Introduction

LIZ ADAMSON |

A Consultant's Guide

to Amazon Success

A Consultant's Guide to Amazon Success

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

Finance and Operations Chapter 1: 3 Steps to Ensuring Profitability on Amazon Chapter 2: Fulfillment by Amazon or Fulfillment by Merchant? Chapter 3: LTSF & Storage Requirements: Keep Inventory Moving Chapter 4: 5 Principles of Inventory Management Chapter 5: Repricing Tools: 5 Ways to Grow Your Bottom Line Chapter 6: Amazon Seller Performance Metrics

Sales and Marketing Chapter 7: Understanding the Amazon Search Algorithm Chapter 8: How to Optimize Amazon Product Pages Chapter 9: Amazon Enhanced Brand Content Chapter 10: Gathering Amazon Product Reviews Chapter 11: What You Need to Know About Amazon Sponsored Products Chapter 12: More Amazon Sponsored Product Tips for Merchants

Keep Learning Chapter 13: What You Don't Know Can Hurt You Chapter 14: Choosing and Preparing for Educational Trade Shows

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A Consultant's Guide to Amazon Success

Introduction

Selling on Amazon is an exciting venture. From the endless opportunities to the ever changing rules, being an Amazon seller never seems to be dull. Over the last 6 years, I have helped dozens of sellers navigate the platform while increasing sales and profits and, hopefully, maintaining their sanity. This eBook contains a collection of articles I have written to share tried and true best practices and tips I have used to coach sellers to success on the Amazon marketplace.

The book is broken into three sections: Finance and Operations, Sales and Marketing, and Keep Learning. You may be tempted to jump ahead to what appears to be the exciting part, generating sales, but I encourage you to read from front to back. While they may seem like tedious subjects, finance, inventory management, repricing and so on create an important foundation for successful selling. Following a few guidelines will help you plan for profitability and a smoother operation.

I have also put together this book assuming you already have a product to sell. This is not an overview of how to create or find the next big product or trend. There are plenty of people out there who will give you a step by step process for how to find up and coming products on Amazon, or how to create a new product that beats the existing competition. As a former product manager and developer, I'll just say that whatever you sell, be sure that you understand the customer and what they want. Make sure that you are differentiated from the competition. If you are a brand owner selling your own product, find ways to solve customer problems in a way that no one else can. Combine that with great marketing and branding and you'll have a winner. If you are a reseller selling a great product that someone else created, make sure you are providing a great experience to the customer and are watching the competition. As soon as other sellers see your success they'll find a way to buy and sell the same or a similar product.

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A Consultant's Guide to Amazon Success In all of this, keep in mind that Amazon is constantly changing. Even at this writing there are recently introduced features such as brand registry 2.0 that pose new challenges and opportunities for sellers. I have tried to cover topics that are basic principles to successful selling on Amazon and can still be applied as the marketplace evolves. Creating and growing an Amazon business is full of challenges, frustration and excitement. A successful business will be nimble enough to react to a quickly changing marketplace, the ever increasing competition and, perhaps most importantly, will position themselves to delight the customer. After all, Amazon's success was built on an obsession over the customer and they are holding you to the same standard.

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A Consultant's Guide to Amazon Success

Finance and Operations

Chapter 1: 3 Steps to Ensuring Profitability on Amazon

A friend once told me that the field he worked in was so cutthroat that most business owners were either losing money or losing money and just didn't know it yet. His observation can be applied to many industries, and it rings especially true for Amazon sellers. It can be very easy for third-party sellers to bleed cash with every sale and not know it until it's too late. One client who was relatively new to Amazon asked me to help calculate his profitability for a couple of product lines. Adding up all his cost of goods, shipping, Amazon fees and overhead expenses for each product, we found the expenses for his primary product line were almost equal to his sales. He clearly wasn't making enough money to reinvest in his business or even give himself a decent paycheck. Here are three steps you can take to ensure that with each sale you are putting cash into your pocket, and not just Amazon's.

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