How to identify bestselling products

At first, doing product research can feel a bit overwhelming, because there is just so much information available, but it doesn’t have to if you know where to look. You don’t even have to spend out on keyword research tools either – unless you want to, of course. We know many of our new sellers are looking for a way to make money without spending any money upfront at all. If you’re completely new to DropShipping but you’re keen to get involved, this post will take a look at some of the ways that you can identify the ways that you can find the bestselling products without needing to get your credit card out.

Amazon

Amazon are by far and away a big enough company that that don’t need to keep secret which are the best selling products right now. If you check right under the search box, there is a link to Best Sellers.

Click through, and you’ll drop onto a page featuring the top items in some of the most popular categories. You can use the list on the left hand side to click through into the department that you’re selling in (or hoping to sell in!) to find the best selling products right now.

You can refine the category in the department you’re looking at too – when we click into the Home & Kitchen department, there are several more categories we can click into. As you click furniture, you can refine further – generally by room, and then there are even more subcategories to click through to. This is the same for all the different categories and subcategories, so start digging!

There is a huge amount of incredibly valuable data, and considering Amazon keep that information updated hourly, as a seller you can really take advantage of this to choose your Avasam products.

If you’re looking for a way to predict what might be a future best seller, you can refine your search by looking at the Most Wished For in different departments. You can drill into the departments in the same way, and the data is updated daily, so this is another valuable source for sellers.

The other options that Amazon provide here – the Hot New Releases, Movers and Shakers and Most Gifted – are all useful for your research too.

You might find that you are unable to compete on price on Amazon, but there is nothing to stop you from taking that research and using it to inform your sales on another marketplace!

eBay

eBay don’t give away information in quite the same way that Amazon do, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use information from eBay to inform your research. You can use the predictive search to get an idea of what customers are searching for. This search shows what is popular on eBay right now if you search for children’s. What is interesting is that people are searching for children’s bed in two categories – so that can help you, since you’ll know you can potentially make sales in different categories.

You can also use the eBay Advanced Search to find sold listings, and filter using the Sold Listings to give you information about which products have been on the up. Finally, don’t forget to check on listings to find out how many watchers a product has – this can be a good indicator of how many sales might be made in the coming days.

Other marketplaces

Of course, Amazon and eBay aren’t the only places that you can search for bestselling product information. Wish is a powerhouse for eCommerce, and the best seller information is certain to help you to identify new products to add to your range. If you decide to sell on Wish, you’ll have the advantage that if you sell the products from Avasam suppliers, your UK and European customers won’t be waiting up to 8 weeks like they do from China sellers on the platform.

Other marketplaces can be gold mines for information too, even if you’re not selling on them. We’ve a number of marketplaces that you can integrate with when you’re using Avasam, so take a look at the integrations page, and search for best sellers for each of the marketplaces to find out what is trending on those platforms.

Don’t forget, some of the international marketplaces may be selling thousands of items that haven’t started trending in the UK or Europe yet, and vice versa. If you can identify a product that hasn’t caught on yet in India, for example, you might list that product on Flipkart or Elala and start marketing the product there – which gives you the chance to be the preferred seller for that item in that country.

Third-party tools

There are a huge number of search tools you can find to help you identify the right products for your business. We have already spoken at length on the blog about the value that can be gained from Google Trends, so rather than repeat ourselves, if you’re unsure where to start, take a look at this post for much more information.

Don’t forget that Google isn’t the only search engine. It might be the most popular by a long way, but Bing gets a lot of use, especially in North America. The Bing Keyword Research tool provides up to six months of data from organic search. Organic search means no paid or advertising data makes it in, so it can be a lot clearer to find the information you’re looking for. You can also search keyword information by language and country or region too, so if you’re aiming to expand to markets outside your home country, information from Bing can be useful.

We’re not even going to try and condense where to start searching for product information when it comes to keyword tools – there are just too many options that can provide what you’re looking for, even if you only count the free tools. We’re sure you’ll find one that suits your needs on this post – and if not, search for ‘alternative to’ and the name of the tool that you’re looking for.

If you’re able to pay a small fee, there are so many more options too! You’re almost certainly going to be using SEO tools, especially once you’ve set up your website, so take a look at SEMRush, AHRefs, and Moz – but check out this post for more options for SEO tools, including free ones.

Other places you can search to find the sort of product information you might be looking for include searching social media and YouTube, or using metric tools to find what you’re looking for. Different platforms will contain very different information, and even if your target customer wouldn’t use that platform (for example, if you’re targeting the age 50 – 60 age bracket, you’re unlikely to see many users on Snapchat or TikTok) it can be worth doing research there anyway, since they may help you identify opportunities for additional products that you might otherwise have missed. You’ll be able to find this information for free on these platforms, so it is well worth having a dig.

Identify where there is less competition

Where a product is selling well on one marketplace, you may not want to start selling that product on the same marketplace. Let’s say you’ve identified a product such as LED strip lights. At the time of writing, 8 of the top 10 best sellers in the Indoor Lighting category were LED strip lights – which means there is a huge demand for them.

Trying to make sales for LED strip lights on Amazon is potentially going to be tricky, because you’ll be trying to compete against sellers that are much more established, and have a lot of feedback. Where this happens, unless you’re able to undercut them with your price, you are extremely unlikely to make many sales as a new seller, and even if you can undercut on price, you may find your sales are low.

This is because on marketplaces like Amazon, trust is absolutely critical to make sales – so trying to compete with these established sellers that have loads of positive feedback is unlikely to lead to many sales. You probably don’t want to cut your profit margins down to nothing, but if you know the product is going to make sales, what can you do?

Looking at selling on other marketplaces (especially internationally) is a good place to start – especially if there are fewer listings for those products, where you may be able to capitalise on there being fewer listings, make sales and get reviews, and start to build trust.

Although there are relatively few marketplaces that we can say are ‘quiet’, there are definitely marketplaces with far fewer sellers than Amazon and eBay. Bear in mind that it is likely to be easier to make sales on those marketplaces and think about starting there instead. It’s easier to be a growing fish in a small pond, than it is to be a small fish in an ocean absolutely chock-full of big fish!

Many of these smaller marketplaces don’t charge listing fees either – many charge commission on each sale, so you won’t need to pay upfront for selling on those marketplace either.

Bear in mind

Although selling bestselling products can be a good way to start your business and to get the hang of DropShipping, once a product starts trending on any marketplace there will be a lot of competition from other sellers doing the same thing. That means you need to try and identify products that aren’t trending quite yet, and expect to make smaller margins on bestselling products. We’ll be looking at ways to increase your profit margin in an upcoming post, so watch out for that one!