I believe that most successful Amazon sellers should look to additionally sell their Amazon listings on Shopify.
In this post I will attempt to convince you that adding Shopify to your eCommerce toolkit has great and unique advantages.
Here are the top reasons why you should look into Amazon to Shopify listing:
1. Amazon May Compete with You, Shopify Will Not
At this point I don’t think the idea that Amazon may develop a product to compete with a successful marketplace listing is news to anyone.
What is news to me is how far Amazon can go in their ruthless drive to grow their own business.
I heard an Amazon Merch customer claim on a podcast recently that Amazon had created their own t-shirt designs that were copies of his most successful shirts.
I had no idea they would go that far, but that is what I hear from some Amazon sellers.
2. You Don’t Own Your Customer List on Amazon
Your customers on Amazon are not your customers — they are Amazon’s. That is the harsh reality when you are selling within a marketplace run by another company.
Here is a recent buyer I had on Amazon. I can only tell you that her name is Karen. Amazon gives me nothing else.
Try going to back to previous orders in Amazon Seller Central and you will find that:
- You cannot find a customer email.
- You no longer see the customer’s last name.
- You no longer have access to the customer’s full address.
In short you have nothing. The customer assets belong to Amazon.
You have no customer assets to build further sales from. Good luck trying to get the word out to past buyers about your new product offer.
3. Your Branding Abilities are Close to Zero with Amazon
The foundational elements of brand building are missing on Amazon for marketplace sellers.
Here is an example of an Amazon storefront:
You cannot display a logo, a tagline, create engaging content, tell stories, communicate with your audience, or do much of anything related to brand building.
Amazon Seller Central lets you pick a display name and storefront link and that is about it.
4. Without Warning Your Amazon Sales Could Drop off a Cliff
Whatever corner of the market you hold could only be temporary. With so many sellers on the Amazon Marketplace it is likely that competing products will challenge your position and competition can get cutthroat.
Along with the sheer volume there are a number of other horror stories I have heard from Amazon sellers:
- If you are gaining sales with Amazon PPC purchases, you could be forced to overspend to keep up with your old sales volume.
- Amazon could change their search results algorithm and suddenly you find your products invisible.
- A competitor could make a bogus claim about you to Amazon resulting in an account suspension.
- People paid by your competitors to buy your product and then give it a scathing 1 star review.
You are at the mercy of Amazon, their algorithm, their rules, and the madness of crowds.
5. Amazon Fulfillment Delays on Your Customer Orders
As we have seen for the past several months, Amazon is struggling to maintain volume during the Covid situation. Many Amazon customers have been flooded with angry customers wondering why their orders are not arriving within a day or two.
This situation has been so troubling that many Amazon sellers have temporarily stopped selling on Amazon FBA.
6. Amazon Eats Away at Your Profit
Let’s say you are in the dog collar business and get your $9.99 retail collars wholesale for $1 each. Selling on your own would mean nearly $9 in profit per sale.
What about selling that same $9.99 dog collar on Amazon FBA? Let’s take a look at the Amazon FBA Calculator to look at our Amazon fees.
You are looking at just under $4 of profit. Congrats your profit just got more than chopped in half!
7. Amazon has few Advanced Sales Tactics at Your Disposal, Shopify has a Ton
With Shopify the number of creative things you can do to increase sales is crazy. You have hundreds of great options and apps to choose from to boost sales revenue.
Cart abandonment, upselling, and other clever sales techniques are nearly endless and at your fingertips with Shopify. Many of the most impactful options available on Shopify have no comparisons on Amazon Marketplace.
I am Convinced about Shopify. What now?
At JoeLister we have anticipated a greater need for Amazon sellers to have more tools at their disposal and have an Amazon to Shopify solution.
We have been in development on JoeLister for Shopify for months now and are nearing our first release.
JoeLister for Shopify will make it easy to:
- Cross-list your Amazon products to your Shopify store
- Set up intelligent pricing logic for your Shopify listings to ensure the profit needed
- Keep your inventory in sync between Amazon and Shopify
- Automate the sales process when your Amazon products sell on Shopify by placing the order to Amazon — and later updating tracking information on Shopify.
Note: We have a special early bird offer if you sign up now — $100 off for the life of your plan.
Shopify Challenged?
We realize many of our customers are not comfortable with performing their Shopify setup (or have the time to learn). So as an added bonus we plan to have a special white glove service available to setup your Shopify store for you.
Conclusions
Selling on Amazon Marketplace is a great place to start as a seller. You have a built in audience of millions and if you use Amazon FBA you don’t need to be bothered to pack and ship your sales orders.
But putting your future in the hands of another platform, especially one run as ruthlessly as Amazon is probably not the wisest business position.
Sellers would be wise to broaden their sales on other platforms. Shopify is the one alternative that will give you the most branding and marketing opportunities.
A good Amazon to Shopify integration will add protection against competitors, more flexibility to be a creative entrepreneur, and allows for real brand building and better potential for long-term business success.
* Please note we may include affiliate links in some posts. But only for products we use personally and have deep faith in.