Is retail arbitrage on amazon still worth doing?

Most people who stick with it end up doing online arbitrage instead, buying from retailers' websites. You can check hundreds of products from a desk in the time one store run takes, and the receipts are cleaner. Whichever you do, put prep, shipping to the warehouse and storage into your numbers before you buy, not only the referral fee. That's where most of the margin goes.

People still make it work but it's a grind, and the margins after fees are thinner than the youtube videos suggest. The bits that catch beginners: a lot of brands are gated, and Amazon usually won't accept a retail store receipt as proof for ungating, it wants invoices from a distributor. Some brand owners also file complaints against arbitrage sellers, and a few of those can put your account at risk. Scan everything with the Amazon Seller app before buying, it shows whether you're even allowed to list it and roughly what fees come off. If you treat it as a way to learn the platform with small money, fine. As a long-term business most people move on to wholesale or their own product.