There is a massive lie floating around the e-commerce world. You have probably heard it a dozen times: you need five or ten thousand dollars just to get your foot in the door on Amazon. It is the kind of talk that makes most people give up before they even scan their first barcode. But the truth is, you do not need a massive bankroll. As long as you just have a willingness to hustle & a game plan for starting with less.

So in this quick article we’re gonna give you that game plan. One of our founders, Warner, began their journey using the savings from a minimum wage high school job. That small start eventually snowballed into a $7 million Amazon business. If you are sitting there with $100 in your pocket, you are not out of the game. You are exactly where you need to be to start building your own snowball.

Making Every Dollar Count

When you are starting with $100, you can’t afford to waste money on nnnecessary supplies. Your goal is to put your money where it can actually grow. In the beginning, that means almost every cent goes toward inventory.

Ideally, you want to spend about $80 to $85 of that first $100 on products. The remaining $15 covers your basics: tape, a few boxes, and labels. You can often find boxes for free behind local stores or on online marketplaces, so do not overspend there. Every dollar you save on tape is a dollar you can use to buy another profitable item at the store.

The Real Difference: What This Actually Means for Your Week‍

Sourcing Like a Pro in the Clearance Aisle

The fastest way to grow $100 is through clearance retail arbitrage. This just means going into a physical store, finding something on clearance, and selling it for the full price it is already going for on Amazon. Stores like TJ Maxx are gold mines for this because they have massive clearance sections where items are already heavily discounted.

When you are out sourcing, you need to look at the BSR, or the Best Sellers Rank. The lower that number is, the faster it sells. If you scan a lipstick item and see a rank of 6,000, that is a winner. It means that product is flying off the shelves hundreds of times a month. Typically items in the top 150k sales rank of a category are solidly in demand.

For example, last time Warner went to TJ Maxx personally, he found some makeup for $3 on the shelf. After checking the stats, we see it sells for a $5.60 profit. That is over-doubling your money & is the type of extra work that helps you stretch a small startup budget. 

To make sure you aren't getting tricked by a temporary price spike, you need to look at historical data. You want to see that the price has been steady for months so you don't get stuck when other sellers start tanking the price.

The Shortcut to Getting Approved

One of the biggest headaches for new sellers is being gated. You try to list a big name brand like Dewalt or Olay, and Amazon tells you that you need permission. Most people think they can only get approved to sell brands by buying lots of inventory from wholesalers. 

You can use the Bulk Ungate feature in Boxem. Even while you are on a free trial, you can run a scan that automatically applies for approval for thousands of brands at once. Often, Amazon will just grant you the rights to sell those brands based on your account health.

How should you make the sales?

You have probably heard of FBA, where you ship everything to Amazon and they handle the rest. While FBA is great for scaling, it has a major downside for the $100 starter: check-in lag. It can take two to four weeks for your items to actually show up as available for sale.

When you only have $100, you cannot wait a month to get paid. You need that money back now so you can go buy more stock. This is why you should start with FBM, or Fulfilled by Merchant.‍

Getting those quick sales early via FBM is going to be the priority.‍

With FBM, you keep the product at your house. You list it on your phone while you are still standing in the store. Sometimes, the item sells before you even finish checking out at the register. You then print a label, stick it on a box, and drop it off at the post office. This keeps your cash flowing and your snowball growing.

Scaling to the Laptop Life

Once you have turned that $100 into $1,000 or $2,000, the game changes. You can stop driving to stores and start sourcing from your laptop. This is online arbitrage. You will find items like this, selling at the brand’s website for $13 with a volume discount that sells for $32 on Amazon.

Now, instead of finding ten different lipsticks, you can buy 100 units of one product. The ROI might be lower, but the volume is much higher. Eventually, you can hire virtual assistants and use prep centers so you never have to touch a box again. But remember, it all starts with that first $100 and the first scan.

Want to see the full video that explains all of this in more detail, including the exact sourcing methods we used to find these products? Watch the full guide here on YouTube for free: