These days, everyone is looking for the next best passive income opportunity to help offset that inflation and pad their bank accounts. As professionals in the Amazon marketplace, we believe that Amazon FBA is an excellent opportunity that has enormous potential for hard workers who are ready to get to work in a highly successful field.

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How to Sell on Amazon in 2022 For Beginners

Amazon is constantly changing - the strategies that you needed to succeed there in 2011 are not the same ones you need to succeed in 2022. In this article, we’ll give you the basic blueprint for your Amazon store launch strategy.

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The Groundwork: Create Your Business Plan

Before you can even begin to plan your Amazon store details or start selling on Amazon, you must create a business plan. Start with the basic questions:

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• What do I want to get out of my business?
• Am I looking to sell full-time, or would I prefer to use Amazon as a side gig?
• Long-term, how much income would I like to see come in monthly from this business? 
• What areas of expertise do I bring to the table?
• What are weaknesses I have that I foresee myself needing help with?
• What is the vision or mission that is driving my entrepreneurship?
• What needs do I want my product to meet in the marketplace?
• How much capital can I commit to using as my startup funds without placing my financial security in jeopardy? 
• Is e-commerce really for me? 
• Am I prepared to work hard to get my store off the ground? 

Once you’ve got the why behind your future business settled out, you can start to look forward to the what and the how.

It’s important to think long and hard about these questions before going into e-commerce sales or an online business. Those who start the process without any direction or commitment are far more likely to fall behind or quit.

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If you decide that an Amazon store is the right move for you, you’ll also want to get a separate bank account and credit card for your businesses finances - you won’t really be able to register with the tax authorities as a business until you know what niche you’re jumping into and what you’re naming your business (but we’ll get to that later). 

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The Amazon FBA Process

We have a tried and true four-step process to starting an Amazon FBA Store that includes four primary focal points: search, source, launch, and scale. 

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This is the process we use to build all of our own stores, train students to build their stores, and build highly profitable stores for investors. While there is much more to the process than “four easy steps” - we’ve found that moving through the process smoothly in these stages leads to highly successful and profitable storefronts. 

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Search

Nobody gets excited about research when they are ready to start “moving and shaking.” But research is the foundation of a well-run e-commerce store. 

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Amazon is a highly saturated marketplace - which means that in order to sell there, you had better do the research and ensure that your product has what it takes to succeed to execute your professional selling plan. 

This is where market research comes in. Market research is the process of studying the current consumer trends surrounding your desired marketplace and how to best succeed within that market. 

In this process, you’ll evaluate Amazon’s consumer habits, trending niches or items on Amazon, and the success curve over time for various industries and products before creating your Amazon seller account. You’ll research the trends of production costs, and shipping costs to see if there are any niches to stay away from due to the rising cost of goods. You’ll study the economy and ultimately decide which niche you are selling to, what products would do well in that niche, which fall into the retail arbitrage, and what unique adjustments you ought to make to your desired product to stand out in that marketplace.

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Before new Amazon sellers start to sell products, look at other sellers and what they are doing with all the features such as buy box and more. This research on the competition would help with your own products.

This process is complex and you should take your time throughout it. The research phase will give you all the confidence you need throughout the rest of the sales process!

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Source

Once you’ve landed on a niche and chosen your desired product, you have to go through the work of finding a reliable and affordable supplier. Ideally, this supplier will be someone that you can rely on for timely shipments and who can work with you to make improvements to (and variations of) the product.

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When you’ve found a supplier you think should be reliable for your needs - make sure you order a sample and evaluate it thoroughly. You want to deliver high-quality goods to your customers - so only accept the best.  

You’ll also want to consider finding a third-party fulfillment business that can assist you with custom packaging, inserts, and branding before things get shipped to the Amazon Warehouse.

During this time, you will also be developing your brand identity. While you are ironing out the kinks in your business’s supply chain, you should pick out a business name, logo, and brand identity. This requires more research (you guessed it!) to discern what will best connect with your ideal customer. 

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Launch 

The launching phase of an Amazon FBA business does include a lot of moving parts. This is where the fun starts. 

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In short, the launch process consists of:

• Registering with Amazon Seller Central as an FBA business.
• Registering your business, receiving your EIN, setting up your bank account, and organizing yourself.
• Registering as a brand. Registering as a brand with Amazon will allow you to take advantage of the full range of marketing and sales tools that Amazon offers. This will require that you have gone the extra mile and trademarked your product.
• Collecting your marketing assets. This includes professional product photography, videography, graphic design elements (like infographics), custom packaging design, and more for your product pages and product.
• Performing keyword research. This keyword research will be the basis from which you build out every portion of your product listings with optimized terms to rank well in the search results.
• Building a great listing. Your listing will be filled with optimized copy, high-quality images (white background, lifestyle, variation, etc.), infographics, and beautiful product videos from the product detail page.
• Getting your inventory squared away. Before you can officially launch, you must ensure that your inventory is fully stocked and that you have a model in place to ensure you don’t run out of products.
• Preparing your pricing model. This can be done by using auto-pricing tools, or by manually studying and adjusting prices as needed.
• Preparing your marketing strategy. To launch well, you will want to have a marketing strategy in place that allows you to meet consumers where they are (whether this is on Amazon or elsewhere online) and redirect them to your store. This includes product inserts to touch base with existing customers and reel them back in, as well as PPC ads to ensure that you perform well right from the beginning.

As all of these elements are successfully completed of opening your professional seller account, you are then able to launch your product with confidence knowing that you’ve laid the groundwork for a successful beginning to your FBA journey.

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Scale

The scaling process is how you take your existing store to the next level by continually improving your existing listings and adding more to your arsenal. 

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With time, you’ll gain access to more and more features on Amazon like:

• Amazon A+ Content or Enhanced brand content
• Amazon Storefronts
• Sponsored Brands Ads
• And more!

As you continue to grow, take advantage of every new opportunity that Amazon gives you. The more you can use these, the better your listing will perform. 

You will also want to put extra attention during this phase to customer service, review acquisition, and inventory management. It’s important that you answer customer questions on your listing, provide excellent support when a customer is not satisfied, and ethically obtain reviews through the Amazon Vine program to ensure you rank well. Additionally, it’s critical that you don’t run low on inventory! Keep the supply chain moving smoothly.

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Once one listing is performing well - start the process over again to add another one to the docket. Rinse and repeat!

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Conclusion

Well - now you know everything you need to do to jump into the Amazon business and start your own Amazon FBA store! Simple, right? Listen, we know that this process is complex and overwhelming, which is why many people opt to use professional training and assistance in the process. We’re happy to walk alongside you as you build your own Amazon store - but until then, feel free to utilize the many resources and free tools available freely on our blog page to get started.  

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