Small and medium businesses sell 4,000 items on Amazon every minute. Whether you already have an established brand or you are just getting started, selling on Amazon can be a great way to boost your sales. This guide will walk you through how to sell products on Amazon.
How To Sell Products on Amazon: Register for an Account
The first thing you need to do is register for an Amazon seller’s account. Amazon offers two selling plans. The Individual plan costs $0.99 per sale. The Professional plan is $39.99 per month. Amazon recommends the Professional plan for sellers who sell 40 or more items every month. However, if you change your mind, you can change plans whenever you want. To complete your registration, you need several pieces of information:
- Bank account and routing number
- Credit card
- Tax information
- Phone number
- Government-issued national ID
How To Sell Products on Amazon: Familiarize Yourself With Seller Central and the Mobile App
The next part of learning how to sell products on Amazon is to familiarize yourself with Seller Central. This is where you manage your selling account on Amazon. You can perform a variety of tasks through the Seller Central portal:
- List your products
- Add product information
- Track your inventory and update your listings
- Manage payments
- Download business reports and bookmark templates
- Contact support
- Access customer metrics tools
- Track daily sales
You can also download the Amazon Seller App in the Apple App Store or Google Play. Use the app to fulfill orders, track sales, locate products to sell, respond to customers, create listings, and take and edit product photos.
How To Sell Products on Amazon: List Your First Product
Learning how to list your products is the next critical step in learning how to sell products on Amazon. If someone is already selling the same product you want to sell, you can match that listing. If you are the first seller of a particular product, you can create your own listing. If you signed up for the Professional seller account, you can list your products in large batches by using a third-party bulk uploading tool. If you are using the Individual plan, you need to upload your listings one at a time.
You need some specific information about your product to complete your listing:
- Global Trade Item Number, such as a UPC, ISBN or EAN
- Product title
- SKU
- Product description and bullet points
- Search terms and relevant keywords
- Product images
To increase your chances of making sales, include descriptive titles, high-quality images and concise feature bullets in your listings.
How To Sell Products on Amazon: Check for Common Errors
There are a few errors that new sellers often make that can impact their sales success. Be sure to check for these common mistakes before you make your listings live.
Variations Listed Incorrectly
Learning which products should be listed as variations of the same product is another important step in learning how to sell products on Amazon. If you are selling products that only differ from each other in color, size, scent or some other factor, you should list them as variations of one product, instead of separate listings.
However, if the products are different enough from each other that most customers would not expect to find them on the same page, list them as separate product listings.
Images Don’t Meet Amazon Requirements
Amazon requires images to be at least 500 x 500 pixels and set against a plain white background. The product should take up at least 80% of the image area.
Product IDs Don’t Meet Amazon Requirements
Amazon requires that your product IDs meet the requirements for UPCs and GTINs. Keep your IDs consistent across product listings.
How To Sell Products on Amazon: Review Product Detail Pages
Learning how to create compelling product detail pages is one of the most important parts of learning how to sell products on Amazon. The product detail page is the place customers view products sold on Amazon. If you are selling products that other sellers are also selling on Amazon, the data from your listing will be combined into one product detail page with all of the other sellers’ data.
You can propose product information on your detail page. You can also request that Amazon review a product detail page that you believe contains incorrect information. When building your product detail pages, include information that you think will make your listings easier to find, answer customer questions and motivate customers to make a purchase.
How To Sell Products on Amazon: Select a Fulfillment Option
There are two ways you can ship your products to customers. You can ship everything yourself with the merchant-fulfillment option or let Amazon take care of packing, shipping and labeling your products by using Fulfillment by Amazon.
Merchant-Fulfillment
If you choose this option, you store, pack, label and ship your products yourself. Amazon bills customers a shipping rate based on the type of product and shipping method selected and then provides the amount collected to you as a shipping credit on your account.
If you are on the Individual plan, Amazon uses a standard shipping rate for all products, based on the product category, so an important part of learning how to sell products on Amazon is to familiarize yourself with the shipping rates and adjust your product prices accordingly to ensure you are hitting your profit goals.
Fulfillment by Amazon
With this option, Amazon stores your products in one of its fulfillment centers. In addition to handling the packing, labeling and shipping for you, Amazon also handles returns and customer service. Fulfilled by Amazon products are automatically eligible for free Super Saver Shipping and Amazon Prime. Using this option is a four-step process:
- Ship your products to Amazon.
- Amazon packs and ships orders.
- Amazon processes customer payments and pays you once every 14 days.
- Returns, questions and refunds are processed by Amazon customer service.
How To Sell Products on Amazon: Grow Your Business
Once you have the basics of selling down, you can focus on growing your brand. Amazon offers a variety of tools to help you with this process.
Performance Metrics
Performance metrics help you learn how to sell products on Amazon successfully. Amazon judges seller performance by three key metrics:
- Order defect rate below 1%
- Late shipment rate below 4%
- Pre-fulfillment cancel rate below 2.5%
You can monitor your performance through the Seller Central portal.
Advertising
Amazon offers three advertising options that you can access through Seller Central.
