Wondering how to sell on Amazon or how to start an Amazon business can seem complex at first, but surprisingly, getting started doesn’t have to be that hard of a process. It hasn’t been uncommon to hear about the success stories of those who have made tons of money by selling products on Amazon. Now that you’re here reading this, it’s obvious that you want to get in on the action as well.
Knowing what you want to sell on Amazon and how you can sell it is a very important aspect of creating a successful Amazon business. With the right Amazon FBA tools like IO Scout and the right know-how, you’ll be well on your way to becoming a successful Amazon merchant.
With Amazon FBA (Fulfillment By Amazon) service, you and other merchants have the ability to get your products on the market without having to do much of the hustling and bustling involved in the typical process. This sounds very appealing to most, because being able to cut out a lot of the time you would normally spend on your product preparation and distribution would leave you more time to spend on other business and personal ventures.
There are other ways on how to sell on Amazon as well, such as by Amazon Vendor Central , or Amazon Seller Central . Selling products by these different ways calls for differing means of operations. Each is dependent on what type of seller you aspire to be, and can also come down to what items you would like to be selling. For beginners, selling products through Amazon's FBA service is known to be a great way to get started.
By selling through FBA, you don't need to ask a questions like: how to sell stuff on Amazon, how to sell products on Amazon - the process is fairly simple; you prepare your products, you send them to an Amazon FBA center for storage, then they take care of the rest after one of your products makes a sale. Having this service is very convenient, but this is not to say that you don’t need to be on top of your product research, profit calculations, advertising, product listing, etc. Of course, Amazon takes their share of money when they help you through this service; it isn’t free for them to operate, and it helps you boost your sales volume and become a more reputable merchant.
What is Amazon FBM?
Contrary to selling products by FBA, Amazon FBM (Fulfillment by Merchant) gives you the ability to take care of most aspects of the product preparation, sale, and delivery. This is desirable by many, since those who do FBM will not have to pay for handling and storage fees that come along with using FBA.
Amazon Seller Central and Vendor Central are two other ways you can sign up to sell products through Amazon, in addition to FBA. With these two, you are operating through Fulfillment By Merchant, because you will either be selling your products mostly on your own, or selling them in wholesale to Amazon for them to resell themselves.
Selling by Amazon FBM is not ideal for everyone, and suits certain types of merchants better than others. Some advantages to utilizing FBM include:
- Freedom Of Package Choice and Sizing
- Manage The Preparation and Delivery Yourself
- Quality Assurance per Your Own Standards
- Easy To Control Moderate Amount Of Inventory
What is Amazon FBA?
Selling privately through Amazon, you will have to deal with aspects such as product preparation, packaging design with proper parameters, where to keep your stock, and much more. Having to make decisions and deal with all of these factors on a consistent basis can eventually impede upon the growth of your business if it becomes too much, as it has in the past for many.
When selling products through Amazon FBA , merchants are granted much more freedom and ease of product delivery than many private merchants would have to deal with. Selling products through Amazon’s FBA service essentially means that you can pay to store your products with them, and have them prepare and deliver your products after your item sells online.Â
Using FBA, you can keep your products in storage at Amazon’s FBA warehouse centers, where they will be carefully stored for smooth stock movement in the future when they begin to sell. Having somewhere to keep their products is a big challenge for many merchants, but this service is a solution for many, seeing that you have the advantage of utilizing the space they have.
After you have your products prepared, as well as their listings, you can upload them to the Amazon catalog and then create the shipping plans for them to be sent to an Amazon FBA center.
How to Sell on Amazon for Beginners
How to start selling on Amazon? Selling products through FBA has been enjoyed by many merchants for its convenience for some time now. With lots of preparation and storage space needed taken off of your busy plate, you’ll have more time to spend on other important activities that improve the overall well-roundedness of your Amazon FBA business. But, some new merchants may find themselves wanting to sell products by the FBM route, and take care of most aspects themselves.
Selling through Amazon Seller Central will give you more freedom over the whole process, such as margins and price changes, and you’ll be taking care of the sales yourself. Whereas for Vendor Central, you would sell a wholesale shipment of products to Amazon for a negotiated price. With Amazon FBA, you can ship your inventory to Amazon as you please and they will ship the product for you after a sale is made.
The ability to sell products through Amazon’s FBA has left many online merchants satisfied, and this shouldn’t come as a surprise. They are selling their products on a site that has millions of visitors every day, and are able to store their products with them without having to worry about much preparation and delivery issues. As great as it sounds, FBA still isn’t an all-in-one service, and there’s still much you need to do in order to be a successful online merchant.
It’s still imperative that you stay on top of many business aspects; Amazon’s FBA service doesn’t do everything for you, they just make the product preparation, storage and delivery a whole lot easier. Business aspects such as correct product listings, proper product research, niche opportunities and more are still left up for you to spend time on.
Regardless, to get up and running with FBA is a pretty simple setup and the whole process can be broadly described as follows:
- Â Find a Niche
In order to be a successful merchant and keep your sales volume up, you’ll need a steady flow of stock, as well as retailers to get the products from. Having the knowledge of any products worth investing in will increase your chances of enhancing your sales volume to its fullest potential.
