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Amazon Best Sellers

Honest reviews on best selling products at amazon

Williams Cashmere Men's 100% Cashmere Sol >

I bought this as a gift for my husband who wanted a warm, but dressier scarf. This scarf fits the bill very well. It is very soft and warm and compliments his grey wool coat well. The width is also very nice, wide enough to be cozy, but not so wide as to provide too much bulk. It is, however, a bit short. My husband is short (5'6") and doubled over it only hits him mid-chest. It is fine on him, but I would never buy it for someone over 6'.

Best Deals for Williams Cashmere Men's 100% Cashmere Solid Knit Scarf

I got this for my husband as a gift and he absolutely loves it. Super soft and a great price.

Honest reviews on Williams Cashmere Men's 100% Cashmere Solid Knit Scarf

Very warm and quality scarf.

I bought serveral colors for my family. they are trend, warm and of very good quality

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I got this as a gift for my sister in law and she loves it. The cashmere is pretty thick and doesn't look cheap at all. Simple and classic!

Educational Insights Wireless Eggspert

Insight's Wireless Eggspert was to be their next generation in affordable game buzzer line. The concept is solid, as can be see by their Educational Insight Eggspert product, but it falls short on the transmitter to receiver end.

This product's main attraction is the wireless Answer Buttons (buzzers) which is specified to have a 20-30' range. Unfortunately the product was shipped to me with only 3 of the six Answer Buttons working fully and the other three working intermediately. Normally I would say this is just a product defect and requested an exchange, but in this case I also found out that when activated at the same time, only the blue buzzer would ring up. i. e. if more than one buzzer was pushed it didn't matter which on came in first if the blue buzzer was pushed within a couple of seconds of the others the blue buzzer would win out.

I think this product still has great potential but Insight needs to make sure their production line units all meet the same standards as the original wired version of this product. Until this happens I can't give this product any more that one star. Hopefully in a year this will improve and I can take back this review.

I was concerned about purchasing the wireless eggspert for my classroom because of the one bad review it received. I decided to go ahead and try it out and return it if it didn't work (even though I'd have to pay 6.50 for that). It's not the most durable thing so I hope no students toss it across the room or drop it too often. It works better the closer the buzzers are to the tower. However, I put fresh batteries in and tried it out. It seemed to work fine. As far as buzzer systems go, it's cheaper than others. I have no idea how long it will last, but it seems to do the job ok.

My students love the eggspert. I used another teacher's last year that used the wires. I bought the wireless and after putting batteries in everything worked except the yellow button. I tried replacing batteries, pushing softly, then harder, nothing. I am now in the process of sending it back.

A small percentage of our most recent batch of Wireless Eggspert units has a frequency tuning issue that makes transmission difficult or impossible. This issue has been completely resolved in our newest model, Wireless Eggspert 2.4 GHz. If you are experiencing difficulty with an original Wireless Eggspert unit, please contact info@educationalinsights. com for a replacement 2.4GHz unit, which will be shipped to you in March.

Thank you so much for your patience and understanding. We apologize for any inconvenience this product may have caused you.

Mr. Walczak's class. I purchased this item because I found the wired units very enjoyable during review games. I experienced very similar problems as everyone else seems to be having. Some of the buttons just don't seem to work, only my purple button works from more than 5 feet away, but none of the others. The teacher's remote must be within 2 feet just to clear the lights. And none of the buttons work dependably. This was extremely frustrating for my entire class. Also, the lights do not come with an AC adapter, you have to purchase this separately. For this price, they really should include it. Lastly, in total, you will need 16 batteries to run everything at once. Chargable units makes more sense. This company really needs to put more effort into this product. I higly recomend people not purchasing this item.

4) NEW Kenwood KFC-1693PS 6.5" 960 Watt 3-Way Car Audio Speakers KFC1693PS

Sounds great! love the bass and vocals are clear, awesome buy and has worked great so far, worth the money for sure

This was for my middle son, he has yet to install them : ( However he seemed quite satisfied with the gift

Brother Printer Wireless Monochrome Printer

I bought this printer to replace an inkjet that just went out. For subcontract work I do I need to print manuals ranging from 10-70 pages which this laser printer is great for, I also wanted to have a copier. I cannot comment on the scanner as I rarely use this feature on any of the multi-function units I have owned.

