Selling on Amazon? Amazon Vendors are vastly different than Amazon Sellers.

[biophase]

Do you mean sponsored products? Yes you can use the sponsored products marketing tool with Amazon as a seller but your ads will be displayed BELOW search results....if you want your ads to appear at the top of the page rather than appear below search results, in the right column on search results pages, or in an ad placement on detail pages you will need an advertising account available only to Vendors.

Troy,

I just don't understand how you say that you are an expert yet are 100% wrong in some of your posts. Are you talking about these ads below? How do you not know this very simple piece of information? All my ads appear above the search results. Sponsored ads will get you there.

 

[Vigilante]

I just submitted for registration.

Select "I have a Vendor Central login"

Click "Next"

It will automatically pull up your Amazon login information.

After signing in it asks for your brand name.

Fill that out and submit.

After an email verification it indicates it usually takes 24 hours to get approved but sometimes takes up to 3 days.

I was just going to ask if anyone has just tried to register. Speed+

Could be the start of something great. When someone takes the time to dissect the PPC options and understands if it gives you different positioning than through Seller Central, please update. Right now, it looks like the "headline search results advertising" might give you the ability to position the entire brand, instead of just an item, at the top of the search results.

 

[Ramble On]

Thank you!

I feel silly, but I'm always worried about doing anything new with the account.

Not a problem. At my age I don't have any time to waste. I just jump first and ask questions later.

Thanks to the others in this thread that brought out this info.

 

[Jake]

I'm in.

This is a nice little benefit.

when inserting a keyword it will bring up additional keywords and tell you if they're high/medium/low traffic. Numbers would be nice but at least it's something. It can help when adding keywords into your listings.

Cheers and rep sent @amp0193

 

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[JasonR]

@JasonR can you elaborate on this? Is this something through Vendor Express that I'm missing, or something completely unrelated?

If you look when you're setting up your ads (the right hand column ones on competitor's products) you can see Amazon has a preview of a bunch of the ads - there is one titled email.

I looked into this a while back, and at first it seemed possible, but I think you actually have to be a full Vendor to get access to this. Have you, or has someone you know, successfully done this through Express?

I have heard though, that you can access A+ content by setting up a full-fledged vendor account, and then opt not to sell to Amazon. I haven't tried it for myself though.

It's on my to do list, but just not a priority at the moment. I have a friend who sells both FBA and Vendor Central, I'll ask him but last I spoke with him he said it was doable.

shhhh

 

[Jake]

prove it...

I've been selling FBA for less than 5 weeks.

 

[amp0193]

No crow here...you cheated

Cheating Amazon is using a flat file to upload html images into a product description.
Cheating Amazon is adding fake tracking numbers to Merchant Fulfilled orders to game the search rank.
Cheating Amazon is ordering a product, calling it damaged, and getting a refund and keeping the product.

Creating a vendor express account, and then using that vendor id to open an AMS account? Not breaking any rules there.

and essentially lied...

The closest thing to a lie was telling the vendor rep that I wasn't ready to ship in product yet. Which isn't a lie, but it does keep them thinking that I will eventually send in product, which there's no way in hell I would ever do.

I'm sure they will catch abusers like you and change the qualification i.e they must receive product first to allow access to AMS.

In the mean time, I'll keep laughing my way to the bank

How am I able to negotiate favorable terms? Well that my friend is proprietary...

I shouldn't have gotten my hopes up on you contributing any real value to this thread.

I am also a very experienced marketer within Amazon. Look at the cost per click to appear first "headline" ...$286.12 spent and $4,825.87 in sales...

That's not you being an experienced marketer. That's you typing keywords into an ad campaign and hitting the "go" button. I set up one campaign in 10 minutes, and achieved very similar results, without knowing jack about AMS. See earlier post.

 

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[amp0193]

I do find it funny, that through the entire thread, @Troy Mangone didn't mention the two biggest benefits of the Vendor program.

