Many Amazon Sellers want to learn about selling supplements on Amazon, because it can be a profitable category to sell in. Even though it can be profitable, it is very competitive since so many sellers are trying to sell supplements.
First Steps to Selling Supplements on Amazon
It’s important to know that to get started selling supplements on Amazon, you will first need to sign up for a Professional Selling Account. You’ll also want to consider that you’ll likely need to pay a non-refundable fee to Amazon in order to get approval to sell in the supplements category. This fee can be thousands of dollars, so it’s important to factor that into your decision-making process.
In 2016, Slice Intelligence found that 77% of vitamin and supplement sales were made on Amazon. While this is an exciting statistic, remember that this category is very competitive, so finding success can be difficult. You’ll want to do as much research as possible to ensure that you are selling a supplement/vitamin that will generate a profit. You will need a hefty amount of money to get started, anywhere between $5,000-$10,000. Once you’ve made the decision to start selling supplements on Amazon, here are some steps you’ll want to take to get started.
Find a Private Label Supplement Manufacturer
Use Google or another search engine to search for Private Label Supplement Manufacturers. Find 5-10 companies you’re interested in and email their sales teams. Ask for their price guides and they will send you a list of their products along with prices for various MOQ (minimum order quantity) quantities. All Private Label Supplement Manufacturers have a stock formulation list. They will make the product using the standard formula and you can add your brand name, logo, product name, etc. to the bottle. You will want to make sure that the manufacturer is FDA and GMP compliant.
Research Products
Find multiple products that you want to source in order to build your brand. Decide what space you want to be in: holistic, herbal, workout, etc. After you’ve decided, find 5-10 products ideas (or more). You’ll want to be able to easily expand your brand offerings and if you build enough brand loyalty, people will buy more of your products. This can lead to rapid growth and increase your profits as customers keep coming back to purchase more of your products because supplements are a consumable and they will eventually need more.
Once you’ve found a few product ideas, find a similar product on Amazon and look at the FBA fees for that product. Input the cost of your product and cost of estimated shipping into the Amazon Revenue Calculator; the calculator will show you the margins and profit per unit. Repeat this for all of your product ideas to identify which products have the best and worst margins. You can use JungleScout Web App and/or Viral Launch Market Intel to identify good product niches. While margin percentages are generally high, the overall profit in terms of dollar amounts can be lower, as the product prices for most supplements on Amazon are in the $25 and under range.
Design your Brand
You’ll want to design your brand somewhere in this process. Most Private Label Supplement Manufacturers will include packaging design in your overall cost or have it as an add on fee for each product. You should have general design ideas for the brand aesthetic, bottle designs, etc. This should be cohesive across all branded items, including all products, a website if you plan to have one, social media, etc. It’s best to try to design products that will stand out within search results and on product listings. Private Label Supplement Manufacturers will usually have a design team that can incorporate your FNSKU (Fulfillment Network SKU) directly on the bottle label.
Ordering your Products
Some manufacturers will have a minimum of 100 units and under, while most will be 250-500 units per order. The more you order, the less you will pay per unit typically. This is important to keep in mind when you are launching and scaling. If you only order 500 units and your product starts selling rapidly, you run the risk of running out of inventory quickly which will hurt your organic ranking. On the other hand, if you order 500 units and they don’t sell very fast, you can be stuck with slow moving product capital. Turnaround times can vary based on order size and the factory’s capacity but most turnaround times 2 weeks for orders for existing products/brand design, and 3+ weeks for new designs/formulations. It’s important to stay on top of ordering with enough lead time to keep your products in stock.
Most Private Label Supplement Manufacturers have experience shipping for FBA. Make sure you ask your sales representative that this is true for your selected manufacturer. You might never touch your product if they can ship directly to the FBA center. They will create your order, send you box quantities and sizing, and you provide them the labels via ‘Manage Inventory’ within your Seller Central account.
Product Listings
Ideally you want a good converting listing that is optimized towards high-performing keywords. Start by looking at the top sellers through Amazon search. Take the main keyword, for example garcinia cambogia, and look at the top sellers in that search.
Extract the titles, bullet points, descriptions, combine them all and run it through a word/phrase frequency counter. This will tell you what those sellers think the main keywords are, based on frequency.
Make sure to include those keywords within your listing to have it optimized for popular keywords. Start with a listing title that you can read easily but includes as many keywords as possible. Be careful about keyword stuffing though, as it can have a negative effect on a product. Once you’ve got a title, use the bullet points to highlight the product features/benefits: talk about the positive aspects of the product, how it will help people, the good effects they will experience by taking it, etc. Try to include a call to action within this text and the description as well. Build up the story of the person potentially using the product: highlight the main problem(s) they are looking to solve by directly addressing it with statements like “Tired of those extra pounds?”, “Want to get lean?”, “Trying to build more muscle mass?” Pitch your product and the benefits, then give them an action to take (purchase, try, etc.).
Pictures are a vital aspect of your product listing. You will need great images with your product filling most of the frame, especially for your main image. They also need to be scrollable, meaning they need to be over the pixel requirement so customers can zoom in with Amazon’s Detail Page feature. Hire a freelance photographer if you can to add in lifestyle shots. These kinds of images can really help customers visualize the effects of using your product.
Launching your Products
Once your products are ready to be sold, start building your customer audience. You can do this a few ways: by building a customer email list, through health-based Facebook/Reddit groups, building hype on other social media channels, etc. This helps create a buzz about your new product(s) to hopefully get at least a few early purchasers to buy and review your product(s). The earlier you are in the launch cycle, the more important it is to get sales.
Amazon Sponsored Product Ads
Selling supplements on Amazon is a huge niche that is growing by leaps and bounds. Many products have the capability of doing over 6 figure sales per month alone, but with that growth comes increased competition. Amazon PPC is the easiest way to drive targeted traffic to your listing. This is especially true for new products, because usually they get buried in search results. By running Amazon ads for your new products, your listings will be put in front of more customers looking for what you’re selling. Amazon ads help your products get found by warm traffic, or customers who are searching for keywords related to your listing. This is why keyword optimization is so important for your product listings. Once you’ve found keywords that drive conversions, you will want to continue to optimize and tweak your product listings to help drive profitability and traffic.
Fully-automating your Amazon ads can help you save time and money by eliminating the need for manual keyword discovery, automatically creating manual ad campaigns for keywords that convert into sales, and continually optimizing towards your target ACoS. Sellozo offers a fully-automated Amazon ads platform that will help you grow your business.
Try Sellozo!
Sellozo offers a simple, powerful platform that makes it easy to manage and optimize your Amazon Sponsored Product Ads and – thanks to machine-learning – programmatically alters bids to help your ads beat out the competition.
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