My Amazon FBA Germany 11,586.85 EUR sales UPDATE!

Welcome back!

To follow up on my recent Amazon France update, I want to share my progress on another hugely popular Amazon European marketplace—Amazon.de! I have been amazed by the results I have seen so far, so I hope this post will inspire more sellers to take action, register for the Pan-European program and expand their international sales.

I started selling in Germany in August. In the beginning, I was just using my UK stock via the European Fulfilment Network (EFN) FBA program. As you can see, I made 26 sales in August, which wasn’t a full month as I started selling on the 10th of August:

This resulted in a profit of about €78, as I’m selling the product for €9.99 with a profit of €3 per unit sold. My initial goal with the European expansion was to make at least 25 sales a month in each country in order to cover my VAT service costs, so I was happy to see that I reached that goal in the first month without even switching on the Pan-EU program.

September, my first full month of trading, resulted in 40 sales. However, I was still using the EFN as I was waiting for my German tax number to arrive:

At a profit of €3 per unit sold, these 40 sales generated a total profit of €120.

On the 8th of October, I finally turned on the Pan-EU program and my sales instantly skyrocketed:

I sold 410 units in October 2019, which resulted in sales worth €4,068.70 and a net profit of about €1,230.

This was amazing to see and got me very excited! This whole process didn’t even take that much effort. It just required a little time on the VAT registration part (which Amazon paid for) and translating the listing into German. Basically, the profit I made in October has already offset all of those costs for this year, so I’ll be making pure profit from here on out.

November hasn’t ended yet, but it looks like I will sell about 800 units or so. This roughly translates into an extra profit of €2000+. And that’s in just one month by simply offering the exact same product I already sell on Amazon.co.uk.

Now, I did spend some money on advertising (PPC ads) in October, which was just above the €200 mark, so I still have to account for that.

I use PPC ads on all of the regional Amazon marketplaces to launch my products and get them ranked quickly. What’s great about Amazon.de is that the click prices are 3x, 4x and even 5x lower than in the UK! This means that I can be aggressive with bidding, get sales in quickly, and still maintain a profitable ACoS, even at the product launch stage.

I believe that this is the biggest advantage of selling on regional EU Amazon websites. The competition is a fraction of what it is in the UK, not to mention the US PLUS click prices, which are at a level that allows ANYONE to use PPC with great success and stay profitable. When click prices are so cheap, you don’t have to be super smart about it. It helps, for sure, but it will still work even if you only set up a simple manual campaign for your most obvious keywords.

Obviously, I can’t say that this is true for all products and niches—it probably isn’t. But that’s why you do proper research using Jungle Scout (just like I did). That way, you know the exact level of competition in that marketplace BEFORE you get into it.

Another quick tip on the PPC side of things: I’ve seen SUPERB results on Amazon.de from the AUTO campaign. Usually, my AUTO campaigns lose money on Amazon.co.uk, but in Germany, I’m getting a great ROI, even with a very low click price. Again, this is most likely because there are not that many advertisers and Amazon has plenty of cheap ad inventory to sell, for which AUTO campaigns are a perfect match.

I was very sceptical about expanding to Germany because my product has a design that includes English writing. I thought I would have to translate my products in order to sell them in Germany—something I was not ready to do, especially without knowing how well it would go. But I was totally wrong! It seems that German customers don’t care much about the English text on the product and buy it anyway! Even though there are similar products already selling on Amazon.de that are written in German, my product and branding stands out from the competition, resulting in easy clicks and sales.

Obviously, this is Q4 we’re talking about here, so conversion rates are above average as this is the perfect time to launch a new product. However, even looking forward to 2020, I can definitely see that the German market will be very important for me and I will certainly continue to expand there. Maybe I will even translate the product into German to even further increase my sales. But who knows—maybe people buy the product because it is in English and not the German language? I will have to think about how to play this out in 2020.

All in all, I’m super happy with the results so far. I really hope this inspires you to go through the whole VAT saga and expand your sales via the Pan-EU program.

One important thing: people often ask me:

“Do I really need to use the Pan-EU program? Can’t I just stick with the European Fulfilment Network?”

You can’t!

My experience and results are solid proof of that. With the EFN program, I made 40 sales in September, but as soon as I switched on the Pan-EU program in October, I sold 410 units, which is a 10X INCREASE in sales!!! And I only started the Pan-EU on October 8th, which means that the actual increase is likely even greater.

A 10x increase in sales after switching on the Pan-EU program!!!

Obviously, using the EFN program is better than nothing, but it won’t show you the true potential of your products in those European marketplaces. You can’t test the market with the EFN program. You simply can’t.

My advice is to analyse the regional marketplace for your product using Jungle Scout. If you see that there is a good sales volume for your product and the competition looks weak, just go for it! Seriously, go for it! You already have the product and brand in place, so you have done all the hard work already. Why stick with just Amazon UK when you have four more EU-based marketplaces you can sell your products on?!

I will talk about my results for Italy and Spain in upcoming weeks. For now, the least you can do is check out the potential of your products on Amazon.de using Jungle Scout. If it looks good, just start the VAT registration process and aim for an EU expansion in 2020!

IMPORTANT!!! I have arranged a special deal with VAT Global for my blog readers. You will receive a special discount on the VAT registration and returns fees IF you mention this code when contacting them: ANDYVAT2020

As always, if you have any questions, feel free to leave them below the post. I will personally reply within 24 hours, Monday to Friday.