Beyond the A: Selling Grocery Items Outside of Amazon

While selling on Amazon will be key to your flipping business, there may be occasions when it is in your best interest to sell your grocery items on another platform. In this post, I will discuss the best platform for selling grocery items, outside of Amazon, along with when to integrate this additional channel into your sales strategy.

A few months into my Amazon selling journey, I came across this awesome product to flip. I looked it up in my Seller app and found that it checked all the boxes: low purchase price, good Amazon sales rank, a healthy profit margin, and only 2 other sellers on the listing. I was so excited that I bought 5 of the products on the spot and took them home with plans to list on Amazon later that evening.

In my excitement, I overlooked a crucial part of accessing a product’s sales potential; Ensuring I could sell the product on Amazon without restriction. When I attempted to list the product, I discovered that I was gated in the brand (ie. the brand required proof of purchase from a wholesaler or distributor). I of course purchased the item from a dollar store, so I could not offer the required receipts showing I had permission to sell. I was disappointed but determined to find somewhere to sell this item because it was such a great deal.

That somewhere was eBay! I listed the product on eBay and within two weeks, all five I purchased were sold. You may not immediately think of eBay when selling grocery items, but with more than 1.6 million users, it is an invaluable resource to leverage as an Amazon Seller. Below are a few situations in which listing your grocery item on eBay is a good idea.

Your product is gated on Amazon – As a verified grocery seller, you will always have the ability to sell in the Amazon grocery category, however, there is no guarantee you will always be able to sell certain brands. Some grocery brands require proof of purchase from a wholesaler or distributor before allowing you to sell their items on Amazon. If you end up with a product that requires additional brand approvals you don’t have, try listing it on eBay before opting to return to the store.

• Your product expiration is outside Amazon’s policy – Do you have a product that has either recently expired or has an expiration date within the next three months? Try listing the item on eBay. The great thing about eBay is that you can easily create listings that allow you to identify a product’s expiration date in the title, so buyers are fully informed and can decide if they want to purchase the product or not.

• You have a product you wish to sell in bundles – Have great products that you would like to sell as a set? eBay is the perfect platform. You can create listings for product lots in any size.

• You want to offer volume discounts – Do you want to offer buyers a discount if they decide to purchase more than one of your items? While Amazon does not have the functionality, eBay does. You can offer discounts starting at 10% off if buyers choose to buy more than one of your products.

I’ve come to view eBay as an essential component of my overall sales strategy. I encourage you to consider the channel for any of the reasons above or even if you want to sell your grocery items across multiple channels. After all, profits are profits regardless of where they came from.