Transitioning From B&M to Online Making $3,500 in 6 Months

[Luke1213]

What's up people. Recently, I became part of this awesome forum when searching the internet for ideas and tips to start my own e-commerce store and depart from the rigors of the B&M model. Much of the advice on this forum is solid and I wanted to say thanks for sharing.

Let's get this thing rolling!

First off, I will be turning 40 this year and for much of my adult life, I have either been partner or owned a business and for the most part, I understand how to run a business. Granted a few of my businesses were moderately successful but several have failed miserably which brings me to this point in my life.

My current business (construction) is on life support and I am at the point of just abandoning construction almost entirely. I have always wanted to create an substantial income via the internet whether its through some type of marketing or e commerce store. Now I'm at the point it's either shit or get off the pot.

I have dabbled in internet marketing for several years and have managed to make a few grand and that was when I became ingrained with the notion that money can be made on line. But my biggest obstacle was shiny object syndrome or going balls to the wall for a month or two and give up when I didn't see the results I wanted. So now I must buckle down and get this business into profit mode.

My focus and attention will be on setting up an Amazon account and begin selling products via FBA and then transitioning into a full e-commerce store within the next 18 months. I am setting a goal of making at least $3500.00 per month by the end of the year and to increase the revenue by 2 times each quarter (i.e. 3500 in six months 7000 in nine months 10500 in 12 months and so on and so forth).

I will do my best to give continual updates but sometimes certain things will carry precedence.

 

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[randomnumber314]

Congrats. What industry did you pick for the ecomm?

Where are you located that construction is lagging?

 

[Luke1213]

I know I just posted the intro to my progress thread but I will list my progress to date.

My business model will be to import goods from china or use local manufacturers and resell them via Amazon and eventually sell on ebay and a e-commerce store.

Things I have completed up to this point: (last 3 weeks)

• Created a pro seller account with Amazon ($39.99)
• Researched which products I would like to pursue by using amazon, google keyword and other sources available to me
  
• Begin sourcing products with low cost and high resale margin on alibaba and similar sites
• Familiarized myself with Amazons selling process by reselling everyday items (helps generate startup capital too)
• Requested my EIN
• Received my EIN
• Sourced 3 items from China
• Contacted 10 different manufacturers for products
• Designed a logo
• In direct contact with 2 different suppliers for three products
• Received pricing and shipping cost for items
• Purchase UPC's for items for private labeling ($10.00)
• Ordered and shipped 50 sample items of 3 different products ($212.00)
• More market research
• Received confirmation on my samples and will ship Monday
• Sold some items via Amazon for more capital

So this is what I have accomplished thus far. I posted pricing next to the items that cost money to give an idea of how little startup capital is involved in creating a business model similar to this.

The next items on the agenda will be picking up a good label/logo printer and begin printing my own labels for these items to go on the shipping packages since the manufacturers wouldn't label a small quantity for me.

Quick note for anyone wanting to do this method. You can use Amazon to help fund your business by doing retail arbitrage or even selling shit you don't need around your house. Granted you don't want to sell a grille or a desk but some books, cd's dvd's, small electronics, ect. Believe it or not it does add up.

 

[Luke1213]

Congrats. What industry did you pick for the ecomm?

My niche involves accessories for electronic devices and want to eventually expand to similar markets.

Where are you located that construction is lagging?

FL. I haven't given up on quitting it all together. Even though my type of work is slowed, I do make a little bit of supplemental income pulling permits for people. I get a nice fee for my service but right now I am only doing 2-3 per month. If it grows, it will be a great revenue stream until the next financial collapse

 

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[randomnumber314]

until the next financial collapse

Care to expand on this?

 

[Luke1213]

Care to expand on this?

Industries follow trends.

The construction industry collapse was how I should have worded it. I live in Florida and currently where I reside on the east coast, my county was one of the hardest hit in Florida and is still one of the slowest growing counties in the state and carries a fairly high unemployment rate. But, my company, which was based on the west coast during its tenure (2002-2011), was located in an area where it ranked top 5 in the nation of areas hit the hardest by the market crash. I witnessed it first hand in 2008-09 when the housing market sank. My bread winning construction company took an indirect hit because of the market crash. Not because I was one of the contractors building thousands of homes a month and lost my clients, I was on the other side of the fence, doing work for public municipalities where the competition was low and the profit was high. After the housing market crashed, companies who had all their eggs in one basket (housing market) had to find a way to sustain cash flow. So what do they do? The over saturate the public sector and start doing work for nearly cost or even sometimes below cost just to keep cash flow steady and to possibly ride out the storm. I know competition breeds character but when you have 50 companies bidding on one job, it was hard to sustain in that time.

The construction industry is a tough nut to crack. Now owners and banks have seen first hand how low something can be constructed for because of the hyper inflation of the services attached to construction industry 7 years ago. At the height of the construction boom, a contractor could name his own price, within reason. A building was costing in excess of nearly $250 per square foot. Now, that same building can be constructed for 1/2 or even less.

 

[Rinzler]

Subscribed to the thread! You and I are on similar paths, except I'm using ebay for my store and hope to expand to my own website in the future. Keep up the good work!

 

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[Luke1213]

Today I started creating ad copy for my first product. Not liking how it looks so I might turn to odesk or elance to have a professional do my ad copy.

I also delve into keyword optimization for my product. Amazon has their own search engine and if you want your product to appear in amazons search engine these keywords are crucial.

That's it for today.

 

[Luke1213]

Thanks @Rinzler! I'll try to provide as much information about my journey as I can.

 

[bboyu]

Hey man thanks for the thread. Are you looking to establish a brand around the niche / products you will be selling? Or are you just going to be selling anything and everything you can get your hands on? When you do open up your own ecommerce store ideally it'll be a brand by you? Or just a retailer of "x"?

 

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[Justin079]

Yep, totally agree about construction being a tough nut to crack. I lost a business in it myself, things are on an up turn here in the uk but i'm not holding my breath it will last!

I think going forward for smaller developers, it's probably best for them to build high end niche property that caters to the high net worth folks. Unless of course you're a massive developer who can re-arrange your ducks in bad times and just ride it out. Being in the middle and or having lower income customers seems to be where the danger is.

Great post Luke, i too am looking to fastlane it from now on. Lots to learn but will all be good, it is tempting to sell my house in this buoyant market which would give me more time to focus on my side learning/gig and just rent for the short term. We'll see.

Good luck Luke!

 

[Luke1213]

Hey man thanks for the thread. Are you looking to establish a brand around the niche / products you will be selling? Or are you just going to be selling anything and everything you can get your hands on? When you do open up your own ecommerce store ideally it'll be a brand by you? Or just a retailer of "x"?

I am establishing a brand for my products. Right now I am only starting out with 3 products to test the market. Their is literally thousands of products in this niche so I can offer a good selection of products that I can brand. My goal is to eventually have my own e commerce store that offers different niches with an array of products in each niche if that makes sense. By then when my ecommerce store is functioning, then I might sell other brands of products on my store along with my own.

 

[Luke1213]

Completed my light box.

.

Took me about 20 minutes. Fortunately I had all the stuff readily available at the house. It's a little smaller than I wanted but the test pics turned out ok even without the use of some external light source. My wife has a butt load of photography equipment and is a good photographer. Gonna hit her up for some lighting and see if she will take the pics for me.

 

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[Harry321]

Would you be willing to share some information on the best methods to research products? Almost every product I have tried to source from alibaba or similar has not been financially viable. It seems that most other competitors are barely making a profit as it is. Perhaps I have looked into the wrong niches...


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Luke1213]

Would you be willing to share some information on the best methods to research products? Almost every product I have tried to source from alibaba or similar has not been financially viable. It seems that most other competitors are barely making a profit as it is. Perhaps I have looked into the wrong niches...

I can point you in the right direction but I don't know if my methods work or not since I am just in the testing phase and haven't put any products to market. So use at your own discretion.

How I do it is I use amazons best seller list and google keyword tool. First I look for items that are selling relatively well and have a decent sales rank then I use keyword tool to find out how many people are searching for this product or keywords associated with this product. For example, If you look at the top 100 sellers in home and kitchen, the top seller is a honeywell table fan. This product is ranked #1 of nearly 56,000 products in this category alone and probably nets a few hundred sales a day or maybe more. But this is a competitive product since their is over 60 people competing for the same fan and usually, the top seller gets 90% of the sales. Even though it is a good seller on amazon and this type of fan gets a lot of searches per month, this is something I wouldn't target. First, it's bulky, it has moving parts, and it could be hard to find a manufacturer for this product to private label.

