Long before the internet, retail was well established as one of the most competitive industries to enter. The internet has given new entrepreneurs the ability to launch their business with more ease, but it can still be difficult to find a foothold.
Even though there are tens of thousands of retail websites online, a few major brands continue to dominate, much like traditional high street retail. By some distance, Amazon is the largest online retailer of all.
The simple truth is that very few companies will ever be able to compete with Amazon. So why bother? The best thing that you can do if you want to start an online retail business from home is to get involved with the Amazon brand and turn it to your advantage.
Read on to learn the basics of getting up and running with your own Amazon business. You’ll find out that by treating Amazon as an ally, not a rival, you too can start earning a great living from home.
Why Start An Amazon Business?
Understanding how you should sell products in the retail environment means understanding what customers look for when they buy them.
Of course, every customer looks for the highest quality products at the lowest possible prices. If you can offer something truly innovative, or enter an existing sector with lower prices, you can certainly attract a large amount of interest in your business.
But this interest is only worthwhile if it turns into revenue. Unfortunately, this means a big leap of confidence for your visitors.
Online security is better than ever, but retail trust is about far more than stolen credit cards. In fact, it can take years for potential customers to learn that you offer good products, you package them well, you dispatch them on time and you follow up with great customer service.
Amazon is the biggest online retailer because it is a brand that customers trust. If you’re selling on Amazon, they’ll trust you too.
How Does Selling On Amazon Work?
First, you need to sign up for a seller account with Amazon. There are two types of account available.
The standard Basic Seller Account is free, and offered to those retailers that sell less than 35 items a month. Products can be listed in up to 20 different categories, and you will simply pay a fee for each product sold. A significant limitation, though, is that you can only sell products that are already for sale on Amazon.
As your business grows, you may want to upgrade to a Pro Seller Account. This type of account is charged at £25 per month, but includes the ability to create new products, and sell them across up to 25 different categories.
For more information on the types of account available, visit amazon.co.uk/services
What Can You Sell On Amazon?
As with any retail business, the first step in successful Amazon selling is deciding on your products. Amazon now has categories for just about anything. Generally, you have three types of products that you can sell on Amazon – which one is right for you?
Products That You Make – If you have a great product idea, or even just a talent for creating new things, your products could fill a niche on Amazon. With little or no competition, these kinds of products are potentially lucrative – but it’s incredibly difficult to be original! Products From Wholesalers – The traditional retail business model, you could source products from wholesalers or manufacturers and sell them with a mark-up on Amazon. But beware – having stock shipped to your home address usually means buying high volumes of stock in advance! If you plan to use this method, consider drop shipping, where stock is dispatched directly from the wholesaler. Used Goods – From second-hand books to DVDs, many sellers earn a living from reselling used goods. When a customer searches Amazon for a product, they will see your more affordable used version.
The best kind of product for you will depend on your talents, your goals, and the kind of products that you have access too. It’s great advice to simply make a choice – spend less time considering your first products and more time working on promoting your Amazon business.
One Amazon seller, Tedric P, did exactly this. He started out by selling video games and consoles that he would buy from high street retailers that were shutting down their stores. Now, his products cover numerous categories and he is earning 30% more than he was in his full-time job!
Choose Your Preferred Order Fulfilment Method
When you have selected your products, it is time to think about how you will get these products to your customers. Never rush head-first into selling without getting a clear idea of how the entire process will work.
When you start selling on Amazon, you have a range of options for fulfilment. Each has its own advantages and your choice will depend on the kind of products you are selling.
First, you can keep your business in-house and send out products yourself. This adds to your own workload, but in the early days of your work-from-home business is usually the best method. Another great advantage of keeping distribution in-house is that you can retain control of your orders, reduce your costs, and even include promotional materials with your packages.
Alternatively, you could partner with Amazon to have them dispatch orders on your behalf. Fulfilment By Amazon, or FBA, is a service provided by the company that is designed to reduce your workload and improve the experience of customers. If you sign up for FBA, you will be asked to send your inventory of stock to Amazon, who will store it for you. Then, when an order is placed, Amazon take care of sending your products – customers can even combine your products with the rest of their Amazon order, or use services such as Amazon Prime for fast shipping.
