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Selling on Amazon vs. Shopify (or both!)
https://www.johnnyfd.com/2017/11/selling-on-amazon-vs-shopify-or-both.html
There's always been a huge battle between using Amazon or FBA to sell your products and selling directly to customers using Shopify. Well the good news is now there's a bridge. Shopify now integrates with Amazon which allows you to list your Shopify products as Amazon listings and sell on Amazon.com and actually ebay.com now as well which also integrates. The point of this article is to introduce to you the mindset of selling across all platforms instead of just choosing one as even though it might take a bit of effort to set up, which I'll help walk you through below, it'll be worth it to reach an entire audience that previously may not have been tapped into!
So instead of just selling on Amazon, Ebay, or direct to consumers on Shopify, you can do technically do all three with the same products on the same store. A huge benefit of selling on Shopify is the fact that you own the site and the domain name, which means those customers are fully yours. But a huge benefit that's often overlooked is that both ebay and amazon have a huge loyal customer base that only shops there and often doesn't even bother looking anywhere else before they purchase. Here's your chance to integrate the different channels together and take over the ecommerce world in your niche! By the way, if you do end up signing up for a new Shopify account, please use my links in this post so I can get credit for referring you, I've made it easy by making all links in this post affiliate links!
Basically the new Shopify/Amazon integration allows you create Amazon listings from your existing products that you already sell on your Shopify store and manage inventory by automatically syncing inventory tracked by Shopify with your Amazon listings. With this method you'll be fulfilling your new Amazon orders from within Shopify.
This isn't FBA, which is an entirely different model where you first send the product to Amazon's warehouses, pay a storage and fulfillment fee and allow them to take orders, and send them out. With this model you are still sending and fulfilling orders yourself, or having your supplier dropship them directly to the customer. The new Amazon integration could work really well with Anton's dropshipping method as the products are shipped from within the U.S. which normally ships quickly and comes with tracking numbers on Fedex and UPS. But in reality, the best products that this method would work with is if you create your own brand, whether the products are drop shipped or not!
I'll get more into that below, but first, here are the actual features of the new integration.
(Note: All links on this site are affiliate links, use them if you want to give me credit referring you!)
A big question about the new Shopify integration with Amazon is going to be if you can dropship products from Aliexpress or China to your customers with it or not. The same thing goes with Shopify Integration with Ebay as well. The truth is, yes it's technically possible, but no it won't be as easy if if you were physically sending out products yourself. I know a lot of people don't want to hear that as an option, but dropshipping from Aliexpress isn't necessarily a real business in itself, but it's a great way to test products to see what sells without first having to buy inventory.
At the end of the day, I've always preached building up a real brand that you can grow and eventually sell later down the road for 27X monthly profits like I've done now with 2 stores so far for over $100,000. So keep that in mind when you're thinking about selling on Amazon, think about creating a brand, and maybe even importing some of the products that you know sell well, private labeling them, and making them better or more unique in some way so you're not just competing on price. Also Amazon is a huge stickler for fast customer service, fast shipping, and making their customers happy at all costs, even if it hurts the seller, so keep that in mind before integrating.
Listen to this interview with Andrew Youderian on the Shopify Master's podcast below for more details.
Yes you need to get UPC numbers, yes it's not as simple and straightforward as you might like it to be. But if it's difficult for yourself to set up, it'll be just as hard for others which can be a good thing as it may keep competition out. Instead of just thinking if you should sell on Amazon or on Shopify, you can now do both.
As much I don't like Amazon for a lot of reasons and prefer selling on my own Shopify store and on my own domain, they have a huge market share and it's silly for us not to take advantage of that. My advice is to go through the Shopify/Amazon Integration steps yourself, and if you get stuck, take 15 minutes to google the answer, or ask for help. Be one of the 5% of people who don't give up and do whatever it takes it become a successful entrepreneur and take advantage of the different tools you out there to make your job easier. If you don't yet have a product to sell and you haven't gotten started yet, check out my guide below on how to start your first dropshipping store on any budget!
Hope this guide helps!
Warm Regards,
Johnny FD
So instead of just selling on Amazon, Ebay, or direct to consumers on Shopify, you can do technically do all three with the same products on the same store. A huge benefit of selling on Shopify is the fact that you own the site and the domain name, which means those customers are fully yours. But a huge benefit that's often overlooked is that both ebay and amazon have a huge loyal customer base that only shops there and often doesn't even bother looking anywhere else before they purchase. Here's your chance to integrate the different channels together and take over the ecommerce world in your niche! By the way, if you do end up signing up for a new Shopify account, please use my links in this post so I can get credit for referring you, I've made it easy by making all links in this post affiliate links!
Shopify/Amazon - Integration
Basically the new Shopify/Amazon integration allows you create Amazon listings from your existing products that you already sell on your Shopify store and manage inventory by automatically syncing inventory tracked by Shopify with your Amazon listings. With this method you'll be fulfilling your new Amazon orders from within Shopify.
This isn't FBA, which is an entirely different model where you first send the product to Amazon's warehouses, pay a storage and fulfillment fee and allow them to take orders, and send them out. With this model you are still sending and fulfilling orders yourself, or having your supplier dropship them directly to the customer. The new Amazon integration could work really well with Anton's dropshipping method as the products are shipped from within the U.S. which normally ships quickly and comes with tracking numbers on Fedex and UPS. But in reality, the best products that this method would work with is if you create your own brand, whether the products are drop shipped or not!
I'll get more into that below, but first, here are the actual features of the new integration.
(Note: All links on this site are affiliate links, use them if you want to give me credit referring you!)
 |
| Sign up for Shopify/Amazon here. |
Features of Shopify/Amazon
- Create Amazon listings inside of Shopify
- Get access to Amazon customers
- Use Amazon ads to promote your products
- Get your products reviewed on Amazon
- Turn your existing products into Amazon products
- Sync product details, variants and images to Amazon
- Link Shopify products with your existing Amazon listings
- Set a unique price for Amazon listings to offset the fees
- Sync inventory tracked by Shopify with Amazon listings
- Fulfill Amazon orders directly from your shopify dashboard
- Currently only for USA but hopefully will roll out internationally
- Rolled out with 8 product categories with more to come
Dropshipping with Amazon
A big question about the new Shopify integration with Amazon is going to be if you can dropship products from Aliexpress or China to your customers with it or not. The same thing goes with Shopify Integration with Ebay as well. The truth is, yes it's technically possible, but no it won't be as easy if if you were physically sending out products yourself. I know a lot of people don't want to hear that as an option, but dropshipping from Aliexpress isn't necessarily a real business in itself, but it's a great way to test products to see what sells without first having to buy inventory.
At the end of the day, I've always preached building up a real brand that you can grow and eventually sell later down the road for 27X monthly profits like I've done now with 2 stores so far for over $100,000. So keep that in mind when you're thinking about selling on Amazon, think about creating a brand, and maybe even importing some of the products that you know sell well, private labeling them, and making them better or more unique in some way so you're not just competing on price. Also Amazon is a huge stickler for fast customer service, fast shipping, and making their customers happy at all costs, even if it hurts the seller, so keep that in mind before integrating.
Listen to this interview with Andrew Youderian on the Shopify Master's podcast below for more details.
Overall Thoughts
Yes you need to get UPC numbers, yes it's not as simple and straightforward as you might like it to be. But if it's difficult for yourself to set up, it'll be just as hard for others which can be a good thing as it may keep competition out. Instead of just thinking if you should sell on Amazon or on Shopify, you can now do both.
As much I don't like Amazon for a lot of reasons and prefer selling on my own Shopify store and on my own domain, they have a huge market share and it's silly for us not to take advantage of that. My advice is to go through the Shopify/Amazon Integration steps yourself, and if you get stuck, take 15 minutes to google the answer, or ask for help. Be one of the 5% of people who don't give up and do whatever it takes it become a successful entrepreneur and take advantage of the different tools you out there to make your job easier. If you don't yet have a product to sell and you haven't gotten started yet, check out my guide below on how to start your first dropshipping store on any budget!
 |
| Learn How to Start Your First Dropshipping Store |
Hope this guide helps!
Warm Regards,
Johnny FD
Thank you for sharing this useful information, I will regularly follow your blog
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