Do you need software when selling on Amazon?

Long time blog readers will know that I’ve always preached outsourcing and utilising software and tools as much as possible in your online business. After all you don’t want it to turn into an online job as I call it, where you spend the majority of your day doing menial, repetitive tasks.

No! That’s not the idea at all and in fact you should be doing the opposite and trying to maximise the time you spend on high level tasks and decisions that can make a real difference to your business.

But I will warn that there’s a limit to this. Don’t be one of those people searching for the best software for every little part of your business, when 90% of it isn’t needed!

I’ve seen this happen many times, where a newbie starts an online business, be it Amazon FBA, Shopify or anything else, and immediately they start searching for that must have software. Before you know it they’re paying hundreds of pounds a month in subscription fees before they’ve even started selling!

I know what you’re now thinking – make up your mind Andrew do I need software or I don’t need it!?

Well my answer is… YES! 100% you do. But focus on the few vital tools that will make running your business significantly easier or quicker.

And that’s exactly what today’s post is all about. I’m going to go through what I consider must have software for creating a successful arbitrage selling business on Amazon UK.

I’ve spoken before about the best tools for a private label business on Amazon but these are quite different to what you use in a flipping business

So let’s get to it.

Product Sourcing

Sourcing and purchasing products is really the crux of a successful flipping business and this is just common sense.

Say you had a business selling £10k a month on Amazon with 25% margins. That means a gross profit of £2,500. To make the calculations very simple let’s pretend that all products are sold for 2x the purchase price and that gives you a 25% margin.

Now the absolute easiest way to increase that monthly profit is by spending more! For example it would be extremely difficult (almost impossible) to increase your margins from 25% to 37.5%, thereby increasing your monthly profit to £3,750.

But on the other hand it’s very achievable to increase your spending by £2,500, up to £7,500, giving you that same £3,750 a month in profit.

And there’s one tool that is king when it comes to sourcing for your Amazon flipping business:

SellerAmp SAS

For once a company’s tagline is 100% accurate as SellerAmp really does simplify your sourcing analysis.

As we spoke about in a recent blog post covering the results of one year of flipping on Amazon UK, there are many different sourcing methods available but they can be broadly split into OA (online arbitrage) and RA (retail arbitrage).

And SellerAmp covers them both.

They have a Chrome extension which can be used to analyse a product on any website which will immediately tell you if it’s a profitable flip or not.

So from any product page you simply click the extension and you’ll get this pop-up window:

As you can see it immediately shows you the profit and return based on the current Amazon selling price as well as how many units are sold each month for this product.  

It also shows you the dimensions and has one click links to take you straight to the product page on Amazon or to search google for that product.

As well as the Quick Info there’s multiple other tabs, such as:

• Ranks and Prices

• Alerts

• Profit Calculator

• Offers

And more!

As you can see SellerAmp provides a ton of information and tells you pretty much everything you need to know to be able to make a buying decision.

And for retail arbitrage their mobile app gives you all the same information as the web app.

So when you’re out and about and see a deal on a product, you can immediately find out if it’s profitable to sell on Amazon.

You don’t even have to search for the product and can simply scan the barcode to make sure you get a perfect match.

So what does all this functionality cost you?

Well, SellerAmp has two plans – Getting Started and Getting Serious:

The only real difference is multiple installs and active sessions, which isn’t really needed unless you have business partners and other people sourcing for you.

And at £11.95 + VAT a month, which you can bring down to £9.95 + VAT paying yearly, I think SellerAmp is amazing value and a priceless addition to any flipping business.

Advanced Sourcing

For this next tool, some people might say it’s not really needed when you’re just starting out and you can get by with SellerAmp alone.

And while this may be true, I think that for anyone serious about their flipping business, you want to learn to use this tool as soon as you can – otherwise you’re simply leaving money on the table.

Keepa

I won’t actually go into too much detail now as there’s already a ton of great resources out there on Keepa and it would require its own dedicated blog post to even start to cover it.

But put simply, Keepa is the next step up when it comes to product sourcing and it can drastically increase your profits by allowing you to use historical Amazon data to time your sales and purchases.

At a certain point it’s not enough to just look at a deal and the current Amazon price and then decide whether it’s a good purchase or not as there are multiple other factors you have to look at.

Often Amazon will price match other offers, so their current price may be short lived.

It may be a seasonal item that has lulls and then peaks of demand where the price shoots up.

There may be an influx of sellers, causing the price to crash temporarily.

Etc.

And with Keepa you can see all of this!

As well as this sourcing information, it also shows you variation sales, allows you to track products on Amazon and get price alerts, and even has its own Product Finder tool which you can use to find profitable products to flip.

All in all, I think Keepa, in conjunction with SellerAmp, is a must have tool for any serious flipping business.

Once again Keepa is also great value, with a free and paid option, which costs just €19 a month.

You can see the full difference between the two options here:

P/L Tracker and Sales Dashboard

In my opinion this is the final must have tool for any serious Amazon arbitrage seller. Some people may argue that you don’t need this straight away but you’re just giving yourself more admin work to take care of that way and starting out right off the bat with a P/L tracker saves you so much time and makes your accounting much more straightforward.

Now there are a ton of options in this space but the vast majority of them are geared heavily towards private label sellers on Amazon and lack a lot of the needed features for flipping.

For this reason, like a lot of UK based resellers, I started off using an app called Seller Toolkit, which is a lot more flipping focused.

This costs £32.99 a month on the Level 1 plan (up to 3,000 orders a month) and £53.99 for Level 2 (up to 6,000 orders a month).

And while I didn’t have any major issues with the software, I did always find it a little bit clunky and slow.

Seller Toolkit vs Shopkeeper

I recently had the chance to try Shopkeeper specifically for my flipping business and have loved it!

Right away I preferred the look and feel of Shopkeeper as it’s a lot more premium and responsive vs what I was used to with Seller Toolkit.

It also has some integral features that I really needed, such as the ability to add different costs for the same product.

Previously I would have to create multiple SKUs for the same product or manually calculate my average purchase price and then apply it over all orders, which was of course a very clunky and inaccurate way of recording sales and profit!

For example say I had an item that I bought for £25 and sold for £50, making a 50% ROI after fees, and I bought and sold 100 of them.

Fast forward a few months and the price is now £30. If I updated my COG for this product on Seller ToolKit it would apply to all previous orders as well and skew my past P/L! The other “solution” was creating a different SKU for every shipment of the same ASIN and then having to re-enter the COG every time, even if it’s the same.

Shopkeeper solves this problem completely with their Cost Period tool that allows you to add multiple costs for the same product, set over any custom period of time.

So for this one product I can set an unlimited amount of cost periods and accurately track my changing profit over time.

This feature alone was enough to make me switch over to Shopkeeper completely!

And the whole switchover process was extremely simple and painless. For one Shopkeeper offer unlimited back data from Amazon for free (most other software, including Seller Toolkit, charge you an additional fee for this) and they also have a great tool to upload all your COGS quickly and easily.

You simply go to Settings > Products – Bulk Upload:

And from there you can tell Shopkeeper how to pull data from an existing spreadsheet and automatically apply it to all your products!

So all you have to do is download your COGS from Seller Toolkit (or whatever software you currently use) and upload it to Shopkeeper and your COGS will be updated – as simple as that and the whole process takes literally minutes!

Shopkeeper Upgrades

There are loads of other little tools and features in Shopkeeper that I love, including their Presentation mode, which allows you to hide all identifying product information (after all who doesn’t love posting flex screenshots), as well as their ka-ching notification that alerts you to every new sale (the best motivation tool when spending hours product sourcing!).

On top of that they have some very interesting further upgrades coming, including a VA mode – where you can set exactly what sections of the software you want to provide access to, and also more in depth inventory management.

