Blog ·
Which Amazon Categories Have Profitable Arbitrage Deals (And Which Never Will)
Max VershininFounder of Arbitrage Heroamazon categoriesonline arbitrageproduct sourcing
Short answer: most online arbitrage deals come from four categories: Clothing, Shoes and Jewelry; Sports and Outdoors; Tools and Home Improvement; and Home and Kitchen. A separate group can never produce a deal at all, because each one sells something that cannot be boxed and shipped: Audible Books and Originals; Apps and Games; Alexa Skills; the Kindle Store; Digital Music; Magazine Subscriptions and Mac Software. The fastest way to tell the two groups apart is the FBA fee: no fee usually means no physical product to ship.
Most online arbitrage sellers have done this: picked a category, set the filters, run a scan and got nothing worth buying. The usual reaction is to loosen the filters and try again. Often that is the wrong move, because some categories cannot produce a deal at all, and no filter setting will change that.
The two most common reasons a category comes back empty are quite different from each other, and they call for different responses. This article explains both, then shows where the deals actually are.
Reason one: the goods are digital, so there is nothing to buy and ship
Online arbitrage has a physical requirement built into it. You buy an item from a retailer, it arrives at your address or at a prep centre, and it goes into an Amazon warehouse. Any category whose products cannot make that journey is closed to arbitrage from the start.
On Amazon that rules out a long list:
- Audible Books and Originals: audiobooks are downloads.
- Apps and Games: software delivered straight to a device.
- Alexa Skills: voice apps, most of them free, with no price to compare against.
- Kindle Store: ebooks.
- Digital Music: downloads and streaming.
- Magazine Subscriptions: a subscription is not a product you can box up.
- Mac Software: the download-only listings. Boxed and USB software sits in the separate Software category and does ship, so read the warning below before excluding anything.
There is one quick test that catches all of them at once: look at the FBA fee. Amazon charges a fulfilment fee for picking, packing and shipping a physical unit. If a listing carries no FBA fee, that usually means Amazon is not shipping anything, so you cannot send anything in either. Treat it as a strong signal rather than a certainty: fee data is sometimes simply missing on a physical listing, and a merchant-fulfilled offer can also show no FBA fee. Confirm in the FBA calculator before you write a product off.
Watch out for the physical twin
Several of those categories have a sourceable twin sitting right next to them, and confusing the two is one of the most common early mistakes. The Kindle Store holds the ebook; the printed edition of the very same title lives in Books, ships like any other product, and is perfectly good to source. Digital Music holds the download; the CD or vinyl pressing of the same album sits in CDs and Vinyl. Streaming video is not sourceable; the DVD and Blu-ray discs in Movies and TV are.
Software is the one to be careful about in the other direction. It is easy to assume the whole category is downloads and write it off. It is not. Many of its listings are boxed or USB editions of office suites, operating systems and dictation tools, and those ship exactly like any other physical product. Exclude the download-only listings by the FBA fee rule rather than excluding the category. The same caution applies to Video Games, where the disc and the download code sit side by side.
It is also worth building this test into your filters for another reason. The ROI formula subtracts the FBA fee from your proceeds. When the fee is missing, the ROI you see is calculated without a cost that a real physical product would carry, so it comes out higher than it should. A listing showing a large margin and a zero FBA fee deserves a second look before you spend money on it.
Reason two: the listing has no sales rank, so nothing can be judged
Sales rank is the main public signal of how fast a product sells. It is what separates a product you will clear in three weeks from one that will sit in a warehouse accruing storage fees. A listing with no rank cannot be scored at all, so many sourcing tools exclude unranked listings whether or not the price gap looks attractive. Ours does the same.
Some groups of listings almost never carry a usable rank:
- Browse nodes that are badges rather than departments. "Climate Pledge Friendly" is a label Amazon applies across many real departments. Products can end up filed under the badge itself, where there is no department to be ranked within.
- Amazon Autos: vehicles are not an FBA product.
- Digital Educational Resources: course material and teaching packs.
- Brand new listings. A product that has not sold yet has no rank yet. This one is temporary yet still real: you have no evidence, so you are guessing.
This second group differs from the first in an important way. The products can be entirely real and physical. What is missing is the evidence that they sell. Buying against an unranked listing is not arbitrage, it is a bet on demand you have not measured.
Where the deals actually concentrate
Once the categories that cannot work are set aside, the remaining ones are far from equal. Deals cluster heavily, and the cluster is consistent.
Clothing, Shoes and Jewelry produces more online arbitrage deals than any other category, by a wide margin. Sports and Outdoors comes next, then Tools and Home Improvement and Home and Kitchen. Together these four account for the large majority of what a broad scan returns.
Three things explain the pattern, and each one is a hint about where to look next:
- Many retailers carry the same branded goods. A price gap needs two sellers of one product. Apparel and sporting brands are stocked by dozens of chains at once, so the same item is on many shelves at many prices. Our supported stores list is weighted toward exactly these retailers for that reason.
- Markdowns are frequent and deep. Seasonal clothing and outdoor gear go to clearance on a predictable schedule. Categories without a season, like most industrial supplies, discount far less often.
