For any eager entrepreneur wanting to start an eCommerce business, Amazon is our magic bullet. However, even better than that, we can learn how to sell on Amazon without inventory. Not holding our inventory eliminates the hassle of having to manage all of the products we stock up on.
But, we need to learn how to sell on Amazon without inventory. Amazon enables this with its Fulfillment By Amazon feature. On top of that, dropshipping as an eCommerce model is based on sellers not holding their inventory.
In this article, we’ll examine how to sell on Amazon without inventory through both methods to see which one best fits our business goals. We’ll also explore the processes of selling on Amazon without inventory.
Dropshipping is a retail fulfillment method that allows us to sell products online without holding your inventory.
Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) allows us to store products in Amazon’s fulfillment centers where they take care of the storage, packaging, and shipping.
To sell on Amazon without inventory, we need to find best-sellers and reliable suppliers to source them from, then import products to your store and fulfill orders.
Dropshipping pros & cons: low risk, low investment, automation, scalability & cross-channel selling; competition, refunds.
FBA pros & cons: organic traffic, easy order fulfillment, easy returns, discounts; upfront fees, storage fees, unsold inventory, restock limits.
AutoDS offers a range of features to help us manage our Amazon store: advanced product research, product imports, order fulfillment & more.
Knowing how to sell on Amazon without inventory enables us to run an online business with minimal & upfront investments and high profit potential.
What Is Dropshipping?
Dropshipping is a retail fulfillment method that allows us to list products for sale on websites or online marketplaces, such as Amazon. Since the products come from third-party suppliers, there’s no need to hold physical inventory. So, when we’re wondering how to sell on Amazon without inventory, we can always rely on the dropshipping model.
Here is an overview of how dropshipping works:
- Dropshipper sources the product from a supplier and offers it on Amazon
- Buyer purchases the product from the Amazon dropshipping store
- Dropshipper buys the product and inputs customer details on the supplier’s website
- Dropshipper gains a profit from the sale
- The supplier processes the order and ships it to the buyer
Overall, dropshipping is a low-risk and high-reward business model. Dropshipping on Amazon is convenient for sellers due to low investment and overhead costs. Thus, these factors make dropshipping an attractive option for those looking to start a profitable eCommerce business.
What Is Amazon FBA?
Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) is a service that allows us to store our products in Amazon’s fulfillment centers. Once our products are in the fulfillment center, Amazon takes care of all the storage, packaging, and shipping of the items to customers. This means we don’t need to handle inventory, and Amazon handles all customer service inquiries and returns. So, this is how to sell on Amazon without inventory.
In addition, this service lets us access Amazon’s Prime shipping program, which offers fast and free shipping arrangements. However, the FBA service requires various fees.
For those who want to explore how to sell on Amazon without inventory through FBA, we must consider all these fees before selling. Nevertheless, we’ll look more into the advantages and disadvantages further down.
How To Sell On Amazon Without Inventory: Dropshipping Guide
When figuring out how to sell on Amazon without inventory, dropshipping is a super profitable choice. So, let’s discover how to sell on Amazon without inventory and multiply our profits.
Here is a brief guide to help us get our dropshipping business started:
- Discover Best-Sellers: Product Research
- Select A Reliable Dropshipping Supplier
- Import Products To Your Amazon Store
- Launch Your Store & Start Fulfilling Orders
Buckle up, as we explore the steps toward Amazon dropshipping success.
1. Product Research To Sell On Amazon Without Inventory
One of the essential steps in learning how to sell on Amazon without inventory is choosing the right products. Remember that the quality and popularity of the items we dropship are crucial to gaining massive profits. We can discover trends, analyze the competition, and uncover market demands through product research. In fact, there are a few ways to go about product research and useful tools that can help us immensely.
With that said, here are tested product-finding methods that we can adopt when dropshipping on Amazon:
- AutoDS Winning Products Hub
- AutoDS Product-Finding Blog & YouTube Playlist
- Amazon Best Sellers / Movers & Shakers
- AliExpress Dropshipping Center
- Spy On The Competition
- Google Trends & Google Lens
Next, we’ll review how these techniques help us find top-selling products.
