Amazon Online Shop

[Marky47]

Hello Everyone,

Happy New Year!

I am researching the idea of selling on Amazon. I am looking at various products to sell and to find out which one would be best for me. I have looked on Amazon and it looks very complicated and I just wondered if anyone here has got an Amazon selling page and could walk me through what is required to set it up.

I have a few questions to ask:

1) when someone searches for an item on Amazon, how will my page come up when there are so many already there?

2) Is it worth getting Amazon to ship the product to the customer instead of me doing it?

3) Can I have more than one type of product on my selling page. If I wanted to sell dog products, could I also sell household products as well or do I have to choose just one product per page?

Thanks

Mark

 

[Frank the Insurance guy]

Hi @Marky47 and welcome to the forum.

Well done on asking the questions before getting knee deep and trying to figure it out when its too late!

No doubt other forum members will be along in a minute who have experience of selling on Amazon, but from what I understand (although I could be wrong):

1. "Amazon Prime" sellers are likely to have priority on listing. I also expect you can pay to "advertise" your goods so they appear nearer the top

2. "Fulfilled By Amazon" takes the hassle out of you storing and shipping the goods yourself, but you have to follow Amazon's procedures and processes to use this method - look into what this involves

Good luck!

 

[Ozzy]

Hi @Marky47 and welcome!
My wife has been investigating this for her own online business, and she has a small number of products on Amazon at the moment to test the water. Picking up on your questions;

1) when someone searches for an item on Amazon, how will my page come up when there are so many already there?

Basically you either need to have a high conversion rate, or pay their ads fees to have your products come up in the results.
A lot of it can come down to good SEO on your products. I spent ages tweaking my wife's product descriptions, keywords and features to get her products show up more.

2) Is it worth getting Amazon to ship the product to the customer instead of me doing it?

I asked this question on behalf of my wife, and some good answers are on this thread;

Amazon FBA Experience

Does anyone have any experience to share with using Amazon's FBA service? My wife is just trying to weigh up the options between handling the sales herself or shipping her products to Amazon and just let them handle it, but she is a very small retailer so wondering if she's too small for such a...

www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk

3) Can I have more than one type of product on my selling page. If I wanted to sell dog products, could I also sell household products as well or do I have to choose just one product per page?

Yes you can, many sellers on Amazon sell ranges of different products.

 

[MBE2017]

Not a seller on Amazon but to try and be brief, price will dictate how easily you will be found amongst other things already mentioned, but remember, your competitors can change their prices at the click of a button. This is why it can be a good idea to have your own label, your brand, so you are harder to compare against.

FBA can work, but you can also lose money doing this just as easily, so FWIW I would recommend shipping yourself whilst starting out, baby steps and all that. Research FBA, things are never as easy as they first appear.

You can have as many products as you wish, in some areas. Certain products are much harder to get into, such as children toys etc, this is to stop everybody jumping on toys at Xmas only, at least that is how it used to be, things might have changed.

Apart from your questions, speed of despatch, excellent customer service, quick answers to emails will all effect your position on Amazon, they expect and demand you are better than most, and will not tolerate otherwise for long.

Look at Ebay and other sites as well, etsy etc.

 

[Marky47]

Not a seller on Amazon but to try and be brief, price will dictate how easily you will be found amongst other things already mentioned, but remember, your competitors can change their prices at the click of a button. This is why it can be a good idea to have your own label, your brand, so you are harder to compare against.

FBA can work, but you can also lose money doing this just as easily, so FWIW I would recommend shipping yourself whilst starting out, baby steps and all that. Research FBA, things are never as easy as they first appear.

You can have as many products as you wish, in some areas. Certain products are much harder to get into, such as children toys etc, this is to stop everybody jumping on toys at Xmas only, at least that is how it used to be, things might have changed.

Apart from your questions, speed of despatch, excellent customer service, quick answers to emails will all effect your position on Amazon, they expect and demand you are better than most, and will not tolerate otherwise for long.

Look at Ebay and other sites as well, etsy etc.

Thanks for your feedback. I will look into it further.

 

[Socio South West]

One of my clients is selling through Amazon FBA at the moment, but the costs are driving the margins down to as little as 2%..... however, the brand exposure is offsetting this considerably

The message is that FBA is not great for low volumes, and you also need know how to stop someone undercutting you and how to get the best advertising spots.... Its all an extremely tricky minefield to negotiate, and this is the reason why there are so many Amazon specialists around.

Lots of good helpful stuff on those other links - best of luck!