- Identifiers are clean. Apparel and hardware carry barcodes that both the retailer and Amazon publish, so a product can be matched to the right listing with confidence. Categories where identifiers are missing or reused produce fewer trustworthy matches. Apparel is not perfect here either: the same barcode is often reused across sizes and colourways, so check that the match is the exact variation before you buy.
Below those, the numbers fall away quickly. Categories such as Appliances and Collectibles and Fine Art do produce deals, but very few. That is worth knowing before you spend a week specialising in one of them. Gift Cards are a separate case and should simply be excluded: Amazon restricts the category, and it is not open to third-party sellers on FBA.
Three things that look better than they are
Amazon Renewed
Renewed products are refurbished. When a sourcing tool compares a retailer's new-item price against a Renewed listing's price, it is comparing two different products, and the margin it reports is not real. Renewed also has its own approval requirements for sellers. Filter this category out rather than working through it item by item.
Anything with a zero FBA fee
Worth repeating in its own right, because it does not only appear in digital categories. A physical product whose fee data is missing will show an inflated ROI, and it will sort to the top of a list ordered by ROI. The most attractive-looking rows in a scan are the ones most likely to be missing a cost.
A single sales-rank threshold used everywhere
Rank is relative to the size of the category, not an absolute measure of demand. The very same rank number can mean a healthy, regular seller in a huge category like Books and close to dead stock in a smaller one like Beauty and Personal Care. Carry one global threshold across every category and you will either filter out every book deal or fill a warehouse with slow inventory elsewhere. Set the threshold per category, or use a measure expressed as a share of the category that already accounts for its size.
A filter checklist that saves scan time
- Exclude the digital categories outright. They will never return a buyable result.
- Require an FBA fee above zero. This single rule removes the digital tail and the inflated-ROI rows in one step.
- Set the sales-rank limit per category rather than once globally.
- Set a minimum profit in currency, not only a minimum ROI percentage. A spectacular ROI percentage on a very cheap item is still a small amount of money, and it will not cover your time or your prep cost.
- Exclude Amazon Renewed.
- Check the pack quantity. A multipack at the retailer against a single unit on Amazon is the most common source of a margin that disappears at checkout.
- Confirm the fees on the winners with an FBA calculator before you buy, rather than trusting the scan alone.
The short version
A category returns nothing for one of two reasons, and telling them apart saves real time. Either the goods cannot be bought and shipped, in which case no filter will ever help and you should exclude the category permanently, or the listings carry no sales rank, in which case the products may be real but you have no evidence they sell.
Everything else is a question of where to concentrate. Clothing and shoes, sports and outdoors, tools and home improvement, and home and kitchen are where the volume is, because many retailers carry the same branded goods and discount them often. Start there, keep the FBA fee rule switched on, and set your rank limits per category rather than once for everything.
Keep reading
- How to Find Profitable Amazon Online Arbitrage Deals in 3 Minutes - the filter workflow this checklist plugs into.
- How to Choose Replenishable Amazon Products That Sell Consistently - what to do once a category is producing deals worth repeating.
- 10 Beginner Mistakes in Online Arbitrage - the pack-quantity and missing-cost traps in more detail.
- How to Do Reverse Sourcing (The Right Way) - starting from the Amazon listing instead of the shop shelf.
- Is Online Arbitrage Still Worth It? - the wider case, beyond category choice.
Frequently asked questions
Which Amazon categories are best for online arbitrage?
Clothing, Shoes and Jewelry produces the most deals by a wide margin, followed by Sports and Outdoors, Tools and Home Improvement, and Home and Kitchen. They lead for the same reason in each case: many retailers stock the same branded goods, those goods are discounted on a predictable seasonal schedule, and they carry clean barcodes that match reliably to the right Amazon listing.
Why does a category return no results even when I loosen the filters?
Because loosening filters cannot fix either of the two real causes. If the category sells digital goods, there is no physical item to buy and ship, so no setting will produce a buyable result. If the listings carry no sales rank, they are excluded on purpose, since without a rank there is no evidence the product sells at all. Widening the filters only adds rows you should not buy.
Can you do online arbitrage on Kindle books or Audible audiobooks?
No. Both are downloads, so there is nothing to purchase at a retailer and send into an Amazon warehouse. The printed edition of the same title is a different matter entirely: it lives in the Books category, ships like any other physical product, and is perfectly sourceable. Mixing the two up is one of the most common early mistakes.
What does a zero FBA fee on a listing mean?
It usually means Amazon is not physically shipping that item, so you cannot send it in either. It is the quickest single test for whether a category is sourceable at all, though not an infallible one: fee data is occasionally missing on a genuine physical listing, and merchant-fulfilled offers show no FBA fee either. It matters twice over, because the ROI calculation subtracts the FBA fee: when the fee is missing, the returned ROI is computed without a cost a real product would carry, so it reads higher than the truth.
Should I use the same sales rank filter for every category?
No, because rank is relative to how big the category is rather than an absolute measure of demand. The same rank number can describe a steady seller in a huge category like Books and near-dead stock in a much smaller one. Set the limit per category, or use a measure expressed as a share of the category, which accounts for size automatically.
Is Amazon Renewed worth sourcing?
Generally not for online arbitrage. Renewed listings are refurbished units, so comparing them against a new item on a retailer's shelf sets two different products side by side and reports a margin that does not exist. Renewed also carries its own seller approval requirements. Filtering the category out is faster than checking its listings one at a time.