AMAZON Sellers Account: Professional vs. Individual

- When you are a new Amazon FBA seller, the first decision you are going to need to make with Amazon is the type of account you want to open. So, should you choose a Professional vs. Individual account and what is the difference? 

Amazon.com (AMZN) Q3 Earnings: Poised to Top Estimates?



Amazon.com AMZN will report third quarter earnings on Oct 27 after the bell. Let's take a look at the company's prospects heading into the announcement.


According to our model, stocks with a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), #2 (Buy) and #3 (Hold) have a higher chances of beating estimates when they also have a positive ESP. Therefore, in Amazon's case, its Zacks Rank #1 and Earnings ESP of +10.47% seems to indicate a positive surprise this quarter.

Amazon's earnings surprise history has been decent with the company beating estimates in three of the last four quarters with an average beat of 90.92%.

AMAZON.COM INC Price and EPS Surprise






What We Are Watching

International/North America/AWS Mix: Last quarter, the segment's contribution to revenues was positive in the highest-margin Amazon Web Services (AWS) business, up 68 basis points (bps), while North America and International segments declined 22 and 46 bps, respectively. This resulted in a positive mix of business and contributed to Amazon's increased profitability in the last quarter.

As far as the retail business is concerned, the North America business being mature generates higher margins, while the international business, accompanied by expansion costs including infrastructure, headcount and inventory, currently generates operating losses. The AWS business contributed 9% of revenues and 56% of profits in the last quarter. Combined segment operating income grew 19.5% from last year.

Prime: Prime membership has been rolled out to some international markets like the UK and Japan where product selection is limited. In the last quarter, the company added India (100 cities in India can now avail the service, with Amazon is planning to add Prime video soon). It remains in various stages of implementation in other geographies.

Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) is increasing third-party sales and also increasing selection for Prime members. But it tends to put pressure on fulfillment centers during heavy selling seasons, which is why Amazon was supposed to add 18 new centers in the third quarter. Prime Now (one-hour and two-hour delivery of a curated list of key products that people need in a short period of time) has been extended to more than 40 metro areas worldwide, with Germany, Spain and France added in the last quarter.

FX: The positive FX impact on revenues was small in the last quarter at around $166 million. Foreign exchange impact was positive on operating income across all segments. This also had an impact on AWS because revenues were dollar-denominated while a lot of the assets were located in low-cost regions.

Cash Flow: Trailing Twelve Months (TTM) cash flow and free cash flow (FCF) as reduced by lease principal repayments jumped 42% and 65%, respectively on a year-over-year basis.

Guidance: Third quarter revenues are expected to include a 30 bps positive FX impact and come in around $31-33.5 billion (up 6.1% sequentially and 27.2% year over year at the mid-point). Operating income is expected to be in a range of $50 to $650 million.

Management said that there is typically a spike in operating expenses in the third quarter due to increased buildout of fulfillment centers in preparation for the holiday season. In the third quarter, the company was expected to add 18 fulfillment centers to deal with increased demand and also to cater to FBA. Higher costs in the second half of this year can also be due to the doubling of its spending on original TV shows and movies. It targets a threefold increase in the total number of shows to be launched in the second half of this year. AWS and India expansion-related expenses are also expected to remain.

Summing Up

Amazon's retail business remains very hard to beat on price, choice, convenience, you name it. The company has a solid loyalty system in Prime and its FBA strategy, and content addition continues to add selection to Prime memberships. If Amazon is able to replicate its domestic success internationally, investors could see far more growth. At the moment, international contributes a third of the revenues but generates just a fraction of profits.

Amazon Web Services on the other hand is the cash cow for Amazon. The business generates much higher margins than retail, so it has a very positive impact on Amazon's profitability. We remain optimistic about the functionality, partner ecosystem and the experience AWS offers and believe this will lead to continued customer wins.

Other Stocks to Consider

You may also consider the following stocks, with a positive Earnings ESP and a favorable Zacks Rank:

Veeco Instruments Inc. VECO with an Earnings ESP of +17.86% and Zacks Rank #1.

Boyd Gaming Corporation BYD , with an Earnings ESP of +16.67% and a Zacks Rank #2. Please check our Earnings ESP Filter that enables you to find stocks that are expected to come out with earnings surprises.

NVIDIA Corporation NVDA , with an Earnings ESP of +8.93% and a Zacks Rank #3.

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Amazon FBA Blocks New Sellers from using FBA Until 2017

- If your a new Amazon seller however you can not only not use FBA but you also can't sell toys so your essentially blocked out of the toy category this Holiday Season.

