Category: Amazon News And Updates

Amazon Prime Early Access Sale: Prime Day 2.0?

According to a report from Insider, Amazon sellers reaping the benefits of July’s annual Prime Day may not be waiting too long before another retail holiday to boost sales. Leaked documents from Amazon detail plans for a potential Amazon Prime Day – like sales event in October named the Prime Early Access Sale.

While we can only speculate at this time, the “Early Access” name may imply an opportunity for Prime members to receive early access to the following month’s Black Friday deals. Amazon sellers will surely want to pay attention to more information about this potential sales event as more information becomes available.

Veteran sellers will remember this would not be the first major sales event in Amazon history held in October, as the COVID-19 pandemic pushed back Prime Day 2020 from its usual mid-summer date to October 13th and 14th.

How major could the Prime Early Access Sale be?

“This event is one of the best deals events of the year and Prime members would be crazy to miss it,” one document said. Also according to the Insider reporting, some third-party sellers report receiving invitations to submit deals for the event.

Whether officially billed as a precursor to Black Friday or not, an Amazon-led sales event in October could mark the unofficial kickoff to the holiday shopping season. 

Seemingly since the massive success of the initial Prime Day in 2015, speculation has persisted that Amazon could add a second major sales event. The duration of Prime Day has slowly increased from 24 hours to 48 hours in 2019, which is the current span of the sales period. After years of establishing Prime Day as one of, and perhaps the most important shopping event on the calendar, Amazon may be looking to the next idea to expand its reach in e-commerce.

After a period of unforeseen and fortuitous growth in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, the re-opening of brick-and-mortar retail and a downturn in consumer spending have served as a reminder that meteoric growth can’t sustain linear growth forever.

By adding a second signature sales event, Amazon could provide some juice for third-party Amazon sellers to bolster sales heading into the very busy holiday season.

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After yet another colossal Prime Day in July during which 24 countries participated in days of deals, any Amazon promotion should be prepared for and meticulously planned for, as it can skyrocket sales and make a tremendous difference in your bottom line.

The timing of the event adds even more weight to this opportunity, with the potential for an avalanche of sales and reviews to enhance visibility for your product and make your product more appealing to shoppers in the run-up to Black Friday and the ever-so-crucial holiday season.

The addition of a second major sales date before the busiest time of the year could be a much-welcomed accelerant to bolster sales.

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Amazon Advertising: New Amazon PPC Budget Page

On Tuesday, Amazon announced a new feature for the Advertising console, the Amazon PPC Budget Page (beta). While the new feature hasn’t generated much buzz, it should be on the radar of every Amazon seller utilizing advertising. It comes with some powerful performance insights and actionable steps being added to their Seller Central account.

The value proposition of the new Budgets page is the powerful data points that allow individualized metrics and estimates for your campaign. Within this page, you can see the average time your campaigns were in budget. It covers estimates on missed sales, missed impressions and missed clicks in the time that the campaign was out of budget.

With the data provided on the page, this will also provide a recommended daily budget for each of your campaigns. It covers the goal of optimizing ad spend, and the option to apply those recommendations.

Amazon claims they are able to provide estimated missed sales, missed clicks, and missed impressions through Amazon’s machine learning technology based on historical performance.

The Potential

The potential of these estimates and metrics can go a long way for Amazon sellers looking to get the most advertising bang for their buck. Access to this information (for free) is a huge advantage for savvy sellers looking to maximize advertising efforts. Knowing how many sales you could be racking up in the time your ads are inactive would theoretically answer any questions or concerns about the efficiency of your campaigns.

It’s important to remember that the majority of these metrics are estimates. These estimates could eliminate much of the guesswork when creating and optimizing PPC campaigns. If accurate, you won’t have to wonder how many sales, clicks, or impressions were left on the table while a campaign ran out of budget.

In theory, Amazon is able to monitor your advertising campaigns over time. Plus, be able to create estimates on performance if they were to run in perpetuity.

