interpret Amazon sales data: graph

How I Use Jungle Scout Data to Help My Amazon FBA Success

We have all been there before: rapidly clicking around Amazon, scanning through the Jungle Scout results, trying to interpret Amazon sales data, looking for the ideal product that lies in the crosshairs of high sales potential and low competition.

What was before a challenge of tedious data aggregation has become the challenge of data overload. Well, there’s actually no such thing as too much data… But it is understandably confusing for many Jungle Scout users to know how to interpret the data, and which criteria matters. Should you prioritize the ideal number of reviews over the estimated monthly sales, or look for only FBA sellers vs. no more than two FBA sellers in the top 10? And what is the sweet spot between sufficient customer demand and too many sellers already competing for the demand?

I’d like to lay out some of the general guidelines that may help you parse through the Jungle Scout data. Please note: these will not be hard and fast rules applicable for all situations. Everything should be tailored to your own tolerance for competition, marketing investment, and risk, as well as the Category and customer you are targeting. And of course stating the obvious: there are no guarantees for a profitable product, regardless of how much data you collect or how promising the numbers may look. The only way to surely know is if you actually get started and start the process of selling.

You can get the exact same data by using Jungle Scout’s web app features and Chrome extension.

You may have heard my podcast with Scott Voelker on The Amazing Seller where I lay out some of the criteria for promising products. In brief, these are summarized as:

 

Is There Sufficient Demand ?

I like to see a total sum of at least 3000 units sold per month for the main keyword (using  Jungle Scout sales estimates). The rationale here is that I ultimately want to sell at least 10 units per day of my product. I believe that I can capture at least 10% of the existing market and get my product in the top 10, which means that if there are at least 3000 units purchased, then I will meet my minimum threshold. Here’s an example of where I look to determine this. This example is after I searched for “dry bag”:

dry bag screenshot

 

Is There Room at the Top?

Competition is something that is subjective, depending on how much you are willing to invest and the time horizon you are working with. For me, I like to see a product in the top 5 with under 75 to 100 reviews. To me, this is a good indication that I can rank well in a relatively short period of time. You need to be cautious though to track the organic ranking and BSR of a product over a period of time. Let’s look at the example below, using the same results as above, for the keyword “dry bag”. :

number of reviews - dry bag

 

It looks like there is a product ranked 3 for the head term “dry bag” with only 89 reviews, and this is good news….encouraging news that I think I can get there as well. It seems almost out of place with only 89 reviews, so I like to click on the “Rank” and “Price” to see if there are any sudden fluctuations that would indicate a promotion or price manipulation to spike sales.

interpret Amazon sales data: dry bag with price drop

As you can see, from June to September, the product’s price dropped continuously, bottoming out at $13 before being brought back to its current price of $19. As Jungle Scout captures the current buy box price, this price drop could either be uniform price reduction, or more likely the seller wanted to spike sales/reviews by possibly just breaking even for these few months. It looks like this is the reason that the product is ranking so well….this worked out well for this seller!

 

Big Brand Dominance is OK

Though it is not an ideal situation to have a popular dominant brand eating up a big percentage of demand, I don’t let any one big brand in the space scare me away from the product if there are other indications that I can succeed. There are two main reasons for this: one is that Amazon is a long-tail keyword game, and there are optimizations I can make to the listing to capture demand where the Big Brand is not. Secondly, product positioning will be to my advantage, so that I can play up all the positive attributes that people love about the Big Brand, but present my product in a slightly different way, whether it is lower price, higher quality (with a warranty or guarantee), or better customer or guidance.

 

What Does This Look Like With Real Data?

If you are a part of any Amazon FBA Facebook group, you have likely come across a screenshot of Jungle Scout data where someone asks for public opinion of whether to proceed with the product. This is a very helpful exercise, and people generally have good insights to share on these as well. Sidenote: we are building out the feature to allow you to do this (while obscuring the sensitive data that would give away the particular product/niche) directly from the Jungle Scout extension.

 

I thought it may be helpful if I were to pull some of these screenshots and share some quick thoughts on them (these are the actual screenshots posted to facebook, so I have no idea what the real product is).

