FBA and Importing Goods From China

[SJVC]

Hey everyone,

My first post here so I thought my first thread would be to answer any questions anyone has regarding to Fulfillment By Amazon (or any other questions on Amazon/eBay) or importing goods from China. I have been importing goods and selling them online for around three years so I know a decent amount but am not an expert yet

Read Mj's book around a week ago and joined the forum the other day which so far seems really great.

Cheers.

 

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[SJVC]

Hi everyone, I was just helping out a friend getting started with Amazon and big stumbling block for him was creating a page that converts from visitors to sales. He had a decent product but that is only half of the equation.

I shot him an email and thought, the guys on the forum into starting their Amazon businesses would probably find this valuable too. So here is pretty much what I sent him:

A lot of new sellers throw up a product page in less than ten minutes with poorly photographed images and even poorer sales copy.

Now I could just tell you too 'write good copy, take better photos, get better reviews, improve your product branding etc' but I think it would be more beneficial for you to show you an exemplary product page and then take it apart, analysing what makes it 'good'.

Here is a screen shot of page I found (this is not mine, so I hope they do not mind the analysis) that I think largely ticks all the boxes I look for.



First up - Brand Concept
This brand deals mainly in survival equipment. 'The Friendly Swede' is a million times better than 'OnlineSeller2010' or 'Bestdeal4uonline'. What do you think of when you say 'The Friendly Swede' to yourself? I think of perhaps a Swedish man who sells camping equipment who is friendly... strange thought process but it will add to the credibility of the products they are selling. The brand name is not restrictive to the type of products they could sell as well, so that leaves room for expansion.

Second - Title
They have filled up the description with relevant keywords which does not look obviously scammy or 'cheap'. Sometimes titles have random keywords that sellers have just thrown in which looks terrible. By adding relevant keywords to the title (that makes grammatical sense) will mean your page has more of a chance to rank in Amazon's search engine and also appear in the suggested items below. Additionally they add 'lifetime warranty' which adds to the brands credibility.

Third - Images
The main image is clear as to what the product looks like. The additional images further help the customer to see what is included in the product and not leave any questions as to the size or functionality. If you have unprofessional looking photos at the moment, borrow your friends DSLR, get a white/grey background and then go over to elance.com and post your photos to be edited to have a white background. Product pages that have 2 or more photographs that have a high resolution with a perfect white background have higher conversion rates.

Fourth - Description (Bullet Points)
Plenty of information is given in the bullet points below the title. This will help with keyword rankings and will help customers to become informed about the product without having to go below the fold.

Fifth - Reviews
Critically important, here they have an average of 5 stars which is really good. Notice something interesting in the review section...
View attachment 8102

Specifically, 'The Friendly Swede provided me with a sample' Huh? That's right, you can and SHOULD be proactive with your efforts to get reviews for your products. The person/people behind The Friendly Swede have obviously singled out this reviewer for their status also:
View attachment 8103

This reviewer has also included a video review which looks great and adds great credibility to the page. There is another review beneath the one above with 'I received one of these direct from the company' so I assume the company must have made a list of influential reviewers and sent them free samples. Remember you can message customers for reviews. Pages with no reviews look odd.

Lastly, the product is fulfilled by FBA which makes the purchase even easier for the customer, and for the seller

So I hope that helps some of you guys out there who already are selling on Amazon or are just getting going.

Any questions?

 

[SJVC]

Enjoyable job, but slow lane. even if you are one of the lucky ones to have a successful million dollar gross studio (which I was nowhere near), you are working very hard for those dollars and with all the overheads, photographers I know with the successful studios where maybe having a new profit of $200K and working insane hours for it.
Tons of people buying cameras now and calling themselves pro and giving everything away on a CD for a few hundred bucks (crap photography, but some customers don't care, or know better).
Better to figure a fast lane way of getting some of their cash, rather than fighting against them. Then as MJ says, once you're in the fast lane, you can participate in the things you love.

Thanks for the insight! Does sound very slow lane... maybe making a digital product in the photography field would be more of a fastline!

 

[SJVC]

Wow, great to see good questions coming from you guys!

What is your system for finding new products that dont have massive competition and good margins. I have days where I search three hours without any success.

Average amount of profit per sale?