Additionally, Amazon sellers can see which campaigns are running out the quickest, compare actual budget to recommended budget, and more.

Where Can I Access the Amazon PPC Budget Page?

Sellers can find the brand new Budgets Page (beta) in a few different ways:

  1. Within Campaign Manager, select the Budgets page.
  2. Download the data into a report within the Report Center of Seller Central.
  3. Set up a subscription within Seller Central to have the results emailed to you.

Within the Reports page, information and data will be available beyond the limits of Campaign Manager, which displays information from the last 90 days.

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Summary

The new Budgets page should be something to keep an eye on for any sellers advertising on Amazon. Tracking the campaign estimates for accuracy could greatly benefit sellers in regard to maximizing return on ad spend.

Monitoring estimates and tracking performance when taking suggested actions will certainly be interesting. We’ll be sure to monitor the new page as more information becomes available.

Overall, it becomes the latest addition to the Advertising Console’s busy 2021, which has been a central point of emphasis for Amazon. The amount of time, attention, and energy paid by Amazon into revamping the Advertising Console should speak volumes as to where the future of Amazon is headed.

If you haven’t begun advertising through PPC on Amazon yet, don’t wait too much longer to start creating your campaigns. With plenty of new tools and features, there are many resources to help you get started.

Check out our Amazon PPC Playbook for absolutely free to hit the ground running with Amazon Advertising.

What do you think of the new Amazon PPC Budget page and how do you plan on using it? Feel free to join the conversation and let us know!

Amazon Launches Brand Referral Bonus Program

Want to make some extra cash through Amazon? Of course you do! Here’s how.

On July 15, Amazon announced the launch of a new Brand Referral Bonus Program. Available exclusively to brand owners enrolled in Brand Registry, the program further incentivizes sellers to accelerate growth from referral traffic.

In short, the Brand Referral Bonus Program is giving you even more reason to level up your external traffic. Not only will registered sellers be able to profit by driving promotions from outside of Amazon, they’ll effectively be able to earn even more money from these sales.

Amazon estimates that on average, registered brands can earn a 10% bonus from qualifying sales. The bonus rate depends on the category for each product, with minor variables such as shipping and gift wrapping charges.

Before you start bumping up your marketing efforts, be sure to register for the program and then Amazon Attribution. For sellers already registered in Amazon Attribution, traffic from previous tags will still qualify for your bonus. Once you’ve registered for the bonus program.

Once you’ve successfully accomplished those tasks, you can create tags through Amazon Attribution. That will track your performance and your bonus. Without Amazon Attribution tags, traffic will not count as qualifying credits toward your eventual bonus.

For those who are interested in monetizing traffic to their Amazon listings but don’t own a brand, the Amazon Associates program presents a similar opportunity. It works by providing commissions for purchases brought in by their marketing efforts.

As you begin to see sales as a result of your external marketing efforts, you’ll be able to find and monitor your bonus amount. It is found within the Transaction Details page within the seller account.

Some patience will be required from sellers. They will have to wait two months before they can use the bonuses so that Amazon can properly account for order cancelations and customer returns.

Summary

All in all, this Brand Referral Bonus Program presents a tremendous opportunity to scale your business. Sellers who make the most of this initiative will accelerate growth while saving money. This improves the efficiency of their marketing efforts outside of Amazon.

Driving external traffic should always be on the mind of Amazon sellers. specially with the rising cost of advertising on Amazon. With an opportunity to earn money by executing strategies that were already beneficial by driving sales and boosting rank, it makes emphasizing traffic a no-brainer.

Accelerating Your Amazon Rank With External Traffic

For sellers who have been executing strategies centering around external traffic, this bonus is free money. Amazon business owners unfamiliar with advertising outside of the confines of Amazon may find this to be the perfect opportunity to expand their reach. There may never be a greater time to experiment with ads on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok.

If you’ve been on the fence about ramping up your external traffic efforts, now is the time to unleash your inner influencer and make some extra dough!

