EPISODE 30: Product Research Like a Pro

In This Episode

Tommy shares the profitable product research method he uses in his own Amazon business and provides recommendations on how and where to source your products. Listen in or watch the video and follow along.

TRANSCRIPT

Tommy Beringer:

What's up, you data-hungry Amazon sellers? This is your host, Tommy Beringer of the Sell Rank Win Podcast from MerchantWords, and in this podcast, we give you the answers to your most burning questions, actionable insights that you can take away and implement into your business today. So let's go ahead and dive right into today's episode. What do you say? Let's go. What's up, everybody? In this episode, I walk you through on video. So it would be good for you to go to our YouTube channel and to our podcast section and try to check out the video as well. But you can still listen to the audio, but I do recommend going to our YouTube channel, our MerchantWords YouTube channel, and going into the podcast section to follow along with what I'm doing to retain all of the knowledge a little bit better. But without further ado, let's go ahead and dive into the episode.

What's going on, everybody? Welcome to the Sell Rank Win Podcast. I'm your host, Tommy Beringer, and in this episode, I'm going to go over how to find the best products, those niche products, to sell on Amazon in order to make a profit. So let's just go ahead and dive in and give you guys the good stuff. So I'm here in classic search, and you need a MerchantWords plan to do this, but you can do a 14-day trial and if you don't like it, no harm, no foul. You can get a full refund. So I recommend for you guys to try it out. I know you're going to love it. We have the best data, the most accurate data around, and you guys are going to love it. So let's go ahead and dive in. I'm here in our classic search tool and what I did was type in the asterisk, and this is called an asterisk search and it brings up everything the top Amazon searches. So from the highest searched keyword all the way down to the lowest searched keyword, and I already filtered right now in respect of time here.

So what I did was I filtered the search volume from 1,000 searches to up to 20,000 searches. And the reason I did that is because anything below 1,000 really isn't going to be enough to make an impact for me. But if you see something below 1,000 that makes sense to you and covers the criteria that I'm going to go over, then go ahead and go for it. And I went up to 20,000. You can even go up to 30,000, 40,000, if you want, even down to 10,000. And I'm doing that because we don't want to compete with the big boys. Now, this is focused here for smaller sellers to medium-sized sellers. So if you're a big brand, a large brand, of course, you can do this research in different ways to see what is the most searched product in each category, and you can do that with our tools as well.

But I'm going to for the small sellers and the medium-sized sellers to find those base hit products that they can scale with and increase their revenue, increase their top line strategically in this way, just selecting one product and launching it one by one. So I have 1,000 to 20,000 on the search volume, and now what I want to do is just scroll down the list here and look for what I call weird products or weird terms here. Because the weirder the term or the terms maybe you don't know, you're not sure familiar with, that's going to be a better product to launch because there's an actual demand for it, but maybe not a lot of people know about it, or maybe there's a certain niche amount of people that know about it. And so what I'm doing here is I'm scrolling down, my eyes are scanning from the name of the search term over here to the search volume then also over here to the results.

So the lower the results, the better, because it's not going to be as saturated of a market. And I like to go below 2,000 results. You want to dig in and do your proper due diligence, which I'm going to show you how to do right now. So if you see something that has 3,000 results and it makes sense as far as the criteria and as far as your business is concerned, then go for it. I'm just using some benchmarks here, some metrics, some criteria that I go by when I look for products to sell on Amazon myself. So just coming down the line here, I did this earlier so you can just, as soon as you see something that you like, that's interesting to you, so here, things for kids, 20,000 search volume, 50,000 results. That's a little high. So I'm going to keep on going here. Cowboy hat women, okay, 20,000, 7,000. I'm going to keep going. Muzzle for dogs, 20,700.

So for muzzle for dogs, and this could be a saturated category, but the data here is just looking good. High search volume and low results, so let's just go ahead and add that to the collection. I'm not going to do the deeper analysis this right here on the classic search. I'm going to do it in our collections tool. So you can just keep going down the line, clicking on these, which ones you like. Let's just do another one off the top here, gasoline transfer pump. That's very interesting. Never heard of that. 1,000 results, so that's not bad. You get the idea here for how you're trying to find your product and pick your product, and then after you find these, add them into a collection so you can go back to later and do a deeper analysis. So product research one, which I've already created, and then just add those to the collection.

And now you're going to go over to the actual collection. So I just did that, go to the CO on the side navigation, and then go to the collection that you created. In this case, I did product research one. So I know this is my product research collection. So here I have a few products that I have added in earlier, and one that I thought was interesting so I came down here to mini screwdriver set. So now I'm doing my further analysis, my due diligence, on these keywords, on this keyword market. So right away what you want to do is hit the Analyze button, which is this column graph icon. It's called our Keyword History Analysis Panel, is what you're seeing here. And you want to see first right away that you have a good amount of keywords connected to this market. So you see that here in the related keywords. Okay, awesome.

So now you're coming over here. It looks like this is on an upward trend. It always doesn't have to be an upward trend because it might not be an evergreen product. It might be a seasonal product, but you just want to make sure that there is a sufficient amount of search volume that is steadily growing over time, which makes it an evergreen product. You just want to make sure of that. So that crosses off that bucket for me as far as the criteria is concerned. There's a high price of 95. Low price of $2. $2 is a bit low. You want to sell a product for at least $17 and up, somewhere around that range, depending on how much you source the product for from China or India, wherever you're buying the product from. And let's see, star rating. Okay, the results, we already checked that off. Page one reviews, there's over 14 listings that have over 1,000 reviews. So we've got to look into that because you don't really want to connect on a product page that has 1,000 reviews because you might not have a chance when you're launching with zero reviews.

So you want to look into that. But what you do want to look here, which is really good, is there's 20 listings that have under 100 reviews. So, that is really good. That's going to be easy to compete with. But we want to look into those listings that have 1,000 or more reviews. And to do that, you just come over here to the page one. So just click on this red box here, and the 48 represents how many products are on page one. So we're just going to go over to our page one tool right now. You can also get there by the side nav. Everything's located on our side nav. For this tool, it is the P1 for page one product. So coming down the line here, it looks like a lot of Me Too products, which means there's a lot that are similar. But that's why we're doing a deeper dive here because maybe they're not all the same, they just look all the same on the outside.

So here's a six-piece mini-screwdriver set for eyeglass repair. Just coming down the list here, you want to make sure that what you're going to offer on the market is going to be different. You want to differentiate yourself, whether it be with a bundle or maybe making a higher quality product. That's why you always want to get samples from your competitors. So just go ahead and straight-up buy some of these. And then also, get samples from your manufacturer that you find, of course, as well. So just coming over here, see this has 2,400 reviews, 10,000 reviews. That's a lot. So right now, looking at this, I don't know if I would want to come into the mini-screwdriver space because there is a ton of products here on page one that have over 1,000 reviews. So I would cross this one off my list immediately because I probably wouldn't succeed in this market.

So you can go back to the drawing board. Go back to your collection. Go back to the product research collection. But now let's just continue our research until we could find something, and I am doing this on the fly. But here, let's just do gasoline transfer pump. Let's see what this is about. And we can go to the page one products again just by going here. There is 11 listings that have over 1,000 reviews. So let's just see what products these are. Okay, gasoline transfer pump. Okay, okay. So 4,000, this one. If it's numerous gas cans, 362, 200, 692, 1,219. So let's just use this as an example. This would be a product I would not sell because just of all the high reviews here. But look here, here's something over 50, siphon pump for gasoline. Oh, it is a transfer pump. So maybe that is something similar. So if you're looking down the line here, if you see something that's maybe similar to it.

And I have no idea what this is, it looks like it's just something you siphon out of a gas can into your gas tank, or you siphon out gas from a car taking the gas out. But what you want to do now, let's go back to our collections really quick and I want to show you guys something else. So, for example, here, affirmation cards. Let's just do that briefly. So what you want to do and what I'm doing here is searching this keyword back on our classic tool, on our classic search tool. So I hover over the magnifying glass and go to our classic search. And the reason I'm doing this is because I want to now see that there's going to be enough keywords. Let's just say that this is a product that I think I want to go with. So another criteria here is, how many keywords are there in this keyword market? So all the keywords right away you can see connected to the keyword affirmation cards.

Right here you can see with this number here, there's 2,424. And then you can also see that in all of the marketplaces as well right there just by clicking on it. So now let's say we're going to sell in the U.S. There is a lot of keywords here that you can go after, add for your SEO into your listing, and also into your PPC campaigns. That is very important if you're getting into a space that a buyer is searching for this product in many different ways. If a buyer is only searching for a product in a few different ways, you have very little amount and you're not going to have that much traffic back to your listing, which is not going to give you a lot of sales. So this is good, you have a lot of keywords here. But, of course, you want to make sure you're comparing apples to apples. So birth affirmation card is probably not going to be, well, maybe it might be, affirmation cards for kids, that might not be the same type of card.

But you can also do a line of affirmation cards here for kids and for men and for women and for babies and pregnant women, whatever. So that's some of the criteria that I wanted to show you guys and go over with that is very important to look into when you're looking into launching or getting into a new space, getting into a new product space. So, number one, you want to make sure there's a lot of keywords connected to that keyword market. I mean, at least 20 plus. You want to make sure there's a good amount of search volume within all of those keywords as well, up to 200,000, 150,000, maybe even more. With all of those keywords combined I mean. Not just one keyword, because if one keyword has 150,000 that might not be that good because it might be too saturated of a market.

And now the next criteria, of course, is you want to see the page one reviews for a few of your main keywords. So, for right now, this example is positive affirmation cards. We are looking at seven listings have over 1,000 reviews. So I might not want to get into this space, because it's a lot of listings that have over 1,000 reviews, but you don't know what those listings are. So, again, you have to go to our page one products, which is just clicking this right here, the red 48, or you can just click on the P1 right here. And you want to make sure that you have a good price you can offer your product at. At least above $17, of course, depending on how much you can source the product for. So if you're sourcing the product for 30 cents, you could probably get away with selling it for maybe 13 bucks or something like that after Amazon fees are taken, FBA fees are taken and all that good stuff, shipping costs and all that.

Also, there's a low amount of results in the space, because that's going to show you that you can compete on it as well. So when all of the stars aligned, you will see it and it'll show you. You'll see that you can enter this space with a calculated risk, which is what you're doing here through this analysis that I'm showing you guys. Now, say that you have a product and you're like, "Yes, we're doing positive affirmation card." Let's just do mini-screwdriver for this example. So I have mini-screwdrivers, okay, cool. Mini-screwdriver set, so your next step is going to be, you want to get a sample from a manufacturer. So an easy way to do that is just go to Alibaba mini-screwdriver. Let's just do this, mini-screwdriver. And you do want to make sure not products, you want to select a supplier or manufacturer from the dropdown here. Supplier, it is.

And this is because you have different suppliers here, because on that first page, a bunch of those mini-screwdrivers could have been connected to the same manufacturer, the same supplier so you're not continually reaching out to the same supplier and wasting your time. So say, for example, you reach out to this guy, this guy, or this company, this company, and this company, make sure when you look you want to make sure that they're doing over a million dollars, so they're a reputable company if they've been around for a while. Six years is good. Those suppliers, they have trade assurance. I mean, they pay for gold supplier, but I think it is a lot of money to pay for that. But it does show that they want your business. Total revenue above 10 million. So I would just contact the supplier this way. Just tell them you're a brand, this is going to fit your product line, and then you'd like to get a sample and they will go through the process there with you.