- Market Research
Very important step is to find the products to sell on Amazon , correctly. The best way is a high demand and low competition products.
- Set Up Your FBA Account
Head to amazon.com/fba to sign up for your Amazon FBA account. If you happen to have an account from prior use, you can add FBA to your account in the settings section.
- Get Products / Create Product Listings
When you’re finished signing up, it’s time to stock up on items you wish to sell, or begin to prepare the products you already have, and create product listings for them. You can add them one by one, or by bulk, into Amazon’s catalog. Many merchants capitalize on integrating their management software with Amazon’s API to easily be able to transition their product / sales data
- Product Preparation
Take time to make sure that your products are ready to be in the hands of your customer, taking into account any safety / hazardous concerns that could arise. If you need help getting started with the right materials to properly ship to Amazon, you can get their preferred prep and packaging supplies delivered to you when you get started.
- Ship Product to Amazon
After your shipping plans are created, ship the products to an FBA fulfillment center. You will receive a tracking number in order to see where your product is. The customer will receive their own tracking number when the product reaches an FBA center, if the purchase was made prior to it arriving at one.
- Customer Orders, Amazon Ships
After the fulfillment and preparation process is said and done, all that’s left for you to do is wait for your item to sell. Prime members will get their items faster than others. Other customers, on eligible orders, may receive a free shipping option.
As you can see, it’s a rather simple process to sign up with and begin selling products through Amazon’s FBA service. Selling on Amazon FBA requires a multifaceted approach. Taking the time to do correct product research and preparation will better equip you for a future in this business.
How to Find Products to Sell on Amazon
How to sell on Amazon successfully? Product research with IO Scout Amazon seller tools is the most important aspect of becoming an online merchant. Knowing your products, how well they can perform on the market, and how well other products can perform is crucial in forming a profitable sales plan. Time spent on product research can lead you to surging opportunities that you can take advantage of, as well as helping you find and settle into niches within the market.
Many companies offer resources and tools through the platforms that will help you with many of the questions and concerns you may come across and IO Scout is a great Amazon seller software for product research, sales estimating, product tracking and other tasks that sellers solve everyday. These companies offer both free and paid tools + resources that will help you become better equipped to comfortably take on the market, stay organized, and seize opportunities that present themselves.
IO Scout Amazon Seller Tools
IO Scout is both a place for long-time merchants in the business, and a place that helps out and supports the growth of young merchants. They offer an abundance of tools and resources that can give you accurate product and market information.
Throughout their list of tools, many help you to perform different functions, and to receive different kinds of data, depending on the tool you are using. To help you find new products to sell on the market, you can take advantage of IO Scout Product Database, which has information on over 120 million products listed on Amazon .
IO Scout’s product database is a great place to seek information on any product. Included with every product is data on aspects such as the products sales volume, revenue, historical price, current price changes, reviews + rankings, stock status and more. With all of this information, the decision of whether to invest in a product or not becomes much more clear!
When searching through their product database, you can apply the use of filters to better optimize your searching experience. Searching by category, price parameters, sellers rank and more can help to keep the quantity of information more compact into a precise and easy read display.
With IO Scout, you have a 5-day money back guarantee to see if you enjoy their services or not. If not, there’s no strings attached. Get IO Scout discount and save money on Amazon tools . In addition to their comprehensive paid-for tools, they also offer free tools such as their own Amazon FBA calculator, and Amazon Sales Estimator, which can give you a general idea of how well a product on the market is performing.
How IO Scout tools help Amazon Sellers
Amazon sellers are always looking for the right kind of strategy to succeed. However, they somehow see themselves doing a whole lot of heavy lifting. Now, doing it all has become a thing of the past.Â
With IO Scout, Amazon sellers can have peace of mind knowing that almost 90 percent of the heavy lifting is done for them thanks to a wide variety of tools. There are plenty of tools that IO Scout will arm you with so you can find the best products to sell, keep track of every stat possible, and be able to keep your Amazon business up and running.Â
We’ll be taking a look at a list of tools and briefly explain how they work for Amazon sellers like yourself. While you may not use all the tools available, there are tools that you may be using more than others. Let’s take a look at them now:
Amazon Chrome Extension
If you use Google Chrome as your primary web browser, you can use the IO Scout chrome extension to pull up stats like the sales and revenue of every product you’ve sold. You can even use it to determine which products are trending. From there, you can be able to select it and sell it yourself to the right market.Â
Amazon Product Research Tool
It may be hard to find a product that is a winner. But IO Scout Amazon Product Research Tool does the job for you. You can find products that are proven winners and whittle them down through certain filters. You can get the sales and revenue stats quickly. And you can see how well your competitors did with the same product. Think you can outsell them? Try it out for yourself.Â
Amazon Product Tracker
Need to find a reputable supplier? Need to know where the product is coming from? The product tracking tool will track everything from its origin to letting you know if the product reached the customer’s doorstep. You can be able to calculate fees and revenues so your have just one more stat to follow for your FBA business.Â
Amazon Keyword Tool
This tool can really help you leverage your success on Amazon. That’s because the IO Scout Amazon Keyword Tool will help you find the best keywords that are low in competition, but have a considerable number of searches each month. Simply put, you will choose a keyword that gives you a better chance of being ranked higher. You’ll be able to outmuscle your competition and be able to receive more visibility rather than be inundated by competitors who use the same saturated keywords over and over again.Â
Listing Optimization Service
Have a template for your products and descriptions? Save them so you can use them in the future. Got some keywords that you want to use? Keep them handy. The whole point of this list optimization tool is to make sure that all of your listings are well-organized and much easier to set up. That way, you can spend less time writing the copy and have more time to focus on the other parts of your business.Â
Sales Analytics
One of the most important keys to succeeding in your Amazon business is knowing what sells and knowing what doesn’t. That’s what the sales analytics tool does here. You can be able to see how many products you’ve sold, how much money you’ve earned, and determine if the product is a winner in terms of how much you’ve sold. The numbers don’t lie when they tell you how successful a product can be.Â
Inventory Management
It’s difficult to keep track of every single product you have. But lucky for you (and other Amazon sellers). You’ll know how many items you’ve sold, how much is left, and have a good idea of when you need to order some more. Now, the tricky part is keeping track of when you need to order more products since they are flying off the virtual shelves.
