How To Choose A Winning Product Idea Every Time | Tim Jordan

MarketingProduct

25 Aug

Today’s Guest: Tim Jordan

Tim Jordan is the Founder of Private Label Legion, a community of sellers and entrepreneurs who come together to share ideas, impart knowledge, and create a solid network. He is a well-known Amazon seller, host of the AM/PM Podcast, and Chief Growth Officer at SellersFunding.

Tim sells on both Amazon and Shopify and is currently working on a crowdfunding project which he is documenting to share his path to success with other entrepreneurs.

Here’s a summary of the great stuff that we cover in this show:

Finding the right product to sell is crucial to ensuring a profitable online business. Earlier, it was believed that the way you sell a product on Amazon is to go and see what everybody else is selling well and replicate it. But that approach has problems.
The smarter way to go about it is to start looking at Keyword Search Volumes and to realise that it’s not products that sell on a marketplace, its keywords. There's inspiration everywhere, online and offline places that you can go to for product ideas and look for the trending items. You take the product idea, find the keyword that relates to it, check keyword demand, or keyword search volume versus competitive product demand. And then you start to find those products that people are looking for.
Software tools such as Seller.tools, Marmalead etc. can help you with product research and finding keyword search volumes of different products. You can also check out Private Label Legion, which is a community of sellers and entrepreneurs who come together to share ideas, impart knowledge, and create a solid network.

Links for Tim

Tim Jordan LinkedIn
Private Label Legion (Facebook Group)

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At the eCommerce Cohort, we're committed to helping you deliver eCommerce WOW through our lightweight, guided monthly Sprint that cycles through all the key areas of eCommerce.

What happens in a Sprint?

Just like this eCommerce Podcast episode, each Sprint is themed-based. So using this topic of How To Choose A Winning Product Every Time as an example - here's how it would work:

Sprint Theme: Core.
Week One: Coaching Session -> Product Research.
Week Two: Expert Workshop -> How To Choose A Winning Product Idea Every Time Perhaps Tim Jordan would be the expert teaching this through a series of video presentations that show you how to apply the ideas and principles to your business.
Week Three: Live Q&A with our experts and coaches. This is a time to ask questions and contribute your thoughts and ideas so we can all learn together.
Week Four: Submit your work for feedback, support, and accountability. Yup, all of this is to provide you with clear, actionable items you can implement in your eCommerce business or department! It's not about learning for the sake of learning but about making those constant interactions that keep you moving forward and ahead of your competitors. Sharing your work helps cement your understanding, and accountability enables you to implement like nothing else!

Who can join the eCommerce Cohort?

Anyone with a passion for eCommerce. If you're an established eCommercer already, you'll get tremendous value as it will stop you from getting siloed (something that your podcast host, Matt Edmundson, can attest to!).

If you're just starting out in eCommerce, we have a series of Sprints (we call that a Cycle) that will help you get started quicker and easier.

Why Cohort

Founder and coach Matt Edmundson started the Cohort after years of being in the trenches with his eCommerce businesses and coaching other online empires worldwide. One of Matt's most potent lessons in eCommerce was the danger of getting siloed and only working on those areas of the business that excited him - it almost brought down his entire eCommerce empire. Working on all aspects of eCommerce is crucial if you want to thrive online, stay ahead of your competitors and deliver eCommerce WOW.

Are you thinking about starting an eCommerce business or looking to grow your existing online empire? Are you interested in learning more about the eCommerce Cohort?

Visit our website www.ecommercecohort.com now or email Matt directly with any questions at matt@ecommercepodcast.net.

Matt has been involved in eCommerce since 2002. His websites have generated over $50m in worldwide sales, and his coaching clients have a combined turnover of over $100m.

Matt Edmundson
Well, I am here with Tim Jordan, who is a serial entrepreneur and eCommerce expert. He has developed multiple online brands as well as having helped hundreds and hundreds of other sellers through training and coaching. In other words, a good guy to have on the show. He is also the host of the popular AM/PM podcast, which I've been on and you should definitely check it out. Not because I've been on it, but because besides me, it is a really good podcast. Tim also works as an executive strategist, that's not easy to say, an executive strategist for many service-based companies in the eCommerce Industry. He is an outside of the box thinker specialising in subjects such as product research, brand development, and all that sort of good stuff. So, I thought it'd be great to get Tim on the show to talk about this whole stuff to do with products and finding good products. Tim, thank you for joining us. Great to have you bud. How are we doing?

Tim Jordan
I'm good, but I feel like that intro was too generous.

Matt Edmundson
Well, you know, it's always good to big up your guests. Right? Set the expectations high.

Tim Jordan
I should be guests more often.

Matt Edmundson
Yeah. Way to feel good about yourself. Just come on the podcast and listen to the intro. Whenever I go on other people's shows, I'm always the same way. I'm like, that's a really nice thing for you to say. And thank you and I'm just feeling pretty good now about my life. So, appreciate that. Hey, listen, how was Paris?

Tim Jordan
Paris was good, but it was exhausting. I was there in Paris at a private castle for a very high-level eCommerce mastermind. But it was one of four stops on one big road trip. So, I was in Missouri, then Paris, then London. Then I spent about a week in New York City before I came home. So, it's all a giant blur. I will say Paris was the best location that I was at the entire road trip. It's really hard to beat a private castle.

Matt Edmundson
And what were you doing in a private Castle, I mean, I saw the photos on Instagram. So, I was following along. But what were you doing?

Tim Jordan
Yeah. So, you know, high level masterminds happen all the time. And in any industry and in the Amazon space, there's almost this game of one upmanship, between these mastermind coordinators, where they of course, bring in great speakers and they bring in really high-level content. But the venue right now is what everybody wants. So, they found a private castle and rented this whole castle that was, the construction started in like 900. The year 900, its very, very old. At the same Castle, it was the private hunting lodge of Henry the Eighth and Louis the Seventh, and all these historical kings. This was their private hunting castle. So, it was pretty neat.

Matt Edmundson
Wow. So, you had a big time is what you're saying?

Tim Jordan
Yeah, we had a good time.

Matt Edmundson
Oh, good, man. Good. So how did you, I mean, pre-French chateau, how did you get started in the whole eCommerce aspect of things? I mean, what was the starting point to get you to the French castle?

Tim Jordan
Well, it was completely by accident. I was a full-time firefighter and paramedic for a number of years and was consistently looking for side hustles, some side income because we would work 24 hours and then we would be off for 48 hours. So, we essentially worked two days a week. And I eventually got into government procurement for the US State Department. So, I was supplying products to the US government and learning how to source products, and learning how to ship products. And we were shipping stuff all over the world. And eventually I realised I had some incredible pricing on wholesale products. And I thought, well, these things that sell for $30 on Amazon, I can buy them for $3. But I didn't even know you could sell on Amazon. So, I put a Craigslist ad out for someone to teach me how to sell on eBay. And some guy walked in the office as a response to my ad. And he said, Well, you need to learn how to sell on Amazon. And he started teaching me and things went really, really fast. But I also realised that I was kind of sitting on a one-legged stool, so to speak, because I was selling these wholesale products for a couple of years, doing tremendous numbers, and really good profit margin. But at any time, my supply chain could have shut down. So, I started walking down this path of now that understand how to sell, a little bit of how to sell, I had a lot to learn. And I understood that there was a willing audience that was ready to come to these platforms and buy things. I want to figure out how to put my own products, my own brands on them. And things just went from there. So, I ended up owning a sourcing and shipping company. I've done some huge collaborative content with other people. I've gotten to go to basically every conference it seems like there is out there and listen to all these great speakers. I've made a lot of mistakes myself with brands. I've had a few successes, but because I had a shipping and sourcing company and a 3PL company, I saw a lot of products come across my dock and I would notice what was moving fast and what wasn't. And the things that seemed to be the hottest sellers on Amazon were actually the things that I would end up liquidating for my clients, they wouldn't move. So, I started to pick up this, almost like a fallacy, which is that the hottest selling items on Amazon are what people want to be selling. And I started venturing into this world of well, how do I find the fidget spinner before everybody else finds the fidget spinner? How am I the first one to launch this now saturated product. And it took me a while, you know, I spent a lot of time walking through markets like Yiwu and Canton Fair in China and comparing the difference between what was hot there versus what wasn't even on Amazon and then figuring out that the hot sellers on Amazon weren't necessarily what I needed to sell. But the things that people were looking for on Amazon and weren't there were the things I want to sell. So, I started learning to, instead of looking up sales volume of existing products, started looking at search volume for keywords. And then I came to this realisation that we don't sell products on a marketplace; we sell keywords on a marketplace and things just kind of spiralled from there. So, like you said in the beginning, I am an outside of the box thinker. But it usually comes after a lot of mistakes. I'm pretty stubborn, I had to do a lot of things the wrong way, and then started figuring out, hey, there's a different way of doing things. And that kind of started to move me in a direction of being somewhat of a thought leader on this topic.

Matt Edmundson
I totally vibe with the whole stubborn thing. And you've got to make the mistakes to figure it out. Yes, that's me right there. And it's interesting, I've not been a firefighter, but I have done my fair share of time on an ambulance, and you know, helping to deal with sick people. Which is always just fun memories for me. But what fascinates me in that in your journey, is you talked about how there's this fallacy that what's hot on Amazon is what people actually want to buy outside of Amazon. And obviously, you quickly realised that it's not it. Did I understand it right that you said that you had clients with container loads of products that they were liquidating, but they were some of the best sellers on Amazon at the time?

Tim Jordan
Well, yes, but maybe the point that I miscommunicated was that the reason they were having to be liquidated is because they weren't selling. So, the fallacy was, and it was a lot of training that led people down this route. But go to Amazon, figure out what everybody else is selling really well. Try to tweak your listing a tiny bit to out compete them, and you should sell it well, too. Well, the problem is all these products become saturated. And I think that the reason people do that is because we're human. Right? We are just humans. And we are scared to jump into something that's unknown. So, the analogy I've used before is a cliff. Right? If I walk up to the edge of a cliff, and there's water at the bottom of the cliff, and it's 100 feet high, and this cliff is long, right? Let's say half mile long cliff, down to the water, and everybody is jumping off of one spot. And you watch them jump off and they land, and they come to the top and they're happy and they're laughing, and they climb back up. And they do it again. Out of that half a mile long cliff. If everybody's jumping in one spot, what spot do you want to jump out? You want to jump off that same spot, because you know it's safe. You don't know if there's rocks at the bottom, you don't know if there's dangers at the bottom, you don't have any idea what the conditions are in those other places. So, we jump off the same part of the cliff as everyone else because it seems safe. And we do that or for a long time we've done that with a lot of different businesses even like you could branch this into any type of businesses, but specifically in picking the product that you're going to sell. We look at what's safe. So, if everybody's selling weighted hula hoops, okay, there's a lot of demand. It's obvious a lot of people are selling these so I should sell these too. A lot of people are selling, you know, whatever the product is, it seems safer, because there's already social proof. Right? People are proving that it works. You know what you don't see, there's 800,000 people trying to sell that same product, and you're looking at the top 20. So, what I started thinking was, instead of just randomly going and jumping off another piece of the cliff and having that to myself, what if there was a way to test the waters? Right? What if that the water at the bottom of this other section of the cliff was safe. And then you could jump off there was a way to figure out with relatively low worry. And the things that we do to find those products that are relatively safe, even if there's not a lot of social proof that it is, are things like checking demand. So, there's demand for this specific product, it's not on there, that's good indicator. This is great. Find what's trending off of Amazon, find products that are blowing up all over social media, or all over Google or all over Pinterest, and take those ideas that are very popular in those areas, and then confirm that there is demand for them on Amazon through keyword search volume, but very little to no competition. So yeah, there might not be a lot of sales history proving that this product will sell well. But we use other evidence to prove that people want it and if I get it up there it should be good. it. And it's tough because maybe you find a product that's very popular on social media and there's one seller on Amazon, but it's not selling well. Well don't just assume that yours wouldn't sell look at it. Is it priced too high? Is it a crappy listing? Are they consistently out of stock? Are they running PPC? And a lot of times, what I find is that this one product that's selling marginally well, is three times the price that it should be, they're out of stock 80% of the time, they've got one listing image there, they're not running PPC, nothing. And that's actually a good thing. Because people will then look at that and say, Oh, it must be a crappy seller, because this person has done it wrong. And the way I look at it is, if they're doing it wrong, I can do it right. But I have all this other evidence to support that people want this product, if it's a good price, if it's a good listing, if it's a good quality, and if I can keep it in stock.

