Category: Amazon
Getting Quality Amazon Verified Reviews
Getting Reviews and Sales Post Amazon TOS Change
Amazon once again changed their Terms of Service, this time about giving discounted or free products in exchange for reviews. Notice of this change caused quite a panic when it was first released on October 3 last year. Many sellers depended on the system of incentivized reviews, and could not see a way around it or a way to make up for the loss. Below we outline what this change means and what you can do to get reviews and boost sales without soliciting reviews.
Amazon TOS Change on Incentivized Reviews
Soliciting reviews is now prohibited by Amazon, with the exception of books and reviews that are run through Amazon Vine. Amazon has allowed the release of advance copies of books for review since the beginning, and this practice will continue. The limitation on the Amazon Vine program is that it applies to new and pre-release products only. Moreover, Amazon controls this program, so vendors and sellers cannot do more than wait for Amazon to invite people to review.
The language in the revised Amazon TOS clearly states that sellers and vendors are now prohibited from soliciting incentivized reviews of any kind. This includes providing incentives indirectly through a third party review service or other similar service. Vendors and sellers are also prohibited from making any kind of connection between discounted products and reviews. In connection, certain advertising and promotions regarding products is also prohibited, such as URLs with affiliate links. Amazon explained in their update announcement that the change is part of the company’s continuing efforts to improve reviews. Amazon has been working on stricter review policies and has penalized thousands of accounts for trying to manipulate reviews.
Per the Amazon Community Guidelines, the updated policy on reviews went into effect the same day that it was announced. Violators may get their accounts suspended or get all their Amazon privileges revoked. Amazon will also be removing solicited reviews that came in before the policy change if they are deemed excessive. Amazon did not give any details on this.
Moving Forward
Without the ability to offer discounts and free products to get more reviews, vendors and sellers will need to try different avenues for encouraging reviews, or other means altogether for increasing conversions. Vendors may try Amazon Vine, but the program is expensive and has limitations on the type and number of products that can be entered. Below are a few adjustments that you can adopt to make up for the loss of incentivized reviews.
1. Re-assess Review Volume
Even if you have not done incentivized reviews before, you should have a pretty good idea of how many reviews you need to make your sales targets. To make sure that you are still getting enough reviews to maintain and increase conversions for your products, take another look at the numbers and plan for how much you will need to work on your organic reviews to compensate.
2. Discounts and Promotions
Continue running your discounts and promotions, but make sure to remove any reference to leaving a review in exchange for the deal. Update these campaigns as well to allow access to these deals without requiring a review. Properly organized and managed campaigns of this type will still make customers happy, which will lead to organic reviews, even if not as many as if they were required.
3. Respond to Existing Reviews
You may have decided in the past not to spend your valuable time responding to reviews. It may be wise to rethink this at this time, especially with regard to negative reviews. Shoppers will tend to look at star ratings and read reviews before buying your product but they may not care about leaving their own, positive review unless they are super impressed. When they see that you are actively engaging with their fellow shoppers, however, they will be more inclined to contribute. Improving your listings and service in other areas will help a lot as well.
Note here that the updated terms also prohibit vendors and sellers from posting and answering questions or other content about their own or their competitors’ products.
4. Follow-Up Emails
Put some energy into creating or optimizing an existing feedback system. Reviews are a vital component of the Amazon sales process, and organic reviews are the only safe way to go moving forward. The simple fact is that if you sell on Amazon, you are highly dependent on reviews. Having a system of following up with your customers and building a relationship with them is going to be crucial to your success in getting reviews.
Invest a little more in crafting nicely worded and laid out emails to impress your customers. Remember, however, that these emails should never be all about getting reviews. Amazon may consider such abuse of the Buyer-Seller messaging system as a manipulation of reviews, which is punishable under the new terms. A/B test your new email formats to get an accurate idea of which emails are working to get customers to review your products.
