Millions of people across the world use Amazon’s online marketplace and global distribution network to sell products. Every day, thousands of people open Amazon accounts to begin trading online, but many don’t take a few simple steps that can help them find success straight away.
Before you rush into selling on Amazon, take a look at these six things that you need to do before you start making your first sales.
Before you start selling products yourself, before you even open an account, you should take a long hard look at the Amazon sites you want to trade on.
You may already have products to sell in mind, so you should search for these goods to see what prices the products are being sold at. Amazon can be a very competitive market on price, and as a new seller, you are going to have to do some research to find a competitive price point and generate sales.
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When you are looking at the marketplace for product prices, this will also help you identify your competitors. By checking their pages, and most importantly their reviews, you can find opportunities that may help you challenge your competitors.
Their customers may be unhappy with their customer service or packaging, for instance. Information and communication are two important components of selling on Amazon, and customers often feel more comfortable buying from a seller who displays clear and concise information and responds quickly to questions. If you can’t beat the competition on price, you can still beat them on service.
When you have a good perspective on the market, and you know which products you are going to sell and have supplies ready, it is time to open an account.
Before you begin you should decide what type of account you want to open. There are seller and affiliate accounts available. There are a lot of reasons why a seller is different than an affiliate, but affiliate or Professional Seller accounts charge a monthly fee and are aimed at businesses that expect a high-volume of sales. Individual seller accounts charge a flat rate per sale, which suits low-volume sellers and small businesses starting up.
Once you’ve opened your account, you will be tempted to start selling straight away, but there are some things you need to do first.
Make sure all the details you have entered in the registration process are correct, particularly your payment and correspondence details. It is also important that you make sure any details related to local taxes or Value-Added Taxes are completed before you begin selling products.
You should also change your display name and the name of your Amazon Storefront to your ‘trading name’. This doesn’t have to be the same as any legal business name. Make sure you check your returns information is accurate, so you can deal quickly with any customer returns.
A final step before you start listing products is to check your email preferences. When you begin trading, lots of emails will come from Amazon and its customers, so make sure they are going to the right accounts.
Listing products on Amazon is easy. Manually adding products through Amazon Seller Central is a simple and straightforward process. With Amazon’s listing wizard, you can copy existing listings as a template if you want, and then decide how to layout your product information.
There are options to explore when it comes to listing your products. You can bulk upload products, rather than list each individually, and you can use product feed software to manage and schedule your listings.
Content is king on the internet, so try to make your listing content is as good as possible. Using high-quality and professional-looking pictures of products is essential on Amazon Marketplace.
Amazon recommends using pictures that are 1000x1000 pixels to look best on their site, and that 5-6 different images are about the right amount. Many sellers provide 2-3 of their products at different angles and another 2-3 that highlight color options, selling points or display product dimensions.
Clear, concise, and relevant information should be carefully checked for typos and grammatical errors, and you should use bullet points when listing product features.
With some simple preparation, you can hit the ground running on Amazon and start selling products quickly.
