#629 - How to Sell on Amazon UAE in 2025
31:24 Share

Everything you need to know about two of Amazon's fastest growing marketplaces, Amazon UAE and Amazon Saudi Arabia, plus a bonus story of somebody who learned from Project X and now has a thriving six-figure business. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. ♪ I'm the sweetie, woo ♪

Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that's a completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world.

And I'm on the other part of the world right now, exactly 12 hours difference from my home place in California. I'm in Dubai. And I must say, I must have brought the California weather with me at this, right? Because I feel like I'm home. This is weather in Dubai in December. So you're welcome, I guess. I have never been to Dubai with such good weather. Like I never understood how people can live here with this heat.

But if it was like this all year round, I think I could live here. How do you take the 40, 50 degree weather the rest of the year? Well, you know, you get used to it just like in any country. I'm sure like people living in Miami have this problem as well. But you get used to it and you get the benefit of having sunshine all year round. And it gets really good at the end of the year and beginning of the year as well. So we can tolerate it. Dubai is an awesome city.

You're going to get a lot of sunshine being on the sun itself, too. It's not always a good thing. And that's how it feels sometimes here in summertime. But hey, a lot of Amazon sellers have moved here, you know, tax benefits and things like that. But the reason we're here is we're at the World F Conference you helped put on. And so how did this conference get started? Like, what was the thought process? Because there hasn't been something like this large here in Dubai before. Like, I was kind of geared towards e-commerce.

Which is kind of weird if you think about it, because Dubai in and of itself is such an innovative city. It is the epicenter of the Middle East and some might say even the world. However, there was never a conference that was fully dedicated for Amazon and in particular, of course, e-commerce, not just Amazon. I met the World Deaf team in Istanbul a couple of years ago and I said, guys, come on, let's do it in Dubai. So that's how it got started. And

The World Deaf Dubai Conference is also fully supported by Dubai Commerce City and the Dubai government as well. So this wasn't an initiative that was done without the support of a lot of different people. And we're very excited that this is the second day. And I think it's awesome.

Yes. Yeah, I've had a great time. I spoke a couple of times. Shivali's here speaking. But the reason I'm having you back on the show is we have you back just like the Maldives honeymoon is once a year. We bring Crystal back once a year to talk about Amazon UAE. And now, you know, lately, as of last year, we started talking a little bit about Amazon KSA, which is Saudi Arabia. So let's just talk about what's new. Like, is there anything major changes or innovations in these two marketplaces you can tell us about since the last time you were on the show?

First of all, it's a big honor. Thank you so much for having me as a recurring guest. It's not easy to be, you know, everybody wants to be on the Serious Seller podcast and on your show because we all love it so much. And we love you. You know that. Yeah. First of all, I think the last time we spoke...

I think my message is always the same. This part of the world, and of course, Amazon as well, is emerging. Let me just give you a few numbers, because I love numbers. We see sales in terms of e-commerce growth growing at a rate of 12% year on year, which is incredible because you don't see these numbers anywhere in the world. So to see them here is great.

Additionally, the thing is, it's always been, and it still is up to this day, a market where you can easily penetrate, get started, rank quite easily, and really become a substantial seller within just a few months. Of course, taking into consideration that you're selling the right product as always. It's just a lot of growth here. And it is a part of the world that is somewhat unknown to most of your listeners and viewers, of course, but it might be something that you want to explore in 2025. Yeah.

So what about the makeup of sellers? I'm sure it's evolved over years as far as the percentage of how many people selling here that are local versus foreign sellers selling here. What would you say that, I mean, obviously you don't have the exact number, but what's the general breakdown would you say? That's a beautiful question. One thing to note is that the region here is predominantly made out of expats.

So predominantly, and you've seen this with every time you visit, predominantly, we've got a lot of expats living here, lots of different nationalities. And that's the makeup of Amazon sellers as well. However, to answer your question directly, there are around, I would say, 40% of the sellers currently on Amazon, either UAE or Saudi, are not based locally. By that, I mean brands that are coming in from the US or coming in from Europe.

because they see that opportunity. And there is an opportunity because when you're early to market and you do know how inherently to sell on Amazon, you've tested your products, you know how Amazon operates, you have first to market advantage, which basically means you can get market domination quite easily because you know how Amazon works versus somebody that's starting off from the market here, learning as they go.

