25 Feb
A Quick-Start Guide to Selling on Amazon – FBA Fulfillment
Have you ever encountered third-party vendors while shopping on Amazon? Contrary to popular belief, these aren’t all major retailers with huge distribution – these are 3rd party vendor’s selling on Amazon using FBA fulfillment.
It turns out that it’s possible for anybody to register as an Amazon seller and list products on the site. Furthermore, third-party vendors are often selected as the top search result when Amazon’s own inventory runs dry for a given product. If you build it, they will come.
It’s not hard to register as a Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA) seller. After that, you’re only a few steps away from your first sale and a money making Amazon Business. Here’s how to sell on Amazon.
What is FBA fulfillment?
Signing Up as a Seller & FBA Fulfillment Fees
There are two options for Amazon Seller accounts:
- Individual Seller.
- Professional Seller.
To be frank, anybody who is serious about making money on Amazon should go straight for the pro account when selling on Amazon.
The professional tier has unlimited sales with no fees other than a $40/month subscription payment. You’ll get access to Amazon’s sales API, inclusion in the Prime program, and the ability to sell in most product categories.
You don’t need any credentials to be approved as a pro seller. Just fork up the $40 per month as your initial investment and you can move on to the next step.
Fulfillment By Amazon
Amazon’s FBA program is the smartest choice for new sellers on the site.
It means Amazon will store and ship your products for you, vastly simplifying your sales process. Even more importantly, this is one of the only ways to get your products into Amazon Prime.
Whenever you want to sell a new product listing, the first step is to create a listing. Be thorough and fill out every single section on this page. A complete product listing is crucial to optimize your page for Amazon searches.
After you post your product listing, Amazon will send you information on shipping your inventory to their warehouses. They will provide you the address to the Amazon fulfillment center that will be receiving your inventory. Shipping standards vary from category to category, with no one-size-fits-all rule about how to handle it.
Amazon has stringent rules when shipping your inventory to their warehouses, there are many companies (Fulfillment Bridge being one of them) that can do your Amazon preparations for you.
Amazon prep means following to the letter all the guidelines Amazon requires for integrating into their system, including proper packaging and labels (UPC codes etc.) to prepare your inventory for Amazon fulfillment, FBA.
Be careful not to ship too much inventory at once. You will have to pay a fee if it sits in the warehouse for too long
Amazon's FBA Inventory Performance Dashboard
Once you have your products for sale on Amazon.com and your inventory has been received at one or more of Amazon’s many distribution centers, you’ll want to keep an eye your Amazon performance.
To help sellers participating in the FBA program, Amazon has created the Fulfillment by Amazon Performance Dashboard in Seller Central enable sellers to optimize their sales and compare their sell through rate compared to other seller via KPIs and other scores.
Promotion
You shouldn’t sit around and hope that people discover your product by sheer luck.
Be active in driving traffic to your Amazon product page.
Here are a few ideas:
Try running a blog with weekly updates, buying the content through third-party vendors at affordable rates. With proper SEO principles, this can lead to massive organic search traffic over time.
Alternately, social media advertising and influencer campaigns can get attention for your goods. Pay mid-level influencers to post about your product, measuring the results with referral links. Keep working with the most effective influencers over time for continued success.
You may also like: How to Use Video Marketing to Promote Your E-Commerce Website
Whatever you do, avoid sending weak traffic to your page. The most important metric in your product’s search rank on Amazon is the sales conversion rate. If you send a ton of people to your page who decide not to buy, it will wreck your search ranking.
Selling Globally on Amazon
Amazon is a global phenomena so don’t limit your participation in FBA fulfillment to only one of Amazon’s national markets.
To grow your business, go global.
From European (with Germany as the biggest market) to Asia (with Japan as the biggest market) to Oceania, hello Australia, once you are started on FBA you can easily expand via Amazon to many regional markets.
Check out the four part video tutorial below to see how to get started selling internationally on Amazon.
Selling on Amazon
There have been many manifestos written on the topic of passive income. Some entrepreneurs have gotten rich, or claimed to do so, with perfectly optimized businesses centered around drop-shipping and referral links.
To be clear, selling on Amazon is not a get-rich-quick scheme. You certainly won’t make a ton of money with little effort. The truth is, as with anything in life, it takes a lot of work to get the best outcomes.
With that said, the Amazon platform when combined with FBA fulfillment is perhaps the easiest and most affordable way to reach a huge audience with your goods. This is clearly an opportunity worth pursuing.
With hard work, you can see magnificent results. The sky’s the limit when you sell your products on Amazon, especially when take advantage of FBA fulfillment’s option to sell internationally. What are you waiting for!
