Building an e-commerce business: how to choose a profitable product

A friend and I decided to start an e-commerce company with a budget of $10,000.
One of the first steps we took was choosing a product to sell.
After consulting with experts and using Helium 10 data, we chose vanes.

When my friend and I made a commitment creating your own e-commerce businessour first task was to choose a product to sell.

We knew we wanted to create something of our own (not use arbitration model and also buy and resell existing product) — and that’s it.

There were an infinite number of directions we could have gone. We talked in circles for weeks, suffering from decision fatigue. Our to-do list included, but was not limited to, kitchen sponges, elbow pads, snaps, wind-up toys, cookie cutters, and even seasonal items like holiday socks. And it felt like the blind leading the blind: my e-commerce experience was secondary to reporting on successful Amazon sellers. My business partner worked in the cinema.

Rather than spend more time wondering if there is enough demand for elbow pads or too much competition in the cookie cutter industry, we decided to ask for help.

I turned to Joe Reeves, who besides build your own e-commerce empirebecame a co-founder of a consulting business 330 Trade to help people do exactly what we hoped to do: make money selling things online.

He and his co-founder Tyler Walter agreed to meet. Before the call, they gave us homework: choose a category we wanted to sell in and list specific product ideas in that area. To get our ideas flowing, they encouraged us to think about our hobbies and how we spend our time in general. What do you know and love?

The answer to that question was easy: we both grew up playing tennis and competing collegiately. Years after graduation, we still played recreation and spent weekends teaching. We played other racquet sports, including pickleball, padeland paddle tennis.

We should not be making kitchen sponges or fasteners; it was something to do with rocket sports.

After defining our category, the next step was to list specific product ideas. We came up with tennis ball tubes, pads, lead tape, shock absorbers, pickleballs and pickleballs and, on Reeves’ advice, signed up for a software called Helium 10 to start researching our product ideas. It offers a lot of data, and Reeves recommended that we start by paying attention to the demand—are people actually buying the product? — which can be determined by looking at the scope of the search.

We purchased Helium 10 Platinum ($79/month billed annually and $99/month billed monthly). Our $99/month subscription also gave us access to Ticket to Freedom, an online course consisting of a large library of video content designed to help you build a successful Amazon, which Reeves advised us to use.

One of the first tools we started working with was Xray. This allows you to see sales data that, in theory, can help you identify a profitable product niche.

Here’s the data we collected on “tennis shock absorbers”, “tennis grip tape” and “pickleball paddles”. I’ve highlighted search volume and BSR, which stands for “best seller rating” and indicates how well a product is selling on Amazon. The lower the product’s BSR, the higher its sales.

“Tennis shock absorbers”:

Kathleen Elkins via Helium 10

“Tennis tape”:

Kathleen Elkins via Helium 10

“Paddles for pickled balls”:

Kathleen Elkins via Helium 10

Pickleball paddles were the most intriguing, at least based on search volume and BSR, but with an average price of $63, we wondered if they would be too expensive to make on a $10,000 budget.

We sent Reeves and Walter our racquet product list and accompanying Helium 10 data before our call, not quite sure what to do with the numbers—and not quite sure we were even using the software correctly.

When we met via Zoom, Reeves helped us get rid of several products at once. For example, tennis ball tubes had low search volume, indicating low demand, and they were irregularly shaped, meaning that transporting them would be difficult and expensive. He asked us as tennis coaches if we use tubes for tennis balls. The answer was no—another reason to pass.

We eventually narrowed the list down to overgrips (the cloth-like tape you wrap around the racket handle) and pickleball paddles. Grips were a cheaper (and therefore safer) option for first-time Amazon sellers, but you could feel the energy behind the paddle idea. It would be easier and more fun to enter the market, there was competition, but there was a noticeable demand the sport continued to grow in the USand the margins seemed great based on the mathematical calculations on the back of the napkin.

The only catch was the cost. Reeves estimated that our first inventory order alone could wipe out our $10,000 budget.

He recommended that we talk to each other and sleep, which we did, but the decision had already been made.

It’s time to make a pickling paddle.

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