Starting a new business is never easy. It takes a lot of courage and knowledge to kickstart a business.
Amazon is a great marketplace where you can jumpstart your eCommerce business. More than just a marketplace, Amazon also offers valuable solutions for sellers to gain profits from selling products on their platform. One of them is FBA or Fulfillment by Amazon.
It’s worth knowing that 89% of the third-party sellers on Amazon are using FBA for their business!
If you are not yet starting an FBA business, there is no time better than now. If you are unfamiliar with either Amazon or FBA, read on to learn what FBA is and how to start your FBA business.
What is FBA and how does it work?
FBA or Fulfillment by Amazon is a fulfillment service provided by Amazon. When using this service, you won’t have to worry about managing inventory, packing, shipping, or dealing with returns as Amazon will handle all of that on your behalf.
What you need to do is prepare your products and send them to Amazon’s fulfillment centers and Amazon will take over the stock management from there.
When using FBA, you can benefit from Amazon’s top-notch logistic solutions and technology, an extensive network of fulfillment centers across the globe as well as many other peaks that come along with it.
How to launch your FBA business?
When opting for an FBA business, you can cross off a great number of responsibilities that relates to running an online business. Yet, the most important task – that 20% of work that delivers 80% of the results – still remains under your management.
If you do these parts properly, you can get better outcomes with little effort. In the following, let’s go through all the steps that might help you to gain success via FBA.
Find products that sell
Picking the right products is the first step and the most important to your success on this platform. It is the make-or-break factor that you must get right in order to see the returns of investment for your business.
Newbie sellers tend to make the same mistakes – either picking saturated products with a cutting-throat competition or choosing products with little to no demand. Products that are too expensive won’t do anything good for your business either.
Picking the right product all comes down to two things:
- Demand
- Price
Find niche products with good demand
A niche is a particular market with specific demands. Customers from these niches look for special products that are not popular among mass consumers.
For example, regular toothpaste and toilet papers are definitely not niche products – they are essential for everyone and highly competitive. Yet, organic toothpaste and organic toilet can be good niche products for customers who prioritize a green lifestyle.
Finding these niches will help you to avoid harsh competition, realize products with strong demand, and narrow down a specific group of target audiences for your products
But how to find these niche products, you might ask.
First, start with what you are interested in.
There are high chances that there is already a considerable population sharing the same interest with you. Plus, if it’s your interest, you are likely to understand the demands and what others are looking for – it is a great advantage for promoting your products to the right audience later on.
Secondly, look for emerging trends in the market
Another great way to find the right products for Amazon is by looking at the current market and doing some research to understand the trends and what people are looking for.
To do that, you might need helps from research tools. Using these tools, you can easily explore and search the huge market for in-demand products. These tools will provide you with data and metrics to make informed decisions on what to sell.
It is possible to dive into the marketplace yourself and find products that can drive sales for your Amazon business. But, it is definitely very helpful – but also very time-consuming!
In your research, besides Amazon, try to extend your research to other platforms and tools like Google or eBay to get more ideas of what to sell.
Some popular tools that you can use for your Amazon product research are IO Scout, Helium 10, Jungle Scout, MerchantWords, etc.
Estimate the right price range for your products
After brainstorming and researching for products with good demand, it’s time to narrow your list down and estimate the right price range. When it comes to pricing, it is ideal to high the sweet pot of competitive yet profitable prices.
Moreover, a competitive price will also help you to gain that Buy Box.
During your research, it is important to take into consideration the prices of other available products and suppliers in the market and identify a specific ideal price range for your potential products.
Source your products
The second phase is to find a supplier for the products to sell in your FBA business. This part is just as important as finding products.
The first and most important when it comes to finding suppliers is the price. In order to get a competitive price for your products, it is recommended to source your products from a supplier outside the US.
Chinese suppliers are great to start with. These supplies provide competitive prices with a wide variety of products. With the development of logistics and supply chains, you can source your products from other countries with ease. Moreover, China-based suppliers are very accessible. You can find products easily by browsing through platforms like Alibaba, Made-In-China, and more.
If you want your products to come from suppliers within the country or even local suppliers, one good way to search for suppliers is by looking at the trade magazine – old-fashioned yet very effective. You can easily find what suppliers are providing similar products within your area.
When working with suppliers nearby, it will be more convenient for you to interact and communicate with them. Plus, it is also easier to make sure the quality of the products meets your expectations and requirements.
Ship your products
After landing a deal with your supplier, it is about time to send your products from your suppliers to Amazon’s facilities for distribution to your customers.
Basically, there are a few shipping options to deliver your products from suppliers to Amazon. You can ship by train, boat, truck, or air!
For products sourced from within the country, you can choose to transport products via train, or truck. If your products are shipped from overseas, you can arrange freight shipping via boat or air. Each option has its own advantages and disadvantages. For example, shipping via boat is slower, and more complicated with extensive paperwork. Transporting by air is faster and easier yet more expensive.
Boat transportation is more common for Amazon sellers as it is a more cost-effective option that helps you get higher profit margins for your products.
After the products arrive at your place, you must prepare your products to meet Amazon’s requirements and send them to Amazon Fulfillment centers.
As a beginner, you might take some time to understand how the shipping process works as well as other custom procedures, taxes, and laws. The good news is that some suppliers can help you out with the whole complicated process and send your products right to Amazon warehouses with speed and optimal cost.
Merchize, for example, is also providing special services for print-on-demand sellers on Amazon to take the advantage of Amazon’s FBA services and send your print-on-demand products to Amazon with ease.
Market your products to the right audience
When your products are all set at Amazone’s facility, ready to be delivered to the end buyers, you will face the most crucial phase in your selling process – promoting your products to customers.
This phase decides whether your products could make it to the hands of people who need them or gather dust in the corner of Amazon’s warehouse. Obviously, you won’t want the latter to happen.
Unsold inventory is costly. Amazon still charges you an inventory fee so you better step up your marketing efforts and empty your inventory as quickly as possible!
Optimize your listings
First thing first, let your audience know how good your products are!
Here is what you can do to make your listings better:
Write compelling copy: Highlight your products’ benefits and address your customer’s pain points so they can’t resist your products.
Add attractive and informative photos and graphics: Good images will make your products stand out from the crowd. It’s the first thing that customers see on your listings so make sure that your product images are attractive and convincing to capture customers’ attention. Add key product features into the pictures so your messages get through easier.
Optimize for search engines: Last but not least, don’t forget that you need to make your listings search-friendly so that potential customers can find your products easily through a search engine. Inserting your listings with high search volume keywords will help your listings make way to shopper’s search results pages.
With the help of SEO tools, you can find keywords with high search volume to include in your title, description, and images.
Promote through paid ads
The quickest and most effective way to spread your listings to the right audience is using paid ads.
Pay Per Click marketing is a great option to help you reach potential customers and audiences at a low cost.
Google Adsense and Facebook Ads are good options to increase the visibility of your listings. Amazon also has a PPC option for sellers on their platform. With this option, your product will appear on the first page of their search results.
Collect positive reviews for your products
Reviews are super important for online products. Most customers will look at the reviews before deciding to buy a product or not. Not having reviews or having bad reviews are equally bad for your business.
That’s why you have to make sure that the review sections on your products look good. Of course, you can patiently wait for your listings to grow organically. However, long waits are costly for FBA sellers. It is highly recommended to artificially build reviews at first.
You can also send your products to product reviewers, and influencers to get reviews for your products.
