Share Your Amazon Product Selection Tips

Hi

Here are some tips:

Don't be too rigid in your price range and number of reviews
Lower priced items can make up for low commissions with higher quantity sales. They will also boost your total items shipped and raise your commission on all your sales.

People rarely leave reviews so if even having a couple of reviews means an items is selling. Rely on your other research (Google searches, trends, hot products) rather than just a number of reviews.

Finally, a lot of Amazon affiliates,especially new ones, are using cookie-cutter guidelines and all hitting the same narrow range of products. Varying what you look for can find some low hanging fruit.

Think about what people will buy online
Some items are more likely to be sold online than in the store. Anything a customer would want to see or examine is more likely purchased offline. They may read reviews and do research online, but then they will run down to the corner and buy it at the store.

Good items are items that may be available but in limited selection at other retailers toys, household decor, tools and hard to get items, items with a wide number of options/colours/features.

For example a web site about bar room accessories could feature a larger selection of bar-back mirrors, barstools, taps,etc. than could be easily found offline. In addition, any cool or unique knick knacks would be attractive to people wanting to add a unique touch their buddy's "mancave" doesn't have.

Use resources outside of Amazon
When looking for what people are shopping for,use other resources besides Amazon. Sites like eBay, Overstock and shopping.com provide reports of best sellers and hot trends that can often be quite different than Amazon's. If people are searching for those items they will find your website which leads to Amazon.

Pay attention when you are out shopping yourself
I was at a hardware store and I saw they had a big display for a log splitter as I was leaving. I went on Amazon and saw a wide variety of log splitters, many with a good number of reviews and prices from the 100's to 1000's. Now a log splitter is probably something most people don't have a good selection to choose from at home and something they would order online because it is cheaper, often free shipping and delivered right to their home. And it is not something they are likely to want to try before they buy. It's also something they would want a lot of information about- such as the difference between a cheap $200 log splitter and a heavy duty $700 one. Which would they need and why?

I went to Google and found tons of searches and keywords for log splitters.

It also gave me ideas for other products in the wood chopping and lumber niche.

Search Amazon Using Google
Searching Google is a great way to find products at Amazon. You can search Amazon using Google by entering searches like these in Google Search:

site:amazon.com “(5..500 customer reviews)” "Price:$50..100"

site:amazon.com “(3..20 customer reviews)” "Price:$80..210"

site:amazon.com “(5..500 customer reviews)” "Price:$100..300" keyword

The keyword doesn't have to be a product because you will get product results if the keyword is in the description, review etc. So:

site:amazon.com “(5..500 customer reviews)” "Price:$50..500" hiking

Would return all sorts of outdoor gear.

site:amazon.com “(5..500 customer reviews)” "Price:$50..500" repair
site:amazon.com “(5..500 customer reviews)” "Price:$50..500" decor
site:amazon.com “(5..500 customer reviews)” "Price:$50..500" kitchen

Google results are fairly random so you see many niches you wouldn't find drilling down categories at Amazon off what is in your head.

Also click on Google Image Search to see pages and pages of product images from Amazon that meet your search criteria.

It is more than the product selection
More than the product you select, it is the site you present to visitors and how you get them to go to Amazon that will help conversions. They may not buy your product, but once on Amazon they may buy something else. Quality reviews, Pro/Con lists, comparison charts.

Unlike AdSense,with Amazon you are allowed to direct them to click so add Amazon affiliate links to "Click Here for more info", "Click Here for more reviews", "Click Here to see the product".

Concentrate on Getting Traffic
Once your site is up, do anything you can to drive traffic. Post on relevant blogs, create squidoo/hub pages, press release, baclinks, etc.

Don't only rely on onpage SEO and Google for your traffic. You need to work at getting ranked in Google and SEO can take time. You can use many other traffic methods that don't rely on Google like PPC, facebook, YouTube.

I hope some of that helps.

Happy New Year!

Mahlon

Thanks Mahlon, Those are comprehensive tips.


To Warrior,
Let's keep the idea flowing...
What's your amazon product selection tips that works?

I agree that there seems to be no way to accurately guess beforehand what will sell. It is possible to do basic reviews on a wide range of products on one big site, then when one product area shows it's profitable, move it to its own specialist site and do more detailed reviews etc.

Chris