The Ultimate Guide to

Amazon Product Research

Find a profitable Amazon product from the start
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 Why is choosing a business
model imortant?
So you’re interested in selling on
Amazon. Awesome and congrats on making
that decision.
3
But selling on Amazon starts here.
Actually, you need to decide which business
model works best for you (that’s right,
Amazon is so big you have a choice of a
business model).
 What are the business model options?

If You Love to
Bargain Hunt
Reselling items you’ve gotten at a
bargain is called “arbitrage” and
can be performed in retail stores
or online.

These are known products and

brands and when you resell them,
you’ll typically be doing so on a
listing that already exists
on Amazon.

4
 What are the business model options?

If You Love
to Create
Creating your own brand of products typ-
ically works best under the “private label”
model (unless you are the manufacturer).

This is where you find factories that can

mass produce a type of product to your
branded specifications.

For example, you find a yoga mat factory

and want them to create a mat stamped
with your logo in your color options and
made to your specified thickness from
your specified materials.
5
 What are the business model options?

If You Love
Sales or
Networking
Building a relationship with a known
brand to get a contract that offers the
bulk sale of their product to you at a dis-
count is referred to as “wholesale.”

When you create wholesale contracts,

you are reselling a known brand’s prod-
ucts on an existing listing on Amazon.

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 Why is
You own the rights to your product. This means
that you can grow your business without outside
restrictions. It’s the most sustainable method.

private label
Period.

Private label has very few barriers to entry. You

the most
don’t need a website, you don’t need to generate
your own traffic (Amazon does it for you), and there
are no inventory requirements.

practical Creating your own brand of products typically

works best under the “private label” You can keep

option?
upgrading your products to make them more com-
petitive in the marketplace. Other options don’t of-
fer this flexibility.

You can sell your profitable brand one day for as

high as six, seven, or maybe even eight-figures.

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 Retail
Arbitrage
You need to constantly go out of your way to find and shop new
goods. It’s a huge vacuum that sucks your time and energy.

You can get stuck with inventory.

Amazon discourages the retail arbitrage model.

Some brands now require manufacturer approval.

Retail arbitrage carries higher risks of getting shut down. Cease

and desist letters are never fun — especially when you’re stuck
with inventory.

8
 Wholesaling

Competition can quickly choke profits dry.

Other sellers will be selling the same products — unlike private labeling.

Saturation is always an issue for this model.

Be prepared for increasing stress on prices.

You will most likely have a third-wheeling distributor as a middle-man between

you and the manufacturer. This means markups from the local toll-man.

You can wholesale your own private label brand but never the other
way around.

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 Private
Labeling
By no means is starting a business easy, but the process
is rather simple.

To start a private label business, you simply find a factory

that can make the product you want to sell.

Work out a deal with them to manufacture your product.

Then sell it.

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 Product
Research For
Private Label
Now, we are going to dive deeper into product
research for the private label model!

11
 month one
Why is choosing the right
product important?
• Sell 125 units of product
one for $25 revenue =
$3125.

Amazon has a big catalog. • Immediately reinvest 3000

If you don’t start off with a product in de- into product two qty: 300.

mand, that will gain traction, you will end up • $125 left over.
losing money.
For anyone on a shoestring budget, that’s why
getting it right the first time is important.
month three month two
Consider this example scenario. • Sell 125 units of product one for $25 • Sell 125 units of product one for $25
Product Cost = 300 Units X 10 dollars revenue = $3125 . revenue = $3125.

= $3000 Initial Investment • Sell 125 units of product two for $25 • Sell 125 units of product two for $25
revenue = $3125 . revenue = $3125.

Profit Per Unit: $15 • Sell 125 units of product three for $25 • Use 3,000 of the $6375 to replenish
revenue = $3125. product one with 300 units.
Profit = $4500
ROI = 4500 / 3000 = 150% • Replenish product two, • Use 3,000 of the $3375 to order
order product four. product three with 300 units.

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 Consider this example scenario.
In this example, you are selling a $25 product
with a 150% ROI. These are good numbers, but
as you see, in your first couple of months, you
won’t have a lot left over. So this gives you less
margin for error.

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 How to Find Your First,
Profitable Product
It all comes down to doing good research.

14
 Method One
Products with low number of reviews

Reviews are one of the most powerful

drivers of sales because they are an
indication of social proof.

For this reason, it can be very hard to

compete with products that have a ton of
reviews. Case and point, in this example,
one listing clearly conveys more trust in
the marketplace.

