Sales Rank is among the most misunderstood yet important elements of selling on
(This post is a condensed adaptation of the Sales Rank module in my extensive video course, Amazon Altitude – Bookselling Masterclass.)
Begin:
Cracking the Code on Amazon Sales Rank
Among the biggest mistakes I see
The Definition of Amazon Sales Rank
For every category (excluding, for some reason, many consumer electronics items), there is a number in the product description called “sales rank” that aims to capture an item’s popularity.
I can define
“The period of time since an item last sold.”
That’s it.
What does that mean? It means that starting from one hour after an item sells, its rank will start to rise until it sells again. The longer the gap between sales, the higher its sales rank grows. When the product sells again, it will drop significantly and then begin to rise again an hour later.
And with books steadily ranked better than (roughly) 150,000, sales rank translates to:
“The number of units an item sold that day.”
The sales rank “safety zones” for each category.
I’ll give most of my focus here to interpreting sales rank for books and media, but I made a chart (the free book at this link contains an updated sales rank chart) to help
To make this chart, I calculated the top 1%, 5%, and 15% in sales rank for each category. Once you decide your comfort zone (Are you risk tolerant? Risk averse?), you can use this chart to know at a glance if a potential purchase likely to sell sooner, or much later.
For example, the top 1% is safe territory in any category. You can read from the chart that a sales rank better than 15,000 in Patio / Lawn / Garden is in the top 1% (at least at that moment), and buy with comfort knowing it will almost certainly sell.
What’s important is to have a buying formula that works and stick to it. When I’m out sourcing, I don’t like pausing to make small decisions hundreds of times throughout a day. I like to know the numbers I need to see on my scouting app if I’m going to buy, and then go on autopilot.
That’s where your formula comes in: Are you going to be a risk tolerant buyer, and purchase items outside the top 10% (or outside the top 30%)? Or play it safe every time, aim for quick turnover, and keep it in the top 1%? That’s where this chart comes in. Know your target percentage bracket, know the sales rank you need to see in each category, and go to work.
How I made the sales rank chart
The formula for arriving at the numbers in this chart was simple:
- On
Amazon , I used the drop down menu to select a category. - In the search field, I entered “[]” and hit “Search.”
- The number of results is the number of items for sale in the category.
- From there, I determined the top 1%, 5%, and 15%.
You can print these out and keep them in your wallet (or just memorize them) so you have a quick reference for interpreting sales rank when you’re “in the field.”
Wait: It gets complicated.
How can this chart mislead you? Here’s how: The top 10% in Books means something entirely different than the top 10% in Grocery. We’re going to look at some familiar categories to illustrate.
- 1.5 million movies (VHS and DVD);
- 7 million CDs, cassettes, and vinyl.
Calculating the top 10% of products selling in these categories brings us to these rankings:
- 150,000 in movies;
- 700,000 in music.
This is where it gets complicated. I know I sell a lot more movies ranked worse than 200,000 (outside the top 10%) than CDs ranked 200,000 (inside the top 5%). I read this as
A book ranked 100 on
The same holds true for percentage brackets. The top 0.01% selling DVDs on
How relying on sales rank alone can be deceiving.
There is debate about how much sales rank should factor into a buying decision. On one end, those who say that the only thing that matters is your profit margin, meaning if a book costs 25¢ and it’s going for $25 on
What do I think? Operating in either extreme is just a function of laziness. Particularly in books and media, there is a (somewhat subjective) formula you can apply to determine if a book has a small but steady niche demand, or it is merely obsolete. It’s not all left to the whims of “the market.” By asking a series of questions one can ask to assess if that copy of “Algorithmic Architecture” ranked 3.2 million is just steadily selling one copy a year, or is so irrelevant it will literally never sell another copy for the rest of time.
I developed eight factors I use to separate the obscure and valuable from the merely obsolete. Going into that formula may be outside the scope of this post, but the message here is: Sales rank isn’t everything. Look at ALL of the available evidence to make a determination as to the potential for an item to (eventually) sell.
How I was a victim of sales rank myths for years.
I started out selling books on
This myth was reinforced by most of what I’d read, which advised not to touch anything ranked beyond 1 million at the absolute worst, if not 500,000.
The reality check came when I started a small side business publishing. This allowed me to see exactly what a sale of a single copy did to sales rank, and track exactly what one, two, and three days without a sale did. What I learned was mind blowing.
