Sadly, many Amazon sellers will see their first product fail & their Amazon journey will stop there.

In this article, I will show you the four main mistakes these sellers make & how you can avoid them!

Problem 1: No Proper Product Research

One of the biggest reasons Amazon FBA sellers fail is a lack of thorough product research. The Amazon marketplace is incredibly crowded, with thousands of sellers competing for attention, so finding the right niche is crucial. Without using advanced tools like Jungle Scout or Helium 10, you’re essentially flying blind.

These tools help identify products with high demand and low competition, but you’ll need to dig deeper to uncover underserved niches. Create specific criteria—like what profit margins, competition level, and sales velocity are you looking for? I personally track all these findings in an organized Excel sheet.

Don’t rush this step; dedicate at least a month to carefully analyze opportunities. By identifying the right niche and doing proper research, you can avoid costly mistakes and stand out in a saturated marketplace.

Problem 2: Not customising your product! 

Let’s first reveal the biggest problem you are having right now: Not customizing your products!

I’m sure you have been told countless times to just look for high-demand, low-competition products. And while that is definitely true. You can’t just stop here. 

If you would now go to Alibaba and order the first product you see. Your product would look exactly like 20 other products that are already out there!

What you need to do is customize your product! 

So how do we do this?

Option 1: Fully customize product

You can either fully customise your product or have it customised. This comes with some pros and cons, though. The biggest con is that it simply costs a lot of money.

That is why I would not advise beginners to use this method. But to check this out, you should ask your supplier for the mold or model costs. This will give you an estimate of how much this would cost.

Option 2: Only customize the packaging

Now the second way you can customise your product ( and this is something that I like to do)  is to customise the packaging. This will cost a lot less money, but can still give your product a really unique feeling and make it stand out from the rest.

In order to do this, you need to ask your supplier for a die-cut. This is the template for your packaging, which you can now fully customize however you like.

For an average size product, that is about the size of a shoe box, custom packaging should cost you around $30 – $50 cents. Of course this all depends on the quantities that you ordering.

Problem 3: Bad Product Presentation

I know what you are thinking: ‘I hired a photographer, he made some nice pictures. I got this covered.’ Well, that is not enough these days.

What you need to do is:

• Make sure you have a Trademark. If you don’t already have one, start registering it ASAP, as it can take a couple of months to process.
• This allows you to enroll in the Brand Registry Program, which unlocks some awesome features that can make your product stand out.
  

A+ Content

The first one is A+ content. This is pretty much a page-wide banner that you include on your product page. You can use it to show off your unique selling points, customer testimonials, how your product is used—whatever you think would sell your product best!

Amazon Product Video

The second thing this unlocks is that you can now upload a video for your product. This is a big conversion booster, and I have seen a huge increase in sales as soon as I upload a video for my products.

If you are not specialised in making videos, I suggest you hire a freelancer to make you a nice promotional video. This investment is definitely worth it.

Problem 4: Quality Control

Yes that is right. Your product might already fail before it even reaches Amazon. You will never succeed if your product rating is below 4 stars. It’s just that simple. Consumers on Amazon are spoiled with loads of high quality products so they won’t buy products with a bad rating.

So how do we ensure that our product is high quality? 

We do this by conducting a factory inspection. We won’t have to fly to China to do this ourselves. You can just hire an inspection company for this. They would go to the factory while your goods are still there and check

• The quality of the product
• Dimensions
• Materials being used
• Working conditions
• Any Amazon guidelines that you might have specified to them
  

This cost anywhere between $100 – $300. I personally do this for every order I place. Its a small investment to make sure I don’t get scammed & save me a lot of trouble in the future.

The company I use for this is: QIMA

Problem 5: After-sales service

When I order something on Amazon, I still see many sellers who don’t do this. But you want to make sure to contact your customers after they have made their orders.

You can do this by either sending them an e-mail. There are a couple of FBA tools out there that would just automatically do this for you.

Or you can include a product insert. This is essentially a small card that you add to the packaging.

What I would like to include in my first message is simply:

Hey thank you for your purchase. I am running a small 1 man operation over here, so every order means a lot to me. Please consider leaving a review.

If there is anything wrong please don’t hesitate to contact me.

What this does is it establishes a relationship with my customers. They know I’m not some big faceless corporation but a real person behind this. 

Now, they are way more likely to:

A). Leave a review.

B). If there is any problem with the product, they know they can directly contact me.

And I have had so many reviews from customers. Where there was initially something wrong with the product. But after they had contacted me & and I had handled their situation by either giving them a full refund or sending them a new product free of charge. They were so happy with the service that they still left a 5 star review. 

And I think this is how you should handle this situation as well.

Now, hopefully, you have learned something from all this and will be a better seller!