The Ultimate DIY Guide to Beautiful Product Photography

This guest post is by Jeff Delacruz a founding member & photographer at Products On White Photography.

If there’s one thing that’s true when it comes to ecommerce, it's that the perceived value of your products and the trustworthiness of your business is often judged by the quality of your web design. And a big part of having an attractive website these days also means having high-quality, beautiful product photography.

But it's not just aesthetics we're talking about. Showcasing your products with high-quality images can also be the winning difference between a conversion and no sale at all. This is particularly true if you’re also distributing your products on marketplace sites like Amazon where they are displayed alongside those of your competitors.

But when you're just starting out, getting your product photos shot can be an intimidating prospect because good photography can be expensive. There are hundreds of product photography tools to help you get the job done yourself. As business owners with lean start-up roots, we understand this more than anyone, and as a company that works with small businesses everyday, we also know that sometimes the money’s just not there. If that’s you, and your budget is tight, have you thought about taking the DIY approach to taking your own images? It’s not as hard as you might think.

There are lots of techniques for shooting successful product photography, but the one I’m going to show you is commonly known as The Window Light Technique.  From someone who photographs products everyday, this tutorial has been specifically crafted for business owners on a budget, and it’s been designed to be simple while producing excellent high quality results with most product types.

Enjoy!

What You’re Going to Need

Gear is at the heart of photography and can be really exciting, but typically it’s the aspect that most people become confused about.

There’s no necessity to spend a large portion of your budget on high-tech equipment, so keep an open mind and try not to overspend on gadgets that do the same job lighting your product as a $5 piece of card can do.  You can probably do this window light setup for $20 or less if you already own a camera.

You’re only going to need a few things for this setup:

1. Camera

You don’t need a crazy camera system. While shooting images with a Nikon D800 ($2796) sporting a 105mm f1.4 lens ($740) is awesome, it’s also totally unnecessary.

Still, if you’re feeling excited, and have the budget to stretch to a new camera system for this project, I suggest reading a post I wrote on quora which offers tips to help you pick out a good camera for product photography.  

When I did the test images for this, I started with my older model (2008), beat-to-hell Canon G10 point-and-shoot.  I love the Canon G series point-and-shoots because they can go full manual and they shoot a really nice raw file. I picked this camera because it’s definitely not top of the line anymore, allowing me to demonstrate that even with modest equipment, good results are attainable.

So what camera do you need?  I would just start out with whatever you have handy and see what the results are. It’s a common myth that it’s the camera that takes the pictures, but in reality the camera is only one piece of the whole.  A photograph is made up of series of choices that incorporates lighting, exposure, styling and post processing decisions.

2. Tripod

Not to get too technical, but you’re going to set your camera to a very small aperture so that you can have the most depth of field your camera is capable of.  

The width of the depth of field defines the area of sharp focus, and to get to that you need the largest f/stop number your camera can obtain. Shutter speed and f/stop are related, and since a larger f/stop number like f/8 lets in less light, you’ll need to counter than by using a slower shutter speed to allow more light through.  

When a camera has a slow shutter, you can’t hand hold it or the subject will be blurry – so a tripod is your answer. If you’re interested in learning more about the fundamentals of photography, check out this video I did with Harrington College of Design last year.  

I realize that most point-and-shoots may not allow you to choose your f/stop.  That’s ok and there are ways to get around this which we’ll discuss in the step-by-step.

Again, you shouldn’t need to spend a whole lot of money on a tripod at this point in your adventure, and there are many, many options out there that are under $30.  I did a quick search on Amazon and found something that would work for $20.  

3. White Background

There are lots of options for a white background and if you’re going to be shooting a lot, you may want to go to your local photography store and get a small white sweep. 

If you’re not in an area with a good photography store, you can always head over to your frame shop/art store and get a 32x40 sheet of their thinnest white Mat Board, which is what we’re using in this example. 

Look for something that you can bend a little bit to create a sweep.  You can usually get this for under $7.  Remember to look for pure white as off-white or cream, while cool, will be more difficult to make pure white.

