ULTIMATE Review, Helium 10 Chrome Extension and Partnership With Alibaba – 2023 Update

Helium 10 is the best Amazon software I have ever used. That’s no mean feat. I’ve previously used Jungle Scout, AMZ Scout, Viral Launch, Keepa, and Amaze Owl to name but a few alternatives.

Update on the Helium 10 Chrome Extension and Partnership With Alibaba

The Helium 10 Chrome extension offers real benefits and can streamline the product selection process for Amazon sellers. It is worth noting that Helium 10 has significantly improved some of its features for 2021, which will make a big difference in how it functions. Helium 10 also recently announced a new sourcing arrangement with Alibaba.com. This Helium 10 Alibaba partnership will make it easier than ever before to manage sourcing for Amazon sellers and to find the best prices on the items offered through your online storefront.

However, I didn’t like early versions of Helium 10, instead, I continued to use the Jungle Scout suite quite happily. But times change, now with its latest, 2021 evolution, Helium 10 is impossible to beat.

While my opinions are fairly clear, I will try to write an objective and unbiased article, to provide you with as much information as possible to come to your own conclusions.

For those just here for the 50% discount coupon, you can get that by clicking here, just make an account and use the code DOM50 at checkout.

What is Helium 10

Helium 10 is a powerful All-In-One software suite that boasts 20 highly integrated tools that help Amazon sellers operate effectively and efficiently in the following areas:

• Product research
• Keyword research
• Competitor intel
• Index checking
• Listing optimization
• Product launching
• Keyword tracking
• Refund management
• Hijacker and listing monitoring
• Email follow-up
• Inventory protection
• Financial analytics

It is headquartered in Irvine, California with multiple satellite offices worldwide. Although now the market leader, it took the creators about three years to refine and master the software offering.

So, who are the creators and can they be trusted?

Who made Helium 10?

Helium 10 was founded by Manny Coats and Guillermo Puyol first learned about the software through Manny’s AM/PM Podcast (still one of the better Amazon FBA podcasts).

Back then, Manny was an Amazon seller himself and noticed a huge void in the market for software that could enhance Amazon seller’s businesses.

Manny and Gui gave birth to their e-commerce dream by creating Scribbles, their Amazon listing optimization tool, so that you can easily and methodically improve your listing.

Scribbles is still one of the tools in the Helium 10 suite.

Today, Manny and Gui are still at the helm of the company which now employs 60 staff worldwide.

For those desperate to see the company moving to their new office, see the video below – I know it will interest at least one of you!

Updates to the Helium 10 Chrome Extension for 2021

Below I have already covered many of the features of Helium 10. With the new year, however, Helium 10 has made some adjustments and upgrades that could have a big impact on your experience as an Amazon seller:

• Black Box already makes it easy to research products and to determine which ones make the most money for your business. For 2021, Helium 10 has added the ability to access preset filters for greater speed in locating the right products. You can also create and save custom filters to Black Box to tailor it to your needs and priorities as a seller on Amazon.
• Another adjustment to Black Box is the ability to search by brand and to exclude some brands from your searches. This will be extremely helpful for sellers who want greater control over the selection of products from which they choose.
• Magnet allows sellers to research Amazon keywords quickly and easily. Helium 10 has adjusted this valuable tool to provide you with total search volume for all the entered keywords on your list. This aggregated search volume feature is new for 2021 and can provide at-a-glance information on the visibility your keywords are bringing to your products.
• Another new feature for 2021 is the ability to manage inventory more effectively inside the Profits section of Helium 10. This advanced tool will now allow you to import your inventory in bulk to streamline the inventory management process. Inventory alerts have also been implemented to let you know when it is time to order more products from your suppliers.
• New users of Helium 10 will appreciate the addition of the quick-start checklist, which includes five important steps for making the most of this advanced seller assistance tool. This new feature will make it much easier for sellers to get started with the Helium 10 system.
• The dashboard has also been streamlined to include links many of the most frequently used tools in Helium 10. This will make it much easier for end users to make the most of their available time when managing their sales on the Amazon platform.

These features will make Helium 10’s Chrome extension even more useful for sellers and will save time and effort in managing your inventory through this advanced system. For even greater efficiency, the new partnership between Helium 10 and Alibaba will make it easier than ever before to find low-cost products through the Helium 10-Chrome interface.

How the Helium 10 Alibaba Partnership Works

Rather than opening multiple tabs and browser windows to search specific products, Helium 10 has partnered with Alibaba to provide the ability to source directly from Alibaba.com through the Helium 10 interface. By implementing filters and requesting specific pricing from the same window, sellers can streamline their product search process to a considerable degree.

Sellers can also access products by supplier from within the Alibaba interface with Helium 10. This could potentially open up brand-new lines of products that would help you to generate greater profits and improved diversification of your Amazon store.