Pros: Decent price on factory toner compared to my other inkjet. I also liked that brother has multiple models all using the same TN-420/TN-450 toners so I don't feel like it be hard to get quality factory toner in a year or two.

Network connectivity, I was able to connect to my wireless network however due to prior issues with my linksys E2000 router, none of the computers could access the printer. I have advanced tech skills and still can not get the settings right for wireless networking Vs my old WRT54G and I don't have time to dumb the router to an access point that would resolve the issue. However, the wired connection works great, all computers on the same network instantly see the printer.

I highly recommend the network printer only/ local attached drivers if you only want to print and copy because it will remove ALOT of bloatware. I also suggest to set a manual IP or static DHCP on your router to avoid any issues with the unit changing IPs.

Cons: Like other reviews I find the fan to be somewhat loud for if you had to sit next to the printer all day and listen to it not a real deal breaker but something to consider. I put the printer on the bottom part of a TV stand where there is enough room for ventilation but the wood absorbs some sound and it is in a room that out of my way.

Like most printers these days, it feels pretty plastic and I wonder about reliability of constantly opening the scanner bed. Although, the printer was on sale which made the 2yr office max warranty $15 for a little piece of mind.

I got my unit for $100 during a sale since it is normally $200, for the price I paid it was too good of a deal to pass up I still believe I would have considered the full price after using it. Starter Toner is 700 pages. $45 for 1200 page toner. and I think $70 for 2600 page. If you want a network printer that is easy to setup, prints extremely fast and can live without color (At least 95% of what I print is black text anyways). I highly recommend this unit.

There are two main reasons I chose this Brother printer over the competition. The first is that it was the only wireless laser printer brand I could find that had an LCD display. That was important to me because it allows the printer to be connected directly to a wireless network without having to be temporarily connected to a PC to do the configuration. WIthout a built-in display you would have to connect it via a cable to a computer to do the configuration using the computer's display. I wanted something that was entirely independent of a PC's display, and this one is. Second, Brother seems to be using the old business model that HP and Canon once used, which is to charge more for the printer and supply the toner/ink at a reasonable cost. These days HP and Canon practically give away their printers but their ink and toner is very expensive. I love Canon inkjet printers especially, but their ink cartridges keep getting smaller and higher priced. Next time I buy an inkjet I will definitely check out the Brother models. Laser printers are much cheaper to operate than inkjet of course, and if you compare the price and capacity of the Brother TN450 cartridge that this machine uses to the price and capacity of similar HP and Canon machines you will see that this one has them beat.

Connecting to my wireless network via Windows 7 was a breeze. I used the automatic one-push setup and had the printer online in a couple of minutes. It does make noise, but does not seem any noisier that other laser printers I have used, although I have not tried the duplex feature yet. B&W print and copy quality is excellent. I haven't tried scanning color yet, but I suspect it will be more than adequate for my needs. It has a nice 250 sheet paper drawer, much more convenient than some of the competing machines which have the paper supply sticking out the back like an erect tail. I like that it quickly goes into sleep mode to conserve power and quickly comes back online when I send a print job or press a button.

This machine prints, copies and scans, but if you need a fax machine then check out the Brother MFC7860DW. It has the same specs as this model but has an ADF on top and fax capability. It usually sells for $50-80 more than this model.

This machine is exactly what I was looking for. I just wanted a wireless laser printer that was easy to set-up and economical to use, and this printer meets both of those criteria.

This printer is a new offering from Brother and I have only had it a couple of days, but my initial opinion is that it's a pretty good printer. Set-up was easy, I have it positioned about 40' from my (very old) router on a different level of my house and connectivity so far has been flawless. I have both printed and scanned without any issues. I currently have a desktop and two laptops setup to print to this printer, again, no issues. Print quality looks as you'd expect for a laser printer and scan quality seemed good as well. On duplex printing the page does come out slightly curled, but I think that's to be expected in a printer of this size. This is my first laser printer so I have nothing to compare it to, but the noise level does not seem bad at all, I can hear it from the next room but just barely and it's totally quiet while "sleeping". Print speed is very quick, I thinks it's rated for less than 10 seconds for the first print and that seems about right, it's very quick. As I stated earlier, I have not had this printer long, but so far so good. I got this for significantly under MSRP, don't buy it for list price. I'll try to provide an update after it's been in use for a while.

