How to Sell on Amazon FBA for Beginners! EASY Step-by-Step Tutorial
Transcribe of “How to Sell on Amazon FBA for Beginners! EASY Step-by-Step Tutorial”
The LQS is short for Listing Quality Score. It’s out of 10, and we find items with low quality scores. As in, this one up here has got an LQS score of 84. So this, those are all automatically canceled, canceled automatically, you can see the revenue of each product. You can see where it is there. You can see if it’s an ad. Can see its BSR, they’re celebrating, its price, is it in Amazon with FBA and reviews and scores, all straightaway just by clicking one button. So it’s just like tools, it’s just there to save you time. The listing quality score algorithm is based on. You know, this is not all the stuff that’s in the algorithm, but this is just some of the stuff that it takes into account for the algorithm, the main factors.
The title length, the number of words in the Amazon product title
The title length, the number of words in the Amazon product title. Amazon, unlike eBay, eBay allows your 80 characters, back in the old days, it was 55 characters on eBay. Now it’s 84 for seven or eight years now, around that time. And then with Amazon, they go up to 200, but 80 is the best. So the LQS on eBay looks at how many characters are in the title. Is it got more than 80 or less than 80? And if it’s got more or less, then obviously it marks it as bad.
EBay recommends that you should have 1600 pixels
Does it have less than six images? The image resolution, 1,001 pixels. For those who know eBay well, with eBay, you can have a minimum 500 pixels, but eBay recommends that you should have 1600 pixels. Amazon recommends that you should have 1,001 pixels. The number of reviews like we spoke about. BSR, the Best Seller Rank. The number of bullet points, should have at least five bullet points on Amazon and 20 bullet points on eBay
The length of the different elements on the page, how long or how short are they?
Length of the different elements on the page, how long or how short are they? Customer questions, does this item get a lot of questions? And how many FBA sellers are on there? Do many people have it in the Amazon warehouse? And of course, is Amazon selling the item, ’cause you don’t want to go up against Amazon. So one out of 10, 10 is the best optimized. Of course you’d leave anything that’s got a 10, but anything under a five is, would be the ones that we look at. Look for ones with a low LQS. And of course it doesn’t take long. It’s just a matter of scrolling up or down. Is it less than five? Yes or no. When you’ve got VAs working for you, most things should always be a yes or no question.
Amazon Prime members prefer to purchase from FBA sellers
Now Amazon Prime members prefer to purchase from FBA sellers. So anyone who’s an Amazon Prime member. And if you don’t know what Amazon Prime membership is, it’s probably best just to Google. But if you’re an Amazon Prime member, you get free delivery, you get fast delivery. You also get things like the movie channel. If you’ve got like an Apple TV or whatever. You got on there movies, shows, and you’ve got, and you also get over two millions songs you can listen to.
There’s a whole lot of stuff, reasons to become an Amazon Prime member
There’s a whole lot of stuff, reasons to become an Amazon Prime member. And if you are an Amazon Prime member, many Amazon Prime members, when they’re buying something, they’ll check the box saying that they only want to buy from Amazon FBA. So that of course gives you a big opportunity.
Amazon shows the FBA items higher in the search results
So Amazon shows the FBA items higher in the search results than if you’re not an Amazon FBA members. People that came on, if you’ve got some questions, please just type them in. Can’t promise I’ll get through them, we’ve got a lot of people on tonight, but I’ll get through some of them. Maddie’s asking can you set product folders? Yes, good question Maddie, and I’m just about to get to that right now.
There’s no other Amazon FBA sellers for product
So if there’s no other Amazon FBA sellers for product, happy day, it’s a good day to be you, because that’s, and there’s a lot of stuff, there’s a lot of products out there that there was nothing in Amazon FBA. So there’s a lot of opportunities. Of course, to be an Amazon FBA seller, you do need to send the items to an Amazon warehouse.
