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How to Sell on Amazon in 8 Simple Steps: A Complete Guide

If you’re reading this, chances are you’re among the hundreds of millions who have made an Amazon purchase. But have you ever wondered about the other side and thought about how to sell on Amazon? In this step-by-step guide, we’ll tackle the basics of becoming an Amazon seller, answering questions and providing helpful tips outlining the fruitful opportunity of selling on Amazon.

Whether you want to start a profitable side hustle or you’re ready to become your own boss, many choose the massively lucrative opportunity to sell on Amazon. But despite what some online marketers would have you believe, it isn’t just a magical money-making scheme.

While the tech giant has transformed into a dynamic global platform, opening doors for countless sellers to showcase their products to an ever-expanding audience, the marketplace and its hundreds of millions of daily customers do not ensure success.

Success takes an adequate budget, hard work, a lot of research, and plenty of dedication. In actuality, many people who start their Amazon journey quit before they ever have a chance to succeed.

But with hard work, business savvy, a vision, you can maximize your potential to start, build, and scale a successful online business. In this guide, we’ll learn how to sell on Amazon step-by-step. Let’s dive into how you can start your Amazon journey on the right foot on the path to entrepreneurial success.

Is Selling On Amazon Worth It?

The question that often lingers in the minds of aspiring online entrepreneurs is, “Is selling on Amazon worth it?” It’s a valid inquiry given the potential rewards and challenges of establishing a presence on the world’s largest e-commerce platform. To make an informed decision, one must consider various factors such as the market’s competitiveness, the time and effort required, and the potential financial returns.

Let’s delve into this question and explore the key aspects that can help you understand the appeal of selling on Amazon and use that to determine whether the journey of selling products on Amazon is truly worthwhile for you.

Amazon’s retail e-commerce dominance

In our increasingly digital world, e-commerce has opened up the global marketplace like never before. Unlike opening a brick-and-mortar shop in your local shopping center, an e-commerce business becomes open 24/7/365 all over the globe. While e-commerce’s origin dates back as early as 1982, it wasn’t until the mid-to-late ’90s that online retail began to make waves with the public.

Amazon and eBay launched online marketplaces in 1995, and how we shop has never been the same. Gradually, more and more consumers recognized the ease and expansive reach of e-commerce, and before long, buying items online became commonplace and the preferred method of shopping for many.

Over the decades, e-commerce has steadily grown in volume. In 2023, 20.8% ($6.31 trillion) of all retail purchases are expected to occur online. And that piece of the retail pie is expected to grow larger for the foreseeable future as millennials and Gen Z become a larger segment of the buying population.

Those numbers speak to the strength of e-commerce, but why Amazon? Well, Amazon doesn’t just lead the pack among online marketplaces; it dominates. As of August 2023, Amazon boasts nearly 50% of the e-commerce market in the United States. Amazon’s primary competitors, eBay (6.6%), Apple (3.9%), and Walmart (3.7%), could join forces and still not come close to overtaking Amazon’s top spot in e-commerce.

A Massive, Loyal Customer Base

“Meet your customers where they are.”

The best businesses go where their customers are, not the other way around. And based on the numbers, when people go to shop online, they overwhelmingly go to Amazon. In 2022, Amazon reported 168.5 million U.S. Prime subscribers. Analysts project that number to grow to 180 million by the end of 2024.

These customers are heavily incentivized and invested on purchasing on the Amazon marketplace. This enormous audience has their payment already plugged into their account and they’re ready to buy items with just a few clicks. If Amazon were a supermarket, it would be crowded with a sea of customers with their cards out ready to pay. For business owners, an audience of this size with buying intent presents opportunities that are almost unfathomable outside of Amazon.

If you want to set up a shop in digital real estate, the choice is clear: Amazon is the place to be for online businesses.

A Built-In Service Tailor Made for Entrepreneurs

In addition to its e-commerce popularity, Amazon makes it easy for online business owners through its Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) service. Amazon describes the FBA program and its benefits below:

Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) is a service that allows you to outsource order fulfillment to Amazon. Sign up for Amazon FBA to send products to Amazon’s global network of fulfillment centers and offer customers free, two-day shipping through Prime. When a customer makes a purchase, Amazon fulfillment specialists can pick, pack, and ship the order. We can also provide customer service and process returns for those orders.

To sum it up, Amazon allows you to outsource difficult, expensive, time-consuming aspects of running a business for a fee. The service streamlines the behind-the-scenes work to simplify the work, while eliminating much of the risk and inconveniences you’d face if you chose to sell products on Shopify, eBay, or in a brick-and-mortar environment.

Simply put, Amazon makes it as easy as possible for shoppers to shop and sellers to sell, creating the ideal marketplace for both parties.

8 Easy Steps To Start Selling On Amazon

The good news is that getting started is not as complex as it might seem. In fact, we’ve broken it down into eight easy-to-follow steps that will take you from having an idea to becoming a full-fledged Amazon seller. So, if you’re ready to turn your entrepreneurial dreams into reality, let’s dive right into the eight simple steps to kickstart your journey and become an Amazon seller.

1. Find a Product to Sell on Amazon

Now that you’ve decided to sell on Amazon, your first step is determining what you want to sell. The research you conduct at this initial stage is one of the most important tasks in this entire process. The data you gather and the product choices you make from that data will determine the success or failure of your entire project.

Finding promising opportunities depends on more than imitating the success of a popular product or competing against products with mediocre Amazon product pages. You’ll need to thoroughly research the products, competition, keywords, and market trends before deciding.

Before formulating ideas, be aware of the various selling methods on Amazon. Consider your situation and resources when deciding which selling method makes the most sense for you.

Methods of Selling

Retail arbitrage is generally a great starting point for an Amazon newbie. Otherwise known as RA, retail arbitrage is when you visit retail stores such as Walmart or Target, buy discounted products, and then resell them on Amazon at a higher price. What’s great about this technique is you can get your feet wet selling on Amazon without a huge investment upfront. Online arbitrage is the same idea, only that sellers buy discounted products online and resell them on Amazon.
Private label is perhaps the most scalable model for selling on Amazon. With private label, you find a generic product and a manufacturer who can make the product in bulk at a cheap price. Then you tweak the product, add your logo and business information, and sell it under your own brand.
Wholesale means you buy products directly from a major brand (such as Nike, L’Oréal, or Fisher-Price) at wholesale price and sell them on Amazon. The difference between this and private label is that with wholesale, you’re buying products directly from an already established brand and then selling them under their brand name with their approval.

This guide specifically deals with private label, since it’s the most scalable, while still being a viable option for a newer seller. Your first step to getting started with private label is to start brainstorming product ideas. The possibilities are endless, but you can’t pick a product randomly and expect to make money. The best method for finding the best product ideas is to use data. Doing so will help you identify products with existing demand, which results in high sales potential for you. To gather this data, your best option is to use product-finding software with market analysis capabilities.

Our favorite Amazon product research tool is Product Discovery. This tool provides you with a list of product ideas that match your budget and sales goals. With a few simple filters, you can easily locate product markets where you can compete as a new seller.

If this is your first product, your market criteria should look something like this:

Decent revenue: We suggest a range of $10,000-$25,000
Low reviews: We suggest a maximum of 250 reviews
Search volume: We suggest a minimum of 5,000 searches
Sales to review ratio: We suggest a minimum of 3 (This means the average monthly sales are at least 3x the number of average reviews. Reviews are the toughest barrier to entry in a market, so you want to make sure you have plenty of sales opportunities to gather reviews and compete with existing sellers.)

These criteria are just a starting point, and you should customize them to your own goals. The more personalized your inputs, the better your results will be!

After gathering a list of products you’re interested in, you’ll need to validate your ideas. Again, you must use accurate data to ensure you’re choosing a product that sets you up for success. Market Intelligence integrates with Product Discovery, so you can dive right into the validation stage. This process helps you avoid oversaturated markets or markets where your sales potential is low. When you plug your ideas into Market Intelligence, you should analyze the following:

Barrier to entry: How easy will it be to enter a market and compete with the existing brands? If there are already many established, successful brands with high sales and many customer reviews, your chance of success will be low. The ideal market for new sellers features low competition and high demand.
Revenue and profit potential: How much can you make with this product? The ultimate measure of how well a business performs is profit, and each business will have different goals. In Market Intelligence, you’ll see how much each existing product makes per month, which will help you determine how much you can expect to make once the product is up and running. Remember to look at market averages, not just a few outliers, so you can accurately predict revenue. And don’t forget: you will encounter costs such as manufacturing, shipping, and Amazon fees. (We added a cost calculator to help with this).
Monthly sales: How many units are sold each month? To understand how many products you need to order from the manufacturer (which is typically in China and leads to long shipping times), it’s important to know how much demand for this product currently exists on Amazon. Look at how many units are sold each month for products on the first few pages for the product’s main keywords, keeping in mind that you’ll likely need to order at least 2 months’ worth upfront.
Market trends: How does this product sell throughout the year? Certain markets are seasonal and see spikes in sales during certain times of the year related to holidays or seasonal changes. You’ll need to anticipate these trends for inventory management reasons, and if this seasonality doesn’t appeal to you, it would be best to avoid products that depend on demand at certain times of the year.

The Amazon marketplace can be overwhelming, especially to newer sellers, but by using software like this to gather data and help find strong product ideas, you exponentially increase your chances of success and steer clear of common missteps or rookie mistakes. Also, by conducting research with data for Amazon, you can eliminate the guesswork and run your business with confidence.

*Note: Before selecting a product, ensure you can source it for a price that allows for a healthy margin. Use a site like Alibaba.com to get an initial idea of how much you will have to spend per unit, and don’t forget to account for shipping.

If you’re ready to find the ideal product for your Amazon business, sign up for a free trial. You can find 25 product ideas and validate 5 of them for free! Have questions about getting started on Amazon? Contact our team 24/7 at service@viral-launch.com.

2. Open an Amazon Account

Once you’ve chosen a product to sell, make it official and open a Seller Central account, which will be the hub of your online business. This portal is where you’ll add product listings, manage inventory, view reports, and more. You can open this on desktop or on the official Amazon Seller app.

You’ll start by signing up with a valid email address and then be prompted to add the following information. Make sure you have all the info you need on hand to make the process a little smoother:

Business name and address
Telephone number
Credit card/bank information
Tax information (If you have an LLC, add your EIN. If not, you can use your SSN)

When you start making sales, Amazon will deposit payments directly into your bank account every two weeks. After clicking Next, you’ll enter your billing information. During the signup, you‘ll also choose which account type to sign up for. You have two options regarding how selling on Amazon works:

Individual: This account type gives you access to 20 product categories and restricts you to a maximum of 40 items sold monthly. You’ll be charged a fee of $1 per item sold, although there is no monthly subscription fee.
Professional: With this option, you’ll have access to 30 product categories and are eligible, upon approval from Amazon, to sell in the additional restricted categories. This account costs $39.99 per month.

If you’re just looking to sell off some old books, you’ll probably want an Individual account. If you plan to flip items through Retail Arbitrage, you must decide how ambitious you want to be. A Professional account will be best if you plan to sell more than 40 products monthly. As a brand-new seller, there’s no need to pay $39.99 a month until you’re actually selling your product. Just before your inventory arrives at the warehouse, you can easily switch over to the Professional plan.

3. Choose Your Fulfillment Method

The next step is to choose the method of fulfillment for your products. Fulfillment refers to the responsibilities of storing, picking, packing, and shipping products to customers. The two options are Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) and Fulfillment by Merchant (FBM):

FBA: This method can be best defined using Amazon’s terms: “You sell it. We ship it.” Using the FBA model, you send your products to be stored in an Amazon fulfillment center. Then, Amazon will pick, pack, and ship your products when a customers order. Amazon also takes care of customer service issues, such as returns. It’s an easy-to-use, hands-off model, but it’s important to know that additional fees are involved.
FBM: Using this method, you list your products on Amazon and handle all aspects of storage and order fulfillment. You are also responsible for any late, missing, or damaged packages.

The infographic below outlines the pros and cons of each selling method. For a more in-depth comparison, check out our blog article, FBA vs. FBM: A Full Comparison for Amazon Sellers.

4. Create Your Amazon Listing

In this step, you’ll log into Amazon Seller Central and create your product listing, the page where a shopper will learn about and purchase your product. A product listing is your opportunity to show consumers what your product is, what it does, and why they should buy it. It’s important to be as accurate as possible when describing your product. Include all the necessary information, including ingredients, materials, and dimensions.

What this looks like on Amazon:

To have your product listed on Amazon, you’ll need to be assigned a specific product number from Amazon, known as a Fulfillment Network Stock Keeping Unit (FNSKU). However, to acquire one, you’ll first need to get a universal product code (UPC), which is a bar code. UPCs are created by the standards organization, GS1 US, and you can obtain your product’s UPC from their website. To get your FNSKU process started, you’ll need to obtain a UPC, which can take some time. Then once you’ve received it, you can create your product listing on Amazon.

The most crucial element in a listing is the keywords, and the effectiveness of your listing depends on your deployment of them. You could write some great copy for your listing, but if you haven’t included the keywords people are using to search for your type of product, your listing won’t be found. In a later step, you’ll ensure your listing is optimized with top keywords to earn strong organic search results and draw traffic. For now, let’s get acquainted with the bare essentials of creating a listing.

