How To Find Product Ideas To Sell On The Internet

So what is the first thing you should do when looking for products to sell on the internet?

I recommend that you install the Alexa toolbar on your computer.

It will provide useful information about the sites you visit by displaying a ranking number. This will help you gauge the size and hunger of your target market for a product related to this subject matter.

Just go to www.alexa.com and look for the free toolbar download on the top righthand side of the page.  Download the toolbar.

These are some of the things you can do to help you judge the web sites you are visiting:

1. You can search the web and other resources direct from your toolbar.  Using the Alexa Web Search box you will be transported to behind-the-scenes information about each site.  This ensures that you don’t waste time surfing lousy sites.
2. Alexas exclusive site information allows you to peer behind the scenes of each web site to get access to contact information, site stats and user views of the web site you are visiting.
3. Alexas related links are a great way to discover new sites related to your search – the toolbar is constantly updating information about where other users visit.
4. The Wayback Machine transports you back in time to see archived copies of these sites – you can see how the website evolved.

You can also find out what other people are looking for online with Alexa.  On the www.alexa.com website you will find a lot of useful information:

• the top 500 sites (broken down globally or by country )
• the top sites by subject
• the current ‘movers and shakers‘ or what’s hot at the moment or becoming popular.

It’s within the ‘Top 500 Sites‘ link on the main page that you will be able to gather the bulk of your information.

Use the ‘Lookup Sites‘ search box on the main page to carry out further research and drill down into sub-categories of the subject you are interested in.

It should quickly become clear which sites people visit relating to your subject and which subject matters are most popular.  This ensures that your product idea  will not be a complete waste of time i.e. people are actually looking for it.

The next tip for finding popular topics that people are looking for is to carry out some research on www.amazon.com or www.amazon.co.uk.  You will quickly be able to find the bestselling books on any topic you like to name.

By looking at any books ranking in Amazon you will get a good impression of how many people are ordering that book.  Also, with many books, you can look inside at the chapter titles and index to get ideas for keywords and content.

It is also essential to carry out further keyword research using Googles External Keyword Tool.  For further information on keyword research please read my linked article.

Finding Products

The easiest way to offer products over the internet is to offer information products such as DVD’s, Videos, digital products, manuals or e-books, software and CD’s.

Popular topics, in no particular order, incude sports, health, dating, personal improvement, making money, losing weight etc

Whilst you can create your own products, it is easiest to start by offering a product that someone else has gone to the bother of creating for you.  Many of these products have the advantage that the sales material has already been prepared for you.

There are basically 3 main methods of finding these products:

Method 1 – Affiliate Marketing

There are thousands of affiliate products and affiliate schemes available that offer you a commission for selling their product.  Over 5,000 such schemes are listed in a directory at www.associateprograms.com.

The downside to affiliate schemes are that:

1. You are limited by what you can say in your marketing
2. Your customers’ order is placed on someone elses website and you wil rely on them to pay you
3. You will be in competition with a lot of other people

To give you an example of some affiliate sites I use:

• Commission Junction
• Amazon
• Clickbank
• Paydotcom

but there are many more…

Method 2 – Resell or Reprint Licence

You can search for these producs by putting your topic into the search engine together with keywords such as ‘information products’, ‘reprint rights’ , ‘resale rights’, ”digital products’ etc.

Take care to pick a good quality product – there are plenty of shoddy products available that will blow your reputation with your customer.  so choose carefully.

Method 3 – Acquiring Reprint & Resale Rights To Products Which Don’t Have Licences

Look out for products offered to you which you can re-market using a different marketing channel.  You will need to approach the owner offering a joint venture or enquire about a reprint or resale licence using a different method of advertising.

Conclusion

So that’s a quick summary of how to find product ideas to sell on the internet.  Of course you can easily create your own product be repurposing and repackaging existing products to make a total new offering with your personal stamp on it.

Most ideas are not unique or original but have been improved or reworked by making new connections and associations with other material that creates new value.  All in all you now have plenty of new ways to find the ideal product for you to sell on the internet.

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