so in this video we're going to look at
the five product types you want to avoid
when doing your amazon fba product
research
so arguably product research is the most
important stage when you're going
through the process of launching a new
amazon fba business
because no matter how well informed you
are or how well you execute the other
stages in the business model so for
instance
no matter how good your product images
are how well optimized your product
listing is or how good your ppc
campaigns are
if you've picked the wrong product from
the beginning then that product is
never going to do well so product
research is super super super important
and that's why i've decided to do a five
part mini series all about how to do
product research
properly and in this video which is
going to be episode one we're gonna be
looking at
the five product types that you want to
avoid when doing your amazon fba
product research then in next week's
video we're going to look at what makes
the perfect amazon fba product
so if you're new to the channel make
sure that you are subscribed with that
notification bell turned on so you get
notified when each video in this product
research series
comes out also guys if you're enjoying
the video give it a thumbs up helps give
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to more people
so without further ado let's talk about
the first type of product that you want
to avoid which
are ppc restricted products so for the
vast majority of products sold on amazon
you are actually able to run
ppc campaigns however for some specific
product types you're not actually able
to they're ppc
restricted and this includes products
like adult products so any
sex toys or really any sexually related
products
drug paraphernalia so bongs pipes
smell proof bags anything related to
drugs
and finally religious items so crosses
or anything that's related
to a specific religion for those kind of
product types you're not
going to be able to run ppc ads and the
reason why this is a problem is for two
main reasons
number one it makes it harder to launch
and number two it makes it harder to
stay ranked for specific keywords so if
we come over to amazon and
look at a product that is not ppc
restricted such as water bottles
if you scroll down you can see that the
first full listings are sponsored
products so these sellers are running
ppc campaigns for these products
targeting the keyword
water bottles if instead we look at a
product that is ppc restricted
such as a bong which counts as drug
paraphernalia
you can see that there are no sponsored
ads running
for this product so obviously when we
think about launching a new product
the idea is to drive traffic to the
product listing and drive sales velocity
to increase
organic rank and obviously there are a
number of different ways to do this such
as facebook ads
google ads youtube ads but no matter
what kind of external sources of traffic
you're using the kind of foundations of
any launch
should be amazon ppc and obviously if
you're ppc restricted
and you're launching one of those
products you're not going to be able to
incorporate
amazon ppc into your launch process or
your launch plan
so in a nutshell if you decide to launch
a ppc restricted product
you have to rely heavily on off amazon
advertising to be able to launch and
keep your keyword ranking
which in general will cost you more
because you're advertising to a cold
audience rather than a warm audience who
are ready to buy
and secondly it's less specific and less
controlled than using ppc
to rank okay so the second product type
that you want to avoid when doing your
amazon fba product research
are fragile products so really you want
to avoid any product that can be broken
easily so products that are made from
glass
or porcelain or any fragile material and
the reason why you want to do that is
because there are just
so so many places that that product can
break along its journey
from your manufacturer to your customer
the product
can break during shipping from your
supplier to the uk
so for instance from china to the uk if
you're getting your products
manufactured in china
that product can break when it's being
sorted or sent between the amazon
filament centers
that product can break when it's being
shipped from the fulfillment center
to the customer there's just so many
places where that product can break it's
important to understand that amazon
don't check
every single box obviously if your
products arrive at the amazon
fulfillment centers
and the box is completely crumpled and
destroyed then amazon
will let you know however if the box is
intact and let's say you have a
porcelain product that's really tightly
wrapped and there's a small crack
amazon's not going to go through all of
those products checking that every
single product
is completely undamaged if there's no
noticeable damage then that will go
into your fillable inventory and that
will be sent out to customers
now obviously the last thing we want to
do is ship our customer a broken or
faulty product because number one
they're likely to leave a negative
product review
number two they're going to say that the
item was defective which is going to
give us a high defect rate which is
going to negatively impact our seller
performance
and finally we're just going to lose
money on that product because that money
is going to be in front of the customer
yet we've still paid for a fulfillment
fee so generally i would advise just
avoiding fragile products all together