We talked about the LQS score, which is what we spent a lot of time looking at
Now, going back to Egrow, we talked about the LQS score, which is what we spent a lot of time looking at. But down at your notes on the bottom left, you’ll see filters. You click on filters there, you can see here, here you can start filtering things at price, your minimum or your max. You can also look at, down at the very bottom there, FBA, or does Amazon have it, the LQS score that you want, the ratings, all that stuff you can forecast. So you just get to see exactly what you want to see. And it’s pretty simple.
A lot of software these days, it just gets ridiculously complicated
Like, and as you guys know, a lot of software these days, it just gets ridiculously complicated, and this is kept bit more back to the bones, which is what we were really like. We really like simple software where you don’t have to try and read a massive manual, trying to work it all out. It’s simple. Okay, so you do your research, you find one with the low LQs score, that’s got less than five, felt like this one, it’s got a low, this one has got an LQS score of three, and this is the product.
How to find a product?
And now the next thing is to find the product. How do you find it? And what we’ve be doing, which we’ve done forever, is we just use Alibaba.com. Alibaba.com is huge. It’s owned by a guy called Jack Ma who’s, he was the richest guy in China. He’s now been pinged, he’s now the second richest guy, poor guy, and he’s only got $43 billion where there’s some new player, he’s $63 billion in the net worth in China.
Alibaba, huge company
But Alibaba, huge company, but Alibaba, a lot of people think it’s just for sourcing items from China. It’s not, we import from China, Malaysia, and Vietnam, and we find suppliers in those countries. We can also find suppliers in any country. You know, if you live in Australia, you can open an account in Australia, and you can ship back to China. So whatever country you’re in, if you’ve got some products that the Chinese like, and better made in your country, you can ship back to them. So don’t just think Alibaba is only in China ’cause they are not.
Alibaba it’s just a search engine like Amazon’s a search engine
And Alibaba is just, it’s basically, it’s just a search engine like Amazon’s a search engine. Alibaba is a search engine as well to find wholesalers. So in here I typed in electric milk frother and hit search, and bingo, I can see a gazillion milk frothers here. And I can see the exact same one that’s on Amazon. And notice on here, it shows me here that a price, $3.57 to $4.35 piece, the minimum order, which in this case is a hundred pieces. It also shows you things like how long the companies have been around for, like this one at the top here, it’s been around for 10 years.
Very important thing that how long have they been on the Alibaba platform?
And that’s one very, very important thing that I want to know is how long have they been on the Alibaba platform? I don’t care about the gold. you can buy that badge and the badge says that you can purchase it, useless, but it shows there what country, in this case, China. Their score, all that stuff is also there. Chatting, you can chat with them live, contact them by email or whatever. So it’s all on there and that’s Alibaba. And there’s a lot of other ones out there, there’s DHGate and China Sources, there’s all sorts of ones. Just choose one and just use one only and get to know it.
We’ve only ever used Alibaba for over 20 years
We’ve only ever used Alibaba for over 20 years, and it’s been great for us, but ’cause it’s the biggest over there as well, if they’re not on Alibaba, I’m scared, like why are you not on Alibaba? They show you prices and they show you , but understand everything is negotiable. And I know a lot of us, including myself, weren’t brought up to negotiate. But they’re never going to ever show you their best prices straight off the bat. But as a rule of thumb, if they’re saying a hundred pieces minimum order, and they’re showing that price of say $3.57 to 4.35, we want to aim to get that a hundred pieces for $3.57 or a lower MOQ.
Everything in life is negotiable
So all this is very, very negotiable. Everything in life is negotiable, everything. So don’t ever take anything at face value. Now also a lot of people and especially when they’re new, they want to get things inspected. So if you’ve outlaid a decent amount of money, get it inspected. Alibaba has registered certified inspectors all over countries, all over China, all over Vietnam, all over Malaysia. And we use what we call the 1 in 10.
