Episode 18 – Find Products To Sell On Amazon FBA – There Are STILL Opportunities!

It’s no secret that Amazon is a dominating force in the e-commerce market. And since they are consistently trending upwards, it makes complete sense to see tons of new sellers flooding to the marketplace, hoping to get a piece of the online pie. Which is why many people are wondering, “Can I still find products to sell on Amazon or is it too competitive?”

Luckily for aspiring and current Amazon sellers alike, Helium 10’s Success Manager, Bradley Sutton’s resounding answer to this question is YES – there are still great opportunities on Amazon… Especially if you apply innovative Amazon product research strategies that work in 2019, which are designed to help you find high-potential opportunities.

In episode 18 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley discusses many of those untapped opportunities:

• 01:14 – Opportunities For Every Amazon Seller’s Budget
• 02:15 – The Right Mindset – Do You Need To Be Passionate About Your Product?
• 04:40 – Product Research Method # 1 – Low Reviews
• 09:10 – Product Research Method #2 – Sub-optimized Images
• 12:15 – Product Research Method #3 – Higher Priced Items
• 14:30 – How To Use Helium 10 Tools To Validate Product Research Results
• 16:20 – Finding Products You Never Would Have Thought Of
• 17:48 – Product Research Method # 4 – Merch by Amazon
• 20:40 – A Special Offer To Jumpstart Your Amazon Journey        

Enjoy this episode? Be sure to check out our previous episodes for even more content to propel you to Amazon FBA Seller success! And don’t forget to “Like” our Facebook page and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Google Play or wherever you listen to our podcast.

Want to absolutely start crushing it on Amazon? Here are few carefully curated resources to get you started:

• Freedom Ticket: Taught by Amazon thought leader Kevin King, get A-Z Amazon strategies and techniques for establishing and solidifying your business.
• Ultimate Resource Guide: Discover the best tools and services to help you dominate on Amazon.
• Helium 10: 20+ software tools to boost your entire sales pipeline from product research to customer communication and Amazon refund automation. Make running a successful Amazon business easier with better data and insights. See what our customers have to say.
• Helium 10 Chrome Extension: Verify your Amazon product idea and validate how lucrative it can be with over a dozen data metrics and profitability estimation. 
• SellerTradmarks.com: Trademarks are vital for protecting your Amazon brand from hijackers, and sellertrademarks.com provides a streamlined process for helping you get one.

Transcript

Bradley Sutton: Anyone ever told you that it’s too late to find new opportunity on Amazon because it’s too saturated or too competitive? Today, I’m going to show you different ways that you can find the opportunity to sell on Amazon.

Bradley Sutton: Hey guys, today’s episode, we are going to go over a little mini-workshop about trying to find products to sell on Amazon. It’s kind of an abbreviated version of a webinar that I did a little while back, which was a very comprehensive guide for 2019 on how to sell products on Amazon. So if you haven’t gotten a chance to look at that webinar or to watch it, make sure to check the notes or the description depending on what platform you’re looking at. I’ll try and put a link at the bottom. If you don’t see the link, just go to our helium10.com/podcast find this episode and in the notes, you’ll see the link right there. But it’s a great way to find out 10 different ways to find new opportunity to sell on Amazon.

Bradley Sutton: Today, we’re just going over a few of those because I really want to get this point across that guys, it is not too late. You know, is it harder than before? Of course, it’s harder than before, but there is still opportunity on Amazon for you guys to sell and I want to make sure that you guys understand that. Alright, so what are you going to expect? Well, I want to show you some actionable product researches or product research strategy that you can implement today, regardless of your budget. Alright, so there is going to be also some information on here about a non-private label. You know, some people just get the idea like, hey, I can only do private label. Well, we’re going to talk a little bit about some other methods that people can use to sell on Amazon, even if your end goal is private label. But if you can afford it now I want to give you a couple of tips on how you can get to that level.

Bradley Sutton: Alright, so the first question you know, is there too much competition on Amazon? Is it too saturated? And first, sometimes the answer is actually yes. You know, I always make the joke that I talk about Collagen Peptides, right? But actually Collagen Peptides, as I’ve said many times, that’s probably something that you shouldn’t sell on Amazon because yes, those guys who are on page one, they are selling like, you know, thousands of units a day, millions– $2 million a month. Some of them–it would be very difficult to scale a brand new Collagen Peptides product, alright. So the first thing that I want you guys to do though, is having the right mindset, alright?

Bradley Sutton: You can’t just choose something that you’re super passionate about. One of my favorite podcasts actually is, you know, Gary Vee and he always talks about, hey, try and do something that you’re passionate about. Maybe you’re passionate about Amazon, that’s great. But if you’re passionate about something in particular, and that’s why the reason why you want to sell it, well, it’s not always going to work out for you. What do I mean? Like, let’s say you’re passionate about ceiling fans. Well, if ceiling fans have no demand on Amazon or if ceiling fans have way too much competition, well, just because you’re passionate about it is not going to make you successful automatically. Alright? Does it help to be passionate about what you’re selling? Yes, but what you’re going to find out is on Amazon, usually, you might have to choose an opportunity or niche that you might not even know anything about because the opportunity is what’s more important than your passion as far as being able to scale and sell and be successful with something on Amazon.

Bradley Sutton: So let’s talk about that for a second. You know, Amazon is not Kick-starter, it’s not Indiegogo, where you can just make up a brand new invention and be successful at it either. Amazon is about existing demand. If somebody does not know something exists, they’re not searching for it and order sales mostly come from Amazon. It comes from searches, whether it’s from PPC or whether it is from just organic searches, alright? Through either method, people or customers, the only way they’re going to find that product as if they search for it. The only way they’re going to search for it is if they know that it exists. Right? So like, you know, you could have some kind of aluminum can that automatically converts into a chargeable teapot that can charge phones. Some crazy idea. It could be the coolest thing in the world. But guess what? Nobody is searching for aluminum cans that can charge phones. And it’s the same for a charging teapot. I mean, because nobody knows it exists. So it doesn’t matter how cool your product is. If people don’t know it exists, they’re not going to be able to find it or they’re not going to be able to find your product on Amazon. Alright?

Bradley Sutton: One thing that you guys really need to focus on also is when doing your product research is ROI. Return on Investment. I’m not going to go too much into that on today’s podcast. Make sure to check that webinar for some great information about how ROI is very important, especially when it comes to scaling your business.

Bradley Sutton: Alright, so let’s, let’s jump right into method number 1. What I want to go over. Alright? How you can find opportunity? Products with a low number of reviews. For a lot of you, this might be no brainier. For those of you who don’t understand what that means, let me talk about that for a second. Put your buyers’ cap on. Think of–right now. Close your eyes, except if you’re driving, if you’re driving, please do not close your eyes, but think of the last thing that you purchased on Amazon or that you searched for it, right? Maybe you did search for Collagen Peptides because you’ve heard me say it a million times. Well, when you got to that first page of Collagen Peptides, you probably saw a whole bunch of listings that had like 1000 reviews, 2000, 3000, 4,000, even 5,000 reviews. Now think really quick, if you saw all those right next to each other, like 4 or 5, 6, 7 of those, and then right next to that you saw a product that had 2 reviews or 3 reviews. Alright? Would you ever click on that item with 2 or 3 reviews? Like if everything else was all things equal? Alright, if all the images, you know, were a decent quality on all these different listings, everybody was 5 stars, everybody has 4 stars, whatever the case is. But the only difference was that there was one that had 2 reviews, alright? Most likely, I think you would tell me that the one with 2 reviews, you probably would not click on it all or that would be the last one to click on. And that’s true because buyer mentality is the psychology of a buyer is if you see something with hundreds or thousands of reviews, you’re like, oh shoot, this is like proven to be a good product. Everybody has bought this product, and so many people have reviewed it, and I know that not everybody who buys it reviews it, but if these many people reviewed it, man, this really gives me a good idea that this is a reliable product, right? And you’re just not going to get that. You don’t get that feeling with a 2 product that only has 2 reviews.

