Welcome to D2CWizard Amazon Beginner’s Guide.
I have been working on Amazon marketplace for the last 5+ years and helped many D2C brands start, build and scale up their business on Amazon. I tried to write this guide in the simplest way possible based on my experience.
Time is precious and it’s limited so you will find to the point and easy-to-understand information below.
In case, after reading this you will have any questions, you can ask them here and I will try our best to answer it in 48 hrs.
Let’s get on a journey.
1. What is Amazon & How does Amazon work?
Amazon is an online marketplace where anyone can sell and buy products.
If you’re thinking of selling your products on Amazon, first you must know how does Amazon works. Below is the simplest explanation in 5 points.
You register on Amazon as a seller
You list your products on Amazon & set the price for each product
Customer purchases your product from Amazon
Amazon charges a fee for every product sold
Payment for the products sold gets deposited in your bank account every 7 days (minus the Amazon Fees).
Now after reading the above, you must be thinking it’s so easy. Let me become the seller now and start selling products. It’s time to make some money or lots of money. woohoooo!!!
Ohh wait..not yet!
It’s not that easy and simple. There are many things that you need to know and do before selling your products on Amazon. Keep reading.
2. How to register on Amazon?
Now before you start selling, you need to have all your details and documents handy. Here is the checklist of all that is required to start registering as a seller on Amazon.in:
Active Mobile Number
GST Number
Pan Details
Active Bank Account
Email ID
Click here to begin the registration.
3. What’s the fee or cost to sell products on Amazon?
There are different types of fees associated with selling on Amazon.in
Selling On Amazon Fee = Referral Fee + Closing Fee + Shipping Fee + Other Fee
Referral Fees - Fee charged by Amazon.in as a percentage of the sales made by selling any product. It varies for different categories.
Closing Fees - Fee charged in addition to Referral Fee, based on your product price.
Weight Handling Fees - Fee incurred for delivering your order through Easy Ship and FBA.
Other Fees - FBA fee to pick, pack, & store your orders.
4. Delivering Your Products to Customers
Fulfilling your orders includes storing inventory, packaging products, shipping, and delivering orders.
Amazon.in has 3 different order fulfilling options:
a) Fulfillment by Amazon or FBA
When you join FBA, you send your products to the Amazon Fulfillment Center (FC) and Amazon takes care of the rest. Once an order is received, Amazon FBA will pack and deliver your products to the buyer as well as manage your customer queries.
We recommend you should opt for the FBA option if you want to scale fast on Amazon. Being on FBA can help you increase your sales by 10x. Below are some of the of using Fulfillment by Amazon & why it’s important.
Offer unlimited free & fast deliveries to customers Amazon has spoiled everyone with same-day or next-day delivery. So now customers expect and buy those products that they can get in a day or 2.
You store your products on Amazon's Fulfillment Centers (FC) and they take care of the rest – picking, packing, & shipping This helps in shorter delivery timelines for your products because Amazon has multiple FCs in almost all states. So you can store your product in different states. This way products will be delivered to customers in a day or 2.
Customer service & returns are managed by Amazon No need to hire extra resources or pay for tools for customer service or returns. You just send your inventory to FBA and focus on other parts of your business.
Eligibility for Prime Your products will get a prime badge because of shorter delivery timelines.
No Buybox Issues
How Amazon FBA Works
The way Amazon FBA works is very straightforward.
You send your products to FBA i.e you send your products to Amazon warehouse or FC.
Amazon FBA stores your products with care.
Customers purchase your products and Amazon deals with the whole transaction from payment to updating your inventory.
Amazon FBA picks and packs your products and ships them to customers.
Amazon handles the majority of your customer service tasks including dealing with any returns or refunds.
Every 7 days, Amazon deposits your sales profit directly to your bank account.
I recommend that you should go for FBA if you want to scale fast on Amazon.
b) Easy Ship
Amazon Easy Ship is an end-to-end delivery service for Amazon sellers.
The packaged product is picked up by Amazon from the seller's location by an Amazon Logistics Delivery Associate and delivered to the buyers' location.
Below are some of the benefits of using Easy Ship:
Fast and safe delivery of Amazon
Control over your inventory. No storage cost
Customer service & returns are managed by Amazon.in
Choose your own packaging
Disadvantages of using Easy Ship:
No Prime badge
No same-day or 1-day delivery
c) Self Ship
Being an Amazon.in Seller, you can choose to store, pack, and deliver your products to the customer on your own by using a third-party carrier or your own delivery associates. Here are some of the benefits of using Self Ship:
Complete control of your business
Use your own resources for operations
Only closing & referral fees are to be paid to Amazon.in
Disadvantages of using Easy Ship:
No Prime badge
No same-day or 1-day delivery. In most cases, Amazon shows a 7-day delivery timeline as a default option.
Buybox issues happen on MFN (MFN stands for Merchant Fulfilled Network. Also known as FBM - Fulfillment by Merchant)
Here’s one exception here, if you register for Local Shops on Amazon, you can get a Prime badge in your area.
Click here to Know More about Local Shops on Amazon
5. What is Seller Central?
When you register on Amazon.in, you will get access to the Seller Central dashboard. It’s the place where you will manage your Amazon selling business. From adding products, tracking orders to finding tools to grow a successful brand, you’ll find everything in here to run your business.
Below are a just few of the things you can do from Seller Central.
Keep track of your inventory and update your listings from the Inventory tab
Download custom business reports and bookmark templates you use often
Use customer metrics tools to monitor your seller performance
Contact Selling Partner Support and open help tickets using the Case Log
Keep track of your daily sales for all the products you sell on Amazon
6. Listing Products on Amazon
To list products on Amazon, you need to provide your product information such as the product category, brand name, product features and specifications, product images, and price.
All these details are available to your customer to help them purchase your product.
Once you list the product, you have to do product listing optimization.
7. Product Reviews & Ratings
Amazon is a reviews-driven platform. Customers buy products after reading reviews. More reviews mean more conversions. The higher the star rating, the more your product will be visible to the buyers.
When you start selling on Amazon, you are going to compete with brands those have hundreds and thousands of reviews on their products. So make sure to get reviews on your products or it will be difficult to get orders.
8. Why Amazon Ads are Important?
You will get sales on Amazon only when your products will be visible to customers. If they are not visible on the first page when customers search for it then there’s a very low probability that you get any orders.
Most of the buyers don’t even go to 2nd page on the Amazon website and stop scrolling after 2-3 scrolls on the mobile app.
Being a new brand you won’t get organic visibility on the first page on relevant keywords. You have to run ads to make your products visible to the customers.
9. What is Brand Registry?
When you sell on Amazon, it’s possible that you may experience issues as someone starts selling products with your brand name or copies your product images or content. So to protect your brand from counterfeit issues, you need to enroll in Amazon Brand Registry.