Manually Add Your Product To An Existing Listing
A quick Amazon shopping search will show you if other sellers already sell your product on Amazon. For example, the Rodeo Bracelet we want to sell has an existing listing with another seller, as shown below:
If at first selling something already listed for sale seems like a waste of time because of competition, remember that sellers often have just a few items in stock. As competitors sell out, your listing will be the one available, and the one shoppers buy. Of course, you can also lower your price, offer free shipping, or use FBA to make your listing shoppers top pick, too.
Manually adding your product to an existing listing is easy in your Seller Central Dashboard. Simply search for the item under List a new product using the product name, Amazon product ID, or item SKU:
If its already for sale on Amazon, youll see existing product listings in the next screen:
Click on Sell Yours, and you can add your item information, like your price and quantity available, by filling in a few fields on the next screen, shown below. Required fields have an asterisk , others are optional:
Once complete, hit Save & Finish. Now you have a live listing on Amazon, ready to sell. Thats all there is to it! Here are a few things to keep in mind when you add products to existing Amazon listings:
Pick the Best Listing
Monitor & Match Pricing Profitably
Prime Helps You Sell
Want step-by-step instructions for creating this type of Amazon product listing? Visit .
Evil Strategy #: Amazon Sellers Can Change Your Product Photos
If you are an Amazon seller who has not registered your brand , you need to be very careful about other sellers changing out the photos on your listing.
Heres what sucks. When someone changes the photo on your listing, you dont even get a notification! So the only way to know that this has happened is to constantly watch your listings like a hawk.
If your picture gets switched out from under you, there are many bad things that could happen. For example in the worst case, an evil seller could change your photo to a completely different product or bundle.
So when a customer buys from you and notices that the product doesnt match the photo, they could complain and ding your account.
The best way to combat this is to register your brand. A lot of new sellers skip this step in the beginning because it requires a website and a trademark but if your product ends up taking off, you need to take care of this ASAP.
Related: If you are interested in learning how to register your brand, check out my post on
For us, weve had cases where our primary photo was swapped despite being brand registered. So today, we consistently monitor our account health for anomalies.
For example, if we see a lot of returns marked as does not match description or not as advertised, we take a closer look to make sure that theres no foul play involved.
How To Create An Amazon Fba Shipping Plan
If you selected Convert & Send Inventory or if you have just added your second item, you will be prompted to create a shipping plan. For this youll need your Ship from address and your packing type.
There are two packing types: Individual products and Case-packed products. Most likely youll be selecting Individual products. Only select Case-packed products if youre sending a box with all the same exact type of item in it. For example, a box of 20 Anchorman DVDs.
Once you set up a shipping plan, you will be prompted to add your items. Assuming this is the second item youve added, you should see two items. Select both.
Once youve created a shipping plan, you can add all the items you wish to sell. Simply go through the same process you went through for the first two items, however, when you get to the end select Add to an existing shipping plan rather than Create a new shipping plan.
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Amazon Can Force You To Sell Your Goods At Whatever Price They Want
Even if you sell your own branded products on Amazon doesnt mean that you get to set your own prices.
Every day, Amazon deploys an army of computer bots who crawl and scrape other websites for product and pricing info.
If Amazons determines that your products are priced too high, they may take away your buy box which will basically kill your sales.
If you read the fine print on Amazons terms of service, it explicitly states that if you sell on Amazon, your prices can not be higher than any other platform.
Update: Due to anti-trust scrutiny, Amazon has lifted this restriction. But there are rumors that your product visibility may be silently reduced if they discover you are selling on Amazon at a higher price than competing marketplaces.
In addition, if youve previously priced your goods at low prices during a lightning deal or a sale, Amazon may not let you raise your prices back up to where they were prior to the sale depending on their algorithm.
One seller who I interviewed on my podcast had to lower his prices near break even on products that hed heavily discounted in the past in order to retain the buy box.
But at these low prices, his products now make little or no profit and it has destroyed his margins.
The Opportunity For Amazon Third
One of the more subtle features of Amazons business model is that it allows people to sell products on its site, which means you can take advantage of this brand names tremendous reach and influence. Theyve been offering this opportunity in third party selling since 2006.
