How to Sell Successfully on Amazon
Amazon manages on average to send 1.6 million parcels every day. According to a survey, 55 percent of all people who shop on the Internet start their search on the world-famous and established platform Amazon. So if you as a trader are not present on the platform, you are missing out on half of the potential market. But don’t worry: it’s not too late to start, of course. We’ll explain to you how to start your Amazon business.
1. Choosing the right product
Before you even start creating an account on Amazon, you should think about what you want to sell in the first place. This may sound very obvious at first, but Amazon offers you 20 open sales categories in which you can place your product. There are also ten other categories if you choose the professional sales plan. In the 20 open sales categories, you can list your products without the consent of Amazon. For the ten categories for professional sellers, you need approval from Amazon itself. For this, your products must meet special requirements, which you can read through in more detail on Amazon.
2. Choose the right sales plan
As mentioned earlier, in order to sell your products on Amazon, you need to choose a sales plan. If you choose the professional sales plan, you can sell an unlimited number of products and pay a monthly fee of 39 euros. If you decide against the professional sales plan and in favor of the open categories, you pay an individual fee of 0.99 euros per product sold. Which plan you choose depends on how many products you intend to sell on Amazon.
3. Create a seller account and list the product
If you have thought through the previous two points well, the next step is to create your seller account. When registering, you will need to provide a direct debit payment method, a phone number, your company details, primary contact information and a bank account number so that your sales can be processed correctly.
Now, of course, you still need a suitable product that you can bring to buyers at a profit. If you have your own brand then you need to get it through the brand registration process on Amazon . If you want to sell a product from another manufacturer, the most important question is: which product is suitable? To what extent a product is suitable for resale can be guessed at from various factors.
COST OF THE PRODUCT
Especially when you start selling products on Amazon, it is best to use cheap products. Customers are much more reluctant to buy something expensive and less likely to make a purchase. So start with a cheaper product, which makes less profit, but is sure to be sold more often. There are brands and sellers who turn over multi-digit millions on Amazon with cheap products.
SALES RANK ON AMAZON
Amazon creates various ranking lists for the categories that reflect the sales figures. This rank is calculated by an algorithm. Products with a low sales rank are ideally suited for sale. It should take you less time to sell one than a product with a high sales rank. If you find a product with a sales rank below 10,000, the chances are it will do very well.
In the seller center, you can use key figures for a product such as the ASIN or UPC to determine the sales rank. But choosing your product based on this number is a rather bad idea. Nevertheless, the sales rank can give you a rough overview of your options within the various categories – especially if you still have no idea what exactly you want to sell.
COMPETITION
Once you’ve found a potential product, it makes sense to look at the prices of your competitors who are selling a similar product. Find out about the prices of the other manufacturers and get an accurate impression of how cheap you can be if you offer a product. If it turns out that the other sellers are significantly cheaper due to higher purchase quantities or the like, then you should rather look for a new product.
If you are looking for a product on Amazon and there are two offers – one for 20 euros and one for 40 euros – which one would you rather choose?
LOW PRICES AND FREE SHIPPING
Even if you certainly don’t want to start a price war with your competitors, it is still important to undercut their prices and sell as cheaply as possible. It doesn’t matter if you only get back the price of the product that you paid for in the beginning or even lose one or two euros. Overall, it’s about attracting sellers and generating sales in order to have a higher overall presence on Amazon.
Another way to get the best price is by offering free delivery. Again, this is just a starter, especially if it would be an expensive proposition in the long run – especially for products with a low base price.
4. Manage orders
If you want to sell products, you also need to have an overview of your orders. Amazon offers you several options for managing your orders. In the Amazon Seller Center you have a complete list of all orders that have been placed for your products. Here you can call up each order individually and view details about it. You can also have a report created for you if you would like more information about the execution of the order. If you have a professional sales plan, you can also use the Amazon Marketplace Web Service. With this service, you will always be informed as soon as new activities, such as orders, have taken place.
5. Choose the appropriate shipping
So that your products arrive safely at the customer, you can choose between two types of shipping processing. On the one hand, you can take care of the shipping yourself, pack the products yourself and bring them to the post office. With a lower number of product sales, you can still do this well and save yourself a lot of costs.
As soon as you have found a product that sells well and that you want to continue working on, it makes sense to use the Fulfillment by Amazon service. With this you can minimize the time you have to invest as Amazon takes care of the packaging and shipping of your products. You can also send your parcels via Amazon Prime, which is certainly a decision criterion for some customers.
6. Gather feedback
This is not about collecting feedback for the actual product you are selling. Reviews are important, but what is even more important are the ratings of your Amazon store. When people shop on Amazon, it is generally very important for them to get to a retailer who is trustworthy. And nothing builds trust better than feedback from satisfied customers in the past. It is actually not easy to build up a large base of feedback here.
There is software that automatically asks customers to rate the store when they place an order, but you can imagine the bounce rate. It is all the more important to achieve a lot of sales. Another smart way to get customers to rate the store is to include greeting and thank you cards when ordering.
Conclusion: Selling on Amazon – When do you start?
If you follow these tips, you can scale your Amazon shop perfectly and sell more and more successfully. It’s best to start right away to implement all of these points and don’t put it off. Reviews are particularly important so that your products are really bought – even with top placements.
