How I Made $6,900 Reselling on Amazon Part-Time (FBA)

Like many people, I’ve always had a desire to start my own online company. In early 2015 I listened to a podcast, I don’t remember which blog I listened to it on but it was somebody who was describing how she went out and bought items at stores and then sold them on Amazon.com

I thought OK that’s pretty cool. I didn’t know they allowed “non vendors” to sell on Amazon at the time. So as I listened to the podcast and went about doing my office drone work. The service she was using was called Amazon FBA or Fulfilled By Amazon. Now 2 things really caught my attention here when she was describing this service.

One was that Amazon warehouses your inventory for you. It’s not sitting in your garage or cluttering up your living room or taking up space in some empty corner of your house.

Second, Amazon handles all the customer service and packing and shipping.

That second part was the selling point for me. I hate dealing with customer service because it's extremely time consuming.

Most people are fine to deal with but there’s always that 1% customer who demands to know why it rained on the day their package was delivered and what not. I’m a friendly guy but my tolerance level for dealing with these type of customers is null and void at this age in my life.

So for a cut of my profit and a monthly subscription fee they would store, ship, and deal with customers and all I had to do was supply the inventory and ship it to them?

I was sold!

There are several different ways to go about reselling on Amazon but I used the method I first hear in the podcast because it sounded the easiest and that was Retail Arbitrage.

Retail Arbitrage is is nothing more than going out to a retail store say Target or Walmart and finding items that you can purchase for less and sell on Amazon for a higher price.

Now, I am generalizing here but that’s the basics of it really.

Buy low, sell high. What a concept right?…

How I Got Started

One of the first things I did after listening to the podcast and being pumped to give this Amazon reselling a shot was join groups on Facebook that focused around Amazon FBA.

I’d recommend anyone new or considering becoming an Amazon reseller do the same. There are many more methods and things have evolved a lot since late 2015 when I first heard that podcast. The competition too, so it's no longer that easy!

I spent hours upon hours reading threads and comments of sellers and other novices like I was at the time asking questions I had.

It was a wealth of information and still is to this day.

The second thing I did was jumped on YouTube and found videos of Amazon FBA sellers and spent several more hours watching their videos and researching their methods and practices of how they made their money.

Best part was doing both the things above cost me $0 dollars!

So after I decided I wanted to take the plunge I did something I had never done before and that was purchase an online course/program for I believe $300 dollars.

The course was The Proven Amazon Course (PAC)

I knew nothing of the creator of this course Jim Cockrum and founder of MySilentTeam.com other than all the reviews I found from other sellers stated they we’re legitimate and respectable community members who only had your best interest in mind.

I was still skeptical.

So I dug deeper and found another guy by the name of Jordan Malik who offered a lifetime guarantee that if the course creators refused to honor their money back guarantee he would honor the money back out of his own pocket since he was one of the affiliates promoting it.

So I hesitantly gave a stranger $300 for a course and haven’t looked back since.

After buying the course and watching about 10 videos that night on retail arbitrage I felt I had enough knowledge to go out into the world and start finding inventory.

I signed up for InventoryLabs which offered a free 30 day trial and they also have an android app called Scoutify that lets you scan barcodes and then checks what that item is selling for on Amazon.

Amazon also offers the “Amazon Seller App” which is free of charge.

Since my wife and I weren’t sure how well this online venture was going to play out we decided to spend no more than $100 dollars within the first month so to stretch our money we started at thrift stores.

This allowed us to buy items that were good and new looking shape for really discounted prices. I still remember my first thrift store sale.

A mini George Foreman grill that was brand new I paid $6 dollars for and sold it on Amazon for $42. It was such an awesome feeling seeing that first email appear that read “Amazon has shipped the item that you sold.”

We turned that original $100 into just under $200 dollars and then turned around and did it again and again. Once I felt like I had gotten the hang of scanning and flipping inventory we decided to branch out into more retail establishments.

We really don’t do thrifting anymore unless I’m looking for office supplies but on occasion you can get lucky and get a nice score.

If you have more money to invest with I’d recommend skipping thrift personally but for those starting out it’s a nice low risk way to get started.

(…side note – I keep saying I or we. My wife has been a huge supporter along the way so the “we” is referring to my wife.”)

On To The Big Box Stores

So after I’d say 3 months we ventured out into stores like Walmart, Target, Meijers, and other large brand name stores with a specific focus on clearance items.

The area we live is a major metro area so clearance can run anywhere to up to 30% all the way to 90% depending on the day and the store.

Clearance items are also great because they’re like little treasure hunts depending on the stores you go to. Some stores have them centralized other stores have them throughout the aisles.

I can walk into 4 different Walmart’s I frequent and know where each clearance aisle is as well as their shelf clearance’d items hidden throughout the store.

Clearance items are nice because to a certain extent they also offer a low risk investment for a chance of a nice profitable return.

While clearance items are great many new sellers and myself included fail to branch out into other sections of the store when first starting out which limits your options.

So I made a road map or my plan of attack while out shopping for inventory (this is also commonly referred to as sourcing.)

I would start in the clearance section of the store and scan as many items as possible. After I had exhausted the clearance section I would then move to the end caps of each aisle. End caps are the display shelves that are on the outer edges of an aisle.

Usually the items placed there are marked down or are running some type of discounted sale.

After the end caps I would walk each aisle of the store looking for certain colored price tag stickers indicating a discounted price.

For example all of Walmart’s discounted tags are either yellow and white or red and white in my area. All of Meijers discounted products use an orange tag.

By branching out into the store I was able to find even more inventory that I wouldn’t have even considered in the first place let alone thought it would be profitable.

Overcoming Hurdles and a Mindset

Now, since this post is starting to become a bit long I think I’ll divide it up into 2 parts but I will mention some hurdles that initially stood in my way.

One of the major hurdles for most new sellers to overcome is Amazons locked (gated) categories. These are select categories only certain sellers can sell in and require approval by Amazon before you can even send in the inventory.

Categories such as Clothing, Groceries, Watches and Jewelry, Handbags/Sunglasses/Shoes, Sexual Wellness, Health and Beauty, and so on.

There are services out there that will help you get ungated in those categories for a price but the price is usually in the $100’s depending on the category.

So be mindful of the inventory you purchase and make sure you are allowed to sell in that category before purchasing it.

A good way to check is to scan the item with the Amazon Seller App and it will tell you whether or not the item is restricted.

A mistake I made a few times was purchasing items that are what Amazon considered Hazardous Material (HazMat) without really realizing it.

These are items such as anything containing flammable ingredients or alcohol. Perfume and cologne are included in that list.

So unless you’re willing to get a MSDS and try and convince Amazon otherwise I’d just suggest avoding that category altogether. Again the seller app will show if the item is a restricted hazmat item.

Now hazmat items can’t be sold through the Amazon FBA program but they can be sold through the Amazon FBM or (Fulfilled By Merchant) program.

Since I don’t do FBM I’m afraid I can’t offer much information there.

Part 2 will come shortly - make sure to comment and resteem and upvote if you enjoyed the article. This gives me motivation to keep writing :)