Selling on Amazon has become a big business for many people. Some sellers just started with a few items and eventually grew their Amazon business to be quite large—and profitable. Becoming an Amazon seller is not that difficult of a process. In this article we breakdown what it takes to start your Amazon selling business and the most efficient ways, you can go about doing this.
Select a Plan
Amazon offers a few different plans featuring different selling models. Picking the right plan for you is the first step to kicking off your new Amazon business. You can begin with the individual plan. This requires that you pay $0.99 every time you make a sale on the platform. Depending on what type of volume you intend on doing, you may think about jumping up to the professional plan. This is more expensive at 39.99 per month, but at the same time if you are doing a lot of selling, then it could save you money in the long run. Keep in mind, there is still a referral fee associated with both plans in which Amazon will take a small percentage of the transaction.
Devise a Sales Strategy
Once you've selected the plan that you think will work best with your intended sales model, then you want to hone in on your selling strategy. That is to say, will you primarily sell items that already exist and consequently set up an Amazon store to feature these? Or perhaps, will you make your products, establish a brand and sell under the umbrella of that brand?
You can also do a mix of both. You are not relegated to just reselling or creating your products to sell.
Set up an Amazon seller account
If you are already an Amazon customer, you can use that account to start selling on the platform. However, if you are looking to make it into a bona fide business, you might establish a new Amazon account dedicated to just your selling; you can utilize a business email address if you have one to further legitimize your Amazon endeavor. If you are setting up a business account to sell, you're going to have to provide a business email address, credit card, government ID, and a bank account for proceeds to go into.
Start adding your products
The great thing about Amazon is that you can sell so many things on the platform. Whereas with some platforms you are confined to a certain product type or niche, Amazon is more wide open.
There are a variety of predetermined categories from which you can select. Some categories do require that you have a professional seller account in place. Some categories prohibit third party sales.
Once you begin to list your Amazon products, you will develop a specific listing for each of your products within the Seller Central section of the Amazon platform. Your product listing will need to include the following:
- Product identification code, either a GTIN, UPC, or ISBN for example.
- A SKU. A SKU enables you to track your inventory.
- All relevant product details; so for example, this will include the price, condition, shipping info, and quantity in stock, among other description details. You will also list things such as brand, actual product name, and then add any images that you have of the product. In your description, you also want to make sure that you include those keywords most applicable to your product, so when people are searching for said product, they are more likely to find you.
Create Effective Amazon Listings
What sells a product is going to be the details and images included. You, therefore, want to spend some time creating dynamic listings filled with key details as well as getting some great photos that will help entice users and thus turn them into potential buyers.
The product detail pages are the first place that people will look to find out information regarding products they are interested in. Because there are most often multiple sellers selling related items on Amazon, the site will combine data gathered from the various sellers and this will go onto a single detail page. As a seller, you can thus contribute information to the product detail pages that are associated with the products you sell.
Getting those customers
Of course, the objective here is to attract customers and turn them into buyers. There are a few tips and strategies to keep in mind as you look to build and grow your Amazon selling business and attract those customers.
- When it comes to shipping make sure you offer a fast and reliable service to this end. There are a few different shipping options that you might explore as an Amazon seller. You could also take advantage of the platform's Fulfillment by Amazon service.
- Learn how/where to advertise. The key to great sales is getting your items found on Amazon. To do this, you might think about your advertising strategy. There are paid ways you can advertise on product pages. You might also consider running a deal or promo to help attract buyers to your products versus those of your competitor.
- Know how to price. Pricing strategically is key. If your price too high, users will turn to your competition for the same product that is cheaper. Price too low and you will hurt your bottom line. When it comes to pricing, you want to do your homework.
- Get those reviews. As most know, Amazon is all about the reviews. In buying anything, people will research first by way of looking at other's experiences of a product. When you do make a sale there is nothing wrong with asking the person to review your item if they were satisfied with it.
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