Day: July 29, 2021

If you’re looking to become an online seller using Amazon, then you’ve no doubt wondered what items you should be stocking for sales. As Amazon experts, we’ve had to answer this question plenty of times to a variety of clients.

Even after pouring hours upon hours of research into the topic, it can be difficult to look through the market to find the right product to sell. To that end, we’ve put together this article with the aim of helping you decide what you should sell for your new e-commerce business!

What Makes Items Profitable

Before we dive right into what types of Amazon products are best-sellers, it’s important to understand why they sell so well. Think of it like cooking. If you’re missing certain ingredients or even condiments, it can impact the quality of the food. Therefore, it helps to have a recipe on hand and we’ve got that covered. 

Fulfillment By Amazon and Onsite

One thing that’s crucial to the recipe of selling items on Amazon is making the process easy for you. That’s why we highly recommend you look into the Fulfilled by Amazon program that they offer. The reason is that it takes a lot of the headache out of the selling process and is perfect for people who are new to the e-commerce scene. 

It’s perfect because using the Amazon FBA program means you won’t have to worry about handling delivery and shipping orders. All you have to do is send in your stock of items to one of Amazon’s fulfillment warehouses. They’ll then store and ship out your orders whenever you receive one. Additionally, FBA can handle a plethora of different customer service issues when the time comes. All you have to worry about is sourcing.

Despite all of these excellent services provided by FBA, it’s still quite possible you’ll want to store your stock somewhere else. Some people like being more hands-on with logistics and that’s understandable. Thankfully, Amazon offers a different service that can still help even if you’re not using FBA. 

Onsite is effectively a middle ground between FBA and what is known as Fulfilled by Merchant (FBM). FBM is when you do all of the work for delivering and shipping orders. Onsite is a program that was created to help reduce the amount of money people spend on things like shipping costs and Amazon seller fees. 

Essentially, you’ll be able to store your new products wherever you want, but Amazon will still handle things like shipping. This way, you have more control over your inventory and do things with more cost-efficiency. Moving on, let’s take a look at the other crucial ingredients that help to make a product profitable. 

Demand

One thing that is a huge driver as to the profitability of a popular product is how much people want a certain item. Therefore, it’s a good idea to pay attention to what items people can’t stop talking about. However, it’s always a good idea to make sure these items aren’t simply fads and not investing too much in them. 

That being said, there are a few other things to consider when talking about demand. For instance, you should be on the lookout for market gaps within item categories or niches. A market gap is essentially when the demand for a certain product by consumers hasn’t been met, or there’s too much of a product that people don’t want.

Market gaps can present excellent opportunities to make money. But then, what’s the best way to keep track of market gaps? How do you know which items on Amazon are sought after and which ones are avoided? Well, there’s a simple solution, keep an eye on product reviews!

As you research products and their categories, pay special attention to the reviews. “Why do this?” you might ask. Paying attention to the reviews of items can show you how you can possibly fill the gap in a market. For instance, let’s say you’re browsing a toy category.

You might notice that one of the only options for a certain toy has a lot of bad reviews. By looking at the reviews and seeing what people dislike about the item, you can find a way to fill the market gap. This can be done by looking for an item outside of the Amazon Marketplace.

From there, you can employ a strategy where you buy this superior version of the item on Amazon which has some demand. Once you should be able to sell your stock pretty easily, filling the market gap. 

Keywords

Something that can play into your research is what keywords that you use. Many best-selling products will have keywords that generate a lot of traffic online. But how can these keywords make a product profitable? Well, it all has to do with how much traffic that these keywords can actually generate for your product. 

Finding out how much traffic certain keywords receive might sound like a tricky process but that’s really not the case. There are a lot of different search engine tools and chrome extensions out there, however, a lot of them cost money or are locked behind some sort of subscription.

There are some free websites, but the quality won’t be on par with what the paid ones offer. But what do these keyword research tools do and why are they so important? They can really help you get a leg up on the competition, for starters.

These tools can gather data in a matter of seconds that would take a single person weeks of research. These tools can provide the following data: The number of monthly searches, related keywords, trending products for your keywords, frequently used words with similar phrases, and even competing products and their related keywords.

