Can I Sell Stuff On Amazon

Clothing Shoes & Jewelry

From exercise clothing to underwear to sunglasses, the Clothing, Shoes & Jewelry category is undeniably a popular one. However, its also oversaturated with items. If youre able to offer something unique and for a good price, this could be a prime idea for how to make money. Want to be truly unique? Start your own clothing line. Youll need to source your own product from manufacturers, but you can buy wholesale and sell retail. For a domestic manufacturer, try a directory such as Thomas. For an overseas manufacturer, start with Alibaba.

Thoughts On The Dangers Of Selling On Amazon And Horror Stories From Real Amazon Sellers

Fulfill And Ship Your Products

Listing products for sale in the Amazon marketplace and managing your inventory are the hardest parts of learning how to sell on Amazon. This being said, once a customer places an order, the next step is to get that product into their hands.

Amazon offers two options for product fulfillment and shipment:

Fulfillment by Merchant

Self-shipping is typically a good option for small sellers and those with smaller margins. You can opt to charge for shipping or offer free shipping. The biggest advantage of FBM is that you can keep everything in-house and not lose more of your profits to Amazon fees.

The disadvantages are that its harder to qualify as an Amazon Prime shipper when you do FBM, so you could lose out on customers with Prime accounts. The other downside is that its more difficult to win the buy box when you choose FBM.

Fulfillment by Amazon

If the nitty-gritty of processing and shipping orders yourself feels overwhelming, go for the shipping method. Through FBA, you can use Amazonâs world-class fulfillment centers, customer support, and other operational tools to scale your business faster than you ever could on your own.

Image source: Amazon.com

How FBA Works

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The Easiest Way To Find Top Selling Items To Sell On Amazon

Now that you know what to look for in top items to sell on Amazon, itâs time to start your search for that winning product. There are several ways you can go about finding products. Of these methods, using Amazon product research software typically yields the best results. This is because these tools give you direct insight into the data of current Amazon products.

How To Find Suppliers

Next, once youve decided what youre going to sell on Amazon, youre going to need to find suppliersâunless, of course, youve opted to make and manufacture your own products. From sites like Alibaba to AliExpress, there are a variety of ways you can go about finding the right suppliers for your products.

With this in mind, on a basic level, one of the first things you can do is to perform a Google search for suppliers of your product. Once youve found a couple of options, you can contact them for more information.

Alibaba is a popular site to find suppliers when selling on Amazon. Image source: Alibaba

As you go through this process, however, youll want to make sure the supplier is reputable and that theyre offering you a good price. Here are a few product sourcing strategies to keep in mind:

• Get samples: Before you choose a supplier, youll want to ask for samples and actually get a feel for their products. This will not only help you choose a good supplier, but it will also help you start thinking about how youre going to list and advertise your products. Plus, getting physical samples of the product will give you the opportunity to evaluate them and decide if theyre worth selling.

• Read reviews: If possible, its always helpful to read reviews of suppliers and see how other business owners feel about working with them. As you might expect, a supplier with a handful of negative reviews probably isnt going to be someone you want to work with.

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Use The Fulfillment By Amazon Revenue Calculator

If you have not set up a seller account yet you can use the FBA Revenue Calculator to get the fee details on any item.

Simply search for the item that you are considering selling on Amazon and enter the price, how much it will cost you to ship to Amazon, and how much the product costs you. At the bottom it will display how much you should expect to receive as profit.

What To Sell On Amazon: To Make Easy Money Complete Guide

If you are still figuring out what to sell on Amazon so that you make good money, then this is the right article to read. Trust me, I have been there, and I know the struggles of coming up with the right product to sell on Amazon that can increase your revenue.

Before selling anything on Amazon you must first do your due diligence to determine market demand and sales potential.

Amazon sells 398+ million individual products. So, this literally means that there are plenty of options to choose from. So, whats the big deal? Yeah, thats right. But is exactly where all the confusions start. When you have a plethora of choices, things get hard. In short, the more, the tougher.

Not only beginners but also experienced Amazon sellers have trouble sorting through their market and coming up with that one fantastic niche that converts their efforts and time into money.

Understand that the kind of product you sell on Amazon can actually make or break the ideology of what you want to achieve from it. This is why you should know how to crack it right from the beginning and thats exactly what you are going to learn here.

