AJ Kelley | Writing Archive

How To Use Kinetic, Viral Launch’s PPC Tool

Amazon’s PPC process can seem mysterious at first. The process can be time-consuming and complicated, so many sellers — both old and new — look to outsource their PPC management to marketing agencies rather than handling it themselves. But the right Amazon PPC automation tool can make PPC easy, allowing sellers of any level to grow their brand and improve sales.

At Viral Launch, we’ve received plenty of demand for how to do Amazon PPC with a simple and effective management tool. We took that feedback from sellers and scouted the marketplace to see what other tools were lacking. We created our Amazon PPC automation tool, Kinetic, to provide better education and convenience to simplify the complicated aspects of Amazon PPC.

With our tool, sellers can stop outsourcing their Amazon PPC automation efforts and demystify the platform to gain a better understanding of how to effectively capitalize on the massive opportunity that is paid search.

Easy Integration With Viral Launch’s Suite of Software

One of the most compelling aspects of Kinetic is its ability to seamlessly integrate with our other Amazon optimization tools, including Keyword Research, Listing Analyzer, and Keyword Manager. By providing this level of sophistication and cross-platform support, Kinetic allows sellers to pull valuable insights and data from multiple sources to increase the effectiveness of their PPC strategy.

Viral Launch Kinetic Best Practices for Amazon PPC Success

After you’ve gone through the process of linking your Kinetic account to your Amazon Seller Central page and have familiarized yourself with Kinetic’s dashboard, layout, and features, you’re ready to begin creating and executing your PPC campaigns.

Here are some best practices to keep in mind when setting up your first few PPC campaigns:

1. Figure out a plan that works best for you.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all guide to PPC strategy. While this may seem like a negative, we like to look at it as an opportunity. Finding the strategy that makes the most sense for your resources and goals is crucial to your PPC success.

While there aren’t many hard-and-fast rules when it comes to how to do PPC on Amazon, we’d like to take this opportunity to highlight what not to do in any campaign: We recommend not putting all keywords into one campaign. This is because it’s simply not scalable to allocate all of your advertising funds to any one particular campaign.

By strategically separating your keywords across different campaigns, you’ll be able to shift your budget from low- to high-performing campaigns and scale your results much easier than if they’re all lumped together.

2. Check out your existing campaigns.

If you already have a few PPC campaigns running, we recommend going over these existing campaigns to check their status and see how they’re performing using Kinetic. This can be a great way to get a firm grasp on how Kinetic works because you’ll be able to experiment with campaigns you’ve already set up. Kinetic allows for a deeper understanding of campaign performance, so there’s likely information to be gleaned from your existing campaigns.

3. Set up some of our recommended campaign types.

If you’re having difficulty determining how to start setting up Amazon PPC campaigns, we’ve got you covered with several predetermined models. In this video, we walk you through six helpful campaigns for beginners. Each campaign covered has a specific intention and goal in mind that can help you quickly get up to speed on how to utilize the platform. From there, you can either implement our recommended campaign types or adapt them to best suit your own particular needs.

Using these strategies within Kinetic, sellers can gain a better understanding of how to do Amazon PPC with the ultimate goal of improving visibility on their products and driving more sales.

Stand Out From the Crowd With Amazon Product Listing Optimization Scores

By the end 2020’s first quarter, more than half of sales on Amazon’s marketplace were through third-party sellers. It’s grown even more competitive since then, and Amazon product listing optimization is the best strategy for sellers to avoid getting lost in the crowd.

An Amazon listing score is a measure of how well your listing adheres to the keyword strategy that our Keyword Research tool has suggested for your product. The research tool uses search volume directly from Amazon’s data combined with a forecasting formula generated by in-house data scientists for statistics you can trust.

We generate the Amazon listing score by analyzing the keyword list the tool gathers related to the primary keyword you’ve chosen for your product. It’s based on how many of the suggested keywords are in the listing, how keywords with the highest search volume are prioritized by placement, and how many of them are the most relevant.

What’s the Value in an Amazon Listing Score?

The forecasting formula we utilize is proprietary, though it’s based on applied weights in volume, relevancy, priority, and keyword phrasing. This means you can use the Amazon listing score to optimize any listing, at any time, with the highest-quality keywords of the moment.

These three strategies will help you get the most value out of the Amazon listing score:

1. Optimize listings from the start.

The point of Amazon listing optimization is to make your listing eligible for indexing and ranking for a keyword. Optimized listings on Amazon are the most visible ones, and greater visibility is essential for being ranked higher.

Think of your listing’s copy as a foundational piece. Once you’ve successfully indexed for a keyword, you’re eligible to be ranked as you generate sales through keywords, increasing your likelihood of organic sales as your ranking climbs. Enhancing a listing’s keyword ranking also boosts your chances of organic sales by putting your listing directly in front of customers’ eyes (at zero cost).

2. Grab the low-hanging fruit of keywords.

The keyword opportunity score within the Listing Builder and Keyword Research tools will help you find the low-hanging fruit: keywords that receive search volume but are largely neglected.

