Should you start selling on Amazon? That’s the million-dollar question, perhaps quite literally. After working with over 52,000 brands to help sell more than 1.2 billion products, Viral Launch knows what it takes to succeed on Amazon. In this article, we’ll gloss over 11 tips for selling on Amazon that every new and existing seller needs to know and understand to cash in on the money-making opportunity at hand.
More than 60,000 sellers on Amazon reached or surpassed $1 million in sales in 2022, many of whom started their e-commerce business without experience running a business. With hundreds of millions of Prime members worldwide and a dominant 37.8% market share of retail commerce in the U.S., which is inching up on becoming a trillion-dollar industry, the opportunity to sell on Amazon is abundant and apparent.
But if it were easy, everyone would do it. Running a highly successful Amazon business requires healthy expectations, patience, and savvy business strategies to stand out amongst the millions of products in the Amazon marketplace. With that in mind, we’ve provided 11 helpful tips to help you increase your sales on Amazon.
1. Understand The Basics
Some of the most popular ways to sell on Amazon are:
- Retail Arbitrage: Purchase a product for a low price at a discounted rate from a retail store, boutique or wholesaler and resell it for a higher price
- Wholesale: Buy items directly from the manufacturer and resell under the manufacturer’s brand
- Private Label: Purchase products directly from the manufacturer and sell them under your own brand
- Merch By Amazon: Apply for the program to be able to upload a design and sell your product like you would on Etsy
You’ll also want to dig deeper into the pros and cons of FBA vs. FBM. With FBA, you’ll qualify for Amazon Prime shipping, be able to win the Buy Box more often, and not have to worry about fulfilling your own orders.
On the other hand, you’re held responsible for paying FBA fees, and it can be more challenging to track your inventory. With FBM, you’re directly in control of your inventory but held responsible for its delivery. Determine your method to simplify the selling process and focus on developing a successful and scalable business model.
2. Choose the Right Products
There may be hundreds of millions of products for sale on Amazon, but how many are making money? Choose products that will move, not just sit stagnant and cost you money. Consider the following before you choose a product to sell on Amazon:
- Knowledge of the Niche: While you may be tempted to pick some new-age electronic device or an Amazon bestseller, stop to take into account your familiarity with the product and its intended buying pool. If you don’t know anything at all about it, do you really want to be tying your potential profit to it?
- The Market: It’s simple supply and demand, really. Will there be enough interested buyers to make selling the product worthwhile? Although this can be hard to judge, more obscure items usually don’t move enough to produce a healthy profit. For sustained profitability, explore markets that are always strong, like sports & outdoors, baby items, tools, or office supplies.
- Fads: Stay in touch with trends to see what the latest and greatest item is and capitalize on it. Fidget spinners are a great example of a fad that went viral and made some sellers a lot of money. But remember, fads die off just as quickly as they came up, so timing and inventory management are crucial. For those who ordered way too many fidget spinners and engaged in price wars, the result wasn’t so lucrative.
- Competition: Check out similar products on Amazon and see who your competitors are. Competing against national brands typically isn’t advisable, as brand recognition and loyalty still ring true even on Amazon. Chances are you aren’t going to outsell a big, nationally recognized brand.
Your initial manual research will eliminate many products, but there will still be a huge product pool to choose from. How do you keep narrowing it down?
3. Craft A Compelling Listing
When new sellers are figuring out how to make money selling on Amazon, many often believe it’s only the product that matters. But in fact, there’s so much more in play. Since online shopping takes away the physical experiences, like touch, smell and ability to pull something right up to your face for closer inspection, your listing copy and photos need to display and describe the product in great detail to bridge the gap.
Both are extremely important for selling success and are key ways to hit your desired sales targets. After all, you only get paid when someone buys something! And that makes listing optimization and using the right Amazon keywords crucial.
Viral Launch also offers seller software like Keyword Research, a data-driven Amazon keyword tool that determines relevant, high-ranking keywords for your product and category.
See the most relevant high-volume keywords for your product and find the low-hanging fruit with high-opportunity keywords that your competitors aren’t targeting in their listings. The better you position your product with high-ranking keywords, the more you’ll boost your visibility. In the crowded Amazon marketplace, visibility is everything.
4. Pricing for Success
One of the key pillars of a successful Amazon selling strategy is getting your pricing right. This entails striking a balance between being competitive with prices across the market and maintaining profitability.
By implementing a smart pricing strategy, you can maximize your sales potential on Amazon while maintaining a profitable business model. Keep a watchful eye on your competitors and be ready to adapt to changes in the marketplace to ensure your pricing always works in your favor.
5. Use Amazon Advertising Tools to Master PPC
Leveraging Amazon’s Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Display ads can place your products in front of a highly targeted audience, driving qualified traffic to your listings.
From setting up effective ad campaigns and selecting the right keywords to optimizing your ad spend and tracking performance, the world of PPC can be incredibly difficult to learn at first but an incredibly rewarding skill for sellers to take control of their product’s visibility and put it in front of more customers. Our innovative Kinetic PPC software integrates with your Amazon seller account and includes comprehensive reporting, valuable insights, and campaign monitoring so you can automate your PPC directly from the tool based on real-time performance.
With Kinetic PPC, you can set your budget, customize your preferences to choose where your product appears, and set limits to minimize wasteful spending and maximize profitable spend for a hands-free experience that boosts your ROI.
6. Get More Customer Reviews
It’s almost impossible to overstate the importance of customer reviews on Amazon. Like a double-edged sword, they can be a weapon in your arsenal for generating social proof and converting clicks into sales. However, a wave of bad reviews can also spell disaster, puncturing your organic ranking along with any chance of competing against similarly-priced products with a healthier review quantity and average score.
By proactively engaging with your buyers and cultivating a stellar reputation, you can harness the power of customer reviews to drive more sales and establish your brand as a trusted choice on Amazon. While plenty of black-hat tactics exist to increase reviews, the Viral Launch Review Generator is completely TOS-compliant, so you never have to sweat suspensions or suppression by Amazon while still generating up to 5 times as many reviews from verified consumers.
7. Efficient Inventory Management
Adept inventory management is often overlooked when considering the fundamental aspects of a thriving Amazon shop, but it can be a huge boon for your e-commerce business. Staying a step ahead of the game by grasping consumer demand, seasonality, and sales trends is key to preventing costly overstocks or just-as-costly stockouts.
Through data analysis and the use of inventory management tools, sellers can strike the perfect balance between supply and demand. Our industry-leading Market Intelligence research tool is a must-have for any serious seller when it comes to prognosticating demand, with years of accurate sales and search data to help you determine seasonal peaks and valleys and strike the delicate balance for efficient inventory levels.
8. Expand into Different Marketplaces
Expanding into different marketplaces is a strategic move that can open up new horizons for Amazon sellers. With the right strategy, your reach can extend far beyond the borders of Amazon or your home country, fostering resilience and growth in an ever-evolving e-commerce landscape.
Whether it’s exploring other line retailers such as eBay or the Walmart Marketplace, or taking your Amazon business to international marketplaces like Amazon UK or Amazon Germany, broadening your horizons allows you to tap into new demographics and untapped markets.
Selling in international markets on Amazon is incredibly easy and streamlined within the selling platform. It allows you to grow and diversify your sales by reducing low sales periods and taking advantage of peak seasons worldwide for a safer, more opportunistic selling experience.
9. Focus on Backend Keywords
When crafting copy for your listing, don’t overlook the field for backend keywords! These fields aren’t visible to customers but still play a critical role in your visibility. We recommend reserving this space for keywords that don’t make the cut for your customer-facing listing, but still possess search volume such as misspellings or Spanish, or tertiary keywords that were left on the cutting room floor while finalizing your product listing’s title, keywords, and description.
Not sure what to put in your backend keywords? Check out Keyword Research and search your product’s primary keyword to see a comprehensive list of keywords customers are searching for to find your product!
10. Drive External Traffic
While the hundreds of millions of customers on Amazon are a dream come true for aspiring entrepreneurs, relying solely on Amazon’s internal traffic may limit your reach, as it competes with millions of other products. By proactively bringing external traffic from sources like social media, email marketing, or your own website, you gain a distinct advantage. This external traffic not only enhances your product’s visibility but can also attract a wider audience and remove search from the equation so the customer arrives directly to your listing and not a sea of competitors.
11. Continue to Learn and Adapt
Ask any seller who’s been around for years and they’ll tell you the same thing: Amazon is constantly changing. As soon as you think you’ve solved the puzzle, Amazon adds more pieces and shifts the selling landscape. That’s why continuous learning and adaptation are not just valuable skills but absolute necessities.
To thrive as an Amazon seller, it’s crucial to stay informed about the latest industry updates, strategies, and best practices. By staying curious and open to learning, sellers can proactively address changes in Amazon’s policies, explore new marketing techniques, and refine product listings to maximize their reach and appeal. An adaptive mindset ensures that you are ready to pivot when challenges arise and seize opportunities as they emerge. Be sure to read up on News updates within Seller Central and to join seller forums and communities to stay up-to-date on the latest updates and hot topics for sellers like yourself.
Conclusion
With so much opportunity in eCommerce and on Amazon, utilizing these 11 handy tips can go a long way in streamlining your success and avoiding potential landmines on your path to operating a thriving Amazon business.
We’ve explored 11 essential tips to help you navigate this vast marketplace, from finding the right product to optimizing product listings to harnessing the power of Amazon advertising. Whenever you think you’ve done everything you can do to fuel your Amazon business, there’s always another tool you can integrate into your strategy to maximize sales and profits.
At Viral Launch, we’ve dedicated years to creating the most innovative seller tools to help uncover these opportunities and break down barriers in their way to entrepreneurial success. With standard-setting tools packed with accurate data critical to your business, the Viral Launch software suite truly is an Amazon seller’s best friend, granting you access to valuable insights that can take your business to the next level, whether just starting out or a veteran on the platform.
So, embrace the challenge, stay committed to your goals, and let these tips serve as your compass to guide you toward a highly prosperous future as an Amazon seller. Best of luck on your path to Amazon selling success!
