Is It Possible To Build a Million-Dollar Amazon Business? Tips for Working Toward Seven Figures

As an Amazon seller, you’ve likely seen the many “ultimate secrets” courses out there promising a quick path to making millions on the marketplace. But can you really make a million or more on Amazon?

Some sellers already have.

One seller built a fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) business worth $1.7 in just eight months in 2017, for example. And Aaron Cordovez grew his Amazon business to a staggering $200 million in just four years by capitalizing on his tech background to take a statistics-driven approach to dominating the marketplace. In fact, there’s even an entire worldwide community of Million-Dollar Sellers who collectively earn more than $7 billion in annual revenue.

These sellers — and so many others — prove that building a seven-figure Amazon business is possible. But that doesn’t make it easy. Here are some actionable tips that can help you on your path to a million-dollar Amazon business.

4 Tips for Building a Million-Dollar Amazon Ecommerce Business

1. Differentiate Yourself From the Competition

In a crowded marketplace where everyone has seemingly made and done everything, how do you stand out?

Here are a few options to consider:

• Create something completely new. Most sellers don’t start here because this strategy requires the most time and money. If you have the resources, however, finding gaps in the marketplace is a great way to open doors to new consumer segments.
• Adjust an existing product. Take a typical, high-selling product and adjust the specs to include new colors, designs, or branding. Sometimes putting your unique spin on a product can help drive new interest at a low overall investment.
• Add onto a pre-existing product. Find an existing product and manufacture a value-adding feature or accessory to capture some of the current consumer interest in the product.

Sellers with fewer dollars and resources should consider starting with private label sales, which enables sellers to add their own branding to an existing product made by another manufacturer at low cost. 

Start by finding a manufacturer on a site like Alibaba. Over time, develop and deepen your partnership so you can shift to private labels and boost your revenue into the millions, as 61% of the Million Dollar Sellers community members have done.

2. Win the Amazon Buy Box

“Buy Box.” “Featured Offer.” No matter what you call it, it’s the most advantageous position for Amazon sellers.

How does the Buy Box work?

When multiple sellers share an Amazon listing, the marketplace picks the best seller for the Buy Box, which enables consumers to purchase their product directly by clicking “buy now” or “add to cart.” Essentially, it’s the path of least resistance for shoppers — and the most beneficial one for sellers.

Winning the box dramatically increases your sales, and experienced sellers can earn this coveted spot by providing quality products, offering fast shipping, and hitting a low return rate. In competitive environments in which sellers engage in pricing wars, the cheapest product typically wins the box. 

Simply put, the Buy Box is the ticket to increased sales and brand visibility. In some ways, it’s an essential need for creating a million-dollar Amazon business. To increase your chances of winning the Buy Box, you'll want to:

• Sign up for FBA to leverage Amazon’s massive distribution network and fast Prime shipping.
• Increase customer reviews by using a product insert to thank customers for their purchase and encourage them to leave an honest review.
• Avoid selling products with a large number of sellers, as these are often too competitive for new sellers.

3. Understand Amazon SEO

Strong search engine optimization (SEO) practices can earn you a boost in organic traffic to your Amazon product listing. This unpaid source of traffic frees up your advertising budget and drives more customers to your product pages.

To get started, research common short-tail (1-2 words) and long-tail (3-5 words) keywords that your competitors use to describe products similar to yours. Insert these keywords into your title, description, and the backend keywords found on Amazon Seller Central under the product listing page. Better yet, let an automated tool like PixelMe do the heavy lifting for you. PixelMe gives you data-backed keyword recommendations that can help bump you to the top-ranking position.

Why bother with long-tail keywords? 

Niche product descriptions tend to require more words, enabling you to rank on both the total long-tail keyword and the short-tail keyword embedded within it. Reaching a million dollars or more will require you to capitalize on multiple keyword rankings within a strategic holistic SEO approach.

Focusing on paid advertising can help generate consumer interest in your product, but before you get started with paid ads, ensure you have a strong SEO strategy in place first.

4. Invest in Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Ads

Amazon PPC ads are a primary — and fairly inexpensive — method of promoting your products on the platform. While they can be daunting for new sellers who’ve never used advertising platforms, the best way to learn is to dive right in.

Fortunately, Amazon gives sellers significant control over their advertising. They provide you with a daily budget and let you know how much it will cost to get into different positions on Amazon's search page. The platform also gives you insight on the cost of other alternative ad models, such as display ads.

Regardless of how you advertise, the ad cost goes up as the keyword competitiveness of your market increases. The system relies on bids, so the seller willing to pay the most will win. If a competitor outbids you, you have two choices: adjust your ad spend manually or set your system to an automatic “max bid” to hold the top slot within a controllable advertising budget.

Many top-ranking sellers use a solution like PPC Entourage, which optimizes your PPC ads to reduce spend, provides automated time-saving campaign templates, and offers access to customized data and reporting. PPC Entourage — and many other strategic solutions — enable sellers to level-up their Amazon game to reach six- and seven-figure levels.