Should You Sell Copper Mugs On Amazon?

Hey, how's it going? It's Ollie here. Welcome to Niche Spotlight. So it's been a little while since I've done one of these. In fact, I looked back at my videos, I think it's been three months. And I often do them much closer together because they perform really well, these videos and I think you guys like them. So what is Niche Spotlight? Well, the idea is for us to take a product, right, and do an in depth, lengthy analysis of that product and really just figure out simple question, should we sell it or not? Simple as that, Right? That's the idea. So obviously when you're trying to make a decision to sell something on Amazon or not, there are a lot of factors we need to take into account, right? So you'll learn in this video whether you should sell this product or not. But also you'll learn generally what should we be thinking about when you're deciding whether to sell something. And this will help you with your product research, it will help you finding better niches. And, you know, it's onwards and upwards when we keep looking at these things. So today's product is Moscow Mule copper mugs. Moscow Mule copper mugs. So you might be thinking, you know, what is that? What is a Moscow Mule copper mug? Well, Moscow Mule is a cocktail. Can't exactly remember what's inside it. I don't think I've ever had one. I like mojitos personally, but, you know, I like mint. But, you know, these look good too. In fact, it looks like they may even have mint in them as well. Awesome. And they're traditionally served in mugs like these. Okay, so they're quite vintage looking, I guess, and quite classic. This is something that probably will never go out of style. You know, it's. People have been serving Moscow Mules in these cups forever, but very recently, in fact, these became very trendy. So, yeah, I mean, it looks like the type of thing that could perform well. So how do we decide whether we should sell this product or not? How do we know if there's a decent level of demand? How do we know if there's the right amount of competition? Well, just before we dive into all of that, I wanted to remind you of the smash hit product Radar.

Okay.

And what it is. Now, if you've never heard of the smash hit product Radar before, then.

This.

Will be really, really important.

Right?

Because you can't analyze a product unless you know the four elements of the radar. If you have heard it before and you do know this, then they say repetition is the mother of skill. So by me going through this again, it will solidify the concept in your mind and it will be very at time, very well spent. So let's have a look at what this radar is all about. So there's four elements, okay, that we need to look for in any hot product. The first one is high demand. In other words, we want to see evidence in the marketplace that this thing is already selling. People are already buying it. We would never sell a product on Amazon that isn't already selling that people aren't already buying. Because without evidence that the thing sells, why would you bother risking all that money?

Right?

We want to go where the money already is. We want to go where the customers already are and just set ourselves in that niche, okay? That's the first element. Second element is low competition. Now, a lot of people make the mistake trying to find a product with no competition. They think that in order to be successful, there should be no other sellers selling the product, or very few. And so when I show them a product that looks very good and they see pages and pages and pages of competition, they think, ollie, you don't know what you're talking about. There's loads of competition on this product. I really shouldn't be selling something like that. I want something with no competition. Well, the problem with that philosophy is that without competition, you don't have demand.

Right?

Demand automatically means there will be competition. In fact, the way that you see if a product is selling already is by looking at your competitors and seeing how well they're doing. It's quite often why you'll see on a high street, several coffee shops. Several coffee shops on a high street. You might be thinking, why did that coffee shop owner make their coffee shop next door to a place where there already was a coffee shop?

Why?

I mean, surely there. There's too much competition on that high street.

No. Right.

If there's a coffee shop on the high street, that means in this town, people want coffee.

Okay?

And one coffee shop can only serve a certain amount of customers. And people have preferences. So sometimes going where the competition is can actually be a really good sign you're going to get customers. Same applies to Amazon.

Okay?

So we want levels of competition, right? But we don't want it to be too high. We want it to be low competition.

Okay?

So competition, but not too much. That's the key. All right? That's element number two. Element number three is low hassle. Low hassle. So we're going to be importing stuff from China, most likely.

Okay?

Although you can source stuff locally. But whatever it is, we need to get this stuff manufactured and shipped safely into the Amazon warehouse and then it needs to be shipped to customers. We don't want products that are going to be a nightmare to ship. I want it to be easy stuff that's light, small, not going to break, not too complicated. So the whole process of logistics is simple. And then finally, we want there to be some kind of gap in the marketplace. Something that's the customers want that they're not getting. For example, on the high street, if there's a coffee shop that serves lattes, cappuccinos and frappuccinos and all those kind of coffees, there might be a gap in the market in that particular market, that high street for more refined coffee, single origin coffee, right? Micro lot coffee, really decent Aeropress coffee and all the fancy stuff, there might be a gap in the market for that. So if you wanted to build your coffee shop next to another coffee shop, then make sure you're doing something different so you can appeal to a different type of customer.

