Recently, many Amazon seller friends will issue such a soul torture:
Does Amazon really make money every month?
Why are there so many people working alone, and money is not all on the goods?
What will Amazon face when it operates alone? What are the odds of starting a business alone?
As soon as you enter the Amazon, it is as deep as the sea, and who is to blame for losing millions in 2 years?
According to a seller asking for help on the forum, he has been working on Amazon alone for 2 years, and when he looks back, he finds that he has lost nearly 1 million, and he is already addicted to Amazon. How to quit?
I further learned that the seller had contacted Amazon in 2015, and at that time, he was still in a cross-border enterprise in Bantian Wuhu, and he became the management of the company. RMB. But a heart uneasy about the status quo prompted him to germinate the idea of starting a business. Based on the operational experience and supply chain resources accumulated in the past, we have assembled more than 3 million yuan, and vowed to prepare for a big fight.
At first, the seller's store mainly operated 7 products, all of which were private models with micro-innovation on the basis of previous popular models. After they were put into the market, they did a little promotion, and the overall results were getting better. However, the good times did not last long. After January 2021, the wind direction of all categories began to decline, and the successive losses made the store almost unsustainable. After nearly a year of brutal price war disputes, according to incomplete statistics, the seller bluntly said: "The overall inventory has lost more than 1 million!"
And such a worrying scene is far more than the above-mentioned seller. In the cross-border circle, it seems that there are countless shadows of fruitless entrepreneurship. Every day I open the background and look at the orders, it is clear that the continuous loss is tragic, but after seeing the orders one by one, I can't help feeling addictive pleasure.
As one seller said: "After starting a business alone, the source of all my happiness is only Amazon. Slowly, Amazon seems to have become an expensive but indispensable paid hobby in life, which makes people want to stop. ."
Another seller joked: "Now doing charity on Amazon has virtually become a hobby and faith. This burden is really indescribable."
In fact, some media research data showed earlier that, affected by the rising prices of raw materials and logistics prices, the operating costs of sellers have changed dramatically in the past two years. More than 80% of Amazon sellers have increased operating costs, and some sellers have increased operating costs. more than 50%.
Rising costs mean that profits are eroded, and in the face of such a situation, the difficulty of doing Amazon alone has undoubtedly risen a lot. In addition, the market has become more peaceful, and the "going it alone" idea that some Amazon operations have been brimming with has only been ruthlessly thrown out by reality.
Uncover the mystery behind Amazon's entrepreneurial success! What are the odds of seller success in 2022?
At a time when new sellers are anxious, what are the chances of success in 2022 when it comes to starting a business alone on Amazon? How much cake is left for small and medium-sized sellers in the huge cross-border e-commerce market? We tried to summarize a few essential elements for success:
First, a professional operation team
To put it 10,000 steps back, to successfully operate an Amazon store, you need at least three people.
The first is the image visual staff, who is mainly responsible for controlling the quality of all visual communication content, such as product pages, A+ pages, print and video ads, store pages, etc.
To put it simply, image visual personnel must have a "dialogue" with potential customers through the visual expression of images and videos, and capture the attention of customers in the shortest possible time! Make them "curious" or even "buy" desire!
The second is the public relations staff responsible for external communication with customers.
This type of personnel is responsible for all communication with customers, including replying to customer questions, after-sales service, store and product review management...etc.
Finally, there are store operators, who are equivalent to the position of the general manager of the store. If it is under the system of a large-scale e-commerce, it is equivalent to a project manager. In short, his job is to manage all the stores and work as usual. The work usually includes finding sources of supply, communicating with suppliers, negotiating prices, planning marketing plans, and communicating with the team...and so on. To put it simply, such personnel are equivalent to the "heads" of store operations, and they need to be responsible for arranging the work of other personnel to ensure that all work content can be completed at the designated time.
The second is to reduce costs
This does not mean looking for cheap operators, or ignorantly looking for low-cost commodities. On the contrary, you get what you get for every penny, whether it’s personnel costs or goods, don’t be greedy for small gains, or you will lose big because of small things!
Cost reduction means that when your store and team reach a certain level, you have to try to negotiate with suppliers and service providers, and use larger volume as a bargaining chip to ask suppliers and service providers to lower prices .
In terms of purchasing, this will reduce your purchasing costs. When your profit margin becomes larger, it is easy to show an advantage in terms of price, and ordinary sellers and novice sellers can naturally be left behind by you.
For upstream manufacturers and service providers, they also want you to have more goods, which also means they have more orders to earn. Therefore, when our shipment volume increases, we have more bargaining chips to negotiate with various suppliers and service providers. The same is true in logistics. We can use more shipment volume to negotiate with logistics providers for lower requirements. Shipping costs and faster logistics.
After you have tried all kinds of ways to reduce your cost of sales, although on average, the cost of sales of each item may be reduced by a few yuan or even only a few cents, but it will add up to a lot, and you will find that when you add it up You will save a small amount of money!
In addition, the problem of store sales should not be underestimated. In terms of professionalism, the sales volume of individual sellers is still a world away from that of team companies. This requires individual sellers to have their own unique operation methods. , in order to stand out in the fierce market competition environment.
Find the right tool to do more with less
Gu Yun, "If a worker wants to do a good job, he must first sharpen his tool!" Finding excellent and suitable operating tools can also greatly reduce our time cost.
Generally speaking, there are many service providers on the market that provide auxiliary software for sellers and store operations, and the software functions advertised by each service provider are also different; but with so many service providers and software with different functions, we should How to find the right tool for us?
First of all, we can evaluate from the functional aspect. A good auxiliary software must meet the needs of Amazon sellers, and can effectively improve store profits, store ratings/ranking, or improve the performance of operation management. The following functions are often used by sellers For example, profit analysis, automatic invitation to comment, information management, product/competitive product research, keyword research... and so on.
Another point is the safety and credit-price ratio. There are all kinds of seller assistance software on the market, whether paid or free, but which ones are really worth buying?
It is very important to choose software that is compliant and legal, especially now that Amazon has more and more regulations for sellers, and stores that have been closed due to violations are emerging in an endless stream; the other is the credit-price ratio, many software advertise "step-by-step purchase" ", maybe you can buy a new one when the quota of a certain function is reached, but you should pay attention to whether this method is suitable for you. Some sellers have not calculated carefully, and continue to add more purchases, but they have not found that there are other software that can be implemented. Subscription-style purchases, and therefore a lot of wasted money!
All in all, before you can become a successful Amazon seller on your own, funds, supplier support, products, logistics channels, mature operators, and auxiliary software are all indispensable!
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