When it comes to dropshipping, one of the biggest decisions faced by online business owners is picking a profitable niche and choosing the right products to sell.
While finding the best items to dropship can be a timely process, it will get you off to a great start with your online store.
Do not waste your time looking for products that are unique and hard to find on other dropshipping online stores.
Chances are, these items are not in demand and will not generate the desired profit.
Conducting thorough market research before selecting your dropshipping products is critical to the success of your business.
But where do you start?
This article will walk you through the main factors you will need to consider in identifying the best items to dropship with a high selling potential.
If you’re new to dropshipping, we recommend that you start with low-cost products.
Contrary to popular belief, the best items to dropship are ones that will be priced at $3 or less.
Items with low costs are more likely to sell in high volumes, generating better conversion rates and greater profit.
Low cost products like these will allow you to offer customers good deals such as free + shipping offers.
This is a highly effective strategy to get your brand name out there and get some customer recognition before moving on to more expensive products.
It goes without saying that you should not be investing your time and marketing efforts on products that will not be of interest to the general public.
If there is no demand for the product, it will not bring you any profit no matter how well you advertise it.
When browsing niche categories on large marketplaces like AliExpress, make sure to filter products by order numbers.
This will help you better understand the demands of your niche market and the types of products you should consider selling.
When conducting your research, chances are you will find familiar items that have already been over-advertised by your competitors.
Make sure to scroll through several pages to find somewhat unique products with order numbers not exceeding 10k.
Generally speaking, the high order number of a product is a good indicator of its good quality.
It is important that you scroll through a few pages of customer reviews and take note of any negative feedback that has been provided.
If you are importing products from AliExpress, choose products with ratings of 4 and above.
Apart from reading customer reviews, you can place a few test orders on the products of your interest.
This is a useful practice as it will allow you to also evaluate the punctuality and professionalism of the supplier.
Your online store should demonstrate products in the most visually pleasing way possible.
Not only will this make a lasting impression on your shoppers, but quality images will also make your business seem more legitimate.
When choosing products on marketplaces, you should ensure that the supplier provides high-quality images.
These images will be directly imported into your online store and be used to attract customers through ads.
It is very important that these images do not have any supplier branding on them.
While you can remove company logos and watermarks via Photoshop, this is only in the case if they are placed in top corners of the given image.
Taking professional images of your products yourself is also an option.
But due to long shipping times, this may be a lengthy process. If you’re selling items like clothing and accessories, look for suppliers who provide images demonstrating different people wearing them.
Having such images will drastically increase your chances of making the sale.
Performing competitive analysis within your niche is fundamental to understanding how the dropshipping market operates.
Considering that many online businesses will be selling the same products as you, it is important to be able to stand out.
Good news is, there are many tools available to help you conduct detailed research on your competition.
Firstly, you can use social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram to identify niche stores like yours.
If you keep seeing ads on a specific product, it is very likely that your competitors have found it highly successful.
Once you have identified your competitors, you will need to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of their selling strategy.
Intelligynce is a highly useful Shopify analysis tool that will allow you to look up best selling items on any Shopify store.
Here you can look up your already identified niche competitors and see their five best selling items.
Competitive analysis is not only for dropshipping newbies.
No matter how experienced you are in the e-commerce industry, it is important that you keep gathering useful tips from your competition.
A typical dropshipping store will generally offer two types of products.
Front end products are your flagship products that will take up most of your marketing efforts.
Complementary products are used to attract customers by using a cross-selling strategy.
When shopping online, you often notice a suggestion section labeled “customers who bought this item also bought”.
This popular strategy known as cross-selling refers to encouraging customers to add related products to their initially intended purchase.
Having complementary products will increase your average order value.
Additionally, this gives the customer an opportunity to buy all the needed products in one single purchase.
As a dropshipper you should always be focusing on finding your front-end products first.
Your flagship products should strictly follow the above-mentioned choosing criteria for pricing, popularity, and images.
That being said, give yourself more flexibility when choosing secondary products as their importance is not as high.
Dropshipping is a highly promising business model to adopt for online business entrepreneurs.
It is efficient, fast and does not require much startup costs.
Finding the best items to dropship does not have to be a complicated process as long as you follow the above mentioned guidelines.
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