By gathering data like this you are incorporating one of the most important ingredients from the recipe for a profitable product. You can use these keywords when creating your own product listings. This will increase the chance of someone finding your product through searches.

Amazon Search Volume and Competition Levels

While it’s definitely a safe bet to observe the search volume of keyword searches via Google, it can be much more advantageous to find this volume on Amazon itself. The reason being that you’re selling products for your Amazon business, not google.

This data is more specific and will help you to pinpoint profitable products. You can do this the same way you’d use any other keyword data tool. Just make sure you find one that specifically works with Amazon. Once you’ve gathered the relevant data, you’ll need to see how much competition you’ll be dealing with in your particular product category. 

This is important because if you know many people are selling an item or product, you can see if the competition is high or low. This will, in turn, help you determine whether or not it would be a good idea to enter that particular market within Amazon. 

Determining the competition levels is not something that can be done with a tool, like with keywords. Instead, the product research needs to be done by yourself. Specifically, you need to be researching what is known as a Compound Annual Growth Rate or CAGR. In simple terms, this is the rate of return that’s required for an investment to grow. 

In terms of selling on Amazon, the investment would be your products. People do research on different products all the time so you can easily find documents on the CAGR about your items by including keywords such as “CAGR” or “market growth” in your search. 

This research will ultimately help you decide whether or not it’s smart to put a product or item out on the market. Especially if you find that your product has low competition. 

Market Size

Another thing that’s extremely important when deciding what items are profitable is to look at the potential size of the market for your items. This ties in with demand because if there’s a big enough demand for your product, then it will no doubt have a large market.

You will have to consider just how big you can make your business if you plan on centering it around one item or product. If your research shows that the market surrounding your item is growing with no signs of stopping, then you might have an excellent opportunity in your hands. Always be sure to monitor the amount of demand associated with the items you intend to sell.

Avoid Competing With Big Brands

Unless you are some sort of marketing or business wizard, you should never go head to head with another big company. This is especially true if you know that Amazon brand products themselves are a part of a category you’re interested in. Honestly, going up against Amazon on their own platform is a horrible idea, you might as well be giving your business death by superior pricing. 

Remember, you’re starting a small business here. Therefore, you’ll want to go up against other small businesses so that you have a fighting chance. By competing with sellers similar to yourself, you’ll have an easier time sticking out from them. Otherwise, it’s like an ant trying to stand up to a full-grown man. 

The Best Selling Items On Amazon

Now, we’ll finally get into the subject you’ve been waiting for. Which categories of products are the hottest on Amazon right now? We’ll tell you by giving you each of the categories and then further break down what categories are perfect for the beginning Amazon seller. 

The top categories are as follows: 

• Electronics
• Clothing and Jewelry
• Toys & Games
• Video Games
• Books
• Cell Phones and Accessories 
• Movies and Television
• Pet Supplies
• Personal Care
• Cameras and Photography

Before we break down some of the categories, you should know that we won’t be able to cover the electronics in this article. The reason being is that the electronics category is notoriously difficult to get into because there are huge companies, like Amazon, that you’d have to compete with for sales.

And because we’re aiming to educate people interested in starting up their own selling business, we’ll stick to the less competitive markets for the time being. 

Clothing and Jewelry

Starting off with the next of amazon’s best-sellers, it can be a bit difficult to nail down completely what is going to be in high demand here. The popularity of different clothing items and jewelry constantly fluctuates based on seasonal attire. Therefore, things like sports shorts, short sleeve t-shirts, and yoga pants or shorts are incredibly popular during the summer and are hot items at the moment. 

Things will obviously change once winter and fall roll around. The smart thing to do here would be to start selling things like sweaters, pants, and various other appropriate attire. The same thing goes for spring too. Also, face masks are top-selling products for the time being due to the pandemic. 

This is also a pretty good place for sellers who are just starting out since a lot of beginners, as well as professionals, are a part of this category. It can be pretty crowded but at the same time, it’s a lot easier for someone to make their own private label products with a hig profit margin. 

Books

This top-seller category has been booming as of recently. It has become super easy to self-publish books on Amazon and many people are taking advantage of that. Of course, you can’t talk about books on Amazon without talking about Kindle, which some people have a lot of money on.

In fact, people have been able to make thousands of dollars a month just by using Kindle. They effectively make it a passive stream of easy income. But it’s not a get-rich-quick situation, mind you. Getting yourself on this side of Amazon can result in either a full-time business or reliable side income. 

There really is a lot of opportunities to be had in the books category of Amazon. If you’re someone who loves books and is interested in that industry, this is definitely a route you should consider. 

Cameras and Photography

This is a category that new sellers might have an easier time getting into. It’s not nearly as crowded as the clothing and jewelry categories and there’s a broad range of items within it. This category covers things like home cameras, disposable cameras, and other gadgets like selfie sticks and rings. 

The trick here is that you’re not trying to make a new camera, but rather a new accessory. We’re talking about things like lens caps, camera bags, lighting sources like selfie sticks, stands, and other similar products. These are all types of good products that are especially profitable in this category. 

The only downside about this category is that there are some pretty big brands within it. However, it’s pretty easy to avoid them altogether and the sub-category of accessories itself isn’t dominated by the big brands, unlike the electronics category. 

Final Thoughts

As you can see, finding the best items to sell on Amazon is a very involved process. You have to do a decent amount of research and legwork to figure out which categories are particularly profitable. And even then you’ll have to do more research about the different products and which ones have a good chance of returning value on the market.

Regardless if you’re doing retail arbitrage, dropshipping, or just trying to get a new product idea out there, we hope this cleared some things up about what you should sell. 

By now, you’ve probably heard about how many people are jumping on the train of e-commerce. Specifically, many people are becoming sellers on websites like Amazon.

Whether it’s because people believe following this path is an easy way to make money or you’re looking to become your own boss, you must be wondering: “How much money can I actually make?”

In this article, we’ll talk about how average incomes for Amazon sellers and how much you can expect to make!

Amazon and Third-Party Sellers 

Before we talk about specific income, we’ll first need to talk a little about how people make money on Amazon. If you didn’t already know, Amazon allows third-party sellers to post product listings on their website. It’s an increasingly popular way to make some cash on the side or start your own online retail business through the e-commerce giant. 

Amazon sells a lot of products using third parties. In fact, you might be surprised to know that over half of the products that have been sold in 2021 came from a third-party seller. Whether it’s selling their own products or Amazon products, people have been using this to make money online for a few years now, kind of like Ebay.

Hearing this might come as a shock to you and now you might be wondering how you can cut yourself a slice of the Amazon pie and establish your own brand. Additionally, Amazon has a variety of tools that can help these sellers such as Seller Central.

This is where vendors can change a variety of things such as pricing and their Amazon listings. Most notably is something that is known as Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) or sometimes it’s just called Amazon FBA. An Amazon FBA Seller has access to a lot of benefits.

It can make managing your e-commerce business a lot easier because Amazon will manage things like shipping and return orders so you don’t have to! All you have to do is ship your items to one of Amazon’s warehouses and they’ll handle deliveries whenever and items of yours are shipped. 

However, there are FBA fees when you use this service. So new Amazon sellers might be scared off from this and prefer to deliver their items themselves. This method is known as Fulfillment by Merchant (FBM). 

Average Sales For Amazon Sellers

Now that you have some context behind third-party selling on Amazon, let’s talk numbers. Specifically, let’s look at the average income for sellers. First, we’ll look at average earning for most people who are sellers, and then we’ll take a look at how much money the top sellers rake in. 

According to some recent research, most people make a decent amount of money. Many sellers make at least $1,000 a month in sales. This number proves that you can easily use Amazon selling as a steady side hustle or passive, supplemental income.

However, this is just the low end of the average spectrum. It was reported that nearly half of all third-party sellers on Amazon make between $1,000 to $25,000 a month in sales! Of course, that’s not even mentioning what sellers at the top of the chain are making per month.

They make up a small percentage, only about 19%, but these people earn anywhere between $25,000 to $250,000 a month in sales! This means you’d be making about 3 million dollars in total revenue at the end of the year. There are also people who make even more than that, but only make up about 6% of sellers. 

But what about people at the very bottom? Should you be worried about that statistic? Thankfully, you won’t really have to worry. Especially if you’re just starting out, you shouldn’t be expecting to make that much money. That being said, people on the lower end of the spectrum make under $500 a month.

However, they make up a smaller percentage than those who make over $1,000 a month. 

Profits and Lifetime Sales 

While all of these big numbers are obviously tantalizing, it’s important to stay grounded when it comes to new business ventures. What we just talked about were sales, not total profits after things like fees and taxes. Not to mention the fact that we haven’t even begun to discuss how much you can expect to make during your business’ lifetime. 

So, as an Amazon seller, how much can you expect to reach in terms of lifetime sales? Thankfully, the numbers for this are pretty high, much like the average monthly sales. It’s been reported that a great deal of Amazon sellers ends up making over $100,000 in sales in their business’ lifetime. Surprisingly, this number is on the lower end of the spectrum. 

In fact, 43% of Amazon sellers will make over $100,000 during their business’ lifetime. While this is certainly appealing, sales don’t really show us everything. We’ll take a look at how much profits the average Amazon seller can expect to make to give you a more realistic look into how profitable being a seller can be. 

Depending on who you talk to, the profit margins for Amazon sellers can seem reasonable or unfortunately low. Generally speaking, Amazon sales will actually see higher profits than a startup small company that tries to do this on its own.

As an example, you’ll find that most sellers will have a profit margin higher than 10% and you’ll see other sellers making profits over 20%. It should be remembered that these profit margins were ultimately taken from lifetime earnings, rather than from one year.

The reason for this is because profit margins can fluctuate drastically during a year due to things like demand, expenses, and other factors. Therefore, sellers who participated in the study used their lifetime profits. 

What Can I Expect For Lifetime Profits? 

Now here comes the big question. After all the considerations about average sales numbers, profit margins, and so on, it’s time to talk about how much money you can expect to be returned as profits. The good news for you is that the profits tend to be quite noticeable. In fact, the brunt of Amazon sellers has reported lifetime profits over $25,000.

While this might seem low in the grand scheme of things, this is what you might expect to make if you’re using Amazon as a side hustle or way to create passive income. Someone who’s taking this venture more seriously will undoubtedly make more. In fact, it was reported that 6% of all Amazon sellers saw millions in profits from this business alone. 

How Quickly Can I Turn Profits On Amazon? 

With the possibility of becoming a millionaire looming in front of you, you must certainly now be thinking this: “How long will it take for my Amazon business to turn a profit?” Well, we have some good news for you. The short answer is that you’ll likely see profits in your first year. 

But you’re no doubt interested in the statistics behind that statement. Research has found that over half of independent Amazon sellers, around 64%, stated that they saw profits within a year. To break that down even further, 20% saw profits within 3 months, 17% saw profits within 3-6 months, and 23% saw profits between 6 months and a year. 

If you’d like a better idea of the average income from selling on Amazon, you should check out this article. It’s got all the information that you need about the subject. 

How Much Money Is Required To Start Selling On Amazon? 

When you look at a business model like the Amazon Marketplace and e-commerce, you might think that this is something that you’d need a lot of money for. That you’d need a big loan so you can buy the necessary inventory and to be able to cover any extra fees and costs that come your way.

This couldn’t be further from the truth. Surprisingly, you don’t need that much money to get started with selling on Amazon. The research reports that 28% of sellers only used about $500 to $1,000 to start selling. Even then, the statistics show that you probably won’t spend more than $10,000 if you’re just starting out.

The money that you use to start out is typically spent on referral fees, advertising, shipping costs, and getting the products you actually want to sell. It should be noted that making the initial Amazon seller account is free. There is more you’ll have to invest than just money, though.

Of course, you’ll have to invest a lot of your personal time into this, depending on how serious you’re taking it. This is especially true if you’re planning on making this a full-time job, rather than something to make money on the side. It also depends on if you’re going to be the only one managing things or if you have a team. 

Something you may want to consider, whether you’re starting an Amazon business or having trouble managing it, is something called automation. 

Automation, What Is It? 

