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Video transcript: Usually, I suggest a somewhat random list of high potential products to dropship. In the past, I’ve recommended that you start selling cycling glasses, pet car seat covers and even pool floaty cup holders. The thing is, I also suggest that new dropshippers start with niche stores, like for instance the car niche. In other words, you should build your store around one category of products, and if you put all of my past product recommendations in one store, that would not be a niche store. A store that carries cycling glasses and pool floaties together would look really confusing and it would probably turn customers off.
That’s why I’m gonna do something a little different, I’m going to introduce you to a high potential niche and I’m gonna supply some numbers to back up my claim. Then I’ll recommend five winning products to sell in that niche and even if this niche isn’t your thing, I’m going to share my sneaky simple method for finding great products in any niche. By the end of this, you’re going to have a blueprint for an entire dropshipping store. That way you can start making online sales instead of watching another product recommendation video on YouTube.
Why the Car Niche
Okay, let’s switch gears because the niche I want to talk about today is the car niche. Before we get started, let me address a doubt that I know is going through your head right now. It’s 2019, and the world is moving towards a greener future. One with fewer cars on the road and therefore fewer car accessories on the road too. That’s what I thought as well. But one of the most important rules about being a successful entrepreneur is to never make assumptions. You’ve got to follow the data and not your gut. So let’s look at some data that backs up my claim that the car accessories niche has a high potential. I’m going to talk about US data here since the US is such a huge ecommerce market for dropshippers.
The average American now spends over 50 minutes a day driving, which has been increasing over the last few years. The amount of drivers has increased as well because, over the last five years, four million new drivers were added to the road. That means that there are now more than 225 million drivers on the road in the United States, more Americans on the road all spending more time in their cars means more driving-related frustrations.
And that, my dropshipping friend, is the good news. Because frustrations need solutions and solutions mean sales. Each of the five products that I’m about to talk about solves a frustration related to spending way too much time in the car. If you make that pain point obvious to your customers, you’re gonna hear cha-ching in no time. Okay, let’s start our engines and jump into product number one.
1. Ergonomic Car Seat Cushion
The first product that would be a perfect fit for your car niche store helps someone feel like their car perfectly fits them. It’s a car seat cushion.
I know, I know, you’re looking at this car seat cushion and you’re thinking, “Wow, this is the product that Oberlo thinks will get my customer excited?” Take a seat and give me a chance to explain. Remember the average American spends almost an hour in their car every single day. That’s a lot of time to be sitting in a seat. The most effective way to sell your product is to sell it as a solution to a problem. However, is discomfort alone really a problem? Yeah, maybe, but perhaps not enough of a problem to get your customer running towards checkout.
So for a hint on how to better position this product, let’s take a look at Google Trends. Searches for car seat cushions have increased over the past five years. Interestingly, you notice spikes around popular travel holidays in the US, like Memorial Day weekend, Fourth of July, and winter holidays.
But if I scroll down, I see the key to marketing this product: back pain. If you’ve ever experienced back pain yourself, you know it is so painful and immobilizing. It’s like this dull ache that never goes away, and that pinched nerve at the base of your spine, and the cramping that goes all the way up to your neck, it’s horrible. So position this product as one that alleviates and prevents back pain, and in that way, this boring car seat cushion becomes a pain preventing product. Positioning the cushion as a product that can reduce back pain will also help you justify the price to your customers.
The cost for the two-piece cushion here from the supplier on AliExpress is around $25. You’ll need to add a markup to ensure that you have a profit margin and enough money for marketing. So ideally, you could sell this product for between $50 and $75, but here’s the cool thing: The mattress industry will actually help you out here. They’ve primed English-speaking markets to spend more money on anything with the word “memory foam” in it. So, when you’re marketing this product, make sure to put “memory foam” in the product name on Shopify. We just used Google Trends to position products like a pro, but now it’s time to use Google Trends to target our Facebook ads. To do that, let me introduce the next product in our car accessory store.
2. Car Air Purifier
$20 for a thermos? No, this is not a thermos. Do not try to drink out of it. This is actually an air purifier for your customer’s cars. You’ve most likely heard of air purifiers for the home before. They’re constantly drawing in air to remove bacteria and dust particles. This does the same thing for your customer’s car interior. And when I hover my mouse over the different photos, I can see pictures that highlight the various benefits and what types of toxins this car air purifier removes.
