Selling on Amazon is a lucrative opportunity. With a large customer base of over 300 million active subscribers (almost 150m of which are Prime customers), the marketplace is one of the best places to sell your goods (Source: Amazon). However, choosing the right products to sell will largely determine how much money you’ll make. Selling popular, trendy, low-competition but high-demand products will give you higher profits. That’s why knowing what are the bestselling products on Amazon is very important for sellers who are just starting.
By looking at the bestselling products on Amazon and analyzing the reasons for their great performance, you can have a good idea of what to sell. But truly understanding the reasons why these products sell so well will also help you consistently choose profitable products that will generate higher sales.
In this article, we’ll show you how to find bestsellers. We’ll also try to understand and discover the insights that you can gain from studying the bestselling products on Amazon.
How to Find Bestselling Products on Amazon
When trying to hunt for products to sell on Amazon, you should put in mind that not everything on the top 100 is always profitable. If the category is too competitive, you will not make too much money even if you land in the top 100. Similarly, products that rank in the top 100 can still be profitable if the niche is not competitive and you can take a big chunk of the sales. The bestselling products on Amazon change constantly too, so you need to be able to adapt if you are a seller.
As a seller, you also have to put in mind seasonal products when choosing what to sell. Some products sell well for a few months leading up to the season such as Halloween and Christmas-themed products. However, once the season passes, you will have a hard time making more sales.
While Amazon doesn’t release the exact number of sales generated on their website, they do have a bestsellers list that displays the bestselling products on Amazon on an hourly basis. Furthermore, there are also several seller software that you can use to find out the bestselling products on Amazon using different filters and metrics.
Let us take a look at some of these options below.
- Check Best Sellers List
When you go to Amazon’s website, you will find a Best Sellers List that is updated hourly. On this list, bestselling products on Amazon are ranked based on the volume of sales. It is also divided into product categories so that sellers can easily find which are the bestselling items in each category.
Although the Best Sellers List is an excellent resource to check trending ones, you should know that the list only shows what are the bestselling products on Amazon at the moment. This means that a seemingly popular product may quickly drop in popularity too, especially if it is a seasonal product like Halloween costumes or Christmas-themed gifts.
In the same way, a seemingly low-demand product can also quickly rise in popularity, especially seasonal goods. While this list of bestselling products might be readily available to everyone, it may not always be reliable for choosing products that will consistently bring in sales.
This is where seller tools such as Zonbase come in.
- Use ZonResearch on Zonbase
Third-party seller software is great for digging deep into Amazon’s database. Not only does a dedicated seller software have access to more sales information, but they also use APIs to extract data that most people wouldn’t be able to get on their own. A more reliable and powerful way to discover bestsellers is to use a product search tool like Zonbase’s ZonResearch to do the job for you.
With ZonResearch, searching Amazon’s wide catalog for profitable products in a category is so much easier. Filtering through the product database with your preferred criteria for profitability is possible. Filters such as price, reviews, monthly unit sales, and monthly revenue will make it easier for you to laser-focus on your chosen category.
Advanced filters include keywords that you want to include or exclude, product ratings, and even BSR (best seller rank).
Let us give you an example. For instance, if you want to look for bestselling products with more than 30 sales a day, you can set the monthly unit sales criteria as greater than 900 units a month. If you want to find products that can generate a given revenue over a month, you can also set the average monthly revenue filter to find products that generate a monthly revenue greater than your specified amount (for example, products that sell more than $50,000/month)
Aside from helping you find bestsellers that can generate a lot of sales, ZonResearch can also be used to assess the potential revenue. For example, to find a potential product that you can sell without too much competition, what you can do is search with good monthly unit sales and revenue, but very few reviews. Products like this present an opportunity for you to get more reviews and surpass competing sellers if you do it right.
ZonResearch can be used in many different ways, depending on how you prioritize each category’s importance. You can focus on price, unit sales, monthly revenue, or even the number of reviews as your anchor for finding the bestsellers that are still untapped. With this tool in your hand, you have more power and options in choosing the best products to sell on Amazon.
Because of its flexibility in using different kinds of search filters to dig deep within each category, using a product search tool like ZonResearch is better than solely relying on Amazon’s best sellers list.
- Using Zonbase’s Chrome Extension
Remember earlier when we said that the Amazon Best Seller List is only an indicator of products that are performing great in the present? Now, what if you want to select that will consistently drive sales over a long period? How do you go about it? In our experience, you have to consider the previous performance of the products and observe their sales patterns to make an educated estimate.
This is where the Zonbase Chrome Extension tool comes in. To find out how well a product has sold in the past, you can use the Zonbase Chrome Extension tool to dig deep within Amazon’s database.
The Zonbase Chrome Extension lets you see the sales history of a product listed on Amazon. To do this, just take the following steps:
- Install the Zonbase Chrome Extension tool.
- Now open Amazon.com to search for a product.
- As soon as it displays the search results, run the Zonbase Chrome Extension. This can be done by clicking the Zonbase icon on the Google Chrome toolbar.
- This will allow you to view essential data on page one with just a click.
- You can now access real-time information about a product’s sales estimates, sales history, etc.
