How To Choose A Winning Product Idea Every Time

Welcome to the e-commerce podcast with me, your host, Matt Edmundson. The e-commerce podcast is all about helping you deliver e-commerce.
Wow. Now I am stoked, properly stoked with today's guest, who is Tim
Jordan from Private Label Legion. And we're going to chat about how to choose a winning product idea
every single time. And you know what, there is some serious out of the box thinking
going on here in this conversation. But before we get into it, let me give a quick shout out to some
of our past guests and episodes. And given that we are talking about how to, you know, find these winning products,
uh, I thought it would be great to mention our first podcast, which was called how to sell personalized products through drop shipping with Brian O'Donnell.
Now this guy was an absolute legend talking about. Maps and all kinds of things that work super, super well.
Again, out of the box thinking personalized products podcast, number two to check out, uh, was a great conversation with Maureen Mwangi, uh, from startup
to growth is the title of that podcast. And Maureen, if you've been following her on Instagram recently got married.
So a huge congratulations to Maureen and I hope the early months of marriage have been fantastic for you.
This episode is brought to you by the e-commerce cohort, which helps you to deliver e-commerce wow to your customers.
Now I'm sure you've come across a bunch of folks stuck with their e-commerce business, or maybe even siloed and just to, you know, work
in one or two areas and forgetting the whole big picture of e-commerce.
It's what I did. And it nearly cost. Everything. Uh, and I wish I had the e-commerce cohort around at this point because
it solves this particular problem. Uh, the e-commerce cohort is a lightweight membership group with
guided monthly sprints and cycle through all the key areas of e-commerce.
The sole purpose of the cohort is to give you, uh, my e-commercer a friend,
uh, clear, actionable jobs to be done so you know what to work, when to work on it and get the
support you need to get it done. So whether you're just starting out, whether you're just launching a new
business, if you are, by the way, do check out e-commerce cohort because they've got a very special startup sprint does for you when you join.
And if like me, you've been around for a while. And we just jump straight in, just jump straight in with the main cohort and
enjoy it and enjoy what comes out of it. Uh, if you want to know more about it, check it out at e-commerce cohort.com.
It's gearing up for its founding member launch. It is almost there.
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I'm super proud of the e-commerce cohort.
All of that said, grab your notebooks, grab your pens, grab your cup of coffee,
Intro to Tim Jordan
because you're not going to want to miss this conversation with Tim Jordan.
Well, I am here with Tim Jordan, who is a serial entrepreneur and e-commerce 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. Yes, he is.
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.
Uh, Tim also works as an executive strategist. That's not easy to say an executive strategist, uh, for many service-based
companies in the e-commerce industry. Um, he is an outside of the box thinker, specializing 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? I'm good, but I feel like that intro was too generous. Yeah.
Well, you know, it's always good to big up your guests, right? So the expectations.
I should be a guest more often. Yeah. Way to feel good about yourself just come on the podcast and listen to the intro.
I always feel 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 I appreciate that. Hey, listen. How was Paris?
Paris was good, but it was exhausting. I was there in Paris at a private castle for a, um, a very high level e-commerce
mastermind, but it was one of, I think, four stops on one big road trip. So I was in Missouri then,
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 in the entire road trip.
Um, it it's really hard to beat a private castle in Normandy.
And what were you doing in a private castle? I mean, I saw the photos on Instagram, so I was following along, but, um, yeah.
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 out of private castle and rented this whole castle.
That was the construction started in like year, was very, very old. Um, at the same castle, it was the private hunting lodge.
Of Henry the eighth and Louis the seventh and all of these historical Kings, this was their private hunting castle.
So it was pretty neat. Wow. So you had a big time is what you're saying? Yeah, we had a good time.
Oh, good man. Good, good. So how did you, uh, I mean pre French Chateau, uh, you know, um,
how did she get started in the whole e-commerce aspect of things? I mean, what, w what was the starting point to get you to the French castle?
