How Amazon Grew in Less Than 30 Years

Without any doubt Amazon became one of the most powerful and world-known multinational technology companies. Ever since it was founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos as a e-shop for selling books, it quickly grew and expanded to another fields. Nowadays, books are just one of the many products that you can buy or sell on Amazon – software, video games, electronics, toys, clothes and jewelry, furniture and even food.

Besides e-commerce, Amazon is also focusing on cloud computing, digital streaming and artificial intelligence. It even developed some of its own consumer electronic products (Kindle, Echo, Fire Tablet/TV/OS), has its publishing arm and a film/TV studio.

The revenue in 2019 was over 280,5 billion dollars.

Amazon on The Internet

The company is active in America, Asia, Europe and Oceania and has 18 web domains. The home domain amazon.com attracted more than 130 million customers on a monthly basis, so Amazon made sure to invest a lot of money into the server capacity for its website in order to be able to handle the crazy traffic, especially during Christmas.

An interesting fact – in August 2013, Amazon´s website crashed for 40 minutes. However short the time may seem to you, the company lost almost 5 million dollars in sales!

Other facts that could be interesting for you if you are considering becoming a seller on Amazon:

  1. This year (2021) Amazon expects about 2.14 billion of customers to buy goods via its websites.
  2. In 2019, 225,000 sellers on Amazon sold more than 100,000 dollars via Amazon!
  3. Each hour, Amazon makes 17 million-dollar sales on average.

Who Are Your Competitors?

To be successful on foreign market, you need to know the market well. Research it, make sure to know the trends, the target buyer. You will learn a lot by getting to know your competitors – see who the most powerful sellers in your industry on the specific market are, what and how they do, what are their prices, etc. If you can, find a niche, which will suit your interests and attract plenty of customers.

Create Your Business Plan

In order to start selling on Amazon, you need to have your business plan ready – that should include your mission, market analysis, financial plan, marketing and sales and the list of your products and services. Once you know your competitors, try to get inspired by them and create your business budget, schedule and plan business activities that will help you reach the top numbers on Amazon.

Find Your Suppliers

There are more ways how to meet your supplier – you can either try the well-known ones (AliExpress, Alibaba, etc.) or you can meet some local ones at the trade shows or via Google search.

Make sure to know the suppliers well – get in touch with them via phone, e-mail or personally visit their office or premises. This will not only help you to make sure that the suppliers are serious, but you will also be able to discuss the price of the products, minimum order quantity, see or feel the quality of the product, find out the shipping charges, etc.  

Register on Amazon

There are two types of Amazon accounts available:

  1. Individual seller – includes basic features. You will not be charged for registration, yet you will pay 1 dollar for each item you sell a product.
  2. Pro seller – includes more features. You will be charged $ 99 monthly.

It is advised to start as an individual seller and once your sales grow, upgrade to pro seller account.

You can also add a FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) service. That means that Amazon will store your products for you, take care of your orders and the customer service.

Prepare a List of Your Products and Optimize Them

Prepare a quality, high-resolution images, which will promote your products well. You may get the images from your supplier or create your own ones (we highly advise to have a professionally made photographs). You can add up to 7 images to your product description, so make sure to show all the important aspects and angles of the specific product.

Also, make sure to write a quality and informative description of the products, which will persuade the customer to buy from you. List as many information as possible. Get inspired and see what your competitors wrote in the description of their products.

In order for your products to list well, make sure to use the proper keywords and use them in the title and the description.

You can either enter the products manually (especially if you do not have many products yet) or upload a spreadsheet with all the items.

What is Prime Eligible?

When listing your products, it is strongly advised to make them Prime eligible. That means, that all the Amazon Prime members will get free shipping when buying your product (there are more than 112 million estimated Amazon Prime members).

Prepare Quality Product Description in Foreign Languages

Once you have your product description and keywords professionally written in the source language, you will need a good translation to sell on the chosen Amazon market. Make sure to contact a reliable translation partner and by all means avoid mechanical translations. You need a perfect product description, which will attract your customers and also proper keywords in the target language, which will bring you the result that you wish for.

Update Your Inventory Level Regularly

After the customers place an order, your inventory level will decrease automatically. Make sure to update your inventory level regularly, so your product will appear on the product listing page. If the products are about to run out of the stock, you may need to rethink your marketing plan and place bigger orders from your supplier/s.

What Are Your Customers Saying About Your Services?

The positive reviews of your customers are especially important for your sales. The customers tend to read the reviews of the seller before buying products from them to see, what experiences other customers had with them. Try to get as many positive reviews as possible – contact your customers and ask them for feedback.