Where to get started with Amazon, maybe others?

A lot of people start with retail artbitrage and books and probably see those results. Use the amazon seller app to scan items and see if you can profit off of ungated items. Then there are wholesale sources and online arbitrage. I personally prefer the private label route but my monthly goals are higher than yours. I would suggest watching youtube videos for tips.

If you're looking to get into Amazon then that wouldn't be drop shipping. Drop shipping would be if you bought 100 pairs of shoes over ebay and then sold/shipped them from your house.

You're looking to get into affiliate marketing. I assume you signed up with the Amazon Associates Program so you need to pick a domain (should be over something specific)..then, buy the domain and buy hosting.. Put Wordpress on your domain..Find a good Amazon Plugin that will let you add products and make them look all pretty. Optimize your site for SEO and start promoting it.. Now you're all set to go!

You can definitely do Dropshipping on Amazon. ( Make a sale and then ask your supplier to forward send the product to your customer. ) The issue with Dropshipping is that, unless it's not a well known product, you don't control much and you'll be competing mostly on price, therefore lower margins.

The main advantage its very low risk in terms of financial investment, and you are getting experience and will learn through practice how Amazon, eBay or other platforms work. With some luck and some work you can also make money.

My 2 cents.
Cheers,
Yann

I started with drop shipping. Tons of time for very little profit. Retail Arbitrage is also very time consuming with low margin, but if you keep an eye out, you can find good product hits once in a while. I've seen the best luck with private label, but it will take some initial investment.

Besides writing for a living I sell on Amazon part-time. I usually work about 1 1/2 days per week on it if you put all the hours together and it brings me in around $800 to $1000 every month. I love shopping and it gets me away from the writers chair for a while.

I started out selling used books and still sell a lot of them. The key to a quicker turn around is watching the ranking of the book or any item for that matter. Book should rank under 1million for me and even better if under 500,000.

There are two ways to sell on Amazon. One is called Merchant full-filled where you store and ship all the products. The other is FBA or Full-filled by Amazon, where you send everything to their warehouses and they store and ship for you for a fee.

Since I have 1500 items in my inventory I let Amazon store, ship, and take care of customer service for me. If you do this, then you need to make sure what you purchase can be tripped in the sales amount. More than that for books. If I buy a book for $1.00 I want to sell it for $10. If you buy a household item for $10 you need to sell for around $30 to pay all fees and still make around $12 for yourself.

Hope this helps. Read all the info Amazon has online to learn how to sell. They also have videos.

Amazon's FBA business model is something that I strongly recommend. I started may FBA business about two years ago and it is the best thing I have done online. You get your inventory in front of their HUGE buyer traffic and they take care of selling it and all customer shipments and customer satisfaction issues.

The key is obtaining the right inventory at the right price. Once you send it into Amazon they do all the rest. Occasionally you will hear people complain about the "high fees" that Amazon charges FBA sellers. IMO that is completely ridiculous because you would not be able to get so much for so little anywhere. There commission and fess are very reasonable.

I think you have the right idea, and as kungfubob stated, You have the opportunity to learn a lot, without the risk of putting your life savings on the line. So learn as much as you can!

You say your confused on where to start, and I think that is what most people do at first, They never really make a plan and then just throw everything at it and start working.

You didn't give us a lot of information but it seems you have an idea of what you want to do, You want to start with Amazon So my advice is.

Start with a pen and a notebook. Write down some reasonabl short term and long term goals you would like to meet, and then write down your ideas on how to accomplish those goals, Write down what your plans are

Research categories and products you feel comfortable promoting.

Are you planning on building a website and marketing it?

If you have any questions feel free to ask.