Having an online business means always having to do a lot of different things, like keeping track of inventory, marketing, shipping, and helping customers. But business owners can use the systems that other platforms have already set up to make daily tasks easier. Small and medium-sized businesses should use Amazon.
In 2019, millions of people used Amazon every day. Of these, 105 million were Amazon Prime members, and many of them shop on the site every day.1More than half of people who shop online first look for something they want to buy, according to a study from 2016.2
If you want to start an online store, Amazon can help you market your products, connect with customers, sell, bill, and even ship them. This can help you get your business off the ground with less money and time, and it can also teach you a lot about selling online.
Do you want to grow your business by using Amazon?
Amazon has millions of third-party sellers who sell more than half of the items that are bought on the site.3Small and medium-sized businesses in the US made more than $90,000 a year on Amazon in 2018.4This is possible because using Amazon as an e-commerce platform has many benefits that any business can use.
The customers are already there: Every day, millions of people all over the world buy thousands of things on Amazon. For starters, you can’t get that kind of qualified traffic from your own website. Instead of spending most of your time and money trying to get customers, that reach can help you start making money right away.
Kind of like a brand name: Consumers are more likely to trust a company whose name they know. People trust Amazon because it has been around for a long time and done so well. If your business is new, you’d have to work hard to earn that trusted. But if you sell on Amazon’s platform, you can use their reputation to your advantage right away.
There is no more technical work to be done: Online sellers have to set up an e-commerce platform and shopping cart so that customers can easily look at their products and place orders. When you work with Amazon, this is already taken care of, and Amazon also takes care of maintenance and tech support. You can now use your time, energy, and other resources for other things.
There are two levels that sellers can pick from on Amazon. For a fee of $0.99 per sale, individual sellers can list goods in more than 20 categories. For a flat monthly fee of $39.99, professional sellers can list in an extra 10 categories and have more ways to customize their listings and shipping. When goods sell, both types of sellers have to pay extra fees.5
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Working with Amazon isn’t going to work for every business, and not every product is going to be a big hit. Before you spend time and money becoming an Amazon seller, look into Amazon trends, top-selling categories, and well-known items to see if it’s the best way to reach your customers.
How to Make Your Business Grow with Fulfillment by Amazon
You can sell your goods on Amazon’s website, then handle customer orders and send the goods to customers yourself. Also, you can let Amazon handle payments and processing orders. This is called FBA, and it can save you time and money if you don’t want to handle shipping and processing.
Note: “FBA” stands for “Fulfillment by Amazon,” which means that Amazon.com processes and ships the order instead of the seller.
The process of using FBA is standard and pretty easy:
A lot of your goods are sent to Amazon.
Amazon will take care of all the steps needed to get the package to your customers every time an order comes in.
There is a fee that Amazon takes out of every sale.
Every time you make a sale, the net profit goes straight into your bank account.
Amazon takes care of all returns and exchanges.
There are many good things about using Fulfillment by Amazon that can help your business grow:
You save a lot of time and money by not having to process and ship orders.
Because you don’t have to store things, you can work from a smaller space.
You get to keep more of your profits, which you can then put back into your business.
It makes people more likely to buy when they know what to expect from shipping and processing.6Amazon can handle order fulfillment and returns more quickly and for less money per order than many small businesses because they have streamlined their systems and hired enough people. Most of the time, the fees you pay for each FBA sale are less than what you would pay to store and ship the same number of items yourself.
Some tips for making your Amazon business work well
Using the fact that thousands of people visit Amazon every minute will bring people to your listings naturally. But every time a customer searches on Amazon, hundreds or even thousands of listings come up.
If you want to get your business off the ground and make more money, you need to make sure that your listings are easy for people to find and stand out from the rest.
Don’t forget to market yourself.
Keep using your own online advertising to get people to buy your products. Search engine optimization can help your blog, landing pages, or website grow so they show up near the top of search results. You can also use social media to get free traffic to your Amazon products or pay for ads that send people who are interested in buying to your products.
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Potential customers who are already interested in your products can be sent straight to your Amazon listings through email marketing.
Make sure your listing titles and product descriptions are correct.
What you are selling and other important information should be made clear in the title of your ad. Think about the words people might use to find products like yours on Amazon or Google. A title like “iPhone case” doesn’t do much to help your product. But “Protective iPhone case fits iPhone 5, shock resistant, multiple colors” will not only give customers more information, but it will also show up up higher in search results.
You can sell your item in the listing.
Write your listing and product description with the customer in mind to make it stand out from the rest. Show the benefits of your product and tell the prospect how it will make their life better by using what you know about marketing, consumer psychology, and writing copy. Thoughtfully include extras, like a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section, to make it easier to understand all the features and benefits of your product.
Add several big, clear pictures.
People want to see exactly what you’re selling because they want to know what they’re buying. Customers probably won’t trust pictures of similar products that you find online, so don’t use them. You should instead pay for professional pictures of your items, just like you would if they were going on your website. To make photos that stand out, if you take them yourself, use a good camera, good lighting, and a lightbox.
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You might want to add videos to your listing along with photos to show how your products are put together or used, or to highlight any unique features.
Try to get good reviews
People who buy things on Amazon love reading reviews because they help them compare products and choose which ones to trust. People are more likely to buy your goods if they can read what other people have said about them. If you want customers to write reviews, you can put a note in the package asking them to do so or send a reminder to your email marketing list asking customers to do so. If you post or ask for fake reviews, you will lose your customers’ trust, and it is also against Amazon’s rules. Your products or even your business could be taken down from the site.7
Pick the Right Main and Sub-Categories
When people are looking for related products, it’s very important that your products are listed in the right categories. Soap made from plants shouldn’t be sold next to cleaning supplies used in factories, for example. Each product you list should have all of its categories and subcategories checked twice to make sure that the right customers can find it.
Getting your online store bigger
You can use what you’ve learned from building your business on Amazon to make your own e-commerce platform and business model. Or, like many other sellers, you can keep using third-party sites to make your business model more streamlined and easy to understand. Depending on the type of business you have, you might also be able to sell your goods and get in front of customers on Amazon or eBay.
Starting an online business can be done in a lot of different ways. One great way is to use Amazon’s huge audience and power to help your own business grow.
