Amazon is the global marketplace-of-choice for convenience buyers with 30+% annual growth and as such a very attractive channel for most online retailers looking to diversify and grow (and take advantage of risk-free selling).

With over 40 categories today, not every product may be sold by a third-party merchant, however. In the interest of providing the highest-level of customer satisfaction and trust, Amazon has placed permanent (and at times temporary) restrictions on some categories, going as far as closing those that are sensitive in nature (adult products, weapons) or just not feasible (cell phone plans).

Open categories are the biggest piece of Amazon’s categories pie and include popular destinations such as Books / Music / Video, Home & Garden, Consumer Electronics and Camera & Photo (the chart on the left shows a complete list). If you sell in any or all of these categories you can be up and running with your products on Amazon with relatively little effort.

Gated categories include Apparel, Jewelry, Beauty and Gourmet Food and are essentially closed to any but the most qualified online retailers. What does most qualified mean? Merchants that add significant value to a category by way of their product selection (unique), brand (well-recognized), pricing (more on this value-add concept to come).

Closed categories are Groceries, Cell Phones, Adult Toys, Guns, Gift Cards and Tobacco & Alcohol. These categories are not available to any merchant because of the sensitive or strategic (groceries) nature of the products and generally require approval from the very top at Amazon. Yes, that could mean from the very top of Amazon.

Note that the Toys & Games category is only temporarily restricted. Amazon has communicated that it intends to re-open the category after the holidays to give more third-party merchants an opportunity to offer their products to the Amazon.com customer.

You can find a more detailed overview of Amazon categories and the types of products that can be offered, checkout my Amazon Product Categories page.

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