AutoDS Winning Products Hub
The AutoDS Winning Products Hub provides a wide range of products suitable for Amazon dropshipping. This platform extends additional features, such as product insights and competitor analysis. For instance, we can access an item’s original cost, retail price, and profit potential.
Aside from this, the Hub helps us analyze the competition by assessing current sellers and Facebook ads. Through these insights, we’ll know our target audiences and adopt the best practices for an optimized business. Notably, it’s an automated product research method, saving us from spending hours searching for high-profit potential products.
AutoDS Product-Finding Blog & YouTube Playlist
Another way to find best-sellers when exploring how to sell on Amazon without inventory is by checking out the AutoDS Product-Finding Blog and ‘Sell These Now’ YouTube Playlist. These platforms provide updated content about the latest market trends and best-selling products. To mention a few, we can explore monthly product articles, niche-specific content, and more.
Amazon Best Sellers / Movers & Shakers
Meanwhile, Amazon’s Best Sellers and Movers & Shakers provide lists of products with high sales volumes. In learning how to sell on Amazon without inventory, we need high-converting items. These pages display a wide selection of high-converting products and frequently bought items. So, we won’t need to search for items to sell, as these sections give concrete suggestions.
AliExpress Dropshipping Center
The AliExpress Dropshipping Center lets us access millions of low-cost and trending products to sell on Amazon. It helps us seamlessly search for items by applying filters, such as warehouses, price ranges, reviews, and more. Plus, we can get top suggestions for best-selling products from AliExpress, and offer the same items on our Amazon dropshipping stores.
Spy On The Competition
When we’re figuring out how to sell on Amazon without inventory, spying on our competition is key to seeing what the market is interested in. We can spy on the competition to gain insights into the winning products and strategies of other sellers on Amazon. To do this, we can manually scan other stores on Amazon or utilize paid tools, such as Jungle Scout. By spying on other sellers, we can explore more product ideas that cater to the needs of a broader market.
Google Trends & Google Lens
Google Trends and Google Lens are helpful tools we can utilize to uncover relevant product information and sales metrics. When using Google Trends, we can analyze the popularity of products through customer search results and web activities. So, when we go about how to sell on Amazon without inventory, Google Trends can give us valuable insight into the direction of our business.
On the other hand, Google Lens is an AI image recognition technology that lets us discover suppliers by scanning product images. Thus, we can utilize this tool while spying on our competitors to know where they source their winning products.
2. Select A Supplier To Sell On Amazon Without Inventory
Knowing how to sell on Amazon without inventory prompts us to work with suppliers that will fulfill our orders. Once we have product ideas to sell, the next step is to choose a reliable supplier from whom we can source our items. Since our suppliers are important in providing high-quality products and top-caliber services, we must only work with trusted platforms.
When selecting a reliable supplier for our Amazon dropshipping business, here are crucial factors we must consider:
- International warehouses
- Comprehensive product catalog
- Competitive pricing
- Practical return, payment, and shipping policies
- Positive reviews
- Exceptional customer service
On that note, the following are some excellent suppliers that can provide our Amazon dropshipping business with worthwhile benefits:
- Walmart
- AliExpress
- Banggood
- CJDropshipping
- The AutoDS Warehouse
Notably, the AutoDS warehouse is an order fulfillment center that stores products ready for dropshipping. Plus, it allows us to build our brands by incorporating our logos into products or packages.
Aside from these platforms, AutoDS integrates with more suppliers we can work with. With AutoDS-supported suppliers, our Amazon dropshipping business can enjoy automated sourcing solutions and other worthwhile benefits. Through its integration with reliable platforms, dropshippers can achieve success with AutoDS.
3. Import Products To Your Amazon Store
Now that we have our products and their sources, we can add products to our Amazon dropshipping stores. To import products, we must create Amazon listings.
To begin with, when we know how to sell on Amazon without inventory, we still need to list our products on Amazon. It’s important to verify whether we have the authorization to sell a particular product or brand on Amazon. This can be achieved by clicking the ‘Sell On Amazon’ option on the right-hand side. Otherwise, we’ll have to request it from the brand owner or company.
Amazon may require us to seek approval from the brand before we can sell the products. However, most of the time, AutoDS will notify us if brand approval is necessary, along with a link to Amazon that explains how to acquire it.
If we can sell the product, we can manually create a listing by providing all the necessary details. However, manually creating a listing on Amazon can take a lot of time and effort.
That is why, we can opt for automatic importing methods to add products faster and easier. As such, AutoDS provides a single product uploader, bulk importer, or scheduled imports. Next, let’s demonstrate adding a product using the AutoDS’ automated product importer.
AutoDS Automated Product Importer
To start, we’ll search for a trending item on our supplier’s website and copy the product URL. Then, we’ll head to the AutoDS platform and click ‘Add Single Product’ on the left sidebar.
In the dialog box, we need to paste the URL and provide the ASIN. The ASIN is the Amazon Standard Identification Number, uniquely assigned to every product. Then, click ‘Edit Now (Quick)’ to start importing the product.
Once the transfer is complete, the item moves to the ‘Drafts’ section of AutoDS. Here, we can set relevant tags, practical shipping methods, and diverse product variants.
When adding product variants, we need to set competitive prices so that our items will be at the top results of the Buy Box. The Buy Box is the ‘Add to Cart’ or ‘Buy Now’ pages, where we compete for sales with other stores.
On the downside, we cannot directly revise titles, descriptions, images, and specifications on AutoDS. We need to carry out the changes on these aspects on Amazon. After we optimize our product, we can save and import the product to our Amazon dropshipping store.
4. Launch Your Store & Start Fulfilling Orders
After figuring out how to sell on Amazon without inventory and establishing our product listings, we can launch our dropshipping stores. Once customers start accessing our products, we’ll start receiving orders. Then, we need to fulfill customer demands promptly.
Generally, we can fulfill customer orders in two ways: manually and automatically.
To fulfill Amazon orders manually, we must obtain the customer shipping address from the order details page. After that, we ship the order to the given delivery address using the preferred shipping method. Afterward, we must click ‘Confirm Shipment’ from the ‘Manage Orders’ section and provide all the necessary details.
However, manually fulfilling orders is inefficient, especially when several orders are waiting to be served. Plus, this method is prone to input errors in customer details and delays in fulfillment.
To save us from this tiresome process, we can adopt automation to carry out the order fulfillment task. Automating this aspect can save a significant amount of time and can fast-track the order fulfillment process.
With that said, AutoDS has the Automatic Orders feature that can fulfill customer orders round the clock. This tool utilizes our buyer accounts, which are our preferred payment methods on the suppliers’ websites. Also, this feature allows us to monitor customer order details under one dashboard conveniently.
Automating the order fulfillment process on Amazon differs from other selling channels since we still need to provide customer shipping details. We can do this under the order settings on AutoDS instead. Then, we can forward the details for automatic order fulfillment.
Moreover, this automatic order fulfillment method provides real-time tracking updates on the whereabouts of customer packages. Now, we can sit back and relax as AutoDS serves customer demands while we generate passive income.
FBA Vs. Dropshipping – Which Is Best To Sell On Amazon Without Inventory?
What is the best business model to adopt when we know how to sell on Amazon without inventory? To help us decide, let’s weigh the benefits and drawbacks of dropshipping and FBA.
Dropshipping Pros
- Low-risk model
- No storage fees
- Dropshipping automation
- Easy scalability
- Cross-channel selling
Primarily, dropshipping is a low-risk business model with minimal start-up investment. With no physical storefront or warehouse to maintain, we won’t incur storage or inventory expenses. In addition, we can adopt dropshipping automation to streamline the everyday tasks of running our online businesses.
Furthermore, dropshipping is highly scalable, meaning we can easily test trending products and reach diverse markets. Similarly, dropshipping allows us to sell across different channels. The flexibility and profitability of this business model can help us achieve enormous passive income in the long run.
Dropshipping Cons
- Competition
- No control over stock/shipping
- Product refunds
Since dropshipping is a popular business model, we can expect tight competition in many niches. It can be challenging to stand out and build a profitable business. That’s why, we must invest in proven marketing techniques to increase brand awareness and drive more sales.
