Did you know that in 2018, 200,000 small businesses made over $100,000 while selling on Amazon?
If you’re thinking about selling items online, you might be thinking about using Amazon to sell your goods. Yet, you might’ve heard a lot of negative things about Amazon, and so you may have a lot of doubts about using the platform.
Read on, and you’ll discover the positives and negatives associated with selling on Amazon. If you complete this post, you’ll be able to answer the question “is selling on amazon worth it?”
Let’s begin!
The Positives of Selling on Amazon
As you might’ve guessed, one of the good things about selling on Amazon is that you have access to one of the world’s largest marketplaces.
Whenever someone wants to buy something, they will typically begin their search on Amazon. So, if you sell on Amazon, you don’t have to worry that much about marketing your product.
Another good thing about Amazon is the platform provides a considerable level of ‘built-in’ trust. Amazon has a great reputation, and people feel good about using the platform to buy things.
Therefore, if your product is listed on Amazon, you will benefit from this trust. If you sell your products on your own e-commerce site, you will not benefit from this trust, and so it might be harder to generate sales.
Additionally, if you use the Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) service, selling items on Amazon is really easy.
That’s because if you use FBA, you just have to send your stock to Amazon’s fulfillment warehouses. They will then take care of shipping, and you’ll be able to focus on other aspects of your business.
The Downsides of Selling on Amazon
Above, we covered some of the downsides of selling on Amazon. In this section, though, we’re going to focus on some of the disadvantages.
Perhaps one of the most significant downsides of selling on Amazon is all the competition you’re going to face. After all, there’s already someone selling a product within most of the product categories on Amazon.
Another downside of selling on Amazon is that you’re at the mercy of the platform.
If Amazon doesn’t like something about your product, they can pull your listing without notice. This can be devastating, and it can destroy your business overnight.
Additionally, you have to give Amazon a percentage of all your sales, which will then result in lower profit levels. If you’re already dealing with thin margins, you might not end up making a lot of money.
How to Create a Winning Product
After reading all this information, you might feel as though selling on Amazon is the right thing for you. If that’s the case, you may want to learn how to succeed when selling on Amazon.
If you want to succeed on Amazon, you need to create the best product within your product category. If you do that, you’ll be able to tackle most of the downsides associated with selling on Amazon.
You can create the best product within your product category by focusing on what people say about competing products. You can do this by reading the reviews of a competing product.
The positive things people are saying will let you know what you need to include in your product. So, if lots of people love a particular feature in the competing product, your product must include this feature.
The negative things people are saying will tell you how you can beat the competition.
For instance, if you read the reviews, you might notice that people don’t like the material a competing product is made from. If that’s the case, you can beat the competition by making your product out of another material.
Creating an Effective Product Listing
If you want to be a successful Amazon seller, you need to know how to create an effective product listing.
When creating a product listing, you must use plenty of keywords associated with your product.
If you do this, you’ll increase the odds of your product appearing in the search listings. If you’d like to see an example of an effective product listing, you might want to look at the listings of competitions.
Additionally, you must take lots of good pictures of your products. In some cases, you might be able to do this with your phone. However, if you want to get some really good pictures, you should enlist the help of a professional product photographer.
The Value of Reviews
Most people will read the reviews of a given product before they decide to make a purchase.
If your product doesn’t have any reviews, people will often buy a competing product. As a result, you need to focus on getting as many reviews as you can for your product.
Now, getting reviews can be quite hard, as Amazon has some strict rules in regards to soliciting reviews.
If you break these rules and use black and grey hat review tactics, Amazon may close your account. If you want to learn about black and grey hat review tactics, just so that you can avoid them, you can visit this website to read more now.
Following all this, the best way to get reviews on Amazon is by simply having a great product. You can sometimes mention that people can leave a review, but you must not state in any way that this review should be positive.
Is Selling on Amazon Worth It?
Different people will reach different conclusions when asked the question, “is selling on amazon worth it?”
Ultimately, it comes down to personal preference, and you need to decide what matters most to you. Note that if you’re still on the fence, you might just want to experiment with Amazon.
If things work out, then you can just settle on Amazon and sell all your product on that platform. However, if things don’t go too well, you can set up your own e-commerce store and do things without Amazon.
Did you like reading this blog post? Check out some of our other content by visiting our blog!