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Choosing which products to sell on
your website Far too many
people make the mistake of trying to sell only products that they
like on their web sites. Others make the mistake of trying to sell
only the coolest and flashiest things they can find.
The whole point of starting an
Ecommerce web site is to make money. That's something you must not
lose sight of (no pun intended!).
As you know, our business is to
show people where they can find products to sell without investing a
single penny in inventory, by drop shipping. It's the perfect way to
start in Internet business on a shoestring budget.
Our Directory covers over a half
million products, from more than a thousand well-known brand names.
So why does everyone who uses the
Directory try to sell electronics?
Ok, I guess I did the same thing.
When I opened my first Internet store, I plastered the walls of that
place with things that I though were cool. Stereo equipment, DVD
players, Computer components. The shinier the better. I had the
latest technology up there. Some of the items cost thousands of
dollars.
I think that in the back of my
mind, I knew that I wasn't going to sell much of it, but it LOOKED
really cool. I could show it to my friends and say, "Check it out
... that's MY store!" They were all suitable impressed, and I could
walk around feeling like I was pretty slick. Whenever any of them
asked me how much money I was making, I cleverly changed the
subject.
The truth was that no one was
buying much. Come to think of it, none of my friends bought
anything, either. That should have told me something right there.
Look, electronics are a fine product to sell on the Internet. I only
use them as an example because it's a situation I can relate to. The
problem is not the product; it's the COMPETITION.
Most of the people I've seen start
an Internet store want to know what the hottest sellers are on the
'Net, so they can sell those products too. They're missing the
point, as I did. If you only sell the hottest sellers, you dilute
your available customer base, because everyone else is trying to
sell the hottest sellers, too! You also run into those
bricks-and-mortar popular-item superstores that have millions of
dollars to purchase tons of inventory at rock-bottom prices.
People buy all kinds of products.
They don't have to be cool or shiny. They just have to be things
that people will buy.
Here's an important ingredient for
success on the 'Net: sell those products that people use, but don't
stumble over every time they open a web browser.
When we build an Internet store, we
do a little research first. Since we build stores in Yahoo Shopping,
we do our research in Yahoo Shopping. We know that at least 90% of
our traffic is going to come from the millions of people who surf
through there with their purses and wallets flapping in the breeze.
So when we consider a new product line, we start a search.
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 this was written, such a search
turned up 7,813 DVD Players available from 496 stores.
Do we want to become store number
497, add 20 or 30 products to the nearly 8,000 that are already
available, and hope we sell something?
I think not.
Since we use our own Directory
exclusively as a source of product suppliers who drop ship, we go
back to the Directory and look around at some of the available
product types. We notice that one of the wholesalers we list carries
a complete line of Fiskars brand Yard and Garden tools. Will people
buy these products? Hmmm... people HAVE been known to work on their
yards and gardens, when they're not playing with their electronics.
Fiskars is a well-known brand name, so our customers would feel
comfortable with it.
So let's check out the competition.
We want to know how many other
people are selling Fiskars products in Yahoo Shopping. So we search
on "Fiskars". Only 54 stores selling Fiskars products! That's
considerably better than 497 stores selling the electronics we were
considering.
Are these store devoted to selling
ONLY Fiskars products? Wow ... not a single one! All the top search
returns are stores selling general merchandise.
When we build a store, we like to
specialize in one product line. There are many benefits to this;
chiefly the fact that customers feel more comfortable in a store
that does one thing, and does it well. It's also much easier to rank
a single product line in the major search engines than it is to rank
a general store with lots of unrelated products.
Ok, we have a product line that we
feel will sell, and the competition in the Fiskars brand name itself
is minimal and unfocused.
However, when people search for
garden tools, they're going to use search words like "Trowel", and
"Pruning". They're not going to search on the term "Fiskars" very
often, unless they're looking for scissors. So, we go back to the
Yahoo Shopping search engine.
We search on "Gardening Tools", and
we find 113 stores carrying 324 products. Still not much
competition. Even better, NONE of these stores are focused on just
gardening tools. They are gift stores, general merchandise stores,
etc., who just happen to have the word "Gardening" somewhere in
their product description. We know that we can put the word
"Gardening" in our very product names themselves (ex.- "Gardening
Trowel, Steel, 9 Inch"), and we will show up right near the TOP of a
search on the word "Gardening".
We search on the word "Pruning",
and find 81 stores carrying 418 products. Still not a problem, since
the top returns are BOOKS on pruning, and the rest are more
unfocused sites.
After a little more searching,
we're convinced that we've found a product line that will sell well
for the Spring and Summer seasons. Since it only costs us $100 a
month to open another small Yahoo Store, we more than happy to do
it. In the Fall, sales will slack off, but we have other stores that
are geared toward Fall and Winter merchandise. They are also small
and focused, and no matter how many Yahoo Stores we open, we know
that each one of them will easily cover it's $100 a month cost, and
turn a profit of some kind all year 'round.
Of course, now that I've opened my
mouth and told everyone about Fiskars, we're going to have to scrap
that idea and go back to the drawing board! That's OK, though ... we
have nearly half a million others to choose from. :o)
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Article by Chris Malta. Chris Malta
is a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer. He has worked with
computer Systems for 18 years. He's been involved in eCommerce
systems, networking and site design for more than 6 years. He's
taught college-level computer courses in Western NY. He developed
The Drop Ship Source Directory, and he and his partners at Worldwide
Brands, Inc., publish the Directory and run eCommerce sites of their
own using Drop Shipping as their only business method.
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