Amazon can be a brilliant place to sell — but that doesn’t mean it’s right for everyone.

In this episode, I’ll help you work out whether Amazon is the right platform for your products and business. We’ll go through three simple checks that can save you time, money, and frustration before you even get started.

You’ll learn:

• How to check if your product can be sold on Amazon (including approvals, restrictions, and safety requirements)
• How to assess demand — whether people are already buying products like yours
• How to estimate costs and make sure your product can stay profitable after fees

We’ll also look at some free tools you can use, like the Jungle Scout Sales Estimator, and I’ll share practical examples to help you make informed decisions before you commit.

Whether you’re just starting out or you’ve been on the fence about Amazon for a while, this episode will give you clarity on whether it’s the right move for you.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Jungle Scout Sales Estimator
• Book a 1:1 training session with me

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Welcome to the Bring your product idea to Life podcast. This is the podcast for you if you're getting started selling products, or if you'd like to create your own product to sell.

I'm Vicki Weinberg, a product creation coach and Amazon expert. Every week I share friendly, practical advice as well as inspirational stories from small businesses.

Let's get started.

Hi, and welcome to another episode of.

Bring your product idea to life.

So today I want to talk about three really simple but really essential checks that I want you to make before you decide whether Amazon is the right place to sell your product.

I think this is really going to help you understand how you can reduce frustration, how you can avoid wasting time, money and effort just by doing a little bit of research upfront. Amazon, as you may well know, can work brilliantly for lots of businesses and lots of products, but it doesn't work brilliantly for everyone.

And in this episode, I want to give you hopefully, a little bit of clarity on whether Amazon is something that's worth pursuing for you. Many people I know feel unsure if Amazon is right for them, and I really hope that's going to help.

My aim today, I should say, is to help give you a bit of clarity and not to convince you.

Because I've said before, and I will say it so many times, Amazon definitely isn't for everyone, but for those who it is rightful, it can be a great opportunity. So the three checks I want to talk about are can you sell it, do people want it? And can you afford it?

And if you can say yes to all of these, then I would say Amazon is definitely a marketplace worth considering. And if you have any no's, then it definitely needs a bit more. A bit more thought.

So let's start with the first thing I want you to think about, which is can you sell it? So this is about making sure that your product is something that you, one, are allowed to list on Amazon, and two, it's going to be practical.

And are you going to have to jump through lots and lots of hoops, which doesn't necessarily make it a no, but it's something that I think you need to know up front.

If you're selling something that's going to require a lot of extra effort, a lot of maybe more documentation, submitting, whatever that is, that's definitely not a reason not to, but I really think it would be good for you to be aware of that up front. So let's start with. Most things can be sold in Amazon in the uk. This is good news, isn't it? There are a few things you can't sell.

So you can't sell vehicles, you can't sell weapons, you can't sell clothing made from animals, you can't sell CBD products. Except for a few exemptions to this.

But I'm guessing you probably would have, you know, known most of that anyway, because I think most of that is fairly straightforward and self explanatory. So most other things you can sell. However, that of course wasn't a full list. I was just pulling out some of the more extreme examples.

So do always check Amazon's restricted products guidelines which is on the Amazon seller website.

So before you even think about opening an account with Amazon, if you go to the seller central site, there's lots of information about what can and can't be sold on Amazon. If can you information on fees, there's all sorts of things on there. So go and take a look.

There are also products that can be sold on Amazon but might need extra steps.

So for example, right at the moment, at the time of recording anyway, because this does change, you need to request approval to sell in the jewellery category. Now that might not be the case today. Sorry, that is the case today. It might not be the case when you record because that does change.

I know that a few years ago you needed to request approval to send in a toy category. Agree, for example, I don't know if that's still the case today. I'm not working for any toy brands. But these things can and do change.

And it's often to do with the number of sellers in a certain category, how competitive it is. Then there are also certain product types where they want you to go through some extra checks before you can sell as well.

So that's something to think about. There are some products that you can sell but you can't use FBA or fulfillment by Amazon.

So for example, products with hazmat restrictions, oversized products you might not be able to send in for fba. And then there are other products that might need safety data sheets or maybe extra documentation. Maybe you need some sort of certification.

For example, anything that could be glass as hazardous. Couldn't get that word out. Then beauty products, you often need safety data sheets.

You might need some sort of compliance checks depending on the products. If you're selling toys, for example, they might want to see your CE safety marking certificate.

There's all kinds of things like that to consider and I'm sure you have all of this, but it's just worth knowing. And also if you sell alcohol on Amazon or anything containing alcohol. So maybe you've got chocolates with alcohol in.

You do require the relevant licenses as well. Requirements, as I said, can and do change.

So even if you've checked this once before, maybe you checked this order a while ago, do check again before listing. Things might have changed in your favour. So, for example, you might have been looking a year ago at a category that required approval.

That category now could be wide open. Or it could also be that you're looking to sell something and you don't realise that there's going to be required, maybe something's changed.

To give you a real example of this, I worked with a brand who sold a really nice home pottery kit.