Shopkeeper starts at $20 a month for their Novice plan, which covers you for up to 250 orders a month.

Next up I’m also going to add in one bonus software to our list. I wouldn’t include this as it’s not at all integral, but it’s very useful and has one important feature that gets it in – it’s FREE.

Free Bonus Tool – Feedback Requester

We’ve spoken before about how feedback is actually not that important for an Amazon flipping seller (unlike in private label where it can make or break your business) but it’s still worth getting as many positive seller reviews as you can.

Unfortunately Amazon customers very seldom leave reviews and the easiest way to increase this is simply by requesting it. This can be done manually on your order page but why not save time and use software to do this for you?

That’s exactly what FeedbackWhiz does, and most importantly it’s free for up to 150 requests a month.

There are other options available here, like Feeback Five and Sagemailer, but they all do pretty much the same thing so it’s really a matter of personal preference (or really which one offers the most free requests a month!)

So there you have it. The three must have tools for running a successful Amazon FBA flipping business

In total they will cost you less than £50 a month, which is amazing value for money, and they provide everything you need to create a 6 or even 7 figure reselling business.

Do you need to register a Limited company?

The question of whether or not to register a Limited company is one of the first decisions you have to make when starting an Amazon FBA business in the UK. And I’ve written about this extensively and gone over all the pros and cons of operating as a sole trader vs a Ltd company so I won’t cover that all again now.

But long story short if your business is doing well then sooner or later you will want to register a Limited company for your Amazon FBA business, mainly due to the flexibility it gives you in terms of extracting as much profit while paying as little tax as possible.

And when you are ready to take things to the next level and move from a sole trader to a Limited company, you’ll have any decision to make – which formation company should you use!?

As you can see there are no shortage of options out there, with the prices and services also varying hugely.

Can you register a Limited company without an agent?

But before we get into the different companies and who I recommend, let’s take a little step back and first decide whether you even need to use a formation agent to register a Limited company in the first place?

The short answer here is no, you don’t need to use a formation agent and can simply register your company directly with Companies House.

This costs £12 and is a fairly simple process. There are some documents you’ll have to prepare and you’ll need to provide information on all people involved with the company who are shareholders or have significant control.

There’s a very useful guide on http://www.gov.uk which outlines all the steps involved and goes over everything you need to know to register your company.

Once completed your company is usually registered within 24 hours and you’ll receive a certificate of incorporation – a legal document which confirms the company’s existence and date of formation.

All pretty straightforward right?

So as I said you really don’t need a formation agent (despite what some of them make it seem like on their websites!) as it’s a fairly easy process with a lot of help available.

The benefits of using formation agents

BUT formation agents offer a number of additional services and extras that you may want to use! This includes:

• guidance on the type of company that best suits your needs
• assistance naming your company, including those that require permission
• ongoing company secretarial support
• registered office address services
• help setting up a business bank account

Coupled with the fact that their formation services are usually very reasonably priced, not costing much more than registering directly with Companies House, and I do recommend most people use them for peace of mind and to make sure everything is done correctly.

Now Companies House actually provide a full list of accredited companies who are able to submit incorporations.

But as you can see there are over 120 different options for you to consider! So as always I will make life easier and recommend the 3 best limited company formation agents, based on their reviews online, my own experience, and feedback from my trusted blog readers and Amazon Sharks members.

Without any further ado, here you go:

Your Company Formations

With 4.9* from almost 4,000 reviews on Trustpilot and amazingly priced packages, starting from just £12.48, Your Company Formations are my no.1 recommendation.

While their Digital package offers everything you need for the same price as you’d pay Companies House to incorporate directly, for most people the Privacy package at £27.48 will be the best option:

With this option you get everything in the Digital package plus printed copies of your certificate of incorporation and share certificates plus a registered office address and director’s service address.

Now this is very important and something a lot of people ask me about.

Can people see my details when I register a ltd company?

