Amazon Prime is a membership program that provides customers access to streaming video, music, e-books, free shipping and many other Amazon-specific services and deals. Amazon Prime is a no-brainer for those who have already invested in the Amazon ecosystem. What started out as an online bookstore 20 years back, is now one of the leading online retailers. Amazon is also a great platform for sellers to get across to a wider range of customers.

Becoming a Seller on Amazon:

• As a seller, decide on what you want to sell and your selling plan. For becoming a regular seller in the Professional Plan and start selling endless products on Amazon, a monthly subscription fee of $39.99 would be charged. To sell as an individual, $0.99 is charged for each item sold.

• Seller Central is the place where you have to register to become a seller on Amazon. This is where you enter your business details, Employer Identification Number (EIN), seller profile and other information.

• After registration, selling takes 4 steps- list, sell, ship, earn.

1. List– Sellers can list products one by one. Professional sellers can add a big batch of items. While listing products, you should provide necessary details- description of products, the shipping options, SKU, EAN/UPC number, product images, etc.
2. Sell– Once the product is listed and visible on Amazon, it is ready to sell.
3. Ship– When the order is placed, a seller has to ship the products by self-shipping methods or choose Amazon fulfilled shipping.
4. Earn– After the order shipment and delivery is complete, payments are done by Amazon into the registered bank account. You also get notified of the payments.
   

   How to Sell Your Products on Amazon.com – An Infographic

Source: Entrepreneur.com

Benefits of Becoming a Seller in Amazon:

1. Amazon has a better customer base:

The number of customers who would buy from Amazon is more than the customers who would buy from a new independent vendor. This would mean saving the time and effort to hunt for and establish a customer base.

2. Marked increase in sales:

Amazon increases your product visibility and this has shown a notable increase in sales for most of the sellers.

3. Convenient shopping for customers:

As the shopping procedure on Amazon is the same irrespective of the seller, customers might find it more convenient to shop through Amazon.

Amazon Prime- Its Benefits for Customers:

Amazon Prime membership offers limitless deals and convenient features for the customers. At a reasonable fee of $99 per year, Amazon Prime offers some great selling features for sellers. Customers can shop all items fulfilled by Amazon Prime with free shipping and free one or two-day delivery options depending on delivery locations and the products. Some pin codes are also eligible for the free one-hour delivery option on few products. Members of the same house can also share few of the benefits of Amazon Prime. Prime video and music subscription are also part of the membership benefits. With this, the members can access several videos and music from Prime Playlist. This is available in limited locations, though. Prime Day is allotted annually to offer exclusive deals for Amazon Prime members. Prime Now, Prime Photos, Prime Pantry are few other benefits for the Prime members. There are an endless number of other privileges for Prime Members.

As a Seller, How to Make Use of Amazon Prime?

Given that Prime members enjoy so many benefits, there is no wonder a huge scope to earn big profits by selling as an Amazon Prime fulfilled seller.

Once you register as a seller with Amazon, choose the option to sell by Amazon fulfilled method. You can’t be a part of the Amazon Prime program by self-shipment of your products. As Prime program has one or 2-days delivery promise for customers, Amazon would not be able to control and track shipments done by the sellers themselves. So they offer Prime Program only for sellers who choose FBA (fulfilled by Amazon). By this, Amazon receives the products from you and ships it by its own transportation services. This would require you to ship the products to one of the Fulfillment centers of Amazon. And from there Amazon would deliver the products to the customer’s place. You might save a lot in the shipping charges, because irrespective of where the product has to be delivered, you only have to ship it to Amazon fulfillment center. You can also save cost and efforts on the management of operations and customers handling by letting Amazon do it. For Amazon Prime fulfilled orders, Amazon takes full responsibility for the products and delivery and Amazon’s customer care would answer customer queries in those orders. The only drawback of choosing FBA shipment is that a part of all your profits would go to Amazon. Given the costs saved in shipping, operations management, customer query handling and the effort required to take care of all that, the profit sharing might appear more economical and convenient. This would mean that you have to set your costs so that your profits are good after all the overheads and fulfillment costs paid.

Seller Fulfilled Shipping:

Once you establish yourself as a reliable seller on Amazon and on the fulfillment of certain requirements, you could become eligible to be part of Seller Fulfilled Prime shipping program. This has a lot of added benefits. Once you register for this program, Amazon will monitor you for 300 orders.

By doing the following, you could become eligible for Seller-fulfilled shipping program.

1. Over 99% on time shipping of products
2. At least 95% of your orders use Buy Shipping service
3. Maintain cancellation rate of 1% or less

All these have to be done and 300 orders should be completed within a 90 days trial period. Even if one criterion is not fulfilled, the trial period would begin all over again.

This is a profitable option because you don’t have to pay the fulfillment charges which are required for FBA orders. The other charges, though, (shipping, operations management etc.) will be on you.

So to be in the Prime program, either by opting FBA or by getting eligible for seller-fulfilled shipping, has its own benefits and extra charges. Analyze your sale and come to a decision based on which would be more profitable to you?