To be successful in the Amazon e-commerce business, you need three key factors:

So, lets get started.

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Determine If You Can Sell Your Products On Amazon

: categories open to all sellers, and ones open only to Professional seller accounts. There are more than 20 open categories for selling on Amazon, where third-party sellers can list products without specific permission. The Professional categories require approval from Amazon to help ensure that sellers meet standards for product and listing quality as well as other category-specific requirements. If you want to sell products in a professional category, youll have to sign up for a Professional Selling Plan and get approval from Amazon to list your product.

Register As An Amazon Seller

After you did your research, youâll need to sign up for an account to start reselling on Amazon. You can do that by going to this page.

When registering for an account youâll have two options:

• to register as a Professional seller.This account costs $39.99 a month and comes with all the tools and features Amazon has to offer sellers.

• to register as an Individual seller. This account is free but you wonât have access to nearly as many features. Youâll also pay a $0.99 fee every time you sell an item.

If youâre just trying out selling on Amazon an Individual account might be a good way to start. But if youâre looking to start a serious business then a Professional account is definitely the way to go. Once you start selling over 40 items a month thereâs no reason not to switch to a Professional account, as youâll actually save money this way.

In order to sign up for an Amazon account, youâll need a piece of government ID, a credit card, and your tax information.

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Create A New Product Listing For Each Product You Sell

To make things easier for you, if youre selling something already on Amazon, you can search for the product. This way, you can use the product information already there to make filling out the detail page go a bit faster.

Once you search for a product, Amazon will show you all the current listings they have. You can choose to sell one of those or create your own.

How Should You Source Your Products

When it comes to sourcing your products you have a few different options.

• Dropshipping: With this strategy, you donât hold any inventory yourself. Instead, when you make a sale you send it to your supplier and they fulfill the order and drop ship it to the customer for you. This is great for individual sellers who donât have a lot of capital as you can get started with minimal investment.

• Wholesale: Wholesale suppliers sell items below retail price. However, they also require you to buy in bulk. Most wholesalers have minimum order requirements. How many items you buy affects the price youâll get. So, the resale strategy requires a lot of capital.

• Private Label: Private label products are unique items you design yourself and can sell under your own brand. This strategy requires you to go straight to the manufacturer. Like wholesalers, these companies require you to buy in bulk. But if you create a product thatâs unique and better than the competition it can result in a lot of sales.

• Retail Arbitrage: With this sourcing method, you buy low-price items from a store. You then sell them for a higher price on Amazon. It is perhaps the simplest sourcing method but is difficult to scale. It also relies on being able to find gaps in pricing. The strategy you choose will largely depend on your budget and your business plan. Make sure to take the time and choose the option that will give you the best chance at success.

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Select Your Shipping Procedure:

Choose whether you want to ship the product to customers directly by yourself or you can let Amazon do that for you. You can take advantage of Fulfillment By Amazon for an additional fee.

You can either opt for Amazons standard shipping or go for the expedited shopping where your product can be reached to the customers within six days.

Learn Amazon Seller Central

While this guide is meant to summarize key strategies and initiatives you can use to grow your business on Amazon, lets go over a few of the basics, starting with the difference between selling on Amazon and selling to Amazon .

Amazon Seller Central with Fulfillment Options

When youre a seller on Amazons marketplace, you own the inventory until a customer receives it. You can opt in to have Amazon facilitate order fulfillment and support to customers or do it yourself.

In most cases, being a third-party seller is the easiest and least expensive way to start selling on Amazon. Sellers utilize the Seller Central portal, with some different features available than with the Vendor portal.

Amazon Vendor Central

Becoming an Amazon vendor means you can sell direct wholesale to Amazon. However, it then owns the product once it receives it. Amazon Vendor Central is an invite-only program and can be a good option for businesses that dont want to sell directly to Amazon customers.

Benefits of being a vendor:

• Builds customer trust
• Access to additional category initiatives such as gift guides, holiday collections, etc.
• Access to programs such as Prime Now, Fresh, and Pantry
• Lower chance of account being suspended for unknown reasons

Disadvantages of being a vendor:

• Less direct control over pricing
• Fulfillment is more complicated and offers less control
• Slower payment terms
• Typically the more expensive model
• Increased reliance on Amazon Vendor Manager and Retail teams

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Pros And Cons Of Selling On Amazon

Amazon is full of third-party sellers, and when done right, you can be one of the successful ones. That doesnt mean, however, that there arent some drawbacks worth considering.