24/7 Customer Service
Need a Customer Service to help you keep your business running? You’ll have someone on the other end 24/7 to answer all of your questions and address your concerns. IO Scout customer service help you with their Amazon seller tools and other questions.
Things to know Before Utilizing Amazon FBA
The services offered by FBA are great and convenient, but you should be a bit aware of what you may be getting into down the road.
- Pricing Fees w/ Amazon FBA
The biggest issue concerning FBA is how much it actually costs you at the end of the day to use, and how much you’re actually taking home after fees. Included in FBA’s fees are the following costs
- Fulfillment / Stock Removal Fees
Storing your products at an Amazon FBA center will cost you about $2.41 per unit, all the way up to $137 for oversized packages / products. The fees include their cost to locate, prepare and ship the item
- Long Term Storage Fees
If you happen to hit an unlucky stretch, and you’re products sit on their shelves for over a year, you’ll be charged a rate of $6.90 per cubic foot or $0.15 per unit, whichever number is greater than the other
- Monthly Fee
When signing up for an FBA account, you will be charged $40 per month, but won’t be charged anything per customer purchase. If you don’t have the professional plan, you’ll pay a base fee of $0.99 per item, plus an additional $0.45 - $1.50
- Your Product Preparation
When you sell items through FBA, you have to properly prepare the products before sending them to an FBA center for storage. Amazon has strict guidelines on how to properly do this, and they often send packages back to merchants / notify them of their mistakes due to merchants' failure to comply with instructions.
Getting used to the details from the start is very important. When you begin the process of sending the product(s) to an FBA center, you must enter it correctly into Amazon’s database, label it properly then send it to the right warehouse, while following rules and guidelines pertaining to the product's packaging.
- More Potential Returns to Deal with
Since Amazon makes it very easy for customers to send returns, they end up experiencing them often because of the convenience. If an original customer is unhappy with their product purchase, they will likely have no problem sending the item back, asking for either a refund or a new product.
Selling through FBA, where returns are made easy, it may become common that you deal with them from time to time. This doesn’t mean you end up losing money every time, but having it happen often can begin to fill your page with bad reviews from unhappy customers. Doing everything you can to prepare correctly will help to avoid this.
Benefits that come with FBA
Selling through FBA and selling privately both have their well-justified pros and cons, but selling through FBA offers much more freedom from time spent on product preparation, delivery and anything after.
- Having a place to store your products and stock, where they will also prepare and deliver your sold products for you, is an excellent resource to have as a merchant.
- Amazon FBA’s customer support is known to be punctual and reliable. If you have any questions or concerns, they are likely to get back to you in a timely fashion.
- Amazon will take care of customer returns and inquiries for you. They have a fee for handling returns, but this could be well worth the time it ends up saving you.
- Customers will often get a quick delivery when they purchase a product through your FBA business. For your products, free shipping may be offered, and your customers will receive their products very quick, likely to leave you a positive review after it’s said and done.
- Amazon taking care of the product packaging can provide you with peace of mind in knowing that your products are being delivered to your customers in a presentable fashion.
Using FBA to sell your products is almost never a bad idea; Amazon has millions of users visiting its website every day, with millions of dollars in revenue being sent across the world continuously. It is more or less the most popular online marketplace in existence.
With your products on a popular site, coupled with good product research and a well-constructed product listing, your growth as an online merchant can potentially be never ending.
Now, you can easily try to Sell on Amazon!
Getting started with selling products on Amazon can seem like a daunting task at first, but with the IO Scout Amazon seller tools, right resources and knowledge of the market, you’ll become a profitable Amazon seller, boosting your sales volume before you know it. Whether through FBA, Seller Central, or Vendor Central, there are plenty of opportunities to exploit and take advantage of the Amazon marketplace. It’s a great place for merchants to sell their products, and will likely be for a while to come. Do you still have a question about how to sell on Amazon?