How many products for sale at one time?

How many sales per day on average, do you have one item that is much more popular than others?

Do you rebrand niche products or import anything that sells well?

Do you have an LLC setup, if so how long were you selling before you set it up?

I usually find new products by looking at the Amazon top seller lists and see what I can source, I mainly use Aliexpress although I have used dhgate before, they are basically the same website. Alibaba is a bit different in that it is harder to order smaller quantities and is usually a bit slower to order items because you are directly dealing with manufacturers.

Average amount can vary, the rule of thumb I use is that I want to at least double my investment, eg I spend £500 I want to net at least £1000. Having said this if an item sells a lot it is okay to spend £500 to £600 back if you can do it quick.

Atm I only have around 10 products that are the main sellers, it might not sound a lot but if you find items that sell well you don't need loads of different products.

I probably average around 30-40 items sold a day, at an average of £10 an item.

Not rebrandng atm, but looking into it for protection

I think an LLC is the equivalent of an LTD here in the UK, I'm actually a sole trader atm and am in the process of changing over to a LTD.

Do you stick to one niche or one peoduct, or sell a wide variety of products?

Along with that, how did you go about choosing your product(s)?

Is this your sole job, or do this for extra cash on side?

Do you strictly sell om Amazon, or do ebay as well?

It's early for me...im sure ill have more later!

PS welcome aboard

I sell whatever sells! Although remember super obvious products like iPhone cases will always be stupidly competitive and are not worth selling due to the penny margins.

I think choosing products is answered above but also look at the sales rank of items on Amazon, try and go for <1000.

This is my sole job atm, but am looking to start my own 'real' business after reading tmf .

I did start on ebay, currently don't sell on there but am going to start selling again on there.

Do you go to China to source your products and meet with the factories or deal with them using Alibaba/email? Have you or do you use importing agents?

I would never dream of going to China to source products unless I was placing a HUGE order or it was critical to starting a new business that required tooling etc. Message sellers on Aliexpress if you have questions, 99% of the time they are happy to help.

Getting ready to place our first inventory order (getting samples sent over first), any advice, tips or things to be cautious would be useful for me to know

Cheers for doing the AMA - appreciate it.

Nice one! Samples is a good idea. One thing I would say is start small, say for example you see a potential product, buy no more than £50s worth is you can, then once those sell with no hiccups you know you can progress to the more substantial orders. This keeps the risk low and gives you an idea of how many items you can sell within a week/month/year.

 

[SJVC]

@1step Thank you for the acknowledgment
@jon.a Nice mustache

 

[1step]

Hit the "like" button guys, this guy has provided good value to you all and deserves more than $117

 

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[SJVC]

Hi everyone, got another nugget of info below about Sales Ranks (SR) which are critical on Amazon.

I will be online for about an hour if anyone wants to do some quick fire question and answers

Most people who purchase from Amazon are unaware of what Sales Rank is and that fine because it really doesn't affect them. However as a seller you must be acutely aware of what this is and how it can and will affect your business on Amazon. The simple definition of SR (Sales Rank) is that it is a number Amazon will assign a product depending on how much volume it sells. The best SR a product could have is 1. The worst could be into the tens of thousands. Now this doesn’t mean only one product at a time can have a SR of 1, multiple products could have that SR, just like many products could have a SR of 2,412 for example. SR are also assigned by category not across the whole of Amazon. For example a product may rank as 1,032 in Kids Toys, while another product may rank 202 in Womens Clothes.

To find a SR of a product is very easy. Go to the product page and scroll down to ‘Product Details’ until you find this:

You can see that this item has a SR of 111 which is #1 in baby cutlery. So now we know that the best selling item in the baby cutlery category has a SR of 111. But how does that really affect us? If you are thinking about selling a particular product, then you can look at your competition and have an educated guess as to how many sales they are getting. In this case our main competitor has a SR of 111 (which is a very good SR).

Below is a guideline as to what volume of sales you could expect from certain SR’s. This is by no means a definitive guide but will help you to get a feel for what size the market is you are after.

