how to find products to sell on shopify?

Shopify ranks among the topmost platforms in the world where anyone can open an online marketplace and launch a small business. While Shopify charges a reasonable subscription for allowing you to use its resources, it offers quite a lot of benefits to its online marketplace owners.

This includes the flexibility to sell almost everything from your Shopify marketplace as long as it’s legit in the place you’re located as well as non-hazardous, toxic or harmful to humans.

Understandably, you might require necessary permits and licenses from appropriate authorities within the government to sell certain kinds of stuff. Furthermore, you might have to take some precautions to ensure that the stuff you’re selling is permitted in other countries too, should you get any foreign buyers.

Despite these small nitty-gritties, it’s still possible to open a highly profitable marketplace on Shopify and launch your own business. In fact, it doesn’t even require much investment in some cases.

However, the greatest hurdle that you could face when planning on opening an online marketplace on Shopify is the kind of products that you can sell. That’s because there are millions of products that’s available on various online stores such as Amazon, eBay as well as Walmart and other stores. Additionally, there’re also international retailers that target the American market or that in your country.

Therefore, it’s important to find products to sell on Shopify.

Before I proceed to tell you how to find products to sell on Shopify, it’s very important to know some facts and figures. That could give you deeper insights into how to find products to sell on Shopify and fetch you decent profits.

Shopify Facts & Figures

These facts and figures of Shopify are from across the world. Knowing these would help you decide on the markets that you wish to target- domestic or international or even a specific region of the world.

At the end of December 2023, Shopify had over 4.8 million active online marketplaces in the US as well as foreign countries. On average, Shopify has some 2.1 million daily active users and more than 700 million customers. During the first three quarters of 2023- from January to September- Shopify recorded a revenue of $4.9 billion.

Additionally, Shopify accounts for 16.36 per cent of the global online retail trade, according to statistics for last year, or 2023. This figure is impressive considering that Shopify marketplaces compete with global giants including Amazon, eBay, Rakuten and Ali Express, to name a few as well as other platforms such as Etsy and Facebook Marketplace.

About 79 per cent of all sales from Shopify marketplaces are over mobile devices such as cellphones, laptops and notepads, among others.

Success Rate of Shopify Marketplaces

Most importantly, the success rate of ecommerce stores or online marketplaces on Shopify ranges between five and 10 per cent.

Why does this specific figure matter to you?

It matters a lot and is extremely important because the success of your online marketplace or ecommerce store on Shopify will depend a lot on the products you sell. This makes it imperative to find the right kind of products to sell on Shopify instead of just offering any run-of-the-mill stuff.

Hence, if you’re now wondering how to find products to sell on Shopify and ease or gatecrash your way into that select club of five per cent to 10 per cent successful online stores, continue reading further.

In this article, I will provide you with a comprehensive guide on how to find products to sell on Shopify. This guide could define your success as an entrepreneur on Shopify and propel you into immense wealth.

how to find products to sell on Shopify?

Before continuing, I’ll make it clear that we will not be discussing any specific products or their genres. Ultimately, you’re the best judge of the genre of products that you wish to sell, based on your knowledge of that field and using the vital tips that I am writing about now.

However, using these tips could prove extremely handy and solve the conundrum of how to find products to sell on Shopify.

Here we go.

1. Identify a Market Niche

Identifying a market niche is the single most important step to finding products to sell on Shopify. This also includes finding the pain points or rather why certain products aren’t available in your target market despite demand and how you can meet the needs of customers with a Shopify ecommerce store.

This can be done by researching or finding out the hobbies and passions of your target clientele and their preferences, affordability and demand patterns such as year-round or merely seasonal.

Also, identify your own expertise in that niche so that you’re fully aware of the various kinds of products and their variants that could do well in the target market.

2. Comprehend Consumer Trends

The next important step to take is to comprehend and analyze consumer trends. These include fashion trends, spending trends, demographics of the target customers and their preferences, the latest arrivals in the market and their demand as well as that for older products.

You could also research online on e-stores such as Amazon as well as online marketplaces on Shopify and Facebook Marketplace among others. Research a few offline or brick-and-mortar stores too since that would give you a clearer picture. Once you know these trends, it’s easier to find products to sell on your Shopify store.

3. Find Reliable Suppliers

The next and obvious step is finding reliable suppliers for the products to sell on Shopify. That’s because you wouldn’t obviously want to run out of stock of one or more products when there’s a huge demand.

Finding reliable suppliers also implies that the quality of their products is good and they’re able to cater to your orders on schedule before stocks are depleted. Additionally, reliable suppliers also don’t up the price when they see any specific product gaining demand.

Finding such reliable suppliers can prove difficult when you’re launching a Shopify business. You’ll have to research every supplier before finalizing a few for products to sell on Shopify.

4. Try Various Resources

The best thing to do for finding products to sell on Shopify: try various sources to find what they have on offer, quality, price and other policies. Here, you can take recourse to two resources: Shopify apps and dropshipping or bulk sellers.

Additionally, you can also use various trade directories such as IndiaMART.com or Ali Express where you could come across lots of bulk dealers. These include manufacturers, wholesalers and dropshippers.

It’s also possible to do direct sourcing if you find manufacturers that are reliable. Buying from manufacturers and selling on your Shopify marketplace could net you higher profits too.

5. Fix Profit Margins

Obviously, you’re opening a Shopify marketplace to make some money, either as mainstream income or as an additional source of cash. Therefore, you have to fix proper profit margins too. Actually, fixing profit margins can prove to be a complex task.

It involves finding the rates that others are charging for similar products with the same specs, albeit from different manufacturers, the cost to you as a seller and the profits that you can make by retailing for a higher price.

Furthermore, profits are also decided by the country or place of origin of your products. For example, certain products made in China wouldn’t most likely fetch you a high profit while those from other Asian countries can provide a decent margin.

6. Shipping & Logistics

Are you planning on shipping orders or would the supplier do that on your behalf? And if the supplier would be shipping it to customers, what would be their costs and how much will some products cost ultimately?

The next question you have to respond to find products to sell on Shopify is whether you would be keeping stocks or sourcing directly upon getting confirmed orders. If you intend to stock products, consider warehousing expenses.

In such cases, find products to sell on Shopify that have a much longer shelf life and perennial demand. Also, find out the best way to ship the products to customers. Here again, you have to be very selective about finding products to sell on Amazon.

Odd-sized products require odd-sized packaging. This can send your shipping costs spiralling through the roof. Hence, opt for products that would require standard packaging only, as per sizes specified by the US Postal Service or any other carriers.

7. Create Returns Policy

One of the hallmarks of success in online retail is a superb returns policy. That’s because the products that customers order might arrive at their doorstep damaged or in poor condition. Sometimes, customers are influenced by an online picture or video of a product and disappointed when they see and feel it.

If you’re selling clothing, the sizes could be wrong for a customer. There are countless reasons that people return stuff from online stores. This is one hazard you will have to accept. Therefore, find products to sell on Shopify that don’t merit a return or wouldn’t get damaged in transit.

And even if you’ve to accept returns for any reason, make sure the supplier replaces it or refunds the money. Only in rare and exceptional cases such as with lingerie, you can refuse to accept returns, for obvious reasons.

8. Online Payments Channel

Thankfully, Shopify Payments is a system you can get when you subscribe and open an online marketplace. You will have to configure that in a manner that the money from customers goes directly to your bank account.

Using Shopify Payments is a good option because you don’t have to pay commissions or usage fees. At the same time, you can diversify payment methods by adding PayPal or credit and debit card payment facilities, to name a few.

Getting payments is very important so that you can pay off suppliers too. Look for products that would be easy to sell due to affordable prices, ease of payment and durable quality.

Conclusion

These eight tips could help you to find products to sell on Shopify. You can also consider imported products to sell on Shopify if they’re allowed in your country.

Additionally, look for products to sell that don’t require much clearance from the government and other authorities and are legit for sale in your country.  Always ensure that your products for sale on Shopify comply with local laws.