So one method is to search for products

whose competition all have a low number
of reviews. Because they will be, presum-
ably, easier to compete with.

15
 Method One
You can do this by using Helium 10’s Black Box tool.
In Black Box, simply add filters to specify what products you want it to present to you.

In this example we only

applied three filters.

1. Products generating more

than $5,000 a month in reve-
nue (to show some demand).

2. Products selling for at least

$20 (to avoid very cheap
items with low margins).

3. Products with no more than

25 reviews.

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 Method One
The search revealed this product:
An inflatable gymnastics mat.

If we search the key phrase “inflat-

able gymnastics mat” in Amazon
and use Helium 10’s Xray tool,
we see quite a few examples of
low review count and very decent
monthly revenue.

17
 Method Two
Products with low star rating

In much the same way of searching for products

with low review counts, we can also filter prod-
ucts by star rating.

The idea here is, if we identify good selling prod-

ucts that only have poor representation on Am-
azon (i.e. low star ratings indicating poor quality)
then all we have to do is come onto the market
with a high quality version.

This time we tweaked the filter to only show

products with a maximum star rating of three.

This new search revealed an

“ultrasonic animal repeller.”
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 Method Two
Searching on Amazon for the term “ultrasonic animal repeller” revealed a number of
listings with poor review ratings.

19
 Method Three
Products with non optimized listings

By filtering to only show product listings with two images or less, we see
a number of individual listings we could choose to compete with.

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 Method Three

Here is a listing that gener-

ates over $11,000 a month
in revenue and only has a
single image.

The logic here is, if you tried

to compete head to head
with one of these listings,
overtaking their position in
rankings, you could earn
that type of revenue too.

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 Method Four
Higher priced items

Often products that sell for over

$60 are intimidating. The initial
product cost presents a high
barrier of entry.

But, for sellers with large enough

starting capital, this could pres-
ent a great opportunity.

If you decided to get creative,

you could combine methods
too. Here’s an example of using
all of the filters we’ve discussed
so far.

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 Combining Methods

Here we see a potential high ticket opportunity in farming equipment.

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 Why is developing a product picking
methodology important?
We’ve shared only a few product picking methods.
There are still a number of other options you can choose from, such as:
Ultimately, you can incorporate any combination
• Seasonal products. of filters and develop your own methodology.

But it is important that you have a method.

• Merchant fulfilled oppor-
tunities (for wholesale). This allows you to follow a process, rather than leave
your product choice too muchto chance.

• Digital and Merch products. By being calculated and unemotional, following the
rules of your method, you ensure that you’ll make
the best choice possible, increasing your chances
of success.
• Many more.
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 How to build your own product
picking method
step one
• Commit to the process.
• Make the decision that no
matter what, you will trust in
and abide by the results.
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step two
• Detach emotion from
the outcome.
• Sure, you can use passion
and interest in the process
of choosing candidates. But
when applying your meth-
odology, emotion can cloud
results.
An example method would be:
• Products whose keyword has at least
1000 searches a month.
• Products whose keyword has less
than 500 competing listings.
• Products whose top listings are
earning an average of over $10,000
a month.
• Products where the average review
count of the top listings is below 50.
• All of these filters can be applied in
Helium 10’s Black Box under the
Keyword tab.
step three
• Make it mathematical.
• Assign either a numeric
value to the results, or make
sure there is a clear value as-
signment that makes it easy
to identify the better choice.
 How to build your own
product picking method
The next step would be to assign a range of values to each metric.
If we continue with the previous example, then:

The higher the average

The higher the search monthly revenue, the
volume, the larger the larger the score. The lower the average
score (set a max score review count, the larg-
too). The lower the number er the score.
of competing listings,
the larger the score.

The product with the highest overall score wins.

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 Why is keyword research so important?
Keyword research may seem like a complex and unnec-
essary step this early on in the process, but it is critical
to ensuring your product selection is optimal.
See, when selling on Amazon, you aren’t just selling
products. You’re actually selling keywords.
To illustrate, let’s say you have designed the cutest,
coolest kids toilet scrub (a real idea pitched).
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The problem is, the keywords related to that product
don’t get a lot of search volume.
So it wouldn’t matter how awesome or cute your prod-
uct is, if no one ever finds it. Or wants it.
This means, when choosing products to sell on Amazon,
there needs to be an emphasis on keywords to ensure
the listing you create has good potential traffic (and a
clear path to becoming more visible).
 How to do keyword
focused product research
For this style of product research we turn back to
Helium 10’s Black Box and use the “Keywords” tab.

