Welcome back!
Jungle Scout is my favourite Amazon FBA research tool. I have been using it since the day I started my Amazon journey and have always recommended it to my blog readers and my Amazon Sharks members. Back in the day, it was the ONLY good Amazon research tool out there.
Sure, nowadays there are many more, some of which are actually quite good (like Helium 10), but I’m still sticking with Jungle Scout because for me, personally, it works best. I also believe that the learning curve is minimal with Jungle Scout tools compared its competitors.
With that being said, people often ask me about the difference between the two Jungle Scout products: the actual web application and the Chrome tool. I agree that for newbies it might seem complicated at the beginning. Why are there two separate tools and subscriptions? What does each of them do? And most importantly, do you need BOTH tools? Or can you use just one?
Today, we’ll take a closer look at how it all works so that you can make the right choice for your situation.
The two Jungle Scout tools I’m referring to are:
- Jungle Scout web application (now simply called “Jungle Scout”)
- Chrome extension (now simply called “Extension”)
Let’s take a closer look at what each of these tools do.
Jungle Scout
This is the MAIN Jungle Scout product that is hosted online. When you sign up for Jungle Scout, you receive login details that allow you to log into the member’s area where all the web tools are located. This includes tools and features like:
1) Product Database: this is the main feature of the app. It allows you to browse/search for products on any Amazon regional marketplace based on the filters you set. Filters like min/max price, reviews, weight, ranking, revenue, number of sellers and more!
You can narrow down the results by category or specific keywords and can sort them in any way you want. With the help of this tool, you can quickly and easily find dozens or hundreds of potentially good product ideas, which you would then further evaluate, analyse and research.
2) Product Tracker: this tool allows you to add products to your account and lets Jungle Scout track sales data for those products over time. This is the most accurate way to get sales numbers for any listing on Amazon!
Once the product is tracked, Jungle Scout starts working their magic and, using various methods, it determines the daily sales of the product. Once the listing has been added to your account for at least 7 to 10 days, you will have access to the most accurate sales data possible. From there, you can decide whether it’s worth going further with the product or not.
3) Niche Hunter: this is a similar tool to the Product Database, but instead of listings, it presents results based on the search terms/keywords used in listing titles. It’s called Niche Hunter because instead of individual products, it helps you identify niches—product groups with good potential.
4) Find Suppliers: this is a relatively new feature. It aims to help you find suppliers for the products you want to sell on Amazon. The whole algorithm is based on US Customs information and it provides data on which companies have imported goods into the US. It also uses Alibaba and Google searches to give you the correct contact information for those companies.
Personally, I don’t use this tool at all. I don’t find it very valuable and I think doing the supplier hunting directly on Alibaba.com will yield you much better results.
5) Keywords: this is a built-in keyword research tool that will show you the number of searches, headline search ads bids, sponsored product bids and other information for any products you want to research. Currently, it only supports Amazon US, but I’m still using it for my UK listings. I really hope they roll out support for other countries—especially the EU marketplaces—so we can get more accurate search data for regional sites.
This tool is a perfect way to gather your initial keyword list for writing your product title, bullet points, description, back-end keywords and even for use in PPC! It is very easy to use and even though the bids and search numbers won’t be accurate for the UK, the proportions and importance of keywords should be +/- the same in both the US and the UK.
6) Academy: this is a learning resource that hosts dozens of videos on how to best use Jungle Scout, how to do proper product research and much more!
7) Email campaigns: this is a massively valuable feature that is included by default in the Jungle Scout subscription. You can quickly set up your post-purchase email campaigns to ask customers to leave product reviews.
Even though now, due to GDPR compliance measures, this strategy has lost much of its effectiveness (most people are opting out of these emails), I still use them and see results, such as new reviews coming in from these emails on a weekly basis. So, I still recommend you do this, and Jungle Scout is the perfect tool to use.
As you can see, this is a full-featured Amazon FBA product research toolkit that also includes an email delivery service and a keyword research tool, which many companies actually sell as separate products. In the early days of my business, I had to use and pay for two separate products: Feedback Five to send emails and Merchant Words for keyword research.
Both tools were additional expenses, but now this is all built into Jungle Scout. Keep this in mind when you compare the price of Jungle Scout to other applications.
While Feedback Five provides much more customisation and more features for your email campaigns, I quickly found out that I didn’t really need all of these additional features. I just wanted to set up my emails and forget about them. I still recommend Feedback Five to people who are just starting out on a very small budget if they can’t afford an ongoing Jungle Scout subscription. This is because Feedback Five has a totally FREE starter plan, which is perfect for beginners.
The same goes for keyword research tools. Merchant Words, for example, offers UK searches, which could be beneficial in some specific situations. But for most people who are just starting out, the Jungle Scout keyword tool is all you need really.
Now, as you can see, there are tons of valuable features built into the Jungle Scout web app. So why do we even need the Chrome Extension? And what does it do differently? Let’s find out!
Extension
The Chrome Extension is a separate tool offered by Jungle Scout and it works outside the web app environment (you can link it to your Jungle Scout web app to improve the workflow of your product research process and add products to the tracker with a click of a button).
As the name suggests, you install the Extension in your Chrome browser and this instantly allows you to do product research directly on Amazon. You can search pages, product pages, seller storefront pages and other pages where products are listed. It looks like this:
Extension provides instant data for any listing on:
- Monthly revenue
- Monthly/daily sales
- Number of reviews
- Average rating
- Amazon fees
- Listing Quality score
- Competition levels
- And more!
This is the perfect way to view ANY product on Amazon at a glance! You can quickly see the revenue for the top 10 or 20 (or more) listings for that product and the average ratings and reviews, which is all the data you need to make an informed decision about whether the product is worth further investigation/research or not.
Ok, now that we know what both tools can do, how do you decide which one YOU need? Do you go with just the Extension, just the web app or BOTH?
Which Jungle Scout tools
do you need?
The simple answer is BOTH. Seriously, if you want the BEST Amazon FBA product research toolkit at your disposal, you will need to get both tools. The quickest and most effective way to do product research on Amazon is to COMBINE the power of the Jungle Scout web app and the Extension. Here’s how I do it:
It all starts with a product idea. You need to develop a list of potential products to research, and for that, the Jungle Scout (web app) Product Database and Niche Hunter are the perfect tools! You will quickly find dozens or hundreds of product ideas that you can then analyse or research further to see if there is potential in them or not.
Once you have a product idea, the easiest way to complete your initial market research is to simply search for the product on Amazon and run the Chrome Extension! This will instantly show you how good or bad the potential product is.
If it looks good, you will add 10 or 20 top listings for that product to your Jungle Scout product tracker to VERIFY demand/sales over the next 7 to 10 days.
Even though the Extension also shows you sales data, it is not as accurate as the Product Tracker as it is based on estimates. Only when you add listings to the Product Tracker do you get the most accurate revenue results possible.
And that’s exactly how I do it. I get product ideas from the Product Database, check them out via the Extension, and if a product looks promising, I add it to the Product Tracker. But it doesn’t end there!
Thousands of people are using Jungle Scout’s product database every day, so lots of good opportunities are discovered by multiple people, which is not ideal. This could mean that by the time you launch your product, ten other people are also launching it, making the competition data at the time of research irrelevant.
This won’t always happen and, at the end of the day, it really depends on what you do with the product, how you improve it, and how you brand and present it. However, I always recommend that people try to be creative and look for ideas outside the Jungle Scout product database.
Where can you get these product ideas? EVERYWHERE!
If you’re willing to put time into this, you can find all kinds of new, interesting and untapped markets that other FBA sellers are not even aware of. You can use product directories like AliExpress, Alibaba and eBay to look for potential product ideas.
You can join specialist, niche-based Facebook groups that cover hobbies and interests that the general public are not aware of. You can use Google Trends to discover new trendy products. You can watch niche-based YouTube channels (for example, in the 3D printing space) to see what products people are talking about, what are problematic products that need to be improved, etc.
Yes, this takes time, but it also puts you in a much better position than the lazy sellers who only know how to use one tool, like the Jungle Scout Product Database.
Anyways, when you do such broad product research online, you need a tool that quickly gives you estimates on whether there is sufficient demand/competition for that product on Amazon. And this is where the Extension shines.
You can have one browser open where you do your research and another one open for Amazon with the Extension running. You can simply take any product idea you come across and quickly do research on Amazon to see if it’s worth doing deeper research or not.
And this is exactly how I do it, so in my opinion, you really need BOTH tools to do proper market research. If your budget allows it, just go for it. The combo subscription for three months will cost you $207, and three months is plenty of time to research and find your first product, if not multiple. If you use my special link, you can get a further 25% off, which means you can get the combo three-month package for just $149 (and yes, it is an affiliate link and I make a small commission for every referral).
If you’re on a very tight budget, have a CREATIVE mind, have no problem coming up with product ideas, and have to choose between the two tools, I would probably recommend getting the Extension.
It will help you greatly speed up your product research and you can still make an informed decision based on sales and demand, even if the sales data is not 100% accurate in the Extension.
On the other hand, if you know for sure that you will need to use the Product Database to find product ideas, go with the Jungle Scout subscription (web app), which costs $39 a month. You will have all the tools you need to do product research, keyword research and even email campaigns for a relatively low cost.
However, if you have just the web app subscription, your workflow will be slower. What you will need to do is find a product idea, then search for it on Amazon, add the top 10 to 20 listings to the Product Tracker and then wait 7 to 10 days to get revenue estimates. Not ideal, I know, but if you have no other choice, this is still a workable approach.
And that’s about it. I hope I have managed to explain the differences between these two Jungle Scout tools and helped you make a more informed decision.
I use both tools on a daily basis and I recommend you do the same. That $149 investment to get both tools for three months will prove to be a valuable investment. There are Amazon tools out there that only do a fraction of what Jungle Scout does and they charge $99 and more per month, so I do think that these Jungle Scout tools are great value for your money.
If you have any questions about Jungle Scout’s tools or the best ways to use them, please comment below the post. I will personally reply within 24 hours, Mon-Fri.
Good luck with the research! 🙂
