In this edition of “What to Sell on Amazon”, here’s the Amazon FBA product ideas I’ll be looking at:
Last week on Dave’s “What to Sell on Amazon” series, I covered Magic: the Gathering; because, hey! I’m a big ol’ hobby geek and I’m not afraid to admit it. So, now it’s time to look at the other end of the product spectrum with weight lifting products.
Before I dive in, I want to answer a popular question I get with this series:
Good question. When you filter out the big competitors, it readjusts the numbers. Say you’re looking at a product opportunity that has one big seller in it… say Cuisinart or something. They’re doing 4,000 monthly sales. They’re making it seem like average monthly sales are 500/month. Then, when you remove them, it switches to 250/month. If I went with the version that has Cuisinart, I’d buy products thinking I’m going to do 500/month sales, when in reality it’s going to be only 250. Often, you can see opportunities go from high (7+) to lower (6 or less). On the other hand, sometimes an outlier can make a product seem like a no go, when in reality it’s strong so long as you can create a new variation.
And that brings me to my point: The only time you should really consider the big competitors in a category is if the product you hope to sell is TOO similar to the big guys’. For example, a garlic press. Every single variation of garlic press has probably been created.and all the available profit has been eaten up by the big brand names. Therefore, it’s probably not a good idea to get into something like that. Whereas something like “mtg play mat” has some big competitors in it (obviously MTG’s actual maker), but there’s still enough variation and profit left for the smaller guys to create products there.
Remember: While I do my best to arm you with the data you need to make good product decisions, there’s always the potential that the product may not work out. This material is meant for educational and entertainment purposes. Always do your own research.
All right, this product is probably going to be a dud. With such a high review count for every single seller on the first page, I can all-but-guarantee it’ll be impossible to get to the first page. Regardless, let’s take a look at costs.
Fortunately, they’re pretty inexpensive to manufacture. They seem to never cost more than $1.50, even for low minimum order quantities.
Let’s say that we totally lost our minds and decided to go against the massive competition with this one. How many units would I need to order? Well, if average sales on the first page is just over 1,000 units, we’d probably need about 3,000 just to cover our first 90 days in sales. Additionally, we’re going to need a lot of giveaway units, too. Keyword Scout shows us that we need to give away 26 per day for at least 10 days. So that’s another 26 units. But I’d be even willing to go a bit further and suggest that you use giveaway units as sort of a constant method of advertising, until you can catch up. So possibly get 26 per day for 60 days. That’s 1,560 more units. So we probably need to order somewhere between 4500-5000 units on our first order. At that volume, we should then probably switch to by sea shipping.
OnPallet.com shows us that we can probably get about 1200 of these onto a pallet, maybe even more. So we’re going to need at least four pallets. That’s probably about $750 per pallet (always check with a logistics company first, though). So we’re looking at $0.63 per unit in shipping costs. I’m guessing at that volume, we might get a discount at 20% off the MOQ price, so let’s say per unit cost is $1.20.
($1.20 per unit costs + $0.63 per unit shipping costs) x 4800 units
+ $300 in art, sample and mold fees
= $9,084 in total product costs
/ 4,800 units
$1.89 per unit
If we sell this product for $18.50, Amazon will take $5.76 in fees (15% referral fee and $2.99 FBA fees). After subtracting cost of goods, we’re left with $10.85 for profit and ads.
Here’s where competition really troubles us with this product. Keyword costs for wrist wraps is extremely high. Exact bids are $1.97 and broad are $1.59. Using the 2.5 Rule, we know that ads at those price range could cost us as much as $19.70 per sale. And since our price is higher than the competition, our conversion rate will probably be lower, too, especially if we lack the number of reviews that our competitors do. Looking at related keywords, it doesn’t get much better.
Verdict: Incredibly high competition means you’ll spend thousands just to get your product ranking and making sales. And even then, it’s a craps shoot. Avoid this one, as it’s a loser.
