Massive Scale Cross-Border Amazon Arbitrage

[GoldFibre]

Weekly Update
No revenue from Amazon, one order from my brother's store.

My goal this week was to get into a routine and I failed.

I can list out my excuses but there isn't a point.

Next week I will have the same goal.

 

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[GoldFibre]

May Goal​

• Reach 20 orders per day, while maintaining or improving profit per order ($20, 15%)

Weekly Goal​

• Get into a new routine

Action​

• I got a 'bonus' for some advisory work I've been doing on the side and it is a substantial sum, so that was a nice surprise
• I'm continuing to confirm orders as they come in and run my script to delete any bad ASINs
• My suppliers have screwed up several times and I'm preparing to make a claim against each of them, but Amazon doesn't care whose fault it is and all this has made my account health even worse. I also need to better manage everything and can't really trust anyone to do their job when it's my own business on the line

 

[GoldFibre]

Morning Meeting​

Last night a friend of mine called me telling me how much he wants to start a business with me. We have worked together on some advisory projects, so I trust him in that capacity, but I'm still very hesitant to say yes to this request.

First of all, he sounds desperate and highly dependent on me. He is also somehow trying to tell me I'm obligated because he has introduced me to opportunities before. But I feel that if he really wanted to start a business he wouldn't need or wait for my buy-in.

Secondly, he says something like this every three months or so when he gets frustrated with his job, and then doesn't take any action. I doubt he is willing the make the kind of sacrifices I've been making to get a business off the ground, much less to make it a success.

Thirdly, he hasn't stated what structure he is thinking, but it feels like a 50/50 partnership discussion, which I would not do with anybody. There is the classic situation where one partner feels like he is doing all the work while the other is coasting, and I can see this happening, especially as I don't see this friend taking action in his own life despite years of saying he wants to get out of his full time job.

I need to do a few things today:

1. Complete my tax registration
2. Submit a POA to my account manager
3. Stop Google ads to my SaaS until I fix it

 

[GoldFibre]

May Goal​

• Reach 20 orders per day, while maintaining or improving profit per order ($20, 15%)

Weekly Goal​

• Get into a new routine

Actions​

• I only slept about two hours last night yet somehow was alive and alert for most of the day. Totally crashing at night though and again did the bare minimum on my orders
• Met a business associate for lunch - he got brand rights to a popular brand in our local market and launched last weekend. This is similar to what I want to do so I was curious how it happened.

 

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[GoldFibre]

May Goal​

• Reach 20 orders per day, while maintaining or improving profit per order ($20, 15%)

Weekly Goal​

• Get into a new routine

Actions​

• Slept for ten hours last night and felt like a human again today. Almost completely recovered from the sick feeling yesterday
• Restarted listening to my motivational audiobooks when I walk my dog and helped me get over my funk a bit
• Have two meetings scheduled with a business associate this week, one of which is to meet a potential acquisition or partner for a business we might work on. At the very least we will gather a lot of useful information
• Applied for corporate tax again. My previous application was rejected but hopefully I got it right this time. There are only three days left before the deadline and potential penalties
• Updated my new license with the bank since it had expired
• Paid my company credit card in the US

 

[GoldFibre]

Morning Meeting​

The One Thing I Absolutely Have To Get Done Today: Write my damn POA

 

[GoldFibre]

May Goal​

• Reach 20 orders per day, while maintaining or improving profit per order ($20, 15%)

Weekly Goal​

• Get into a new routine

Actions​

• Wrote a new POA, sent it to my account manager and then called and discussed it with him. He suggested a few changes, which I incorporated and then I submitted it to Account Health
• My account manager told me that he has five of his sellers deactivated at the moment, so it seems like there is a wider crackdown going on
• My corporate tax application was approved this time around
• Went this morning with a business associate to visit a warehouse and saw quotes from four different companies for eFulfillment. Each of these companies have different pros and cons
• My first brand-enablement order is arriving in the latest consol, so I'm excited for the first one to be a successful fulfillment
• Wrote a new pitch to a larger brand, and sent the CEO the message over LinkedIn. I think the pitch was WAY better than the last one I sent out
• I thought that this guy doesn't use LinkedIn much, so I tried to guess his email address and sent him the same message there. I didn't get an email bounce message!
• Had a discussion with my wife about the coming summer. Most of the progress I made last year was during the summer when my family was away. We are going to try to schedule a similar period this year so that I can work like a mad man on business for at least six weeks straight

I felt satisfied today that I got a decent amount done for the first time in a long while.

 

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[GoldFibre]

Morning Meeting​

The One Thing I Absolutely Have To Get Done Today: Cold-contact more than one brand, and be relentless about it.

 

[GoldFibre]

May Goal​

• Reach 20 orders per day, while maintaining or improving profit per order ($20, 15%)

Weekly Goal​

• Get into a new routine

Actions​

• My POA was rejected, but I didn't have a forgiveness path anyway - I have to rely on my account manager to try to get me out of this
• Decided to ramp up my cold outreach and also try to improve my approach each day
• Switched away from my gmail address to one with my company domain
• Replaced the homepage on my online store with something about brand enablement - very basic for now
• Contacted one more person at the brand I contacted yesterday
• Contacted two more brands, one of which I tried before on LinkedIn without any reply
• Tomorrow I cannot stay late after work like I have been the past few days. I need to find some other time to get this work in

 

[GoldFibre]

May Goal​

• Reach 20 orders per day, while maintaining or improving profit per order ($20, 15%)