Finally, you may be able to reach an agreement with your wholesaler or manufacturer if you have one. Using a process called drop shipping, you can concentrate your attention on promoting products and delivering great customer service. All you need to do is notify the wholesaler or manufacturer when an order has been placed, and they will take care of sending it on your behalf. A drop shipping agreement is also a great way to secure arrangements with wholesalers without buying large quantities of stock in advance.
How To Make Your Amazon Business A Success
Starting your Amazon retail business is easy. Making it successful is not! As with any retail venture, promotion is everything. Amazon includes a number of features to help you promote your products, but there is a lot that you will need to do for yourself. Here are three tips to get you started:
1. Consider How You Write Product Listings
A product description is a difficult thing to write. It must convey useful information while persuading, enticing and attracting your potential customers. As you write, ask yourself what your customers would want to know, and how the product can help them. Does it make them look great? Does it save them time? Write benefits-driven product listings that persuade customers to take action.
2. Encourage Activity Around Your Listings
Take a look at any product available on Amazon and you will see product ratings and reviews. These are vital assets for your work-from-home business.
Ideally, your products will be so good, and your service so amazing, that customers will naturally flock to Amazon to leave a message. But don’t rely on that – always be proactive.
You could email your existing customers to ask for their reviews. You could offer freebies to established bloggers within your sector to encourage them to link to your product and review it. You could even get your friends and family to post reviews themselves. Every review lends credibility to your listing but, more importantly, can lead you to the holy grail of Amazon – The Buy Box.
3. Get In The Buy Box
The real results from Amazon selling come from getting yourself into the Buy Box. This is a complex, almost impossible task, but one that you should always strive for.
The Amazon Buy Box is the big ‘Add To Cart’ button that appears on the right hand side of every product listing. For the average user, it is the only place that they will click when they decide that they are ready to buy. If you sell a product that Amazon themselves offer, they will always remain in the Buy Box. But if you don’t, you should work hard to get yourself there.
Amazon uses a complex algorithm to decide which companies are in the Buy Box, and the details of this have never been revealed. Essentially, there is only one trick – to be the best retailer possible.
Give great service. Send shipments instantly. Use Fulfilment By Amazon so that Amazon can be confident that products will be dispatched correctly. Reduce your prices and be the most competitive seller on the site. By doing all of these things, there is a chance that you could find yourself in this lucrative and in-demand position.
The Secret Of Online Retail With Amazon
All too often, people venture online to find out big secrets about their chosen work-at-home profession. The reality is, though, that there is only one thing that you need to do to create a successful Amazon retail business: do everything that you would do if you opened a high street store.
I opened this article by saying that high street retail was competitive. The internet is exactly the same, if not more competitive. So be discerning with your products, be proactive with your promotion and be unrivalled in your sector. If you can do all of those things, a successful Amazon business is just a matter of time.
Daughter, Sister, Wife, Mother of three, PR Consultant and Entrepreneur
Like many women on most days I seem to have to juggle all my roles. On other days just three or four. This is why I founded Homeforbusiness. I recognise what it takes to be a working Mum and how to set up an online business from home with all ‘pulls’ of everyday family life and work.
I have always been entrepreneurial and set up by first corporate communications company, EMA Productions, in my 30s working with big corporate clients such as Texaco, Rank and Boots. Whilst it was challenging and hard work, it was quickly successful. I could focus solely on winning contracts and meeting the clients needs without family distractions and with the support of a fantastic team and office.
I feel very passionate about HomeforBusiness as I believe that lots of people want to create a better work/life balance and work from home, either setting up a new business or working as a freelancer. There are hundreds of genuine opportunities for people but often people do not know how to start. I want HomeforBusiness to empower anyone who wants to work from home profitably. With a panel of guest experts I will share share genuine business opportunities, business ideas, advice on running a business, online marketing, and health and wellbeing tips. I have also put together my favourite free online resources.
Many of us want to work flexibly from home - but can you actually earn a living from the get-rich-quick schemes flooding your inbox? Ben Sillis spent a week online finding out
Can you make real money from the virtual world?
Demand for flexible working hours is growing. The internet is allowing more people to break out of their nine-to-five routines, and the number of homeworkers has soared 16% this year, according to a BT report published last month. What's the reason for this rise? Kindly bosses letting more staff work out of the office, or gullible mugs answering internet ads and spam emails promising easy money?
It can be difficult to distinguish between the legitimate businesses operations and the scams: the Office of Fair Trading estimates that £70m is lost to fraudulent work-at-home schemes in the UK each year. I decided to spend a week seeing how much I could earn from the comfort of my home. Day 1: E-business
Googling "make money online" churns out some choice offers (earn "£20K+ a month"), and if you're looking for a steady stream of income, several sites offer information on how to set up a killer e-business in a day - even if they do seem highly suspect.
I settle with one prominent, well produced site, therichjerk.com, after a friend forwards the $10 e-book it sells. I expected it to be useless rather than deeply cynical - "Don't forget, promoting products in industries well known for fraud is always a good idea" - and there's something rather pyramid scheme-like about the advice it provides, which is basically to set up your own how-to-get-rich website.
Still, it has definitely worked for the author, so I launch my own blog directing people towards several money-making scams. Predictably, the book understates how hard it is to drive traffic to a website without quality content - I hoped for a "If you build it, they will come" scenario - and after 24 hours, I got zero hits, zero click-throughs and zero commissions. Somehow I don't think any amount of work will kickstart this, but if you don't have any ethics, you could have made a killing on this eight years ago. Shame I don't have any initiative. Running total: £0.00 Day 2: Freelance bidding sites
The internet has completely changed the way freelance workers operate, including how they get commissioned. Sites such as peopleperhour.com and elance.com connect projects with providers all over the world - but of course, the web has also made it easier for everyone else to muscle in too, as I find out when bidding for writing jobs.
Unlike sensible auctions, here the object is to undercut one another, with the winner usually being the one who's prepared to do a job for the least money. I browse through the jobs on peopleperhour. Men's lifestyle writing required? I can do that. Budget range: £500-700. I play them at their own game and offer to do the job for £400. I don't win, and nor do I get the lucrative contract to write press releases about double-glazing either.
No freelances I have spoken to have had a positive experience with bidding sites, and most have given up the idea after being undercut one too many times by an IT whizz in India. It's no small wonder when the starting prices are a pittance too: one project on getafreelancer.com asks for 1,000 blog posts for $250, while another has a going rate of $7 for every 500 words. I can't bid here; I'm far too used to having a minimum wage in place. Running total: £0.00 Day 3: Online surveys
Success! I've struck gold. Or £4.75 to be precise, though it's taken more than a few hours. Customer survey websites offer a slow and simple method to earn some pocket money online. There are scores of them, offering everything from prize draws and vouchers to the princely sum of £2 for giving your two cents - so long as your two cents is agree, not sure or disagree, anyway. Even pollsters Yougov and Ipsos are taking the nation's temperature this way, handing down some of their commission to you at the same time.
Signing on for two schemes earns me £4 straight away, while a survey for valuedopinions.co.uk bags an extra 75p. Another survey has a bounty of £2, but after a few questions, it turns out I don't fit the demographic and I'm banned from answering it.
So what's the catch? The sites only pay out once you've reached a high target of £50 or so, and given that I'm only offered three surveys during the entire week, that could take some time. I'm still counting this one though. Running total: £4.75 Day 4: Posting on forums
This seemed like a winner before I started. The idea that new websites needed to pay people to post to populate their forums and get the ball rolling seemed a logical one. One site, paidpostingtools.com, states that it vets its contributors beforehand for literacy and general common sense, but after jumping through far too many hoops (post 15 times on a supposedly unrelated forum) and then hearing nothing from them ever again, or any other similar operations, I become highly suspicious.
Trying to trace anyone in the real world who has actually made money from these schemes proves impossible, so I turn to a pay-to-blog site, PayPerPost.com, which is actually operational. Although the site insists you disclose that you're on its payroll, it's widely hated online, with high profile bloggers such as Michael Arrington of TechCrunch waging war on it. Sadly, like the dodgy e-business I tried, it also requires you to have a blog with steady traffic in place, and since only pitying friends and relatives have gone to mine, I'm not eligible for any contracts.
