Today in Episode 2 I talk about how I made my first $10,000 month selling on Amazon.

In this episode, you learn: "How I made my first $10,000 month selling on Amazon"

	1. Researched products by searching for companies for sale and what others where selling.
	2. Created Lists compiling companies that offered drop shipping
	3. Setup b2b relations with wholesale companies
	4. Tracking for product trends when selecting your products for drop shipping companies
	5. Hiring a data entry team to put your products on amazon
	6. Managing products and customer service + entering tracking numbers
	7. Challenges faced while drop shipping
	8. Pros and Cons of Dropshipping & Wholesale vs Amazon FBA
	9. Considerations when drop shipping
	10. Revisiting my Amazon business to set a new record.

Links mentioned:

Flippa - http://flippa.com - Website Marketplace
Ebay - http://ebay.com - For Looking At People's Reviews
Camel - http://camelcamelcamel.com - Tracking Price Changes On Amazon
Google Trends - http://trends.google.com - Check Search Trends Over Time
Odesk - http://odesk.com - Freelance Network Site For Hiring
Elance - http://elance.com - Another Freelance Network Site For Hiring

SOS 002 How I Made My First $10,000 Month Selling On Amazon

Guide To Amazon FBA Private Labeling, Product Marketing Strategies and Selling Online

Purpose of this exercise:
The idea of this exercise is to test 10-12 items a month for selling on Amazon FBA by purchasing similar ones to what you want to sell from Aliexpress to test. I then rely on the 80 20 rule which 80% of my income will be able to be produced from 20% of the products I test. Therefor by testing 10-12 products a month I should be able to find at least 2 winners on average. This exercise is to test these claims and help you learn about the process I currently use and am refining to do so.
Hypothesis:
My hypothesis is that by finding 2 to 3 new successful products a month I will be able to keep supplying my product streams based on demand to Amazon enabling me to eliminate products that have a higher demand and a less competitive market.
Research:
Based off my preliminary marketing research I have determined that each product is currently being sold on a regular basis by tracking the sales with AMZ Shark. I was also able to determine that there is a 1500+ searches being performed per month on each product.  If my research proves correct I should be able to increase the odds of picking profitable and more favorable items.
Resources & Links:
SOS Product Testing Worksheet - Where I will be keeping track of my test product data so you can follow along.
AMZ Shark - For product sales research and tracking.
AliExpress - Buy similar products here that your interested in selling to test on Amazon FBA.

 



For this follow along we will call these products Product 1, Product 2, and so on and we will be tracking their numbers in my spreadsheet from this episode so you can see the progress as I test them.

 



As well I have started getting 2 new private label products setup we will call them product A and Product B which we will track as well on the same spreadsheet.

Since I have ordered my 10 products I have received 3 of the shipments from Aliexpress.

They all came in poly bags except for 1 which I will have to order some bags off amazon to put them in.

I have also ordered a nice high quality product stage to take better pictures then those I am seeing online. It can be found here.



While I wait for the rest of the products to come in I will start to work with the ones I have.

In order to start creating my listings so I can send my products to Amazon I will require purchasing barcodes which I usually buy from Barcodestalk.com. I know some people use Ebay but I like working with a reputable company that I can seem to count on if I have questions.

Before even using any barcodes I will make sure all of my products are listed on my spreadsheet so I can keep track of them as I process each one. Eventually we will be working with many products to diversify our channels of income so we can better decrease the risk of our investments if products sell slow or markets become more competitive over time.



I will normally track expenses, planned selling prices and a few other things which can be seen as I track my own products on the spreadsheet.







If our test products perform well on the market we will reorder more of the same product until we get our own product private labeled or just keep the stream of passive income coming in from our tes...

SOS 007 Follow Along As I Test 3 Lucky Products from Aliexpress & Ship Them To Amazon FBA for Fulfillment

On this episode Will and Justin discuss Tips for finding and working with product manufactures on Alibaba to sell on Amazon FBA and other things related. Please enjoy and if you want to keep supporting this podcast leave an honest review and tell us what you think. I hope you enjoy the show. -Justin


Links Discussed During Show
Aliexpress - Marketplace where you can buy stuff to test on Amazon FBA before private labeling items.
Add Chinese Holidays To Your Google Calendar - keep track of Chinese holidays easier.
Alibaba - Marketplace for finding manufactures and sourcing private label products.
Amazon - Compare Aliexpress and Amazon pricing to find possible products to test.
Graphic River - Marketplace to buy logos and graphics for private labeling.
99Designs Ready Made Logos - Browse logos that are already made and for sale here. 

1. Shopping for multiple quotes from multiple manufactures
- Have them compete with each other on value and price
- Don’t aways pick the cheapest bid (you get what you pay for)
- Make sure communication is consistent (it can be stressful if your manufactures are not prompt responding)
- Don’t let MOQ’s discourage you from getting a quote. (for your first order most manufactures will go less then the advertised MOQ).
- Never tell them how big or small your company is
- Pretend you are a rep and not the company owner so you can present your opinions in more concrete ways. (good cop bad copy)
- If you just want to test products go to Aliexpress and buy items that have decent profit margins and see if they sell on the market with some Amazon PPC.




