Registering to begin selling on Amazon's Marketplace is rather straightforward. Knowing what are good sellers and finding the optimum price requires more effort, often this is trial and error. With more experience it is possible to further understand which products sell easier than others. You will often find the best course of action is to just list the item and track its progress rather than hold back on more listings. There are different resources and strategies you can implement to increase your success and potentially earn more money. Amazon and eBay are very similar in some ways, some of these ideas are applicable to both. There are also many websites on the internet that give advice regarding hints and tips on improving your selling technique.
Selling hints and tips for amazon marketplace
One of the biggest questions sellers will be asking is what do people want to buy
- one of the best places to research is Amazon itself! A good tip is to visit other third party sellers and see
what items they are listing. This can provide new leads and insights of the selling
process. You could also be inspired by making some notes on other highly rated Marketplace sellers, in particular ones
that have sold hundreds or perhaps several thousand products and see how they are managing to meet their goals and
achieve success.
Amazon also list their best selling products in each product category, for example Electronics, Books or Music. This is
a great source of information revealing the top 100 product bestsellers - so you can find out the hottest selling
items on the worlds largest shopping website. The list is updated on an hourly basis and will tell you what people are
current buying on the site. Researching the bestseller lists will reveal what buyers are searching for,
it can also tell you current tastes and fashions in music, film, electronics and other products. An example of the top 100
Electronics and Photo products sold on Amazon can be found here.
There are lots of other websites online offering selling hints and tips for amazon marketplace incease your sales.
Sell unique or collectable items
One way to command a higher price is to sell unique and hard to find items. This can give you an edge over the thousands of other third party sellers. Another good technique is to try and locate products that others have not listed. If you can source items and yours is the only item listed then you can ask for a higher price due to its scarcity. As you would expect brand new items for sale will ask for a higher price versus second hand equivalents. Amazon have a special category - Collectable, where you can list rare or special edition products, for example, imported or limited edition CDs and DVDs.
Sell secondhand items
It is worth while trying to source secondhand products that you can buy cheap and resell on Marketplace. The best starting point is to locate items within the home that you longer need, for example, CDs, DVDs and books. Other items that can be sold are toys and electronic items that have no further use.
Identify products that offer repeated sales
If you find an item that sells with minimal effort then find out if it can be sourced again in the future to re-list. Depending on the item, some will sell easier than others, with time and patience it is possible to find items that will sell many times over. Over time, it is possible to get a better understanding and naturally find repeat sellers, sometimes you will stumble upon items which sell again and again.
Increase volume of product listings
Listing more items will present more opportunities to sell and increase earnings. More sales will inevitably mean more postage, packaging and general account management so you will need to account for extra time to process new sales.
Monitoring sales, are you selling enough ?
It is worth the effort to monitor ongoing sales and keep notes on what is selling successfully and any that are not. If you are an Individual Marketplace seller then you can afford to cancel any items that are not selling and replace them with alternatives. Replacing items that never sell with ones that do will also increase earnings, the idea is to remove non sellers and keep the best sellers. It is wise to review sales statistics once in a while as fashion and tastes can change, what sells today may not sell as well tomorrow. Successful products can even become unavailable for various reasons, the best course of action is to research new potential items to sell and begin listing them and track their progress. Remember, it is free to list items (as long as you are not a Pro-merchant subscriber) so you can experiment listing items which will cost nothing even if they do not sell.
Increased sales at Christmas
Ensure you are listing the optimum amount of products during the lead up to and including the Christmas period. Traffic at this time of year can easily increase 2-3 fold, there will be far more buyers searching the web for presents and gifts. Web traffic typically starts to increase at the end of the year from September - after the August summer holidays. Online traffic will also increase during October and November, which are some of the busiest months of the year for selling on the internet. December, with the Christmas holiday is not as busy as buyers will want to buy gifts and presents in advance so sales tend to ease off by early-mid December. January and February are also busy months, many people will be offloading their unwanted Christmas gifts onto Amazon (and eBay) and many buyers will be expecting to shop online and pick up a few bargains. You will increase your chances of earning some extra money during Christmas and the New Year, it is worth trying to list more items than any time of the year and focus on sought after products.
Set prices according to buyer perception
One of the things we often do when deciding on prices is to work out how much the item has cost at source price and then calculate other expenses for the product such as postage and the closing fees to arrive at the target sale price. A different strategy is to define the amount charged for the item for sale based on what the buyer perceives to be a good price and what they are prepared to pay, this is not directly based on the actual cost of the item. This is really saying don't charge too much for a product as you run the risk of not being able to sell it but you want to set an optimum price based on buyer perception.
Buy stamps in bulk, first and second class
If you are posting most of your items yourself then you will be buying and using a large quantity of stamps which all adds to the overall expenses. Unfortunately at this level of selling there is no discount on buying stamps in bulk from the Royal Mail. One way around this problem, and to save some money, is in fact to bulk buy 1st/2nd class stamps. 1st/2nd class stamps are labelled as such and do not quote a price, this means stamps bought today can theoretically be used at any time in the future. The Royal Mail usually increases the price of stamps each year in April, bulk buying before the April price rise makes a worth while saving. If you are anticipating a consistent high volume of sales then you may want to consider buying several hundred or perhaps several thousand in advance from the post office.
Seek cheaper packaging materials
You can save money by sourcing cheaper materials for posting items. The best thing to do is shop around for the best and cheapest prices, or by materials in bulk. Any savings on packaging will allow you to make even more profit.
Weigh products using your own equipment
Buying your own set of weighing scales can help reduce the time in the packaging and posting process. Items can be weighed and stamped at home and not the post office. Items ready for dispatch can simply be posted at a post box or larger items left at the post office. Weighing the items yourself means you can be confident the buyer receives their item, rather than run the risk of the buyer disappointment in having to pay extra postage at their local collections office before collecting the package. Ensuring correct postage will reduce the chances of the buyer leaving negative feedback on the seller's account.
Exploit television, film and radio advertising to sell more products
Another tip for increasing sales is to time listings, or atleast ensure items are listed when the product has been recently advertised on the television or radio. For example, Television advertising music videos or concerts would encourage buyers to hit the web and look for the same merchandise online. If you are specialising in selling music CDs, DVD films then you could ensure these are listed when a film is about to be shown on television, this will increase traffic to Amazon and similar sites. Buyers will often search online the next day looking to buy films along with their soundtracks available on CD and DVD formats.
Earn positive feedback from buyers
When dispatching items always ensure to package and post promptly to get the best possible chance of positive feedback. As previously mentioned, double check the packaging contains the correct postage address buyers will expect the transaction to run smoothly. This will help you to protect your feedback, higher feedback scores will lead to more trust and therefore an increased chance of buyers deciding to buy from your product listings, or the same buyers returning to buy more.
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