There are advantages and disadvantages to selling on Amazon.
In recent statistics published by Amazon for its investors, is expected to close the 2018 budget with revenues of $135 billion, 40 percent of this revenue comes from the third-party vendors that is, by sellers who have decided to exploit amazon as their sales channel.
It is easy to see how Amazon FBA is a great opportunity, a great marketplace for anyone who wants to sell online.
But like all marketplaces, Amazon also has some advantages and disadvantages.
The main advantage is that you can quickly and easily realize your online store, so you can start selling in five minutes by creating your own online seller account.
Another of the main advantages is that you can attract qualified traffic without having to spend a euro on web marketing strategies or paid advertising activities, since it is Amazon itself that with its 200 million visitors every month provides you with traffic, thus some qualified users Who are already intent on purchasing.
I start-up costs of your online store on Amazon are very small: with a few tens of euros you can open a professional-type account and immediately start selling.
The only additional costs are, of course, the commission costs, that is, commissions on sales, a small percentage that Amazon charges you every time you make a sale, or other services that Amazon provides such as the amazon logistics, which allows you to hinge your products within Amazon's warehouse and have Amazon itself sell to ship those products whenever a sale is made.
You can also sell your products throughout Europe thanks to Amazon as it allows you to take advantage of its European marketplaces without having to create additional accounts.
So with one location, one office, you don't need to structure and go abroad, but you can safely sell and ship all over Europe.
Having seen the advantages of selling online through Amazon FBA, it is only fair to also list the disadvantages.
The main disadvantage is that you cannot create your own brand, because you will be almost anonymous.
Most users have a lot of trust in Amazon, which is now a globally recognized brand, and are not looking for your brand.
Most importantly, Amazon itself tries to severely limit your communication with the end customer, not allowing you to forge that brand-consumer relationship that increases customer loyalty, not allowing your brand to grow.
Another major disadvantage is the inability to customize or add features.
You'll have a standard product page, standard mechanisms, systems, and features that you can't customize, just as you can't use different alternative web marketing strategies, because it's Amazon itself that uses different paid advertising, use thesearch engine optimization to attract visitors, and so you can't use different web marketing strategies or go and implement particular features within so that you can develop your business and develop your revenue.
Shipping costs are decided by Amazon itself, depending on the product category.
In addition, as mentioned earlier, there are commissions on sales. These commissions greatly affect your margin because they can be as high as 15-20 percent.
So before selling on Amazon, it is also important to consider your marginality on products, because you will obviously incur significant costs each time a sale is made within your online store.
Another disadvantage, or at any rate another particular aspect of this marketplace that few people know about (and those who do know about it do not take it into consideration at all), is the fact that you have to use different strategies in order to position yourself for visibility, to provide visibility for your products within the marketplace.
Keep in mind that it is not enough to create your own account, enter your products and from there start selling. You need to understand the logic the mechanisms behind a sale made within the marketplace.
Keep in mind that competitors are there and are on the same page as you. Each product page may have several sellers, and as a result you are competing within the same page with other sellers.
You need to use repricing strategies or at least you need to know mechanisms so that you can increase the visibility of your products and thereby increase your revenue by ranking better within Amazon's search results than your competitors.
Now that we have seen what the advantages and disadvantages, it is important that you also understand when it is convenient to sell on Amazon.
On Amazon it is interesting to sell when you have a very small budget And you don't want to open your own e commerce on a website.
In that case, if you are a creative, an artisan, a merchant with a physical store, and you want to sell online, you can use the Amazon marketplace Because it is very simple.
So without special technical knowledge and at especially very little cost, you can start selling right away.
Alternatively, amazon is also very attractive to anyone who wants to launch their own ecommerce, with a structured ecommerce, but wants to test the market first.
In this case Amazon is a very good marketplace, it is a very good platform for the product testing. So you can easily open your online store, put your products that you have made or you have just bought from some suppliers and from there you can start selling and understand what is the feedback from the market, what is the feedback from the users, so that you can then invest your budget within your ecommerce that will develop separately on your own domain.
Keep in mind that even if you have an ecommerce, if you are an entrepreneur who already has an ecommerce, it is still very important to take advantage of the Amazon channel, as it allows you to diversify your risk, therefore to have an additional source of traffic and above all to increase your revenue because Amazon attracts those visitors that maybe with other web marketing strategies you would find very difficult to attract.
As a result, in addition to diversification, increased sales through an additional channel is an important aspect that allows you to further develop your sales.
