Reverse Sourcing With Keepa Product Finder
Snipe winning products with Keepa's underused data tool.
Greetings, Amazon sellers! Today, we're back with another product sourcing write up, specifically focusing on how to use Keepa Product Finder.
For those familiar with Keepa already, you’re probably used to using the Keepa Chrome extension, which overlays data graphs onto Amazon listing pages. But not many take the time to explore the tools available to you on Keepa’s own website, including Product Finder.
Product Finder is an excellent tool for reverse sourcing because it lets you use filters made specifically for Amazon sellers. You can filter by Sales Rank, how often Amazon is in-stock, FBA prices, number of sellers, brand names, and more. It’s Amazon search on steroids.
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While the concept of the tool is pretty straight forward, it’s easy to get lost in the sauce. Most of you will fire away with searches and click aimlessly away at the results pages without any real idea of what you’re looking for. These steps will help you stay organized and source with intent.
Online arbitrage with Product Finder
If you’re an arbitrage seller, this is a relatively simply process: find “good” products that are already selling well using Product Finder, then Google them to see if you can source them cheaper and make a profit.
The following steps will walk through how to conduct your sourcing session and use Product Finder’s filters.
Create a spreadsheet to track your searches
Start by creating a search log in Excel or Google Sheets. In your spreadsheet, create the following headers:
Search name: (e.g., Discontinuing toys)
Last searched date: (e.g., 11/25/2022)
Category/Brands: (e.g., Toys & Games)
Description: (e.g., Toys with Amazon in-stock rate 10-60% that have been listed >2 yrs)
Search URL: (e.g., https://keepa.com/finder/[search-parameters])
Notes: (e.g., Reduce sales rank next time. Too many slow movers in the mix)
Maintain this log with every search session you start. This will prevent you from running the same searches over and over. It will also help you pick back up where you left off if you need to continue the same search a different day.
Adjust your search filters based on your use case
The following is a list of filters we use on a regular basis. This does not mean you have to set every single one of these filters on each search. Use as many has you need to get a reasonable number of search results back (under 5000).
Sales Rank: Either set a max Sales Rank or don’t set one at all. Sales Rank will vary by category. If you’re new to Sales Ranks, check out Jungle Scout Sales Estimator to get a sense of demand. You want a minimum of 60 sales per month.
Amazon price: Check that Amazon is out of stock unless you have a specific use to source Amazon products.
New, 3rd Party FBA price: Sets your target sales price. Anything under the $20 range can be more difficult to source. This can vary depending on the category and your success with different price points.
Used, 3rd Party FBA price: Important if you're flipping used goods from places like eBay or the Facebook marketplace.
Root and sub categories: We almost always organize our reverse sourcing sessions by a category or subcategory.
Brand: See the Sourcing wholesale with Product Finder section below.
Text fields: Helps find special circumstances of products that you know sell well and share a common word in the title. Examples include "discontinued", "Walmart exclusive", and "bundle".
Count of retrieved live offers
0 sellers - this is an OOS listing you might be able to revive
1 seller - high chances these listings are private label or IP restricted
0 FBA sellers, 1+ FBM sellers - you’ve got a chance to convert this listing to FBA, charge a higher price, and capture Buy Box
40+ sellers - This listing is very high competition and better sell like absolute hot cakes to source it
Variations: Choose no variations if you're newer and have trouble sourcing these.
Listed since: Use this filter to find older or discontinued products—usually toys. It is more reliable than the Release Date since the latter is user-generated.
90 days out of stock percentage (OOS%): Set the Amazon percentages to find products that Amazon is either completely out of stock on (meaning no competition) or has trouble keeping in stock (indicating high demand or low supply). This can be especially useful for discontinuing products or during Q4 holiday sales. You can uncheck “Amazon Out of Stock” on the price filter if using this one.
Sales Rank drops: More drops indicate more sales activity. This can be overkill if you've already set Sales Rank. If you do set this, we usually do a min. of 30.
Rating: Setting this to 4+ can help reduce the likelihood of high return volume.
Review count: Useful for cutting down search results. Set a minimum of 50+ reviews. The higher, the better. But keep in mind your Sales Rank settings.
When you’ve adjusted your filters as you like, select “Find Products” at the bottom right.
