It’s about time your online store started making 6 figure profit.
With dropshipping, sometimes just one great product is enough to get you there. And what if you find more than one winning product? Ka-ching!
In this blog post, you will learn how to find and sell the best-selling items for your online store. In 10 minutes, you’ll know what defines great dropshipping products, how to find them, and what will most likely be trending in 2022.
What is a winning product?
A winning product is a product that sells like hotcakes. It’s something your target audience REALLY wants to buy.
However, just because people brush their teeth daily, it doesn’t mean selling toothbrushes will build you a 6 figure e-commerce business. Think of all the competition that’s out there already, selling toothbrushes. Why should an average customer buy a toothbrush from you instead of the closest drugstore?
Below is a guide that will help you identify a winning product.
1. You can’t easily find it selling elsewhere.
You need to find dropshipping products that people can’t buy at the usual department store. The products should be unique, trigger impulse buyers, and still be practical.
2. It has no advertising restrictions.
Chances are you will make most of your sales through advertising, especially if you’re just starting with your store. Make sure you don’t sell products that you can’t advertise on the biggest ad platforms.
For example, you can’t run ads for tobacco products, adult content, or face masks on Facebook and Google. Have a look at what Facebook and Google have to stay on their ad policies and avoid unpleasant surprises.
3. The product has a wow factor.
Winning products should also pleasantly surprise potential buyers. Think of the last clothing ad you saw on Instagram and clicked right away – that’s a wow factor. Here are some great Instagram advertising tips.
4. A winning product usually solves a problem.
People are also drawn to products that can make their lives easier. It could be anything from a water bottle that tracks your water intake and helps you stay healthy to a dog travel bag that’s airline compliant.
5. The product is just… different.
You can make a solid side income selling slightly unusual items. For example, you can dropship products like this brush that imitates licking your cat. Yes, it exists, and it’s even labeled as Amazon’s Choice.
While the Licki Brush may raise some eyebrows, it actually sells! It has attracted lots of media attention. The customers are having a blast leaving fun reviews, making this pet brush a perfect gag gift.
How do I find winning products?
The key to building a successful dropshipping store is selling niche products that are trending.
Once you have a shortlist of popular items, see if they fit the qualities of the winning products we discussed, and put the biggest focus on the ones that do.
A single product doesn’t need to meet all the five criteria defined. Though we strongly advise it meets the second one — It has no advertising restrictions.
But where can you find winning products?
1. Dive into Amazon Bestseller listings
Amazon is the Google of the e-commerce world. According to the data from eMarketer, Jeff Bezos’ empire controls almost 40% of US e-commerce, so it only makes sense to look at this platform first for product trends.
Amazon Best Sellers is the website to bookmark and refer to when you do your product research. Their lists are based on sales and updated hourly. So, you can be sure your findings are timely and focus on the right metrics.
Explore different categories
The best thing about the Amazon Best Sellers page is that it has categories for pretty much everything that exists.
For example, let’s say your dropshipping site is about Beauty & Personal Care, and you want to find trending products in Bath & Bathing Accessories. Easy!
Amazon returns the top 100 selling products in this category, and they’re beautiful. Your next step is to pick the products that you like the most and find the best suppliers for your store.
Let’s take the second best selling product in its category, the Microfiber Hair Towel Wrap for Women, as an example and do a quick search on AliExpress.
In the image below, we can see over 1,200 results for “microfiber hair towel for women.” But we’ve got even better news coming your way!
You can buy one towel for as little as $0.08!
Now, remember that people are paying about $11 for a microfiber towel on Amazon! Imagine how much you could make selling microfiber hair towels for women in your store?
All you need is the right marketing strategy and a slightly smaller price than what Amazon offers. We’ll let you daydream a little here…
PRO TIP: Use the AliExpress Dropshipping Center to filter suppliers for your winning products.
The Trusted Supplier Rank feature in this new AliExpress tool sorts the suppliers according to their time on the platform, reliability, and sales. So, you buy products from the best in their game, for sure!
But if you’re still having doubts, you can run your winning dropshipping products through the tools like Dropship Spy. Just enter the product from AliExpress into this tool, and it will show you the order rate during the last seven days.
2. Find more winning products on eBay Watch Count
Compared to Amazon, eBay doesn’t look too big. However, this marketplace still takes 3rd place among the top 10 e-commerce retailers in the US in 2020. There’s a lot you can learn from it!
eBay also has a tool to check what products are currently the most popular on the platform. It’s called Watch Count - see how it looks in the image below.
You can use Watch Count to find winning products for your online store. eBay continuously tracks users who add products to their watch lists and reports real-time results for different regions.
