You might have seen the orange “Best Seller” icon above an Amazon product listing. The badge tells shoppers that the item is popular and highly sought after. And, by extension, can give a really big sales boost to the seller.

Since social proof is a big factor in influencing shoppers, having the Amazon best seller badge shows buyers that the product is highly sought after and that the brand can be trusted.

Though with so much competition among sellers and potentially hundreds or thousands of competing products, it’s also incredibly difficult to get an Amazon best seller badge.

What is Amazon best seller?

There’s actually a lot of things that even Amazon sellers themselves don’t know about the best seller list and ranking criteria. The most common assumption is if you sell a lot of products in a short time, you’ll get into the Amazon best seller list.

Though that’s partially true, there are many more factors that influence how a product is tagged as a best selling item by Amazon. Why is it important to understand how Amazon ranks its products? That’s because the better you understand what makes a product a best selling item, the easier it will be for you to take actionable steps toward achieving just that.

Here’s a brief overview to help you get a better idea of how Amazon decides which are their best selling products:

The Amazon best seller ranking is relative

The speed of your sales (or sales velocity) definitely sends a strong signal to Amazon’s algorithm that the product is a hot selling item. At the same time, the best seller ranking is also compared in relation to other products within the same category.

Let’s say for instance you see a sudden jump in sales for your product, you might not necessarily see the item climb in Amazon best seller rankings. This is especially the case when Amazon sees that other products in that same category also experienced the same increase in sales.

The relative ranking is also the reason why newly launched products might get an Amazon best seller badge while a similar older product with more sales doesn’t have the badge.

Amazon uses predictive tech to determine rankings

If a product suddenly goes viral and gets a huge boost in sales, it’ll definitely be tagged by Amazon as a best selling item, right? Well, not necessarily.

Amazon has predictive features built into their algorithm that also takes into account the product’s historical data. That means recent sales is not the main factor that Amazon takes into account. It’s also able to predict, based on the historical data of the product, whether or not it’ll be able to overtake another similar product in a given time.

It’s evident that Amazon ranking is logarithmic in nature, which makes it harder and harder for a product to climb up each ladder in rankings. A large majority of products that are on the Amazon best seller list are often those that have the most amount of sales (in that product category) over a long period of time.

Amazon best seller ranking depends on BOTH sales and reviews

Amazon is pretty smart. Getting a lot of sales alone just won’t cut it. To get that highly sought after best seller icon, your product needs to also be good and of high quality. Which means the ranking will depend on both high volume of sales and a lot of good reviews.

It’s part of Amazon’s policy of not just being a marketplace that just sells products, but also a place where buyers can find products of the highest quality that meets their needs. If you want to be a successful Amazon seller and stay in the game for the long term, it’s best you also follow the same philosophy.

There’s no doubt that the online retail business is sales driven. But as an Amazon seller, it’s a good idea to not just focus on the numbers but also ensure that you’re selling a great product. That’s the only way to get as many good reviews and positive ratings as possible. Add that to a cumulative increase in sales, and you have a winning recipe to climbing Amazon’s best selling rankings.

So, as a seller, how exactly can you get the much coveted Amazon best seller badge?

Luckily for you, we dug deep to find the quickest, easiest and most cost-efficient ways that can help increase the potential of getting an Amazon best seller icon for your chosen product.

Here are 3 surprisingly easy hacks to propel your product to the Amazon best seller list:

Hack #1: Run regular product giveaways

Never underestimate the power of Amazon product giveaways.

It’s a great tactic to launch your products, but it’s also a smart way to get a quick boost in sales. While you’ll be “spending” money by giving away your products for free, it’s also a good alternative method of marketing your Amazon brand and capturing more sales at the same time.

Product giveaways is a pretty common tactic among experienced sellers who are launching a store or a new Amazon product. That’s how Amazon sellers get their first batch of sales and reviews. But, of course, it’s not a scalable method.

As we’ve mentioned earlier in this article, Amazon’s algorithm has predictive features that take into account both the product’s sales velocity and its historical sales data. Which means if your product only experiences a short burst of sales increase, Amazon won’t see that as a best seller signal. You’ll need a regular increase in sales as opposed to quick bursts followed by a lull in sales.

The quick solution? Don’t just run a single giveaway campaign at the start of your store or product launching. Instead, make it regular and spread it across the year. It might even be a good idea to run it during low shopping season, as that may help to even out your Amazon store’s overall, annual sales volume.

Note: If you’re an Amazon FBA seller, click here to get more information regarding doing product giveaways for Amazon FBA.

Hack #2: Drop your price to break-even

Now, this is a trick that’s as old as sales itself.

The main purpose is not to low-ball your competition by outpricing them, but rather to reduce your price as low as possible to increase your volume of sales per unit. The general rule is the higher the price, the lower the sales. And the lower the price, the higher the sales.

If you decide to try this tactic, make sure you price it smartly. Never price it below your cost price. Instead, reduce it to as near break-even price as possible. That way you won’t be sacrificing a larger sum except receiving a lesser profit margin. You can also run this on a regular basis and spread it across the year, especially during low season.

Hack #3: Change your Amazon product sub-category

Since the Amazon best seller ranking is relative, another smart way to boost your rankings and get the best selling badget within arms reach is to reduce the competition.

The easiest way to do that is to change your Amazon product sub-category to another similar category but one that is a lot less competitive. It may not work well for every type of product, but if you can make yours work then it might just make the process of getting an Amazon best seller badge a lot easier.

Here’s another secret (but related) tip: Use both the first and second hacks, after you change to a less competitive Amazon product sub-category. It will almost surely help you climb the Amazon best seller ranking much faster that you think.

Though these hacks might seem like quick shortcuts, there’s little doubt that getting an Amazon best seller can be very challenging. You might be lucky and get the badge quickly, or it may turn out to be a long grinding climb up the Amazon ranking ladder.

Either way, these tips will definitely make your journey a lot easier towards attaining that ever illusive (but profitable) Amazon best seller badge.

The post 3 Quick Hacks to Get Your Product on Amazon Best Seller List appeared first on Keyword Tool Blog: How to Find Great Keywords.

Through Amazon Merch, sellers can register an account, upload designs, and Amazon will handle everything else. Merch creators will not need to worry about product storage, fulfilment, shipping, and customer service. There are no upfront costs and Merch creators get paid on a per t-shirt basis. How cool is that?

With Merch by Amazon, you won’t need to order, design, and produce t-shirts in bulk, ship them to an Amazon fulfillment center, and hope that they’ll sell (before your storage fees pile on).

It’s not a surprise then that the service has seen tonnes of people joining to cash in on a potential passive income opportunity with Amazon. If you’re one of them, then read on to find out how to get started.

What is Merch by Amazon

In some ways, Merch by Amazon is similar to Amazon FBA. The main difference is that Merch creators only need to upload their designs, choose colours, and set a price. Literally everything else will be managed by Amazon.

Unlike Amazon Merch, Amazon FBA sellers will need to purchase products from a warehouse, liaise with the supplier, ship the items to an Amazon fulfilment center, run promotional and marketing campaigns, and closely manage inventories.

Amazon Merch is much more hands-off than that, and Merch creators have no limit to the number of t-shirts they’d like to sell. But there’s also a caveat – the amount of Amazon t-shirt designs you can upload and sell depends on which Tier you’re on. For all new accounts, you’ll start with Tier 10 and can only sell up to 10 t-shirts a month.

Breakdown of the Tier system:

If you want to get on to the upper tiers, you’ll need to sell more Amazon t-shirts than your tier number. For example, you need to sell more than 10 t-shirts to get into Tier 25. Looking to scale up to Tier 100? Then you’ll need to sell more than 25 t-shirts in a given month.

