Don't over complicate it

Selling on Amazon isn’t really that complicated.

If you’re just starting out…Don’t start with private label. Don’t start with wholesale.

I know everybody wants to do private label or wholesale but please do not start with that first until you know the Amazon process and get used to sourcing easy to find products and make some sales.

Otherwise you will risk too much capital and run the risk of buying products that won’t sell.

You will also need to meet minimum order quantities that will eat up whatever cash you have especially for a beginner.

Instead…do this.

Find simple everyday products that are already selling.

Boring easy to find products like boxes of chocolates, dog treats, books, cleaning products etc etc

Yes, I know these are so boring but trust me …boring sells.

Go out and pick up 10 or 12 of these products and make sure they are profitable, even if it’s only a small profit.

Bring them home and pack them up and send them in.

See how quickly they sell and go and buy some more…maybe 20 or 24 this time.

Once they sell out then you will know 2 things. You know how quickly they sell and you know what profit you can make on each one.

Do this with several products to prove the concept.

Now you know, if you buy them…they will sell.

Then and only then, would you consider looking at buying some of these products wholesale.

Until you do this process then you would be spending a lot of money on products buying them wholesale and you wouldn’t even know if they would sell, even if a Keepa chart told you that they would.

Doing it this way gives you the hard data that you need to move forward with confidence.

So many beginners overlook this point and go out and buy 300 or 400 private label products or a wholesale order with a minimum order value of £1000 that they think people want to buy, only to find that no one wants them and they end up sitting in a garage gathering dust for years leaving you no other option but to try and flog them on eBay at a loss just to get rid of them.

As the old saying goes “ Sell what Sells”

Test small and prove the concept and scale up slowly using the knowledge and the data that you learn along the way.

Amazon is not a get rich quick business.

I’ve been doing Amazon FBA for 10 years and building slowly each and every year… buying products that I know will sell and wont be stuck with them.

As a beginner, you need to Start small and scale up.

If you don’t, you are setting yourself up for failure and frustration.

Don’t believe me?

Set yourself a mini challenge. This week, go and find 10 products that you can easily source locally and make a small profit on, and send them to Amazon.

Then come back and tell me that it worked and you’re away to buy more.

Don’t over complicate it!

Not looking for the answer to your successful products, but perhaps one example of something you can just go out and buy and then ship to Amazon? I found that 100% of the things that I contemplated selling are gated. Even if you are going out and buying 10 products that are for sale in a store to see if you can sell them on Amazon, they typically have a brand name. We have to type in the brand name when we are creating the listing or copying a listing and I am finding that everything I have ever attempted is gated or requires receipts showing minimum purchases of 100-300 units.

I do think that this is good advice, just find the advice to not really be that practical so to speak. On top of that, there are typically restrictions to what you can put in the listing, or you need permission, or suddenly something might become gated that you already bought inventory for.

I was attempting to follow your guidelines that you laid out here when I first ventured selling on Amazon and within 5 months I made the decision to just have at it with private label because I found that not having control over my listings, requiring permission, or having minimum purchase orders was just way more frustration than it was worth. What is your guidance for finding these categories that don’t already have UPC code and brand name affiliation where you would require permission from the brand to be able to sell? What are the categories?