Want to Learn How to sell on Amazon? Here's the Information You'll Need
If you have an established e-commerce business or are just starting building your online presence, you've probably considered the advantages and disadvantages of selling your products on Amazon.
In general, you'll earn an increase in revenue and equity for your business through the creation and maintenance of a store on your own website. But, thanks to all the devices that make multichannel selling more effective as well as profitable -- than ever before, you can do simultaneously and swiftly expand your customer base.
If you're looking to test out selling on Amazon or would like to find out more about what's involved in the process, this article will guide you through selling on Amazon and the things is required to start.
A brief introduction to Amazon's marketplace
Amazon is the biggest ecommerce vendor in the world and certainly that is true for the U.S., where 70% of Americans have Prime memberships. About 56% of online sales within the U.S. happen on Amazon with around 200 million active monthly app users. According to Amazon's own figures around 7400 items sell every minute across the U.S.
Amazon is also shipping to more than 130 countries If you're looking for global ecommerce customers, this is certainly the fastest and most convenient method to reach the largest global audience.
Ready? Let's discuss what you need to be aware of to make a sale on Amazon.
Different types of Amazon seller accounts
There are two primary types of seller accounts on Amazon The two main types are Professional and Individual.
A majority of online businesses looking for consistent revenue and growth will want to select the Professional version, because the Individual one charges you fees for every transaction while the Professional version charges a fixed monthly rate.
Other selling costs are also a part of the equation. both types of accounts have to pay for, but we'll look at them a little later.
An easy guide for creating the account you want to use as an Amazon seller account
Amazon has created a ton of content to help merchants set up accounts and begin selling. If you want to go through their help pages to get started, begin by visiting the following page. But, we've broken the procedure to the following basic steps:
1. Make a seller account
The process of creating your Amazon accounts is easy as registering. The first step is to create a username and password, follow the steps to the next step.
2. Select the Professional sales plan
After that, you must select the seller account type you want to use. As mentioned already, you'll want to pick the Professional plan if you're planning to increase your sales using Amazon. If, in terms of sales, you expect to sell more than 40 products per month, you want the Professional plan.
Amazon probably won't be the only platform or marketplace. It shouldn't even be, because there are big advantages of developing your own store using . However, Amazon enables you to expand to markets that you would not be able to reach with your own shop.
3. Join the Brand Registry
Amazon offers an Brand Registry service, which you have to use before you are able to build your own store. It also allows you to take advantage of various other tools and features available on their platform like seller protections and Amazon Ads. Additionally, you can earn a 5% bonus on branded sales.
4. Utilize this Stores Builder tool to create your own online store
Once you've registered, you are able to use their Stores builder tool and drag-and-drop tools to build your online store. It's possible to select from three designs that you can choose from, and after selecting the one that you prefer, you'll be able to add products to your account and begin creating pages.
You can adjust the tiles to organize product photos, videos, descriptions, as well as other material to make the most sense for your store.
To get this far further, you'll need to obtain a registered trademark in the country you're enrolling from as well as a logo.
5. Design your product listing and start selling
With your chosen template, you can begin using the page manager to add category pages for your products, add categories, design a homepage, and whatever else you want to include as an element of your Amazon storefront to help generate revenue.
There are specific image dimensions that you must meet, and you're limited to 200 characters in your product description, which is more than enough.
The "Perfect Launch"
Amazon is known to promote its concept of the "Perfect Start" for brand new sellers, which means you complete five goals within the initial 90 days following the creation of your account as a seller. Those five tasks are:
- Sign up to Brand Registry
- Create A+ content on 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, or deals
Doing all this within the first 90 days results more successful results according to their data that's why they refer to it as the perfect launch.
After your store is established it is possible to use your brand's analytics data to create product bundles and combination items that consumers will be interested in. This will increase sales as well as enables you to bundle multiple items in the same shipment.
Improve product listing to be able to use Amazon
Amazon's site operates much like the search engine. Users can enter keywords, and Amazon will present them with the products that are compatible with their search.
This should guide your approach to creating product listings and optimizing your product detail page.
Search-friendly keywords
Utilize keywords shoppers may search for that relate to your items. Put them in your titles and descriptions of your products. Make use of variations or other keywords in the event that you have more than one method to describe the product. Make use of model number, GTINs or SKUs.
Details and descriptions of the informational text.
Make sure you are precise in the descriptions you write and in the details Particularly for items with a variety of variations such as colors, sizes, and tastes.
Use bullet points to make your listings easy to read, and concentrate on the advantages in addition to attributes. Benefits focus on outcomes- how does this product help me? What problem does it solve? What needs do I have that this product can meet, and what is the best way to meet the need? It is important to address these types of questions within your product descriptions as well as bullet points.
Great product images
Understanding Amazon's fees
As mentioned earlier it is really only two options to pick from.
The Individual plan charges 99 cents for each sale. Each item that you sell on the internet through this plan is 99 cents.
The Professional plan is $39.99 per month, with unlimited sales. The idea of selling 40 items every month from. But even if you aren't sure whether you'll actually make 40 sales in your first month, you should still choose the Professional plan if dedicated to making it one of the most important aspects of your online venture and hope to increase that amount in the near future.
If you want to advertise on Amazon and appear in the Buy Box and sell items that are restricted to certain category (and there are many of them) as well as use advanced selling tools, you'll need to purchase an Professional account.
Amazon will also charge you additional selling fees depending on your arrangement with Amazon.
Fees for referral
Both plans charge a referral cost for every sale you sell, and they can range from 3% to as high as 45 percent in some instances. The majority of fees for referrals are between 8 and 15%, which is fairly typical for the online marketplaces.
