Amazon Seller – 20four7VA

Amazon Vendor Central vs. Seller Central: What’s the difference?

amazon seller central

Interested in selling your products on Amazon? You should be! Here are some impressive figures that prove that Amazon is the leading virtual marketplace today:

Amazon average 300 million monthly users
100,000 Amazon sellers earned $100,000 or more in 2016
44% of online shoppers directly visit Amazon to research products
Amazon boasts of $256 million net income in the third quarter of 2017 alone
80% of Amazon users in the USA shop from the website at least once a month

These impressive numbers are more than enough to push aspiring entrepreneurs to build and expand their business in the online marketplace. Of course, simply putting up your product listings on Amazon isn’t enough to guarantee success. It’s imperative to know how to sell properly on Amazon to share in its success.

To start your Amazon selling venture, you need to make a choice between selling through Vendor Central or Seller Central. The operations of your business will be determined by the intricacies of these two Amazon selling platforms.

To help you decide, check out the differences between Amazon Central vs. Seller Central:

Selling Model & Background

Vendor Central

This selling option is by invitation only and is best suited for bigger brands.
Vendor Central is for people who want to sell as first-party sellers. That is, users are distributors or manufacturers of their products.
Users sell their products to Amazon in bulk. These products will then be put up under the Amazon brand.
Amazon will hold your goods in their warehouse and handle individual orders.

Seller Central

Seller Central does not require invitation.
It’s great for sellers who may or may not own their products.
Users will be selling directly to shoppers through the Amazon Marketplace.
Vendors sell their products individually or in small quantities.

Payments

Vendor Central

Slow. Vendor Central users are paid on a NET-60 basis.
If payments are issued within 30 days, a 2% deduction is made.

Seller Central

Fast. Payments are made in 7 to 14 days.

Margins and Pricing

Vendor Central

Low Margins. Because Vendor Central users pose as wholesalers, the margins are lower as the products are sold in bulk.
Pricing is set by Amazon. Vendor Central users have no control over the Minimum Advertised Price or MAP.

Seller Central

High Margins. Seller Central users enjoy higher margins because they directly sell to consumers.
Sellers also have control over the pricing of their products. Take note that Amazon does price match, so if another vendor sells the same product at a lower price, they will let the customers know about other options.

Shipping

Vendor Central

Amazon ships the orders to customers.

Seller Central

Sellers have the option to handle shipments on their own or use FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon). To use the FBA option, sellers need to ship their products to an Amazon fulfillment center in advance. When an order is made, Amazon will pack and ship the product to the customer. This option also means that Amazon will take care of customer support, refunds, and returns.

Strengths and Advantages

Vendor Central

Amazon branding or listings. Customers are more inclined to trust the Amazon brand compared to third-party ones.
Eligibility for Amazon Prime.
Access to premium marketing services including Amazon’s Marketing Services or AMS.
Access to Amazon Vine. Reviewers will test the products and write reviews even before the seller’s products are warehoused. This means that before the vendor’s inventory is fulfilled, their products already have reviews which are a sure customer magnet.

Seller Central

Inventory control. You have the freedom to recall your products from Amazon should you decide to sell them elsewhere.
Access to Customer Information. Sellers can view the demographics of their customers
Ability to contact customers through the Feedback Genius.
Access to the Enhanced Brand Content feature. Sellers can create keyword-rich, smartly written content to advance product awareness.

Weaknesses

Vendor Central

Fees. Vendors are required to pay MDF (Market Development Fees), packaging fees, and damage and freight costs.
No access to customer information.
Vendors are not allowed to contact buyers.
No control over inventory. Amazon calls the shots on how much inventory they order.

Seller Central

Aside from membership fees, sellers also need to pay FBA storage costs if their products sit in fulfillment centers for too long.
Fierce market competition. Amazon alerts customers if your products are being sold by other vendors at a lower price.
Restrictions in terms of product listings.
Exclusion from premium Amazon services hinders sellers from advancing their brand.

Knowing the differences between Vendor Central and Seller Central will help you decide which platform is more suited for you. Either way, you need an Amazon Seller VA (Virtual Assistant) to help you hit the ground running. Which of the two selling platforms will you go for?

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Best Relaxation Apps for Busy Managers

For managers and business owners alike, stress and anxiety are common occurrences. In the digital age, one way to relieve stress and anxiety is through some of the different relaxation apps available online. These apps were specifically created to provide relief, entertainment, and relaxation to its users. Here are the best relaxation apps for busy managers to help them get through the day.

Omvana

Omvana is a free app that includes optional purchases for audio tracks that help soothe the mind. Considered by some as the life coach of meditation apps and websites, it not only relaxes you while you meditate. It also helps to sharpen your mind so you’ll be more focused on your upcoming projects. This is useful for goal-oriented managers who would like to take a break for a while to feel reenergized and more focused on the task at hand.

Calm

As the name of the app implies, the goal is to get you in a calm and relaxed state. It’s a subscription-based app that helps reduce stress and make you feel more relaxed. Musical tracks provide different targets for your well-being. You can choose from different tracks that target good sleep, focus, relaxation, and calmness. If you want additional tracks in your library, you’ll need to make in-app purchases. Surely you won’t mind spending a few bucks to feel bliss?

Buddhify 2

It’s the meditation app built for the urban life. The app is designed to help you feel focused and relaxed while you walk, commute; go to the gym or just stay at home. A perfect fit for the busy and active managers who reside and work in the urban jungle.

The Mindfulness App

It’s designed to provide you with 5-day meditation “sessions” to help you get attuned to your daily or weekly goals. Sessions last from 3 to 30 minutes, and these sessions are customizable and adaptable to your specific needs.

Headspace

It provides the user with 10 daily guided meditation sessions that they can use to relax. Don’t have any internet access where you’re going? It’s not going to be a problem as you can download the meditation sessions so you can use them offline. This is pretty useful if you want to spend the weekend in the woods or the mountains without any Wi-Fi signal. This can be your companion while you relax and meditate. It also features dedicated sessions targeting different areas you want to focus on like stress, eating, sleeping, walking and mindfulness.

Breathe2Relax

Feeling relaxed yet? This app is designed to guide you with breathing. These breathing exercises are focused on helping you manage stressful situations. It also guides you on how to keep calm and control your anger and anxiety.

These are some of the apps available in the Appstore and Google Playstore that busy managers can access and download. Keeping yourself relaxed and calm is very important. It helps you be more focused on upcoming projects and allows you to get rid of unnecessary stress. All these apps are just waiting to be downloaded and tried, so give each of them a go and see what fits best with your mood and your lifestyle.

Next: 5 Compelling Reasons To Outsource Your Social Media Management

20Four7VA recognizes the challenge of effectively managing an online business – and we are very eager to help. Our company specializes in eCommerce VIRTUAL STAFFING SOLUTIONS, providing customizable and scalable solutions to small, medium, and large enterprise business owners so they can focus on growing their business.

Ready to have access to incredible people with incredible skills in the most cost-effective way? Contact us today!

7 Practical Reasons Why You Need To Hire A Virtual Assistant

Hiring a virtual assistant can be very beneficial for your business’ growth and success. Over the years, virtual assistants have immensely helped small businesses and startups boost sales and growth. To learn more about this, here are 7 practical reasons why you need to hire a virtual assistant.

Hand over the tedious jobs

If there are tasks that you don’t want to do, your virtual assistant or virtual secretary can work on them for you. Usually, these include the tedious administrative jobs that you shouldn’t even be doing. This ranges from cleaning your inbox to social media management and data entry to setting appointments. This would not only save you time and money, it would also make your daily life easier and less stressful.

Save time in recruitment

You’ll be saving precious time in the recruitment process when you opt for a virtual assistant. You don’t need to spend much time on interviewing, scheduling and screening candidates to be your virtual assistant. Instead, consider hiring from virtual assistant companies to help you with this. You just need to provide the skill sets you would need for virtual assistants to run your business and the staffing services would do the rest.

