If your home Amazon marketplace is outside the USA then expanding to sell on Amazon.com will open the doors to the world’s most competitive Amazon store around.

Here’s our step-by-step guide on how to reach these customers and maximize your returns.

Why should your business sell on Amazon.com?

Once your core Amazon Marketplace is well established, expanding your sales into new international territories is an excellent way to boost revenue. And selling on Amazon’s home turf offers access to its biggest and most lucrative market.

Amazon.com is the most visited ecommerce site in the United States, with worldwide direct visits to Amazon.com recorded at approximately 2.45 billion¹. Global net sales for Amazon.com in 2021 was US$131 million² and the marketplace commands over a third of market share for ecommerce in the United States³.

How to link your existing Amazon account to Amazon.com

If you’re already running a store on Amazon Marketplace, it will be a perfect launchpad for selling on Amazon.com.

You will need to sign up for a new North American Amazon Seller Central account – every region you sell through requires its own account. But once created, you can link your accounts through the Sell Globally page on Seller Central and manage them all from your Unified Account. Once you define your ‘source’ marketplace you can choose listings that you want to be available across multiple target marketplaces.

Using the Build International Listings (BIL) tool, you can set the rules for how your listings and prices are translated across marketplaces. This includes being able to make automatic price adjustments for your products on Amazon.com as your source marketplace currency fluctuates.

You can also use this single North American account to sell to Canada and Mexico. So, once you’re fully operational you’ll be able to consider new sales options.

How to transfer your Amazon customer reviews to your Amazon.com store

If you’ve built a solid reputation in your home market, your customer reviews can be copied to your new listings on Amazon.com.

The Build International Listings (BIL) tool keeps reviews from your source marketplace attached to your matching products on Amazon.com. Then, once new reviews begin to come in on the new marketplace your transferred reviews will no longer be displayed.

Localizing listings for Amazon.com

Even if you’re coming from an English-speaking Amazon Marketplace, remember to adjust your product listings to reflect American spelling conventions. It can be the little details done the right way that helps a shopper decide between two closely matched listings.

Find bestselling categories for your Amazon.com store

If you’re chasing new sales that differ from what works best on your home marketplace, you need to do your research. Bestseller lists can reveal the biggest items – but these also come with the toughest competition and tightest margins.

Some of the top categories on Amazon.com are:

Also, remember other considerations such as making sure the items you sell use the correct power plugs and that you have distribution rights for the US market.

Make sure the items you sell use the correct power plugs and that you have distribution rights for the US market.

Trends change and there are some good third-party tools available to help you keep an eye out for what’s hot. Plus, Amazon.com offers an annual events calendar that shares which categories sell best around key moments throughout the year.

How to sell on Amazon.com from Canada

If your home Amazon Marketplace is Canada, selling on Amazon.com is simple thanks to the Unified Account system for North America. Your Amazon Seller Account on Amazon.ca allows you to create listings that can run across Amazon.com and Amazon Mexico.

Earning US currency can be a benefit for many Canadian businesses that sell on Amazon.com. And with a multi-currency account, managing those US dollars by avoiding unnecessary conversions could deliver substantial added value.

How do you get paid and manage fees for your sales on Amazon.com?

Selling into international markets can be more profitable if you take a little extra time to have a currency management plan in place. By using a multi-currency account to sell on Amazon.com (more details below), you’ll be able to retain your US currency, giving you the option to pay USD expenses in the same currency or convert to your local currency when the time is right.

Funds you owe to Amazon.com for your store can be paid via credit card, or when you start achieving sales on Amazon.com your various fees can be deducted from your earnings. According to Amazon, receiving payments after a sale usually takes three to five days.

Currency conversion for Amazon.com

Amazon.com revenue is paid in US dollars (USD), but depending on where your home market is you will probably want to convert it at some stage.

Amazon Currency Converter for Sellers (ACCS) is the default service that automatically delivers your sales back to your home currency, with conversion performed at the exchange rate when the transaction occurs.

It can be difficult to open a bank account that is valid as a local currency account as it must be domiciled in the USA. But by opening a multi-currency account, you can receive your Amazon.com sales revenue in US dollars and keep them in that currency until you’re ready to perform a conversion at the time of your choosing – perhaps based on a target exchange rate that allows you to maximize profit.

Manage conversion rates and fees with a multi-currency account for Amazon.com

With a multi-currency account you only need to create a single account to open virtual currency accounts across many major currencies.

Through your a multi-currency account you can manage payments in local currencies, even keeping funds in the market if you need to pay suppliers or other services with that currency. This is particularly beneficial with US dollars given the many options for a store to trade in USD.

Using a multi-currency account can reduce losses caused by unfavorable exchange rate fluctuations or the conversion costs and fees that come with unnecessary transfers back and forth between currencies.

You can even set rate alerts to notify you of moments when currency rates are particularly good for making your transfers, helping to ensure the effort you’re putting into selling on Amazon US will receive its maximum reward.

Using Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) for your Amazon.com shipping

Amazon.com has built a reputation in the USA for its delivery speed, all thanks to Amazon’s distribution prowess. You can take advantage of that by using Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) to place your goods into its North American distribution network.

65% of US Amazon customers are members of Amazon Prime; by using FBA your products will be shipped free as part of the free shipping offer that all Prime members receive. In addition, Amazon will handle returns for you.

When participating in FBA on Amazon.com, your items are shipped to a receiving center and then there’s nothing else for you to worry about.

There are FBA fees for storage and distribution but Amazon offers a calculator to help you price in the fees appropriately and stay profitable.

Some products may not be ideal for FBA.

The best products to sell on Amazon FBA are of a size and weight that is easy for storage and shipping, as costs scale up quickly for large package sizes.

The best products to sell on Amazon FBA are of a size and weight that is easy for storage and shipping, as costs scale up quickly for large package sizes. Similarly, very low-priced items will have poor profitability once FBA fees are factored in, so finding a pricing sweet spot that can sell fast, at scale, with the right margin after fees are calculated is the key to success.

Advertising to grow your business on Amazon.com

To boost your visibility on Amazon.com, three key options are available to put yourself in front of more shoppers at the right moment.

To advertise individual products in search and on details pages, use the Sponsored Products option. To boost the visibility of your Amazon.com store brand, use the Sponsored Brands service. And to sell your Amazon.com products with ads across the wider web, Sponsored Display is the tool for you.

IMPORTANT: This third party content provided by OFX has not been reviewed or endorsed by Amazon.

Sources:

1. https://www.statista.com/statistics/271450/monthly-unique-visitors-to-us-retail-websites/
2. https://ecommercedb.com/store/amazon.com

3. https://www.insiderintelligence.com/newsroom/index.php/us-ecommerce-will-cross-1-trillion-in-2022/

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IMPORTANT: The contents of this blog do not constitute financial advice and are provided for general information purposes only without taking into account the investment objectives, financial situation and particular needs of any particular person. OzForex Limited (trading as OFX) and its affiliated entities make no recommendation as to the merits of any financial strategy or product referred to in the blog. OFX makes no warranty, express or implied, concerning the suitability, completeness, quality or exactness of the information and models provided in this blog.