Struggling to decide what to sell online? You’re not alone.
Many ecommerce entrepreneurs get stuck in this beginning phase because they can’t find the right products to sell.
Sure, you might get lucky and come up with a great idea at some point. But if the demand for your product isn’t there, you’re unlikely to be successful.
How do you gauge demand? Well, there’s an entire process to it that could take anywhere from a couple of weeks to months from start to finish.
For the time-constrained entrepreneur, a better approach is to find trending products to sell online.
The idea is that if you start selling items that are a big hit with consumers, it’s going to make doing business easier and more fun in the foreseeable future.
In this post, I’m going to share some of the best ways to find top trending products to sell through your store.
By the time you finish reading this article, you’ll become a master in sourcing and identifying popular, high-demand items that keep you busy managing and fulfilling orders.
Best Ways to Find Trending Products to Sell Online
Now that you know about the key benefit of choosing trending products to sell, here is a list of the best ways to find those items.
1. Browse Through Social Media Conversations
Social media conversations are a goldmine because they give you a consumer perspective on what’s trending right now.
All you have to do is browse through the comments and sub-sections of the popular networks out there.
Some of the platforms I recommend you to browse through include:
Reddit is packed full of subgroups (referred to as subreddits) where people often engage in discussions about trending products.
Joining a few of them will give you access to active conversations where you can get first hand insight on new, popular items and see what people think about them.
Some of the subreddits I recommend you to check out include:
The discussions happening in these subgroups can help you identify up-and-comers as they start to make waves in consumer circles.
For example, Shut Up and Take My Money has a conversation going on around this Llama Shaped Pepper Spray.
That’s one trending product idea right there.
Pinterest and Fancy
Pinterest is one of the fastest growing social networks out there with over 250 million monthly active users.
Make sure to scroll through its “popular” section to explore what products consumers are excited about at the moment.
If you can’t find anything interesting on Pinterest, expand your search to Fancy.
Fancy describes itself as a part magazine, wish list and ecommerce store.
Irrespective of that, it’s stocked with trending product ideas for you to consider.
Another quick way to discover trending products to sell is to use search for relevant hashtags on Instagram.
For example, if you’re selling in the “men’s fashion” niche, search for hashtags such as #mensfashion and #mensclothing (just to give an example) to see what’s popular in your market.
Also, keep tabs on thought leaders and influencers within your niche, and see what items they endorse or talk about in their Stories, posts, and videos.
With their social cloud and affinity, Instagram influencers are often the ones behind the trends and shifts that often result in a high sales turnover.
The key takeaway? Find influencers who are relevant to your industry and see what type of items they are touting.
2. Look at Product Review Websites
Did you know there are specific blogs and magazines aimed at helping entrepreneurs find trending products to sell?
Whether they’re data-packed blog posts or curated images, these websites are great for gaining a better understanding of what’s currently in demand.
Here is a list of some of the best product review websites you should check out on a daily or weekly basis:
Another resource available at your disposal is trend publications.
These are websites that can help you understand where consumer buying is headed on a larger scale, which can give you some fantastic product ideas.
For example, if you sell art-themed products through your ecommerce store, you can subscribe to Cool Hunting.
This is an award winning trends website that uncovers the latest in art and several other domains. Make sure you also view their buy guides to get more ideas for products to sell online.
Other cool trend publications that might be worth your time are UberCool and Trend Hunter.
3. Take advantage of YouTube
A lot of pros will advise you to search for trending products on Google, but let’s not forget that YouTube is as big of a search engine.
Search for “best (your niche) products” or something similar to learn what people are running after nowadays.
For example, searching for “best fitness products” will provide you with the following search results.
As you can see, there are several videos on fitness-related items. Watching a few of them will surely give you fresh ideas for products to consider.
Some trending items are also featured in unboxing videos, so try and search for “unboxing (your niche) products” as well.
Don’t forget to account for the number of views on the videos, as well as the comments left by people.
Ideally, the more views and comments a video has, the more demand for the item you can expect.
Pro tip: Use YouTube’s search filter to ensure you aren’t looking at old or outdated videos. Products in these videos are unlikely to be trending, so choose “this year” or “this month” as the upload date.
