7-Steps For Effectively Using Amazon For Niche Research

byDaveSw

5.7K followers

Updated 5 years ago

Basic Info:

Words: 3310

Time to Read: Approximately 8 minutes, so get a fresh coffee and a notepad/pen!

WHY AMAZON FOR NICHE RESEARCH?

Are you wondering about how to get ideas for a niche or ways to see if a niche has legs (i.e. will make you money)? Maybe you are looking for products to sell within a niche or ones to promote on your niche blog?

These days outside of the tools like Jaaxy, used to see what the keywords that will get you traffic and raise your visibility, there are a lot of ways to do your research and they cost nothing – only time, collecting data, and then evaluating what you collect.

Google, which is a good tool, is useful but there are other resources that you can tap into easily. Today I want to cover Amazon and show you how it can help in your research. It is an underused resource, and I want to change that!

Amazon is full of data that is free for the taking and is an avenue I would tap into for market research…

There you can see what the trending topics are, look at the many micro-niches within the niche markets, see what problems there are that users are having that they cannot get solutions for, look for cross-sell opportunities (shoulder niche items).

You can get ideas for your post titles, even some keyword ideas that you can then do more research with using Jaaxy or another keyword research tool, see what prospects are wishing to have, and more.

Are you excited yet?

Today I will suggest using 7 different ways (there are more) to use the Amazon platform to create a better website (i.e. sought after subjects, content and products) so that people will be excited to discover what you have on offer.

Amazon can help with your niches, help you mine niches that you may not have thought of, help you learn more about your niche, and it can give you tons of ideas for all aspects of your online affiliate marketing business.

One recommendation I have: As you do your research and mining, take notes. I am old school, so I use a pad and pen, but you can also do it using anything that will be there for you when you start analyzing what you discover.

For sure you will have many notes as you start drilling down, and as great as the information might be, unless you can collect it then use it later, most of what you see will be forgotten.

Suggestion if you just cannot get into pen and paper: I also use a great free tool called Evernote a lot, just not for this kind of research. It can be used, but again, I am old school. With Evernote, you can even create a separate notebook for each niche or sub-niche for easy reference later.

Let’s get started…

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1. Come Up With Ideas for Niches

Unless you have been under a rock for the last few years, you already know that Amazon offers pretty much everything under the sun, and over the years they have learned to present it to buyers in the best possible manner.

They make it easy for shoppers to find exactly what they want, and also get related items, best-selling items, etc. This is the same information that you are looking for, right? This is why I recommend using it for your research.

Because there are so many ways to access the information they have, it can be daunting figuring out where to begin. They do have a great categorization system for all possible topics, so that might be a good entry point…

My suggestion is that if you have no idea where to start with drilling down, go with the bestsellers category for whatever niche that you are researching. This will bring up a voluminous number of items and data to look at.

If you have no idea on the niche, start with topics. Which ones interest you? See what major category it falls under, then start drilling down. Do not get distracted (there is so much there that this can happen) – follow the niche and products all the way so you can determine if it might be for you or not.

Another route to follow. On your Amazon page, at the top tabs, you'll also see some basic categories as follows:

1. Hot New Releases
2. Movers & Shakers
3. Top Rated
4. Most Wished For
5. Gift Ideas

From these tabs you can drill down by department for any category and you will uncover valuable information about what may be trending in any one niche. Same steps as we describe, these are alternate places to start that will work.

Although there are these alternate routes to the bestseller option, and they will work, I suggest sticking with the bestseller method, and later using the tabs/categories route. Keeping it simple is never a bad idea.

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2. Which Niches Are Best

You have a starting point (bestsellers) and once you have selected a category that interests you (maybe a passion for?) you can move quickly to the department within the main niche that relates to your interest.

Amazon helps you out as they have broken down the many categories into the most popular and common niches that people are looking for. These are the ones that shoppers are checking on, comparing products in, and buying from.

That is where you want to be too. Your niche should have a large enough audience that it has enough products that are available and sought after so you know you will be able to make money by reviewing and recommending them.

Pick one department and see what is hot and bestselling. What kinds of customers are buying the products, what kind of reviews are they leaving. I do not want to get too far ahead, but I think you see where I am going?

You may be able to drill down yet further to see if there are any more narrowly defined niches that you could focus on. If you get to the point that there is little interest or activity, you likely have gone one step too far. This means you will go back up one level.

While you are on these smaller sub-categories, you can still pick up bits and pieces of other information though, so it is not a total waste of time for you likely. Maybe you can get some ideas for content or perhaps some catchy titles, etc. that you can use.