How to get started with Amazon Merch

When Amazon first introduced this seller program, it received an overwhelming response. Amazon sellers and online retail entrepreneurs alike flooded the platform to sign up with Amazon Merch.

Though shortly after that, Amazon closed the open registration system and have since implemented an invite-only application process. That way Amazon is able to filter out lower quality designers while reducing the saturation of Merch creators. That effectively ensures that selling Amazon merchandise can be both competitive yet profitable for everyone.

Aside from the waiting period to get into the program, getting started with Amazon Merch is actually pretty easy. Here’s how to do it:

1. Go to the official Merch by Amazon page
2. Click “Request invitation”
3. Fill out the form

And that’s it! The difficult part will be waiting for your request to be granted. Some say it can take up to 3 months, while others received approval much earlier. In many ways, the waiting period is a blessing in disguise. You can use that time to learn, research, and experiment as much as possible before going all-in as an Amazon t-shirt seller.

Once you’ve applied to join Merch by Amazon, it’s time to plan your journey towards becoming a legit and profitable Merch creator. Here are the steps you should take:

1. Request to join Merch by Amazon (done)
2. Research on t-shirt design
3. Identify a niche
4. Do product research
5. Find a designer (or design yourself)
6. Perform keyword research to optimize your Amazon product listing
7. Upload your products to your Merch dashboard
8. Monitor your analytics for the next 30 days

Next, we’ll help you get started on figuring out what type of product design you should go for, how to create your Amazon t-shirt designs, and the best ways to optimize your Amazon products.

What type of Amazon t-shirt design should you sell?

Believe it or not, a lot of Merch creators have no experience in graphic design. But that doesn’t stop them from being successful Amazon t-shirt entrepreneurs.

Let’s say you’ve applied for a Merch by Amazon account and aim to get approved in 3 months time. You now have a quarter of a year to get familiar with designing t-shirts. Alternatively, you can source for pretty decent yet affordable graphic designers on freelance marketplaces like Upwork or Fiverr. Depending on the quality, you can expect to pay anywhere between $5 to $300 per design.

Though it’s best if you can work on your designs yourself. Not only will it become an added skill, but you’ll also save a lot more in the long run and have more flexibility to work on new designs or improve old ones. You can use Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, or GIMP. All of which uses filetypes that are accepted by Amazon.

When it comes to Amazon t-shirt designs, you can break them down to 3 main types of design:

1. Evergreen – If you want to make money on Amazon for the long term, you need to carry more evergreen designs. Evergreen t-shirts are those that may not sell a lot per design but will see a more steady flow of sales month to month.
2. Holidays – The online retail sector is seasonal and always fluctuates. Holiday seasons often see the largest spike in sales, like Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Chinese New Year, and so on. During festivities is when a lot of people turn into shopping mode, buying gifts for themselves, friends, family, and colleagues.
3. Trends – Unlike the holiday season, trends that become viral are usually short-lived. They suddenly become popular, then just as quickly the trend fizzles away. Think Nyan Cat, Gangnam style, salt bae, Pepe the Frog, Donald Trump, and so many more. Though despite its lack of seasonality, trends often pull in the largest amount of sales in the shortest amount of time. Keep your eyes peeled for any

For your Amazon t-shirt designs, make sure that they comply with these requirements:

• 300 dpi – High resolution in PNG formatted file. Ideally, one that has a transparent background.
• 15 x 18 inches – The design should fit within the printable area of the product (15 x 18 inches), but Amazon recommends a design that fits comfortably within that area rather than taking up all of it.

Luckily for you, Amazon has preset templates that you can download for free for your t-shirt designs. Click here to download the templates.

Finding creative inspiration for cool t-shirts

Now, here comes what is possibly the most difficult part about being a Merch creator – coming up with cool ideas for your t-shirt design.

If finding inspiration and ideas to design your first Amazon t-shirt is hard enough, imagine having to do it repeatedly month in and month out. But luckily, just like any other skill, finding ideas and designing t-shirts can be learned over time.

There are also plenty of ways to source for new and creative ideas for your Amazon t-shirts. It all depends on how smart you are at identifying t-shirt ideas from any sources.

Here are some sources to help get your creative juices flowing:

• Mugs
• Jokes or puns
• Memes
• Viral content websites
• Pop culture websites
• Celebrity news websites
• Pinterest
• Instagram
• And tonnes more

It might be a good idea to look at other marketplaces and online stores that sell t-shirts. One of the more famous ones is Threadless, though a lot of their designs have been copied and improvised already. Never copy any designs too closely. Instead, use it as a base of inspiration.

Look at different types of designs, visuals, and artwork and see if you can take bits and pieces from different sources to create your own unique, novel t-shirt design.

Go mass or niche down to find your Amazon t-shirts buyers?

Before you start randomly sourcing for t-shirt ideas, you should first identify a niche.

A niche is a topic or type of interest that appeals to a small demographic. For example, cats make for a mass topic, while Persian cats is a niche area.

You might assume that by going mass and trying to cast a wider net to capture larger groups of people may bring you more sales, but that may not always be the case.

Firstly, a mass or mainstream type of interest is much more saturated and highly competitive. Which is why targeting a niche segment is a better approach, especially for first-time sellers and small-time entrepreneurs.

Start by niching down and make your designs more specialized. That way you’ll be able to narrow your focus on a smaller segment of people that potentially has a higher conversion rate in a less crowded, less competitive space.

What happens after your Merch by Amazon account gets approved

Once you’re approved, Amazon will ask for some basic information, and then you can get officially started as a Merch creator. The Merch dashboard is where you can upload designs, promote your Amazon t-shirt and analyze sales.

Assuming you’ve spent the 3-month waiting period working hard at researching niches and creating designs, the next step will be to upload your designs to your Merch dashboard.

Select a design to upload. Then, you’ll see this:

Your next most important task starts here. And that is product optimization.

The title of your product, the product features, and product description will determine whether or not searches will be able to easily find your product. To ensure that you’ll appear high in Amazon search rankings, you’ll need to do some keyword research and identify high-value keywords to use for your particular product.

Keyword Tool for Amazon can do exactly that for you. The free version will show you a whole list of keywords, where you’ll see up to 5 keywords and its accompanying data, like search volume, trend, cost-per-click (CPC), and competition level.

While the paid version of Keyword Tool Pro will give you full access to a huge database of keyword data that will be invaluable for your Merch store’s Amazon SEO.

How to optimize your products on Merch by Amazon

For a lot of Merch creators, especially first time sellers, marketing t-shirts using Amazon ads might be a bit too costly. Instead, optimizing product listings for Amazon SEO is a definite no-brainer method.

It costs next to nothing and can help make your t-shirts more discoverable on Amazon, one of the largest search engines on the web.

Before you begin writing your t-shirt titles and product descriptions, you first need to begin with keyword research. To find relevant keywords for your beards t-shirt, go to Keyword Tool for Amazon and key in the topic “marvel shirt” in the search box:

You’ll see that there are 172 unique keywords with an average monthly search volume of 55,830. Also, notice how the monthly searches seem to be more regular rather than seasonal? That’s a good indication that this may be an evergreen product that can sell well over the course of the year.

Scroll down to view the detailed results:

From the results, it shows that the keyword that you’ve chosen has a healthy mix of high-volume focus keywords and long tail keywords. While your main keyword will be “marvel shirt§1,” the type of keywords that you’ll want to target should be long-tailed as it will result in a higher conversion rate.

You’ll need to avoid keyword stuffing at all costs. Instead, make sure that you use both your focus keyword and long tail keywords moderately and placed in the right spaces.

