Amazon FBA has firmly cemented itself as one of the most popular and alluring ways to earn off the internet.
You might be asking yourself why that is. Maybe you’re a seller who wants to gain a competitive advantage over rival merchants. Or maybe you’re someone looking for an easy contract that makes it a breeze to sell your products to a huge customer base.
Whatever the case may be, this guide will explore why Amazon FBA is a recipe for success. Here, you’ll learn all you need to know about FBA, what it is, how to use it, and where to start.
What is Amazon FBA?
Why are millions of entrepreneurs, all around the world, so excited about FBA?
Here’s your first lesson.
FBA stands for “Fulfilled by Amazon”.
As you might have guessed already, Amazon FBA basically means that Amazon ships the product you’re selling for you!
When you avail of the FBA service, Amazon takes your products, keeps them in one of its warehouses, ships it to people who want to buy, looks at any refunds and manages all the logistical details related to shipping your products.
Amazon gives you a shipping deal where you, as a third party vendor, have the option of storing your products in Amazon’s fulfillment centers, and letting Amazon run things from their end.
All of this might sound a bit complex right now, but stick with us! By the end of this guide, we guarantee that your knowledge of FBA will be as clear as crystal can be.
How Does Amazon FBA Work?
Now it’s time to look at the specifics of how FBA works.
Sit back, relax, and let us guide you the entire way.
1. Send Units to Amazon
Want to hear something amazing?
Amazon has more than 175 fulfillment centers across the world, most of which are located in the US and Europe.
Firstly, when you choose the FBA service, Amazon contacts you and asks what products you’re sending them.
When you tell them what you’re sending, they tell you where to ship your products to.
You go to your Seller Central Account page and get your product listings ready. Then you tell Amazon which ones it should handle the shipping for. You then make a shipping plan, where you give Amazon essential details like the quantity of products you are sending, labelling information and shipping details.
2. Amazon Stores & Sorts Your Products in Warehouses
As soon as Amazon gets your products, they add them to their inventory. That means your products are officially listen in Amazon’s stock.
They store your products in their warehouses and look at stuff like appropriate temperature to keep your products at, any packaging details or issues or if your products need any special requirements to store.
Also, you should hear a bit about sorting here too. You can ask Amazon for the inventory placement service, where Amazon partitions your products into small groups and sends them to different fulfillment centers.
Amazon may send your products to different warehouses based on season, size, category of your product, etc.
If any product of yours is damaged in an Amazon warehouse, Amazon reimburses you fully.
3. You Make a Sale
Time for the fun part!
At some point along the way, a customer decides to buy your product. Here, the FBA agreement ensures that Amazon handles the entire process for you. So Amazon makes the transaction, collects your money and changes your inventory based on the purchase.
Next comes the part where the item is shipped to the buyer. Someone (either an Amazon employee or a machine) takes your product from its warehouse storage, packages it, and sends it to the location it was requested at, to the customer.
This is one of the biggest benefits of FBA. Literally anyone can sell on Amazon this way, even if they don’t have the knowledge or resources to handle things like shipping on their own.
4. Amazon FBA Takes Care of Customer Service
Worried about customer service? Stop right there, because FBA can’t let you be.
Amazon prides itself on its amazing customer service. FBA means that instead of you having to follow up with customers yourself, and having to risk being bogged down by complaints, and details about the shipping, you can simply let Amazon handle it.
Don’t fret, Amazon will follow up with your customers, handle any complaints about the shipping, take care of returns, answer any questions customers may have, and more.
However, this doesn’t mean that you’re completely off the hook. You still have to look at and deal with feedback about your product listings. FBA has nothing to do with that, it only deals with the shipping aspect of it all.
5. You Earn Revenue
According to Amazon’s policy, they update your sales every two weeks. Within this process, they also deduct their seller fees.
When it comes to your payment, Amazon deposits it directly into your bank account.
This is the final step in the entire FBA process.
As we’ve seen up till now, it’s incredibly easy and fulfilling to choose FBA and let Amazon handle the heavy lifting with regards to shipping and feedback.
This way, you give your undivided attention to the more “central” parts of your business, such as creative ideas, new product designs, inventory additions and pure business growth.
By now, you must be asking yourself: “Okay, sounds great, but how much does this plan help me if I have to pay a sum of money to get it?”
Trust us on this when we tell you that the amount you pay for this service is literally pennies on the dollar compared to the huge benefits you get from this.
Efficient shipping, saving costs on shipping equipment and storage space and having more time to look at your business knowing that Amazon has your back.
Believe us, FBA is the way forward.
A. Getting Your Product Units – Find Reliable Wholesalers
One of the most important steps in the entire selling business is to figure out your priorities.
Finding reliable wholesalers from which you can get your product supply is incredibly important. You need to be aware of market rates, fluctuations, changes in market dynamics and current levels of competition.
