Are you interested in selling on Amazon? If so, you may be wondering what type of business you should start. Here’s a guide to help you decide.
What Type of Business Should I Start on Amazon: It’s no secret that Amazon is the number one place to set up an online business, and starting a business on Amazon has never been easier than it is today. With over 300 million active customers and more than 200 million Amazon Prime members.
What Type of Business Should I Start on Amazon?
Your chances of success are higher than ever before, but you have to ask yourself what type of business you should start first? No matter what niche you end up choosing, with these 10 businesses you can start on Amazon, there’s bound to be something that catches your eye. Learn about them all in this step-by-step guide!
1) Selling Health and Beauty Products
Selling health and beauty products online through a Shopify dropshipping store is an easy way to make money online, but there are several different aspects that come into play. For example, knowing which products to sell, where to source them from, and how much they cost.
And then knowing how to find reliable suppliers can all be quite tricky. In my Shopify Dropshipping 101 course, I teach you everything you need to know about starting a business selling on Amazon for profit using Shopify as your e-commerce platform. Watch my Shopify 101 training course below
2) Selling Children’s Books
If you have experience or training as a writer, one way to make money on Amazon is by publishing your own book. With self-publishing, you can be up and running within days and reach millions of readers worldwide in just a few clicks. You set your price point and earn royalties based on each sale. Many authors hit it big by self-publishing eBooks on Amazon Kindle.
Jack Canfield’s Chicken Soup for the Soul series started out as an eBook that became a huge success. Now his books are available in more than 100 countries and in 45 languages, with 250 million copies sold—and there’s a film franchise to boot! Plus, unlike every other option listed here, writing a book involves little risk: The only investment required is time.
3) Selling Craft Supplies
When we started our online business, my husband and I had a lot of experience running craft stores. So, it made sense for us to sell arts and crafts supplies. Today, we run multiple businesses selling supplies to crafters all over.
It’s a great business because there are a lot of products that you can buy in bulk, which makes them inexpensive (and they sell quickly). There are always people looking for items like these in different places; it’s an easy way to get started with Amazon FBA! 🙂
4) Selling Wellness Products
According to a 2017 Statista report, pet supplies are one of America’s fastest-growing e-commerce categories. These items can be shipped via Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), which gives you access to tens of millions more shoppers who have an annual household income over $100,000 and who have shopped for at least one product online in any given year.
Selling pet supplies is an easy way to get started with selling on Amazon. Here are some ideas: dog collars and leashes, cat beds and trees, cat litter boxes, kitty litter, ferret food and treats… even special self-cleaning litter boxes that spritz your cat with a cleaning solution every time she uses it!
5) Selling Musical Instruments
If you love music, consider selling instruments and equipment. In addition to being fun, it can be an extremely lucrative business if you know what you’re doing. (After all, even at a garage sale, no one is going to pay $10 for that beat-up old guitar.) Know enough about different models and brands so that when a customer comes in with a question.
You can help them make good decisions. If you aren’t sure how to start a musical instrument selling business, ask an expert or read up on stores that are successful. As with any eCommerce venture, it may take some trial and error before your store becomes profitable. But once it does—watch out!
6) Selling Pet Supplies
According to one study, approximately 30% of Americans own a pet, while two-thirds of those people have pets in their homes. They are responsible for nearly $60 billion spent each year on dog and cat food and supplies. Fortunately, if you sell pet products—food, treats, toys, etc.—you can earn a share of that massive market. That’s because Amazon is far and away king when it comes to selling pet supplies online.
In fact, according to an analysis by Hitwise Data Miner and reported by Entrepreneur Magazine, nearly 40 percent (39.8%) of all online U.S. searches for pet supplies come from Amazon. It’s not even close: PetSmart owns just 6.6% of searches, followed by Chewy with 5%. With millions of potential customers shopping at Amazon every day.
Your business could be sitting on top of a gold mine . . . as long as you know how to capitalize on it. And that means understanding how and where to list your products so they appear when potential customers search for them.
7) Selling Home & Garden Products
You’ll find a lot of competition in retail, and that means it can be tricky to stand out. But if you offer unique products that fulfill a need of customers, you could have a winning formula. Home and garden products, from candles to pet toys, are popular because people buy them regularly. These items are also typically niche enough that you’ll have less competition than you would in other marketplaces.
So getting your foot in the door might just be your ticket to success. For more advice on selling home and garden products successfully, check out our guide The Ultimate Guide to Selling Home & Garden Products Online. It covers everything from what to sell to how to photograph your product.
8) Fulfilling Orders For Others (As an Amazon Vendor)
If you have an idea for a product and are good at finding high-quality suppliers, selling your products as an Amazon vendor can be an excellent way to make money. You can bring in extra income from Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), too. Your business will be listed as a third-party seller. This means that if someone orders from you, then ships it themselves using Amazon’s shipping services or uses their Shipping with Amazon (SWA) program to get your items shipped for them, you won’t pay anything upfront.
It also means that when you make sales as a third party seller, you can use Shopify Payments to process your orders instead of setting up your own merchant account and processing service. There is a small fee for doing so, but it is less than you would normally pay to set up and maintain your own merchant account.
With FBA, Amazon stores and ships your inventory; they handle customer service issues; they take care of returns; they let you know what’s selling well; etc. As a result, most people who sell via FBA don’t need to worry about picking products or pricing them—that’s all done automatically by Amazon. So it’s definitely worth considering!
9) Create an Amazing Product Listing (Tailored to fit your chosen category)
Most sellers focus on their product listings and don’t think about anything else. And why wouldn’t they, if your product listing is amazing, then you will start selling more products with very little effort. But, here is where a lot of new sellers make one of their biggest mistakes. They forget to tailor their product listings to suit that particular category.
An expert in any given category will know exactly what works and what doesn’t work for most customers within that category and use that knowledge to inform how they create or modify their product listing so it performs even better for them. As an example, let’s say you sell dog toys on Amazon.
You might think that including a picture of a cute puppy would be great because everyone loves puppies right? Wrong! The majority of people who are searching for dog toys aren’t looking for puppies. That kind of image isn’t going to help sell your products at all.
10) Sell Services such as SEO, WordPress, or Photography
Starting a service-based business is relatively easy. In fact, one benefit of creating your own business is that you can make money from day one. And you don’t have to have any experience, let alone a college degree in your field! There are many options for selling services online. For example, if you’re a photographer, why not offer to take portraits of family and friends using professional equipment at your home or office?
If you know how to cook, start a restaurant or catering service. Just be sure to check all local regulations first so you don’t run into trouble with health and safety rules or zoning laws. Another option is renting out space on Airbnb or becoming an Uber driver. If you have some free time, there are plenty of ways to earn extra cash as an independent contractor.
Also Read: Which Amazon Business is Most Profitable?
Conclusion
At its core, Amazon is a platform where independent sellers can come together to sell their products. Nowhere else in e-commerce is it so easy for an individual entrepreneur to scale up a business and make money selling stuff online.
The beauty of selling on Amazon is that you don’t need any special training or certifications – if you can read and use basic HTML, then you can get started straight away. In fact, many people are making a very good living from their own websites by using Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA).
In order to be successful with your own product range, however, you will need to do plenty of research first and decide whether launching onto Amazon is right for your business model.
