Browsing Amazon, and selling some bits now and again on Amazon’s Marketplace was once upon a time a nice little side hustle. Before you dive on how to sell on Amazon for free, let's figure it out on how to sell on Amazon in general.
Fast forward to 2020, and becoming an Amazon seller is now the sole stream of revenue for the vast majority of sellers on Amazon’s Marketplace.
This is largely due to the level of flexibility being an Amazon seller allows. Working from home, choosing your own hours, and being your own boss certainly sounds appealing.
Added to this is the fact that it’s relatively easy to jump on the Amazon bandwagon and start selling products.
How much money can you make selling on Amazon ?
And better yet, how can you get started as an Amazon seller, for FREE ?
IO Scout provide several tools such as FBA Calculator and Amazon Sales Estimator , this tools are completely free to use.
Read on to learn more.
How much money on average do Amazon sellers make?
By and large, most Amazon sellers opt to go down the FBA route ( Fulfilled by Amazon ).
Using FBA is a stress-free approach to handling all the administration and shipping required in your Amazon business.
Enlisting FBA’s service means you don’t have to be concerned about customer orders, or customer returns, or customer complaints, or customer questions – anything to do with customers at all, really!
FBA ensure that your orders are fulfilled quickly, and delivered quickly too. All adding up to very happy customers.
Let’s take a walk down the FBA path….
- Your products, stored as units, are forwarded to Amazon Fulfillment Centres for safekeeping.
- These items are included to Amazon’s inventory.
- Buyers see your products and place orders.
- These orders are received, the goods are packed, and delivered to your waiting consumers.
- FBA takes care of all returns, and customer service queries that occur during the whole route.
What are the Benefits with FBA?
- No need to handle customer service demands or grievances, Amazon FBA have it covered
- No mistakes made with order placing and delivery, Amazon FBA have it covered
- No waiting for your orders, FBA orders are delivered quickly to your customers via Amazon Prime
- Your listings will be enhanced with the Amazon Prime badge, signalling trust and authority within the marketplace
- Frees up your time in your business
- Your listings will be visible to more people due to higher ranked listings, thanks to Amazon FBA
And although there are a substantial amount of costs and fees entailed with Amazon’s FBA service, for the sellers who are selling exceptional amounts of stock each month, and taking a huge number of orders, this FBA service pays for itself for the convenience.
Back to how much money typical Amazon sellers make.
Amazon sellers – what are the typical earnings per year?
49% of Amazon vendors make under $100k, 36% of Amazon vendors make $100k-$1m, 13% make between $1m-$10m, and only 2% of Amazon vendors enjoy more than $10m!
And which products sell the best on Amazon?
Home and Kitchen 18%
Toys and Games 11%
Books 9%
Health 8%
Beauty 8%
Electronics 7%
Clothing 7%
Sports and Outdoors 6%
And which products earn the most profits on Amazon?
The most profitable items on Amazon can be categorized like so:
- Books
- Child and Baby Products
- Jewellery
- Active Wear, or Exercise Clothing
- Electronic Goods and Accessories
How do you sell on Amazon for FREE?
Four actions. Let’s investigate:
- Check around your home for items that you could flog on Amazon
- Register for a free sellers account on Amazon.com
- Find your product on Amazon that is already listed by someone else (handy!)
- Obtain your orders, distribute your goods to your consumers, and hey presto! Amazon selling business – completed it!
How long can you expect to wait before becoming profitable on Amazon?
Happily, the answer to this question is not too long.
67% of Amazon sellers report that they started enjoying business profits within their first year as a seller. And the average new Amazon seller makes a profit of around $26k annually.
What about Amazon Selling Fees?
Every sale you make on Amazon’s Marketplace comes with a sales fee.
Amazon selling fees are owed whether you are on an individual or professional Amazon selling plan. These particular fees are dependent on a) the price, and b) the product category.
On average, the sales fees equate to around 15%, but for an in-depth, accurate computation, you can use Amazon’s Referral Fee tool here .
It’s 100% worthwhile to test and see which category your items will be categorized as, and ensure the referral fees aren’t too exorbitant, so you don’t end up paying all your profits directly to Amazon!
Amazon offer two selling plans:
Individual Amazon Selling Plan
- Sell less than 40 products monthly with no subscription or cost
- Sell on one Amazon site
- Restricted categories to sell in
If you are starting out selling on Amazon, this plan is recommended, and you can always develop to the Professional plan when your business starts go viral!
Professional Amazon Selling Plan
- Sell more than 40 products monthly
- Subscription fee (currently $39.99/month), plus referral & variable fees
- Facility to interact and sell on various Amazon sites
- Limitless item categories to sell your products in
As long as you initially stick with the Individual Amazon selling plan, you only have to worry about the referral fees, and these fees come into play after the sales have been made , so you don’t need to stump the cash up front for them.
But what if you want to sell your own handmade products on Amazon? There’s a niche especially for you.
Selling via Amazon Handmade
A platform you can use to sell your own products, and which you can also use FBA for, Amazon Handmade aims to compete with other sites just like Etsy.
You’ll find listing your items is free on Amazon Handmade, however a fee will be deducted in the form of a percentage of the sale.
Selling via Retail Arbitrage
Retail Arbitrage is a walk in the park, to be honest.
A retail store (Walmart, for example) sells a product (either online or in-store) for a certain price. You then go and purchase that article, and then sell it for a higher price yourself on Amazon = PROFIT.
This is a non-committal way to test out selling on Amazon’s Marketplace, as it doesn’t necessitate much initial capital, but you do need to have some spare time on your hands! It also gives you knowledge of what products sell well, and experience high demand on Amazon.
One way to start would be to explore the retail arbitrage tactics that are we’ve contemplated in this post in a negligible quantity of time, and through this process, you will hopefully find that you’ve got to grips with the procedures involved with selling on Amazon.
If you’ve run out of items around your home to sell, you can check these tools out:
What are Amazon Product Research Tools?
Amazon Product Research Tools take the work out of research, product pricing and product tracking for you.
Instead of wasting your valuable business time observing product inventories, struggling to summon up a brand-new, never-seen-before, product to jump out at you, you can alleviate some of this strain by using these tools.
The best Amazon Product Research Tool will help you to:
- Uncover brand -new product niches
- Follow your competitors’ prices
- Precisely determine competitive but lucrative prices for your items
- Collect essential data from the Amazon Marketplace.
All of which are a minefield to accomplish purely using a spreadsheet!
When you start to think about all the aspects of running an Amazon FBA business, and all the tasks that are involved, such as….
- Product Research
- Product Sourcing
- Sales Tracking
- Inventory Tracking
- Competitor Monitoring
- Gaining Customer Testimonials
- Creating Quality Product Listings
Which are the best FREE product research tools for Amazon sellers?
IO Scout is one such product research tool for Amazon FBA selling businesses. IO Scout offers these special features for sellers:
Product Research Tool
Keyword Tool
Listing Optimization Service
Free Amazon Sales Estimator
Free FBA Calculator
Product Tracker
Other product research tools available online in competition with IO Scout include:
- Sellics – A complete management tool for FBA sellers
- Keepa – Price history charts and insights for FBA sellers
Other ways to tell if your products will sell well on Amazon
Take a look at these categories:
- Toys and Games
- Cameras and Photos
- Electronics
- Video Games
- Cosmetics
- Books
- Kitchen Equipment
These categories comprise the top selling categories, as they stand in 2020.
Amazon Best Seller Rank (or BSR)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank is a categorization given to items on Amazon’s Marketplace based on its orders, in comparison to other items with the same categorization, based on a set time period. You can find the Amazon BSR in the item description section of the item.
The Amazon Best Seller Rank (or BSR) is the score that Amazon’s algorithms work out to place products based on the sales. This algorithm calculated by Amazon is a mystery to most people, and probably known by a select few at Amazon’s headquarters!
The Amazon BSR is a vital measurement for Amazon FBA sellers. Get it right on Amazon with your product listings, and your business will be more profitable and successful.
Calculations for Amazon BSR is based on categories, and sub-categories, not keywords.
The Amazon BSR is a nice sign of potential sales of goods.
How to apply BSR to discover goods to sell on Amazon
- Find out the item’s Best Sellers Rank on Amazon’s Marketplace
- Make an assessment of the typical sales of the item on a monthly basis – this will ensure you have data on how frequently this item sells.
- Work out what the item should sell at. This comprises the cost of the item, along with the associated fees, and the potential fees to store the item if they don’t fly off the shelves!
How much time do you need to invest as an Amazon Seller?
Like any business, you need to put the work and effort in to see results. If, like the vast majority of Amazon sellers, you are seeing this as a new business venture as your sole income, then time will need to be spent on your new business.
In the beginning, it’s likely a lot of time will be required as you research new products, check they’re viable, find suppliers, check product niches and categories, create listings, and so on. And then, after a while, it’ll settle and you’ll find your groove. The average amount of time spent on Amazon selling businesses is reportedly 11-20 hours a week. That’s not too shabby!
Key Takeaways to make 100% profit on Amazon’s Marketplace
Selling on Amazon’s Marketplace is a time-consuming business. And you won’t always get it right every time, and choose the perfect product to sell every time. But that’s par for the course.
So, experiment – enjoy the process, and learn from errors. Soon you’ll pick up on trends in the Marketplace, and gain a really clear knowledge of what your consumers desire – so you can give it to them!
