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Becoming an Amazon seller is a great way to start a low-cost online business and build passive income. But with over 2.4 million sellers to compete with, entering the marketplace as a newcomer can feel intimidating.
Selling an outstanding product is vital to stand out in this dynamic eCommerce landscape. Fortunately, you don’t have to comb through millions of Amazon listings to find profitable products. This guide will tell you how to find products to sell on Amazon in 2024, so let’s dive right into it.
You can find a product to sell on Amazon in seven steps:
Step 1: Visit Amazon’s Best Sellers Rank page to identify the most profitable niches and product categories.
Step 2: Choose a product category.
Step 3: Find out the demand for the products in your chosen category.
Step 4: Research the competition and market trends.
Step 5: Source your products.
Step 6: Calculate costs, including inventory, shipping, seller fees, and more.
Step 7: Develop a profitable pricing strategy.
These steps aren’t set in stone, though. You can switch steps 1 and 2, and it will make no difference in the process.
The good first step to finding a profitable product to sell is to check out Amazon’s latest best-sellers. Go to the Best Sellers Rank page to view the top-selling products in featured categories.
Amazon selects best-sellers based on their Best Sellers Rank (BSR), a metric or score you can find on the Product Details page. The score indicates how the product sells compared to other items in its category. The lower the score, the higher the sales rank. For example, if a portable handheld vacuum cleaner ranks #10 in the Automotive category, it means it’s the tenth best-selling item in that category.
You can also identify a bestseller by the Best Seller Badge. It appears on products ranked #1 in a category with at least 100 items. Once you've determined the top-selling categories and products on Amazon, you can go to the next step: researching demand.
Another way to find a product to sell is by checking out Amazon's Hot New Releases. It lets you know the latest listings with the highest sales.
The Movers and Shakers tab also shows best-selling products, specifically those quickly gaining popularity. Finally, the Most Wished For tab showcases the products added to customers' wishlists and wedding and baby registries the most. If you’re looking for a holiday product to sell, The Gift Ideas tab will show you the items most ordered as gifts.
You need a good grasp of a product’s demand cycle to know if selling it will make enough profit. If you already have an idea of what to sell, identify its potential buyers and ask questions about their problems or challenges related to the product. The potential buyers are those who use the same product as your prospect or some variation of it.
You can send out surveys through email or social media. If surveying your friends or family members is an option, you can talk to them about your business idea and ask for insights about your product. The questions you can ask include:
You also need to evaluate the potential buyer’s problem to gauge its significance. If their problem affects their daily life, your product could have a strong demand. It shows that they are willing to spend money on the product because it solves a pressing problem.
You can inquire about your potential buyers’ problems and challenges in the same survey. However, avoid asking too many questions because long surveys will feel like a chore to complete. Take note of these best practices before sending out your demand analysis surveys:
It's worth noting that selling products with high demand means fierce competition, so choosing a product without a booming demand will be wise. What’s more important is having a niche market that will likely comprise loyal customers.
Test sales help gauge a product’s demand. Ask your buyers to leave a review to gather more insights into your product idea. Conducting test sales also gives you the opportunity to A/B test your Amazon listings. Create multiple listings for your product and track each one’s performance to identify which listing attracts the most sales. Remember to use SEO keywords in the product titles, descriptions, bullet points, and other key sections to give them a good search ranking.
This process focuses on your competitors, their strengths, weaknesses, offerings, and marketing strategies. It helps you identify gaps in their practices, which you can use as opportunities to outsell them. Additionally, competitor research lets you discover market trends that can help determine your potential position in the industry.
Start by building a list of Amazon sellers offering your product. You don’t have to do this manually; Amazon product research tools are especially useful in these scenarios. For example, AMZScout’s PRO Extension is a Chrome extension that digs deep into an Amazon product when activated. It reveals the competition and tracks competitors’ sales, rank, pricing, keywords, and stock levels.