This is a topic that we specialize in, as you’ve no doubt noticed. To put it simply, automation, in terms of e-commerce, allows software and various AI to handle a lot of things for you. It’s a very convenient and efficient way to keep your online business moving along efficiently.

Many online business owners end up switching to this method as they don’t like putting up with the repetitive parts of online business owning. What parts are typically automated in an online business? Some examples include automatic emails to customers, automatic ordering of new stock, customer service, private labels, sourcing, dropshipping, listing the best new products, and a lot more.

Automation services can also deal with retail arbitrage if that is the route you’d like to go with your Amazon FBA business. 

How Automation Works

E-commerce automation works one of two ways: doing it yourself and hiring people like us. We generally don’t recommend automating your online business yourself as there’s a lot of different tools, software, and systems that you have to make yourself. You may find yourself spending more time trying to automate things than actually being able to sell products. 

Therefore, it’s a lot easier to just hire a company that already has these tools to handle things for you. Hiring a company like us is more than just letting a computer do all of the work though. We also have a team of highly trained experts who make sure that your company will increase in profitability.

Whether you’re a small business or a larger retailer, we can handle all of it for you! 

Looking To The Future

After having seen all of this, you may begin to wonder if this selling craze using e-commerce is simply just a fad. It’s a very fair concern as many people believe that the rate at which people shop online will decrease once the world recovers from the pandemic.

That being said, you shouldn’t worry. A large number of people are very confident that they’ll continue to use online shopping. It’s very unlikely that you’ll see a huge drop in Amazon’s sales or figures. Online shopping is such an easy and convenient part of many people’s everyday lives.

Therefore, it’s unlikely that they’ll all just stop using it one day. Additionally, Amazon is such an integral part to a lot of many different industries. What this means is that there’s no doubt that sellers will be able to find some sort of market that can satisfy a consumer base.

Even if you’re a new seller and are totally unsure about what you should sell, choosing something niche can be a great way to turn a profit! 

Extra Tips For Becoming A Succesful Amazon Seller

Start Now

Don’t stress about getting everything right immediately. Part of this system is finding out what things do and do not sell. There’s no way to find out if you’ll fail or succeed without taking the plunge and trying things for yourself. Of course, there are ways to increase your chances of success.

Automation services can help make your life easier as you manage your business, and you don’t have to become super serious about selling all at once. What matters is getting your foot in the door and having a foothold on the market. 

Make An Effort

A lot of people look at selling on Amazon and see it as some sort of “get-rich-quick” scheme. The unfortunate truth is that this is not the case.

You need to put the effort into watching trends, sales reports, and managing funds if you want to be successful. Even if you are working with an automation business it’s still important to be thoroughly involved in your selling process. 

Final Thoughts

Selling on Amazon is one of the latest and greatest ways that normal people can get into business with the online retail titan. At a glance, it’s a fairly simple way for someone to get into the e-commerce scene but once you start putting in the effort, things get more complicated.

Additionally, you’ll be surprised by the number of successful sellers in this field. You can make a steady income if you play your cards right and maybe even come out of it as a millionaire! 

If you’re someone who frequents Amazon or other e-commerce websites, then it’s very likely that you’ve heard of people becoming online sellers.

But, you’re not quite sure what the Amazon Marketplace and its equivalents are, nor are you familiar with the process of selling online.

In this article, we’ll give you the rundown of what the Amazon Marketplace is and how you can get started as a seller!

What is the Amazon Marketplace? 

Before we tell you more about how you can start your own Amazon business, we should cover information about the Marketplace itself. If you’ve done any sort of shopping from Amazon, you know that they sell just about everything.

Books, ping pong equipment, and pretty much anything else you could want can be found on their website. What you might not know is this: along with buying directly from Amazon itself, you’re actually buying from third-party sellers. These sellers utilize the Amazon Marketplace, which is integrated straight into the main website itself. This allows the third-party sellers to easily get their merchandise out on the market, whether it’s new or used. 

So, to answer the question, the Marketplace is a third-party online retail market. It allows independent online sellers to put their merchandise on the website directly. These products can both be new or used and are integrated alongside the main website. However, products that use Amazon’s namesake will always be new and entirely owned by them. 

Now that you know all of this, you’re probably wondering to yourself “What’s the big difference between Amazon and its Marketplace?” At a glance, it probably doesn’t seem like much. However, there are some defining characteristics between the two platforms. 

Differences Between Amazon and the Marketplace

We’ll first look at Amazon itself. Like we mentioned before, if you are buying directly from Amazon, you will always receive a new product, unlike if you buy from a third-party seller. The other key difference is that Amazon will keep the profits from the items they sell. 

Marketplace sellers have the ability to sell both new and used products to their customers. Another thing you have to remember is that Amazon gives permission to certain people to become Marketplace sellers. We’ll get into the stipulations behind this soon. Additionally, Amazon will keep a percentage of the profits from these third-party sales. 

How To Become An Amazon Seller

Now that you’ve learned a little bit about the Marketplace itself, you’re probably thinking that it sounds like a pretty good way to bring in some extra income. After all, partnering with the biggest online retailer in the world would certainly mean you’re reaching a whole lot of different customers!

So, we’ll give you a little guide on how to actually get your seller’s profile set up. There are two important things you need to do before you set up your seller’s account. First and foremost, you’ll need to pick a selling plan. A selling plan dictates how big your selling business will be.

Depending on the one you pick, you’ll be allowed to do things like advertising your products or even selling in bulk. We’ll go over the specifics so you can get an idea of what you’re getting yourself into with each plan. 

Individual Selling Plan

Individual selling plans are perfect for people who are just getting into the world of online selling, have a smaller business, or are unsure what it is they’d like to sell online.

You will not have to pay a monthly fee and instead only have to pay a small fee of $.99 every time an item is sold. With this type of plan, you are allowed to add new products to the Amazon Catalog as well as grow your business with Fulfillment. 

But what is Fulfillment? Simply put, it’s a program by Amazon that allows shipping, storing, packing, as well as returns and exchanges to be handled by Amazon. It’s a big benefit for those who do not have the time or money to do all of these things themselves. It’s perfect for sellers who are just getting started and don’t have a clue about the packaging and shipping process. 

There are, however, some negatives when it comes to the individual selling plan. Because it’s meant for individual or smaller sellers, it doesn’t have any of the benefits of a Professional Selling Plan. You can’t even sell more than 40 products a month with an individual plan. 

Professional Selling Plan

If the Individual Selling Plan seems too small-scale for you, or if you’ve already got an idea of what you’re selling, then the Professional Selling Plan is perfect for you. It already includes the few benefits of the Individual Plan, such as the being able to add new products and the use of Fulfillment by Amazon, but also adds a lot more and removes some restrictions. 

While we won’t list every advantage of using a Professional Plan, we will show you what we think are the most notable ones. API integration, bulk listings, advertising, restricted category access, and other advanced selling tools are by far some of the more appealing aspects of using this selling plan.

If you’re planning on running a larger e-commerce business, this plan is essential to you. There is a snag with this plan though. Amazon won’t let you sell your products on their platform for free. Unlike the Individual account where you’re just charged $.99 for each item that’s sold, you’ll have to pay a monthly fee of $39.99 for the Selling Plan. This can be a turn-off for some people as they might not bring in enough profits to warrant the monthly payment. 

Additional Selling Fees

Upon looking at teach of the different Selling Plans you might think to yourself that this is a pretty good deal. But, before you get too excited, you should know that your products are charged different fees when they’re sold off.

These types of fees include per-item fees, referral fees, closing fees, and high-volume listing fees, to name a few. We’ll look at some of these so you can better understand the cost of selling your items on the platform. 

Per-item Fees

This is the type of fee that’s charged each time you sell an individual item, regardless of what other fees and charges are tacked onto it. Thankfully, for professional sellers, you will never be charged a per-item fee. This is the tradeoff for the monthly subscription. Meanwhile, individual sellers are charged $.99 per item sold. 

Referral Fees

This fee type is the big one. As in, you’ll see the biggest fees in this category. Referral fees are applied to items that fall under certain categories and Amazon will deduct the applicable fee percentage on the sales price. This means that this fee is applied to the base price of the item. 