however if you do decide that you want
to launch a fragile product
what you're going to need to do is make
sure that your supplier packages the
product
properly and run a drop test get them to
drop the package
from head height onto the floor and make
sure that the product survives that drop
okay so the third product type you want
to avoid when doing your amazon fba
product research are
large and heavy products now the reason
why you don't want to avoid
large and heavy products is because
they're going to cost you
much much more in three different places
number one it's gonna cost you more to
ship those products from your
manufacturer
to your local amazon fulfillment center
number two you're gonna have to pay more
in amazon storage fees and finally
you're gonna
have to pay more in amazon fulfillment
fees okay so let's talk about shipping
from your manufacturer at your local
fulfillment centers
you're most likely not going to be able
to ship your item by air if it's large
or heavy because it's just going to be
too expensive the price is going to be
prohibitive so you're going to be forced
to ship your products by sea
now obviously there's pros and cons to
both which i'm not going to go into in
this video but if you're interested in
that
i'll put a link to a video around here
somewhere that i did a few months ago
comparing air and sea shipping
but you're basically going to be
restricted to sea shipping and that sea
shipping is going to cost you a lot more
than if you were to launch a smaller
lighter product
then you have your amazon storage fees
these are the fees that amazon charge
you
per cubic foot per month to store your
products at their fulfillment centers
so let's say that you are launching a
small light product like a water bottle
that you could fit 10 into a square foot
then for that water bottle you'll
probably be looking at paying somewhere
between kind of
seven and nine pence per month to store
that product amazon
if instead you're launching a bulky item
that say is a full square foot you're
going to be paying 10
times that in storage fees closer to
somewhere between 66 pence and 93 pence
per month for amazon to store that
product and finally let's look at the
amazon fulfillment fees
so these are the fees that amazon charge
you to pick pack and ship
your product to your customer if we
scroll down you can see
that the larger the product the more
amazon will charge you for this
fulfillment fee
and on top of that the heavier the
product the more amazon will charge you
for that fulfillment fee so if you were
to launch a heavy and bulky item it's
going to cost you a lot more
in shipping storage fees and fulfillment
fees so obviously if you're able to
launch a small and light product
then all of those fees and costs are
going to be lower which is going to
allow you to be able to have a larger
profit margin and we're going to talk
about that more in next week's video
all about what makes a perfect fba
product so the fourth type of product
that you want to avoid
are clothing items and the reason why
you want to avoid
launching clothing items is because of
the issue with different sizes and the
fit of those clothes
so every single person has a completely
different product shape and you will
know that if you go shopping
in one shop or a different high street
shop that in some of those different
shops you might have a different way
size you might wear a different t-shirt
size because
every different designer every different
store
has a different cut of clothing and
that's going to fit each individual
person differently
so one of the problems with launching a
clothing product is that you're going to
have a much higher return rate because
that product
is not necessarily going to fit everyone
properly and obviously a higher
return rate means that that customer is
being refunded for that product and
you're still paying that fulfillment fee
so you're going to be losing money there
and then on top of that if the customer
returns a product to amazon in an
unfulfillable state
you're then going to have to create a
removal order to have that product sent
back to you
or destroyed because you're not going to
be able to sell that that product to a
new customer and you're going to lose
money you're going to lose that product
cost so again in general i just say
avoid
all clothing products that have multiple
sizes however if you are dead set on
launching a clothing item
what you want to do is do two things
number one make sure that you have a
very very clear sizing chart as one of
your product images so the customer can
see it
and they can measure themselves and in
the description or in the bullet point
to make
it very clear ask the customer to
measure themselves
against that chart before ordering your
clothing product obviously if you get a
customer to do that
they're more likely to pick the right
size there's more like to fit them and
you're less likely to get a high return
rate
so the fifth and final type of product
that you want to avoid
are seasonal products and i would define
any product that has higher demand at a
specific point in the year
as a seasonal product so to give you
some examples summer products so
inflatable swimming pools anything that
you would only use when the weather is
good would be a seasonal products
winter products again any product that
you would only use when the weather's
cold outside would be seasonal and then
finally
event specific products so mother's day
products christmas products
