Author: admin

When doing product research, we tend to think that it’s going to be harder to make sales if lots of people are selling similar hot products. But this misleading thought could usually lead to the fact that we have missed out on many opportunities.

 

In addition to competitor factors, what we mainly consider are the market capacity and product profitability. When there is a considerable demand for the product, it is possible that it could stand out in the fierce competition, provided that the increase in cost will not be much higher in the process of product update.

 

Also, we need to consider the following points when finding products that sell:

 

1,Shipping, choose smaller or lighter products.

 

2,Avoid choosing fragile products. Otherwise, you have to pay the extra cost of packaging materials to ensure product safety during transportation, followed by a great deal of after-sale problems.

 

3,Products that are easy to operate and use, without complicated after-sale services.

 

4,At least 50% of profit margin. You can compare the pricing with e-commerce platforms such as Amazon/eBay/wish, according to the price of the product you know.

 

5,Considering how to improve customer retention. The offerings of unique package or bespoke design services can increase brand identity for customers, and prevent competitors from piggybacking listings.

 

6,Seasonal products are not the only one in your online business. For example, lamps can only be auxiliary products.

 

As an Amazon seller, if the product meets the requirements for participating in LDs, you should choose the right products and take active part in this promotion. It is a great opportunity to increase product exposure and drive more conversions.

 

Furthermore, grasping user psychology to offer appropriate discounts is also an effective marketing idea to increase traffic.

 

The above is the introduction of some traffic portals and related suggestions within the Amazon platform. Whether it could help you improve conversion rate and boost sales, it actually depends on your product quality and long-term accumulation.

Here is a basic and simple tool: Google Trends.

 

When judging whether a product is potential or not, the first tool I use is Google Trends, which is one of the tools I have used the most since I was engaged in e-commerce.

 

In order to verify whether there really is a market for the product, I generally use Google Trends to track for two to three weeks. If the search volume soars during this given time period, there must be a huge market for the product.

 

The source data of any product can reflect how large its market capacity is, and then let’s organize all useful information:

A high search volume means that the demand is huge.

A spike in search volume indicates a surge in demand.

This product will make me fascinated. Small in size, light in weight, value for money, it meets the characteristics of a hot selling product.

This product is novel and has a very large market.

 

In addition to finding products for your Amazon, Google Trends can also be used to discover what search terms and ad keywords people are using, which you can find them through customer needs.

 

Firstly, I would like to introduce three key settings on Google Trends:

The results may vary if you type different terms in your query. I have found several top selling products through this tool.

 

Where can I find hot selling products?

I would like to share some of the most popular websites/platforms that I usually follow.

 

1. Google trends

https://trends.google.com/trends/hottrends Google Trends

You can see popular products and topics across different countries and regions in real time. Also, you can be inspired or know which aspects people tend to spend money on the most.

 

2,ubersuggest

https://ubersuggest.io/

A free keyword search tool, where you enter key products to learn about the search habits of each country after setting up a desired regions.

 

3,Yahoo

https://www.yahoo.com/

Trending Now in the upper right corner of the website is also a useful tool to discover hot spots and best-selling products. Ideal for searching smart electronic products.

 

4,Walmart

https://www.walmart.com/

You can refer to Walmart – Https://www.walmart.com/, and give extra attention towards its banner and Top Selling Pickup Products

Amazon Lightning Deals is tempting for both Amazon buyers and Amazon sellers while buyers can rely on it to find more preferential products and sellers can apply it to identify more potential consumers as well as increase their brand awareness.

 

So, how exactly could Amazon sellers to run this fabulous Lightning Deals? Please check more details in below:

 

What is a Lightning Deal?

 

A Lightning Deal is a promotion offered in a limited quantity for a short period of time，Lightning Deals are available, one per customer, until either the promotion period for the deal expires or all the available inventory is claimed.