Okay, so let's take that percentage of people who are selling here from overseas, be it Europe, be it USA, Australia, wherever. What's some of the basics? I mean, we could probably have a two-hour episode of you have to have this documented. But what are some of the basics of what a seller needs to have? Like, for example, in America, TikTok shop, if you're a foreign company, you kind of can't sell on TikTok shop unless you have an employee that has a social security number in the US. And so that's kind of like full stop. You're like, unless you have that, you can't do it.

Are there any like really strict requirements like that for selling in Dubai? Like you have to have local bank, you know, local business entity, stuff like that.

Our listener is in UK. Our listener is in California. What do they need to know? You're going to love this. You're going to love this, guys. The barriers to entry are very, very simple. You don't even need to have a local business license. You could use your US LLC, your UK LTD, your German, I'm guessing LLC as well. Yeah. Your German company, your company that you're currently using to operate your Amazon store.

You use that and you get started. The only additional thing would be taxes. The UAE doesn't have any personal income tax, but there is the value added tax, which would be sales tax equivalent in the US. So you would need to just register with the FDA, the federal tax authorities here, get yourself. And by the way, just as a side note, everything that I'm saying about UAE is the same thing for Saudi Arabia, which is also a very great and very...

great market for Amazon. You would just need to get a VAT number, get yourself registered. And then VAT or value added tax is a tax where you collect it from the customer, you pay it back to the government, and it's just 5% in the UAE and 15% in Saudi Arabia. That's it. So that's why you can easily get into the market. Now, of course, just like you said in the introduction, there are a lot of Amazon sellers that are now based here because of the taxes. So there is

Double taxation, maybe. So if you're operating with a US LLC, you have to look into that. However, you can also later on register a business license here and operate your store with a local company here or in Saudi. That way you can bypass any additional taxation that you might be paying at home.

Okay. All right. So that's interesting. I mentioned, you know, like obviously Saudi Arabia and, and UAE are connected as far as the marketplaces. Now in general, you know, at Helium 10, we call it like tokens, you know, where it's one token for North America, which actually includes Brazil now. So like if,

If you connect your token in North America to Helium 10, that includes Canada marketplace, Mexico, US, and Brazil. And then that's like one token with Amazon, like one account. And then you can register in Europe, but then you'll be across the board, like UK, Germany, Belgium, France,

Italy, et cetera. That's part of like the Europe token. And there's like an Asia token. I think it includes like India, Japan, maybe Australia. Now, UAE and Saudi Arabia, is that connected?

they're connected to each other, but is that considered part of the EU token? Is it considered part of Asia or are any other marketplaces connected to it or it's a separate? On Helium 10, I believe it's part of the currently because Helium 10 only operates right now or serves, let's say, the UAE market. So I believe it's under the European token. However, on Amazon...

It's a token in and of itself, and it's under the Middle East token, or I call it umbrella. So you've got the United Arab Emirates, Dubai, where we are at right now. You've got Saudi Arabia as well as Egypt, also part of this token called Middle East. Want to check estimated sales for products you see on Amazon? Or maybe you want to instantly see how many listings on page one of a search term result have the actual search keyword in the title.

You can find all of these things out and more with the Helium 10 Chrome extension tool, X-Ray. More than 1 million people have used this tool. Find out what it can do for you by downloading it for free at h10.me/xray. h10.me/xray.

All right. So now, I actually was in Amazon Australia at an Amazon event. And somebody there, I'm not sure if it's 100% accurate, but they had said that actually Amazon Australia was the number one growing as far as percentage-wise in Amazon. But they were saying number two might be KSA, like it's growing pretty fast. Does that sound like it could be right? It's certainly right. Saudi Arabia, for anyone that follows news, global news, is a country that's expanding exponentially. So yeah, I'm certain.

We've talked about this in previous years episodes about like the language base. So UAE is mainly an English based platform, but Saudi is the main default language. Is it Arabic? Yes. And I have some updates about that as well. Yeah. So Amazon, as of us filming this video a couple of months ago, have Arabized the platform, which basically means that.

The issue that Amazon was facing was there was no such thing as Arabic keywords, even though people would, of course, search for products using Arabic. What Amazon would do is they would translate that word into the nearest English keyword and then show you the products. Obviously, for anyone that knows different languages, it's not going to be perfect because the way that you speak slang in one language might be completely different.

Hence, now what Amazon has done, they've taken on the mission because the Arabic language is not an easy language. There's multiple dialects as well. And they've Arabized the website. So now I would say, yes, people do use Amazon in Arabic, both here and most predominantly in Saudi Arabia and English. But now sellers are also able to focus and target customers using Arabic keywords as well.

So let's say I originally made my listing in UAE in English, obviously. And then I'm assuming in seller central is kind of easy to just to activate Saudi marketplace, just like it is in U S if you want to go to Mexico and Canada. So if my do, uh, I was about to say Dubai, if my UAE listing was in English and now I activate that ASIN in Saudi, does it, does Amazon automatically translate it or do I need to, to give the listing myself in Arabic? So,

So the backend Amazon seller central, which we know and sometimes don't love is in, uh, is predominantly in English. So you use it in English and you can change it and use it in Arabic. So that's fine in Dubai, as well as Saudi, the listing is automatically changed into Arabic. You can make a few changes to it. And, but the, the, the, uh, Amazon's, um, what do I call it? Translation? Maybe Amazon's translation is great for the listings. Um, in Dubai,

Dubai or the UAE, as well as Saudi Arabia, the customer can switch toggle between languages. So the customer interface is either in English or in Arabic. And yes, the listing changes.

What about the size of the marketplace as far as generally? Obviously, there are some products that might sell more in one marketplace over the other. But if you were just to take the average, for example, in the US, on average, it's at least two to three times, if not four times bigger than the next biggest market.

marketplace like Germany, as far as if I'm selling a product in US, you know, if I'm selling a Walmart, maybe, you know, average, you know, maybe it's only five or 10%, whatever is my product on Amazon. So let's say I'm selling a product in the US, let's say I'm selling a product in Germany. And of course, not considering demand. I mean, obviously, if I have a shirt that I'm selling in Germany that says, I hate Dubai, that is not going to do very well here. So forget about that. Let's just pretend that the demand is similar. Um,

What could I expect as far as sales? Is it one-tenth of USA, one-twentieth, one-half of UK? How do you tell potential clients about what to look forward to? That's, for me, probably the con of this market. The size. So size is small. Okay.

Just simply because of the population. So the population of the UAE is around 10 million, maybe 11. The population of Saudi Arabia is about 33, 36 million approximately. So these are small countries. And inherently, obviously, even if Amazon is, which...

Amazon is the market leader, there's still a potential size. So what I see from the sellers that we support and we help come from their European markets or from the US markets into the Middle East is this market gives them around 20 to 25% of their current sales on Amazon US as an example. So that's what to expect.

However, one more additional thing that I'd like to add. Amazon here, as well as in Saudi Arabia, most customers, when asked, why do you like to buy products from Amazon? And it's for the convenience, not because, oh, things are cheaper. Oh,

Everybody likes a good price, but it's mostly for the convenience. Hence why, no, you can't sell your product double or triple of what you can sell it in the US. Of course not. But still, price is something that you could maybe be a little bit higher than you would be in other more mature markets. Yeah.

