Our last blog post about how Amazon’s algorithm ranks products was a huge hit, but everybody kept asking us one question…

Are there any tricks to selling on Amazon you can use to rank a new product FAST?

And I’m happy to report that YES – there are several Amazon tricks 🙂

Here’s What We’re Covering:

Amazon Traffic Hack #1 – Winning the Buy Box
Amazon Traffic Hack #2 – ASIN Piggybacking
Amazon Traffic Hack #3 – Custom URL Queries
Amazon Traffic Hack #4 – Vendor Powered Coupons
Amazon Traffic Hack #5 – Automated Tools for Amazon Sellers
Wrapping This Up…

Here’s the most effective Amazon search tips, hacks, and schemes you can use to increase your Amazon seller ranking for new products quickly…

Amazon Traffic Hack #1 – Winning the Buy Box

Truthfully, the biggest tip for selling on Amazon that you need to know is how to win the Buy Box. so this is a crucial part of successfully selling on Amazon, especially if you’re not creating and manufacturing your own products.

Here’s an example of what it means:

Look, of the 20 sellers for this product, only 4 of them are shown on the product page. You can bet that these four sellers are getting most of the sales for this listing…

If you’re one of the 16 losers for this product, what could you do to win the Buy Box?

Important Buy Box Metrics

First, let’s take some time to review known Buy Box metrics. They can basically be grouped into three categories. For reference, you can see the first page of sellers for the kettlebell listing above, shown to your right.

Pricing

Understand, this is without a doubt the most important Buy Box metric.

So even though the image of the product listing above says that there are other offers “from $15.65”, closer inspection of the listings reveals that those cheaper options are actually more expensive once you take shipping into account.

By default, Amazon lists products on this page in order of Price + Shipping, and that carries into the Buy Box unless one of the other metrics are way out of whack.

Shipping Performance

Normally, Amazon puts an enormous priority on fast, hassle-free shipping for their customers. That’s why they encourage sellers to use their Fulfilled by Amazon program.

And, shipping performance includes a number of individual metrics, including Order Defect Rate (ODR) and Perfect Order Percentage (POP), both of which we talked about in our last post on Amazon ranking factors.

ODR (Order Defect Rate) is how many orders are canceled, returned, shipped improperly or get negative feedback for any reason.
POP (Perfect Order Percentage) is how many orders go perfectly smoothly without any customer intervention.

Therefore, Amazon keeps track of how often you run out of stock, so try to maintain a 100% in-stock rate.

Seller Rating

It seems to me that the magic number for the seller rating is 90%.

Now the listings shown to your right are a great example. Every seller on the first page has a 90% rating or above. However, you can see that a seller with a 90% rating has a higher Amazon seller ranking than a 100% rating.

It seems that as long as you hit 90% positive feedback, anything extra won’t have a huge impact on the Buy Box. Giving the most accurate and informative product descriptions is the best way to have a happy customer. If your product is not exactly or better as described then the customer won’t be happy and unhappy customers tank your ratings.

Conversely, it’s uncommon for a seller with a <90% rating to have the Buy Box.

How to Win the Buy Box

What are the specific steps? Turns out, there are only three:

1. Make sure you’re eligible – Your product must have the same ASIN as the listing you want to be featured on (more on this below). You also must meet all the criteria listed above.

2. Lower your price – If you’re eligible, pricing is pretty much the sole determining factor. All you have to do is find out what your competitors are selling your product for, and offer to sell and ship it for one cent less. Voila, you rank higher in the Buy Box.

3. Use Fulfilled By Amazon – You’ll get a special orange Fulfillment By Amazon icon (see above) on your seller listing when you use FBA. You’ll also be able to compete on Amazon Prime listings, which is reason enough to join by itself. Plus, Amazon is constantly trying to push sellers onto FBA, so the sooner you hop on the bandwagon, the more rewards you’ll reap.

(NOTE – While lowering the price is certainly a good strategy to rank higher, it is not always a good long-term business strategy. You do NOT want to compete on price alone, as this will only start a price war/race to the bottom)

One of the top sellers you see in the list above is WayFair. As I was poking around Amazon, I noticed them showing up a ton in our searches. They have over 200,000 reviews and this seller clearly knows what they’re doing… Just about every item in their shop is winning its Buy Box. Getting Amazon reviews has to become systematic to generate sales.

You can see another of their Buy Box-winning products below, shown here from inside their Seller profile shop:

Amazon Traffic Hack #2 – ASIN Piggybacking

If you know the Buy Box hack, your earning potential on Amazon instantly skyrockets. One of the most powerful Amazon tricks you can use is Amazon ASIN piggybacking.

Look:

How to Find Your Amazon ASIN Number

There are 3 different methods to find your Amazon ASIN number: web address, listing details, or you can use a software tool for ASIN lookups.

We think the fastest way to find the Amazon ASIN is to use your browsers address bar when you find the product you’re looking to sell.

The Amazon ASIN will be after the “dp/”.

The next place to find the Amazon ASIN is in the details section of any product listing, near the bottom of the Amazon listing.

Now:

Steps to Amazon ASIN Piggybacking:

Identify a successful non-unique product and find its ASIN. The Amazon ASIN is listed in the Product Details section of the product listing. (shown below)
Research the manufacturer to figure out how you can start reselling the product for yourself. Find out how much it will cost wholesale, and calculate what it will cost you to ship. Is there room between that number and $0.01 less than the current Buy Box-winning price for you to make a profit?
If the answer to and #2 is YES, contact the manufacturer and start selling. You’ve just found a gold nugget!
If the answer to #2 is NO, you may still be able to work out a special deal with the manufacturer if you ask for it. However, if you don’t think it’s worth it, look around for other products in the same niche… Chances are, there’s money to be made on a slightly lower ranked product.

Blackhat Amazon ASIN Piggybacking

As you can probably guess, some sellers have developed a blackhat form of ASIN piggybacking. Basically, it involves finding knockoffs of popular products and listing them with the same ASIN as their non-knockoff counterparts.

This works because the process Amazon uses to identify and suspend misleading sellers is extremely cumbersome. The seller whose listing is being illegitimately piggybacked has to report the seller and order one of the suspected counterfeit seller’s products to prove that it is indeed a different product.

