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How to know if a physical product will be successful before you start selling it



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How to know if a physical product will be successful before you start selling it

When it comes to selling physical products online, you never really know what will be profitable unless you do some research prior to jumping all in.  I'm here to help you through the process of figuring out what will be a good product to sell online by doing a few simple steps.  Obviously it will vary slightly, but this will be a good starting point to figure out if something will work out for you.

When I started out working online I never thought of selling physical products.  I was more focused on being an affiliate and making passive income streams that would continue to send income every month without me having to invest dozens of hours each month.  Now I'm slowly getting into selling physical products and I've figured out a few ways to figure out what works well when wanting to sell it online How to know if a physical product will be successful before you start selling it  and that's what I'll be sharing with you.


6 ways to figure out if a product will be successful


  1. Do you PPC research first
    What you'll want to do is set up a dummy adwords campaign to figure out your estimated monthly spend and how much traffic you'll be getting.  If you're spending $1.00+ per click and only making a few bucks per sale, then that's a really good indicator that you don't have a successful product on your had, at least for an adwords campaign.  Look over how much it would cost to run a bing ads campaign and if it would be worth putting up an ad over there.  If Bing ads isn't your outlet, move over to facebook and get super targeted with your targeting.  Some items that don't sell well on Adwords and Bing Ads will make a killing on facebook because it's a different atmosphere How to know if a physical product will be successful before you start selling it

  2. Figure out your ROI based on a 3% conversion rate
    This step goes well with step 1, and that's whey it's step 2 How to know if a physical product will be successful before you start selling it  What you'll want to, after you pass step 1, is figure out your estimated ROI.  Basically you'll take the total amount of estimated clicks, let's say there are 5,000 clicks in total for $500, and then multiply that by 0.03 which is 3%

    Example: 5,000 x 0.03 = 150

    This means that you could be getting around 150 sales for the $500 investment.  Now that means you need to be profiting $3.33 per sale in order to break even.  If you're making anything over that $3.33 estimate then you're profiting How to know if a physical product will be successful before you start selling it  Now this is just an estimate, you may be in a more expensive niche that will cost $0.50 per click and it could have a higher success rate.  My estimates were just that, an estimate.  You'll need to do your own math, and you'll want to use a 3% conversion rate when figuring everything out.

    If you're almost breaking even, don't think that's a failing campaign.  If you're capturing emails and having a newsletter send out every 2 weeks then you can usually get a lot of shares and recurring buyers each month How to know if a physical product will be successful before you start selling it

  3. Figure out what your competitors are doing
    For this I like to use SEMrush because it will show me what my competitors ads look like and I can mimic or make them better for my own gains.  I can combine this with step 1 and 2 to figure out the PPC cost and then optimize my campaigns to get a higher quality score which will drop my CPC gradually How to know if a physical product will be successful before you start selling it  Having a lot of competitors can be a good and a bad thing.  If you don't have any competition, it could also be good or bad.  Having a lot of competitors means you could be spending a premium for your PPC campaigns and if you don't have any competition you could be in a dead niche that won't make you any money, which is never good.

    I also like to use ahrefs for backlink research, but that doesn't really come into a factor when figuring out if a product is going to be successful or not.

  4. Make a product higher quality than your competitors
    I've recently been getting into physical products and one of my niches has a decent amount of competitors.  The thing about my competitors is that all the top sellers are Chinese brands that were bought at wholesale.  Usually a Chinese product that is mass produced will lack superior quality, which I can output since I'm the small guy in the niche. 

    What I did was order my competitors product and had it shipped to my house.  I studied the quality of the product and figured out how to make everything myself, for a cheaper price than what my competitors are actually buying their products at wholesale for lol.

  5. Source your materials or products from China
    If you know your competitors are getting their products and materials from China, then you can likely find something of the same quality or even better.  What I did was find my competitors product, then I contacted the distributor and figured out the pricing.  I used that as a price point to get under when I made the product myself using aliexpress and alibaba to source my products or materials.

