How to Be Successful Selling on Amazon: Top Tips and Proven Strategies

Your online shop is your home base, where you display your brand, connect with your target audience, and sell your goods. 

That said, there are many options to reach and sell to existing and new customers through online marketplaces like Amazon.

If you are a new eCommerce startup, you might have some questions, including:

• Why should I sell on AMZ? 
• How do I set the pricing on Amazon? 
• What does it take to develop a successful business on the platform, and how can I keep it growing over the long term? 
• What options and solutions are available in the marketplace I should use?

This guide strives to tackle these questions and help you apprehend how to create and grow a sustainable and profitable business on Amazon. 

So, how to sell on Amazon successfully? This article provides efficient tips for selling on Amazon and scaling your business by increasing sales.

Study the Amazon’s Landscape

Learning the rules of the Amazon platform isn’t a choice. It’s a must. Find out more about guidelines, Amazon Prime member benefits, and fulfillment by AMZ FBA recommendations. At the same time, you need to examine the competitive landscape. You don’t want to work with products on Amazon with too many similar options or find that your price isn’t competitive too late. Thus, abide by the platform’s recommendations and rules, operate professionally, and keep smart about entering the market. 

Consider Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) Fees

The product choice should depend on how much you pay to sell them on AMZ. So let’s delve deeper into the most popular sales model – FBA.

The main fees paid for the FBA:

• FBA fee;
• referral fee.

These fees are paid for each unit of goods. FBA fulfillment fee is calculated depending on the product category, size, and weight. The Amazon certificate states that the platform charges this fee for collecting and packaging your orders, delivery, processing, and return.

The larger the product’s weight and volume are, the more FBA fee you will have to pay for the items.

FBA storage fee refers to the commission for storing goods in an Amazon warehouse. It is calculated depending on how many cubic feet your product occupies in the warehouse (not one unit, but all the products). 

Many sellers choose small items to pay a minimum fee and cheaper delivery to AMZ (from China, for example).

The referral fee is calculated as a percentage of the price of the goods on the listing, paid for each unit of goods sold, depending on the category. In the category “kitchen,” for example, the referral fee is 15%, whereas in the category of electronics, only 8%. 

Think of Your SEO on Amazon

Consider the Amazon platform as a typical search engine to end up with a much better idea of selling online with a more strategic approach. Get acquainted with all the peculiarities of the search engine algorithm, and you will find yourself in a great position to keep your keywords, search results, and all the copywriting spick and span.

Check out the Product Listings

Once you find out what the algorithm of the search engines on AMZ offers, spare some time to learn more about your competitors, look for your products and mark how your rank coincides with the competition regarding price and the product listing description.

Price Your Products Competitively

You are unlikely to achieve many orders when you are the most expensive on the market. But, on the other hand, when your prices are too low, you can’t make a significant profit. The key is simple: try to get the sweet spot between these two options. For example, your price can be 1% lower than your competitors. But there are more aspects than just the price in choosing the winner of Buy Box.

Select the Proper Pricing Strategy 

When you are selling inexpensive or luxury products, you need to set the appropriate pricing. Generally, try to keep prices not higher than 10% compared to other Fulfilled by Merchant Amazon sellers. At the same time, try not to be more than a few pennies cheaper than the least expensive competitor. Common seller strategies also include raising the price when your competitors run out.

Mind the Packaging 

Do you want to send the products to AMZ only to have the items damaged on the way from the party seller or to fulfillment centers? Probably, no. Then, make sure there’s enough packaging in your shipment. Thus, even if they are dropped, your goods will be okay. Great things are simple, and it doesn’t take much time to check the package, especially when your suppliers can handle most of it.

Decide on Your Best-Performing Products

The most profitable goods are your real cash cows. So, you need to treat such goods just as well as they have been working for you. First, study your Amazon selling account and reports to spot your profitable goods by examining the profit margins, sell-through ratio, and trends in price. After that, order more to continue increasing your ROI. Finally, don’t forget to maintain a decent stock of your bestsellers.

Maintain Top-Notch Customer Service

As soon as you do the difficult part and gain sales, you mustn’t screw the pooch. Ensure all information about the order is proper, package your goods appropriately, and deliver to the provided address. Don’t forget to politely request a customer’s feedback and respond to queries on time.

It is no secret that product reviews are extremely important for successful selling on Amazon.  We have likely all purchased something on AMZ, and in many of those cases, the decision came down to which item had the better reviews, even if it had a higher price. 

Merchants are allowed to send follow-up emails to clients about a specific order, and several automated services can help you manage this process. The guidelines are here but, to cut a long story short, you may not:

• send emails with promotional and marketing messages
• include links to other websites
• demand, incentivize, or ask for positive feedback

However, you can send a few messages confirming you have accepted an order that also follows up to request the client share a review or seller feedback.

There are multiple best practices for email marketing out there but try to send no more than two to three messages: one during the confirmation of order or delivery phase and one a few weeks after the item is received. 

