#fbaamazon

Simply by utilizing the Fulfilled by Amazon business model, many of your important business processes are already fully automated. Shipping individual orders, handling product returns and general customer support management are all taken care of by Amazon, saving you countless trips to the post office and endless frustrating customer calls.

However, after using AMZScout to research your niche and select the perfect products, you have the opportunity to take things a few steps further. So take another sip of that margarita and let’s take a look at how experienced Amazon sellers are automating their FBA businesses.

Listing Creation & Optimization

Online platforms such as Upwork and Freeup enable you to find product photographers and Amazon sales copywriters to create professional listings for your products. Hiring experienced freelancers that use a variety of advanced methods and strategies to create optimized listings that resonate with your target customers will boost your conversion rate and increase sales, providing you with greater profits and freeing up your time to automate more business processes.

Continuous optimization is also possible by using split testing software that utilizes automated A/B testing to further increase your conversion rates and profits. At the click of a button, you can test various aspects of your listing such as pricing, images, titles, bullet points, descriptions and back-end keywords. By asking your product photographers and copywriters to provide multiple versions of their work, you can leverage this automated testing so you don’t have to manually rewrite your sales copy. You can also use software that identifies negative product reviews and seller feedback, and contacts the buyers directly to remove it. This means you don’t have to waste time manually tracking orders and dealing with unruly customers!

PPC Management

PPC (pay-per-click) campaign management is another easily automatable process that can be handled by powerful PPC management software. The software will automatically adjust your bids for different keywords, help keep you below your target ACoS% (average cost of sale), and set up your campaigns to find new highly converting keywords. You can even hire a PPC management freelancer to regularly tweak your settings for optimum results, or take a hands-off approach and let the system handle itself. No more scrolling aimlessly through laborious search term reports!

Inventory Management

By using inventory management software that accurately estimates how many units you should order and when, you can avoid stock-outs that significantly limit your profits and damage your organic rankings. You can give software access to a virtual assistant (VA) hired on an online freelance platform to automate the process even further. The VA checks the software weekly, reviews what needs to be ordered, and sends out template emails to your suppliers. This means all you have to do now is process the payments!

Bookkeeping

To automate your finances, it is imperative to use bookkeeping software such as Xero or Quickbooks to accurately record and reconcile your revenue and expenses. This allows you to stay in control of your finances, quickly process your tax returns, and keep track of the growth of your business. You can hire a freelancer to manage the reconciliation process for you, so all you have to do is forward your invoice emails, or better yet, set up auto-forwarding rules from your email client.

In addition to this, you can combine your bookkeeping software with A2X (a2xaccounting.com – an accounting automation software), which fetches Amazon settlements from your seller account and posts summarized settlements to your accounting system. This will save you many tedious hours each month manually recording transaction data.  

To be more in control of your financial data, you can use software to accurately calculate and display your critical metrics, such as total profit, profit margins, PPC spends, ACoS%, FBA fees, and refunds. Having all of this information in one place without manually creating messy spreadsheets is an incredibly useful time-saver.

While all these software subscriptions and freelancer fees add up to a significant monthly expense, the automation process frees up your time so you can focus on what truly matters to your business: making high-level strategic decisions that develop your business and increase your long-term profits. Generally, this means finding more great products with AMZScout, expanding your product lines and implementing carefully crafted launch strategies. But if you really want to ride the automation wave, you can hire a freelancer to do all of this for you, and kick back living the 4-hour dream.  

As a seller, participating in either program can have massive benefits. Chances are that if you qualify for one, you’ll also qualify for the other, but it may be a good idea to start with one and then move into the other. Both have pros and cons, and both will have slightly different results in terms of sales boost, audience, and requirements. However, both programs come with advantages your business cannot afford to pass on.

Amazon Prime

Amazon Prime is the largest program designed to offer customers perks in exchange for a monthly subscription. Consumers benefit from over 40 different perks, including free audiobooks and access to exclusive items, but many sign up to take advantage of fast and free shipping.

Walmart 2-Day Free Shipping

Walmart.com averaged 350 million visitors per month for 2018, giving sellers significant incentive to capture as much consumer spend as possible with fast shipping tags. With Walmart Free 2-Day Shipping, you promise free delivery by a guaranteed date (2 days after purchase). Like Amazon Prime, sellers can choose to ship themselves or utilize Walmart’s outsourced fulfillment partner.

Unlike Amazon Prime, customers don’t have to be members and don’t have to pay a subscription fee. Free shipping encourages customers to purchase and helps to reduce cart abandonment.

