4 2 9 N . P E N N S Y LV A N I A S T. ,

S U I T E 4 0 3

I N D I A N A P O L I S , I N 4 6 2 0 4

1 ( 8 5 5 ) 5 2 8 - 6 2 4 9

V I R A L- L A U N C H . C O M

3 S T E P S TO F I N D I N G YO U RN E X T G R E AT P R O D U C T

CONTENTS

01 INTRODUCTION

0203 DETERMINE YOUR

PRODUCT CRITERIA

SIZE, PRICE, AND

DEMAND

04 CREATE A LIST OF PRODUCT IDEAS

OLD FASHIONED

IDEA GENERATION

05 CREATE A LIST OF PRODUCT IDEAS

USE A PRODUCT FINDER

07 RESEARCH AND VALIDATE IDEAS

08 RESEARCH AND VALIDATE IDEAS

BARRIER TO

ENTRY

09 RESEARCH ANDVALIDATE IDEAS

REVENUE

POTENTIAL

DETERMINE YOURPRODUCT CRITERIA

CATEGORY

10 RESEARCH ANDVALIDATE IDEAS

MONTHLY SALES

11 RESEARCH ANDVALIDATE IDEAS

MARKET TRENDS

12 RESEARCH ANDVALIDATE IDEAS

PRICE, PROFIT, AND

IMPROVEMENT

13 CONCLUSION

It ’s no secret that Amazon is an e-commerce giant. It is estimated that Amazon owns 44% of total

e-commerce sales.¹ And here’s the best part: Around 50 percent of paid units on Amazon are sold by

third-party sellers!²

As a seller, there is massive potential for you to take advantage of Amazon’s enormous consumer base.

And if you are serious about growing your business, you just need the right knowledge and the right tools

to achieve your goals.

Being successful on Amazon starts with sourcing a great product. But finding a great product is not just a

lucky roll of the dice. In fact, it ’s quite the opposite! Finding a great product is all about examining the data

and choosing the product that aligns with your goals.

LET'S GET TO IT:

Determine your product criteria.

Create a list of product ideas.

Research and validate your ideas.

01

3 STEPS TO FINDING YOURNEXT GREAT PRODUCT

3 S

TEP

S T

O F

IND

ING

YO

UR

NEX

T G

REA

T P

RO

DU

CT

• V

IRA

L-LA

UN

CH

.CO

M

1. DETERMINE YOUR PRODUCT CRITERIAA “great” product looks different to every business. For example, a product with low margins and high sales

can be a steady and reliable source of income for someone just getting started on Amazon, while a seasonal

product with inconsistent sales can bring welcome influxes to an already established operation.

Let’s go through the different criteria for products to determine what is best for your business.

First, you will want to determine what category to sell your product in. Amazon has lots of categories for you

to choose from, but as a private label seller, some are easier to enter than others. Some categories are wide

open to anyone, some have additional guidelines that sellers must follow, and some require approval.

If you're newer to the Amazon game or don't want to have to bypass any red tape, here are some

categories we recommend:

If you’re already selling on Amazon and are approved in a gated category, feel free to add that category to

your list.

CATEGORY

Home & Kitchen Office Products Patio, Lawn, & Garden Pet Supplies Sports & Outdoors Tools & Home Improvement

If this is your first, second, or third product, you likely won’t want to sell a refrigerator. Or TV. Or

surfboard. These will cost you a fortune to ship into Amazon and store in their warehouses. Size and

complexity are two important elements to keep in mind when selecting a product to sell on Amazon.

Amazon charges more for oversized products. Oversized is classified as over 20lbs and longer than

18”. Not to mention the sea frieght tab that comes with very large products. For a more cost-effective

shipping and storage experience, we recommend products that are under 5lbs and not abnormally long

or tall.

And, not only is a refrigerator tall and heavy, but there are a lot of moving parts and opportunities for

malfunctions. Complex products open up another can of worms entirely. Glass, electronic elements, and

intricate elements are not the most ideal for the rough journey from China, into a warehouse, and to

someone’s home. If you don’t want to deal with warranties, damages, and excessive returns, a simple

and durable product is the way to go.

We don’t want to limit you, but especially if you’re a newer seller, we suggest choosing a product that

sells for between $15-$40. Anything lower will have low profit margins, and anything higher may result

in lower sales volume and competition with name brand players.

If you have a smaller amount of money that you’re wanting to invest upfront, sticking to a lower-priced

product will likely allow you to source the product for cheaper. If you’ve got a little more money to invest,

you may tend towards products at the higher end of that range.

