Selling on Amazon can offer lucrative returns. I started selling with £12,500 and this turned into £20,000 in the matter of a few months. However, it’s not always possible to start with a large bankroll. I’ve explained how I made £10,000 in a month.
There are people who want to turn their rainy day fund into a business, and this is something I will be looking at today. So, is it possible to start selling on Amazon FBA with £500? Or How much do you need to start selling?
How much money do I need to start selling on Amazon?
Having money isn’t the pinnacle of Amazon FBA. In fact, most people that resell on amazon via Retail Arbitrage or Online Arbitrage are disappointed if they have a bank balance left at the end of the month. They like to have their money in stock, as this can provide them with a pretty much guaranteed 20% Return on Investment, if not more.
In fact; I will be putting this to the test this year. I’m putting a hold on any sourcing efforts and I’m waiting for my stock to sell. I’m going to restart selling on Amazon, with just £500 to my name. I’ll be doing a challenge journey based on this, so you will be able to keep up with this yourself.
There are a few things that you need to have before you can start selling on Amazon. I’ve compiled a few costs and tips below, to help you get started selling on Amazon with £500.
Amazon Subscription Fee
You will need an Amazon Seller Account, which costs £30 per month for a professional selling plan. I can see the first concern here, as that eats into your overall balance, taking around 7% of your bankroll for a single month.
You do also have the option to stick to an Individual Plan, but I don’t think it’s worth it and you can see the differences here.
Using Free Software
You can leverage some fantastic Free Trials in order to give your business a jump start. There are lots of software providers that offer free trials such as; Selleramp, Source Mogul & Helium10. You can use these trials to source your items faster, enabling you to boost your profits for the first few weeks.
Register Your Business for Free
If you register a business manually, you’ll be asked to pay a fee. Instead, I would look for a business bank such as TIDE that will pay your incorporation fee for you. The fee is only around £20, but if you can save money at the start, why not?
£20 might not seem like a lot, but it’s significant cut out of a £500 bankroll and is almost your first Months Amazon subscription!
Research Your Products More
When you’re starting off with £500, you can’t really afford to make any mistakes. A mistake here would be purchasing something that doesn’t sell well, ends up selling for a loss or takes a really long time to sell. Fortunately, you can research using the above Free Tools to ensure that you can research in depth.
Aim for Lower Priced Products with Higher Sales Volume
Just as advised above, you don’t want to sell items that take a while to sell. At the start, I would focus on items that sell at least 500 units per month according to Selleramp. This would leave you in a good position, knowing that your shipment will be checked in to Amazon and sold more or less instantly (depending on who controls the buy box).
Buying Lower Priced items also means that you can purchase multiple different items, instead of going ‘deep’ in on a single item. I’m not discounting that strategy, but a ‘Wide, Not Deep’ approach is typically a successful one for beginners.
Make Sure You’re Ungated to Sell
There’s nothing worse than spending a decent chunk of your balance on some items, only to find that you aren’t abel to sell them. If you’re gated, it means that Amazon won’t let you sell the products unless you pass their application process for it. This isn’t actually difficult and you can simply upload an invoice and get ungated.
If you do get stuck in gated though, it’s going to take a little bit of time to get ungated. It might only be 2-3 working days, but this is time you can’t really afford. Again, a tool like Selleramp will advise you if you’re ungated.
Avoid Private Label
You need to stick to Retail Arbitrage or Online Arbitrage. Private Label is something which requires quite a lot of time and money spent researching products, spending on marketing and advertising etc. This is something which I would only recommend experienced sellers look at really.
Set Realistic Expectations
There is no product on the market that you’ll pick up for £10 and sell for £1,000. You won’t become a millionaire in the space of a few months.
However, you can easily make around 20-30% Profit on Sales across the board in general. Depending on the amount that you have to start with, this can be significant.
Starting with £500 and making 20% per month will leave you with just under £1,500 at the end of Month 6. The snowball effect will then continue and if you can continue this for 24 months you’ll have £39,700. It’s almost scary, isn’t it?
Utilise Credit
If you have good credit, you have a gigantic head-start with Amazon FBA. You can purchase stock and sell this, before you even have to pay your statement off. This is something that lots of people do. However, I’m not suggesting that you do this if you only have £500 in your account.
It’s always important to ensure that you have enough money to pay off your credit card statements without getting into debt.
Can you actually start amazon FBA with £500?
I’m planning to create a series where I start Amazon with £500. I will be documenting my journey and continuing this until I can turn this into £40,000. It sounds very ambitious, but I’m sure it can be done.