A product listing consists of the following elements:

Title: The title is the most important element in your listing since it’s what Amazon focuses on the most regarding keyword ranking. In addition to your main photo, the title is what shoppers will see first In a search results list. Keep in mind that a title should give an accurate overview of what your product is and does. For some products, this will mean including dimensions or quantity counts. It’s also crucial that you include the most important keywords here.
Bullet points: In Amazon, these bullet points are known as product features. This is where you can elaborate on and highlight important aspects of your product. This is also where you’ll want to include any important keywords you didn’t fit into your title.
Product description: Your product description is where you can write in greater detail about your product and expand on what you covered in the bullet point section. Although brevity and keyword placement are key in the title and bullet points, the product description is where you can establish brand voice.
Backend keywords: This section doesn’t appear on your live listing, so your customers won’t see it. This is where you should input any related keywords you couldn’t fit in the main parts of your listing. You can include foreign-language keywords here along with misspelled words to gain the most visibility.
Photography: Each listing can have a maximum of nine product photos. The first and most important image in your photo set is called the hero image. This is the main image shoppers see when looking at your product in search results or your listing page. In addition to your hero image, you can add images to show your product in use, known as lifestyle photos. Remember, e-commerce product photography is crucial, as customers can’t feel or see your product in person.

5. Find a Manufacturer

Let’s say you’ve decided to sell private-label products as an FBA seller. Where do you get your inventory? The goal of this step is to answer that question. It’s time to research the potential manufacturers and decide on the best one for your business.

Among the most popular sourcing options for private-label manufacturers is Alibaba. Alibaba is a great place to begin your search for an overseas manufacturer who can supply bulk orders of your product, and is the most popular choice for Amazon sellers when it comes to sourcing products.

When making this choice, make sure you do your research and choose a legitimate company to work with. Alibaba provides its own quality assurance metrics, such as its Verified Supplier and Gold Supplier memberships. These designations are certified by third-party groups outside of Alibaba and confirm the business’s legitimacy. When looking at a supplier’s product page, you can view information that includes their response rate and the number of transactions they’ve had in the last six months.

We recommend creating a list of 10 or more suppliers and contacting each of them. Alibaba offers a messaging system for contacting a manufacturer; just click the Contact Supplier button on the product page.

In assessing each one, you’ll be looking for several different characteristics. You’ll want to avoid any language barriers and find someone who will be easy to understand. Pay attention to how quickly a supplier responds to messages. Also, they should provide satisfactory answers to your questions and ask thoughtful questions of their own regarding size, color, and other specifications. It will also be preferable to find an experienced supplier familiar with Amazon’s requirements and seller needs. You’ll also want to know how flexible they’ll be if you need to make changes after placing an order.

Pricing is also a vital point since you’ll want to source a quality product that meets your budget. Once you have prices from each supplier, go to Viral Launch’s FBA calculator to ensure you can make a profit. To estimate your potential profit, you’ll need to know the cost of goods sold, the shipping costs to Amazon, and the selling price of your product on Amazon.

After communicating with each supplier, narrow down your list to two or three and request product samples from each of them. Also, buy some competitor products from Amazon and compare them. It may seem unnecessary, but you’d be surprised at the details you may notice when judiciously reviewing a product. After reviewing everything, you can decide on which supplier to work with.

For more in-depth information about finding a manufacturer, listen to this episode from Viral Launch’s podcast, Follow the Data.

6. Order and Ship Your Product

In the last step, you’ve decided on the best supplier for your product, so now you can place your first full order. We recommend that you order enough product for at least a two-month run of inventory.

Since you’ll be ordering from an overseas supplier, you’ll have a few different payment options.

Bank wire (or telegraphic transfer): This method is the riskiest since you pay directly to the supplier’s bank account before receiving your order. Of the other methods, this requires the least amount of fees. Manufacturers usually prefer these kinds of payments, but we recommend using a different option, especially when forming a new supplier relationship.
Credit card/PayPal: This is a more reliable and secure payment method, but it comes with additional fees. Because of the security involved and the ability to cancel a payment, many who sell on Amazon prefer this method. However, due to fees, some manufacturers will not accept these for large orders.
Escrow service: Alibaba provides this payment option, essentially a combination of the previous two. Your payment is sent to the supplier, but it’s held by Alibaba until you confirm the receipt of your product. This is a great middle-ground; try to find a manufacturer willing to accept Alibaba pay or similar, which protects you and them.

Before paying, you’ll need to plan where your goods will be shipped depending on your selling plan. You’ll also need to provide the supplier with box labels, pallet labels, and FNSKUs.

If you choose FBA, the destination will be one of Amazon’s fulfillment centers. Additionally, you’ll need to notify Amazon that your order is coming by creating an inbound shipment in Seller Central. If you choose FBM, your manufacturer will send your product directly to you or to your desired warehouse. You can work with your manufacturer and a freight forwarder to handle shipping logistics.

Lastly, you’ll want to consider an inspection. You can have a third-party inspection company check over your inventory to make sure it’s up to your standards, either in the country of origin or in the United States. Alibaba has an inspection directory to help you find an affordable provider in the origin country. We recommend an inspection on your first order, with inspections every few orders after that to ensure the highest quality.

7. Optimize Your Listing

In this step, we return to the product listing from Step 4 to do some search engine optimization (SEO). The goal with a listing optimization is to ensure the listing will reach the greatest number of consumers seeking your product. As discussed earlier, using the most relevant keywords will be crucial to creating a listing that earns a high search ranking and draws traffic.

You may have already started gathering the important keywords from the earlier product research step, but if you haven’t, entering your product in Keyword Research will give you a list of the top keywords to include. You’ll want to write a title that artfully incorporates the top keywords without confusing the customer. The following is an example of a well-optimized title for a first aid kit:

First Aid Kit Emergency Preparedness Medical Supplies for Home, Office, School, Car, and Travel – 150-Piece Small Basic Kit with Full Range of Medical Supplies for Treating Common Injuries

It includes vital keywords associated with the product from Keyword Research and lets consumers know exactly what they’d receive upon purchase.

Our Listing Builder tool provides an efficient and simplified way to create a listing, helping you build each element. Enter your title, features/bullet points, product description, and backend keywords, and you’ll generate an optimization score, telling you how effective your listing is. If it needs some work, the score will tell you. You can experiment with your listing by adding keywords and moving them into different sections from the displayed list, and watching the score fluctuate to figure out what works and what doesn’t.

If this sounds too time-consuming or not up your alley, consider LaunchGPT, our AI-powered tool that creates your product listing copy for you! Using Amazon keyword data from our comprehensive set of tools, LaunchGPT takes the basics of your product and strategically generates copy for each segment of your customer-facing listing. It’s like ChatGPT but tailored specifically to the needs of Amazon sellers! Simply provide some basic info about your product, and within minutes, a ready-made product listing is created for you.

When you have a well-optimized listing, copy it into your Amazon seller account and get one step closer to starting an Amazon business. Be sure to check out our in-depth guide on how to optimize your product listing for more!

8. Start Driving Sales

Your business as an Amazon seller officially begins now. Once you have your product listing completed and products ready to ship, it’s time to go live and sell on Amazon.

However, there’s much more to it than just throwing up a product listing and expecting sales to start rolling in. To set yourself up for success, you’ll want to increase your visibility. We recommend a couple of different tactics:

Running a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign.
Offering a product giveaway, or what we call a product launch.

PPC Campaigns

PPC campaigns are essentially the “sponsored content” advertisements you’ve probably seen when browsing products on Amazon. In these campaigns, you bid for your advertisement to appear in sponsored ads for a keyword related to your product. When a consumer searches for that keyword, your ad appears and you pay a small amount of money to Amazon for each click your ad receives. This helps generate visibility initially and gets your product in front of more people than you would otherwise.

Product Launches

Another way to get your product more visibility is through product launches. These will help kickstart your listing through deeply discounted sales. This helps Amazon’s algorithm understand your product as important for the keywords in your listing, and the goal is to increase your product’s rank in search. The higher a product ranks on Amazon, the greater your sales opportunity. Most shoppers don’t make it past the first page when browsing, so page-one positions for major keywords are essential.

Your Amazon search results ranking should rise with a launch, providing exposure to consumers and the chance to drive significant sales. Sales and rank both influence each other. As your sales increase, your organic ranking will increase. As a result, this exponentially helps visibility to drive sales and cause your rank to continue to rise.

Want to learn what not to do when launching? Check out our 9 Common Launch Mistakes to Avoid.

Amazon Seller FAQs

If you’re considering entering the world of Amazon selling, you likely have numerous questions about how to get started, what to sell, how to optimize your listings, and much more. In this section, we’ll address some of the frequently asked questions that arise when embarking on your journey as an Amazon seller, providing you with valuable insights and guidance to help you hit the ground running on the platform.

Do I need a business license to sell on Amazon?

No, you do not need to acquire a business license to sell on Amazon.

However, we recommend enrolling in Amazon Brand Registry to enjoy a bevy of benefits for your Amazon business. Enrollment in Brand Registry requires an actively registered or pending trademark for your brand. The Brand Registry program unlocks Enhanced Brand Content, protects your brand from imitators, and a host of other helpful benefits that enhance your Amazon offerings.

But a business license is not among Amazon seller requirements.

Is selling on Amazon free?

Although you do not need to pay anything for a Seller Central account, selling on Amazon isn’t free. Amazon offers a Professional selling plan and an Individual selling plan to sell on its platform. As previously mentioned, the Professional account costs $39.99 per month with no per-item fee and the Individual account doesn’t have an upfront fee but incurs a $0.99 charge for each item sold.

Of course, it does cost to sell on Amazon since it requires money to purchase inventory if you source your products and Amazon seller fees via its FBA program and a per-item referral fee exist. Consider these Amazon selling fees as an investment into your own business.

What is dropshipping?

Drop shipping is a business model where you don’t have to keep any inventory. You simply act as the middleman between your customers and the supplier who stocks the product. This selling method is how to sell on Amazon without inventory on hand.

Whenever you receive an order from a customer, you place the same order with your supplier, and they will ship it directly to your customer. If this sounds appealing to you, please check out our deep dive into how to dropship on Amazon.

How to find products that are in demand on Amazon?

Viral Launch’s Product Discovery tool! Product Discovery has helped hopeful Amazon sellers uncover untapped product markets to reverse engineer top items to sell on Amazon for years. Built on real-time and historical data by tracking Amazon’s full catalog, Product Discovery lets you customize your search by crucial metrics like search volume and sales that can play a vital role in finding in-demand products.

Once you think you’ve unearthed a gem of a winning product idea, validate it with extra data from Market Intelligence to earn the data-informed advantage and proceed with confidence.

What is the average monthly income for Amazon FBA?

Results vary, but according to one poll, nearly half of Amazon third-party sellers make between $1,000 and $25,000 per month. Needless to say, this number relies on pricing, sales, and competition. With no guaranteed sales and no upper limit, there’s a substantial gap in potential monthly income.

Start Selling On Amazon Today

If you’re ready to take the plunge and start selling on Amazon, there’s no time like the present to get started! With its vast customer base, unparalleled infrastructure, and a myriad of resources at your disposal, Amazon offers an incredible platform for aspiring and seasoned entrepreneurs. With determination, a clear plan, and reliable, accurate data on your side, you can turn your business aspirations into a thriving reality.

The reliable and accurate data? That’s where we come in. The Viral Launch software suite boasts solutions for Amazon sellers at all stages. From finding prospective products to sell to creating your product listing to managing your buy box strategy and advertising efforts, Viral Launch gives you the competitive edge with trustworthy data based on years of incessantly tracking the Amazon market.

Start your 14-day free trial to the Viral Launch software suite today to start your Amazon journey with tools trusted by thousands of Amazon sellers. With premium tools and walkthroughs to help you utilize the tools to the best of your ability, our software is tailor-made to help Amazon sellers confidently conquer every step of the selling process.

Starting your Amazon selling journey today begins with just a few simple steps. Each phase brings you closer to your goals, from product selection and account setup to optimizing your listings and engaging with customers. So, don’t wait any longer. The world of e-commerce awaits, and there’s no better time to start than now.

How To Sell On Amazon Without Inventory

Starting an Amazon business can be highly lucrative, but one of the downsides to selling on Amazon is needing space to store the products you sell.

As your business expands, so do the requirements for space. The need to streamline the process of getting products shipped to customers.

In this post, I will explain how to sell on Amazon without inventory and the different ways to run an Amazon store that require little-to-no involvement with actual physical inventory.

Amazon FBA

FBA stands for Fulfilment By Amazon.

FBA is the process of selling and shipping products through the Amazon platform. It is the most popular way of running an Amazon business with 96% of sellers choosing the FBA business model.

How does FBA work?

The seller sends all inventory directly to the Amazon Fulfillment centers, and then Amazon handles all aspects of selling, storage, and shipment for you.

This allows sellers to focus on the more important aspect of the business, like sourcing more products to sell and launching them to increase their profits.

The Pros Of Selling With Amazon FBA

There are many benefits of running an Amazon FBA Business, here are some of them:

You’re able to sell private-label products online without having to hold any inventory yourself.
Amazon will keep your products in their Amazon fulfillment centers and send them out to the customer as soon as they order.
Over 200 Million customers are searching for products on Amazon per month. The FBA business model allows you to take a slice of the very large pie that already exists.
Amazon FBA requires very little time commitment after the initial setup, making it perfect for those just getting started with online businesses.
You can access powerful analytics tools to track the performance of your products.

The Cons Of Selling With Amazon FBA

Selling with Amazon FBA is a great way to generate passive income, but it doesn’t come without its problems:

FBA is a competitive business model, but there are many great FBA courses that can guide you to get an advantage over the competition
Starting an FBA business can require a high financial investment in wholesale quantities of inventory.
You are not in control of the customer service experience for your products (although the FBA experience tends to be world-class)
You may find it difficult to differentiate yourself from other sellers on Amazon.

