How to sell online
Clothes, books, art, antiques, food products—you name it, you can probably sell it online. But how do you sell items online? Whether you want to specialize in sporting goods or electronics, here’s how to get started:
11 tips for selling online successfully
Whether you’re new to selling, a seasoned seller, or want to diversify your business in a new product area or niche, here’s how to get started:
1.
Choose products to sell
What products sell best online? What niches could be most interesting or profitable for you? One way to get product ideas is to see what's already performing well for other online sellers by visiting the Amazon Best Sellers list. Consider what makes these top products enticing to buyers.
- Price: Check out competitors who sell similar or the same products for pricing ideas. Pricing your product too high may drive potential customers to more affordable options. Pricing too low could lead to a pricing war. Monitor competitor prices by searching on Amazon or through the Amazon Seller app, where you can use comparison points like match low price and Featured Offer price.
- Reviews: What are buyers saying about the product—negative and positive? Reviews can provide valuable insight on gaps you may be able to fill with your next product.
- Seasonality: Are certain products seeing higher purchases because it's the holidays or a particular season like summer, or are they trending for another reason? This is important to note if you are specializing in a product like bathing suits or Christmas lights, which are likely to have a spike in sales during certain times of the year.
- Size: It’s also important to consider the size, weight, and durability of the product you may want to sell. Is it large or heavy? If so, it might be more costly to ship, cutting into your profitability or ability to sell. Is your product very delicate or breakable? If so, you may have to take extra precautions and use more materials or specialized packaging.
- Customers: Identify your customers. The more specific the niche, like home decor or pet supplies, the more specific your audience. A smaller niche means you might not reach as wide an audience. It could also limit the products you can offer. Check out our ecommerce guide for tips about choosing the right product to sell online. You can also get inspiration from our list of business ideas.
Did you know?
You can find product ideas through Product Opportunity Explorer
Product Opportunity Explorer is a tool Amazon sellers can use to identify seasonal trends, unmet customer demand, and untapped niches, to help guide decisions about what products to sell within a given category.
2.
Source products
Once you’ve figured out what to sell online, the next step is deciding how to procure products.
You might make products from scratch or work with a manufacturer to design items according to your specifications. Some sourcing methods, such as getting products from a wholesaler, might require you to keep track of inventory and maintain a warehouse, while others, like dropshipping and print-on-demand, can allow you to operate without a dedicated space for storage.
If you want to work with a supplier, here are a few things to consider:
You might make products from scratch or work with a manufacturer to design items according to your specifications. Some sourcing methods, such as getting products from a wholesaler, might require you to keep track of inventory and maintain a warehouse, while others, like dropshipping and print-on-demand, can allow you to operate without a dedicated space for storage.
If you want to work with a supplier, here are a few things to consider:
- Quality: Make sure the supplier you choose is reliable and provides quality products. Check customer reviews, ask for samples, and read through their terms and conditions.
- Price: Compare prices between different suppliers to get the best deal. Don't forget to factor in shipping costs.
- Delivery times: Find out how long it takes for the supplier to deliver orders. This will help you set realistic expectations for customers.
- Customer service: Check to see if the supplier offers customer service and how responsive they are to inquiries.
- Returns policy: Ask if they accept returns or if you have to handle this on your end. If they do, find out if there's a restocking fee.
- Inventory: Can the supplier handle large amounts of inventory? Ensure they can scale with you.
- Shipping: Find out what shipping methods they offer and how much it will cost you to ship orders to customers.
- Packaging: Check to see if the supplier offers custom packaging options, such as branded boxes, bags, labels or tags.
- Bulk discounts: Ask if the supplier offers any bulk discounts for larger orders.
Take the time to research suppliers and compare offerings to make sure you're getting the best deal possible and providing customers with quality products.
3.
Check listing and selling costs
The cost to sell online will vary with different sales channels. Be sure to pay attention to fees, costs, and other charges as you decide on options for your business.
Some stores will charge a small fee to list products, while others offer free listings. Here’s a quick breakdown of the different fees you’ll come across:
Some stores will charge a small fee to list products, while others offer free listings. Here’s a quick breakdown of the different fees you’ll come across:
- Listing fee: Typically, a flat fee to list on the site, either per item or a monthly charge
- Selling fee: A percentage of the selling price (may include shipping and handling)
- Payment processing fees: Sometimes charged if you accept credit cards
Expenses can add up. If avoiding fees is your top priority, then a plan that charges you fees at the end of the sale (like the Amazon Individual plan) can cut costs.
In the Amazon store, you can choose from two selling plans:
In the Amazon store, you can choose from two selling plans:
- Individual: $0.99 per sale (ideal if you sell less than 40 units monthly)
- Professional: $39.99 per month, no matter how many items you sell (ideal if you sell more than 40 units monthly and want to run ads)
Some additional fees and costs might include:
- Referral fees: A percentage of each sale, depending on the category. For example, baby products might incur a fee of 8% if the total sale price is $10 or less.
- Fulfillment costs: If using Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), fulfillment costs are based on size and weight. You can use our Revenue Calculator to compare estimates for FBA and your own fulfillment method.
- Inventory fees: These can vary by factors like product volume, size, and weight, and how long products are stored.
4.
Set up your online store
Depending on what you’re trying to sell, and who you are trying to reach, you might want to use your own website, sell through social media, set up shop on an established ecommerce website like Amazon—or do a combination.
- Choose how you would like to sell items online: You can design and build an ecommerce store from scratch or use a tool like the Amazon Stores builder to create a custom, immersive ecommerce website experience. Selling with Amazon can come with built-in infrastructure for processing payments, managing customer reviews, and more. It also means you have access to a dashboard for tracking sales, prices, and key performance metrics.
- Take good product photos: Good visuals help customers see the product in detail before they buy. Make sure to take photos in a well-lit area, choose a plain background, avoid photo filters, show different product angles, and avoid picturing other products not included in the order. Use the Amazon Seller app to edit photos for free, and double check all images meet Amazon requirements.
- Write descriptive product copy: Be sure to include helpful and accurate information to help customers make sound decisions. This includes accurate listing details about features and benefits. Use clear, concise language, avoid jargon or technical terms that may confuse potential customers, and use SEO best practices to help product offers rank in search results.
5.
Determine payment methods
Offering a selection of online payment methods can help you avoid high cart-abandonment rates and cater to customers’ preferences. There are several things you should consider when offering payment options:
- Customer preferences: Consider what types of payment your target audience or demographic may prefer, such as PayPal, credit card, or digital wallets, just to name a few. Market research can help you decide which payments methods to offer to your customers.
- Security and fraud prevention: Your online business should offer secure payment—to protect yourself and your customers. Consider two-factor authentication, encryption, and fraud detection.
- Trust badges and SSL certificates: Security badges show that a site has secure sockets layer (SSL) certificates. These are also known as “trust badges.” This means it follows security measures required to safely handle customer data. SSL certificates or trust badges can help boost customer conversion.
- Transaction fees: Online sellers may be charged transaction fees. These are fees can be charged to sellers each time they make a sale. These fees can vary based on different factors like your subscription plan, selling platform, and product category.
Amazon offers a variety of payment methods that you can use on your own website. Here a just a couple of secure payment systems that combine security with ease of buying:
- Amazon Pay: This payment method offers shoppers an easy, secure, fast way to check out on your site using the shipping payment information stored in their Amazon account. You also have access to Express Payout, which lets you receive payments from Amazon within 24 hours—any day, any time (even weekends).
- Buy with Prime: Buy with Prime lets you display the Prime logo and delivery promise on your own website. Sellers pay for what they use. The cost per unit for Buy with Prime orders depends on factors like product dimensions and weight, average order value, and the number of units per Buy with Prime order. All fees are charged only after sellers make a sale.
6.
Manage inventory and shipping
Shipping can make or break a sale. It’s important to consider how much it'll cost to store and ship an item. Some stores may have a shipping and processing time expectation if you're going to ship items, while others will ship products for you. This can eat into your profit, but may also save you time and effort.
How shipping works on Amazon
When a customer buys a product, either Amazon can ship the order to the seller with Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), or you can fulfill the order on your own using Fulfilled by Merchant tools and services. Many Amazon sellers use a mix of the two. Learn more in these guides to ecommerce fulfillment and inventory essentials.
Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA)
With FBA, you send products to Amazon’s global network of fulfillment centers. When a customer makes a purchase, we pick, pack, and ship their order while handling returns and customer service so you can save time, reduce costs, and grow your business.
Fulfilled by Merchant
Use a suite of solutions to save time and money when you fulfill customer orders yourself. Streamline the orders you receive from Amazon, as well as other sales channels. Get great shipping rates while offering fast, reliable delivery.
Supply Chain by Amazon
Supply Chain by Amazon is a fully automated set of supply chain services that gets your products from manufacturers to customers around the world. It’s a complete end-to-end solution that includes programs like FBA and Multi-Channel Fulfillment (MCF). Supply Chain by Amazon keeps products in stock, automates inventory replenishment, provides faster and more reliable shipping, and can significantly lower costs.
Multi-Channel Fulfillment
If you sell across multiple platforms or use Buy with Prime, your orders can be fulfilled using Multi-Channel Fulfillment (MCF). With MCF, you ship your inventory to Amazon fulfillment centers and Amazon picks, packs, and ships your products, while offering Prime delivery speeds. If you're an existing Amazon seller using FBA for sales on Amazon.com, you can use your FBA inventory for your MCF sales channels, including your own site.
Calculate shipping costs
Considering costs can be a key factor in choosing your fulfillment method. Shipping costs are usually related to the size and weight of the item. Larger and heavier items require more packaging materials and shipping resources, resulting in higher costs. Each method has its own benefits—and you can decide which one is right for each product you sell. You can also use our Revenue Calculator to compare estimates for FBA and your own fulfillment method.
Pro tip
Mix and match your fulfillment options
If you sell online in Amazon stores, you can choose to use FBA for some or all products. The right combination depends on the products and your business goals. For example, you can take advantage of FBA Export or Remote Fulfillment to make international shipping easier.
7.
Package items with care
Make sure customers get the right products without damage or missing parts. If you’d like to outsource the packing and shipping process, along with handling customer returns and refunds, enroll products in FBA, and Amazon will take care of the rest.
If you’re fulfilling orders yourself, here are a few tips for top-notch packaging:
If you’re fulfilling orders yourself, here are a few tips for top-notch packaging:
- Use the right sizes: Boxes, envelopes, and other forms of packaging should have enough space to fit the product and any additional packing materials. Too much room can lead to damage.
- Include cushioning materials: Protect items during shipment with padding like bubble wrap, foam peanuts, or air pillows.
- Seal the package securely: Use strong tape to seal the box shut so it won’t open during transit.
- Include a packing slip: This goes inside the package and should include the customer’s name, address, and order details.
- Label the package correctly: Make sure you use the correct shipping label with the customer’s address and a return address to prevent items ending up at the wrong location.
These steps can help ensure customers receive orders in perfect condition and increase your chances of getting positive reviews.
Pro tip
Add a personal touch
A thoughtful gesture like a small sticker or handwritten note can go a long way to earn repeat business.
8.
Focus on delighting customers
The golden rule of selling online? Take a customer-centric approach.
Start with the customer and work backward. What types of customers are you trying to attract? Are you curating specialty items for a community of enthusiasts, or do you want to attract a wide variety of customers? It’s also important to keep a pulse on what matters to your customer and what they’re saying about your product.
Start with the customer and work backward. What types of customers are you trying to attract? Are you curating specialty items for a community of enthusiasts, or do you want to attract a wide variety of customers? It’s also important to keep a pulse on what matters to your customer and what they’re saying about your product.
Pay close attention to customer reviews
Customer reviews can help you—or hurt you if they’re ignored. Reviewers are candid, and many buyers read reviews before deciding to purchase. Be sure to monitor, analyze, and respond to reviews.
Look at answering customer questions as an opportunity to build rapport with a potential buyer. While it’s OK to take a few hours or a day to respond, don’t let requests go unanswered for weeks. Also, be sure to familiarize yourself with the right way and wrong way to get product reviews and avoid policy violations.
Reviews not only inform shoppers’ purchasing decisions, but they can give you valuable insights into what customers like or ways you could improve your products. To help monitor reviews, you can use Amazon's Customer Review Insights feature to gauge customer sentiment for a particular product or niche. Use it to understand customer needs and improve your catalog.
Look at answering customer questions as an opportunity to build rapport with a potential buyer. While it’s OK to take a few hours or a day to respond, don’t let requests go unanswered for weeks. Also, be sure to familiarize yourself with the right way and wrong way to get product reviews and avoid policy violations.
Reviews not only inform shoppers’ purchasing decisions, but they can give you valuable insights into what customers like or ways you could improve your products. To help monitor reviews, you can use Amazon's Customer Review Insights feature to gauge customer sentiment for a particular product or niche. Use it to understand customer needs and improve your catalog.
Reward repeat customers
Do you get orders from the same customers month after month? Help them feel appreciated with a simple note, by offering a small discount, or by adding a bonus gift to their order. This will encourage them to keep coming back.
Check out this ecommerce business guide for more guidelines on how to start and grow your business.
Check out this ecommerce business guide for more guidelines on how to start and grow your business.
9.
Promote your products
There are several ways to promote your store and products to help attract customers, drive sales, and improve product rankings.
