How I Earn Thousands by Selling on Amazon
This is a guest post from Amy Whitmer of MoneyMorsels.com
One of the largest shopping platforms on the Internet is Amazon. It seems that nearly everyone has bought something off of Amazon at one time or another. And if you are like me you make purchases there on a weekly basis or more!
Update: 4/5/20 You asked for it and I’m delivering! Starting NOW, you can grab the Trashed to Total Home Transformation Survival Guide (Pandemic Edition) For FREE!
It teaches you step by step how to work with your personality to not only set up home routines that will work (no matter how many times you’ve failed in the past), but that you’ll stick to… long after the pandemic is over.
We’ve taught hundreds of thousands of people how to use bare minimum consistent effort to completely transform their home (and life!). You’re up next.
You can get your Survival Guide here for FREE…
Even if someone has never bought anything on Amazon, they have likely heard of it.
Many years ago, Amazon started letting other people sell items on their website right alongside Amazon’s inventory. These third party sellers are people just like you and me.
The beauty of selling on Amazon instead of your own website is that Amazon is already heavily used and trusted and has all of the infrastructure in place. So, you don’t have to worry about finding buyers or establishing relationships with your customers.
You also don’t have to worry about taking credit cards since Amazon takes care of that too. And, if you want to, you can send your items into Amazon’s warehouses and let them take care of the shipping and customer service as well.
I started selling on Amazon in 2004 when I was trying to downsize a massive collection of books that I had acquired over the years. Since then, I have sold all kinds of items on Amazon and made many thousands of dollars in the process.
There are many ways to sell on Amazon that range from beginner level to advanced. I’m going to break down a few of these for you here.
Beginner
The easiest way to get started selling on Amazon is to sell used books. You can sell your own personal collection or you can go to thrift stores, garage sales, and library book sales and amass super cheap inventory this way.
Here’s a tip: fiction doesn’t make money. The books you are going to make money on are not best-selling novels because the market is too glutted.
The books that have the best profit potential are non-fiction books about obscure topics. Current textbooks, books about niche business topics, and some health and religious books are often good choices. Usually, I can make between $5 and $10 profit on each of the books I send in.
I once sold a book that I got at a yard sale for $2 for $180. No joke!
Intermediate
Retail arbitrage is all the rage these days, but it is getting harder and harder to do this. Retail arbitrage is when you go shopping in a store like Walmart or Target and buy items that you can then turn around and sell on Amazon for a profit.
You might buy items on clearance or use coupons or other discounts to get your price down. Then on Amazon, you can raise the price to higher than normal because people are willing to pay for the convenience of ordering on Amazon.
Toys, groceries, sporting goods, clothing, health and beauty items and more can all be sold on Amazon this way (once you are approved to do so). This used to be a gold mine. And even today, it makes a lot of people a lot of money.
The problem though is that so many people have started doing this, that the competition is too fierce on some items which makes the prices of those items on Amazon fall down to levels that are no longer profitable. So proceed with caution here.
Advanced
The most difficult way to get into selling on Amazon is by doing wholesale. This means you go directly to the company that creates the item you want to sell and purchase large quantities at wholesale pricing and then turn around and sell it on Amazon.
I consider this to be an advanced method because, in order to get approved for most wholesale accounts, you have to have an established business. You also have to have large purchasing power. Most wholesale accounts have large minimum orders, sometimes in the thousands of dollars, although not always.
So not only do you need to know what you are doing on Amazon, but you need to know what products will sell, what doesn’t have too much competition and so on. It’s not something I would recommend a beginner do.
Amazon FBA
No matter which method you choose, I recommend that you consider using Amazon FBA to manage your inventory. FBA stands for “fulfilled by Amazon.” This means you send your inventory into Amazon and they store it in their warehouses and ship it out to customers when someone buys it.
It costs you more money in fees this way, but your sales will be much higher. FBA items are noted as “Prime” items on the Amazon website. Anyone with a Prime membership can get these items shipped for free sometimes in as little as one day.
Many people will only purchase Prime items. So by having your items in the Amazon warehouses, you automatically increase your sales. The extra fees are well worth it. It also makes your work load a lot lighter since you don’t have to ship items to customers and manage all that entails.
Amazon Seller App
I also recommend that you get the Amazon Seller app for your smartphone. It lets you scan barcodes of items and see what your profit would be if you sold the item on Amazon. There are also some paid software systems that have more features, but the Amazon Seller App is free and is a good way to get started once you are approved to sell.
I’ve only barely scratched the surface with this article when it comes to selling on Amazon. There are many more ways to sell. There are several more tools and tactics you can use within each of these methods.
Some items cannot be sold on Amazon unless you are approved to sell in those categories. All of these things must be considered when selling on Amazon. But once you get through the basics, the profit potential is amazing.
Before you go…
90 Day Budget Bootcamp is FREE right now!
Is your spending out of control? Do you set a budget and then never stick to it? Or just have no idea how to start? I’ve totally been there! But the 90 Day Budget Bootcamp changed my entire life. You can now get immediate access to the 90 Day Budget Bootcamp for FREE (limited time only!) through this link. You’ll learn how to create a *realistic* budget that you can actually stick to, create a meal plan of simple 15 minute meals that take less time than the drive-thru, and even get your spouse on board with the budget. Grab it here for free before it’s gone!
More Job Ideas:
- The 4 Side Jobs that Make me $3,000 a Month as a Stay at Home Mom
- How to Start a Blog (when you suck at Computers)
- How I Make Over $24,000/Month by Running a Blog
- How I earn Thousands by Selling on Amazon
- How I started a Small Cleaning Business
- How to Make Money from Home Offline
- How to Work Full-Time From Home as a Ghostwriter
- How to Make Money Scanning Photographs
- The Easiest Path to Freelance Writing
- 75+ Ways to Make Money From Home
- How I made $30,000 as a Voice Actor
- How Hard is it to Make Money Blogging?
- How I made $30,000 in 10 Months as a New Proofreader
- How to Make Extra Money Teaching Piano
Course Recommendations:
- Elite Blog Academy- (how to make money blogging)
- Proofread Academy – (how to make money proofreading)
- Creative Live – (how to make money in photography)
- Ebay Selling Course (Free)
Other popular posts about ways to make money from home…
The Four Ways I Make Over $3,000/Month as a Stay at Home Mom —-> Click here!
How I turned Pinterest into a Full-time Job —-> Click here!
How I Made $30,000 in 10 Months as a New Proofreader —–> Click here!
Amy Whitmer blogs about saving money and making money at MoneyMorsels.com. She can also be found on Twitter @MoneyMorsels.
I’ve had my best success on Amazon selling books I bought from thrift stores or from my personal collection. My only problem with selling on Amazon is making sure my profit isn’t eaten up by fees and shipping. I’ve had instances where I either made very little or worse made nothing. I tried the retail arbitrage path and that didn’t work out so well with me. After reading this post, I may rethink selling on there again.
Thanks for your input Shanetta. I just looked up what it takes to become a seller on Amazon and there is a $39.99 monthly fee (1st month free) + fees so I can imagine you would have to sell at a good profit margin or high volume to make a decent profit and it be worth your time. I would be interested to learn how much volume (product) the author of this blog entry sells each month and time spent doing so. I do agree that buyers like utilizing Prime when it is offered over other products so that is a plus but I can sell my books on Ebay a whole lot easier.
I like eBay, too, for smaller items like books and old video games. Older games can fetch some decent money if they are in good condition or somewhat rare!
This is something I haven’t done personally yet but know that my readers will love hearing about. It’s so awesome to see someone making money this way!
I have been selling on Amazon for about 3 years now. It brings in some regular monthly income and I only spend a few hours a week working at it. The fees can seem high but when you consider what those fees are paying for, it is well worth it. You don’t have to pack and ship individual items or pay for postage of individual items, you don’t have to handle customer service or returns. If I had to do all that, the few hours a week I spend could easily turn into a full time job.
Thank you for your feedback… Do you mind sharing additional information:
1. What do you sell on Amazon?
2. You mention that there is no packaging or shipping? How is that completed?
3. You also do not handle customer service or returns?
Thank you so much in advance?
If you want to send items to the Amazon prime warehouse and it’s a very heavy load does Amazon pay for shipping?
Yes you can make money on Amazon but I recommend you do plenty of market research before you give it a go. Profit margins can be really tight unless you choose the right niche. You need to know what’s going to sell before you buy in bulk, which can be very costly. Amazon FBA is a lot more preferable and a lot less hassle than posting the product yourself and the delivery is super quick.
I think selling on Amazon is a great idea and your tips are really helpful. I would definitely go with the FBA option. Now I just need to do some thinking on what I can sell.
A good read! Thanks for sharing Amy. This is a good way to earn staying at home.
Hello, this is an amazing article for beginners. i just wanted to let everybody knw that this is not hard. you can make money on amazon. if you just hang in there and do some research for products to sell.
Selling on amazon is a exiting and enjoyable task . I started my business on amazon by research on amazon services provider and i finally find out Evantage store of amazon which gives services from scratch to advance on Sell On Amazon, How to Sell On Amazon, Selling Services on Amazon, Amazon Webstore Management.This are the starting and the most important part of selling for more details visit http://www.evantage.store/ and get your wholesale business sales at great height.
I just wanted to say thank you for sharing this information. After moving across the country 2.5 months ago and realizing my new salary doesn’t cover my bills, I’m looking for a way to make money that is an investment in my future and self sufficiency.
I also encorage buy this start up documentary
I wonder what it might take to sell pure gold Jewellery on Amazon.
Any idea please?