As we move into 2022, the classic movie is a distant memory (if a memory at all) to many of us. But the lesson with acting on emotion and not rational still rings true and is a good lesson to everyone, particularly Amazon sellers. 

All too often, new or potential sellers become giddy with the idea of being an entrepreneur and making quick money on the conglomerate that is Amazon. And while such prospects certainly are enticing, it’s pretty important that merchants make selling decisions based on metrics and data, not emotions. This isn’t to suggest that you shouldn’t be passionate about the product you are merchandising. Passion is an important factor in the success of your brand. However, if you haven’t done proper product research, that product you thought was such a good idea may not end up transitioning to a profitable product on Amazon. All too often, we see sellers with the same exact look on Hoffman’s face – that “Oh s***” face when they realize that expectation and reality didn’t quite align. 

Selling on Amazon has evolved over the last decade and it continues to evolve as more sellers enter the market in tandem with self-proclaimed “experts” that seem to be created out of thin air. 

Aside from the conundrum of finding a high-selling product is the problem with budgeting for your business. Even if you find a great product and have the metrics to buttress your business endeavor, you still need to come up with the capital to start your Amazon venture. As this article explains, when it comes to initially investing in your company, you need to properly budget for all potential costs including PPC and other marketing strategies. Copious amounts of eager entrepreneurs on Amazon forums inquire about the minimum expected budget to launch their first product only to be met with a barrage of answers. Some swear by the doability of establishing an Amazon brand with only $5,000 (a number upended in recent years as Amazon’s marketplace has become exceedingly competitive and marketing costs have skyrocketed). Other experts may quote a minimum of $25,000.

Essentially, anytime there is such a drastic difference, you can go ahead and assume that no one has a damn clue what they are talking about. Or they are basing their conclusions on anecdotal stories. There are a few factors that experts and other sellers judge their recommended capital on, obscuring facts regarding what price point you really should be investing. For example, an established seller who is confident of their material and shipping supply chains and has a history of strong sales and ranking can order $6,000 worth of units, get them into the FBA warehouse quickly, and ultimately turn that investment into a cash cow. This quick turnaround allows the seller to go back to the manufacturer and get another round of units. But that doesn’t mean that newcomers only need to have $6,000 for a start-up. 

On the other hand, ordering $20,000 worth of products doesn’t make sense for a new business for a few reasons: 1) Amazon has restock limits that are based on your sales history which means newcomers don’t get the advantage that highly-coveted brands do and 2) Due to extensive shipping delays, your cash-flow is likely to be tied-up across seas for upward of months.

Let’s dive into product research and see if we can mitigate some of the risk, so that once your product is released, you feel confident in your investment.

What Do Most Amazon Sellers Use for Product Research?

Tools like Helium 10 have done a solid job providing user-friendly tools people can use for a plethora of Amazon-centered services. And it’s wildly popular. Potential sellers of a product search Amazon and use their X-Ray extension to scrape the search results page as a means of product research.

Honestly, it returns some good information. Estimated units sold, Revenue, BSR (Best Sellers Rank), Reviews & Review velocity. It even gives the layout of the land in regards to the related keywords. 

So what’s the drawback? 

EVERYBODY uses it. A majority of sellers use it and a majority of VAs offering services to “hunt” for products are analyzing and drawing conclusions from the exact same data. And these are all the major metrics that seasoned VA’s and the average seller uses to discern what potential products will do well on Amazon. And there lies the problem.

Let’s say you are an eager entrepreneur that is utilizing X-Ray for your product research. You see an opportunity with a product that has, say, 10,000 search results with less than 1,000 sellers. You establish that the supply-and-demand for said product is good enough to turn profit. The problem is that, with roughly 2,000 new sellers on Amazon per day and the majority of them using Helium 10 for their product research, the likelihood of other people going after the exact same product is pretty high. By the time you have your product source, there is likely to be more than 1,000 other competitors. Hopefully, you can see how quickly this spider webs out and your quiet little niche quickly becomes overrun by everyone from major players to startup sellers.

How You Can Use PPC Results for Product Research

If you are at the point where you are in search of the perfect Amazon product, your consumption of Amazon content has probably led you to the understanding of how vital branding and PPC is to the success of your business. The great thing about branding is that you can tuck yourself away in a niche and cater to a specific audience. And if you are patient enough to learn PPC, you can go after keyword phrases and ad techniques that cater to your niche. 

The benefits of managing your own PPC campaigns isn’t just that you can save money on outsourcing and learn a new skill set (albeit those are pretty cool bonuses); you can actually utilize your results to come up with new products that would be a great addition to your store or that you can sell with your current product in a bundle. 

PPC returns data. The golden goose of data. First-party data. PPC results provide you the actual search term that customers search. But how can you turn this information into a winning second product?

There are different ways to go after this data. The most commonly suggested advertising campaign type are Automatic campaigns. An automatic campaign is the fastest campaign type to start running on Amazon. It harnesses the power of the algorithm (based on your product listing’s copy) to target keywords and products. It is comprised of 4 target groups: Close Match & Loose Match will target keywords while Compliments & Substitutes target products.

Over time, this type of campaign will produce customer-searched keyword phrases and also ASINs that your product has been advertised on. 

There are also Manual Campaigns. If you know specific keywords to bid on then you can create different ad groups. Normally, people will create broad match, phrase match, and exact match ad groups that you can run. While we won’t go into the details of all of the different match types you can create, we will focus on broad campaigns and how they can pertain to product research.

With broad campaigns, Amazon will take your keyword and allow that keyword to be bid in any order. Amazon will add words before, after, or before and after your keyword. So for example, if you are bidding on the keyword term “women shoes”, Amazon may allow your product to be bid in different ways such as: 

• shoes women
• shoes for women
• black leather shoes women
• Women shoes black leather

PPC experts know that these longtail keywords are the holy grail for the most efficient PPC spend, but not all long tail keywords work to your benefit. In the example above, if you were selling a red leather women’s shoe and didn’t offer black and you had a significantly high CTR on “black leather shoes women” with no conversions, this data might tell you that a lot of people are searching for your shoes but in a different color.  Suddenly, you can expand your storefront by offering a new shoe color that has data to back up the popularity. 

Conversely, if the campaign began to generate black leather ballerina flat shoes, then you have a new style to begin researching. 

We find these types of opportunities show themselves in inefficient spending. How many campaigns have you had keywords generate tons of clicks, but they just don’t convert? Oftentimes, your current product doesn’t provide the right buyer intent. Perhaps you have a storage container designed to hold food, but your broad match campaign indicates a different size preference. Or perhaps your containers are being utilized for storing things other than food. WOAH! Suddenly, you have a firm understanding that people want your product in a different size or that a ton of people are using your bread box for storing mail. You can use this information to grow your catalog from 1 product to 2, 3 or 4 highly-needed products. 

The search term report houses this type of information. A seller can access this report within the campaign ad group. It will also let you know how often your product was seen (impressions), clicked on (click through rate), and how many sales resulted from those clicks. Furthermore, he report will break down the cost factors. This will provide the dollars spent on that ASIN or keyword and the revenue created from that money spent (ACOS).

How is the AMZ Legendary Tool Different?

“Hold on, my guru never told me about this PPC trick.”

“Wait, that Facebook ad didn’t explain that I needed liability insurance.”

“I didn’t know that I’d have to factor in software and marketing into my bottom line.”

“Nobody informed me that Amazon regulated inventory flow and penalized you for not moving units.”

These are common complaints from new sellers that we hear all the time; complaints that should have been addressed way before sourcing. Why? Because these extenuating factors play massive roles in your net profit. 

Well, the AMZ Legendary Tool takes into account EVERYTHING! That’s right. We cater our product research to your starting budget and factor in ALL costs that pertain to your business to help you find a profitable product. We make sure start-up expenses, marketing expenses, cost of goods – literally, everything – fits within your budget with a little breathing room in case any unknown costs arise.

Best of all, everything is spelled out for you. The Legendary Tool will give you an ideal price to sell at. It will estimate monthly revenue and even give an estimated profit range based on your assessed spend on sourcing, shipping, launching, storage, and PPC . Most importantly, they don’t pedal the same product to multiple platform users. Each product is customized to marketing trends as well as the category you wish to sell in and the amount of money you want to invest. 

At AMZ Savages we even offer a list of trusted service providers to contact for manufacturing, product photography, listing optimizations, PPC services, and more! Then, when you are ready for your launch,  we’ll supply you a list of keywords to use for the listing and to include in your first PPC campaigns. 

Final Thought

While there are a variety of tools and methods you can use to do sound product research, it’s important to remember that emotions should not be a final factor in what you decide to sell. You can be passionate about women’s multivitamins, but that doesn’t mean it will be a winning product to sell on Amazon. Data-driven metrics have to be part of the decision. 

But even if you do allow data to lead the outcome, that doesn’t necessarily negate all of the competitors you may face who followed the exact same market trends. This is why popular software programs may lead you astray with their results. 

Furthermore, it’s not enough to find a potentially high-grossing product; you have to confirm that you’ll turn profit by factoring in every potential cost you may inherit in the process. The Amz Legendary tool is a trusted software tool that not only takes into account your budget and the cost of sourcing and Amazon services – it also provides a quality product that is unique to your budget and needs.

Undoubtedly, if you have been in the Amazon space for even a day, you have heard of Helium 10’a software program and the plethora of tools readily available to help Amazon sellers navigate everything from product research to optimization to inventory management. It essentially is an all-in-one tool that has won the heart of the masses. However, while Helium 10 has some pretty great and effective tools to help leverage your product, it’s questionable how great the software program is for product research.

So you want to start selling on Amazon?

With Amazon’s reputation as a behemoth with the most visited e-commerce store in the world, it’s tempting to wake up one morning and decide that selling on its platform is a sure-fire way to be a successful entrepreneur. After all, there are thousands of rags-to-riches stories about other Amazon merchants winning the pot of gold by setting up shop there.

However, getting neck-deep into Amazon selling takes a lot more than just uploading a product and attaching your product. Whether it be Helium 10 (or the hundreds of other Saas companies out there) these software programs give your product the right visibility, help in inventory management, sales, marketing, and product research that you need to launch, succeed, and scale your business.

How many do I find the right product to sell on Amazon?

But first, you have to find a product worth selling. Maybe you’ve come up with a brand concept that is unique to the marketplace or maybe you want to repurpose a product that already exists. Either option is noble, but you have to understand what works and what doesn’t when it comes to this phase in your journey.  As easy as it seems, getting inspiration by surfing Amazon’s website, looking for that next smartphone cover or kitchen utensil that appears to have good reviews and rankings – it’s not that simple. Selling on Amazon requires a lot of heavy-lifting in the beginning when it comes to product research.

You need to first go into this process with the understanding that Amazon can be pretty cut-throat, with 1.9 million U.S. retailers actively selling on its platform to date. The importance of proper product research cannot be underestimated. While the allure of unlimited visibility on the e-commerce platform is one of its selling points, you need to get in the faces of your potential customers by selling exactly what they need. This means having a firm understanding of supply-and-demand (business 101).

Because of the magnitude of current Amazon sellers, one can’t help but pause for a moment to think about how unlikely it is to find that unique product that doesn’t already involve a lot of sellers already pushing similar merchandise. This is why product research is so important.

More often than not, sellers encounter some challenges when using tools like  Helium 10 to conduct product research. Why? Let’s take a look at common issues associated with multiple sellers using the same software to establish a product they think is a “winner.”

Why Helium 10 May Not Be The Best Option For Product Research

High Competition w/ High Sales Velocity

High search volume indicates that a product is in high demand (which is great!) But what many fail to recognize is that, with high search volume, comes high competition. As a seller, your product will compete greatly with other products of its kind. Just from doing a simple keyword check before deciding on a product, you can already see how many similar products are already ranking for those coveted keywords. While a product might be in high demand, you must look at the supply aspect of that. If there are thousands of others supplying a similar product, you will really have to differentiate your product from the others if you want even a chance at succeeding.

In short, sales velocity is how fast you’re making money through online traffic. A number of factors can be responsible for low sales when competing with many sellers on the same product. First, customers tend to go with a seller they are familiar with and have established history with. It is very difficult to compete with a “household name” product.

Another reason is product reviews – the same customers who purchase a product they’re familiar with – will also purchase a product with higher reviews than the three or fours reviews may start with. And even though there’s a tool by Helium 10 that provides reviews of your competitors, all those reviews can do is tell you what works and what doesn’t. This is a good starting point if you want to differentiate your product from your competitors – find out what buyers DIDN’T like about their product and change it.

Going for niche products

Now, most people utilizing programs like Helium 10 are aware that they, in fact, shouldn’t go after high velocity/highly competitive products for the exact reasons listed above.

So, many will try to find a product that appears to be in decent demand but has far less competition.

And this is, in theory, a great method when deciding what sort of product you want to move forward with.

But here’s the thing: with everyone employing that same method, suddenly that “small niche” product you were so excited about won’t be small anymore. This is why so many people in the industry make jokes about garlic presses. The first few people that sold garlic presses on Amazon made bank because it was a very specific product that offered a very specific solution to a very specific group of people. So, the profit margins were great. But because Helium 10’s product research tool only provides metrics, it doesn’t show you the stark reality that, suddenly, everyone started selling garlic presses based on what originally looked like solid metrics.

To be clear: we’re not suggesting that metrics don’t matter because they certainly do! But think of it this way: say you find a product that has decent search volume but little competition. You do your homework and the profit margins look good. So, you decide that this is your product. Here’s the problem: Helium 10 currently has 1 million subscribers on its platform. What do you think the odds are that a number of those new sellers are looking at the margins of the same product as you and thinking, “this is perfect. I’m going to sell this”? It happens way more than you think.

While numbers are important, product research also involves understanding pain-points

People purchase products for two reasons: needs and wants.

“I need a new blender to make good smoothies.”

“I want that hair curler because it curls hair perfectly.”

Whether out of need or out of want, the ultimate goal of purchasing something is to make one’s life better or easier.

