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What is a good product for a beginner to sell?

  • avatar

    by: webcosmo
    SaleHoo Junior Member
    14 posts

    What is a good product for a beginner to sell?

    Posted 18 Jul 09 4:11 pm.

    I am still in the process trying to get a grasp of this whole dropship thing. Just in effort to gain as much knowledge as possible before I start. After all I don't wanna reinvent the wheel when its already done.

    My plan is to sell on my own e-commerce website, which is in the process of development.

    I am getting quite confused which products to sell really. Going through many posts I saw suggestions like picking products that we are expert of. Problem is I don't see I have knowledge on any product that I could sell.

    I thought about lingerie to start with. Is that something good for a starter? Or may be something else you folks could suggest?
  • avatar

    by: fudjj
    SaleHoo Staff
    2971 posts

    Re: What is a good product for a beginner to sell?

    Posted 18 Jul 09 10:11 pm.

    If you are developing your own platform to sell from you should be looking at how you are going to target your market (how you are going to draw targeted traffic to your site)

    Of course with your own platform you won't be subjected to listing and final success fees and that will always be an advantage, but you will of course have the general cost of your site to cover and the marketing of that site which can be an extreme expense.

    Why not take a look at your business model inside out to get some ideas. It seems that you don't really care about what you sell, but being really successful is all about knowing your market, and knowing your market includes not only knowing your product, but also knowing the type of people who will be your primary demographic.

    If you don't know who to market your products to, then the chances are that you marketing dollars won't be delivering you any real value at all.

    Why not take a look around town and some businesses, see if you find something that you could get interested in. Approach the business owner with a joint venture plan.

    You will market their stock on your site for free, in return they provide you a reduced price for margin and process your orders to ship direct to your customers upon sale.

    Present the proposal correctly and it will be an easy decision for the business owner to make. Marketing is key to any business, and they will always be looking at effective marketing avenues that offer them the biggest bang for their buck, and it doesn't get much better value for a business owner when some free marketing comes their way!

    Of course this would only work if the business didn't have their own site already, but the fact is that there is still more businesses offline than are actually online, so there is opportunities for joint ventures available everywhere.

    If you're smart you will your site in their shop, after all it is now an extra added convenience for their customers to be able to shop 24/7.

    It basically solves the problem you have of trying to establish a market, it only leaves you with the issue of marketing to targeted traffic.

    Why stop at one store, set your site up to sell for other businesses in your area, create your very own online department store!

    It's true what they say, no one ever gets big by thinking small : )

    Marc Ransom

    Community Manager
    SaleHoo.com

    About the Community Manager

  • avatar

    by: webcosmo
    SaleHoo Junior Member
    14 posts

    Re: What is a good product for a beginner to sell?

    Posted 19 Jul 09 5:08 pm.

    Thanks Fudji for the suggestions.

    I find it very difficult to sell on EBay specially when I don't have enough money to buy from liquidators. If I buy from dropshippers, chances are very slim I will find any dropshipper that will offer a good price for me to make any money out of it. So I guess only option left is going for my own website.

    I know the main challenge is marketing, as you mentioned.

    Do you by any chance have any specific product suggestion I could start with?
  • avatar

    by: fudjj
    SaleHoo Staff
    2971 posts

    Re: What is a good product for a beginner to sell?

    Posted 19 Jul 09 9:20 pm.

    I think you've summed up the market opportunities pretty well personally, but I couldn't suggest a specific product. To be honest it's all a matter of money and the effectiveness of how the money is spent as to what product would be best.

    There is virtually nothing on this planet that can't be sold if it's marketed well, and that's where a budget plays a role in what you try to sell. The more well known and sought after a product is, the easier it is to market and therefore should take less budget to market than a relatively unknown product.

    Of course it's not just marketing dollars, there will still be other factors such a pricing to also consider, and that would mean an investment in stock.

    It's why I suggested you team up with a business that's already established, you will gain knowledge from their research and not be in a position to have to invest in stock.

    Whatever you have can all go towards website development and the marketing of those products.

    Can an independent platform work with drop shipped products? Absolutely, but again, it all comes down to how the site is marketed as to it's success or failure.

    Marc Ransom

    Community Manager
    SaleHoo.com

    About the Community Manager

  • avatar

    by: monstersaintsfan
    New SaleHoo Member
    6 posts

    Re: What is a good product for a beginner to sell?

    Posted 1 Aug 09 12:54 am.

    Hello everyone. I am new to Salehoo and joined on 31/07/09, I have spent hours reading on this forum and have learned plenty. I checked a number of wholesalers in Salehoo's directory.
    I am an extremely hard worker and have been all my life. I am new to this wholesaler/dropshipping business and wanted to give it a try. I want to succeed and will continue to work to succeed in this business. It took me weeks of research before I decided to sign up at Salehoo. I feel I have received my $67 worth just on this forum alone. I have a couple of questions for all you experienced individuals:

    1) How often is the directory updated?

    2) Why is it when I do a search on a specific product, does other wholesalers that has nothing to do with the product I searched for show up also
    Example if I look up 'camping' wholesalers websites that has nothing to do with 'camping' shows up. I have to look at each one and weed out the ones that doesn't pertain to what I am searching for.

    3) Why does a lot of these companies in the directory have 'coming soon' in areas such as 'shipping, or in other areas on their reports' that are in the directory?

    4) I am considering becoming a member at another dropship wholesaler like Salehoo to get more more listings to use would any of you or have any of you done it?

    Comments would be appreciated.
  • avatar

    by: planes
    Forum Moderator
    843 posts

    Re: What is a good product for a beginner to sell?

    Posted 1 Aug 09 2:31 am.

    I have had a dropship option available for a few months now. Your welcome to try it out completely free for the first 30 days. link hidden

    You can literally be up and selling within 48 hours at no cost.

    I have 5 members from here actively selling on eBay. A new seller just sold his first item within 1 hour of posting to eBay just this week for an app. 12$ profit after all fees.

    If you have any questions you can PM me here or email me at link hidden .