How to sell on Amazon step by step in 2020 | ®

Amazon is the largest marketplace worldwide and presents an immense source of opportunities for any business that is dedicated to online sales. Although there are other marketplaces that are also very powerful and interesting internationally, we are going to focus this article on how to sell on Amazon. We remind you that there are also other very interesting ones such as Alibaba or Ebay. If all this seems like too much work or you don’t know how to do it, you always have the option of having one.

Why is Amazon so successful?

We cannot attribute the success story that Amazon represents to a single reason, but to several. Among them we can count the usability of its website or the great technological innovation, with products such as Amazon Echo or Kindle. It highlights its great customer service, with special emphasis on its solid Social Media strategy. Nor can we forget its impeccable execution in shipments and the ease of receiving them at no cost (apart from the annual subscription) with the payment of a Premium account.

9 out of 10 consumers consult Amazon before making a purchase in another e-commerce.

These are just some of the examples why, on a day-to-day basis, more and more users decide to make their purchases online at Amazon, but there are others such as diversification. For example, Amazon started out selling only very specific product categories like books and gradually expanded, making it possible for us to buy almost anything.

Why sell on Amazon?

Just like Amazon sells its products, there are also many companies that sell within Amazon. This is where your business has a great and very interesting growth opportunity. Among the reasons why your business should sell on Amazon are:

It is simple to carry out: Unlike setting up an online store, selling on Amazon is relatively simple. By simply creating a Seller or Vendor account and uploading your products, you can access all its features.
It is relatively inexpensive: The price of a Seller account is relatively cheap, at 39 Euros per month. Within this section, you have the
You reach users in the purchase phase: When someone finds your product on Amazon, they are usually in the purchase phase. That is, you are visiting Amazon because you plan to buy something. This is very interesting since these types of users are very valuable and have higher conversion rates.
It allows you to internationalize: Creating an account in Spain can help you directly to sell in other countries.

What should you keep in mind when you are going to sell on Amazon?

Amazon charges you commissions: Depending on the category of the product you sell, Amazon will give you a commission percentage on the final sale. This is very important before starting to sell, because if you have very tight profit margins on your product, it may not be the most appropriate choice.
You do not receive payments directly: That is, the customer pays, Amazon collects and then Amazon pays you. Important when considering accounting, when you sell in your e-commerce or online store the payment is direct, here it can take weeks in case there are disputes with the buyer. (For example the buyer complains about a certain problem).
Getting it right takes time: As in any sector, doing things well takes time and getting profitability and sales from Amazon requires dedication. You have to upload products, optimize them, manage opinions… There are quite a few things that will obviously take time in your day to day life.
It is very competitive in price: This point is closely related to the first, selling on Amazon will mean measuring yourself against competitors who have a very tight price. It can also be the quite common case that there are several sellers who have the same product and logically the one with the lowest price takes the cat to the water.

“Calculating the costs and commissions well on Amazon is key before starting to sell”

What are the fees that Amazon has?

Surely point number 1 has caught your attention and right now you are thinking about how much Amazon can charge you to sell. Let’s analyze step by step the different concepts for which you can be charged:

Referral Fee: This is what I mentioned in point 1 of the previous section. Amazon will charge you a commission on the sale price (product + shipping). Depending on the category to which the product that has been sold belongs, it can vary between 7% and 20%. To give you an example electronic items are at 7%, however Jewelry is 20%. There is a very specific one that is the Accessories for Amazon devices that is at 45% but this case is an exception. You can check the
Closing fee (Not applicable to Pro seller): For each sale they charge you 0.99 Euros, it’s that simple. It does not matter the category or the price of the item.
Fixed fee per Seller Pro account: This is priced at 39 Euros per month and is paid for having a Seller Pro account within your marketplace.
Fee for item sale: It is a special rate for the sale of multimedia items. €1.01 for Books; €0.81 for Music; €0.81 for Video and DVD, and €0.81 for Software and Video Games
Fee for high number of active listings: It is an additional fee that applies to sellers who have many products. The limit is two million SKUs.

