How to Sell on Amazon FBA for Beginners

What is Amazon FBA?

Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA) is a service offered by Amazon that provides storage, packaging, and shipping assistance to sellers. Amazon FBA allows sellers to ship their products to an Amazon fulfillment center, where items are stored until they’re sold. Amazon FBA can help sellers scale their businesses and reach more customers.

To sell on Amazon, you simply need a product to sell, a seller account, and a means of getting your product to the customer.

Whether you have a product to sell or just want to get in the game but don’t yet know what to sell, there’s a business model that will work for you to sell on Amazon. We’ll review the many options and choices you have when building your business, and focus on one that has proven to be a profitable, scalable method: private label.

Amazon business models

• Private Label: Creating your own product label/brand

• Wholesale: Buying products in bulk directly from a brand or from distributors with extra stock in order to sell on Amazon

• Reselling/Arbitrage: Buying discounted products through retailers or online to resell on Amazon

• Dropshipping: Buying products directly from a manufacturer who fulfills the order and ships directly to the customer

• Handmade: Creating/crafting your own products to sell on Amazon

How to sell private label products on Amazon FBA:

With private label, you find or produce bulk products to sell under your own brand or label. This is the most common sales method — 71% of all Amazon sellers use it.

What you do:

1.

Product research: Research products that have high demand and low competition on Amazon to find the most profitable opportunity.

2.

Product sourcing: Find a supplier or manufacturer to create your product at the right cost. The supplier can ship your products directly to Amazon’s warehouses.

3.

Product listing: Create a listing for your product within your Amazon seller account and brand your product.

4.

Promotion: Launch and advertise your product to stand out among Amazon’s catalog of millions of products and rank in the product search results.

5.

Sales management: Monitor your inventory and sales, and scale your business to keep those profits coming in!

In short, your job is to find the best product that will sell on Amazon. After a customer orders your product, Amazon takes over.

What Amazon does:

1.

Amazon receives your products (from you or your supplier) and stores them in one or more of their million-acre fulfillment centers, which are massive warehouses run by robots and Amazon employees.

Your products are inventoried and sorted. (It’s in Amazon’s best interests to take good care of your products, but if they are somehow damaged in one of Amazon’s warehouses, Amazon will reimburse you the full retail price!)

2.

When a customer places an order on Amazon for your product, Amazon processes the transaction automatically.

Your product is picked from its place on Amazon’s warehouse shelves, packed into an Amazon box, and shipped to the customer.

3.

Amazon manages communications with the customer, including shipping notifications and tracking, reviews, and even returns.

In contrast, you can sell through Amazon’s Merchant-Fulfilled Network (aka Amazon Fulfillment by Merchant, or Amazon FBM), and you would be responsible for all fulfillment.

Learn how to set up your account in our Selling on Amazon Guide!

In this clip, we explain the benefits and requirements of the private label method.

What product should you sell on Amazon? How do you know if consumers will buy it? How do you know how to price it so you make a profit? We’ll cover all these questions and more, and we’ll show you exactly how to search for winning product ideas.First, a few best practices that will help you enormously in your product research quest:

• Let data guide you, rather than picking a product to sell simply because it’s something you like. Trust us on this. (And if you do have an idea of what to sell, you can validate that with data on how similar products are performing on Amazon.)
• Don’t rush it. Product research is essential preparation that requires some time and analysis to be successful.
• Use a tool, like Jungle Scout, that can mine massive amounts of Amazon data to find a product with the trifecta of: high demand, low competition, and positive profitability. We’ll show you how.

How to find a profitable, high-demand, low-competition product to sell on Amazon

For all products you’re considering, analyze them for:

1.

Profitability

For every product you’re evaluating, think: can I source and ship this to Amazon for substantially less than it’s selling for?

Generally, you can consider the “rule of 3’s” to estimate this. Each product’s sale is broken up into ⅓ for fees, ⅓ in landed costs, and ⅓ for you. (So, if the product sells for $15, you should expect to profit $5.)

Here’s a breakdown of how you can calculate potential profitability by assessing costs and revenue for each product opportunity.

