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People frequently ask me how they can start importing. Most have this terrible misconception that importing physical goods to sell (with great margins) requires a substantial amount of capital, enterprise-level logistics, and—more or less—putting your financial future on the line. In reality, getting started in the importing game is easy, relatively inexpensive, has few barriers to entry, and usually doesn't require custom manufacturing or creating plastic-injection molds.


Pick the Right Product

The first step in getting started is identifying a product that you like, love, or know something about. While this isn't a necessity, it is helpful in the later stages. In the long-term, you want to choose a product that has solid margins; 400% to 500% markup is ideal, especially if you ever want to sell wholesale.

Testing the Product and Proving Salability

Before we dive further down the rabbit hole, it's important to understand that testing is critical to success when importing physical products. Ideally, we want to run a test and either make a bit of profit or break-even, and actually prove that a product can sell. The products I do well with are electronics, but I've met people making money importing seemingly ridiculous items like ant farms, so the possibilities are nearly endless.

Product Determination Process

First, we need some basic suggestions. I like to start at the largest consumer search engine in the world: Amazon.com. Google's keyword tool is great for referencing the number of searches, but unlike Google, Amazon's search field returns suggestions that tend to be a bit more niche and have higher commercial intent.

Enter some of the following broad examples into Amazon to yield more specific product ideas. I like to use “(keyword) for” as it gives you substantially better niche ideas.

adapter for
microphone for
cable for
case for
convertor for

Now, most of these are going to give you results like “adapter for iphone” or “adapter for ipad;” you'll have to use a bit of imagination to get more refined suggestions. Not only will these give us niche suggestions, but most of these are going to be impulse buys with a very high-degree of commercial intent, which is exactly what we want; they're searching on Amazon because they probably don't know where to go locally for the product they need.
















Now that we have some basic niche ideas (and we really only need basic), we're going to jump over to AliExpress.com. This AliBaba.com's M2C (manufacturer to consumer) sister website, and it let's us order a batch of (usually) 20 or so products from a manufacturer, often with free shipping. Enter your search term(s) and browse the results. You'll get 5-20 similar listings from different companies, so keep scrolling. Eventually, you'll get related, but substantially more niche items, like this item.

Let's assume we want to move forward with this. All we do is jump back over to Amazon, type in what the product is, and click on a given suggestion. In this case, we clicked “3 pin male mini xlr.” Now, we want to look at the number of reviews. In this case, these have none. Does that mean they don't sell? Absolutely not. We can make general assessments about the competition based on the number of reviews. Remember two things: 1) We're testing and proving initially. 2) This is Amazon, so we'll be optimizing the listing based on how they rank products.

In very simple terms, Amazon ranks products based on the following:

Sales/sales history/sales velocity
Reviews
Likes
Product tags

List Your Product

Now that we've identified a niche we like and have received our product, we need to setup a listing. Buy a UPC code online, which range from $8-10 for one, and sign up for an Amazon seller account. The paid version is free for 30 days, and offers more options and greater flexibility; do not waste your time with the free option.

Build Out the Product Listing

Now, using your own UPC, brand your test product and build your listing out as much as possible. For a description, you can hire someone from Fiverr to write it for you, or if it's something you're passionate about, write it yourself. Don't use the manufacturer's description or pictures. Properly building out a listing is critical. Make sure you fill out as many fields as possible, including technical details and optimize your search keywords for Amazon's suggestions; they're suggesting them for a reason and they have the highest commercial intent. Also make absolutely sure you have your own product photos, description, and brand name (why we bought the UPC). Having our own brand (which should be our seller/merchant name) ensures that even if others are doing the same thing, we're not competing with them because Amazon sees this as a different product.

Promote Your Product and Improve Rankings

Now, we want to get 2-3 other accounts to order our product at a ridiculously low price, usually within 1 night, so we don't actually sell it for $0.50. We don't actually have to physically ship the product—just tell Amazon you shipped it via USPS and don't include the tracking number; it's not required. Ideally, we also want to contact the manufacturer and find out what price they'll give us if we order a larger quantity. Find that price, and mark it up 500%. From there, feed the beast—Amazon's A9 engine—with the equivalent of “links” which we mentioned above; slow and steady always wins the race. Once you've hit position 3-5, you'll get sales, which will help your listing move even more.

The Rest is Cake

Once you start selling steadily, order more. Initially, you just want to prove that it can sell. From there, contact the manufacturer and order a larger quantity so you move to ideal margins of 4-5x markup. Once your initial large shipment arrives, move from shipping them yourself to fulfillment by Amazon so you won't have to worry about anything aside from your sales and Amazon rankings.

Author Bio:
Kyle Sanders is the head of strategy at RapidQueue.com, a product importing junkie, and eCommerce nerd. You can connect with him on Google+