Selling via Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) – Status update (Part 7)

You can read my previous post on Amazon FBA here (Part 6).

So far, I have 2 products listed on Amazon.

I went through the whole process of lowering sales price, advertising through Pay Per Click  – PPC campaigns (Auto and Manual), doing Facebook Ads, giving out product at heavily discounted prices, going through an email list to promote my products.

For Product 1, it received 2 nos. of 4 stars reviews, while for Product 2, it received 2 nos. of 5 stars reviews. (I did try a no. of samples for Product 2, before deciding on which to sell).

Sales have been really slow. Including those discounted products, I have only sold 18 units. Come to realize that e-commerce is pretty tough.

In the meantime, I have befriended someone who has been selling since Oct 2016. Let’s call him John (not his real name). John is 47 this year. John previously sold a product via Etsy (but was banned for no apparent reason, well at least that is what he said. Probably because his product wasn’t handcrafted like he listed it to be).

For Amazon, John bought in 1000 units of 1 product and will be bringing in another product soon. He managed to sell about 500++ of the first product (which is mainly due to the Q4, Christmas effect). Now he is having problems selling. Somedays there are no sales.

While messaging him, I can’t help but wonder about the person who spent 6 figures, and who will be listing 15 variations on Amazon soon. Let’s call this second person Ben (not his real name). Ben is 30 this year. I am still in contact with him. And Ben’s goods will probably be listed in 2 weeks’ time. Ben does have his doubt (said that he may have been too over-optimistic).

For me, on some days I did get organic sales, but like 1 or 2 sales. So it is very low.

The thing about Amazon is that there is a monthly fee (if you are using the Professional account), and there is the long term storage fee if your goods are stored in Amazon for more than 6 months. They will do their checks in Feb and Aug every year.

As for John, he is worried about this storage fee (his items are bigger than mine and more expensive). In his words.. he felt like every day he is doing ‘charity’.

For his second product, he has paid a deposit to his manufacturer, but still pretty undecided as to what to sell.

Well, as for me, I shall keep on trying. See how it goes.