Avoid making your letters feel too aggressive or spammy, and give clients an outlet to leave negative feedback directly with you before writing a negative review.  

For your convenience, use a great tool, SageMailer, developed to make communicating with clients and handling customer reviews on social media as smooth and straightforward as possible.

Track Your Success and Possible Changes in Your Amazon’s Seller Central Account 

Seller Central (the one you use to access your Amazon seller account) provides great tools and different reports. You want to make sure you are making money and don’t want to run out of products to sell. Check your account to keep track of all the operations. Also, the report can display the Amazon Buy Box rate and if your competitors are creeping in on your goods. Download the reports, keep an eye on the processes, and make forecasts and alterations in your selling strategy

Avoid Out-of-Stocks

For a good reason, running out of stocks almost always becomes the “worst nightmare” issue for sellers. They lead to lost sales and reduce customer satisfaction and loyalty levels. 

That is why merchants should calculate as accurately as possible how many goods to order from the manufacturer and how much they will sell before a new delivery. If you order too much and don’t sell until the next batch arrives, you will have to pay for extra storage at Amazon. Besides, there is a chance that the platform will not accept the next set because the total quantity of goods will exceed your storage limit at the company.

Amazon allocates a certain number of places for each seller for the goods in the warehouse, based on the historical data of this account: how many sales there were earlier, and periodically reviews this limit. And the limit depends not only on the number of units of goods but also on their volume. So, for example, whereas you can get 100 units of space for small teddy bears, the platform will likely allocate only ten units for two-meter teddy bears.

Produce A+ Content

The Enhanced Brand Content feature, now known as A+ Content, allows you to tell your company’s story with appealing, customized text and images that promote your digital store. A+ Content goes beyond the information in your product listing and delivers a more promotional overview of what makes your goods unique. 

It helps you highlight products and campaigns in engaging ways to lower your bounce rate and boost conversions. Adding fresh A+ Content also supports pictures you might use on social media and in client newsletters to develop brand familiarity as part of a single online strategy.

Invest in Advertising 

When learning how to boost sales on the platform, benefit from advertising opportunities to stimulate growth. Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Displays, Sponsored Products, and Stores all help improve your visibility in the marketplace and allow you to reach customers more likely to purchase your goods.

Each is a practical approach to your eCommerce growth strategy. It is easy to manage costs with pay-per-click ads, which let you work within a defined budget and monitor spending to optimize your ad campaigns and maximize performance. 

Use the Power of Instagram

Jumping on the Instagram bandwagon — video ads, stories, whatever — is another excellent way to become successful on AMZ in 2022.

While many think Facebook is the leading social media platform, Instagram is not far behind. Over the years, such an image-sharing solution has become a great place for online companies to grab their perfect clients’ attention.

Using the Instagram Story feature and your Instagram feed is a great way of showcasing your goods to the clients most likely to purchase them. 

If you use a Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) seller profile, you may create a social media promo code that you will use to bring purchase-ready traffic to an AMZ landing page. Then, proceed to the Promotions tab, where you will set it up properly. The landing page only shows your goods, giving you a better opportunity for landing sales.

Finally, Instagram Ads are another good option. You may create Story Ads, Carousel Ads, Video Ads…the list is long. Since you are targeting your advertisements at curated target audiences based on behavioral analytics and interests, they have a higher conversion rate if the ad leads to clicks.

Be Ready for Hard Work and Effort 

Once you start selling on Amazon and get your first orders, it doesn’t mean that the game is over, and now you can sit back in the chair. There is much more hard work ahead. Now when you have felt a bit of the taste of victory, it’s high time you pressed on even more.

Be Ready for Hard Work and Effort 

Once you start selling on Amazon and get your first orders, it doesn’t mean that the game is over, and now you can sit back in the chair. There is much more hard work ahead. Now when you have felt a bit of the taste of victory, it’s high time you pressed on even more.

To Sum up: How to Succeed on Amazon

Amazon is an excellent place for merchants, but you need proper preparation to start a prosperous business here. Not all in-demand goods in offline stores can be successfully sold on the platform. Some specifics include commission and fees, policies on prohibited goods, and “restricted categories.” In addition, large sellers have long occupied some niches, and it will be tough to compete in them.

It is also essential to consider many people’s risks after launch. For example, you have to mind the need to adjust the number of sales according to the production cycle and the time for new batch delivery, constant innovations of Amazon, competition with other sellers, and product listing guidelines. 

So, how to be successful in selling on Amazon? We hope you will create another Amazon Success Story by leveraging our twelve Amazon seller ways. In this article, we have provided you with some sound advice and food for thought on how to sell on Amazon successfully. It will help grow your business on Amazon and boost profits and sales. One final trick is ensuring you are ready for sales spikes during the holiday season — you don’t want to end up without your top-selling goods during the year’s busiest period!