9+ High Margin Products that Generate Easy Sales in 2024

11/29/2022

High-margin products - if you're not selling them already, you need to start.

Seriously, with the cost of just about everything on the rise, high margin products are must. They give you the wiggle room you need to keep churning out solid profits and keep your business thriving.

But the problem is that high margin products aren't always easy to find. That's why we put this post together. To save you hours of googling products, looking at graphs and perusing the depths of AliExpress.

Read on to learn about our top high-margin items to sell. Plus, we'll also cover a secret strategy to find your own best-sellers.

So, if you're tired of being squeezed from every angle, if you're sick of dwindling margins after everything else is paid, let's jump in and start selling some of these profit-pumping gems!

What are High-Margin Products?

First, let’s talk about what high-margin products are. This is probably pretty obvious to most folks - however it's always useful to have a working definition.

There's no hard and fast rules when it comes to exactly what qualifies as a high-margin product. However, in retail circles, it's generally accepted that anything with a profit margin above 30% is deemed to be high margin.

Of course, this is a ballpark figure, but for the purposes of this article, let's say that anything that would sell with a margin below 30% will be automatically excluded.

If you're feeling a little less than impressed about such a conservative 30% definition, don't worry. Many of the products we'll cover have margins that go soaring above the measly 30% mark.

But before we get to the big reveal of said products, let's talk about why you should focus on selling high margin items in the first place.

Why Online Sellers Should Focus on High-Profit Margin Products

High-margin products should be your store’s primary profit-makers, here’s why.

When you sell a low-margin product, you’re often barely breaking even.

Add on shipping costs, the price of any staff, and factor in any store overhead - Low margin products just don’t cut it.

Low margins make it effectively impossible to grow your ecommerce store with consistency. You’ll have to use most of your profit from sales to offset overhead costs.

And all of that’s before we even consider the cost of acquiring each customer and paying yourself a livable salary afterward.

That’s why high-margin products are game changers.

When you sell a high-margin product, the profit covers overhead, customer acquisition, shipping, wages, and then some.

You can think of your margin as a safety net.

The larger your safety net, the more space you have to work with and the bigger risks you can take to expand your business.

When you’re working with tight bottom lines and a small net, you're walking a tightrope with no net underneath. Any changes you make to the business will come with much more risk of a nasty fall (in profit).

The Challenges of Selling Products with High-Profit Margins

All of that isn’t to say that selling high-margin products is a walk in the park.

As with anything, it still comes with a few challenges.

The first challenge is that you’ll need to invest the time and resources to find those high-margin products.

Finding high-margin products can be difficult because many of the best ones are already far too saturated.

Not only that, but with higher margins (usually) comes higher prices. Selling an item with a high price point is usually more challenging than selling a cheaper one.

Luckily, your larger safety net is a good way to offset that difficulty, since you’ll be able to invest more cash into acquiring each customer.

With all of that being said, how do you find a high-margin product? And what makes a good example of one?

What's the Difference Between High-Margin Products and High-Ticket Products?

High-margin and high-ticket are similar concepts, but they aren't quite interchangeable.

High-ticket refers to the end price of a product. If the product costs a few hundred bucks, then it’s a high-ticket item.

On the other hand, high-margin refers to the profit a merchant generates compared to the price they invested in a product.

Selling a product for $4 that only costs a merchant $0.50 would still be a high margin, but it wouldn’t necessarily be high-ticket.

What Makes a good high Margin Product to Sell?

High Quality Products

The first requirement is great quality control. It doesn’t matter how much you sell an item for if a customer returns it in the end.

To reduce customer returns, ensure that any product you pick is well-built and reliable. Usually, you can find reviews and testimonials from other merchants on your wholesaler’s website.

As a rule of thumb, until you have enough funds to offset the risks, don’t invest in products that don’t have a proven track record yet. Stick to the ones that aren't oversaturated, but have still been proven by other merchants already.

Fast Shipping

Next, pick a product that can be shipped quickly. If you’re dropshipping, this usually means contacting the supplier directly to make sure they can arrange quick order fulfillment.

For businesses who keep their own inventory, this means streamlining your own fulfillment process and keeping enough inventory to handle all expected orders quickly.

Fast shipping isn’t just quality of life. If customers receive their products quickly, you’ll have less of them contacting customer support, which will help you save those resources for more pressing tasks.

High Potential Markup Prices

The last requirement relates to the markup itself - the potential for a high profit margin.

Generally, you’ll want to refer to competitors to see the average price a product sells for.

If you’d have to charge significantly more than the competition to attain a 50% markup, the product probably isn’t an ideal pick for your store.

A great branding strategy can help you charge more than competitors, but even a strong brand has limits on how much it can charge for the same products.

