International Expansion Strategy For Amazon FBA Sellers

There’s 3 main ways to scale an Amazon business:

(1) Get more sales for existing products. This is achieved by optimizing your listings with 10-15 high-traffic, high-relevancy keywords. Plus graphic design. Plus good reviews. Conversion rates should be 10% minimum. Then, sellers run Amazon ads to the listings. And boom. Scale.

(2) Add more products (à la the Many Fish Hooks theory). The largest physical retailers (think Walmart) have 1000s of SKUs. The most popular podcasters (think Joe Rogan) have 1000s of episodes. And, the largest Amazon sellers I’ve seen (that crack $10m in annual rev) have 100s of SKUs. Quantity has a quality all its own. Without outside funding this may take 5+ years of reinvesting cashflow into inventory, but you can get there.

(3) Sell existing products in new marketplaces. Take your winning Amazon formula (your SKUs, listing copy, images, pricing, PPC campaigns, etc.) and list them in other countries. Now, you’re scaling horizontally (same thing in more places) versus vertically.

Today, let’s tackle point #3.

The glamorous world of international expansion ✈️✈️✈️

It begs the question:

When is the right time to expand internationally?

I’m about to give you a specific number. But in general, I know 1 thing for sure:

Not right away.

Every new marketplace comes with operational overhead. Setup costs. Foreign tax regulations like VAT. So, it has to be worth your while before you make the leap.

For the sake of today’s discussion, let’s assume we’re selling on Amazon.com (US).

Hard number:

I wouldn’t even LOOK at other marketplaces before $30k/month in topline revenue in the US.

Even then:

If you’re at $30k/mo on Amazon.com and still growing month-on-month, max out the potential of your American SKUs before considering international.

This is because a country’s population dictates seller performance. The US has 10x the population of Canada. As a result, most US sellers that expand to Canada see a 10% overall revenue boost. If you’re only doing $10k/mo in the US, then Canada will only give you an extra $1k/mo, which doesn’t justify the operational lift required to expand.

If you’re >$30k/mo and plateauing a bit, sure. It’s time to start looking around.

What order?

Here’s my dream expansion plan (assuming we’re starting from Amazon.com):

#1 Canada (Amazon.ca). Population 38 million. An easy, English-speaking expansion. Localization isn’t much of an issue. Listings can have the same text and images. For supplements/food/beauty, different regulations may apply.

#2 Mexico (Amazon.com.mx). Population 128 million. Also in the North American sphere, so shipping is easier. This is the first expansion where translation is needed. But, I’ve seen Amazon itself starting to help sellers with this.

#3 UK (Amazon.co.uk). Population 67 million. Another English-speaking expansion. Listings have to be localized somewhat, and tax regulations have to be sorted. You can see, here, that international expansion starts to get more “costly” in terms of operational overhead.

#4 Germany (Amazon.de). Population 83 million. This is Amazon’s largest market outside of the US. But, there’s the language barrier. So I’m giving it #4. David Schomer, my friend and 7 figure seller, notes that the importation has been tricky.

Then, continue to the rest of Europe.

Then, I’d go Japan (126 million) and the middle east.

My company AsteroidX can run ads in any Amazon marketplace around the world. All languages. So if you’re listed there and want to scale up, feel free to book a free strategy call with us: