Brian Connolly
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2024 Update: In order to provide ecommerce entrepreneurs with all the information they need to succeed with their Amazon ventures—from launch, to first sale, to growth and scaling—we’ve updated our content for 2024. This includes new data on the long-term success of Amazon sellers who launched their businesses with little to no money. Spoiler alert: selling on Amazon is still a profitable venture for aspiring entrepreneurs with minimal startup capital. Read on to learn why. Looking to start an ecommerce business? Check out our updated guides for How to Sell on Amazon, How to Sell on Walmart, and How to Sell on eBay.
Did you know that you can get started selling on Amazon practically for free? This article will teach you everything you need to know in order to get started selling on Amazon without having to open your wallet.
Then, once you’ve gotten a feel for how Amazon works, you can start investing a little more into your business.
Let’s take a look at how to start an Amazon store without money.
How to sell on Amazon for free (in four easy steps)
To get started selling on Amazon, all it takes is four simple steps:
- Find a free product to sell. If you’re like me, chances are you have a bunch of stuff lying around your house collecting dust. Why not sell it on Amazon?
- Create a free Amazon account. Creating an individual seller account on Amazon costs you absolutely nothing. All you need is to give Amazon a little information and you’re good to go.
- List your product on Amazon for free. Amazon.com’s product database has more than 300 million products; chances are good that whatever you hope to sell is already listed. If it is, all you’ll have to do is add your name to the list of sellers already offering the product.
- Ship the product when it sells. Once you make the sale on Amazon, all you have to do is ship the product to the end user.
Does it cost money to sell on Amazon?
While selling on Amazon can cost money, it is possible to do it without spending a dime (or, fewer dimes than you might expect).
In fact, in a survey of over 4,000 Amazon sellers, Jungle Scout discovered that sellers who started with less cash found success in the long run.
- 11% of sellers started selling on Amazon with $500 or less
- 25% of sellers started selling on Amazon with $1000 or less
Sellers who started small have a lot to say about what they’ve accomplished thanks to their success on Amazon. So far, they’ve achieved:
- “Huge retirement savings, paid off house, buy cars with cash, travel first class.”
- “I was able to stay home with my kids until my youngest started kindergarten.”
So, when starting out there are two main costs you need to consider: fees and the cost of your products.
What are Amazon’s fees?
The two main fees you will need to concern yourself with are:
- Referral fees are Amazon’s commission (usually around 15% of the sales price).
- Individual per-item fees are flat fees you pay if you aren’t a professional seller; you will have to pay $0.99 per item you sell.
Both of these fees are taken out after you make the sale. Therefore, you won’t have to pay them up front.
Note: There are some other fees, but as long as you start off as an individual seller — a seller who sells fewer than 40 products per month — you won’t have to worry about those just yet.
READ MORE | Amazon FBA Fees: How They Work and How to Profit as a Seller
How to find a free product to sell on Amazon
If you’re just starting out and are concerned about keeping costs low, we recommend finding used items around your home to sell for free on Amazon.
Used books, kitchen items, toys, and sometimes even electronics are all great items that you can find around your home. You can quickly list these items on Amazon and if they are popular enough, might sell almost immediately after you list them.
Alternatively, you could make your own products. If you have a knack for crafting and design, consider Amazon Handmade and Amazon Merch on Demand.
With Handmade, your product costs are the materials you use to create your goods. With Merch, aside from your time, there are no upfront costs.
How do you know if your product will sell on Amazon?
Before you list your product on Amazon, you want to make sure that it will actually sell. Fortunately, Amazon offers a way for you to “tell the future,” so to speak. Here’s how:
1. Check the product’s Best Sellers Rank (BSR)
Amazon awards almost every single product in its product database a special score called the Best Sellers Rank (BSR). Products have a BSR for each category they are listed in. The lower a product’s BSR, the better it sells.
So, a product with a BSR of #1 will sell thousands of units per month versus a product with a BSR of #300,000, which might only sell 20 units in the same time period.
When you are sourcing and listing your products, be sure to check the product’s BSR. You can find it on the product listing page in the Description section.
READ MORE | Amazon Best Sellers Rank: Everything You Need to Know in 2023
2. Estimate your sales
Put the item’s BSR into Jungle Scout’s free Amazon Sales Estimator, which calculates the average number of sales the product should have each month.
If you want access to more advanced Amazon seller tools for product research, keyword research, and more, check out Jungle Scout’s full suite of tools.
Jungle Scout includes the following tools which can help you build your Amazon business:
- Product Database and Opportunity Finder to help you quickly conduct product research and find profitable products to sell on Amazon.
- Keyword Scout which helps you find high-performing keywords.
- Supplier Databasewhich can help you find manufacturers to create goods for you to sell on Amazon.
- Alerts that let you know when other sellers price their products lower than your own.
- Review Automation to help maximize your product review potential with automated review requests.
- Inventory Manager to automate your Amazon inventory planning.
- AI Assist to write product listings, analyze reviews, and automate certain tasks.
3. Estimate how fast your product will sell
Once you know your product’s BSR and the average number of monthly sales that product makes, simply divide the average number of monthly sales by 30.
The result is the number of times per day that product sells on Amazon.
So if you sell a product that sells 10 units per day (300 per month), chances are your product will sell the first day you list it.
How do I create a free Amazon account?
Follow the steps in our “How to Create an Amazon Seller Account in 2023” blog post to create an account. When given the choice between the professional seller account and individual seller account, choose the individual seller account.
If you choose the professional seller account, there will be a $39.99 subscription fee. However, as an individual seller, there is no subscription.
READ MORE | Amazon Individual vs. Professional Seller Plans
How to list a product on Amazon for free (in three quick steps)?
As mentioned above, almost every product you could possibly think of can be found on Amazon.
So, unless you are selling a brand new product that has never been seen before, such as a handmade product or a product you manufactured via Private Label, all you need to do to list a product on Amazon is find the existing product’s listing.
And the fastest way to do this is to simply go to Amazon just like you would if you were shopping.
1. Find the product’s page on Amazon
In the search bar, type in the product that you wish to sell. You can give a description of the product or you can type in the product’s UPC (or ISBN if it is a book). You may have to scroll through the search options to find the exact product that you hope to list.
2. Click the ‘Sell on Amazon’ button or add a product in Seller Central
Once you find your product, on the right side of the screen just below the product’s Buy Box, you will see a button that reads ‘Sell on Amazon.’
You can also copy the product’s ASIN and paste it in Seller Central under “Add Products.”
You can find a product’sASIN within the URL or under “Product Information” in the listing.
READ MORE | How to Add Products on Amazon Seller Central
3. Enter in your product’s information
After you click the button, Amazon requests the following information about your product:
- Condition:If you are selling a new item, the condition is New. Otherwise, use Amazon’s condition guidelines to determine the quality of the used product you are selling.
- Price:Unless your product is in better condition than the others listed, likely, you want to offer the lowest price available. Usually, Amazon gives you a price suggestion that would make your price the lowest.
- Quantity: How many units of the product do you have for sale?
- Fulfillment method:How will you send the product to the customer once it sells? There are two ways to do this which we describe below.
After that, click ‘Save and Finish.’ Usually, your product appears on the product’s listing page within two hours.
How to fulfill your orders on Amazon
Okay, you’ve made a sale! Now what? Time to ship.
And although you can’t really “ship for free” with Amazon, there are a number of things you can do to keep costs down.
Here are a few tips:
1. Use packing materials you already have
If you’re like me, you probably have tons of boxes lying around — probably even Amazon boxes! Reuse those boxes, plus any packing contents that came with them, such as air pillows, packing peanuts, or shredded paper. Just make sure you don’t have old labels on the boxes and that they are in good condition.
2. Sell lightweight and small products
The smaller the product you sell, the lower your shipping costs will be. This is especially true with products like books and media products. Thanks to USPS Media Mail, you can ship a book that weighs less than 1 pound for a little over $3.00.
3. Use Amazon’s Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) program
After you’ve found a product to sell and listed it withinSeller Central, you need to choose your fulfillment method.
When selling on Amazon, you have two options for order fulfillment:
- Fulfilled by Merchant (FBM): With FBM, you as the seller will be responsible for shipping the order. That includes packaging, printing labels, and getting the box to the respective shipping carrier.
- Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA): With FBA, you first send your products to Amazon’s fulfillment centers, and Amazon will handle all of the order fulfillment (and customer service) for you. Once a customer purchases your product, Amazon will pick, pack, and ship the order out.
When first starting out, it’ll likely be less upfront investment to fulfill orders via FBM. Because with FBA, you need to pay to ship your products to a fulfillment center first.
READ MORE | Amazon FBA vs FBM Comparison Guide
Sell for free on Amazon!
We hope this article helped give you a better understanding of how you can get started selling products on Amazon for free!
Have more questions? Let us know in the comments.
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Brian Connolly
Brian is a writer and entrepreneur with over 6 years of experience in e-commerce and selling on Amazon.
