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Using Amazon as my reselling marketplace of choice is a no brainer. The fact that I can simply add a label to my already packaged product, ship it off to Amazon, and wait for my payment to come in, is a beautiful thing. It makes reselling a breeze. However, that isn’t to say it’s all rainbows and butterflies. There are a lot more fees and a lot more returns, but the time savings and the simplicity make up for the downfalls.
If you’re new to the world of reselling, this is a great post to start with. I will be going over the basics of reselling on Amazon, why it’s a great marketplace, and what to watch out for. So, don’t worry if you’re completely new at this, you’ll be an expert before too long. After reading this guide, I highly suggest looking at my other reselling guides below.
As you can see, there are a lot of pros to selling on Amazon, but there are almost as many cons. Do you want to provide your own customer service or are you willing to pay a bit more and have it provided for you? Do you want to ship every item you sell or is it more cost-effective to give the work to Amazon? It’s important to look at your selling goals and see if reselling on Amazon is right for you.
There are a lot of things to look for when selling products on Amazon (e.g. sales rank, who it’s sold by, amount of sellers, ect.). So, let’s dissect a listing:
The main part of a listing is shown above. To a buyer this has a lot of information, but to a seller the only parts that matter are the “Buy Box” and who is selling the product. The Buy Box is the part of the listing that shows what the price is when you click “Add to Cart.” The Buy Box seller is not always the cheapest, nor do they always use FBA. Amazon has an algorithm that decides who stays in the Buy Box. If you have the cheapest price and ship via FBA with a rank of 100, chances are you’ll have the Buy Box. On the other hand, If Amazon sells the item, they will always have the Buy Box regardless of price. Jordan mentioned in the comments that Amazon doesn’t always have the Buy Box. If you price an item 1%+ less than Amazon, you will win the Box.
If Amazon does sell the item, you may have a tough competing with them. They will almost always beat your price even if you change it regularly. The best thing you can hope for is that they go out of stock at some point. For popular items, this happens often. I generally try to sell items that Amazon doesn’t, such as store exclusives, that way I’m not worried about the competition.
Quick Tip: If there are a lot of sellers selling the same item, you might want to avoid selling it or you will have a lot of competition to deal with.
The next box you will want to look at is the “Additional Information” box.
This box shows a lot more information for a reseller. I’ll break it down by number.
I cover sourcing much more in-depth here, if you’re interested in learning more.
Reselling is not for everybody, so please don’t rush into it without researching, or you may end up losing money. If I’ve sparked your interest, please check out my other reselling guides.
Happy selling!