You can also view a variety of other fees, plus referral fees for various categories of products here.
Fees for fulfillment and storage
If you engage Amazon with the delivery packaging, packing, or other fulfillment activities, there will be an additional cost for this also, and that is determined by the size and weight. If you are using them only for shipping, you'll pay depending on the size and weight of your package.
There's additional costs when you utilize Amazon's warehouses to store your products. You might want to think about this because it comes with additional advantages we'll go over in a moment. The biggest one is the possibility of offering 2-day shipping with their own brand name.
From October to December, storage fees are three times higher than during the other 9 months because of the Christmas time.
Fulfillment options include FBM, SFP, FBA
In the same way it is important to determine how you want to handle fulfillment.
You can choose to fulfill all your orders yourself and this is referred to as "fulfillment by retailer" (FBM). It is also possible to make use of seller fulfilled prime (SFP) which is a unique service offered to experienced Amazon sellers that you can't make use of if you're just starting out. Additionally, you have the option of using Fulfillment by Amazon this is what they'd like customers to utilize which is loaded with incentives.
Fulfillment by merchant
This fulfillment option gives you the greatest amount of control over the entire process. You get to manage your orders, package them to ship them and store them in your home, warehouse, or other place. If you're using dropshipping, which Amazon accepts, you'll most likely opt for this method.
The drawback for FBM is that it's not possible to avail the benefits of becoming an Amazon Prime seller, which offers a host of advantages.
However, if you wish to put special care into your packaging process, you may find this to be a more beneficial option in the event that less customers order through you due to longer shipping time.
Seller Fulfilled Prime
You maintain your inventory at your warehouse. However, Amazon takes care of the distribution process by using the companies of their choice.
You can't do this till you've got the time you are in your Amazon store is:
- Offers premium shipping options
- Ships over 99% of orders on time
- Has a cancellation rate for orders of less than 0.5 0.5%
- Uses Amazon Buy Shipping Services for 99percent of purchases
- Uses shipping methods that support weekends for delivery
- Achieves the goal of completing a trial
Learn more about the specifications.
Fulfillment by Amazon
Amazon customers are awestruck by Prime Day, and all aspects Amazon Prime. In the past, around 70% of U.S. adults have Prime memberships. So, anything you can accomplish to entice the Prime members is going to be to your advantage with regard to sales.
If you opt for FBA, your Amazon shop will be awarded a Prime Badge. When customers search through Amazon and search for a store, they have the option to filter their results based upon stores which have the Prime Badge. If you don't have this, you won't show up in search results for shoppers who use this feature.
And even for shoppers who don't filter their searches, they can still see the Prime logo on your listing when you're making use of FBA.
Additionally, using Prime Badges it is possible to give Amazon Prime's two-day free shipping and also free shipping in general. Amazon handles the packing, delivery, returns, and customer service issues.
FBA can also allow you to use Amazon's machine-learning technology to assist with the management of inventory. This helps to plan for future the demand of customers so that you don't buy excessive or insufficient stocks.
You'll pay more for Fulfillment through Amazon However, you'll receive a lot than that, plus some tasks associated with running an online store is lifted off your back by the optimized Amazon fulfillment center.
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 stuff yourself to save money and time, then FBA isn't a good choice.
Wait -- inventory?
If you're just beginning on your business, inventory is something that you might not have considered much about.
Inventory is affected by several variables that will be different in each company, such as:
- The number of channels you're selling on
- Your industry norms
- What kinds of items you market
- Your business's size
More channels and platforms you're utilizing The more items you'll be able to sell. In terms of inventory, that makes it difficult to track all of it.
Let's suppose that you've got a warehouse 50 units of stock for a particular product, and you're able to sell 30 them on Amazon within a month. You feel great, and plan to restock your supply with another 50.
However, what happens if you're selling on your store, and you sold 20 more items the following month through that site. That means your supply is full, and if sales increase at all the next month it will require a greater than 50.
It's a slightly simplified illustration, since sales aren't always happening in a single day. However, it illustrates how important it is to continually monitoring your supplies, how quickly they are selling and what ways they're selling Each of these may have different fulfillment processes.
You also have to factor into products that are non-perishable, products that aren't selling anymore, and the high cost of storage.
No matter what you're selling you'll require a method for monitoring all this. Here's more from Amazon regarding managing stock.
Customer service and maintaining an excellent rating for sellers
As you learn the best ways to sell on Amazon and other platforms, you'll discover that interacting with customers is somewhat more challenging than it is with your own store on Amazon. However, you must develop procedures to offer the best customer service on a level so you can earn high seller ratings.
The first step is that you use the descriptions of your products to address as many questions as you think customers might ask.
Third, make use of good pictures along with other pictures to make it easier for customers to see and understand what they're buying.
Thirdly, you should respond positively to all reviews Even the ones that are negative. It shows that you're attentive to your customers and want to deliver the highest quality service.
Then one, in Amazon you can use an application called Brand Follow which provides an opportunity for your customers to connect with you even if they do not purchase something on the first time they visit. Any person who decides to follow you is informed of any updates to your products, so you have a opportunity to regain their attention.
Sell your product on Amazon and build your future with
You can profit of endless flexibility, complete control, and powerful functionality -- all without selling costs on the platform. Furthermore, you will not have to fret about rival products showing up right next to yours!
Multichannel selling helps you reach the highest proportion of your customers and connect with them right where they are. There are a variety of multi-channel extensions that allow users to link their online store with Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Facebook, Pinterest, and more.