stretch361
Junior Member
- Aug 16, 2010
- 175
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You can't use Paypal with Amazon. You have to use your normal bank account with them. No, I don't avoid taxes. We operate a regular business and pay taxes properly like every other business.
Amazon Physical Product Sales - Ask me Anything!
- Thread starter stretch361
- Start date
You can't use Paypal with Amazon. You have to use your normal bank account with them. No, I don't avoid taxes. We operate a regular business and pay taxes properly like every other business.
irfanrufi123
Supreme Member
- Jan 22, 2012
- 1,359
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how do you do on-page SEO or what are your strategies to rank betters in Amazon's serps
stretch361
Junior Member
- Aug 16, 2010
- 175
- 129
Here was a comment from an earlier post on margins:
EXTREMELY thin. Our margins this year, after commissions, etc are about 16-17%. This is before any actual expenses like rent, debt service, labor, shipping supplies, etc.
This mainly has to do with the fact that we compete hard on the buy box on Amazon. The philosophy has been - if the product doesnt make any money / loses us money, we just don't rebuy it. There are cases where we take steep loses on some products just to free up working capital to buy product. On about 30% of our sales, we would have margins in the 30-35% range. What makes the overall margin so thin is that there are many poor buying decisions. In some cases, we almost have to give away product to get rid of it.
Yes, you need to have a US bank account to sell on Amazon.com.
stretch361
Junior Member
- Aug 16, 2010
- 175
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The biggest factors I've seen that help in the Amazon serps are:
- # of positive ratings
- # of sales
- relevancy of keywords in title, and the keywords you list in the 'keyword' area.
- ensure it is in the correct category
In my opinion, getting it to rank well in google is imperative to getting your listing to rank well in Amazon. Why? It will increase the sales of the item. When you start hitting the best sellers areas, affiliates start promoting the items. It becomes a self feeding beast once you start selling a decent amount.
IamNRE
Elite Member
- Aug 18, 2010
- 7,164
- 10,717
Great thread.
I'm not into e-commerce but I do run a copywriting company.
Any ways, some of ya'll that are into e-commerce should check out these 2 articles;
they are long as f$%ck but def. worth the read.
http://foreverjobless.com/how-to-get-lucky-in-e-commerce/
http://foreverjobless.com/how-to-create-a-business-that-prints-money/
Thanks again Dan + OP for the quality posts.
I'm not into e-commerce but I do run a copywriting company.
Any ways, some of ya'll that are into e-commerce should check out these 2 articles;
they are long as f$%ck but def. worth the read.
http://foreverjobless.com/how-to-get-lucky-in-e-commerce/
http://foreverjobless.com/how-to-create-a-business-that-prints-money/
Thanks again Dan + OP for the quality posts.
stretch361
Junior Member
- Aug 16, 2010
- 175
- 129
Want to talk about a quality post... These links are gold. I spent quite a bit of time today looking at all of his posts. I would HIGHLY recommend them. They don't necessarily talk about the tactical type things, but they definitely put you in the right mindset.
stretch361
Junior Member
- Aug 16, 2010
- 175
- 129
I technically didn't see a "profit" until 6 months after I started. This mainly had to do with the fact that I had no idea what I was doing, and was trying out many different "suppliers". Back when I started, there were no real sources of wholesale information. I had to do it all trial and error. At one point I was with DOBA, but it was before they were even named doba - it's been so long ago I don't even remember the name of their old company.
Majority of the traffic was originally Amazon, on Amazon. Other buying traffic tends to come from referral sites, and repeat business.
To provide some value in this post:
- Don't use DOBA. They just are basically middlemen for other dropshippers.
- Try to think of unique ways to pull Amazon customers directly to your site, so you can save the Amazon commission.
- Don't depend on Amazon being your only source of income. Build your brand and website outside of Amazon. Amazon = Google of Ecommerce. One big change, and your business is screwed.
stretch361
Junior Member
- Aug 16, 2010
- 175
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Ah, sorry, never answered the "money" question. Technically, I used no money of my own. I would buy products on credit cards, then pay off the credit cards at the end of the month with the sales. I then reinvested that money and credit card limits for new product, and continued to snowball. At one point, I had 60k / month in credit card bills on my PERSONAL credit. You can imagine the amount of points it built up!
