FBA and Importing Goods From China

[SJVC]

@mosdef 370USD is mad for ten lamps... I would either try and negotiate them down or tell them where to go!

 

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[ebms]

Haha just got this from another manufacturer:
DHL Shipping Cost10 PCS is 0.25 CBM and delivery to Sweden by DHL cost 370.00 USD

370 dollars shipping to sweden for 10 lamps, haha amazing How the hell are one going to make any profit on that

How big and heavy are the lamps? That could be your problem.

 

[Trevorjc]

No, I live in a small 3rd world country and everything is batshit expensive due to taxes. My plan is to import stuff buying from amazon, I have to pay an extra for the weight so heavy stuff aren't very profitable. Thanks for the reply I will research more on this subject.

Would it be possible to import from the likes of Alibaba / Allie Express to your home-country? Lots of the products on Amazon have been imported from these sources so by importing from there rather than Amazon you are cutting people out of the loop and potentially increasing your profit margin.

 

[Luke1213]

I have listed my products on amazon and have had them listed for about 2 weeks now. No sales via amazon but I have made a few sales elsewhere and people that have purchased one of my items have left me reviews on amazon. I am selling my own private label brand and it is nearly impossible to find it using the keywords I use. My problem isn't finding my products if I search my brand. When I search my brand they appear without hesitation. My problem is finding which page my product is on when I search the keywords i have listed with my item description. I have tried finding it by searching the price, by relevance, by number of reviews, color, ect and it doesn't come up. I have searched through thousands upon thousands of listings with all my selected keywords and still can't seem to find it. Am I missing something? This is really beginning to frustrate me. How do you get your product to sell on amazon?

 

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[BGLefty]

Is your product fullfilled by Amazon? Pretty sure that helps your ranking.


Sent from my GT-I9100M using Tapatalk

 

[Luke1213]

No I fulfill them at the present time. I have to wait on amazon to approve my products prior to sending them in. It could be that I am not FBA at the present moment but many products that are merchant filled that don't even have reviews or sales rank higher than me.

 

[BGLefty]

No I fulfill them at the present time. I have to wait on amazon to approve my products prior to sending them in. It could be that I am not FBA at the present moment but many products that are merchant filled that don't even have reviews or sales rank higher than me.

I am no expert...you're way ahead of me in fact...I'm still in the investigation/learning phase of selling on Amazon. I posted this eslewhere but I'll give it to you here...it's a "creative Google search" that will give you links to lots of available PDF docs that you may find your answer in. Even if you don't find that answer, if you're just starting with FBA I'm sure you will learn a lot...

FBA PDFs

Hope that helps you out.

 

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[Luke1213]

@BGLefty Thanks. I'll check these out.

 

[Ronak]

Look into Amazon sponsored search, you can have your product ad show up in amazon results for keywords you specify, clicks can be pretty cheap, and I think your first $50 is free...

 

[SJVC]

@Luke12321 Hey man. First up, 2 weeks isn't very long at all for a product on Amazon. It does take time for your page to move up through the rankings and there is a chance that it won't if you are not judged correctly by Amazon.

It is kind of hard to give you direct advice if I do not know what you are selling but here are some broad points:

Is your store brand new? Message your buyers and literally ask them for a review of your product and your store. State that if they were not happy with their purchase then you will rectify the issue.

Consider reducing the cost so you get more purchases which will increase your rank for your keywords. Then once you start to rank well put your price back up to where it was originally.

Consider using Amazon's paid ad network, but do not go overboard if you are not seeing ROI.

Try as best you can to objectively compare you page to your competitors. Look at your images, description copy etc

How competitive are your keywords for your product? For example if I created a page selling HDMI cables then I would not expect to rank for a very long time for someone searching 'HDMI cable'.

The reason for this is the competition, items such as HDMI cables are in big demand and so the margins are slim and the pages that do rank have either been there for a long time and/or are well researched and optimised effectively. That isn't to say you cannot rank, just that some wars will be more easily won on Amazon than others.

 

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[Harry321]

What are your thoughts on sourcing branded products from AliExpress? I have a feeling some of the products I've been looking at are fake..

 

[SJVC]

@Harry3000 Branded products that we all know (such as Nike and Adidas) do not use Aliexpress as wholesalers. So yes there is a ton of fake goods on Aliexpress, stay clear because you will be the one who gets in trouble for selling them.

On the other hand there are branded goods that are not counterfeit, often this will be a generic item that a particular manufacturer has branded in China. The way to tell these apart is if you have never heard of the brand!