Now look in the same category. Their is a Weber 6494 12-Inch 3-Sided Grill Brush that is #14 on the best sellers list. It probably sells close to one hundred or so a day based on the amount of searches some of the keywords in this niche receive in a day. The number of people competing for this exact weber brush is 21 so the competition is 2/3rds lower than the fan. Another thing to bear in mind is that this item is small, light weight, doesn't have any moving parts, is readily available through multiple suppliers and can be private labeled unlike the fan.

Trust me. Theirs plenty of products you can find on amazon that can be sold for good profits. One of the products I found and private labeling is selling on amazon for almost $25.00 and probably averages 200 sales per day. My cost for this product is around $5.50. So if my product sells, I am looking at nearly a $20 profit on each unit sold. My other products retail around $10.00 but only cost me approximately $3.00 per unit.

Just remember when looking at a product to keep it simple. Start out targeting simple products that can be easily manufactured at a low cost and have a low retail cost preferably under $50. Hope this helps

 

[Harry321]

I can point you in the right direction but I don't know if my methods work or not since I am just in the testing phase and haven't put any products to market. So use at your own discretion.

How I do it is I use amazons best seller list and google keyword tool. First I look for items that are selling relatively well and have a decent sales rank then I use keyword tool to find out how many people are searching for this product or keywords associated with this product. For example, If you look at the top 100 sellers in home and kitchen, the top seller is a honeywell table fan. This product is ranked #1 of nearly 56,000 products in this category alone and probably nets a few hundred sales a day or maybe more. But this is a competitive product since their is over 60 people competing for the same fan and usually, the top seller gets 90% of the sales. Even though it is a good seller on amazon and this type of fan gets a lot of searches per month, this is something I wouldn't target. First, it's bulky, it has moving parts, and it could be hard to find a manufacturer for this product to private label.

Now look in the same category. Their is a Weber 6494 12-Inch 3-Sided Grill Brush that is #14 on the best sellers list. It probably sells close to one hundred or so a day based on the amount of searches some of the keywords in this niche receive in a day. The number of people competing for this exact weber brush is 21 so the competition is 2/3rds lower than the fan. Another thing to bear in mind is that this item is small, light weight, doesn't have any moving parts, is readily available through multiple suppliers and can be private labeled unlike the fan.

Trust me. Theirs plenty of products you can find on amazon that can be sold for good profits. One of the products I found and private labeling is selling on amazon for almost $25.00 and probably averages 200 sales per day. My cost for this product is around $5.50. So if my product sells, I am looking at nearly a $20 profit on each unit sold. My other products retail around $10.00 but only cost me approximately $3.00 per unit.

Just remember when looking at a product to keep it simple. Start out targeting simple products that can be easily manufactured at a low cost and have a low retail cost preferably under $50. Hope this helps

Really appreciate the advice mate! I am sure you will achieve success in your venture.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

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[MMatt]

I can point you in the right direction but I don't know if my methods work or not since I am just in the testing phase and haven't put any products to market. So use at your own discretion.

How I do it is I use amazons best seller list and google keyword tool. First I look for items that are selling relatively well and have a decent sales rank then I use keyword tool to find out how many people are searching for this product or keywords associated with this product. For example, If you look at the top 100 sellers in home and kitchen, the top seller is a honeywell table fan. This product is ranked #1 of nearly 56,000 products in this category alone and probably nets a few hundred sales a day or maybe more. But this is a competitive product since their is over 60 people competing for the same fan and usually, the top seller gets 90% of the sales. Even though it is a good seller on amazon and this type of fan gets a lot of searches per month, this is something I wouldn't target. First, it's bulky, it has moving parts, and it could be hard to find a manufacturer for this product to private label.

Now look in the same category. Their is a Weber 6494 12-Inch 3-Sided Grill Brush that is #14 on the best sellers list. It probably sells close to one hundred or so a day based on the amount of searches some of the keywords in this niche receive in a day. The number of people competing for this exact weber brush is 21 so the competition is 2/3rds lower than the fan. Another thing to bear in mind is that this item is small, light weight, doesn't have any moving parts, is readily available through multiple suppliers and can be private labeled unlike the fan.

Trust me. Theirs plenty of products you can find on amazon that can be sold for good profits. One of the products I found and private labeling is selling on amazon for almost $25.00 and probably averages 200 sales per day. My cost for this product is around $5.50. So if my product sells, I am looking at nearly a $20 profit on each unit sold. My other products retail around $10.00 but only cost me approximately $3.00 per unit.