It should be noted here that Amazon doesn’t have anything against selling cheap knockoffs. They just don’t like it when you lie about what it really is or who really made it. So, I’m not telling you this method because I condone it, but merely to keep you informed doesn’t Amazon seller. Someday it could happen to you! Know how to protect yourself from having your product listing hijacked.

In order to keep your Amazon ASIN piggybacking above the table, make sure that you’re shipping the exact same product – with the same brand, SKU and manufacturing code – as the listing you’re trying to piggyback. You can’t even use your own UPC code. You have to list the product with the sellers ASIN.

Amazon Traffic Hack #3 – Custom URL Queries

The other really common tips for selling on Amazon that we had after our last post was for more information on how Amazon uses URL queries for search results and what you can do to take advantage of that.

So to show you what’s going on behind the scenes when you use Amazon, let’s start by looking at the URL for a search term you might want to increase your amazon seller ranking for. Therefore, when I search for “stove top espresso makers” from Amazon’s home page, here’s the URL that we get, shown in the image below:

In case you can’t see, this is the URL:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=stove+top+espresso+maker

If we dissect this URL, it’s easy to see that the &field-keywords= string is what Amazon uses to ID which search results to show. The /s/?url=search-alias is how Amazon tells itself to query a search results page, automatically sorted by best-sellers.

So, if we’re building links or promoting this page, we could strip the URL down to this:

http://www.amazon.com/s/?url=search-alias&field-keywords=stove+top+espresso+maker

Quick Note: For some reason, removing the ?url=search-alias returns a different set of search results… Not sure why, but either way make sure you keep that in if you want to make it look like someone searched for that keyword from Amazon.

Now, let’s see what happens when we click on a product from the search page:

http://www.amazon.com/Primula-Aluminum-Stovetop-Espresso-Coffee/dp/B001J1L59E/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1422041743&sr=8-2&keywords=stove+top+espresso+maker

The part of the URL that’s bold is all that you need to bring up this product page in your browser. Everything else is there to tell Amazon how the viewer arrived at the listing.

You can see the &keywords=stove+top+espresso+maker tells Amazon that I arrived at the listing by searching for “stove top espresso maker”.

There are a couple other keyword strings to be aware of. You may have to do some experimenting one your own to figure out specific URL string combinations that delivers the page you want to see, but knowing these queries will give you a great starting point:

&node= is what Amazon uses for categories. If you click on “All Departments” and enter the Kitchen & Dining category, you’ll get this URL:

http://www.amazon.com/kitchen-dining/b/ref=sd_allcat_ki?ie=UTF8&node=284507

Just like with the &field-keywords= string, the only part of the URL necessary to tell Amazon to bring us to the “Kitchen & Dining” category is the &node= query, in this case &node=284507. So, if we wanted to link to this page, you could strip down the URL to this:

http://www.amazon.com/s/&node=284507

&field-brandtextbin= is another URL string you’ll want to be familiar with. It’s what tells Amazon to filter your search by a brand name. Since many customers already know what brand they want, you may be able to use this query for tracking and SEO purposes.

To bring everything we’ve learned about custom URL queries together, let’s say we wanted to bring up the search results page for the term “espresso maker” in the Kitchen & Dining category, filtered by the Breville brand. Here’s what the URL would look like:

http://www.amazon.com/s/&field-keywords=espresso&20maker&node=284507&field-brandtextbin=breville

One important thing to note here the use of the &20 character instead of the + character in the URL. This tells Amazon to separate your keywords with spaces instead of actual plus signs.

The Best Way to Optimize Your Listings with the Right Keywords

How to Use the Custom URL Queries Hack

You may remember that Amazon keeps track of which products people end up buying after searching for a given keyword. They then use that data to help them decide which products are most relevant to the original search term.

This means that you can drive traffic to a product page from instagram, facebook, or google using a custom URL and make Amazon think all those people came from a search result for your target keyword or brand. That way, every sale you make from that link counts toward that specific search term’s relevancy!

Make sense? No? Don’t worry, here’s a real-life example:

Let’s say you want to make this product rank higher for the “best espresso maker” keyword in the “Breville” brand:

Ranking-Your-Amazon-Product-With-URL-Search-Query-Hacks

You could theoretically make Amazon think that every visitor to this page came from the search page for “best espresso maker”, filtered to the Breville brand, by directing traffic to this URL:

Now, every purchase a visitor makes through that link would count as coming from our target search term, “best espresso maker”.

Keep in mind, this isn’t 100% proven to work, but everything we know about Amazon’s ranking algorithm tells us it should. Plus, the absolute worst-case scenario is that you’re driving extra sales to one of your products… Amazon isn’t like Google where they’ll punish you for trying to optimize for their search engine.

Quick way to use the Custom URL Amazon Traffic Hack

By the way, if you’ve got lots of capital, you can fast-track this process yourself:

Search for a term you want to rank a product for
Click on your product
Buy it
Change your IP (make sure to clear your cache) or get on a different computer.
Repeat!

Of course, if you had that much capital – it may be better to spend them on Amazon Product Ads 🙂

Amazon Traffic Hack #4 – Vendor Powered Coupons

If you’re an Individual Seller with a Pro Merchant account, a Professional Seller or a Vendor, then you can use Amazon’s built-in promotion tools. The savviest of shoppers always make use of Amazon’s daily deals.

You can access these deals for yourself by clicking on the today’s deals link in the top-most navigation menu next to the Amazon logo (underlined in green below). That link will take you to a page like this:

As you can see, this section of Amazon’s website is almost a department unto itself. Promotions are given their own unique links and listing pages. The part I’d like to draw your attention to is the Coupons link, highlighted in the blue box above. This page takes you to a list of Amazon’s most popular Vendor Powered Coupons (VPC) in a variety of categories. See the page for yourself below:

Scrolling down the page, we see coupons for Outdoor Gear & Clothing, Grocery & Gourmet, Baby, Household Supplies, Electronics, Personal Care Appliances, Kitchen, Industrial & Scientific, and Other Coupons. There are coupons categories for just about everything except for digital content!

Here’s what a coupon page looks like:

(Note: you won’t see this page if you’re signed into Amazon; instead the coupon will automatically be added to your cart)

And depending on your seller status, you can create your own VPCs for any products you sell.