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Amazon Prime Day 2021: Small and Medium-Sized Businesses See Huge Wins

Amazon Prime Day 2021 met and surpassed mammoth expectations, with small and medium-sized businesses reaping much of the benefits.

Customers taking advantage of steep discounts unquestionably weren’t the biggest winners of Amazon Prime Day. Third-party sellers on the Amazon marketplace, comprised almost entirely of small and medium-sized business. They took home record-setting sales numbers during the mega sales event.

Lasting 48 hours, this Prime Day proved to be the biggest two-day period ever for Amazon’s third-party sellers.

According to Amazon, shoppers spent more than $1.9 billion on more than 70 million products from third-party sellers during the promotional period. Compared to Prime Day 2020, held in October, these small and medium-sized businesses experienced more than a 100% sales increase.

Furthermore, the report stated the deals were available to more than 200 million paid Amazon prime members. The massive figure was first announced in late April, within a letter from Jeff Bezos to shareholders.

In January 2020, Amazon revealed it had reached 150 million Prime members. Picking up over 50 million subscribers in less than two years is a remarkable sum. Even for a company as large as Amazon. While the pandemic created issues for many industries, the surging amount of Prime subscribers showcases the strength of e-commerce that has yet to show signs of slowing down.

Indeed, these numbers are incredibly encouraging for the current and future state of the industry. Likewise, the continued rise of Prime subscribers and massive sales numbers underline the tremendous opportunity afforded to third-party Amazon sellers.

How To Become an Amazon Seller in 8 Simple Steps

More Notes from Prime Day 2021

Amazon released a few interesting tidbits related to categories and specific products that crushed it during the sales holiday.

  • Amazon reports the best-selling categories worldwide included tools, beauty, nutrition, baby care, electronics, apparel, and household products.
  • Top-selling products worldwide for Prime Day 2021 included iRobot Roomba 692 Robot Vacuum, Keurig K-Slim Coffee Maker, Apple Cider Vinegar Gummy Vitamins by Goli Nutrition, and Crest 3D White Professional Effects Whitestrips.
  • Prime members worldwide saved while gearing up for back to school purchasing more than 600,000 backpacks, 1 million laptops, 1 million headphones, 240,000 notebooks, 40,000 calculators, and 220,000 Crayola products.
  • In the United States, top-selling deals included the Waterpik Electric Water Flosser, Orgain Organic Plant Based Protein Powder, 23andMe Health DNA Test, iRobot Roomba 692 Robot Vacuum, Instant Pot Duo Plus 6 Quart 9-in-1 Pressure Cooker.

Overall, Prime Day 2021 was undoubtedly a major success even when compared to its lofty standards.

With the accelerated prominence of Amazon and e-commerce, it’s never been a better time to be one of the hundreds of thousands of third-party sellers who have realized their entrepreneurial dreams on Amazon.

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Amazon Approved Sellers List: 100 Countries Added

The world of Amazon sellers just grew more extensive, adding 85 new countries to the Amazon Approved Sellers’ list.

At last, Amazon appended to its list of approved countries for seller registration to many previously barred from registration. In all, the latest update to the list includes 85 brand-new additions.

To many, it serves as a bit of surprise that such a substantial number of countries could still be added to the Amazon marketplace. Although Amazon’s grown into one of the world’s largest companies since its founding in 1994, the recent inclusion of nearly 100 new countries to the approved sellers’ list shows it’s still growing.

Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and Venezuela are among the notable new additions to the marketplace. With this revision, few countries are omitted from the directory of approved countries, with 188 countries now approved for seller registration. For the most part, only countries with strict sanctions, such as North Korea and Cuba, remain excluded from the Amazon Approved Sellers list.

What this means…

After record growth in Q1 2021 and setting up more international marketplaces, Amazon shows no signs of slowing down. Allowing more sellers into the marketplace only figures to accelerate that upward trajectory.

