How to Brand your Amazon FBA Business – Part 9

In the 9th update in my Amazon FBA case study we will be talking about how to setup your brand the right way. I will be going over how to choose a brand name, how to get a logo created, registering a domain, setting up a website, customizing product packaging and more!

Before we get into that, make sure that you are all caught up with the previous updates in the case study. You can view all of them below:

I have received numerous questions/emails from people asking about the different aspects of branding. I thought it would useful for a lot of people to write a new update that covers all of those questions and more.

I also mentioned in the recent webinar I held that I would do an update that covers this topic. So here it is, enjoy! 🙂

Branding is Important

Setting up your brand the right way is important, however, it is not vital to your success. 

What I mean by this is that you can start selling on Amazon and making money without a website, a good logo, custom product packaging or an appropriate brand name.

Even though it may not be vital for success on Amazon, doing the branding correctly will set you and your business up for the long run.

This is important and can be even more important if you plan on growing your brand past selling only one item. I will touch on this topic a little later in the post.

Don’t Spend too Much Time on Branding in the Beginning

People are always so worried about having just the right logo or an awesome looking website when they should be worrying about the stuff that matters.

You can always go back later and modify things to your liking, so don’t worry if your logo is not EXACTLY how you want it.

A perfect looking logo will not make you more money, it will just look nice. When you are just starting out selling on Amazon you should only be spending your time on the stuff that will make you money.

Those things may be working out your first order with your supplier, getting initial reviews or optimizing your product listing. 

Once you start to see some success THEN you can start worrying about your logo or your website. 

How to Choose a Good Brand Name

Out of all of the different aspects of branding, choosing a good company/brand name to sell your products under is the most important.

One reason why it is so important is because you won’t be able to switch brand names down the road. Whatever name you choose at the beginning will be your name forever, unless you switch niches and create a new brand.

The second reason is because you don’t want to limit what you can sell because of your brand name. This is where a lot of people go wrong and I want to explain the right way to go about it.

Set Yourself up for Long Term Success

If you are planning on creating a brand that will sell multiple products and become a top seller in a specific niche then choosing a good brand name is vital.

My plan with my Amazon FBA business is to build it up to a point where I am selling 5-10 different products(in the same niche) on Amazon that are all bringing me money each month. Then sell this business for 2-3x yearly profit.

If you want to do the same thing as me then you need a brand name that will allow for this. 

For example, if your first product you were going to sell was a silicone baking mat and then your brand name was “Silicone Baking Mat Master”. This is a problem.

Why?

Because your brand name is limiting the types of products you can sell under the brand. You are not going to be selling kitchen knives under the brand “Silicone Baking Mat Master” are you?

By having a brand name such as “Silicone Baking Mat Master” you are limiting yourself to only being able to sell silicone baking mats.

A better name would be “KitchenNinja” so that you could sell any items related to the kitchen no problem. It is also easy to remember and catchy.

By having a brand named “KitchenNinja” you would not be limiting yourself to selling only one type of product, you can now sell any sort of item that would be used in a kitchen.

One last thing that I want to touch on is make sure that you choose a respectable name. Choose a name so that someone who is looking to buy your business will have no problem with.

Don’t put your name anywhere in the brand or make the brand anything inappropriate. Make your brand easy to sell. 

I have put together an easy to follow cheat sheet on the do’s and dont’s of choosing a brand name. Click below to get your cheat sheet!

Choosing a good brand name is not hard as long as you know what you need in a brand name. Just follow the steps and guidelines laid out above and you will be fine.

The most important thing to remember when picking a name is to choose one that will allow you to sell numerous products down the road. Many people don’t account for that when creating their brand names and it comes back to hurt them.

Creating your Brand’s Logo

A logo is something that you can change or modify whenever you want so I wouldn’t worry too much about it. However, it is nice to have a logo that represents your brand and as a way for customers to identify your brand. 

When I had my logo created for my brand I knew I wanted a couple of things:

1. The logo had to be simple
2. The logo had to have my brand name in it
3. Simple colors

Those were the main things that I wanted in my logo. Keep in mind that your logo will be used on your website, packaging and possibly even your product.

To get my logo created I went over to Elance and hired a graphic designer. I told the person what I wanted, they sent over 20 different variations and I chose the one that I liked the best.

It was a very easy and straightforward process. 

Where and How to Get your Logo Created

Unless you have some experience with photoshop you are going to need to outsource the creation of your logo. There are a couple of different places where you can accomplish this.

The first is Elance(or Upwork) which is a place where you can hire people to complete certain tasks for a fee. I have been using Elance for over a year to get all of my content written for my niche sites. I also got my own logo created from Elance as well, Elance makes my life so much easier.

To get a logo created for you at Elance you need to create an account and then post a new job looking for a graphic designer. 

An example job post that I would use to hire a graphic designer to create my logo is shown in the images below:

I would then post the job and you will have people ready to create your logo within the next 30 minutes. I would wait at least 12-24 hours and field all of the offers you can.

