EP #318] [ENG] - Strategies to find top winner products to sell on Amazon - Abdallah Hesham

EP #318] [ENG] - Strategies to find top winner products to sell on Amazon - Abdallah Hesham Speaker 2: Welcome to The Ecommerce Lab By Ecomcy. This is the place for everything related to Amazon private label and e-commerce. Learn exactly what you need to start or scale your business. Get insights from the top industry experts who will discuss the latest trends and best practices in the world of Amazon. From choosing products and sourcing from a supplier to setting up your Amazon account and marketing your business, you will hear it here. Let's get started. Here is your host, Vincenzo Toscano. Speaker 3: Hello guys, welcome to another episode of The Ecommerce Lab By Ecomcy, the place of air related to Amazon, FBA, Private Level and Ecommerce. My name is Vincenzo Toscano, founder and CEO of Ecomcy and today we bring you another special guest, His name is Abdallah and we actually met a couple of months ago now in Dubai. I got to know the amazing things he's been doing with community, supporting you know sellers in the Middle East and worldwide and he's also a very successful Amazon seller and that's why I wanted to bring somebody that is on the trenches every day like as a seller you're not trying to figure out how to launch the next product, how to figure out PPC, how to figure out Amazon game and I know today specifically we're going to be talking around pro research, which is something that is, you know, very, very interesting as a topic, because at the end of the day, if you get the pro research wrong, you get everything wrong. So hopefully today Abdallah is going to give us some nice insights. So welcome to the show, bro. How are you doing? Speaker 1: So, I'm doing well. Thank you for having me, Vince. It's a pleasure that we met before in World EF Dubai. It's couple... since December, I think, six months. So, it's very nice to meet people you actually watch and see online. So, it's my pleasure. Speaker 3: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being here. So, I guess, you know, for those that might not know you, give us a quick intro by yourself, yeah? Speaker 1: For sure. My name is Abdallah Hesham. I'm from Egypt. I'm a full-time Amazon seller. I started to sell on Amazon back in 2020. I literally watched every single video on YouTube in Arabic and in English. So I went from my first year selling on Amazon, I lost about 20,000 bucks because I watched all the people are saying you have to find a product that has a very high demand and very low competition. So my first two products, I didn't succeed in them, but Today I'm going to share a presentation on how to practically find a low competitive product to sell on Amazon. So I have been selling on Amazon for almost five years, ups and downs, till we reached to this level. I'm also a content creator on YouTube, focusing on Middle East. And finally, I'm Amazon ads partner in the MENA region. Speaker 3: Okay, that's good, man. So thank you so much for that intro. And I know, you know, in the MENA region, there's something actually that I want to go a little bit deeper, because that's something that a lot of sellers come to me like, oh, should I be selling Amazon in MENA regions? And what is the opportunity here and there? So maybe we can touch a little bit on that. But let's start with the pro research side of things. Like I'm sure like a seller, You know, you've been encountering a lot of processes out there in terms of what is the ideal kind of system to find winning products. And as you mentioned, you had an encounter system that have made you lose money. Some of them have made you win money. So I guess from your perspective, what do you think in 2025 is the ideal format of, you know, finding products? What do you think is working? Speaker 1: Okay, for me, what it worked, but we have to believe like selling on Amazon is like football. Each coach or like Guardiola has a technique and another coach has a different technique. So we are all right. No one is wrong. But for me, what worked for me when I started to sell on Amazon in 2020, a lot of videos are saying you have to find the product. Let's say you have the first 10 or 20 sellers are making a lot of sales. And at the same time, if these sellers have low number of reviews, that means that the market here has a demand and low competition. So I started since the lockdown of COVID. I was lucky because I have like four or five months to watch videos and get every single information that I want to know. And then I find myself in a loop, educational loop. So I decided to start selling my first product. I did a research. It was a charcoal bags and odor absorber. It's like bags contain charcoal for bad odor eliminator. And this market has a very demand, has high demand. And at the same time, I spend too much money on differentiating my product. Like I spend like 500 USD on package design only so I can beat my competition. When I started to sell my product in September 2020, I was selling like 50 units and 60 units per day since day one on launching. And I bought like 1,500 units from inventory from this product. But when I started to rank organically in the first page on my main keyword, I ran out of stock so I didn't have enough cash to buy more inventory and that's why I learned that cash flow is a very important factor that will determine you can succeed or fail on Amazon. Because I reached organic rank on the main keyword and if I have enough inventory, I can optimize my PPC because I can get more organic sales, but my Amazon balance, it was a negative because Amazon, I'm making 500 units, $500 sales, but I'm spending 500 units, so I'm negative. But my first product didn't go well and I tried to learn from my mistakes. So I know that I spent too much on advertising. This means that I have very high competition. So why people are saying number of reviews determine the competition. I started to watch more videos and luckily I saw Project X by Helium 10 from Brad and Tim Jordan. Literally, this was the only piece of content on YouTube to teach you how to really find a product that no one is selling on Amazon. Back in 2021, when I heard Tim Jordan was saying, I can show you how to find a product that no one sells, I thought, no, it's impossible because all we know that Amazon United States is a very competitive market. So I spent $200 to join Tim Jordan private community. And I told them that I will join only for product research to find the product as per your criteria. At this time, I was studying computer engineering. My family, they are saying to me, go to university, but... Speaker 3: Like me as well. I'm an engineer as well. We had this conversation. Yeah. Speaker 1: So I was going to university, but I'm not attending lectures. I was skipping and sitting on any office and watch all the product research videos for Tim Jordan. And then I started to make a research and I found the product. It was my third product and the first one to succeed. I made over six figures from this product in just seven months or something without too much spending on PPC. So it worked for me. And then I started to develop because Tim Jordan, for me, he's a legend. If he sees the episode right now, I love you so much, man, because you changed my life. But it was not easy strategy. So it's been three years for me developing this strategy until I found a way. Literally, if you spend just one hour each day for seven days, you will find a product that no one is selling. Like I can share my screen to show the audience something. Okay. Speaker 3: So yeah, for those listening, then of course make sure you tune in for the video version we're going to be releasing on YouTube so you guys can have a look at what Abdallah is going to be sharing with us. So, yes. Speaker 2: Perfect. Speaker 1: I'm just sharing my screen. Speaker 3: Okay. Speaker 1: Can you see it now? Speaker 3: Let's see. It should actually... Yeah, it's coming up. Yeah. Speaker 1: Okay, you can see it now, right? Speaker 3: Yes. Speaker 1: So I started to develop my criteria until 29 November in 2024. It was the last Black Friday. So in this day, we made over 18,000 in sales. We sold over 800 units in that day. And I want to ask you a question. Just guess how much we spend on PPC. To make this screenshot from seller boards, we made like 17,000 in sales. How much do you think we spent on PPC? Speaker 3: Maybe around $2,000, $3,000, I would say $3,000 or $4,000. Okay, so you see my screen right now, right? Speaker 1: OK, so actually we spent about less than 300 in dollars in PPC. That's why I love this strategy because. Okay, we are back here. So that's why I love this strategy because most of my sales, 90% is organic traffic. That's why I love selling on Amazon and it will be money-making machine if you understand that you are selling in a search engine. It's so different than selling on your own website. So today we will do practically about this strategy. Speaker 3: Yeah, of course, like something I think that happens many times when doing research and that's why I wanted to have this conversation with you is a lot of people end up doing the same strategies as everybody else. In terms of, you know, going for the product that's under $20, making sure that it's a shoe size box, making sure not many reviews, making sure that, for example, you don't have many variations, like things that are very kind of copy-paste and then that's why a lot of people end up with saturated kind of products, but definitely your approach of seeing things allows you to think out of the box, which at the end of the day is what you really need these days to succeed as an Amazon seller. So I guess my next question to you is like how you even, when you're doing this process of doing the pro research and everything, do you also define a budget when it comes to what is ideal, for this kind of products? Because let's be honest, the type of products you can find with a budget of $5,000 is completely different than a budget of $30,000. So how do you use that initial budget to condition the essential KPIs and characteristics that you're going to use to find a winning product? Speaker 1: OK, so I have two main criteria to identify how much should I invest in this product. But first of all, for me, the demand is not the sales that our sellers are making. The demand on Amazon, it's