Amazon FBA: The Basics, The Best Courses, and Done-For-You Services

By: Drew Estes

New to Amazon? Considering selling on FBA? Wondering if you need an Amazon FBA course to learn how to sell more on Amazon? Whether you’re brand new to eCommerce, or you’re an established brand moving into the Amazon marketplace, you’re in the right place.

This post will introduce you to FBA, explain its benefits, and help you decide whether it’s worth taking one of those online courses for Amazon sellers, because let’s face it: some are more worth it than others.

What is Amazon FBA? How Does FBA Work?

Amazon FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon) is a service where Amazon stores, packs, distributes, and ships your product — as well as handling customer service.

Once enrolled, you ship your stock to them. Amazon can then distribute your stock to their fulfillment centers around the country and properly pack it upon each sale. This allows your product to qualify for Prime shipping (which means your customers get Free 2-Day Shipping, if not faster).

For this reason, using FBA is a huge sales booster, and you’re almost guaranteed to see your conversion rates go up from it.

With so many logistics taken care of, this lets you focus on marketing, such as keyword research, promotions, and advertising.

In summary, using FBA makes scaling your business quicker and easier than ever, and paves a much easier path to profit.

Can I fulfill Amazon orders myself instead of FBA?

Yes, you can always fulfill your own orders in what’s known as Fulfilled by Merchant (FBM). This creates some new hurdles to make sure your shipping is fast and free for customers, but if you find a reliable order fulfillment partner like ShipBob, or ShipMonk, or Red Stag, FBM can work just as well as FBA.

When using FBA, you automatically qualify for Prime shipping, which gives your conversion rates a nice boost.

Getting the “Prime” badge isn’t always a guarantee with FBM, but with the right fulfilment setup you can qualify for Seller Fulfilled Prime, so don’t write off FBM completely (unless you have a good reason to avoid it). Many merchants do a mix of FBA and FBM as a risk management practice.

Do I need an Amazon FBA course?

Nobody needs an Amazon course, but you can save yourself a lot of time and money by taking one. If you’re a new seller, or you’ve been selling a while but your business is struggling to get sales, you may want to consider hearing what experts have to say.

To clarify, people these days use the phrase “Amazon FBA course” when they’re really referring to an “Amazon seller course,” so the courses tend to cover MUCH more than just how to use FBA itself (which is actually pretty straightforward once you get the basics).

So should you avoid taking a course? It depends on how much work you want to do. Forging your own path is a great learning experience, and you’ll pick up some invaluable lessons along the way, but that doesn’t mean you need to reinvent the wheel.

Sometimes you’re better off learning from other people’s mistakes, and a course can be great for that.

What’s the best Amazon FBA course?

When you research courses, you’ll find some big names such as Amazon Selling Machine or Helium 10. These courses go in-depth, and if you have the budget they can be a great way to get started. However, since courses like these tend to cost between $1,000-$7,000, you might want to put that money towards, well, actually launching your business.

If throwing a few grand towards an online course sounds excessive or reckless, you might want a more frugal option. If this is the case, Udemy offers countless Amazon courses with different areas of focus, and often in the $10-$20 range. Sounds a bit easier on the wallet, doesn’t it?

The downside of these courses is that while each course itself might be fun and engaging, and the reviewers seem to have enjoyed the classes, you don’t always know how much of it is applicable and useful in the real world — that is, the information you want might be glossed over with abstract, big-picture ideas, rather than the nitty gritty nuggets that will be most helpful.

Since so many of the courses out there seem like risky investments, we decided to take a different approach. We made an Amazon FBA course that’s not only affordable, but comes with a bunch of other perks too. It’s on a monthly subscription plan (see current rates here), and includes all the tools you need to launch your product and keep it ranking in search results.

Is an Amazon FBA course worth it?

It really depends on the course. Some paid courses might only cover the same basic info that you can find for free on blogs or YouTube channels, while others can give you some insider tips and expert knowledge – the types of strategies and tricks that might take years to learn otherwise.

At Massview, we like to give our users more comfort with this decision, and that means making sure you get your money’s worth, no matter what.

It means giving you plenty of powerful lessons that you can try out immediately, as well as giving you cutting edge marketing tools to grow your business – at no extra charge.

So when you sign up for our Amazon FBA Step-By-Step Course, you get access to our Starter Plan features too. This way, you get tools to help you find a profitable product, services to optimize your listing, and even run ranking campaigns to boost your product in search results.

Massview’s Amazon course includes growth hacks and expert strategy advice from 7-figure sellers and business leaders, including Massview Founder & CEO Paul Johnson. They boil down advanced concepts into simple, actionable information, so you can implement their solutions and get real, measurable results.

And guess what? These courses are distilled into small, digestible videos, letting you go along at your own pace. Better still, our support team is right there to help you if you have any questions.

Shouldn’t I just hire an Amazon selling consultant or product manager instead?

When it comes down to it, being a successful Amazon seller is always going to involve putting in the time to learn how it all works. In a competitive market, there aren’t many shortcuts.

That said, yes, Amazon sellers can always hire consultants and similar services to help out with the early legwork. This can be costly, sometimes more costly than a course, but there are some people we recommend it for.

If you run a successful business outside of Amazon and you want to launch your brand on the Amazon marketplace, contracting a product manager can be a great move – especially if you or your team don’t have the time to learn the ropes of Amazon yourself.

If you have a product in mind with established demand but you see a market gap on Amazon, product management services might also be a smart choice for you.

If you’re interested in expert consulting, or if you’d like to see if your product is a good fit for Massview’s product management service, schedule a free call here.

While we can’t work with everyone, we do give our clients a 100% guarantee that your product will rank on page 1 search results within 90 days of launch — or your money back.*

*Terms and conditions apply – merchants will need to follow the advice of Massview’s experts in order to achieve results. We’re happy to discuss this with you during your free call so you know exactly what to expect when working with us.

Other Resources for New Amazon Merchants

For those of you still looking for a product, you may want to learn some of the best Amazon product research strategies, as well as how to source an ecommerce product.

Want to learn some of the most effective growth hacks for launching a product on AMZ? You’ll want to read our Product Launch Hacks post, and understand Product Positioning on Amazon.

For a list of all the essential tips to increase sales on Amazon, we’ve got you there too.

That should be enough to get you started.