Watch the video to find out more. Have you been blocked from sending in an FBA shipment? Leave a comment and tell us how your affected.

How We’ve Made Over $750,000 on Amazon Selling Unique Products

BY JAKE CAIN

Going back to the beginning,Spencer’s Amazon business has now eclipsed $800,000 in total revenue. While we’ve done someprivate label products, the vast majority of that revenue has come from creating our own unique products and selling them through Amazon’s FBA program.

Today I want to share some insight into how we come up with product ideas and hopefully help you take the leap towards creating your own product.

What Do You Mean By “Unique?”

I’m really glad I asked myself this question.

For the purposes of this article, I just mean that the product is unique to Amazon. So that technically could be a product that is sold other places and probably would sell on Amazon, but nobody is selling it there currently. More commonly, our approach is to find products that already do sell well on Amazon and then add/change things that give us at least one unique selling feature so our product isn’t just a carbon copy of other things out there.

Ideally, we want to find some evidence that people would actually want to buy our unique version of the product. In this article I’ll be sharing details of how we do that.

Why Unique Products?

There’s no doubt about it, coming up with a brand new product that has unique features takes much longer than simply private labeling a product that already exists.

Besides the time it takes to come up with the idea, you then have to find a manufacturer that can actually make the product. (Hint: every manufacturer will say they can make your product).

You’ll then get samples of the product, likely want some revisions and then get an updated sample before ordering.

In my experience, this process takes at least several months from idea to having a product ready to sell on Amazon.

So with all the extra work and hassle, why mess with doing a unique product?

The answer for us is that it’s where the money is.

Amazon is so saturated with products that your best chance to stand out from the crowd is by having a widget that does something different.

Maybe it’s a feature no one else has, maybe it’s the biggest of its kind, maybe it’s the smallest of its kind – you get the idea…

We’ve found that we can often rank for long tail searches much easier, and ultimately carve out a little niche inside of a product category by offering something your competitors do not.

But Don’t You Need a Patent?

I don’t really coach people on Amazon, but I do have casual conversations with friends and family who are interested in the business. One of the first questions I hear is “Yeah, but don’t you need a patent to do that?”

(I’ll stop here for my disclaimer that I’m not an attorney and this shouldn’t be a substitute for legal advice.)

To many people, this whole concept is a bit intimidating and overwhelming and ultimately prevents them from ever taking action.

Here’s what I’ve learned: 

The answer is usually “no” you don’t need a patent to create a new product and sell it.

Patents in the US are generally a way for someone to protect a unique function (utility) of a product, or in some cases a particular design (which is harder to defend).

For us, our primary concern isn’t acquiring a patent for our own product, but rather making sure we aren’t violating the patent of someone else.

There are many ‘generic’ products you can create and not really worry about violating a patent. For instance, anybody can make a baseball bat. That’s why there are tons of very similar bats out there in every size, color, material, etc. So if you wanted to create a new brand of baseball bat – have at it.

Although the baseball bat has been around forever, some people have made specific innovations and types of bats that are patented. One I’m familiar with is the Axe Bat which has a handle that is shaped like an axe, and not round like virtually every other bat out there. A quick Google patent search shows the patent they have on this design.

So while you could make your own brand of bat, you wouldn’t be allowed to make your bat with a handle shaped like an axe.

If you’re thinking about making a product that also uses a somewhat unique function you’ve seen elsewhere, I’d suggest doing a little Google Patent search of your own and if it’s not crystal clear, getting a patent attorney to check into it and advise you if it’s safe to move forward.

It’s better to spend $100 upfront and have peace of mind than to purchase thousands of dollars in inventory and then find out you’ve got a problem.

Here’s an example:

One product I was looking at making a unique variation of is this collapsible popcorn bowl. Before we went too far down the road of working on our own version of it, I noticed there weren’t many other bowls out there that could collapse flat like this – which made me wonder if they had a patent on that particular functionality.

I went to Upwork and hired the services of an experienced patent attorney (for about $100) and he did a search and provided the document to show that the parent company did in fact have a patent on the utility of a bowl that would collapse flat – which was the key feature of this bowl.

Notice the distinction that this patent didn’t mean we couldn’t make our own popcorn bowl, we just couldn’t make a collapsible one or we’d be violating their patent.

So, we simply moved onto the next idea.

(Here is a link to the patent attorney we used on Upwork, he was very fast and thorough for us.)

