By Richard
Who is earning passive income from selling products online? And what can we learn from them?
Whether you want to create your own product, drop ship someone else’s (a pretty bad idea!) or create a marketplace-style online store, this is the ultimate collection of ecommerce case studies.
First up, let me just say that from my personal experience selling products online is the beeeeest way to make a six figure plus income from the Internet. Seriously.
In fact, ecommerce has become my #1 source of passive income. Something which I go into great detail about here, including my exact 10-step strategy for doing it.
As you’ll see in that article you no longer need to go through all the complicated nightmarish stuff of building your own online store and setting up a fulfillment system in order to start earning passive income from ecommerce.
Things have changed dramatically in the last few years thanks to one beautiful bald headed man based in Seattle. I heart you Jeff, I really do.
But even armed with my ecommerce strategy, readers still wonder…
“Richard, I get it. Ecommerce is where it’s at. But what the [insert expletive] should I actually sell online?”.
Well, to inspire you I have assembled this epic collection of case studies below.
I hope you find them freaking insanely inspiring as you think, well if that worked for them, maybe I could try something similar for the hair salon industry or the at-home power lifting crowd or whatever niche you’re interested in.
And if you want some really specific ideas of what products you could sell, then I suggest you dive into the top 100 product ideas PDF here (enter your email below the video to download). Not my resource, but one I very much love given the amount of research/blood, sweat and tears that went into making it.
Okay, enough chitter chatter, let’s get into some case studies!
1. Home Sushi Bar
Where can you go locally to find all things Japanese cooking and drinking related?
Can’t think of a place…of course not! This is soooo niche. Even trying to find a bottle of half decent sake at your local bottle shop is tough work.
That’s one of the big reasons I love this site – it sells products that are hard to find locally, at least hard to find in any kind of variety or range. Continue Reading >
2. Reader Dock
RD is a cool little company that makes it’s passive income online from selling docking stations for Kindle Fires! That’s it.
Verrrry nichey ecommerce idea and doing alright from the looks, with about 11,000 monthly uniques and $23,000 in sales for the first year. (PS This data is coming straight from the Million Dollar Blog Project leader board, ie straight from the horses mouth.)
Okay, so let’s analyze this case study and see what we can learn. Continue Reading >
3. Northern Parrots
Oh wow! If you thought that case study on chicken coops was immense, wait till you read about this…a site dedicated to selling all things parrot related!
Yeah, that’s right. Cages, food, toys, stands, feeding dishes, transport boxes, medicines and just about everything else under the sun…specifically for parrots.
This ecommerce idea is freaking genius. Continue Reading >
4. Taller Heels
Ever wonder how Tom Cruise can sometimes look a lot taller than he actually is?
Well, thanks to a combination of a special shoe and an inside ‘lift’ insole he can vary by about a foot in height!
This is the same technique that everyone from Robert Downey Jr to John Wayne have used in Hollywood, and it has caught on in the real world as shorter than average men try to gain a few inches so they can boost their confidence and expand the dating pool open to them. Continue Reading >
5. Datsusara MMA Martial Arts Gear
This was one of the first really cool case studies I read over at the Four Hour Work Week Blog, and what follows are the main points I took away from that and my own more recent look at their business.
I love this case study because it is really inspiring for those of you who see big ass problems with existing products you use, as part of say a hobby or a sport (which is pretty much everyone!) and want nothing more than to start a business in a niche you’re super passionate about.
So what does Datsusara actually do? Continue Reading >
6. Ready Set Go Kits
This site is awesome! It’s another great example of how easy it is to come up with an idea when you simply do some self-reflection on what topics you know a bit about.
The pair behind this site spent a few weeks thinking about all the areas they had been involved in over the years, from dancing to emergency rescue. Good.
Next they tried to whittle down the list by looking at which interests had products that could easily be drop shipped. This killed some ideas fast. Continue Reading >
7. My Chia Seeds
Christopher McDouglas’s book Born to Run made these little black and white seeds sound like magic freaking bouncing beans.
After becoming entranced by them, I decided to smash a bunch during my marathon last year and thanks to these little seeds – or the 3 aspirins I snuck into my running shorts – I made it past the finishing line.
Anyways, so we have a very niche, but very popular product here in Chia seeds. And since they’ve risen to popularity you’ll see 100,000s of searches a month in Google…368,000 monthly searches to be precise!! Continue Reading >
8. House of Rave
Neville’s drop shipping muse is focused on selling rave/dance products – think glow sticks, disco balls, strobe lights, and well pretty much all things that light up.
How freaking niche! And yet it’s home to 1000s of products. Isn’t it amazing how you can niche down so far but still have a ton of products for sale?
Also, doesn’t this remind you a little of the Parrots example above? ie you have a general market (party accessories) niched down to a specific audience (ravers). In fact, guess who Neville drop ships with…a party accessories supplier (a generalist). Continue Reading >
9. Curbside Air
A very interesting case study for us and, one I only happened upon recently when reading Andrew Youderian’s very kick assy blog on all things ecommerce, eCommerce Fuel.
So here’s the deal…
Two guys with full time jobs partner up to create an ecommerce business in their spare time. Continue Reading >
10. Lumo Back
What a cool little invention! Lumo Back is a little sensor of sorts that you strap to your lower back and it vibrates every time you slouch. And since awareness is the number one solution to posture problems, you got to say the 3 Stanford grads behind this have nailed it.
The product takes it up another level when you hook it up with their purpose-made iPhone App, which shows you how your posture tracked for the day.
Now admittedly, these guys had to spend some serious time upfront designing and manufacturing the product, but with all that done things are starting to look nice and passive. Continue Reading >
11. Pop Chart Labs
A very cool site that sells crazy cool looking infographics as posters, tshirts and more.
Weird right?! How can they make money?
But when you hit the site you’ll see how cool and engaging the products are. Definitely out of left field and definitely something I could see being immensely appealing to our hipster generation. Continue Reading >
12. Cookbook Village
I love this site as it’s a great example of niching down from a market where almost no one makes money (books) to a market where some profit still exists (cooking books).
Now if cookbooks in general was the niche here we’d have to conclude that the founders should be institutionalized, because who the f**k could compete with Amazon?
But that’s where the niche just gets nichier! Continue Reading >
13. pH Miracle Living
This site sells pretty much every product on Earth to help people achieve balanced pH levels in their blood – ie balancing alkalinity and acid.
It’s a niched up health approach made famous by Anthony Robbins, the motivation dude from 2am TV.
I don’t really care for the theory behind the actual health approach, but I do looooove the inspiration this idea brings… Continue Reading >
Editors note: I’m currently updating this page. But if you want to see the top 100 product ideas from my ecommerce mentors at ASM, you can download their PDF list here.