Let’s say for example you were interested in selling a protein powder. Well, there are thousands of protein powders on the market, so you want to make one that differentiates itself from your competitors. But what if you decided it wasn’t the actual ingredients you wanted to differentiate? What if you realized based on reviews and google searches that one of the biggest problems people have with these products is that the scoop never fits inside the bottle or it gets buried deep in the bottle. You could decide to sell a supplement with a unique handle that resolves these pain-points. Patent the handle, not the protein shake. This not only separates you in a very unique way, but potentially you could sell just the handle to other companies that make protein powders. These are the sort of things you need to be considering when formulating a viable Amazon product.

Not calculating your operating costs

The problem with many of the Amazon tools out there is that, when it comes to profitability, they only calculate wholesale costs and the mark-up costs of your competitors. They do not factor in the price of shipping fees, storage fees, FBA fees, marketing costs, PPC costs, launching costs, etc. And this is a BIG DEAL. All of the aforementioned aspects of selling take out a huge amount of your profits, so you need to consider your budget and all of these external costs before deciding if a product is actually viable to make money off of it.

Enter AMZ Savages.

How AMZ Savages works with your budget and all your costs to come up with the perfect product

AMZ Savages’s Legendary tool is not like anything else on the current market. We know, we know. Every software company makes these exact claims, and we certainly aren’t suggesting there aren’t great tools out there for a multitude of things Amazon sellers need. However, when it comes to product research, there is one thing all these other companies are doing wrong.

• They don’t work wth your budget
  At AMZ Savages, we realize that you have to consider how much money you have to work with in order to decide on a product that makes sense for you to sell. Not knowing your budget is much like house-hunting and looking at everything from condos to mansions. You have to have a financial starting point.
• They don’t consider ALL of your overhead
  We make a point to calculate your profit margins based on your COGS, landing price, storage fees, FBA fees, marketing costs, photography, listing optimization, PPC, etc. based on aggregated data from the top professionals in all of those fields.
• They offer the same products to the same people
  Our tool is designed to use your parameters to recommend products ONLY for you. We do not recommend the same product to our clients, so you don’t have to worry about selling a product that someone else on our platform is selling.
• The Creators Don’t Have Experience Selling
  Our team of experts has spent years in the Amazon space, successfully selling on Amazon. We have spent years perfecting our platform to ensure high quality and high satisfaction. We also have experts on our team to provide 1-on-1 training on how to use the Legendary tool and to answer any questions or concerns you may have.

To learn more about AMZ Savages set-up and how to come up with proper standards when deciding on a product, check out this great read.

He goes by “Amazon J” and posts images like this to solidify his credentials as a rising “guru” in the Amazon space.

Impressive, isn’t it? Impressive enough that you would probably turn to Amazon J for his expertise if you were a new seller right? 

First off, Justin isn’t his name and we actually have no idea how this kid actually makes his money. But, this profile is typical of what curious Amazon sellers do come across when seeking mentorship with their entrepreneurial journey. Look, we get it. He’s got the cool car, the name, and most importantly, he’s got the sales numbers to back his proficiency. 

And, as any savvy business person knows, numbers don’t lie. People lie, but metrics don’t. So, looking at an Amazon report like the one above elicits awe, maybe even jealousy. 

Here’s the thing: None of these metrics mean ANYTHING if the person brandishing them isn’t including their net profits. Making claims that one’s success is contingent solely on their sales can be incredibly misleading. It’s not unsimiliar to telling someone you won third place in a race. That number is only meaningful or valuable when compared to the number of people you ran against. Being third place is very different if you’re competing against 100 runners as opposed to 5. 

If sales or revenue is what you are focused on, then you are setting your business up for failure. This applies to any business  – from traditional brick-and-mortar retailers to service providers to e-commerce retailers. When you consider your mark-up for a product, you need to factor in all costs associated with the making and the promoting of that unit. 

Net Profit vs. Sales

Depending on the type of product your business is structured around, there are multiple areas of expenses to be mindful of. Let’s take for example brick-and-mortar businesses. Obviously, the first thing you need to consider is overhead – leasing, electric costs, labor costs, shipping, storage, etc. Your operating costs need to be factored into the price you position your product because your store won’t make enough to cover overhead AND make a profit.

E-commerce is no different. A lot of online sellers make the mistake of looking at the brick-and-mortar business structure and thinking “I can sell online and remove all my overhead.” Not true. While you may not have overhead like leasing, employees, and electricity, you still have overhead – it’s just structured differently. 

Say you have a product and you want to sell on Amazon’s platform. More than likely you’ll look at the price range of your competitors, calculate your price of goods, manufacturing, and landing costs, and base your markup on those factors. Unfortunately, your COGS and landing costs are only part of the overhead and – if mismanaged –  will make your product non-profitable. 

If you plan on selling on Amazon (or already are), here are a few things you need to calculate into your “wholesale” costs.