Dropshipping

Dropshipping is a business model where the seller doesn’t actually hold any inventory, but instead uses a third-party supplier to ship products directly to the customer.

Dropshipping is the best way to sell on Amazon without inventory. Not only do you not need to store inventory – you don’t even need to own any!

How Does Dropshipping Work?

You simply act as the middleman between your customers and the supplier who stocks the product.

Once a customer places an order on your Amazon store, you then forward the order to your supplier who will then send the product directly to the customer.

The Pros Of Dropshipping

• No need to purchase or store any inventory.

• Can offer a wide variety of products without investing in additional storage space or staff.

• You don’t need to worry about shipping or packaging orders.

• You can focus more on marketing and growing your sales rather than managing the day-to-day operations.

• Overhead costs are much lower as there is no need for additional storage space.

The Cons Of Dropshipping

• Less control over the quality of the products being shipped as you are relying on a third-party supplier.

• Highly competitive business model, so you may have lower profit margins in order to compete.

• The customer service experience is out of your hands and any issues relating to delivery or product quality must be handled by the supplier.

• There may be delays in getting orders processed

Use Third-Party Logistics Companies

Third-Party Logistics (3PL) companies are businesses that provide outsourced services such as warehousing, inventory management, and order fulfillment.

Essentially, A third-party logistics company would offer the same service as Amazon FBA.

3PLs help sellers save time, money, and resources by managing the shipping process for them and are a great way to sell on Amazon without inventory.

For some sellers, using a 3PL may not make the most sense. Amazon FBA could offer the same service, but more efficiently run and cost-effective for sellers.

Not to mention that a 3PL wouldn’t be able to offer the same next-day delivery service as FBA would to Prime members.

The best time to consider working with a 3PL is when you are a new seller. Especially a new seller who wants to increase their storage capacity during sales events, like Black Friday or Prime Day.

Sellers can add the FBM (Fulfill By Merchant) option to the product listing, and be able to offer higher qualities of products to allow for an increase in sales during the sales event.

The Pros Of Using 3PLs

Much like Amazon FBA, working with a Third-party Logistics company is a great way to run a passive Amazon business. Here are some of the benefits of working with a 3PL:

• No need to manage or store any inventory.

• Access competitive rates without having to pay for additional staff or storage space.

• Increased flexibility in terms of pricing. You won’t be paying for shipping costs upfront or storing your own products.

• You can focus on marketing and growing your business, rather than managing the day-to-day operations.

• You have access to powerful analytics tools to track performance and inventory levels.

• Scale quickly without having to invest in additional staff or storage space.

The Cons Of Using 3PLs

The downside to working with third-party inventory solutions is that Amazon already provides a world-class solution. This is very difficult to compete with.

Here are some of the other cons to working with a 3PL:

• You may not have as much control over customer service as you would if you were handling all of the processes yourself.

• Certain 3PL companies may require minimum orders, which could limit your ability to manage costs effectively.

• There is a risk that something may go wrong with the order fulfillment process and it’s out of your hands if it does.

Sell Digital Products

Selling digital products is the ultimate answer to “how to sell on Amazon without inventory”. Technically, your product doesn’t ‘physically” exist!

Digital products are any type of product that is available in digital forms, such as ebooks, video lessons, software programs, music downloads, etc.

Selling digital products is an attractive option for those who want to know how to sell on Amazon without inventory. It eliminates the need to purchase or store any physical inventory.

The Pros Of Selling Digital Products

• You don’t need to worry about shipping or packaging orders.

• You have access to a global market since you can easily deliver your product digitally in any corner of the world.

• No need to manage returns or defective products. You are simply delivering information rather than a physical product.

• You don’t need to worry about buying or storing any inventory, which reduces overhead costs.

• You can easily scale up your product offering without having to invest in additional storage space or staff.

The Cons Of Selling Digital Products

• Margins may be tight since customers are used to paying significantly less for digital products than physical ones.

• You will have to deal with digital theft, as it is easy for customers to copy and distribute your work without permission.

• There is a risk that the customer may not be satisfied with the product, which could lead to negative reviews or refunds.

• It can take time and resources to create high-quality digital products,

How To Get Started Selling On Amazon

Whether you decided to sell on Amazon leveraging the FBA model, or sell digital products, the process is similar in regards to set up.

If you’re a complete newbie and need some guidance on:

how to start an Amazon store,
how to source products,
how to launch your brand,
and how to scale your business,

Viral Launch has an incredible FREE course that will show you how to do all of these tasks and more:

In Summary

Hopefully, this post has shown you 4 ways how to sell on Amazon without inventory.

Selling on Amazon without inventory can be a great way to start or expand your business.

There are several options available, such as dropshipping, using third-party logistics companies, and selling digital products.

Each of these methods has its own pros and cons. It’s important to carefully consider which one is right for you before taking the plunge.

No matter what option you choose, with the right strategy in place, you can find success selling on Amazon without investing in any inventory.

Follow The Data: Growth & Expansion Through Amazon International

Ryan Cramer walks through his perspective on where international e-commerce is headed and how sellers can take advantage of the growing seller momentum around the world.

At Viral Launch, we constantly hear from Amazon sellers who want to take their business to the next level. The option to sell internationally on Amazon is a low-risk, high-reward opportunity that’s being underutilized in the seller community.

Why is selling internationally such a promising proposition? Follow the Data host Cam Yoder chats with Ryan Cramer of PingPong Payments to find out!

PingPong helps e-commerce businesses sell worldwide by providing international payment solutions. Since 2015, more than 600,000 e-commerce merchants have entrusted PingPong with their cross-border payments, resulting in more than $10 billion processed for global sellers.

With experience in sales, marketing, and e-commerce, Ryan expertly explains the benefits of going global and how you can take full advantage of growing seller momentum around the world, so you can expand your business as Amazon continues to grow. Don’t miss out on growing with Amazon international!

HIGHLIGHTS

Get familiar with what PingPong does for sellers and Ryan’s extensive background in e-commerce (0:12)

Ryan lets us in on his professional journey to PingPong Payments and how it fits in with his goals. With a background featuring a steady mix of sales and e-commerce, Ryan provides an insightful perspective on where those fields overlap.

Ryan, on how he sees international fitting into the typical Amazon seller’s strategy (10:39)

Quietly, Amazon has been steadily expanding around the world. As e-commerce continues to grow at different speeds globally, it allows yet another way for Amazon sellers to scale their business. Ryan breaks down why it’s worth keeping an eye on international opportunities, and why it should be on the minds of current or prospective sellers.

With Prime shipping, Amazon changed the way we buy online in the U.S. Is changing the way the world buys online up next? (12:57)

The future of selling is closer than it may appear. Amazon is rolling out programs to provide the same revolutionary two-day shipping program in its international marketplaces. For many U.S. sellers, the idea of selling internationally can seem quite foreign. Ryan lets us know about these programs, what they may mean, and why now may be the best time to take your business global.

So you want to sell internationally. What are the prime marketplaces to target? (15:57)

While selling internationally might be easier than you think, there certainly are important decisions to be made before getting started. We discuss the importance of locating emerging markets, understanding cultural differences, local habits, and more aspects to consider before taking your business abroad.

More money is being poured into buying Amazon businesses than ever. What does this mean for the traditional Amazon seller in the near future? (23:14)

With millions upon millions of venture capital money going to companies that buy Amazon businesses, are the days of the traditional Amazon seller numbered? Ryan doesn’t think so in the slightest and believes it’s actually a great opportunity for more traditional sellers.

Lastly, a huge thanks to Ryan for coming on the show and sharing his knowledge with us!

Check out PingPong to save a LOT of money if you sell internationally!

Don’t be the last to know! Subscribe to our email list to receive the latest Amazon news to stay informed on all things Amazon.

6 Best Amazon FBA Tools and Apps

When it comes to selling on Amazon, there’s always an abundance of items on the to-do list. As many brands are made up of just one person or a small team, there’s a lot to keep track of from picking a product and managing inventory to creating a listing and advertising… and everything in between. So how do you keep track of everything? Luckily, there’s an Amazon web app or tool for nearly every step of the selling process.

Here’s a list – in no particular order – of some of the best paid and free Amazon FBA tools and web apps designed to help you take your e-commerce business to the next level.

1.Take your Business On-the-Go with the Amazon Seller App

Before we get started, we should first mention one smartphone app every seller should have.

This might be pretty obvious for more seasoned sellers, but it’s definitely an important one. This is essentially Amazon giving sellers a free tool to help make their selling experience a whole lot easier and organized even when you’re on the go. You’d be crazy not to take advantage of it, right?

What it does: In short – a lot. This is essentially Seller Central in your pocket. With this app, you can analyze sales, quickly make pricing changes, view fees, create listings, upload photos, manage orders, respond to messages and much, much more.
Why we love it: For starters, we love it because it’s free. It’s also great because it has many of the major features and functionality of Seller Central available to you at any time. With this app, you’ll be able to manage your business from just about anywhere.
How to get it: This app is available for free in the Apple or Android app stores.

Ok, now that we’ve covered the Amazon Seller app, lets get back to the best third-party web-based apps and tools for sellers!

2. Take the ‘Ew’ Out of Reviews with Feedback Genius

Amazon reviews are a touchy subject to say the least. That’s why finding any tool that helps sellers manage and gather reviews within Amazon’s terms of service is like coming across an oasis in the middle of the Sahara. One of the most popular review apps is Feedback Genius from Seller Labs.

What it does: Reviews serve as social proof on Amazon, and they’ve got a major impact on clicks and conversions. Therefore, reviews are extremely important, and sellers must have a solid review-gathering game plan. Feedback Genius is a powerful Amazon FBA tool to help sellers gather and manage reviews as well as communicate with buyers through automation and helpful notifications.
Why we love it: Feedback Genius is great because it takes a lot of the legwork out of review aggregation and management. This app allows sellers to automate the bulk of their messaging to buyers and set up notifications so you never miss a review or feedback.
How to get it: Visit the Seller Labs website and create an account. New users can also try out a 30-day free trial!

3. Track Inventory and Run Ad Campaigns with Teikametrics

Making sure you’re on top of your inventory and successfully managing your advertising campaigns are extremely important aspects of selling on Amazon. Knowing how much product you have left and when to restock helps you to maximize profits and maintain ranking. And getting in front of shoppers through sponsored ads expands your sales potential. Luckily, there’s an FBA-focused tool out there that can help you keep track of inventory and advertise your products called Teikametrics.

What it does: This tool helps Amazon sellers create and follow smart inventory systems and sponsored ad campaigns. Manage your investments, track replenishment, and find your true profitability with Teikametrics’ FBA platform. You can also automate your sponsored ad campaigns to increase profitability. It’s all in one place.
Why we love it: Teikametrics is great because it’s designed with the FBA seller in mind. You get help managing inventory to reduce stock-outs while also learning valuable strategies to improve sales velocity and ranking. And when it comes to PPC, Teikametrics’ automated bidding allows you to get the best placement for max profitability without lifting a finger.
How to get it: Visit the Teikametrics website to create an account and get started.

4. Utilize Viral Launch’s Suite of Tools to Launch your Business into the Stratosphere

Here at Viral Launch, our mission is to provide sellers with the best information and tools out there for their selling journey – whether it’s from us or not. So with that being said, please forgive us for this shameless plug. Our Viral Launchpad (see what we did there) is based around 4 main tools:

Product Discovery: Our product finding tool allows you to find individual products that meet your criteria, review initial keywords, discover successful brands, and search subcategories for up-and-coming products. It also has advanced filters allowing you to customize your research process to get personalized results.
Market Intelligence: Once you’ve used Product Discovery to find a few products you’re interested in, it’s time to use Market Intelligence to verify your choices. This tool lets you verify demand for products by showing you estimated sales numbers, keyword search volume, trends, market conditions and much more.
Keyword Research: Like we mentioned earlier, finding the right keywords to include in your listing is huge. Our tool allows you to search a general keyword associated with your product and then presents you with a list of other possible keywords. Along with the keyword list, you’ll also get data like Search Volumes, Priority Score, Relevancy Score, Opportunity Score, Trends and more.
Launches: Also known as giveaways, launches are a great way to help move your product up in keyword ranking. At Viral Launch, our clients work with one of our Amazon Seller Coaches to target a major keyword for their product with a lot of search volume. Then, we determine what number of units to give away at a discounted price and for how long. Amazon recognizes these sales which in turn moves the product up in rankings for the major keywords, getting it in front of the eyes of more shoppers.

5. Own Your Taxes with Avalara

Is there anything more fun than doing your taxes? Oh, wait, there is? That’s right, unless you’re a CPA or an Excel whiz, taxes are tedious at best and massively confusing at worse. As an FBA seller, taxes can get even more confusing as changing legislation makes things increasingly difficult. Not to fear, Avalara is here with tax tools designed specifically for the needs of Amazon sellers.

What it does: Among other tax solutions, Avalara software automates sales tax compliance. Amazon sellers can easily understand how much they owe in each state that they have nexus. Avalara can even prepare and file your returns according to a filing calendar. It’s like having your very own accountant on your payroll!
Why we love it: Avalara provides real-time rate calculation and automatic return filing. No more manually entering data and other tax information… with Avalara’s sales tax engine, the right rates and rules will be applied every time!
How to get it: It’s simple, visit the Avalara website, sign up and get started!