One thing to note is we obviously can’t tell from these screenshots if the product would have good margins or if it is a good candidate to private label, however, we are able to size up the competition and demand.

Example 1: 

 screenshot

This looks like a potentially excellent product.  Great sales volume with relatively low competition.  I shouldn’t have any problem jumping into the top 5 spots with 100 reviews.

 

Example 2: 

interpret Amazon sales data: extension

I would shy away from this product/keyword.  Why it does look like someone snuck in the top 5 spots with only 22 reviews, I would imagine he is doing a giveaway or is priced well below the competition. There is plenty of demand here, however, the competition is too steep for my liking.  It would take a lot of time or money to get my review count up to where I can compete with the guys in the top spots.

Example 3: 

screenshot 3

This looks like an excellent potential opportunity.  These items are selling like hot cakes and nobody is completely dominating.  I shouldn’t have any trouble popping up in those top 5 spots.  If I had some extra promotional money, I could giveaway 50 or 100 right off the bat (to a review group) to jumpstart my review count.  If I was on a tighter budget, I could giveaway 10 or so then work on my review count with a good follow up series to organic buyers.

 

In Closing…

So these are just a few of the criteria I use when scanning through products. Again, I want to emphasize that there is no right answer, and at some point overanalyzing your product choice is counterproductive to making moves forward and getting something up.

A quick note as well, I will be walking through my product selection process in a live webinar on October 13th, 9p EST/6p PST. It will  be a totally free webinar, and a good chance for you to look over my shoulder as I choose a product. In subsequent weeks, I will be going through the whole product launch process, you can read more about it here. If you can’t attend, we will be recapping our progress on our blog, and you can always participate in the comments section. So let me know of other important criteria that you look at when evaluating the viability of a private label product.

 

28 comments on “How I Use Jungle Scout Data to Help My Amazon FBA Success

  1. When adding up the estimated sales per month, do you add the sponsored products, or count ten after the sponsored ones?

    1. It depends on how you want to read the information. I like knowing how well the sponsored products are doing so I can make estimates on how well my own advertised products will do in the space. But if you’re interested in only organic results, you may wish to remove them.

  2. Hi,

    Why many of the products have high Opportunity Score but very large average sales rank and vice versa?!

    I thought the lesser the rank + the higher the score is the key isnt it?

  3. I have a product through jungle scout but only doing 1 sale per day.It had 3200 sales per month among top 10 sellers.5 of these sellers had less than 75 reviews.No major brand and I think my launch plan sucks.I have tried jumped.Do you recommend any reviewer group?

  4. Hey Jungle Scout, love your series, great info.

    I am struggling on your 3000, 10%, 10 units per day math. I’m clearly missing a key piece.

    Goal is to get in top 10% of sellers and to sell 10 units/day, that’s 3000/month.

    So the guidance is the sum of the top 10 sellers being at 3000/month. If the goal is 10% of that demand then you need the sum to be 30,000/month.

    What am I missing?

    1. Hey Charles,

      Sorry for any confusion. Typically, the rule of the thumb is that you want to find a product that’s selling 10 units per day at $10 in gross profit per unit. Therefore, that’d be $3,000 per month, not $30,000.

  5. Hello, my name is Raquel Hargreaves, I curious about Jungle scout, I am an amazon seller I am a newbee what can Jungle scout do for me? Thank you..

    1. Hey Raquel,

      Jungle Scout is a suite of product research tools that help you predict the average sales for a given product search page. For example, if you plugged in “garlic press” into Amazon’s search engine and then clicked on the Jungle Scout Chrome Extension widget, it might tell you that garlic presses sell an average of 1,000 units per month with an average of 500 reviews. Then, the PRO version would actually calculate an opportunity score based on that information… 1 being, don’t touch that product with a ten-foot poll, and 10 being GO GO GO!

      Definitely check ’em out: https://www.junglescout.com/the-chrome-extension/

  6. Hi Greg!

    I got a problem that i’ve already bought jungle scout pro. But i can not find FBA estimate cost for an item in this software.
    Pls, help me to find out.
    Thanks and best regard!

