There are millions of products on Amazon, which means as a seller on Amazon, you’ve got a ton of competitors. Sometimes, you can beat those competitors easily. Other times, they’re businesses with millions of dollars invested in their Amazon products and you simply can’t compete.
Given such a competitive marketplace, you need to be smart about the products you invest in. A product’s Amazon Best Seller Rank (or BSR) is one of the most important numbers to help you with this.
Best Seller Rank, or just “sales rank”, is a number assigned to products based on their sales on Amazon. This ranking is automatically calculated every hour by Amazon, relative to other products within the same product category.
A lower number is better, so #1 is the best rank any product can have in its category. A recent sale of the product is more impactful to the current sales rank than a sale in the past, and historical sales factor into the sales rank as well.
Click here to learn more about Best Seller Rank and how to improve your ranking.
While a product’s sales rank is important, there’s a problem with just looking at the number without context…
Amazon Sales Rank Chart
This Amazon sales rank chart shows the various categories Amazon uses to organize their product catalog in the left-most column. The right-most column shows the total number of products in each category. The columns in the middle show the top .1%, .5%, and 1% in each category, respectively.
Below is a download link if you want a pdf version of this sales rank chart.
Keep on reading after the chart if you don’t know what any of this means or if you’d like further insights.
| Category | Top .1% | Top .5% | Top 1% | Total Products |
| Appliances | 1,097 | 5,484 | 10,969 | 1,096,853 |
| Arts, Crafts & Sewing | 12,418 | 62,092 | 124,184 | 12,418,388 |
| Automotive | 31,608 | 158,042 | 316,085 | 31,608,470 |
| Baby Products | 3,861 | 19,306 | 38,613 | 3,861,258 |
| Beauty & Personal Care | 11,714 | 58,571 | 117,142 | 11,714,201 |
| Books | 93,122 | 465,608 | 931,216 | 93,121,623 |
| CDs & Vinyl | 7,944 | 39,718 | 79,435 | 7,943,530 |
| Cell Phones & Accessories | 18,707 | 93,534 | 187,068 | 18,706,753 |
| Clothing, Shoes & Jewelry | 182,045 | 910,223 | 1,820,446 | 182,044,576 |
| Collectibles & Fine Art | 7,628 | 38,139 | 76,277 | 7,627,721 |
| Electronics | 18,296 | 91,478 | 182,957 | 18,295,689 |
| Everything Else | 13,659 | 68,295 | 136,590 | 13,659,004 |
| Grocery & Gourmet Food | 3,645 | 18,225 | 36,450 | 3,644,985 |
| Handmade Products | 2,377 | 11,885 | 23,770 | 2,377,031 |
| Health & Household | 10,030 | 50,150 | 100,300 | 10,029,992 |
| Home & Kitchen | 109,693 | 548,467 | 1,096,933 | 109,693,322 |
| Industrial & Scientific | 16,263 | 81,313 | 162,626 | 16,262,564 |
| Movies & TV | 5,850 | 29,251 | 58,503 | 5,850,257 |
| Musical Instruments | 1,901 | 9,505 | 19,010 | 1,901,014 |
| Office Products | 10,528 | 52,639 | 105,277 | 10,527,729 |
| Patio, Lawn & Garden | 13,516 | 67,580 | 135,161 | 13,516,096 |
| Pet Supplies | 7,458 | 37,288 | 74,576 | 7,457,617 |
| Software | 211 | 1,054 | 2,107 | 210,747 |
| Sports & Outdoors | 33,050 | 165,250 | 330,500 | 33,049,976 |
| Tools & Home Improvement | 27,052 | 135,260 | 270,520 | 27,051,965 |
| Toys & Games | 8,515 | 42,574 | 85,148 | 8,514,782 |
| Video Games | 1,149 | 5,747 | 11,495 | 1,149,456 |
Sales Rank Chart Methodology
I created this chart with the help of Keepa’s “Category Tree” feature. See the image below for the raw data I used in the “Number of products” column on the far right. I then used Excel formulas to calculate the top .1%, .5%, and 1%.
If you’ve never heard of Keepa, I wrote an overview of it here.
Further below in this post, I’m going to explain how Keepa can be used together with a sales rank chart to make better-informed buying decisions.
Understanding Amazon Sales Rank
The sales rank chart above has a ton of numbers on it. It might be overwhelming or even confusing at first, but let’s take a minute to break everything down.