6. Make Accounting Easy with Quickbooks

Whether you’re a solo Amazon seller or part of a small team, there’s a lot to keep track of. From expenses to taxes and everything else, that’s a lot of work to put on the shoulders of one, or in some cases, a few people. But with Quickbooks Online, you can keep track of all the important aspects of your business all in one place.

What it does: It might be better ask what Quickbooks Online doesn’t do. Sellers love this tool because of the wide range of services it offers. With Quickbooks Online, you can keep organized books with everything in one place. Automatically import and categorize your transactions, and you can even share your books with your accountant for seamless collaboration. This way, when tax time rolls around, you’re set up for a painless experience.
Why we love it: To be successful in any business, you need to know how much cash you’ve got on hand and how much cash you’re spending. Quickbooks Online allows you to see in real time how much money you’re making and spending… all in one place.
How to get it: Visit the Quickbooks website and sign up for the plan that best fits you and your business! There’s also an option for a free 30-day trial. If you’re having trouble setting up Quickbooks for your Amazon FBA business, get help from the pros. Find a bookkeeper like CapForge Bookkeeping Pros, who specializes in FBA, and they can help you set up your books correctly. After a free consultation, you’ll understand how CapForge can simplify your Quickbooks for peace of mind.

Bonus Round: International Sellers

7. Take Your Business Worldwide with WorldFirst

One of the main reasons Amazon provides sellers such a massive opportunity is because of the sheer size of their user base. Millions of shoppers from around the world are browsing Amazon every single day. But with different rules and regulations in each overseas economy, selling worldwide can be tricky. With the help of WorldFirst, you can build your business overseas and easily bring your money back home.

What it does: Amazon requires you to open a bank account in any country where you sell products, which can cause logistical headaches and great confusion. WorldFirst allows you to set up Amazon receiving bank accounts in overseas marketplaces like USD, JPY, CNY, GBP, EUR and CAD.
Why we love it: One of the best things about WorldFirst is that it’s extremely cost effective. For starters, it’s free to open an account which makes it easy to get started. There are also no fees for receiving money and no monthly charges.
How to get it: All you have to do is visit the WorldFirst website and sign up for an account.

Combine Amazon FBA Tools and Web Apps with Hard Work and Dedication

While the Amazon FBA tools and apps listed in this guide are great resources, they aren’t the end-all-be-all for whether or not you’ll be successful on Amazon. By that, we mean that merely signing up or using these tools won’t ensure success. It’s also completely possible these or other popular tools just aren’t right for you and your business – and that’s fine!

The best way to maximize your chances of successfully of being a successful seller is to combine Amazon FBA tools like these with hard work and plenty of research. It’s also important to make sure you stay up to date on any changes that may be taking place within the Amazon marketplace.

The great thing is a lot of this information can be easily found online, it just takes some effort on your part to find them. Like we mentioned above, Viral Launch hopes to be your source for information about all things Amazon. We encourage you to subscribe to our blog, check out our Youtube channel or listen to our podcast Follow the Data.

What is Private Label? An Introduction to the Popular Amazon Selling Method

Most people have heard of the online retailer Amazon. A lot of people use it as one of the main ways they buy products and goods. In fact, in early 2016, it was reported that Amazon had more than 310 million active customer accounts worldwide. And in 2017, net sales totaled $178 billion. What a lot of people might not know, is that a good portion of Amazon sales come from private label products.

And the great thing is, anyone can learn how to sell on Amazon, especially through private label.

In this post, we’ll go over private label products and how you can use them to build an Amazon business from the point of view of a seller. We’ll cover what a private label product is, where to get them and how to pick the right one.

First, we need to answer the question:

What is Private Label?

The concept of private label as it applies to Amazon and selling is actually pretty simple. Think of all the products that are on Amazon. Everything from phone chargers and first aid kits to kitchen utensils, toys and everything in between. Have you ever stopped to think about where these products come from and who is selling them? More often than not, the “company” behind the product listing you’re looking at isn’t so much a company as a single person or small team selling products.

So where do they get the products? People who sell private label products on Amazon “source” generic products from manufacturers and then market them under their own brands as a “third party seller.” This is actually one of the most popular ways to sell on Amazon because it’s the most scalable. As a third party seller, you buy your product in bulk from a manufacturer at lower per unit prices and then re-sell on Amazon for profit.

Sourcing Private Label Products

So this next step in understanding what private label is learning how sellers find them. One of the most popular ways to source products is through the website Alibaba. In short, Alibaba connects you with overseas manufacturers allowing you to purchase your selected products in bulk for resale. However, there are some things you have to keep in mind. Many of the manufacturers you work with will be from another country, so you’ll have to think about possible communication issues and cultural differences when dealing with them.

Just to give you an idea of what the Alibaba interface looks like, take a look at this example search we performed for a random product, in this case a phone charger.

You can’t see on that screenshot, but there are literally 100 pages of products related to phone chargers that you could source and sell under your own brand. By just browsing through the searches, you can get an idea of what the per unit prices will be for products like these, what the minimum order the manufacturer will accept is, and there’s even a button to “Contact Supplier” directly through Alibaba. And once you choose a specific product listing, there’s even more information available.

All this available information will allow you to do your homework on the manufacturer, to ensure they will be a good partner to work with. Alibaba also has its own quality assurance metrics to help you pick legitimate manufacturers to work with, but a lot of the work will still come from your end during communications with prospective partners.

Picking the Right Product

Now you that you know where to get a product from, let’s talk about how to choose the right product. Like with everything on Amazon, this process takes a good deal of research. You don’t just browse Alibaba, find a product you think is cool and then sell it. First, you need to do your homework.

Choosing the right product to sell private label is crucial to your success. One wrong move can cost you time and money, or worst, ruin your Amazon business before it begins. When thinking about what product to sell there are a lot of factors to consider like price/profit margins, marketplace viability, popularity and much more. By using a product finding tool, like Product Discovery from Viral Launch, you can generate a list of possible products that align with your goals.

After you’ve got a list of items you think could be winners, it’s time to validate. There are a lot of market research tools out there for Amazon sellers, including our own Market Intelligence. This type of software eliminate guesswork so you can steer clear of risky products that might lose you money.

For instance, our tool allows sellers to see demand for a product by looking at estimated sales numbers, keyword search volume, and market trends. You can also take a look at how top competitors have performed and are performing with similar products.

Our tool also allows you to look at potential barriers to entry like reviews, big brands and high initial investment.

Want to learn more about how to find great products? Check out this video:

Next Steps

Now you know where a vast majority of the products available to buy on Amazon come from, you might be thinking about getting involved. If so, there’s still a lot to learn about how to become an Amazon seller. You’ve got to start an Amazon seller account, figure out how you want to fulfill your orders, learn what makes an effective listing and how to market your product and much more.

One of the most important things to keep in mind as you continue on your journey of becoming an FBA seller is to never stop learning. Things can change on Amazon in what seems like the blink of an eye, so it’s important to stay up-to-date. What’s great is that information is out there, you just have to be willing to put in the time and effort to research.

Your friends at Viral Launch would love to be there every step of the way by providing tools and resources for your Amazon journey. If you’re interested in learning more information about all things Amazon, we encourage you to subscribe to our blog, check out our Youtube channel or listen to our podcast Follow the Data.

Amazon Sales Rank: Why it’s Important & How to Improve It?

For even the most seasoned sellers, mastering the intricacies of Amazon can be difficult to say the least. Like with any online or internet-based venture, things change on Amazon sometimes seemingly overnight. It can also be difficult to get concrete information about some of their elements – especially Amazon sales rank, also known as Best Sellers Rank (BSR).

[YOU MAY ALSO BE INTERESTED IN: 5 Tips on How To Improve Your Amazon Ranking]

This metric is quite possibly the most disputed and researched element in Amazon’s arsenal. Sellers truly have a love-hate relationship with BSR. Viral Launch’s own CEO Casey Gauss made it his own mission to learn more about the mysterious metric by reverse engineering Amazon’s algorithm. You can learn more about that in his Definitive Guide to Understanding BSR.

But for now, let’s answer a few questions:

What is Amazon Sales Rank?

Essentially, Amazon Sales Rank is used to determine a product’s popularity within a category. It actually exists for all products, even those that aren’t part of a category. Products can have a sales rank of 1 to over a million. The lower your number is, the more sales your product is getting and vice versa. Basically, it’s calculating the period of time since an item last sold, so if you want a low BSR, ideally you want the period of time between sales to be as small as possible. Just think of your BSR like your golf scorecard – the lower the number, the better you’re doing.

You can find the BSR of any product in the Product Information section of a listing. As an example, I searched for a random product – in this case, a phone charger.

As you can see in the image above, you get quite a bit of info at a quick glance.

This particular phone charger’s BSR is 28 in its main category of Cell Phones & Accessories. You also have the option to look at a list of the Top 100 products in that main category. Once you boil it down to subcategories, it ranks 1 and 28.

Why Does Amazon Sales Rank Matter?

From a seller’s standpoint, BSR matters for a few reasons. For starters, it’s an indication of how well your product is selling compared to competitor products, which gives you an idea of where you’re at in the marketplace. So ideally, you want to have as low of a BSR score as possible.

Just remember, when looking at BSR for the products you’re selling it’s an indication of past sales. Think of it this way, does a report card from a previous semester impact your grades in next semester? No. It’s just an indication of your past performance. So like a report card, BSR has no bearing on your future sales and won’t directly help you drive organic sales. This is actually one of the biggest misconceptions about BSR.

For more info about BSR misconceptions, check out this blog about Busting BSR Myths.

How Can I Improve my Amazon Sales Rank?

Now that you know a little background about Amazon sales rank, let’s go over some guidelines of how to improve it. The very best way to improve your Amazon sales rank is to make more sales. I know, that seems pretty obvious, but it’s something newer sellers still struggle with. Here are a few ways to improve your chances at more sales:

Optimize your listing: Choosing the right keywords for your product is imperative. It’s also important to make sure you include keywords in your listing, especially in your title and bullets. This will help your listing be seen by more people, increasing the chances of your product being bought. There are a lot of keyword tools out there, including Keyword Research from Viral Launch, that can help you with this.
Create great copy: Along with including keywords in your listing copy, you also have to do a great job selling your product to customers. Make sure to highlight all the important aspects of your listing and tell people why they should buy it.
Use professional photos: In addition to copy, product photography plays a huge role in increasing conversions. Many people think a few smartphone photos and some Photoshop is all you need and that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Professional photography can make a huge difference in selling your product to customers.
Run a giveaway: Giveaways, or Launches, as they’re called here at Viral Launch, are a way to increase your listing’s ranking for a major keyword. In short, we target a major keyword associated with your product and do product giveaways – usually around 90% off – for a period of 7-10 days. As your product racks up the sales, it is organically moved up in rankings. While the goal of a launch is to improve keyword ranking (which is more crucial to generating organic sales), an improved BSR is frequently a side effect of a promotional campaign.
PPC Campaigns: Pay-Per-Click Campaigns are essentially the “sponsored content” you see when browsing Amazon, Google or other search engines. Basically, you pay a small fee to search engines for a specific keyword. This helps get your product in front of more people who are searching for similar items.

One thing you don’t want to do while chasing a lower BSR is intentionally miscategorizing your product in a less competitive subcategory. Some sellers try this tactic because they think it will be easier to achieve a lower BSR. However, we don’t recommend this because it limits the product’s visibility as many searches filter to a relevant subcategory. This means your product could be filtered out of valuable results.

Final Thoughts

Here at Viral Launch, part of our mission is making sure sellers have the best possible information about all things Amazon in their arsenal. That’s especially true when it comes to a widely disputed, misunderstood and, frankly, confusing topic like Amazon sales rank. Is it important? Sure. It’s great to know how your product is doing in comparison to others. But you should view BSR as more of a symptom rather than a cure. If your product isn’t performing well compared to its peers, check out competitor listings. Try to see what they’re doing right and you might find ways to improve your listing. Just remember, what your BSR is today has no bearing on what sales you’ll make tomorrow.

Want the latest Amazon news, tips, and insights from experts sent to your inbox? Sign up for our email list below!

12 Common Mistakes to Avoid as an Amazon FBA Seller

When starting your Amazon FBA business you’re taking a risk. One false move could cost you precious time and money or worse. A mistake when looking for what to sell on Amazon FBA could send your business crashing down before it even begins. The Amazon ecosystem can be confusing to navigate, but by arming yourself with plenty of information, you can maximize your chances for success.

So if you’re a newer Amazon FBA seller, you’re in luck. We’ve compiled a list of the most common mistakes to avoid when starting your FBA journey. Most of these are centered on the Private Label selling experience since over half of Amazon FBA sellers have one or more Private Label products.

#1 – Following the wrong resources

It’s extremely easy—maybe a little too easy—to find courses, gurus or service providers that give out or sell lists of the “best products to sell on Amazon.” If you see someone selling or giving out “hot product ideas,” run away.

There’s a huge market for courses, gurus, and consulting services centered around the Amazon FBA seller journey. And it’s not hard to see why. Amazon can be confusing, to say the least, and people want to be told how to be successful. The problem is, when everyone takes the same advice, especially when it comes to products, it can lead to oversaturated markets. That means it can be exceptionally hard to generate visibility and drive sales. A market can be great, but if a few hundred sellers all source that same product, the supply can overtake the demand, leaving you with high competition and a bunch of inventory that’s too hard to sell.

#2 – Following trend markets

Just like you ran from the gurus and best product lists, do the same for trendy markets. Chasing trends can be extremely risky, especially as a newer seller. They’re only really profitable for those who are really, really early to the party.

