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Hello Amazon Seller,
Another year has come and (almost) gone. The holiday season can get away from everyone, but I wanted to ensure that I took a moment to express my gratitude for your visits to the site and for reading this newsletter.
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I am taking a break from the newsletter until early January.
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Have a wonderful holiday season and New Year.
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This email may contain affiliate links which means we may earn referral fees if you make a purchase through our links, but without any additional cost to you.
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The Amazon Empire Strikes Back
It seems like a Christmas miracle. From CNBC:
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For years, Amazon has been quietly chartering private cargo ships, making its own containers, and leasing planes to better control the complicated shipping journey of an online order. Now, as many retailers panic over supply chain chaos, Amazon’s costly early moves are helping it avoid the long wait times for available dock space and workers at the country’s busiest ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles.
By chartering private cargo vessels to carry its goods, Amazon can control where its goods go, avoiding the most congested ports. Still, Amazon has seen a 14% rise in out-of-stock items and an average price increase of 25% since January 2021, according to eCommerce management platform CommerceIQ.
Amazon has been on a spending spree to control as much of the shipping process as possible. It spent more than $61 billion on shipping in 2020, up from just under $38 billion in 2019. Now, Amazon is shipping 72% of its own packages, up from less than 47% in 2019 according to SJ Consulting Group. It’s even taking control at the first step of the shipping journey by making its own 53-foot cargo containers in China. Containers are in short supply, with long wait times and prices surging from less than $2,000 before the pandemic to $20,000 today.
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But there is much more to this story in this well-written article from The Stratchery.
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Everything You Need to Know about Climate Pledge Friendly Certification
Shoppers don't make purchase decisions solely because of a product's green credentials. If your product isn't good at the thing it's designed to do then people aren't going to overcome those doubts no matter how strong your green credentials are.
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That being said, there's no doubt Amazon values climate-friendly products and customers generally perceive client-friendliness as a given in many instances. Promoting those virtues is an easy-win.
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The best way to do that is through the Amazon certification program. For those keen to pursue such a qualification then head straight to this 69 page guide to all US and EU certificates. This Amazon guide will also point you in the right direction to start the application process for each one. Very useful...
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Amazon’s Policy Clarification on Rebates: What It Means For Sellers
On November 2nd, Amazon posted an announcement on the Seller Forums that shook up the seller community, prompting numerous comments about a groundbreaking update.
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But it wasn’t really an update so much as a clarification. Amazon further defined what marketing strategies and reviews-gathering techniques they consider illicit and rule-breaking. Given the frequency of suspensions for sellers who believed they HAD followed the guidelines, Amazon had to say something.
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It’s good to see Amazon confirm in writing who is playing by the rules and who is violating them. But we still see Seller Performance managing the appeals process in an incredibly haphazard and unfair manner.
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Sidenote: I have touched on this before, but it is such an important topic and WebRetailer has come out with this new, well written article.
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Tornado Hits Amazon Warehouse
Six Amazon workers died after a tornado caused an Amazon warehouse to collapse in Illinois. The destruction has prompted scrutiny of health and safety practices at Amazon facilities, with the Department of Labor launching an investigation into the building collapse on Monday. Amazon said it is “deeply saddened” by the deaths and is donating $1 million to the Edwardsville Community Foundation as well as providing relief supplies.
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Our thoughts and prayers are with all of those affected by this tragedy. I live in Tennessee and it was an epic and historic storm that also leveled towns in Kentucky and a retirement home in Arkansas. So many people lost their homes and businesses. While there is no good time for such a tragedy, it seems even worse when it comes at such a special time of the year and in such difficult times.
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FBA 101: How to Get An FNSKU on Amazon
Barcodes ensure your products are identifiable and tracked. As an FBA seller, you must label your products with FNKSU barcodes to ensure they get through the fulfilment process without any hassle.
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If you are starting out and don’t know what FNSKU is, where to get one or what the difference is between various Amazon barcodes, check out this blog.
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USPS Rate Hike to Drive Sellers to FedEx, UPS? Not So Fast
Will the USPS rate hike drive online sellers to consider FedEx and UPS? EcommerceBytes spoke to several shipping analysts about the challenges shippers are facing across the board as carriers try to improve their revenue per shipment. Here’s what they had to say, including advice on how to make the right decision about which carrier to consider for your online order fulfillment.
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Amazon Aggregators Raised Over $12 Billion in 2021
Amazon aggregators raised over $12 billion in 2021 - that’s at least a billion dollars for twelve months in a row. The amount raised includes both equity and debt financing.
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Forty-five Amazon aggregators have announced funding rounds, of which 29 raised at least $100 million. More than 40 other firms haven’t announced their funding rounds but are otherwise active. For comparison, the total amount raised in 2020 by the few active aggregators at the time was only around $1 billion.
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Sidenote: I have a question. Are there really that many multi-million dollar Amazon businesses out there for 45 aggregators to fight over? Most big Amazon businesses love their brand and don't want to sell.
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Free BSR Chart
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The Amazon Category Best Sales Rank Chart might not be as pertinent as it was in years past, but it still provides value and is worth a look.
