Amazon Best Sellers Best Winter Holidays

See Amazon best-seller predictions for this hol > December 14, 2017

A new compilation from SellerApp of the top 1,000 products expected to be the season’s hottest will come in handy for online sellers and retailers looking to make the most out of the last-minute and after-Christmas shopping splurge.

The list features ideas for Amazon sales, and groups products into 21 categories, including wireless, appliances, computers and accessories, electronics, fashion, and home and improvement. Curation is based on seven key data points that forecast the best-selling products per category, including keyword trending and new buyer keywords. Many of these products are confirmed Black Friday 2017 hits and are expected to remain hot until early into the New Year.

The compilation also lists similar products on GlobalSources. com so you can easily and quickly find verified suppliers to source these sure-buys.

View and download Amazon’s best-seller predictions and similar products to source.

How to use this list?

Use the top-selling products to identify product categories you can sell on Amazon Use the products as inspiration for your own private label products Understand and learn from top sellers’ strategies Source similar products from verified China suppliers on GlobalSources. com

SellerApp is an all-in-one platform that helps e-commerce sellers research, manage and improve their Amazon FBA business. The unified easy-to-use interface includes features such as Product Research, Product Ideas, Product Insights, Product Source, Keyword Research, Keyword Tracking, PPC Optimizer and much more.

Amazon Seller Best Practices: 4 Habits of the Best Sellers

Don’t assume that selling on the world’s largest online marketplace is an instant ticket to riches. If you don’t follow rules and adopt Amazon seller best practices, the road to success will be long and uphill.

But have no fear: We’re here to empower you to make the smartest possible decisions with your Amazon store.

That’s why we’ve put together a short list of Amazon seller best practices that you can start using today.

These aren’t the same as the in-depth Seller Best Practices that Amazon published on its site. The image below is just a small sample of Amazon’s own seller best practices, and you should definitely get to know those, too!

The best practices that follow come directly from top Amazon sellers.

The beauty of the habits we highlighted is that if you adopt just one, you’ll see positive effects right away.

Read on to see which Amazon seller best practices you already follow and which ones you should start using today.

1. Plan ahead and stay organized

Planning and organization are vital best practices for Amazon sellers because there’s so much to think about every day.

If you’re just starting out, this could mean organizing your inventory into the most logical categories on Amazon. It could also mean planning your sourcing process and organizing your supplier network.

If you’ve been selling for a while, it could mean planning logistics for shipping and inventory replenishment. For some sellers, it could also entail researching and testing third-party tools and services that can make planning and organization easier to handle in the future.

Certain times of the year, planning and organizing may involve researching products to see what’s trending for different holidays.

And all sellers should plan how to attain (and maintain) Amazon Featured Merchant status.

Sellers should also decide whether to use FBA or MFN. And, if they use FBA, they should organize a budget and plan for shipping to Amazon’s fulfillment centers.

2. Crunch numbers and analyze them carefully

Selling is a numbers game, so if you’re not a math person, you may want to hire someone who is that you trust. Without someone to calculate and analyze your costs, prices, sales figures, and profits, you risk overspending, underpricing, and leaving money on the table.

Amazon also changes its fee structure often, and you aren’t paying close attention to how it affects your inventory and pricing, your sales and profits may suffer.

One goal should be to offer free shipping if your costs allow for it, as doing so could lead to a huge increase in sales. And, if you can speed up your shipping times on top of offering it for free, your sales have the potential to skyrocket.

Use Amazon’s FBA fee calculator to see what minimum prices you need to charge in order to profit on each SKU you list.

3. Embrace new tools and technology to streamline and automate operations

Like many sellers, you may have thought you could handle every aspect of running your Amazon store.

If you’re like the majority, though, you hit a wall after a while and realize you need help.

But that’s okay: there are plenty of tools you can use to automate your workload and make it lighter. Not only can these tools free up time from your schedule, they can also handle tasks more efficiently and effectively than you or your employees could ever do because they work non-stop.

