Helium 10 - Best Tips on How to Use X-Ray
There’s no doubt in the fact that:
Product research can make or break your Amazon Seller journey.
This process can be extremely tedious, time-consuming and often involves a lot of guesswork with uncertain results.
That’s where Helium 10’s X-Ray tool comes in.
It provides valuable insights into Amazon product trends, eliminates a lot of the guesswork and finds lucrative opportunities for you.
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Let’s get into how Helium 10’s X-Ray works and how you can use it to its fullest potential.
What is X-Ray?
X-Ray is one of the many tools offered by Helium 10 as part of their package of tools for Amazon sellers.
It’s a product research tool that helps sellers identify profitable niches (ones with high demand and low competition) as well as specific products within those niches.
As you can probably tell, you can use X-Ray to identify products that you may be able to sell for the maximum amount of profit.
As with all of Helium 10’s tools, all of the data that X-Ray analyzes is pulled straight from Amazon. This means there’s no room for inaccuracy or error.
What you see is what you get.
You can get X-Ray for free by downloading Helium 10’s Chrome extension.
The Chrome extension gives you easy access to X-ray as you are browsing Amazon.
X-ray is also available as a part of Helium 10’s paid subscription in addition to their plethora of other tools.
How can X-Ray Help Me Sell on Amazon?
As mentioned earlier, performing product research without the help of any product research tool is an extremely time-consuming and inefficient process.
You’d have to sift through a huge number of product niches, determine which products in those niches are worth going for and then, start gathering your resources to sell that product.
Oftentimes, when you perform product research this way, not only does it take up a lot of time but also, it may not even give you the results you want.
This is because all of the product research you perform without a tool is based on guesswork. You research different product niches and depending on the number of searches for it and the number of competitors, you determine whether it’s worth going for or not.
In this case, it’s quite possible you may be looking at outdated data when looking at the search volume for different product niches. It’s also possible that the search volume for those product niches is not specific to Amazon but to the internet in general.
Thus, performing product research without a product research tool is time-consuming and inaccurate,
That’s why, it’s definitely a good idea to invest in one so that:
You can save time when performing product research.
The time you do invest in product research is not wasted due to inaccurate data.
The time you do invest in product research is not wasted due to inaccurate data.
Get Helium 10 at 10% discount for EVERY month regardless of the plan you choose.
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And when it comes to great product research tools, Helium 10’s X-Ray is definitely one of the best out there.
It’s easy to use, it’s free and most importantly, it pulls up-to-date data directly from Amazon to give you its insights.
How Does X-Ray Work?
Helium 10’s X-Ray is best utilized when it’s paired with another tool in Helium 10’s arsenal: Black Box.
Black Box is Helium 10’s product finder and niche research tool. It helps you identify favorable niches based on certain parameters that you input into it.
For example, let’s say you’re looking for a niche that has:
● A minimum turnover of $3000
● Maximum number of reviews of 50
● Maximum competing products of 50
You input these parameters into Black Box and then, Black Box will provide you with an extensive list of niches that fit these parameters.
You can then go through this list to choose the niche that you want to work towards as an Amazon seller.
Important Note: In addition to the parameters we’ve given in the example above, Black Box provides you with a number of other parameters to work with such as weight, dimensions, Amazon FBA fees, number of images, etc.
Getting to the point, once you’ve utilized Black Box and identified a niche to work towards, you can start using Helium 10’s X-ray to focus on the product(s) within that niche.
Start by searching for that niche in Amazon and naturally, Amazon will provide you with a result page of a number of products within that niche.
For our example, we have chosen Boom Arms as our product niche to look at. Hence, we got to the results page shown below by searching for “boom arm” in the search bar.
Once you’re on the results page, you click on Helium 10’s Chrome extension and then choose the X-ray tool.
The X-ray tool will provide you with a detailed window of all the products on that result page along with a number of different metrics pulled straight from Amazon’s database.
It should look something like this:
At first glance, this may seem like a lot of information to parse through and if we’re being fair, it is.
What do all the metrics by Helium 10 mean?
In order to make sense of what you’re looking at, let’s go over what all the different categories and metrics provided by Helium 10’s X-ray mean:
● # - This is the serial number of the listing as it occurs on the product results page.
● ASIN - Amazon Standard Identification Number. This is a unique ID that is given to every product listed on Amazon that’s used to specifically identify that product.
● Brand - The brand that’s selling that product.
● Title - The name of the product.
● Category - The category or type of product that Amazon has categorized it as.
● Seller - The individual seller or company that’s selling the product on Amazon.
● Delivery (identified by the truck icon) - It details how that product is fulfilled (delivered to the customer).