Why should sellers get on Amazon Prime or Walmart Free 2-Day Shipping?

Sellers need to put themselves in the best position to succeed no matter what marketplace you sell on. The best way to do this is having fast shipping tags differentiate your listings. Since consumers can filter for delivery time on both Amazon and Walmart, it also boosts visibility and can reduce competition.

Comparing the two, both fast shipping programs offer different benefits. Amazon has the potential for more volume with a giant user base and a wide international reach, whereas Walmart sellers benefit from lower ad spend needed and less competition. Ultimately, you should aim to get on both of these programs to give your business the best advantage.

Below we’ll share 2 ways to get on Amazon Prime, and 2 ways to get on Walmart Free 2-Day Shipping.

How to get on Amazon Prime

As a seller, you can choose to opt into Prime by either using Fulfilled by Amazon or Seller Fulfilled Prime.

FBA Prime

Selling products through FBA simply requires moving your inventory into an Amazon warehouse, paying Amazon to store products, and allowing Amazon to handle fulfillment for you.

Fulfillment costs are flat rate and are based on product volume, weight, and duration of time in warehouse, with additional flat rate fees for fulfillment. However, FBA can be expensive when it comes to storage fees, which increase during the holiday season.

Amazon handles every aspect of fulfillment, including order processing, pick and pack, shipping from the warehouse nearest to the customer, and customer support and returns. This can save you considerably in that you won’t need to set up the infrastructure to handle the sort of high demand that owning the Buy Box can produce.

Seller Fulfilled Prime (SFP)

Seller Fulfilled Prime launched in 2015 and supports sellers who want to fulfill their own Prime orders. Here, you must commit to same-day and two-day delivery on all products and must complete a lengthy trial period.

To be eligible for SFP, you need a professional seller account and must meet specific account metrics. These include having fulfilled 30+ Premium Shipping orders over the past 30 days, with a >96% on-time delivery rate, <1% cancellation rate, and >94% ID on all orders.

The trial process typically involves a 30-day period, in which you must have a >99% on-time delivery rate, must utilize Buy Shipping Services on >95% of orders, and have a cancellation rate of <1%. You’ll also need a 4.5+ rating on all orders shipped over the preceding 30 calendar days.

While significantly more difficult to set up, and costlier to begin, SFP leaves you in control of your inventory and may eventually reduce costs over FBA if your order volume is high enough.

How to get on Walmart Free 2-Day Shipping

Similarly to Amazon, Walmart marketplace sellers can opt to fulfill themselves or go through Walmart’s fulfillment partner, Deliverr.

Seller-Fulfilled

Walmart allows seller-fulfilled 2-day shipping, which you can request access to from your Seller Central. Walmart will let you know whether you’ve been approved or rejected in 48 hours, and you’ll have to meet certain account metrics.

For example, you must have fulfilled >100 orders over the past 30 days, with on-time shipping at >95%, on-time delivery at >95%, valid tracking >95%, a cancel rate of <1.5%, and a generous returns policy.

Sellers can set the regions and states where they can support 2-day shipping, so only shoppers in certain areas see the fast shipping tag.

Deliverr

Walmart has partnered with Deliverr, an FBA-like fulfillment service that is able to fulfill orders in 2 days. Here, you pay Deliverr’s flat-rate fees plus a storage fee, and they provide discounted rates for sellers fulfilling on Walmart’s Free 2-Day Shipping program. You can calculate your fulfillment costs on their cost calculator.

Deliverr sellers are pre-approved for Walmart’s fast shipping program and can activate it from their Deliverr dashboard. Simply ship inventory to Deliverr, and they will handle the entire fulfillment process from order to doorstep. Another benefit of using Walmart’s official fulfillment partner is they support nationwide 2-day delivery, which means more shoppers will see the Free 2-Day Shipping tag on your listings.

Deliverr also partners with other eCommerce marketplaces, so this may be advantageous if you’d like to get on multiple fast shipping programs across marketplaces.

Overall convenience

In the end, offering fast, free shipping is a wise business idea regardless of which marketplace you sell on. Not only is it convenient for your shoppers, outsourcing to the right fulfillment partner makes things easier for you as a seller.

And as the holidays are approaching, keep in mind that although many sellers use fast, free shipping as seasonal tactics, they are increasingly important throughout the year, and it will help you to boost sales.

