The very first step to starting an online business is finding a product to sell.  I am not sure why everyone struggles with this because to me, this is the easy part.  What do you enjoy?  What do you do in your own spare time?  What things have you purchased online?  These are the same things that you should look at when considering what to sell in your e-business.  The very first ecommerce business that I started was a cologne and perfume website.  I sold this site a year later and learned a lot from the experience but in the end, it was a successful business and is still going strong today.

There are a few things to look for when trying to find a product to sell in your online store.  Firstly, how easy is the product to get.  Basically, this means, do you have find a supplier from China or Japan or Pakistan or can you ge the product from an existing wholesaler here in the states.  The second thing I look for is competition for that item.  Do a search for an item like a shopper would do it.  Lets say for example that you are going to sell radar detectors.  If you were an Internet shopper actually looking to purchase a radar detector, you would probably just head over to Yahoo or Google and do a search for radar detectors, right?  Well go do it!  Look at what Google brings back for results.  At the top of the search results, it will read something like; Results 1 - 10 of about 109,000 for radar detectors. (0.27 seconds).  So basically, right now there are only about 109 thousand results for that particular keyword.  That is awesome!  The competition is scarce which means you could easily sneak right up in the top with little or no efforts.  It could also mean that there this product is not good online or the profit margins are to slim to mess with so you need to dig in a little deeper.  If you search for the keyword radar detector (singular) you will notice there are about 1.5 million results which makes me feel better about this market.  As a general rule of thumb, stay away from anything over 5 million results.  5 million web pages indexed for a term and higher means huge competition and lower profit margins.  You still need to dig in more and start doing searches for brand names of radar detectors to see what kind of results you get back.  This is one of the most critical things you can when planning your online store business.  No matter what you choose, do some serious keyword research.  You can check the tools section to get help with what software I use to do keyword research. 

Think niche!  Have you noticed more and more online stores selling a niche product rather than a catalog of products?  Have you ever seen Wal-Mart or a major department store in the top of the search engines?  Not often.  Why is that?  The biggest reason is because they have so many products that it becomes almost impossible to rank "naturally" for anything.  Remember, search engine optimization, the art of getting top listings, naturally or organically, should always be on your mind when planning your online business.  I have a whole section dedicated to SEO so I will not talk about it much here but when finding a product to sell, it is important that you find a nice niche and stay within that niche to be effective.  For example, lets say you want to sell furniture.  Putting a website online that sells bedroom furniture, living room furniture, kitchen tables, recliners, front porch chairs and everything else will be a nightmare to get ranked for.  Mixing beds and mattresses with kitchen tables and bar stools just is not gonna get you where you want to be.  But, you CAN have a site that sells nothing but recliners or nothing but bar stools and totally dominate.

Figuring out what you want to sell should be easy. Finding out where to get your products to sell can be frustrating but it can be done.  I personally use the World Wide Brands directory which they renamed to One Source just recently. You can view more on finding a product to sell in your online business or you can click the promo below.