1) A+ content
2) Eliminating the risk of having your seller account suspended for no reason

 

[Runum]

On another note:

My best seller is not ranked as well as I'd like, and ranking up via conventional methods is NOT going to happen because of... reasons.

I'm considering selling TO Amazon for this one sku in hopes of a rank boost. My logic being... how many "sold by Amazon.com" listings have you seen at the bottom of the page? Aren't they all at the top pretty much? (prove me wrong on that if you can, that'd be helpful) This would shake things up quite a bit for me logistically and profit...ly because of the volume I'm doing. So, before I make the plunge, I'd like to know if anyone has gone the Vendor route and seen an uptick in search rank because of it?


@Runum didn't you start selling as a vendor a few months ago? Any difference in search rank or anything else that you noticed?

I did begin selling one of my products with Vendor Express a few months ago. It has not shown to me to be a help with search rank. Amazon doesn't sell as much volume as I was but I sell to Amazon at 100% profit for me. Less sales but more profit.

I had some of the same product also in FBA at the time. When Amazon begins selling your product through Vendor Express you lose the buy box completely. So, my FBA inventory was just sitting there with no possibility of selling.

Getting a product in Vendor express has also opened up Amazon Marketing Services for me. I can advertise several of my products for less CPC on 2 of the 3 AMS advertising options.

On another note... I also advertise a couple of other products through a normal PPC campaign. My CPC costs have increased from $.60 average CPC in January to $1.17 average CPC now. Also, my own branded products were not even getting the buy box for 5 days a short time ago. I am not sure what is going on but there are definitely things changing with Amazon.

I am spending much more of my time and effort on other sales channels at this time. I am getting a bad vibe about Amazon right now.

 

[Being]

Amazon Vendors are vastly different than Amazon Sellers.
It is estimated that over 75% of US consumers shop on Amazon.com
If you want your product to be seen and purchased by the US market, Amazon is clearly the best way to do this.
There are 2 vastly different accounts you can have with to sell your product on Amazon.
Without going into a lot of detail about each account I will just highlight the most important differences.
A Sellers Account

1. Anyone can open one.
2. Your product is in a sea of tens of thousands of products.
3. You sell one unit at a time. You have a choice. You can either fulfill your own product (i.e. ship your product to the customer) or you can for a fee have Amazon do your fulfillment.
4. You get paid as your product sells. Unless you do Amazon fulfillment. Then you must send a large amount of product to Amazon and to have Amazon sit on the product until someone actually orders it. Thats a lot of money in inventory sitting there until you move it through Amazon.
5. You CANNOT utilize Amazons internal PPC marketing program they just rolled out last year. This means that customers are going to have to find your product through a general search. Good luck selling your product that way as most consumers never leave the 1st page of a search result.

A Vendor Account

1. You must be invited by Amazon or hire an agency that will get your product in as a Vendor.
2. Amazon buys from you. Amazon now buys from you with wholesale pricing that you specify and in large quantities. No more sitting on inventory waiting for someone to buy something piecemeal.
3. Amazon provides all customer contact, fulfillment and returns. Saving you a ton of time and money to not staff these needs yourself.
4. You are paid in full for all orders with 30 days. Direct deposit to your bank account for the entire order...now you're really cooking with peanut oil.
5. Amazon offers your product to all Prime Members. This means free shipping and if you don't think that free shipping means a lot to most US customers, think about it again.
6. You CAN utilize Amazons internal PPC marketing program they just rolled out last year. This is a real game changer for your product because now your product appears on top of the list when a consumer keyword searches within Amazon. This works the same as it does when you do a google search. The keyword returns both paid and free items. Paid is on top which is the first thing the consumer sees and the free search results are down the page or many pages deep. Now where do you want your product to appear?

As you can see there are two vastly different ways to sell to 75% of the consumers in the United States. If you want your product to sell and sell big and fast there is really only one clear choice.

