Being an Amazon seller can be a lucrative venture. When it comes to e-commerce, Amazon is the recognized king. As of 2020, Amazon’s sales grew 44.1% reaching $318.41 billion.
The platform serves as the starting point of every price check with 9 out of 10 shoppers checking out the marketplace for the best deals available. In addition, 89% of buyers agree that they are more likely to buy from Amazon than other ecommerce sites. So if you aren’t selling on Amazon, then you are losing out to your competitors who are on the platform.
But being an Amazon seller entails more than just posting products and prices. With thousands of sellers on the market, how can you make your store stand out and attract potential buyers? If you want to become a profitable Amazon seller, here is a guide to help you maximize your potential revenue.
Tips For Becoming A Profitable Amazon Seller
- Decide What You Want To Sell
- Choose Your Selling Plan
- Create A Seller Account
- Improve Your Amazon SEO
- List Your Items Correctly
- Pick The Right Niche
- Be Proactive
- Choose The Right Pricing Strategy
- Analyze Your Competition
- Test Everything
Let’s get started.
Tips For Becoming A Profitable Amazon Seller
While there is already a system in place for selling on Amazon, becoming profitable will still require hard work on your end. In order to gain huge profits as an Amazon seller, there are still a few things you have to take into consideration.
1. Decide What You Want To Sell
Before everything, you should first have an idea of the product you want to sell. Most sellers make the mistake of creating an account without knowing what they are selling. You can choose multiple products or just select items. Also, you need to determine which category your product belongs to.
While there are 650 million products on Amazon, only 1% of all products are profitable. It all boils down to choosing a product that works. Select the product hunting tools and look for products by filtering them based on the price, weight, sales reviews, keywords, and others to help you select from your chosen products.
Finding the right product to sell does not happen overnight. You need time and patience but it can become worthwhile once you find it. Identify your most profitable items by checking their sell-through rate, profit margins, and price trends. Make sure you keep a good number of these items in your inventory.
2. Choose Your Selling Plan
Once you have already identified the product you will be selling, the next step is to choose your selling plan. There are two selling plans available for you to choose from:
- Professional Plan. With a professional plan, you can sell an unlimited number of products. Monthly subscription for this plan costs $39.99/month and Amazon will collect between 0% to 20% depending on the item.
- Individual Plan. With an individual plan, there is no monthly fee but you will pay $0.99 for every item sold plus a selling fee on top of that.
If you are planning to sell just a few items, the individual plan may be the best option for you. However, if you want to sell your products continuously and gain valuable traction on the platform, you are better off with a professional plan. You can always switch selling plans in the Settings area of your seller account.
The biggest advantage of being a professional seller is the opportunity to win the Buy Box. With an individual plan, your buyers will still have to go through more steps to make a purchase. If you have a Buy Box as a professional seller, their purchases automatically go to their shopping cart. Statistics reveal that 82% of all purchases happen through the Buy Box.
3. Create A Seller Account
First things first, you need to register as an Amazon seller. It only takes a few minutes provided you have all the necessary information handy. When registering for a seller account, you need to provide the following:
- Business Email account. You should prepare this before the registration process as Amazon will email you right away after submission. Make sure your business email address is up and running before you commit to filling in your details.
- Business Details. Aside from a business email address, you will also need your business details like address, name, and contact details.
- Bank Details. If you choose to become a professional seller, you will need a credit card to cover the costs of the Amazon subscription or advertising costs. You will also need to provide the bank details for the deposit account of your Amazon funds.
- Phone Number. Amazon will get in touch with you during the registration process so make sure that your phone is on hand when they do.
- Tax Information. This will include your social security number, Federal Tax ID number, and State Tax ID information. It’s not fun to fill out these numbers but it is important.
Once your account has been verified, you are all set to become an Amazon seller. There are two ways you can create an account as a business or as an individual. If you will be a sole proprietor, you will use your social security number as your tax identification number.
The last step in creating an Amazon seller account is to provide general information about your products. But this is optional and you can skip it and fill it out at a later time. Your seller account is your passport to exploring Amazon Seller central.
4. Improve Your Amazon SEO
When it comes to product search, Amazon is also a search engine like Google. You need to make sure that your products are visible to potential buyers. Improving your Amazon SEO is important in driving more traffic to your online store. It can also increase product and brand visibility as well as boost conversion rate and sales growth.
However, ranking on Amazon is different from Google. Searches on the Amazon search engine are transactional which is why its ranking factors are only based on relevance and performance. So you should work on ranking on these two factors to increase your conversion rate and sales.
To influence your ranking factors, make sure to utilize relevant keywords on your product titles, product descriptions, and bullet points. Put relevant keywords but don’t stuff it with keywords or it will harm your search rankings on Amazon.
5. List Items Correctly
To be profitable as an Amazon seller, posting your products is not enough. You need to post it correctly. Optimizing your listing will help you reach more valuable leads who might show interest in your products. Aside from the appropriate keywords, you should include important product features that will entice and get your buyers interested in your product.