determined by the search volume. So if I have a very specific keyword on Amazon, it's a keyword game, not a product game. So I have to find a product that has a very specific keyword. If this specific keyword have like from 500 search volume to 1000, for me, no one is selling this product. I know the demand is not too much, but when you are the only seller selling this product, maybe you can sell like 200 units per month. You have like 90% of sales are organic, so you are not depending too much on PPC and you will have high net profit margin. So if you have another keyword that has 1000 search volume till 10 or 15, for me to determine how many sellers are selling this product, it doesn't exceed 15 sellers in the first page. Why 15 sellers? Because as you know, each page on Amazon contains like 48 listings. If the 48 listings are selling the exact product that customer want to buy specified in the keyword, when you launch a new product, your product won't be in the first page because the first page is too saturated. But if you have a very specific keyword and it has a search volume, and from the 48 sellers, only 15 sellers are selling this product, the day you launch your product, You don't need to spend money on PPC because from the first day you will be organically ranked without spending $1. And this, it worked for me. Speaker 3: Awesome. Yeah, I think keywords are definitely the way to go when it comes to research in the sense that a lot of people sometimes focus only on things that I mentioned, price point, the features, the category and all of that. But at the end of the day, you could be having the best product on your hands. But if you don't have enough opportunity in terms of keyword diversification, you might end up very fast into a category where the amount of keywords is limited and there's not much you can do in terms of expanding beyond that, right? So I guess coming back to that point, which I wanted to discuss with you, when it comes to keywords, Do you usually are looking for a product that has X amount of keywords as a minimum to be able to diversify? Like I need at least 10 keywords to have 1,000 search volume or 20 keywords to have 1,000 search volume. Like how do you make sure the opportunity is big enough for you to launch the product? Speaker 1: Okay, if the product has only one keyword, I'm not 100% sure that I will enter the market because I like to find at least two keywords so I have more ways or more doors to open to get new customers. So for me, minimum two keywords specifying for this product. One of them has at least 500 search volume. Okay. And the total of the search volume for all keywords, if it from 500 to 1000, it's good opportunity, but for the competition, you have to make sure that no one is selling this product. And today I will show you a product because I, when I hear this strategy for four years ago, I was saying, this is crazy. Every product on Amazon, there are a lot of sellers, but today I will show you some products. In order to answer your question about the budget, for me the minimum budget to start with this strategy, it's about four thousand or five thousand This is the minimum. And what I like about this strategy, it doesn't cost you too much. You know, right now, if you go to a very competitive market, let's say you are selling melatonin diffuser. So you have to buy a lot of inventory because you have to burn a lot of inventory in order to rank. So you must have minimum $20,000 or $30,000. But this strategy can work for anyone, even if he has like $4,000 or $5,000. Speaker 3: I love it. Okay. And in terms of when you do pro research, do you also try to find products that can be social proof, social media proof in the sense that you want products that are very easy to create content around and things along those lines? The reason why I ask you this and then I came to hear your take is because given the TikTok, social commerce and everything is becoming such a trendy topic lately and in terms of channel distribution, if you find products that are not future-proof in that perspective, you might end up penalizing yourself in terms of the potential growth. So are you looking for those kind of products as well when it comes to that? Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. And I will tell you something. A lot of people are saying you have to sell a product that solves a problem. I didn't make money from these products. I made money from cool products and funny products and shape the products. And these products are originated from TikTok. So the demand of the products I'm selling and I'm going to show it to you, the demand started from a TikTok video or maybe a YouTube video posted eight years ago. So TikTok, that's why I like or I love the US marketplace because it is the only marketplace on earth that the customer can buy these products that are not solving a problem. Maybe it's entertainment or decorational item. Speaker 3: Yeah, okay. And I guess in terms of variations, I want to mention this as well. Do you like products that have a big spread in terms of variations or not really? Because what I do find sometimes variation can be a very good opportunity for you to niche down