How to Find Profitable Products to Sell Online

Before we get into the perfect high-margin products for merchants in 2024, let’s talk about how to find your own high-margin products through market research.

As the old saying goes: Give an online seller a high-margin product, they’ll generate profit for a day. Teach an online seller how to find high-margin products, they’ll generate profit for life.

a) Identify High-Margin Opportunities

The first step is finding the right opportunities. Here are a few places to check for great high-margin products for your online store:

Amazon’s “Movers & Shakers” Section
The “Movers and Shakers” section on Amazon is a hidden gold mine when it comes to finding great products through online retailers.

This section displays all of the items that are quickly growing in popularity with high demand. You can sort by categories and niches to find a product that fits your store best.

AliExpress Best Sellers & Trending Products

AliExpress is another great scouting site, especially for dropshippers. Even if you’re not a dropshipper, sorting items on Aliexpress by order count can help to find which ones are moving off the shelves the fastest.

Another approach to find great dropshipping products is to use a product sourcing tool. For example with a tool like AutoDS, you can streamline the research process, identify and import trending products, and monitor their pricing & stock.

While such tools are typically paid, I've found they're an excellent help to speed up your path to finding a winner. Plus, most come with a free trial so you can test them before paying.

We know the guys at Auto-DS, so we can recommend them - but there are other tools out there too. If you're interested, check out AutoDS here.

Pay Attention to Frequent Ads

If you see an ad come up frequently on your social media feeds or website sidebars, it probably means that it’s performing well enough to keep running the ad.

Pay special note to the ads you see as you’re browsing the web, if there are any common repeats, write it down and see if it's another opportunity.

Before deciding on your new products, we recommend creating a large list of potential best sellers.

Once you have a list, we can use the rest of this guide to help funnel it down to the best few.

b) Compare Wholesale Prices to Retail Prices

The next step is to compare the wholesale price of the product to common retail prices.

A great first stop is Amazon. Once you’ve identified a product, look it up on Amazon to see how much the best-selling versions are running for.

Your search shouldn’t stop there, though. Take some time to browse through the most popular retailers in your industry. Once you have a good idea of the average selling price, note it down and calculate your markup.

How to calculate product markup: 100 * (profit / cost) = markup %

I.e., A product that sells for $10 and costs $2 wholesale ($8 profit) would be a 400% markup.

c) Decide if the Cost Per Customer Acquisition is Within Your Budget

Even with a high margin, some products might be unviable for your current business.

Take a very high-ticket item, for example. Selling a $400 watch for $1000 is over 100% markup, which looks great on paper.

But once you factor in CPA, it becomes clear that it might not be a good fit for every business in the niche.

If you’re running on a low budget, you’ll need to make sure that the CPA (Cost per Acquisition) is within that budget too.

While it may take some time to get a reliable CPA, it’s an invaluable metric once you do have it.

You can use similarly priced items to get a baseline estimate for a potential product’s CPA.

For instance, if you sell a $900 watch, you can estimate that the CPA of a new $1000 watch will only be slightly higher.

Once you’ve got your estimate, compare it to your total profit margin and marketing budget. If the numbers don't show you'll make a high margin after outside costs, it may be better to wait till your budget has increased.

Using these steps, you should be able to filter your list of potential products down to the best few.

To help you get started though, here are some of the best high-margin products to sell in 2024 and beyond.

The Best High-Margin Product Examples to Sell in 2024 (& Beyond)

Here’s our list of the top products to sell in 2024 for high profit margins:

Branded & Custom Apparel/Accessories
Pet Products
Phone Accessories
Fitness Equipment
+ a Secret Bonus Item at the End…

These are some of the most profitable niches and products out there.

To help you find the best fit for your store, here are our favorite examples of high-margin products.

Examples of High-Margin Apparel & Accessories

Apparel might seem like a saturated market, and that’s because it is.

To stand out and ask higher prices than the competition, you’ll need to create unique products.

Some of the best ways to do that are by offering custom & branded products. A strong brand helps to justify higher prices, and helps you market you products against competitors.

1. Custom Print on Demand Products

Approximate Markup: +200%

Print on demand works similar to dropshipping.

You give your supplier a set of designs, and instead of keeping stock or inventory, the supplier prints the designs on an unbranded product whenever a customer puts an order in.

The benefit is that your products stand out against the crowd, and you can offer designs of your own. With that comes the downside of higher production costs.

Which is where custom print on demand products come in. The higher cost to produce print on demand gear leads to lower margins, but with personalized print on demand gear, you can ask for even higher prices.

Personalization Mall is a retailer that offers a range of personalized gifts of all sorts:

For suppliers, we recommend using a popular service like Monster Digital for clothing related products or browsing through the Printful catalogue to find a supplier with good rates.

