GOAL :

Max Time : 1 hrs(could be less) of starting this module.

Look for things around the house to practice scanning on and sell!

Are you confused and not sure how to identify a profitable product? This will show you the key points to purchasing products that will sell.

Watch how Shawn shares his early experiences on his FBA journey.

The Amazon Terminology Cheat Sheet 

 

Equip yourself with the meanings of acronyms you will work on soon.

 

Seller Central (SC): 

The SC is your main dashboard when you log in. This is where you manage your inventories, customer concerns, terms and conditions, updates and forum- all for the knowledge of sellers.

 

Prime:

Amazon Prime is a premium membership for consumers that give them many advantages versus regular ones. This includes; special shipping and delivery options, music, video and entertainment selections, special discounts and early-bird specials, etc. They are considered as ‘top-list’ consumers of Amazon and should win over by sellers.

 

Buy Box:

where Amazon features one seller on a product page (usually by the Buy Now button)

 

RA (Retail Arbitrage):

getting inventory from local retail stores

 

OA (Online Arbitrage):

getting inventory from an online store

 

Sourcing:

when we are buying or looking for inventory to resell

 

Scanning:

using our phones to look up products on Amazon

 

BOLO (Be On the Lookout):

a good item that you can watch out for in stores

BOGO: Buy One Get One – This is used in reference to shopping deals. Often used in sale ads. For example: “Triscuits are BOGO free this week at Target”, meaning you buy one box you get one free. Sometimes used BOGO 50% meaning: Buy One Get One 50% Off.

Brand Registry – A program Amazon has created for sellers to protect their brand from the copyright and/or trademark violation.

BSR – Amazon's Best Sellers Ranking – This is the rank that Amazon gives products based on their sales volume. Each category has its own ranking.

BTS – Back To School – a season where Amazon sellers often buy products from retail stores and mark them up on Amazon.

Bundle – When a listing on Amazon combines multiple DIFFERENT products together, to create ONE new product listing.

Category – The placement within Amazon to categorize products. There are main categories as well as sub-categories. Some categories are restricted to new sellers and others are open to all sellers.

COGS – Cost Of Goods Sold – The price that you paid for your inventory items. Used for tax purposes and accounting purposes.

 

EAN – European Article Number – If you sell in Europe on the European network your products will be assigned a 13 digit code called a European Article Number or International Article Number, IAN by some people.

 

FNSKU – Fulfillment Network Stock Keeping Unit – These are the numbers printed directly on your product labels to enable the picker’s scanners to identify this product as yours so that the correct item is pulled for each sale. Your units will always have a unique to you FNSKU, so if a piece of your inventory was to get misplaced, the FNSKU would link it back to you.

 

GC – Gift Card – Many Amazon sellers will buy discounted gift cards to purchase inventory, especially for online arbitrage.

HBA – Health & Beauty Aids – One of our favorite niches on Amazon. This could be part of either the beauty category or the health and personal care categories.

HTF – Hard To Find – When a product becomes hard to find, the price often increases on Amazon.com.

IL – Inventory Lab – The only service we recommend for inventory management and listing on Amazon.

ISBN – International Standard Book Number – You’re probably familiar already with this acronym since it’s on every print book you’ve ever purchased. For us Amazon sellers, the ISBN is used in the same way that UPC codes are used: looking up products, using with seller tools, and has to be covered when sending items to Amazon.

Keepa – A site similar to CCC where we can see the price and rank history for most items listed on Amazon. This is helpful in making buying decisions. They even have a chrome extension that makes it easier to use!

MAP – Minimum Advertised Price – This comes to you when you have a type of product with restrictions that the manufacturer placed on it not allowing your advertised pricing to go below a certain number. You will find this when dealing with wholesalers or buying directly from a manufacturer.

MOQ – Minimum Order Quantity – This is the minimum # of units that can be purchased at a time. This is often seen when you are buying from wholesalers or creating a private label product.

MSRP – Manufacturers Suggested Retail Price – This is the price that the manufacturer suggests their products be sold for. On Amazon, you will find the MSRP shown above the selling price, IF, the current price is lower than the MSRP.

Multi-pack – When a listing on Amazon includes multiples of the SAME product and they are then sold as one unit.

Net Profit – The amount of profit you have left in your business after taking out all operating expenses, including the cost of goods and Amazon fees.

VA – Virtual Assistant – Often referring to someone who helps you find products online that you can resell on Amazon.

