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AMAZON FBA - The Journey Begins

A detailed account of a Fastlane process...

Kak

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Lol... I just looked up Jungle Scout... My gosh there is even an app devoted to finding "opportunity" on Amazon that all of the competition has access to. Now you need to use all the tools just to keep up.

Can you say perfect competition? Wow. This is unprecedented.

From investopedia:
Perfect competition is the opposite of a monopoly, in which only a single firm supplies a good or service and that firm can charge whatever price it wants, since consumers have no alternatives and it is difficult for would-be competitors to enter the marketplace. Under perfect competition, there are many buyers and sellers, and prices reflect supply and demand. Companies earn just enough profit to stay in business and no more. If they were to earn excess profits, other companies would enter the market and drive profits down.

Read more: Perfect Competition Perfect Competition

Good luck to you @Ayanle Farah you're going to need it. Honestly it seems like you understand these pitfalls... Why then did you choose FBA?
 
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ChrisV

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@Ayanle Farah you're going to need it. Honestly it seems like you understand these pitfalls... Why then did you choose FBA?
What are you talking about... Amazon is a great venture. They’ll all be be a hundredaires in no time.
 

Kak

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What are you talking about... Amazon is a great venture. They’ll all be be a hundredaires in no time.

It's becoming a stupid waste of time at this point. It has turned into a "get rich quick" scheme.

There is nothing new or groundbreaking going on here. Just people trying to game a system $500 at a time. Money chasers. Not entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurs don't do things with directions. They create the directions.
 

ChrisV

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amp0193

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Lol... I just looked up Jungle Scout... My gosh there is even an app devoted to finding "opportunity" on Amazon that all of the competition has access to. Now you need to use all the tools just to keep up.

I would love to see the pandemonium of the masses, if one day Amazon decided to stop publishing best seller rankings on all of their products.
 
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biophase

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Lol... I just looked up Jungle Scout... My gosh there is even an app devoted to finding "opportunity" on Amazon that all of the competition has access to. Now you need to use all the tools just to keep up.

Can you say perfect competition? Wow. This is unprecedented.

From investopedia:
Perfect competition is the opposite of a monopoly, in which only a single firm supplies a good or service and that firm can charge whatever price it wants, since consumers have no alternatives and it is difficult for would-be competitors to enter the marketplace. Under perfect competition, there are many buyers and sellers, and prices reflect supply and demand. Companies earn just enough profit to stay in business and no more. If they were to earn excess profits, other companies would enter the market and drive profits down.

Read more: Perfect Competition Perfect Competition

Good luck to you @Ayanle Farah you're going to need it. Honestly it seems like you understand these pitfalls... Why then did you choose FBA?

This is why I don't use Jungle Scout and I tell my clients not to use it. But I do check my product on JS from time to time and love it when it shows up as a shitty product with shitty numbers.
 
D

DeletedUser0287

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Like others have said, learn from the mistakes of others. Failures aren’t free, they cost time and money. Just winging it will be a disaster.

I am one of the people that have learned the very hard way. NOT WORTH IT.

Read as much as possible before executing.

Edit: Everyone says persistence and handing failure is all there is, but from experience, that is only half the battle. The other half is affording the failure. People with deep pockets can AFFORD to handle failure. I thought it was all mindset before, but currently have zero funds because I thought handling failure was just a mindset and free...
 
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amp0193

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This is why I don't use Jungle Scout and I tell my clients not to use it. But I do check my product on JS from time to time and love it when it shows up as a sh*tty product with sh*tty numbers.

In the last month, we have found 2 entire product lines that people in our niche are looking for, but no one, literally no one, in the U.S. is selling. There are no distributors, there are no retailers, there are no listings on Amazon.

We already import these products, as they are complementary to our main products.

Now, I'll just order more quantity, and a few more skus, and sell on Amazon as well as other places.

Jungle scout would have given these products a solid "<5 a month"

But we know the niche, and we know these will be solid "base hit" products.
 

Ayanle Farah

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Lol... I just looked up Jungle Scout... My gosh there is even an app devoted to finding "opportunity" on Amazon that all of the competition has access to. Now you need to use all the tools just to keep up.

