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Details of My First 90 Days Selling on Amazon – Update 16

Wow, where has the time went? It feels just like yesterday when I was still trying to figure out what product I was going to sell! A lot of things have happened since then 🙂

Currently, I have been selling on Amazon for right around 90 days and it has been a rollercoaster ride so far. There have been some downs but, plenty more ups along the way and I am very happy with the success that I have had this early on.

In this 16th update in my Amazon FBA case study, I will be analyzing everything that has happened within the first 3 months of selling on Amazon. There is a TON of information to cover and I am so excited to give you all some updates on the progress I have been making. I will also be discussing the future plans that I have to grow this business away from Amazon at some point.

Lot’s cool stuff going down in this update but, before we can get into it, make sure to check out all of the previous updates in my Amazon journey below:

  1. PART 1 – Intro to Case Study
  2. PART 2 – The Game Plan
  3. PART 3 – How to Find Profitable Products to Sell on Amazon
  4. PART 4 – How to Find Suppliers on Amazon
  5. PART 5 – Info About my First Order + Calculating Profit Margins
  6. PART 6 – How to Utilize your Samples
  7. PART 7 – FNSKU Labels and UPC Barcodes
  8. PART 8 – I Placed my First Order + a Minor Setback
  9. PART 9 – How to Brand your Amazon FBA Business
  10. PART 10 – How to Setup your Amazon Sellers Account
  11. PART 11 – My Product has Shipped + Updates
  12. PART 12 – The Definitive Guide to Getting your Product Pictures Taken
  13. PART 13 – My Product has Arrived + My Initial Launch Strategy
  14. PART 14 – Results from my First Month of Selling on Amazon
  15. PART 15 – Increased Rankings and Sales + Ordered a New Shipment

It’s crazy that I already have 16 updates in my case study and it’s amazing to see the progress I have made since the beginning. For those of you that have followed along since the beginning THANK YOU. For those of you who are first time readers of my site and this is the first article you are reading of mine, THANK YOU. You all are awesome and give me the motivation to keep putting out these updates for you 🙂

I just wanted to give my thanks to you all before we got into the post.

Sales Stats from my First 3 Months

It has been almost exactly 90 days since my product went live on Amazon and all of the sales, earnings and units sold info can be seen below:

3month-sales-dashboard

Not too shabby of a start for a new business on Amazon!

Interestingly enough, these numbers had the potential to be lot higher if it wasn’t for inventory issues. I touched on these issues in the last update but, the main problem was that I was selling too many units too quickly and I didn’t want to run out of stock.

In the image above of my seller dashboard, you can see at the beginning I was constantly making more sales each day and I had a nice upwards trend going. Then I had to raise my price to slow sales and since then my sales have been lower.

Did I Make any Profit?

This is the most important question.

I always see people talking about how many units they sold and how much REVENUE they made, but rarely do people like to talk the most important thing, profit.

The first thing we need to look at are the revenue and expenses to determine the profit. Below is a screenshot of my Amazon “Summary Report”:

This report does a good job of showing the expenses that you had ON Amazon, but it does not take into account the expenses such as shipping and manufacturing fees. We have to factor these prices in manually.

Total Revenue: $10,939.87

Amazon Expenses (FBA Fees): $5,164.58

Manufacturing and Shipping Fees: 732 units sold * $4.2  cost per unit = $3,074.40

Amazon Ad Spend: $165.08

Other Expenses: $1,058.00

Total Expenses: $9,462.06

TOTAL PROFIT: $1,477.81

Note: The “Other Expenses” includes things such as the cost for the samples, product pictures, inventory placement service and other minor expenses.

In the first 3 months of selling on Amazon I have been able to turn a profit of around $1,500!

This is not fantastic by any means considering that I made close to $11k in revenue but, was only able to turn a $1,500 profit. A big reason for this was because over $2,500 was “lost” due to running my launches for my product. Even though these launches helped me out, it still took a large chunk of the profits away.

All in all, I am happy with making $1,500 in the first 3 months and it proves to me that this business model works. Now it’s time to try and scale it as fast as possible by reinvesting all of my profits back into the business.