Just remember when looking at a product to keep it simple. Start out targeting simple products that can be easily manufactured at a low cost and have a low retail cost preferably under $50. Hope this helps

That is of the most comprehensive explanations on this forum, and it was given by a beginner in the field. Excellent.

 

[RazorCut]

I prefer eBay to Amazon as it is easier to create a USP. Amazon has become too cut-throat, if you don't own the buy box you simply don't sell. We have had nightmares with Amazon. We have spent a year or more on some products getting them to the top of the best sellers list only for some low life's to attach themselves selling a low rent version for less money. In some cases a completely different product altogether. You then go down the inevitable penny cheaper leapfrog path in order to get sales until there is little to no profit left and the feedback is in tatters as the copycat products are shite.

Reporting it to Amazon is a total waste of effort as they do bugger all 98% of the time and you can only talk to the front line who have limited powers, the real decision makers are inaccessible hiding away in their ivory towers. We have reported 1 seller who keeps changing product images to his products as his items bear only a passing resemblance to ours so he has been getting grief and refund demands from customers expecting the original product and all Amazon do is change the picture back after 3-4 days of reporting it and do nothing to the stop the counterfeit sellers doing the same again days weeks later.

MAKE SURE YOU BRAND YOUR PRODUCTS AND PROTECT THEM TO STOP SELLERS CHERRY-PICKING YOUR BEST LINES AND RUINING SALES AND MARGINS.

In my experience presentation is everything. I spent good money on quality kit (Canon 7D L Glass len's, Pro light box with 5 adjustable backlights etc.) to get the best images in-house so we had total control. I know that made a huge difference to sales on eBay (over 250,000 feedback to base my opinions on) as all other things being equal our images squeezed out the competition. It really grates that any images you upload on Amazon becomes part of their library which is why I never put our best images on there. It is hard enough getting images pulled on eBay, you have no chance on Amazon. Alibaba and China Sourcing have loads of my stock photography they have stolen over the years.

I'm not trying to rain on your parade but I would be careful with both eBay and Amazon as they call the shots and can easily ruin your business in a matter of weeks with just a few policy changes. DON'T put all your eggs in the same two baskets. Look what happened to all the affiliate sellers after Google changed their algorithm. I can assure you it is not nice to have the rug pulled from under you when you have become reliant on eBay/Amazon sales.

Closer to home a good friend of mine dominated the Fancy Dress market on eBay and Amazon here in the UK. Business was so good (shipping out over 1000 orders a day) he expanded to a warehouse over 400% larger than the size he had when he was just running via their very successful Web Site.

Everything was roses until the competition started to bite back slashing prices across the board. He ended a busy fool working on minute margins and he was just not making enough to finance the overheads. The whole pack of cards came tumbling down. Lost the lot and had to go bankrupt on a turnover of probably $5,000,000+ PA.

 

[Luke1213]

Update:

My first batch of products came today. The turnaround for the products was actually a lot faster than I thought. I completed my order on July 11th and my products arrived today. Not a bad turnaround.

All the products arrived in great condition and exactly the product I wanted. Waiting for the products to make it here and needing them to be the right product is a little bit stressful.

The packaging of the actual product is a lot smaller than I expected which is good because it can easily be put into a bubble envelope for easy shipping. The product itself seems to be constructed very well. I put one together and tested it and it works fine.

Now I am waiting for my other shipment to get here with my other products but in the meantime, I will start taking pics and continue working on my ad copy for this product.

If anyone can take anything away from this is don't rush the process. Trust me, I know we all want to get into profit mode ASAP but researching and finding the right suppliers can save you a ton of stress from either not getting the right product or being scammed. It took me at least 2 weeks just to begin emailing suppliers and then another week on top of that weeding out the ones I didn't want to do business with.

 

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[Luke1213]

Quick update:
Been kinda slow this week. My wife had surgery to repair a torn meniscus in her knee and I have been busy off and on with baseball camp. However, I did manage to get my photos completed and uploaded to amazon and activated the listing.

My second batch of products arrived yesterday as well. Happy with the products but it looks like customs wasn't very gentle. A few boxes were torn apart but no big deal. My second batch of products were ordered from a different supplier but offered the exact same item. So what I did was ordered x amount of the same item and then x amount of a another different item altogether. I did this to test multiple suppliers of the same item. The only downfall with this shipment is that they sent me several color variations of the same product. This is ok, but I am new to amazon so figuring out how to list these other items with product variations might take me a little while.