Well, it was completely by accident. I was a full-time firefighter for two years and was consistently looking for side hustle, some side
Understanding the fallacy of selling on Amazon
income, because we would work hours and then we would be off for hours. So we essentially worked two days a week and I eventually got into government
procurement for the US state department. So all supplying products to the U S government and learning how to source products, learning how to ship products.
And we were shipping stuff all over the world. And eventually I realized I had some incredible pricing on wholesale products.
And I thought, well, these things that sell for $on Amazon, I can buy them for $Oh, wow.
But I didn't even know you could sell on Amazon. So I put a Craigslist ad. I don't know, in the UK, if you know what Craigslist is terrible.
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, and, uh, things went really, really fast, but.
I also realized 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.
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, um, 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 PL 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 seem 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? I'm I the first one to launch this now saturated products.
And it, 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, are the things I want to sell. So I started learning to, instead of looking up sales volume of
existing products, start looking at search volume for keywords. And then I came to this realization that we don't sell products on a marketplace.
We sell keywords on a marketplace and things just kind of spiraled from there. So like you said, in the beginning, I am an outside of the box thinker.
Um, 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. Hmm. That's really interesting. I totally vibe with the whole stubborn thing and you know, you've got to
make the mistakes to figure it out. Uh, yes. Uh, I that's me right there.
Um, And it's interesting because I mean just going right back to, I've not been a firefighter, but I have, I have done my fair share of time on an ambulance,
uh, and you know, helping to deal with sick people, um, which is, which is
always, always just fond memories for me. Um, but what, what fascinates me in that is you, you, 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. Um, and obviously you quickly realize that it's not, did I understand, right.
That you said that you had clients, um, with container loads of product, that they were liquidating, but they were some of the best sellers on Amazon at the time.
Well, yes, but maybe the, maybe the point that I miscommunicated was that the
reason they were having to be liquidated is because they weren't selling. Right. 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. Yeah. 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. Right. If I walk up to the edge of a cliff and there's water at the bottom of
the cliff, and it's a hundred feet high, and this cliff is long, right? Let's say half a 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?
If you want to jump in that same spot cause you know, You don't know if there's rocks at the bottom, you don't know if there's dangers at the bottom,
you, 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, 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 Hoola hoops?
Okay. There's a lot of demand. It's obvious that a lot of people are selling these. 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.
And now what you don't see, there's people trying to sell that same product. And you're looking at the top
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
is a way to test the waters, right? What if there is a way to figure out that the water at the bottom of this other section was, uh, the section the cliff was safe and then you could jump
off of it 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 are all over Google or all over Pinterest and take those ideas that
are, 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.
And it's tough because maybe, 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.
Three times the price that it should be. They're out of stock % of the time. Uh, they've got one listing image.
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's done it wrong. And the way I look at it is if they're doing it wrong, I can do it right.
But I've 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. 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.
Yeah. You're not going to sell them. That's for dang. Sure. Uh, you call that way, way too late, right?
So I, I, I get what I'm I get what that looks like. This was a product that was in high demand and very quickly, there were
sellers all trying to sell the same product for the same price, the same methodology on Amazon or on their websites or wherever they were.
And it became super competitive. And so, um, to use your cliff analogy, it's like, If there's people
waiting to jump in that one spot, you're going to jump once every now and again, aren't you, you're not going to get your safe, but you got to wait in line.
Yeah, exactly. And so the volume is going to be like. So have you, do you have an example of a product that, um, that you've
worked with that, you know, the fidget spinner before it sort of took off? How did you, how did you find that I'll even talk about the fidget spinner?
High demand products
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. 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
Yiwu, China, all of the vendors were playing with these things. They had them, they're spinning them 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 quote unquote 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 like I found one listing in that one listing had poor sales. It was 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.
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 or people a month
or searching for that product. But the only reason there was one seller. Everybody else was out of stock or nobody knew there was a demand or that crappy
seller wasn't keeping them stocked, I didn't know what they were doing. And I could have realized that I was in that golden hour where everybody wanted it.
Nobody could get it, but nobody realized 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 was keep my position for the first year in organic sales and I'd own Fiji.
Um, so that's when I started realizing like this quote unquote jungle scout method, not just picking on jungle scout, but, but they used to teach, you
know, when that came out, they said, the way you sell on Amazon a product is you go and see whatever else is selling well, and you replicate it.
Like that was the jungle scout methods 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, my
next one that I found in 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 catalog. In fact, I don't think you've seen that video, but I think I have.
One of my catalog. So I used to take people to China all the time in groups.
I'll pull 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 in this notebook, I would walk into vendors con I really haven't picked
this notebook up in like five years. I would walk into these. And I would write down the different items that they had and I would
put their business card on it. So this is just ideas. So rustic ladders, rough pricing.
Um, I put their business card, Chinese Chestnut sticks and rustic. That doesn't really mean anything, but I could do that really, really fast.
And then what I'll do is I'll fill these notebooks up with 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 oversize items. They were massive. I was like the only guy on Amazon for like two years selling these things.
And there were a massive. So I got the product idea just by looking at something going, this is interesting. What is it?
Let's find a keyword that attaches to it. See if there's keyword demand. And I sold a mountain of those things.
Um, 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 a document, it, I don't know what it is, but if I picked it up, it must've caught my eye and I picked up.
These D these huge D-ring shackles. Okay. There were stainless steel. It's like a, it looks like a D and it's got a pin that goes through and
screws in, and it's like, used for like lifting things or for like truckers. And I thought, this is cool.
I'm playing with it's nice stainless steel. It's like a dollar. So I throw that in my notebook. And when I was going through and looking for different ways to use those
things in 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 tow hooks and they were taking those D-rings and just hanging in there cause they look cool.
So what they're doing is going to a hardware store and buying these things. And I thought, well, this is weird. So I track 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. 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 realize that that didn't have big enough to lift these pallets out container
rental forklift that day brought them in. And I literally just changed the listing out for Jeep Wrangler bumper.
And then I did like different colored versions. So like a bright red one, or a bright white one to match the color paint scheme.
I probably sold 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 and said, what is this? And then went and found what was trending off of Amazon.
And then it was the first to launch it on Amazon under that purpose. Yeah. That's really fascinating.
So there, I guess I you've kind of preempted one of my questions here, because it was, 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.
Where to find inspiration for high demand products
Is that fair? Yeah. So there's online and offline places. I love offline places because I like getting around picking stuff up, um, 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 to like the home and handicraft show. It's the biggest in the world in Delhi, India, like thousands of thousands
of vendors of some of the nicest home decor and like, like handicraft products you've ever seen and I'll walk around.
And last time I was there, I literally found products. I'd never seen, didn't know what they were. I had to like use Google to figure out the keywords and realize these were in demand.
And there was no none on Amazon and the U S I love going to trade shows like.
Which is in Vegas, or I love going to the toy fairs or I love going to the, um, like 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. Okay.
Because the people in those trade shows that have brands they're doing the research. I don't need to research, you know, what's trending, I'll have to just
walk around and look at their booths. If there's a booth of people that are selling plush, plush, animals or toys.
I know that in that booth, they are prioritizing 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 prioritizing? And if they sell stuffed animals, I don't ever want to sell stuffed animals, but
out of all those variations, I realize what they're prioritizing and it's oh, they're prioritizing koalas and narwhals.
You know what a narwhal is Matt? I have no idea. I know what a Koala is. A unicorn of the sea. It's that whale with like a big unicorn horn.
Yeah. 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 prioritizing those narwhals. Now this is so bizarre. Well, I went on Amazon and sure enough, there weren't a lot of
listings for narwhal themed items, but the keywords were out of. So I started printing narwhal themed birthday party supplies, super easy
to find birthday party supply vendors. So paper plates with narwhals, um, balloons with narwhals, uh,
picnic table covers with narwhals. And I was the first one to launch narhwal themed birthday supplies.
And for about nine months, I was all to myself until people figured out what I was doing it caught on, but I would have never known that narwhals is going
to be a hot item, unless I look 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 site of just trending items.
Um, 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. We're 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, well, like why do I continue to see
products on here that are similar? So back in about me and another business partner happened on this egg
and chicken niche because all these yuppies in the U S are putting chickens in their backyard, in their neighborhoods.
Right. Right. So we started selling coop supplies, egg trays, a cloth.
All this stuff. If you've watched project X from, um, uh, with helium 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've never known that if I wasn't looking off Amazon and
seeing just consistent, consistent indicators that like, Hey, this niche is trending or something like that.
Um, I also love going to places like subscription box services. If you go to crate joy.com, CRATE J O Y.
It's a marketplace for subscription boxes. And start stocking all those subscription boxes, the big ones, literally you're
spending no, 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. So I, well 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, in your notebook
there, you've got the inspiration and then you're checking keywords. And you said, um, uh, I think it was about the, the ladders that the
keywords were out of this world. Right. Um, and you talk about checking keyword, search volume.
Keyword search volume checks
How do people do that? How do you, how do you actually check keyword search volume? Is there software that I need?
Is there a website that I go to? What's what's what's the plan. Yeah. So there are, there are software tools.
There's a lot of them out there. Um, right now I'm getting really interested in seller tools, 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, right. I've got my podcast microphone here. Why? No, this is called a podcast microphone.
But if I type in that keyword in 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 more broad. So. Podcast accessories or audio suc 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, uh, podcast microphone, blue snowball microphone,
microphone for podcasting USB microphone for podcasting. Right?
So every one of those search terms that directly describe. 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 keywords that specifically talk about this product, or describe this product that are highly relevant.
Now I've got opportunities to sell because there's search results, pages, clicks, and I'm bidding on.
Right? So that software helps me figure out what all of that is. And so that was sorry.
seller.tools. Um, and are there any other pieces of software that people should check out
or is it just focus on that one for now? Um, man, there's a ton. I think that when it comes to product research, I think that's
a really good place to start. Um, 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 than Amazon, as far as trends.
And it's called. Okay. Marmalade is a pretty cool tool that not many people talk about and I don't
sell on Etsy, but I use marmalade to search on Etsy for trending items that I would then correlate over to Amazon and see if it's in demand.
That's interesting. I've not heard of marmalade, so I'm definitely going, gonna check that one out. I'm a, I'm curious to see that one there.
I don't settle on Etsy either. Um, at least not yet. Um, so I'll go check it out, but, uh, so that's like, so you, you're checking,
you're looking for these different search. Well, are you predominantly searching on Amazon? Uh, the, the search volumes or are you looking at Amazon?
Are you looking at Google? I'm going to sell it on Amazon. I'm I'm looking on Amazon now.
I will also like to. Verify that this demand is increasing across all of 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.
Right? Cause sometimes there's a weird fluctuation of the software read something differently or something like that. So to be honest with you, there's real.
No, there's really no indication of what a perfect, product is hmm, 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. Um, 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, like, so I'd 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. Um, I came up with this, this hypothesis, um, that is related to a medical condition
that my wife has called Marfan syndrome. Have you ever heard. No. So Marfan syndrome, the most, the two most prominent people with
Marfan syndrome, Abraham Lincoln and Michael Phelps, the Olympic swimmer. Okay. 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 a echocardiogram to make sure your aorta is not to, 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 the specialist, said, let's find out if you have Marfan syndrome because Marfan syndrome would explain why you're connected
while your joints are commands. So there's connected. 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 specializes in this 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. It's, there's nothing that actually diagnosed. Except for a series of indicators.
So when the doctor meets with you, they have a list of like potential things with your body. So one of them, for example, is that your wingspan tip to
tip fingers is longer than. Okay. Most people, that's not the case. My wife is two inches wider than she is tall.
And she's like five foot nine. And she's a tall woman. So like Michael Phelps has ridiculously long arms.
That would explain why he's so well, yeah. So what they do is they go through this, this check, this list of check boxes.
And at the end they will say, okay, based on 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 test. There's nothing, but because you hit this many indicators, we're going
to proceed as if you have more. Yeah, 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 checkboxes 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, that's not a make it or break it. Right. But if the Google trends, um, like growth, you know, line matches the Amazon
one, that's just another indicator. This is looking good. Right. I also do things like I go to Alibaba. If I found a product that's trending on social media is not really selling
on Amazon, but I think that, 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's sellers are just like Amazon.