1-100 Extremely Good Selling Item (Will be around 20+ sold a day)

101-500 Very Good Sales

501-1000 Okay Sales

1001-2000 Average Sales (Will be around 5+ sold a day)

2001-3000 Will Be A Slow Seller

3000+ Very Slow Sales (Will be 1-2 sales every other day, once you get passed a 5000 SR then you can’t expect any sales at all really)

Keep in mind that it is quite rare to see a SR of 1. Also remember that when you create your product pages they will start with a relatively high SR (around 2000-3000) and then will the SR will begin to come down as your sales go up. Most of my product pages have a SR of 100-800 depending on where they are on their life cycle.

It is okay to have a higher SR if you net profit per unit is high. The flipside of this is also that it is okay to have a low unit profit if your SR is low. For example if you had a product that you sold to consumers for £49.99 (a relatively high priced item on Amazon) and your unit profit on that was £20 you are doing well if you sold three of those a day. Equally if you had an item which sold for £4.99 in which your net profit was £2 and you sold 30 of those day, you have the same total net profit as the item which sold three items a day.

The optimal position to be in would be for a high net profit item with a low SR. So while SR is important so is the unit profit that is associated with the product.

 

[SJVC]

I didn't really explain myself well but you managed to answer my question anyway. I was asking more along the lines of how to compete selling a product that Amazon or another large retailer sells. If I understood correctly, you're saying don't use their ASIN (so it shows up as a "price option" underneath the Amazon offer or price leader) and instead use a fresh ASIN so my product gets its own page, right? And then focus on building quality for my product over theirs - good copywriting, photographs, etc.

That was what I figured but I didn't know if there was just so much competition against those types of products that it wasn't even worth it. I'm going to give it a try and see what happens.

Thanks again!

Yup you got it, just entice those customer eyes!

Thanks. That's not a problem, as one of my slow lane jobs was pro Photographer. Doing the shot on white (like a stock image) is simple enough. My question was more on the lines if it's worth investing the time in having the product in more of a situation type shot and if this impacts sales/ranking? Like the attached - You could shoot the wine furniture on white, but it has way more impact this way.

I don't see much of the point of shooting on white, as most of the manufacturers have these images anyway. Why not just use those?
Appreciate the help.

What was it like being a photographer if you don't mind me asking? I have dabbled in photography but never got into it properly. In terms of your photo question I would say do it against white for the stock photo because (correct me if I'm wrong) the default photo has to be on a white background. But I would definitely suggest using a photo like you linked too - I'm sure that would help sales

 

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[SJVC]

How do you handle your customs? Do you do it yourself or do you use a customs broker and a freight forwarded?

No broker or anything like that, just have to pay DHL when they turn up.

Hey man, since you say ask you anything, I want to try and get started on this buy online and sell for more. What do you recommend I import from amazon? I want to do this to get some extra cash (gotta start somewhere right?) but truth be told I have to idea where to begin. What are the things that sell most easily in your opinion? I want to spend up 500-1000 usd on my first buy, something not too risky.

Import from Amazon? Do you mean import for Amazon? To be honest your questions are very specific, what do I recommend you import? Find something that sells then see if you can source it for a profit. Its only risky if you order too much (500-1000USD sounds like a lot for your first order) and if you don't research the product (look at its track record of sales from other sellers).

 

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[SJVC]

A nugget about Alibaba for you guys. (I wonder how the IPO will go!)

This is an extract from the free ebook in my signature (shameless self-promotion I know!)

This is the place to go if you wanted to source both ready made products and to find a manufacturer for a product. When you are just starting out, you do not want to go down the manufacturer route, purchasing ready made products is much quicker and easier. Examples are always useful so lets say we are looking for HDMI cables.

Above is what the home page looks like for the website.


Below is what the page will look like when you search for ‘hdmi cables’ :

From here you can see that the first two results show unit prices of $0.69-$2.46 and $0.5-$10, respectively. Out of these two the best option would be the second cables because they have a lower unit cost and lower minimum order quantity (MOQ). Bear in mind that if you are ordering the MOQ then you will pay the higher unit cost, for our example here we would pay $1 for ordering 100 pieces.


Scrolling down we can see some more results, but the second listing still looks the best.

Okay so now we have chosen our supplier (the second listing), it is time to message them. When we click through to the page we see this:

Click ‘Contact Supplier’ to be taken through to the message interface.