Bradley Sutton: Alright, so now this is what you do. What you’re going to do is you’re going to use a tool like Helium 10 Black Box and then you put into their whatever category you want to search for, and then right there in Helium 10 Black Box, you’re going to enter into the monthly revenue, like your minimum, like let’s say you want something to find a product that’s selling at least 5 or $10,000. you put whatever you want to do. You put whatever price range you’re wanting to do, but the key is the review count. Use that filter for the review count. You could put maximum, like 15, maximum 20, maximum 25, whatever you think signifies opportunities. So, here’s the key if you put in a product that has less than 50 reviews, but maybe you put in that it’s making at least 5,000 or $10,000. What is that an indication of? Think about that for a second. You just said or I’m hoping that you said along with me that if you’re searching for Collagen Peptides, and you see items with thousands of reviews, you’ll probably click on those first and probably would never click on the one with only 1 or 2 reviews. But if I show you a product that has 1 or 2 reviews or Helium 10 Black Box shows you that, and yet it’s selling $5,000 or more. What does that indicate to you? In my mind, it’s maybe one of two things is a possibility.

Bradley Sutton: Number one, maybe–nobody has a lot of reviews, right? There’s nobody with a thousand or 5,000 on that first page. Everybody’s got like 2, 5, 10, 15, whatever. So then this product that might only have 2, 5 or 10 well, it’s not too much of a reach that people might click on it because it’s not dominated by a bunch of listings that have a thousand reviews like Collagen Peptides is. Alright, so that’s option 1. Does that sound reasonable? What about number 2? A second option could be, well, what if this is just the only product that meets the specific need? Basically, there’s no competition, so maybe it has only 2 reviews, but there are no other products that have more or less reviews that meet this need, so it’s like shoot, well, I got to buy this because it’s the only one that meets the actual description of what I’m looking for, so, oh well that it has 2 reviews, I’m going to have to take a chance. Alright? Again, those two could very well be the indications if you see that it sells 5,000 or $10,000 a month, because just like we said, if the main keyword is something where all the competitors have a thousand reviews, there is no way that our product is going to make 2 or its going to make 5 or $10,000 with only 2 reviews. Alright? So that’s way number 1, that you could do a search for potential, and this is not guaranteed, but they’re potential products that you could sell on Amazon. Alright?

Bradley Sutton: You can also do something similar. Another way of the reviews. I’m not going to talk about that today and make sure to check the Webinar for that. What about optimizing listings? How do you know if something’s optimized or not? Well, one easy way to tell is the images. You guys who are experienced sellers know that you’ve got to fill up those images. 5, 6, 7, 8 images, right? You want to be able to use because the consumer nowadays, sometimes they’ll only check the image and they need great descriptive images. They want infographics perhaps. They want to see different angles of the products. Maybe they want to see pictures of the ingredients if it’s a food or if it’s in the health category. Alright, so what if you saw a listing that only had two images? Again, put your buyer’s hat on. Alright, put your buyer’s hat. Last thing you search for. What if the first thing you clicked on, it only had 1 or 2 images? What kind of impression do you get? For me, when I see that, I’m like, man, this is like a weak listing or this image, these images, this is not enough information for me to know if I really want this product or not. So usually guess what happens also, if there are only 1 or 2 images, like 8 out of 10 times, you’ll see that the rest of the listing also was not optimized. The bullet points are weak. The descriptions probably weak because if somebody is not smart enough to understand that they got to put 4, or 5, or 6, or 7, or 8 images in a listing, they probably don’t know how to make the rest of their listening.

Bradley Sutton: Okay, so this is another thing I’m going to search for. I can do all the same different filters that I did in that first option where you know I’m entering a certain price range. I’m saying, show me something that’s making at least 5 or $10,000 a month, but I can actually use in Helium 10 Black Box an image filter where I can say, show me the listings here in this category that is selling this amount, but it has 2 images or less or whatever you want to pick. Right? And then it’s gonna show you all the listings that are selling like crazy but only have 2 images and again, what is that an indication of? That might be an indication of opportunity. Again, number 1, maybe everybody else in that niche doesn’t have that many images and that’s why this product can sell so well because again, we determined that most people do like more images. Another option is that again, it only–this is the only product that meets the need. It’s slim pickings, right? So they have to choose this product even though it only has two images because they don’t see anything else that they could purchase.

