Are you looking for profitable products to sell online?
If you're a dropshipper or any type of a new business owne,r choosing
that right product is going to be instrumental to your success.
From branding to marketing, to shipping and pricing,
it's really going to shape your entire business.
But coming up with a great product idea is a little bit
tricky and aimlessly searching on Google is only really
going to get you so far.
Fortunately, there are amazing opportunities out there and
we put together a short list of five places that you can
go to find some product ideas.
Let's get started.
Welcome back.
My name is Michelle Bali.
I'm a creative strategist, and I'm also your host for today's video.
If you're a new entrepreneur, I want you to think about subscribing
because each week we're going to be bringing you step-by-step
coaching on how to start, run, and grow your online business.
Also make sure that you're sticking around until the end of this
video, because I'm going to give you a formula on how to come up
with some truly unique ideas to develop brand new products that
people are really going to be excited to buy, and you're going
to be equally as excited to sell.
All right, let's get into it.
Online consumer trend publications.
Following consumer trend publications can expose you to new
products and new industries that you maybe didn't even know existed.
But one of my favorite publications is Trend Hunter.
They're the world's largest trend community, with over
200,000 hunters dedicated to finding you the latest trends.
You can find trends from pretty much any industry.
So we're an e-commerce store, so let's go into culture and
then we'll hit internet to see what's trending online.
And there's some pretty cool niche stuff here.
We have empowering pandemic emoji designs, and you know what
already, just off the top of my head, we could create a drop
shipping business, selling socks using these types of designs.
It's actually funny because Jeremy, the founder of Trend
Hunter, he wanted to be an entrepreneur, but he didn't know
what idea he wanted to pursue.
And so he was hunting for inspiration and that's
how Trend Hunter was born.
Definitely Meta.
But I also want you to check out PSFK.
They are a membership-based platform that provides personalized
trends and research that's going to help you stay ahead of the curve.
You can use these resources to identify trends that are
happening in other parts of the world and then bring them home.
That's how Dan started Inkas.
Inkas is a shoe brand made of authentic South American textiles.
Dan spotted the trend and he thought that it would also
do well in North America.
He was right and he successfully funded his Kickstarter project.
He raised over $77,000 in pre-orders.
Industry leaders.
If you have an industry that interests you, following
influencers that are always on top of trends can give
you some nice tip-offs.
To discover influencers, I want you to check out Dovetale.
With Dovetale you can search influencers by industry, location,
and even the amount of followers.
I'll leave a link in the description box for a free
trial to dovetale, but there are also several other online
tools that you can use.
You can discover influencers with Followerwonk and
Alltop top as well.
Social curation sites.
Image curation sites can be a gold mine for product ideas.
Just by looking at the likes, you can sometimes get a sense
if there's going to be a market for a specific product or niche,
you probably already know about Pinterest, but here are a few
more sites that you can check out.
Check out We Heart It.
Here you can find beauty, fashion, photography, and travel ideas.
Also check out DudePins.
DudePins is a place to discover and buy products
targeted towards males.
Another place to check out is Fancy.
They described themselves as part store, part
magazine and part wishlist.
Use it to find a range of gift ideas.
Wanelo.
So Wanelo, also known as want need love, describes itself as an online
community for all of the world's best shopping, bringing together
products and stores in a Pinterest like product posting format.
B2B wholesale marketplaces.
Why not find your product ideas straight from the source?
Wholesale and manufacturers are going to expose you to thousands
of potential product ideas.
And also it makes sense to start here, because if you see something
that you like, you know, you can start selling it right away.
Alibaba and Ali express.
So you probably have already heard of AliExpress and
Alibaba, but these are platforms that connect consumers with
manufacturers from Asia.
They have hundreds of thousands of products, and there's not really
much that you can't find, but the main difference between Ali Baba
and Ali express is that Alibaba is intended for B2B transactions.
Alibaba is going to help businesses purchase large quantities of
products directly from the manufacturers at wholesale prices.
Whereas Aliexpress on the other hand is open to consumers.
So if you're wanting to test the market, check out Aliexpress
for smaller quantities.
Oberlo.
Like Aliexpress, Oberlo is also a marketplace, but this
marketplace is owned by Shopify.
Your suppliers sort the inventory and ship orders
directly to your shoppers.
Oberlo integrates seamlessly with Shopify, which makes
it a popular option to find ideas and stock your products.
Oberlo also has a trending product section to help you browse for
popular and trending items.
Some other B2B marketplaces include TradeKey, Global
Sources, Made-in-China and Wholesale Central.
Industry and niche forums.
Depending on the industry that you're targeting, there may be
a forum site out there for you.
Gaming is one of those industries that has a particularly
active online community.
You can check out forums like gameFAQ or NeoGAF, but if
you're in fashion, check out the Fashion Spot, and if you're
in fitness, head over to Nerd Fitness Rebellion, and you can
also check out geeks to go.
If you're in another industry that I haven't mentioned, just type in
your niche into Google, followed by the word forum, and then you
should see a few come up there.
And also don't forget about Reddit.
So Reddit is the forum of all forums, where you can basically
find any industry, any niche, any culture and subculture.
All right.
So those are five solid places to get your gears turning,
I recommend you start there.
