One of my side hustles that I have been scaling up during lockdown whilst working from home is my Amazon FBA business. I have been selling on Amazon since my second year of uni when I was nineteen. At this point, I was mainly selling books and I was dispatching them and dealing with it all myself. Last June I got started selling books on Amazon FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon) where I could buy the books and then ship them to Amazon who would store them and dispatch them from their warehouse. This worked really well for me as the sourcing of the stock was the part I enjoyed the most and so I could do that but not deal with the other part such as packaging the books and posting them. I also didn’t have to store them in my flat! In March I realised I wasn’t really expanding my business at all, it was steadily bringing in £200-300 a month which was great but I wasn’t reinvesting any back into the business to grow it. So in March I started doing Online Arbitrage on Amazon FBA which is what I have been working on recently!

What is Online Arbitrage?

Online Arbitrage is the idea of buying something online at a certain price and selling it on Amazon for a higher price. There are loads of deals like this out there where items may be on sale or a discount at one retailer and selling on Amazon for a higher price. The items might not necessarily be on sale either as Amazon can demand a higher price due to services they offer such as Amazon Prime delivery which are appealing to customers. 

How does it work? 

So it’s quite simple really. I buy my items online at, say Boots as an example. They arrive at my house and I then send them to Amazon. I might have to prepare the shipment for Amazon by putting bar code stickers on the items but I then ship them off to Amazon. Amazon receives the parcel and places the items into my inventory. They then sell them for me and send them off on my behalf. It really is as simple as it sounds! 

What do I buy? 

I buy a huge variety of items from lots of different sites and categories, from beauty, to toys and games, to DIY. There are loads of deals to be had out there an because Amazon sells such a wide range of products, it’s not too difficult to find good deals to sell! 

How much money can I make?

This is a side hustle that can vary hugely. If you would like £200 extra a month, that is totally do able but if you would like to scale your business and make £1500 a month and maybe turn it into a full time income, you can do that too! It depends on the money you have available to put into buying stock of course as the larger pot of money that you can put in then the sooner you can be earning more money as you can buy more stock to sell on! I started with £250 as my pot of money in March and last month I made £1500 profit so it definitely is do able to make the extra money to put in. You can also use cashback services to get cashback on the items you buy as an added extra source of income!

How do I learn how to do it?

I would recommend going to YouTube as the place to start. There are lots of people making content who really know what they are talking about making easy to watch videos on YouTube. One of my favourites is Christos Fellas who makes great content about Amazon FBA documenting his journey. I will also be answering questions on here so if you have anything specific you want to find out then let me know!