To optimize your product listing, you need to insert relevant keywords into:

• Title – Use the design’s quote (e.g., Fear the Beard), the niche (beard t-shirt), your target audience (men), and then add a few related keywords to it (e.g., funny, hilarious, etc). You can also add holidays or events (e.g. Father’s Day, Fourth of July, etc).
• Key Product Features – Who is the product for? What are their interests? How will it benefit them? Where will they wear it? Use bullet points to string the answers together. Sure, it’s only a t-shirt, but there are many ways to tell a short story about why they need to get it and how it will benefit them.
• Description – The description box is optional for Amazon Merch. It may be a ranking factor but since the product is just a t-shirt, there’s not much more you can elaborate or describe (that you haven’t under Key Product Features). If you’d like to, you can either use bullet points or just write a short paragraph.

Once you’ve identified the right keywords and inserted into your product description page, it’s time to upload them and monitor your analytics on your Merch dashboard.

If your t-shirts are selling well, then you’ve done a good job optimizing it. If the products aren’t moving, even after a few weeks, it’s time to re-optimize or swap it with an alternative design.

A lot of your initial effort as a Merch creator will involve a lot of trial and error. Don’t give up and keep trying. If you focus on optimizing your Amazon SEO, it should give you enough time to work at your Amazon Merch business at a low cost before you start becoming profitable.

When you first begin, you’re limited to 25 designs. Once you sell 25 shirts, you’ll be automatically upgraded to Tier 100. It will allow you to upload up to 100 designs. That’s four times more than the first tier!

The more designs you have, the more opportunity there is to make money on Amazon Merch.

The post Amazon Merch: The Complete Beginner’s Guide to Merch by Amazon appeared first on Keyword Tool Blog: How to Find Great Keywords.

Online shopping has become part of the average consumer’s lifestyle and is set to grow even bigger over the coming years. More and more marketplaces and online stores are popping out, serving the masses, niche interests, and so many more.

Out of all major online marketplaces around, Amazon is by far the largest in terms of daily transactions, product quantities, and number of sellers.

Amazon is growing at a rapid pace, responsible for a whopping 80% of the e-retail market growth in the United States. The marketplace giant is also projected to account for 53.7% of the total e-retail sales (estimated at $325 billion) in the country by the end of 2019.

There is little doubt that more people are shopping on Amazon today than ever before. And there is still a lot of opportunities to make money on Amazon, despite increasing competition from more Amazon sellers.

If you dream of making a living through e-commerce, Amazon FBA might be your best bet. Read on to find out how to make money selling on Amazon through Fulfillment by Amazon.

1. Sell on Amazon or your own website?
2. Amazon, an ideal option for new sellers
3. What is Amazon FBA
4. How to become an Amazon seller
5. How much do you need to get started with Amazon FBA
6. How to calculate Amazon FBA fees
7. What products to sell on Amazon
8. How to sell on Amazon FBA
   
9. Selling products on Amazon with private label
10. Finding the right supplier for your Amazon product
11. Found your Amazon product and supplier? Time to list your product on Amazon
    
12. How to optimize product listings for Amazon SEO
13. Finally, time to launch your Amazon FBA store
    

Sell on Amazon or your own website?

There’s a running debate between the advantages of selling on Amazon vs. creating your own e-commerce website. Both have their pros and cons, but could there be a better option between the two?

The biggest advantage to building your own branded store is that you’ll have complete control over your website. You’ll be able to create a unique buying experience, sell branded products with its own unique selling proposition (USP), create a loyal customer base, and so on and so forth.

But here’s the catch – you’ll need to build and manage everything on your own from the scratch.

The cost of creating and hosting your own e-commerce website

When you first set up shop, no one knows your brand, which means there will be little to no potential customers coming to your online store.

You’ll need to invest heavily in branding and marketing to gain traction. That often involves paying for SEO, content marketing, paid-per-click (PPC) campaigns, social media ads, graphic design, and others.

Not to mention, hiring a web developer and designer to build a custom made e-commerce website can cost thousands of dollars and take months to complete.

There’s also another option – subscribe to Shopify or build your store on WordPress with WooCommerce. Though you’ll still need some working knowledge of managing websites, using plugins, and editing basic HTML and CSS to create a really good site.

There’s a good reason why e-commerce websites usually cost a lot to make, maintain, and manage. There are tonnes of moving parts and it takes a lot of effort to get it right.

Amazon, an ideal option for new sellers

A lot of people have succeeded in e-commerce through their own independent online store. Some are custom built, while others use Shopify or WooCommerce with ready-made templates. But in reality, they are often part of the minority and usually more experienced in the e-commerce space.

Now, let’s take a look at Amazon. Tonnes of people have also done well as Amazon sellers. They range between large companies to full-time entrepreneurs to part-time sellers.

But what makes selling on Amazon different than a customized online store? For one, it has all the tools that make for a great option for beginners to get started in e-commerce.

There are two things that Amazon wins by a long mile, which are:

• Brand trust
• Conversion magnet

Amazon has been around for 24 years. What started as an online book retailer has now evolved into the largest online marketplace in the world. Amazon is the 7th most visited website on the web and attracts over 150 million visitors per month in the US alone. In total, Amazon draws in an average of 2.5 billion visits per month.

A platform that has perfected the art of converting browsers to buyers

There’s a good reason why people keep coming back to Amazon to buy everyday essentials, make impulse purchases, and shop during festive seasons, and that is because they trust the Amazon brand.

Another winning factor of selling on Amazon is that the platform is a conversion magnet. A 2018 study of the top 500 retailers in North America showed that the average conversion rate sits at 3.32%.

In comparison, the conversion rate for Amazon is 13% for non-Prime members and a whopping 74% for Prime members. That means that Amazon converts at least 22 times higher than the largest retailers in North America.

Amazon employs some of the top minds and leading experts in tech and e-commerce and invested millions of dollars to continuously improve and fine-tune the platform.

They have successfully created an e-commerce platform that converts casual browsers to paying customers at a high rate. And keeps them coming back for more. Amazon is a well-oiled machine that makes the buying process quick, safe, and easy for customers.

Amazon does all the heavy lifting for you

When you choose to sell through Amazon FBA, a lot of expensive and time-consuming work will be done by Amazon, such as storage, fulfillment, delivery, handling returns, and customer service.

They can store your products, ship them with same-day delivery (or, at worst, a lot faster than AliExpress or AliBaba shipping times) to some of the largest consumer markets in the world (like North America, Europe, Japan, and others). They also have a solid return policy and responsive, quality customer service.

That’s more than half the battle won for any e-commerce business. As an Amazon seller, all you need to do is sell a good product, optimize to make it discoverable on the platform, and manage your inventory. The rest? You can leave it to Amazon.

What is Amazon FBA?

Amazon FBA, or Fulfilment by Amazon, is a storage, shipping, and support service for third-party sellers on Amazon.

It makes the selling process easier by helping to store Amazon seller products, to managing fulfillment and shipping, to handling returns and providing customer support.

Through Amazon FBA, online sellers can focus solely on selling, marketing, and optimizing their products on Amazon.

How to become an Amazon seller

Selling products on Amazon may seem easy and profitable. The truth is the process from being a verified Amazon seller to running a successful store on Amazon is a long one.

In summary, the process of being an Amazon seller can be broken down to:

1. Product researching
2. Product sourcing
3. Product listing
4. Product shipping
5. Product launch

Steps 1 to 3 is what we call the pre-launch period and will involve up to hundreds of hours of preparation. Step 4 is when you ship your products from your supplier’s factory to an Amazon fulfillment warehouse. Once all your work is done, you’ll be ready to launch your product on Amazon, which happens at Step 5.

Bear in mind that before you can progress on any of these steps, you’ll need to get an Amazon account and be a verified seller.

