Starting an Online Business All-in-One For Dummies®, 3rd Edition

Taking Advantage of Other Selling Opportunities with Amazon WebStores

Amazon has cleverly created several opportunities to make money using its site, products, and technologies. Truly, there's an opportunity for just about everyone. In addition to those we discuss earlier in this chapter, Amazon has two other programs, or Web stores.

The first, aStore, is the simplest way to get started. You don't even need your own inventory to sell using this method. Instead, Amazon allows you to examine its entire inventory of products and select which ones you want to sell. You sell them from a storefront that Amazon provides to you, at no charge. You can add the storefront to an existing Web site you already own or create a unique domain name (a URL) especially for your new Web store. Did we mention that it's entirely free?

What's the catch? Each time a product is sold, you earn only a small commission. In other words, you probably won't get rich serving as the Amazon.com middleman, but you can earn a few extra bucks.

Because the site has such an extensive selection of products, you can also use this option as a no-cost method of testing different types of products and how they might sell on your Web site, before investing in similar types of inventory. It's also a useful quick-start way to start selling products on a new site or on a blog for an extra revenue source.

Figure 2-7 shows an ...