Tricks to Selling on Amazon Using Vendor Powered Coupons

Here are four straightforward ways to make the most of your VPC promotions:

Promote VPCs just like you’d promote any other Amazon product listing. Coupon pages have their own independent sales rank. So, if you’re a new seller or trying to compete in a tough niche, you may be able to get more eyes on your product by promoting a coupon for it instead of the listing itself.
Create a bigger discount or coupon than your competition. Since Amazon tries to give customers the best possible deal, you only need to offer a little bit better of a coupon than your competition to maximize your chances of getting showcased on the Coupons page.
Promote your VPCs on third-party deals sites. This is a really sweet hack that can get you decent levels of traffic with very little effort. Simply search Google for “submit a deal” and you’ll get a list of 500,000+ websites that all want to showcase your deals. Submit your coupons to 10 of these sites per day because not all of them will take online coupons. And if your deal is eye-catching enough, you should start seeing some steady traffic flowing in.
Give your VPCs out to friends and family in exchange for reviews/sales metrics. This is also an awesome hack, which most of our clients use with great success. You can set up a VPC and discount your product down to your total costs (so you’re not taking a loss on each sale, but breaking even). Then give this VPC out to friends and family, and have them buy it through Amazon on their own. Most people will be ecstatic to receive such a deeply discounted product, and you’ll get a ‘Verified Purchase’ review – as well as a boost in your initial sales data!

Important – For #3 to work you really need to offer a standout deal. The penny-pinching you can get away with on Amazon probably won’t be enough to get you featured on the most popular Daily Deals sites.

So not everybody can make use of these coupons or Amazon’s other built-in promotion tools. However, if you have the right type of account, be sure to check them out!

Automated-Tools-for-Amazon-Sellers-Blog-Banners

Amazon Traffic Hack #5 – Automated Tools for Amazon Sellers

Finally, no discussion of Amazon Traffic hacks would be complete without talking about the most important part of scaling any /ecommerce-workshop”> /ecommerce-workshop”>e-Commerce business…

Automation!

As you continue reading, we’re quickly going to look at three of the most powerful ways you can automate selling on Amazon.

(check out this overview of the best Amazon Seller Tools for automating your sales on Amazon)

Please note! This is not one of those posts where we’re secretly trying to get you to buy a bunch of stuff. We’ve found free alternatives where possible, and there are no affiliate links anywhere in this guide.

Keyword Research

One of the most common questions we hear from entrepreneurs transitioning from SEO for Google to selling on Amazon is, “How do I find good keywords?”

Well, the short answer is that there is no built-in keyword tool for Amazon. (But we cover 19 tools you can use there).

Amazon Keyword Search Tips

However, you can manually perform keyword research for Amazon.

Identify a popular root keyword in Google’s Keyword Planner
Enter that keyword into Amazon’s search bar followed by a random letter (a to z)
Get Search Suggestions for that keyword.

You can see this process in action below:

It won’t take long for you to realize that manually finding and recording the Search Suggestions for even one root keyword would quickly turn into a huge task.

What if you had a tool that automated this whole process for you?

Recommended Amazon Keyword Search Tools

Tool #1: 100% free tool that does exactly that – it’s the KTD Amazon Keyword Tool. When you enter a keyword, it automatically queries Amazon’s search box for all the long-tail Search Suggestions for your keyword + each letter of the alphabet.
Tool #2: A premium alternative, we’ve heard good things about MerchantWords (not an affiliate link). They typically use a system that pulls data from major search engines, identifies matching queries in Amazon, and then use an algorithm to combine that data and give you estimated traffic numbers. Still may be worth checking out for some.

Product Re-Pricing

Using the Buy Box Hack a few times, you’ll start running into a problem… Your competitors are using the exact same tactics on you that you’re using on them. They’ll undercut you by a small amount to get placed above you in the Buy Box for your products.

What can you do about it?

Recommended Product Re-price Tool

Easy – invest in a tool that automatically reprices your products so that you always stay on top of the Buy Box. This is almost a requirement when you have lots of products for sale; there’s just no way to stay on top of pricing for all of them.

Tool #1: The best one we’ve found is Sellery because it’s a straightforward application that gives you control over when and by how much you reprice your products. Here’s a screenshot of the interface:

Sellery-Amazon-Repricer-User-Interface-Preview

Tool #2: An alternative to Sellery is RepricerExpress. It does pretty much everything Sellery does with a similarly easy-to-use interface. The perks are that it’s a flat monthly rate instead of commission-based, and it claims to be one of the fastest large-volume repricers on the market.

(NOTE – Be careful when using Repricing Tools, and be sure to keep a close eye on all your product prices and repricing errors are not unheard of, and they can be devastating.)

Listing, Inventory & Shipping Management

Finally, large volume sellers and vendors, especially those who sell their inventory across multiple platforms, will inevitably need a tool to manage inventory and shipping.

Recommended Amazon Inventory Management Tools

Tool #1: If you’re an Amazon-only seller, the best tool we can recommend is InventoryLab because it’s an all-in-one inventory management system. You can create product listings, keep track of shipments and inventory, manage income and expenses, and analyze your business’s growth and performance over time.
Tool #2: Now, if you are selling on Amazon AND an eBay (or a NewEgg seller, or one of the other six supported platforms), we recommend SellBrite. It sacrifices the accounting, financial and analytics tools of InventoryLab in favor of multi-channel inventory and listing management tools.

For example, SellBrite automatically keeps inventory for your Amazon store, eBay store and Etsy store all synced up so that you’re never showing duplicate products. You can also manage multiple stores on the same channel (if you have two Amazon accounts, for example). You can learn more about specific features on their website.

Additional resources to learn more:
18 Amazon Seller Blogs to Master the FBA Game

Wrapping This Up…

So, selling on Amazon doesn’t have to be intimidating, even if you’re a new seller. It’s the largest e-commerce platform in the world, and now you have all the tools you need to make the most of it. But in the end, nothing beats getting your hands dirty and actually putting these Amazon ranking hacks to work!

So what are you waiting for? Finally, get out there buy UPC codes and list your first product! Start with Retail Arbitrage if you’re looking for a smaller investment. But take action anyway!

TL;DR (Amazon Selling Tips)

Use the Buy Box Hack by making sure your offer is eligible, accurate, and priced a penny lower than the competition.
Get easy sales by piggybacking on the Amazon ASINs of successful products.
Drive traffic to your product pages using custom URL queries to “trick” Amazon into ranking your products for high-volume search terms.
Create Vendor Powered Coupons if you’re competing in a tough niche because they’ll have their own independent Sales Rank.
Automation is the ultimate secret to seller growth – identify which tools will help you make the most sales.

Therefore if you have any other Amazon tricks, search tips, or seller ranking hacks, I’d love to hear about them in the comments below! See you there 🙂

Author

Will Mitchell

Will Mitchell is a serial entrepreneur and Founder of StartupBros. You can learn more about him at the Startupbros about page. If you have any questions or comments for him, just send an email or leave a comment!

146 comments add your comment

Hasan samplewala
October 6, 2020 Reply

So rare to see such high quality, fresh and practical articles these days. I found it immensely helpful. Keep posting!
JustSomeOldDude
September 12, 2020 Reply

Kinda sad that we are forced to buy crappy chinese stuff form people who use “Dirty Hacks”
Prashast Singh Malla
October 14, 2019 Reply

Excellent read, Positive site, where did u come up with the information on this posting? I have read a few of the articles on your website now, and I really like your style. Thanks a million, and please keep up the effective work.
Thank you and keep up the good work.
- Will Mitchell Chief Bro
  October 14, 2019 Reply
  
  Hey Prashast, thank you for checking out the article and reaching out! We love selling on Amazon and have done a ton of experiments to figure out what works and what doesn’t. If you run into any issues or have any questions about Amazon please don’t hesitate to let us know.
Hania
January 20, 2019 Reply

Just love this style of posting, a lot of work but well worth all the effort. Thanks for posting your article!
- Will Mitchell Chief Bro
  January 28, 2019 Reply
  
  Thanks for reading the article 🙂
Chris
September 20, 2018 Reply

Really great job if your aim was to teach the world how to race to the bottom on price so that nobody actually makes any profit (including ultimately, you).

I know you call out that this *might* be a bad idea, but then the whole of the rest of the artice is about how to undercut on price to WIN the Buy Box. Instead the suitable, and not to mention responsible, approach is to MATCH the buy box price and then get an equal share of the sales by rotating through.
- Steve
  October 13, 2018 Reply
  
  So why is this wrong, yes it might end up with no one making a profit but isn’t this the tactic WalMart, Kmart and many of the brick & mortar use to undercut the competition and bring the business to their store? Why is Amazon any different?
  - SH
    May 11, 2019 Reply
    
    Because amazon has engineered the shopping experience to make you completely anonymous as a seller on the platform. The stores mentioned gain value from returning customers who might buy more profitable items next time or alongside. This effect doesn’t happen on amazon. You lower by 1 cent, they lower by 1 cent, repeat until both parties are giving the product away at cost. Chris is 100% correct, better to share sales and make $4.00 on 50% of the sales volume than race to the bottom and still end up sharing. If you don’t have an actual and substantial wholesale cost advantage (which almost never exists), lowering the price is a bad idea.
    - raj
      June 27, 2019 Reply
      
      This is the nature of arbitrage, it tends to zero. There’s no reason easy profit should continue to exist for resellers.
      - Will Mitchell Chief Bro
        June 29, 2019
        
        Retail arbitrage is tougher now for sure but people are still making some incredible money doing it!
      - Erik
        October 11, 2019
        
        This may be a silly question but in the last link in Hack #3, is the %20 necessary after the word “maker” and before &field-brandtextbin=breville ?
        
        I know the link works without that last %20 but I wondered if that last space was helpful?
      - Will Mitchell Chief Bro
        October 11, 2019
        
        Hey Erik, thank you for checking out the article and reaching out. To directly answer your question, no it’s not necessary. It’s an extra space to separate the keywords and make sure the keywords were spaced out and read separately by Amazon. It might have not done anything but we know in this particular situation it worked.
Harry
August 27, 2018 Reply

Great work. Very helpful and relevant information. (y)
Milos
July 21, 2018 Reply

This is probably a silly question but is there any Daily Estimated Sales online tool in real-time so we can identify sales rank of products we wanna sell and perhaps calculate if selling such products can make us profit > 15% ? Ex. Let’s say we find FIFA2018 DVD sold @ Walmart for 5$. Using such a tool we can enter the same product name and get results it is sold 15 copies today on Amazon between 15 & 25$.

Thx in advance
Tom Buckland Bro
July 20, 2018 Reply

Great, good share on tips/hacks for increased Amazon ranking. Also, Full SEO optimisation will be helpful as we are also relying on higher click rate that will provide more exposure to products.
Akshay
July 19, 2018 Reply

Awesome… Very Informative . Thanks for sharing.
hyperlink
July 13, 2018 Reply

I want to say that this information is awesome, I’d like to see more content on ePayments.

More comments on this discussion:

Collagen (July 11, 2018): Hi Surely if you want to purchase your own product then you would need a separate Amazon account with a separate credit card each time otherwise Amazon would just know its you buying your own products?

(July 9, 2018): I enjoyed reading the amazon hacks. I leave comments rarely, but you definitely up deserve a thumbs up!

quicken 2018 (July 6, 2018): Hello, after reading this awesome post I want to share it with friends.

CP (June 2, 2018): 2 of my listings (in small category) were hi-jacked by an experienced seller (who has over 10,000 seller's feedback) last week. 1. Hi-jacker's products have different UPC no. 2. Hi-jacker's products have different brand name. I only put my brand logo sticker onto product packaging. My brand (trade mark) is still pending status. I tried to match the price, hi-jacker still won the buy box, even though I am FBA while hi-jacker is FBM. Now, the price is so low that I even cannot pay ...

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Irfan (April 14, 2018): I read about URL query to drive sales. When I determine the url code to use, do I put it in the Amazon url box and click on the Buy Now Button over and over to drive the traffic to my product. Please help me regarding this

Sam Djam (April 13, 2018): Hi will as you promise but i didn't receive my down load i do not know why ,please let know. thanks

Rob Goodwin (February 19, 2018): Comment on Hack #3 By the way, if you've got lots of capital, you can fast-track this process yourself: 1. Search for a term you want to rank a product for 2. Click on your product 3. Buy it 4. Change your IP (make sure to clear your cache) or get on a different computer. 5. Repeat! In testing fba and other aspects of ordering and delivering my listings, I occasionally purchase my own products. Among other things, it allows me to review all of the screens buyers would see through the check o...

