What Should I Sell on my Site?
"What Should I Sell on my Site?" Far too many people make themistake of trying to sell only products that they like on theirweb sites. Others make the mistake of trying to sell only thecoolest and flashiest things they can find. The whole point ofstarting an Ecommerce web site is to make money. That’ssomething you must not lose sight of (no pun intended!). Ourbusiness is to show people where they can find products to sellwithout investing a single penny in inventory. The approach iscalled drop shipping. This is where a wholesale distributor willship a single item directly to your customer from theirwarehouse, AFTER your customer pays you for it. It’s the perfectway to start in Internet business on a shoestring budget. TheDirectory we publish covers three quarters of a millionproducts, from over two thousand well-known brand names,available from more than a hundred REAL wholesalers who willdrop ship. So why does everyone who uses our Directory try tosell electronics? Ok, I guess I did the same thing. When Iopened my first Internet store, I plastered the walls of thatplace with things that I though were cool. Stereo equipment, DVDplayers, Computer components. The shinier the better. I had thelatest technology up there. Some of the items cost thousands ofdollars. I think that in the back of my mind, I knew that Iwasn’t going to sell much of it, but it LOOKED really cool. Icould show it to my friends and say, “Check it out…that’s MYstore!” They were all suitably impressed, and I could walkaround feeling like I was pretty slick. Whenever any of themasked me how much money I was making, I cleverly changed thesubject. The truth was that no one was buying much. Come tothink of it, none of my friends bought anything, either. Thatshould have told me something right there. Look, electronics area fine product to sell on the Internet. I only use them as anexample because it’s a situation I can relate to. The problem isnot the product; it’s the COMPETITION. Most of the people I’veseen start an Internet store want to know what the hottestsellers are on the ‘Net, so they can sell those products too.They’re missing the point, as I did. If you only sell thehottest sellers, you dilute your available customer base,because everyone else is trying to sell the hottest sellers,too! You also run i...
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...nto those bricks-and-mortar popular-itemsuperstores that have millions of dollars to purchase tons ofinventory at rock-bottom prices. People buy all kinds ofproducts. They don’t have to be cool or shiny. They just have tobe things that people will buy. Here’s an important ingredientfor success on the ‘Net: sell those products that people use,but don’t stumble over every time they open a web browser. Whenwe build an Internet store, we do a little research first. Sincewe build stores in Yahoo Shopping (http://store.yahoo.com), wedo our research in Yahoo Shopping. We know that at least 90% ofour traffic is going to come from the millions of people whosurf through there with their purses and wallets flapping in thebreeze. So when we consider a new product line, we start asearch. If we were considering selling DVD players, for example,we would do a search on the term “DVD Player” in Yahoo Shopping.As of the date of this article, such a search turns up 7,813 DVDPlayers available from 496 stores. Do we want to become storenumber 497, add 20 or 30 products to the nearly 8,000 that arealready available, and hope we sell something? I think not.Since we use our own Directory exclusively as a source ofproduct suppliers who drop ship, we go back to the Directory andlook around at some of the available product types. We noticethat one of the wholesalers we list carries a complete line ofFiskars brand Yard and Garden tools. Will people buy theseproducts? Hmmm…people HAVE been known to work on their yards andgardens, when they’re not playing with their electronics.Fiskars is a well-known brand name, so our customers would feelcomfortable with it. It happens to be late spring, so it’sreasonable to assume that people will be buying garden tools forsome time still this year. So let’s check out the competition.We want to know how many other people are selling Fiskarsproducts in Yahoo Shopping. So we search on “Fiskars”. Only 54stores selling Fiskars products right now! That’s considerablybetter than 497 stores selling the electronics we wereconsidering. Are these store devoted to selling ONLY Fiskarsproducts? Wow…not a single one! All the top search returns arestores selling general merchandise. When we build a store, welike to specialize in one product line. There are many benefitsto this; c...
...iefly the fact that customers feel more comfortablein a store that does one thing, and does it well. It’s also mucheasier to rank a single product line in the major search enginesthan it is to rank a general store with lots of unrelatedproducts. Ok, we have a product line that we feel will sell, andthe competition in the Fiskars brand name itself is minimal andunfocused. However, when people search for garden tools, they’regoing to use search words like “Trowel”, and “Pruning”. They’renot going to search on the term “Fiskars” very often, unlessthey’re looking for scissors. So, we go back to the YahooShopping search engine. We search on “Gardening Tools”, and wefind 113 stores carrying 324 products. Still not muchcompetition. Even better, NONE of these stores are focused onjust gardening tools. They are gift stores, general merchandisestores, etc., who just happen to have the word “Gardening”somewhere in their product description. We know that we can putthe word “Gardening” in our very product names themselves (ex.-“Gardening Trowel, Steel, 9 Inch”), and we will show up right atthe TOP of a search on the word “Gardening”. We search on theword “Pruning”, and find 81 stores carrying 418 products. Stillnot a problem, since the top returns are BOOKS on pruning, andthe rest are more unfocused sites. After a little moresearching, we’re convinced that we’ve found a product line thatwill sell well for the rest of the Spring and Summer. Since itonly costs us $100 a month to open another small Yahoo Store, wemore than happy to do it. In the Fall, sales will slack off, butwe have other stores that are geared toward Fall and Wintermerchandise. They are also small and focused, and no matter howmany Yahoo Stores we open, we know that each one of them willeasily cover it’s $100 a month cost, and turn a profit of somekind all year ‘round. Of course, now that I’ve opened my mouthand told everyone about Fiskars, we’re going to have to scrapthat idea and go back to the drawing board! That’s OK, though…wehave nearly half a million others to choose from. (NOTE: Thenumbers mentioned regarding search results were at the time ofthe writing of this article, and will have changed. The pointremains the same!) Chris Malta WorldWide Brands, Inc. For moreinformation, visit http://www.YouCanDropship.com.
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