Why repricing is mandatory for every Amazon seller

If you’re not repricing, you don’t have an Amazon business. Here’s the three reasons repricing daily is absolutely 100% essential for any seller:

Video: Three reasons Amazon sellers must reprice daily

What’s the deal with Amazon sellers and repricing?

When it comes to repricing inventory, tons of Amazon sellers fall off either side of the deep end.

On one side, sellers who set up automated repricers to reprice their inventory a bazillion times a day, chasing the lowest price and the quickest sale. (There is such a thing as repricing too much).

On the other, sellers who view repricing as either totally unnecessary, or a nice thing to do “whenever they have time.”

It’s possible only a stint in rehab will cure the first group.

This article is to help Group #2, and to explain in brutally direct terms why ignoring repricing will be devastating to your Amazon business.

Prices on Amazon never stop going up and down

I’m stating the obvious here, but many sellers act like their job is done as soon as they list something for sale. As though the price they set at that moment is somehow sacred, and represents the ultimate optimal price they have etched into the heavens. Like the sanctity of Their Price represents a cosmic edict that will ensure their item is delivered to a quick sale.

The reality is, the price at the time you listed an item is almost entirely meaningless.

The Amazon marketplace is an unfeeling ecosystem. Here’s what Amazon doesn’t care about:

• You
• What you paid for an item,
• What price you want to sell it for
• What the price was at the exact moment you listed it for sale

Amazon is a violent cauldron of activity that does not cease because your particular item just went live. It churns onward, indifferent to you and your desired selling price. And if you don’t keep up with consistent repricing, it will leave you behind.

In a perfect world, repricing would be unnecessary

In a world I wish existed, every Amazon seller would list an item for sale, matching the current lowest price, and patiently wait for a buyer. Every subsequent seller would do the same, and we’d all live in harmony, selling our inventory with healthy margins, with no one underpricing anyone. That would be a world where repricing was unnecessary.

That is not the world we currently inhabit. Unfortunately, we live in a world where Amazon sellers aren’t so smart. When you list something for sale, you will get underpriced. Often within seconds. Other seller’s pricing practices can be aggressive and border on violent (okay, not really but it can feel that way).

In this world, to get sales, you must reprice your inventory both intelligently and frequently. Not too low, and not too high, but repricing must be done to get sales.

Sidenote: Repricing is almost as often about raising prices as lowering them. “Repricing” is not synonymous with “dropping prices.”

Repricing is not optional

You would never say “I haven’t been buying books, I can’t understand why I’m not getting sales.”

Yet I’ve read I-don’t-know-how-many emails from sellers (dozens? hundreds?) who aren’t repricing, yet ask why they’re not getting sales.

It doesn’t hold up to logic, but it highlights a real problem: Many sellers consider repricing to somehow be optional. But repricing and getting sales are two sides of the same coin.

Let’s get into the three reasons frequent repricing is non-negotiable for Amazon sellers:

The three reason you must reprice (or go out of business)

Once you understand these principals, you will be compelled to be more diligent about your repricing.

#1: Repricing is (often) the highest $ per hour part of an Amazon business

You will usually make more money dedicating an hour to repricing than an hour to sourcing.

Let me be clear: If you’re buying a shipping container full of inventory with a couple clicks, then sourcing inventory will be probably be a higher yield activity than repricing (on an hour-by-hour basis).

But for most smaller sellers, you will literally generate more revenue repricing for an hour than sourcing inventory for an hour.

Whether you’re repricing manually or using automated repricing software, the time you spend repricing is bringing dead inventory back to life. Remember ff your inventory hasn’t been repriced recently, then it simply won’t sell.

Repricing inventory that hasn’t been repriced recently will usually result in sales almost immediately. And depending on the size of your inventory, repricing can result in a quick flood of sales.

It usually took more time to source that inventory than it did to reprice it. This makes repricing the highest “dollar per hour” part of your business, period.

#2: When your item isn’t repriced, it is effectively not for sale.

If any item in your inventory that isn’t competitively priced, it’s the same as that item not being for sale at all.

This is hard for a lot of sellers to get their head around. How can something be for sale, but be effectively not for sale?

Say you list an item for $25. Then you neglect to update its price. Over the next week, 10 other sellers move in, each one underpricing you by 50 cents. Now your offer is so far down the list, no Amazon customer will ever see it. And if they can’t see it, they won’t buy it. And why would they? There are 10 offers cheaper.

When you have been undercut by multiple sellers, your own might technically be “for sale,” but functionally – it’s not for sale at all.

An un-repriced item is an item that may as well not exist.

Sidenote: I don’t not consider this true with very high-demand inventory. You can not reprice and still expect sales of inventory selling multiple times a day.

#3: All Amazon businesses are only two things: Sourcing & repricing

This entire business comes down entirely to sourcing quality inventory, and repricing it often.

There’s other aspects of the business that can keep you busy. But if you neglected literally everything else, and only focused on sourcing and repricing, you can still make money on Amazon.

Likewise, if all you focused on is sourcing & repricing – it’s impossible to lose money on Amazon.

You can literally do everything else wrong, and as long as you 1. Source abundant, quality inventory; and 2. Reprice it frequently and intelligently; it’s impossible to lose money on Amazon.

Everything else is a distraction.

If you either stop sourcing or stop repricing, then you have no business.

Repricing is literally non-negotiable.

The three ways to reprice your Amazon inventory

If this article has jolted you into action, you can start repricing immediately in one of three ways:

#1: Reprice manually. Go to your Manage Pricing page inside Amazon Seller Central, and start editing your prices. Either click “Match Lowest Price” for everything (not recommended, since this will result in selling inventory for less than you otherwise could in many instances), or click over to Amazon for every item to review competing offers, and set a new price that makes sense.

Note: Manual repricing becomes very challenging and laborious once you have more than 100 or so items for sale.