A good example text could be:


‘Hello,


My name is (insert name here) acting on behalf of (your company) and I am interested in your product.


I would like to purchase (x amount) of this product.


Please reply so we can arrange payment methods and delivery.


Best regards,


(Your name).’


Then you can proceed to talk with the supplier. If they do not reply, do not worry as there are plenty of suppliers on Alibaba. It is a good idea to message several to ensure you get some replies. Also do not worry if you have not officially set up your company yet, it is still a good idea to include a company name to look more credible.

 

[SJVC]

Thank you for offering up the AMA.

Your welcome MJ!

Thanks for the answers, I thought of another. How do you differentiate yourself from your competitors to make sure you get sales over them?

No worries man. Well if you are competing against other sellers then the money is with the buy box which is primarily chosen by who has the lowest price (account rating is also taken into account). So its a case of checking prices and making sure you abide by Amazon's rules and getting good feedback.

Why are you not scaling what is already working for you?

Oh I am scaling it! This is just where I am now. What I meant was because all the stock is FBA I do have a good amount of free time to work on a business that has a higher amount of control and a higher entry barrier.

I thought this too - Sounds like you are making approx !40,000 pounds a year gross. So, assuming your net profit is somewhere in the
60-80,000 pounds range. For the U.K that's a pretty decent take for small scale. As previous post stead, why not scale? Have you found to sell those 30-40 items per day, it is taking too much time and effort?
Thanks

It doesn't take up too much time once you have found the products, just depends on how long you want to research products really, FBA is very efficient time wise. And as stated before I am scaling now alongside other projects.

Thanks for doing this:

My questions:

1) Are you using Amazon.com or UK? If .com, what is your shipping process from China to FBA?
2) What methods are you using to drive sales/traffic (seo, youtube, lists, FB, ppc, amazon ads, etc?)
3) What insights or tips can you share?
4)Are you insured (product liability)

Your welcome man, I use UK and some European Amazon sites. The stock has to go through me then to the a warehouse, the stock can't go directly to Amazon, although it would be amazing if it could! I don't use any methods to drive traffic... find something that sells and sell it! Although at the moment I am looking into my own website where of course SEO etc plays a much bigger role. Insights I would say... Don't try and over complicate things, look for a good sales rank (<1000), factor all your costs in before you buy an item to make sure it is profitable, also look at Amazons rules; things like not replying to customers within 24 hours is a negative mark on your account etc which can really add up to make your account in danger. Not insured atm no, none of my items would cause any harm I hope! Ha.

 

[SJVC]

Do you find it hard to compete with products that Amazon sells themselves or with big sellers? I've found a couple items I can make a great margin on but they're either sold and fulfilled by Amazon, or sold by guys with hundreds of feedback across dozens of items. The funny part is those guys are selling the same items I'm seeing on DHGate and slapping their brand name in the title. They don't even brand the product and most of them use the stock photos from the manufacturer. Go figure.

I want to take a crack at a couple of these items but I'm worried that competing with Amazon or a power seller like that will just end with me holding a lot of unsold inventory or taking a loss.

Hi there, looks like @Luke1213 has already made some good suggestions so I'll add too. I don't directly compete with Amazon a page they sell on, however if you have a separate page then you will be still be able to get sales for the same/similar product if you are cheaper or you can differentiate yourself in another way. I wouldn't worry much about other big sellers, they all started from scratch too so its case of being on top of your game from the start (ie great customer service etc). Yeah branding can be a funny thing sometimes on Amazon, in regards to the photos in some cases the manufacturers have taken them from sellers so don't always assume its the sellers taking it from the manufacturers. If you are worried about being left with a load of stock, see if you an order a really small amount, even if you only break even you will know next time when you order more that you will profit. Hope that helps!

 

[SJVC]

How much inventory are you receiving via DHL? Is it being shipped to US to an amazon fulfillment area or the UK?

This is my last hurdle before I pull the trigger
Thanks

90% of what I order goes through DHL, you can also use china post air but that will take around 2-3weeks. Its shipped to my house in the UK then to a fulfillment center, good luck!

 

[BGLefty]

No I fulfill them at the present time. I have to wait on amazon to approve my products prior to sending them in. It could be that I am not FBA at the present moment but many products that are merchant filled that don't even have reviews or sales rank higher than me.

