Many might not realize this, but Amazon is actually a search engine. And one of the largest ones on the web. The majority of people who go to Amazon and browse the site use the search bar to key in the name of the brand or type of product they are looking for. Which means the search behaviour on Amazon is quite different than that of on other search engines like Google or Bing (where users usually search for information rather than to purchase products).

On the other hand, most users on Amazon already know or roughly know what they want and they use Amazon search to locate the products that they want to purchase. This is why keywords are such an integral part of an Amazon listing. The better an Amazon product is optimized for search, the more people will find that page or product (which then, increases the potential of the Amazon seller receiving a sale).

With the right keywords, your Amazon keyword research will provide search term options that are highly relevant to your product. The question is: how do you pick the right keywords for your Amazon product? Here are a few things you need to consider before you start your keyword research efforts:

1. Find out where your Amazon keywords come from

The first thing to consider is where your keyword data comes from, whether it originates from Amazon autocomplete or other search engines such as Google, Bing, and YouTube. By figuring out where your keyword data is from, you’ll know if your product will be discovered by customers in Amazon search results. In addition to using standard search engine data, you also have to think about the customer intent of that search data as well.

That is because people use search engines with different purposes and intentions, which means that the search data also varies with them. For example, people who search for products on Google, Bing, or YouTube are generally trying to find more information on those products, not to purchase the products themselves.

On the other hand, when people go on Amazon to search for products, their intent is to purchase those products. That’s why it’s important that you make sure that your keyword performs well in Amazon’s A9 algorithm as much as it does in Google Analytics. To ensure accuracy, the data you are referencing should be based on Amazon estimations rather than other search engines. You can use an Amazon keyword research tool such as Keyword Tool for Amazon to help you with your keyword decisions.

2. Perform Amazon keyword analysis on your competitors

Another thing to take into consideration is the strategies that your competitors are implementing. This can give you some great insights to improve your own Amazon efforts. While you want to stand out from your competitors, you can learn a thing or two from them, especially those successful ones.

When coming up with your own keyword list, you can also reverse-engineer your competitors’ keyword strategy by running a reverse ASIN number search on Amazon. This will allow you to see a list of products that are related to the ASIN number and what keywords they use in their product titles and descriptions. Then, you can figure out what related focus keywords that your competitors are missing out on so that you can use them to your advantage.

3. Find out the relevancy of your keywords to your Amazon product

One of the most important elements when it comes to picking the best keyword on Amazon is relevancy. Think about the reaction your target customers will get when they type in your selected keyword or phrase into the search box. If they’re confused rather than happy to see your product appear in the search results, then it’s likely that your chosen keyword may not be what they’re looking for. While relevant search terms are crucial to your potential customers, they’re also important to Amazon’s algorithm as well.

If you have an irrelevant or wrong keyword for your product, then customers are most likely going to disregard your listing, which can hurt your Amazon rankings. As a matter of fact, Amazon may even de-index some keywords if one that you are attempting to rank for is irrelevant to your product. To improve your keyword relevancy, you can choose a keyword that mentions an important feature that makes your product special and one that sets your product apart from your competitors.

Another crucial precaution you need to take is to avoid keyword stuffing. Make sure you only use relevant keywords that are closely related to what your product is all about. Keywords are meant to help your target audience find your Amazon products or page by giving them what they want – which are keywords related to your brand, titles that help them find your products, and descriptions that give them value.

4. Do your keyword research using Keyword Tool for Amazon

A lot of people do their keyword research manually by browsing Amazon pages, filtering through common keywords through tonnes of products, and guessing the keyword popularity. There’s nothing wrong with that approach, of course. But it’s often very ineffective.

Instead, you should be using an Amazon SEO tool like Keyword Tool for Amazon.

With the tool, you’ll be able to generate hundreds of relevant focus keywords and long tail keywords to optimize your Amazon products and page. The tool also provides important data like search volumes, trends, cost-per-click (CPC), and competition level.

These are useful information that can help you estimate whether or not there are enough people searching for your chosen keywords (in a month, a season, or a year). It can also give you additional keyword ideas that you might not have thought about before.

5. Identify optimal keywords to use for your Amazon ads

If you want to push your content or products on Google Ads, you can easily find keywords using Google Keyword Planner. The tool will show you estimated search volumes for different keywords that you can then use to optimize your ads better. But the same can’t be said about Amazon.

Amazon doesn’t provide a keyword tool like how Google does, and most Amazon sellers need to guess their keywords and run trial-by-error ads to identify the best type of Amazon keywords to use. It often turns out to be a time-consuming and expensive exercise. A better and more effective option is to use an Amazon SEO tool like Keyword Tool.

