How Long Does It Take to Make Your First Sale on Amazon

Let’s not kid ourselves. I’m impatient. You’re impatient. We want good things to happen to us right now, we don’t want to wait.

Selling on Amazon is no different. You’ve put your heart and soul into your business and you want results. NOW!

So naturally, these questions come up a lot:

How long does it take to make that first sale on Amazon? Why isn’t my item selling?

Some people start making sales within just a few hours of their listing going live, and go on to make 100s even 1000s of dollars in their first month. Whereas others don’t make ANY sales in month one.

So what can YOU do to be more like the first seller?

Often, it comes down to the quality of your listing. That means a keyword-optimised title, a dynamite description and crystal-clear photos. If you don’t cover these 3, then you’re off to a false start straight away.

If I’m still not getting any sales – or far fewer than I want – I do a little exercise that I’m going to share with you.

Let’s say I’ve listed my product on Amazon, it’s ranked – meaning you can see it on the first page when you search- yet still NO SALES. Something’s wrong… very wrong, and I need to sort it out.

This is what I do:

1. Contact a friend or family member who regularly buys online but is clueless about selling online. 

I ask my sister. Despite explaining to her several times what I do for a living, she is still none-the-wiser. Bless her.

1. Show them your product images and ask them what THEY THINK the product is. 

I’ll show her the pictures of my product, let’s say I’ve called it a wooden-handled wok. Now my sister may look at it and say it’s a Chinese wok. This tells me there’s a discrepancy between what I THINK the product is and what my customers think it is.

I’ve not thought about what my customers may actually be searching for, I’ve just assumed the title. And as a result, I’ve optimised my product for the wrong keyword. Instead of optimising it for wooden handled wok I should be using Chinese wok.

The moral of this story is; it doesn’t matter what you think the product is, it’s what your customer thinks it is.

I know, 9 out of 10 times I’m not getting sales – this is the problem.

There’s a mismatch with what my listing is saying about the product and what people are searching for. So I can use my sister’s insights to re-optimise my product for the words people are actually typing into the search box.

Knowing what your customer wants and delivering it to them is an art form. If you get this right, sales will follow. Trust me.

Hugs Stacey