The Most Profitable Categories on Amazon: Doing Your Homework

Created January 5th, 2020

Amazon offers 3rd party sellers an opportunity to reach a diverse (and immense in size) audience.

For customers, part of the appeal comes from a wide range of products available every day in the 36 of Amazon product categories. From personal care products to the latest technical devices, customers are confident that Amazon has everything they need.

Photo by Jezael Melgoza

For retailers, especially if you’re new to the home-based business, this wide range of products can complicate the development process, as competition is very intense. As a seller, you need to know which categories of Amazon products generate the most sales.

Luckily, Amazon will help you navigate through the various options they have available. They regularly share a list of the most profitable product categories on the market.

Sourcing Nova has excellent examples on what products to sell on Amazon.

What Makes Products Profitable on Amazon?

Before going into the most profitable categories, let’s first look at what makes these categories so successful. In addition to sales figures, Amazon also uses algorithms to identify the best-selling products and categories to which they belong.

Besides these factors, there are four characteristics of products that sell well. When thinking about the types of products you want to sell, remember these characteristics. Each Amazon product category includes a subsection and there are thousands of products in each subsection. The following considerations will help you sift through millions of products and reduce to zero the number of specific products for sale. Successful products:

• Fill in the specific need (duh). Market research is indeed an essential first step in deciding on a product. For example, for the fitness industry – consider selling technical devices such as fitness trackers or smart watches.
• Generate a lot of traffic. Regardless of the season, profitable products attract a large number of page views and sales. Avoid the categories with large, established brands, as they are harder to compete with if you’re new to them. Focus on niche categories with a stable traffic flow.
• Include some positive feedback reviews. Most customers research products online before they buy. Part of this includes reading (and collecting) customer reviews and feedback. You will notice that the most profitable product categories have thousands of reviews. This is a sign of customer engagement. If the reviews are positive, there is a high probability that customers will choose one product over another.
• Use Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA). Fast delivery is an expectation in e-commerce. By using an FBA instead of executing orders yourself, you can be sure that your products will be shipped accurately, efficiently, and on time.

Now let’s consider the most profitable categories of products and the ones that are most sold (by the way, check sellersnap.io itself).

The most profitable categories is just one example of how strong and fascinating Amazon analytics can be.

Best Practices for Selling on Amazon

Now that you know which products to sell, let’s see how to attract traffic and increase conversion rates. Even if your store sells exactly what your audience is looking for, a simple list of products does not guarantee that they will be sold.

Ask Customers for Reviews

Whether you are fulfilling orders on your own or through FBA, a few days after customers receive orders, send a follow-up email asking about customer experience and purchase. Invite clients to share their feedback based on their opinions. The more feedback you have and the more you answer customers’ questions, the better, because this shows that customers are working with your product in the market.

In addition, positive feedback creates social proof. Clients are advised and attracted to buy products with a high rating of stars and positive reviews.

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Get a Best Seller Badge

Amazon bestseller lists are updated every hour. For customers who start searching these pages, these frequent updates are a great way to show your products to customers so they can potentially buy them.

This badge is displayed on your product information page, so customers need to click on your product after searching for it.

To get a bestseller badge and be listed, you must sell most of the items in your category. You should start selling in a small category with less variety. With the right marketing, you have a better chance to stand out. As you begin to generate more traffic to your product pages and customers click on your branded Amazon landing page, they’ll learn more about your other products, even the ones that don’t have a bestseller icon.

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Incorporate Keywords

As you discover your audience and the features they want to use in the products you sell, create a list of keywords.

For each product, include the appropriate keywords in the title and description of the list. For example, if you sell mobile phone cases in the electronics category and realize that shock absorption is important for your audience, add this to the title. When customers look for terms such as “cell phone shock cover” or “shock absorption cell”, your products are displayed closer to the top of the search results.

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Set up an Amazon Giveaway

Amazon Giveaways is designed to help you generate great interest and traffic for your products. If you have a Professional Seller’s account – compared to an Individual Seller’s account – you can create gifts for any of your products. At the bottom of the ads there is a section that gives you the ability to customize any of them:

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Research Amazon Product Categories

To be a profitable seller on Amazon, continue to focus on a regular audience and product research. This gives you insight into the changing needs of your audience to ensure that your products meet their specific needs. A good way to stay up-to-date is to use Google Trends to find out what types of products your customers are looking for.

This approach can even help you plan your seasonality so that you can offer the right products from the Amazon product categories at the right time.

For example, you can explore what time of year customers most often buy certain electronic products. You can start your promotions in advance to attract customers’ attention and give them time to do their own research before they convert and buy.

Research takes time, however, it pays off because you can consistently offer your customers products that meet their changing needs and expectations.

To sum it up

As one of the most popular online markets, Amazon provides an opportunity to tap into a diverse audience with diverse offerings ranging from personal care products to the latest technical devices, customers are confident that Amazon has everything they need.

So it’s important to know which categories on Amazon are the most profitable in order to make sure your business is successful.

About the Author:

Dmitrii B. is the founder of GRIN tech – a full-cycle white label agency delivering design, development and marketing solutions.