Bradley Sutton: The other thing that is actually good for you is the thought being is that whatever people have as a shortcoming on their listing, then you’re going to have something better. If they only have 2 images, you’re going to have 6 or 7 images. If those listings that only have 2 images have very poor bullet points, you’re going to improve on that. So that means that right after that if this is the niche that you choose, your listing is going to be more attractive than these other ones because you’re going to have 6, 7, 8 images. You’re going to have optimized bullet points. So again, the way to find that one is Helium 10 Black Box. You use the filter for images. Alright? A number of images you are going to want to put it low. What is another way? What about higher priced items? Right? Most new Amazon sellers. Now, this is not for everybody. This is for people who are rolling. Not for people on a budget like I am. Alright? So you –instead of just having like 3 or 4 or $5,000, maybe you’ve got $50,000 to invest in a couple of products. Well, if that’s the case, here’s what I would suggest. Look for higher priced items. What do I mean by that? Right? Think about it. If you find a product that sells on Amazon for like 15-20 bucks, you could probably source that for like 2 bucks, 5 bucks, right? That’s very reasonable. Most new Amazon sellers could probably afford to invest in a product like that, but think about a product that retails for a hundred bucks, right?

Bradley Sutton: Now, maybe the cost to produce that product is like $20 or $15, and now imagine if the minimum order quantity from a factory that can produce that product is 1000. Now we’re talking about in an initial investment of like $15,000 or $20,000, how many new sellers can really do that? Probably not that many. So that in itself might be an indication that this could be a niche that has less competition.

Bradley Sutton: Alright, in the Webinar, you’ll see that I do an example, right? I search in tools and home improvement I put in that I want a product that’s selling at least $15,000 a month and is priced between 60 and $120. Well, one of the products that came up, something I’d never would have thought about, a set of two large curb ramps, like if you have a curb at your driveway and you can’t get your car up, so you put this little ramp right there. It was something that’s selling for $90. $90 a pop and it’s selling over $15,000 a month and there in that niche, there was actually not that many competitors. Why? Because who is going to be able to afford to invest 15, 20, $30,000 in this niche to start off right? For something that maybe they don’t know if it’s going to sell well or not. So again, this is a third way that you might be able to find opportunity.

Bradley Sutton: Okay, now what you need to do once you find these opportunities, I want you guys to do that. By the way, I, at the end of the episode, I’m going to give you guys code in order to get a trial for Helium 10 so make sure to stay until the end of this episode. We’re going to do a trial for that. I want you to do, once you get that full version of Helium 10 you’re going to be able to try for 30 days. I want you to go through this exact process that I just mentioned about using Black Box, but then each of these items that maybe you find that might be interesting, you’re going to need to verify it using Xray, which is our Chrome Extension, because remember, it’s not just about one product that you are going to compete with.

Bradley Sutton: You’re going to compete with everybody in that niche, so you’re going to have to validate these products in these niches within Amazon itself, and you’re going to want to use X-ray for that. Alright, so what do you do after you find a product, right? You’re going to want to verify it, like I said, using X-ray, and then after that, you’re going to go check where those products sales could be coming from. Alright, so like take that curb one. That curb product, you know, as I said, it’s selling $15,000 a month approximately. Well, the question is what is driving those sales? You’re going to use Cerebro in order to do a reverse ASIN search and you’re going to find all of the high search volume keywords that they are ranking for on the first page because you can probably have a good idea that a lot of their sales are coming from these keywords that they’re ranking on page one for. And then what you’re going to do from there if you’re going to start analyzing those search terms to see the other products that are ranking high. Can you compete with those?

Bradley Sutton: Okay, so this is very important guys. It’s not just always about finding the right product, but you’ve got to know where to look and what you are looking for as far as what signifies opportunity in a certain niche. Alright, what are a couple of other ways to find products that maybe you might not have thought about? What about FBM for wholesale FBA? What the heck does that mean? You might say FBM, Fulfilled by Merchant. Alright, wholesale FBA, Fulfilled by Amazon. So maybe you can search on Amazon or on Black Box for items that are Fulfilled by Merchant, FBM. What does that mean? That means that it’s not in Amazon’s warehouse. That means they’re probably products that person is just shipping out of their garage or dropshipping, right? So if you can find a product that’s selling well there and you can source that same product yourself, like a lot of those I said it was for wholesale, you know, maybe they’re purchasing it from a department store, they’re purchasing it from a wholesaler and they’re just storing it in their garage and shipping it as it comes out, they’re dropshipping it.

