Setting your Budget

After gathering ideas, the big Second Phase is: FILTERING.

The first thing to say is: there is no single perfect formula. If you use the same formula as everyone else, you'll end up with the same products, you'll compete on price and you'll make no profit (if you manage to make sales).

So DON'T choose "$20-40 sales price, 3000 units a month, lighter than 1 lb weight"!

The first thing to do in this Phase is: set a budget.

The main thing that makes a difference is how much budget you have to spend. If you haven't got £3-4,000 or $5,000 USD, you don't really have enough to do private label anyway, in which case I recommend Online Arbitrage, Retail Arbitrage or Wholesale.

Broadly, I would choose a product that you can sell for as high a price per unit as you can afford. If you have for example $5000 to spend on inventory for your first order, get 200 of something fantastic you can land for $25 and sell for say $75.

Don't get obsessed with units sold per month. Traditionally you look for 3000 units/month sold on page 1 - which means per product, about 300 units a month or 10 a day.

I no longer care about that. I just want $10,000 - even $5000 a month of revenue per product. It's in fact much better to have the same turnover from fewer, higher priced products because a lot of the costs per unit are similar  - so in other words, you make more profit if those units are higher priced.