Step by step guide on how to create a product page on Amazon
When do you need to create a product detail page on Amazon?
For Amazon sellers, creating an Amazon product page is one of those things you don’t know you need until you learn it. Then you don’t know how you lived without it.
How do you know when you should create a product page? Don’t my mistake and ignore this next part…
One of my most costly Amazon selling mistakes
Over the years I have scanned or keyed-in many hundreds (maybe thousands) of books that brought up one of the following messages:
- “Invalid ISBN”
- “No results found”
- “No seller listing”
It depends on the scanning app you’re using, but they all mean the same thing: “This book is not for sale on Amazon.”
This is where I made the huge mistake (aka dumbest thing imaginable): I put every single one of those books down and walked away.
Really, really dumb. Because each of those books was an opportunity.
I’ve since learned the error of my ways, and I’m going to how to do what I should have been doing all along: Creating a new product page on Amazon, and listing proceeding to list the book for sale.
Here’s how…
Why you should create a product detail page on Amazon
There are over 50 million product pages for books on Amazon. And its growing every day. Nearly every book printed in the last 100 years is on Amazon. But not all. There are still opportunities to be the only person selling a particular title.
And you do that by creating your own product page.
Two benefits to creating your own product page:
- You’re the only one selling that book on Amazon (until more sellers come on board)
- As the only seller, you can set a high, high price (and often get it)
How to set up a product detail page on Amazon
- Go to the Catalog tab, click Add a Product
- Click “I’m Adding a Product Not Sold On Amazon”
- Select a product category
- Add the ISBN or UPC (if no ISBN – more on this here)
- Create your offer (you can do this later if you’d like)
- Upload product images
- Fill out the book’s description
- Enter keywords to aid in the product appearing in search results
- Enter the book’s dimensions and subject category
And there you go. Your page is live almost instantly. At least for now, you have the only copy of this title anywhere on Amazon.
A case study in creating a product detail page: The $100 experiment
Recently one of the big “internet marketing gurus” published a book. He offered it for free to anyone who sent him $5 for postage. I sent him $10 – one copy for me, one for Amazon. (He wasn’t giving away books just for people to flip them on Amazon, but somehow I think he’d respect this experiment.)
I created a product page (using the method I described above). Nice image, detailed annotation, all the details. And as the only seller of this title, I set the price at $99.99.
The book sold in one week.
This was a book you could (and still can) get for $5 from the author. This is the power of Amazon: People are paying you so they don’t have to think. So they don’t have to comb the internet for what they want. Or, more than likely, they simply operate with Amazon-blinders and don’t know they have other options.
Notes from setting up my own product pages
It wasn’t until about 2 years ago I really started to “get it”, and stopped looking at books with no Amazon listing as opportunities instead of mild disappointments.
Today, assuming a book looks like it may have at least a small amount of demand, I’ll buy the book and list it for sale by creating my own product detail page on Amazon.
And depending on the subject matter, I will price the book anywhere from $49.99 to $499.99. Learning to know what subjects and kinds of books can command the highest prices is a time-honed skill.
Here’s another testament to the power of having the only copy of a book anywhere on the internet: I’ve sold several books I created pages for for $499.99. The people who wanted them simply had no other choice.
Another interesting thing happens when you set up a product detail page on Amazon: Not only do the books sometimes fly out the door (though usually not), you will often see many other sellers jump on board with their own used copies.
So not only can setting up a product page reveal pent-up demand, it can also reveal pent-up supply. It shows how few sellers are aware they can just set up their own product pages.
Takeaway
Creating your own “Amazon real estate” by creating a product page is a simple and profitable tactic that should be practiced by every Amazon seller.
-Peter Valley
PS: Here are a few screenshots of the process (Amazon changes their layout all the time, so don’t be alarmed if these don’t match up exactly):
Thanks for the information. Question, though. What if there are many other versions of the book you are trying to sell, but yours has a unique cover (and I assume date)? Do you still create a new listing?
Always defer to the ISBN. That is the one unique identifier. Don’t list a textbook on any page other than one that has a matching ISBN.
I finally found some help on this subject! Thank you so much! I was wondering the same thing as Diane (above). What if your book has the same ISBN, but it is still a different cover or edition? Can you still list it on the same ISBN page that Amazon already has? I seem to come across this situation often.