For aspiring Amazon sellers in the newly approved countries, this update encourages aspiring entrepreneurs to enter the marketplace by removing a major barrier to entry. Now, they can get in on the growing number of third-party sellers cashing in on the billions of dollars generated in the marketplace.

In the past, sellers from these newly added countries could still sell on Amazon. However, they’d be forced to establish their business in a country on the approved sellers’ list.

However, exclusion from the list served as a hurdle for those looking to enter the Amazon marketplace. For example, Pakistan stands out as a new addition among newly approved countries as the home of one of the largest Amazon seller groups in the world.

While many in the group sold on Amazon before Pakistan was approved, countless others entered the Amazon marketplace as virtual assistants. Certainly, removing restrictions and breaking down barriers to entry may stimulate them to become sellers in their own right.

Our interview with Saqib Azhar, serial entrepreneur, Amazon mentor, and leader of the Ecommerce by Enablers Facebook group

In previously banned countries with a strong Amazon presence like Pakistan, many celebrated the newly opened doors. As Azhar notes, Amazon represents a massive opportunity for Pakistan to improve the country’s economy. Additionally, he believes FBA can be a promising opportunity for the country’s youth to discover financial freedom.

Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) has proven to be an incredibly rewarding opportunity for aspiring entrepreneurs. After a record-setting 2020, e-commerce continues to thrive in 2021. Even more encouraging, market analysis projects Amazon to be responsible for 50% of all e-commerce retail sales in 2021.

How To Become an Amazon Seller in 8 Simple Steps
Our guide on how to become an Amazon seller.

All in all, the excitement from newly added countries underlines the opportunity provided with FBA. While many industries experience turbulence and many unknowns, selling on Amazon offers a tremendous opportunity with an even brighter outlook.

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Eliminate HTML Tags: Amazon Listing Optimization

On Monday, Amazon announced an upcoming change that will affect plenty of product listings. Starting July 17, 2021, Amazon will no longer support HTML tags in the product description of product detail pages.

You can view the entire statement from Seller Central below:

In order to provide security for our customers as well as versatility to list products on non-HTML devices, after July 17, 2021, we will stop supporting the use of HTML tags in the product description on product detail pages. Please refrain from using HTML content on detail pages as outlined on our Product detail page rules 260 Help page.

We encourage you to update any product detail page for your listings with an HTML tag. You can use Seller Central or your usual channel for such updates.

Any product description containing HTML tags in the product detail page which are not supported after July 17, 2021, will stop showing HTML formatting. For example, if you use HTML tags in one line of a product description, the line might be removed or shown without HTML formatting, depending on the usage of the tag.

– Seller Central

The statement reads somewhat confusing, especially as the Product Detail Page guide referenced mentions that line breaks (written as “</br>”) can be included in the description as a special case. HTML line breaks in listings, as they break up text into smaller, more readable text blocks.

How It Appears

LEFT: How a product description example with HTML line breaks.
RIGHT: How the same product description appears without HTML line breaks.

Additionally, the inclusion of “non-HTML devices” is a headscratcher, as most devices can read and display HTML markups without issue.

Nonetheless, Amazon sellers should prepare accordingly.

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While product descriptions don’t make a significant impact on keyword indexation, it allows an excellent opportunity to describe your product, explain crucial product details, and close the deal with a customer.

If segments of your product description are removed or displayed in an undesirable manner, it could consequently lead to lower conversions. Making sure your product description answers potential customer questions, highlights differentiating points, and is reader-friendly can certainly go a long way toward giving your product listing an edge over the competition. Any failure to do so invites customers to click off and check out your market rivals.

Of course, we’ll continue to monitor the situation as more information becomes available regarding the update. The announcement serves as the latest update in what’s been a rather busy week for Amazon news. Stay tuned for more regarding HTML tags on Amazon.

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What’s Going On with Amazon Search Results?

Recently, Amazon search results have gotten a little wonky. What’s the deal?

Over the weekend, attentive Amazon sellers started noticing strange, extreme changes in organic rank for their products. Suddenly, products that were mainstays atop organic search results vanished. Instead of appearing in the most desirable digital real estate on Amazon, they could be found deeper in the seldom seen pages of search.

As a result, sales plummeted for many top sellers as visibility severely declined. Meanwhile, product listings that typically don’t receive much traction benefitted from taking up top spots usually held by competitors.

Destaney Wishon of BetterAMS discovered the issue early on, and made a quick and helpful explainer outlining an example of the issue with Amazon search results.

At first, the sudden change flummoxed Amazon sellers. Was Amazon continuing to crackdown on sellers generating fake reviews? Did the ranking algorithm change?

According to Amazon, it’s simply an error that’s in the process of being corrected.

We are aware some customers are having issues with search results. We are working to resolve this as quickly as possible.

Amazon Technical Support

While many Amazon sellers state things have returned to normal for them, some sellers report the glitch has not been resolved as of Tuesday. Additionally, Amazon has not released a statement indicating that the issue has been completely resolved.

As any Amazon seller will tell you, organic rank remains the holy grail for Amazon sellers. Any rise or drop will significantly impact a product’s bottom line. With this in mind, monitoring your organic or advertising rank can be vital for tracking your product’s performance.

ALWAYS know when your keywords are rising or falling within Amazon search results with Keyword Manager

Of course, we’ll continue to monitor the situation as more information becomes available.

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Amazon Fake Reviews Crackdown Continues

By suspending familiar Amazon brands, Amazon sends a crystal clear message: fake reviews will not be tolerated on its platform.

Since late April, Amazon has suspended many notable brands that have made their name on the platform due to fake reviews. The list of noteworthy brands includes Mpow and Aukey, two brands that have dominated the Electronics category for years. HOMTECH, Atmoko, Tacklife, and Vtin are a handful of other Chinese-based sellers suspended.

Many of the suspensions went into place in late April, and the sellers remain off the platform weeks later in the U.S. marketplace and internationally.

As Amazon continues its increased enforcement of guidelines, it underlines the importance of staying with terms of service.

RELATED: [How To Get Amazon Reviews: Automated Review Conversion from Viral Launch]

In Late April, reviews for one MPOW listing declined from over 18,000 to just over 9,000. (Via Market Intelligence)

By all means, Amazon sellers should take notice. Amazon has markedly worked towards removing fraudulent reviews from time to time. Perhaps most notably, Amazon removed more than one million reviews in May of 2018. It’s not uncommon to see massive waves of reviews removed periodically.

However, the suspensions of such major Amazon mainstays at once is new territory.

While Mpow’s storefront is still viewable, many products are unavailable to be purchased from the brand.

At the moment, the future of the brands is unknown. In all likelihood, the brands are seeking reinstatement by submitting a plan of action for correcting the matter. If this is a repeated issue, a ban could be in place.

For Amazon sellers, the incentive to generate plenty of favorable reviews is easy to provide trust to potential customers. As a result of shoppers seeing others have pleasant experiences, they’re more likely to complete a purchase.

In order to combat bad actors looking to game the system, Amazon created its Anti-Manipulation Policy for Customer Reviews.

While Amazon has automated much of the review generation process and taken many aspects of the process out of the control of sellers, Amazon sellers can take measures to maximize review count within terms of service.

For example, our Amazon Review Automation tool optimizes the review generation process by signaling Amazon to follow up with customers on your behalf. It’s TOS compliant, effortless to use, and up to 5 times more effective than traditional email follow-ups. Available as an add-on within the Market Intelligence Chrome Extension, it’s the best way to garner reviews without violating Amazon’s terms of service.

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When is Amazon Prime Day 2021?

Tucked away in Amazon’s Q1 Earnings Call was an announcement of important intel regarding Amazon Prime Day 2021.

