How Do You Get Your Money After The Sale
Arguably the best part of selling on Amazon is getting paid. Thats why we do it, right?!
When you sell on Amazon, you will have a balance in your Amazon Payments account. It will look like this:
There will be 2 main sections of this report. The standard orders section, and the invoiced orders section. Standard orders are ones where customers paid for them at the time of purchase.
Invoiced orders are typically for business customers and are much less common.
When a balance shows up in a blue, that is how much is currently owed to you. If a balance shows up in red, that is how much you currently owe Amazon.
Amazon will add to your balance every time they ship an FBA order on your behalf, anytime you ship a merchant fulfilled order, or anytime they reimburse you for a mistake they made. The most common example of getting paid for a mistake by Amazon is if they damage or lose a unit of your inventory.
Amazon will subtract from your balance for their fees and for customer refunds.
Your Amazon payments balance will accumulate and be deposited to your bank account every 14 days. You will typically see the funds available in about 2 business days from when the transfer is initiated.
Note: for sellers that sign up during certain time periods, Amazon will provide them with the ability to request a payout on a daily basis. Most accounts dont have this, so if you do, consider yourself lucky.
You can get these steps completed in the next week, maybe even sooner! Start now!
Bottom Line: How To Sell On Amazon
Amazon is an incredibly accessible platform that welcomes all kinds of sellers, from individuals selling a few items per month to power sellers moving thousands of products each day. There are many ways you can sell on Amazon, but the competition is fierce and Amazon is a demanding marketplace.
You need to approach every Amazon product opportunity from a profit perspective. This means you must figure your seller fees and the cost of the goods you sell and add to that the time value for sourcing products, creating listings, managing inventory, and shipping orders. Once you understand your costs, you can make decisions to help balance efficiencies, increase net profits, and find ways to grow.
After figuring Amazon out, you might want to look at the Walmart marketplace next.
Are you an Amazon seller, or hoping to become one? If so, wed love to hear how you got your start, or what youre planning to sell on this vast platform. Please share your experiences and thoughts in the comments below.
About the Author
What Tools Do Time
Sellers said the biggest focus for their Amazon business is finding a product. In fact, 55% of sellers who spend fewer than four hours per week spend their time looking for a product, as do 45% of sellers who spend 4-10 hours in their business.
Those who spend more than 10 hours per week on their business told us that they spend most of their time managing PPC. However, finding products and getting product reviews are just as important.
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Work From Home As An Amazon Rep
You can get a job working directly for Amazon from the comfort of your own home. The customer service team supports 16 languages from over 130 locations worldwide.
Many of Amazons employees work remotely.
You can become a virtual customer service representative and do the same. If you want to help Amazon customers while sitting in your pajamas, this could be the job for you.
Amazon is constantly updating its Customer Service Associate jobs. Check this page to see if theres a full-time or part-time job you meet the qualifications for. Then simply apply online.
Now I Know You Offer Products To Help Others Create Successful Amazon Fba Businesses What Can A Person Learn From Your Products Can You Tell Us About Some Of The People Who Have Successfully Purchased One Of Your Products
We have one main course that is for people who want the quickest way to start an Amazon business, without any of the guesswork. That is our . We take you from point A the idea of having an Amazon business. To point B having sales on Amazon. We even take you past that point and cover things that come up after your first sales. The goal of the course is to make sure you have a solid understanding of the way things work and have a great foundation to build on. Sellers come to us sometimes after having just tried to figure it all out on their own, and are surprised at the things they just didnt know. You dont know what you need to know right?
We cover everything from account set up. Using scanning apps and knowing how to read the information. Finding products to sell using 4 different methods. Sending your products to Amazon. Account management of your seller account. And more.
We have had people from all different backgrounds and skill levels coming in to our course. One lady we met in person started selling on Amazon simply to be able to buy a new car and pay the payment and the insurance. She met that goal quickly and is actually making a few thousand dollars a month now.
Another mom wanted to pay her daughters college tuition, and didnt know another way. So she started selling on Amazon FBA and was able to pay that almost $1,000 a month payment just with her Amazon earnings. Then she stopped when her daughter graduated.
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Understand Amazons Cost Structure
You can start selling on Amazon with little money. But there are some fees you should be aware of because theyre frequently charged and can impact your Amazon channels ROI. The following fees arent the only fees, just the common ones.
- Referral fees. Amazon charges a commission for selling on the platform. Its different for each category. The average referral fee is 15%, but can range from 8% to 45%.
- Closing fees. This is a $1.80 fee taken from each unit sold for products in media categories .
- FBA fees. If you use Fulfillment by Amazon youll cover the shipping and handling costs for a sale. This fee is charged to fulfill items for Amazon purchases and depends on the items category, size, and weight. A standard package may cost you between $2.41 and $4.71.
- Additional Amazon fees. Amazon will also charge you inventory storage fees for inventory in its fulfillment center. You may pay monthly or long-term storage fees, as well as disposal order fees, return fees, and advertising costs.
For an in-depth look at all possible fees, read the .
New Products Cant Get Organic Traffic
New products can get organic traffic if theyre well optimized.
Also, if you send paid traffic to your products as soon as you upload them and focus on getting sales and reviews early on, your new products can also get organic traffic.
Potential customers may be wary of items without reviews, but there will still be those who buy products without them if its something they want.
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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.
Amazon Shipping And Fulfillment Options
Before we talk about shipping and fulfillment options, lets briefly discuss UPC codes. In short: If you dont have UPC codes, get them.