The 1 in 10
The 1 in 10 is, they’ll go out there and they’ll inspect. They’ll randomly take, if you’ve got say 100 products, 100 pieces, they’ll randomly take 10. And if they find any products that are faulty out of those 10, we’ll then ask them to inspect every single one of those items. And we’ll ask the supplier to foot the bill for it. So the 1 in 10 is just inspect one in every 10. It’s not that expensive. Often it can, for a 100 pieces, it should cost you less than 100 dollars. And you need to get an inspector who’s close to the area.
So a lot of people say to me, you know, can you recommend me an inspector?
So a lot of people say to me, you know, can you recommend me an inspector? And no, because the place is huge. So like, like Australia, if you had one supplier in say, say Perth, and you know, who’s in your, you got electrical items so you use an electrical inspector in Perth, but then you’ve got another supplier in Brisbane. You’re not going to fly that inspector up. You’re just going to get the one in Brisbane. It’s the same with China. If you’ve got someone in Qingdao and then I’m in Shanghai, you’ll just find someone who’s local. So you don’t have one inspector.
You find inspector who’s local to each supplier
You find inspector who’s local to each supplier. So we talked about the MOQ or the minimum order quantity. Another question that comes up a lot is how much cash is required realistically to make a thousand dollars profit per week. So if you make an average profit margin after all costs, all expenses, Amazon expenses, importing expenses, every single expense, and then say you have a margin of 30%.
We hear margins of all sorts of ridiculous amounts, but let’s be realistic and just say 30% after all costs.
Yes, I know we hear margins of all sorts of ridiculous amounts, but let’s be realistic and just say 30% after all costs. So you need to sell $3,000 per week, which is around 13k per month, to make a thousand dollars profit per week. Now to do that, you need to outlay 20,000 to 40,000 in inventory. Why? And that includes 30% deposits, the inventory which is in travel, and the inventory and FBA. ‘Cause you want, you can’t just import one lot and sell it if you want to keep a thousand dollars profit coming in, you’ve got to always keep, for us, we always, when we do our ordering, we order 90 days worth of inventory minus whatever’s left in our warehouse or if it’s Amazon FBA, what’s left in the Amazon FBA warehouse.
So we always want to keep 90 days
So we always want to keep 90 days. Every month we reorder, every month, and we order 90 days worth based on its previous sales minus how much is left in the warehouse. Plus you need cash for PPC advertising, pay per click advertising. Now, if you don’t want outlay that much money, it’s not the end of the world. There’s still other avenues you can do. So if you don’t have the cashflow or you’re not willing to have the cash flow funds to fund your own FBA inventory, then for now, you might want to do it later or whatever.
You can always consider using what we call virtual inventory
You can always consider using what we call virtual inventory or known the industry as drop shipping, which I’m not going to go into tonight. But if you want to know more about drop shipping again, there’s another link there if you want to know more about it. With drop shipping, you use virtual inventory. So you don’t use your own, so you don’t have to spend any money buying inventory.
Tips to ranking well on Amazon
So let’s move on to tips to ranking well on Amazon. Just like eBay and websites, optimization is the foremost process to rank your products. It’s the same, whether it’s Amazon, whether it’s a website, or whether it’s eBay. It’s exactly the same thing. Optimization is what it’s all about. Don’t guess. And as I’ve talked here many times before, 90% of sellers just use what we call Best Guess Marketing Strategies. That is guess it all. Don’t guess, we use VAs, they’re not allowed to guess.
Everything has to be set criteria
Everything has to be set criteria. You don’t have to guess, today you’ve got the technology. You don’t have to be a pioneer anymore, trying to figure stuff out. I was just talking to a guy the other day. I read this sentence, being pioneers, it’s hard work, trying to figure this stuff out all the time. It’s tough. Anyway. So for those who don’t know much about Amazon, Amazon is all about the buy box.