Right?

That's what a gap in the marketplace is all about. So let's go through these elements, analyze this niche and see does it check the boxes or not. So first thing I always do when I'm analyzing a niche is I pull up Jungle Scout, okay? And I just use the chrome extension. I don't bother with the web app, any of that stuff. I just want to see how much revenue is going through this niche, right? So I sort by revenue. First thing I do and I look at the numbers. Okay? So number one, best sellers doing £11,000 per month in sales, okay? In fact, to be precise, it's £11,820 per month sales.

Okay?

Second best sellers doing 8k a month. Third best sellers doing 7k a month. Fourth best sellers doing 7k a month. Fifth best sellers doing 3.86. Best sellers doing 3.3. And there's lots of sellers doing well, okay? Lots of sellers with high demand. Now the number I like to use for this as A benchmark is £3,000 per month in sales or more.

Okay?

£3,000Amonth in sales or more. And if we look at sellers who are meeting that benchmark, we've got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Eight sellers who are doing at least 3k a month in revenue. So there's lots of demand for this product, right? Very least, I'd want three sellers who are doing well with 3K or more. We've got eight. So that's very Good people buy these copper mugs. Okay, so is there high demand? I would say absolutely, yes, there is. There is definitely high demand for this product. It sells very, very well. Okay, so next, we've seen that there's competitors, right? We've seen that there's demand. What about the levels of competition? Well, for this, I look at reviews, right, because we want to see how established these sellers are. How long have they been selling for, how difficult are they going to be to compete with.

Right.

And number of reviews can indicate how established a seller is. If a seller has, you know, 5,000 reviews, they've probably been selling that product for 10 years. Customers really trust the product. They're probably going to go towards that seller rather than the new seller, which could be you or me who has two or three reviews. Right. I mean, obviously, 5,000 reviews with like a 4.8 rating is more attractive to a customer. We think, yeah, you know what, that's more likely to be a good quality product. So it's harder to compete with. So we don't want too many reviews.

Okay.

Now, in 2021, my guideline is to look for established sellers. They would be sellers who have more than 500 reviews.

Okay.

More than 500 reviews. Okay. So we need to see how many sellers have 500 reviews or more. In this case, there is one.

Okay.

With 768. Two here, number two has 615. Three. There's three established sellers. Now, interestingly, I actually put this rating up. I used to aim for 300 or more. But what I found is I kept launching products in niches that I used to think were competitive on Amazon. You know, be very strict and say, you know, Amazon, we need sellers with less than 300 reviews. And if they have more than, they're an established seller. And then that would mean that this niche has 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 established sellers. Okay, that's being more strict on your analysis of competition.

Right.

I used to be like that, but then I realized that I kept launching products in these competitive niches and they were working really well. So what I've done is I've upped my criteria for competition levels and I've actually put it in the 2021 version of my product research handbook. There's a link in the description if you want to go check that out. That gives you all the criteria you need to find products. Right. So since the update, I say there's only three established sellers here, and we want five or less a niche. So there is less than five. So I would say that this niche does have low competition, right? It's not too crazy. It's not like there's loads of established brands, like, I don't recognize any of these brands. It's not like there's sellers with thousands and thousands of reviews and it's not like there's loads of sellers with really, really high reviews. So I'd say this is actually a low competition niche, right? There's room for you to stand out and to get established inside the niche. So on to element number three, low hassle. Is this product low hassle product or is it going to be a nightmare? That's the question you want to ask yourself because you're the one who's going to have to import this stuff. You're the one who's going to have to deal with customers giving you returns and things if you've got a product that's, you know, going to break all the time. So. So how easy is it going to be for you? Is it going to cause you loads of pain, hassle, irritation? Are they going to be way too bulky and expensive to ship? We want to have a look. So what I do is I usually look at one or two of the products and my laptop's going a bit slow just because of. Because I'm recording. Funny, I've actually got a new laptop on the way today. So excited of that. Father Christmas was kind this year. So I pick out one or two listings and I scroll down and I look at the weight and the size of the product. So a good guideline is, will it fit in a shoebox?

Right.

Will it fit in a shoebox? And you want to be careful here because what we've got is we've got product dimensions. Now, product dimensions can be different to packaging dimensions because it's the packaging dimensions we want to pay attention to. But we don't know if that's the package dimensions, size and weight or whether that's the individual cup. We don't really know. So let's. Sometimes you can have a look around and they'll tell you. Looking at them, they don't look that heavy. I'd assume maybe 500 grams is. It's probably the weight of the full thing, but if it's not clear, pull up another listing, have a look. Let's have a look. Okay, so this is a set of four. So this will probably be a kilogram then I'd assume, or £2.2.2. But sometimes it's important to notice the difference between item weight, package weight, item size and package size. Because they might put a relatively small product in a relatively big box and it might be a bit harder to ship and sell. Let's have a look. Okay, so this is 880 grams. And they've actually specifically put the package dimensions here. So it's 20cm by 20 by 11. So that's relatively within the parameters. Will it fit in a shoebox specifically? Maybe not. Maybe it will, but maybe not. I can't remember the exact dimensions of a shoebox, but what we want to do is make sure it's not going to be oversized.

Okay.

Because when a package is oversized, according to the FBA version of oversized, which I think is similar to Royal Mail oversized package dimensions, the fees are just more expensive. That's all it is. We want to avoid paying unnecessary fees. Interestingly, I do have products that are oversized and they are profitable. So look at your numbers to really know, but just make sure you pay attention to that. And it could be that offering a set of two is easier than offering a set of four. So these are all things to consider. So generally I would say yes, this is definitely a low hassle product. I think it's not gonna be too difficult to ship to the UK and also ship to customers. Alrighty. So it's looking good so far, this product? I think it is, yeah. It's measuring up quite well. Final thing to consider is gap in the marketplace. Is there a gap or is there not? Is there something customers wish they could buy in this niche that isn't being offered or, you know, are all the gaps filled already? Right, well, the way I like to look at this is I pick some of the best selling products in the niche and use Jungle Scout to figure this out. By the way, you can also use Helium 10. You can use Amazelle, you can use, you know, there's loads of these kind of chrome extensions. As long as you can see the revenue numbers, estimations for each product, they're not exact the estimations, but as long as you can see them, then you'll. You've got what you need. So don't worry if you don't have Jungle Scout. You can use any software that you like. I just. Jungle Scouts, the one I've just always used. I'm comfortable with it. My team use it as well. Alrighty. So is this the one we were looking at before? No, it's a different one. Okay, so this is the best seller. We want to look at the reviews. So what do customers say they wish this product had or what? What's wrong with this Product like what can we fix that this product doesn't do or doesn't do well enough? Reviews are a really amazing thing because, you know, you get to read customers minds. They'll tell you exactly what they're thinking. And as a marketer, as a an E commerce business owner, that is the best possible thing. You can have access to people's thoughts. Basically, I think it was it Eugene Schwartz who said, you want to enter the conversation that's already happening inside the customer's mind. That's what we want to do. And if you can do that, it's so easy to sell stuff. The conversation happening inside the customer's mind has been laid out for us inside these reviews. That's the bottom line. So we can just read what they're thinking and then enter that conversation by offering a product that does what they wish it would do. Here we go. Straight away, these are not copper. Okay, so one star review. So this person is very annoyed. And remember, people don't often leave reviews on Amazon. I think I've left like maybe one review or two in my life and I buy products on Amazon all the time. People leave reviews when they're extremely happy or when they're really annoyed. Basically, they leave a review usually when they have an emotion come up. Okay, so this is, you know, if they went to the trouble of writing this entire paragraph and taking time out of the day, they must be really annoyed about this. So this must matter to them. And if we know what matters to a customer and we fix that problem, then it's going to be easy making sales in this niche.

Right.

So this customer is very annoyed that the mug is not copper. They're just very annoyed about that. It says the mug's outside. Copper finish is eroding. The base of these copper mugs are now just metal and the copper effect is diminishing. Do I feel I got ripped off and these were bought initially for their copper material to drink out of? I'm assuming that was a question, but there's no question mark. They're so angry that they just forgot about grammar. They were used for drinking water for my children. Once I saw the outer surface of copper becoming metal, they're no longer used for this sole purpose. Not happy at all with being ripped off. Okay, so this person's annoyed. This person says, poor quality, horrible service story. And it looks like the same issue, right? Copper faded, change of the color, very bad quality, very poorly finished. A ride with bots of nickel in the. Lots of nickel, I assume in the bottom of the cups don't make hot drinks in them, they get really hot.

Right.

Mugs are okay quality, they're a bit scratched on arrival. Okay, so there are big quality issues with the number one best selling product in this niche.

Okay?

Big quality issues. And customers can see all of these reviews, right? Customers can see this and they're still buying this more than any of the other listings on page one. This is the best selling product. It's doing £11,000amonth. So imagine if you came up with something that was better than this, solved those problems, you could overtake this person's sales. And I've done this so many times in different niches. I've looked at the revenue that a lot of sellers are doing in a niche. Loads of sellers, pages of sellers selling a product. I figured out what's the biggest problem with most of the the current sellers products, solved that problem, done something extra special. And then I've surpassed all of the revenue that you can see on Jungle Scout. Because when customers are happy, they come back, they tell other people about the product, they buy your product way more, and your product can just skyrocket because you're finally giving customers what they really want. And it just takes. You need to just do your research and understand what it really is that customers want. And that really pays off. So if I was going to attack this niche, I'd say, first of all, there's definitely a gap in the marketplace because clearly there's quality issues. I'm sure there would be similar problems with other products in the niche. You can go and investigate and have a look. But there's definitely a gap. But what I would do to fill the gap is I would offer a good quality mug, something that's good quality, if that's possible. It's not always possible.

Okay.

Also I would bundle, right? So I like what these guys are doing with their packaging, which can be good packaging can add a real edge, real special quality to your product. It can make it look more premium, it can make it look like a better gift opportunity.

Right.

It just makes it presented better, the branding is better. But if you can bundle, then you're one upping your competition. You can charge more, you offer something more valuable. So it might be good to see what people who buy these mugs, what they also buy alongside it. It's quite funny. These two products are identical. This is, this is a side note, but I have to get into it. So this is the number one bestseller, okay, 2149. This is the picture here. See the picture right this is another seller, another brand has come into the marketplace and sold the exact same product. And look, they've used exactly the same pictures. And the only difference here is the price. So the only reason this product is selling better than the other product is because it's a little bit. Oachi is more expensive. So it must be the reviews then, right? Because that's what you're left with when your product is the same as everybody else's. So don't do what this seller has done. Don't enter into a niche where you have to undercut looks. He's trying to undercut to get some sales because he's not established seller and he doesn't have any way of differentiating and making his product better. It's exactly the same. So if he doesn't undercut, there's no way anyone's going to buy this product because they look at this as a cheap imitation of the number one bestseller. Okay, if you want to come into this niche, you can sell a similar product but add something. Let's see what people who buy this product also buy. Frequently bought together. Okay, so coffee. Probably best not to. Is that coffee? Oh, it's mulled wine. It's not coffee.

Okay.

That's a grocery item. Probably best not to sell groceries. That would be considered a high hassle product.

Right.

Because it's, it perishes at some point. You need to get ungated in a lot of cases and it's just. It's too much hassle for me personally. But there might be other things we could do. So this person's bundled with straws and a little shot glass and a recipe book, which is cool. It's a cool little bundle. And you see they've charged a lot more. So you could do something like that. Let's see if there are any other suggestions for what people buy. Here we are. Products related to this item can be good. So here's a water bottle, might be a bit much to bundle with this. Let's have a look. I've got a jug here, some jars. That's a similar kind of aesthetic, isn't it? Copper jars or, sorry, glass jars. I like the idea of metal straws. Actually goes with the product quite well. So, you know, if you think about it, you can actually, you can get some pretty decent ideas for products to bundle. And the key is really just to test. You'll never know which bundle is going to work the best. Nobody does. People might say to you, you know, this bundle is going to work really well. This bundle is not going to work. You don't know until you test. I've tested bundles that shouldn't work and they've done really, really well. So you just have to test, test a few different types, maybe see which one kicks off. And if you also have a copper mug that you know is good quality, then you'll smash all these competitors out the water. Alrighty. So should you sell Moscow Mule copper mugs? I would say definitely. And to rate this niche out of 10, certainly high demand, certainly low competition, certainly low hassle, certainly a gap in the marketplace. There's a few sellers who are doing bundles already. Like there's a couple who have got straws and things bundled with it. So you'd have to come up with a very decent bundle. I would say solving the quality issue might not be as easy as it looks. Just from experience, I've got a feeling that that might be kind of tricky. So because of those two things, I'm going to knock off two points and I'm going to give this an 8. 8 out of 10 products and I think it's a really solid, really solid product to go for. It's not perfect, right? No niche is perfect, but it could definitely be something to dive further into and have another look at. Alright, hope this is helpful. Hope this is useful. I try to keep these as casual as possible, as if we're just literally sitting next to each other and I'm just showing you, you know, over my shoulder, the type of thing I would analyze on, on Amazon. Hope it's been useful. If it was, leave a comment down below and if you want, if you're ready and you want to get some help from me, I've put some links in the description where you can get some more help. Anything from getting my handbook, which is just £10 and it can tell you all the steps of finding hot products and gives you my updated criteria for what to look for. Anything up to maybe getting some coaching or just having a chat about it, if you're interested in that. So check the links in the description and you can find some more info. Alright, thanks so much for watching this video and I'll catch you very soon.