This is a cool tip and I have to give credit where it’s due before I dish it out to you. I first came across the idea while listening to an interview with Terry Dean, a very well known Internet marketer who has been doing the online money making thing for years. He’s also one of the only pure Internet marketers I’ve seen really embrace blogging as a tool to build an email list. You will see his blog has a pop-up opt-in form to join his list, which will definitely annoy some people but I suspect is converting well for Terry.
Now let’s look at this very underused method for finding topics and hot products using Paypal Shops to determine what people are spending money on. This is so easy it blows my mind it hasn’t been talked about before and that could be because people don’t know about it. I’m probably eroding someone’s secret advantage by publishing this one!
Paypal Shops
You probably know Paypal shops already. It’s the page you are taken to after you log out of Paypal that contains a list of online retailers that use Paypal to sell goods.
If you haven’t been there before, go visit Paypal Shops now.
Once there you will see this page which you can either search or browse categories to find stores. For the sake of this tutorial, I clicked the Sports category link in the left side navigation.
After clicking a category you are taken to a list of shops ranked by volume.
In the listings you will notice a number in brackets next to the name of the store. That number refers to the number of Paypal members who have paid that merchant. The higher that number, the more sales made.
The idea here is that you can browse categories and find the stores that make a lot of sales. This is free live information about what is selling well online. If you don’t understand how powerful that is, then you haven’t been reading my blog enough 
.
What’s even better is you can go and visit the stores making a lot of sales and see the exact products they sell and the website design and content they use to sell it.
How To Use This Information
The simple way to use this information is to find products that sell. What you do after that is entirely dependent on your strategy.
Here are some ideas for you -
- If you are a blogger you can use this information to find hot products to sell as an affiliate. You can write content to attract the buyers of these hot products or test these products on your existing blog readers.
Some of the students in Blog Mastermind complain of not knowing what products to promote on their blog, so Paypal Shops is definitely a great research point and conveniently breaks everything into categories. Some of the shops will have affiliate programs you can join, but if they don’t, simply find another retailer who sells the same product that does have an affiliate program or consider drop-shipping the product yourself.
- If you are a niche marketer you can develop content sites targeting a topic category to attract search engine traffic and use AdSense, brokering services like Chitika and affiliate products to monetize the content. This is a tactic for those thinking about making 50 sites that make $100 a month, rather than one site that makes $5,000 a month. Hot products are generally reflective of hot markets where search research is being done. If you want the traffic, find the hot topics and create the content.
- If you are keen to go deep in a subject and become an authority, but you need topic ideas and are concerned about profitability, Paypal shops can help. Use the data to come up with topic ideas and find the product categories that sell in large quantity.
- If you are looking to build an e-commerce store, you can use Paypal shops to find who makes money and then enter their market and do a better job. Most of the shops listed, despite their high sales figures, will under utilize the marketing methods available to them. Use your search engine optimization and direct marketing skills to become a dominant retailer.
- If going up against the existing competition is not your thing, consider creating a product or service to compliment and appeal to existing customers. The data in Paypal Shops can give you ideas and point you in the direction of customer categories with ample buyer numbers. Remember iPod customers buy a ton of iPod accessories each year too.
I’m sure you can come up with a bunch of your own ideas that go beyond what I came up with. Feel free to post your ideas as comment replies.
Knowing what sells online is powerful information. Most Internet marketers are very good at one or two techniques and go from market-to-market applying these techniques. If you have skills in SEO or PPC or blogging or social marketing, Paypal Shops can show you what people spend money on and thus what traffic to seek using your skills.
Yaro Starak
Mining Paypal
Hi Yaro,
I wasn’t even aware of Paypal Shops existence before reading your post but I can see it’s a great market research opportunity.
I suppose it’s similar to the Clickbank ratings except it also gives you information on physical products too. A real goldmine of live sales info, thanks for sharing.
Graham
Thanks Yaro – I’d breezed by that page several times and never paid much attention.
The fact they show you the numbers is as you say a gold mine of info.
You can pull info on whats hot from eBay and amazon as well, but not the numbers at the top level.
ive heard about it but never looked into it thanks i’ll deff check it out
Another useful article Yaro.
That is such a good little tool to see what and who is really selling….I’m honestly a bit surprised that they do that! You would think it might give some of the pre-existing, more dominant companies an even bigger upper-hand.
That is really social proof at work!
If I was selling on Ebay, Paypal
Shops would definitely be the first place I would look to research my product.
Keep up the great articles!
Yaro,
I actually didn’t know of paypal shops, so thank you for that. You pretty much summed up the major ways people can use that info for profit. I would probably go into making niche youtube sites, using nothing but video. I know of a script that could make these for you in minutes using your major keywords. Just a thought…
Toki
I had not seen PayPal shops myself either. It is a great resource for sure. I will definitely try this technique.
Yaro,
Thanks for the tip! I have actually never stopped to look at Paypal shops before. I will definitely have to look into it more.
Thank you so much for the tip, Yaro! Very useful, and explained extremely well.
I think that market research is perhaps the one area that bloggers (and other Internet content types) spend way too little time on, on the average. I know there are some providers of this sort of information out there, but wading through the crap from the genuine stuff is more work than most of us care to engage in.
I know that my first two blogs would have been very different, had I taken the time to do a little bit of this sort of work. Still, the Dungeons and Dragons Blog is a labor of love, and I’m sure I’ll continue to use it long after it’s served any monetary purpose.
At any rate, sorry for the rambling response!
Paypal has always been good to us. Despite a lot of the knocking that goes on we’ve used them without issue for several years. Paypal shops is an interesting concept which could be a good adjunct to existing sites if they do not already have paypal capability. Even if they do have Paypal integration the availability of the stores may provide additional outlets.
Wow yaro this is one of the most valuable pieces of information that you have posted. Intelligence on what sells, and how much of it sells is a very powerfull tool.
Thanks a (potential) million dollars for sharing!
Steve
Thanks Yaro,
It’s one of those things that was sitting right there in front of our faces but we hadn’t realized the significance of it. A quick and easy way to research what’s popular, and it’s free!
What a crazy coincidence. About the time this was posted, I was online browsing through PayPal shops! I’ll admit, it wasn’t for the same reason as you, Yaro, but I like your reason better. I hadn’t thought about using those sales numbers before, but it sure makes a lot of sense. Thank you, thank you!
Good find Yaro ! Never heard of paypal shops before…and very ‘brave’ of you to write something about this in public. Like you said, most of them who know about it would keep it that way.
Dave
Hey Yaro – firstly, damn you!
I’ve been focusing a lot on data/trend mining and this is just one of the tools I have come across (by sheer luck).
I follow trends like a hawk and basically PayPal Shops is a delight – in the categories box, click “view all” and I can spend many hours in the business area – which is my market.
The thing to remember though: do not rely totally on it. Grab some ideas and do the normal keyword, forums, AdWords research to validate if it’s a goer or a no-go.
Excellent post, Yaro. Similar approaches also work with eBay & Clickbank.
Yaro,
It seems there are many hidden treasures to use for research. Just as I am being reminded in, “The Medici Effect” if you open up your mind, think outside of the box, look beyond conventional and traditional you are likely to have better results. Thanks for sharing.
Wow cool post, i used to do some online shopping in ebay before it also had some rep system, but this paypal score is lot more safe.
Thanks
An interesting post… don’t think I will try it though, there are just too many internet marketing things to do!
Here’s another idea: if you are a web designer or developer like myself and building an ecommerce website for a client, you can charge your client premium bucks for digging out such info
nice review
I wasn’t even aware of Paypal Shops existence before this post but I can see it’s a potential market research opportunity.Do you think their would be challenger for Amazon ?
Yaro,
It appears that many of us did not know of this feature in Pay Pal. Thank you for the great information.
Excellent tip … and yes a aheadslapper, becuas elike some others who owned up to it, I’ve been past that Paypal page thousands of times and took no notice. Wasn’t it Churchill who said, “Many men stumble across opportunity, but most pick themselevs up and move on, taking no further notice?
Years ago, before the Internet, there was a loosely held ‘secret’ of the guys who marketd books and correspondence courses in ‘starting your own business’. get the current issue and ayear-old back issue of a magazine that covers something you like … see which businesses are still advertising a year later … thay are the businesses making money.
Dang you Yaro !! I was just about to do a post about using paypal stores to find niche markets for a blog as part of a series of posts I am doing on finding niche markets. So I’ll just link to yours instead, great post, couldnt have done it any better!!
Cheers and Beers
Shane
Ottawa senators make the playoffs !!!
seriously this is cool. I’ve never thought about it before…THANKS BRO!!
Great info Yaro!
Definitely Paypal shop is a good place to search for hot products!
In all these years working online and with paypal i never noticed this, thanks for the info!
Thx a mil Yaro – As usual you come up with some fresh idea. This is indeed a very powerful way to look for new niches and hot products. I’m busy looking up some products now and will use it in the future.
Keep well
Maggie
This is great information!! I never thought about using Paypal Shops as a way to locate products and sales volume. This have definitely opened my eyes to another way to promote as an affiliate.
Hi Yaro / Friends
i would like to know, whats the exact link for Paypal shops, where in i can find the
hot topics and products.
thanks and regards,
Mirza
I don’t believe that feature works anymore.. I tried it and nothing, let me know if you found out how to use it. Thank you
Thank you so much for the tip, Yaro! Very useful, and explained extremely well.
i have been looking for ways to get market niche that i enter and you flood me with great idea where i can such information..
Thanks man