This week’s episode is a Q&A, covering the questions I hear time and time again from people selling or thinking about selling on Amazon.

I dive into topics like:

• the biggest mistakes new sellers make

• choosing between FBA and FBM

• how to improve visibility and reach page one

• knowing if your pricing is truly competitive

• whether Amazon is still worth it in 2026

Even if you’ve been selling for a while, these are still the questions that shape better decisions, stronger foundations and more confident growth.

If there’s something you’d like me to cover in a future Q&A, you can message me on LinkedIn or Instagram, or reply to one of my emails. And remember, there’s a whole back catalogue of episodes if you want to keep learning.

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Welcome to the Bring your Product Idea to Life podcast. This is the podcast for you if you're getting started selling products or if you'd like to create your own product to sell.

I'm Vicki Weinberg, a product creation coach and Amazon expert. Every week I share friendly practical advice as well as inspirational stories from small businesses.

I'm recording this on a very wet and rainy day in November by candlelight, because if I turn the overhead light on in my office, it's not so great for the videos if you're watching this on YouTube. So I am doing something a little bit different this week. I'm going to answer some of the questions I'm asked most often about selling on Amazon.

I am always been asked questions, as you can imagine, and I wanted to share some of the most common ones with you because I think it will be really helpful because some of these things come up time and time again. So I think you'll find this really useful. So let's get straight into it.

So question number one is the that I get asked is what's the biggest mistake people make when they first sell it, when they first start selling on Amazon? And I'm going to cheat a little bit here because I don't have one answer. I have a few. Yeah, and perhaps this isn't even my full list.

These are just the ones I could think of when I was preparing this episode.

So the first mistake that I see is jumping in without doing any research because some sellers assume that Amazon will work a bit like Etsy or like their own website. But it's actually Amazon is basically a big search engine and listing products on Amazon works a bit differently to listing on your own website.

So something I see often is that someone will list on Amazon and I'll look at their product listing and it's not very keyword rich. So it's going to be. People are going to struggle to find it. It's not going to come up in search results organically.

And then I look at the text and it's a bit sparse. Maybe it just lack. It just lists the features of the product. There's nothing about the benefits. There's no usp.

There's nothing about why someone might buy that product, what the benefits to their life would be, how they might use it. It's just not really very compelling. Maybe the pricing's really out compared to other listings.

There's lots and lots of things that can happen when you haven't done enough research. So perhaps you haven't checked since perhaps customers don't, Sellers don't check the eligibility before listing.

So I've got a three point checklist that I think everyone should go through before they start selling.

On selling on Amazon, the first thing is can you sell your product there because you don't want to get so far down the process and then think, oh, actually I can't sell this for what, whatever reason, I've seen that happen. You don't want to sell something on Amazon that there's just no demand for because maybe Amazon isn't the best marketplace for your products.

I've said this so many times, it's not right for everyone. It's a great marketplace, but not for every brand, not for every seller.

And you know, there will be, there will be products that will be a benefit to Etsy, for example, than Amazon. And that's absolutely fine.

Unless you've just spent months getting set up on Amazon only to find that your product isn't selling because you haven't done your research.

And also you don't want the get all the way into selling, get everything set up and then find out that actually you're losing money because of your margin. So not doing any or enough research is probably my number one. However, there are a few other things as well.

So listing products really quickly without taking the time to optimize the copy, without taking the time to really think about the keywords, getting great images, as I mentioned, I guess right at the beginning when I was talking about some of the listings, I see where I think, oh, actually that could be done. You know, this could be slightly improved. Trying to do everything at once is another thing that I see.

So deciding that you're going to start doing all the ads and get FBA set up and start listing bundles, getting your entire catalog listed, instead of getting the basics right, I think you'd be much better off listing a small number of listings, doing them really well, taking the time to understand how it all works, get some reviews, start getting some sales, then maybe start adding on ads. You know, you can do things slowly and deliberately and do really, really well. There's absolutely no rush to do everything right away.

