Are you interested in learning how to Sell on Amazon? Here's What You'll Be Needing
Whether you already run a successful online store or are just starting building your online presence, you've probably considered the advantages and disadvantages of selling products on Amazon.
In general, you'll earn an increase in revenue and equity for your business by building and maintaining an online store on your website. But, thanks to all the devices that make multichannel selling more effective and profitable -- than ever before it is possible to do both at the same time and swiftly expand your customer base.
If you're ready to try to sell on Amazon or want to know a bit more about what's involved We'll teach you how to sell on Amazon as well as what is required to start.
A brief introduction to Amazon's marketplace
Amazon is the biggest ecommerce retailer in the world and certainly the U.S., where 70% of the adults subscribe to Prime. The majority of ecommerce sales in the U.S. happen on Amazon which has around 200 million monthly active app customers. Based on their own statistics, about 7400 products sell every minute in the U.S.
Amazon offers shipping to over 130 countries, so if you're searching for international e-commerce customers, this is certainly the fastest and easiest method to reach the largest global audience.
Ready? Let's look at the things you should learn about selling on Amazon.
Different types of Amazon seller accounts
There are two primary kinds of seller accounts available on Amazon professional and individual accounts.
A majority of online businesses looking for consistent revenue and growth will want to select the Professional model, as the Individual one charges you fees for every transaction while the Professional one charges a flat per month fee.
Other selling costs are also a part of the equation. that both kinds of accounts need to pay, but we'll discuss those later.
An easy guide for the process of setting up the account you want to use as an Amazon seller account
Amazon has created a ton of material to help sellers create accounts and start selling. If you're looking to read through their help pages to get started, begin by visiting this webpage. However, we've distilled the process to the following basic steps:
1. Create an account to sell
The process of creating with your Amazon accounts is simple as signing up. You'll first create your username and password and then go to the next step.
2. Select the Professional sales plan
Next, choose the kind of seller account that you want to use. In the past that you should select the Professional plan if you intend to grow your business using Amazon. In sales terms, if you plan to sell over 40 items a month, then you should consider to go with the Professional package.
Amazon is likely to not be the sole e-commerce platform or marketplace. It shouldn't even be since there are many advantages of building your own ecommerce store with . But Amazon lets you expand into new markets that you could not reach in a short time with your own shop.
3. Join the Brand Registry
Amazon provides a Brand Registry service, which must be used prior to constructing your store and take advantage of various other tools and features on their platform like protections for sellers and Amazon Ads. There is also a 5% bonus on branded sales.
4. Use this Stores Builder tool to create your online store
Once you've registered, are able to use the Stores creator tool, as well as its drag-and drop features to design your own store. There are three templates for design, and once you pick the one that you prefer, you'll be able add products to your account and begin creating pages.
It is possible to alter the tiles to display product pictures, videos, descriptions, and any other content so that it makes the best sense for your store.
For this to happen it is necessary to have an official trademark registered in the nation you're registering from, along with the logo.
5. Design your product listing and then begin to sell
After you've selected your template in hand, you'll be able to begin using the page manager to create category pages for your products, add categories, make a home page as well as any other pages you'd like to add as part of your Amazon storefront to help generate revenue.
There are specific image dimensions that you must meet that you must meet, as well as a limit of 200 characters in your product title, which is plenty.
"Perfect Launch," or the "Perfect Launch"
Amazon is known to promote the idea of the "Perfect Start" for sellers who are new that is, you must complete five objectives within the first 90 days of creating your seller account. The five objectives comprise:
- Enroll in Brand Registry
- Make A+-related content for your pages for products
- Set up Fulfillment by Amazon (we'll discuss this in the future)
- Automate pricing with Amazon's machine-learning technology.
- Create sponsored product ad campaigns Coupons, deals, or coupons
Doing this all within just the initial 90-day period results in significantly better outcomes, as per their research, which is why they call it the Perfect Launch.