How To Come Up With Product Ideas

As the old saying goes, there is no reason to re-invent the wheel. But that doesn’t mean you can’t and shouldn’t make a wheel that looks better, lasts longer, or meets a demand that is currently underserved.

When it comes to creating products to sell on Amazon, we don’t really think of ourselves as “inventors.” We’re mostly looking for simple modifications to uncomplicated products that we can launch, market and sell.

One of the best ways to get the ideas flowing is to start reading reviews online.

Listen to Buyer Feedback

Many times, you’ll find some absolute gold inside of negative customer reviews on Amazon and elsewhere. Even in some cases when people like the product, they’ll throw in suggestions like:

“it would be even better if it could…”

“The only thing I would change/add…”

“I would have given 5 stars if it…”

One way to do this quickly is to scroll down to product reviews on Amazon and click the link to view all reviews. From there, you have a search box where you can look for keywords in the reviews that might go along with this kind of feedback.

Below, I was looking at a grill cover and searched the hundreds of reviews for the word “wish” and found some useful ideas about how I might make a better grill cover:

Other searchable words could be “Suggestion”, “Better”, “Improvement”, and anything else you can think of.

Stack Your Ideas

Once you start finding some ideas based on buyer feedback, start making a list of possible features/improvements your product.

Personally, I like to “stack” several ideas together to give my product a number of advantages and perhaps unique features compared to the competition.

So for the grill cover above, I might find a better solution for straps that can clip on the legs but I’m going to keep looking through reviews of other top selling grill covers and hear what else customers are looking for.

Find Ideas Off of Amazon

We use a tool called Jungle Scout Pro that helps us estimate how well products are selling on Amazon, so we get a sense for what our ceiling might be if we created that product ourselves.

Below is a look at Jungle Scout data for meat claws:

While starting by looking at what’s selling on Amazon isn’t a bad idea, I’ve also found that looking for ideas elsewhere can be super helpful.

By searching Google for a solution to the problem your product will solve, I’ve found product ideas in 2 different ways:

1. DIY Solutions

DIY videos and “hacks” are everywhere. Buzzfeed is full of lists of hacks for just about every purpose, and generally you can expect to see people who have cleverly repurposed one product to make it solve an unrelated problem.

Here’s an example from a Buzzfeed list of kitchen cleaning hacks where the folks at OneCrazyHouse.com used a pair of tongs and microfiber towels to clean their blinds.

If hacks like this work well, it could be a launching point to go create and brand the best blind cleaner out there.

2. Not Sold on Amazon

Another thing I’ve found when just googling different solutions is products that exist, but just aren’t sold on Amazon. In fact, one of our more recent successful products is based off of something I saw being sold on a sporting goods site in the UK.

While there were other products selling well on Amazon that addressed the same problem as this product, I couldn’t find any products on Amazon or any US retailer that were similar to this product I found being sold in Europe.

So the market/need definitely existed in the US, and we were able to work with a manufacturer to create something similar to what we’d found selling overseas and then we became the first to launch that kind of product on Amazon US.

Amazon Suggested Searches

If you’ve searched products on Amazon, you’ve likely noticed that like Google, they try to complete your thought for you by providing suggested searches.

These suggestions have led to some useful product ideas for us. Here is what the suggestions look like if I type “waterproof” searching all categories:

By simply looking at these suggestions I’ve got some product ideas that I know people are searching for.

Since “All” is the default category when you search on Amazon.com, you may not have noticed that if you change the search category the auto-complete suggestions will change to reflect that category.

Here’s what “waterproof” looks like when I change the category to Home & Garden:

Obviously you could continue this process for different categories and start searching different words to see what comes up.

My next step is to start clicking on some of the results that sound interesting and then use Jungle Scout to see what sales look like for those products.

Let’s say that “waterproof apron” seemed like a promising idea, you can then take this whole thing a step further and see suggestions for that specific product:

Maybe there are tons of waterproof aprons for women, but there aren’t many good “extra long” waterproof aprons. That’s when you’d start doing what we talked about earlier and see what reviewers are saying about the extra long aprons and see if you can figure out ways to make yours stand out from the crowd.

Maybe the other ones aren’t long enough…

Maybe all the extra long aprons are focused on men and you could make a more feminine version…

Make sense?

Scratch Your Own Itch

They say that necessity is the mother of invention. That is, when you’ve got a problem you’ll work hard to find a solution – even if it’s a solution you have to create yourself.

Though I’m listing this idea last, maybe it should be the first place you start when brainstorming unique product ideas.

Who knows, maybe you will come up with something truly unique and patentable.

