Amazon has changed a lot since last year so what worked then may not be as effective in 2024 which is why in this video we're going to walk you through the updated roadmap for launching your very first product on amazon in fact everything that we're about to share with you We've done ourselves here at jungle Scout in just two years We've gotten our latest product up to 1200 reviews and have sold over half a million dollars in sales The reason this has been so successful is because we found a really great product and then we created a brand around it. And we did this under the private label business model, which is just one of the two main ways that you can sell on Amazon. The first way is by reselling other people's products by doing something like retail arbitrage, wholesale, or even dropshipping. And the second way is what we did, private label.
This is when you buy a generic product directly from a factory and then have it branded with your own unique logo. Then by using a service called FBA or Fulfilled by Amazon, all you have to do is tell your supplier to ship your products into an Amazon warehouse and then And from there, Amazon will hold on to your product until a customer places an order. When that happens, someone at Amazon will pick it up off the shelf, package it into a box, and ship it out to the customer for you. And even if the customer doesn't like the product and wants to return it, Amazon will handle all of the customer service for you.
This means you don't ever need to touch your own inventory. So you can literally run this entire business from home or really anywhere else in the world. And by far, my favorite part is that you can make it as small or as large as you'd like.
You could work at it. it as a full-time job and potentially sell millions of dollars a year. Or maybe you're just happy with a smaller business that supplements or even fully replaces your current income. Whatever your goals are, the private label business model is by far one of the best ways to build a long-term scalable business.
Now to get started creating your own brand, your very first objective is to find at least 10 different product ideas. Coming up, I'm going to be showing you how to find these 10 products, and I'll also show you how to narrow them down and find the best product on that list. But because there's a lot that we're gonna cover today in this video, here are three things that are gonna help you get the most out of this video. First, go ahead and bookmark this page so that you can refer back to it again and again.
Anytime that you do come back, you can use the detailed chapters below to jump right back into wherever you left off. And lastly, if you wanna take your learning experience to the next level, download our ultimate how to sell on Amazon guide completely for free with the link down below. Just like this video, it includes all the step-by-step tutorials, tips from some top Amazon experts, and even free templates that you can use to follow along with this video. So now that you have everything you need, let's jump right into step number one. To become a successful seller, you need to be willing to invest both time and money.
The foundation of your business is the product or products that you choose to sell. Choosing the right types of products is really important. The biggest mistake that we see a lot of beginners make is guessing which products to sell based on the number of reviews or worse, their own personal preference. Instead, you wanna make smart, data-driven decisions based on the market.
So to help you understand this, we put together this handy checklist of the three most important factors for choosing a successful product. Now you want to make sure that all 10 of your product ideas meet this criteria. So this first factor is by far the most important and that's high demand.
When you're researching an idea, you basically want to answer, are there enough people consistently purchasing this type of product? So say you have a great idea for a product, you go look it up on Amazon, you might be thinking, hey, I see some products here that have a lot of reviews, so it must be a high selling product, right? Well, actually, let me show you why that's not always the case.
In this scenario, despite having over a thousand reviews combined, this type of product actually only sells a few units every day. And I know this because each product on Amazon has something called a best sellers rank. The sole purpose of this number is to show you how well a product sells compared to... others in the same category. Which means for sellers, you can use this number to estimate the sales for any product.
As a general rule of thumb, the lower the number, the higher the product sells. But because these rankings are different for each category, what's considered a good BSR in one category could actually be a bad BSR in a different category. So to help you get familiar with all of this, Jungle Scout actually has a free tool that you can use called the sales estimator.
So first you need to grab the bestseller rank. Now to do this go to the product detail page, scroll all the way towards the bottom here and then you're going to see the BSR. You want to copy the top number, this is known as the parent category.
You also want to take note of what this category is. Now you can paste that into the estimator, select the Amazon marketplace, and then select the product category. This is going to give you the estimated number of sales per month for that product and is a great way to get started. You can use this for free up to 10 times per day.
Now, an even quicker and better approach to getting unlimited sales estimates right on the Amazon page plus a whole bunch of other data is using Jungle Scout's other tools such as the extension. With it, you're able to quickly validate product ideas at the same time that you're browsing on Amazon. You'll see each product's ranking along with key insights for understanding product demand, profit projections, and a whole bunch of other useful information. So now let me give you an example beginning with the first way to do product research and that is by validating your own ideas.
Alright, so now I'm on Amazon and I've searched for dog toy basket large. Now I have a dog named Albus and he's got a whole bunch of toys so I've always thought it'd be a great idea to create and sell my own toy basket. Except I don't know the answer to the question are there enough people consistently buying this type of product? So let me now show you how to dive into the data and see if there's enough demand. So once you've typed in the name of your product you can then refer to the individual overlays under each product here.
but in order to analyze the entire market, which is what I'd recommend, you can actually open up the extension by clicking over here. This will pop open a table that displays data for all the products listed on this page. You can scroll over to see more information and even customize the view here for whatever you want to see. And you can scroll down to see more products and actually you can even click this button and bring in all of the products from the next page. At the top here, you want to keep a close eye on this row here because this shows you the averages for all the products on the page.
Now here's how to go through the checklist to see whether or not your product hits each of the three factors. So starting with high demand, the first thing you want to see is that the average monthly sales is above 300, which is about 10 sales per day and a really good number to shoot for. So already we can see that we're well above that 300 number.
Now one thing to keep in mind though is that Amazon decides which products appear on this page. So sometimes you get irrelevant products that are included and that affects our averages at the top. So you may need to take a second to clean up your list first.
So let's do that now. You can just look at the images here or hover over it to get a larger image but I can tell that a lot of these are dog toy baskets which is really great. As we scroll down here...
Okay here we go. So now this looks like now we're seeing dog toys here. Essentially if you find these irrelevant products, let's see if there's a few more here. That's a dog toy.
I'm gonna check these here. All right I've selected my irrelevant products and we're going to hit hide rows. But just notice how this changes all the averages at the top, particularly the average monthly sales.
So hide and now we're only looking at the dog toy baskets and you can see that our average monthly sales has changed. And fortunately, it's still above our 300 number so far. Okay, so the next thing that you wanna see is that there are plenty of individual products getting over that 300 monthly sales number or what we call the distribution of sales.
Because remember, these numbers at the top are just averages. So you do need to analyze the individual listings as well. What you don't wanna see is just. one or two products with thousands of sales and all the other products with only a handful.
So let me show you an example of that. We're now looking over at ice bath tubs and you can see at the top here, we're hitting our 300 average monthly sales. But now when we analyze the individual listings, you can actually see that these top two listings here actually dominate in terms of the monthly sales, about 3000 sales, nearly 6000 sales. But then as we scroll down, there's only there's a couple here that hit our 300 mark.
But then there's so many of these listings that aren't reaching the 300 sales per month that we want. So that's why it can be a little misleading if you only look at the average monthly sales at the top. So let's see what happens if we remove these top two listings and we hit hide here.
Now we actually see that the average monthly sales is down to 125 per month. and is well below the 300 that we're looking for. So this is the scenario to watch out for and avoid because for whatever reason customers are mostly buying from these one or two listings which means even if you were to rank on this first page of search results then it's unlikely you're going to capture many sales.
Alright so now we'll go back to our dog toy basket example and I'll show you an easy way to see how many listings are above that 300 monthly sales. So we're gonna come over here and we're gonna click on filter results and now we can enter 300 into the minimum monthly sales filter. After clicking apply this will now narrow down your list to just the products that have reached this mark. But remember the question you're trying to answer contains the word consistently.
Ideally you want your product to sell all throughout the year not just during certain seasons. So if you're doing research in the summertime, just be careful that the products that you're looking at aren't just temporarily inflated with high sales. So to check the seasonality you can click on any product's monthly sales to get an idea of how it's been selling over the past two years.
So let me show you an example of seasonality using these outdoor grills. If we open up the extension you can actually hover over the monthly sales and if you click on it you can actually see its past sales history. Alright so now we're going back two years and we can actually see the sales on a weekly basis here.
We can see that there was a little bit of a spike here in March, then it was quite low and then it got really big during the summer months here and then it started going back down again up until summer this year. So this is a really good example of a type of product that's quite seasonal. Now I'll show you a really extreme version of seasonality. So we're looking at Halloween decorations here. And again, we're gonna click on monthly sales for one of these products.
And now we can see that week by week, this product is only getting 20, 30, 40 sales. And it's only during the months of September and October that it gets crazy volumes of sales. So try to look at this for as many products as you can, just to make sure that there aren't any extended periods of time where the sales are dipping below 300. It's okay if it spikes up and down throughout the year, just as long as most of the products consistently sell at least 300 units per month. Alright, onto factor number two which is high profitability.
The question that you're trying to answer here is, after all my product costs and expenses will I still take home a healthy profit? A lot of beginners make this same mistake of selling products with low margins and then the minute that Amazon increases their fees or if their shipping costs go up or really any other unexpected business costs then their product ends up failing because there's not enough profit to sustain the business. business. So to make sure that you don't make this common mistake, a good rule of thumb is to look for products that you can sell between $20 to $70.
Typically anything below $20 your margins are going to be really slim and anything above $70 it's going to be a lot harder convincing shoppers to make a big purchase from a brand that they're not familiar with. Also remember that your product is going to be starting with zero reviews which also makes it harder to get those initial sales. All right so like we did with sales we're going to come up to the filter here and we're going to set our price to $20 to $70.
Now one quick note on $20, I would say that that should be your absolute bare minimum. Again I want to reiterate that the lower your price is, generally the lower your profit margins are. So I have seen a lot of products work at $20 but typically I would even go a little bit higher sometimes $25 to $30 if you can find those types of products but just keep 20 as an absolute minimum.
So we're gonna hit apply here to filter our results even more and before we move on to the next factor I'm just double checking that we're still well above our average monthly sales which we are and so now we're going to move on to factor number three and that's low competition. The question that you're trying to answer here is will my product have a chance of competing with others that are already established in the market? So after you've looked at the distribution of sales Again, making sure that the market isn't completely dominated by just the top few products.
The next thing to look for now is the number of reviews that your future competition has. Specifically, you want to see a few products that are selling over 300 units a month, despite being new or having a low number of reviews. Because if others are able to do that, then you can feel fairly confident that there's room for a new product like yours to come in and replicate their success. So for example, if we look through these listings here, we can see this particular one was launched in 2023, very recent, and they're getting nearly a thousand sales per month, despite the fact that they only launched quite recently and only have a low number of reviews. And so to find more of these products, you can actually come back up here to our filters and we can filter by date first available.
So we can click in here and you can go one year or two years. I'm going to go two years. and click apply or the other filter that you could use here is maximum number of ratings. So there's not a specific number but let's say something like 500 at a maximum and you can do one or the other of those or we're going to do both.
and click apply. So now we can actually see there are seven listings here that have launched within the last two years that have under 500 reviews and then if we go and see their average monthly sales they're well above the 300 that we're looking for. So this validates for me that new products can enter this market and still make a lot of sales despite the competition.
Now if you enter these filters and you don't see any results or not many results of these newer listings that are proving successful It's not an absolute deal breaker. You don't have to throw the idea out, but it's just a really nice peace of mind to validate that new products can enter the market. So if you like what you're seeing, you want to keep track of this idea by collecting all of the data.
So for this, I'd recommend removing all of your filters and that way you're keeping track of all your future competitors. Now, if you'd like, you can simply download this table into an Excel sheet. However, just keep in mind that Amazon data is constantly changing. One day a product could be selling 100 units, the next day it could be selling 5. So instead of locking your data into a static spreadsheet, I'd recommend using something more dynamic like the Jungle Scout product tracker. This is a tool that's designed to help you easily organize, group, and compare all your ideas in one place.
And because it's connected to Amazon, whenever the data changes, it automatically updates in real time. It even lets you go back and view historical trends just like the extension. Now coming up here shortly, we're actually going to show you How to use this main overview page to narrow down your 10 ideas to just the top 5. So now you can continue this process of searching for product ideas here on Amazon by typing in your idea and then opening up the extension to analyze the market just like I've shown you.
Then just make sure that each time you find a product that looks interesting and meets our criteria that you add all of these products to a new product tracker group. So that's how you can use data to validate your own ideas. but what if you don't already know what you want to sell?
Well, for a lot of beginners, this ends up being the biggest blocker for getting started and they get stuck in a state called analysis paralysis. So how do you finally push through and find a product that checks all of the boxes? Well, for this, you can use Opportunity Finder, another Jungle Scout tool that helps you easily discover ideas from scratch that already meet each of these three factors. How it works is every product on Amazon is loaded in here and just like the extension, you can use advanced filters to easily discover products that are high in demand, highly profitable, and have low competition and seasonality.
You can also add in your own keywords to help you narrow down or discover certain types of products, maybe around one of your hobbies or something that you're interested in. Or to keep your options open, you can just leave this section blank. Now to the left here, you can decide which categories you want to search for products in, but to help you eliminate products that are generally known to cause some serious headaches, I'd recommend selecting all of the categories except for the ones that I've left unchecked.
Now I'm not saying it's impossible to sell in these categories, but for the reasons that you see on screen, these are typically the ones that cause the most issues for new sellers. But now after selecting your marketplace, you can click search to see a full list of products that pass on all three factors. The process from here is just to scroll through this list and open up each one of these opportunities that seems appealing.
Now we're going to see these graphs here and what you want to do is confirm that the demand is consistently above 300 over the past few months and then do the same with the average price point by making sure it's not trending downwards below $20. You can also track the monthly search volume on Amazon for this keyword which is often another indicator for the product's demand over time. You can even see trend lines whether this is typically trending up or down. As we move across the next graph here will help you easily spot seasonality.
This is really useful for understanding when most people are buying this type of product. It'll tell you if there's an obvious month where this product peaks and the seasonality level of the past 12 months. And now this final tab will show you the top products on Amazon that are ranking for this keyword. So just like the extension, you're able to scroll through this list and see sales data for each individual product.
Clicking this icon here. will send you to that products listing where you can then use the extension to track important information directly on the page. When you find a product that you like, you can simply come up here and add it to the product tracker, similar to what we did before.
You can also do this directly from within the opportunity finder by clicking on each product and then adding it into an existing group or creating a brand new one. So I'm just going to go through a few examples, click on a few things that sound interesting or I want to learn more about. So as I go through this list here, I'm wondering what trifold poster boards 36 by 48 is. I like things that are relatively specific. So let's kind of look at the average unit sold to begin with and looks like it's been a little bit lower but then it's gone up more recently.
Let's go over to average price and we can see it's pretty much always been between $30 to $45 so a really good price. We can go over to search volume and we can kind of see how that's changed over time. It's a little bit lower at the moment.
but it is really interesting to see this trend line. It seems like it might be trending up, although I'd be slightly worried by the lower, more recent search volume. We'll see if seasonality gives us anything different. Doesn't look like it's specifically seasonal.
No particular month or time of year really jumps out. And then let's have a look at top products. So this is always fun because now you can actually see what the product is if you weren't already sure. What I like about it is that...
it seems like it would be a lightweight product, something easy to make. Some downsides that come to mind is if it's 36 by 48 inches it's going to be quite big. I don't know if this can be folded down. I'm assuming that it needs to be shipped in that size so it does make it a little bit larger.
I'd be worried about it being bent or broken in shipping. So these are the kinds of things that you'd be thinking about as you're going through this. Another downside could be I don't know how you would really improve upon this. product. It's sort of like you get the product there's probably not much more that you can do with this poster board.
So those are things that come to mind. I don't love this one but I'm just going to talk through my thoughts on some different examples here. I'll show you an example now of narrowing down your search results by using a keyword. Using my love of dogs as an example I'm just going to add in the word dog and see what results that we can find.
Alright so what have we got here. Coastal Dog Harness. That sounds like they're looking for a specific brand.
So I'm not going to look at that one. Avalanche Dog Harness. Okay so there and Kong that's definitely a dog brand.
If we keep coming down. Dog Comfy Cone. I'm curious what that is.
Let's take a look. So average unit sold. There's a couple of examples here or this one here relatively low but generally it looks like this product sells a lot over the last two years.
If we look at the price. Let's see how that's changed. That one has had a fairly low price and is just above our $20 mark. And it looks like it's been holding that for a little while. If we go to search volume, it seems like it's generally trending down a little bit.
In seasonality, there's no sort of standout month or time of year there. Top products. Let's take a look at what these are.
So, okay. Comfy cones. Cool, so this is when your dogs had surgery or something like that and you don't want them to scratch themselves.
Okay, this one's interesting. I don't love the price point. I don't know how I would differentiate it exactly.
It's interesting but I'm going to keep moving on. Dog scratchboard, that sounds kind of like unique and interesting. So let's take a look at that one.
It has had some crazy sales. It does have some lower months here. Quite a few lower months if we just look more recently, let's say the past year, we can kind of see goes from like 800 there, just under 300 or a couple of months of under 300, 400, 500. So it's creeping up a bit. So it looks like it's got some pretty decent sales there. If we look at the price point, this is interesting.
So it was selling for around about $50, but it looks like since May 2023, the price has really come down almost down to the $20 mark. That's kind of interesting. I'm going to keep that in mind. You would hope that the price isn't going to keep going down. Search volume is really interesting.
It seems like it's been fairly consistent. It was quite low, but it's been growing and growing. I really love this trend line here in search volume. And this one does have a pretty clear trend going up.
Seasonality, we'll see if there's anything interesting here. It looks like maybe in the last part of the year, it's trending up a little bit more, but Can't see any super clear trends there. And then now we can get a little bit of a look at what this product is.
So another interesting one. I'm going to see if I can find one more dog example, and then I'm going to move on to sort of a different niche here. All right. Weighted dog collar.
That again is sort of like a little bit different, unique, weird, maybe you could say. So let's take a look. Average unit sold.
It looks like, yeah, 400. There's a few months here where it is really low. So that puts me off a little bit. It looks like for some reason there was a lot of sales in June, but we are seeing a lot of months where there's not many units sold.
So that's a little bit of a red flag for me. Let's take a look at the price. So, oh wow, so this product is selling at over $60. It's come down to about 40 and sort of seems like it's between 40 and $50.
So knowing that it actually is selling at a higher price point, I can be a little bit more forgiving on the number of units sold. So, you know, we talk about 20 to $70 as a recommended price range. The higher the price of the product, the more expensive it is to purchase it and the more capital you need upfront. So a lot of people that are starting out typically end up finding products that they can sell for $20 to $30 just because those are cheaper to purchase.
Keeping that in mind, if you find a product that you can sell from that sort of $40 to $70 mark, then you don't necessarily need to hit $300 sales. You're still going to end up making the same amount of revenue. Right.
as someone that's selling a $20, $30 product and getting 300 sales. Moving on to search volume. Okay, this is interesting and it looks like this is trending down according to this data here.
So that's a little bit of a worry and then if we look at seasonality, there's this is peak month of December but otherwise I don't see any super clear trends here. Top products. There's a few products here that aren't the weighted dog collar.
So if you ever look at a keyword and you're seeing other types of products, that can be a little bit of a red flag. Sometimes what that means is that maybe that particular type of product, maybe someone has a patent on that type of product and therefore not many other people can sell it. So that's something to keep an eye on and could be a little bit of a red flag, but I would do a little bit more digging. All right, so let's do some other examples here. I'm just gonna type in the name of a sport.
So let's go with golf and see what kinds of products come up. Now, I'm actually not, I'm not a golfer at all, but I'm just kind of curious to see what sort of unique products are out there. So we scroll down here. Let's look at golf pad mat.
So let's bring that one up. Average units sold. Wow, this one sells really, really well in the hundreds, generally over 500 units per month consistently, which is great.
So let's take a look at the price now. Okay, it looks like it's been fairly steady in and around that $60 mark. So it sells over 500 units and over at least $50 most of the time.
It looks like the average price for some reason was really high during this point. But when I see something like this, I would just say that the average price is that 50 to $60 mark. I would exclude any big spikes like this. If we move on to search volume, okay, little bit of a trend down.
That's something I would keep in mind. Seasonality. This one doesn't look like it has any specific type of seasonality.
Looks like it is a little bit less in January, higher in November. Okay. And let's take a look at the top products here.
Okay. I had no idea what this would look like, but now I've got a little bit of a sense here. What I'm curious about is how much room there is to improve upon this product. So analyzing this a bit further, it looks like all the monthly sales of these individual listings are really good, except for this one that's only 111. If we scroll across, I'm curious about the average star rating here because if you've got a lower average star rating but people are still buying that product, then that often means that there's room for you to come in and improve upon the product.
product. So it's interesting to see this one here is 3.9 and that's out of over 3,000 reviews. So there's clearly things that people don't like about this particular product here. On the other end of the spectrum, this one here has 141 reviews and an average of 4.9, which is actually really good.
So this one has actually done really well, although it does have less sales. But these are the sorts of things that I'd be thinking about. And if you find a product that you quite like, At this point, what you would do is you can check this box here and then add to the product tracker.
And at this point, you can add to an existing group that you might have, or you can create a brand new group. So I would come in here and then I would type in golf pad mat. All right.
Following the theme of sports here, we're going to type in basketball, another game that I do not play, but let's take a look at what products are here. Okay this is interesting toddler basketball set. So if we look at the average unit sold, wow it sells a lot often over a thousand or at least certainly over our 300 mark and okay December it sells a lot and December it sells a lot. So it's a great gift item clearly. Let's go over to the average price and it sells at a really high price as well.
So we've got sort of 45 dollars here and it looks like it doesn't dip below 30 which is really good. We go over to search volume. So this does go up and down.
You could say maybe a slight trend downwards, but it's not super, super steep. Let's go to seasonality. Okay. It's saying that seasonality, it mostly sells in December, but as we could see from the average unit sold, it does still sell throughout the year. It does look like there are some months that are a little slower, but still above our 300 mark.
So that doesn't worry me too much. And then over and top products. Now we can kind of see what this product looks like.
And then again, if you liked the look of this product or niche, you could select all of these products and then add them into a product tracker group. So the process from here is just to continue leveraging the opportunity finder and the extension until you have at least 10 different product ideas. Even more is better. Now keep in mind that this process will take time. It's probably the most time consuming process.
out of everything to do with selling on Amazon. And you might go down a lot of rabbit holes just to find out that that product idea is a complete dud and doesn't work. There are times that product research can be really frustrating, but just remember that the product you choose to sell is the foundation that holds up your entire business.
So despite it being frustrating and difficult at times, it's well worth spending the extra time needed to make sure that you find a product. that helps protect your investment. Now as you're using tools like the Opportunity Finder, keep in mind that you don't always need to utilize these exact filters. In fact, I'd encourage you to play around and see what different results you can get playing with different filters.
You can always save these filters and then come back to them later and you can even load some of the presets that we've created for you. For example, sometimes what I like to do is pick this trending up filter to find products that are trending by a minimum of 30% over the past 90 days. Now, especially if you find your list to be too big to analyze, applying some additional filters is a really great way to narrow down your search results.
And speaking of narrowing down, once you've added at least 10 different product ideas to the tracker, your next goal is going to be to shorten your list down to the top five. This is really important because coming up in step two, Jake's going to walk you through the entire process of contacting suppliers. So to help cut down on the number of messages that you need to send, it's really important to narrow down your list to just the top five. To get started, you want to be able to compare all of your ideas right next to each other. And for this, the product tracker is perfect.
Remember, there are three factors that make a winning product, but it all starts with high demand. So begin by focusing your attention on the demand indicator, which is the average daily sales and revenue columns. This is going to help you separate the highest selling products from the lowest.
And what's really helpful in the product tracker is that you can sort by each of these columns. And there's also this heat map which helps you quickly rank them. So let's start by sorting by unit sales, highest to lowest.
Now, if you see any products that are significantly below the others as far as sales, I'd go ahead and just cross those straight off the list. Next, you want to start comparing profitability. And the indicator for this is the average price column. Remember, it's a much safer bet to sell products in the $20 to $70 range. That way, even if you're hit with increasing Amazon fees or other business expenses, you'll still be able to achieve a healthy net profit.
Using the heat map, we can easily see here which products have the lowest prices. However, I wouldn't cross any of them off just yet because price is only one indicator of potential profitability. And before you can determine this accurately, you're going to want to know how much it actually costs to sell that product, as well as how much you can expect to make from it. And you can only know that information by reaching out to suppliers, which is what we're going to be showing you in the next step.
So for now, keep an eye on the lower priced products, but we're going to move on to factor number three, and that's low competition. Here we want to take note of the reviews column. This is going to be the main indicator and metric that tells you how hard it would be to compete with current sellers. But again, I wouldn't cross off any of these products just because they have a really high number of reviews, not just yet.
And that's because ideally the product that you choose to sell is going to be slightly different from the ones that you've added to this list. And so this actually brings up a fourth factor that you can use to help narrow down your list and that's improvement potential. Because there's so many people selling the exact same product on Amazon, it's important that you don't just find a generic product and slap your logo on it, but instead find something that you can slightly tweak to make it better. Making even just one small improvement can really help increase your chances of breaking into a market, even if the competition there is fierce. So how do you determine a product's improvement potential?
Well, for each one of your ideas, you can do something called review analysis. So This is the process of reading through Amazon reviews to identify the things that customers say they don't like about the product. This could be anything from the product's quality, size, functionality, or anything else. Then you just take these notes and tell your supplier to go ahead and fix them so that you can bring an improved product to the market.
Now this can be a time consuming process, especially if you're doing this for multiple products. So to speed up this process and make it much easier. you can use Jungle Scout's review analysis tool to instantly analyze the reviews for any product. You start out by putting in any ASIN and in just the click of a button, you'll get a graph that displays the reviews for this product over time. You have the option of viewing it by day, week, month, or year.
On the chart, you've clearly identified positive, neutral, and negative reviews that allow you to easily spot any trends or patterns in customer feedback. So for example, If you notice the product is getting more negative reviews than normal, you want to read through them to really understand ways that you can differentiate and develop an improved product that's going to stand out from the competition. To further your research, this next section here uses AI to give you a summarized analysis of all the reviews, including common, positive and negative comments, suggestions for how to improve this product, an assessment of how this product compares to others in the market. recommendations for competing with this product and any other helpful trends you should be aware of. Let me show you an example.
So we're going to come over to this golf practice net. We'll just grab one of the ASINs here of one of these products. So we're going to copy that one and to get to review analysis, we're going to come up to toolbox and then review analysis, paste in our ASIN. And now we get a lot of really cool information. So at the top here, we've got our listing optimization score.
We're not going to worry about this right now. This is information that would be really helpful if we do end up launching this product and we're competing against this listing. If you're considering this type of product here, customers are saying how they love how easy it is to set up and how they appreciate the fact that it comes with a few extra products. But what they don't like about this product is the quality and the durability. Customers mentioned that the net tears easily, even after only a few uses.
and then also the poles and the support frame are also reported to be weak and prone to breaking. So what do we do about that? Well we can look at how to improve this product. So here it says to improve this product it'd be beneficial to focus on enhancing its durability, reinforcing the netting material and then strengthening the poles and the support frame would address many of the concerns raised by customers.
This is really awesome because it gives you specifics. It's not just improve the quality of this product but it's used a lot of these customer reviews to find specific things that you can improve about this product and this is the information that you want to take to your supplier. So now you want to repeat this same review analysis process for all of the products that you're considering.
And now how do you weigh up all of these improvements? Well essentially I would just look at how many potential improvements is there per product and then I'd sort of rank all of your products based off of how many potential improvements there are. I'd maybe also think about how difficult it may seem to improve that product. It's going to be really hard without talking directly to a manufacturer, but some things might seem like, okay, that should be a fairly easy thing to improve. Others might seem like, oh, that's probably going to be expensive and require a whole new material, et cetera.
So I'd weigh that up as well. And so then based off of the improvement potential, I'd kind of give each of your product ideas a little bit of a ranking. So as you can see, this is really, really powerful.
Now try to do this for each of the products on your list, because this is going to give you a great idea of which products can be improved more so than others. At this point, you may only have a few more products to cross off. So to help you continue narrowing it down to your five, another factor to consider is how easy it will be to sell this product. Remember, you don't want to sell anything that's going to give you too many headaches. And with physical products, two of the biggest headaches are high shipping and high storage costs.
So ideally, you want to sell a product that is relatively lightweight and is what we call standard sized, not oversized. An easy way to think about standard sized products is basically anything that can fit into a normal shoebox. On Amazon, simple is better.
So ask yourself these following questions. Is it breakable? Is it likely to be returned?
Is it hard to use? How long will it last? Do you think you'll get a lot of negative reviews? Keep all of these questions in mind and trust me, the more product research that you do, the more these questions will just naturally become part of your initial thought process. Now the last factor to consider is legal and liability issues.
But first up a disclaimer, I am not a lawyer, but we do get these questions all the time. So let's address them. The most important question to ask yourself is, do any of these products have an existing design or utility patent? If you think a product might be patented, the best way to know for sure is to hire a lawyer. But there are a few quick steps that you can do on your own, such as running a Google search for your product idea plus pattern.
Next up is to consider trademarks. So for example, this Deadpool bed set, while it looks really great on my bed, I can't actually sell it without getting a licensing agreement with Marvel. That's a whole other process and outside the scope of private label.
So as fun as it would be to sell it, it's going to be really hard to sell a product that has a trademark. So If your product idea isn't as obvious as Deadpool, you can actually search the trademark database on USPTO or a site like Trademarkia to see whether a trademark exists for the product that you're looking at. Other things to consider is whether Amazon has any restrictions on the product that you're looking to sell. You can find this list by searching on Google, but here are some of the prohibited items that you can't sell on Amazon. The next thing to consider is potential liabilities.
Ask yourself, could I see anyone getting hurt using this product? An example of this might be things that go in or on people's bodies, anything that's flammable, products that contain hazardous materials such as a battery, or even products that are intended to be used by children. If you can see a potential issue with any of these products then I'd recommend playing it safe and crossing them off your list, or at least considering how big of a liability you think it could be. Now after considering all of these factors choose the top five products that check off most of the boxes. And to help you with this, Here's my best piece of advice.
Rarely will you ever find products that absolutely crush all six of these factors. But if anything, your product must have high demand. So whatever you do, don't budge on this.
Then the next most important factor is profitability. So once you feel confident in your top five products based off of demand, as well as the other factors mentioned, your next step is to figure out how much it will actually cost to sell each one and how much you can expect to make. This is the final missing ingredient you need to figure out the profitability of each of these products and then you're going to be able to narrow down from those five to the final one that you're going to sell. But the only way you can find out the potential profitability is by reaching out to suppliers and getting real quotes.
So make sure to pay close attention to this next section to learn the best ways to contact suppliers. In step two, we're going to be talking about sourcing your product. And in the method we've been teaching so far, the private label method, the best place to source these types of products is directly from the factory. In other words, you want to go straight to the manufacturer and not some sort of middleman.
This will give you the most customization options, the best pricing, the most flexibility, and it's just the best place to purchase these types of products. So in step two, your main objective is to find reliable suppliers that produce high quality products, at a good price. To do this, you'll learn where to find suppliers and how to contact them, how to order and evaluate product samples, and how to narrow down your list of five products to the one that you're ultimately going to sell.
So up first, how do you find reliable suppliers? Well, the first way is with Alibaba, the world's largest business to business platform. How it works is you run a search for the type of product you're looking to sell. But before even looking at the list, check these two boxes to help filter out the suppliers who aren't verified, or offer trade assurance.
Trade assurance is a program that helps ensure that your product is produced to the quality you expect, is paid for securely, and is shipped on time. If there's any issues at all, Alibaba will actually help you file a dispute and get reimbursed. And while you're here, it's also smart to come down to this section and select the country you plan on selling in. This is really helpful because you don't want to work with a supplier that has zero experience shipping products to the country you're selling in. And if you're selling in Europe or North Some of these other countries actually operate under different quality standards.
This is all about setting yourself up for success. So once you've done this, you can now start scanning through this list. When deciding which suppliers to reach out to, I wouldn't really pay any any attention to the prices you're seeing here. And that's because when you actually reach out to the supplier, they're going to quote you depending on a number of different factors, like how many units you're going to order, how you're going to customize it, or if you're customizing it, your shipping terms, and so on. So instead, I'd recommend looking for suppliers that been selling for at least a few years and using their years of experience as the main reason that you'd want to reach out to them or potentially reach out to them.
So to find their years of experience, you can see it right underneath the prices. or you can actually click into the listing and review the section right over here. But you can also click into their profile here and see exactly how long they've been exporting products, how long they've been selling in their industry, and you can even see which markets they primarily send their products to. And remember, you want your supplier to have experience shipping products to the country you're selling in. However, Alipaba here is really only telling you their experience across all of these markets.
So if you're selling in the US market, then you can actually use the Dulles Scout supplier database to verify how long they've been shipping products to the US. When you run a search for a supplier, you can see the number of shipments they've sent to the US, who their top customers are, and what type of products or materials they specialize in. And then scrolling down below, you can see a graph of their full shipment history. And it looks like this supplier has been shipping to the US since...
Now, for a number of reasons, you might not always find the supplier that you're researching in here. So if that's the case, don't let it be a deal breaker. However, if you can find them, then you should have a little bit of extra peace of mind knowing that you can verify their experience.
But this tool doesn't just help you verify suppliers, it also helps you find them. So you can actually just type in the name of the company that's already selling this product on Amazon, which is a really great way of finding out which suppliers your competitors are using. And even if you don't know their full legal business name, you can just go to their Amazon listing and copy their ASIN. then come back and paste it here to find their exact supplier. Now, personally, this is my favorite way of finding suppliers because if your competitor's product is getting a ton of great reviews on Amazon, then you can pretty much assume that their supplier makes a high quality product.
And lastly, just like Alibaba, you can always search for suppliers by typing in the product name itself. Now, using both Jungle Scout and Alibaba, you want to reach out to at least 10 suppliers per product idea. And this is because... as you start collecting quotes, you're most likely going to receive a range of different prices.
So by having at least 10 different quotes to compare for each of your five products, you'll be able to see which suppliers are giving you a really good price. Now, once you have your full list of suppliers, the next step is to contact them. The outcome you're trying to achieve here is to send a detailed list of questions to all the suppliers you found. And to do this, you'll first need to track down each supplier's contact information using either Alibaba or the supplier database on Alibaba.
It's pretty straightforward. You simply just click this contact supplier button. But just a fair warning here, Alibaba's messaging system can get a little bit messy. So you may just want to try out the supplier database instead.
Here you can click this button to run a search for the supplier on Google. And oftentimes you'll find that the good suppliers will have a website where you can find their email addresses and contact them that way, which, in my opinion, is a much cleaner way of keeping track of all of your messages. So what are you supposed to say in your first email?
Oh, to help you out, here's a template of the exact email that we send out to all of our suppliers. First, introduce yourself. Then briefly let them know what you're looking for. If your product already exists on Amazon, include a link to an identical product just to make sure they fully understand your intention.
And if you're looking to customize your product, as we strongly recommend doing, include a picture with any potential modifications clearly marked. A great tool that you can use for this is called TechSmith Capture, and it's actually free to download. Next, let them know where you plan on selling and how many units you estimate purchase after a sample and a small trial order.
But honestly, you don't have to get this right. You're just trying to let them know that you're serious about doing business with them. And then under that, lay out all of your product requirements and specifications. And just keep in mind here, you want to make this as easy as possible for the person reading.
So that's why I'd recommend sticking to bullet points. Now for your list of questions. First, it's important to ask if they're a manufacturer or a trading company.
So the difference here is that a trading company is more of a middleman that purchases products from a variety of suppliers and then resells them. Generally, you'd rather work directly with a manufacturer because not only will you get the best prices, but you'll also be able to customize the product or at least easily modify it. It's a lot harder to do that with a trading company because again, they're more of a middleman.
However, the advantage of a trading company is that you can often get much smaller. minimum order quantities. So there are some positive trade-offs as well.
Now, a manufacturer, on the other hand, may require you to purchase a minimum of 500 to a thousand pieces. On Alibaba, you'll typically see on the company profile page, whether they are a manufacturer or a trading company. But another great way to check is to see what types of products they're selling.
If you see lots of different products that are typically made using different materials or even different machinery, then they're probably a trading company. Coming back to the template here, you want to now ask for the best price per unit they can offer for a trial order of say 500 units. Also try to get them to send you three separate quotes. And this will depend on how the products are being shipped. These are called Inco terms.
In other words, the terms that make it super clear who's responsible for arranging and paying for the shipping insurance and the custom duties and taxes. It's really important to know what these mean. So let me try to explain it to you in the simplest way I can FOB or free on board. is when the supplier is responsible for taking your inventory off the factory floor and then delivering it to the origin port. Once there, they'll also make sure it gets loaded onto the ship.
But as soon as it hits the sea, all of the responsibility and risk now transfers to you. This means once it arrives at the destination port, you'll need to arrange the rest of the shipment to go from here all the way into an Amazon warehouse. This next one is called EXW or Xworks.
This is when you're responsible for the entire shipping process. All your supplier has to do here is make the inventory available for pickup at their factory. And then you or your freight forwarder are the ones who are responsible for getting it to the origin port onto a ship, to the destination port and into an Amazon warehouse.
Now, I just mentioned a freight forwarder, and these are the companies that will handle all of the logistics for you. And don't worry, later on in this video, we have a full section that will show you exactly how to get quotes from these companies. But for now, let's talk about this last Inco term, which is DDP or Delivered Duty Paid. This is the complete opposite of EXW. Here, your supplier arranges the entire shipping process, meaning they're going to handle both the cost and the responsibility for delivering it all the way into an Amazon warehouse.
Now that you know all your Inco terms, make sure to ask how much a sample will cost individually. and what the lead time is to receive one. All lead time means is how long it takes to make the product after you've placed the order. Next, ask what their payment terms are, what type of packaging they offer, and whether or not their price includes customizing the packaging. And then ask if there are any additional charges for adding your logo to the product itself.
Lastly, see if they have another preferred method of communication. You may find that they can respond much faster through an app like WhatsApp. And then just a quick note here, make sure you send this exact same email out to your entire list of suppliers so that you can judge the responses equally. Now, with the link down in the description, you can get access to this template inside our written guide for how to sell on Amazon. It includes step by step tutorials, expert tips, free tools, templates and much more all for free.
So make sure to grab your own copy with the link below. And hey, while you're down there, if you're getting any value from this video so far, we'd really appreciate it if you smash the like button. OK, once you start getting responses back from your suppliers. A really great way to keep track of all of your notes is inside the Jungle Scout supplier tracker. It lets you easily store all of your quotes, sample cost, and you can even record any notes that you have throughout the entire process.
This especially comes in handy for jotting down all the things you either like or dislike about each supplier. For example, if you found a supplier that's easy to communicate with, or maybe they can just make really great modifications, or they quoted you at a great price, then you can use that quote. quote to start calculating the potential profitability.
And so at this point for each of your five ideas, the question you're now trying to answer is, can I source and ship this to Amazon for substantially less than it's selling for? To help you with this, we have a profit calculator sheet that is completely free to use. You can find it down in the pinned comment below, but really how this works is everything in green here is a formula. So it will automatically update as you edit the sections that are colored in red. So for example here, if I change the number of units we'd be buying, you'll see how that changes the total cost per unit.
Now, to begin calculating your profits, you'll first need to know what your costs are and where to find them. So this first one right here is your upfront cost. These are things like the cost of buying samples for your product, getting design work done for your packaging, photography for your product listing and so on. However, these are just one off expenses, meaning they don't actually factor into your profit margins.
each time you make a sale. So for now, you can just skip over the section and move on to this next one, which are your fixed landed cost. This is what you pay to produce and ship your product into Amazon's warehouses.
So if your supplier quoted you for, you know, $1,500, then you would put that here in the cost of goods section. And now really- Depending on which shipping terms that that quote was for, you can add your shipping costs in one of these three sections here. If your supplier is going to handle all the shipping, then you can add that quote right here. However, if they're just going to be getting it to the port and you're the one responsible for getting it overseas, then instead of putting that here, you can just go ahead and put that in this next one. And the same goes for getting it off of the boat and sent into Amazon.
You only need to add that here if there's a cost there that you need to pay for. But for the purpose of this example, let's just make it super simple and say that our supplier is including shipping in the cost. And they quoted us $700 to do that. Together, your product and shipping costs should take up nearly all of your landed costs. But do just keep in mind that you'll probably have some other minor costs that will come up.
but you can't see them right now. And these are things like your custom duties, for example, which really just depend on where you're ordering from and shipping to. But for the most part, the majority of your fixed landed costs will come from your cost of goods sold and your shipping cost. So now that we've talked about that, let's talk about your next biggest cost, and that's Amazon fees. So to find your Amazon fees, just scroll up to this section here and click on this link right here.
This will send you to Amazon's revenue calculator tool, and you can just continue as guest here. But the first thing you'll want to do is click define product. Now, it's important to know that Amazon charges fees based on the country you're selling in, the weight and dimensions of your product, the category it's in, and the price you're going to sell it for on Amazon.
So you can start off by adding in all your product dimensions here. And just know that this should be the size of your product when it's placed in the packaging that customers will receive it in. If you don't already have this information, don't worry. Just simply reach out to your supplier and they'll be able to provide you all the information that you need here. This next step here is to enter your category, which you can simply find by going back over to Amazon and looking at similar products to see which category they're selling in.
And now all that's left to do here is enter the price that you think you'll be selling at. You don't need to know this exactly. So for now, just put what you think you might sell it at.
Also, if you're using FBA to ship your products to customers, then you'll just put zero here so that you can click. estimate. So now to the left here under Amazon fulfillment, this is a breakdown of all your Amazon FBA fees per unit. So now let's go over to the three biggest ones you need to know about, starting with the referral fee.
Essentially, this is Amazon's commission for each item you sell. Now the percentage will vary depending on the category, but most of them are 15% of your sales price here. So you can see if we actually just change the sales price to like $40 and click enter, we'll see that reflect in the referral fee here.
The second one here is your fulfillment fee. This is what you're paying Amazon to pick, pack and ship your products to customers. And again, this is charged depending on the country you're selling in, as well as the weight and dimensions of your product in its packaging. And now this last one here is your monthly storage fees.
Just like the last one, this is also charged based on the size of your product. But it's also worth noting that this cost goes up roughly three times more in the holiday season than it does throughout the rest of the year. So these right here are your three major Amazon fees.
Now, one question you may have is, do I actually have to pay these fees or does Amazon deduct them from my sales? So with these first two, the referral and fulfillment fee, Amazon will simply deduct them from each sale that you get, meaning you don't actually have to worry about paying them out of pocket. Now, with the storage fee, however, each month, this will be totaled up and then taken out of your Amazon account.
So this will actually come from the cash that you already have inside of your account, which would have came from all the sales you earned up until that point. But if you didn't make enough sales to cover the storage bill, then the fallback option would be to take it out of your actual bank account. But now let's come back over to this revenue calculator. And down at the bottom here, you can see your total cost per unit for all your Amazon FBA fees.
So what you want to do is simply copy this number and then paste it back over into the sheet right here. You now have your two biggest costs accounted for. These are your landed costs and your Amazon fees, except with.
Any type of business, not just e-commerce, you're always going to have variable cost. These are costs that can fluctuate over time, like the cost of advertising, the cost of running promotions, and technically your FBA fees are variable as well, since you know your price could change or your monthly storage fees could change as well. But for the most part, the biggest variable cost that you want to account for is advertising. So there's not really a perfect way to know what this cost will be until you start advertising, but you still want to account for the fact that your ad sales will come at a cost. So for this, I just recommend adding something here.
It could be $3, $5, or even $10 per unit. But like I said, it's not an exact science. You only know this true number once you start advertising, and you're able to see how much you're spending to acquire a paid customer. This brings up a really important point.
It's going to be in your best interest to always be conservative with your estimates. meaning try to assume that you're selling price will be on the lower end of what you're planning for right now. And also assume that your expenses will be maybe like one to two times higher than what you're estimating in this sheet. This will help. raise the bar for finding a profitable product.
And yes, while it may reduce the number of good products on your list, you're going to be increasing the likelihood of success by making sure that you're still profitable, even if your math is just slightly off. So just keep that in mind as you're estimating all of your costs. But now once you've accounted for all of your costs, you can use this section below to calculate your profit margins at various price points. This is important because when you first launch your product on Amazon, your listing isn't going to have any reviews.
So you will probably have to come in at a lower price just to get your first initial sales. And then as your listing starts to mature and you get more reviews, you can slowly start to raise your price and begin focusing on profit. But in both situations, you still want to be profitable or at the very least know what you're getting into. Now, the only thing you really need to do here is to update these three Amazon FBA fees.
And you can do that by just going back over to the revenue calculator tool and updating your price point. Once you do this for all three of your products, make sure to just copy over the new price and update it in the FBA fee section here. Make sure to do this for all three prices, and you'll know exactly how much you can expect to make each time you sell this product. Now, as you're doing this for all five of your product ideas, you might be asking yourself, what's a good profit margin?
Well, on Amazon, the goal is to hit at least 33% net margin. And essentially, this just means that for every dollar you spend, you get $2 back. And here's a really great way to remember this.
It's called the rule of thirds from your sales price. You want one third to go towards Amazon fees, one third to go towards your landed cost. And then one third goes back to you in profit. So for example, if you're selling this product here at $33, then that means the goal is to get back one third of that or $11.
For that to happen, the total of your Amazon fees and landed cost must stay under two thirds of the sales price or $22. Now, you'll notice for this example, I actually went ahead and removed the PPC cost. And that's because for one, it's going to be really hard to find products that have these margins with advertising.
I'm not saying it's impossible, but you just don't see it that often anymore. And second, not all of your sales will come from paid ads. As you start getting your first sales and your keyword rankings go up over time, your product will start showing up organically in search results. So the idea is if you have high enough margins without ads, then you have plenty of room to still be profitable with them.
Now, just like we did for this one product, you can make a copy of the sheet and go through the exact same process for the other four products that you're evaluating. And yes, this will take some time to do, and you might even go through all of it just to find out that some of your ideas aren't profitable at all. But trust me, you don't want to rush this process.
It's well worth spending all the time you need to find a profitable product, even if that takes a few days. But once you do finally know what your margins are for all five products, it's time to narrow it down to the one product that you're going to sell. And this is when things start to get really fun.
So for this, I'd recommend ranking your products on a scale from one to five, and you can do this based on which ones have the highest profitability. Now, if certain products are closed, then of course you can always just pick the one that you want to sell the most and put it at number one. And when you do have that one product that you really want to sell, the next step is to reach back out to suppliers and order samples.
But first, just a few notes regarding this. It's typical to pay anywhere from 50 to $150 just for a single sample. So if you ended up only liking just one supplier, then you may want to order like two or three samples from them.
And that's because when you order multiple samples from the same supplier, this is a really great way to compare the consistency of their quality. However, if you did get good quotes from multiple suppliers, then you can actually order one sample from each of them. That way you can actually compare the quality between the different suppliers. Now, when you finally receive samples, make sure you take the time to really compare them.
What's the quality of the sample like? use it in a way that a customer would and see how it holds up. Also, how quickly did it arrive?
Was the communication easy? Now, based on your experience with the samples, if the product fully meets all of your expectations, then great. You can now move on to the next step.
However, if the product just wasn't the best quality for some reason, or maybe just didn't like working with the supplier, then move on to product number two and order samples for that one. But now once you've landed on the product you're going to sell, your next order of business is to purchase some inventory and get it shipped into Amazon. But before you can do that, you actually need to create your Amazon seller account first, because this is how you're going to be able to create the shipping labels that your supplier needs.
So make sure to keep watching because in this next step, I'll walk you through the entire process of signing up for your seller central account step by step. Congratulations on choosing the product you're going to sell. Even if you're not following along and you're just here to learn, this is still a huge achievement getting past the product research phase. But now here in step three, you'll be learning how to set up your Seller Central account. This is the headquarters for running your entire Amazon business.
It's where you'll be able to add your product to Amazon and get it listed. It's also where you'll be able to create advertising campaigns and get the shipping labels that your supplier needs to send your product into Amazon. So for this step, your main goal is to just get approved for a seller central account. But also we're going to be talking through some other business related topics, like whether or not you need an LLC and how to get one, how you can choose a good brand name, how to trademark your brand name, and all the other requirements that you must have in order to sell on Amazon. So up first to apply for a seller account, just head over to sell.amazon.com.
Next, either sign in with your existing Amazon account or create a brand new one. And I'd highly recommend here setting up a new account just because this will help keep your personal shopping separate from your business. But more importantly, separating your accounts will make it a ton easier to file your taxes.
And you just have to trust me on that. After this, Amazon will send you a verification code to confirm your new account. Then in the account setup, you'll first start by entering your country or business location. Next up is your... business type.
Which one you choose will just depend on whether or not you already have an LLC. So now let's talk about that. Do you need an LLC to sell on Amazon? In short, no, you do not need an LLC, but there are a few advantages to getting one. First, it's not particularly expensive and it doesn't affect your taxes too much, which is great.