I have never owned a Brother Printer before. I have always used either HP, Canon, or Epson. To my thinking, printers like those made by Brother and Lexmark have seemed to be less reliable in times past. The past 5 months have proved me wrong. This Brother is an astounding printer at a terrific price.

All features work flawlessly and print quality is outstanding for this price range. Brother have upped their game over the last 4 or 5 years and I was tempted enough (after my HP and Canon both gave up the ghost) to look elsewhere. This Brother Printer (and I still have a Canon Pixma Inkjet for occasional color needs) is just a work horse. Flawless printing in regular and duplex mode. Originally, I just hooked a USB cable to it. but then set it up (pretty easy) to Wireless via it's built in interface. Works great.

Noise: I have seen a few comments about the noise level of this printer. I find it extremely quiet. FIrst of all, it is most usually "sleeping" in what appears to be OFF position. in this mode, the printer is totally quiet. No noise at all. If I send it a print job to it wirelessly, it wakes up pretty quick.. wait. let me time: It woke up and printed a single page in 20 seconds. So, keeping the printer in standby mode is not a problem (unless 20 seconds is too long for you to wait.

The printer returns to a quiet state after another 10 seconds (after printing) and then stays in this "alert" state for about 10 minutes. It is during this time that the printer will make some noise. Quite frankly, I don't usually notice it, it is so quiet. Then the printer returns to SLEEP mode and goes totally silent. So, there really is not a noise issue at all. In fact, my HP printer was much more noisy. The fact that it is most usually in Sleep mode, means that it is almost always completely silent. (If I had read all the reviews that said this printer was too noisy, I likely would not have purchased it. And I would have lost out on a great, quiet printer).

Cost per page: I am averaging just under a penny a page to print with this. that is so much cheaper than my ink jet! I am using the "toner save" mode, however. In fact, the thought of buying another ink jet with their incredible high cost of ink was one of the reasons I bought this Brother printer.

I love that the printer takes an entire ream of paper. I just load it and forget about paper for a long time! And Duplex mode (front and back of page printing, without needing to flip the paper!) has been a great feature that I didn't have before. That too is another savings feature. The copier works fine. I haven't tried scanning with this printer yet. And the cost per page on this printer. well, that is why I purchased it. this is a money saving baby!

Cons? Yes. One. The message about LOW INK comes on too soon. Being cheap, I usually ignore these prompts until the thing truly runs out of ink. With this printer, I can print several weeks before it really runs out of ink. FYI.

UPDATE 1-15-2012: Still love this printer! I wanted to update this about the one "con" I listed. Ink. More specifically, the message that you get to change the ink ("toner low message"). My advice is to ignore it. I printed for over two months before it truly ran out of ink. Even then, I never got a single bad printed copy. No "light print jobs," no "missing lines of text." When this printer really runs out of ink (OK, toner), it will simply refuse to print. Then it is time to replace the cartridge. I replaced mine with a Brother branded High Capacity toner cartridge. at least this first time. I would love to hear comments from others who may have used cheaper 3rd party cartridges. do they work well? Or should I stick with a Brother branded cartridge? Enjoy this printer!

Update 9-1-2012: Still going strong. just replaced first full toner cartridge. I just ignore the low toner printer warnings (however, you can turn off. I turn off the STOPPING because of low toner, to do this, Go to General Settings, and then number 4. Replace Toner, set to Continue.). Wait until you see the ink not filling the page or getting streaky. Then replace. You will go months past the first low toner warning (depending on volume of printing obviously).

This is my second Brother printer and I absolutely love both of them. The duplex printing option is especially welcome after having to muck around with manual feeding to do duplex for so long (the other one is an HL-2070N).

