Remember when someone said Amazon and the first thing that came to mind was that huge river down south? Today, Amazon is a household name and most of us find ourselves buying more and more from the mega-marketplace.
But just as consumers have embraced Amazon, so, too, have sellers—so much that new retailers may wonder if it’s even worth trying to launch an Amazon business anymore. Do new guys have a chance? We asked a panel of specialists, and here’s what they had to say.
Jessica McCune has been blogging about selling on Amazon for the past 18 months for the Sellozo blog. She enjoys the intricacies that go along with selling on Amazon and sharing best practices to help other be more successful.
As a new seller on Amazon, the key to being successful is finding a way to make your products stand out among all the others available. If someone is considering creating their own products rather than reselling other brands’ products, they are likely to be more successful if their products have a distinct differentiation that makes the product more appealing to customers than other products.
The easiest way to get ideas on how to execute this is to look at similar products on Amazon and read through the reviews to find what aspects of the product could be improved based on customer experiences.
Gerek Allen is the co-founder of Wod Recovery Rx. He’s been an entrepreneur for 10+ years, Crossfitter for 5+ years, and he’s now shifting his entire focus to the cannabis industry. His passion is to educate people on the power of this miracle plant.
The idea of ‘too saturated’ is absurd, but ‘extremely competitive’ may be more appropriate. With online spending only counting for 12% of ALL retail sales in 2018, the online selling opportunity is still in its infancy.
New sellers can still thrive even today, but there’s been a fundamental shift in how to succeed in the last few years. It’s now 100% pay to play. You can’t just put up a product without doing any paid advertising and hope it will sell organically. Those days are long gone.
The real value today is to build a brand OUTSIDE of Amazon and focus on driving outside traffic to your Amazon listing. Not only will Amazon love you for that, but your overall ROI will be better with this strategy.
Peter Koch, an engineer by trade, a father of two kids and owner of a Dollar Sanity blog.
If you are planning to import a cutting board and just slap your sticker on it then it is saturated. If you are an entrepreneur who innovates and takes risks, then Amazon is the greatest opportunity for you.
You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, but you must have an original product that separates you from the crowd. Simple idea: toothpick out of almond wood. It would be a unique product, and you’d be able to charge more.
Vanessa Babuin
Vanessa Babuin, Founder and Managing Director of Sonsee Woman, an eCommerce boutique focused on plus-size women’s clothing, hosiery, and intimates. We have been selling on Amazon for the last year now in the USA and have achieved great results.
Amazon is continuing to grow at an extremely rapid rate, but there is still room for new sellers with unique or highly desired items. I would, however, not be solely relying on Amazon as your one and only touch point for sales. Invest in a good ecommerce site, wholesale accounts and other traffic streams to ensure you are not putting all your eggs in one basket. With Amazon, the more you sell the easier it is to sell more. You items will gain better list ranking through more sales so it doesn’t hurt to drive customers to your Amazon store as well.
This is a crowdsourced article. Contributors are not necessarily affiliated with this website and their statements do not necessarily reflect the opinion of this website, other people, businesses, or other contributors.
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