A product’s sales rank shows how well it sells relative to other products in the same category. Therefore, a sales rank chart makes it easy for sellers to identify a product that should sell well on a relative basis if the sales rank of the product is very good, say in the top .1% in its category.
Let’s look at an example product, an instrument in the Musical Instruments category, ASIN B08ZHMWYVH.
We can see that its sales rank is #480 in the Musical Instruments category. Let’s refer to the Musical Instruments category line from the sales rank chart with the #480 number in mind:
For a product in the Musical Instruments category to be in the top .1% of its category, it would have to have a BSR of #1,901 or lower. With a rank of #480, this product is in the top .1% of products in the Musical Instruments category, and is selling more often than products with a higher rank.
In plain language, a product with a sales rank of #480 in the Musical Instruments category is likely selling very well, because there are only 479 products in the same category selling better than it is.
How Are Sales Rank Charts Useful?
Some Amazon sellers may not know why a sales rank chart is useful. However, sales rank charts can offer valuable insight if they know how to properly use the information.
The most obvious way to use a sales rank chart is to make quick buy or don’t-buy decisions of products you want to resell on Amazon. For example, most sellers only source products that sell well. Let’s say you define “sell well” as products that are within the top .1% of their category.
During product research, if you find a product that has a rank in the top .1% of its category, you would decide to buy the product. If the product has a rank outside the .1% range in its category, you wouldn’t buy the product.
Another way to use the sales rank chart is to find a product that sells well, say in the top .1% of its category, identify any shortcomings the product has, and create an improved version of this product. This is a good approach because you already know the product has good sales potential based on it already being in the top .1% of its category.
Why Sales Rank Charts Are an Imperfect Tool
While a sales rank chart can provide insight into how a product may sell, it’s got some shortcomings worth mentioning.
One problem using a sales rank chart is the inconsistency across categories. As explained earlier, each category has a different number of products in it. That makes the top 1% of products in one category a completely different number than the top 1% in another category.
Some categories sell faster or slower than others, are more profitable, or are simply just more popular. A lot goes into a product’s sales rank, and comparing products’ sales ranks across categories doesn’t usually make sense.
Another problem with a sales rank chart is that product categories grow over time, so a product in the top 1% today won’t be in the top 1% forever.
For example, in researching this post, I dug up an old sales rank chart from 2015. It showed the top 1% of the Book category having a rank of 110,000 or less. Contrast that to today, where a book ranking 110,000 will be just over the top .1% in its category. Why is this important? Because relying on a rule like “only buy books with a sales rank under 110,000″ won’t mean the same thing forever, because product categories get bigger every day on Amazon.
Lastly, sales rank doesn’t tell you about one of the most important factors of selling a product on Amazon: profitability.
If a product has a particular sales rank that translates to selling ten times a day, but makes $1 in profit, is it better than a product with a sales rank that sells once a day, but makes a $10 profit? I would rather sell the second product, because it is a lot less work to sell 1 unit of a product per day than 10.
Despite these shortcomings, the sales rank charts still gives insight into how products sell relative to other products in the same category, which is valuable information.
Speaking of valuable information, the best way to complement a sales rank chart is to incorporate information from a software tool called Keepa…
How Keepa Can Compliment a Sales Rank Chart
Keepa is a software tool that shows charts of individual products’ Amazon price history, sales rank history, review & rating history, and more. It updates regularly, and shows you a product’s history all the way back to its first day selling on Amazon.
Keepa is more robust than using a sales rank chart alone, because while a sales rank chart shows you a product’s relative position in its category, Keepa shows you how a product’s sales rank, reviews, and ratings have all evolved over time.
The “evolved over time” part is really important, because seeing how a product’s sales rank, reviews, and ratings have evolved tells you whether or not a product is selling well on Amazon. Since determining whether or not a product is selling well on Amazon is a fundamental part of product research, it’s very important information to know.
Unfortunately, Keepa isn’t free, but it’s definitely worth paying for. I wrote an entire post about how I use Keepa for my own Amazon business, and why I believe it’s worth paying for, here.
Final Thoughts
An Amazon sales rank chart can provide insight into product categories on Amazon, specifically the relative sales rate of a product based on its sales rank within its category. While sales rank charts aren’t a perfect tool, they’re still useful.
Ideally, a seller looking to make smart sourcing decisions should review the numbers on a sales rank chart in conjunction with a more comprehensive tool, such as Keepa.
Want to know how my Amazon business has evolved since I started in 2015? See this post.
Want to see a list of tools you need to sell on Amazon? See this list.