Welcome! This is Tomer from Sourcing-Monster.com. Today we’re going to cover how to find the best Amazon FBA products, this is part 2!
Most successful Amazon sellers today have learned this the hard way, through trial and error. I know this because it’s how I became a successful Amazon seller.
That’s why I am here to share with you my experience and best practices so you’ll be able to do it easily.
Part 1 – Product Research Recap
In part 1, I’ve covered what is the right mindset you must have and how you should approach product research.
I featured that you need to acquire the attitude of an expert in having a deep understanding of the item that you’re sourcing so as to be confident about your item.
We’ve discussed the significance of examining product reviews and figuring out what are the awful things in an item since when you know the present issues of a product you can come up with a superior variation of it.
At exactly that point you can start to source an item and begin giving more worth.
That’s one good approach to compete among others in the market and be in the game for a longer period of time.
Today, I’m going to cover how you can actually do the product research and what are the things and tools that you would need. I’ll also share a checklist that I go with to determine whether you are starting with a good idea.
#1 Helium 10
Helium 10 is the only all-in-one suite of Amazon FBA tools for SEO, product research, refunds, fraud protection, and inventory management.
I use the Helium 10 Platinum Plan valued at $97/month. I can give you a link which will give you a little discount for your first month. Helium 10 is really the number one tool.
When I began my Amazon business eighteen months prior, Jungle Scott was the pioneer however right now it would appear that Helium 10 is turning out to be increasingly famous in light of the fact that it offers more features, functions, and tools to calculate profit and results.
It allows me to sort out everything in a decent manner. Each morning when I open the Helium 10 dashboard, I can perceive how much revenue I made for everything rather than individually checking the PTC costs, cost of merchandise, expenses, whatnot.
Cerebro is a reverse ASIN research tool that allows Amazon sellers to input any ASIN and discover what keywords competitor products currently rank for.
This is a powerful tool in Helium 10.
You can essentially search for an item that is selling on Amazon. Cerebro will give you a rundown of the considerable number of keywords that are identified with this item, show the rank dependent on income, sales reviews, and numerous others.
That is an enormous thing since you can spy and see what keywords of different items are selling.
Spy on the Competition
Another tip is to find opportunities by searching for private label sellers and checking out their storefronts. Distinguish their top selling products and look for opportunities that you can replicate or improve.
You can do this manually right on Amazon if you like, or you can use Jungle Scout to filter for products that only have one seller.
#2 Jungle Scout
For this next tool, I’ll show you that you don’t really need to subscribe to the limited package if you want to use an extension for product research.
You don’t have to purchase the paid version until you know your product too well and already making a profit from it.
This will allow you to do fundamental things until you feel that you are fully dedicated to selling in Amazon.
Jungle Scout is an Amazon research tool that helps you find winning products, estimate sales, research keywords, and spy on competitors all from one easy-to-use dashboard. Basically, it instantly shows you what products will be the most profitable and easiest to grow your business with.
#3 Evernote
Evernote is an app designed for note-taking, organizing, task management, and archiving.
I like to use Evernote because once you save notes on it, you can check the note from any device like your mobile phone or from a different computer.
It is critical to take notes because sometimes your time is constrained. I do an hour of product research every morning and make notes of new ideas, reasons why I added or removed a product and mark where I left off.
Evernote helps me a lot in becoming productive and staying organized.
I like to take notes of ideas, instances of good product listings that I run over, and even image references that may not really be related to product research so when I actually do product research at least I have something to refer to.
I also save image samples in my note so that when I actually need it for copywriting or images creation, I can easily pull it out without much effort since it’s been in my note.
The Actual Product Research
So how do you conduct product research? You can start by looking around and seeing what is available on the market by shopping around, looking at the sponsored ads on Facebook, YouTube, and other e-commerce related websites. Once you have an understanding of what the market has to offer you need to find out if there is demand.
Next, make use of trusted resources that will help you get as much data to understand the product you are working on and its market.
