My Amazon FBA Journey
Welcome to my Amazon FBA journey, you can follow my progress below as I try and make some money selling private label products on Amazon. Check out all of the updates so far below
My Amazon FBA Case Study Updates
- Follow Along as I Try to Make Money with Amazon FBA – Introduction
- PART 2 – The Game Plan
- PART 3 - How to Find Profitable Products to Sell on Amazon + Details about my Product
- PART 4 - How to Find Suppliers on Alibaba
- PART 5 - Info about my First Order + Calculating Profit Margins
- PART 6 - How to Utilize your Samples
- PART 7 - FNSKU Labels and UPC Barcodes 101
- PART 8 - Placed my First Order + a Minor Setback
- PART 9 - How to Brand your Amazon FBA Business
- PART 10 - How to Setup your Amazon Sellers Account
- PART 11 - My Product has Shipped + Updates
- PART 12 - The Definitive Guide to Getting your Product Pictures Taken
- PART 13 - My Product has Arrived at Amazon + My Initial Launch Plan
- PART 14 - Results from my First Month of Selling on Amazon
- PART 15 - Increased Rankings and Sales + Ordered a New Shipment
- PART 16 - Details from my First 90 Days Selling on Amazon
- PART 17 - The Plan for my Amazon FBA Business in 2016 and Beyond
- PART 18 - Update on Sales + Future Plans
I am not taking any courses and everything I am learning is from free online resources or from learning myself.
I started this journey and case study because I wanted to see if it was possible to become a successful Amazon seller without buying the thousand dollar courses. I figured there would be plenty of people that felt the same way as I do so that is why I created this case study.
I am hoping that I am able to create an awesome, free resource for people looking to start selling on Amazon. If you are interested in Amazon FBA then make sure to join our Facebook group here and sign up below to get all of the new updates emailed to you.
Comments
33 Comments
Congratulations Josh on your success! It is great to see how hard work and determination pays off. Have fun in college and I will keep in touch.
Mr. Vaule!! Wow its good to hear from you! Thank you so much and I hope everything is going well for you. We’ll have to talk soon
I would just like to say that you are going to do really well with your Amazon business and want to wish you all the best with it and your life. It is great to see and thank you for the case study.
I am just a couple of years older than you (67) and am just starting out on my Amazon journey.
I will be following along. I am fairly fit so I should be able to keep up.
Glad to have found your blog via a YouTube video.
Hi Bruce,
I really appreciate it Bruce and I wish you the best of luck on your journey! If you ever have any questions feel free to ask me. Thanks
Josh
Hi Josh,
Great case study, hope it is all going well.
I got a question regarding your choice to go with a minimum order of 1000 units. I understand it was financially the best choice to go with 1000 instead of 500 based on the production cost and shipping cost. And of course the unit price is going to be lower if you go with higher quantities if you only factor in production and shipping cost.
However, did you take storage cost into consideration? The FBA calculator bases shipping cost on a 30-day turn around if I’m not mistaken. So if you don’t sell in 30-days the shipping cost will be higher than calculated with the FBA calculator. I was wondering if you took this into consideration and if you made any calculations on how the unit price would be if it would take you for example 120 days to sell all 1,000 units.
I think it was still a wise decision to go with the 1000 piece order, but was just wondering how you think about this.
Hi Danique,
Thank you, I didn’t take storage cost into consideration because it’s such a small fee per month. They cost me under a dollar per month to store my units at Amazon. At such a low cost this did not affect my decision between 500 and thousand units.
Hoped this helped and thank you for commenting,
Josh
Hi Josh,
Thanks for your reply, that seems to make sense.
Another question I got was if there is anything you can do to make sure people don’t “steal your listing”. As far as I understand it right now you are working hard to get your listing lots of reviews and rank it up in the keywords. However, if someone decides to copy your product it could sell it as well under the same listing. It might even beat you by selling it for a cheaper price and winning the buy box, correct? Is there anything you can do about this?
Hi Josh,
I have been following along your journey and have really enjoyed your FBA Material. I am at the point where I have been getting quotes from suppliers on Alibaba for my first order and I had a couple questions.
How did you negotiate with suppliers and what was the back and forth dialogue like?
How did you come to the conclusion that what you were actually paying was fair?
Thanks in advance I have gotten a lot out of your FBA Case study.
-Louis M
Hi Louis,
Thanks for leaving a comment and congrats on taking action and starting to get quotes!
As for your questions:
1. I didn’t really do any negotiating with my supplier because I felt like it was a good price. Also, I felt like I had no leverage within the negotiations because I have never placed an order with them and they had no idea if I was going to be a serious buyer or now.
