The dropshipping community is still booming worldwide. People claim to be making a lot of money online by simply selling items on Amazon. In this article we will talk about all the necessary steps that you need to start dropshipping on Amazon.
After reading this article you will understand:
How to get started with dropshipping on Amazon.
The basics right so you are prepared to scale and sustain your business
Why you should automate the whole process
Opening your Amazon account
All it takes to start up your own drop shipping store is an Amazon account. If you plan on selling big amounts of products, it’s best to have a professional account. With the individual selling plan, you’re charged 0.99 cents per sold item which lowers your margin. Also, note that you’ll need to offer competitive pricing, while ensuring you make a decent profit to reinvest in the business. With a professional seller account you pay a subscription each month as well as a few additional fees.
For more information about selling fees on Amazon, visit here their official website.
To set up a professional account, you will have to provide your personal information and more details about your business, such as proof of identification, proof of address, certificate of incorporation, or other documents requested by Amazon. Find out more details on Amazon here.
Also, you have to get approved in your product category. Certain product types and niches require an approval from Amazon. Fashion, Beauty, and Jewelry are some popular niches that require approval before starting up your Amazon store. You can view the specific approval requirements for each category from Amazon’s Website.
Choosing Suppliers
While searching for a supplier for your Amazon store, there are few things that you need to inquire about and compare amongst the suppliers you are choosing from. Here is what you need to know when looking for the right supplier:
Shipping time (Very important) – You want to find a reliable and consistent supplier that will deliver the goods in a timely manner. Try seeing that as a customer. With Amazon Prime and goods getting delivered in a day or two, you don’t want to make your customers wait too long.
Return policy (Very important) – Sometimes customers make mistakes and order the wrong item, and sometimes suppliers accidentally ship the wrong item. It’s going to happen – you want to know how your supplier will handle this situation.
Additional costs – Some suppliers charge delivery fees, fuel surcharges, restocking fees for returns, or duties on imported goods. It’s good to know what you’re getting into ahead of time.
Just make sure that you are choosing the supplier with caution, and watch out for fake businesses. One tool that can help you with finding the right supplier is SaleHoo – an online directory that has excellent resources for finding reputable suppliers. You can search for a supplier based on the things that are most important for you. In this way you can save a lot of time.
Selecting products that sell
Figuring out what products to dropship is not an easy task. However, it’s a quite important task for your success. The products you are dropshipping will be the reason your customers purchase from you.
Here are some shopping websites where you can get fresh ideas for products that sell:
Ssense – e-commerce international fashion platform with a large selection of brands.
Kickstarter – is a famous funding platform for various creative projects.
Wish – is an online marketplace for all kinds of goods
Other social media communities, where you can find cool items to sell:
I Want One is a Facebook community with the content that makes you say “I Want One!”.
Insider Pages place to get an insight of the popular trends that are surrounding us.
I Want That is another social community, that you can easily find interesting products.
Other methods of finding profitable items that sell on Amazon is by using tools such as ZikAnalytics, a tool that lets you discover the right products, get inside analytics about competitors, and boost your performance on eBay.
Here is a little comparison between eBay and Amazon
The monthly users for Amazon are 300 million where eBay has 167 million.
Around 35% of Amazon sales are outside the US, where for eBay the percentage is 60%. The conclusion is that eBay has a bigger international audience and if you are looking to expand internationally and have a diverse customer base, eBay is the right call. If you prefer to stick with the US customer base, Amazon is a better bet.
When compared the fees for both Amazon and eBay we found out that eBay charges 10% FVF (Final Value Fee), vs 15% that Amazon charges. The only fee that eBay charges that Amazon does not is the Paypal fee. This is 2.9% of the sale price plus a flat rate of $0.30.
So now that we’ve gone through the basics, let’s talk about the best practices for selling on Amazon.
Pros of dropshipping on Amazon
The basics of dropshipping don’t really change when you switch the concept to Amazon, other than you have to take into consideration the small details of dealing with that particular marketplace. Rather than really explore what makes it so unique, let’s just take a look at some pros of dropshipping on Amazon
There is little or no upfront cost or capital required to start the business as you don’t have to buy inventory and rent a warehouse.
Since there’s no inventory you don’t have to worry about the logistics which frees up time for other tasks.
Doing dropshipping on Amazon means you’re dedicated to their search engines and marketing tools so you can benefit from the work that other sellers have already done.
You have immediate access to a HUGE audience because of the sheer numbers that buy from Amazon.
Automate and integrate your way to dropshipping success
It’s not as easy to start a profitable dropshipping business as it’s made out to be. But, with the right mindset and the right tools, it can be done.
The dropshippers who continue to rely on manual processes, spreadsheets or basic software will have difficulty achieving mass scale. They will likely always be outpriced and outsold by other more sophisticated sellers that leverage integration and automation to drive-up sales and purchasing volume and drive down costs.
The most important competitive advantage created by a hands-free, automated dropshipping business is the time that’s freed up from automating repetitive or error-prone processes.
While your business grows, you have invaluable amounts of time on your hands. Spend this additional time to find and explore new potential suppliers, investigate new channels, and focus on other methods to grow your business.
Every successful dropshipper is using a repricer that monitors the prices consistently in order to keep their profits stable and never sell at a loss or out-of-stock products. There is no workaround to scale your business and boost your profits.
Nowadays the biggest issue with these kinds of softwares is that most of them are super expensive and hard to use, because of their complicated interface plus it also takes you ages to get used to it.
Fast, accurate and effective Amazon repricing with affordable plans and live support team that’s there to help 7 days a week? Yes, that’s Repricehub.
Here are some key features that distinguish Repricehub from other repricers:
Direct integration with Amazon, no third party software is required – With Repricehub you don’t need other software such as Informed, where you will have to spend more money and have your tasks spread around multiple platforms.
Order management – Detailed dashboard where you can see all your amazon orders and the corresponding supplier items. Know your exact profit from each sale and quickly navigate to Amazon order and supplier product with one click.
Automatically checks and updates prices and availability of all your products – It updates prices twice an hour, every hour
Live Chat Support – 7 days a week our team is ready to help with anything.
Affordable plans, starting at $49. Compared to other repricers where you will pay up to 3 times more even without the third party apps – that’s a pretty sweet deal.
Tired of complicated and hard to use softwares? Try it out with the 14 days Free Trial.
Get started in 3 Easy Steps
Add Amazon seller account
Follow the three simple steps during setup to connect your Amazon store.
Create payment policies
Add a profit margin, Amazon and supplier tax, fees and other settings in your listing policies. Repricehub will update the price and quantity of your listings based on that.
Link your Amazon listings and supplier products
Insert the supplier product URL for each corresponding Amazon listings and choose a policy to apply. You can do it one listing at a time or in bulk.
You can always request a demo by sending an email to support@repricehub.com or directly contact our Live Support Team.
To sum it up
After reading this article, that’s enough preparation on your end. You can consider your research as done!
Now it’s time to go and create your first ever Amazon seller account.