Being a reliable wholesaler means being adhering to a fixed schedule, being consistent in product delivery and maintaining good product quality, overall.
So while choosing wholesalers, keep your goals in mind, and find people who match those goals to a certain degree.
With a strong backing behind you, there’s little chance that you will be bogged down by even the harshest of crises.
B. Pre-Launch Campaigns – Everything You Need to Do Before Launching Your Product on Amazon
There are some things you need to take care of before you launch your products on Amazon. To make this easier for you, we’ve laid out everything you need to do, right here.
The first thing you need to take care of is to build an amazing product listing.
Believe us when we tell you, your initial sales and Amazon average have long lasting consequences for your future as a seller.
If you’re unprepared when you launch, and still haven’t gotten your act together, there’s a good chance that your lack of effort in creating a perfect listing will come back to bite you.
Take care of these things when you’re making a listing:
Clear, coherent and well-researched title.
High quality, relevant images.
Use relevant and specific keywords.
Also, do a market survey before you start. Collect and analyze market trends and opportunities before you start selling online.
Another good strategy is to create a “coming soon” page on social media sites and elsewhere, just to start developing your brand, and ensuring that you get amazing responses from customers by the time you actually start selling.
If you play smart, you can also utilize your launch week to welcome a hoard of customers.
How so? Make an OTO, or a “one-time offer”, where you offer discounts and incentives during your launch week. This can really be huge for your campaign and the subsequent reaction you receive.
Still worried about receiving a lackluster response?
Don’t sweat, because the next thing you can do is to find the right influencers to promote your product for you. Be sure to find people who are genuinely interested in what you are putting out, and by opening day, you’ll be the talk of the town.
Try your best to hype your page up before you start selling, make use of market strategies and check all these boxes before starting to make sure that you’re never unprepared.
C. Amazon Super URL
Amazon Super URLs are a sure-fire way of retargeting, so that more and more external users visit your product listing, and so that your keyword rankings increase as a result.
You might be asking yourself: “Why would I need to use Amazon Super URL?”.
The answer is simple. Amazon’s policies and algorithms (such as the algorithm that handles user traffic and the placement of your products compared to others) can sometimes be restrictive and skewed in favour of giant business corporations.
In that context, Amazon risks becoming a marketplace where small sellers can’t compete because Amazon’s algorithm simply doesn’t allow them to have user engagement even slightly comparable to that which larger users get.
Therefore, you can use Super URLs, which are basically links that can be used externally to direct external users to Amazon (and to your product page).
The fun part is that as these users view your page, Amazon sees them as users that came to Amazon and searched directly for your product, instead of users that came to Amazon from another site, using a Super URL.
This boosts your keyword ranking, placing you much higher in Amazon listings, and giving you a good chance to engage with your customers, even if Amazon is being restrictive!
D. Successful Product Launch
You might be wondering about the difference between a successful product listing and a successful launch, if there is one.
Well, there is, and it’s time for you to find out what it is.
Even if you create an amazing product listing that details everything about your product, emphasizes your plus points and depicts your product’s importance, there’s a chance that without a proper launch, things could go haywire.
What we mean by that, is that even the most put-together listings will suffer at the end of the line, hidden behind several others, probably on page 30, if you’re not careful with launching your products.
If possible, hire a product launch consultant to help you flesh out a solid plan.
You should also definitely go for Amazon PPC! Don’t miss out on a creative advertising opportunity if you see one.
Make your product launch look like something people feel they just can’t miss out on. Discounts, attractive deals, and reasonable pricing coupled with smart advertising, and you’re good to go.
Keep in mind that your goal here is to tell customers how your product is better than what everyone else out there is selling.
If you choose the right keywords, analyze market trends, set up attractive incentives and make everything’s in place before you sell, your launch will be as successful as can be.
E. Maintain a Good Selling Average
There are many buzzwords in the world of online selling, but when it comes to Amazon, the golden word is consistency.
Confused? Nothing to worry about. You see, selling on Amazon is structured so that one big hit or one good day at the office won’t simply turn you into an overnight success.
Far, far more important than a couple of big hits is that you maintain a good, consistent selling average.
The reason why this is so important is that Amazon uses moving averages to determine the organic ranking of your product.
Now we know that as a seller, there’s only a limited amount of content and material that you can use in your launching campaigns.
If you make the rookie mistake of piling everything you have into one launching campaign, chances are you’re not going to be left with much for promotions and campaigns soon.
Here’s what you can do: Spread out your launching campaigns over some time (say two weeks), so that your products keep getting exposure and you maintain a constant stream of visitors and buyers.
At the end of the day, your goal is to be on the front page when someone looks up your category of products.
Since consistency is rewarded heavily on Amazon, try to make strategies that place importance on continual selling and long-term goals, not just big, isolated trades.
With that, you’re good to go!
F. Keep an Eye on Your Competitors
One of the primary mistakes new sellers make is not diving deep into what’s happening in the market.
A seller can’t realistically improve and adapt unless they know what other sellers are doing, how the market is changing, what strategies big sellers are using, what perspectives competitors are bringing about the same products.
Once you start keeping an eye on your competition, you’ll find that it’s a lot easier to keep track of what you need to do in a dynamic, and often unforgiving business culture.
The idea here is to learn from competitors, to avoid their mistakes and improve on their designs. Find out what changes have been welcomed by customers, and change your product to meet those standards.
However, knowing what your competitors are doing doesn’t mean you necessarily have to follow what they’re doing. If you have a unique brand, and if that style is working for you, more power to you as far as we’re concerned!
Amazon Super URL – Everything You Need to Know
Super URLs, in basic terms, are links that have unique timestamps and the specific keywords that a seller wants to increase rankings for, on Amazon.
Simply put, a Super URL is a link that can be created by going to Amazon, looking up your product using a keyword, clicking on your listing and then copying the link at the top of the page.
The basic functionality of a Super URL is that it can generate a higher ranking for your products on Amazon, even if users aren’t directly visiting your listing all that much.
So what can you do with a Super URL? How can you use them to drive more traffic to your listing? How do you make sure that you’re using them to full advantage? Find out below!
Opportunities
Guys, let’s be real. Amazon barely leaves any room for sellers to interact freely with their customers with their red taping and their restrictive policies.
Due to all of these restrictions, small sellers suffer the most, because they’re barely able to get off the ground without constant engagement with their buyers.
Super URLs offer amazing opportunities and open up a world of possibilities, as described below!
Retargeting
Retargeting, for the new seller, is the practice of driving outside traffic to your products.
So how do Super URLs help with retargeting? And why are they important?
These links are constructed so that they have a pixel embedded within them, that tracks everyone who goes to the hyperlinked website.
The obvious benefit of this is that sellers get a complete sheet of visitors on their product listings. So you can now send these URLs to your customers, they click on them, which takes them directly to your product listing.
The best part is that Amazon registers this retargeting as an increase in visitors on your page, so you can rest easy when it comes to engaging with customers haphazardly.
All of this just isn’t possible with normal links. It’s mildly unfair to you that big businesses can use Amazon to their benefit, using their superior capital to get all the attention and views, while you have to sit at the bottom of the ladder because of Amazon’s restrictions.
Here’s where we come in! Pixelfy.me generate Super URLs for you, which you can use wherever you want, on social media and so on, and you can track everyone who clicks on these links.
These links now also come with the option of targeting these clickers specifically (sending them links), through a process called super targeting.
With the rise of these Super URLs, hopefully, your life as a seller will start to get easier!
Boosting Keyword Rankings
Keyword rankings are incredibly important to every Amazon seller.
Why? Because these rankings ultimately decide where your product will be listed. They decide if it will be listed on page one or on page twenty.
This means that these rankings directly impact the number of users you get, the responses you receive and the number of sales you make.
Using Super URLs gives you an immediate boost because now you will be using external traffic to get a boost in keyword ratings.
As you send these links to more and more users, the probability of more users going to your product listing increases.
Amazon interprets this increased inflow of customers simply as if they were going on Amazon, and searching manually for your page (which is a huge boost for your rankings), not as external users coming to your page through a Super URL.
So get started, use these Super URLs, and make your way to success. If Amazon is limiting you and not allowing you to reach your full potential, these links can be your guide to fulfillment.
How Does Amazon FBA Help Your Amazon Business?
By now, hopefully, you have a solid idea of the innumerable potential that FBA gives to your business.
Having a partner like Amazon back you up in so many ways can really help alleviate some of the constant pressure you might feel as a new seller.
Once you subscribe to Amazon FBA, Amazon takes care of your shipping and all relevant customer feedback.
One of the biggest ways this helps your business grow is that you, as a new seller, may not be able to afford storage costs for a large number of products.
You may not be able to follow up with customers and offer reimbursements to them.
Maybe you feel like the pressure of having to ship products yourself is too much for you?
FBA helps you solve all these problems and more. You never have to worry about shipping, you never have to worry about storage, and you never have to worry about being unable to handle your business alongside shipping.
Wrapping it Up
So there you have it, a complete guide on your route to success!
We gave you a bunch of ways FBA can help you, listed the various methods you should use to get the most out of the service and talked about how Amazon FBA helps small and large sellers alike.
We also gave you a roadmap that will help you decide what you need to focus on before you start selling, where to look for opportunities and how to decide which style of business suits you best.
Lastly, we talked about Super URLs. By now, you know how Amazon can sometimes be a little too strict when it comes to targeting audiences, but you can find a way around that using super URLs effectively and develop a good standing on Amazon.
If you need further advice, or if you’re still having doubts, contact us right away! We’d be glad to help!
