Five Star Commerce, 42 North University Avenue, Suite 205, Provo, UT (2026)

06/13/2025

Make sure to get your free Frazil for Frazil Friday! Free Frazils for each Friday in June. Frazil

10/31/2024

We’re at TopGolf today after we achieved one of our long time company goals! Happy Halloween!

09/26/2023

Huge thank you to Trademark-360 for the treats they sent us! We typically recommend our clients use them for their trademarks as they are the lowest cost and fastest way to protect their product brands! Let us know if we can help connect you!

07/26/2023

Amazon and eBay
Data has shown that there is an increase in the number of people who prefer to purchase items online. This is something that online sellers took advantage of during the COVID pandemic and this trend has only rapidly increased. Unsurprisingly, many brands are now asking which platforms make sense for them to use as they sell their products.

Amazon and eBay are the two most popular e-commerce platforms that brands use to sell their products, evidenced by their majority of market shares in the United States. Each platform -- whether you chose to be on Amazon or eBay -- has its own advantages and disadvantages in helping sellers track and market their products. This article outlines the differences and similarities between both Amazon and eBay platforms.

Types of Sellers on Each Platform
There is a clear difference in the types of sellers that you find on Amazon and eBay. Amazon allows third-party sellers, including individuals, to sell on their platform; however, the platform is geared towards selling products as a business, not as an individual. At the same time, Amazon sells its own products; therefore, when you sell your products on Amazon you should be prepared to run into some competition from Amazon itself.

On the other hand, eBay only allows third-party sellers and does not sell any of its own products. eBay is also a more conducive environment for buying used products from person to person, rather than selling new products from business to customer.

Each Platform's Selling Process
Amazon only has one selling process: they sell directly to the consumer for a fixed price directly through their platform.

eBay does things differently. While eBay has that same direct-selling capability, one of its unique selling features is "auction selling," where an item can be auctioned off and the highest bidder gets the item when the auction period ends. This feature is friendly to individuals that are selling singular-quantity items, rather than businesses looking to sell larger amounts of product.

How Many Customers are on Amazon and eBay?
As brands consider which platform to use, the most important consideration is the number of potential customers that are active on the platform. In other words, brands must ask themselves which platform has a broader customer reach?

According to the latest data on similar webs, Amazon had about 2.5 billion visits to their website in the last three months while eBay only had about 700 million visits. It goes without saying that Amazon has greater traffic.

What is the Ease of Use for Each Platform?
Selling an item on eBay is a pretty straightforward process because the quality of the inventory being sold is not considered. This is not the case for Amazon -- especially if you are in their FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) program, which outsources the shipping of a company's products to Amazon. eBay does not have a fulfillment program.

This is not the only program offered exclusively by Amazon. In addition, Amazon provides product marketing and allows different product optimization strategies that can increase product exposure. These programs make a huge difference in the success of a product being sold online.

While Amazon has a more complicated barrier to entry than eBay, the benefits of selling business products on Amazon far outweigh the possibilities of eBay.

How do Products Appear on Each Site?
On eBay, each product is listed and sold separately. Sellers on eBay must also provide their own images and descriptions for their products. For this reason, there will likely be several listings for the exact same product you are selling sorted by price or quality.

On Amazon, each product that uses the same barcode is sold through the same listing. This means that a customer might not be aware that multiple vendors are selling the same product. While this creates pros and cons, this standardization makes the selling process easier for a company using the platform as they attempt to sell large quantities of a product.

What does Five Star Commerce Recommend?
Ultimately, eBay's ease of use is favorable to Amazon, but Amazon has greater customer reach and optimization features. Of course, we recommend placing your products in front of as many customers as possible, but generally speaking, Amazon is a better fit for businesses.

Therefore, business owners should be prepared to do more work on Amazon in their pursuit of sales. This might introduce new challenges for business owners whose time is already spread thin. Sellers must be able to focus on product improvement and customer relationships, which does not give them the opportunity to prioritize listing optimization.

Thankfully, there is an easy way to navigate the complex maze of Amazon's requirements and algorithms. By consulting with an expert Amazon Consultant who is well adept with Amazon requirements for sellers and for optimizing product listings, business owners can efficiently increase their sales on Amazon without sacrificing product quality or customer relationships. Schedule a free consultation with an Amazon Expert today at Five Star Commerce!

07/13/2023

Sometimes when a customer purchases a product on Amazon, they are automatically encouraged by Amazon to leave a review for the product. While it is good that Amazon has integrated an automated system that reminds customers to leave a rating, it is still a good idea to do everything you can within Amazon TOS to encourage customers to leave feedback. Engaging clients is also what any amazon consultant would recommend.

The Power of An Amazon Review:
Surely, you wouldn’t just click a "buy now" button without scrutinizing the product that you are purchasing. More often than not, the review page of a product plays an important role in the buying decision-process of a customer. Sometimes, what they read on the reviews will determine whether they make the purchase or not. A high rate of bad reviews will typically cause customers to look somewhere else. It’s essential to maintain a good rating.

How to properly earn more Amazon reviews:
There are many ways that you can encourage your buyers to write a review of your products.

1. Follow-up Emails – You can use a followup email such as FeedbackWhiz to send emails to customers after they purchase. Make sure to obey Amazon’s rules about what you can and can't say in these emails. Amazon has many restrictions, however, asking a customer to leave a product review is allowed.

2. Amazon’s “Request A Review” Feature – Each time a customer orders, the order appears in the “manage orders” section of seller central. Once a few days have passed, a “request review” button will appear. You can click that button and Amazon will send out an email to the customer letting them know that the seller requested a product review. You can’t customize this message; however, it is a free feature. Many software tools have added chrome extensions or features to automate this process for you.

3. Product Inserts – Before you send products into FBA, include cards with your products that ask the customer to leave a review. This allows every customer to be reminded to leave a review when they first get the product in their hands. Be careful as you have to use the correct wording in order to follow Amazon’s TOS.

4. Early Reviewer Program – We typically recommend this for every new product. If your product qualifies, you can enroll it in the early reviewer program. With this program, you pay a $60 fee (you aren’t charged until you get the first review through the program) and Amazon will email customers with an offer for a $3 gift card in exchange for a review (Don’t try this yourself, if you were to make the same offer, you would be breaking TOS). They will keep emailing your customers this until you get 5 reviews through the program or until a year has passed. It’s a great way to earn reviews. Note that this program won’t do anything until you sell some of the products. If no one has bought the product yet, Amazon won’t have anyone to send the email to.

5. Amazon Vine – Amazon Vine is our new favorite way to get reviews. It’s now typically available to all brand registered sellers. Amazon has a pool of vetted reviewers. With Amazon Vine, you offer a certain amount of your product for free (up to 30) to these special reviewers. These reviewers are then obligated to leave a review. If they request the product, Amazon will ship them a product for free and, after the appropriate amount of time, you’ll start seeing Vine reviews on your listing. We typically recommend offering a maximum of 30 units to Vine reviewers.

6. Indirect – This goes without saying but make sure you always provide quality products and great customer service. Treat every customer like they are valuable. When you provide a lot of value, that will naturally lead to great reviews. Focus on providing great customer experiences every time!

In Conclusion
Amazon reviews help shape the first impression of potential new customers of your product. Sometimes, clients skip the product description and just go directly to the reviews section. Although sellers are limited on what they can do to earn reviews, there are plenty of tools available to establish a good track record if you are selling good quality products. Take advantage of them all and establish a great reputation on Amazon.

06/29/2023

Amazon Prime Day has been announced for July 11th-12th!

Prime Day is a shopping event with deals exclusively for Prime members. Anyone can participate in Prime Day by becoming a member of Amazon Prime.

For most brands, it's going to make sense to enroll at lease some of your products as "Prime Day Deals." This is important because it distinguishes these products as part of the event. Customers on Amazon during these two days can filter through Amazon products specifically for these "Prime Day Deals" so that only products enrolled in this marketing event are shown. As can be imagined, this can be a great opportunity to find new customers and promote your products.

That being said, we have found that for some products, these deals are not always helpful. Typically, items such as dietary supplements or other health products might not benefit from Prime Day as much as other products. Talk to your project manager about Prime Day to see if enrolling products in this marketing event makes sense for you.

We can still register for these deals if you haven't already. The minimum discount required to enroll is 20%.

Walmart+ Week July 6th - July 13th:

In competition with Amazon, Walmart has announced they are doing a "Walmart+ Week." This is an event that gives Walmart+ members exclusive access to thousands of savings on tech products, home decor, clothing, toys, and more. The event will run from July 6th - July 13th. Members will also have first dibs on special deals for items on a long list of "summer must-haves" on July 10th at noon EST.

If you are interested in participating in Walmart+ Week, please speak to your project manager about this as they can help you determine a plan that is best for you. You may also want to match your Prime Day discounts on Walmart if you're selling on both platforms.