When your shop is up and running and you're ready to begin utilizing your analytics information to design product bundles and combination items that consumers will be interested in. This increases sales, and enables you to package multiple items in the same shipping.
Improve product listing for Amazon
Amazon's website functions similar to an engine for searching. Shoppers can type in the keywords they want to search for in order to search for products, and Amazon will present them with the products that are compatible with their search.
This is what needs to guide your approach to creating listing of products and to optimize the product details page.
Search-friendly keywords
Utilize keywords shoppers may look up that are related to your products. Include them in your title as well as product descriptions. Make use of variations or other keywords if you have more than one method people might describe your product. Utilize model numbers, GTINs as well as SKUs.
Informative descriptions and details
Get really specific in the descriptions you write and in the details particularly for those products with a variety of variations including sizes, colors, and flavors.
Additionally, you can use bullet points to make your listings easier to comprehend, and concentrate on the advantages in addition to features. Benefits are about outcomes -- how can this product benefit me? What problem does it solve? What needs do I have which this product will meet and what is the best way to meet this need? You want to answer those sorts of questions in your product descriptions as well as bullet points.
Great product images
Knowing the Amazon fees
As mentioned earlier it is really only two plans you can choose from.
The Individual plan is priced at 99 cents per transaction. Everything you sell online through this plan is 99 cents.
The Professional plan cost $39.99 per month and comes with unlimited sales. The idea of selling a minimum of 40 products per month comes from. Even if you're not certain if you'll be able to make 40 sales in your first month, you must opt for the Professional plan if committed to making this an integral part of your online venture and anticipate to exceed that amount in the near future.
If you are looking to promote on Amazon, show up in the Buy Box or sell items in restricted areas (and there are plenty of them), and use other modern selling tools, then you'll require the Professional plan.
Amazon is also liable for a variety of selling costs that are dependent on your arrangement with Amazon. They also charge a variety of additional fees based on your arrangement with.
Referral fees
Each plan charges a charge for each sale that made, and the fees vary from 3% up to up to 45 percent in certain occasions. But the great majority of referral fees are between 8 and 15%, which is pretty typical of the online marketplaces.
ou can see many other fees and referral charges for diverse categories of product on this page.
Fees for fulfillment and storage
If you involve Amazon with any of your shipping packaging, packing, or other fulfillment tasks you will pay an additional cost for this as well, and it depends on the the size and weight. If you only use Amazon to ship items, the cost will be depending on the size and weight of your package.
There's also a cost if you use Amazon's warehouses to store your items. You might want to think about this due to other advantages that we'll discuss in a moment. The biggest one is that you can offer 2-day shipping for your customers under the brand name.
In the months of October and December, storage charges will be three times more expensive than the rest of the year, due to the holiday season.
Fulfillment options - FBM, SFP, FBA
Like we said the decision is yours to make the best way to manage satisfaction.
You may choose to process each order on your own this is known as "fulfillment by retailer" (FBM). It is also possible to use Seller Fulfilled Prime (SFP) which is a unique service offered to experienced Amazon sellers. It's not something you're able to utilize if you're only starting out. You can also use Fulfillment offered by Amazon that is what they would like customers to utilize, and is therefore filled with incentive programs.
Fulfillment by merchant
This option of fulfillment provides you with the most amount of control over your fulfillment process. It allows you to handle the order, pack them for shipping, then keep them at your house in a warehouse or another locations. If you're doing dropshipping that's what Amazon allows, you will most likely opt for this method.
The downside of FBM is that it's not possible to avail the benefits of becoming an Amazon Prime seller, which comes with a number of benefits.
However, if you wish to take extra care in the packaging procedure it could prove beneficial regardless of whether it means less customers order through you due to more time-consuming shipping process.
Prime Seller Fulfilled by Seller
Here, you still maintain your inventory at your own warehouse, but Amazon takes care of the distribution process by using the companies of their choice.
