What To Do If You Are You Struggling With Amazon Product Research
Building an Amazon FBA business is incredibly rewarding, not just because of the profit that you’ll hopefully be generating, but also because of all of the transferrable skills & qualities that you’ll be developing along the way. The process of discovering, sourcing and launching a product teaches you how to analyse data, be creative, and to negotiate, to name but a few.
But despite the clear benefits of creating an Amazon FBA business, there’s one part of the process that is so challenging that it causes people to question whether the effort required is even worth the pay off.
The part that I’m talking about is finding the right product to sell.
There’s no two ways around it, product research can be difficult, time consuming, and pretty demotivating, and that’s coming from somebody that’s been doing it for over 5 years. But, what I have learnt over that period is that whilst it is hard and will undoubtedly require you to put time and effort into it, there are a number of steps that you can follow when doing product research, in order to streamline the process, make it more enjoyable to do, and above all, find a product to sell that you’re happy with, much faster than before. Here’s how I did it.
Setting An Earnings Target
In order to maximise how efficient you are when searching for and analysing an Amazon FBA product, you need to ensure that you’ve written down how much monthly profit you’d like to earn in the short term, and how much you’ve got to invest in order to hit that target.
If you miss this step out, then you might find yourself in a situation where you’ve spent a tonne of time analysing a product to sell, and then realising that it only makes £200 profit a month when you’re targeting a £1,000, or even worse, it has so much demand that in order to stay in stock and compete with other sellers in the niche, you’d need to be have tens of thousands of pounds to invest in stock, which you might not have or be comfortable spending.
If you haven’t done this part already, write down a monthly earnings target that is sensible, achievable, realistic, and aligned to how much money you have available to invest in stock. When I first started Amazon FBA, the amount that I had to invest was £3,000, which I wanted to use to hit a monthly profit target of £1,000, which was an amount that certainly wasn’t going to be life changing, but was something that I could achieve in the short term, and meant that pretty much every type of product on Amazon could be considered when doing my research.
The biggest mistake that I see beginners making is going into their product research with £500 to invest and an earnings goal of £10,000 a month, which rules out tonnes of products that don’t have super high levels of demand, and only leaves those that are in really saturated and competitive markets, have a high risk of failure, and require a huge amount of start up capital.
Of course, it is possible to earn much higher amounts of profit on a monthly basis with Amazon FBA, but as a beginner that hasn’t even started selling yet, my advice is to keep it simple and find a product that makes a smaller amount of profit that you’re still happy with, just to get you the experience of selling and to get that confidence up.
Don’t forget that with Amazon FBA you’re not limited to selling a single product – you can sell as many as you want, so over time, as your confidence and experience builds, you can launch more and more products that cumulatively add up to make you a profit that you’re absolutely over the moon with. You’re far more likely to stay motivated and committed to doing Amazon FBA if you set an achievable earnings goal that gets you to the most enjoyable part, which is selling and making a profit on autopilot.
Once you’ve set your monthly Amazon FBA profits target, you can start doing your product research much more efficiently because you’ll know the level of demand that you’ll need to see when running your product research tool of choice.
The quickest way of assessing whether any product’s demand is enough to meet your earnings goal is to check the revenue figures for the niche that your viewing are at least 3x your monthly profit target. If they are, then you quickly know that the product probably makes sense for you to keep investigating it further, something that you wouldn’t have been able to do had you skipped the goal setting stage of product research.
Avoid Analysis Paralysis
Convincing yourself to spend your hard earned cash on an Amazon FBA product that you aren’t 100% sure on is one of the biggest obstacles you’ll face, and it’s probably the main reason that many people never reach the point of selling. Our brains are hardwired to be cautious and risk averse, and for some people, that’s especially so when it comes to spending money on a product to sell on Amazon. Because of that, this category of people find that they’re forever analysing every product that they come across, before eventually getting frustrated and giving up because they can never find any product that ticks all the boxes and guarantees them success.
If this sounds like a scenario that you’ve been experiencing over the past few months, then be grateful that you’ve identified it and don’t worry because it’s a very common situation that I’ve seen in my role as a mentor over the years. I’ve lost count of the number of times that I’ve had a great product idea sent to me, which hasn’t then been progressed because the person that sent it to me over-analysed every aspect of it, and then found something incredibly minor that they couldn’t get comfortable with.
This problem of looking for a 100% surefire perfect product with no risk at all, means that you’ll be forever trapped in the product research phase, because…
To help get over the mindset that every product needs to be risk free and perfect in order for you to succeed with Amazon FBA, scroll through all of the purchases that you’ve made on Amazon over the past few months, and then consider whether any of them are 5 star products with no flaws or improvement opportunities at all. The answer is probably no, yet when you were shopping on Amazon, you still bought them, and you were still happy with your purchase because the product did what you wanted it to do, and it hopefully did it well.
That is essentially the mindset that you need to be in when analysing any product opportunity. It doesn’t to be perfect, it just needs to be something that customers will be able to use and on the whole be content enough with their purchase for the price paid. If you can train your mind to consider products in this manner when doing your research, then you are much more likely to reach the point of selling, instead of over analysing, getting frustrated and then giving up.
Rotate Between Discovery Methods
Searching for a product to sell with Amazon FBA takes time and effort, and because of that, it can be quite boring, especially if you’re doing it for hours on end and using the same sourcing methods day in day out, meaning that you’re seeing the same unsuitable product ideas over and over again.
To solve this problem and improve your chances of finding a product to sell, I recommend doing a maximum of 2 hours of product research a day in order to avoid burn out, and rotating between product discovery methods every time you start a research session. That way, you’ll be kept stimulated and not putting your mind into a trance as you endlessly scroll through the same ideas over and over, with sessions being a lot more productive given the time limit that you set yourself.
If you’re struggling with methods to find new product ideas then there’s a whole catalogue of tutorials on my Youtube channel and in my mentor scheme the Smashers Academy, but to get you started now, here are some of my favourites:
Browse Ali Baba
View Amazon’s sub-category best seller lists
Look at any seller’s storefront
When rotating between these methods, no matter how much fun you’re having finding lots of new ideas, just remember to take breaks and cap yourself at the 2-hour mark to avoid the risk of getting overwhelmed, stressed, and demotivated.
It might be hard to stop yourself If you feel like you’re having fun when you first start your research, but trust me – it’s the right thing to do in the long run. Realistically you’re going to be doing product research for at least 2 weeks regardless of how many 12 hour sessions you have in your first few days, so spread it out and try and keep the process enjoyable as a result.
Seek Guidance
When going through the Amazon FBA product research phase, you’ll undoubtedly experience feelings of overwhelm, isolation, and maybe even regret, all things that happen to all of us when we’re facing a challenge alone. If you don’t act upon these feelings, then the most likely outcome is that you’ll end up quitting and never becoming an Amazon FBA seller, so my best advice is that you try to beef up your support network as much as possible, by joining Amazon FBA facebook groups, following Amazon FBA topics on Twitter and Instragam, and if your budget allows, getting the help of somebody experienced in the field that can help give you the encouragement and support that you need to start selling as quickly as possible.
If you would like to get the help of a mentor and join a community of likeminded entrepreneurs at the same time, then my obvious recommendation would be for you to join the Smashers Academy, which is a beginner to advanced Amazon FBA training programme that not only includes step-by-step video tutorials on how to discover products to sell, but also on how to verify and then select the ones that are likely to give you the best chances of success. Joining means you’ll also have me as your partner, so if you’re unsure about what steps to take next or whether what you’re doing is right, you can reach out for my expert opinion.
If you’re just starting and want to learn more about how you can be successful with your own Amazon FBA business, then check out my free training where I run through my exact 5 step strategy that I’ve repeatedly followed to continue launching successful products.
Alternatively, if you really are fed up of searching for a product and you just don’t want to do it anymore, then there then there are plenty of options out there. You can find people that are willing to hunt for products for you on sites such as Fiverr or Upwork or if you want somebody really experienced to look for you, then you can use AMZ Scout’s Seller Hook service, which is a tailored solution where they will send you 5 exclusive product ideas that their experts have vetted for the marketplace that you want to sell in. Once you’ve got your ideas, you can even go a step further and get another company to actually the source the product from a supplier & negotiate for you, like Jingsourcing.
Above all, regardless of whether you decide to do your product research alone or with the help of somebody else, if you’re struggling for motivation or in making progress, join as any facebook groups as you can, tell friends and family, and ask for advice. The more that you tell others about your goals, aspirations and struggles, the more likely you are to actually stay committed and become an Amazon FBA seller.
Now that you’re you have the right skills for Amazon FBA product research, read up on what products to avoid selling on Amazon.
If you want to learn how you can create an Amazon FBA business yourself, then check out my free training where I’ll teach you everything you need to launch your first product on Amazon and scale to $5,000+ in monthly profit.
Or if you’re ready to begin your journey and want to start with the best chances of success, apply to become a member of HonestFBA’s training programme where you’ll receive guidance & support from our team of 7-figure Amazon FBA seller experts whenever you need it.
