When you’re doing the research for your product it is hard to be 100 percent objective. You need an expert that can find out exactly what your customers want. The problem is that there are so many different market research tools available nowadays, that it makes it hard for you to choose.
There are so many research tools out there for market research. It can be hard to decide which ones will suit your needs best. I know that when I first started researching, I was overwhelmed with the number of options.
AMZBase
AMZBase is a free, useful tool for assisting you in your search to find products to sell on Amazon. It helps sellers to quickly obtain the ASIN and the title description of listings on Amazon. As well as providing immediate access to CamelCamelCamel, Alibaba, AliExpress, eBay and Google search engines, AMZBase also calculates FBA fees to estimate your potential profits.
Keepa
Keepa is a modern Amazon price tracker that is elegant, efficient and easy to use. It offers comprehensive price history graphs, price drop and availability alerts, browser extensions, deals and a huge and constantly updated product database.
Related: How to Use Keepa and CamelCamelCamel for FBA
CamelCamelCamel
CamelCamelCamel is a price tracker that makes sure you’re getting the best deals. You don’t need an account to track your desirable products’ prices, but you do if you wish to get alerts. Plus, if you create a Wishlist in your Amazon account, it can watch the price history of all the items that you have not purchased yet, helping you decide when to buy.
Jungle Scout – The Most Beginner-Friendly Research Tool
Elevator Pitch: The most popular of all Amazon product research tools. Jungle Scout is usually the tool you start with before graduating to the big leagues.
Jungle Scout is not as powerful or accurate as Helium 10, but it’s a whole lot easier. On top of that, once you find a product, Jungle Scout connects you with thoroughly screened and proven suppliers so you don’t risk getting stiffed.
Jungle Scout Pros
- 7-day free trial
- The most beginner-friendly tool
- Opportunity score quantifies winning products into easy-to-understand metric
- Point, click, evaluate – easy as that
- Supplier database (my favorite)
Jungle Scout Cons
- Nowhere near the power or insight of H10
- You’ll need to buy other software for your Amazon FBA business
- Price-quality ratio not quite right
Jungle Scout is the most popular, beginner-friendly, and dead-simple Amazon product software out there.
Most successful Amazon FBA entrepreneurs use Helium 10, but I bet they found their first product with Jungle Scout’s web app and browser extension combo.
The whole tool is set up to make your life easier:
- 7-Day Free Trial: Start poking your nose around without spending any money. Why not?
- Niche Hunter: Don’t even know where to start? Rather than hunting a particular product, now you can hunt a niche. Say you want to find products at a certain price and monthly demand, Niche Hunter shows you different product types (ex: home and garden), to point you in the right direction.
- Opportunity Score: Imagine if experts took all the key factors of a winning product (ex: good profit margin and low competition) and put them into one simple metric. Behold! Opportunity Score. It’s not super accurate, but it’s definitely another helpful data point.
- Supplier Database: Rather than risking your entire Amazon FBA business on a random supplier in a strange land, JS’s Supplier Database connects you with proven suppliers with a long history of working with Amazon FBA sellers.
Plus it has the world famous Jungle Scout Chrome extension. Helium 10 is overall the better tool, but Jungle Scout’s Chrome extension is definitely better. It’s cleaner, more accurate, and more helpful.
Say you want to evaluate a product after finding it…
Just open the product page, fire up the Google Chrome extension, and boom.
You’ve got everything from accurate profit and sales forecasts to competition and Amazon rank in one spot. Then head over to the Supplier Database and find someone to send you the product from god knows where.
I recommend it if you just want to find your first product without investing a lot of time or money, and don’t mind upgrading in a few months when it’s time to get serious.
Why it’s not my top choice
- Value doesn’t match Helium 10: H10’s Starter plan is only about $10 more per month than JS’s entry-level plan but it delivers way more end-to-end value. If JS had more competitive prices, I’d be more keen.