👉Learn more about selling custom products with no upfront fees Printful here

2. Handmade Clothing

Approximate Markup: Variable

Handmade clothing is a great way to charge super high prices for products that with low production costs.

If you’re a smaller merchant with the skills to create clothing by hand, this can be one of the most lucrative ways to make a profit from your skill.

Handmade items like sweaters can generate hundreds of dollars, which is a hefty margin.

The largest downside is that handmade clothing isn’t nearly as easy to scale and requires a base set of skills. You’ll need to source experts once you can’t keep up with sales.

And those experts won’t be cheap, which is why this strategy is better for smaller businesses.

Pros of Selling Apparel and Accessories

Strong brands can charge very high prices for clothes
Relatively easy to find a good supplier
Easy to customize whitelabeled products to your brand

Cons of Selling Apparel and Accessories

Market saturation means you’ll need to find a way to make your products stand out
Larger suppliers often charge fees that can hurt your margins

More Ideas for Profitable Clothing Products

Yoga Pants/Leggings
Sunglasses
High-Quality Watches & Jewelry
Women's Apparel

Examples of High-Margin Pet Products

Pet products are great for high margins because they strike an emotional chord.

Everyone loves their pets, and as such, merchants can ask for higher prices for the right pet-related products.

Here are a few ideas for great pet products to sell for high margins.

1. Pet Toys

Approximate Markup: 500%

Pet toys are great high-margin items because you can stock up on them for dirt cheap.

Mouse toys like this one go anywhere from $0.01 to $3 per lot, even with shipping included - that’s less then $1 per toy in many cases.

Even if you were to choose $3 toys and sell them for $15 each, you’d still make a handsome margin off of each sale.

The biggest downside is that while you can get great margins from products like cat toys, the total price of the product isn’t super high.

That means you’ll need to make more sales to generate significant profit figures.

2. Water & Food Bowls

Approximate Markup: 500%

Water and food bowls for pets are another great choice.

For one, they’re relatively cheap.

They don’t include many moving parts, so product quality is much easier to control, even with a supplier from Aliexpress.

And on websites like Etsy or Amazon, they can sell anywhere from $20 - $30.

Bonus points if you offer personalized dishes, which will allow you to charge an even higher price.

Pros of Selling Pet Products

Can be sold for higher prices because of emotional value
Wholesale prices tend to be very cheap
Less moving parts means easier quality control

Cons of Selling Pet Products

Usually lower-ticket than alternative categories
Lots of competition

More Ideas for Profitable Pet Products

Dental Hygiene Products
Personalized Collars
Organic Pet Food

Examples of High-Margin Phone Accessories

Phone accessories are a great niche because everyone has a phone, which means you’ll have no shortage of customers.

In this age of convenience, accessorizing phones is something that practically everyone does.

If you can tap into that market, you’ll find your store generating a sizeable chunk of change.

1. Wireless Chargers

Approximate Markup: 300%

Speaking of convenience, wireless chargers are becoming increasingly popular.

The great thing bout them is that they’re easy to source, and relatively inexpensive.

Not only that, but it’s not uncommon for customer to buy multiple to keep around the house.

2. Custom Phone Accessories

Approximate Markup: Variable

Custom & personalized phone accessories can be anything from cases to grips.

They’re great for similar reasons to the aforementioned apparel idea - People love to trick out their gear with personalized touches.

And that’s especially true with phones, since they’re one of the most common things we carry around.

If you’re looking to sell custom phone accessories, look into suppliers on a popular print-on-demand site, or you could even start applying designs and stickers to customer phones yourself.

Unlike handmade clothing, customizing phones with stickers, decals, or designs isn’t quite as expensive, so scaling a phone customization business is much easier.

Pros of Selling Phone Accessories

Everyone has a phone, which means the target market is massive
Relatively inexpensive to create or buy inventory
Not uncommon for customers to buy multiple products

Cons of Selling Phone Accessories

Tend to be relatively low-ticket products
Tons of competition on sites like Amazon or Etsy

More Ideas for Profitable Phone Accessories

Phone Cases
Screen Protectors
Personalized Accessories

Examples of High-Margin Fitness Equipment

Fitness equipment is a great choice because it’s always a craze. People are constantly looking for the next best gadget to get their body into shape just a bit easier. And since that goal is tied so closely to emotion, fitness equipment often sells for great prices.

1. Massage Guns

Approximate Markup: ~200%

Massage guns are a recent storm to hit the market.

While they may have been niche items before, they’ve become super popular within quite a short span of time.

The great thing about massage guns is that they’re simple machines, so they're not as unreliable as many complex electronics from Aliexpress tend to be.

