If you sell the wrong product, you’re wasting your money and your time

If you’re running a small company, what differentiates you from a big one is your limited budget. Therefore you have a limited number of mistakes you can make before going bankrupt. The startup principle is “build the airplane before you crash.”

If you’re reading this guide, it means you want to increase the chances of success of your product. That’s great! But you also need to be aware that you could be selling the wrong product and that any effort on your part will not be fruitful.

The main mistake new sellers make on Amazon

Here is the classic path they take:

1. They choose the wrong niche and/or the wrong product, creating something the customers don’t want.
2. They get emotionally attached to the product and its outcome.
3. They waste money and time trying to promote and sell a losing value proposition.
4. They end up believing that Amazon is too hard for them.

If you start with the wrong product you’ll face an uphill battle. There is no way around it.

How to recognize if you’re selling the wrong product?

Here are some clues:

• You don’t have much traffic even though you appear high on the search results.
• You have very few differences with the competition: you’re selling a commodity competing on price alone.
• You have a very low conversion rate even after you have optimized your listing (if you have not optimized it yet, do it before giving up!)
• Your margin is very low, and you don’t have a plan to raise it.

At some point, it’s time to move on. Prepare yourself for this possibility as you learn to master your business on Amazon. Your next product will do better!

But hopefully, that’s not the case!

Here are some simple pieces of advice on how to make the best of Amazon traffic:

• Never forget: on Amazon, you’re not here to create something 100% new and ground-breaking. You’re here to use existing traffic and rising trends.
• Don’t try to innovate too much: differentiate from existing competitors by improving upon their offerings.
• Don’t go into short-term trends.
• Don’t go into low-traffic niches (except if you have insider knowledge of a steady wave coming! – that’s the case for instance if you’re an expert in a field that’s beginning to mature enough to cross the early adopter chasm).

Good luck!