When people think of Amazon, what comes in their mind is big businesses that are selling thousands of products being shipped from fulfillment centers all over the world. Although this is true, Amazon is also an incredible platform for small business owners who are just starting out in ecommerce. Opportunities for selling on Amazon are increasing and with the right strategies, there are big opportunities for those who venture into sales on this website. Below are tips on how to successfully sell on Amazon.
1. Adhere to rules and regulations of Amazon
Go to the help section of Amazon to learn about their rules in order to avoid getting banned. It does not make sense to go through the effort of getting your products into Walmart and not follow their rules. Consider selling products on Amazon as being on a store. You need to stick to their rules and when you contact them, be professional.
2. Know how you can become an Amazon featured merchant
You must have a sellers account for this to happen. It is vital that you get positive feedback and good sales and you will be featured within a short time, mostly less than a few months. Amazon will not tell you how you can be a featured merchant. A featured merchant on Amazon will have a buy box on the website. This buy box provides one with default sales. When someone clicks on add to cart, you will get the sale. This is going to increase your sales.
3. Use good fulfillment service
You should let Amazon fulfill products for you. This is one of the best kept secrets out there. With this program, you will be able to ship your products in bulk and then the fulfillment service will ship individual orders for you. This will save you a lot of time which you can then spend on expanding your business.
4. Choose products ideal for the size of your business and space available
If you will be selling mattresses and sofas and want to work out of your basement, you need to have a big basement. If you have a warehouse, this will not be a problem but if you will be doing this on your own, you need to have products that you can manage with ease.
5. Be flexible with pricing and promotions
A lot of people usually under price their products. Although you need to take your competition into account, you need to play where there is very little competition. If you think putting up things on sale will increase your sales, then do it. In order to get more profit, you need to elevate your prices. It is not necessary to increase the prices by a lot as three percent increase will mean a lot to your income.
6. Know your margins
This is vital and it cannot be emphasized enough since your margins are everything. When you buy a product to sell, you have a product cost that you need to cover. Many sellers want to make money and their prices are low and do not know that all the fees has to be covered. It is such a pity to see businesses do this and end up running themselves into the ground with work that does not earn them money but costs them money. Do not be like this. Know all fee that is involved, cost of products, taxes and cost of shipping. You should have an Amazon application on your phone so that when you think something is a good idea, you can simply check to see if it is similar to something on Amazon already in order to determine if it is a worth it or not.
7. Take advantage of marketing within Amazon
Amazon makes it easy for your products to be noticed. They are constantly testing out new things such as Amapedia although it is now gone. Things are going to come and go as Amazon determines what will work and what will not. Take full advantage of them while they are there.
8. Be ready for the holidays
During the holidays, it is not unusual to see things go up five times the normal sales. This can be one of your best times of the year for your business unless you do not have products. It is also not a good idea to buy a lot of products that you end up having too much of it left after the holiday is over. There are very many ways you can forecast demand. Your product might be seasons, weather or holiday related but nearly everything gets sold during Christmas. When you are not well prepared, you will end up selling out your entire inventory and blaming yourself because you will have lost a lot of sales while trying to get the product back in stock. You can opt to create a simple seasonal forecast on a spreadsheet in order to be well prepared.
9. Carefully label and package
It will not do you any good by sending a product to Amazon only to have it damaged on the way. There should be enough packing in your shipment so that in the event a box was to get dropped by mistake, your products will not be ruined. Use a bubble wrap and add some extra packing if your items are fragile or heavy. Take into account that if you choose to use a kraft paper to pack your products, it might end up scratching them especially when it has a lot of hard wrinkles.
10. Take advantage of seller central reports
Amazon seller central which is the place where you get access to your seller account has good tools and reports. It is essential to use them to know how much you are making, how low or even high your inventory is, if people are taking advantage of promotions that you have created and reasons for refunds and returns. Download the report and use it in your forecasting. The last thing you want to happen is to run out of an item that is on demand. You will lose a lot of money.
Poly Postal Packaging is a National UK manufacturer of mailing bags & packaging.
