What stuff can I sell online?

This is going to be hard to believe, but the answer is ANYTHING. Your products don’t have to be the latest trend products as long as people have a need for it or find it novel. Your products don’t need to be expensive game consoles that cost hundreds of dollars. Remember that ultimately your goals are profits. Selling a large number of inexpensive products with low unit profit margins could essentially make you the same profit as selling a few expensive products with larger unit profit margins.

When you are starting out, I recommend that you start with smaller and cheaper products, so that in case they don’t sell, you don’t make a massive loss. If you read my article on my first success, you will realise that my first attempt was to sell these mini card lamps:

They don’t look like they would make you money, right? After all these are just the size of credit cards, with light coming out of them. They seem like very unimportant, miniscule pieces of trashy products. And each card I sold made me less than $3. But there was a demand for them! Remember that I sold 100 of these cards, making me a nett profit of about $250. Note that I only sold these cards in my own country. $250 may not sound like much, but combine this with a whole bunch of other seemingly ‘unimportant and miniscule’ products, and you could be making up to a thousand dollars or more selling these ’small’ stuff. As I’m writing this, I have in transition a couple of more unassuming products -  keychains that look like lightsabers that could make me up to $400 for selling 100 of them. Download my Profit Calculation Spreadsheet to see for yourself.

Check Out What Other People Are Selling

This guy is selling a large number of these seemingly unassuming piggy keychain lights, and constantly relisting the item whenever they expire. Notice that each keychain costs only about 1.5 USD. You must be thinking how anyone can make any substantial profit by selling something that costs so little. Minus the cost price and the profit margin is negligible. Is this seller an idiot? PROBABLY NOT. Note that this guy is has a PowerSeller status, which means his sales volume must fulfil a minimum requirement. Obviously he is making good sales from his products, one of which is the sales of these piggy keychains. He knows what he is doing. If these unassuming keychains do not make him money, he won’t do it at all. NOW check out the cost price of each of these keychains at Focalprice.

The exact link to the product is here.

If you buy 10 or more of each piggy keychain, it costs only $0.39 each. Thus, if you buy and sell 100 units, you earn a profit of approximately $100. Combo this piggy keychain with a couple of other products on sites like focalprice.com, and you could be raking in substantial income. Focalprice.com also offers dropshipping services which means that you do not even need to keep an inventory of these items if you are afraid of getting too much stock and making a loss due to poor sales.

Of course, I cannot be sure and am not saying that this eBay PowerSeller acquired his piggy keychains from Focalprice. He could have gotten them from other suppliers with a lower or higher cost price. However, ultimately what I want to say is that ANYTHING can be a potential profitable product. You just need to find them and sell them. Many people have a misconception that the only things that earn you money selling online are big expensive electronics or the latest iPod or gaming console, but there will always be innovative products that seem miniscule and unimportant that can make you money. You don’t need to have the capital to buy expensive electronics to sell. After all, you are reading this probably because you are a beginner learning to sell stuff online, hence I recommend that you start SMALL and learn the basics before moving on to bigger products.

However, if it helps to know the current hot-selling trends, you could always go to eBay Pulse. The eBay Pulse contains several dynamically created lists showing popular searches, stores, products, and more. These lists are a great way for you see what’s hot in the eBay marketplace. These give you an insight of what is hot. However, as a beginner, I do not recommend that you dive straight on and try to fight the other sellers who have more experience at selling these things. Find your own niche of products that do not compete with the big players but still have selling potential. In time, as you learn more (like I am still learning), you may then move on to selling trend stuff. As of this writing, the hot products as listed by eBay Pulse are iPod accessories. Notice that my first success at making sales wasn’t about banging straight on trying to sell iPod accessories. The streets and Internet are FULL of people selling them. Clashing with them head-on as a beginner is not a good idea! Try to offer something unique that is not readily available online. This may decrease your target market but will increase your chances of making the sale. If not many other sites are offering what you sell, people will come to you.

Continue reading my article on Finding a Supplier to learn more about where to obtain products to sell!