Pros

• Its easy to get started as an Amazon Seller, even if youre a beginner.
• If youve got an exclusive product and a decent profit margin, you can benefit from the Amazon partnership.
• Potential for more sales because Amazon has so much traffic
• Low marketing costs
• No need to carry stock

Cons

• Sellers can hijack your listings. They use your legitimate Amazon Standard Identification Numbers to list counterfeit products. Those sellers get all your marketing effort, and you get all the bad reviews for the fake product on your actual listing.
• Amazon fees add up quickly. If you dont have a considerable margin, you may lose it by paying Amazon.
• You dont get control of the experience for customers.
• Youll still be responsible for customer care and nurturing even if Amazon fulfills your orders for you.

Before You Pick Between The Individual And Professional Plans

Before you even sign up for either plan to sell items on Amazon, its recommended you have a strategy in place as a new seller. Determine the following essentials before you sign up to sell:

• You have a product ready to sell
• Youve selected a selling plan
• Youre able to meet the requirements for any items needing approvals
• You have IDs for all your products , such as a UPC, EAN, or GCID)
• You have a plan for fulfilling orders

So how do you find products to sell? Thats where things get difficult. Ideally, you want to sell a product in high demand, but with low competition. This is basic economics 101 and applies to anyone who wants to sell anything online.

There are paid tools that will help you find profitable niches and products to sell on Amazon, such as , if you want to get serious about your business. These tools generally provide features such as product research, keyword research, inventory management, and more. They can range from free to $49 a month for a browser extension to upward of $120 a month for some of the highest plans.

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What To Sell On Amazon: Criteria

When youre about to choose products you want to sell on Amazon:

#1. Look at the top selling products for each category and find trending products.

#2. Go for items with high demand : an item doesnt have to be selling massive amounts per day. However, at a minimum, any product you plan to sell should achieve at least 10 sales per day.

#3. Avoid being too trendy or seasonal so you have consistent sales throughout the entire year. Selling products in demand 24/7/365 will help you achieve sustainable growth.

#4. Avoid picking heavily-saturated markets, consider international markets.

#5. Find a niche with consistent demand: in general, buyers often dont just browse on Amazon, but look for something specific, e.g. Cookbooks for instant pot cooking is more specific than Cookbooks. You can use a chrome extension to research products in a niche market, e.g. Jungle Scout to see monthly sales volumes on products or products with low competition.

#6. Consider products with low competition that could indicate an untapped market . There might be high demand for a product, but not many sellers are offering it. Why not swoop in and offer a really good version of that item?

#7. Leverage existing product reviews, e.g. the number of reviews could indicate how often a product has been purchased or how long a product / listing has been up. A small number of reviews that are in the 4-5 star range could mean that that product is emerging as a top seller .

Can You Learn How To Sell Stuff On Amazon

If you sell a direct-to-consumer product and fall into one of the business types above, you may want to sell your product on Amazon but, the next question is can you sell on Amazon?

To answer that question, well need to look at Amazons seller requirements and restrictions.

Because its a marketplace, Amazon wants as many sellers as possible to provide the best value to its customers.

As a result, its relatively easy for anyone wanting to sell a product and willing to pay Amazons fees to register and start selling in the Amazon Marketplace.

As long as you fall into one of the more than 20 open categories , you should have no trouble registering and listing your products quickly.

Amazon sales restrictions

With that in mind, Amazon does have some limitations as to who can sell in its marketplace. To start, there are many categories that require Amazon approval before merchants can begin selling products. The approval process mitigates any quality-control concerns and provides assurance to buyers.

For example, products like trading cards, autographed memorabilia, and fine-art paintings require Amazon approval.

Products within these categories are more susceptible to scams and misrepresentation. By controlling the merchants that sell these items, Amazon can increase the trust consumers have in the quality of their purchases.

There are many benefits to figuring out how to sell stuff on Amazon from increased visibility to a secure and streamlined consumer experience.

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