Keyword Tool for Amazon can be incredibly valuable for optimizing your Amazon ads. By using the data provided by the tool, you’ll be able to identify the best keywords to use for your Amazon ads based on its search volumes, CPC, and competition level. The trends chart shown in each generated keywords can also be used to gauge the most optimal times to push your Amazon ads.

If you’re looking for an Amazon keyword research tool, take a look at Keyword Tool for Amazon today. It’s easy to use and completely free!

The post How to Find the Best Amazon Keywords for Your Products appeared first on Keyword Tool Blog: How to Find Great Keywords.

There are many other services out there that help both amateur and professional authors to publish their own books. They often come at little to no cost, but few are as attractive as Amazon. And even fewer that are as profitable for authors.

Think about it: from an online retail company that started by selling books, Amazon has also grown in double-digit percentages every year for the past 10 years. Millions of people visit Amazon every month to shop, with a large chunk of that traffic being avid readers who frequently buy paperback books and Kindle ebooks.

The options for consumers to find and buy books on Amazon is endless. And so are the opportunities for sellers to turn a profit by selling and marketing their books.

Can you really make money by selling books on Amazon? Steve makes $40,000 a month!

Steve Scott, or better known as S.J Scott on Amazon Kindle Store, is an incredible success story. He started off with $15,000 in debt, got into affiliate marketing in 2005, worked really hard, started publishing books on Amazon KDP around 2012, and his Kindle earnings have skyrocketed since then.

By 2014, Steve was making between $12,000 to $14,000 a month. His most profitable month saw his revenue shoot up to $60,000. Today, his monthly income from Amazon KDP ranges between $30,000 to $50,000.

Of course, it goes without saying that Steve is an exception to the rule. Save for famous authors like J.K Rowling or George R.R Martin, most authors rarely break into the best selling ranks of Amazon Books or Kindle Store.

Which is why success stories like Steve are so inspiring. It goes to show that anyone who has the right idea, markets the book well, and works hard, has the potential to do very well for themselves. Even if you work at your Amazon KDP business and earn a fraction of what Steve earns, it’s still a very good income. And a pretty good start for potentially more successes to come.

If this has piqued your interest, read on to learn how easy it is to publish your own book and monetize on Amazon KDP, including tips on how to make your books searchable and discoverable on Amazon’s Kindle Store (by spending the least amount of money).

What is Amazon KDP (and how does it work)

Amazon KDP, or also known as Kindle Direct Publishing, is a service that enables anyone to self-publish ebooks and paperback books on Amazon for free.

Literally anyone can publish their own paperback book or Kindle ebook on Amazon KDP with a few clicks in as little as 5 minutes. Once the files for the book are uploaded to the platform (and provided it doesn’t contravene any of Amazon’s publishing policies), it will take anywhere between 24 to 48 hours for the book to be live on Kindle Store.

Authors have the flexibility to choose to have their books sold on individual markets or worldwide and receive up to 70% royalties from every book sold.

Amazon Books vs Kindle Direct Publishing: Which one is a better option?

Amazon KDP has two main options for authors to choose – paperback or ebook. Paperbacks will be listed and sold on Amazon Books, while ebooks will be sold on Kindle Store (that caters specifically for Kindle devices and applications).

There’s no right or wrong between the two choices, it all depends on your preference. Either one wouldn’t cost you a dime to produce, except for ghostwriting fees, book cover design, marketing costs, and other related expenditure.

Many authors choose to write one book and distribute them as both paperbacks and Kindle ebooks. That way the book will be produced in different mediums and exposed to two different markets – readers who prefer physically printed books and readers who own Kindles and prefer the convenience and mobility of ebooks.

There are also differences in terms of royalties that you’ll receive. Paperbacks are entitled to 60% royalties while Kindle ebook authors receive either 35% or 70% royalties (depending on the author’s choice of the ebook’s sale price). Since paperbacks are produced by the print-on-demand service, Amazon will subtract the printing cost from each book sale. Another downside to paperbacks is that they are only available in the U.S., Europe and Japan markets.

Note: For this article, we will be focusing on Kindle ebooks and how to optimize your ebook listings.

Why choose Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing

There are many advantages to choosing Amazon KDP over other self-publishing ebook platforms. The most obvious among all is Amazon’s brand recognition and consumer trust, something that the company have invested in and nurtured for more than a decade.

The trust that consumers have towards Amazon is not just due to the quality and variety of products that the marketplace giant provides, but also the easy and comfortable online shopping experience of the platform.

Amazon is a well-oiled machine that has been fine-tuned for conversions. To give you an idea of how well the platform successfully converts casual browsers to actual purchases, Amazon boasts a conversion rate of 9.7% while the industry standard is around 1.3%. That goes to show how far ahead is Amazon compared to its other eCommerce competitors.

