Amazon Product Research: How I Generate New Ideas

Amazon product research. The topic that Amazon sellers love to discuss the most. Let's dig into it. 

Most people are too busy looking for the “perfect product” to make any serious money on Amazon.

Take a moment to consider what the successful PL sellers have in common

• They don’t believe in perfect products..
• They don’t go after a Grand Slam (every time)..
• They steadily build a nice portfolio of some triples, doubles and singles.

Once you let go of the fallacy of finding that “perfect” product, it will feel like your chains have been unshackled and you are now free to explore around!

My previous posts pointed out that I’m a fan of adopting core principles and developing certain styles that work for me.

Two of the principles that I have firmly accepted are:

1. There are NO perfect products
2. All product ideas are worth writing down

Let’s Explore!

Currently I’m at a coffee shop drinking an Espresso sourced from Guatemala. I’m thinking of the tiny espresso mugs, the coffee bean grinder it took to prepare the roast, the apron the barista was wearing, the mat I stepped on as I entered.

Ideas begin to gush out.

When this happens to you (and it will) forget form, just write them down quickly!

Put yourself in Brainstorm 24/7 mode

Relax, you will not have to spend 24 hours a day behind a computer.

This approach only involves the right (creative) side of your brain and is a very chill process.

Here’s the trick. Whatever comes to your mind, write it down!

Keep the list growing. Write. Write. Write. Write. Don’t judge yourself. Don’t judge the products.

Just Write! Title the document 24/7 List or something

Some do the touch test. I do the visual, touch, and auditory test. (whatever works for you)

Keep going!

This is a list you will eventually add more ideas, delete some, tweak, pivot, refine, rinse and repeat.

You want to grow comfortable and make it a habit to always either have pencil and paper on hand or some digital app to capture the ideas as they come out (and they will come faster than you think).

Every idea has a potential

As crazy as the product sounds, there’s a good chance it has an accessory, or that when you spy on the seller's storefront you land on a completely different product that might peak your interest.

The main thing here is to not discount a product before you eventually plug it into Amazon and extract the data from Jungle Scout.

Now let’s say you are just stuck and you have hit the product research equivalent to Writer’s block

Not a problem.  This is where you should follow the Pomodoro Technique.

Basically you turn a timer on for 25 to 33 minutes and just completely concentrate on product research..

If 25 minutes feels like too much, just start at 11 minutes a day, add a couple minutes here and there, and before you know it you will come to a time that is agreeable to you.

It just now occurs to me that Francisco Cirillo (the founder of this method) used a tomato shaped kitchen timer to time himself.. (pomodoro is the Italian word for “tomato”).

This is random but let’s see what we can dig up here…

Even though Tomato Shaped Kitchen Timer probably does not produce the velocity of sales we are looking for, I’m positive I can use it as a chain reaction to lead me somewhere that will.

Are you ready to follow?

I’m going to dedicate a 33 minute Pomodoro to this:

Then I clicked the JS Chrome Extension to see how the potential products look. There are a few products that seem to have very high Best Seller Ranks and healthy Net profits, that we should look into further. You can see from the data here: 

Hmmm.. Let’s dig in a bit, and sort by the monthly sales column. I think it is always helpful to see the products that sell the most, to give me an idea of what the upper end of sellers for this product sell on a monthly basis: 

There is one particular seller that looks interesting, as it sells 1945 units per month at a $43.91 price point and Netting $33 per sale. That sounds attractive!

So I can click the Seller's link to see their Amazon storefront 🙂

And that leads to this page, which is a nicely designed selection of their products: 

I can click through each of these sub categories (a viable option)

However for now I choose to just click the JS Chrome Extension on the spot.

And on Page 2 something sparks my interest: a “drip decanter”. I'm not exactly sure what that is or what it looks like, but let's dig in a bit: 

Then I create a completely new search titled “Drip Decanter”, so I type that in the search bar and pull up the Jungle Scout data: 

WOW! That was cool!

Forgive me about that. I digressed (somewhat) but did you see how we went from a red tomato shaped timer into a Drip decanter?

If my pomodoro timer didn’t stop I would have kept going and who know’s what I would have landed on.

Back to the Pomodoro Technique

I LOVE starting these sessions after a good exercise where my natural endorphins create this real good sensation inside me and leave me feeling really pumped about the task at hand.

Go to a place where you are at your creative best. A coffee shop, library, your office, and open two screens. You can use a split screen chrome extension for this. I happen to use Tab Resize but I’m sure you have options out there.

One side of the screen you can open Google Sheets. On the other, open some alternative options to Amazon.

For this example I’m going to explore Wayfair (not on the list)

Once you open them I suggest you just dive into the categories. And the sub categories. And believe it or not, they have sub sub categories with sub niches I’ve never heard of !

Keep writing. Add to the list!

Here’s my idea:

What if if you add 5 to 6 products on that list every day, and each day you dedicated a Pomodoro Technique to one particular idea that is on your ever growing list?

This same method we took with the Red Tomato Timer I want you to do to each item you typed into this Google Sheets document.

Keep exploring and you will be amazed at the opportunities that come up.

Want other ideas?

• Hire a Virtual Assistant from the Philippines for a couple of hours and tell them to gather a list based on a set criteria. (You will be amazed at what could turn up from this!)
• Ask a supplier for catalogs.
• Ask the Virtual Assistant to extract the keywords from the catalog then type them into Amazon and gather all the keywords for the listings under 20000 Best Seller Rank and less than 200 Reviews  (Again just Brainstorming)

Let me know how this turns out and I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

Moving On.

Imagine what we just accomplished with the right side of our brain, pen, paper, and the Jungle Scout Chrome Extension.

We did awesome!

But what if with a few clicks of a button we had thousands of even NEWER ideas?

And that we could take these ideas, set up some parameters, and fetch thousands of  even more niche product opportunities?

Tweak, filter, and fetch even more products!

Well the feature is now Live and Greg introduced it here

I have never seen anything so POWERFUL and I want to show you how I use it, but I have to wait till the next post! 🙂

In the meantime, tell me how do you go about researching products?

How do you break through plateaus to keep the ideas flowing?

Until next time!

Omar