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Ok, you are thinking about purchasing Jungle Scout…

For a long time, I have been researching on Amazon to find the good products that I can sell and Jungle Scout is probably the most powerful tool for any FBA seller.

It is a great tool if you know how to use it but the info it presents doesn’t really mean anything if you don’t know to interpret it.

That being said, it is just a tool and tools may help validate an idea but they will not create one. Jungle Scout is good for getting an idea of the “health” of a particular niche market that you may be interested in, but that’s about it.

Another thing about Jungle Scout (or any tool out there) they are all focused on the quantitative metrics (BSR, estimated monthly sales, projected profit after fees etc) and less on the qualitative metrics.

Quality in my mind at least should make the difference between a successful product and a mediocre one. Jungle Scout does not read reads reviews but you should read them.

Looking at existing products reviews gives you a clue about product improvement opportunities while still hitting the basics like ensuring good margins and potential demand.

So be careful out there. Do your due diligence as you would with any business idea.

Jungle Scout Review

Jungle Scout has a web app that allows the users to search a database of the items on Amazon that sell well. It also has a Chrome extension, which allows the users to be in a position to display information on various pages of the products.

So what is the difference between the Jungle Scout Chrome Extension and Jungle Scout Web App?

These two apps work closely together while addressing different needs during the product research phase. However, they are completely different.

Chrome Extension is for helping the users in gathering specific data and information regarding a certain product on Amazon. They are normally installed into the Google Chrome Browser, thus operating in the inside of the Amazon Website.

Jungle Scout Web App, on the other hand, helps the users in finding products from various filters as well as tracing tracking the products over time whose data has already been gathered by the Chrome Extension. The Web App is not on Amazon.com but it runs in the cloud of the Jungle Scouts website, and it has various features.

Jungle Scout Web App

The web application is meant to help you find products according to certain criteria that you choose and it is like a search engine but intended for sellers (to give them ideas).

One of the features in the Web App is the:

Jungle Scout product database

Jungle Scout product database allows you to be able to filter the Amazon’s catalog that includes those filters which are relevant to sellers only. Here you can filter according to all possible criteria to find and analyze the interesting products.

The most important functions are numbered at the top of the screenshot:

Select your marketplace and one or more categories

Set your desired filters such as price and weight (pounds not kilos), number of ratings and minimum sales per month

Make sure you are interested in FBA, FBM or Amazon sold products

You can add or exclude keywords, which works well for materials eg exclude “stainless steel” if you want

Below you will find the corresponding results listed

Another feature in the Web App is the:

Jungle Scout product tracker

Jungle Scout product tracker allows you to track over time to monitor the sales, inventory, best-sellers rank as well as any other relevant information. The tool is a classic tracker that saves you so to say the “999 Trick” but automated allowing you to monitor the inventory of whatever ASIN you want.

Add the product to the cart, up to the QTY to 999, if they have less then it’ll show how many they have in stock. Repeat the process multiple days in a row to see how the product’s quantity changes to get a good idea of sales.

Exporting results and tracking over several days (weeks or even a month) is important because you can’t know if some company just bought 50 units of them the day prior, and the Amazon rank is temporarily inflated.

Jungle Scout Niche Hunter

Niche Hunter is the best part of the Web App, which you use when finding specific niches depending on such things as demand, competition, among other relevant criteria.

In this tool, you set up only some variables and wait for what happens. In the example above, I removed all the filters and the results are…

NOTE: Niche Hunter is included with Jungle Scout standard version.

Frequently asked questions (FAQ)

What’s the difference between a product database and niche hunter?

Product database is better if you want to see demand. Niche Hunter is better to detect untapped niches.

How valuable/useful is the Niche Hunter?

If you can’t trust your instincts, you have no experience and you need facts and figures, then Niche Hunter is for you. Try it and see if you like it. You can always change your sub.

And the main question…

How to use Jungle Scout Niche Hunter

In Niche Hunter you have several filters like Categories, Average Units Sold, Average Price, Opportunity Score, Competition etc.

Run with something like price $20, min 300 sales, Opportunity Score 90 in Patio, Lawn & Garden category…then adjust criteria from there to narrow or expand your results

Using the example above you’ll get this result

and here is the idea – pelletized gypsum! I would never think about that product without Niche Hunter.

Now you can expand and see top products in the niche.

and data about the whole niche…

Quite useful IMO.

Please do not use my filters, use your own, play with the tool… Don’t be too strict with the numbers, start with relatively lax criteria, for instance, opportunity score 5, and tighten them when found what seems to be a nice corner.

NOTE: I have not seen a product where ALL the first 10 sales are above 300 each and all the first 10 reviews are below 100, so I am sure you won’t either.

Keyword Scout

The youngest member of the Jungle Scout family. As the name says itself, it is a keyword research tool with several features. I have to be honest, the tool is still fairly new (released in May 2018), so I’m still not sure about the accuracy but the features are great.

Toll has a reverse ASIN (check keywords of your competitor)

Exact and broad search volume for the keyword and the most important feature cost of PPC advertising for the keyword.

Keyword Scout is included with the Starter, Standard, and Business plans for the Jungle Scout Web App, so you don’t have to pay anything extra.

Jungle Scout Chrome extension

Probably the most famous Amazon tool. It allows you to make a product search directly on Amazon while you navigate through the individual listings or search pages.

The estimated sales figures are always given here for 30 days, for this you see the BSR, price history, ratings, and many more details.

If you enter your Amazon MWS API Key, you will receive additional data such as whether it is oversized. In addition to these main features, some details are still integrated, such as direct access to Google Trends to see how seasonal a product is or how to set filters directly in the plugin.

