Why Products Fail - 7 Reasons And How to Avoid Them

So, let’s be honest: everybody fails. It’s okay. Happens to everyone. Becoming one of the best selling products on Amazon is tough. What do you do when you fail, though? Do you just keep on keeping on, or do you take a good, hard look at what went wrong and adapt your sales strategy? That’s what separates the serious sellers from everyone else. We choose to look at failure as an opportunity to grow, and because of this, we happen to have a lot of valuable insight to share with you. 

It’s time to learn from our mistakes and watch your business grow. Let’s take a look at these 7 common reasons why your product launch might be underperforming, and what you can do to avoid them!

1. Lack of eCommerce Market Research

High demand, low competition products don’t just fall out of trees. Finding the best things to sell on Amazon takes time, and any decision you make needs to be backed by rock-solid data. That means market research and lots of it. Our Niche Finder tool significantly cuts down on your market research time by grabbing the most accurate and current data from live Amazon listings and presenting all the relevant information (search volume, average number of reviews, average PPC bid, etc) to make smart decisions. Multiple filtering options save you even more time by letting weed out results that don’t fit your business needs. Take a look.

While Niche Finder is a fantastic place to start, it’s not your one-stop-shop. You need to dig deeper to find niche products worth selling. A great resource to make sure the niche product you’re interested in isn’t just a flash-in-the-pan is Google Trends. While you’re at it, it’s important to ask yourself these questions about the product as well:

• Is demand for this product consistent, or seasonal? 
• Is it trademarked? If so, that’s it. Consider looking elsewhere.
• How fragile is it? Does it ship easily?
• Does it have less than 1000 reviews?
• What kind of margins does it have?
  

2. Long-Term FBA Thinking

When you’re in Amazon FBA, you’re playing the long-game. Sure, having one hot-selling item is great, but you need to diversify if you want to last. You might have a one-hit-wonder on your hands, but what are you gonna do after that? Trust me, I know.

When I finally found the answer to “what can I sell on Amazon?”, I was raking in the dough. I sold 60 iPhone screen protectors a day. The problem, though? I got comfortable. I didn’t adapt, and I let my business stagnate. Eventually, my competitors saw a weakness in my strategy, exploited it, and blew me out of the water. Whomp whomp.

The moral of the story: always think three moves ahead. Don’t just think about your next product, think about the next product after that, and the next product after that. Always be researching and looking for new ideas so that when one product begins to slow down, you have others you can rely on. Try using our Amazon Niche Finder to keep your product research moving along, even when you already have an item or two up on the market. 

3. Don’t Just Find Easy Things to Make and Sell

Things used to be easier in the old days. Back then, you could just source any product, slap your own private label on it, and boom! All of a sudden you’re stacking up cash. There’s simply too much competition out there now to do that anymore. The eCommerce market evolved, and you have to evolve with it. That means don’t just look for cheap things to sell.

You need to innovate if you want to sell, and that means investment capital. Put more money towards a product launch rather than simply finding the cheapest items possible and putting a label on them. Your customers aren’t stupid; they’ll smell this a mile away and your ratings will take a hit. Reputation is everything on Amazon. Protect it. 

Your extra time and money into making a product your customers will enjoy will end up paying off big. If a customer thinks your product is “premium,” they’ll pay a premium price for it. Everybody wins!

4. Keep an Eye on Your FBA Product Rankings

Don’t just jump blindly into a product niche. Plan things out. Part of that planning means knowing what your initial launch budget is. Our Chrome Extension happens to provide you that info upfront and center, all while never leaving a live Amazon listing!

This estimated launch budget is the amount of money it takes to keep 3 months worth of inventory while still staying on page 1 for that product niche. We calculate it based on:

• Keeping enough stock to run 15 days worth of product giveaways
• Having 2 months worth of stock for organic sales
• Having a COGS (Costs of Goods Sold) of 30% of the average sales price

A deep understanding of how Amazon SEO works will help you stay afloat as well. This helps you gain insight your competition doesn’t have and may be what rockets you to page 1 or buries you on page 10. 

5. Optimizing Your Niche Products

Knowing how to sell products on Amazon means knowing how to get eyes on your listings. That means optimization. Products that aren’t optimized with relevant, long-tail keywords will just result in listings with high bounce rates and low conversions. 

Knowing the ins and outs of Amazon’s A10 algorithm will put you at a huge advantage over your competitors. This, in conjunction with our Keywords on Fire tool, will net you huge conversions.

Just loading up your listing with high-performing keywords won’t do the trick, though. It’d be wise to investigate A+ Content (formerly known as EBC). This feature allows you to add video to your listing along with giving you more space to add more product photos and copy. This allows you to tell an engaging story about how your product fits into your customer’s life. At the end of the day, connecting with your customers is what generates a sale.

We’re not quite done, though! To truly optimize your listing, you need to think about your backend keywords. These are keywords that don’t appear in your listing but still affect when you appear in search results. Typos are a great example of this. 

6. Poor Marketing and Strategy

All the optimization in the world doesn’t mean anything if your marketing strategy doesn’t work. It just results in headaches and lost revenue. Make sure you’re targeting the right audience. That means Amazon Ads. Don’t just throw together a couple ads, put them up, and magically expect conversions though. You need to know what your customers want before they even realize it. If you just blindly post Amazon ads all over the place with no real idea of your ideal customer, all you’re doing is wasting time and money. 

A great way to laser-focus your Amazon ads is through A/B testing. This form of testing involves creating multiple versions of an ad, putting it out in the wild for a short amount of time, and seeing which one performs the best. 

Another great way to finetune your ads is by simply asking customers what they want. There are numerous tools out there used to send out automated surveys to customers. With the right questions, you’ll get insight about buying habits you never thought possible!

Make sure to follow our blog for all sorts of useful advice on how to effectively market your FBA products!

7. Delayed Product Niche Entry

If you’ve found a product niche that has the right numbers behind it, is perfect for your business, and are ready to move on it, then move on it! Don’t hesitate. There are thousands of other sellers eager to snatch a profitable Amazon product niche away from you. 

It can be scary jumping into Amazon FBA, but if you’ve done the proper research, you’ll be well on your way to page 1!

Let us help you get there with our detailed, step-by-step guide to finding, validating, and successful product niches and our powerful product research tracking sheet! Find out how you can sell like a pro here.

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