There are plenty of Amazon selling tools you can use to automate parts of your business, from your inventory management to your feedback requests and much more. And, when you crunch the numbers and compare the cost of automation with the cost of human labor to accomplish the same work, you realize just how great a deal these tools are.

In terms of Amazon seller best practices, there’s no consensus on what order you add these tools to your arsenal. For a good place to start, consider what your biggest pain points are as an Amazon seller. Then, figure out what tools will make the biggest bottom line impact in the shortest period of time.

Many sellers opt for an automated repricing tool first to handle the management and optimization of their prices. That way, they won’t have to spend hours making manual price changes, and their prices get optimized continuously 24/7.

It’s perfect for Amazon sellers looking to eliminate a tedious and time-consuming part of running their business and, at the same time, drive their listings into the Buy Box and boost sales and profits.

Take advantage of automation tools that offer a free trial to get a feel for their functionality and power before you commit to a monthly payment.

4. Cultivate deeper relationships with customers

It’s easy to blend in with other sellers on Amazon since there aren’t many ways to stand out. But that doesn’t mean there are no ways to distinguish yourself among sellers.

If you fulfill orders yourself and run into issues with customers, keep an open line of communication with them. And, always treat customers in a friendly way to build rapport and add a human element to your business.

You should also pepper your customer communications with language and imagery that distinguishes your “brand” from other Amazon sellers. Invoices, emails, and any other customer touch points you send out should have a consistent look and feel.

That will get customers to remember you in the future. And when you’re selling the same items as many other sellers, any advantage you can get is important.

Amazon’s Storage Fee Increase For The Holidays

By Andrew Maff, on November 9th, 2018 , Amazon

Every year, Amazon raises storage fees for the holiday season to reflect the higher demand for warehousing during Q4. This means you pay a premium to house your inventory with FBA during the Halloween to New Year period. This year, these holiday fees have skyrocketed higher than they’ve ever been.

What does this storage fee increase mean for sellers? How can you offset these fees and boost your margins during the holiday season?

Basic storage fees

These holiday increases come on top of Amazon’s overall 2018 adjusted fees. It’s important to understand what the basic FBA fees look like to see where this year’s cost increases are coming in.

Last year, Amazon announced a few new changes to FBA inventory fees:

Monthly inventory storage fees increased by $0.05 per cubic foot for standard-size and oversize items (April)

Long-term storage fees were adjusted based on size and assessment date (September)

There is a minimum charge of $0.50 per unit per month for items in inventory for 365 days or more

Sellers are already seeing increases in their FBA storage. Now that Q4 is raising these even higher, it might be pushing some smaller and newer businesses out of the ranks.

Another implemented policy comes with the Inventory Performance Index . Any sellers with an Inventory Performance Index below 350 might have limits on how much they can store and use FBA. Those sellers with an IPI greater than 350 have access to unlimited storage. For those under 350, though, they can be charged an overage fee of $10 per cubic foot per month based on excess storage space.

This means sellers who consistently show top-notch operations processes will be rewarded over those with ineffective logistics. These numbers are re-evaluated every three months to ensure the strongest businesses are getting the most space.

Holiday storage fees

Amazon holiday storage fees are basically increased storage fees to accommodate the influx of sellers trying to get their goods in FBA warehouses.

The holiday season (and the related storage fee increase) takes place October 1 to December 31. That means we are already in the thick of it. It also means it’s time to get your goods to FBA if you plan to use them.

This season, monthly inventory standard-size storage fees increase by $1.71 and oversize fees by $0.72.

Storage Month	Standard-size	Oversize
January – September	$0.69 per cubic foot	$0.48 per cubic foot
October – December	$2.40 per cubic foot	$1.20 per cubic foot

Long-term storage fees remain the same regardless of the holiday season because long-term is usually more than one season. But if you’re interested in long-term storage for overflow of inventory, the monthly cost for items in fulfillment centers for 181-365 days is $3.25 per cubic foot and those for more than 365 days is $6.90 per cubic foot.