Amazon Fees

Obviously, Amazon isn’t there to provide free real estate for your business. Nothing comes for free, people! When calculating the true value of ONE unit, you need to apply the Amazon fees associated with that one unit:

Individual Seller fee: $0.99 per unit

Professional Seller fee: $39.99 a month unlimited units 

FBA, storage fees, shipping fees: (depends on weight, size, and category). Storage fees include monthly fees, long-term storage fees, and removal of order fees. These also can fluctuate during busy seasons like Q4. 

Sales percentage fees (Referral fees): on average 8%-15% of the total price; includes the item price and gift wrapping. 

Refund fees: Amazon will refund you the referral fee minus their administration fee, which is the lesser of $5.00 or 20% of the referral fee.

Photography and Listing Optimization

For the creative type, the prospect of creating amazing images and content for their product is a fun and sexy venture. Creating an entire aesthetic and voice around your brand is super important and is generally one of the processes sellers enjoy. However, it’s also an expense that absolutely needs to be factored into your pricing. 

Sure, you can cut costs by hiring someone on Fiverr to do photoshop and infographics, but with the mounting competition on Amazon, high-quality images for your listing and social media marketing are incredibly important. Should you go the route of having lifestyle photography and videography taken, anticipate paying upwards of a few thousand dollars.

Software programs for keyword research and listing optimizations can be a fiscally conservative option when writing your detailed page, but they also require monthly subscriptions. Hiring a marketing agency to do your listing optimization can range anywhere from $200-$800 dollars. 

Launching Fees 

With Amazon continually refining and tightening their TOS on how to get reviews, launching has resorted to some serious maneuvering, tricky strategies, and even black hat tactics. Using launching services like Rankbell is very effective, but also quite costly. Using software programs like Elite Seller can also be incredibly impactful – but again – pricey. And let’s not forget about how much money you’ll lose on giveaways and discounts on your product. 

Now, onto the reoccurring/continual fees you will accrue over the lifespan of your Amazon Business…

PPC Management and Spend

PPC fees depend on the level of management you wish to do yourself or have outsourced. Using the latest PPC software programs will cost a monthly subscription ranging anywhere from $200-$600.  The average PPC management company charges roughly $300 per ASIN per month (and these costs don’t factor daily budget spend for your PPC).

Outside Advertisement

Lastly, you need to account for advertising costs outside of Amazon. Now, many sellers do just fine tailoring their ad spend solely on Amazon with no external traffic – and that’s great! But if you choose to run Facebook ads, Google ads, Instagram ads, or Tik Tok ads, you better be financially prepared for those accrued costs. It’s even more expensive when you hire someone else to do it for you. 

Bottom Line

Financial success isn’t measured by how much your company makes; it’s measured by how much YOU make. It’s great to enjoy a thriving business, but if that business results in you breaking even (or worse, puts you in the hole), you need to rethink your strategy and look at your numbers from a different angle. 

Whether you are on the journey to becoming an Amazon seller or you already have been selling for a while, it’s important to look at all of your costs going in and out and figure out a way to diminish overhead in order to elevate your net profit.  

We get it. Nothing is more exciting than the prospect of becoming an entrepreneur and beginning your journey toward a successful future. So many exciting elements are involved and one of the MOST exciting bridges to cross is finding a product. 

Now, there are all types of sellers (particularly on Amazon) right? We have wholesalers, retail arbitrage resellers, vendors, patented/unique products/brand registered merchants, and “me too” products sellers – all having pros and cons to each approach. 

Regardless of your platform, it’s important to  implement product  research  so you  understand demand, niche, profit, keywords, and competition. Some of these hurdles can be clarified through Amazon-focused software tools. And, while there are dozens of tools out there to help hone in on what you want to sell, not all of these tools are created equal.  

As this article in Helium 10 explains: Without proper product research, you’re simply guessing. Amazon is a marketplace, not a crowdfunding website like Kickstarter where one can bring a new invention to market and expect to build demand. This is not to insinuate that you can’t introduce a totally new product on the conglomeration that is Amazon, but you have to understand that Amazon’s entire platform revolves around keywords. In practice, it is an  end-of-the-funnel marketplace that relies on customers using keywords to direct them to products they want to purchase. If you are selling a product that nobody has ever heard of, this poses a whole new set of problems regarding searchability.  

In general, you need to validate that there is existing or emerging demand for the product you wish to sell. You also need to research the competition to make sure that you can obtain market share while staying profitable.

Why Many of the Amazon Product Research Tools Fail You

Product research is only as valuable as your strategy and, unfortunately, many new sellers don’t understand the proper methods to implement their strategy nor do they understand how to avoid the same mistakes their fellow sellers are making. Part of that lies in the fact that newbies are all taught the exact same methods when deciding a product to sell. 

Let’s take Helium 10’s Product Research Tool for example. Easily one of the most sought after Amazon tools in the space, H10 promises access to over 450 million products in its database, which is second only to Amazon.

