Speaker A
Finding that one winning product is what takes you from rock bottom to finally hitting that six-figure store. But as you probably already know, finding your first real winning product is far from easy. You know, oftentimes you're wasting weeks researching and burning hundreds, if not thousands of dollars while testing. That used to be me six years ago when I was first getting into dropshipping. And honestly, nothing really changed for me until I finally learned these five principles of winning product research. And after learning these, I was able to scale multiple stores to six and seven figures like clockwork. And that led me to sharing them with others. And that led to over eight figures in client results. So today I want to pass on these five principles to you so you can find your first six-figure winner in 2026. Principle number one, the six criteria of a winning product. So before you go out there researching, you need to know what a winning product actually looks like. And in my experience, every single winning product that I or my clients have scaled up checks these six criteria first. The first criteria, and probably the most important, is that the product has to solve a real problem that is connected to what I call a deep pain. And look, you might be like, yeah, no shit, Nathan. I've heard of this before. I get you. You know, the product has to solve a problem. But the reason you haven't found a six-figure winner yet is because no one's explaining to you what the hell this actually means. So look, I know there's a lot of people out there selling random gadgets and cute little toys as dropshipping products. And while that can work, it's not necessarily a good strategy for somebody who's just starting out. Because when you sell a random item that doesn't solve a true, deep pain, like a fidget toy or some cute lamp, you're essentially trying to convince someone that they need something that they have literally never thought about before. And it's hard to do because there's no existing desire to buy that thing. There's no deep pain. Now look, there are two types of deep pain, physical and emotional. Physical pain is stuff like back pain, neck pain, joint pain, you know, really any type of pain that someone can feel in their body. Now emotional pain or psychological pain is stuff that affects a person's confidence and their self-image, you know, like bad skin, hair loss, feeling overweight, feeling low status. You see, physical pain works because people are actively searching for solutions. Skin care and hair care, these are multi-billion dollar industries. Why? Because people with acne or hair loss are deeply insecure about it. It affects their confidence. You know, I recently became a new pet owner and I realized that the pet niche works the same way. It's super emotional. You know, people love their pets like family. They'll spend crazy amounts of money just to keep them healthy and comfortable because seeing their pet in pain causes deep emotional pain. So you need to become an expert at identifying and targeting those deep pain points in the market. And this goes far beyond just feeling or looking good. I recommend studying Maslow's hierarchy of needs. This one pyramid will give you a much deeper understanding of what desires people tend to have at all different levels of comfort and security. So next time when you're looking at a product, first ask yourself, is this the kind of product that solves a deep pain? And if the answer is yes, you have a very good foundation for your first six-figure winning product. But even if you get this first criteria right, if you get this second one wrong, you'll fail before you even start. And the second criteria is picking a product in what I call profit margin green zone. So look, I can tell you firsthand from experience that people mess this one up all the time. They find a product for $15, they sell it for 25, they start making some sales, you know, they get super excited and then they check their bank account and realize that they're actually losing money on every single order. They thought that $10 gross profit was good, but after marketing fees and subscriptions, that $10 quickly becomes negative five. So in order to avoid this, be sure to check if you can sell your product for at least three times the price of what the supplier is selling it for. So if you find a product for, let's say $15, that means you need to sell it for at least 45, unless you're selling high ticket or, you know, you're focusing on building a long-term brand and you already have thousands of dollars to deploy, but that's a conversation for another day. You need to be selling at a 3x markup because fulfilling and acquiring clients costs a crap ton of money. You've also got payment processing fees, subscription fees, customer service returns, refunds, chargebacks. And when all that adds up, you're not going to be left with very much if you don't follow this rule. So it's very simple, but really important that you have this sorted out from day one. If you can't sell a product for three times the price, skip it. It'll be really hard to reach that healthy 25 to 30% profit margin that we're all looking for. Now, the third criteria is often so overlooked, it's not even funny. I've seen people burn their businesses to the ground by not following this step. And it's going to sound so simple, but the product needs to be lightweight. I don't want to ship refrigerators or car parts, furniture, really anything heavy, because shipping costs on heavy products will eat into my margins like crazy. So ideally, the product has to fit in a shoe or smaller. Small, lightweight products keep the shipping costs low and your profit margins high. This is really a non-negotiable if you're just starting out. The fourth criteria might be somewhat controversial and some people might not agree with me here, and it's that the product needs to be evergreen. So here's what that means. If you sell beach toys, you'll be scratching your head when winter comes around and you're sitting there with zero sales. No income, no cash flow, nothing. Just waiting around for summer to come back. And here's the thing. There's already so many variables that you have to deal with when you're, let's say, running ads or even creating organic content. The algorithm changes, competitors, creative fatigue. You don't need another variable to stack on top of all of that by picking a seasonal product. You want to have a product that sells well all year round. And you can check this by going to a website called Google Trends and searching for key terms relating to your product. Then what you want to do is zoom out at least five to 10 years so you can see the bigger picture and make sure that there's a steady increase in interest over time. For example, if you search the terms neck pain, you'll see a beautiful steady graph generally trending up. And that means that people are always interested in these types of products, no matter the weather. But what you don't want to see is a graph that has one huge jump and then a massive dip down like this graph of the term fidget spinner. So just please pick products with consistent demand year round. Now the fifth criteria is something that will help you build a real brand in the future and not just build pump and dump stores all the time. And that is that the product you pick needs to have upsell potential. You want products that you can cross-sell and upsell to the same customer. If you're selling blue light blocking glasses, the perfect upsell for you will be a glasses case or maybe even a cleaning kit. Let's say you're selling skincare. Well, in this case, the perfect upsell would be more skincare products that you can just build into a routine. I always like to say that you always want to begin with the end in mind. You don't want to try to find a product that sells and then try to figure out upsells later down the line. You wanna kn