Amazon’s goal with raising inventory fees for the holiday season is threefold:

· To discourage short-term sellers who only sell on Amazon for the holiday season

· To make more money by optimizing on demand

· To prevent overpopulated warehouses and ensure the most efficient inventory process (in order to deliver top-notch service to customers)

This means they’re trying to keep only the top sellers who have a history of selling with FBA. If you haven’t previously sold with FBA, it might be more challenging for you to get a spot in a warehouse this season.

How to optimize margins with fees

Whether you’re using FBA or another service, you want to figure out how to best optimize your processes for the greatest margins during the holiday season.

What are some ways you can focus on boosting your margins and streamlining your business to profit from the holiday rush?

1. Sell the right products.

When choosing the products to focus on for the holiday season, you want to consider trends, target audience, as well as the product itself. Is the product light and small, which makes it cheaper to ship and store? Or is it large and heavy, which means it takes up more room and costs more on the backend? Keep in mind how the products you sell will impact all of your operational costs.

2. Choose the right logistics process.

Shop around to make sure that working with FBA is the right solution for you and your products. Some smaller warehousing companies offer cheaper storage, especially for particular types of products. If you don’t want to pay Amazon’s hefty fees and fight for warehousing space, you can look into third-party inventory just for the holiday season.

Keep in mind that this won’t allow you to utilize FBA’s labeling, picking, packing, or shipping services, so you might want to work with the third party warehouse to see if they offer similar services.

Still, keep in mind that FBA is the most reliable for Amazon. It will also ensure your seller account remains in good standing, which has an impact on Your ability to win the Buy Box and get those critical holiday sales.

3. Automate.

It’s hard to keep up with the influx of orders during the holiday season. A lot can slip by unnoticed until it’s too late. Automating your inventory management with a system Like Skubana allows you to take a hands-off approach to logistics, so you can focus on marketing, selling, and customer service.

4. Reprice.

How much your goods cost is the biggest factor in your margins. Some sellers will raise their prices during the holiday season to offset the increased storage and shipping costs. However, this can also make you less competitive if others are selling similar products for less.

So, make sure you do a competitive analysis and use Repricing software to find the best price that will maintain margins for the holiday season. Repricing software works well because it will continuously monitor your price, your competitors’ prices, and your margins to ensure you are headed on the right track.

5. Get products in early.

Whether you’ve decided to use FBA or a third party, get your inventory in fast. The earlier you get your products to the warehouse, the more likely they’ll have space for you. It’s not uncommon for Amazon to start turning away even top FBA sellers because warehouses are too full by the time the products arrive.

If you’re still struggling to order your products, Contact Seller’s Choice now. We can help you find the right production partners fast.

6. Maintain seller metrics.

In order to be successful as an FBA seller, you need to maintain certain metrics that prove you’re a credible and reliable business. Amazon will measure you based on how quickly and effectively you deliver service.

Holiday SEO: Using Amazon Bestsellers for Keyword Research

Wanna do some extremely cheap (free) and fast market research? As lovely as Google Trends, Google Insights and Google’s Keyword Tool are – they are not as valuable as Amazon for commercial keyword research. They can’t tell you which products are most wished for and most gifted.

Though it’s hidden amongst a jungle of other links, products and calls to action – Amazon has a Bestsellers department. On the Amazon. com home page, scroll down to Features & Services / Amazon Exclusives / Amazon Bestsellers (or just click our link).

You’ll find every category that Amazon offers (which is pretty much everything) and even sub-categories.

And you’ll notice you can select the Most Gifted and Most Wished For items, based on Amazon’s tsunami of customer tracking and purchase data.

For example, if you’re in the beauty category, you can see the top 3 wished for fragrances are Vera Wang Princess, Dolce & Gabbana Light Blue and Marc Jacobs Daisy.

Comparing to Sephora’s best seller list, this is pretty good data.

When you understand what customers’ most desired and most gifted items are, you know where to focus your SEO efforts at the product page level as we approach the holiday season. And by SEO efforts, I mean link building.

