Selling online continues to be profitable, so who wouldn’t want to get a little piece of the action? In 2021, Amazon selling partners in the US sold more than 3.9 billion products and averaged approximately US$ 200,000 in sales. That’s 7,500 products sold every minute.
But how do you choose what to sell? It can be a tough call simply because of the sheer number of products available for sale on Amazon. And, of course, you don’t just want to pick any product; you want to pick something that will sell well. Here we’ll show you how to dig into the Amazon Best Sellers list to find winning products to sell on Amazon (including some tools that can help with this process). We’ll also walk through some basics on how to get started with selling your products.
Table of Contents
3 steps to finding products to sell on Amazon
What products have the chance to become hot items?
Why niche private label products are the best to sell on Amazon?
5 tools for Amazon sellers to find winning products
Picking a winning product to sell on Amazon
3 steps to finding products to sell on Amazon
Amazon sells millions of products, so how will you determine the best products to make your business thrive?
Step one – Check out the best sellers list
The best place to determine if your idea for selling products on Amazon has potential is the Amazon Best Sellers. This list shows the top 100 most popular products selling on Amazon (and it’s updated hourly).
But don’t stop there. Each product has a Best Seller Rank (BSR) that can be used to gauge demand for a given product. You can research manually in all departments to determine product BSR.
To find the Amazon BSR, go to the product page and scroll down to the ‘Production Information’ section. The best sellers rank section under product information will provide a number (the rank) and the name of the section it’s ranking in.
What’s a good best seller rank on Amazon? What’s good is subjective, and the ranks are different in every category, i.e. what’s a ‘good’ rank in Patio, Lawn & Garden may not be in Kitchen & Dining. That being said, depending on your goal for the number of products you’d like to sell, you can figure out for yourself what a ‘good’ BSR would be. Jungle Scout Sales Estimator is a great tool you can use to determine the BSR you should aim for.
So, after looking at the Best Seller List, dive deep into product categories and subcategories to look at individual products BSR to identify up-and-coming products, spot new opportunities and look for patterns in a niche that interests you.
Step two – Focus on products you’d like to specialize in
You’re likely to want to stick to a product category, so you can focus on what’s hot and trending in that category and adjust accordingly. The research you did in step one can help you determine which product niche or category you’d like to focus on. Here we can continue that research to choose specific products to focus on.
A great way to determine what products to focus on is by keeping an eye on the Movers & Shakers – this list shows the biggest gainers in sales of the last 24 hours.
Within each category, you can determine:
- The top trending products
- How much the sales rank has increased for products
- Number of reviews
- Price range
Another list to keep an eye on is the Amazon Hot New Releases.
Step three – Find your spin
So, now that you know what products you might like to sell on Amazon, consider whether you can improve on what’s already selling well or offer something better. Can you make one of these trending products unique? Can you improve quality?
One great way to determine if there are ways of improving a product is to read the reviews on existing products. Read customer feedback, note the pros and cons, and look for areas of improvement. This can help you determine ways to improve existing products or offer something that is currently missing in the market. For example, if you’re selling products in the technology category and all the reviews mention battery life, you can consider improving battery life to fix this problem and take over sales for that product.
What products have the chance to become hot items?
Now that you’ve looked at some of the best-selling items on Amazon, did you notice any trends? In some categories, top-selling items will be challenging to complete because they are Amazon brand products or sold by other big brands.
So, what products have the chance of becoming hot items for smaller sellers?
New top products will target a niche category, fill a unique consumer need, and be difficult to imitate, yet have enough of a market demand.
Why niche private label products are the best to sell on Amazon?
While market demand is significant, the sheer size of Amazon means there is likely enough demand for niche products as long as they fulfill a consumer need, and they’re less likely to be competitive.
