Newbie Importing and Selling on Amazon

[Dicky Dee]

This is already happening. One of my suppliers is already doing just that, with two full time staff dedicated to this pursuit exclusively. That being said, they are failing. Why? Because it is highly competitive already with other sellers striving to be heard in the noise. It takes insight and experience in terms of how to market, rank for keywords, do PPC effectively, brand and customize effectively, and so on. It IS getting harder to be heard and it is requiring more and more bank roll (for product giveaways, custom toolings, professional design etc) to reach the top, and generally things seem to be consolidating somewhat in the major categories.

The days of finding a silicone spatula (as the common example goes) and simply slapping a sticker on it, getting a few friends and family to review, doing some Amazon ppc and up you go are pretty much behind us. You have to INNOVATE, have a solid stand-out brand with a MESSAGE and emotional connection, you have to REALLY differentiate, not superficially so with a new color or size but by custom tooling, custom packaging, and custom images. You need to go DEEP not wide (to start) and have something that stands out in the market. When your product gets searched you need Google results to reveal a webpage with actual unique content, a story about your brand. You need YouTube video reviews to pop up, YouTube HowTo's, Instagram pages and giveaways. You need bloggers and influencers talking about your product etc.

I.E You need to market effectively, you need to learn and implement strategies, you need to provide unique value to the market place, and quite honestly you will likely need more money than you did if entering this model a few years ago.

What else are you doing now to boost rankings? Amazon updated the TOS today about giveaways for reviews and it seems that they wont allow an "excessive" amount anymore of them, although they did not comment on what was "excessive"....

I have a few products launching right away and just looking for ways to boost the launch without being on page 3412342524352!

 

[biophase]

I will make my first order the next week and was thinking in that my supplier send the inventory directly to amazon warehouse ... to keep the cost low... I know that my supplier only is a reseller and he buy directly to a factory, so I would like if someone can give me a advice...

If my goal is... first test my product and sell 500-1000 units per month and after travel to the country and search directly a factory . What can I make ?

Why don't you try to find that factory now?

 

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[QDF]

What else are you doing now to boost rankings? Amazon updated the TOS today about giveaways for reviews and it seems that they wont allow an "excessive" amount anymore of them, although they did not comment on what was "excessive"....

I have a feeling I know the reasoning behind this.

There are businesses forming where they will contact Amazon sellers asking if they're willing to do a giveaway for reviews, and they have a large email list of people wanting deals on products. They offer usually like 25 spots to their email list and then get coupon codes from the seller once they're claimed.

Per Amazon's rules and guidelines, this is perfectly acceptable unless they are now "excessive".

 

[Dicky Dee]

Just make it a better value and it will sell itself. What I've usually done is price it at cost or below cost and people will find it. They will buy it, like it and give it reviews and 6 months later I'm usually in the top 5. Sometimes I've priced stuff below cost and it still doesn't sell, then I know I have a dud.

I actually was thinking of using the same strategy last night, although it doesn't guarantee the reviews on those sales it would still boost rankings because of the amount sales you get from it. My only concern with this strategy is that there are deal sites from around the world that look for deals exactly like this and may just buy up your stock for that product when you price it so low, have you ran into this problem? A networking friend of mine had that happen to him with a discount code few months back.

 

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[Dicky Dee]

I have a feeling I know the reasoning behind this.

There are businesses forming where they will contact Amazon sellers asking if they're willing to do a giveaway for reviews, and they have a large email list of people wanting deals on products. They offer usually like 25 spots to their email list and then get coupon codes from the seller once they're claimed.

Per Amazon's rules and guidelines, this is perfectly acceptable unless they are now "excessive".

That is correct, the updated TOS is very vague though regarding this rule since they did not say you can not do this entirely but just not to do it "excessively". Im currently brainstorming with a few networking friends in the same business at the moment to figure out new ways to effectively do a product launch as this literally could 3x your wait time to get your products ranked on page 1 or 2 if you're lucky........has anyone tried selling on jet.com yet?

 

[Superwoman]

Food for thought: I wanted an extra cord to charge my FitBit. I already have one, but wanted a spare, so I wasn't in a big hurry for it. Ordered the cheapest one I found on Amazon. Took a few weeks, (not sure how long because I wasn't sitting around waiting for it). Hubby asks when he brings the mail in, "what did you order from Shanghai?"

My sister ordered nail art supplies from China because it was so cheap.

So don't fool yourselves. If people want something, but realize if they are willing to wait they can pay a third of the price, they are buying from China directly.


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[PTP]

@BusinessBen Any updates in the past few months?

 

[MTEE1985]

Just stumbled across this and considering the wealth of information provided I can’t believe it ended like it did.

What’s been happening the last 18 months @BusinessBen?

Like you said, that business may have failed but the lessons are worth it. My first failure was losing $2,000 to an overseas manufacturer but it was worth the knowledge gained from the process.