And then I guess the final thing that I see is people thinking that because something is listed it will sell. I don't see this as often now, maybe because it's something I talk about so much, people don't say this to me anymore, which is good.

I did often used to get people say to me, I can't even find my own listing on Amazon. And you know, there's many reasons for that.

If you listen to last week's episode about the Amazon algorithm, you might get some hints and ideas about why your listing isn't getting found.

And if you haven't listened to that, it's a good one to go back for, particularly if you feel like your listing isn't getting the visibility it should. But yes, you can't just set up a listing on Amazon and expect people to find it and buy it. That very, very rarely happens.

And I guess takeaway from all of this is that the most successful sellers I've worked with are the ones who took time to set up properly, had a bit of a plan in place, understood where their product fits in the category, and started off slowly and deliberately and then scaled so, you know, they didn't decide they were going to launch in five marketplaces at once. They focused on one, did it right, and then moved on. I think trying to do everything is always a mistake. And I can say this from experience as well.

I don't mind telling you, when I had Tiny Chipmunk, my baby brand, I launched in the uk, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, all at once. That was ridiculous. In hindsight, I think Amazon wasn't quite as complicated then. I mean, it was just before Brexit for one thing.

But doing all of that at once was silly. I should have focused on the uk, getting the uk, you know, doing really well, which it did do really well.

But I feel like I spared myself a bit too thin by trying to do everything at once. So I am saying this from experience and I'm not judging anyone at all because it can be really easy to think I have to be doing everything.

But when it comes to Amazon, I'd say slow and steady is definitely the best way forward. So the second question, should I use fulfillment by Amazon or should I ship orders myself? Okay, so let's start off by explaining the difference.

So fulfilment by Amazon or FBA is where Amazon stores, packs and ships your products and you pay them fulfillment and storage fees. And what we call FBM stands for Fulfilled by Merchant. And that's where you handle the shipping yourself.

Or maybe you have a third party or distribution center that does the shipping for you. And FBA gives you prime badge.

So when you see your prime listing, it means that that product is actually listed in Amazon's warehouse and it can help with Conversion rates. However, it can all cost you more money that it often does cost more money and it requires you obviously sending your stock into Amazon.

And depending what you sell, it may be a product that's very easy to send into FBA or not.

So for example, if you sell a product that's very fragile and you're worried about Amazon damaging it, you might not want to send it in for FBA if you sell a food product with a very short shelf life. So I work with some food brands who sell like amazing products that have got no additives, no preservatives, they're just completely natural.

But those products by nature of what they are, often have very short shelf lives.

So either they can't send these products in for fba, or maybe they need to send them in smaller amounts because you don't want to have stock that expires because once it expires, Amazon will destroy it or send it back, depending on your preference. And if you have products that are really big or bulky, again, you might not want to send them into Amazon for fulfill.

So I have, I work for a brand who sells, among other things, fence panels. They're not going to sell fat send fence panels into fba. I'm not think Amazon would even accept fence panels.

That sounds a bit, that sounds beyond what they probably could do.

But if you were to buy, I don't know, a microwave on Amazon, for example, it might, it might be fba, but it might not be because the brand might decide actually it'd be much better and profitable to ship this ourselves. So both things are okay. FBM can make sense, as I say.

So fulfilling yourself can make sense for these bulky, heavy or handmade products or where FBA fees mean that it's going to eat into your margins too much. There's no right or wrong answer here. It really comes down to what's right for your business and your individual products.

There are lots of brands that do both.

So you might do FBA for your smaller, fast moving items, FBM for ones that maybe your bigger products, maybe you've got some handmade products, you do those via fbm. Maybe you've got some products that sell a bit slower, so it makes sense to dispatch those yourself.

And you can also offer both options across both listings.

One thing I would say is if you are going to offer both FBA and FBM is that if you're able to offer free shipping on your FBM products, that's really good. So it's comparable because otherwise people of course will, will gravitate to the ones where shipping is included.

Because sometimes, depending on what you're buying and how much it costs, paying £3.99 or whatever it is for shipping on top can feel a bit much, particularly on Amazon. When so many products are prime and the shipping is included, sometimes it can be a bit jarring, can't it?