1. Sponsored Products
These are ads for individual products that appear on search results pages and product detail pages. These ads are visible to customers who are searching for or browsing similar products.
2. Sponsored Brands
These are search result ads that highlight your brand. These ads display your brand logo, a headline of your choice and up to three of your products.
3. Amazon Stores
Amazon stores are like your own individual shopping space on Amazon. Setting up an Amazon store allows you to share more information about your brand with your customers and group all of your product offerings together in one place.
Promotions and Coupons
Coupons encourage customers to make purchases. You can offer four types of coupons through Amazon:
- Free shipping
- Money off
- Buy one get one free
- Percentage off
International Sales
Once you are confident that you understand how to sell products on Amazon, you may want to expand your business globally. Amazon can help you do this with its Amazon Global Selling program. Through this program, you can list and sell your products on any of Amazon’s international online stores.
Tips for Growing Your Brand
Establishing good selling practices from the start builds a strong foundation to grow your business. These tips can help keep you on track:
- Monitor your account health in Seller Central
- Utilize Amazon’s advertising and promotional tools
- Use Seller Fulfilled Prime or Fulfillment by Amazon
- Create enhanced brand content by enrolling in Brand Registry
- Expand your product offers by adding more listings
- Use Amazon’s Automatic Pricing Tool in Seller Central
How To Sell Products on Amazon: Utilize Brand Owner Tools
Selling on Amazon isn’t just about how to sell products on Amazon. You also need to build your brand. Amazon Brand Registry makes it easier to manage your brand’s product listings. It also gives you access to an exclusive set of tools to promote your brand and protect your intellectual property. You need three things to enroll:
- Active registered trademark for your brand that appears on your products or packaging
- Amazon Brand Registry account
- Ability to verify that you own the rights to your trademark
Amazon offers 10 tools that are only available to sellers who are brand owners. These tools can help customers discover your products, protect your intellectual property and increase conversion rates.
1. Manage Your Experiments
This tool helps you determine which product content gets the best results by running experiments that compare the success rates of different content types.
2. Virtual Bundles
This tool helps you sell more products by bundling them together without packaging them together. It is only available for Fulfilled by Amazon items.
3. Video Upload & Manage
According to Amazon, customers who view videos are 3.6 times more likely to make a purchase. This tool helps you upload and manage videos on your listings.
4. Customer Reviews
Amazon data indicates that having at least one review on a product can increase sales by 3.5 times. Learning how to get and respond to customer reviews is a critical component of learning how to sell products on Amazon. The customer reviews tool helps you read, manage and respond to customer reviews.
5. Amazon Attribution
This tool helps you assess how effective your off-Amazon advertising campaigns are. The data from this tool can help you boost sales by optimizing your marketing efforts.
6. Brand Analytics
This tool gives you access to Amazon’s largest aggregated data reports. You receive information on search terms, market basket analysis, repeat purchase behavior, alternate purchase behavior, demographics and item comparison.
7. Brand Dashboard
Your brand dashboard is the place to monitor the overall health of your brand. It offers you conversion recommendations and suggests the best actions to take to improve traffic.
8. Amazon Live
Amazon Live is a great opportunity to build customer engagement by offering shoppable live stream content.
9. Transparency
Unintentionally purchasing counterfeit products is a major concern for many Amazon customers. This tool helps authenticate products and prevent customers from receiving counterfeits.
10. Brand Registry
This tool helps you protect your intellectual property with powerful search tools, accurate brand representation and proactive brand protection.
How To Sell Products on Amazon: Build Your Amazon Store
Amazon stores allow you to have your own customized dedicated space on Amazon. According to Amazon, 45% of customers who visit a Store will come back again, and since Amazon Stores are included in your Brand Registery membership, there is no reason not to utilize them as you learn how to sell products on Amazon. You don’t need any coding knowledge to build your Store, because everything is done using drag-and-drop tiles or templates.
When you set up your store, you get your own unique Amazon URL that you can use in your marketing efforts outside of Amazon. Additionally, the Stores insights dashboard provides you with data about your visits, sales, traffic and page views that can help you fine-tune your selling strategies.
Getting started is a three-step process:
- Build pages for your products and categories using drag-and-drop tiles or templates
- Add text, videos and images to illustrate your brand story and demonstrate how your products can help customers
- Submit your Store to Amazon for review.
Amazon’s self-service Store builder is available in the advertising console.
How To Sell Products on Amazon: Enlist the Click Fluency Team
Figuring out how to sell products on Amazon may seem overwhelming when you are first getting started. However, Amazon offers many helpful guides to walk you through the process. Once you are ready to take your Amazon sales to the next level, contact the team at Click Fluency. We can help you optimize your Amazon account, expand your brand name, design your advertising campaigns and more.
Sources:
https://clickfluency.com/amazon-advertising-services/
https://sell.amazon.com/beginners-guide.html
https://sell.amazon.com/brands.html?ref_=sdus_soa_beginners_brands_dyk
https://advertising.amazon.com/library/guides/getting-started-with-stores?ref_=a20m_us_p_st_lbr_gs
https://www.oberlo.com/blog/amazon-statistics