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NeoDialectic
Successfully Exited the Rat Race
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@NeoDialectic
Thanks for the value you are providing. I have a few beginner questions if you don't mind.
1. As far as I understand, you sold on different channels, but most of your sales came in through Amazon. Do you think one can still start solely on Amazon today, or would it be better to start your own online shop simultaneously?
2. Can you start with just one product? Or should you have two, three, or even more products for your brand to get started?
3. Where have you looked for ideas? Did you actively search for them on Amazon, or did you do something else?
4. Did you use any tools (like Helium 10, Jungle Scout) for product research ...?
5. What minimum capital should one have to start with a first product?
6. What was the average profit margin you wanted to have on product sales? What was the minimum margin below which you discarded a project?
7. Did you source everything in China or also locally, i.e., in the United States?
8. I live in Europe and would start on the European Amazon marketplaces. What do you think about that? (Amazon.com is much bigger, but if I start on Amazon Germany, at least I know the market).
9. Would you recommend taking a course to get started faster, or learning by doing? What did you do and why?
@fastlane_dad I would be interested in your input too.
Thanks.
- I think, in this regard, the landscape is the same. If you want to do Amazon, start on Amazon and follow up with the other channels shortly after. If you're going to leverage google ads or some other form of advertising, start with a website.
- One product is just fine.
- Check out my idea generation thread.
- We did not. That isn't to say that these tools aren't helpful. But, if I had to guess, the easy picking of opportunities those tools exposed was taken advantage of by the teams that made the products and then the first users. Then they made videos of how to use the tools when they were done. But I don't doubt that those tools are handy for market research or idea generation if you approach them in a novel and creative fashion.
- You can start at less than $100. It may make things easier to have a few thousand to invest, though. Even today, we have started things with minimal investment, as mentioned here.
- It started at around 75% profit margin. By the end, we were running around ~50% profit margin. The margin you are OK with highly depends on the type of business you want to run. Plenty of big companies run at 5%. We wouldn't touch anything that doesn't have the potential for 40%+
- We always sourced things from the USA.
- Unfortunately, I'm not sure. By the numbers, we had a lot of international sales. Including Germany. But I'm not sure how viable it would be to build an entire business just on Amazon Germany since we don't have experience in that.
- I have no courses to recommend. @fastlane_dad and I have generally been very disappointed with the quality of courses and advice we have seen regarding eCommerce. It's usually outdated, hyper situation dependant, or too unactionable. Even worse, it seems like a lot of it is made by people that may have never even walked the walk but are just experts at selling an image. So maybe we just haven't looked in the right places for high-quality content. I don't know. We have thought about making courses but go back and forth on it. We believe we could make some genuinely good contributions...but...We aren't sure if it is worth our time and whether we want to make the commitment.
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