11 Common Mistakes New Sellers Make
The stories of successful Amazon sellers, the points that lead them to success, their daily turnovers and more are written, drawn, and passed on by word of mouth… But where did the unsuccessful, those who were disappointed in their first product, the entrepreneurs whose big expectations turned into big disappointments?
In this article, we have summarized the most common mistakes made in first products under 10 headings.
1- Check the PPC Bids to understand the competition
You should analyze the competitive conditions of the market you will be involved in so that the product you plan to sell can meet the expected in the shortest time and at the least cost. Although there are many methods to detect this, the shortest and surest way is to use Amazon’s suggested ad bid (Bid) for your product’s automatic PPC and Bid rates for your high-volume keywords.
PPC Bids will naturally be high (like >$2) for keywords belonging to highly competitive products, while in quieter markets the Bid rate will remain at reasonable (<$1) levels.
2- Understand the concepts of Sales Conversion and ACoS very well.
In our previous article titled “What awaits an Amazon entrepreneur”, we mentioned that an Amazon seller has many different areas of expertise that must be tackled individually in order to carry out the operation performed by many departments and dozens of employees of corporate companies.
The concepts of Sales Conversion and ACoS are terms that Amazon merchants, especially those who will start selling for the first time, should know in more detail and priority than anything else. To briefly remind;
Sales Conversion: The ratio of those who ordered the product to those who entered the product page.
Example: If 10 people visited your product page (10 Sessions established) and received 3 orders on July 1, 2018; Your sales conversion rate will be 3 orders/10 sessions = 0.3 ie = 30%.
Parameters affecting Sales Conversion; product price, product photo, number of reviews and star rate, number of questions/answers, product color/varieties alternatives, brand value, discount/coupon rate, product title, Bullet Poins and product descriptions.
ACoS: The ratio of your total PPC cost to the order price you get with PPC.
Example: If you received an order for 2 products with $10 each through your PPC ad on July 1, 2018 and spent $10 on PPC on the same day, your ACoS rate would be $10 PPC Cost / $20 Total Order Value = 0.5, ie 50%.
Parameters affecting the ACoS rate; In addition to the parameters that affect Sales Conversion, are the words in which the PPC is listed and the page number in those words, and the position of the PPC on the page, such as top/middle/bottom.
We aim to have our Sales Conversion rate as high as possible since we want to sell to most of our product page visitors, and to have our ACoS rate as low as possible because we want to reach the highest sales with the least cost.
3- If possible, do not use air cargo.
There is a common saying in trade that “you earn when you buy, not when you sell”. We assume that you procure the product at the most reasonable price, and we recommend using the low-cost sea route, which is 3 times cheaper than the airline, at the logistics point, which is another important cost item.
It will be beneficial for new sellers who do not yet have live data about their products (Sales Conversion, ACoS, etc.) to pay attention to each US dollar in their expenditures until they put their products on Amazon shelves, in order to cover the unplanned expenses that will arise later.
4- Do not activate the option of sending to a single warehouse.
When creating a shipping plan for your products that you will send to Amazon, your Amazon products; The seller, which is disabled by default, may ask you to send it to multiple and different warehouses based on your central settings. Before making a shipping plan, you can activate the “shipping to one warehouse” setting from the relevant menu in the seller’s center, and then have Amazon provide a single warehouse address for all your products with the shipping plan you will create.
While the single-warehouse shipping option is active, your products will be distributed among warehouses by Amazon, and you will be charged an additional payment for this distribution, depending on the number, size and weight of the product.
In our first product, since we do not want any unaccounted expenses to be added to the cost items, it would be beneficial to keep the single-warehouse shipping setting passive.
5- Stay away from low profit products.
Although low net profit rate and high order volume products are an alternative for experienced sellers due to the release they produce; These are products that newcomers should definitely stay away from due to start-up costs, unplanned expenses, returns and amortization of launch costs.
6- Do not enter high stocks without testing the sales.
The most common mistake made by new sellers is that they send 2 or 3 times the highest sales amount they determined based on assumptions in the product analysis stage.
It would be a logical method for the effective use of their investment budgets, especially for new retailers, who act with a limited budget, to test the sale first by entering a reasonable number of products that will not pose a problem if they cannot sell.
If you can make 2 or more sales per day with PPC without abnormally below-average price reductions, no reviews and no stars, then it’s probably a good product and worth investing in.
Remember! Staying out of stock is a more preferable alternative to the products that have not yet known ACoS and Sales Conversion rates and which have been determined by estimating with high deviations.
7- These products are not for you!
Don’t even think about products that are quick and easy to enter, smaller than a shoebox size, limited in development, and have all the qualities to start with on a low budget.
You ask why? Until you procure it and send it to Amazon warehouses, countless people looking for products in different geographies of the world at the beginning of product discovery software will also enter the same product and compete fiercely by cutting prices.
8- Make sure to use an inspector.
If a product is ordered from a supplier to be used for the first time, which would be annoying in case of loss, the final control of the products should be made by working with a professional inspector before they are shipped.
The biggest risk for new sellers is their shop that has zero customer ratings yet. Returns and returns of Amazon customers, who do not hesitate to reflect their poor quality or unexpected product experiences with 1 star, may result in results that may lead to the closure of your shop if your first product has these qualities.
9- Choose a qualified product.
Apart from the price of the product you plan to offer, does it have a strong and clear feature that will encourage you to buy?
Price alone is not a competitive factor. Try to answer this question as objectively as possible, evaluate your product with these glasses, and if possible, try to hear the answer to this question from different people.
10- Don’t waste money on packaging.
In the first order of your first product, do not rush to spend money on the packaging and logo of the product that you have not yet tested whether it will be successful or not, whether it will fit in the market.
Changes such as product box and logo printing; mold, film, color separation, such as high one-time costs, as well as their MOQ limits are high.
If it will not have a direct and high impact on your sales, implement such changes, such as packaging and boxes, after testing the product and reaching a reasonable conclusion. On Amazon, products are often photographed and displayed without boxes and packaging. Be mindful of the fact that 99.99% of your customers will not compare the box/package with a competitor’s product by ordering yours.
If the product you are selling is not a product that needs to be renewed after a certain period of time and will be ordered continuously (for example, perfume, copy paper, baby diapers, toothpaste), keep your packaging/box and logo costs to a minimum.
11.You can buy barcodes cheaply.
You can buy the cheapest upc – ean barcodes in the market from newbarcodes.com. After making the purchase, we send the upc and ean codes automatically via e-mail.