How to find high demand products with low competition to sell

How to find high demand products with low competition to sell?

High demand products have high search volumes which can be estimated with free online tools like Google Keyword Planner. The number of product listings and product reviews can be a good indication of competitiveness. A good product to sell has high search volume, but minimal number of product listings.

Imagine, starting an ecommerce store or Amazon FBA side hustle and finding products that sell well. You are actually making money buying low and selling high.

Selling online takes a strategy, which means evaluating demand and competition.

Luckily for you, I’m going to show you how to find high demand products with low competition to sell. I’ll show you some of the best online tools available and they’re free to use! You’ll be on your way to selling success in no time.

This article may contain affiliate links which pay a commission and supports this blog. Thank you for your support!

How to find high demand products to sell with low competition

The best ways to estimate product demand include low Amazon best seller rank, Google Trends, and high search volume. You can estimate product competition with the number of product listings and product reviews. Additionally, online tools can help you estimate the demand and competition for a product.

Low Amazon best seller rank

Amazon best seller rank is one of the easiest ways to determine how easily a product will sell on Amazon. The best seller rank can be found on each product listing, where a rank of one indicates the product is a best seller.

Typically, products with a best seller rank under 100k are popular items to sell. Anything with a best seller rank over 100k might be a slow seller. You’ll want to avoid slow sellers because your money will be tied up into a product that isn’t selling.

You can use Amazon best seller rank to estimate the demand of a product for your own ecommerce store. Basically, you’re making the assumption that if a product sells well on Amazon then it can sell well on your store.

Look at it this way. A product that doesn’t sell well on Amazon will most likely not sell well on your own website. Amazon is an ecommerce giant, so if they don’t sell it well then why would your ecommerce store sell it?

Low number of product listings

The number of product listings is a good way to estimate the competition of your product. More search results indicate more product options to choose from and steeper competition. 

For example, you can search Etsy for “Seahorse necklace” and “Turtle necklace.” Seahorse necklace has nearly 7,000 results, while Turtle necklace has nearly 28,000 results. Therefore, you have less competition when it comes to selling a Seahorse necklace.

However, you’ll still need to know the search volume of each product.

High Search Volume with Google Keyword Planner

Search volume estimates how many times a specific keyword is searched. The higher the search volume, the greater the demand is for the product. You can pair this information with the number of product listings to estimate overall product competition.

Going back to the Seahorse and Turtle necklace example. I can use Google Keyword Planner to estimate how many searches each term gets per month.

Seahorse necklace gets between 100-1k searches per month. Turtle necklace gets between 1k-10k searches per month. Assuming the average (e.g. 500 searches for seahorse), you can calculate the number of searches per product listing.

Seahorse necklaces have 500 searches per month with 7,000 results on Etsy. Therefore, Seahorse necklaces have 0.07 searches per product listing on Etsy. Turtle necklace has 0.17 searches per product listing.

As you can see, Seahorse necklaces have fewer results, but they also have less searches per month. Therefore, you have a better chance of selling a Turtle necklace because of the searches per product listing ratio.

Search intent doesn’t match

Additionally, the less the search results match the search intent, the less competition you’ll have. Finding a product with high search volume, but horrible search results can give you a competitive edge when selling online.

For example, have you ever searched for a product online, but the results were bad? You might search for “Teacher appreciation day coffee mug” and only find one mug that’s relevant. The rest of the results aren’t related or are kind of related, but not really.

You can sell a product that fills this gap and make money because nobody else is selling.

Number of product reviews

Product reviews are a good way of indicating competition. A good sign is when the top 10 search results have less than 100 reviews each and the reviews aren’t concentrated on one listing.

A small amount of reviews (e.g. less than 100) gives you the opportunity to bring your product into the market. There doesn’t seem to be a clear winner and you can easily get 100 product reviews compared to thousands.

Some products should be avoided if one product on the search results page has the majority of product reviews. For example, the top product has over 4,000 reviews and the next nine products have between 50-300 each. In this case, the top product is getting all of the attention and your product is not likely to see success.

Google Trends

Google Trends gives you the ability to see what products are trending or declining in popularity. You can also see the seasonality of items to see how each season will affect the product’s demand.

For example, you can search for “camping tent” in Google Trends. As expected, camping tent searches rise in popularity during the summer months and drop off significantly during winter. 

Therefore, your ecommerce store around camping tents might see booming business in the summertime. However, you can expect revenue to decline in the winter when everyone stays indoors.

Google Trends also tells me that “Roof Tent” is rising in popularity. Therefore, I can look to start adding Roof Tents to my online store to take advantage of the demand. I can also identify additional accessories to upsell or cross-sell, like “safe tent heaters for camping” which are rising in popularity as well.

Jungle Scout

Jungle Scout has a calculator which estimates the number of product sales on Amazon each month. You can plug in the best seller rank, hit calculate, and get an estimate of product sales. Therefore, you can use this in your decision of which products to sell in your online store.

What products are in high demand?

Products which have a high search volume or low Amazon best seller rank are considered in demand. The more searches a product receives, the more interest people have around a product. Online tools like Google Keyword Planner or Google Trends can help you estimate the demand for a product.

What products are the most profitable?

Digital products like information products are the most profitable, because they have low cost of creation and high purchase price. Digital products only need to be created once and they can be resold over and over again. Physical products that are lightweight, small, and are shelf stable can have good profit margins as well.

In my opinion, digital products are superior to physical products for selling. You can make the product yourself over a weekend, upload it to Gumroad, and you’re ready to sell. 

Selling digital products online can be done for zero upfront costs. One of the best strategies for selling digital products online is through influencer or social media marketing. However, you typically need a large social media following to be successful.

You can also get other people to sell your product for you through affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is when you give someone a commission to sell your product for you. Companies like Gumroad allow you to create an affiliate program for your product when uploading.

Physical products require manufacturing, shipping, importing, inventory management, and a whole list of other expenses. Creating your own physical product has no guarantee of success, even after sinking in a lot of money.

Summary: How to find high demand products

As you can see, it takes time to research the best products that are in demand with little competition. Demand can be estimated from search volume and Amazon best seller ranks. Pay attention to the number of product reviews and the number of product listings to estimate competition.

One of the best ways to estimate the demand for a product is to look at search volume compared to the number of product listings. The higher the number of searches compared to the number of listings gives a ratio of searches to listings. The more searches to listings, the easier it may be to sell.

Digital products are some of the best and most profitable products to sell. Digital products don’t cost much to create and can be sold over and over, without remanufacturing.