One particular tool I am using is the Xray Amazon Product Research. It gives you direct access to the most accurate database of trustworthy marketplace data.
Xray is an Amazon Product Research tool that’s part of Helium 10’s Chrome Extension. It provides sellers a birds-eye-view of a market as they browse Amazon.
By utilizing it, you’ll see the prices, sales, average revenue of a certain niche or product, and many more.
BSR
You can analyze your item and check whether it’s going up or down and likewise observe other merchants’ income every month, BSR, reviews ranking, and more.
Best Seller Ranking is a score that Amazon assigns to products based on its sales volume and historical sales data and it is updated hourly.
It essentially tells you how your product ranks compared to other products within the same category. So as a seller, you want your number to be as low as possible and it’s a good metric to look at, and its something we check when we do product research.
The next thing I want to check is the revenue and sales. These are the things I check first when I do product research.
I’m more used to Jungle Scout. I used this a lot when I was starting my product research. I think it’s like $70-$100 dollars for the Pro version, a one-time fee and then you have your extension for life.
One good thing about using these tools is that it allows you to see how other sellers are performing. If there is any myth in the market, it’s the fact that there is money to ‘take’ from other sellers in a way that if you come up with a better product you can take away the amount in sales they are making. Do you get the idea?
By looking at Jungles Scout as well you get to understand if there is room to give more value in a certain product or if it’s too saturated. I’m not gonna get into a market that’s exploding!
So, in general Helium 10 and Jungle Scout works almost the same. It really depends on what your preference is and how you like the tools better.
Finding the Right Product
Initially, I just browse and scroll down just to find an item with the main picture that doesn’t really look good but has enough sales.
Start with products with not so great pictures
Do you know why I do that? I don’t want a good picture because my process is to find a seller that is selling a lot but with pictures or image listings that are not optimized, then I would browse through the other items that they sell to find the opportunity to bring a better product to the market.
Find high selling items with great pictures
The next step is to find a high selling item with a really good main picture and very good copywriting. This way, I am already starting to find ways to get ahead and give more value even still at the planning stage.
Using Jungle Scout, you’ll have an option to take a look at the products within the same category and sort it by revenue. You will see the Bestseller item and how they present the product in their main image and do their copywriting. You’ll learn from them and you’ll realize who among the sellers are experienced and well-researched and who are beginners.
You’ll see the total number of reviews, sales, get to see the Storefront and see the other items that sellers are selling.
And then you move on and find other sellers’ stores and check if we can find opportunities in the items that they sell. This gives you a greater understanding of the product you want to source and get to see a bigger picture of how this item is presented in the market by different sellers.
Products to Avoid
I don’t like to go with electronic products because electronics have a high chance of getting bad feedback from people who don’t know how to use it. There is a chance of people not reading the instructions, issues with batteries, and many components. It’s too high of a risk for me.
Avoid Electronics
I’m not saying electronics are not good but I would say that at least in your first two years, focus and spend your money carefully since resources may be limited.
It’s better to focus on things that are less complicated, with a lower chance of damage, arising problems, or bad reviews.
That’s why I don’t go with electronics products for now. Same with glass items as it’s something that might break and is very hard to operate.
Machinery
Another niche that I don’t do at this time is special machinery as it requires special skills. It might look easy to people but when they actually get it, they realize it’s very hard to operate and they most likely will return the item.
So you want to go with products that are easy to use, very self-explanatory and items that people would want to keep and not return.
Seasonal Products
We don’t go with seasonal products. We’re looking for a product that sells all year round, of course. I’m trying to find an item that will also sell well during the holidays because by the holidays an item that is giftable will sell like crazy like six times or five times higher than what you normally sell in a regular month.
Patented Products
After you’ve done all efforts in conducting the product research and analyzing data, you just want to get started and move on to the next stage which is to contact suppliers and then test the market if it sells or not.
Don’t get too excited. You want to actually check if it’s patented or not!