● Price - How much each product costs.
● FBA Fees - The fees charged by Amazon to the seller for storing and delivering that product to the customer.
● Sales - How many sales the product makes on average per month. You can click on it to look at a sales graph that updates daily.
● Revenue - The monthly revenue for each listing.
● BSR - The value of the product’s Best Seller Rank. The higher the Best Seller Rank, the higher that product’s sales are.
● BSR 30 - A graph depicting the listing’s fluctuations of its Best Seller Rank over the last 30 days.
● Rating - The Amazon rating of the product based on customer ratings.
● Reviews - The number of customer reviews for that product on Amazon.
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We haven’t even begun going over how you can use this data to your advantage but we’re sure you can already tell how powerful of a tool this is.
Having access to all of these metrics during product research can give you extremely valuable insight on which product you should go for and what products you should avoid.
Quick Tip: If you click on the gear icon next to the “Reviews” category heading, it’ll open a window with all the metrics listed and checkboxes next to them. You can check or uncheck any metric you like to determine which of them shows up on Helium 10 X-ray’s main window when you perform research on a specific niche.
This will eliminate a lot of the clutter and ensure that you’re only looking at metrics that are meaningful to you.
Next to the products in the main list, you’ll see that every listing has a pin next to it.
When you click on a pin, it turns blue and gets added to your list. You can use this feature to save all of the listings you wish to track for later.
X-Ray also provides you with a “Success Score” for each listing. You can consider the success score to be that listing’s overall worth. It basically tells you whether that product is worth pursuing or not.
Helium 10’s X-ray takes into account a number of factors to determine its success score. We’ll go over how the success score of each product is determined in the next section.
At the top of the Helium 10 X-Ray window, you also get some overall metrics for the product niche.
These include:
● Total Revenue - The estimated total revenue of that product niche (excluding sponsored listings).
● Average Revenue - The estimated average revenue of that product niche per month (excluding sponsored listings).
● Average Price - The average price of the products within that product niche (excluding sponsored listings).
● Average BSR - The average Best Seller Rank for products within that product niche (excluding sponsored listings).
● Average Reviews - The average number of reviews for the products within that product niche (excluding sponsored listings).
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If you want to look at what product is being referenced in Helium 10 X-Ray’s window, you can hover your cursor over that product’s results and it will give you an enlarged image of the product.
Some more features provided by Helium 10’s X-Ray include:
● Additional details of individual products when you click on an individual listing.
● Sorting listings according to specific categories.
● Ability to drag the X-ray window anywhere on the Amazon results page. The window can also become transparent for you to see through it.
Even if you’re overwhelmed by all the information that X-Ray provides you with, you can simply use its “Success Score” as a guideline for whether or not you should pursue a certain product.
It’s a fairly accurate metric that can help you make a decision on going for a certain product and it can also help you save time and effort by pointing out which products are not worthwhile.
Speaking of X-Ray’s Success Score, let’s talk about how it’s determined for each listing...
How is X-Ray’s Success Score Determined?
Along with all of the detailed metrics and insights that Helium 10’s X-ray tool provides you such as search volume, review count, ASIN, etc., it also gives you a custom metric called the Success Score.
The Success Score of a product is X-Ray’s own metric that is calculated by taking into account a number of different factors that we’ll go over shortly.
First, let’s talk about what a product’s success score means:
The success score of a product essentially refers to whether or not that product is worth pursuing.
Is it worth your time and effort to set up a listing for that product on Amazon to start selling it? Will it be profitable?
That’s what the success score tells you.
Products with a success score of higher than 3 stars meet a number of different criteria that make them viable for pursuing and selling on Amazon.
So, how is it determined?
Let’s have a look:
● Category - Not only does X-ray pull the main category of a product but it also pulls the sub-categories for it. If a product is able to be placed in a number of different sub-categories, it has higher chances of ranking better and selling more on Amazon. The more categories a product can be placed in, the better its success score will be.
● Buybox - Buybox is a privilege that Amazon offers its top sellers. The higher the number of sellers that qualify for Buybox within a certain niche, the higher the success scores for products in that niche will be.
● Number of Sellers - The number of sellers within a certain product niche determines how much competition you’re going to be facing if you choose to target the niche. The lower the number of sellers, the lower your competition will be and thus, the higher the success score.
● Delivery - This category determines whether products in a certain niche are delivered either by Amazon (Amazon-fulfilled) or by the sellers themselves (merchant-fulfilled). Too many Amazon FBA deliveries will mean that there’s a lot of competition within Amazon for that product. On the other hand, too many merchant-fulfilled deliveries will mean that you’ll face a lot of logistical challenges as well as increased costs that would go towards deliveries.