Build your brand
Brand building is the process of defining your strategy, identity, and marketing to figure out how you want to be perceived by your customers. Branding is important because it helps your ecommerce business stand out, build brand recognition, and entice potential customers to shop your store. Amazon Brand Registry can help you grow your audience, increase sales, build brand loyalty, optimize your selling strategy, and protect your brand.
Offer discounts
Help increase sales by attracting customers with coupons and deals. Amazon Coupons allow customers to save money on products in the form of a percentage or a specific dollar amount discount. A Best Deal is a discount on higher priced items and a Lightning Deal is a promotion for a limited period of time
Get customer reviews
Reviews can help shoppers make purchasing decisions and build trust for your products and store. Get high-quality reviews through the Amazon Vine program.
Advertise
Ads can provide a visibility boost for your products and brand, attracting new customers and increasing sales. Amazon Ads offers cost-per-click campaigns that appear in highly visible placements, including on search results pages and product detail pages in the Amazon store. You can also use Sponsored Display ads to advertise beyond the Amazon store.
Optimize your listings
Help customers discover products and make informed purchasing decisions by using search engine optimization (SEO) to help your products rank better in search results. This can include optimizing different parts of a product listing, such as the product title and description, to match relevant search terms and provide customers with the information they’re looking for.
3D models and augmented reality
Give customers an immersive shopping experience by adding 3D models to your product detail pages. Let them see a product from all sides with View in 3D, or give them the opportunity to see it in their own space with View in Your Room. You can also let customers see themselves in shoes and eyewear in real time with Virtual Try-On.
10.
Monitor store performance
Keeping an eye on how your ecommerce store is performing is helpful for measuring your success—or potential areas of improvement. A few different ways to monitor your store’s performance are through analytics reports, product reviews, and inventory management.
Analytics reports
What are your customers clicking on and what are they buying? Better understand your business and customers through Amazon Brand Analytics, available to brands enrolled in Amazon Brand Registry. Brand Analytics aggregates customer search and purchase data through dashboards that you can use to make strategic decisions to optimize your products and advertising.
Product reviews
Product reviews can provide you with helpful information that you can use to identify what’s working in your ecommerce store, or recognize potential gaps or shortcomings in your product selection. Amazon customer reviews and star ratings can be an important indicator of a product’s success—and an important source of feedback for sellers looking for insight on how to improve their product or invent a new one.
Inventory management and performance
As an ecommerce business owner, proper inventory management can help prevent missed sales opportunities and keep customers coming back.
Inventory performance is a measurement of inventory management and replenishment—all of which can directly impact how you are meeting customers’ product quantity needs, demands for certain products, and delivery expectations. You can automatically track how well you manage your inventory with Amazon using the Inventory Performance Index (IPI).
IPI is a metric for Amazon sellers that measures how efficiently they manage your FBA inventory—similar to a credit score for your inventory efficiency. Your score is based on how well you:
Inventory performance is a measurement of inventory management and replenishment—all of which can directly impact how you are meeting customers’ product quantity needs, demands for certain products, and delivery expectations. You can automatically track how well you manage your inventory with Amazon using the Inventory Performance Index (IPI).
IPI is a metric for Amazon sellers that measures how efficiently they manage your FBA inventory—similar to a credit score for your inventory efficiency. Your score is based on how well you:
- Replenish popular products
- Maintain healthy inventory levels
- Fix listing problems
Just as a high credit score will give you benefits, so will a high inventory score. Keep your IPI score high to lower storage costs, make more profit, and increase customer satisfaction.
11.
Identify new opportunities to grow your business
Identifying new opportunities and niches for your ecommerce store can help your business grow and increase customer loyalty.
Identify new products
Amazon’s Product Opportunity Explorer is a resource that can help you generate new product ideas by better understanding customer demand. It provides insight into Amazon customer search and purchasing behavior, which you can use to identify unmet customer demand and opportunities for new products.
Try selling to businesses
Amazon Business provides a suite of features and tools that can help you connect with business-to-business (B2B) customers. Business customers often buy in larger quantities and return items less—which means you can sell more with less time and effort.
Explore global selling
Amazon Global Selling simplifies international selling and allows you to sell worldwide. Learn how to expand globally and reach customers around the world.
Online selling tools
Amazon has tools and service providers to help your business operate more efficiently, automate key workflows, and scale. When you sign up, you join a community of online sellers with support for meeting your goals and finding success in ecommerce.
Seller Central
Seller Central is your go-to hub for selling on Amazon. It’s a portal to your Amazon account and a one-stop shop for managing products, adjusting prices, fulfilling customer orders, and maintaining settings for your business operations. You can also use Seller Central to access many helpful tools to monitor your sales, explore business growth opportunities, and stay on top of news and announcements.
