Mathematically, a lot of new Amazon sellers get killed by the numbers . Get this straight: Amazon takes a whopping third of every sale.
Add on the referral fee, FBA fulfillment, storage and that preview-inbound placement fee they cooked up a couple of years back – you’re talking 30% gone before you even buy the product itself.
So, let’s say you grab a item for $8 and try to flog it off for $15, you’re not making $7 profit, you’re lucky to scrounge out $1.50 before you account for returns.
And there will be returns some guy in Ohio will return a spatula in August because it “felt off”.
Picking Something You Can Actually Make a Dent in
Don’t try to cram yourself into the trendy gadget space that’s a turf war between the 9,000 review club and Amazon’s own brands.
Look instead for boring old items where the current lot are phoning it in: dodgy photos, three-line descriptions and reviews that are all complaining about the same old flaw for years on end. If your version actually fixes those issues, the demand is already there, just nobody’s serving it properly.
Start with one product, a few hundred units, something small and lightweight because FBA charges by size and weight.
A phone stand is going to beat a yoga mat any day of the week. And consider that first batch as tuition.
One new thing to keep in mind for 2026-2027. A growing chunk of shoppers are finding products by asking Rufus, Amazon’s AI helper, and the AI is answering right out of the listing copy. Simple, plain language listings that actually answer the questions are the winners these days. Don’t bother with the keyword soup crap.