Matt Edmundson
So, the product you mentioned a minute ago, was fidget spinners, which again made me smile, because it wasn't that long ago, someone came to me and said, Matt, I've got a container of fidget spinners. How am I going to offload these? I'm like, I don't know. I just don't know. You're not going to sell them, that's for dang sure. You caught that way, way too late, right. So, I get what that looks like this was a product that was in high demand. And very quickly, there were 800,000 sellers all trying to sell the same product for the same price, the same methodology on Amazon, or on their website, or wherever they were, and it became super competitive. And so, to use your Cliff analogy, it's like, if there's 20,000 people waiting to jump in that one spot, you're going to jump once every now and again, aren't you? And so, the volume is going to be low. So, do you have an example of a product that you've worked with that you know, the fidgets spinner before it sort of took off? How did you find that?

Tim Jordan
I'll even talk about the fidget spinner. The first time I saw one of those fidget spinners was not on Amazon, it wasn't when my kid brought one home from school. It was in Yiwu, China. So, I used to go around this market. And it's an amazing place. When China opens back up, I can't wait to go back. But as I'm walking through this market in China, all the vendors were playing with these things they had spinning in their hand, they were telling me, this is a hot seller, people want these, you should buy these and they're giving me samples and I'm even walking around the market playing with these things I can't stop. So, I went back to my hotel. And I checked Jungle Scout, right at the time I was using, like, I call it the "Jungle Scout method of selling", meaning I would look at existing sales volume. So, I went to Amazon and I figured out this thing was called a fidget spinner. And I found one listing. And that one listing had poor sales. There's a crappy listing process. So, in my mind, I'm thinking, well, everybody here says it's a hot item. But they're wrong. Because on Amazon, it's not a hot item. There's one crappy seller and he barely sells any. If I could go back to that time and know what to look for, then what I know to look for now, which is search volume, what I probably would have found is that 60 or 70,000 people a month are searching for that product. But the only reason there was one seller is because everybody else was out of stock, or nobody knew there's a demand or that crappy seller wasn't keeping them stocked, I didn't know what they're doing. And I could have realised that I was in that golden hour where everybody wanted it. Nobody could get it, but nobody realised people wanted it. Right? And yes, it became a saturated product, I wouldn't have sold it forever. But what if I could have been one of the first on Amazon? All I had to do is keep my position for the first year in organic sales. And I'd own Fiji right now. So that's when I started realising like this "Jungle Scout method", not just picking on Jungle Scout, but they used to teach, you know, when they came out, they said, the way you sell on Amazon a product is you go and see what everybody else is selling well and replicate it like that was the Jungle Scout method, still is really. And I just think that's a problem. So, then I took that kind of idea of the fallacy of the fidget spinner. And I started trying to figure out how else can I find this early? My next one that I found an Yiwu that was actually a success was I started just walking around these markets, Canton fair, Yiwu and just documenting products. They might not be products I knew anything about, they might not have been something I'd ever seen before. They might not be something that were even in a niche that I was selling. I was just filling up a catalogue. In fact, I don't think it's a video, but I think I have one of my catalogues. So, I used to take people to China all the time in groups. haven't pulled this thing out in years. And what I would do is I would give everybody a notebook like this. And this notebook was literally just to document products. So, I put a sticker in it. That was a cheat sheet, how to avoid things, what to avoid. And I would walk into vendors constantly, I really haven't picked this notebook up in like five years. I would walk into these vendors and I would write down the different items that I had, and I would put their business card on it. So, this is just ideas. So rustic ladders, rough pricing, I put their business card, Chinese chestnut sticks and rustic ladders. That doesn't really mean anything. But I could do that really, really fast. And then what I will do is I'll fill these notebooks up with 500 product ideas. And then I would go back, sit on my computer, attach keywords to the product ideas and see if there's keyword demand. That item, rustic ladder. That's not the item I was going to mention. But that was one of my best sellers on Amazon, I would sell these rustic blanket ladders that were like six feet long. Everybody said don't sell oversized items. They were massive. I was like the only guy on Amazon for like two years selling these things. And they were a massive seller. So, I got the product idea just by looking at something going this is interesting. What is it? Let's find if a keyword attaches to it. See if there's keyword demand. And I sold a mountain of those things.

