Amazon is one of the largest and oldest online marketplaces. It’s the go-to place for many people to do their online shopping. If you’re thinking of starting a business selling products, Amazon could be the perfect platform to do it through.
But just what does it take to sell products through Amazon? Where do you start? This post provides a step-by-step guide of how to begin selling products through Amazon and how to stand out among other sellers.
Decide your product
The first step is working out what product you’re going to sell. You could sell handmade products using Amazon Handmade. You can design and mass produce a product to sell through Amazon. Or you can sell other company’s products – acting as a wholesaler or a retailer.
Your product does not have to be unique – you’ll find many examples of the same product on Amazon being listed by various different sellers – however, your brand and your listing will have to be unique. Choosing a unique product could of course improve your chances of securing sales. That is, a) providing there is a demand for it, and b) you market it well. It’s best to choose a range of products that you are passionate and knowledgeable about.
Create a seller account
Once you’ve decided upon a product, you then need to set up a Seller Central account.
First you need to choose your account plan: Amazon offers an Individual plan where you are paid a small fee per sale (a good option if you’re not going to be selling products frequently) or a Professional plan where you where you pay a monthly fee regardless of how much you sell (a better option if you’re planning on selling lots of products each month).
Once you’ve picked your plan, you then need to fill in all your seller information and adjust your account settings. You can do all this via Amazon’s website or via the Amazon Seller app. Come up with a brand name and consider enrolling it in Amazon Brand Registry to help protect your brand (this service is free).
Understand selling requirements
Products must meet certain requirements to be legally sold through Amazon. These requirements largely revolve around product safety – you can check out Amazon’s Product Compliance page for more detailed information.
While you can handle fulfilment yourself, many Amazon sellers choose to use the Fulfilment By Amazon (FBA) service. Amazon will then take care of the shipping process for you and Prime customers will get free and fast delivery, which could help to increase sales. You will however need to make sure that your product meets FBA prep requirements. An Amazon FBA prep centre can be outsourced to take care of this prep work.
Set your price
Setting a price is one of the most important steps when selling on Amazon. You need to make sure that your product is profitable, which means taking into account all the outgoing costs of your business. At the same time, you need to compete with competitor prices, which means doing some competitor analysis.
This is where having a unique product can be beneficial, as you don’t have to worry so much about competitor pricing (although you should still keep tabs on prices of similar products being listed). Amazon’s Dynamic Pricing tool is very popular and allows you to automatically adjust the price based on certain parameters such as competitor price changes, time of year and demand. You can read more about Dynamic Pricing.
Use high quality photos
How many sales you get can be influenced heavily by the quality of the product photos attached to your listing. It’s important to use unique and high quality photos. This requires hiring a professional product photographer.
If you’re selling third-party products, you may be provided with photos to use. However, it can still be beneficial to take your own photos to stand out from other sellers who may be selling the same product. When photographing your inventory, try to maintain a sense of consistency by using the same background, lighting and angles.
Customers are typically more likely to buy a product if multiple photos from different angles are provided. You could even consider providing a 360 degree product photo, allowing customers to virtually rotate your product (there are photographers that can create these photos for you using specialist equipment).
Optimise your product listing description
The keywords that you include in your product listing description can influence how easy your product is to search for. It’s important to therefore think carefully about the wording and to use all the types of keywords that you think potential buyers will be using. There are Amazon SEO guides online that you can read to help you create listings, or you can hire an Amazon SEO service to write listings for you.
On top of being SEO-focused, your listings also need to be detailed and professional enough to win over the trust of customers. Make sure to include all key information that a buyer is likely to look for such as measurements, allergen warnings, expiry information and safety instructions. Amazon’s A+ content feature allows you to display this text in an exciting way.
While information should be detailed, you also need to make sure it’s easy to read. This involves avoiding large walls of text and making key information easy to scan by using bullet points and subheadings.
Pay for some advertising
Pay-per-click advertising is a great tool for building some brand exposure. Amazon has its own PPC service that you can use to advertise through its platform. However, you can also set up ads using Google or Facebook, which can lead to your Amazon products listing pages when clicked on.
For your ads to be effective, it’s important to target them carefully. Spend time doing some market research to truly understand who your key demographic is. You may even be able to target different ads at different types of people (such as different ads aimed at men and women). Regularly running advertising campaigns is recommended to maintain constant exposure.