I know I've had it before where I've looked at buying. You know, I've got a few products in my basket and then maybe one of them is fbm.

I don't realize until I get to checkout and I see, oh, I've got to pay an extra four pound fifty for that to be delivered. Sometimes I'll be honest, I do go back and see if there's another option. You know, can I get a similar product on prime?

So it's just going to come with the rest of my order. I'm not going to be the only person to do that. So I think if you're able to offer FBM at free shipping, that would always be my suggestion.

Of course, that isn't always possible if you're sending something that's really fragile or really large. I think customers will expect to pay for shipping.

But if not, perhaps you can even incorporate the shipping price into the product price so it looks a bit more reasonable. But I guess that was a very long way of saying it depends. There's no right or wrong.

It's just what's right or wrong or best for your individual business. Okay, question number three. How do I get my products to show up on page one? Well, that's what we all want, isn't it?

But let's be honest, there's no magic button and paying for it helps. I should say that straight away that if you pay for ads, you've got much more chance of appearing on page one.

But actually it comes back to what I spoke about in last week's episode, which was the Amazon algorithm. And just you can go back and listen to that entire episode that explains it in lots more detail. But in short, Amazon's algorithm.

Algorithm rewards listings that are relevant and sell because products sell also make Amazon money. And there are three things you really want to be thinking about when it comes to your products, your product listings in particular.

So first is making sure that they're relevant so you've got the right keywords in your title and the rest of your listing text. So all of the wording you know is deliberately words and phrases that, well match your product.

You want to focus on performance so you Want to have high click through rates, which of course you can't directly impact, but you can indirectly impact by making sure you've got a great product title and a main image and conversion rate to making sure that all the information a customer might need to make a purchase is included in your in your listing. There's nothing that's that's missed out. Your listing is really clear.

That will also help on reducing returns, rates and then the customer experience. So making sure you stay in stock, trying to get some great reviews, having pricing that makes sense and delivery speed.

All of these things also impact where you appear in the search results. As I say, ads can help with building visibility and it they can get you onto page one. However, they won't fix a listing that isn't converting.

If your listing isn't converting organically, driving more traffic to it isn't going to help. So my top tip here is to always focus on conversions.

Getting your listing to the best place it can be and focusing on getting a listing that converts and then start driving traffic.

Getting on page one really comes from showing Amazon that you're the best option and the best way to do that is to have a great product and a great product listing. And if you can do those things, that's really going to help.

And as I say, if you want to know more, you can go back and listen to last week's episode. Question number four is how do I know if my pricing is competitive?

I mean this is a, this is a tricky one because I mean what does competitive mean really? So something you can definitely do is you can look for other products similar to yours and see what similar products are priced at.

However, I want to say up front, don't assume you need to be the cheapest. I hate seeing people compete on price. Hate the strong word, but I really do.

Because if your product is worth five pound more than your competitors, it's worth that. If that's what it's worth, then that's what it's worth. And you don't have to be lowering your price to meet theirs.

What I would suggest you do instead is ensuring that customers can be can see why your product is five pound more, let's say as an example. And you can do that via your product listing text via your images.

Customers just need to be able to tell the difference between a £20 product and a £25 product, even if they look quite similar. That would be my my advice. So I would look at what other products are priced at similar to yours, but then at where Your product fits.

So maybe your products are higher quality, maybe your branding is more premium, maybe you sell more items in a pack, maybe your product has got really unique features. All of these things can justify a higher price.

It also might be, by the way, that your product justifies a lower price than some products in your category and that's fine as well.

So I'm not saying don't be the cheapest if your product and your margins lend you to actually being able to sell your product cheaper than somebody else. And perhaps you know that your product is more pared down version or you know, it's about knowing where your product fits and pricing accordingly.

And it also is okay, I should say, because I spoke to someone about this just this week, it's also okay to price your product on Amazon slightly differently to on your website, if that makes sense for you. You can absolutely sell for the same price. But if you need to alter your price on Amazon for any reason, you can do that. That's absolutely fine.

It's your business and it's your and it's your and it's your choice. It's also okay to do sales and discounts and promotions on Amazon now and again if that's going to help you.

I wouldn't do it all of the time because you don't want to be one of those brands that people never buy from when they're full price.

I remember years ago when I was in my 20s, I used to shop at Gap a lot and I never ever shopped at Gap when it was full price because I knew that at least once a month it was going to be 25 off or 30 off. There was always a sale. So I never ever bought anything full price.

So you definitely don't want to be one of those brands where customers are like, I'm just going to wait till the next discount because there's always one.

But using disc accounts strategically at certain times of year where you want a bit of a boost to sales or you want to help up your visibility is definitely not a bad thing. But I would just say how you price your products is really unique to you and it just needs to make sense within the category that it's in.

As I say, you can be the most expensive customers. Whether you're the most expensive, whether you're the cheapest, whether you're somewhere in the middle.

Customers have just got to be able to make sense of your pricing. And I think that's the key thing. Okay, and now the final question.

If you can pass the checks I speak about, because you can sell your product on Amazon, there's a market for it and it's going to make you money. Yes. If you have the time and the effort or resources to put into doing it really, really well, then yes, Amazon is definitely competitive.

It's becoming more competitive and it will carry on becoming more competitive, I imagine. But there is still room for new brand if it's done really, really well.

We know that customers trust Amazon and it's where lots of people do start their product searches. Not everyone shops on Amazon.

I know there are those out there who would rather shop from independent brands and independent websites and that's absolutely fine. But there were always going to be people who were shopping on Amazon. I don't see that going away anytime soon.

So for that reason, I still believe it is a good place to be if it's made sense for you. What I think has changed a lot over the past few is the sort of the quality level and like the bar for quality.

What I mean by that is that to sell well on Amazon now, I think your product listings have to be great. I think your branding has to be good. You need great images, you need to uncopy. You ideally want A plus content as well.

You want a store, you want reviews. It is getting harder, I'm not going to lie about that.

But I think if you've got a great product and you've got everything in place to create really great product listings on Amazon, and you've got some time to invest in getting sales going and getting reviews, as I've spoken about in a few episodes earlier this month, then I still think there's an opportunity for you. It's not. Amazon isn't one of these marketplaces where you're necessarily going to get overnight success. There is a little bit of work involved.

However, if you're prepared to do that, and as I say, you have a great product and a great brand and you're prepared to invest the time, I still think it's worth it. Not for everyone. Let's be honest. I've said this before, I don't.

I believe that it's absolutely still worth it, but not for every brand, not for every product. But I think if you have.

If you can pass all of the checks, that it's going to be somewhere that's going to work for you and you've got a plan and you've got realistic expectations and you're happy to go in and test things out and learn. I still think you can do really, really well and I still genuinely believe that it's worth it.

So I hope those questions and my answers have been helpful. Please, please, please. If there is something you'd love me to cover in a future Q and A episode, I would like to hear from you.

Just reply to one of my emails or email me directly. Vicky vickyweinberg.com Send me a message on LinkedIn. Send me a message on Instagram. Tell me what you'd like me to cover. I'm always happy to do that.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode. Thank you so much for listening to my episodes this year. Whether this is your first episode or you've been listening to me right from the beginning.

Thank you so, so much. I'll be back next week with another episode to help you make selling on AM little bit easier.

And remember that from January there'll be no more Tuesday episodes, so there'll be episodes every Friday, alternating between me and a guest. But remember, if you are missing specific Amazon content, I've been doing this for over a year now.

There are lots and lots of Amazon episodes in the back catalog. They are all great, they're all still relevant and you can find all of them for free there. So please go along and find whatever you're looking for.

Thank you so much for listening right to the end of this episode.

Do remember that you can get the Fullback catalogue and lots of free resources on my website vickyweinberg.com Please do remember to rate and review this episode if you've enjoyed it, and also share it with a friend who you think might find it useful.

Thank you again and see you next week.