ონლაინ მაღაზია / Online Store: Pick Your First 3 Products to Test

You have already picked your niche. You have twenty tabs open in your browser, every product looks equally interesting, and the decision has been postponed for a second week. This is the most common place where opening an online store stalls — not on the technology, not on the money, but on the choice itself.

This article is not about testing. Testing is a separate job and it has its own article. Here we answer one earlier question: how to get from twenty candidates down to three, before you spend a single tetri. In the guide this step sits between choosing a niche and building the shop.

Why three, and not one or twenty#

One product gives you nothing to compare against. If your only candidate fails the test, you cannot tell whether the product was bad, the photo was weak, or the price was off — because there is nothing to hold it up against. One failed test, in that situation, is neither an answer nor a conclusion.

Twenty products are worse still. You do not have serious attention for all twenty: not the time, not the budget, not the photographs, not the descriptions. The result is that all twenty get uploaded superficially, all twenty sell badly, and you draw the wrong conclusion — "this niche does not work" — when in reality not one of the products was given a fair chance.

Three is the number at which comparison appears but attention is not yet scattered. Three products can demand a decent page and decent photographs each within one week — and that is still possible for one person working alone.

Step 1: collect a long list and do not filter it yet#

The first step is deliberately uncritical. Go through supplier catalogues, the social accounts in your niche, and your own memories of things you looked for and could not find here — and write 15 to 20 candidates into a single file. Do not evaluate them, do not decide, do not delete anything. Just write them down.

This order matters. When you collect and filter at the same time, you never build a long list at all — you start thinking about the first five products and then choose from those five. A choice only becomes a good one when the set you are choosing from is wide enough to be worth choosing from.

Next to each entry write down only two things: the supplier's price and the link. Everything else belongs to the next step.

Step 2: run the list through five filters#

A filter is not an evaluation. A filter is a yes-or-no question that either leaves the product on the list or throws it off. All five of them work quickly, and together they will bring 15 to 20 candidates down to about five.

Filter 1 — the margin survives three costs#

A product stays on the list if the gap between its selling price and its purchase price survives three costs: shipping, the payment fee, and advertising. Whatever is left after those three is your profit — and if that is close to zero, the product does not deserve a test, however much you happen to like it.

You do not need to do the arithmetic by hand: enter the purchase price, the expected selling price, and the shipping cost into the margin calculator and you will get your answer. The same thing is worked through at length, with numbers, in the course lesson on margin and unit economics.

Filter 2 — size, weight, and fragility#

A large, heavy, breakable product is the most expensive lesson a beginner can buy. Shipping eats the margin, a damaged item eats the profit, and the return journey is paid for in both directions. Pick your first three from the products that are cheap to send and that do not break on the way.

Filter 3 — one photograph explains what it is#

If a product needs a paragraph before anyone understands it, keep it out of your first three. Your first sales happen on social media, where you have one frame and two sentences. A complicated product that has to be explained is better left until your shop already has an audience that trusts it.

Filter 4 — a specific problem, not a general wish#

"A nice thing" is not yet a reason to buy. "A thing that frees up space in a small kitchen" already is. A product whose problem you cannot name in a single sentence always turns out expensive in advertising — because the buyer is left to work out for themselves what they would need it for.

Filter 5 — it is not available on every corner#

If the same item is available in the shop down the street and in every shop window, the only thing you can compete on is price — and a price war is a war a beginner loses. Take your first three from the products that are not easy to find here, but where demand is already visible.

Step 3: score whatever is left#

After five filters you are left with somewhere between five and eight products. Choosing three out of those should no longer be a matter of taste — ask every one of them the same four questions and give each answer a score from 1 to 3.

The four questions give you a total between 4 and 12 points. Sort the list by score and the top three are your candidates. The scores are not objective truth — their job is to write the decision down, so that two weeks later you can remember why you chose exactly these three.

Step 4: the three should differ from each other#

The most common mistake at this stage is that the top three turn out to be essentially the same product in three variants. The test then gives you nothing to compare: all three will do well or all three will fail, and you will end up with one conclusion instead of three.

So put the difference into the top three deliberately. Let the first be the safest, cheapest, most self-explanatory one — the one everybody in the shop immediately understands. Let the second be the most distinctive, the one that is not easy to find here. Let the third be more expensive, at a higher margin, with fewer orders expected. That way, a week later, you have three different answers instead of one answer repeated three times.

What should never go into the three#

Some categories may be good later, but they do not belong in a first set of three:

• A product that needs a warranty and servicing. Post-sale work is for when your process is already in place.
• Anything used on the mouth or the skin. The responsibility is high, and a new shop does not yet have the trust for it.
• A copy of a brand. A new shop will not survive it — neither in the buyer's trust nor in the account itself.
• Something only you like. The most expensive product is the one defended by your taste alone.

This article deliberately does not touch taxes or customs clearance — that is a separate topic and it demands a different kind of precision.

How long the choosing should take#

Three or four hours, in one sitting or split in two. It needs no more than that, and more does it harm: a choice that stretches over two weeks never turns into testing, because every day brings a new candidate and the list grows back to twenty.

Write down the date by which you will have finished your three, and on that day close the list with whatever you have. An imperfect set of three that made it to a test always beats a perfect set of three that is still sitting in a file.

Where choosing ends and testing begins#

Three chosen products are not yet your range — they are your hypothesis. The next step is to check them: order a sample, build the page, spend a small budget, and write the result down. That process is broken into steps in the product testing article, and in the course the product testing lesson covers the same work more briefly. To place this step in a wider plan, see the first 90 days plan.

Once you have your three, building the shop is technical work rather than a decision. On Sellit a page for each of the three products is assembled on a ready-made template — the commission on sales is 0% on every plan, and you can try it free for 30 days without entering a card (source: sellit.ge/llms.txt).

One table worth keeping#

Keep the file you used to choose this set of three — the long list, the result of the filters, and the scores. A month from now, when you already know which product worked and which did not, you will come back to that file and see which filter was right and which one was not.

That is exactly the difference between one lucky result and a process. A first set of three rarely gives you the final answer; what it gives you is a second set of three, chosen better than the first.