I will help you find a product to sell on Amazon

[freelancedev]

I would start tracking the sales volume using the add 999 to cart method, or you can pay for Jungle scout or something similar. The presence of big brands doesn't worry me as they usually don't actively compete. I would challenge you to post your product idea here so we can discuss it. But that's up to you.

Ok I'll play ball. The product is called the peanut and it is a tool used for myofascial release.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Massage-Ba...=1503853708&sr=8-2&keywords=peanut+myofascial

There are similar products in this niche (foam rollers, lacross balls) which have instructional ebooks budled with them which give instructions on how to use them, but there are no peanut products with an ebook.

 

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[biophase]

Ok I'll play ball. The product is called the peanut and it is a tool used for myofascial release.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B016V5SG4Y/

There are similar products in this niche (foam rollers, lacross balls) which have instructional ebooks budled with them which give instructions on how to use them, but there are no peanut products with an ebook.

This is a big no. Too competitive, no value add or opportunity to differentiate.

Adding an ebook is not a value add.

 

[freelancedev]

This is a big no. Too competitive, no value add or opportunity to differentiate.

Adding an ebook is not a value add.

Why would you say the ebook is not a value add? If you're looking at fitness equipment as a whole, you're probably right. For example, adding an ebook with a jump rope probably created no additional value for the consumer.

But with these myofascial release tools, there are a ton of ways to use them. I personally have a lacrosse ball for myofascial release and purchased a book called supple leopard to learn about different ways it can be used (although I never actually got around to using it ). I'd have thought bridging that gap in knowledge would be value adding?

Thanks for your thoughts.

 

[biophase]

Why would you say the ebook is not a value add? If you're looking at fitness equipment as a whole, you're probably right. For example, adding an ebook with a jump rope probably created no additional value for the consumer.

But with these myofascial release tools, there are a ton of ways to use them. I personally have a lacrosse ball for myofascial release and purchased a book called supple leopard to learn about different ways it can be used (although I never actually got around to using it ). I'd have thought bridging that gap in knowledge would be value adding?

Thanks for your thoughts.

Do you think that adding a free ebook would make someone purchase your peanut over another one on the market at the same or lower price? What creditability do you have that would make someone value your ebook?

 

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[JDx]

Great thread idea, following.

 

[steelandchrome]

Just a thought for some of you if you havent tried it is to download amazeowl and search for products you like there to see good ideas of sales, competition, profits, FBA calculator, etc... I set up a search and found my first product and have placed an initial order for 300 pieces and am eagerly awaiting shipment. I had found a few that seemed like great ideas but after plugging them in there found I would be investing $20 each unit to end up making $3 each unit and it wasn't worth the risk. The one I went with is an investment of $7 each unit to make $7-10 each so a lot more room to play with price to rank etc and not lose money.

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[funkj25]

This is a big no. Too competitive, no value add or opportunity to differentiate.

Adding an ebook is not a value add.

@A1roller If you want to see a value add in this space check out Rollga. There's a bunch of different foam rollers out there, but they actually improved their design to fix the problem of compressing your vertebrae while rolling your back out (and other things). My coach swears by them and I now have one in my living room.

Stock flat foam roller --> Rollga design is what Bio is talking about as value added differentiation. The ebook is just a kicker.

 

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[Mac]

so you wouldnt give it a go? at the end i think not only gamer would buy it, but i speculate

@biophase also no recommendation on this one?

Take a look at www.elementalknives.com, they're a 7 figure Shopify store (check out www.xpareto.com).

Take their URL and plug it into www.similarweb.com and see where they're getting traffic from.

Now you can see where to advertise your product, because Facebook doesn't allow advertising of weapons.

If you can make design better than them, then you shouldn't have a problem.

 

[Dylan_91]

Yes, I will help you find a product to sell on Amazon. But the catch is that all the information will be posted here. No PM's. So if you want to talk about a potential product, you must do it on this thread and risk a bunch of copycats. But, as we always say here, it's not the idea, it's the execution.

The idea of this thread is for others to post a product that they think might do well on Amazon and I will analyze it and give pros and cons about the product. Hopefully, this will help give you ideas and direction on other products if not the one being analyzed.

What I don't want is people asking about crap products and supplements. For example, I don't want a post that says, "What do you think about cutting boards?" I want a more in depth post that says, "I'm thinking of doing bamboo cutting boards. I can make it better by blah blah.I look at the competitors and blah blah.

The problem with most people looking for a product is that they don't "DO" enough things or have experience in broad areas. It could be because you are young and just haven't experienced enough life yet. But for many, it's probably because they don't "DO" anything that's not on the internet, they don't have any hobbies and they sit at home looking for an idea.

So let me run by some hobbies I've had when I was younger: collecting comics, baseball cards, RC car racing, saltwater fish keeping (reef tanks), paintball, car tracking, etc...