Can you say perfect competition? Wow. This is unprecedented.

From investopedia:
Perfect competition is the opposite of a monopoly, in which only a single firm supplies a good or service and that firm can charge whatever price it wants, since consumers have no alternatives and it is difficult for would-be competitors to enter the marketplace. Under perfect competition, there are many buyers and sellers, and prices reflect supply and demand. Companies earn just enough profit to stay in business and no more. If they were to earn excess profits, other companies would enter the market and drive profits down.

Read more: Perfect Competition Perfect Competition

Good luck to you @Ayanle Farah you're going to need it. Honestly it seems like you understand these pitfalls... Why then did you choose FBA?
Thanks Kak, Amazon FBA is a starting point but there are many 7 figure sellers on there so you can definitely scale. The most successful people sell to the competition aswell. Junglescout is a solution to a problem many sellers have on Amazon, I'm sure there are other problems within Amazon waiting to the solved.

I have no intention of remaining there once I've got enough experience to expand on my own, I may even directly challenge Amazon in the future lol but for now I'm treating it as a journey, just having fun on the way.
 

Kak

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Thanks Kak, Amazon FBA is a starting point but there are many 7 figure sellers on there so you can definitely scale. The most successful people sell to the competition aswell. Junglescout is a solution to a problem many sellers have on Amazon, I'm sure there are other problems within Amazon waiting to the solved.

I have no intention of remaining there once I've got enough experience to expand on my own, I may even directly challenge Amazon in the future lol but for now I'm treating it as a journey, just having fun on the way.

That is a bit like saying you don't know much about flying airplanes, but you plan to build up experience by flying in clouds over mountains before you fly. It doesn't make sense.
 
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Ayanle Farah

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That is a bit like saying you don't know much about flying airplanes, but you plan to build up experience by flying in clouds over mountains before you fly. It doesn't make sense.
To me it's more like having training wheels on a bike and removing them when I'm ready.
 

Kak

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To me it's more like having training wheels on a bike and removing them when I'm ready.

Nothing about making actual money on Amazon FBA is easier than just starting a real business.

You keep acting like it's the path of least resistance. It's not.
 
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Ayanle Farah

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Nothing about making actual money on Amazon FBA is easier than just starting a real business.

You keep acting like it's the path of least resistance. It's not.
Oh no, I'm ready to put in work, but some of the work is already done for me, like getting set up was really easy, there is basically no barrier to entry and I have little control because I'm on someone else's platform but it comes with convenience.

I'm not saying it's easy to succeed with FBA at all and I'm not looking for the path of least resistance.

To me though it feels easier than say, setting up an ecommerce website myself and starting from there, I don't know why exactly.

I also think there is a higher chance to find problems with such a huge company for a potential fastlane business down the line.
 
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Kak

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To me though it feels easier than say, setting up an ecommerce website myself and starting from there, I don't know why exactly.

Way to set the difficulty bar high there. Bravo...

The fundamental problem I have with your business model is that it isn't a business model. You are just selling. You aren't building a brand. You aren't going to create a social presence. You aren't going to try to get your brand into more traditional retailers. There will be no snowballing, just generic, random, junk from China you think you will make money with.

"I opened a store where I will sell stuff. YAY."
 

ChrisV

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Well here’s the thing... I’m somewhat familiar with FBA, but not an expert...

It’s your products they’re selling? Like you make the products, and amazon ships them?

I think with FBA you can sell products you developed yourself, or you can import products

If you’re just selling someone else products - i don’t think you’re gonna make any real money. Maybe 6 figures if your lucky until saturation hits (like eBay)

If you’re manufacturing your own product and sending it to Amazon to shit out - that’s definitely fastlane. But otherwise you really gotta invent something. Dude, just go about your life, watch the things that annoy you. Think of a product that would resolve that annoyance and make it. That’s it. Books, apps, software have the lowest barrier to entry, imo. That sounds like it violates CENTS but they are still profitable.
 

Ayanle Farah

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Way to set the difficulty bar high there. Bravo...