I am no expert...you're way ahead of me in fact...I'm still in the investigation/learning phase of selling on Amazon. I posted this eslewhere but I'll give it to you here...it's a "creative Google search" that will give you links to lots of available PDF docs that you may find your answer in. Even if you don't find that answer, if you're just starting with FBA I'm sure you will learn a lot...

FBA PDFs

Hope that helps you out.

 

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[SJVC]

@Luke12321 Hey man. First up, 2 weeks isn't very long at all for a product on Amazon. It does take time for your page to move up through the rankings and there is a chance that it won't if you are not judged correctly by Amazon.

It is kind of hard to give you direct advice if I do not know what you are selling but here are some broad points:

Is your store brand new? Message your buyers and literally ask them for a review of your product and your store. State that if they were not happy with their purchase then you will rectify the issue.

Consider reducing the cost so you get more purchases which will increase your rank for your keywords. Then once you start to rank well put your price back up to where it was originally.

Consider using Amazon's paid ad network, but do not go overboard if you are not seeing ROI.

Try as best you can to objectively compare you page to your competitors. Look at your images, description copy etc

How competitive are your keywords for your product? For example if I created a page selling HDMI cables then I would not expect to rank for a very long time for someone searching 'HDMI cable'.

The reason for this is the competition, items such as HDMI cables are in big demand and so the margins are slim and the pages that do rank have either been there for a long time and/or are well researched and optimised effectively. That isn't to say you cannot rank, just that some wars will be more easily won on Amazon than others.

 

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[throttleforward]

I have listed my products on amazon and have had them listed for about 2 weeks now. No sales via amazon but I have made a few sales elsewhere and people that have purchased one of my items have left me reviews on amazon. I am selling my own private label brand and it is nearly impossible to find it using the keywords I use. My problem isn't finding my products if I search my brand. When I search my brand they appear without hesitation. My problem is finding which page my product is on when I search the keywords i have listed with my item description. I have tried finding it by searching the price, by relevance, by number of reviews, color, ect and it doesn't come up. I have searched through thousands upon thousands of listings with all my selected keywords and still can't seem to find it. Am I missing something? This is really beginning to frustrate me. How do you get your product to sell on amazon?

Look at your competitors (the ones on the first page of the keywords you want to rank for) pay special attention to the keywords/language they use in the their title copy. Try to incorporate as much of that into your title as possible, while still in a sentence/phrase format (you can't just list keywords in the title). Fill the title block completely. Keyword match to title is a key element Amazon uses to match searchers to sellers, so it has an outsized impact on your Amazon SERP ranking.

 

[SJVC]

Okay guys, here is an interesting 'trick' you might be interested in...

Ever see those pages on Amazon that seem to be always on sale? You can do that too. This might sound quite cynical but I would estimate that 90%+ pages on Amazon that say they are sale are not actually on sale at all. They are just using the contrast principle. The contrast principle is that a potential buyer will value an item more if they believe it was once selling at a higher price than it is now. So we could enter this in the price fields (in Amazon Seller Central):






You can then enter when the sale starts and ends. There is no limit as to when the sale should stop so you could theoretically have a sale that never ends… see what I mean? We could enter our sale to go on for two years and then when our page go lives it will say ‘50% off’ when it was never selling at £14.99. You can use this ‘trick’ if you want, no doubt it will increase your conversions for your page.

 

[eSparks]

Not sure how accurate FBA Toolkit is, but the site estimates daily sales per category and sales rank. You can also get details on the daily price, stock and sales volume for products in their database.

 

[SJVC]

Are your future business plans tied to importing and reselling? If not, why are you choosing to move away?

Any thoughts on the future of this arbitrage in the next few years?

I'm not choosing to move away, I will continue to do what I'm doing but FBA does give you a fair amount of free time so I want to create a business that has more security. I think this business model will continue to be profitable, getting more sales channels would be good also just incase.

I am new to amazon selling. If the product is already on amazon, how can you sell there? Does amazon keep track of how many of the item you have in stock and will display them as others sell out?

Is it even possible to list the same product at the same price and not get sales? Does that happen? Just a bit nervous!