But be careful when installing the software, as the default "Install MFL-Pro Suite" option adds a third party program called PaperPort, which started popping up ads for other Nuance software from my system tray. This is completely unacceptable for the installation of a hardware driver, especially hardware that bills itself as a professional office product.

From what I gather, PaperPort is for scanning and organizing documents like receipts and such. So if you need that functionality you might tolerate the ads. But in an office environment it's most likely not worth it.

Setting up Your Account in Europe

Amazon has established marketplaces in five European countries that can reach up to 27 countries through Europe. An EU selling account enables you to sell in multiple marketplaces from a single account, simplifying listing, pricing, fulfillment, and getting paid.

Amazon Europe Marketplace Account

When you sign up to sell with an Amazon Europe Marketplace Account, your seller account is automatically enabled to allow you to sell on all Amazon EU marketplaces:

You will be asked to define your source marketplace, which can be any of the five marketplaces.

You can choose an Individual or Professional selling plan depending on how much you expect to sell in a given month. If you register for a Professional selling account, you will be charged a monthly subscription fee based on your source marketplace. When you sell on any of the Amazon marketplaces in Europe, country-specific, per-item fees are charged to your unified account.

Inventory and orders

With a unified account, your inventory can be managed as a single pool available to all the marketplaces on which you choose to offer your products for sale. All your orders will be managed in a single account, making trading in Italy feel just like trading in the UK. When you include Fulfillment by Amazon, we will deliver orders to other Amazon EU Marketplaces from your source inventory pool using Amazon's fast and reliable European Fulfillment Network.

Qualifications

To be able to sell on Amazon in each EU marketplace, you will need to satisfy the Amazon seller rules applicable to each country. These are basic rules to ensure Amazon's customers enjoy the best possible shopping experience, thereby improving the chances that they'll buy your products.

You need to provide a bank account in one of the countries supported by Amazon. Currently Amazon supports bank accounts in the following countries:

Austria Belgium Cyprus Estonia Finland France Germany Greece Ireland Italy Luxembourg The Netherlands Portugal Slovakia Slovenia Spain The United Kingdom The United States

You should be aware of the local and EU legal and regulatory requirements; it is your responsibility to comply with those that apply.

Amazon Best Sellers: Best Metal Detectors

Man In England Discovers Iron Age Grave

Carl Walmsley, metal detecting treasure hunter, has found what he described as “the find of his life”.

What he found in a farmer’s field outside of Weymouth, Dorset, England was a 2,300 year old grave containing a skeleton, a bronze amulet, glass beads, a mirror, coin, tweezers and a thistle brooch.

Carl says that he had hunted in this field many times before, but was not expecting to find this. The grave was only about 18 inches beneath the surface, and as Carl started digging, he first found the amulet, then glass beads. Next he found parts of the mirror, but when the bone was discovered, he knew it was a grave. Carl immediately called the police to report what he had found.

You can read the entire story here.

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Understanding The Amazon Best Sellers Rank (BSR) – The Definitive Guide

At Viral Launch, we thrive on understanding and discovering the intricacies and science of the Amazon marketplace. Because the more we understand about Amazon the better equipped we are to map out the process of selling successfully for you. One of our targets was to reverse engineer the Amazon Best Sellers Rank (BSR) algorithm.

The intent was to build an incredibly robust Amazon sales estimation algorithm with unprecedented accuracy. While we have built a far more accurate BSR-to-sales mapping algorithm than what is currently available, reverse engineering the BSR algorithm requires a far greater amount of data and sophisticated machine learning tactics.

Here are our findings on BSR and the downfalls of using Amazon’s Best Sellers Rank as a tool to estimate sales.

What is Amazon’s Best Sellers Rank?

A product’s Best Sellers Rank can be found on the product’s detail page. As you can see, products are typically listed in multiple categories. There is usually a top level category: in this example it is #71 in Beauty & Personal Care. And there is a subcategory: this product is the #1 best seller in the sub category, Serums.

Often you’ll find a product in multiple subcategories and, somewhat less frequently, in multiple top level categories. For sales estimation equations, it is the top level category that the algorithms pay attention to. If someone had enough data to map out the current 64,000+ subcategories, they might use those numbers. But at the moment, that seems unlikely.

