In this guide, we’ll go through 4 powerful techniques to do product research for Amazon FBA using a plethora of tools and techniques to brainstorm product ideas.
If you have no idea on what to sell on Amazon, the techniques we’ll be sharing in this guide will help you gather as many product ideas as possible. On top of that, these product research techniques are also backed by analytics, so you have absolutely certainty of their demand and profitability.
Before we begin, it’s important to know that we’ll be using 3rd party Amazon analytics software to conduct our research, namely Jungle Scout.
About Jungle Scout
Our software of choice is Jungle Scout, the leading analytics tool for Amazon.
With a subscription to Jungle Scout, you’ll have access to way more tools than just analytics, such as their launch features and supplier sourcing tool.
However, for product research, we’ll mainly use only 2 key components of the software – The Chrome Extension and The Web App.
You won’t be able to proceed with this guide without this incredible tool.
So, now is the time to sign up for Jungle Scout. We recommend the $69 monthly subscription bundle as that has everything you need.
Note that this is a monthly subscription, meaning that you can cancel it anytime you wish. You could sign up for Jungle Scout for a month, then cancel your subscription the following month if you’ve already got enough product ideas ready.
Sign up for Jungle Scout here.
The Chrome Extension
With the Jungle Scout Chrome Extension, you’ll easily be able to pull up data from any Amazon listing or search results page. After subscribing, simply install the Chrome extension onto your browser and click on the Chrome extension icon while you are browsing any Amazon search results, and you should see something like this:
The results are pretty straightforward; it runs on Amazon.com, as well as 8 other marketplaces.
With it, you can quickly assess a product idea on Amazon. So let’s say we wanted to look at “yoga mats.” After the search is complete, you’ll have a general idea of the performance of each listing.
The Chrome Extension is useful for gauging demand for a niche, and you should run it whenever you have a product idea to validate.
The Web App
Another huge part of Jungle Scout is the Web App, which you can access by logging into https://members.junglescout.com.
Here, you’ll have access to the Product Database, Supplier Database, Keyword Scout, and the Launch section.
Jungle Scout packs a lot of features in their software, and it’s totally normal to be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of features they have. Don’t be worried if you don’t understand how everything works right away.
For now, you’ll be using the Product Database and Keyword Scout most of the time.
To put it simply, in Product Database, you’ll be able to put in certain parameters, and Jungle Scout would crawl all of the Amazon listings and give you the ones that match your criteria.
For Keyword Scout, you’ll be able to enter a product’s ASIN (Amazon Stock Inventory Number) or a general keyword for your research. We’ll go over how to obtain a listing’s ASIN later this guide.
If you’ve entered an ASIN, Keyword Scout will return the results for all of the keywords that listing is ranking for, along with search volumes.
If you’ve entered a keyword, Keyword Scout would then return the search volume for that specific keyword, along with data for relevant keywords.
Now that you understand how Jungle Scout works, let’s dive right in on the 4 product research techniques.
Product Research Techniques
Do note that these techniques are fairly similar to one another, so once you get the hang of it, the rest should be a breeze.
Again, you will need Jungle Scout for this, so sign up for Jungle Scout here if you haven’t already.
Technique #1 – Jungle Scout Web App
With the Web App, you’ll be able to enter the exact metrics that we’ve outlined above, and Jungle Scout will crawl across millions of listings on Amazon that returns you products that meet these criteria. How sweet is that?
With that said, the results from the Web App isn’t updated in real-time, and because of that, the search results won’t contain all of the listings that we’re looking for.
That’s why this is only one of the techniques we’ll be using.
To get started with the Web App, login into https://members.junglescout.com.
You should arrive at the Product Database section, which is what we’ll be using for this technique.
Something like this should show up:
From here, you’ll be able to enter the metrics that you want to look for on the right menu.
Here are the options you should enter for each section of the Product Database:
Categories:
• Appliances
• Automotive
• Baby
• Beauty & Personal Care
• Clothing, Shoes & Jewelry
• Grocery & Gourmet Food
• Health & Household
• Home & Kitchen
• Industrial & Scientific
• Kitchen & Dining
• Movies & TV
• Office Products
• Patio, Lawn & Garden
• Pet Supplies
• Sports & Outdoors
• Tools & Home Improvement
• Toys & Games
Product Tier: Standard
Filters:
• $15 – $25
• 0 – 200 reviews
• Max rank: 20000
• Revenue: $8,000 to $18,000
• Max weight: 1 lbs
These search values are the ones that tend to bring the most amount of listings that fit our criteria. However, feel free to explore different values if you want to browse more ideas.
You’ll notice that there will be a lot of results that show up will be things that are trademarked, generic, or repeated results of the same thing.
To further filter out these results, use this cheat sheet of keywords to exclude from the ‘Exclude Keyword’ section.
Simply copy and paste the following into the ‘Exclude Keyword’ section.
adidas, pant, pants, shorts, short, battle fang, arena, swimsuit, helmet, cap, skort, nike, count, cup, scarf, shirt, tee, cargo, goggle, sleeve, sleeveless, cream, glove, gloves, bluetooth, flashlight, sleeves, hat, cap, bra, jacket, pillow, tracker, tape, boxer, boxers, brief, shampoo, cream, conditioner, soap, serum, ncaa, nfl, nba, thong, suit, goggles, iphone case, qalo, shorts, tights, men's, women's , polo, headset, capsules, umbrella, picture frame, curtains, plates, BTS, bed skirt, ink, hoodie, blankets, candle, fishing line, pack, hemp, cbd, necktie, bowtie, towel, LED, ring, casual, shoes, dress, ankle, romper, jumper, swimdress, trunk, shoe, knicker, cardigan, sherpa, sunsuit, suit, pajama, gown, skirts, uniform, kimono, robe, 8mm, 6mm, 4mm, sunglasses, lingerie, corset, polos, leggings, tabletop, crocs, rompers, sexy, microfiber, sheet set, printer, printers, pokemon, paper, hoodie, hoodies, fashion, hooded, raincoat, raincoats, sock, socks, earring, battery, earrings, dress, dresses, belt, divot, curtain, curtains, nightgown, nightgowns, bralette, sandal, sandals, capri, men, mens, women, womens, slipper, slippers, radio, radios, unisex, mug, mugs, pajama, pajamas, jeans, levi, levi's, bag, bags, heel, boot, boots, sneaker, sneakers, leggings, legging, mlb, overalls, overall, unitard, Under Armour, Threadborne, robe, robes, silverware, bracelet, bracelets, sunhat, poncho, argentyn, augusta, Ayurvastram, BenefitUSA, Bento Box, aveda, ares, blowfish, sweater, sweaters, vest, vests, yoga, bride, bridal, mask, creeper, cowl, putter, trunk, trunks, spray, shirt, shirts, tee, tees, hood, sweatpant, sweatpants, tank top, tank, top, rashguard, jean, slim fit, maxu girls, ballerina, carver, flip flop, flip-flop, new balance, NHL, Nicole Miller, Tote, ballet, replacement, sofsy, Stockings, stocking, reader, reading, readers, tumbler, Vera Bradley, Venum Predator, Mouthguard, Tight, soccer, cleat, tervis, bottle, shades, loafer, loafers, bino, oxford, oxfords, mask, masks, mary jane, 0, audi, toyota, bmw, hemp, oil
After entering the excluded keywords and hitting the Search button, you should see more relevant results showing up at the bottom of the page, like this.
From there, you’ll need to go through the results to deem which ones fit the bill.
If you see something good, copy the ASIN of the listing, which can be found right in Jungle Scout, the URL bar, or at the bottom part of the listing and then put into Keyword Scout under the Keywords section.
ASIN stands of Amazon Stock Inventory Number, which is the unique identifier of each product listing on Amazon.
Here’s what the ASIN looks like in the URL bar, circled:
You can also find it under the ‘Product Information’ section:
Simply copy and paste this into Keyword Scout under the Keywords section and hit the search button, which should get you a bunch of keyword results like this:
This is essentially a list of keywords that the product ranks for. What you’ll do here is to click on the keywords, and Jungle Scout would return you the search results page on Amazon on a separate tab. You’ll want to do this for the top keywords sorted by Exact Match and Broad Match.
For this example, that would be ‘country flags’ and ‘international flags.’
From there, run the Chrome Extension on the search results to see the demand for that niche.
If the numbers look good, it would be a good idea to save the main keyword and it’s search results page on a Google Doc or a word file.
That’s all there is to use the Web App and Keyword Scout! The following techniques will revolve around this process, so please familiarize yourself with Jungle Scout as you’re going to be using it a lot, even with the other techniques.
Technique #2 – Amazon’s Best Sellers List
Amazon has their own list of their current bestsellers, which can be a great way to get product ideas.
To view the Best Sellers page, you can do a quick Google search on ‘Amazon Best Sellers’, or click here.
Here’s what the best sellers page looks like:
Then, you’ll want to browse through the categories that were mentioned in Technique #1.
While it’s definitely possible to get great product ideas from other categories, you’ll have much better chances by sticking to the categories we’ve outlined earlier.
Here are the categories you should look into:
• Appliances
• Automotive
• Baby
• Beauty & Personal Care
• Clothing, Shoes & Jewelry
• Grocery & Gourmet Food
• Health & Household
• Home & Kitchen
• Industrial & Scientific
• Kitchen & Dining
• Movies & TV
• Office Products
• Patio, Lawn & Garden
• Pet Supplies
• Sports & Outdoors
• Tools & Home Improvement
• Toys & Games
From there, simply run the Chrome Extension the results page to see if any of them look like a great product.
A good practice would be to open the products that look good in a separate tab, to dive deeper into that niche.
That way, you can grab the ASINs for that listing and put them into Keyword Scout, and from there, run the Chrome Extension again on the search results for the top keywords.
By doing this, you will have a clearer picture on the demand of that niche as a whole instead of a single listing.
You’ll also notice that there are the ‘New Releases,’ ‘Movers and Shakers,’ ‘Most Wished For’ and ‘Gift Ideas’ sections under the Best Sellers page. Feel free to rinse and repeat this process for all of those sections.
Technique #3 – Long Tail Amazon Autofill
This technique is going to sound extremely rudimentary and is so unbelievably simple that you might even scoff at it, but it’s actually one of the most incredible ways to do product research.
What you’re going to do is, head on to Amazon.com and……… enter a random alphabet in the search bar.
Yes, a random alphabet. Any alphabet from A-Z.
I’ve entered “K” as an example, and I get the following results from Amazon’s autofill:
It turns out that these are actually the most searched terms on Amazon that starts with the letter K!
From here, you should probably already have an idea on which of these would make for a potential product idea, and in this example, the knee brace is the one we’re going for.
Since these are super highly searched keywords, you’ll probably find that most of the search results from here to be competitive. Just look at the sheer competition for knee braces.
As you can see, we’ve got too many top tier listings in this search result. This is usually the norm for generic search terms such as knee brace, where the competition would be too high for you to compete in.
What you can do here is to expand on the autofill results and opt for longer tail keywords instead.
A neat trick to do this is to simply enter a space after your keyword to see more niche results for that keyword. Here’s what the longer tail keywords look like for knee braces, just by entering a space after ‘knee brace’ in the search bar.
From here, you’ll get more niche variations of that keyword, and you’ll have a much better chance of finding a less competitive product that you can compete in. Have a look at the results for the ‘knee brace with side stabilizers’ keyword.
While this is still competitive, you can see how much lower the reviews are compared to the generic ‘knee brace’ keyword. This means you have a better shot at competing in this niche, and it would be way easier for your listing to be ranked on the first page.
If you need to dive deeper into a keyword, you can even enter another space to see what else shows up.
As you can imagine, there are so many variations you can come up with using this technique that you’ll have an endless source of keywords to look from.
You can also enter a generic word instead of a letter into the search bar and see what shows up. Some examples would be words like:
• Storage
• Wood
• Metal
• Small
• Big
• Holder
• Pet
• Brush
• Cover
Moreover, these search results are actually dependent on the category, which means you can repeat this process for different categories to get even more results.
You’ll see different results for different categories, so go ahead and try out as many different categories as you can.
Technique #4 – Storefront Method
This technique starts out from the previous 3 methods, where you look for keyword ideas. What you’re going to do here instead is to spy on other Amazon’s sellers via their storefront.
From your keyword ideas, open up a few listings of the top sellers for that keyword. Then you’ll want to click on the link to access the seller’s page.
Here’s an example, with the link to the seller shown in red:
From here, you’ll see the reviews for that seller and other information. What we’re interested in is the other product that this seller sells, so click on the storefront link as shown below.
From here, we should be able to see what other items this seller is selling.
Chances are, if a seller is doing well on Amazon, they would have other items that are doing well too, and with this technique, you’ll be able to spy on them and reverse engineer their listings.
From here, you’ll simply just repeat the process of clicking on the listings, identifying their keywords, and pull up the Chrome Extension on the top keywords.
Final Thoughts
With these 4 techniques, you’ll have an endless source of product ideas at your disposal.
As you practice these techniques, you’ll find that you will be able to go through them quicker over time, which means you will have an abundance of product ideas in no time.
If you’re planning to sell on Amazon FBA, it’s important for you to have as many product ideas as possible so that you have the freedom to choose the right one to launch.
The last thing you want to happen when brainstorming for product ideas is to have a one-product fixation, which could easily cloud your judgement on the product’s potential and profitability.
By having a plethora of product ideas at your disposal, you will have a much better chance of finding a fantastic product idea that will generate a ton of revenue.
If you plan to launch your product elsewhere, such as on Shopify, the techniques we’ve outlined in this module might also be useful in validating your product idea on Amazon. After all, if your product is doing well on Amazon, it’s a good indicator of the general demand for that product.
Let us know what you think about these techniques and if you’ve found any interesting product ideas using them in the comments below.
Bernard currently works full-time as a growth hacker and content researcher for HUSTLR. When he was studying in the US 2 years ago, he flipped Yeezys on eBay as a side hustle to fund his degree and living expenses. He’s currently working on his Amazon FBA business & dropshipping on the side.