5. Amazon Advertising
If you are launching new products and the Vine program is not an option for you, you can turn to Product Ads or Sponsored Products. These ads can do a lot to help get the word out by making your new products more visible. Ads can also help you to test out new keywords to see how they convert for you. Running ads has also proven effective in increasing organic rankings, so if you are able to run them for longer you can reap that added benefit as well.
The road ahead is going to be a little tougher, but these changes in no way mean that Amazon is not going to continue to be an awesome platform to sell on. More work will need to go into getting reviews to help products rank better, but this is a good thing over the long haul. The change was made to encourage honest, organic reviews. Vendors and sellers are not going to have to worry so much about unscrupulous competitors who manipulate reviews at every turn to try to keep good businesses down.
If you are looking for hands on help with your listings, account management, PPC set up and management, or building a strategy for more sales and reviews, please contact us for setting a meeting.
Be Location Independent with FBA
Running a profitable business and having freedom of movement are usually mutually exclusive. Any experienced business owner knows that there is always a choice to be made between being present and being successful. Thankfully, the connected world that we live in today affords us a way to avoid being tied down to a desk 24/7 or working a 9-5 job while retaining the ability to increase revenues.
The Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) business model allows anyone to trade in the 9-5 hamster wheel for a business that can be managed from home, the beach, another country, or really anywhere you choose that has a decent internet connection, and flourish.
Take the Load Off
Running a business based on the sale of physical products takes a lot of time and effort. There are several stages involved – sourcing product, generating sales, fulfilling orders, providing customer support, and executing expansion plans – and each of these stages comprises a multitude of small and big tasks that will pull you in six different directions along with losing track of time.
Amazon has created a system that can take care of much of this for you, leaving you free to focus on what you want to sell so you can grow your business – and live virtually permanently on vacation. The Amazon fulfillment network has been continually developed for over two decades and is now recognized as the most advanced in the world. Amazon has the experience to expertly handle the logistics and provide the needed customer service.
With your products stored in Amazon’s fulfillment centers or Add to Cart’s warehouse, there is no need for you to build or maintain a vast warehouse system, which already saves you a lot in terms of time, money, and energy. From these centers, Amazon takes care of carefully packing and shipping your orders to Amazon Prime members. Add to Cart allows businesses to also offer fulfillment by merchant (FBM) to non-prime members for Amazon shoppers and open the door to other e-commerce platforms like eBay, Etsy, Jet, Walmart, etc. If any issues arise on the customer end, Amazon is there again to step up and help resolve any complaints. With the FBM orders Add to Cart handles, they can either help you with the customer service side or assist you with a dedicated virtual assistant to manage all of your customer service needs.
With FBA, you are not limited to the products that you sell on Amazon. You can use Amazon’s superior network to keep all your stock in one place and fulfill all the orders that you get from your website or other sales channels. In addition, you can leverage a user-friendly online interface to manage all your inventory and communicate to Amazon how you want it handled.
If you are not sure that you want to go this way, Add to Cart Consultants also provides an excellent alternative backed by a wealth of experience. If you want to have more control over your warehousing, logistics, labeling, and shipping, we can provide you with a customized solution that understands the concerns that are unique to your business and your customers. We also provide consulting services to help you more effectively manage and build your business.
By cutting out all the middle parts to your business responsibilities, you are left with ample resources to refocus on managing products and sales exclusively, which means that you can start to scale your business and broaden your target market.
FBA Perks
Once you get started with FBA, you are qualified for a number of additional benefits that can further reduce your business costs. For instance, Amazon Prime members can take advantage of Amazon Prime FREE Two-Day Shipping. The longer you use FBA, the greater your chances are of winning additional benefits, such as the Buy Box. This prime location for your Add to Cart button dramatically increases your visibility to customers. As you learn more about Amazon’s policies and show consistently high performance as a seller on criteria like pricing and feedback, you increase your chances of being awarded.
Registering for an Amazon.com seller account earns you the privilege of selling not only locally but also on Amazon.ca (Canada) and Amazon.com.mx (Mexico). By using FBA on these marketplaces as well, you can instantly increase your customer reach by as much as 200%.
Where to Get Legit Barcodes
There are a ton of websites out there claiming to provide legal UPCs and EAN barcodes for cheap. It is no wise, however, to just pick up any number of codes from these sellers without verifying first if they are legit. The absolute best place to purchase your codes is from GS1, but there are several other sites that have been authenticated via the GS1 database. We outline a few of these sellers below who have the most competitive pricing and the advantages of purchasing from them.
The GS1
GS1 is a nonprofit group that sets standards for business processes internationally. You can register your company with them on their website to get your own legal identification number that will become the first part of the UPCs you are issued. This registration can be costly, however – several hundred dollars for the application and a smaller annual fee that is based on your revenue projections and the number of products you predict you will need UPCs for in the next year. Registering with GS1 is therefore only advisable if you plan to purchase thousands of UPCs.
Amazon recommends purchasing from GS1 for security reasons, such as bogus sellers passing off recycled barcodes or codes with nonexistent (unregistered) prefixes. GS1 is the safest option, but if you don’t need too many codes, a reseller is the more cost-efficient option.
Resellers
The first thing to do when searching for a UPC or EAN reseller is to check if they are duly registered with GS1, and verify their company identification number. Next, check that you will actually be buying barcodes and not renting them, i.e. paying the reseller to use their codes with their identification number prefix.
These barcode provided by Cheap UPC Barcode are guaranteed to be genuine and unique and never used before. They don’t get refreshed codes that have been used before. The codes are for your exclusive use worldwide and include a certificate of authenticity. A bonus they offer, they will generate the barcode image files for you in multiple formats. This is great when designing boxes for your product and your supplier or graphic artist needs certain file formats.
Special Promotion they are running and the best deal with have seen. $1.99 per barcode that is registered with the GS1. At this price, they still include the JPG, PNG, and vector files to you.
Legal Barcodes
This reseller is a Maryland-based company that has been in business for eleven years. They are BBB accredited with an A+ rating. Legal Barcodes is a verified seller of GS1-compliant codes and guarantees that their UPCs and EANs will be accepted by retail stores and Amazon marketplaces worldwide. They do not resell old barcodes and offer services to register your new codes under your name. They further guarantee a one-time purchase and no expiry on your barcodes.
Legal Barcodes is currently offering a promo where you can purchase a single barcode via Paypal for USD 7.50 and get two more free. The promo runs to up to USD 170 for which you will receive 1500 barcodes. Plus, if you can find a legitimate reseller that offers better prices than these, Legal barcodes will match it and take an additional 10% off the cost of your order.
In business since 1993, this reseller also offers UPCs and EANs accepted by Amazon, eBay, iTunes, Home Depot, and top online stores and retailers. They likewise guarantee no renewal fees, plus offer same-day turnaround, and high quality professional printing for orders of 100 and above.
The price for a single barcode is USD 5, 10 for USD 15, 25 for USD 25, and goes down to as little as USD 0.045 for a purchase of 100,000 codes. They also have a lowest price guarantee, but are not competitive at the moment with the above promo running.
There are a lot of other resellers out there that you can check out, starting with the list found on the Authenticated UPC Registration Directory. This is also a decent place to check on registered prefixes if for some reason you are unable to get the information from GS1.
If you need more information or advice on barcodes or labeling, don’t hesitate to contact us. Add to Cart Consultants also provides a variety of other consultation services including warehousing, shipping and logistics.
Starting Amazon FBA? Make sure you know about your Sales Tax obligation
The 20th of every month, every 3rd month, every 6th month, on annually; this sales tax due date will loom over you and penalize you if you are late! Selling online and sales tax can be very difficult for anyone to understand. Some old school accountants might even wonder and have to search for the answer on this messy and complicated but required business practice you have to perform. Basically, if you sell on Amazon and have Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA), you probably (if not 100%) have to pay sales tax in that State, County, and City.
