This is Series One – How to Start a Successful eCommerce Business in Less than 30 Days. In this step-by-step guide, you will learn how to quickly launch an eCommerce store and start seeing those sales roll in! And here’s your host…Ishani DePillo. 

Ishani: Hello Everyone, I hope you are doing well today!. Thanks for listening in. Today’s podcast is going to be about the big guy, Amazon. If you’re not familiar with Amazon… who am I kidding, we all know Amazon, right? Well, let me tell you a bit of history about Amazon anyway. 

Started in 1994 and in his garage, Jeff Bezos sold his first book on Amazon. Now over 25 years later Amazon records $4,722 each second? That’s $17 million per hour. Isn’t that insane?  To say that Amazon has flipped the retail industry on its head is understatement. You can basically order anything online, and get it delivered to your home within days, if not hours. There’s same-day delivery and then there’s Amazon Prime where you pay a subscription fee to get 2-day FREE shipping, free music and movie streaming plus additional benefits. And 1 out of 3 Americans have an Amazon Prime Membership.

So if that many people are using Amazon to purchase what they need, shouldn’t you be on Amazon selling?

Our consensus is yes, but there are some that say no, including some of our bigger clients. I’ll go over why they don’t want to be on Amazon. But before that, let’s quickly go over how selling on amazon works.

1. You sign up for the Amazon Seller Program and go through their approval process, 
2. You list your products on Amazon, 
3. Amazon customers find and purchase your products on Amazon’s Marketplace, 
4. You either ship the items to the customer or have Amazon ship the item for you if you have signed up for Amazon Fulfillment. We will cover both options in this podcast
5. Amazon sends you the money, but not before taking out their fees.

Did you know small-to-medium businesses located in the US sell more than 4,000 items per minute? And more than half of the items sold on Amazon are from small to medium-sized businesses. So yes, being an Amazon Seller might be worth it for you.

Let’s talk about the benefits and the disadvantages.

So the advantages to selling your products on Amazon are:

1. Reach: There are just so many users on Amazon! 112 million US Amazon Prime subscribers, to be exact. With that amount of shoppers on the marketplace, you are bound to make sales.
2. Reputation: Amazon is one of the most powerful, respected and trusted companies in the world. Trusted by buyers that is. In fact, 89% of buyers agree they are more likely to buy on Amazon versus any other eCommerce website. And the #1 reason behind why consumers prefer Amazon over other eCommerce businesses is the their customer service. 
3. High Purchase Intent: Consumers go to Amazon to buy a product. 
4. Unparalleled shipping times: If you do end up using Fulfillment by Amazon, where Amazon ships your product from their warehouses, you get fast shipping that’s hard to beat. Amazon’s distribution warehouses are strategically placed across the US while many other businesses only have one distribution center.

All of this sounds amazing, right? But hold up, there are also some disadvantages that you need to be aware of:

1. Competition: There is a lot of competition on Amazon and it’s going to be hard to stand out and win. In fact, there are more than 2.5 million sellers currently actively selling on Amazon. 
2. Lack of Brand Awareness: Don’t expect Amazon customers to be loyal to your brand and make repeat purchases directly on your website after purchasing your product on Amazon. They will almost always purchase on Amazon.  
3. Cost: Nothing is ever free. And Amazon is not the exemption. Meaning, there are fees. First, you have your seller account fee. Amazon sellers can choose between a Professional or Individual plan. 
   1. Individual sellers pay $0.99 for each item sold on Amazon, in addition to “referral fees &  variable closing fees” for each item sold and that can be between $0.45 to $1.35. 
   2. Professional sellers also pay referral fees and variable closing fees for each item sold. The percentage can vary between 6 to 20% of your selling price, but most sellers average a 13% to 15% fee. Professional sellers also pay a flat-rate of $39.99 per month.

Then there is Amazon Storage fees if you decide to use Fulfillment by Amazon. 

Which leads me right into the next topic – Fulfillment by Amazon (also known as FBA).

Sometimes it’s just nice to delegate the work, am I right? FBA is just that. You ship your products to an Amazon’s Fulfillment Centers and they do the heavy lifting of picking, packing, shipping, and providing customer service once a customer purchases your product. 

It’s super easy to get it started, and we do use FBA for Roam Often and it was a breeze. All we had to do was prepare our products (package items individually and add a label to the package so they can easily scan the item when they pick and pack) and then we shiped our inventory to Amazon following their instructions. To ship your products to Amazon for fulfillment, purchase the shipping label through Amazon. Their UPS rates are heavily discounted. To ship one carton of 50 jewelry travel cases which was about 11 lb to Amazon, only cost us roughly $8.00  I was actually pleasantly surprised. That’s basically what we pay to ship each case to a customer.

So now Amazon Prime members can enjoy free two-day shipping. It’s a win-win!

Plus, did I mention that FBA handles returns and customer service inquiries? That means our Operations is basically all taken care of with FBA and we can hopefully scale faster.

But having Amazon store and ship your items does come at a price. You are charged for storage space. Fees are charged by cubic feet So it varies by the size of your product and the time of year, Then there are fulfillment fees, removal order fees, long-term storage fees (if items sit in Amazon for over 365 days), unplanned service fees for improperly labeled items arriving at the fulfillment center, and returns processing fees (provided when Amazon offers free return shipping to the customer). For the most up-to-date information on fees, head to Amazon or our blog post: yourmarketingpodcast.com/amazon.

Okay are you ready to sign-up for Amazon? Here’s what you need to do:

1. Go to Amazon Seller Central and sign up for a Professional account. You’ll need a company credit card that can be charged internationally, banking information (routing and account numbers) and your tax identification information. Good thing we made you sign up for all of that in Episode 3 of Business Fundamentals.
   1. Remember to sign-up using a business email address, instead of your personal one that’s probably already linked to your Amazon account.
2. Amazon will guide you through the next steps, which is a ton of forms, like filling out a Seller agreement (you’ll need your business name, address, phone number, credit card, bank account info, and tax information), then a billing and deposit form where you will decide on a professional seller plan and fees, then your tax information which may include your social security number or employer identification number. Lastly, you’ll need to answer questions about your products including UPC codes if you manufacture your products and how many you would like to list on the marketplace. If you don’t have UPC codes, you will have to apply to get a GTIN exemption from Amazon. This happened to us and it took awhile for approval. In fact the whole Amazon Seller approval process took a lot longer than anticipated. For instance, we didn’t realize that we would need a trademark for our business name and therefore had to apply for an additional exemption. All in all, it took 3 weeks for us to get live on Amazon, not ideal, but I wanted to share our experience with you in the hopes that the process will be smoother for you. Take the paperwork slow and realize there could be some delays, especially for approvals.
3. Once you complete the steps, you will gain access to your Seller Central Dashboard, which includes a number of tabs to manage your inventory, prices, orders, advertising, reports, and performance. One key tip here is to fill out the “About Seller” section to let Amazon customers know about you. Be sure to include your logo, description of your business, FAQs, and privacy policy.

So here’s the thing, we’ve been talking about Amazon for what feels like hundreds of years, but really only 15 minutes, and we’re not even close to covering it all. In fact, there is so much to Amazon, that even Amazon had to create its own University. I’d definitely recommend checking out Amazon University.

We will be covering Marketing on Amazon on another Series soon, so hang tight. But until then, here are some simple ways to successfully sell on Amazon:

• Choose images that are clear, information-rich, and attractively presented. Amazon recommends, at least, 3 images per listing that show what the product is, its features, and the product in use. Note, that main images must be on a pure white background to fit with Amazon’s search and product detail pages.
• Spend time on really vamping up your product detail pages that means:
  • No grammar issues or misspellings
  • Use numerals like the number 2 instead of writing it out, capitalize the first letter of each word in the title, and state the number of items in a bundled product
  • Describe the major product features, such as size, style, and what the product is used for in the product description.
  • Include accurate dimensions, care instructions, and warranty information.
• Offer a coupon to help your products get more visibility. Coupons are displayed on the deals page on Amazon and helps differentiate your product from competitors because it also displays an orange coupon badge in search results.
• Join the Early Reviewer Program that encourages buyers who have already purchased a product to share their authentic experience through reviews. So it helps you generate credibility faster so customers can feel confident in buying your product; in fact, it helps you get up to 5 reviews by offering customers who purchased your items a small reward in exchange for providing feedback on your product. You aren’t charged until you receive a review through the program.

Those are just some helpful hints to get your Amazon Seller account set-up and going to generate sales. We’ll be covering more advertising opportunities on another podcast episode, but wanted to get you going now. So stay tuned for more.

Also, we wanted to touch briefly on OTHER marketplaces. OTHER than Amazon. It doesn’t seem like others exist, but there are actually three other big marketplaces you might want to consider – Walmart, Etsy, and Target. There are pros and cons to each marketplace and you can learn more about each one by signing up for our email alerts at yourmarketingpodcast.com/letsgo.

And that wraps up online marketplaces for now! Head back here for our next episode that covers Operations, from Customer Service, to shipping, to packaging. All the things you need to have in place in order to get your store running smoothly. Thank you for listening to yourmarketingpodcast. See you next week!