How to Find a Niche Product to Sell on Amazon - Don't do This!
by Hoz
I was consulting with a client who wants to sell on Amazon, when he asked me how to find a niche product to sell on Amazon.
In this post I’m going to reveal why I told him you shouldn’t try to find a niche on Amazon.
I’m also going to show you what you should do instead, and I’ll share my super-simple, free, and effective way to find proven products to sell on Amazon.
Let’s start with my answer:
Don’t try to find a niche on Amazon. In fact, forget about Amazon niches. If you pick a niche, you then have to find a product that meets the demands of the niche. Instead, find a product that already sells. The product will determine your niche.
It really couldn’t be simpler. There is no niche research involved – only product research.
The bottom line is, you want to make money on Amazon. To do that, you need to sell products. Those are the two fundamental requirements. Niches don’t come into it. Or rather, niches are what’s at the buying end of your products.
You don’t need to find the niche. Your product will determine your niche.
Now, if you want to better understand your customers once you have a product, by all means go ahead and explore the niche deeper, but always start with the product.
I teach a course called Perfect Niche Selection, and on the preview video I state that niche selection is not applicable to ecommerce, unless you really want to start by choosing a niche, which is simply an extra layer of complexity to an otherwise simple premise:
Find a product that sells or find what people want
Sell it
Niche research is both applicable and important in blogging, but I’ve never started with a niche in mind when selling online.
I always start with a need or a want. What does the market need or want.
Starting with a need or a want is what helps you identify a product or service that serves that need or want.
If the market needs tents, then I sell tents. The product determines the niche (in this case, people who like ‘the great outdoors’).
The key is always to focus on what the market needs or wants.
Fortunately, when it comes to Amazon, it’s even easier to reverse engineer what the market needs or wants, because Amazon shows you that information.
I’m going to show you exactly how I do product research in Amazon for free. But first, let me explain the whole Amazon niche thing in a way that makes sense, because understanding why doing niche research for Amazon is flawed will help you fully appreciate why you should always focus on product research instead.
If you’re already on board with my point, feel free to scroll down to my step by step video tutorial on how to find proven products on Amazon.
On the other hand, if you’re still here, then let’s start with the concept of niches. A niche, essentially, is a group of people who share an interest or more. In the case of Amazon and shopping in general, that interest dictates the types of products you buy.
The keep fit niche buys exercise products and products that complement their identity; the cooking niche buys cooking utensils and products that help them perform their interest (aprons, silicon oven gloves, etc).
Niches in Amazon are represented by categories. For example, the cooking category is where the cooking niche ‘hang out’, and the exercise equipment category is where the keep fit fanatics ‘hang out’.
The thing to understand is that categories are just reflections of the things each niche buys. In reality, categories are just a convenient way to group and organise products.
It’s all about products.
Interests drive product sales, and interests are defined by niches. It’s easy to see why it may seem logical to some people to try to start with niches in Amazon.
So, skip the niche analysis and focus on finding a product.
Now, as promised, let me share with you how to find proven products that sell on Amazon:
https://youtu.be/eX8IzhAlT5Y
Using this method requires no guessing. You can see exactly which products are selling.
You can also use a took like junglescout to scrape data and look at sales figures and Amazon fees to get a very good indication of how any product is performing and how much money you could make based on the performance and the fees.
Finding a good product is not difficult. The only question is: can you beat (or at least match) the other listings?
Now, getting back to the product: having a great product is no guarantee that you’re going to do well, but it’s a huge part of the equation.
The 3 key elements of a great selling product are:
Having a good product
Having a good listing
Having visibility
Some people argue that reviews play a bigger part than they do. Reviews are important and can help you sell a product indirectly, but they’re not essential, since every product starts with zero reviews.
I started selling iPhone cases without any reviews. I just had a good product, a good listing and visibility (because I was paying for ads).
Having a good product
A good product is defined as a product for which there is demand. My product research method shows you exactly what products have demand. That then, by definition, means you should be able to choose a good product without too much difficulty.
Having a good listing
Having a good listing comes down to having good copy. If you haven’t delved into copywriting before, I highly recommend you spend some time in this area.
Out of all the different skills that go into selling online, copywriting is one of the most vital ones. The words on the page is what sell the product. Becoming a competent copywriter is something every Solopreneur should aspire to.
It’s worth me pointing out here that you can easily get sucked into a rabbit hole when it comes to learning copywriting. I mean, people spend their entire working life mastering this skill, so it can be a never ending process.
Stay mindful and try to apply the 80/20 rule when it comes to learning this skill. In other words, learn the key things as fast as you can and get back to working on your business.
I recommend studying a book on headlines that work, as well as power words (words that trigger strong emotional responses that can be effective in copywriting).
Having visibility
Visibility is basically how many eyeballs you can get on your products, and that comes to ranking.
Ranking a product in Amazon is not complicated (that is, the process is not complicated). However, being able to rank a product in the top 16 (i.e. the first page) varies in difficulty depending on the category and the competition.
Always expect to have strong competition. If you don’t, then consider that an unusual bit of good luck.
Generally, you’ll find that there are competitors with well-established products in almost every category. This is what makes it more difficult for your product to rank.
Look at it from Amazon’s perspective: they know a product that performs well. That means that they make money (each time the product sells).
Why would they rank your new product above the one that makes them money?
The simple answer is that they wouldn’t. You need to get some sales – preferably organic sales – to prove that your product also performs well, before your product starts to rank higher.
However, there is a shortcut to this often lengthy process, and that’s paying for ads.
Whenever you launch a product, I recommend that you pay for ads. Make this a part of your strategy, because visibility is part of the success equation (if people can’t find a product, they can’t buy it).
Buying ads on Amazon’s platform enables you to get instant visibility by ranking among the organic results on page 1 and usually in deeper pages too, making advertising a no-brainer.
Conclusion
Finding a niche product in Amazon is a misconception. Unlike blogging, where choosing a niche to serve is part of the process, selling online successfully depends on meeting market demand, which means all you need to focus on is the product that meets that demand or solves that problem, rather than the buyers (i.e. the niche).
The product you choose to sell determines your niche. But your decision should be product driven and not niche driven.
Once you have a product, you can explore the niche the product serves deeper to find pain points and other leverage points that may help you sell or at least present the product in a way that resonates more favourably with the niche.
I hope you found my point of view useful, and I hope it saves you a lot of time (and heartache).
Thanks for your time and remember to subscribe for more good stuff!