For an example of this, look no further than 2017’s fidget spinner:

In late 2017, the fidget spinner made some early sellers a lot of money. But as more people hopped on the bandwagon, demand crashed, and a lot of money was lost. Think of it this way, if a product is trending on social media or TV, you’re probably too late to the party. Even if a market looks amazing, with tons of sellers moving thousands of units with low review quantities, you probably won’t have enough time to capitalize on it. On the short end, it’s going to take you two months to get your product to the market. And by that time, public hype will have started to die down.

If you do hop into a market that quickly becomes saturated, many sellers find themselves in pricing wars with their competitors, limiting their profit margins. This could lead you to sell below cost and lose money.

The people that profit from a trend market either get extremely lucky with timing or they have a low cost (meaning they are a manufacturer) or a ton of capital to pour into a product to drive and hold ranking. Everyone else will likely end up taking a financial hit.

#3 – Not thoroughly researching restrictions/barriers for your desired market

There are quite a few categories on Amazon that have a required approval process to begin selling. For these categories, you may need to submit formal documentation and invoicing. You may also have to pay an upfront fee to be permitted to sell in the category. This can be disastrous for new sellers hoping to hop into a category quickly and start selling. Make sure you have taken the time to understand categories that require this upfront work by checking out Amazon’s approval process. Additionally, there are also specific products that have different restrictive barriers.

#4 – Sourcing low-quality products

If you are planning on selling a private label product, make sure it’s high quality. Sourcing a low-quality product can doom your Amazon venture from the start. Reviews are extremely hard to generate on Amazon, and a few negative reviews early on can sink a listing in a flash. Take the time to order samples and analyze durability, functionality, and overall quality to address any concerns that could drive complaints from buyers. Also, take the time to read through negative reviews from your competition and see if there are any issues that you can improve on. You may even want to purchase a few of your competitor’s products to compare to your samples as a quality check.

#5 – Sourcing an expensive product (for that market)

Another thing to be aware of is all the hidden costs of starting a private label business. Until you actually get started with the selling process, it can be difficult to understand all the costs associated with an FBA business. Between shipping, sourcing, Amazon fees, PPC, promotions, listing creation and more, there’s a lot of costs to be aware of before you jump in. At Viral Launch, we actually have a tool that can help you with initial cost estimates. Amazon also has some great resources about referral fees by category and shipping tiers you should check out before getting started.

While it’s extremely important to have a high-quality product, if you cannot match or beat the majority of your competition on price, it’s probably not advantageous to enter the market. We recommend being sure you can break even by selling at a lower price than everyone on page one. This isn’t absolutely necessary, but it will afford you some flexibility to adjust pricing with fluctuations in the market.

Keep in mind that while quality is important, it is extremely hard to sell a higher priced item based on quality on Amazon. You’re allowed limited space for copy and images and shoppers are typically looking for low prices.

#6 – Selling a product you’re passionate about

This one might surprise people. It might make sense to some to sell a product you’re knowledgeable or passionate about, but it can often do more harm than good. Sourcing a product you’re passionate about can cloud your judgment, lead to mistakes in pricing and make it harder to bail out if a product just isn’t selling. While it’s not wrong to sell something you’re passionate about, it can cause you to react emotionally rather than logically. So just remember to focus on the bottom line.

The 12 Most Common Amazon FBA Mistakes to Avoid – Video Version
Check out the video version of this blog below and don’t forget to like, comment and subscribe:

#7 – Not inspecting a product

This is another note for private label sellers and it goes hand in hand with sourcing a low-quality product mistake. It’s important to ensure the product that comes off the manufacturing line and to your customers is in good shape and quality. Many sellers hire an inspection agency that will go in and observe the manufacturing process to check out inventory and monitor any defects or flaws. This step can save you significant time and money in the long run because you’ll catch mistakes before the inventory is sent to the United States or Amazon.

#8 – Sourcing a patented product

When looking for private label products to source from a manufacturer, it’s important to consider patents. In some cases, sellers will have a product manufactured that’s actually under a patent. Most likely, manufacturers you’re buying from won’t know the product is patented and will try it to sell to anyone who will buy it. However, that doesn’t mean it’s legal. Imagine investing a bunch of capital in product inventory only to get a cease and desist or lawsuit from the patent holder.

#9 – Not putting enough effort into building your listing (including photos)

If you’re a private label seller, you own the product listing. That means you have to set it up. You’ve put a lot of effort into finding and sourcing your next great product. It would only make sense to put the same amount of effort into creating your listing, right? Unfortunately, many Amazon FBA sellers don’t subscribe to that notion. Between your photos, title, bullets, and product description you don’t have much space to capture a customer’s attention and explain what your product is and does. That’s why it’s so important to use the limited space you have to its full advantage.

Effective listing copy accomplishes two goals. It provides persuasive sales copy while also helping you to index for valuable keywords. Before launching a listing, make sure to do extensive keyword research. Find the most relevant keywords for your product and make sure they’re in your listing, most importantly in the title and bullets. And, make sure you’re writing engaging and accurate copy for your product. If you’re not comfortable writing your own copy, check out the listing optimization service from Viral Launch.

As for photography, many sellers think a smartphone photo and a few clicks in Photoshop will do the trick, but they’re mistaken. Professional photography can play a huge role in whether or not a product fails on Amazon. Because Amazon is such a crowded marketplace and you have limited space to sell customers on your product, including high-quality photos can truly make a difference in sales.

#10 – Violating Terms of Service (with reviews or by attacking competition)

There are a lot of companies that pitch different “black hat” (against Terms of Service) strategies. Most of these are centered around generating reviews. While these strategies may seem tempting, Amazon heavily polices review generation. If you get caught paying for (or otherwise incentivizing) reviews, you’re putting your selling privileges at risk. Engaging in review manipulation tactics is common on Amazon, and many sellers get away with it initially, but Amazon has been seriously cracking down on review fraud and the impact can be extremely detrimental to your business.

#11 – Not monitoring your listing or data

For private label sellers, your product listing is sort of like a living, breathing organism. There are ups and downs and changes from day-to-day. Far too many private label sellers throw their listing up and think they’re done. It’s important to continue monitoring your listing to collect data and see how it’s working. You should also keep track of how competitor listings are doing and the category as a whole. Make sure to monitor your ranking for important keywords and ad campaign data as well, using those insights to develop a long-term strategy. Getting your listing up is only half the battle. Tweaking and optimizing based on feedback is the other half.

#12 – Putting your product into the wrong category

As a private label seller, one part of setting up a product listing is deciding what category your product will be listed in. During this step, it’s important to place your product in the proper category. Some sellers try to categorize their product in a lower competition market as a way to earn the Best Seller Badge. However, many searches filter to a specific subcategory, so incorrectly categorizing your product could filter you out of crucial search results.

Sellers can look up their product in Seller Central to determine potential categories, just make sure your product is relevant to the one you choose. If my first aid kit, for example, is not for survival or tactical purposes, there are several options below I would want to avoid in terms of category choice. More than likely, I would want to be in generic first aid kits under Health and Personal Care:

Learning from Your Mistakes as an Amazon FBA Seller

This is the part where I wish we could tell you a magical secret that would make you wildly successful with your Amazon FBA business and richer than you could have ever dreamed. But on Amazon—and in life—these magic shortcuts just don’t exist. The only way to maximize your chances for success as an Amazon FBA seller is through hard work, data leveraging, and constant research and education.

It’s also safe to say that you’ll make some mistakes. The hope is, however, that those mistakes are minor and few and far between. But, when you do make mistakes it’s important to learn from them. Hopefully, this blog has helped open your eyes to things you’ll want to keep in mind and help you from making a big mistake that could doom your FBA business.

Here at Viral Launch, we’d love to be your resource for all things Amazon. To hear more from us, we encourage you to subscribe to our blog, check out our Youtube channel and listen to our podcast Follow the Data.

Best of luck on your Amazon FBA seller journey!

What You Need To Know About Amazon Sales Tax Compliance in 2018

Amazon’s move from garage-based book seller to massively successful global ecommerce giant has inspired countless entrepreneurs to sell products through the Amazon marketplace. With a good product, tireless work ethic, and a dose of luck, you could be the next Amazon seller success story. But getting Amazon sales tax wrong can undermine such success. Here’s what you need to know about sales tax compliance to start off on the right foot.

The changeable nature of sales tax

Sales tax, rates, rules, and product taxability change frequently at the state, and in some cases local, level. Though tax authorities do their best to disseminate information to taxpayers, the burden of keeping informed and complying with new rates and regulations falls squarely on the shoulders of the seller. If you make a mistake, even due to ignorance, you’ll likely pay the price.

A need for revenue

Due to a 1992 Supreme Court’s ruling, Quill Corp. v. North Dakota, a state cannot oblige a business to collect and remit sales tax unless it has a substantial physical connection to the state, or nexus. Consequently, although consumers are buying more online, state and local sales tax revenue is not seeing a corresponding increase. According to a report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), states lost approximately $13 billion in 2017 to untaxed remote sales.

In response, states are aggressively redefining nexus to include ties to in-state affiliates, economic activity, warehouse inventory, web cookies, and more. Many of these laws impact Amazon sellers. Since Amazon now collects sales tax on its own products in all states with a sales tax, states stand to gain the most — approximately $6 billion in 2017 — by taxing its marketplace sales.

States eye marketplace sellers

Different states are taking different tactics to acquire that revenue. For example, Massachusetts is trying to get Amazon to identify its marketplace sellers, while South Carolina is suing Amazon for uncollected tax on its marketplace sales. Virginia law now holds that storing goods in an in-state warehouse is enough of a connection to mandate tax collection, so you better know where your inventory is stored. And as of Jan. 1., 2018, Washington is requiring Amazon to collect and remit tax on its marketplace sales.

While some states are being sued over their efforts to tax remote sales, they’re undeterred. In fact, South Dakota created an economic nexus law with the express purpose of challenging Quill’s physical presence standard. It’s on the steps of the Supreme Court now, and if the court takes the case, it could overturn Quill and grant states the right to tax remote sales.

Getting Amazon Sales Tax Right

Given the current climate, it’s essential for all Amazon sellers to track state efforts to tax marketplace sales. Equally important is the need to understand the risks of not collecting tax. The more aggressively states pursue tax revenue from third-party sellers, the more you can expect to spend on audits and assessment-related costs. According to the GAO report, small and medium-sized businesses could be audited “should states gain the authority to tax remote sales.”

Avalara automates the complexities of collecting and remitting Amazon sales tax, so compliance doesn’t have to be a nightmare. Click here to learn more about how Avalara works with Amazon sellers.

Rebroadcast of Dispelling Myths: 90% Off Promotions (Follow the Data Ep. 24)

We’re off this week preparing for the launch of our latest software tool. If you want an exclusive offer and to be among the first to find out what the tool is, join us for the unveiling Tuesday March 6 at 8pm. Reserve your spot at launchevent.viral-launch.com In the meantime here’s a rebroadcast of Dispelling Myths: 90% Off Promotions.

Do launches work? Amazon gives higher keyword ranking to products sold at full price, leaving deeply discounted promotional products in the dust… Or so the myth goes. In the inaugural episode of the “Dispelling Myths” series, Viral Launch CEO Casey Gauss dives into the data to validate, or dispel, this widespread concern among Amazon sellers. Originally aired on October 5, 2017

Listen on iTunes Listen on Stitcher

Follow the Data Show Notes

Be one of the first to see our newest software tool! Sign up to reserve your spot at the launch event webinar.
Read our recent blog post about Viral Launches and how 90% off promotions continue to work for our customers.
Looking to set up a Viral Launch? We’ve got a handy step-by-step walkthrough on our YouTube channel.
Check out the Viral Launch YouTube channel and look for Cameron’s Product Discovery Strategy Guides where he walks through how to get the most out of Product Discovery.

Podcast Transcript

Casey Gauss:
Everyone’s looking for like that next hack. It makes logical sense that 90% off promotions don’t drive as much keyword ranking. You know the problem is that the data just doesn’t show that.

Cameron Yoder:
The buzz about town is that running promotions to get ranking may not work the way it used to. Today we’re diving into the data to see what’s really going on. I’m Cameron Yoder.

Casey Gauss:
And I’m Casey Gauss, your host for Follow the Data: Your Journey to Amazon FBA Success. So in this show we leverage the data we’ve accumulated at Viral Launch from over 20,000 product launches and our experience working with over 5500 brands on Amazon to help you understand the big picture when it comes to Amazon and, most importantly, the best practices for success as an Amazon seller.

Cameron Yoder:
These first four inaugural episodes of Follow the Data are all part of our Dispelling Myths series in which we explore topics that have garnered a lot of conversation among the Amazon seller community recently, but that until now have not been proven or disproven using factual evidence.

Casey Gauss:
We’ll talk about where these Amazon myths come from, why they seem to logically make sense, and what the data is saying, and what is actually happening and how you can apply that moving forward.

Cameron Yoder:
All right, Casey, so this is Episode 1 of Dispelling Myths. We’re talking about promotions here. Can you tell us a little bit about this myth? What exactly is this myth?

Casey Gauss:
Yeah, so essentially this myth is basically stating that Amazon gives higher ranking power or effect to sales at full price versus, you know, the promotions at 90% off. The theory is that if you are running a promotion, if you’re giving a product away at a discount or selling it at a discount, especially 90% off, you’re not going to get nearly as much ranking power as a full-price sale.