How is the Amazon’s Best Sellers Rank (BSR) Calculated?

The “Best selling” product in a category has a BSR of #1 in that category. The second “Best selling” product in a category has a BSR of #2 in that category. Amazon calculates a product’s Best Sellers Rank or BSR by considering the number of orders for that product compared to other products in the same category within a given amount of time.

We tried to figure out the time frame in which orders are taken into account using a few different machine learning algorithms. We wanted to know how much weight Amazon was placing on various timeframes. The most successful of these algorithms was Linear Regression.

[PRO INSIGHT: We also tried Decision Forest Regression, Bayesian Linear Regression, and Boosted Decision Tree Regression algorithms] Generally, with this kind of dataset, we would expect to use Linear Regression to help us understand how Amazon weights sales each hour. For example, using Linear Regression, we can determine that sales today are more heavily weighted than sales a year ago when calculating BSR.

To briefly explain how Linear Regression helped us reverse engineer the BSR equation, let’s break it down. Linear Regression is an AI equation that finds the proper coefficients for an equation by sorting through massive amounts of data. The equation looks something like BSR = X(a)+ Y(b) + Z(c)….. and so and and so forth.

Variables a, b, and c are the numbers of orders for each period of time, and X, Y, and Z are the amounts each period of time is weighted. For example, sales over the last hour (a) are worth 40% of the BSR calculation (X) and sales two hours ago (b) are worth 20% of the BSR calculation (Y).

Unfortunately, this approach did not return the exact calculation we were looking for. But it did help us uncover some great insights.

What We Discovered About BSR

Though BSR has been difficult to work with, through trial, error, and analysis of massive amounts of data, we definitely learned a lot! Some of these are not new discoveries, but for those unfamiliar here you go:

BSR updates for a product within 2-3 hours of a sale (we assume depending on when the payment clears relative to Amazon updating the market’s BSR). The BSR calculation more heavily weights recent sales. Historical sales still hold considerable weight in the calculation. We’ve seen two products with near identical BSRs have different sales by a couple of hundred during the last month. (Ex. BSR #76,430 and #76,433 with monthly sales of 94 and 310 monthly sales respectively). We’ve seen products with much lower BSRs with far fewer sales (Ex. BSR #720 at 366 sales over the last month.). New items with no sales do not have an Amazon Best Sellers Rank. When it comes to listing variations, some types of variations do not have their own BSR. Instead sales roll up to the parent ASIN. Other variation types do have their own Best Sellers Rank. BSR is order dependent and unit independent. (e. g. 90 items in a single order has as much impact as an order for 1 unit). BSR can swing by tens, even hundreds of thousands in the lower ranks with a single sale. Likewise, BSR can plummet just as fast (we’ve seen drops of 10,000 per hour until another sale occurs). BSR is re-calculated every hour for every product. We’ve never seen two products with the same BSR in the same hour.. so you can’t just re-calculate the top X products each hour as some people suggest.

So as you can see, BSR can be both an indicator of how well a product has sold in the past and an indicator of how well it has sold over the last few hours. The problem is you can’t tell exactly which unless you have detailed BSR history. Becuase BSR fluctuates so drastically and frequently, it’s almost impossible to determine anything from a product’s BSR at a single given moment.

An Example of BSR Fluctuations

Let’s take Product A and Product B. Product A has been selling steadily at 40 units per day in the Patio, Lawn, and Garden department for the last 6 months and Product B has only ever had 1 sale which was 31 days ago.

Let’s say that Product B get’s their stuff together and starts really promoting their product. Let’s say it sells 120 units total over the last two days. We would expect Product B to have a very similar BSR to Product A even though Product B has only sold 120 units over the last 30 days and Product A has sold 1,200.

Pretty crazy huh?

Different Ranks But Same Sales

With there being millions of products per category it is very possible for two ASINs to have the same number of sales but have very different BSRs.

Let’s say that Product A has had 197 sales and Product B has had 200 sales over the last 30 days and their BSR is sitting at 12,000 and 10,0000 respectively.

Okay, now let’s say that Product A had three sales in the last three hours, while product B has had none. We would expect Product A to be ranking somewhere in the 8,000’s even though they have had the same number of sales over the last month.