Sarah (March 15, 2018): What shipping address you would use then? wouldn't the credit card be the same?

Collagen (July 11, 2018): But does that mean you have to keep creating new amazon accounts and using different credit cards from different addresses?

Gary (January 31, 2018): so you're saying that we get our initial investment back ($10), plus make $7.13 in profit. Meaning our cost to get the item to market to be sold is around $8.99. is that correct?

Angela (November 18, 2017): Thanks for the post. Good stuff I have been rereading this post every once in awhile to refresh myself of what needs to be done :) Bookmark worthy post! Thanks again for info

Ali Naqvi (March 10, 2018): Yes, I do bookmark all posts because every post is soo on point and helpful. Probably the best site if you wanna know things related to business. Really appreciate their work, very helpful.

kritish (October 21, 2017): Awesome post Will ! For someone like me who works with a start-up that helps Amazon sellers increase their revenues and profits, this post is a God-send ;) Don't mind if I use this as a reference for our own content :)

Super Trim 500 (September 26, 2017): What's up, the whole thing is going perfectly here and ofcourse every one is sharing facts, that's genuinely excellent, keep up writing.

Robert Canine (September 13, 2017): Could Amazon have made selling on their site any more insanely complicated??

Darren Lennox (September 27, 2017): Give me a break. Have you tried selling on NewEgg?

Jack Smith (October 11, 2017): Yes, it's terrible. I'll take Amazon and even old school eBay over NewEgg any day of the week!

matjaz (August 17, 2017): Great article ! One question : did anyone did have problem because of super URL ? In my view is possibile that AMZ use this as honeypot and it will at some point delete all user accounts that used this ?

Lisa Russel (July 24, 2017): Good one Will Mitchell! Really liked the reading. I am working for a company whose main domain is optimizing for Amazon. This post will prove to be very helpful for me. Thanks a lot for sharing such a helpful & good read. Thanks.

Nancy Collins (July 11, 2017): Thank you so much for this. I will also share your information with our authors. We are book publishers. Question: What about these techniques via Amazon Advantage? Do all of the strategies apply there?

Joel Oquendo (July 11, 2017): Hey Nancy! So awesome that you like the article :) We believe that these strategies apply across the board on the Amazon platform

EnduroRush (July 9, 2017): I really enjoy studying on this website, it holds wonderful articles.

Joel Oquendo (July 10, 2017): Hey! Thank you so much for reaching out :) So glad you love the site! Let us know if you need anything at all.

jerry (July 6, 2017): Thanks for this awesome article it elaborate a lot; although I am a beginner and just about to start I see this very useful when I begin!

Joel Oquendo (July 10, 2017): Hey Jerry! We're so glad you like the article :) Don't be shy to ask us any question you got!

Pratibha (July 6, 2017): It is very hard to sell your products on the Amazon, specially on the initial stage. I searched for so many ways about how we can start selling on the amazon. Winning the buy box is actually a great idea and I will try this trick for sure. Apart from that getting positive reviews is one of the most important factor to fight with competitors. If I do blogging about my product and give amazon link their, will it improve my product listing?

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Abas kociaj (June 26, 2017): Hi. I just wanted to know, if you were to repeatedly buy your own product to boost sales wouldn't amazon flag that as fraudulent activity? I've heard amazons algorithm is capable of recognising these unnatural sales. Also if that is the case how does amazon recognise this? Thanks

Sean (June 21, 2017): I just came back to this post having read it more than a year ago. And actually ever is as relevant as it was then, the only issue is getting around to doing it all. But if you do it works - its all about getting the basics right on Amazon and then the dirty hacks after that, which give you the 'ninja results' but you have to have the basics right first unfortunately! My experience anyway... Thanks again for the great article!

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Tomy (May 31, 2017): Great stuff, thanks! I'm looking to convert my Amazon shipping addresses to email addresses. Anyone familiar with Email Appending, adding an email to a name and postal address? I've heard a company called TowerData does that sort of thing.

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Boy (April 25, 2017): Hi Will would custom URL help something as placing it as a keyword or the only way it will work will be to set a custom url for your listing and market the link somewhare to end customers? i have a couple of 100 listings and we were not able to get those ranked well yet we tried SEO people but nothing worked your prompt response will be appreciated.

Raya (April 18, 2017): I think, amazon like a jungle. I tried to sell this tshirt hopefully not get lost. Thank for your post, give me a guide on amazon.

Karl (June 27, 2019): If you new for Amazon - you should visit https://fbacatalog.com It's a directory with all kind of FBA tools. It will save you time.

Will Mitchell (June 29, 2019): Hey Karl, thanks for the suggestion :)

Tim Kline (April 15, 2017): Hi Will Mitchell, If I Submit my product link on Different DA authority sites, Is it optimize my product rank?

Yogesh (May 29, 2017): Not likely. Your product rank within Amazon would not be influenced by the backlinks you try to place on websites all over the web.

Sandra P. Polk (April 9, 2017): I think maintaining many things On amazon business, Before this include topic are really very impotent for every seller, The listing very impotent for every listing, The perfect listing optimization can rank well easily. The description is very important Part shells shine Include their blog, I also believe This From my 6 years amazon selling the experience. What do you think?

Mary Ghorne (April 5, 2017): Hey Will Mitchell, Thanks for it. After all i think so its so hard to win a buy box.

Get Product Rank (March 26, 2017): Its really Works I Personally works on it.........

Fatimah (March 15, 2017): Hi! Did you find any solution for this?

Graham (March 7, 2017): Hi there I have a question with regards to selling on amazon and cannot seem to find the answer anywhere! My question is - Can I sell two separate products from two different suppliers under one listing with amazon FBA? (just for this purpose I will use a coffee mug and a spoon for example). More to the point can I have two separate products sent to amazon FBA separately and list them under one listing? And when someone purchases the listing, amazon FBA with send both products in the same bo...

Jia (June 19, 2017): No, amazon will not combine products for you. You need to have the two products delivered to your office/warehouse, package them as a pair in one package youself, barcode the package, and send that to amazon.

Rick P Domas (March 4, 2017): Amazon ranking i think maintaining many thing On amazon business, Before this include topic are really very impotent for every seller, The listing very impotent for every listing, The perfect listing optimization can rank well easily. The description is very important Part sellsshine Include there blog, I also believe This From my 6 years amazon selling experience . What you think?

