The reality of selling on Amazon: Is it as easy as people think?
Doing business on Amazon is very attractive to many people recently when there are not many Vietnamese businesses participating in this market. If you are aiming to sell on Amazon, AGlobal will share the realities that sellers face when starting a business on the world's largest e-commerce platform.
About Amazon
Amazon is the world's leading e-commerce website, the daily traffic can be up to millions of times. At the same time, Amazon also operates in many countries and territories such as the UK, Japan, India, etc. offers a variety of goods as well as customer files. Operating in 18 major markets and more than 185 countries, shows great growth potential on Amazon.
High level of competition
The fact that Amazon has a large operating market in many places, creates opportunities for thousands of sellers to participate in the market, increasing the variety of products on the floor. Going poorly with that is the high competition among sellers when Amazon is expanding, more and more people are entering this market. To thrive in this market, sellers need to have unique products, attract consumers, and reduce the risk of being copied from other sellers.
The risk of copying comes from Amazon
Besides being the world's largest e-commerce site, Amazon also develops a number of product lines manufactured by the company itself, such as: technology devices to home appliances that can be copied and sold by Amazon. cheaper price. Currently, Amazon owns thousands of brands in many different fields, the common point is that they are all sold at very cheap prices, sometimes only 2/3 of the original product and advertised in attractive locations. customer. So sellers not only consider Amazon as an e-commerce platform provider, but also as a competitor to their own business and products.
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Prepare full costs when selling on Amazon
Similar to selling on e-commerce platforms like Shopee, Lazada... the seller only has to pay a small part of the maintenance costs, shipping or advertising fees. Amazon also operates in the same way but with fixed and higher costs when it is a multinational e-commerce site, the scope is also much wider than domestic e-commerce floors. Some additional costs that sellers may have to pay if participating in this potential market can include:
- Account costs: Amazon has 2 types of sales accounts, basic and professional. The basic account has no maintenance fee, but for each product sold, Amazon will collect 0.99USD/product. As for the professional sales account, the maintenance fee is 39.99USD/month.
- Advertising costs: Depending on the needs of the seller.
- Shipping costs: The seller pays the Logistics unit to ship it to the Amazon warehouse in the business market.
- FBA costs: Includes fees for storage, packaging, care and expedited shipping to customers provided by Amazon.
- Other costs: fees incurred as documents, procedures, ... in the process of selling on Amazon.
Possibility of suspension of sales accounts
Amazon puts the standards of product quality first, and sellers are always at risk of having their sales accounts suspended if there are reports of products of poor quality or falsehoods. Businesses can always appeal, but sales accounts are generally very susceptible to suspension. In addition, there are many cases where a seller's competitor competes "badly" when it falsely reports on the quality of the product in order to eliminate the competitor. This also applies to customer reviews.
Comply with Amazon's Terms of Sale
Amazon is very focused on product quality on its website, so it has set out many regulations as well as rules about products, sales pages or customer responses, etc., all of which are clearly defined. Therefore, businesses often do not know the reason for their account being "locked" or unable to sell products on the floor. Here are some mistakes sellers often make when selling on Amazon:
- About product listing: wrong size photo, wrong product description, title without banned keywords, special symbols, all caps….
- About customer care: Asking for personal information, contacting customers through 3rd parties, threatening or bribing with vouchers/products to get good reviews…
- About the product: not the right quality or product description
Summary
In general, Amazon is still a potential market when it is expanding and attracting more customers from many places, creating business development opportunities for businesses in the international market. In order to help Vietnamese businesses not be surprised when they start doing business on the Amazon floor as well as avoid violating Amazon's terms, AGlobal was established to support businesses to approach and do business in the international market in a safe way. easier.
Contact hotline 0888 608 007 or visit here to receive free advice from experts of AGlobal.