Categories
Amazon Online Selling

7 Mistakes to Avoid while selling on Amazon

When new sellers join Amazon they are not aware of some things that can affect their store critically. Here in we list down 5 things that Amazon won’t tell sellers but these things can have critical impact on their business

Succeeding on Amazon isn’t easy. We know that! We also know you are trying your best to get better sales on Amazon. In the process of succeeding on Amazon, you may sometimes make mistake. Based on actual learnings from a live Amazon Store & here are the top 6 mistakes to avoid when you sell on Amazon.

1) Not Calculating your real costs

Most sellers dont get familiar with all costs associated with selling, and hence tend to calculate in-accurate costs. They also get tempted to have low price to generate sales. By the time money starts coming in from amazon and sellers gets to understand profitability, its takes some time. Our experience tells us that most sellers take 4 – 6 months to fully understand their Amazon profitability and when they realise they put in all the efforts and made no money, they get disillusioned and some of the sellers stop selling online. So, dont make this mistake.

Calculate your costs correctly. Add cost of Amazon Selling & Closing Fees, Shipping Fees, Advertising costs, Return Costs, Product Breakage, Packaging Costs to your product costs to find your real costs. Also add cost of your operations and then add 15% as min margin you want to make from selling online on Amazon. By doing so, you will get your real costs and pricing that you should use for your Amazon products.

2) Ignoring Performance Notifications

Sellers get busy with operations and ignore reading all mails from Amazon as most of the mails are related to order fulfilment. If you miss a Performance Notification and don’t act on time to resolve it, it’s a sure-shot recipe to get penalised by Amazon.

3) Old Hat Mistake

The existing Amazon relationship you have has no value and you can be suspended by Amazon for one breach even if you are a seller with Amazon for years. So, don’t make this mistake of thinking that you are an old hat with Amazon selling and you cant get suspended.


4) Ignoring Negative Feedback

Amazon measures your selling performance based on many metrices. One of the most important metric is ODR (Order Defect Rate). Do remember that many stores gets suspended by Amazon because their ODR is high. The threshold for same is 1% of all orders fulfilled. So, it means that for every 100 orders a max of 1 order can be defective (ie order with negative feedback). So, dont ignore any negative feedback you receive from buyers. In case you get a negative feedback, proactively contact buyers and try to resolve their issue and request them to remove the negative feedback. Do note that Negative Feedbacks removed gets removed from ODR calculation.

5) Put up wrong image and description on the listing

Many times when sellers list a product they cut and paste images and description from other similar products available on Amazon or on Internet. Even if you do it, ensure you check the content for correctness. Many times sellers ignore checking the content assuming it to be correct. Later when buyer buys a product and find difference beween listing content and what he received, it can lead to negative feedback. So, check each and every image and description / pointers that you mention on listing for correctness.

6) Not managing correct Inventory

Another mistake small sellers make is not automating their inventory. So, there are situations where seller receives an order but the product is not available in stock. Such a situation will lead to Cancellations or delayed shipment (assuming you take time to arrange out of order product). Remember, both of these are areas of concern to Amazon and sellers are expected to have low cancellations and late shipments. Any breach of these also affects performance of Seller and can lead to account suspension or product selling right suspension

7) Selling Counterfeit or unauthorised products

If you sell counterfeit products or products that violate IPR of other brands its a recipe for getting your account suspended. Be sure not to make this mistake. Our sincere advise to you. Particularly, don’t sell products that are Apple Fakes. Amazon is particularly strict with such products.

Some of the above mistakes to avoid are Critical in nature and can lead to Seller Suspension or losing out on Buy Button or receiving too many customer complaints. So, be watchful and do make efforts to avoid mistakes.

Leave a Reply