The interface works both ways. You can click on the Helium 10 Chrome extension while searching for products on Alibaba.com to access the insights available from this seller tool. This can help you to make the best choices for your online sales activities and can streamline the process to save you time and earn you money.

It is my view that the Helium 10 Alibaba partnership and the upgrades to the Chrome extension will provide a real boost to Amazon sellers both in the ease of accessing products and in the profitability of their online storefronts. Along with all the other features available from Helium 10, it is definitely a must-have tool for anyone who wants to sell on Amazon.

Helium 10’s tools in detail

There are a lot of tools to cover so buckle up.

I’ll explore the key features with the help of images (a picture paints a thousand words and all that) to illustrate how it works and why it’s better than its competitors.

Helium 10 Black box – (Product Research)

What Helium 10 have to say…

Haven’t decided what product to sell on Amazon yet? With over 450 Million ASINs, Black Box is our extensive product research tool that yields advanced product results in just seconds. Black Box could help you find a top-selling product you never would have thought of.

What I think…

If I could set it, Black Box would be my homepage. It is the best tool to find product ideas! This is where my product research starts.

It’s similar to the Jungle Scout Product Database, whereby you input your criteria into the boxes, and it pulls any product from the enormous Amazon database that agrees with your filters.

This is fantastic for generating ideas for your next product or niche.  

If you were to comb the Amazon website for ideas, you would already need a keyword in mind to start searching. Black Box doesn’t require a keyword to get going, which makes it a great unbiased starting point for your research.

However, in Black Box’s latest evolution, the option to search with a keyword was added, this allows you to really drill down and explore a specific niche if you did have one in mind.

Product database size and display algorithm

Helium 10 say that Black Box searches over 450 million ASINs (products), but according to my research, Amazon may have closer to 350 million on their books.

Either way, I’m fairly sure Black Box has access to the entire catalog which is the important thing. I will email them to verify that one and update this when I know for sure.

At present, the following international marketplaces can be searched:

Good news for UK based sellers!

What about the display algorithm?

It’s good. The products in the results are correctly filtered however, I don’t know what criteria are used to show which product first. Instead, I like to filter by revenue largest to smallest.

This allows you to work from the best-selling product downwards, saving time not looking at duds.

A downside to Black Box is the number of branded products like Nike etc that can show up. I for one won’t be competing with brands like this and instead filter them out.

I’ve found very few instances of product data being wrong or inaccurate.

Quite often using Jungle Scout, I would come across an amazing opportunity only to find on closer inspection that the data was wrong and the product was not selling (this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t double-check Black Box’s figures anyway!).

Using filters to find a product

How specific you set the filters is up to you. Naturally, the more specific you are the narrower your net is cast. A narrow approach requires less time manually interpreting the search results.

Conversely, casting a wide net with broad filters will show you more results but will require more work deciphering what is viable.

I’d recommend going fairly broad to start and manually looking through the products. This allows unexpected opportunities to be discovered.

For the less experienced, here’s some broad filter settings to get you going:

• Categories – Select all, then deselect appliances, books, clothing, shoes & jewelry, electronics, grocery & gourmet food. For further discussion on the best products to sell see my article here.
• Monthly Revenue – Set minimum $5000, I wouldn’t waste time targeting a product below this unless it was a unique circumstance
• Price – Set minimum $9.99, unless you are targeting products that qualify for the small & light program, cheaper than this you will struggle to make a worthwhile margin. Also, being pedantic and not choosing $10 will allow the search results to show more products (who sets prices on round numbers?)
• Review Count – Maximum 150, products with thousands of reviews are more difficult to launch and compete against.

Concluding thoughts on Black box

• Great place to start your product research as no keyword or idea is required.
• Full range of marketplaces available to interrogate.
• Accurate product data displayed but still double-check data by searching on Amazon just in case.
• Use broad filters to discover unforeseen opportunities.
• Use narrow filters to dissect chosen products/niches.
• Once you’ve chosen a product or niche, use Xray to explore it further.
• I can’t find a better alternative on the market.
• Black Box can definitely help you find a winning product idea

5 Reasons why Helium 10 Black Box is the best product research tool

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Helium 10 Xray – (Product Research)

What Helium 10 say…

Use Xray after narrowing down your product niche to reveal crucial and highly-accurate market data such as estimated monthly revenue. Let Xray help you validate your product selection, make informed decisions, save time, and make more money.

What I think…

Xray is a Chrome extension that interrogates the Amazon search results. It provides important data that helps you assess how good a product or niche is. 

Importantly, Xray shows you the sales and revenue figures (something Amazon does not). It does this by estimation, based on the Amazon Best Sellers Rank (BSR). Every product in the Amazon database has a BSR, it plays a large part in how products get ranked and thus what shows up on page 1.

Xray can be used on its own if you are just surfing Amazon. However, it works well if you find a product using Black Box and explore further with Xray. 

For example, if you found a sports water bottle that produces $5000 in monthly revenue and less than 150 reviews. Simply type ‘sports water bottle’ into Amazon and click on the Xray button in your Chrome toolbar. 

You will then be presented with copious amounts of data that allows you to make a decision on whether the niche is something worth pursuing.

What metrics does Xray cover?

To name a few:

• Buybox owner
• Number of sellers
• Fulfillment type
• Price
• FBA fee
• Sales (estimate)
• Sales trend
• Revenue (estimate)
• BSR 
• Success Score (beta)
• Rating
• Reviews
• Review count velocity
• Weight & dimensions
• Size tier

How accurate is Xray? I tested it!

As I mentioned, Xray bases its sales and revenue figures on an estimation of the product’s BSR. 

Amazon don’t make their algorithm publically available, thus we peasants have to create estimation models. Naturally then, Helium 10 is not 100% accurate however, it comes very close.

Tell us then!

Here are the results tested against two of my own products (i.e. I know exactly how many were sold) over the last 30 days:

Product	Actual units sold	Xray Sales	FBA fee accuracy	Sales accuracy
A	592	560	98%	95%
B	377	355	98%	94%

Conclusion: Helium 10’s Xray underestimated sales giving 95% and 94% accuracy for products A and B respectively. This shows that you can’t rely on tools to give you an exact figure.

However, getting an estimate within 10% is certainly good enough to decipher whether a niche is suitable.

Additionally, the FBA fee displayed in Xray doesn’t account for VAT, much like Seller Central.

To get an accurate FBA fee estimation you must add this on – this means multiplying by 1.2 (20%) for UK sellers – other countries may differ. After this, the FBA fees are 98% accurate.

How does this compare with the competition?

I have previously tested my own product’s sales against estimations from the main software providers – the results were as follows:

Tool	Actual sales	Estimated sales	Accuracy	Position
Jungle Scout	482	460	92%	2
Helium10	482	453	94%	1
Viral Launch	482	410	85%	4=
AMZ Scout	482	539	89%	3
Scope	482	410	85%	4=
Unicorn Smasher	482	698	69%	6

Conclusion: With the exception of Unicorn Smasher, the other competitors performed with reasonable accuracy. 

However, Helium 10’s Xray just clinched first place with 94% accuracy. I would imagine Jungle Scout and Helium 10 would juggle first and second positions if the test were completed multiple times. 

The key takeaway is that both Jungle Scout’s Chrome extension and Helium 10’s Xray will get you within 10% accuracy, which is more than enough for assessing niche viability.

Helium 10 Sales Data

Helium 10 provides accurate data that helps Amazon sellers make data-driven decisions about their business. The sales data includes orders placed, units sold, promotions, refunds, revenue, profit, margin, and overall cost. It also includes features to help you manage competing products, export FBA exclusion files, and provide support for webinars and live training sessions. Additionally, Helium 10 provides historical data which is useful for identifying whether the product that you’re trying to sell might have a simple, linear sales model. Xray is a great tool for mining this data

Extra features included with Xray

ASIN Grabber

ASIN Grabber allows you to select and copy ASINs in bulk. This can be useful when creating targeted ads. I personally don’t use it. If you do and find it helpful, leave me a comment, I’d love to hear how to make the best use of it.

Profitability Calculator

Profitability Calculator allows you to make essential pricing decisions by uncovering vital net profit or loss results based on cost factors in your Amazon business. Accessed from the chrome extension, useful to run rough and ready calculations that include the FBA fee!

Calculates everything including cost of goods, shipping, Amazon fees, storage, tax etc. Boxes can be manipulated to suit. 

Basically, it allows you to do some calculations which include the FBA fee. Personally, I copy and paste the FBA fee to my own spreadsheet for final bottom line calcs.

Review Downloader

Review Downloader allows you to uncover valuable customer insights to help you create products that are better than your competition’s. Phrases found in the body of the review are tallied up, you can then export every review with a certain phrase, this can be helpful for spotting trends. 

Personally, I still like to nosey through listings too, but that’s probably me not making the best use of my time.

If your Amazon reviews are not showing up make sure to read our article here!

Inventory Levels

Uses the old 999 cart trick to work out how many items are in stock. However, this doesn’t work if the seller has set buy quantity limits, which most now do (if you don’t do this you should!). 

Concluding thoughts on Xray

• Xray shows important sales and revenue figures to assess niche and product viability. 
• Sales accuracy is in the region of 94%, FBA fee accuracy is 98%.
• Xray is the most accurate sales estimation software available (Jungle Scout is also good).
• Don’t forget about the extra features!
• Xray can be a bit slow to populate its data however, It has more features and is more accurate than the competition so I will continue to use it.

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Helium 10 Scribbles – (Listing Optimisation)

What Helium 10 say…

Streamline and simplify your product listing creation process with Scribbles. This tool helps you optimize your listings’ content so that your products are primed to attract more customers – and sales.

