Selling on Amazon isn’t always smooth sailing. But road bumps along the way do not have to derail you from success.
In this article we cover the top 7 issues experienced by Amazon sellers – and how to overcome them to keep growing.
Tip 1 Hangers On
You did all the hard work to get a product selling well with a high rank, and you’re spending money on marketing and pay per click. Suddenly you find other sellers hanging onto your listing and selling copies of your product.
If you haven’t already done so, make sure your brand is trademarked and that you submit the brand to Amazon. Contact Amazon and tell them that no other sellers are authorized for your product and they will get rid of them.
You need to act fast because they could be stealing hundreds of dollars of sales a day from you.
The sooner you file for a trademark – the sooner you can protect your brand. But be sure to use Amazon’s IP accelerator program – as this will get you Brand Registry in 2 to 3 weeks!
Tip 2 Slow Sales
Sometimes you’ve done all the right things yet your product still sells slowly.
Use CashCowPro to check if your particular market has a decent volume of sales and searches. If you find that the overall market has a low-volume of units sold every month then you need to drive as much traffic as possible from Facebook, Google and Pinterest.
Also be sure to research extra keywords you can target on Amazon and these other platforms.
The more marketing channels you create – the more sales you will get and your risk decreases as your sales are coming from multiple sources.
Tip 3 Competition
The competition selling on Amazon can be brutal.
Sometimes people put prices down to levels that make no sense. You could be selling steadily for months and then out of nowhere five or 10 new sellers appear doing big blasts and promotions.
The best thing to do is to lower your price to the cheapest you can afford, and ride out the storm while they burn through their cash doing senseless promotions.
Doing a bit of off-Amazon marketing will also help you maintain your rank. The more traffic and sales you can drive from off Amazon – then the more likely you are to succeed.
Tip 4 Choosing a Product
Knowing which product to do first or next isn’t easy. Product selection makes all the difference to your profitability later on.
The best thing to do is to use the CashCowPro 100,000 niche selector tool. This lets you search by competition, sales, and keyword competition.
You will be able to choose the top thousand products by profitability.
Adding products into your line helps you diversify away from a single source of income.
Tip 5 Factory issues
You need to make sure you’re doing everything possible to check the quality of the goods throughout production and before shipment. Once the product ships then it becomes really expensive to fix any issues.
Dealing with customer complaints and refunds is time-consuming and eats up your profits. It’s worth spending a few hundred extra dollars to check the quality of the goods with a professional inspection company before they leave the factory.
This will prevent any potential problems later on.
Tip 6 Listing optimization
It’s easy enough to create an okay listing, but as competition heats up you need to make sure that all aspects of the listing from your photographs to your features are top-notch.
Use professionals to help you improve each of these areas. For a product selling between $5000-$50,000 a month, it’s worth spending $500 on your photos and copywriting to make sure your listing converts as many people as possible.
This small investment can have massive returns. Even a 10% uplift in conversions can result in more profits in the long term.
Tip 7 Listing Issues
Everything is going well, and then all of a sudden Amazon suspends your listing for some reason . It could be due to a minor mistake somewhere or an error in their system.
Sometimes the price or title might not update even after a few days. In these cases you need to contact Amazon seller support as soon as possible and work with them to fix the problem quickly.
Every day it takes to resolve the issue can result in hundreds of dollars in lost sales.