Any startup requires extensive planning before it can launch. This can include creating a budget after thorough analysis and calculation. However, the most important aspect of selling on Amazon and using Amazon FBA is selecting the product you will sell and ensuring that it will be profitable for you. Amazon product research and planning are crucial unless you view selling on Amazon as a side gig that will earn you some extra money along the way.
Regardless, you do not want to spend blindly on something that will fail and give you nothing in return. To provide you with a better understanding of what goes into this necessary and crucial process and how you can conduct the most effective research to choose profitable products, we have put together this product research guide for Amazon.
What is Amazon Product Research?
It is essential to analyze current trends and all the data accessible from the marketplace to choose the niche with the most in-demand products for generating high-volume sales and profits. This process is known as Amazon product research. The objective is to purchase your goods at the lowest possible cost and then sell them for the largest profit margin conceivable.
Product research is a crucial component of private labeling, the practice of marketing goods you manufacture and distribute under your brand.
Due to its success, private label selling has grown to be the most frequently used manner of selling on Amazon. Additionally, the method of doing product research has grown to be quite intricate and involves multiple steps.
Why do you need Amazon Product Research?
Amazon is an extremely crowded, fiercely competitive market. Deciding to sell something based only on what “your intuition tells you” is the first mistake you can make as an Amazon seller.
You will be stuck with a product that doesn’t sell and you can easily lose money instead of making it with Amazon’s numerous expenses, which range from account fees to the cost of keeping inventory in their warehouse, especially if you choose to use the FBA fulfillment method.
Your product won’t sell if you don’t do the proper research to discover which products are profitable. But, you can save your time and money by choosing products that stand out, making an optimal listing that potential customers will see, and advertising your goods.
You’ll need to determine whether customers are going to purchase your stuff to avoid spending all your money on nothing.
FBA product research aids you in:
- Testing the viability of your product;
- Determining comparable products;
- Describing the most effective strategies to create, produce, and sell a product;
- Make certain there is a market for your goods;
- Estimating the cost that clients will pay;
- Avoiding making costly errors;
- Identifying any potential issues the product may have;
- Determining the strategies and errors of your rivals.
Features to Look for in an Ideal Product
These general recommendations can help you choose a product to sell on Amazon. A high-volume selling product’s key attributes are:
1. A good price range for impulsive purchases
To start, you should search for goods priced above $18 and no more than $50 and $100. First of all, such products have substantially cheaper initial production and transportation costs. In addition, buyers are less likely to compare prices before purchasing a cheap item or need to contact someone else, for example, than they would with a more expensive one.
2. Compact and light items
Choose things that are lightweight and quick-moving. This will provide you the chance to reduce your delivery expenses and stay clear of FBA’s hidden charges. Larger products require additional processing fees from Amazon. Furthermore, there is a charge for long-term storage of stationary things, which you should also avoid.
3. Best-seller Rank (BSR) >1000
Visit Amazon’s best sellers page to identify a product that sells frequently. It might offer you a sense of how popular this certain product is on the market.
Consider purchasing things with a BSR of 5000 or less if you’re just starting. Look in the product details section of the description for the product’s real BSR. The first number, which represents the product’s rating in the major category, is the one that draws the most attention. Choosing products that are already popular with customers is a great way to get off to a successful start.
As a beginner, avoid attempting to pursue products with a BSR below 1000 because they are likely to be sold by more seasoned sellers with excellent ratings.
4. Products with consistent demand
Selling seasonal goods is generally not a good idea for new entrepreneurs. The holiday season is a very competitive time for sellers and many of them want a piece of the action. If you don’t sell your inventory during this period, you run the risk of being left with unsold goods for the rest of the year. Look for the products that provide a lot of sales all year long.
Seasonal goods are not profitable all year round, therefore you should avoid them when starting. To be more precise, it can be useless to invest in nothing but seasonal goods. Once more, you must find a solution that will work for you and make an effort to calculate every possibility.
5. Top 3 product keywords attract more than 100,000 searches each month
Finding out how many people are searching for your goods on Google or Amazon is another crucial step in determining whether there is sufficient consumer interest in it.
Finding out the demand for your main keywords on Amazon is more important because, according to data, it normally has a conversion rate of between 12 and 17 percent. If the combined monthly searches for our top three product keywords on Amazon exceed 100,000, that is a strong indication that there is enough demand for it to sell.
6. Check Page 1 reviews
Though it is not a particularly significant criterion, especially in categories with strong sales, the number of reviews on the first page might help you realize how tough it is for you to generate sales. You may still determine how easy it is for you to claim the top rankings by looking at the number of reviews.
The more checklist items you can confirm, the better. These are the fundamental requirements that are advised for a successful start, even though they are not strict regulations that you must adhere to.
7. No well-known brands in the product category
A consumer will pick a well-known brand over a fresh item or brand. Starting with a product that faces relatively less competition is preferable to having to fight for one that already has well-known brands and battling with them for sales.
Final Tips
To sum it up, look for products that aren’t dependent on seasonal sales and can be sold all year long. Picking up items with a trademark or legal difficulties is not a good idea. Anything costing more than 18 dollars makes it much easier to improve your ability to make millions of dollars through sales. Lightweight and compact items typically sell better than heavier ones. Lower shipping costs and less storage are the two causes of this.
There is always room for improvement. If you can select a product that will outperform those of your rivals, your chances of increasing sales will rise.
How to Research Products
You can employ a variety of strategies to identify successful goods to sell on Amazon. Here is a summary of the main techniques:
1. Manual Product Search
The manual search method is the initial step in discovering goods to sell on Amazon. To come up with ideas, you will need to conduct product searches on Amazon and other eCommerce websites and marketplaces.
The top sellers list on Amazon is an excellent place to start. You can quickly identify the most popular things by using Amazon’s live list of the best-selling items in each category.
To track changes in interest over time, you can also check trends using a platform like Google Trends.
2. Employ Amazon’s Tools For Research
The next strategy is to use software to speed up the research procedure. You can view past sales data from current Amazon product listings with an Amazon research tool to get a clear understanding of how much demand there is for a certain product and how fierce the competition is.
3. Use Services or Freelancers
Hiring a freelancer or business to do the work for you is another approach to conducting product research for Amazon sales. You can save time by using this strategy because you won’t have to do the research yourself. However, because you must pay for the service, this strategy will cost more than the other strategies.
Now that we’ve discussed the various methods for finding products, let’s look more closely at some of the mistakes to avoid while searching for a product.
Common Errors and Products to Avoid
1. Difficult or delicate items
When it comes to product selection, it’s better to avoid fragile products. First of all, such products’ packaging demands extra thought and, inevitably, costs more. Additionally, you have no control over how your products are shipped and wrapped if you use Amazon FBA, which could result in a time or financial loss overall. Overly complicated items may also cause problems, especially when they are being produced.
2. Products without distinction
These are items that a consumer can quickly swap out for an item of a similar nature from a different source. You need your Amazon products to be distinctive. Find products that are different from others until you can compete on price or have the best-seller ratings.
3. Engaging in excessive competition
When you have an idea for a product that you want to sell, look up how many Amazon sellers there are for that particular product. Avoid choosing niches that are already overrun with competitors. It will be challenging to distinguish yourself from the competition, and because your new listings lack reviews, they may just suffocate on the last pages of search results.
4. Not figuring margins or choosing a price that is too low
You will lose money if you don’t maintain track of the ratio between your margins and Amazon’s fees. The same holds for choosing to set your price cheaper to stand out from your rivals. By doing it in this manner, you immediately place yourself at a disadvantage.
Top Tactics to Follow For Product Research on Amazon
- Use Lists on Amazon
It should come as no surprise that your investigation should start on Amazon.com. More particularly, with the lists of “bestsellers” on Amazon, which includes categories for “movers and shakers,” “most wished for,” and “gift ideas.” All of these might provide priceless information on the kinds of goods you have to take into consideration for your inventory.
Start your investigation by going to the Amazon Bestsellers page. You can do a ton of research on Amazon products using all the tabs you see at the top of the page. View the top 100 bestselling items in any category using Bestsellers. It’s important to delve deeply into the subcategories in this case.
