Welcome back! Hopefully you've been following along and signed up for an Amazon Seller account following my three part instructions found here, here and here. If not, please make sure you go back and follow the steps before continuing with this post. The app is useless without an Amazon Seller account.
Now that you have an Amazon Seller account it's time to do some research. There are many different ways to research items to sell on Amazon. One of the easiest is using a smartphone to scan items with a barcode. There are a number of different apps (Scoutify, ScanPower, ProfitBandit) that offer services to look up the information about a particular item on Amazon using a barcode scan. Each of the above come with a monthly fee (some on the high side). Amazon came out with their own smartphone app in March 2014 and it's FREE which is perfect for sellers just starting out.
Your next step is to download the Amazon Seller App [iPhone | Android] to your smartphone. Go to the link above and download the app from the correct marketplace for you phone. Once it is installed you should see the icon to the left on your phone.
Now comes the fun part – research! Let's get logged in first. When you click on the app icon the first page below will show up. I'm assuming that most of you reading this blog plan to sell in the US marketplace (at least to start). Click on the American Flag and the sign in window will pop up. Enter you username (email address) and password and click Sign In. The main screen of the Amazon Seller App (ASA) will appear. Eventually this screen will show you your daily sales.
In this post, I will me explaining the information the ASA provides for product research. There are tons of features in this app but many of them won't be beneficial until you start selling on Amazon.com. You next step is to find an item with a barcode around your house. Any book, video game, CD, or DVD is a great place to start. Once you have an item look at the ASA on your phone. In the upper right corner, next to the search bar on the main screen, is a barcode icon. Click on this and the following screen, with the orange arrow bars will appear. Once you have centered the barcode between the arrows they will turn green and your phone will vibrate letting you know that the ASA captured the barcode.
They next screen that shows up is the Product Details Screen. Using the barcode information the ASA was able to pull up the listing for the item on Amazon.com. If the Item Not Found screen appears, that means the item isn't currently sold on Amazon and you'll need to find another item to scan for this exercise.
Now let's look over the information that the ASA provides. If you have trouble reading the descriptions, click on the image and a larger one will appear.
All of this information will be critical when making buying decisions for selling on Amazon.com. There are two final screens to look at and then I'm going to send you off to do some scanning to get used to using the app and the information it provides.
Now that you know how to use the app and what information it provides, it's time to do some scanning. Grab your smartphone with a newly installed ASA and start walking around your house scanning anything with a barcode. You want to familiarize yourself with the tools that you will be using – both the smartphone and scanning app. Scan a barcode and look at way the display is telling you. Does it make sense?
Once you are familiar enough with the app, the next step will be finding profitable items. Not every item in your house will be worth selling. But you'll be surprised at what items are. Now go scan and come back and share what you find.
What are you doing today to move your business forward?