Blog: How to Become a Successful Amazon Seller
How to Become a Successful Amazon Seller
You’ve read all the articles, watched all of the YouTube videos and trawled through pages and pages of forums. Now the only thing left is to is the scary bit, actually DOING IT and becoming an Amazon seller! You have put in so many hours of research, a lot of your hard earned money and you’re nervous. I get it. Been there, done that, got the T-Shirt.
What’s the goal? To become a successful Amazon seller, of course. To rank as high as you can. earn as much profit possible and have your own online business.
How? Well that my friend, is exactly what I am going to explain to you here.
STEP 1 – Create an Amazon Seller Account
If you haven’t done so already, you’ll need to register to sell on Amazon by completing the Amazon Seller Account registration process.
This isn’t half as bad as it sounds, trust me. It only takes a few minutes, providing you have all of the necessary information handy. So before you sit down at your computer, rearing to go, make sure you have the following information to hand:
- Business Email account – This should be created BEFORE you start your registration process, as Amazon will start emailing you straight away after submission. So ensure your business email address is up and running before you commit to filling in your details.
- Business Details – As well as a business email address, you will also need your business details, such as address, the name and the contact details.
- Bank Details – You will need a credit card to cover any costs of the Amazon subscription (If you chose the Pro Account, which you should!) or advertising costs. You will also need the bank details for the account you would like Amazon to deposit your funds to.
- Phone Number – Amazon will contact you during the registration process, so make sure your phone is charged, on loud and in arms reach!
- Tax Information – Oh yeah, the fun stuff. Whilst this may not be the most riveting of information to fill out, it is very important, so make sure you have it out ready to look over. This will include your Social Security Number or company Federal Tax ID Number and State Tax ID information.
For more information on Tax details when it comes to selling on Amazon FBA, check out this video where Lenny talks us through the registration process step by step.
Once you have verified your account, you are all set to get started selling on Amazon!
… See, I told you it wasn’t too bad.
STEP 2 – Find the BEST product to sell on Amazon
I’m assuming you may already have a stellar product lined up to sell, as you have just signed up for your seller account. If so, great, you can skip to the next step. Check you out, eager beaver.
If, like many others, you are still scrolling through pages and pages of products. Tracking too many to ACTUALLY keep track of and worried of committing to “The One”, then stay put. I’ve got you covered.
Finding the right product doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time and patience, but it is all worth it once you find it. It’s like the stars finally align. It’s that moment Alfred sees Bruce in Florence at the end of the Dark Knight Rises. The moment Andy meets Red on the beach in that final scene of Shawshank. The fist pumping scene at the end of the Breakfast Club. I think you catch my drift.
Check Out These Resources
Rather than go into detail on HOW to find the your best selling product to sell, I’ll point you in the direction of our Product Hunting 101 where we talk you through the whole process of finding “The One” step by step. Or if you prefer to hunt products alongside, with us, then check out this HOW TO FIND THE HOTTEST PRODUCTS TO SELL ON AMAZON where Lenny talks you through our step by step tips and tricks, that you definitely do not want to miss!
Look for High Demand and Low Competition
It all comes down to finding that HIGH DEMAND and LOW COMPETITION product. An 8 to 10 on our Opportunity Score within our Chrome Extension, for example. The product with less than 50 reviews to make sure its low competition or that sells over 300 units per month to ensure demand is usually a good place to start.
But with the abundance of videos on our YouTube Channel and posts on our Blog showing you all the nifty hacks to finding that AMAZING product, I can assure you, we have your back on this one. To save you some time hunting around, here are some of my personal favourites that have helped me on my Amazon journey so far…
How to Find Products to Sell on Amazon
Amazon Product Research: What Not to Do
How To Find Amazon Product Ideas
How To Find A Profitable Product To Sell On Amazon
Hunting BEST selling products!
Hidden TRICK 🙊to finding a PRODUCT to sell on Amazon
STEP 3 – Find Your Supplier and Shipper
You’ve found your product, now you need to find someone to make it and to ship it to your Amazon FBA warehouse.
This can almost be like online dating. You want to find a company that understands your product, what you want and expect and who you get along with. This goes for both your manufacturing and freight company.
Prepare to Contact Suppliers
First things first, get your questions prepared and a template ready to send out to potential companies. Have a long hard think about the questions that are important to you and your business. Then, create a template of an email that you can send to a few companies that you have found. This will then make it easier to evaluate who you want to go to the next step with when they reply, as you can compare their replies and see who was helpful, not helpful and who went that extra mile.