Results from Raising my Price

I raised the price for my product from $14.99 to $19.99 in hopes of slowing down sales to prevent me from running out of inventory. While my price was at $14.99 I was selling 25+ units a day at the peak, however, on average it was around 15-20 units per day.

I knew that if I kept the 15-20 units per day pace I was going to run out of stock WAY before my second order could arrive. So on October 28th, I raised the price to $19.99 in hopes of making my inventory last as long as possible.

Below you can see what my sales have looked like since the price increase on October 28th:

sales-since-price-raise

In the 42 days since the price raise, I have sold 305 units. This comes out to 7.26 units sold per day.

If you recall from my last update, I did some calculations to determine that if I wanted to make my inventory last until my second shipment arrived, I would need to sell 8 or less units per day. Somehow, I have managed to do exactly that!

Higher Selling Price = Higher Profit Margins

Yes, I have only been selling around 7 units per day since raising my price but my profit margin has nearly doubled on a per unit basis.

  • At $14.99 my profit margin was around $4.50 per sale
  • At $19.99 my profit margin is around $8.50 per sale

Selling 7 units at $19.99 is practically the same thing as selling 14 units at $14.99 since I am making roughly the same amount of profit per sale. This has allowed me to slow down sales to make my inventory last while not taking too big of a dent out of my profits.

With that being said, there has been a downside to raising my price.

Higher Selling Price = Lower Conversion Rates

As I have explained many times throughout my case study, your product listing conversion rate is the most important metric for your product.

Why?

Amazon uses the conversion rate to rank your listing within their search engine for keywords. The higher the conversion rate for a keyword the higher you will rank for that keyword. Also, the higher conversion rate means the more sales you will make. More sales means better rankings within Amazon as well. Conversion rates are a MAJOR factor to ranking in Amazon’s search results.

With my product now at $19.99, I have seen a decrease in conversion rate which has affected many of my keyword rankings. I have seen a decrease in just about all of my keywords I was ranking for since raising my price. This isn’t the end of the world as I am still making sales, but this does prove that Amazon uses product listing conversion rates to determine your rankings.

Overall a Success

I had no idea what to expect from raising the price for my product. The only thing that I knew was that I needed to slow down sales and make my inventory last as long as possible.

With all things considered, I would say that raising the price was a success.

Not only did it do a good job of lowering my sales to under 8 units per day but, it also still made me a pretty nice chunk of profit even with the lower sales. I will continue to keep my price at $19.99 until my second shipment arrives at Amazon.

Update on my Second Shipment Order

I want to give you all a quick little update on the progress of my second shipment. I placed the order for another 1008 units with my supplier on October 22nd and it cost me $2,675. This comes out to be a cost of $2.65 per unit.

On November 28th, my supplier had completed the order and my freight forwarder picked up the shipment. From there, the shipment was placed onto a boat and it is currently on its way to Amazon’s warehouse.

I am hoping to get the shipment to Amazon by the first of the year, which is about 3 weeks from now.

Current Inventory

Right now, I have around 268 units left of my original 1008 units. See below:

current-inventory

Assuming my order arrives January 1st, 2016 which is 24 days from now, I need to sell under 11 units per day to make my inventory last. I would think this should be fairly easy as I have been selling around 7 units per day the last month or so. However, with the holidays coming up I am not sure what my sales per day will look like.

I am just hoping that my shipment arrives ASAP and I can stop worrying about running out of inventory!

Finally Tested Amazon PPC

I have been talking about trying out PPC with Amazon for the past couple of updates and I have finally got around to it. Check out the stats from my first campaign below:

ppc-results

I spent a total of $165.08 on PPC ads and in return made $619.99 in sales in 4 days of running the campaign. This was an auto campaign with a $30 daily budget.

The auto campaign is where Amazon will choose what keywords to target for you. I chose the auto campaign mainly because I wanted to see what type of results I would get. I was also able to find some keywords that I didn’t know about that I can now try to rank for within Amazon.

Running the Numbers

Now, even though I only spent $165 to make $620 in sales, this is not all profit. We still have to take into account the Amazon fees, shipping fees and the manufacturing fees.