Weekly Goal​

• Get into a new routine

Actions​

• Was busy until way past my bedtime with work and then obligations
• Didn't want to sleep without doing anything, so I went to one of the brands I reached out to yesterday and tried messaging them on Amazon - since Amazon gives an SLA for all sellers to reply to messages, I should at least get some kind of response

 

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[GoldFibre]

May Goal​

• Reach 20 orders per day, while maintaining or improving profit per order ($20, 15%)

Weekly Goal​

• Get into a new routine

Actions​

• I spent time this morning writing out my thoughts with pen and paper - there are ways I can be making money and I'm just not taking action. Somehow it always comes down to a little bit of thinking and then taking big action

 

[GoldFibre]

May Goal​

• Reach 20 orders per day, while maintaining or improving profit per order ($20, 15%)

Weekly Goal​

• Get into a new routine

Actions​

• Got an hour with a successful entrepreneur that has built a business around trading raw materials out of China and supplying them to local factories. His story was really interesting both in how simple the business is and how simple beating the competition was. This guy is shipping 200 containers per month and currently dominates the local market. I was pretty inspired and humbled. I'm messing around with 200 eCommerce orders per month and this guy is sending 200 containers per month - he definitely has the scale to make real money.

 

[GoldFibre]

Actions​

• Called my account manager and asked for an update. He thinks I should get my Country 1 account back by the end of the week. He told me not to log into my secondary account until this one gets reopened. Once it is open then I can run the FBA off of that account
• Reached out to a new brand with a personalized sales pitch. For now I sent it over LinkedIn
• Reached out to my brother to see if we can send some inventory over here and then try selling with free next day delivery

 

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[GoldFibre]

Actions​

• Wrote a script to compare the items in my catalog to the list of recommended ASINs I received from Amazon, and then delete anything not on those lists

 

[GoldFibre]

Actions​

• Deleted a list of risky ASINs provided by my account manager
• Spoke with a friend that has an Amazon store about her business - her store is pretty simple but most of her items have around 300 ratings, which suggests that she is selling decently well. I introduced her to the ASP 360 program after she said she thought it could help her

 

[GoldFibre]

Actions​

• I fulfilled my last set of items and now have zero pending orders in either account
• I had an obvious idea on how to avoid many account health issues: I could have a 'canary' account that lists everything before it gets listed in the main account. If the items don't get flagged after a certain period of time, then we also list them in the main account. This would require me to use different legal entities and IP addresses and so on, but then at least the main account would have some additional protection

 

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[GoldFibre]

Actions​

• Absolutely nothing

 

[GoldFibre]

08/06/2024​

Actions​

• Although I did spend some time writing out some ideas in my journal, at the end of the day I had taken no action

 

[GoldFibre]

09/06/2024​

Actions​

• Another slow day - still writing a bit in my journal and have some ideas but am not taking action

 

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[GoldFibre]

10/06/2024​

Actions​

• Switched up my routine to pause for a few minutes before going to the office each day and plan my day in the morning
• Spoke to my account manager - we will wait until Wednesday and if the account is still not open then we will start a new one
• He told me that one of his other sellers got their account reopened and then they were closed again after just three days. It sounds like things have gotten much stricter
• Finally fixed my SaaS program after knowing it has been broken for over a month
• Reenabled ads on the SaaS since it should work properly now
• Paid out from my Stripe account
• Adjusted the countries I target in Google Ads to try to optimize spend

 

[GoldFibre]

11/06/2024​

Actions​

• Got my first SaaS sale in a very long time last night after fixing the site and restarting ads
• Took some time in the morning before commuting to work to write out my plan for the day and new ideas. I have one idea for a SaaS that I think is pretty good: A price monitor for Amazon - this already exists in the US and other marketplaces, but not in my market, and I could also expand this to check other local marketplaces after Amazon
• Had to work late, so not a lot of time for business
• Decided to make at least one small improvement to my SaaS each day, regardless of how much time I have
• Walked through the flow and noted down any issues I saw:
  • Modal dialog doesn't fully close if the Stripe iFrame is still loading
  • Alignment issues with the current plan price on the upgrade page
  • FIXED Cursor isn't a pointer when over the logo
  • FIXED Error if you click on a site before the data comes in from GSC
  • FIXED Unnecessarily loading Vercel Analytics
• Took a look at my Google Ads and saw that I need to redo advertiser verification - so completed that
• Added conversion value to my columns in Google Ads

 

[GoldFibre]

12/06/2024​

Actions​

• Planned my day in the morning although today was again a full day of meetings for my full time job and I only had about an hour at night to work on the business
• Started making my price tracking site prototype and banged my head against the wall for a while trying to get a monorepo setup to work before deciding to just plow forward with some basic dumb UI

 

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[GoldFibre]

13/06/2024​

Actions​

• Had a chat with my account manager. He is saying we might get the account reopened but need to be careful that it doesn't get immediately shut down again. I told him I'm going to stop this drop shipping model and fully move to FBA - I will delete my entire catalog and start with the inventory I already have in my warehouse
• Even if he doesn't get my account reopened, I will do the same if I have to start a new account
• Had no time tonight to work on development

 

[GoldFibre]

14/06/2024​

Actions​

• Not much update today - was stuck with maintenance in my apartment and didn't get free until 1 hour after I normally go to sleep

 

[GoldFibre]

15/06/2024​

Actions​

• Put together a homepage for my 'Deal Hunter' site. It is visually there but not yet functional. I will have a few hours tomorrow as well and will try to get it up and running

 

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[GoldFibre]

16/06/2024​

Actions​

• Paused my Google ads because I didn't get any more conversions after the first day and I am working on a different product now
• Got the first version of my homepage running on Vercel
• Had a long family discussion on financial/lifestyle goals and things are a bit clearer now