All in all a very successful integration of different tools to a really usable app in which one can make its complete research.

I hope you understand the differences and how and when to use them. I recommend both of them because they are doing different things.

You can buy it together with other people to optimize the costs because you will not use it all at the same time and this way everyone has to win.

Personally, I use both the web app (standard because it comes with the Niche Hunter and that is the feature I use most) and chrome extension.

Having all these ideas about Jungle Scout, now you can simply log into Amazon, run the Jungle Scout on the main keywords that you have chosen and identify the products you are interested in.

After that, now you can use the product tracker on the web app, which will help you watch over those products for a period.

The reason why it is important to track and watch those products over time is that you get to know if the data was consistent or whether it was put in the bestseller rank to ensure that it did not alter the estimated sales or revenue.

You need to feel confident about your product, and that is why consistency is very important.

How accurate is Jungle Scout?

It is pretty accurate but be careful using Jungle Scout or any other similar tool to predict purchasing of a new product. While they provide a good average of sales, they can also produce some inflated numbers, or make you pass on a product that actually has good sales.

Jungle Scout estimates sales based on the BSR, which at the time of your viewing could throw off a wildly inaccurate multiple that turns out to influence your decision.

Some seller with a new product did an excessive giveaway during the last week and temporarily boosts its BSR, a product can appear to have a BSR of 100 with 50 reviews.

Jungle Scout will estimate the item sells 5,000 units/ month with monthly revenue of $100,000 and truth is the item have ONE organic sale and haven’t generated any profit.

This has nothing to do with Jungle Scout per se, but it is something to be aware of.

I would HEAVILY recommend doing an average Jungle Scout reports over a few weeks to figure out a good baseline. Then it is very, very accurate.

Actually, when I have run them on my own products, they are pretty damn accurate. However, use Jungle Scout cost estimator with heavy caution. Lots of sellers have incorrect weight and dimension inputs for the listings.

For example, if someone is selling via FBM and there are no FBA sellers, Jungle Scout will pull info of the size and weight from the FMB merchant which usually might be way off.

You should really look into the actual fees with Seller Central FBA calculator before purchasing any item. It is a free tool that does that with 100% accuracy even I am not convinced Amazon knows what Amazon’s fees are…

Btw, If you want to run a business and outsource your decision making and due diligence, then you can’t be surprised when you lose money.

PROTIP: Order and send your product in 7.5″x7.5″x7.5″ boxes because the added cost of the box far outweighs items being classified as small oversized when it comes to Amazon fees. An 8x8x8 box that is considered “small oversized” tends to bulge slightly in the cubiscan, yielding 8.1″ on a side, and guess what, $4 added cost per unit… Jungle Scout and other sales estimates are not good for books and seasonal product.

How necessary is Jungle Scout for private label?

It is not necessary and thousands of sellers have picked successful products without it. It only depends on how much you value your time.

Without Jungle Scout I can create a spreadsheet and put all the same information in it. It takes about 20 minutes per product. With Jungle Scout I get all that same information in about 3 seconds.

If you value your time at more than like $1/hour then stop thinking about it and just get it. I’m not going to say I can’t live without it but it is useful.

How to Use Jungle Scout to find high margin products

As taught earlier, most people who use the Jungle Scout in finding which products to sell, they always use the web app in searching through the Amazon database on various criteria.

The Web App is best known to be a time-saver, unlike when you are searching manually on Amazon and the most used feature like we have seen are, the product database and the product tracker.

Also, while finding the best product that sells well on Amazon, do not forget about the Chrome Extension as it allows you to get the required data and information regarding a certain product. It is also important as it helps you find competitive products in the market.

The good thing with Chrome Extension is that it is a one time cost and then if you need it in future you can still review it.

Sample: Search for any product in the category you want to sell in. Click on a product and go where it says “Sold by …. and shipped by Amazon”.

Go to the storefront of that seller. Most likely he has more items in the category you want to sell in.

Run Jungle Scout and scan through that seller items until you find one that sells a lot with low reviews.

Go to another tab and search that item on Amazon. Once again, run Jungle Scout on the results.

If Jungle Scout result looks good, then do the “999 trick” on all the listings on the first page and repeat several days to confirm Jungle Scout results.

Meanwhile, check out all the listings and read reviews on the first couple of pages for any weak spots you can improve.

Which are the best plans while using Jungle Scouts – Startup, Standard or Business Plans?

All these plans are different, and it all depends on what plan you want to use that will bring out the best. I actually use Jungle Scout’s Pro chrome extension and standard Web App I find them immensely valuable.

To be able to see all the data really quick, it makes my first level of product research done in literally seconds.

While I don’t think it’s the one-stop-shop tool for everything, I think it’s definitely part of the total solution because neither tool can be expected to be taken as the absolute.

However, when you use multiple tools you can paint a much more accurate picture.

Is there a free alternative to Jungle Scout?

Unicorn Smasher extension is very similar to Jungle Scout extension but almost every time I check a results page with it the Est. Sales and Est. Revenue columns stay empty.

You get what you pay for… but, use it, it’s free.

Compared to Jungle Scout it is pretty inaccurate but it’s still the alternative and gives you a great snapshot of how many reviews, average review rating and if products are FBA, merchant fulfilled or sold by Amazon.

That being said, Jungle Scout is a tool in your toolbox that makes product research quicker and easier to sell on Amazon that is a super powerful channel but whether you use Jungle Scout or not, proper product research is a very important part of having success there (I’ve learned this the hard way).

Further reading