Amazon Renewed: How to Sell Certified Refurbished Products on Amazon

The thing that I love most about Amazon is that there always seems to be a new way to make money on their platform. Amazon Renewed (sometimes colloquially called “Amazon Refurbished”) is one of those opportunities, letting you sell refurbished products online — but also one that many people haven’t heard about. 

This guide covers the basics of what Amazon Renewed is, how to get started, what’s required of you as a seller, and how you can succeed selling certified-refurbished goods.

• What is Amazon Renewed?
  • What certified refurbished products can you sell online on Amazon Renewed?
• How to sell refurbished products on Amazon Renewed
  • 1. Register to become an Amazon seller
  • 2. Find product opportunities
  • 3. Source products
  • 4. Apply and qualify to sell on Amazon Renewed
  • 5. Start selling and grow your business
• Why sell refurbished products on Amazon Renewed?
• Tips to drive sales with Amazon Renewed

What is Amazon Renewed?

Amazon Renewed is a program that allows participants to grow their businesses by selling refurbished electronics — that is, products that have been cleaned, tested, and upgraded where necessary so they work like new.

There are three different types of products you can sell on Amazon Renewed:

1. Refurbished: Products that are likely used, and the customer either sent it back because it was faulty or they no longer wanted it.  
2. Pre-owned: Products that are likely used, but were in better condition when returned than a refurbished product may have been.
3. Open-box: Products whose packaging was opened but the actual product was not used.

Qualified sellers have these devices professionally inspected, tested, and cleaned so they look and work like new before repackaging and reselling them.

And with the program’s guarantee, buyers can rest assured that products purchased through Amazon Renewed will work like new — as promised. 

What certified refurbished products can you sell on Amazon Renewed?

Amazon Renewed is a program that enables products that can’t be billed as “new” (but are in high-quality enough condition to meet Amazon’s standards, as well as consumers’) to reach the Amazon marketplace.

Sellers can sell refurbished, pre-owned and open-box products in these categories:

• Automotive Parts
• Cameras
• Headphones & Audio
• Home Appliances
• Home & Industrial Tools
• Kitchen Appliances
• Laptops & Computers
• Musical Instruments
• Outdoors & Sports
• Office Equipment
• Smartphones
• Tablets
• Television Sets
• Video Game Consoles
• Watches

To see the full list of categories allowed for Amazon Renewed, please visit Amazon Renewed Program Policies page.

How to sell refurbished products on Amazon Renewed

Learning how to sell refurbished products on Amazon is comes down to five straightforward steps:

1. Register to become an Amazon seller

First, to be able to sell certified refurbished, pre-owned and open-box products, you must be a registered seller on Amazon.

If you’re new to selling on Amazon, you can sign up to become a seller by going to Amazon Seller Central and creating a new account.

2. Find product opportunities

Since you have to prove to Amazon that you have enough inventory before you can sell on Amazon Renewed, it’s important that you find the item you plan to sell first. 

Of course, you don’t want to purchase just anything. Similar to any method of selling on Amazon, you’ll need to know what’s actually in demand and what sort of competition to expect.

Look for products that match the following criteria:

1. High-demand and low competition. The product should sell hundreds — if not thousands — of units each month, without a lot of other sellers active in the niche. 
2. Not sold by Amazon or a private label seller. Make sure the product you’re interested in doesn’t compete with Amazon directly. Furthermore, avoid items sold by a third-party seller’s private label. You won’t be able to sell on those listings, either.
3. Make sure you can price the product competitively. You want your price to be within 2% of the product’s current Buy Box price. Any higher than that and much more difficult to sell your product.

The easiest way to find products like these is with Jungle Scout, using the Product Database to find high demand and low competition products.

Here’s a quick step-by-step guide on how to find product opportunities with Jungle Scout:

• Use the Product Database to easily find and sort opportunities based on the filters of your choosing (eg. estimated sales, rating, price, etc.).

• Once the database has filtered and sorted your search results, start analyzing the items to find the right product(s) to source and sell.

• Finally, when you’ve identified several items that look like good selling opportunities, use the Product Tracker to determine their real sales potential over time.

3. Source products

Once you know what products are in high demand and have low competition, you’ll need to source those products.

Fortunately, there are a few different ways to source products like these:

• Liquidation companies: Some third-party companies buy excess merchandise from manufacturers (see below), do the refurbishing themselves, and then sell those goods to distributors and retailers like yourself.
• Manufacturers: If you take the time to search, you can find wholesale companies where you can purchase certified refurbished goods in bulk.

4. Apply and qualify to sell on Amazon Renewed

Now that you know what you’re going to sell and where you’re going to source those products, you’ll need to apply and qualify to sell on Amazon Renewed. 

These are the requirements you must meet in order to sell on Amazon Renewed:

1. Products must be inspected, cleaned, repaired (if applicable), and tested by a manufacturer or a specialized third-party refurbisher to function and look like-new.

2. You must supply invoices showing a minimum total value of $50,000 in qualifying refurbished purchases in the previous 90 days from the date of the application.

• Items with a selling price of $15.00 or less do not count toward the refurbished units. You may black out either the unit or dollar amount on the invoices, but not both.
• For approval to list on Apple-branded items, we require invoices dated from trailing 90 days that total $2.5 million in Apple refurbished products.

3. You must submit a minimum of 8 images of a sample unit for product and packaging review (box in which the product will ship, inside packaging and padding, product from top and bottom, product from all sides including top and bottom).

• If you have an item with a screen, we request images of the screen turned on.

4. You must honor the Amazon Renewed US Quality Policy for all of your Renewed products.

5. If you are an existing seller on Amazon, or once you start selling on Amazon, you must have an Order Defect Rate (ODR) of 0.8% or less in the trailing 60 days.

5. Start selling and grow your business

Once you get past the application process, you can start listing all of your certified-refurbished, pre-owned, and open-box products, as well as adding offers to existing pages.

Why sell refurbished products on Amazon Renewed?

There are quite a few benefits to selling certified-refurbished products on Amazon Renewed.

• Exclusivity. Not just anyone can sell certified-refurbished products on Amazon. Only sellers who meet Amazon’s criteria and can consistently sell like-new products are permitted to sell on Amazon Renewed. This means there is a huge opportunity to succeed for the few who are accepted.
• Customer trust. Enjoy high customer trust due to the stringent customer satisfaction goals Amazon has put in place to measure seller performance. Not to mention, Amazon’s U.S. marketplace alone receives over 2 billion visitors each month with conversion rates in the double digits.
• Growth. This method of selling complements practices you may already be employing with your business such as wholesale selling and private label. By adding Amazon Renewed to your current business model, you can grow your overall sales and brand. your overall sales and your brand. 

Tips to drive sales with Amazon Renewed

Additionally, these tips will help you succeed selling Amazon refurbished products:

• Price your products at least 20% lower than its ‘new’ price, and within 2% of the ‘used’ Buy Box price.
• Add at least 15 SKUs (stock keeping units) to get started.
• Run ‘Best Deals’ on your refurbished, pre-owned and open-box products. 
• Leverage Amazon’s Sponsored Products advertising program to drive traffic to your newly created certified-refurbished ASINs (Amazon Standard Identification Number). 
  • Amazon recommends that you consider using both manual and automatic campaigns. But, for manual campaigns, it’s best to use broad keywords for driving initial traffic to an ASIN.

Sell refurbished on Amazon Renewed today!

So, if you’re looking to start selling on Amazon, or you want to expand your current Amazon business, Amazon Renewed is a great opportunity.

And you can begin your new venture by finding your perfect product(s) by searching on Jungle Scout: