What’s the best product for Amazon FBA?
There isn’t an individual product that is best to sell on Amazon. Some “Youtubers” will tell you that pet supplies, children’s toys, or electronics are the best things to sell on Amazon. In fact, “electronics” is one of the most popular answers to this question when I read blogs or watch YouTube videos recommending products to sell. In the “white label” e-commerce space, it’s common knowledge that electronics are among the worst products. The best products to sell on Amazon are simple and don’t include a lot of moving parts. It must be smaller than one foot on its biggest edge.
If your product is bigger than 12”, you will have to pay extra storage fees to keep it in Amazon’s warehouse, and your shipping cost will increase. The cost for shipping goes up when the item is bigger than one foot. Pet toys are among the best things to sell on Amazon FBA. To be viable for e-commerce, a larger product must be foldable, or the customer should assemble it, so it is only 12 inches when shipping.
Good Product Logic
Electronics break, and that is problematic for various reasons. The biggest reason is that you’ll get bad reviews. The next big reason is that you may develop a turbulent relationship with your supplier if you can’t promptly fix the issues and get a refund for the faulty inventory.
Risk management dictates that you can’t make a large inventory order if you’re concerned with product quality issues. On the other hand, if you’re selling a dog bone you can get a sample of the bone, and if it passes your inspection, you can order 1,000 bones with confidence that they will all be the same.
In contrast, if you’re selling a solar-powered calculator that also connects to a separate weather station posted outside of your house, it is logical that some percentage of them won’t work. You can not have the same confidence when making a large order. Too many things can go wrong if you order 1,000 of them. If something is wrong, you’re going to have a big problem because most suppliers will not refund your money. Even if they refund your money for the product cost, you will still pay for the shipping, amazon fees, and bad reviews which will hit your bottom line.
We’re not saying that pet supplies are the “best” when selling products online. It’s only a good example because they are usually small and simple. Anything small, simple, hard to break, and does not include moving parts, is a great product to sell online. Selling a complicated product with moving parts or electronic components is risky, and you risk your investment when you order a large number of them. If the product does not work consistently, you may even get negative reviews, which will dramatically decrease your sales volume.
If you have a lot of negative reviews, your potential customers will go to one of your competitors who have already worked out those “kinks”. With a simple product, it is easy to get positive reviews. You send it, it works, they leave you a five-star review. You can even automate the reviews process so you can rely on a steady flow of five-star reviews to help you sell more and more over time.
Is It Good To Create a Product?
As a new brand, creating a product to sell is not a good idea. Customers sometimes come to me wanting me to help them break into the market with a novel product. Convincing someone that their brilliant idea for a product won’t work is tough. You might have the best product idea in the world, and you might be willing to invest $100,000 into advertising it. That still doesn’t guarantee high sales volume for that product if nobody is searching for it. Even if you advertise it, breaking into a new industry is difficult and expensive. Let the bigger companies develop products. If you are trying to make money, the best thing to do is find out what the bigger companies are selling in high volume and sell the same thing or a related accessory.
Develop your own brand. Some customers prefer to buy from a smaller brand just because it’s not Walmart. Developing your own brand inherently comes with equal advantages and disadvantages. There is software that will help you compile data on product sales volume and performance on Amazon. Google Trends will help you to determine what products people are searching for in Google. Amazon itself has a bestseller section. That will change hourly, and you will have a constant flow of product ideas. The problem with using Amazon‘s bestseller list for product ideation is that you’ll be competing for the same products with other people who are looking at that list.
You must have data available to pick a good product, you can not pick a product because you “like” it or because you “think” it will sell. Facts are facts: The best way to develop a good product to sell online is by using a software product like Jungle Scout or helium 10. These products offer real-time and historical data taken directly from Amazon‘s website. They will help you understand how much money the sellers make with each product and how many sellers are competing for it. They clarify how many buyers are searching for it and more. This paid software provides critical data risk management when buying inventory for e-commerce or Amazon FBA.
It cannot be overstated how important it is to invest in a product that already has a high volume of sales online. No matter how great your product idea, developing your own product will likely be a failing prospect short term. It will take years for that product to get off the ground. It’s better to develop a brand around a product that is already popular online.
A Great Product Has An Audience
Some products are easier to promote than others. It’s easier to promote a product that has some kind of following, even if it’s a general audience, like people who like cell phone tech. When you have a lot of customers in your audience who have bought a product similar to yours, you can write about your product, and your audience will eventually recognize your brand. You can offer your product as an answer to some of the problems with similar products.
Coming out with a new brand and a new product that nobody is looking for is a failing proposition. That is a scientific fact in the world of Internet sales. It is indisputable. Unless you want to invest a million in advertising, on TV, and across the web, you will not be successful in the short term. It will take years for that product to takeoff and, by the time it does, you will have competition. Even if you start as the only person who has it, somebody else will copy it and offer it to the world. Maybe at a lower price, considering they didn’t spend years researching and developing the product like you did. All they had to do was copy you. Now how would that make you feel?
Product Sourcing
Jungle Scout provides data on suppliers so that you’re not risking doing business with shady suppliers in China. Dealing with the suppliers is tricky. It is no secret that business people are smart. Furthermore, it is no secret that American culture has fallen behind in
strategic ways over the years, so Americans doing business in China may be taken advantage of simply due to that fact.
Anybody can go online and misrepresent themselves. You would never know who you’re talking to. The profile picture may not represent who you’re talking to. A single seller may have multiple profiles selling a similar item, so you may talk to one supplier. You start talking to another one for comparison, but you might be talking to the same person again. For this reason, many sellers choose to use a sourcing agent.
The problem with sourcing agents is that they usually work for the supplier. Hiring a sourcing agent may make you feel comfortable, but that is their job. They will make you feel comfortable going through them. Go directly to the supplier and choose a product that will be easy to source in large quantities. The best products will be plastic, less than 12 inches on its biggest side. It will be light, simple in operation, and have strong, verifiable demand throughout the internet.