A seller simply has to open an account and choose FBA as the method of business. With this simple choice, you have access to billions of customers worldwide who frequently shop from Amazon. More information about how to sell on Amazon you will find in IO Scout comprehensive guide.
Coming to the hard part out of the equation, there is only two questions left: 1) How do you choose the best things to sell on Amazon? 2) What sells best on Amazon?
This is what IO Scout Amazon will explore in this article. Unless you are planning on doing retail arbitrage – where you buy a random bulk product for cheap and sell it online – then you will need things to sell on Amazon that will give you steady income. Finding the products to sell on Amazon might be more difficult than you can imagine though.
Contrary to the popular belief, the best products to sell on Amazon should not be chosen simply because they have a lot of demand. There is also the question of suppliers.
So, what sells best on Amazon? A lot of attractive niches have become saturated nowadays because there are way too many sellers for a single product. It’s imperative to devise a strategy for building up a successful business, and we will take you through it step by step.
What are the Top Selling Categories on Amazon?
The bestselling products usually come with a lot of competition, but if you source your product right and time the launch correctly, you can easily earn huge. Here are the top items to sell on Amazon.
Games and kid’s toys
Do you remember the 8-year old kid who was making millions on YouTube by playing with toys? He still is. And that is because toys are one of the most recession-proof products in the market and have demands that are unwavering throughout the year.
Whether you are an adult or a child, there is something for all. After every movie and franchise release, there are new waves of toys and games that capture market interest immediately. And you can bank on the toy fever.
Toys are not only for Disney and Pixar fans. There are many educational games on the market. Even dog toys have a huge demand. They either break or wear out in a few months or years, and then customers are looking for something new.
One of the easiest ways to pick what kind of toys you want to sell is to go to Amazon’s top-selling games and toys section. Check out product popularity and be aware of the trends. The list is updated regularly, so if you make your own collection your listing might end up there too.
The highest selling toy category belongs to science, art, music, math, engineering and tech product. Legos or Jenga have some of the eternally popular products. Crayola has the art category down. The trends change every year, but a good indicator would be the upcoming movies or TV shows. If you have decided on a category, you can watch videos of the countless kids who demo the toys. They will be able to tell you what features interest them the most.Â
Electronic equipment
Ever since the inception of the Internet of Things, tech product sales has seen an unprecedented boom. If you are thinking what I can sell on Amazon - some of the bestselling products from recent years are electronics items like the Echo dot from Google, Alexa from Amazon, Fire TV Stick, and voice automated universal remote controls. most of these products made the Amazon’s bestseller list last year. Some of the top spots were occupied by Fire TV stick related items.
The caveat of selling in this category is that it is difficult to break out as a new seller. Bigger, more famous brands already have captured the market in innovation and effectiveness.
People do tend to go for bigger names when it comes to electronics because it is riskier to buy non-brand products. You can never diversify enough to match their offerings, but the shortcut to success here is selling items that are related to only one subcategory. If you choose accessories, you can source cables, chargers, remote controls, and memory cards, you can specialize in a niche and that will get you more sales than starting off with a large range of products.
Photography equipment
Although this is a subcategory of the electronics department, the high sales numbers warrant a separate entry for this altogether. Camera and camera-related accessories are one of the most popular items on Amazon. And not just professional photography cameras.
The idea here is to find what to sell on Amazon to make money. The answer is an item that has repeated use. You can sell security cameras, but they tend to have limited use in a home. Rather you can sell security cameras that are attached to the Ring doorbell. This kind of doorbell not only shows who is at the door but also triggers through sensors when people come within a certain distance. They require monthly subscriptions, so you can easily retain a steady income from them.
Similarly, batteries and memory cards of cameras tend to wear out more than the camera itself. There is a passionate movement of film photographers who still prefer film photography over digital. If you pander to this market, you will have a section of repeat customers who keep buying films periodically.
 Video games
Who doesn’t like video games? You will like it even more when you know that it is an industry worth a hundred billion and growing. Even Amazon has joined the rage by hiring their own developers to create video games for the Amazon Game Studios, their very own video gaming project platform. Some of the states of the art games sell millions of copies every year. In 2018, Fortnite was released on twitch and it became an instant hit on the strategy and first-person shooter category.
If you analyze the sales numbers, Nintendo is one of the top earners. The features of Twitch are exclusively available for Amazon prime members, and live streaming happens to be getting popular every day. If you choose to sell video games, you can promote them on this platform and offer rewards so the buyers will be hooked.
Books
Amazon has made indie publishing huge in recent years. A few years ago, traditional publishing methods through publications were considered the only way of getting your books out in the market. Amazon has not only provided starting authors to market their content in their platform, but they also made is very easy for sellers to trade in books.