As we learned with the wrist straps, high competition like this is way too tough to compete in. We can’t even remove the big guys, because they’re all big guys. Best just to call this one dead-on-arrival.
Okay, again, competition is pretty ugly here. Regardless, the higher price and low FBA fees have piqued my interest. Let’s see if there’s any way we can get into this category. After all, there are a few sub-100 review sellers on the front page.
And here’s where things fall apart. Sadly, these belts are costly to manufacturer. Doing a quick look on Alibaba, looks like these belts cost roughly $15-$20 to produce at low quantities. Some even moreso. There’s some cheaper ones, but they look, cheap, too. And if we want to get close to the higher end price, we have to go with quality. While they’re light, they do take up some space, so we’re probably going to need to ship them by sea no matter what quantity we purchase. OnPallet.com shows us that we can fit about 500 onto a pallet.
If I remove all the mega-competition sellers, the Chrome Extension shows us that we’ll sell 175 units per month. And Keyword Scout recommends giving 150 units away the first ten days (15 per day). So that means we need 675 units to launch right. That’s going to be two pallets worth of products. In my experience, two pallets runs roughly $1800. That adds $2.67 to our total cost. But at price points of $15, that’s not a huge hike.
($15.00 per unit costs + $2.67 per unit shipping costs) x 675 units
+ $300 in art, sample and mold fees
= $12,227.25 in total product costs
/ 750 units
$18.11 per unit
If we sell our belts for $39.95, Amazon is going to take $10.18 out. And after our per unit cost, we’ll have $11.66 left over for ads. But just like our first product on this “what to sell on Amazon” list, ads are pricey for this product. $2.50 for exact and $1.39 for broad.
Verdict: Another incredibly competitive product. You could end up spending tends of thousands of dollars and failing completely. This product is a loser.
I was hoping that these products would be the one, but already there’s a couple red flags here. Let’s look at costs.
Surprisingly, they’re not very expensive to manufacture! I’m seeing about $2 – $3 on Alibaba. OnPallet.com shows us that we can fit a little over 400 of these onto a pallet.
I can remove the high review sellers again, but it has an interesting effect on the results:
Notice how sales stay pretty high, but average price goes way down? That means that customers are willing to overlook the number of reviews for a cheaper price. Still, average reviews are 42. And if you look closely, those with reviews less than 50 still aren’t cracking 300 sales per month.
So for our purposes, let’s order three months worth of units, so 750 based on the smaller sellers in the above screenshot. Keyword Scout says we need to giveaway 21 units per day to compete, so that’s another 210 for a total order of 960. That means we’ll have three pallets worth of stuff. I’m guessing that’ll run us about $2400 in shipping charges, or $2.50 per unit.
($2.50 per unit costs + $2.50 per unit shipping costs) x 960 units
+ $300 in art, sample and mold fees
= $5,100.00 in total product costs
/ 960 units
$5.31 per unit
If we sell our weights for $14.95 (remember how the average price went down when we took out reviews?), Amazon is going to take $6.65. After we subtract our costs, that leaves us with a measly $2.99 for ads. I don’t have to check Keyword Scout to know that this product probably won’t make it.
Verdict: Another competitive product with high FBA fees. This product is a loser.
By now, you should probably already know that this product isn’t so hot. No reason to price it out.
Verdict: Another competitive product.. This product is a loser.
There’s a couple reasons why I wanted to show off these products on the What to Sell on Amazon Series.
As you can see, nearly all of the ad costs–HSA, Exact, and Broad–are pretty high. We could have saved a lot of time just looking there.
Hope you enjoyed this list of what to sell on Amazon (or more likely, what NOT to sell on Amazon). Even though these were all duds, there’s always better products out there. Be sure to check out the previous editions of “What to Sell on Amazon” for some winners:
If you’ve got any questions or have a suggestion for the next 5 products I break down, leave a message in the comments below or drop me a message at [email protected]
And if you need more product ideas, be sure to grab our list of 10,000 bestselling products on Amazon.
See you soon!
NEXT: by user request Sewing/Crafting Supplies