Therefore, don’t choose the product you’re going to source and sell by looking at the best-selling item in the top-level category.
Pick a subcategory and focus on the top 100 listings there instead. Even though your product will still be in demand, there will be less competition because you are narrowing your focus. Select a product to investigate more and look for a comparable but superior version as opposed to the exact product.
- Hot New Releases
Use Hot New Releases to learn about products that are now selling well and those that will soon be available. You should target a certain market, just like the greatest sellers, and base your ongoing study on goods that are comparable to those that have recently been introduced.
If you’re quick with your research, you could even be able to find a product before a popular item is released and start making money right away.
- Movers & Shakers
Find out which products have become more or less popular over the past 24 hours by using Movers & Shakers. If you have a product in mind and want to keep an eye on it for a while before sourcing and adding it to your inventory, this is a terrific strategy. However, be careful not to watch for too long or you might miss the perfect chance.
- Most Wished For and Most Gifted
View the items that are frequently ordered as gifts or added to wish lists by using the Most Wished For and Most Gifted filters. The advantage of this is that you can see the kinds of things that are popular, providing you with suggestions for more focused study on a certain niche as opposed to more general product research.
2. Consult with Your Current Provider
One of the simplest and most affordable product research strategies is to just speak with your supplier to get the inside scoop on their best-selling products and hottest product trends if you already sell a product on Amazon and have a relationship with a supplier.
Your supplier ought to already be on top of things and be able to give you insider knowledge. Additionally, the more goods you get from a single supplier, the less each individual item will be per unit. Speaking with your supplier might help you receive significant discounts as well as new product suggestions.
3. Monitor Your Rivals
Checking out whether products are already profitable through Amazon PPC is an excellent additional strategy for researching Amazon products. Amazon merchants who invest money in campaigns like this are almost certainly making money off of these products or they would not do so. On Amazon, the label “sponsored” indicates that the product is an advertisement that has been paid for.
4. Make Use of Google Trends
Google Trends is one of the greatest resources for researching Amazon products. Setting up alerts to receive fast notifications about trending subjects is the first approach to using this service.
The benefit is that, despite not directly receiving notifications of “items,” you will be able to find pertinent topics or stories that relate to your company’s and your product demands as a seller. This enables you to investigate potential goods that you could market on Amazon.
5. Examine the “Frequently Bought Together” and “Customers Also Bought” Sections.
Returning to Amazon, a smart research strategy is to look at the sub-listings, which might provide you with useful product inspiration.
This strategy will not only help you understand the thought and purchasing process of your potential clients, but it will also provide you the chance to research and develop an original product bundle. You will need to have a general understanding of the niche and product you are investigating.
One fantastic product that has the potential to become a big seller may be created by combining products that are regularly purchased together on Amazon. Products that customers have purchased with them are probably quite popular. These products can be studied further on their own, put into a “bundle,” or found and sold separately.
6. Review the Trending Lists on eBay
Even though you might want to sell on Amazon, eBay can be a goldmine of product research data. A product is likely to sell well on Amazon if it is available and doing well on eBay. eBay’s lists are helpful for your product investigation because you can go to the website to browse all popular product discounts in your choice of categories.
Even though not every product will match your search criteria, it’s a great location to find popular items that you can source and sell on Amazon.
7. Explore AliExpress and Look for the Top Sellers
This is a great method for researching Amazon products, but it is frequently disregarded. Don’t only utilize AliExpress for product sourcing; it’s one of the largest trade marketplaces that you can access for free. Use it for research purposes as well.
Although AliExpress doesn’t have a page just for best-selling items, you may still find out which items are well-liked by following these simple steps:
- Select a group or subgroup, such as pet supplies.
- To display the highest sold numbers first, sort the results by “orders.”
- Filter the outcomes to only show items with a 4-star rating.
Now that you have seen all the best-selling items in the category or subcategory of your choice, you can buy with confidence because every item has received at least four stars from previous customers.
Conclusion
These strategies will ensure that your Amazon Product Research is thorough and highly competitive. Find fascinating things to offer and aggressively list them on the market to start competing with the big competitors.