Now probably isn’t the best time to get into the Snuggie market. As you’re looking for product ideas, try

to think of products with decent, solid demand. A trendy product might be great in the short-term, but

like fidget spinners, they often die quickly due to increased competition and intense price wars.

It ’s also important to keep seasonality in mind. Selling candy canes may be lucrative in November and

December, but the demand drops drastically for the remainder of the year. For a newer seller looking to

make steady money, a seasonal product may not be ideal. But don’t count them out; seasonal products

can be nice sales influxes for businesses with the necessary capital and infrastructure to support them.

03

SIZE AND COMPLEXITY

SELLING PRICE

DEMAND3

ST

EPS

TO

FIN

DIN

G Y

OU

R N

EXT

GR

EAT

PR

OD

UC

T •

VIR

AL-

LAU

NC

H.C

OM

OLD FASHIONED IDEA GENERATION

With these considerations for category, size, complexity, selling price, and demand, hopefully you have a good

idea of your criteria for potential products. Here comes the tough part: actually thinking of product ideas. You’ll

want to generate as many ideas as possible. Not every idea will be a good one, so you want to make sure you

have plenty of options when it comes time to research and decide on a product.

There are a couple of ways to find Amazon product ideas. You can do it the old fashioned way, combing through

Amazon pages and supplier catalogues to stumbleupon potential products. Or, you can use a Product Finder to

really simplify the process. We’ll quickly go over a few of the old fashioned methods, but we will spend the most

time going over the quickest proven product finder there is: Product Discovery by Viral Launch.

2. CREATE A LIST OF PRODUCT IDEAS

DRILL DOWN ON AMAZON Visit the Best Sellers main page on Amazon and drill down into sub-categories. You’ll see a list of the

high-level categories along the left-hand side. Click into one and keep clicking into smaller

sub-categories to come across products you may not have thought of otherwise.

ALIBABA CATALOGSHead to Alibaba.com and look through a supplier’s complete product offering. You can even send a short

message to different suppliers asking for their product catalog, and you’ll have a multi-page PDF to look

through. From a knee brace manufacturer’s catalog, we came across multiple new product ideas such as

gymnastic grips, lunch bag, and door mat.

• Product search will show you a list of individual Amazon products that meet your criteria. This

is a good way to get lots of product ideas in front of you. From these products, it is important to

research the market further to determine if there is a good opportunity for you there.

• Keyword search will show you a list of keywords that meet your criteria. Information about

keywords is derived from the top products that come up when searching that keyword on Amazon.

This is a great way to quickly find whole markets that match your criteria. If you’re a beginner,

keyword search is a great starting point.

• Brand search will show you a list of Amazon brands that meet your criteria. Sellers can use this

method to find brands experiencing recent growth or high review rates. Based on the products that

are driving a brand's success, sellers can investigate the methods that these brand are using and

potentially replicate that success.

• Category search will show you Amazon categories and subcategories that meet your criteria.

Sellers can use this method to identify subcategories experiencing recent growth or to find

products within their existing product line. If you’re a more experienced seller looking for unique

opportunities to discover Amazon products, check out Category search.

05

NICHE DISCOVERY METHOD Put your thinking cap on for this one. Get up and grab 7-8 items from around the house that fall within

your product criteria. We’ll take scissors, a yoga mat, and a water bottle for example. Then, get out a

piece of paper and write out ten common product adjectives. Here are some standard ones: mini, large,

bulk, travel, personal, industrial, for kids, for men, for women. Then, run searches on Amazon with each

adjectives in front of each of your items. Go through the Amazon search results and see if there are any

niches that you didn’t know existed but may have some demand. Don’t be afraid to veer off the path and

click around a few times. With our example, we found yoga knee pads from searching “mini yoga mat,”

desktop organizer from searching “bulk scissors,” and collapsible water bottle from searching “travel

water bottle.”

USE A PROVEN PRODUCT FINDERWe understand that looking for potential products isn’t always easy or productive. That’s why the Amazon

experts at Viral Launch created Product Discovery, the best Amazon product finder in the galaxy.

Product Discovery grants you access to personalized, high-potential product ideas and accurate key

performance metrics based on your exact criteria. That way, you can seamlessly narrow down all of the

products you could sell to the precise products you should sell. Here’s how it works …

1. Determine what kind of results you’re looking for. Do you want to filter for a list of products, key-

words, brands, or categories?

