Amazon Product Research

After going into the Down Bedding category under Pinzon, I am actually shown a search for the term Pyrenees, which does include some Pinzon products (which are Pyrenees).

I am now going to click on the Down & Feather-Fill button here to narrow my results even more. This provides me with just six results. Five of them are Pinzon products - two down comforters and three pillows.

These five Pinzon products are all sold by Amazon, so they are eligible for Amazon Prime (free shipping for Prime members). I have shown all six results below.

This is a good start - five products, that should be Amazon exclusives, all with good reviews and eligible for Amazon Prime's free shipping.

In an ideal situation, your website will target some type of product niche that will provide you with good commissions, so we're talking about $100-$200 products. I also like to promote lower priced products on these sites, as long as they relate to my main products - this helps to boost your commissions per customer and also increases your sales volume on Amazon. For these reasons, I am more inclined to look into the two down comforters here as a potential niche to target.

At this point, it is time to investigate a few of the primary products that have drawn in our interest for the niche.

The first one will be the $200 goose down comforter. Before I even visit the actual product page on Amazon, I scan the basic listing information.

I am interested in the average reviews as well as the shipping and/or availability information here.

First, notice the yellow check with the word Prime next to it. This indicates the product is eligible for free shipping with Amazon Prime (two day shipping in most cases). It is also eligible for free Super Saver Shipping. Seeing these is definitely a plus because this provides more value for the consumer.

The sentence that says Order in the next 4 hours... indicates that the product is in stock.

The review count on the product is at 251 and looks to have close to 4.5 stars average. This is an excellent indication that it is a quality product that has also seen some decent sales numbers on Amazon because only a small percentage of buyers will actually leave a review.

I also consider products that have good reviews but a low total count or even products that do not have any reviews at all (especially if they are newly released products).

Instead of taking a close look at this product, I am going to go ahead and move on to the next product, which will be shown in more detail. The previous product looks to be a great choice, so I do not see a big reason to research it more yet (I will eventually before deciding to promote this product).

For now, I will go ahead and copy the product name and the URL for the product. I simply save this information in a Notepad file on my computer for easy reference later.

With this product, almost all of the information is very similar to the previous product with one major exception - this product is listed as being out of stock!

This brings me to a critical decision point - is this product worth promoting or not?

To answer that, I ask myself more questions like 'Who is selling the product?'.

If a product is an Amazon Exclusive, it could be worth promoting anyways because they will be in stock again or removed from the site if discontinued. In fact, them being out of stock could simply be a good indication of the demand for the product.

If another vendor is selling, you will really have to make your own judgment call on whether you think the product will be back in stock again.

Try looking at recent reviews to see how long ago the last purchase seemed to be, look at review ratings for the vendor, or even research the actual product being sold in terms of whether it is discontinued or not.

I am going to look at the actual product page now to try to get more information. The main product information at the top of the page has been shown below for this product.

Here are a few important things to point out here:

1. Directly below the product name, notice the smaller text that says by Pinzon by Amazon.com. This tells you the vendor, and this is obviously sold by Amazon itself (not just shipped by Amazon).
    
2. Below the review rating, notice the yellow box that says Amazon.com Exclusive. This is a clear indication that this product is something produced by Amazon itself and sold exclusively on their website. These are excellent products to promote because they often have very competitive prices and good quality too.
    
3. Next is the obvious red text that says Temporarily out of stock. If you continue reading the text here, you can see that people can still order and simply have it shipped when it is ready -they won't even be charged until it ships (which is also when you would receive your commission for referring the sale). Always consider why it is out of stock. For this particular product, it has the best sales in the cold months of the year, and this product information page is viewed in the middle of the summer. For this reason, combined with everything else, I think this product will be back in stock soon, especially as the summer ends. With the high review count, it could also be a popular product and simply sells out often.
    
4. Finally, take note of the Size choices. This product is selected as a Full/Queen but Twin and King are also available. Some products may even have many different options to choose from here. Technically, every option here is a separate Amazon product (and has it's own Amazon ASIN that can be used to directly link to the page with that option selected). This is very important with an out of stock product because it may just be that one option that is out of stock. Below is a picture of what the same part of the page looks like if I click on the King option here - notice that this option is in stock and that the price changed because of the option selection!The second Pinzon comforter in the results is a down alternative comforter. Again, I will review the basic product information here.

Below the product information, Amazon displays other information that is intended to help boost sales with other related products. As an affiliate, you can take advantage of this information because this is actually free research for you! Use this to find other related products that could be good to promote alongside the same product or even on other pages of the same website.

Below you can see two sections of products: Frequently Bought Together and Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought.

The first shows additional products that are purchased with the main product being viewed. This information is actually based on real-time stats from Amazon sales.

The second section shows even more products that have been bought by the same customers that bought the main item. These may be products that were purchased in the same transaction or they may have been purchases from separate transactions. Arrows are provided to show lots of products in this section - sometimes 100+ products can be found here.

Most Amazon products also have a Product Description. This is customized information provided by the vendor that tells more about the product. Sometimes this may just be a couple of sentences worth of information and other times it is a more complex description that can even include images and HTML code.

Here is the Product Description from this particular listing:

A lot of affiliates will actually use this information directly on their website as the content of the page that promotes the product. This is OK to do if you intend on providing additional, unique content of your own, but you don't want to solely rely on Amazon's content to power your website.

Instead, use Amazon's product information as a way to learn about the product, and then try to present that information to your users in an informative and helpful way.

Another way that you can learn about products is by actually reading Amazon's Customer Reviews. Again, some people will try to use this content on their own website, but this is actually not allowed by Amazon. However, you can read them to learn about a product, and present that information in your own words on your sites.

Here is the initial Customer Review section on this page:

At the top, take note of the bar graph that shows you how many people have left reviews at each level. Seeing most of the reviews towards the top is the best - you just don't want to see a lot of 1 and/or 2 star reviews.

Below that, you can actually read the reviews that were left. I like to read a variety of reviews, both good and bad, to get an overall sense of the product.

On the right side of the page, you will also find the most recent customer reviews. Always look at these to ensure the product quality and service is still good. I also use this when looking at out of stock products to get a general idea of when the product was in stock last. For this product, notice that most of the recent reviews were from roughly 2 weeks ago, so I would estimate that this may be the timeframe of this product being in stock last.

Another excellent way to find out about a product is through the Customer Questions & Answers.

Some products on Amazon will have existing questions and answers about the product, all direct from actual customers that have these products and are using them or customers that are interested in buying them. Some of these may be common questions that people wonder about a product before buying it, so always be sure to investigate this area, if there are existing questions. They could be great selling points that you can use on your site to promote the product.