Jane Hopkins MBE

As you know we at mumsclub love devising ways to help women in business connect with each other.  A month or so ago we launched #bizmumfollow whereby each Monday we dedicate our twitter account to connecting mums in business.

You simply tweet who you are and what you do, (don’t forget the hashtag) then simply look at all the other posts, follow and tweet with as many as you want to, to build your network. And we RT as many as we can to our 8,000 & growing followers.

• The key is building relationships so you should make the effort to engage with your new followers, and those who you are now following but engaging with them – if you follow somebody let them know about it!

So in addition to #bizmumfollow we are launching a new one. This is a fabulous idea from Donna, the mum behind Little Lily Pad Co.

The idea for #passiton is to recommend people you tweet with to others from within your network. A little like #followfriday, but we don’t want to squeeze as many twitter names as possible into 140 characters, we want you to tweet just one name, along with a reason why. But you can tweet as many times as you wish.

Then when you look at the other tweets that include #passiton, you can decide who you would like to be connected to – you can then follow them and tell them about it – via a tweet!

Example:

my #passiton goes to @littlelilypadco – mum of 2, sells gorgeous well priced baby gifts, is also super supportive & has genius ideas.

You could reply saying:

“Hi @littlelilypadco, I saw you on #passiton & I’m following you now! I make baby gifts, perhaps we could talk?”

Or

“Hi @littlelilypadco, I saw you on #passiton, we have lots in common & I’m following you now ”

So from now on, Thursdays will be #passiton day! So pass it on!

Quick note:

With popular hashtags there is the chance of spammers getting involved. But we are not touting for high quantity random followers so the attraction is not so high, and having to purposefully recommend someone will deter spam a little, but should it become a problem we will change the hashtag to something similar. We’ll keep you posted.

Again, we hope you enjoy and get lots out of it, I’d love to hear your comments on how it’s working for you here.

Until next time,

Jane

Had an interesting email from Frances last week, who’s a mumsclubber who’s having great success on Amazon, she offered to share her tips, so here it is. Thank you Frances, it’s a great read.

I’d love to hear your thoughts…

How to sell on Amazon

I’m Frances from bigbooklittlebookcardboardbox and I sell my children’s bookcase through my website, through ebay and via Amazon. Approximately 50% of my sales come from Amazon, but I see very few MumsClub members selling there, so I wanted to share my experience and provide some tips about making money through this vast marketplace.

If you want to sell an item that is already for sale on Amazon, you just need to see if you can match the price that the item is currently available for (taking into account the fees). Sadly, the competition is fierce and many online sellers decide they can’t compete on  Amazon. If you sell your own unique product, or have an item that no one else sells on Amazon, then you can set your own price and make a good profit despite Amazon’s notoriously high fees.

Getting started

Setting up an Amazon seller account is straightforward. You will need to decide whether to go for an Individual seller account (paying fees of 80p per item sold, + order value percentage) or a pro-merchant account (monthly fee of £28 + order value percentage). As a rule of thumb, you pay Amazon approx. 20% of your total order value (including postage). So the fees are considerably higher than ebay, but Amazon payments are disbursed directly into your bank account, so there are no paypal charges.

Obviously the individual seller account is best while testing the water, as there are no fees if you do not sell. The Pro-merchant account becomes mathematically cost effective at 32 items per month, but I actually found becoming a pro-merchant increased sales in itself, presumably through greater visibility in the search results, so I would recommend switching to pro when you are averaging about 25 items per month. Also, you won’t be considered for the Blue Box (see below) until you become a pro merchant.

Tip – don’t simply upgrade your existing customer account to a seller account. Set up a brand new seller account. If you just upgrade, there is an anomaly where there are some restrictions to your account, e.g. you can’t set your own postage bands.

Acquiring a barcode/EAN new seller account. If you just upgrade, there is an anomaly where there are some restrictions to your account, e.g. you can’t set your own postage bands

It is only possible to sell items that are in the Amazon catalogue. Unlike ebay, each item appears just once on Amazon, and all sellers of that item list their ‘offer’ against it (which explains why Amazon is such a competitive marketplace – it’s generally the cheapest seller who gets the sale).

If you have a unique item, you will need to get a EAN number (barcode) for it in order to input it into the catalogue. Barcodes can be purchased legitimately for approx. £8 each from www.barcodestalk.co.uk   You will need a different barcode for each variation of a product (colour, size etc).

In order to add a new item to the Amazon catalogue, you need to have a pro-merchant (paid subscription) account.

Tip – Pro-merchant accounts are currently offered first month subscription free, so sign up as a pro-merchant, add your item to the catalogue, then downgrade your account to individual seller before the month is up, to avoid paying the subscription fee.

Product listing

If you are adding your own product to the catalogue, give as much info as possible in your product descriptions and use the best pictures you can. Take a look at my listing here for some ideas – I’m not saying it’s perfect (I’m tweaking it all the time!) but you’ll see there are plenty of pictures, technical details, an in-depth product description and press reviews. You can also offer promotions (e.g. buy 2 get 5% off) through Amazon.

Tip – Amazon Product reviews really drive sales, so encourage as many of your customers as possible to leave you a positive product review.

Managing orders

When an order is made on Amazon, you get an email notification. You need to log in to Amazon to get the customer’s address, and confirm the shipment. All email correspondence is done through Amazon (you don’t get customer email addresses). You are paid every two weeks by Amazon directly into your bank account. Amazon automatically debit the monthly fee (if applicable) and their commission from your account balance.

The Amazon Customer

Amazon customers:

• Are loyal (they will buy from Amazon, even if the product is available cheaper elsewhere)
• Are high-value (are the demographic who will pay for premium products)
• Expect high levels of customer service
• Rarely leave feedback. Only about 5-10% amazon customers leave feedback (and naturally the dissatisfied ones will more readily!). This is something to watch as Amazon monitor feedback as part of their seller performance metrics  (along with returns rate, late despatch, A-Z claims  etc) and poorly performing sellers can have restrictions made on their selling activities (and lose eligibility for the blue box.

Tip – Amazon provides an ‘A-Z guarantee’ to its customers and if anything goes wrong, Amazon will always side with the buyer (e.g. award them a refund without insisting they return the item). Therefore always deal promptly with any correspondence from Amazon customers, as you do not want to get an A-Z claim against you.

The Blue Box

The ‘blue box’ (the ‘buy now/add to cart’ option) is vitally important to Amazon sellers. Approx. 95% of sales go to the seller who ‘owns’ the blue box. If you are competing with other Amazon sellers then the blue box is the holy grail. Eligibility for the Blue Box is largely down to price – Amazon usually awards the blue box to the lowest priced merchant (and rotate the honour where several equally-performing merchants offer the product at the same price). Naturally, if Amazon themselves sell the product, they will always award themselves the blue box! If you sell your own unique item then you’ll obviously get all the sales regardless of whether you have the blue box, but I noticed a slight uplift in conversions once I got the blue box, as it’s ‘one-click’ rather than three clicks to add the product to basket.

Tip – Eligibility for the Blue Box is a closely guarded secret but it took me about a year and 400 sales before I got the Blue Box for my product.

I hope you find this guide useful. Please do investigate selling on Amazon – it’s possible it won’t work for your business but it’s such a big a marketplace, and growing year on year, that business mums can’t afford to disregard it out of hand.