4. White Bounce Cards Made of Foamcore

While you’re at the art store/frame shop, ask them if they have any extra scraps of white foamcore you can buy.  You only need a piece roughly the height of your product, and about 3x the width. Typically, a letter size will work.  We like to bend ours in half, like in the above example, so that it will stand up on its own.  Its purpose is to bounce light back onto the product.  

5. Table

A standard folding table works best, and a width that’s between 24 and 27 inch wide is ideal.

6. Tape

Depending on the table you end up with, you can use tape or clamps to secure down your board so that it sweeps properly.

7. The Right Room

A room with windows next to a wall is perfect, and the bigger the window, the more light you’ll get in.

How to Photograph Your Product on a White Background

Alright, let's get into the step by step process for shooting your photos. 

Step 1: Set Up Your Table

Once you have collected your gear together, it’s time to set up your shooting area.  Place your table as close to the window as possible without intersecting the shadow from the windowsill.  You’ll want to start with the window 90 degrees to the right or left of your setup.  The closer you are to the window and the larger the window, the softer the light will be.  

Also, remember to turn off all other lights inside the room you’re shooting in as other light will contaminate the set.

Variations:

You can try rotating the set so the window is at 45 degrees to the set, or try it with the window straight onto the set for a different style of lighting.  Food photography is often shot with a window behind the setup and the camera shooting into the window for a more dramatic setup.  Another variation is setting up in a garage with the door open, it will have the same qualities of light as a window, just without the glass.

Tips:

You do not want direct sunlight hitting your set. Direct sunlight is harsh and looks bad on most people and products.

Step 2:  Set Up Your Sweep

There are a lot of ways to do this, but the ultimate goal is to have your mat board sweep from being flat on your table to being vertical.  You may need to roll up the board to help it reach that shape.
In my set-up, we placed the table against the wall and taped the sweep to the wall and the table. If you don’t have a wall, you’re going to have make something to secure the back of the sweep to. Some bricks or a wooden block would work well.

Place your product in the center on the flat part of the sweep and leave enough room to sneak your white reflector card in later. In this case, our product is a cool Skyrim & Doom toy available from Symbiote Studios. Thanks guys!

Step 3: Set Up Your Camera

1. Set Your White Balance (WB) to Auto.  
2. Turn your flash setting to off
3. Image Settings – set it to the largest quality settings:

• Set it to raw if you have it.  Most point and shoot cameras don’t have this setting, but if you do then use it.  This file is the largest file the camera can shoot, and utilizes the full bitdepth of the camera.  You will have to edit in a software that reads raw imagery though, like Photoshop, Bridge, Lightroom or Aperture.
• If you don’t have raw, set it to the largest JPG setting you have.  In my canon there are 2 settings to look out for:
  Size –  sometimes L (large), M- (medium) S- (small)  Pick large.  This setting determines the file size, and you almost always want to shoot it at its largest file size for optimal image quality.  You can always shrink an image once it is take but you can’t make it larger.
  Quality – S (Superfine), F (fine), N ( normal). You should always set it to Superfine.  This setting determines the number of pixels that are used on the camera sensor.  Not using all the available pixels will render a lower quality image.
• Set your ISO to 100:  The ISO controls the sensitivity of the sensor.  The higher the ISO the more noise there is.  Typically, the lowest ISO you can set your camera to is ISO 100, so set it there if you can.
• Exposure Settings
  