What I think…

Scribbles has turned a very manual process with lots of guesswork into a calculated science. Previously, I would use a Word document to structure my listings, plugging in keywords where I fancied (firing from the hip if you will). 

I would use lettercount.com to count characters and remove duplicates, before copy and pasting into the relevant boxes in Seller Central.

Scribbles streamlines this process by having everything in one place and allows you greater control of keyword placement, frequency, and prioritization with search volume indicators.

I don’t think I need to tell you that this is really handy!

Does it actually make listing products easier?

Perhaps easier isn’t the best description, it allows you to create better-optimized listings more quickly. Scribbles allows the creation of all front and backend parts of a listing including: 

• Title
• Bullet points
• Subject matter
• Description (if not using A+ content)
• Search terms

However, the feature that makes using it worthwhile is the keyword boxes on the left.

Input your chosen keywords phrases, one on each line. Then individual keywords, one on each line again before clicking apply. This will bring the keywords up in colours:

The colour scale shows how much search volume the keyword gets, red is the most, dark grey the least. Additionally, as you fill out your listing the keywords will strikethrough and count how many times they’ve been used.

You can also select ‘Hide used phrases’ to have them disappear from the list and make it easy to see what keywords you have not used yet. This is a lot better than Microsoft Word!

How to use Scribbles

Scribbles can look a bit confusing at first so I would recommend the following process if you are just getting going:

1. Find phrase and individual keywords – use Cerebro, Frankenstein or manually add.
2. Input keywords and click apply.
3. Fill out the listing title box – use as many phrase keywords as you can with it still making grammatical sense – no relentless stuffing – a good title, pictures, and the price will get you clicks.
4. Fill out ALL bullet points – sticking to the byte limit where possible.
5. Add your most important keywords again into the subject matter boxes – this is my personal approach, others write a short sentence.
6. Fill out the description – if you are brand registered, you should be using A+ content here instead which will replace anything here.
7. Fill out search terms – stick to byte limits as anything extra will be ignored, whether or not you will get penalized too is uncertain.
8. Double-check keyword list – make sure you haven’t left any out that you want to use.
9. Copy & paste into Seller Central – I’m still waiting for an ‘export to Amazon’ button!

Concluding thoughts on Scribbles

• Sorry about all the lists in this section.
• Scribbles saves time by having multiple tools in one place.
• Use Frankenstein or Cerebro to generate your keywords, then copy them into Scribbles.
• Make best use of the keyword search volume colours, this allows you to choose where you want to use high or low volume keywords.
• Written text can be lost when flicking between Helium 10 tabs, make sure to save before clicking off, if you forget this can be very frustrating.
• No export to Amazon button yet – is that just me being lazy? 

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Helium 10 Cerebro – (Keyword Research)

What Helium 10 say…

Cerebro is our powerful reverse ASIN lookup tool that uncovers your competitors’ keyword strategy for both organic and paid searches. Use it to see the estimated search volume for these keywords.

What I think…

Cerebro allows you to do product research in reverse. Instead of typing in keywords and being presented with associated products, you type in a product and get presented with keywords. This is known as a reverse ASIN search.

Why is this helpful?

It allows you to find out what keywords your competitors are ranking for, and thus figure out what you should be targeting/not targeting. Furthermore, you will discover keywords that you would have never imagined are ranking, and rank for them yourself.

Cerebro is the premier reverse ASIN tool in my opinion. When doing manual keyword research (still worth doing), I double-check with Cerebro and have never found a keyword that it has missed. 

Additionally, you can use it to reverse engineer one product or multiple products. 

For example, I like to select 5-10 products and find out all the keywords that have them ranking organically on page 1. I then copy these keywords to Frankensteine for sorting, then to Scribbles and create a properly optimized listing.

How to use Cerebro

Using Cerebro is relatively straight forward. Enter 1-10 ASINs that you want to explore and hit ‘Get keywords’. 

However, the real power from the tool is in the analysis. Cerebro will display all that you require and more, but how you implement the data it provides is up to you. 

Do you want to find out the top 10 keywords with high search volume and compete? Or do you want to target low competition long-tail keywords that will be easier to rank for?

I can’t tell you which strategy will be best – it depends on many factors. 

My best advice would be to continue to test different strategies until you find one that works well. Much like ranking a website, testing product images, split testing copy, etc, the process is pretty simple but time consuming.

With that being said, if it helps, here’s a quick way of finding top-performing keywords which you can include in your listing:

1. Find your competitor/s ASINs – this will be displayed on their Amazon listing and in the URL bar as ‘B011LC85PM’ for example.
2. Word count filter – set to minimum 2, this allows short phrases to be shown (you can sort for individual keywords later if you wish).
3. Organic rank filter – set 1-20, not all search results pages are the same but this should show keywords that are ranking a product on page 1.
4. Export – use the export button in the top right to copy to Frankenstein for sorting, they can be copied to Scribbles from there.

