Does anyone use Fulfillment by Amazon?

[Wal903]

I read a few books about side hustles recently, and came across Fulfilment By Amazon. I'd never heard of this, but I kept looking it and have now come across things like the Amazing Selling Machine, amazing.com and all their related courses you can buy.

I am looking at making a start using FBA as a side hustle for some extra income, but I wanted to check if anyone around here has experience with this. The guys at amazing.com make it sound awesome, but I'm also aware these guys are fast lane type entrepreneurs selling a digital course in how to make a fortune using this. Kinda like that whole saying about selling shovels in a gold rush.

I trust this forum more than the sales copy on amazing.com. I'm not asking if the Amazing selling machine course is worth it, although if you have experience with this course I'd love to hear it. I just want to know if Fulfilment By Amazon, and importing stuff from China, is an ok side hustle to get started with for someone with zero experience.

Also on another note, how do I get the little tag saying I've read TMF ? MJ changed my life! That book was the catalyst for a complete paradigm shift in my mindset. I came across TMF accidentally, loved all the little articles on the website and was completely hooked after reading the 3 chapter sample. I think it cost me $6AUD to by on kindle, and it's by far the best 6 bucks I've ever spent. Changed the way I viewed the world! Now I just need to get the wife into it...

Cheers guys.


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[AllenCrawley]

Lots of threads here detailing peoples experience with FBA.

 

[jon.a]

https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/threads/ask-me-anything-about-ecommerce-2015.62360/

 

[H. Palmer]

FBA is great, even without importing stuff from China.

Decisive though is whether you have product to sell at a margin.

A great book on this is Arbitrage by Chris Green.

 

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[biophase]

No, nobody uses FBA here.

 

[FBAPhD]

I use FBA. Started about 100 days ago in a small niche, doing about 10k per month in sales with a 40% margin before taxes. Jist avoid the more crowded areas like garloc presses and meat claws and you'll have an easier time. Also ASM is not worth the money.

 

[Alveko]

^
"PS: If you buy the $5000 course through my link I'll get a nice commission out of it."

 

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[Vigilante]

Hey, I signed up on the amazing course last year in October 2014. So here’s my experience so far, I'll try to shed some light on the programme for you and what you can actually expect from it.

To answer your actual question could you use FBA and ship from China with little experience of course you can and it would be a great learning curve for you as well. Especially if you use alibaba.com (make sure you tick gold supplier when you are searching for suppliers). Just make the whole first order small and take it as a learning curve, where you expect to make no money. I'd be happy to help you with any questions you have if you tried as well. Just drop me a private message.

My insight to the amazing course from someone who had no experience before, short answer questions:
Could you set up this business in a couple of months?
-Yes
Do you have to spend a lot of time to get up and running?
-No, there is no rush to get started and you can spend as long or as little time on it as you like. I took a good 8 months to sell my first product. However, the speed of your success will correlate to the time you spend on it.
Are the start-up costs low?
-Yes, the start-up costs are just your inventory costs. I would say you would realistically need $500 for inventory.
Do you need to be a genius to get started?
-No, the videos are very simple to follow and the best part is that there is such a large community of people around who can help you with any problem you have (forums, facebook communites, etc). Adding to this is the live events they often hold in Vegas, where everyone comes to share their ideas and motivate each other. This is where I have first-hand have seen peoples huge monthly incomes.
Can you truly make $100000’s of dollars a month and is it achievable?
Yes

So here’s my experience my journey so far, I’ll try to keep this brief. I took a little longer to get started than was necessary. Even after buying the course and watching the videos I only started to really get going in January. I also decided to bring in a friend of mine who I outsourced a lot of the work to due to my focus being elsewhere. However, after a few dropped product selections and disregarded supplier conversations we managed to order 200 units of a product from China to the Amazon warehouses in the United States. With a few promotions and advertisements (all taught on the course) we ended up selling out far quicker than anticipated and ran out of stock before we could get the next batch going. We gave away 60 units as a promotion and about another 20 at Nett cost. The rest we sold a varying amounts of profit testing the demand a different prices. In the end we cut even on total costs which was very good considering we gave so many away and many more at minimal profit.

