Following my latest case study on how to launch new products on Amazon.com, I have had a bunch of questions on how I found that product. And you might have asked yourself as well:
What are the Best Items to Sell on Amazon FBA?
There are loads of ways to do product research, but I have used my Jungle Scout tools to find the product I am using in the case study. In the post we will split up my Amazon Product Research Strategy into the following points:
Disclaimer: I am a huge Jungle Scout fanboy! Not only am I a big time user of their products but I also love all the free info they put on their blog. I advice every new seller to read as much free info as possible and the Jungle Scout blog is a great resource for every Amazon seller.
Video Tutorial
1). Amazon Product Checklist
I have made a checklist of all the criteria I want a new product to have. This is simply the checklist I use. If you are an experienced seller you don’t have to follow this but if you are just starting out this is a great guideline.
1. Sales Price: $15 and above
I always look for products that have a sales price of at least $15. The reason for this is that you can take the general rule of thumb with private label products that:
33% goes to production & shipping.
33% goes to Amazon fees.
33% goes into your pocket as profit.
So if you have a $15 product you can expect a $5 profit per order, which is very healthy. Anything under $15 sales price and your margin will drop very quickly.
2. Healthy profit margin / Profitability
Previously we have discussed that you want to aim for a 33% production cost + shipping, 33% Amazon fees & 33% profit ratio. Of course the higher the profit margin the better but if you can find a product with this ratio it is fine. Based on this we can say that we want to spend a maximum of 25% on production cost, as this will still leave us with 8% to spend on shipping.
So let’s say we find a product with a sales price of $15. We want to produce this product for a maximum price of: $15 * 0,25 = $3,75. This still leaves us with $1,25 to transport the product, after which we will have our 33% / 33% / 33% ratio.
When doing product research I usually do a quick search on Alibaba.com to do a price check.
3. High demand
This very much depends on your goals and how much you want to make on your product. Personally, I want to make at least $1000 profit on a product per month. Based 33% ratio we discussed, I should look for products that have at least $3000 revenue per month. The demand of the product is checked with tools like Jungle Scout or Helium 10.
4. Low competition
This is an obvious one, but also the most important one. Judging if a niche has low or high competition actually is quite complex. I have set a couple of factors that I use to determine if a niche is competitive or not.
Reviews
This is pretty straightforward. You want your competition to have the least amount of reviews so you can easily catch up with them and even surpass them in reviews. I always look for products that have a couple of sellers on the first page that have less than 50 reviews. As I can easily reach 50 reviews as well and reach page 1.
Product photos
Product photos are super important for customers. However, I still see a lot of sellers with very bad pictures. If I am looking at a niche and see sellers who only have 2-3 low quality-images, I know I can easily beat them if I have 7 high-quality images including lifestyle shots & infographics.
Listing-quality
Here I look at how well a seller describes the product and if it uses the right keywords to attract customers. For example, there is a big difference between a seller who describes his product as:
iPhone charger
Compared to a seller who describes his product as:
White iPhone Charger: 6 feet Charging Cable for iPhone X, 8, 7 Plus, iPod, iPad Pro and more
Product quality
Pretty straightforward as well: If I see a niche where there are a bunch of sellers on page 1 with an average rating of 4 stars or below, I know I can offer a better quality product. I simply read their 1-star reviews to see where their product lacks, and improve on this with my own product
There is a reason I picked these factors to determine if a niche is competitive: This is also what a customer looks at when deciding which product to buy! So I am simply asking myself: Can I beat my competition?
- Can a create a better quality listing?
- Can I offer a lower price?
- Can I deliver a better quality product?
- Can I gather more reviews?
If the answer to most of these questions is: YES! You will have a very good chance to reach page 1 as well, especially if you follow my case study on how to launch a new product.
5. Easy to manufacture
This is a very important one if this is the first time you are manufacturing a product from China! There is a lot that can go wrong in the manufacturing process and if you no experience with this, you probably won’t catch any potential errors. For this reason, I advice every new seller to find products that are very easy to manufacture. So stay away from any sort of electronics or products that require a lot of assembly. Try to look for simple products that are made from 1 piece, or at least from 1 type of material.
