Technology. E-Commerce. Globalization. Advancements in these areas over the last decade have created new businesses, innovations, and industries that have never existed before.
Imagine making thousands of dollars using just a laptop in the comfort of your own home. In a previous generation this would have been completely inconceivable. But today, this is very much a reality for countless people all over the world.
The reason? We live in a connected world where you can be a vendor servicing customers in any country. Innovations in manufacturing, logistics, and online distribution have made it so economical that the barriers to entry are no longer restricted to large corporations with millions (or billions) of dollars to invest.
All it takes these days is a few hundred bucks and a devoted motivation to make it as an entrepreneur.
By far the biggest platform facilitating online merchants is Amazon. Originally created as an online bookstore, this company has transformed into an e-commerce juggernaut. It is the preferred platform for millions of customers worldwide, who make purchases for everything from coasters to auto parts.
Why is this important? In 2018, Amazon’s share of US ecommerce sales hit 49%. There are over 100 million amazon prime members in the US alone. There are over 12 million products being sold on Amazon. 50% of sales are coming from 3rd party sellers.
It is safe to say that there is a lot of business transactions taking place on Amazon and a lot of everyday people are getting in on the action. In fact, the Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) program, which allows individuals to sell products on the platform as third-party sellers, actually boasts a community of over 2.5 million, many of whom are earning six to seven figures annually!
The evidence that selling on Amazon can be successful also presents its biggest challenge.
It is ultra-competitive.
As a seller on the platform, you are competing against millions of other vendors, often with generic products that are easy to replicate. Ranking on the first page of search results is pretty much the holy grail of any FBA seller.
So how do you go about building your presence on Amazon as a new seller? Sure, you can try to manually research the right niche, praying that you may land on a star product with good upside potential. It’s unlikely though.
In order to be successful on Amazon today, you’ll need to leverage a tool that takes the guesswork out of research, analysis and marketing. And the most popular one out there is Jungle Scout. Created by Greg Mercer, an engineer turned e-commerce entrepreneur, this is the most popular all-in-one platform for selling on Amazon.
In this review we’ll go through the tool’s features that make it advantageous (if not a downright necessity) for budding Amazon sellers. We’ll also cover areas where the Jungle Scout falls short and discuss alternative tools that are also worth consideration.
Why You Need a Seller Tool
Whether you’re new to selling on Amazon or an experienced seller looking to gain an edge over the competition, you can’t afford not to be using a tool to operate your business.
First, all successful FBA sellers are already utilizing some product and keyword research tool on the market to inform them on key decisions on what to sell. So not using one will put you at a disadvantage right off the bat.
Second, with so many products being sold on Amazon, it’s hard to know what has the best chance at making you money. Using a tool helps to collect the necessary data so that you can make informed decisions on where to invest your money.
Basic information like what products to sell, what their market viability is, and how much money you can make selling them used to take countless hours of research. And some would still fail to produce meaningful sales.
A tool like Jungle Scout eliminates the guesswork and compiles useful information based on market data available on Amazon. What used to take hours, days, or even months can now be down in a matter of seconds!
Moreover, when you do start selling, you’ll want a way to track and measure performance of your projects and make sure you are staying on top of pricing fluctuations and competitor moves. A tool like Jungle Scout does that for you, and more.
Key Features
You’ll be hard-pressed to find any Amazon sales tool on the market that is as feature rich as Jungle Scout. Here are in-depth details of its most promising features and how you can use them to supercharge your FBA business.
Keyword and Product Research
1. Opportunity Finder
This is a relatively new feature that was introduced in the fall of 2019, replacing what was previously known as ‘Niche Hunter’.
Opportunity Finder, as the name suggests, is all about helping you uncover sales opportunities on the platform to maximize your investment.
With literally millions of products being sold on Amazon every day, figuring out what product to sell can feel pretty much like gambling. You can take a DIY approach by manually checking Google trends and Amazon Best Seller rankings, but it’s guesswork at best.