We have just started selling our next batch of a 1000 units. We are estimated to make around $4000-5000 dollars in gross sales this month and are aiming to hit, in the near future, a target of $10000 a month with this one product. With about a 30-35% profit margin. This time round we won;t have to give so many promotions as our product is already ranked.

Do I believe their business model works? Of course, I have seen the results and I am now looking into funding options to ramp up our product selection. The best part of this business is that it is completely scalable, hence, why people are able to make so much money. You simply increase the amount of products you sell.

Positives:
-Simply and easy to follow videos
-community to help you any problems you may have (1000’ of members on a forum and facebook community), this is probably one of the biggest assets.
-step by step guide with strategies and guidance
-It’s exciting! I spend so much time refreshing my sales spreadsheet just to see if we have sold one more unit.
-Unbelievably cheap start-up costs to get a business, with your own brand label, up and running.

Negatives:
-There will be some hurdles and learning curves to overcome
-Not necessarily a negative but it’s good to have some knowledge on the product you are selling
-Your first product may not be a success, but if you follow the guidance of the course then you will not lose any money. With high profit margins you can simple slowly sell out at a lower price.
-As with anything you will have to put some time and effort in to see results

My overall view, is the course worth getting? Yes I certainly would not of achieved what I did without the course. I believe that anyone can make some money from this and if you want to start up your own business and follow an entrepreneurial route then this is a great way to start.Who has to say you only sell your product to Amazon? To see the best results it will require some ingenuity. For example being creative in how you sell your product to gain customers and increase sales. Now are there other cheaper courses out there...probably. However, I doubt they will be as detailed and have such a strong community. If you really want to be successful at this business model I believe this course is your best chance, as I find it hard that any other courses would produce as high a success rate.

I'll try and answer as many questions as possible in the next coming week, as I realise the course is only on sale this week. Please feel free to drop me a private message as well, I'll be happy to help.

Did you get a google alert on this topic, or what brought you to the forum? Are you affiliated with the course?

 

[AllenCrawley]

Did you get a google alert on this topic, or what brought you to the forum? Are you affiliated with the course?

My money is on this. The only reason he joined our forum was to pitch the course.

 

[Bellini]

Also on another note, how do I get the little tag saying I've read TMF ? MJ changed my life!

@Wal903

Go here:

https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/threads/ive-read-the-the-millionaire-fastlane.28234/

 

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[ddall]

I am looking at making a start using FBA as a side hustle for some extra income

The model is getting crazy saturated. If you treat it like a side hustle, you likely will get caught in the ongoing consolidation as high rollers are outspending smaller, inexperienced players (massive giveaways, massive PPC bids, selling at cost). If you treat it as building a true and unique brand and business, you will have an excellent gateway channel (the best really) into the world of ecomm.

Forget ASM, if you search for it all the same info is out there for free (particularly in podcast form). The easy days of this where you hit a home run out of the park with a generic product and a 'brand' sticker on the box are gone. I'm not suggesting not to do this, I'm simply commenting on the current environment.

 

[zt90]

I do about 50k monthly sales with 20% margins. Nothing is extremely complicated about the business model but the learning curve is quite steep. You hear all these people having success quickly but those successes will be short lived without constantly making tweaks.(ie: Do you know how to stay relevant when a dozen competitors 1 up your product and take your market share?)

The reason there are a lot of courses on it because it is really trending right now, but don't be a fool in thinking it is easy money because it's not. It's actually a very capital intensive game with the big players slowly capitalizing and taking over the market share through buying power. I've seen many small sellers having initial success but because they didn't know how to stand out, spike sales, and do other stuff to keep their ranking and sales, they eventually let the big players with sophisticated systems capture their sales.(I know this because I can simply track a product's BSR)

The fact that you need to track, tweak and come up with plays to maintain your sales doesn't make it completely passive, but with a sophisticated backend system(ideally you can eventually outsource this), it is well worth your time.

As for courses, don't ever buy a course on learning on how to sell on amazon... Here's why:
1. even after going through a course, you still have to actually DO IT to really ingrain the process in your brain
2. all the actual VALUABLE nuggets and tricks aren't taught in courses. Most of them are greyhat secrets that veteran sellers keep to themselves or share with their friends.

At the moment, selling shovels for this mini "gold rush" is more profitable than actually being in the trenches of FBA(No need to lock up capital for inventory among other perks). It's actually quite amusing how these FBA "authorities" try to conceal the fact that saturation is inevitable, but don't get me wrong because I have nothing against people selling courses

 

[Vigilante]

I do about 50k monthly sales with 20% margins. Nothing is extremely complicated about the business model but the learning curve is quite steep. You hear all these people having success quickly but those successes will be short lived without constantly making tweaks.(ie: Do you know how to stay relevant when a dozen competitors 1 up your product and take your market share?)

The reason there are a lot of courses on it because it is really trending right now, but don't be a fool in thinking it is easy money because it's not. It's actually a very capital intensive game with the big players slowly capitalizing and taking over the market share through buying power. I've seen many small sellers having initial success but because they didn't know how to stand out, spike sales, and do other stuff to keep their ranking and sales, they eventually let the big players with sophisticated systems capture their sales.(I know this because I can simply track a product's BSR)

The fact that you need to track, tweak and come up with plays to maintain your sales doesn't make it completely passive, but with a sophisticated backend system(ideally you can eventually outsource this), it is well worth your time.

As for courses, don't ever buy a course on learning on how to sell on amazon... Here's why:
1. even after going through a course, you still have to actually DO IT to really ingrain the process in your brain
2. all the actual VALUABLE nuggets and tricks aren't taught in courses. Most of them are greyhat secrets that veteran sellers keep to themselves or share with their friends.

At the moment, selling shovels for this mini "gold rush" is more profitable than actually being in the trenches of FBA(No need to lock up capital for inventory among other perks). It's actually quite amusing how these FBA "authorities" try to conceal the fact that saturation is inevitable, but don't get me wrong because I have nothing against people selling courses

Welcome to the forum.

Stop on by the new member area and drop an introduction post. We're glad you are here.

Have you read The Millionare Fast Lane? How did you end up here?

 

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[Wal903]

FBA is great, even without importing stuff from China.

Decisive though is whether you have product to sell at a margin.

A great book on this is Arbitrage by Chris Green.

I picked up a couple of Chris Green's books on kindle. Certainly shedding a lot of light on the subject, the only thing I've ever bought from Amazon is ebooks straight to kindle.

I live in Australia, is FBA still a feasible option?


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[Wal903]

No, nobody uses FBA here.

I'm assuming that's because Amazon has a lot of control and it doesn't really meet all the CENTS principles



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[Wal903]

^
"PS: If you buy the $5000 course through my link I'll get a nice commission out of it."

This made me lol. A lot. I don't trust the ASM sales copy, and he sounded a lot like it.


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[Wal903]

I do about 50k monthly sales with 20% margins. Nothing is extremely complicated about the business model but the learning curve is quite steep. You hear all these people having success quickly but those successes will be short lived without constantly making tweaks.(ie: Do you know how to stay relevant when a dozen competitors 1 up your product and take your market share?)

The reason there are a lot of courses on it because it is really trending right now, but don't be a fool in thinking it is easy money because it's not. It's actually a very capital intensive game with the big players slowly capitalizing and taking over the market share through buying power. I've seen many small sellers having initial success but because they didn't know how to stand out, spike sales, and do other stuff to keep their ranking and sales, they eventually let the big players with sophisticated systems capture their sales.(I know this because I can simply track a product's BSR)

The fact that you need to track, tweak and come up with plays to maintain your sales doesn't make it completely passive, but with a sophisticated backend system(ideally you can eventually outsource this), it is well worth your time.