Whether you are selling books as a retailer, or a writer, the kindle products offer a very easy opportunity to sell more product. It costs customers almost nothing (books are available with $0.99, $1.99 pricing tags, along with free samples), is much more environmentally friendly, and is easy to market than traditional hardcovers that happen to be more expensive.
The best-seller list from Amazon has categories like children’s books, adventure, and fantasy, fiction, science fiction, and literature. Top-selling books get over four-star reviews and bring in more money. These books also often get their own movies, which has brought a lot of renewed interest in books. Recent classics like The Fault in Our Stars, Hunger Games and Divergent were the biggest sellers in the fantasy and dystopian categories. The movies only pushed the hype of the books further.
You can choose from the 37 available categories to sell. Analyze your geographical zone and the trend popular to that place. World-renowned best-sellers are good bets, but local best-sellers are what brings in the bucks.
You can find out the trends on social media or Google trends. Promote the books on various sites, through blogs dedicated to book reviews and the landing page paid advertisement. Let your customers know what you are selling because reading is still one of the most prevalent hobbies and interests of people. The subjects of the books might shift in favor of a genre, but the interest in books will never fade.
Apparels, footwear, and pieces of jewelry
A survey conducted by Morgan Stanley in 2018 estimated that 68 percent of people who responded have bought tops, around forty percent has bought pants and other products related to bottom wear. Shoes came out to fifty percent of all respondents. Other subcategories also performed very well with at least 20 percent of people buying undergarments, pieces of jewelry, accessories, dresses and other apparel from Amazon. Amazon is a hotspot for the latest fashion trends and offers a lot of options at a very cheap price due to the diversity of the sellers.Â
More and more millennials prefer buying clothes online, and Amazon happens to offer the best prices on most items. Prime customers make up for over 60 percent of all apparel sold on Amazon.
To succeed in this market, however, is difficult. You should have a very wide range of selections to choose from. It is the same as retail, people do digital window shopping before committing to a particular jacket or boots.Â
If you are selling clothes, it is a good idea to also have FBA because size issues and likability issues are prevalent in customers. People are going to be apprehensive about buying clothes if they do not have an easy return policy. They need the motivation from 2-day easy shipping and a 7-day easy return policy.
Top Selling Products on Amazon in 2021 [Updated]
Amazon has countless items that are bought and sold every day. From household items to books and everything in between, it has been the go-to place to get anything you need. If you are an Amazon seller, you can even provide those exact items for customers.
We’ll be taking a look at some of the top-selling items that sellers have found success with. Keep in mind that as a seller yourself, the results are not as typical compared to others. With that said, we’ll show you how to find the right product so you can be able to sell them and make consistent profits every single time.Â
Without further ado, let’s get started:
Product Research
Finding the best selling product can be a challenge. That’s why it’s important to do as much deep research as possible. It’s also important to be aware of some things about a product:
- It has a price ranging from $21 to $200
- More than 10 sales per day
- Easy to ship (small in size, light in weight)
- Profit margin of 50 to 60 percent
- Under 150 reviews
- Available for air express shipping
With that said, these products that fit the profile have the potential to become high-sellers. They are not guaranteed, but it’s possible that they will. It’s also a good idea to keep away from products that are trademarked, heavy in weight, and require a lot of prep for shipping.Â
IO Scout Amazon Product Research Tool will help you to find the products that you want to sell. We’ll find products that meet the above criteria and have the potential to sell. If you get the right offer in front of the right people, you’re bound to get the sales you want.Â
We have a built-in Amazon product finder and Amazon keyword tool that will help customers find your product fast. So all that heavy lifting is done without you lifting a finger. All you have to do is pick the products that you think have the potential.Â
Best-selling products
Below is a sample list of best-selling products that you can try and sell on Amazon when you are starting out. As mentioned before, these have been successful in the past for most sellers but the results are not always typical or guaranteed. Let’s take a look at some example products:
Exercise bands
These bands will give you plenty of resistance for all kinds of aerobic exercises. They are lightweight, inexpensive, and can be used in so many ways.
Grill Mat
Perfect for all kinds of grilling. If you are the master of burger making or want to cook some mouth-watering ribs, you can’t live without the Grill Mat. It heats up fast and will make cooking all your favorites easier and quicker than ever.Â
Pet nail clippers
Your dog or cat need their nails clipped at some point. Whether they like it or not, pet owners need to make sure their fur babies are groomed and looking good. These tools are lightweight, easy to use, and painless for good ol’ Fido.Â
Yoga Mats
Yoga has grown in popularity over the years. Not to mention, working out on a hard floor can be a real pain. A yoga mat is perfect for those pushups, situps, and those many yoga poses for an invigorating workout session.Â
Stainless steel straws
If there is one market that might be worth tapping into, it’s the environmentally-conscious market. There are those out there who eschew the use of plastic goods in favor of environmental alternatives. These stainless steel straws are one of them.
