10 Best Things to Sell Online to Make Money

Finding any one of the 10 best things to sell online to make money could set you up for a very lucrative online selling career.

Ecommerce has exploded into a trillion-dollar industry in a short amount of time, and growth has nowhere near topped out. The global ecommerce market size is expected to continue growing by double digits through at least 2020, at which point it’s expected to be a $4 trillion industry. eMarketer also estimates that online sales will account for 14.6% of all retail sales at that point, nearly double the 7.4% total of just five years earlier. Needless to say, there’s a lot of money to be made selling things online.

Of course, competition is also fierce, and online sellers will need to do everything in their power to identify valuable niches and stay on top of the latest e-commerce trends, both in terms of how to reach customers and what the hottest items will be in the future. The sooner you’re selling something hot, the less competition you’ll have initially and the greater chance you’ll have of carving out a permanent niche with those items. Consider the current success of fidget spinners and the potential rewards from identifying that trend early, before everyone else had hopped on it.

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Another aspect to consider will be which countries to target. The world is your oyster online, and though shipping items to foreign countries could present some additional obstacles compared to selling primarily within your home country, the potential to gain access to a market with less competition or one where your products are in higher demand is too good to even think about passing up.

In terms of current e commerce market size by country, China easily leads the way at $672 billion in online sales, while the U.S is a distant second at $340 billion. Other major ecommerce markets include Germany, France, Canada, Japan, and Russia. These countries have varying levels of local ecommerce competition and growth potential, as well as varying levels of penetration by Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN).

Speaking of Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), the pros and cons of selling products through Amazon will have to be carefully considered by anyone delving into online sales. On the one hand, Amazon gives you access to a huge pool of customers and takes care of much of the heavy lifting for you.

However, selling primarily or completely through Amazon also limits your own growth potential. You’ll have trouble growing your individual brand on Amazon’s platform, and your margins will likely be extremely tight. After all, if you’re not selling a non-original product for the best price on the platform, you simply won’t be getting sales. On a personal website you have more flexibility with pricing and promotions, and greater access to your customers and the data related to their shopping habits.

Now then, let’s get into the 10 best things to sell online to make money. Firstly, we should emphasize that the items on this list will be related to selling/reselling existing products, as opposed to creating and selling your own. It wouldn’t be much use for us to tell you to make custom products that you have no capability to make.

We considered multiple ways to attack the topic, but ultimately settled on finding ten product categories that are not only consistently popular, but which are also constantly evolving and growing, allowing sellers to find profitable trends and products within those categories. We felt this would make for a more useful list than just listing ten trending products right now (like the aforementioned fidget spinners), which could quickly lose their luster. These categories also provide decent margins. Check out our list beginning on the next page.

To get an idea of what some of the current best selling products online are, you can check out our list of the 10 Best Selling Products On Alibaba.