Refunds Manager Blog

Learn More Sign Up

5 Busywork Tasks to Remove from Your Amazon Business

November 2, 2016 by refunds

5 Busywork Tasks to Remove from Your Amazon Business
Running an Amazon FBA business is no easy task (and it’s actually made up of dozens of constantly competing tasks). Even though the payoff can be high, becoming a seller certainly isn’t for everybody.

Most sellers start off like this: squeezing in time to build their business on nights and weekends while working a day job that they hope FBA will one day replace. But it’s impossible to take it to the next level without outsourcing and automation.

When your growing pains are keeping your business from growing even further, then it’s time to identify what exact pain points can be removed—or rather moved on to another entity, like a software program or your first ever part time employee.

1. Managing multi-channel inventory

Selling on multiple channels, like Amazon and Ebay for example, is a great opportunity, and one that creates a lot of busywork when it comes to inventory management. Overselling is absolutely something to avoid. At the start of a business, many sellers have a low enough volume where they can manage inventory across channels themselves.

But as the amount of orders raise (or if you want to invest more time into advertising and optimization and less time into dealing with orders after the fact), then you simply can’t do it manually anymore. There are a lot of options for Amazon and multi-channel inventory management, but you want to look for these key abilities:

  • Track multiple warehouse locations
  • Synchronize inventory lists across channels
  • Automate inventory updates to each marketplace
  • Potential to grow with further integrations (such as CRM) when needed

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Amazon Seller Success

How to Test and Analyze Growth as an Amazon FBA Seller

September 30, 2016 by refunds

How to Test and Analyze Growth as an Amazon FBA Seller

When you’ve got an FBA business that you’re ready to take to the next level, it can be hard to see where exactly to take it next.

Here we’re covering common mistakes that Amazon FBA sellers make, alongside ways to test, monitor, and analyze your account, plus the mind shifts it takes to view your FBA business like the real business that it is.

But first thing’s first. Are you passionate and knowledgeable about the products that you sell? If you’re not regularly sourcing items you know and care about, it will be even more challenging for you to discover innovative ways to wipe out the competition. When you add some products to your inventory that you know a thing or two about, that confidence can expand to how you approach the rest of your business.

Improve your ability to forecast

One of the trickiest tasks for any FBA seller is forecasting sales, and yet it’s absolutely necessary.

Practice definitely makes perfect, but some basic monitoring tactics don’t hurt either.

  • Sign up for replenishment notifications from Amazon
  • Use third-party software tools to review inventory-to-sales ratio and gross-margin return on investments
  • Compare both high and low investment products with sales data

Creating monthly or quarterly processes for sales forecasts can protect you from two nightmare situations: overstocking an item that just won’t sell and running out of a profitable quick-selling product.
[Read more…]

Filed Under: Amazon Seller Success

Making eCommerce Profits Possible: 13 Benefits of Amazon FBA

September 23, 2016 by refunds

Making eCommerce Profits Possible: 13 Benefits of Amazon FBA

Saving time, space, and money with Amazon FBA is only the beginning. FBA stands for “fulfillment by Amazon” but it covers so much more than just fulfillment.

With Amazon raising their storage fees and lowering their shipment fees during the upcoming 2016 holiday season (thus penalizing anyone whose inventory is not moving during the critical time) it’s easy for sellers to get a little nervous about the changes.

The key is to remember that the benefits of FBA outweigh the risks, so long as you truly make use of them.

1. Save space–use Amazon’s warehouses

Many ecommerce retailers store and ship products out of their garage (or even their bedroom), but this is not an option for anyone who is pressed for space. More importantly, sellers who don’t have to stock and sort their inventory on a daily basis can stay sane! Can you imagine having all those boxes stare at you everyday? It would cause a lot of stress and might cause you to think too granularly about your business.

2. Save time and money by not packing and shipping

No need to choose the right items in the right quantities, box them up, and ship them out. Amazon handles all of this (and can combine your items in the same shipment with other Amazon products). You can save money, time, or both by outsourcing this process to Amazon.

3. Automatic, around-the-clock customer service

While many sellers choose to interface with their customers directly (at least for feedback or a post-delivery check-in) it’s nice to know that you don’t have to.
[Read more…]

Filed Under: Amazon Seller Success Tagged With: Amazon FBA

How to Optimize Amazon PPC Ads

September 16, 2016 by refunds

Optimize Amazon PPC Ads

Well-managed Amazon PPC ads can create a huge source of revenue for sellers.

