Amazon Marketing

Steps to take to become a successful Amazon seller:

• Launch a seller account based on your customer account or create a new commercial account tied to your business email.
• Decide on your primary activity: resale of existing products or distribution of your unique products. You can engage in both.
• Prepare your contact, financial, and security data and submit it to Amazon to launch a personal account.
• Choose an account type. You can work as an individual seller without having to pay monthly fees or as a professional seller who pays monthly fees but, at the same time, can display an unlimited number of items and listings, has access to all categories and enjoys some other benefits.
• Add items to your store. Check out the list of prohibited items to make sure you do not violate the marketplace’s policies.
• Create killer listings to make your items attractive. Use high-quality images and meaningful and unique descriptions. Read Amazon’s general requirements to the content of listings, as well as requirements for individual categories.
• Keep in mind that multiple Amazon traders can sell the same product. Therefore, you need to attract customers to your items by offering fast shipping and competitive prices and using a rich set of marketing tactics.
• Get customer reviews to increase the trustworthiness of your store in the eyes of future clients.

The registration process for book sellers is similar to the registration of all other categories of Amazon traders. Once you have registered as an individual or professional seller, make the following steps to display your items on the platform:

• Other traders may sell the same book, so first, search for it in the catalog. Select the Books category and type the title in a search bar. If no similar offers are available, create a new listing. If there are competitor sellers, visit the page of a similar item and hit the “Sell on Amazon” button.
• Set your price. To attract customers as a new seller, it’s reasonable to demand a bit less than your competitors. At the same time, you need to keep in mind storage and shipping fees, unless you sell on the FBA basis, and not depreciate your items, since you risk losing more than you gain.
• Provide comprehensive information on the book’s condition and characteristics.
• Specify shipping terms. You can ship products to buyers on your own or take advantage of Amazon’s fulfillment. In the latter case, the marketplace undertakes responsibility for the storage and delivery of your products.
• Once you save edits to the product card, it will be displayed in the catalog.
• Regularly check your account not to miss customer requests and score negative reviews due to poor service.

You do not need a business license unless you sell federally regulated products: some foods, drugs, medical devices, radiation-emitting electronic products, cosmetics, dietary supplements, and tobacco. For all other categories, it’s enough to register on the marketplace as a seller.

You are also not required to create an LLC for your small Amazon store. You can work as a sole proprietorship and pay business taxes along with personal taxes. It’s recommended to launch an LLC when you start hiring employees, to draw a line between personal and business expenses.   

It may be necessary to register a DBA if you are doing business as someone else but yourself.

Keep in mind that sales taxes need to be collected for each state to which you sell. Also, Federal Tax ID is needed to create a business bank account.

A business bank account is not required if you work as a sole proprietor. You can just create two separate accounts for personal and commercial purposes. In this case, your social security number will be used as the taxpayer identification number. But if you decide to shift to an LLC, it’s EIN is obligatory.

Some proven ways to boost Amazon sales:

• Offer competitive prices, especially if many other stores sell the same products as yours.
• Acquire a professional seller status to display more products. It enables you to sell an unlimited number of items per month, upload them in bulk and use advanced reporting. Also, instead of paying $0.99 for each item sold, you pay a monthly fee of $39.99. If you sell 100 items per month, the fee would amount to $39.99 instead of $99.
• Sell on the FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) basis. Delegate the storage and delivery of your items to the marketplace, to devote more time to the promotion of your store and attraction of new clients.
• Acquire Buy Box. It provides you with the exclusive right to sell a particular item before your competitors. To gain this privilege, you need to prove your superiority and show compliance with Amazon requirements.
• Optimize your titles and descriptions for the marketplace’s internal search by embedding in them as many strong keywords as possible.
• Collect reviews and feedback to build a trustworthy brand image.
• Leverage Sponsored Products to display your items on search pages and pages of related products.  
• Promote your store aside from Amazon to attract targeted traffic.

The PPC (Pay Per Click) scheme implies that you pay for Amazon advertising exclusively when your ads are clicked and your links are followed. It keeps you assured that your marketing budget is not wasted on the audience not interested in your offers. You can flexibly control your expenses by limiting the sum to be spent on promotional efforts. It’s recommended to start from a low budget, experiment with various strategies and gradually increase it.

If multiple sellers compete for the same advertising spot, Amazon compares their bids and displays the most expensive ad. The interesting peculiarity is that the owner of the most expensive ad pays the price set by the competitor following them on the list. If the highest bid is $3 and the second-highest bid is $2, the winner would pay $2.

Different kinds of ads are displayed on a PPC basis:

• Sponsored Products promoting a single item; featured on Amazon’s internal SERPs and related product pages
• Sponsored Brands promoting your store and up to three items; can be found on search results pages
• Sponsored Display featuring a single product; displayed both within and beyond the Amazon marketplace, providing access to a more extensive target audience