5 Reasons To Resell Your Items on Amazon, According to an Experienced Reseller
Written by
Brooke Barley
Edited by
Rebekah Evans
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If you’re looking for a way to make extra money, perhaps you’ve considered becoming an Amazon reseller. It’s a job where you mainly work from home and can run your own business on your timetable.
Richard Robbins is the cofounder of RobbinsAthletics.com and has experience using the “retail arbitrage” method to sell on Amazon. This involves using software tools to find discounted products at local outlets, then selling them for a profit on Amazon. Robbins has found it to be a very successful venture. Read on to see why he has continued to sell items on Amazon.
There Are Multiple Options for Fulfillment
Worried about how you’ll fulfill orders? Robbins said that Amazon offers two ways to simplify the process. “You have the option to do your own fulfillment for the product you’re selling,” he said. “Or you can send in products to Amazon’s fulfillment warehouse so that you don’t have to worry about dealing with shipping and returns.”
There Is Access to a Large Pool of Consumers
Once you start selling on Amazon, you instantly become accessible to the million of shoppers the site sees. Robbins said that most customers going to Amazon want to buy something, which bodes well for your business.
“Amazon’s audience is large and the intention of most Amazon users is primarily to shop and buy things versus just learning about a topic or product as they tend to do at a business’s own online retail store,” Robbins explained. “Amazon makes the purchasing process much easier than almost any other online selling platform.”
You See Higher Conversion Rates
It goes without saying that starting your own business is hard, but Robbins said that when you start selling on Amazon, you see a higher return than you would starting from scratch. “Conversion rates on Amazon are close to 10%, much higher than the average conversion rates for small business ecommerce stores, which tend to be close to 1%,” he said.
It’s an Easy Process
Robbins said that one of the reasons he appreciates Amazon is that it makes the actual selling process so simple. You can list multiple items quickly, so you can start earning a profit.
“Amazon makes the listing process easy, especially if the product you want to sell is already listed in their catalog,” he explained. “From the Amazon product page of the product you want to sell, you simply click on the link to sell yours, fill out some information, set your price and your product offer goes live.”
You Can Still Get Sales Without Lower Prices
You might think that the trick to making money on Amazon is to always have the lowest rate. If that were true, you’d have to make a ton of sales to recoup your costs. Robbins said, in his experience, he’s definitely made sales without offering the lowest price.
“In many instances, you can set the price you want to list your item and you don’t always have to be competitive with other offers for the product,” he added.
Robbins explained that one reason for this is Amazon will rotate the “buy box,” between different vendors selling the same product. The buy box is important because it has the “buy now” and “add to cart” buttons that make getting an item so easy. Once you have the buy box, sales go up dramatically.
“Your offer can occupy the buy box (meaning you get the sale) without being the lowest price,” Robbins said.
“I bought a couple dozen automotive funnels for ten cents each from Walmart and added them to a listing on Amazon. At first I listed them for $5 each,” he added. “As they started to sell and the other vendor of the same product ran out of inventory, I increased the price for mine up to $13 each. The funnels sold just as quickly as they had been selling when priced at $5 each.”
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