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3. See What The Competition Is Doing

This kind of information is invaluable when it comes to how you will prepare and present your content to the target audience members. It helps to know what others are doing and what helps them be successful.

You want to emulate (not copy) what they are doing but take it one or several steps further. If they are talking top 10 of something, you will talk top 20. If they are adding in an infographic, you will add a video from a related channel.

So look at the top sellers. What are they offering, how are their descriptions packaged, what kinds of images are they using, do they have a website, and if so, how is it designed and what kind of content do they have?

These are all questions that you are seeking answers to, and the reason is that you are developing a "map" of sorts with many data points that will direct you to where you will go if you pursue the niche.

Knowing who you will be competing against and what they are they selling will give you a big advantage over someone that is trying to reinvent the wheel and is stabbing in the dark hoping to hit something.

Look for topics, look for products, look at what problems the topics and problems are solving, look at buyer reviews, read what issues they are having that are not addressed with the product.

Remember, though…You are not trying to copy exactly what the competition is doing, rather you are trying to one-up them. Take your niche blog to the next level while addressing everything they may be addressing. If you be yourself and add in your own flair to the copy and website, you will go far…

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4. Research for Products & Services plus Content & Titles

I mentioned these uses above but I want to expand on this a bit more, because it is such a valuable part of what Amazon can offer you as a part of the research phase of you seeking a niche.

You will find that the more that you look at the Amazon site from a data mining perspective, the more valuable hints, ideas, and potential areas for monetization are uncovered.

Perhaps create a page for each of the subject areas above and add in notes as you filter the categories, the subcategories, the products, and the sellers. Take the best from each and add it to each of the pages you created for later use.

The more that you browse, the more ideas you will get.

At the end of your research you should have a large list of possible products to review and promote, content that you can create, titles and even descriptions to include in your own niche website. These lists and data are gold, and you can use them again and again.

When it comes to ideas, you will get them from:

1. The subcategories you visit
2. The Top Sellers in those subcategories
3. Noting the products that have a lot of reviews
4. Noting what is hot and trending at the moment
5. If you are looking at books, check out the Table of Contents of the top selling books – tons of ideas!

Since you are researching a niche to see if it is viable, you likely will not have a customer base (i.e. a leads list) but if you do have one already, you will have new ideas for campaigns that you can create that will interest the audience as you know the topics and products are in demand.

This is where another tool that Amazon has will come in handy:

People’s Wish Lists

Did you know that you can look up any person's wish list and there you will see the topics they have an interest in or the products they are looking to buy.

Think about this: If these people spent the time to add this information it to their wish list, they likely have a high level of interest - that is where you can provide what they are looking for.

Another way to leverage this feature is to look at the Most Wished For list. There you can see what the general audience wants in a particular category. You can find this on the right side of the page where it says ‘More to Explore.'

Pretty exciting, huh? Amazon is a wonderful place for marketers to spend time with (especially if you are looking for a niche, products to sell, figuring ot who to sell to, what the audiences are wanting, etc.).

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5. Discover Valuable Niche Keywords and Long Tail Keywords

Amazon has SEO and keywords pretty much aced, you can have faith in that. They have built a monster business partially through tapping into the power of SEO and it is a lesson for all of us.

Definitely the keywords and phrases that you will find used on Amazon are ones that people are also using in their Google, Bing, and Amazon searches. There will be some that you can use and some that require more research, but no matter – write them down for later use.

This is a big leg up for you, as you have a starting point to do your own further research to find the ones that you can compete for and use in your blog posts so you can grab some of that search traffic

You can also use these keywords in product reviews, product descriptions, for social media posts, for creating related videos, slideshows, etc. Use them anywhere people might be searching for your content…

What should you focus on harvesting as you do your search on Amazon for the keywords?

1. Document the category name from Amazon
2. Write down the subcategories
3. Look at top ranking search results for the key phrases and the descriptions that are drawing people in

These points will get you the keywords that you need. They also are an indicator of how difficult the niche may be to compete in once you start doing some research on them. They offer good starting points for more research later using special tools like Jaaxy.

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6. Is The Niche Viable

Again Amazon shines when you are trying to determine if the niche has legs, as in will you make money if you build a website around the niche and the products that members of the niche may be buying.

Here are some things to take note of (and physically add to your notes for later use) as you can use Amazon's data to decide whether or not to go into the niche:

1. How many products are there in the category? Is there a lot, as in thousands, or are there just a few, as in hundreds or less?
2. How many sub-categories are there below the category niche you are exploring? If there are only a few or none, you likely have hit the bottom-most sub-niche, and there may or may not be a large enough audience to make it worth your while. If that is the case, your niche may be TOO narrow and this means you will have a limited chance for success. My advice – look for another niche or go broader in that niche.
3. What kind of recommended upsells/cross-sells/combos are there for the niche (items that are frequently bought together, or ones that similar customers also bought with the items you are considering)? It is likely that if there are a lot of such options showing, you can realize some cross sales and commissions (a good thing). It also means that the audience members in the niche are spending money on products in the niche and so you have some growth potential for your own business.
4. What kind of products are on offer? How many are repeat purchases? How many are one time purchases or once in a long time purchases? This will give you an idea on what kind of sales you can expect if you can draw in the traffic from that audience.
5. How expensive are the products? Are most cheap or is there a good mix of cheaper and more expensive items? What are people buying more of? I would recommend a niche where there is a mix of price points and where expensive and cheap selections are there. Customers spending more means more commission for you.

Remember to take notes on all of this the data. Again, you will be able to again create a map of sorts that will indicate to you the overall health of the niche and the potential it may offer for your own affiliate marketing business.

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7. Discover New and Untapped Markets

While you are gathering all this information and annotating it somewhere, you can also be on the watch for looking for trends and markets that others have not identified nor pursued.

This can be done separately or you can do it while you are doing the other research above. Keep these nuggets in a separate area as they may or may not get lost in the other data you collect. You don’t want that to happen!

I would look at the reviews of the best-selling products in the niches. This is where you will find needs and opportunities that customers are looking for. You will see what they really think is important and you can often find solutions to the problems and needs – voila – you have hit gold!

Here’s is how to do this:

1. Search for the top selling products in the category and focus on the ones with more reviews.
2. Have a look at the ‘Most helpful' reviews. These are ones that others have rated as being most helpful for making their buying decisions, which also means they contain some valuable information for you.
3. Now do the opposite – look at the poor reviews/ratings. What are unhappy people writing about? Why are they unhappy? Missing features, bad customer service, low quality or perhaps they mention another competitor that is better?
4. Next you can look at the top ratings. See what people love about that particular product. Can you provide this too with a competing product (or do it even better)? Is there anything they are saying is lacking? This is when you have an opportunity to step in…
5. Watch for trends in reviews. Do not base your marketing decisions on one or two reviews. If the preponderance of people are mentioning something, it is notable. If it is just one or two people, likely not. Do not go chasing ideas down the rabbit hole with this...Make sure the ideas have legs…

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In Conclusion

So now you have an idea on how Amazon can help you in researching a niche. One precaution I want to add here. Do not commit to a niche on this research alone.

This is just one step and you should do the same drill down research using other tools or platforms such as Google/Bing/Walmart, etc., and even through other means such as your experiences, what you see around you etc.

The one overriding factor that you are trying to determine is whether the niche can make you money and ancillary related factors are as follows: (1) Can you offer unique solutions; (2) Do you have a passion for the niche; and (3) Are you willing to put in the work to flesh out the niche?

The quality of the research you do prior to selecting a niche will determine the success you will have when developing your website and your strategy. I cannot emphasize enough what an important step doing the research properly and thoroughly is.

Do this work on the front end and save yourself a lot of heartache down the road, There are no excuses, you have the guidance to get it right! The idea is to get you to results as quickly as possible. This research will help you do that!

Good luck and please let me know what your experiences have been below in the comment section. Add in your own tips and suggestions for niche research, we can all learn and be better when you do that!

Note that this post is one of a series all focused on getting you started with affiliate marketing in as fast a manner as possible while ensuring the best chance of success. Check them out too!

Here are the links to the other related posts I have made recently:

(1) Picking a niche/developing a customer avatar: https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/davesw/blog/affiliate-market...

(2) Within this post, there is a link to a great post from Kyle regarding niches - pat attention the to featured comment too while checking it out (it is my comment hehe):

https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/kyle/blog/which-niches-will-...

(3) Next, we have a planning guide for blog posts:

https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/davesw/blog/planning-guide-p...

(4) Up next, there is this post on using copywriting formulas and templates for your content creation process:

https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/davesw/blog/using-a-copywrit...

(5) Lastly, here is a post on 10 secrets of copywriting for blogs and small businesses:

https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/davesw/blog/10-tips-on-copyw...

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There you have it! More coming, at the end this will be a lead magnet I think, published in PDF format for prospects and team members that can have one resource to get all this in one go/place!

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Cheers!

Dave : )