PPC is an incredible opportunity for seeking out new customers, and the best thing about it is you don’t pay for it until your ad gets clicked.

But just because someone has clicked your Amazon ad, doesn’t mean they will purchase your product. To make every single click pay off (generate revenue), it’s critical to advertise to the right people.

The best way to pre-qualify your traffic is with targeted keywords, but that’s only the beginning.

While Amazon PPC is fundamentally similar to AdWords and other search engine display ads, there are a few key differences. The good news is that the Amazon PPC platform is far simpler than any other search engine offering, so it can be easier to get up and running with no experience. However, fewer settings means less control. And while it’s tempting to automate the entire process, PPC success comes from a mixture of manual manipulation and strategic automation.

Understand the fundamentals of Amazon PPC

Before you get started with Amazon PPC, there are a few key definitions to be aware of:

Campaign. This is the highest hierarchy level for PPC ads. The overall budget can only be set at the campaign level. Most Amazon sellers create a campaign for each product category.
[Read more…]

Filed Under: Amazon Seller Success Tagged With: Amazon PPC

The Most Profitable Items for Amazon FBA

September 13, 2016 by refunds

Profitable Products for Amazon FBA

Amazon Sellers continuously add to their roster of products and are often on the hunt for the next best thing. When you’re ready to expand your Amazon business with readily profitable products, you have to know where to start.

There are a variety of factors that make something profitable on Amazon. Here are the top things to consider and product types that meet the mark.

How to determine the most profitable items

Price. Due to FBA fees, it’s very hard to make money on a product that costs less than $10, even if you sourced it for cheap. That’s why so many Sellers won’t attempt to carry products that cost less than $15. On the flip side, attempting to sell something that costs hundreds of dollars is also a risk, so you’re best capping the final sale price at around $250.
[Read more…]

Filed Under: Amazon Seller Success Tagged With: FBA profit

Branding Tips for Amazon Sellers: Stand Out in Your Go-To Channel

September 9, 2016 by refunds

branding-tips-amazon-sellers (1)

So many Amazon Sellers focus on retail arbitrage and retail arbitrage only. While shopping for clearance items and reselling them can be a great source of revenue, it locks you into what you can buy and sell that month. If you’re ready to create an Amazon business with true longevity, then you need to create a brand.

Here we’re covering tips for custom products and white labeling–whether you have a branded product available on Amazon already or are just getting started and leaping out of retail arbitrage for the first time.

Get out of a product mentality

The first step to creating a recognizable, meaningful brand is to think more holistically. Most Sellers think only about the individual products.

How much can I buy it for?
How much can I sell it for?
How many can I find?

When you operate your Amazon business only on that granular level, you inhibit your own growth. Instead, try adopting an audience mentality. This means that you’ll start asking yourself questions about what your audience wants and needs.
[Read more…]

Filed Under: Amazon Seller Success Tagged With: branding

How to Increase Your Amazon Conversions

September 7, 2016 by refunds

how-to-increase-amazon-conversions (1)

On the Refunds Manager blog, we’ve already talked about how Amazon Sellers can improve SEO, but what about CRO?

For those of you not familiar with that bit of marketing lingo, it stands for Conversion Rate Optimization and it refers to the steps you can take to improve conversions (increase purchases) on your product pages.

While SEO entails getting traffic to your page, CRO means controlling what that traffic does when it gets there.

Increasing your conversion rates on your Amazon products won’t just make you more money in the short term, it will also increase your chances of winning the Buy Box–because Amazon wants to show customers the products that sell–and so will increase your profit in the long term too.

Pro tip: only use CRO techniques on your branded product pages or for products that you own more than 95% of the Buy Box. Otherwise you’ll drive up sales for someone else!

Strengthen your value proposition

This tip applies to branded items specifically. Let’s say there are tons of noise-limiting headphones for children on Amazon being offered by several different brands. All of them are colorful, comfortable, and safe for young children to use. And they’re all right around $20.

What could possibly make yours stand out?
[Read more…]

Filed Under: Amazon Seller Success Tagged With: CRO

7 Social Media Tips for Amazon Sellers

September 2, 2016 by refunds

social-media-tips-for-amazon-sellers (1)

As an Amazon Seller, you want to do everything you possibly can for your business to succeed. No matter what business you start these days (from a mom-and-pop ice cream shop to an enterprise level software company), someone will tell you to jump on social media.

While it might seem that social media marketing exists only to sell social media marketing, there are some key benefits to using it strategically to build your Amazon business.

Follow these tips to see not only increased brand awareness, but better Amazon product conversions.

Know whether or not social media makes sense for your Amazon business

You’re an Amazon Seller. Your number one channel is Amazon–where customers migrate to all day long without you telling them to. Do you really need to do social media?

Probably.

Roughly $88,000 is spent on Amazon every single minute, and to have a shot at some of that revenue, you need to take a multi-pronged approach that includes traffic to your page from Amazon search, Google search, and both paid and organic social media traffic.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Amazon Seller Success Tagged With: social media

Multiple Sellers of the Same Item? What That Means for Amazon Sellers Using FBA

August 26, 2016 by refunds

people (1)
Ignorance is bliss. Well, not when it comes to using Amazon FBA to sell a non-unique item. For certain hot items (say Princess Elsa dress up shoes, for example) there can be 40+ different sellers.

Here, we’re covering the opportunities and the downfalls when it comes to multiple Amazon sellers of the same item.

The Buy Box is everything

Of the sometimes dozens of Sellers for a single item, the customer is most likely to buy from whoever Amazon recommends in the Buy Box.

elsashoes

Most customers will use the “Add to Cart” option, which typically shows Sellers whose merch qualifies for free shipping. Sometimes, customers will click on one of the other three options (if they want to pay a lower price + shipping because they aren’t going to buy anything for this order). But as for the other 37 Sellers not on this page? Forget about it.
[Read more…]

Filed Under: Amazon Seller Success

Steps You Can Take to Show Up in Amazon’s Buy Box

August 17, 2016 by refunds

Steps You Can Take to Show Up in Amazon’s Buy Box

Updated November 30, 2017.
While it might sound like something fun you can just jump into, Amazon’s Buy Box is actually an incredibly complex algorithm that can make or break your success as an Amazon seller.

The Buy Box is basically the Add to Cart button, and if you’re an Amazon Seller, that’s where you want to be on the product page. Amazon’s algorithm chooses which seller will show up here. Amazon’s main goal is to sell products, so they award it to the seller with the best success (and the best chance of making more sales).

AddtoCart
So, here’s how it works: You rent the buy box for a period of time. It’s a share, not something you own at all times. What percentage of time you rent it is what you want to improve. But of course, to be successful with your efforts, you have to be strategic.

Choose the right segment of your catalog to focus on at the right time

An Amazon seller’s work is never done. If you have a high share of the Buy Box, say 95% or even higher, you still have to protect that by increasing your conversions of that product.

But if you have a low share on a certain product, then you shouldn’t focus on increasing conversions of that product for someone else. Instead you’ll be concerned with upping your share. So, the very first thing you have to understand about the Buy Box is that you will approach it based on where you currently stand for each listing.
[Read more…]

Filed Under: Amazon Seller Success Tagged With: Amazon Buy Box

  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • …
  • 8
  • 9
  • 10

Refunds Manager

Refunds Manager can help you get back reimbursements from Amazon FBA for 19 different types of claims. No more wondering if you skipped anything. No more valuable time spent cross-checking order numbers! Refunds Manager has you covered.

Get Notified of New Posts

Stay strategic on Amazon! Get new blog posts sent to you via email:

Loading

Check Out Our “5 Best” Series

The 5 Best Podcasts Created By and For Amazon Sellers

The 5 Best Blogs Created By and For Amazon Sellers

The 5 Best Books Created By and For Amazon Sellers

The 5 Best Conferences For Amazon Sellers

The 5 Best Tools For Amazon Sellers





READ OUR REVIEWS ON TRUSTPILOT

Visit Trustpilot to See More

View Our Blog Content Categories

  • Amazon Seller Success (100)
  • Amazon Updates (10)
  • FBA Refunds (22)
  • Refunds Manager News (8)
  • Uncategorized (1)

Search Our Blog

Links

FAQ

Sign Up

Learn More

Subscribe to New Posts

Loading

Support

Give us a call at 800.272-6159 or email us at [email protected] if you need any help

© Copyright 2016 Refunds Manager · All Rights Reserved ·