Then go through the applicants and choose the person that will be the best person for the job.

Using Elance for your logo creation is quick and fairly cheap(depending on who you hire). I had my logo created within 5 days and I paid $50 for it.

The second option that you have is to use a service called 99Designs. This is a more expensive option but the work will probably be of higher quality. 

Basically what 99Designs is place where you post that you want a logo created for your business and give them all of the details about the job. 

From there, people will submit their work to you and you get to choose from all of them to pick the logo that you like the best. If you don’t find a logo that you like you get your money back, which is pretty sweet.

You are practically guaranteed to get a logo that you like. The downside is that it will cost you $299 for the cheapest option(around 30 different submissions). 

Elance vs. 99Designs

Picking between Elance or 99Designs to get your logo created depends on you.

Do you have the extra money($300+) to spend on a logo? Or would you rather save that money and use it for inventory/advertising?

You will get higher quality work with 99Designs but that comes with a price tag.

In my opinion, the best route to choose at first is Elance. Get an initial logo created from Elance that you like and use that until you start making a decent amount of money on Amazon.

Then once you are making money you can spend some of that money on getting a better logo created at 99Designs. That is how I would suggest you go about creating a logo. 

That is what I am going to do with my FBA business as well.

Customizing Product Packaging

This is something that may or may not be important depending on your product and supplier.

To give you an example of why it could be important I will tell you about why I had to customize my packaging for my product. 

The packaging for my product had a couple main areas, those being the title of the product, the brand name, the brands website, an image of the product and some basic instructions and warnings.

All of the things that I listed above were all on my packaging except the information on the packaging was not mine. Meaning that the brand on the packaging was not mine, the website was not mine, the logo was not mine and the product was not mine.

I had to make sure that the packaging that was going to be used for my products had all of MY information, not someone else’s.

That is one reason why you may need to customize your packaging.  

How to Customize your Packaging

Now before I begin, I just want to say that you may not have to customize your packaging but if you do then follow below.

The design for your packaging will be on some sort of template that your supplier has. What you need to do is get that template from your supplier so that you can change what you need to.

Your supplier should have the template saved as an editable file that you can send to a graphic designer for them to change what you want. 

Once you have the editable template for your packaging you need to hire someone from Elance to make the necessary changes to the template that you want.

Maybe you want them to add your logo, brand name and website to the packaging. They will do this for you.

It should be a quick and cheap job. Once they have edited the template to your liking you can send it back to your supplier. Your supplier will now use this template for your packaging.

The best advice I can give you is to ask your supplier about it. They will help you out and make sure that you get what you want.

Register Domain and Setup Website

In a section above I talked about seeing if your brand name was available as a “.com” domain, now we are going to register the domain and use it as our brand’s website.

A lot of the people that I have seen that talk about or teach how to sell on Amazon recommend that you set up a website for your Amazon FBA business after you are making sales.

I think it should be one of the first things that you do once you decide on a brand name. You don’t want to choose a brand name, start selling on Amazon and then 3 months later when you go to setup your website the domain name is not available anymore.

I also think that having a website behind your brand makes it look more official and is a good place to talk with customers and try to get more customers down the road.

I will be doing a full post that is dedicated to talking about your brand’s website and how to best utilize it sometime soon. For now, I just want to let you know that setting up your brand’s website is important.

The Website Doesn’t Have to be Fancy

The website that you setup does not have to be fancy or anything special. As long as you register the domain and get your website online then you are good to go for now.

Down the road after you become more successful with selling on Amazon then you can invest some money into a fancy new theme or regularly updating the site with new content.

I would suggest that your website has at least the things mentioned below:

• Decent looking homepage
• An “About Us” page
• A “Contact Us” page
• An article or two about your product(s)
• Your logo

That’s about it for the bare bones of your site. I would suggest at least setting up your website with those things to get started. 

You can add more stuff and take advantage of your site down the road but this is all you need when you are just starting to sell on Amazon.

I would highly, highly suggest using wordpress as it is the easiest way to make websites. If you have any questions about wordpress or setting up a website leave a comment and I will gladly answer your questions. I have been using wordpress for the past 5 years and I know what I am doing with it.

Conclusion

I was debating on whether I should include a section about social media accounts and how to use them to help your brand. I ultimately decided that it would be best to save it for a later post. I think it deserves its own update and I have a lot I want to say about that subject, so be on the lookout for that update!
Anyways, that is going to bring us to the end of the 9th update. I covered a lot of stuff related to branding your Amazon FBA business correctly. I really hope that you all enjoyed it and learned something.
For all of the people that had questions about this topic, was I able to clear some things up? If not then let me know in the comments and I will answer the best I can.
As always, if you haven’t already make sure to join our Facebook group. We just recently hit over 500 members which is awesome!
Thank you all for reading and I will see you all in the next update.