Best Research Tool For Amazon FBA Beginners?

Could AMZScout hold the key to starting a profitable Amazon business in your spare time?

It just might.

After all, product research is arguably the single most important factor when it comes to successfully selling on Amazon. 

Choose the right products, and you’ve got a solid foundation to build on.

But pick wrong, and you’ll struggle to get anywhere at all.

In this quick review, we’ll see how AMZScout can help you make the best product choices and determine if this is the right Amazon research tool for you.

What Is AMZScout?

As mentioned above, AMZScout is an Amazon research tool at its core, providing a suite of functionality to help you find the right niche and products for your business. 

And, like most modern software, AMZScout is primarily a web application.

But to really appreciate all that AMZScout can do, we need to dig into its key features.

AMZScout Features

As it turns out, AMZScout is far from a one-trick pony.

Indeed, the features that AMZScout brings to the table can be broken into three broad categories: product research, keyword research, and training.

Product Research

Product research is AMZScout’s bread and butter, and it all starts with the Product Database, which is where you land when you log in to the web app:

The Product Database lets you search across 10 different Amazon marketplaces by keyword or category, and you can filter by up to 16 parameters, including product weight, price, reviews, etc.

If it sounds like there’s a lot happening on the Product Database dashboard, that’s because there is. 

It can be a little overwhelming at first, but you’ll start to get the hang of it after a few searches. And the table of results delivers a ton of useful information about each product, including:

• Amazon category and subcategory
• Product rank in the category and subcategory
• Number of monthly sales
• Per-unit profit
• Product ratings and number of reviews

The Product Database also shows competitor information like the number of sellers for each product and its Listing Quality Score, or LSQ. 

The LSQ is a metric AZMScout developed to give you a quick idea of how tough the competition is. It takes into account factors like brand and item name length, number of bullet points and images in the listing, and seller type.

Once you find a product you want to know more about, you can click through to see its Amazon listing or over to Alibaba to look into buying stock.

You can also add items from the main dashboard to the Product Tracker.

Product Tracker

As the name implies, the AMZScout Product Tracker allows you to monitor a product over time. Add your favorites here, and you get a table view that shows basic product information.

And you can click through to see even more details, as well as a graph of product performance over time:

One major drawback to this view is that the graph only shows product performance from the time you add it to the Product Tracker (and not before).

Pro Extension

This Chrome extension takes the basic functionality of the AMZScout Product Database and adds a little rocket fuel to your product research.

Just type in your search on Amazon, click on the Pro Extension icon in your Chrome toolbar, and voilà! 

You get a table with the same sort of product information you see in the main AMZScout web app, along with a few extra goodies:

The turbo boost comes from the proprietary ratings that AMZScout displays on this screen:

• Product Score for Private Label: Is this a good candidate for private labeling? (higher score is better)
• Product Score for Reselling: Is this a good candidate for reselling? (higher score is better)
• Visibility Score: How many sellers are targeting this niche? (lower score is better)

But the Niche Score is particularly helpful when you’re just starting out. It rolls up all of the steps in Amazon product research into a single number to let you know whether you’re on the right track.

A score below 5 means the combination of demand, competition, and profit margin will make it tough for a newbie to succeed.

Get a Niche Score closer to 10, though, and your odds of finding success ratchet up in a hurry.

Of course, no one metric can guarantee results, but Niche Score can save you a lot of time as you’re narrowing in on a focus for your Amazon business.

Other Product Research Tools

Beyond these core utilities, AMZScout also offers up a few other tools to help you with product research:

• Monthly reports detailing emerging Amazon trends
• Weekly “hot products” reports that zero in on areas with exploding sales numbers
• Quick View – a Chrome extension for comparing products side-by-side from Amazon search results pages
• Stock Stats – another Chrome extension, this one for “spying” on your competitors’ stock levels
• Amazon Dropshipping, Arbitrage, and Wholesale – and one last (for now!) Chrome extension for evaluating how suitable a product is for each of these three business models (dropshipping, arbitrage, wholesale)

Keyword Research

Once you’ve decided on which products you want to sell (and figured out how to source them), you have to actually list them on Amazon.

