How to Grow Your Online Business with Amazon

Setting Up an Amazon Account for Your Business

Sign up for Amazon as an individual seller. One of the easiest ways to grow your business using Amazon is to create an Amazon account as an individual seller. Sign up for an account on Amazon.com and start selling your products through your Amazon account. This is ideal if you have a small number of items to sell as a merchant and are looking to build your business slowly. As an individual seller, you will need to pay $0.99 per item that sells on Amazon. Keep in mind that as an individual seller you will actually be competing with Amazon for customers. You also may not get the sales proceeds right away through Amazon.com as an individual seller.

Go for the “pro merchant” option. This option is available through Amazon.com for a monthly fee and is ideal for online businesses with a fairly large amount of product. As a “pro merchant” on Amazon, you will also need to pay Amazon a referral fee that is a percentage or a fixed amount of each sale. But you will get access to selling and administrative tools on the site that can help grow your business. The one potential downside of the “pro merchant” option on Amazon is that if you have a large inventory as an online business, you will need to devote some time to the upkeep and maintenance of your account on Amazon, as you will have to do it yourself.

Set up an online store through Amazon. This is a good option if you are looking for an ecommerce platform to help you get a webstore off the ground. Having an online store through Amazon can make it easy for you to set up the store and market your products to Amazon customers. To set up the online store through Amazon, you will need to pay a $24 monthly fee and two percent of your sales. If you are already a “pro merchant” on Amazon, you can use the webstore services for free.

Using Amazon as a Platform for Your Business in Other Ways

Offer checkout and payment through Amazon for customers. One way you can use Amazon to make running your online business easier and more user friendly is to offer checkout and payment through Amazon.com. You can make “Checkout by Amazon” a payment option for your customers by signing up for the hosted payment option through Amazon. This is a good option if you have a lot of customers who buy from you on Amazon.com or who search for the items you sell through retailers like Amazon. To set up the "Checkout by Amazon", you should follow the steps on the Amazon Help page. You may need to enter in HTML characters onto your site to then link to the Amazon checkout page. The option will then appear as a small clickable button on your site that will take customers to the Amazon checkout page. Keep in mind this payment option may be confusing for customers who are Amazon-savvy users. You may need to include instructions on how to use checkout through Amazon for users. When you sign up for the hosted payment platform through Amazon, you are giving Amazon access to your customers’ payment information. You will also need to make sure the Amazon payment process is integrated into your current process.

Use Amazon’s shipping services for your business. Another way you can utilize Amazon’s services to make running your online business easier is to use their shipping services. This service is called Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA). When you sign up for this service, Amazon will handle the shipping process for you, including customer service and returns. Your orders can also be packed and shipped 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and any day of the year. To use FBA, you will need to send your items in one big shipment to Amazon’s fulfillment centers. From there, Amazon will ship and fulfill your customer orders for you. Using an FBA can also be a good cost saving measure, as you will not need to spend time and energy shipping the items yourself or hire staff to do this for you.

Solicit reviews from customers on Amazon. Amazon.com gets a lot of traffic on a daily basis and is seen as a good source for customer research on products and businesses. You can capitalize on this by asking your customers to post reviews of your products on Amazon.com. Having good reviews from customers on Amazon can encourage other consumers to buy from you and improve your sales. Encourage your customers to rate and review your products by including a note in their shipment requesting a review. You could also send out an email to buyers asking them to review your products on Amazon. To give your customers an incentive to review your products, you may include a discount code for future purchases from your online business. Or you may run a contest where each person who writes a review is entered into the draw to win a big prize.

Improving Your Sales Through Amazon

Buy an advertising package through Amazon. If you have an Amazon account, you can boost your sales by buying into an advertising program on Amazon.com. This program can help you target specific types of customers and leverage Amazon’s high traffic of potential customers on the site. This is a good option if you are struggling to reach your customer base and want to use Amazon’s customer base to increase your sales. You can sign up for the advertising package through Amazon.com. The pricing for the advertising package will depend on the level of advertising you need for your business. Depending on the package you buy, the advertisements may appear as sidebars, as pop ups, or as advertisements on the top bar of a site or page. You can choose from a variety of advertisements to boost your business on the advertising information page on Amazon.com.

Use Amazon’s revenue calculate tool. As an Amazon user, you can use Amazon’s revenue calculator to help you determine if selling specific products through Amazon is cost effective. The calculator can help you determine your adjusted gross margin after fees and expenses. You can then adjust your inventory, your pricing, or your advertising strategy based on these numbers. As an online business owner, you should keep track of your sales on your own as well. Having a clear set of data can help you analyze your sales and grow your business effectively. Keep in mind if you use Amazon as your main platform your business, you will not get access to customer data as Amazon will keep that information. This is why some business analysts recommend creating your own platform for your online business and then using Amazon for services like shipping, payment, and advertising.

Identify and evaluate your competition on Amazon. You can improve your sales using Amazon by identifying and evaluating your competition. Search for products or stores similar to yours on Amazon.com. Be aware of competing vendors and try to make your pricing comparable to theirs. Consider how you can compete with them, whether it is through better customer service, higher quality products, or a larger variety of products. For example, if you are selling iPhone cases on Amazon, you may search for other iPhone case vendors and look at the types of iPhones cases they have in stock. Think about how you can make your store the one stop shop for iPhone cases and how you can appeal to customers more than your competition can.

Keep your online business up to date and consumer friendly. A big selling point of using Amazon to sell your online products is that the site is known to be user friendly and easy to navigate. You should keep your online business up to date and just as consumer friendly as Amazon.com. If you are using Amazon as a platform for your business, make sure you have up to date images for all of your products and that the product descriptions are accurate. Keep the descriptions specific and clear so they are easy to search for online for customers. For example, if you are selling iPhone cases with watercolor paintings on them, you should write the product description as “watercolor iPhone cases.” Or if you are selling iPhone cases that have a specific character on them, such as Pokemon, you should have a product description that says, “Pokemon iPhone cases.” You should also include a note on how and why the product will improve your customer’s life. Note the benefits of the product as part of the listing so the customer knows why they should purchase the product.