Bradley Sutton: Well, imagine if you could source that exact same product and actually send it to Amazon to be a Fulfilled by Amazon product. You’re going to get the buy box. Okay. That’s going to have a lot more love from Amazon if you have FBA listing or offer for that. Alright, so again, that’s another method to start finding the opportunity to sell on Amazon. Your search for sellers who have products that are not FBA and then you go find these products that are selling well and see if you can source them and then put them in FBA in order to get the buy box, in order to undercut those other sellers who cannot for whatever reason do FBA.

Bradley Sutton: One last way, I wanted to talk about is Merch by Amazon. Alright? Merch by Amazon is a print on demand service for like sweaters, t-shirts, etc. for Amazon. Basically, let’s say you want to do a private label product but you don’t have any money to invest. You need some way to generate funds without having to invest money. Merch by Amazon is for you because if you’re a graphic designer or you have a very inexpensive one and he can create shirts designs, you just upload that shirt design to Amazon and Amazon will make a listing for it and show how it looks on a shirt and then if somebody orders a via Prime that t-shirt, then you get a commission on it. Let’s say you sell it for 20 bucks, then you pay Amazon $12 to ship it and to print it. Amazon prints and ships this shirt to the customer and you just end up with $8 without any investment. There’s no inventory in Merch by Amazon because it is print on demand. So make sure to Google Merch by Amazon or merch.amazon.com and find out about that because then you would use Helium 10 tools such as Magnet and Cerebro and Xray to find trending, like maybe catchphrases or niches that you can make a shirt about to get ideas that have search volume. And then if you put up a shirt and drive traffic to that listing, you are going to make sales without any investment at all other than having to actually pay somebody to make that image if you can’t do it yourself. So that is a great way that I know many Private Label Sellers started out, they started with Merch by Amazon because it didn’t require an investment then they used all the proceeds from Merch by Amazon to invest in private label products.

Bradley Sutton: So guys, again, this was just like what, four or five methods that you could use to find opportunity. An opportunity exists on Amazon don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, don’t let anybody tell you that it’s too hard to do it… You missed the bandwagon. Sorry, go to Etsy, go to another website, you know, Pinterest and try and sell something. Whatever the case is no guys, Amazon is still the place where millionaires can be made and a lot of us maybe might think that’s unrealistic. Great. That’s unrealistic to become a millionaire, no problem. You can still be successful by selling private label products on Amazon that could totally supplement your current income $5,000 a month, $10,000 a month.

Bradley Sutton: It is possible to do that and many people are doing that now just by using some of those simple methods that I talked about earlier today on getting to know where the opportunity is on Amazon. So guys, don’t forget to check out the notes for a link to the full webinar. Right, go over 10 ways that you can find the opportunity to sell on Amazon. If you want to jump right in this and you’re not a Helium 10 user right now. Let me give you a coupon for 50% off your first month. Use SSP50, SSP50 no spaces, and go to helium10.com, sign up for the account make sure to use that as a coupon code for the platinum plan.

Bradley Sutton: You’ll get 50% off your first month and then within about two minutes that it takes to sign up for it. You can go ahead and rewind this podcast and step by step, use those techniques that I just mentioned and you can start yourself on your journey for finding opportunity on Amazon to sell your very first product. And after that guys, the sky is the limit. Alright, it is not that easy to become a millionaire on Amazon as it was maybe, 5 years ago. It’s not that easy even to make $10,000 as it was before, but guess what? People every day still are doing it, right? By using these methods. So you cannot do it just on your own by browsing and sitting there looking for products to sell on Amazon, you’ve got to put in the work. You’ve got to do the research, so make sure you use Helium 10 Black Box and start yourself on your journey to find your next product. Thanks a lot, guys.