I have been an e-commerce entrepreneur for four years, and I can tell you right now that if you think you will profit just by choosing a trending product, you are greatly mistaken. Yes, choosing a product that is in good demand is important; however, there are a series of research steps that you need to take in order to generate sales and brand familiarity.

Nowadays, there are endless platforms to build an online store and advertise your goods or services. During my time as an e-commerce seller, I have realized that the 3 most important aspect of e-commerce selling is understanding your audience, market and diversifying your traffic sources.

Making data-backed decisions and advertising your product across social media platforms is the only way your e-commerce store will become profitable. In this article, I will teach you how to find a winning product, find a supplier, and some secret tips on how to increase the number of store visitors that you get.

I am Sasha Forbes, and for the past four years, I have created and run three Shopify stores, three TikTok shops, and made a significant profit on Amazon.

What is product research and how to do it?

The act of a researching items, that fall into particular niches, that are on the market. Essentially it is taking a dive into a market, reviewing how active sellers are performing and asking yourself the below questions:

• What is being sold?
• What is trending on the market?
• How much is it being sold for?
• How well is it selling on average?
• Is there a demand for it?

The process of researching a market and identifying profitable products is fairy straight forward, however, before you proceed with research you need to establish your drop shipping business model.

2 Types of e-commerce models that are simple and effective

There are two e-commerce models that you can follow after you have finalized your product research and chosen a product that you wish to sell:

• Supplier-based
• Manufacture on demand based

So, what is the difference between the two?

In the supplier-based model, you find a supplier who can provide you with your product in bulk. This means that your supplier costs will include your bulk purchase and shipping.

Like many other e-commerce sellers, I have used suppliers from Alibaba in the past, and they have all been very accommodating. If you have found a supplier, then I would recommend ordering 1 or 2 product samples for quality inspection before proceeding with a bulk order. You do not want negative ratings and reviews on your website, as this will impact visitor trust and leave sales stagnant.

Manufacture-on-demand model: I will be using a print-on-demand company to describe how this model works.

Printify, a well-known print-on-demand store, offers you the opportunity to browse their wide selection of products that have no designs (they are blank). You can choose a product from their catalog that you wish to sell and then create a number of designs for that product. Once you have designed your product, Printify will give you a cost breakdown, as well as provide you with a suggested sales price and profit margin.

If you have a Shopify store, there is an option to integrate your store with Printify so that if your store visitors wish to create their own designs, they can be referred to Printify to start designing. Do not worry; you will still receive 100% of the profit, and shipping is handled entirely by Printify.

What should one research before creating a product/choosing a product to sell?

Now that we have established 2 e-commerce models, it is time to start researching for a winning product. It is understand that you may selling on different platforms, however, the below factors apply for any platform:

• Sales trend data (average revenue made for product/product niche
• Keyword search volumes for product
• Reviews and ratings
• Interaction ad tests

Remember, the product you choose should be based on performance data. Making data-driven decisions will determine your sales growth, as well identifying gaps in a market that can turn into profitable opportunities, if taken advantage of.

I will break down each of the above points and then show you how you can apply each one to Shopify, Amazon, and TikTok Shop. These platforms will require product research tools. I will recommend the tools that I have used in the past that have proved to be truly beneficial.

Sales Trend Analysis

With access to product research tools, you will be able to see the monthly average sales for the past year, the past 6 months, and the past 30 days. When choosing a product niche, you should focus on one that has been generating steadily increasing sales.

A key identifier of a product that is performing unpredictably is frequent drops in sales after each rise. Do not choose these products. These trends tend to occur with seasonal gifts over one or two months; therefore, I would avoid seasonal niches.

In my personal experience, products that are not generating over $20k per month, are not reliable and should be avoided.

Keyword Search Volumes

Once you have found a product that is generating over $20k per month, the next step is to confirm if it is in current demand.

By using a keyword research tool, like Helium 10 BlackBox for Amazon or Ahrefs for Google, you will be able to see the search volumes for keywords related to your product. You might be thinking, “Okay, my product has over 2,000 searches on average, so it should sell well.” However, you need to consider the competition as well.

By using a search engine SEO tool, you will be able to see the monthly search volumes and the keyword difficulty score (KD). The KD score tells you how many people are ranking for that keyword on their websites, which indicates how competitive that product market is.

If you are using a search engine keyword research tool, then I would suggest that you aim for keywords with a KD score below 20 and a search volume of over 150 to 200.

The Helium 10 Magnet tool or the Black Box tool will also provide you with an idea of how competitive the product niche market is by showing you how many active sellers there are.