 

A Lightning Deal is a promotion offered in a limited quantity for a short period of time. Lightning Deals are available, one per customer, until either the promotion period for the deal expires or all the available inventory is claimed. It is featured in its short duration, a relatively high discount privilege and limited quantity offered. Unlike Amazon Subscribe & Save, few Lightning Deals will last for more than 6 hours, and the deal is gone once the claim limit is reached even when time is not up. These offers will be displayed on all pages of the Amazon, including the Gold Box page.

 

Amazon sellers who create Lightning Deals may suffer losses due to high discounts, meanwhile you may gain access to a large number of potential customers that allows future marketing through Amazon’s newsletter, social networks and mobile apps, thus contribute to more sales in the future.

 

In addition to potential consumers, Amazon sellers can also apply Lightning Deals to promote and sell less popular products or stranded inventory as long as they meet Amazon’s requirements.

 

So, how can Amazon sellers run Lightning Deals on Amazon?

 

It is not every Amazon seller that is qualified to run a Lightning Deal. You must be an Amazon professional seller who receive at least 5 feedbacks from the buyers first before claiming a Lightning Deal event. In addition to that, you must have an overall seller star no less than 3.5 stars while the product you put on Lightning deals no less than 3 stars.

 

Amazon also requires the promoted products to include in as many variations as possible, such as different colors and sizes. You also need to ensure that your product is not against Amazon’s “offensive” product policy. Besides, it is explicitly stipulated that e-cigarettes, infant formula, alcohol, adult products and medical equipment are not allowed to join Lightning Deals.

 

Based on above requirements, you also need to ensure the Prime qualifications in overall regions, the review requirements of Amazon customers, the pricing and transaction frequency are meet for your products. In fact, these requirements are all subject to change at any time, especially on Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Christmas, make sure you know all updates of requirements for LD before launching your event.

 

How to create LD on Amazon?

 

If you and your product are all qualified for applying Lightning Deals, please go to Seller Central and create an DL event according to the following steps:

 

1. Go to the Lightning Deal activity list and select “Create” on the left of the page;

 

2. Select the product you want to put on LD from your inventory and click “Edit”;

 

3. Fill in required information, including time schedule, the highest deal price and the minimum number of transactions;

 

4. Click”Submit”after entering all required information.

 

After creating a LD, you will pay attention to the following:

 

1. As the charging structure of Lightning Deals been simplified by Amazon, you are to be charged according to the expected traffic. Normally every Lightning Deal event will cost you $150 as transaction fee, which will be higher on the Prime Day, Black Friday and Cyber Monday depending on the actual situation.

 

2. You must offer a discount no less than 20% to join a LD.

 

3. You must ensure that enough inventory for product that join a LD, otherwise your Lightning Deal may be cancelled by the system. It is suggested for sellers to prepare the inventory 7 days before the start of a LD.

 

Once you have submitted a Lightning Deal, you can monitor its status on the Lightning Deals Dashboard to see if it needs to be re-edited or be approved.

 

All in all, Amazon sellers may benefit a lot from Lightening Deals. It is important for sellers to know how to use it properly so that they could enjoy the benefits to its maximum.

There are always some returns when you running business on Amazon. Sometimes, it is the product to be blamed, sometimes, it is the customers not being satisfied. While, the reasons we get from the return mails normally come as “Buyer Return” and “General Adjustment” which are obscure enough to hinder your judgement on the real causes, neither could you decide whether the returned goods are in good conditions for resale.

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Try follow the steps in below to know how can you check and analyze reasons for return systematically and understand the roots of problem before taking any actions to improve your product or listing.

 

1. Click on 【Fulfillment】 under 【Reports】;

 

2. Click on 【FBA customer returns】in the bottom of the next web page;

 

3. Choose 【Event Date】 according to the time range you want to check;

 

4. Pay attention to the returned products, inventory features and the reasons for returns.

 

We can see different reasons from the pictures.

 

“Unwanted item” seems like a specific reason which you can’t satisfy all with only one kind of product. Sellers can ignore it if it appears for a few times. Yet you will need to reconsider much if a lot of customers require returns with this reason. Under this circumstance, you need to identify whether there are any problems in product selection or difference between listing images and the actual product.

