Your Amazon Sales Rank Chart is Trying to Kill You

So, the headline may be a bit hyperbolic and by you, I mean your business. If you are a creator of an Amazon Sales Rank chart, I apologize.

I do not apologize for the fact that I believe they have become a crutch many sellers over-depend on. Especially since there are so many other tools and data, literally, at our fingertips.

Below, I am going to outline three reasons I think you should dump your Amazon Sales Rank chart and what tools use in its place.

The Data is Static

Amazon has listings created every single day. People

launch new products, they find something that isn't available on Amazon yet, or they bundle multiple products for convenience.

All of these result in new listings and change the results of how many items are in a category and, in turn, what ranks in the top 1, 3, or 5%.

Now, creators often update their Amazon sales rank chart quarterly or even semi-annually. However, I don't believe that is good enough. The market changes too quickly. It's like reading the weather from last week when you are trying to plan for this week.

Better, More Powerful Tools

Being cognizant of sales rank is still important. But, it is not the end all be all any longer.

We have Keepa (my personal favorite chart), CamelCamelCamel, and  UnicornSmasher. Those are just the free options.

If you'd like a paid option you can use ASINspector (quickly becoming my favorite tool) or Junglescout.

These tools will help you, fairly accurately, find out how many units per month an item sells. This information is much more valuable, in my opinion, than actual sales rank.

It is also much easier to figure out with a tool than counting dips on a chart.  Dips on a chart can be misleading.  The reason is if an item sells on a regular basis the dips may not be as noticeable.  This is especially the case when you have an item that is incredibly popular.

Check out this chart as an example.

Sales rank is just a snapshot in time, a snapshot that changes hourly. You may find find a product that is super sexy, looks killer on the amazon sales rank chart, but in reality you just happened to find it on the one day of the year it sold.

Charts are outdated

I do not fault the creators for this.  It would be impossible to keep an Amazon sales rank chart up to date on a daily or weekly basis.  It is also, probably, not the best use of their time or resources to update these monthly.

Many of these charts are updated quarterly.  That is fine, it’s a nice measuring stick to have in our tool belt as Amazon sellers.  The question is would you rather use a yardstick like my grandfather did or would you prefer a laser measuring gun that is accurate to the millimeter?

Tools to Use

I touched on them briefly above.  Here I will go into why should you have each one of these tools.

Keepa – This is a free chart as well as a Google Chrome extension.  It pulls in tons of data points so that we can view the historical data of ASIN’s regarding sales, prices, and number of sellers.  The reason Keepa is so powerful is that we can gauge not only if a product steadily sells but we may also be able to see when and if there are spikes and figure out the correlation.

CamelCamelCamel – This is a free resource that is very similar to Keepa and they have an extension called The Camelizer.  I don’t find this product to be as powerful but they will occasionally have information that keepa does not have.

Jungle Scout – These folks have several features and tools that are pretty sweet.  They have a free resource that will estimate monthly unit sales based off of the current sales rank.  My sources tell me that this is not so accurate.  I am not sure why but I want to give you all of the information I have.  They also offer a paid extension as well as a web app.  I know that the figures from the paid versions are supposed to be more accurate and the software can be used to find niches for private labeling and many other things.

ASINspector – This resource is quickly becoming one of my favorite tools.  The cost is affordable, in my opinion.  The features are also sick.  You get an extension that also offers information about each ASIN directly on the Amazon product page.  It includes the estimated number of monthly sales as well as the fees to sell the item.  Then if you click on the extension you can grab all sorts of other information.  One of the best pieces of info is the items that also sell with what you are looking at.  You can then use this to make bundles or come up with private label ideas.

Conclusion

Don’t be a one trick pony (sorry for the cliche).  Learn, use, and even master many tools.  You may need to pivot in your business, as we know that Amazon likes to makes changes to the seller landscape at a rapid clip.

By doing this you will be able to have continuity in your business no matter what change comes your way.  That, in my estimation, is what is most important.

Audentes Fortuna Juvat

Chris