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Every product is assigned a BSR by Amazon that changes by minute, hour, or day. This rank is indicative of how well an item is selling in its category. A rank of 1 would be the best product in that category. The higher the BSR, the fewer the sales of that product. As with most things with Amazon, it is complicated.
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The BSR Chart lists the rankings per category. so let's say you are sourcing books and you find one with a BSR of 3 million. You might think you should pass, but in Books, a rank of 3.5 million is in the top 5%. Home and Kitchen is another category where a rank of 4 million is in the top 5%.
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Consider this chart yet another tool in helping you to find products to sell on Amazon. The chart can be downloaded from Chris Grant's website at the link below. Sign up and he will send you a new one as he updates them.
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Free ASIN Index Checker
Make sure your customers on Amazon can find you with this FREE tool by ZonGuru. Index check your ASINs for any keyword on Amazon and never get left in the dark again.
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PODCAST: How Two Sellers Have Scaled Up To $20,000,000 In Annual Sales
In this podcast Ankit Patel and Huy Nguyen talk about updates to their businesses in 2021, all the lessons learned, and some new strategies that helped them crush it this year.
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In episode 305 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley, Ankit, and Huy discuss:
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- 02:00 – What’s New With Ankit and Huy?
- 03:30 – Entrepreneurs Going On Vacation
- 07:45 – Off-Amazon International Strategies From Huy
- 14:30 – Dealing With Returns Using eBay
- 16:00 – Using The Amazon Renewed Program For Returns
- 20:30 – How Did Their Businesses Perform In 2021?
- 27:00 – $15,000,000 In Amazon Gross Sales For 2021
- 30:15 – Search Find Buy Without “Search Find Buy”?
- 34:00 – More Tips And Strategies From Ankit And Huy
- 44:00 – Your Network Is Your Net Worth
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Great Cyber Deals From Jungle Scout
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Each of Jungle Scout's plans comes with exclusive bonuses, including:
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• How To Sell on Amazon 2022 PDF ($99 value)
• Getting Started Checklist ($59 value)
• Month by Month Seller Guide ($39 value)
• Entry to win one of five $100 Amazon Gift Cards
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Tidbits:
- Amazon Invoice Verification Team is emailing suppliers to verify an invoice is legit. They are asking the supplier if the order was actually fulfilled and if the supplier does not answer, they tell Amazon “the invoice was not fulfilled by them”
- Hudson has become the first travel retailer to offer Amazon’s palm recognition checkout service. Amazon One is now available at the company’s Nonstop store at Dallas Love Field Airport.
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Tactical Arbitrage is online software that allows you to scan over a thousand global retail sites to find matches in the Amazon catalog, either by UPC or by product title, that will be profitable to re-sell on Amazon. You can set up bulk scans of multiple pages and multiple websites to scan at one time and get text alerts when it is finished scanning.
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The results will show you links to product pages on the online store’s site and Amazon. It then shows links to Keepa and columns of info on pricing, sales rank, profit, and ROI, among other things. There is also a way to reverse the search and start with best-selling Amazon products and look for matches on online retail stores. Or even search Amazon for items to buy and flip back onto Amazon. You can also upload a wholesale manifest and let the software quickly analyze it to find you profitable deals.
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Advanced algorithms quickly calculate Amazon fees, source discounts, cash backs, and shipping costs to ensure your profit and ROI are as accurate as possible. Some of these include estimated sales metrics, competitor stock levels, dozens of filters, average periods of rank and price, product variation analysis, image recognition, saved product folders you can re-scan or download, and much more. Set the filters for ROI, profit, item size, whether Amazon is selling it, negative keywords, and more.
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Tactical Arbitrage will also run on your mobile device. There is also an add-on extension for viewing the profitability of variations of a product by analyzing color and size data.
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There are many “how-to” videos online for the software and a deeper dive there is the Tactical Arbitrage Academy for an additional fee. There is also support for virtual assistants.
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Their Chrome extension is called Hummingbird Hover that allows 5 uses for free each day or is unlimited for subscribers. You can use it to hover over an Amazon product and see key information such as history and ranking.
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Deals we know about....
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Use this Promo Code - A2Z50
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Use this Promo Code - A2ZSC50
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Use this Promo Code - GET50
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Use this new Promo Code - A2Z_10_6MON_2021
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Use this new Promo Code - A2ZSC
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NOTE: Above offers are subject to change.
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Pay as you grow with Teikametrics Flywheel 2.0
Teikametrics Flywheel is the AI-powered advertising platform to connect, optimize, and grow your business on Amazon, Walmart.com, and beyond.
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AI-Powered Flywheel 2.0 is free for businesses under $10K in monthly marketplace sales. Affordable, scaled pricing for everyone else.
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Thank you for reading. I wish you unbelievable success. Selling on Amazon can be challenging sometimes, however, goals can be achieved by working hard and not giving up.
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Any suggestions about our site or this newsletter are welcome. Just hit reply and let us know your thoughts.
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Keep sourcing, keep selling, keep learning, keep growing.
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Visit our website for all sorts of Amazon resources:
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And more.....
Happy Selling on Amazon. Let's go Brandon!
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Making Sense Of Selling On Amazon
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