Testing Product Market

[webcosmo]

Lets say I have some products(brand name products) I can get with very good price. I can easily build a site, but before I go all out I want to test if I really can make any money from them.

My target market is USA.I was thinking of making some trial sales on ebay or so, but I am not so sure.

What would be the best approach for testing if these products would really sell?

[WorkTogether]

Yeah I would try ebay for sure. but if other sites are already selling 'x' product there is probably a demand for it already.

have a look at Googles keyword tool. it's not perfect but will give you an idea if it's searched for.

But if it's easy to build a site why not do it anyway. Not sure how much you need to sell but some sales are better than none.

[webcosmo]

On Ebay its almost impossible to beat the prices. Most likely those products are fake.

How do you check demand for a specific product other then keyword search?

[jrockfl]

This is how I got started. I started selling on ebay first, then created a web site. I no longer sell on ebay.

[votrechien]

I second that eBay is your best route to go.

On a side note, relying on being able to source brand name products at very good prices is rarely a sustainable competitive advantage. The chances are the folks on eBay are sourcing their product legitimately and extracting paper thin margins (again, the competitive advantage of which is questionable).

eBay and Amazon, for better or worse, set the market prices for things. It's your choice whether you want to sell on there or not, but if Widget X is selling on eBay for $20, it's tough to sell Widget X for anything more than $20.

[cabbagehead909]

Are you guys still finding there is opportunity for new entrants to sell online? I would just assume with PPC and eBay being cutthroat, Amazon spying on marketplace and competing directly, CSEs driving down price, and SEO being nearly impossible unless you're a large brand -- that the only way to stand a chance in ecommerce anymore is to either be (a) extremely niche and low volume or (b) very high volume and thus a low cost leader. Not sure there's much brand loyalty out there either unless you're Amazon or Macys.com.

Would love to hear your perspective.

[jrockfl]

We have our own brand that we have been developing for the past couple years. So far things have been going well and our sales have been increasing each month.

We do not do any PPC right now, but maybe in the future. Currently it is all organic.

[webcosmo]

to let you guys know. i tried ebay first. and made some sales to my surprise. this seem to be not a bad way to get started.

[jrockfl]

That's great news!
After I started selling on ebay to test the waters, I started to build a web site. I only had one product at first, but after a couple months I added a second.

For my niche, I decided to market my products on YouTube and bloggers.

After the web site sales started to increase, I stopped selling on ebay.