About the Author

This is a guest post from Michael Krakaris. Michael is one of Forbes’ 30 Under 30 and the co-founder of Deliverr. Deliverr provides fast and affordable fulfillment for your eBay, Walmart and Shopify stores, helping to boost sales through programs like Walmart Free 2-Day Shipping and eBay Guaranteed Delivery.

In this article, we’ll take a look at the options for bringing your Amazon profits home – and maximizing what you keep. Let’s start with the first place people often look to when they need foreign currency exchange, banks.

Not Everyone Can Get a Foreign Bank Account

While having a foreign bank account can sound pretty cool; it’s not necessarily a practical reality. You may be required to have a business address or office in that country. For Europeans, the process is easier within the EU. For Americans, it’s another story. Many European banks don’t want to deal with the paperwork of compliance with American regulators, especially since the US enacted the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act of 2010.

Traditional Banks Aren’t Exactly Known For Great Exchange Rates

Even if you do jump through the hoops to get a foreign bank account, they may not even give you the best rate. Banks aren’t known for their competitive exchange rates, and they’re not really set up to handle the interests of international e-commerce sellers.

Banks are most likely to reserve their most favorable exchange rates for businesses that exchange millions per month or more. They may even advertise their interbank rate, the wholesale rate they use to transact with other banks, even if they’d never actually offer their customers that same rate.

But many Amazon merchants never even set up foreign exchange with a bank in the country they’re selling on. They use Amazon’s built-in currency converter.

The Amazon Currency Converter Option

For many merchants who sell Amazon EU and Amazon Canada, Amazon Currency Converter is the easiest way to exchange profits from foreign currencies into local currency. But it’s not free to use Amazon Currency Converter, and it’s almost certainly not going to be cheap. Worst of all, you may not even know you’re being charged for currency conversion using Amazon.

Here’s how it works, when you transfer money using Amazon’s currency converter, you’ll be charged an exchange rate not a separate fee. It’s sort of like exchanging money at the airport, where you hand them $100 and you get back the equivalent of $90. They may not claim to charge you a “fee” – they just gave you an unfavorable rate that amounts to a high fee. Although Amazon doesn’t charge fees much higher than most banks, they don’t make the fees easy to understand.

So How Much Does Amazon Currency Converter Cost?

According to estimates, Amazon charges around 3.5%* when you use their currency converter. Yes, 3.5% is a relatively high percentage. No, you don’t have to pay that much of your profits to currency exchange.

 *Estimated rate based on actual transactions using Amazon Currency Converter between 07/09/2016 – 07/23/2016.

If you pick the right cross-border account, you could get that rate down to 1.5% or 1%. That’s an estimated 2.5% savings. While 2.5% may not seem dramatic at first, it sure adds up over time.

Consider what a seller who transfers the equivalent of $12,000 per month would pay. In one year, that 2.5% will add up to $3,600 savings. In three years, that adds up to $10,800 – more than enough for a new top-of-the-line Rolex Submariner, which runs about $8,550.

When you calculate the cost to your business, the toll is even higher. Consider the real cost of taking an extra $10,800 away from your business; money that could be invested in inventory and hiring to grow sales. Over the course of a few years, that extra $10,800 could be worth $25,000, $35,000 or more to your business.

How Get a Better FX Rate

Now that you know the banks and Amazon aren’t the best place to exchange your money, where do you go? For many e-commerce sellers, the answer is in finding a cross-border account, sometimes called a borderless global account. With the right cross-border account, you can eliminate many of the exchange fees and transaction fees – and keep more of your profits!

Finding a Cross-Border Account for E-commerce

A good cross-border account can help fuel global growth in more ways than just currency exchange. With the right cross-border account, you can pay suppliers and make VAT payments without any fees. You’ll also avoid the dreaded double foreign exchange fees when paying VATs and suppliers.

Here’s how double exchange fees work… Let’s say, you need to pay your UK VAT (which you’ll have to do in pounds). Since you’ve already exchanged your earnings from pounds into dollars, you then have to exchange the dollars back into pounds to pay your VAT. That means exchange fees both ways, plus any fees the bank may charge to transfer the money.  

A cross-border account designed for Amazon and e-commerce sellers, like the one from PingPong, gives you the ability to keep your earnings in the currency you prefer. When it’s time to meet your VAT and supplier obligations in the UK, you can pay directly in pounds. No exchange fees!

Now that you know the secret every savvy global seller knows to growing their business, there’s no reason to overpay for exchange fees or making supplier and VAT payments. Just be sure to do your homework. Shop around for rates, and find the best account to help your Amazon business grow.