 So pretty much every single one of us knows the importance of product research. I mean, how could we not write every single dropshipping tutorial video or top products video always talks about the importance of product research won't stop. They're never going to stop. Now, while everyone does know that product research is in fact crucial, very few of us actually understand why. Now, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, why does it matter? I know as long as I do some product research, find some trending products, I should be able to make some money, right? Well, in theory, yes. But to really be able to succeed in the dropshipping business and to really know what products to look for, then you really do need to understand in depth product research. You need to know what you're looking for and what really makes these products winning products. It's not simply just the wall factor and the value it provides. There's a lot more to this. So I'm going to leave it up to you at this point. Do you actually want to be able to understand the meaning of product research? Do you want to be able to know how to conduct a proper product research or do you want to keep going with failing products that actually look like they're trending? If you're ready to finally start succeeding in dropshipping and learn how to pick the best selling products so that way you can maximize your profits, then make sure you check out this video all the way through that before you start understanding product research. First, you need to understand why. Why do you need to understand product research and why should you be doing proper product research? So we're going to be talking about Amazon product research, but realistically speaking, anything that I'm talking about in this video can be applied to any marketplace that you're selling on, whether that be Amazon, eBay, Etsy, or even on your own website on Shopify. So first, I'm going to start off with a few different reasons why product research is absolutely crucial. And it's not just because without the proper product research, you're not going to find the right products to sell. It's a little bit more than that. And the first thing that we're going to cover is competition management. Now, when you're selling on any platform, in this case, let's say Amazon, there's going to be tons of different products and tons of different sellers. When you're conducting product research, one thing you can do is start identifying different niches that have less competition. If there's less competition, you have more of a chance to actually stand out, be seen, be recognized and make a few sales. You also have profitability. Now, of course, not all products are created equal. Some are going to be worth a lot more than others. Some are going to be able to be sold at higher prices, even though the profit margin is going to be different. With the proper product research, you're able to identify which items have the best potential for profit and which ones would work best for you. On top of that, you're also going to be able to know more or less how many you need to sell to actually start being profitable. Customer appeal is another huge factor when it comes to our product research. When we do product research, we're always looking to see what our customers want. Why are we always going on TikTok and searching up hashtag TikTok made me buy it? Well, because on TikTok, everyone is uploading videos on some of their favorite products. Of course, a lot of those videos are going to be people that are actually drop shippers themselves and they're trying to get some sales. But aside from that, you can pretty much tell whenever somebody is a drop shipper or whenever somebody is actually talking about a product. If they mentioned their link in bio, then they're probably trying to sell something or they're trying to get a commission from an affiliate marketing link. But if they don't talk about anything of that sort and if they don't even have a link in their bio, then more than likely that is an actual customer that purchased that product and they're making a review of it because of how much they love it. So when we're talking about customer appeal, we're talking about understanding trends, checking out different customer reviews and pretty much looking through the eyes of a customer and trying to more or less understand how they think and what they like. Because as we all know, it's not about what we like, it's about what our customers like. Another thing that product research helps us with is our risk reduction. So when we do our product research, we're looking for products that are trending. Sometimes people like to purchase inventory and have them on hand or have their suppliers have them on hand and ready to ship. With proper product research, we can actually reduce the risk of staying with unwanted inventory. Now, a lot of the times, of course, as drop shippers, we typically don't work with suppliers where we have to purchase a minimum order quantity and have them store it. So in this case, the risk that we're reducing could potentially be the risk of, let's say, ads not performing well because nobody likes the product or wasting money on promoting a particular product on, let's say, Amazon or Etsy or eBay. And last but not least, it helps us adapt. The e-commerce world is constantly changing. It's constantly evolving. Products are coming in, products are going out. Trends are starting, trends are ending. So you need to be prepared to adapt. You need to adapt to the changing trends and product research can help you anticipate these changes beforehand. So that way you're ready. Now, if you're enjoying this video so far, please make sure you hit that subscribe button so you don't miss out on any future videos and also ring that little bell notification so that way you're notified whenever we release a new video. So the next