Second, an LLC creates separation between yourself and your business. This will help shield you from any potential liabilities. And if you were to ever get sued.
it will also protect your personal assets. And the third benefit is that you'll be able to set up a separate business bank account and credit card, which means you'll be eligible for some pretty cool cashback rewards that only business cards can offer. And as far as how to set up your LLC, this is really up to you, but personally, I found it super easy using LegalZoom because they do most of the work for you and then lay out all the steps that you need to take.
Now, coming back to this registration form, if you have an LLC, then you can sign up as a privately owned business. However. If you have a single member LLC, then it actually doesn't matter whether you register as a business or an individual. Basically, if you want to be taxed separately, choose the business. Or if you just want to keep it simple and have your taxes combined, then choose individual.
Now for individuals, you'll need to enter information about your country of citizenship, country of birth and date of birth. Or if you're a business, you don't need to enter your company registration number, which is usually your EIN. Following that, enter your business address, regardless of whether you're an individual or a business.
And just a quick note on this, customers can see this. So if you're not comfortable with putting your real address out there, you can always get a P.O. address and just use that one instead.
But just keep in mind, you do need to be able to receive mail at this address because Amazon will most likely send you a postcard for verification. At this point, you need to enter your phone number so Amazon can send you a verification code. Once you verify that, click next.
Now you need to enter your credit card to charge your subscription to. So if you have an LLC, I strongly recommend signing up for a business credit card. That way you can benefit from the cash back rewards. And if you're selling from outside of the U S you can always get a card by using a service such as Payoneer or even wise. Now something to keep in mind here, it says you'll be charged $40 for the first month.
However, if you continue reading, it also says that you'll continue to be charged only if you have active listings, which means you don't actually have to worry about paying until your inventory arrives at Amazon's warehouses. This is a great time to talk about the two different types of accounts that you can sign up for. At first, you're going to be signed up on the professional plan, which is $40 a month.
You'll have access to sell in any category, and you'll also have access to a bunch of advanced features like advertising. However, as soon as your application gets accepted, you're actually able to switch your account from a professional to an individual account. There are no monthly costs with an individual account, although Amazon does take 99 cents per sale. Also, keep in mind that unlike a pro account, you actually won't be able to sell in every category and you also won't have access to certain features like advertising. So if you're serious about starting your business, I'd recommend sticking with the pro account.
But either way, like I said, once your application gets approved, you can always switch accounts at any time. The next step is to create a store name. We're actually going to come back to this in just a second.
So for now, let's just move on to this next question. Do you have UPCs for your products? And here you just want to say yes, because you will have to get these in order to add your products on Amazon. And again, don't worry coming up actually in step four, we're going to be showing you the step-by-step process of how to get these, but for now just select yes.
Below that select whether you have any diversity certifications and then next, are you the brand owner or do you serve as the manufacturer of the brand? In this case? Yes, you are. Because by definition, private label business owners assume the role.
of the brand owner and the manufacturer. So again, for this, you can just select yes. Also, if you already have a trademark for your brand name, then you can say yes here as well, as this will be the beginning of the brand registry process. But if you're just starting out, you likely won't have this yet. You can just click no and then always come back later and apply for brand registry at a later point.
But hold up, you might be asking now, do I need a trademark? And what is brand registry? So at first, no, you do not need a trademark to sell on Amazon.
But just like having an LLC, there are a few advantages. First, your brand name will be protected by others who are trying to sell fake products on your listing. And second, having a trademark will lock something called brand registry, which is a program on Amazon. that gives you greater control of your listings. For example, you'll be able to add A-plus modules, which are basically supercharged product descriptions.
You can upload images, use comparison graphs, and take advantage of other visual elements that normal descriptions don't have. And also, it gives you the ability to create an attractive Amazon storefront. But again, just like having an LLC, you don't need to trademark your brand name right away. I always suggest just to get started first and then get one whenever it does make sense.
Also, if you're starting to get really confused by all these different terms, don't worry. At first I was too, but here's a quick example that will hopefully help it make sense for you. Think of yourself as Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart. One day you create a business and name it Walton Enterprises. You then decide to open a massive retail store called Walmart.
And inside that store, you sell branded products. Right here, this is your business name. It's the same name that you'll use when creating an LLC.
And for the most part, the IRS and Amazon. are really the only people that actually see this. So back over on the application form, if you have one, your business name will go in this field here. This next one is called your store name, except unlike the Walmart example, the only place this really matters is on Amazon. Shoppers will be able to see this on your listing.
And if you have brand registry, then they can click on it to visit your storefront. So while your store name is somewhat important, it doesn't really matter what you put in the application because you can always change it in the future at any time. any point.
Now, this last one here is your brand name. This is the name that you would get a trademark for. So just like Walmart's done with their own brands, you can trademark and sell multiple brands under the same storefront. But if you're going to spend the money getting a trademark, it's a good idea to pick a brand name that's both simple and generic. That way, you're not locking yourself into a specific range of products.
The only exception to this, though, is if you're just dead set on building a business around one particular market, which in that case, you can go ahead and name it. like something like Jake's dog products, for example. Also, just a quick pro tip.
One day you may be able to sell your brand for six or maybe even seven figures. Now, one great way to increase your brand's value is to fully own the brand name. And this just means that you have it trademarked, you have the.com domain name, and you also have the social media handles.
So as you're thinking about what your brand name is going to be, first, check to make sure that you can secure the domain. If you can, then check all the social media sites to see if the username is available there. Now you don't have to do this and you can easily just get away with a similar domain name or social media handle.
But if you can fully secure your brand name, then it will go a long way in increasing your brand's value to a potential investor. But if you're going into this, trying to find the best products to sell, regardless of the category, then I'd highly recommend choosing a broader brand name. That way you can sell a variety of products underneath it, just like we've done with our brand jungle creations.
Now if you do decide to get a trademark, You can simply apply directly through your state. However, just know that the downside of going through your state is that the approval process can take anywhere from one to two years. This means you won't be able to take advantage of all the benefits that brand registry offers until your trademark gets approved.
And because of this long wait time, I always recommend sellers get their trademark through a program that Amazon offers, and that's called the IP Accelerator. This is actually what I use to get my trademark. And basically by using...
one of these law firms that are already pre-vetted by Amazon. You'll gain instant access to brand registry before your trademark is even approved. So instead of waiting that one to two years for it to be approved, this program gives you brand registry right after submitting your application.
And if you're wondering how much it costs, it's actually a really great deal. Amazon doesn't even charge you a fee. And they've also pre-negotiated all the rates that these firms can charge you, which is pretty minimal considering all the legal paperwork that's being submitted for you.
Now we've kind of gone off track here just a little bit, but hopefully this has all been really helpful for you. If it has, we respond to every single comment. So if you have any questions or maybe you just want to say hi, then make sure to drop us a comment down below.
Okay. Now back to the application on this final screen here, check that your information is correct and then upload any necessary documents that Amazon is asking for. This will change depending on what country or information you entered, but usually it's just like a bank statement or a copy of your ID or a passport even.
Then click submit. and your account will be reviewed by Amazon and hopefully set up soon. Once you have full access to Seller Central, you can now begin the process of adding your product to Amazon.
But just remember, before you can list your product, you'll first need to go get a UPC barcode. So in this next step, Lenny's going to walk you through the process of getting all your barcodes, creating your Amazon listing, and how to purchase your first round of inventory. First up, you have UPC barcodes or universal product codes.
These are used worldwide and are commonly used in retail stores. Pick up any item around your house and it most likely has a UPC barcode on it. Amazon requires you to have a UPC barcode in order to create your listing. There are some exceptions where you can create a listing without one, but just to keep things really simple, yes you do need one. The best place to find and purchase these barcodes is directly through GS1, which is the agency that manages this.
They can also technically be purchased from third-party sellers at a cheaper rate. However, this is against Amazon's terms of service. So just forget about that and just buy them only from GS1.
To purchase your barcodes, go to gs1.org. On the right hand side here, click on Get your barcodes. Select your country, then click Get a barcode.
Next, scroll down and consider your two options. The first option is if you're starting small and you only need a few barcodes. Each one is gonna cost you $30 and you can buy as many as you like. Now the second option here is going to be better if you need more than just a few barcodes. As a general rule of thumb if you need less than eight stick with the first option but if you're needing eight barcodes or anticipate needing more than eight in the future then you're better off going with the second option for the best overall savings.
So how do you know how many UPC barcodes you need to purchase? I'm going to break this down because I know there's always a lot of confusion here. So if you're just selling a single product then you only need one UPC barcode.
So let's say I'm just selling these Jungle Snugs. These are baby hooded towels. This is the only product I'm selling.
I need one UPC barcode. I might be intending to send in 500 units, a thousand units, 2000 units, but I still only need the one UPC barcode and that's just attached to this one product for life. So I purchased one UPC barcode for the product and then I just need that to create the listing and then again once I've created the listing I don't necessarily need any more UPC barcodes. If I was intending to bring in another product, so let's say I'm selling two completely different products, then I'm going to need one UPC barcode for each. Again even if I'm planning to send it in a thousand units of this product.
When it comes to FN SKU barcodes it's very similar in that once you've created your listing it's going to generate a FN SKU that's going to be attached to this product for life. As I mentioned that FN SKU does need to be displayed on the product, but it's going to be the exact same FN SKU that's on all of your products. So you just print or stick on the same FN SKU onto all units that you're sending into Amazon, whether there's 500, 1000, etc.
So I think it makes sense that if you're creating separate products that you would need separate UPC barcodes in order to create those listings. But what about if you're selling multiple variations of the same product? So it might be hard to tell here, but on the left, we've got a gray elephant. And on the right here, we've got blue bear, which is a really nice color. These are two variations of the same product.
So as far as UPC barcodes go, these would need separate UPC barcodes because they're essentially classed as different products, even though they're going to be sold on the same listing. they are different. So they need different UPC barcodes to tell them apart.
Then if you have lots and lots of different variations, let's say you've got different colors and you've got different sizes, then you just have to multiply or figure out what's the total number of variations. Let's say that you've got a red and a blue t-shirt and then you've got three sizes of each, then that means you're going to need six total UPCs because there's six different variations that you have there. So hopefully that clears up any questions that you might have about how many barcodes you need to purchase on GS1. So now that you know how many UPC barcodes to purchase, let's go through the rest of the process.
So let's just say that you only need the one barcode. Go ahead and click this button to begin adding it to your cart. From here, enter your brand name, which is the name that you want to share with your customers.
And usually this is different than your registered business name. So for example, let's say that my business name is Lenny's Products LLC and my brand name is Lenny's Pet Supplies. Because the latter is the name that I want my customers to see, that's the brand name that I'm going to enter here.
For the product description, this is the description that you share with retailers, not the marketing description that you share with shoppers. So you'll want to include these four pieces of information. Your brand name, type of product, product variation and net contents.
For example Lenny's Pet Supplies Dog Pad Large 3-pack. Then click Add to Cart and Continue as New. This will bring you to a general checkout page and once you fill out all the information click Confirm Order.
Next you'll receive an email to create a password and sign in. After signing in click access GS1 Data Hub, click product and then open it up. At the bottom you're gonna see your GTIN 12 also known as your UPC barcode. This is the one that you're going to paste directly into Seller Central when creating your listing. Now a quick note here if you purchase your barcodes in bulk then you need to click product and then create.
Enter a description and brand name like we mentioned earlier. and then click save. Once the GTIN button is activated, click auto assign GTIN. Then at the bottom, you'll see your GTIN 12 or UPC barcode. After you've purchased your UPC barcode, you'll be able to create your listing like I mentioned earlier.
So to do this from your Seller Central account, click on catalog, add products. Now, if you're reselling an existing product on Amazon, you would just type in the name of the product here. But if you're doing private label, then you'll actually be creating a whole new listing. So instead you wanna click on, I'm adding a product not sold on Amazon.
The next step is to select a category to list your product in. You can either search for a category here or scroll down and select one from the list. Now, if you're unsure which category you should sell in, a great way to find this out is by pulling up your competitors listings and identifying what categories they're in.
So over on Amazon, we can use the Jungle Scout extension which will show you each product's category here on the search page, or without the extension, you can just open up the listing and then scroll all the way down here to find the category information. So if we're creating a listing for our dog toy basket, I've pulled up a few of our closest competitors to see what categories they're selling in. You can see a lot of these baskets are selling in the pet supplies category. There's a couple here in some different categories like home and kitchen, but... Since we want the category to be as accurate as possible, we're gonna go with pet supplies.