3 S

TEP

S T

O F

IND

ING

YO

UR

NEX

T G

REA

T P

RO

DU

CT

• V

IRA

L-LA

UN

CH

.CO

M

FIND PRODUCTS WITH PRODUCT DISCOVERY

2. Define your filters to narrow down results.

Product Discovery provides plenty of filters to help you narrow down your results to be as personalized as

possible. If you want a high-volume product with low reviews selling at $20, just input the numbers, and

you will see all the resulting products. Want to see brands with high growth, more than 10 products, and a

high review rate? Set your filters, and browse the corresponding brands. You can customize your products,

keywords, brands, or categories as much or as little as you like to narrow down the results.

With the product search, you’ll see individual products, the BSR, estimated monthly sales, monthly revenue/

profit, selling price and net profit, the number of reviews and the number of sellers. For each product result,

you can continue your research with seamless integration to your Market Intelligence subscription. You

can also view the product on Amazon or save the product to your Pinned Ideas for monitoring and future

reference.

With keyword search, if you have an annual subscription, you’ll see the Product Idea Score, a 1-5 star rating

based on a custom, complex Viral Launch algorithm. On the annual plan, you can even sort by this, so that

you’re seeing the best results first. With both the monthly and annual plan, we’ll show you the keyword

search term, average price, margin, monthly sales, average number of reviews and review rating, the sales

to review ratio measuring the barrier to entry, the average revenue and average profit. Again, you can easily

further your research with Market Intelligence, view the market on Amazon, and save to your Pinned Ideas.

With brand search, we’ll show you the brand name, top-level category, the number of products in that

brand, the monthly sales across the brand’s entire product line, total reviews and average rating, average

product price, monthly revenue, and success and growth rate. You can see the brand on Amazon, or save

the brand to your Pinned ideas board, and view much more detailed information on the Full Scan page for

the brand.

With category search, we’ll show you the root category, total number of brands, monthly sales across the

category as a whole, the number of reviews and review rating, average product price, total monthly

revenue, opportunity score and maturity score.

3. Delve into the abundance of

high-potential ideas that meet your

exact standards.

With your filters set, you will instantly see

a whole list of ideas that correspond to

your inputs, whether those are products,

keywords, brands or categories. For each

idea, we will show you lots of helpful in-

formation to help you determine whether

or not the idea may be a good fit for your

business.

Once you’ve got a solid list of potential products, you will want to validate, or invalidate, those ideas. Don’t jump into an uncertain market; do your due diligence to set yourself up as well as you can. At the point when you find a market with numbers that align with your goals, don’t be afraid to jump in.

There are many things to consider when determining whether or not to source a product, and it’s important that you know what exactly to look for in a market. Market research tools, such as Market Intelligence, give you insight into the market with data, estimates and insights to help you make an informed decision.

To determine if a potential market is a good fit for your business, you’ll want to understand how the top sellers are the market are performing. By analyzing their successes through in-depth market research, you can make a confident sourcing decision and predict your product’s performance. So, here are some of the most important aspects to explore during your market research.

07

3. RESEARCH AND VALIDATE YOUR IDEAS

BARRIER TO ENTRY

MARKET TRENDSMONTHLY SALES

REVENUE POTENTIAL

3 S

TEP

S T

O F

IND

ING

YO

UR

NEX

T G

REA

T P

RO

DU

CT

• V

IRA

L-LA

UN

CH

.CO

M

Getting started with a brand new product in any given market has its challenges. The largest challenge, or

the biggest barrier to entry, is often gathering reviews. Reviews on Amazon serve as social proof.

According to a recent survey, nearly half of Amazon shoppers say product reviews are the most influential

source when determining whether or not to purchase an item, which is more than 3x the second highest

option, which is word of mouth.³ Reviews communicate to customers, “Other people have bought and liked

this product, so it is probably a good one.”

Amazon has made it difficult to gather reviews, which makes it next to impossible to enter certain markets.

Consider a market like Spiralizers. On page one for the main keyword, Spiralizer, the average review count is

around 2,000. If you want to sell spiralizers, launching your brand new product with 0 reviews in this

market, you will have an incredibly difficult time competing for clicks and purchases. Think about it … as a

buyer, you are more likely to purchase the product with 2,000 reviews than the product with 2 reviews.

If the average review rate is 3% with email follow-up sequences, and somehow you were able to match

the average sales on page one for “Spiralizer” at 1,500 per month, it would take approximately 2 years and

9 months to achieve a competitive number of reviews. And keep in mind, the whole time you’re gathering

reviews, so are all of those established products.