If I were Sephora, I would head over to the search engine and scope out the ranking situation (making sure I’m signed out of my Gmail account so my rankings aren’t skewed by my frequent visits to the Sephora site). Now it doesn’t really matter what position you are in the results – results may vary based on a searcher’s location, browsing history (personalized search) and exact keyword term (rankings may differ for “vera wang princess” vs “princess vera wang”). And there’s always room for improvement when it comes to link building.

But you want to get an idea of which pages you are competing against. Is it Amazon? The manufacturer’s site? A popular blog review or shopping engine? Also, you want to know if you have a hope in the North Pole to actually rank for the product. If you’re not on page one or two, you may want to think realistically about your chances. Or, aim for a less competitive search like “buy vera wang princess” or “princess by vera wang.”

Okay, keeping with our hypothetical Sephora case:

Sephora is doing really well, and it’s tough to outrank the manufacturer site but we’ve seen it happen. Also, assuming Sephora’s competition reads Get Elastic and is embarking on link building campaignage as we speak, Sephora must protect its position. The key will be to build links (and start soon), and here are some ideas to accomplish this.

Leverage the Blog

Sephora has, in my opinion, one of the better retailer blogs out there. It actually has several posts linking to its Marc Jacobs Daisy page. But linking from a new blog post that includes “Marc Jacobs Daisy” in the title tag and URL will give extra topical relevance to the link. I’d go ahead and write a post on how it’s one of the top sellers, what customers have to say about it or which celebrities wear it.

Blogger Outreach

Why not make a list of influential beauty bloggers and send them a free Vera Wang Princess bottle or sample to review? As long as the review is appreciated but not required, I don’t see how this would violate the “don’t buy links” rule. Of course, I’d love to hear your opinions in the comments.

It works for quirky lounge chair maker Sumo. Top Internet marketing and advertising blogger B. L. Ochman calls Sumo’s blogger outreach smart marketing:

Sumo has used blogger outreach to get their furniture reviewed, and it’s smart marketing. Sending chairs to bloggers is cheap; effective because you feel like you need to review something that costs more than $100; and, unlike a book, way too big to ignore once it gets to your house. They didn’t send some stupid press release, or cutesy pitch. They just sent an email asking if I’d like to try the chair and review it, with a link to the site.

Sumo ranks quite nicely for terms like “lounge chair” and “bean bag chair,” thank you very much.

Search for Conversations

Who’s been blogging about Vera Wang Princess? Two tools I like to use to find out are blog search engine Technorati and reputation monitoring tool Trackur. These both have advantages over Google Blogs search.

Technorati shows you an authority score (higher is better), so you don’t waste time checking out low-quality blogs:

And Trackur lets you bookmark items with “Add to Favorites.”

You may discover some interesting things, like this blog that actually did link to Sephora:

But as you can see in the status bar, the blogger buggered up the link with a cut-and-paste so it reads Http://http//www. sephora. com/browse/product. jhtml? >

Sephora should send this blogger a heads up, and some form of thank you for linking (coupon or free gift). And to build a relationship, ask if she’d like to be an official reviewer for Sephora products on her own blog.

Help a Reporter Out

Get on Peter Shankman’s HARO (Help A Reporter Out), a thrice-daily mailing list of press opportunities. I’ve seen requests for sources from reporters from major news papers, magazines and even network TV morning shows. Several calls for products for gift ideas have come through. Getting on the list to receive the notices is easy, sign up here. You could get a link or great word-of-print marketing.

Don’t Forget Value Propositions

Sephora not only ships for free over $50, but also has free return shipping.

This should be in the title tag / meta description. Especially for searches like this:

This will also improve click through for searches without “free shipping” as we discussed yesterday.

So try out Amazon Bestsellers for the category/ies you sell – and remember, you can apply this insight to email marketing campaigns and merchandising strategies too. If you have additional link building tricks, you may want to keep them close to your chest. If you’re brave and already in the holiday spirit, you may want to share them in the comments here *wink.*