How I Built TruRank: The Simpler (And Cheaper) Keepa Alternative

I love Keepa, but this time they went too far.  So I had to get my revenge…

First, I have to clarify: I love Keepa. But my love is not unconditional.

This is the story about how Keepa drove me to create a simpler (and cheaper) Keepa alternative, after Keepa pushed me over the edge.

Here’s the story (and what I created out of it)….

(To skip to the punchline, check out TruRank here.)

Strike #1: Keepa began charging for sales rank data

Sometime last year, Keepa began charging $17/month for their Amazon sales rank data.

This started when Keepa’s main competitor – CamelCamelCamel – had their servers crash, and they lost all their Amazon sales rank data.

Keepa suddenly saw their own historical sales rank become a lot more valuable. So in a case of cutthroat capitalism, almost overnight (literally), Keepa announced they would now be charging for their Amazon sales rank data. (The charge is in Euros, but works out to about $17 a month).

I get why they started charging for Amazon sales rank data, but this is where my love for Keepa started to break.

That was strike #1. Now for strike #2…

Strike #2: I couldn’t stand how hard it was to find their Amazon rank data

Maybe you’ve had this happen in relationships: Once your idealized image of someone starts to crack, you start to notice flaws that were always there, but you never noticed before…

So was my love for Keepa.

It wasn’t until Keepa committed strike #1 that I began to notice what would soon become strike #2.

To set the stage, here’s how I use Keepa’s sales rank data:

1. Manual repricing.
2. Sourcing online (aka “online arbitrage”).

Current Amazon sales rank is almost worthless. To know the true demand for your Amazon inventory, you need to know a book’s average sales rank.

For both Amazon repricing and online arbitrage, all I’m really looking for is the average sales rank data. And Keepa doesn’t make accessing average Amazon sales rank easy.

Here’s how to see average sales rank figures in Keepa:

1. Wait for Keepa to load.
2. Hover over the “statistic” icon
3. Fight through a firehose of numbers to get the 180-day (or 90 day) Amazon sales rank figure).

After all that, here’s what you’ll see:

When you’re repricing or sourcing, derailing your workflow with even the smallest speedbump can be debilitating. The way Keepa made you fight to get their sales rank took a massive amount of time. And simply put, it was annoying.

That small extra 5 second step to get to the average Amazon sales rank data in Keepa started to drive me insane.

Keepa’s data is amazing, but the way they make you bushwhack through a forest of numbers just to get to it will make anyone go bonkers.

With Amazon data, sometimes less is more

Seemed like Keepa is so focused on adding new features and refining their data, they never actually tried to use their own product.

When repricing or doing online arbitrage, most of Keepa’s data does more harm than good. There’s a point where more actually becomes less, because its a distraction from the only data I wanted:

“Just give me the average sales rank so I can know a book’s true demand and move on.”

This is subjective, and a lot of people want the elaborate charts and tables of data. But for me, it was a distraction.

Keepa’s complexity was a case of “more is less.” The firehose of data was in impediment to my efficiency, and I got tired of it.

It was one thing when Keepa was free. But now I was paying $17 a month for 98% more data than I needed.

That’s when I broke down and built my own Keepa alternative

I got a couple programmers together and told them to make me the following:

1. A Chrome extension
2. A simple Chrome extension (no crazy charts or huge tables of data)
3. Displaying historical sales rank data
4. Specifically for booksellers
5. That published sales rank data all over Amazon (no hovering or clicking required)

As a final poetic touch, I wanted it to be cheaper than Keepa (almost half the price).

TruRank was born.

“TruRank: The simple average sales rank tool that publishes historical sales rank data for over 20 million books on Amazon.”

And you can access it right now.

Install and get started

Q: What does TruRank reveal?

Three things:

1. 12-month average sales rank
2. Average rank for this month last year (for books with seasonal demand)
3. Current sales rank

Q: Where does TruRank display?

Similar to Keepa, it displays 4 places on Amazon:

1. Above each book (in the Amazon search results)
2. Above the offers (on the Offers page)
3. At the top of every Product page
4. Below “Product Details” (on every Product page)

Q: How is TruRank better than Keepa?

1. Cheaper ($9.99 a month. Keepa is € 15 euros / $17. A difference of $84 a year.)
2. Simpler to use (no clicking required).
3. Easier to read (no more firehose of date – just average sales rank).
4. Some data Keepa doesn’t have (12-month sales rank vs six, and average rank for this month last year)

Q: How is Keepa better?

Keepa has about 1,000 bits of data and features that TruRank doesn’t. If you like the “firehose of data in your face” effect, Keepa is for you.

If you just want to shortcut to average sales rank in the quickest way possible, TruRank is for you.

Q: Is it just for books?

The historical data is just for books, and for anything outside of Books (Kindle, or any other categories), TruRank displays the current sales rank.

I love Keepa, but….

I had to do something.

TruRank is my response.

Get started here.

See you over there.

-Peter Valley

PS: Sorry Keepa. Nothing personal.

Also, claim your free book:

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