Nick Manning (January 25, 2017): You dont need this extension. Obviously it only works on Chrome and people use other browsers. Just add the item to your cart. Click "Cart", then +10. Input 999. It will show you the amount that is in stock if it's under 1000 units.

Colleen Graves (February 22, 2017): Any advice if they keep intentionally adding a hundred a day to throw me off? I did not know that they could do this. Now the only choice that I can think of is to check hourly. Thanks!

Linda VK (January 4, 2017): Amazon has not been posting all the reviews people have written, even though we know the reviews were very good, met all the criteria,etc. Amazon sends them a confirmation that their review will be posted, posts it for a day or two and then it disappears. We've had that happen about 10 times and we can't build our reviews. Any thoughts? Amazon has no answer for us as to why this happens.

Nick Manning (January 25, 2017): Maybe they are being flagged as fake?

Bethany (April 3, 2017): This happened to me too!!! With no answers at all from them. They wanted me to provide the lost feedback and who the seller name was. Of course I didn't keep a copy of every review. My guess is that they somehow linked it to an item purchased by a friend or family member or had a coupon. All of which were valid purchases... so annoying!

Brody Miles (December 27, 2016): These sellers will attack your account and use these friends and family to ruin you, they will keep buying your items, leaving negative feedback, report to Amazon that you are selling Fake items, broken items, ect - until Amazon shuts you down. Arrow Media - Francisco Vera, Jeffrey Winkler, Amy Quarles, Matthew J Aden, Frankie Olguin, Sosa Games - Daniel & Amber Foote, Janine Lawton,and basically any order you get from the 46016 zip. Games Ink- Joey Pedone, Aaron Ledet, Peter Hess...

JMe2 (December 9, 2016): Great tips! I have been noticing that sometimes a used version of an item, priced higher than new versions will "win the buy box." Is this because Amazon is doing the fulfillment - although, none of these items are Prime eligible. or what's happening there?

Jason Glover (December 8, 2016): Hi Will, Is there a way to determine (eg. from the Amazon merchant APIs) how many sellers there are for a given sku? There seems to be a way to determine min/max prices, but I can't figure out where to see the total number of sellers for a given sku.

Daniel (December 7, 2016): Thanks for the info. How important is delivering the product on time? What happens if some of my orders arrive late in the mail during the holiday season?

Yogesh (May 29, 2017): That's pretty important. Your seller metrics also play a good part in getting a slice of the pie that Amazon holds in terms of number of potential buyers for a given query.

rick p domas (November 20, 2016): Hello, interesting article. Helpful also, But I think for amazon ranking title description is are most impotent, i also get better result on it, i also recommended title 200-250 Characters, is better and image are also important and auto zoom and description are 1000+ word is better. Thanks for advice..

Ringku Khan (November 2, 2016): hi mate i will submit something but dont see

Claudio Schmidt (October 27, 2016): Hey Will, nice one. Just wondering. First, is there a way to run a report on sales volume against UPC. For example, I don't know what I am buying and I don't want to purchase "cat in the bag" from the wholesaler not knowing if item will eventually sell or not. Is there a tool that will help you to see what's the sales volume per product UPC on Amazon. Also, having multiple accounts on Amazon, all with reputation, I know its against the rules bla bla, but in reality, is this an advantage and...

Ringku Khan (November 2, 2016): Hi, Lets introducing myself. I am an AMAZON SEO Expert. I have been working on product SE0 for 3 years. I will sincerely and successfully work for increasing ranking of your product. I will apply: Purchase, wishlist, gift idea, review, Question Post,seller feedback,Product Review Voting etc. If you give me, I will work my best for you.. Thanks

Mahedi (October 7, 2016): Hey Mitchell, did you gets any proven result for custom URL Queries that you called Hack#3? I just curious is that really count traffic on algorithm? Thanks Mahedi

Sean (June 21, 2017): Hi, I think it all does. Although I have found the only way is to keep testing and then look at your metrics (traffic and conversion). Hope that helps!

David E. Roy, Ph.D. (September 12, 2016): My question is about the book sellers who are posting 50-100,000+ reviews a year. Since only a % of buyers will make a review, the actual sales could be 5x or more than the number of reviews. Amazon won't respond to questions about this, but this strongly suggests that there is someway that sellers are spewing out clouds of reviews, positive in all cases. Further, now that Amazon only lists about 5 reviews per page, and does not make searching and filtering possible, then it is easy to b...

Mary. (August 4, 2016): Hi, I would like to ask for example if I am a distributor of a certain type of product in my country that I get from other countries' manufacturer, can I sell the products that I receive from other manufacturers on Amazon? Will the manufacturer of the products take legal action against me?

Shailendra Prasad (July 29, 2016): Awesome article. One more info I need my dear friend. Now a days every alternative day one of my amazon listing is getting hijacked and we are suffering to release it. Can you share how exactly they do this Hijack so that we can avoid it.

Customer Service Guy (July 18, 2016): Hey mate, great article. I was looking for a good Amazon guide, and this article is really helping getting stated with the selling. Anyway, thanks a lot for the time you invested, that probably took you like 5 hourse to write this crazy thing :)

Sparkos Merriman (July 4, 2016): Hello, I found your article fantastic! I was wondering if you knew of or had any recommendations for any software/website services that allow you to do basically the same thing as your spread sheet with the addition of matching my product identifiers (SKU, UPC, etc.) with Amazon ASINs and pulling not only the fees but Amazon's "Commission" on that ASIN/listing? Basically what I'm looking for is something where I can retrieve Amazon ASIN numbers and other data in bulk fashion by searching wi...

shadowchest (June 28, 2016): As an Amazon Seller, it is also important that you know your competitor products' quantities in stock. I found a new interesting tool which is a Google Chrome Extension called Amzpecty. This incredibly inspects all product offers quantities in just seconds. Just search "Amzpecty" in google chrome's app store and instantly add it to your Google chrome browser.

Scott (November 10, 2015): Thumbs up for AMZ.one. Best so far...

Manuel (October 29, 2015): Does it work for Amazon kindle publishing? If yes, how?

Mike Wanner (October 23, 2015): Hey Guys, This is helpful and the article a few ideas I will test. We just left a paid Amazon forum because of too much black hat techniques. Also, if you rely on Amazon as your primary income (as my wife and I have for the past 9 years) trying these things very softly. We sell stationery, our own products, so a lot of the buy box does not relate to us. But I'd love to hear if anyone has had our issue: Amazon starting LLC's in their category and basically killing our business. Yep, they b...

