Amazon is one of the most reputable online marketplaces in the world. Starting your business on a platform with over 300 million active users sounds like a solid idea.
But how to start? Is it going to be profitable? What are the pros and cons? So many questions you need to take care of before practicing.
If you are going to start your online business on Amazon, this blog will help you to figure out three crucial questions that new sellers care about the most.
Ⅰ. How much does it cost to sell on Amazon?
This is actually a very big question because when it comes to selling on Amazon, there are many business models, such as wholesale, retail, private label, or just things like how FBA differs from FBM will also lead to adjustments in budget.
But since here we are just talking about dropshipping this one model which is really hard to use FBA, the answer would be just the basic required fee of the platform.
Take Amazon U.S. store as an example, when it comes to selling plans you have two options: individual and professional, if you choose an individual plan then the cost will be $0.99 per unit sold and you can only sell up to 40 units per month.
The professional plan, on the other hand, doesn’t have a limitation on the selling quantity, but it requires a $39.99 monthly service fee.
Spending more money to start an Amazon business does not always mean more success for the seller. In fact, sellers who started with less money sometimes find success even faster and have lasted longer than those who started with a big budget.
Ⅱ. Is dropshipping legit on Amazon?
We all know that Amazon sellers get suspended pretty easily, so it’s better not to touch the line the platform set up for sellers. Is dropshipping allowed on Amazon then? Let’s find out through their official policy terms.
So yes, Amazon allows dropshipping on their marketplace as long as you follow these few rules:
– Always be the seller of record for products.
– Identify yourself as the seller on packing slips, invoices, and other information in connection with products.
– Remove all information that identifies the third-party seller before shipping the order, including invoices, external packaging, packing slips, etc.
– Stay responsible for accepting and processing returns.
It’s also worth mentioning that except getting an account on Amazon if you already have a successful Shopify store, you can just easily integrate with Amazon and start selling as well.
This integration is actually an amazing thing cause it allows you to leverage the incredible traffic Amazon can offer, while still making sure that you are not putting all eggs in one basket, as we all know, if the store gets suspended on Amazon, you may not be able to withdraw the money you make on it.
Ⅲ. Amazon Dropshipping Tips
Almost 50% of online shoppers start their product search on Amazon, so it’s important for you to find the winning product, which can help you stand out from the numerous options that consumers are facing.
Although finding winning products is always the essential step in eCommerce, when finding products for Amazon stores, there are a bit more things to pay attention to.
First and foremost, don’t choose the same product or the substitute of items that are in Amazon prime, and there are many Google extensions that can help you do this, such as Prime Away or AMZ Prime filter, once you download this kind of tools then you can go straight to the Amazon page and only view products that are not Prime sellers.
Except for Prime sellers, you’d also wanna avoid products that are sold by FBA sellers or Amazon itself, cause you just simply can’t compete with them from all perspectives, so do remember to stay out of their zone when choosing products.
And of course, if you wanna get more help with product searching instead of just simply filtering out prime or FBA sellers, there are also tons of tools you can choose from, like AMZScout, Jungle Scout, etc.
Conclusion
People say that online businesses are passive income, once the store is on track you don’t need to take care of it too much. Not saying this is entirely wrong, but you might want to pay more attention to your orders when running an Amazon store.
As a seller on Amazon, you can’t cancel the order and if the shipping label is not uploaded on time, your metrics will get hurt really bad and even get suspended. So be standby for any order is definitely an initial quality of an Amazon seller.
