How about we start off with the bad news?
Amazon FBA isn’t as easy as it used to be. You can’t just find a random product, slap a logo on it, put it up for sale on the internet (read: AMAZON) and make money.
You HAVE to differentiate.
And one of the biggest issues today with sellers is that they spend so much time looking for the right product - that sometimes we as as sellers do NOT spend as much time as we should looking for ways to DIFFERENTIATE our product.
Let’s take our first product that we ever sold on Amazon as our “case study”:
When we first started selling cornhole lights - we saw a few differentiations we could make - by evaluating the market and actually buying one of our future (and now past) competitors.
The first one was the box - the boxes these things came in were plain, brown, and boring. That was the first thing we changed, simply the packaging to allow for a more pleasant customer experience.
Second thing was that we noticed that all of our competitors were selling two lights - both of the same color. So two red lights, two blue lights, etc. So we started offering cornhole lights that were DIFFERENT colors - one red and one blue - one white and one green. Lots of people theme their cornhole lights with different sports teams, etc. so it made sense.
Within a month of having them up, we had over 20 differentiations - and what did this do? It allowed us to turn one product that should’ve done $3k-$5k in a month, into 20+ products, that all shared reviews, that was new on the market and in our first month did almost $23k in sales.
So without going too deep in this email, what are some ways that you can creatively differentiate? If you want a more in depth walk through, check out our YouTube video here:
How to creatively differentiate:
One - Colors - different colors, different patterns, etc.
Two - Sizes - small, large, different measurements, etc.
Three - Materials - wood, metal, plastic, etc.
You can see up above that another option would be SHAPE - circles, squares, hexagons, rectangles.
Four - Bundling - maybe it’s more than one option, maybe it has dividers, etc.
Five - Reviews - analyze through the GOOD and the BAD reviews to figure out what people both like and dislike about your competitors - and offer a product that has all the things people like and none of the things people dislike. Unfortunately there isn’t really a way for me to explain this using pictures haha.
Six - Evaluate other sites - some people get so consumed with amazon, that we forget what Google, or sites like eBay can tell us about what people are buying, what could make us stand out, and what is DIFFERENT.
I can tell you on Google we’re seeing different sizes and materials then what the first page is on Amazon - this is a HUGE amount of information, as Google has more searches on it by miles than Amazon does.
Ebay shows some of the same, but also shows a 3 pack as well as a gold “coffee tea beverage serving wavy tray” - there is another keyword for ottoman tray we could evaluate on Amazon.
The key here is to BE CREATIVE. If I’m doing product research, find a decent product and then find that no one is really offering different size/color/material options, then my first thing I’m going to look into is are their suppliers that make different variations/versions of this product that I could offer? If all my competitors only have one version of their product, but I have 6 - which one stands out?
Don’t just be okay with finding a product, slapping it in a box with your logo on it and moving forward. Look for ways to stand out, to differentiate - it completely changes the game and also completely changes the possibility of creating income for yourself :)
Love you guys.
Taylor
HOW TO...Creatively Differentiate