- You trade convenience for confidence: JS makes your life super easy, but it doesn’t give you better keyword research ability, market, or competitor data than H10. And I’m not a fan of the product tracker. Helium 10 empowers you to make can’t miss decisions. JS, not so much.
- Not end-to-end: JS can’t handle the entire selling process from source to shipping. You’ll need some more help.
Want to give it a try? Click here to check it out!
As always, we’ve got full coverage on Jungle Scout here.
Viral Launch – The Best For International Markets (and Launches)
Elevator Pitch: Viral Launch is an advanced market intelligence system high-level sellers use to keep their pulse on the market, launch products, and run profitable ad campaigns. It has most of the same features of Helium 10 – they just aren’t as accurate or usable. However, it is available in 8 international markets! If this isn’t your first rodeo and you want the best service for photos, listings, and product launches after your next product, VL is definitely worth a look. Not recommended for beginners or intermediate sellers though.
Viral Launch Pros
- Available in non-US markets (limited tools)
- The best product launch service
- Expert market intelligence (Ex: estimated sales)
- Very smooth interface
- Great for running paid ads marketing campaigns
Viral Launch Cons
- No beginner or starter plan
- Product research tools aren’t as good as H10
- Not as user-friendly as JS
- Best features are not related to product research
Imagine a product with the most accurate, up-to-date Amazon data fed into its system regularly so you could view sales metrics (ex: estimated sales or monthly sales), trends, current prices, validated suppliers, and estimated profits in real time.
That’s Viral Launch in a nutshell.
It’s like having a mole inside of the Amazon marketplace that relays how the market is behaving as you do your research so you can spot trends or inefficiencies before others and pounce.
Theoretically, that’s all well and good. But from a research standpoint, I find that most Amazon sellers don’t have the chops to actually put all the data data to use.
Let me put it in plain English:
If you had the skills to evaluate this data and these sales estimates, you probably wouldn’t be reading this article.
Nothing personal. Even I look at the data and think “what!?!?!”.
Personally, I prefer the Helium 10 method:
Hey, you. This is good. Do this!!
There are a few things Viral Launch does well:
- Great for international Amazon sellers: If you plan to be an Amazon seller in the UK, Canada, Germany, Japan, France, Italy, Spain, or Mexico, VL’s product research tool is the only option for you.
- Product launches: VL not only helps you find and validate products, it’ll take photos of the damn things too and spread the word. There’s a science to product launches that VL has perfected (hence the name…). If that’s in your bag, check it out. VL could very well get you to the top of the Amazon results page and get you in front of hundreds of thousands of eyes for cheap.
- Market intelligence: Again, unrivaled intelligence in terms of sheer number of data points and accuracy. We’re talking pinpoint accurate sales estimates here.
Why I don’t recommend it for beginners:
- No entry-level plan: It’d be nice to use some of the features for cheap rather than getting the whole shabang for $69/mo. It’s worth it, but the other tools have better pricing.
- International tools are hit or miss: One of its biggest selling points – international markets – isn’t even that good. Only product research works in those markets. Market intelligence does as well. Everything else – zip, zilch, zero.
- It’s like Helium – just worse!: I hate to sound cheeky, but it has all the same tools as H10…they just aren’t as good. Why pay double for worse software?
TL;DR: Viral Launch is a great tool overall, but not the best for product research. If you want to find a product and pay to get someone to launch it for you, check it out.
BrandMentions
BrandMentions is a social media monitoring platform that can help you understand what your prospective customers are buzzing about online. Search for a keyword, and BrandMentions will show you recent social posts that contain that keyword, along with the context of its usage. After subscribing to the platform, you can also get sentiment analysis on the keyword.
You’ll also get other metrics such as Reach (how many people view the keyword per day), Performance (how many people engage with the keyword per day), and Mentions by Weekday (when people are mentioning the keyword).
You can use this tool for market research by finding out when people are looking for your product on social media sites. When you start announcing the new product, you can use insights from this tool to post about the launch at exactly the right time. It also allows you to find out how people are generally feeling about the type of product you’re launching. That way, you can better refine the tone of your campaigns.
