Helium 10 - What Is It and How To Get Started With It?
Selling products on Amazon and building your brand can be very exciting, but also very confusing.
If you’ve never run an e-commerce business before, it’s not uncommon for you to have feelings of being overwhelmed or not knowing where to start.
Fortunately, there are a number of useful tools out there that can help you break down the process into manageable chunks.
One of these tools is Helium 10.
What is Helium 10?
Helium 10 is an all-in-one tool that can help you in almost every stage of your Amazon product selling journey.
This would include:
Choosing a product to sell, scaling your business and then managing it consistently.
When selling on Amazon, there are countless factors, metrics and details which you need to keep track of.
Not only does Helium 10 do that for you, but it also provides valuable insights on what your next step should be based on the data that accumulates.
Common Problems with Selling on Amazon that Helium 10 Addresses
Some of the common problems of Amazon selling that Helium 10 could help you out with are:
● Finding low-competition product ideas for your business.
● Identifying product opportunities that could help you scale faster than your competitors.
● Optimizing your product listings in order to get you to page 1.
● Consistently optimizing your product listings, so they stay on page 1.
● Handling refunds.
While all of these solutions may be enough for you to invest in this product, we’re happy to tell you that it does a whole lot more as we’ll see in this post.
After using Helium 10 for many months, we’ve come to the conclusion that it is the definitive tool for all stages of selling on Amazon.
It can help you start, grow, as well as maintain your Amazon FBA business.
The fact that it does a lot of the analysis and parsing for you means that a lot of guesswork is eliminated when you’re trying to figure out what your next step should be.
So, what exactly do you get with a Helium 10 subscription?
Well, a monthly subscription will give you access to 13 tools that can help you with:
● Product niche selection
● Trend research for products
● Competitor analysis
● Keyword research
● Listings analyzer and optimization
● Refund management
● Inventory protection
● Amazon index monitoring
● Fraud protection
As a new seller on Amazon, you may feel that these many tools might be overkill, but once you actually wet your toes and start setting up your business, you’ll find that many of these tools might be the keys to your success.
In the past, you had to be a seller on Amazon for a while before you started figuring out effective approaches to selling.
By using Helium 10, you can completely skip that stage and move right into selling low-competitive products and then, scaling your business.
Why Use Helium 10?
Every major seller on Amazon that’s teaching how to start your Amazon FBA business has nothing but praises for Helium 10.
While it may seem like a stretch to call it the best Amazon FBA tool out there, the fact of the matter is that it’s definitely at least one of the best.
Helium 10’s strength lies in the fact that it does many things for your Amazon business across many different stages. Also, it does them effectively.
Normally, when you have tools that offer a ton of features, only one or two of them are actually worthwhile while the rest aren’t really that effective.
Helium 10, on the other hand, ensures that all of its tools are usable, efficient and user-friendly.
For example, you may look towards Jungle Scout for keyword research, Viral Launch for product launches and AMZ Tracker for sales generation.
Now, those are three different tools you’d have to invest in for different stages of your Amazon business.
Whereas, on the other hand, you could just invest only in Helium 10 that does all three of those things and does them well.
Helium 10 does have a steep learning curve which is why a lot of beginners are put off by it.
However, Helium 10 also has a free plan as well as a starter plan that comes at a much lower price than their other plans (Platinum, Diamond, and Enterprise)
Not only that, but these less expensive plans also have fewer features. This means there’s less stuff for you to get overwhelmed by.
It can be a great option for you to get the free or starter plan when you’re just starting out as an Amazon FBA seller.
Once you’ve established yourself within the market, you can maybe experiment with the Platinum or Diamond plans.
Lastly, Helium 10 also comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee. So really, you’ve got nothing to lose by trying this product out.
Worst case scenario:
You don’t find much traction by using Helium 10 and get it refunded.
