Selling on Amazon Complete Course: FBA, FBM, Sponsored Ads

Welcome to How to Sell on Amazon.  This course covers everything you need to know about selling on Amazon, including FBA, other fulfilment options, creating optimised listings, advertising your products and much more!

This lecture summarises the steps you will need to start your Amazon business and where you can find the information in this course that will help you.

Whilst many marketplace sellers choose to sell under a generic brand (e.g. TPG Trading, 247 Top Seller), developing your own brand will help customers to identify you and build loyalty. This video lecture gives guidelines for developing your brand and using this to create a cross-platform identity.

With 18000 categories on Amazon, it can be challenging to know what to sell.  This lecture provides data sources for investigating hot products and tools for finding product opportunities.

When setting up an Amazon account, you will need to select an account type. This lecture briefly describes the differences between the basic and professional account types. Note: We will be discussing the buy box later on!

In this lecture, we cover how Amazon referral fees are calculated.

Combined EU and NA accounts allow the accounts for these countries (EU = UK, FR, IT, ES, DE, NL, SE, NA = US, CA, MX) to be pooled and accessed from a single sign-on.

Opening an Amazon seller account requires accurate documentation.  Be careful to submit the correct documentation and that the documentation is consistent.

Orders which are fulfilled directly by the seller are referred to as 'Fulfilled by Merchant' or FBM.  A second option is Seller Fulfilled Prime (SFP) where the orders are sent by the merchant but using an approved courier so are Prime eligible

Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA) is Amazon's wildly popular fulfilment service where Amazon store the stock and manages dispatch and customer service.

Seller Fulfilled Prime is Amazon's fulfilment programme which allows merchants to ship orders from their warehouse using an approved service and be Prime eligible.

This concluding section considers choosing the right fulfilment method for your business.

Each product, as defined by a single barcode, should have only one listing on Amazon.  Multiple sellers will add their offer against this listing.  This is known as a catalogue system.

The page on the Amazon site which gives information about a product is known as the Product Detail Page. In section, we look at all the various parts of this page.

For a listing that has multiple sellers, Amazon combines the product information from various sources to create the product listing. It will also recommend data to be added to a listing via its 'listing enhancements' product list. By adding this information and improving listing quality, the listing will do better in search. 'Suppressed' listings are those missing vital information (e.g. product title) and so will not appear in the Amazon search until the missing data has been submitted.

The simplest way to create listings on Amazon is to add your offers to already existing pages.  This can be done one at a time or in bulk.

When a customer searches, Amazon produces a list of results that it thinks are most relevant to that query.  This is based on the ranking factors discussed in the following lecture.

There are multiple ranking factors in the Amazon search, including listing page conversion rate, click-through rate, sales volume, review rating.

This lecture covers the sections of the product listing, which Amazon indexes for inclusion in the search. 

Amazon natural search result performance is based on the historical performance of the listing.  This lecture discusses building performance by driving sales, improving CTR and collecting reviews.

How to research and generate relevant keywords for inclusion in your Amazon listings. 

How to create an Amazon listing that drives traffic through natural Amazon search and converts browsers into buyers.

This lecture goes through the process of creating a single product on Amazon via the product listing entry form

There are several different upload file types that are used for various purposes e.g. product matching, creating products from scratch. Note the required attributes vary by category.

The Price and Inventory file is used to update the price and stock level of SKUs already in your Amazon inventory.  It cannot be used to add items to inventory.

It is much quicker to create the listing via a feed file when adding multiple products.  This is an excel file where the product data is completed and then uploaded.

Variations (also known as parent-child relationships) are sets of products related to one another in terms of Size, Colour, etc. Good variation relationship listings allow buyers to compare and choose products based on different attributes such as size, colour, or other characteristics from the available options on a single product detail page.

If products are missing required information, they will appear in the product drafts, where the required information can be directly entered.

The buy box or featured offer is the default purchasing option available on the product detail page.  Which offer is selected to appear in the buy box is based on several factors.

Winning the buy box can be a matter of slight variations of the price.  For this reason, many merchants use dynamic pricing to vary their price to maximise their buy box exposure.

The Pricing Health page provides an overview of your Featured Offer (Buy Box) eligibility sales conversion from a pricing point of view and any deactivated offers with potential pricing errors.

Fulfilled by merchant shipping settings are a vital part of inventory creation.  In this section, we consider general shipping settings, shipping template and SFP shipping settings

Shipping templates let you create your shipping settings across several products at once (default service levels, shipping regions, transit times, and shipping rates). You may create up to 20 shipping templates for specific groups of SKUs.

A shipping template must be assigned either by editing the product directly or uploading via the listing loader file to assign shipping rates to a listing.

This lecture covers Seller Fulfilled Prime settings.  Items sent via Seller Fulfilled Prime requires a separate shipping template to enrol them in the service. 