With Opportunity Finder, you can find lucrative product ideas based on real world data and analytics. You’ll be able to discover trending Amazon keywords to find products that have high demand and low competition.
Some of the most useful metrics provided include:
- Historical average units sold
- Average Price
- Search volume
- Seasonal trends
- Reviews
- Supplier Details
To be successful on Amazon, you need to be constantly evaluating product performance and market viability. There are products in every niche that can generate a lot of return for a seller. This feature helps to discover them.
2. Product Database
What’s the most useful resource when trying to figure out what to sell on a platform as large and extensive as Amazon?
Data.
Jungle Scout’s Product Database offers a searchable catalog of over 475 million products. These products are extracted straight from Amazon so you know they will be authentic and accurate.
But data by itself if not useful unless there is a way to synthesize and present it in a way that a user can draw meaningful conclusions. Jungle Scout provides endless ways to organize data that suits your needs.
Filter or sort based on categories, estimated, sales, sales rank, and revenue, to name a few. The opportunities the product database can reveal are a real game-changer, as you’ll have in-depth product insight into areas such demand, return on investment and overhead costs.
3. Keyword Scout
As of 2020, there are over 100 million Amazon Prime subscribers in the US alone. The primary method that buyers find products on Amazon is through the website’s search function.
Making sure that your product ranks high on the search results is the most important aspect of selling on the platform. It is also one of the most difficult things to do.
The sheer volume of similar products being sold on Amazon means that your product is likely to get lost in the mix if you are not properly optimizing it for search.
Jungle Scout’s Keyword Scout feature allows you to discover what buyers on Amazon are searching for. Imagine having all the answers to the exam and all you need to do is write them on your test paper.
This is essentially what the Keyword Scout feature does for you. Not only do you get great insight into what shoppers today are searching for, but you can also perform reverse ASIN searches on any product so that you can discover all the keywords that the product ranks for.
These will include keywords that were used in their titles and descriptions. Use this information, along with the keyword suggestions generated by Jungle Scout, to build an effective keyword strategy for your own product.
Trends and buyer tastes change constantly. Keywords that have ranked well in the past may not continue to do so. The historical search volumes in Keyword Scout allows you to analyze keyword performance over the last two years so that you can be sure you are applying the most relevant keywords to your products for maximum profit!
4. Jungle Scout Browser Extension
If you’re going to be selling products on Amazon, you’re obviously going to be on the site the majority of the time. Luckily, you don’t need to worry about toggling between the site and Jungle Scout thanks to its browser extension.
Available for both Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome, this extension allows you to access detailed product insights as you browse through the Amazon site. It’s easy to install and easy to use.
Within a single click, you’ll be able to see useful information about a product listing such as demand, competition data and profit projections. You can use it directly on a product page or on an entire list of search results.
This extension generates an extremely useful metric called the Opportunity Score. This score assesses a products potential based on data collected about demand, competition and listing quality.
If you want to know if you have a good idea, this score can help you to rapidly make a decision on whether it presents a promising opportunity and warrants further investigation, or it’s one that isn’t worth your time.
5. Supplier Database
Successful Amazon sellers typically source their products from suppliers all over the globe. Nefarious online practices and lack of oversight can make sourcing the right suppliers difficult as a newcomer.
A good supplier can put you on a path to success and profit. A bad supplier can tarnish your reputation or, worse, steal your money.
Thanks to Jungle Scout’s verified Suppler Database, you can rest easy knowing that you can connect to reliable and legitimate global suppliers.
This database gives you access to a host of suppliers that have been verified on the platform. You’ll be able to see data on each supplier such as total shipments and total customers so that you can make informed decisions on who to work with.
You can even search for the suppliers of any product on Amazon. This gives you even more insight on how to differentiate between high-quality suppliers and low-quality ones.
The Supplier Tracker provides a single place for you to save lists of suppliers and manage quotes, samples and purchase orders.
When you’ve found that perfect supplier, you can generate and send out purchase orders right within Jungle Scout.
Tools For Running Your Business
1. Product Tracker
Finding the right product to sell on Amazon is only the first step. Once you’ve found that perfect product in that perfect niche that’s yielding an amazing return on investment, you’ll need to track and monitor its performance.
The Product Tracker allows you to track a product (or group of products), monitoring its performance over time. This gives crucial data you can use to strategize your operations.
You’ll be able to easily view data for every tracked product such as:
- Average Daily Sales
- Average Price
- Average Daily Rank
- Average Daily Revenue
Use these metrics to help you answer questions like:
- Should you increase inventory?
- Should you exit from a certain product category?
- Should you enter a certain product category?
You can also download your Product Tracker group metrics via a CSV file and export table and graph data to use for further exploration and analysis.
2. Listing Builder
On Amazon, ranking is king. The higher your product ranks on the search results page, the more sales your product will generate.
Jungle Scout’s Listing Builder uses AI to generate a ‘listing quality score’ (LQS) based on what it believes Amazon deems most important to ranking.
It performs in real-time and looks at areas such as product title, description, key features, keywords and images in order to determine how well your product will rank in search.
The instant feedback provided will show you the key areas you need to adjust in order to improve your products ability to rank.
Keywords are crucial to selling products on Amazon. Using the Listing Builder, you’ll be able to identify areas where your listing needs improvement. Combine it with the other keyword features on Jungle Scout and you’ll be able to create a fully optimized product listing that consistently ranks.
3. Inventory Manager
Inventory management is always a bit of a balancing act. You want to have enough inventory to meet the demands of your customers. But you don’t want unused inventory to sit idle on shelves, especially when you’re paying for the privilege of storage.
Jungle Scout provides an Inventory Manager feature that can intelligently predict when products in your Amazon FBA inventory need additional stock.
This is such an amazing feature because it takes the guess work out of it. Having Inventory Manager automate this entire process helps prevent out of stock scenarios and reduce Amazon fulfillment center storage fees.
4. Email Marketing
Getting your product to rank high increases the likelihood your product will be seen. But what can you do to increase the likelihood someone will buy?
Reviews. Positive reviews.
Collecting ample positive reviews for your products not only validates its quality, but it also builds trust and confidence for people to buy or continue buying your products.
With Jungle Scout’s Email Marketing feature, you can send targeted, personalized email campaigns that comply with Amazon’s terms of use.
This increases your changes of receiving positive reviews. It also builds a solid community for your business and lets others know that you’re a business that consistently delivers quality products to its customers.
5. Alerts
When you’re selling on Amazon, you’re juggling multiple tasks at once, especially if you’re selling a lot of products. Jungle Scout’s Alerts feature helps you keep on top of critical updates on your products.
You can set up alerts for the likes of:
- New customer reviews
- Changes in keyword rankings for your listings
- Changes to competitor listings
Getting notified as early as possible allows you to make the proper adjustments before market forces negatively impact your business. You can even receive daily snapshots sent to you email to keep yourself up to date.
Performance Measuring Tools
1. Rank Tracker
According to Jungle Scout, 73% of shoppers click the first organic search result. In a nutshell, working on your rankings is important. So many factors affect your product’s ranking.
The Rank Tracker allows you to track where your products rank in search results under different keywords. In addition, you’ll also get useful insight into how aspects like PPC, external traffic, and promotions have impacted your ranking for those keywords.
You’ll also be able to track how your competitors rank for keywords as well. Using the comparison tools, you can track how rankings change over time. This give you great information on how you stack up in your niche and whether or not it remains a viable space for your business.
2. Sales Analytics
There are some many things you’ll need to keep track of when selling on Amazon. Having the right data readily available is crucial in determining whether your Amazon business is operating successfully or if it’s time to change up your strategies.
