Product Selection is Hard? 90% of Global Selling Beginners Aren't Selecting Products, They're Rolling Dice

Many beginners deeply understand the importance of product selection. Yet they tirelessly seek shortcuts to bypass this crucial step. It really frustrates me.

Common "Wrong" Mindsets

"Give me a list/tool, I want to see what products sell well, and I'll sell them too."

This is almost the first pitfall most beginners fall into. First, this method might allow you to make a few or even dozens of sales through social media traffic tactics (if you have decent skills in other areas like store building, social media引流, etc.). But trust me, this is not a sustainable product selection approach. Moreover, for beginners who start with this mindset, even if they lazily skip the most important step, they will later be unable to overcome other business difficulties and barriers due to laziness.

The reasons are simple:

1. A public list that you can see—can't the other 99 beginners see it too? Can't the other 20 experienced sellers see it? Isn't it possible that experienced sellers have already captured and started acting on insights from their usual social media browsing?

   This is why I often say: learn from global selling case study bloggers in terms of insights, but stay away from them in terms of action. Their case studies are always so flippant—this person makes 100k daily doing xxx, that team of 3 people sells xxxx and makes millions annually. Such eye-catching titles naturally bring them tons of traffic. Enchanted readers flock like they've found a gold mine, getting trampled. Finally, some don't believe it and go back to pay for blogger's knowledge. Great, blogger has closed the loop, leaving you alone in the wind.

2. Setting aside everything, since we both agree product selection is so important, how could such an important step be achieved simply through a product selection list? Doesn't that seem strange?

3. Think about it—how did it become #1 on the list? It's because it sells well. So tell me, if it's already selling so well, what advantage do you have as a newcomer entering this market? Competing on supply chain to lower prices?

Finally, I try to辩证 with readers: "Online bloggers all say to copy those who get results! These products all have good results!"

As I mentioned above, with certain capabilities, you can get short-term results with these products. But it's definitely not your long-term solution or a sustainable business model. You can use this as a starting point, but you must keep thinking and gradually find your own small but beautiful niche.

"Then I'll just keep copying new hot products! Infinite replication!"

Of course! Copy more, compete on lower prices more, use quantity to trigger quality, and eventually form your own methodology. This is certainly a strategic approach. The premise is that you need to persist—not every product you copy will sell immediately. Can you endure the psychological pressure and physical torment of day after day of折腾 with little results after copying and advertising? (Of course, many global selling companies do exactly this—they can hire workers to do such repetitive mechanical work.)

"Can I do pet products? Can I do clothing? Can I do 3C?"

Are you selecting products or rolling dice for luck? So you just read the first-level product categories and ask in groups once? Then you feel you've worked hard, can't get an answer, and think cross-border is too hard, no one helps you, group friends and admins are too stingy, cross-border e-commerce is all about割韭菜.

Without any logical thinking, why start a business doing cross-border e-commerce? At the very least, if you ask about second-level categories, I'd think you have some thinking going on.

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My Preferred Product Selection Mindset

Setting up a shield in advance—for individual sellers, product selection is a highly personal business activity. Everyone's thinking style, personality, values, and business understanding are different, leading to different product selection approaches. Therefore, this is not a multiple-choice question but an open-ended essay question.

1. The Most Basic Mindset: 2W1H Theory

• Why (Most Important): Through my personal life insights/friend sharing/online information/etc., I believe the xxx category can meet certain people's needs/has爆品 characteristics/etc.
• What: I want to choose a xxx category xxx product, what characteristics does it have to meet the above why.
• How (Hardest): Through xxxx (how to solve sourcing) + building an independent store + Google SEM/TK organic traffic/active and continuous private domain/etc. strategies, to attract this part of customers and achieve conversion.

Practice (My模拟 Path, Not for Real Reference)

I usually observe that including me and my pet-owning friends, we often worry about cats and dogs scratching our sofas with their 3 claws; at the same time, because cats and dogs often rest on sofas, some cleanliness-obsessed family members feel there are bacteria on them.

Therefore, I want to choose a pet x home category, similar to a human-pet shared sofa cover product. Due to special materials, it can be anti-scratch, antibacterial, easy to disassemble, machine washable, and I'll set up a sniffing pad on the sofa cover to let pets decompress and reduce separation anxiety. Thus truly solving the pain point of pet owners' sofa scene pet keeping.

I achieve this by lightly customizing existing human home sofa cover products, then building an independent store. Since cat and dog videos get good traffic, I hope to mainly attract customers through shooting various video social media引流 methods to achieve a closed loop.

The above is the most basic product selection logic.

Some beginners might think: Damn, it's so f***ing simple. Of course, in principle, it is indeed simple. But the simpler and more basic things are often the hardest and most effective.

Where does the difficulty lie?

1. You need to be a life observer, do you usually have insights? This is the biggest bottleneck blocking 90% of Chinese cross-border beginners, because I know too well that many friends around me mostly have boring lives, nothing to talk about, let alone cross-border e-commerce entrepreneurship. They're socially awkward, silent in school, can't fit into small circles at work. No hobbies, no new discoveries.

   Think about it—if lululemon's founders completely didn't do yoga, didn't love fitness, didn't observe the pain points between women's lives and exercise, didn't observe the development of women's consciousness, how could they create such a brand?

2. At the same time, it involves multiple specialties: a product developer who deeply understands user needs and can find ways to solve them through products, a brand positioning expert good at marketing packaging, a market operator who understands traffic and operations. And so on.

2. A Formula for Reverse Validation

After selecting the category and product, ask 10 ordinary friends and family around you if they know this product and if they use it in daily life.

Although somewhat counterintuitive, the logic is simple—remember, the only survival rule for individual sellers is small but beautiful. So first learn to find small, then gradually become beautiful.

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Summary

For long-term global selling individual sellers, products are definitely not selected, but obtained through the complete logic of洞察 user needs, product development, and brand positioning.

What if you just can't select!

The above is a刻板 textual representation summarized. The actual product selection process may not be so rigid at all. For many people, it might just be a 10-second flash of inspiration, and they don't even realize it's a product selection环节; but for others, they might not be able to come up with anything even after 3 months.

For those who can't come up with anything, I have the following suggestions:

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