Category

Amazon & Marketplaces

In an ecommerce world increasingly dominated by Amazon and other huge marketplaces, we address how independent merchants can best use those channels to grow their businesses and brands. We analyze selling tools, listing optimization strategies, multichannel selling options, back-office efficiencies, pros and cons, common mistakes, and much more.

Amazon & Marketplaces
Are Amazon ‘Sponsored Products’ Ads Worth It?

October 27, 2016 • Rob Sieracki

Are you considering advertising on Amazon this holiday season? Curious if Amazon’s “Sponsored Products” campaigns are worth the money? In this article, I’ll offer a high-level analysis to help determine if Sponsored ...
Amazon & Marketplaces > Merchant Voice
Implications of Amazon’s repricing software

October 13, 2016 • Richard Stubbings

In “The end of automated Amazon repricing?,” my post from 2014, I raised the prospect of Amazon creating its own repricing tool. Well, that tool now exists. It’s called “Amazon ...
Amazon & Marketplaces
Common Mistakes from Amazon Sellers

October 5, 2016 • Rob Sieracki

My agency is often called on to do formal audits of Amazon seller accounts. In the last 12 months, we’ve audited more than a dozen small-to-medium sized accounts, from companies ...
Amazon & Marketplaces
The Anatomy of an Amazon Legal Dispute

September 21, 2016 • John Di Giacomo

I represent a number of sellers who utilize Amazon’s various services to increase their ecommerce sales. Though I often advise clients against relying on Amazon as their sole source of fulfillment or ...
Amazon & Marketplaces
Amazon Juggernaut Rolls; Third-party Sellers Benefit

September 13, 2016 • Marcia Kaplan

Amazon’s 2016 second-quarter financial statements for the period ending June 30 showed robust growth, extending its profitability to a fifth straight quarter after years of spotty results. Revenue was $30.4 billion compared ...
Amazon & Marketplaces
In Acquiring Jet, Walmart Seeks Younger, Higher-income Consumers

August 16, 2016 • Marcia Kaplan

Last week Walmart purchased online merchant Jet for $3 billion in cash plus up to $300 million in Walmart shares to Jet founders. While this is a lot of money,
Amazon & Marketplaces
SEO: Most Online Shoppers Start at Amazon and Google, Study Says

July 1, 2016 • Jill Kocher Brown

When searching for products online, Amazon and Google are the leading places to start, according to a study released this week. Thirty-eight percent of shoppers polled reported starting their shopping ...
Amazon & Marketplaces > Merchant Voice
Ecommerce brands vs. Amazon sellers

June 27, 2016 • Peter Keller

I’ve worked in ecommerce for 15 years. When I started, those of us in the industry made the rules as we went along. No one knew for sure what would ...
Amazon & Marketplaces > Merchant Voice
For marketplace selling, know written and unwritten rules

June 18, 2016 • Richard Stubbings

If you are selling on a third-party site like Amazon or Ebay, it is important to understand the rules — the written rules and the unwritten ones. The unwritten rules ...
Amazon & Marketplaces
Amazon Payments: Pros, Cons for Ecommerce Merchants

June 9, 2016 • Bruce Harpham

Fewer than 10 percent of Amazon’s 304 million customers reportedly used Amazon Payments on third-party sites in 2014 and 2015. This, potentially, could be an opportunity for ecommerce merchants that ...
Amazon & Marketplaces
Getting Sales Tax Setup Right on Amazon

December 3, 2015 • James Thomson

Every seller on Amazon has the responsibility of paying sales tax in those U.S. states where it has tax nexus. When the tax isn’t paid, that seller builds a tax ...
Amazon & Marketplaces
How to Sell an Amazon Marketplace Business

November 16, 2015 • James Thomson

Most Amazon sellers have enough on their plates keeping their businesses running and maintaining sales and profits. But no matter how long a merchant lasts on Amazon, there may come a ...
Amazon & Marketplaces
How to Overcome Negative Feedback on Amazon’s Marketplace

October 7, 2015 • James Thomson

Say you are shopping on Amazon and you find the perfect product to buy. But you notice that the seller offering the product has 90 percent positive feedback. Yes, one ...
Amazon & Marketplaces
7 Overlooked Holiday Tactics for Amazon Sellers

September 15, 2015 • James Thomson

For many ecommerce merchants, the holiday shopping season is the busiest, most critical time of the year. On Amazon, things can get crazy for sellers, even if they have been ...
Amazon & Marketplaces
Fulfillment by Amazon Necessary for Marketplace Sellers?

