Last Updated on April 27, 2022
If you are going to set up an online store, there is something you must be very clear about: there must be demand for your products. It doesn’t make much sense to spend money to build a store with products that no one is going to buy. It may seem obvious, but when you take a closer look at the web, you’ll find instances where it’s not so clear why they decided to start selling certain products. In addition, to sell online you must take into account another important detail: selling online is completely different from traditional sales.
Just because a particular product or industry is in high demand in physical stores does not mean that it will be in demand online (and vice versa). To avoid mistakes when choosing your industry and target audience for your store, today we will share with you the 5 Most sold product in the world and best products to sell online. These products ensure demand, but also competition.
Table of Contents
1. Fashion items
Interestingly, fashion is the top selling industry in almost the entire world.
Yes, despite the industry being tricky and having products that come in sizes that may vary from store to store, fashion remains the queen of sales.
The increase in demand in the fashion industry in the online world owes itself mainly to the improvement in returns policies.
Before now, it was hard for somebody to risk buying a shirt, pants, or a jacket without knowing for sure if it was going to fit well. Nowadays returns are free in almost all shops and you can try something on at home, without lines and knowing that you can return it at any time.
2. Trips and tourism
If there is one industry that has adapted well to the online revolution, it is the tourism industry.
Surely you can’t even remember the last time you bought a plane ticket, reserved a hotel, booked a tour, or planned any other part of a trip in person.
Furthermore, the huge number of comparison sites drives prices to be much more competitive. In the past, we all went to travel agencies, but now we can organize our own trips from home with a computer and mobile devices.
Are you thinking about starting an online business about trips and tourism?
3. Tech products
It’s interesting that tech products aren’t the #1 seller, isn’t it?
The main reason behind a sale slipping away is the customer’s lack of guarantee.
When you buy a piece of technology in a physical establishment you tend to have much more confidence that, in the case of defect, they will be there to repair it.
We want to feel that no matter what problem we have, there will be a “real” person we can go to.
With an online shop you don’t have that kind of confidence, unless they have inspired it.
For example, in the Spanish tech market, BQ has become a benchmark thanks to its excellent guarantee. Anyone buying from them knows that if they have any defects they will have their product replaced or repaired within 2 days.
The positive thing about this sector is that there is a huge supply and that technology advances quite rapidly.
This situation is key for a content curation strategy in which you analyze the “new arrival” products.
The con, again, is that there are a lot of consolidated blogs and websites with a huge business volume that already does reviews and compare devices.
There are only a few who can create technology.
The way to monetize a website here is through publicity and affiliation.
Affiliation is about analyzing products from other parties and redirecting the audience to an external sales website in exchange for a commission.
Once again, specialization is key. If instead of covering all types of products, you specialize yourself in Samsung tablets that cost more than X euros, you will be able to reduce your competitors and become the benchmark on the topic.
4. Books and Music
These products may be thought to be in a higher position in this ranking, but taking into account the amount of illegal downloading of music and books, fourth place is not bad at all.
Lower prices, after eliminating some of the costs related to distribution, allows us to buy books for as little as $1 and to choose which tracks of an album we want to buy.
Since it seems that hard copies of books are going to disappear altogether, it wouldn’t surprise us if book sales jumped up in the rankings in the coming years.
It’s been a long time since Napster and other platforms of that sort started to come along.
Since those days, when this sector began to fear what could happen, we’ve experienced a revolution, especially in the way music is bought and sold.
Books and music albums are still among the most sold products because of platforms such as iTunes, Spotify, or Amazon and its Kindle. If it had depended on music labels, we would still be buying cassette tapes.
5. Educational Courses
It’s hard not to notice how popular e-learning is becoming.
A lot of online learning platforms have appeared lately; like course platforms such as Video2Brain (recently bought by LinkedIn), or Udemy. Specific education in some areas is taking over general education (like official university and master’s degrees).
Given that we live a global setting in which finding a job is getting more and more difficult, it is understandable that the demand for online training is on the rise.
The key to that change is that users are no longer afraid of learning without getting a degree or certificate.
Let’s break that down.
The most important thing now is simply the content you learn, not the certificate that says that you have learned it.
Perhaps there were too many cases of students holding university bachelor’s and master’s degrees despite not knowing anything about the real market.
When someone has the skills and knowledge in order to train other people about something, it is not necessary to issue a certificate specifying what students have learned.
For many years, we have had an obsession with certificates. Luckily, users are starting to get online training these days.
This unaccredited education is surely going to grow in the future. In addition, the entrance requirements are quite flexible. And that’s good, isn’t it?
Should you create an online shop with one of these products?
With these being the most sold product in the world, the obvious and logical answer would be yes. The problem is that this high demand is no secret and that means there is a lot of competition.
Think about the number of fashion shops, trip planners, technology shops, music/book shops, or e-learning platforms that we currently have, and their numbers are only increasing.
If you want to succeed in these industries, there is only one possible way to do it: differentiate yourself and specializing.
Getting into a mature and general market like the ones we have talked about isn’t something a beginner can do:
- Price: competing in terms of price is nearly impossible, so your brand must be 100% unique.
- Authority: be the market’s benchmark has its perks. You can even set the trends.
- Trust: remember that online customer is still scared and prefer to buy from well-known shops, even if the products are worse.
- SEO: can you imagine yourself trying to position the same amount of products as Amazon or El Corte Inglés?
The key to making it in these industries that deal with the most sold products online is hyper-specialization, offering a unique user experience, and covering those tiny details that the giants just can’t see.