Yes! All companies are searchable and you are able to see the registered address, director, and director’s address.

So if you don’t have an office and are using your home address for this, which most people do, then this will be public record… and that’s where Your Company Formations come in! Using their Privacy package will allow you to use their address for your registered office and director’s service address.

That way if anyone searches for you or your company your details will be kept hidden.

Well worth the £27.48 fee, which is great value if you ask me!

If for whatever reason you don’t want to go with Your Company Formations then that’s fine, they’re not the only company offering address services, and there are plenty more good options out there.

1st Formations

1st Formations are my second recommendation, and with 4.9* from over 15,000 ratings on Trust Pilot, you know you’re in good hands here.

Once again their basic package costs just £12.99 and then you have multiple other options depending on which features / extras you need:

Rapid Formations

Last but not least we have Rapid Formations, who average 4.8* on Trust Pilot from over 10,000 ratings. Slightly less than our first two choices but still a very high score.

And actually I’m pretty sure that Rapid Formations and 1st Formations are white label versions of the same company as their websites are very similar, even down to their package names and prices:

That brings me very nicely on to the conclusion to today’s post.

Final Recommendation

While you don’t need to use a formation agent, I do strongly recommend it, as you really lose nothing and in fact you can see some significant savings if you need any of the extras such as registered addresses, as they cost significantly more if you’re signing up for them separately.

For example Rapid Formations charge £39 per year for their London registered office service.

In comparison their Privacy package gets you company formation, a London registered office, and a London director’s service address, all for £20!

That means you pay WAY less than registering yourself with Companies House and adding it on later, plus you save time.

It’s rare in business to have a no brainer decision, but this really is one.

So no need to overthink it, simply choose any of the 3 options and get your company registered, and let’s start making some money with Amazon FBA!

For those of you who are transitioning from a sole trader to a Ltd company on Amazon, I know there are a lot of horror stories out there about how difficult this is and how it can lead to your account being suspended for months.

But not to fear as most of this is scaremongering and I am going to write a separate blog post where I outline step by step how to make the changeover on Amazon without disrupting your business and losing precious time and money.

Until next time.

All the best,
Andrew

Many sellers are scared away from the whole importing from China process because they think that shipping costs are too expensive. I recently had a blog comment from Michael, which perfectly illustrates this common frustration:

Hi Andrew,

I just got a quick online quote from FedEx for collecting these 5 boxes from the factory address and delivering at my home address and it was $1880 USD! Yikes.

If I look on AliExpress for the same item, I can order 1pc for $125 delivered from a reseller.

I know this is all part of the learning curve, but why is shipping 5 boxes so expensive? Is it because they are relatively large, but light in weight?

Is the only way to make this cost-effective simply to order more units? Enough for a few pallets? Advice is greatly appreciated.

Michael

I get comments and questions like this one all the time, so let’s try to debunk the expensive shipping myth and find out exactly why Michael’s shipping quote was so high.

Read More…

Welcome back!

We’re just ten short days away from Christmas, and it’s that time of the year when I say a big THANK YOU to all my blog readers, social followers, and, of course, my loyal customers. Unfortunately, I can’t send a gift to each and every one of you, but I can create a contest to reward ten of you with a £25 Amazon gift card and one of you with a £50 Amazon gift card!

This contest is very straightforward. All you have to do is comment below this post with a suggestion for a topic I should cover on my blog or Facebook page in 2019! It can be anything related to Amazon FBA business, importing, branding, product research, etc. The more specific the question, the better!

To give you an idea of what I’m looking for, here are a few examples:

• Do I need a limited company to start selling on Amazon?
• What is the best way to ship a 20kg package from China?
• Is it worth it to start selling on Amazon US if you live in the UK?
• How do I make sure my product quality is up to standard?
• How many samples do I need to buy from Chinese suppliers?
• What tools are best for Amazon product research?
• Why do we need AUTO PPC campaigns?
• Etc.

Read More…

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