Learning how to sell on Amazon changed my life. Not only did it teach me a bunch of skills that allowed me to build multiple online businesses, but it also taught me a very important concept of “leverage” and how I don’t really need to do all the work myself especially when starting off. But this wasn’t always the case.
Before I attempted to sell on Amazon..
Before building my Mike Vestil blog and YouTube channel to over 200,000 subscribers…
Before I lived in over 25+ countries..
And before I wrote the book on side hustles..
I used to spend 8-12 hours every day working as a dental assistant.
Then I realized I was trading all my time away for money that I was never going to have time to spend… makes no sense right?
So while working I found several mentors who taught me a bunch of ways to make extra money online.
After months and months of failure… some of the side hustle ideas started to work! So I grabbed my ukulele..
Left Everything Behind… And Traveled The World..
Here’s me in Peru
Here’s me swimming with the whale sharks in the Philippines
Here’s me chilling with a monkey in Thailand
The more I started traveling.. the more people started asking questions on exactly how I was able to do it..
So I started teaching people exactly what my mentors taught me
Here is exactly what I learned about selling on Amazon:
What is Amazon FBA?
Ever buy something from Amazon.com? Did you know that there are people making passive income online because they sell random things on Amazon? Amazon does the shipping, handling, customer service, and selling and all that person had to do was ship products to the warehouse. Amazon does the rest. This is exactly what Amazon FBA is.
My Results with Amazon FBA
I first heard about Amazon FBA back in 2013-2014. This was like the wild wild west of Amazon. You could litterally put up an umbrella for sale and get rich quick relatively shortly. My dad and I ended up buying several courses on Amazon FBA, went over to alibaba.com, and placed a big order from a Chinese supplier in the hopes of striking gold with a winner.
Long story short?
It was a dud.
But after a couple more failures we finally got it to the point where we were doing over $100 per day with it.
What are the associated costs with Amazon FBA?
You need a seller central account which is about $39/month. The most expensive aspect of Amazon FBA is that you have to buy products in bulk from China. This can mean forking over $500+ for a product that you may not know will even sell. This is one of the reasons why we pivoted to a new model of making money online because the costs for a beginner were just too much. But with this new method of ecommerce people started pulling in $10/day, then systematically start scaling to $100/day and $1000/day and more. Check it out in this week’s free workshop.
Pros of Amazon FBA
Amazon litterally does everything. They ship, they sell, they handle customer service, all you have to do is send the products there way. This is what initially sold me on the idea as theoretically if you do send a good product to Amazon, its pretty much turnkey and Amazon pays you big fat checks consistently and all you have to do is reorder products when you’re low on stock.
Cons of Amazon FBA
The biggest one is time. It takes a while to recoup your initial investment. It may take several months in product research to make sure you have a proven winner before making the investment. Then another couple of months dealing with China to get the branding together and a listing up on Amazon. And then another couple of months marketing your listing to start ranking for certain keywords.. and this is all before making your first sale.
Tips, Tricks and Tactics for Maximizing FBA Sales
- Focus 80% of your time on product research – getting started can be expensive. What helps is if you have a 99.9% certainty that your product will be a winner. This is exactly how I was able to find the Amazon winner:
2. Bundle products. One of my winners was when I combined 2 products that were frequently bought together in just one listing. This was HUGE because it gave me a competitive edge against people that were selling only one of those things and allowed me to have a higher perceived value than my competitors.
3. Beg your family for reviews. Reviews are the lifeblood of your Amazon business. Amazon is a social proof platform where people buy based off of what other people have said from their purchase experience. The first 20 reviews are the hardest. i begged my girlfriend’s parents, uncles, cousins, neighbors. It was really word but 100% worth it as it was the most cost effective way to get them.
4. Have real expectations. I live here in Bali, Indonesia where many “amazon fba sellers” retired. I asked them how did they make so much money. They told me its because they sold their Amazon FBA business. The biggest downside of Amazon is all of your profits will always be tied up in inventory. And the bigger you scale the more you have to reinvest. The big profits is when you sell out to another company. I wish I knew this sooner as I would have created better expectations.
But yeah overall all thats everything you need to know about Amazon and selling on it it. If you want the fastest and easiest way to make money online where some of our students are going from $10/day then systematically scaling to $100/day and $1000/day or more, then make sure you sign up for this week’s free workshop here.
