Selling products of your own, or selling products from others using Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), can be a fun and profitable experience, but it can also be very frustrating.
This short list of tips will be useful for those who are new to selling on Amazon, and hopefully, provide enough of a guide that you won’t be immediately disappointed with your first month of poor sales.
Build Your Brand Outside of Amazon
This list is in no particular order, but building your brand and being seen outside of Amazon could very well be the most important tip for new sellers.
Having your own website and social media channels will allow you to maintain more control of your brand, and give you more options in the future. Don’t just assume that Amazon will be a dominant player forever, and don’t assume that your partnership with them will remain profitable forever either.
With your own website, you will also be able to take more advantage of the Amazon Associate program. Not only will you be directing customers to your own products, but now you will also have a space to advertise other Amazon products which will then earn you a commission even if they don’t buy from you.
Read Also: How To Build A Brand Using Social Media
Reclaim Your Lost Time
This sounds like a tip that could be so general as to cover any type of business at all, but there are some specific goals you can have when it is related to Amazon and selling products on that platform.
So, in general, your goal should be to spend the least amount of time doing behind-the-scenes busy work, and more time developing new ideas that could bring your business to the next level.
More specifically, whether you’re a small-time seller or you already have a large business on Amazon, you could benefit greatly from some automated help.
The first thing you should think about is using an Amazon PPC tool which will allow you to spend more time doing what you enjoy by doing a lot of the work and optimizations for you.
Emphasize Growth Over Time
Particularly for people who are new to selling products on Amazon or just selling products anywhere for that matter, it is important to remember that growth over time should be one of your main goals.
It is much more important than starting with a big splash, which often requires a loan or other risks because making money should be a long-term strategy instead of a get-rich-quick scheme.
Selling products or services online means that tracking your growth has never been easier than it is right now. There are so many statistics that you have access to, from Amazon and elsewhere, which will show your growth or decline in more ways than just simple profits.
For example, you can track where you are in the Best Sellers Rank (BSR) for any given product, or find out which countries are enjoying your products all of a sudden and then focus more on them.
Read Also: 5 Must-have KPIs for effective sales and proficient management
Diversify Your Products and Discover More
If you have already chosen your product and you’re in too deep with it to stop now then this may not be as useful to you, but you should keep it in mind anyway.
The point of diversifying your products is fairly simple – for a start, you don’t want to rely on one product no matter how popular it is right now because that can change.
You also want your products to appeal to more people, so having more products generally creates a wider appeal.
Discovering new products to sell is also important. This often doesn’t involve inventing something new but simply finding a gap in the market. Can you sell a better quality widget than the top competitors? Or can you sell an identical or similar quality widget cheaper than them? There’s your gap.
In summary, we can see that being in the business of selling products on Amazon is a lot like any other business. However, there are also many ways in which it differs from a regular business, and it will continue to evolve quickly over time.
This is why it is important to combine the knowledge and experience you may already have in sales with new and specified knowledge coupled with tools that are made just for this job.