Supplies, Subscriptions, and Sets: The Ideal Amazon Seller Strategy?

As most of you know, I’ve been in the copywriting business for 29 years in various forms, including almost 10 years as an Amazon Product Description Copywriter. I’ve never been an Amazon Seller, instead choosing to stay in my lane in the world of writing.

Over the past almost-decade of writing for Amazon clients, I’ve seen a mammoth range of products cross my desk, as well as a huge list of different strategies and things people use to launch and be successful – and I often catch myself in a daydream thinking about what I would sell, and what I wouldn’t sell if I became an Amazon Seller.

And today, I thought it would be a fun thing to write about.

Many of you are successful selling products I might not touch, and some of my ideas will land, and some will not. This is simply a fun little blog that peeks inside my “10 years of writing for Amazon clients” brain and why I would choose certain things, and not others.

Let’s dive in.

1. Supplies

Art Supplies, Craft Supplies, Gardening Supplies, Quilting Supplies, Pet Supplies (non-medical), Baby Supplies, Kitchen Supplies, Sewing Supplies, Beauty Supplies… you get the idea. Many of you are already selling these types of products, so you know what I mean.

 I would sell supplies for many reasons:

• They are evergreen. They’ve always been evergreen (Quilting supplies were around in the 1800’s and we’ve been trading various supplies since the dawn of modern man). And supplies will always will be evergreen, unless the world crumbles.

• Trends within the niche are low risk because you run trending products as the icing on the cake, alongside your evergreen bread and butter.

• Supplies are easy to brand build. The low cost and endless options for most of these products means you can add to your portfolio fairly quickly, enticing your shopper to come back for more.

• These niches have products that can be low or high cost, allowing for flexibility within your own product sourcing budgets.

• They can be dynamic and creative to work on. You can set the tone to whatever you want: fun, serious, authoritative, revolutionary, and more! You can control the positioning to certain target audience. For example – kitchen supplies for men, quilting supplies for pet lovers (there are tons of people who would exclusively quilt pet related items), art supplies for serious artists. These niches let you have a lot of creative fun IMO.

• They are very easy to replicate, allowing you to build multiple brands fast. I could set up as Stacey’s Pet Supplies with branded items, find out what’s working then create another second brand – Acme Pet Supplies. Instead of trying to double my audience on one brand, I now have a second brand – same suppliers, same product, same everything – just different branding and positioning! I could have 10 pet supplies brands if I wanted to, using the one supplier! Just slap a different label on it - you know the drill.

• I’m a shopaholic. I would get great satisfaction always shopping for supplies for my supplies brand.

• They are easy to create digital bundles or upsells that can be low cost, high value to the shopper. For example a 15pc kitchen utensil set with a matching measuring cup upsell. And/or, the Premium Bundle - 15pc Utensils WITH Measuring Cup. Go nuts.

• They are not dangerous and don’t come with many of the rules of other products. Kitchen knives being a possible exception. These products typically don’t rely on batteries, and their performance is typically good with less returns than let’s say – a sweater that doesn’t fit, or a fitness watch that doesn’t work.

• They are small items, easier for FBA.

• For some niches, multibuys are almost a given (example, quilting fat quarter fabrics), allowing you a greater sale per customer.

• Easy to create different packs from one product - making it look like your store has tons of product! I had a client who sold the same chalk paint brushes in different packs. If you liked one pack but it didn’t have a particular brush, you could just buy both packs - or single brush add-ons.

 And I’m sure there are plenty more reasons, but let’s move on to the next category.

2. Support Items for Collectors.

This is an interesting category, one that many of you do not exploit – but you should! In my 10 years career writing for Amazon clients, I have only ever had one person who sold support items for a type of collector. He does very well, with one $19 item selling 3000 units in the past month, another $19 item selling 900 units. His catalogue contains around 20 items - with 4 items replicated in different sizes, plus a “premium” version to catch everyone who has different tastes and needs within that collector market.

