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Selling on Amazon outshines all the other seller marketplaces such as eBay, Etsy, and Overstock because of Amazon’s incredible fulfillment network of warehouses. Warehouses that they allow 3rd-party sellers to use.
How does Fulfillment by Amazon Work?
- As a seller on Amazon, you can ship your products in bulk to an Amazon Warehouse
- Amazon scans & receives the inventory
- When an Amazon customer places and order for your product, Amazon packages and ships your product to the customer
- Amazon handles the returns and most customer service related to the order
The great thing about this is that the system works while you sleep. A customer places an order in the middle of the night, and you don’t have to worry about it. Amazon takes care of shipping your product to the customer.
How Amazon Fulfillment Increases Sales
The great thing about Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) is that it qualifies your products for fast and free Prime shipping to millions of Amazon’s customers.
This helps boost sales, especially around the holidays.
It makes shipping orders to customers fast and easy.
**But Make Sure to Avoid the Following FBA Mistakes:
However great FBA is, there are sellers that make mistakes. Don’t let that happen to your business.
1. Mislabeled Products
If you label your own products (with UPC or Amazon ID stickers), please for the love of everything holy, make sure that you’re putting the right product ID stickers on the right products.
If you don’t put UPC stickers on your products, then nothing to worry about. Except for the rest of the items below. Worry about those.
2. Incorrect Items to the Wrong Warehouse
Related to the one above, you might have the right product in the right packaging with UPC and all, but if you tell Amazon you’re sending the socks you sell, but you actually send a box of hats, you’ll delay your inventory getting in, and could get in trouble with Amazon or even customers if it makes it through to them.
Point is, make sure you send the product to Amazon that you’ve marked you’re sending.
If you’re sending items to multiple warehouses, make sure the correct products are sent to the warehouse specified. There’s nothing like getting a note from Amazon that there’s a problem with your inbound FBA shipment.
3. Not Enough or wrong type of Dunnage (Packing)
It would stink to take such good care of your products only to skimp on packing them and have something damaged. Use appropriate bubble wrap, kraft paper, or other packing (not packing peanuts though).
You don’t want your product damaged on the way to Amazon.
Amazon will give you a sticker to print out with a barcode for FBA receiving as well as the FedEx or UPS label. Don’t place the labels across the box seam where it will need to be cut. Make sure that the labels are unobstructed and clearly visible.
Make sure you’re boxes aren’t too heavy. Keep them under 50 pounds.
Remember, it’s not rocket science, but any mishap can cause delays.
4. Breaching Amazon’s Guidelines and Restrictions
Amazon has some restrictions on items that could be dangerous or melt. Batteries are high on the list. Proper labeling is required, and some products Amazon just won’t accept for FBA. So check out the Amazon FBA Restrictions list before selling the product on Amazon or sending in for FBA.
5. Sending way more Inventory than you Need
Here’s where it can get tough? How much is too much inventory to send to Amazon?
With a product that has a good selling history, you’ll have a good idea of how much you sell a month. If you send in much more than that, you’ll start to get dinged for having too much inventory and can even be charged extra for inventory that hasn’t sold in the last 6 months or more for inventory that hasn’t sold in the last 12 months.
Think of it as first in, first out. If you sent in 20 units of one product, and they’ve been sitting there for 6 months, you could be charged for slow moving inventory. If you were to send in 10 more units (Amazon might warn you that the product hasn’t sold much recently), you’d be charged for the 20 units that had been in there 6 months or more until each one of those units have sold.It’s not too expensive of a fee, but it’s one you’ll want to avoid.
Fulfillment by Amazon – Launch your Business
Just think about it:
No warehouse that you have rent and staff.
No worries about returns and shipping individual orders.
What FBA can do is help you start small and start a business on Amazon that can add that extra income or replacement income that you’ve been looking for. The great thing is the automation it provides.
FBA works while you sleep or vacation. It could be the tool to provide that extra money for a vacation or two or three.
Millions of sellers are making money selling on Amazon, and you can too. Just imagine how many entrepreneurs just wanted to get their products into Walmart back in the day, but it was an exclusive process and limited by shelf space.
Now you can achieve way more getting your product potentially before millions and millions of customers. There’s never been a better time to get started.
Check out our favorite tool to help bring success fast on Amazon:
