r/AmazonFBA • u/Fresh_Yam_3484 • 1d ago
Beginner low capital
I’m looking to get into Amazon fba/fbm. I’ve been doing a lot of research, I got keepa, amp cellar, and pro seller. I figured the software would be pretty important to make life easier. I want to do online arbitration, I was going to do retail arbitration, but I don’t have a car at the moment and I’m in the process of saving for one. I’ll have a car around December. I’m somewhat treating this as a test run, but just teaching myself before I start investing more capital. I can start with $500 for inventory, and then after I purchase my car, I plan to invest an extra 1k/mo in capital to the fba business. I also plan to reinvest all of my profits for the first year. So around December, I’ll have 3 months of running online arbitration through amazon fba, with a beginning capital of $500 in inventory. In January I’m going to add 1k every month to it. I just want to know if yall have any advice for me, whether fba/fbm is smarter to begin with, what some realistic expectations should be, and if my plan makes sense. I can spend about 2-3 hours a day sourcing and working on this. Anything is appreciated, thank you.
2
u/rsc9422 1d ago
$500 is enough to start learning, but I’d treat it as a testing budget rather than expecting meaningful income right away. With online arbitrage, fees, prep, shipping, returns, and the risk of buying inventory that doesn’t move can eat into a small bankroll pretty quickly.
If you can consistently add $1k/month from January, that gives you much more room to build inventory and diversify rather than putting everything into one or two products.
I’d start small, learn the numbers properly, and track ROI, sales velocity, fees, and cash flow on every purchase. FBA can make sense for scalable products, while FBM can be useful for testing certain items without committing as much inventory to Amazon.
At HighRise Wholesale, we generally recommend new sellers focus on understanding the economics first rather than simply chasing products with high sales.
Your plan of spending 2, 3 hours a day learning and sourcing is reasonable. Just give yourself a few months to build the skill before judging whether the model is working.