Just before Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, I discovered a method called “The Winning Products Screener”.

It’s a method that helps me find winning products easily, on a very low budget.

Before we learn the method, let me tell you about how I got started selling print-on-demand products using Facebook Ads.

People keep asking me about Facebook Ads. Most of them have the same problem: a tight budget. They’re nervous about spending money on Facebook Ads to find winning products.

Some of them have a bigger budget, and they still worry when their ads don’t result in sales. These people soon quit.

This is not necessarily the wrong thing to do. Different people have different backgrounds and different problems.

Some of us have to save money for their child or for themselves, especially in uncertain times like the current COVID-19 pandemic.

I totally understand that. It’s part of the reason why, in my blog, I rarely describe how to use Facebook Ads. It’s a difficult skill to teach.

This case study is actually the first course I’ve written about Facebook Ads.

I want to find a way to help people to become successful in the print-on-demand business by using free traffic first, because it’s basically stress-free.

Once they find products that sell reasonably well and have some money, they can easily scale these products using Facebook Ads.

Okay, that’s my history with Facebook Ads. Now let’s create your own journey. :)

Now let me introduce you to The Winning Products Screener.

This is the method I used to find coffee mugs that sold over 14,000 units for Mother’s Day and over 10,000 units for Father’s Day – using Facebook Ads.

Need proof? Check this out:

You’ll soon be able to use the same method to find winning products, even if you’re on a tiny budget.

I’ve divided my Winning Products Screener method into FOUR simple steps, so you can follow along and take action easily.

1. Find Quotes

For example, if you’re going to sell products related to Mother’s Day, find 200-300 quotes related to mothers.

Do this one or two months before Mother’s Day, so you’ll have enough time to find your winning products and scale them up using Facebook Ads.

I usually hire my virtual assistant to find quotes on Amazon, Etsy, Pinterest, and Google Images. Ask your VA to find as many quotes as possible, because you’ll have a chance to find quotes that people have never seen before.

Don’t let your VA find just 20-30 quotes, because those will usually be quotes that are easy to find. Most POD sellers are already using those quotes on their products.

Challenge your VA to find a ton of quotes, so they’ll discover new quotes you’ve never seen. More obscure quotes tend to sell well, because people have never seen them on products.

That’s the trick I use to find winning products bearing quotes that other sellers haven’t used yet.

Some of you might be asking: Why not just use obscure quotes on our products, since we could save costs by not creating designs?

Well, it’s not only obscure quotes that sell well. More general quotes also sell well. I’ve found that most general quotes haven’t been scaled through Facebook Ads yet.

For the past Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, two of my BIG winning coffee mugs displayed simple quotes that many sellers were already using on Amazon and Etsy.

But they hadn’t promoted their products through Facebook Ads. I was the first to scale these two products on Facebook Ads – and sell over 20,000 units.

So, find as many quotes as you can. You can make a lot of sales with them.

2. Create designs and products

The designs can be simple text designs in black and white.

In the screenshots of my mugs above, you can see that the blurry design on the mugs is only in black and white.

You don’t have to create beautiful or complex designs, which might cost over $30 each to create. Text-based designs that cost just $0.5 can sell well.

In fact, none of my winning products feature complex and beautiful designs.

Every time I’ve paid a designer $30 or $40 to create a beautiful design – the highest price I paid for one design was $200 – the designs proved difficult to sell.

Some people just don’t appreciate art. ;-)

So, I stick to simple text designs, which cost just around $0.4-0.5.

You should create at least 5-10 designs per quote.

Why? Sometimes people like the message on the product, but not the design. So, create many versions for each quote and see which versions people prefer and buy.

Then use these designs to create print-on-demand products.

In this training, I’ll focus on white coffee mugs, two-tone coffee mugs, shot glasses, and travel mugs. Most of my sales come from these products.

I think these sell well because they’re not too expensive and people can use them every day.

3. List Products in the Marketplaces

As I said earlier, we don’t have to launch a ton of ad campaigns to find winning products anymore.

Instead of using paid traffic, we can leverage free traffic from these two marketplaces to find winning products.

The good thing about Amazon and Etsy is that they send people to your product pages, and you know which items people purchase.

You do have to pay fees to use these two marketplaces.

There’s one fee for the Amazon Pro Seller Account ($39.99 per month). Etsy’s listing fees are $0.20 per product, every four months.

You can list as many products as you want on Amazon for just $39.99 a month. If you list 4,000 products on Etsy you’ll have to pay $800 every four months, or $200 a month on average.

You may think that spending $200 a month for Etsy is expensive. Many people are afraid to list products on Etsy because of the listing fees.

But NOT listing products on Etsy is the wrong thing to do, because there much less competition in this marketplace compared to Amazon.

You might feel okay when you list products on Amazon because you have to pay only $39.99 a month. But don’t forget that other people feel the same way.

Other people list lots of products on Amazon too because of the low fee. That’s what creates competition on Amazon.

Most of my members sell more products on Etsy.

Also, don’t forget that even if you have to pay $800 for four months on Etsy, you can list 4,000 products. Only ONE has to be a BIG winner.

When I found two of my winning coffee mugs for the past Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, I had only 3,000 products in my Etsy account.

That means I spent $600 to list 3,000 products on Etsy to find products that generated over $350K in sales after I scaled them using Facebook Ads.

Compared to spending $2,000 on paid traffic to find winning products – like I did in the past – my Winning Product Screener method requires much less money.

Don’t forget that you can make passive income from these two marketplaces while finding your winning products.

Most of the time, your passive sales will cover your expenses. So don’t be afraid to list many products on Etsy, even if it costs a bit.

4. Use Facebook Ads to promote the products that sell best

After you list products on Amazon and Etsy for a while, see which ones sell at least 5 or 6 times. Promote these products on Facebook.

Before Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, after I found products that sold often on Amazon or Etsy, I picked a few of them to promote with FB Ads. Around 70-80% of them were winning products.

Not all of them were BIG winners, but most of them made me between $500 and $3,000 in profit.

Two of them sold over 10,000 units. One of them was the second best-selling coffee mug on Amazon.

This is the beautiful part of the Screener Method. You can make money from both free and paid traffic.

Okay, what we’re gonna do next is take the ‘good-selling’ products we picked from the marketplaces and send them to Gearbubble.

We won’t send traffic directly to Amazon or Etsy, because we can’t track the product’s performance there.

Also, the product pages on Amazon and Etsy show related products from other people. We don’t want to pay for advertising to help people purchase another seller’s product, right?

So launch your products on Gearbubble, and send the traffic to the Gearbubble product page. (You can also use Shopify or WooCommerce if you want.)

I prefer using Gearbubble, because I don’t have to worry about fulfillment and customer service. Gearbubble will handle those jobs for me.

The conversion rate on Gearbubble product pages is really high, too. I don’t have to optimize or edit anything. I can fully focus on my ads, designs, and products.

Also, Stripe is not available in Thailand yet. I can’t use it to receive payments if my customers want to use a credit card. So it’s better for me to use Gearbubble to process the payment. My customers will have the options to pay by credit card or via PayPal.

If you want to promote items in your own shop, you can do it on Shopify or WooCommerce. There are no rules.

But if you want me to choose an option for you, I’d say go for the regular Gearbubble. It’s far easier, and there’s no need to handle customer service yourself.

Follow them – and find winning products easily!

In the next module, we’ll discuss how to use Facebook Ads to promote your winning products.