Where to start selling on Amazon in 2020?
What Amazon Sales model should we choose to sell?
Before we decide on a product we have to decide on our business model. There are different models to sell products on Amazon.
Her are a few for you to refer to
- Reselling
- Retail Arbitrage
- Drop shipping
- Private label
- Liquidation
- Manufacturing
Some people sell products located in the house. They download the seller app and scan the product in their house to check the price on Amazon. Another place that sellers source products from are garage sales, Facebook marketplace and retail outlets. You can redistribute retail outlets products into the Amazon FBA warehouse. That is called retail arbitrage.
Another model is to represent products for manufacturers. You are acting aa middle man for the product.
You can also sell your own product by setting up a private label product. You can do this by attending trade shows or developing your own product through a manufacturer.
Before you spend 1000’s of dollars on a products, a good place to start could be faux private Labeling or bundling. Faux Private labeling is a good tactic to take before you spend too much money. It is putting a bundle together of other products and creating a private label of those products.
A private label product is manufactured by a 3rd party or contract and sold under the retailer’s brand name.
An example of Private labeling is natural energy drinks that you can source from a manufacturer. The problem is how costly it is to private label a product. A good tactic may be to learn these other listing tactics like selling things from your house or selling retail outlet items before you try and develop a private label product. Our FBA Map Coaching program will help guide you through this process of sourcing, selling and private labeling,
Later down the line once you master Amazon techniques you can start to partner with manufactures and do their online listing and optimization. This tactic to partner with the manufacturer can help limit your capital outlay. If you show the manufacturer you possess a certain skillset that their internal team doesn’t have as well as portray that there is a market for their product, you may be able to partner with that manufacturer. Of course you must learn the system first.
Some other ways to sell on Amazon
Merch by Amazon
https://merch.amazon.com/landing
Merch by Amazon is an order on demand t-shirt printing service.
Design a shirt and Amazon will put those shirts on their site and you will get a royalty. When ordered, Amazon makes shirt and ships it. You can upload all the designs you want. There is no upfront cost and you get paid on a per shirt basis.
Print on demand (POD)
You can design the graphics for products like mugs. It can be anything that is customized and can be printed on demand like mugs, t-shirts, phone cases, pillows…When the product is ordered a manufacturer will print and deliver. There is a low upfront cost, no stock really needed, and you only pay to make the item right there.
Which way should you go about it depends on how much money you have. Decide on one of these ways to start selling in order to learn the process.
If you have a T-Shirt and want to sell it on Amazon. There is an app called Tee launch. Set up a Shopify store. You can hit a button and it will be posted on Amazon. There are lots of other ways to sell through 3rd party providers that will do the printing. Just Google the various options you are thinking about.
How would I start if I was you?
Before you start: Decide what your budget is? If you have a large budget you have more options . If you have no budget or low budget. Maybe sign up for Merch for Amazon. Especially if you know graphic design.
So how do you find products that are high in demand?
After you have the money you probably should look at bundling a product. It is because you can faux private label products. Source the bundled product based on a few different criteria.
Bundling
Bundling allows you to put together a private label product out of nothing. Another benefit is that you can source all your products out of your local market, Australia, United States, United Kingdom, Canada, etc… You don’t need to go overseas to find the correct supplier.
A great way is to start is through pretend private label through bundling. The process will help you learn how to private label products. A good place to start is ww.dollardays.com. You would purchase the various pieces and ship them to yourself. You would then repackage the products in separate packaging. The power behind the bundle is based on low cost and high turn over of the product. This also minimizes your risk.
You can do this by finding what sells well with other individual products. You can identify products by combining products based on Frequently Bought Together items on Amazon.
When you click on a listing and scroll down it will show you other products that are purchased with the product you clicked on.
Example:
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Better examples of this would probably be based on different categories but the concept is the same.
You will have to do some leg work to identify the products that are well positioned for bundling. Source the bundled products from Ali express or Dollar days. Package the items then send them into Amazon to be fulfilled through Amazon Prime.
Some more bundling tips and rules;
Bundling is collection of things that relate to one another. Things that are frequently purchased to one another on Amazon.
There is another section that can be referred to in order to find bundling opportunities.
- Customers who bought this item also bought
- Customers who viewed this item also viewed
These types of sections on Amazon will provide insight into bundling opportunities.
Bundling can be beneficial because
- the Average selling price will be higher than the original product.
- The startup costs of bundling will be cheaper
- Without bundles you can make $4-$5 per product
- With bundles you can make up to $25
- If done right you can prevent other sellers jumping on your listing because they can’t find out where you sourced your product.
- It is the easiest way to step into faux private labeling
- It has a higher perceived value
Different levels and stages to bundles
1st stage of bundling- Look into frequently bought together. This will help you with niche expertise and experience. As you start to study bundles you will know how to create the next bundling opportunity. The best way to start is with 10-25 bundles to research. The end result will be 2-3 bundles that you are going to go forward with.
2nd stage of bundling- Once you determine a bundle sells well for a particular time of year, you can also determine that it might sell well next year or on a different holiday. Once you have experience you can start to branch out. Again start with 10-25 bundles. Narrow that down to your top 4-5.
3rd stage of bundling-You have a lot of experience selling bundles in a specific category
Your order size starts to grow because of your knowledge of the market.
Some tips to bundling;
- Be careful of mixing brands
- Never put the name of the brand in the bundle title
- Google the Amazon product bundling policy
- Bundles cannot be listed in media
- Highest price item should be the category
- The term Bundle should be in the title.
- 1st bullet point should list the number of items and what they are
- The product that you are bundling should relate the other products you are bundling it with.
Sourcing you bundle
There should be 3 areas to break this process down into.
- Identify the proof
- Identify the theme
- Identify the source
Places to look for a bundle on
- Aliexpress
- Dollar days
- Wanelo- # of saves
Identify Proof
First you need to find your main keywords. A good place to start your search is obviously on Amazon.com. Look for a keyword and look for what is selling well based on the BSR. Open the links and record the keywords that link to that BSR.
You also need to be checking the BSR history through Keepa. Keepa will give us some insight into the past history. A good Google Chrome extension is Keepa. We recommend this extension in our FBAMAP courses as well. Google ‘Keepa’ to gain further look into the extension. Keepa will give us data about if the product is doing well during certain times of year but ultimately we want to see if the product does well all year round.
A few forms of proof is if it has a good BSR and good history all year round. Another form of proof is going to Ali Express. Type in main keyword into Aliexpress. Click on orders and it will tell you what people are currently buying. Open the link and copy the keyword to record it in your google sheet or excel spreadsheet. Right now we are identifying individual items. On the next part we are going to try and identify a theme.
We can do a similar test on dollar days. We can sort by popularity. You can get ideas in this section. Type in a keyword that is shown on dollar days into Amazon.com and see the BSR.
Another place that will assist with proof of concept is called Wanelo. This site is not going to give you sales proof or orders proof. It is an online store that facilitates the discovery and sale of new products.
Another Chrome extension is DS Amazon Quick View. It will let you know the BSR on your search screen on Amazon.
After we do this study we are going to go back and check the frequently bought together products that we spoke about earlier in this article. You will enter into Amazon the keywords of products that you have gathered together. Another good place to look is in the reviews. Customers will tell you what they want. Go to the 1 and 5 star reviews and read what they are saying. The 5 stars will tell you what was good about it. 1 starts will tell you what they should have done.
You can also search Amazon for the keyword you have targeted and put the word “ bundles” on the backend to see what comes up.
It comes down to putting in the work to identify a product and solidify proof of concept through these websites that have been mentioned.
Identify the theme
Identifying a source of the products based on the theme. Go to Aliexpress and type in your keyword. Then start looking for products. Look for products on Dollar Days that aren’t on Aliexpress. Slendids.com is another site that sells wholesale kitchenware. Dollartree and Wholesalecentral.com is another place to look for and source products.
- Start with your 20-25 bundles
- Look for $10 of profit
- Try to ensure Anti-highjacking by sourcing multiple products from multiple sources so it is difficult for people to hijack listing.
Prepping Bundles
So how do we start to prep our bundles
First we should know the various terms of bundling and the conditions set out by Amazon.
A good place to start is by Googling “Amazon’s Bundling Policy”
Some things to be concerned about when starting out are oversized items;
Oversized
- Over 20 pounds
- Over 18” on its longest side, 14” on its medium side, 8” on its shortest side
- If it is smaller than that then it is considered standard
You want your products to be smaller than these dimensions to ensure your storage and shipping costs stay low.
FNKSU- Fulfillment Network Stock Keeping Unit- This represents the numbers printed directly on your products label. It enables pickers scanners the ability to identify your product so that your product is correctly picked and shipped for each sale.
Prepping your bundles
Your poly bags are clear plastic that is at least 1.5 millimeters thick. It is one way to package your bundles together. You don’t want to get anything that can get stick on a conveyor belt.
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Depending on your product size, pick the correct self adhesive bags.
Amazon Bundling Labels
If it is 15 inches or more you need a suffocation label. Some come with the label in the bag already.
You also need a ‘do not separate’ label for the workers at Amazon. I is so they don’t try to separate the products. Avery Labels are for printing FN SKU’s and Shipping labels. When you add your product into amazon they will give you a PDF and print it to put onto your product. You will make a shipping plan and get a shipping label. Print that off and place onto the box you are shipping with.
There are 2 stickers that are going to be required if you are creating a bundle. The suffocation label & do not separate sticker.
Example;
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That is everything you will need to prep you bundles.
