I'm new, want to know how to source for products

Unfortunately this is as long as it is short.

It largely depends on your budget, what your product knowledge is like, what route you want to take and what your storage facilities are like and finally whether you want to send the items yourself or by amazon. There are pros and cons to all of it.

There are two real routes on Amazon, the first is the arbitrage side, this is where you would buy from a wholesaler products that exist already, and then try and get them at a price that makes a profit, go to an existing product page and then add your offer and wait for a sale.

Once sold ship and wait.

This has pros, in that you dont have to creat a product, you dont need product numbers and you dont need professional pictures etc.

However, the cons are that a lot of companies are very very strict about who sells their items. A lot have agreements with online sellers that they cannot sell their items on amazon if they buy from them.

In addition, Parallel imports, whereby an EU or Non EU product is imported because its cheaper and sold cheaper can cause account issues and bans.

Then you also have to be aware of Amazons policy. This states, if you buy from a shop or anyone other than a retailer its classed as Used.

Even if its brand new in the box, the policy is because it was not sold by a wholesaler, its used. List as new and then you will get a request for documents and Tesco or Asda receipts wont be accepted.

Many fall foul of this for not reading the policy.

The second alternative is the Private label route, where you set up your company, often get a trademark and then source products, this can be from many sites, just type in product sourcing in google and it will bring them up.

In this version, you have to source the product, you have to go to GS1 UK and rent barcodes and each product (unless a GTIN exemption is granted by Amazon) has to have a barcode assigned which matches your company.

If it doesnt eventually it will be removed.

But once you have a trademark and a brand and barcode, you need to create a listing, find the keywords, write the description and get some pictures done.

You can do your own pictures now really inexpensively and Amazons app allows you to take pictures and remove backgrounds.

You then sell your products.

You can either have them stored at amazon, providing they are permitted, so not chemical or Haz materials unless allowed by amazon and then if they sell amazon pick pack and send for you and deal with any returns.

There is of course a fee attached to this including storage fee, but if you dont have warehousing or storage this can be a good option.

If Amazon store it, then you also get the Prime badge which can lead to more sales.

If you send yourself, then you would be responsible for this and sending them and have to comply with amazons valid tracking rate, which you can achieve by using buy shipping on Amazon.

With the private lable, you are responsible for the safety and testing of the products to ensure they meet all local standards in the marketplaces you are selling.

So it can be a little difficult at first to wrap your head around.

But what you cannot do is nip to a local store see a product at half price, buy it and put it up on Amazon for sale at the full price. That would be a quick way to a ban.

Unfortunately I dont think anyone is going to give you a direct source of their own products as who wants a competitor ? so if will be down to you to have a look at programmes like Helium or Jungle Scout and use them to identify which product you want to sell

Both programmes have trackers so you can see what you like and see how they sell and go from there, that should be a good start on your journey.

An absolute must though is that you watch the Amazon videos and make sure you read the policies.

It can save you a lot of heartache later on, with things such as copyright, trademarks, used sold as new complaints and how to deal with issues and what is expected