Get Multiple Quotes
You will also want to ask these companies for quotes for your needed services. Don’t just choose one company and then go with their quote. GET MULTIPLE QUOTES FROM MULTIPLE COMPANIES. I cannot stress this enough. The last thing you want to do, is go for the first quote you are given, only to realise a few months later you could have had the same service for a few hundred dollars cheaper.
Remember: Cheapest Isn’t Always Best
There is a fine line between cost and quality. You want your product to be of a high quality standard. That is when you earn those 5 star reviews and start beating your competitors by selling the better product. Equally, this doesn’t mean you should spend an arm and a leg on manufacturing and shipping.
Make sure you go for the happy medium. Don’t go for the highest quality product that will barely make a difference to your overall product experience that will cost you three times the price to make. That doesn’t mean to say, go for the cheapest material for the cheapest price and make a flimsy product. Common sense and aiming for a quality product, with affordable manufacturing costs, is the one.
Even though you’re an Amazon seller, you’re running a business here. Don’t forget that. Any pennies saved is a bonus, but like I said, don’t skimp on everything to save a buck or two. Screw your business thinking cap on. Ask for several quotes on everything. You’ll soon easily identify the price you should be paying.
Here I explain how to find a supplier on Alibaba in just 60 seconds!
Step 4 – MARKET, MARKET and MARKET Your Product!
One of the best bits of advice I can give you, to really give your product that OOMPH, is to market the hell out of it.
How you market your product, is essentially how your customer will see your product. So, you want it to look as awesome as possible, right?
Create a Great Product Listing
The first step in this process, being your product listing.
It is SO important to spend time perfecting and really optimizing your listing, to ensure you convert as many of those views into sales as possible.
This stems from the title, bullet points, description, product photos to Enhanced Brand Content.
Consider Your Top Keywords
Adding the right keywords to your title, description and bullet points is the first thing to do here. This will make sure your product is appears in the most popular searches, whether that’s short or long tail keywords.
The easiest way to do this? Use Keyword Scout and look at the keywords your immediate competitors are targeting. It seriously could not be any easier. Simply grab the ASIN from your main competitor, plug it into Keyword Scout and BOOM. There you go. All the keywords associated with that product are listed right before your eyes. Now you know exactly what to target, without any second guessing.
FIND THE BEST KEYWORDS ON AMAZON IN 2018
Get Great Photos
Your product photography will also play a huge part in the selling of your product. We humans are visual creatures. We like pretty things. So make your product visually appealing and really sell it using good product photography.
This can be pretty easy by hiring an experienced Amazon photographer. This will take a ton of stress off your hands as you’ll know a professional will know exactly what rules they have to abide by to meet Amazon’s strict image requirements. Finding a photographer of this calibre is not as hard as you may think.
The Jungle Market is FULL of experienced Amazon freelancers, including photographers, graphic designers, listing optimization and PPC experts to name just a few. Not only do they have Amazon experience, all of the freelancers on Jungle Market are vetted before they are allowed to advertise their services, as we want only the best of the best for you lovely lot.
Another option to go for, if you chose to not use a professional, is to do your own product photography. While this isn’t the option I would go for if given the choice, I do understand that sometimes you want or need to save a few pennies to send elsewhere.
Now, DIY Product photography IS possible. I show you exactly how to achieve a professional looking shoot for your product in easy to follow steps in this video, both for lifestyle and product images!
Test Everything
Finally, be open to testing and running promotions on your listing. Doing this, is a sure fire way to boot your BSR rating. You want your product on the front page, right? Well running promotions to boost your sales number is a great way to achieve this. So, always be open to running a giveaway or a promotion to bag those sales and watch your listing climb the sales rank!
PPC campaigns are another fantastic way of boosting your sales, which all contributes towards that ever important BSR rank. Now, I’m not going to lie, but PPC campaigns are a whole new kettle of fish, so I’m going to leave this to the expert Greg to tell you exactly how to utilise this awesome strategy.
FINALLY, split test your listing! You seriously cannot go wrong here. Split testing is essentially creating two versions of your listing, be that different images, titles targeting different keywords ect. It will truly surprise you when you see the results of a split test. There have been so many times when I have been certain that a specific title or main image would win, when in fact, it did not perform well at all!
So utilise Split Testing as much as you possibly can, it really will make a difference and earn you that extra bit of profit!
STEP 5 – Be the Person YOU Would Want to Buy From
Having worked in customer support roles for the past six years, I am all about the customer experience. This should be the same for you, as it greatly improves the chance of customer return and positive feedback.