  Option A:  Set your camera to Manual (M)
  This is the best setting for this type of work because nothing will be moving or changing as you take the pictures.  In manual, change your f/stop to the highest number, which will give you the greatest depth of field.
  Preview the image on the back of the camera through liveview.  Everything is probably pretty dark, which is ok.  Now, switch to your shutter speed and rotate the dial to make it bright enough that the image is properly exposed.  Your shutter number should be going down.  For example, your number may go from 1/60th to ¼ .  These are fractions of a second that your shutter will be open for and as the number lowers it will let more light in.  Adjust this number until the preview of the image is correct.
  Option B:  Use Aperture Priority, Av…
  Your camera may not have this either, but if it does, change the f/stop to the highest number.  This should automatically adjust the shutter to be what the camera thinks it should be.  This may be wrong and you may need to use the exposure compensation dial to add light.
  Option C: Auto Exposure
  If you’re stuck in the all-auto world, there may not be much you can do.  Don’t fret, it’s not a big deal.  If you have an exposure compensation dial, you will most likely need to add +1 or +1 ½ to get the correct exposure.  If all you have is the running man images to choose from, try picking something like sunset. With the iPhone, just tap the area you want exposed properly.
  Use the Histogram on the back of the camera.  You’re looking for the slope to be closer to the right hand side like in the image above.
  Exposure Tip:  Don’t trust the image on the back of the camera, instead pay attention to the histogram to know if your exposure is correct.  The far right hand side is white, and left is black.  In the example image there is a little gap on the right hand side which means that there is no pure white.  Adjust the exposure till the part of the curve representing the white background is touching the right edge without going over.  In this example, you would probably need to add 1/3 of a stop, or one click for more light.
  
  
• Zoom In
  Cameras typically have an optical zoom and a digital zoom.  Don’t use the digital zoom as this will lower the quality of the image - it’s essentially just cropping the digital image.  If you have an optical zoom, try zooming in as far as you can without going digital zoom.  A longer zoom will remove distortion caused by a wide angle lens.

Step 5:  Set Up Your Product in the Middle of the Surface

Setting up your product is one of those things that seems simple, but can take time to position correctly.  If it’s a bottle, pay attention to keeping the label type centered.  Many times there are lots of tiny movements needed to get everything lining up perfectly.

Step 6: Set Up the Reflector Card

This simple white card is the single most important light modifier we have in our studio and we use it with everything.  The light will bounce off the card and fill in all the shadows.  How you position this card is matter of taste, so try it at different angles to the product.

Step 7:  Take the Picture and Evaluate

Once you take the picture, take some time and really look at what you’ve created.  This is where experience and education comes into play – what’s working, what isn’t working and what can you do to make it bettser.  Experiment with different ways of making your image better and over time you’re skills will naturally improve.

Upload your images onto your computer to get a better idea of how they look. The back of your camera is never very accurate. I suggest using Adobe Lightroom to organize all your images, and it can be used to do almost all of your editing except very advanced processes.  You’ll no doubt need to make some adjustments to the images to get them to look right.  

Post production software like Adobe Lightroom is very in-depth and we won’t have time to go into the details of using it because it’s just too much.

Step 8: Get Your Pictures Retouched

Once you’ve got a final image you’re happy with, it’s time to get it retouched. If you photographed your product correctly, the product should be exposed properly and your background a light grey.  It should look something like the un-retouched image above, and comparing it to retouched version shows you how important this step of the process actually is. 

The retouching tasks associated with on-white photography, for someone without a lot of training, can be tricky, and tend to be the weak link for most people trying to photograph products themselves.  So, instead of trying to teach you advanced Photoshop, I’m going to show you how to outsource it.
You’d be surprised how affordable this can be. From around $4 - $10 an image, you can have a professional retouching company improve your images for you.  Finding a good company can be tough, but one company that works best for consumers is Mister Clipping. They have an office in New York City, so you’re not trying to correspond with someone overseas, and they’re super-friendly.  

Their process is simple. Just create an account, upload your images and they’ll give you a quote.

For the directions write:

Make the background 255 white. Keep the hard shadow under the product and fade the long shadow. Enhance the product contrast and correct for color.  Spot product and fix damaged areas. Correct for distortion. Deliver Full resolution jpegs with no compression.

Step 9: Upload Your Pictures to Your Website

Once you get your images back, it’s time to upload them to your site.  

If you’re using Shopify you’re lucky, as it resizes the images for you. You have no idea how many websites I see where the image is the wrong size.  When this happens the image becomes skewed and stretched, ruining all the work you put into the image.  

With Shopify, completed images will be ready to load directly into your store, thanks to some handy software that prepares and resizes the images automatically for you. Some other CMS platforms, like Wordpress, also have this capability. 

