Spent the last few years scouting products for Amazon FBA and dropshipping sellers, and the biggest mistake I see is people sourcing off vibes — a product looks cool on TikTok so they order 500 units.

Here's the actual checklist before I ever put money into a product:

1. Search trend trajectory, not search volume. A product with 5k monthly searches climbing 40% month-over-month beats one sitting flat at 50k. Volume tells you the market exists. Trajectory tells you if you're early or late.

2. Review velocity on top listings. If the top 3 listings for a product are all under 200 reviews, there's room. If they're all sitting at 5k+ reviews, you're not launching a product, you're launching a review-count competition.

3. Ad saturation on the exact keyword. Run the main keyword and count sponsored listings. 2-3 sponsored slots = healthy. Wall-to-wall sponsored placements = the smart money already found it and is paying to defend it.

Most "winning product" lists just show you what already won for someone else. By the time it's on a public list, the competition score is usually already too high to be worth it.

Started putting this process into a weekly newsletter (RAVIX) because I was doing this research for myself anyway. Happy to answer questions on sourcing/validation in the comments.