What should you sell?

Got your finger on it? The pulse, that is.

Don’t expect to get ahead in the online sales game unless you know not only what’s selling well today but also what’s going to hit the big time tomorrow.

Stay one step ahead of the competition by spotting new trends. For example, some drop shippers are now offering personalization of products – name engraving and branding off off-the-shelf items – and you could be among the first to offer this as a retail service. (All the personalization is done by the wholesaler).

So, how do you stay in front?

Finding Holy Cow Wholesale is a good starting point but there’s a whole cattle-pasture full of sites, books and other publications that will keep you in the picture and make sure you don’t step in the you-know-what.

Some, like WhatDoISell.com or the eBay research specialists Terapeak.com, will keep you informed – for the price of a monthly subscription – or for a free instant snapshot of what’s currently red hot try the eBay Pulse at http://pulse.ebay.com/. There are gallons of other free online resources too, like ecommercetimes.com, trendhunter.com and internetsales.com. Just Google it.

Just as important as following the product trends, is knowing where you can source items at the right price. This is where you need to be extra careful and Google doesn’t necessarily provide you with the right answers. There are many organizations, thousands probably, claiming to be suppliers and drop shippers when really they are middlemen. They may even be legit but what they are doing is taking an order from you, when they don’t really hold the stock, and just transferring it to a genuine drop shipper. The difference between what they charge you and what they pay the drop shipper is their profit – and it should be yours!

Comments

[Marucs]

I use the free account at http://inventorysource.com/ to find wholesale dropship supplier programs and products.