Helium 10 Pros and Cons
Pros
● All-in-one suite so you don’t have to switch between different ecosystems
● Effective listings optimization tool
● Great product validation and reverse ASIN tools
● Exclusive tools that you can’t get with its competitors
● Effective keyword research and SEO tools
● Easy-to-use landing page builder
● Helpful and responsive customer support
Allows you to learn Amazon metrics and insights if you’re just starting out
Cons
● Does not have a supplier database
● Full access plans are relatively expensive
● Can be difficult to learn for beginners
Getting Started with Helium 10
So, how do you actually get Helium 10?
We’ve taken the time to develop a complete mini-guide within this post that will help you get started.
Whether you’re a new Amazon seller or an experienced one that’s new to Helium 10, these are the steps you need to follow to start gaining value out of it as quickly as possible.
We recommend that you refer back to this section no matter what stage of research you’re in as you can easily follow these instructions once you’re ready to start selling on Amazon.
Signing Up for a Free Helium 10 Account
The first thing you need to do, as with most tools, is to sign up for an account.
The great thing about Helium 10 is that they offer a free plan and you don’t need to add any credit card information or anything similar to set up your account.
Just enter your email and password and click the Signup button. Once done, you’ll be sent a verification email. Go through its instructions and that’s it. You now have a Helium 10 account and along with that, access to all of its free features.
If you ever run into any issues or problems when setting up your account or even in the future, you can email Helium 10’s customer support at support@helium10.com.
We tested Helium 10 for months and did run into some issues during that time. Helium 10’s support team was quick to respond and gave us clear instructions on how to resolve our issues.
Furthermore, Helium 10’s support team is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. So, you can contact them any time and expect a quick response.
Once you’re registered and logged in, you will be redirected to Helium 10’s user dashboard.
It’s carefully designed to give you quick access to all of its tools with zero fluff or distractions.
All of the tools you have access to are present in the toolbar on the left side.
Furthermore, the tools are ordered in a way that you’d use them when going through the process of selecting a new product type and putting it up on Amazon.
For example, since you normally start your process by performing product research, the product research tools (known as Black Box and Trendstar) are right at the top.
After that, you have keyword research, followed by listing optimization, operations, analytics and finally, marketing.
You don’t necessarily have to use all of these tools in order, of course, but the fact they’re ordered like that in the toolbar is a nice touch and makes using Helium 10 very streamlined.
Downloading the Helium 10 Chrome Extension
We highly recommend downloading and installing the Helium 10 Chrome Extension since it makes the process of analyzing products on Amazon very easy.
As you’re scrolling through Amazon, you can click the extension and it will display a summary of all the important data you need regarding the product such as its pricing history, sales history, ranking, etc.
You can also use the Helium 10 Chrome extension for a number of other things such as:
● Analyzing competitor’s product reviews
● Quickly copying ASINs (Amazon Standard Identification Numbers)
● Calculating expected profits
And much more.
Finding Information through Helium 10’s Professional Training Videos
While Helium 10 is definitely an amazing tool for countless aspects of Amazon selling, the fact of the matter is that it can be overwhelming when you first boot it up.
You can try to experiment with its tools on your own but it may take you a long time before you understand how to use them to their fullest potential.
In order to quicken this process and get you acquainted with how to use every tool in Helium 10’s kit, they have provided professional training videos as well as several instructional articles that you can consult.
Not only do these training videos detail how you can use every tool that Helium 10 provides, but they also tell you how you can use these tools in different scenarios and for different tasks.
We feel that actionable knowledge such as this is definitely worth looking at as you’ll be able to use every Helium 10 tool to its fullest potential right off the bat.
They have professional training videos for every tool that you can watch as many times as you want to have a clear understanding of how to use them for your business’s specific goals and objectives.
Furthermore, their articles are also very helpful and detail solutions to common issues that you may face while using certain tools inside Helium 10.
You can access the Pro Training page for Helium 10 here.
Opting for the Freedom Ticket Course
This isn’t something that you necessarily have to go for but it’s definitely a worthwhile option to consider if you’re completely new to selling on Amazon.
The great thing about their Freedom Ticket course is that not only does it detail how you should go about setting up your business to sell on Amazon but it also tells you how to utilize Helium 10 alongside it as well.