If I pick one hobby from my list, let's pick saltwater fish keeping, I can think of 3-5 problems that I had during my fish keeping days. In fact, when I go to Amazon now, I see some great innovations in things.

I'll give you an example of a super small niche in reef keeping.

To grow your own SPS corals in reef tanks you take a pair of pliers and cut off a piece and put it on the bottom of the fishtank. This is because you have to slowly aclimmatize the new piece to the light. If you put it at the top of the tank, it will burn and die. So we put it on the bottom and every week we raise it slowly by 3-4 inches. We did this by just putting it higher and higher on rocks.

Sometimes, the piece of coral would fall off the rock. So people starting super gluing the piece to a small rock.

Then as time went by, people started making special "rocks" to super glue them to. Thus coral plugs were invented.View attachment 15994
Amazon.com : Oceans Wonders Coral Frag Plugs 100pc : Pet Supplies

Then soon came racks so people had a place to put the coral plugs. These racks were held by magnets to the side of the fish tank so you could slowly raise the height easily. Thus magnetic coral racks were born.
View attachment 15995
Amazon.com : Oceans Wonders N52 MAG RACK PRO MAGNETIC CORAL FRAG RACK HOLDS UP TO 30 FRAG PLUGS : Pet Supplies

This is an SPS coral frag tank. Each one of those pieces could sell for $30 or more to a hobbyist.

View attachment 15997​

Neither of these products were available when I was reef keeping 20 years ago. They have come a long way in 20 years. If I had been in an entrepreneurial mindset back then instead of a hobbyist maybe I would have invented some of these. They certainly solved a need.

There's probably some dude out there making a decent living in this niche who's going to be pissed off that I'm exposing it.

My point is, how do you even know that this need is out there if you don't "DO" anything in your life? There is probably a problem for people who flying kites or people who fly drones. But you won't ever know what it is if you don't do these things.

I'll give you another one that is more current. See this object below? Guess what it is?View attachment 15996
Amazon.com : Neewer 24x24 inch/60x60 cm Photo Studio Shooting Tent Light Cube Diffusion Soft Box Kit with 4 Colors Backdrops (Red Dark Blue Black White) for Photography : Photographic Lighting Diffusers : Camera & Photo

It is a lightbox for photography. It is a 24" cube. The beauty of this box is that it folds down flat. Guess what else it could be good for? Drone racing!

Yes, drone racing. My friend who races drones builds 6' x 6' x 6' PVC cubes that they use as gates in the park. The problem is that they need to carry about a bunch of 6' PVC pipes in their small cars.

You could take this lightbox, remove the center panels, make it 6' long, and presto! You got a portable lightweight drone gate.

Here are some currently on Amazon.
Amazon.com: drone gates

I started an Amazon store on my moms windows 95 computer back when I was 8 by selecting my favorite video games. Still haven't made a sale...

 

[AA1980]

Maybe I'm missing something, but looking at some of these products being posted, I'm seeing 4-star reviews. So let's say you improved the product so that it gets an average review of 4.5 stars. Not that big a jump to the average consumer. Worth the risk though? I'm not so sure.

 

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[Scot]

Maybe I'm missing something, but looking at some of these products being posted, I'm seeing 4-star reviews. So let's say you improved the product so that it gets an average review of 4.5 stars. Not that big a jump to the average consumer. Worth the risk though? I'm not so sure.

That's part of why Bio has shot down a lot of these products.

 

[AA1980]

That's part of why Bio has shot down a lot of these products.

Makes sense. Thanks.


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[funkj25]

Maybe I'm missing something, but looking at some of these products being posted, I'm seeing 4-star reviews. So let's say you improved the product so that it gets an average review of 4.5 stars. Not that big a jump to the average consumer. Worth the risk though? I'm not so sure.

Really depends here.

I took a product that is rated 4.8/5 stars with around 500 reviews at the time and made it better because of a glaring error they have in their product. Also made a few more tweaks to improve it and update it for today.

Now a little over a year later my improved product is also rated 4.8/5 with a bit over 100 reviews, is eating into their sales and will be around probably for a good while (their's came out in 1999).

Depends on your tolerance level for risk as well (i.e. available bankroll - potential money allocation x expected returns). My example certainly wasn't a slam dunk by any stretch of the imagination, but a successful launch of it also means it will earn for quite a while too.

Another "it depends" but I personally think Amazon bumps products with greater than 4.5/5 much harder than a 4/5 average rating. There's some notable examples to the contrary, but most of the products in my niche don't survive long term with less than that.

 

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[AA1980]

Really depends here.

I took a product that is rated 4.8/5 stars with around 500 reviews at the time and made it better because of a glaring error they have in their product. Also made a few more tweaks to improve it and update it for today.

