How To Sell Products On Amazon.com

There are a multitude of sales channels on the Internet, but most of the outlets do not get enough traffic to make it worth your effort. Earlier we discussed eBay. Around the same time eBay was hitting the Internet world, another company was also rising in popularity. That company was Amazon.

History of eBay and Amazon

While eBay was making a profit from the get-go, Amazon was losing money nearly every quarter during the 1990s. Their early advertisements featured a man looking for a huge warehouse to inventory their online book assortment. The problem was, books were not that profitable and they had to make a huge investment. Meanwhile eBay made money by facilitating the transaction between the buyer and seller. eBay did not have to inventory anything and made fantastic profits right away.

Things have changed since the 90s, and Amazon has now opened their huge network to outside vendors. Now Amazon has become profitable, and even more importantly, you can use their service to make money too.

What You can’t Sell On Amazon

There are some advantages and disadvantages when selling on Amazon.com. EBay allows you to sell more items with ease, including apparel, Beauty, Industrial and Scientific items, Jewelry & Watches, Personal Computers, Cell Phones, Service Magazines and Newspapers, while Amazon does not.

What You Can Sell And How Much It Will Cost

Amazon has a very low monthly fee, but expects high commissions on the products you sell. The monthly fee is only $39.99, but the “referral fee” or commission rate can be as much as 15 percent. Here is a list of the commission rates for various categories:

Automotive Parts 12%
Baby 15%
Camera and Photo 8%
Consumer Electronics 8%
Everything Else 15%
Health and Personal Care 15%
Home and Garden 15%
Musical Instruments 12%
Office Products 15%
Software 15%
Sports and Outdoors 15%
Tools and Hardware 12%
Toys and Games 15%
Video Games 15%

Amazon handles the payments for you. This can be good and bad because they can withhold and recoup money when a customer complains. Credit card companies and Paypal can do the same thing though.

Customer Payments

The good aspect of the Amazon system is that you don’t have to mess with credit cards and customers can place orders with multiple vendors using one payment. With ebay, customers must settle with every vendor separately.

How to Sell on Amazon

The first thing sellers need to do is register to sell with Amazon. Then there are various options for listing your products. You can use their “Seller Central” web interface to generate your inventory one product at a time. Basically you are telling Amazon what you have for sale.

Amazon also offers a downloadable program called “Seller Desktop” that resides on your computer. This is similar to the selling tools offered by eBay. You can also upload a batch file which includes multiple products. Although quick, most sellers will likely opt for the Seller Desktop or the Seller Central approach to listing.

How to Find Out About Sales

You can use either their web-based or desktop solution to keep track of your inventory and make changes to the product descriptions and price. When orders come in you will be notified either by email or another method.

Fulfillment Options

After you are given the details, it is your responsibility to ship the item. If you want to avoid that headache, Amazon does offer a fulfillment service where they handle everything, but that will eat into your profits considerably. They can inventory and ship your products.

Getting Paid

Since Amazon collects the money for you, there will be a delay in getting paid. Unlike PayPal or direct credit card payments with eBay, Amazon will process all payments. They pay 14 days after your account has been “settled” and you can expect to see the money in your account five days later.

By Dan Wilson - Best Syndication News Writer

Home Business

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