If you’re interested in making money on Amazon, then you’ve landed in the right place. This beginner’s guide will help you understand how to thrive in the competitive environment on Amazon to kick off your journey as a seller.
Let us not delay any further; let’s get the ball rolling!
What is Amazon?
Amazon is the largest e-commerce marketplace around the globe, serving as a massive arena for those who wish to profit online.
Originally, Amazon was an enterprise focused on bookselling but has expanded to a wide variety of consumer goods, digital media, and electronic services like the Kindle Fire tablet, Kindle e-book, and Fire TV, a streaming media adapter.
Jeff Bezos incorporated the company as Cadabra in 1994 but eventually changed it to Amazon for its website launch in 1995. According to Bezos, he picked the name that starts with “A” because of its alphabetic placement. He decided on the name Amazon because it was “different and exotic,” reflecting one of the largest rivers in the world— the Amazon River.
The company headquarters rest in Seattle, Washington. It has individual websites for its different branches, software development centers, fulfillment centers, and customer centers in many locations all over the globe.
What is Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA)?
Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) is a service offered to Amazon’s third-party sellers. Through FBA, Amazon undertakes major business processes like order fulfillment, storage, and customer service on behalf of sellers.
Amazon has fulfillment centers all over the globe, so sellers can store their goods in these storehouses until they get sold. Once an order gets placed, the product is automatically picked, packed, and shipped from the warehouse to the customer without input from the seller.
Amazon FBA isn’t a business model like most beginners think. In fact, the first and foremost step in using FBA is choosing a business model. Amazon presents various business models, but you must be intentional in picking one that suits your needs most. That’s what we are here for, to acquaint you with how to thrive on Amazon.
There’s a variety of ways how you can learn on Amazon, including online arbitrage, retail arbitrage, wholesale, FBM, and private level. In this article, we are going to focus on the number one method to actually get started. We’re going to talk about how you could get into the point of passive income in the fastest possible way.
How to Get Started on Amazon: The Very Basics
Since this tutorial is for beginners, we’re going to go through the most scalable, easiest, and most profitable way to sell on Amazon— through private levels.
The private label requires sellers to source products or items directly from manufacturers, just like other Amazon business options. The only difference is that the products are created based on specifications, and the products do not carry the manufacturer’s brand but the seller’s personal branding.
Tons of sellers on Amazon go for the private label because it all fits the criteria when it comes to scalability, profitability, and feasibility.
The first step before you start selling, of course, is to register yourself as an Amazon seller. You first need to have an Amazon customer account, then you can utilize that account to sign-up for the business account. You can also create a new seller account thru your business email address.
Step 1: Find a home run product
Product research is a critical part of every business, even those that are outside Amazon. However, entrepreneurs pay little to no attention to this. Making money out of an Amazon business involves processes that cannot be accomplished all at once. It isn’t a day job.
If you truly want to sell in the tremendous Amazon marketplace, your first goal is to find home-run products. This part of the process can be pretty exhausting and confusing, especially for beginners who use a trial-and-error approach.
Nonetheless, this isn’t a ride that everyone should suffer from. Even a beginner should waste their time spending an entire day cherry-picking mindlessly from an inexhaustible list of product options.
Why consume so much time and effort when you can automate your product research?
Bunches of software are available in the market to help people automate the ever-time-consuming research process. Such tools assist in narrowing down options and validating product ideas.
One of the best all-inclusive software that you can use to automate your Amazon business is ZonBase. This software offers tools for product research, keyword research, and even listing optimization, which could greatly help in thriving in the Amazon seller’s community.
Since AMZ software can help you yield high returns and make it easier for you to scale your business, you should consider investing in them.
Getting back to the main topic, you need to decide which products you want to sell in the market. The most recommended ones are products with low competition but high demand and profitability.
You can do product research manually, but since this is a step-by-step guide by ZonBase, we are going to employ ZonBase’s research tool to find your homerun product. Through the ZonResearch Tool, you’ll get the chance to choose from 20 million products itemized in the ZonBase database.
If you don’t want to rely on the ZonBase database alone, you could employ ZonBase’s Chrome Extension tool to do your product research on Amazon.
With the help of Chrome Extension, you will be able to see data about a particular product listed on Amazon. Data includes unit price, reviews, sales, revenues, and average monthly revenues. These data are valuable and advantageous in assessing potential winning products.
Moreover, data presented through the tool can be used to check potential prices and profits. This could give you and other users an insight into the profitability of the product.
In choosing a product, ensure not to pick those that have an existing patent. Because we’re looking into private label selling, you have to make sure that your product name and logo do not overstep a brand or a company’s trademark.
Do not neglect to check Amazon’s restricted product categories to avoid getting the wrong product to sell. Research about the approvals you need to get, as well as the rules and regulations you need to follow.
Step 2: Find a supplier
Once you have made up your mind on which product you want to sell, it’s time to look for source suppliers of your product/s. To get high-quality products at a reasonable price, you need to examine suppliers carefully. You need to find the authentic ones.
Finding suppliers has never been this simple before the emergence of the internet. Now, with just a few clicks on Google’s search engine, you can discover local manufacturers and wholesale stores without spending time, effort, and money visiting different locations.
The best bet of most sellers is overseas wholesale suppliers. AMZ sellers usually order products in bulk and import them into their country.
Unarguably, Alibaba is the go-to online wholesale marketplace to find suppliers overseas. The platform has a large base of manufacturers, offering manufacturing costs at a much lower price than the United States.
Step 3: List Product/s on Amazon
A product has no use if you won’t let potential customers find them. Thus, the next step is creating a product listing on Amazon. Keep in mind that your listing has to go up before your shipment reaches the Amazon Fulfillment Center.
If the product is non-existent in the Amazon marketplace, you need to create a new listing. However, if another seller is already selling the same product, the best thing you can do is to match their listing.
A product listing should include:
- Product image
- Product title
- Product description
- Search term and relevant keywords
- SKU
- Details (e.g., price, quantity, condition, etc.)
For potential customers to find your products easily, ensure to use the right keywords. Utilize ZonBase Keyword Tool to rank in Amazon.
