Answers to 7 Common Amazon FBA Seller Questions
Guest blog post by Ryan Grant from The Online Selling Experiment
Following last week’s post, I’m going to answer more questions that I have been often asked from new Retail Arbitrage sellers.
Q3. How many items would I buy in any one category?
I wouldn’t be too concerned with what categories the items I found were in. If I found $1,000 worth of toys that I could resell on Amazon that’s completely fine with me. I wouldn’t have any issue with all $1,000 being invested in the toys category. As you continue to grow your business, this wouldn’t necessarily be the case, but when you’re just getting started I wouldn’t be overly concerned with diversifying between categories.
Q4. How to price the items when you list them on Amazon?
I am going to assume we’re using Fulfillment by Amazon for this answer. I generally like to price items a little bit higher than the lowest FBA competition. I find I still get the buy box occasionally when pricing in this manner. In addition, I’m not creating a race to the bottom or causing other sellers of freak out and lower their prices.
So at the lowest, I would match the lowest FBA price and in general I would probably price slightly above, as in 1 to 5% higher, than the lowest FBA price. I find that I will still get sales at that price.
Q5. How many items would I send to Amazon in a week?
This would largely depend on the price point of the items that I was finding. My top priority would be to invest the $1,000 in inventory and get it sent in to Amazon warehouses. Whether that is 10 different items that cost $100 each, or 200 different items that cost $5 each, wouldn’t be overly important to me.
Once I hit the $1,000 in spend I would then send those items in to FBA warehouses. If I didn’t have $1,000 in inventory after my first week of going sourcing regularly, then I would send in the items I had found so far to get the ball rolling.
If you’ve never created an FBA shipment, you can download a free pdf that walks through the entire process by clicking HERE.
Q6. How to pack items to send to Amazon?
The main thing with packing is to put the items in a box and make sure you have enough padding so the items arrive safely. You want to use a small enough box so that there is not an excessive amount of empty space. If there is empty space you will want to use void fill to take up the extra space. The void fill I use, kraft paper, which can be found on this page on my website which shows all of the products and tools I use for my business. When initially getting started I recommend keeping the amount invested in supplies to a minimum, the initial $1,000 would be better spent on inventory. Overall though, I wouldn’t over analyze how to box up the items. Use your best judgment and pack carefully.
In terms of boxes, I’d recommend looking for free boxes if at all possible. Go to Wal-Mart, a grocery store, or somewhere like that and see if they have any used boxes you can have. If you want to buy them Home Depot, Lowes, and U-Haul are all good options.
Q7. Any other tips I would have for people just getting started?
I would recommend putting in consistent effort for a predetermined amount of time. Right away it might be frustrating as you won’t know exactly what to look for and you probably won’t come out of stores with carts full of inventory, unless you get a little bit lucky on your first few trips. The more you do it, the easier it gets.
If you have any additional questions about getting started selling on Amazon that I didn’t cover in this post, please leave them in the comments below.
Biography: Ryan Grant is an entrepreneur who makes his primary income from his online retail business selling products on Amazon & a few other channels. His business has sold over $1,000,000 on Amazon in each of the past 2 years. Ryan shares his experiences, as well as tips to help other sellers succeed on his blog: www.onlinesellingexperiment.com.
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