Now, if I'm selling in these marketplaces, I'm assuming since this is the first, I'm assuming the FBA warehouses are here in UAE. But now if I want to expand to Saudi, do I need to now import directly to that country or it's fulfilled from my inventory that is in UAE? Unfortunately, no, there's no connection. They're two separate kind of entities. So, yes, you would need to. But it is easy because...

the countries share a border. So you could easily ship your products from the UAE to Saudi Arabia, just truck by land. It takes one day. It's not a complicated thing. And that's what we normally advise sellers because the rules and regulations of the UAE are quite simple for European or US-based companies to get into the country. So make your base here in

the UAE and then expand throughout the region wherever you want to go. And one of those places would be Saudi Arabia. How many people who you know about who sell here use like FBM or is everybody 100% FBA or do some people have like 3PL warehouses where they're maybe fulfilling from their own warehouse or their own house or things like that? There are a lot of fantastic 3PLs. Any infrastructure, anything that you need as an e-com and Amazon seller is already existing and it's exactly what you would expect.

from someone in the US or European market. So worry not about that. The reason why most sellers use FBA is because just like I mentioned before, when Amazon gets into a market, they obviously want sellers to come with them. So all of the charges are a little bit lower. There's no additional small charges that you pay in the US and stuff like that. It's only an FBA fee.

even no removal fee. But with that being said, the main reason why most sellers opt for FBA is that the funny statistic is 60% of customers here in the UAE, as well as Saudi, are Prime members, and 20% use somebody else's Prime account. So it's almost 100%. That's why people would, it's much better to sell FBA, but you have both. And you have a

also a lot of 3PLs that are on seller flex, which means they can provide the FBA services, but just externally to Amazon. There are a lot of, as you said, you know, expats here and especially people who are Amazon sellers who move here for tax purposes. So what are those tax purposes? Like what are the benefits of moving here if you can handle the ridiculous heat? So there's

There's no income tax, no personal income tax. So that's a big thing, especially for anyone that's listening or watching from Europe, because that's a big thing. No personal income tax. And corporate tax is just 9%. And then how long do you have to be here to qualify as being a resident to qualify for that?

I think it's based on, I believe it's based on your home country, because some countries, if you live outside of the country for, let's say, six months, then you can claim you are a resident of another country. So I believe it's related to where your original country is.

All right. Now, before we ask for your last strategy of the day, how can people find out if maybe they're inspired by this? Like, man, I need to go ahead and dabble in this market. How can they find you on the interwebs and reach out? Interwebs. I like it. So we put out a lot of content, as you know, Bradley, about the region here, how to get into it, how to sell, how to everything you might require. So primarily, I would suggest that you find us on YouTube, Amazon Sellers Society, or you can just

search on Google, we pop up our website or anything, you can reach out to us. We're happy to assist you and help you with anything that you need. Awesome, awesome. And who donated this amazing like little podcast space to us? What's this company's name? And then also give us your last strategy of the day.

The name agency just set up this podcast for this podcast studio. And you're the first person to use it, guys. So thank you so much for the name agency. They're based out of Dubai Commerce City as well. Thank you so much to Tala for helping us set this up. And your strategy of the day. Strategy of the day. Well, you know, everything I talk about is Amazon products.

Middle East. Believe it or not, my strategy is very simple. Add a video. Because what we see here in the UAE, by simply adding a video, a user-generated content video to your listing, you're able to increase your sales by 20%. Imagine that.

I love it. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. All right. Well, Crystal, thank you so much for joining us. We'll definitely have you on next year as well to see what's going on. And I'm going to try and see if maybe some others are going to come on this podcast too because there's so many different sellers here. But we'll definitely be bringing you back to let us know what's new in Amazon Middle East region. Perfect. Thank you so much, Bradley. Thank you.

All right, next up, we're still here in Dubai. We've got Abdullah here. Now, Abdullah, I don't know much about you. I just met you yesterday. We've done videos before, like on YouTube before. Where do you live now? Right now, I live in Egypt, but I live in the United States on Amazon.com.

Okay. Well, is Egypt where you were born and raised? Yeah. I'm 26 years old and I spent all my life in Egypt. I'm living beside the pyramids of Giza. So I'm currently living in Egypt. Okay. All right. Now, what did you study when you went to university? Right now, I'm still studying because I dropped down three years of university to watch Project X especially.

I started to sell on Amazon in 2020. At 2020, I was in the third year of computer engineering. And right now I'm still in the third year because right now I'm focusing more on my Amazon business.