Now, I know that using Amazon FBA means that Amazon deals with the customer support for you, which is a HUGE advantage in my personal opinion, but you can also contribute to this to really make sure your customers end up happy campers.
Follow Up With Your Customers
Make sure your customers always know what is going on with their orders. Let them know you have received their order, when it is being processed and when it has been dispatched. Not only does this keep any impatient customers happy, but it also builds rapport with them and makes them feel involved with the whole process.
Not only should you keep your customers up to date before they receive their order, but following up with an email after it has been delivered is also a fab way to help avoid any negative feedback on your listing.
By simply sending out a “Thank You” email and asking if there is anything you could do to improve future experiences is a sure fire way to make sure customers forward their negative responses to you directly, rather than leaving them on your product listing. This also shows you care about their experiences which will encourage the customer to buy from you again!
Staying in touch with your customers is a fantastic way to keep your positive reviews flowing and returning customers. This means sending emails at the correct times, so you don’t BOMBARD or SPAM them, as nobody wants that! Make sure each email has a purpose and you are not sending it for the sake of staying in touch.
Want to know know all there is about email campaigns and how to use them to their full potential?
STEP 6 – Look After Your Amazon Seller Business (And Your Business Will Look After You)
This sounds like a given, right? But it really is true.
Know That Bad Things Happen (But You Will Perservere!)
First of all, launching your first product will be the hardest one, so don’t feel disheartened if you experience a few hiccups along the way. This is your first time, you’re learning. Don’t beat yourself up about it. Any mistakes or glitches will be avoided next time round.
So with that in mind, once you have everything set up, your product launched and it has started to sell, you’ll be happy to learn the hard work is mostly over. Note, I say MOSTLY.
I say this because the hard work of finding suppliers, a product and registering/listing always tends to be the gruelling part of the process.
Reward Yourself
So right now, let’s take a moment to congratulate you on getting through the HARD part. Give yourself a pat on the back! You’ve done it. Let’s keep this train heading full speed ahead and look at how we continue and grow this success.
Now, it’s up to you whether you decide to broaden your online business and launch new products. It’s better to start slow and build up to that though. Have your first product, get to grips with things, let it excel, earn some profit and then build your online empire.
Think to the Future (Know When to Expand)
Well, the best way to calculate this is by knowing your business financials backwards. Where your business is thriving and where you can improve is crucial. You then know what you can spend and where you can save.
You can see your sales forecast in Seller Central, where you’ll see all the information you should need to calculate inventory orders for example. The last thing you want is to order too much or too little stock. Either way, you’ll be losing out. So making sure you get that order figure right is a must.
This is where I’ll be a negative Nancy and say I really dislike Seller Central. I find it too “all over the place” and not overly easy to find the numbers I need. And the spreadsheets, ergh. I’m no math guru by any means but you really do not need to be to run an online business despite popular belief.
Having a tool that takes half the stress away of any financials is a winner in my book. Equally, I know people who LOVE this stuff, so each to their own. But any help in the finance department and I’m there. Remember, there is no harm in relying on tools to help you out here. If it makes the job easier, why not?! Make this whole Amazon journey as easy and stress free as possible. Freeing yourself from the everyday, 9-5 stress is part of the beauty of being your own boss!
TRY OUT FETCHER AND FORECASTLY TODAY TO SEE HOW EASY IT IS TO DETERMINE STOCK LEVELS AND KEEP ON TOP OF YOUR FINANCES EASILY AND RELIABLY
STEP 7 – Keep at it
Once you have it all down and your product is selling nicely and you’ve go your head around things, then you’ll probably only need a few hours a week to run a one product business. Then, like I said above, you can expand to an online shop, sell multiple products or have multiple online shops, the Amazon world is your oyster!
This is where the success really happens, by keeping at it. Don’t let that determination and perseverance that got you this far slip. I know, easier said than done right? And there will be days that will test you. Not every day is dancing unicorns and Amazon rainbows, but it all really is worth it all in the end.
So don’t ever get lazy and sit back thinking “My work is done here”. KEEP AT IT. If you successfully launch your first product, then do it again and if that works out, do another! Just think, did Steve Jobs think, “Ah, that iPhone idea did well didn’t it? Let’s leave it at that.” No! Build your success and grow. Don’t ever give yourself that chance to be able to look back on yourself in a years time and think, “Damn, I should have done that”. There is no time like the present and you only live once. So go out there, launch your products, be successful, live the dream and do not be your own excuse.
Work hard and and be the success you always dreamt of.
Go get ‘em.
Frost, out.