Many people in Australia write off Amazon as an e-commerce opportunity as Amazon currently does not have a warehouse in Australia. However, Amazon offers e-commerce Sellers a huge opportunity from Australia with over 278 million active customers worldwide. This gives Amazon the largest reach of all e-commerce marketplaces in the world.

Ebay comes in at number two followed by the Apple Store number three, Walmart number 4 et cetera. Considering Amazon only started back in 1995, that is massive growth.

We have been selling on Amazon since 2007 with good success. In September 2015 I co-hosted an event with Amazon in Sydney Australia showing how Amazon is another huge e-commerce opportunity.

Many people ask should they sell on eBay, their own website, Amazon, comparison shopping engines et cetera and my reply is always, why choose? Why not sell on all platforms.

Diversification is the key not just in e-commerce, but in all business. Today our number one revenue source is our website’s closely followed by eBay and then Amazon.

So how can Australians jump on the bandwagon and learn how to make money on Amazon?

Most people who start selling on Amazon in Australia first target the US market due to its size and then reach from there.

Amazon refers to individual sellers like you and me as “third-party sellers”. Third-party sellers can either send their goods to Amazon and let the Amazon warehouse send their goods through its very good FBA (fulfilment by Amazon) program. Or, sellers can send the goods direct from Australia to customers just like eBay.

The FBA program works extremely well. It allows merchants to ship their goods to Amazon’s warehouses and Amazon will warehouse the goods. They are then picked and packed and finally shipped out every time they sell on Amazon, or whenever you request Amazon to ship your goods for you.

Amazon very much supports third-party sellers with approximately 40% of Amazon revenue coming from third-party sellers.

As well, you can also use Amazon as your own private fulfilment house so if you have a website or you list your items on eBay USA, Walmart, Etsy et cetera you can login to your Amazon account and have Amazon ship your goods direct to your customers anywhere in the world.

Amazon currently has 109 fulfilment centres all over the world (except Australia) so after you start getting sales in the US, you can then ship your products to other countries like Europe, UK, Japan et cetera.

With the Amazon FBA program, Amazon looks after all the shipping as well as 24-hour customer support in multiple languages.

This effectively puts your Amazon e-commerce business on autopilot as Amazon automatically sells the products, ships them and does the customer support for you.

If you already have an eBay business or any other e-commerce business which sells physical products, I highly recommend adding Amazon as another income stream.

If you do not have an e-commerce business already, learning how to sell on Amazon is very similar to learning how to sell on eBay. However listing items on Amazon is easier than listing the same items on eBay if the product has a UPC code or other type of product identifier. Normally you do not need to photograph the item or write a description, however, you do need to learn how to do basic keyword research.

To make yourself stand out on Amazon, just like with eBay, it is often better to value add your product.

So what do you sell on Amazon?

Just like China, Americans love Australian made products. However they also strangely purchase items made in China from Australia? Especially if you white label it by adding your own brand name to the item.

China and the USA perceive Australia as having high-quality products and their massive populations create a massive opportunity.

Product research can be done using the same techniques as with eBay.

Many people think you need a big brand name to sell on Amazon however nothing could be further from the truth. With over 44% of Amazon revenue coming from third-party sellers and not from big brand names. In fact, if you search Amazon for “black dress”, the first 15 black dresses which appear in the search results are from brand names which nobody in the audience recognised. This is very good news for new sellers who want to learn how to make money on Amazon.

Neil Waterhouse is an eBay Multi-million dollar seller and the author of best seller “Million Dollar eBay Business From – A Step By Step Guide”. As well Neil is the founder and host of the Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane eBay and e-commerce Sellers Meetup Groups. For more information, see: Neil Waterhouse