Because when I started, it was very difficult. The COVID, I failed my first two products. Then I decided to learn more. I know that there is money in this business, but I don't know how. Hold on. So you said you failed your first two products. What was your first two products? Okay. My first product was a charcoal bags odor absorber. It's a very, very good product because it's like an odor, natural odor eliminator. And

I differentiated my product very well, but my point was I am spending too much on advertising and more than my sales. And when I started to sell on Amazon, especially in the COVID, I watched all the content on English and Arabic.

And I learned from all people about the criteria to choose product. And all people say you have to choose products that have a high demand. If you like open Helium 10, see that the first 20 sellers are making good money or let's say selling 500 units. And at the same time, they have low number of reviews. The older criteria of research. That means that the product has demand, but low competition. My product is,

was perfect to this criteria, but I failed. The second product, it was a t-shirt ruler. It's like a ruler, help people to align the print or design on t-shirt.

and the highest number of reviews for any seller was 10 reviews only it was completely new product everyone are doing at least $10,000 per month but I also my first product I made money but I lost the second product I didn't even make any sale so I started to learn from my mistakes and I found that the criteria that I followed about product selection

It's wrong, or maybe it's not wrong, but it's outdated because business on Amazon, it's changed a lot, especially from COVID. And two products that I found has low number of reviews, but still there is competition. So that means for me, competition on Amazon, not only about number of reviews, but it's about how relevant or how many relevant sellers are selling under the super exact keyword.

when I started to decide that I need a product that no one is selling I found Project X and to be honest the first time when you watch Project X there is hidden gems you won't notice these hidden gems in the video when you watch Project X in the second time

I thought, yeah, they are talking. Only 1% of people may notice some hidden gems in the video, but you and Tim Jordan, thanks to you, because this is the only source on YouTube and internet about how to really find a product that no one is selling. After I watched Project X, I decided I joined the private group and send him a message on Instagram. Hey, I am here because I need to find a product like Project X. I was going to university, but not attending my lectures. I was in...

Because my parents at this time, they told me go to university. I was skipping my lectures and watching the videos and I found a product that really has a super relevant keyword, 15,000 search volume and only one relevant seller. Amazon, any Amazon keyword has 48 listing or 48 seller, only one seller and he is doing 150,000 per month. How did you find the product? Okay.

At this time, it was Pinterest product research. Right now, I have...

made like a new criteria or new method to find through Pinterest, I have like a sequence of three stages. The first one, like you said in Project X, find a niche, brainstorm any niche. But at some times, maybe you get stuck in two or three niches, but you don't have, you cannot brainstorm more niches. Right now what I do is very simple. You have Shadjibiti and you have Amazon.com. Go to Amazon, go to the bestseller, pick any category, let's say Home and Kitchen,

and go to JackGBT and tell him I need you to split test this category into divided to 200 sub-niches then you choose a category that you can have a product from it like

if you yesterday in my presentation i introduced a product it's called this cobalt diffuser has like three thousand search volume i think and only six sellers how i found this product i went to amazon found car accessories category i went to shut gbt and he started to give me a lot of ideas one of the ideas is flash drive so flash drive it's only flash drive you cannot have a

a shaped flash drive or shaped like a real something in real so I found a car aromatherapy diffuser so first of all you have to pick a niche especially in the United States people are buying cool products or shaped products like a real thing I took the diffuser keyword I went to Pinterest don't go to Pinterest and type diffuser no type cute diffuser funny diffuser unique diffuser because

I see the trend right now is going to the funny products and cute products, especially on Pinterest and Etsy and TikTok, especially TikTok shop. I wrote cute diffuser. On Pinterest, there is no software, but you have to stop on any product that the image itself has a keyword. Like,

If we go to Pinterest and type funny rug, you will see a lot of rug, but you will see a rug. It's shaped like an Ono card. So if you don't know the product, but what is the first keyword that came to your mind when you see the product? Ono rug. That's it. Pinterest that did its job. Go to Amazon. You have to find three or two things. First of all, super relevant keyword. It's very important to have a super relevant keyword.

and it has a demand I see if you have like two keywords have a total search volume let's say 1000 so the number of sellers for this product is zero because the demand itself is too low but when you are the only seller selling this product you can make good money let's say you are making $100 per day in net profit it's easy

If you have search volume from 2,000 to 5,000 search volume, maybe you can have like 10 maximum for me, 10 sellers. But the most important to find a gap between those sellers to enter. Like I know a product,

It's called a cow cheese slice holder. It's very good product. Only two sellers are selling, but I didn't, I didn't decide to enter the product because I cannot differentiate it. I cannot add more value. People sometimes are mistaken in differentiating the product. Maybe you're selling notebook. I want to differentiate my product. I will add a pen. No, this is one

what you did is increasing the cost but you didn't give any value to the customer so you have to find a good search volume 1000 search volume but no one is selling or 2000 search volume up till 5000 and you have to find a gap to enter the market from this gap maybe the gap just main image and you have make a differentiated box a colorful box and put it in the main image maybe adding something unique to your product but this is the main criteria that I use

And so, you know, you originally you learned more strategies from Project X. You went to Pinterest, you found this product using similar strategies. And then now, you know, we're just finished 2024. What was your total gross sales this year across the Amazon platforms? This year, it's we'll finish at five hundred thousand. This month was one hundred and twenty.

And I will tell you something, I have a, it's a very niche brand. The 120 we did this month, almost 80% it was from one product.

No one is selling this product. And what I like about selling a low competition product is that you can raise the price. When you raise the price, the sales, it's increasing also. Because what I did, normally I sell the product at 25. On the last of October, I increased my price. So when I can do prime exclusive discount, I raise my price from 20 to 30. And each day my sales are increasing.

I will tell you also something. Amazon has lost 3,000 of my units in the inventory. I made a case and then they told me they found the product, but it's in the transit. So people are buying in the Black Friday and the delivery will be half of December. And I was selling 300 units a day from this product, especially when people know that the delivery is late. This is good when you sell a product without competition, you own the market. But it's not easy to find a product, to be honest.

Now, did you do, you know, when you have a product that nobody is selling, kind of like we did in Project X with Coffin Shelf and Wooden Egg Trays, you know, we did test listings just to, hey, make sure that there is demand. Because, you know, if you're selling a product that already has existing competitors, you can see, you know, which keywords is the ones. But when you don't have that, you're kind of like guessing. So how do you like lessen your risk? Are you doing test listings or you're just so confident with your data that you know it's going to work even though nobody else is selling that same thing?

I don't do test listing.

what I do is like buying 300 units but what I don't like about this listing because you won't have a good images so maybe you have the group good product but your images is bad so your conversion rate is so bad so what I do is buying 300 units it won't cost too much and make a perfect listing if you see a demand from this product last year I launched two products I bought 500 from each one one failed and one succeeded so

I test with 300 units. This is the test phase for me. Okay, excellent, excellent. But still, if you don't have enough money for 300 units or that's a big risk,

buy five or ten like we did in Project X and that might be good now if people want to find you on the internet out there like your content I know you do a lot of Arabic content where can people find you out there okay my name is Abdullah Hashem A-V-D-A-L-L-A-H you can type it in YouTube and also link it in and other social media pages I do content about Amazon FBA especially in the Middle East but maybe I can do also content in English so that's it

All right, one last 30-second strategy you can share with our audience today. Amazon, it's all about keywords. It's not about products. When you select a product, you have to make sure that there is a relevant keyword. Like, can I get 30 seconds? Okay. We can make it 60. 30 seconds times three. Okay. One client reached out to me. She's selling baby silicone sets.

is baby silicon set a super relevant keyword to a product no because when the customer say baby silicon set so the idea for me to find a product that is exactly described by a single keyword this is my tip

All right. Awesome. All right. Well, thank you so much. And we'll reach out to you next year. And then maybe finally you've made enough money on Amazon. You're just going to go ahead and give up completely your university career. Yeah. So thank you, Bradley, for having me. And thank you for all your help for Amazon community and especially for Project X. Awesome. Thanks a lot.