Tim Jordan
There was another product that I did well on which I was just walking to the hardware section just picking stuff up. And my rule is if I pick it up and look at it, I document it. I don't know what it is, but if I picked it up, it must have caught my eye. And I picked up these huge D ring shackles, okay, there were stainless steel. It looks like a D. And it's got a pin that goes through and screws in, used for like lifting things or for like truckers and I thought, this is cool. I'm playing with it, it's nice stainless steel. It's like $1. So, I throw that in my notebook. And when I was going through and looking for different ways to use those things and keywords. I didn't even see it on Amazon. But I saw that off of Amazon, those things were a big item on Pinterest, in the front bumpers of Jeeps. So, everybody that has a Jeep Wrangler has two little toe hooks, and they were taking those D rings and just hanging there because they look cool. So, what they're doing is going to hardware store and buying these things. And I thought, well, this is weird. So, I tracked this for like two or three weeks. And when I would type like stainless steel D ring on Pinterest, it was pictures of Jeeps, I would type it on YouTube, and its videos of people putting them on Jeeps, but I went to Amazon, it had nothing to do with jeeps, it was just stainless steel D rings for hardware use. So, I literally bought half a container of these things, which by the way, is very heavy, didn't realise that they didn’t have forklifts big enough to lift these pallets out and rented a forklift that day, brought them in and I literally just changed the listing out for Jeep Wrangler bumper D rings. And then I did like different coloured versions. So, like a bright red one or a bright white one to match the colour paint scheme. I probably sold 40,000 of those stupid D rings. And I never would have even known that was a use for them unless I had found the product picked it up said what is this? And then went and found what was trending off of Amazon. And then was the first to launch it on Amazon under that purpose.

Matt Edmundson
Yeah. That's really fascinating. So, I guess you've kind of preempted one of my questions here because I was curious to know where you got your inspiration for products from because you mentioned a couple of times the markets in China. And I was curious to know, outside of that, where could people go to get inspiration? But then you talked about the hardware store? So, in reality, there's inspiration everywhere. Is that fair?

Tim Jordan
Yeah. So, there's online and offline places. I love offline places because I like getting around picking stuff up. You know, seeing what other people are doing. So, for offline I love the trade shows in China. So Yiwu and Canton Fair, I'm going back to India this October. On a sourcing trip, where we're going. I went there in 2019 to like the home and handicraft show. It's the biggest in the world in Delhi, India, like 1000s and 1000s of vendors have some of the nicest home decor and handicraft products you've ever seen. And I'll walk around and last time I was there, I literally found products I've never seen, didn't know what they were, I had to use Google to figure out the keywords, realise these were in demand and there was no none on Amazon and the US. I love going to trade shows like ASD, which is in Vegas, or I love going to the toy fairs or I love going to the Home Show in Atlanta. Now when I go into these trade shows, I don't have the same typical method that people typically do for trade shows which is walk in and try to buy wholesale and resell it. No, I'm just looking for inspiration for product ideas. Because the people in those trade shows that have brands, they're doing the research already. I don't need to do research to know what's trending, all I have to do is walk around and look at their booths. If there's a booth of people that are selling plush animals or toys. I know that in that booth, they are prioritising the real estate that they have the front shelf, that's Eye level is what they think is the highest value real estate in their booth. So, I look at that spot and say, what are they prioritising and if they sell stuffed animals, I don't ever want to sell stuffed animals. But out of all those variations, I realise what they're prioritising and it's oh, they're prioritising koalas and narwhals. You know what a narwhal is, Matt?

Matt Edmundson
I have no idea. I know what a Koala is but

Tim Jordan
Narwhal is the unicorn of the sea. It's that whale with like a big unicorn horn. So, like, two or three years ago, I was walking around with ASD, plush toys and like every single plush toy manufacturer was focusing on and prioritising those Narwhals. This is so bizarre. So, I went on Amazon and sure enough, there weren't a lot of listings for narwhal themed items, but the keywords were out of this world. So, I started printing narwhal themed birthday party supplies. Super easy to find birthday party supply vendors. So, paper plates with Narwhals, balloons with narwhals, picnic table covers with narwhals. I was the first one to launch narwhal themed birthday supplies and for about nine months, I was all by myself until people figured out what I was doing and caught on. But I would have never known that narwhals going to be a hot item unless I looked at what someone else was doing, use their research, and was told basically like this is hot. And then I was able to confirm it with the keyword data. Now online, I love going to places like Pinterest, Etsy, I like going to social curation sites, I like sites like fancy.com, you can go to fancy and it's literally a site of just trending items. Even on Reddit, there are a lot of subreddits where people just brag about cool products, there's one called Shut up and take my money. Where literally, it's just people going, oh my gosh, this is so cool. And a lot of it's like weird chintzy stuff or very expensive stuff. But occasionally you get an idea and go like, why do I continue to see products on here that are similar. So back in about 2017, I and another business partner happened on this egg and chicken niche. Because all these yuppies in the US are putting chickens in their backyard in their neighbourhoods. Right? So, we started selling coop supplies, egg trays, egg cloches, all this stuff. If you watch Project X with helium 10 that I did, we did a wooden egg tray, right? Because at the time, all of that stuff was trending really, really hot. But I would have never known that if I wasn't looking off Amazon and seeing just consistent indicators that like hey, this niche is trending or something like that. I also love going to places like subscription box services. If you go to crate joy.com. It's a marketplace for subscription boxes, and start stocking all those subscription boxes, the big ones, literally you're spending, no telling how much money on product research to figure out what trending products to put in their box. So, look at their boxes, see what they put in it, you know that's a trending item. Right? It's fairly simple concept. But the hard part is then taking that indication or those clues, and then transferring them to actually validate on Amazon. So that's when you have to take the product idea, find the keyword that relates to it, check keyword demand, or keyword search volume versus competitive product demand. And then you start to find those products that people are looking for and they're just not there yet.

Matt Edmundson
So that's I mean, thank you for all that insight, super helpful in terms of where you get the inspiration from. So, you've gone from putting the product in your notebook there, you've got the inspiration, and then you're checking keywords. And you said, I think it was about the ladders, the keywords were out of this world, right. And you talk about checking keyword search volume. How do people do that? How do you actually check keyword search volume? Is there software that I need? Is there a website that I go to? What's the plan there?

Tim Jordan
Yeah, so there are software tools. There's a lot of them out there. Right now I'm getting really interested in seller.tools, that I basically can use that software, I can type in a specific keyword. And it will tell me how many people essentially monthly search that keyword as well as related keywords. So, if I don't know what something's called, I've got my podcast microphone here. Well, I know this is called a podcast microphone. But if I type in that keyword to one of these tools, it's going to say X amount of people a month are searching for a podcast microphone, but they're also searching these other keywords. And some of them are very specific, and some of them are broader. So, it might be podcast accessories, or audio accessories. But I'll also see that it's not just a podcast microphone, it's a microphone for podcasts. It's a Blue Snowball podcast microphone, Blue Snowball microphone, microphone for podcasting, USB microphone for podcasting, right? Every one of those search terms that directly describe this product is all real estate that I can occupy. So again, you're not selling a product, you're selling a keyword. So, if I can find 15 keywords that specifically talk about this product or describe this product that are highly relevant. Now I've got 15 opportunities to sell because there's 15 search results, 15 pages, 15 clicks that I'm bidding on, right? So that software helps me figure out what all of that is.

Matt Edmundson
And so that was seller.tools?

Tim Jordan
Yep.

Matt Edmundson
And are there any other pieces of software that people should check out? Or is it just focus on that one for now?

Tim Jordan
Man, there's a tonne. I think that when it comes to product research, I think that's a really good place to start. There is a cool tool that I like specifically for sorting searches on Etsy, which is cool because Etsy is usually about a year ahead on some products that Amazon as far as trends and it's called Marmalead. Marmalead is a pretty cool tool that not many people talk about. And I don't sell on Etsy. But I use Marmalead to search on Etsy for trending items that I would then correlate over to Amazon and see if it's in demand over there.

Matt Edmundson
That's interesting. I'm not heard of Marmalead, so I'm definitely going to check that one out. I'm curious to see that one. I don't sell on Etsy either, at least not yet. So, I'll go check it out. But so that's Marmalead. So, you're checking, you're looking for these different searches. Are you predominantly searching on Amazon? The search volumes? Are you looking at Amazon? Are you looking at Google?

Tim Jordan
If I'm going to sell it on Amazon, I'm looking on Amazon. Now, I would also like to verify that this demand is increasing across all the interwebs, so to speak. So, I will also go to like Google Trends. And Google Trends doesn't give me a specific search volume. But if I see that historical search volume for a keyword has increased on Amazon, I like to see that it's also increased on Google. Because sometimes there's a weird fluctuation where the software reads something differently or something like that. So, to be honest with you, there's really no indication of what a perfect product is, right? There's no piece of software that says yes, this product will make you money or yes, this is not competitive, or yes, this has search volume. There are tools that have tried to do that. And it's all junk, it doesn't work. So, when I talk about pieces of evidence, so I like to see that the Google trend is the same as the Amazon search playing Trump, but it's not a make or break deal for me. I came up with this hypothesis that is related to a medical condition that my wife has, called Marfan Syndrome. Have you ever heard of this?

Matt Edmundson
No

Tim Jordan
So, the two most prominent people with Marfan Syndrome are Abraham Lincoln, and Michael Phelps, the Olympic swimmer. And Marfan Syndrome is a connective tissue disorder. So, the reason that people need to know if they have Marfan syndrome is it could affect their aorta, serve a few years, you need to go get an echocardiogram to make sure your aorta is not about to rupture, and Marfan syndrome is not a disease, and it's not actually able to be diagnosed. Okay, so hear me out. So, when my wife was having problems with her joints, her knees would come out of socket, her shoulders would come out of socket, and we didn't understand why. Right? They would just dislocate very easily. She eventually talked to a specialist said, let's find out if you have Marfan Syndrome, because Marfan Syndrome would explain why your joints are coming out, because it's a connective tissue weakness, and if there is, we also need to start monitoring your heart health, your cardiac health, she said, Okay. So, she went to a specialist that specialises in a syndrome. And at the end of this big diagnosis, they were not able to tell her if she had Marfan Syndrome or not, but they were able to say, we believe you do. So, we're going to treat you as if you do. So Marfan Syndrome, it is not tracked through DNA markers, it's not a blood test. There's nothing that actually diagnosis it, except for a series of indicators. So, when the doctor meets with you, they have a list of like 200 potential things with your body. So one of them, for example, is that your wingspan, tip to tip fingers, is longer than your height. Most people that's not the case. My wife is two inches wider than she is tall. And she's like 5 foot 9. She's a tall woman. So, like, Michael Phelps has ridiculously long arms.

Matt Edmundson
That would explain why he swims so well.

Tim Jordan
So, what they do is they go through this list of checkboxes, and at the end, they will say, okay, based on 200 data points, we believe, with reasonable certainty that you have Marfan Syndrome, so we're going to treat you as if you have Marfan Syndrome. We can't diagnose you for sure. There's no DNA marker, there's no blood tests, there's nothing. But because you hit this many indicators, we're going to proceed as if you have Marfan Syndrome. Picking the right product to sell on Amazon, or online is the exact same. There is no perfect diagnosis, there's no piece of software that will spit out a result and say, if you start selling this product, you will make money and you'll be happy. So, what we do is we look at as many check boxes as we can and we look at as many pieces of evidence, and we try to build up enough of an argument to where at the end of this research, we can say, we don't know for sure. But I'm pretty dang confident that this is going to work. So going back to like the Google Trends. It's not a make it or break it for me. But if the Google Trends like growth line matches the Amazon one. That's just another indicator this is looking good. I also do things like I go to Alibaba. If I find a product that's trending on social media, is not really selling on Amazon. But I think it's just there's not a good offer. I'll take those same keywords and type them into Alibaba. Because Alibaba's search engine is exactly like Amazon and Google. And Alibaba sellers are just like Amazon sellers. If we as Amazon sellers see a tonne of people requesting a fidget spinner, a bunch of us are going to start selling fidget spinners. Right? So, when Amazon sellers or eCommerce sellers are doing this research, maybe I found a product, there's one that I actually walked away from right before it got too competitive called a burrito blanket. It's a blanket that looks and shaped like a burrito. It's like a tortilla blanket.

Matt Edmundson
I need to get one for my daughter. She'd love it!

Tim Jordan
So they were blowing up all over social media. The search volume was ridiculously high on Amazon, but nobody was really selling them. So, I went to Alibaba and I typed burrito blanket. And there was like 200 search results of the exact same thing from different vendors. So, what that told me is that so many people that identified the niche or the product, they were then going to Alibaba and typing it in looking for a supplier. And Alibaba has tools that track search volume too. So, it meant that so many people are going to Alibaba to search for a burrito blanket that all these vendors started selling burrito blankets. And that was an indicator to me that, hey, this is probably about to be really competitive. Because I couldn't see that maybe 50 people already had containers full of these things on the water. Yeah, sure enough, three months later, there's 90 listings of burrito blankets on Amazon. So, did the Amazon results prove to me it was a bad idea? No, but it was one indicator that I could start beginning to reasonably deduce a specific outcome, right? So, there's no guaranteed yes or no, you just look as many pieces of data as you can and try to find that Marfan product.

Matt Edmundson
Yeah, that totally makes sense. So, some of these key indicators for you are, obviously the search volume that you mentioned, you're checking demand, you're looking at Google Trends. You're looking across social media platforms, you're looking at sites like Alibaba to see what's going on there, trying to figure out, are there already 50 containers of this on the seas sailing to San Francisco? What are some of the other markers? Are they sort of the main ones that you look at?

Tim Jordan
Those are kind of the first ones, there's other markers like human interaction. So, I can go in. And if I'm thinking about launching a product that I'm not familiar with, and I'm not sure people actually want it, I can get into niche Facebook groups, and not spam, but just sneak into these groups and say, Hey, has anybody ever seen one of these, I think this is cool, and get reactions, or I can use a tool like pick food, and ask what people want. So if I found a niche opportunity for a wooden version of something else, let's say there's a toy that's plastic, and it looks like people are looking for a Montessori version that's wood, I can go to a place like PickFu and show a plastic version, just snip a shot from another Amazon listing, have a wooden version that I've stolen a picture from Pinterest, put them side by side and say if the plastic version was $10, and the wooden version was $30, which would you be more likely to buy? And I can run that PickFu poll? And if everybody says No way, I'd pay $30 for a wooden version, then I kind of have an answer. Right? So, I can do human testing that way. Some of the other things I do is I also check for seasonality. So, there are a lot of products that are very seasonal, meaning I'll see search volume that spikes up really, really high, but there's only a few listings. And I can go back to those listings and check historical BSR data to figure out is it consistently seasonal? So, is this an item that sells really well in the spring? Because I'll see High search volume for like strawberry baskets for one month of the year at Strawberry harvesting season wherever he buys a basket and dresses their little kids up in cute little outfits and goes to the strawberry patch and pick strawberries. Right? So, I have to be careful about seasonality because I can look at that search volume. See there's only two sellers, strawberry baskets. 50,000 people want searching for it. But then the rest of the year I'm stuck with them. So also check seasonal kind of historical data. I will also go through and make sure that there's no patents, because sometimes I'll find an incredible product. There's only one seller, everybody's looking for this item. And then I can find out oh, it's actually patented. An example of that is what's called a bug-a-salt. It's a gun, like a toy gun that shoots salt. And what it's used for is like shooting flies. So instead of walking around with the flyswatter, this little gun with a spring-loaded mechanism shoots out little grains of table salt. Like if you have flies in your house, you put your 10-year-old kid to battle with these things. And he walks around shooting flies with salt and it stuns the flies, you throw them outside. Right? It was like blowing up through the roof and I saw all these keywords for like salt gun. What the heck is a salt gun? People didn't know the brand name. And there are products that are in the hardware niche that literally are like they go on the end of your water hose and it mixes with a desalinity thing and you spray it on your boat, right? Okay, there's all this stuff. But what I figured out was like people were actually looking for that salt gun. And I went to Google patents and look for bug-a-salt and realised that there's all sorts of utility patents and all sorts of design patents, but if I went to Alibaba, there was 50 knockoff versions. If I didn't know to look at the patents, I might have bought one of the knockoff versions and tried it, because they're just knockoffs that would have sold like crazy. But I hadn't checked there was a patent. Right? So just lots of little things you look at. There's a list of like probably 50 things. And you just go, I think this will work. I don't think it will.

Matt Edmundson
Yeah. I take it your list of finding products is evolving all the time, isn't it? Because everything's changing, the markets moving? And this is I guess why you're constantly going to trade shows, right? Because you're actually physically seeing things is quite helpful.

Tim Jordan
Yeah. And not just physically seeing things, but physically seeing trends. And listening to what people say. There's an example. Let's see if I have it. I don't have it here. But I went to a fashion show a few years ago in Vegas. And this may shock some listeners if you know me, but I'm not a very fashionable guy. I'm not very trendy. I'm in gym shorts, like sneakers and a T shirt. That's how I go to work every day. But I'm walking through this trade show that's showing off high-end designer women's accessories and purses. I don't know anything about women's purses. But I did notice that my eye kept being caught by this unique texture on these purses. And like a lot of these vendors had their prime showpiece at the very corner, this purse, and I would walk up and touch it and realise this wasn't leather. So, I started asking, what's this material? They said, Oh, it's cork. So, cork apparently is a vegan leather alternative. And it's tougher than leather. It's sustainable. You don't have to kill a cow to get it. And all of these very high fashion brands, were seeing a demand for vegan leather options. It still feels like leather. And it looks kind of like leather. It's beautiful to replace leather in accessories. So of course, I went to Amazon, there's nothing, there are no cork accessories, nothing. But there are people looking for it. There was a keyword at the time that people were looking for "cork bow tie for men." There was not a single one on Amazon, never had been a listing on Amazon, but off of Amazon a place like Pinterest, it was like a big trend, like guys would get these cork bow ties. So, I was the first guy to launch a cork bow tie. And it was like no PPC, I'd listed like I got the first 500 units from India. And it's like within three weeks, I'm sold out at like $40. And my cost was probably $5 landed and no PPC, it just blew. Right? So, then I started selling cork passport holders and court belts and cork clutches for women and make up Bags for Women and all this stuff. I eventually ended up selling that brand. But if I hadn't gone to a trade show and seen this crazy material and said what is this? And then what's crazy as those vendors openly tell you everything, they're trying to sell their products. So, they're telling you the data, yeah, we saw at Paris Fashion Week, this was a big thing. And right now, we're seeing a big demand all over Google and we're running Google ads for vegan leather alternatives or vegan leather or leather alternatives. They literally just told me everything I didn't know, and I walked out of there and like Okay, that's cool went back, found people were looking for it on Amazon, I was first on Amazon.

Matt Edmundson
That is fascinating. But here's the thing, right? All your stories so far are you putting things on Amazon. You're not putting them on what I would call an eCommerce site, as in you're not buying timsveganpurses.com. And doing that, or are you or is it just literally you're focusing on Amazon with this sort of strategy?

Tim Jordan
It varies. That's like asking how long a piece of string is, right? It always varies. There are some products that just suck on Amazon. And there's some products that have to be direct to consumer or they're better on Walmart than Amazon. Generally, I talk about Amazon a lot, because I think the Amazon is typically the best way to get started in eCommerce. If you're an existing brand. It's additional sales. I guess I'm kind of big in the Amazon space. But I tell people all the time, stop being Amazon sellers. Stop. I was at a conference in New York, there was 500 people in this room. And in New York and Brooklyn in this zip code that I was in, this neighbourhood. That zip code represents like three and a half percent of all third-party sales on Amazon, like billions of dollars just in that room. And I said stop being an Amazon seller. And everybody looked at me like I was crazy. And I said, be a product seller that sells on Amazon. Right? So Amazon is a tool. Amazon is a great tool, if you're bootstrapping and just getting started and trying to figure out how to do this wild crazy thing. Amazon has a lot of resources and infrastructure that's good. Amazon is pretty competitive. So, for some products it will never work. Some people need to start on Etsy, or some people need to start on Zulily or some people just need to start with a website.

Tim Jordan
One of the coolest products that I've seen the past couple years is a product called a wet sleeve, it's a patented product. It's a water bottle for active people that slides on your forearm. So, if you're skateboarding and it's common, those little black bite valves and nipples like a Camelback would have okay, but you don't have a big heavy backpack. It's just your arm. So, rock climbers are using it. Skateboarders, surfers, and you just bite on your arm and suck the water out. That's a really cool product. But it was a disaster on Amazon because nobody knew what to look for, there was zero keywords for it. So, we were trying to sell it as a running water bottle, or water bottle for running. But when people go looking for a water bottle for running, they're looking for a waist pack that has water bottles, not that. So, on Amazon, there's just not enough demand for it and it's too specific and it's hard to cross sell. So that is like a direct consumer product. Right? So, there's not like a one size fits all. But I would say that, generally speaking, Amazon continues to be the most frequent pathway to success for launching eCommerce products, or for adding additional scalability and sales to existing brands that are sold elsewhere online.

Matt Edmundson
That's a fair point. And I have definitely no argument with that. I'm just really curious to understand how do you decide you've got this product over here; you're going to sell that on Amazon? How do you decide if you're going to then run that on a website as well and go direct to consumer? Or is there a thought process behind that? Or is it just an intuition that you have.

Tim Jordan
Yeah, it's a little bit of an intuition, you know, there's some products that are just going to sell on Amazon and there's no point taking them off of there. I sold a woman's shoe accessory, a boot shoe tree, this long thing that fits in tall boots, these women have these like tall like knee high leather boots or cafe leather boots, when you put them in your closet, they fall over and it creases, the leather. It's just these plastic inserts that just hold them up right, stupidest thing I've ever seen. But man, I sold a lot of those. And there was like, I could buy those from China, put my label on them, they were 90 cents landed at FBA for a pair, I was selling for like $19.99 for years. And a lot of them, I could barely keep those things in stock, containers and containers of these things. Well, I didn't have any other women's shoe accessories to sell. So, like, if I built a website for that, it would be almost pointless, because yeah, I can drive traffic to there from Google. But the real value of an independent website is to build that audience to increase lifetime value. So, my opinion is setting up a website for one ancillary product doesn't make much sense, because then you can't cross sell, I can maybe sell them more of those. But honestly, if they want them, they're just going to come back to Amazon and buy them again. So the product, the brand, the community, the niche, all that's going to depend if I go D2C or no. Typically speaking, if I can go wide, but not deep on Amazon, meaning just a bunch of random products, and then they will eventually show up as brands like I'll wake up one day, I had a line of products that was cigar and like pipe smoking accessories, really cool bougie kind of millennial, lots of leather, wood, rustic stuff, I had one then had another then I had another and one day I woke up and had like seven products, oh crap, I actually have a catalogue of products now that are related. And then we went and did like really expensive photoshoots and set up a website and we started reaching out and eventually got those into subscription boxes too. So, I typically wait till either I wait till I have a cross sell opportunity, where it makes sense to acquire that audience. Because I can raise the LTV of each purchase by cross selling and reselling and having the list or it has to be a product that just will not work on Amazon. But I'm pretty sure that I can drive like paid traffic to it, so I can run these crazy Google ads or TikTok influencer campaigns, drive them to a website, where I might have a one product purchase funnel.

Matt Edmundson
That's really interesting. So, if you are talking to someone who's listening to the show who's going, that's great. I'm going to go and do some research. But I don't really have an experience in selling on Amazon, where would they go to learn that? Are there courses that you would recommend, are there websites that you would recommend people head to?

Tim Jordan
Oh, that's a tough, that's a dangerous question to ask if people want to learn to sell on Amazon, where do they go? And I'll say it's a tough question for a few reasons. One is, there are a lot of different ways to sell on Amazon. There are arbitrage sellers, that are wholesale sellers, there are private label sellers that are essentially finding something putting a sticker on and selling it. There are also large brands that want to then convert to selling on Amazon and every method is different. Every product is different, every number of resources that you have, if you want to do this will change the way in which you're going to sell. Right? It's a lot. I will also say that you have to be very careful going to a place like YouTube, because typically the top trending videos of how to sell on Amazon on YouTube are affiliate sellers. And they're selling a get rich quick scheme, which I don't believe in, they're blowing you up with hype to buy this expensive courses, expensive software bundle that maybe is actually not very good information. So, I'll throw a few resources to you, a few ideas. One is check out Project X by Helium 10 on YouTube. So go to YouTube and type in helium 10 Project X. It's a case study that I did where I talked a lot about this stuff, and we actually showed it live in person. Completely Free, no sales pitch there, no up-sell. So also, there is my own YouTube channel, which is Private Label Legion. If you just search Tim Jordan, Private Label Legion, again, we don't sell anything on it. It's just a bunch of content. You can also join our Facebook group, private label legion Facebook group where it's not a huge group, we probably pick out two thirds of the people that request to be in it. But it's like got an 85% engagement rate. So, it's heavily moderated. Also, you can check out carbon six, so carbonsix.io, they are a group of software companies, or it is like an aggregator of software companies, that is building a ridiculously huge education programme right now. So, if you go to carbonsix.io, just sign up for the newsletter. And maybe if you're listening to this a couple months from now, it's already launched. But they're building out a ridiculously impressive and free educational platform for people that want to sell in different styles of Amazon, whether it's the merch or wholesale or private label.

Matt Edmundson
That's brilliant. So, the project that you did with helium 10, Project X. Just tell folks what Helium 10 is just in case they don't know.

Tim Jordan
Yeah, Helium 10 is one of those other software tools. So basically, to explain how to sell on Amazon for them is important because they're trying to sell their software, which is one of the research tools, too. So, Project X was literally a case study where I worked with them and sat down with kind of their lead educator and I taught him along the way, this kind of different method, of course, we used software to prove things and validate things and back things up, you know, to test the waters at the bottom of the cliff so to speak.

Matt Edmundson
Yeah, that's great. Can check those out or join the Facebook groups that Tim does, why not? And Tim, if people want to reach out to you and connect to you, is that the best way to do that or are there other channels as well?
Tim Jordan
There's LinkedIn, LinkedIn is the best place. I put a lot of content on there, I put a lot of free resources and things like that, direct people into the larger community. You can also just follow me on Facebook, I post eCommerce stuff there all the time. I'll be honest, I'm slow about private messages. So, if anybody private messages me and says, Hey, Tim, can you give me free advice? I'd be able to probably ignore that. You go into the Facebook group, the Private Label Legion Facebook group, and you ask questions there, you ask for input, you want advice? The members are really active in there, as well as our moderators push those pieces of information back up to me, and we usually get answers pretty quickly. I just don't have time to sit on Facebook all day, unfortunately.

Matt Edmundson
Yeah, gratefully, I think there's definitely better things you can do with your time. But Tim, listen, it's been great having you on the show. I'm sure many people have got a lot more questions. And so do reach out to Tim, if you would like to get ahold of him via all the methods that he mentioned. And we will of course link to all of those, all the bits, software, all the videos and all that sort of stuff Tim's mentioned, we will put all those links in the show notes, which you can get access to. Just head over to the website, ecommercepodcast.net. Search for Tim Jordan, and it will come up and you'll be able to get all of that as well. So, Tim, listen, bud I really enjoyed being on your show. I genuinely did. But I've enjoyed you being on mine more. So, thank you for joining us. And thank you for answering all my questions. It's been absolutely fascinating to talk to you. And I hope to have you back soon to hear about your recent product ventures.

Tim Jordan
Yep, just send me an email. We'll jump back on.

Matt Edmundson
Oh, you're a legend. Thanks, Tim.

Tim Jordan
All right. Take care.