There is a huge range of referral fees that cover a wide variety of different item categories. It would admittedly take a long time to cover all of the different categories and their associated fees. Therefore, we’ll link the table that Amazon provides for applying these fees.

It’s definitely worth a look as you may want to change up what you plan on selling depending on these fees. Some of these fees take up to as much as 45% of the price! 

Closing Fees

This type of fee is thankfully more straightforward. It’s simply a flat $1.80 fee on any item that falls into the categories of books, DVDs, music, video games, game consoles, and video game accessories. You will find that these items also have referral fees on top of them, so be wary. 

High-Volume Listing Fees

This fee only applies to sellers who are selling items with unit counts over 1.5 million. Essentially, Amazon tracks the amount of SKUs (Barcodes) of all of your items. If the number that you are stocking exceeds 1.5 million you will be charged $0.001 per each of those SKUs. While this number seems minuscule, it can add up quickly. 

Refund Administration Fees

That’s right, even when you’re performing a refund, your item will have a fee attached to it. When you perform a refund, Amazon will return the referral fee you paid but with a catch. You’ll be charged either $5.00 or 20% of the referral fee, whichever is the smaller amount. 

Fulfillment Fees

While these are not directly tied to selling fees, you should be made aware of the fact that Amazon charges fees for using their Fulfillment services. Pretty much every service that is provided by Fulfillment incurs some sort of fee.

These range from storage fees, removal and disposal fees, return processing fees, and even unplanned service fees if they receive any inventory that lacks proper documentation. 

Seller Central, the Next Step 

The number of fees can certainly be daunting. However, don’t let this dissuade you from partnering with Amazon. You are still able to make plenty of money by using Amazon Marketplace! Once you’re ready, continue with all of the account creation steps and you’ll find that you have access to your Seller Central account. 

What is Seller Central? Well, it’s your hub for selling your items on Amazon. It will allow you to manage your account and the items that you sell. Through this hub, you’ll be able to add product information, update inventories, manage your payments, and you’ll list all your products here too.

Additionally, Amazon provides plenty of helpful content within Seller Central to better navigate the wild world of Amazon business. This is not all that Seller Central can help you with. One of the most important parts of this feature is the ability to look at reports for your items.

You can track inventories, keep track of sales, generate business reports, and even use custom tools to monitor customer metrics. This will allow you to take a closer look at trends as you sell your items. If you’re someone who’s on the go a lot, you should definitely get the mobile app. It allows you to do everything on Seller Central as well as extra features like quickly capturing product photos. 

Time To List Products! 

Now that you’ve got your Seller Central account all set up and ready to go, it’s finally time to start listing your products! But how do you do that exactly? Well, keep reading and we’ll tell you all you need to know. Something that you should know before you start listing your items is what seller plan you’re using.

If you’re using a professional plan, you will actually be able to list your items in bulk. Individual plan owners must list their products one at a time. Beyond that, you’ll need to either match an existing listing or create a new one yourself. Matching an existing is used if someone else is already selling the same product as you.

Doing this won’t take away any sales from you, it’s just an easy way to keep the Marketplace from being full of duplicate listings. Otherwise, you just have to make a new one for your item. In order to create this listing, you’ll need to have access to your product’s Global Trade Item Number.

This is something like a UPC, ISBN, EAN, or SKU. Additionally, you should also be prepared to provide things like product titles, descriptions, images, and keywords for when people search for your product. 

Shipping Your Products

You’ve made a sale and now it’s time to have your product delivered! You can do this by either doing the shipping yourself or by using Fulfillment. It’s generally easier to use Fulfillment because Amazon will handle all of the shipping and delivery for you.

But how does this system work? It’s really quite simple. You simply ship your inventory to Amazon where it will be made ready for sales and when a customer orders something, they’ll ship it to the customer for you. 

Final Thoughts

Well, there you have it. This is essentially all you need to know about the Amazon Marketplace and how you can get started as either an individual or professional seller! As you can see, the process is fairly simple and it’s not hard to do.

It is very easy to get an account set up and start selling your products. That being said, all of the different fees and costs can seem daunting and scary at first.

Therefore, if you’re ready to take your selling experience to the next level, or want some extra help, check out our website!