I could do a whole other video on just how to reach out to suppliers, but simply just tell them this is a product that fits your product line for our brand and just go with the flow there with them that way and just get the samples from a few different suppliers. At least three to four to five. The sample prices aren't going to be cheap, but it could be almost $100 dollars possibly. For these mini-screwdrivers, maybe a little bit less, but this is the cost of doing business so make it happen if you want to make this happen and get some passive income in your life. So now say, for example, you've found the product, you're like, "Yes, let's do it," you can also reach out to a company called 16ADA.com, which is also a part of Alibaba as well. A lot of people don't know this, but a lot of these companies on Alibaba actually reach out to the 1688 Company.

This is like Alibaba for the manufacturers in China or India or wherever, and you're going to get it a lot cheaper here on 1688 than going through Alibaba. And you can reach out and find your own sourcing agent, which I do. I had my own sourcing agents that goes out and goes and finds me the cheapest prices around. So it's hard to navigate 1688, I'm not going to lie to you. It has gotten better, but I think it's almost on purpose so that Americans or people who do not know how to speak Chinese do not know how to navigate it for these reasons for these companies here. That's my guest. So an easy way to do it is just pay someone on Fiverr to help you navigate this site in 1688. I've done it before. You find great manufacturers this way that you can have long-term relationships with. It is a great investment. I mean, you can pay someone, "Here, just go to Fiverr, type in 1688, and, boom, you get all these people or companies back."

And, let's see, I would do pro services because these are vetted professionals by Fiverr. And then also, just make sure that they have a good amount of reviews. Just reach out to a few of them and say, "Hey, I want you to check out 1688 for these mini-screwdrivers and try to get me the lowest price possible. And if you can possibly see if they offer samples." And you can do is that through Alibaba as well, if you're just getting started, but you can do it either way through 1688 or Alibaba. It is up to you. Now, you say that you have all of that out of the way now. You've gotten your product. You have figured out what you can source it for. You've figured out how much it's going to ship for. You've figured out how much you're going to sell it on Amazon for. So what you want to do is go to your FBA calculator here in your Seller Central Account.

I believe you need a Seller Central Account to access this FBA calculator that they offer, but just sign up for an account. It's free to do until you started selling goods so it shouldn't be of any harm. And there's also free FBA calculators out there on Google. Just Google "FBA calculator" and you'll see a bunch of pop up. So, in this example, I typed in, you want to go under Amazon Fulfillment because you're going to be doing FBA fulfillment. That's the model that gives you the highest margins. And then also, there's Your Fulfillment if you want to fulfill it from your own warehouse, which is called FBM, merchant fulfilled. You can do it that way as well. You won't have the Prime logo at the moment. At least they're not offering that. They used to have Seller Fulfilled Prime, but at the moment of me recording this podcast, they're not offering Seller Fulfilled Prime, which sucks, but I wish they would bring that back.

But now, let's add the numbers into the Amazon Fulfillment section. So your item price that you can sell it for $25. I'm just doing an example here, 25 bucks. And then let's just estimate per item it's going to be $3 per item to ship from China to your FBA warehouse. And then your cost of your product is an estimated $4 per unit. So right here, your net margins, after all is said and done, minus PPC costs, you want this net margin to be around 30% to 40%. I wouldn't go too much lower than 25%, but that's where you want to be as far as the net margin is concerned. So I just wanted to show you guys all of that from top to bottom, from product research to reaching out to a manufacturer, and then also trying to calculate what you're going to make on Amazon. What is your profit margin going to be after you're selling?

Because you have to know all of these things, again, going in. It's a risk, of course, but doing all of this research and analysis is going to give you a calculated risk going in and that's what we're here for to help you guys to be better-equipped sellers and to make sure that you guys are getting the most bang for your buck in every aspect here. So again, guys, thank you for listening, thank you for watching, and reach out to me please. My direct email is [email protected]. I'd love to answer any questions from you. You can also reach out to our wonderful customer service team at [email protected]. But until next time, guys, stay awesome and be awesome. Thanks so much.

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