So, competing in established markets obviously proves to be pretty difficult. In these markets, the

barrier to entry is high. So, how do you determine if a market has a low barrier to entry?

A low barrier to entry market heavily depends on the number of reviews relative to the number of sales. So,

you want to look for markets with higher sales and lower reviews. These markets make it relatively easier

to gather the necessary reviews to be competitive. Here at Viral Launch, we simplify this concept with our

Sales to Review Ratio. This number is measuring the barrier to entry, or how tough it will be to compete

with the current top sellers. Going back to “Spiralizer,” we will take the sales and divide it by the reviews

(1,500/2,000) to get 0.75. So, the Sales to Review Ratio here is 0.75. Take “First Aid Kit,” divide the sales by

reviews (1,000/300) to get a Sales to Review Ratio of 3.

In conclusion: a high Sales to Review ratio is an easier market to enter. A low Sales to Review ratio is a

tougher market to enter. So in this case, the First Aid Kit market is relatively easier to enter than the Spiral-

izer market when it comes to the number of sales and reviews.

Market Intelligence, Viral Launch’s market research tool, simplifies all of this for you by showing you the

Sales to Review ratio for each product along with a star rating that takes barrier to entry into account when

rating the market for you.

BARRIER TO ENTRY

REVENUE POTENTIALHow much money do you want to make on this product? Are you looking for a smaller market with less

upfront capital required? Do you want to go big with a larger initial investment for the opportunity to make

more money each month? Start by setting your revenue goals to see how each market compares.

Revenue is sales price multiplied by monthly sales. So, to understand if this market aligns with your revenue

goals, take a look at the sales price and estimated monthly sales. Amazon doesn’t explicitly show how many

sales each listing is doing on any given day or month. The metric they do show, however, is Best Seller

Ranking (BSR), which most product research tools use to arrive at sales estimate numbers.

09

Quick Info: Best Seller Ranking

BSR is the product’s ranking in its category, in relation to other products in that same category. It

is a calculation of a product’s number of orders compared to other products in the same category

within a given amount of time. In simple terms, the “best selling” product in a category will have a

BSR of #1 in that category, the second “best selling” product in a category will have a BSR of #2 in

that category, and so on. The BSR can be found on the product’s detail page, and many products

will be listed in multiple categories with multiple different BSR numbers in those different

categories.

The Viral Launch team has done in-depth research using a few different machine learning

algorithms to arrive at some insightful conclusions about BSR. We won’t bore you with the details

at this point (check out our BSR complete guide if you’d like to really dive in). But, we learned that

BSR is extremely volatile, so it is crucial to see the historical BSR in order to get an accurate view

of how the product has actually performed. For example, you may look at a toothpaste product in

the morning to see a great BSR of 100, but that same day in the afternoon, the BSR may be 5,000.

Depending on what time of day, or what week, or what time of year you’re looking at any given

product, you may get a skewed idea of how the product is performing.

Most product research tools out there will use BSR to estimate monthly sales in order to give

Amazon sellers insight into how those products are performing. Without reliable sales estimates,

sourcing a product is like a shot in the dark because otherwise, there is no great indication of your

sales potential.

3 S

TEP

S T

O F

IND

ING

YO

UR

NEX

T G

REA

T P

RO

DU

CT

• V

IRA

L-LA

UN

CH

.CO

M

Each research tool has a different, proprietary way of actually mapping BSR to sales estimates. Here at Viral

Launch, we leverage more than one billion data points we’ve collected to engineer a sophisticated BSR

to sales mapping algorithm. With these calculations, in Market Intelligence, we provide the most accurate

sales estimates available. In your market research, look at how the product is selling now, along with how

the product has sold in the past. Is the demand sufficient to provide the revenue you’re looking for? Are the

sales too high for you to keep up with? Have sales been on the rise recently? Are sales declining signifi-

cantly?

Ultimately, you must determine what kind of sales you’re looking for, and at what price point. That way, as

you’re researching your potential products, you have a benchmark to help you determine whether or not

the market is a good fit for you.

MONTHLY SALES

“Practice Golf Balls” on page one sell for around $12 with monthly revenue averaging around $3,000. A

smaller market like this will allow for a smaller upfront investment and may be a great starter product.

On the other hand, “Puzzle Mat” first page products sell for around $30 with a monthly revenue

averaging around $18,000. A more established seller may have the upfront investment necessary to

drive more revenue here.

And on the more extreme end, “Air Mattress” top products sell for around $55 with a monthly revenue

averaging around $300,000. A much bigger initial investment will be necessary here, but revenue is

obviously a lot higher.

