Starting your own business? Considering Amazon? Want to know what it takes to make money on Amazon? Are you confused whether Amazon is the right platform for selling your products? Well, don’t worry anymore, for you have landed on the right page. Today, we will discuss the pros and cons of selling on Amazon and essential tips on how to start your Amazon business, even if you are a beginner.
Previously Covered…
Previously, in our blog, we underlined the entire process of starting your own Amazon business. The points we covered in our blog included how does amazon works, things you need to think about before beginning your journey, the process of selling on Amazon, Amazon seller registration, amazon business models and what exactly Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) is and how you can use it to grow your business and customer reach.
In this blog, we will try to cover the remaining parts, i.e. the pros and cons of selling online and some expert tips you would like to consider.
The Pros of Selling on Amazon
How Amazon has beautifully used our skills and products and established itself as the number one online retail platform. In fact, it has become one of the major topics for marketing case studies. And indeed, a retailer has much to gain from Amazon, the giant online shopping realm.
More Access to New Customers
Amazon takes you to where the customers are, and isn’t it the main motto of any business? Currently, online consumers are overwhelmingly using Amazon for shopping and purchases.
If your company and products do not represent on Amazon, you will be missing out on a large access to consumers and a great opportunity to improve your brand visibility and brand sensibility. FBA offers superb benefits to retailers at a reduced cost that no other e-commerce platform offers.
Definitely More Sales
With the base of more than 300 million active user accounts on Amazon and more than 170 million unique visitors per month, what else do you need to boost your revenue?
You gain immediate credibility and trust when you list your products on Amazon. This is because today most consumers prefer to buy from Amazon than from shops they haven’t heard of. Amazon promises great service and excellent quality, which has genuinely attracted and retained many shoppers into buying products from Amazon app or website.
Expand Your Business Internationally
Amazon, being the largest global buying and selling platform, makes it very easy to start selling in different markets. For instance, if you want to test if your products appeal to the global audience, you can quickly create a listing on a local Amazon, while you won’t have to think of local payment system, operations, and logistics.
Almost Nil Marketing Costs
Today the most important aspect that determines the success or failure of a business or brand is its marketing and promotional tactics. But if you are an Amazon seller, your marketing worries are sizably reduced to zero. How? Amazon is already attracting millions of shoppers to their website. Depending upon your niche, your product, and the market condition, you can seriously start selling from the first day itself.
All you have to do is curate your presence and follow the rules and regulations of Amazon selling, rest assured you will start earning despite the fierce competition.
Amazing Utility
We think this is the best reason to sell on Amazon – it has dynamic fulfillment infrastructure already in place. In simple words, all you have to do is choose Fulfilment by Amazon or FBA, relax and let Amazon do everything, from accepting orders, packing, delivering your orders to handling the returns and payments.
Amazon has over 70 fulfillment centers and over 90,000 full-time employees. These figures are for the USA alone. Just imagine how massive is their seller service regime if we take the global team in to account? FBA also eases the burden by storing your products and goods in Amazon warehouses. Through FBA, you could easily end up a much larger audience. And, if you are an Amazon Merchant, you also become eligible to choose Fulfilment by Merchant option.
The Cons of Selling on Amazon
Fierce Competition Leads to Split Loyalty
Although you get a much larger access to customers on Amazon, unfortunately, these are already Amazon customers. This means they may already have established a loyalty towards a brand in a similar niche as yours. However, this does not mean you can’t win their loyalty towards your brands; but it definitely means you won’t have all the information that can be provided via metrics.
This can make your research on buyer demographics a little more tedious.
You Have to Pay Commissions
Yes, all those goodies that include in FBA don’t come for free. You have to pay a good amount as commission for every product you sell. In Amazon, you pay a percentage of each sale. And because of this, you need to make sure your selling margins are high enough to gain sizable profit from each sale. Depending upon the listing and category, the commission fee ranges from 8% to 15%.
You May Let Your E-Commerce Site Fall Down
Dependency on Amazon can cost you a lot. Making sales is never a bad idea but you have to also think about your brand and its future. Heavily relying on Amazon sales can lead you to stop putting efforts on your website or e-commerce site and other online marketing and selling efforts.
You need something to fall back on, and therefore you have to put equal efforts on other selling platforms apart from Amazon.
7 Amazon Selling Tips You Definitely Need to Know
The Amazon marketplace has become fierce with competition and it has become tougher to make sure your items are found in the search. Use these selling tips to up your game:
1. Provide accurate product details and as much information as you can provide for optimizing If you want your customers to buy your products, you have to make sure they find them in the first place. Customers get the advantage of narrowing down their search to exact keywords, such as 2XL Red Chikankari Tops for Women. And, Amazon matches the customer to search by going through your information and details.
Include essential information like product title, description, search terms, size, color, etc.
2. Take professional product images from different angles to make customers physically see and take in your product. You should invest in a good HD camera when shooting pics for your products. Better yet, you can hire professionals to do the work for you. Keep your images fresh and up to date. Quality and professional pics easily make sellers trustworthy and reliable.
3. Try to win Buy Box. It is important for sellers who offer the same products sold by multiple sellers. In simple terms, buy box is the box on a product detail page from where customers can begin the purchasing process and add items to the shopping cart. Create unique item bundles for instance, such as 3 related mobile accessories, if you want to win Buy Box.
4. Use a unique pricing structure. If you are not selling unique items, do some research on what price the items are being sold. Having a lower price can help you win many customers and a lower priced item has more chances of showing up at the top of search results.
Use Amazon’s Low Price Match Feature to help you match the low price on the website.
5. Follow all Amazon rules; that would be the best way you can grow as a business person. Keep yourself upgraded with the latest policies and regulations. If you don’t follow the rules, your account can be penalized or you might even get suspended. Sellers that stick by the Amazon Rules always get benefited at the end of the day.
6. Don’t forget to sign-up for Fulfilment by Amazon. When selling online, three things are extremely critical – fast order processing, great packaging, and timely delivery. If you are not able to deliver orders to customers on time, you will not be able to stay in the business for long. Although you can fulfill orders by yourself, FBA has a great many benefits, which you should definitely use.
In here, Amazon fulfills the order on behalf of you, from storing products in the warehouse to packaging and selling.
7. Seek customers to leave positive reviews of your products. If not positive then at least genuine reviews. Product reviews can go either way for sellers. While great reviews can bring in more buyers, bad reviews can slower your sales.
For the most part, customers turn to these reviews for making a purchase decision. Therefore, you need to increase reviews and one of the simplest ways to do so is to ask your customers. Customer reviews have great impact and you shouldn’t take them lightly.
That’s all for now! We have essentially covered everything involving in starting an Amazon business. To keep learning more about other freelance businesses, do subscribe and follow our blogs.