What the Cerebro filters mean

There are a lot of filters that Helium 10 have designed and it’s important you understand what they are telling you to get the most out of them – let’s talk about some of the more important ones.

Cerebro search volume – estimate or fact?

As we know, Amazon don’t publish search volume or any real data at all to be honest. They keep their secret sauce to themselves and who can blame them. They no doubt use the data to come out with their AmazonBasics range, but I digress.

Resultantly, Cerebro has to estimate search volume – quite how they do that is unknown to me. However, as with any keyword search volume estimation tool, the higher the number of searches, the more accurate the estimation.

Conversely, be wary that estimation accuracy at low search volume is unreliable!

Cerebro IQ Score

This is the ratio between the search volume and competing products for a given keyword. It can be used to identify low competition keyword opportunities. The higher the number, the better the opportunity.

While it would be bold to identify all high scores as good opportunities and all low scores as bad opportunities, it can be used as a rule of thumb to investigate a keyword further. 

For example, the keyword ‘Camelbak water bottle’ has a very high Cerebro IQ score. However, I would not target this keyword as anyone searching specifically for Camelbak has their buying intent aimed at that specific brand. 

Some may consider sneakily targeting it and scavenging a few sales – but I personally don’t think it’s the most fruitful (or ethical!) endeavour.

CPR 8-Day Giveaways

The Cerebro Product Rank (CPR) 8-Day Giveaways column refers to the number of units you would have to give away or sell discounted to rank page 1 for that keyword. 

Although giveaway services are less common now, selling heavily discounted products on launch is still a great way to gain sales velocity (reviews received at heavily discounted prices may not show though). 

In the example below, you would need to sell 96 units with the user searching for ‘straw water bottle’ to get ranking on page 1 for that keyword.

I use this data to decide how competitive the keyword is, how much giving away 96 units at 90% off is going to cost me, and how big my initial order needs to be to get to page 1.

Once on page 1, organic sales should start to come in as customers can actually find the product. This is when the price can be raised to something more sensible.

Note: Cerebro only shows the number of units to get to page 1. Viral Launch tells you exactly which position on page 1 you will be. However, these numbers are estimates so I would advise using with a pinch of salt either way.

We want to know more about CPR Dom!

Ok! Helium 10 founder Manny made a few videos explaining all about CPR here if you are interested.

Cerebro Amazon Recommended Rank

Amazon’s algorithm works out what it thinks a product should be advertised for. Much like running an automatic PPC campaign where keywords are chosen and your product displayed for.

Cerebro will show you this data for a given ASIN, be it yours or a competitor’s. 

I would suggest using it as follows: Enter the competitor’s ASIN, export the top 20 Amazon Recommended Rank keywords to Frankenstein for sorting, then add to Scribbles.

Concluding thoughts on Cerebro

• Most feature-rich and integrated reverse ASIN lookup tool available.
• Remember search volume is an estimate.
• Consider searching for products with lots of reviews, this normally means the listing is older and will likely index for more keywords than a new one.
• Use the CPR 8-day Giveaways metric to decipher competition and potential order size requirements.
• Use Cerebro IQ Score to find low competition keywords that you can target.
• All searches in Cerebro are stored in ‘History’ which is handy for saving searches.

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Helium 10 Magnet 2.0 – (Keyword Research)

What Helium 10 Say…

Magnet boasts the largest database of actionable Amazon-related keywords on the market, and unlike most keyword tools, includes search data you can trust. It is a keyword aggregator that will help you find optimal keywords that rank well for your product listings.

What I think…

Magnet 2.0 is good for expanding and generating keyword ideas. You can use it to look for a product idea, explore auto-suggested keywords and flesh out a product’s backend search terms.

Magnet will pull thousands of keywords giving us more data than we can handle. What’s important is deciding how to filter that data into something meaningful and how to use it in your keyword targeting strategy.

Is keyword research necessary with Amazon FBA?

Yes! Amazon is effectively a search engine for products – it displays products based on the query a customer types in. Therefore, we absolutely need to do keyword research to maximize the chance of our products being shown on page 1.

In theory, it’s possible to get to page 1 without doing any keyword research. You could drive loads of traffic from a social channel for example – your product would shoot up the rankings based on sales velocity alone. 

However, if I was driving lots of warm traffic to a product, I’d sooner do it on my own website. This way I could own the customer and build a longer relationship with email marketing, upsells etc.

The best way to use Amazon as a sales channel is to leverage their obscene amounts of organic traffic (in excess of 2 billion hits a month), this is done by optimizing your product listings for keywords that customers are searching for.

How to find these keywords?

By manually trawling through Amazon, inspecting listings and guessing what is drawing traffic – or we can use tools like Magnet and Cerebro which make our lives easier.