Ideally, the product you choose to design and manufacture to sell on Amazon should fit into the following criteria:
- Target a niche category
- Be priced between US$ 20-70
- Cheap and easy to manufacture with no complicated parts
- Small and light
You would think more expensive products would equal more profits, but that’s not necessarily the case due to more costly manufacturing, potentially less demand, and customer performance expectations. A cheaper product has fewer expectations and is more likely to be bought as an impulse purchase. However, you don’t want to go too cheap, as for products under US$ 15, a bigger portion of the price goes toward Amazon fees and shipping.
Cheaper and easy-to-manufacture products that are light and easy to ship are less likely to experience issues bringing them to market, fulfilling orders quickly and shipping them cheaply without any damage. For example, small kitchen items that are light and easy to ship are likely to make a profit because they’re cheap to ship, and there is less likelihood of damage compared to products in the technology category.
5 tools for Amazon sellers to find winning products
Need help finding the best products to sell on Amazon? Some amazing Amazon Product Research tools can help you find the next best product idea and help you grow your Amazon business.
Helium 10
Helium 10 is a bundle of tools for Amazon sellers. It has helpful research tools, including Black Box and Trendster, that are perfect for discovering and analyzing potential new products, among many other valuable tools.
Black Box is a tool that helps with product research and discovery; it provides vital information by searching using filters such as sales volume, reviews, anticipated sales and trends, and many more Amazon products.
Trendster is a tool for analyzing products. You can get seasonal demand statistics, product sales volume, historical price swings and market trend estimations all in seconds.
Jungle Scout
Jungle Scout is a robust tool that can help all Amazon sellers, from new sellers to established merchants, brands, and agencies.
It has an Opportunity Finder feature for new sellers, allowing you to find high-demand, low-competition keywords. It also has a product tracker that provides information on seasonal and year-round sales as well as filters such as historical sales, BSR, reviews and ratings, opportunity scores, and more.
SellerApp
SellerApp provides a robust tool that goes above and beyond in regards to basic product research. They offer three distinct membership packages. However, even the most basic package includes many standard services, including:
- Product research and trends
- Tracking and researching keywords
- Listing
- Search engine optimization
- Index Checker
- Analyzer for PPC
AMZ Scout
As we’ve discussed, targeting a niche market can make it easier to reach customers with less competition from big brands. But how do you know if a target niche is worth investing in? AMZScout specializes in assisting sellers in identifying significant trends to target these niche markets. Additionally, once you’ve identified a niche gaining traction, you can utilize the platform’s other capabilities to determine if it’s worth pursuing. It informs you which other sellers are also looking into a particular sector and may be your competition.
Through AMZScout, you can access Google trend data analytics, product sales estimates, the quality of listed products, and more.
ZonGuru
ZonGuru provides a considerable data solution that helps sellers to find top research-selling products and valuable market opportunities. Its Niche finder will help you to find inspiration and unlock the ideas for your niche products.
Picking a winning product to sell on Amazon
Have an idea of where you’d like to start when it comes to selling products on Amazon? First, does the product meet the niche product criteria? Does it sell between US$ 20-70? Is it easy to manufacture, and is it small and light?
If yes, great. Then look at the Best Seller Rank for this product and determine if it’s a popular selling product. But remember, the BSR alone doesn’t necessarily determine how many sales a product makes because it’s category dependent. In more popular and larger categories, sellers could still make large sales with a higher BSR. So, another way to determine demand is by looking at the actual monthly sales for a product. One way to do this is using an Amazon FBA tool, Jungle Scout. Use their sales estimator by plugging in the BSR to display estimated monthly sales.
Finally, once you’ve determined the product is selling well, consider whether or not you can compete. You can determine how competitive it is by looking at how many products on page 1 have less than 1,000 reviews (if you see fewer than 500 reviews, even better). Of course, less competition is better; however, if you’re willing to put in the work with marketing, you are likely able to out-market many products.
Now you have a better idea of how to find winning products to sell on Amazon, so get started with your Amazon shop, or get out there and find new products to sell from Alibaba.com.