We feel that this combined knowledge is definitely a recipe for success and something that you should definitely consider.
If you’re still on the fence about whether or not you should go for the Freedom Ticket course, you’re in luck. That’s because Helium 10 offers the first two weeks of their 8-week Freedom Ticket course for free.
That way, you can check it out free of cost to see if it’s something that brings you value or not. If it does, you can opt for the complete 8-week course.
Some of the aspects that will be taught to you within the Freedom Ticket course include:
● Inventory management
● Sourcing
● Supplier management
● PPC
● Ad campaigns
● Listing setup
● Listing optimization
● Product launching
And much more.
The course starts with building your fundamentals on how to run a business on Amazon and then, delves deeper into the way the Amazon marketplace works.
This coupled with Helium 10 strategy and knowledge gives you all the tools you need to set up a successful Amazon business that scales well and quickly.
It’s the perfect place to start if you’re just getting into Amazon FBA.
As mentioned earlier, you can check out the first two weeks of their Freedom Ticket course for free here.
In addition to the Freedom Ticket course, there are a number of other resources on Helium 10’s website as well such as guides and eBooks for Amazon Sellers.
Using Helium 10
Now that we’ve given you a thorough introduction of what Helium 10 is all about, let’s take a deep dive into all of its individual tools, what they do and how you can get the best out of them.
Helium XRay
Helium XRay is its market research tool that is highly popular among Helium 10’s users.
It’s present in Helium 10’s Chrome extension and provides extensive information on product trends and sales.
You can choose a geographic location and Helium Xray will provide you with metrics such as sales trends, prices, revenue estimate, PPC analysis and more.
This can help you gain insight into lucrative product opportunities and determine what niche you should be targeting next.
Helium Cerebro
Helium Cerebro is one of the most powerful tools in its arsenal and it’s something that almost every Helium 10 user uses regularly.
Essentially, Cerebro is a reverse ASIN (Amazon Standard Identification Number) tool but it does so much more than that.
All you have to do is paste in a product’s URL within Cerebro and it will give you everything you need to judge that product’s viability for yourself.
Firstly, it will give you an extensive list of keyword suggestions for that product. This will instantly let you know what keywords your competitors are using to rank for that product on Amazon.
It literally eliminates all of the guesswork you’d normally have to do in regards to relevant search terms for a given product.
Important Tip: It’s almost always a good idea to go for a product that has a high number of reviews even if it’s not the top product within that niche.
This is because a high number of reviews typically means that the product has been on Amazon for a while and thus, that means that it can rank for many more keywords than a newer product would.
In addition to providing you with an extensive list of keywords, you also get all the usual metrics with them such as search volume.
One unique metric you get is the Cerebro IQ Score. This metric is very useful as it’s a ratio of search volume to competing products.
The higher this number, the more viable that product is as a high score means that a large number of people are searching for that product and there’s low competition for it.
It’s important to note that keywords with brands in them will be something you have to ignore. This is because you can’t just sell your own “Sony speakers”, etc.
CPR 8-Day Giveaways
Another metric that Helium Cerebro provides you with is CPR 8-Day Giveaways.
This metric gives you an estimate of the total units you need to sell over a period of 8 days in order to rank on page 1 for that specific keyword.
You can use this to your benefit by first calculating how much it’s going to cost you. It’s a good idea to sell your product at a discount for the first 8 days in order to make the appropriate amount of sales indicated by Helium Cerebro.
Always remember: Getting to page 1 is the hard part but once you’re there, it will mean consistent sales and reviews (assuming that you keep up with the quality and customer support).
Helium Magnet
If you’ve ever used any keyword research tool before, this is pretty much the same thing but geared solely towards Amazon.
Basically, you give Helium Magnet a “seed” or “input” keyword and it helps by providing you with an extensive list of keyword ideas as well as related traffic opportunities that may be unknown to your competitors.