2. Getting quotes on Alibaba & Testing Products from Aliexpress
- Either add a multiple products to your favorites or approach 30 different product suppliers who can manufacture your product.
- Its better to pick a product that is a little higher in value because it will hold better value then one that is made poorly.
- Ordering more then one item in a sample pack from one manufacture will save you money on shipping and you can get a better idea of others products to private label if your using Alibaba.
- If your using Aliexpress to test the market do not worry about branding. You can put a sticker on the item if you really want to brand it.
- Communicating with more then 1 manufacture will increase the chances of getting what you want vs what they want to just give you.
- On aliexpress you can just place orders like Ebay and get the product sent with out having to talk to the suppliers. This makes it easy to test products before Private labeling them.
3. Packaging options for your FBA Private Label products
- Perceived value is so big many of us forget about it.
- Some industries you can just sell with the product image and not with packaging so branding does not matter with all products.
- Packaging on PR items for amazon can be subjective depending on which category and audience you are targeting to buy it.
- If you have a nicer package and better presentation you can charge more for your product.
- Weigh out the options of how you can make your packaging more enticing if its a more competitive market.
Ask your manufacture what types of packaging they offer for products and have them send you photos of them.
- Ask the manufactures how they could make your product packaging different.
- Once you have an idea of your packaging either request their files they work off of to put your logo on or change or have them put a simple logo on their package.
- I usually design my own and will send them an Adobe illustrator file they can print.
- Keep in mind on some packaging depending on how its printed more colors can increase the cost of your package.

SOS 006 Will’s and Justin’s Tips for finding and working with product manufacturers on Alibaba & Aliexpress to sell on Amazon FBA

Luke and Justin discuss how to develop and design winning Amazon FBA products through product development research. Luke's discusses his experiences so far learning from the podcast and what he takes away from it. While Justin highlights how he does product marketing research using Amazon reviews and what percentage of people mention important things to improve the products around.

Links Talked About
Google Keyword Tool - Our favorite tool to find how many searchers are done on our keywords. 
Amazon Top Seller List - The magic list to do research on Amazon PL products.
Alibaba Marketplace - My favorite place to find manufactures in China to create private label products.

Downloads From Podcast
Product Development & Improvement Worksheet - (instructions also included in spreadsheet notes). 




Ways to get more granular with your Amazon FBA private label product research 
- In addition to doing my basic product research when choosing private label products I will expand off the data to find even more gems.
- I do this by taking the best products from the previous results we talked about researching in episode 3 in a spreadsheet and branching off in the categories in a new spreadsheet like the last one.  if you haven’t.
- Then add small products in the Amazon top seller list category of the products you found repeating the same exercise. 
- I recommend that you also explore subcategories and add products to your list that compliment each other.
- This way if you choose to build a brand you can cross promote them and make the most of your advertising spend.
- This research should give you a good idea too of what type products you can private label next.
- Typically I am doing this almost every few days and building a master list of ideas to expand off of, but I would recommend it be done at least once or twice a week.
- I will also click on the brands of the products listed to see which other products they are selling. 
-  is another good place. Just go to the website and click on the category your selling on Amazon in and then organize the products by Best Sellers.
- Sometimes I will also go to Google trends and see the search volume of people searching for those products over time and get an idea if sales are seasonal.


Once you have decided on which products your interested in most you are going to want to find ways to improve them. 


1. The benefits of improving the private label FBA products.
- It will give your products an edge in the Amazon marketplace over everyone else.
- You can differentiate yourself in more competitive markets.
- Improving your products will enable your products to stand out and  increase your advertising conversions and save you money over time.
- You will get better reviews if you end up fixing problems with other competing products customers complained about.
- More people will want to review your product when you start building up your reviews on your Amazon listing if your product is different.
- The more you improve on products the better you will become at spotting products that can be improved on.

2. Researching Amazon Product Reviews to Improve PL Products
- To do this just visit Amazon then search and click on the ratings of the product your interested in selling
- Then look for common descriptive words about your product people complain about and praise.

SOS 005 Designing Winning Amazon FBA Private Label Products Through Marketing & Product Research

