Starting and running a business means taking on a risk. However, when you do everything properly and avoid making mistakes other owners have made, you significantly increase your chances of succeeding.
If you run an Amazon FBA business, you should know that the Amazon ecosystem can be a bit confusing to navigate. However, when you know what you need to avoid, you will do yourself a big favor and prevent your business from crashing.
Moreover, avoiding these mistakes will help your business grow and also give you the opportunity to sell Amazon business assets later on. A business operating successfully is more attractive in the eyes of brokers.
Without further ado, take a look below and learn about the five mistakes you need to avoid as an Amazon FBA business.
Not using AWS cloud services
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is one of the world’s most broadly adopted cloud platforms and it offers more than two hundred entirely featured services from data centers globally.
No other cloud provider has more features within its services than AWS. This ranges from infrastructure technologies such as compute, storage, and databases, to emerging technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence, data lakes, and analytics, as well as the Internet of Things.
All of this guarantees that the solution is faster, easier, and more cost-effective if you decide to move your apps to the cloud and build whatever you want to.
On top of that, AWS is designed to be the most flexible and secure cloud computing environment available today. This means that the degree of AWS cloud security support will always be up to scratch, with professionals from the field always available to help you.
Not following the rules
Amazon is a marketplace that is successful due to its good rules and procedures. Fail to follow the rules and you will violate Amazon’s Terms of Service. If that happens, Amazon will cancel your business and shut down your account.
You most likely understand what an account suspension holds for a seller. The scenario becomes even worse if you have already delivered inventory to one of Amazon’s fulfillment centers.
In other words, you should never cheat. Amazon is a trillion-dollar company and they employ thousands and thousands of employees that are equipped with the latest tech gadgets to watch out for violations.
On top of that, Amazon has the resources to police seller behavior even if it means account suspension. The marketplace won’t suffer at all since there are thousands of other sellers there selling almost everything you could possibly think of.
Ignoring your rivals
You need to do thorough product research and look at the number of rivals in your particular niche. It is important to place focus on the number of reviews too. For instance, if the first ten sellers in your product search results all have more than 100 reviews, the product is too competitive. This means that you’ll have a difficult time breaking into that area with your product.
On the other hand, you can also turn to paid advertising to help you get the word out about your offerings. Many people use software tools that can predict Amazon PPC’s cost. The higher the pay-per-click for a keyword related to a product, the more rivals you’ll have to beat to dominate the product niche.
Sourcing low-quality products
If you want to sell a private label product, make sure that its quality meets the standard. Sourcing low-quality products can destroy your Amazon business in a matter of a few days.
Reviews are difficult to get on Amazon and a few negative ones early on can get your listing down in no time.
Allocate enough time to order samples and analyze durability, functionality, and overall quality to deal with any concerns that could drive complaints from buyers. Also, take the time to read through negative reviews from your rivals and see if there are any problems that you can resolve.
Not monitoring your listing or data
It’s safe to say that you should expect ups and downs with your products and keep in mind that hese changes happen on a daily basis.
Unfortunately, many private label sellers throw their listing up and think that they have done everything they need to do.
But that’s not the case. On the contrary, it’s very important to keep monitoring your listing to gather data and see how it’s working. You should also keep an eye on your rivals’ listings and see how they’re doing as well as see what the category looks like as a whole.
Make sure to monitor your ranking for important keywords and ad campaign data as well. These insights will help you craft a good and long-term strategy.
Finally, don’t forget that getting your listing up is only half of the job. You need to tweak and optimize everything according to the feedback you receive.
Final words
It’s important to avoid making the mistakes you’ve just read about. But even if you do make a mistake, try to learn from it. Never allow a mistake to break your spirit and motivation.
So, learn about the mistakes and incorporate that into knowledge to make your business more successful.