Being impulsive, or spontaneous, or flying by the seat of your pants has its place.
Just rarely in business.
Reason, analysis, decision leads to better, more secure business. It won’t be as susceptible to falling off the rails or of sustaining major losses.
Sure, intuition has a place. But intuition that is based on knowledge and experience, not just a gut feel.
A case in point is the selection of a profitable product.
To be profitable, an item needs to sell for more that its total costs.
First. It has to sell.
Second. Its total costs must be less than the selling price.
This seems like it should be obvious. Maybe it is. But often actions don’t prove it so.
In searching for a product, you might think, “This is cute.” or, “I think this would sell really well.
Maybe so.
But the odds are not in your favor.
Even the giant consumer products companies strike out more often than they succeed when introducing a new product. And this is with giant budgets and Testing. They test everything about a new product.
- Product design
- Product features
- Product name
- Product packaging
- Graphics
- Interior packing
- Color
Then they cobble up several versions of the product with variations on these factors. And they test-market each variety and analyze the results. Then they make adjustments and test again.
They do not commit millions of investment dollars on a single, untested idea. They research, test, and test some more.
So it is with your new products, bundles, or listings.
Don’t invest in a large quantity until you’ve tested and found out how well it sells, how the Title wording works, how much advertising is required to reach profitability.
Start a new product with 6-8, 3-5, less than a dozen. Expect to lose your entire investment while you test and prove that it will sell, or you prove that it won’t.
Then you can decide on ordering more.
The worst result is to have a thousand of some item that has never been tested, and that has never sold one, let alone that thousand.
Test, test, test, and then test some more.
John L