Product research is a background check. If you are about to establish a new business or trying to extend your product line, this chapter discusses how to find a product that would be lucrative for you. Whether you’re advertising on Amazon or not, it gives many incredible product and market research opportunities.

As challenging as product research may sound, it is vital. Rome was not built in a day. Hence, we need to understand that finding a profitable product to sell takes time and patience. If you can identify what that product is and get it manufactured with improved specifications, you will be able to capture the demand and sell successfully.

Produce product ideas keeping in mind a specific niche and then searching product trends for products with real potential. One of the main reasons sellers find product research is so challenging because they don’t know what to focus on. And it’s not surprising as not all products are equal. Before you even start your research, you should handle what a good and profitable product looks like to introduce to your inventory.

When you’re gathering a list of product ideas, an ideal product should meet the following essential criteria:

A price point in the range of $20 – $50. Any lower, you might face profitability issues. Any higher requires more money upfront and also risks greater scrutiny in reviews.

Low seasonality. You want a product that will sell throughout the year and not just during specific seasonal periods.

Small and lightweight. For fast and easy shipping, you want something that won’t be too expensive to import

Easy to manufacture. You don’t want to run into quality control or manufacturing challenges. Avoid glass, electronics, or highly complex products if you can.

Using these critical characteristics as a guide, let data direct your product discovery process using Amazon product research tools, like Jungle Scout. These tools allow you to filter different sets of criteria so you can drill down until you’re left with a curated list of products with low competition and high sales volume.

A different approach is looking at keywords to unlock niche products. You can search for keywords in a specific marketplace and category to get all possible results showing the keyword’s top five sellers’ metrics.

But is it a profitable niche overall? After you have a few product ideas, you can search for keywords related to those products directly on Amazon to scope out the competition. Based on the results, you can focus on a specific feature or function of a product that you might be able to improve on in manufacture.

Now that you’re taking a look at the competition on Amazon for your product ideas, there are a few advanced research methods to dig even more profoundly in your search for prime opportunities. Look for products with:

Sufficient demand. A minimum of 2,000 sales per month (the total sales among the top ten sellers of a given product idea) is ideal.

Limited competition. Look for listings where the top competitors have less than 200 reviews (preferably less than 100 reviews) as an indicator of room for new entrants.

Poor ratings. If they sell well but have a low rating, read the bad reviews to see if there might be an opportunity to develop a better version.

Poor listings. The LQS (Listing Quality Score) is Jungle Scout’s proprietary system that evaluates and scores a product listing based on the Product Title, Description, Product Images, Keywords, and more. It is a scale of 0-100, so products with an LQS below 40 leave a lot of room for improvement.

You can also validate demand by conducting keyword and competitor research, tracking sales activity, inventory, Best Seller Ranking, and pricing over some time. You are tracking a product’s performance for a few weeks.

When analyzing your product search results, use the following list to assess whether the product may have issues shipping:

Avoid clothing brands and licensed products.

You don’t want anything fragile that can easily break, including anything that is glass or electronics.

Look for small, lightweight products that will make for easy shipping and won’t be too expensive to import.

Research any potential issues with IP or import. These issues are covered in depth in the following three chapters.

Many seemingly innocuous products are restricted on planes or ships like some camping gear, cosmetics, perfumes, and frozen foods.