If you're new to dropshipping, you may have heard countless times that choosing a winning product is the secret to becoming successful in this venture.
This is 100% true.
If you go wrong with your product choice, you'll most probably end up in dead spaces—and as you can easily guess, nothing much goes on in there.
Selling generic or oversaturated products will most probably result in poor sales performance (and thus thin profit margins).
On the other hand, finding unique and high-demand products with good profit margins will help you stand out in this highly saturated dropshipping marketspace and achieve long-term success.
So, how do you find these profitable products to help you make it big in dropshipping?
In this post, we'll reveal all the top secrets top dropshippers use to identify winning products for their dropshipping stores.
What’s A Winning Product?
BEFORE we get into more in-depth details about finding winning products, let’s first understand what a winning product is.
In the dropshipping world, a winning product refers to an item that consistently brings in high sales, attracts significant consumer interest, and maintains healthy profit margins.
In other words, a winning product ticks DEMAND, REVENUE, and PROFITABILITY.
Winning products usually resonate quite well with your target audience and stand out in the market due to their high demand or unique features.
KEY aspects of a winning product include:
High demand: A winning product should have a broad appeal and be highly sought after by many consumers
Good profit margins: If the product still offers you healthy profit margins after accounting for marketing and shipping costs, and other costs, then it’s a winning product.
Unique selling proposition: Is there something about the product that stands out? This could be unique features or being superior (whether it’s in terms of price, quality, or features) compared to the others.
Scalability: You should be able to sell the product in large volumes without experiencing logistical and supply chain issues.
A few examples of winning products include fitness products, kitchenware, pet products and supplies, eco-friendly items, smart home devices, and clothing/apparel.
However, note that these are just a few examples of winning products and there are many more out there for you to discover.
Understand The Market Trends
The first step to finding winning products for your dropshipping store is to understand the market trends.
This is important given that market trends simply define consumer preferences, buying behaviors, and market demands—all of this directly influences the product's success.
As such, staying updated about market shifts and emerging niches will enable you to meet the demand effectively and stay ahead of your competition.
That said, gauging the market demand and consumer behavior becomes easier if you utilize tools like:
Google Trends: Presents you with search volume trends over time to help you identify seasonal interests and rising interests.
Social media analytics: monitoring hashtags, influencer campaigns, and engagement metrics, on different platforms like TikTok, Instagram, etc. will help you identify viral trends and potential winning products.
Keyword research tools like SEMrush, and Ahrefs: These tools will help you analyze different keyword trends and competitor strategies, enabling you to uncover untapped niches and product opportunities.
Using these tools provides you with valuable data insights that guide you through your product selection process, ensuring you only sell products that meet the current market trends.
Choose The Right Niche
Picking the right niche for your dropshipping is another foundational step toward finding winning products.
Most beginner dropshippers don’t seem to understand this, but niching down allows you to focus your marketing efforts on a specific audience segment, thus increasing your relevance and appeal.
Moreover, it helps you manage your competition more effectively as niche markets usually have lower competition compared to the broader categories.
We have listed a few tips you can follow below to help you easily come up with viable niche ideas:
Check the profitability of the products within the niche you settle for. Take into account factors such as product cost, potential markup, and shipping fees. Also, ensure there are reliable sourcing options available to ensure consistency in product availability and quality.
Assess the level of demand for products in the niche you want to get into as well as the competitiveness of existing sellers. Ideally, you should go for niches featuring moderate to high demand and manageable competition.
Research your niche’s target audience demographics, buying behavior, and preferences. This is crucial for helping create effective targeted marketing campaigns and product offerings for your potential customers.
Conduct Product Research
Now you’ll need to get down to choosing the winning products in your niche that will make your online store a profitable venture.
In this section, we’ll discuss the tricks we(and many other experts) use to easily find high-demand, profitable products for their stores.
We’ll divide this section into 4 broad categories namely:
#1. Using e-commerce platforms to find winning products
#2. Using social media to find winning products
#3. Using Google Trends to find winning products
#4. Using specialized spy tools to find winning products
#1. Using e-commerce platforms to find winning products:
Check Amazon best sellers listings
The Amazon Bestsellers list is usually updated every hour, making it a goldmine for finding winning products.
