A lot of Amazon online arbitrage sellers make this mistake when evaluating competition on a listing:
- Open an ASIN
- See “22 other sellers”
- Close the tab and move on
The problem: “total sellers” is a terrible proxy for real competition. It’s like judging a race by how many people are in the stadium instead of how many are on the track.
1. Start with the only group that really matters: FBA offers near the Buy Box
When you’re evaluating a lead, the key question isn’t:
“How many sellers are on this listing?”
It’s:
“How many FBA sellers are within ~5% of the Buy Box price?”
Those are the offers Amazon is actually rotating through the Featured Offer (Buy Box). Everyone else is basically a spectator.
- A seller priced 15–20% higher than the Buy Box is on the listing, but not in the game.
- A seller priced way below the Buy Box might be burning margin or almost out of stock.
You only care about the cluster of FBA sellers within ~5% of the current Buy Box. That’s your real competition band.
This matches a broader principle: don’t copy “the average” competitor; focus on the slice of the market that’s actually competing for the customer’s purchase right now.
2. FBM noise: when to ignore it (and when not to)
When analyzing leads for competition, you can ignore FBM offers when you’re judging FBA competition:
- FBA has a structural advantage for the Buy Box (delivery speed, Prime, reliability).
- FBM quantities are easy to “game” and often don’t reflect actual inventory.
So if you see:
- 3 FBA offers within 3% of the Buy Box
- 14 FBM offers scattered below and above that
Your starting assumption: you’re really competing with those 3 FBA sellers, not all 17.
Exception: if a wall of FBM sellers is way below the FBA price, that’s a red flag for future price compression. But that’s a separate margin question, not a “too many sellers” question.
3. Regional Buy Boxes: why your view is incomplete
Amazon doesn’t show the same Featured Offer to everyone. The Buy Box is regional:
- Different sellers can win in different parts of the country based on where their inventory is stored and how fast Amazon can ship from there.
- A seller who “never seems to win” from your location might be getting a solid slice of sales elsewhere.
- The reverse is also true: you might be rotating into the Buy Box more than your own checks suggest.
On top of that, Amazon now routinely shows a second featured offer (“Get it faster”), which creates two competing Buy Boxes on the same listing. If you want to go deeper on how that works and how to factor it into your sourcing, read this explanation from the Olsons next:
4. A quick checklist for your next lead
Next time you pull up an ASIN, do this instead of panicking at “Total sellers”:
1. Find the current Buy Box price.
2. Count FBA sellers within ~5% of that price.
3. Glance at FBM only for extreme undercutters that might drag price down later.
4. Remember it’s regional. Your snapshot is one angle, not the full picture.
If the fundamentals (rank, velocity, margin) look good and the FBA-in-5% group is small, you likely have a real shot… even if the “total sellers” number looks scary.