Third-party sellers account for more than half of Amazon’s total sales. They make up 58 percent of its sales, generating approximately $160 billion in annual sales for 2019.
Building trust with customers takes a lot of work but selling on Amazon lets you leverage the trust they already have.
Let us look at how to sell on Amazon so you can reach their massive audience with your products as well.
Why Sell on Amazon?
Amazon is one of the most recognized brands on the internet. Customers trust them and it’s one of the first places many people go when they need to buy something.
Selling on Amazon lets you piggyback on their reputation. Your products show up in the search results and if you use Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) you do not even need to worry about shipping and handling.
Amazon takes care of it through its powerful shipping infrastructure.
Costs to Get Started
The costs to get started on the Amazon Marketplace are surprisingly low. They are practically nothing compared to starting a business almost anywhere else.
There are two options for selling accounts — Individual and Professional.
Individual accounts pay a $0.99 fee per item sold. This option does not make sense for most businesses since the Professional account is $39.99 per month. Unless you sell fewer than 40 products each month, you’ll pay more with the Individual option.
Finding Products to Sell on Amazon
There are two important factors in finding the right products to sell on Amazon:
Market research
Product sourcing
Researching your market to find products that sell well should be your first step. If you stock up on a product you think is going to sell and it turns out you are mistaken, you could end up with a bunch of unsellable inventories.
Rockit Seller’s AIM tool will help you uncover those profitable products from Amazon’s marketplace, so you know they are going to sell.
Once you have a product in mind, if you do not already have a source for it, you can use websites like Alibaba and ThomasNet to find wholesale distributors.
How to Create an Amazon Product Listing
Step by step selling on Amazon includes the following things:
Writing copy for your product
Adding images
Optimizing your product listing
Getting reviews and ratings
You should keep all four of these in mind for every product you add to the marketplace.
Writing Copy for Your Product
Copywriting is a helpful skill for creating your product listings. The product copy includes the name of the product, the description, and any specifications you need to include.
Your product name is like the headline on an ad. It needs to grab people’s attention and make them want to click on your product in the search results.
And once they click on your product, the description needs to hold their attention and tell them how your product is the solution to all their problems. Tell them a story with your copy, no matter how mundane your product might be.
Good Photography Is Critical
They say you should never judge a book by its cover, but many people do exactly that, especially on the internet. There is no way to pick up a product to give it a closer look, so those product images are the only thing they must work with.
Your product images need to stand out from the rest of the products in the search results if you want people to click on them. Make sure they are clear and well-lit with a good look at your product.
Take pictures from different angles if it makes sense and include them all in your listing. This lets people take a closer look even though they cannot physically handle it.
Optimizing Your Product Listing
In some ways, Amazon’s most useful feature is its search engine. Most people who go there to buy something end up searching for it.
Similar to getting your web pages ranked in the Google results, good SEO techniques will help your products show up at the top of the Amazon search results.
Include keywords that people would search for to find your product in the title and description. Use attention-grabbing images that will get people to click on them more often. The more clicks your products get in the search results, the higher they will rank.
There are 6 factors that you should focus on optimizing in your listings:
Title
Images
Key features
Product description
Amazon reviews
Rating
Pricing your product is important as well. If your price is too high, nobody will buy your product and if it is too low, you will not generate much profit.
Do not Forget Customer Service
You do not have direct control over the optimization in your reviews and ratings since those are up to your buyers to provide. But you do have control over their experience.
And the better their experience, the better your reviews and ratings.
The best advice for how to get feedback on Amazon is to follow up with them after their purchase to make sure they are happy. If they have any problems, deal with them quickly and without complaint.
Ask them to rate and review your products as well. People are more likely to review something when they are unhappy than when they are satisfied so asking happy customers to do you that favor will help boost your positive reviews.
Respond to product questions on your listings as well. If one person asks a question, chances are others have the same one. You can also take those questions and update your product descriptions to answer them up front.
This is a good way to improve your Amazon SEO as well since you will be adding more keywords and content that’s directly related to what people are looking for.