The product research funnel, explained

A product idea has to survive a 5-phase, 23-checkpoint funnel before it's worth your money. Each phase asks a tougher question than the last, and a candidate flows through them in order. The famous Market Dominator scan is one checkpoint in here (checkpoint #5, competition level); the rest test demand, opportunity, and the legal and physical barriers to selling.

1. Phase 1 · Demand Factor. Is there a real, profitable-size market for this product?
2. Phase 2 · Competitiveness. Can a new seller realistically break into the search results?
3. Phase 3 · Opportunity. Returns, conversion, seasonality, budget, differentiation, and the money (margin and ROI).
4. Phase 4 · Barrier to Entry. Compliance, restrictions, patents, and dangerous-goods gates.
5. Phase 5 · Result. The overall go / no-go verdict.

It's a funnel, not a scorecard. The checkpoints aren't averaged into one number; a candidate is walked through them in order and each one returns a verdict.

The tool fills in what it can automatically (from a Market Dominator scan or live Amazon data) and asks you for the judgement calls. Each checkpoint below is tagged with where its answer comes from: Computed for you computed for you, Your call your call, or Amazon data from Amazon's own data.

The first question is the cheapest to answer and the easiest to get wrong: is this even the right kind of product? One checkpoint decides it.

• 1

  Retail price & FBA size

  Kill gateComputed for you

  Roughly $25–$100 retail price, in a small/large standard FBA size tier.

  Auto-estimated from the linked scan: the niche's competitor median price and FBA size tier. Off-band price (e.g. the "$20 check") fails; oversize or high-capital (>$100) products are flagged. Edit to your own planned price/size.

Now the hard part for a newcomer: can you actually get seen? Seven checkpoints, and the Market Dominator scan (checkpoint #5) is the engine behind most of them. The sections after this one unpack exactly how that scan works.

• 2

  Brand / 1st-party dominance

  Kill gateYour call

  Is Amazon or a single brand dominating the page? Dominated = fail.

  Uses the themarkup methodology for spotting Amazon/own-brand dominance in search results.

  Reference ↗
• 3

  Design vs utility

  Your call

  Design-oriented, utility-oriented, or both — state the lean.

  Products can have both elements; note which way it leans, since it changes how you differentiate.

• 4

  Top clicked products

  Amazon data

  Products taking 90% of clicks: <25 very good · 26–50 good · 51–75 caution · 75+ consider again.

  From Amazon Product Opportunity Explorer (Professional plan). Fewer products capturing the clicks = more concentrated, more winnable.

• 5

  Competition level (Market Dominator)

  Kill gateComputed for you

  Super Weak → Super Strong. Super Strong / entrenched dominator = fail.

  Computed from a Market Dominator scan: the reverse-ASIN keyword × competitor matrix and the 0–100 niche score. Link or run a scan to fill this automatically.

• 6

  Data anomaly check

  Computed for you

  Does the data make sense? e.g. low click-share but high sales, or high share but low sales.

  A sanity pass on the scan output. Flag anything that contradicts itself before trusting the read.

• 7

  Keyword quality score

  Computed for you

  # keywords with Significance > 7: ≥50 very good · ≥25 good · <25 caution · <10 careful.

  Auto-counted from your linked scan: keywords where 80%+ of competitors rank on page 1 — the niche's must-rank core (the matrix's "Significance"). No Helium10 needed.

• 8

  Keyword count

  Computed for you

  Total ranking keywords between 100 and 300.

  Computed from the linked Market Dominator scan (the goldilocks keyword count).

Checkpoints #5, #6, #7, and #8 all read from a single Market Dominator scan. Here's what that scan does and how its 0–100 score is built.

You're evaluating whether a niche is worth entering. The question the scan answers: how dominant are the top 10 competitors across this niche's most important keywords?

If the top 10 sellers control most of the demand (most page-1 rankings, most search-volume share), the niche is entrenched and a new entrant will burn cash trying to break in. If page-1 rankings are scattered across many smaller players, you've found an opening worth investing in.

The output is a single 0–100 score with a traffic-light grade and a per-competitor breakdown showing exactly who's dominant and why.

1. Pick a candidate niche. Usually a keyword like hammock camping chair or silicone baking mat.
2. Find 10 competitors. Two ways:
   • Paste ASINs — open Amazon, search the niche keyword, grab the top 10 organic ASINs by hand. Works with raw ASINs (B08D8CM3TJ) or full Amazon URLs.
   • Search by keyword — let the tool fetch the top ~48 results and pick 10 visually from a card grid sorted by estimated revenue. Lets you filter by design and type rather than just rank.
3. Scan. The tool pulls every keyword each of the 10 ASINs ranks for, unions them into a single keyword × ASIN matrix, and applies the Market Dominator scoring methodology.
4. Tune filters live. On the results page, adjust Min Search Volume and Page-1 threshold to land in the Market Dominator sweet spot of 100–300 keywords. No extra credits charged — filtering is local.
5. Export to Product Launch Simulator. Send the niche straight into the Simulator (one click), or download the xlsx, to run the full Monte Carlo launch simulation.

You might notice a search volume here reads differently from Cerebro (Helium10) or Jungle Scout for the same keyword. That is expected, and it works in your favor. This tool is a fully independent read on the niche, purpose-built for one job: the go/no-go call.

Amazon does not publish absolute keyword search volumes to anyone. Every research tool infers them from its own inputs and its own model:

• Helium10 (Cerebro) is built largely on Amazon's Brand Analytics data plus its own clickstream and modeling.
• Jungle Scout uses Amazon data plus its own sales panel and algorithm.
• This tool reads live Amazon keyword and rank data and runs it through the transparent Market Dominator methodology, with every step of the math shown.

All three are independent estimates of the same hidden reality, so the raw volume numbers will not line up. Helium10 and Jungle Scout disagree with each other by 2–3× on the same keyword just as often. That is not a defect in any of them. It is the nature of estimating a number Amazon keeps private, and it is why a second independent read has value.

So use this as your primary niche read. If one keyword's exact volume is decision-critical, cross-check that single number against Helium10, Jungle Scout, or Amazon directly. The most reliable cross-check of all is rank, not volume. Whether a competitor actually shows on page 1 for a keyword is something you can confirm yourself by searching Amazon.

The score is computed in five mechanical steps. No machine learning, no opinions — just the same arithmetic you can do by hand.

A single dominant rival or a coordinated pair can drown out an otherwise healthy-looking niche. The methodology has an override for this:

The raw score is still shown so you can see what the math would have said. The effective score is what should drive your decision — because in practice, a single anchored leader (think Anker in a charger niche) makes the niche unenterable regardless of how weak the other 9 sellers look.

The Market Dominator blueprint sorts every competitor into a 5-grade scale based on how much of the niche they dominate:

The per-niche grade chip on the results page comes straight from the 0–100 niche score, so the chip and the number can never disagree:

• Green (Open): score 67–100. No entrenched dominator; a real opening.
• Orange (Caution): score 34–66. Contested but enterable with a clear plan.
• Red (Entrenched): score 0–33. Crowded; high risk for a new seller.

The genuine "one anchored giant" case is handled by the max-penalty override (above): if a Super Strong competitor is present, or two Strong ones, the effective score is clamped to 0, which lands in the Red band. So a niche with a single dominant rival still reads Red by the score itself, not by a separate hidden rule. This is the exact scoring the Product Launch Simulator uses, so a niche never changes grade when you export it.

When you submit a scan, the tool fetches every keyword every competitor ASIN ranks for and stores the full matrix. The filters on the results page are applied client-side against that full matrix — no extra API calls, no extra cost.

Two filters are exposed:

• Minimum Search Volume (default 350) — the search-volume floor for keywords to count. The Market Dominator methodology is calibrated for the 100–300 keyword band. Outside that band, the score is biased in opposite directions:
  • Under 100 keywords: a handful of high-rank rivals dominate the dataset → competitors appear falsely stronger than they really are (the score is red-shifted).
  • Over 300 keywords: irrelevant long-tail dilutes the buckets → competitors appear falsely weaker than they really are (the score is green-shifted).
• Page-1 rank threshold (default 45) — what rank counts as "on page 1." 45 matches Amazon's usual page-1 result count. Rarely worth changing.

A blue Modified badge appears whenever your live filters differ from the auto-fit, with a one-click reset.

The "Search by keyword" tab is an alternative way to gather the 10 ASINs. You type a niche keyword, and the tool fetches the top ~48 Amazon products with all the metadata you need to choose visually: thumbnails, prices, ratings, review counts, and an estimated monthly revenue.

Sort defaults to estimated revenue, but you can switch to past-month sales, reviews, price, rating, or Amazon's own search-results rank. Hide sponsored toggle is on by default (you're looking for organic competition). Minimum review count filter weeds out brand-new listings with no traction signal yet.

When you've picked your 10, click Continue with 10 selected — they get pre-filled into the paste tab so you can review before submitting the actual scan.

The "Est. revenue" figure on each product card is the most accurate revenue signal we can produce. We use two methods and pick whichever applies to each listing.

Method 1: past-month sales × price (preferred)

When a listing carries Amazon's "X bought in the past month" badge, we read that number directly and multiply by the listed price:

A label of "from past-month sales" appears under the revenue figure when this method is used. Amazon only shows the badge for products with stable recent demand, which is why this method covers a minority of listings.

Method 2: Best Sellers Rank + category curve (fallback)

When Amazon doesn't expose past-month sales, we look up the ASIN's Best Sellers Rank in its top-level Amazon category and run it through a per-category sales curve:

1. Fetch the ASIN's Best Sellers Rank and the category it ranks in (Home & Kitchen, Sports & Outdoors, etc.).
2. Map the Best Sellers Rank onto that category's sales-per-day curve, then multiply by 30 days and the listed price: monthly_revenue ≈ sales_per_day × 30 × price.

The curves are industry-standard reference data — "a Best Sellers Rank of 1,500 in Home & Kitchen typically sells about 300 units/day" — fitted from sampled real Amazon sales data. They're the same shape every mainstream Amazon-research tool uses under the hood. A label of "from Best Sellers Rank #X,XXX" appears under the revenue figure when this method is used.

The product is enterable. Is it worth it? Eleven checkpoints on returns, conversion, seasonality, the cost to rank, your differentiation plan, and the money: margin and ROI are both kill gates.

• 9

  Return ratio

  Kill gateAmazon data

  <5% good · 5–7.5% caution · ≥7.5% bad.

  From Amazon Product Opportunity Explorer (Professional plan). A high return ratio erodes margin and signals a product problem.

• 10

  Avg search conversion %

  Amazon data

  Note the benchmark — your future listing must beat this conversion rate.

  From Product Opportunity Explorer. Informational: it sets the bar your listing has to clear.

• 11

  Top-3 keyword metrics

  Amazon data

  360-day SV, CVR, and CPC for the top 3 keywords. CPC target < $1.

  SV = search volume, CVR = conversion rate, CPC = cost-per-click for ads. CPC at or above $1 makes ranking expensive.

• 12

  Seasonality

  Your call

  Consistently seasonal, trendy, or year-round — note the window.

  A sharply seasonal or trend product changes inventory and launch timing risk.

• 13

  Budget calculation

  Computed for you

  Cost-to-rank budget, run at Stage 1 (pre-differentiation) and Stage 2 (post-differentiation).

  Uses the workbook cost-to-rank model: top-keyword search volume → ad clicks → CPR → spend to reach page 1 in 8 days → cost per day. Too high = "High Capital".

• 14

  Differentiation — negatives to improve

  Your call

  ≥3 negatives mined from competitor reviews, each with a concrete action.

  What buyers complain about across competitors, and how your product will fix each one.

• 15

  Differentiation — positives to keep

  Your call

  ≥3 positives from competitor reviews, each with how to protect it.

  What buyers love that you must not lose when you change the product.

• 16

  Differentiation — bundling options

  Your call

  Value-add items you could bundle to stand out.

• 17

  Retail price

  Your call

  Launch price vs desired (final) retail price.

  Margin and ROI are usually checked at both the launch price and the desired price.

• 18

  Profit margin

  Kill gateComputed for you

  Must exceed 30%.

  Computed from retail price, COGS, and Amazon fees (FBA + referral). Below 30% kills the product.

• 19

  ROI

  Kill gateComputed for you

  Must exceed 100%.

  Return on the per-unit cost. Below 100% kills the product.

The last gates before you commit money: anything that could legally or physically block you from selling. The tool surfaces the likely requirements; you confirm them against your own account, since gating can differ seller to seller.

• 20

  Compliance check

  Kill gateAmazon data

  Any certifications or regulatory restrictions required to sell?

  Check Seller Central restricted-products references before committing.

  Reference ↗
• 21

  Dummy listing

  Kill gateAmazon data

  Does Amazon suppress the listing as restricted? What certification is needed?

  Create a dummy listing to see if Amazon flags the product as restricted, and what proof it asks for.

• 22

  Patent check

  Kill gateYour call

  Is there a patent protecting the design or your planned differentiation?

  A blocking patent on the design or your differentiation is a hard stop.

• 23

  Dangerous goods check

  Your call

  Battery, meltables, paint, or anything needing a Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS)?

  Hazmat classification adds cost, storage limits, and supplier requirements.

Every checkpoint rolls up into one call. The funnel walks the phases in order: the moment a kill gate fails, the verdict is No-go and the rest is moot. If nothing fails, the status reflects how many checkpoints are still at caution versus cleared.

The Product Launch Simulator xlsx export contains:

• Phrase + Search Volume columns
• Optional Position (Rank) column if you specified a target ASIN
• One column per competitor ASIN, with the ASIN as the column header
• Each cell holds the competitor's organic rank for that keyword, or >306 if unranked
• Search Volume ≥ 350 filter applied at export time so it matches what Product Launch Simulator expects

Open Product Launch Simulator and drop the xlsx into the Step 1: Market Dominator upload box. The Simulator will auto-grade the niche (the same score you saw in this tool, give or take a small rounding) and tune the simulator's ramp / Advertising Cost of Sale / velocity assumptions accordingly.

Sometimes Amazon refuses to return data for a specific ASIN (suppressed listing, regional restriction, very new product, etc.). The tool handles this gracefully:

• Successful ASINs are still used for the scoring.
• Failed ASINs are listed in a red callout at the top of the results page.
• The niche score is computed from whatever data we got. If 8/10 ASINs returned, the score uses 8 columns.
• The bucket weight math is calibrated for 10 columns; with fewer the score is still directionally correct but slightly less precise.

• Not a guarantee. A green Market Dominator score is necessary but not sufficient for a successful launch. Product quality, supply chain, advertising competence, and timing all still matter.
• Not a substitute for primary research. Run the score, then go look at the actual listings, read the reviews, check Helium10 / Jungle Scout for cross-validation, and talk to other sellers. The score points you at niches worth investigating — it doesn't replace the investigation.
• Not an exact revenue forecaster. The estimated monthly revenue figures are directional. They're great for ranking competitors and gut-checking market size; they're not numbers to put in a business plan.
• Not your account's compliance department. The barrier checks flag the common gates and likely requirements. Your own account's approvals, brand gating, and category permissions are yours to confirm in Seller Central.