Since FBA allows you and Amazon to ship products to customers within 2 days, Amazon places your products across the country closer to all your (Amazon’s) customers. If you are new to FBA or been selling for a while, you might have already been required to collect sales tax and be paying that state. Yes, we know your business is not located in a state that has no sales tax for Amazon purchases, but your business and product is national and you have product all over the US via FBA.
What happens when Amazon gets your shipment in? You might ask, I shipped everything to North Carolina and they don’t require a sales tax. Amazon FBA opens your box of goodies and leverages their mass network of warehouses across North America. They break up your units shipped to them and send them all over. They want to be able to ship an item to a California resident from a warehouse in California. This saves Amazon on shipping rates to. Ever seen one of those Amazon trucks? It could be carrying your products from one of their warehouses to the next waiting for a happy customer to place their order. Amazon FBA feature also allows Amazon to fulfill your 3rd party sales channel orders. Know how to do this? We talk about it here.
Love Amazon FBA? Of course you do but quickly you will see the con of FBA called, Sales Tax Nexus. Have to say, all the benefits of having these services outweighs the burden of sales tax.
We’ve mentioned sales tax nexus a few times, so what is it?
Nexus: Sufficient physical presence.
Basically it’s a legal term that describes having physical products an out of state company has and is doing business (selling) in that state which would require to collect and PAY tax in that state.
If you want to read more about nexus and your possible obligations; we suggest checking out the pages of articles on taxjar.com
Without getting too deep into politics, states, counties, and cities survive off taxes to pay for this or that program in their respected geopolitical location. So, charging sales tax is the perfect way to generate income for that government office. Nexus as always been around to describe in state sellers, but now the definition has expanded and includes the online seller or out of state business.
Raise your right hand and say sadly, I have nexus and will agree to collect and pay sales tax. Now the fun part begins. You must go onto the various states that require you to collect and pay sales tax and register for a sales tax ID. Once registered you must submit your sales tax ID to Amazon. On your Amazon Seller Central page, Settings -> Tax Settings -> “View/Edit your Tax Calculations” -> enter in your sales tax ID for that state -> Review Changes -> and just follow the continue and accepting pages.
Now, why are we telling you this? With Add to Cart Consultants, we offer warehousing within the state of Florida and provide international shipping from China to the US that might come to our warehouse before getting sent to Amazon or another 3rd party. When you fill out your sales tax information, you are going to be asked when you had Nexus in that state. Since Amazon won’t charge sales tax until you have a Sales Tax ID, you will be paying for this uncollected tax out of the profit you make on your goods. What if you don’t apply nor tell the state that you sell as an out of state business to one of their residents? They will eventually catch on and ponce on you like a puma. I personally don’t want a puma pouncing on me. They will latch on and keep on you until you pay with interest and penalties, which might be worse than a puma.
With our fulfilled by merchant services, you will also be required to charge sales tax for shipments we provide for you. The good news is, when selling on Amazon, either FBA or FBM, Amazon will charge for you sales tax. You don’t have to make any changes here to offer FBM to potential customers. Being able to offer FBM to our clients expands their ability to sell on other platforms like Amazon.ca, .uk, .com.mk, sears.com, jet.com, ebay.com, etc and etc. Since you are set up with sales tax ID and you have the products here in the US, we are here to help you expand your business into other arenas to showcase your brand and products. We do all the tracking, shipping, and reporting to the platforms so that both the software and customer knows their order has shipped.
Haven’t had enough sales tax information and still have questions? Here are a few links to some tax software sites that can provide more info or answer some questions for you. Also, please feel free to send us any questions you might have at Add to Cart Consultants Contact us.