Troy Mangone

EDITED BY VIGILANTE TO REMOVE CONTACT INFORMATION

 

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[Vigilante]

This could have been an epic, epic thread full of tips and tricks and experiences and new ways of doing business and knowledge sharing between the top sellers on this forum.

It still can be.

 

[Vigilante]

So there are different types of searches in Amazon Marketing Services. I haven't watched all three of these yet, and I need to get better educated when time permits about what the results expectations are for each.

Watch our Sponsored Products,Headline Search Ads, and Product Display Ads videos in the AMS YouTube channel.

 

[Vigilante]

Thread is turning out to be quite educational, despite the rough start.

Like usual. Diamonds from coal.

 

[Greyson F]

So there are different types of searches in Amazon Marketing Services. I haven't watched all three of these yet, and I need to get better educated when time permits about what the results expectations are for each.

I'm confused on the foundational differences being discussed here. I know what an Amazon Seller Account is, and am familiar with FBA, but what was Troy discussing? What do vendor accounts specialize in? And what is the Amazon Marketing Services (AMS) referring to... all PPC, Troy's "special" PPC?

 

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[Greyson F]

The thread was all over the maps, so you can pick and choose a few gold pieces from within it.

Troy was discussing becoming a vendor, selling products to Amazon as a vendor much like Sony or Samsung might, instead of being a seller on Amazon's platform and selling individual units directly to end consumers over Amazon.

I assume that aiming to become a vendor is unrealistic and more corporate-oriented? AKA Lack of the Commandment of Control?

I'm actually looking for more Gold/AMA threads on this forum for Amazon selling. I have a lot of threads on importing currently in my bookmarks, and I've found one or two of @biophase 's e-commerce AMA's, but I haven't as of yet seen any resources that kind of walks through the back-end process of Amazon Selling.

Even Youtube Tutorials and Walkthrough's skip the back-end fulfillment, Inventory Management, and initial Bookkeeping that would be required starting out.

 

[Vigilante]

Vig,

I've seen these ads before and had wondered about them before concluding one must be a vendor and not seller. I am brand registered, can you advise what you filed out to receive the above email from Amazon? Thanks

This was just from an update to my Amazon Marketing Services custom page (I added a new product video) but it has been a few years since we got access. Watch this thread though, or others from @AllenCrawley as it sounds like he is about to make this happen for his companies, and he will give you some fresh perspective when he navigates the gauntlet of how to get access to Amazon Marketing Services.

Someone could also shoot a note to seller support, but half the time they have zero idea what you are even talking about, so you might get the wrong information back if you catch the wrong kid in India on the wrong day.

 

[JonnyC]

Not a problem. At my age I don't have any time to waste. I just jump first and ask questions later.

Thanks to the others in this thread that brought out this info.

Just signed up too! Let's see what they say

 

[LightHouse]

Got turned back for not having a vendor central ID.

 

[LightHouse]

I think it was towards the end of this one: http://theamazingseller.com/tas-120...-and-launch-products-employee-shares-details/. Again, I didn't actually listen to it, but someone just told me it was mentioned in there.



You made a wrong turn somewhere.

Here's what I remember, maybe it will help:

Sign up for Vendor Express at: https://vendorexpress.amazon.com/

When it comes to the part where it asks you to input product info, skip it.

Signing up should give you a vendor Login.

Go to https://ams.amazon.com/ and use that login to get rolling.


If I remember, I had some snafus getting access to the ads. I think that when creating my profile, that changing my company name to match my brand name is what got the problem solved.

Rep+. This worked perfect. once it got to the product part, you can click to the marketing tab and accept the terms right there and you have access. This is purely invaluable information!! Thanks dude.

 

[Iwokeup]

I think it was towards the end of this one: http://theamazingseller.com/tas-120...-and-launch-products-employee-shares-details/. Again, I didn't actually listen to it, but someone just told me it was mentioned in there.



You made a wrong turn somewhere.

