Do you want to be a seller on the world’s biggest marketplace? That’s great! But there are many Amazon product categories to choose from that can make life difficult for beginners.
What’s the first question that comes to your mind the moment you think of starting an online business? Most of the time, it is what kind of products to sell. With over 400 million items sold on the site, deciding what to sell is the toughest part of the entire online seller journey.
Since there are many Amazon product categories to choose from, how do you find the winning niche for you? How do sellers determine the items with the most demand and least competition at the same time? Can you accurately predict what categories would work given their historical data?
In this article, we are going to cover what is the most profitable category in the platform. We’ll discuss other top Amazon product categories offering the most opportunity to grow as a third-party seller.
Table of Contents
What are the most popular Amazon product categories?
A wise seller looks into the market and finds what consumers are buying. After all, selling t-shirts in the Himalayas is not the best idea at all, right? So, you must understand your customers and the items you are selling in the market. Even in a low-demand category, you can still make some money if you can dominate the top spots in the marketplace.
When it comes to selling online, deciding on what to sell are a very important decision. It makes up most of your initial plan and it can make or break your whole business. Choosing the right Amazon product categories can get your business rolling right at the start. However, choosing the wrong one can break the bank and even burn your capital investment.
To help you out, we have made this list containing the top categories in 2021. Let’s look into these top Amazon product categories in this article so you can make a wise decision to scale your business.
Top 10 Amazon Product Categories.
- Home & Kitchen
- Sports & Outdoors
- Toys & Games
- Beauty & Personal Care
- Health, Household & Baby Care
- Kitchen & Dining
- Office Items
- Garden & Outdoor
- Tools & Home Improvement
- Pet Supplies
Home and Kitchen
Without a doubt, this is one of the Amazon product categories that had a boom during the pandemic. Because so many people are stuck in their houses, boredom found a way inside their homes. To pass the time and learn something new, most people turned to cook and baking as new skills to learn.
Because of this, the increase in the growth of home and kitchen has shot up the category into the top. Baking tools, cooking utensils, grills, and other home-cooking stuff have become bestsellers in the category.
Tools and Home Improvement
This category has always been one of the top-ranking categories in the platform. For years, home improvement tools have dominated the website and are set to continue the trend too. Most Americans love to tinker with their homes, and doing simple DIY stuff needs home improvement tools.
Some of the top sellers in this category include screw drills, patio improvement tiles, garage door repair kits, and more. Small tools are also great items to sell because they are small and easy to ship. Which means shipping would be less.
Toys and Games
Of course, this list wouldn’t be complete without this one. In any online marketplace, it would be hard to find a list without Toys and Games in the top category. And with the pandemic keeping more people in their homes, what else can they do to pass the time? Most likely, they will just play a game with their family and avoid stressing out, right?
To give you an example, the sales of Chess shot up to almost 1000% back during the pandemic. Although much of it can be attributed to the Netflix show “The Queen’s Gambit”, it’s still the same mentality. Games are always here to stay.
Aside from games, movie-themed and educational toys are also very big on the website. Characters from popular movies are always bestsellers during the Christmas season and Thanksgiving. There is also a myriad of educational and generic games that both kids and adults enjoy playing. AMZ also publishes its own annual Holiday Toy List showing the top 100 games and toys of the year. Customers are much more likely to buy gifts when they see something they like from the list.
Electronics
Tech and gadgets rule today’s world. Wherever you go, you’ll see something powered by electricity and that’s not even an understatement. The same thing also goes when it comes to the top Amazon product categories. You will always find the electronics on top, especially since some of the best-selling items on AMZ are their own.
Gadgets such as Fire TV stick, Echo, and Kindle are all manufactured and produced by Amazon itself. Televisions, pc parts, monitors, and other items are also very big in their way. The electronics category is a force to be reckoned with.
However, there is one thing that you need to learn about this category. If you plan to go head-to-head with the biggest sellers here, you’ll have a very hard time. Some of the top-selling vendors in this category are known brands like Apple. And you also have to compete with AMZ itself. Not only that, but Electronics are fragile to ship, so it might cost you more.
Books
Did you know that the AMZ website originally started as an online bookstore? Yes, you heard that right. AMZ was established as an online book store in Jeff Bezos’s garage back in the 1990s. So it is not a surprise to see Books as one of the top Amazon product categories.
Over the years, the Book section of AMZ has evolved to become digitally focused. Since AMZ is also selling Kindle, it just makes sense for them to sell digital books too. From epic adventure stories that have been turned into Hollywood films, to classic novels, the Book category has a lot to offer. On AMZ’s best-sellers list, some of the books that top the charts are also educational books used for learning in school.
Books are great options to sell in the marketplace because they fulfill a lot of criteria for a good category. First of all, they are small and easy to ship. They are also not fragile so you won’t have to worry about breaking them when shipped. Furthermore, they also don’t decay or rot, which means you don’t have to unload them fast. So if you are looking to enter the market as a new seller, this category is something you should consider.
Clothing, Shoes & Jewelry
Everyone wants to look good and feel good, and that’s just our human nature. No one wants to look bad and lose their confidence, right? Because of that, Clothing, Shoes & Jewelry stays as one of the top Amazon product categories on the platform.