But if you're looking to create brand new products from scratch,
here's this really cool method to help you start with some ideas.
If you're hungry, for more knowledge, you're going
to want to check out this free 40 minute webinar.
It's going to teach you how to find and source a winning product
to sell, how to validate that idea and how to get started.
Just click the link in the description box below.
How to produce brand new ideas.
This thinking theory comes from a book called a
technique for producing ideas.
It's written by James Webb young.
It's actually one of my favorite books, but the theory is that
an idea occurs when you combine two or more existing ideas.
Your ability to bring old ideas together, to create something
new is going to depend largely on your ability to see relationships.
The concept argues that there are no new ideas, only iterations.
So here is the five step technique to combining old
ideas to create something new.
Step number one.
So first you gather material.
This includes specific material that's related to your
product, and that's going to be information on your target
audience and your competitors.
Target audience.
Craft questions about the problems and the challenges they face.
Which products do they love?
Which products do they hate?
What do they wish that they had to enhance their everyday life?
So places to collect information are; consumer facing publications.
These types of publications within your industry can reveal a lot
about a market segment and what's trending .Do audience surveys.
So these are one of the best ways to get quantitative and qualitative
insights into your audience.
Also check out SEO analytics and insights.
This can show you what's trending on search globally or targeted to
a specific geographic location.
Competitor research.
Learn from the successes of your competitors and popular
businesses in your chosen industry.
What products were launched with massive success and
why were they so successful.
Places to collect this information are competitor websites for one.
So here you can look at the copy.
How did they describe their product?
What customer pain points are they targeting?
Identify gaps in your competitor's product offerings,
and look for ways to fill those gaps with your new product.
Competitor communities.
Go to their social media networks and ask about who their audiences
and why they love their products.
Look at what the brand is saying to consumers and how consumers
are interacting with them online.
After this, you're also going to want to collect general material.
The general material is going to take on a form of fascination
with a wide range of concepts.
So look at historical trends, look at world issues.
Basically the more general knowledge that you have, the
more opportunity you have to create new relationships and
new connections between ideas.
As long as you're acting as a sponge in this phase, then
you're on the right track.
The next step is an intense analysis of what
you've just learned.
So work over the materials in your mind.
Talk about it with your network.
Do mind maps.
Take notes.
You basically want to mentally chew your new material by looking
at it from all different angles.
At this stage, you're also going to want to experiment
by fitting ideas together.
So do this by making an idea generation table.
Here's mine.
I made a column of existing products.
Then a column of world issues.
My products listed here are coming from the specific research
that I did in the step before.
And the world issues are coming from the general
research from the step before.
I created a third column where I will fill in possible solutions
by combining these first two columns, the aim of this is
to create meaningful new ideas that can impact the world.
So this next step is actually almost counter-intuitive.
If you're going to want to step away from the exercise, get
away from your desk and just completely put it out of your mind.
This is going to be difficult because once you were on
a roll, obviously leaving it is the last thing that
you're going to want to do.
But in doing this, you're allowing the subconscious to work.
During this free time, do something that energizes you.
Do something that brings you joy.
Go on a walk outside, do some yoga, just free your mind completely.
Now you have to allow the idea to come back to you naturally.
This requires a lot of patience, it requires a lot of discipline,
but your idea will come back to you with a flash of insight.
But this will only happen after you've stopped stranding your mind.
Many ideas are lost in this final stage because of the lack
of patience, so just think of this as the art of letting go.
Once the idea has come to you, your next step is to produce your idea
and then test it in the real world.
Make sure that you're asking for constructive criticism.
Good ideas have self-expanding qualities.
So when someone sees it, they're going to be really excited to tell
you how to improve on your idea.
So only ask people who are within your industry or your
target market, but then listen intently to their feedback.
Don't be too precious about your ideas and make sure that
you're adapting it as needed.
Be mindful that the ego can blind us at this stage.
The ego is going to want to stop us from adapting our ideas to fit
the actual conditions of the world.
And this may be because of stubbornness or pride.
But if you think of this as a phase where we validate
the usefulness and the demand of our new idea, then your
openness to learn is going to be what makes you successful.
The key with this as less about knowing where to look for your
particular idea, but more about training the mind to grasp the
principles and training the eye, to see the relationships.
If you're excited about the product that you're making,
you're going to genuinely involve yourself in the research and
getting into the business of it.
So just make it easy on yourself.
Choose something that you're actually passionate about.
Becoming fascinated with what you do is a full and rich way to
live, and it's going to ensure that you never run out of ideas.
But if you're stuck on finding your passion and want me to
make a video on how to find your passion, make sure that you're
leaving me a comment below and I'll see if there's enough
interest to maybe make that video.
Shopify is offering a free 14 day trial.
All you have to do is click the link in the description box to
take action so that you can level up your e-commerce business.
All right.
I feel like that was a fun one.
How do you guys feel about that lesson?
Do you guys prefer more step-by-step tutorials or do
you like this theory based skill building that we did today?
Let me know in the commemt section, it would be great
to hear your feedback.
And also if you have a friend entrepreneur send
them this link, I'm sure that they're going to thank you.
That's also going to help our channel and our community grow.
If you haven't already, don't forget to subscribe.
Thank you so much for watching.
My name is Michelle Bali and I will see you in the next one.
Bye.