What you get when you enter a keyword into Magnet is:
● Relevant keywords
● Actionable keywords (words like “Buy now”, “Limited offer”, etc.)
● Competing products
● Top products
● Word frequency
And since all of these keywords are pulled directly from Amazon, you don’t need to worry about any unrelated, junk keywords that could mess up your business’s growth.
Furthermore, Magnet provides you with a bunch of useful filters so that you can narrow down your search, leaving behind only the most viable keywords.
Lastly, you can use Magnet to expand upon the list you may have already generated through Cerebro or vice versa.
Helium Frankenstein
Frankenstein is a very simple and straightforward tool to use but the value it brings you is unparalleled.
As you may already know, Amazon’s search algorithm puts a lot of emphasis on using the appropriate keywords.
Hence, if you can figure out what the relevant keywords are, it can make your journey to page 1 a whole lot easier.
Helium Frankenstein makes that entire process a breeze by taking your keywords and eliminating any junk or useless modifiers it may have such as words like “and”, “in”, “with”, etc.
Thus, you can enter your list that you may have populated through Cerebro or Magnet (or both) and Frankenstein will return you all of the keywords you need to have within your listing to make it completely optimized.
How to Sort and Identify the Most Relevant Keywords
Once you’ve populated a list of keywords using Helium Cerebro, Magnet and Frankenstein, you may find that it’s overwhelmingly huge.
Beginners tend to make the mistake of stuffing as many keywords as possible into their listing and hoping for the best. This is not an efficient approach and may result in you never getting your Amazon business off the ground.
Instead, here’s what you need to do:
● Export your keyword list into a spreadsheet on Google Docs.
● Parse through the keyword list and identify the most relevant keywords. You can do this by coloring the cells with the most relevant keywords.
● Next, use a filter to only have your relevant keywords in the list. You can do this by selecting the column with the keywords and only including colored cells within your filter as shown:
● You will be left with a list of your most relevant keywords that you can then use within your listing(s).
Helium Blackbox
Helium Blackbox makes an annoying and tedious process like niche research extremely simple and even, satisfying.
It allows you to find niches by entering certain details that you want to look for in a niche.
For example, if you’re looking for product ideas for a niche that has low competition, high monthly sales and high search volume, you can simply add that to the search bar and click enter.
Once done, Black Box returns an extensive list of product niches that you can pick and choose from.
Normally, you’d have to brainstorm a bunch of niches and then, manually check whether those niches fit your criteria or not.
You can clearly see how Helium 10’s Black Box saves you time when it comes to niche research.
Helium Scribbles
Helium 10’s Scribbles is its listings analyzer and optimizer.
If you’ve ever tried to manually optimize a listing, you’ll know that it’s one of the most annoying processes that an Amazon seller has to go through.
Keeping track of which words you’ve used and which words you still need to include can be quite headache-inducing.
Scribbles keeps a complete track of all the keywords you have used so far, which ones you’ve yet to use and it even informs you when you’ve over-optimized your listing with a certain keyword.
Once you’ve written text for your listing that is 100% optimized, you can simply copy it and then paste it into your Amazon listing.
Helium Keyword Rank Tracker
Helium 10’s Keyword Rank Tracker does exactly what you’d expect.
It keeps track of all of your important keywords within your listings and gives you a regular report of what their position is.
This is crucial as you have to monitor the progress of your listings in order to make appropriate changes to them.
Not seeing any progress with your keywords? Maybe change them. Keywords are ranking better but not as fast as they did for your competitors? Maybe do some competitor analysis and add more keywords.
This is something that you constantly have to do as an Amazon seller and Helium 10’s Keyword Rank Tracker makes this process very simple.
Helium Refund Genie
Sometimes during the Amazon FBA process, Amazon may mess up and deliver a damaged product or an incorrect product to your customer(s).
In that case, not only are your customers entitled to a refund but so are you.
As your business grows, refunds can be very hard to keep track of, considering everything else you have to look at.
Helium 10’s Refund Genie does a great job of identifying whenever there’s a good chance of a refund for one of your deliveries.
Furthermore, it actively notifies you of that, so you can contact Amazon and demand a refund.
For a medium-scale business, Refund Genie can help you get a few hundred dollars refunded every year.
If we’re being honest, this tool basically allows you to pay for Helium 10’s subscription with all the money that you get refunded.
Helium Inventory Protector
Helium’s inventory protector can protect you and your business from potential inventory gouging.
What’s inventory gouging? Well, we detailed how you can use Helium Cerebro to get to page 1 easily.
For that, you have to sell your products at a heavy discount for the first 8 days.
Consider that you’re selling your product at 80% off when you initially launch your product. This can allow someone to buy all the stock you have in your inventory and clean you out instantly.
This is bad for a couple of reasons:
● You will not be making a profit from these sales since you’re selling them at a heavy discount.
● You will not receive a high number of reviews as all of your stock will be going to just one person.
Helium Inventory Protector helps prevent this by allowing you to set a product limit that one user can buy. Thus, keeping your inventory secure.
Helium Hijacker Alert
Once your business starts gaining traction and your listing moves up to page 1, there’s a possibility you may run into scammers trying to sell knockoffs of your product.
This can be extremely detrimental to your business for a couple of reasons:
● It will drive traffic away from your listing and negatively affect your sales.
● Customers may think they’ve purchased a legitimate product from you and be disappointed once they receive it. This may result in them leaving you a bad review.
So, how does Helium Hijacker Alert help with this?
Well, it scours Amazon for competitors using the same keywords as that in your listing.
If it detects a possible scammer, a notification is sent to you. You can then check their listing out to see if they’re ripping you off or not.
If that is the case, you can report them to Amazon to get their listing removed.
Helium Misspellenator
The Helium Misspellenator is an incredibly unique tool that lets you capitalize on an extremely common phenomenon: misspelling and typos.
It works by showing you which words Amazon does not correct automatically.
By identifying certain keywords that people misspell often and that Amazon doesn’t auto-correct, you can capitalize on people making typos in their searches.
We don’t recommend that you misspell keywords everywhere in your listing but it can be a good idea to add a typo or two somewhere within it.
Helium Seller Assistant
Helium Seller Assistant really makes your job as an Amazon seller a whole lot easier.
It basically allows you to request a review for any sale you make in the past 30 days.
Why is this huge?
Well, say, you made 100 sales in the past 30 days. Without Helium Seller Assistant, you would have to go to the Orders page, find every sale and request a review manually.
If you made 100 sales, you would have to repeat this process 100 times.
With Helium Seller Assistant, you can request reviews for all of your sales in the past 30 days with the click of a button.
Helium Listing Analyzer
Helium’s listing analyzer is another tool that’s extremely useful and can help you get your listing to page 1.
Normally, you’d have to either manually check whether you’re following all best practices within your listing or not. If you don’t know what those practices exactly are, you may have even had to hire an Amazon listing expert.
Instead, you can easily input your listing into Helium Listing Analyzer and it will give you an overview of everything you’re doing right as well as anything you’re doing wrong.
It’s a quick analysis of your listing to ensure you’re following all the best practices to help it rank and also, that you’re following all of Amazon’s terms and conditions.
It also quickly informs of all the keywords that you’re ranking for without you having to manually check via Helium Cerebro.
Helium Inventory Manager
A fairly recent feature that Helium 10 has added is its inventory management tool.
You can think of it as an inventory manager that gives you a quick overview of everything you need to effectively manage your inventory and ensure everything stays in stock.
Some of the things that its inventory manager allows you to do are:
● Adjusting your stock reordering frequency
● Managing your purchase orders and sales
● Getting restocking recommendations
● Inspecting your stock and suppliers
By having all information related to your inventory in one place, you can quickly analyze when to place restocking orders.
Helium Chrome Extension
We briefly mentioned Helium 10’s Chrome extension earlier in the post and how it’s definitely something worth having.
This is because it makes using Helium 10 a lot more convenient. You have access to the most commonly used tools within the Chrome extension and it provides you with relevant data as you’re browsing Amazon.