And inside that kit it had a tiny, tiny little, I want to say knife, but it wasn't really a knife, like a little implement for making marks on your, on your pottery.

And because that was classified as a blade, we had to restrict that product to only be bought by 18s and above and go through some extra things before that could be listed. And that wasn't something that was foreseen, it was something that sort of threw us up when it happened.

So all of these things lead me to say to you that do have a bit of a check.

You can also, if you already are selling on Amazon, so let's say you already have a seller central account, you can also use the add a product tool to see if there. See how easy it will be to list your item. Because you can pretend you're going to add your product if you, if you have the account set up already.

And you might find that when you go to add the product category, it says, oh, no, this is restricted. So that's another way that you can check. So let's assume that we found out that what you're selling can be sold on Amazon.

The next check we want to talk about is do people want it? So this is about checking the demand for your product before we start to invest. You don't need to pay for fancy software to do this, by the way.

To get a sense of the demand, you can do this yourself. You can go to Amazon, you can search a product similar to yours and you can look at how many results appear. That's one thing you can look at.

The number of results that appear will tell you how many similar products to yours there are on there. And then you can also have a look at the reviews.

So if there's lots of products of a high number of views, and that tells you that these products are quite popular, which can be a good Thing I don't want you. One thing I will say is I don't want you to worry.

If you go and look on Amazon and there are lots of products like yours and they've got lots of good reviews and think, well, actually that means there's no space for me. It doesn't necessarily mean that. It means products like, you know, like yours are in demand. And it means people are buying them and they like them.

What it does mean is when you go to list your products on Amazon, we've spoken about listing in other episodes and always feel free to contact me if there's. If you know, if you want support with something and you're thinking, actually, is there an episode on this? Chances are there will be.

I can point you in the right direction.

So I've done some episodes about product listings and something that will be really important if you're going into a category where there are other products and they are selling and they, they do have reviews, is to make your product stand out so people understand why to buy yours over someone else's, but actually seeing other products on there like yours is a good sign. Sometimes it can be harder to sell a completely unique product.

So if you sell something that people have never heard of, never used, maybe it's completely original idea that can actually be harder. You won't have competition on Amazon. Amazon. But because people don't know a product like yours exists, they won't necessarily be searching for it.

So that just makes it a bit trickier when we get to the listing stage. So we're gonna. So you can do this manual research and find out what other products like yours are on there. You can.

While you're doing this, something I always like to do is look at the features of the product, look at the price range, look at the keywords they're using, and think about where my product would fit in. So is my product a bit more premium than the other products on there? Is it slightly cheaper version?

Because when I'm coming list, this will just help me think about how I position it.

I would look at the pricing and think, okay, it might be that I might adjust my pricing because it might be that when I look at what I'm selling and I look at the other products, I think actually mine is actually a lot better than this and they're selling theirs for X. I could actually, you know, sell mine for a little bit more potentially as well. So that's something to think about. Look at whether people are offering prime or not in your category.

I worked with A brand last year who had one big competitor on Amazon because they sell something quite niche, they only had one real competitor and that competitor wasn't offering fba.

So when my client decided to list on Amazon, we deliberately decided to choose FBA and send all their products in for fulfillment because we felt that would give them an advantage over their competitor who was already there and doing quite well.

And I'm pleased to say that did actually work because the products themselves were very, very similar in terms of what they were in terms of the quality. And actually it was a product where you couldn't do that much differentiate it.

But just by using fulfillment by Amazon, rather than dispatching orders themselves as their competitor was doing, really did help make a difference. So when you're doing this research, I do think note down, you know, things that you're noticing.

Any ideas of how you can make your listing stand out when you get to that stage? There's also a free tool which I think I've mentioned before, called the Jungle Scout Sales Estimator.

I'll link to that in the show notes for this episode. And this gives you a rough idea of how many sales a product makes each month based on its bestseller ranking, which you can get from the listing.

And the category, which is also in the listing, it's an estimator. It's not 100% accurate.

I've tried it before where, you know, for products where I know how many sales they're making a month and sometimes it's very close, sometimes it's not. But it is a tool that you can use and it doesn't cost you anything.

So to summarize, I guess I will say that if no one is selling something similar to your product, it might be because there's no demand. But it also just might be that you are the first person to think about selling a product like yours on Amazon.

So just because you don't see anyone selling anyone anything similar, someone always has to be fair. So this doesn't necessarily mean that Amazon isn't the right place for your product, particularly if your product is proven to sell elsewhere.

So let's say you've been selling your product on your own website or you've been selling it in stores or markets, wherever you've been selling your product.

If your product has sold well and you feel that Amazon would be a good fit, don't be disheartened if there aren't many similar products on Amazon, because it just might be that you will be the first. If, however, you haven't sold your products anywhere.

Because let's say you haven't sold a single unit of your product, whether that's on your own website, whether that's anywhere you just haven't sold your product is brand, brand new and there's nothing like yours on Amazon, then I would think, okay, this is going to be a bit more of a gamble.

