Product Sourcing News   

Are you Selling on "the River"?

Here are Five Amazon Basics

By: Steve Lindhorst

Have you begun selling on Amazon yet? eBayers have affectionately dubbed the site “the river” when chatting on the eBay discussion boards. Why the nick name? Because the Amazon and eBay marketplaces are neck and neck. If you haven’t started selling on Amazon, you’re missing out on millions of potential customers.

Some eBay sellers hesitate to get started on Amazon.com because it seems foreign. Like a strange land. In fact, there are differences. But if you learn them, you can join a vast number of people just like yourself and tap into an entirely new source of customers. Let’s look at some of the main considerations when selling on Amazon.

Site Organization

When you sell on eBay, you craft each individual listing to stand out. Each item has its very own page on the eBay website. Shoppers are greeted with a host of unique sellers, displaying their various personalities and styles on their eBay item pages.

On Amazon, the product holds center stage. Each product, based on its unique identifier (UPC, ISBN, etc) has its own page. That page is called the Product Detail Page. When the first seller of a particular product lists that product, he creates a new Product Detail Page, along with a description, and other details about the product. That shiny new Product Detail Page then gets categorized, and becomes part of the Amazon catalog.

Once the page is in the catalog of products, anyone who has that exact product to sell may add their name to the Product Detail Page as a seller. Shoppers shop for a product, then choose the seller they like best from the list of sellers on the Product Detail Page. They make their choice based on many factors including: price, seller feedback, condition, etc.

Seller Fees

It is free to list your items on Amazon.com. The seller fees are associated with actual sales, not listings. When you sell your item, you will be charged a percentage of the sale price. This percentage varies according to the category of the sold item. At first glance, the percentage may seem high, compared to eBay. But once you figure all eBay fees (including unsold item listing fees), and PayPal fees, Amazon comes out about even.

Amazon offers two types of seller accounts. One is called an Individual Seller account, and the other is a Pro Merchant account. Individual Sellers pay $.99 per item on top of the percentage when they make a sale. Pro Merchants pay $39.99 per month, and the $.99 per item fee is waived. Pro Merchants also get to create Product Detail Pages, and have access to other tools and benefits.

The bottom line is: if you only sell a few items per month, stick with the Individual Seller account. If you sell 40+ items per month, go for the Pro Merchant account.

Shoppers Are Not All the Same

Amazon shoppers expect high quality service, and they will pay for it. The typical Amazon shopper is a bit more affluent, and is willing to pay a little higher price, than the average web shopper.

Amazon shoppers are also quite loyal to Amazon. They tend to shop on Amazon rather than surfing all around the web looking to save a nickel. They want their item quickly, and they want to get out.

No Deadbeats!

One thing you don’t have to worry about when selling on Amazon – deadbeats. Amazon collects the payment for you. When they say you’ve sold an item, you can take it to the bank. If for some reason the buyer’s payment fails after Amazon has told you to ship – they will cover the cost. They have a world-class fraud protection that protects not only buyers, but sellers too.

Amazon collects your payments and makes a deposit in your bank account every month. After the first month, you can request your funds more often, up to once every 24 hours.

The Amazon Seller Community

Generally speaking, the Amazon sellers you find on discussion boards are professional, and helpful. Of course there’s a cranky one every now and then. But most people focus on selling.

You’ll find people tend to handle site changes (which do not occur often) with little emotion. There are many large businesses selling right alongside small sellers on what appears to be a very level playing field.

Try Selling on “the River”

You have a lot to gain and little to lose selling on Amazon. Try starting with something easy. You can learn all the basics to selling on Amazon at www.SellingOnTheRiver.com

Webinar with Steve Lindhorst on Monday August 3rd at 9:00pm EST. Click the banner below to register to attend. You can also sign up for our other upcoming webinars from that page.