Pricing: $99/month (Growing Business); $ 299/month (Company); $ 499/month (Enterprise/Agency)
Helium 10 – The Best Of the Best
Elevator PItch: Helium 10 is an unfair advantage, and easily the most powerful, accurate, and convenient Amazon seller software ever made.
I’ve used it since 2017 and haven’t never even thought about switching. It gives you more product ideas and insight than any other tool.
You can sift through product ideas, calculate profits, view sales estimates and trends, check customer reviews, and spy on competitors by reverse engineering their product listings.
Every 7 and 8-figure seller I know uses it. If you’re serious about this, get it now and never worry about it again.
Helium 10 Pros
- Free and Starter plans to get your feet wet
- As close to foolproof as you can possibly get
- Research-made-easy
- Avoid high-competition products by spying on competitors
- End-to-end software so you don’t need anything else
- Reduces risk with in-depth sales insight
Helium 10 Cons
- Not as beginner-friendly as competitors
- Free plan is a bit limited
All Amazon product research tools fall into 1 of 2 categories:
- Helium 10
- Tools that wish they were Helium 10
I once met a guy at an eCom conference who called it evil black magic. He’s not wrong. The Amazon product research phase doesn’t get any easier. It’s like a cheat code.
Instead of just helping you find a particular product, H10 is like a finder, validator, and projection machine in one. For one subscription, you get:
- In-depth competitor analysis to see if you can actually rank
- Keyword data to see what people are actually searching for
- Product tracker to see inventory estimates to make sure you can actually achieve enough sales to get reviews and avoid stockouts (Amazon will kill you)
- Review aggregation to make sure public sentiment matches your gut feeling plus the data
I hope you can see the power in that. Most research tools help you come up with product ideas.
Helium 10 helps you find a good product, make sure people will actually buy it, show you how to rank it, and evaluate the competition.
It’s actually more like an Amazon business research tool and brand builder now that I think about it.
Here’s why it’s the only tool I use…
As soon as you get the hang of it, it’s basically idiot proof (good for me!).
Helium 10 has tools for every step of the research process in one place for as low as $37/month.
It’s basically just checking off boxes at that point.
This is what my process looks:
- Product research and the keyword research tool
I type in the niche, price range I’m going after, revenue goals, and the number of reviews and it gives me immediate access to invaluable insight for 450 million products.
- Product Validation
I use Helium 10 to check monthly sales, revenue, international suppliers, inventory, historical sales data, and price across the board. Then I check the keyword search volumes. That way you know exactly what you’re getting into before sourcing a product.
- Profit calculations
I use the calculator to see how much profit I can make. It’s not always spot on but it’s a lot better than other tools or just winging it.
- Review check
Helium 10 aggregates customer reviews for me so I can see what people are saying. If people hate it, I know to stay away or what to do differently with my products.
- Competitor comparisons
I get to see exactly what I’m up against. If I find competitors with a lot of holes in their game, I know it’s time to attack.
See how it’s really just checking boxes?
Instead of doing all that hard work yourself, Helium 10 basically spits back the answer to you.
I’m not saying it does it automatically – you still need to understand what you’re looking at. But if you’re serious about building a thriving Amazon business, Helium 10 is exactly what you need.
BONUS – Helium 10 has all the tools in one place: Once you’ve got a certified winner, Helium 10 empowers you to rank on the Amazon and Google search engines, run paid ad campaigns, fight with Amazon to get refunds back, and a ton more. It’s the only tool you’ll ever need for the entire selling process.
Discount alert! They’ve been kind enough to give our readers either a 10% lifetime discount or 50% off your first month – click here to claim the deal!
Not convinced? Check out our full Helium 10 review!
Conclusion
Once you have your business plan, along with a number of factors that will affect the success of your business, you are now ready to embark on the next stage of launch preparation. Market research can be one of the most important parts of your plan, especially if you are interested in making money online.