Uploading Images to your Site for Non-Shopify Site Owners

If your online store doesn’t resize the images for you - perhaps you have a custom built site - you’ll need to crop your images to the correct dimensions and then resize the image.

Step 1:  Find Your Image Size

Images, particularly jpegs, do not enlarge well, so you want your final image to start as large as your camera will shoot it. If your camera shoots a 4416 x 3312 pixels size image than this means that you can shrink this image by cropping or down-resizing (shrinking it proportionally) to a smaller size. The not so technical industry term is down-rezing referring to lowering the resolution.  

To find your image size, right click on the image on your website to inspect the image.  You’ll see the dimensions in two areas. Each browser’s ‘inspect element’ is a little different.  I’m using Safari in the above image example.

Step 2:  Crop Your Images to Size in Lightroom

Chances are your images will need to be cropped to fit the exact dimensions required by your website, but thankfully this is something you can manage easily in Lightroom, but entering a custom crop size.

 

With your images in Lightroom, click the image you want to crop and go into the ‘develop’ menu.  Click where it says ‘original’ next to the lock icon, and click again on ‘custom’.  In ‘custom’, enter in the size you acquired from ‘inspect element’, and click ok to crop your image.  

Step 3: Export Your Images to the New Size Using Lightroom

Once you’ve cropped the image, it’s time to export the final cropped image for upload to your site.  Start by right clicking and selecting ‘export’.  The important part is how you set the file settings and image sizing:

• Image Format: Jpeg
• Quality: Between 70 – 90, 100 is typically not necessary.
• Colorspace: Srgb (anything on the web must have this colorspace set)
• Resize to fit: Width and Height – match your crop size
• Resolution: 72 pixels per inch (this is a standard screen res)

Everything else is up to you, or self-explanatory.  Press ‘export’ and upload your images.  

Conclusion

There you have it!  The simple ‘how to take your own products on white photography the easy way, without having to buy tons of gear and complicated lighting’ article.

If you try this, please post an image of your setup and a final image so everyone can see what you did.  We’d love to see the results!  

How to Find The Perfect Product to Sell

How do some small businesses like Diamond Candles (230,000+ Facebook Fans), Luxy Hair (708,000+ YouTube Subscribers) and DodoCase (Winner of Shopify’s Build-a-Business Contest) break through in their hyper-competitive niches and become market leaders in less than a few years?

One of the most important factors in creating a successful ecommerce business is knowing what to sell online. Finding the perfect product(s) to sell is often the most important step in creating a profitable and growing company.

For the past 2 years, I have been trying to answer the question - what is the perfect ecommerce product? To better understand what the perfect ecommerce product is, I had to determine common characteristics successful products and niches share.

By analyzing hundreds of successful and unsuccessful products and niches alike, I developed a comprehensive list of key metrics and criteria to evaluate new ideas against. 

What follows is my definitive criteria to evaluating your ecommerce product and niche.

Note: You will likely never find a product or niche that fits all the criteria below. Evaluating your idea against this list though will give you a better understanding of your chosen product/niche, helping avoid pitfalls and increase your overall chances of success.

1. What Is The Potential Market Size?

Choose a product and niche with a small but sufficient market size. Avoid niches that are too small with low keyword searches. For example, a product that caters to pregnant females between 25-40 years old is probably good. But a product that caters to pregnant females between 25-40 years old who like punk rock music will likely be too narrow. It will be harder to find customers, more expensive to acquire them and the small market size will limit your potential growth substantially.

 

Example: Shopify store Daneson sells luxury toothpicks. You can probably imagine that the market for luxury toothpicks isn’t massive. Being in a small niche like luxury toothpicks can be both a good and bad thing. The small market size will likely limit revenues, but if they do a great job of defining their target customers and acquiring them inexpensively, they can definitely own that niche. As a bonus, high-end toothpicks is a product that lends itself very nicely to garnering media attention.

Tools: Using Google’s Keyword Tool can help you determine search volume of chosen keywords. This can give you an idea of how many people are searching for your keyword terms and in return give you a sense of the market size. Combine that with realistic judgment and some Google searches on your interested niche and you should start to get an idea of your market viability. 

