Someone once said, “Do a job you love you’ll never go to work again.”That’s true FBA too – choose products that you would buy yourself or ones that you feel passionate about.That way it will keep your interest and you’ll be far more likely to understand your customers. A friend of mine is a yoga nut-he sells yoga equipment online. Makes sense.
Problems are a great source of ideas. If you can’t find durable gardening gloves, the chances are that you’re not alone. Make
a list of these and ask your friends too.
Flick through newspapers and magazines – they are awash
with product ideas. And, if you can bear it, shopping channels
will give you an insight into the kind of things people are
buying.
You can also find out what customers are searching for on
Amazon’s website by typing in the start of a search. When I
typed “pillow”, the following appeared: pillows, pillow cases,
emoji pillow, travel pillow, pregnancy pillow etc.
Product bundling is worth considering too. It’s a tried and
tested technique across a range of industries and used by
everyone from car manufacturers (Ford + insurance) to the
fast-food industry (McDonald’s Happy Meal) and from games
consoles (PlayStation + free game) to fine foods (Fortnum &
Mason’s hampers). The key advantage is that you can create a
unique listing using off-the-shelf products. And you can charge
less per item. For example, you could fill a wash-bag with
toiletries, rebrand, barcode etc. and suddenly you have a
unique offering. The reason you can charge a lower price is
simple: Amazon’s fees are less as they’re only selling and
shipping one item. It’s also harder for competitors to copy
your inventory.
Note:There are some Amazon rules regarding bundling. For
example, BMVD (Books, Music, Videos, and DVDs) product
bundles must be defined by the publisher or manufacturer and
have a single ISBN, UPC or EAN.
Selling multipacks also allows you to sell your products at a
lower per-unit price too. But, remember, if you’re selling
generic products this offering can be copied.
I urge you to avoid selling low-cost inventory. It’s almost
impossible to sell anything for less than £4 and make a profit
even if you can source it for pennies. The cost to ship to
Amazon’s fulfilment centre and Amazon’s fees will decimate
your profit.
Some new sellers piggyback existing listings. This is
reasonable to test the market, but there are some significant
downsides. Firstly you will not, initially at least, “own” the Buy
box – you will be listed under “Other Sellers on Amazon”.
(Note: In Amazon’s words, the “eligibility to win the Buy Box is
tied to specific seller performance criteria that identify the
sellers who have consistently provided customers with a great
buying experience”.) In addition, you’re stuck with the listing
they created, which may have poor pictures, a substandard
description and be underpinned with irrelevant search terms.
This is one such example for a pretty generic sunglasses case:
there were 17 sellers of the same item. The non-Prime price
ranged from £1.33 to £1.70 including P&P. All these sellers
were based in Hong Kong. It was also available on Prime for
£4.32. So, unless you’re in a rush, you’re not going to buy from
the Prime seller. Worse still, it was a non-Prime seller who
owned the Buy Box (i.e. on the product page, the main “Add to
Basket” button would give that non-Prime seller the sale).
My first ever products were cushion covers. They did, in time,
become the highest rated cushion covers on Amazon.co.uk.
However, I made several mistakes.
- It was already a very competitive segment ( which was price competitive too )
- I didn’t get my logo stitched onto the covers.
- I didn’t get an exclusivity deal on the designs.
Over times, I rectified these issues – but i wish i had known then what i know now.
A-Z of Amazon 