Everyone is new at some point If you have the same product then of course you can sell there! Amazon keeps track of your inventory if you use FBA otherwise you will have to enter how many units you have. When there is two or more sellers with the same price sometimes the buy box can vary between sellers or just stay with the better ranked. Just try one product to see how it goes.

 

[SJVC]

Hey @SJVC,

Thanks for doing this. Just a few quick questions...

1) When you say you are looking at items that have a sales rank of < 1000, how far down do you drill into a given category to evaluate the sales rank. Meaning, do you look for something that has a sales rank of less than 1000 in a top ranked category like "Home and Kitchen" or do you look at the sales rank in a deeper subcategories like "Home and Kitchen > Bath > Towels"?

2) Also, you mention you aren't branding and it sounds like you are using Aliexpress as a primary source of getting your product. So you are relisting these products then generically, without any branding then....basically just repackaged and shipped to Amazon from what you received from Aliexpress?

Hey man, 1. Sub categories are fine, often they have less competition. 2. Yes in a nutshell that sounds about correct, bearing in mind some of the items are already branded that you can buy from aliexpress.

Have you done any sourcing in the UK or around the EU, or just China exclusively? With 20% import VAT on invoice of goods, what sort of margins do you project before moving forward with a product idea? What are some of the attributes you look for in products?

I appreciate you doing this. I'm also in the UK. Currently trying to get a products business off the ground.

Just China atm, however I did find one company in the UK for an item but their MOQ was way too high. VAT is just one of the expenditures you have to calculate into a potential product, try and aim for 40-50% gross margins. In terms of attributes just an item that you know has a good track record of sales and that you can source... nothing fancy!

 

[SJVC]

Hi.
I'm seeing conflicting posts with items < and > 1000, which is it?
Are you looking for the more popular selling items, or the off the radar items?
This might be a stupid question, but when I look on Amazon, they are typically number 1-100? if I click best sellers.
Or, as an example, if I type sd cards (something that will have more than 1000 hits), then they all show, but I don't see any rankings listed. Even if I click on the item, I can't see that info. Is it a case of clicking most popular sort, then counting the pages, or am I missing something?
Many Thanks

Hello! I originally stated <1000 but someone else asked about >1000. So to confirm its best to look for <1000. For your second question I think I know what you mean... If you click 'sell yours here' the sales rank should come up, does that make sense?

You know, i think there is great money to be made dropshipping from china for the expensive items. expensive enough so that they are shipped via DHL or UPS, since delivery is fast (they would pay for shipping too). what do you think ?

Good suggestion. I haven't got any experience with dropshipping but in many respects it is an attractive business model if you can get a reliable supplier. And yes a fast courier would be needed to ensure customers were not waiting too long.

 

[Luke1213]

z6evolved I am new at the amazon sales but maybe I can help a little. I am in the process of branding a few items and getting them to amazon. The fulfillment by amazon is basically where a merchant sends his merchandise to amazon and then amazon packages and ships it from the merchants inventory. If you already know this then my bad for repeating.

Branding it and making it your own will be a benefit for you so this is a good step. If you see a product that uses stock images and average copy, how can you make your product stand out from the other guys? A couple of ways is by using original photos of the product. Hire a professional photographer to take some pics of your merchandise and use that instead of the stock pics that the other guys use. If you can't come up with great ad copy for your product that will have you stand out from your competition, then hire someone from elance or odesk to create great ad copy and have an advantage on that end. Good pics and copy will set you apart from the other guys competing for the same product.

If you are worried about sitting on a bunch of inventory that might not be sold, see if your manufacturer/supplier will sell you maybe 1/3 of your original order. Taking a loss might be part of the learning curve. Maybe this run you lose, then your next run you break even and then after your break even, your start to profit. It's all a risk but it is one you have to take.

 

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[jon.a]

Hit the "like" button guys, this guy has provided good value to you all and deserves more than $117

done

 

[SJVC]

Thanks for taking the time to do this thread!

I am also from the UK and have been purchasing some products from dhgate and alibaba. I am getting hit with a 2.75% foreign currency fee for all my purchases though. I'm with RBS.

Paypal also seems to have foreign exchange fees involved although they are a little tricky to work out. It might be expensive on the seller end, which means higher prices for us.

What method do you use for your purchases that is cheap but also secure? I am looking into getting a separate credit card to use just for my importing business that does not charge an exchange fee. I have just seen one that even offers 0.5% cashback on purchases! This would surely add up if you were doing a lot of business...

Your welcome man, atm I use a credit card for safety and am probably charged around 1% I think. Its not something I have thought about much tbh but now you mention it, it might be a good idea to reduce that cost. What credit card offers 0.5% back? (You can dm me if you want) cheers.

@mosdef, @ddall's idea about getting your own quote is a good idea. Ask them to send it china post air for you, should be MUCH cheaper/free.

 

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[Ronak]

Look into Amazon sponsored search, you can have your product ad show up in amazon results for keywords you specify, clicks can be pretty cheap, and I think your first $50 is free...

 

[SJVC]

@Harry3000 Well... going against BIG brands will be tough, but not impossible. The main reason being is that customers know and generally trust big brands. If you do sell the same/similar product then you must have a USP. Otherwise why would someone choose your brand over an established brand? As for monopolised niches, yes it is easier to establish yourself in a field that is not dominated. Remember you do not have to sell in just one niche, you can have smaller empires that cumulatively bring in the good money. But good questions man, keep going you will get there. Just remember to test your products on your market before ordering a load of stock.

@16yearoldboy I assume you are 16? If so, why the hell not go for it!? Busy with school? Do you spend all your waking hours at school and studying at home? Can you cut out 1 hour of tv a day for product research and then another hour for product fulfillment? You can treat it as a hobby first, aim to make £10 a week, then £30 a week, then £10 a day then £30 a day etc. If you start this when you are 16, well, you will be light years ahead of 99% of your peers. The value isn't just in making x amount of money, but your SKILLS to be able to source products, work out margins, find customers and markets.

As for storage space, I started out of my bedroom. Just look for items to sell that do not take up a lot of room. Or you could go straight to using FBA and using Amazon's warehouses... but I wouldn't recommend that for a beginner!

 

[throttleforward]

So I've just spent the last few hours trying to source my first product

You could:
-search for products based on sales rank, looking not for the top selling items but items selling in the middle of the pack (less competition, usually better margins, e.g. take a look at sports and outdoor products over $25 that are ranked between 80k and 110k)
-put your own brand on an existing generic product (go to Chinese manufacturer, get your own brand stamped on it, sell at a premium - see the credit card knife on Amazon)

 

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[Walter Hay]

Hello everyone

It is my first post so I would like to welcome all members. I have a question and I think that it is the best thread for it. I'm going to make my first order from China. I was looking for the product and picked up some. Now I want to evaluate my choices and I have a problem with one of them. I hope that some of users with bigger experience in this field suggest me what to do. 1 So, what do you think about importing cosmetics? Is it good type of product or should I avoid it? I know that I should avoid products with trademarks but on Alibaba 2 I found that manufacturers offer "private labels" So they can put on the product my brand? If I understand correctly?

I would like to know your opinion about importing cosmetics, 3 is it a problematic product? For example people can have problems with skin, hair etc. What do you think about it? I found good market demand but I hesitate that it is the best choice and product to import. I will be very grateful for all your suggestions.

PS: I know that my English isn't perfect but i hope that everything is understandable

The OP has not posted anything on this thread since September 2014, so it looks like you won't get answers from him. You might like to see my thread: GOLD Sharing my lifetime experience in export/import. Product sourcing specialist.

Meanwhile I will try to answer some of the questions posted since he left the scene. I have numbered in red the two parts to your question:
1. Importing cosmetics from China is a very risky thing to do. I would never import anything that goes on the skin or is to be swallowed either.
2. You can have almost anything private labelled, but you should consider the product liability issues, in particular with cosmetics.
3. Problems can include the need to meet FDA regulations.

Walter

 

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[JimClark]

This is my sole job atm, but am looking to start my own 'real' business after reading tmf .

Why are you not scaling what is already working for you?

 

[ddall]

Thanks for doing this:

My questions:

1) Are you using Amazon.com or UK? If .com, what is your shipping process from China to FBA?
2) What methods are you using to drive sales/traffic (seo, youtube, lists, FB, ppc, amazon ads, etc?)
3) What insights or tips can you share?
4)Are you insured (product liability)