Tag: selling on Amazon

How to Start Selling on Amazon – Do You Have What it Takes?

I am a serial entrepreneur having started my first business when I was in my twenties and now almost thirty years later, am able to say I have never drawn a salary from someone else in all that time.

Three years ago I started a new product business centred around my passion for helping others. I saw a need and I saw pain in others which I postulated I could solve if only I could come up with a product that would do the job.

I spent about a year researching the market, looking at other products that were available, buying them all and trying them out. I made countless notes of what was good about them and what was not so good. I created a gap analysis and once I’d figured out what the gaps were, I tried to work out how I could fill those gaps.

I created a quick and dirty ad and put it up on google and sent people to a landing page that I created with a free website builder to drive people to a short 5 question survey, which I also created with free survey software. I asked them what they wanted and that also gave me an opportunity to not only get to know the potential market and their pain points but I was also able to gauge interest in my idea by measuring the click through rate (CTR) on my ads. I was able to test out some keywords and determine if there really was a market for my idea.

Then once tested, I went into searching for a manufacturer, developing the product and eventually landing a couple of pallets of my own product! A very exciting day indeed.

I launched my first website and had my first sale within the first day. I knew then and there that I had a winner. I have gone on to expand the product range and the countries into which I sell.

I stumbled on Amazon as I was looking for the best way to sell my product in the US. In my country, Amazon is just a book seller so it took a bit of research to discover what Amazon had to offer in the US.

I launched on Amazon.com about eighteen months ago, and got my first sale almost straight away. Again, I knew I had the right market, the right channel to market and the right product at the right time.

Why am I telling you all this?

Because I am saddened to see so many would-be entrepreneurs on Facebook who have been led to believe that this business is a paint-by-numbers business and who are unwittingly buying into the dream.

They are being encouraged to download the podcasts, do the training, sometimes paying exorbitant prices, sometimes free. Follow the steps in the exact order in which they are laid out, and then voila! Before you know it you’ll be leaving the Dilbert cube and on your way to freedom. All it takes is the guts to take the plunge, and the rest is up to the process which you painstakingly follow.

Well, while it is true that some of these trainers have some great ideas and have certainly provided some people with the instruction manual to make a potential living out of this, the vast majority are not making a living – or even close. Not because the process manual is wrong necessarily, but because it is only half the story.

There is SO MUCH MORE to this business than what is able to be communicated via a training manual.

Those that succeed have either stumbled on a whiff of Lady Luck or they are extremely talented, smart, budding entrepreneurs who would have succeeded in any business venture they put their mind to.

But is that you, or are you one of those posting questions like:

“I have decided this is going to be my future, what ideas do you have to give me, any help would be much appreciated”.

“I am trying to find my first product and finding it really difficult. Can anyone take a look at this chart and tell me what you think?”

“What does it mean, ‘verified’ reviews?”

“With all these changes on Amazon, how is someone new going to be able to launch a new product?”

“I launched my product on Amazon a month ago and have spent $200 on PPC and still no sales, does anyone know why?”

“Three months ago I opened my shop on Shopify and I have not had any sales. Can you please look at my shop and provide me with some ideas?”

These are all great questions, but not the questions someone imminently planning to go into business should be asking. If you don’t know how to turn on the post notifications in Facebook so you can follow the responses to other people’s questions and posts, then I am not the only one who thinks you are possibly not the person to succeed in PL selling on Amazon.com.

I know I probably sound harsh to some of you, but I intend to be. I want to stop the vast majority of you from losing money, I want to stop you from giving away your hard earned dollars to a world you don’t understand.

And before all the grumblers get on my case and say “you can’t swim unless you dive in the water” and “ just do it” and “don’t listen to all the negative talk” and “you can do it, just take action” etc, etc, blah, blah…

That is all just so unfair to be letting people believe that!

If you are one of those who lucked onto a product and you are netting $50k a month and working three hours a day and languishing on a beach somewhere, then I’m really happy for you. But you represent about 1% of all those who try.