105 comments on “How to Sell on Amazon for Free in 2024”
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Fie Did Amazon change their price for individual sellers? Tried to sign up but was met with this message:
” You will be charged a Professional selling subscription fee of 39.99 USD for the first month. You will continue to be charged this fee each month if you have active listings. If you do not have active listings, you will not be charged a subscription fee in that month. If you expand to sell in other stores, you will pay the equivalent of 39.99 USD per month, split proportionately across each country or region in which you have an active listing and charged separately in each local currency. You can downgrade at any time”Reply reply
Brian Connolly Check out Amazon’s pricing page to sign up for the individual account: https://sell.amazon.com/pricing
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Brian Connolly This article is not a “scam.” Amazon UK does in fact have the individual account type: https://sell.amazon.co.uk/pricing?ref_=sduk_soa_prisp_n#selling-plans
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NIk Mikealson Truly a gem!!!
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Kris I should really try this. I hate having yard sales, but I do have a bunch of decent stuff laying around that could be used by somebody else!
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Madison Thanks for this awesome guide on selling free on Amazon!
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Lisa Anderson Thanks for the information on selling on Amazon. Information is definitely wisdom.
Have a good day.
Here goes my trying to get my new business started.Lisa Anderson
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Hugh Price I have various wildlife art prints that I’d like to sell on Amazon. The slightest dimple or smudge would ruin the print so I would prefer to handle the shipping myself.
The price would vary greatly depending on the size of the print, the image and the popularity of the artist. The larger prints would have to be shipped in a tube to prevent damage which is why I prefer to ship the prints myself.
How would this work with Amazon?Reply reply
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Stacy laubsch How do i ship a liquid product? I have gallons of purrell surface cleaner that kills covid, and many other things. If i ship to amazon for them to ship out how do i get to amazon?
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Cristian I am a student at dchs and I’m tired of always being broke so I’ve been looking for ways to make money online
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Brian Connolly Hi,
Check out this article: https://www.junglescout.com/blog/amazon-best-sellers-rank/
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Kaludewa Swarna Chandrakanthi Hello Dear Sir/Madam
I have following products in my own land. I would like to sell these products free in Amazon site. Now a days no foreign exchange in Sri Lanka. But there are more lot of organic natural products.
We are always frustrated in this situation. Your free information is very impotant for me. But I have no lot of money. At this moment your kind support is very very important to help my country.
Organic products in my land
Cinnamon sticks
Coconut nuts
Coconut shells
Coconut shell craft products
Cashew nut kernels
Curry leaves
Ginger
Iramusu plant for herble teaThank you and best wishes
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Michelle Horvath Hi. Thanks for the selling tips. I am confused about something. You say it is cheaper to use Amazon FBA to ship your products for you because all you do is send your products to Amazon and they will ship them right to your buyer for a fee that costs less than shipping it yourself. But, isn’t that paying more money to ship since you pay the fees for Amazon to ship your products for you, plus you still have to pay to ship your products to Amazon, so why not just ship the product to your customer yourself and save the FBA fees? Thanks
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Brian Connolly Hi Michelle,
Amazon gets great shipping rates so the FBA fees tend to be less than if you ship the product yourself. Though, that is not always the case. You need to figure out what your costs would be for both FBA and FBM.
Shipping your goods to an Amazon warehouse is also fairly cheap. The more units you send, the cheaper it is per unit to ship. Go through the FBA shipment process to see what it would cost you to ship into FBA.
FBA is a good option for sellers who do not want to ship order, cannot ship orders, or don’t have the storage space. Plus, your products will be Prime shipping eligible if using FBA.
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4KT Great sir, you explained better, also tell me how to do keyword research on Amazon. If someone wanna a top on the category page so what steps he need to follow
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Tofazzal Hossain Amazing! Best Amazon guidelines. I learn a lot about Amazon from this post. Thank you so much!
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Louis Bryson Great article. Very simple straight to point explanations. Thanks for Sharing
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Jojo Hi, my name is jojo. My question is .. I want to start selling postpartum belly wrap on Amazon I don’t have the product in hand so I want to order. I tried to create amazon professional seller account it says I have to pay the subscription fee but I don’t have the product yet . Do I have to wait until I got the product to create the professional account?
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philipa nwadike Laster Great article.
Very simple straight to point explanations.
Thanks.
Now going to read the “if you manufacture your product”. Will also go through “manufacturers who will manufacture my invention”
I’ll need your guidance on the prevention of copying my invention or what way can you guide me completely until I find my feet. I have 3 inventions. Desire one to be in market by February 2022.
