Amazon Private Label

Amazon Private Label

There are many ways of selling products on Amazon's platform using the dropshipping methodology or FBA. As a seller you can piggyback, create original listings or private label. What is private label you might ask? Amazon private label is using a manufacturer's generic products but remarketing under your business/retail name with your packaging and logo. It's a super profitable business model when done properly, the unfortunate reality is that for most people, it's costly. Most private label sellers use amazon FBA and buy upfront - and follow YouTube videos where you’re told to spend money on ads for every single product. When done properly, you can do it without spending much on ads, but not many people teach this - we do!

Now, before you start with private label, there are a few things to consider. You decided to take the Amazon private label route, now what should you do? First you need to do your research on the product that you would like to potentially sell. Manual research is the best way to do this task. The human eye is better than using software for the most part. It does take a lot of time to research products and it can be tedious- but the end result will definitely be worth it. The best place to do some research is Amazon itself. Google trend search is another great way to do some research and you can compare it to Amazon to see the level of competition. Helium10 is another tool for product research, and Jungle Scout is another but not as good as Helium10. You can test the product by dropshipping the product to prove its validity before pursuing. Just remember to stay away from branded products. The products are protected and they can file IP claims against you If you try to brand it as your own.

Once you've done your product research, you want to check out the competition! You want to take a look at their pricing. Lower price would be selling your product less than your competitors prices. Having a lower price than your competitor can diminish your profit margin. You can have similar pricing to your competitors, dependent on your products “perceived value”. At this point you are just focusing on the product itself. If you can offer more or better features to your product, it will provide more perceived value in the customers eyes and is more likely to do well. If you are pricing your products higher than your competitor you need to make sure your product has new features, improvements or something a little extra. It is all about the customers purchasing behaviour when it comes to pricing and the customers experience with the product. 

Now, while you're researching your product for Amazon private label, you also want to make sure you find the right supplier. You want to make sure that you are doing your due diligence. You want to make sure that your supplier is legitimate and the only way you can do that is researching the supplier you want to use. It's all about having reputable suppliers and that they have quality products, QC procedures, with fast shipping (if you're doing private label dropshipping). Take a look at their prices too. Their prices will have an effect on your profit margins versus your competitors depending where they’re sourcing from. And most importantly, that the supplier allows private label.

So, let’s say you’ve found your product after some intensive research, you checked out the competitors, the pricing and all that fun stuff, and you found a great supplier that will work with you. Now, it's all about your brand. When it comes to the design of your brand or logo, keep it simple but appealing so it catches the customers' eyes. You don't need to trademark your brand right away, but it is highly recommended. Trademarking your brand can take upward to 3+ months. If you want to register your brand with Amazon, then you need to complete the trademark process first. Doing these steps will help protect you and your brand, and your listings on Amazon- especially if you have your brand registered with Amazon. Again, it's not necessary but HIGHLY recommended especially when you're racking up those sales! 

Your next step is to create your listing. SEO on Amazon represents the process of optimizing your product listing to rank higher in the product search results. You can accomplish this by thoroughly researching competitors and choosing relevant keywords or keyword phrases to target. When creating Amazon listings from scratch or building a brand(s) or doing Amazon Private Label- SEO (keywords/optimized copy and content) is vital to long term ranking and success for each product you list. Make sure you're using the right keywords and copy strategies for your listings and not just focus on product value and pricing. The best way to find those keywords is using Amazon's own predictive search bar. We have a whole blog dedicated to SEO on Amazon, and we also teach it in our Mastering Amazon program. 

Your listing is up and running, what next? What do you do with the product you're selling? Well, there's two methods of selling your product- dropship or FBA. And yes, there are suppliers that do private label AND allow you to dropship the product. Even after doing extensive research on the product, it's always a great idea to dropship. Why you may ask? Dropshipping is less capital intensive, and you can prove validity and get a product to sell without ordering 500 or 1000 units and spending money upfront. Once a product is proven and is consistently selling you can send it to FBA. However, before you do, you also want to take a look at if it's worth sending to FBA based off if the margins are higher than they are compared to Dropshipping the product. Or if you have the capital and are dead set to send it to Amazon FBA, then do it! You're the one that's in control of your business. We're just here to help and guide!

WRITTEN BY: Leslie Lazaro