Black Box PRO Training Video: Introduction and Overview

 Black Box is Helium 10’s primary product research tool.

In this document, let's survey the features and purposes of the Black Box tool. 

Across the top of the page you will see a row of categories:

• Learn
• www.amazon.com (region)
• Restore Last Search
• Filter Library
• Save Filters

The first row features the Learn Button, which offers constantly updated information on our specific tools. To the immediate right, you are given the opportunity to choose the specific Amazon Marketplace in which you are selling.

Click the Restore Last Search button if you need to retrace.

The Filter Library contains all the filters you build and save. (You can name them to correspond to the season or tactic that you are employing). Last, the Save Filters button allows you to save the collections of filters that you’ve constructed. Because you will already have your favorite filters in place, this will save you significant time in the future.

There are five different tool tabs contained within Black Box. 

• Products
• Keywords
• Competitors
• Niche
• Product Targeting

The Product Tool has over 500 million products in its database and in this tab, you are able to search for products using whatever specific criteria you have identified as important. 

In this first example, you can choose in which Category on Amazon you’d like to begin your search. 

The Category column is followed by estimated Monthly Revenue and the retail Price. You can also filter by the minimum and maximum number of Reviews as well as the overall Review Rating (the number of stars) and the Shipping Size Tier. 

For example, this will help you to avoid researching heavier products (to save on potential shipping charges), or go in the opposite direction if you think there’s a way that you can make an oversized product work for you. 

The Advanced Filters allow you to drill down in order to find products that meet increasingly fine-tuned criteria. 

You can filter by Sales, and Year Over Year, which reflects the percentage change over the past 12 months. 

Similarly, if you want to look for products that have shown a steep increase or decrease in price, you can look to Price Change which shows the percentage of change over the last 90 days. 

You can find the percentage of sales change over the past 90 days by setting the minimum and maximum values in the Sales Change fields.

Lastly, as you move across the window, you can identify the Best Sales Period. This will help you be aware of possible seasonality and other factors that may affect your decisions. 

The next filter category, Sales to Reviews allows you to find products that might have a high (or low) number of sales to number of reviews. 

The next filter allows you to set a range of estimated Monthly Sales.

Amazon gives all products on its site a ranking per category, based on how they view the product’s degree of success. That criteria is referred to as the Best Sellers Rank or BSR. 

The Number of Sellers helps you set or limit the level of competition.

The Fulfillment filter lets you limit the search based on who ships the product to the customer. 

• Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) 
• Fulfillment by Merchant (FBM)
• Amazon 

Setting the Number of Images is one way to identify a listing that might not be well optimized. This filter can help you identify a product that possibly belongs to sellers that haven’t taken the time to optimize their listings properly.  Once optimized, these listings could be a great opportunity. 

 

The Variation Count refers to the listings on Amazon that include a range of sizes or colors. If you want to concentrate on a single ASIN, you can use this filter to make that happen. 

 

Much like the size filter, the Weight of the product will help you differentiate the type of products (and competing sellers) that you focus on. 

 

You can further filter down to be much more precise by including specific keywords in the Title Keyword Search. 

 

Similarly, you can exclude keywords in the Exclude Title Keywords field. This filter is helpful if, for instance, you know that there is a popular product (and corresponding keywords) that you absolutely want to avoid. 

 

As an example, the next screenshot shows the results of an actual search in the Arts, Crafts and Sewing category. A product that grosses at least 40,000 dollars and has at least two images and less than 20 reviews. 

Just one product came up. In the product description you can see a list of metrics including the manner of fulfillment, product size, number of images, weight, dimensions, storage fee and the age of the product.

If you click on the product image, it will take you to the actual product listing on Amazon.  

If you click on the Price, Monthly Sales, BSR or Reviews, it will take you to close-up views of the individual metrics. 

If you click on Monthly Sales, it will show you a graph of the monthly sales. 

You can also zoom-in on a specific time period. The following screenshot shows a close-up look at the period from July to November. With your mouse or touchpad, click and drag to highlight the specific period you are interested in. That will immediately show you the detailed view. 

Here you can see the close-up detailed view of that time period. 

When you click on BSR, you will get a history of the product’s Best Seller Ranking. 

Clicking on Reviews brings up a history of the review count and rating. 

You can also either send the listing to My List (your list of monitored products), or go to the product’s page on Amazon. 

When you move over to investigate the Keywords tab, it is almost identical in the way you will use it. The only difference is that in the Keywords tab, the results reflect an average of the top products that are showing up for the keyword. 

In the Competitors tab, you will be shown competing products that are potentially very similar to the ASIN of your product (or, any other ASIN that you are tracking). This ASIN is referred to as the seed product. 

In the Niche tab, you can query the Helium 10 database of over 500 million products. This reflects data that Amazon no longer shares. This information will give you a more broad, in depth view of possible product opportunities. 

The Product Targeting tab is a great way to see products that come up under “customer also bought,” or “frequently bought together.” Just enter an ASIN and set your filters, and Black Box will display information on the products that show up for the criteria you have chosen. 

Be sure to check out our other videos and documents about Black Box for more tips on using the tool to find product opportunities.