SaleHoo Research Labs - Need help with it's features

Hello, Please indulge me I am knew to this & have many questions: For starters since I am interested in drop shipping & when using the research lab features, what am I looking for number wise? For example I see the sell-through rate, median end price, total listing, total bids, average daily sellers & below the average price & average buy it now as well as the buy it ratio. WOW!!!
Can anyone tell me what all this means especially since none of the items that I am interested in dealing in or with come back with a sell-through rate of more than 30%. Is that good, bad or average? Even the buy it now ration 5% or 15% is that good or bad?? I’m trying to do research on item I’m interested in but I’m just not sure what all this means and when I get the results back from the research lab I don’t know what the numbers mean or what I should be looking for, Please help…

Hi RB, a slow sell through rate isn't automatically a bad thing, in fact it can be quite positive. You have to take a stat like that and then research it to get the full story. For example, what sort of profit margin is in that product, why is the sell through rate low, is it the way the products are being marketed, are the seasonal and so on.

The thing with sales data is that a single stat will never give you a clear and complete picture. The secret is digging down on the stat, learn what's behind it. Knowledge is power, and knowing why a stat is what it is can help you find a way to improve on the average.

Welcome to SaleHoo RichBuy :)

Ideally you should go for products that have a sell-through rate of not lower than 50%, although not the only factor to consider, for me this one is major thing to consider when I do my searches for our Monday Market of the Week blogs.

But to help you get a better grasp of our new Research Lab, I recommend going through this post by Alice - Link hidden: Login to view

Hope this helps!

Don't think its ever happened before, but I'll have to disagree with Richelle on this one lol, sorry Richelle :)


It's not that I think a sell through stat isn't valid, it's a very important stat, but for me, a stat like that asks more questions than gives answers. I tend to think that a sell through rate can be seriously over rated and can at times be misleading on the surface, see my above post for those reasons.

It's all relative, I am involved in a business venture where by we import cars. Now let's say that the sweet spot in our market is the 8K - 12K price range, that's where most of the ducks are feeding. At this price point we can move vehicles at a decent pace and make around 1k margin on a deal.

Now that doesn't stop us from trying to sell a 75K car, at which we would have a much larger margin, somewhere around the 10K mark. While the sell through rate of the 75K car is not even going to be close to a 10K car, purely because there aren't as many ducks with their bills in the pond, we still only have to sell one, as opposed to selling 10 of the others to balance the equation.

Slower sell through rate, same profit!

Basic principle of business, you can sell 1000 things at a margin of 1 dollar each to make $1,000 or you can sell one thing at a $1,000 margin to make the same amount. Chances are that your sell through rate will be lower on the thousand dollar margin, but so long as you can sell it in the time frame you have sold the other thousand items, you're still there.

Again, a stat doesn't always tell the whole story. You have to dig down, you have to understand why the stat is as it is. Once you understand it, you can then seek opportunities within it. Never any guarantee that there are opportunities within it of course, but if you take a stat at face value without digging down on it, then you can guarantee there will be zero opportunities.......

:)

Thanks Everyone,

I really appreciate the advice, and I’m sure I will have more questions coming ;)