The first step before Step 1: Amazon seller account registration and verification

To begin, you will first need to register an account on Amazon Seller Central. If you already have an Amazon account, just log in with the same username and password:

1. Go to services.amazon.com
2. Click on either the “Selling on Amazon” link or “Sell on Amazon” bar
3. Go to sellercentral.amazon.com
4. Then, click “Selling on Amazon” at the bottom left
5. Go to the “Sell” icon at the top of the Amazon.com homepage
6. Then, select FBA

For a more detailed step-by-step guide on how to register and become a verified Amazon seller, read our article here.

How much do you need to get started with Amazon FBA

It’s the million dollar question that everyone asks. There are a lot of videos on YouTube by successful Amazon sellers that claim to have earned tens of thousands of dollars every month through selling products on Amazon.

But what a lot of them don’t tell you is the real hidden costs behind starting an Amazon business.

To help you better plan your Amazon seller journey, here is a basic breakdown of what you will need to spend to start and run an Amazon store:

1. Hiring a designer to create your brand identity, logo and packaging design.
2. Buying products in bulk, including shipping cost from your supplier’s factory to an Amazon fulfillment center.
3. Paying for monthly Amazon seller fees.
4. Paying for Amazon ads.
5. Paying for Amazon FBA fees (which includes storage fees based on the storage size, weight, and duration).

These costs can set you back by thousands of dollars, so it’s best that you calculate how much will you really need to start. You should also have an idea of what are the costs to keep your Amazon store running while being profitable, especially your inventory restocking and storage.

How to calculate Amazon FBA fees

Fulfillment by Amazon charges fees to handle all the heavy lifting for Amazon sellers from storage, to shipping, to customer service.

The fees you can expect to pay can be broken down to:

• Amazon seller fees
• Amazon FBA fees

In total, here is the complete list of FBA fees you’ll need to pay when selling products on Amazon with FBA:

• Per-item fees
• Referral fees
• Variable closing fees
• Shipping fees
• Fulfillment fees
• Monthly inventory storage fees

The per-item fees will depend on what type of Amazon seller account you choose to use. There are two types of monthly plans:

• Individual – No monthly subscription fee. Instead, sellers are limited to a maximum of 40 items per month and subjected to pay $0.99 per item (on top of other selling fees, depending on the item category).
• Professional – Monthly subscription of $39.99. There’s no limit to the number of items you can sell in a month but per-item sellings fees will still apply.

If you’re serious about Amazon FBA, it might be a good idea to go for the Professional Amazon seller plan. You’ll be able to sell more items and make a bigger profit by being able to move a larger volume of products.

Amazon FBA fees vary depending on the size, weight, and amount of time your products sit in Amazon’s fulfillment center. Another variable is, of course, the wholesale cost of the item.

To give you an idea of how Amazon fees generally impact your profit, let’s use an example of a product with a retail price of $25 and wholesale cost of $8:

In summary, here is a breakdown of the product’s cost, selling price, fees, and profit:

• Selling price = $25
• Wholesale cost = $8
• Amazon fees = $10.70
• Net profit = $6.30

Based on this example, the Amazon fees accounted for 42.8% of the total sale price of the item, which resulted in a profit margin of 25%.

As you can see, Amazon fees play quite a big role in determining your end profits. You’ll also need to bear in mind that different items can come with varying costs and selling prices.

Next, we’ll get started with the most important part of any Amazon seller journey – what product to sell.

What products to sell on Amazon

You might have a great product idea to sell but the more important question is – will people actually want it? It’s crucial that you do a detailed market study and determine if the product you have in mind has enough demand.

Take a look at Amazon listings. Search for the product you’re intending to sell (or others similar to it) and see whether it ranks in the first few pages and how many reviews it has.

A lot of reviews means that there is demand but it might be competitive to sell. A smaller amount of reviews could indicate a low market demand but may indicate an opportunity to sell a similar yet improved product type.

You’ll need to find a sweet spot, which means you’ll need to dig in deeper and get more data.

To do that, you can use these two platforms:

• Google Trends – To find out the overall trends and seasonality of a product type or niche.
• Keyword Tool for Amazon – To get a detailed look into whether people are searching for your products on Amazon.

Detailed product and price research using an Amazon keyword tool

Keyword Tool for Amazon is an incredibly useful tool to find out about the overall popularity of the product you’re planning to sell. You can use a word or topic related to your product to find relevant keywords, product types, and competitor’s product listings.

Let’s say you’re looking to sell running shoes for women, just input the focus keyword “women running shoes” into the search box, choose the Amazon marketplace you’re planning to sell, and hit enter:

The search result will show you the average trend and competition level of the product you’re planning to sell. From this result, you can summarize that:

• Running shoes for women is a moderately competitive product, with over 500,000 monthly searches and a competition level of 44 (Medium).
• Interest towards women’s running shoes is lowest in the 2nd half of the year, during autumn and winter.

How to sell on Amazon

For new Amazon sellers, it’s important that you’re aware that there is actually more than one Amazon marketplace. Depending on the location of the customer, they will see a different Amazon.com storefront with their own fulfillment services.

The largest and most active Amazon marketplace is Amazon.com in the United States, while the rest are divided into:

• Americas
  • Canada – Amazon.ca
  • Mexico – Amazon.com.mx
  • Brazil – Amazon.com.br
• Europe
  • UK – Amazon.co.uk
  • Germany – Amazon.de
  • France – Amazon.fr
  • Italy – Amazon.it
  • Spain – Amazon.es
  • Netherlands – Amazon.nl
  • Poland – Amazon.pl
  • Turkey – Amazon.com.tr
  • Belgium – Amazon.com.be
  • Sweden – Amazon.se
• Asia
  • Japan – Amazon.co.jp
  • China – Amazon.cn
  • India – Amazon.in
  • Singapore – Amazon.sg
• Middle East
  • United Arab Emirates – Amazon.ae
  • Egypt – Amazon.eg
  • Saudia Arabia – Amazon.sa
• Australia
  • Australia – Amazon.com.au

Each marketplace has its own tax and regulations that are specific to the country or region. Find out more here.

The default marketplace for most Amazon sellers is Amazon.com in the US. Though some do branch out and diversify into other regions. Do note that expanding your store to other marketplaces can open up new revenue streams, but at the same time it’ll incur higher shipping costs.

It may also require either more time for you to manage multiple stores on different regional marketplaces or you’ll need to hire virtual assistants to help you operate your other stores.

More than one way to sell items on Amazon

There are actually many options for Amazon sellers to sell their products on Amazon, such as:

• Retail arbitrage
• Wholesale
• Used book sales
• Private label

Retail arbitrage is where you buy an item from another place and sell on Amazon with a markup. Wholesale is a popular option for larger sellers and wholesale-retail companies. They often use Amazon as one of their revenue streams, on top of other online marketplaces and their own physical store or warehouse.

Private label has always been a preferred option among many successful e-commerce entrepreneurs. It requires more investment in time and money upfront but it attracts the highest profit margins. Private labeling is a method of turning a regular (or custom-made) manufactured product to your own brand.

Among all the options of selling products on Amazon, you can choose between:

• DIY fulfillment
• Fulfillment by Amazon

With the latter option, you will be paying higher fees but it all goes to offloading the heavy workload that you won’t need to do – fulfillment, shipping, and customer support.

With Amazon FBA, you get to focus solely on selling and scaling your business further without worrying too much about operations and logistics.

Selling products on Amazon with private label

Private labelling is the method of selling a product that is bought from a producer or manufacturer and customized to the seller’s unique brand. In short, you purchase an existing product and make it your own by placing your own logo, brand, and packaging design.