 

If you get the reason of “Item is defective”, you may try to see if the product is impaired during production and without proper test before delivery, or exits any damages during delivery. If certain reasons appear over and over again, sellers may send inquiry emails to gather questions from the buyers. You may require your supplier to optimize production process and improve test before shipment or packaging materials.

 

If you get the reason of “Product does not meet  customer expectation”, you will need to check your listing again to spot any ignores and mistakes regarding images or descriptions. Now, you should take actions to test each details of listing in order to make necessary modifications and improvements.

 

Amazon sellers should check and analyze the reasons for returns regularly as varied as them are. Once we decide to take actions, it is key to conduct analysis and reinforce our actions, or we will waste our time and efforts. Amazon business and operation is a moving process aimed at improvement and development where every detail matters. We may suffer from the detail, or respond to it quickly and appropriately to seize opportunities of success.

We often hear the saying, “To sell on Amazon successfully, 70% depends on what you sell and 30% is about how you operate.” So, selling the right products plays a big role in your success on Amazon, and the remaining factors are supply chain and operations. But all things are centered on choosing exactly what you sell.

 

Product research is a great challenge to your professional experience. For example:

• Ability to analyze data: Understand what consumers are concerned about in the market from the big data, and uncover other hidden business opportunities from keywords.
• Ability to integrate a variety of tools to choose products: For example, a combination of keyword tools and Amazon product selection tools.
• Ability to balance between rational and emotional sides: This means that you use rational thinking to analyze data and emotion to make your customers notice, remember, share, and buy.

 

Today, I would like to share with you some tips and ideas about how to find a product to sell on Amazon.

 

Before choosing a product, there are two points we should pay attention to: One is customer needs, and the other is quality. Therefore, when we find the product, we should firstly cater to customer needs, then pursue the product quality.

 

Let’s take the fidget hand spinner for example that was a viral trend last year. In the beginning, there were different types of such products on the market, with uneven quality. However, due to significant demand in the initial stage, even if the quality was poor, lots of people still wanted to buy.

 

But in the later stage, the product would be selectively eliminated from the market. The inferior quality products can’t be sold at all. Consumers have changed the habits from “purchasing a fidget spinner no matter how good or bad it is” to “choosing a good fidget spinner”, which is the changes in “demand”. Therefore, the most important point when finding a product is to think of the demand.

 

Let’s get to the point.

 

When choosing items to sell on Amazon, it is better to choose ones that are popular, profitable, and less competitive. In other words, you have to pick the right niche products.

 

What is niche product?

Niche products are goods or services targeting one or a few smaller segments of customers. Because the traditional market fails to meet their needs, the unique and one-of-a-kind, handmade products are run on demand. As there are lower levels of competition, selling niche products can make your business profitable. Relatively speaking, the market selling these products are known as niche market.

 

For example: In the process of cooking, we often use traditional cutters to cut vegetables. But for many office workers and lazybones, cutting vegetables is very cumbersome and time-consuming. So, we have designed a machine that can help us automatically chop vegetables, which could save tons of time during the prep.

 

Although the customer base for this product is small, the demand is relatively high. Your sales likely will be able to compete.

 

So, the following vegetable chopper is a niche product.

As new sellers swarming in, there are also a lot of sellers quitting. If you want to develop your business on Amazon in the long run, you need to consider registering your brand and building a flagship store. You may get some troubles after registering your brand. Here we offer some suggestions for you to contact Amazon brand service team.

Please take the following steps for your reference:

 

1. Login in on Amazon brand service page:

https://brandservices.amazon.com/

(please bookmark the link for future reference);

 

2. Click on 【Contact us】in the bottom of the webpage;

 

3. Enter your name, telephone, email, brand information and so on and click on 【Next】.

4. Enter registered email of your store, company name, trade mark no. and details you want to consult before click on 【Submit】to continue;

You will receive a notification of successful submission and can check the status of it in your 【Case Log】. Amazon brand service team will respond to your case within 12 hours and you can communicate with them under case log whenever you want until get the problem solved.

