In this digital age, building an eCommerce store could be very lucrative and profitable. People are discovering the wonders and convenience of online shopping, and many of them would gladly give up the trouble of buying in traditional brick-and-mortar stores.
You also have a host of options for your store, such as your own website, eCommerce platforms, and online marketplaces. They don’t entail high fees and are not difficult to set up. Also, many service providers are available to help you with the tech part.
With that said, becoming an online seller is not that easy. This business model involves many cogs and wheels which may require some learning curves. One of the biggest challenges you can face is product research.
Your products are the heart of your enterprise. They spell the difference between success and failure. With the right items, you can laugh all the way to the bank. But with the wrong merchandise, you can wipe out your entire investment.
You must therefore devote time, energy, and effort to finding products that are in demand, easy to procure, and require little capital. If all of these seem overwhelming, be assured that there are tactics you can employ to simplify the process.
Using Amazon Data for Product Research
Is it a good idea to use Amazon to find new products to sell on a different platform?
Absolutely! Following Amazon trends is one of the most surefire ways to determine what products online shoppers are looking for at any given time. Selling them on your eCommerce store assures you of high demand and steady supply.
Best of all, product research using sales statistics and buyer behavior on the world’s largest online marketplace is almost an exact science. Numbers don’t lie, and they are not only easily accessible but also free to use.
Ways to Find Profitable Products on Amazon
Within the Amazon platform are sections you can use to help you find the most profitable products to sell at any given time. Some are obvious, others are discreet. Below are 4 of them.
1. The Best Seller Category
One of the apparent segments for product research is the Amazon Best Seller list. As the name states, it showcases the marketplace’s “Top 100” bestselling items. And it covers a wide range of categories, from toys and games to clothing, shoes, and jewelry as well.
The Best Seller page is updated every hour, and therefore, a great place to start your product hunt. You can view the Top 3 in each category on the landing page, but you have the option to "See more best sellers in <category>" to check out the rest.
If you are already eyeing a particular product in a specific category or niche, you may also use the Amazon Best Sellers Rank (BSR) as an indication of its performance. The lower the BSR, the better the product is performing.
Another advantage of using the BSR to find out the salability of an item is that it can show multiple BSRs. This means it may not be selling well in one category or niche but could be a bestseller in another.
2. Amazon’s Movers & Shakers
A little-known page, Movers & Shakers gives sellers a glimpse of the top listings that have risen in rank during the past 24 hours. These gainers, as Amazon calls them, are listed according to their ranking increase in terms of percentage.
For instance, a telescope may currently be on top in the Electronics category because its sales rank today is 50, even though it was unranked the day before. Number 2 could be a listing for a power strip with USB, at 156 today and previously unranked.
Such examples could help you glean shoppers’ buying behavior and the current trend. This information is valuable in determining the potential profitability of a product.
Movers & Shakers is updated every hour and covers 39 categories--the perfect metric to provide you the people’s pulse in real-time.
3. Amazon Trend Report
With a more in-depth look at product movements across industries, the Amazon Trend Report covers 12 months in order to identify trends. And it doesn’t rely solely on the Amazon community, rather, it searches various internet platforms.
Back home, the Trend Report team compares its findings with the popular and bestselling items on Amazon. They also take the reviews on purchased products into account. The published report is the result of combining all these data.
This information is important if you do not have the capability to launch products in a few days or a couple of weeks. It can help you decide what product to sell backed by the reassurance of knowing that its profitability will not expire soon.
4. "Customers Also Bought" Section
This segment is popular not only because it is ubiquitous on the Amazon platform but also due to its strategic placement. Based on the retail giant’s item-to-item collaborative filtering algorithm, the Customers Also Bought section is found on every product and checkout page.
How can it contribute to your product research?
Well, you get a glimpse of other items that customers bought together with the specific product or other product pages they visited when they made the purchase. You can then create bundles of products that buyers perceive as complementary.
Finding Products on Amazon Using Third-Party Apps
The success of Amazon as a marketplace has spawned numerous third-party tools to support sellers. Hence, you can search for products that are popular on the platform even without going there. And save time in the process.
Keyword Research
Believe it or not, keyword research is also an effective way to search for profitable products. Using a word or a phrase, you can find popular requests of trending items on Amazon.
For instance, if you enter “dog leash” into the search bar of the AMZScout Keyword Research Tool, the search results will yield: dog shock collar, large dog bed, dog waste bags, no pull dog leash, dog robe, funny dog shirt, and dog pad.
That’s a pretty long list of potential products that are trending in ranking and popularity. You can then head over to the AMZScout Product Database and use the keywords to source your items.
This tool is simple to use. Just open the database, select your criteria, and set the filters according to your preferences. The result would be a list of products currently popular on Amazon.
Analytical Tools
With these tools, you can analyze a product or brand’s rank, the number of reviews and ratings as well as its price and estimated revenue. A good example is the AMZScout PRO, an Amazon product research tool that provides “any product’s sales data with just a few clicks.”
AMZScout PRO is a browser extension that allows you to access pertinent statistics of an Amazon listing so you can determine whether or not it is profitable. And you can do it at a glance, eliminating the need to dive into multiple pages of product analytics.
The PRO Extension also offers information on unsaturated opportunities, sourcing options, and competitors’ performance. You may avail of the free trial version, which gives you accurate data on 15 niches in Amazon marketplaces across the US, UK, Germany, Canada, France, Italy, and India.
Criteria to Choose Products from Your List
Now that you have a list of promising products, you can whittle them down to the ones you will actually carry on your eCommerce store.
To ensure profitability, consider the following factors as you go through your options:
- Competitive Landscape: High-demand products in low competition categories.
- Weight: Merchandise under 2 or 3 pounds are easy and inexpensive to ship.
- Price: Target selling price should be 25% markup from your supplier’s price. Check the competition and whether you can compete with their pricing.
- Stability: Unbreakable items have a greater chance of arriving in one piece compared to fragile ones. It will also save you additional costs on replacements and damages.
- Seasonality: Avoid seasonal or holiday-specific products to make sure you get your ROI fast and not incur extra storage expenses.
- Searchability: Your selection must present the opportunity to use multiple product-related keywords with the top 3 yielding 50,000+ monthly searches.
- Brand: The products must not be associated with any brand name. This will help you undertake private labeling and establish your brand.
Conclusion
The eCommerce playing field has never been more attractive, thanks to the increasing number of people embracing online shopping. And with technology bridging nations, sourcing products from anywhere in the world is now possible, and that too with just a few clicks.
But just like any business revolution, challenges accompany these exciting developments. Not the least of them is stiff competition among online sellers offering the same products and vying for the same buyers’ attention.
If you’re a newbie to the game, it’s enough to make you doubt whether building your eCommerce store can actually be profitable. Be assured that it can and will be.
By following the processes outlined above, you will be equipped to take on even established competitors. The secret to an online store’s success is in choosing the right products to offer. Once you have that aspect down pat, you can set up all the other elements of your business for success.
- AMZScout team
