Blog2019-05-22T20:08:52+00:00

Sell on Walmart: Get Your Products in Front of Walmart’s 120 Million Customers! Apply Today!

Expand Your Business to Walmart Today! Back in the “early days”, a lot of sellers made the transition from Ebay to Amazon. Now, it seems that Amazon sellers are choosing to add Walmart to their list of platforms to conduct business on. When Walmart first opened up their platform to third party sellers, many found it difficult to get approved, sometimes waiting months without receiving an answer to their application. In recent months, Walmart has actively begun recruiting established Amazon sellers to sell on their platform, simplifying the application process, and quickly confirming new [...]

Unpacking Amazon FBA Poly Bag Requirements in 2023

Amazon FBA Poly Bags Navigating the world of Amazon FBA can be a complex task, especially when it comes to understanding the various packaging requirements. One essential aspect that sellers must be aware of is the proper use of poly bags for packaging their products. Not only do these bags ensure that items are protected during transit, but they also play a crucial role in maintaining seller reputation and customer satisfaction. So, what exactly are the requirements for poly bags, and how can sellers ensure that they are meeting Amazon's guidelines? Let's dive in and explore the [...]

The Ultimate Guide to Finding an Amazon Prep Center Near Me

The Ultimate Guide to Finding an Amazon Prep Center Near Me Are you an Amazon seller looking for ways to streamline your fulfillment process and boost your business? Look no further! This comprehensive guide on local Amazon FBA prep centers will provide you with all the information you need to find the perfect “amazon prep center near me” that caters to your unique requirements. Let’s dive in and explore the pros (and maybe cons) of using local prep centers and how to choose the right one for your business. Short Summary Research and compare local [...]

UPDATE How to search beyond the top 100 items in a category edited with intro

A few years ago we made a video on how to see beyond the top 100 items and the Amazon bestseller categories. Before, you would go in and you go to Amazon bestsellers, you choose your category and you would go up into the search bar and you would put in a closed set of brackets. And then you would search and it would show you all the way up to page 400. Well, now they show you how many listings actually have brackets in it, which is in this all of Amazon. It's 91 listings. Well, that's not [...]

How to Reprint Amazon FBA Shipping Labels

So you're working on an Amazon FBA shipment. You've gotten to the point that you're ready to print your labels. And for whatever reason, you closed out and you didn't print your shipping labels, maybe your printer crashed your computer crashed, or you got in a hurry. You clicked the wrong button. And now you're past that point. And they're telling you that the order has been shipped or ready to ship, but you didn't print the labels. And when you go back and look, you don't see where to print your labels at. Let me show you the [...]

A Different Kind of OA Deals List

Paid Daily Leads Lists are plentiful in the Amazon Online Arbitrage (OA) space. The way they work is simple: Someone pays a fee to receive a "list", usually in the form of a spreadsheet, of items that they can purchase from an online retailer to be resold on Amazon for a profit. The lists are usually compiled by Virtual Assistants (VAs) working for the OA List provider. These VAs are most often based in the Philippines where the cost of living allows for a lower wage than a US-based worker would receive. The VAs often use sourcing tools like Tactical [...]

Amazon Updated Intellectual Property Policy (How to Identify an IP Risk)

Date Effective: November 11, 2020 For: Amazon Intellectual Property Policy Brief Summary Amazon released an update of their Intellectual Property Policy today. They did a good job defining what is and what isn't a Trademark Violation. They even made the following statement: ​ "Just because you are not the owner of a trademark does not necessarily mean that you cannot sell another company’s product." ​ They went on to talk about Counterfeit Violations, although I don't believe they devoted as much time and attention to fully describing this specific risk as they did the Trademark Violations [...]

Annual Long-term Storage Fees (LTSF) are coming

Date Effective: October 15, 2020 For: Amazon FBA Inventory Brief Summary Any FBA Inventory that has been in the Fulfillment Center (FC) for one year or more will be assessed a Long-term Storage Fee on October 15, 2020. The Full update October 15, 2020 is Fulfillment by Amazon’s (FBA's) next scheduled long-term storage fee inventory cleanup. On this date, inventory that has been in US fulfillment centers for more than 365 days incurs a long-term storage fee of $6.90 USD per cubic foot or a $0.15 USD per-unit long-term storage fee, whichever is greater. [...]

