How to Start Selling on Amazon: First Steps to Your Success

With 200 million unique visitors each month, Amazon is the most popular e-commerce site globally. Such an audience of customers allows 46% of stores to earn up to $5 thousand per month. And 67% of sellers start earning during the first months of running the business.

The most popular categories are electronics, clothing and footwear, jewelry, household, and kitchen goods. Moreover, these categories are five times more expensive on Amazon.com than abroad.

Amazon is a very promising platform for entrepreneurs. While Etsy is mostly for handmade manufacturers just starting their business, Amazon is suitable for running and scaling up your brand. According to a survey, more than 30% of customers make more than 100 shipments per month.

Moreover, selling online abroad is easy, and merchants have many opportunities. So, our blog post by SellerSonar will cover quick and practical advice on starting your business with Amazon as effectively as possible.

Business on Amazon: How It Works

Amazon is a marketplace where you can buy everything from children’s toys to auto parts for vans. The main advantage of this platform is that the seller does not need to create their website or a page on social networks, promote themselves on the market, come up with advertising creatives, and even deliver goods to final customers.

Instead, it is enough to register in the system and upload information about the products: titles, descriptions with main features, photos, and videos. And voilà – you can wait for the first buyers.

Selling goods on Amazon is as easy as ABC and looks as follows:

• Merchants order a batch of goods that they want to sell from manufacturers or suppliers.
• They send these items to the Amazon warehouse. The goods are stored there until the order is placed.
• When you get your first order, warehouse workers form a package with your products and send it to the specified address.

Such convenient logistics with little or no seller involvement is available through a particular FBA program (Fulfillment By Amazon), when the platform itself is responsible for storing and delivering goods.

Participation in this program isn’t free – Amazon takes some commission for placement, storage, and delivery of products. FBA fee is calculated for each product listed on the website. The cost depends on the weight, dimensions of the items, the storage in the warehouse period, and the packaging and delivery cost. You can use the Amazon FBA calculator to estimate potential fees and profits and, thus, decide whether to sell a particular product.

How to Start Selling Products on Amazon?

Before registering on Amazon.com, we recommend analyzing:

• competitors who sell similar products on the platform;
• the target audience to whom you will sell those goods.

Pay attention to the descriptions in the listings of your competitors’ products, how they design them, what keywords and phrases they use, and so on. It is where knowing the basics of SEO comes in handy.

Now, let’s proceed directly with how sellers can register on Amazon.

Step 1. Choose a plan

Go to the registration page, find the Pricing section and choose Compare Selling Plans. Then, a window for selecting a tariff plan will open. Amazon offers two types of tariffs for sellers: Individual and Professional ones.

The cost of the first plan is one dollar. With it, you can sell only up to forty items per month.

The Professional plan costs $40 per month and includes:

• an option to sell more than forty units of goods per month;
• advertising support;
• advanced sales tools like API and custom reports;
• use of categories.

For starters, you can try the Individual tariff. However, if you want to immediately connect additional features, select the Professional one.

Step 2. Fill in information about yourself and your company

You will be asked to enter the country’s name, type of business, and personal details.

Step 3. Congratulations, you are an Amazon seller!

After entering all the data and paying for the tariff plan, you will become a seller. Now you can list your products and offer them to customers.

How Not to Sell Items on Amazon

Let’s look at five of the most common mistakes entrepreneurs make when selling products on Amazon.

• Sellers do not attach certificates for goods. Keep in mind the additional requirements for products you intend to offer in the US and other countries. It will help to avoid problems with their sale.
• Sellers offer goods as an individual instead of a company. In the former case, the tax amount is two and a half times less. The company pays tax exclusively on the profits received, while the individual pays tax on the entire amount of income.
• Sellers do not check products against the database of US trademarks. As a result, Amazon might block the account and stop their goods sale.
• Sellers provide counterfeit patented goods. In this case, your account will be blocked. And in the worst case, the patent holder can sue you.
• Sellers ignore the countries’ tax bases in which the goods are sold. Doing so might get a fine from the states’ government where the companies sell their products.

Ten Tools to Help You Success on Amazon

Finally, we have compiled valuable services to make your life as an Amazon seller much easier and even increase your profits. Feel free to benefit from any to your taste.

1.  All-in-one program to monitor Amazon listings. Tracks changes to products, BuyBox hijackers, customer reviews, and keyword rank history with notifications. Provides free Amazon FBA calculator.
2. Keyworx. Tracks keywords on Amazon.
3. AMZScout. Analyzes data on goods sold on the marketplace.
4. Profit bandit. Automatically calculates profits and fees for each product.
5. Unicorn Smasher. Helps to quickly track competitors: products, descriptions, prices, and even sales.
6. AMZ Finder. Automatically sends review request emails and manages testimonials and orders.
7. Amazon SEO Consultant. Researches and analyzes keywords, optimizes and improves description pages.
8. Camel. Tracks price changes for competitors’ products.
9. Feedback Whiz. Synchronizes orders, customer data, reviews, and comments.
10. Uspto. Validates existing brands and registers new ones in the US.

To sum up, business on Amazon is available for any budget and level of experience in e-commerce. Want to play long – start your private label and sell via the FBA model. If you do not plan to invest a lot, but want to try your hand, choose online arbitrage. These business models allow for remote management, and you can sell goods to any country.

Whether it is worth starting an Amazon business in 2024: the answer is clear. The platform remains the most popular online store in the United States, and its popularity will only grow within the next few years. So, don’t be afraid to join the community of online retailers, develop a strategy to promote your brand, look for new customers, and scale your business.