4. Research Online Marketplaces
Product marketplaces are generally one of the best sources to use when it comes to finding trending items because they feature products that are currently being sold on the internet.
But since they’re huge in size, it’s easy to get lost within the marketplace.
That’s why I’ve decided to talk not only about the marketplaces you should be searching to find hot selling items, but also what sections of the marketplace you should explore to find those winners.
So, without further ado, here’s how to search for popular items in leading marketplaces.
Amazon
Amazon is one of the world’s largest ecommerce companies, making it an ideal resource for doing your product research. Below are the sections you should explore on this marketplace.
- Amazon Movers and Shakers – This is a list of products that have experienced the biggest gains in sales ranking within the past 24 hours. It’s updated on an hourly basis.
- Amazon Best Sellers – Here, you’ll see the marketplace’s most popular items. This list is updated every 24 hours. Use the links in the left sidebar to browse bestsellers for a specific niche.
If you have some money to spend, there’s a tool that makes the Amazon product discovery process much easier.
You may have heard of it. It’s called Jungle Scout.
Jungle Scout tracks Amazon listings and makes it easy for its paid users to instantly sort through thousands of items so they can hone in on trending products that are both high in demand and highly profitable.
You can easily look for any product by custom filters using the product database feature, saving precious time that could be spent on marketing and branding your storefront.
eBay
eBay is another marketplace that contains a host of products that are popular with consumers. Below are the tools and sections you should explore to find those hidden gems.
- eBay Watch Count – The tool helps you see the number of times consumers have “watched” a certain item. Of course, the products with the highest watch count are the ones that are attracting the most interest.
- eBay Trending – This section presents you with a list of trending products as well as the number of searches and product page URLs.
AliExpress
AliExpress has an entire database of consumer products that are directly made by Chinese manufactures.
You can search the popular section of this website to get a better idea of trending items.
Unlike its parent company Alibaba, AliExpress allows you to order items in small quantities.
Etsy
Etsy is home to unique, hand-crafted items that are a hit with consumers worldwide.
It’s also a great resource to explore what type of items are trending.
Feel free to browse through Etsy’s trending products section to see items that currently have a big demand.
Kickstarter
Are you aware that there’s a community of folks that work to bring exciting projects to life?
I’m talking about Kickstarter.
It’s a perfect place to discover creative products ambitious entrepreneurs are working on, as well as get ideas for your own store.
The discover page of the website features a list of its top listed items filtered by funding earned, staff picks or popularity.
5. Use Supplier Directors to Your Advantage
Suppliers are often aware of what sort of products are in demand at a certain point in time and some of them, in particular, serve as the best channel for discovering trending products.
Dropshipping wholesalers and suppliers are more likely to offer trendy items to ecommerce store owners than other suppliers because they often have a big inventory, and they’re unlikely to be carrying items that aren’t in demand.
So, if you want to know what items are popular right now, check out the different types of supplier directories, such as the ones I’ve listed below:
There’s a two-fold benefit to using a supplier directory to find trending items.
If you do find a product you’d like to add to your store, you’ll also automatically have a supplier for it. What could be more convenient than this?
6. Don’t Forget to Use Google Trends
With Google’s trends tool, you can easily and quickly see volume trends for specific products to evaluate whether or not their demand is on the rise.
As an added bonus, Google Trends also enables you to see search volume based on geographic composition.
For example, say you want to sell wooden sunglasses through your ecommerce website.
To get started, you’ll need to go to Google Trends and type in “wooden sunglasses” to discover what the search trend looks like. The tool will present you with this screen:
As evident, there is a slight upward arrow on the screen, which means people are currently searching for the product.
On the other hand, a downward slope doesn’t give a good signal.
If your Google Trends search returns a downward slope, the product you’re searching for is outdated, and you should look for something else.
Conclusion
Contemplating what products to sell online is hard.
Unless you’re following a tried and tested approach to validating an item’s demand, you can’t expect to build a sustainable business.
Think about it: You only have time to identify the best products to sell, but then you need additional hours on stocking, sourcing, and listing them on your store, and then promote it to your customers, as well.
By following the tips I’ve shared in this article, you won’t have to worry about finding popular items for your store.
If you’re looking for an even quicker way to get started, read my post about the top trending dropshipping products to sell online in 2019.
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