More visitors, better conversions, higher sales

Another good reason to choose Amazon KDP to publish your ebook? The massive amount of readers that flood the platform every single day. Millions of people visit Amazon every month, with a healthy portion of them being loyal, repeat customers of the marketplace. From 2007 till 2017, Amazon has sold nearly 90 million Kindle devices, while in 2016 there were more than 1 million ebook paid downloads every day.

Other than the high conversion rates and large numbers of visitors, there are also many more benefits of publishing your ebook on Amazon KDP:

• Control the copyright and intellectual property of your ebook.
• Set your own prices, no matter how high or low.
• Edit and make changes to your ebook at any time.
• Get your ebook published and be available on the market as quickly as within 24 hours.
• Earn as much as 70% royalty from each ebook sale.
• Make your ebook available globally or select countries like the US, Canada, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Australia, Japan, India, Brazil, Mexico, and more.

There is also an option to enrol in KDP Select and earn more money through Kindle Unlimited and the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library.

How to publish an ebook on Amazon KDP

One of the most attractive things about Amazon KDP is how easy and quickly can anyone publish an ebook on the platform. It allows authors to focus on the most important part of publishing – writing – which begins way before the ebook goes on the market. The bulk of the time (before getting the ebook published) will be spent on ideation, research, writing, editing, and designing.

Now, let’s go back to the point of this section – to show you the steps and process to publish your completed ebook on Amazon KDP:

1. Prepare your completed ebook text and cover design.
2. Go through the Kindle Direct Publishing Terms and Conditions and make sure you don’t contravene any content and quality guidelines.
3. Go to your Amazon KDP account, then go to your KDP Bookshelf.
4. Click “Create a New Title” section, then click “Kindle eBook”.
5. Follow the instructions and enter the necessary information for your eBook, including title, description, keywords, categories.
6. Then, upload your ebook manuscript and cover. Click “Preview” to make sure everything is in order.
7. Next, select the territories where you hold distribution rights.
8. Choose a royalty plan based on your chosen ebook price.
9. Finally, click “Publish Your Kindle eBook”.

And you’re done! Your ebook will be reviewed by Amazon and usually takes anywhere between 24 to 48 hours for the ebook to go live on the Kindle Store.

How to promote a Kindle ebook

So, you’ve just published your ebook on the Kindle Store. How will readers find your book? Well, you’ll need to market it, of course.

Competition is stiff on the Amazon Kindle Store. There are millions of ebooks being sold every day, and more authors are joining the Amazon KDP program every month. Although there are many opportunities for authors to earn a good income by selling Kindle ebooks, it’s definitely not easy to get noticed by readers.

There are many ways to market a Kindle ebook. Here are a few of the most commonly used and impactful Kindle ebook marketing methods:

1. Do ebook giveaways and get reviews

There are many signals that Amazon takes into account for product rankings. One of the biggest factor is the reviews. The more positive reviews you have, the higher your ebook will rank on Kindle Store.

Once your book is live on Amazon KDP, start an ebook giveaway promo in exchange for a review. Try to avoid mass emailing or posting on social media groups. Instead, take time to personally message potential giveaway customers. A personal touch may go a long way to convincing them to write your ebook’s first batch of reviews.

You’ll most likely see that the majority of them won’t fulfil their promise to review your book. Which is why having a personal touch to follow up with them to get your first batch of reviews.

Reviews are not just great for rankings, but it’s a good signal of social trust when other potential customers are browsing ebooks and stumble upon yours. If you have a choice between buying a product with good reviews and another product with no reviews, wouldn’t you choose the former? Exactly.

2. Use Amazon Advertising banner ads

Amazon Advertising is available for all products on Amazon, including ebooks and paperback books. When done the right way, Amazon banner ads can be an incredibly effective way to put your ebook out there and attract potential readers.

Amazon ad campaigns have two types – Sponsored Products and Product Display Ads. They’re both very different. For Kindle ebooks, you’d want to go with Sponsored Products, as these are keyword targeted ads (as opposed to the latter which are product or interest targeted ads).

If you’re new to Amazon ads, don’t worry. Let’s keep it simple and focus on the most important features and steps to creating an Amazon ad for your ebook.

How to create an Amazon ad for a Kindle ebook:

1. Go to your Amazon KDP dashboard, and click “Promote and Advertise” next to the KDP title you’d like to promote.
2. Select “Sponsored Products”, and key in your campaign details, budget, and duration.
3. Scroll down to Select targeting type and click “Manual Targeting”.
4. Next, you have the option to either use the keywords suggested by Amazon or add your own. Choose the latter.
5. Set the cost-per-click (CPC) bid for your chosen keywords.
6. Then, you’ll reach to the Customise your ad section. This is the text that will be displayed in your Amazon ad alongside your Kindle ebook cover. You can write up to a maximum of 150 characters only, so do it wisely.
7. Finally, once you’re done, click “Launch Campaign”. If your Amazon ad is approved, you’ll receive an official email confirming that your ad has been allowed to run.

