The 8 most common mistakes made by new Amazon sellers!

When hearing that the number of new sellers entering the Amazon platform exceeds 1 million each year, many sellers are terrified. With so many sellers entering, competition will inevitably become increasingly fierce. But after hearing another piece of news, everyone more or less found some comfort. It is said that more than half of the Amazon accounts have been in existence for less than half a year, which seems to mean that the number of competitors has been reduced by half.

Whether it is fear or comfort, it is indeed not easy for sellers to survive and develop on Amazon.

In the past communication with many sellers, we found that the core reason for Amazon account restrictions or sellers’ automatic departure is often that the sellers made one or more of the following mistakes at the beginning of operations.

1. Blindly releasing products without actual inventory and resulting in high order cancellation rates

Many new Amazon sellers randomly find some products to post after their accounts are created, but they do not verify whether the products are in stock before posting. After posting, they are surprised to find that they have received orders. Then they rush to look for the products, but find that they are no longer available on the market, so they have no choice but to cancel the orders. There are not many orders in the new account, and a few order cancellations will directly lead to an excessively high order cancellation rate, which exceeds the standard, and then the account will be restricted.

Therefore, for new sellers, before putting any product on the shelves, you must first make sure whether the product is in stock. If the product is out of stock, do not put it on the shelves, even for practice.

2. Blindly follow or speculate on the sale of infringing products

Some novice sellers or sellers who have transformed from other platforms are ignorant and fearless, some are driven by long-term speculative mentality, and a few are due to inaccurate identification, blindly following sales or selling infringing products, which soon led to account restrictions. This is also the hardest hit area for account restrictions.

Therefore, before selling, sellers must first ask themselves whether the products they are going to sell have the risk of infringement, whether it is trademark infringement or patent infringement, which must be absolutely avoided. If you cannot judge by yourself, you should also consult more experienced sellers around you, verify with suppliers, and ask trademark and patent registration agents to assist in inquiries, so as to avoid infringement due to incomplete identification, which will affect the security of your account.

Of course, for sellers who have a speculative mentality and want to make a fortune by selling infringing products, what I want to say is, dear, it’s time to take medicine.

3. Delivery is not timely and the valid tracking number cannot be filled in in time

Some new sellers do not prepare inventory when new products are put on the shelves. They start placing orders through Taobao, Alibaba, etc. only after the products are sold. It takes three or four days for the supplier to ship the products, and the delivery time has exceeded the standard. If they cannot quickly fill in a valid tracking number for various reasons after delivery, or they update the tracking number a few days after delivery, either the account performance indicators will exceed the standard due to delayed delivery, or the system will determine it as a false delivery due to repeated updates of the tracking number. These may lead to account restrictions.

Therefore, for sellers, it is best to prepare goods in advance. If this is not possible, the order must be confirmed and shipped within the delivery period . It is best to fill in a valid tracking number. If this is not possible, it is okay not to fill in the tracking number and do not update the tracking number repeatedly . If you can use FBA for shipping from the beginning of the account operation, that is of course the best for account performance indicators.

4. Careless product release leads to complaints about non-conformity

Some sellers follow other people’s products because they think the products are “similar”, or when creating products, they copy other people’s product descriptions due to their limited English proficiency, and the product descriptions happen to be different from their own products. As a result, after the customer places an order, the goods received do not match the product description, and the customer complains, which leads to the removal of the listing or the restriction of the account.

Amazon has strict platform rules, and product consistency is an important assessment indicator. When sellers release products, they must ensure that their products are completely consistent with the content presented on the product details page.

5. Slow email response time

According to Amazon's system regulations, any email sent through the Message system requires customers to respond within 24 hours, and this time limit is not affected by holidays and other factors. If an email is not responded to within 24 hours, you will receive a warning from the Amazon system. If the proportion of overdue emails exceeds 10% , the account may be restricted. However, because Amazon's platform has few customer inquiries, if one or two emails are overdue, the account indicator will exceed the standard.

In terms of email processing, sellers should ensure that they reply within 24 hours. If an email does time out occasionally, it is recommended that you click " No Response Needed " before replying to mark the email as one that does not require a reply, bypassing the statistical indicators and then replying normally. It is also necessary to remind you that all emails in the Message system are within the assessment indicators, so the polite reply " Thank You " from customers after solving their problems, as well as various advertising emails received, need to be manually marked as " No Response Needed " by the seller to avoid exceeding the email response time efficiency indicator.

Of course, sellers can also use some third-party tools, such as Bqool , and set them to automatic reply mode to reduce the situation of email reply timeout.

6. Blindly selecting products without considering the consumption habits and needs of the platform and target market

Many sellers choose products based on their own experience and vision, without considering the platform data. They choose products simply because they like them or have supply chain resources, but they do not consider that consumers in the target market do not need them at all. It is like selling combs to monks. The result is that the goods are prepared and sent by FBA , but the sales expectations are not met, or there is no sales at all, and the funds are tied up in vain.

In short, when it comes to product selection, there is only one sentence to say: when fishing, you need to know what bait the fish eat, and product selection must not be separated from customer needs.

7. Over-optimism, multiple SKU distribution, and massive inventory lead to a break in the capital chain

Some sellers think they have a lot of money and mistakenly believe that Amazon’s customers are “rich and stupid”. After opening an account, they start selling large quantities of multiple SKUs and then ship massive quantities to FBA warehouses. Unexpectedly, the market did not develop as they expected. Instead, it provided a vivid lesson for these inexperienced sellers who do not understand operations, telling them what “products are unsaleable as soon as they are put on the shelves” means.

If sales don’t produce results, confidence and funds will soon be exhausted, the capital chain will be broken, and one will have no choice but to leave the market sadly.

For every seller, no matter how strong your financial strength is, you should maintain a trial-and-error mentality, use low cost to try and error, and after accumulating experience and summarizing a successful model, quickly copy it to increase your chances of success.

8. Brushing orders and killing yourself

Seeing that a seller’s listing had dozens or even hundreds of reviews a day, I felt itchy too, so I found someone, spent money, and placed a bunch of orders. As a result, the reviews were not stable yet, and there were not many actual orders, and the account was shut down.

Don’t be too superstitious about brushing orders and reviews. The so-called “operation is to brush orders” is just the paranoid view of a very small number of idiots. For new sellers, learning the rules and abiding by them is 100 times more important than taking shortcuts.