What I don't realise until after I've signed up and slapped their advertising badge on my site is that PayPerPost has been blacklisted by Google, with any sites opting into the scheme having its all-important page rank removed - making PayPerPost traceable only by the handful of web users who don't search with Google. Zero again. Running total: £4.75 Day 5: Poker
Ignore those banners telling you how to make £500 in 15 minutes at online casinos - they're fakes set up by shady casinos themselves. The only way is to hit the virtual floor and play for real. Al McClenahan, a graduate from Cricklewood, London, funded a year out entirely by playing poker online, averaging about £1,800 a month in winnings. He gives me some tips to try and max out my earnings. "Maths and patience are key," he reveals. "There's generally a correct thing to do."
Taking his advice to steer clear of Scandinavians ("very good, very aggressive"), I take a seat at a low stakes Texas Hold'em table at PokerStars with my £4.75. Things start well, and I even scoop $1.40 with my first hand, but I'm definitely one of the chumps semi-professionals make a sum off. Mangoman1000 keeps beating me every time I have a good hand, and I win far fewer times than there are players. I call it quits after a full house, leaving me with $6.06, which converts to £3.51. For the experience, poker is definitely the best way to make some extra cash at least, but unfortunately to get that experience you'll have to lose a lot first. Grand total: £3.51
Having made just shrapnel after a week's work, I speak to Tony Neate, managing director at Get Safe Online, a Home Office-sponsored advice organisation, about where I went wrong. Are others trying to make money the same way? "Definitely," he agrees. "People are feeling a bit of a crunch happening, and are looking around more for money."
So how can they succeed where I've failed, and sort the scams from the real opportunities? Neate is an ex-policeman specialising in hi-tech crime, but his advice is simple: update your common sense for the digital age. "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is," he says. "Be aware: they can be very engaging and sound very genuine. Look for a landline telephone number and a physical address." Follow that advice, and who knows? You might even start earning the cost of your broadband bill each month. Possibly.
Many people have explained what one can learn from Steve Jobs. Guy Kawasaki was there with Jobs, launching the Macintosh and absorbing everything he could from Jobs' singular collection of talents. Here's Kawasaki's list of the top 12 lessons he learned from Steve Jobs.
1. Experts are clueless Experts—journalists, analysts, consultants, bankers, and gurus can’t “do” so they “advise.” They can tell you what is wrong with your product, but they cannot make a great one. They can tell you how to sell something, but they cannot sell it themselves. They can tell you how to create great teams, but they only manage a secretary. For example, the experts told us that the two biggest shortcomings of Macintosh in the mid 1980s were the lack of a daisy-wheel printer driver and Lotus 1-2-3; another advice gem from the experts was to buy Compaq. Hear what experts say, but don’t always listen to them. 2. Customers cannot tell you what they need “Apple market research” is an oxymoron. The Apple focus group was the right hemisphere of Steve’s brain talking to the left one. If you ask customers what they want, they will tell you, “Better, faster, and cheaper”—that is, better sameness, not revolutionary change. They can describe their desires only in terms of what they are already using—around the time of the introduction of Macintosh, all that people said they wanted was a better, faster, and cheaper MS-DOS machine. The richest vein for tech startups is creating the product that you want to use—that’s what Steve and Woz did.
3. Jump to the next curve Big wins happen when you go beyond better sameness. The best daisy-wheel printer companies were introducing new fonts in more sizes. Apple introduced the next curve: laser printing. Think of ice harvesters, ice factories, and refrigerator companies. Ice 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0. Are you still harvesting ice during the winter from a frozen pond?
4. The biggest challenges beget best work I lived in fear that Steve would tell me that I, or my work, was crap. In public. This fear was a big challenge. Competing with IBM and then Microsoft was a big challenge. Changing the world was a big challenge. I, and Apple employees before me and after me, did our best work because we had to do our best work to meet the big challenges.
5. Design counts Steve drove people nuts with his design demands—some shades of black weren’t black enough. Mere mortals think that black is black, and that a trash can is a trash can. Steve was a perfectionist, and he was right: some people care about design and many people at least sense it. Maybe not everyone, but the important ones.
