How to Find What Products to Sell for the Best Profits:
“You can have anything you want in life, as long as you help enough other people get what they want.” -Zig Ziglar
Now that you know some great sources on “where” to find items for resale, it is important to know “what” items to buy for resale to make the most profits. Of course, the idea is to find items with a high profit margin, and also high demand. That means you will make a large markup (in dollars or percentage), and also you will sell many items (high demand). That always produces the highest profits.
How to Find What Items are in High Demand and High Markup Profits for Resale:
To find out what to buy, what items are selling well, and at what price products are selling, use these following resources: eBay® completed items search, eBay Pulse®, eBay Marketplace Research®, online market research, and by following popular trends.eBay’s® completed items search is not only free, but one of the fastest ways to check final selling prices of any item you want to check. To use this feature, simply go to
www.eBay.com. Then click on the “Advanced Search” link in the upper right portion of the site’s page. Then simply type in a keyword (for example: Nintendo Wii®), select a category (or just use all categories for a more general search), and check the “completed listings only” box. This will then display the final selling prices of all listings containing the keyword you typed within the past few days.
eBay Completed Items
You will then be able to research selling prices & determine if the product is selling well, and at what price. You can then use this information to estimate the potential profits that could be made from a given item (I will give more tips on estimating profits later). This is the most frequent resource that I use to determine what products I will buy for resale, as well as which products to avoid.
eBay’s Pulse® contains a list of eBay’s® most popular listings, hot products, hot stores, and more. This is also a great resource to browse and see what it is that most people are buying and searching for on eBay. To use look at eBay’s Pulse, just click on the “Pulse” link at the bottom of the home page. You can then look to see the products people want most, and you can try to find suppliers of these items & resell the items for a profit.
eBay’s Marketplace Research® is a more advanced research tool on eBay. This feature allows you to check up to 90 days of completed listings, average sold prices, and much more. It is currently being changed over to a new service (terrapeak). This does cost from $2.99 & up at the time of this writing, however, but it can be a useful resource. To use it, just click on the “eBay market research” link on the home page.
Online research can also be helpful in finding popular products. The easiest way to do this is to simply go to a popular search engine and use the “popular searches” feature. For instance, Google® has Zeitgeist®, Yahoo® has Buzz Index®, Aol® has Hot Searches®, etc. Http://searchenginewatch.com is a website with links to different keyword sites. Again, use this tool to look at what products most people are searching for because this can help you find what to buy.
Another way to find the hot, in-demand products is to just look at popular trends. For example, heard of a new product that everyone seems to want? Check it out! It may be worth your time to try and grab up a supply for resale. Many entrepreneurs heard the buzz surrounding the release of the Playstation® 3 video game system in November 2006.
It was expected to have a high demand, but low supply. The results- they were selling online consistently for as much as $1,000-$2,000 above the normal retail price. So that means that if you were able to just get your hands on only 50 of these systems, you could have made a $50,000 profit easily within a few weeks. I was also fortunate enough to get in on the video game system demand, but I never did get my hands of a PS3. I purchased a few Nintendo Wii’s® & sold them all for a total profit of about $1,100 (not bad for about 3 hours work). In hindsight, this actually worked much better in my favor. The Nintendo Wii’s were the underdog, and not really expected to be popular, so I was able to get a few of them. The PS3′s on the other hand were thought to be EXTREMELY popular, but turned out to not be so much.
Again, the reason that these systems were selling for such a high price is because there was a huge demand, but very limited supply. Therefore, people were willing to pay well above retail price for these systems. I included the retail receipt with the item so the buyer could take it back to the store if there was a problem in the actual listings when I sold my Wii’s. This was a great selling tool to increase buyer confidence!
How to Calculate Estimated Profits on Inventory for Resale:
When deciding whether or not to purchase a particular item (or bulk of items), you should always calculate your potential profits. To do this, simply use the completed items search to find the average selling prices. This will give you an idea of the potential total revenues. Then simply deduct all of your costs such as: wholesale cost, eBay® fees, Paypal® fees, shipping fees/supplies, etc. This will then give you your estimated profit per unit. Of course, this can become time consuming if you calculate this by hand, which is why it is recommended that you set up a simple spreadsheet that can automatically calculate this for you. I use a simple Microsoft Excel or Open Office.org spreadsheets so I can quickly estimate potential profits on a given item.
You can download this Open Office program for free on our website (http://www.howtomakeawebsite.ws). If you do not have Excel, you can use the same basic formula and apply it to any spreadsheet program, or use the online calculator on our website. Again, if you use a spreadsheet, you can make it where it will automatically calculate your eBay fees for you. Basic formula below:
Estimated Revenues: Sales Price + Shipping and Handling Fees Added= Total Revenues
Estimated Expenses: Cost of Goods Sold + eBay Fees + Paypal Fees + Shipping and Handling/Material fees = Total Expenses
Total Estimated Revenues – Total Estimated Expenses = Total Estimated Profits
Of course, this is a very simplistic formula. It can get more complicated when you have to collect sales tax, have added expenses such as gas, labels, etc. But overall, it is accurate and can help you get an idea of the profitability of what you intend to sell.