My experiments with Amazon

A few months ago, I came across a wonderful opportunity. One of my clients was having issues with their sales on Amazon’s Seller Central. The agency that they were working with was highly inefficient, quite expensive and the results were lackluster. Perhaps for them, small businesses were not their ideal target clientele since SMEs are very cost-sensitive and require considerable amount of individual focus to their sales channels (especially in e-commerce) to yield a sensible result. Given the situation, I offered to take a crack at handling their Seller Central account for a month and see if I am able to learn the tricks of the trade fast enough and at the same time yield a better result than a large decades-old retail agency with over 100 employees in their roster. And to everyone’s surprise, things turned out for the better. 

Personally, one of the most challenging things for me to do in a short span of time is to pick up a new skill under a tight deadline and at the same time yield results which exceed expectations. It was like a do-or-die situation. Luckily for me, I found out that the world of e-commerce is quite exciting and the slow yet steady growth in sales did give me quite an adrenaline rush. I was very happy I was able to pick up the challenge and learn more than I can ever hope. 

At the end of it all, not only did I get the contract to handle my clients’ Amazon Seller Central account but also launched a private label lifestyle brand for my own venture as a case study for my strategies which I picked up during my learning phase. 

Amazon Seller Central has a lot of moving parts, which keep evolving over time. There are thousands of e-commerce gurus on Youtube and large retail agencies who market themselves by giving just enough information in public domain to grab everyone's interest by showing 6 or 7 digit sales figures but seldom do they tell you how much it cost them to get the numbers there. What is the point of having monthly revenue of say 1 million dollars if it cost them 0.999 million dollars to get there? The one thing I have learned is that selling on Amazon (or e-commerce in general) is all about discipline (combined with copious data analytics and continuous experimentation). 

In the first month of launching my lifestyle brand, I decided to purchase 100 specialized wallets from Alibaba and shipped to Amazon’s fulfillment centers under my company’s name. I did not brand, label or even see the products myself. I did spend a considerable amount of time researching what my competitors were up to, how much they priced, how they put up the product images and how they described their products. I took inspiration from almost all of them and listed my wallets up myself.

In 3 weeks, I sold out of all my wallets. 

I was pleasantly surprised that a brand new seller like me, without any sort of branding or experience, was able to do this. I did do considerable pay-per-click ads on Amazon and advertised it heavily, but I am sure almost all of my competitors did the same. I concluded that I got partially lucky and all my hours of keyword research and competitor analysis paid off. But when I calculated the costs, I found out I actually lost money. That’s when it hit me, its all about discipline. 

I rolled back my ad spending but continued with tweaking around prices, descriptors, and keywords. In the second and the third month, I sold considerably less but earned more money in net profits. I found out that there are much-automated software out in the market which claim to use AI and machine learning to optimize one’s Seller Central account, but when I spoke to multiple people availing those services, many of them found the automated software to be woefully unsatisfactory and inefficient. 

With all the testing and intrinsic understanding, I was able to get fantastic results for my clients and for myself. This experience has taught me that it is never too late to learn something new and occasionally wandering outside your comfort zone can sometimes open unexpected and wonderful doors for you. 

We are now servicing multiple clients with e-commerce sales and growing as we speak. I hope to learn much more as we tread along this wonderful path of learning and discovery.