Selling my products on Amazon - the Journey.
Hello, online warriors,
Does anyone sell on Amazon? I hope somebody does and or considers it and this post might be of value. I have opened a professional seller account, developed, designed and listed three products, so let me share my experience thus far.
First it is necessary to open an account, which is not so easy as I thought. Here is my post on how to open Amazon account outside US, which I did almost a year ago when I started out.
E commerce business is growing fast and soon there will be no thing or a service that can't be sold online.
As any business, selling online is not easy (it is difficult) and requires a lot of knowledge and mental toughness. I strongly suggest doing it with at least one partner or employee if possible. Here are some main principles in my opinion and experience in order to have a chance on successfully selling products on Amazon:
1. Research the products deeply and the niche you are entering.
2. Differentiate the product as hell and solve real problem for particular people.
3. Build a brand in the first place, then the product.
Research criteria I followed to choose the products are:
A market that goes up and is evergreen (not seasonal). Use Google trends for that.
Market has no more than 20 strong competitors (as desktop amazon page shows 20 listings, and is important to get on the first page in order to sell organically). Also, no less than 3 strong competitors, as it shows demand for the product already exist. There are many tools to be used for this AmazeOwl, Helium10, JoungleScout. I used the first one.
Sales of the particular product are more than 10 units per day per competitor, and at least $500 in revenue per day per competitor. (it does not mean you will get this income right of the start, but it is a good indication what you can aim for once you get your piece of a market share)
Price range of the product must be in the range of $25 - $85, in order to secure the profit margin. At least 40-50% profit margin must be calculated.
Product has to have good differentiation potential. After reading/studying competitors reviews and analyzing where to improve, the new product has to solve real problem for the market.
Availability of various keywords. The product can be described in various ways, thus ensuring you don't bleed fighting for good keywords once launching the product. The tools I used for kw research are keyword tool nominator and merchant words.
Product size and weight. If it fits in the shoe box or smaller it is cheaper to ship and store it. If product has few moving parts and can't easily break it is also a huge benefit.
Review count on the top sellers are less than 500 in USA and less than 200 in EU.
Once the research is done and first draft of the product design is created it is important to reach out to manufacturers. I did try to reach local ones (I strongly recommend that), but I did not succeed and thus I found my suppliers on Alibaba and negotiated my products with Chinese manufacturers.
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Differentiation is the do-or-die on Amazon.
I must admit I did poorly with this and learning the hard way. Just changing the color of the product or increasing the size of it although might look sufficient but is not enough. In order to check out whether the differentiation is enough engage your friends and local community in your chosen niche ask experts (do not be afraid if they steal your idea, they won't) and they will tell you whether you have succeeded.
Be strong in negotiation your position with suppliers on product quality, features of the product, packaging, and inserts. Yes, it is important to think about acquiring info from customers when you create the product. Amazon does not allow asking for reviews and you are not allowed to divert traffic from your listing to your web page. Thus, product inserts play huge part in inciting customers to go to your web and leaving their email address, whether for a free e book or other magnet created for them.
In the same time I don't recommend to push manufacturers with lower sample prices but rather negotiate future price of a product if the business takes off. To build a relationship with your partner is far more important than to safe few bucks.
Aim for at least two manufacturers that do NOT sell their products on Amazon. You can check if they are selling the product, by directly asking them that or by conduction onsite inspection with local company that specializes on such tasks. Manufacturers are used to that and are welcoming inspections. I did pay 240$ for one.
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Build your brand as soon as possible.
From the get go, if your business is serious, do all what wealthy affiliate teaches and register the brand with USPTO, as it takes up to 12 months and more to get your brand registered. Costs are around $1250 per one category. It means you will be long selling your product under TM name and once you receive brand registration it will be possible to put R sign on your brand. Thus protecting your brand from hijackers. There are so much more possibilities and security for brand registered products with Amazon, like video and enhanced brand content. It is different ball game once you have brand.
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Don't get stuck in the launch phase as it is the most expensive place to be.