Thanks again.Reply reply
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Rachel Hizon Can I sell used design furniture and other furniture pieces, accessories, etc? What about shipping to Amazon via FBA? Won’t it cost a lot as my products will come from Bangkok and Manila? Do I add shipping cost to my product?
I have used items and new items as well but I want to be an individual seller.Reply reply
Brian Connolly HI Rachel,
I don’t think used furniture will be a good product to sell on Amazon. I suggest other platforms or sell locally for those items.
If you ship your items to FBA in the US, I am sure that the shipping cost will be high from your location. You will have to factor in the inbound shipping costs to your products so you can still make a profit
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Megan Hello,
When it asked me what type of business I own, I accidentally selected “publicly-owned” instead of private and now I’m on the next page where it’s asking me to enter my company registration number, however I need to go back to reselect my business type but I don’t have the option to change it.
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Robert Allen Me and my wife would love to becoming or own Amazon sellers…But we just don’t know how to get a good start…Is there anything you have to help us get started…It would be much appreciated….thank you….we don’t have a website and don’t know how to start one.
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Brian Connolly Hi Robert!
I suggest reading our in-depth How to Sell on Amazon for Beginners guide. You don’t need a website to start.
This will provide you with all the basics of getting started with selling on Amazon. We also have tons of other free content on our blog and Youtube.
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Kimberly Lewis I am just beginning, I would like to sell my shoes on Amazon. I have free shipping and free returns as well.
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Brian Connolly Yes, you will need to pay monthly storage fees. Check out our post on Amazon FBA fees to get a better understanding of all of Amazon’s fees.
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rachel Muehlbauer I want to sell on Amazon, I dont have a product but would love to sell exercise related item, how do I go about getting a supplier and manfature to get what I want. I would like to start of with stretch bands…then go from there
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Brian Connolly Hi Rachel,
Please check out our How to Sell on Amazon Guide. It will teach you everything you need to know to get started!
Brian
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Hatim Abukhdair Good afternoon,I just finished reading your article.It was very informative and it encouraged me to look into doing business online. My only issue might be that I live in Israel and I’m not sure how that works considering the Post office’s over here are not like the ones in the states. There are courier services but they are more expensive.I would like to get your thoughts on this. Your response is greatly appreciated.
ThanksReply reply
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Hina zaidi Hi iam an entrepreneur and wanted to sell me handmade ,natural soaps I need help in this like marketing advertising and everything I wa ted to sell me product through Amazon and wanted to make my brand name what help you can do for me
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Ti thank you this was so helpful and straightforward to read I’m going to try it right now!!!
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Sravanthi Gangidi That was a very useful info… Thank u Dave…
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Max Hi There, I have been a collector for years so I have hundreds of books, some in multiple quantities and brand new and over 1500 cds, which are mostly used. From what I have read. It seams this is a great opportunity for me to get into Amazon and start getting my feet wet, while making some money before I get into other products that I need to purchase to sell and I had one question.
I have multiple of a book that has a BSR of 5,803,682, which translates to 40 sales per month or 1.3 sales a day. I understand this is not huge, but if Amazon is selling one a day and I price mine lower, am I assuming correctly that I should sell it in a month?
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Diana Locklear Carter Good morning, I have a lot of used children’s toys and clothes mainly boys. Will I still be able to sell my items even though they are used? Everything is in good to excellent condition. I am extremely eager to sell the items I have. What do I have to do to start selling the items?
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Brian Connolly Hi Laurin,
Please try this Amazon link: https://sell.amazon.com/pricing.html
You should have the option to start as an individual.
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Robert C FARRELL Hi Dave, enjoyed your article and key points for getting started selling on Amazon. I am green in this area. I want to get started for little money if you get my meaning. I have been out of work since August 2019 due to bad knees. I want to do this right but I don’t understand this concept of finding products to sell on Amazon. Am I looking on Amazon for these products or some where else? Please help!
Robert
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Brian Connolly Hi Robert,
Thanks for the comment! I suggest starting with books. Look around your house to see if you have any old books lying around. Look them up on Amazon and take a look at the sales rank, as stated in the article. Also, there is a lot of great resources on Youtube about this topic.
You can easily find used books very cheap at thrift stores or even for free on Facebook marketplace, craigslist, etc.
I hope this helps!
Brian
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Dave Hamrick Hi Satyanarayana,
Of course! You’ll still need to go through the normal process, but there’s no reason why products made in Indian factories wouldn’t be available to sell on Amazon.