It may cost more but there are actually a lot of advantages to selling via private label. Here are a few:

1. Lesser sourcing time. When you sell through arbitrage, you’ll usually need to liaise with multiple manufacturers. With private label, you only need to source a single type of product in large quantities from a trusted supplier.
2. Better price control. Private labelling allows you to set your own price. Also since your products were bought in bulk, you have a lower per unit cost, which gives more flexibility in determining the profits that you desire.
3. Higher profit margin. Buying a cheaper product in small bulk and selling at a higher price won’t bring as much profit as selling via private label. Creating your own brand often increases the value of the product, giving you higher profit margins.

Compared to other selling methods, private label often requires more upfront capital and long-term effort to increase the brand value and grow a loyal customer base.

If done well, it will improve customer retention, create repeat orders, and result in customers talking about your brand. More often than not, the private label route is worth the extra time and money.

Finding the right supplier for your Amazon product

Now, let’s take things back a notch and look at the first step towards creating a private label product – supplier sourcing.

It’ll be worthwhile putting in extra effort to research quality suppliers and manufacturers to produce your product. You’ll need to not only find suppliers that are trustworthy but also can work well with you.

Most of them speak English as a second language, so bear this in mind when reaching out to them.

To find suppliers for your private label product, here is what you’ll need to do:

• Browse Alibaba.com to find relevant products.
• Create a shortlist of verified Alibaba sellers with gold ratings and a long track record.
• Contact them via email. List down specifics of what you’re looking for, down to the measurements (in the metric system). If you have deep product knowledge and show sincerity and seriousness, it’ll help to gain the trust of the supplier.
• Then proceed to discuss further details through the phone. Ideally, you should use Wechat, it’s the most popular messenger app in China.
• Arrange for sample orders in a small quantity. Payment is usually done via bank transfer, though some do accept Paypal. Try to avoid using Western Union, because there’s no recourse in case anything unfortunate happens to the fund transfer.

Once you’ve identified the right supplier for your product, the next step is to arrange for the first batch of product shipment for your supplier’s factory to an Amazon Fulfilment Center.

Here is the complete list of all the Amazon Fulfillment centers around the world.

Supplier management is likely one of the least discussed part of being an Amazon seller, but it’s incredibly important to get it right from the start. It’ll save you a whole lot of trouble, time, and money in the long run.

Found your Amazon product and supplier? Time to list your product on Amazon

The second last part of your journey to officially becoming an Amazon seller is product listing. You’ll need to get two things right:

1. High-quality, attractive images for your products.
2. Well-written, Amazon SEO optimized product description.

A good product image will make it easier to capture the attention of customers, so it’s worth investing a little bit into hiring a professional photographer to capture your product images.

Get a few samples sent to you or the photographer’s location to get the products professionally shot. It may cost you a bit extra but it’ll be well worth it in the long run.

Next, you’ll need to write a good product description. Here are a few tips you can use when writing your Amazon product details:

1. Know your target audience.
2. Describe the product benefits.
3. Tell the story behind the product.
4. Use an easy to read, natural language.
5. Optimize for search engines and Amazon SEO.

The last part is crucial and one that often determines whether your Amazon product gets stuck in the back pages or get consistently listed on page 1 or 2 in Amazon.

How to optimize product listings for Amazon SEO

Amazon works similarly to other search engines. When more people search for a type of product and clicks on it, the higher it ranks over time. And when it organically ranks well, more people will be able to find the product, which increases the chances of the item being bought.

Another way of increasing the visibility of your product is to invest in Amazon ads. It’s a great way to find new customers but may not be the best long-term option for most people. Ideally, you’d want to be organically ranked high. The ROI beats Amazon ads any day.

So, how exactly does optimizing product listings for Amazon work? You’ll need to use an Amazon keyword tool to find relevant, high-volume keywords. Keyword Tool for Amazon does exactly that. When you insert a word or topic related to your product, it pulls hundreds of keywords from Amazon’s autocomplete.

Let’s say you’re selling running shoes for women. Go to Keyword Tool for Amazon, choose the location and language of the marketplace you’re selling to, and type in “women running shoes“:

The results will show you a summary of the overall search volume, 12-month trends, average cost-per-click (CPC) for Amazon ads, and the average competition level of the keyword.

Scroll below and you’ll find the list of related keywords:

As you can see, there are a lot of valuable keywords that you can analyze and use for your Amazon product listing. From this example, you can conclude that:

• There are a lot of people searching for the focus keyword “women running shoe.” But that may also mean the search is broad with loads of competition, which could result in a lower click-through-rate (CTR) for your product.
• Your main competitor brands are Nike, Asics, Adidas, New Balance, Puma, and Reebok.

A simple search on Keyword Tool for Amazon can give you a wealth of valuable data. Not only will it show relevant keywords that you can use for your Amazon product listing optimization, but it also gives a glimpse of what your potential customers are interested in.

Finally, time to launch your Amazon FBA store

By this time, you would’ve found your products, suppliers, worked out all the costs and FBA fees, and have a list of Amazon keywords for your product listing optimization.

You can now start uploading your product images and description to launch your Amazon store. And start selling!

Your Amazon FBA launch is crucial. When done right, it will help to maximize your products’ visibility on Amazon and get them to rank higher. To do this, you may need to invest in:

• Promotional giveaways
• Amazon ads

One of the best resources for promotional giveaways is JumpSend. It’s a platform with readily available buyers that are specifically looking for discounted products.

The website attracts nearly a million visits every month, so you can imagine the sheer volume of people browsing the platform looking for discounted products.

You can register on the platform and list your product in the deals section. An interested buyer will select the product and they’ll use the coupon code on Amazon.

Using a service like JumpSend is a great way to pull in your first few sales, get ranked for some keywords, and receive your initial batches of reviews.

The next step is to run some Amazon ads. It may add more marketing spend for your launch but it’s a sure-fire way to be noticed by potential customers and get ranked for your keywords. Here’s a short tutorial video about how to create a new Amazon ads campaign for your pay-per-click (PPC) ads:

A lot of people skip these steps when launching their Amazon FBA store. If you want to get started on the right footing, be more visible, and get ranked higher than your competitors, it’s worth going the extra mile by investing in promotional giveaways and Amazon ads.

Being an Amazon FBA seller is definitely not as easy as it seems. It involves tonnes of work, hours of painstaking research, and a lot of trial and error. But with the help of certain types of tools for Amazon, it’ll make your journey as an Amazon seller a lot smoother.

Using these tactics and tools won’t guarantee that you’ll succeed right away and start pulling in five-figure revenues immediately. Though it sure does increase your chances of succeeding as an Amazon FBA entrepreneur.

Amazon FBA has worked for a lot of people that either brought in a much needed part-time income or a sizeable full-time passive income. Follow the steps in our guide, work hard, and don’t give up too soon. If they can do it, there’s no reason why you can’t too!

The post The Beginner’s Guide to Selling on Amazon FBA (like a Pro) appeared first on Keyword Tool Blog: How to Find Great Keywords.

Many of you might not know this, but Amazon actually started with affiliate marketing when they first began operations in 1995. Jeff Bezos was operating Amazon as an online book retailer and had a very limited marketing budget.

To solve this problem, he introduced the Amazon Associates program that gives a commission to every referral to Amazon that converted into a sale. It was a fantastic solution that’s cost-effective for the brand while opening an opportunity for people to make money online.

Fast forward to today, Amazon Associates enables nearly anyone with a laptop and an internet connection to make profits online through promoting millions of new and used Amazon products.

Contents

• What is Amazon Affiliate program
• How Amazon Affiliate works
• How to start affiliate marketing with Amazon
• How to setup Amazon Affiliate (and start to earn money on Amazon)
• Amazon vs. Clickbank: Which is a better affiliate marketing partner?
• How to do Amazon Affiliate marketing like a seasoned veteran
• Grow and optimize your Amazon affiliate website
• Understand consumer behavior on Amazon
• Find a winning Amazon product through a good keyword tool
• Summary
  

What is Amazon Affiliate program

Amazon Affiliate (also known as the Amazon Associates program) is a referral program where you will be compensated for sending traffic from your website to Amazon that converts into a sale.

Once the referrer makes a purchase, you will be paid a commission of a certain percentage from the item’s sale price.

Note: Amazon Affiliate (where commissions are made based on referrals to Amazon.com that converts to a sale) shouldn’t be confused with Amazon sellers or Amazon FBA operators (where individuals or companies open an Amazon store to sell products on Amazon.com).

How Amazon Affiliate works

Just like how affiliate marketing generally works, Amazon Associates members make money through commissions paid by every referred traffic that purchases a product on Amazon. Here’s how it works:

When visitors on your website clicks an Amazon referral link, they will land on Amazon.com with a cookie which lasts for 24 hours. If they make any purchase on the platform within 24 hours, you’ll be paid a fee based on the commission bracket of the item. But if they purchase after the first 24 hours, you won’t be paid a fee.

There is also a list of strict terms and conditions that you need to adhere to to be a verified Amazon Associate member and get paid commissions. If you’re found to contravene any of their guidelines, you’ll risk your account being suspended or banned.

How to start affiliate marketing with Amazon

Affiliate marketing is by no means a get rich scheme. Behind the many affiliate marketing success stories you might’ve come across on YouTube or popular marketing blogs, it actually involves a lot of work.

Before you get started as an Amazon Associate and get into affiliate marketing, you need to have a place to redirect clicks to Amazon. And where might that be? Well, a website of course!

Getting traffic to your website takes a lot of effort, but you’ll find that converting those traffic to sales on Amazon is a different ball-game altogether. Though when it’s done right, you might be surprised at the amount of passive income you can get as an Amazon Associate.

Tips (and what to avoid) when creating and managing your affiliate marketing website

Before you get started with Amazon affiliate marketing, you need a website that attracts a healthy amount of targetted traffic. You’ll need to pour in a lot of time to build, manage, and create great content on your website.

If you’re new to this (or just looking to improve your web content), try these ideas:

• Don’t just focus on review-based content. Instead, try to provide something of value to your readers.
• Don’t create informational articles. DIY or “how to” articles rarely convert into sales.
• Spend time optimizing your articles for search engine optimization (SEO). But don’t forget to do off-page SEO optimization as well, especially getting quality backlinks.
• Do keyword research. Lots of it and for all your articles. Then, create articles out of the relevant, high-volume keywords that you find.
• Create both evergreen and trending articles to ensure they perform well (both short term and long term) on search.
• Improve and refresh your old content. Already have content on your website? Revamp, edit and refresh your old content. Try Brian Deen’s skyscraper content technique. TLDR: Make your content 10x better than other similar content out there.

Getting traffic will not be easy and may take months before you get a decent amount of organic visits to your site. But it’ll be well worth it in the long run. You’ll see why in the next segment of this article.

How to setup Amazon Affiliate (and start to earn money on Amazon)

Getting started with Amazon Affiliate is incredibly easy. All you need to do is:

1. Create an Amazon account (if you don’t already have one).
2. Visit the Amazon Associates homepage.
3. Click “Join Now for Free.”
4. You’ll be prompted to log into your Amazon account, just click Login.
5. Follow these next steps to build your Amazon Associates account:

Step 1: Enter your details in Account Information. You can either use your primary Amazon account address or enter a new one.

Step 2: Key in your website and/or mobile app URLs where you’ll be promoting your Amazon affiliate links.

Step 3: Start by entering your choice of Associates Store ID, then fill out the rest of the page’s form regarding the details of your profile, website, content category, and others. Be honest and make sure to fill every section.

Step 4: Before you can start using your Amazon Associates account, you’ll need to verify your identity. It works similar to most other company’s Know Your Customer (KYC) policies, and it’s an extremely important step. But don’t worry, it’s pretty quick and easy to settle.

Once you’ve successfully created your Amazon Associates account, you’ll arrive at your personal Amazon Associates dashboard where you’ll be asked to create your Amazon affiliate links. These are the links that you’ll be using on your website to drive traffic to Amazon.

Here’s an important disclaimer for all newly created accounts

If you have a newly created Amazon Affiliate account, you’ll need to make at least one sale within the first 180 days (which used to be 90 days). Failing which will lead to your account getting banned. If you ever find yourself in that unfortunate situation, fret not! You can reapply, and you’ll receive a new Amazon Affiliate ID.

The best way to avoid from getting banned by Amazon due to account inactivity is to make sure that your website already has a good amount of traffic. That way you can focus on optimizing past articles and creating new content with the end-goal of motivating your site visitors to click on your Amazon affiliate links.

How to create your Amazon affiliate links

Once you have created your Amazon Associate account, the last step before you can officially start affiliate marketing with Amazon is to create your very own Amazon affiliate links.

To do that, follow these steps:

1. Go to either “Quick Links: Search for Product” or “Browse for Product.”
2. Once you find a suitable product, click the “Get Link” button.
3. Choose to customize your links with text only, text and image, image only, or widget (you can also customize background color, title, color, and image size depending on the type of link).
4. Preview of the link before adding it to your site.
5. Copy and paste the link, Amazon short link, or HTML copy and insert it on your site.

Insert the Amazon links to your relevant articles, and you’re ready to go!

Since Amazon is very strict with how Amazon Associates use and promote their links, make sure you read their terms and conditions from start to finish. The last thing you want is to put your account in jeopardy of being banned.

Amazon vs. Clickbank: Which is a better affiliate marketing partner?

Whether you’re new to affiliate marketing or been around the space, you might’ve heard of Clickbank. There are many affiliate marketing programs out there, but Clickbank is by far one of the biggest and most popular among all. It’s hard to say which is better and  trickier to tell which program can help you make more money online.

Either way, you’ll need to compare its pros and cons to see which is more suitable for you. But more importantly, you’ll need to do your due diligence and decide which programs carry products that are more popular and available to a broader demographic.

1. Clickbank: Big commissions, questionable quality of products, poor user experience

Clickbank is incredibly popular and for a good reason. They offer a wide variety of products with large commissions that can range anywhere between 10% to well over 50%. On top of that, there are also subscription-based products where you’ll be able to earn recurring commissions from regular paying subscribers.

Although Clickbank is a favorite among many veteran affiliate marketers, their products are nowhere as popular or sought-after among consumers as those found on Amazon.

On the other hand, Amazon has spent a lot of resources that have turned the marketplace to become a customer converting beast. Every aspect of the platform has been fine-tuned to entice and encourage casual visitors to make impulse purchases. And make them keep coming back.

2. Amazon Associate: Low commissions, great marketplace, globally recognized brand

If there’s one drawback about Amazon Associates program is that they offer notoriously low commissions. Depending on the product category, it can range anywhere between 4% to 10%. They also have a relatively short cookie span. For example, if a visitor clicks on your Amazon affiliate link for a product worth US$100 and makes a purchase within 24 hours, you’ll receive a commission of US$4.

By itself, that sounds pretty low, doesn’t it? But what if you’re running a website with over 100,000 visitors per month? If you’re able to convert 1% of your visitors to potential purchases, that amounts to 100 people. Say, from the 100 people, only 10% clicks on the Amazon affiliate link of a product. And from that 10% (or 10 people), only 50% purchases that product on Amazon.

Let’s say the product costs US$50. Since 5 people bought that particular product, the total amounts to US$250. If the commission for that product is 4%, you have made a cool US$10 from a single product in a month. But if they add more to their cart and check-out within 24 hours, you stand to make even more commission.