As for courses, don't ever buy a course on learning on how to sell on amazon... Here's why:
1. even after going through a course, you still have to actually DO IT to really ingrain the process in your brain
2. all the actual VALUABLE nuggets and tricks aren't taught in courses. Most of them are greyhat secrets that veteran sellers keep to themselves or share with their friends.

At the moment, selling shovels for this mini "gold rush" is more profitable than actually being in the trenches of FBA(No need to lock up capital for inventory among other perks). It's actually quite amusing how these FBA "authorities" try to conceal the fact that saturation is inevitable, but don't get me wrong because I have nothing against people selling courses

Seeing all the ASM stuff made me wonder about saturation. I'd never buy the course, it cost a fortune and I guess you'd be better putting that money to actually starting out.

I can afford to put at least 5k into this to get started. I won't be able to get started though until around mid next year as my job is about to isolate me from society and I won't really have access to the net or the real world for a lengthy period of time. The upside is I will have plenty of time to read up on any books you guys recommend, and save up capital. The downside is it's a long delay to get started and I imagine the saturation will just get worse.

What is realistic in terms of start up costs? I don't buy the hype about it only being around 500 bucks.


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[zt90]

Seeing all the ASM stuff made me wonder about saturation. I'd never buy the course, it cost a fortune and I guess you'd be better putting that money to actually starting out.

I can afford to put at least 5k into this to get started. I won't be able to get started though until around mid next year as my job is about to isolate me from society and I won't really have access to the net or the real world for a lengthy period of time. The upside is I will have plenty of time to read up on any books you guys recommend, and save up capital. The downside is it's a long delay to get started and I imagine the saturation will just get worse.

What is realistic in terms of start up costs. I don't buy the hype about it only being around 500 bucks.


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The lower the startup cost, the lower your chance for success is. Here's the deal, if you try to source a product with low MOQ, other people can do it too so your competition will be greater, which requires you to be a lot more creative and aggressive with your marketing/product creation to stand out and capture the sales. The higher the startup cost for a product(let's say the suppliers require you to order $5000 worth and above), the less competition there is, which means you can be average Joe in terms of creating your product and lackadaisical with your overall marketing efforts.

The truth is, it can be done with just $500, but I would say the average person would have a 1/10 chance of succeeding with that $500 invested product. In a nutshell, you are basically throwing money at products, seeing if you can sell within the market, and going from there. The higher the barrier of entry for a product(startup capital as well as other barriers), the more likely you will succeed with mediocre efforts.

Some people will disagree with me and say to go for the ultra competitive, low MOQ products with a bunch of competitors, but I'm speaking from a longterm strategy mentality as opposed to selling trendy products for the short-term.

Anyway, choosing a product is more of an art than a science. If you have a gut feeling about something, do your due diligence and just go for it.

 

[H. Palmer]

I live in Australia, is FBA still a feasible option?


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There is always the possibility of importing products from China into the USA.

Amazon even has systems to deal with the customs clearance for you.

You could do the same thing importing into Europe, like the UK market.

I guess you have to think and operate internationally.

As far as Australia, I don't know. I live in the Netherlands where Amazon only sells Kindle books at this point.

Amazon Australia looks like the same to me.

But .... maybe Amazon is detecting my location and presents another homepage to me than it does to you.

You have to find that out.

 

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[RazorCut]

Did you get a google alert on this topic, or what brought you to the forum? Are you affiliated with the course?

Shysters take note: you will have a hard time getting traction here with the ever vigilant @Vigilante guarding the gates.

 

[10Xlifestyle]

my little bro is into Amazon FBA, and he's doing good selling in the outdoor sport accessories section. Regarding Amazing selling machine I find it great but the price is very high!!!! You would have to spend 5K + 1 or 2K for inventory...it's a huge risk. You get great value but it's overpriced. My bro got a copy from a grey zone where they sell expensive courses at like 10% the price you should take a look [link removed by mod]
Wall903 no matter where you live, you can work with amazon.com, and it's far way more lucrative than any other amazon as it's the 5th most visited website in the US, potential is HUGE.