If you go this route, youll be in good company. As of the first quarter of 2021, third-party sales became a majority, with roughly 55% of sales on Amazon are made through third-party sellers. In its 2020 Small Business Impact report, Amazon revealed it shipped out more than 3.4 billion third-party items in just one year, between June 2019 and May 2020and this was during a pandemic no less. So its plain to see that buyers do trust and buy from third parties.
Even if you already have your own website and ecommerce store you may want to consider expanding your distribution into Amazon. You’ll be able to reach more potential customers and increase sales of first-time customers who may be leery of shopping on a lesser known website.
Its a lucrative opportunitythird-party sales account for billions in sales each year. You could take a slice of that pie and make your own five or six-figure income as an Amazon Seller.
And its easy too. Using Amazons Seller Central dashboard, youll be able to manage an online business without your own website and letting Amazon handle all the grunt work.
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Power Browse Amazon Listings With A Chrome Extension
Another way to choose a hot selling product is to power browse Amazon listings by using a Google Chrome extension.
There are quite a few Google Chrome extensions that Amazon sellers use to research products and determine how well these products will sell on Amazon. Some of the top Chrome extensions include the following:
- AMZ Base
- AmazeOwl
When you use any of the Chrome extensions listed above, you can browse Amazon listings quickly and fully, determining what products should be on your sellers list. In addition to zoning in on the best sellers, you can compare product prices, mull over sales estimates, dive into revenue projections, and consider keyword insights.
Evil Strategy #: Amazon Sellers Can Outright Accuse You Of Selling Counterfeit Goods
Over the years, the number of knockoff products from China has been exponentially increasing. And with large brands like Birkenstock pulling out of the platform due to piracy, Amazon has been extremely sensitive to counterfeit claims.
Unfortunately, unscrupulous sellers have started using this to their advantage.
Because Amazon is quick to the ban hammer and sellers are considered guilty until proven innocent, evil sellers are getting legit private label products suspended by accusing them of selling fake products.
Everyone that I spoke to who has had this happen to them eventually got their products back online. But the appeals process was grueling and tedious and some sellers had their products suspended for weeks.
Whats particularly frustrating about this tactic is that Amazon simply doesnt care. Your puny listing doesnt matter to them as theres always another product to take its place.
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How To Sell Your First Item On Amazon
This is the easy part. Once you ship your package off to Amazon and they receive it, your items will be available for purchase.
Now, you sit and wait for your items to be sold.
If you are selling a more popular item, the wait isnt that long. In my case, I listed 8 items, and they all sold within 15 days.
Pro tip video games sell fast!
Research Trending Topics On Google Trends
Researching the trending topics on Google can help you narrow down the options to the products that will fly out the door when selling on Amazon.
Google Trends highlight the popular products and taking note of these will help you choose a product that sells.
It doesnt matter what niche youre looking to target for your product to sell on Amazon. Looking at the latest Google Trends will give you an idea as to the top sellers in a wide array of categories.
Google Trends is a popular research tool that you should be using to zone in on the ideal items to sell through Amazon.
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Selling On Amazon With Fba
Amazon is a global leader in online selling because of its cutting-edge, worldwide order fulfillment networks. If you sign up for , you can store your products in their centers and scale your business reach by using FBA to pick, pack, ship, and provide customer service for your products.
Think about it: If youre just getting started in ecommerce, you need to take the time to market your business with digital ads, SEO, content, and PR. By selling on Amazon through FBA, you at least get to remove inventory management, shipping, the signature process, and returns from your plate.
Plus, Amazons customer service via email, phone, and live chat tools can save you from hiring employees to handle complaints and returns. Customer service and returns for any orders your customers place are handled directly by FBA and their knowledge base software database. This saves you time and frustration so you can focus on selling on Amazon to the best of your ability.
And there are more benefits:
- You can use Amazon FBA to quickly grow your business since its fulfillment centers have been designed with wide-ranging inventory in mind.
- There is no minimum number of products you must send in order to participate in this program.
- Storing your products in the Amazon fulfillment centers is cost-effective.
- You basically pay as you go.
- Amazon charges for storage space and the orders it fulfills for your customers. Shipping costs are included in your fees.
When To Fulfill Your Own Orders On Amazon
There are certain situations where we end up fulfilling our own items.
The main one is in December when there is no longer time to get items to an FBA warehouse with time for them to ship out before Christmas. Weve found that we get more sales and make more money by fulfilling our own orders for a few weeks because this eliminates the time our inventory is in transit to FBA warehouses and allows us to get more items delivered by Christmas.
Situations like this where you have a high-demand product that needs to reach consumers ASAP are the main scenarios to consider seller fulfilling.
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Price Your Items To Sell
If you want your items to sell, you need to price them accordingly. When you price your products higher than your competition, it can kill both your Amazon venture and any trust with your customers. 91% of customers buy from trusted branding, so you need to build this customer trust on Amazon, too.
Once you build trust and start generating sales, you may see that Amazon starts to promote your products. Amazon automatically promotes other products in the section on the product detail page under Customers who bought this item also bought.
Setting the price for your product involves the following strategy:
Finally, search for other Amazon products similar to yours. Use the same three keywords that you used for your description page and search for other products to see what appears.
Youll want to stand out from this list with strong pricing, high quality imagery, and a highly clickable product title.
Find Private Label Products To Sell On Amazon
An offshoot of direct-sourcing is private labeling, and its a great way to find products to sell on Amazon under your own brand. Private label suppliers manufacture goods, then label, tag, or package them under your brand.
You can find private label products in virtually any product category, from personal care items and cosmetics to kitchen tools, pet supplies, gourmet foods, and much more.
The process of finding private label products to sell on Amazon is similar to finding wholesale and direct-source suppliers. Many manufacturers offer a private label option on their stock goods. Or, you can find private label vendors within a specific product category using a quick online search, like this:
When it comes down to it, private label sourcing is similar to buying from wholesale or direct-source suppliers. You have to buy in minimum quantities, and stock and ship products to your customers. Of course, this can be done via your own fulfillment setup, using FBA as your Amazon fulfillment tool, or a combination of both.
Likewise, you need a way to track your inventory and product costs and forecast your reorders. The same inventory tracking tools that work for wholesale and direct-source purchasing can help you organize your private label product sales on Amazon.
Give InventoryLab.com, Sellics.com, and Shopkeeper.com a try if youre heading down the private label path.
Pros and cons of private label sourcing
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Amazon Product Promotions & Advertising
To help boost your sales on Amazon, you can run promotions on your products. You can also pay for ads.
Running a promotion can help boost your chances of making a sale when a customer is looking at your item on Amazon. The options that Amazon provides for promotions you can run on your items include:
- Social Media Promo Codes
- Buy One Get One
Social Media Promo Code
This allows you to create a custom coupon code that you can share with others. Amazon will provide you with a dedicated link to the page as well to help you promote it.
You are able to pick what type of discount you offer, and how many are able to be redeemed.
Percentage Off
This promotion type is designed to incentivize customers to purchase multiples. For example, you can run a promotion to offer 10% off if customers purchase 2 items and 12% off if they purchase 3 or more items.
You can customize the discount percentage and purchase quantity required for customers to be eligible for the discount. This is a promotion we use fairly often in my business and it helps generate more orders of multiples.
Buy One Get One
This promotion type allows you to setup offers where if a customer buys one item they get the next one free or discounted. You can also set it up so customers have to buy multiple units to get one free. So you can do buy 3 get 1 free, or any combo that youd like.
Evil Strategy #: Amazon Sellers Can Abuse Your Inactive Listings
Dirty Amazon sellers routinely use Google to comb inactive or out of stock listings because they are easy prey for hijacking. In fact, all you have to do is type site:amazon.com currently unavailable to locate these products.
Because inactive listings are not usually monitored, hijackers can often piggy back and abuse these listings without knowledge of the seller.
For example, one of my colleagues had one of his product listings converted over to a sex toy without his knowledge.
Bottom line, you should close off all inactive product listings on your account that you dont intend to continue selling.
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Is Amazon Handmade Worth A Shot
When its all said and done, Ill probably still attempt to sell on Handmade at Amazon, if only because I really like the potential it has.
I hardly see it as competition for Etsy, and quite frankly, when Im looking for a handmade item, Ill still go to Etsy first. My favorite university professor told me once that
When you finally call an ugly dog an ugly dog and stop pretending that it isnt, you can enter it in an ugly dog contest.
Im not calling Handmade at Amazon an ugly dog, but maybe we shouldnt assume that its fantastic just because Amazon made it. Maybe it isnt the best market to sell handmade products. Maybe it will be one day.
In the end, take a look at your profit margins and decide if they can support higher fees and the learning curve associated with a new platform, and make your choice from there.