But just throwing your products into that massive marketplace won’t get you very far.

No, to give your listings the best chance of turning up in user searches on Amazon, you need to ensure you’re targeting the right keywords…yeah, it’s hard to get away from SEO, even for business models outside of blogging!

Anyway, AMZScout provides another box of tools to help with keyword research.

Reverse ASIN Lookup

Enter an item’s ASIN, and this tool returns a list of keywords – along with information about search volume and competition – that you can use in your Amazon listings:

Amazon Keyword Research

This one’s a pretty straightforward keyword tool where you type in a seed phrase and get back a bunch of related keywords:

Keyword Tracker

The Keyword Tracker is a Chrome extension that lets you enter a product ASIN and then track the keywords that the product ranks for over time:

You can choose how often you want to update the information for each product, ranging from once an hour to once a day.

Training

Loading up on features is great, but they won’t do you much good if you don’t know how to use them…and why.

You need some training.

Luckily, this is one area where AMZScout really shines, especially if you’re just getting started on your Amazon trek.

The Amazon Private Label training is a 22-video course that walks you through every aspect of starting an Amazon business, from doing initial product research (surprise!) all the way to a tutorial on how to ship your product to Amazon FBA.

The first eight videos in the series are free, but you need a subscription to access the rest of the course.

Overall, this training is easy to understand and follow, and it’s one of the best courses around for Amazon beginners.

If you’re a bit more seasoned, you can jump into AMZScout’s Masterclasses offerings, which tackle more advanced topics, like pay-per-click ad strategies, sourcing local products, and international Amazon sales.

There’s also a “University” option, which offers up a series of premium courses (with matching premium prices) led by instructors with hands-on experience in building successful Amazon businesses.

How Much Does AMZScout Cost?

As of early 2023, AMZScout offers two basic subscription levels:

Pro Extension

The Pro Extension package gives you access to the Chrome extension plus the basic training courses. Pricing is $259.99 per year or $599.99 for lifetime access. 

Note that this level does NOT give you access to the full-blown research tools or trend and product reports.

Seller’s Bundle for Amazon

The Seller’s Bundle gives you everything the Pro Extension package does but also adds on access to the full web application, as well as all the weekly and monthly reports.

Pricing is $49.99 per month, $379.99 per year, and $1599.99 for lifetime access.

Free Trial

The good news about all this is that you can try AMZScout for yourself with a free trial that gets you access to all the tools. And, unlike a lot of software trials, you don’t have to use a credit card to sign up – just an email address gets you in.

The free trial limits how many searches you can run, but it’s enough to get a pretty good feel for AMZScout’s capabilities.

You can sign up for the free trial on the AMZScout homepage. 

AMZScout Alternatives

For as much as AMZScout offers, it’s far from the only game in town when it comes to tools for conducting your Amazon product research.

Jungle Scout is probably the most popular of them all and provides even more features than AMZScout, though at a higher price point.

But be sure to check out our Jungle Scout review to learn all about this excellent Amazon tool.

Helium 10 is another popular full-featured option that offers up several pricing options.

Brady Cook ran through all the major players in his article on Niche Pursuits: Need an Amazon Sales Estimator? Here Are Your 7 Best Options. 

Definitely worth the read!

The Verdict

So, is AMZScout worth the price and time investment needed to learn how to use the tool?

If you’re just starting your Amazon business, the answer is a resounding “YES!”.

AMZScout gives you all the tools to pick a niche and specific products you want to sell. And the training modules alone will jumpstart you along your journey.

If you’re a little more experienced and want a more full-featured product, then AMZScout may not be the absolute best choice for you, especially when tools like Jungle Scout and Helium 10 don’t cost all that much more on a monthly basis.

The good news is, you have nothing to lose by taking advantage of AMZScout’s free trial…and maybe a whole lot to gain!