How to find easy things to sell online

How do you find easy things to sell online?

Easy products to sell are heavily searched online, have product reviews, and are low-competition. Name brand products are easy to sell online because people trust the brands reputation. Find products to sell through retail arbitrage, dropshipping, wholesale, private label, or manufacture products yourself.

Imagine, finding the best selling products to resell online. You could be making $10k per month or more simply reselling products on Amazon or Ebay!

Reselling products is the perfect side hustle for bargain hunters!

Luckily for you, I’m going to show you how to find easy things to sell online. I’ll show you how to find the easiest products and how to evaluate the competition. You could be making enough money to quit your job with enough hard work!

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What are the easiest products to sell online?

The easiest products to sell online are in-demand, but have low-competition. Avoid making products yourself because winning products already exist. Name brand products sell fast, but profit margins and competition should be evaluated.

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Products in-demand

You need to be able to find products that are in demand. When a product is in demand it is literally flying off the shelf. Why in the world would you want to sell a product that nobody is looking for?

I remember when fidget spinners were the hottest thing around. Our local craft store could not keep fidget spinners stocked.There was an incredible amount of demand for the product and the manufacturer could not keep up with the demand.

I was talking to one of the employees at the craft store and was joking with them about how fidget spinners were selling like crazy. To my surprise, the employee told me they were selling $100,000 of fidget Spinners per week!

The craft store didn’t have to do much to sell the product. The product sold itself because it was something that people wanted. At most, the craft store would let people know when they had more in stock.

What you should take away from this is that items sell faster when in demand. Eventually, demand will die for products, but there will always be demand for something.

Focus on demand!

Products with Low Competition

Selling products that are in demand is one part of the puzzle. However, most of us are not going to find fidget spinner success. Fidget Spinners had high demand and short supply which made them an easy sell. 

Most of the products he will find will not be in short supply. In other words, you are going to have a lot of competition for selling products.

Let’s assume you have two different items. The demand may be very similar, each selling 100,000 units per month. 

The first item has 1,000 other people selling that item at an online Marketplace like Etsy. However, the second item only has 50 people selling that exact same item. Which product do you think is going to be easier for you to compete with?

I would much rather try and compete with 50 people over 1,000 people. The math just makes sense if the product is selling similar quantities.

Products you don’t have to make

Success comes from doing one thing really well over and over again. The same principles apply when you are trying to start an online business. Making products to sell online means you are doing more tasks and dividing your attention.

Remember, the jack-of-all-trades is the master of none. You need to get really good at doing one thing and doing it well.

So if you are the only person trying to start an online business, then selling needs to be your priority. It is much easier to source and sell products then it is to make and sell products.

For example, let’s assume you are going to make wooden tea light candle holders. You have to go buy the wood, make the product, take product photos, and then upload the product to a Marketplace. 

You spent a lot of time and money to build these tea light candle holders. Making matters even worse, you don’t even know if they’re going to sell!

Additionally, you are always going to have to make more if the product turns out to be successful. Therefore, you are constantly limited to how much product you can make.

It is so much easier to find a product distributor and buy products from them. When you find a great selling product, just keep buying the product at wholesale and resell it. 

Name brand products

People love name brand products. Big companies have spent a lot of time and money to grow their products into a brand that people fight over. People will spend twice as much money to get their brand of product than buy similar quality of an unknown brand.

Seriously, I just did a search on Walmart’s website for tissues. Great Value tissues are selling for 1.1 cents each, but similar Kleenex brand is 7.7 cents each!

Therefore, you will always have customers if you can find name brand products. Usually, your biggest struggle with name brand products is sourcing them and still gaining a profit.

How do you find in-demand products?

Find in demand products by looking at search volume, product trends, and product reviews. The more product is searched, trending,  or reviewed the better selling the product may be.

Search Volume

Search volume is a good indication for product demand. Keyword research tools give an estimate or how frequently a specific keyword was searched.

For example, you can search for “seahorse necklace” and see between 100 and 1,000 people search for that specific phrase every month.

Seahorse necklace Google Keyword Planner

In addition, you can discover other good product suggestions. For example, you can see that people are also searching for “gold seahorse necklace” and “seahorse pendants.”

There are many paid keyword research tools, but I like to use Google Keyword Planner. Google Keyword Planner is completely free and easy-to-use. Not to mention, all the data comes from people using Google search results.

Trends

Google Trends is another cool tool which helps you understand how products trend over time. You can also use the tool to find out which locations are more interested in a specific type of product. 

Using Google Trends will allow you to estimate when products will be in favor. For example, you can do a Google Trends search for “snow shoes.”

Snow Shoes Google Trends

As you can see, snow shoes tend to be more popular starting in November and lose popularity after February. 

Google Trends will also let you know where a product has the most amount of interest. Snow Shoes have the most popularity in Vermont, Montana, and Maine.

Google will also show you related queries that are starting to trend. These related queries can get you additional product ideas to sell or upsell.