How to Check Your Amazon FBA Returns Report

Amazon FBA Returns are a part of every Amazon seller's business. Everyone gets them, and nobody likes them, but it’s important to keep track of your returned items as some may be unfulfillable and need to be removed from the warehouse. You do this through the Amazon FBA Returns Report available through Seller Central. Here are the simple steps to access that report:Click on the “Reports” tab in the menu at the top of the page in Amazon Seller Central.Select “Fulfillment” from the option in the drop-down menu. This will open a menu on the left side of the page.Looking [...]

You Can Learn How to Sell on Amazon

If a How to sell on Amazon article actually existed, one that: taught the basics of becoming an Amazon Seller how to set up an account in Amazon Seller Central how to find products to sell How to sell them on Amazon the shipping process Whether to send products into an Amazon Fulfillment Center vs. shipping them first to an FBA Prep Center vs. shipping them one by one from your home or place of business ...that article would actually have to be a complete course, or at the very minimum, a series of articles, and even then, it [...]

Free shipping – Amazon Prime vs. non-Prime

Amazon Prime has many benefits, and FREE two-day shipping is one of the better ones. But if you are an Amazon seller and are buying things from the Amazon website with the intention of reselling them (on or off Amazon), it is against the Amazon Terms of Service to use your Prime membership for these orders. "But what if you choose something other than the Free two-day shipping?" you ask... Let's take a look at an example: I placed a countertop microwave oven into my shopping cart in both my Amazon Prime account, and my non-prime account in order [...]

Amazon BOLO Groups: An In-Depth Look

Amazon BOLO groups have been around for as long as Amazon groups have been on Facebook. Some are free, and some have a paid membership. Amazon BOLO groups, in many cases, have received bad reputations, whether deserved or not. Be On The Lookout - or BOLO as it is commonly called - is a way to identify something that is supposed to be worth finding, and in the case of Amazon, worth buying to resell on Amazon for a profit. This term BOLO usually refers to finding the item in a retail store setting as opposed to buying it [...]

Suppressed Listings – Why does Amazon hide pages from buyers?

From time to time as an Amazon seller, you may discover that you have one or more Suppressed Listings, affecting your ability to sell some of your inventory. Suppressed Listings are product pages that Amazon is not showing in the search results because something on the page does not meet the standard that Amazon has set for their listings. Unless someone clicks through a link directly to the product page, they will never see it. This means that your inventory will sit in the warehouse, costing you money. It is imperative that you take the necessary steps to reactivate Suppressed [...]

Fix Your Amazon FBA Stranded Inventory Listings

Amazon FBA Stranded Inventory  - This is not a situation where something becomes lost. Instead, it occurs when Amazon is holding the inventory but something caused your placement on the listing to be removed, preventing your item(s) from being sold. Sometimes it's a situation where the listing itself was closed. Or maybe your pricing triggered an alert and Amazon shut down your listing to prevent you from selling it outside of the minimum or maximum that you set. There are several other reasons an item might become stranded. When your inventory becomes stranded at the Amazon FBA Fulfillment Center, it [...]

Advanced Online Arbitrage Tips for Amazon FBA

Do you know how to do Online Arbitrage? What is Online Arbitrage? Is Online Arbitrage legal? Online Arbitrage sourcing for Amazon FBA sellers is a great way to operate an Ecommerce business without needing warehouse or office space. You can run your Amazon OA business with nothing more than a laptop computer from anywhere you can get a WiFi signal, while utilizing one or more Third-Party Prep Services to process and ship your items to Amazon. There are many Online Arbitrage Tips that can help you scale this business model, whether you are brand new to Ecommerce, or an [...]

Safety Documents Required for Amazon FBA Toys

If you or someone you know sells children's TOYS on Amazon, be sure to pay attention to this - One of our Essential Daily Deals OA group members emailed me this morning about a notice he had received from Amazon. It is related to a toy that we had on our OA list in the past - available in retail stores and sold by multiple resellers on Amazon. The email is requesting Safety Documentation, and apparently Amazon can and will ask sellers for these documents at random times for toys aimed at children 12 years old and younger. Please take a [...]