Now a little over a year later my improved product is also rated 4.8/5 with a bit over 100 reviews, is eating into their sales and will be around probably for a good while (their's came out in 1999).

Depends on your tolerance level for risk as well (i.e. available bankroll - potential money allocation x expected returns). My example certainly wasn't a slam dunk by any stretch of the imagination, but a successful launch of it also means it will earn for quite a while too.

Another "it depends" but I personally think Amazon bumps products with greater than 4.5/5 much harder than a 4/5 average rating. There's some notable examples to the contrary, but most of the products in my niche don't survive long term with less than that.

This is super helpful. Thanks for the response!


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[MJ DeMarco]

Thread MARKED Notable.

 

[Ika]

true. But how do you scale this??? How do you know its neglible?

iam wondering this one got over 7000 reviews = https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0087DRWWQ/?tag=tff-amazonparser-20

You might want to look into other countries where the game is not as niche.
Here in Germany CSGO wa really popular - one year ago, my whole school played the game excessively. Some people bought said knifes.
Since then I've cut ties to most of them, so I can't tell if the game is still so popular.

If having an excact replica is valuable for your potential market, my bet would be to use gaming influencers as a way to market.
Again, a lot of people played the game and most of them watched various twitch streamers.
Because those influencers probably care about having exact replica knifes (instead of having slightly off knifes), it could be easier to approach and sell.

Just my 2 cents

 

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[Dan_Fastlane]

Take a look at www.elementalknives.com, they're a 7 figure Shopify store (check out www.xpareto.com).

Take their URL and plug it into www.similarweb.com and see where they're getting traffic from.

Now you can see where to advertise your product, because Facebook doesn't allow advertising of weapons.

If you can make design better than them, then you shouldn't have a problem.

pretty cool site, and thank you for this great tip with similarweb, elemental knives got 1Mio visits a Month, i think thats huge. A lot of traffic from youtube!

 

[Dan_Fastlane]

You might want to look into other countries where the game is not as niche.
Here in Germany CSGO wa really popular - one year ago, my whole school played the game excessively. Some people bought said knifes.
Since then I've cut ties to most of them, so I can't tell if the game is still so popular.

If having an excact replica is valuable for your potential market, my bet would be to use gaming influencers as a way to market.
Again, a lot of people played the game and most of them watched various twitch streamers.
Because those influencers probably care about having exact replica knifes (instead of having slightly off knifes), it could be easier to approach and sell.

Just my 2 cents

thank you ika for your reply. iam with you here, but if we look at the pricing and biophase made a statement on this, the margin is horrible. But i like your idea, because if i get some influencers(how much cost you an influencer?) i could do this with a shopify shop and package myself. It seems just Pretty difficult as first product, if you in the game longer, i could imagine that your idea could work out very well.

 

[Colton]

Take a look at www.elementalknives.com, they're a 7 figure Shopify store (check out www.xpareto.com).

Take their URL and plug it into www.similarweb.com and see where they're getting traffic from.

Now you can see where to advertise your product, because Facebook doesn't allow advertising of weapons.

If you can make design better than them, then you shouldn't have a problem.

Wow, that's a cool website, thanks for sharing.

I always thought that signing up with shopify meant that you don't get your own domain name. That must be a premium feature that you have to pay for?

I am on the fence between wordpress and shopify for my new store... leaning toward wordpress because I don't really see the advantage to shopify aside from quick setup with a pre-made layout. I'd really like to hear from someone who has tried both though.

 

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[Colton]

Take a look at www.elementalknives.com, they're a 7 figure Shopify store (check out www.xpareto.com).

Take their URL and plug it into www.similarweb.com and see where they're getting traffic from.

Now you can see where to advertise your product, because Facebook doesn't allow advertising of weapons.

If you can make design better than them, then you shouldn't have a problem.

What I really like about that website is their photography. I'm not really into gimmicky knives and have never played CSGO, but just scrolling through their website it's hard not to drool a little.

Does anybody have an idea how they made their pictures look that good? I have access to some DSLR cameras courtesy of my college photography club, but I think I might still have to pay somebody else to get great results that look that good.

Maybe it's just me but I've always found it difficult to get great looking product photos.

 

[biophase]

Maybe I'm missing something, but looking at some of these products being posted, I'm seeing 4-star reviews. So let's say you improved the product so that it gets an average review of 4.5 stars. Not that big a jump to the average consumer. Worth the risk though? I'm not so sure.

I'm not evening looking at the reviews. I'm looking at the competition landscape, type of product that it is, price point and ease of improvements. You can still improve a 5 star product.

 

[biophase]

Maybe it's just me but I've always found it difficult to get great looking product photos.

Then you should improve your photography skills. It's not as simple as get a DSLR and take pics. It's all about lighting. Then I'd learn some simple photoshop skills (using free GIMP).