 

[Harry321]

@Harry3000 Branded products that we all know (such as Nike and Adidas) do not use Aliexpress as wholesalers. So yes there is a ton of fake goods on Aliexpress, stay clear because you will be the one who gets in trouble for selling them.

On the other hand there are branded goods that are not counterfeit, often this will be a generic item that a particular manufacturer has branded in China. The way to tell these apart is if you have never heard of the brand!

Thanks! I have had very limited success in sourcing products in the past. I am starting to wonder whether it is because I ignore branded products..

E.g. If I see a Samsung camera I assume that I will have no chance in competing if I am able to source a chinese brand camera with the same spec...IS this limited thinking? Can you compete with the big brand names? Or are you sticking to niche's that have not been monopolised?

 

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[Brentnal]

Hey everyone,

My first post here so I thought my first thread would be to answer any questions anyone has regarding to Fulfillment By Amazon (or any other questions on Amazon/eBay) or importing goods from China. I have been importing goods and selling them online for around three years so I know a decent amount but am not an expert yet

Read Mj's book around a week ago and joined the forum the other day which so far seems really great.

Cheers.

If you are busy with school and have almost no storage space you can't really make alot of money with this right?

 

[SJVC]

@Harry3000 Well... going against BIG brands will be tough, but not impossible. The main reason being is that customers know and generally trust big brands. If you do sell the same/similar product then you must have a USP. Otherwise why would someone choose your brand over an established brand? As for monopolised niches, yes it is easier to establish yourself in a field that is not dominated. Remember you do not have to sell in just one niche, you can have smaller empires that cumulatively bring in the good money. But good questions man, keep going you will get there. Just remember to test your products on your market before ordering a load of stock.

@16yearoldboy I assume you are 16? If so, why the hell not go for it!? Busy with school? Do you spend all your waking hours at school and studying at home? Can you cut out 1 hour of tv a day for product research and then another hour for product fulfillment? You can treat it as a hobby first, aim to make £10 a week, then £30 a week, then £10 a day then £30 a day etc. If you start this when you are 16, well, you will be light years ahead of 99% of your peers. The value isn't just in making x amount of money, but your SKILLS to be able to source products, work out margins, find customers and markets.

As for storage space, I started out of my bedroom. Just look for items to sell that do not take up a lot of room. Or you could go straight to using FBA and using Amazon's warehouses... but I wouldn't recommend that for a beginner!

 

[Ajay2390]

Ok, so i found a product which is currently selling on Amazon for the double the wholesale price on Alibaba. i thought it was a winner a no brainer UNTIL i found out it was a counterfeit. But both Original and copy are made in CHINAAAAAAAAAAA!! lol What to do ey?

 

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[SJVC]

@Ajay2390 Don't be surprised that they are both made in China! Keep looking for legit products.

 

[Ajay2390]

Understood. Back to researching i go haha. Thanks for your wisdom throughout this tremendous thread @SJVC

 

[Luke1213]

Look into Amazon sponsored search, you can have your product ad show up in amazon results for keywords you specify, clicks can be pretty cheap, and I think your first $50 is free...

I setup an ad campaign. Amazon states my ad is not getting impressions because I don't own the buy box. I guess the only way to own the buy box is to have amazon fulfill it. So I started the process of packing my products to send to amazon and hit another snag. My package quantity is wrong. Not a big deal when self fulfilling but when amazon does it, someone will get 3 for the price of 1. I have to create new listings for my product and it's variants. I am just concerned that the few reviews I have from selling it through other avenues will disappear. I'm waiting for amazon to respond to my email.

 

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[throttleforward]

I have listed my products on amazon and have had them listed for about 2 weeks now. No sales via amazon but I have made a few sales elsewhere and people that have purchased one of my items have left me reviews on amazon. I am selling my own private label brand and it is nearly impossible to find it using the keywords I use. My problem isn't finding my products if I search my brand. When I search my brand they appear without hesitation. My problem is finding which page my product is on when I search the keywords i have listed with my item description. I have tried finding it by searching the price, by relevance, by number of reviews, color, ect and it doesn't come up. I have searched through thousands upon thousands of listings with all my selected keywords and still can't seem to find it. Am I missing something? This is really beginning to frustrate me. How do you get your product to sell on amazon?

Look at your competitors (the ones on the first page of the keywords you want to rank for) pay special attention to the keywords/language they use in the their title copy. Try to incorporate as much of that into your title as possible, while still in a sentence/phrase format (you can't just list keywords in the title). Fill the title block completely. Keyword match to title is a key element Amazon uses to match searchers to sellers, so it has an outsized impact on your Amazon SERP ranking.

 

[Luke1213]

Hey man. First up, 2 weeks isn't very long at all for a product on Amazon. It does take time for your page to move up through the rankings and there is a chance that it won't if you are not judged correctly by Amazon.
It is kind of hard to give you direct advice if I do not know what you are selling but here are some broad points:
Is your store brand new? Message your buyers and literally ask them for a review of your product and your store. State that if they were not happy with their purchase then you will rectify the issue.
Consider reducing the cost so you get more purchases which will increase your rank for your keywords. Then once you start to rank well put your price back up to where it was originally.
Consider using Amazon's paid ad network, but do not go overboard if you are not seeing ROI.
Try as best you can to objectively compare you page to your competitors. Look at your images, description copy etc
How competitive are your keywords for your product? For example if I created a page selling HDMI cables then I would not expect to rank for a very long time for someone searching 'HDMI cable'.
The reason for this is the competition, items such as HDMI cables are in big demand and so the margins are slim and the pages that do rank have either been there for a long time and/or are well researched and optimised effectively. That isn't to say you cannot rank, just that some wars will be more easily won on Amazon than others.

Thanks @SJVC. I understand that sales won't be overnight and 2 weeks isn't giving it much time to creep up in the sales ranking. What I can't understand is that in the categories where my product is listed, it is no where to be found. I have searched through thousands upon thousands of listings. Their is 100's of new merchants with no sales record or reviews that are listed. I can search my brand and it comes up but if I search the keywords and then look at every listing under this keyword, my product is not found. Another confusing issue is that my brand is listed under the search by brand in the same keyword categories. It's just irritating...

 

[Ronak]

I setup an ad campaign. Amazon states my ad is not getting impressions because I don't own the buy box. I guess the only way to own the buy box is to have amazon fulfill it. So I started the process of packing my products to send to amazon and hit another snag. My package quantity is wrong. Not a big deal when self fulfilling but when amazon does it, someone will get 3 for the price of 1. I have to create new listings for my product and it's variants. I am just concerned that the few reviews I have from selling it through other avenues will disappear. I'm waiting for amazon to respond to my email.

Not necessarily...if your price is significantly lower, then you can get the buy box w/o FBA...you may or may not be able to create a child listing off the current one, contact support and see if they'll let you add a child listing...

 

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[Ronak]

Not necessarily...if your price is significantly lower, then you can get the buy box w/o FBA...you may or may not be able to create a child listing off the current one, contact support and see if they'll let you add a child listing...

Just reread your posts...so are you the only seller, since its a private label product? In that case, I don't see why you wouldn't have the buy box??

 

[Luke1213]

Not necessarily...if your price is significantly lower, then you can get the buy box w/o FBA...you may or may not be able to create a child listing off the current one, contact support and see if they'll let you add a child listing...

If I am the only one selling this brand, shouldn't the buy box be in my listing? No one competes with me on this so their is no competing for the buy box.

 

[Luke1213]

Just reread your posts...so are you the only seller, since its a private label product? In that case, I don't see why you wouldn't have the buy box??

Yea this is what I don't understand.

 

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[Ronak]

Yea this is what I don't understand.

I'd contact support on that, it doesn't make sense....

 

[debitandcredit]

If I am the only one selling this brand, shouldn't the buy box be in my listing? No one competes with me on this so their is no competing for the buy box.

If you are a new seller, it takes a while to get buybox even you are the only one selling, it depends, 2 months to 6 months.

 

[MarkNNelson]

If I am the only one selling this brand, shouldn't the buy box be in my listing? No one competes with me on this so their is no competing for the buy box.

I was in the same situation, the only person selling the item. As @debitandcredit said, you may get the buy box eventually, but I didn't want to wait. Once I had them under FBA, I got the box immediately.

As far as the quantity, I thought that was editable? I kinda remember starting my listing as a 3-pack, and then changing to 5. It's been a while though, so maybe I'm remembering wrong...

 

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[throttleforward]

Once I had them under FBA, I got the box immediately.

Amazon rewards those who agree to give Amazon more of their money. Don't be suprised that when you start giving Amazon more money (via use of FBA, pro seller account, etc.) that they will start "favoring" your product in the form of higher SERP rankings.

That said, you really have to match your title and copy to what people are already searching for. Analyze your competition, steal their keywords, and consider getting a Merchant Words account.

 

[Harry321]

@SJVC So I've just spent the last few hours trying to source my first product, but what I seem to find is that most products are branded, and that the mark-up on non branded products is non-existant. I hate to constantly ask for advice, but could you shed some light on how you found your FIRST product? Or is it a case of continual searching...?