One of the hardest parts of starting a business used to be sourcing and storing physical products. The good news is you don’t have to have any inventory to sell on Amazon!
This is one of the most popular ways to earn a passive income or a full-time job for many people.
Knowing how to sell on Amazon without products can help relieve a lot of the logistics side of the business for you so that you can focus on other areas like marketing. This is especially beneficial if you’re working alone as a small-scale business.
In this article, we’ll show you how to sell on Amazon without inventory using a process called drop shipping. We’ll also cover the different ways to sell without inventory on Amazon and the benefits and drawbacks of each. Read on to learn more.
How to Sell on Amazon Without Inventory
To sell on Amazon without inventory, we recommend using Amazon’s FBA program. With this program, you can source products from other online stores and add them to your store on Amazon. You can then use Amazon warehouses and have Amazon fulfil shipment and delivery.
Benefits of Selling on Amazon Without Inventory
The ability to sell on Amazon without inventory has become a game changer for many people. Some of the advantages of this include:
- Beginner friendly: It’s easier to start selling without inventory since you don’t need to get products to sell and find storage for them. You also don’t need to get licenses, and you can start immediately if you want to.
- Cheaper starting costs: You need a lot less capital to start selling without inventory since Amazon’s no-product platform eliminates the need to buy the stocks and the cost of storing them.
- Access to a wide range of products: Selling without inventory on Amazon gives you access to any product available on Amazon, which means that you have a wide variety to choose from, and you don’t have to worry about being limited to the products you can sell due to the amount of money you have.
- Less work: Unlike a physical stock business, a no-inventory model reduces pressure and the amount of work you need to do in terms of logistics so that you can focus mostly on marketing and customer service.
- Customer Reach: Thanks to Amazon, you already have access to a huge customer base which means that you don’t have to start from scratch gaining customers for your products.
- Safety: All the methods for how to sell on Amazon without products are safe for the buyer and seller since Amazon is already a well-known platform with an excellent reputation. This gives the consumers the confidence to buy from the stores and be assured that they will get their purchases. Amazon also protects sellers against fraud and chargebacks, which helps reduce financial risks.
Drop Shipping
You’ve probably heard the word dropshipping being thrown around everywhere by YouTube business gurus, but what exactly does it mean?
Drop-shipping is when someone sells items that they carry no stock for. Once they receive an order on their website, they send it from a different business or manufacturer  to the purchaser. This allows you to manage the project of your business much more straightforwardly.
In simple terms, dropshipping is how to sell other people’s products on Amazon or other platforms.
Here’s how to start drop-shipping:
Step 1: Get an Amazon Sellers Account
There are 2 seller accounts on Amazon, an Individual seller account and a Professional seller account. For the Individual seller account, you can create one for free but will be charged a commission of 0.99 from every sale you make, while the Professional seller account has a monthly fee of $39.99.
To sign up for a seller account, you’ll need the following things:
- A working cell phone
- A valid passport or other government ID
- Recent credit card or bank statement
- A working credit card
Step 2: Find Products to Sell
When you have a wide variety of products to choose from, as you do on Amazon, choosing the right product for your store can be difficult. The last thing you want is to be stuck with a product that nobody wants to buy.
There are many things you need to consider when choosing products, like prices, trends, profitability, and popularity. You can do your own research and check things such as sales rankings.
Step 3: Find a Supplier
After you’ve decided on the products you want to sell, you need to find where to buy products to sell on Amazon. You have to find a supplier who offers dropshipping services. You can find them on Aliexpress or search for them on Google and reach out to them from their websites.
Step 4: Create a Dropshipping Store on Amazon
Once you have reached an agreement with your dropshipping supplier, you can now add products to your Amazon seller account. Here’s how:
- Log in to your seller account.
- Go to Inventory and click Add product
- Create a new product listing
- Choose a category, then fill in the information about the product.
- Save your listing.
Once you have completed all these steps, your product will be published on Amazon, and you can start focusing on marketing and earning from your sales.
Pros
- Lower overhead costs
- Fewer risks
- No physical location required
- It’s easy to increase the scale of your business
- You have access to a wide variety of products
Cons
- Since it’s easy to start, it’s also highly competitive.
- You don’t have control over the product quality.
- You don’t have control over inventory management if a product you offer is not in stock. This potentially gives customers a bad experience.
- There’s a limit to the offers and promotions you can offer your customers.
Amazon Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA)
If you’re wondering how to sell Amazon warehouse products, then you should consider FBA. FBA stands for fulfilled by Amazon. This is similar to dropshipping but with some added perks. The difference is that with this no product Amazon system, you can have the products shipped to an Amazon warehouse, and Amazon takes over the logistics from there, including storage and shipping.
Usually, when you’re business is picking up, and you’ve gained some customers, you might not want to suddenly get a problem with stock at such a crucial point. What you can do is buy some of the popular stock in advance.
The problem is where you store the stock. That’s where Amazon comes in with the FBA program. So you have secured supply for your store and have a place to keep them.
Since FBA and dropshipping are pretty similar, the steps to get started are more or less the same.
Here’s how to make money on Amazon without inventory using FBA:
Step 1:Open a Seller account on Amazon
Step 2: Set up your FBA account on Amazon
Step 3: Find products and suppliers
Step 4: Add your product listings
Pros
- Amazon offers 24/7 customer support, including returns.
- Access to Prime delivery for faster deliveries.
- Amazon FBA also has perks that put your products at the top of search lists and give you a higher ranking.
Cons
- You have to keep track of the stock manually.
- You have to pay storage fees, which can pile up if your stock isn’t selling as fast as expected.
- The guidelines for joining FBA are stringent.
- The packaging does not come with your brand logo
Third-Party Logistics
Third-Party Logistics are organizations to which you can outsource your distribution tasks. They will handle the warehousing and delivery of your products for you. With this, you can sell on Amazon without FBA. You can get your products from a different source and provide them in your Amazon store. Then, once you receive an order, you contact the 3PL to handle the storage and delivery of the product.
This is very useful if you still need to meet the requirements for FBA and you still and you still want to sell on Amazon without inventory.
If you’re planning to work with a third-party logistics, then you’ll have to research the complete services they offer and the costs. You may also come across 4PL, which is pretty much the same as 3PLs but with more services.
Some 3PL points to consider include:
Pros
- Saves you time so that you can focus on marketing.
- You can use customized packaging.
- You can expand your reach to the 3PL’s customer base.
Cons
- The extra cost of the logistics company.
- You have no control over the delivery process.
Digital Products
The final way you can sell on Amazon without stock is by selling digital products in your Amazon store. Digital products are products that do not have a physical experience.
You can usually access them through a digital device like a mobile phone or a laptop.
This is how to make money on Amazon without selling physical products.
There are plenty of digital products on Amazon, the most popular being books like recipe books and productivity books for kindle.
The most popular digital products on Amazon include:
- Ebooks
- Software and apps
- Games
- Digital art and graphic designs
- Templates
- Audio or music
- Digital courses
Amazon has a division that takes care of digital products called Amazon Digital Services, which includes Amazon Prime, Amazon music, Kindle, and Audible.
To sell digital products on Amazon:
Step 1:Â You need to open a seller account on Amazon
Step 2: Come up with an idea for the digital product.
Step 3: Create the Content you will be selling. In this step, you should have a focus group to test out the product and keep editing it according to their feedback.
Step 4: Add the product to the appropriate Amazon digital service.
Pros
- You don’t need a lot of upfront costs.
- High-profit margins.
- You’ll never have to worry about a lack of stock or inventory shortage.
- You don’t have to pay any additional fees for warehousing,
- You can deliver the product immediately after it has been purchased with no delivery costs.
Cons
- High risk of piracy and your content being copied.
- Big learning curve
- Lots of competition
Frequently Asked Questions
Is There a Minimum Inventory to Sell on Amazon?
No, there isn’t a minimum inventory to sell on Amazon.
Can Just Anyone Sell on Amazon?
Anyone can sell on Amazon by signing up for a seller account as long as you have all the requirements to sign up for one. This means you have to have a mobile phone, a valid government-issued ID or passport, a recent bank account or credit card statement, and a Chargeable credit card.
Is There a Minimum Amount of Stock I Need to Sell on Amazon?
There is currently no limit to the amount of stock you can have in your Amazon seller account. All the methods mentioned above are flexible, and you can work at your own pace and slowly build up your inventory.
Wrapping Up
In this article, we’ve shown you how to sell on Amazon without inventory by dropshipping, FBA, third-party logistics, and selling digital products. Before you embark on any of these methods, we recommend that you do thorough research on everything, including the products, supply and demand, and profit margins.
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Chris is a spreadsheet expert and content writer for Productivity Spot and Spreadsheet Point. He has a double Bachelor's Degree in Teaching and has been working in the education industry for over 11 years. His experience makes him adept at breaking down complex topics so that everyone is able to understand.
