Packing For The Journey Ahead
Product research in 2022 and 2023 is based wholly on analytics. Unless you’re using the variety of tools provided by Helium 10, you won’t be able to find the optimal products that meet requirements such as high demand and low competition. To help you on your journey, we have prepared a unique treasure map to Amazon. So let’s start packing for the adventure!
All research starts from somewhere, and for Amazon Sellers, it usually begins from a store shelf, an overloaded niche, or a best-seller category. Fortunately for us, all the information we need already exists on Amazon; you just need to know where to look. A good place can be the seller’s store highlighted in blue on your general listing page.
Once you’ve placed yourself in their jungle, use the products tab to explore anything else they might be selling — this is where Helium 10 comes into play. Explore what’s next on our treasure map to Amazon.
Subscribe to our newsletter
Which Route To Take On The Treasure Map To Amazon
Now that you have many products to choose from, open up the H10 extension and launch Xray. This tool provides a wide overview of the products’ analytics that will significantly help narrow down your research. However, for the sake of time, we’ll focus on two — revenue and reviews.
What’s significant are the proportions between the two factors. For example, a product bringing in $13K/month with a 50 review count would be a good potential product to look into. Take the title of that product, paste it into the search bar, choose “All Departments,” and click the search button.
The objective is to figure out which products are selling under the same keyword(s) and allow yourself to see the bigger picture. Five to six sellers with a <150 review count and a desirable revenue tell us that this niche can be a good place for your own campfire.
Note that an average of $3K in revenue in a niche where everyone does the same thing is not beneficial, especially not for your wallet or time. You’ll end up putting an ample amount of hours and money into gaining 150 reviews for what, at that point, will seem like a small amount of revenue.
Keep reading to find more clues on our treasure map to Amazon!
Setting Up Camp
After completing the basic research, the question we must urge ourselves to think about is: “How can this product be customized?”. In a general sense, customization is not that difficult. To illustrate, let’s choose a pencil. How can you customize it? You can choose between colors, thickness, size, material, whether it’s mechanical or not, etc.
Unfortunately, if after creating an awesomely customized pencil, you’ll go up on Amazon with the rest of the competitors who also have awesomely customized pencils, you’ll end up struggling with the byproducts of substantially tough competition. But don’t be discouraged just yet; you have an idea!
Having done some more research, you add a few more supplementary products to the pencil and pack it inside a cute box, creating a gift rather than something people use daily. You realize you can think deeper, so you ask yourself, “Who’s my target market? How can I customize this to fit them?”. Now, what you thought was a confusing treasure hunt leading to doom, is just a thinking game.
Planning For Traps On The Treasure Map To Amazon
Before customization, you have to think about the scalability of your niche. After all, Amazon is made for growth. Can your product have variations? Does your niche have room for numerous kinds of products? Because launching ten different products — each of them being the only ones in their niche — is both tedious and challenging to scale.
Pro tip: Amazon appreciates sellers that work in one niche with specific products (you can surely open another category and work with a variety of products within it just the same). This leads us to the next step on the treasure map to Amazon.
Sharpening Strategy
Let’s go back to product research. You found the right title and a product with a low review count and enough revenue. But can you research deeper? The answer to that will always be “yes.” Quite frankly, you can explore the market down to the smallest grain of sand. However, that will most likely twist your gears into overdrive and the wrong canal.
To our help comes the excellent tool called “Cerebro.” It allows a seller to run an ASIN of any Amazon product to view its keyword analytics. Today, the filter of choice is “Match Type.” Under the drop-down arrow, we’ll choose “Sponsored.” As you run each ASIN individually with this filter on, the keywords coming up will be so unexpectedly…sponsored.
The idea is that you’ll find the products that sellers spend a lot of money on to advertise through keywords, which will consequently end up on the first pages and top views, with high or medium ranking keywords. However, such a relation is not a good thing if this same product doesn’t have enough visibility via organic keywords.
That would be an indicator for you to investigate the competitors and if that product is selling because of its quality and customization or because the seller is trying to win the market over with a technical strategy such as a price point.
Battles Up Ahead
If you didn’t catch it in the last paragraph, you don’t want to choose a product with many sponsored keywords without any visibility through organic keywords. The way Amazon PPC campaigns, ranking, and visibility work is — if your product is constantly on page 1 with top-sponsored keywords, usually the same keywords will be on page one organically.
Alas, you can’t turn off your PPC campaign when you’re organically on page 1, or you’ll immediately drop in position. C’est la vie of the Amazon algorithm. The good news? You learned about it before going head into the puddle. If you’re on page 1 with both sponsored and organic keywords, your ACoS will go down while your sales are going up. Such knowledge is true power! After using just two Helium 10 tools, you’ve spared yourself a ton of money and sleepless nights.
Now that you know what not to choose, it’s easier to figure out what you can. Reverse back to the sellers of high-revenue products with low reviews. What else are they selling under the same parameters? If you’re already successfully selling around ten products on Amazon with over 500 reviews each, every other product you launch is automatically guaranteed lots of sales. Amazon wants to see new products from its sellers. Therefore, it will help them make every other product launch successful.
At A Crossroads Of The Treasure Map To Amazon
When you catch yourself at a crossroads between two different products, you will need to consider the seller’s value. For example, you found one great product — a beautiful, well-decorated candle. So you say, “I want to sell this same candle.” You will have to make sure there are similar products from other sellers on the market with not just a smaller amount of reviews but also enough demand.
What’s more, the product’s semantic core — the keywords that fall under the product. If it’s low, you’ll see no end to the tediousness of ranking. However, if it’s high, you’ll be able to rank your product with an array of keywords split into low, medium, and high-ranking keywords.
Not The Only Treasure Hunter
Having done all of that research, you must remember that this product can be found through different types of demand. Potential customers searching for a candle can look for it through scent, occasion, or just as a decor piece. Maybe your idea was to create a vanilla-scented candle that buyers can gift to any family member.
Now your product can be found through search terms like “vanilla candle” or “gift for sister” instead of just…candle. The goal is to guide people to your product when they might not even be searching for it. In other words, you shouldn’t start selling a candle just because you see it through high search volume. This is why it is important to note that the moment you’re searching for a product, it will need to be different. It can’t be the same white candle or wooden pencil that everybody else is selling.
The journey on our treasure map to Amazon leads us to a conclusion. We know the Amazon market seems packed, but it’s actually empty. That’s why in search of your product, or a “treasure” as some may call it, you should aim to find something that gives people an opportunity to buy a product because they want to, not because they have to.
About the author
Izabella Ritz is a serial entrepreneur and Amazon Seller. After creating and selling her first business, a coaching center, at 17 years old, she took off running and began making waves in the rising e-commerce business. Through her involvement in hundreds of e-commerce projects, Izabella has delved deeply into SEO, digital advertising, and virtually scaling any business.
She is the CEO and Founder of Ritz Momentum, an agency that serves as a one-stop shop for e-commerce business services and consulting, especially for Amazon sellers. Izabella founded Ritz Momentum to help propel entrepreneurs into the 21st-century style of doing business. She was born in Moscow, Russia, and moved to the U.S. with her three wonderful children in 2015.