For example, if you sell first-aid kits, indexing for a niche phrase like “first-aid kit for cars” could be what puts your listing in front of customers. Also, include common phrases in other languages, like Spanish, and common misspellings in the listing’s back-end search terms.

3. Keep listing optimization reader-friendly.

Your product’s Amazon listing score will help you ensure the listing is optimized, but it’s up to you to make it as reader-friendly as possible. Keyword stuffing is a terrible strategy, and Amazon will do its best to weed it out. Amazon listing optimization is both an art and a science. Use marketing-minded language while incorporating the right keywords to masterfully create a listing that’s not only optimized, but also set up specifically to drive sales.

A lot of Amazon sellers rely on trial and error, blindly tweaking their listings’ keywords, copy, or photos without any hard data to back up their decisions. Gain a greater competitive advantage by using keyword research and our Amazon listing score to optimize your Amazon listings with proven, high-quality keywords and phrases.

What Is Amazon PPC?

When customers look for a new product to buy, about 66% of them start their search on Amazon. And when they begin their searches with one specific product already in mind, 74% go straight to Amazon.

Most sales on Amazon come via the search function, but the results are mainly based on past sales. That makes it difficult for sellers outside of page one to gain visibility for products using only organic SEO methods. To increase visibility for their products, sellers can use different types of Amazon PPC ads to bid on product exposure.

Amazon PPC is an advertising and marketing platform that allows you to buy and optimize different types of Amazon ads. Through the platform, you can bid on keywords and competitor listings, create advertising strategies, and run a variety of PPC campaign styles. Bids and ad performance are specific to your Amazon Standard Identification Number (ASIN), so you can figure out which campaigns are the most beneficial.

Since its 2012 introduction, sellers have optimized and automated Amazon PPC to achieve several highly specific goals. For example, you may want to make your sales cycle more efficient or maximize the rank of a brand or product. PPC optimization is all about figuring out your goals and accomplishing them with the available resources.

Setting Up Different Types of Amazon PPC Ads

At its core, an optimized PPC strategy helps you avoid inefficient ad spend while accomplishing your goals. You can boost short-term profits by running efficient PPC campaigns or spend more to build long-term strategies in order to increase rank so your listing can see more organic sales down the road. Because Amazon PPC is still relatively new, many sellers aren’t familiar with it. This makes for an excellent opportunity to enhance your competitive edge.

To begin, go to your Seller Central account and hover over the Advertising tab; then, select Campaign Manager. From there, you’ll be asked to set up the budget and duration of your advertising campaign. The entire process is built into your Seller Central account, so you won’t need to download anything to create and track your campaigns.

The next step is to choose what types of Amazon ads you want to utilize. It’s possible to sponsor products or brands specifically and to choose manual or automated targeting. Automated Amazon PPC ads determine what keywords and products are associated with and then run ads based on that information. Manual targeting allows you to choose what, specifically, to dial in on.

Optimizing Manual and Automated Amazon PPC

Both manual and automated Amazon PPC can be highly useful. PPC automation shows you what Amazon recognizes your product for and, over time, conversion rates for each keyword or product. You can then use this information to manually optimize campaigns further and spend more efficiently on long-term campaigns.

By combining Amazon PPC automation with manual targeting, you can build a more hands-on type of campaign in which you retain total control of your ad spend in the context of your goals. Pinpoint the keywords and products that Amazon finds most relevant and successful, then target them specifically to maximize your ROI.

For a few examples of how we recommend properly structuring these automatic and manual targeting campaigns in Kinetic and why we recommend setting them up that way, check out this handy video!

Strategizing a manual and automated Amazon PPC campaign can seem overwhelming, especially if you don’t have a background in marketing.

How can I manage my Amazon PPC?

Viral Launch’s Kinetic platform helps simplify it for you by presenting extremely detailed data taken directly from Amazon in a user-friendly and easily understandable format.

Save time tracking your PPC spend by seeing all of your data within a few tabs instead of digging through multiple Microsoft Excel tabs.

Within Kinetic, you can create rules to automate Amazon ad campaigns based on past performance and receive optimization tips. With Kinetic’s preset advertisement types, you can better understand different types of Amazon ads and PPC strategies.

Maximize Sales and Rank With Amazon Keyword Tracker Notifications

If your Amazon listing’s rank falls, how soon would you know? Our Amazon keyword tracker helps you keep tabs on rank changes.

Amazon sellers realize that most of their sales come from organic search results, and 70% of shoppers don’t venture beyond the first page of search results. That means staying visible is a major key to successful sales. Monitoring with our Amazon keyword tracker can help you do it.

On top of your own rankings, you can learn a lot more and gain a much greater competitive edge by paying the same attention to the ranking of your competitors’ listings. With Keyword Manager, our keyword tracker for Amazon, you can be notified instantly if your rank — or a competitor’s rank — changes. You can react instantly to the data to see why your competitor jumped or fell in rank and protect your own listing’s position in the process.

From Tracking Ranks to Boosting Sales

It’s a fact of life on Amazon’s market that keyword ranking jumps around like crazy. Sometimes, every other session will show a different order of products for the same keyword search. Notifications eliminate the need to constantly refer to a ranking dashboard to see how that fluctuation has affected your listing. Set the parameters and let the system tell you when it’s time to adjust your selling strategy.

Knowing the exact time your ranking drops or falls and reacting to it in real time can give you a leg up over competitors. At the same time, you must know when those competitors drop in rank so that you can use it to your advantage. As you get familiar with making the most of Amazon keyword rank tracking, boost that advantage by using real-time data and custom notifications to maximize your sales strategy, such as:

1. Increasing PPC spend at just the right time:

When your rank starts to slip for a particular keyword, the rank tracking tool will notify you immediately. You can boost PPC spend to more aggressively target that particular keyword and gain back some of your position as soon as possible. Our PPC tool, Kinetic, allows you to automate the entire process.

2. Attributing efforts to results:

The transparency you get with our rank tracking tool allows you to see just how effective your advertising efforts are, which is essential to devising any Amazon selling strategy. After boosting PPC spend, set ranking notifications to be more strict so you’ll instantly know whether the additional spend is working.

3. Prioritizing the highest-ranking product variations:

For products that have multiple variations (such as small, medium, and large), rank tracking gives you an entirely new dimension of performance to track. For example, if the small versions of the product start ranking highest, you can boost your ad efforts and stock up on smalls before the sales boost.

In Conclusion

As can be seen, Amazon keyword rank tracking is essential for anyone who wants to sell on Amazon. Since the market is driven by a search engine, our keyword tracking tool helps you stay in tune with the constant fluctuations in the keywords for which you’re competing. Get notified instantly, at whatever threshold you set, so you can optimize your listings appropriately.

Don’t let the competition pass you by! Get started with our Amazon keyword tracker and monitoring tools today!

How To Increase Amazon Conversion Rates

When you’re selling on Amazon, you have nearly every tool you need to drive leads to your product listings. However, PPC ads and Amazon listing optimization alone aren’t enough to turn that attention into revenue by converting your traffic into customers.

That takes putting a little more thought into every aspect of each listing. This guide will introduce you to some of the key concepts of Amazon conversion rate optimization.

What Matters Most About Your Listings

Through our experience working with more than 8,000 brands on Amazon’s marketplace, we’ve learned that there are four high-priority items to address when it comes to Amazon conversion rate optimization. If you’re looking to turn more traffic into customers, focus in on these areas of your product listings first:

1. High-quality photos

People process visual information faster and easier than they do written words, so attractive photos of your product are an absolute must-have. Online shoppers, in general, put a high priority on quality photos. In one report, 60% of shoppers said they need to see at least three to four photos of a product before purchasing it online.

On Amazon, quality photos hold even more weight. Anyone familiar with the market is likely aware of counterfeit and low-quality products. A well-crafted set of images can instantly reaffirm your product’s quality and establish your credibility, making shoppers more confident in their decision to convert and make a purchase.

2. Well-thought-out descriptions

It’s not as attention-grabbing as photos, but the description should be a helpful expansion on your product’s features and highlights. A neat and clean description can make a difference, especially for higher-end products where comparison shoppers decide based on those details. Use page breaks to separate messages and make them easy to read quickly.

It’s important to have all listing content written by a native speaker. This will help you avoid errors that can chip away at confidence in your product’s quality. With space for 2,000 characters, you can expand on any unique features and capabilities that give your product a competitive edge, such as eco-friendliness or unique connectivity.

3. Informative bullet points

Some shoppers will skip over descriptions and head straight to the listing’s bullet points to get the gist of what they’re looking at. These bullet points are just as important for describing your product’s features and letting shoppers know it’s the item they’re looking for.

Keep in mind, however, that bullet points give you less space to write and are meant to be scannable. Put thought into what key elements of your product would appeal most to your consumers and highlight them here. How is the product used? What makes it better than comparable products?

4. Quantity and quality of reviews

While the first three points focus on what you can tell shoppers about your listing, they’ll pay just as much attention (and sometimes more) to what people who’ve used the product have to say. In fact, in one consumer survey, 92% of respondents said they won’t buy anything online without reading at least one review first.

When it comes to reviews, both quantity and quality matter. You should strive to have an average rating similar to your competitors with a similar number of reviews. Amazon incentivizes reviews through programs like Vine and the Early Reviewer Program, but outside of those, there’s not much you can do to drive reviews for your products. If you ensure your products are of high quality and the buyer experience is positive, however, your customers shouldn’t have a reason to leave negative reviews.

With these elements, your listing will help assure customers of your brand’s realness, as well as the product’s quality and authenticity. As you increase your sales volume through strategic Amazon conversion rate optimization, you’ll be able to earn more reviews and sell even more. If you need help getting started, check out our resource for high-quality Amazon listing photos, read more about our Amazon listing optimization tools, or call and speak with one of our experts today!

How To Start Selling on Amazon: A Step-by-Step Guide

Amazon isn’t just a marketplace — it’s an epicenter of entrepreneurship. Since 2018, the company has controlled more than 49% of the U.S. e-commerce market, and this result is largely due to the third-party sellers who found success on the platform. In fact, Business Insider reports that third-party sellers now outsell Amazon itself on its own marketplace.

However, Amazon is just a vehicle — and not a guarantee. When you’re first getting started, learning everything you need to know to be a successful Amazon seller can be overwhelming. What kind of account should you choose? What products should you sell? Which research tools and marketing best practices should you use to gain the biggest competitive advantage?

This learning curve does seem overwhelming at first, but we can break things up for you. Use this guide as a reference to better understand every step toward becoming a successful Amazon seller.

Step 1: Become an Individual or Professional Seller

The first step in becoming an Amazon seller is determining which type of account will best meet your needs: individual or professional. Both types of Amazon seller accounts come with different costs and advantages. So before choosing and registering your account on Amazon Seller Central, take the time to research both types of accounts carefully.

Individual Amazon Seller Account

An individual account might be the best type of seller account on Amazon for beginners — at least until you get a good inventory flow going. As an individual seller, you’ll pay a 99-cent fee for every item you sell on up to 40 items per month. You won’t have to pay a monthly subscription fee, so you have a better chance of making a higher profit on each item you sell.

Even if you plan on becoming a professional and selling more than 40 items a month, you might still want to choose the individual seller option at first. This will help you get started and used to the system as your inventory is prepared and shipped. If you have more than 40 items, you can change your type of seller account on Amazon’s account-settings dashboard before the items arrive.

Professional Amazon Seller Account

If you already have your inventory prepared and ready to go and it equals more than 40 items, you can choose to sign up for a professional seller account. Having a pro account means you don’t have to pay a fee for each item (unless your product is in a category that carries a minimum referral fee). If the item’s standard fee is lower than this referral fee, you’ll have to pay the minimum for that category.

As a professional seller, you have to register as a business. You’ll also have several perks that help enhance your products’ positioning; you can offer free gift wrap with your items, for example, and avoid shipping rates on almost everything except media. Having a pro account means you’ll pay a flat rate of $39.99 a month, but because you sell more than 40 items, you’ll pay less per item than you would as an individual seller.

Once you select the Amazon seller account you want to start with, you can input your business, contact, banking, and tax information into Amazon Seller Central and register the account. Congratulations — you’re officially an Amazon seller! Now, you can decide what to sell.

Step 2: Choose the Best Products to Sell

Researching the best type of seller account on Amazon is fairly straightforward. Read about the costs and advantages, compare them to your immediate and short-term business plans, and fill out your information. Deciding what you want to sell, however, is a bit more complex.

Don’t just rely on guesswork here; you have plenty of options and tools to find a good product, validate its potential in any market, and research its popularity using keywords.

3 Tips Before Selecting A Product to Invest In

1. Use a product finder to narrow things down. Many entrepreneurs who choose to start selling on Amazon’s marketplace don’t do it out of a desire to sell a single product. In fact, it’s common to go through every step of setting up an account without having any exact idea of what you want to sell! The next step, then, is to use our Amazon Product Finder tool to narrow it down.

Using the tool, product discovery on Amazon can be as niche as you want it to be. Want to sell electronics in a low-competition market? Is your goal to make at least $30,000 in profit? Using the right set of descriptive keywords, you can put the product discovery tool to work to find and compile a list of products that match your queries.

2. Get some intel on the state of the market. Consumers search for products on Amazon almost exactly how they search on a major search engine, like Google. This provides invaluable data to help you research and validate your product’s chances on the market. Examples include price margins, revenue potential, sources of competition, and more.

Gather that intel by plugging your product into our Amazon Product Research tool and diving into past performance of similar products; average revenue spreads and historical market trends can help you determine how likely it is that your product meets your goals. Get the full picture before you make a final decision on what product to sell.

3. Take a scientific approach to keyword research. As you research products and markets, keywords represent one of the most important sets of data you can utilize. Consumers use keywords to find what they want on Amazon, so keyword research can help you determine consumer demand. Our Amazon Keyword Research Tool helps you track the most relevant SEO activity for your product.

One last thing to consider…

Keep in mind that consumers search for products using a wide variety of terms. The tool’s Market Relevancy Calculation filter helps you choose relevant keywords that fall between high search volume and low to moderate competition (typically, items with at least 10,000 searches/month).

Now, you have a validated product and a healthy stack of keyword research in hand. You’re almost ready to put that research to the test! Circle back to the Amazon Product Research tool and strategize how you can use those keywords to maximum effect. That strategy will be important for optimizing your competitive advantage once you launch your product.

Step 3: Give Your Product a Competitive Edge

Knowing how to optimize your Amazon listing is a crucial skill. But it involves more than just finding a good product and compiling a list of keywords. What you do with your intel — and how that compares to your competition’s efforts — matters most. Avoid getting stuck after launch by making the most of our Competitor Intelligence tool for carefully placing PPC ads.

Using the Competitor Intelligence Tool

As a novice Amazon Seller, you can’t expect to enter the marketplace and immediately jump ahead of the competition. However, you can gauge how top-sellers reach and maintain their positions right off the bat — simply compare their listings with yours in our Competitor Intelligence tool. Instead of blindly building your strategy, you can gain actionable intel on how to successfully optimize your Amazon listings.

Because Competitor Intelligence provides real-time insights, you can compare your listing to top-performing competitors on a daily or hourly basis. Be sure to gain insight into not only the listing’s keywords but how competitors interact with the market as a whole. As Amazon’s market grows increasingly crowded, that insight will be more valuable in helping your product rise to the top.

Using the Right Amazon PPC Ads

PPC ads are essential to online marketing, and Amazon’s marketplace is no exception. By using different types of Amazon ads, you can pay to sponsor your product, a specific brand of products, or an entire display of similar products. 1 in 10 product pages on Amazon are sponsored, so you’ll leave out an important part of optimization if you ignore PPC ads.

However, simply investing all of your money in ads isn’t a good optimization strategy. PPC ads won’t generate much return on your investment for products that you’ve just launched. When establishing yourself as a seller and your product as a quality item, consider PPC ads as investments toward growth. Analyze your competitors’ sponsored activity and use it to design a PPC budget you’re comfortable with.

The different types of Amazon ads that are available — along with the access to quality data and research our tools can give you — will make it much easier to build and keep your competitive edge. Take advantage of it all, and you can go from novice to pro Amazon seller in no time.

Follow-Up Tips to Boost Your Sales Faster

After reading our overview on how to start selling on Amazon, you should feel more confident in your ability to succeed. Still, the science of Amazon’s conversion-rate optimization — essentially turning more visitors into buyers — is a tricky and unpredictable one.

6 tips to broaden your reach and boost sales faster after launching

1. Use a tool for keyword research. The only real way to take a scientific approach to keyword research is to use an appropriate tool. A robust tool will show you the most popular keywords currently, break down the histories of their search queries, and provide the most relevant keyword variations.

2. Speak the way your customers do. To get the best results from your keyword research, you should use as many high-quality keywords as you can. However, these keywords will only be useful if they match the terms customers use. Be sure to use the same language they do in their searches to describe your products.

3. Put every listing in the right categories. On Amazon, you don’t just use keywords to differentiate your product; you also assign it to categories and subcategories with similar items. Researching your competitors’ listings will help you find the categories that will give your product the highest visibility.

4. Draw attention with quality photos. Nobody will pay attention to your product for its description alone. Without attractive, high-quality photos, buyers will likely scroll past your listing without ever even noticing it. If you don’t have great photos yet, check out our gallery of image resources to find some for your product.

5. Identify the sweet spot for pricing. With many different ways to optimize your listing, it’s easy to forget the impact pricing will have on its performance. Avoid pricing your product too low or too high by thoroughly researching the price margins of similar high-performing products.

6. Use Amazon’s terms of service to guide everything. Amazon’s terms of service give you plenty of ways to optimize your listings as you please, but they’re strict about certain practices. Any violations can prove costly, so be sure to refer back to the terms when devising any strategy.

Overview

Amazon’s marketplace is the most popular and active one in the world. The ability to get started easily and have access to every tool you’ll need to succeed is a big part of that. Don’t underestimate the importance of research and preparation, and remember the more data you obtain, the greater insight you’ll have into any market you launch a product in.
From setting up the right account to choosing the perfect product or devising a savvy optimization strategy, it pays to be thorough.

At Viral Launch, our mission is to help you do that with research and analysis tools designed specifically for Amazon sellers. To learn more about how to start selling on Amazon, enroll in our free course today!

Validate Your Product Ideas With Viral Launch’s Amazon Market Intelligence Tool

Now that you’ve got both feet on the ground as an Amazon seller, the tricky part is finding what products will put you ahead of the pack. You can look at snapshot estimates from a random collection of sourcing tools, piecing together what you hope is an accurate picture of the market and product — or you can improve your chances of sourcing only the right products by making use of the right Amazon market intelligence.

Viral Launch’s Market Intelligence tool gives you the most comprehensive access to Amazon-wide insight across billions of different data points. With it, you can make truly informed decisions and validate any product before you ever launch it.

What Real Amazon Market Intelligence Looks Like

Intelligence is nothing without data, which is what makes our Amazon Market Intelligence tool so valuable. It’s the only tool that can collect and leverage data points from across Amazon’s entire market. With the data the tool gathers for you, you can glean the kind of insight and analysis that can help you almost predict the success of any product launch. For example, the billions of data points you’ll have access to can help you assess markets and products by:

1. Name brands: See whether any big household names or Amazon itself is selling in the market. It will be easiest for you to compete against other smaller brands, so stay away from markets that are dominated by one brand or a few dominant brands.

2. Sales spreads: If a few products are claiming most of the sales in the market, it’ll be harder to claim a piece of the pie, especially as a newcomer. Look for markets where sales are spread pretty evenly between the products on the first page.

3. Competitors’ intelligence: Finding a few products dominating sales spreads isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Use the Market Intelligence tool to reverse-engineer their strategies. For example, track what keywords the dominating products use in sponsored ads and make a list of your own variations.

4. Market trends: Sales trends tell you a lot, but if you want to determine which trends are fads and which are actual depictions of the market, you’ll have to look at data from across a few years. Use market trends to avoid investing too heavily in the next fidget spinner.

5. Price margins: Even with a great product, you won’t make a profit unless you can cover Amazon’s fees and still stay price-competitive. You can research the cost of sourcing units from a site like Alibaba, then plug it into our Amazon FBA calculator.

6. Product reviews: Speaking of being competitive, you can enter the competition a lot sooner in a market where mediocre performance is the norm. Research reviews throughout the market and pay special attention to those that are generally low.

7. Product fulfillment: Finally, stay away from markets filled with FBA (fulfilled by Amazon) or AMZ (Amazon original) designations. If your products are FBA, then you can compete more effectively in markets that are mostly filled with FBM (fulfilled by merchant) products.
Data can mean the difference between entering a market and thriving in it — or sinking fast due to poor intelligence. With our Amazon Market Intelligence tool, you can make sure you end up on the thriving side every time. To learn more, sign up for a free trial today!

Amazon SEO: How To Optimize Your Amazon Listings for Keywords

Selling on Amazon is unlike running any other online store.

The beauty is that it’s both marketplace and search engine rolled into one: Buyers search for and purchase what they need without ever having to navigate to another site. This makes for an exciting and dynamic seller experience — but it also means sellers must market correctly in order to see real results.

Because of this layout, you need to treat Amazon as a search engine when advertising your products. If you want to get your products in front of people who are searching for them, you’ll need to know how to optimize the right keywords for your Amazon listings.

Any failure to understand how to optimize your Amazon listings gives your competitors an advantage in your market. Don’t give your rivals the upper hand!

How Do Keywords Work on Amazon?

On any other search engine, such as Google, getting a brand or product to rank high means building up your organic search engine optimization. The same is true on Amazon. The majority of sales happen organically, with products that are highly optimized.

When optimizing your listing, be strategic. Keep SEO in mind to set up your product for the highest potential visibility, and most important, make sure to get things right the first time. Editing a listing that was already written can hurt the listing’s SEO ranking.

For example, make sure to include the most frequently used variations and prioritize the right keywords for the right audience at the right time. You’ll need the help of our Amazon keyword tool, which is designed to help you find and use every relevant keyword.

For one of Viral Launch client, the strategic use of the Amazon keyword tool helped it reach $40,000 in sales within 30 days of its new product launch. By the end of the launch, the product had gone from ranking No. 300 to No. 1 in search results for the targeted keyword.

A Few Amazon Keyword Tips

Our Amazon keyword tool tells you which keywords shoppers use most often when they shop for products like yours. It also helps you include these keywords in your listing without breaking Amazon’s character limits in any of the fields.

When used correctly, the Amazon keyword tool gives you the power to find all the keywords and variations relevant to any product. To use them to your ultimate advantage, keep these three points in mind when choosing which keywords to use:

1. Lean heavily on search volume data.

Our Amazon keyword tool gives you actionable data about the search volume of any keyword. The industry-leading search volume estimates generated are constantly updated, so the data is always fresh and safe to rely upon.

Each time you research a keyword, the tool will also provide exact and broad match data surrounding it. You can see the immediate and far-reaching impact it could potentially have on your SEO ranking, as well as the keyword’s current standing in the market.

2. Dive into the keyword’s history.

Every relevant keyword around your product has a history, especially those that have the highest search volumes. Our keyword tool is the only one that can bring you exhaustive historical data, helping you dive deep into the history across the entire market — including competitor usage.

Accurate historical keyword data is important for several reasons. It includes historically relevant horizontal keywords you can use to boost the product’s listing. Additionally, it gives you full market context so you can strategize around each keyword’s popularity trends.

3. Keep the keyword’s relevancy in mind.

Although search volume is essential to choosing the right keywords, relevancy to your product is just as important. Some terms might have attractive volumes but may not actually fit the customer base for your specific product.

Because the majority of Amazon sales happen organically, our Amazon keyword tool can give you deep insights into which keywords and variations are most relevant to which products with the Viral Launch Priority Score. It allows you to easily compare terms, finding the most appropriate ones for your listing based on relevancy and search volume.

Finding the right keywords for your Amazon listings is vital to successfully selling on Amazon. But you can’t do it manually. Learn more by starting your free trial of Viral Launch to get access to our suite of keyword research tools.

