Hot niches and products can be found in the unlikeliest of places!
Last weekend I finally forced myself to sort out all those niggly little jobs around the house that have needed doing for ages.
Jobs such as gluing a broken picture frame back together, replacing light bulbs and fixing a torn blind pull…. as you can see, these jobs are not exactly excitement personified are they!
Anyway, I nipped down to my local DIY store for some bits and bobs to ensure the ‘fixing’ got done properly and there I was, wandering pretty aimlessly around the store, when I noticed a small TV on a display stand at the end of an aisle.
It was playing what appeared to be an advertisement. I moved closer and saw that it was indeed a commercial for a type of Tippex style pen that claimed to get rid of scratches on your car. Then I noticed that directly below the TV was a large selection of the product. Well that made perfect sense!
This wasn’t a short 20 second commercial though – it probably ran for at least 10 minutes – and it was on a loop – so started up again immediately it had finished.
It was an all-singing, all-dancing promotion for the product, with a demonstration on screen which showed just how amazing this scratch filler pen was along with all the benefits. The key fact was that this was an exclusive product available at the store for the special introductory price today.
Right here! Right now!
It actually reminded me of a shopping channel advertisement. You know the ones that you usually stumble across accidentally when you’re mindlessly looking for something interesting to watch on TV.
But, that’s the thing, those shopping channels do really well because they advertise products that are in demand and they make those products available to consumers immediately – often for special, discounted prices which people then purchase on a whim.
Similarly, the scratch filler pens in the DIY store were being advertised with full demos because marketers know that they are reaching a really targeted market. People are in the right place and can also be manipulated into an impulse buy. In other words, here’s what the product does…and here it is, available to you, right under your nose…right now!
Anyway, these products in stores and on TV are known as ‘As Seen on TV’ (ASOTV) products – a generic name for items that are advertised on television for direct-response and mail order.
You are very likely to have seen some of these products yourself as they are easily recognizable by the packaging which includes a red seal in the shape of a television screen with the words “AS SEEN ON TV” written in white.
The products themselves range from kitchen, household, cleaning, health and beauty products, exercise and fitness products, books and toys and games for children.
The great thing about these ASOTV products is that they are in fact genuine, proven hot sellers and can definitely be considered for resale within your online inventory.
In fact on eBay UK right now there are 7673 listings for ASOTV products. Importantly, that figure confirms that whilst the products are hot, it’s not an overly competitive market to enter.
Magic Tap or Stuffed Burger Press?
The products themselves can be quirky, ingenious, or just plain daft but incredibly, the weirder the product, the more in-demand it seems to be.
For example, look at this ASOTV product currently listed on eBay UK:
It’s a stuffed burger maker! Who would have thought such a product was even needed, let alone in demand!
And look at this ‘magic tap’
Those are just two examples. Not all ASOTV products sell well and so you will need to learn how to determine which ones will sell well online, where to source them (or similar products) and how to make the big profits.
Sellers on eBay.com have been sourcing and listing ASOTV products for years and found that they absolutely flew off the shelves. Basically buyers were seeing them advertised on the shopping channels and then buying them instead on eBay.
There are fewer ASOTV sellers listing in the UK than in the US though and that’s why it could be a great niche to get into. So to get you started try following these simple research steps.
3 steps to researching ASOTV products…
1. First search eBay for As Seen on TV products that have already sold and check their final value. Simply click on ‘Sold Listings’ or ‘Completed Listings’ under the ‘Show Only’ heading on the left of your eBay page.
It’s best to sort the results by ‘price + P&P highest first’ – just choose this from the drop down box at the top of the page – so that you can see the highest price that an ASOTV product has sold for and the popularity of a product.
2. Next, you’ll need to go over to some of the international eBay sites such as eBay.com (USA), eBay.ca (Canada) and eBay.au (Australia). Once again search the completed and sold listings to see which products are selling well.
3. Make sure you pay attention to the advertisements you see on TV and in store promotions especially the products being advertised on those shopping channels and in DIY stores and take note of what is popular, then you can research those products too. What these steps will do is build up a picture of the kind of products you will be successful at selling.
Can you find these products at wholesale?
Well, there are actually quite a few websites where you can source these products at wholesale prices. They are mostly based in the USA so you will need to check out their shipping policies.
First though, make sure you visit the official As Seen on TV websitewww.asseenontv.com and take a look at their products to give you an idea of their best selling products, most popular and featured products.
Everything is categorised so easy to navigate. You can then use this information to choose the top products you should research. Often this site will run a Buy One Get One Free offer so it’s easy to use this offer to test order for a great price and then resell those products.
An important note: Please don’t be tempted to source ASOTV products from China – they are likely to be counterfeit. Instead, here are two sites that you might like to consider to get you started once you have done your research:
What you must remember is that trends come and go online and what’s hot one month might not be so hot the next and this is true for ASOTV products too. There are always new products being released for sale so you do need to keep your wits about you and your eyes peeled for potential hot sellers. You absolutely must check out and research which are the definite hot selling products before you go ahead and source them to ensure that they will sell.
So, there’s a proven mini niche for you to get started with.