Once I figure out the variation and get that complete, I am going to start doing pics and ad copy for my other product. I am hoping to accomplish this over the weekend. From there, I am going to do a little bit of internet marketing to drive traffic to my amazon page.

 

[Joe Cassandra]

I prefer eBay to Amazon as it is easier to create a USP. Amazon has become too cut-throat, if you don't own the buy box you simply don't sell. We have had nightmares with Amazon. We have spent a year or more on some products getting them to the top of the best sellers list only for some low life's to attach themselves selling a low rent version for less money. In some cases a completely different product altogether. You then go down the inevitable penny cheaper leapfrog path in order to get sales until there is little to no profit left and the feedback is in tatters as the copycat products are shite.

Reporting it to Amazon is a total waste of effort as they do bugger all 98% of the time and you can only talk to the front line who have limited powers, the real decision makers are inaccessible hiding away in their ivory towers. We have reported 1 seller who keeps changing product images to his products as his items bear only a passing resemblance to ours so he has been getting grief and refund demands from customers expecting the original product and all Amazon do is change the picture back after 3-4 days of reporting it and do nothing to the stop the counterfeit sellers doing the same again days weeks later.

MAKE SURE YOU BRAND YOUR PRODUCTS AND PROTECT THEM TO STOP SELLERS CHERRY-PICKING YOUR BEST LINES AND RUINING SALES AND MARGINS.

In my experience presentation is everything. I spent good money on quality kit (Canon 7D L Glass len's, Pro light box with 5 adjustable backlights etc.) to get the best images in-house so we had total control. I know that made a huge difference to sales on eBay (over 250,000 feedback to base my opinions on) as all other things being equal our images squeezed out the competition. It really grates that any images you upload on Amazon becomes part of their library which is why I never put our best images on there. It is hard enough getting images pulled on eBay, you have no chance on Amazon. Alibaba and China Sourcing have loads of my stock photography they have stolen over the years.

I'm not trying to rain on your parade but I would be careful with both eBay and Amazon as they call the shots and can easily ruin your business in a matter of weeks with just a few policy changes. DON'T put all your eggs in the same two baskets. Look what happened to all the affiliate sellers after Google changed their algorithm. I can assure you it is not nice to have the rug pulled from under you when you have become reliant on eBay/Amazon sales.

Closer to home a good friend of mine dominated the Fancy Dress market on eBay and Amazon here in the UK. Business was so good (shipping out over 1000 orders a day) he expanded to a warehouse over 400% larger than the size he had when he was just running via their very successful Web Site.

Everything was roses until the competition started to bite back slashing prices across the board. He ended a busy fool working on minute margins and he was just not making enough to finance the overheads. The whole pack of cards came tumbling down. Lost the lot and had to go bankrupt on a turnover of probably $5,000,000+ PA.

When I talked with @JackEdwards on my call, I mentioned E-commerce and how it seemed like a ton of people on the forum are making a good living off of it, enjoy it , and have great products.

He said something along the lines that you just said @RazorCut [love Dexter, not the last 2 seasons but side note], did you have a call with him? He said doing this stuff is great but you need a brand and probably more preferably, repeat customers. Like you said [and Jack] everything on amazon can be going great, then right when someone realizes you are doing well in your niche product, they import too and sell if for half the profit and take your business.

He said you need to create something brandable and you can't just bank on amazon to do your marketing. you have to get offline and do it yourself. My thoughts on ecommerce completely changed thanks to Jack. I stumbled over an idea for licensing so that's what I'm working on, but similar in it would have repeat business which makes it harder for someone to cut your legs out.

For hustling reasons, Amazon importing is certainly a good avenue and jumping off point for a branding your biz.

Keep it up Luke, hope your wife gets better.

 

[Luke1213]

Quick update:

Not much has changed since last posting. I have been sick for the last few days so productivity is at a minimum. I did manage to get the copy and keyword research finished for my second product and will be taking pictures and getting them posted to amazon.

I have sourced a few more products that I want to import but I am waiting to see how and if these products I currently have will sell. If the current products start producing sales, I will order more of these items along with a few other different items to begin selling as well.

For any of the seasoned people already selling on amazon, how long until your first sale and how do you go about marketing your products?. I tried the ppc advertising but it won't allow me to run ads since I am currently fulfilling the shipments and not amazon.

 

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[debitandcredit]

Quick update:

Not much has changed since last posting. I have been sick for the last few days so productivity is at a minimum. I did manage to get the copy and keyword research finished for my second product and will be taking pictures and getting them posted to amazon.

I have sourced a few more products that I want to import but I am waiting to see how and if these products I currently have will sell. If the current products start producing sales, I will order more of these items along with a few other different items to begin selling as well.

For any of the seasoned people already selling on amazon, how long until your first sale and how do you go about marketing your products?. I tried the ppc advertising but it won't allow me to run ads since I am currently fulfilling the shipments and not amazon.

When I first got pet products from china and sent it to FBA, it took about a week for a sale. It also depends how competitively priced your product is. My products went down in profit and I just wanted to cash out, just drop price and it moves.

I suggest you to be patient before lowering your price and list it on ebay, bonanza etc. I got products for amazon, but it moved better at first on ebay which was a surprise.

 

[debitandcredit]

I prefer eBay to Amazon as it is easier to create a USP. Amazon has become too cut-throat, if you don't own the buy box you simply don't sell. We have had nightmares with Amazon. We have spent a year or more on some products getting them to the top of the best sellers list only for some low life's to attach themselves selling a low rent version for less money. In some cases a completely different product altogether. You then go down the inevitable penny cheaper leapfrog path in order to get sales until there is little to no profit left and the feedback is in tatters as the copycat products are shite.

Reporting it to Amazon is a total waste of effort as they do bugger all 98% of the time and you can only talk to the front line who have limited powers, the real decision makers are inaccessible hiding away in their ivory towers. We have reported 1 seller who keeps changing product images to his products as his items bear only a passing resemblance to ours so he has been getting grief and refund demands from customers expecting the original product and all Amazon do is change the picture back after 3-4 days of reporting it and do nothing to the stop the counterfeit sellers doing the same again days weeks later.

MAKE SURE YOU BRAND YOUR PRODUCTS AND PROTECT THEM TO STOP SELLERS CHERRY-PICKING YOUR BEST LINES AND RUINING SALES AND MARGINS.

In my experience presentation is everything. I spent good money on quality kit (Canon 7D L Glass len's, Pro light box with 5 adjustable backlights etc.) to get the best images in-house so we had total control. I know that made a huge difference to sales on eBay (over 250,000 feedback to base my opinions on) as all other things being equal our images squeezed out the competition. It really grates that any images you upload on Amazon becomes part of their library which is why I never put our best images on there. It is hard enough getting images pulled on eBay, you have no chance on Amazon. Alibaba and China Sourcing have loads of my stock photography they have stolen over the years.

I'm not trying to rain on your parade but I would be careful with both eBay and Amazon as they call the shots and can easily ruin your business in a matter of weeks with just a few policy changes. DON'T put all your eggs in the same two baskets. Look what happened to all the affiliate sellers after Google changed their algorithm. I can assure you it is not nice to have the rug pulled from under you when you have become reliant on eBay/Amazon sales.

Closer to home a good friend of mine dominated the Fancy Dress market on eBay and Amazon here in the UK. Business was so good (shipping out over 1000 orders a day) he expanded to a warehouse over 400% larger than the size he had when he was just running via their very successful Web Site.

Everything was roses until the competition started to bite back slashing prices across the board. He ended a busy fool working on minute margins and he was just not making enough to finance the overheads. The whole pack of cards came tumbling down. Lost the lot and had to go bankrupt on a turnover of probably $5,000,000+ PA.

Thanks for the post. I was doing after 100 orders combined alone myself and got kicked out as well. In my case, my store was shut down after 3 month. I think i grew too fast. I was thinking about getting a warehouse. If i did, I would have been dead. I learned so much from my first attempt. just a week ago I got back both of them legally and getting sales with completely different products. But I will not try to build my business around there, it is to me is to raise cash and start ppcing my website and build a brand.

 

[Luke1213]

Update:
Manage to get all my products photographed and listed on amazon. I also figured out how to list product variations along the way.
Each product variation, whether size or color, does require a separate upc obviously. You have to create a parent theme and then list each child theme variation within the parent theme. It's a little more in depth than this but with a little trial and error, it can be figured out.

Once this was complete, I began prepping my stock to ship to amazon so they could fulfill it but I hit a snag. Since my products have new upc's, amazon needs to review my products to see if the products are safe to be sold at the FBA warehouses. I wasn't aware that this would need to happen so this kinda throws me off course a little bit. I'll just continue to try and sell them through self fulfillment until they approve the products, which from what I have read can take anywhere from 4 days to 3 weeks.

That's it for today

 

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[Luke1213]

Update:
Amazon has approved my products to be fulfilled by them but I hit another snag prior to sending my products in. During the creation of my list, I somehow managed to put the wrong package quantity on my listings. This wasn't much of a big deal since I fulfilled the orders but now since they are going to be shipped to Amazon, they will control the quantity and buyers will get 3 for the price of one. So my understanding is that I will need to create new listings for all the products with the wrong package quantity. Creating new listings isn't really an issue since the listings can be copied and my UPC's are in the system and my products won't need to be approved again. My concern with this is I have managed to get some product reviews and I am afraid that once I create a new listing, my reviews will disappear. I have sent amazon a message to see if my product reviews will be lost.

I am hoping to have this resolved by the end of the day today. Once I have this resolved, I will send my remaining products to amazon and see if the product will sell.

 

[Luke1213]

Update:
Well back to almost square 1. Finally received an answer from amazon and it wasn't what I wanted to hear. To change the package quantity, I have to create all new listings with new UPC's. On top of this, I will lose all my reviews and will have to wait another week to get my products approved again since the new listings require a new UPC.

 

[Luke1213]

Since my last debacle, I went ahead and created a new listing to correct the package quantity amount in my old listing. Instead of creating 4 new listings for the variants, I decided to only create one new listing. My other variants will be fulfilled by myself while the new listing will be fulfilled by amazon. After I created the new listing with new UPC, I submitted the information to amazon for approval for fba. Amazon approved the listing almost the same day so I didn't have to wait a week to get my items shipped out.

I prepped 3 boxes to be shipped to multiple fba sites and the process was quite simple. If you haven't sent inventory to amazon fba, it isn't that hard. Just prep the boxes how amazon recommends. If you have your own label printer, you can label your items prior to shipping them to amazon. Since I don't own a label printer, I let amazon handle the labeling ($.20 per item). Amazon will walk you through this when you are prepping your products. I used amazons preferred shipping partners which is about 50% cheaper than using my own shipping solutions. I shipped 3 boxes to 3 different fba warehouses and it cost a little over $9.00. So now all I do is wait for these products to reach amazon so I can begin advertising them through amazon's sponsored ads.

In the meantime, I am still selling other products on amazon through arbitrage and have made almost $300 in the first month. While doing this, I listed one of my products on ebay and had my first sale yesterday! I was happy to see one of my PL products sell and I was happy with the 50% profit margin as well.

During this waiting period, I researched and sourced a few other PL products I am going to order some samples of and give them a try as well. Although I am confident the current PL products I have will produce sales, I am going to wait to order a large quantity of my current products because I haven't really did much marketing with them as of yet. I want to give sponsored stories a try and see if using amazon and other ppc traffic will garner any traction.

 

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[Luke1213]

All of my fba products arrived at the amazon warehouses. The total process took 3-4 days to prep and ship them to amazon's warehouses. Amazon had me ship the products to 3 different warehouses. FBA is the only way to get amazons ppc or the buy box. If you want to get the buy box and be able to use amazon's ppc, you have to ship you inventory to amazon. Amazon won't run any ads or allow the buy box without it being in their inventory. Having the buy box is extremely important. It allows buyers to qualify for special savings like free shipping, etc.

Last night, I finished setting up my ad campaigns for my products and they have been active for about 16 hours. Setting up the ad campaign is close to as simple as it gets. I have setup multiple adwords and bing campaigns in the past and amazon ppc is a cake walk compared to google and bing. It is almost as simple as facebook ads. Amazon recommends which keywords convert the best based on your sku description. However, I didn't limit myself to only amazons suggested keywords. I used google keyword planner and have about 100 keywords per ad.

Amazon ppc is so cheap in contrast to other ppc advertisers. The recommended bid is $.10 but I can have my bid as low as $.02 and still get impressions and even clicks. Where else can you get your product in front of millions of people each day for about the cost of a soda? Amazon! Although I haven't garnered any sells, possibly due to lack of reviews, I've had thousands of impressions and even a couple of clicks. I believe once some reviews start showing up, the sales will start to increase.

 

[Luke1213]

After initializing the ppc, I made my first amazon sale of my PL items yesterday. It converted in 3 clicks which is really good but the click through rate has dropped significantly. I am going to work on getting more reviews for my items to see if will help pick up sales.