This is a guest post by Connor Gillivan, Chief Marketing Officer and co-owner of Freeeup.com, a rapidly growing freelance marketplace making hiring online simpler.
Perhaps one of the greatest things about having an Amazon business is that you can run it as a one-man show for a long time. You can take care of a lot of things about your business by yourself and still grow at quite a steady pace.
After a while however, you will find that there are a number of responsibilities that may be tedious or too time-consuming. Often, these tasks take precious time away from more important undertakings that can help scale up your business. Other times, these are things you might not be an expert in.
If you find that your business is growing at a faster rate than you can handle, then you might need help. A great solution is to for your Amazon Store.
Why Hire an Amazon VA
For many Amazon business owners, handing over the reins to someone else can be a scary idea. It’s understandable to be a little hesitant at first when it’s your first time hiring virtual assistants for your Amazon store.
However, there are a lot of advantages to having an extra pair of hands if you want to expand your business. Here are five reasons to hire virtual assistants for your Amazon store:
You Don’t Have to Invest in Maintaining an Office: Without a doubt, e-commerce businesses and virtual assistants are a match made in heaven. You don’t have to invest in a lot of overhead costs since VAs will be working remotely. There is no need for work spaces, office furniture, or office devices and supplies.
Freelancer Marketplaces Make Hiring Simple: Getting skilled professionals onboard can take a lot of time and effort on your part. The good news is that there are platforms today that make hiring virtual assistants for your Amazon store easier, simpler, and more cost-effective.
You Can Save Money on Benefits: Since virtual assistants are private contractors, hiring them does not come with the expenses often associated with hiring full-time. You don’t have to pay for things like insurance premiums and other health benefits, for example.
You’ll Earn More: Virtual Assistants for your Amazon store have the skills and experience to propel your business to a whole new level. They can take care of a lot of areas from inventory management to optimizing your ads to help you get more sales to increase profits considerably.
You Can Free Up Your Time: Running your own business is fulfilling but it can also be tiring when you’re doing it all by yourself. A VA can take care of aspects of your business so you can spend time with your family or pursue your other passions.
Five Steps to Hiring Virtual Assistants for Your Amazon Store
There are various freelance marketplaces today that make the process of hiring virtual assistants simple and quick.
At FreeeUp, hiring virtual assistants for your Amazon store is as simple as these five steps:
Create a FreeeUp Account: Joining the FreeeUp community takes only 5 to 10 minutes. Once everything is set up, you can gain immediate access to hundreds of pre-vetted freelancers
Request a Freelancer: Whether you need someone to handle order fulfillment, customer service, or some other task, FreeeUp can find a suitable VA for you. All you need to do is provide your budget and project details and you can meet a freelancer in one business day.
Hire the Freelancer that Suits Your Needs: Once a freelancer is introduced to you, you can do a quick interview to make sure that they’re the right fit. If they fit the bill, you can add them to your account and start working together for your business.
Onboard the freelancer: Once hired, you can start onboarding the winning candidate. Set clear expectations about work hours, estimated deadlines, and communications methods.
Pay the Freelancer Every Week: One of the many ways FreeeUp makes it easy for you to work with freelancers is by streamlining the payment process. Every Thursday, you get billed for the freelancer’s hours. You can review detailed invoices for each billing period.
Common Tasks to Hire Amazon VAs for
Customer Service. Ensuring that your customers have an excellent experience shopping at your Amazon store should always be a top priority. However, customer service is a specialized skill and you need a customer-oriented VA to get this right.
They can work on a number of things including answering customer queries, creating message templates, commenting on reviews, and dealing with customer feedback.
They can also work on order-related matters like creating removal orders, locating past orders, confirming or cancelling FBA orders, refunding orders, and even creating fulfillment requests manually.
Copywriting. A VA with notable experience with the Amazon platform and all its rules will be able to produce optimized listings from keyword research.
Content Writing. Content off-Amazon also plays a crucial role in providing added value to your customers. The hallmark of an impressive brand is being able to provide valuable information that your customers will gladly consume. Think blogs, email campaigns and online courses. These compelling messages will increase click-through rates and mature your audience before you send them to Amazon.
Optimizing Sponsored Ads. Sponsored ads are crucial if you have an Amazon store. They help Amazon customers discover and purchase products that you sell on Amazon with ads that appear in the search results and on product pages.
You need someone who has, at the very least, a basic understanding of . An Amazon VA can help you with the process of setting up campaigns. They can also help you with analyzing the data that Amazon gives you so that you can make adjustments to fine tune your campaigns. An Amazon VA can help you set up negative key terms as well to make sure that you are not paying for terms that don’t add value to your business.
Search Engine Optimization. SEO is an important aspect of any e-commerce business. A VA can help you with keyword research, link building, and social bookmarking to ensure that your website, product listings, social media posts, and blogs are visible to your target audience.
Social Media Management. Social media can be a time-consuming aspect of running an Amazon business. A virtual assistant can help you keep your social network accounts updated, answer customer queries, and keep your customers engaged.
Product Sourcing. An Amazon VA can help you find products you can buy at wholesale prices and sell on Amazon for a profit. They can handle product research, negotiations with suppliers, and securing samples so you won’t have to do it.
Order Fulfillment. Whether you use the FBA or FBM system for your business, you’re going to need the help of an order fulfillment specialist. They can handle tasks such as making sure suppliers put on the correct barcodes and labels and sending inventory to warehouses. They can also track shipments and check units received to ensure accurate and sufficient inventory.
Graphic Design and Photography. Graphic designers play a crucial role in branding your online business. They can help you with designing a timeless logo for your company, creating images for your listings, producing infographics, and even creating covers for ebooks.
Web Design and Development. Just because your business is primarily on Amazon, it doesn’t mean you can’t have a presence elsewhere. You can sell your products on your own website to increase your profits.
In order to do this, you’re going to need the help of a web designer and developer. They can help you come up with a website for your business that’s easy to navigate and aesthetically pleasing for your target customers.
Final Words
Hiring virtual assistants for your Amazon store can help you take your business to even greater heights. Not only will you be able to fulfill more orders but you will be doing it more efficiently with the help of skilled professionals from all over the globe.
Virtual assistants can help you improve aspects of your business so you don’t have to worry about them falling short. Sometimes however, finding the right person isn’t easy. The good news is there are places like FreeeUp where you can have immediate access to the top remote talent worldwide who are not only highly qualified but are also phenomenal at communication.
Do you want to know more about how freelancers can help boost your Amazon business? Head on over to the FreeeUp podcast to get exclusive advice from leading entrepreneurs, business owners, and startup founders in eCommerce, Amazon, Shopify, and digital marketing.