The most critical part of my journey was launching the products. As I had to launch and operate PPC campaigns it was important to launch one product at a time. I did mistake of launching 3 products and payed fools money for it in excessive PPC campaigns. Amazon PPC campaigns are much simpler than Google or FB campaigns. Launch phase is costly and at the beginning you pay for advertising more or as much for your product as the incoming revenues from the product. Mentally it was hard for me to grasp that, but once the product starts to rank and organic sales come in got easier.
If you have done your work on differentiation and quality of the product right it is important to be aggressive in PPC and rank as high as possible to get market traction. Sometimes cost per click can reach up to 5$ and cuts into your profit significantly, but it pays of once you rank and market starts to buy your product organically. The main objective is to stay on the first page of search results on amazon under your chosen keyword. As statistics goes 80% of all purchases happen on first page and 80% of those purchase happens within first 3 listings. So the winner takes it all there.
Ger your product to rank on amazon organically as soon as possible. Outside traffic is so welcomed there, thus if you have build the brand website, blog or social presence it definitely helps.
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Reviews = Sales
Reviews are separate topic on Amazon as it significantly influences the sales numbers. Some expert claim that difference in 4.3 and 4.2 on the product review accounts for 50% sales increase or decrease respectively.
I do recommend to use early review program, that costs 60$ and your listing gets 5 reviews to build on.
It is also important to notice that competitors do buy your product and intentionally leave a bad reviews on your product thus trying to downgrade your ranking. It did happen to me to. Got 5-6 great reviews and then 2-3 one star reviews as competitors did saw the progress my listing was making. The only thing you can do is to dig deep and sell more and trust your product and customers you are serving, or do some gray hat review hunt, that is not topic of this article and I do not recommend it as Amazon may and will ban your listing and remove your selling privileges once finds out.
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Lessons I learned and will do differently with my next products.
1. Research like crazy the market trends. I did enter market niche that was so obvious to enter that off course I was not the only one who noticed this. In the span of 4 months the number of listings that sell particular product increased from 5 pages to more than 20 pages. It is better to dig deeper and find more remote (niche down) product that can't be obvious to online tools available as everybody use them.
2. Do not enter market with strong single stand out competitor that has established market share and holds most of the market. I underestimated that. They have deeper packets stronger brand and established customer base. You have to really stand out for market to look at you and find the new product interesting. Better is to enter market with 10-20 competitors that have more or less equally distributed the market.
3. Local suppliers are more preferable, as it is so important to establish good relationships and trust. Possibility to work on the product details and improve them along the way is crucial for success.
4. Pictures - seek for professional Product photographs, as the pictures create perceived value of your product. Sure the real product must meet or even better exceed the expectations of customer. Product photographers specializes on products and are not to be confused with any other professional photographers.
5. Calculate margins of the product. Do not hope the margins of the product will be as you first excel calculations show. It is impossible to take into account PPC costs and how long it will take the product to rank.
6. Test the product before launching. On local stores, with friends and community.
7. Even if the tests show the promise, the market might show different results. Size of the first order and size of the first shipment must be considered carefully and paced according to your cash flow. I would go with 200- 300 units. Most manufacturers will ask you for higher per unit price, but it is worth the risk.
Building the audience beforehand launching the product is also important benefit.
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I do hope this helps somebody who is thinking about Amazon or are in the process of building their store. Let me know if you need some help on the topic, I will be more than happy to help and engage. Please also those who have experience leave me a comment and your thoughts about your experience so we can learn together.
Sincerely,
Raivis
P.S.
If you want to find out the products that i have launched, please go to my profile and look under bio.
Thank you for reading this post.
Recent Comments
3
Raivis,
Great detailed and actionable post for anyone pursuing the sale of their products on Amazon.
Your first hand account of all of that, including the lessons learned the hard way are priceless.
You may already know this, there may be sme who may object to you sharing the links here instead of in your profile.
I may have a solution for you, since the number of links there are limited, you can use the FREE tool I have described in my post here to resolve that and maybe to use it in the future in other situations as well: FREEBIE Friday - The Power Of A Link - Part Deux I hope that this helps.
Blessings!
Thank you, for info. I did not know there are some restriction. Will take care of this.
Raivis,
it is not a problem for me, I have mentioned it because i have seen such comments often in the past.
I have a few FREE marketing ideas to share with you if you are interested, please send me a PM.
I wish you continued success here and in all of your marketing endeavors.
Blessings!