● FBA Fee - If the FBA fee for a certain product or products within a niche is high, then the margin for profit will be low. Hence, products with high FBA fees have a low success score whereas products with low FBA fees have a high success score.
● Price - The price of products tends to fluctuate within the Amazon marketplace due to a number of different factors. Products whose prices stay fairly the same are the ones that have high success scores. Products with varying prices tend to be harder to compete for on Amazon and thus, they have low success scores.
● Sales - The sales and sales graph give you an estimate of the number of sales of that product within the last 30 days. Obviously, products with a level or upward trend will have higher success scores whereas products with a downward trend will have lower success scores.
● Revenue - The revenue tells you the average money that’s pulled in through sales of a certain product each month. If all (or most) sellers for a certain product (or product niche) pull in the same level of revenue, this means that that market is not dominated by a few sellers. This can make it harder to rank for such products and thus, these types of products have low success scores.
● Customer Ratings - These are the ratings left by customers that bought that product. High customer ratings indicate good customer satisfaction and high quality of products. This can make it harder to compete within that market. On the other hand, low star ratings mean that there’s a lot of room for improvement and a better opportunity to compete. Thus, products with low customer ratings have higher success scores.
● Review Count - The number of reviews for a certain product is highly important because if a product has a high number of reviews, it means it’s doing exceptionally well on Amazon and it can be harder to compete for that product. On the other hand, products with a low number of reviews tend to be easier to compete with and thus, they have higher success scores.
As you can see, Helium 10 X-Ray’s success score takes into account a number of different metrics that you would usually look at to determine a product’s viability.
It takes all of them and condenses their information in a simple score that you can look at and immediately determine whether or not that product’s worth your time and effort or not.
Advantages and Disadvantages of X-Ray
Oftentimes, the best way to determine whether or not a product is worth your time and money is to look over its pros and cons.
Keeping that in mind, we’ve listed all of the benefits and pitfalls of Helium 10’s X-Ray tool for you to figure out whether it’s suitable for you as an Amazon Seller or not.
So, without further ado, let’s get into it:
Pros
● Completely free to use as part of Helium 10’s Chrome extension. All you have to do is sign up on their website and then, install the Chrome extension on your Chrome browser.
● X-ray’s metrics are pulled straight from Amazon which means there’s no chance of inaccurate or outdated data.
● You can use the Success Score to save yourself some time and easily determine whether a product is worthwhile or not.
● The metrics provided by Helium 10 X-Ray not only help you with product research but also to determine what keywords competitors are using.
● You can use the “pinning” feature to keep track of certain products by pinning them which adds them to your tracked list of products.
Cons
● You can only use Helium 10 X-ray 50 times with the free version. After that, you’ll have to pay for at least the Starter plan which costs $37 per month.
● The information you’re given when you first boot up X-Ray can be overwhelming, especially if you’re a beginner Amazon seller.
Quick Tip: For further insights and tricks on how you can utilize Helium 10 to its fullest potential, you can check out Helium’s Serious Sellers Podcast (SSP) on their website.
Get Helium 10 at 10% discount for EVERY month regardless of the plan you choose.
Use our code: STC10
How to Use Helium X-Ray?
Let’s finally get into the meat-and-potatoes of this article which is how you can use Helium 10’s X-Ray to its fullest potential.
As with pretty much any Amazon Seller tool, Helium 10 X-Ray is only as good as the person using it.
Hence, we’ll go over the entire process of how to find a viable product as well as some tips and tricks you can utilize to make your search more efficient.
Searching
The first step to using Helium 10’s X-Ray is searching for a product within the niche you want to target.
As mentioned earlier, in order to identify a viable niche, you can take the help of Helium 10’s other tool, Black Box.
Black Box will provide you with an extensive list of viable niches based on the parameters that you give it.
Once you’ve identified a viable niche, search for it in the Amazon search bar.
Quick Tip: If you have the Helium Starter plan, you will have unlimited uses of Helium 10’s X-Ray. Hence, it’s a good idea to search within your chosen niche multiple times using different keywords to get as much insight as possible into viable products within that niche.
You can get 50% OFF your first month when you use code: STC50 when signing up for Helium 10.
Once on the Amazon product results page, click on the Blue Helium icon to open the menu for the Helium Chrome extension.
Click on “Xray - Amazon Product Research” as shown:
This will open Helium X-Ray’s main window with all of the details and metrics you’ll use to find viable products as shown:
We’ve already explained in detail what all the different metrics displayed in this window mean for each product in the section above.
Analysis
In this section, we will go over how you can use these metrics to identify viable products you can go for as an Amazon seller.
Let’s start with the Fulfillment Option:
Fulfillment Process
The fulfillment process basically refers to whether you choose to deliver the product to your customers yourself or whether you’re going to be getting it delivered to them via Amazon’s FBA service for sellers.
As a new Amazon seller, we recommend that you choose FBA as it eliminates a lot of logistical planning and you won’t have to spend a ton of money on packaging, storage and delivery.
If you’re choosing to use Amazon FBA, it’s good to look for a niche that contains products that are mostly merchant-fulfilled (fulfilled by the seller and not Amazon).
This is because that will mean that there’s not a lot of competition for that product within Amazon.
Price
Analyzing the prices of products within a certain niche is important for a couple of reasons:
It will determine whether or not going for that product is profitable.
It will determine how hard it will be for you to rank better within that niche and popularize your listing.
Prices fluctuate on the Amazon marketplace just like in the regular market. However, you need to be on the lookout for product niches that have minimal price fluctuations.
Furthermore, you should be looking for a product niche that contains products that all fall within a fairly similar price range.
Opting to go for a niche where all the products have extremely varied prices is not a good idea as it’s significantly harder to rank within such niches.
When you have a product niche that has products with prices within a similar range of each other. You can get an idea of how you should price your product in order to make it sell better and gain popularity.
Number of Sellers
It’s fairly obvious that you should target a product that is in a niche with a low amount of sellers.
This is because as a new Amazon seller, you should always try to make a name for yourself in a niche with low competition since it’s much easier to do so.
You won’t find a lot of success selling a product in a niche that already has established sellers dominating the niche.
So how low is low?
Well, as a new seller, you should ideally target a product that has below 50 sellers.
Worst-case scenario, you should go for a product that has below 100 sellers but avoid niches that have anything above that.
Sales and Sales Graphs
Analyzing sales graphs is fairly simple: You simply have to identify products that have sales graphs with either a level or an upward trend.
A level trend means that the product has been selling consistently for a while and will (most probably) continue to do so. This makes it a reliable product to go for and you can go into it with some guarantee that you’ll be seeing a consistent number of sales.
An upward trend is even better as this means that the demand for that product has been growing recently. Targeting such a product (especially if it’s in a niche with low competition) is a very good idea.
If you’re able to deliver a high-quality product within such a niche, it can be a great opportunity for you to dominate that field.
Review Count
The review count refers to the number of reviews that a certain product has.
As you can probably imagine, you should be targeting products with a low review count. This means that not a lot of people have felt compelled enough to leave a product review and thus, if you come up with a high-quality product, there’s a high chance you’ll be able to dominate.
As a new Amazon seller, you should be targeting products that have below 50 reviews.
Customer Ratings
Customer ratings are star ratings that customers who have bought the product leave behind to give an idea of their level of satisfaction with the product.
As a new Amazon seller looking at Helium 10’s X-Ray’s results, you should be looking for products that have low customer ratings.
Low customer ratings mean that customers are not satisfied with the product they’ve been given and thus, this gives you an opportunity to come up with a product that’s better.
This will allow you to dominate that field and become a successful seller for that type of product in no time.
FBA Fees (If Applicable)
If you choose to have your product fulfilled by Amazon, there are some fees that you’ll have to pay to Amazon for storage and delivery of your product to your customers.
Looking at Helium 10’s X-Ray results for the type of product you’re targeting will give you an idea of what the FBA fees are like for a product of that size and weight.
Hence, you should analyze these fees to determine whether it’s profitable for you to utilize Amazon FBA for your product or not.
If it’s profitable, you should go for it, if it’s not, you should look for other products.
Zooming In
We’ve extensively gone over how you can identify viable products for your Amazon selling journey.
Now, let’s talk about what to do once you’ve done so.
We mentioned earlier the pins next to each item in the Helium 10’s X-ray window as shown:
When you click on a single pin next to a certain product, it adds that product to your list and keeps track of it.
When you identify a viable product, what you should do is click on the pin next to it so that it gets saved and Helium 10 starts keeping track of it for you.
For the next few days, you should analyze your saved list to see which of your chosen products is performing the best according to your own specific parameters (sales, revenue, review count, ratings, etc.).
From there, you can choose one single product out of your saved list that you’ll go for as an Amazon seller.
Other Types of Searches
Apart from X-ray, there are a few more tools within Helium 10’s Chrome extension that you can utilize effectively once you’ve focused on a product to go for through X-Ray.
The Profitability Calculator is an insanely useful tool that can estimate profit margins for you based on the type of product you’re selling. All you have to do is give it parameters such as dimensions, weight, freight costs, FBA fees, etc.
You’ll have all these parameters to give to the Profitability Calculator since you’ll have this information from the product you’ve chosen within X-Ray.
The Review Downloader is also great as it’s a convenient way of downloading reviews for a certain product.
If you choose a certain product within X-Ray that you’re going to target, it’s a good idea to use the Review Downloader to download reviews for that product.
Go through the reviews that you’ve downloaded to see what customers are complaining about. This can give you valuable insight into what improvements you can make in the product you develop and sell in order to get ahead of your competition and dominate that niche.
How Accurate is X-Ray Compared to its Competitors?
The number of detailed metrics that Helium 10’s X-Ray provides you with would all be useless if they were not accurate.
According to the Helium 10 team, X-ray provides results that are up to 97% accurate. This is because it uses sophisticated algorithms and data that is pulled straight from Amazon Seller Central.
While the estimates suggested by X-ray are not 100% accurate, that’s really not something you need at all. All you really need is an estimate.
Remember why you are looking at sales estimates:
You’re looking at them to determine whether it’s a worthwhile niche to go into as an Amazon seller.
Thus, if Helium 10’s X-ray provides you with 97% accuracy and some other competitor provides you with 93% accuracy, it doesn’t really make a difference. This is because in both cases, your decision is going to be the same.
Hence, what we’re trying to get at is that it’s never really a good idea to compare the accuracy of two different Amazon seller tools as that research will get you nowhere.
What you should be looking at is whether or not the tool you’re using is accurate in accordance with actual data from Amazon.
Helium 10 have conducted a comparison on their website showing how accurate X-ray is at determining different product sales.
Let’s look at a few examples they’ve provided:
The first product is a Coffin Decorative Shelf. The X-ray sales estimation for this product was 668 units per month and the exact number for sales on Amazon Seller Central was 670 units per month. We feel that’s accurate enough for you to make an informed decision on whether the product is worthwhile or not.
The second example is an Egg Tray for which X-ray’s sales estimation was 50 units per month and the actual number on Amazon Seller Central was 64 units per month.
Both of these examples showcase that Helium 10 X-ray’s estimates are highly accurate and while they may not be 100% on the money, they’re still accurate enough for you to make the right decision.
And in the end, that’s really all that matters.
Some Alternatives to X-Ray
Some of the best alternatives to Helium 10’s X-ray that come to mind are:
● Jungle Scout
● Sellics
● DataHawk
Let’s have a closer look at each one of these alternatives to see what they have to offer:
Jungle Scout
In terms of analyzing products and their metrics as Helium 10’s X-ray tool does, the corresponding tool for Jungle Scout is its Product Tracker.
Jungle Scout’s Product Tracker gives you real-time, updated details for a given product’s sales history as well as other details such as average price, revenue, customer rating, review count, weight, dimensions, search volume, etc.
Similar to Helium 10’s X-ray tool, Jungle Scout’s Product Tracker eliminates a lot of the guesswork when it comes to choosing a worthwhile product and enables you to utilize a data-driven approach to do so.
Sellics
The counterpart to Helium 10’s X-Ray tool within Sellics is its Product Detector.
Similar to X-ray, Sellics’ Product Detector provides you with a ton of metrics and details regarding whatever product you choose to target.
This can give you insight into what niches are profitable and have low competition.
Unlike Helium 10’s X-Ray, the Product Detector for Sellics is fairly rudimentary and does not provide you with as much value as the former does.
However, as part of the complete Sellics package, it’s a good addition and can be very useful when it’s paired with other tools in Sellics’ arsenal.
DataHawk
DataHawk is an all-around Amazon Seller tool similar to Helium 10.
The corresponding tools to Helium 10’s X-ray within DataHawk are its product tracker and its product research tools.
The former allows you to keep track of chosen products such as their keywords, sales, revenue, review counts, customer ratings, etc.
The latter works by providing you with product ideas based on the parameters you give to it using its detailed filters.
DataHawk has a number of powerful tools in its arsenal and similar to Helium 10, it may seem overwhelming at first but it definitely does not take a lot of time to get the hang of.
Final Thoughts
Helium 10’s X-ray is an extremely powerful tool that can help you save time and identify opportunities for profit as an Amazon seller.
It eliminates most of the guesswork and allows you to adopt a data-driven approach when it comes to choosing a product to sell on Amazon. Furthermore, the first 50 uses are free so, there’s no harm in checking it out.
Use it for a few days to see if you gain value from it and if you do, you can think about getting a Helium 10 subscription.
What do you think of Helium 10’s X-ray tool? How do you use it? Do you think some other tool is better? Let us know in the comments below.