Why sellers on Amazon can get an order with 0$ without giving away free products?

 

This may happen when a buyer requires an exchange. Sometimes, customers may find out flaws or trivial details going wrong after receiving the products. As flaws not deemed as very big issue by customers, they would inform the seller to exchange a new one for them to try.

 

Of course, the buyer needs to return what they already got back to FBA warehouse. If, by any accident, the product wasn’t returned within 45 days, Amazon will compensate the charges of this deal. However, there may still exist some mistakes or compensation failures with so many goods going in and out the Amazon warehouse. To prevent from the above situation, sellers on Amazon need to keep record of the customer exchange history and check after 45 days in the backstage. You can contact Amazon customer service for compensation when finding out any late returns.

 

You can check business reports for any exchange updates.

 

Do Amazon Sellers Need to Pay for Exchanges?

Amazon offers a free exchange service. As sellers, you don’t need to pay for exchanges or receive extra exchange orders. The payment and charges remain the same as the original order.

 

After an exchange, customer may respond in two ways as follows:

1. Get satisfied with the new product and return the old one, which is a win-win ending.

2. Not satisfied with the new product. In this case, customers may return both products to Amazon FBA warehouse, which means a loss of the customer.

 

Therefore, it is extremely important to standardize the product production and avoid detail problems. Moreover, you can check the product before delivery if you get enough energy and time to pick out defective products in case any of them are shipped to customers.

Before we learn how to download VAT Transactions Report, we need to figure out what Amazon VAT Transactions Report is.

 

The Amazon VAT Transactions Report contains relevant information for VAT on transactions that occur in VAT Services in Amazon-subscribed countries. … Sale: All transactions in which a buyer purchases goods from you. Return: All transactions in which a buyer returns goods to you and there is a product movement.

 

You will see information about the following transactions for AFN and MFN channels:

 

Sale: All transactions in which a buyer purchases goods from you.

Return: All transactions in which a buyer returns goods to you and there is a product movement.

Refund: All transactions in which you issue a refund to a buyer and there is no product movement.

FC transfer: All movements of your inventory between Amazon fulfilment centres.

Inbound: All movements of your inventory to an Amazon fulfilment centre.

 

Please note that where both a refund is issued and the goods are physically returned to an Amazon fulfilment centre, all relevant transactions will be automatically reported in your Amazon VAT Transactions Report. There is no requirement for you to report these separately.

 

Let’s introduce how to download the VAT Transactions Report:

Step 1: Click [Fulfilment by Amazon] under [Reports];

 

Step 2: Click [Amazon VAT Transactions Report] at the bottom left of the page that appears；

 

Step 3: Select the corresponding month or the desired time that spans different months. There are two files in .csv and .txt formats below, you can select according to your needs.

 

Step 4: Click the [Download] button to download in the generated report (if the download button does not appear, please refresh the page).

Note: You shall generate the report with local language when filing to the corresponding Tax Office. If the sellers want to know more about the report, it is suggested to copy the contents from the .txt file to the excel table for a clear review.

Many of Amazon sellers may come across with A-to-z, that is the refund guarantee service offered by Amazon to buyers, during operation. Some of you may get nervous whenever they find out an A-to-z request. After all, it might have impact on your ODR performance, or even get your account at stake of restriction if there are too many A-to-z requests in total.

 

(Notes: The Amazon A-to-z Guarantee protects customers who purchase items sold and fulfilled by a third-party seller. This guarantee covers both the timely delivery and the condition of items. If either are unsatisfactory while the seller cannot offer a solution agreed by the buyer, customers can report the problem to Amazon for a refund.)

 

So, how should you respond to Amazon A-to-z?

To start with, don’t get too nervous about it. Amazon will allow the seller three days to negotiate with the buyer. You will have enough time to identify what goes wrong and fix it.