Here's what I remember, maybe it will help:

Sign up for Vendor Express at: https://vendorexpress.amazon.com/

When it comes to the part where it asks you to input product info, skip it.

Signing up should give you a vendor Login.

Go to https://ams.amazon.com/ and use that login to get rolling.


If I remember, I had some snafus getting access to the ads. I think that when creating my profile, that changing my company name to match my brand name is what got the problem solved.

Sweet! Worked for me too. Thank you. Rep sent

 

[Iwokeup]

Got approved for Amazon Marketing Services account.

 

[amp0193]

Loss prevention companies charge 50% of what ever they recover

There's a company called RefundsManager that does Amazon refunds and charges 25%. Actually not too bad for those that have no desire to get balls deep in excel reports, and just want to get money they wouldn't have gotten anyways. However, you could pay a VA to do it for way less.

But, I have a hard time paying a percentage to get my money back. Especially if it isn't rocket science to do so.

 

[Jake]

There's a company called RefundsManager that does Amazon refunds and charges 25%. Actually not too bad for those that have no desire to get balls deep in excel reports, and just want to get money they wouldn't have gotten anyways. However, you could pay a VA to do it for way less.

But, I have a hard time paying a percentage to get my money back. Especially if it isn't rocket science to do so.

1. Setup company
2. Outsource to VA
3. Profit

 

[amp0193]

If you look closely you can also see Amazon runs email ads. For this particular product, no one seems to be doing this.

@JasonR can you elaborate on this? Is this something through Vendor Express that I'm missing, or something completely unrelated?

Did you know you can also get A+ pages through Vendor Express?

I looked into this a while back, and at first it seemed possible, but I think you actually have to be a full Vendor to get access to this. Have you, or has someone you know, successfully done this through Express?

I have heard though, that you can access A+ content by setting up a full-fledged vendor account, and then opt not to sell to Amazon. I haven't tried it for myself though.

Like...did you know you can get twice as many keywords on your listing if you use flat files?

shhhh

 

[Vigilante]

First headline ad submission rejected for superlative statements. .

Modified resubmission approved.

 

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[Guest14692]

ROOKIES!!!

 

[Eskil]

I'm with the Exclusives team, and asked them about AMS here recently. This was the response from one of my team reps;
"I would warn that I have seen it backfire when a third party Seller signs up for a Vendor Central Account only for AMS purposes. I have seen it tear apart detail pages. If you remember, when your detail pages were broken back in November my first question was if you had created a Vendor account. As part of the Exclusives program, Jason has the ability to do a number of things similar to AMS without the trouble of a VC account."

What he's referring to about broken pages was my listing becoming completely corrupt for no reason a while back, and nobody at Amazon could explain why. Not saying to discourage people, as I'm sure AMS can be good - but just something to be aware of.

 

[amp0193]

Just read over this thread.

Anyone have had issues lately using internal marketing PPC without the intent of sending in your products to vendor express?

I just applied for MWS. Looking forward in hearing updates on how it worked for you

Added another 4 campaigns today. No issues. Even did a 30min call last week with an AMS rep and she helped me out with my ads and suggested some new campaigns for me.

The only thing blocked now, is sponsored products through AMS (which I wasn't running anyways). It says that I can only run the ads for products that are being sold to Amazon. Maybe this is a sign that it will roll out to headline and product display ads as well. Time will tell.

 

[Late Start]

I had forgotten about this glorious thread/OP. For fun I Googled his name, and found this:

https://www.gofundme.com/296ysx7t

Still has a ways to go...

 

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[DBXI]

I just got into AMS. So far it looks like I have it without having to send a product in. I started with vendor express setup then skipped product and bank info. From there I clicked on marketing from inside vendor express and clicked on add bank account. Added that with business info / ein then clicked on marketing again and clicked on ppc click advertisement and accepted the TOS. It brought me to AMS and I had access to run ads. Haven't done much with the ads yet but will tonight. Did not receive a request to send the product in yet. Solid info @amp0193 @exclusives88

 

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