All you have to do is click the Helium 10 icon within your Chrome browser and you’ll have quick and easy access to:
● Helium 10 X-Ray: A tool with access to Amazon marketplace data that allows you to search for and identify viable product niches.
● ASIN Grabber: Lets you copy ASINs (Amazon Standard Identification Numbers) in bulk for easy data compilation or for making targeted ads.
● Profitability Calculator: An easy calculator for determining your profit margins by taking into account the weight, dimensions and freight cost of your product as well as Amazon FBA fees.
● Review Downloader: Lets you download the reviews of your product(s) in bulk, so you can analyze them and gain better insights to adjust your listing(s).
Helium 10 Phone App
Unlike most smartphone apps for other services, Helium 10’s smartphone app does not feel clunky at all to use.
Furthermore, its user interface is quite intuitive if you’ve already been acquainted with Helium 10’s desktop interface.
While the phone app doesn’t have a lot of functionality, it does have adequate features to let you keep track of how your business is doing.
You can easily check your profits, the number of sales, PPC as well as your inventory at the swipe of a finger.
Furthermore, Helium 10’s Hijacker Alert also sends knockoff notifications to your phone via the app.
Thus, you can immediately get on top of it and report it to Amazon before it harms your business.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What’s ASIN and Reverse ASIN?
ASIN stands for Amazon Standard Identification Number and it’s a unique number that is assigned to every product that is put up on Amazon. It’s a way of uniquely identifying that specific product.
Reverse ASIN or Reverse ASIN lookup is a method of taking a certain product’s ASIN and reverse-engineering it to gain insight into how that product generates sales.
How do I Know What My Product’s ASIN is?
Finding any product’s ASIN on Amazon is easy. You can find your product’s or any of your competitors’ products’ ASIN by looking at the product details.
How does Helium 10’s Pricing Work?
Helium 10 has a number of different pricing plans as shown:
All plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Furthermore, Helium 10 also has a free plan that isn’t shown here. Helium 10’s free plan gives you:
● Black Box - 20 Uses (limited functionality)
● X-ray - 50 Executions/Launches
● ASIN Grabber
● Profitability Calculator
● Inventory Level Management
● Review Downloader - 100 Views
● Trendster - Unlimited for 30 days
What Are Some Alternatives to Helium 10?
There aren’t any true alternatives that do everything Helium 10 does as Helium 10 just does so much.
However, if you’re looking for similar tools that assist Amazon FBA sellers, some great ones out there are:
● Jungle Scout
● CamelCamelCamel
● Sellics
Is Helium 10 Worth it?
100% yes. Even if you don’t go for the more expensive plans, the free and starter plans are something you can gain a lot of value from.
And since all plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee, you really have nothing to lose here.
How Accurate are Helium 10’s Insights and Metrics?
Since Helium 10 displays its insights and metrics by taking data straight from Amazon’s database, it’s the most accurate any Amazon FBA tool can be.
Can I Get an Annual Subscription of Helium 10?
Yes, you can choose to get either a monthly or an annual subscription based on your budget and needs.
The annual subscription can be worthwhile since it’s cheaper compared to the monthly subscription.
How do I Get Help for Any Issues I May be Having While Using Helium 10?
You can either email their customer support at support@helium10.com or initiate a chat session using the Helium 10 dashboard.
You can initiate a chat session with a customer support representative by clicking on the blue chat icon in the bottom-right of the Helium 10 dashboard.
Wrapping Things Up…
All in all, Helium 10 is definitely a tool worth exploring both for new as well as experienced Amazon sellers.
It makes several processes that Amazon sellers have to go through extremely streamlined and efficient.
It also eliminates a lot of the guesswork as well as a lot of the tedium that comes with trend research, keyword research, competitor analysis, etc.
We definitely recommend that you give its free plan a shot and if it’s something you’re into, you can consider going for one of its paid plans.
Have you tried Helium 10? Do you prefer some other tool? Let us know in the comments below.