If you’ve been to any of my workshops, then you know how much I love Amazon. It has become such a beast in the retail industry. I remember in University studying online shopping and there was all this debate as to whether or not Internet retailing will last. Well, Amazon has indeed answered this question. It’s definitely lasted and has disrupted the traditional brick and mortar retail model.

If you have a product-based business, then you need to consider selling your products on Amazon. I highly recommend Amazon for many of my clients. The beauty of Amazon is that setting up a seller account is fairly straight forward, and the cost is great too. You can register as an individual account and it’s free to do so, or professional. A professional account will cost you just $29.99/month for a Canadian account or $39.99/month for an American one.

What I love about the professional account is the ability to advertise, execute coupons and really leverage and maximize your listing on Amazon. It’s a small fee that I think is well worth it!

There are so many benefits for selling on Amazon, that I could probably do a whole workshop solely on it, but I’ll try and do a quick summary for you, so you can start to evaluate whether it’ll be a right fit for your products.

First is its reach. Stats show that there are 300 million users on Amazon.com alone. These are active shoppers searching on Amazon for products and services to buy. This is better than social media where people are there primarily for connection and social means. However, on Amazon they’re actively seeking for products to buy. This opens up a whole new opportunity to get your products in front of active buyers who may want your products.

According to a study in BloomReach, shoppers start their product research nearly 2X more often on Amazon than Google. This was a huge surprise to me, and another great reason why I recommend selling your products on Amazon!

You can leverage Amazon in many ways. For one, you can advertise your products on its marketplace and they take a commission of sales. Doing this exposes your products to more potential buyers. Plus if you have a professional sellers account, you can advertise your products, create coupons and execute other promotional opportunities that drive sales.

I also love the ability to have Amazon fulfill your orders, which is known as Fulfillment by Amazon or FBA. This is the format I went with when selling my planners for Amazon.ca. I simply listed my items, created a shipment plan and sent my planners to an Amazon distribution centre in my region. When a customer orders my planner, Amazon picks and ships my products to them. They also handle all customer service and returns.

I LOVE having the opportunity to manage my business this way because it allows me to focus on other areas of my business. No more running to the post office to ship out orders. Amazon does it for me. In addition, with my selling plan I’m able to offer coupons and advertise.

When you sign up to be a seller (North America) you have access to Amazon US, Canada and Mexico from one account, which is very convenient. To access each region is a simple option from a drop down menu.

The other benefit to FBA is that Prime members get free shipping, which is a big advantage to customers. I know many product-based business owners that struggle with shipping. Depending on where a product is ordered from, shipping can be almost half the price of the product itself, if not more! The high cost of shipping can deter potential shoppers. With Amazon, shipping is free for Prime members, plus if the cost of the item is $35 or more, shipping is free with or without Prime.

In addition, with FBA there is this perceived trust from the customers, vs. from a company who is shipping the products themselves, which is known as Fulfillment by Merchant (FBM). Basically, if you do not wish to send your products to Amazon’s distribution centre to have them ship your orders, you can fulfill it yourself. Amazon will send you an email that an order has been placed and you ship the products yourself. You can also charge the customer shipping fees. Something to think about with FBM is that you and not Amazon handle returns from customers.

Probably one of my favourite reasons why I love Amazon so much is that that when you lead people to your product page on Amazon, they will drive traffic to your products. Just think about when in the past you’ve viewed an item on Amazon that you did not end up buying. All of a sudden you started seeing that product on Facebook from Amazon, or you’ll get an email from Amazon saying something along the lines of you were interested in this. These are all Amazon’s retargeted ads for your products. Just think about the marketing budget of Amazon. I’ll bet it’s way more than yours. So why not leverage their marketing spent for your goods.

So, if you have a product based business it’s definitely worth it to see how you can leverage this powerhouse that’s leading retail sales worldwide. It may or may not work for you, but there are many advantages to it.

If you want to see if selling on Amazon will work for you, or need support in setting up your products on Amazon, we can definitely help you with that. Simply click here to request a 20mins complimentary call to discuss how our business can set up your products on Amazon.

To learn how to scale your products through wholesale, click here for Wholesale Academy. The only online training dedicated to help you scale your business through wholesale.

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