Posted by This article will guide you in the right direction to sell on Amazon as a vendor and make money online. Amazon has many different selling accounts and features that can be confusing at first. We will go over the difference between Seller Central and Vendor Central to sort out any confusion.
Amazon Vendor Central
Amazon Vendor Central is a Central account that allows you to sell inventory to Amazon. With Vendor Central, you can:
- Sell your products at wholesale prices and earn a profit margin of up to 30%.
- Work directly with a dedicated Amazon manager who will help you set up your account, manage inventory management and fulfillment, and more.
Vendor Central enrollment is only available through an invitation. And when you get an invite, you need to accept or decline it. If you choose to accept, you have to agree to the terms and conditions, after which you get access to Vendor Central.
ALSO READ: Amazon Integration And Effective Ways To Develop It in 2022.
How Does a Vendor Account Work?
Amazon Vendor Central is a program that allows Amazon to sell its products as a vendor. This gives the platform more control over your inventory, pricing, and sales. You can use the Amazon Seller Central dashboard to manage your listings. However, it will not allow you to see the monthly sales data needed for tax reporting purposes.
When you become a vendor:
- Amazon will buy your products from you.
- The platform stocks up its warehouses with your goods and manages the inventory.
- This effectively makes Amazon the distributor of your products.
- Amazon also controls the pricing.
- The platform takes care of the shipping of the products and any customer service and returns.
Learn Vendor Central Strategies for Beginner at $10.
How Does Amazon Pay Vendors?
Amazon pays vendors on a net 60-day basis, meaning that you get paid for the sale after the customer has paid for their order. If you are selling items on Amazon as a vendor, it could take up to two months before receiving payment for your products.
Amazon also pays vendors by check or direct deposit. You can choose which method works best for you. The platform pays vendors based on orders placed by customers and shipped and returns from customers.
What’s The Difference between Being an Amazon Seller and Amazon Vendor?
Being an Amazon seller is not the same as being an Amazon vendor. Amazon vendors are businesses that make products and sell them on their websites while also selling them on the marketplace via Amazon’s platform. An example of this would be a company like Fidget Cube: they make fidget cubes and list them on Amazon. This allows them to reach more customers and grow their business in ways that aren’t possible if they only sell through their website alone.
Criteria to Become a Vendor on Amazon
To become an Amazon vendor, you need to meet some essential criteria. Although many of these criteria are unknown, it bothers on the following:
1. Consistency
To qualify for an invite to become an Amazon vendor, you need consistency in all aspects. Consistency is critical for selling products on Amazon because the site’s customers expect both high standards and quality from their purchases. This means that you need to ensure that all your products are consistent in terms of appearance and description.
2. High Sales Volume
To be eligible to become an Amazon vendor and sell products on the site, you will need to have a high sales volume. To get your vendor account approved by Amazon, your sales volume must exceed $10,000 per month in U.S. dollars. This means that if you want to be an Amazon vendor, it is vital for you to have a lot of customers buying from your website and bringing in large amounts of revenue each month.
3. Popularity
To become an Amazon vendor, your product has to be popular. It has to be searched for and has a high sales volume. It should also have a lot of reviews and sales.
When you’re starting, it’s crucial to pick a product that has demand but not too much competition. This means finding something that people want but isn’t already being sold by many other vendors on Amazon.
Learn Vendor Central Strategies for Beginner at $10.
Features of the Amazon Vendor Platform
With an amazon vendor, you can expect to leverage some of the features below:
1. Merchandising
Merchandising is an essential part of the Amazon Vendor Central platform. It’s the process of creating a listing on Amazon, and it can be done either manually or automatically. If you’re starting, you’ll want to use the manual method for merchandising. This means that you will need to upload your product images one at a time into Amazon Seller Central and then assign them to specific categories and subcategories until you’ve created a complete listing.
2. Payment
The first step to selling on Amazon is to sign up as a seller. After you’ve signed up, you can create your new product listing. A good title and description will help drive sales and increase the chances of someone buying your product.
As for payment:
- Amazon takes a fee of 15% of the net sales price
- Amazon charges a monthly subscription fee of $39.99
- Amazon sets a transaction fee of 2.9% of the sales price
3. Orders
When you’re a vendor, your customers can order directly from you and have the products sent directly to their homes. You can set your store up so that Amazon handles all of the shipping for you or control it yourself by having items shipped to Amazon’s warehouses and then shipping them out from there. The choice is yours.
4. Reporting
Amazon Vendor Central allows you to track your sales, inventory, and performance on Amazon. You can see daily deals, sales by category, and sales by product. You can also see your inventory levels and how many items you have sold.
Amazon Vendor Pros
- You can get your products listed on Amazon without doing all of the work yourself. Amazon handles all of the shipping and returns, which saves you time.
- If your product is popular enough, Amazon may even decide to start selling it in their fulfillment centers (FCs). You also get more storage space at FCs than with most other warehouses since these centers are often near consumer markets like New York City or Los Angeles.
- Amazon is constantly growing its vendor program, so there’s always something new happening when selling through them. They’ve recently started offering free shipping with Prime membership, and Fulfillment by Amazon services are being phased out in favor of Vendor Central listings.
Amazon Vendor Cons
- It takes time to get approved. Amazon takes its time getting vendors approved, which can be frustrating if you have a product ready to sell. But this is because they want to ensure that they are protecting their customers and their brand identity by only allowing people with good reputations and businesses that will uphold the highest customer service standards into the marketplace. This can cause delays if you’re impatient or want results quickly.
- You’ll need a lot of capital up-front because it costs money to become an Amazon vendor and pay for fulfillment. You may need money for marketing campaigns or advertising before your products go live on Amazon.
Learn Vendor Central Strategies for Beginner at $10.
Conclusion
With this in mind, I hope that you can get a good understanding of how Amazon works and what it will take to be successful as an Amazon vendor.
You may also like to read our latest article, Sell on WayFair: how to sell home furnishings and décor.
