How To Ship To Amazon Fba
There are many ways to ship products to Amazon however, this guide primarily focuses on shipping pallets via LTL or FTL freight. LTL stands for less than truckload, while FTL stands for full truckload.
You would use LTL when you do not need an entire trailer for your shipment. On the other hand, you would use FTL if your products need a full trailer.
Dont worry this guide covers this topic later on. For now, lets dive deeper into FBA shipping. Regardless of whether you use FTL or LTL, you will need to place your products on a pallet. Keep reading to learn how to ship to Amazon FBA.
Fba Vs Mfn: Which Fulfillment Option Is Better For Amazon Sellers
In the battle of FBA vs MFN, which fulfillment method wins? That’s the question we ask in this informative post.
If youre an Amazon seller, one of your most crucial decisions will be whether or not you ship using Merchant Fulfilled Network , or both.
Amazon sellers have strong opinions about each method, and each has its own strengths and weaknesses.
The best way to decide between FBA or MFN is to gauge the size and scope of your operation and understand how your product mix affects the FBA fees youll incur. Lets explore this further.
The Newest Changes And Features Of Amazon Fba
Fulfillment by Amazon is constantly changing and adapting to meet the needs of both its customers and the sellers that are using the platform. Keeping up-to-date with the latest changes and additions can help brands meet consumer demand and stay at the top of their own game with the FBA service.
For example, one big change in 2020 is the added comingling of inventory, which is permitted if Amazon barcodes are used. What is commingling? Its when Amazon stores every unit of a single product together, regardless of the seller, and ships any one of these to a buyer. Its also called stickerless inventory.
This has its own pros and cons, but it can possibly end up in counterfeits being shipped to your customer instead of the high-quality unit you placed in Amazons warehouses or create other issues. So youll want to keep an eye on things if you take advantage of this feature. Some instances have occurred where legitimate sellers using FBA have been banned from selling on Amazon due to negative reviews caused by damaged or fake products.
Another new change as of August 2020 is the Inventory Performance Index, which measures a variety of elements to determine how your inventory is performing and help you improve that by getting rid of excess inventory, improving your sell-through rate, and more. Youll want a score above 500, which is calculated based on factors like:
- In-stock inventory
- Stranded inventory
- Sell-through rates
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Fulfillment By Amazon: How Does Amazon Fba Work
A lot goes into running an ecommerce business.
So, youre a solo entrepreneur selling marked-up wiffle ball bats that you find on clearance at sporting goods stores. Or, maybe youre an artisan with a small team of workers who craft high-quality picture frames. Perhaps youre a large coffee maker manufacturer that handles tons of orders on a daily basis.
Regardless of what products you move and how you source them, you have a lot on your plate. You need to develop your product. You need to . You need to manage your business finances.
Translation: you dont have time to manage inventory, pack and ship every single order, and oversee customer service processes. Whether or youve seriously considered it, there is a solution: Fulfillment by Amazon, or FBA.
A multi-channel ecommerce strategy is an effective ecommerce strategy. and start spreading your brand today!
What Is Fulfillment By Amazon
Fulfillment by Amazon is one of two core fulfillment options offered to . The other is called Fulfillment by Merchant a system by which the seller takes care of packing and shipping orders directly to customers. FBM sellers essentially use Amazon as a place to reach consumers and generate demand.
Amazon actually sums up FBA pretty well in Seller Central: You sell it, we ship it.
Heres how it works.
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How Does Amazon Fba Work
Like I said, the Fulfillment By Amazon part is the key to how this whole thing works. Think about all of the most tedious parts of running an online store youve got to store your inventory, process payments, package and ship things out, answer customer issues, etc.
Amazon takes care of those things. Heres exactly their role in your Amazon FBA business:
- Manage their website so that your product can be listed for sale there
- Store your products in their warehouses
- Process payments
- Package and ship out the item when someone makes a purchase
- Manage any customer questions, comments, or concerns
- Process refunds, returns, and exchanges
Thats a lot of stuff, but running an Amazon FBA business as the seller still requires a lot of work. This isnt a hands-off job for most sellers, but Ill talk about some ways to minimize your effort further down.
Now, heres your responsibility as the Amazon FBA seller:
- You have to find, source, or create a product to sell on Amazon
- Create listings for your products on Amazon
- Package the items correctly so they can be shipped Amazon is pretty strict about packaging and prep requirements
- Ship the items to an Amazon warehouse
Use Good Seo Practices
Amazon is a search engine, so youll want to make sure your listings are optimized with relevant keywords.
You can do some keyword research by looking at current product listings any by thinking about how people would search for this particular item.
In the example I used early on, the Bose headphones, I searched Bose headphones. Related keywords are noise-canceling headphones and Bose QuietComfort. A buyer might not know the exact product name, but related keywords will help them find what theyre looking for.
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The Benefits Of Amazon Fba
Now, Im sure you have questions, so lets cover some of the benefits of Amazon FBA first because when it comes to Fulfillment by Amazon, there are plenty of advantages.
1. You can use Amazons reputation to benefit your business
People from all over the world trust Amazon. When they order a product, they know they will receive it. They also know they can return it if they need to. This plays a huge part in whether or not they purchase from you.
2. You gain the ability to provide a super-fast service
Amazons unique online ordering system includes faster processing and dispatch. For this reason, they can ship products to your customers faster than you may be able to.
3. You can achieve a higher ranking on Amazon and better visibility
When you use the FBA programme, your product will appear higher in the search results. Products from sellers not using FBA have items listed by total price . However, as an FBA seller, you will have your items listed by price only thus making it one of the first items in the search results.
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4. You have a better chance of securing the Buy Box
5. You can automatically offer free delivery
6. Your overheads are significantly reduced
Thanks to FBA you dont need to be concerned with storage, employees and administration and youll be able to focus on selling more products and boosting your profits!
7. You will benefit from increased productivity
8. You can run your business anywhere!
You wont deal with customer queries as often.
To Sum It Up Amazon Fba Fulfills Your Customers Orders For You
The basics: When you sign up as an FBA seller, you send your inventory to any of Amazons FBA warehouses . When you receive an order, Amazon ships it instead of you handling the shipping yourself.
Fulfillment by Amazon was created to keep up Amazons strict commitment to customer satisfaction. When Amazon handles your inventory, shipping, returns, etc., they are able to keep the majority of customer service in their hands and out of yours as a seller.
What are the benefits of Amazon FBA?
Amazon FBA increases profits.
Many sellers increase their profits selling through FBA. One perk is that as a seller, you can avoid the costs and aggravation of storing inventory, dealing with shipping, and other similar issues.
Chitagam Saluja, a Paralegal at Rosenbaum Famularo, PC states that:
One of the greatest benefits provided by using FBA is that Amazon provides storage for your products. This is an extremely cost-effective benefit as compared to renting a warehouse yourself.
Amazon FBA qualifies your listings for Amazon Prime, free shipping and other benefits. When you sell through FBA, youre able to reap the benefits of Amazon Prime, a service that just about every Amazon customer knows and loves. You also receive the benefit of free shipping on eligible products, and the gold star next to your listings that is, the Amazon Prime logo.
Amazon FBA is cost-efficient.
Amazon FBA takes the stress out of customer service.
Amazon FBA allows multi-channel fulfillment.
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So What Is Amazon Fba
Essentially, it means that Amazon will handle the storage and shipping of products for you, so that you can sell physical items without owning a warehouse or worrying about logistics. Its one of the great equalizers provided by the web, allowing small businesses and even individual entrepreneurs to compete with much larger brands across the largest store on the web.
In this post, well explore how it works in detail, and how to start an Amazon FBA business of your very own.
The Buy Box Advantage
If you have a professional seller account and sell a product using Amazon FBA, you are more likely to win the Buy Box. Why is this important? More than 80% of Amazons sales are from the innocuous yellow button on a product listing. Winning the Buy Box often results in a massive boost to your sales.
If youre interested in finding out how to consistently win the Buy Box, I recommend watching this video. Ankitha Nagaraj will take you through everything you need to do to win the Amazon Buy Box.
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Brainstorm Your Passions And Pick A Niche Market
Start with what youre passionate about and brainstorm product ideas. When youre brainstorming, dont limit yourself. Its best to think broadly and outside the box you can narrow your ideas down later on.
Its good to keep in mind the idea of niche product categories versus broad product categories. A product line about fashion may be too broad, but mens fashion may be more of a niche market. Current Empire Flippers FBA sales indicate there are still numerous opportunities for success across a wide variety of niches.
If youre already running a blog or have a strong social media following, these web presences can help you figure out your niche, since youve already got a trusting audience thats willing to hear about a new product you want to share with them. For example, if you love hiking or traveling, and your followers know that, theyll be more likely to trust you when you start advertising your awesome new line of travel-sized backpacks or fashionable hiking gear.
Inspiration can also come from simply looking around your house are you really into gardening? Are you a fixer-upper? Do you have an amazing bathroom that you love showing off to new visitors?
Its Best To Start Slow
As with so many other things in business, its best to start out slow with Amazon FBA.
Thats because you dont know what you dont know. Even after reading this overview, there will always be unforeseen expenses and unexpected challenges. Its best if you face those problems on a small scale.
Start by offering only a limited number of products available for sale via Amazon FBA. Give that a shot for a few months.
After the few months are up, evaluate your costs and income. Determine if you can make a lot more money by using the service for a larger portion of your product.