Product research tools also help analyze market trends by examining a product's sales history. You can identify peak seasons and slow and stable periods. Once you’ve researched your product’s competition and the market trends surrounding it, you can start finding suppliers.
Finding a supplier is one of the most critical aspects of product research. But with today’s technology and available tools, the process has become easier.
Retail arbitrage can help you source products quickly and with minimal costs. It’s the process of buying products from retailers at a discount and then reselling them on Amazon for profit. You can choose any retailer, like Walmart. A product sold for $2 on Walmart can be sold for $5 on Amazon.
Online arbitrage is another option. It’s the same as retail arbitrage but focused on online retailers. You can buy products on Amazon itself and then resell them. However, manual retail or online arbitrage can be time-consuming, and you need to act fast if you want to attract sales on a dynamic platform such as Amazon. That's where advanced product sourcing tools come in.
InventoryLab by Threecolts is one of the most powerful product research and sourcing tools you can find. It has a mobile app called Scoutify, which you can use for retail arbitrage. Its proprietary built-in scanner reads barcodes from various retailers. You can customize your scouting preferences to focus only on the best retail arbitrage deals.
If you prefer online arbitrage, you can get InventoryLab’s ScoutX browser extension. It enhances your Amazon search to help you find the best sourcing options on the platform. You can also use InventoryLab's Scout, which identifies the fees, ranks, restrictions, storage costs, and other essential information associated with a product. It helps you set up your inventory and pricing quickly.
Direct sourcing means ordering a product straight from its manufacturer. It isn't advisable for new sellers since manufacturers have minimum order quantities that are often too many for startups. However, direct sourcing is your best option if you want to create a private-label product.
A Google search can lead you to many reputable manufacturers, but you can also find them on Alibaba. Just note that while Alibaba manufacturers offer cheap wholesale items, the shipping fees will add to your costs. You can save money by choosing a supplier that ships to the Amazon FBA directly from China. However, sourcing products from overseas will be costlier if you want to store inventory in your home or warehouse.
Evaluate various manufacturers by looking at their pricing, successful customers, quality of work, and business practices. Ideally, your manufacturer should have experience creating private-label products for Amazon so that they’re familiar with the platform’s regulations and policies.
You’ll encounter many costs as an Amazon seller: seller plans, inventory, and shipping, to name some.
The Individual selling plan on Amazon costs $0.99 per sale. It’s the ideal selling plan if you’ll likely sell less than 40 units monthly.
On the other hand, the Professional selling plan on Amazon costs $39.99 monthly, regardless of how many units you sell. It’s a more cost-effective plan if you sell more than 40 units monthly.
Inventory costs are determined by your product, manufacturer, and the number of units you plan on purchasing. Shipping fees also depend on those factors, plus your fulfillment method. Amazon offers two options: Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) or Fulfillment by Merchant (FBA).
Your chosen fulfillment method also affects your inventory costs. For example, if you choose FBA, you’re required to pay Amazon to pick, pack, and handle your products. The cost is charged per unit and varies depending on the product category, size, dimension, and shipping weight. For non-apparel items, the fulfillment cost ranges from $3.22 to $158.49/unit. On the other hand, fulfillment costs for apparel items range from $3.43 to $158.49. The costs for both categories increase during the peak season, which starts in the middle of October and ends in mid-January.
If your products are under $10, they automatically qualify for Low-Price FBA. In that case, you only have to pay $2.45 to $157.72/unit for non-apparel items or $2.66 to $157.72/unit for apparel items.
Besides fulfillment, the FBA also charges for storage. The rate from January to September for standard-size items is $0.87 per cubic foot. It increases to $2.40 per cubic foot from October to December. On the other hand, storage for oversized items is $0.56 per cubic foot from January to September and $1.40 per cubic foot from October to December.
The other FBA costs you may deal with are aged inventory, unplanned services, removal orders, and returns processing. This is why carefully researching your product is crucial—it lets you avoid slow-moving items that incur additional FBA costs.