This category has many of the same benefits as supplies. But let’s look at some of the main unique benefit of this collector category as they relate to Fanatical Repeat Shoppers.

Let’s take stamp collectors as an example. They’re known as Philatelists. Brick and mortar philately stores are a dying breed, but stamp collection books still have a search volume of around 1200+/- a month on Amazon. Not high, but a solid number with a dedicated crowd looking for supplies. While stamp collecting is a bit “old-timey”, the demand is always there. Now, each stamp book may hold let’s say 100-200 stamps. But if my collection contains 1000 stamps and I want to store matching books neatly on a shelf, I could be back to your store 10 more times to order the same style book! And, if I loved the experience of your brand, I’m now back to buy tweezers, more postage stamps, glassine envelopes, hinges, magnifier, and more philatelic supplies. Gimme!

Collecting is serious business. Not only do collectors, collect the thing, but they also collect the support items for the thing with just as much enthusiasm! My mom collects all sorts of things, and she went to the expense to buy 4 matching glass cabinets to keep them in!

I collect “Decomposition Books” – a style of composition book with unique fun images on the cover. When I ordered them online, I ordered 5 I think. The last time I saw them in a store, I grabbed another five. Have I written in them all yet? Nope. I just adore them and I intend on collecting every single style over time. And, I love how I can now have a matching set of journals instead of a mishmash of different shapes and sizes. They’re easier to store on a shelf.

Records, coins, comics, stamps, trading cards, action figures, autographs, antiques, bottle caps, sneakers, handbags, fabrics, crystals/stones, earrings, fossils, concert tickets and setlists, essential oils, silver statues, art, rocks, shells, antique perfume bottles are just some of the things people collect. And journals! For example, Moleskin lovers will keep buying Moleskin. In fact, I know two women, each with multiple matching journals. One women has over 100 journals on a shelf, the other is a Moleskin ride or die.

And just like my client killing it in the collector market, you can sell duplicates of the same item! In the case of stamp collectors: beginner tweezers, expert tweezers, tweezer 2 packs, premium glassine envelopes and regular glassine envelopes – large ones and small ones! 100 stamp books, 200 stamp books, stamp book 5 pack… you get the idea.

And you can apply that to supplies also!

3. Subscriptions and Consumables 

Back in 2019, I had a very smart client who decided to start a blood glucose monitoring brand. If you’re not familiar with this niche, people use a glucometer to test blood glucose levels. And while the glucometer may be the higher dollar value item, it’s not where the money is made. People test their glucose multiple times a day using consumable items like lancets, test strips and alcohol pads. You can also use a solution to calibrate your device, and a logbook to track results. The money is not in the device, but the consumables.

But here’s where he was so smart. Unlike regular consumables, you can ONLY use the consumables that match that device! No swaps. This is true for all glucose monitors on the market. So if you’re a customer who is happy with this brand of device, you’re now a guaranteed shopper for those consumables for the life of the device. And if the device isn’t faulty, you’re now a guaranteed repeat shopper for this brand.

In some households, all members use glucose testing, so we go one step further - subscribe and save, being more economical.

If it’s frequently consumed, and you can move customers through to a subscribe and save model, it’s a good money earner. And if it’s a device that REQUIRES consumables in order to use it, you’re onto a winner there, too.

Another example is the GammaCore migraine device. It comes with “3 months of therapy” preloaded + conductive gel tubes. To continue using the device long term you need to purchase more months of therapy, and more gel when you run out. I use a different device that uses gel pads – a consumable that comes in a 3 pack for $20 – and will last a max of 15 or so sessions.

So once a person has bought your “thing”, it will be the consumables and subscriptions that bring in your evergreen income, until they inevitably decide to brand switch.

Another subscription consumable I worked on in 2017 was a range of natural plant based household items such as dish soap, carpet shampoo, bug spray, hair shampoo, and more. They offered a range of bundle and save subscriptions “so you would never run out again of your favorite items”. They are still going strong.

 In 2018, I worked for a natural body care brand, again selling consumables like shampoo, conditioner, body wash, face wash and more. It wasn’t a huge leap for them to start bundling these consumables into product 2 packs, then complimentary packs like shampoo and conditioner. I’m not sure if they sell under the subscribe and save model, but it’s easy to see you should. This particular brand is actually purchased by loyal customers who use multiple products. Where there are loyal customers, you should definitely try to move them through to a subscribe and save.

So think about what people consume at an alarming rate. And think about what products rely on consumables to continue using them. There’s evergreen money there. The more existing customers you have on subscription, the more set and forget income your product is bringing in, without needing heavy lifting from new traffic.

4. Collect The Set!

This is similar to our collector supplies, except we’re the ones selling the collection (and hopefully, the consumables and supplies that go along with it). Collect the set products benefit from repeat traffic, as well as leveraging powerful psychological drivers like FOMO, pleasure, and compulsion.

Years ago I worked for Heads and Tails Coins and Collectibles (Hotcoco), who sells a range of silver statues and collectible coins. The idea being, that they’re both beautiful to behold while being a valuable precious metal.

These collectors even have a name, they’re known as Silver Stackers! And you guessed it, they’re people who basically stack silver items. Hotcoco knows this, and that’s why they sell a collection of silver, instead of just a few items. They release limited edition items, and themed collectibles – such as the Frazetta Collection of silver statues and Lost World Collection of Silver Coins hedging their bets that their customers won’t stop at just one. Many will collect two or more, and some will “collect the set”.

However, not all of us can sell silver.

I use “collect the set” copywriting wherever I can for clients, knowing that there are people out there who a) love collecting, b) have FOMO about missing out on an item and c) have psyches prone to collecting.

Think about it like this. Why does McDonalds frequently promote glass collectibles, figurines and other such things? It makes you keep coming back to McDonalds so you can collect the set! In my childhood we had themed pens with Grimace, Hamburgler, Ronald McDonald and Mayor McCheese, I think I managed to collect two, but I craved owning the entire set.

Right now there’s a promo at my grocery store – collect stamps and then trade them in for glass containers. I’ve spent like $1300 in groceries so far just to get the free vacuum pump, salad container and dip container. I’m still collecting stamps and hoping to get the baking dish. Once you redeem one item, you have to start again to redeem your next one.

Like I said. Collectors are FANATICS about what they want to collect.

I have a client who sells glassware. He also sells licensed items and collections within the brand. So I always urge customers to collect the set in my copywriting to try and find those fanatical FOMOs. I have another client who sells giftables (for self or others), and again I urge customers to collect the set of the four smaller gift items that have just been released. They’re cute and preppy!

I wish I was the person who came up with Bobbleheads or Beanie Babies, the product releases are endless!

A Different Type of Collectible to Consider

Another type of “collect the set” is to collect most of the consumables from the brand, even if it’s not a set.

Unlike a pen collection (all pens), or a coin collection (all coins), this type of collectible will be to obtain all the items from the brand, no matter what they are. Hard to explain, but Bullet Journal is a great example. The drive is to collect all the branded items because they’re “Bullet Journal”. You collect them as consumables to use, instead of collectibles to store. Make sense?

Bullet Journal created a system (the bullet journaling practice) and then sold consumables to enhance the practice. And when you ran out of pages, or ink - you would need to buy another bullet journal, or pen! A clever business model with the idea of creating a novel practice, then selling supplies to binging collectors and journal fanatics so they could undertake the practice. Almost like selling them a device and then requiring certain accessories to make it work, yeah?

The bullet journal practice became its own set of high volume keywords, creating SEO that stepped outside of the regular world of stationery supplies and journal supplies.

Their USP was the practice. Without it, they’re just selling journals. With it, they can sell an entire matching consumables collection!

Spotting the product and SEO opportunity, private label brands came along to sell their bullet journal supplies, trying to differentiate themselves with USP’s and claims like “the only notebook in the world designed for bullet journaling”. And shoppers didn’t care, so long as it had Bullet Journal attached to it, Bullet Journalers would buy it.

If you’re a Bullet Journal writer, chances are you get excited when you see new Bullet Journal items.

And some of the supplies niche merges with the collectibles niche. I’m a sewer – but I’m also a fat-quarter fabric collector. Us fabric collectors will keep collecting until we’re buried under our fabrics! Within that market, you can sub-niche into animal prints, or licensed prints for example. I went through a phase of trying to collect all the sea themed prints I could. Us collectors are a goldmine!

So I wonder what would happen if you launched a simple Collect The Set brand with just 4 tantalizing items – and the promise of more to come. I wonder what that item could be? Imagine if you could be the next cool thing like Bullet Journal? Or at the very least, succeed at selling 4 themed anythings, to the same shopper.

Here’s an easy one to get your creative juices flowing. Every year I buy my mom a new Christmas tree ornament. I always return to the same 3 stores, knowing they have new ornaments each year. I may be forcing the collection onto my Mom, but she loves it!

Christmas Ornaments has a search volume of 37,000. Christmas Ornaments 2024 already has 3500 and it’s only September. Every year, you can guarantee people are looking for the “latest” ones. And let’s take it another step - sell them an ornament storage box, and a way to make their own ornaments in your specialist ornament store. Add last years ornaments at a crazy price, create themes like Dolphin Christmas or Rainbow Christmas, launch 4 special edition ornaments to “collect the set”.

Swarovski sold 2000 units of their 2024 edition ornament in the past 30 days. They started selling it in June, with an uptrending sales spike that started in mid-August.

Collectors are awesome.

5. Gift Brand

I recently had the privilege to work on a gift brand, and in doing so, it’s sparked my attention. The cool thing about the gift market is the INSANE amount of customer search terms you can work with. You can carve out a little niche for yourself without necessarily breaking the bank on those high volume gift keywords.

The other thing I like about this market is that there is a real opportunity to create product that outshines the rest. My client is doing this superbly.

Within this niche, you also have the opportunity to build an entire brand of higher to lower priced gift items, themed gifts (offering even more SEO opportunities), collect the sets, and support items like different types of gift cards, gift wrap, and a whole lot more!  

The world will never stop gifting, so it’s an evergreen market. You can boost it with short-run trending or seasonal gift ideas, and you can create the “regular” gift and the “premium version” of the same gift without breaking a sweat!

The other cool thing about this market is that the packaging is always part of the product offering. And when you create packaging that people can’t bring themselves to throw away, you’ve just created an extrinsic value that money can’t buy. You have the value of the gift, AND the value of the gift box to attract shoppers. As I’m writing this I’m looking at all my pens and pencils, stacked neatly in my premium whiskey gift box. Across the room, all my scrap fabrics are neatly arranged in an empty magnesium flakes pail.

As a kid, my brother and I collected product box packaging. A few years later I started collecting cosmetic industry branded bags. Yes, us crazy folks actually exist in the world. We WANT YOUR PACKAGING beautiful and reusable!

And as I have noticed, if you do gifts right, your reviews will be epic! The wording people use to describe gifts and the package they come in are some of the most positive, lovely words I’ve ever read. These reviews are joyous, friendly, kind and filled with love. And most of them will tell you who they gifted it to, and why. Live as it happens, market intel for free.

What They All Have In Common

So there you go, if I was an Amazon seller I would consider supplies, support items for collectors, consumables and subscriptions, collectible sets, and giftables. Supplies, Subscriptions and Sets!

They are highly consumable and in demand 24/7/365 no matter what. They are easy to upsell, easy to create multi-buys, they’re easy to brand extend and don’t solely rely on Hallmark holidays, special events or trends to sell. Those events create bumps in sales, but aren’t relied on (stressfully) as the main event. These products are affordable for customers, with low price resistance.

They’re fairly affordable to source, leaving you with more budget to run traffic, and engage in early marketing and brand building activities. The affordability enables you to launch the second product quickly, thereby building a brand faster and having something that you can build a Amazon Brand Store around fairly quickly. It’s kinda pointless having only one product on your brand store. But equally, you don’t want to leave it too long before you build one, because brand stores are sales-generating machines.

When you find a market full of people who fit these categories, you’re onto a great product. Keep expanding your portfolio, to feed the repeat shopper who ADORES you.

That’s why baby products are such a popular sell. Going beyond pure necessity, this entire market blurs the lines with fashion-based industries where style and design trumps utilitarian use, opening the way for millions of brands with an infinite array of baby-products by design. If a parent has a boho themed nursery, how many boho themed products do you think they’ll want to fill it with? Let’s start with wall art, a mobile for crib and baby blanket. How about a stuffed animal? Sell all the things! Rinse and repeat for mushroom baby nursery, and any other nursery that’s in vogue!

You can even deploy the Pantone Color of the Year as a strategy to launch a special edition of something each year - but be market savvy, teenage boy sunglasses don’t qualify as a market who would care.

I Would Also Sell Based On Interest

Would I sell baby products? Afterall, they’re a great consumable that can easily become a successful brand builder! But they’re not on my preference list because the personal interest isn’t there. I’m a sewing and gardening fur-mama and more likely to sell pet, sewing or gardening supplies, or my forever love - stationery. I would sell what I know, love and want to buy myself! And chances are, I’ve already shopped for these items on Amazon myself and been through the process of “being a customer”.

What Wouldn’t I Sell On Amazon?

• Supplements. I used to write a lot of supplement listings, but over the years the landscape just became too hairy and you really are boxed into what you can and can’t say. I’m also a qualified Nutritionist and don’t want to be part of the generic supplement club. It goes against my values. There are amazing brands in the world like Now, Researched Nutritionals, Pure Encapsulations, Thorne, Ancestral Supplements, and Practitioner-Only Brands like Metagenics doing amazing stuff with supplements.

• Medical. I recently wrote a listing for a client that contained the exact claim word-for-word that her product insert had been FDA approved for. But guess what? Amazon would not accept those FDA approved claims despite the fact they were approved and despite the fact that Amazon Brand was making specific “forbidden” claims on a similar product. Too much bother, I say.

• Electronics. I think there are too many ways for it to go wrong. Even the best electronics can malfunction, and I don’t think I’d want the hassle of all those returns + the negative reviews.

• Jewelry. Too saturated unless you can become a brand leader fast – like Pandora or Kendra Scott and many of the weirdly named Chinese brands (IFKM, Leafel, EFYTAL, Gifon, AZFVBQL to name a few) It can also be a costly product to bring to market, if you’re adding gift packaging and gift cards. You’re competing with Chinese manufacturers who can make these items for cents compared to your dollar. I have also noticed that once a trend begins (compass necklaces) the market becomes saturated pretty fast. If I were to start a jewelry brand, I think I’d want it to be like Pandora bracelets, a collect-the-set model of jewelry.

• Furniture. I’ll leave that to my past and current clients who have a sophisticated entrepreneurial edge and a deep understanding of manufacturing. I’ve been fortunate to write for two furniture brands now, with great success. But I’ve also seen the other side, where a product issue can bring your listing down for many, many months. I’m too soft for that game.

• Fitness Gear. Everything is a cookie cutter of the last thing, boring. Do an Amazon search for “booty bands” and tell me the results are not an eyesore. In saying that, Vergali is selling nearly $250k a month in booty bands, and it looks like they only launched in in April, demonstrating that the fitness supplies market still has some stretch.

• Clothing. There seems to be too much room for sizing error and returns, and you’re competing heavily with Chinese manufacturing who can create any garment fast and cheap.

So there you go! If I were an Amazon Seller and not just a 10-year Amazon Copywriting veteran that is what I would, and wouldn’t sell. I hope you found it either helpful or entertaining. And I’d love to know if it sparked any ideas for you!