Using this giant e-commerce platform to look for product ideas is great because you already know there’s a proven market out there and you just need your skills to sell to the customers.
Besides, you can visit Amazon’s “Movers and Shakers” section to view products that are quickly growing in popularity.
Here you can easily find winning products before they are saturated.
eBay watchcount tool
eBay also has a helpful product tool known as eBay watchcount. As its name suggests, this tool shows you the most watched products on eBay.
This can help you easily identify products that are generating significant interest.
Simply analyze the number of watches and sales history of the products and you’ll end up with more winning product ideas.
You can then head to your supplier to see if they have similar products that you can display on your dropshipping store.
#2. Using social media to find winning products:
Here’s how to use different social media platforms to hunt for winning dropshipping products:
Use TikTok to discover viral products
More and more dropshippers are using TikTok as their favorite tool for advertising their winning products.
As such, you can search their ads to see their products on the platform.
Head to the “Discover” section on TikTok (usually located at the bottom of your screen for mobile apps). Next, input one of these hashtags:
#tiktokmademebuyit
#coolgadgets
#amazonfinds
#amazonreview
#productreview
Now filter the results so that you only view items posted in the last three months. This gives you a list of best-selling products instead of saturated products.
Now search through the filtered videos and spot any videos with 100k+ likes.
Also, check the comment section on what people are saying about the featured products.
Finally, check if the product you found meets the winning product definition we discussed earlier in this post. If yes, save the video to your profile by liking it for later.
Repeat the above process to find more potential winning products for your product store.
Many dropshippers also use Facebook video ads to advertise their products to potential customers.
This makes Facebook search another helpful way experts use to look for viable products.
Here, you’ll need to head to Facebook and enter the key terms these dropshippers are likely to use in their words.
Examples include:
Shop Now
Free Shipping
Tag someone who needs this
30/40/50% Off
Limited Time Only
You can also get creative and try to come up with more ideas that dropshippers may use in their ads.
Assuming you’re in a specific niche, be sure to add keywords related to that specific niche.
Now filter the results you get by video and set the date posted to “this month.”
Identify ads with a high number of shares, comments, and likes.
If you see people enquiring about the product, that’s a good sign it could be your winning product!
After finding a list of potentially viable products, go to AliExpress, check if you can find the products, and start dropshipping them.
Instagram is another place you can look for winning products for your dropshipping store.
While there's no specific method you can follow here, you can follow these tips to come up with product ideas:
Search for relevant hashtags related to your niche, e.g. #beautyproducts, #fitness gear, etc.
Look for popular with high engagements (including likes shares, and comments)
Check the Instagram shopping and look for trending items related to your niche
Follow the influencers in your niche and see the specific products they’re promoting
Go through comments to help you gauge the customer feedback and interests
Save all the potential products you come across to a dedication collection to allow for easy reference
If you own a business account, use Instagram insights to track the engagement and audience demographics of your post. This can help you identify potential trends.
Interact with users and pots so that you can stay updated on popular products and new trends in your niche.
You can also use Google to search for products on Instagram. Enter your search terms e.g. “fitness equipment Instagram" on the Google search bar and then check the resulting pages and validate your product ideas.
Did you know that 80% of Pinterest users are women?
As such, it’s a great place to consider hunting for product ideas if you’re targeting female-related products.
Keep in mind, though, that Pinterest isn’t a marketplace. Rather, it’s a place where people post countless photos about anything and everything!
Create a Pinterest account and choose your favorite broads (we suggest choosing broad boards related to your niche).
Next, save and pin posts by others. Focus on posts with products you can sell in your niche.
Just like other social media platforms, you'll need to use the Pinterest search bar to type keywords for the products you’re looking for.
#3. Using Google Trends to find winning products:
Google Trends is a helpful tool dropshippers have been using for product searches.
This tool simply shows you if a given product is declining or rising in popularity.
Thus, if you just found some viable products using any of the methods we have shared above, you can try entering it on the Google Trends search bar to see how it’s been performing over time.
Just enter the product name, specify your target market, and hit to get the results. You can also filter the results by country, source, category, and interest over time.
If you see a product with an upward trend, it could become a future winner!
#4. Using specialized spy tools to find winning products:
You can also use specialized tools to look for profitable products to feature on your online store.