This software contains multiple Amazon seller tools to help you find high ranking keywords, identify trends, spy on competitors and optimize product listings. The Amazon optimization tool suite is specially designed for sellers looking to grow their Amazon FBA businesses exponentially.

Here’s the problem though. If everyone is using the same tool, what are the chances that a significant portion of users come up with the same products? Pretty high, right? It’s kind of like being a dancer and using the same trainer that all your competitors are using and hoping for better results. The likelihood is pretty… well… unlikely. 

This is not to suggest that Helium10’s software tool has no value – it certainly does. But it’s value is limited to the fact that it provides metrics based on keywords. 

Let’s say for example that you use the H10’s discoverability tool and it suggests that (based on search volume, category, and competition) selling pop-it toys for kids with autism (like this one) is your ideal product. The reality is that a LOT of other sellers are going to be getting the same feedback which means there is a very high likelihood that the niche will suddenly become saturated. Plus, the H10 tool doesn’t factor in things like evergreen products, overhead costs, and scalability. 

The reality is that a product that looks good on paper doesn’t necessarily translate to a product that actually pays the bills, and isn’t that the entire purpose behind entrepreneurship?  

Why AMZ Savages’ Legendary Product Research Tool Negates All of The Issues With Regular Product Research

First and foremost, the Legendary tool was not the product of some company that wanted to make a few extra bucks. With software companies like Helium 10 or Jungle Scout, those programs weren’t originally designed for product research. They were additions to the portal so that they could claim they were a “one-stop service station for all Amazon needs.” Let’s be clear: adding tools to a software company that wasn’t originally designed to truly help with product research should be a red flag for anyone. These tools are primarily based on keywords (which are obviously important). However, it totally negates the reality of customer behavior and operating costs for YOU. 

The AMZ Savage Legendary Tool was specifically designed to help new sellers navigate the unknown waters of choosing a sure-fire product. Of course, our metrics are based on keywords, demand, and search volume, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Our software factors in soooo many more variables to establish a profitable product that is right for you. 

Here are some of the ways our portal is completely  different than others on the market:

• Our tool will find a product for you with our proprietary product research learning machine.
• Our tool will offer you a UNIQUE product each time, with a GUARANTEE  that you won’t be suggested a product that all other users are being offered.

• Our technology was curated over years of personal experience and really studying the market and the many variables that contribute to product research 
• We implement REAL companies that provide REAL services to give you REAL metrics on what your supply-chain, landing costs, COGs, marketing, and FBA fees will be
• We don’t pedal the false claim that you can start an Amazon company with $5,000 as many of the gurus like to claim. You can set your budget yourself (at $10,000 or more) and we will use that information to find you a product, tally your overhead costs, and give you realistic profit margins for that product. 

What Overhead Costs Does Amz Savages Factor In?

Here are just a few things that our tool factors in when providing expected overhead costs:

1.     Chain-Supply Costs: Based on the average price of manufacturers that can make your product and how many units you sell (we base this number off of 500 units), we provide a calculated expense. 
2.     Inspections: As a seller, you are responsible for ensuring your products comply with your market’s laws and regulations (REACH, CPSIA, Prop 65, etc.) Plus, inspections are CRUCIAL for keeping shoddy products from reaching your customers.

3.     Shipping: We factor in the costs for both shipping across seas from your manufacturer as well as the costs Amazon enforces for Prime. This is based on weight and dimensions of your product.

4.     Storage Fees: Amazon FBA charges monthly fees for holding your inventory that are also based on category, weight, and size. This number can fluctuate based on the time of year (i.e. Christmas). 

6.    Amazon Fees: The cost of selling on Amazon.com varies based on your product characteristics, fulfillment method, optional services, and other factors.
7.   Marketing Expensives: Your marketing strategy should definitely be a huge factor when calculating your profit margins. Expenses like PPC, Facebook ads, Manychat funnels, email marketing, and google ads NEED to be considered when you figure out how much you need to mark up your product to ensure profit. Our tool tabulates these numbers based on average costs of marketing to help you tally this. 
8.   Photography and Listing Optimization: Customers don’t care about keywords. They care about images and content and its now more important than ever to invest in great, persuasive sales copy as well as images that really stand out. Such services cost a decent amount which is why the Legendary tool takes those numbers into consideration as well. 

The Bottom Line

Not only does AMZ Savages cover all of your basis when applying for a product – you can guarantee you won’t be suggested a product that all other users are being offered. That’s because AMZ Savages’ extensive database doesn’t offer the same product to more than one client. Even if you have the same budget, category, and parameters, once one person has been recommended a product, that particular product is no longer available to newcomers. Even more important, founders Raj and Fabian found a gap in the market for tools that, you know, actually HELPED sellers succeed. In short, they were wick of the smoke-and-mirror tricks and the B.S. that was happening with all the other software companies on the market. That’s how AMZ Savages came to fruition. 

