What to Expect When Selling on Amazon.com – The Drill Down: Listing Options

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ach aspect of Selling on Amazon will be examined in this series to answer the most frequently asked question, “why?” Today’s drill down answers why you might choose each of the available methods to list your products on Amazon. There are benefits to each, based on how you run your business. Taking some time to find the right solution can make a difference in the ease of managing your Selling on Amazon experience.

What are the listing options?

• List products one-at-a-time if you only have a few products that don’t change often – use the Add a Product tool in Seller Central.
• For larger catalogs the Amazon Seller Desktop (ASD)  provides a central interface for bulk uploads.
• When you have UPCs for all your products and most of them are already available on Amazon or in Amazon’s catalog, there is a quick way to upload your inventory and offers using the Listing Loader.
• Finally, for the most control of your data and when listing a large number of items use the various Inventory File Templates (also called “text files”). Using this method you can list all the information about a product is at one time and, for ease of use, you can group products by type and attributes. 

  Why would I choose one over another? The chart here provides some details about each, but what do you really need to think about to make the right decision?

• Start right: Each product is a standalone option. You won’t be able to switch between them, so if you have a lot of work, make sure you start where you want to finish. Perhaps you’ll want to test each by trying a product or two.
• Choose the best option for your catalog size: While the Add a Product interface may seem simple, there are some limitations for data management. Let’s imagine that you want to change an attribute or the level of inventory on all of your products at one time. You may not want to do that one-at-a-time, so a bulk upload option may be better.
• Develop the best data management plan: The Add a Product tool can be ideal for the quick start, but for complete data control, nothing is quite as useful as the various category-specific inventory templates. There are currently no tools available to get an list of what you list on Amazon, but the templates are a great place to keep track of what you send. Each provides you with a single line to input all of the pertinent data about every product in your catalog using the Amazon format.
  
  • You can make bulk changes through the Excel drag-and-drop editing option to place the same information in multiple cells quickly. 
  • Once you’ve made changes in the template it then becomes your historical record of your product information for Amazon.com.
  • Each of the inventory templates provides an outline of "data definitions" that help you determine the right information to provide. Those data definitions sheets are useful for understanding how to prepare your product information, no matter which option you choose.  

Even if you choose the templates or ASD, you can still make a quick change on a single item or two using the edit options in the Add a Product tool, but any future bulk uploads will overwrite those changes.
  

The bottom line is that you want to manage your product data, maintain it in a format that can be reused, and keep track of your updates and changes. Look for flexibility within your business management processes and think about the long run and your growth potential.

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ther uploads -- once you’ve looked at how you’ll upload and maintain your catalog information, there are a number of other systems to use in managing your business on Amazon.com. Each is part of the workflow and integral to your success in working with buyers:

 

Order Report – while this is not an upload, you will want to look into the order report function in Seller Central. This report is the definitive set of information for processing, tracking and auditing your orders from Amazon. For more information: https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/help-page.html?ie=UTF8&itemID=651

Shipping Confirmation – each time you ship products to buyers, you’ll be confirming shipments to the Amazon.com system so the buyer gets billed and you get paid. You may do this one-at-a-time, but the fastest method is the bulk upload template and this, again, gives you a tracking system when you save that information to your desktop. For more information: https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/641

Adjustments – whether making a full or partial refund, you will use the adjustment function in Seller Central. There is a bulk method for this as well as the one-at-a-time interface. For more information: https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/help-page.html?isLink=1&itemID=19661

Settlement Reports – like the order reports, this is not an upload, but it is the report you’ll use to reconcile your bank deposits to your orders and adjustments. For more information: https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/help-page.html?ie=UTF8&itemID=791

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dvanced options – These are all optional, but well worth learning to use because they can enhance your experience and that of the buyer.

• Accessory relationships – more on this in a future blog, but this is a method for cross-selling products that a buyer might want to buy together. Amazon uses the term, accessory, because you are essentially accessorizing the items. These shin guards go with this soccer ball, or this lemon balm shampoo goes with this lemon balm conditioner. To get started today, read https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/help-page.html?ie=UTF8&itemID=9001
• Shipping overrides – when you set up your shipping charges in the shipping manager, these are cross-catalog settings. You have the option to establish an override for those products requiring different handling by using a template designed just for that. To learn how:
  https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/help-page.html?ie=UTF8&itemID=200212820
• Amazon Merchant Transport Utility (AMTU) – While the name is a bit unusual, the purpose of this utility is to provide a simple method for semi-automation for managing your uploads and reports. It is an optional service, open source, works only with the inventory templates, and there is only limited technical support but many sellers find it fits the bill for the level of automation required by their company. Check it out at:
  https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/help-page.html?ie=UTF8&itemID=16481

These are the basics of the listing options. There are some additional considerations about which pieces of information you must include, should include, and would be best served to include no matter how you provide the upload. Stay tuned, we’ll continue with the series of "Drill Downs" with the topic "Data Definitions" and why you need to include this information."

Cathi C.

Comments

[CKM]

I am a brand new seller on Amazon. How do I sell something, a specific perfume,for example, that is not listed on Amazon?