Costs

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Landed costs

The collective costs to produce and transport your product to Amazon’s warehouses:

Cost of inventory
Any preparation or inspection fees
Shipping
Duties

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Amazon’s fees

Referral fee: Essentially Amazon’s “commission” for each item you sell on the platform, this is typically a flat 15% which you pay when a product sells

Selling plan fee: For professional Amazon sellers, a monthly fee of $39.99; for individual Amazon sellers (those who typically sell fewer than 40 units per month), a $0.99 per sales transaction (but no monthly fee)

Fulfillment fee: For FBA sellers, this per-product fee covers Amazon’s cost for packaging and shipping products, and it varies based on weight and dimensions of your product and which marketplace you’re selling in

Storage fees: FBA sellers pay either a monthly storage fee or long-term storage fees

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Other

Business costs may include advertising and packaging

Revenue

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Of course, your take of any sale will depend on how much you can buy the product for, and what fees come out along the way.

As a general rule, you want the product to sell for $20-$70 to allow for healthy profit margins. Below $20, profit margins are minimal and possibly not worth your effort. Above $70, some customers are often unwilling to spend higher amounts on a brand they don’t recognize.

Simply calculate your profits by subtracting fees and costs from your potential revenue.

2.

Demand

The key component of a good product to sell on Amazon is demand. Do people want this product? Are they looking for it or is there a need or pain point this product could solve? We use data to answer these questions.

The key metric that helps us determine demand on Amazon is sales.

3.

Competition

Next, we want to evaluate the competition, determining how many similar products exist and whether there is opportunity in the market for a newcomer.

The key metrics that help determine competition are the number of products and the number of quality reviews and ratings they have. In other words, are the products already listed on Amazon any good?

We’ll use Jungle Scout’s product research tools to explore these metrics and show you how to find profitable products to sell on Amazon.

In this clip, we tell you our main criteria for making data-driven product decisions.

What products sell on Amazon the most?

The top 10 product categories on Amazon are:

*These 10 categories are largest by quantity of FBA sellers. See more about Amazon product categories here.

Start your product research

We’ll show you how to create and narrow down a list of product ideas based on the main criteria above: profitability, demand, and competition.

Search Amazon’s product database

Using Jungle Scout’s Product Database, you can explore Amazon’s entire catalog (hundreds of millions of products), easily searching products based on specific filters to narrow down your product ideas.

Say you want to explore product opportunities in the Pet Supplies category. Select that category and then start adding your filters. (If you don’t know what category you want to dig into, explore several! Or, review our product category research and other methods of honing your product research in our guide.)

Filters (remember our main criteria above: profitability, high demand, and low competition):

• Price (for profitability): Aim for $20-70

• Sales (for demand): Aim for at least 300 units per month (~10 sales per day)

• Number of reviews (for competition): Of the top 10 products, we want to see an average of 500 reviews or fewer, and ideally 3 to 5 of them have fewer than 50 reviews

• Rating: Find products with low star ratings, aiming for a maximum of 4 stars (these will give you the opportunity to improve products and beat the competition)

• Listing Quality Score, or LQS: Find products with listings that have room for improvements, aiming for a maximum of 5 to 7 LQS

These filters will narrow down your list of products with potential to explore further.

Here is an example of good potential products that we can then dig deeper into:

Based on this information, you should continue to do more research into this niche.

Other factors you’ll want to evaluate should include:

• Size and weight of the product (for standard, affordable shipping)

• Ease of sourcing/manufacturing the product

• Seasonality (ideally, your products will be in demand year-round)

• Uniqueness (the market is not dominated by an existing brand)

(Most Amazon sellers are probably sticking to similar criteria when doing their product research. So, how can you outsmart your competitors? We go into each of these in greater detail in the Amazon selling guide.)

You can also do product research while browsing Amazon.com with Jungle Scout. Simply click the extension and you’ll be able to view product data including Best Seller Rank, average price, average monthly sales, a custom Opportunity Score, and more on Chrome or Firefox browsers. You can also click to track products from here, which is a key step in evaluating a product’s potential.

Track products over time to narrow your list

We recommend tracking as many listings as possible on the first page of the search results for a given product keyword for at least 2-4 weeks to monitor performance over time.

This isn’t necessarily to track for seasonality, which you can see more easily through search volume trends. Tracking your product for several weeks helps you be sure a product’s sales are not temporarily inflated due to promotions a seller may be running or other random factors.

Within Jungle Scout’s Product Tracker, you’ll see historical sales over time for all listings. You can change the view to the past 60 days, number of units sold per day, price, inventory levels, review count, and more details.

Find improvement potential

Your goal is to find a product opportunity with proven demand and profitability — but one in which you can compete. You’ll need to make your product better or different enough to appeal to buyers looking for unique features. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel, just differentiate yourself enough to stand out. (You’ll work with a supplier who will take care of all these changes for you — more on that below.)

Find improvement ideas by examining the reviews and the “Customer Questions & Answers” section of existing product listings. What do customers like or dislike about it? Consider all factors including color, material, size, usability, functionality, packaging, etc.

If you’re serious about a product, buy the competing products to learn first-hand about any potential pain points you could improve upon. Take notes (you can save notes in Product Tracker).

In this clip, we show you how to use Product Database and Extension to research profitable products.

Check for IP or other legal concerns

Selling products on Amazon means you’re creating a real business, and no doubt there are boxes to check and rules to follow, particularly when it comes to intellectual property (IP). Amazon cracks down on “black hat” behavior such as counterfeit products and trademark infringement, so make sure you find products that you have the right to produce and sell.

1. Patents

You cannot sell something that is patented because it means someone else owns the rights to the design, the way it functions, or another fundamental quality of it.

How do you know if there is a patent? Hiring a lawyer is one way to learn for certain whether a product has a patent, but here are some other steps you can take on your own:

• Google “patent” + [your product idea].

• Check listings on Amazon for that product and see if they mention anything regarding a patent.

• Check if there are many other people selling a similar product. If there are, it’s unlikely the product is patented because patent holders typically enforce their patents.

2. Trademarks

A trademark is any symbol, word, or group of words that a company legally registers or establishes use of to present their brand or product. You can’t put another company’s trademark on your product. For example, if you are selling a private label shoe, you cannot use the name “Nike” or Nike’s logo.

Before settling on a brand name, logo, or slogan for your Amazon business or a particular product, you should conduct a trademark check with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

3. Other restrictions and liabilities

Research whether Amazon has any restrictions or necessary certifications you need to have for a product or product category. For example, there are certain subcategories within Toys & Games in which you need a Children’s Product Certificate (CPC) to sell.

Also consider if someone could easily get hurt or sick using your product. Avoid products with greater chance of liabilities such as electronics, products for the body (cosmetics, lotions, and dietary supplements), and other obviously dangerous products (like those that are flammable or sharp).

Disclaimer: We are not lawyers, so be sure to seek legal counsel for any specific questions or concerns you may have.

Consider ease and practicality of sourcing

Especially for your first product, you want to find something that is going to be rather simple to produce and ship. Keep these variables in mind when narrowing down your product ideas:

So, how do you find someone to make your product?

Now that you’ve found your product, or narrowed your list to a few final product options, it’s time to find a supplier.

If you find this step a little intimidating, you’re not alone. Many successful sellers today say they initially had no idea how to find or work with suppliers. However, with enormous advancements in technology, communication, and services to help facilitate international trade, it is a process that is simpler than ever.

We’ll walk through 3 steps to find and source your products to sell on Amazon

1.

Research Amazon suppliers

There are hundreds of thousands of manufacturers around the world that can create any product you can imagine. You’ll want to narrow your list of potential suppliers to those who can produce the highest quality product for you at the best price.

And there are a number of ways to find these suppliers.

Alibaba.com

Alibaba is the largest business-to-business platform in the world with a search function like Amazon’s to help you find relevant products and the manufacturers that make them.

Jungle Scout’s Supplier Database

Jungle Scout’s Supplier Database allows you to search the largest database of global manufacturers and suppliers to find legitimate, verified suppliers for your products. You can search the database by product (e.g., “tea kettle”), company (e.g., competitor name), supplier name, and ASIN.

Sourcing agents

Sourcing agents can help you source products with the best quality and price. They often speak the language in the country from which you are sourcing and may give you a competitive edge in finding more affordable pricing. You can find reputable sourcing agents online.

What you should look for in a supplier:

• High-quality products: Amazon shoppers care just as much about reviews as they do about price, so selling high-quality products is the best way to keep your Amazon reviews high and get continued sales.
• Experience: Look for a factory that has been producing your type of product for at least 3 years. You can see a supplier’s import history in the Supplier Database.
• Communication: Find a factory that is easy to communicate with and responds to you in a reasonable amount of time. (You can assess this when you initially contact them for a quote.)
• Price: You want a fair price for your products. A factory that quotes a much higher or much lower price than other factories could be a red flag.

2.

Contact suppliers for a quote

In this clip, we walk you through our 4-step process for finding a supplier for your product.

3.

Evaluate and modify product samples

Once you’ve narrowed down the list of suppliers to the ones who can offer you what you want based on your initial outreach above, it’s time to order samples. This is an important step to ensure you’re making the right investment and purchasing a quality product.

Order samples: You should expect to pay $50-$150 for a sample, and expect it to be sent to you by air. Once shipped, you should expect your samples within 1-2 weeks.

Examine samples: Once your samples arrive, check them carefully for quality, specifications (all the details and features you requested), and utility (the product works as intended).

If your product isn’t exactly what you’re looking for, you may request modifications to the sample (likely for an additional charge). Modifications can include adding a logo, changing the dimensions, adding or removing components, etc.

Consider packaging and branding: Before you place a large bulk order for your product, think about whether you want to have branded packaging for your products (i.e., the box, bag, or sticker that encases your product inside Amazon’s boxes). If you want to, you should have the design ready for your supplier at this stage. The supplier or manufacturer you’re working with should give you the exact dimensions of your packaging so you can pass that information along to a graphic designer.

Check out these packaging designs for inspiration:

4.

Order and ship your Amazon products

Once you’re satisfied with the product, you can select your supplier, determine the details of your order, and get your products to Amazon’s warehouses to start earning sales!

Some important steps in this process:

• Price your products
• Establish pricing terms and methods and pay the invoice
• Run a quality inspection on your product before it gets to Amazon’s warehouses
• Decide on shipping (often working with a freight forwarder to simplify international shipping)

Your product will typically take anywhere from 2-6 weeks to manufacture.

As your products are being developed and making their way to Amazon’s warehouses, you can prepare to launch your business on Amazon.

In this clip, we give you tips on price negotiation when placing your first order.

Your listing is how customers will find and purchase your product on Amazon, so this step is incredibly important!

We’ll review the key steps for setting up a successful listing here:

1.

Research keywords to include in your listing

If you have the right data to tell you which keywords to include in your listing, you’ll get your product in front of relevant, ready-to-buy customers.

There are two methods to create a keyword list for your product:

In this clip, we use Keyword Scout to generate a comprehensive list of keywords for our product listing.

2.

Purchase the UPC barcode for your product

Amazon requires you to have a universal product code, or UPC barcode, in order to create your listing in Seller Central. This is the barcode that you see on essentially all packaging.

UPC barcodes can be purchased directly from GS1, the global organization that standardizes these codes.

In this clip, we show you where to purchase a UPC barcode and explain the difference between UPC and FNSKU barcodes.

3.

Create your listing in Seller Central

Now that you’ve prepared all the elements of your listing, it’s a simple process to create your listing in Seller Central.

• Add your product and select the category to list your product in. Choose a category that’s most appropriate for your product, and select as specific a subcategory as possible.

• Under product ID, add your UPC code.

• Add your product title and brand name.

More sections of the listing setup will allow you to add product variations (if you have different sizes, colors, etc. of a product), add SKUs to help track your inventory, and of course add your product description details, including your keywords and images.

Once you click “save changes,” your listing will show up in Seller Central under “Manage inventory.”

In this clip we show you how to set up your Seller Central account.

4.

Draft your listing’s title

Make sure you include the top keywords that are most relevant for your product and also have high search volume — meaning more customers use these search terms when looking for a product like yours.

• Make sure the title flows, uses punctuation, and is easy to read — not jammed with random keywords

• Use as many characters as are allowed (this goes for your title as well as the other sections of your listing)

• Include the top high-volume keywords (those with 1,000+ searches/month) for which your competitors are ranking

5.

Draft your listing bullet points

While your title is all about your keywords, the focus of your bullet points should be to inform your customers about the main features and uses of your product. You want to do this while including the rest of your highly relevant keywords that couldn’t fit in your listing title. Again, use as many characters as you are allowed.

• Get to the point and clearly explain the main selling points of your product and how they will benefit the user. Say what the product does and/or solves, and answer any commonly asked questions.

• Modify your tone and details based on your product. For example, if your product is a tool, concisely say what it does, how it works, what it’s made of, etc. Or, if you are selling a toy, you want to make the copy fun and exciting. Paint a picture of how it works or how much kids will enjoy it.

• Include relevant information such as sizing, quantity, materials, etc., if applicable.

6.

Draft your listing description

Use the description section to include additional keywords or details that did not fit in your bullets, talk about your business, or share anything else about your product that you want your customers to know.

Add A+ Content

If you are brand registered, you can replace the description section with an A+ content product description, which allows you to add more images and text that highlight what makes your product stand out with more customization and branding. Amazon also has different modules you can use.

7.

Get quality images for your listing

Photos and other pictures are incredibly important for marketing your product as customers tend to look at your images first (especially on mobile) before looking at your description. So make sure your images are high-quality and informative!

You can take the pictures yourself, but we recommend using a professional photographer in order to present your product to potential customers better than your competitors do.

First, make sure you know about Amazon’s photography requirements:

• Images must accurately represent the product that is for sale.
  
  
• Your main product image needs to feature your product against a plain white background, without any props or watermarks.
  
  
• 85% of the main image has to be taken up by your product.
  
  
• Your image should be at least 1000px by 500px in order to be zoomable. Amazon recommends your image files to be 1600px or larger on the longest side.
  
  
• You are allowed to include up to 9 pictures, and we recommend having as many as you are allowed.
  
  
• Images must not include any Amazon logos or trademarks, or variations, modifications or anything confusingly similar to Amazon’s logos and trademarks. This includes, but is not limited to, any words or logos with the terms AMAZON, PRIME, ALEXA, or the Amazon Smile design.
  
  
• Images must not include any badges used on Amazon, or variations, modifications or anything confusingly similar to such badges. This includes, but is not limited to, “Amazon’s Choice,” “Premium Choice,” “Amazon Alexa,” “Works with Amazon Alexa,” “Best seller,” or “Top seller”.

In this clip, we give you tips on price negotiation and how to ensure the quality of your product using Supplier Database.

It’s important to start getting sales for your product as soon as your listing is live on Amazon (as this will help your best seller rank, or BSR), so make sure you have a launch strategy to start strong.

Three factors that affect your ranking include:

How to improve your Amazon conversion rate

How to get reviews for your Amazon products

Just think how often you’ve bought something on Amazon and not looked at the rating or reviews! Reviews have a major impact on your conversion rate — so how do you get (good) reviews?

In this clip, we show you how to easily get product reviews on Amazon using Jungle Scout’s Review Automation.

How to get your first sales on Amazon

We recommend two strategies to use at launch to get initial sales: promoting your product through a deal site, and using Amazon PPC.
The main strategy we recommend for getting initial sales is by using Amazon pay-per-click, or PPC, advertising. PPC is a big topic, and something we recommend you always have running (and not just at product launch).
We’ll explain how PPC works here. For step-by-step tips for different campaigns and strategies, download the full, check out the Selling on Amazon guide.

PPC

“Pay Per Click” or PPC is a method of internet marketing in which you pay for consumers to click to your product listing. This advertising is a way of driving traffic to your product (in addition to the organic clicks, which you don’t pay for and are based on algorithms that help a consumer find the most relevant product for their search).

PPC is a more effective method of paid advertising on Amazon than other advertising like Google or Facebook because you’re targeting shoppers who are already on Amazon for the purpose of buying.

There are three different types of PPC ads on Amazon:

In this clip, we show you how to create a Sponsored Product PPC campaign based on your Keyword Scout research.

PPC Best Practices

• Start running PPC campaigns as soon as you can, beginning with an automatic campaign as soon as you’ve optimized your listing.
• Once you’ve set up an automatic campaign, also set up a manual campaign, and create an ad group for the three targeting types: broad, phrase, and exact
  
  • Broad: Keywords targeted can be in any order, and additional words may be included (e.g., if your product is a set of marshmallow sticks, your ad will also be shown for “marshmallows and hot dogs sticks” and “roasting stick for marshmallow”).
  • Phrase: Include your keyword phrase exactly as it’s entered, but feel free to include other words before or after (e.g., “campfire marshmallow sticks” and “marshmallow sticks for roasting” are okay).
  • Exact: Keywords need to be entered exactly as you want people to search for them. So for marshmallow sticks, only “marshmallow sticks” will be targeted, with no words before, after, or in between.
• Sponsored Product ads are the most effective for most sellers, but once you’ve set these up, feel free to try out Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display ads as well.
• Remember: don’t jump into your campaigns every day and make changes! You want to give them some time, and maybe make changes once a week.

Chapter 5

Summary

In this chapter, we discussed the important steps for a successful product launch, including pricing your product, creating promotions, and getting reviews to help your product listing rank and earn sales.

We learned:

• Amazon’s Best Seller Rank
• Product reviews
• Promotion strategies

Tools mentioned:

Extension

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Review Automation

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Promotions

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Download the guide

Get in-depth PPC advertising tutorials, learn expert tips for getting product reviews, and optimize your conversion strategy with our free, in-depth seller guide.

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Selling on Amazon is not a “set it and forget it” type of business, but if you prepare and have the right data and tools, you’ll be in great shape for successful growth. Consider the following tactics to ensure your business is running smoothly, efficiently, and profitably:

Listing management

Regularly check in on your listings both within Seller Central and on the live listing itself. Review all your images and description details and make sure they appear as they should, answer questions from customers (you should also receive email alerts about these), and keep an eye on any new reviews, which may give you helpful guidance to improve your product in the future.

Advertising optimization

Continue to optimize your PPC campaigns every couple of weeks to ensure you have the highest-performing ads possible. Run search terms reports to get a better understanding of how each individual keyword is performing, then remove poorly performing keywords and increase bids on winning ones.

Expanding your product line

Whether you’ve started with a single product or multiple, you may want to continue leveraging your Amazon selling experience to expand your product line. You can research or validate product ideas in a similar niche as your existing products by using Jungle Scout’s Opportunity Finder and evaluating high-demand, low-competition keywords.

Brand building

By focusing on your brand, you can build a loyal customer base to help drive more traffic to your products on Amazon. Make sure to produce a well-designed and packaged product and consider creating social media accounts to highlight and promote your product in a more customizable environment. You can also become brand-registered on Amazon, which gives you access to enhanced marketing features to help your brand stand out on Amazon and improve conversion.

Inventory management

You want to find the right balance of inventory to keep up with demand but not have too much supply in Amazon’s warehouses. We recommend keeping about 3 to 6 months’ worth of inventory in Amazon’s warehouse at a given time (with exceptions around the holidays) to monitor your inventory needs and keep storage fees in check.

Account health

Keep track of your Amazon account health to ensure your business is in compliance with Amazon’s Terms of Service and prevent any risk of account suspension. Make sure you comply with product policies and avoid any product authenticity or safety complaints, and focus on providing positive overall customer service.

Hire a virtual assistant

Keep track of your Amazon account health to ensure your business is in By hiring a virtual assistant (VA), you can have them focus on day-to-day account management while you focus on more high-level tasks to grow your business. Use a VA to handle customer service, create new content, source products, optimize your PPC campaigns, as well as daily administrative tasks such as reconciling shipments or handling any listing issues. Check out this article to learn how to find reliable VAs for your Amazon business.

Chapter 6

Summary

We shared seller strategies to keep your Amazon business running smoothly after launch. We discussed how to manage sales, expand your product line, and grow your brand.

We learned:

• Expanding your business
• Listing and advertising optimization
• Inventory management

Tools mentioned:

Inventory Manager

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Sales Analytics

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Opportunity Finder

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Download the guide

Get advanced seller tips and resources to help you expand your product niche, build your brand, and make the most of Amazon’s platform in our free, in-depth seller guide.

You must provide your first name.

You must enter a valid email address.

Download now

Thank you! The PDF guide has been sent to your email and can be downloaded here .