Guide Contents
- Amazon Product Finder Download
- Choose a Top-Level Category
- Rule 1: Best Sellers Rank – Between 300 & 5000
- Rule 2: Number of Reviews – Less Than 1000
- Rule 3: Five Lbs or Less
- Rule 4: Priced Between $15 and $70
- Rule 5: Private Label Potential
- Improving Upon An Existing Product
- Takeaways
So you heard about the success people are having… and now you’re dying to know how to find products to sell on Amazon FBA?
Well, you might be surprised to find out there’s actually 5 simple rules you can use to find and select products that are a good opportunity for building your own brand on Amazon FBA.
I promise that by the end of this short tutorial you’ll have a MUCH better understanding of the entire process, and you’ll be well on your way to finding products to sell on Amazon.
Download an Amazon Product Finder
Before you get started, you will need an Amazon product finder tool. We recommend this product finder, because we can vouch for its usefulness.
Getting Started: Choose a Top-Level Category
So from the Amazon homepage, you have to choose a category to start your searching. Once you’ve got a category, for this example it’s “Garden & Outdoor” then just type the negative key plus any random set of numbers. Your input should look something like, “-53453”, now you just click search.
Your search should look like:
After you’ve hit search, and you’re now in that category, click on your product finder tool to launch it. You’ll see that it will start pulling up all the top-selling products in that category on Amazon.
From here you can begin setting the five filters which are required to find the BEST products to sell on Amazon FBA.
Criteria 1: Best Sellers Rank – Between 300 & 5000
So to make sure your product has a chance of being seen, and that competition won’t be too high, you should really only consider products with a Best Sellers Rank between 300 and 5,000. Also, you only want to take into account the BSR of a product’s top-level category.
The way you can know if you’re looking at a top-level category is you will see the words, “see top 100” displayed after that category on the product page.
So the reason we use just the top-level category to find products to sell on Amazon FBA, is because otherwise you have no idea how well products are actually doing within their subcategory. The only way to really tell good product opportunities from bad ones, is to use that top-level category.
So to check it manually just go to the product’s page, and way down on that page, under “product details” you will see Amazon best seller rank.
Top-level category check:
Sticking to this optimal BSR range ensures the product will do a good amount of revenue every month without having too much competition either. So we recommend in that top-level category, find a product with a BSR of between 300 to 5000. With a product finder tool, you can simply set your filters to only display products within this optimal BSR range.
Criteria 2: Number of Reviews – Less Than 1000
So when you’re looking for products to create your own brand with, you obviously want to sell products that won’t be WAY too difficult when competing against existing products with reviews out there.
That’s why we recommend to use the benchmark of about 1000 reviews or less. The reason for this is simple, if you’re going to be starting at zero reviews when you create your own brand, and all your competitors already have thousands of reviews, you’re just not going to look as credible having only a couple reviews at first.
Sure it’s totally possible to compete with products that already have tons of reviews, but it may take much longer than you expect, and cost more money. You may need much more inventory and a way bigger marketing budget to even build up those reviews too.
So one huge thing to keep in mind during this step, is that from the initial search you’ll see the first several products have thousands of reviews, and it’s not until the fourth one where we see one less than 1000.
Keep in mind these top selling products you see are the exception, not the rule, most products on Amazon will have FAR LESS reviews and do just fine. We can actually sort by reviews with a product finder tool, and this makes it easy to see all of the products that do not have a thousand reviews on there.
You’ll end up finding TONS of products opportunities that have only a handful of reviews and those sellers are making some decent profits.
To recap, if you’re just getting started on Amazon we recommend you find product opportunities with less than a thousand reviews. That way you can get started getting your first couple of reviews and can start to gain trust and credibility within your category.
With the right kind of marketing promotions, people will actually take a chance and buy your product! Versus just trying to compete with products that have a massive leg up already when it comes to reviews… So why make it harder? Never start with a product that’s going to put you up against competitors with thousands of reviews.
Criteria 3: Five Lbs or Less
Next up is the product’s weight, so when you’re selling a physical product, shipping costs can be kind of a hassle if your product is too heavy. Having a product over five pounds will just be way more expensive, especially when you consider refunds and having to ship out additional units, It can quickly become a huge dilemma…
Starting with products that are five pounds or less allows you to have relatively inexpensive shipping costs, and it just makes your life simpler. Ideally, if you can source a product that is extremely light and small, then you’re golden.
To recap this rule, we recommend selling only products that are 5 pounds or less. This makes your life a lot easier, especially while you’re just starting out in this business.
Criteria 4: Priced Between $15 and $70
So the lowest price we want in a potential product is $15, and the maximum price is $70.
It’s important to filter out any products outside of that price range, since it will limit the number of products you have to sift through. This ideal price range is there so that your product will provide maximum profits without costing too much in inventory reorders.
A price range filter can be easily added into any product research tool, and once set, you’ll see tons of potential product opportunities in the range of $15 to $70.
Criteria 5: Private Label Potential
The last criteria for finding a product to sell on Amazon FBA is the only one that’s kind of impossible to filter automatically. This criteria is called private label potential, basically referring to any generic product that you can go out there and launch your own brand with.
Private label potential is important because we DO NOT recommend you sell other people’s brands of products. If you do, your profit margins are going to be way too low.
Also, you’re going to be heavily restricted on how you can sell that product, and where you can sell that product. Plus you’re going to be competing against tons of other people selling that exact same product. The only thing you can compete on at that point is price, so you want a product without limitations that you can create your own brand out of.
When you’re looking for products to private label, you have to avoid products that have a ton of research and patents behind them.
So once you’ve put together a list of potential products, then it’s time to head over to a site like alibaba.com. There you can see if you can find a similar product that a manufacturer is making in bulk, which you can then put your own brand on.
The next step, if you’re unsure about a potential product being trademarked, is to do a quick patent search, trademark search, or even hire a patent attorney if you really want to go further. This is critical because the last thing you EVER want is to wind up ripping off other people’s products without even knowing it.
Improving Upon An Existing Product
Ideally you want to launch products that are a little bit better than the competition, and oftentimes it’s not a huge hassle to pull that off. You can simply communicate with the manufacturer, and make a few small tweaks, without having to reinvent the entire product.
It won’t really take any extra time on your part, and you’ll wind up with a better product that has your own brand name on it, that’s also not infringing on anybody’s patents or trademarks.
You might have noticed that a majority of the products being sold on Amazon are very generic.
Most products are just people slapping their brand’s logo on a generic product, or swapping out materials, and adding features…
So if you can find a supplier that’s making generic versions of your ideal product, then you can simply put your own brand name and logo on it. That’s a perfect sign your product idea is an amazing option for selling on Amazon FBA. These types of products have what we call “private label potential.”
Takeaways
We know how it feels before you get started selling on Amazon FBA. You usually think like, “Coleman is the only company making this particular piece of camping gear.” But in reality they’re just one of the biggest brand names out there.
There are hundreds of other products just like them, sold by everyday normal people like you and me!
All you need to do now is come up with some good packaging, design a great logo, and you’re ready to start selling. Then, once you’re ready, check out this guide to learn how to sell Amazon products on Facebook. Let’s assume you start generating $80,000 a month in revenue with this product, and you figure you’re making 20% percent profit from that monthly. You’ll quickly see that it’s a pretty significant income!