Selling Partner Appstore
The Selling Partner Appstore is where you can find Amazon-approved third-party apps, integrations, and other software solutions to help with your unique business needs, from automated pricing and listing tools to product research. Many applications focus on automating time-consuming and tedious tasks like product research, filling out tax forms, or building custom reports.
Service Provider Network
The Service Provider Network is a directory of third-parties, vetted by Amazon, to help you manage and grow your business. From getting great images of your products to improving your chances of increasing sales, Amazon service providers can assist with every step of selling online.
Seller University
Make use of thousands of trainings and tutorials on Seller University, a home for educational resources to help brands, businesses, and entrepreneurs learn how to succeed selling in the Amazon store.
Amazon Seller App
Manage your ecommerce store remotely with the Amazon Seller app. You can create listings, track sales, fulfill orders, respond to customers, and more—all from the mobile device of your choice.
New Seller Guide
Speed matters—and for Amazon sellers the first 90 days are especially critical. That's why we invented the New Seller Guide, a set of brand, logistics, pricing, and promotional services that are backed by data science and designed to fuel the growth of new sellers.
Sellers who use the New Seller Guide during their first 90 days generate approximately 6x more first-year sales on average.1 They can also take advantage of over $50,000 in New Seller Incentives.
1Amazon internal data, FY2023, US store
Ready to get started?
While it can seem overwhelming to launch your ecommerce business, we’re here to help make it as smooth and easy as possible—just take it one step at a time.
Ready to get started? Sign up for a Professional selling plan today.
Ready to get started? Sign up for a Professional selling plan today.
Helpful resources
Whether you’re looking to start a new brand, expand an existing brick-and-mortar business, or increase ecommerce sales, here are some resources to help support your path to success.
Ready to go from idea to first sale? Check out the New Seller Guide for a winning formula for your first 90 days with Amazon.
Selling online FAQs
How can I start selling items online?
If you want to get products in front of Amazon shoppers, start by choosing a selling plan, then sign up and create an Amazon selling account. Once you configure your account, you can list and price your products, select a fulfillment method, and explore options to promote and advertise. If you have a brand, enroll in Brand Registry.
Find more tips for starting and growing your business online in our ecommerce guide.
Find more tips for starting and growing your business online in our ecommerce guide.
Should I consider selling on multiple websites?
To increase sales, ecommerce businesses today must be able to expose their products to the largest possible audience of potential customers—and multi-channel selling (the practice of selling on more than one online channel) is an excellent way to achieve this. This includes brand websites, ecommerce options like the Amazon store, and social media.
Amazon’s Multi-Channel Fulfillment (MCF) lets you outsource fulfillment for orders placed on your websites or another sales channel. With MCF, we use your pooled FBA inventory to provide fast, low-cost, and reliable fulfillment for multiple ecommerce channels.
Amazon’s Multi-Channel Fulfillment (MCF) lets you outsource fulfillment for orders placed on your websites or another sales channel. With MCF, we use your pooled FBA inventory to provide fast, low-cost, and reliable fulfillment for multiple ecommerce channels.
Do I need to collect sales tax for selling online?
Amazon calculates, collects, and remits tax on sales made by merchants shipped to customers located in the states that have enacted Marketplace Facilitator, Marketplace Fairness, or similar laws. These laws shift collection responsibility from the merchant to the marketplace facilitating the sale. For more information, see Marketplace Tax Collection.
How do I determine shipping costs when selling online?
You can use our Revenue Calculator to compare cost, profit, and margin estimates for FBA and your own fulfillment method:
- Search the Amazon catalog for a product, or define one using dimensions, weight, category, price, and shipping charges.
- Review and adjust inputs for Amazon Fulfillment and Your fulfillment to calculate—and recalculate—fees, costs, and revenue.
Is it profitable to sell on Amazon?
Selling on Amazon can be very profitable. Data from Amazon’s Small Business Empowerment Report shows that US-based sellers sold more than 4.1 billion products and averaged more than $230,000 in sales in Amazon’s store in 2022.
If you’d like to grow your business in ecommerce, Amazon's selling plans give you the option to pay per sale (Individual selling plan) or a flat monthly fee (Professional selling plan). You can decide which option is best for you based on your business model.
If you’d like to grow your business in ecommerce, Amazon's selling plans give you the option to pay per sale (Individual selling plan) or a flat monthly fee (Professional selling plan). You can decide which option is best for you based on your business model.
