How I Find Amazon Products Before They Go Viral
I stopped guessing what to review. Now I filter for it. Here is the exact software and the exact numbers I use to find products while there are still only a handful of videos on them.
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Viral Vue
Amazon product research and automation
For two years I picked Amazon products the dumbest possible way.
I walked around my house, found something I owned, and filmed it. Then I would upload it and discover four hundred other people had already reviewed it.
What changed was not effort. I stopped browsing Amazon and started querying it, filtering on the one number that decides whether I am early: how many influencer videos already exist on that product.
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Tap any card to open it up
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Set the filters. See what comes back.
This is the actual Product Findr screen, simplified. Pick a setting in each row and I will tell you what that search returns and whether I would film from it.
Right now this is every product on Amazon, which is the same as having no strategy at all.
The six tools I use, and the ones I skip
Tap through these. I have marked which plan each one needs so you can tell whether the free tier is enough for you.
This is the one that replaced my old routine entirely. It queries the whole Amazon catalog instead of making me browse it, and the filters are the ones that actually matter: price floor, category, and influencer video count.
My standing search is 1–10 influencer videos, 500+ units a month, $25 and up, sorted by influencer commission rate. It caps at 500 results, and if I hit that cap it means my filters were too loose, so I tighten the category.
The data refreshes every 24 to 48 hours. That sounds like a small detail until you realise a product with four videos on Monday can have forty by Friday.
Product Vue is the table that appears over any Amazon storefront page. The column I care about is Total Influencer Videos. Click the number and it shows you the actual competing videos, so you can see what everyone else did and decide whether you can do it better.
It also flags which products have live Creator Connection campaigns, lets you download competitor thumbnails, and exports the whole table.
I use this to spy on my own storefront too. It shows me which of my videos are sitting in the top carousel and which fell off.
Viral Score is a single number predicting whether a product is worth your time. It is on the free plan, which tells you something about how they price it.
I treat it as a tiebreaker, not a decision. When two products both clear my filters and I only have time to film one, I take the higher score. I have never filmed something purely because the score was high.
Sales estimates can be a little off. Use the direction, not the decimal.
Creator Connection campaigns pay a bounty on top of your normal commission, and some run as high as 50%. The catch has always been that finding and submitting to them is tedious.
This automates the whole loop. It finds eligible campaigns, accepts them, and submits your qualifying videos without you sitting in the dashboard. If you are already posting, this is free money you were leaving on the table.
This alone is why I am on Professional and not Starter. It is the single feature I would not give up.
Most of my blog traffic comes from Pinterest, so this one matters to me more than it might to you. Mid-upload on Amazon, you click one button and it turns that video into a pin: pulls the ASIN, writes the title and description, and adds the affiliate disclosure.
About thirty seconds. There is also a Storefront Optimizer that goes back and does it for videos you already uploaded, which is how I caught up on two years of back catalog.
A pin keeps working for months. An Amazon carousel placement can vanish in a week. Do both.
A normal Amazon link opens in the phone browser, where the shopper is not signed in and has to type a card number. A deep link opens the Amazon app, where they are signed in and one tap from buying.
URL Vue builds those, with the campaign tracking already attached. Nothing about your content changes. The same clicks just convert better.
This is the least exciting feature on the list and one of the most profitable.
My weekly product-finding routine
Tick these off as you go. The whole thing takes me about forty minutes on a Monday.
My exact filter settings
Paste these into the search and change the category to your niche. Everything else stays.
Influencer videos: 1 to 10 Monthly units sold: 500 minimum Price: $25 minimum Category: [your niche] Sort by: Influencer commission, high to low Results cap: 500 (if you hit it, narrow the category) Then check by hand: - Reviews are recent, not three years old - Rating is 4.0 or better - The existing videos are beatable - There is an active campaign on it if possible
“Being early beats being loud.“
— Lori Ballen
Which plan you actually need
Start free. Move up when a feature is costing you money by not having it, not before.
Free
Chrome extension, Viral Score, Storefront Optimizer, brand deal tracker. Enough to see whether this fits how you work.
Starter
Adds Product Vue, sales estimates, order history scanner and Pinterest cross-post. This is the one most people should be on.
Professional
Adds Product Findr, Creator Connection automation, the profits dashboard and deep links. This is my plan.
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Questions I actually get
Do I need this to be an Amazon influencer?
No. You need an approved Amazon Influencer account and a phone. I did it for two years without any software and made money.
What the software changes is how many of your videos land on products that were worth filming. That is the difference between posting a lot and earning a lot.
Is the free plan actually usable?
Yes, genuinely. The Chrome extension overlay, Viral Score and the Storefront Optimizer are all on it. If you are not approved for commissions yet, stay free until you are.
Product Findr, the filter I built this whole page around, is on Professional. That is the honest catch.
What is a good number of existing videos?
One to ten. Zero usually means nobody wants it. Over fifty means the carousel is full and you are fighting for a slot that is already taken.
The exception is a product with fifty bad videos. If everyone before you filmed it badly, that is still an opening.
How fast does the window close?
Weeks. Sometimes days on something genuinely trending. The catalog data refreshes every 24 to 48 hours, so if you find something on Monday and film it Saturday, you may have missed it.
This is why I batch film. Finding it and never filming it is the same as not finding it.
Does it work outside the US?
The extension covers the US, UK and Canada, and there is a CA and UK cross checker on the free plan for finding products that are live in more than one marketplace.
What do you not like about it?
The sales estimates are approximate. Treat them as a signal, not a spreadsheet. It also has the occasional stall where you have to refresh the page.
Neither has ever cost me a product. But I would rather tell you now than have you find out and think I oversold it.
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The simple way I run a one-person business in three buckets so it keeps working without me chasing every shiny thing. Enter your email and I will send the field notes.
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In group coaching I walk you through the systems I use to build a steady creator business, step by step, without the hustle-culture noise.
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The rest of the stack
Two more in the stack, both things I use weekly.
Both are affiliate links. If you sign up or buy through them I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.
Lasso
How I organise and display every affiliate link on this site in one dashboard. If you are running links across a lot of posts, this is what keeps them from rotting.
vidIQ
What I use to research and optimise my YouTube videos so the right people find them. Same idea as the product filter, applied to titles.
Keep building the business
Side Hustle to Six Figures
My playbook for turning a small, one-person side hustle into a real business.
From Idea to Income
How to take a simple idea and shape it into a product people actually buy.
Stop filming what is already crowded.
Not ready yet? Get Letters from Lori — my field notes on building a business that earns for the long haul.
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Hey there! Just a quick heads-up: some of the links on this site are affiliate links, meaning I may earn a small commission if you make a purchase (including through the Amazon Associates program), at no extra cost to you. Occasionally, products featured here are gifted by brands.
I also use AI tools to help research and create content for you! While I love sharing strategies to help you succeed, please remember that everyone's journey is unique—individual results vary, and there are no guarantees. Thanks so much for stopping by!
