Have A Brand
Amazon is not a branding company, they are a publishing company. Branding is a strategy for marketing your product line. If you want to sell on Amazon, you can sell on Amazon. But too many people think they can put a product on Amazon, and it will sell itself. That is a misconception. There are some products on Amazon that don’t sell. Sometimes, the reason a product doesn’t sell is that it doesn’t have a sufficient brand strategy and a company infrastructure behind them. It’s essential to build a strong brand strategy before you put a product on Amazon. A product is only that; a product.
When you say you want to sell on Amazon, it means that you want to own a company that sells physical products. Once you have a company, develop a brand, and determine your products, you should put your products on Amazon. Absolutely, put your products on Amazon. But having an “Amazon business“ is a misnomer. People call it an “Amazon business”, and some people make money just by putting the product on Amazon. Those successes are unique. That kind of success on Amazon is far and few between.
Many people are making YouTube videos about how to do it, but if they were making thousands of dollars on Amazon, they wouldn’t be making YouTube videos about how to do it; they would just do it. To be successful selling a product on Amazon, it’s essential to build a company with a brand.
Have A Well Developed Product
You have to have a website, graphics, and product already before you go on Amazon. Amazon is not cheap. You’ve got to do more than put a product on Amazon to sell products anymore, and it’s an expensive way to test a new product. To sell a product now, you need to reach people all over the Internet. If you search Google for the product, your website should come up, and your product should be on “Google shopping”. If they shop on Etsy, your product should be available on Etsy. If they usually buy things from Facebook, you should have advertisements for your product on Facebook.
If you’re an expert at that product, you should have a blog about that product, as well as pictures and videos featuring the product. This all sounds like a lot of work! Whoever told you that you could build a business or sell products on Amazon without doing a lot of work lied to you. Either that or they’re trying to sell you something.
We build businesses. We build brands. We start with the website, blog, graphics, and product niche. These things are essential before you put a product on Amazon.
It would be best if you assumed that whatever product you decide to sell, you will compete with other people selling the same product, maybe 30 or 40 other people, perhaps hundreds. With so much competition on Amazon, simply putting a product up there will not do the trick unless you find a product with low competition and high sales volume, But you probably won’t. There are millions of sellers on Amazon, and with that much collective brain power, you are unlikely to outthink them all by using “Jungle Scout” or just thinking of something that nobody else came up with before. The only way to compete is to do it better than your competition. Not cheaper, but better. That means you don’t have to lower your price to compete. If that’s the case, you’re probably not looking at a perfect product for Amazon FBA. A good product on Amazon FBA would have high demand and where the competition isn’t doing a good job.
Build a Business Around A Product
The products you’re competing with will have negative reviews on Amazon. To develop a competing product, pay attention to those negative reviews and make a better product addressing the issue discussed in the competitor’s negative thoughts. You can build a real business around that product and do very well. Once you build up your business, your search
volume is coming from various places organically. You can lower your price on your campaign because your competition has to pay a lot to sell the product. Once you’ve established a business for six months or a year, that business will generate sales for you without paying for ads. You can always add more products to your company and put them on Amazon, Etsy, Facebook, Google shopping, etc. Bottom line, you should have your own website graphics, brand logo, and a blog about the product, as well as videos and pictures featuring your product.
Amazon Alone Isn’t A “Business”
Search Google for a product that you have bought in the last 30 days. Look at the results that come up. Just look at the top 10. Only look at the products on the first page of Google. Now compare those search results with the search results for the same product on Amazon. You may find that the same products are doing well on Amazon and are on the first page of Google. That is not a coincidence. But it’s because they do well online in general that they do well on Amazon. Trying to compete with any of them only by using Amazon is like getting into a fight with one hand tied behind your back. We don’t recommend doing that, and we wouldn’t recommend you try to compete on Amazon without having a company website, blog, images, logo, etc.
Your competition is brilliant, and so are your customers. It is impossible to be lazy and successful when you’re selling online. Yes there’s a lot of money to be made, and it’s not hard; anybody can do it. But no matter who you are or what you’re selling, it will take work.
If you’re reading this blog post, you’re probably on our website, or you can click one of the links in the blog post to get to our website, and you’ll see that we build FBA business brands for people who want to sell on Amazon FBA.
When we build a new business for someone who wants to sell on Amazon FBA, we focus on competition across the internet. We don’t just look at Jungle Scout, although we do look.
Compete All Over The Web
Jungle Scout first. Your product must check out on Amazon because if you’re going to be selling a physical product you certainly need to sell it on Amazon to reach maximum success. But once we find a product on Jungle Scout, we’re just looking for the price point and sales volume to verify demand and profitability. The “opportunity score” and competition from 1 to 10 is not really something we use to determine our business and we don’t use those criteria to determine if we’re going to start a business around that product. There could be a lot of competition for a product on Amazon, but if nobody is competing across the internet, or they’re not competing well, then that could be an excellent opportunity for you, even if there is “high competition” on Amazon.
