3 Essentials for Taking Your Amazon Sales to the Next Level Pricing and visibility are key to take your store's profits sky-high.
By Jennifer Spencer Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
The ability to anticipate a buyer's needs is one of the most important traits of an Amazon seller. Understanding what you should be selling means knowing your target audience. If you're constantly looking for innovative ways to create more sales within your Amazon store, no doubt you've already searched Google and YouTube for every hint, hack and trick you can find.
This due diligence is a good start. But there's no substitute for the education you can glean from someone who's made a personal success of his or her Amazon store. And few have more experience than Ashraf Ali, founder of AMZ Trainer. Ali has made more than $1 million in sales on the platform and has a few tips for taking your Amazon business to the next level.
Related: 3 Things You Should Consider Before Listing Your Products on Amazon
1. Generate your price model.
It's likely other people are using Amazon to sell the same products you offer. You must determine whether to sell above or below their pricing models. One of Amazon's biggest draws is its ability to return the lowest prices for buyers. It has its own app, Amazon Price Check, that allows consumers to scan bar codes in retail stores and comparison-shop those items on the website. Even better, Amazon gives users credit for doing so.
Knowing this, you generally can expect your buyer always will seek the best price for her or his purchase. Choosing the right pricing model can help your Amazon store succeed faster. As part of his AMZ Training course, Ali breaks it down for students with a simple example: If they profit only $12 per unit and can sell 16 units a day, they'll create an annual profit of $70,000.
Related: 5 Strategies of 'Psychological Pricing'
2. Improve your visibility.
The Amazon webstore offers millions of items. That's a lot of distraction for the buyers you want to find your listing. However, Amazon does allow a few techniques to increase your product's online reach.
Optimize your listing. Whether you're a new Amazon seller or an experienced one, an optimized listing should take top priority. It sets a high bar for your product. Once you've determined your product and its audience, make note of the keywords used to find this product on Amazon. Then, scour this list for high-performing, non-competitive keywords and take advantage of the Google Keyword Planner to determine how long-tailed keywords can help you even further.
This is where it can get a bit hairy: with two billion products sold last year on the site, a lot of keywords will be competitive. You must do your research to learn the long-tailed keywords your potential customers are using to search within Amazon. For instance, if you're selling women's dresses, you don't want to compete with everyone else on just "women's dresses." You can increase the search -- and narrow the playing field -- by also including more specific terms such as "women's empire waist maxi dress," "maxi dress long sleeve round neck," and so on.
Related: 4 Ways You Can Attract the Traffic You Want to Your Affiliate Site
Become a featured merchant. Amazon places products from featured merchants at the top of the pile when you offer a discounted price on something the buyer wants. Your only objective: garnering lots of great reviews for your product (and service). If you played your strategy right when the product first came out, you already have those reviews in hand. Amazon doesn't charge sellers for featured-merchant status, but you will need fantastic feedback from customers.
Set up an Amazon pay-per-click campaign. Sellers can tap into this paid feature to advertise products on the Amazon store. Make certain you're well-versed in how it works and what you'll realistically get -- or you'll end up spending too much to gain little or no profit. Research your audiences so you'll understand which high-volume keywords or long-tailed keywords can help you pinpoint the exact target audience for your listing. Done correctly, this is one of the most effective ways to make your Amazon sales soar. You'll stay in the coveted, highly visible spot at the top of the product listings.
3. Appeal to Amazon Prime members.
Only Amazon sellers whose products are Fulfilled By Amazon (FBA) can offer Amazon Prime to buyers. You send your products to the Amazon warehouses, and Amazon ships to customers. On the surface, a two-day shipping option might not seem important enough to switch over. But consider this: half of all American households have a Prime membership. Changing your product's status to FBA could make the difference for a Prime member deciding between your store or a competitor's -- simply because someone else offers Prime benefits.
Related: 5 Things Digital Marketers Can Learn From Amazon Prime's 35 Percent Growth