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Amazon FBA for Beginners: How to Create an Amazon Seller Account

Amazon seller success is easier said than done. If you’re thinking about starting to sell on Amazon but feel a little like you’re about to jump in headfirst with your eyes closed, our Amazon FBA for beginners guide can help.

In the two-plus decades since it was founded, Amazon has taken over more than 49% of the entire e-commerce market — that’s more than eBay, Apple, and Walmart combined. As of Q2 2020, 53% of products sold on Amazon were sold by third-party sellers, highlighting an excellent opportunity for those interested in starting an online business.

So naturally, having an Amazon Seller Account is the best route to becoming a successful online seller, right?

Let this be your guide, and you’ll be up and running in no time!

Types of Amazon Seller Accounts

The first step in your “Amazon FBA for beginners” journey is deciding what kind of Amazon seller you want to be.

There are two different types of Amazon seller accounts on: individual and professional. Each has its own costs and set of perks. For example, an individual plan is best if you plan on selling fewer than 40 items a month, and it comes with no monthly subscription fee. However, the Amazon individual seller fee is 99 cents per item you sell.

If you want to sell more than 40 items a month, you should opt for a professional plan. The Amazon professional seller monthly fee is a flat $39.99, which replaces the 99 cents per-item fee. As a professional seller, you can also offer gift wrap for all your products and avoid shipping rates for everything except media.

For both plans, be prepared to pay referral fees for every item. Some categories have a per-item minimum referral fee, which you’ll have to pay if the item’s standard per-item fee is lower. Any media items you sell will also be subject to variable closing fees, whether you’re on an individual or professional selling plan.

Quick tip: If you don’t have products to sell immediately, you can save money by starting with an individual plan. The process of manufacturing and shipping your first product can take a few months, so you don’t need to start paying the $39.99 monthly fee before you’re actually selling. Just switch over to a professional selling plan in your account settings shortly before your inventory arrives to Amazon’s warehouses.

What to Have on Hand Before You Get Started

Once you’ve chosen a plan, the next items on your Amazon FBA for beginners checklist will be your information. Specifically, Seller Central will ask you for your:

Business name and address (you can be a sole proprietor, limited liability corporation, or corporation)
Phone number
Chargeable credit card and valid bank account
Tax information*

*If you’re a U.S. taxpayer, you’ll provide a W-9 or W-8BEN form when completing the tax interview in your seller account. Your Employer Identification number (EIN) or Social Security number (SSN) will be registered as your Taxpayer Identification number (TIN).

If you’re a foreign seller, you’ll still need to complete a tax interview. The responses you provide will create the appropriate form for you. According to Amazon, “IRS regulations require non-U.S. taxpayers to provide Form W-8BEN to Amazon in order to be exempt from U.S. tax reporting requirements.”

How to Create an Amazon Seller Account

Now that you’ve got everything ready, visit Seller Central and register your account of choice! To do that, you’ll go through four main setup processes:

1. Seller Agreement

If you’re registering as an individual seller, use your full legal name. As a business, enter the business’s registered name and your full name (e.g., Seller Inc., John Smith). Then, read the Amazon Services Business Solutions agreement and check the box to agree.

2. Seller Information

Here, you’ll add the granular details of your business, including the address and the “business display name” you want to be displayed on your profile and item listings. If you decide to change the name later, you can do so at any time from the “account info” tab in Seller Central settings.

3. Billing/Deposit Information

Enter your credit card information into the billing section. If you’ve registered as a professional seller, the first monthly subscription fee of $39.99 will be charged immediately. You’ll also need to provide a valid bank account as your deposit method.

4. Tax Information

In addition to validating your W-9 or W-8BEN form and U.S. taxpayer status, your tax interview will also require you to clarify who’ll receive income from Amazon or its subsidiary (individual or business). If you’re a sole proprietor or single-member LLC, select “individual.”

A Look Through Seller Central

Now that you’ve signed up, it’s time to navigate the vast world of Seller Central! Your dashboard gives you easy access to all the information about your account, and you can tweak it for optimal functionality. At the top of the dashboard, you’ll find the following:

Catalog: to add products to your account
Inventory: to manage your in-stock units
Pricing: to manage product prices
Orders: to see who ordered what and when
Advertising: to boost your products’ exposure, manage campaigns, enhance and promote content, and more
Storefront: to manage your registered brand pages
Reports: to see data on sales, inventory, fulfillment, and more
Performance: to analyze customer satisfaction indications
Appstore: to use additional tools from Amazon and external developers
Settings: to edit your account info, preferences, settings, and permissions

From the dashboard, you can receive flag notifications in the top left corner or view important news at the center of the screen. At the top center, you can select the appropriate marketplace and country.

The “your orders” tab to the left gives you a quick breakdown of unshipped orders and orders made through Fulfillment by Merchant (FBM) and Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA). Recent payments and current balance information are available to the right, next to the “news” box.

If you haven’t already, you’ll need to select a product to sell. You can use Viral Launch’s product research tools to choose one and a service like Alibaba to find a manufacturer for it. You can add new products to Seller Central from the “catalog” tab and choose the product’s category, listing copy, UPC code, price, images, and more.

