A common question of people who want to sell on Amazon is “what can I sell on Amazon without approval?”
If you’re like most sellers, you want to start selling on Amazon ASAP without the hassle of going through approval.
Products with no approval requirement are the fastest and easiest way to get your products listed on Amazon.
There are tons of products you can sell on Amazon without approval. Though it often depends on the category to that your product belongs. Each category is divided into subcategories that hold specific products.
There are instances that your product will not require approval in the main category but needs in the subcategory.
There are approximately 24 categories that are open or ungated on Amazon. Although being a seller on Amazon is pretty easy, becoming an approved seller (which allows you to sell products that require approval) is tough.
Many first-time Amazon sellers try to figure out which products require approval, and which don’t. And they try to find loopholes so they can sell products that require approval without having to go through the application process.
Here’s the list of the Ungated categories:
- Baby (certain subcategories require approval.)
- Beauty
- Books
- Camera & Photo
- Clothing & Accessories
- Consumer Electronics
- Grocery & Gourmet Foods
- Health & Personal Care
- Home & Garden
- Industrial & Scientific (BISS)
- Kindle Accessories
- Luggage & Travel Accessories
- Musical Instruments
- Office Products
- Outdoors
- Personal Computers
- Pet Supplies
- Shoes, Handbags, & Sunglasses
- Software
- Sports
- Tools & Home Improvement
- Toys (certain subcategories require approval. Additionally, approval may be required during the winter holiday season.)
- Video Games (approval may be required for specific products)
Please note that product category restrictions may vary based on the marketplace. For instance, certain products or product categories that are restricted on Amazon US may not be restricted on Amazon Europe.
GATED VS UNGATED CATEGORIES
Amazon has a number of categories on its marketplace that are considered “ungated” meaning that no approval is required for you to sell in these categories. These are products that Amazon considers low risk so they do not require sellers to apply for approval before listing items.
Gated Categories are otherwise products that require approval. The reason behind this is consumer safety- It is Amazon’s number one priority. Gated categories are typically categories where it’s easier for scammers to sell fraudulent products.
So verifying the sellers and listed items reduces the risk of fraudulent products selling on the site.
These products tend to have strict rules and regulations around them depending on your product, marketplace, and national laws, which makes it difficult for new Amazon sellers to be approved to sell them.
If you’re a new Amazon seller, I recommend you avoid products that belong to gated categories and know what products to avoid.
WHY DO SELLERS RISK ON SELLING ITEMS IN GATED CATEGORIES?
One reason why sellers are taking risks to sell gated products is because of low competition. By selling products in gated categories, you are eliminating the competition of sellers who don’t want to bother with the hassle of having to dive into a lot of paperwork for approval.
The competition on Amazon is getting fiercer and finding a profitable product is getting tougher. Therefore, more sellers are going for products with high profits that have less competition within gated categories.
Here’s a list of categories with approval requirements:
- Automotive & Powersports.
- Collectible Coins.
- Entertainment Collectibles.
- Fine Art.
- Sports Collectibles.
- Video, DVD, & Blu-ray.
- Music.
- Watches.
- Amazon Handmade.
- Gift Cards.
HOW TO FIND THE BEST PRODUCTS TO SELL ON AMAZON WITHOUT APPROVAL?
There are many ways to search for products that are profitable without using paid tools. But if you want an in-depth and comprehensive way, you can perform Amazon data scraping using Helium10. This technique will give you data on which products are best selling and profitable within a certain category.
To do this, I recommend you sign up for Helium10 and install Helium10’s chrome extension to get access to the X-ray tool.
By using the X-ray tool, you can perform research on what are the profitable products in a certain category and subcategory.
Step 1.
Go to Amazon.com and choose the category without approval that we provided above. For example, Baby Products
Step 2.
Step 2. Select the subcategories until you are in the last sub-category. There are usually 4-5 subcategories depending on the product. In the Baby Products category, there are 15 subcategories and each subcategory has its own sub-category. For example, the subcategory Activity & Entertainment has the 2nd subcategories.
If you click one of the 2nd subcategories, it will bring you to 3rd subcategory. Let’s say you want to sell a product within Activity Centers. The Activity center is the last category within Activity & Entertainment. It is then you can run an X-ray to see which products are the best selling.
Step 3
Once you’re in the last subcategory, choose the bestseller
Step 4.
Once there, run the X-ray tool and it will give you a list and reports of the products and sellers who are competing in that certain subcategory. Click the Helium10 extension and choose X-ray- Amazon Product Research.
In this example, you can see that it is profitable to sell within this category. The average revenue is $189,011 with 4,751 average reviews which means the competition is high for this product.
If you decide to sell within this category, you can further your research by checking calculating profit, checking the Google trends, or spying on your top competitors.
FINAL THOUGHTS
There are tons of profitable products within ungated categories. With the right product research techniques, you’ll find the winning products you can start selling on Amazon and earn. The key to Amazon’s success is by taking every chance and working on it.
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