There’s no doubt about it – one of the hardest parts of Amazon FBA product research… is finding a product to sell. For some people, this isn’t just hard – it’s impossible, which is usually because they don’t know what it is they’re looking for, or if they do, they’re overcomplicating the process, resulting in them never being able to settle on a product, getting bored and giving up.
There are still hundreds of thousands of Amazon FBA product opportunities out there just waiting to be found and capitalized on… if you know what to look for. So in this article, I want to walk you through what the essentials are when it comes to finding a product, and how to verify them, which will make your product research 10 times easier. You’ll understand exactly how to do Amazon FBA product research by the time you’ve finished this article!
When scouting Youtube tutorials and the internet in general, if you don’t know what the essential factors for success are, then that can result in you massively overcomplicating the research process, meaning that you’re looking for a product that more or less ticks every single box – i.e. it’s the perfect product. Given that that doesn’t exist, it means that you’ve set yourself an impossible task that you’re never going to complete.
So, to decomplicate the process of product research as much as possible, and to make an impossible task turn to a possible one, whenever you are looking for a product, just make sure that it has these 3 things – sales demand, profitability, and an opportunity to differentiate somehow.
Everything else that can factor in to making a good product – so lightweight, not complex or fragile for example – those are just nice to haves. You can still have a really successful business if your product isn’t lightweight, or easy to use, or sturdy, as long as it does have my 3 essentials – demand from customers, profitability, and an angle for you to add your own stamp.
Lets break down each of these essentials, why they’re important, and how to verify that any product that you find during your research, has got them.
Sales Demand
Selling a product that has existing sales demand is hugely important when it comes to Amazon FBA. Even if you think you’ve got the best product in the world, if customers on Amazon aren’t already buying or searching for it, then it’s just not going to sell.
A common mistake that I see quite frequently, is where people think of a random product that they personally like, and just assume it will sell well because of that. Any product that you want to sell on Amazon, needs to already have demand. Amazon isn’t really a place that people go to, to mindlessly shop on – typically they have a product in mind already, they just don’t know who they want to buy it from and exactly how much they want to spend. Convincing a shopper to buy yours is going to be your job when it comes to writing your listing.
So, how do we verify sales demand? Well, the easiest way is by using a product research tool such as Helium 10, which will give you a very accurate estimate of the sales within a product niche.
Once you’ve installed the app, simply search for the product that you want to sell on Amazon, check the results are relevant, and then run the Helium 10 X-Ray tool. After it’s run, you can then check the sales revenue column, and what you should look to see at a minimum is 3 sellers who are generating monthly revenues that are at the very least equivalent to 3x your profit target.
Another common mistake that people make when looking for products, is that they’re searching for something that’s making £100k profit per month, when in reality, they’d happily settle for £1,000 of additional income per month. So before using tools such as Helium 10, make sure you’ve sat down and had a serious think about how much you’d be happy to earn with Amazon at a minimum. Earning £100k a month is all well and good, but those type of products are few and far between – so keep it realistic and at an achievable level, and you’ll soon find the product opportunities you come across increases tenfold.
Profitability
Selling a product that flies off the shelf is an amazing feeling, but that feeling will quickly disappear if the product that you’re selling doesn’t make you money.
So, the second essential for any product that you want to sell – is that it’s profitable. I went through exactly how to do this in my last video which I’ll link to, and calculating profitability these days is pretty straightforward, especially when you’ve got my free profit calculator to hand.
Standing Out
The final piece of the puzzle is down what you think you can do to stand out from a sea of competitors in order to compel the customer to buy from you. This is probably the most challenging of the three, but it is certainly achievable if you put your mind to it.
The first step that I always take is to look through your competitors listings and assess the quality of the images and text, and judge whether you think you can do a better job. There are still huge amounts of listings that are poorly written and look unprofessional, but because there’s no better option, they still sell. So if you take a look at listings and see that the images are poor and the benefits of the product are not being clearly communicated, then that is certainly one area that you can look to stand out.
The second step, is where we look at what customers like and dislike about the current product offering, which is really easily done by using Helium 10’s review insights tool. Simply load up a listing within your niche, run the tool that sits within your Helium 10 Chrome Extension, filter for 1 to 3 star reviews, and then go through each of them and try to understand what it is that customers aren’t liking, and whether you’re able to fix those problems or implement their suggestions, in order to improve upon the product.
The third step that I’ll often follow to stand out, is by searching Ali Baba to see if there are any designs of the product that aren’t currently available on Amazon. Even if its is just a colour change or a slightly different design that you can show in your main product image, that’s going to be enough for a pattern interrupt when the customer is scrolling through the listings, which will hopefully grab their attention and get them to click onto your listing, where you’ve then got a much higher chance of making a sale.
Now obviously there are a tonne of other ways that you can look to differentiate a product, but these 3 techniques are probably the quickest at helping you understand whether there is an opportunity.
Conclusion
So, if you are doing product research and you’re being driven crazy at how long it’s taking and you feel that youv’e set yourself the impossible task of looking for a perfect product – remove all of that selection criteria from your head, and just focus on my 3 essentials – sales demand, profitability, and an opportunity for you to differentiate. If the product has those 3, then it’s absolutely got the potential to be a killer Amazon FBA product.
If you’d like to learn more about how you can start selling with Amazon FBA, check out my free mini course here! To read about whether I think Amazon FBA is passive, check out this post here.