How to use Magnet 2.0

Let’s pretend I’ve decided on releasing a sports water bottle to the Amazon marketplace. I’ve already used Cerebro to inspect the keywords that my top 5-10 competitors are ranking for. 

In this instance, I can now use Magnet to further explore related keywords to my product.

My process is:

1. Search with a keyword – input the query you would like related keywords for.
2. Check distribution and filter for a chosen category – in this instance, I would filter for smart complete to hoover up potentially undiscovered keyword variations.
3. Export keywords – sort the keywords in Frankenstein.

For reference, this is the ‘Distribution’ box results for ‘sports water bottle’:

This shows that of 6,924 related keywords, 1,182 are from smart complete. 

By then filtering to show just smart complete keywords, you can farm the autosuggest box from Amazon automatically without endlessly typing in ‘sports water bottle a’, ‘sports water bottle b’, ‘sports water bottle c’ etc for auto-suggestions.

Concluding thoughts on Magnet 2.0

• Similar in looks to Cerebro, Magnet should be used for getting ideas and keyword suggestions.
• You need a search term to generate the keywords (if you don’t have one consider using Black Box to find an idea).
• Once you have found lots of related keywords, export them to Frankenstein for sorting.
• Consider including high, medium and low competition keywords in your export – you never know what your listing might or might not rank for!

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Helium 10 Frankenstein – (Listing Optimisation)

What Helium 10 say…

Frankenstein is a powerful keyword processor that allows you to take thousands of keywords and process them into cash-generating keyword lists in a matter of seconds.

What I think…

Distilling a large list of keywords from a spreadsheet was previously a laborious task. Thankfully, tools like Frankenstein make it a lot easier now.

I primarily use it to remove duplicates, remove single letters, remove special characters and split phrases into single words. 

For an efficient workflow, you are best exporting hundreds of keywords from Cerebro and Magnet to Frankenstein, sorting them out as above, before copying them into Scribbles where you can create a keyword optimized listing. 

What’s the advantage of Frankenstein over the alternatives?

It’s fast. 

The word processing features are basic, but to save you from switching from website to website for each individual function, it can do it all. 

It’s purpose-built for creating Amazon listings and it’s good at it. 

I like that the character and word count are always visible. Exporting thousands of keywords into Scribbles is not necessary. Amazon only allow 250 bytes for backend search terms now, which is about 50 words – not much.

Frankenstein allows you to see when you’ve reduced your list to a sensible number, then you can export it to Scribbles (or anywhere).

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Helium 10 Refund Genie – (Listing management)

What Helium 10 say…

Refund Genie locates your non-reimbursed lost or damaged inventory that must be reimbursed by Amazon. Detailed reports are quickly generated so you can easily submit them to Amazon to promptly collect what you are owed and recoup your losses.

What I think…

When Amazon lose and damage your items they usually reimburse you. However, they aren’t perfect and sometimes you do not receive what you are entitled to. 

This becomes more pertinent when shifting larger volumes of product, think thousands of units a month. 

It is genuinely pretty difficult to stay on top of parts of your business like this. Consequently, I have always paid for refund services. Since becoming a Helium 10 user, I’ve switched to Refund Genie with great success as it allows me to have everything in one place.

They also include message templates to send to Amazon to claim the refunds which are handy. Note, you have to personally write to Amazon to request the refund but the heavy lifting is done for you.

How does it compare to other similar services?

There’s not much to differentiate Refund Genie from other services. As a Helium 10 user, I use it out of convenience, it’s also free as I pay monthly for the whole suite of tools – so why not!

For reference, similar services like AMZ Refund charge 12% commission on the money received from Amazon. 

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Helium 10 Inventory Protector – (Listing Management)

What Helium 10 say…

The easy-to-use Inventory Protector tool enables you to limit the number of units of an item that buyers can purchase at one time, protecting you against lost sales from clever coupon stackers who may clean out your inventory.

What I think…

A common trick of opportunists on Amazon was to find products offered at a discount. Purchase 100’s of them at the low price, then resell them at a higher price. Smart, you may say. 

Maybe so, but it’s bloody infuriating if it happens to you.

To prevent this from happening, you should add a maximum order quantity limit to your listings (permanently – not just when offering discounts). You can do this per individual item in Seller Central, or you can use Inventory Protector. 

Is it necessary?

Technically no.

It’s not necessary as you can do it manually in Seller Central. 

However, it’s included in the Helium 10 suite so why not use it. The Inventory Protector interface allows you to quickly check that all your products have a limit set – I like setting it to 5 items. This caters for those who genuinely want to buy multiple units but protects against opportunists.

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Helium 10 Trendster – (Product Research)

What Helium 10 say…

Trendster allows you to quickly analyze products to determine sales strategies based on seasonality and to better plan for revenue fluctuations and cash flow decisions.