And I would always recommend trying to make sales somewhere else before Amazon, because Amazon is such a hard marketplace to get set up and started on. So I wouldn't recommend it being the first place that you go.

And this step just really helps you identify whether shoppers on Amazon are already buying products like yours or not. Because it might be, as I said, this episode isn't to convince you.

It might be that you do this research and you go, actually, there aren't many people selling products like mine on Amazon. And then you look at Etsy and there's loads.

And you know, you might say, okay, maybe Etsy is the best marketplace for me, this definitely isn't about convincing you. This is about saving you time and effort in the long run. So the third check I want you to do is can you afford it?

And this is basically about understanding the cost involved on selling on Amazon and making sure that you're selling on Amazon will and can be profitable for you. Because selling on Amazon, like selling anywhere, costs money, there are lots of fees to consider.

The fees vary by category, they vary by fulfilment method.

There's a lot to take on board, but I want you to know before you start the cost to expect so that you have an understanding of whether Amazon will actually make you money or cost you money. Because what you don't want to do is put all this money into getting set up, start selling and find that you're barely breaking even.

That's not going to be a good place to be, particularly if you've paid for the setup as well. So let's start with the basics. So if you have a professional Amazon seller account, pay £30amonth for that.

I always recommend the professional account. You get a lot more features and it doesn't cap how many sales you can make a month. So that is essential.

Then you're also going to pay a referral fee for every product that you sell. I should actually say you don't pay to list on Amazon. So it's not like ebay. You don't pay any money to, to have a listing.

So that £30amonth fee means you can list as many products as you like. But every time you make a Sale, you pay a referral fee, which is a percentage of the total price.

And this is going to be somewhere between 5 and 15%, depending on the category. Something people ask me a lot is how much would it cost?

Sell my product on Amazon, and unless I know them and I know their product, I know what it is, I can't really give an answer because there's lots of factors involved here, which is why I'm going to talk you through the ones to look at. So there'll be a referral fee and you can actually get that from the Amazon seller website.

So the extern website as well, you don't have to be on seller central already. You can get that from the external Amazon seller website. You can find out what the fees will be for the category you're selling in.

And then if you're going to use fulfilled by Amazon, then there will be fees. So you're going to pay a fulfillment fee. So this is for them actually dispatching the order.

And that's going to be based on the product type, size and weight. And that's a set fee per item. And you're going to pay a storage fee, which is per cubic foot per month, based on how much space your stock takes up.

If you have oversized items, if you have hazmat items, then you might pay extra charges as well.

And then of course, if you are fulfilling orders yourself, you're going to save on FBA fees, but you will still presumably have some sort of cost for packaging, posting and potentially your time.

If you're actually dispatching your own orders, there is an FBA calculator which I've mentioned a lot of times before because I think it's a really, really good tool. And this is a free Amazon tool. It's available on the external Amazon seller site as well.

So you don't need an account again to use it, which helps you estimate your total cost of potential profit. So you put in, you know what your product is. You can put in all the size and weight information. You can put what your price you'll be selling it for.

You can even put your product cost in there as well.

You can put your own fulfillment costs in and Amazon will basically break it down for you and say if you use fba, your total fees will be this and your profit will be this. If you use fbm, your fees will be this and your profit will be this.

And then you can use that to work out whether Amazon is going to be feasible for you. If your margins are already really tight, if your product is really bulky, really heavy, particularly if you want to use an extra into fba.

Amazon might not make sense for you right now, but I think it's just really good to know before you invest because you don't want to get any nasty surprises along the way. So to summarise, the free checks I want you to do before you start thinking about selling on Amazon.

Can you sell it, do people want it and can you afford it? This, by the way, hopefully I should say, isn't about discouraging anyone, it's about helping you make an informed decision.

It's also not about encouraging you because I'm not here to convince you, as I've said right at the beginning. I'm here to make you make the right decision for you and your business. Most products can do really well on Amazon.

I see a lot of sellers who do really, really well, but the ones who succeed are the ones who really understand the platform and, you know, understand what's, what's going to be required, have done the research, know, you know, go into it with confidence that it is the right place, that it is going to work, that there are customers there to buy your product and that you know, the margins do work. Because I think knowing all of that just gives you a such better sense of security as well. Because it's a big undertaking getting set up on Amazon.

There's obviously no guarantees, but I think unless you can tick all of these three boxes and say yes, yes, yes. You need to seriously consider whether it's worth you investing your time, your money, your effort into getting started on the first place.

If you would like to talk about whether your products are a good fit for Amazon or you want help running these checks together, I offer one to one sessions where we can go through this in detail. So if that's something you're interested in, I'll put a link in the show notes or you can contact contact me vickitvikiweinberg.com to find out more.

And thank you so much for your for your time. I hope you found this episode useful and I look forward to speaking with you again soon.

Thank you so much for listening right to the end of this episode.

Do remember that you can get the full back catalogue and lots of free resources on my website, vickywineberg.com Please do remember, remember to rate and review this episode if you've enjoyed it and also share it with a friend who you think might find it useful. Thank you again and see you next week.