They are reusable, BPA-free, and have received a ton of reviews in recent years.
Choosing What to Sell on Amazon FBA
50% of all internet users in the United States use Amazon as their primary source of online shopping. Even Google searches for products are lower than that. So, there should not be any doubt that this is the absolute right platform for your product.
If you are conflicted about which of the twelve million products you should sell, there are methodical ways of concluding. The most basic search can be done on the Amazon platform itself. The clue is in bestselling products in the categories we mentioned above. That will give you an idea of what kind of items you can select.Â
The process gets a little more technical at this step because some of the FBA fees are pretty high, and you must do a profit calculation to understand which product is sustainable for your business. There is no short cut answer to success. But there are definitely the right ways to search for it.
Finding the Best Products to Sell on Amazon - 5 Steps
Make these 5 steps your holy commandments for finding the right product. Research is necessary and being tactical is too.
1. Research product manually on Amazon
As we said, the best platform to give you the seed idea is Amazon itself. Scout the top-selling categories for products that have high demand. Of these products, find some which do not have too many sellers. Your goal is to find a product that has high demand, low sellers and high profit. Explore every subcategory and go through the section that has suggestions for customers.
When you get a list of products you know are popular, do a keyword analysis in the free Google keyword planner up. For every product, you should look for keywords that have high search volume. Search volume is an indicator of how popular a product is, and the number of buyers demanding this. You can also access many paid tools like IO Scout, SellerApp in the market. Go through some tools that have a free trial and use their keyboard research and product finder tools to validate your idea. Do not start selling before confirming this.
2. Install a chrome extension to analyze product data
You can use either a paid or free chrome extension to analyze and provide product data. The most accurate product data research app is available with IO Scout for a membership fee. However, the data is quite accurate, and it will show you search volumes, and sales volumes. What can you sell on Amazon, is down to the scientific calculations from the data these apps will give you. IO Scout is more cheaper and powerful than SellerApp, Viral Launch, Unicorn Smasher or Keepa.
Remember, you are looking for an estimated sales data and revenue for a competitor product, the like of which you want to sell.
3. Effectively identify market opportunities and fill them
A single search on Amazon will show you the gaps in the market. When you have a product niche in mind, maybe a tee shirt, do a deeper keyword search on it. You can maybe find 10000 search results when you look for tee shirts. See all the popular t-shirt related keywords and note them down.
But search for pink tee shirts and see how many results come up. It would be much less than 10,000. Maybe a couple of thousand. Now, tally the result with the keywords you have noted down. What are the demand for small sized t shirts, kid’s t shirts, t shirts with collars, v neck t shirts? You are looking for a product that has a high search volume, yet not many results in the Amazon market.
This is called a market opportunity or simply – a gap. Fill this need and you will find thousands of sellers. You can also search the user reviews of competitors and see if they are missing something that other brands are not providing. Market your product with this missing feature and voila, you are closer to success.
4. Do not sell a product that has too many sellers
If your choice already has hundreds of sellers and thousands upon thousands of search results, it has a saturated market. As a new entry, you are not bringing anything new or cornering the already occupied market share.
Start with items of relatively a smaller number of sellers and you can compete in this market. Keep in touch with the newest market trends to see upcoming product categories and become a pioneer yourself.
5. Choose a category that has at least 3 bestselling rank items
When a product category has items with many BSR products, you can look at the historical trend and we guarantee that this is a surefire way of finding products with very high demand. Look for such a subcategory with at least three to four BSR products.
Sourcing Products to Sell on Amazon
There are various effective ways of sourcing the product to sell on Amazon, depending on your business standards.
- Wholesale
These suppliers are best when you are selling items on the marketplace with FBA.
You will be able to buy a lot of products at once and buying bulk will also enable you to get higher discounts. The best-priced items make the best profits. You can store whatever inventory you have with Amazon and not worry about the warehousing.
- Dropshipping suppliers
If you are using FBM and have a limited capability for inventory, dropshipping supply is your best bet. Manufacturers will take orders and supply a limited quantity of products whenever needed.
Alternatively, you can ship them directly to the Amazon warehouses with FBA, but the issue with that is you do not know the kind of stock your customers will end up receiving as you are not verifying the product.
- B2B online marketplace
China has the biggest B2B marketplaces, where you can buy products for cheap and get it shipped to the Amazon warehouse. The options with this process are many, which makes it quite convenient.