Eric (October 22, 2015): I think it is %20 for spaces and not &20

Rav (October 11, 2015): Hi Will, I'm an indie author, and I published several kindle books. I do it for almost 2 years and I couldn't understand yet how the SEO of the kindle books works. I got amazing (!) verified reviews (from reviewers I send my ebooks to for free) but I don't see any purchases. I researched the subject for over two years and I got many bad tips from the net (or maybe I used them wrong :/). In addition, I just tried the Merchantwords (free version) and when I got a term in kindle with 2,400 resu...

pamela (October 5, 2015): Hello, I am interested in selling Amazon the tipi imported from China. When I import the products, do I need to change the product label with country of Origin? How many items will be good to try out on Amazon? When you sell it on Amazon, how do you work with their free shipping promotion for like Prime customers when it actually costs for a shipping? Please kindly advise. thanks

Dean Murray (September 14, 2015): We are selling branded watches on Amazon and want to research potential inventory numbers from our Vendor and see what the selling history is on AMazon? I cant figure out how to get that information on seller central.

Jillie (September 6, 2015): Lots of great info, thank you. Do you have a printable version?

Colin (September 2, 2015): Hi Enjoying reading all of these great tips. However I too have no luck with the buy box. Been selling successfully for 4 years. Excellent metrics in all areas 450+ feedbacks 99% rating, lowest price etc etc. It seems to me that the only criteria for the buy box is being FBA. I send out myself and therefore no buy box. Also I don't get this ASIN piggybacking. Surely that's a given. You find a successful product and if you have or can source the same item and make money on it then you list ...

Felicia (September 1, 2015): I am also a Seller on Amazon, I have found a way that helps me with new product launches. I have did some research and discovered "Review Groups" with bloggers and I have been doing this for over a year now and I have to say my raiting went up. I can control where they look, what they look out, how much they pay and get a sweet review out of the deal. I find reviews, Key words and Seller raitings are #1 factors when it comes to buying from Amazon.

alimran (November 9, 2015): Hi, Lets introducing myself. I am an AMAZON SEO Expert. I have been working on product SE0 for 3 years. I will sincerely and successfully work for increasing ranking of your product. I will apply: Purchase, wishlist, gift idea, review, Question Post,seller feedback,Product Review Voting etc. If you give me, I will work my best for you.. Thanks

Pam Disuja (October 3, 2016): Hi alimran, i need your services can you please contact me at pamdisuja13@gmail.com

Jason Veda (November 18, 2016): Please contact me at jasonveda21@gmail.com. Need your services.

Gordon (August 5, 2015): Tools for Amazon sellers that You need to try are at: www.amz.one Just a warm recommendation...You will not be sorry..All best

Travis (August 10, 2015): Ohh you mean that site where you blatantly copied another existing product (but will never work near as well). Peasant

Matt (August 14, 2015): Right on Travis :)

Todd (August 4, 2015): Hey Will great post! I am still a little confused with Hack#2 Blackhat Piggybacking. I have a question regarding piggybacking. I found products that have a brand name on them selling on Amazon but it's not a registered trademark or anything. I also found the exact same product from the same manufacturer but it doesn't have a brand name on it. It's just black. My question is can I still piggyback off of the brand name product I saw on Amazon with my exact same product that I found that doesn'...

Devin (July 29, 2015): Can some one sell on the Amazon Marketplace and at the same time advertise with their ad network.

Terry (July 4, 2015): I read about URL query to drive sales. When I determine the url code to use, do I put it in the url box over and over to drive the traffic to my product? Thanks. Terry

renee (May 30, 2015): hello, i am so confused you say "Basically, it involves finding knockoffs of popular products and listing them with the same ASIN as their non-knockoff counterparts" Ok lets say i found or i have the item already where in my inventory or listing do i copy and paste there asin to get traffic? please help with this question.

Vanessa (May 23, 2015): is there a certain website like a marketplace that i can upload my product and get users' attention? please help.

customizable shirts (May 12, 2015): Fine way of telling, and pleasant piece of writing to take information on the topic of my presentation subject, which i am going to convey in school.

Jerry (May 6, 2015): I have purchased several things off of Amazon in the past and I disagree that the fulfillment center is fast. The only thing they are fast about is throwing your 5 items in a box, breaking 4 of them and smashing the 5th item. Also I find that the quality of the item is much higher when purchasing from a private seller. Example when I buy through the fulfillment center, I think I am buying a loaf of brand A breads, only to receive my bread and find out it is an old moldy generic brand of garb...

Street music (April 30, 2015): Ok I got a newbie question about the piggybacking. Is it better to the highest ranking product or the highest ranking product without inventory or very little inventory?

drive (March 20, 2015): Excellent site you have here but I was wanting to know if you knerw of any ser discussion forums that cover thee same topics talked about here? I'd really love to be a part of community where I can get feedback from other experienced individuals that share the same interest. If you have any suggestions, please let me know. Appreciate it!

Kyle Eschenroeder (March 20, 2015): We have a private forum for clients where all this gets talked about in serious depth. There are a lot of other places online to go to but I can't point to one exactly.

Matt (March 19, 2015): Thanks for the great article. It has great information and it was communicated well. I'm new to selling on Amazon. I'll let you know how it goes. I loved your 5 Levels of Entrepreneurship book.

Andrey (March 18, 2015): Hey Guys, Wonderful blog post - I love your website. I must say I am one of your fans. Of course, I have a question about this post : Is there a way to find which keywords people are searching for on Amazon (like you can do in Google)? Or what are the keywords for a particular product? (e.g. hot pot instead of boiling pot). Do you just put those words in the title, description and that would take care of it? Thanks :)

Jordan Malik (February 28, 2015): Great article but it applies to sellers who have their own product (or they have rights to edit the product listing). What about the smaller sellers who rely on arbitrage (buying products online/locally 'low' to sell high)?

david (February 16, 2015): Great article. I have a question about the suggestion you make at the end of Hack 3, where you say you could do this yourself, but it basicly would be very expensive. Are you suggesting you do this for your own Private Label products, to drive your rankings up, or for your own listing for a branded product, so that your particular listing for the branded product ranks high?In either case, you would still have the product, so you could relabel it and send it back into Amazon FBA, so the cost...

rich (February 17, 2015): While its good to rank higher for the keyword you would be better to offer a coupon or discount with the aim of also getting a good review. It may cost you a bit more but alot less work and can give them a jazzy URL for keywork and get the reviews.. I've heard feedback genius is meant to be good to streamline that area..any reviews??

Libratiger (February 15, 2015): Hi, need more help on how do I create a vendor powered coupon and promote it? I am a pro seller and am only using money off promotion which only lists on my listing page.

Antti (February 14, 2015): Hi Will! Thank you for a great post. I really appreciate that you give out all this information for free. About the URL search query hack: Can you recommend how to drive traffic to that link? I don't own any website that I could use and I assume Adwords is out of the question. Are the 2nd tier ppc networks the way to go?

Fleur (February 13, 2015): This is really great info, unfortunately it doesn't seem to pally to books. Any advice to help place your books on the top of the list (besides keywords)? Thanks!

Dave (February 13, 2015): Vendor Powered Coupons (VPC) are only for Amazon to use... ex... Only for Amazon to use with products they buy directly from the vendors/suppliers.... As a product seller you do NOT have the option to use this strategy regardless of whether you ship personally or whether you use FBA. I've spoken with several people there... It could be used to grab & promote as an affiliate I guess, but that is chump change IMO compared to Private Labeling your own product.

Dawn O'Donnell (February 13, 2015): You have brought up a lot of good suggestions and I commend you on your investigative ability. I would like to caution sellers about just piggybacking on listings. We have had many clients over the years that have done this just to get into a bit of trouble. Yes it is nice to be able to find a listing that already has a ranking that is higher than others and just add yourself to that listing, but you have to make sure the listing is complete and has the correct information. Just last week we...

Emily (February 13, 2015): Hi, Thanks for another great post! I have one newbie question to ask you...When you are going to put your listing on Amazon do you go to the existing product listing and click the "Have one to sell? Sell On Amazon" button? Or do you do something different? I'm not sure how to go about listing new imported products as I have only ever sold used textbooks which I piggyback onto existing listings in the used section.

EJ (February 13, 2015): Great article! Lot's of easy to implement hacks and details.

Mary (February 13, 2015): Thanks for the info. I did retail arbitrage prior to private labeling on Amazon and I found that it was really effective to price slightly higher than the competition. Even if you are a few cents higher but within 1% of your competition (depending on the category) you will share the buy box and possibly avoid triggering their repricer. This avoids the whole race to the bottom and still gets you sales.

Amir (February 12, 2015): Hi, Thanks for your great article. I'm new to Amazon, and I've got a question about writing "Product Description". I know using HTML codes are actually against Amazon TOS, but I need to use bold, italic and underline formats to write a readable description. I tried several tags such as , but Amazon doesn't apply the changes to my listing. Any idea?

Will Mitchell (February 12, 2015): See my reply to Martin above - he had the same question. Let me know if you have any other questions!

Amir (February 12, 2015): Then I would say WTF. Thanks by the way.

Will Mitchell (February 12, 2015): Haha no problem - it is definitely a bad situation for Amazon. I personally hope they loosen up on the HTML formatting - but at the very least, they need to level the playing field...

Amir (February 16, 2015): Will, I have another question for you. Does Amazon charges fees for purchases made using promotional codes? Imagine, I have a product with the listing price of $40. Amazon normally charges $7 per order. If I give out $40 promotional codes to my buyers, does Amazon still charge me for $7?

Sunit (September 9, 2015): From my experience you will be charged $1.00 or 15% (whichever is higher) as a commission from Amazon. The FBA fee's would remain the same. Most of my products originally would cost $5-$10 - but i ended up paying $2-$5 when i gave out "heavy discounted promotional codes"

martin (February 12, 2015): Hi. Thank you for the post! How can you make a nice product description with some html? ?

Will Mitchell (February 12, 2015): Thanks Martin, glad you liked it! Unfortunately Amazon is really cracking down on using HTML in product descriptions. You can still get away with some basics elements (bold, italics, bullet list) - but Amazon is even starting to crack down there. I would get your description up ASAP - as Amazon has not yet taken down any existing HTML listings. They are just beginning to stop new ones...

Ina Krautwurst (February 12, 2015): Advanced tactics here, thanks for sharing. I've been selling on Amazon successfully for 2 years now, and the first couple weeks of a new listing is always the worst. I will try to apply these on our next product launch - thank you for sharing!

Will Mitchell (February 12, 2015): Sure thing Ina, glad to help! No reason to wait for the next product launch though - many of these methods could help with your current listings as well! Worth a shot :)

Ina Krautwurst (February 12, 2015): That's a good point :) I'll go try now, and email you with the results!

Will Mitchell (February 12, 2015): Ah, now that's the spirit Ina! Good luck, I'll keep an eye out for that email ;)

Rob (February 12, 2015): Re. The 1 penny undercutting - are you trying to get n00bs to start a race to the bottom? Because this is how you get n00bs to start a race to the bottom.

Will Mitchell (February 12, 2015): Thanks for bringing up that important point Rob. There are many other aspects of being a successful Amazon seller - but when speaking solely about ranking hacks, price cutting is obviously a big deal. You can instantly go from the bottom of the list to the top. I'll be sure to add a disclaimer that this is solely for ranking your Amazon products well!

Uri (February 11, 2015): So the main takeaway is that to win the buy box you need to be priced lower than the competition? Isn't that a race to the bottom? I thought the idea from previous posts was to compete by selling better: branding products, writing better descriptions, etc

Will Mitchell (February 11, 2015): Maybe I should have made that point #5 - I do not believe it's the most important Uri! Advanced tactics like the URL Search Query hack and Vendor Powered Coupons are much more effective for new sellers. Furthermore, I would not recommend competing on price alone! However, if you're playing a pure arbitrage game - you're going to have to in most cases - at least until you can start differentiating your product and brand. Sorry for the confusion...

Will (May 26, 2015): These have not worked for me. I dont' know what it is, but I struggle to win the buybox. I've lost out on the buybox to sellers with an 82% rating, and I have a 100% rating, and I was priced lower than them.

5 Dirty Hacks for Amazon Sellers to Dominate the Marketplace (Updated 2019)