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com
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PRODUCT
RESEARCH
GUIDE

2018

Get a College Level degree

in Amazon Entrepreneurship

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Product Research Guide

Introduction
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Product research, the

holy grail of private
label businesses.
Throughout years of e-commerce
experience, selling anything and
everything, Private Label Masters has
developed a calculated method for
surveying online markets and finding
product opportunities guaranteed to flip
some sort of profit. This guide will serve
as a comprehensive walkthrough of our
methods and mentality to choosing a
product that you can be confident will
grow your business.

Product research is arguably the

hottest topic amongst the private label
community, and many have their own
opinion as to what the best approach
is. As always spend some time doing
your own research, however you
can feel comfortable knowing you
have access to the intensely tested
formula that has already helped many
people build private label businesses
from the ground up, and helped me
sell $800,000 in just my first year of
Amazon private label.

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The Mentality
Before covering the exact process
of how we find winning products,
it’s important to discuss the “Why?”
behind it all.
Product research isn’t an exact recipe, different
things work for different people, and while we have
an extensive guide and experience to share you’ll
have to use some of your own subjective opinion.
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So it’s important to know the mentality behind it all,
to learn how to find a good product on your own.
This thought process is the core foundation behind
what has skyrocketed my private label business
to $5 million in annual revenue in just 2 years. It
might be different than things you hear from other
experts, and their strategies may have worked in
the past. However, this formula is not one that has
found people in PLM brief and minorly successful
products in the past, this is how we found products
to build our business so fast 2 years ago and how
we find winning products today. The private label
community is constantly growing, the market is
getting intensely competitive, and therefore we need
a strategy that considers this and outmaneuvers the
competition.
Product Research Guide
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Singles Not
Homeruns
This is something not a lot of
experts will tell you,
and we can confidently assume that anyone that
says otherwise is either outdated or irrational in
their mindset. The idea is simple, the people that
swing for the fences the most strike out the most,
and in the game of life throwing your savings at
a product idea doesn’t really grant any room for
striking out. We aren’t looking for a product that
will make millions immediately. Not because that
isn’t possible or that isn’t something we want, but
because that’s the wrong way to look at it and nearly
guarantees you’ll fail before you start. So at the core
of our product research mentality is the idea that
we just want a winning product to start.
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We don’t need something that is the equivalent of
winning the lottery, we just want winning products,
because having multiple winning products is not only
safer but far more likely than finding one extremely
successful product. In the days of people chasing a get
rich quick scheme, people fail to realize that getting
rich quick is possible and realistic, they’re just looking
at quick wrong. People want to find a successful
product that will get them rich in a few months, let
them quit their job, have a business coast on Amazon,
and never have to work another day in their life. But
behind every seller that hit the jackpot on their first
product, there’s thousands more who swung for the
fences and after striking out couldn’t afford to get
back to the plate. At Private Label Masters we know
building a business and gaining financial freedom isn’t
scratching off the right lottery ticket, it’s consistent
and intelligent hard work. Do it right and you will
gain your financial independence, it might just be in
12 months instead of 3. When we swing for singles
not homeruns, we choose the high probability of
consistently growing a successful business over
the incredibly small chance of winning the lottery.
Product Research Guide

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Here are the top six reasons we found that going for singles
benefits new sellers:

Going for easy wins requires far less capital. Most people starting off don’t have
1 $20,000 to bankroll a massive MOQ and branding to compete with the larger brands
in a big market.

You’ll learn far more quickly. Going for a single allows you to learn how to build your
2 business and navigate the market. You can learn the process without getting bullied
out by bigger sellers. If you’re a new poker player you aren’t going to learn a thing by
sitting down at a table of high rollers. You’re just going to lose your money.

These singles often are what turn into homeruns. These days homerun products grow
3 organically, they start as a sensible product in a healthily competitive market and
grow into a highly successful product under a thriving brand. And with our expertise
a single often turns into a least a double or triple, which is more than enough success
to become your own boss.

It’s easier to build a brand with base hits. Amazon’s market has become competitive
4 enough that branding matters, and by releasing related products guaranteed to be
singles the brand will grow and subsequently all of your products grow together.

With singles you’re more likely to succeed than fail. We’ve covered this extensively,
5 logically it just makes more sense. If you fail at this you’re back where you started with
nothing but a hole in your wallet. If you actually want to become your own boss, why
not give yourself the best odds of that happening?

Singles will setup homeruns. Most people don’t hit the jackpot on their first product.
6 Once you learn this process and get some cash flow from your first product’s success,
you’ll be able to swing for the fences with the expertise and branding needed to
actually knock it out of the park.

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Product Research Guide

This is the mentality that has helped PLM grow many businesses from nothing, and to skyrocket
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our own. This is a current and effective mindset that is guaranteed to find you some success.
The people that would rather have a get rich quick scheme fail to realize how quickly a rock solid
foundation will actually make you some money and how much money hitting a single actually
makes you.

The Method

So now that you understand the core concept behind

our product research method, it’s time to hand over
the keys to the car. We’ve provided you with an excel
workbook that we designed for our own personal use.
It will expedite the process as well as dramatically
increase your odds of choosing the right product
needed to start making some money. This guide will
help you understand the nuances of our criteria and
how we use these worksheets to choose a product.

1 Step One: Confirming Product Viability

As indicated in the videos, there are 6 qualifiers any potential product idea you
find needs to meet. Any product you would like to source needs to meet ALL of
these criteria in order to move onto your consideration set. These 6 criteria are:

1. Age – When we do market research on different products we could source, we rely on the
information of the current market leaders to determine if the product is viable and has enough
demand for us to make a profit. In order for a product to prove it can be profitable to us, it has
to have been doing it for more than just a short period of time. We require any product we’re
researching to have been selling well on Amazon for at least 2 months, to ensure it’s not a
fluke or short-lived fad.

2. Consistent BSR – We want to choose products with good Best Seller Ranks(BSR) so that we
choose a product market that has decent demand and opportunity for us to make sales. We
need to check not only that the products’ BSRs are high enough, but that they are consistent.
Something might seem like a top selling product, however that could be inflated because of a

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Product Research Guide

recent price decrease or lightning deal. We want to choose products that the market has
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been consistently selling well, not just recently.

3. Market Depth – In order for a product to meet our criteria, it needs to be making sales across
the whole market. Any niche we choose needs multiple successful sellers. If only one person is
selling a product well, that means the market has little depth. A good product to source is one
that the “sales pie” is big enough that getting a slice is worth it, big or small.

4. Competitors’ Listings – The foundation of our business model is finding products that have
decent demand but aren’t being sold the right way, and then using our expertise to sell even
more effectively. This means if the top sellers in a market we’re considering entering have
excellent listings, it’s going to be tough to overcome them. We need to check the competition’s
listings to see if there is any room for us to do it better.

5. Price Consistency – Any product we choose must have profit potential. We gauge this profitability
on the price of the top sellers and the cost of sourcing the product. Before determining a
product will be profitable, we need to make sure the price we use based off of current sellers is
consistent and accurate. Check past prices of top sellers to determine what the most logical
selling price we can use will be, and if that will be profitable.

6. Google Trends – One of the leading causes of failing in the private label business model is trying
to get rich quick by chasing a fad. In order to avoid this, we must check Google Trends’ data to
see if a potential product is a flash in the pan or a real opportunity. Google Trends allows us to
use the past to gain a glimpse into the future of a product market, and prevents us from
choosing a product doomed to fail.

7. Product Reviews – Another key way we check how well a product is being sold is by looking at the
product reviews of the top sellers. If these sellers are generating positive reviews slowly, or are
receiving many negative reviews, that is a clear example that they are failing to sell as effectively
as possible and opens the door for us. A product with high demand and low number of
reviews indicates an opportunity for us to come in and take a piece of the market with
our selling expertise.

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Product Research Guide

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In addition to these 6 criteria, your product needs a potential improvement. The core product
has met all of these requirements and proven there is market value, now you need to find a way
to alter that product to add value to. Many sellers advocate that you either find a product that is
different or better, and that’s how you gain a competitive advantage. We say screw that, we know
a product that makes sense and has demand is one that is guaranteed to sell. So we don’t go for
different or better, we’re looking for different and better. Whether it’s selling more quantity of a
certain item, improving the functionality, stepping up the quality, making it look better, or bundling
it with something else, we want a way to improve the product. We do this by looking at top sellers’
reviews and finding issues that people have with the product.

In the workbook we’ve provided you, begin to keep track of all products that meet these 6 Product
Criteria and have potential improvements. This will be the first level of our filter, the Potential
Products – Viability Checklist. If you take your time and do your due diligience, by the time you
reach the end of all of the product research filters you should feel confident knowing you’ve chosen
a product that will be the foundation of your business, and the catalyst that will change your life
going forward.

A Note on Due Diligence: Product research isn’t fun. It can be exciting at first, seeing all the
potential things you could sell. Imagining yourself starting a business on some of these products,
imagining telling your friends you own a business that sells “Cool Product X” or “Badass Product Y”.
However, it’s a lot cooler starting a business on a product that will change your life and telling your
friends you quit your job and started a business selling 7 or 8 figures a year. That brings us to two
important notes on the product research process:

First, watch your bias on products that sound “cool” to sell. Many sellers fall victim to their
imagination of starting a business selling badass military grade gear or selling expensive high

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Product Research Guide

quality Damascus knife sets. Just understand that it happens to everyone, and it has the potential
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to skew your decision towards a product that is likely not the best choice. Not that either of
these products don’t have potential or you should stay away from them, but just remember that
markets for “cool” products like these are often more competitive due to the sole fact that people
think they are cool to sell. From a money standpoint being a cool thing to brag about selling can
sometimes skew our opinion of how much money a product can make. Second, take your time
in the product research process. Don’t choose the first product you find. Imagine someone
holds a bag out in front of you labeled “Profitable Private Label Product Opportunities”, inside
the bag are hundreds of chips with different amounts of money labeled on them. Some chips are
worth $1,000 and some are worth millions. Would you have better odds of choosing a good chip
if you only picked from the first three you grabbed? Or would you improve your chances if you
reached in 20 different times and chose the best one? This is how we should approach the product
research process. Obviously at the start we don’t know exactly how much potential each product
we might choose has. However, the odds of your first idea being your best idea is highly unlikely.
For this exact reason, it’s important you take your time and create a list of potential products.
This is arguably the most important part of the private label process. It has the potential to be the
difference between quitting your job and being paid like a professional athlete or falling flat on your
face and cementing your fate in the grind of your 9-5. So take it seriously.

2 Step Two: Product Selection

Once you’ve spent enough time building out a list of potential products that meet
all the vetting criteria and have potential improvements, it’s time to move over
to the second worksheet of the of our Product Concept Workbook. This Product
Selection worksheet allows us to compile all of our product ideas and sort them
based on a number of different variables.

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Product Research Guide

In this worksheet, you need to compile the BSR, 30-day sales, reviews, and review rating of the top
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3 sellers for each product. This will auto-populate the overall numbers of each product into a list on
the right. This list is what we will use to help choose which product we would like to source. Based
on the information in this list you should be able to get a glimpse of how competitive each product
is. Use this data to choose at least 2-3 products that you feel comfortable with your improvement
idea and the competitiveness. Now it’s time to begin getting rough quotes. Using the information
we provided on contacting suppliers on Alibaba, begin to get quotes for your top products. Once
you have a rough idea of how much the product and freight will cost you, you can begin to see
the profits for each product(keep in mind this does not factor in Amazon’s 15% commission or
fulfillment fees). This should allow you to choose from your final few choices the product that
has the best potential for making a sustainable profit amongst a market with at least moderate
demand. While the list we create is generating rough estimates of the potential profit, it is just
another variable that allows us to further filter our consideration set and improve our chances of
choosing the right product.

The amount of information we have on our product choices directly correlates with the probability
of us choosing a highly successful product. The more information we have when making our
decision, the more likely we are to choose properly. The less research we do, the less likely we
are to choose a product with which we can lay the foundation of our business. This concept is a
fundamental principle in Microeconomics and applies to not only product research, but to
choosing suppliers, freight forwarders, designers, and any other important decision. Having
more information means you’re more likely to make the right decision. Do your homework.

By the end of this process you should have chosen 1-3 products
to seriously begin contacting suppliers about based on:

1 2 3

The 6 Vetting Criteria Potential product Comparing your choices

necessary for a product improvement ideas in the Product Selection
to be considered for setting your worksheet based on
product apart research you’ve done

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Product Research Guide

Once you begin the process of contacting suppliers, use the “Supplier Contact Book” worksheet to
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compile information on your suppliers, just as you did on products. This will allow you to perform
the similar process of compiling data and making the best decision. Choosing the right supplier
can be just as important as choosing the right product, so use this worksheet to make sure you’ve
considered the key variables for each one.

After you’ve chosen your product and your supplier, use the fourth worksheet labeled “Product
Brief” to compile any and all relevant information on your product. This will be extremely helpful
as a reference later on and makes sure you’ve gathered all the important information on your
product.

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Product Research Guide

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Conclusion
WE’VE GIVEN YOU THE PROPER MINDSET AND
NECESSARY TOOLS TO FIND A PRODUCT THAT WILL
MAKE YOU THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS A MONTH.

All that’s left to do is execute. Use this workbook in combination

with the tips and walkthroughs of the course videos to perfectly
execute the product research process and take the first step in
ripping your financial freedom into your own hands. Take your
time, do your homework, and take this process seriously and
you’ll be your own boss before you know it.

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CONTACT US

Tim Sanders

privatelabelmasters@gmail.com

PrivateLabelMasters.com