Find Profitable Products with IO Scout Amazon Seller Tools
If you are looking for a profitable product, you’ll eventually find one. For most, the process is more time consuming than usual. That’s because it requires a lot of time used for research on the product itself.Â
Thankfully, there are plenty of tools that you can use to your advantage so the search for the right product doesn’t take too long. We’ll be taking a look at those tools provided by IO Scout so you can be able to find the products that will be best for your ideal market.
After all, if you get the right product in front of the right people, there’s a good chance you’ll get plenty of sales. People want a solution to a problem (in other words, a product that will make life easier for them). Don’t find a product that you want to sell because “that’s where the money is”.Â
We’ll also explain how these tools will work for you. If you have used tools like AMZ Scout, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Let’s take a look at the tools you can use from IO Scout.
How IO Scout Tools Work?
Product database
The number of products sold on Amazon is well into the millions. Specifically, there are 200 million items that are accounted for in IO Scout’s database. But somewhere in that list is a winning product or two you might be selling out fairly quickly (while not guaranteed, it can happen).
Amazon Product Research Tool
This tool already does the heavy lifting for you in terms of research. You can whittle down products based on various categories. In fact, you’ll be able to find a high margin, low competition product fairly quickly without doing a lot of research. You can find products in niches you are familiar with or dive into a new niche and sell products to customers that want nothing more than a product that makes life easier on them.
Amazon Chrome Extension
Amazon Keyword Tool
One of the keys to your product being found is having the right keywords. If your product doesn’t get discovered, it won’t be sold. Like the products you’ll find, IO Scout has the tools that will help you rank better in the listings. We’ll find keywords that are low in competition but get a considerable amount of searches per month.Â
Product Tracker
Want to know where a product is located? Want to see if it got shipped on time? This product locator and tracker are exactly what you need. Here’s a tip you might want to use, if there is a product that is in a fulfillment center closest to the customer, there’s a good chance it can be sold fairly quickly due to the timing. The sooner the customer gets the product, the better. You might not be just selling the product, but you are selling the timing of when it gets shipped to when it arrives on their doorstep.Â
Sales Analytics Tool
This tool will come in handy so you can keep track of all of your sales. You’ll know firsthand which products are selling and which ones are not. From there, you can make the changes needed in order for you to eliminate the losers and replace them with winners. The more winners you sell, the better.Â
Amazon Sales Estimator
Estimate monthly sales based on the BSR for free using IO Scout Estimator.
Amazon FBA Calculator
Calculate product revenue and Amazon fees for free using IO Scout FBA calculator.
Will are All the Products you’ll Find Profitable?
Just because you find a product that is a proven winner to one Amazon seller, doesn’t mean it will yield the same results for you. It’s important for you to incorporate these tools to your advantage to find the right product. But selling it will require some other “moving parts” as well.Â
How good is the product copy? Is it reasonably priced? Is it geographically close to a potential seller?
There are plenty of factors that come into play when it comes to selling a winning product. At the end of the day, it’s all about what the market wants. If you have the right product and the right message in front of the right people, you’ll be golden.Â
It might be hard to sell products on Amazon at first. But once you have a good system in place using these tools, you should be able to achieve the success that you want.Â
Final Thoughts
Starting your business on Amazon does not have to depend on luck. Choose the right products with the professional tools with the methods we have mentioned, and you have the answer to - what should I sell on Amazon.
Always keep track of your inventory and keep profitability calculators at the click of a hand. Sellers who have started out as small business owners made millions by doing business on Amazon. And you can be one of them.
FAQ
How successful is selling on Amazon?
The average income of an Amazon seller is a thousand dollars every month. If you are a small business owner, you have a lot of scalability and the right tools at hand with Amazon. Use IO Scout Amazon Listing Optimization Service to optimize you product listings on Amazon and become more successful seller.
How much can Amazon sellers make?
Over fifty percent of sellers make a minimum of $1000 per month. A medium-sized established business can make around $25k per month. Which makes it a very high reward job. Use IO Scout Amazon Keyword Tool to find keywords that convert best.
What does it cost to sell on Amazon?
It depends on if you are an individual seller or professional. Amazon will deduct $0.99 on every product you sell for individuals. For professionals that number will range from 6 to 15% of the revenue, plus a monthly $39.99 account fee.
What is the most sold item on Amazon?
The top category on Amazon is toys and games, closely followed by electronics and apparel. So, do not wait anymore. Make the right use of tools, and start selling on Amazon straightaway.
What can I sell on Amazon?
You can sell on Amazon whatever you want, but we advise you to choose the products with high demand and low competition. Also, we recommend you to use IO Scout Amazon Product Trends and Product History Tool.
How to find product to sell on Amazon?
Use IO Scout Product Research Tool to find the best products to sell on Amazon and start to make money.