6. You can’t go wrong with big graphics and big fonts Take a look at Steve’s slides. The font is 60 points. There’s usually one big screenshot or graphic. Look at other tech speaker’s slides—even the ones who have seen Steve in action. The font is 8 points, and there are no graphics. So many people say that Steve was the world’s greatest product introduction guy. Don’t you wonder why more people don’t copy his style? 7. Changing your mind is a sign of intelligence When Apple first shipped the iPhone there was no such thing as apps. Apps, Steve decreed, were a bad thing because you never know what they could be doing to your phone. Safari Web apps were the way to go until six months later when Steve decided, or someone convinced him, that apps were the way to go—but of course. Duh! Apple came a long way in a short time from Safari Web apps to “there’s an app for that.” 8. “Value” is different from “price” Woe unto you if you decide everything based on price. Even more woe unto you if you compete solely on price. Price is not all that matters—what is important, at least to some people, is value. And value takes into account training, support, and the intrinsic joy of using the best tool that’s made. It’s pretty safe to say that no one buys Apple products because of their low price. 9. A players hire A+ players Actually, Steve believed that A players hire A players—that is people who are as good as they are. I refined this slightly—my theory is that A players hire people even better than themselves. It’s clear, though, that B players hire C players so they can feel superior to them, and C players hire D players. If you start hiring B players, expect what Steve called “the bozo explosion” to happen in your organization. 10. Real CEOs demo Steve Jobs could demo a 'Pod, 'Pad, 'Phone, and Mac two to three times a year with millions of people watching, why is it that many CEOs call on their vice president of engineering to do a product demo? Maybe it’s to show that there’s a team effort in play. Maybe. It’s more likely that the CEO doesn’t understand what his/her company is making well enough to explain it. How pathetic is that? 11. Real CEOs ship For all his perfectionism, Steve could ship. Maybe the product wasn’t perfect every time, but it was almost always great enough to go. The lesson is that Steve wasn’t tinkering for the sake of tinkering—he had a goal: shipping and achieving worldwide domination of existing markets or creation of new markets. Apple is an engineering-centric company, not a research-centric one. Which would you rather be: Apple or Xerox PARC? Unique + Valuable = Has a market 12. Marketing boils down to providing unique value Think of a two-by-two matrix. The vertical axis measures how your product differs from the competition. The horizontal axis measures the value of your product. Bottom right: valuable but not unique—you’ll have to compete on price. Top left: unique but not valuable—you’ll own a market that doesn’t exist. Bottom left: not unique and not valuable—you’re a bozo. Top right: unique and valuable—this is where you make margin, money, and history. For example, the iPod was unique and valuable because it was the only way to legally, inexpensively, and easily download music from the six biggest record labels. Bonus: Some things need to be believed to be seen. When you are jumping curves, defying/ignoring the experts, facing off against big challenges, obsessing about design, and focusing on unique value, you will need to convince people to believe in what you are doing in order to see your efforts come to fruition. People needed to believe in Macintosh to see it become real. Ditto for the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad. Not everyone will believe—that’s OK. But the starting point of changing the world is changing a few minds. This is the greatest lesson of all that I learned from Steve. May he rest in peace knowing how much he changed the world.
The number of people working from
home has risen to its highest level since records began, according to the Office
for National Statistics (ONS).
There were 4.2 million UK home workers in the first three months of 2014,
amounting to 13.9% of the workforce.
The ONS said that was the highest proportion since measurements started in
1998.
But the TUC said too many UK bosses still did not trust staff to work from
home and forced them into the office.
The
figures include those who work at home, and those who use their home as a
base, but work in different places.
About 1.5 million actually work in their home, or in studios or workshops in
the grounds.
Nearly double that number - 2.7 million - say they work from home, but travel
on a frequent basis to meet customers elsewhere. Well-paid
The proportion of home workers has risen slowly, from 11.1% in 1998.
It was in the 1990s that many big companies - such as BT - began encouraging
staff to work from home if they could.
But the TUC believes many companies have failed to embrace home-working on a
large enough scale.
"Too many bosses still don't trust staff to work from home and instead force
them to trudge into the office so they can keep an eye on them," said Frances
O'Grady, the TUC's general secretary.
"Employers' attitudes to new working practices must change to make a much
better use of modern technology in all workplaces," she said.
But according to the ONS analysis, the majority of people working from home
are self-employed.
In all, 63% regarded themselves as self-employed, compared to 34% who were
employed by a company or organisation.
Home workers are also likely to be well-paid and highly skilled.
Just under 15% of home workers are managers or senior officials, while 35%
are professionals.
Median wages are £13.23 an hour, compared with £10.50 an hour for other
workers.
