Forward Selling on Amazon

If you’re launching a new product and just shipped the inventory into Amazon FBA, you will soon see the product as ACTIVE and purchasable with delivery dates depending on when Amazon will start receiving the inventory. This is commonly known as forward selling or the pre-selling of a product to consumers prior to launching.

How to opt in?

If your product is FBA, then you shouldn’t worry because Amazon will take care of the shipping as soon as Amazon starts receiving your inventory. It will only be problematic when there’s unforeseen logistical delay or when you’ve already created a shipment and it took you weeks to actually ship your inventory because that would give customers a longer wait time than expected.

If your product is FBM and you want to forward sell because you have inventory already in transit, you can enter units available and the handling time that is equivalent to when the products will be available to ship to customers. The handling time (aka usually ships within # of days or weeks) gives customers an idea when they will receive their order.

On the other hand, if you don’t want to offer your product ahead of its launching date, you can set a future date on the release date section. By doing so, the product won’t be appearing on search results until the release date has passed.

Does forward selling actually work on Amazon?

Based on experience, I’d say yes. I’m about to launch a product and already shipped the inventory to Amazon two weeks ago. Since the inventory was marked as ‘IN TRANSIT’, the product started showing as active and purchasable automatically. And in the past week alone, 2 orders already came in. Those 2 customers were fully aware of the one month wait time and they still bought the product.

I was surprised, to say the least, when the first order came in because Amazon customers are notoriously impatient. If they order on Amazon, they want it delivered at the soonest possible time. So for these 2 customers to buy even after knowing the delivery dates–they must be really interested in the product which I took as a good sign.

Forward selling can also be beneficial for ranking because it allows your product to start ranking for the relevant keywords even before the intended launch date.

However, it’s important to note that forward selling doesn’t work all the time. It depends on the product–if you’re launching a product that has a lot of similar alternatives, then that doesn’t stop the customers from buying what’s readily available. But if your product has a unique feature, then it can definitely benefit from forward selling.

Got questions? Drop a comment or send me an email.