This will be much like our earlier example meth-

od, but we’ll focus more on the functions and the
power of this tool.

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 Black Box’s
Keyword Tab
There are two functions within the Keyword tab in Black Box that set it apart from the other tool options.
“Search Volume” and “Competing Products.”

The reason these functions are unique is, rather than focus on individual products, the results from these
searches provide entire search pages.

29
 Black Box’s
Keyword Tab
In this example, a search for keywords that get al-
most 30,000 searches a month but have less than
250 competing products yielded a few results.

These are mostly branded search terms (meaning,

they have a brand name in them) but the phrase
“mesh wifi” showed some promise.

That is because “mesh” isn’t a brand name, but a

reference to a type of technology

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Black Box’s
Keyword Tab
Mesh Wifi systems may not be the best mar-
ket for a new seller to get into (electronics
have high return rates, these can be some-
what expensive, and the competition has lots
of reviews) but this illustrates the power of the
Keyword tab nonetheless.
Now let’s see if we can’t harness it for some
real product research.
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Parameters set:
• Search volume 3000 to 12000 (decent volume
that could generate sales, but not too hard to
compete on).
• Monthly revenue $7000 mininum (enough sales
to be worth the time).
• Review count 50 maximum (don’t want to try
and compete with listings that have thousands
of reviews).
• Categories all but electronics and apparel
(very difficult for a new seller).
• Shipping size tier standard size only (oversized
can get expensive).
• Number of sellers one max (this refers to the
number of resellers. Most bigger brands have
many resellers, where private labelers are typi-
cally the only seller).
• Fulfillment FBA
(most other private labelers use this).
• Competing products 850 (low enough to com-
pete with but high enough to show demand).
 Black Box’s
Keyword Tab

The results reveal a lucrative seasonal option,

a niche concept with long tail keyword strength
and a licensing opportunity.

All decent ideas that are generating real

money for some seller.

But let’s go deeper. Let’s look at the key term

“led starburst lights with remote, eight modes
and waterproof”

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 Black Box’s
Keyword Tab
When we run Helium 10’s magnet on the search term, we see two related terms both showing decent
(more than 1000 searches a month) volume.

Also, they both have less than 1000 competing products (another good sign).

33
 Black Box’s
Keyword Tab

And if we run Xray on the search page for

“led starburst lights” we see some really
positive numbers.

Almost all listings have less than 100 re-

views and over $10,000 in monthly revenue!

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 Why is using the right
tools important?
At the crux of Amazon product research to-
day is using the technology available.

The marketplace is simply too big to make a

good decision just by browsing the website.

You need to leverage the power of data

and software tools (like Helium 10) are the
way to do that.

35
 How to leverage
Helium 10 for Amazon
product research
We’ve already shown examples of how to use Helium 10’s Black Box
and Xray tools for product research. However, there are many other
functions that make the process even more efficient and effective.

36
 2
Magnet Information
Seed Product Research
Magnet 2 allows you to deep dive into relevant Search volume Broad volume
keyword suggestions so you can truly see the
opportunity of a key term on Amazon. 266 1,566
Competing products

70,000

Pull the most traffic-generating keywords

within a few clicks. Throttle any listing’s
Amazon SEO strategy with a perfect line-
up of high-performing keywords.

37
 Profitablity
Calculator
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Price $150
The Amazon Profitability Calculator tool lets
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Amazon Fee -$200
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make a profit. Net $500.00

Margin 60%

38
 Cerebro
Reverise ASIN Keyword Research

The ultimate tool for competitor analysis.

Phrase Exact phrase Broad phrase
Learn all of the keywords your competition is
831 3,427
ranking on Amazon for.
62 181

1,121 9
Cerebro is a reverse ASIN keyword research
106 4,212 tool that helps you identify your competitor’s
106 4,212 keywords so you can create a better listing
and crush your competition.
371 426

39
 Review
Downloader
Review Downloader aggregates the negative
and positive buzz surrounding your
competitors’ products.

Perform instant product research on your

competitors listings for useful insights.

Conduct market research without spending

thousands on focus groups by diving into the
language of competitor reviews.

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 Putting it all together
Finding profitable products to sell on Amazon can seem complicated,
but it is actually simple when you take the right steps.

Use the technology available

Identify opportunities/ Analyze competition/ Quantify results/
and most importantly, take action.

41
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