For example, I can see that “snow grips for shoes”, “dog snow shoes”, and “snow spikes for shoes” are also trending.

Competition Sales History

Product reviews are a good insight to how well a product is doing. Generally, if products don’t have any product reviews then you can assume the product is either new or not selling well. Therefore, look to find products that have a decent history of product reviews.

How do you find Low Competition products?

To find low competition products, start by estimating the demand of the product. Then, see how many different sellers are selling similar products and number of product reviews. The goal is to find high demand products with minimal competition.

The first thing that you should be doing is creating a list of products that you are interested in selling. Creating a long list of products is going to help you find more potential leads. 

Let’s assume for now that you created a list of 100 products you are interested in selling. If it were me, I would put each of these products on a Google sheet or Excel file.

The next step would be to evaluate product demand. As we mentioned before, a simple way of doing this is using Google Keyword Planner.

With Google Keyword Planner, find the estimated searches per month for each of the products. On your Google sheet, write down the search volume for each of your product ideas.

Next, we need to find out how many people are already selling these items. I’m going to assume that you are wanting to sell your products on Etsy.

Take your targeted key phrase, and search for that product on Etsy. Etsy will give you an idea of how many results are returned for that search phrase. Write down how many results are returned for each of your products on your Google sheet.

In the next column over, divide the monthly searches by number of search results. This will give you a ratio of searches to the number of competitors.

For example, I would estimate 500 searches if Google Keyword Planner said an item was 100-1K. An item with 50 Etsy results would have a ratio of 10 or 500 searches / 50 Etsy results.

Products with a higher ratio should be easier to sell.

Where can you find products to sell online?

You can find products to sell online through dropshipping, retail arbitrage, wholesale, private label, and manufacturing your own products. Each method has their own strengths and weaknesses, but all can be very profitable.

Dropshipping

Dropshipping is where you find products at one retailer and sell them elsewhere without even buying them. Whenever a customer places an order, you buy the item and ship it directly to your customer.

For example, you might find a tool set at Home Depot which sells for $35. On Amazon, that product might sell for $50.

A dropshipper would list the product for sale on Amazon for $50. When the dropshipper received a sale, they would buy the product from Home Depot and send it to their customers. The dropshipper would then pocket the $15 difference minus Amazon fees.

Alternatively, you can source inventory from dropshipping suppliers likes Spocket. Spocket finds dropship suppliers and gives you one convenient spot to do business. Spocket links with your ecommerce stores to easily import inventory.

Retail Arbitrage

Retail Arbitrage is the process of buying products at one retailer and then reselling elsewhere. You are essentially flipping products. Retail Arbitrage can be very time-consuming, but very exciting when you find a good deal.

Some people like a Retail Arbitrage online. They scour the internet and find items they think they can flip for profit.

For example, you might find shoes on eBay that you know sell for more on eBay. You immediately buy the shoes and then release them for a higher price. When the product sells, you pocket the difference in price.

Wholesale

Wholesale involves finding a Wholesale Distributor that can provide you products at a wholesale price. The benefit of wholesale buying is always having a supplier for products. Should you find a good selling product, you can repeat by as much as needed.

Private Label

Private label involves slapping your own branded label onto a generic product. You work with the manufacturer to create your own brand with their product.

Nutritional supplements are perfect examples of private label. There are manufacturers that manufacture certain protein powders, but don’t sell them themselves.

All you have to do is give the manufacturer your label design. A manufacturer will put the label on their protein powder and ship it to you for resale. Some manufacturers will even ship out the product to your customers so you don’t have to.

Private label works well because the manufacturer can do what they do best, manufacture. It also allows you to do what you do best, create a brand and make sales. Private label is usually a win-win for everybody.

Manufacture

The most difficult way to source products for resale online is to manufacture the products yourself. You can find manufacturers who will create your product with your design or ingredients list.

Typically, manufacturing your own product requires a lot of upfront capital. Therefore, it can be very hard to get started.

However, creating your own product can be very lucrative.You would have the exclusive rights to sell your product and no competition for that specific product.

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Summary: Find easy things to sell online

As you can see, it’s not quite so easy to find things to sell online. However, you can avoid some of the mistakes most beginners make and eventually fizzle out over.

Products need to have demand in order to sell. Without demand, there will be no sales. In addition, you want to find products that have low competition. Avoid trying to make your own products because doing so gets complicated quickly.

When you want to find in demand products, look for search volume, product reviews, and trends. The higher the search volume, Trends, or reviews, the greater demand the product should have. 

You can find products to sell through dropshipping, wholesale, retail arbitrage, private label, or manufacturing your own products.

John is the founder of TightFist Finance and an expert in the field of personal finance. John has studied personal finance for over 10 years and has used his knowledge to pay down debt, grow his investment portfolio, and launch a financial based business. He is committed to sharing content related to personal finance based on his experience in his career, investing, and path towards reaching financial independence.