On a side note, using your personal credit this heavy can affect your personal credit score. I was paying off my bills every month, but it impacted my debt / income ratio.
stretch361
Junior Member
- Aug 16, 2010
- 175
- 129
Amazon prime / FBA is huge. Especially when you are battling against other sellers that are using FBA. If you have your own listings without any competitors, the FBA factor is minimal, unless you are selling items under $25.
stretch361
Junior Member
- Aug 16, 2010
- 175
- 129
Let's see if anyone else has any 'golden questions'.Stretch, thanks for the awesome thread, a few questions:
I currently sell in one category but want to get into another that is restricted and not taking new applicants, any advice? Is there a way to leverage your current, good standing account?
What methods do you use to source new products? What is your criteria?
If you had 50k to work with plus credit, what would your business plan be?
I currently sell in one category but want to get into another that is restricted and not taking new applicants, any advice? Is there a way to leverage your current, good standing account?
What methods do you use to source new products? What is your criteria?
If you had 50k to work with plus credit, what would your business plan be?
AustBost10
Newbie
- Jan 6, 2014
- 14
- 0
What did you do when you first started out to get going? Also you mentioned you bought off of aliexpress....... do you think there is a possibility of dropshipping from them?
StrictlyBiznez
Junior Member
- Oct 23, 2011
- 140
- 38
I'm literally just sniffing around this whole concept, but to start off bare bones, how would I go about finding dropshippers? I'm only 19, so I'm not really big on buying wholesale to start off and losing money like that. I'd rather get to selling a product at a time, and building up my quantity, so how would i find a seller who will essentially ship the product for me?
stretch361
Junior Member
- Aug 16, 2010
- 175
- 129
If they aren't taking new applicants to the category you are looking for - you are probably SOL. If you wanted to try and leverage your way in, you'll probably need to be able to show value to the category managers. I.e. products not yet being sold on Amazon. If you can get ahold of a decent line of products that are not being sold on Amazon, and you can show you'll provide value to the category by bringing a wider selection - that would be the angle I would take. There are too many sellers on Amazon they could let in if you sell the same things everyone else does.
The easiest criteria would be:
- Does Amazon sell it?
- Are there multiple ASIN's for the same item that we can attack?
- Is the margin above 15%
- Look at the best sellers ranking over a period of time. camelcamelcamel.com can give you historical sales rank on individual asins.
As far as where to source? I go the backwards way - once I find a potential target product, or set of products, I figure out who the manufacturer is. Then, contact them directly to find out where to buy them (distributor, them directly, etc)
On the business plan front...if I was ONLY dealing with Amazon, these are the areas I would put money into:
- Researching under served niches on Amazon for products
- Source and manufacturer those products in China. Make sure they are branded, so noone else could sell them.
- Run a campaign to drive reviews and traffic to those product pages. SEO the hell out of the page to rank it on google. Give away some products in exchange for reviews, so the reviews push the products in the Amazon SERPS. Once the products get into the bestseller rankings of a category, it will mostly self feed itself.
stretch361
Junior Member
- Aug 16, 2010
- 175
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There is some information on what I did when I first started already in this thread. Is there a specific "getting started" question you would like answered? The question you are asking is quite broad, and could literally take pages upon pages of info to spit it all out.
Dropshipping from Aliexpress- Yes, there is a possibility. Like any other dropshipper, you need to be aware of risks the supplier represents. The major risk from Aliexpress is the shipping lead times. You can specify lead times on Amazon, so they don't necessarily hit your metrics. However, customers hate waiting a long time for products. Aliexpress can be a mixed bag on shipping times. What I would do is ask the supplier how long the average delivery takes to the US. Then, order an item yourself. It will cost you some $, but you'll be able to exactly see how they would handle your shipments. Remember, on dropshipping, it's YOUR reputation on the line when the supplier screws up.
stretch361
Junior Member
- Aug 16, 2010
- 175
- 129
I'm sure there are multiple products already on the market on Amazon similar to what you are looking to sell. Find those products, and look at the sales rankings.
Another option is, if you have an Amazon seller account, once you find the similar items, list the item for sale (even though you don't have it). Just make sure the price is something ridiculous where someone likely wouldn't buy it. This only works when there are other sellers selling. What this will do is start to give you Analytics on the business reports in seller central for that particular ASIN. You'll get how many times that listing has actually been viewed. Basic math can give you an idea of how many of them sell in a given day - just assume 2-8% conversion. Could obviously be different based on many factors (seasonality, demand for the product, etc)
If you really wanted to test the market, build a one page website with an opt in form to be notified when the item is released. Buy some adwords for the target keywords. You'll be able to see how many impressions you get on the adwords side, you'll see what the expected click through rate is, and you'll possibly get some hot leads via email when you actually get the product in.