INFORM Verification:

As most of you know, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) created the INFORM Consumers Act in 2022. The Integrity, Notification, and Fairness in Online Retail Marketplaces (INFORM) for Consumers Act requires that all marketplaces (including Amazon) authenticate various business information including tax ID's, government ID's, contact details, and bank account data. All of this information confirms the legitimacy of businesses and makes the online shopping process more transparent.

Please make sure that you are continuing to work on getting the verifications done so that your business can continue to operate smoothly without interruption. Part of this process involves verifying your business address through the reception of a postcard in the mail. This is a physical postcard that will arrive in the mail containing a verification code needed to confirm your business address. Some brands are waiting on Amazon for the postcard to arrive in the mail. If this is you, Amazon has told us that they won't be suspending accounts just because you haven't gotten the postcard in the mail before the 27th. Account suspension will only take place if you fail verification after several tries to verify the business address. That being said, please make sure to check for the postcard so that you can verify the business address as soon as possible, preventing further problems from happening later on.

If you have other items that Amazon is waiting on to confirm your business information, they will likely show up in your "account health" section with instructions to resolve the issue. Please follow these instructions. You can ask your project manager if you have questions to ensure that everything has been taken care of. At the end of the process, Amazon does send a final email saying that the INFORM verification has been completed.

Seller Investigators:

We are recommending that all of our clients sign up for the service that Seller Investigators offers, so that they can make sure to get reimbursed for anything that Amazon owes them. We've secured a lower 20% rate for all of our clients (industry standard is 25% - 30%). Please, use this link to sign up:

https://ps.carbon6.io/fivestarcommerceSI

If you have questions about it, ask your project manager. If they don't get any money back from Amazon for you, it doesn't cost anything. This is the type of service every seller should have checking their account regularly. Industry estimates are that sellers on average are eligible for reimbursements for 1-2% of their sales.

06/14/2023

If you want to become an Amazon seller and make money on Amazon, then you came to the right place. In this post, we will teach you how to make money selling on Amazon and how to set up an Amazon account to sell. Not only that, we will be sharing some tips on how your company can become an Amazon seller in a way that is geared towards success.

When deciding whether Amazon is worth it, you need to first think of how competitive you will be on Amazon.

Successful sellers are typically product brands, resellers with exclusive selling agreements with brands, or someone who has invented a unique and innovative product that a lot of people want. Buying generic products from China and selling them on Amazon is typically not a winning strategy. Simply adding a logo doesn’t help either. You need to have something of value that you can provide that others can’t easily copy.

You see, there are two types of Amazon accounts: one is for those who are using the platform to purchase items (the customer account) and the other one is for those who are using the platform to sell items (the seller account).

If you already have a customer account for which you use to buy items, you can also use that same email to create your seller account.

Start your Amazon Selling Journey
1. Choose a Selling Plan – there are two types of selling plans available at Amazon. These are the individual and the professional plans. Each of the plans has its corresponding benefits as well as fees. There is a complete list of Amazon seller fees here.
2. Decide your selling strategy – there are two ways to sell on Amazon, one, is to become a reseller the other is selling as a brand owner. What’s the difference? A reseller takes a product that is already existing in the market and sells it on Amazon. A brand owner manufactures and sells their products and develops their brand.
3. Set up your Amazon Seller Account

Now you are ready to set up your Amazon account to sell so here is the information that you'll need:
1. Business email address or your amazon customer account if you already have one.
2. Your chargeable credit card.
3. A valid phone number
4. Government-issued ID
5. Your Tax Information
6. Your bank account where Amazon can send the proceeds from your sale.

Note that all your documents and information should be under the same address. For example, your tax id, bank account, and anything else related to the account should all be under the same address. If those don’t match, that can trigger verification issues with Amazon later and cause the setup process to take much longer than it needs to.

Time to Create or set up your Amazon seller account! To start creating your account you have to go to the Amazon seller central (https://sellercentral.amazon.com/):

1. Click sign-up or if you have an Amazon customer account you can use that to log in.
2. Once the account is created or if you have already logged in using your Amazon customer account you will be asked to click on the seller agreement. After filling up the form with your name and clicking on the check box you can proceed to the next page.
3. On the next page, you now have to enter your seller information. You will need your business address, business contact number, and your mobile contact number for SMS verification.
4. You should have your phone ready on the seller information page because you will have to verify your mobile number through the PIN code to be sent to you via SMS.
5. Fill up the next page, the billing and deposit form. For this page, you will be needing your credit card information and your bank details. The former is to pay for your chosen seller plan and the latter is where your earnings from Amazon will be deposited.
6. The tax information page is next and here, you will have to input your tax information or details.
7. Finally, you will now start to input your first products for sale on Amazon through the product information page.