I don’t know about you, but I actually have never seen this product before and I never even considered my car’s air quality. But when I saw these photos I started thinking about my car and the Ubers that I’ve taken, and all the dust and bacteria that must have been in the air. And that icky feeling is exactly what you want to evoke from your customers. You want them to imagine sitting in their cars with the windows up, breathing that stale dirty air. Euch.
Now you know how to position car air purifiers in your product descriptions and your ad copy, but how do you build a targeted Facebook Ads audience for this product? For some help, let’s go back to Google Trends. For the search, I’m going to look up air purifiers, not car air purifiers. I actually want to find out what are the top brands in the general air purifiers category.
Because if someone is searching for an air purifier for their home, chances are that they’d like to also buy an air purifier for their car. If you scroll down, you can see related topics and searches for air purifiers, and it looks like these are all the top brands that sell this product. So what’s the point of knowing all these brands? Well, knowing your competitors can help you find your customers because you can note these companies down as an interest when you’re building an audience for your Facebook ads.
If you don’t know what I mean by that, consider getting up to speed with Oberlo 101. Oberlo 101 is a dropshipping course that we just created to give you step-by-step instructions on the entire process of finding products, building a store, and getting your first sales with Facebook ads. So if you’re serious about building a business, enroll now.
Back to the topic at hand. One of the biggest brands in the air purifier industry is Dyson. When I head into their website, I see two things that I really like. First, their products are set at a very high price point. That tells me that I can sell these car air purifiers at a high price point as well. Second, the range of Dyson air purifiers doesn’t include car air purifiers. So even if I target my ads at people who like Dyson, I won’t be competing with any Dyson products.
Okay, now your car niche store is coming together, you just added a product that helps your customers clean their car air. Now for something that helps them clean their car seats.
3. Car Cleaning Glue
The next product is a car cleaning glue. Here’s the stat that you need to know to sell this product: 20 percent of Americans eat food in their car, and if you eat meals in your car, like your favorite Mukbangers, then you know crumbs get everywhere. Car cleaning glue is a slime-like substance that helps you clean small cracks and crevices in your car. It’s small, it’s cheap, and it speaks to a very tedious problem that all car owners face. In total, the product and ePacket shipping come to less than $3, so it’s really time to put the pedal to the metal on those profit margins.
After interviewing successful dropshippers, I found that the most popular pricing method is to take your product cost, add shipping, and multiply by three. Following this formula, this car cleaning glue would be around $10. As a dropshipper, this is great to see because generally, any products under $25 are preferable. That’s because they fall in the “impulse buy” range. People aren’t thinking too much before they click “Add to cart”. But to capture those impulse sales you need two things: The first is a good price and the second is a way to catch their attention. Thanks to a creative supplier, we actually have a way to catch customer attention.
The first picture on this AliExpress listing is actually a video. You can click play to see this car cleaning glue in action. You see the dirt and debris and you see how quickly the glue picks it all up. If I was browsing Facebook this would definitely catch my attention. And if I press the three small dots in the corner, I can actually download this video.
You can throw this video straight into Facebook Business Manager and start running your ads right away. No one likes crumbs in their cars and this slime car cleaner is a perfect way to get customers to stop scrolling and start buying. Target people who like fast-food restaurants with drive-through windows like McDonald’s. Now, compared to other products on this list, the car cleaner is a low ticket product, while you won’t be able to have as large of a profit margin, you can use it to drive traffic to your store. Once customers land in your store, they may browse and buy higher-priced items like this next product.
4. Dashcam
A dashcam is a small camera for your car that’s constantly recording the front and back in case there’s an accident. This footage is extremely helpful if someone hits your customer’s car and they’re stuck in a “he said, she said” situation.
This particular dashcam has over 7,000 orders, which means it’s selling well. Wait. Before you scream that this project is saturated, give me a chance to explain its potential. 7,000 orders seem like a lot when you compare it to other products on AliExpress, but when you compare it to the over 220 million Americans that drive, you can see that there’s still a huge audience to tap into. And this is great for the car niche as dashcams are great for many different types of drivers.
Customers will buy this product because they want peace of mind that if they get into an accident, they can prove that they aren’t at fault. That saves the customers hundreds or even thousands of dollars in insurance and legal fees. This is a great marketing message to send to potential customers! For help on marketing strategies, let’s head back to, you guessed it, Google Trends.
If I look up “dashcam” and set the date range to the last five years, there’s a huge upward trend over time. More drivers mean more potential accidents, which means more potential sales. I can also scroll down to interests by subregion to see the regions that have the most interest in this product. And I see that in this case, it’s California, which isn’t that surprising. California has tons of drivers on the road and the Los Angeles area, in particular, is infamous for its traffic. But what can you do with this information? Well, you can use it to hyper-focus your Facebook Ads targeting. I’ll explain with an example.
Earlier I mentioned that every driver in America could benefit from a dashcam. While that’s true, simply targeting your ads towards American drivers might be the wrong move. You’d be paying Facebook to go after a large audience that may not be interested in this product, rather than a small audience that’s really interested in it. The information from Google Trends can help you find that smaller, more interested audience. So in this case, you could experiment by targeting Californian drivers with your first Facebook ad. If you do that and you should, adjust your ad copy so it speaks directly to the concerns of your narrowed audience.
I did a quick Google search and I found that in 2017, there were over 450,000 car crashes in the state of California alone. That is a mind-blowing number, it’s sure to remind California customers that there’s a high chance that they could be in a car crash, and that is exactly what I would put in my ad copy. “California had 450,000 car crashes last year, what if it happens to you? You need to prove it wasn’t your fault. Get the dashcam for 50% off today.” Your ad copy can make all the difference when it comes to converting scrollers to buyers. Speaking to the fear of a car crash works, but speaking for a fear of personal safety can work even better.
5. Emergency Tool
That’s why I suggest this last product for your car niche store. It’s the emergency escape tool. This tool can be used to cut a seatbelt or break a car glass in case of an emergency. If your customer’s car were ever to flip over or hit something, this would allow your customer to escape from inside of it.
A tool like this is priceless, but since you have to price it anyway, something like $10 would be great because it’s still a no-brainer for your customer to buy it. The challenge with selling this though is that the pictures of this product don’t do it justice. It looks like a weird tool you would just find in the back of your shed. So here’s a marketing hack: Scroll down and look at some of the reviews of this product. The first one really stood out to me because it reads, “I hope I never have to use it.”
Whoa, what a powerful statement that would make in an ad copy. So for your ad copy, borrow that quote and quote the reviewer saying, “I hope I never have to use it.” The product photos might not catch your customer’s attention, but that statement from another customer absolutely will. This would be the perfect product to sell at a volume discount offer. Yes, your customer needs a tool like this, but so does their significant other, their friends, and their other family members. So, offer a discount to customers who buy multiple safety tools at once, maybe they get 50 percent off their second tool or they can buy four tools for the price of three. There are plenty of apps on Shopify that will help you set up these offers.
Tip to Find More Niche Car Products
Now you have five high-potential products for a high-potential niche. That is the car niche. However, if car accessories don’t rev your engine, I have a tip for finding trending products for your own niche store, whatever that is. A niche is a category of products, but it also represents a passionate community. Every community has places online where they discuss trends, news, and new products.
So when I was looking for the products on this list, I simply put together a clever Google search. I searched, “car blog”, plus “cool products”, plus “2019”. I know that seems obvious, right? But if we scroll down, we see blogs and websites that suggest cool products to look out for. For example, on Travel Away, I can see a huge list of exciting gadgets for drivers. While I can’t sell any branded products, I can easily find similar products that are unbranded on AliExpress. And if we scroll all the way down, we can see dash cams and the other products that we spoke about in this video.
To do your own niche-specific research, simply search, “(your niche) blog”, plus “cool products”, plus “2019”. So for example, if you wanted to sell in the outdoors niche, you can search, “outdoors blog”, plus “cool products”, plus “2019”. And as the end of the year approaches replace “2019” with “2020”. That search will yield blog posts that predict which products are about to blow up in popularity.
Now, I would love to hear from you. Do you think these products are winners? Because I do, but I’m willing to talk with you about it if you disagree. Let me know in the comments below, and I’ll chime in with my own thoughts. Until next time, learn often, market better, and sell more.