But then we have to figure out what the subcategory should be. We can see dog chew toys and dog food storage. So now I'm gonna go back to Amazon. I'm just gonna try searching to see if any other category ideas come up.
So if I type in dog basket, it looks like the top result is also food storage, which we saw on Amazon. Now, while it's not an absolute perfect fit, your goal is just to find the closest possible category. And I think in this case, it's going to be this food storage category.
Some products are going to be a little less obvious to categorize like this one, but then others are going to be really easy, such as the washable dog pads that we also sell. These fall into pet supplies, dogs, litter and housebreaking, training pads and trays, training pads, and then reusable pads, which is exactly what the product is. So don't ever stress if it's not a perfect fit, just see what competitors are using and then find the closest possible category that you can.
All right, now you can begin the process of creating your first listing. Now just a quick heads up, this screen may look a little different depending on which category you're in, but for the most part everything is fairly similar. You may just have a few extra or a few less fields. Right now all we want to do is create a draft listing.
We're not trying to perfect it, so we're just going to enter a quick product name here, Dog Toy Basket. Next is variations. If you know that you want to offer variations at some point, then feel free to check all of the attributes that you want to offer.
Keep in mind though, that you will need separate UPC barcodes for each variation that you offer. So if you have only purchased one barcode, or if you're unsure exactly what or how many variations you want to offer, then you can just click no for now. as we do have the ability to update this in the future and add variations later if we choose. Next is brand name, which is applicable if you've registered for brand registry, which Jake talked about earlier in the video.
If you haven't registered, that's fine. You don't need it to get started selling on Amazon and you can check this product does not have a brand name. And don't worry, you can absolutely come back and update this later on if you choose to register your brand.
Next up is your product ID and this is where you would enter the UPC barcode that I showed you how to purchase just before on GS1. Select UPC and then copy and paste your barcode number from GS1. Now you can see the option for I don't have a product ID.
If you check this and try to submit it though, you'll discover that you'd need to apply for something called a GTIN exemption. This is a whole big process on its own, which is why I'd recommend getting a UPC barcode as the easiest and certainly the quickest way to get your listing created. So once you've added your UPC barcode, you can hit submit.
Now, again, remember our goal is just to get our listing created. Later in this video, Jake's going to show you exactly how to build out this entire thing. But for now, we just want to enter these required fields so we can get our listing created.
So I'm just going to enter something into the product description and the key product features section. Remembering we can edit all of this later on. Then we can move on to the product detail section.
Now this section has a lot more required fields and depending on your product and category, these fields might look a little bit different, but like all of these fields we can edit them later on so now we're just going to go through real quick and get something added. CPSIA warning is applicable if your product has some sort of hazard which mine doesn't so I'll select no warning applicable. Manufacturer can be a little bit confusing but basically if you're doing the private label model then you're technically the manufacturer as well as the seller so you can just enter in your own brand name here and in case you're wondering it's okay if you said you don't have a brand name on the previous screen. but then add in your brand name here. That's totally fine.
Model number can really be anything that you like. So you can just make this up, but I'd recommend making it something easy to remember. If your product has a number of units in it, like it's a two pack or a 10 pack, then you can put that number here. Mine is just one. You need to enter the country of origin here where the product is actually made.
So in my example, it would be China. Next up is your item dimensions. Now you may have gotten these earlier from your supplier in the previous step, which you can easily then add in here, or you can just estimate it for now and then update later on when you've got the accurate measurements.
Unit count is the same as number of items. For unit count type, select the type that makes the most sense for your product. So for my dog toy basket, I think I'd go with either piece, pack, or count.
Let's go with piece. I'm going to add dog toy basket into item type. Now you'll begin to notice that a lot of these fields are either repetitive or seem a little redundant or strange.
It really does vary between products and each time I go through this process it always looks a little bit different and there's new fields. So don't worry if your screen looks a little different to mine. But if you do have any questions about what a field means then you'll see that some of them here do have little tool tips to explain what each of them are. For model name, I'm just going to put dog toy basket again, then check through this list for any included components.
But if you don't have any of these listed, you can just add NA. Finally, number of boxes in my case is just one. And probably for most people, it'll usually be one. All right, we've made it to the offer screen, which is a lot more straightforward.
So starting with the seller SKU, this is really important because this is an identifier that can't be changed later on. And you do end up referencing it a lot when you're navigating Seller Central, so you definitely want this to be something easy to remember. So for example, I'll make mine dog toy basket. However, if I was planning variations and had multiple versions of my product, I'd try to be even more specific. So for example here, these are the SKUs for the dog pads that we sell here at Jungle Scout.
You can see that we named them based on the size of the mat. which makes it really easy to identify each size, particularly when you can also see that the product titles are really long and it's hard to quickly identify which variation it is from the title. So definitely give a little bit of thought to the seller SKU. If you don't enter your own, it's just gonna make up a sort of random string of numbers.
Now, you can choose the skip the offer data for now, but I'll quickly show you what I'd select here. You can set your price to... whatever you want for now and update it later.
We'll select new for item condition and then we'll be using fulfilled by Amazon, not fulfilling ourselves. Now below this, you'll be able to set prices in multiple marketplaces if you have multiple Seller Central accounts set up. But more than likely though, you'll only have one account set up. So for example, it might be the Americas and only show these countries at the top here.
Either way, you can turn on and off all of these individual countries and set individual pricing in the relevant currencies. And like most of this, you can always come back later and update these prices. So for now, you can finally hit submit and congratulations, you now have your listing created.
And now that you do, your next step is to generate the second type of barcode. that we talked about earlier, and that's your FNSKU barcode. So if we look at our listing that's just been created, you'll see the SKU that we created, Dog Toy Basket, but the listing also has a FNSKU number as well as a unique barcode, which I'll show you an example of in a sec.
You'll need this barcode to apply to your product packaging. This could either be a sticker that's stuck on, like we have on this particular product, or it can be printed directly onto your packaging which we have an example of right here. As long as Amazon can scan this, this basically tells them whose inventory this belongs to. So you do want to make sure that Amazon knows when you send them your inventory.
So how do you get an FN SKU? Well, once you've created your listing, it's actually pretty easy to find. So go to manage all inventory, then to the right of your listing, click print item labels.
You can choose the number of labels that you want on the PDF. So if I was sending in a thousand units, then I might put a thousand here, but I've also had situations where my supplier has said that they prefer just one barcode on the sheet, and then they're going to print out that sheet, you know, a thousand times onto a sticker. So it doesn't really matter. And keep in mind, you can always come back in here and generate more if you need.
It's not something that you only do once. You have paper size choices here, but I always leave it at the default. This now gives you your PDF, which you would then pass onto your supplier.
to either print out onto stickers or to attach to your product. Or you might even give this to your designer if you're getting custom packaging made for your product. In the long term, I'd recommend just getting it designed onto your custom packaging.
That way, no one ever has to deal with stickers and you've got peace of mind knowing that it's always going to be on your product. So now let's talk about the packaging, as there are two main requirements. The first one is to display your FN-SKU barcode, which we've just covered.
The second one is to display your country of origin. origin. This is the country that your product was manufactured in and it must be displayed on the product itself and in the product packaging. Examples of this could be printed labels, engraving, or even tags, which is what you'd commonly see on clothing. Another option is to say assembled in or designed in if you want to list your own country or wherever you designed or assembled it.
However, you do still need to specify where the components came from. So for example, if you have any Apple products then take a look at them. You'll see that they always say designed in California but made in China. The only exception to displaying this on the product itself is when the product is really small or you know it would get damaged or something when you try to put that label on it.
In those instances you would need to put this information on the packaging but by default you need to put it on the product as well. So that's the second requirement for your product and packaging. I hope by now the difference between a UPC barcode and an FN SKU barcode makes sense but I'm going to recap real quick just to make sure. You only need the UPC barcode in order to create your listing. You only need one UPC barcode per product and it doesn't matter how many you intend to sell of that product.
Once you've created your listing you can honestly just forget about your UPC barcode if you're only selling on Amazon. Instead all you care about now is your FN SKU barcode and making sure that it's displayed on the product packaging itself. You get one FN SKU barcode per product or product variation, and you take that one FN SKU barcode and print it onto all of the units that you're sending into Amazon. Okay, let's move on to designing and determining your packaging style.
A good place to start here is just by asking your manufacturer what they typically do for your type of product. Then from here, you can decide if this is what you want to do, or if you want to improve upon that basic packaging style. So for example, with our washable pee pads here, I just reached out and asked what's the typical packaging you do and this was it.
They just have this plastic sheet and then they have this simple piece of cardboard on the inside and we were able just to supply a design for this piece of cardboard and then they would manufacture it. So this is actually an example of the basic packaging style. This decision is going to be based on what you think your customer expects for your type of product.
So for instance if it's a gift item you might want to offer fancier packaging. And then on the flip side, if it's just a disposable item, customers may not care how it's packaged. That's why I felt like the basic packaging for these washable pee pads was going to be fine without customizing it and spending more money on the packaging.
So your packaging could be anything from just a fancy bag to a plain cardboard box. You may also decide if you want your packaging to include a few extra things that are nice to have, but are not mandatory. Perhaps you want to include something visually appealing such as a business card or a product insert that includes your contact information. You can use these to ask customers for their email addresses or to leave a review, cross sell other products in your catalog and so on. If you do decide to include these though, remember you're not allowed to ask for only happy customers to write reviews.
Now if you're wanting to design and create your own packaging, some good options here include using a tool like Canva. to sketch up design ideas, or you can even hire someone for cheap on sites like Fiverr or Upwork to design it for you. You'll then need to send the designs to your supplier in what's known as a vector format. Once you've done that, the next step you need to take is to place your first official order with your supplier.
This is the step where you go from having product ideas just floating around in your head to having a real product produced. Previously we showed you how to choose a product to sell. Based on our top criteria, we also showed you how to reach out to suppliers and order samples. Now is when you bring all of this together. You evaluate your samples to see which one is the best quality and matches your requirements, but you also consider the supplier and how quick their communication is, how thorough it is, and just overall how well you think you can work with that supplier.
You select a supplier based off of all of these factors and now you're ready to place your first order. To make this easier for you, we actually have a sample purchase order agreement and template that you can fill out to generate your order. You can find this in the supplier tracker by clicking the purchase orders tab where you can begin creating the order.
First fill out their contact information, then the billing and shipping address, then if you've been tracking quotes from this same supplier already, you can easily add that one in here or you can just add in the quote details manually. Then I'd recommend coming down and adding some specific information into the agreements section. This helps you be super clear on what's expected by both parties.
You can ask your supplier to sign this before placing your initial order. So first of all, make sure you include as many details as you can about your particular product. Every little detail that you can think of here is really helpful. This makes sure that you're on the same page about what they're producing. You can never have too much detail here.
Anything from what the tags look like to color codes to where your logo goes or anything else. You can even include certain expectations around production time. One thing that we've done with our products here at Jungle Scout in the past is to...
add an agreed upon shipment date and if the production time exceeds that, first up they have to give you advance notification and then secondly if it's delayed by more than seven days you can start to enforce a five percent discount for every seven days that the production's delayed. Now not all suppliers are going to be comfortable with this and the exact number of days and the discount amount doesn't necessarily matter. We've never actually had to enforce this but The point here is more to hold your suppliers accountable and creating something like this is definitely going to keep them more motivated to make sure that they get your goods out on time.
Now in this section you can also include any inspection details if you're utilizing a third party inspection service which we're going to talk about briefly. You can also add packaging and labeling requirements and also a confidentiality clause which basically says, hey you're not allowed to share with anyone else that I'm purchasing this product from you and what price I'm getting it for. And then lastly, you want to have your cost information in here as well. The typical payment terms that you can expect are either 30% upfront and then 70% once your order ships.
Another common payment term that some suppliers use is 50% upfront and then the other 50% after your order ships. So I'd suggest first asking your supplier for 30% upfront. And then if they're not comfortable with that, then you would sort of fall back and see if they'd be happy with 50% up front. Now especially when placing your first order with a new supplier, one thing that you might want to do is to run an inspection.
This will help ensure the quality of your product and protect you from receiving unsellable inventory. Now while a lot of people choose to do an inspection, this is technically an optional step. You do just have to balance the risk versus reward, but in my opinion I do think it's worth it to do it anyway. How it works is you pay a third party company, two popular ones are called Kima and Vtrust, and they'll send out a representative to your factory.
