Everything You Need to Know About Selling on Amazon

Amazon is one of the biggest e-commerce platforms in the world, selling everything from groceries to electronic software. For independent businesses, Amazon offers an exciting opportunity to offer your products to their huge, global customer base. However, success on Amazon is a little more complicated than listing your products on the platform. To ensure you are best able to leverage the potential of Amazon marketplace you need to understand the best practices for selling on Amazon. 

An Overview of Amazon

Amazon is one of the ‘big five’ U.S. information technology companies, alongside Google, Apple, Microsoft and Facebook. Founded by Jeff Bezos in 1995, Amazon started as an online marketplace for books. Now Amazon offers almost any consumer product imaginable. Amazon is one of the biggest e-commerce platforms in the world today, hosting more than 197 million visits per month. Amazon is a popular destination for shoppers not only because of the ease and convenience of its expansive product range and prime membership benefits, but because of its competitive pricing. Studies have found that 9 out of 10 American shoppers will price check a product on Amazon before purchasing a product, on or off-site. 

Selling Your Products on Amazon

Now that you understand a little more about the potential of selling on Amazon, it is time to focus on the practicalities of listing your products. 

How Much Does it Cost to List a Product on Amazon?

Various fees come with listing and selling products on Amazon, this includes: 

• A seller fee: a seller’s fee will either come in the form of a monthly subscription or a fee per item. 
• Referral fees: the value of this fee will depend on the category of product you are selling. 
• Returns processing: if your product falls into certain categories you will have to pay a fee if it is returned. 

The three points listed above are the fees exclusive to Amazon, you will also want to consider other costs associated with selling online. For example, shipping costs, inventory charges or export fees. 

Staying Competitive When Selling on Amazon 

To ensure that the investment you make in your Amazon listing pays off you need to ensure your products are visible and appealing to potential customers. The total number of products sold on Amazon is over 353 million – that is a lot of competition. Marketing your products on Amazon is different from selling on any other type of e-commerce store. As this Amazon Agency explains, Amazon’s digital marketing best practices are platform-specific and evolving constantly. So the challenge to sellers is to make their products eye-catching and unique within this fast-paced marketplace. 

Amazon Prime

To benefit from the highest return on your Amazon product listings you need to make use of Amazon Prime. Prime members are the most valuable shoppers on Amazon, spending an average of $1,000 every year. The easiest way to become an Amazon Prime seller is to choose order fulfillment by Amazon. 

Why Sell Your Products on Amazon? 

Amazon is a dominating presence in the e-commerce marketplace and this market share is only expected to grow. Amazon offers shoppers convenience, familiarity and reliability – three characteristics that cannot be ignored in the world of e-commerce. Amazon is not only a go-to destination for shoppers, but a price comparison resource that shoppers consult before purchasing off-site. Being familiar with the best Amazon practices before listing your products gives you a great opportunity to benefit from all this platform has to offer.

Bio: Ryan Flannagan is the Founder & CEO of NuancedMedia, an international eCommerce marketing agency specializing in Amazon. Nuanced has sold $100s of Millions online and Ryan has built a client base representing a total revenue of over 1.5 billion dollars. Ryan is a published author and has been quoted by a number of media sources such as BuzzFeed and Modern Retail. To connect with Ryan, check out @Ryanflannagan on Twitter or via Linkedin