Understanding Dimensional Weight

Dimensional Weight Your package weighs 20 lbs., but UPS is charging you for 36 lbs. to ship your package. What Gives? Whether you operate a large-scale manufacturing facility that ships products by the truckload every day, or you're a small-time eBay or Amazon seller who ships a few boxes a week, you have likely run into the dimensional weight issue in the past. Why are you being charged for more weight than the package actually weighs, and what exactly is Dimensional Weight? Here's an easy way to understand it. Each truck or trailer that transports freight on the highway, each [...]

ASellerTool: Where are they now?

ASellerTool - The more things change, the more they stay the same. Prior to, and during my early days of selling on Amazon, I had built a respectable used book-selling business on eBay. Most of the books I was finding were from the "for sale" sections in the 11 local libraries in my county. I was selling a lot of audio books on cassette and cd that I was buying for $1 each. I remember finding an unabridged copy of Gone With The Wind  on 28 cassette tapes for a dollar and selling it on eBay for $165. This was back [...]

Amazon Resellers – Arbitrage is hard

IP claims and Restrictions make Retail and Online Arbitrage harder today than ever! Amazon resellers using OA lists need to be especially careful when Reselling on Amazon. If you have been selling and reselling on Amazon for any length of time, you no doubt have observed the rise in Intellectual Property violations being filed against sellers by brands, under the guise of "Protecting their rights". While counterfeit products, trademark infringements, and copyright violations are certainly a reason for concern, many brands have taken the protection of their Intellectual Property to a level that has caused many Amazon resellers to [...]

A Better way for Amazon Product Labels

Amazon Product Labels Do yourself a favor and try out AZLabels. Print your Amazon Product Labels directly to your Dymo /and / or Zebra thermal printer with no need to create a pdf file prior to printing. Perfect for the sellers who create shipments directly within Amazon Seller Central. AZLabels allows you to print Amazon Product Labels (fnsku) for Amazon, as well as Shipping and pallet labels for Amazon, Ebay, UPS, Fedex, USPS, and more. Want to try out AZLabels for free? You can print 100 Amazon product labels and 10 shipping labels for FREE every [...]

How to use Keepa to analyze products on Amazon

If Amazon sellers had to eliminate all tools except one from their arsenal, it would be a safe bet that most would want to hang on to Keepa, the Amazon price tracker. But  knowing how to use the data that Keepa provides to make informed buying decisions requires some practice. Let's take a look at a Keepa graph to see what we can find.AMAZON SALES RANK, as revealed by KeepaThe green line on the Keepa graph represents the sales rank at the time that Keepa looked at the product. The more Keepa users that look at the product on Amazon, [...]

10 Tips for Selling Liquidation

Liquidation is a category of merchandise that can be very profitable to the reseller. It can be very challenging for the inexperienced, so here are a few tips to help you get started. 1. Location is KEY. You, as the buyer, are paying the freight charges to have the inventory delivered to you (even if the seller tells you they are paying for shipping). The closer you are to the origination location, the less you will have to pay to transport the goods. Shipping pallets or truckloads of liquidation merchandise is not cheap. 2. Determine if the liquidator is [...]

Keepa and Jungle Scout – Vital Amazon FBA Research Tools

Recently I did a training video for my sourcing team where I demonstrated some interesting and surprising data regarding Keepa and Jungle Scout, two very important and highly recognized tools used by the Amazon FBA selling community. Here is a summary of what was discussed: There is an item on Amazon that I sold 52 units of in a recent 90 day period. I was not the only seller at the time. My Buy Box percentage was 60% for this item. If all things were equal, based on that information, one could likely conclude that the item sells around [...]

The Best Amazon FBA Calculator

Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) sellers who practice retail arbitrage or online arbitrage need to quickly determine if the product they are researching is profitable before buying it to resell on Amazon. One Amazon FBA Calculator that will easily do these revenue calculations for you, taking into consideration the buy cost and the fees that Amazon charges for selling the product, is AZInsight. Much more robust than Revseller or any of the other free or paid Amazon FBA Calculators, AZInsight can actually replace numerous other paid tools that you may already be using in your Amazon business. In addition to providing the net profit and [...]

Save Money With Discount Gift Cards

People in the US and around the world shop online for convenience, selection, and lower prices. Comparison shopping online is easier than running from store to store, and it allows the shopper to look at ratings and reviews prior to making the decision to purchase. Many smart buyers have found ways to increase their savings by using coupons, joining cash-back sites, and even pre-buying discount gift cards. Many apps and websites have popped up over the years that make finding these discounts as easy as 1-2-3. You can save money 1) before you buy (Discount Gift Cards) 2) when you buy (Coupons) [...]

Tactical Arbitrage vs. OAXray

Tactical Arbitrage or OAXray.  OAXray or Tactical Arbitrage.What is the difference?Which is better for a new seller?Or an experienced seller?When OAXray came to the market with their market research tool, the Amazon selling community couldn't contain their excitement. Soon thereafter, Tactical Arbitrage, or TA, as it is commonly referred to, entered the arena, and Amazon sellers now had a choice - OAXray, TA, or both?Competition is great for the consumer. If nothing else, Tactical Arbitrage has made OAXray better, and vice versa. Both are similar in that they look at online retail store prices on items that are also listed on Amazon, identifying [...]

How to See More than 100 Amazon Search Results

Sometimes, when researching products to sell on Amazon.com, it’s important to be able to go beyond the top 100 best-sellers that Amazon automatically shows in the Amazon Search Results when you click “Best Sellers” after you have chosen a category. Fortunately there is a simple solution that allows you to see 400 pages worth of deals in a given category or subcategory in the Amazon Search Results. For Amazon sellers, this can be the difference between knowing of a few items that are profitable, and totally mastering the category. Simply choose your category on Amazon.com and leave the search [...]

Is an Amazon Prime Membership worth the price?

Amazon Prime is a membership that currently costs $119/year or can be subscribed to on a monthly basis for $12.99/month.  Members of Amazon Prime enjoy many benefits, and each benefit on its own may be reason enough to join. Amazon offers a FREE 30-day trial membership, and college students who are currently enrolled may qualify for 6-months of Prime for free. Some cell phone plans and Credit Cards also offer free memberships to Amazon Prime. Check your Terms of Service to see if yours offers this. Some of the Benefits of subscribing to Amazon Prime [...]

Selling on Amazon FBA – Choosing an Account

Selling on Amazon FBA provides a lot of opportunities, but setting up an Amazon seller account requires making several choices. When filling out a new seller application on Amazon, one of the choices you are presented with is whether to create an Individual Seller Account, or a Professional Seller Account. Knowing which type of account to set up in the beginning can eliminate problems that could potentially arise from making changes later. The graphic below outlines the basic differences between the Professional and the Individual plans. Selling on Amazon with an Individual seller account comes with the following restrictions: ⦁ [...]

Am I Getting the Best Discount?

"Question, why would you buy Kohl's gift cards? By using the Kohl's charge card, you get the discount." This is not the first time I was asked this type of question, so let's compare: The question revolves around the fact that Kohl's sometimes offers 10% off your purchase if you use your Kohl's charge card. In reality, however. the Kohl's CC discount is taken after all other discounts. Here's an example. You shop at Kohl's or their website and buy $100 of merchandise and there is a 20% off special. Let's also assume, for this example, that you have $10 [...]

To Commingle or Not to Commingle with FBA

One of the biggest benefits of selling on Amazon is the ability to send inventory in to Amazon’s warehouses and have them fulfill orders for you, not to mention handling the returns and customer inquiries. WHAT IS COMMINGLING? When sending in inventory, one decision that sellers must make is whether to commingle or not. Commingling simply means that you do not place your label on the products when prepping a shipment; instead Amazon scans the UPC code to identify the item when they receive it. When someone buys your item, that customer may get one that you sent in, or [...]

3 Simple Repricing Tactics to Sell Product Before the End of Q4

Here are some simple tactics that may be helpful to those Amazon sellers who are not using a repricer: 1) Reprice your highest priced inventory. From your Seller Central page, go to: Inventory>Active>Amazon Fulfilled and sort by the highest price. Reprice the first couple pages, or maybe items over a certain price, especially ones that have been in inventory for 60-90 days or longer. If the low price is within a few percent of your price, match it. If it is considerably lower, click the link and look at the item as if you were making a buying decision. Would [...]

Negative Feedback Strategy

Seller feedback is something that every Amazon seller should be concerned with. Keeping your Amazon feedback score as close to 100% and 5 Stars is important when customers are analyzing who to buy from. Many times buyers just buy from whomever is in the buy box, but more and more listings are showing up with nobody in the buy box (suppressed buy box), so buyers have to go to the list of all sellers to select on to buy from. If you have a 98% feedback rating, and your similarly priced competitor has a 100% feedback rating, you could easily [...]

10 Tips for Transitioning from Q4 to Q1 as an Amazon Seller

While everyone is enjoying the fruits of their labor during Q4, it’s easy to forget that the craziness of Q4 doesn’t last all year, and you need a strategy going into January. Sales velocity changes, prices change, and you need to approach the new year with some basic things in mind. Here are 10 tips and strategies you can use to become better prepared for what January brings and improve your Amazon business. 1. Sell what you can before Dec. 22. This includes duds you have bought, but it also includes items you may be deeper on than you would [...]

Purchase Orders – Hashing out the Details

I noticed a discussion in a buy/sell wholesale group in which a Seller did not disclose that the goods were still in production and would not be ready to ship for some time. The exact details are irrelevant, but what matters is that little details which could be a deal-killer should be flushed out early on to save your time. One way, which can be cumbersome, but well worth it (especially for larger purchases), is by use of a purchase order. A Purchase Order or "PO" is an written authorization from a Buyer to acquire goods from a Seller and [...]

How to Use OAXRAY to Find Products to Track

In this video, Seller Essentials shows you how to use OAXRAY to find products you can track on MyAlerts.com or your favorite product tracking tool. Seller Essentials has negotiated a 10 day free trial for our viewers. Click the button below to give OAXRAY a try. Start your free trial today!

Pricing Strategies for Amazon FBA Sellers – Does Low Price Win?

As I coach new clients, one of the issues that comes up repeatedly is pricing. How should I price my product? Should I be .05 lower than the lowest price? How high can I price and still get a share of the buy box? You get the idea. There’s no easy answer to any of these, and I’d like to address the first question in this post. One of the biggest misconceptions of newer sellers is that you have to be the lowest price, always. It seems to make perfect sense, but in most cases it is simply not [...]

Stop Comparing Yourself to Other Sellers

One of the most destructive things I see new sellers do is compare themselves to others.  There’s nothing more deflating after working your butt off to get your first few boxes out of the door than to see a picture like the one below posted on Facebook. There are multiple problems for newer sellers or even veteran sellers who maybe aren’t getting this many boxes out. 1. They assume that they are doing something wrong. 2. They assume that the other seller posting the pic is making more money that they are. 3. They try to find out what that [...]

How to Use OAXRAY to Source on Amazon

In this video, Seller Essentials shows you how to go through hundreds of products using OAXRAY to do some "reverse sourcing" on Amazon in the same time it would take to go through 10-20 using the traditional way of searching. Seller Essentials has negotiated a 10 day free trial for our viewers. Click the button below to give OAXRAY a try. Start your free trial today!

How to Use OAXRAY to Source More Efficiently

In this video, Seller Essentials shows you how to go through hundreds of products using OAXRAY in the time it would take to go through 10-20 using the traditional way of searching. Seller Essentials has negotiated a 10 day free trial for our viewers. Click the button below to give OAXRAY a try. Start your free trial today!

How to Optimize Online Arbitrage Deals using Rebates, Gift Cards, Discounts, and Bonuses

If you are wondering how you can turn an otherwise marginal deal into a deal that is very profitable, you will want to watch this Online Arbitrage video by Seller Essentials. By taking advantage of discounts and bonuses provided by the retailer, and combining those with discount gift cards, rebates, and credit cards that offer rewards, your Online Arbitrage skills can turn straw into gold. Buy the PROFITABLE deals that others are totally missing. This video focuses on selling on Amazon using the FBA platform but can easily be adapted to any selling channel. The Essential Daily Deals service is [...]

How to Avoid Long-Term Storage Fees on Your Amazon FBA Inventory

On February 15 and August 15 every year, Amazon assesses a long-term storage (LTS) fee to all items with more than a single unit in stock that have been in the warehouse for more than 6 months. To avoid this, you need to identify your inventory that is subject to these fees and select one of the following options to avoid the fees: Reduce your price to liquidate the inventory before the deadline. Have the inventory returned to you at a cost of .50/unit. Have Amazon destroy your inventory. There are two methods to check which of your items will [...]

How To Use Live Chat To Increase Your Profit Margins

Next time you find yourself using the Live Chat feature on your favorite shopping website, try asking the operator for a coupon code. Many of them are trained to offer coupon codes to shoppers who simply ask for one. Just be sure to be polite in order to increase your chances of scoring. For more information and a list of stores that have been known to offer these coupons you can check out the full blog post from rather-be-shopping.com.

Under Armour Restriction Beginning November 1st

Amazon recently announced that Under Armour would become a restricted brand beginning on Nov. 1, 2015. Here is the email that was sent to sellers: Dear FBA seller, Amazon strives to provide the best possible experience for customers. As part of our ongoing efforts, we are implementing approval requirements for certain Under Armour products in the Sports category. You can find a list of the products for which approval will be required at the bottom of this email. Effective November 1, 2015, you will no longer be eligible to list these products on Amazon.com, and your listings for these products [...]

What is Arbitrage – The Business Model of Millionaires

What is Arbitrage? According to Webster, “arbitrage” is “the practice of buying something (such as foreign money, gold, etc.) in one place and selling it almost immediately in another place where it is worth more. What is Arbitrage, as it relates to Amazon or Ebay resellers? Keep reading for a detailed breakdown, as well as some additional resources for the Arbitrage business model. While the word doesn’t perfectly represent what we do as online sellers, it’s pretty close. The objective of every seller is to find inventory that can be bought at a price that allows for it to [...]

Adversity Equals Prosperity? Struggling Your Way to Success

Many years ago I had a neighbor that sold new two way radio equipment for a local dealer. He had a customer that wanted to buy 100 new radios but he wanted to use his old radios as trade-ins. Well, his dealership didn't take trade-ins.It turns out at the time most dealers didn't. He knew I sold on Ebay a little and he really wanted to get this deal done so he asked if I could help him sell the used equipment. Now I knew absolutely nothing about this equipment but this isn't the first time I jumped into the [...]

How To Complete and Pay for a Wholesale or Liquidation Deal

I frequently get calls from new or inexperienced buyers in this business. More often than not they have no idea how this business works so I wanted to give some knowledge of what you can expect if you decide to make the leap. I may sound like I'm being harsh here. That's not my intent. But if you are going to do this you need to know how the game is played and what you are up against. Whether I'm selling a truckload or a lot of 100 new products I will frequently get the comment "I want to buy [...]

The term “wholesale” is thrown around a lot but what is it really?

     The term "wholesale" is thrown around a lot but what is it really? I guess in the purest sense it's when the manufacturer or distributor sells new product to the retailer. So when you see the stores that are essentially selling retail but call themselves wholesale that's not really wholesale. If you're buying pallets or truckloads of even new product that's probably not wholesale in the real sense. I've had people argue with what's wholesale and what's liquidation and I understand the point. The real point is they are just titles and different people have different definitions for [...]

5 Tips For New Buyers of Wholesale or Liquidation Pallets

This post is for those who are new to using LTL (less than full load) truck service to deliver pallets. #1. Post your City, State & ZIP in your Wanting to Buy Ads If you are posting a WTB (Wanted to Buy) ad, it will streamline communications if you list your City, State, and Zipcode. Wholesalers can then estimate freight to see if an offer is even viable to present to you. #2 Post whether you have a residential or commercial address. Carriers often charge extra for residential delivery and weight restrictions on some roads can complicate those deliveries. Carriers [...]

9 Tips for Finding Inventory Sources

I keep seeing people asking for the best place to buy from. This takes a little bit of work and luck. Now luck is a funny thing because it seems to find people more often that work harder or put themselves in positions to get lucky. Go to any places you find locally. They may be a middleman. Their prices and terms may not be good enough for you, but you can still get information from them. You can also let them know items you are looking for so they can contact you. Develop a relationship and see what you [...]

There Are Buyers And There Are Shoppers When It Comes To Truckloads

     There are buyers and there are shoppers when it comes to wholesale, liquidation and closeout truckloads. Shoppers rarely turn into buyers and it's mainly because they are uneducated or uninitiated in to this business. They can learn but they have to be open to it and pursue that education. They have to take a bit of risk and take that first step.       Here's how a typical truckload sale goes. A seller puts out an offer of XYZ Truckload. Potential buyers inquire by email or phone to get some basic information. If the seller is reputable or [...]