These tools can help make the product-hunting process much more efficient compared to the manual methods we've just discussed above.
Some of the tools to consider include:
Ecom Hunt
Ecom is a dropshipping product research tool that will help you find and sell winning products.
It presents you with a wide range of tools that you use to identify trending and profitable products.
Its products database features a carefully selected list of winning products that are updated daily.
You can search this database by price range, category, and other criteria to help you find products that fit your niche.
The tool also has a “hunt” feature that lets you submit products you believe are profitable or trending.
The Ecom team then analyzes these products and if they qualify, they’re added to the database.
Niche Scrapper
You can also use this product research tool to help you find winning products to feature on your dropshipping store.
This tool has helpful features such as a product database, store analysis, etc., which will help you find profitable products and niches.
Their product database carries a careful selection of profitable products that are updated every day, and you can search these products by price range, category, and other criteria.
Their “trend explorer” function makes it easy for you to find trending products in your niche based on key metrics such as search volume.
AutoDS
This is a dropshipping management platform designed to automate various online store-related tasks.
It integrates with multiple marketplaces to provide you with a centralized platform for managing your orders, pricing, inventory, and even product research.
One of its key features that’s helpful in this case is its product research tool. This allows you to find profitable dropshipping tools by simply analyzing metrics such as sales data.
It also has a “Hot Products” feature that shows you top-selling products across various marketplaces and the list is updated regularly based on the sales data.
This can be another goldmine for finding popular products you can quickly add to your store.
Test Your Product Ideas
Once you have identified a list of viable products, the next step is to validate them before you can commit significant resources to them.
One way you can test these products is by using Facebook ads.
Launch targeted ad campaigns to help you gauge interest as well as measure engagement metrics such as click-through rate (CTR) and conversions.
You can also use Google ads to test your products. Google's platform will help you test the keyword relevance and consumer interest through search ads.
Conducting these tests helps you obtain valuable insights into market demand and decide the best marketing techniques to use and product positioning.
Find Reliable Suppliers
To make your product truly winning products, you'll also need to ensure you find reliable suppliers.
A good supplier ensures consistent product quality, timely shipping, and enhances customer satisfaction.
As always, we suggest using various online platforms like Alibaba, Oberlo, SaleHoo, etc., to look for dependable suppliers.
Be sure to go through different suppliers’ profiles, reviews, and ratings to gauge their credibility and responsiveness.
Before you can start working with a supplier, you’d want to ensure they indeed have quality products and make timely deliveries.
One way to do this is by requesting sample products from your potential suppliers so you can assess the product quality firsthand before displaying it on your online shop.
Don’t forget to establish clear quality criteria and communication expectations with your suppliers to ensure compliance and consistency.
Optimize Your Online Store For Maximum Profits
After finding potential winning products, what’s next? You’ll need to Optimize your e-commerce store.
This step helps you boost sales and customer engagement, further increasing the success of your online business.
You’d want to ensure your store has high-quality visuals that improve overall customer experience.
Consider enhancing your product pages with professional photos, videos, and 360-degree views to help you show product features and benefits to your customers in the best way.
Create compelling product descriptions that highlight the product's key selling points, benefits, and unique features to help persuade buyers to click that buy button.
Incorporate customer reviews and testimonials into your product pages to build trust and credibility, and positively influence purchase decisions.
Besides enhancing your store, you should also consider employing effective marketing techniques to boost your product sales.
Some of the advanced marketing strategies we suggest include retargeting ads and email marketing campaigns.
Conclusion
Identifying winning products is a crucial setup in ensuring the success of your dropshipping business. This guide has just laid out the proven steps experienced dropshippers use to hunt for winning products.
From understanding the market trends to choosing the right niche and using the right product research tricks, etc., these steps will help you land into unique and high-demand products with decent profit margins.
Implement these steps, monitor the results, and make changes based on feedback to help ensure continued growth and profitability in your dropshipping venture.
Ready to take your dropshipping business to new heights? Book a call with us today to learn how our expert insights and tailored strategies can help elevate your product research, supplier management, and marketing efforts.
Let’s hold your hand through the process of hunting for winning products, and launching and scaling your online business in this highly competitive world of e-commerce.
