For millions of online shoppers, their quest for the perfect product begins and ends on Amazon. There’s simply no comparison to the size and variety of products available in this gigantic online marketplace. If you’re looking to sell products online, setting up an Amazon seller app and taking advantage of this vast marketplace is one of the most effective ways you can find success.
Selling on Amazon allows you to pull up your own digital tent with the world’s largest online retailer. Each month, almost 200 million users shop on Amazon, which accounted for half of the ecommerce market in 2018. Online shoppers know that this retail space offers the widest variety and most competitive prices on the products they need, which is why many users don’t feel the need to ever look elsewhere.
But the sheer size and scale of Amazon can also be intimidating. How easy is it to simply jump into this giant online marketplace? What tools, skills, and knowledge do you need to successfully run your own Amazon seller account. Luckily, Amazon has made it relatively simple and easy to set up an online store, and in this article, we’re walking you through how to become an Amazon seller and find success.
FINDING THE RIGHT PRODUCTS
The first step for any profitable Amazon store is knowing what products to sell. If you personally craft your items, the decision is made for you, but for many sellers, you have an almost endless supply line of potential products to offer. This is an important step for doing your homework—research hot products, profitable niches, and see what’s trending. Try to get an understanding of not only what sells, but which products provide the most profit.
SET UP YOUR ACCOUNT
After you have some idea of what you’ll be selling, you need to set up a seller account on Amazon. This is a straightforward process and only requires minimal information, such as your name and a valid e-mail address. The ease of setting up a seller account through Amazon might be why there’s currently over 2.5 million individual sellers working with this online giant.
AMAZON FBA
After setting up your Amazon sellers account, you’ll need to select your method of fulfillment. While many sellers simply fulfill their orders themselves by packaging and shipping their products, many stores are turning to Amazon for assistance. And why not? Fulfillment and shipping logistics are what Amazon does best and many sellers are taking advantage of this partnership.
Enrolling in Amazon’s FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) service hands over all your shipping, fulfillment, and return needs so you can focus on your product line. Of course, this fulfillment service isn’t for everyone, so we’re taking a look at the pros and cons of Amazon FBA to see if this program is right for your store.
PROS AND CONS OF AMAZON FBA
Pros
Can you put a price tag on your peace of mind? Arguably the greatest benefit of using Amazon FBA is the free time and lack of worrying you’d otherwise have over shipping and returns. With this service, Amazon handles the entire fulfillment process, including storing your products in one of their massive fulfillment centers, so you can kick back, relax, and focus on improving your inventory of products.
With Amazon FBA, you can also take advantage of savings in overall shipping costs. Since Amazon is one of the world’s businesses, they have close relationships with most of the major shipping companies around the world. What does this mean for you? The reduced prices on shipping they receive get passed down to you.
Cons
By using Amazon’s FBA service, you inevitably sacrifice control for convenience. Amazon will handle your shipping and fulfillment needs, but you also lose most of the control over these processes and must accept and work with Amazon’s guidelines. As your store continues to grow, it also becomes more difficult to carefully track all your packages because Amazon makes the system fully automatable.
Finally, Amazon FBA isn’t free, which can considerably cut into profit margins of smaller stores. Amazon uses fee rates based on the volume and types of products you sell so you’ll want to do some research to see exactly how much the service will cost you. Generally, this fulfillment method is most beneficial for larger Amazon stores.
DEVELOP YOUR PRODUCT LISTINGS
While a picture is worth a thousand words, Amazon product listings are essential for informing shoppers about important details of your products. In filling out your product listing, you’ll include information like the product name, brand, manufacturer, and physical details such as the size and color.
One of the most important steps in writing an effective product listing is using the right keywords. Knowing what keywords your shoppers use in their searches can help match them with your store. Be sure to perform keyword research to know what your users are looking for so you can script the most effective product listings.
FINDING A MANUFACTURER
If you don’t have your own products and are choosing to fulfill via Amazon’s FBA, you’ll need to locate a product manufacturer. Many people choose online options, such as Alibaba, because they tend to offer a higher profit margin for your store. Look for multiple options for manufacturers and most will even provide product examples so you can be assured of the quality.
SHIPPING YOUR PRODUCTS
This is where the Amazon seller experience really changes depending if you use the Fulfillment by Amazon service. If you do take advantage of Amazon FBA, you simply ship your products to their fulfillment center and they take care of the rest. This is ideal if you have an extensive inventory and simply no time or space to manage all the packaging and shipping needs.
If you aren’t using the FBA service, you’ll be responding to individual orders and packaging and shipping the products yourself. Some sellers prefer this as it gives them more control over the shipping process and they can even add personalized touches, like thank you cards or requests for reviews.
CONCLUSION – HOW TO BECOME AN AMAZON SELLER
Since 1994, Amazon has grown out of a garage into the fourth largest company in the world. Their success can be attributed to many factors, but the sheer volume and variety of products offered by their online marketplace is surely one of the top. Every minute, Amazon accounts for hundreds of thousands in sales. There’s no better way to reach these sales and countless potential customers than by starting an online store on Amazon. We hope this guide showed you just how straightforward, and possible, becoming an Amazon seller really is.