You can have more control over your costs by choosing Amazon Fulfilled by Merchant (FBM), which lets you partner with a carrier of your choice that offers budget-friendly rates. It’s a fantastic option for new sellers because of their small-scale operations and limited reach.
With so many costs to deal with, you need to price your products profitably to stay in business and make growth possible. Here’s how to develop the right pricing strategy:
Research the competition to see how much they offer their products for. You can use third-party tools like AMZScout’s PRO Extension, Jungle Scout’s Browser Extension, or Threecolts’ SmartRepricer.
Out of those three tools, SmartRepricer may provide the best experience. This is because, aside from scanning prices, it can also automatically adjust your products’ prices to stay competitive. Additionally, it can help you set prices based on your desired profit margin.
Your product’s pricing should cover all costs. Calculate the cost of each item, then mark it up based on your desired profit margin. For example, if an item’s total cost is $0.50 and you want a 50% net profit margin, you should sell it for $1.00.
As a new seller, building a customer base is crucial for cementing your position on Amazon. You don’t have to offer your products at a discount to do this. Instead, consider offering free shipping or a gift with purchase (GWP). The latter can be a great way to make your business memorable to your customers. Perhaps you can add a freebie or coupon to their orders.
Promotions and deals are vital to a profitable pricing strategy because they make your products more enticing than your competitors’ offerings. It lets you build the foundation for stabilizing your business and increasing your profit margin in the future.
Prices change because of demand, supply, season, market trends, and other factors. Monitor your pricing to ensure it stays profitable. Don’t forget to check your competitors to discover if they have adjusted their prices.
SmartRepricer is an excellent tool for tracking prices because it eliminates all guesswork. It has pre-configurations for competitive pricing adjustment, including Buy Box, Featured Merchants, and Lowest Price. The tool automatically adjusts your prices based on those configurations, so you no longer have to monitor Amazon manually. You can also build a custom pricing strategy to develop even more competitive rates.
Sometimes, a product idea just won’t work. It could be because of low demand, seasonal trends, limited suppliers, and other reasons. Finding a product to sell isn’t a walk in the park—it requires substantial effort and time, even with high-tech tools at hand.
If the product you want to sell doesn’t have a promising market, it’s okay to scrap the idea and start all over. Amazon is teeming with hot products and new releases; monitoring these items will help you find a new product to sell in no time. You should also check out other online marketplaces, like eBay and Walmart. They can give you more ideas about what sells well and the market’s behavior.
In addition, consider if the product you want to sell can be offered through dropshipping. It could be a more profitable business since you can sell another retailer's product, and they will handle the shipping and delivery. You can avoid FBA and FBM costs, letting you maximize your profit.
Another tip worth noting is that you can sell a product you’re passionate about instead of a high-demand one. It will be easier to market a product when you yourself are its target market. On the other hand, selling something you’re barely interested in can make you dispassionate about your business. Even if many customers need your product, they may not discover your business because you have limited knowledge about your offering, affecting your brand message and visibility.
However, it doesn’t mean selling something solely because of its profitability won’t work. It’s a practical idea that might be less risky than selling a product you’re passionate about. With a tried-and-true product, it will be easier to build a customer base, whereas you need to tap into a more precise niche if you opt for a passion project.
Regardless of which product you choose, keep an open mind and establish your priorities to determine if your idea is sustainable.
Becoming a top seller on Amazon doesn't happen overnight, so don't worry if your product moves slowly at the beginning. You can gain more momentum and customers by leveling up your marketing game. Amazon offers advertising tools to boost your listings' search ranking and traffic. While they're not guaranteed to increase sales, they certainly enhance brand awareness. It's a step in the right direction.
In the meantime, focus on finding the best product to sell. Use product research tools to make the process more efficient and data-driven. More importantly, ensure that you understand Amazon’s policies for sellers. If you want to use FBA, you should also understand its policies and restrictions. Amazon is committed to selling legitimate and safe products for its customers, so it places many rules to ensure just that.
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