your search into very specific keywords, but it depends sometimes on the product, right? So what is your take on variation? Do you like products with a lot of variations or not? Speaker 1: Okay, for me, as I said, I have to sell the exact product that the customer are searching for. So, for example, people are searching for beanbag. No, I will not sell in this keyword, but people are searching for 8-ball beanbag, you know, the 8-ball for the game. It doesn't offer for me like if the sellers have a variation or not. For me, I have to make sure there is a specific keyword and how many sellers. This is the first phase of my validation. When it comes to the next phase, I have to see about variation. So if I have sellers are selling this product, and first of all, we said not too many sellers, let's say we have five sellers. A lot of products I found only have one seller and I didn't decide to launch this product. You know why? Because I didn't find any differentiation point that I can differentiate my product and give the customer a bigger reason to buy from me and not to buy from him. His listing is so perfect. He has a great rating. He has a great design, great images and SEO. So for me, I have like two phases. First of all, determine the demand and competition, then determine how competitive are the sellers. And I will share with you also products that it has a good demand, but if you sold or launched this product, you will organically rank in first page, but your conversion rate, it will be very low because you cannot compete with such a big seller. Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree. I agree. And I guess talking about competition and everything, I want to bring very briefly to a conversation PPC, like, is that something that we're doing pro research, you also have a look at like, what is the average cost per click? What is the average a kind of a conversion, all these metrics that go beyond the actual traditional KPIs? Is that something you have a look at as well? Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. But I will tell you something. I know PPC and I use PPC, but my sales are 80 percent or 90 percent organic. So I don't depend so much on PPC. And if you want to know the average CPC for my products, it's about one one dollar. For CPC and also I like to make higher bidding. I have a keyword I spend on this keyword like 30,000 last year and it generated for me like 90,000 in sales This keyword has a CPC of $1 but I am bidding at $10 because no one is bidding at this keyword and I'm trying to raise a bid because I I have high bets. I have a good conversion rate. So in case any new seller coming to the market, it will be somehow competitive for them to launch PPC. Unknown Speaker: Cool. Speaker 3: And I guess in terms of the pro research phase, how you also maybe consider like maybe protecting the product with patents or trademarks or anything like that. Is that something you usually also recommend to take in consideration? Speaker 1: For sure, this is a very important step, but I'm not an expert in the patent and IP and trademarks. But if you can do something like this and you will control the market, and I will tell you something very, it's a blue ocean. If you find a product related to a trademark, let's say, for example, Cheetos, you know the Cheetos snacks, Let's say you found a keyword on Amazon. It's Sheetus Pillow. You cannot sell this product if no one has a license agreement with Sheetus to sell this product. If you can get a license agreement, you will control the market for at least three or four years and make a lot of money and make a very big brand about it. And I know a lot of examples are selling iPhone cases or socks related to a very famous brand. Speaker 3: Yes, actually, something I wanted to go on. Yeah. Speaker 1: Another thing, you know, I have a product that I've been selling on Amazon for three years and only in the three years, two competitors only are entering the market. Not too much. You know why? Because the products we are going to find today You cannot find from any software. And when we share our screen, I will tell you why. Because the software are looking for a specified metrics and we are looking for a different metrics. And we will, I will show you when I share my screen. Speaker 3: Sure. Yeah. So are you, are you gonna, you want to share it now or you, or you want to do it towards the end? Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay, so before we dive in in product research, we just have to summarize the criteria we want to find. First of all, we have to find at least two specific keywords for specifying for a product and total search volume for this keyword. If it's from 500 to 1000 per month, then no one is selling this product. So it's a good opportunity to enter. But if you have From 1000 search volume to above, then maximum 10 or 15 sellers. So how we will start our product research? We don't use any software or any tool. I love using Helium 10, but I use Helium 10 only for validating the idea and getting the data. What we will use, first of all, you have to find or search for any category or any niche. Just brainstorm. If you don't like to do brainstorming, you