  7. Hi Kym!! I was reading your comment on the main things to consider when doing a research. I am new to Amazon and I am starting my product research as an FBA seller.

    Is the level of competition reflected on the number of reviews? And why do reviews express the level of competition?
    What about the number of sellers?

    Thanks!!!!

    1. Hey Gabriela,

      Our guide is to look for product ideas where sellers in the top 10 have less than 100 reviews.

      We have covered this exact process in some of our recent case studies where we launched products on Amazon in the public domain and shared all of our secrets 🙂

      Check out this posts to get a full detailed walk through:

      Advanced product research for Amazon.com

      Hope this helps! 🙂
      Kym

  8. Hello Greg,

    Thanks for the blogs and webinars we are really learning.

    When working with product research using Chrome Extension, I have been really confused with Opportunity Score and Review fields like which one should one prioritize as I thought like both should have been indirectly proportional? like when the number of reviews get low, the opportunity score should raise and vice versa.

    while doing product research, I observed some cases with few reviews and still low opportunity score as well as for some other products many reviews and still high opportunity score.

    so my question is, should we base our niche/opportunity decision on Opportunity score or reviews like high opportunity score or low number of reviews?

    1. Hey Wasel,

      I think I responded to a similar question you left on one of our other posts but opportunity score is our own proprietary metric. It’s there as a guide only and takes into consideration things like demand and competition. It’s just something you can use as an easy guide as you are browsing products using Jungle Scout, but you should also dig deeper and do your own product research for any products you are interested in selling.

      Some products may have low reviews but the opportunity score might still be low if there is not significant demand, for example.

      When doing your research the main things to consider are:

      – Demand
      – Level of competition
      – How easy is the product to source and import
      – Profit calculations: the product needs to be profitable

      It’s also a great nice to have if the product can be improved in some way, so that you can enter the niche with a great unique selling point!

      Many thanks,
      Kym

  9. Hello, I am totally new to FBA/Jungle scout world. What exactly jungle scout program should I sign up for? I am just starting and of course am in search of products to sell via FBA. I need to find a product, a manufacture and complete the entire circle. Please help. Just tell the on program that will give me all the pertinent information I will need to find the products.
    Thank You!

    1. Hey Roseli,

      There are tons of courses out there (many of them paid). Personally I haven’t tried a paid course, but we do offer what we believe is the best resource for newbies for free. It’s called The Million Dollar Case Study. We are working towards building an Amazon business to $1 Million in revenue and donating the profits to charity.

      We already completed the first leg of the case study and launched a product in the US, you can follow every step of the way here: MDCS US
      Currently, we are working towards expanding our business into Europe, which you can follow along with here: MDCS Europe

      Best of luck on your journey 🙂

      Kym

  10. Hi Greg & Ken,

    My request to join your FB group is pending and I am eager to have this question answered so I thought I’d try to post it here first. Hope this is an appropriate place to ask the question:

    I watched the webinar last night. Thanks so much for all the great information! I’ve been learning so much from you guys and Scott Voekle.

    I just started doing some preliminary product research using the Jungle Scout web app. Really excited about the power of this Application!!! Wondering if it’s advisable (as a beginning seller) to bundle different products that naturally go well together (I just learned this is technically called bundling & multi packing is when you bundle the identical item) in order to get up to the price point that I want to sell in a specific category? Ex. Selling a product with a carrying case &/or something else you would naturally use that product with. In some cases, it doesn’t make sense to multipack (ex. double or triple the exact same product) the product in order to raise the price point. Also, in this same vein, is it advisable to try and bundle items that naturally go together, but that might be found in different parent categories?

    Thanks in advance,
    Julie

    1. Hi Julie,

      Glad that have used the web app to find some products! Bundling is a great idea in order to create a differentiated offering and bump up your price per unit sold. There may be some logistical steps to follow as far as how you list it on Amazon and store it in the warehouses. However, if it is your first product, it may be good to do thorough product research for one product that you think will sell well and get your feet wet with that one product. Hope that helps!

      Gen

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