    After extensive research for around 2 months I figured out a way to get my price per piece down to below what I could get it for at a wholesale price and having to buy 100 at a time How to know if a physical product will be successful before you start selling it  Now that I have a product that is actually cheaper than what I can get it for at wholesale, I can now price it less than my competitors and make more sales.  Essentially I will be taking over the niche out of no where before my competitors can react to the new guy on the block How to know if a physical product will be successful before you start selling it

  6. Don't forget about Amazon
    Sourcing products on amazon is also a good thing to think about.  Now this has only worked with one part of the machine that is a physical product, but it reduced my pricing dramatically because I re-purposed the item to do something it wasn't intended for lol.  You have to think outside of the box How to know if a physical product will be successful before you start selling it




In Conclusion:
You will have to do a lot of research to figure out if an item is going to be a good seller online, but it's worth the time.  Would you rather be investing hundreds into a websites advertising only to figure out the item isn't going to sell the way you had hoped and now you have 100 items sitting in your basement taking up space?  I know that my girlfriend would kill me if I had 100 hoverboards sitting in my basement lol (yes, I was going to sell hoverboards).  Think outside the box a little bit and you can usually find something that will sell well.  Figure out your profit estimates and if they're worth the chance to profit well, go for it How to know if a physical product will be successful before you start selling it



Remember to follow me!
https://www.seoclerks.com/user/Razzy


Thanks!

Razzy

Comments

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Cristian
Great information Razzy! I've been thinking for a while now if I should invest into a physical product and sell it on Amazon.
I did some research and found out that local manufacturers are actually more expensive than the ones from China, in fact, China seems to be the perfect source for any product, it has the best prices and you can customize the products after your own wishes.

Now, the real problem is finding the right product to sell. I need a product that has a manufacturing price under 5 dollars and I need to turn at least 25% profit with each and every sale after all expenses are cut down. I also need to sell enough items per month to make everything profitable and hopefully become financial independent in 2 years time.

Have you ever sold anything on Amazon, can you make a living in the US by selling stuff on Amazon? What tools or method should I use to find ideas for products worth testing PPC over it?



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Makefort
I would create few prototypes and show them to people for free during certain events, let them tell you what they think about it, do they like it, would they buy it, but don't tell them the price. Try to make them guess the price. If lots of people give it a try and each of them gives you approximate guess on the value, you can decide to either go below current market prices, stay the same or go above. It really comes to the costumers in the end. If most of your costumers end up liking your product you can easily tweak it a bit more if needed and come up with average price from people's guesses.



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kaka135
Thank you very much for you informative post. This is really helpful. My husband and I thought of setting up an online business to sell physical products, we even bought some stuff from China online shopping site. Without doing much research and studies, the business doesn't go well and the products just sit there quietly. I will follow your tips, and try to work on it again. I hope the business will be successful so we can continue to work from home and spend time with our kids.



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johnfranklin1
A good piece of information should be appreciated. It is true that we should do a little bit research before launching our product. It is a good idea to get the material for the product from China. Check the competitor's product and analyze that what they are missing in it. Make a product that is better than anyone else is producing.



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clara1993
I like to keep a positive mind so I'll say Sure this will sell basing on what the majority like,is the majority of my Traffics youth?? Yes Do they like Musics? yes Then If I sell them Ipod can works well! These kind of questions are also rewuired to decide on best selling product.
Am I in a muslim community yes so Bulka or Koran would do????



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dancairns
Simple answer One of the smartest things that you can do as a business owner is to take what’s working in another industry and try it out in yours. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. If it’s working for someone else, with a few small tweaks, it will probably work for you.



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johnfranklin1
I like your point of view. If a business is working good for someone else then it can work same for you if you follow the same strategies. First of all, you would have to look for the targeted market and the audience. Learn how to attract buyers. Check for the features that your competitors are not offering.



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clara1993
In addition The best way to know if A phisical product will sell is selling it basing on this saying " Try but never fail to try " Other wise you might do all steps and Whatever but if you never implement you'll never know what may happen :-) Good lucks anyway to those who want to know.



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tonyval
Thanks, I believe these ideas of yours are based on experience alone, because there are no any studies or science that backed the claim as far as I know. But at least I hope they are reliable.
I’ve started dozens of businesses if you count the ones that died before they even got named. And that experience has given me a fairly reliable pattern for predicting which types of products will succeed.



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Corzhens
This is not to ignore the suggestions in this discussion. It just occurred to me what the new products are doing with their promotion. They give away samples for the potential consumers to know the quality of the product. Of course, that free sample is applicable only for small products like food items. It cannot apply to big products like appliances. However, for big products, you can resort to a demo just to show the quality.



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