What type of Amazon seller account are you most interested in?

When it comes to selling on Amazon, we have two main Seller accounts.

Seller or Individual Seller: It has no monthly subscription fee but instead charges you a fee for item sales. In addition, you can only sell less than 40 items per month and as long as they are already on the Amazon platform.
Seller or Pro Seller: You have the monthly subscription fee of 39 Euros (+VAT), you do not have the article sale fee and you can also sell more than 40 articles per month, using your own articles and references.

It is clear that if you want to do a little test on Amazon, you can start with the Individual Seller account, but when you want to give it a greater role in the sales plan of your online store, you should go for the Pro Seller account. .

How can you sell on Amazon step by step?

Well, now after analyzing the pros and cons of Amazon, types of seller accounts, costs and others, the step has come for you to see how you can sell on Amazon.

1- Choose what products you are going to sell:

It seems like a simple step, in which the first thing that comes to mind is that you want to sell everything you have on Amazon. Ideally, however, you should start with a selection of products from your online store. To make this selection, we will take several factors into account:

Profit margin: As you have seen in previous sections, Amazon is going to charge you fixed fees and also a percentage of sales on each product depending on the category to which it belongs. The first thing you should know is the profit margin you have on your product, calculate the commission that Amazon would take for the sale of this and see if including that commission it is still profitable to sell it. Subsequently, having calculated the price of your product or the price you have to put it to get a certain profit margin, you will have to search for that product on Amazon and see the price of your competitors. Is your price competitive? Keep in mind that this is one of the most important variables when a user opts for you on Amazon. If your product is priced well above the competition, perhaps it is time to analyze other products that are more profitable for you.

Demand: It is related to the previous section. The first thing we must understand is whether the products you want to sell on Amazon are in demand by users. A good place to start is at This way you can see by category which are the best-selling products on Amazon. This has the limitation that it only shows you the hundred best-selling products by category. There are some , which can give you more exact details about the sales of a specific product. Other alternative tools can be the keyword tool (Searching for products with high search volume) or your own e-commerce, analyzing the best-selling or most searched products in your search engine. Another interesting way to see if something is in demand or not is usually to see if your competition is advertising those products. You can try searching. If ads appear to you, it possibly means that there are searches and that they are also being profitable for your competitors.

Competition: Once you have been able to see which products are the most in demand and also in which you can have an interesting profit margin, it is time to analyze with whom you are measuring yourself. We recommend you search for those products that you want to sell and see if there are many sellers that offer them, if they have many reviews or comments and the price. If you come across a large number of sellers with more competitive prices than yours and many positive reviews, it will be difficult for you to start selling. On the contrary, if these characteristics are not present, you may have found your niche to start selling!

And remember:

When in doubt, it is always better to start with a limited number of products and later, when you have results, increase it.

2- Create an account:

This is the simplest step, it is only a matter of going to the sellers or sellers registration part. You will have to choose the type of seller account that interests you the most. If you want to start small, as a small test, try the individual account and later you will always have time to upgrade to the Pro account. To register your account, you will have to provide a series of personal, company, payment and contact details (phone number). Have data on hand such as your ID scanned on both sides or an electricity bill to prove that your address is correct. Depending on whether you are self-employed or a company, they will ask you for one piece of information or another, but to speed it up it is essential that you attend to what they ask of you. Many of the questions that come to the agency have to do with this step, since if after a certain time you have not entered all the necessary data, they will cancel your account until you provide it. And here we go, reopening an account can be easy, but it can also give you a lot of headaches.

3- Create your first products:

Once we have created the Amazon Seller account, we will proceed to create our first products. If they have an EAN or barcode, you can search for them directly on Amazon and see if that product is already registered. When you have found the product, you can select it and finish filling in the missing data. This modality is faster, since someone has previously created the product and assigned it to the appropriate category and subcategory. To get to…