8 unexpected places to find what to sell online 2020

HappyPoints

Before beginning to set up an online store (no technical skill required), or your business’s name, you’ll need to find out what to sell online. 

Sounds easy?

But lots of business owners stuck with this. Why? Because they don’t know where to start.

Don’t worry! Compiling a list of great products for online selling is just finding inspiration in the right places. This article will show you all the right places you can look at to find trending items to sell online this year.

Stay tuned!

What to sell online: 8 unexpected places

Go through all these resources listed above, but there are 2 things you should keep in mind:

Look beyond the products themselves:

The most common and popular product categories have fierce competition. Don’t just look at products, look for potential in the product category also. Consider new markets/features and new ways to use the products. That’s a judicious way to find out niches and product ideas if you want to commit to this eCommerce journey.

Looking at smaller product categories & niches isn’t scary!

We don’t deny that a smaller niche has fewer potential customers, but it also means fewer competitors. Obviously, it means more cost-effective and efficient to advertise to your customers. And, it somewhat makes it easier to get on top of Google.

1. Research ideas on Google trends

It’s important to quickly verify product ideas to know whether or not they’ll be a good product to sell online. 

Verification is crucial in the process as it helps you understand whether you should continue with a product idea or not before spending your time, energy and budget into it. 

One tool that helps you in forming product ideas to sell online is Google Trends.

This tool shows the trend of your product ideas based on total search volume, starting from 2004. It doesn’t only show the total search volume but also displays the countries and cities that the ideas are most searched for.

For example, gloves might be a good niche you can focus on as the search volume is stable.

2. Use product sorting & filtering app

Jungle Scout is awesome to discover what to sell online. This tool allows you to track Amazon listings and sort through thousands of products so you can project what’s popular selling on the market. In just a few minutes, you can narrow down your search from thousands to a dozen by adding some filters. Also, Jungle Scout helps you find other related products you might be interested in selling.

Track Amazon listing with Jungle Scout

Although this app focuses on Amazon selling, you can use it for finding great products to sell anywhere. This is an ideal tool that helps you have an overview of what is going on within the market. It’s a great way to discover things to sell online that are relevant to your chosen niche.

3. Subscribe to Trend publications

One of the best places to start your search is Trend publications. We don’t say they will give you direct and exact product ideas, but they can help you in understanding consumer behaviors. They give you a vision on consumer buying patterns, hence you can spark some great product ideas.

Here below is the list of Trend publications worth following:

  • PSFK: This is the top online trending publication. PSFK does research for corporate clients to determine trends and consumer behaviours. You might want to see their valuable trend reports.
  • Cool Hunting is an honour winning publication that reveals the most recent in design, technology, style, travel, art, and culture. 
  • The Cool Hunteris the perfect fit for eCommerce entrepreneurs who want to stay up to date and on the ball. The Cool Hunter is the expert on everything imaginative and a truly worldwide centre point for what’s cool, mindful, creative, and original.
  • Trend Watching: with a team of 30 trend scouts in locations worldwide, this publication searches for upcoming consumer product trends. All trends and ideas found by Trend Watching are worth considering.
  • Trend Hunter: Trend Hunter is the #1 largest trend community with 137,000 members globally. Entrepreneurs find Trend Hunter a great source of idea inspiration on the hunt of trending products to sell.
  • Springwise: They bring their audience 3 inspiring business ideas everyday. From the homepage, you can browse the new business and product ideas they published in the last 30 days. They even give you access to their entire database, as long as you subscribe to Springwise Access. As a member, you can unlock the entire database of every innovative idea and startup they’ve spotted. This is a big data hub that’s worth subscribing to.

4. Browse product review blogs

Blogs and online magazines are ideal places to look for what to sell online. Product review blogs and online magazines are the rich sources to find out what’s trending now and can somewhat help you burst into ideas.

Below is the list of some top product review blogs for you to bookmark for daily read:

This is only a small list, if you want to find more product review sites that are better fit for your niche, find one product review that fits your niche well, then use the Similar Site Search to find other alike sites.

5. Browse social image networks

Social image sites are great sources to get consumer perspective on interesting and trending things to sell online. They’re all visual, you can quickly get a huge amount of product ideas.

Here below is the main large social image site for you to browse every day:

  • Pinterest: With over 50 million monthly users, Pinterest is one of the most social image networks on the internet. You can use Pinterest to find inspiration for your business idea. It’s totally visual-based, so you can quickly grab some ideas for yourself.
  • Instagram: Instagram is filled with tons of product ideas, it’s a great source to explore what products people are talking about. Use hashtags to find out what consumers are following, follow influencers of your niche to see what they’re sharing.

6. Check out online marketplaces

You can discover trending items to sell online on online marketplaces, they feature the products that receive the most preference. However, it would be overwhelmed due to a large number of products out there. If you don’t have a strategy to find trending items within the marketplaces, you would be easy to give up.

The list below we give you the exact place to find the hidden gems!

7. Interact in social forums

One of the best places to find product ideas is through social forums. Reddit, one of the best and biggest social forums that describes itself as the front page of the internet. You can dig into its “subreddits” to find what you need. They are niche-specific subsections that cater to a particular area of interest. 

We list down below the somewhat-helpful subreddits for you to have a look:

These above are some suggestions for you to research for product ideas to sell online. Reddit can insanely give you ideas to go on, but don’t let it be the only place you search. There are tons of similar forums, although smaller, you can absolutely find new ideas in those ones.

A quick tip: you’ve dug deep into these subreddits, don’t abandon it once you get a product idea to sell online. Keep following these subreddits, post something about your online store, these are sources of traffic to your site. So, don’t miss them!

8. Search through hobbies

Have you ever thought about people’s ideas? People are willing to make purchases to satisfy their hobbies. Looking at different hobbies and products that people need is a great way to find product ideas to sell online. Check out Wikipedia hobbies list to get started.

Browse through hobbies on Wikipedia to form your ideas

What’s next?

Now you have top tips to uncover what to sell online this year. It’s time to apply these tips to explore trending products to sell, or to find out what consumers out there are willing to purchase! Once you have product ideas in mind, you might want to think about the suitable eCommerce platform for your business.

Struggle to find the best eCommerce platform for your business? Get our CHECKLIST here!

We would love to know what tactic you’ve successfully practiced in the comment section below! Good luck!

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