August 20, 2015 • James Thomson

Amazon launched Fulfillment by Amazon ten years ago as a mechanism to help sellers scale their fulfillment and customer service operations. Yet, the single most important feature had nothing to do with operational effectiveness,
Amazon & Marketplaces
7 Common Mistakes of New Amazon Sellers

July 21, 2015 • James Thomson

It’s easy for new Amazon sellers to get caught up in the excitement of 240 million shoppers. But, while Amazon recruits more than 100,000 new sellers each year to the ...
Amazon & Marketplaces
6 Things to Love About eBay Product Pages

July 3, 2015 • Armando Roggio

Founded in 1995, eBay is one of the original ecommerce pioneers. So it would stand to reason that as eBay has gone from startup to earning more than $17.9 billion ...
Amazon & Marketplaces
5 Tradeoffs for Selling on Amazon

June 23, 2015 • James Thomson

For six years I worked for Amazon, most recently as head of Amazon Services, that part of Amazon that recruits 100,000 new sellers to the Amazon marketplace each year. During my tenure, feedback ...
Amazon & Marketplaces
Amazon Sues Fake Product Review Websites

April 23, 2015 • Marcia Kaplan

Ecommerce merchants know the importance of favorable customer reviews. Results of a 2013 survey of 1,046 American consumers by research firm Dimensional Research show that 90 percent of consumers who ...
Amazon & Marketplaces > Merchant Voice
The end of automated Amazon repricing?

December 15, 2014 • Richard Stubbings

We all know of Black Friday and the sale prices offered on that day to kickstart holiday sales. But the repricing software Repricer Express created an entire new meaning to ...
Amazon & Marketplaces > Merchant Voice
Amazon’s version of Christmas customer care

December 7, 2014 • Richard Stubbings

At this time of year, more than any other time, you have to work harder at customer care. This is due to two main reasons. Firstly, you have a much ...
Amazon & Marketplaces
SEO: Optimizing Product Content on Amazon

November 14, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown

In “SEO: The Case for Optimizing Amazon,” my article last week, I reviewed the growing importance of optimizing products for Amazon’s massive internal search engine. In this article, I’ll describe ...
Amazon & Marketplaces
SEO: The Case for Optimizing Amazon

November 7, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown

Some ecommerce businesses, especially those that manufacture the products they sell online or acquire their products at a deep discount, are experimenting with optimizing on Amazon alongside their existing websites.
Amazon & Marketplaces
Is Amazon Planning a Shipping Revolution?

October 2, 2014 • Armando Roggio

Amazon is rapidly adding new fulfillment centers, sorting packages for carriers, and even delivering some orders directly to customers. Could these initiatives hint at a revolution in ecommerce shipping? The answer ...
Amazon & Marketplaces
ShopRunner Joins Forces with Alibaba to Sell in China

August 14, 2014 • Marcia Kaplan

When I last wrote about ShopRunner two years ago, the company’s main marketing pitch was its free two-day shipping and free returns with a $79 annual membership or an $8.95
Amazon & Marketplaces
6 Tips for Making Money on Etsy

May 16, 2014 • Armando Roggio

Etsy is a marketplace for crafts, art, and vintage items that empowers home-based entrepreneurs, collectors, and handicraft makers to sell their products to an audience of millions. But like any ...
Amazon & Marketplaces
Alibaba IPO Likely Largest in U.S.; Analysis

May 15, 2014 • Marcia Kaplan

The Alibaba Group, the Chinese ecommerce juggernaut founded in 1999, is likely to become the largest U.S. IPO of all time. The company earlier this month filed papers to begin ...
Amazon & Marketplaces
SEO: Why Amazon’s Navigation Works So Well

April 11, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown

Judging by the number of Google searches for which Amazon ranks, it’s easy to see that Amazon is doing a lot right when it comes to search engine optimization. It’s ...
Amazon & Marketplaces
Amazon Raises Fee for Prime Shipping

March 17, 2014 • Marcia Kaplan

After floating the idea that it might raise the fee for Prime shipping to $119 from the current $79, Amazon settled on a $20 increase, to $99 per year. In ...
Amazon & Marketplaces
Anticipatory Shipping: Amazon’s Approach to Influencing Purchases

March 12, 2014 • Marcia Kaplan

One Amazon obsession is faster package delivery. When CEO Jeff Bezos shared his idea of delivery by drone with 60 Minutes, many ridiculed him. Now Amazon has a new idea ...

« Previous 1 2 3 … 5 6 7 Next »