In addition to the sales history, this Chrome Extension shows you relevant product data such as the price, BSR (best seller rank), monthly sales, monthly revenue, rating, and reviews. This gives you a better gauge on the bestselling products on Amazon that you can sell.
The Chrome Extension breaks down the page one averages of product. It displays information that you will find handy such as the average unit price, monthly revenues, units sold, and average product reviews. With this tool, you will be able to make a much more accurate estimate of how profitable a product is. Now you can make a better decision on what to sell.
If you want to ensure that you are making the best data-driven decisions while choosing the bestselling products, using Zonbase’s array of Amazon product search tools is your best bet.
Overview of 5 Top Product Categories on Amazon
Now that you know where and how to find the bestselling products, let’s show you the best product categories you should be selling in. With more than 100+ categories and subcategories present in Amazon’s marketplace, knowing these top-selling categories will give you an easier time when it comes to narrowing down your possible choices.
Here are some of the bestselling categories as of 2021:
Books
We’re in the 21st century, and yes, everything is already getting digitized – including books! But even though eBooks and audiobooks have grown in popularity in recent years, physical books are still in high demand. Selling physical books, used or new remains one of the most profitable options for sellers. This is especially true now that more people are stuck in their homes with nothing else to do because of the pandemic. Also, with more people locked up in their homes and looking to learn new skills, instructional books are also making a huge impact on sales.
Toys & Games
Hey, it’s not just kids who want to have fun. At this point, with more games and consoles starting to cater to adults, gaming and playing have become a constant family activity for many households. Toys & Games are mostly cheap to acquire, and there’s always a hot new toy or game coming out every month.
Remember when the Netflix show, The Queen’s Gambit, trended worldwide and people started scrambling to buy chess boards and sets? It has really pushed the sales of chessboards and other board games on the website. You never know what’s gonna be the latest game to become trendy in this category, and it might surprise you. When it comes to this category, it’s always wise to pay attention to the latest trends. If you can jump on the trend while everybody is not yet on the bandwagon, you can make a lot of money in the process.
Home & Kitchen
Everyone eats food. So, this category will always have a big demand. And while some people may prefer frequenting fast-food stores and restaurants, it is not a surprise that most people still love to cook (especially after the pandemic hit and everyone got stuck inside their homes). With such a high customer demand, Home & Kitchen is always going to be one of the most popular and profitable product categories.
Cooking is an activity that people do every day, so you can bank on the knowledge that this category will always generate sales. It is also great for selling seasonal baking and pastry for occasions such as Christmas, Halloween, and Thanksgiving.
Beauty & Personal Care
Women are big spenders on Amazon (Source: Statista), and most of them spend a lot of time in this category. And while celebrities will go as far as undergoing cosmetic surgery to rejuvenate their bodies, most regular people simply buy beauty & personal care products. You may think that this category is limited since women are more inclined to buy personal care products, but did you know that men are starting to pay more attention to grooming too?
Men spend more money than women, in all categories combined. (Source: Statista) So the market has gotten bigger for this category now too. If you are willing to put in the effort required, you can rely on this category to consistently bring in sales.
Sports & Outdoors
The recent years have seen many sporting trends such as mountain climbing, fishing, camping, and hiking spike in popularity. And while some people would rather stay at home, others are much more concerned with staying fit, young and healthy. This is why sporting and outdoor events will never go out of style. And although many products in this category are heavy and sometimes hard to ship (such as gym plates and exercise machines), you can still find some light and simple products to sell in this category (such as heart rate monitors and smartwatches)
Some in these categories are more profitable than others because they rake in sales all year round as opposed to specific seasons. But if you want a tip on how to choose the next bestseller that you can sell, always ask yourself if this category or product is something you’d be interested in. Nothing beats the feeling of selling a product that you also like to use. It will also make it easier for you to be involved and engaged in selling your product.
Some of the bestselling products also change by the season. What sells well for December could be due to those being themed around Christmas. However, when the season passes, these trendy products might also fall out of the top spot. If you want consistent sales all year long, be wary of seasonal when it comes to choosing what to sell on Amazon.
To find consistent bestselling items in these top categories, we highly recommend that you use the Zonbase Chrome Extension tool to view the sales trend in the past twelve months.
Conclusion
Amazon is the world’s largest online marketplace, beating other competitors like Walmart and Etsy. In the US alone, almost 90% of American households have bought at least once (Source: Oberlo Statistics). This makes Amazon a lucrative sales channel for individuals, SMEs, third-party sellers, and even big brand businesses.
However, the competition is also stiff, and you need to know how to find profitable items to sell if you want to make some money. Knowing how to find the bestsellers by looking at trends, bestseller lists and sales history over the past year can give you much-needed insight into the items you should be selling. But it is not enough. This is why you also need third-party product research software such as Zonbase to help you discover more information and much-needed data before launching your products. With the help of Zonbase, finding the bestselling products on Amazon becomes a lot easier.
Hopefully, this article has helped you understand the ways to find the bestselling products on Amazon easily. If you are interested in seeing how Zonbase can help you take your business to the next level, you can also sign up for Zonbase today.