amazon seller

Seller Support is the organization in Amazon that provides world-class customer support to over 2 million Amazon Sellers in 9 countries--and counting! Third party sellers are our customers, and we work to eliminate any challenges and pain points those sellers may face when selling their products on Amazon’s marketplace platform.

1) The power of Amazon.

2) Good mentors.

3) Good partners.

4) Hard work and some start-up capital.

The reason that Amazon has been so quick to scale into something really special is because all of the work is handled by Amazon – they do the shipping, they take the payments, they refer all the sales, they do the customer management… everything EXCEPT marketing (which is what I do best).

One important note: It also helped that I had a amount of previous business experience , which allowed me to treat this as a long term business. Amazon is not a fast cash model, it’s a long-term growth business model. You don’t come out of the gate making a bunch of money – it’s a steady climb up, and if you stick with it, the rewards are plentiful. Give yourself at least six months from start to finish.

Below, I’ll attempt to outline in some detail how to do it if you’re just starting out…

Click To Download The Amazon Business Roadmap

Step One: Identify A Really Big Market

A lot of people misunderstand “niche marketing.” Niche marketing means focusing on a specific target market – dating, losing weight, yoga, etc. Niche marketing does NOT mean targeting the smallest market possible, which is what most people do. Remember these words: BIG MARKETS ARE BETTER.

Amazon is a game of volume. It’s like Google SEO in that way – you are playing with the traffic volume that is already there. There is nothing that you can do to make more search for your keyword more; to be successful, you need to have something of value in a market that is already really big.

In other words, if you’re inventing something new, Amazon isn’t necessarily your best channel (although I would still advise that person to have a presence on Amazon, that is not the model we’re after).

Ryan Moran has been fairly public about the fact that one of my markets is yoga (www.ZenActiveSports.com), and that company currently does somewhere between $10,000 and $25,000 per month in sales (currently his smallest Amazon venture). His

didn’t invent a new yoga widget, he just provided what people already wanted – mats, blocks, towels, etc, and his strategy is to rank for keywords around those products.

Step Two: Find Out What People Are Purchasing

This one is fairly easy. Just Google “top Amazon sellers in [your market]” and observe what comes up.

In the below example, I looked up the top sellers in “baby.”

These top products are moving hundreds of sales per day. How do I know? First, becose they are in the top of the category , and second, because they have thousands of reviews.

Important to note: I would not recommend getting into anything that did not sell for at least $20 for your first product. Otherwise, the profit margins just aren’t attractive enough for me to consider.

Step Three: Find A Manufacturer Who Will Produce Your Product

Sites like Alibaba.com make this really simple, but it takes some digging to find good ones who will provide what you need.

If you go to Alibaba and just type in something you’re interested in selling, you’ll find a plethora of sellers who are already supplying it.

Note: when browsing Alibaba, always contact the manufacturer to get the true quote. They will often display a lower price than their actual price.

I won’t lie – this process can take a bit of legwork. I recommend that you order a sample from each of the suppliers (they’ll give them to you cheaply), and that you negotiate as though you are already a player – NEVER tell them that you are new.

You can also browse Google for this, just by typing in “baby toy wholesale supplier” and digging into the results. It takes some digging, but there is always a supplier. If there isn’t, then have no fear – just choose a different product.

If you’re dead set on getting a supplier from the US, you’re going to be hard pressed for luck. We are good at a lot of things here in the states, like starting businesses, voting for really bad politicians, and gossiping about celebrities… but we are lousy at creating physical products that can compete with China’s prices. You can say what you want about the politics around it, but the profit margins just aren’t there to go with a US supplier on most products. I have only found a few exceptions.

Step Four: Ship The Products To Amazon

To do this, you’ll need a Seller Central Account, which costs $30 a month. Best money ever spent, because they’ll do all of the packaging, the fulfillment, the shipping… everything. This program is called Fulfilled By Amazon, and it’ll make your life a lot easier.

If you are shipping from overseas, you may need to work with a shipping carrier in order to transport the goods from your supplier to Amazon’s warehouse. Unfortunately, I know almost nothing about this process, because my partners handle it all. If you’re not freaked out by details, like I am, you’ll figure it out just fine.

Step Five: Position Your Products For Sale

Here’s where things get fun, because it’s where you can really stand out from the crowd.

ALMOST NO ONE markets themselves well on Amazon, so if you do even a little bit of work here, you’ll clean up.

Remember a few years ago, when no one knew what “local marketing” was? If you did anything to try to rank for a “local” keyword, you’d be #1 on Google in about ten seconds?

Amazon is currently like that. It’s wide open.

To do well, you need a high converting listing.

That comes down to:

– the text on the page

– your reviews

– the images of your product

If you do THESE THINGS better than your competition, you’ll do extremely well.

Here are some tips to help you to make the most of this:

1) Use copywriting on your listing. Most people just throw something up for sale, while I write really good copy. Use that listing as though it is a sales page. You get a lot of real estate in the bullets section of your listing, so make the most of it. This is where some good copywriting expertise comes into play, so make sure you discuss the benefits and where your product differentiates itself from the competition.

I’ve included a screen shot of our listing below for your reference:

2) Treat reviews like the lifeblood to your business. Do whatever it takes to make a customer happy, and treat reviews like they drive your business, because they do. I’ve seen sales drop by 25% just from one negative review. Don’t try to “game” this system or cheat Amazon, because you will get caught; just be good to your customers and provide good products.

3) Hire a professional to take photos of your product. On Amazon, reviews are the most important thing in your business. The SECOND most important thing is your product images. Get a professional to take photos of your product, and you’ll stand out from everybody else.

Step Six: Scale

The way you scale on Amazon is to a) rank higher for your keywords and to b) release more products. You rank higher with time; conversions, reviews, and sales will pull you up over time. If you want to rank faster, you can drive sales from off of Amazon through launches, giveaways, promotions, and good marketing.

I’d only recommend releasing new products once you are satisfied with the results of your first product – too many people do too much, too fast. I’ve gotten to $100k/month on Amazon with just two products, so you don’t need to have 100 products to be successful there.

How much money does it cost to get started?

Since you’re selling physical products, you need some capital to get an Amazon business up and running.

My first business got up and running for about $1500 – that includes inventory, labels, fees, everything. But we were bootstrapping it, and I wish that I had invested more at the get-go.

All in all, I’d recommend to prepare to invest $2k – $5k in your inventory, and to keep a little money on the side for marketing costs. If you’re going to complain about having to invest that much into your own business, then I’d advise you to not pursue having your own business. This is one of the lowest cost businesses I’ve ever seen in terms of investment compared to profit potential.

IS THAT IT?

Strangely, yes. I know this seems overly simple, but that’s the beauty of it.

You make business decisions, control inventory, and worry about marketing, and Amazon fulfills the rest. They do the shipping, the advertising, the customer service, the payment processing… everything. You worry about making a really good product and making sure that your customers are happy, and then you grow.

ONE MORE THING…

If you’re the kind of person who is FIRED UP right now from reading this post, then I have one more thing for you.

We can start ...

Learning how to sell on amazon is the right move for many aspiring entrepreneurs. Selling on Amazon using the FBA program.

Well, read below and we will share with you how you can get started selling on amazon yourself.

What Does Selling On Amazon Mean?

Selling on Amazon is basically like having your own online store. But it is so much better than that! When you are an Amazon seller, you get the benefits of being a large corporation, without all of the headache. Once you list products on Amazon.com you automatically get exposure to the millions of customers that Amazon has already. Once you are selling on amazon, you will show up as a third party seller on their website.

The funny thing is that most people who don’t know how to sell on amazon, never even notice that there are multiple sellers to choose from.

