I shared what I call the "Amazon Whisper" Blue Ocean sourcing strategy on X not long ago and it was viewed by over 8,000 people, so it deserves it own post here on my blog.
Below I break down this strategy in great detail so you can follow along and do this yourself.
If you prefer to watch me go through this online arbitrage sourcing method, I posted the video on my YouTube channel.
Before we dive into this strategy, let's give a little context to the name.
What is a Blue Ocean?
If you've read any marketing books or been involved in any online communities that center around marketing, you may have heard the terms "blue ocean" and "red ocean".
If someone calls a particular part of a market a "red ocean", it indicates that there is fierce competition. A red ocean means there is blood in the water.
To the contrary, a blue ocean is a market segment that has very little competition.
The term "blue ocean" was actually coined in the book "Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant" by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne.
A typical "blue ocean" product has the following characteristics:
- Unique and not widely offered by competitors
- Meets customer needs that are otherwise currently unmet in the market
- Bigger profit margins due having little competition
Now before we continue on with this strategy, there is one huge caveat we need to address!
Competition is GOOD, not bad!
This might sound counterintuitive based on the whole idea around the blue ocean strategy though, right?
Well the truth is, if you are sourcing products that are SO unique and have absolutely zero competitors, you're going to struggle to sell the products.
You need to ensure that there is a market for the products you are sourcing.
Okay, now let's dive into the strategy so you can start implementing it into your own Amazon business.
The "Amazon Whisper" Strategy - Step-by-Step
This strategy works best if you are already selling a specific product on Amazon, because it is designed to help you find ancillary products and accessories that are related to your product.
For this example I am going to use lotion. Assume we are already doing alright selling lotion on Amazon, but now we want to find some ancillary products.
You could even use an ancillary product to create value add bundles on Amazon, which can be extremely lucrative if done correctly.
Use the Amazon Search Box to Find Product Ideas
To start off this sourcing strategy, head over to Amazon.com and type your main "seed" keyword into the Amazon search box.
In this case we're going to use the keyword "Lotion". We type that in, then hit the spacebar.
You can see Amazon is already suggesting products. Even at this stage you may find some product ideas that are worth investigating.
The next step is to start going through the alphabet.
"Lotion a"
"Lotion b"
"Lotion c"
"Lotion d"
This is where I found something interesting, "Lotion deodorant for men", but first I want to show you a free Amazon software tool that could help you with this part of the process.
Using AMZ Suggestion Expander
While I'm not going to use the AMZ Suggestion Expander chrome extension for this particular example, it is worth taking into consideration.
As you can see from the screenshot above, it automatically starts showing you other Amazon search terms using your seed keyword. The above example is using the free version of AMZ Suggestion Expander, but you can also upgrade to the Pro version if you need.
This is a fantastic piece of software if you like using this kind of sourcing method.
Let's get back onto the next step of the strategy.
Research Your Product Idea in Keepa Product Finder
So the product that caught my eye was "Lotion deodorant for men".
This isn't a product I had heard of before, but it sparked my interest so I'm going to bring it over to Keepa Product Finder (KPF).
Enter "lotion deodorant" into the keyword search.
This returns just over 730 results. This isn't a huge amount of products, but we still don't need to go through all of these products right now.
On the same page in Keepa, let's scroll up to the Buy Box section and filter using the 30 days drop % section.
Enter -500 in the FROM column, and 5 in the TO column. This narrows it down to products that have gone up by 500% and have only dropped in price by 5% in the past 30 days.
This returns a result of just 20 products. If you click the blue "find products" button, you can go and hand pick products that match our criteria.
Click each product to read the Keep chart and assess whether the product is worth sourcing.
If you want more help with this part of the process, you may want to read my Keepa review and tutorial.
So What's Great About This Sourcing Strategy?
You can do this over and over for hundreds of these types of keywords to find products that:
- Have a stable buy box
- Are going up in price
- Don't have a lot of competition
- Can be used in bundles or just as additional product listings
Final Words - Low Competition Product Sourcing
A strategy like this isn't difficult, but it requires a little bit of sweat equity. And sometimes that's all sellers can afford to invest, especially in the early days.
Once your Amazon FBA business is consistently doing a decent volume of sales, investing in software like Tactical Arbitrage is going to take your business to the next level. You can literally source while you sleep with something like TA.
If you enjoyed this strategy, I share many more like it via email every single week, and also over on my X.com account. You join my free newsletter just below this article.
Thanks again for reading, happy selling!
