How to start Amazon wholesale with a small budget

You do not need tens of thousands of dollars to start wholesale, but with a small budget every mistake costs more. A single slow product can lock up half your money for months. Here is how to start Amazon wholesale with a small budget: how much you need, where to spend it first and how to grow it.

How much do you really need?

Count three things, not just the stock:

• Stock: enough to buy from at least one supplier at their minimum order, across several products.
• Getting it to Amazon: freight, prep, labels and inbound shipping, often 5 to 15 percent on top of the stock. See how to calculate landed cost.
• Running costs: the Amazon seller plan, a few months of storage and the invoice orders you may need for brand approvals.

Many sellers start with roughly $2,000 to $5,000. Less is possible, but it leaves very little room for a product that does not sell.

Keep a reserve

Do not spend everything on the first order. Keep around a fifth of your budget back to reorder the products that sell. Amazon pays out every two weeks, and the products that work will need restocking before the first payouts have built up.

Choose suppliers with small minimums

A supplier with a $5,000 minimum is out of reach; one with a $500 minimum or no minimum is not. Distributors usually have lower minimums than brands and carry many brands in one order. Ask every supplier for a smaller first order or mixed cases. Many agree for a new account, especially when you are clear that you plan to reorder.

Spread the money across products

Put no more than about 10 to 20 percent of your stock budget into any one product, and buy several products rather than a big quantity of one. If one turns out slow, the others keep the cash moving. Prefer products that sell fast over products with the highest ROI: with a small budget, the speed at which money comes back matters more than the return on a single unit.

Be strict about what you buy

• Set firm targets before you look at a price list, for example a 30 percent ROI on landed cost and at least $3 profit per unit.
• Skip products that need brand approval for now; you cannot afford stock you cannot list. Check eligibility first.
• Skip crowded listings and listings where Amazon sells; they are where price wars and dead stock come from.
• Order only what you can sell in a month or two; see how many units to order first.

Reinvest and repeat

For the first months, put the profit back into stock. Reorder the products that sold as expected, drop the ones that did not, and add one or two new products from your next price list each round. Growth on a small budget comes from turning the money over quickly, not from a big first order.

Make the budget go further

Wholesale Analyzer helps you spend a small budget on the right products. Enter your available capital and your maximum investment per product in the wholesale settings. Every scan then sizes the first order of each product to your limits and the supplier's MOQ, and the capital allocation view picks the mix of BUY products with the best profit for your money, with a limit per brand. You can try it on the first 50 products of a supplier list for free every month.