2. I knew it was fair because it was cheaper than all of the other suppliers and they also knew what they were talking about in terms of shipping to Amazon. These two things sold me
Josh
Hey Josh
Thanks for sharing your story! Great job on your first product launch. My belief is after you get the process you just did. (You got this)! and once you get it the sky is the limit. just replicate with other product. Profits will get better a lot of start up cost in there. Thanks for sharing your story.
and congratulations!!
Hey Randy,
Thank you 🙂
And yup, I agree with you! I am getting the process down and now I can start scaling up with other products. Thanks for your comment and thank you for reading my journey
Josh
Hi. I wrote a reply yesterday but it was late and didn’t notice it was an old topic so I will rewrite it here..if you got the time i would like to hear your answer.
” Hi, and congrats for doing this especially at this age! Just 1question: you said you are looking to build a legit business to be able to sell it lately…so did you register a new company and you are making an invoice for each sold product? did you register your brand? because if you did there are lots of taxes to pay which need to be taken into consideration;;
Hey,
I replied to your other comment 🙂
Josh
Josh – Wanted to write and say ‘thanks’. This is great information, glad I stumbled upon your site. Will read the steps in more details to start to implement and follow along what you’ve laid out.
Tanner
Hey Tanner,
Awesome! Thanks for commenting
Josh
Good Work Sir. I will try to follow your steps to Grab India Market
Awesome, good luck!
Josh
Very cool doing a case study! I wish you the best of luck with your Amazon FBA Business! I also run a forum for anyone needing help in their amazon fba business! http://www.FBAFORUMS.com
Thanks Mikey!
I will check out your forum and see if I can help some people out over there! Thanks for commenting
Josh
Hey Josh,
Great info here in your FBA journey!
Just curious as to your thoughts on whether it is always necessary to seek out niche products with low amounts of reviews vs simply finding a product that is already selling well and entering the marketplace with a cool and fresh take on it (iPhone cases, herbal supplements, etc).
With regard to the above, you can then build out a Shopify store and share your product with influencers etc for reviews and social proof.
Your thoughts are appreciated!
John
Hi John,
The products with low reviews/competition just make it easier to see success quickly. A lot of times these type of products have a ceiling on the earning potential. With the products that are already selling very well and have high competition, it will be harder to find success but there is a lot more earning potential. It just depends on what you want to do. It is also important to note that the more competitive products will take more money to get started due to the giveaways, quantity and marketing needed.
As for your other question, YES! I am actually doing that right now for my own brand and I am seeing some success so far
Josh
Congratulations on getting this far. I’ve been reading this site and your niche site azon websiet and have decided to add amazon affiliate products to my AdSense information sites. Hopefully i’ll be as successful as you.
Thanks for all the tips.
Hi Peter,
Thank you and I wish you nothing but the best of success my man
Josh
Hi Josh, congratulations and thank you for sharing your work.
I am planning to try FBA too but I’m stuck in finding supplier on Alibaba. When you order a sample and you have to pay for it, do you have to make a contract for it ?
Thanks again
Hi Maxime,
Thanks, and as for your question, no, I didn’t have a contract. I just paid them through my bank’s wire transfer with a 30/70 payment
Josh
Hi josh,
Thank you for sharing your work.please I need the address which you gave the supplier to ship your products to amazon.And how are the prices fixed by amazon ?
Thanx
Hi Josh
My grandson’s name is Josh, so I feel you will be able to help me. I want to sell on Amazon, but I have no clue how to start or what would be good products to sell. I have not done a good job in saving and now that I am retired, I find it difficult to make ends meet.
How do I begin?
Hi,
I would suggest reading through my Amazon FBA journey here – https://www.passionintopaychecks.com/my-amazon-fba-journey/
That will give you a solid understanding of where to begin
Josh
Hey man I am really working to figure this whole Amazon FBA system out and I think I may have found my first product along with a good supplier for this product but I have a few questions about private labeling and was also curious as to if you think my product would be able to stand a chance in the market. If you get a free minute please shoot me an email because I would love your input. I have learned so much from your content and really appreciate you keeping us updated throughout your entire process!
Hi Adam,
I will send you an email!
Josh
By far the most comprehensive guide to private labeling and FBA I have seen so far. I am on my way to listing my first item on Amazon and this helped fill some gaps I had in the process. Thanks! Go Seahawks!
Thank you, I appreciate it!
And yeah, go Seahawks baby woo!! 🙂
Awesome information! Many of thanks Josh!
The future is in video! 😉
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