The very first product that Spencer launched on Amazon came from his own personal preferences about a common household product. He had trouble finding one that was designed to his liking, so he basically started contacting manufacturers on Alibaba who made these kinds of products already and said “I want one that looks like this ________.”

Ultimately, that lead to samples being sent, revisions being made, and a very successful product being launched a few months later.

Unless your “itch” is really weird and obscure, the odds are that other people are out there having the same problem or frustration you are – so if you can create product that works, you’ll likely find others who want to buy it too.

Wrap Up

What I’ve shared with you isn’t by any means an exhaustive list of ideas. However, we’ve had a measure of success launching products on Amazon and these are some of the exact methods we’ve used to come up with new ideas.

My best advice is to get out there on Alibaba or even talking to a local manufacturing company where you live and at least have a conversation about what it would take to bring your sample to life.

For my last product, I literally sketched a certain kind of bag design on a piece of paper, took a picture with my iPhone, and sent it over to a bag manufacturer I had a relationship with from Alibaba. A few weeks and $120 later I had the bag I had drawn sitting in my living room.

Maybe your unique product idea won’t be a homerun, but if you strike out – at least strike out swinging.

(SOURCE)

Amazon FBA Private Label Research | CASE STUDIES

- LEARN A LOT ABOUT FBA PRIVATE LABELS! 

Did Amazon just stop sellers from joining FBA? Here’s what to do

by JORDAN MALIK

This post applies to you only if you've never sold anything via Amazon FBA. If you're affected by Amazon's announcement (next paragraph), remember there are tips for you further down the post.

As of last week (Oct. 1oth), sellers who had not sent any items into FBA are currently not allowed to sell any products into Amazon FBA until December 19, 2016. That also means if you've never even registered to sell on Amazon yet, you won't be allowed to sell anything via FBA until the same date. (You can, however, still sell on Amazon via 'Merchant Fulfill' - I call it 'ship it from home').

See, you try to sign up as a new seller at the bottom of Amazon's official page here, you'll see this notice: "If you have not completed your first shipment to Amazon before October 10, 2016, we invite you to start shipping to Amazon after December 19, 2016."

Keep in mind Amazon might reverse this policy. They're probably doing it because their fulfillment centers are overwhelmed with incoming shipments from FBA sellers. If they free up capacity before Dec. 19, they might start allowing sellers to join FBA.

But let's assume that's not going to happen. Here's what you can do:

If you're already selling on Amazon, check to ensure your FBA shipments will be accepted by Amazon: Simply try to ship an item into an Amazon Fulfillment Center using the Amazon Seller interface. (Use this official guide to help you if you've never done this before).

Thus if you have found you can't sell via Amazon FBA this holiday season, don't fret. Here are some ideas:

1.)  Sell on Amazon merchant-fulfill. You won't be allowed to sell toys via merchant fulfill so you're limited to Amazon's  "unrestricted for new sellers" categories: Kitchen, Books, many baby products (some toys may be restricted), home & garden, pet supplies, sports, tools, camera and photo. (Scroll half-way down this page to view the categories that don't require approval).

1a.) Tip: When sourcing products to sell on Amazon via FBA or merchant fulfill, avoid the brands that have restrictions for new sellers - see this blog post on how to do that.

2) Join a trusted, inexpensive Holiday sourcing group and focus on their finds that meet #1 and 1-a above. (See my post with the most trusted groups with 100% money back guarantees).

3.) When listing your items on Amazon (merchant fulfill), boost your exposure almost instantly by using Joelister to post your item on eBay, too.  Joelister posts your Amazon inventory on eBay, and then syncs your Amazon (Merchant fulfill and/or FBA) orders with eBay when a customer buys an item on either Amazon or eBay. Try it free here.

4.) Ensure you're ready to prep, pack and ship your orders quickly 'from home'. Here is some eBay help, most of which also applies to Amazon 'Merchant fulfilled' sales.

OR:

• You can study up and learn how the Amazon business works and be ready to start on December 19th (there's plenty of Amazon selling opportunity year-round). This link has some free resources for you. If you need more help, join the Proven Amazon Course at PACCourse.com

AND/OR (this applies only if you're sourcing goods via wholesale or private label):

• Learn how to sell products on Shopify (inexpensive training from another trusted expert - includes 40 how-to videos!)

Good luck and keep me posted,

-Jordan

(SOURCE)

- Did you guys experience this problem? Share it below!

How To Find A Profitable Product To Sell On Amazon (Step-By-Step Tutorial)

- In this video Stefan shows you, step by step, how to find a product to sell on Amazon.