We’ve covered Helium 10 and other Amazon seller tools for the past few weeks.
However, we haven’t yet dived into Helium 10’s main feature: product research.
So today, in this post, we will briefly go back to what Helium 10 is and then explain how you can use it to find products to sell on Amazon.
Let’s start.
What is Helium 10
Helium10 is a multifaceted software you can use at any point in your Amazon journey. Plus, amongst its many features, it has tools that are even suitable for Walmart and Pinterest.
That’s because Helium 10 was funded in 2015 and has done nothing but grow since then. It now has over 2 million users worldwide.
Its Black Box feature is by far its most popular and it helps you find the best product type or niche. On the other hand, features like Review Velocity show how popular an item is when you’re considering whether to stock it or not.
Helium 10 also has an award-winning training series and multiple webinars, so you never stop learning.
Besides its powerful features, one advantage of this platform is it has a free forever plan where you can try Black Box. It also lets you access other tools but with time limitations.
If you go with this plan, however, keep in mind it gives you few searches, so you’ll have to make each one count.
You can also go with one of its premium plans, which starts at $29 per month and goes up to $349 per month. If you are unsure of which plan to choose, Helium 10 even has a seller journey quiz to help you decide.
For an extensive look at its features, check out our Helium 10 review.
Product research tool
Product research is the action of finding niche products, in this case, inside Amazon.
The goal of product research tools is to turn what would normally be hours of tedious product research into just a couple of clicks. They help you analyze product viability and maximize your selling opportunities.
Helium 10 has three tools that are suitable for this task: their Chrome extension, Xray and Black Box.
In this post, we’ll talk about the three of them and focus on Black Box, which currently tracks the existing sales demand of over 450 million products.
With this tool, you can search by product category, estimated monthly sales revenue, price, weight, review rating, number of images, number of sellers and more.
With these filters, what you’ll be looking for is your ideal product. This means the product should have enough demand and should be doing more than enough sales.
We’re basically going for that sweet spot between a not-too-competitive product and a product that gives you a lot of money.
How to use Helium 10 for product research
Getting started
Visit Helium 10, first.
We start in the dashboard. You can use either this dashboard or the new one, doesn’t matter.
Then we click on “Tools” and, under Product Research, we click on Black Box. You can also move Black Box to Favorite Tools for quicker access.
You will also want to have the Helium 10’s Chrome extension in hand for this search, so make sure you’ve downloaded it.
Once you’re on Black Box, you’ll see this brief set of questions.
I wanted to be more precise, so I selected “Advanced”.
You can, however, also conduct your search using keyword search volume criteria or sort through competitors, niche or product targeting.
Filtering
The first thing you have to determine for your search is your marketplace. Helium 10 works for 13 marketplaces, including Mexico, the United Arab Emirates, Australia and Japan. Languages will also change according to location.
For the purpose of this tutorial, I went with the US marketplace.
For the category, I chose “Beauty and Personal Care”, and the subcategory “Skin Care”. Each subcategory also has more sub-categories, however, being that specific can be counterproductive.
You don’t have to fill every blanket, of course. But other essential data here is the maximum and minimum monthly revenue we are looking for, the minimum price and the smallest standard size for monthly sales.
You don’t want to go too low with the minimum price, since Amazon’s fixed fees will into your margin.
Another important thing to specify is the listing’s age in months, since sometimes the results can be a bit old.
Reviews are essential on Amazon, so that’s another thing to pay attention too. A good tip is to look for products that are four stars or lower, so you can always improve on the product.
Finally, don’t forget to indicate the method of storage and shipping, in this case, we’re going with FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon).
This solution allows sellers to send their products to Amazon, and Amazon will store, pack, ship and assist with customer service on the sellers’ behalf. That’s why it’s the solution advised by Helium 10
You can also indicate the shipping size, which I recommend not being too big since shipping and storage fees will be high.
After you set your criteria, click “Search” You can also save it as a Filter Preset if you wish to go back to it in the future.
Results
So here are the products that matched my criteria:
As you can see, since my category was Skin Care, I have a sun serum and a facial skin care discoloration, there’s even a face mask and body oil.
If you’re not interested in some product details, you can go to “Customize”, then tick off some columns and change the product size image. Vice versa, you can also toggle on “Show advanced product details” to see the price trends and subcategories in which the product is.
With the “Export Data” button, you have the option of downloading it as a CVS file or XLSX file.
To learn more about one of the products, click on its image and you’ll be redirected to its page on Amazon. This is where I landed when I clicked on one of my products:
If you’ve already pinned the Helium 10’s Chrome extension, you’ll also see the product’s listing health score and other useful metrics.
Using the Chrome extension
Since you’re on Amazon, you can dive deeper by searching lip volumizer on Amazon. Once you have the list of results, go to the Chrome extension and open X-ray, the tool you can use directly on Amazon.
Wait a few seconds for it to download the data and you’ll see something like this:
You’ll see some products have an SP symbol on their left, which means “sponsor”. Don’t mind those products, the ones that we’re focusing on are the organic results.
When you use X-ray on a product page, you’ll also see more data scrolling down the page. For example, these all-time charts of best-selling rank (BSR).
Above the chart, you’ll find quick access to different features, such as the Profitability Calculator.
If you click on that one, you’ll be able to calculate your profit based on Amazon’s fees, manufacturing costs, shipping and more.
You can also use the Chrome extension while searching on the Amazon bar. Helium 10 will give you related niche keywords with full data that you can once again export.
Repeat and start over
After you analyze the data of one of the products, you’ll need to go to another and make a list of your favorites to finally decide which is the best product for you to sell.
You can easily do this by selecting products and clicking “Add to My List” so you’ll be able to access them directly from your dashboard.
If you are on a premium plan, you can also track your competitors or run Cerebro.
When you’re going over each product, make sure you also take a look at what the bad reviews say. Since, as we said before, we’re looking for something you can improve, you’ll need to know exactly what is to improve.
Final words
So there you have it, our tutorial on how to use Helium 10 for product research.
And the cool part?
We did it all on its free plan. So you can access a lot of useful information to help you get started without even requiring a big budget.
Helium 10 also has Elite Analysis for experienced and successful sellers. We didn’t cover this feature in this post but it’s really powerful, letting you upload up to 2000 rows of Black Box Keywords and giving you an extensive report.
We hope this post helped you understand how exactly you can find Amazon product ideas with Helium 10 and that you’ll give it a try!
If you do, please tell us your experience in the comments!
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