Scale With Virtual Assistants: Amazon seller central & dropshipping
If you’re an Amazon seller, there are a number of perks to setting up your own “storefront” and making your inventory available to the millions of shoppers who frequent the site. One major drawback: it can take a lot of time tackling office tasks that have nothing to do with sales.
This article covers the proven methods in which Amazon sellers and dropshipping expand their capacity, market share, operations, and profits — all by way of adding full-time professional virtual assistants. These strategies should help you remove the full-time administrative tasks that were once required to run your business. In turn, you can focus on selling more products and earning higher profits.
What is a virtual assistant?
We’re often asked how virtual assistants can benefit sellers on Amazon Marketplace, so we’ll provide a brief explanation here:
A virtual assistant is an individual who works remotely for a client of any kind (individuals or companies) using specific tools and processes. Virtual assistants are often hired by individuals in need of assistance with administrative tasks. Since they work remotely, clients don’t always know the location of their virtual assistants.
Amazon Seller Central
When it comes to selling online, Amazon is the king. The retail giant dominates the market with its selection and prices, but that doesn’t mean it’s stopping there. In fact, Amazon has been making moves out of their warehouse to put themselves more on par with the marketplace. One of these new services for all sellers is called Seller Central and it allows you to go beyond selling on Amazon and even set up a shop where you can sell your products themselves.
Now, the big question for those interested is what exactly will this look like? You probably already have a website set up and are thinking that you don’t need to be on Amazon if you’re already there. Well, that’s not the case as Amazon is not only expanding its shipping options but is also taking some of those tasks on for sellers.
Getting started on Amazon Seller Central
All new sellers have to do is sign up and get going — but if you’re an existing seller, then you’re going to want to make sure that your inventory feed is updated. This means more work but it’s more than worth it according to experts.
In fact, Amazon is going beyond simply allowing you to sell on your own website – they’re offering you the opportunity to use a storefront as well. This is similar to eBay in that it’s a way for sellers to do business directly with customers and not have to go through Amazon at all.
The main reason for this new venture is so that existing sellers can take advantage of moving their inventory items over from Amazon itself. All sellers will need to do is make the move and then transfer the inventory feeds from their existing account over into Seller Central.
Dropshipping & Amazon
As you might imagine, dropshipping has become a very popular way to not only sell products on Amazon but all over the world. The main reason for this is that it’s extremely cost-effective and doesn’t require any stock to be kept. In fact, in most cases the seller themselves doesn’t even need to carry any inventory – which means that they don’t need to worry about being stuck with excess stock should they not sell quickly enough.
Amazon does allow sellers to use dropshipping as a tactic in selling their products – although there are rules as to how long these items can remain on your site or if you can link directly to an external provider’s location. As we said before, dropshipping is a popular way for people to sell products, and often you can find that you have the exact product that you need at a much lower price than from your usual supermarket – which can save you hundreds, if not thousands of dollars.
These days it’s getting ever more difficult to find products in your local supermarket – not only are they often not cheap enough, but increasingly the range on offer is poor. As a workaround to dropshipping, many sellers source their products and rent out an affordable local warehouse to store their stock. This is often done through fulfillment by Amazon, which simply means that you can have Amazon ship your products straight to a third-party location rather than directly to your customers.
Don’t Lift a Finger with Virtual Assistants
As mentioned, there are a few reasons why sellers should consider deploying some full-time Ecommerce Virtual Assistants to help with important tasks. As we’ve just discussed, new sellers will need to do a little more legwork when it comes to getting their products set up and ready for sale on Amazon.
Full-time MyOutDesk Virtual Assistants come with proven business experience and cost up to 70% less than a traditional employee. They work as hard, if not harder, than full-time employees and take all the stress out of non-selling tasks.
Here are a few examples of what you can ask Virtual Assistants to help with:
Product sourcing
Sourcing vendors and suppliers for your products or services is one of the most important parts of beginning to sell online. It doesn’t matter if you want to liquidate items from your garage or purchase inventory for a dropshipping business – you have to find the right sellers in order to put yourself on the path towards success.
Is it possible for you to do this by yourself? Of course, but it’s time-consuming. The right virtual assistant will save you a ton of time by helping you find the right vendors and suppliers for your business. They’ll help you find products that are great for your business and make sure that they’re available at the best prices possible.
Social marketing
Not all sellers need to focus on social media marketing for their products or services – but if you want to scale quickly, then the right marketing tactics are an absolute must. This is especially true if you’ve got a new eCommerce site or are interested in becoming a full-time seller on Amazon Marketplace.
Virtual assistants can help you with social media marketing. They’ll monitor your competitors on different marketing websites, and find out which ones are more successful than you. They’ll then brainstorm ideas on how to beat your competitors, get followers and engage with them on those platforms. In this way, you can use your virtual assistant to drive traffic and increase sales – not only for your products but for the services you offer as well.
Amazon SEO Services
Once you’ve started selling on Amazon, it’s important that you optimize your product listings. This is another one of the areas that full-time virtual assistants can help you with – because they’re well versed in how to improve your visibility on Amazon and get your products up to the top of the SERPs. Here are a few things that can help you with improving Product Page Rankings (SEO). One way to increase visibility on Amazon is to optimize your product page by making sure that it follows all of the rules for a successful listing.
Amazon Product Advertising
There is a way to easily advertise on Amazon. A lot of sellers are simply using Amazon’s own advertising service, which can be an effective way to not only reach potential customers but also generate sales.
Project & Inventory Management
No one likes to deal with product returns, so it’s important that you keep track of what’s in stock at all times. If there’s a problem with the inventory levels on your product pages, you risk having customers come to you for a refund or replacement.
With full-time virtual assistants, you can have our team monitor your inventory levels each day and make sure that they’re always accurate. You’ll be able to log into your Amazon seller account at any time and see what you need to do to fix any issues with your inventory.
Customer Service
Of course, if you’re new to selling on Amazon, then you’ll likely need some help with customer service. Selling online attracts some of the most passionate customers, so it’s important that your team are able to answer queries quickly and effectively.
There are a number of ways that our virtual staff can help out your customers. They can answer questions on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook – as well as provide direct support via email and live chats – making sure that all of your customers’ needs are met.
Basic Bookkeeping and Accounting
If you run a small to medium-sized business, then you’ll need a place to manage all of your financial and accounting details. It’s also important that you know where your money is going so that you can take action if there are any issues or changes to your merchant account. We often have features in our software that allow owners of small to medium-sized businesses to easily manage various aspects of their business.
Get Your Business Off the Ground Today
As we mentioned earlier, there’s no need to start building a team in bits and pieces as you go along with your scaling your eCommerce business. We’ve put together an entire team of fully-trained, experienced virtual assistants who’ll be able to support and encourage you through the journey of scaling your business.
If you’re looking to take the next step, then we’d love to talk with you! You can get a demo of our software – or find out exactly what it can do for your business – by filling out the form on this page.
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Simply put, MyOutDesk equips entrepreneurs & business owners with tools, strategies, and virtual employees – and when combined, businesses have a competitive edge and find growth while efficient systems and processes are put in place.
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Did You Know? MyOutDesk’s origin story is set during the last global financial crisis of 2008. Yes, that’s right — our business started by scaling businesses with virtual assistants during a recession! Our first client in 2008 went from five to seventeen VAs with a completely revamped organizational model in short order, and he told MyOutDesk, “Our virtual professionals have shaved $250,000 off our monthly overhead.”