Amazon is all about the buy box
The buy box is here, it’s at the top. So basically if you’re selling this camera, whoever owns the buy box up here, this is basically the item and the seller Amazon is recommending. If you’ve got the buy box, you’re going to get the majority of the sales. Then below here going down are all the other sellers. So this is the seller that Amazon is found to be the best. Now, and it works like eBay best match. So it looks at things like price, where is the buyer located? Where is the seller located? Is the seller located, ’cause of course, if the buyer’s in say Sydney, Australia, and the seller’s in Italy, of course, they’re not going to appear at the top of the search results.
They’re going to appear much higher if everything else is equal
If there’s another seller in Sydney, of course, they’re going to appear much higher if everything else is equal. So it’s going to look at all those things to work out which seller should I put at the buy box? And this is one of the reasons that we talk about private labeling. Because if you private label something, you don’t have to compete with any other sellers. ‘Cause it’s your private label. So if you’re not private labeling, then the buy box is here. That’s why we don’t want to go for something that has a lot of reviews. Alright, moving on. So image optimization.
Image optimization is extremely important
Image optimization is extremely important. No matter what platform you’re selling on whether it’s Amazon or whatever. You want six images on Amazon. Share the product being used. If the item’s an electrical item, and it’s got something like a LCD display, for God’s sake, turn it on, show the thing being used. If you’re doing Amazon FBA, you can get the items sent one to yourself to be photographed. And the rest can go to Amazon FBA. Have a picture of the product packaging.
If it’s in a box show a picture of the item in a box
So if it’s in a box show a picture of the item in a box. Include photos that show the size of the products for some items. If the item can be emphasized that it’s bigger by showing it next to something smaller, do it. Show the product from multiple angles. Power up as I mentioned, and with the images, at least 1,001 pixels, always color photos.
Amazon likes to see a white background
Amazon likes to see a white background. So this is a question that comes up a lot ’cause on eBay, you can, a lot of people put a lot of graffiti on their pictures. They’ll put infographics, et cetera. You can’t do that with Amazon, it’s pure white background. If you want it to cover just like every other platform a minimum of 85% of the image area. You don’t want to, you know, like that. Then you’ve got a little picture in the middle. You want it to try to touch two of the sides.
Use free software like GIMP and Canva to edit the images
You can use free software like GIMP and Canva to edit the images. Again, this links here to a free video showing how to use Canva and another one to how to use Gimp, these ones are free. All right. Now that long URL at the top is, if you go to Fiverr, enter that URL. Let me so you can see it. That will take you to a whole load of product photo editors who can come out with a really brilliant Amazon photo for you. And it won’t cost you much money, like $5 or less.
Product title has to match what people search for on Amazon search
The product title, obviously very, very important because the product title has to match what people search for on Amazon search. If someone is searching for an electric milk frother, for example, you need to have the right keywords and the variations of the keyword around. So we can title, you want to keep it again around 80 characters. I know you can take it over 200. But you want to keep around around 80. You gain too many, it confuses the search engine.
The search engine doesn’t know what on earth you’re selling
The search engine doesn’t know what on earth you’re selling. We want to put in there things like the brand, model number, model name, and product type and color. Now to find keywords is the question that comes up a lot. There’s several ways of doing it. You can use the Amazon auto suggestion box, and all that is, is the Amazon search box. You type it in and automatically suggestions are shown you. Or you can use a tool. Both would get you similar results.
We use a tool called keywordtool.io/amazon
So we use a tool called keywordtool.io/amazon But you can also just use the auto suggestion. So here on Amazon, I type in binocular. And below it’ll show you the auto suggestion, showing you all, oops, let’s go back. Showing you all your keyword phrases for it. And if you put in binoculars for adults, it will show you more keyword phrases. So you don’t have to buy software, you can do it a lot there. And the other platforms have gotten as well. Google’s got it, eBay’s got it. All these autosuggestion tools, they’re already there. And then of course they’re free to use.
