It’s easy to see why everyone wants a piece of Amazon’s pie – sellers who leverage the retail giant realized a net revenue of close to $135 billion in the second quarter of 2023 alone! Are you hoping to jump on the bandwagon or want to boost your existing store? These seven insights can tip the scales in your favor!

1. Don’t Go in Blind

Competition on Amazon is fiercer than on any other market in the world. If you’re just dipping your toes into entrepreneurial waters, you’ll want to do a lot of prep work to set yourself up for success.

Before anything else, you’ll want to figure out whether selling on Amazon is going to be a full-time career or a side hustle. Setting goals is the next step – what do you hope to achieve as a seller? Who is your target audience? What will make your online store stand out from countless others?

2. Find – And Own – Your Niche

Choosing a suitable product niche has a greater impact on boosting sales than almost anything else you can do. Amazon is already overflowing with phone accessories, clothes, shoes, and dollar store items, so avoid them. The same goes for products that experience a high ebb & flow of traffic, like decorations and other seasonal items.

The trick is to sell a product people need not many competitors are interested in. Once you identify such a product, you’ll want to research everything related to it thoroughly.

• Find out if it’s hard to source.
• Spend time analyzing competitors and their performance metrics.
• Check out competitors’ reviews. What are they doing right, and do critical reviews focus on specific flaws?
• Can you offer a cheaper, more attractive, or more reliable alternative?

Getting to know the market conditions and developing a business plan with a profitable niche in mind will let you hit the ground running.

3. Make Your Listings Easy to Find …

Shoppers can’t buy what they don’t know about, which is where listing optimization comes in. Amazon is many things, a product search engine among them. Thus, SEO rules apply. Familiarize yourself with the platform’s SEO idiosyncrasies and tailor your product listings accordingly.

You’ll want to focus on keywords that are relevant to the product, rank highly in searches, and aren’t too appealing to competitors. A tall order, but not impossible if you have the right skills or hire someone who does. Don’t forget to optimize both the title customers see and the keywords hiding in the backend.

4. … And Engaging to Read!

How many times have you searched for something as simple as a spatula on Amazon only to come across listings whose long titles read like gibberish? It’s understandable since placing keywords into the title is a core part of any good SEO strategy. However, you’ll attract more buyers if you weave the keywords into an organic-looking description. Besides, Amazon’s algorithm penalizes keyword stuffing.

Apply a similar principle to your item descriptions. Organize the information you want to display into neat bullet points. Write engagingly about the product! That means telling a story & focusing more on what benefits the buyers can expect rather than listing dry specs readers will get bored of.

5. Take Fabulous Product Shots

Excellent product photography makes sales – it’s that simple. A listing with only one or two low-res images isn’t only less appealing, but it looks sketchy, too. Either flex your photography skills or hire a pro, as this is one part of your presentation you do NOT want to flub.

The featured image has to follow Amazon’s guidelines, so make sure it proudly displays the product and lets visitors zoom in to check out the details. Other images are fair game, so include some that show the product in its intended environment. Help customers visualize themselves using it by taking pictures of real people doing the same.

6. Outprice the Competition

Timely information is key to setting a price customers will find appealing and competitors can’t match. The best way to obtain such info is to use Amazon scrapers. They are web scraping tools that specialize in collecting data like pricing, ratings, and review sentiments from Amazon listings. Scraping can help inform your pricing strategy in several ways.

Its most basic form aggregates current pricing, letting you determine how low you can go while maintaining a profit. Scraping Amazon and its historical data opens even more opportunities since it can help you anticipate promotions, seasonal changes, etc., and remain competitive. The better informed you are, the better you’ll be at predicting price trends or setting your own.

7. Broaden Your Horizons

Selling on Amazon might be the end goal, but there are countless ways to get people to notice and buy your wares. Don’t underestimate the power of your brand and social media marketing in building trust. It’s a great idea to maintain a blog that offers insights into your products & how to use them without expecting readers to buy right away. Offering valuable knowledge without asking for anything in return will establish you as an expert and boost your products’ credibility.

Most importantly, go above & beyond when it comes to customer service. Answer any questions courteously & professionally. Interact with audiences on your social media & website and build a community people want to take part in. Someone will always find fault with your items or services. Accept and view it as a challenge to do better and grow.