If you are one of the hard workers who worked seriously hard to find the right product, followed your passion and learned everything there is to learn the hard way, failed a few times and got back up, exercised patience, lost sleep, and kept on going, then you represent about 10% of all those who try. An you are the guys who would have succeeded at anything you put your mind to – with or without the training manuals.

But if you are one of these and you are encouraging others to follow in your footsteps and “give it a go, why not?” then you are not, in my humble opinion, doing anyone any favors.

And you are failing to recognize your own unusually high level of skill and intelligence which makes you one of the 10 percent success stories. It is not kind to be perpetuating this idea that you only have to take the leap and anything can be achieved.

For those of you who are considering starting this journey, let me ask you this one question: Do you believe you can do this without the training manuals and without the step-by-step podcasts? If your answer is yes, then congratulations – advance to the next stage and start the journey. By all means download the podcasts and learn everything you can while doing your own due-diligence. Depart from the paint-by-numbers instructions as often as you can and make your own way in this.

As a side note: Like many successful PL sellers before me, I started my Amazon journey without any training manuals or step-by-step instructions and I never once gave away product in return for a review because I didn’t believe in the ethics of it. But I’m killing my competitors who have thousands of reviews. Most of my products have less than 20 genuine organic reviews provided by customers who felt like leaving one.

But I digress.

If you answered a definite no to my question above, then please reconsider. You are not going to find everything it takes to make this journey a success if you intend to rely on the instruction manuals and podcasts alone. It just isn’t possible.

Apart from tenacity, intelligence, patience and perseverance, you need money – and quite a bit of it –  and you need to understand the marketing process. You need to understand supply and demand, the unique selling proposition, pricing strategies,  needs and gap analyses – and even if you don’t know what these mean, you need to instinctively be able to discover these answers along the way.

I have been so saddened by the posts of those who have not been able to grasp this business and who have lost their hard earned money.

This is not meant to be the doomsday chronicles but just a reasoned alternative point of view that may help prevent some of you becoming the next statistic.

Amazon.com has made some huge changes of late aimed at slowing down the number of new PL sellers getting in their way. There must be millions of products sitting in Amazon’s FCs costing them money, and we know Bezos is not accustomed to spending a dime he doesn’t want to. So if he sees new inexperienced PL sellers costing him money, you can bet your bottom dollar he will continue to slow you down or run you out. He will reward the high turnover sellers and constrain the newbies.

So please take heed and do not jump into the Amazon.com business unless you are sure you can become one of the ten percent.

Amazon Sellers Advice: Beware the checkbox of death

Last weekend I lost 75% of my Amazon stock to one guy who took advantage of my ignorance and wiped me out. He now has, in his possession, hundreds of items that belonged to my business and he paid absolutely nothing for them.

My Amazon listing is now out of stock in five of the best selling variations since he was careful to only take the best sellers.

I am writing this because I want to warn all the other new sellers out there that this can happen, so it doesn’t happen to you.

I am a bit frustrated I have to admit, that I have spent at least 40 hours a week over the past few months, on top of time spent on my other businesses, reading everything available about how to manage a successful business on Amazon, yet I had never heard of the checkbox of death until it was too late.

So, what is the checkbox of death? It is an option which is checked by default in Seller Central, that ensures any promotion codes you create are posted publicly on your Amazon listing. That way, anyone who goes to your product listing can see the code they need to put in at checkout to take advantage of the promotion. Sounds reasonable.

Problem is, all the “how to sell on Amazon” advice out there tells you that you have to get as many reviews as you can, as fast as you can, to be successful. The current advice is to give product away in return for reviews, because, among other reasons, amazon allows this, provided the reviewer declares they received the product for free in return for their honest and unbiased review.

All good so far. Except the only way to give product away on Amazon is to provide the reviewers with free promotion codes. And, yes, unless you know about unchecking the box that unhelpfully says “detail page display text”, the code goes public and the outcome is potentially shattering.

But the unfortunate thing for a newbie is this, what the hell does that mean? What is a detail page and what is the display text? No explanation is given, no little question mark offering some explanation as to what this means. And since the box is checked by default, any newbie (who is in a hurry and trying to juggle 10 things at once, like me) is going to assume that one should leave it that way. I would certainly not check a box I didn’t understand, but equally I wouldn’t uncheck a box I didn’t understand.

Usability testing 101 Amazon. That box would do no harm if it was left up to the user to decide whether to check it or not. Worst that could happen to someone setting up a promotion where the code needed to be public, would be they would realize it’s not visible on their listing and they could go put it in. A much less devastating outcome than the way it is designed at the moment.

This one checkbox is apparently the source of many, many sellers being in my shoes. It has apparently sent many sellers to the wall. This is so common that it has been dubbed the checkbox of death.

Before I go on, and lest I don’t do this warning properly, there’s another checkbox that you need to know about too, the one that says “one redemption per customer”. At least this one is pretty obvious. If you don’t check this box and you give a code to a reviewer, he can give it to anyone else and they – and potentially hundreds of others, can use it too. At least the description of that one makes perfect sense, but I thought I’d mention it as apparently it’s also the reason many sellers have been wiped out.

Anyhow, back to the story. The weekend for me was devastating as I tried valiantly to save my stock as it was running out the door and down the drain. Firstly, I rang Amazon within one hour of the first 90 items being bought and asked them for some help. I couldn’t see that this person had used a promotion code, it looked like they were legitimately buying the stock, which I knew was a sign something was wrong. No one needs 90 garlic presses, let alone at full price!

The person I spoke to never alerted me to the potential folly of the checkbox, nor did she ask me if I had recently set up a promotion. She told me that she could see that all the sales were to one person, she also assured me Amazon protects their sellers and that I need not worry, if the sales turned out to be a problem, Amazon would reimburse me. She must have said at least three times, don’t worry about it, everything will be ok.

So I didn’t worry. Then 12 hours later there was another run on my stock, again I rang Amazon, again they were not much help. This is when I turned to this Facebook group of Amazon sellers and was alerted to the checkbox of death. I checked my promotion, found the issue, turned off the promotion (which takes four hours to take effect), and then watched helplessly on as the rest of my stock was wiped out.

The next 48 hours was spent trying to get Amazon to cancel the orders. This is not an easy task because,  although I was wiped out, all is good for Amazon. They supposedly have one very happy customer, and that’s what they are all about, happy customers.

I opened a few support cases with different titles and each time they read the case they closed it by forwarding it onto a “specialist team”. Each time they did that, I reopened the case and provided a phone number for someone to call (this was all happening outside normal business hours at Amazon, so there was no phone support). They closed, I reopened until finally someone called me!

Once I explained, they were somewhat helpful, but by now it was all too late. Most of the orders had gone out, and my stock was gone.

To add insult to injury as they say, I still don’t know what effect having my stock out there being controlled by someone who doesn’t understand it and didn’t pay for it, will have on my business in the US. Potentially even more damage to my business yet to come.

However, after I got over the devastation to my business and the feeling of being violated, by Tuesday I was back on the horse and had sent another shipment of stock to Amazon.

I’m largely an optimistic person and I do generally look for the silver lining. For me there were several positive outcomes, yes, truly there is.

With the sudden run on my products, the all-important Amazon sales rank metric has gone through the roof. That means that the Amazon algorithm thinks my product is hundreds of times more popular than it thought it was before the weekend, which has increased sales to the remaining stock and will positively impact sales when my stock is back. (This is one reason for sending more stock over as quickly as I could – might as well make the most of it, right?)

Second, I discovered that The Amazing Seller Facebook group was a remarkable group of supportive and caring people, which restores one’s faith in humans.

And third, I decided to tell my story so that I could help as many of you as I can. I hope that hundreds of Amazon newbie sellers read this so it doesn’t happen to them.

I am also very grateful for something else, which I hope is a lesson for others, and that is that I didn’t have all my eggs in the Amazon basket. I have several ecommerce sites which bring in sales from at least 12 other countries. I am currently building a structure of  resellers and distribution networks and warehouses all around the world, and sales are still strong everywhere else.

While this temporarily wiped out my Amazon business, it didn’t wipe out my business as a whole. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket, spread your risk!

So here’s my other piece of advice: never give up and don’t let the buggers get you down