If everything goes well, you can eventually centralize your shipping operations with FBA.
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So Is Fulfillment By Amazon Worth It
The answer to this question really comes down to three factors: how much youre shipping per month, how big your profit margins are, and how niche your market is.
You need to move at least 40 items per month to qualify for FBA. If youre just barely hitting that minimum threshold, it may not be worth the hassle of preparing your inventory according to Amazons strict guidelines. Youre probably better off handling these responsibilities by yourself, or through a smaller fulfillment company thats more flexible.
FBA isnt a good idea for ecommerce sellers with small margins. If youre not making much money per sale, its a safe bet that FBA fees are going to bring your margins down to zero, if not into the red. Although shipping everything on your own isnt freein terms of money or energyyou shouldnt take on any fees that arent essential to your business.
Sellers of super niche products dont necessarily need FBA, either. Remember that one of FBAs biggest advantages is the eligibility for Prime. If an Amazon shopper sees a bunch of fairly identical products, and only a handful of them are Prime eligible, shes going to immediately write off those that are ineligible.
But, not that many people use Amazon to sell 70s goth zines. The people who are in the market for your niche product probably dont care that much about Prime eligibility theyre just happy to have found what they were looking for.
Conor Bond
Retail Or Online Arbitrage
You may have heard the word arbitrage to describe buying and selling stocks or other securities the idea is taking advantage of a price difference between two markets.
For Amazon FBA, the two markets are where you bought the product from and the market youre selling it to now. This means youre buying products at a lower price and selling them on Amazon where the market is higher.
Retail arbitrage is buying things from brick-and-mortar businesses, and online arbitrage is buying things from online stores.
The goal is to find things at deeply discounted prices so you can flip them and make a profit on Amazon FBA.
You can start with things that are listed as clearance or buying off-season items that are discounted. Amazon FBA sellers use price scanning apps like the Amazon Seller App or Scoutify to scan items when theyre in the store to see what the item is being listed for on Amazon, best seller rank, approximate profits, and FBA fees.
This will help you decide if buying 12 discounted iPhone chargers will be worth your investment, for example.
The benefit of retail or online arbitrage is that it requires a lower upfront investment. You can buy a handful of the item compared to hundreds. That minimizes your risk and lets you get your feet wet before committing to a product.
The main downside is that your profits may not be as high.
Despite lower profit margins, most seasoned FBA sellers recommend starting with arbitrage.
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There Is No Sales Quota
You might think that a company as large as Amazon will require you to move a certain amount of merchandise every month if you want to be part of the FBA program. But, thats not entirely true.
Amazon understands that not all products are created equal and that demand for some items is softer than for others. The company is more than happy to offer FBA services to small business owners who dont move inventory quickly.
With FBA, you can sell only a few products a month or you can sell thousands of products every month.
What Do You Need To Do
With Amazon doing all the picking, packing, and shipping, whats there for you to do?
A lot.
Its up to you to find, research, and source the right products. You still need to lower your expenses and boost your sales to ensure you make a profit, especially with Amazon FBA taking a fair cut.
Youll also need to keep an eye on inventory levels. Amazon will let you know if inventory is running low, but youll need to send them additional products before they run out to avoid missing out on potential customers.
Remember, Amazon is mostly just storing and shipping your productstheyre not selling it for you.
Yes, youll get access to Prime status and free shipping options, but those are icing on the cake. Youll be the one responsible for creating compelling product listings, doing keyword research, and getting photos to sell your merchandise.
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Lower Your Shipping Cost
Theres a lot of factors that go into the price of shipping of an item. You have to consider the packages DIM weight, size, destination, carrier agreements, fuel surcharges, and more. Even for small packages, these factors can add up.
And despite these costs, customers still expect fast and free shipping. This leads to sellers offering free shipping, even when they cant afford it. If youre not careful, shipping costs can quickly shrink your margins, meaning you make less money.
Thats why many sellers outsource to a program like FBA. The overall fees you pay them can be less expensive than trying to manage everything on your own. After all, youre not a logistics expert.
Find Easy Ways To Advertise
Once youve got that awesome product listing, its important to look into advertising, and a great low-cost option is using a Pay Per Clicks program, which can also help you gain a broader audience.
PPC marketing is basically the Sponsored Content that pops up when youre searching for a product on Google or any major search engine. As an Amazon FBA business, you pay a small portion to the company or search engine thats marketing your product for each click that your product gets.
thatll boost your product so it appears on the first page of their search results as a Sponsored Product. These targeted ads help customers find your product within the vast sea of Amazon products.
Where else can you find more customers from your product? Facebook, of course! If you choose , youve got options to create PPC ads or customize different advertising campaigns depending on your budget, and you can even target a specific audience for the ad.
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