As an online entrepreneur, you’ll find that the most common daily struggles you’ll have to deal with are researching products, providing top-notch customer service, as well as sourcing items to sell on your Amazon platform. Product sourcing isn’t an easy task as a lot of research is needed to determine if they’re saturated or yield a decent margin as well. Here are some of the things that you can do to up your product sourcing game.
Factors to Consider When Sourcing Products to Sell on Amazon
Use a sourcing platform
Look for a product sourcing medium that you can rely on. This will become a great tool to help you make necessary decisions based on analysis of what products are in high demand and which ones are going to get you the best possible returns.
You’ll also need to use this platform to understand the relationship between demand and competition levels and how your profits are calculated. More importantly, it’s ideal for finding products that you might want to feature in your shop to keep it growing.
Check Amazon product niches and categories
Go to Amazon and pick a specific category that you’re permitted to sell and one you’re familiar with. Remember that if you’re new to the selling platform, you may not be able to offer products under Health and Beauty, Automotive, and Toy and Video Games among a few others. Search the specific category you have selected and go deeper to find subcategories that may only have little supply but still have a reasonable demand. You can then feed these products to your sourcing platform.
Make sense of the statistics
When doing product research, be sure to take note of the following products:
- Low competition
- Medium demand or even higher
- Fewer reviews with competing sellers having easy to overcome reviews
- Low shipping fees
- Easily available not only for your current supply but also for future demands as well
- Has high profit margins
- Has an Amazon Buy Box
Start small
Most new sellers tend to focus way too much on items that can be sold at really high prices. This may not be a good idea. While there may not be a direct range for prices that you should aim for, items with lower costs will lead to lower losses just in case things go south.
Find durable products
Look for highly durable products— ones that won’t easily break or crack when shipped. The last thing you want are products that could get damaged during shipping as this will just cost you more to sell and ship.
Where to Source
Clearance Sales
This is one straightforward sourcing method and will help you get your hands on products that are offered at a deep discount that you can then sell on Amazon for a higher price so you make a nice profit. This is also a safer route for sellers that don’t want to end up losing a lot money in the event that their chosen products doesn’t sell.
Surplus/Liquidation Stores
You’ll find that there are certain niches in Amazon where products that have been discontinued are going to sell for a higher price which means more profit for you. This is especially true in the Health and Beauty niche.
When products are discontinued, people are willing to pay more for them. Groceries are another category you want to look into too. Look for seasonal products or limited edition flavors and the like as they can make you some good money.
Online Sourcing
This is ideal if you can’t make regular trips to the store. It’s convenient too as you can just source the things you need at a time that is most convenient for you. This is also perfect for sellers that have a full-time job and will usually have no time to make trips to the stores.