Next Step:
- Locate where your inventory is and when you established Nexus
- Determine if your product is a taxable product
- When are you required to pay sales tax (you might owe for back months)
- Are you monthly, quarterly, semiannual, or annual?
- Should you file your sales tax or have someone like Taxjar auto file for you or your accountant.
We are here to help point you in the right direction and get you the resources needed to succeed in your business. We are more than just someone people moving boxes, we can help with your shipping logistics, inspections, labeling, and even a little knowledge on tax law. We look forward to hearing from you and helping your business grow.
We are, by no means, state sales tax CPA’s and all info should be checked with your accountant.
Amazon Storage Fees; Get Ready to Pay More in 2017
Did you survive the 4th quarter Monthly Inventory Storage Fee increase? The monthly storage fee goes up almost 400% during the Months of November and December. These are most company’s crucial months for selling and want the most inventory sitting and waiting to be bought. We, Add to Cart Consultants, know what this pain is and what it feels like to pay high storage fees. That is what got us to help the small business that doesn’t want to worry about having these fees.
How Our Services Can Help the FBA Seller:
First, Add to Cart Consultants provides free pick & pack services to clients that warehouse their products in our warehouse when items are being sent to FBA. The client is still responsible for the freight. This is great; a FREE service. We want our clients to have a ZERO storage fees every month with Amazon. So, to help our clients do this is by offering free pick and pack for their FBA shipments. We warehouse the product, you let us know how many items to send, we go in as an admin to your Amazon Seller Central Account, input the data, package up the units, label the boxes, and off it goes to Amazon FBA. We recommend a bi-weekly shipment to Amazon and we can help you with your inventory control with a simple formula.
Second, we have a lower yearly storage fee than Amazon. Our current rate is $30 per pallet size. We define a pallet size as 48”x48”x48” which breaks down the $30 to $0.47/cuft. Amazon was charging $0.54/cuft and is increasing that to $0.64/cuft. Now for October, November, December 2017, our per pallet price will go up to $2.35/cuft. For 2016, Amazon only increased the storage fee for November and December. This year (2017), they are adding in October with the increase in storage fees. What’s the big picture price difference? That’s almost $150.40/pallet per month compared to our $30/month. So, why pay more?
Third, You don’t have to send all your inventory to Amazon every time. Buy more units from your supplier to get a better rate and have them shipped to a non Amazon warehouse to inspect, label, and warehouse until the units are needed at an FBA center. Many suppliers will offer you a better per unit price if you order more. Worrying about your storage fee might have held you back from placing a large order.
Forth, Add to Cart Consultants will ship your product for you to customers that are Fulfilled by Merchant. Ever thought about getting onto another e-commerce platform but didn’t know what to do about sending your customers the order? Well, since we are warehousing the product for you, we have the ability to pick & pack the item and ship it off. We aren’t greedy when it comes to getting your orders out. The client gets charged the same amount of shipping that we do; no bump up in shipping rates for FBM.
How does Amazon calculate the Storage Fee?
First, get the dimensions of your product in inches. You will get three measurements; length, width, and height.
Second, to get a cubic foot into inches; 12”x12”x12”= 1,728”
Third, Multiple your three measurements from step 1 (LxHxW) and divide by step 2 (1,728). This gives you you’re cubic feet. An example a gizmo is 3” by 9” by 17” divided by 1,728 = .27 cu. Ft.
1st through 3rd Qtr: $0.64 x .27cu. ft x 500 units = $86.40/month
4th Qtr: $2.35 x .27 cu ft x 500 units = $317.25
Our Client’s storage fee
All Year: $0.47 x .27 cu. Ft. x 500 units = $63.45
Year Cost Difference
Amazon: ($86.40 x 9 month) + ($63.45 x 3 months) = $967.95
Add to Cart: $63.45 x 12 months = $761.40
Difference: $206.55 in SAVINGS
Now times this for how many different SKU’s you might have and the savings start to add up.