But, you won't be able to use this until the time you are in your Amazon store:
- Provides high-quality delivery options
- Ships over 99percent of orders in the same day.
- Cancels orders with a rate that is less than 0.5%
- Uses Amazon Buy Shipping Services for 99% of orders
- Makes use of methods for shipping that permit weekend delivery
- Achieves the goal of completing a trial
Find out more information about the specifications.
Fulfillment is handled by Amazon
Amazon shoppers love Prime Day, and all aspects Amazon Prime. As mentioned earlier, about 70% of U.S. adults have Prime memberships. Thus, any thing you can do to appeal to the Prime members is going to be advantageous with regard to sales.
If you opt for FBA, your Amazon business will receive an Amazon Prime Badge. If customers are searching on Amazon, they can choose to filter their results based on the stores that have an Prime Badge. Therefore, if your store doesn't have this, you won't appear in the search results for shoppers with this feature.
Even for those who do not use filters to narrow their searches and aren't filtering their searches, they will still view the Prime logo on your listing if you are making use of FBA.
Additionally, using Prime Badges You can give Amazon Prime's two-day free shipping, and the free shipping general. Amazon handles the packaging, delivery, returns as well as customer support issues.
FBA also allows you to use Amazon's machine-learning technology to assist with the management of inventory. This helps you anticipate customer demand so you don't buy too much or too little inventory.
It costs more to use fulfillment through Amazon, but you get a lot more also, and a lot part of the burden of managing an ecommerce business is taken from your hands by having an Amazon fulfillment center that is optimized.
So, it's a good alternative for companies that appreciate the savings in time and effort and don't want to deal with storage or shipping. If you prefer handling that task yourself, to cut costs, then FBA isn't a good choice.
Wait -- inventory?
If you're just beginning with your company, inventory is something you may not have thought too much.
Inventory depends on several factors that are different in each company, such as:
- The amount of channels you're selling your products on
- Industry norms for your business
- The types of products you sell
- Your business's size
The more channels you're using and the greater number of products you'll sell. With regards to inventory, that makes it more difficult to manage everything.
As an example, let's say you've got a warehouse 50 units of stock for a particular product, and you are able to sell 30 of the same items through Amazon over the course of a month. You feel great, and intend to replenish your inventory by adding 50 more.
However, what happens if you're selling products through your store and then you've made 20 sales on products the same month through that site. This means that your inventory is not enough, and if sales are increasing at all in during the month following then you'll require more than 50.
It's a slightly simplified illustration, because sales don't all happen in a single day. However, it illustrates the need to be constantly monitoring your inventory and the speed at which they're selling, and the channels they're selling on Each of these could have different fulfillment procedures.
You also have to factor into products that are not being sold anymore, as well as the high cost of storage.
Wherever you're selling, you'll require a method for monitoring all this. Here's more on Amazon on controlling inventory.
Service to customers and keeping the highest rating of sellers
As you learn the best ways to sell on Amazon it will be apparent the process of interacting with your customers somewhat more challenging than it is with your own store on Amazon. You must create procedures to offer the best customer service on a level so you can earn high seller ratings.
First, be sure to use your product descriptions to be able to answer as many inquiries as you think customers might ask.
Third, make use of good pictures along with other pictures to help customers to see and understand the products they're purchasing.
3. Respond positively to every review Even the ones that are negative. This shows you are aware of your clients and are committed to providing the highest quality service.
And last thing, in Amazon you can use an application called Brand Follow that is a way for customers to connect with you even if they do not purchase items on their first visit. If they choose to follow you will get notified of your product updates which gives you a possibility of regaining their trust.
Sell on Amazon Build your future with
You can profit from endless flexibility, full control, and powerful functionality and all this without having to pay fees from the platform. Plus, you won't have to worry about other products showing up right on top of yours!
Multichannel selling helps to reach the largest proportion of your customers and get them to where they're. There are a variety of multi-channel extensions which allow the connection of your online store to Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Facebook, Pinterest, and more.