8 Traits of a Financially Successful Amazon Merchant

There are a lot of moving parts to growing a financially successful Amazon sales channel. While most anyone can sell on Amazon, selling profitably is a completely different ball game.

Regardless of what you sell, whether your business is big or small, there are common characteristics that are shared by financially solid Amazon sellers.

Today, I want to share 8 traits of a financially successful Amazon seller with you.

1. They know their numbers. Financially successful Amazon business owners review their P&L (profit & loss) report each month.

• Knowing your expenses, controlling your expenses, and knowing your bottom line profit every month is key to building a solid, profitable business.
• They know what their gross sales are, but more importantly, they know what their net profit is.  There are many Amazon sellers out there who are barely breaking even or, are losing money each month.

• Successful Amazon sellers calculate all COGS (cost of goods sold). They know which products are profitable and which aren’t. If you’re not including all your product costs (not just inventory costs and Amazon fees) when sourcing your products, you’re not making as much money as you think (in fact you’re likely losing money).

• They make informed business decisions based on results. They don’t wing it.

No matter what size your business is, if you don’t know your numbers, you have a hobby, not a business.

2. They don’t fall in love with their products. Falling in love with a product that isn’t performing well, is a sure way to lose money.

If your product isn’t performing because:

• The market is saturated

• You made a bad product selection

• The product is not profitable

• The quality is poor

• It’s driving a lot of returns

Or any number of reasons, it’s time to cut your losses and move on to more profitable inventory.

Retail is a fast-moving, dynamic industry. Stay up on the trends, source where the market is going, and love the pursuit of new products.

3. They have niche expertise. There are riches in niches. If you want to be more successful on Amazon, faster, and with a competitive edge, learn a category and the market who buys there.

• No matter how they source, successful Amazon sellers have (or are pursuing) special expertise in one area. And they leverage that expertise to source better products, make invaluable connections with product suppliers and know what their customers want to buy.

• Relying solely on software tools to show you what products to sell, without also understanding your target market, is a dangerous proposition. 

• You’ll end up sourcing a “me-too” products, that don’t sell. 

This is the reason there are 13 pages of essentially the same chainmail scrubber on Amazon that aren’t selling!

Pick a target market that you know, or want to learn about – then dig in and find out what they’re buying, thinking and who they are.

4. They develop their own branded products.  Private label products are the best opportunity for 3rd party merchants on Amazon in 2017 (and beyond). In fact this is one of the Top 4th Growth Opportunities for Amazon Sellers that I covered in my latest video. 

However, you can’t import a “me-to” product, put a label on it, and expect to “market it better than the other guy/gal” – because in today competitive Amazon marketplace, it won’t sell.

You need to bring value and differentiation to the marketplace, and (for most people) do it without spending a fortune. 

And it IS possible. I do it in my own private label business, as do my clients and students who private label.

Bring a product that provides value to the consumer into the Amazon marketplace, then market the heck out of it.

5. They know how to optimize their product pages to get ranked in search (SEO) and they know how to write page copy that converts to sales. 

Your Amazon listing is your salesperson. It works for you 7×24 selling your products. 

But most Amazon product pages are not doing their job of ranking well in search or converting browsers to buyers.

Keeping up on the latest page optimization strategies is takes a considerable amount of skill, effort, and time. 

Whether you hire a qualified page optimization expert to create and optimize your product pages or you (or your team member) learn the skills to do it yourself, it has to be done.

A well optimized product page (for search and conversion) is money in the bank, literally.

There’s no point in spending time and effort sourcing great products, only to let them languish on your virtual store shelves due to a badly optimized product page.

After sourcing, this is the most important step in growing your sales.

6. They market their products on Amazon and outside of Amazon.  The days of relying solely on Amazon to sell your products are gone! 

Successful Amazon sellers know that they can’t wait for people to walk through Amazon’s front door and buy their product. The marketplace is too competitive for that.

There are a lot of great products on Amazon that aren’t selling, because they are not being marketed properly.

Using Amazon’s marketing tools in conjunction with getting your products “out there” (outside of Amazon) in front of potential buyers and “leading them by the hand” directly back to your product page to buy is the key to taking a product from low/no sales to consistent daily sales.

Consistent marketing on Amazon and outside of Amazon will increase your product sales incrementally, each day.

There are so many external marketing opportunities for Amazon sellers. And while not every marketing platform is right for every product or brand, there is a marketing platform that will be effective for your products. 

7. They’re on top of their back-end processes. As a busy business owner, it’s so easy to let things slide…

But without focusing on the details of your business, you are guaranteed to be losing money.

Financially profitable Amazon merchants:

• Don’t have non-selling inventory sitting in FBA tying up cash

• Get reimbursed for destroyed, damaged or lost inventory

• Review their Amazon reports on a regular basis

• “Walk the floors” each week to survey what’s happening with their sales, competition, category

• Price strategically, to capitalize on seasonality, and market demand

• Are constantly looking for ways to increase profitability

The money is in the minutiae. The most profitable Amazon merchants keep a close eye on the details in their business, and are constantly looking at ways to improve performance.

8. They know the weak links in their business. Ultimately, your business is only as strong as your weakest links.

While your business may be very successful in some areas, if you have weak links in other areas, they will undermine all the other great work you’re doing in your business.

• You need to fix the foundational issues in your business before adding new, cool, ideas into the mix.

• And while some of your weak links may be obvious – you may source great products, but you don’t have a good replenishment process in place, so you’re losing sales due to being out of stock.

• There are many other weak links that you may not even realize are sabotaging your sales and profits.

Things like setting thresholds for product sales performance and reducing non-performing ASINs proactively, rather than reactively – thereby freeing up valuable cash and not getting hit with storage fees and recalls at the last minute.

Identifying the weak links in your business and fixing them one-by-one, will lead to a strong, profitable business. 

I see too many businesses, both big and small that could incredibly successful, but there are weak links that hold them back and diminish their success.

Which of these 8 traits resonate with you? 

Even if you don’t have all of these traits, don’t worry! Getting to this level is a process.

So ask yourself?

• Which are you doing in your own business?
• Which do you need to start doing?

Amazon Selling, Marketing & Business Strategies