Cameron Yoder:
So someone selling on Amazon, let’s say they give away items at 50% off. People are saying that those are not as effective or efficient as – or that the 90% off promotions are not as effective or efficient as the 50% off coupons. Is that right?

Casey Gauss:
Yep, correct.

Cameron Yoder:
Okay, okay. So where – or when, when did this idea start? Like where did it come from?

Casey Gauss:
Yeah, you know, we’ve seen this idea ever since 2014 when we got started. To be honest, I think that it’s definitely had a resurgence. We’ve seen people say you know back in the day oh Amazon will only let a review stick, or you can only get review power if it is at zero dollars, or if it’s over five dollars. You know there’s always these kind of arbitrary metrics that people throw out, and so now there’s just this resurgence. You know I’ve probably seen it a lot more over the last three months maybe, maybe around May, maybe around June, somewhere around there.

Cameron Yoder:
So why do you think it’s researching? Like why is this coming back?

Casey Gauss:
The – so yeah, so I mean with any myth I think a lot of it boils down or finds its root in everyone’s looking for like that next hack. It makes logical sense that 90% off promotions don’t drive as much keyword ranking. You know the problem is that the data just doesn’t show that.

Cameron Yoder:
Another point I guess that’s important, right, is that I mean it would be really, really great if it wasn’t true, right, that oh, that means if 90% off promotions aren’t as effective or efficient, then we don’t have to give products away at 90% off. Like that is a very appealing notion, right? So then that means that sellers don’t have to give products away for extreme discounts.

Casey Gauss:
Yeah, okay, yeah, very true. I would definitely like to point that out as – so it’s called consistency bias, right?

Cameron Yoder:
Yeah, right.

Casey Gauss:
And so you don’t want to spend the money associated with selling product at 90% off, and so you would like to tell yourself that it is great to – or that Amazon prefers full-price sales, and that’s why you want to head that way. Oh yeah, so another instance in which this kind of comes up is, you know, people run one promotion and they don’t get the keyword ranking they expected to see, right? So I’m selling a fish oil. I think I need to give away 50 units a day, let’s just say. And so I do that, and I expected to get to page 1, but I only got to bottom of page 2, right? And so then instantly everybody would jump to oh my gosh, promotions don’t work nearly as well. It must be full-price sales that are the answer. And you know the problem with that is here’s where, you know, the Viral Launch data or perspective really comes into play is that we’re running hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of promotions every day. So we have tons of data where you know, we’re tracking keyword ranking –

Cameron Yoder:
Right.

Casey Gauss:
– for keywords, the targeted keyword, as well as keywords that we find in the title, in the bullet points, in the rest of the listings. So we really, really understand how sales interact with the content of a listing, or tracking the price point of sale, or tracking are coupons present when we have MWS access. And so yeah, we’re able to really get this really broad perspective of the market versus you run one promotion, maybe your keyword, main keyword, wasn’t in the title. Maybe it wasn’t in your listing at all. Maybe, you know, you weren’t even indexed for it, or you know there’s a number of different factors that – and sometimes you know there’s things like cursed products where we just cannot get those things to rank in –

Cameron Yoder:
Cursed products.

Casey Gauss:
Yeah, that’s what we call it. So yeah, there’s so many different variables coming into play that running one test and then not getting the results that you had expected or intended is not enough of a sample size to really draw a strong correlation or a strong conclusion.

Cameron Yoder:
Right. And we, in terms of data – like you were talking about data – we really have that sample size. Again, like we run – we run promotions every single day, and they’re all built off of – or not every single one, but almost all of them are built off of 90% off promotions.

Casey Gauss:
Yeah.

Cameron Yoder:
If that didn’t work and it wasn’t effective, it wouldn’t work for us.

Casey Gauss:
Right.

Cameron Yoder:
And we see it every single day.

Casey Gauss:
Yeah, so I mean getting into the data of it, simply we’re running hundreds and hundreds of launches, and the amount— our ability to drive keyword ranking is just insane. And so at the end of the day Amazon is paying attention to did a sale happen? They’re not paying attention to the number of units that occurred or the price at which it is actually purchased. I think Amazon cares or is paying more attention to the price that the product is listed at.

Cameron Yoder: Let’s transition to a break. We’ll be back right after this message.

Rebecca Longenecker:
Hey, I’m Rebecca Longenecker, the producer for Follow the Data, and I wanted to let you know about a really cool resource the Viral Launch team just published. With this holiday season promising to be the biggest yet for Amazon, we’re offering an e-book that walks you through every aspect of Q4 preparation, from inventory planning, to optimizing your listing for mobile, to making sure your product is showing up in search. We’ve got you covered. There are also fun facts, helpful notes and handy little checklists you can use to evaluate how prepared you are. Don’t miss out on this year’s holiday sales. Go to viral-launch.com/Q4 to download the e-book now. That’s viral-launch.com/Q4. Thanks!

Cameron Yoder:
And we’re back again talking about the myth of giveaways and promotions. So Casey, let’s talk a little bit more about the data that’s backing this dispelling up. Can you touch on everything just a little bit more?

Casey Gauss:
Yeah, you know I think the really simple analogy or the simple logic here to kind of give everyone an example is as simple as this. So let’s take fish oil as an example, and someone wants to run a promotion to get ranking for the keyword, “fish oil.” Well, what we do is we go and we look, okay, here’s page 1 for fish oil. You know these guys are selling, let’s say it’s 50 units a day average page 1 or bottom half of page 1. And we want to get ranking there. So what we will do is we will give away 50 units per day targeting this keyword, “fish oil,” and after three days, five days, maybe seven days we’ll be ranking bottom of page 1 for fish oil, and we did – we ran 90% off promotion. So 90% of the sale price, these guys are selling 50 units a day at the organic price, and we sold at 90% off, and we’re still able to drive the same amount of keyword ranking. And so again, if Amazon did not – or reduced the amount of keyword ranking power as some kind of function of the purchase price we would not be ranking alongside these people that are selling just as many units except at the organic price. So that alone kind of just busts that myth, completely dispels that.

You know, another area this myth came from is there are these, you know, quote unquote experts or service providers in the space that are saying oh, you have to do these full-price deals with us, and the reason they’re doing that and they’re promising these crazy affects, right? So if you come and use our service we will guarantee you hit page 1 or number one most of the time, and we guarantee you will stay there for 30 days. The reason our method is so effective is because we’re using these gift cards to run full-price sales, and in reality what people didn’t realize was this person was running a bot or this artificial ranking method to your listing, and that’s what was getting you the results. That’s what was helping to maintain those results. It wasn’t the fact that you used these gift cards. And so that’s really frustrating to me because one, you know this person is operating on your business without your consent in a black hat manner, and two, they’re just, you know, completely lying about what is driving the results, which then goes and leads people down these dark paths. You know, it is against terms of service to compensate someone or reimburse someone for buying your product. It is absolutely stated explicitly in the terms of service that you cannot do this. It’s black hat. You know, will you get caught for it? I personally don’t know anybody that has. But you know, I think it’s one little slip up and now you’re in trouble for, you know, manipulating Amazon’s system or compensating buyers for purchasing your product.

Cameron Yoder:
Right. Let’s touch a little bit on just like the mentality of why, like why 90%? So why not? Why not? Why can’t – people are asking, why can’t I just launch my product at 50% off? It’s still a heavy discount, right, so why is 90% necessary? Touch on that.

Casey Gauss:
Yeah, so the discounted price or percentage is not a function of effectiveness.

Cameron Yoder:
Right.

Casey Gauss:
It is really, you know, we’re running generally around 450 or so launches a day right now, and so yes, we have a buyer list of 350,000 in the US, but you know these guys have – some of these people have been on our list for, you know, years and years and years.

Cameron Yoder:
A long time.

Casey Gauss:
And so if we’re selling an iPhone 7 case or a fish oil, like this demographic that we have only has so much discretionary income, and if you’re selling your product at 50% off, let’s say $10, versus the usual $1, $2, whatever, like that’s $8 less discretionary income they have to go buy our other products. And so in order to make sure the demand is high enough in the group for every launch that we’re running, we want to keep prices as low as possible so they have the money to buy more stuff.

Cameron Yoder:
Right. The 90% off is very much – it’s a means of control. Like you need to move – you need to move, if you’re launching, again, for fish oil, you’re going to have to move an insane amount of units to get to the top. The 90% off really gives control and gives you the ability to launch to page 1 for that. So the 90% off is a means of moving the launch forward and making it effective.

Casey Gauss:
And you know, to be honest, from like a competitive standpoint, you know if I were a larger seller I would actually kind of prefer this because the smaller sellers don’t have the budget –

Cameron Yoder:
Right, right.

Casey Gauss:
– to be really aggressive in these high-volume markets at these low prices. So they have to, you know, work their way up in a much slower process. And as a larger seller, yes, it is more expensive, but you’re essentially pricing or paying your competitors out of the market, which, you know, for large sellers that works. For smaller sellers, you know, this is why we definitely suggest getting into smaller niches where you don’t have to give away 100 units a day for seven days just to get on page 1, let alone maintain that ranking or whatever.

Cameron Yoder:
Oh, but what about fidget spinners?

Casey Gauss:
Yeah. We don’t want to talk about those.

Cameron Yoder:
No, no, no. So that’s actually a good transition into the takeaway. Let’s talk about what is the main takeaway? From my perspective it’s all about the risk, right, the reward of the risk. You have to take a huge risk. You are taking an investment, kind of an investment with giving away this many units. But giving away this many units at a 90% off discount is going to give you the control and get you on to page 1. And from there, then you will be able to make that increase in sales.

Casey Gauss:
Yeah, oh, completely. I would say, especially like – or specifically to this particular myth I think the takeaways are one, really be careful of who you’re trusting and paying attention to. Two, definitely make sure that you are getting a really solid sample size when you are making conclusions. Again, running one promotion that doesn’t get the ranking effects that you expected it to, you know, maybe you underestimated the number of units needed to give because the guys on page 1 are selling more units through that keyword than you had anticipated. Who knows? But anyways, yeah, please pay attention to your sample size when drawing conclusions because the last thing you want is to draw some conclusion and then spend the next three months and $20,000 trying to build a business around this, you know, this wrongly-founded conclusion. Yeah, and then three, really is at the end of the day, like you have to spend money to make money, like Cam is saying.

Cameron Yoder:
Right, right.

Casey Gauss:
And you know, unfortunately that’s the case right now. And yeah, you know, we’re definitely biased in saying that, but the problem is in that bias like we’ve just seen so many people have success. We just posted three Viral Launch case studies where this guy came, and he was doing $400K a month, and he came in, ran promotions across his product line, and after 30 days he’s doing $650K a month organically just because he improved the keyword rank position of his product. So yeah, he spent a bunch of money. I thought it was $250,000 to get that ranking, but now, you know, his sales are just killing it compared to where he was at. So –

Cameron Yoder:
Yeah.

Casey Gauss:
Yeah.

Cameron Yoder:
Take a zoomed out perspective. Ask why with everything that you’re doing. Make sure you’re getting all the data. Make sure you’re getting all the facts.

Casey Gauss:
Awesome. All right. We’ll see you guys later.

Cameron Yoder:
Hey, that is all for this week. Thank you so much for joining us here on Follow the Data. For more reliable information about what’s really happening on Amazon subscribe to the podcast and check out the Viral Launch blog at Viral-Launch.com.

Casey Gauss:
And don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes if you liked or enjoyed the podcast. We really appreciate your feedback as we work to build this podcast for you. Want to be featured on the show? Leave us a voicemail and tell us your thoughts on today’s episode, or ask us any of your Amazon questions. Our number is 317-721-6590. It will be linked in the show notes. Join us next week when we dispel the myth of Amazon sales velocity. Until then, remember, the data is out there.

The Secret to Amazon Sponsored Ads with Viral Launch Head of Innovation Leo Sgovio (Follow the Data Ep. 23)

Sponsored ads provide sellers with an incredible opportunity to gain exposure to streams of shoppers. But most sellers don’t know how to utilize sponsored ads, spending way more money than they need to for minimal returns. Join host Cameron Yoder as he talks to sponsored ads guru and Viral Launch Head of Innovation, Leo Sgovio, to find out how you can grow your business using Sponsored Ads.

Listen on iTunes Listen on Stitcher

Follow the Data Show Notes

Sponsored ads work a lot like a launch, driving sales through a targeted keyword. Read our recent blog post about Viral Launches and how 90% off promotions continue to work for our customers.
Looking to set up a Viral Launch? We’ve got a handy step-by-step walkthrough on our YouTube channel.
Check out the Viral Launch YouTube channel and look for Cameron’s Product Discovery Strategy Guides where he walks through how to get the most out of Product Discovery.

Podcast Transcript

CAMERON YODER:
Sponsored ads provide massive potential for sellers to gain exposure to streams of shoppers, but most sellers don’t know how to utilize sponsored ads, spending way more money than they need to for minimal returns. I’m Cameron Yoder, your host for Follow the Data: Your Journey to Amazon FBA Success. In this show we leverage the data we’ve accumulated at Viral Launch from over 30,000 product launches and our experience working with 6500 brands to help you understand the big picture when it comes to Amazon and, more importantly, for success as an Amazon seller. In today’s episode we sit down with our Head of Innovation, Leo Sgovio, to talk about the best practices for sponsored ads. We’ll talk about how to use sponsored ads to your advantage without breaking the bank so you can put your money towards more important investments for your business. Let’s jump in.

All right, so we’re here today with Leo. Leo, how are you doing today?

