How to successfully sell on Amazon Marketplace?

Find out how to sell on Amazon Marketplace efficiently in this article.

How Amazon Marketplace works

With more than 170 million visits each month in France, Amazon is a sales platform that e-merchants cannot ignore. If you want to sell your products online, it is possible to use this marketplace without being a professional. To understand how to use this solution, it is first important to know how the site works in order to put all the chances on your side.

Create your store

The first thing to do is to create your store dedicated to online sales. A presence on Amazon is an ideal way to reach millions of customers around the world by taking advantage of the site's popularity and the practical solutions available to sellers. Before you sign up, you'll need to determine what products you want to sell. There are over 20 categories available - some of which are reserved for professional sellers. You will also have to choose your selling plan, with items sold individually or in the quantities of your choice. The first option is good for individuals. No subscription is necessary then, but a commission of 0.99 euros (excluding VAT) is taken on each product sold. The second is suitable for professional sellers. It is possible to sell products in unlimited quantities by paying a monthly subscription of 39 euros (excluding VAT).

Once these first decisions have been made, you will be able to register on the site. The creation of a personal account takes place in Seller Central, the global interface from which you can access the management of your seller account later on. As soon as the registration is effective, you can start listing your products. You can register items that are already for sale on the platform or that are not yet listed on Amazon. The description of the products, their number, their condition and the available delivery options must be filled in.

Manage your orders

When your products are listed on the site, all visitors are able to access them. Managing your orders on a day-to-day basis is an important part of how the Amazon platform works. Sellers have an order management tool that allows them to view the orders placed and the details of each order in Seller Central. It is also possible to receive order reports. For e-tailers with a professional sales plan, accurate information can be obtained with the Marketplace Web Service Order API.

You can choose to ship your products yourself to customers who have placed an order or use the service provided by Amazon. In this case, you will be alerted to each sale and the Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) solution will take care of shipping the different orders. Payment is easy with regular deposits to your bank account. An information message is sent to you each time a payment is made. The configuration of your account allows you to reach a potential of tens of millions of customers with all your products. By doing so, you maximize your chances of finding buyers at any time.

Amazon marketplace's advantages

The flexibility of the platform is a great asset for all sellers, individuals or professionals. Depending on your profile, you can opt for a Basic or a Pro account and start earning profits by selling your products. With average sales of less than 40 items per month, the Basic offer remains the most interesting. In both cases, you get many benefits that are worth knowing.

With Amazon, all your products are easily found by people from all walks of life. You can update your inventory and make sales on the five European platforms the site offers. Your product listings can be automatically translated to reach an even wider audience. You are not restricted in terms of product categories and new items are likely to be put on sale every day. The site also includes a highly reliable security and anti-fraud protection system. Professional sellers will appreciate having access to information from order reports, automated inventory management tools, APIs and web services from Seller Central.

Support for all sellers

Users can easily sell in Europe but also worldwide. Regarding regulations and VAT codes, quality tools are proposed to help you in your steps. With a single account, it is possible to reach customers from all over Europe by accessing five major marketplaces in France, UK, Germany, Italy and Spain. The management of offers and stocks is then done on a large scale. You also have the opportunity to send your products to one of Amazon's European distribution centers, which will then take care of all the steps (preparation, packaging, shipping) to get your products to you. Returns management is also provided.

Our tips to be profitable on Amazon

Choose the right products

In the online sales sector, competition is a crucial element to take into account. To succeed in selling your products, there are a few rules to consider in order to use Amazon's marketplace well. You can choose to sell the products of one or more brands by supplying yourself upstream, to market white label products at a lower cost or to sell your own creations. This last choice is the most profitable because of the high margins you can make. If you want to become a professional seller, a business plan must be established in order to reach profitability.

With hundreds of millions of products listed, Amazon is a highly competitive marketplace where it can be difficult for e-tailers to succeed. So you'll need to find the right market niche by observing which product categories have less competition and which types of items have potential. You can use Google Trends as a trend indicator to track the interest in a particular product. Only by selling products with high demand can you become profitable.

Set your prices right

As with all marketplaces, Amazon has fees that are important to consider. Commissions and subscriptions will affect the price you set for your various products. It is essential to offer competitive rates in order to make money with the platform in the long run. Doubling your competitors by choosing prices much lower than the average is rarely a good solution. The best calculation here is to offer a selling price close to double your initial purchase price.

Shipping costs are another important consideration. If you ask for high shipping costs, you may turn off some buyers who will prefer to turn to another reseller. It's a good idea to focus on lightweight, low-volume products that are less expensive to ship. If you want to be profitable quickly, this is definitely the best choice for you. Sellers who have a lot of orders can also delegate the shipping part to Amazon. This service is a definite time saver and saves you money on storage.

Showcase your products

To gain an advantage over other sellers, it is pertinent to look at optimizing your site traffic. With more visitors discovering your product listings, you'll be able to increase your sales, appear higher in the results pages and have a larger customer base. Remember to make the most complete descriptions of the items you offer for sale. The content of a product listing must be effective, by carefully choosing your title and keywords according to the most frequent Amazon queries.

If you sell technical products, don't hesitate to give all the specifications in a clear way, with bulleted lists for example, and by proposing photos detailing the function of this equipment. A good visual is important to convince visitors to your page. Also pay attention to the accuracy of the information given (weight, dimensions, colors, etc.) so that your customers don't feel cheated later on. In this way, you can get positive reviews from buyers that prove to be extremely incentive and improve your SEO on the site.

Reach new customers

Increasing traffic on your pages can also be done by turning to external channels, able to attract a larger number of potential customers. Internet users will then have the advantage of arriving directly on your pages, without being tempted by competitive offers. In this perspective, several methods can be considered by using classic marketing techniques in the e-commerce field: an e-mailing campaign referring to your products, sponsored ads on various social networks, blog posts presenting your offers or even partnerships with influencers.

Amazon offers another way to promote your online store. The Stores feature allows you to create a multi-page catalog to promote your products. With free access, this free service allows you to take advantage of both internal and external traffic sources by being better referenced, customizing your store and introducing new products to your customers. It's a powerful tool to build customer loyalty and brand awareness.

The different tools offered by Amazon

E-retailers need reliable analysis tools to increase their profitability on such a marketplace. Amazon provides you with a number of very effective features that will facilitate your decision-making.

Advertising campaigns can be created on the platform with Amazon AMS. Depending on specific keywords, your products can appear in the first position in the search engine of the site. This paid service allows you to create campaigns for all budgets.

A powerful tool like Sunpricer can be used to optimize the prices of your products, making adjustments according to the prices charged by other resellers. With this tool, you will have a much better chance of appearing in the Buy Box, the box that appears to the right of the products that allows you to put them in the cart. Nearly 8 out of 10 sales are made this way on Amazon. With regular price adjustments, you will get better margins.

Finally, to discover new high-potential niches, the KeywordToolDominator tool shows you all the keywords most searched by the platform's customers.

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