Building An ECommerce Business: How To Select A Profitable Product

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When my friend and I committed to building our own eCommerce business , our first task was selecting a product to sell.

There were infinitely many directions we could pursue. We talked in circles for weeks, plagued by decision fatigue. Our working list included but was not limited to, kitchen sponges, elbow braces, zip ties, wind-up toys, cookie cutters, and even seasonal-specific items like holiday socks. And it felt like the blind leading the blind: My experience with eCommerce was secondhand, having reported on successful Amazon sellers. My business partner worked in film.

Rather than spend more time working through whether there was enough demand for elbow braces or too much competition in the cookie-cutter space, we decided to ask for help.

I reached out to Joe Reeves, who, in addition to building his own eCommerce empire , co-founded the consulting business 330 Trading to help people do exactly what we were hoping to do: Make money selling things online.

He and his cofounder, Tyler Walter, agreed to meet. They assigned us homework ahead of the call: Select a category we wanted to sell in and come up with a list of specific product ideas in that space. To get the ideas flowing, they encouraged us to think about our hobbies and how we generally spend our time. What do you know and like?

It was an easy question to answer: We both grew up surrounded by tennis and competed collegiately. Years after graduating, we still played recreationally and spent our weekends teaching. We dabbled in other racket sports, including pickleball, padel , and paddle tennis.

It wasn't kitchen sponges or zip ties we should be producing; it was something racket-sport-related.

After pinpointing our category, the next step was listing specific product ideas. We came up with tennis ball tubes, overgrips, lead tape, shock absorbers, pickleballs, and pickleball paddles and, under Reeves' counsel, signed up for a software called Helium 10 to start researching our product ideas. It offers a lot of data and Reeves recommended we start by paying attention to demand — are people actually buying the product? — which you can identify by looking at the search volume.