Is 4% commission per product enough?

US$10 per product per month in commission might not sound like much. But remember, that’s a conservative estimate of 1 product bought by 5 people in one day. If that same product gets bought by 5 people for 10 days out of an entire month, that’s US$100 per product per month. If you have at least 10 products and with similar conversion rates, that’s at least US$1,000 in commissions every month.

It may not be life-changing money, but it sure is a great passive income for a side gig. And if you go at it full-time, who knows, you might even manage to pull in US$5,000, US$10,000 month in month out!

Note: This is only a simulated, conservative estimate. Since commissions can reach as high as 10%, the products you choose to promote will ultimately influence your potential commission income.

A better brand value means a higher level of trust among consumers

When comparing Amazon vs. Clickbank, other than the differences in commission rate, another factor jumps out the most. And that is brand recognition. Amazon has cemented itself as one of the modern day’s most successful companies and boasts the largest and most active online marketplace in the world.

Aside from the high level of trust among consumers, Amazon also has great customer service. These are the kind of factors that often determine whether a casual visitor converts to a paying customer. And if you’re doing affiliate marketing, that “last mile” experience can go a long way.

How to do Amazon Affiliate marketing like a seasoned veteran (on a low budget)

Okay, so you’ve built a website, created content, signed up for Amazon Associates, and you’ve gotten your Amazon affiliate links. Now what?

There are two key things you need to do to make sure that you’ll succeed in this for the long-term, and that is:

1. Being able to grow your website organically
2. Understanding consumer behavior on Amazon

1. Grow and optimize your Amazon affiliate website

Most affiliate marketers enter the industry with a shoe-string budget. And it’ll most likely be the same for you. You might hardly have any budget for marketing. That means the only (and often best) way to grow your website is to optimize it for Google search.

SEO is a long game. But once your site has great on-page and off-page SEO, it’ll be able to attract more organic clicks and visitors over time. The more visitors you get, the higher the likelihood of your Amazon affiliate links being clicked.

To optimize your website for Google search, you’ll need to:

1. Do keyword research.
2. Find the search intent of your target audience.
3. Select relevant, high-volume and long tail keywords.
4. Build content based on your targetted keywords.

Note: If you’re unsure about how to do good keyword research (or what it even means), read this detailed article to get you started.

From your keyword research, you should be able to get a good idea of your target audience’s search intent (i.e., how they search for the products that you plan to feature), keyword volumes and trends (how popular are the keywords related to your product), and long tail keywords.

Search intent and long tail keywords are key to converting visitors to purchasers

Since you’re working on what is essentially an affiliate marketing website, conversion is your end goal. Which means to get the right type of targeted visitors to your website (and convert them), you should use as many relevant long tail keywords as possible.

Long tail keywords convert better compared to shorter, focus keywords. They also help to point visitors in the right direction (ideally in the direction of your website). For example, a user that searches for “best Android smartphones in 2018” may have a lower purchase intent compared to one who searches for “Samsung Galaxy A9 price.“

So, as you can see, SEO for affiliate marketing is not just about pulling in a lot of visitors and clicks. It’s about attracting the right type of audience to your website.

Use a good keyword tool to find keywords and content ideas

Doing keyword research for your web content for affiliate marketing involves a lot of work. The best way to make your workflow more efficient and finding relevant, targetted keywords is to use a good keyword tool like KeywordTool.io. With this SEO tool, you’ll be able to:

• Find suitable long tail keywords with higher conversion potential to include in your content.
• Get a long list of content ideas based on high-volume search terms.
• Learn about search trends of various keywords related to your niche.

For example, if you’re running a men’s lifestyle website, it might be a good idea to feature a gadget review and comparison section. It’s an ideal place to insert and promote your Amazon affiliate links. To get started, pick a product type like “wireless headphones,” type into the search bar in KeywordTool.io, and press enter.

You’ll get a long list of search terms that you can use either focus keywords or long tail keywords in your article. Or you can use the generated keywords list as a source of content ideas:

From this list of generated search terms based on “wireless headphones,” there are many ideas that you can pluck out to create content. For instance:

• Best wireless headphones in 2023
• Bose vs Sony: Which has better wireless headphones?
• Sony vs. JBL: One of this wireless headphone is a best-seller

This is just from one keyword search and one results page from KeywordTool.io. Imagine how many more relevant content you can create when you do regular keyword research on your niche of choice.

Creating content ideas out of long-tail keywords

You now have a few potential content ideas. Out of which, you choose to create an article on 5 most affordable brands of wireless headphones for TV. Enter “wireless headphones for TV” in the search bar to find relevant long-tail keywords:

Now, from this list of keywords, you will see some great long tail keywords. We’ve chosen to highlight “wireless headphones for tv for hard of hearing” due to its very specific nature.

Long tail keywords such as those are interesting, especially for affiliate marketers, because people who search for long tail keywords have a specific intent. More often than not, it’s with a potential purchase in mind.

There may not be many websites that rank well for wireless headphones for people with hearing problems. If you’re able to rank your article with Amazon affiliate links for that keyword, you’ll be ahead of the pack. And this is only one example out of many, many more than you can experiment with.

Don’t be alarmed by the relatively low search volume of long tail keywords such as those. There may be fewer people searching for those types of keywords, but they boast a far better conversion rate.

2. Understand consumer behavior on Amazon

The key to increasing your Amazon affiliate earning potential is to promote products that have a lot of demand. That comes from understanding the keyword search and hence the buying habits of consumers on Amazon, including seasonal and shopping trends.

A simple keyword search on Google won’t cut it. Instead, you’ll be better off using KeywordTool for Amazon. The tool pulls autocomplete data from Amazon itself and shows a long list of keywords that are related to the product you’re targeting.

From the results, you can see that there are 359 unique keywords related to “wireless headphones.”

As you can see, there are a lot of exact long tail searches for specific brands, including specific company related like SkullCandy and Apple.

Plug one of those search terms into Amazon.com, and you’ll get:

It’s clearly a very popular product with good reviews, and it has a high search volume (12,200/month) too!

Find a winning Amazon product through a good keyword tool

From this simple research on consumer behavior on Amazon, you can safely say that there is a healthy demand for wireless headphones on both Google and Apple.

Specifially, we saw that branded keywords were generally more popular, which makes it a good place to start Amazon affiliate marketing.

You’ve reached the end of the article and the beginning of your affiliate marketing journey

You can use the methods laid out in this guide and apply it to your affiliate marketing plan. Replicate them for all the products and niches that you’d like to target. Trust that it will make a big difference in your Amazon affiliate work.

Amazon Associate is an amazing program. It has its pros and cons, no doubt, but it’s arguably one of the best affiliate marketing partners for just about anyone. Especially if you’re still new to this industry and entering with a low budget.

Draft out a plan, don’t rush into it (nor should you take too long finding the perfect plan), and put in some elbow grease into research. And get a good keyword tool.

Get prepared for the long haul because there’s no such thing as an affiliate overnight success. If you do it well and persevere, who knows, you might just be the next affiliate marketing success story.

The post Amazon Affiliate: The Complete Guide to Creating Passive Income with Amazon appeared first on Keyword Tool Blog: How to Find Great Keywords.

Amazon is the biggest online marketplace in the United States which sells goods ranging from books, toys, food, electronics, games, apps and much more.

What started out as an online bookstore has now grown to a multi-billion dollar corporation which serves 11 global markets across North America, Europe, and Asia. Amazon’s net sales in 2017 was close to 180 Billion US dollars, making it an extremely lucrative marketplace for Amazon sellers to market their products.

This comprehensive, beginner’s guide will show you how to make money on Amazon by becoming an Amazon seller.