Keyword IO does the same thing
Keyword IO does the same thing, but it gives you a lot more. And it also gives you more data. Next, Amazon is totally view driven. The item that’s got the most reviews goes generally up higher. So it’s always great to be working on reviews. Don’t do any that kind of black hat stuff. ‘Cause you’ll get shut down by Amazon. It’s got to be all legitimate that you know, the last thing you want to do is get someone in Bangladesh slapping up reviews for you. You’re going to get nailed.
Amazon is very, very smart
And Amazon is very, very smart. They know what they’re doing and they’ll find you and they’ll shut it. We’ve seen many, many listings that have just lost instantly thousands of feedback overnight because Amazon’s figured out that they’re all fake. Don’t get involved with it. I didn’t mention that. So we use FeedbackExpress, but there’s also a popular called eComEngine. There’s probably a lot more out there as well, but that’s the ones, FeedbackExpress is what we’re using.
FeedbackExpress is what we’re using
When you’re listing an item on Amazon, fill out all the relevant categories when listing any new items. There’s a whole lot of different categories, just make sure every single one of them is complete. We see that a lot where people just don’t fill this stuff out. And then because of that, their competitors go higher. Always try to do your best to avoid duplicate content. Don’t copy and paste.
Don’t copy and paste
Always improve what’s there. You see, if everyone’s just copying and pasting the same thing, Google hates it. Amazon hates it. Don’t do it, just take what’s there and improve. There’s always a way to improve it. It might even be a bit of bad English, a lot of the stuff is, not the best going on. Consider using a program like like Grammarly or whatever to check your spelling. All right, summary of optimization. You want to have 80 character headline for your product.
Five bullet points that describe the features of your product
Five bullet points that describe the features of your product. Paragraph of sales copy to go in and description section. Six photos of the product on a pure white background. The weight and the dimensions of the item, the keywords, a SKU code which you can make up, it can be anything, and a barcode. Now every item on Amazon has to have a barcode preferably what they call a GS1 barcode.
Every item on Amazon has to have a barcode preferably what they call a GS1 barcode
But you can get barcodes, the cheapest one at the moment is actually on eBay, you can get 1,000 barcodes on there very cheaply for 20 something cents a barcode. But if you’re going to have your own product, you get a private label or whatever, highly recommend just go and spend the money and buy yourself a GS1 barcode for that one. You only got to buy the one barcode, which is for that particular item.
You can sort of hundreds of thousands of times with exactly the same barcode
And then you can sort of hundreds of thousands of times with exactly the same barcode. Like I mentioned earlier, Joni, if you want to have inventory at Amazon warehouse, I’ve got a whole video, shows you by step, walks you through it, exactly how to, it’s all free, of course, send stuff to Amazon. So quite a few people asking about that one. It’s all about finding one product only. Learn the steps.
So as I said tonight, it’s all about one product, and it’s all literally baby steps
All right, so as I said tonight, it’s all about one product, and it’s all literally baby steps. It’s just taking one little tiny step at a time. And for the perfectionists out there who take a long time and I can be very much guilty of this, done is better than perfect. You know, don’t try to always get everything perfect before you get started. Just version one is better than version none.
If you get at version one knocked over, you can improve it and get onto version two
If you get at version one knocked over, you can improve it and get onto version two. And that’s what we have. You know, when we look at back at our own company back in the early days, it was just, it was just rubbish and the photos were terrible and you know, just get version one done. And then you can launch into getting version two. So thank you. The slides will be available for 24 hours tonight. You can download them and there’s a link, and you guys have been great. You guys have a great night, and I hope you got something out of it tonight. Have a great night, talk to you soon, cheers.
Everyone uses eBay and or Amazon, but many don’t know how great they can be if you’re trying to make money.
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Part 2 available at:
https://www.neilwaterhouse.com/amazon-fba-2
Download the slides and follow along
https://www.neilwaterhouse.com/amazon-fba-australia-download/
In this video, multi-million dollar seller Neil Waterhouse presents how to sell on Amazon for beginners – step by step.
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