If we, as Amazon sellers see a ton of people requesting a fidget spinner, a bunch of us are going to start selling fidget spinners.
Right? So when Amazon sellers or e-commerce sellers are doing this research, maybe
I found a product there's one that, that I actually walked away from right before it got too competitive called a burrito.
It's a blanket that looks and shaped like a burrito. It's like a tortilla. It was a . Yeah.
Yeah. You got one for your daughter. You said I need to get one she would love it. Tortilla blanket.
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 Ali Baba and I typed burrito blanket and there was like
search results of the exact same thing from different vendors. So what that. Is it 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 Ali Baba has tools that track search volume too.
So I meant that so many people were going to Ali-Baba 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 real. 'cause I couldn't see that maybe people already had containers
full of these things on the water. Sure enough, three months later, there's listings of already blankets on Amazon.
So did the Amazon results proved 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. Yep. No, that totally makes sense. So some of, some of these key indicators for you are obviously the search volume
that you mentioned, your 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 containers of this on the seas, sailing to San Francisco.
What is, what are some of the other markers, or are they sort of the main ones that you look at? Uh, those are kind of the first ones.
Other key indicators to look for
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 Fu 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 pic Fu 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 $and the wooden version was which would you be more likely to buy? And I can run that pick fu poll and if everybody says no way, I'd
pay for a wooden version, then I kind of have an answer, right. So I can, I can do human testing that way.
Um, some of the other things I do is I also check for, um, 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? Cause I'll see high search volume for like strawberry baskets for one
month out of the year it's strawberry harvesting season, where everybody buys a basket and dresses their little kids up and cute outfits and goes to the
strawberry patch and pick strawberries. Right. So I have to be careful about seasonality because I could look at search volume.
See there's only two sellers, strawberry baskets, people went searching for it, but then the rest of the year I'm stuck.
Yeah. Right. So also check seasonal, um, kind of historical data. Um, 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, B U G hyphen, a hyphen S a L T.
It's a gun like a toy gun that shoots salt. And what it's used for is like shooting flies instead of walking around the
flyswatter, this little gun with a spring, spring loaded mechanism, shoots out little grains of table salt.
So like, if you have flies in your house, you put your year old kid to, to battle with these things. And he walks around shooting flies with salt and its dones, the flies.
You throw them outside. Right? Well, it was like blowing up through the roof and I saw all these keywords for like salt gun.
What the heck is assault gun people that know the brand name. And there are products that are in like the hardware.
That literally are like, um, paint, sprayers, uh, or I'm sorry. They're like, there they go on the end of your water hose and it mixes
with a desalination, the desolidity thing, and you spray it on your boat right there, all that stuff.
But what I figured out was like, people were actually looking for that salt gun. And then I went to Google patents and looked for buggy salt and realized that.
Uh, all sorts of utility patents and all sorts of, um, you know, uh, design patents.
But if I went to Alibaba, there was knockoff versions. And if I didn't know, to look at the patents, I'm out about what one of
the knockoff versions and tried it, you know, cause they're just knockoffs that would have sold like crazy.
But I had to check there was a patent, right? So just lots of little things you look at as the list of like probably things and just go, I think this will work or I don't think.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And I take it. Your, um, your list of finding products is evolving all the time. Isn't it? Because everything's changing the market's moving.
And, um, and this is, I guess, why you're constantly going to trade shows, right? Because you're actually physically seeing things is quite a helpful, just physically
seeing things, but physically seeing trends and listening to what people say. There's an example.
I don't have it here, but I went to a fashion show a few years ago in Vegas and I don't, 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 get to work everyday. But I'm walking through this trade show that 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.
And like a lot of these vendors had like their prime show piece at the very corner is purse.
And I would walk up and touch it and realize this wasn't leather. So I started asking what's this material. They said, oh, it's cork.
So court apparently is a vegan leather alternative, and it's tougher than leather.