E-commerce can be scary, especially if you aren’t familiar with how to get started selling on Amazon. Follow this Amazon FBA for beginners guide to choose the kind of seller account you want, have your relevant bank and tax information handy, and take time to familiarize yourself with the dashboard. Before you know it, you’ll be selling like a seasoned Amazon pro.

Looking for even more Amazon FBA for beginners step-by-step instructions? Enroll in the FREE How to Sell on Amazon course today!

How To Launch a Product on Amazon

Launching a new product on the Amazon marketplace involves a lot more than you might realize at first. It’s not just a matter of listing the product. You also have to find and incorporate high-quality images and written content, organize early promotions and advertising strategies, generate early reviews, and ultimately make the product visible. It sounds like a lot — but the right guide can teach you all the steps to launch a product on Amazon.

These early steps are critical to the product’s long-term success and your own growth as an Amazon seller. Those who put enough time and effort into their product launches can gain traction and market share faster. As Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos recently revealed, third-party sellers now generate more revenue on the marketplace than Amazon itself.

This also means that the market is getting more crowded and that gaining exposure is increasingly difficult for every new Amazon product launch. From choosing the right product to planning out the right launch strategy, however, there are a few things you should know — and a few things you should avoid — to get a leg up when launching a new product on Amazon.

First of All, There’s No Point in Launching a Product If It’s Not the Right One

Before you ever get started launching a product on Amazon, you must choose the right product. Start by researching several product markets as thoroughly as possible so that you can set realistic expectations. For example, in some markets, first-page products can sell 10,000 units per month, but it’s often unrealistic to expect you’ll reach those numbers quickly.

You can raise sales volume faster in niche markets with thinner competition. However, these markets typically see lower sales volume, so make sure you have a thorough understanding of your expected sales before entering the market. You can forecast revenue and measure barrier to entry using Amazon product research tools.

With that in mind, you’ll also have logistics and manufacturing costs, as well as Amazon fees, marketing, advertising, research, content production, and other costs to consider. You need to thoroughly understand where your point of profitability lies so you have a goal to aim for. Then, you can plan a much more successful Amazon product launch strategy.

Once You Know What You Want to Sell, Find Out How to Successfully Launch an Amazon Product

If implemented correctly, a new Amazon product launch will drive sales early, and early sales are critical in helping you gain early traction in the market, improve your keyword ranking, and net some early reviews to give your product an advantage.

In addition, early sales can teach Amazon’s algorithm that your product is a quality option for shoppers, which helps promote easier ranking and sales growth in the future. Shape your Amazon product launch strategy using these six steps as a guide:

1. Take time to read the terms of service.

Before launching any product, carefully read and understand Amazon’s terms of service. You’ll want to do everything you can to give your product the best chance at success, but you do not want to risk your account by unwittingly violating the rules.

2. Be prepared not to make a profit at first.

Properly driving success on Amazon while sticking to the terms of service takes capital, so be prepared not to make a profit with early sales. Amazon’s market isn’t a get-rich-quick platform; running your online business is just like running any other business. That means stimulate long-term sales requires spending on marketing and advertising, offering discounts, and more.

3. Reorder inventory before you run out of stock.

As you watch your sales and profits, you may be tempted to wait until your initial inventory runs out before ordering more. If you do so, you’ll risk running out of stock before you can replenish it. Being out of stock means shoppers will bypass your product listing, and it can negatively impact the listing’s keyword ranking.

4. Take advantage of early review generation.

Keeping an adequate amount of stock is important, but buyers might still scroll past a product that hasn’t even been reviewed yet. In one e-commerce study, up to 79% of buyers say they check reviews before making any purchase on Amazon. You can sign up for Amazon’s early reviewer program, set up and send out email sequences to customers, and craft a social media announcement strategy that adheres to Amazon’s terms.

5. Take advantage of Amazon’s massive customer base.

Unlike using your own branded website, Amazon’s biggest benefit is that it brings customers to you. The challenge is getting your product in front of them, which means focusing on Amazon SEO. Generate as many sales as possible up front, which will kick-start your listing’s keyword ranking. After all, thousands of people are already searching for your type of product. Now, it’s your job to get in front of them. Amazon sponsored ads are a great way to put your new product in front of eager shoppers. Learn how to run ads with our free Amazon advertising course.

6. Keep researching after the product launches.

The more you know, the smarter decisions you’ll make when it comes to ordering, listing, advertising, and scaling. Use data to gain insights into missed keywords, sales trends in your market, and your advertising opportunities. The insight you gain will help you create an even more effective strategy the next time you have a new Amazon product launch.

The path to a successful Amazon product launch strategy is different for every seller, product, and market. But the most important tips for any successful Amazon product launch are to understand what kind of market you’re getting into, to ensure that your expectations align with what’s possible in that market, and to drive initial sales. To learn more about what it takes to launch your product successfully on Amazon, sign up for your free trial with Viral Launch today.