Unfortunately, Amazon did not announce an exact date for Amazon sellers and customers alike to circle on the calendar. But Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky did drop some hints and key information about Amazon’s signature sales event.

“I will remind you that Prime Day has been scheduled for later in Q2, and we’ll have more on that as the quarter unfolds.” This would mean Prime Day would take place in April, May, or June.

With April in our rear-view and roughly a week into May, it’s highly unlikely Amazon would make a surprise Prime Day without giving sellers a few weeks in advance to prepare for the massive wave of sales that come with Prime Day.

For that reason, we’d imagine that an official announcement regarding the date of Amazon Prime Day 2021 is coming soon. At the present time, we’d recommend planning on Prime Day kicking off in mid-late June.

Additionally, Olsavsky mentioned Prime Day 2021 is slated to be a two-day event. As Amazon did for Prime Day 2020, he stated it will heavily emphasize small businesses.

“Another popular benefit of Prime membership is Prime Day. And we are excited to announce that we will hold the two-day savings event during the second quarter. Prime Day is also a great opportunity for our selling partners to reach more customers and will make supporting small businesses a big focus again this year.”

Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky

When is Prime Day typically?

Since its initial launch in 2015, Amazon Prime Day has been held in mid-late July with one exception. In 2020, the mid-summer sales event was postponed until October, making one of the world’s largest shopping days the unofficial kickoff to the holiday season.

The usual mid-July date marks the anniversary of Amazon.com going live in 1995. Known for massive markdowns and discounted deals, it’s estimated that sales on Amazon surpassed $10 billion over Prime Day 2020.

Over the years, Prime Day has grown into one of the largest shopping days globally.

In summary, the tidbits of information gleaned from Olavsky’s comments certainly deserve much attention. With a blockbuster Q1 behind us, the return of a mid-summer Prime Day marks another reason to believe Amazon sellers can keep the sales momentum going.

For Amazon sellers positioned to take advantage of Prime Day, the potential for record-breaking sales is stronger than ever.

UPDATE: In order to ensure your inventory is properly stocked for Prime Day, Amazon advised sellers to the following countries by these dates:
June 1: Australia
June 6: United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Turkey
June 7: United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia
June 13: Japan

As more information becomes available, we’ll be sure to update. Lastly, feel free to let us know how you feel about Amazon Prime Day 2021 in June in the comments!

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Amazon Marketplace Growth: Sets Record in Q1 2021

After a record-breaking 2020, the Amazon marketplace growth shows no signs of slowing down. In Amazon’s quarterly earnings report for Q1 2021, the results show the marketplace is only growing larger and third-party sellers remain the backbone of Amazon’s signature retail platform.

It’s estimated that third-party Amazon sellers were responsible for 55% of all products sold on the Amazon marketplace, matching Q4 2020 and up from 52% from a year earlier. Even more encouraging for Amazon sellers, that percentage hasn’t budged even as the amount of products sold has risen.

Overall, Amazon reports $52.9 billion in retail sales in Q1 2021. For comparison, that number represents 44% year-over-year growth from 2020.

Emphatically, the record-breaking numbers are encouraging in any context. However, the sales data becomes even more impressive when taking the events of the past year into context.

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As the COVID-19 pandemic caused lockdowns that pushed customers online, it goes without saying Amazon sales would dramatically increase. If there were any doubts on if customers would ditch digital shopping once restrictions loosened up, this quarter serves as the first indicator of e-commerce’s staying power.

While the year-over-year results may be partially skewed due to the pandemic only impacting the last month or so, the numbers represent a significant increase from Q2 and Q3 2020, when the pandemic and its subsequent restrictions were more prevalent.

Regarding what’s ahead for Amazon, the company projects year-over-year growth between 24% and 30% for Q2 2021. This projection is company-wide and not solely for the marketplace. With this in mind, the Amazon marketplace continues to thrive and appears poised for continued growth for the foreseeable future.

Without a doubt, there’s never been more opportunity to make your entrepreneurial dreams come true on Amazon.

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