Adding high-quality images can also help attract potential customers to your online store. 75% of online shoppers rely on product photos when deciding on a potential purchase. Make your products visually appealing to really sell it. You can hire a professional Amazon photographer to shoot your products. They are well aware of the rules they need to abide by to meet Amazon’s strict image requirements.
Optimizing your product listing can help ensure that you convert as many potential buyers as possible. Search your items yourself and note how they rank compared to that of your competitors in terms of the listing description.
6. Pick The Right Niche
Okay, you have already optimized your product listing. But do you know who your products are for? When it comes to your buyers, you should have a particular niche in mind. See whether the niches you have in mind are doing well or will only eat up your investment. You have to know about trends, sales volume, and quality of competition.
You can search for a tool that shows which product niche is profitable or not. It can reduce the amount of research that you need. Check its bestseller rank, which represents the product’s sale in a certain category. The smaller the rank, the better, it means that the product is doing great and selling in their category. If there are products with low ranks in a specific niche, that means there is a great demand for the products in that niche.
Make sure that the cost and FBA fees of the products in the niche will not eat up all your profit. Look for niches with low-quality listings as you will be able to easily enter that niche by making a better listing.
7. Be Proactive
As an ecommerce seller, you need to pounce on every sales opportunity that comes your way and not just wait for it. You need to take control of the sales process instead of the other way around. By sitting back and waiting for the perfect customer to come, you could be wasting time by focusing on a potential customer who may not be a good fit for your product in the first place.
By being proactive, you can guide the pace of the sales process to deliver better customer service. Take the initiative to talk with potential customers, especially those who have shown some interest in your product. Don’t just seize opportunities, seek them out. There are many ways you can become a proactive seller.
Sending emails is a proactive approach to being an effective Amazon seller. In the case of abandoned cart emails, time is of the essence. You need to find the best time to send an abandoned cart email. According to Dynamic Yield, the most effective emails are those that are sent within the first hour of cart abandonment.
8. Choose The Right Pricing Strategy
If you’re selling expensive or inexpensive goods, then you should price them as such. Generally, you don’t want it to be 10% more expensive than other sellers but at the same time you don’t want it to be a couple of pennies less than the least expensive seller. Around 90% of ecommerce shoppers are masters of hunting for deals. Thus, you need to give them a reason to choose your store over the competition.
Setting your pricing strategy should not be done haphazardly. It should be calculated and informed and should be aligned with your business identity, and brand with financial stability in mind. Your pricing is more than just numbers. It reflects how you view and treat competitors and value your customers. For this reason, it is important to carefully plan your pricing strategy.
Setting a pricing strategy starts with an assessment of your business needs and goals. Once you have determined your requirements, do some research on your main competitors. It will also help you differentiate your business from the competition. In an industry offering the same products and services, having an effective strategy will make you stand out from the competition.
9. Analyze Your Competition
The Amazon platform is also a good place for analyzing your competitors. Type in your product on the search bar and you will see the products of your competitors as well as their rates. This will allow you to offer competitive pricing. Your pricing will have a huge impact on the purchase decisions of your shoppers and it can also convince them to buy from another seller.
The competition in Amazon is becoming more cutthroat and new players register on the platform every day. For this reason, you need to put in a lot of work in ensuring that you stay competitive on the platform. Competitor analysis will give you an idea of how you can benefit and perform on the market.
Competitor analysis also entails researching about the keywords they are ranking for. Narrow down your list to those companies that are getting good results on the platform. Find out their strengths and weaknesses and start your analysis from there.
10. Test Everything
Identifying which elements of your Amazon listing can make a difference in driving thousands of customers to your product page. It’s not all the time that your store will have a decent conversion rate but there is always room for improvement. In addition, your listing SEO may also not be ranking all the time. This is why you need to continue testing all the elements of your Amazon store.
In Amazon testing, you run variants of your product listing by collecting data over time to figure out which listing drives more conversions and sales. Testing your listings will help ensure that your customers will be happy and maintain the highest quality standards. It will help you find out your strengths and weaknesses.
Becoming a profitable Amazon seller can be a lengthy and complicated process. You cannot do everything right at the onset. You need to take testing seriously because it will help you iron out flaws and create fixes that will help you boost your sales numbers.
Becoming a profitable Amazon seller is not that easy. It takes a lot of hardwork and effort on your part. These tips will help you maximize your profits as an Amazon seller.
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airisX has a complete range of individual and complete solutions for Amazon FBA and FBM sellers. Our expertise stems from the deep ecommerce experience of our founders. This founder experience in bringing large scale Amazon businesses from 0-1 has allowed airisX to develop a very wide variety of solutions designed specifically for Amazon sellers of varying revenue ranges.
airisX builds a dedicated team for your business to optimize and streamline your Amazon seller account operations. Your Managed Services team is dedicated to your success, working only on your business to grow it in partnership with airisX. Our pricing model fully aligns your success to ours.
Need help with your Amazon store? Get in touch with us at contact@airisx.com and we will get back to you with the right solutions for your needs.