They can check for specific things that you ask them to look for, but they'll also have their own list of standard checks to go through. Now even if you got a great sample from your supplier, you still want to ensure that your first order lives up to the same standard. And while inspections are relatively cheap, if you don't have enough money to pay for one, you can also run a sort of no budget inspection. This is essentially where you just ask your supplier to send you pictures throughout the process or video chat with you so that you can see the products for yourself.
So for example, you may notice that your supplier is using the wrong label or maybe something else that you notice is a little bit off, but doing this will allow you to bring up this mistake so that it can get fixed before it's too late. Additionally, you can even include this in your agreement within the purchase order like I mentioned earlier. Something we've done in the past here is is also added a section that states that the shipment must pass the inspection and if it doesn't then the supplier needs to fix the problem and then pay for a new inspection until it passes.
This is another great way to hold your supplier accountable for creating high quality products. Now once you've filled out the purchase order you can simply generate it as a pdf and send it to your supplier. Now assuming that they agree to the terms of your purchase order they'll usually let you know which forms of payments they accept. So the main ones that you'll typically see are ACH transfers, wire transfers, and some suppliers will even accept credit card payments. However, you'll most likely have to pay credit card fees.
So if you can, I'd recommend paying with one of these first two options. And if you're using Alibaba, you can take advantage of their trade assurance program, which will typically offer all of these types of payments. This is a great way to get some extra protection and added peace of mind when sending such a large payment.
And speaking of big payments, I know this can be scary, but trust me, it's a lot easier once you just get through this first purchase order. I remember back When I placed my first order, I think it was around $2,000 to $3,000 at the time, which was a lot of money for me. And I remember it was terrifying.
I had these wire details and I had to send this money to someone in China. I wasn't sure if this was a scam, if I was going to lose my money, but it all was fine. And after repeating this process a number of times, you do get more and more comfortable with it because you ultimately understand and therefore trust the process.
Now I'm telling you all this just in case you're feeling that similar kind of fear. I want to let you know that it's a totally normal feeling. But as long as you've taken all the steps that we've outlined previously to verify your product opportunity, then you're going to be set up with the best chance of success. So now the question you probably have is, well what happens after I send over the initial payment?
Well from here your product will officially go into production and depending on how many units you ordered or how sophisticated the production is, It might take a few weeks for your product to be made. I've typically seen products take four to six weeks, depending on what they are. But when that time does come, your supplier will notify you that your product is ready to be shipped.
And that brings us into the shipping process. So depending on which shipping term that you agreed on, either your supplier will handle all of the shipping for you, or at some point in the process, you will have to take over and get your product into an Amazon warehouse. Either way, there are two main ways that your product will be shipped.
will be shipped. For our products we always go with sea shipping just because it's so much cheaper. For example under normal conditions an 85 kilo shipment might cost $400 by sea and over $600 by air. However with air shipping your goods are going to arrive much faster, potentially within a few weeks rather than a few months. So if you're in a rush to get your products into Amazon then this might be a good option.
Now let's talk freight forwarders. Even if you're an experienced seller, I strongly recommend hiring one because they're going to help you arrange your entire shipment. They'll handle all your customs, packaging, labeling, and so on. Think of them as a trusted partner for your business.
Without them, this process would be almost impossible for the average person with a day job. So how do you go about finding a freight forwarder? Well, there are a number of places that you can look, but the two sources that we've used are Freightos.com and Amazon Global Logistics. Let's start with Freightos.
Here it's just like Alibaba, except instead of looking at suppliers, you can collect quotes and compare rates from multiple freight forwarders. How this works is you select your origin here, which in this case will either be the factory or warehouse of your supplier, then choose the country that your supplier is located in, and then enter their address. The next step is to select your destination, which if you're using Amazon FBA, you'll choose the fulfillment center option. Again, enter the country and then the address of a fulfillment center. Now, a quick note here.
Technically, you don't yet know the address of the fulfillment center that you're going to be sending your products to. So I recommend just choosing one in your country to help you get past this step. Then once you choose a freight forwarder to work with before paying them, make sure to let them know that you'll be updating the final destination address once you have it, which I'll be showing you how to get in just a moment. So for now, just pick one. that's in your country.
Now, the third step here is to enter your load or what you're shipping. Here you have a couple of options regarding the shipping container that you'll be using. And don't worry if you don't know this, simply just ask your supplier and they'll let you know which one.
So if you have enough goods to fill the entire container, you'll ship a full container load, also known as FCL. But if you don't have enough goods to fill an entire container, you'll ship loose cargo. And this is often referred to as less than container load. or LCL. In this case your goods will be shipped in with other people's goods in the container as well.
Next you want to fill out the rest of this information such as package type, pallet type, and dimensions which again can all be provided by asking your supplier. The last step is to enter the value of your goods and when your shipment will be ready. On the next screen here take a look at your options and select who's going to be responsible for palletizing your shipment. It automatically defaults to the freight forwarder here However, most suppliers do this anyway, so just make sure that your supplier does so that you can save some money.
Now you'll want to leave the rest of these checked because it's good to have insurance and you'll need to pay for customs, brokerage and bond anyways. After that, you'll now be able to look and sort through all the listed freight forwarders. You can sort by best value, speed, lowest price and eco-friendly.
When selecting a freight forwarder, keep these four things in mind. The price, how well they communicate, whether or not they've worked with small sellers like you before, and most importantly make sure they're knowledgeable on all of Amazon's requirements. Speaking of, the second way to find a freight forwarder is actually going directly through Amazon themselves.
This is a relatively new service called AGL or Amazon Global Logistics. It lets you import directly from your supplier to different Amazon marketplaces without having to work with an actual freight forwarder. Essentially Amazon is your freight forwarder and this is great because by working directly with Amazon you can easily track your shipments from departure through customs and to the arrival at the fulfillment center. So here's how it works. Just like a freight forwarder, Amazon will take over and coordinate all the inspections, loading and transferring of your inventory from your supplier's warehouse all the way to their fulfillment centers.
They'll even guide you through the customs process, making it much easier for new sellers. Now, I really love this program because for starters, it's offered by Amazon. So if you're sending inventory into FBA warehouses, the process is much more streamlined. You book all your shipments through the exact same workflow that I'm about to show you in just a second. The second benefit is that the price is very competitive.
In fact, we've been testing it out over the past few months, and so far it's pretty comparable to what other freight forwarders have charged us in the past. Lastly, because there are fewer touch points, your shipments are going to actually be cleared into stock much quicker than with a third party provider. And this is huge.
So these are just some of the main reasons why I'd strongly recommend checking this program out. However, what I'd also recommend is to get quotes from both AGL and a few freight forwarders. That way you can compare them to make sure that you're getting the best deal. Now, once you've settled on a freight forwarder, here's how to ship your goods into Amazon. For this, let me walk you through setting up a shipping plan inside of Seller Central.
Now, this is a step that you're gonna have to do on your own, even if you've hired a freight forwarder. Also, this is where you're gonna find out the address of the exact FBA warehouse that you'll be sending your products to. So first up, go to inventory, manage all inventory.
Then in the drop down next to your product, click send replenish inventory. You'll start up here by entering your ship from address, which is where you're telling Amazon to pick up your inventory once it lands in the country that you're selling in. However, just a note that in most cases, either your freight forwarder or your supplier will ship it into Amazon for you or all the way into Amazon for you. Meaning that once your inventory gets cleared off the shipping container, they'll have a truck ready to pick it up. and then they're gonna deliver it straight to an Amazon warehouse.
So in that instance, since Amazon doesn't need to be involved, the address that you put here doesn't really matter. So you can just put in the address of your freight forwarder or supplier. Next, select your marketplace destination from the dropdown menu here, then click here to edit your packing details.
First, you can give this a name so that you can save it as a template in the future. Then for template type, if your product is being shipped on pallets, then select single skew pallet. Otherwise just select case packed if it's only a few cartons. Now, if you're unsure which of these it is, then just ask your supplier or freight forwarder whether your shipment is being palletized or not. It more than likely is if it's more than just a few boxes.
You'll also then need to add in the number of units per box, the box dimensions, as well as the box weight, and the number of boxes per pallet if you selected that option. Again, all this information can be provided by your supplier if you're unsure. Lastly, click this drop down menu to see if your type of product has any specific prep requirements. Make sure that you carefully look through this list. And if your product falls under one of these categories, you'll then select who is doing the prep for your shipment.
Essentially, all Amazon cares is whether they're doing it or someone else is. We recommend having your supplier or freight forwarder do the prep rather than Amazon as Amazon's going to end up charging you more for it. Plus if Amazon ends up doing it, then in some of these categories, they're also going to have to label your products as well, which again comes at an additional cost that could be saved if you got your supplier to do it instead. Now, when it comes to applying your labels, just like I mentioned earlier, try asking your supplier to print the label directly onto your product packaging.
That way you never have to worry about... sending them to your supplier or anyone ever putting stickers on them ever again. You'll now need to enter the quantity of boxes that you're sending in, and then click ready to send, and then click confirm and continue. Now onto step number two. To begin, select your ship date up here.
This is the date that you expect your supplier to hand your inventory to the carrier. But don't worry too much about getting this exactly right. This date just helps Amazon prepare to receive your inventory. Next up, select your shipping mode.
You can do this by either asking your supplier or freight forwarder how they're planning to send your inventory into Amazon. So they're either going to send in a smaller SPD shipment, which basically means that your boxes don't need to be put on pallets or they're going to be sending in a much larger shipment which will require pallets. If you're using pallets then you'll either take up some of the truck which is called LTL or you actually take up a full truck load which is called FTL.
Then below that section you'll now see a shipping price for selecting Amazon's partnered carrier which in this case is UPS but again this is only relevant if you're having Amazon come and pick up your inventory once it lands in the country that you're selling in. If however your supplier or freight forwarder is shipping all the way into Amazon for you, then you don't need to pay Amazon here since you've already paid for the delivery. In that case you can just ask them which carrier they'll be using and then select it from the list here.
This just helps Amazon understand which company they can expect to make the delivery. But if you don't see the exact company here then don't worry you can just simply choose other. Now Amazon will tell you what fulfillment centers you're going to be sending your products to. And so now the last thing you have to do is select a rough estimate date of when you expect your inventory to arrive at Amazon. But just like the ship date earlier, this doesn't need to be exact.
So just select the estimated date of arrival that your supplier or freight forwarder would have told you. Then from here you can come down and click confirm and print out your FBA box labels. Simply click print This will open up a PDF file.
You want to save this file and then send it to whoever is prepping your boxes, whether it's your supplier or freight forwarder. Just make sure to ask them to correctly attach these labels to your boxes before shipping them into Amazon. And that's it. Once you complete this final step, you can then go into the shipping queue tab to track the status of your shipment. At this point, your inventory is all set to ship.
So you have a little bit of time before it arrives. I'd recommend using this time wisely to finish setting up your listing and making sure it's fully optimized. There are five steps of building a strong listing, and it all starts with keyword research. So now let me show you how to use Keyword Scout, an Amazon keyword research tool that helps you find the best keywords that customers are using to buy products on Amazon.
First, search for whatever keyword you think is the most relevant one for your product. For example, if you're selling the dog toy basket, then you can just use that exactly. From here, Keyword Scout will then show you all the top keywords that customers are using to buy this type of product. In the list here, you'll most likely discover a bunch of new search terms they probably haven't even considered yet.
And because it's automatically sorted by the search volume, all the most popular terms will be right here at the top. Now, as you go through this list, You can open up each keyword to see the average search volume over the past two years. And this is a really great way to see if the keyword or the product even is trending up or trending down.
Also, if you have a few thousand keywords like we do here, then I'd recommend applying some filters to narrow this down to a much more manageable number, because obviously you're not going to be able to add all of these into your listing. So you'll want to experiment with this a little bit. But what I like to do to start is to set the minimum monthly search volume. to 500. That way you can prioritize just the highest volume keywords and making sure those ones get added to your listing. Now, at this point, you want to keep track of all these keywords and you can simply do that by selecting this box here and then adding them to a new keyword list.
So what this will do is copy all these keywords over into a separate list that you'll be able to use later on when writing your listing. However, by far my favorite way to use this tool is to do what's called a reverse ACE in search. Essentially, this is when you can spy on your competitors by seeing which keywords they're using to capture sales. So to do this, pull up ten of your closest competitors and copy their ASINs.
For this, you can either find their ASIN over on the General Scout extension or if you're on the product listing, you can just scroll down under the product information section and find it here. Now go ahead and copy those ten ASINs and paste them back into Keyword Scout and then click search. This will now show you all the top keywords that these ten products are ranking for.