Whether its shoes, clothes, winter clothing, or just basic casual wear, this category performs. There is so much traffic and interest in this category, and you will surely not run out of potential customers. Just make sure you have the proper permit to sell in this category before jumping in. Jewelry is a restricted category in the platform, so you need to get permission from AMZ.
Other categories are less relatively less traded in the market. Once you decide to become a seller, you have to sell multiple categories. If you choose to go for the categories that are not frequently traded in the market, it can be difficult.
You should always look to jump into such a market with less competitive categories. This is how you can land on the first page of the website.
Factors that define the Top Product Categories
Profitability
Profitability is the most important factor in defining the success of any store. But we have also tried to explain what items are sold more regardless of profitability.
Profit margin is directly related to the cost of the item and other related expenses. They can help bring the merchandise to a marketable stage. The average profit margin by selling on Amazon comes to 17-26%
With 28-26%, the most profitable categories to sell are computers, video games, books, and handmade items.
Profitability ranges from 2% to 200% and is the key to pushing your unknown item to sell like hotcakes on the site.
The most profitable categories are selling the most but there are too many subcategories under these primary categories. Some of these subcategories don’t sell well because there is a large competition, competition with Amazon, and a high PPC cost.
The basic theory here is whatever we do, you have to draw a clear picture of what you are going to sell. The merchandise that are high in demand and low in the competition are always good, but they are hard to find. So, considering the profitability factor alone is also not a good practice.
Average Monthly Sales
The average monthly sales of almost every top category come in between $1000 to $25000. Although they have high profitability, the monthly sales of books are $1000 and computers and musical instruments collect much higher sales up to $50000.
Selling Experience
This factor demands the experience of the sellers. Some categories that require high selling experiences are :
- Musical Instruments
- Tools & Home Improvement
- Apps & Games
- Automotive Parts & Accessories.
The other categories that don’t require high selling experiences are electronics and appliances.
Fulfillment method
Almost every category goes for fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) method while there are specific categories that go with FBM. Categories like Cell Phones, Computers, Apps & Games, and Handmade are popularly sold under FBM.
Business Model
Now you know the basic selling models that vendors usually adopt. So, let’s discuss in detail which product categories are fit to go with each business model.
- Private Label: This model is mostly used by new sellers selling categories of handmade and home & kitchen. It is less preferred in categories of books and Video Games.
- Retail Arbitrage: It is most famous for product categories like apps and games. It is less famous for industrial, scientific, and home and kitchen items.
- Wholesaling: Product categories under wholesaling are more popularly the items including grocery and musical instruments.
- Dropshipping: Dropshippers mostly prefer to sell Computes, Collectibles & Fine Art, Electronics while less prefer grocery items.
Meanwhile, Homemade sellers always want to sell handicraft items, fine arts, etc., and not beauty and personal care.
Reasons why the Home and Kitchen product category is very famous?
Home and kitchen items are everyday products. They are not huge and almost everyone needs some items of household and kitchen now and then.
Here are some additional reasons why this product category is famous:
- There is no listing barrier in this product category.
- There are endless product ideas under Home and Kitchen that can be explored each day.
- It is easy to find a supplier for this product category easily.
- Home and Kitchen items have fewer regulations to follow and face no restrictions to sell almost anytime during the year.
Things to be considered while selling any product category
As you know from the above that selling any product category can be profitable. But, what exactly will hit the bull’s eye is what you should choose. Here are some factors that you must not miss:
- Competing with Amazon: AMZ is always ahead of the game. It lists its products ahead of sponsored products and other private label sellers’ products. It generally has a lower cost than any other sellers in that product niche.
- Competing with other sellers: Popular product category is a huge market. You cannot deal with every specification of all the products available in the market. So, to compete with other co- sellers on the website, you have to choose specific sub-categories.
- Higher cost of advertising: The more saturated product categories will cost more on advertising. This is all because they have huge competitions.
Thus, when a new seller enters the market, he has to pay that increased cost which will increase his cost of advertising. You have to closely monitor your ad spent as you have a higher cost per click.
Now, Does it matter what product category you should be selling specifically?
If you saw the facts above, every product category is profitable and there are already thousands of sellers selling such products in the market. So, you have to invest a lot of time in finding the product category with minimum competition. But it’s not impossible.
Here are some important takeaways:
- The most important factors to decide a product category are the demand of the product and the result of your product research.
- Even if you find the best product category to sell, you have to follow through to make your business successful. You must continuously enhance yourself and continue your product research, product sourcing, negotiate pricing, and run a PPC campaign.
ZonBase: An all-inclusive Amazon Seller Tools Software to find Top-selling Products
Many products are selling profitably and it is hard to distinguish what product category has a high demand and low competition. For this, we have developed our own artificial intelligence-backed software to help you out.
Product research is your responsibility, but we want to make it easier. In addition, we also ensure that the product category you have chosen is validated. Zonbase is a tool that can help in the product research for you. With access to Amazon’s database, Zonbase can help you find the best Amazon product categories for your business.
Want to try it out? Check out Zonbase’s free 7-day trial.