How to Find and Use Tax Settings in Amazon Seller Central

One of the more confusing parts of selling on Amazon.com is figuring out sales tax settings. This guide is meant to help you navigate the tax settings section, NOT to give you advice about how you should set up yours. Please consult with a professional if you don’t feel comfortable making the decisions we’ll talk about below. To get to the tax settings area in Seller Central, go over to “Settings” in the top right corner and hover over it until a menu appears. Select “Tax Settings” from the list. Here you will see three links under “Welcome to the [...]

How to Reconcile Shipments and Get Reimbursements in Amazon FBA

When you ship items to Amazon.com, you expect them to be delivered and received into your inventory with no problems, but this isn’t always the case. items (and sometimes whole boxes or shipments) get lost or damaged at times. It’s important that you check on your shipments regularly to make sure that Amazon has fully received everything that you sent. Here’s how you do that: In Seller Central, click on the Inventory tab at the top left of the page, and select Manage FBA Shipments. Here you will see your shipping queue. Select the “Closed” option at the top of [...]

How to Use Context Menu Search to Make your Online Sourcing More Efficient

Online sourcing can get tedious after copying and pasting title after title from the source site into Amazon.com, but Context Menu Search is a browser extension that eliminates this copying and pasting. First you need download the extension. The two browsers that I know this works on are Google Chrome and Firefox, so I’ve included those links below. Click here if you want to download this extension for Google Chrome Click here if you want to download this extension for Firefox Once you have downloaded the extension, you will need to customize it by going to the website and following the [...]

Can you recommend a liquidator in my area?

     There is one question I've gotten the most and I want to answer it here. The question I'm getting is "I live in __________ area. Can you recommend a wholesaler/liquidator in my area?" Now if I could, I would be more then happy to do that. But in all honesty that is difficult to do. When you're buying wholesale, liquidations, closeouts etc. proximty has nothing to do with getting the best buy. I sell a lot of truckloads and 99.99% of them are purchased by people that are in states other then where the products are. That's the business. [...]

A Regular Pallet vs a Gaylord. What’s the difference?

When you're buying a pallet or even a truckload you are likely to see two different types of pallets.  Standard Pallet: First, you will see the standard pallet. This will be stacked with products as you're used to seeing. You will be able to see what is on the load, but you won't necessarily be able to tell the condition, other then the condition of the boxes. Most of the items will be medium to big in size. It will require processing but should be a pretty easy job. Gaylords: Secondly there are things called Gaylords. These are entirely different. [...]

How to use the calculator widget to quickly calculate profit on Amazon

When sourcing online, it’s nice to be able to quickly calculate your potential profit. Fortunately there’s a browser extension that connects you to Amazon.com’s FBA calculator to help make this process a one-click operation. Just follow the steps below when you find a product you’d like to check: 1. First you need to install the extension, so do a simple Google search for “FBA Calculator Extension.” 2. Find the link that applies to the browser you use and click it. 3. Download the Calculator Widget and it should appear in the top right side of your screen, to the right [...]

How to Find and List a Missing Variation on an Existing Listing

Often when I am sourcing items that have color or size variations, I’ll find sizes or colors that are on the listing when I buy them, but by the time I get them listed the size or color I purchased is not longer on the site. Fortunately, there is a solution. When you find a listing with only some of the variations listed, there’s a simple trick to find the sub-ASIN for the other variations. If you don’t have the sub-ASIN, you can’t list your exact variation, so this is important. Simply follow the simple steps below and you’ll be [...]

How to Choose a Prep Company for Your Amazon Business

Product prep companies will process your inventory when you can’t, or just don’t want to. Since there are many to choose from, it will be helpful to discuss some of the important factors to consider when choosing which company to work with. There are many companies out there who will receive, process, pack, and ship your products, but they are each unique in pricing and services offered. The first factor to consider is the cost for the prep company to process your inventory and the cost of materials used in this process. One pricing model, which I call a [...]

How to List a Product for Sale on Amazon.com

When you are first starting out, figuring out even the simplest tasks can seem overwhelming. Listing products is a task you will be completing over and over. There are two ways to list your products for sale, and we’ll cover the steps for both below. The first method involves scanning in the barcode (or typing it in if you don’t have a desktop barcode scanner) into the Amazon search bar on Amazon.com. When you do this search, your product will show up if it is already listed on Amazon. If not, you’ll have to create a new listing, but that’s [...]