It's, you know, sustainable. You don't have to kill a cow to get it.
All of these very high fashion brands, we're 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 and accessories.
So of course I went to Amazon. There was nothing, there were 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.
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 lo I'd listed. Like I got the first units from India and it's like, within three weeks I'm sold out at like $
And my cost was probably $landed and no PPC, it just blew. Right.
So then I started selling cork. Passport holders and cork belts and cork, uh, clutches for women and makeup
bags for women and all this stuff. Right. 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. Is those vendors openly tell you everything.
They don't see, they're trying to sell their products. So they're telling you that again. 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.
Like they literally just told me everything they know. And I walked out of there and like, okay, that's cool. I went back and confirm people are looking forward to Amazon.
I was the first on Amazon. That is fascinating. But you here's the thing. Right?
You are all your stories so far are you putting things on Amazon? You're not putting them on.
And what I would call an e-commerce site. And as in, you're not buying Timsveganpurses.com and, and
doing that, or are you, is it just literally you're focusing on Amazon with this sort of strategy? It, it varies.
Products for Amazon or other eCommerce sites?
That's like asking how long a piece of string is. Right. It always varies. There are some products that just suck on Amazon.
There are 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 that Amazon is typically
the best way to get started in e-commerce. And if your existing brand it's additional sales, I tell, you know,
I I'm, I guess I'm kind of big in the Amazon space, but I tell people all the time, stop being Amazon.
I was at a conference in New York, there was people in this room and in New
York and Brooklyn in this zip code that I was in this neighborhood, 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.
Right. So Amazon is a tool. Amazon is a great tool if you're bootstrapping it and just getting started and trying to figure out how to do this wild, crazy thing.
Amazon has a lot of the resources and infrastructure that's good. Um, Amazon is pretty competitive.
So for some products that will never work, um, 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. One of the coolest products that I've seen the past couple of years of product called a wet sleeve, W E T S L E V E.
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 got one of those little like bite
valves and nipples, like a Camelback would have, but you don't have a big, heavy backpack, it's just your arm. So rock climbers.
Skateboarders surfers and you just bite on your arm and suck the water out. It's a really cool product, but it was a disaster on Amazon because
nobody knew to look for it. There was zero keywords for it. So we were trying to sell it as a running water bottle or water bottle for running.
Right. But when people go looking for a water bottle for running, they're looking for like a, like a waist pack that has water bottles, not that.
So on Amazon, there's just not enough demand for, and it's too specific and it's hard to cross sell. So that is like a direct consumer.
Right. So there's not like a one size fits all, but I do. I would say that generally speaking, Amazon continues to be the most frequent
pathway to success for launching e-commerce products or for adding
additional scalability and sales to existing brands that are sold elsewhere. Online.
That's a very fair point. Uh, it is a fair point and I, um, I have definitely no argument with that.
Uh, I'm just really curious to understand how you, um, hi, how do you decide, you
know, 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, um,
and go direct to consumer, or is there a thought process behind that or is it just. Uh, an intuition that you have.
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 in taking them off of there.
I sold a woman's shoe, accessory of boot shoe tree. It's this long thing that fits in tall boots because these women have
these like tall, like knee-high leather boots or calf 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. There were cents landed at FBA for a pair I was selling
for like for years. And a lot of them, like, 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.
Right. So like if I built a website for that, it would be almost pointless because yeah. I could drive traffic to there from Google.
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, there's going to, if they want them, there's going to come back to Amazon and buy them again. Right? So the product, the brand, the community, the niche, all that's going to depend if
I go D to C or not 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 Leatherwood, rustic stuff. I had one. Then I had another, then I had another, and one day I woke up
and I had like seven products. Oh crap. I actually have a catalog of products now that are related.
And then we went and did like really expensive photo shoots and set up a website and we started reaching out and eventually got
those into subscription boxes too. I typically wait until I have a cross sell off 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.
You know, if I can run these crazy Google Ads or Tik TOK, influencer campaigns, driving to a website where I might have a one product purchase funnel.
That's really interesting. So if you, uh, um, uh, if you were talking to someone who's listening to
the show, who's going, that's great. I'm going to go in and do some research, but I don't really have an experience in selling on Amazon.
Learning how to sell on Amazon
Where would they. Where would they go to learn that? Are there courses that you would recommend is there websites that
you would recommend people head to? Ooh, that's a tough, that's a dangerous question to ask. If people want to learn to sell on Amazon, where do they go?
Um, 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, um, private label sellers that, that are essentially finding something,
putting their sticker on selling it. There's also large brands that want to then convert to selling on Amazon and every method is different.
Every product is different, every, uh, amount 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 it's, 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 or 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 may be not as 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 on.
So, if you go to YouTube, you type in helium project X it's a case study that I did where I talk a lot about this stuff. And we actually showed it live in person completely free, no sales pitch.
There, no episode also there is um my own Facebook, I'm sorry, 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 a bunch of content.
You can also join our Facebook group, private label, Legion Facebook group, where it's not a huge group.
Probably kick out two thirds of the people that request to be in it. It's just a, but it's like I got an % engagement rate,
so it's heavily moderated. Also you can check out carbon six. So carbon six.io.
They are a group of software companies or is it, is it like an aggregator software
companies that is building a ridiculously huge education program right now? So if you go to carbon six to 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 in three educational platform for people that want to sell in different styles of Amazon, whether it's the merger wholesale private label.
That's brilliant. That's brilliant. So projects. Um, so the project that you did with helium project X.
Um, uh, just tell folks what helium is to that it just in case they don't know.
Yeah. Helium is one of those other software tools. So basically to, to explain how to sell on Amazon for them its important
because there's, you know, trying to sell their software, which is one of the research tools too, um, so project X was literally case study.
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. And of course we use software to prove things and validate things and back
things up, you know, it's test the waters at the bottom of the cliff. So. Yeah. Yeah, that's great. And that's all online and you can check those out or join the Facebook
groups, uh, that, um, that Tim does. Why not? Um, and Tim if they, if people want to reach out to you and connect you,
Connect with Tim
is that the best way to do that? Or there are other channels as well that, because I'm sure. LinkedIn is the best place.
LinkedIn. 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.
Um, you can also just follow me on Facebook. I post e-commerce stuff there all the time. Um, I'll be honest.
I'm slow about private messages. So if anybody private messaging me and says, Hey Tim, can you give me free advice? Uh, my VA will probably ignore that, but if you go into that 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. Uh, our moderators kind of push those pieces of information
back up to me and we usually get answers, you know, pretty quickly. I just don't have time to sit on Facebook all day unfortunately.
Yeah, I, uh, gratefully, I think there's definitely better things you can do with your time.
Uh, but Tim listen, it's been great having you on the show. I'm sure many people have got a lot more questions.
Um, and so do reach out to Tim, uh, if you would like to get ahold of him, uh, via all the methods that he mentioned, and we will, of course, link to all
of those, all the bits of software or the videos and all that sort of stuff. Tim's mentioned. We will put all of those links in the show notes, which you can get access
to just head on over to the website. E-commerce podcast.net search for Tim Jordan uh, and it will come up and you'll
be able to get all of that as well. So Tim listen, but, uh, I really enjoyed being on your show.
I genuinely did. Um, but I've enjoyed you being on mine more. So, um, thank you for joining us and, uh, thank you for answering all my questions.
Uh, it's been absolutely fascinating to talk to you and, um, yeah, I hope, I hope I hope to have you back soon to hear about your recent product ventures.
Yup. Just, just send me an email. We'll jump back on. Oh, you're a legend. Thanks Tim. All right, so there you have it yet.
Wrap up with Matt
Another fantastic conversation right here on the e-commerce podcast.
Huge, huge. Thanks to Tim. Love that conversation. He's he's an absolute legend that fella and make sure you
follow him on Instagram as well. And keep up with all these happenings. Been following along on Instagram, it's guess the man travels.
Let me tell you, so do follow him and find out what's going on. Don't forget to check out our complete back catalog online.
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And in case, no, one's told you yet today. You, my friend are awesome.