Save money on logistics

By hiring a virtual assistant, you don’t have to worry about paying office space rent, utility bills, office supplies, and appliances. You also don’t need to purchase computers and software for your virtual assistants. Since your VAs will be working remotely, a physical office or permanent office will not be on the top priorities of your business’ budget.

Save money on salaries

You’ll save money by hiring a virtual assistant compared to hiring an office employee. Generally, the salaries are lower for VAs because you don’t have to pay for benefits and taxes. You don’t have to spend much on training as well as it is already understood that they already have the skill set you need from them to help you run your business.

Be more productive

By hiring a virtual assistant, you’ll be more productive. You’ll have more time to spend on more important things that will help your business grow and succeed. You won’t have to spend time anymore cleaning your inbox or managing your social media accounts. These are tedious and time-consuming duties that you should not be doing if you want to focus on other aspects of your business.

Get great content

If you’re handling all aspects of your business, you usually spend time thinking and writing new content for your blogs. But this will be a thing of the past once you hire a virtual assistant. You can hire VAs that are expert content writers to accomplish these tasks for you. Imagine the time you’ll be saving in thinking of new subjects and new topics to discuss in your blogs.

Get a cleaner your inbox

Cleaning your inbox is a tedious task that can take up a lot of your precious time. Delegate this task to your virtual assistant and have them organize and sort your inbox to save you the time and effort. It also allows you more time to answer emails that are actually important and relevant to your business. You don’t have to worry about irrelevant emails in the future.

These are the 7 practical reasons why you need to hire a virtual assistant now. Don’t waste the time and opportunity to hire one. Now that you know the benefits, hiring a virtual assistant should be a priority. Take advantage of this opportunity and you’ll never feel overworked and understaffed again.

Next: Why You Need A 20four7va Virtual Assistant For Your Ecommerce Business

Ready to have access to incredible people with incredible skills in the most cost-effective way? Give us a call at our toll free number 1 (443) 856-4882 today!

The Local Business Owner’s Guide to Avoiding Social Media Mishaps

As an owner of a local company that shares the same line of business with big corporations, how do you keep up with advertising, if at all?

The answer to your marketing woes are two words: Social Media.

It’s time to step up with your social networking skills from a savvy business person’s perspective. Like any other marketing platform, it takes skill, impeccable timing, and a good strategy to make a name for yourself on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Before you set out outlining your strategy, it’s best to know which practices to weed out. Remember that you cannot just copy what the other businesses are doing. They may have goals and needs which are different to your own or a much larger market to target.

What you need is a type of approach that’s geared towards a more focused, localized market.

Here is the local business owner’s guide to avoiding social media mishaps:

Mistake #1: Not being proactive in direct messages or comments

Many businesses regard Facebook, Pinterest, or Twitter as mere advertising platforms. Although marketing through these networks is effective, it should not make you forget what regular customers are using these apps for: to communicate.

Here’s how to make it right:

As the owner of a local business, you can’t afford to be mum when users send you direct messages or comments on your posts. Although it might get a little tedious to answer the same basic questions, you must be as accommodating and informative as possible. Remember that you have a local company. Your best shot is to show people you are their friendly neighborhood supplier of the services you provide.

Mistake #2: Pouring all your efforts in one platform

While it is true that it’s not smart to be a jack of all trades, you must at least expand your horizon and optimize relevant social networks available at your disposal. Focusing on one network alone means not taking advantage of the exposure other platforms can give you.

Here’s how to make it right:

Highlight the different strengths of your business using the different forte of social channels.

On Facebook, you can share links to your blog or website and increase brand exposure through check-ins and tags. On Instagram, you can showcase vivid and colorful snapshots of your products to entice customers. On LinkedIn, you can build your professional portfolio so other people can view a summary of your profile.

Mistake #3: Not having a strategic schedule of posts

In advertising, timing can make or break your business. An innocent joke made at the wrong time can make you sound insensitive and cause a whiplash. A well-timed post can rouse followers and convert them into subscribers of your blog.

Here’s how to make it right:

Every social channel has a different algorithm and influence on the audience. Know what works and what doesn’t as far as posting frequency and time is concerned.