Timing Is Everything

Product A has only ever had 2 sales on Amazon, and they both occurred 18 months ago. The product is now sitting with a BSR in Patio, Lawn, & Garden of #2,000,000. Product B on the other hand has only had 1 sale, but that sale occurred 12 months ago. Because Product B had a sale more recently than Product A, we would expect its BSR to be something like #1,000,000.

Even though Product A has had more sales, those sales happened earlier and reached “the bottom” of the BSR calculation, while Product B didn’t hit “the bottom” of the BSR calculation until much later. As BSR updates each hour, products that don’t report a sale generally get pushed down the ranks (increasing in BSR), and products that have a sale rise above.

BSR Is Bad For Sales Estimation (But It’s The Best We Have)

In our journey of crafting the most accurate sales estimation algorithm, we brainstormed all possible indicators of sales on Amazon’s platform. One thought was estimating sales based on an assumed average review rate per market, which would look something like this: if an average of 25 reviews were added per product in a month, and we assume review rate is 1% of organic sales then we would assume there were 2,500 sales that month.

This is obviously not the proper approach. But in brainstorming, no idea is a bad idea. The most popular alternative is tracking inventory levels, which has some major weaknesses. This approach does not allow for situations in which sellers are driving sales from external sources as well as listings whose inventory levels are above 999 units, or listings where the Max Order Quantity is set.

You may be wondering why we were so turned off by the way existing tools use BSR. Essentially, w e were opposed to using the Best Seller Rank because it is such a volatile metric. BSR is globally updated per hour meaning each product’s Best Sellers Rank is calculated and adjusted each hour.

Each time Amazon pushes a BSR update, a given product’s rank can fluctuate dramatically. For example, we watched a product’s Best Seller Rank jump from 98,000 to 38,000 in one hour due to one sale. Then in the next hour it fell back down to 76,000. This drastic fluctuation is happening across the marketplace all the time.

Moving forward, let’s call the BSR that you find on Amazon a “snapshot” (because it is just a snapshot in time as BSR changes hourly).

Let’s walk through an example of how snapshot BSR is a poor metric for estimating sales volume. Imagine you are wanting to source a tea kettle. When are people most likely to remember that they need to purchase a new tea kettle? Probably, most people remember to purchase a new tea kettle in the morning when they have their morning tea/coffee before work. That means, that BSRs for tea kettles are likely going to be lower (showing higher sales estimates) in the morning than at night.

So, if you do your sourcing research in the mornings, you are going to estimate higher sales volume than if you do your research at night. The same can be true for times of the week. Let’s say for example’s sake that half of tea/coffee drinkers only drink tea/coffee on work days to get some extra pep in their step on the way to work. That would mean that BSR/sales figures are going to be different when looking over the weekends versus weekdays.

Essentially because there is no direct calculation and because BSR can fluctuate so drastically within the scope of a day, week, and/or month, the Amazon Best Seller Rank is a poor indicator of past sales.

How We Built Our Sales Estimation Algorithm With This Knowledge

We don’t feel comfortable sharing too many specifics, but here are a couple of key aspects that allow us to have an incredibly accurate estimation algorithm in our Amazon product research tool.

As you can see, the Amazon Best Sellers Rank can be extremely volatile hour to hour, day to day, and week to week. So in order to build a sales estimation tool with any degree of accuracy, we had to build a tool that was going to take into account the vast fluctuations in BSR that occur all month, and we’ve done just that.

Using a snapshot of BSR to estimate the number of sales over the last month is like trying to predict the plot of a movie based on a single still frame. It can be extremely inaccurate. O ne feature of our algorithm that I would like to highlight is that we continually update our BSR-to-sales mapping algorithm each night.

Nightly updates allows our calculation to remain consistent with the natural trends of the market. Due to seasonal trends across Amazon, as well as Amazon’s increasing popularity, estimation tools that do not refresh their algorithm regularly will find their estimations quickly becoming stale and continuing to decrease in accuracy as time goes on.

See just how accurate our sales estimates are with a free trial of Market Intelligence!