When it comes to consumer behavior and online purchases, the multinational conglomerate employing over 1,600,000 people needs no introduction.
Amazon is the largest market leader in D2C (direct-to-consumer) sales and among the five largest companies by market cap.
The company reported net sales of over half a trillion US dollars – with North America generating $315.9 billion alone and international markets contributing another $118 billion combined.
With over 2 million active sellers on the marketplace, the digital landscape shapes a vivid ecosystem of third parties: product brands, dropshippers, indie makers, authors, affiliate sellers, publishing and media partners, influencers, and more.
No matter what stage you’re in right now, focus on yielding the most out of the growing shopping universe.
Let’s review the most lucrative opportunities to join the market or increase your performance in the coming months.
1. Streamline Your Business Model
If you haven’t explored Amazon as a strategic channel – or don’t generate substantial revenue yet – start with the basic business foundations.
There are well-known and established opportunities such as:
- Dropshipping
- Selling private label products
- Retail arbitrage
- Fulfillment by Amazon
- Running a blog selling Amazon affiliate products
- Influencer marketing
Diving into the foundations of every segment will enable you to employ the best practices in each of them.
Play to your strengths and explore a channel that you feel comfortable with. Furthermore,if you’re already involved in a segment, consider diversifying within the same realm.
Successful brands are often led by founders or C-levels investing heavily in personal branding. Brand founders engage in influencer marketing activities and vice versa.
FBA aggregators also run blogs and publish sites to develop new sales and marketing channels in parallel.
There are less-known Amazon segments worth exploring, too!
Amazon Business is Amazon’s B2B marketplace for services. While it’s less popular than the consumer space, it’s less crowded too.
And with the evolution of AI and GPT, launching ebooks is easier than ever. The marketplace can take care of everything – from print-on-demand to electronic versions to Audible outsourcing for their audiobooks.
2. Use The Right Platform
Once your business model is fully defined, consider if you’re using the right platform to succeed.
Great shops or content creators often start with a general no-code platform or a site builder such as Carrd or Wix, but quickly reach the limits to scale and optimize for conversions successfully.
What’s more, influencers may end up stuck with the latest privacy or data regulations by platforms like Facebook, the ad revenue cut by Snapchat introduced several months ago, or potentially the ban of TikTok in the US.
Maximizing Amazon opportunities and running your own data is imperative to succeed.
When it comes to running a brand website, an eCommerce store, or a content creator community, the two leading market players remain WordPress and Shopify.
Both provide large ecosystems with many thousands of plugins and apps, facilitating professional email list building, consumer tracking, remarketing, and anything you need to develop your online store or resell Amazon products through featured content.
3. Acquire or Merge to Accelerate
Eager to start or grow faster?
Acquisitions are a great way to penetrate a new market or expand your business.
Amazon affiliate websites, dropshipping Shopify stores, creator landing pages and tools, PLR stores with freebies, automated WooCommerce resellers: thousands of opportunities available on Flippa as low as $200 for a starter website (up to 8-figure stores for sale).
Expert investors and acquisition veterans are well aware of valuations, but due diligence requires some effort on behalf of newer buyers. Luckily, the marketplace provides financial data (and revenue/profit multipliers) for reference, along with advisory services for larger purchases.
One sweet spot I truly enjoy for launching new brands are acquisitions within the $3K to $30K range.
Launching a new site or brand is about credibility. And credibility takes time to develop.
Acquiring a publisher or a Shopify store launched 2 or 3 years ago carries a lot of weight.
- Your site has built some starter Domain Authority as Google SERP recognition.
- Relevant communities will see you as an established founder.
- Some traction has already been vetted – the foundations of product/market fit.
- Sites/stores generally come with digital assets like Facebook/Instagram profiles or small email list. It’s an incredible start!
- Bonus points for some reviews or testimonials. Making the first sale is the hardest, followed by the first 10. Once you’ve crossed that, things gradually get easier.
I’ve acquired and grown over a dozen properties over the past 9 years and it’s a key go-to-market strategy in my playbook.
4. Diversify Revenue Streams
While Amazon is king, basing your entire business model on a single market is a recipe for disaster.
Marketplace regulations shift all the time. The same goes for commission rates, marketplace SEO, and costs of internally boosted content.
Just as basing your entire marketing funnel on Facebook ads may backfire, diversifying your revenue streams matters as much.
As a product brand, you can still run your own Shopify or WooCommerce store in parallel. Yes, free traffic won’t grow as quickly, but you remain in control of future growth and visibility.
As a publisher, look into other affiliate programs as well – such as Etsy, Walmart, or Target. While commission percentages may be lower, look into each program’s affiliation and attribution policy, cookie retention, and the possibility of profiting off of other purchases (not necessarily what a customer clicked on.)
And content creators can build more diverse partnerships and explore additional marketing and promotion channels to stay in the green at all times.
5. Go Omnichannel
A large portion of Amazon sellers solely rely on free traffic.
In terms of paid, Facebook and Instagram ads are among the leading paid traffic channels funneling growth for many established brands AND publishing partners.
But Facebook created a Marketplace and also lets you run your store straight into Facebook or Instagram.
And while it still lets you connect your Shopify, WooCommerce, or BigCommerce store and catalog, it’s not necessarily a streamlined way to grow further.
Other networks pose limitations of external links – just as Instagram won’t let you post a clickable link in the caption of organic posts.
So – look into different ways to diversify your own offering, too.
Amazon Ads is a powerful addition to amplifying your organic reach.
Building viral videos on TikTok or making a hit with Instagram reels could make a real difference for you.
YouTube unboxing or product demos can help both organically and amplify visibility and brand recognition over time.
6. Build Strategic Relationships
A key omission in what makes a brand successful is building key relationships.
As a brand, you can only benefit by growing your professional network and developing any form of cross-promotion offers together.
For product brands, think of cross-sells and group promotions, bundling products, and running campaigns together.
As a dropshipper, there are profit share opportunities and performance marketing agencies scaling indefinitely without paying ahead of time.
Amazon Sellers work closely with influencers and agencies, running different campaigns across the board.
Even podcasts and radio yield incredible results for many brands. Podcasting hosts may quickly become your best friends.
7. Optimize For Revenue
When the product-market fit is achieved and you can afford to maintain scale, what makes a real difference is increasing conversion rates.
Great brands build comprehensive dashboards, pulling any data point they can access: from Analytics traffic through remarketing pixels, heatmaps, user journeys and lead flows, abandoned cart segments, and everything in-between.
Investing in a professional data warehouse solution or a commerce-specific dashboard SaaS makes a true difference in determining net profit – considering ad costs or influencer payments, COGS, shipping and packaging fees, average returns, and other operating expenses.
And investing in post-order experience, such as order tracking and notifications, upsells, cross-sells, integrating with your marketing automation sequences, and increasing retention from abandoned carts through recurring seasonal discounts, is the difference between a smaller brand and a successful machine.
As far as Amazon is concerned – there are unique opportunities that aren’t recognized by default (or explored as a business opportunity).
Amazon’s “deep link” functionality lets you open the Amazon app on any device with the app installed, passing the cookie attribution and retaining the user behavior (and commission tracking) back to the source.
Brand referral bonuses can add an extra commission of about 10% on average by signing up to the Amazon Brand Registry.
Connecting publisher and seller accounts together can streamline the process and optimize additional fees on Amazon’s end, too.
Experienced partners working with Amazon sellers and publishers often specialize in these lesser-known opportunities that often make the difference between a successful paid campaign and one running in the red.
And while you’re refining your business model and shopping for the right asset – you can land on one that’s already set up for success!
Find Out How Much Your Online Business is Worth
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