In this three-part series we’re reviewing the niche selection process with the goal of finding products that can deliver sustainable profits for the long term. In Part 1 we reviewed what makes a good niche and then explained the details of how to find a profitable niche. In this post we will go over how to refine the product ideas you created in Part 1. In Part 3 we will explain how to verify that your products will actually sell. The steps outlined in these three posts will give you a number of proven tips and tricks that you can use to find a profitable niche.
As mentioned in Part 1, niche selection is not rocket science, but it does require patience and hard work. With the help of these techniques and some useful third-party tools, you’ll be well on your way to increasing your chances of success.
As you go through this process make sure to let your interests and passions to guide you, so you find products that are interesting for you.
Tips to Refine Your List
By now you have brainstormed different ideas and have come up with a bunch of general categories that you like. Now it’s time to dive deeper and refine your list. One of the best places to start is on Amazon because it literally has a treasure trove of data that you will be able to use to narrow down your ideas.
Searching on Amazon
Here are some great resources on Amazon that you can use to make your list better. These include the following sections on Amazon:
- The Amazon Best Sellers List
- The Amazon search bar
- Products Highlighted on Amazon, which include the following sections:
- Hot New Releases
- Top Rated Products
- Most Wished for Products and
- Customers who viewed this item also viewed…
The Amazon Best Sellers List
Amazon is a tremendous marketing machine so use their stratifications to find ideas for yourself. Once you have some general categories that you are interested in (such as Home & Kitchen), go to the Amazon Best Sellers page to drill down within that category until you get to a sub-category that seems promising.
When you get to the final sub-category in a category, look at the products that are listed in order from 1 to 100. See if any of them jump out at you. Once you find a product that you like, look on sites like Alibaba or AliExpress to see if those EXACT products are available for sale. Many times, you can find the EXACT same product for sale on Alibaba or AliExpress. The idea is to import those same products and sell them under your own private label brand.
Since this product is already ranked on the Amazon Best Sellers list under a different brand, there’s a good chance that you can be successful selling it as well under your own private label brand. Don’t worry if other merchants are already selling the exact same products. If you market your version of the product well, you will be able to make your product successful as well.
In the two screenshots below, notice that the sixth ranked product in the ‘Pour Over Coffee Makers’ sub-category on the Amazon Best Sellers List is also found on Alibaba. Since you know that this pour over coffee maker is already selling well on Amazon, it could be a good candidate as a private label product of your own.
Amazon Best Sellers List
Exact Item Found on Alibaba.com
The Amazon Search Bar
Another great source of ideas is the Amazon search bar. Amazon has a great search engine that often gives you an amazing list of “auto-fill keywords” as soon as you start typing a search term. As you can see in the image below, as soon as I started typing the search term “Coffee,” Amazon’s search bar began to offer me several related keywords. These related keywords are very valuable because they get presented based on how popular they are on Amazon. So, Amazon is basically giving you the most popular keywords in a niche.
Use The Amazon Search Bar to Find Other Keywords
What’s more, once the search results are presented, often times (but not always) Amazon will also present a section that lists “Hot New Releases,” “Top Rated” or “Most Wished For” products. Make sure to take note of the products in those sections as well. They can often give you good ideas that you may not have thought about on your own.
If you don’t want to search manually, you have the option to use the following paid tools to automate the process of extracting related auto-fill keywords. A few very good tools you can use include:
- Keywordtool.io
- Keyword Tool Dominator
- Merchant Words
- Sonar Tool by Sellics
- Ubersuggest.io by Neil Patel
Products Highlighted on Amazon
Other good places to look are in the item detail page where Amazon highlights two sections called:
- “Customers who viewed this item also viewed…” and
- “Customers who bought this item also bought”
You can see examples of these in the screenshots below.
Customers who viewed also viewed
Customers who bought also bought
Item with “Amazons Choice” tag in Amazon
It is also a good idea to look for products that have been tagged as “Best Seller” or “Amazon Choice.” See the screenshots below for examples.
Item with “Best Seller” tag in Amazon
Products marked with the “Best Seller” and “Amazon Choice” tags are a great indicator of the types of products that can sell well on Amazon. All you have to do is look for products that have these tags and then see if you can find the same exact products from a wholesale distributor or on Alibaba or AliExpress. If you’re able to source these products you’ll at least know that a good market exists for them so they are a much safer bet.
As you can see, there is no shortage of information on Amazon. Even better, if done right, Amazon will literally give you the best product ideas based on its own data. You just have to take the time to do your research and browse around. Once you find a handful of these types of products, you can put them through the validation test that we’ll review in Part 3. In the next part in this series we’ll go over some methods and tactics you can use to test to see if the product ideas you uncovered have a good chance of selling.
Conclusion
In Part 2 of this three-part series we went over how to refine the list of product ideas you created after the brainstorming you did in Part 1. Refining your list allows you to narrow things down so you can begin to verify that your product ideas will actually sell. We went over how to use the treasure trove of data available on Amazon to find a number of diamonds in the rough. Finding profitable products becomes easier when you take a systematic data-driven approach with the help of some useful third-party tools.
Now let’s move on to Part 3 where we go over how to verify that the product that you found will actually sell.
Business Consulting Services: If you’re a small business owner looking to start or improve an online business then let me show you how to benefit from my experience. I have helped several online resellers grow their businesses by developing an online strategy to sell on Amazon, eBay or any other marketplace. Call me at 310-574-2541 or email me at Pez@Pezlogic.com for a complimentary business review.
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