UPC – Universal Product Code – A barcode with 12 digits that can be found on almost all products found in the retail world. You can use the UPC code to look up items on Amazon. This is also what is covered up by your FNSKU label when preparing your products to send in to FBA.

Wags – Walgreens – Drug Store often frequented by Amazon sellers.

Wholesale – This is a business model where you are buying directly from the brand owner and then reselling the product on Amazon. Many times you can get the product for 30%-50% off the retail price.

Fulfillment: 

Fulfillment is the process of receiving goods from a supplier, packaging and branding those items, and then shipping them to consumers. The seller can do fulfillment directly or it can be done through a third-party, similar to dropshipping

 

Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA): 

Amazon will work as a separate entity that picks, packs, and ships your merchandise through Fulfillment By Amazon. Upon sending your items, Amazon will receive, manage and store it in their fulfillment centers along with many other sellers. This method is one reason why Amazon has been and is the most successful eCommerce market currently.

 

Fulfillment by Merchant (FBM or MFN): 

FBM is when the merchant or seller is entirely responsible for packing, sending and fulfilling their customer orders as well as customer support and service.

 

Private Labeling: 

Private labeling is a business model that means you create and sell your own product under your own label or name. 

 

Inventory:

The number of stocks you have in your business or the units in the warehouse. It is a must to regularly manage and check inventory levels to ensure smooth operations and won’t affect your performance scores with Amazon.

 

Listings:

Your listings are your Amazon product pages available to consumers. The “listing” includes a description, the condition of an item, price, shipping methods, quantity, SKU, and any additional discounts or offers from your site. (Your listing is similar to the tag on a garment that gives all of the information about a shirt, so you can decide whether or not you would like to buy it). These listings need to be optimized in accordance with Amazon to rank highly and convert customers.

 

Logistics: 

Logistics is the overall fulfillment process of moving the stock in and out of a building. 

May big companies have logistics managers who oversee this stock operation. Basically, you need to properly manage your logistics in order to turn what you buy from suppliers into what you sell to consumers.

 

Margin: 

The margin, or profit margin, is the profit percentage of a sale taken after the cost of goods and expenses have been deducted.

 

Conversion Rate: 

In order to optimize your Amazon store, you would need a good conversion rate. The conversion rate is measured by the percentage of prospects that go to your store and make a purchase. High conversion rate sellers would mean to Amazon that your products are desirable and would place you higher in searches and rankings. Low conversion rate are advised to tweak and optimize their listings to attract buyers.

 

Pay-Per-Click (PPC): 

Pay-per-click is a form of advertising where you pay only based on the number of shoppers who click on your ads. When your ad is performing well, you pay more; if your ad doesn’t perform, you don’t pay. 

 

Verified Review: 

These are reviews that are left after an authentic purchase has been made from Amazon. Amazon does not verify views if it does not have a history of that consumer buying that product being reviewed. More verified reviews mean better optimization and happier customers.

Overview on How to Assess Products

If you see a product you want to buy, you have to decide how many you would want to buy. But before that, you need to pay attention to these important things first:

• Item’s sales rank - check it thru Keepa so you’ll know its price history, etc.
• Number of sellers - we recommend you to stay under 20 sellers. The less sellers, the better.
• FBA Price Point - you must pay your main attention to FBA sellers price points and not merchant unless the merchant price point is way below.
• Sized Category - checking the size of the product is necessary. The smaller the better. Small standard is way more profitable than small oversized.

 

Go Deep or Go Wide?

It is better to go wide rather than deep. If you go deep it means taking a lot of risk. You would want to expand more rather than focusing all your money on a single item. We’d recommend you to buy no more than 3-5 of  a single product.

 

Clearance Products

If you are sourcing on the clearance section, you have to decide quickly whether you want to get all stocks available or just a few. If you are confident that it is profitable, we suggest getting up to 10 of a product.

 

Items with High Availability

When a product has a large quantity available, we recommend getting about 10 of it to test the product out first. With this, you can evaluate the item for an estimated number of sales and price trends, etc. Rule is, even if we have a large quantity of a certain item, we still need to test them out first.

 

This is important because most of the time, some prices and ranks change right after you purchase an item. Prices or sales rank could go down and you won’t like having a lot of stocks just sitting still in the Amazon warehouse.

 

3-Month Trial

Another way to test out a product is trying it for a turnaround of about 3 months. This means you buy a specific quantity of an item wherein you can sell it out in 3 month’s time. You can try it out by using the daily sales estimate as a basis to figure it out.