Vendor District follows a holistic approach to managing Amazon stores efficiently, optimizing product listing, store creation, proper categorization or listing of products, order processing, customer support, and inventory management. Our specialists upload all products and related specifications according to the guidelines established by Amazon and the product search algorithm.
Steps to FBA Success!
New to Amazon FBA? Don’t worry, we have you covered. Just follow these steps and you will be off to a great start!
Choose the right marketplace
First find out which marketplace will be suitable for you. It depends on the amount of investment in hand, market competition, shipping obstacles and language barrier. Not every marketplace is profitable for every Amazon FBA seller. It’s fruitful to understand the variation in marketplaces to make the right decision about where to sell.
Find the Right Product
Let’s face it. It not the 1900s anymore. You can’t just pick up anything and start selling it. Egrow provides the most accurate data on Amazon products for the convenience of the seller. Instead of wasting your money on flukes, make calculated decisions about what’s trending in the market. What are people searching for? What will sell with minimal effort?
Pro Tip – Think like a businessperson
If you are partial to a certain product or niche, but there is clear evidence for you to stay away from it i.e. low search volume of the product or a highly competitive niche, don’t spend your resources on it. Always remember, Amazon FBA is a business and in business, you have to listen to your mind.
Select a Suitable Niche
A few sellers start their FBA journey with a pre-selected niche in which they want to build their brand. Some niches are extremely tough to get into and demand ludicrous amount of cash, whereas some are welcoming for new sellers.
Some niches are within the “Gated Categories” which require certifications and a small fee to be paid to Amazon to allow the seller to sell in those categories. Generally, the following categories and products require approval.
Video, DVD, & Blu-ray
*Categories vary from one marketplace to another. Please visit the Amazon website relating to your selected marketplace to get more details about what you can sell.
Setup your Amazon Seller Central Account
This is your “Control Panel. With this, you’ll operate your Amazon FBA business. Due to its high importance, Amazon requires a lot of information for its creation.
Amazon Seller Central Sub-checklist
1) Business Information Your legal business name, address and contact information.
2) Email Address A separate dedicated email address to corroborate with Amazon and in the future,
possibly with your customers.
3) Credit Card An Internationally chargeable credit card with a valid billing address.
4) Phone Number A phone number where you can be reached during this registration process. Also, have your phone nearby during registration.
5) Tax ID Your tax identity information, including your Social Security number or your company’s Federal Tax ID number. To submit your tax identity information, the registration process will take a brief detour to a “1099-K Tax Document Interview”
6) State Tax ID State tax ID information for states in which you have tax nexus. This physical presence is typically impacted by company offices, warehouses/3PLs, and call centers. In June 2018, the US Supreme
Court changed the law regarding the responsibility that commerce sellers have to remit sales tax for online purchases.
“It’s highly recommended for sellers to consult their tax attorneys or tax accountants to get insights into
this matter.”
Choosing the Seller Plan
Amazon offers 2 selling plans:
1) Individual Selling Plan – Free
2) Professional Selling Plan – $39.99 Per Month
– Individual Selling Plan is for sellers who expect to sell less than 40 units each month.
– Professional Selling Plan is for sellers who are confident that they’ll sell more than 40 units each month.
– Professional Selling Plan comes with a lot of features for the sellers with are unavailable to the sellers with the Individual Selling Plan.
Create a Dummy Listing
Just got your AMZ Seller Central account and thinking about ordering your 1st shipment? Hold your horses. Set up a dummy listing in your selected category with generic images of your product. This small task will:
1) Confirm whether you category is gated or not. If gated, you will need to ungate the category before you can sell.
2) Make sure that the product is NOT patented. There are 2 types of Patent.
– Design Patent
– Utility Patent
This small deed alone can save thousands of dollars because you won’t be able to sell your product even if you spend all your money on manufacturing and shipping, only to find out that the product was patented beforehand. Your Product Listing will be “Put-On Hold” and your account will be suspended.
Source Some Samples
After passing the patent check, try to find a manufacturer who can fulfill your demands in the shortest time with the highest quality.
You can search for a manufacturer on these platforms:
Choose the manufacturers based on their ratings, reviews and order completion. Order one sample from the manufacturers you have chosen and your competitor’s manufacturer. Pick the one with the highest quality and lowest prices.
Prepare a Launching and Ranking Strategy
This is the most crucial part of Amazon FBA for every seller. Unless you invent a product, you’ll compete with thousands of sellers all selling the same product.
Launching. – You just started selling on Amazon? So what? There are thousands of sellers, selling the same product as yours. Launching involves how you’ll introduce your product on Amazon to stand out from the competition.
Ranking – Almost no one goes past the third page of Amazon. The sellers who are in the 1st place dominate the market and drive the most conversions. Reaching the top spots of the 1st page is a race in which every seller is a participant. Ranking involves how to improve the visibility of your product by promoting it to the 1st page of Amazon. There are many ways to launch and rank your product. Each with its own merits and demerits.
Get ready to setup PPC Campaigns
Initially, no matter what you are selling, you need to create a daily budget for PPC. You should find and target the right keywords relating to your product. To find out the keywords you can rank your product for, simply use Egrow’s Reverse ASIN Tool to hunt your competitor’s keywords. Amazon’s algorithm improves the ranking of the product manyfold with effective PPC Campaigns.
Register as a Brand and get a trademark
Would you mind if you put in all the effort to sell on Amazon but some unethical hijacker starts to mooch off your work? If yes then register yourself as a brand and get a trademark. This will ensure that no one will steal your sales along with creating your individual identity in the market. Imagine Nike or Adidas, if they hadn’t registered as brands and hadn’t gotten a trademark.
Prepare an External Traffic Source
Want to improve your sales even more? Set up a Facebook Ad campaign and direct traffic from it to your product listing. You will be surprised to see the reach you get this way. This won’t be as easy as it seems because there is a high chance of violating Amazon’s To with this technique.
Offer Discounts to Slash the Competition
By now, potential customers will be visiting your product listing. Give them another reason to buy i.e. “Discounts. Surveys show that people tend to buy more when products are discounted.
Sell with Selling Specials
A seller can employ a variety of tactics to improve sales even more. Tactics like:
Go through the Information in Seller Central
Amazon Seller Central contains updates about inventory reports, current sales promotions and much more. You can benefit enormously from the knowledge in these files.
Constantly Analyze your Metrics
What’s in-demand today might not be tomorrow. Are you sure you will still be turning profit 3 months from now? Is the market changing or only you are not getting your piece of the pie? Look closely into the market details to answer these questions. You can’t run a business without having a clue. Metrics will give you the insights and the vision you need.
Don’t get over excited
A lot of people become overexcited as soon as they start getting a few sales. They start spending more than they are earning at that moment. Egrow suggests that new sellers bel patient and recover their initial investment first. After the Launch of the product, there is a stabilization period of 5-6 months in which the organic orders start flooding in and the expenses begin to drop. Then and only then, it is suggested to start spending your hard earned cash.
Always remain updated
Amazon is an ecosystem which is thriving and constantly evolving. Egrow understands this and is coming up with new courses, checklists, guides and E-books for the ease and understanding of the worthy users. All the latest authentic tips and tricks are being conveyed and will continue to be conveyed to the Egrow community.