Since we are not in control of the shipping and fulfillment process, there is a risk of errors, delays, and lost or damaged packages. Also, product refunds depend on our supplier’s policies. Therefore, we must work with reliable suppliers who can fulfill customer demands satisfactorily and offer practical business policies.
FBA Pros
- Easy order fulfillment
- Organic traffic
- Shipping discounts
- Customer support management
- Easy returns
Amazon FBA eliminates the need for us to worry about storage location, customer service, handling returns, packing, and shipping. This means we can efficiently fulfill orders and focus on selling more products. Plus, Amazon has organic traffic to help us drive more viewers and turn them into buyers.
As Amazon FBA listings automatically qualify for Amazon Prime, we can provide customers with free, fast, and discounted shipping. Moreover, this business model extends excellent customer support, resolving issues promptly. Finally, Amazon FBA implements an easy return process, extending up to a 45-day return period window.
FBA Cons
- Upfront fee
- Storage fees
- Restock limits
- Unsold inventory
As a drawback, FBA implements charges, such as subscription, selling, referral, and removal fees. Besides these costs, the platform charges inventory fees for storing, packing, and shipping products. Thus, we must consider all costs when assigning product prices.
In addition, Amazon FBA has restocking limits to manage inventory and warehouse restrictions. Since Amazon FBA maintains physical stocks, there’s a bigger chance of unsold inventory, resulting in losses. Before adding products, we must conduct thorough product research to ensure we’re selling popular and profitable items.
Upon weighing the pros and cons, dropshipping is a better option for selling on Amazon without inventory. As such, dropshipping is a more flexible and lucrative business model that minimizes the risk of financial loss.
Sell On Amazon Without Inventory Using Automation
Running an Amazon dropshipping business can be overwhelming, especially if we have many products to manage. But don’t worry; dropshipping automation is here to help us run our Amazon stores more efficiently. Knowing how to sell on Amazon without inventory is one thing, but doing it in the most optimized way is another.
An exceptional automation tool for Amazon dropshipping is AutoDS. This dropshipping solution offers a range of features to help us manage our Amazon store smoothly. Some of the key benefits of using AutoDS include:
- Advanced Product Research Marketplace
- Quick Product Imports
- Price/Stock Monitoring
- Automatic Order Fulfillment
- and much more!
Dropshipping automation can help us streamline our Amazon businesses and save time by handling repetitive tasks. By using a dropshipping automation tool, we can avoid errors, reduce the risk of delays, and easily scale our business.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is It Possible To Sell On Amazon Without Holding Product Inventory?
Yes, it is possible to sell on Amazon without holding product inventory. But, you might wonder how to sell on Amazon without inventory. On that note, you can utilize two popular business models: dropshipping and Amazon FBA.
Do I Need To Have A Warehouse To Sell On Amazon?
No, you do not need a warehouse to sell on Amazon. When you learn how to sell on Amazon without inventory, there are a couple of methods you can utilize. You can use Amazon’s fulfillment services, called Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), to store, pack, and ship your products. Likewise, the dropshipping model allows you to offer products, directly from suppliers, without maintaining physical stock.
Can I Sell On Amazon Without A Business License?
Yes, in most cases, it is possible to sell on Amazon without a business license. However, you will need to provide certain information to Amazon to register as a seller, such as your legal name, address, and tax identification number. Depending on your location and the products you are selling, you may also need to obtain certain permits or licenses to comply with local regulations.
What Is The Difference Between Amazon FBA And Dropshipping?
Amazon FBA stores and ships products from their fulfillment centers. Meanwhile, dropshipping doesn’t require sellers to hold any inventory. Instead, dropshippers send the order details to a supplier who ships directly to customers.
Conclusion
Ultimately, knowing how to sell on Amazon without inventory enables us to run an online business with minimal risk, almost no upfront investments, and high-profit potential. This is because we don’t have to worry about losses or unsold goods. Plus, by knowing how to sell on Amazon without inventory, we can take advantage of their existing customer base. That way, we can start selling even without investing in marketing.
Now, to help us further when we’re selling on Amazon without inventory, check out these useful articles:
