This is going to be a very brief overview with information that is hopefully new for you. I'm have a follow up video at the end to show you exactly what my research process is. Stay tuned!
As an entrepreneurship major, the main idea our professors planted in us was that we had to reinvent the wheel, and then create a viral marketing plan that creates an explosive company and last for a few years, and then you repeat. Well, being an entrepreneur doesn't mean you have to reinvent anything. You simply want to find a niche, find a problem or gap, come up with a solution that provides value to the user, and then create a way to inform the user that your solution exists.
Ok, so, entrepreneurship 101 is over, time for the good stuff.
So how do you find a product that will sell well, but won't cost you thousands to market in a competitive niche? It can be tough. Wouldn't it be awesome if there was a website out there that ranked millions and millions of products based on how well they sell online? Well, there is. It's called Amazon. On the bottom of every product page, you will find the 'BSR', or best sellers rank. That is the current rank that product has in it's category. There are many tables and charts out there that will give you an estimated monthly sales based on the BSR and category.
So you're probably thinking 'oh great now I can go search thousands of products and individually check the BSR and sales/month, this will take forever...'
Nope. There's a better way. There are two main programs that expedite product research, allowing you to view the valuable data from each product on the search result page in a single chart. This way you can quickly analyze the top sellers in a niche and decide whether it is right for you. I use JungleScout, it's around $85 i believe, and it's awesome. I actually use it daily. The other program that recently came out for free is Unicorn Smasher. Works the same, monthly sales numbers seem to be a bit lower than JS, but ultimately should work just fine. I just trust JS a bit more.
So now you have the ability to search a product in amazon, click a button and view the monthly sales of the products by page. So how do I know if I can compete?
Reviews and brands. One of the largest factors for ranking (if not the largest) is the number of reviews a product has. When a new product is launched, companies will often do big giveaways in exchange for reviews, which drives down their BSR (the lower the number the better) and gets them better organic ranking, driving those organic sales. So what you want to do is find a niche with a decent amount of monthly sales and not too much competition. Also, if the niche has several household brand names, I just skip it.
Here's my criteria: Top 15 results are at least doing a combined 5k sales/month
Top 5 results have a product with less than 100 reviews
Top 10 results have 5 products with less than 100 reviews
The average price is greater than $20
The product niche has several names (i'll get into this later, but I mean products like 'sponge' are difficult because everyone is going to search that keyword, but 'string lights' could be rope lights. fairy lights, copper lights, etc.)
My goal is to find a niche where I can sell 10 units a day at $10/profit per sale. That's 300 units/month, $3000 profit.
So that's product research on amazon in a nutshell. Once you find 5-10 ideas, track their niches for a few weeks by exporting the data from the research programs. Narrow down your list and see which niche has the least amount of competition on google. Look for opportunities to overtake competitors websites with a nicely-designed and optimized ecommerce website. Your combined sales channels of your ecommerce site, amazon, ebay, pinterest, wanelo, etc. could create quite a lot of income for yourself if you find the right product.
These are the basics to get you started. There are so many youtube videos, facebook groups, and even the Amazing seller (I got a lot of good tips from there), e-books, and even subreddits that will teach you more about amazon, FBA (fulfilled by amazon), private labeling, importing, and so on. As promised, here is my video of how I go about product research and a good amount of tips to help guide you on your path. Now it's your turn to go out and learn more the way that works best for you.
As an entrepreneurship major, the main idea our professors planted in us was that we had to reinvent the wheel, and then create a viral marketing plan that creates an explosive company and last for a few years, and then you repeat. Well, being an entrepreneur doesn't mean you have to reinvent anything. You simply want to find a niche, find a problem or gap, come up with a solution that provides value to the user, and then create a way to inform the user that your solution exists.
Ok, so, entrepreneurship 101 is over, time for the good stuff.
So how do you find a product that will sell well, but won't cost you thousands to market in a competitive niche? It can be tough. Wouldn't it be awesome if there was a website out there that ranked millions and millions of products based on how well they sell online? Well, there is. It's called Amazon. On the bottom of every product page, you will find the 'BSR', or best sellers rank. That is the current rank that product has in it's category. There are many tables and charts out there that will give you an estimated monthly sales based on the BSR and category.
So you're probably thinking 'oh great now I can go search thousands of products and individually check the BSR and sales/month, this will take forever...'
Nope. There's a better way. There are two main programs that expedite product research, allowing you to view the valuable data from each product on the search result page in a single chart. This way you can quickly analyze the top sellers in a niche and decide whether it is right for you. I use JungleScout, it's around $85 i believe, and it's awesome. I actually use it daily. The other program that recently came out for free is Unicorn Smasher. Works the same, monthly sales numbers seem to be a bit lower than JS, but ultimately should work just fine. I just trust JS a bit more.
So now you have the ability to search a product in amazon, click a button and view the monthly sales of the products by page. So how do I know if I can compete?
Reviews and brands. One of the largest factors for ranking (if not the largest) is the number of reviews a product has. When a new product is launched, companies will often do big giveaways in exchange for reviews, which drives down their BSR (the lower the number the better) and gets them better organic ranking, driving those organic sales. So what you want to do is find a niche with a decent amount of monthly sales and not too much competition. Also, if the niche has several household brand names, I just skip it.
Here's my criteria: Top 15 results are at least doing a combined 5k sales/month
Top 5 results have a product with less than 100 reviews
Top 10 results have 5 products with less than 100 reviews
The average price is greater than $20
The product niche has several names (i'll get into this later, but I mean products like 'sponge' are difficult because everyone is going to search that keyword, but 'string lights' could be rope lights. fairy lights, copper lights, etc.)
My goal is to find a niche where I can sell 10 units a day at $10/profit per sale. That's 300 units/month, $3000 profit.
So that's product research on amazon in a nutshell. Once you find 5-10 ideas, track their niches for a few weeks by exporting the data from the research programs. Narrow down your list and see which niche has the least amount of competition on google. Look for opportunities to overtake competitors websites with a nicely-designed and optimized ecommerce website. Your combined sales channels of your ecommerce site, amazon, ebay, pinterest, wanelo, etc. could create quite a lot of income for yourself if you find the right product.
These are the basics to get you started. There are so many youtube videos, facebook groups, and even the Amazing seller (I got a lot of good tips from there), e-books, and even subreddits that will teach you more about amazon, FBA (fulfilled by amazon), private labeling, importing, and so on. As promised, here is my video of how I go about product research and a good amount of tips to help guide you on your path. Now it's your turn to go out and learn more the way that works best for you.