Here’s a research takeaway you can use as a guide:

Facebook – 2 posts/day before users flake out in Likes or Comments.
Twitter – 3 posts/day is the maximum if you’re rooting for engagement. After the third Tweet, users show a decrease in engagement.
Instagram – 2 posts/day before users feel like you’re spamming their feed.
LinkedIn – 1 post/day during the week shows 60% of audience reach increase.
Blogs – 2 blog posts/week regardless of the blogging platform you use. Blogs that publish an entry 3 to 5 times/month shows reader engagement and the companies that increase their posts to 6 to 8 times/month gain twice as much readership.

Mistake #4: Thinking you can manage it all yourself

Just because you have a small business does not mean you have to confine your thinking and obligations to a limited space. While it is possible to manage your social channels and blogs, this leaves you with limited time and energy to work on other business dealings.

Here’s how to make it right:

Hire a virtual office assistant. The good news is, the hiring process is easy, fast, and smart. You can get the best virtual secretary to manage your social channels and blogs as conveniently as possible. All it takes is getting in touch with the right company to help you find the best remote staff.

You already have social media profiles for your small business. Now, thanks to this guide, you’re guaranteed to avoid the typical social networking mishaps that many local businesses fall into.

Next: 3 Quick And Easy Tips To Make Instagram Work For Your Business

Ready to have access to incredible people with incredible skills in the most cost-effective way? Give us a call at our toll free number 1 (443) 856-4882 today!

5 Indispensable Social Media Tools for 2017

Social media has proven to be a very powerful tool in brand awareness and exposure. It has become a powerful marketing tool that helped businesses increase their sales and the number of their loyal customers.

To give you an overview of how your business can utilize social media to be even more successful, check out the top 5 indispensable social media tools for 2017 below.

Facebook

Facebook can be considered as the king of social media platforms right now. Almost everyone has their own Facebook account; even small and big businesses alike. What’s fascinating about Facebook is that it’s dynamic. They constantly update their platform to provide users with innovative features that shake the social media landscape. For instance, Facebook Live, which enables live broadcasts, can be used for interactive product introduction. This was one of the biggest changes Facebook has recently implemented, and it’s projected to improve together with Facebook Messenger and Facebook Marketplace.

YouTube

YouTube has launched its own YouTube community. It has developed from a video sharing website to a video sharing social media platform. This is big for businesses, as consumers can be reached easily through this channel. Its potential is enormous in terms of people sharing your videos, reacting to them and giving their feedback. This is a perfect platform to present or launch your products, or simply market your company’s services.

Instagram

The biggest feature to further help businesses would be “stories” where you can feature your business or product by sharing pictures or short videos. With millions of users interested to see what “stories” are, this is one strategy that businesses can look into. With Instagram, you can also have influencers introduce your product for their followers to see. They can also react and share the content for their friends to see.

Twitter

Twitter has evolved from a place to simply express your feelings to a venue where businesses can make their customer service useful. Businesses have started using Twitter to deal with complaints and provide instant customer service. Customers who are on the go can receive quick responses without spending too much time waiting for someone to pick up the phone or respond thru email. Twitter, with speed as its asset, is perfect for this opportunity. The quick interaction between a company and its customers allows fast resolution and satisfaction.

Pinterest has launched “Promoted Pins” for small and medium businesses alike. This allows businesses to further increase brand and product awareness to current customers and potential customers who may be interested in what you could bring to the table. It provides companies the flexibility to run different marketing campaigns and at the same time, monitor which campaign is doing well and which campaign needs improvement.

These are just some of the social media platforms to look forward to in 2017. To make the most of social media, have your virtual assistant or virtual executive assistant act as your social media manager and take advantage of the tools mentioned above.

These are exciting times for marketing and advertising as different tools and innovations are expected to be launched by different social media platforms that compete with each other.

As these platforms compete, different tools are made to attract businesses to use their services. These innovations have become more daring, effective and helpful in different campaigns in marketing.

Next: Reputation Management Tools In Social Media

Ready to have access to incredible people with incredible skills in the most cost-effective way? Give us a call at our toll free number 1 (443) 856-4882 today!