Growth is a crucial aspect of running an online business that can sometimes get overlooked.
There are many advantages to constantly growing your business: More revenue, more innovation within your market, boost your brand identity, and keeping momentum if one of your products becomes obsolete.
Rather than coming up with new products to sell all the time, your current product mix could actually perform well in other places throughout the internet.
In this post we’ll go over some channels that you can potentially expand your product catalog into beyond the US Amazon FBA market.
Expand Into International Amazon FBA Markets
There are a lot of Amazon FBA markets other than the US.
The most obvious pick for most sellers will be Europe, as that has a lot of countries within it (28 you can sell to) that are very close together.
You can’t sell your US-stored inventory to Europe, so you’ll have to send those products to international FBA warehouses just like you do for the USA.
There are also some hoops to jump through to sell in Europe (things like VAT) that don’t exist for the US, but the payoff can be worth it to open yourself up to millions of customers in a market where there’s less competition.
See if Your Products Would Sell on Etsy
You can actually sell your products on Etsy if they fit with what others are already selling on the platform.
While it is marketed as a place for “handmade” goods, I’ve noticed that a lot of people shop on Etsy for extremely specialized products for very niche audiences.
Check Etsy’s product categories page to see if your products would be a potential fit.
If you have a product that complements what people are already looking at on Etsy, or is extremely specialized, it might be worth it to launch your product catalog on the platform, as the selling fees are similar enough to Amazon FBA.
But as a caveat, you will have to fulfill products yourself as they don’t ship out automatically like FBA. If you have a 3PL that can ship out your products, that is also an option.
Launching Your Own Website (Shopify;, Woocommerce, etc.)
A lot of people online will tell you that you absolutely MUST launch a Shopify; store after your Amazon sales have reached a certain level.
While this is an option for some, you can grow Amazon FBA businesses to millions in revenue without ever touching Shopify;.
Regardless, if you feel like your product mix would work well on a standalone site, then by all means you can expand into your own eCommerce shop.
When you launch a website, you will have to promote it or else customers will never come. You will have to find your marketing strategy for your products.
- Search: Pull in customers with a content strategy so they find you when searching on Google.
- Social Media: If your products work well on social media, have visual appeal, are in an emerging trend you can become a thought leader in, then the social angle can work well for you.
- Ads: There are many ways to run ads all over the internet, finding the ad platform that works for you can be a fast and simple way to get sales.
Adding Your Products to Walmart Marketplace
Walmart has created a competitor to Amazon FBA that functions in many ways just like Fulfillment By Amazon.
According to the Walmart Fulfillment Services page, you send your products to Walmart warehouses just like Amazon, and they will pick/pack and ship out your products fast just like Amazon does.
For many sellers, this option makes a lot of sense as the process is very similar to Amazon, but now you can sell to a potentially entirely different customer base.
Look at eBay (It still exists!)
While you may have forgotten about eBay, along with many others, it’s still a viable option to sell products on.
Again, you have to look at your product mix to see if it’s a “match” for a site like eBay, but if it is then there is no reason you shouldn’t give it a look. After all, more channels = more opportunities for more revenue.
Conclusion
While there are more platforms and marketplaces out there, these 5 are some of the biggest that match well with Amazon FBA sellers.
If you want to give a potential big boost to your revenue (but also at the cost of a big investment), then expanding your channels might be the way to do it.
