This is a question I get asked all the time. Today I was doing a webinar with about 40 people and I was talking with the group about strategies you can use to source products, the only problem was most of them were more interested in me telling them what to sell as compared to how to find it. So many people are interested in doing business online, but they don’t have any ideas about what they want to sell. Because of this I diverted a little bit and spent about 20 min. talking about how to qualify a product and come up with ideas. Here are my recommendation on that subject.
- Brainstorm. To brainstorm up ideas I always start by answering three questions of myself. What do I know about? what do I like to do? and finally, what do I want to learn more about? I always list the answers to these questions on a sheet of paper folded into three columns. YOU MUST TIME YOURSELF during the brainstorm or it won’t work. Give yourself 1 min. to answer each questions and then do it again if the list is short.
- Do something you love or have a passion for. This gives you an advantage as a new business owner because if you love it you will already know a lot about it, including good and bad products in the market, who manufactures them, etc. and your passion will motivate you to succeed even when the economy sucks…like today.
- Make enough money to be happy. For me you have to find out what the industry margins look like and determine if that enough money to work for. Take into considerations your overhead costs, marketing costs, etc. and at the end of it all if say 15% is enough to make you happy then you’re all set on this factor.
- Sell something that can be sold elsewhere. Don’t just move your product through your front-end website. Do something that can also be sold via kiosk in the mall, or through school funding programs, or through door-to-door reps. This will help diversify the income streams to the business and keep it more solid for you.
- Create a back end for the business. If you are getting customer that are buying technical books on how to fix their transmissions, by all means realize that there are companies out there that will pay you for leads. Sell their info if you can, or find another way to open the backend of your business up.
If you can find a product that meets these 5 requirements then you’ll probably be happy with your choice of business and hopefully well on your way to success.