LEO SGOVIO:
Amazing, guys. Thank you for having me today on the podcast. I’m really excited.

CAMERON YODER:
For sure. And you’re in Canada right now, right?

LEO SGOVIO:
Yes, I am.

CAMERON YODER:
What’s the weather like?

LEO SGOVIO:
It’s cold in Canada. It’s terrible outside. Actually, it’s not too bad lately. It’s a big plus so I can’t complain.

CAMERON YODER:
Okay, that’s good. Well, just to intro Leo a little bit because he deserves introducing, Leo is a performance-based advertising specialist with expertise in multichannel digital advertising, and he’s the Head of Innovation here at Viral Launch. So he’s worked for over nine years in digital marketing, during which time, during this time he successfully built and managed multimillion dollar traffic acquisition strategies in travel, career, real estate, finance and online retail marketing, including Amazon.com.

So Leo, can you tell us about your past a little bit, just kind of everything that you’ve been involved with because you’ve been – I mean obviously you’ve been involved with a lot. So maybe just expand on the experiences that you’ve had and just briefly kind of what you’ve learned from everything.

LEO SGOVIO:
Yeah, thanks for the introduction, Cam and Casey. So like you said, I’ve been involved in the digital space for a very long time, and that’s really what gives me an advantage when it comes to understanding what the major search engines, including Amazon on the sponsored side of things, does. So I’ve been managing over $6 million, $7 million a year ad spend on both Google AdWords, Bing, Facebook. And so when it came to – when I started selling on Amazon.com I adopted sponsored ads almost from day one because I knew that it was one of the best ways to always drive traffic to my product and always have my product in front of people that were looking for it. So I didn’t use that as a second option when my sales were low, for instance.

And yeah, so going back almost like 10 years ago when, you know, Google was still in its infancy I understood that for them there was an advantage of, obviously, for us as an advertiser it was an advantage on using sponsored ads together with traffic that we were getting organically because there was a field that the search engine obviously looks at it. Okay, they’re making money when you buy traffic from them. And so there is some sort of reward when obviously they see that you are both paying for the traffic through their sponsored programs and as well as, you know, doing well organically. So it’s a win-win situation that works well for the advertiser and the partner you are working with, which in this case would be Amazon.com.

CAMERON YODER:
So how did you initially just even get involved in the SEO space?

LEO SGOVIO:
Yeah, that’s funny actually. When I came to Canada, and I was visiting this country, I was already doing some SEO stuff back in Italy where I’m from, and I got really passionate about it. And I remember and I met one of my family members, and I asked him okay, you need to tell me what’s the hot job right now that is going to make me good money? And he’s like you know you should learn SEO, and a week later I was already Google certified. You know, I had already started all the hoops. And you know I got the certification of Google AdWords, and I was ready to rock it. And then since then I just, you know, kept studying and learning, and this is how I really got into it. But it became a really a passion for me. I would never do anything else right now. I mean I love e-commerce. I love, you know, like understanding traffic sources and generating sales online and all that comes with it. So I’m really happy what I’m doing right now.

CAMERON YODER:
I think your perspective is so valuable, number one, because you’ve been in the space for a really long time, not in just the Amazon space, right, but the Google space as well. So your perspective is very valuable, and it’s a perspective that not a lot of people have, especially in this space. And so I mean we’re talking about – this show is all about Amazon specifically, but there’s value in comparing Amazon to something like Google, especially when it comes to sponsored ads. So can you touch on, just here in the beginning, kind of what the difference is for when it comes to sponsored ads between Amazon, Amazon.com and something like Google?

LEO SGOVIO:
Yeah, so I think it depends on like, you know, what perspective we look at it, right? So for example, in both cases, right, Google AdWords, or Bing, or Facebook, or Amazon sponsored ads, you know we’re familiar with display advertising. You know, format is pretty much the same, as well as, you know, text ads. So if we look at it from a format perspective, then, you know, it’s pretty much similar, right, when it comes to the way we build ads, like starting with a campaign, ad groups, and then, you know, looking it down all the way to keywords.

However, when we look at objectives that’s when things are really a bit different. So for example, on Amazon.com the main goal is to drive sales to your product. And so when you look at Google or Facebook instead there are so many different objectives. You can set it for your goals, for example, or it could be an email capture or, you know, an account creation. Or if you’re an e-commerce store obviously a sale, a purchase. So these platforms are similar in certain ways and completely different in others. So it really depends on how you look at it.

CAMERON YODER:
So really when it comes down to the primary differences Amazon is very focused, right? Like Amazon, the goal of sponsored ads on Amazon is just kind of one; there’s like basically one goal, and it’s to drive sales to your product. At least that’s one of the primary goals, right?

LEO SGOVIO:
Yeah, and that comes, you know, because of the, obviously the intent of the user on the platform. It’s a different kind of intent. When you’re on Google.com you’re, it’s kind of, you’re looking for information. You’re still in the shopping process. You’re looking for something. You’re, you know, gathering information around the web, and then eventually you make your decision. When you go on Amazon.com you’re ready to purchase. You probably already have your credit card on the desk ready to be, you know, typed in – the card, right, the checkout page. So over there you’re going to be really – do your best to make sure that your product is in front of these people. And so sponsored ads help you with that specific goal, right?

CAMERON YODER:
Yeah, and that makes sense. People go to Amazon. If you’re searching in Amazon, like the search engine of Amazon, you’re intending to buy something off of Amazon.

LEO SGOVIO:
Correct.

CAMERON YODER:
If you’re searching in Google you’re searching for a large number of different things. It could be to buy something, but it could be just for like, for another piece of information.

LEO SGOVIO:
Correct. And you can see like the conversion rate, for example. It’s a good metric when it comes to, you know, understanding the difference between the two different platforms. Usually an e-commerce site, Shopify or WooCommerce, as a – in a good case scenario, like the average, let’s say, conversion rate is probably like 3%, 4%, sometimes lower, like say in the travel space I’ve seen is 0.8%. And on Amazon I personally aim for at least 25%. So it’s a huge difference there, right? So obviously user intent is, you know, where the conversion rate comes from, right?

CAMERON YODER:
Of course. So okay, in your mind, in your experience using sponsored ads on Amazon specifically, is it – is using sponsored ads more focused on making a profit or gaining something like keyword ranking, or a little bit of both?

LEO SGOVIO:
Well, yeah, I’d say little bit of both. I mean there are different goals that are usually set when I use sponsored ads. The main one is obviously to generate more profit, and I’ll explain that in more detail. Let’s say if I’m just launching a product and want to start generating awareness toward my brand or build sales history, which is very important for a brand-new product, then I don’t care much about profits. As long as I can break even my numbers look good based on the analysis that I’ve done prior to my launch. Then I’m fine with, you know, like breaking even, even losing maybe a few cents, a dollar. But my goal at that point is to generate, to build my sales history so that Amazon, you know, falls in love with my product because eventually it’s going to make money. So once I’m comfortable with these numbers I took the listing first of all to get a good conversion rate. And so when we look at using sponsored ads for rankings, it’s a little bit of a different strategy. But yeah, both – like I use it for both reasons. One is obviously to drive rankings. The other one is for profits.

CAMERON YODER:
So kind of the baseline, bottom-line goal of sponsored ads really, like we said before, is to drive a sale. But in that, that purpose and that primary goal kind of splits into two things. You can use those sponsored ads to either drive a sale or promote keyword ranking, really. Like it’s kind of twofold. So Leo, can you describe for us then, can you even expand a little bit more on advice you’d give when it comes to increasing ranking using sponsored ads?

LEO SGOVIO:
Sure. So the first thing I do when I start with a brand-new product, for instance, is launching ad campaign and set it on automatic targeting, which means that Amazon targets your ads to all relevant customer searches based on your product information. So if my product is in a highly competitive niche, which means that the search volume is high, obviously, I wait let’s say 4 to 7 days and then I download the report that shows me the customer search terms and the keywords that resulted in clicks on my ads.

CAMERON YODER:
You said you do that first, right? That’s like one of the first things you do?

LEO SGOVIO:
I actually, yeah, that’s one of the first things I do because I want to make sure that whatever I’m doing after makes sense, right, like I’m targeting the right keywords. And so at this point I know what consumers are searching for rather than just relying on you know, a guess, or I see how there through other tools. And I first tweak and optimize my listing to ensure that those keywords are included in the key section of my listing. For example, the title, the description, bullet point. This is very important because if I’m targeting something out through a launch, for example, either way or sponsored ads and my listing is not optimized, I don’t think I’m going to get as, you know, results as good as otherwise, right, if my listing was optimized for this keyword.

And so once I make sure that I have the right keywords in the listing I then create campaigns targeting these specific keywords using exact match and phrase match only. Then I look at the report. Usually if I have time I look at the report, you know, on a daily basis, maybe every two days. I just want to make sure that the campaigns are performing well. I look in my [unintelligible], and if it makes sense for me then I keep running these campaigns, or I tweak. So ideally this process lasts about a month, and during this month I try to build campaigns very targeted. So with my experience with, for example, Google AdWords, Google also, when you add a very thin campaign, a campaign, very tight so the name of your campaign, ad groups, what you are targeting in terms of keywords, as well as the ad copy. So I try to use the same practice, same guidelines on Amazon as well. And so I end up with a campaign that only has exact match keywords because those ones are clearly [unintelligible] and usually the CPC is pretty low, and then I go and use one for like phrase, phrases only. And then I keep an eye on this one because obviously it gives me a little bit more insight. It might be that search strengths change, or people are searching for the product in different ways because maybe a press release came out, or someone is advertising the product in a different way, and so people go on Amazon and search for it. So I try and go and discover these new keywords within this report.

But again, it’s very important that, you know, the listing is obviously, you know, it keeps optimizing it so that eventually Amazon grabs these keywords from your listing and ranks your product, especially if you have that automated campaign still running to gather data.

CAMERON YODER:
I think a lot of people get overwhelmed from this whole process. Like they see sponsored ads. If they’re not familiar with SEO they get overwhelmed easily, and then they just throw on an automatic campaign and then just leave that forever because it’s just easy to do. But I really like your process. And correct me if I’m wrong, but there were like maybe like three steps with it, -ish, maybe four. So run the automatic campaign, get the primary keywords, change your listing to match the most, like the best keywords, or at least use that as part of that process, and then run specific kind of targeted sponsored ads and then reevaluate consistently?

LEO SGOVIO:
Correct, correct.

CAMERON YODER:
Yeah, that’s – and you’ve found that process to be just very effective?

LEO SGOVIO:
It is, yeah. It is. It’s like you said, just four simple steps. Like find, optimize, tweak and scale.

CAMERON YODER:
Yep. And that’s very easy to digest, and I, for our listeners I think that’s so valuable. Again, just to map it out and to make it less complicated, that’s great. So you’ve touched on this already a little bit, but when talking about looking up specific keywords you mentioned using auto campaigns. Again, that was like the first step that you mentioned, but is there any other way or any other thing that you would recommend for sellers to really dig into which keywords they should select to optimize sponsored ads or just there listing in general?

LEO SGOVIO:
Yeah, so this is my perspective on things, but I believe that automatic targeting campaigns are one of the best ways to start because you’re buying data straight from Amazon rather than relying on tools that might not give you accurate results. And so you really see what users are searching, and this is also very good practice when you’re starting a Shopify site or an e-commerce site. Usually you build a campaign in AdWords with a broad match, and you just, well, you’re wasting money. You’re just throwing money outside the window, and that’s fine because you’re just buying data from that source. So it’s the best way to know exactly what people are buying. And so you have now a good set of keywords to go after.

However, if I’m just getting an idea of what people search, I usually – I do these, and I’ve shared with some people a couple of times, and I’m hoping that those that are listening will start adopting this method. What I do, I usually scan my competitor’s listing why I keep this Chrome extension open. It’s called SEOquake. This extension was initially used for, or was an SEO extension, was just, you know, built to understand what the page was optimized for and calculate the keyword density within the page. And so I use this extension to show me what are the keywords that this specific competitor, let’s say the top 50, are going after. So the SEOquake, once I click on a link, sorry, a page analysis, it’s going to show me a list of keywords. And then I can filter by two-keyword phrase, three-keyword phrase, four-keyword phrase [unintelligible] keywords. And it will sort them by keyword frequency. So it’s basically like a density score.

And so it gives me a good overview. It’s like okay, if this user, this seller is optimizing for this keyword it means that it’s probably working for him, right? It’s probably ranking well, and so I should also keep an eye on this keyword. And then what I do, I combine in Excel all the keywords I find using SEOquake, the keywords I have from the automatic targeting campaigns, and then some keywords – I also use the Google keyword tool to get an idea on, you know, what people search on Google because it’s very important considering that these days Google is still the homepage of any website out there, and every search starts on Google. And then my secret weapon, it’s actually the AMS person campaign builder, like the campaign builder, because what I do, the way I use it, I create just a fake campaign. I never launch it. But what you could do there, you just create a new campaign and, you know, ad group and then with AMS you have the option to actually advertise any product, not only yours. And so you can now select a competitor’s product, and Amazon is going to give you suggested keywords based on that product. And I thought that was amazing, right, because I get keywords straight from Amazon without really relying on anything else that I don’t know data.

CAMERON YODER:
So you create a campaign for a competitor’s product, and you don’t start – did you say you start the campaign or you don’t start it, you just –?

LEO SGOVIO:
No, I never start it. I delete it after. I just download the keywords that Amazon is giving me, and then I delete that campaign. I don’t need this. It’s just for me to see okay, this is what Amazon thinks are really good keywords.

