spending money on advertising, then there's a high chance that those adverts are making them a return on their money.

There are certain ways to influence the adverts you see.

For example, you can spend a few hours visiting online shops, clicking on adverts of products, going to add things to checkout, clicking on the checkout, and so on.

This will tell the platform's algorithm that this is what you're interested in and so they'll show you more and more adverts of that nature.

Similarly, we've got an extremely powerful tool at our disposal.

Although Facebook has recently removed one of its most effective business tools, they've kept one in that's very useful for us.

That's the ads library.

Here, you're able to search every single advert that is currently active on Facebook.

This gives you the opportunity to see products people are selling, how long they've been up and running, and even gain marketing inspiration.

As long as a brand have a Facebook page, you'll be able to check whether they're running ads or not.

Or, you can also type in keywords and it will return ads associated with those words.

If this was not a tool given by Facebook, it could easily be a SaaS that costs $10+/m to use.

Take advantage of it while you still can!

Crowdfunding

There is a very simple card game, called Exploding Kittens, that managed to raise almost $9 million during its creation.

It was the #1 most-backed project in Kickstarter history and it was only able to come to fruition due to its 219,000 backers.

All of this was possible on a platform called 'Kickstarter.'

Kickstarter is a crowdfunding platform that lets people share their projects or businesses with the world in the hopes of raising early funding to complete the project.

It's unique because it's not like a formal investment, but normal people are able to fund the project and get a reward (usually the product and some more) after the launch.

Although I don't recommend going for a Kickstarter/crowdfunding for your own business, unless you really wanted to, it can still be an amazing way to find great product opportunities.

Finding a great product to sell through Kickstarter is very simple.

There are two main things you can do:

• See the top-funded/backed projects
• See the trending projects

These two categories will give you many different product ideas.

Usually, the things on Kickstarter are going to be difficult to replicate if you're dropshipping.

This is because Kickstarter mainly works on products that are unique in some sort of way.

Exploding Kittens is likely a 9 figure business at the moment - a simple, yet unique and fun card game (I think).

There are other products which are not exactly new, but might have a twist from conventional products.

Understand that, unless you're going to do your own Kickstarter campaign, you don't need to have a unique product.

You don't need to reinvent the wheel here - there are millions of products and services in demand right now that you can piggyback off of.

Use Kickstarter as a method of identifying these good opportunities and start small and simple.

Supplier sites

Finally, we're going to be going back to basics.

This might be one of the simplest ways to find products, yet it's also very effective.

The only problem with this is that a lot of other dropshippers are going to be using these techniques.

Alibaba and Aliexpress are both eCommerce companies that sell millions of products.

Whilst Alibaba is more tailored to the wholesale side of the market, Aliexpress is made for direct consumers.

Consumers all over the world use Aliexpress whilst businesses are more likely to use Alibaba.

With that said, you're able to use either site to find products that are worth selling.

Simply jump on one of these sites and start to search for random products.

You're able to search through different categories like electronics, home & garden, and you're going to be finding a ton of products.

Simply search through all the available products and cross-check them with our product criteria.

On top of this, you're going to be able to look for the products with a lot of reviews or purchases which can prove that there's a high demand for this certain product.

Similar to Amazon, Alibaba has different search options.

You're able to search for bestsellers, new arrivals, top-ranked products, fast dispatch, and more.

There are so many ways of finding good products through Alibaba and Aliexpress.

By now, you should see how simple it is to find products.

All you need is the product criteria in one of the previous articles, and line it up with any one of these strategies we've discussed today.

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Till next time,

Mohamad