As an Amazon seller, your ultimate goal is to find a product that buyers want, a product that buyers purchase frequently, and a product that has low overhead for you. If it seems like some sellers have the “secret sauce” to finding the best products to sell on Amazon, they don’t. The reality is, everyone is using the same product research methods to find products to sell on Amazon. Because most sellers are not creative about their product research methods, you will find that the market for specific products is highly saturated. In this article, I will detail how to find a winning product with Alibaba.com by using the right tools, getting creative, and diving deeper.
What Is Alibaba?
If you’re not already familiar, Alibaba is essentially Amazon for suppliers. There is a wide variety of global suppliers for just about any product under the sun on this platform. They currently offer hundreds of millions of products in over 40 major categories, including consumer electronics, machinery, and apparel. Alibaba buyers are from 190+ countries and exchange hundreds of thousands of messages with suppliers every day.
Users can easily search for products they are interested in selling, see pricing, and contact the suppliers for more information. One of my favorite ways to scope out products is to browse through the “New arrivals” section of Alibaba’s website. This section showcases all of the newest products available from suppliers and ones that are more likely to be new to Amazon as well. I would avoid “Top-ranked products” as they tend to contain the more saturated items.
Now that you have a sense of what Alibaba is, let’s talk about using it (and other tools) for product research.
Product Research Method
To get started researching products, I search for products by category. For example, I might search by “Gifts & crafts.” I like to save several products that I find exciting and unique. For example, here is a product that piqued my interest: Home Decoration Hot Sell Gift Set Rose Salt Crystal Stone Essential Oils Aroma Glass Bottle Diffuser. After I select the product, I then extract the best keywords from the product title. I search for “Salt crystal essential oil diffuser” in the main search bar and utilize my Helium 10 extension to see demand. Helium 10 is a browser extension that integrates directly with Alibaba. The extension will tell you the demand for the product you are searching for (see photo example below) with details like total revenue, average revenue, average price, top keywords, search volume, and the number of competing products.
If you find a product category that is pretty popular, i.e., considerable search volume/revenue, you might consider differentiating yourself by finding a product that is better or different than what is currently offered on Amazon. For example, for the salt rock diffusers, you could consider looking for one that changes colors, offers longer scent diffusion, or is USB powered. The important thing here is to look for a product offering that is different than the ones currently sold on Amazon. Conversely, I recommend staying away from products that have especially low search volumes/revenues because it’s not going to produce the results you want.
In addition to showing demand for products on Amazon within Alibaba, Helium 10 also allows you to search demand for products while on Amazon and click on a button to source that product from Alibaba (see below).
To find a winning product, you need to invest some time combing through Alibaba and Amazon to carve out a niche that will be profitable for you. Spend time looking at what Alibaba offers, what Amazon offers, what the demand is for a particular product, what keywords are the most relevant, and where the holes in the market are. Suppose you want to sell Bluetooth barcode scanners, for instance. In that case, you might utilize Alibaba, Amazon, and Helium 10 to discover that there are not many people selling Bluetooth barcode scanners that you can connect to your phone. Many sellers only offer big, clunky scanners, so there is an opportunity there to provide added value. In fact, Helium 10 shows us a $19k revenue for portable phone Bluetooth barcode scanners (see photo below)
The entire product research process might take you a few hours, but I promise you that it will be worth it in the end.
Once you decide on a product, you can contact the suppliers directly via Alibaba with a request-for-quote (RFQ). I recommend contacting multiple suppliers to see what they offer, what price breaks they can give you (if any), and what customizations they provide. Getting more than one quote can save you thousands of dollars, so it’s definitely worth doing. You can type up one RFQ message and send it out to dozens of suppliers. Alibaba has a messaging platform within its site and a payment portal that accepts all major credit cards. Alibaba essentially holds your money in escrow with their trade insurance feature until the supplier completes your order so, there is a minimal risk here.
Suppose you need more information on any aspect of Alibaba’s site. In that case, they have a super helpful YouTube page with dozens of success stories and tutorials on how to best source products on their website. Using Alibaba, you can sort through global manufacturers and pick the best possible option for your future money-making product. Although product research can feel overwhelming initially, Alibaba lets you direct message hundreds and hundreds of suppliers instantly, making it as easy as it’s ever been! So, get out there, get creative and start selling on Amazon.
Happy researching!
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