CAMERON YODER:
Gotcha. Okay, wow. Shoot, I actually have not heard of that before. That’s great. And you found success from that so far, at least mixing that with other things?

LEO SGOVIO:
Yeah, of course.

CAMERON YODER:
Yeah, that’s great. And so jumping back to the other tool, the other tool that you mentioned was SEOquake, and I think the principle – I don’t think people are very familiar with the principle of what that’s doing, or at least with the idea behind something like keyword density that you mentioned. So in this case what this is doing, or one aspect of SEOquake with Amazon is it’s pulling – it’s basically kind of a – you put in a search term like fish oil, and then it searches for keyword density, which in this case means which keywords are being used frequently across each listing, right? And then it’s giving you that information.

LEO SGOVIO:
Well, kind of. Like so if you search for fish oil on Amazon, then what you will do, you will click on each one of the results, and once you are on the listing, then you will click on this chrome extension, SEOquake, and then it will analyze that page and give you a result of all the keywords that have been used in that page and score them by, like score them by frequency, right, or density. And so the ones that are obviously at the top, maybe if you look at one keyword phrase or the two keyword phrase you might find words like “buy now” or these things that don’t really matter because they appear on every page. But as you go down to like the third and fourth result, now you see like some pretty cool keywords, like for example fish oil, right? And then you get a 4%, 5% density. So this is now – I don’t want to go off topic, but it’s very super important for SEO, for example, we can have another podcast about it, but what I do usually, I analyze each keyword, each listing, and I see that on average each one is optimizing this listing with a let’s say 4% density, right? And so when I build my listing I try to match that or go a little bit higher so that when the Amazon bots go and crawl my page, consider mine as relevant as theirs, if not more, right? So that’s obviously now going into optimizing listing, but that’s what I use also the tool for.

CAMERON YODER:
Gotcha. And that’s very relevant. I think that’s something that not a lot of people are familiar with, so that’s great. I’m going to switch up topics just a little bit, just to keep things moving. But when it comes to cost, that’s one thing that a lot of sellers ask is oh, how much should I be spending on my sponsored ads, which I’m sure depends a which ads you’re running. But do you have any just general advice on costs that people should be spending or where people should cap themselves at, anything along those lines?

LEO SGOVIO:
Yeah, I actually have a really simple formula that helps to calculate the cost, and obviously it’s focused on ROI. But the formula is pretty simple. What I do, I look at my organic conversion rate. So for example, if my listing is converting at 30%, and then I look at the selling costs, so how much is this product costing me after all the FBA fees and the margin that Amazon is making, the referral fees. So by dividing that, right, by the conversion rate, you get your break even ACoS. So by making the calculation you get, okay, in order to break even my ACoS should be, let’s say, 10%. And so once you have that you know your organic conversion rate and the selling price, now you calculate your recommended default bid.

And now you obviously base your budget on that, right? Like if you cannot afford to spend more than $0.50 because now you’re going to lose money, then go below that. And so I usually calculate that default bid just before starting so I know that, and you know, in this case I’m breaking even. And then I tweak my campaigns as I go. So I launch, you know, like a bunch of different campaigns. The budget is obviously based on how much you can afford to spend. But at least you know that worst-case scenario you’re not losing money; you’re breaking even, unless you’re willing to lose money, for example, doing maybe just a ranking campaign but you don’t care about making money; you just want the product to end up on page 1. And so that’s usually what I do. It’s pretty simple, and I think it would be really beneficial for the listeners.

CAMERON YODER:
Yeah, that’s really good. And there may not be another answer to this. I just want to kind of jump back to automatic campaigns. So automatic campaigns can be good for finding your initial keyword list, right? But are there any other things that people should use automatic campaigns for, or should they just kind of stay away from them once they get more advanced? Like you said before, it was kind of that first step in your process for optimizing sponsored ads and listing and everything. But is there any other place for automatic campaigns, or not necessarily?

LEO SGOVIO:
So I think the main goal of an automatic campaign is to give you that initial set of keywords, kind of like understanding of what people look for when buying, looking for your product. However, obviously once you get familiar with the sponsored ads and become more experienced with the platform I will suggest to, you know, keep automatic campaigns running with huge budgets. Most likely you’re going to waste a lot out of it but however, I still have some catchall campaigns that I’m usually running on automatic targeting, and those ones, usually what I do, I lower my bid so I won’t be more than let’s say $0.10, $0.15, and they turn out to be pretty profitable, to be honest with you. So yeah, I usually just keep a catchall one after I’m done with, you know, the optimization scaling process, and these ones will just catch everything else that I’m not covering in my targeted ones.

CAMERON YODER:
Yep. So once a campaign is, I guess, successful in your mind, in your eyes, once a product is converted organically for a keyword that you’re targeting through sponsored ads, what generally would you say is the next step, just to kind of lower everything down and keep on going or to just keep an eye on everything? Like where – what is the next step from that point on?

LEO SGOVIO:
Well, if you’ve identified some good profitable campaigns I would scale the budget as much as I could. I mean as long as you are making money I would just feed the beast, right? Traffic on Amazon, like is there. Like people are searching for your product. So why leave that, you know, food on the table for somebody else to eat it? And yeah, like I would still try to look for other low-hanging fruit. So what I usually do, for example, one of my best practices with not only like with sponsored ads I only go and target, for example, my competitors with display ads, right? It does work extremely well for me when I target some related products, not necessarily my competitors. Obviously I get some good results when I target a specific competitor, they’re selling the same product and I know I have better and more reviews than them. So it’s pretty easy to win that customer. But it’s also very profitable for me when I go and look at for example, I’m selling, I don’t know, a face cream and someone is going to buy something related to it, maybe like a face brush or something to like related anyway, but not necessarily my direct competitor. And that works really well for me. There is a tool that shows you, for example, the frequently bought together. It’s called YASIV, y-a-s-i-v.com, yasiv.com. It shows you all the combination of like it’s a graph that pretty much maps all the frequently bought together. And that’s a good way to target your competitors and non with display ads. Those tend to do really well, and what I do is – I’m giving away a tip here as well – I usually target one competitor at a time per campaign. And this way it’s easier for me to see which one is winning, and then I just pause anything that is below like, you know, like 10% ACoS. And like you know, ended up with like 1500 winning campaigns.

CAMERON YODER:
So this is a – I know it’s a relevant question, but it’s a little bit out there, as well. How much time do you think people should be spending on sponsored ads and optimization, just optimizing the ads that they’re running, the campaigns that they’re running or starting new ones? How much time should people be spending on this?

LEO SGOVIO:
I would say obviously at the beginning you need more time than later on when you’re product has really been selling organically. But I would say probably I think a couple of hours a week, like two, three hours a week is plenty. You don’t need to, like the first week just to set everything up, and then maybe the second week, you know, it goes down to two just to, you know, go through the reports and make sure that everything is optimized. Maybe even one hour is enough. It doesn’t take really a long time unless you have, you know, a lot of products. Then it’s a different story. Maybe I will use a service for that. But I wouldn’t, like personally, I don’t spend a lot of time on building and managing campaigns.

CAMERON YODER:
And I guess it takes time. Like you said, it’s going to take more time at the beginning.

LEO SGOVIO:
Of course, yes.

CAMERON YODER:
Especially if you’re not familiar with how sponsored ads work, or SEO, or practices in general, like that. But once you learn all of that, really I’m assuming it just becomes easy to kind of just press play and go and spend a couple hours here and there a week, optimizing everything.

LEO SGOVIO:
Correct, yeah.

CAMERON YODE:
So I mean you’ve given a lot of really cool hacks and tips so far, especially like yasiv.com and the other tool that was called – what was the other tool called, the chrome extension?

LEO SGOVIO:
SEOquake?

CAMERON YODER:
Yes, SEOquake. But are there any other just general hacks, tips or tricks that you would recommend for people when it comes to sponsored ads?

LEO SGOVIO:
With sponsored ads, to be honest, it isn’t – like it’s a straightforward process and platform. So there are no really hacks that you can adopt so that, you know, your sales go up. I mean it really comes down to how smart you are and how, you know, like if you think outside of the box, okay. Really like what I find really effective is the kind of wording I use in my headlines, for example, or my, you know, like display ads. I try to trigger some sort of interest in like, so playing with the customers’ emotion, and then that usually gives me a higher click through rate, which means, you know, lower CPC. And that applies to all the different, apart from including, you know, Facebook, or Google, or Bing, if you play with a good ad run you usually tend to perform much better. What I would suggest as a good tip is to, you know, build different variations of your ad, not only one, because one of them most likely is going to outperform the other ones. And so I think that’s super valuable.

CAMERON YODER:
So essentially split test the ads you’re running?

LEO SGOVIO:
Exactly, yes.

CAMERON YODER:
Well, Leo, thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you so much for everything you do, for all your information. Really, there’s so much value, I think, and in the space that a lot of people get overwhelmed by. Leo, again, thank you so much. Really it was a blast having you on the show.

LEO SGOVIO:
Thank you, guys.

CAMERON YODER:
Well, that is all for this week. Thank you all for joining us on Follow the Data. For more insights and reliable information about how to succeed on Amazon, subscribe to the podcast and also check us out on YouTube. I have a series of product discovery walk-throughs up on our channel that will really help you understand how to leverage the tool. And if you want to check it out, just search “Viral Launch” on YouTube. Go to our page and look for my face. So if you’re listening on iTunes and you like what you hear, don’t forget to leave a review and rate the show. You can also leave feedback on our Facebook page or tweet at us @viral_launch. Use the hashtag #VLFollowtheData.

And if you have a seller friend who you think would appreciate the show, tag them in your post and send them our way. We want to really be a great resource for sellers and the information source in this space. So please tell your friends. Tell your family. Spread the word, and share the show. And thank you all again so much for listening. And as always, if you want to be featured on the show, or if you have an Amazon-related question, or in conjunction with today’s episode, if you have a question for Leo or another idea for an episode, feel free to leave us a voicemail. Our number is 317-721-6590. Until next time, remember, the data is out there.

Is Selling On Amazon Worth It?

Amazon’s retail e-commerce dominance

A Massive, Loyal Customer Base

A Built-In Service Tailor Made for Entrepreneurs

8 Easy Steps To Start Selling On Amazon

1. Find a Product to Sell on Amazon

Methods of Selling

2. Open an Amazon Account

3. Choose Your Fulfillment Method

4. Create Your Amazon Listing

What this looks like on Amazon:

5. Find a Manufacturer

6. Order and Ship Your Product

7. Optimize Your Listing

8. Start Driving Sales

PPC Campaigns

Product Launches

Amazon Seller FAQs

Start Selling On Amazon Today

Amazon FBA

How does FBA work?

The Pros Of Selling With Amazon FBA

The Cons Of Selling With Amazon FBA

Dropshipping

How Does Dropshipping Work?

The Pros Of Dropshipping

The Cons Of Dropshipping

Use Third-Party Logistics Companies

The Pros Of Using 3PLs

The Cons Of Using 3PLs

Sell Digital Products

The Pros Of Selling Digital Products

The Cons Of Selling Digital Products

How To Get Started Selling On Amazon

In Summary

Ryan Cramer walks through his perspective on where international e-commerce is headed and how sellers can take advantage of the growing seller momentum around the world.

HIGHLIGHTS

Get familiar with what PingPong does for sellers and Ryan’s extensive background in e-commerce (0:12)

Ryan, on how he sees international fitting into the typical Amazon seller’s strategy (10:39)

With Prime shipping, Amazon changed the way we buy online in the U.S. Is changing the way the world buys online up next? (12:57)

So you want to sell internationally. What are the prime marketplaces to target? (15:57)

More money is being poured into buying Amazon businesses than ever. What does this mean for the traditional Amazon seller in the near future? (23:14)

1.Take your Business On-the-Go with the Amazon Seller App

2. Take the ‘Ew’ Out of Reviews with Feedback Genius

3. Track Inventory and Run Ad Campaigns with Teikametrics

4. Utilize Viral Launch’s Suite of Tools to Launch your Business into the Stratosphere

5. Own Your Taxes with Avalara

6. Make Accounting Easy with Quickbooks

Bonus Round: International Sellers

7. Take Your Business Worldwide with WorldFirst

Combine Amazon FBA Tools and Web Apps with Hard Work and Dedication

What is Private Label?

Sourcing Private Label Products

Picking the Right Product

Next Steps

[YOU MAY ALSO BE INTERESTED IN: 5 Tips on How To Improve Your Amazon Ranking]

What is Amazon Sales Rank?

Why Does Amazon Sales Rank Matter?

How Can I Improve my Amazon Sales Rank?

Create great copy: Along with including keywords in your listing copy, you also have to do a great job selling your product to customers. Make sure to highlight all the important aspects of your listing and tell people why they should buy it.

Final Thoughts

#1 – Following the wrong resources

#2 – Following trend markets

#3 – Not thoroughly researching restrictions/barriers for your desired market

#4 – Sourcing low-quality products

#5 – Sourcing an expensive product (for that market)

#6 – Selling a product you’re passionate about

#7 – Not inspecting a product

#8 – Sourcing a patented product

#9 – Not putting enough effort into building your listing (including photos)

#10 – Violating Terms of Service (with reviews or by attacking competition)

#11 – Not monitoring your listing or data

#12 – Putting your product into the wrong category

Learning from Your Mistakes as an Amazon FBA Seller

The changeable nature of sales tax

A need for revenue

States eye marketplace sellers

Getting Amazon Sales Tax Right

Follow the Data Show Notes

Podcast Transcript