Unlike most of the comparable tools out there, we WANT you to succeed. We CARE about providing good information that is applicable in the real market. We’re a one-of-a-kind company with a one-of-a-kind tool that is dedicated to helping you find a  one-of-a-kind product.

Source:

• https://www.fbaglobalonline.com/amazon-fba-product-research-what-to-avoid/
• https://www.fabongo.com/5-common-mistakes-to-avoid-while-amazon-product-research/
• https://tinuiti.com/blog/amazon/amazon-supply-chain/
• https://blog.edesk.com/resources/amazon-sourcing-research-tools/
• https://www.qima.com/amazon-fba-product-inspection
• https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/external/G3EDYEF6KUCFQTNM

The five introduced bills would make it easier to break up businesses that used their dominance in one area to get a stronghold in another. This would potentially create obstacles for conglomerates trying to procure/monopolize rivaling companies as well as empower regulators with more funds to police companies.

The legislation would not only change the playing field for many, it would increase the threshold to prove that any acquisitions or mergers weren’t the results of obstructing competition from lesser-known companies or start-ups. More specific to Amazon, the new legislation could revoke Amazon’s privilege of selling their over-100 companies on its platform which indefinitely allows the conglomerate the ability to sell cheaper items and utilize advertising that undercuts many of the sellers on their platform. 

Amazon’s Unique Platform Allows Sellers Multiple Advantages

Amazon is known for a few things: its quick shipping, its unparalleled selection, and its ubiquitous presence in consumer life in the past decade. It’s also known for its ability so far to skate under the radar of regulators. Jeff Bezos has long contributed the success of Amazon to its laser focus on customer happiness. Their quick shipping and logistics are a big part of their strategy to surpass consumer expectations and provide delight at every turn. 

To deliver on that promise, the strategy has been a long game. It took 7 years for Amazon to turn a profit as they reinvested in building infrastructure and working on their now-famous operational capacity that has set them head and shoulders above any other marketplace. But with such concern over their customers, the question remains: What about their sellers?

Another step in their strategy has been to expand their reach from just being an online bookstore to becoming the de facto online marketplace – an everything store, so to speak. They were able to bring a dizzying array of products together at low prices; the same blueprint that made Walmart a household name. This boost in inventory was ushered by the use of third-party sellers bringing their products to the platform, with many newcomers opting white labelling, drop shipping, retail arbitrage, and utilizing the Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA) program. 

What Benefits do Ecommerce Sellers Get Using Amazon’s FBA Program?

Sellers can take part of FBA by paying the marketplace a fee in exchange for warehouse storage, packing, and shipment of their orders. This was beneficial for the third-party sellers by bringing them directly to where the consumer’s eyeballs are, allowing merchants to forgo maintaining or operating their own online store and having immediate access to hundreds of thousands of customers. By leveraging the FBA program, many didn’t even need to have warehouses, hold their own inventory, or deal with overhead costs associated with brick-and-mortar stores. The ability for the proverbial mom and pop stores to spring up and serve their products exclusively on Amazon was a path for many to entrepreneurship. 

The added benefit of using Amazon’s services (as sellers have reported) is that in using FBA, they have the advantage of better search rankings and the reverent Buy Box. The buy box (accompanied with search position ranking) are keys for any retailer to succeed in a platform rife with competition. While this initially seemed like fair trade or even a deal to some sellers, many quickly learned that the high premium to utilize FBA and PPC advertising services was a cut above what other retail channels offered. 

Amazon Has Made Some Sketchy Decisions in The Past For Sellers

When sellers tried to expand their sales channels that didn’t require such high fees, Amazon came back with a “most favored nation clause’ to add to their seller agreements. The “most favored nation” stated that “You will maintain parity between the products you offer through [other platforms] and the products you list on any Amazon site” – effectively instating that price, product description, and standards needed to be the same on their platform as all others. Amazon’s stance was that it was trying to prevent sellers from price gouging. However, the inverse was also true in that they were effectively preventing retailers to sell their products for less on any other platform. Which, in all honesty, was probably their underlying reasoning behind the clause in the first place. 

Amazon updated this specific language in the US in 2019 after antitrust scrutiny, following suit from 6 years prior when they were forced to remove it for similar backlash. Stories came in of sellers who tried to lower their prices on other platforms only to have their listings suppressed on Amazon within a week. Reports say this wasn’t coincidental given that, when these other competing listings were removed, their Amazon presence returned to normal.

This sort of preemptive gaslighting didn’t stop there. Unsurprisingly, the other seller-funded cash machine on the famous marketplace (other than actual sales) is advertising. Amazon is the third-largest digital advertising company, outpacing the revenue of Snap, Twitter, Roku, and Pinterest combined – twice over. This only widened the gap between sellers who did or did not choose to pay up, making it nearly impossible for sellers that couldn’t afford PPC to climb the pages of Amazon’s catalogue. 