As you can see in the picture above, we have where the item “Ships from and sold by Amazon.com” and then there are “other sellers on Amazon” shown to the right. This shows that everyone who is selling the same stuff on Amazon shows up on the same page for buyers to choose which one they want to buy from. Or they can just select the seller that is shown in the buy box (where Amazon is above).

Different Ways You Can Sell On Amazon

Now that we know that there are third party sellers on Amazon, let’s talk about the different types there are.

You can sell on Amazon in 2 different ways. One is selling on amazon as an FBA (fulfilled by Amazon) seller or MF (merchant fulfilled) seller.

There are differences in the way that you show up on Amazon as a seller as well as what your responsibilities are.

What Does Selling On Amazon As An FBA Seller Look Like?

Using Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA) is the way that we recommend anyone who wants to sell on Amazon get started. The biggest benefit is that Amazon is doing all of the fulfillment for you. Ok, techie term…Let’s break that down! Here is what it looks like when you have a business selling on Amazon FBA:

You find a product to sell on Amazon
You list the product on Amazon.com (does not go “live” at this point)
You prepare the items to be sent to Amazon’s warehouses
You ship the items to Amazon’s warehouses
Amazon unpacks and stores your inventory for you
Your product shows up live on Amazon.com (according to where you listed in step #2)
Your product is featured as a Prime Eligible purchase
Amazon BUYER places an order from you
The Amazon warehouse workers find and ship your product to the customer
Your customer receives the product in 2 days (if they are a prime member)
Customer is happy!

In the scenario above, your “work” ends at step #4, and the rest is handled by Amazon. You pay them a percentage of all sales and some handling/shipping fees. When Amazon is handling the Fulfillment for you, you are free to sell as many items as you want because you don’t have to worry about having time to process and ship out all of those orders! This was a big concern when we were selling on eBay. The more items I listed for sale, the more time I had to spend per day shipping those individual orders out to customers. So I was limited in my income because I was running out of time that I could allot to listing, packing & shipping.

Curious what it looks like to be an Amazon FBA Seller?

What Does Selling On Amazon As A MF (Merchant Fulfilled) Seller Look Like?

Now that you know what it looks like to sell an item using the Fulfillment By Amazon program, you can probably guess what it looks like to be an Amazon seller that is not using the FBA program. But, let’s break it down again in a step by step process so you can see exactly what parts you would be doing selling on amazon and merchant fulfilling.

You find a product to sell on Amazon
You list the product on Amazon.com (product is live at this point)
Amazon BUYER places an order from you
After the payment clears Amazon notifies you to ship the item
You package the product to arrive safely to the customer
You purchase a shipping label through Amazon to send to the customer
You schedule a pick up or drop off the package to a local post office / ups drop off (depending on what is used)
Your customer receives the product in 2-12 days depending on shipping selection
Customer is happy!

Since you are doing the fulfillment for all the items you sell on Amazon, you are responsible for all of the steps.

The Biggest Benefit Of Selling On Amazon Via FBA

There is a key element that is missing from this process of selling on amazon using merchant fulfill versus amazon fulfillment and that is having your products Prime Eligible!

Amazon does a ton of marketing to get people to join their Prime Program. People spend almost $100/year so that they can have unlimited “free” 2 day shipping on items sold on Amazon.com. There are other benefits as well, but let’s just focus on this one.So, if you spend $99 to get free shipping, are you going to choose to buy from a seller who “gives you” free shipping, or from someone that you have to pay shipping to? And, that you have to wait for more that 2 days for your item to arrive? If you are a Prime Member, you already know the answer!

As a Prime buyer myself, I ALWAYS choose FBA sellers over merchant fulfilled sellers. EVEN IF the price is higher. I trust that the item will arrive quickly and as described. Amazon has a trust factor built in that people have come to know and believe in. This my friends, is where the power of being an amazon fba seller comes in!Amazon has trained us as buyers to look for Prime Sellers! Take a look below and see which seller you would choose to buy from if you are a prime member.If I place an order from the first seller, I will get the item on SUNDAY, which is in 2 days. Since I am writing this on a Friday, the second seller probably won’t even ship my order out until MONDAY. Since they are in TN and I am in CA, we are probably looking at an additional 5 days fro me to receive the order. So, maybe next FRIDAY I will get it. Possibly longer.

The thing is, I honestly would choose seller number one, even if they were like $5-$7 higher than the merchant fulfilled seller. Just for the convenience of fast and easy shipping.

How To Actually BE An Amazon Seller?

Now that we have covered what it means to sell stuff on Amazon and why you would want to. Let’s talk more about what it looks like to become an amazon seller.

Using Retail Arbitrage To Sell Stuff Online

There are a few different ways that you can have an amazon business. The model that we teach in the Amazon Boot Camp course is what is known as ‘Retail Arbitrage’. This means that we purchase products from retail stores (either locally or online) and then we resell them on Amazon.

Our main goal is to find items that are being sold at a discount so that we can mark them up enough that we make a profit on them. Buying clearance items is one of our strategies. If we can buy an item for 75% off, and then sell it at the normal retail price, that leaves room for us to make a nice profit on the item.

When we go into a local store we are using a scanning app called Scoutify on our phone that will help us to know which items are profitable or not. We scan the barcode of the products on clearance using the camera on our phone. The barcode brings up the product page on Amazon and we can see the current selling price, the best sellers rank, number of sellers and more. This will also allow us to input our buy cost and then get our profitability of the items we want to sell on Amazon.

Testing Products You Have Around Your House

Since you are not yet selling on Amazon the above app will not work for you. But no worries. You can use the Amazon FBA Calculator to get the breakdown of how much money you would make on any items you sell on Amazon.

I recommend that people who are interested in selling on Amazon test some items from around their own home to see how the process works. Say for example you have a red can opener that you got for Christmas and have never used it. If you search for the exact item on Amazon you can see that it is listed and selling for almost $30.

Next we would look the item up on the Amazon FBA Calculator and add in:

#1 the price it is selling for on Amazon and

#2 the inbound shipping cost. I calculate this at roughly $.50 a pound. We get really good rates as Amazon FBA Sellers through the program. Since this was at home, I am considering it a zero cost item.

When you click calculate, you will get #3 - the profit on that item if it sells for the price listed.

See below for the example.

Now, if you actually do this exercise, I bet you will find at least 5 things that are still new and that can be sold on Amazon! This is a way that you can start your business with very little money out of pocket and you will have a good idea that this business is for you.

Once you have decided that you want to try out selling stuff online, you will need an Amazon seller account. That is video #3 in our 3 free videos series. In the video, I will walk you through the process and show you some important steps!

Here are the basics. Go to Amazon.com and scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page. There is a link that says “sell on Amazon”

Since you want to start a real business, and be able to use scanning tools, I recommend signing up as a Pro Seller. This will save you money in the long run of having your account.

The best thing is that you get a free month when you first sign up, and you can ONLY get the free month when you create your account. If you don’t find you need the Pro Account after your first 30 days, you can downgrade at anytime before getting billed and not be charged for the next month.

Once you set up your account you can start using the Amazon Seller App to scan items in stores or your house. This is similar to Scoutify, but it is free and a good place to start getting comfortable with scanning products.

Don’t Forget The Supplies For Your Amazon FBA Business

As you get started on your Amazon FBA journey, you will need to have some tools along the way. The basics are: computer, smart phone, printer, labels, boxes, shipping tape and a scale.

You can see all of our recommended tools here.

Join The Amazon Boot Camp Today And Get Step-By-Step Instructions For All Things Amazon FBA!

Our number one training we offer to new sellers is our Amazon Boot Camp. This course was built with you in mind. When I started selling on Amazon, there were no step by step courses available for selling on Amazon.

So, I had to figure it all out on my own.

That is why we decided to create the first complete step by step video course for getting started on Amazon.com using the Fulfillment By Amazon program.