There is only one legitimate producer of UPC codes that exists globally: GS1.
GS1 is a non-profit organization that has set the global standard for supply chain barcoding.
There are more than 100 GS1 organizations around the world GS1 US is the organization that serves US businesses. GS1 issues unique prefixes to brand owners so that they can create their own unique barcodes containing the prefix number given to them by GS1.
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Check Out The Movers And Shakers In Your Target Categories
Similarly, you can repeat this process with another set of top-seller pages that Amazon calls Movers and Shakers. Here is where Amazon tracks products that are quickly moving up the popularity charts, like the top trending items in Clothing, Shoes, and Jewelry, below.
Following the process above, you can drill into sub-categories and items to see whats trending with shoppers right now. This is valuable information if youre trying to catch a style or product opportunity on the upswing.
These are just a few of the many ways you can use Amazons own dataand your potential competitors own productsto guide you in finding and choosing the right products to sell on Amazon.
Become An Amazon Affiliate
Affiliate marketing is a brilliant way to make some passive income if you have a blog or website that generates a decent volume of traffic.
Become an and earn a commission by putting special affiliate links to various Amazon products on your site.
The idea is to promote products that align with your blog or websites mission. So, if you have a website about how to travel efficiently, you may promote items such as packing cubes, sturdy suitcases or wrinkle-free clothing.
Each time someone who comes through your website clicks on the affiliate link, youll earn some money. You can earn anywhere from 4% to 8.5% of a sale.
Keep in mind that commissions are generally really low, which is why you need a significant amount of traffic to your site.
The more page views you have, the more chances are that the links will get clicks. No traffic means no chance that anyone will see those links to be clicked on.
Amazon offers a progressive earnings structure on the majority of merchandise and the more clicks and purchases you get from your site, the more you can make.
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Is Fba Status Essential To Winning The Buy Box
Whether youre a seasoned Amazon seller, or youre totally new to it, the Buy Box should still be your goal. 82% of shoppers never even look beyond that yellow box. Its the key to a successful Amazon business.
Weve written before about what it takes to win the Buy Box. Its a relatively complicated formula, with a few different aspects to it. Mainly though, it comes down to price and fulfillment method.
All other things being equal , in a battle between 2 or more merchants, the seller who is FBA will get nod. For , FBA status matters more than price. So FBA sellers could in theory price higher than their rivals and still in the Buy Box.
Why? The cynics will say that its all part of Amazons masterplan to make signing up to their optional programs a necessity in order to survive on the marketplace.
Maybe they have a point, but officially the reason is that FBA guarantees customers prompt, reliable service. They are therefore more likely to make the purchase.
So yes, being an FBA seller can help you win the Buy Box. That alone will be enough information for some sellers to join up. Again, I would urge caution though. If your products are otherwise better suited to self-fulfillment and if FBA would make it difficult for you to make a profit then resist the temptation.
Listing Doesn’t Guarantee A Sale
Amazon makes it easy for anyone to list a product, and anyone, in theory, can find it, but Amazon is huge, and listing a product doesnt mean it will sell. Dont expect to go from zero to hero just by creating an account and listing your product. Use the tools mentioned above to research the search and sales volume of your competition. Optimize your listing. Run ads through Amazons advertising platform. Sales will come from the efforts you put into making them.
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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.
How Do Beginners Sell On Amazon
Once you know what products youre going to , youll have to set up an account to get started offering your items through the Amazon marketplace.
Setting up an Amazn seller account is easy. You just have to follow four simple steps:
The difficult part isnt signing up to sell on Amazon. The tedious part is doing the product research and choosing the product that has the highest likelihood of being successful for you as you sell on Amazon.
When you sign up to sell on Amazon, youll have access to plenty of seller tools to help you along the way.
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Contact Amazon To Get 8 Bonus Categories For Your Book
Pro tip: youre prompted to select up to 2 categories when you go to , but you can also add up to 8 additional categories post-publication by .
You should absolutely take this step. Note also that not all of the sub-categories are available through the publication dashboard. Some can only be added post facto, or by using a specific keyword as part of your seven keywords.
What Is An Amazon Variable Closing Fee
The Amazon Marketplace variable closing fees are fixed for media products and vary for non-media products. These fees pertain to the shipping details of your sold product.
Amazon Seller Fees for a Sold Book :
Now that you know about the structure of Amazons seller fees, lets look at an Amazon fee example. Imagine youre a book merchant who just sold Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone for $15.99. Suppose the customer paid $3.99 for shipping and NO gift wrapping. Assuming that youre not a Pro Merchant subscriber, heres how Amazon will deposit your revenue:
Dont let these fees scare you.
Amazon is a major source of traffic for online retailers and is competitive with other marketplace rates. Being aware of and understanding the Amazon selling fee structure is the first step on your way to managing a Marketplace campaign effectively.
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What Is Fulfillment By Amazon
Fulfillment by Amazon is a program where you send your merchandise to one of the many Amazon fulfillment centers to be stocked then customers buy products from you, and Amazon ships them. This sort of arrangement allows you to focus on other aspects of running your business while Amazon handles many facets of shipping and customer service.
Other benefits include extending the reach of your products to Amazon Prime members, and gaining an extra push towards winning the Buy Box, even if your products have a bit of a higher price. With Volusion, merchants have the ability to set up different shipping options including dropshipping, which allows flexibility to try using FBA. You can learn more about Fulfillment by Amazon here.