Jungle Scout’s Sales Analytics provides real-time and detailed sales data for your Amazon business. You view all critical sales metrics all in one place to get the full financial picture of your business at a glance.
For a more detailed look, Jungle Scout allows you to drill deeper into metrics to get even more insight into areas such as revenue, hidden fees, costs of goods sold, and operating expenses.
Information is presented in easy to read graphs, charts, and tables so that you get all the information you need when you need them.
You can also view and track your sales data over time. This is an amazing tool for spotting trends, reviewing the progress of your product, and even managing your taxes!
If you run campaigns for your Amazon business, Sales Analytics can also measure your PPC-related sales and expenses. This gives you an inside look into how successful or unsuccessful a paid marketing campaign may be, providing valuable lessons you can use to run better ad campaigns in the future.
You’ll also be able to compare your organic and PPC sales on the platform so that you can make informed decisions on how to best market your products.
Pricing
Jungle Scout has recently simplified their membership into three tiers: Basic, Suite and Professional. They are priced at $19, $49, and $97 a month, respectively.
Previously the Web app and Chrome extension were priced separately, which resulted in a confusing pricing scheme and disjointed user experience.
But now with three distinct membership options that all include the browser extension, Jungle Scout is able to provide value for every customer type
The ‘Suite’ option is recommended for most Amazon sellers. This plan provides all of Jungle Suite’s premium features at a great value.
The Basic is recommended for completely new sellers who are just getting started. You’ll have access to Greg Mercer’s exclusive Academy training and all the product and niche prospecting tools. It’s a great start in helping you research possible products in your niche to sell, but you won’t have access to advanced seller features that help you run your business like a well-oiled machine (e.g. rank tracking, sales analytics and inventory manager).
Professional is the most expensively priced option. It’s pretty much the Suite plan but scaled up in certain areas. You’ll get extras like more user accounts, more products tracked, and longer product histories. While these are great and will be attractive to some, many Amazon sellers won’t benefit from the increased quotas. So we recommend most people stick with the Suite plan.
Unfortunately Jungle Scout does not offer a free trial on any of their subscription plans, but they do at least offer a risk-free 14-day money-back guarantee.
Jungle Scout Alternatives
Paid-for Alternatives
There are a number of Amazon product research tools and all-in-one seller platforms around. Most of them share the same core features as Jungle Scout, like product sales estimates and trends, reverse ASIN keyword search and sales analytics.
Because all these platforms (including Jungle Scout) are using intelligent estimates for data, the accuracy and dependability of their data vary. When it comes to data accuracy, only Helium 10 and Viral Launch can really compare with Jungle Scout’s industry-leading data.
Free Alternatives
There aren’t much in the way of free Amazon research tools. Unicorn Smash, a Chrome extension by the makers of AMZ Tracker is the most popular, but its sales estimates are often wildly inaccurate.
If you’re just looking to dip your toes into the world of FBA, Helium 10 has a free tier which is worth looking at. Unfortunately, its limited to just 20 uses of the ‘Black Box’ Product Finder and Research tool and just 50 launches of the ‘Xray’ Chrome extension. Be warned, though, as it will cost you a whopping $97 a month to upgrade to the cheapest paid tier.
Conclusion
Online retail is one of the hottest industries today, presenting limitless opportunities for individuals to create businesses for themselves. It’s also ultra-competitive and carries a great deal of risk for people who aren’t taking the time to do research and due diligence.
Seller Research Tools have become essential to anyone looking to build a successful Amazon business. Other product research platforms like Helium 10 and Viral Launch exist and do a good job in some areas of the FBA process.
But there is no platform that matches the quality of Jungle Scout when it comes to features and providing the most accurate data estimates.
For anyone looking to build a successful business by selling on Amazon, Jungle Scout is the one tool you’ll need to manage it all, from research to inventory, to analytics. This is the most pop