 

How does the A-to-z guarantee work:

1. The buyer apply for an A-to-z refund;

2. Amazon inform the seller about the request;

3. The seller responds Amazon within 3 days while it will take Amazon a week to investigate and confirm the results. (1. The seller is to be blamed and shall refund the buyer; 2. Or, the seller is not to be blamed and shall not refund the buyer; 3. Or, Amazon is to be blamed and shall refund the buyer.)

 

You can see from the above procedures that it may not be the seller’s fault at all. Therefore, stay put and keep a clear mind first before taking any actions.

 

Some of you may refund customers instantly and try ask them to cancel A-to-z, by which you want to secure your ODR. Yet it still counts as this behavior will lead Amazon to identify that it’s your fault for this A-to-z request directly. In the end, the money is gone and your product is gone with a negative ODR on your business report. You lost it all.

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So, how to respond to A-to-z request properly? Just follow the steps: finding the reason, proposing a solution, handling the problem and turning it down.

 

1,Receive the notification from tool4seller app.

2,Check why the buyer applies for an A-to-z refund. Is it the problem of the product, the delivery or anything else?

 

3, Contact the buyer and apologize. Confirm the reason again with the buyer;

 

4, Wait for a reply. If it is the product, identify whether there is a quality issue or is the buyer who can’t properly use it. You can teach the buyer to use it properly. Or, resend a new product to the buyer or refund them directly after they cancel the A-to-z apply.

 

5, If it is FBM’issues, you may feel sorry for wasting their time and give a very sincere apology, or, you can even promise to mail a small present to them if they cancel the A-to-z request. A lot of buyers would like to accept this kind of apology.

 

6, If it is Amazon, the seller may respond directly through the system while Amazon will take care of the rest and close the A-to-z.

 

Anyway, please stay clam whenever you met a problem like this. Do not take a rush to deal with it but take above steps properly – find the reason, propose a solution, handle the problem and close the A-to-z correctly.

Generally speaking, sellers will find their listing piggybacked by Amazon under the following three conditions:

1. 1.A VC vendor authorized by Amazon is selling the same product. This happens rare in recent years and sellers don’t need to worry too much about it.
3. 2.Amazon appreciate a certain listing and want to cooperate with the vendor. Under this circumstance, Amazon will contact with the vendor first to get permission on direct delivery to Amazon warehouse. And Amazon will sell under the same listing once the agreement is reached. Of course, normal sellers may not come across with that.
5. 3.Amazon is piggybacking on your listing with “Amazon” or “Amazon warehouse” as the vendor. You will find this kind of piggybacking with goods in Used-Like New conditions or with very low stock of 1 to 2 units. This happens to sellers more frequently compared to above conditions and today we will explain it in more details.

Why Amazon piggybacks our listing with Used-Like New products? It is all about customer service.

Amazon believes firmly in customer focus. While 3rd-party sellers who use FBA delivery will trust Amazon’s customer service to deal with related issues. The customer focused service agents may help unhappy customers making unconditional refund returns all the time. Sometimes, the sellers are responsible for the returns, for which you will be charged related fees by Amazon.

However, sometimes there is nothing wrong with the product. Amazon may still satisfy the buyers with refund returns. In this case, Amazon will be responsible for related fees. Amazon will refund the customers directly and get returned goods back in their warehouse. FBA warehousers will check the status of returned goods to see whether they can resell them. If the goods are in good condition, Amazon will piggyback on the seller’s listing and resell returned goods as Used-Like New items. Certainly, you will find the product in low stock as it’s been supplied according to how many it’s been actually returned.

 

Under this condition, Amazon warehouse is likely to have the buy box as they are offering a lower price for the returned goods. Once the products have been purchased by buyers and went out of stock, Amazon warehouse would stop piggybacking immediately.

 

Some Amazon newbies will get nervous when find out that they are getting piggybacked by Amazon. Actually, this is totally fine and will do no harm to your business. What you really need to do is to check your bills to see whether there are any charges for refund returns with no actual product returns. If there are, you may need to open a case.