You have heard selling on Amazon is a great opportunity. It doesn’t have to cost a lot to get started. In this article we cover the 7 steps you need to take to start your business with $1000.
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Step 1 Multiple Channels
There are many different ways to get started as a seller on Amazon today.
You can send in products that you have around your house for resale. From used books to used barbecue equipment, Amazon sells billions of different items and there are people looking for new and used items in every category.
If you don’t have much money, selling products you have around the house and don’t use is one way to learn how the Amazon system works while earning extra cash.
Step 2 Retail Arbitrage
A really popular way to generate money using Amazon’s traffic is to find deals in other retailers and resell the products in Amazon.
For example, Walmart may have a closeout sale of a certain toy for $5 each, but they may be selling on Amazon at $20 each. You can simply buy the products from Walmart, label them and send them in to Amazon for resale at the full price.
This is called retail arbitrage and is a good way to get going with minimal cash.
Step 3 Partner
Look around for small mom-and-pop shops in your area. They may have items you can list on their behalf for resale on Amazon.
You can work out some sort of deal for selling those items. They have the stock anyway, sitting on the shelf waiting to be sold.
By using the fulfillment by merchant channel, you don’t even have to send the product into Amazon. You can sell it first and then post it to the buyer. This means that the retailer can keep it on the shelf and either sell it in the shop or through Amazon.
If you don’t have much money you can partner with someone to do this.
Step 4 Commission
Another option when starting with very little cash is to work for another brand or seller and manage their account, marketing or sourcing in return for a commission or fee.
For example, you can handle all of the customer service, listing optimization and research in return for 10% of the value of the sales.
Join some of the Amazon groups and contact large sellers asking if they will be willing to let you optimize their products or do research for them in return for a commission or fee.
Step 5 Test
Even with $1000 you can still conduct a test on your first Amazon product.
If it costs $10 a unit, then you can only invest in around 80 units to start with, leaving some money for marketing and building a listing. Once you sell the $1000 worth of stock you may be left with $1500 and you can repeat the process scaling up your money over time.
For this I recommend you go into very low competition markets with only a small markup so you can sell out your stock without having to spend a lot on marketing.
Step 6 Private Label
Factories in China will still make you 50 or 100 units of some products. They may have products another customer rejected because they were the wrong color, which means you can buy 50 or 100 units to resell.
Step 7 Raise Money
Another option is to test one of the above strategies and prove that you can sell products through Amazon.
Once you learn the process, you can go to friends,family and investors and use your success to raise additional capital to promote your own branded item. Remember to warn them that they can lose all the money on the venture.
If you do take investor capital do everything possible to make a great return for them and make your Amazon business successful.
