Most of the time, we hear about the success stories of selling on Amazon: getting rid of stuff around the house, making extra money on the side, being able to work in your pyjamas. But how many of those posts are balanced and show both sides of the argument? RepricerExpress takes a look at the pros and cons of what’s involved.
First, Let’s Look at the Upsides
There are a lot of great things with selling on Amazon, and they involve different advantages for different kinds of sellers.
- Reputation: Millions of people shop on Amazon every day. They’re familiar with the brand and experience; by piggybacking onto Amazon, you’re taking advantage of their reputation and leveraging it for your own good. You automatically get lumped in with Amazon’s credibility and trust that they’ve built with buyers over the years — a smart tip would be to use FBA so you can continue leveraging Amazon’s reputation for yourself.
- Traffic: How long and how much work would it take to get your site traffic up to the same level as Amazon’s hundreds of millions visitors per month? A lot longer than it takes to sign up for a Seller Account.
- Ease of Use: Whether you’re an ace webbie or have no idea what goes on behind the scenes, Amazon makes it ridiculously easy to set up shop and start selling. The layout is really user-friendly on both sides of the table. For sellers in particular, there are a plethora of tools available to make the listing process even easier.
- Automation: Imagine yourself owning a store 50 years ago. You’d have to unlock the shop in the morning, get yourself up-to-date on what to do that day, make sure everything’s neat and tidy and ready for opening, greet the customers as they walk in, answer their questions and help them find their product, tally up the total, wrap it so it’s ready to go, count up the inventory and cash at the end of the night, tidy up, get the books in order, and then lock up and head home. But with selling on Amazon, you can use automation to take care of most of those things for you.
- Flexibility: Carrying on with the above example, if you had a shop 50 years ago, you’d have to be there at the same time every day. If you had a doctor’s appointment or were sick, you either had to suck it up and get yourself to work or hope business was good enough that you had hired hands that could handle the workflow. But with selling online, you get a lot of flexibility and work-life balance.
- Global Reach: Back before stores were online, you were limited in geographical scope. Not anymore, though. Now you can sell to buyers around the world as easily as you would to the people who live in your city.
Selling on Amazon Isn’t All Peaches and Cream
As with anything in life, selling on Amazon has its drawbacks, too.
- Fees: You don’t get a free ride with Amazon. Whether it’s the costs associated with a professional account or the fees you pay for FBA, you’re going to have to shell out at various points.
- Competition: Because Amazon is such a well-known commodity, there are tons of sellers on there. And unless you deal in extremely rare or unique goods, you’re going to be facing stiff competition all the time.
- Lack of Control: When you sign up with Amazon, you agree to do things the Amazon way. That includes making good on their A-to-z guarantee, how you communicate with buyers, what you can and can’t sell, and more. You’ll have to accept giving up a large degree of independence and control if you want to sell on Amazon.
- Inventory Management: This applies to sellers who feature their products in multiple areas. If you sell on Amazon as well as other sites, you’ll have to make sure your inventory is meticulously synced up to prevent order and listing errors.
Final Thoughts
When sellers go about things smartly, selling on Amazon can reap huge rewards. One way of achieving that is to automate your pricing so you’re always swinging for the fences against your competitors. By using RepricerExpress, you can do that. And when you sign up now, you’ll enjoy the first 15 days absolutely free.
