But did you know that you can find high potential product ideas on Amazon itself—without pricey software?

Today, I’m going to give you five steps to finding a high potential product to sell on Amazon FBA for free and without software.

1. Navigate to Amazon’s Best Sellers list.

Amazon’s Best Sellers list consists of the best selling products on the platform at that moment. To access it, go to Amazon’s homepage.

Click on All in the top left corner. 

From the top Trending section, select Best Sellers.

The page you’re now viewing shows you the top (literally best) selling products within each Amazon shopper product category (there are different categories for shoppers and sellers).

2. Choose a product category that contains products with 100 or fewer reviews.

Let’s use the Home & Kitchen category to start. 

That is a gigantic category favorite with both shoppers and sellers, meaning a large number of shoppers buy in this category on Amazon, and lots of sellers want in on that action. 

Pay attention to review count as you scroll through the list of best selling home and kitchen products. Right away, we start with an over 400,000 review product 😳

That’s more than 4,000 times the amount of reviews you want to find in your prospective market niche. Why?

Because when you first launch your product, it will have precisely zero reviews. And if you sell that review-less product in a market saturated with reviews—a 1,000 review product here, a 500 review product there, 200 review products everywhere—your product will look extremely out of place. In fact, your low to no review count will most definitely scare shoppers into thinking your product is deeply flawed (that’s also a sign of highly competitive markets, which are notoriously tough for new products and sellers).

If, however, you launch in a market where the best selling products have something like 98, 56, and 12 reviews, that suggests shoppers in that category favor product features and functionality—in other words the value offered—over review count. They might even be tempted to buy your reviewless product, particularly if you take exceptional product photos and outfit your listing with optimized copy (our membership includes a comprehensive how-to).

In order to get to these coveted, low review count categories, we niche down from our main category. 

Left of the Best Sellers list is our nested Home & Kitchen category menu. Select a subcategory from within the main one. For example, from Home & Kitchen, we can niche down into Furniture.

The best selling products have fewer reviews overall than the best sellers in the entire Home & Kitchen category, but we can do better. 

Select another subcategory from the Furniture submenu, for instance Kids’ Furniture.

Notice a pattern? 

As we niche down farther, the review counts on the top selling products decrease. By the time we hit a final subcategory, such as Step Stools, we get to a best sellers list wherein the best selling products actually have under, or around, 100 reviews. 

By the way, all of the product criteria numbers (like ideal review count) I’m throwing out today—and the rationale behind those numbers (I promise they’re not arbitrary)—come from our Amazon FBA Mastery membership, where we show you, in over 100 video lessons, how to start, build, and run your own Amazon FBA store. If you are dead serious about changing your life, we will help you on your way. Start today. 

3. Choose a product category you can build into a brand.

Building a product to sell on Amazon is one, shortsighted, thing. Building a brand is something entirely different (and better for you in the long run). 

You can grab the long version here, but the gist is that building a brand allows you to expand into other products, but you can also streamline all those products into one emotional, captivating brand story that helps you establish a loyal customer base that loves your brand. 

To captivate that customer base, you must identify what demographic it is. Starting with a highly specific product category is a great place to start your market research. 

Consider who your target audience consists of and what they would want from your product and brand. 

For instance, we settled on kids’ step stools when we niched down above. Knowing that product niche alone gives us a lot of critical information:

1. Your target audience is parents of children (most kids don’t have their own epay options).
2. Your market values safety above all else, as small children and toddlers require extra precautions.
3. Your market is perennial—year-round—nor is it a trend or fad; children will always require instruments to increase their reach.

If you were just creating a product, you might make a run-of-the-mill plastic step stool, price it low, and wind up in an accidental race to bottom for lowest price 👎

Since you’re creating a brand, however, you care more about the products you create—the care you put into crafting each reflects your brand’s values that speak to shoppers. So you create a premium step stool, complete with unique safety features, price your product higher than average, and see a steady stream of sales to satisfied parents who want the very best for their child 👍

Those are the kinds of customers who will help you go far. 

Or, they’ll at least the ones who would pay over $30 for a child’s step stool.

4. Ensure your product can sell for at least $30.

Typically, higher-priced products lead to greater profits and lower PPC advertising costs. 

Starting backwards, most sellers shy away from high priced products. Thus, there will be fewer sellers to compete against as you bid to appear for different keywords in shopper search results. That keeps your ad costs low.

As for greater profits, that comes from leveraging fixed costs, namely your shipping costs and FBA fulfillment fees, both of which are based on product size and weight.

Consider this: if you sell a $20 candle and a $120 pair of headphones, those products are approximately equal in size and weight, which means their shipping and fulfillment costs will be the same—maybe $5 for both per unit. 

That $5 cuts into your profit margins. $5 is 25% of the revenue for your candle. $5 is also 4% of the revenue for your headphones. 

Regardless of what your actual profit margins are, you are guaranteed—in this scenario—to see more money in your bank account from your higher priced object.

As you assess Best Sellers lists and niche down, pay specific attention to product sell prices and avoid any market where the majority of products are under $30. 

But there’s one more aspect to consider.

5. Ensure your product sells at least 300-500 units per month.

Right about now, you might be thinking that our promise of free research was just a gimmick. Here’s why it’s not. 

If your product sells for $30 at 30% profit margin (in our membership, those numbers are both minimums), 

• At 300 units per month, you would gross a profit of $2,700 (300 x [$30 x 0.3] = $2,700)
• At 500 units per month, you would gross a profit of $4,500 (500 x [$30 x 0.3] = 4,500)

To get those numbers, you would also need to average 10 to 17 sales per day (300 units ÷ 30 days/month = 10; 500 units ÷ 30 days/month ≈ 17). 

While software is helpful in that it can give you existing products’ estimated sales numbers, you don’t need software. 

You just need a BSR—best sellers ranking.

BSR tells how quickly a product is selling in its category compared to other products in that same category. And much like a race, the lower a product’s BSR the better. 

Not all the time, but most often, products with a BSR under 15,000 sell around 300 to 500 units per month and have strong demand 👍

So this part is actually as simple as a little math and visiting a product listing, hitting command F on your keyboard, typing in “best seller” and hitting enter. 

Just because fancy schmancy product research softwares exist and can actually be quite helpful, does not mean that they are necessary to have success on Amazon FBA. In fact, all you need is drive, grit, and perseverance and an Amazon Seller Central account. With the right knowledge, you too can build a thriving Amazon business and fire your boss. 

And if you’re looking for some help along the way, that’s where my team and I come in. Our Amazon FBA Mastery membership covers absolutely everything you need to know to start and run your very own Amazon FBA business. We will coach you step-by-step, we will share our success tips ‘n tricks, and we will troubleshoot with you along the way. If that sounds like the missing piece you’ve been waiting for, visit JOD.com/apply to speak with a member of our team who will help you decide if we are the right fit to help you grow your business.

Where’s your favorite place to scout Amazon FBA product ideas? Let me know in the comments.