 

2. What's Your Competition?

What does the competitive landscape look like for your product? Are there no competitors, a few competitors or many?

If there are a lot of players in your niche, it can be a signal that the market has been validated. In order to break thought though, you will have to do something different to attract customer attention and build market share.

Example: Shopify store Luxy Hair wasn’t the first company to sell hair extensions online, the market was filled with competitors when they began two years ago. Right from the start they knew they had to do something different. Luxy entered the game with a different marketing strategy by offering value for free in the form of video tutorials on YouTube.

2 years and over 700,000 YouTube subscribers later, they are now one of the biggest online hair extension retailers in the world. 

 Tools: Of course, good ol’ fashioned Google and Bing searches will help you uncover current market players. Google’s Keyword Tool can tell you approximate search volumes for your chosen keywords, and also tell you how competitive they are (meaning how many other people/businesses are bidding on those words). Don’t forget, the more people bidding on your keywords, the more expensive they will be.

3. Is it a Trend, Fad, or Growing Market?

Make sure you understand to the best of your ability where your product stands. Does your product or niche fall into fad, trend, stable or growing market?

Example: A Geiger Counter is a personal device about the size of a cell phone that tells you the level of radiation around you. Cool niche market right?

With a quick Google Trends search, I knew instantly that I would have probably made a small fortune if I had been selling them in March of 2011 right after the earthquake in Japan. Likely if I tried to sell them now, I would probably sit on my inventory for a while. 

Tools: Google Trends will help give you the big picture whether something is a trend, fad, growing or stable market. If you see unexplainable spikes, try doing some further searching to see what the possible cause was of it. 

 

4. Can You Buy The Item Locally?

If your product is readily available locally there is one less reason for people to seek your product out online. Example, most people who want to buy a toilet plunger simply go to Walmart or their local hardware store. 

If your product can be bought locally, how are you going to differentiate yourself and convince people to buy from you online? Can you offer a better selection? Higher quality? Better price?

Example: Ellusionist sells gorgeous, high-end decks of cards for magicians and card players alike. Take a look at their products. Have you even seen something like them sold locally? 

5. Who Is Your Target Customer?

At this point you don’t need to go into extreme detail but you should be aware of they type of customer you would likely be selling to and their online purchasing capabilities.

If you have a product geared for teens, you should keep in mind that most don’t have a credit card to purchase online. 

Example: Clothes for Seniors

 offers adaptive clothing for seniors. One of their main target markets has a low level of technology and online commerce adoption. You'll need to tailor your entire online store to accomodate them.

Tools: If you find another company selling similar products, you can use Alexa to get information on their visitor demographics, which may help you define your target market better.

 

6. What Is Your Markup?

It is vitally important to take markup for a specific product into consideration before going too far into the process. This is important as there will be lots of other small fees associated selling your product that will eat away at your margins. Having a strong initial markup will provide you with the necessary cushion to absorb these variable costs.

Example: 

Lets look at an actual product to get a better understanding of why initial markup is so important. We will work with a Pet Pedometer - a little device you connect to your dogs collar to count how many steps they take.

This might be an interesting little niche - people are always willing to spend money on their dogs. But can you sell this product profitably?

I chose a potential selling price of $24.99 and got a cost per unit of $2 from a manufacturer on Alibaba. I added all the other approximate costs associated with selling the product into the spreadsheet below:  

 

You can see from this example how the small fees whittle away at your margin. In this case, a product that had an initial markup of over 1,200% ends up less than 100% when all is said and done. Of course, these are just approximates and you can cut costs significantly by handling fulfillment yourself and spending less on advertising. 

Tools: Try to find an example of the product you are interested in on Alibaba. Email a few manufactures to find out pricing and minimum order quantity (MOQ). From there, use Google to try to find others selling the same or similar product. How much are they charging?

Survey Monkey is a great tool for creating quick surveys to send out on your social networks to get a sense of what others would pay in your social circle.