Even on a site like Aliexpress, it isn’t hard to find a reliable one with a few attachments.

When you pair the markup, the health benefits, and the luxury, these products come out to be a hidden gem.

2. Resistance Bands

Approximate Markup: ~250%

Resistance bands are a great choice for a few reasons.

For one, they’re so simple that it’d be hard for a manufacturer to get it wrong.

Elastic bands with a set resistance strength aren't too complex.

And because they’re so simple, it’s easy to sell them in sets like you’d find below:

They're also a fitness item that can be used from practically anywhere, which means your target market is much wider.

For such a convenient fitness tool that practically anyone can use, resistance bands make for an excellent way for your store to generate a pretty penny.

Pros of Selling Fitness Equipment

A super popular niche
Gadgets tend to be simple and well-built
Emotionally-tied purchases make for great markups

Cons of Selling Fitness Equipment

It’s a very competitive market

More Ideas for Profitable Fitness Equipment

At-home weight sets
Yoga Leggings & Mats
Water Bottles
Massage Rollers

Bonus High-Margin Products for 2024: Digital Products!

Approximate Markup: Infinite

Digital products are, by far, the most overlooked high-margin products out there.

Once you’ve created a digital product, the production cost for each sale is $0, which means you’ve got a markup of infinite.

And creating digital products isn’t as challenging as you might think, either.

Take this wall set for instance:

It’s a digital download on Etsy that you can buy and then print yourself.

The cost of creating it? The same as just creating one of these wall sets.

Digital products can be anything from posters and prints, to online courses or subscriptions.

The possibilities are virtually endless when it comes to digital products, and the overhead is significantly less.

If your business doesn’t offer any digital products, now might be a good time to consider adding them to your catalog.

High-Margin Products to Avoid

Now that we’ve covered some of our favorite high-margin products for ecommerce merchants to try, let’s talk about some to avoid.

For one reason or another, each of these products is probably an item that you should consider steering away from. Let’s explain why.

a) Phones, Tablets, & Complex Electronics

The main problem with phones, tablets, and any complex electronic devices is that they’re often unreliable. This is especially true for devices from sites like Aliexpress.

Unless you can source a very reliable seller off of common dropshipping sites, it’s better to avoid selling any complex electronics in your store.

They’re risky investments, often have problems that cause customer returns, and - in the worst cases - aren’t up to the safety standards you’d expect from most electronics.

b) Dropshipping Jewelry & Watches

If there’s one thing to know about jewelry and watches, it’s that the people who buy high-quality jewelry know what high-quality looks and feels like.

Unfortunately, jewelry from dropshipping suppliers isn’t up to par 99.99% of the time. The jewelry often consists of fake metals, low-quality materials, and cheap feeling alternatives to the real deals.

And the customers willing to pay a pretty penny for these products will notice if the quality seems off.

Not to mention that the dropshipping jewelry niche is already well oversaturated.

If your goal is high-margin sales, we recommend staying away from dropshipping jewelry, watches, or similar products.

c) Supplements, Consumables, & Health Products

Any products meant to be consumed or used as a supplement are risky investments for an ecommerce business.

Unless you’re a trained professional with knowledge on the topic (and legal protections in place for your business), we recommend staying away from any health or supplement products.

They’re risky investments and can run your store into legal trouble if you aren’t careful.

d) Copyrighted Products

The fourth is probably the most obvious product to avoid, but it still happens nonetheless.

If you’re running an ecommerce business (or even an offline one) , avoid selling any products that fall under copyright protection and/or trademarks.

Selling products that deal with IP that you don’t have the right to will very quickly lead to legal troubles and lawsuits.

This includes knock-off imitation brands, popular characters from movies or TV, etc.

Unless you own the commercial rights, avoid selling any trademarks or copyrighted products in your store.

Go Forth & Sell Some High-Margin Products!

Finding high-margin products to sell for your store isn’t hard.

It’s often a matter of looking through the most popular ecommerce sites, finding best sellers, and deciding if those products are a good fit for your store.

But sometimes, the best upcoming high-margin products aren’t the current best sellers, but products that are growing in popularity quickly.

Hopefully, this guide helped you get a better understanding on high-margin products and can help you start finding your own.

If you found it useful, make sure to check out some of the other content on our blog!

High-Margin Products FAQ

Before we close off, let’s cover some of the most common questions we see on high-margin products.

What is a high-margin product?

A high-margin product is any product that sells a markup of at least 50%. For some industries, this number can be lower or higher, but the 50% mark is a good rule of thumb.

Which niche has the highest margin?

Digital products in any niche are the products with the highest margin since the markup is technically infinite. Other common niches and industries with high margins are toys, hobbies, clothing, entertainment, and health.

What is the difference between high-margin and high-ticket products?