Analyze your results
Copy the URL
Before diving in, copy the URL on the results screen into your spreadsheet. This is a URL you can revisit without having to reset all of the filters. Especially helpful if you accidentally hit the back button on your browser. It should look something like this:
https://keepa.com/#!finder/%7B%22f%22%3A%7B%22SALES_current%22%3A%7B%22filterType%22%3A%22number%22%2C%22type%22%3A%22inRange%22%2C%22filter%22%3A1%2C%22filterTo%22%3A10000%7D%2C%22BUY_BOX_SHIPPING_current%22%3A%7B%22filterType%22%3A%22number%22%2C%22type%22%3A%22greaterThanOrEqual%22%2C%22filter%22%3A20%2C%22filterTo%22%3Anull%7D%2C%22AMAZON_outOfStock%22%3A%7B%22filterType%22%3A%22boolean%22%2C%22filter%22%3A%22on%22%2C%22type%22%3A%22equals%22%7D%2C%22offerCountFBA%22%3A%7B%22filterType%22%3A%22number%22%2C%22type%22%3A%22inRange%22%2C%22filter%22%3A3%2C%22filterTo%22%3A40%7D%2C%22rootCategory%22%3A%7B%22filterType%22%3A%22singleChoice%22%2C%22filter%22%3A%22165793011%22%2C%22type%22%3A%22equals%22%7D%7D%2C%22s%22%3A%5B%7B%22colId%22%3A%22SALES_current%22%2C%22sort%22%3A%22asc%22%7D%5D%2C%22t%22%3A%22g%22%7DConfigure your columns
Now, the first thing you’ll notice on the results screen is a lot of columns. Let’s kill the noise and only show the columns we care about. Select “Configure Columns”, de-select all, and then select the following:
Image
Title
Sales Rank
30 day avg
Drops last 30 days
Review count
Amazon: 90 days OOS
Buy Box Seller
Brand
Count of retrieved live offers
New, FBA
New, FBM
Buy Box
Current
90 days avg.
This will give you just the minimum you need to make quick decisions from the listings page, rather than clicking into every listing. Feel free to adjust these to your own use case if you’re looking for something specific.
Avoid red flag listings
The name of the game here is to avoid clicking into and analyzing 10,000 listings. So here are red flags you want to watch for.
Buy Box seller matches the brand name
If the brand name and and the Buy Box seller have very similar names, chances are this is a private label seller. You’ll see this with small PL sellers as well as bigger brands, such as Disney.
Huge difference in current price vs 90 day average price
Unless you’re hunting for discontinued products, this is usually a temporary supply issue that will be corrected.
Example: The main sellers of an item have a price of $10. They sellout and the next available seller has a price of $20. At $20, you could make a $5 profit on this item and think this is a good buy. However, by the time you send in your inventory to FBA, the other sellers are likely to re-stock and price is likely to return to $10—leaving you to eat the loss.
Again, there are exceptions where you will be okay with this difference (e.g., discontinued products, Q4 sales, etc.). But most of the time, we are looking for price stability. So we want the 90 day price and the current price to be somewhat similar.
Huge increase in current Sales Rank vs 90 day average Sales Rank
Not necessarily a red flag but should definitely spark suspicion. If the Sales Rank suddenly increases substantially, that means sales have slowed. You’ll want to learn why. It could be because… 1.) the price increased substantially; 2.) sellers went out-of-stock; 3.) temporary demand has died out (seasonal or viral product).
Either way, this means you have some homework to do. On the other hand, if a product with really high sales rank is suddenly low, you could be catching a product that is catching a new wave of demand.
Picking winning products
Next, click into the products you’d like to analyze.
When looking at Keepa graphs, the goal is to validate that our filter criteria holds up over time (min. 3 months). We want to look for stability or emerging trends in price, demand (Sales Rank), and supply (new offer count). Here’s what to look for:
Price: Stable or slowly increasing price over time (e.g., not a lot of fluctuation over last 3 months)
Demand: Stable or decreasing Sales Rank (lower number = more demand)
Supply: Stable or decreasing new offer count, with a minimum of 2 different sellers
Amazon out-of-stock permanently
That’s it. Don’t overcomplicate it.
Yes, there are some exceptions to this criteria you can use to hunt for “gems”, as covered above in the filters section.
We’ll also release a Keepa graph guide this month to walk through examples of different charts to study. But this should be more than enough to get you started.
Sourcing wholesale with Product Finder
You can also use Product Finder for wholesale. You’ll use the same filters mentioned above, but apply the brands offered by your wholesaler or dealer. This will help you find the brand’s best products and then ask the wholesaler for those products specifically.
The process goes like this…
Review your distributor’s website or price list to see what brands they offer.
Enter those brands into Product Finder and set your filter criteria for winning products. Now, analyze the results to compile a list of the “best” products from each brand.
Create a basic list of products that includes the brand, product title, and model number (if relevant). For your own tracking, list how many you'd be willing to buy as a test buy and then full order.
Check your distributor’s website or price sheet for these products. Not there? Email them to your sales rep and ask if you can special order those products. If they have a direct relationship with the manufacturer, they should be able to do so.
Voila! No need to run blanket UPC scans of price lists that yield the same 5 products everyone else is sourcing.
Wrapping up
Not as scary as you thought, right? Aside from the filter overview, if there’s one thing you remember, it’s this: stay organized. Document what filters you're using and how often you’re using them. Otherwise, it’s easy to get lost, repeating the same searches, reviewing the same set of products.
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