Contents

• How To Setup Your Amazon Seller Account
• How To Login To Your Amazon Seller Account
• How To Get Amazon Seller Support
• What Are Amazon Seller Fees
• How To Add Products On Amazon Seller Central
• How To Sell On Amazon
• Amazon Keyword Research: How To Improve Listing Relevancy
• Keyword Tool For Amazon
• How To Optimize Your Amazon Listing With Keywords
• Summary
  

What Is Amazon Seller Central

Amazon Seller Central is where you can manage your Amazon seller account. This is where you can add product listings, edit product information, add product keywords, make inventory updates, manage orders and payments.

How To Setup Your Amazon Seller Account

1. Register for a seller account here.

1. Determine your product’s Amazon category. Some categories require additional approvals unless you are a professional seller. You can check your product category here.

1. Choose your selling plan – Individual Seller or Professional Seller. An individual seller is for those who sell less than 40 items a month. On top of referral fees and variable closing fees, you pay an extra $0.99 per item sold.

1. Choose professional seller if you plan to sell more than 40 items a month. Instead of the $0.99 fee per item sold, you pay a $39.90 monthly subscription fee but also get the full benefits of professional seller tools. Referral fees and variable fees remain the same.
2. After registering, you can start listing Amazon products in your Amazon Seller account.

How To Login To Your Amazon Seller Account

Access your Amazon Seller Account via the Amazon Seller Login page. There will be a 2-step authentication to log in, so you must enter the code generated by the authenticator app, which you can download for any smartphone device.

How To Get Amazon Seller Support

Want to learn more and get guidance about becoming an Amazon Seller? You can access Amazon Seller Support via the Amazon Seller University. If you’d like to contact customer support directly, use the Amazon Support page.

What Are Amazon Seller Fees

Amazon Seller Fees are fees collected by Amazon whenever you make a sale on their platform. These fees apply whether you are a professional seller or individual seller.

So here’s an example of what you would pay if you are an individual seller vs. a professional seller. The main difference here would be the per-item fee.

Example: You sold a Baby Product priced at $15 + $5 for shipping (shipping fee is paid by customer). Here is the breakdown of Amazon seller fees for individual and professional sellers.

Important note: Referral fee will always apply to the final amount the customer pays, even if you decide to sell the product at a discount.

Example:

• 50% discount on the baby product: $7.50
• Shipping fee: $5
• Total paid by the customer: $12.50
• Final Referral fee: $1.88 ($12.50 x 15%)

Note that the referral fee is not always 15%. It depends on your product category. For the complete breakdown of the fees and referral fee percentages, visit Selling On Amazon Fee Schedule.

How To Add Products On Amazon Seller Central

Once you’ve logged into Amazon Seller Central, you can add products via the catalog option via the main navigation bar. This instructional video provided by Amazon will show you how to add products on Amazon Seller Central:

How To Sell On Amazon

Now that you’ve got the basics set up let’s look at the exact steps on how to sell on Amazon. (aka how to make money on Amazon). There are only 3 things you need to prioritize if you want to start making Amazon profits quickly.

1) Nett Profit Margins

Whatever product you are selling, you need to make sure you can sell it on Amazon at a profit. Which means, your revenue per item must be more than your total cost (Amazon seller fees + fulfillment costs + product cost).

For example, if your total cost for an item of Baby Product is $10, the amount you charge your customer must be more than $10. We recommend you charge at least 50% more than the cost so you won’t be affected by fluctuations in your fixed costs.

2) Fulfillment

How do you want to ship your products to your customers? Do you want to handle fulfillment yourself or use the Fulfilled By Amazon (FBA) service? Your fulfillment cost will vary based on whichever option you choose.

If you go with Fulfilled By Amazon, you’ll have to ship your products to Amazon’s warehouse, and they will handle fulfillment for you. You only have to factor in shipping costs to Amazon’s warehouse. If you wish to manage fulfillment on your own, you’ll have to account for your fulfillment costs such as shipping and warehouse storage.

You can use Fulfillment by Amazon calculator to see if using their fulfillment services is cheaper than doing it yourself.

3) Getting Traffic

Now that you’ve ensured your profit margins are healthy and have your fulfillment system in place, the last step involves getting traffic to your product listings.

The way to make money on Amazon is to have your listing show up whenever someone makes a search on Amazon for your product keywords. For that, you have to understand the ranking factors of Amazon’s search engine (A9) and apply them to your listing.

Ranking Factor #1 – Conversion Rate

Amazon’s search algorithm is designed to show listings which are likely to get more sales. Naturally, your listing’s conversion rate can have a direct impact on your search ranking on Amazon.

Your conversion rate determined by factors such as customer reviews, copy, quality of images and price. As a new Amazon seller, chances are you don’t have that many reviews or past historical data for Amazon to measure conversion rate. Therefore, Amazon will try to estimate your listing’s likeliness to rank based on on-page factors such as price, copy or images.

Ranking Factor #2 – Retention

Amazon pays attention to your customers’ likeliness to make repeat purchases from you. Factors which impact retention include seller feedback and Order Defect rate. Therefore, as a seller, you have to pay attention to your customer support and fulfillment process to make sure your customers are happy.

Ranking Factor #3 – Relevancy

Relevancy relates to how Amazon associates your listing with what people are searching. This factor is crucial because it’s the one thing you have the most control over. For example, making sure your Amazon listing is well-optimized with the right search terms people are using when they look for your product. Let’s now look at some listing optimization tips to boost your relevancy.

Amazon Keyword Research: How To Improve Listing Relevancy

Keyword research forms the basis of any profitable Amazon product listing. If you have not decided what to sell on Amazon, you should do keyword research first. If you have already decided on your products, you need to do keyword research to know which keywords to put in your Amazon listing.

The easiest way to make profits on Amazon is to find out what products are people are searching for. To do that you can use tools such as Keyword Tool for Amazon.

Keyword Tool For Amazon

Keyword Tool lets you discover the most popular Amazon keywords potential buyers are searching for. All you have to do is enter your product keyword, and the tool will automatically generate a large list of related keywords for you to put in your Amazon listing.

These keyword suggestions are pulled from Amazon autocomplete and is the most reliable and relevant source of keywords on Amazon.

Try Keyword Tool For Amazon For Free

How To Optimize Your Amazon Listing With Keywords

Once you’ve narrowed down your product keywords, there are 4 specific places you can optimize your Amazon listing within your seller account.

1) Product Title – Include your main keywords and related keywords in your product title. Think about what your potential customers would type in Amazon’s search engine if they are looking for your products.

2) Product Description – Here you can put your long-tail keywords and additional information such as key features and product benefits. You can also add stories here to convince your visitors to buy from you.

3) Key Product Features – These are bullet points on the product details page. Here you can include a summary of the key features of your product or keywords you have identified in your keyword research.

4) Backend Keywords – Last but not least, Amazon lets you put backend search terms for your product listings. Similar to the meta tags of websites, these backend keywords help Amazon’s algorithm understand the relevancy of your listing to a user’s search query. Be sure to include all your important keywords related to your product here.

Having the right keywords in each of these sections can improve your listing’s overall relevancy so that your products will get shown more prominently on Amazon.

And there you have it! The basics of becoming an Amazon seller and setting up your first Amazon listing. We hope this beginner’s guide on how to be an Amazon seller has been helpful.

Summary

Here’s what you need to do to become an Amazon seller and start making sales.

1. 1. For Amazon product ideas, start with keyword research.
   1. Setup your Amazon Seller account.
   1. Log in and add a product to your seller account.
   1. Make sure your product has a good profit margin and has a fulfillment system (such as FBA) in place
   1. Do keyword research for listing optimization.
   2. Optimize your listing with your keyword list.

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