When The Price Is Wrong 

With FBA fees incrementally increasing (particularly around the holidays) and advertising spend pushing self-fulfilling, organic sellers further and further down SERPs, in recent years, many Amazon sellers have found it nearly impossible to compete with Amazon brands, big companies like Nike, and the aggregators that can afford egregious amounts of advertising real estate. 

Amazon has reported that 92% of their third-party sellers utilize FBA, and in 2020 contributed $80.5 billion to their bottom line. This comes as little surprise given the practices highlighted above. Merchants can feel left with little choice other than to utilize the service, particularly with the Prime Badge incentivizing customers to only purchase products that offer 2-day delivery. It appears to be nudging sellers to believe there is some pay-to-play antics at hand with some price fixing suggestions.

More recently Amazon has been seen as being in direct competition from these same sellers who’ve bolstered and grown their business. Amazon has over 100 individual, private label brands that it sells. They claim that the use of their proprietary sales data is used to inform their private label businesses of opportunities and sales trends. This information would obviously give them an edge over any company on their platform, even though Amazon claims they do not look at individual seller data but rather data in aggregate. Regardless, the access to information that only can be known at a platform level can only be interpreted as an unfair competitive advantage over individual sellers. This is the crux of any antitrust accusations to Amazon’s private label business; that they’ve taken advantage of their competition. This inside information has made them able to acquire, copy, and stifle the competition of these same third-party sellers that once made Amazon the behemoth that it is now.

Trouble in Washington

In May of 2021, suit was filed against Amazon by the Attorney General of Washington D.C. over their unfair price tactics. This joined the ongoing anti-trust cases against other big tech firms, Google and Facebook. The House Judiciary Committee brought forward 6 bills in an anti-trust legislative package that was approved to continue in June. These bills are not directed solely at Amazon, but are a measure intended to bring some regulation to tech companies – that unlike many other industries –  have been able to grow unencumbered by government intrusion. If this move is for better or worse seems to be up for personal opinion. On the surface, the House legislators are trying to even the scales of government intervention across all of public sectors and prevent price fixing or manipulation under the idea of consumer protection. 

Of the 6 bills, the one most pointed towards Amazon is the Ending Platform Monopolies Act, which is sponsored by Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash. Her district covers Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle along with many other tech companies such as Microsoft. This bill aims to prevent platforms from offering a product or service that users must purchase or use in exchange for access to the platform. 

This can be interpreted to fly in the face of Amazon where sellers pay the FBA premium in exchange for a competitive advantage. Conversely, you could look at it as a premium service offering that in no way bars other sellers from accessing the platform. Where this will land depends largely on the information that only Amazon knows and litigators hope will be uncovered in the upcoming months.

With the increased pressure upon them from lawmakers, Amazon has started to use its considerable war chest to bolster its defence with a D.C. area-based legal team, comprised of former federal prosecutors and regulators. Hoping that these insiders can use their knowledge of the system to steal Amazon against allegations that could affect its future profitability and returns to shareholders. 

In addition to the in-house legal council in 2020, Amazon spent in excess of $18 million on lobbying expenditures. This is only second to Facebook’s lobbying spend, and a company record thus far. These lobbying topics include data privacy, drones, veteran employment, and COVID-19. 

They’ve also decided to try to mobilize their sellers – those very people that the legislation is attempting to empower. Amazon’s take is that big government is coming to make it harder for Amazon to do business, thus affecting both vendors and sellers on their domain. In conjunction with an email they sent to all of their merchants, They’ve set up a website to help sellers stay up to date on the newest news, branding both communication attempts to launch fear among the very people Amazon relies on to service its customers. 

In Conclusion

In the end, it appears that Amazon’s past behavior is starting to catch up with it as it evolves from a plucky startup story to a monolithic tech empire. To make light of the company’s arc, it does seem to echo that of its founder Jeff Bezos. Bezos started as a brilliant and quirky guy in Seattle who was fanatical about customers that would share with anyone who listened about his very unique warehouse cataloging systems. His story of a humble founder, refusing to upgrade his 1997 Honda even after being minted a multi-billionaire seems counterintuitive to the current state of affairs. This original image is a far cry from the current day in which he has a reported $21 million car collection, donning a stetson to play space cowboy, and has been embroiled in some scandalous private life affairs. What a journey it has been. 

Much like its founder the company is understandably and rightfully allowed to change its business model and adapt to the new opportunities that its success has behooved on millions. In doing so, Amazon needs to be careful that it doesn’t bite the two hands that feed it – its loyal consumers turned off by the new image and its army of FBA sellers who bolstered its web presence to stratospheric heights. This isn’t so much a tale of David and Goliath as it is a fight between David (the government) and David (tech titans) and the only Gloiath is the sellers and end users in the bleachers trying to avoid being collateral damage as they look on to the ensuing battle.