TRY MARKET INTELLIGENCE FOR FREE

11

Seasonality and trends have major impacts on Amazon sellers across the majority of markets. As you’re

doing your product research, it is crucial to understand the trends in your market: sales, price, and review

trends.

Sales Trends

Understanding your product’s sales trends is important for inventory planning and cashflow. Just looking at

a snapshot of sales, or sales estimates at this moment in time, will not give you a full picture of the market

as a whole. Imagine looking at Candy Cane sales on December 10th compared to sales on July 10th.

To really understand how your product will perform year-round, you want to look at sales trends across the

market. Not for one specific product … but for an entire market. Estimating sales based on one

specific product can be dangerous because one product may not be indicative of the market as a whole.

With Market Intelligence, you can view average sales trends for top sellers in any given market to get the

most accurate picture of the market and year-round sales.

MARKET TRENDS

Sales can vastly fluctuate within a market

throughout the year. A market like “Fish Oil” is

relatively stable, meaning sales remain fairly

consistent throughout the year.

In contrast, a market like “Bath Toys” is

relatively seasonal, meaning sales rise and

fall with the time of year.

Even more stark is a market like “Candy

Canes,” where sales peak for a short 2-month

period and then fall drastically for the re-

mainder of the year.

3 S

TEP

S T

O F

IND

ING

YO

UR

NEX

T G

REA

T P

RO

DU

CT

• V

IRA

L-LA

UN

CH

.CO

M

Check to see how you can out-market your product and out-sell the top competitors in your market. Are

the images pretty ameteur across the market? Is the review rating fairly low across the board? Is there a

common buyer-complaint that you can fix for your product and address in your listing? Look for

opportunities in your market to put your product and/or your listing one step ahead of the competition.

Market Intelligence provides Tips, Warnings, and Alerts to help you recognize any factors in the market that

you may have otherwise missed. Examples include “Amazon is an active seller,” “You may consider bundling

this product” and “It looks like name brands may dominate this market.”

High revenue can be great, but keeping healthy margins is crucial for ensuring profitability. To determine

your unit margin, you’ll need to first determine your landed cost.

Landed cost is a combination of product cost and shipping. In other words, it ’s how much money you are

paying per product to get the product into an FBA warehouse. While you may not be able to nail this down

to the cent during the research stage, visit a supplier site, such as alibaba.com, to get an idea of how much

you can source the product for.

Be sure you’re leaving yourself enough room to make money on each unit after the landed cost, FBA fees,

and any advertising costs. Market Intelligence makes this process easy by showing you the potential unit

margin, monthly revenue and monthly profit with the built in FBA Calculator.

PRICE TRENDSAnother important element to consider is the

market’s price trends. Have prices remained fairly

consistent across the market? Are sales dropping

at an increasing rate? Getting into a market that is

cannibalizing margins often leads to money lost.

With Market Intelligence, you can see how prices

have trended for top products in the market.

ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT

PROFIT POTENTIAL

13

CONCLUSIONFinding a successful product takes time and effort. But, narrowing down what you’re looking for,

coming up with ideas, and vetting those ideas is one of the most important processes you’ll go through as

an Amazon seller.

Setting yourself up with a great product from the beginning will help ensure your Amazon business is on

the right track. With Product Discovery, you can find a list of profitable product ideas that align with your

exact business goals. And using Market Intelligence, you can validate those ideas to make a confident

sourcing decision.

Here at Viral Launch, we’re committed to helping entrepreneurs reach their fullest potential. We’ve built

these tools to aid you on your journey to finding your next great product.

We wish you the best of luck as you prepare for this holiday season. As always, with any questions, reach

out to the coaching team at Viral Launch. They’re happy to answer any questions and help you most suc-

cessfully source, launch, and dominate on Amazon.

3 S

TEP

S T

O F

IND

ING

YO

UR

NEX

T G

REA

T P

RO

DU

CT

• V

IRA

L-LA

UN

CH

.CO

M

1-HTTPS://WWW.RECODE.NET/2017/10/24/16534100/AMAZON-MARKET-SHARE-EBAY-WALMART-APPLE-ECOMMERCE-SALES-2017

2-HTTPS://WWW.STATISTA.COM/STATISTICS/259782/THIRD-PARTY-SELLER-SHARE-OF-AMAZON-PLATFORM/

3-HTTPS://APPARELMAG.COM/ARE-CONSUMERS-LOSING-FAITH-AMAZON

TRY PRODUCT DISCOVERY

TRY MARKET INTELLIGENCE