Did you know that nearly 60% of all products sold on amazon are from third party companies and individuals just like you & I?

Getting started may be easier than you think, but it’s gonna take grit!

In 2021 alone, third party sellers on amazon generated nearly $80.5 billion in revenue for the online retail giant, and earned about $20.1 billion profit if we assume everyone’s business model has ROI set at 25% after expenses. These massive earnings are predictable due to the amount of active amazon and amazon prime accounts. An estimated 300 million active amazon accounts. 200 million of those active accounts are prime members.

A massive market built right in front of you with all the potential to make your dreams come to life! The exciting part of all this, is that you only need time, dedication, & a short list of tools to get started!

Before we dive into my recommended tool set, lets quickly go over some key terms.

• Online Arbitrage/Retail Arbitrage (OA/RA) — Buying a product at low cost on one market and selling for profit on another market, in our case Amazon.
• FBA/Fulfillment by Amazon — You ship your inventory or arrange with a third party e-fulfillment service to ship your inventory directly to an Amazon warehouse where Amazon will then handle fulfillment of the product. FBA fees are payed at the time of sell.
• F​BM/Fulfillment by Merchant — You ship your inventory or arrange with a third party e-fulfillment service to ship your inventory directly to the customer. You will not have to pay FBA fees using this method, yet you should note that you will be responsible for shipping, and your products may not move as quickly without spending extra resources marketing.
• R​OI/Return on investment — The amount you will profit after expenses such as cost, shipping, and FBA fees.

N​ow that you speak some of the language, lets take a look at some powerful resources out there waiting for you!

Amazon Seller Central. You’ll want to first create your professional Amazon seller profile with Amazon Seller Central and download the app to whatever devices you plan to work from. From here you can manage anything to do with your account, whether it be listings, shipping plans with amazon, using the FBA calculator, or managing inventory and marketing. You may also take advantage of countless hours of training in the “Seller University” area of the website. For a professional Amazon Seller Central profile, your cost is roughly $40 per month plus FBA fees that will be taken at the time your products sell.

Jungle scout. A platform to take complete control and manage your amazon business, from product research, marketing, sourcing and analytics tools, there is usefulness with this program everywhere you turn. While Jungle Scout isn’t an absolute must when starting out, it’s well worth the investment of $589 per year or $70 per month.

SellerAmp SAS-Sourcing Analysis Simplified. It’s all in the name! This is a program that really excites me, and works just as well on the go while doing Retail Arbitrage, or in your office and home while doing Online Arbitrage. At your fingertips you have full access to quick information such as item cost, sale price, profit, and ROI as well as estimated sales per month, and the max cost you should buy that product at. Moving to other parts of the same page you will see crucial data such as your competition and what business model they are using (FBA or FBM). You will have a profit calculator available that will provide your exact profit after FBA fees for any amount of the product being analyzed. I could write an article on SellerAmp alone I get so excited about it, it 100 percent gets two thumbs up from me. SellerAmp will set you back $23.29 per month, billed annually at $279.50.

Keepa. This product is actually the source that many other platforms like SellerAmp gather history on products. With Keepa you will be able to see graphs of charts outlining the history of a products price, how often it moves on the BSR (best-seller rank), competition over time, as well as set alerts for when the price of a product you are tracking drops below a predetermined price, so that you may be quick on your toes and a step ahead of the competition. The cost for Keepa is $21.34 per month.

While you can use these programs and most of the capabilities on most devices, you will get the most of these programs and integration with chrome on a device that will support the chrome browser extensions that each of these programs offer to make your time much more efficient.

You have the tools, now what? Now is when the grind kicks in! Time to source! Sourcing your first products to sell on Amazon can feel like a daunting task at first, but rest assured, there are countless places online if you are doing OA and just as many brick & mortar stores if you’re doing RA, that you will find profitable opportunities that you will be able to quickly analyze and make calculated business decisions with your new Amazon selling tool kit!