The fundamental problem I have with your business model is that it isn't a business model. You are just selling. You aren't building a brand. You aren't going to create a social presence. You aren't going to try to get your brand into more traditional retailers. There will be no snowballing, just generic, random, junk from China you think you will make money with.

"I opened a store where I will sell stuff. YAY."
I'll most likely do those things when I've got some experience, I don't even know the first step to that atm.

Edit: How would you suggest I do this?
 
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SquatchMan

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I'll most likely do those things when I've got some experience, I don't even know the first step to that atm.

Edit: How would you suggest I do this?

Don't sell commodity goods (generic junk from China).

Trust me. Made that mistake myself.

Create something people actually want and then sell it.

I think this thread is pretty relevant and an accurate prediction. This was 2015 too, it's only gotten worse.

GOLD! - Do you want to do it the EASY way, or the HARD way?
 

Kak

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Amazon just sent their email on long term storage fees... Half of it was written in Chinese characters.

That says a LOT about the competition.
 
G

Guest58302

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Amazon just sent their email on long term storage fees... Half of it was written in Chinese characters.

That says a LOT about the competition.
This prediction from over a year ago seems pretty accurate:
I just got back from visiting one of my suppliers from China to find out that, yes, they have been selling the same item direct on Amazon for a few bucks less! They even copied my box design.

Needless to say, we will be switching suppliers, which may end up being a blessing in disguise. I ended up finding another supplier that will be doing a custom mold for us, and their quality will be better, but at a lower price.

I can't say I blame the guy for going direct, ultimately if your product can be knocked off, it's just a matter of time until someone does.

I still think this is rare, but as time goes on, more and more factories are finding out about the Amazon opportunity, and Amazon will continue to make it easier for factories to go direct. The long term solution is to have something protectable, whether through a patent, trademark, or something else.
Competing against your own supplier... What a nightmare.

Edit: It seems that language barriers and other mishaps are what helps you maintain an edge over Chinese suppliers directly selling on Amazon. See @spraybottle 's post below. Nevertheless, unwanted competition is unwanted competition.
 
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ShamanKing

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This is my progress thread. I will start Amazon FBA, now I don't know anything about this whatsoever but I've decided to learn as I go, I'm going to allow experience to teach me.

I won't read a single article, book or watch any videos on the topic, I'll only learn through trial and error.

Here we go!

Hmm. So you are going to dive into Amazon FBA without researching? Look at Shopify while you are at it also. I almost pull the trigger on Shopify (Dropshipping) and FBA but it violates CENTS. With that being said you can still produce high income from it and I believe it provides good experience. Please do keep us posted.
 

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I think a lot of people here have said some hard to swallow things but they come from the right place. They don't want another rookie to mess up and fail.

With that being said, I personally do FBA and did $30,000 in one month from my first product on Amazon (Q2) so I know FBA works and I fell in love with the business model when I realized I didn't have to fulfill orders which I had experience doing from past ventures which quite frankly sucked a$$. I do have to mention that I didn't source my product from China. I used junglescout, found my niche that was underserved, looked at the metrics to see how many sales people were doing, and then proceeded to call every manufacturer in america that could develop and source my product until one listened to what I had to say and give it a go. It helped I wasn't reinventing the wheel. In that way I differentiated myself from other gimmicky sellers selling the same thing on Amazon, which, by the way, can work as long as you have enough good reviews, quality products, and better copy. I don't even bat an eye at the chinese sellers because they tend to do alot of shady stuff with their reviews, their copy usually reads like a dictionary with grammatical errors, and it screams chinese which people are getting smarter and smarter and avoiding.

One nugget I can give you is to understand the bigger picture when you're selling your product. It's not always about making x% for every good you sell. Working with amazon's algorithm to place organically at the top, your first goal with your product is to get reviews to increase CTR and increase sales velocity. Period. Then, the organic sales will come naturally as long as everything else is good.


I say press on my friend, don't let naysayers discourage you from taking action. Just be careful in how you spend money because it quickly adds up and more often than not, you end up spending more than what you expected to get it going and cash flow is tricky with re-ordering stock and additional costs associated with advertising, etc.
 
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G

Guest58302

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The initial pessimism in this thread was because @Ayanle Farah was insisting on jumping into the fray completely blind and I'm glad that he's willing to at least do some research.

While the later pessimism comes from Amazon's current reputation on the forum. Its reputation is best expressed in the topic's tags.

It just seems that more seasoned veterans have been moving away from relying on Amazon on the basis that launching a product and a brand is considerably more difficult than in the past because of violations to the commandment of Entry and Control.

NOTABLE! - Navigating the changes at Amazon since we started
NOTABLE! - My opinion of the Amazon Marketplace


But I also think that one of the most important things to do is to get started. Anything. Just get something out there. And that seems to be what @Ayanle Farah wants to do as well.
 
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Ayanle Farah

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I think a lot of people here have said some hard to swallow things but they come from the right place. They don't want another rookie to mess up and fail.

With that being said, I personally do FBA and did $30,000 in one month from my first product on Amazon (Q2) so I know FBA works and I fell in love with the business model when I realized I didn't have to fulfill orders which I had experience doing from past ventures which quite frankly sucked a$$. I do have to mention that I didn't source my product from China. I used junglescout, found my niche that was underserved, looked at the metrics to see how many sales people were doing, and then proceeded to call every manufacturer in america that could develop and source my product until one listened to what I had to say and give it a go. It helped I wasn't reinventing the wheel. In that way I differentiated myself from other gimmicky sellers selling the same thing on Amazon, which, by the way, can work as long as you have enough good reviews, quality products, and better copy. I don't even bat an eye at the chinese sellers because they tend to do alot of shady stuff with their reviews, their copy usually reads like a dictionary with grammatical errors, and it screams chinese which people are getting smarter and smarter and avoiding.

One nugget I can give you is to understand the bigger picture when you're selling your product. It's not always about making x% for every good you sell. Working with amazon's algorithm to place organically at the top, your first goal with your product is to get reviews to increase CTR and increase sales velocity. Period. Then, the organic sales will come naturally as long as everything else is good.


I say press on my friend, don't let naysayers discourage you from taking action. Just be careful in how you spend money because it quickly adds up and more often than not, you end up spending more than what you expected to get it going and cash flow is tricky with re-ordering stock and additional costs associated with advertising, etc.
Thanks alot Spraybottle, it'd be great if my product could also be manufactured in my country instead of needing to import but I'm learning about the topics involved with running this business atm, once I've studied those I'll put together a solid plan of action.

The initial pessimism in this thread was because @Ayanle Farah was insisting on jumping into the fray completely blind and I'm glad that he's willing to at least do some research.

While the later pessimism comes from Amazon's current reputation on the forum. Its reputation is best expressed in the topic's tags.

It just seems that more seasoned veterans have been moving away from relying on Amazon on the basis that launching a product and a brand is considerably more difficult than in the past because of violations to the commandment of Entry and Control.

NOTABLE! - Navigating the changes at Amazon since we started
NOTABLE! - My opinion of the Amazon Marketplace


But I also think that one of the most important things to do is to get started. Anything. Just get something out there. And that seems to be what @Ayanle Farah wants to do as well.
I'm well aware there is no barrier to entry and very little control as I don't own the platform.

Before I just wanted to jump in but after thinking about it, I realized that won't do me good in the long run.

So I'm researching and learning atm.
 

Minus9

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What sucks about Amazon is the fact that it controls every single thing and can kill you within a second, but also the reward is greater.

I am in a group with several successful FBA sellers helping each other out, if you're interested in that. But the mentality that just because it gives instructions, you won't use something is stupid and also not read on it.

Use Junglescout for stats only, not research. Do research on your own otherwise you'll be having the same products as a dozen others. And do watch videos and learn, they're helpful. You'll have trial and error regardless if you read a book or get a course, there's way too many I encounter that are so confident in their product that I simply tell them to not go with it because by my experience and knowledge, I know what's good to sell.

Regardless, good luck with your journey. I hope you do study some of it.
 

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