thing that we need to think about is how do we select a niche for our business? So this is kind of a broad question because this really depends on the platform that you're selling on. Certain niches can perform better on certain platforms but taking Amazon as an example, these are some of the best selling niches on the Amazon platform. Now, before I do start counting these down, I do wanna let you know that there's a ton of different ones. And if you want a complete list of all of this and a little bit more information on everything else that I'm talking about, then just make sure to check out the description down below because I'm gonna have a link to a relevant article down there. So touching up on some of the best selling niches on Amazon, we have arts, crafts and sewing, automotive, beauty and personal care, cell phones and accessories, clothing, shoes and jewelry, computer accessories, electronics, handmade products, kitchen and dining, office products, toys and games, and honestly, the list goes on. On Amazon you can pretty much find anything that you need but these are just some of the top selling niches on there. Now from those niches that I just talked about and pretty much any other ones, how do you find winning products? So what is it that we're looking for exactly in each product? What are the different checkboxes that need to be checked off in the list of criteria for winning products? Well, for one, quality. Of course, we need to have quality products. We can't send our customer a product that's all scratched up or that breaks easily, right? We need to send them something that's quality and something that's gonna last, something that they're gonna open up and they're gonna think, wow, this is awesome. We need to make sure that our customers are happy with their products because if they're not, that's gonna end up resulting in returns, charge backs and bad reviews. And ultimately on the customers just not shopping with us anymore. We also need to look at price. The products we sell can't be too expensive. They can't be too expensive for us to source and we can't sell them at too much of a markup because if we do, our customers aren't gonna buy them and if we purchase our products at a very high price and then we try to price them competitively, then we could potentially be losing out on money. So you need to make sure that the product you're sourcing is just the right price to both source and sell. Demand is up next. And of course, this is pretty self-explanatory. The products that we choose need to be in demand. We need to make sure that people actually want these products. We're not gonna be selling fidget spinners. People don't want those anymore. Profit margin. I mean, do I really even need to explain this one? I mean, we all wanna make money, right? That's why we're here in the first place. The next checkbox is niche analysis. Of course, we need to be selling relevant items that are relevant to the niche that we're selling in. If we're jumping into the clothing and fashion niche, we're not gonna be selling power tools. We also need to check out other people's products. We need to see what other people are selling and we need to try to do better. We need to try to offer some better variations, better quality items. So then we can check off competitor analysis. Delivery is another one. So how fast can we get our products for customers? Can we get it to them within a week? Two weeks, a month? Maybe not a month because as we all know, a month is way too long. People do not like waiting that long to be able to receive their products, especially in the Amazon age. Everyone wants their items or their orders tomorrow. Amazon has obviously spoiled absolutely everyone, but people are understanding about the fact that not everyone has the resources that Amazon does. Not every company can compete with Amazon. So people are okay with waiting one or two weeks for their items. Just anything more than that, you wanna stay away. And we also need to check off returns. So if somebody doesn't like our items or somebody just decides that they don't want it anymore, we need to have a plan for our returns. All right, now that we know what to look for in our products, now we need to start figuring out what are the different research methods out there? So how can we start actually finding these products? So for this, there's two different ways. There's the manual way and there's the automatic way. First, let's start off with the manual way. Now when you're doing your product research manually, you're actively looking for different products. You're not using any software. You're not using any tool. You're looking through different websites. You're looking through social media, different articles, whatever it is, to be able to find these different products. And as you look at the different products, you're just checking off your criteria boxes. Now the first way that we can do this is, remember, we're taking Amazon as an example. So in this case, we're gonna be checking out our Amazon best sellers. So when you're on the Amazon best sellers page, you can pretty much see all of the trending items on Amazon right now. These are all of the different items that are consistently selling and people are actively looking for. Now, as you can see here, there's a lot of brand name items and that's because it's Amazon. But think of it this way. So they have air filters. You don't necessarily have to sell a brand name air filter. You can look for some generic brand filters and start selling those as well. Same thing goes for, let's say this Stanley cup. Of course, I don't know about you guys, but in my area and pretty much everywhere I look, everyone has these Stanley cups. Everyone is always walking around with them. But when I went to purchase one, it was like $45. And I thought, I don't wanna spend $45 on one of these. So then you can start looking on, let's say Aliexpress and start finding some different variations for it. Some cheaper options, some better looking options. And then you can offer that. Now, the best seller section isn't just limited to Amazon. Pretty much any online store has a best seller section. You can go to Aliexpress, eBay, Etsy, CJ Dropshipping or wherever it is that you make your purchases. And you're always gonna find a best seller section or a top product section or something along those lines. There's also some blog articles that you can read that have a bunch of information on some best selling products. For one example, you can check out our best sellers blog over at ModelDS.com. There we have the best products to sell for each month, the best products for seasons, different occasions, different holidays, different niches, different stores, pretty much anything that you can think of. Google Trends is also another great tool that you can use to be able to check the popularity on certain trends throughout the year. Or you can also use this to be able to anticipate trends before they actually happen. So right now we're actually gonna be searching up Swimsuit. I'm gonna give you a quick example of how to be able to use this. So let's search up Swimsuit. And right now, for whatever reason, it's set to North Macedonia. I have no idea where that is. But let's go ahead and switch this over to the US. All right, so by default, it's actually set for the past day. I like to switch this over to the past five years. Now you can see a clear trend where all the different spikes are. So as you can see, there's not a lot of people searching for Swimsuits around October or November. But between February and March, it really starts to pick up with it peaking around May or June. Then it starts to go down towards the end of July and the next year around February or March, it starts to increase again with the peak being again around July. Then it starts to dip and it's just the same thing over and over. So now you know, you wanna start talking up on Swimsuits if that's what you're selling around February or March. So that way you can be ready for peak season around summertime or right before summertime. Google Lens is also another awesome free tool. So right now we're checking out the same Stanley Cup that I was talking about earlier. And all we're gonna do is we're gonna right click it and then search images with Google. Then it's gonna ask us to select the image if it doesn't pick it up automatically. So in this case, what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna go ahead and highlight the item itself. And then here on the right, we're gonna have a little pop-up window with an image search. So instead of searching for text, it's gonna search for this image. Now if you scroll down, you're gonna see a few different suppliers. So you can see that Stanley, the website, has it for $35. Some people sell it for $45 on the same website. Keep scrolling, you have it for $74 on eBay, that's crazy. But what I'm looking for right now is knockoffs. So I'm trying to see if there's any items on here that are similar to it, but not exactly a Stanley brand item. Now after a bit of scrolling, I actually came across this one right here. So this is a puzzle tumbler and it's actually only $17.99, so that's not bad. And that pretty much wraps it up for the manual ways of doing things. Of course, there's a few more ways, but if you want a bit more information on that, just go ahead and check out the link down in the description below to the relevant article. But aside from the manual way of doing things, we can also do things an automatic way. And in this case, what we're doing is using different tools or different software to be able to find some best selling products or some trending items. And the first one that we're gonna talk about is the TikTok ad spy. Now for this, you are gonna have to have an account over at autods.com. And if you don't currently have one, you can start your trial period right now for just $1. But once you have that set up and you're signed on, then you're gonna come to this screen. By default, we're always gonna go to the marketplace, but what we're looking for here is the TikTok ad spy. And for this, we're just gonna look right under the tab that says marketplace and winning products and click on the TikTok spy tool. Here you have pretty much every single ad that's running both paid and organically, promoting different products on TikTok. Now, how do you have an organic ad? Well, it's pretty simple. It's just pretty much people making user-generated content videos and posting them up. Just because they're not paying for it doesn't necessarily mean it's not an advertisement for the product. Now here you can search through the different ads with a variety of filters. So for when you can check out how many likes the video has, you have a few different options starting from more than 20,000, all the way up to more than 500,000. You can also filter out by different impressions. So the same thing, more than 20,000, up to more than 500,000. The interaction rate, which goes by percentage, the CTA button or the call to action button. So some ads might say order now, others might say shop now, some might say send us a message. You can filter through that on here as well. Then you can also filter by the source, so organic or advertising. And if you're looking for a particular product, let's say a slushie cup, you can search that up through here as well. Now as a quick example, let's check out this one right here. This seems to be for a microphone. Let's go ahead and click on see TikTok ad. And here on the side, you can see the ad actually playing. Then you have all of the different information that I mentioned earlier. So the impressions, the likes, the comments, shares, total interactions and the interaction rate. On top of that, you can also see some more information on the video itself and some more information on the ad. So we have the entire description here, the duration of the video and the location that it was released in. So in this case, this video released in the US. And you also have the option to see the original post. Aside from the TikTok ad spike, you also have the winning product section. Now on the winning product section, you have a lot of different products that are currently trending and have a premium track record. So all of these items have been selling. People are currently searching for these items. So they are backed up by demand. So let's say you decide to offer one of these. For example, this RFID wallet, you can go ahead and click into it and scroll down a little bit. And then you're gonna have quite a bit of information on the product itself. Some of this can actually help you market and sell the item. So for when you have a profit analysis, then you have a Facebook ad that's currently running for this particular product. So just like the TikTok ad spike shows you TikTok ads, here we show you Facebook ads. We also give you the target audience for that Facebook ad. So you can structure your ads similar to that one if you choose to. And you also have a website. Now the link to this website will take you to a site that's actually currently selling the item. So if you wanna get an idea more or less of how to structure your own website, you could do so like that as well. Another automated way is AMZ Tracker. Now AMZ Tracker is a tool for Amazon sellers. If you wanna try it out, they do currently have a seven day free trial and you get access to keyword research, rank tracking and listing improvement suggestions. Now jumping back to AutoDS, we also have the marketplace. Now the marketplace is my personal favorite one because here you have items that ship from the actual AutoDS warehouse and items that ship from our private suppliers. Both of which have guaranteed quality items with some pretty quick shipping. On top of that, some of the private suppliers that work with us also offer branding options. So your items have the potential to ship with a branded thank you card. Helium 10 is up next and this is another tool for Amazon drop shippers. This one gives you access to keyword research suggestions, profit estimation and inventory management. Aside from that, you also have jungle scout with some sales estimation, some niche analysis, profit margin calculations and suggestions on how to improve your listings. Now up until now we've been discussing how you can conduct proper product research. But one thing that you really need to know is how to not conduct product research. Wait, what? So there's a few things that you need to know that you really should not be doing when you're doing your product research. You shouldn't be selling items that you think are gonna be profitable. Remember, not everyone thinks the way you do. Not everyone likes what you like. So just because you like it doesn't mean everyone else will. You need to make sure that the items you're selling are proven, people want them and it's not just you. And trust me when I say that a lot of the times you're not even gonna like the product that you're selling. Remember, we're not selling to ourselves. We're selling to people and we need to offer people what they want. Also make sure that when you do product research you do product research on multiple products. Don't stick to maybe just five or six different products. Bring in the big numbers. Go into the 10s, 20s, 30s, 40s, hundreds. Do product research on multiple products. The more products that you're researching the higher chance you are to come across one that's actually gonna sell. You also don't wanna spend too much time on products that either don't have enough demand or don't have enough people actually searching for it. This is ultimately a waste of time because if you do end up selling these products you're gonna be targeting a very small demographic of people and chances are you might not even get a sale. You also don't wanna try to go with products that don't have absolutely any reviews or that are brand new. You wanna make sure that the products that you start researching have some sort of social proof. You wanna make sure that people are searching for them and you wanna make sure that they have pretty positive reviews. And last but not least you definitely wanna make sure that you're not selling prohibited items. So each marketplace has a few categories of items that you shouldn't be selling but for the most part they're all pretty much the same. Now for a full list of products that you shouldn't be selling make sure you check out Amazon's guidelines or Etsy's guidelines, eBay's whatever platform you're selling on check out their rules but as a general consensus don't sell things like firearms don't sell weapons, drugs potentially toxic or hazardous materials and this one's a big one copyright items. Don't sell copyright or trademarked items and that's pretty much everything that you need to know about product research. Remember if you wanna go a bit more in depth into this just go ahead and check out the description down below there's a link to the relevant article down there. Now if you found this video informational if you found it helpful if you liked it, if you enjoyed it please make sure you hit that subscribe button and you ring that little bell notification so you don't miss out on any future videos. Also make sure you leave a like because it truly helps me and it truly helps out the channel and it helps us grow, not just that but it also lets me know that you're enjoying my videos. It lets me know that I'm helping you out and that in itself is a huge motivation booster and it really motivates me to keep making these videos for all of you. So if you're enjoying these please make sure you subscribe and leave a like.