One of the most confusing parts of running an Amazon FBA business is the fact that storing inventory in Amazon fulfillment centers creates sales tax nexus for your business. Sales tax nexus is just a fancy way of saying a significant presence. And if you have nexus in a state, you are required to collect sales tax when you make a sale to a buyer in that state.

Unfortunately, because sales tax is governed at the state level and Amazon doesn’t provide any education about sales tax, many FBA sellers are confused on what to do about sales tax. We talk to many sellers who have been selling for years and are only just now realizing that they have been on the hook to collect sales tax in some states.

Fortunately, an upcoming “sales tax amnesty” will give many sellers the chance to start collecting sales tax with a clean slate.

What is the sales tax amnesty?

In a program managed by the Multistate Tax Commission (MTC), 15 states have come together to offer a “get off the hook free” card to Amazon and other online sellers.
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If you’re in the world of selling on Amazon (not the world of digital marketing) chances are that you don’t even know what influencer marketing is. That’s okay. We’re here to break it down for you, help you decide whether this form of marketing is a good candidate for driving sales on Amazon, and give you some tips and best practices.

Intro to influencer marketing for Amazon listings

If you’ve never heard of influencer marketing before, here’s a really quick, basic definition:

Influencer marketing is when you pay somene to promote your product to their audience.

Unlike affiliate marketing, where affiliates get a cut from every sell they help create, influencers are paid regardless of whether their actions cause additional sales or not.

That means that influencer marketing could be a huge success, or a total waste of money. Before we get into ways to make sure it pays off, let’s take a look at some examples.
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All it takes to create a profitable business is one profitable product, but most sellers want to expand. Once you’ve gotten your feet wet and are comfortable selling on Amazon, it doesn’t make sense to stop there.

Sellers may choose to tackle lots of random individual products, build up a product line, or create multiple branded product lines which can later be sold.

Whatever your long term strategy, success is still built on the foundation of your individual products—items that sell consistently and don’t have insurmountable levels of competition.

These tips will take you through the process of discovering your next profitable product.
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Guest blog by Chris Dunne from RepricerExpress

Amazon has an estimated 304 million customers worldwide and recently announced sales of $35.7 billion for the first quarter of 2017.

In exchange for giving third-party sellers access to its customers and their billions, Amazon demands sellers meet their high standards of customer service and price competitively.

There are two ways to keep your prices competitive on Amazon—manually or automatically.

When you have more than 50 items in your inventory, repricing manually is time-consuming, tedious and inefficient.

Thankfully, with advances in technology, you can now make your life so much easier whilst updating your prices (via Amazon’s own Subscriptions API) with automated repricing software like RepricerExpress.

With an intelligent repricer, sellers can keep the prices of their products competitive around the clock, even when they are asleep! And, it’s not a race to the bottom or about undercutting your competitor by a penny!

Intelligent repricing is about price optimisation—achieving the best possible profit for each sale.
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Back to school shopping season is actually the second biggest retail event, second only to the winter holidays.

In 2016, 46% of consumers planned to shop online for back to school supplies, and 89% of those planned to make use of free shipping. 51% of consumers start shopping for supplies three weeks before the start of school, meaning that early August is time to expand your product offerings.

If you’re looking for ways to expand your retail arbitrage repertoire to maximize on this high-volume shopping season, read on.
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The success of your Amazon business is all up to you. There are only 24 hours in the day, so using those available hours wisely is absolutely essential.

For entrepreneurs, productivity comes down to having the right mindset, software tools, and support systems.

Amazon sellers are no different.

You need to automate what you can, outsource what you can, and be strategic in how you spend your time. Here are our top productivity insights designed to help Amazon sellers manage their businesses more efficiently.

1. Use project management software

Project management software is only for large teams, right? Wrong!
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Have you ever noticed that some Amazon product pages look…really professional? Nice images, quotes, charts…all sorts of details that turn the basic product description section into what’s effectively a landing page.

What you’re seeing is enhanced content, which is available for you to create for your own product in two ways:

1. A+ Content is available through Vendor Central at the price of $600 per page
2. Enhanced brand content is available for free once your brand is registered with Amazon

Once you’ve accessed the ability to create enhanced content, the next step of course, is to actually create your new page.

Since Amazon claims that these pages can increase conversions by 3 to 10%, you’ll want to do the best job you possibly can.
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This is a guest post by Ethan Morgan from Volo Commerce. 

Earlier we covered exactly why third-party sellers on Amazon should be gearing up for Prime Day – the opportunity is huge. Check out our infographic and blog here.

So what can you do to prepare for early-to-mid-July, when Prime Day falls?

1. Look back to look forward

What can you learn from last time round, if you experienced Prime Day 2016? You shouldn’t need a time machine to go back to that point in the life of your business – a good reporting suite will do that for you.

Which product lines sold fastest, which geographies were most eager to buy your goods and which SKUs did you make the most money from? [Read more…]

This guest post is brought to you by TaxJar

We talk to thousands of online sellers in our sales tax community, but many of their sales tax issues boil down to just five major questions. Today, we complied your basic sales tax questions into one place for easy reading!

1.  From which buyers do I need to collect sales tax?

As an online seller, you are required just like brick and mortar retailers to collect sales tax from buyers in any state where you have sales tax nexus. Sales tax nexus is just a fancy way of saying “significant connection to” or “significant presence in” a state. Common business activities that create sales tax nexus for online sellers include: [Read more…]

When it comes to advertising an Amazon listing, most sellers think immediately about Amazon PPC. Customers who are inside Amazon’s platform are looking for products and are ready to buy, so why go outside that platform and advertise elsewhere?

Facebook advertising offers some unique benefits, like extremely advanced audience targeting, and the fact that you’re sending people directly to your page, without the competition of similar Amazon products.

If you serve your product to the right audience at the right price, you can drive immediate sales. These customers may be more likely to purchase right away than shoppers who were searching around and comparing similar products.

Here are strategies to help you master Facebook advertising as an Amazon seller, specifically.
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