those are all seasonal products they're
going to have much higher demand at a
specific time of the year and much lower
demand
in the remaining part of the year so how
do you actually go about
finding out if a product you're
considering launching is a seasonal
product
it's actually really easy to do all
you're going to want to do is just come
over
to google trends make sure that you
select the country that you're based in
on the right hand corner this is really
important because
a product may not be seasonal in another
country but might be seasonal in your
country so i just dropped down and
selected united kingdom
and then you just want to search the
main keyword for your product so let's
say we are looking at something
like a inflatable swimming pool
pool which we know is seasonal
if you then hit a view
a five year period so what google trends
is doing here is showing us a search
volume for the specific keywords
which kind of indirectly relates to
demand for this specific product
over a time period and what you can see
is these distinct peaks and troughs
so we can see that search volume from
inflatable swimming pools as expected is
really high over the summer months
and then really low over the winter
months so this is a classic example of a
super seasonal product so there's two
main reasons why you want to avoid
seasonal products
number one is that you may not
necessarily launch that seasonal product
in time let's say it's coming up to
christmas
you see that a specific product is
getting quite popular and you want to
launch christmas products
if manufacturing takes a bit longer or
shipping takes a bit longer for whatever
reason you don't launch in time
you may actually miss that seasonal
period and you might
launch into a low period and you'll have
the same kind of issues if for instance
you don't actually sell
your launch is not that successful and
you don't actually sell as many units as
you expect
what will happen is you're left with all
this excess inventory being held at the
amazon fulfillment centers because
as you come out of the seasonal period
that product doesn't sell as well and
your
units are just not moving off the
shelves and what's going to happen is
you're going to be paying the amazon
storage fees for amazon to hold those
products at their fulfillment centers
while not making sales and you're also
going to have your ipi score
which is your in inventory performance
index drop on amazon and amazon then
might impose
inventory restrictions on your account
so really you want to avoid
those things happening because they're
going to cost you money and they're
going to cause you issues down the line
when you're planning on launching future
products on top of that your business's
cash is going to be held in slow moving
stock which is going to give you poor
cash flow
and that's going to cause you problems
when launching subsequent products down
the line
so in general i would just recommend
avoiding seasonal products however again
if you're dead dead set on launching a
seasonal products
seasonal product the two things i would
recommend is number one
launch that pit product in the low
season so you can gain reviews
you can gain some organic rank which is
going to cost you less and then
you're ready your product is ready and
ranked as you move in
to the high season the second thing that
i would recommend is that just be
conservative with the amount of stock
they hold on amazon
so you're not left with all of this
excess stock if your product
doesn't sell as well as planned okay so
i've actually got one more sixth bonus
product type that i want to talk about
and these are fad products so you really
want to avoid a fad
product and i would define any product
that becomes
massively popular and then that
popularity steeply decline declines as a
fad
product so we head back over to google
trends to give you an absolutely classic
example of this i've just searched the
keyword fidget spinner
and we can see that in 2017 it grew
massively in popularity
and then steeply declined in popularity
now obviously if you were about to
launch a fidget spinner in 2017
you wouldn't have seen the demand
steeply decreasing you would just see it
steeply
increasing and you might think this is a
great product to launch but what you
need to ask yourselves
to make sure that you do not launch a
fat product is number one
is the demand for this product
increasing too quickly
and number two is this product essential
to day-to-day life or is it a fad
product and normally if you do those two
things fat products are
fairly easy to identify and the reason
why you want to avoid
fat products is for exactly the same
reason that you want to avoid seasonal
products
by the time your products manufactured
by the time that you launched that
product
that product the demand for that product
might be decreasing it might not be as
high as it was
and essentially you're going to be left
with all this excess inventory all this
slow moving stock
where your capital is tied up in and
really that demand is never
gonna come back for that product so
you've just wasted your money on stock
that is never gonna sell
so those are the six product types you
wanna avoid when doing your amazon fba
product research i hope you found the
video interesting and helpful if you did
don't forget to give the video a thumbs
up it helps it get out there
to more people and make sure you're
subscribed for next week's video which
is going to be all about
what makes the perfect fba product
you