When you begin to get more serious, you can mock up a quick website using tools like Weebly and actually try to attract a customer to put through an order to validate your price point. There can sometimes be a big different between what people say they would pay, and what they would actually pay, especially if all you solicit is friends and family members opinions.

7. How Much Can You Sell It For?

A price point between $75-$150 is general recommended as it minimizes the need to find a large number of customers to turn a decent profit and be able to give you some cushion for customer acquisition (marketing) costs.

Prices in excess of $150 tend to come with a lot more customer scrutiny. Potential customers will want and expect a lot more re-assurance. They will have more questions and in general will create a longer, more difficult sales cycle. 

Example: In our previous example with the Pet Pedometer we had a relatively low selling price of $25. Because of this, variable costs ate away at much of our profit, leaving us with a profit per unit of only $12.95. Lets say we switch out the Pet Pedometer for a new product called “Product X” and assume that “Product X” has a potential selling price of $100 (4x more than the Pet Pedometer). For consistency, I have also multiplied the other appropriate cost by a factor of 4x.

Because of the higher selling price we have much better margins 73% vs. 42% for the Pet Pedometer, and our profit per unit skyrockets from $12.95 to $76.75. 

 

8. Can You Offer a Subscription?

You will hear it time and time again: It’s much easier and less expensive to sell to a current customer, than to find new customers. A subscription-based business allows you to sell to the same customers many times over, automatically. There are generally two types of subscription-based ecommerce businesses, discovery and replenishment.

Examples: A discovery based ecommerce business like Quarterly Co. sends you something on a schedule but you don’t know what it is. It is picked by someone else but usually falls within the same category every period like beauty or fashion products.

Below is an example of a quarterly based subscription service of products hand-picked by Tina Roth Eisenberg (Swissmiss).

A replenishment based ecommerce business like Dollar Shave Club

 is based on sending you things that you consume and constantly need. In this case, shaving razor blades.

A subscription ecommerce model is especially important for a company like Dollar Shave Club because of the extremely low price of their products. Monthly blade subscriptions begin at $1 USD/month. If they didn’t sell to that same customer on an ongoing basis their business model would not work.

9. What is Your Product Size & Weight?

Product size and weight can have a big impact on your sales and bottom line. More and more customers expect free shipping these days. If your product is oversized and/or heavy, costly shipping can deter potential buyers. Did you know that shipping costs are the #1 reason for shopping cart abandonment?

Additionally, there will be added costs for shipping the products to you if you are working with an overseas manufacturer and it will increase warehouse costs if you choose to use a fulfillment warehouse.

Example: There is a popular oversized yoga mat company which sells giant workout mats. The product itself is a reasonable $99. Shipping to the USA is $25, Canada is $40 and the rest of the world is $100. For some, it would be hard for them to justify spending 40-100% more for shipping. 

Same goes for any large or heavy item. You may be very keen on selling iron weight sets, and perhaps you found a great supplier that will give you an excellent price - well, you need to take into account the increased shipping cost. There's only so much in shipping costs that a customer is willing to pay. 

10. Is Your Product Durable?

How fragile is your potential product? Fragile products can be an invitation for trouble. Breakable products will cost you more in shipping/packing costs and you are bound to have more customer returns and exchanges. Always keep in mind that even if it’s the shippers fault, it’s still the customers experience with your brand. You are ultimately responsible for that entire experience.

When you get to the stage of ordering samples, test them and push them to the limits. Leave them in a hot/cold environment, apply pressure, twist it, pull it, drop it, kick it. Don’t worry about breaking a few hundred dollars in samples. It’s more important you know exactly the quality of your potential product.

Example: Play Lashes lost over $2,000 worth of product due to a damaged shipment to themselves when the shipping company tried to fit the shipment into a P.O. Box that was too small. The hard plastic cases that were protecting the delicate product shattered on most of the units. Going forward they decided to have their fulfillment warehouse bubble wrap all orders. 

11. Is Your Product Seasonal?

Businesses with seasonal products can suffer from inconsistent cash flow. Ideally, you want to find a product that will show even demand year round. At the very least, you just want to be aware of seasonal demand fluctuations to plan accordingly.