How to Edit an Existing Listing on Amazon

When you have a listing on Amazon and you want to change something about it - Add photos, change photos, add more bullet points, add or edit the description, or change anything about listing, this is how you do it: From the Seller Central page, hover over the Inventory tab and click “Manage inventory,” and then go to the “All Inventory” view. From here, find the product you want to edit by doing a simple search. There is an “Action” tab immediately to the left of each product and a “down arrow”. Click the arrow next to the product you [...]

How to check an Amazon FBA Seller’s Available Quantity

When making a buying decision, it’s often useful to know how many of the product that competing sellers have in stock on Amazon.com. You may only have 2-3 competing sellers on a listing, or you may have hundreds. Knowing their stock levels can help you make better buying and repricing decisions. There is a simple way to check a seller’s stock level, and this even works with Amazon as a seller sometimes. On products where Amazon is limiting quantities, it’s impossible to see their total stock level, but when they do not have these limits in place, this trick works [...]

How to check the total number of products in a category on Amazon

When making a buying decision, many Amazon sellers rely on the rank of an item. Unfortunately, knowing the rank alone without knowing what that rank means in a given category can be useless, or even worse, lead to some really bad buys. To give the rank of an individual item some context, we need to know how many total items are in that category. A toy that is ranked 40,000 is much different from a home and kitchen product that is ranked 40,000. Why? Because the toy is in a category that has less than 10% of the total number [...]

How to add a sales tax exemption to your Amazon Account

One strategy to find products to resell on Amazon or eBay is to look on Amazon for items selling far below what they normally do. If you are going to buy products from Amazon.com to resell, I would recommend setting up a separate Non-Prime buying-only account just for your AZ to AZ flips. One of the main reasons to do this is that you can add your sales tax exemption/reseller’s certificate to you buying account. Doing this allows you to buy all of your AZ purchases that are for resale tax free. How do you do this? It’s pretty simple. [...]

How to understand rankings on Amazon

In our warehouse, we create a lot of Amazon product pages. I am always interested to see what rank a new product achieving its first sale will receive. Knowing how to read this information will help you make more intelligent buying decisions. In this example, we created a bundle in the toy category. Since we created it, there were no other sellers, and no sales rank history of any kind. When the first one sold, for a short period of time the ranking was displayed on the product page -  2,181,642. That is a pretty good indicator of active listings [...]

The New Wholesale Buyer and Great Expectations

     As I've suggested in previous posts, buying wholesale, liquidation, closeouts etc. can be a slippery slope. There's a lot of product out there to buy but there are far fewer opportunities to get good deals. But it's not just the sellers that are troublesome. Finding good buyers can be difficult as well. I had a buyer that was a big company. They bought tens of thousands of dollars of product every month. For all intents and purposes a great customer. So I sell him his first load. Now this is a load we've bought before and have sold ourselves [...]

A Truckload Is A Truckload. What are you actually buying?

There is a lot more to buying a truckload of anything then a lot of people understand. If you don't understand this at worst you can get burned and at best you may be disappointed. There are people that say I don't buy returns. I only buy new. That's fine, but you have to find the new products and then plan on paying significantly more than you will with returns. If you are good with those things you are set. The fact is returns get kind of a bad rap. But you need more then just the term "return" to decide what [...]

The First Deal is the Hardest and Most Important in Wholesale.

The First Deal is the Hardest and Most Important in Wholesale. The toughest part of getting into the business of buying or selling truckloads of wholesale, closeouts, returns, shelf pulls etc is always completing the first deal. People making their first buy from a wholesale company are scared to death they are going to get cheated or ripped off and they should be scared. This business has more then it's share of sketchy characters. But there are good people and good opportunities out there. This business isn't for the faint of heart or the lazy. So a buyer sees a [...]

eBay Arbitrage is Alive and Well

Back in the early days of eBay, many of us were buying items that were improperly listed on the site, and flipping them right back on eBay for more money. At the time, images were not required, and eBay charged when you added pictures, so many people would list without images. You could buy an item off eBay, add some photos, relist, and make money. Incomplete listings were also a source of good finds. Sometimes the seller would list an item and have no idea what it was. I bought and sold classic car parts for many years. Some sellers [...]

Go to Top