6. Is the product seasonal?
This isn’t a very strict requirement. As I have a lot of success with some seasonal products. However, I do want to point out that you should always find out if a product is seasonal. For example, if you are doing product research in July on Pool Toys you will probably find that there is a huge demand for it. But when you finally launch your product in November you will find that all the sudden the demand has dropped for this product. This is not a bad thing as you can still make a lot of money with seasonal products in the right period, but you should definitely be aware of this. You can check if a product is seasonal with Google Trends, and the Jungle Scout Chrome Extension also offers Historical Monthly Sales.
Importance of product research
I’d say that your product selection is the most important decision in your whole FBA process. It doesn’t matter how good your marketing or launching strategy is, if you picked a bad product you will have an extremely hard time to make it a success. Personally, I spend at least 1 month on product research when picking new products, and this is not something to be rushed. Below I will quickly go over some products I found using this checklist, but I strongly advice everyone to take their time for this!
2). Using Jungle Scout tool to find Amazon product idea’s
Ok so now that we know what we are looking for it is time to actually put in the work and find that golden product! There are loads of ways to look for products but the beautiful thing is: Jungle Scout has a database with Amazon products on which we can use these requirements!
So this is the field where you can enter the filters. Below I will explain the filters I use:
- Categories: Based on if a product is easy to manufacture I have selected these categories. You can experiment with this, but I would stay away from the Watches & Electronics categories as there are extremely hard to manufacture!
- Price: Minumum $15
- Net: Minimum $10. This is the minimum payout from Amazon, so based on the 33% ratio we want to get paid at least $10. So we can still spend $5 on production & shipping and have at least $5 left over as profit.
- Revenue: Minimum $3000 per month
- Reviews: Max 50
- Rating: Max 4
- LQS: Max 60. This is great. Jungle Scout has their own formula to judge a listing: Listing Quality Score (LQS). This ranges from 1 ( low ) – 100 ( perfect).
So we enter these filters into their database and POOF! A huge list of potentially great product idea’s! I’ve been scrolling through the database for about 20 minutes and noted the best products I have found below.
3 Tier Metal Stand
Hooded Beach Towel
Dog Car Seat Cover
3). Evaluating our product idea’s
DON’T LOOK AT THE PRODUCT BUT LOOK AT THE NICHE!
This is really important. You don’t want to base your decision on just 1 product, but you want to look at the whole market in general. For example, it might look like 1 product is doing great and there is a huge demand. However, it could be that this product is doing a lot of giveaways and spending a lot of money on advertising, so the sales are inflated.
To get a complete overview of the niche I use the Jungle Scout Chrome Extension. We will be checking the niche to the checklist to find out if they meet our demands
Product idea: 3 Tier Metal Stand
First page on Amazon for: “3 Tier Metal Stand”
1. Average Sales Price: $36
2. Profit margin: $18 – PERFECT!
Sales Price: $36
Amazon fees: $11
Production cost: $5
Estimated shipping: $2
Profit Margin: $18
Quick Alibaba price check:
3. Demand: Medium
Almost all sellers are doing more than $3k in revenue per month, which is our target. However, the revenue is not extremely high.
4. Low competition: Extremely low!
- Reviews: Extremely low
The first 7 sellers have less than 50 reviews. There are even 4 sellers on the first page who have less than 10 reviews.
- Product photos: Terrible.
This is the listing ranked #1. Only has 1 picture! - Listing quality: Terrible
The #1 only has the dimensions in the description - Product quality: Terrible
Top seller has 3.5 / 5 stars. You can simply read his bad reviews, see why his rating is so poor and improve this on your product.
5. Easy to manufacture
This product is made out of 1 piece, requires no assembly and very easy to make!
6. Not Seasonal
Conclusion
This is an amazing product with barely any competition. Very good profit margin. The only downside is that there no huge demand for this niche. You can easily make $1k – $2k profit a month with this product but there is not really room to grow bigger.
Product idea: Hooded beach towel
First page on Amazon for: “Hooded Beach Towel”
1. Average Sales Price: $21
2. Profit margin: $10 – GOOD
Sales Price: $21
Amazon fees: $6
Production cost: $4
Estimated shipping: $1
Profit Margin: $10
Quick Alibaba price check:
3. Demand: High
Every seller on the first page is doing between $3k – $10k, even with a super seller doing $17k in revenue per month.
4. Competition: Very Low
- Reviews: Low
So the competition barely has any reviews. 7 products on the first page have less than 50 reviews, and the average amount of reviews on the first page is 58!
- Product photos: Low
This listing is ranked 3rd. It only has 2 very basic pictures. - Listing quality: Low
This is a great example of a terrible listing. It has the bare minimum. - Product quality: Good
Most sellers have a rating of 4 – 5 stars
5. Easy to manufacture
The product is only made of 1 piece of fabric and requires no assembly. Seems to be very easy to manufacture!
6. Very Seasonal!
Yes, this product is seasonal. Let’s check this out:
Like expected this product has amazing sales from March-August. And in the winter, months the sales drop drastically.
This does mean this is a bad product! If you take this into account you with your stock forecast this can actually be a great advantage. For example, I actually have a lot of summer products like this. They will generate loads of sales for me during the summer and require barely any stock in the winter. This is great for me to generate a lot of capital in the summer, which I can then spend on stock for my Christmas products!
Conclusion
Great product if you take the seasonality into account. The product barely has any competition, huge demand and checks all other factors of our checklist!
Product idea: Dog Car Seat Cover
First page on Amazon for: “Dog Car Seat Cover”
1. Average Sales Price: $26
2. Profit margin: $11 – GREAT!
Sales Price: $26
Amazon fees: $8
Production cost: $6
Estimated shipping: $1
Profit Margin: $11
Alibaba price check:
3. Demand: EXTREMELY HIGH
So this product is for people who want to make some serious dough. This is a huge market with some of the top sellers doing between $100k – $300k. Obviously, we don’t need to be a top seller, but we want a tiny piece of this pie. For example, there are a couple of sellers ranked in the middle of page 1, who have around 50 reviews and are doing between $10k – $20k in revenue. This will be our first goal as we can easily reach 50 reviews. Once we are ranked on page 1, we can change our ambitions and aim for those top spots.
4. Competition: Medium-High
So I have kinda touched upon this point above. There are some major sellers in this niche who are well established with thousands of reviews and great listings. However, there are also some vulnerable sellers we can beat. For example, in my product launch case study I am also competing with sellers who have a couple hundred reviews.
- Reviews: Medium-High
So for this niche, we definitely need some deep pockets and be ok with not making a profit for the first couple of months, in order to get those reviews. However, it is not as hard as it seems. For example, seller #7 only has 90 reviews and is doing $72k a month. Besides that, there are also sellers on the first page with only 25, 35, 52 & 74 reviews. Definitely something we can do as well!
- Product photos: Great
- Listing quality: Great
Ok since this is a semi-competitive niche you can expect all sellers to have their listing & products in order. This is a great example how of you want your listing & pictures to look. Great lifestyle pictures in combination with a very detailed description. - Product quality: Great
5. Easy to manufacture
Yes, same as the products above.
6. Not Seasonal
Conclusion
Semi-competitive niche with a huge demand! I would not recommend this for your first product but if you have some experience this is a very good opportunity. All competitors have great listing & pictures. So it is up too you offer something different. For example, I would differentiate myself by offering an e-book on how to train your dog, something no other seller is offering.
Your Turn!
I think I have explained every aspect on what to look for when doing product research and even showed you how easy it is to find products with the Jungle Scout Web App. So there is not much more I can show you, now it is time for you to take action! I found these products in 20 minutes. Definitely not something I would recommend, but imagine what you can find when you spend a full month on product research!
The web app has a price tag of $49 per month and the extension is $39 per month, which is quite a lot. However, they offer a bundle discount where you can get both tools for $69 per month.
I typically only use their service for 1 month where I do very extensive product research. After this month I have found my product and can cancel their service, so it is not that bad.
Major Downside with this Method
One of the main disadvantages of using these databases is that everyone is using the same filters (everyone wants a low competition product with loads of revenue right?). I have had it happen multiple times that I found a great niche with one of these databases. But by the time I was ready to launch my product (3 months later), loads of other people had also seen this niche in the database and the competition was much higher!
Are You Ready For The Advanced Level?
Because of this, I focussed on developing new product research strategies! I ended up sticking with 3 methods that helped me find awesome niches every time I used them! I have been using these methods non-stop lately and never run in the problem anymore that I see the competition increasing by the time I am ready to launch!
Advanced Product Research Tutorial
hi,
thanks for the great info, this is really helpful and just wanted to know about the extra steps you take to research aproduct after initial research on jungle scout. this is because you said you spend one whole month to do the product research so just wondering about those extra due-diligence that gives you confidence that you have really got a product that has very high chance of success…. would appreciate if you can please share that info as well…….thanks
Hi,
Glad you like my product research strategy! Yeah so these products I found pretty fast. But if you spend some more time you will find even better products in the database. There are millions of products to sell on Amazon. So I am sure you can find something better than what I found in an half hour!
Then when you found a couple of awesome products there is still a lot more to check out, for example:
– How is the competition doing? I read ALL the negative reviews of my competitors. This will give you a great feel for what consumers are looking for in the product, what the competitors are doing wrong and what you can improve on!
– Check any possible patents.
– Can I sell this product on outside of Amazon? What is the competition like there?
– Can I sell related products and build a brand around this?
– Are there any add-on products that I can add to this product?
– How can I customise this product to offer something better than the competition? Different color?
– Is the product being sold in brick & mortar stores? Where? For what price?
– How easy is it to work with the suppliers for this product?
So plenty of things to focus on! And like I said before: This is the most important step! Don’t rush this, and really take your time to make sure you picked the best possible product!
where do you go to find if an item is patented?
In a patent database like Google Patents
Hi, amazing info and thanks to share as you explain you get all knowledge free and it is time to you to share.
Actually i was reading carefully all details but I’m missing something ( sure I don’t have knowledge)
Yous say (as example):
Sales Price: $26
Amazon fee’s: $8
Production cost: $6
Estimated shipping: $1
Profit Margin: $11
How much it cost to send MOQ to your warehouse/home?
How much you paid on tax import?
That will reduce profit margin is it?
Thx for your help again
Pep
Hi man,
Glad you like it!
Those cost are already estimated in the shipping cost. Of course this is a very rough estimation as someone who ships a full container pays way less shipping then someone shipping LTL container. For example I am mostly shipping full containers and generally don’t pay more than $0,4 per unit on items this size ( from factory -> Amazon, including import duties ). So for me this estimate is very high. But if you are just starting out you will likely pay more than $0,4 per unit, that is why I put the estimate at $1.
Hi there, great post!, thanks for sharing. On this note, you mention you ship by sea. Would you recommend shipping by air on your first batch? how much would you recommend ordering as a first batch? 1x avg monthly sales? 2x? Any freight forwarder to recommend? when would you use an express service like dhl, ups, etc?
ha, sorry, I bombed you with too many questions. Thanks again!
Haha no worries. Il try to answer them all:
– Air vs Ocean shipping: Sure you can ship by air if you really like. I guess it depends on if you have a large budget and want your products ASAP. Since it is more cost effective to ship with ocean I mostly do that. But there are some occasions where I also ship by Air. For example: If I need a quick restock. Or if I really want to launch a product ASAP I might air ship a couple of cartons to start the launch, then ship the rest by ocean. I use Flexport as freight forwarder. Super easy to use for both Air & Ocean shipments.
– Order quantity: This is a tough one. You don’t want to have too little stock when your products picks up, especially when you have a long lead time. However, you also don’t want to order too much in case your product flops. I have more occasions where I run out of stock because the products is a success, then when I have ordered to much stock because it flops. So I rather buy a little bit extra. For example for the launch case study I ordered 1000 units. Average monthly sales for the top seller are around 500-600, so that would be x2 average monthly sales.
Hey there.
Found your blog off reddit and I absolutely love how useful and genuinely helpful this is without hundred hidden ulterior motives or £1000 courses being sold ha ha! I’m definitely following you all the way and want to give you the encouragement to please keep up what your doing and don’t stop!
I’m a complete beginner in Amazon Selling and need to use this to help me get out of a lot of financial problems and a crappy job so I have a few questions about the post and also in general regarding the Amazon FBA lifestyle. So apologies in advance for the amount of questions but if you could find the time out of your busy life to help, I’d be very very grateful buddy!
1- How long do you feel it would take to make selling Amazon enough to replace a full time job and in your opinion is it alone enough to basically pay the bills and support a comfortable lifestyle or would you recommend to supplement it with more sources of income?
2- How much should I have saved to launch a product the first time round.
3- As a beginner how long does it take until I am actually able to put money in my own pocket or take home a profit?
4- Would you do some form of testing of the product before a full Amazon Launch? I ask because came across one person who recommended to get multiple samples of the product first and sell them on Ebay and other smaller less stringent sites to get feedback on improvements and test different prices.
5- You said you sell on other platforms other than Amazon, I was wondering what they are?
6- Would you use any listing boosting software in your launch such as Viral Launch’s on Zonblast’s products? (Maybe something you will cover in your later post anyway)
7- You highlighted that higher and more competent competition in a niche is something you want to avoid as a first timer (the dog seat thing). What other aspects of the process would you advise a first timer to alter and avoid or look out for to enable an easier first product launch to add a better chance of getting some early easy wins or positive results though maybe low ones in the beginning.
7- How do you deal with being really nervous and anxious about doing this all the first time ha ha! (Joke… But how though lol?)
Again really sorry for the long message and the never ending questions, but again you have no idea how much this is going to help me.
Yours Truly
Kazif
1. Strongly depends on with how much capital you start. If you start with $200 it’s gonna take forever. However, if you start with $50k and got a decent product you can stop with your day job right away.
2. Whatever you can afford to lose
4. Yeah you can do that. Myself I just rely on the market research I do.
5. I only sell on Amazon. However, for the future it is smart to have an idea if you can sell your products on other platforms as well.
6. Think these are against the TOS, but I will check em out later
7. Low competition in combination with a easy to manufacture product
8. First time is definitely nerve wrecking. But after you have done it a couple of times you will realise it is actually quite easy.
Hey there!
What software are you using to get the historical monthly sales on your products?
Thanks!
Jungle Scout
This is so fascinating. Please be patient with me. So the product already exists? I want to sell on amazon? Can you please share how I find the manufacturer? Do you ever sell made in america? Thank you so much for sharing your experience.
So there are private label products. Meaning they are standard products that other people sell as well but you make them your own by putting your own brand ( label) packaging on. You can find manufacturers in China on Alibaba.com. I wrote a post about it here
Hi,
Ok, I feel good and stupid, but I’ll ask these questions anyhow.
1) How do I become an Amazon seller?
2) I don’t have a credit cared, do I need one?
3) Do I need a website?
My advantage: I have 4-5 hours at work where I can work on the web and not affect my current job.
I’ll bookmark this site and come check back for an update.
Great blog, excellent advice, found you through Quora. (Subscribed)
Much thanks!
1). You can simply apply to be an Amazon seller, no special requirements.
2). Yes Amazon requires a creditcard
3). No you don’t need a website
Good luck!
Thank you for your efforts to provide all this information. But I have some basic questions 🙂
To start selling on Amazon, do I need to register my business? What kind of licenses I need to start Amazon FBA and from where I can get those? How much it costs?
Thanks again!
Mode
You can start selling without a business license, even if you are not based in the US. But I would highly recommend it; just Google: “Register LLC”
Hi Thank you for your great tips! Really appreciate people who teach others. Just a question. There are so many sellers in Alibaba, how do you know who to choose. Is it by using their ranking system? How if they give us bad quality products. Our success depends on them right?
I will make a post about the whole manufacturing process soon. Sign up to the newsletter to stay up to date
Thanks for this great and informative post !
My question is, does the manufacture ship the products ordered directly to amazon warehouses ? or in other words, how does the logisticsexactly work when you are an Amazon seller ?
Hi,
The manufacturer can ship it for you, but I use a freight forwarder who can ship it by ocean. I will write a more detailed post about the whole shipping & manufacturing process.
Hello
1. I want to became an Amazon seller but My country its not listed. İt needs some information such as adress etc… but my country its not listed.
2. I have been registered as an Amazon affiliate and have set up website on wordpress with infinityfree.net free for 12 months but i dont know if it has included the web Hosting. I have written an Article about Amazon but now i dont know what to do. I am overhelmed with a lot of information. I dont know how to start with HTML. I dont have idea.
3. For everything we had to pay but i cant afford right now. This is the reason why I am registered as an affiliate but until now no success.
Thank you!
Hi, thanks for all the information!
I have an LLC already (so I’m familiar with the LLC incorporation part). I’m also partly familiar with Amazon FBA, Alibaba, etc. so I am really interested into putting all the pieces together and finally giving it a try!
My questions are:
– Should I provide the investment funds by getting a credit card/line/loan thru the business (LLC) I’d create for this venture?
– What would you recommend as the best investment funding (bank, credit union, etc. based on fees and loan amount)?
– How much would you estimate an initial (average) investment would be?
Thanks again for sharing your knowledge!
Did you ever find the answers to these questions? If so, will you share your findings?
Great post!
Is that a way to mentor me one on one about how to start Amazon?
Hi This is amazing information. I have few questions.
1. If you have product in amazon warehouse, and its not selling even after waiting for long. What you need to do? Can we ask amazon to return all remaining quantity to me?
2. What if customer return product to amazon? Does amazon blacklist seller? Or downgrade listing?
3. I just started reading on fba. So one thing i concern is how to trust chinese manufacturer? I know there are scammers. If my sample is good. But how to ensure that they ship same product and quality to amazon. I heard that one of seller got all rocks in container reached to amazon.
4. Which software provided you that seasonal graph? What jungle scout chrome extension is for?
5. I am in Australia and i found here that people selling courses on amazon fba. Each week thousand people attend webinar and join these courses spending couple of thousands. These people promise them passive income and financial freedom. I cant imagine amazon marketplace after 5 year where half of australian and usa population foing fba? and what we will earn if that happens? My question is how to deal wuth this? And why people share and sell their knowledge if amazon is such golden opportunity for them to become rich? Are they creating competition for themselves? Sorry but you also shared your knowledge at free of cost. You are great person. I just wanted to clear my concept before i start something on why people share their knowledge which thet earned after hard work and cteatinh competition.
6. I just wanted to save myself of emtering into something for short-term. I did Amway just by listening people about their success. Lost all my money. And finally stopped. I dont want to repeat the same here.
1). Yes you can have Amazon return the product to you
2). No product returns are very normal and nothing to be worried about. About 2% of all mine order get returned. Amazon FBA handles all this, and as long as your return rate is not extremely high you will be fine.
3). Have your production inspected by a 3rd party. I wrote a detailed post about manufacturing here
4. Junglescout chrome extension is to get the sales estimates & the seasonal graph 😉
5). Amazon does like 40% of all e-commerce sales. There is plenty of room for everyone. The only people who are guaranteed to not make any money are the ones that don’t try.
Great article !
Great article, thanks for sharing.
Quick question: What are your strategies for estimating shipping costs from china for each product?
Shipping is kinda hard to estimated, as this depends on the quantity you ship. But as a rough estimation you can take: if it fits in a shoe box $1 or less estimate for shipping, everything bigger but not oversize: $2 est shipping cost.
If you want a more exact estimation you can calculate your total shipping volume in CBM, and request a quote from your supplier based on this.
Great information you have here on your blog , would you consider doing a question and answer Skype or phone call session for a agreed upon fee , I have venture capitol and i am very serious about starting a amazon business such as yours.
PM’ed
Do you have any strategies for using JungleScout’s Niche Hunter? Is it a worthwhile product?
Thanks
Havent checked it out. Might do it in the future
Hey, quick question. Can you go into a bit more detail on the shipping cost per product? I was under the impression that Jungle Scout’s “Fees” column included the cost of shipping. If not, how did you calculate the shipping cost per item?
Thanks for producing all this content, by the way. It’s extremely helpful for people like me who are looking to launch their first product on Amazon.
Regards,
Garrett
Yeah sure, so the shipping fee’s you see in the JungleScout app you see are the shipping fee’s:
from: Amazon FBA -> Customer
However, you still have to get your product into the Amazon FBA warehouses. So the shipping fee’s I am to referencing in this tutorial, I am talking about getting your goods from: Supplier -> Amazon FBA. And if you are making Private Label products, than most likely you will be shipping from China.
Hey, thanks for all your work. I have few questions:
1) Are the numbers you always aim to (>50 reviews sellers on 1st page, 3000$ rev per month etc…) relevant for beginners as well?
2) The production cost = the price of the product on Alibaba?
3) You keep mentioning that getting 50 reviews is relatively easy. Is that really that easy for beginners as well?
Thanks!
1). Yes, that the minimum. But the lower the reviews / higher revenue, the better of course.
2). Jup
3). Yeah, I created a case study where I show you exactly the steps I take to launch my product. I got to like 10 reviews & first page ranking in only 1 month. So 50 reviews in your first year should definitely be possible.
thank you for all the information, could you please give me your thoughts on Chinese competing/ selling directly on Amazon?
best
Edvin
Sure, obviously they have a price advantage if the manufacturer themselves will start selling on Amazon. However, I think in all other competitive aspects they are really far behind. For example in my niche it is very easy to spot Chinese sellers as they all have really bad pictures, broken English, barely any marketing etc.
nice article..a quick question….please could you explain what made you to analyse the 3 products you had given in example in the first place….that is ? how do you short list a few products ( from 1000s of products, sold in amazon best seller list ) , before you put filters in jungle scout? …many thanks
I enterI don’t browse 1000’s of product through the best seller list. I just input the checklist in Junglescout and it will output all products that fit the checklist.
Great article, Very helpful ! Thank you for the tips. In a few months I will want to start selling on Amazon, and your knowledge will definitely help me. I believe it.
Hi, there.
This is the first time I am writing here although I’ve bookmarked your blog a while ago. After reading this page I would like to say good on you to provide your hands on tips here. Also I love how your link towards the end of this page match with potential follow up questions newbie sellers might have (like myself who is still at prod research stage).
Straightforward and easy to understand with examples. Good on you.
One thing I am curious is when you say low price (when launching) are you referring to discount price? or are we talking about offering a quality product with lower price than your competitors? Sorry I’ve never launched a product before so it is naive Q.
Also I am a big fan of Helium 10. I’ve came across with a couple of products that have 70+ success rate!! but all were small electronics and I had to move on since many mentors are saying it’s no go zone.
Is 1000 search Vol just not enough to venture? If you see a niche with 1300 search Vol and less products out there than search Vol amount lets say 900 competing products. Your main competitor is doing 5k revenue. Would you say this is somewhat profitable for a newbie?
Also when I use the profitability cal from H10 I always get stuck with the shipping cost estimation. Is there any simple way to estimate this? I’ve learned from one online mentor that less lead time the better which makes me to think that using air shipping is the way to go. You have less lead time and therefore don’t have to order as much.
Any advice would be appreciated pal~.
Hi mate,
Thanks a lot for the kind words!
When I launch a product I lower my price so I have the best price versus my competition.
I actually never look at search volume. As these are just very wild estimates that can differ a lot. I rather focus on revenue. $5k revenue per month is great!
Air shipping is indeed a lot faster but you pay a lot more. If you want to get an better idea how much shipping will cost. You can ask a supplier for a CBM & weight for your (potential) order. With this information you can get a shipping quote for both Air shipping & Ocean shipping.
No, thank you pal. Good karma will come to you. Spending time to answer all those questions I know it is not easy. I see so as long as there are people searching for that niche I am interested in I should focus on how much revenue the seller (who is selling similar product) is generating each month.
That lead to a question of how I am gonna simulate that seller’s success. From my limited knowledge you do all the right things like improving the quality if you could, better listing, competitive pricing and than give away which I can refer to Helium 10. So basically simulating the number of sales done by the competitor. Am I right?
Is give away something that is still safe to do it? I’ve heard that some sellers got their listing suspended because they were getting too much reviews per day or their promo discount was more than what Amazon would like to see.
Is giveaway literally mean 100% free to the customers in favor of reviews?
I will definitely do the early reviewer program. Is there any requirement if I want to get my 1st product qualified for the review program?
By the way I really like your 33 33 33 ratio for budget. It actually helps me to do the profitability faster.
I see so shipping is something that I need to do more due negligence to get that acculturate numbers. Man I am enjoying this journey but with fulltime shift work and having a young child at home I need to be a super human. lol.
Jup! You just want to get your product out there. And giving it away for free is a great way to get some traction!
Depends. If you giveaway a product and ask for a review in exchange, this is against the rules & can get you banned. However, if you are just giving it away the worst that can happen is that they limit the amount of unverified reviews you can receive.
Good luck out there mate!
Great read! I was doing some research in the manner you discussed and when looking at products with say a 4 star rating, one may think that they got a winner however when going to Amazon you will see all the products in that niche with the better ratings. Maybe I’m looking at this wrong or maybe it’s because I’ve been trying to get my first product for 7 months and nothing yet! lol
Really good article! Where I can find the Advanced level tutorial? Is it currently no available?
Many thanks
It is available again!