Example: Christmas items like the Omega Tree Stand

 are best sold leading up to the the holidays. Take a look at the Google Trends report below.

Tools: Look for seasonal trends by looking at Google Trends for your product/niche keywords.

12. Does Your Product Serve a Passion or Pain? 

Products that sell best serve a passion, relieve a pain, or solve a problem. Customer acquisition (marketing) costs tend to be lower as well since customers are actively seeking out a solution as oppose to discovering it.

Example: Pro Teeth Guard sells custom mouth guards to prevent teeth grinding. People with this problem are likely to seek out a solution and find Pro Teeth Guard rather than needing costly advertising to draw them in. As JP, owner of Pro Teeth Guard pointed out in a Skype call, “It’s a much easier sale when someone is in pain and your product helps alleviate that pain.”

13: What Will Your Turnover Be?

It’s risky to have products that constantly need to be changed. You run the risk of not being able to sell your product before time of turnover. For example, clothing with seasonal colors or accessory products for the ever-changing smartphone and tablet market. Now of course there are plenty of successful businesses who cater to these markets, like iPhone and iPod cases, but it's important to realize how fast your product turnover may have to be. There are costs associated with entering a market like this.

Example: I got a chance to talk to the owner of Sutra Designs

 who is the designer/owner of a line of leather smartphone/tablet cases. He has been having difficulties building awareness of his brand and selling his product since launch.

Sutra Designs' biggest challenge is creating enough traffic to sell his inventory before the cases become obsolete due to new models of hardware. If he choses to design new products for new hardware models, he will be faced with additional costs for developing new designs and minimum order quantities by manufacturers. This will be perpetual and ongoing because of the niche he chose. 

 

14. Is it Consumable or Disposable?

As we already discussed, it’s easier to sell to existing customers than to new ones. Having consumable or disposable products makes this easier by essentially putting a time limit on the products life.

Example: Manpacks

sells products that generally have a lifespan like razors, condoms, socks and underwear.

15. Do You Need to Consider Perishability?

Perishable products are risky for a physical storefront, never mind for ecommerce. Since some perishable items require speedy delivery, shipping can cost quite a bit. 

For example, baked goods, meat, frozen foods, and anything else that needs to be kept cold or has a short expiration date all require special care when shipping to a customer. If you choose to sell perishable goods, you need to be prepared for the extra process and shipping costs associated with your product.

Example: The Yummy Tummy Soup Company makes delicious homemade soups and desserts that they sell and ship to customers through their ecommerce website. This model works well for them and they're doing very well, but it's not right for every ecommerce merchant. They need to prepare fresh soup every day and be very conscious of shipping times. 

 

16. Will There Be Restrictions & Regulations?

Before you dive into a niche or choose a product, make sure there are no regulations or restrictions, or make sure they are at least manageable. Certain chemical products, food products, and cosmetics can carry restrictions by not only the country you are importing your goods into but also the countries you are shipping your product into.

Some places to make a few phone calls are customs of the country you will be importing your product into, your warehouse if you plan on using one, and the food and drug administration if it’s a food/supplement product.

Example: Silky Polish

, a non-toxic, cruelty-free nail polish, was excited about their product and niche, but ran into problems when they learned it was considered 'hazardous materials' because of flammable chemicals in it. 

These regulations prevented them from having the product transported by air when they were importing it and when selling it to customers, preventing oversea sales. 

 

17. Is Your Product Scalable?

Many people don’t think about scalability when they first start out. It’s difficult to think about the future when you are still in the launching process but scalability should be thought of and built into the business model right from the start.

If your product is hand made or contains difficult to find materials, think about how to scale it if your business takes off. Will you be able to outsource manufacturing? Will your number of employees have to increase with the number of orders or will you be able to maintain a small team?

 

Conclusion

The product and niche you choose is at the very core of your business and one of the most important decision you will have to make. 

Although the perfect product may or may not exist, there are definitely ways to minimize risk by choosing a product and niche that have more going for it, than against it.

Using the above criteria as a guideline can help you better understand the product you are considering and increase your overall chances of success.