What can you do with Watch Count?
- Search products by keywords.
- Explore the trends by categories.
If you don’t have a particular product or niche in mind, you can use Watch Count for inspiration! Under the tab “What’s Hot on eBay?” you will find lots of different products currently trending among eBay users.
3. Check Google Trends for a more detailed view
Google knows what people want – use it to your advantage.
You can check what products are trending with Google Trends. It’s a tool that shows the relative popularity of search terms. Let’s take a look at that microfiber towel from Amazon Best Sellers again.
We can see that “microfiber hair towel” has been becoming increasingly popular worldwide during the last 12 months. It even reached a value of 100 or was very close to it several times.
What does Google Trends data mean?
- If your search term hits a value of 100, it means the term is in its peak popularity. The lower the number goes, the less trending the search term is.
- If you get a score of 0, it means there was not enough data for this term.
With Google Trends, you can also see where in the world your potential customers are the most interested in your dropshipping products.
PRO TIP: Use Google Trends for ad targeting.
When you’re setting up your ad campaigns on Google or even Facebook, use the data from Google Trends for geo-targeting. Though keep in mind that Google Trends data is not absolute but rather relative.
The highest value (100) for a “microfiber hair towel” in Australia means the highest proportion of all queries, not an absolute query count. So, before you throw in all your ad dollars into promoting your winning products in Australia, consider other countries and their population size, too.
4. Keep an eye on your competitors’ ads
Your goal is to find ads that have high engagement rates. Look for positive comments, people tagging their friends and family. See which products bring the biggest interest, and make notes for yourself.
Below are a few ways you can spy on your competitors’ ads.
Get to their marketing funnel
Start visiting your competitors’ websites often. Add a couple of products to your cart and abandon it. Soon enough, you should start seeing your competitors’ ads on your social media accounts. Make sure to save them or make print screens for later analysis.
Use tools
Get a toolkit like Pexgle. It’s one of the many tools available to analyze your competitors. This tool allows you to see the best performing ads of your competitors and track them.
You can also use Facebook’s Ad Library. Simply enter your competitor’s name, and you will find all the ads that are currently running. You won’t see the overall engagement, but you’ll know what products your competitors are pushing and how.
Like what you’ve read so far? The best part is coming!
What products will most likely be trending in 2022?
The data from sales on Shopify shows that in 2020 people were mostly buying products that helped them stay busy at home. People were looking for puzzles, furniture, and décor accessories to cozy-up their homes.
Shoppers also wanted to find products that helped them to stay healthy and active. Beauty products like peel-off face masks and nail polish were among the most bought things, too.
People at Alidropship have made predictions about winning dropshipping products for 2021.
We studied both of these extensive sources to save you time and effort and categorized information to help you find winning products faster.
Below, you’ll find a list of products that were a bomb in 2020 and will still be popular this year. With the ongoing pandemic, it’s very likely these will be your winning products in 2022 as well.
Beauty
- Peel-off face mask
- Nail polish
Fitness & Health
- Exercise bands
- Water bottles
- Yoga and Pilates mats
- Kayaking accessories
- Home fitness equipment
Home Decor & Furniture
- Blankets
- Kitchen and dining room furniture
- Kitchen utensils
- Rugs
- Home office supplies
- Pillows
Hobbies
- Jigsaw puzzles
- Board games
Electronics & Accessories
- Laptop skins
- Bluetooth devices
- Magnetic tech
- Smart home devices
- AI lights
- Smart wearable devices
Other winning products:
- Pets’ accessories
- Home clothing. Here’s an extensive marketing guide for selling clothes online.
You’re welcome!
Start selling any of these winning products, and you’ll be on track for success! Just pick a product category that suits you best.
What’s next?
Now you know how to find winning products and what should be trending in 2022. That’s awesome!
Chances are you’ll be selling the same items as other dropshippers in your niche who also do their research well. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad thing. On the contrary, it just proves you’ve hit the right spot and found the products that work – you’ve already left many of your competitors behind!
Now, your job is to stand out from the rest of the crowd. And what’s the magic ingredient that makes one product look better than the other? Marketing! You need to work on your product branding and advertising.
The first step is to make your store shine. Start with producing great copy for your main product page – you need to convince your potential customers why they should buy from you.
Then, organize a photo shoot for your dropshipping products – unique photos will help your store to stand out. If you have the budget, think about video marketing, too, videos are the best!
Once you’ve got the content covered, get your ads running. Not sure where to start? Check out our blog post about driving traffic to your Shopify store and find out which channels are the best for you to get sales after sales.
