1). Sales Estimation Tools
IMO, this is by far the most important tool when you are doing product research. You absolutely need to have some kind of indication about if a product is in demand or not.
You have a couple of tools you can use for this, but here are my favorites:
1). Jungle Scout
2). Helium 10
3). Viral Launch
2). Alibaba
When I am doing product research, I always have one tab open with Alibaba. This way, I can quickly do a price check, which will give me a rough idea of the product’s cost. I will still need to request quotes to get a more accurate price later, though.
Here, I can quickly see that I can manufacture a garlic press for around $0,90 – $1,30. This is a very rough price, but it will be enough for me to continue with my product research.
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3). Amazon FBA Fee Calculator
Of course, we want to know if we can profit from our product. There are loads of different profit estimators you can use, but I like to stick to the official Amazon FBA fee calculator. It’s free, and it’s from Amazon itself!
I simply enter the $1,30 product cost I found on Alibaba and enter the $1,30 product cost that I found on Alibaba. Now I can see that with a sales price of $9,99 I will make about $3,40 profit on this product.
4). Product Database
Ok now that we have our profit & sales estimation tools ready, we need to actually find some product that fit our criteria. When I first started out with Amazon FBA I would just browse Amazon.com all day until I found a couple of products that would fit my product research requirements. Although this way I found a couple of decent product, I would have to spend multiple days of just browsing Amazon. So very time consuming.
Nowadays, I just use a Product Database where I enter all my requirements, and the database will spit out a huge list of potentially great products
You have a couple of options when you want to pick a product database. But the biggest Amazon databases are currently:
1). Jungle Scout
2). Helium 10
3). Viral Launch
5). Trend tool
And the last tool I use when doing product research is a tool to spot any trends. We want to know if a product is seasonal or not. Here, you have a couple of options as well:
- Google Trends: It is great to spot general trends based on Google searches.
- Jungle Scout Pro Chrome Extension: Great to spot Amazon trends.
I found this very helpful. I’m still researching and learning how to launch my first product. I’m curious if there has been any issues with shipment delays or profit margins being lowered due to our current trade wars with China.
Fortunately, I have some money saved that I could use to launch a substantial amount of a single product or modest amounts of multiple products. I plan to go with a modest amount of a single product to start with the learning curve and minimize loss. Thanks and gratitude!
Hi,
Only 1/18 of my products got hit with a new China/US tariff. So for me it’s not that bad.
Thanks for the information. Been rolling around the idea of FBA for a few weeks. Strangely I never heard about it before then (sadly). In your opinion, what is the best course of action for 2019? Can one start on $1000 or less?
Will check out these resources as well and get familiar with them
Of course this all depends on your own situation. ( For example if you need that $1k to pay rent next month then obviously don’t start with FBA lol ).
But yeah I think for newbies it’s best to start small. $1000 is enough to get started, and if you fail or only manage to break-even it’s not the end of the world either. This will give you a bit of playroom on your first order ( as there is a big chance you will make a couple of mistakes on your first run ). Then once you have gone through the entire process and are ready for order #2, you can increase the capital if you feel comfortable with that.
Have you tried using Unicorn Smasher instead of Jungle Scout(it’s free)?
Yeah I have. On my products that I tested it with, it wasn’t accurate. Check out my Jungle Scout Alternatives post about it.