21 issue) 🍬

Written by Richard Connorton | September 8, 2021

For all of your Amazon Seller Central, Amazon FBA, and seller support news, tips and updates subscribe to Treacle Thursday by Seller

Dear Buddy,

Hope you've had a great opening to September. Thanks to everyone for your feedback on the first issue - nobody has mentioned the name so it's staying for now!

Things are really starting to ramp up for the holiday season now with gifts appearing on shelves and, before we know it, Halloween will be past us and we'll be looking at the rear-view mirror at another (admittedly troublesome) year. But there's plenty to do before then!

Now's the time to make sure all those ducks are in a row and you've got everything in place to make a splash in your niche.

For now, let's dig in to some Amazon.

"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is."

- Jan L. A. van de Snepscheut

The Crossover Commerce Podcast

We have another podcast to share with you! John is a fairly prolific podcast guest, so I could probably find one to share for the next 40 or 50 issues but I'll be throwing in some variety next week.

Last week, we joined Ryan Cramer on the Crossover Commerce podcast - powered by PingPong (the payment processor, not the sport). This one is worth a listen if you want to get the inside scoop on where Seller Candy came from and how things work in the background.

If you've never heard of PingPong, they transfer more than $150 million a day for eCommerce sellers just like you. They're now helping over 1 million customers and have processed over $90 BILLION in cross-border payments. If you're looking at reducing cross-border fees they're definitely worth a look. Check them out here.

WATCH NOW

Getting your money back the safe way

News in the Amazon rumor mill is pointing towards a shift in the methods you can use to request your hard-earned dough back. The majority of sellers and companies who actively try to recover revenue from any 10 points at which Amazon will hold on to it are using automated software tools that scrape the data and send a reimbursement request which is often wrong.

It's been touted that Amazon, in an attempt to stamp out people getting what's actually theirs (obviously unacceptable to them), have started to permanently ban companies using these softwares to calculate their cashback. It's somewhat understandable. Without some input from a human, it's created hailstorm of incorrect claims for the team at Amazon that handles reimbursements.

If you're currently using something like this or plan to in the future, I'd definitely recommend making sure you have an alternative in place just in case this turns out to be true.

And if you've never requested a reimbursement from Amazon, look in to it! On average, Amazon is holding 4.1% of your total profit so if you've been selling for years you could get an unexpectedly large chunk of change coming your way. Let us know if you need a hand.

Returns Performance Dashboard

Coming 21st October, Amazon is kindly adding another metric to keep track of - returns performance. For those of you doing FBM, you'll now be able to get a much better overview of exactly what the incorrect reasons that your customers gave for their returns were. Here are the highlights:

The Returns Performance dashboard will focus on three key returns performance metrics:

Return requests approved in less than 24 hours
Total declined return requests
Return-related buyer contact rate

Each performance metric will contain details for the following areas:

Current metric performance
Target metric threshold
Definition of the metric
Explanation of metric calculation
Explanation of importance of metric
Policy information

You'll also get access to the Returns Analysis page at the same time the Returns Performance goes live where you can track return reasons and "take action to improve the return experience".

It's a good time to start thinking about how this is going to change things - especially if you sell a seasonal product like costumes. With this becoming a metric and sellers possibly being penalized for refusing to accept returns (remains to be seen if this will be the case, but I think it's a fair assumption) you may need to take action to make sure it's not affecting your operations.

You can read about the Returns Performance Dashboard here

Sourcing made simple

The age-old headache of the arbitrage seller is, of course, sourcing products. Where do you get the best deals and, once you've got them, how can you be sure they're going to be profitable?

That's where Liquid FBA Gold comes in. They not only find profitable products with great returns at the best prices for you - the research is already done. All of the big data points are analyzed to make sure you're getting a lot more hits than misses.

Sounds great right? On top of that, you get a free consultation on things like product evaluation, variation strategies, PPC guidance, shipping tips, to tactical pricing. Have a chat with Simon is arbitrage is your deal - you won't regret it!

Check out their website and see what you think

Thank you for taking the time to read this, the second issue of Treacle Thursdays. As this is only our second issue it's still pretty new to us here at Seller Candy. I've done my best to make it as relevant and useful as possible, but if there's anything you'd like to see more (or less) of then please let us know - it would be genuinely helpful.

Have a great end to the week and may you be blessed with many sales and few complaints!

Rich

Partnership Manager and occasional newsletter writer at Seller Candy

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