But the first thing you should do is begin to read about product photography and photography in general.

 

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[AA1980]

I'm not evening looking at the reviews. I'm looking at the competition landscape, type of product that it is, price point and ease of improvements. You can still improve a 5 star product.

How do you know what improvements need to be made without looking at the reviews?


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[Scot]

How do you know what improvements need to be made without looking at the reviews?


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That's not what Bio was saying. He said he didn't even get that far because the products posted were in high competition niches. Once you find a promising niche,then you look for ways to improve it.

Essentially, everyone's posting really popular or well known product niches. Think as boring or abstract as possible to find your product. I think Bio has used the example of a dog cremation box.

 

[#nowhere]

So I've got one... I thought about it for longer, but have other project going right now. Peace of mind and stuff.
Feel free to grab it, even if I believe bio will dismiss it. Too complicated.

Competition:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01FVUXE6A/?tag=tff-amazonparser-20

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01DODMU9I/?tag=tff-amazonparser-20

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KDNSNVM/?tag=tff-amazonparser-20

Features they all have:

• chin support
• neck support
• sides supported
• can be packaged smaller, when not in use
• all have this fleecy surface

Possible Improvements (or I thought so..):
The core of the usp should be suitable for outdoor people, or frequent travelers:

You sew something like a bag to the back of the pillow so that it can be packaged into this bag. I always tend to lose these seperate bags. And they are often not water and dirt-resistant. Easy solution: Use the fabric they use for canvas and such heavy duty stuff. Attach a carabiner there to attach to backpack/headrest in plane or car. It uses no more space inside your luggage but it keeps clean and dry outside of it.

Additional you could bring premium to the inside of the pillow as well:

There are manufacturers here in Germany that laser cut memory foam with anti toxic cert.
The actual market participants all have a solid offer, but nothing extraordinary. Something that commands a premium, even if you only consider the surface, the fabric, or gum. Here in europe premium pillows do often have one part natural feathers contained. Feathers and foam could be sourced US or EU- based to jump through certification and toxin - hoops.

As long is could see through a short research the fabrics from asia are really nice and they can sew it for you.


I see it's complicated after my write up. These foams are harder to source (lower quality) in China, that's my gut feeling. Maybe the margins get low here.

Thank you bio for your support!

#n

 

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[AA1980]

That's not what Bio was saying. He said he didn't even get that far because the products posted were in high competition niches. Once you find a promising niche,then you look for ways to improve it.

Essentially, everyone's posting really popular or well known product niches. Think as boring or abstract as possible to find your product. I think Bio has used the example of a dog cremation box.

@Scot I gotcha now.. thanks!

 

[JAJT]

Speaking of backpacks, something I think might have a lot of value that I don't see a lot of bags doing is high contrast interiors.

Instead of opening your pack to a "black hole" if it was a vibrant yellow, or white, or whatever you would be able to find your objects a lot easier with less light than a typical black-interior pack.

Very clear value add + easy to demonstrate with photography.

I've seen one or two like this in the past and thought it was just genius. I also don't think they are very wide spread (but it's been forever since I've checked).

 

[AA1980]

Speaking of backpacks, something I think might have a lot of value that I don't see a lot of bags doing is high contrast interiors.

Instead of opening your pack to a "black hole" if it was a vibrant yellow, or white, or whatever you would be able to find your objects a lot easier with less light than a typical black-interior pack.

Very clear value add + easy to demonstrate with photography.

I've seen one or two like this in the past and thought it was just genius. I also don't think they are very wide spread (but it's been forever since I've checked).

So while I think this is a great idea, isn't this area so competitive that it will be tough for us to get to the top of the rankings? people aren't going to look for backpack with bright interior.. once they see the benefit, they'll love it, but they likely won't be looking for it?

 

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[ripas]

Essentially, everyone's posting really popular or well known product niches. Think as boring or abstract as possible to find your product. I think Bio has used the example of a dog cremation box.

I've seen this mentioned a few times however I would assume that if your product is to abstract there are very few buyers. Perhaps if you make it they will come.......how many buyers would you be looking for before investing? I have most commonly seen mentioned about 3000 purchasers in the top 10 listings on Amazon.

 

[JAJT]

if your product is to abstract there are very few buyers.

Boring doesn't mean abstract.

Casters are boring. But people buy them every day.
Soap dishes are boring. But everyone has one.
Milk crates are boring. They still sell.

Something can be boring without being "abstract".

Anything people are passionate about generally has a million competitors.
Anything that you need but nobody is really passionate about is likely what what would constitute a great "boring" product.
A shower organizer is something people need, can be improved, but nobody is passionate about it.

I'm not saying "go boring", necessarily, but when someone says "go boring", this is what they mean.