Amazon has become a major brand throughout the world because of its large platform and opportunity for everyone to change their lives.

Whatever your goal is, it is to leave 9-5, to become rich, gain financial freedom, or retire at a young age.

Amazon is the way to go for these goals. With the launch of Amazon FBA, the Amazon business became practical and scalable.

In this article, I am gonna explain what Amazon Private Label Product Development actually is and why just researching/finding or hiring someone else to just look for a product for your Amazon business is a big mistake. Let’s jump into Product Development.

Finding a product for your Amazon Private Label is the most important part, as it lays a strong foundation for further steps. If you want to lay strong foundations in order to keep your investment as safe as possible, develop the product first, instead of blindly launching it, seeing a good score on some Amazon tool.

Let’s see if you have found a perfect product. It has a high score on some tools, and now you want to launch it. The first thing to do if you want to develop this product properly before the actual launch is to check the product’s viability on multiple tools.

If it has a high score on Jungle Scout, then check its potential on Viral Launch or Egrow. Because one tool might miss something that you find out about in the other tools.

A single missed thing can affect your launch, and it’s quite difficult to deal with issues while your product is live and you have invested money already.

So, let’s start talking about the other steps or important parts of the Product Development Process. I will be discussing some of them in quite a detail, and some of you can see and easily understand from the image below. Explaining all these will be a bit long, but it would be worth it.

Product Approval:

So, what does Product Approval mean here? It simply means that if the product passed these product development criteria, then it’s a viable product to invest in.

But it’s not words written on stone; there is always space for improvisation and trying out new strategies, but you can decide that based on your own experience and set of skills.

Initial Viability:

Initial Viability is simply a product that is showing promise; it has good scores on multiple Amazon tools, and you are thinking of choosing it as your launching product. Now the actual process of Product Development starts.

Main Keyword Identification:

A product can have hundreds of keywords directly or indirectly related to it. But there are a few that actually could be considered as main keywords.

After finding a promising product, the first thing to do is identify the main keyword. It could be the keywords that are most relevant to your product and have the highest search volume.

After you have found that keyword. Check your tool’s score on that specific keyword, because here is the thing, especially for those who are buying Amazon Consultancy services from freelancers or agencies. Different keywords show different scores for the same product.

Jungle Scout can show 8 scores for a specific keyword for a product, and it might have 1 score on the same product’s actual main keyword. So, you have found the main keyword, and it looks good, the scores are good, and you want to move on with the process.

Niche Analysis:

Now, this part is important in many ways; it might not be important for your first product, but it’s quite important for your Private Label Brand.

You must know how the niche is performing, what is happening there, is there a sales war, price war, or is there way too much competition in it?

Because in order to create a brand, your plan should launch up to 5 products in the upcoming years. Always make sure there is enough space in that niche for more products because changing a niche might be difficult for you.

So, if your niche is not showing any of these things, then your niche is a go for your brand.

Initial Keywords Analysis:

So, this is where we start talking about our budget; every keyword has its ranking budget. Some keywords are difficult to rank, but the sales they generate are also higher. The strategy that I follow is to start with small keywords and scale my way up from there.

So, it depends on you and your skills; estimate your budget according to which keywords you are going to spend the most money on. Which advertising service will you use, is it Amazon PPC, Facebook Traffic, or other sites’ traffic?

It depends on you; make sure to make an accurate budget estimate to avoid any future surprises.

Retail Readiness Checks:

It simply means the steps you take to make sure that your product listing is ready to sell on a digital platform. It can include Product Title, bullet points, description, clear images, etc. So why do this during the Product Development phase?

The question is, why not?

Why not make everything ready before actually buying the inventory? You can even get the photography done from the samples you bought. This will tell the potential of your product visually, as you can see how your final product page will look. Then keep on improving it till your product goes live.

Attribute Analysis:

Attribute Analysis is simply checking your competitors’ positions in the market before placing your own product in that market. Always do thorough research on your competitors, especially those you want to target for your product’s sales.

Look at what keywords they are spending their money on, what type of feedback they are receiving from their customers.

If their product is doing well, what is the reason behind it? If they are not performing well, find out about their mistakes and bad strategies.

Make sure to compare your own product samples with the main competitor, to match the quality or get a higher quality than your competitor.

Social Listening:

You would think, why is that important. The product is already selling well on Amazon. Well, you might be introducing a new design, color, or even a new product to the market.

The buyers haven’t actually seen your specific product. Obviously, you like your new product, but do the customers also like it?

Instead of pondering about it without any actual action, use social listening to your advantage. It can be social media ads, showing it to your friends and family, or hiring professional product reviewers. You can even hire an expert Social Listening Freelancer to do it for you.

Initial Patent Check:

Now, this is something that does not need an expert. You can simply visit the Patent website and see if there is a patent on your product. I usually do it myself. It’s not the most important part because later on, you have to hire someone to actually do a thorough patent check. It’s a bit of a guarantee before doing the other grunt work.

Initial Sourcing:

Now, to be accurate, this is not where you start the sourcing phase of your product. Right now, you are just looking at the manufacturers, seeing the average price of your product.

Getting an estimate of your product’s weight and shipment charges. You get in contact with some manufacturers, discuss basic details with them, and choose a freight forwarder.

Get an estimate of how much your shipment will cost. Now, after all these, we are going to the most crucial step, which is budgeting your product launch.

Budgeting:

Now, this is where you go through everything. The basics of budgeting are to think of Murphy’s law, which simply states,” if something can go wrong, it will go wrong”.

Calculate your budget in a way that you are ready for everything; don’t leave anything to chance or luck because it will ruin your launch. Finalize which keywords you are going to rank on, and how much advertising budget you are going to spend on your first month, second month, and so on.

If something does not go according to your plan, do you have a Plan B? Calculate how much money you have to spend on buying your first inventory, can you afford advertising after, or will you be able to sell it in time, or is it enough so that you don’t go out of stock?

Forecast things that can go wrong or things that will go wrong. This is where you get ready for an adventure. Get your potions and weapons ready!

Patent Check:

Now this one can be the last step or the first step of your product development. What I do is, do this early in the process to avoid getting my hard work wasted.

Always do a Patent Check, even if you are sure that your product does not have a patent. If any one of your competitors has a patent, they can stop you from selling. And then all your inventory and hard work are useless and wasted.

Want my advice? After finding that there is no patent, apply for a patent yourself, not just sell more than others. You can actually dominate and own that product page.

This was my take on Product Development. To all the aspiring Amazon Sellers, don’t miss out on these. If you can’t do them yourselves, hire someone else to do it.

Obviously, I would prefer it if you hire, but I leave that to you. But please make your investments and launches safer by following these. Good luck with your Amazon Private Label Journey!