In my 18+ years doing this, I see a common thread of new and/or struggling sellers blaming Amazon for everything. They complain and cannot understand why Amazon does not "care" about them.

I will advise anyone to get past this thinking immediately.

Amazon is a business that has its only obligation to its shareholders. Not sellers.

This platforms is a money making machine IF and only IF you can adapt to the way THEY do things! Dont expect Amazon to adapt to the way you do things!

As to the forums here, its also good to ask those giving you advice what their success has been. Lots of sellers come here to complain and paint Amazon as this or that. They make their experiences seem universal and fact based, rather than what they are - just singluar data points.

Amazon IS hard. Amazon IS worth it - if you figure out how to speak THEIR language!

AWESOME – YOU FOUND THE FORUM!!

There are hundreds/thousands of posts done every week on the Forum (not nearly as many on the New Seller Side however) that ask for help and have responses from other sellers or the MODS but the OP (Original Poster) NEVER comes back to see what they were told.

Do YOU know how to see responses to your posts?

Click on the ‘Notifications’ tab to open it up!

Personal note -- If AMAZON was REALLY interested in getting people to be aware of these notices they would have that tab FLASH in red or green to draw attention to it.

When you open the tab you will see any messages there. Some are just ‘warm fuzzy’ stuff like votes which only means your post received a reaction.

The IMPORTANT ones are the REPLIES which mean there is a message (reply) there to your post.

You may not like what you read but it can be important information.

From the MODS you can expect to see warm fuzzy stuff that is couched in words that will let them keep their job.

From other sellers you are more likely to see the unvarnished truth about your situation because we don’t work for Amazon and can tell you –”You screwed up and are done here” as opposed to the MODS that need to say “ I’m sorry you are facing this situation, try this…”

It's a two way street here IF you choose to make it one.

If all you do is drop and hide with a post it will not solve anything for you.

This advice is entirely anecdotal, meaning that it is based off an abundance of experiance.

I often see sellers struggle with sales volume, the featured offer or promoting thier products. There are many practical things that can be done to improve your listings effectiveness and efficiency in these areas. The listings "visability" or position in the results when searched or browsed is a major factor so we will be talking about improving visability. Visability is determined by the listing quality and sellers metrics.

Your seller metrics must be managed over time but for starters lets just say make sure your product makes customers happy and ship it the moment you get the order using a major carrier and the ship speed required or faster. We will get more into seller metrics later on but it is more systematic.

For practicality we can manage our listing visability as it is determined by listing quality.

The first rule here is that your listings visability will be determined by comparison to its peers. This means that the highest quality listing will have better visability (in general, not concidering seller metrics and promotions).

The second rule is that all promotion visability will also be determined by comparison to its peers. Thats right, your ad performance is directly linked to your listing quality.

So what determines listing quality? Primarily the product data in the listing details which can be found in Menu>Inventory>Manage all Inventory>SKU>Edit Listing. You may see or hear sellers reffering to "PIM" or having a "PIM" service, this is Product Information Management and is a primary responsibility of an Amazon Seller.

High impact areas in the listing details will be images & videos, A+ content, Item name (title), bullet points, your price, list price, any compliance data fields, and all data fields that apply to your product like Brand, model number etc.....

Specifically in the listing details we want to make sure all the required data fields are accurate and content is the same quality or higher the requirements and your competition.

Remember, if your listing is lesser quality that another seller and your both running ads, when your searched they will have higher visability. That means if your missing a video or have A+ content but not A+ brand story or have 6 pictures not 7...whatever the case, you lose out.

I will post each day to build on this topic as we have not addressed specific listing details and thier requirements, generic listings, having authority over the listing details, managing/owning/representing a brand or brand registry.

Please excuse any spelling or grammar. Im trying to help but am just a person, like you.

To conclude, if you want to improve sales, first ensure your listing is the highest quality. Even if you dont have sole listing authority you can submit adjustments to improve the listing.