What I think…

Trendster can be used from the Helium 10 dashboard. You have to input an ASIN and a keyword to generate some data.

A BSR over time graph will show the ASIN’s sales history and a Google Trends table will populate showing the keyword’s trend over time.

I currently use Google Trends, is Trendster better?

Trendster imports its keyword data from Google Trends, therefore it’s no different. I actually prefer to use Google Trends as it shows more information.

Why is a product’s BSR history important?

I would argue that a product’s BSR history is THE MOST important metric in determining a successful product. It will show how the ASIN has performed over time. 

This helps to uncover seasonal products that might sell only in the summer months. It shows when the product was first listed, it shows price changes, it shows if there is sustained demand, it shows if the product is getting more or less popular.

When doing product research, you should use Xray to obtain a sales estimate but remember that it’s based off the current BSR.

But BSR fluctuates.

You must then explore the product’s BSR history to ascertain whether the current sales are typical or if they are abnormal – like a kids vampire costume near Halloween.

Thus, always check the BSR graph!

Again, instead of using Trendster for this function, Helium 10 integrates it into every Amazon product listing – I find it more convenient to use there.

How do the competitors fare?

Camelcamelcamel and Keepa used to be reliable, free tools to show BSR history. They are both now paid services which is a shame. I suppose they were leaving a lot of money on the table by not monetizing so who can blame them.

I initially signed up to continue using Keepa’s service however, I find better value, functionality and convenience now with Helium 10. 

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Extra little tools

Helium 10 Index Checker

Index Checker allows you to quickly verify that the best keywords to your listings’ frontend and backend are indexed (seen by Amazon), this ensures your listing is properly optimized.

Follow-Up

Follow-Up is a tool to send automated follow-up emails to customers. The aim is to increase review and seller feedback rates.

You can focus your marketing around the important moments that matter to your customers. You can create email sequences that kick-in on order deliveries and other event triggers.

You can write your own templates or use the designs included.

I previously used Feedback Genius for this task, but now I get it for free with my Helium 10 subscription- so why not! No complaints.

Helium 10 Keyword Tracker

Knowing which keywords are ranking well and driving traffic to your listing is critical to success. Keyword Tracker allows you to optimize keywords and visualize how changes affect your product listing ranking for your chosen keywords.

Mispellinator

Mispellinator allows you to take advantage of frequently searched for but commonly misspelled Amazon keywords.

Misspelled search terms often have little to no competition and are a great way to boost sales.

These terms are best inserted into your product listing backend.

It’s possible to get your listing to the top of the search results whenever shoppers enter commonly misspelled variations of your main keywords – handy.

Helium 10 alternatives

I intended to write a detailed section comparing Helium 10, Jungle Scout, AMZ Scout, Scope and Unicorn Smasher, but I think this review is long enough as it is!

For a comparison of the main points between the big players see my recent article here.

Helium 10 Freedom ticket, is it worth it?

I hadn’t heard of the Freedom ticket until recently. 

It turns out Helium 10 has merged with Freedom ticket to offer a training course. Now, if I hear the words ‘course’ in relation to Amazon FBA, I immediately get turned off. 

However, what I didn’t realize is this course is free with a normal monthly subscription to the Helium 10 suite ($997 without). Huh. 

If you are already a member of Helium 10 you can head here and use the code ‘FREEACCESS’ to get it all as shown below:

Thus far I’ve only completed a little bit of the training. It seems fairly basic so far but would definitely be helpful to new sellers.

When I’ve completed it all I will write a review – all I can tell you now is that current reviews seem positive for the most part.

Helium 10 Pricing

So that’s everything I can tell you about Helium 10’s tools and features, now how much does it cost?

There are a variety of plans to choose from, ranging from free to $397 per month:

More info can be found on their website.

How to use Helium 10 as cheaply as possible

Everyone likes to save money where possible, as such, the cheapest way to use their software is:

• Sign up for a free trial here.
• Use as much of the trial as you can.
• When you run out of uses either sign up using code ‘DOM50’ for 50% your first month or ‘DOM10’ for 10% off every month forever.
• How long you intend to use the software will determine which option makes more sense for you.

How to make the most of the free trial

• You get quite a lot of Black Box uses – 20 in fact, so make sure you use these for getting product and niche ideas. 
• Switch Product Alerts on – you can monitor 2 products for free, this lets you know things like who has the buy box, when you get a bad review etc.
• Use Xray straight away – you get 50 uses which is actually quite a few. If you’ve never used it before you will be amazed by how much data it gives you. You can validate a niche using Xray alone if you are being really frugal.

Parting thoughts

I’ve been using Helium 10 for the best part of a year after swapping from a combination of Jungle Scout, Keepa, AMZ Refund and others. Helium 10 brings it all together in one place which is cheaper and more convenient.

If you’re already selling on Amazon or are just thinking about getting started – Helium 10 saves a ton of time and takes a bunch of guesswork out of the process you’ll go through.

If you are starting your Amazon FBA journey I would suggest to skip all the expensive and over hyped courses – there is free information available on YouTube and Helium 10 is the only tool you will need.

If you have any questions or thoughts, I’d love to hear or help where I can – leave me a comment below.

Take care,

FAQ

How to download Amazon reviews with Helium 10?

Open an Amazon product page, then navigate to the Helium 10 Google Chrome extension in your browser toolbar (to the right of the URL bar most likely). Click on ‘Review downloader’ and select a time frame. This will download all respective reviews in a new tab, where you can analyze by phrase and export to .csv. 

Is Helium 10 reliable?

In terms of server uptime and software integrity, I’ve never had or heard of a problem. When it comes to estimates, I’ve tested their sales accuracy to be in the region of 94%, their FBA fee calculation to be 98% accurate and their keyword search volume estimates to be very reasonable.

Should I use Helium 10 or Jungle Scout or both?

I use both. Helium 10 is my weapon of choice however, I use Jungle Scout’s Chrome extension to double-check Xray’s sales estimations. Jungle Scout still offers a good software suite but in my opinion, at present, Helium 10 is more feature-rich and the complete package. 

What is Helium 10 used for?

Helium 10 is a powerful All-In-One software suite that boasts 20 highly integrated tools that help Amazon sellers operate effectively and efficiently in the following areas: Product and keyword research, listing optimization, financial analytics, listing management and competitor and market analysis.

Which Software is better helium 10 vs viral launch?

Helium 10 and Viral Launch both offer a suite of software tools designed to help Amazon sellers find and sell the most profitable products on Amazon. Helium 10 offers a free plan, while Viral Launch does not. Helium 10 provides a range of product research tools, including a product finder, research browser extension, listing optimizer, reverse ASIN search, inventory reimbursement finder, inventory protector, trendster and more.

Viral Launch also has a range of tools, including market intelligence, keyword research, PPC management, listing optimization, and more. Both tools have their own unique features, and depending on the specific needs of the user, one may be better than the other.

My take on Viral Launch vs Helium 10

Personally I tend to find Helium 10 more accurate and functional. Helium 10 provides more comprehensive product research tools, including a product finder, research browser extension, listing optimizer, reverse ASIN search, inventory reimbursement finder, inventory protector, trendster and more.

Viral Launch’s product research toolkit is more limited, only offering market intelligence, keyword research, PPC management, listing optimization, and more. Lastly, Helium 10 offers more detailed analytics on sales and profits, allowing users to make more informed decisions about the products they are selling.

I made a quick infographic for reference to the main tools:

Keepa vs Helium 10

Keepa and Helium 10 both offer extensive product research tools for Amazon sellers. Keepa is focused more on price history tracking, allowing users to easily monitor prices of products over time. Helium 10 is more comprehensive and offers a variety of additional tools. Helium 10 has a full set of tools you will need to run a successful FBA business.

How do I cancel Helium 10?

In the Helium 10 dashboard, select the profile avatar circular icon. From here select ‘#Plans’, this page will show you what subscription you are currently on. If you wish to cancel, click ‘Cancel’ at the bottom of the page. Note, you will still be able to use the software until your billing date!

Who owns Helium 10?

Founder Manny Coats and co-founder Guillermo Puyol own Helium 10. The software is just over three years old and is parented by Pixel Labs, LLC.

What is reverse ASIN? 

Reverse ASIN searching is a clever way of reverse engineering an Amazon listing using a tool, such as Cerebro. It provides keyword data including search volume that the ASIN ranks for, allowing you to compete for the same keywords.

What is Amazeowl chrome extension and how it compares to Helium 10?

AmazeOwl is a Chrome extension that allows Amazon sellers to conduct product research and monitor competitor products. It offers an array of features, including a product scout, an AI-powered product research tool, a product tracker and more.

Compared to Helium 10, AmazeOwl Extension does not offer as comprehensive a suite of tools. It lacks the comprehensive product research tools offered by Helium 10, such as a product finder, research browser extension, listing optimizer, reverse ASIN search, inventory reimbursement finder, inventory protector, trendster and more. However, AmazeOwl’s product scout, AI-powered product research tool and product tracker are useful for smaller sellers who need to conduct quick product research.

Amzscout vs Helium 10

Helium 10’s suite of product research tools is more comprehensive than AmzScout’s, including a product finder, research browser extension, listing optimizer, reverse ASIN search, inventory reimbursement finder, inventory protector, trendster and more. Helium 10 offers more detailed analytics on sales and profits, allowing users to make more informed decisions about the products they are selling.

Read more about Helium 10 discount coupon codes here:

Helium 10 Coupon | Helium 10 Coupon Code 50% Off + How to Redeem