BY VINCENT VU
Lab 916
Vince helps established brands take control of their Amazon channel through expert marketplace management.
Guide to Start Reselling on Amazon in 2026
Guides
February 25, 2026
10 min read
How to start reselling on Amazon, find profitable products, and build a real business. Covers sourcing methods, fees, FBA vs FBM, and realistic income expectations.
Reselling on Amazon is one of the most accessible ways to build an ecommerce business. You find products at a lower price, list them on Amazon, and pocket the difference. It sounds simple because the core model is simple. But turning it into a real business takes strategy, sourcing discipline, and an understanding of how Amazon's marketplace actually works.
At Lab 916, we manage over $250 million in Amazon revenue for established brands. We see the reselling ecosystem from the brand side every day — what works, what gets sellers in trouble, and what separates profitable resellers from those who burn through cash. Whether you're reselling on Amazon for beginners just getting started or looking to scale an existing operation, here's everything you need to know in 2026.
How Does Reselling on Amazon Work?
Amazon's marketplace allows third-party sellers to list and sell products alongside Amazon's own inventory. As a reseller, you purchase products from retail stores, wholesale suppliers, liquidation pallets, or online retailers at a discount, then list those products on Amazon at a higher price. The entire model of reselling products on Amazon is built on this price arbitrage.
When a customer buys from your listing, you either ship the product yourself (Fulfillment by Merchant, or FBM) or have Amazon handle storage, packing, and shipping through Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA). Most serious resellers use FBA because it qualifies their listings for Prime shipping, which dramatically increases conversion rates.
The reselling model works because of price inefficiency. A product might be $8 on clearance at Walmart but sells for $25 on Amazon because the buyer values convenience, Prime shipping, or simply doesn't know the product is available cheaper elsewhere. Your profit is the spread between your purchase price and Amazon's sale price, minus Amazon's fees.
Is Reselling on Amazon Worth It in 2026?
The short answer: yes, but with important caveats. Reselling on Amazon is worth it if you treat it as a real business rather than a side hustle you dabble in. Margins have tightened since the early days of Amazon arbitrage, and competition has increased. But the opportunity is still substantial.
Amazon's customer base continues to grow. More than 200 million Prime members worldwide means massive built-in demand for virtually every product category. You don't need to drive traffic or build brand awareness — Amazon's marketplace does that for you.
The barrier to entry is low. You don't need to manufacture products, build a brand, or invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in inventory. You can start reselling items on Amazon with a few hundred dollars and scale from there.
FBA handles the hard parts. Warehousing, picking, packing, shipping, and customer service are managed by Amazon when you use FBA. This lets you focus on sourcing and listing rather than logistics.
That said, reselling on Amazon isn't passive income. You need to consistently source profitable products, manage your inventory levels, monitor pricing, and handle account health metrics. Sellers who approach it casually tend to lose money on bad sourcing decisions or get stuck with unsellable inventory.
How to Start Reselling on Amazon
Getting started with reselling on Amazon requires some upfront setup, but you can be listing products within a few days.
Create Your Amazon Seller Account
Go to sell.amazon.com and register for a seller account. You'll choose between an Individual plan ($0.99 per sale) and a Professional plan ($39.99/month). If you plan to sell more than 40 items per month, the Professional plan is cheaper. It also gives you access to bulk listing tools, advertising, and advanced reporting.
You'll need your legal business name or personal name, a valid credit card, government-issued ID, tax information, and a phone number. Amazon will verify your identity, which can take 24 to 48 hours.
Understand Amazon's Fees
Before you source a single product, understand the fee structure. Amazon charges several fees that eat into your margins:
Referral fees are a percentage of the sale price, typically 8% to 15% depending on the product category. Most categories fall in the 15% range.
FBA fees cover picking, packing, and shipping. These are based on item size and weight. A standard-size item under one pound costs roughly $3.00 to $4.00 in fulfillment fees. Larger and heavier items cost significantly more.
Storage fees are charged monthly for inventory stored in Amazon's warehouses. Standard rates are $0.78 per cubic foot from January through September and $2.40 per cubic foot from October through December. Long-term storage fees kick in for inventory sitting longer than 181 days.
Use Amazon's FBA Revenue Calculator (available in Seller Central) to estimate your actual profit on any product before you buy it. This is the single most important habit for profitable reselling.
Choose Your Sourcing Method
There are several ways to find products to resell on Amazon, each with different risk profiles and profit potential.
Retail arbitrage means buying discounted products from physical retail stores — Target, Walmart, TJ Maxx, Ross, HomeGoods — and reselling them on Amazon. You walk through stores scanning barcodes with the Amazon Seller app to check prices and estimated profits in real time. This is how most resellers start because it requires minimal upfront investment.
Online arbitrage is the same concept but sourced from online retailers instead of physical stores. You scan deals from websites like Walmart.com, Target.com, Kohl's, and dozens of others using tools like Keepa, Tactical Arbitrage, or BuyBotPro to identify profitable products. Online arbitrage scales better than retail because you're not limited by what's on the shelf at your local store.
Wholesale means buying products in bulk directly from brands or authorized distributors at wholesale pricing, then reselling them on Amazon. Wholesale requires more capital upfront but provides consistent, repeatable sourcing. You're not hunting for one-off deals — you're building relationships with suppliers who can ship you the same profitable products month after month.
Liquidation and returns pallets involve buying bulk lots of returned, overstock, or closeout merchandise from liquidation companies. The margins can be high, but so is the risk. You often don't know exactly what you're getting, and a significant percentage of items may be damaged or unsellable.
List Your Products and Ship to FBA
Once you've sourced products, list them on Amazon by matching to existing product pages using the UPC barcode or ASIN. For reselling, you're almost always listing on an existing product page rather than creating new ones.
If you're using FBA, create a shipment plan in Seller Central, label your products with Amazon's FNSKU barcodes, pack them according to Amazon's requirements, and ship them to the designated fulfillment center. Once Amazon receives and processes your inventory, your listings go live and are eligible for Prime shipping.
How to Make Money Reselling on Amazon
Sourcing products is only half the equation. Making real money reselling on Amazon comes down to discipline, data, and operational efficiency.
Target the Right Profit Margins
A healthy minimum margin for reselling on Amazon is 30% ROI after all fees. That means if you buy a product for $10, you need to sell it for enough that after Amazon's referral fee, FBA fee, and any other costs, you net at least $3 in profit. Many experienced resellers won't touch a product unless the ROI is 50% or higher.
Use tools like the Amazon Seller app, Keepa, or SellerAmp to analyze every product before purchasing. Check the sales rank to estimate how quickly the item sells, review the pricing history to understand seasonal fluctuations, and count the number of competing sellers on the listing.
Watch Your Sales Rank
Amazon Best Sellers Rank (BSR) indicates how quickly a product sells relative to others in its category. Lower BSR means faster sales. As a general guideline for resellers:
BSR under 100,000 in a major category usually means the product sells at least once per day. BSR under 50,000 means it sells multiple times per day. BSR above 500,000 means the product might sit in FBA storage for weeks or months, eating into your profits through storage fees.
Sales rank should be evaluated alongside the number of competing sellers. A product with a BSR of 30,000 and only 3 FBA sellers is a much better opportunity than one with BSR 30,000 and 25 FBA sellers competing for the Buy Box.
Manage Your Cash Flow
Cash flow is the number one reason resellers fail. You spend money on inventory today, but you don't get paid until the product sells and Amazon releases the funds, which happens every two weeks. If you buy too much inventory too fast, you can run out of cash before your first disbursement.
Start with a small budget, reinvest your profits, and scale gradually. Many successful resellers started with $500 or less and built to six figures by consistently reinvesting over 12 to 18 months.
Reselling Books on Amazon
Books deserve special mention because they remain one of the most beginner-friendly product categories for Amazon resellers. Reselling books on Amazon has lower startup costs, simpler sourcing, and very forgiving margins.
You can source books from thrift stores, library sales, garage sales, and used bookstores for $1 to $3 each. Textbooks, niche nonfiction, and out-of-print titles can sell for $15 to $100+ on Amazon. Use the Amazon Seller app to scan ISBNs and check current prices and sales rank instantly.
Amazon's media mail shipping rates make FBM book selling viable if you want to avoid FBA fees on lower-priced books. Many book resellers use a hybrid approach: FBM for lower-value books and FBA for higher-value titles where Prime eligibility significantly increases the sale price.
The trade-off is that individual book reselling is labor-intensive. Each book is unique, so you can't buy in bulk the way you can with retail products. Many resellers start with books to learn the fundamentals, then graduate to retail or online arbitrage for better scalability.
Reselling on Amazon FBA vs. FBM
Choosing between Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) and Fulfillment by Merchant (FBM) affects your margins, workload, and competitiveness.
FBA advantages: Your products get the Prime badge, which significantly increases visibility and conversion rates. Amazon handles all shipping, returns, and customer service. You can scale without warehouse space or shipping staff.
FBA disadvantages: Fulfillment fees cut into your margins, especially on low-priced or heavy items. Monthly and long-term storage fees accumulate on slow-moving inventory. You're subject to Amazon's strict packaging and labeling requirements.
FBM advantages: Higher margins on items where FBA fees would eat your profit. Full control over your inventory. No risk of Amazon losing or damaging your stock.
FBM disadvantages: No Prime badge means lower conversion rates. You're responsible for all shipping, returns, and customer service. Harder to win the Buy Box against FBA sellers.
For most resellers, FBA is the better choice for your core inventory. Use FBM for oversized items, very low-priced items, or products where the FBA fees would eliminate your margin.
Common Mistakes New Amazon Resellers Make
After working with hundreds of brands on Amazon, we've seen the reselling landscape from every angle. Here are the mistakes that trip up new resellers most often.
Ignoring the fee calculator. Every product looks profitable until you account for Amazon's referral fee, FBA fee, and shipping costs. Run every potential purchase through the FBA Revenue Calculator before buying.
Chasing low prices instead of good margins. A $5 product you sell for $12 might look profitable, but after a $3.50 FBA fee and $1.80 referral fee, you're making $1.70 before accounting for your purchase cost and shipping to Amazon. Focus on products with enough margin to absorb all fees.
Buying too much of one product. Until you've validated that a product sells at the price and speed you expect, start with small test quantities. Buying 100 units of something you've never sold is how you end up with dead inventory and long-term storage fees.
Ignoring product restrictions. Many brands and categories are gated on Amazon, meaning you need approval to sell them. Some brands actively enforce restrictions against unauthorized resellers. Check whether you're approved to sell a product before buying inventory.
Neglecting account health. Amazon monitors your Order Defect Rate, Late Shipment Rate, and other performance metrics. If these metrics fall below Amazon's thresholds, you can lose your selling privileges. Stay on top of your account health dashboard.
How Much Money Can You Make Reselling on Amazon?
Income from reselling on Amazon varies enormously depending on how much time and capital you invest. Here are realistic benchmarks based on what we see in the marketplace:
Part-time resellers investing 10 to 15 hours per week with $1,000 to $5,000 in inventory can typically generate $1,000 to $3,000 per month in revenue, with $300 to $1,000 in actual profit after all expenses.
Full-time resellers investing 40+ hours per week with $10,000 to $50,000 in inventory can generate $10,000 to $50,000+ per month in revenue, with $3,000 to $15,000 in profit.
Scaled operations with teams, warehouse space, and wholesale accounts can generate $100,000+ per month in revenue.
The key variable is your sourcing efficiency. The best resellers have systematized their sourcing process to find high-ROI products consistently. They don't rely on luck or random clearance finds — they have repeatable sources and use data to make purchasing decisions.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can You Really Make Money Reselling on Amazon?
Yes. Thousands of sellers generate consistent income buying and reselling on Amazon. The model works because Amazon's marketplace has massive built-in demand, and price inefficiencies exist across retail channels. If you use the FBA Revenue Calculator, check sales rank, and monitor competition before every purchase, you can build a profitable reselling business.
Is Reselling on Amazon Profitable?
Reselling on Amazon is profitable when you maintain disciplined sourcing standards. Target products with at least 30% ROI after all Amazon fees, keep your average BSR under 200,000, and avoid over-investing in any single product. Most experienced resellers report net margins between 15% and 30% of revenue, which is strong compared to many traditional retail businesses.
Is Reselling on Amazon Legal?
Reselling legitimately purchased products on Amazon is legal. The first-sale doctrine in U.S. law protects your right to resell products you've purchased. However, some brands have intellectual property policies that restrict unauthorized sellers, and Amazon may enforce these restrictions. Avoid counterfeit products, don't make false claims about being an "authorized" seller, and respect brand gating policies.
What Are the Best Products for Reselling on Amazon?
The best reselling products have strong, consistent demand (BSR under 200,000), enough margin to cover all fees (30%+ ROI), limited competition (fewer than 10 FBA sellers), and stable pricing. Popular categories for resellers include toys and games, health and beauty, grocery and gourmet, home and kitchen, books, and baby products. However, specific products matter more than categories — analyze each item individually.
How Much Does It Cost to Start Reselling on Amazon?
You can start reselling on Amazon with as little as $200 to $500 for initial inventory, plus $39.99/month for a Professional seller account. You'll also want $50 to $100 for supplies like poly bags, labels, and shipping boxes. Budget $0 to $50/month for scanning tools (the free Amazon Seller app works to start). Total realistic startup cost: $300 to $600.
Lab 916 is a full-service Amazon marketplace management agency that helps established brands launch, grow, and protect their Amazon channel. If you're a brand seeing unauthorized resellers on your listings, or if you need help with any aspect of Amazon strategy, get in touch with our team for a free consultation.



