Most Profitable Items To Sell On Amazon

What are the most profitable items to sell on Amazon? There’s a couple of main ways to sell using Amazon. The easiest of which is to join Amazon’s affiliate program and promote existing products. Or you can sell your own products using “fulfilment by Amazon”. Handmade products are some of the most profitable items you can sell, if you have your own products to sell. But what if you don’t?

The simplest way to sell using Amazon is to join Amazon’s partner program and become an affiliate who sells existing products from the site. Affiliates are third party referrers and they earn commissions simply by referring customers to products and services online.

While Amazon’s affiliate commissions are quite low, the site is hugely popular and well trusted. Most people are comfortable buying from Amazon. A recent study found that 89% of consumers are more likely to buy from Amazon than other E-Commerce stores.

Most Profitable Products To Sell On Amazon

Since commissions are pretty low on Amazon compared to digital products, for example, you would be well advised to seek out the more profitable items to sell if you’re going to promote their products. Amazon’s commissions range from 1% to 20% with most items falling between 1% and 10%. Have a look at this recent commission structure (US affiliates):

As you can see, Amazon’s rates range from 0% on some items all the way up to 20% in the Amazon games category. So you can see that games will pay the most. Here’s the website which includes items from this category: amazongames.com. Everything else ranges from 0% (gift cards, for example) to 10%.

While Amazon’s commission rates are pretty low, it’s worth mentioning that you can pick up extra commissions should your referring affiliate also checkout with a bunch of other items in their cart (having bought from your affiliate link).

A cookie signals to Amazon that your affiliate link determines that you’ll earn from a purchase. But it only lasts a day. So if they don’t buy within 24 hours of clicking your link, you won’t get the commission! However, if they place the product in their basket, to checkout at a later date, you have a further 89 days to qualify for commission should they purchase within this time. Anyway, I digress!

Most Profitable Items To Sell On Amazon

Having seen the commission structure on Amazon, it make sense to focus on selling in the categories listed which have the highest percentage commission. So, “Amazon games” would qualify but the products are limited. The next category is “Luxury Beauty, Luxury Stores Beauty, Amazon Explore” and this category pays 10% commission. At 5% commission, the next category, you will find Digital Music, Physical Music, Handmade, Digital Videos. After this you will find the commission levels dropping further.

But there’s another way to find the most profitable items to sell on Amazon, and that’s by price. Let’s have a look at some products in order of their price. To do this we can find something which is going to be the most costly.

By typing in the product you want to promote, you can zone in on the most expensive item in that category. For example, I’m using the search for “jewellery”. Once you have clicked on search, scroll across the page and click on the checkbox (sort by*) on the right hand side. Then click on Price: High to low. You should then see the most costly items in your search.

Here I have found some gold and silver jewellery worth from £4-£5K. Looking back at the commission structure, you can see this would generate a commission of 4%. So for the Silver necklace at £4,647, you could earn a commission of £185.88. That’s not great really for an item worth nearly £5000!

Let’s try another category which will perform better “handmade”. Type handmade into the search bar on Amazon and you’ll find a bunch of items. Zone into the most expensive by clicking on the sort function. You can sometimes find this on the left hand side of the page:

We know from the chart above that “handmade” items fall into the 5% commission structure. Here’s a few of the items which came up in the £1000 and above price range:

Here’s an item I found listed for £29,000 in this category. Sell that and you’ll make £1450!

Considering the price of this item, £1450 still seems pretty low. But that’s because Amazon offers low levels of commission to its affiliates. With high priced items such as this too, it will be more difficult to sell. Lower value products from Amazon are more likely to sell “en-mass” than a very niche product such as the one in the image above.

Other Considerations:

When choosing the best products to sell as an affiliate, there’s another important consideration other than the cost/commission of the product. That is, how you will sell the product in the first place? If you’re selling high valued products, you perhaps don’t need as many sales as you would with a lower valued item. But no sales still means zero commissions, so you need to weigh up your marketing strategy against your commission structure.

Higher valued products on Amazon are likely to sell less well than low valued items, which are more affordable for most people. But high ticket items do sell. The question is does Amazon pay well enough for you to put the work in to make only small commissions or the odd occasional sale. I do use Amazon as an affiliate but the commissions I get are pretty low. So I focus on selling digital products which carry recurring commissions and high ticket digital sales instead.

Your niche is another consideration too. Before choosing your niche, it’s worth considering whether you’ll be building a lot of content in it. If so, ideally choose a niche you have some interest in, otherwise it’s much more difficult to sustain. See also the best niche for affiliate marketing.

Other High Ticket Physical Products To Sell

Take a look at another website which you can become an affiliate for and some of the higher ticket items you can sell.

Hammacher Schlemmer offers a number of high ticket items you can sell as an affiliate. You’ll earn 8% commission on any sales you make for the company.

Consider also using digital products too. The most profitable digital products to sell are high ticket educational products, such as training and mentoring courses. Subscription affiliate products are a good choice too because they continue to pay you long after you have made the sale. These are things like software products, plugins and memberships.