Note: 31 units were sold from this PPC campaign

Total Revenue: $619.99

Ad Spend: $165.08

Amazon Fees: $7.02/sale * 31 units = $217.62

Shipping + Manufacturing Fees: $4.20/sale * 31 units = $130.20

Total Expenses: $165.08 + $217.62 + $130.20 = $512.90

Total Profit: $619.99 – $512.90 = $107.09

All in all, I made over $107 in profit from running these ads!

This isn’t anything amazing by any means, but it does show promise. Once I am able to mess around with this more I can start running targeted campaigns that go after specific keywords that I know convert well. This will only increase my profits further.

Just for fun, let’s break these numbers down even further 🙂

I sold 31 units and made $107.09 in profit, that means I made a profit of $3.45 per unit sold. Compare that to my normal profit margin of $8.50 per unit when my product is priced at $19.99. Running PPC cut my profit margins more than 50% but, I think I could optimize this with more testing.

I can’t wait until my second shipment arrives so that I can start running more of these PPC campaigns. I am really excited about my results and I think it could be a great way to increase sales while still maintaining a solid profit margin.

 Product Review and Seller Feedback Progress

Now that I have been selling on Amazon for 3 months I have been able to get a solid amount of reviews for my product as well as feedback for my sellers account.

Product Reviews

Check out the amount of reviews I have for my product as well as the average review ratings below:

reviews

I currently have 125 reviews for my product and an average rating of 4.9 out 5 stars. This is awesome to see because it proves that my product is high quality and the customers have liked my product.

I would have liked to maintain a 5 star rating but, as I sell more and more units the likelihood of everyone leaving a 5 star review gets worse. Still, 90% of the people who have left a review have left a 5 star review which is really cool to see.

Seller Feedback

Below is a screenshot of the feedback I have recieved for my sellers account:

seller-feedback

I have 75 reviews at an average of 4.9 out of 5 stars for my account. Also, 100% of the reviews have been positive which is a good thing to see.

The funny thing about seller feedback reviews is that over half of them are product reviews. People accidently leave the product review for my sellers account instead of for the product itself. This is a bummer because I would have an extra 30+ reviews for my product if they were left in the correct spot.

Found New Keywords to Target

I mentioned above that by using an auto PPC campaign I was able to dig up keywords that I never knew existed for my product. I was then able to target these within my product listing. Aside from that, I was also able to find a TON really good keywords from Merchant Words and that is what I want to talk about really quick.

14 New Keywords with at Least 500+ Monthly Searches

By utilizing Merchant Words, I was able to find 14 NEW keywords that all had at least 500+ monthly searches. The screenshot below shows the spreadsheet I created for these keywords, the highlighted green rows are the new keywords I found:

new-kws

Like I said, the green rows represent the new keywords I discovered and the white rows are the keywords I was previously targeting. Also, the far right column shows where I was ranking within Amazon for each keyword. The ones with “0” mean that I was not ranking anywhere in Amazon for that search term.

The keywords that I am not ranking for are the ones that I am most excited about.

Why?

Because these are the keywords that I have not tapped into yet. This means that there is still a lot more room to grow before I hit the ceiling in terms of maxing out the keywords/traffic. It will be interesting to see what happens when I add these “new” keywords to my product listing and/or target them within a new PPC campaign.

Attempting to Grow Brand Away from Amazon

Using Amazon to kick start your brand and to get a lot of eyeballs on your products is perfect. However, in my opinion, the way to truly create a sustainable business is to try and NOT rely on Amazon for everything. This way if Amazon randomly disappeared overnight my brand would not be ruined.

I think the smart move is to make your business self sustainable as soon as possible. I am attempting to start this process by doing the following:

  • Growing the brand’s website via organic traffic
  • Growing an email list of people who are interested in my products
  • Gain fans and grow brand awareness on social media

These are the three main things that I have been focusing on the past couple of weeks and what I will be continuing to focus on in the future. I believe these things will help my brand be less reliant on Amazon and be able to stand by itself as a business.

Starting to Utilize my Website

I have had a website for my brand for a while now (6+ months) but, I have not done much with it. Looking back, I wish I would have started working on growing this site a long time ago.

With that being said, the main thing I am trying to do is grow the traffic to the site by adding new content as much as possible. I am doing this in hopes of the articles ranking for keywords within Google that are related to my brand/product. Doing this will bring in people that could turn into potential customers.

The type of content I am writing is geared towards the overall niche that my brand/product is currently in. The long term goal here is to have a whole catalogue of products that cover all parts of this niche and having content that compliments these products will be very useful down the road.

I am not doing anything groundbreaking here. All I am doing is hiring a content writer from Upwork to write 500+ word articles around my niche and posting them to my site in hopes of ranking for niche related keywords. That’s it.

Right now, I only have two pieces of content on my site and they were both added within the last two weeks. Since these articles are so new there isn’t much to report to you all at this moment. I will make sure to keep you all updated on the progress that the site makes!

Trying to Grow my Email List

This is another major goal I have that will help me rely less on Amazon. Having a list of, for example, 500 interested people that I can email whenever I want is SO powerful for so many different reasons.

I am attempting a lot of different strategies when it comes to growing my email list and I will have a whole post dedicated to my results sometime in the future.

Growing an email list is something that I see as very important, so I will be spending a lot of time focusing on this during the next couple of months.

Becoming Active on Social Media

When I say “social media’ I am mainly talking about Facebook and Twitter. These are the main two that I will be focusing on and using to grow brand awareness. I think that I have underestimated the power of social media when it comes to branding and selling products.

This is another area that I have only been focusing on the past week or so but, I think being active on social media and interacting with your customers will pay off in the long run. Right now, it is too early to report any sort of results from this since I have been active only a week.

I am thinking about putting together a post here soon where I will discuss all of the strategies I have used to grow my website, my email list and my social media accounts. I’m obviously going to have to test what works and what doesn’t so this post may not be ready for a while but, I wanted to let you all know what I will be focusing on during the next couple of weeks/months.

Bringing it to a Close

That is gonna do it for the 16th update in my Amazon journey! The first 3 months have been a success and I have been able to turn a profit of around $1,500. I am expecting a lot more to come in the upcoming months with my second shipment coming in and me being able to go back to aggressively selling my product.

This past month in a half have been me focusing on slowing down sales and making my inventory last. I am looking forward to not having to worry about that anymore once my shipment arrives 🙂

I have just finished finals and I now have around 3 weeks off! I am planning on taking advantage of this time to put out a lot of content for you guys, so be on the lookout!

Thank you all for reading, before you go make sure to join our Amazon FBA Facebook Group and sign up for my newsletter below.

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Comments

60 Comments

Abraar Arique

Awesome Josh! It’s amazing to see that you’re making such great progress. I’ve been following you for a long time now, and yet you’ve posted another helpful article.

One thing: Greg, the founder of Jungle Scout, mentioned in his “Collaborative Product Launch with Greg” guide that for one’s first Amazon FBA shipping air freight is a MUST. I know air shipping costs a lot more than sea shipping, but Greg gives a logic that it takes 2+ months for products to arrive by the sea, where it is less than 7 days in air shipping. This is a big difference when it’s your first product shipping and you need to test the waters first. What do you think, Josh?

Thanks again for the update.

Josh
Josh

Hi Abraar,

Thanks for following along and it’s good to hear that you have found them helpful 🙂

As for your question, I agree that shipping by air is MUCH better in terms of lead times but you are leaving a lot of product on the table by ONLY using air shipping. However, it is a lot easier to ship by air and if possible, I would suggest going by air as well. It all depends on your situation.

Josh

Mazhar

Hi Josh,
Glad to know that you are making profit. I have two questions.
1 – Can you let us know what would you have changed or not done if you can go back 3 months.
2- Do you (still) recommend the blast service ( viral launch) ? OR you would only recommend PPC over viral launch. Because I can see that product blast have costed you a lot.
Thanks & keep up the good work.

Josh
Josh

Hey Mazhar,

Thanks for the comment!

1. Good question, I may just turn that question into a future blog post and expand on my answers. To answer it concisely I would do a couple of things differently. One of them being that I would have ordered more than 1000 units for my first order. This is easy to look at in hindsight since my product has been a success so far but it would have been nice to have 2,500 units. ANother thing I would have done differently is start working on growing my website a long time ago so at this point I would have a website that was already getting a good amount of traffic. Aside from those two things, Im not sure what else I would change. Good question though!

2. The effectiveness of launch services are in the air right not but I would still recommend them for now. They do a great job of increasing your listing’s conversion rate and sales velocity, both of which help you rank better in Amazon. I also think that PPC is extremely underutilized and is awesome at helping get your product up and running on Amazon. If I was just starting out, I might start with PPC for a week or two and if I didn’t see any results I would try a launch service.

Thanks for commenting and I appreciate your questions

Josh

Alex

Hi Josh,
Thank you for your update.
Where did you find that income/expense report in Amazon Seller Central? I’ve been looking for a simple summary like that but can’t seem to find it.

Josh
Josh

Hi Alex,

Thanks for your comment! The income and expense reports can be found by going to “Reports” -> “Date Range Reports” -> click “Generate Report” -> choose the “Summary” option and then pick the date for which you want the report for. Let it download and then you have it! I hope this explained it well enough

Josh

Alex

Awesome, thanks Josh!

Josh
Josh

No problem 🙂

Mary

Hi Josh,
Congratulations and many thanks for giving us all the info from your experience with FBA
You are right that we all talk about REVENUE and very few about their PROFITS
PROFIT is the raison d’etre of the whole business.
But it is exciting getting the business up and running on FBA
I followed your steps and now am live on UK FBA.
Am looking to find a UK wholesaler and not to be too reliant on China.
All the best – look forward to the updates.
Mary

Josh
Josh

Hi Mary,

Good to hear from you again and it’s awesome to hear that you are now selling on Amazon after following my steps 🙂

Thanks for the comment

Josh

Ted

Josh

Another great update, thanks for keeping us informed. I think you’re doing great and you’ve definitely proved the business model. Looks like it may now just be a matter of fine-tuning and seeing what works and what doesn’t – and you’ve already got a great head start on that, too.
Fantastic!!
Ted

Josh
Josh

Hey Ted,

Yup, exactly Ted. Thank you for leaving a comment

Josh

issac

Hi, Josh

Thanks for sharing so much useful info .

I’m planning to follow your step to have a business on Amazon.

Hope some day i can catch up you.

Issac

Josh
Josh

Hi Issac,

You are welcome and good luck with your own amazon business! If you ever have any questions feel free to email me

Josh

Eddie

Thanks for sharing Josh.
I really enjoy following your journey. (i actually ready your whole 3 months journey in 2 sittings :))

It seems like your product has an opportunity to branch off into a niche site and potentially a branded business. Have you consider about incorporating? As opposed to selling your assets which you have done for your past sites. This avenue allows you to have BOTH the money (via loan or sell equity) and the website/business. (it’s like having the cake and eating it :))

Josh
Josh

Hey Eddie,

Thanks for commenting! Awesome to hear you that you read my whole journey in 2 sittings, that’s impressive 🙂

And you are correct, my product does have an opportunity to branch off into a niche site and that is what I am working on right now. I haven’t incorporated yet but I have an LLC behind the business.

Good ideas and thanks for sharing

Josh

Greg

Hey, Josh.

Could you please detail how you were able to determine your ranking within Amazon for those keywords you scraped up from Merchant Words? For example, you mention that you ‘are excited by the keywords for which you were not ranking at all’. Fair enough, but how were you able to determine that?

(My guess is that you used AMZ.One for that, but could you please let us know?)

Cheers for your extremely clear and to-the-point analysis. Excellent work, you deserve your success.

Michelle

I don’t have the answer but was going to ask that question also regarding where to look for your keyword ranks. I was wondering if it was a report within Amazon I hadn’t found yet?!

Josh
Josh

Hi Michelle,

You can check your rankings by using a service such as Amz.one or AmzTracker. They will track your keyword rankings for Amazon so you can keep tabs on how well you are ranking.

Josh

Josh
Josh

Hi Greg,

You are correct. I took the keywords from Merchant Words and pasted them into Amz.one’s keyword tracking. This way I was able to determine where I was ranking for those keywords.

Hope this helps and clears things up 🙂

Josh

Bill

Josh,

Well done on making a profit I was a bit disappointed that the profit was only a modest $1,500 considering the time and effort. Nevertheless with scaling up the business with your new shipment I am hoping to see an upswing in profit.
Have you identified new products?
Keep up the excellent work.

Bill

Josh
Josh

Hi Bill,

Thank you. And yes, $1,500 is not that much considering how much revenue I generated but this will be different with my next shipment. However, I am not too worried about profits at this point in the business and I am more worried about growing my business. As for your question, yes, I have a couple of products that I have in the pipeline that I will be pursuing once I get enough capital from my first product.

Josh

John Mara

Hi Josh – What was your reasoning on only reordering 1000 units as opposed to the 2500?

Josh
Josh

Hey John,

The only thing that stopped me was capital. I just don’t have enough extra capital to order 2,500 units. Good question and I am hoping my next order will be at least 2,000+ units

Josh

Britt

Wow Josh!

I get a little sick to my stomach when I think about what your future holds in terms of both your influence as an expert on the subject of ecommerce and also your personal financial success. To think you are only early 20s is so exciting! I share your passion for online sales with a major interest in Amazon. Just doing arbitrage made me 60k profit my second year on Amazon. Your insights are spot on but I go from loving to hating you for giving away the formula for success to the world! But anyone willingbto put the work in deserves the success. I couldn’t agree more about the fact that you stress the importance of moving away from a relationship dependant on Amazon for a few reasons but the main one being this- At any time Amazon can shut down a sellers account they generally won’t without reason and if you watch your metrics you should know where you stand but there are other things that can cause a sellers demise and if you’ve already diversified you won’t feel it in such a catastrophic way. Josh your body of work is so in depth, well explained and brilliantly presented that even giving it away you’ll soon be making money off of it but I am sure you know that already. Kudos to you for preaching the branding of new products and I look forward to hearing about your personal success selling both on and off Amazon. You have inspired me to do the footwork and find a product to sell so if you don’t mind I too may be contacting you with a question or two and your expert opinion. This is the most impressive and comprehensive guide to selling a product online that exists from creation to consumer you cover it all!

Samuel

Hi there Josh. This series has pushed me to start a similar business in 2016. One question that I have is : how much should I separate to start a FBA business with similar success to yours?

Josh
Josh

Hi Samuel,

That’s awesome to hear 🙂

The amount of capital needed to get started on Amazon is going to differ depending on your product and quantity of your first order. It cost me around $5k to get started but it could be a lot less or a lot more based on your situation. I think you will need at least $3k to get started and maybe even more.

Josh

Justin

Hey Josh,

Amazing work. It’s been really fun to follow you. I was wondering if you have any tips about guarding yourself from a legal perspective. Obviously there’s the LLC thing to protect personal items, but how about other legal issues like accidentally infringining on trademarks or patents? Or not complying to US Regulatory requirements or even liability issues, like if someone accidentally cut their pet with an abnormally sharp part of a pet brush (yikes).

Obviously you can decrease the probability of a lot of this by selling a simple product that you’ve made enhancements to keep it unique but there are still risks. Are you using any sort of liability insurance for your product?

I appreciate what you’re doing!

Thanks,
Justin

Josh
Josh

Hey Justin,

Good question and this is something that I will have to look into more once I start selling more products. It would be smart to get some sort of liability insurance just to be safe. When I start getting into this more for my own brand I will make sure to report back and let you know what I found out

Josh

David

Hello Josh, first sorry for my English, iam from Austria EU.
I will say you thanks for all the information that you have find and share with us. Nevertheless, I must say that your income is simply too small for 3 months. I think the calculation was wrong. I think I read in your blog that should be the selling price purchase price 25% then everything would have gone out. hope you’re not angry with me but that’s a gain of approximately $ 300 per month with a bet of 4,000, or $ 5,000 It is very small. I am grateful to you for your information and your blog is great. I pity you because you have
invested so much time and money. I wanted to shake with this post you a little awake, everyone showered you with praise, nobody dares you to tell the truth. I think you’re going to take as an incentive and think of improvements criticism. Then we can all have something from that , I really appreciate what you do and see that you have a lot of information and knowledge. I just wanted my mind to say I hope you’re not angry with me.I also hope the people which read this are also not angry with me, it is only what iam think and a discussion and criticism is needfull to be better! Thanks.

Josh
Josh

Hey David,

In the first 3 months I earned around $1,500 in PROFIT, which is not fantastic but it is a good start! Considering how much money I invested into this to start it, $1,5k profit after 3 months is pretty good. I will be seeing much better profits in the next couple of months as I grow my product line and my second shipment arrives. Im not sure where you got the $300 from but I have earned more than that.

However, thank you for your comment and I appreciate you reading my site! 🙂

Josh

Mrs. Budgets @MrandMrsBudgets

Hey Josh,

I just started in the private label space. I’m currently having my modified samples mailed to me right now before I give the final ok to start production. I was blogging in the personal finance space then completely stumbled into this arena and I was surprised I didn’t hear about it sooner. Two months ago, when I first learned about PL, I’ve completely stopped blogging to learn everything I can about PL. I plan to do a similar case study on my experience on my blog. Being a bit older than you, 29, and married my husband and I have a bit of money to invest in PL. So I decided to go with an over-sized product that were having modified, a bit of an expensive product as well. I’m confident though there is way less competition and I’ll worried less about copycats. Welp, don’t won’t to ramble too much. Just want to let you know I’ll be keeping up on your journey. Best of luck.

Josh
Josh

Hey there,

Great idea going into a higher price product and that is something that I am planning to do as well once I get some more capital to work with. I wish you the best of luck with your product and feel free to shoot me an email whenever you have any questions, I would love to help you out if you need

Josh

Caleb

Hello Josh,

I saw in one of your videos that you are looking at a few kitchen products that touch food. Do you worry about the products from China on Alibaba being food safe? Thank you

Josh
Josh

Hi Caleb,

I was only looking at those products as an example, but good question!

This would be something that I would make sure would be 100% safe before I placed any orders. I would do research on the material sued in the product and make sure that is safe to use with food. Good question!

Josh

Steve

Loved following your Amazon journey and learned a lot. I hope your profits continue to increase and you are able to expand your line of products in the future.
QUESTION: Are you going to look for other possible suppliers as a backup in case your current supplier decides to suddenly up the price or simply goes out of business.

All the best for 2016

Josh
Josh

Thanks Steve, I appreciate it!

Good question, I have not done that yet but it will be something that I will look into in the future

Josh

Gabe

Josh,

Just waiting on samples now. I, like Eddie, also finished your posts in a couple sittings. I have been interested in pursuing PL FBA stuff for a while, nearly 100ish hrs of research, and your case study has been the most comprehensive and in depth study. I really appreciate you taking the time to be responsive and transparent with your postings/responses.

As a thought, It seems, from the reading I’ve done of your posts, that lead time is closely tied to the success of one’s early success. It seems, the quicker you can get product in inventory, the faster you can push it. When you picked your supplier, was lead time a question you asked about? If not, would you have knowing what you know now?

Again, I really appreciate your material. Keep up the good work!

Happy new year!

-Gabe

CarlZam

Hi Josh,

First and foremost, I would to congratulate you on your FBA success, really inspiring journey for online business newbies like me to follow or use it as a guide to start my own FBA journey. It is also very generous of you to share your case study and really thank you for that. However I do have few questions that i have some doubts and hope you can help me out to answer it( i know it is too much to ask on top of what you have shared here but a newbie like me can easily get confused! 😀 )

I can see you did your product research extensively before creating FBA account? any reason for this as you only touched this on PART10 ?

Josh
Josh

hey,

Thank you 🙂

I wanted to find a product before I created an account. The main reason was because I had no use for an account until i found a product.

Josh

joe

Why are there no dates on your posts?

Josh
Josh

Hi Joe,

There are dates on the post. Look at the very top at the featured image, you will see the date there

Josh

Richard

Hi Josh
Excellent series..thanks! I started to try Amazon FBA in Jan 2016 and am still struggling with my first product listing just now! This process seems slow and somewhat complicated and confusing to me just trying it out. I need to properly read all your posts now, as I have just skimmed through to this last post now. I have applied for the FB group and hope to see you there! Best wishes 🙂

Fran

Hi Josh,
Thank you for sharing your knowledge and journey. This series has been very informative and comprehensive for me. You have cleared up a lot areas that I wasn’t sure about. I have joined your FB, but not been in yet as too busy reading this. I would like to ask a few questions.
You mentioned Inventory placement service. Is this what other people might call a prep company?
I live in the UK and was wondering if it is better to start in the US, as it’s huge compared to the UK market. To do this, I thought it would be best practice to use an inspection agent in China before it is shipped, to make sure the product is high quality and then have it shipped to a prep company, who would then forward it to Amazon. Is this viable or do you think I am best to start in the UK ? Thank you so much in advance.

Josh
Josh

Hi Fran,

Thanks for the comment and I would love to answer your question!

Inventory placement service is not a prep service, it is something that allows you to ship your whole shipment to only one Amazon warehouse. This will save you money because you won’t have to send your shipment to multiple warehouses.

The US marketplace is bigger but the UK market is still a viable market for selling. It may be easier to get started with UK because there is less competition. I haven’t used a prep company but I would suggest using one for your first shipment.

Josh

Michelle J

Hi Josh,

You say you wish you had started to build up your website sooner. Do you have any specific advice on the easiest, least expensive way to go about this for someone who is new to website building/technologically challenged and specific programs/sites you would recommend? Ex – best place to buy a domain (go daddy or others), monthly vs. one time start up fees, website design software (wordpress etc.)

I know you have some experience with this, so any recommendations appreciated – thanks!

Josh
Josh

Hi Michelle,

Domain – Godaddy or namecheap

Hosting – Bluehost

CMS – WordPress

That is all you really need to get a website up and running!

Josh

Manuel

If you need more capital, what do you say about someone investing in you?

Josh
Josh

Hi,

I would consider it but, I have recently sold one of my niche websites so I have a good chunk of capital to work with. I appreciate the suggestion

Josh

Chris Hyatt

Hi Josh

I found your case study while googling professional photography for my amazon products. The info you provide here is priceless.

I am reviewing all my products and updating all my processes to follow in your amazing footsteps.

please add me to your email updates.

Josh
Josh

Sweet! That is awesome to hear and I appreciate your comment. If you want to join my email list then you can do so in the email signup form above

Josh

Lisa Wolfe

I have really enjoyed your journey. I was wondering if you had given any thought to splitting your 2d shipment and sending some by air so you could keep your momentum. I realize that the costs are higher, but you would only need to ship the amount of product projected to sell during the sea shipping time. Thoughts?

Josh
Josh

Hi Lisa,

I looked into this but found out that it was outrageously expensive to do so. Thank you for your suggestion and I am sure this would work well with other products but my product was too heavy.

Josh

Tracy

Hey Josh,
U mentioned that you started by giving away 100 products at $0.99 to get reviews and improve your rankings.
How can you assure that people who purchase your product at $0.99 would leave you a review?

Thanks

Josh
Josh

Hi Tracy,

They all wont leave a review but the hope is that since they got the product for such a low price that they would return the favor by leaving a review. Good question!

Josh

Wes

Hi Josh,

Just a quick question, I aim to conduct shipping with the same company as you. When you were in touch with your supplier, did you give them the final payment once you got a photo of the finished goods? Or did you wait until your shipper confirmed that they were in touch with the goods?

Thanks a bunch. Great case study you have made.

Wes

Josh
Josh

I finished paying them once they were finished making my goods

Srinivas

Josh
I have one confusion. People in India are advising to launch 50 products at a go. With all the hard work you have to do thats a tough ask. Tell me did u launch 50 products or just 1 or 2. Please its very important for me.

Srinivas

Josh
Josh

Hi – I started with one product. 50 at one time is a lot and would require a lot of upfront capital, even with small MOQ’s.

I’d suggest starting with one and scaling from there.

Josh

javier perez

Hi Josh,
Do you have any update since the last time? How your PL is performing? Wondering how things going for you. It is important to understand better the conclusion of your PL this is going to help many followers……….thanks a lot and hope continue following your content.


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