So, in summary, this step ensures that we have chosen a product with high demand and low competition.

Reviews and Ratings

If you have found a product niche that is performing well, in terms of sales and has low competition, I would further look into the reviews and ratings of a few products. The reviews will suggest if there is an opportunity to take advantage of in that product market.

Let’s say I have completed the above steps, and based on the research I have carried out using those steps, I have decided to look further into selling baby highchairs. I would go on the platform where I wish to advertise my product (in this case, we will use Amazon) and read through the reviews of the top 10 products on page one of the search term “baby highchair.”

Some people who have purchased the item may have said that it wobbles or is unstable when a slight amount of weight is applied. These types of reviews are like finding gold because they highlight an opportunity to take that product and ask your supplier to make modifications to ensure that it is not unstable or wobbly when weight is applied.

In your product description, you should highlight the measures taken to ensure that your product is safe, stable, and user-friendly. By emphasizing the significant differences between your product and your competitors’, you will have an edge over them. The aim of this step is to take your idea and make it better than the competition’s product.

For safety I would recommend that you choose a product niche that has an average over 10 reviews across the market.

Interaction Advert Tests

Once you have completed sales, keyword, and review research and confirmed a product you wish to buy in bulk and start selling, there is one more step that you should take.

After confirming which social media platforms you want to use for advertising your product and start directing people to your online store, I would recommend that you launch a test advert over the span of 5-6 days.

Remember: at this stage, you have only found a supplier and have not made any purchases yet. This ad is a short video that highlights what your product is, its features, and its sales price. By using the targeting features on the social media advertising platform, you will be able to reach your target audience based on their demographic information.

The point of this advert is to review the campaign data and see what level of interaction the video received. If your video received very little engagement, then the odds of your product selling is relatively low. If your advert received a healthy level of engagement then your product will most probably sell well.

Another benefit of running this test is that you get to see who engaged with your ad. This will allow you to further refine your target audience and focus your future ads on individuals with the same or similar demographics, which will, in turn, reduce your overall ad spend.

Amazon FBA product research

In all honesty, you cannot do research without an FBA tool. To get a sufficient amount of data on the market you wish to enter, you will need an FBA product research tool. I will provide a brief breakdown of the top features that such a tool offers and then provide you with a research method to find your winning product on Amazon.

If you would like a more detailed breakdown of all the features that Helium10 has to offer, I have a full page dedicated.

In my personal opinion, Helium 10 still holds the title of being the best product research tool for FBA. A key feature that has definitely made analyzing niches effortless for me is the Helium 10 Chrome extension.

Through the Chrome extension you will be able to analyze:

• who is selling within your interested product niche
• average monthly revenue
• revenue amount competitors made in the past 30 days
• sales rank
• average rating
• amount of reviews

Amazon Keyword research

Helium 10 Cerebro, a keyword research tool that allows you to see what keywords are being used in search terms and who is competing for them on Amazon.

Helium 10 Cerebro is a keyword research tool that allows you to see what keywords are being used in search terms and who is competing for them on Amazon.

So, how do we use these to find a winning product?

In the past, I have used a specific refining process to create a list of potential products on Amazon, and in this section, I will break it down step by step. Remember, at this point, you have not yet found a product niche, and you are starting your research on a generic scale.

Step 1: Go to Helium 10 and select BlackBox under Tools. You will be provided with a list of filters. Where “max” or “min” is indicated, fill in the relevant one and leave the other blank. Filter by the following:

• Monthly revenue-$2000 (min)
• Price-$20
• Review count-200 (max)
• Review rating-4.6 (max)

Step 2 : Select the products that meet these metrics and export them.

Step 3: Review the list and isolate the top three products that have the highest monthly revenue with similar metrics mentioned before. The three selected products are the ones that are most profitable.

Step 4: Go to Cerebro and search for keywords related to your first product. Do they have high search volumes?

Step 5: If your product has exact match and related keywords with high search volumes, then the next step is to go to Alibaba and search for the product (excluding the brand name).

Step 6 : Compare supplier prices and product features.

This is the most effective research method that I have been using to find well-performing products to sell on Amazon. The data that you are looking for applies to any platform on which you wish to sell. If I can leave you with one important message that I have been emphasizing throughout this page, it is that making data-driven decisions is crucial when researching a product.

I hope this article was beneficial, and if you are looking for a way to start a Shopify store or expand it to TikTok, I will be adding a detailed TikTok product research and marketing strategy to this page soon.