This is super important as the last thing you want to do is spend a bunch of time studying a potential winning product, only to find out it has a patent on it.
You don’t want to go through checking an item then sourcing an item and then realizing it’s patented because Amazon will remove it in an instant.
You’re also risking yourself getting a lawsuit here so that’s something that you should do at the beginning and save yourself a headache at a later stage.
Uspto.gov and patents.google.com
You may head on to sites like https://www.uspto.gov/ and https://patents.google.com/ to check for product patent.
Everyone is encouraged to search the USPTO’s patent database to see if a patent has already been filed or granted that is similar to the product that you are working on. Patents may be searched in the USPTO Patent Full-Text and Image Database.
Main Image Opportunity
Main Image Opportunity is an aspect we consider to determine if we have the chance to stand out and attract people to click on our item. We want to ensure that the keyword customers are going after shows results where our product’s main images have a way to differentiate itself.
Keyword Test
We want to make sure that there is enough search volume for the keyword that we are going after. Some products only have a hundred people searching for and obviously there is not enough room for us to make money in it.
We want to have at least 2000 or 1500 searches per month. There is no black and white because you can have an item that has only 1000 searches but it’s selling price is $60.
So you know the item that you’re gonna sell would yield 40-50% the profit margin per product is high. Even if you sell fewer units, in the end, you’re gonna make a lot of money.
Monthly Sales Depth
It’s very similar to the keyword test but here, you will see numbers.
To determine that an item has a good Monthly Sales Depth you should see that at least the first five sellers are making above $10,000 revenue per month.
For me, I want to make at least $10-$30,000 revenue every month.
Review Activity
Review rating and the numbers of reviews is very important.
I want to see that there is activity and there are people over 400 that’s really telling us that a product is really selling and people are leaving reviews for these products.
When I enter the market for the first time, I seem to join a competition where the other products are already getting like 16,000 reviews. Some advised me not to do it but I tried and came up with a better product and it worked!
So as long as you come with a really good product, you have nothing to worry about the reviews count.
Profit Margin
The profit margin usually refers to the percentage of revenue remaining after all costs, depreciation, interest, taxes, and other expenses have been deducted.
I would say the minimum profit margin would be 30% but obviously the higher you go, the better because you will have more room to compete as far as PPC expenses and be more aggressive.
So based on the requirements here we discussed, we can start searching for a product. We don’t do electronics. Using the principles above, we have to check Main Image Opportunity, used Helium 10 or Jungle Scout, we can determine if this is saturated.
If a product does not really meet our requirements, then we move on to another product.
If it’s saturated niche and it does not really meet our requirements then we move on to another product.
You must learn how to accept that a certain item won’t really bring value and be fast to move on to the next product.
You must have a clear understanding of the item you are working on. Identify what is it’s usage because if it seems unclear and it’s not straightforward or too complicated, then you must move into the next one.
When all these winning factors are combined it would be a good opportunity.
Obviously, you need to come up with something that is really good, really unique, and differentiates yourself from the other market.
Conclusion
Amazon product research is a key component and possibly one of the most important tasks to execute when devising a strategy and selling on Amazon. It is the bread and butter of being a successful online business. Scouting, sourcing and eventually deciding on which products to invest in can be a daunting task. This is especially true if you are new to selling on Amazon.
Remember to always find ways to differentiate your product and do bundling. We have covered that in-depth on the first product research blog post. I’ve shared how you can bring value and actually stand out among the competition.
With the powerful Amazon product research tools that you can use, you’ll be empowered to see exactly what promotions other sellers are running and allows you to use those ideas for yourself to boost sales and increase profits.
All right! It looks like we’ve covered enough and we’re done for this part. I hope you’ve enjoyed Amazon Product Research part 2 blog post as much I enjoy sharing this.
Thank you for reading up until the end, I appreciate it. I would also appreciate it if you can subscribe to my YouTube Channel. You may leave a comment and like the video that would help me grow the channel and allow me to upload and create more content for you guys.
So thank you very much!