FBA is Amazon's wildly popular fulfilment service.  Merchants ship their products into an Amazon warehouse and from there, Amazon does all the work, including customer service and returns.

FBA has several programme specific settings covering areas such as international selling, product returns and disposals and labelling which sellers should familiarise themselves with.

Amazon charges are several fees for FBA, including storage, fulfilment and optional fees.  These are started in the FBA rate card which is examined in this video.

It can be challenging to work out what you are being charged for storage and fulfilment for FBA items.  This lecture shows you where to find what you have been charged for FBA.

Amazon inventory can be created as FBA inventory from the start using an inventory template.  Alternatively Fulfilled by Merchant products can be converted to FBA in the Manage Inventory screen or by way of the inventory loader file.

To send inventory to an Amazon warehouse requires uploading a shipping plan to create a shipment.

Amazon's inventory planning tool provides recommended inbound stock quantities based on sales velocity and the merchants reordering schedule.

The payment report tab provides information about payment both at the order level and at the account level. Here, you can view disbursements (payment for sales minus fees), referral fees, and other costs.

Amazon Selling Coach offers personalised recommendations to maximise your effectiveness as a seller.

The following types of Business Reports are available: Sales Dashboard, Business Reports by Date and by ASIN, and Amazon Selling Coach.

Amazon order details can be accessed from the main menu.  From here, sellers can see order details, contact customers, buy shipping and dispatch orders.

If a buyer requests a return, Amazon will send you an email that includes the reason for the return. Return requests can be processed through your Manage Returns page, where you can review, authorise or decline requests.

Amazon does not provide a direct customer email to merchants. Instead, communication must be through the cloaked email provided or Amazon messages.

Amazon is serious about keeping its customers happy and sets strict performance metrics for its merchants.  This section looks in detail at Feedback, A-Z claims and the order defect rate (ODR).

Amazon's A-to-z Guarantee ensures that buyers have a consistent experience across Amazon, regardless of whether their order is fulfilled by Amazon or by our selling partners directly.  If customers are not happy with their experience, they can file a claim against the seller.

The Order Defect Rate (ODR) is the most important metric for an Amazon seller.  It is the sum of the negative feedback rate, the A-Z claim rate and the chargeback rate, with each order only being counted once.  If this goes about 1%, then the account can be suspended.

Amazon provides an ever growing number of performance metrics against which it measures its sellers.

Amazon Business is a programme to enable businesses to set up their accounts and manage their amazon purchasing centrally.

A Lightning Deal is a time-bound, promotional offer where an item is featured for a limited number of hours, usually four to twelve hours (varies per marketplace), on the Amazon Deals page. In addition, 7-day Deals are also featured on the Amazon Deals page for up to seven days at a time.

You can offer discounts on a single product or a set of products and enjoy automatic merchandising for your voucher through Amazon.

Amazon promotions can help your products stand out from the competition and stimulate sales.  They can be money off or buy one get one free.

Amazon's advertising service enables sellers to promote their products using a pay-per-click adverting system. The main options for retailers are Sponsored Product Ads that drive traffic to specific products and Sponsored Brands that drives traffic to collections of products.

Before you start your advertising campaign, you need to decide what your objectives are, which products you want to advertise, your budget, and how long you want the campaign to run.

Targeting and keyword matching types enable advertisers to optimise their ad campaigns.

Sponsored Product ads allow sellers to drive traffic to specific products based on keyword, ASIN or category targets. Ads are charged on a pay-per-click basis.

Sponsored brand ads allow brand owners (i.e. registered in the brand registry) to drive traffic to collections of products or the brand store homepage.

This lecture covers organising campaigns with adgroups and portfolios.  It also covers managing and creating campaigns using t bulk operations and copying campaigns.

Amazon provides a broad suite of reports to enable you to understand your advertising performance.

This lecture looks at ways to analyse your sponsored ads performance and make improvements

Brand registry enables a brand to control its presence on Amazon in the UK and internationally. This lecture introduces brand registry and explains how to register a brand.

This video details the features of Amazon's brand registry.

Brands that are registered with Brand Registry can create branded storefronts and add enhanced brand content.

A+ content is a rich content area that can be added to the ASINs of brands registered in the brand registry.  A+ content is used to give more information about the product and Amazon stated that it significantly increases the conversion rate.  A+ content can only be added by the brand owner.

Amazon has sites worldwide that work in a similar way to each other.  Expand your sales by reaching customers all over the world.

The Expand Globally tool enables merchants to match the inventory on their home market onto Amazon's international sites.

This lecture details how to create listings on Amazon's international marketplaces.

Pan European FBA enable merchants to fulfil into the EU from a single inventory pool whilst paying the local fulfilment fee.

Customer service for your international customer need not be difficult and Google translate works surprisingly well. However, remember you need a local return address for returns!