A huge mistake I see a lot of small internet business owners make is not staying on top of their competition. There are many ways to stay up on them, but the most important would be the ones that are selling the exact products you are selling and the price that they are selling them for. If your competition has good rankings on the search engines, and are very visible then you need to make sure your prices are better if not at least equal.
Most internet browsers do not go past the first page of results, but they will look through every one of the results and do a price compare. They may then go to Ebay, or Craigslist or another "buying solution" (shopping type) site and see what product prices are at those places. If you are not on the search engines yet, but can be found on Ebay this is a good reason to know what the prices of the competition is so you can be able to compete. I just don't want you to "assume" that since you are brand new that you do not have anything to bring to the table. You have a lot to bring to the table if your prices are good, and you still can make some sales.
If you are new to selling products online, or drop shipping products then make sure you are doing these things when it comes to the competition:
- Research out the price of your top 5 -10 competitors on all major search engines (Google, Yahoo and MSN)
- Research out the competitions keywords on all major search engines.
- Research out the ads of the competition and see what ad makes you wanna click (and take good note of it).
- What are the big products they are featuring?
- Who is linking to them?
- Can you find out any supplier or manufacturer information from their website?
- Are they selling their products on Ebay (or any other off website place)? If so, what prices are they selling for?
If you can even do a little bit of research when it comes to the competition (especially prices) this will give you an edge that should help grow your business. It is always an advantage for you when you know what the competition is doing.