Will Tjernlund and I discuss how he built his Amazon FBA business into a $6,000,000 company in under 4 years and how he got started. We also get into discussing a lot of great ideas for picking epic private label items to sell on Amazon while talking about our experiences. Then later on the show we ask Will about the Canton Fair in China where you can go each year to meet different manufactures to produce your products and brainstorm new ideas. Do not miss this episode.
Links mentioned on this episode:
Google Trends - A tool to look and track trends of keyword searches overtime on Google and see trends.
Amazon FBA - Our favorite place to sell our private label products of course.
Alibaba Marketplace - Marketplace to source products from manufactures.
Canton Fair - Chinese Import and Export Fair.
Discussed on this episode:
- How will got started with Amazon FBA.
- How successful he was picking his first product.
- The first product he picked to sell on Amazon to get going.
- Chat about Amazon FBA product niches
- How his family got him into the Amazon business importing from china while he was growing up.
- Experiences with finding past successful FBA products.
- What he looks for when picking products to sell on Amazon FBA.
- How Will got going selling his first product.
Problems often faced when beginning to sell Private Label Products on Amazon FBA
- Products sell too fast
- Cant get products into stock quick enough
Things Will looks for when picking Amazon Private Label Products to Import
- Picking items with little or no electronics.
- Doing deeper research in the Amazon category your going to sell in.
- Its better to sell 1000 items once a day then 1 items 1000 times a day.
Continuing on..
- How long it took Will to get his business making six million dollars.
- Experiences importing a container of products to sell on Amazon.
- What to watch for to prevent yourself from selling out before you can re-stock more products.
Biggest Mistakes Seen When Beginning You Amazon FBA Business
- Not moving forward and worrying about hurdles.
- Not taking action and getting started.
- Putting too much value on Amazon Best Seller Ratings.
- Not doing Google Trend or keyword research
Tips Looking for finding Epic Products To Sell Private Label on Amazon
- Look for products that are not being fulfilled by Amazon.
- Make sure these products have reviews and some proof of sales.
Continuing on..
- How Will found his niches and why he diversifies the products he sells.
- How many listings he has on Amazon in his inventory.
- Selling combo private label products on Amazon.
Will's Experience at The Canton Fair and Why You Should Go To
- Went in 2014 during the fall
- Was there for 3 weeks
- How the Canton Fair has different phases when its on.
- Finding great PL products for sale and brainstorming at the fair.
- How easy it was to get around when going to the Canton Fair.
- Transportation to the Canton fair back and forth by subway to get around quicker.
- How he could get around in China easily with out speaking any Chinese.
- How easily it is to navigate in China to get to the Canton Fair.
- Making a living proof reading billboards in China because of bad grammar.
Wills outlook for the future of his Amazon FBA PL business
- Increasing his business to the 20 million dollar mark.
- Focusing more on maximizing profit vs growing revenue.
- How long he see's it taking him to get to his next business goal.

SOS 004 Will’s $6 million Amazon FBA Story, Tips Picking Epic Products & The Canton Fair

Generally we want to reduce any risks when selecting products so we you are not stuck with inventory that is hard to liquidate. Through this podcast episode we are going to go into the details of how I find extremely profitable items to sell on Amazon. In the end goal of this exercise we should be able to find products that are selling reasonable volumes and decide if its a good market to enter based on the marketing research we compile together. I have included the documents to download here. By following these steps we will be able to intelligently choose profitable products.

 


 
Tools and Links Discussed
AMZ Shark - A Tool For tracking Amazon product sales, Amazon reviews, competitor product research.
Alibaba - Largest manufacture marketplaces to connect with suppliers for producing private label products.
Google Keyword Research Tool - For finding search volumes on products people look up on Google.
Camel Camel Camel - Amazon Product Pricing Tracker
 
Downloads Discussed:
SOS Profitable Product Spreadsheet - My personal worksheet to research and find profitable items to sell on Amazon.

Once you download my spreadsheet visit Google Spreadsheets and click the green plus button in the lower right to upload and add this spreadsheet to Google docs.
 

1. Document Your Researching Products To Sell
Open up a spreadsheet in Google Documents (I like this because I can work on it from anywhere).
- In one column label it “Products”.
- In another column label it “Avg Amazon Reviews”.
- In another column label it “Amazon Product Results”.
- In another column label it "Google Searches”.
- In another 5 column's label them “ASIN1”, “ASIN2”, "ASIN3", “ASIN4”.
- In another column label it “Avg Amazon Pricing”.
- In another column label it “Avg Alibaba Pricing”.
- In another column label it “Avg Daily Units Sold”.
- In another column label it “Lead Time”
- In another column label it “Shipping Cost”
- In another column label it “Profit Margin"

 

2. Research Amazon Top Selling Products To Get General Readings.
- Visit Amazon top sellers website list
- Pick A category that interests you and look for small items that are light weight.
- Make a list of these 5-10 different products from the category you picked in column 1 labeled “Products”.
- Use the simple name for example if you where came across some "fancy silver nail clippers” just put down “nail clippers”.
- Remember to only pick small items that can easily be shipped (basically nothing bigger then an ice cooler.
- After making your list in a Google Spreadsheet go to Amazon.com
- Search each product you added on Amazon from your list, one at a time by placing the product name in parentheses example: “nail clippers”.
- Put the number average number of reviews in column 2 from the top 5 products on that page.
- In column 3 your going to put the number of results that came up in amazon,
- Do this for each product and don’t skip ahead.
- Now visit the Google keyword planner tool. It will require that you have a Google account.
- Click on the option that says “Get search volume for a list of keywords or group them into ad groups”...

SOS 002 How I Made My First $10,000 Month Selling On Amazon

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