For an ad to be successful, it needs an attractive visual and a compelling ad copy. This is another reason why your ebook cover design needs to look great and able to draw the attention of readers. Once it has attracted the eyes of the reader, the ad copy will often determine whether or not the reader will convert into a buyer.

Ad copy is not easy to write, especially with such a limited number of characters to fit in a small space. But don’t fret, we’ve prepared for you a few tips to help you create quality ad copy.

How to write copy for an Amazon KDP ad

• Summarize what the ebook is about.
• Highlight what the reader will benefit from it.
• Don’t be overly promotional in your ad copy.
• Avoid using too many capital letters and foul language.
• Keep your copy clean.

These ad copy tips can be used for any type of ebook promo ads, whether it’s for fiction or non-fiction. Try writing a few versions of the same ad. Then, sleep on it or review it again later. Or, share it with a trusted friend or relative and get their honest feedback. You’ll find that fresher eyes can often be a better judge to your ad copy.

3. Optimize your ebook metadata and Kindle keywords

At the end of the day, Amazon is a search engine hosted in a marketplace that is full of an enormous variety of products. Because of that, you’ll find that most of the best-selling products on Amazon are those that people are already looking for. Which means that the majority of sales actually come from organic searches.

This is why optimizing your ebook’s metadata and keywords are so important. For each Kindle ebook, you’ll be able to enter up to 7 keywords. These keywords will be used for Amazon to rank your ebook based on relevance and user search behaviour.

To make sure that your ebook will appear to the right type of searches, you’ll need to find and identify keywords that are most relevant to your ebook. Those keywords should then be inserted in the ebook’s metadata, such as the title, subtitle, and description.

To find your Kindle keywords, you’ll need the help of Keyword Tool for Amazon.

How to use Keyword Tool to find Kindle keywords

Although technically possible, it’s still fairly difficult and tedious to do keyword research manually using Amazon autocomplete. Instead, a better option will be to use Keyword Tool for Amazon.

Keyword Tool is an incredibly powerful yet easy-to-use SEO tool that is built specifically to help you perform keyword research quickly. The tool helps to generate thousands of high-volume focus keywords and high-converting long tail keywords for numerous platforms, including Amazon.

Let’s say you’ve just written a non-fiction book titled “The Complete Guide to a Fuss-Free Diet.” The book was written for beginners and those who lead busy lives. The focus keyword from your book will be “diet.” Now, go to Keyword Tool for Amazon:

1. Click on the dropdown menu next to the input box and select “Kindle Store.”
2. Then, go to the Amazon market and language selection dropdown menu and select “United States/English”
3. Next, key in “diet” as the primary keyword into the input box and press enter.

As you can see from the summary results, the paid version of Keyword Tool gives a wealth of data. The focus keyword “diet” yielded in 119 unique keywords with a total search volume (for the past 12 months) of almost 2.2 million. It also shows the average keyword trend, cost-per-click (CPC), and competition level.

It’s also interesting to note that for the keyword “diet” in the Kindle Store, there is a visible search spike in January. These trend graphs can be a very valuable indicator as to when might be the best time for you to push your Amazon ads to promote your book.

You can run promotions, giveaways, or contests during these periods when searches for your targeted keywords see a visible spike.

Now, let’s scroll down to see the list of generated Kindle keywords:

There are many considerations to pay attention to when doing keyword research for your ebook’s topic to identify the ideal keywords to target and rank for. One of them is keyword competition.

From the list of keywords provided by Keyword Tool for Amazon, it’s pretty obvious that “diet” is very popular. Keyword Tool data tells us that a lot of people are interested in the topic, and the keyword competition level ranges from low to medium.

These facts make them excellent keywords to target as high search volume and low competition is the sweet spot.

You might also find better keywords and search terms to use in your Kindle ebook metadata, especially for the title. Since you can easily edit your uploaded ebook on Kindle and republish it, you can change and optimize your ebook title and description at any time.

Optimizing your Kindle ebook metadata to make it more search friendly will prove to be the most cost-efficient way to promote your ebook. It’s especially useful for those who are on a tight budget and can’t afford to run a lot of Amazon ads.

Remember, your product (the Kindle ebook) sits in one of the largest search engines (Amazon.com) on the web. When your ebook is easier to find and appears in more relevant searches, the more likely you will see a rise in sales and readership for your Kindle ebook.

Make the most out of Keyword Tool for Amazon and watch as your ebook sales on Amazon KDP climb over time!

The post Amazon KDP: Complete Guide to Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing 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.