Most people do not achieve success on their own, there is usually someone who has influenced their idea or strategy. If you have a product to sell, why not lean on the shoulders of those who have been through the retail process before?

I mean Amazon. All small and medium online retailers have faced the challenge of attracting customers and finding an efficient way to sell to those visitors. Many small and medium online retailers have used affiliate marketing as a strategy to close that gap. However, the cost of using affiliates is getting expensive. Commissions that retailers must pay affiliates can range from 30 to 50 percent, and sometimes up to 75 percent.

I am not here to criticize affiliates, but to inform them that there are alternatives that can also benefit them. Amazon estimates that they have 257 million credit card holders who purchase registered information.

Amazon is one of the most recognized and popular online retailers. Amazon claims that about 5% of Internet users worldwide visit Amazon each month. Amazon is ranked 5th in the US and 14th globally. The average time spent on an Amazon page is eight and a half minutes compared to one minute for other retailers, and 61% are from the US.

Amazon’s business model is so well built that it makes a good partner if you are a retailer because they have positioned themselves to help small and medium online retailers.

Amazon Prime: Amazon Prime is an “incentive-based membership” program. The membership is made up of loyal customers who have previously purchased so their information is the system. The exchange of information between the customer and Amazon allows future purchases by customers quickly and easily. When I have used Amazon, all my old credit information is stored, so all I had to do was click the button and my transaction was completed in minutes.

There are some advantages to using Amazon as a strategy to sell your products. Partnering with Amazon is very easy, and Amazon offers several platforms to simplify that transition. As an Amazon partner, you can feel comfortable with Amazon’s secure order processing, handling all sales issues, and fulfilling all orders.

Selling on Amazon requires a simple process of uploading your items to the Amazon system. Amazon charges a fee for this service, it can start from 99 cents per item sold, and offers an upgrade to a professional merchant account.

The Advantage program is designed to assist online retailers that offer physical content such as books, music labels, CDs, DVDs. This paid program offers distribution and order fulfillment. As a content provider, you may ask for a percentage of the royalties.

Web-Store for Amazon is a program for retailers who dream of having their own online store. Amazon’s tools to improve the presence of your web store are incredible. If you go online and carefully examine the Amazon page site, you can see how many online retailers have benefited from these tools. Do your research when it comes to creating a web store because it comes at a cost.

Create-Space- Create-Space is owned by Amazon and is a print-on-demand service for books, DVDs, CDs, and MP3s. Create-Space is unique in that there are no membership or setup fees required compared to Selling on Amazon, the Advantage Program, and the Web-Store, where there is a cost or monthly fee. Create-Space is very beneficial to the partner because it saves content providers a large upfront cost of merchandise and helps with editing, book design, distribution and marketing. In addition, Create-Space takes care of order fulfillment. Bail; Create-Space will want to negotiate royalties with you. Once again, I urge you to do your research.

Kindle Direct Publishing: Kindle Direct Publishing is an electronic reading substance publishing site. The platform allows content creators to upload and format their material for sale on the Kindle Store.

This brings me to one of my sound strategies that many writers would find interesting. On November 25 or the day after Thanksgiving, better known as Black Friday in the United States, most people set aside that day to shop for Christmas. Some believe this is when the best deals are given per retailer. If you think it’s not, one thing’s for sure, Amazon’s Fire (the e-reader) was the best-selling item on November 25, 2011.

I included the success of the Kindle Fire e-reader for a reason. If you are an editor or writer, it is crucial to add your content on as many electric e-reading platforms as possible.