Now you want to go ahead and add each of these keywords to the list that you just created. And now you're going to have a huge master list of keywords that you can use, not just in your listing, but also in your advertising campaigns. Once we get there and don't worry in the next step, I'll show you exactly how to set up your first advertising campaigns.
So now let's talk about how to write your title bullet points and product description. For this, you can use Jungle Scout's listing builder, a tool that makes it faster and easier to create highly optimized listings. How it works is you import your listing that you've already created, or if you still haven't set one up yet, you can simply start from scratch by creating a brand new listing from here. Just select that keyword list that you just created and then click next step. This will now bring you into the content editor, which is where you can start filling out all of the details of your listing.
Over on the left-hand side here, you have a keyword bank. And what this is doing is sorting all of your keywords by search volume. So you have your highest volume keywords in green here, medium volume keywords in yellow and your low volume keywords in gray.
And then as you begin filling out your listing and writing your title, bullet points and description, each time you use a keyword, that keyword will get crossed out. And this is really useful because once you've already added it to your listing, Amazon doesn't reward you for repeating it. There's no SEO value in doing that.
So try not to repeat any keywords and instead try to use up as many of your highest volume keywords as you can. When it comes to your title, this is even more important because Amazon actually puts more weight here than any other part of your listing. So the goal is to try to include a lot of these big keywords in your listing, but also along with trying to please the algorithm.
It's equally important that your title and the rest of your listing really flows naturally so that shoppers can actually read it. So as you start writing your listing, you want to take these high volume keywords and smartly weave them into your title without keyword stuffing. Now, trust me, I know it's not fun staring at a blank screen like this and trying to write a perfectly optimized listing from scratch.
So that's actually why I'd recommend using AI to help write your listing for you. Built right into the listing builder here. there's an awesome feature called AI assist that will simplify the listing creation process with a click of a single button.
AI assist takes your top keywords from your keyword bank and automatically generates a high performing title, compelling bullet points in an expansive product description. Within seconds, you have a strong foundation of optimized copy that you can then leverage and make further edits from. And as you edit, you can quickly see how likely your listing is to rank. and convert sales with the AI-driven listing optimization score.
It gives you live feedback and instant recommendations to help you improve your product's ranking in Amazon's search results. Once you're all finished, click sync to Amazon, and your changes will automatically go live on your listing. With basically little to no experience, AI Assist can help anyone create high-performing listings.
And even if you are a good writer, you still need to figure out how to craft a strong listing that appeals to both the algorithm and customers. That's what I love about AI Assist. It just makes sense of the keywords for you and writes your listing in a way that helps you reach the right customers. By saving time here, you can now spend more of your time on other important tasks, like creating your images and videos for your product. Both images and videos are incredibly important for your listing, so you really want to make sure you're putting a lot of effort into making them look good.
And you essentially have two options here. You can either take the images yourself and record the videos yourself. or you can hire a professional to do it for you. At least for your images, I'd strongly recommend hiring a professional because this will ultimately influence shoppers into buying your product over your competitors.
And Amazon actually makes it pretty easy for you to find these experienced photographers. Just head over to your Seller Central account and click on Explore Services. From there, select your country, also where you're selling, and then from this drop down menu, you can select Imaging. You'll now see a full list of partners who are experienced in taking high quality product images. But if you're taking the images yourself, just make sure that you open up and review all of Amazon's image guidelines here.
And this basically will just tell you what type of images you can upload as well as the technical requirements that your files must meet. Take our images, for example. Outside of the main image, our number one goal is to explain to shoppers how this product will solve their problem. And your images play the biggest role in this since shoppers aren't able to physically experience your product before purchasing.
So you want your images to clear up. any confusion that they may have, as well as allow them to picture how life could be better if they just buy your product. One way of doing this is by including a lifestyle images. These are images that show your product in use, giving the customer a way to put themselves in the model shoes.
These images should hit on their emotions. And while they are a little bit expensive and sometimes harder to get, trust me, they're definitely worth the extra money. Additional elements you can include on your listing or infographics.
This is design work on your photos that highlights the main benefits of your product. You can create a competitive matrix, show the dimensions of your product, add arrows that highlight the main benefits, or any other design that helps highlight what sets your product apart from the competition. Just keep in mind that many customers will be browsing on mobile devices, so keep your designs simple and clear. It's good to know that while you can upload a maximum of nine images, only the first seven will appear in the main image block on your listing. If you upload more than seven images, customers will have to click on one of the images to reveal the rest.
So now once you foot out your entire listing and it's fully optimized, the next step is to prepare for takeoff and officially launch your product. When your inventory arrives, you want to have a plan in place that helps you get your first initial sales and reviews and that That's the topic of this next step, so keep watching to learn the best go-to-market strategy for launching your product. In our first year selling this product, it got over 500 reviews and $200,000 in sales. But honestly, our strategy was actually pretty simple. We came in with a strong pricing strategy, we promoted our product with coupons, and we ran a lot of Amazon advertising campaigns.
But it's how we executed these three steps that made this product launch successful. So we're going to dive deeper into these three strategies. But first, it's important to understand that on Amazon, reviews are king. Without reviews, it's hard to convince shoppers to buy from you. But when you're just starting out with zero reviews, how do you even get your first sales?
Here's the formula that we used. And just know that this whole formula is meant to be very simple because no matter how you slice it, there are only two main ways to get reviews. You first need to drive more traffic to your product.
Why? Because when your traffic increases, you'll typically get more sales. And when you get more sales, you now have more customers able to give you a review. But getting more sales is only half the battle. You see, the second way to get more reviews is to increase your product's review rate.
In other words, after someone buys your product, how can you increase the likelihood of them actually leaving a review? By focusing on these two objectives, this is exactly how we went from zero to 500 reviews in just our first year. So going back to our three-step process here, here's what you can do to get your first reviews.
It all starts with your pricing strategy. It's no secret that on Amazon, price plays a huge role in why shoppers buy. That's why it's super important to make sure your price is very competitive.
But that doesn't just mean lower your price below your competitors. You want to be really smart about this, so make sure to calculate your break-even price. In other words, what's the lowest price you can afford to sell your product for? and still remain profitable.
To do this, go to your products listing and open up the Jungle Scout extension. Then click on the net column. This will now bring up the FBA profit calculator. From here, enter in your total landed cost, which includes manufacturing, shipping and anything else per unit.
Then adjust the selling price until you find either your break even number or a number that allows you to make just a very small profit. Whatever your target price is, Keep in mind that it's actually okay to price a little bit lower during this launch period. And it's actually ideal because in your first few weeks or even months, you don't want to be too worried about making a huge profit.
Instead, your focus should be more on improving your keyword rankings and getting more reviews. Then once you hit your goal, maybe it's like a hundred reviews or so, you can then increase your price to begin maximizing the profit. Now, the next way to get more sales is to promote your product through the use of coupons. So in combination with lowering your price, Try offering a small discount inside of Amazon. You can find this option inside of Seller Central under coupons.
The main advantage of coupons is that shoppers can actually discover your products by browsing either the coupons homepage or by directly viewing them within search results. This is great because when you have a coupon active, you can show off this bright green badge that is very hard to miss. It just makes your product really pop out compared to products that don't have one. This is why when you combine coupons with your pricing strategy, It's the perfect recipe for getting more traffic and hopefully more sales.
However, the question many sellers wonder at this stage, is it just better to lower your price or keep a higher price and then offer a coupon? I'll say that we've seen some pretty different results on this, but what I think worked really well for us was offering a small 5% discount and then going back to our price and increasing it by 5%. That way, we aren't dipping below our break even price to take advantage of the benefits coupons offer. Okay. Now, just because you have a low price and you're using coupons, That doesn't mean shoppers are actually able to see your product.
So where advertising comes into play by bidding on high volume keywords, running ads on Amazon will help get your competitively priced product right in front of potential customers. And this is crucial, especially if your competitors have hundreds or even thousands of reviews. Advertising helps you cut the line and push your product right ahead of theirs. When you combine showing up at the top of the page and having a competitive price, the chances of shoppers clicking your product over theirs increases dramatically.
Amazon makes these ads super easy to set up. You can even run an automatic campaign that does most of the heavy lifting for you. With this campaign, you're allowing Amazon to decide which keywords to display your ad for.
They choose these keywords based on your listings title, bullet points, description, and even your backend keywords, which is why it's really important to make sure you've already done your keyword research and you have an optimized listing. Now, on the other hand, you could also launch manual campaigns, which take a little bit more work to set up. but you have much more control since you select the keywords to target and not Amazon. For this, you'll want to use that same keyword list you made earlier with Keyword Scout. These are the three main ways to drive more traffic to your listing.
And the real magic happens when you take them all and combine them together. But just remember, drive... Having more traffic and getting more sales doesn't always mean those customers are going to leave you a review. On Amazon, the average review rate is between 1% and 2%, meaning out of every 100 sales you get, only about one or two of those customers actually write a review. Going back to the two main ways to get reviews, I'm now going to share with you three strategies to increase your product's review rate.
So the best way to get more reviews is to simply just ask your customers to leave a review. And I'm being serious. But believe it or not... A ton of sellers actually aren't even aware that you can do this inside your seller central account.
So on the orders page here, you can ask Amazon to send your customers a review request email for any purchase within the last 30 days. And while customers often opt out of receiving emails from Amazon, this is one that they don't typically opt out of. However, as I'm sure you can see, clicking through it the way Amazon designed can be incredibly time consuming.
That's why we created an easy way for you to automate this entire process by sending out review request emails. every 24 hours without any effort on your end. Let me show you how this works. To access this feature, click on marketing and then review automation. And as long as your account is synced to Seller Central, this process is extremely easy.
All you have to do is toggle this switch to the on position. And really, the rest is history. Just set it and forget it, because now Jungle Scout will automatically send out review request emails to each of your eligible orders every 24 hours. By default, these emails will go up five days after your customer receives the product.
This is the earliest Amazon allows, but sometimes you're actually more likely to get a review if it was just sent a little bit later. So, for example, let's say you're selling vitamins, right? You wouldn't want to request a review before the customer even has a chance to appreciate the benefits.
That's why in some cases, a delay to request could actually increase the likelihood of your product earning a review. To create a delay, you can just come over here and adjust the time frame by up to 30 days. And you can also do this on the product level or even just delay certain orders only.
And sometimes we do get asked this question. So yes, this tool is 100% Amazon Terms of Service approved. You don't have to worry about breaking any rules since you're just automating Amazon's own request process.
Okay, now another great way to get more reviews is by enrolling your product in Amazon's Vine program. Essentially, this program allows you to give out your products to pre-vetted Vine reviewers. These are people who Amazon think leave really great reviews. And how it works is they request your product and once they receive it, you'll get an honest and detailed review. Now, of course, this doesn't guarantee you'll only receive positive feedback.
So just make sure you're confident in the quality of your product before enrolling. Also, keep in mind that Amazon does charge $200 for each newly enrolled ASIN, but it's just a one-time cost, and sometimes Amazon actually offers special signup bonuses to help reimburse you for this charge. The third way to get more reviews is by using product inserts inside your packaging.
Typically, these look like business cards, and they're mostly used to convey important information, thank the customer for their purchase, and request honest feedback. Now, the keyword there is honest. Amazon has very strict rules against incentivizing only positive reviews. This means you can't offer things like gift cards, warranties, discounts, or really any other type of benefit in exchange for a positive review, or actually any review for that matter.
But with that said, it's still okay to ask for feedback, just as long as your messaging is neutral, and that your customers know every experience. Good or bad warrants a review. Now that wraps up the three main ways to increase your reviews. If you can do all of this, then you'll be doing all you can to set up your product for success.
And really what it comes down to now is how you're able to manage your business over these next few months. This launch phase is by far the most important part of your product's life, but it's also where a lot of people just give up. You may not be earning a ton of profit right away, but trust me, In the end, it's all going to be worth it.
For example, it took us a whole five months to have our first profitable month. If we would have just given up then, we wouldn't be where we are today, making a consistent profit each and every month. You wanna play the long game with Amazon and don't just give up because you aren't seeing immediate results.
Now, if you need even more support, we actually have been documenting our entire process that you can watch right here on YouTube. It's called the Million Dollar Case Study. In this series. Lenny and I pull back the curtains to give you an over-the-shoulder look at what it takes to sell on Amazon. So come be a fly on the wall and take a sneak peek into the journey of how we found, made, and launched our latest product.