can go to ChatGPT. And a few months ago, I discovered a very nice tool. It's a free tool in Amazon Seller Central. Amazon, it can give you thousands of niches. You can take each niche. Then we start our product research. So first of all, we will find a niche. Then you can I used to search with this niche in Pinterest, on Etsy, on TikTok, and also on brand analytics, but today we will search on Pinterest. So I will share my screen right now. So you can see my screen. Speaker 3: Yes. Speaker 1: So first of all, this tool, it's called Category Insights. You can find it in Priscilla Central. Just go to the menu, Gross and Marketplace Product Guidance, and then choose Category Insights. So simply this tool, you can also define by the marketplace. So today we will use United States. First, choose any category, okay? I will just use a home and kitchen. What I need from this tool is to give me the common niches or common words that are searched by the customer. So you can, you also need a skill in order to choose which keyword will you choose. I will give you an example, like skirt. No, I won't take this niche because it has a lot of variations, has a lot of sizes. Kitchen, I don't like kitchen because selling, even if you find a good product, the selling price is too low. But I found here a keyword. It's called diffuser. OK, diffuser. I can sell it above 20 or 30 dollars. It's easily that I can source from China. And what it matters for me the most. That diffuser, I have to choose a niche that can has a lot of designs, okay? So diffuser, it can be a diffuser shaped like something or real thing in the life. So I will take the keyword diffuser and go to Pinterest. Don't search with a diffuser keyword only. Just put like a funny or cute or unique or shade diffuser. Because what I love about the US marketplace, a lot of people, especially the TikTok has a very TikTok plays a very big role. So the customer right now, they can buy a cool products or funny products, not only the products that are solving the problem. So right now we are on Pinterest. We don't use any software or tool. How we will find that this product is worth to validate on Amazon or not? For me, first of all, you have to make your eyes like an x-ray or radar. You have to analyze each image in the page and just stop on the product or the image of the product that can be described as a keyword. For example, Can you describe this diffuser in just two words? Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it would be aroma, aroma and vibes, maybe, I don't know, something like that. Speaker 1: Yeah, but yeah, you're right. But this, what we are talking about, that aroma diffuser, still, it's a very generic, the customer doesn't have a very intent to buy a specific product. But we just want to keep looking and making an x-ray. Then this product comes. Can you describe this product in just two words? Speaker 3: Yes. Not really. Speaker 1: It's shaped like a disco ball. You know disco ball in the United States? Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 1: So this product you can call it disco ball diffuser. Let's see another example. This product you can describe as a whale diffuser or elephant oil diffuser. So on Pinterest, I want to stop on the products that have an image can be described in a certain keyword. And then Pinterest, it's fine for me. Let's go to another product. So Let's validate the disco ball diffuser. As we said before, we need a surge volume to make sure that there is a surge volume and then it has 1,600 surge volume. First of all, I don't depend on the surge volume for right now. I need to make sure for the last year it's consistent or Playing around a specific point as you can see the average search volume for this keyword for one year. It's about One thousand seven hundred one thousand five hundred so it's consistent on this point then For the competition I must see more than ten or fifteen sellers, so let's check Okay Let's count how many sellers are selling this product. One, two, three, four and five. Okay. Then we go down. Can we consider this a competitor? Speaker 3: Yes, it's a disco. It's a wax. Yeah. I mean, it's more like, yeah, it could be to some extent. Speaker 1: Yeah. But to be honest, this one is not a competitor. Speaker 3: Why? Speaker 1: That's why we said Amazon, it's a keyword game. People here are searching for disco ball diffuser. These ones are diffuser. But this one, it's not a diffuser. It's a wax melt. It's similar to Diffuser but it's a totally different product. That's why this one has 93 reviews and it's ranked number 6 and this one has 18 reviews and it's ranked number 5. So you know when Amazon considers ranking a product, it has many factors but the main factor is how relevant This product related to the keyword. So, okay, we can count this one, six competitors, but this one, it's a disco ball, but it's not a diffuser. It's not related to wet smelting or something. This one is not a competitor. This one actually is a planter. Amazon says you have 48 products or seller in this page, but actually you have six sellers only selling this product. When you launch this product, The day one you will be ranked in the position seven or eight why without spending a dollar on PPC why because Amazon needs people or offers to use the keyword in the listing so this because Amazon here is showing unrelated offers in this keyword Okay, so why? If we used softwares like Helium 10 or any other great software, we cannot find these types of products. I will show you. Speaker 3: I like actually this dynamic just to make a quick point. This is because it's very driven on how actually people shop on Amazon. That's very visual. It's based on what is the actual features and the thing that make your pro unique. And you're doing that very clearly on the demonstration like is essentially trying to convey a product that is essentially a high level. It seems like there's a lot of offers, but when you actually go down, only a few fulfill the need, which is it's actually even good from a defensive point of view, because that means a lot of people might not even sell this product ever again because they don't just don't go as deep as you're doing with the data. You see what I mean? Speaker 1: Yeah. So what we do if we do a normal product research on Helium 10 or Jungle Scout, We open a tool like BlackBox and entering some data. Some people are using BlackBox keyword to search for a keyword. So they enter, we need to find a keyword that has a minimum search volume of 1000 and maximum number of reviews, let's say 100. People are using this strategy, but if you use this strategy, you cannot find this product. Why? Because when you enter on Helium 10 BlackBox, This keyword, this kubold diffuser in the database for Hellington, it has average reviews about 800, not 100. But in reality, this data, it's not 100% right, because these data are average for sellers are not selling the product like this one. Okay, so we have only six. Okay, we can just One, two, three, four, five, and six. If we deleted this, okay, I don't know. Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay, delete from here. So, The average number of reviews for this keyword, it's about 886, but it's saved on the database on Helium 10, about 800 reviews on average. So that's why you cannot find a product like this in Helium 10 or any software. And for me, I have been selling with this strategy for almost three years, and only two or three sellers just entered the market. Speaker 3: Wow, that's amazing. Thank you for sharing that. To be honest, it's a strategy that I haven't seen before, so it's very niche and very unique approach. I'm sure a lot of the listeners and the ones watching are going to get so much value, especially in 2025, that we need, you know, more and more ideas to really stay in the game. So I think to start coming to a closure, Abdallah, is there any other advice, insights you think you want to share for people to complement with this strategy to have a successful launch and pro-research on Amazon? Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe two. First of all, you have to know that selling on Amazon, it's a marketplace. It's a search engine. So it doesn't depend on the product you're selling. It depends on the keyword. So Amazon is a keyword game, not a product game. The second advice, and it's very important, Amazon, it's also a cash flow game. Even if you entered the market with $3,000 or $5,000, But if you are making 300 units per month, that means you have to buy a stock not only to cover your 30 days of sales, you have to buy a stock for the shipping time and production time. So Amazon also, it's a cash flow. You have to understand how cash flow and how the cash flow cycle works on Amazon. And the third one related to our product research, just brainstorm and go use Category Insights tool and don't pick the niche that you are familiar with. The most beautiful products I have ever seen when I started to research with a niche, I didn't know even about it. So just discover. Speaker 3: Awesome. Thank you, Abdallah. I think it's been an amazing episode. Thank you so much for all your wisdom. And I'm sure there's some people who want to go more in depth when it comes to having this conversation. So tell us how people can find you and get in rich with you. Speaker 1: Okay, you can find me on Instagram. I will show you my username right now. And also on YouTube, but my YouTube channel is in Arabic, so it's... Speaker 3: You can use AI to translate. Speaker 1: Yeah, you can find me on Instagram. This is the username, The H, and this is my email. I'm happy to receive all of your questions related to Amazon. And thank you, Vince, for having me. It's a pleasure, and we hope to do another episode. Speaker 3: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much. It's been amazing. Hopefully I'll see you soon. Yeah. Have a good one. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 3: Thank you. Speaker 2: Bye bye. Thanks for listening to The Ecommerce Lab by Ecomcy. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss an episode. While you are at it, we would appreciate it if you could leave an honest rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. That will make it easier for others to find out about the show and benefit from it. Want more? 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