Steps to Start Expanding Your Business Through Amazon Platform
Amazon is one of the largest online sales platforms in the world. From Autonomous and Entrepreneurs, we teach you how to use it for your business.
In the last five years, sales of small businesses and freelancers through the Amazon platform have exceeded 400 million euros. The company is one of the largest online stores in the market, where self-employed workers can easily connect with potential customers anywhere.
According to data from the website itself, 75% of the entrepreneurs who created or transferred their activity to the electronic store managed to export their products outside Europe. In addition, according to the technology consultancy States, 15% of e-commerce sales in 2021 were made through Amazon.
Self-employed workers interested in creating a store on the platform will need to pay a monthly subscription. The first is an ‘individual plan’ in which the entrepreneur will pay Amazon 99 cents for each product sold.
How Can Freelancers Create Their Stores for Amazon?
As the website itself explains, the first thing a self-employed person must do to transfer or create their business on Amazon is register and choose what they want to sell and how they want to sell it. Before setting up your business on the portal, you must select from one of the twenty categories that the page offers.
Once the entrepreneur has completed his registration with his data, he must execute the following steps:
Go to the Amazon seller website
Access the ‘Start selling’ section
Fill in the different fields suggested by the website: where the business is located, what type of business it is, the full name of the owner, country where the activity is carried out, country of birth, residential address, etc.
After completing all the requirements, the entrepreneur will only have to publish their product inventory on the platform. You can add products to the Amazon catalog whether they are there or not. You can search for products already on Amazon.com, choose how many you have, the status, and shipping options. Or, on the contrary, you can register new products giving all the same characteristics.
Completed the store’s inventory, Amazon will make available to customers a series of tools – quality, opinions, shipping times, etc. – to position the business product over others.
The more facilities, quality of the product, and the competitive price, the easier it will be to gain a reputation among customers to increase sales volume.
In addition, the business can use Amazon logistics to be the company that ships the orders. Once you have already sent everything, Amazon will send the payments to the bank account of the freelancer and will notify you when it is done to keep a detailed record of the stock.
What Are The Advantages of Including Amazon as a Sales Channel For a Business?
The technology consultancy Stratasys explained to this newspaper the advantages of using Amazon as an online sales channel for freelancers and small businesses. These are the benefits according to the experts of the prestigious web platform:
Scope: “The numbers of buyers and monthly visits are perhaps one of the great reasons a business should bet on selling its products on Amazon. In this way, this company’s visibility will experience an increase. Traffic and purchases on Amazon grow year after year, a growth that has been accentuated especially in the last two courses”, they explained from the consultancy.
International Exposure: “Amazon is the largest’ marketplace’ globally and constitutes an incomparable showcase for those freelancers who want to start distributing their products. In addition, it is the gateway to an international business, so if the objective of a company is to make sales to any part of the world without taking into account logistics, Amazon is the ideal channel to start selling your products.”, added from Stratasys.
Credibility: “Gaining users’ trust is essential for achieving sales, and Amazon has earned it. Security, delivery guarantee, reliability, and ease of return have made users not hesitate to purchase a product through this platform. Thanks to the opinions, criticisms, and reviews that users leave about their experience with each product and seller, Amazon has achieved its reputation today.
Initial investment: “Amazon allows entrepreneurs who want to sell through its platform to start selling online without making a large initial investment, which allows companies that wish to make sales through its platform to allocate that budget to other actions and marketing strategies.”
Management Of The Sales Channel: “While an eCommerce will have to be managed by an eCommerce manager, Amazon will be in charge of processing the orders, their shipments, and customer service, offering 24/7 service to the user and the return management of both the product and the payment in case of purchase or sale”, they concluded from the consultant.