Setting up your Amazon seller account correctly is the first and essential step to a successful and problem-free journey to selling on Amazon. You see, by configuring your seller account correctly, you will be able to avoid any fees for features you do not need. The money you saved can be used somewhere else like for advertising among others.

What are your next steps to becoming an Amazon seller?
After registering on the seller platform and after you have uploaded your first products on Amazon, you will now have to optimize your product page. That is a whole new other process and it is dependent on how you implement such optimization processes.

If you want to skip the learning curve and jump right ahead to gaining more eyeballs to your products or if you need help setting up your seller account, it would be best to hire the help of professional Amazon marketing companies such as Five Star Commerce. In doing so, you will be able to skip the huge learning curve and go straight into earning profits for your products.

06/02/2023

What is Fulfillment by Amazon and How Amazon Consultants Can Help:

If you’re looking to sell your brands products on Amazon, it’s typically best to use Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA). This is where you ship the inventory into Amazon’s warehouses ahead of time and Amazon ships the individual products to the customer as the orders are made. However setting it up might be a very tedious task because of the guidelines that Amazon provides for you to follow, these will be discussed in the section below.

What do you get with Amazon Fulfillment?
When you choose to sell on Amazon using the Fulfillment by Amazon option, you do not have to worry about logistics from storage of your product to shipping. Upon storage, products will be catalogued and added to the ready-to-ship inventory. When your product is ordered, Amazon will handle the shipping. Finally, you also get Amazon to handle after purchase services such as returns and refunds. If the carrier delivers the product late, Amazon takes the blame. If you’re not using FBA, Amazon will blame you and it will hurt your stats and visibility, even in situations where you had no control. In addition to the logistical benefits, products that are sold via FBA see much higher conversion rates, higher rankings in searches, and qualify for special programs that require FBA. For brands that are using a new Amazon selling account, they will often find that they won’t win the buybox (even when no other seller is selling their product) unless they are using FBA. That makes launching onto Amazon a much more difficult and slow process.

What is your role when you use Amazon Fulfillment?
With Amazon Fulfillment, as a seller, you basically do not have to do anything right? Well, that is not really entirely true. Sellers who utilize fulfillment by Amazon will still have some role to play in order to ensure that products will constantly be available. So here are the three things that you as the seller will be responsible for.

Monitor inventory levels – In general, you want to make sure your inventory in FBA is going to sell within 3-4 months. You don’t want inventory sitting for a long time and you don’t want to run out of stock. This is because it can affect your IPI Score or your Inventory Performance Index. Recently, Amazon has set a new guideline for the IPI Score and if your IPI score is lower than the required score you will be subjected to storage volume limits. One factor that lowers IPI score is excessive inventory and this can happen if your products are not selling, so send in appropriate amounts of inventory.

Properly label products – If you don’t understand how Amazon’s system uses barcodes, it can be difficult to understand how products need to be labeled. Mislabeled or incompletely labeled products could end up as stranded inventory and could again affect your IPI score. Each product needs a barcode that identifies an individual unit. This is typically a UPC code or an Amazon “FNSKU.” They need to be visible and no other barcodes should be visible on the product. If your products are case packed, you would also put labels on each box and need to tell Amazon how many units are in each box along with the weight and dimensions of each box.

Pack your products – Since your products will be stored at the fulfillment center you have to properly pack them and ready for shipping. Packing also requires you to comply with Amazon’s shipping and routing requirements and failure to do so may result in the refusal of the inventory at the Amazon fulfillment center, return of the inventory or disposal of the same. Often products can be damaged in shipping and, if that happens, Amazon will hold you responsible. You need to make sure products are packed in a way that will get them to customers safely.
Ship your products to Amazon – When shipping your products to the Amazon Fulfillment center you basically do the following. First is to create a shipping plan, make sure the products are appropriately barcoded, put on the box labels, and finally ship the products to the Amazon fulfillment center.

For brands using FBA for the first time, it can be difficult to apply these principles to the specifics of your products. You might end up having stranded or excessive products which might lower your IPI score. While you can go through the learning curve and make a few errors along the way wouldn’t it be better to skip committing the errors and go straight to earning profits from your products? You can do this by consulting with the experts.

Amazon consultants such as those in our team at Five Star Commerce can help guide you on how to properly prepare your products for shipping to the Amazon fulfillment centers. Amazon consultants have experiences in all the aspects of selling on the platform. Our team of experts are well-versed in every aspect selling on Amazon.

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