A single sale will cause any book to jump to a sales rank of approximately 130,000. Maybe 70,000, maybe 150,000. Two sales in a day will bring it up to around 30,000. The actual rank can be on either end of these estimates, depending on how many other books have sold that day on
None of what I publish sells well enough for me to be able to offer personal testimony beyond what two copies sold in a day translates to. But the available info says that a book ranked steadily at 5,000 is selling about 11 copies per day. A book with a steady rank of 100,000 is averaging a little more than one copy per day.
After a sale, the rank starts its downward decline. If no other copies sell, the next day the rank will be approximately 250,000. After two days, the rank will hit somewhere around 400,000 (again, ballpark figures here).
Most
If 500,000 means that a book sold three days ago, what does 1 million mean? Keep in mind almost none of the
Have a seat.
A book ranked 1 million sold about ten days ago. That’s it.
Picture holding two books. According to your scouting app, the book in your right hand has a rank of 100,000. The book in your left, a rank of 800,000. Both will cost you 50¢, and sell on
The folly here is that there is no such thing as “a book ranked 100,000” or “a book ranked 800,000.” There are only books with those ranks at that moment. That 100,000 book could be 800,000 in a week. And that 800,000 book could be 100,000 in five minutes. Sales rank only tells you one thing: How long it’s been since an item last sold.
In conclusion
This is a brief look at demystifying sales rank. Both ignoring and being a slave to sales rank will hurt you as an
Endnote I
To oversell my point, four weeks ago I sent in a shipment of 110 books (salvaged from a university library dumpster) with an average sales rank of 4 million (only four were ranked better than 2 million). From this shipment, I’ve sold four books in four weeks – books that most sellers will tell you “will never sell.”
Endnote II
Two places to learn more about
- An updated (for 2017) version of the sales rank chart can be found in my (free) book Online Book Arbitrage.
- I dedicate an entire video to decoding sales rank in my massive
Amazon bookseller training, Amazon Altitude.
Love this article. Do you continue to stick with these percentages although there are now more products in each category or do you go by updated percentages?
Hey Peter,
First, thank you so much for providing the information regarding sales rank and pricing. It has been invaluable to me!
Would you mind updating the table in this article? I have used it to GREAT success.
Again, thank you SO MUCH.
Dave
Dave, why dont you start using your brain instead? That table is great for beginners. It’s there to help you understand and learn the rank as you source, but I don’t think Peter meant for it to be used by you your entire life. After all, there is more to it than just the rank, and the price (and the risk factors). Condition of the book is important as well in decision making, for example
Great article, and here are my 2 cents. The term “sales rank” may be a little bit misleading, especially since even Amazon doesn’t call it that. The proper term is “Amazon Best Sellers Rank”. There is a good reason for that, and everything you’ve explained about the rank being #1 is correct. Another way of looking at it is like this. The book ranked #1 is the number one best selling book on Amazon at the moment. #2 is the second best selling, #1000000, is the millionth best selling book on Amazon. I sold a book not too long ago that didn’t have a rank at all, and right after sale it was at right under 14 million. Meaning that the worst selling book on Amazon is ranked at about 15 million, and the rest of the books after that book probably havent sold a copy in a while (but not years). I may be wrong on this, but I think that is not a single copy of a book sells in 30 days, its sales rank disappears, until a copy sells again, and then it jumps to around 15000000 best seller rank. But my point is this: if you look at a book, and its ranked at 10 million, that does not mean that it hasnt sold a copy in years. In fact, it could mean the book just sold 2 copies in last few days. A very high ranking number may mean that this book just sold a copy, as apposed to it hasnt sold a copy in years.
I don’t think it is time but relitive sales compared to all the other items in a category. For example. If nothing in a category sold for a day no items would change position. If however only on item sold it would move up and every item under it would move down. A subtle difference I know but that means that sales of items can affect the rank of other items.
i meeet a guy that have a program than calculate by the seller rank an category using the asin how many item sell every day for have that type of claculation how i know what is the last seller rank for example if a buy a item that is number 21.234 but the category have 1 that is the best seller one but how i know the last one for example 1000000 kitchen item in the case that kitchen have1000000 item 20000 is very low and sell well but in the case of 900000 is very near the last i bad number of course the item dont sell fast or is a item that the people dont know , this math but i need data where i can find that data
Well, now I feel a lot better about my 2 books on Amazon. Author, Mary Cates (Mary Merriman Cates). I’ve been obsessed with the Rankings. Sitting tight now and letting it roll.
Many times I sell a book and then I go to enter its, “Rank,” in my spreadsheet and it ranks at zero. How can a book have a rank of zero when you just sold one?