Be A Creative Business Owner
Starting an LLC, registering a trademark, and talking to some local businesses about putting a display in their shop, are not difficult things to do, but they make you into an actual business, not just one of the millions of Amazon sellers. Having an actual business set up and having your product in stores as well as online across the internet will ensure that you have high volume for the long term. Paying for ads on Amazon forever and thinking you’ll be able to live on the money, or even worse yet, assuming that you’re going to create a passive income out of that kind of a business to live off of, is pretty unrealistic. Take it from us.
We’ve tested Amazon businesses by tweaking the Amazon ad pictures, product descriptions, and advertising campaigns within Amazon, but that doesn’t usually make the most significant difference. The biggest difference comes from developing your product across the internet; Google, Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, etc. Amazon doesn’t care if you sell a product or someone else does. The bottom line is Amazon is selling the product no matter who the FBA seller is. So if you really want to get an edge you’re going to have to do it elsewhere. Work on what you can control.
Don’t Rely Entirely On Amazon For Sales
Build a business that doesn’t rely entirely on Amazon. Sell a great product and then use Amazon’s website to supplement your sales. What if you get kicked off of Amazon? That’s a serious concern and it happens all the time! Most of the time you won’t even know why you got kicked off Amazon. They’ll just tell you you got kicked off of Amazon because you broke some policy. Once you look up the policy you’ll see that there are 10 different things you could’ve done wrong that would’ve been against that particular rule or regulation, so that doesn’t narrow down exactly what you would need to fix in order to quickly get back on Amazon with your product. In addition to that, even if you can fix the problem and appeal to Amazon to get your account activated again, it often takes weeks or months for that process to be completed. If Amazon is your only source of sales, you will have no income during that time.
Do you want to have an e-commerce company or do you want to work for Amazon? That’s a choice you’re making when you decide whether
to sell only on Amazon, or to build a business around the product using Amazon as your fulfillment service and a part of your traffic source. If you have a great business outside Amazon, and Amazon kicks you off their website, your income will not go away completely. You can take your time and fix whatever happened with Amazon, put in your appeal, and wait for the response. All the while, your income is still flowing. Of course, Amazon is a great way to sell your product, but it’s not the only way, or at least it shouldn’t be.
The Best Branding
The best branding you can get will come from other people. If you do a Google search for a product, you’ll find results like “the 15 best keyboards for your computer”. You definitely want those types of websites to list your product among “the best”. You can capitalize on their traffic to sell your product. This is called a “backlink”. Google uses backlinks from good websites to rank your content. It shows Google that other trustworthy websites and people trust you. That way Google doesn’t have to gauge every individual website by themselves. It can rely on a general consensus around the internet as to whether or a website offers good service, product, or valuable content.
Build up your website, get some great images and videos of your product, then start reaching out to influencers and review websites to do a review of your product. Many times this is all it takes to go viral with a product. You may be asked to pay for someone to do the review. That is perfectly reasonable. Depending on how many followers the influencer has, they may charge anywhere from $300-$700 or more to feature your product. It is worth it. The video or blog post they do to feature your product will last forever. It’s not like a television advertisement where people see it one time for 30 seconds and that’s it.
Risky Business
What if you get kicked off of Amazon? That’s a serious concern and it happens all the time! Most of the time you won’t even know why you got kicked off Amazon. They’ll just tell you you got kicked off of Amazon because you broke some policy. Once you look up the policy you’ll see that there are 10 different things you could’ve done wrong that would’ve been against that particular rule or regulation, so that doesn’t narrow down exactly what you would need to fix in order to go on Amazon again with your product. In addition to that,
even if you can fix the problem and appeal to Amazon to get your account activated again, it often takes weeks or months for that process to be completed. During that time, you will have no income if Amazon is your only source of sales. Do you want to have a physical products/e-commerce company? Or do you want to work for Amazon? That’s a choice you’re making when you determine whether or not to sell only on Amazon or to build a business around the product using Amazon as your fulfillment service and a part of your traffic source. If you have a great business outside Amazon, and Amazon kicks you off their website, your income will not go away completely. You can take your time and fix whatever happened with Amazon, put in your appeal, and wait for the response. All the while, your income is still flowing. Of course, Amazon is a great way to sell your product, but it’s not the only way, or at least it shouldn’t be.
Show-off Your Brand
Have a display created to display your product. Bring the display with some inventory to a few of your local stores. Ask the shop owners and store managers if you can place your product in their store. Most likely they have a process through which you can become a vendor or supply your brand to their store. Find out what the process is and go through the motions. Take it step-by-step, store by store. Each store will have a slightly different process.
Find out if you can have your products distributed to all locations of their store. This is even better if you’re dealing with a store that has locations all over the country. It does take some financial investment to make the displays and provide the inventory to the stores but when people see your product at their local store, then again when they go online, they are much more likely to trust your brand. People will feel like they know you, and because they saw you at a store they trust, they know they can trust you. It may seem counterintuitive to put your product in a physical store in order to get more online sales, but it works!