How many people sell on Amazon?
Ever wondered how many people sell on Amazon? Then you’ve come to the right place. In January this year, Amazon had 9.7 million sellers, of which 1.9 million were actively selling in the marketplace. For the last five years, more than 2000 new sellers have joined Amazon every day. Not all of these sellers become active, but each day sees 800 new sellers receive their first review. With this regular influx of new entrepreneurs joining the gang, you’d think Amazon would be a little overwhelmed, but that’s simply not the case.
The number of active new sellers has remained fairly steady since 2016 (source: marketplacepulse.com)
How do they do it?
Amazon received 2.2 billion visits from desktop and mobile just in February of this year. These numbers are astronomical! With such a huge potential reach for new customers, you can certainly see why so many people decide to start selling on Amazon. But how do they manage to keep on top of 2000 newbies every day?
Automation, of course! Every seller on Amazon needs to go through a verification process before they’re allowed to sell on the platform. It’s designed to catch any scammers (which they take a hot stand on as they do with their review policy). Whilst they could certainly hire out, especially being the number 1 company to work for in 2022 according to LinkedIn, because there are just so many every day, the automated system is the only way they can keep up. It allows them to get through the applications quickly and easily. That’s what sellers want after all – to get selling as quickly as possible!
Unfortunately, using robots instead of humans does cause some frustration and upset amongst sellers. It’s notoriously difficult to speak to anything but a cyborg at Amazon, and if your application runs into an error, it can be a lengthy process to sort out.
Hello? Is there anybody there?
Doesn’t that mean there’s a lot of competition?
Yes it does! But that’s the same in any industry on any platform. Things do get crowded, and with this many new sellers every day, it’s no wonder the catalogue of products is constantly building up and saturating every category.
It’s great news for Amazon of course but it only adds to the competition for sellers. Shoppers only see a 20 results on each page. The likelihood of them scrolling through 80 pages worth of products is slim. In fact, 70% shoppers don’t even leave the first page! Ideally you need to be near the top of the search results, which is difficult when there are so many contenders for the top spot.
It’s an uphill climb but boy does it feel good when you get there!
So how can I stand out?
A lot of it has to do with optimisation. Of course you should make your listings look as professional as possible, and sure having lots of honest product reviews helps, but you should be looking at optimising your pages daily. People’s search habits change, so you should always look at what keywords are popular and adjust your listings accordingly. If something is trending and you can incorporate it into your work, jump on it! We wrote a blog recently on how to manage your Amazon business, giving you daily, weekly and monthly tips. Head over and see what other things you can do to really push your business forward.
It looks like there’s no let up on the persuasive powers of Amazon at the moment. Have you been drawn in yet? Want to see if your business would work in the online marketplace? Get in touch today and see what management options we have available to help get you started in the world of Amazon.