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Idea Generation To Execution: Fastlane Millionaire's Step By Step Guide

Walter Hay

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If it is a supplement...... Be careful sourcing those from China. I'm not saying you can't do it succesfully. I am saying there is a decent chance you are gonna get a crap product with crap ingredients that wouldn't pass American QC standards.
I was pleased and somewhat relieved to read this. I would never buy such products from China. In 2008 there was a scandal due to the chemical Melamine being added to baby formula to give the impression that the milk contained a higher level of protein than was the case. 300,000 children were affected, 54,000 of them were hospitalized and 6 died.

According to the China Daily, of the company executives, 2 were executed, 3 got a life sentence, and 2 got 15 year sentences. About the same time melamine was discovered in eggs and other food.
As a PS, a similar aduleration of cough syrup (some from China, but numerous other sources) has resulted in the death of hundreds of children in many countries.

An American pediatrician Michael L. Bennish published in a medical journal in 1995 his opinion that "death tolls must be in the tens of thousands".

Supplement and cosmetic sellers beware!
My apologies if this has been asked in this or other threads.

It is well known that Chinese manufacturers (or their middlemen) sell their own products on Amazon and other e-commerce platforms. Even Amazon has had its own products that are exact copies of products previously sold by others.

Let's say someone goes through all the steps outlined in this thread and comes up with a winning product. What keeps your Chinese (or from any other country) manufacturer from launching the same product with a different brand, etc?

I can see how big brands (Nike, Apple, you name it) can protect themselves from this. But, are there any options for a small player just starting out?

Obviously, you and others on this forum have been able to make it work.

I'm curious to know if you've had to deal with this issue, and if yes, what did you do to keep your product or products at the top and still make it to the point where you could sell your company for 8 figures?

Thanks!
Those who have my book know that I warn that copies of products being made in China often appear on the market before the designer sees a prototype.

Walter
 
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NeoDialectic

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The websites you make, what platform do you recommend? Wix, squarespace etc
In recent times, we have always used Shopify. It's easy to setup, easy to use, and there are endless adaptations that you could do.

Our website was never our biggest driver of sales though, so I could imagine many scenarios where someone would want a custom built platform to handle more intricate processes.
 

NeoDialectic

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My apologies if this has been asked in this or other threads.

It is well known that Chinese manufacturers (or their middlemen) sell their own products on Amazon and other e-commerce platforms. Even Amazon has had its own products that are exact copies of products previously sold by others.

Let's say someone goes through all the steps outlined in this thread and comes up with a winning product. What keeps your Chinese (or from any other country) manufacturer from launching the same product with a different brand, etc?

I can see how big brands (Nike, Apple, you name it) can protect themselves from this. But, are there any options for a small player just starting out?

Obviously, you and others on this forum have been able to make it work.

I'm curious to know if you've had to deal with this issue, and if yes, what did you do to keep your product or products at the top and still make it to the point where you could sell your company for 8 figures?

Thanks!
The best way to protect yourself is making quality items and Branding. A good portion of people will still go for the more expensive branded item so they know they bought a quality item.

This isn't a field I am an expert in because in my fields "copying" is just called competition. You beat the competition just like in any other way. Hopefully you had a running start. There may be other members that are more experienced in the "copying" issues with physical goods on Amazon that could chime in.

Your issues will directly correlate to the type of products you sell. If it is Chinese manufactured goods, I imagine you will be at risk of copy cats in short order. If it is a custom formulation or combination of ingredients done in the USA, they have no way of just "copying" you. Get big enough though and soon you will be dealing with counterfeits. We started having to deal with that the last 2 years of our business. The best way to handle this was being vigilant and flagging counterfeits as soon as they get put up. If you give them an opportunity to start making good money, you will never live it down.

Either way, you shouldn't have to worry about this until you have earned some success. Don't let it stop you from building a business. This is tomorrows problem, not todays. Todays problem is to start ASAP and make your first sale.
 

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Not sure if you've mentioned this previous but I thought I'd ask since it's been on my mind recently - do you have any experience in new product development from some kind of a custom design/engineering point of view?

I've started multiple businesses in the past and worked with manufacturers to customize products, but those customizations were nothing that couldn't be figured out over a few back and forth emails. Change the color, pattern, size, formula, etc.

As I start to consider what my next venture will be, I find myself drawn more and more to developing unique products with designs that stand out in the market and get away from the "slap my logo on a marginally customized white label product" way of doing things.

I'm not an engineer or a designer (which is obviously going to cost me) and having never worked with engineers/designers/consulting firms/etc on something with a unique design/feature/function/etc, I don't really know what to expect. I kind of feel like this is the kind of thing that could be done relatively affordably if done right or it could be problematic and extremely expensive if done wrong.

Have you played in the custom design space with your past products that you could shed some insight on? Any great book suggestions?
 
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NeoDialectic

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I kind of feel like this is the kind of thing that could be done relatively affordably if done right or it could be problematic and extremely expensive if done wrong.
I think your intuition on it is dead on because the answer is just "it depends".

If you know solidworks/autodesk/blender/etc , you can have an idea and draw something up for free! Then you find an overseas company that specializes in the general niche of your product and provide them the drawing. You work out some terms, get samples, and rock and roll without too much of an investment.

From there, you can modify all those inputs to increase costs by either a little or by unlimited.

Hiring someone to make a drawing for you doesn't have to be too unreasonable unless it's some huge complicated design. Depending on what it is you are talking about, you could even approach the manufacturer and they could help you with design.

You could hire a USA company to do the manufacturing and designing. Which is much better but also another level of cost.

That's all assuming you have a working idea. You could also just have a vision and need to do the research to implement the vision. Now you may be opening a pharmaceutical company that has 10 researchers on payroll!

I think you know where I'm going with all this. The point is that even though making something from scratch will have a little more (relatively) investment than the white labeling you have been doing, it is still on a sliding scale and can be attained by normal people.
 
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DinoMidas

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After posting my general advice post here , I realized that one of the most burning questions that people struggle with is "how do I come up with an idea that isn't already done?" and "how do I test whether I can successfully sell this product without a huge investment?".

This is the first time I am writing down this process on paper, but this process in general is one of the ways my business partner and I have successfully launched multiple big products that have been in the hands of hundreds of thousands of happy customers.

Hopefully this thread will show you how to do that with a real step by step example of how to do this. I will also try to include my reasoning for decisions along the way. So this will be a long thread with multiple parts. Even though I have already went through the example all the way through posting; Writing detailed accounts take a long time. So today I am tackling the idea generation part. Depending on the response over the next week or so, I will add a post detailing how to bootstrap your way through successfully testing the product. I can also add a post detailing a few unsuccessful iterations, to showcase what failed attempts look like.

Disclaimers:
  • This is FAR from the only way to do this. By providing the following steps, I am not saying that this is the best way to start a business. But these are difficult questions to answer in an actionable and generalizable fashion, so I have chosen a niche and path that I could do just that. I believe others methods have been posted before on these forums. For example like searching for everyday items on Amazon and seeing what all the 1 star reviews have in common and solve that issue.
  • The best way to think of an idea is to be familiar with a product or field and try to solve an issue that you or someone you know runs into. In this exercise I am attempting to answer not just how to test a product, but also how to come up with an idea when your mind is running completely blank. The point is to show that the only thing holding you back is your willingness to put in work/time and not your experience/age/finances/etc. If you have an advantage in either of those (know a problem to solve or you have sufficient finances to fund faster experimentation) then I would recommend using that.
  • You are taking a peek at my exact process that I would take to think of and test a product under these circumstances. That means I have not actually made and tested this product but I actually do believe this would be a good product to test. My bar here would be to test X amount of products and only 1 has to catch on to be a success.
  • My example will be testing on Amazon as it is the most lucrative marketplace and simultaneously probably the hardest to do so as your are playing by their stringent rules. However you can apply the same methods for any other marketplace and/or search engine and you would just be dealing with less traffic but likely have more control.
  • If you want to copy any part of this, you can. But please know that I only went surface level for the purpose of this exercise. I don't endorse any of the companies mentioned (I haven't necessarily worked with them) and I haven't done all the legal research and due diligence.
Prelude:

What do I need?
  • An Amazon seller account
  • Willingness to spend $50-$200 on product and another couple hundred on advertising. There may be cheaper ways to do this with close to zero investment and I will annotate those options, but they all come with drawbacks

The Idea Framework:

When starting to brainstorm ideas from scratch, I am thinking about the question "what scenario or group of people can I provide value to in a specific way that others haven't?" Thinking about the question this way helps me find a niche. Here is an outline of the steps that you can follow.

  1. Think of attributes that separate people into groups with possible unique needs or requirements. Example: Height, age, sex,race,hair color, eye color, skin color, disability or special needs, left/right handedness, location, etc...
  2. Think of questions that could expose unique needs that these people would have just as a byproduct of being in this group. You are proding for problems to solve. If you had personal experience and unsolved problems, you wouldn't need to do this step. But you have none, so here we are. Examples:
    • What ingredients are X sensitive to?
    • What ingredients should X avoid?
    • What do people with X have to be careful of?
  3. Literally google the questions and read a good amount of results. Each problem that you encounter, add it to a Problems List and then see if there is a solution that is specifically marketed for this problem on Amazon. If the group itself is super niche, this may actually be enough! However this is usually not enough as most issues in the big groups have been addressed in the marketplace. You can also type that same question with the word "forum" afterward to see what people on forums have been complaining about as well. This can sometimes be gold for finding budding problems that the market hasn't caught up with yet. These base problems could also be harder to test sometimes because you may need to come up with a completely new invention or product versus repurposing other products that provide a solution.
  4. If you have found that all the very general problems have been taken care of, you should move onto the next step of the niche discovery process. Put yourself in the shoes of this group and think of ways your Problems List can be affected by everyday tasks or common products. Lets call this the Interaction List. This list obviously has unlimited iterations. Just make sure it is something that would have a large enough audience.
  5. Use google to see if the things on your Interaction list are actually issues or not. Example language: Does (some product or action) cause (some issue) for (group of people) . This is a good time to also see recommended solutions to these interactions. This will help you gauge whether this is something you can solve without reinventing the wheel.
  6. Search Amazon to see if there is a solution for this specifically.
  7. Go through steps 1-6 over and over again until you find a problem that has not been solved and that follow a majority of MJ's CENTS model. Ideally it would be something that you can creatively test without too big of investment. This isn't a requirement, but with unlimited problems to solve, why not make it easy on yourself?
OK. So those are the basic steps I recommend you follow for this method. If you are confused about any of the steps see the next part.

The Idea Example:

Here is the process I went through for this thread. I went through many FAILED iterations before coming up with this final product. However for brevity's sake, I will post a few examples in a follow-up post and not here. The steps line up to the previous chapters steps.

  1. People with blonde hair.
  2. Here are the two questions that made sense within the context of the group
    • "What do people with blonde hair have to be careful of?"
    • "What ingredients should blondes avoid?"
  3. Here is a short list of things that made my sample Problems List. If you google my questions from #2, you will see that this list is easily made just from the first page of results.
    • Hydration
    • Heat
    • Sun
    • Fading
    • Staining
    • Using things with dye's
    • Chlorine
    • Harsh Chemicals
    • Using color-safe hair care products
  4. All these issues are either things that the people in the group can just avoid, or there are solutions to the problem. So now I need to make an Interactions List. A good way to whittle down the list from unlimited is by excluding things that are directly related or unique to the specific problem. For example, it should be obvious that products designed specifically for blonde or colored hair are already solving the issue. There is no need in wasting time to see if you can make a shampoo that avoids those things (unless you have reason to believe otherwise). So I will think of things that may touch or expose blonde peoples hair to things on the Problems Listas a byproduct of normal daily activity and not specific to blonde people activity. A small list of immediate thoughts:
    • Hats
    • Scrunchies
    • Sunscreen
    • Lotions
    • Shower water
    • Going swimming
  5. I start googling and cross referencing with Amazon. With many of these it becomes immediately apparent that these issues have been solved (and I would have known that if I had colored hair). However I land on jackpot with "Does sunscreen discolor blonde hair". The answer is YES. Normal sunscreen discolors colored hair. Yes there are ways to continue to use sunscreen without discoloring hair. For example, further google searches shows that common ingredients like Avebenzone and Octocrylene are what cause the discoloration and mineral sunscreens do not.
  6. I search Amazon for "sunscreen for people with blonde hair", "sunscreen for people with colored hair", "sunscreen for blonde hair", and many other iterations. What I find is that there are sunscreen that you can specifically apply to colored hair to protect it, but there is no SKIN sunscreen that is advertised as being color safe. So when someone applies their generic face sunscreen, it can fade their bangs, eyebrows, mustache, etc...
  7. Bingo. This is an issue that affects a large group of people, so its scaling potential is huge. Even better, it has no direct competitors. This may seem like a home run, but I wouldn't get ahead of myself. Just because this is a common and unique problem that can be solved, doesn't mean people will actually search for or care for you to solve it.
That's it folks. Thats the idea part of the process. Next is the testing phase. Research Phase and then finally comes the Testing Phase.

:bulb:Follow up posts to this series:
---- The Preliminary Testing Phase
---- The Testing Phase
Hey Neo, i apsolutely and utterly love this golden piece of information that you've shared with all of the beautiful users of the "Fastlane Forum". I must say that you changed my paradigm of percieving the world. In the process changing my young entrepenurial head. I read your post a few days ago and i started making random business ideas for the fun of it, im sure i will stumble upon a fantastic idea that i will later use. Changed my minsdet definitely. As of currently writing this, im just a guy with some extraordinary goals and wishes, trying to be the best version of myself mixed with a little bit of arrogance, why not hehehe. I currently haven't made any money(age, but is that really an excuse?). But that will soon change, thanks to me, everyone i follow and amazing people's advices like yours, that want to help a young guy with discipline and goals.
If you have any advice for me, that will help me to succed in this modern day and age, where to start... i will gladly listen to it and be like a sponge.
I look up to the people like Mj and im sure i will meet you all someday so we can discuss about.. everything!
All the love, all the power!
 
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fastlane_dad

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Hey Neo, i apsolutely and utterly love this golden piece of information that you've shared with all of the beautiful users of the "Fastlane Forum". I must say that you changed my paradigm of percieving the world. In the process changing my young entrepenurial head. I read your post a few days ago and i started making random business ideas for the fun of it, im sure i will stumble upon a fantastic idea that i will later use. Changed my minsdet definitely. As of currently writing this, im just a guy with some extraordinary goals and wishes, trying to be the best version of myself mixed with a little bit of arrogance, why not hehehe. I currently haven't made any money(age, but is that really an excuse?). But that will soon change, thanks to me, everyone i follow and amazing people's advices like yours, that want to help a young guy with discipline and goals.
If you have any advice for me, that will help me to succed in this modern day and age, where to start... i will gladly listen to it and be like a sponge.
I look up to the people like Mj and im sure i will meet you all someday so we can discuss about.. everything!
All the love, all the power!
Many of the threads @NeoDialectic has started on here are definitely GOLD, for framing your mind, and starting to put a plan of action to work TODAY (left foot in front of the right).

Also, take a look here for some threads I posted on mindset, persevering and dealing with family and friends who aren't supportive.

Actionable steps to begin / mindset
Dealing with slowlane family/friends
Enterpreneurship as a way of life

Let us know if you have any further questions or ways to help set you up in the right direction.

Most important, is to take out a notepad and jot down 5 tasks you can work on today to move you in the direction of your goals. Knock those off, then rinse and repeat tomorrow. @NeoDialectic and I did that to the tune of 15 years before we had our first successful exit.
 
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DinoMidas

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Many of the threads @NeoDialectic has started on here are definitely GOLD, for framing your mind, and starting to put a plan of action to work TODAY (left foot in front of the right).

Also, take a look here for some threads I posted on mindset, persevering and dealing with family and friends who aren't supportive.

Actionable steps to begin / mindset
Dealing with slowlane family/friends
Enterpreneurship as a way of life

Let us know if you have any further questions or ways to help set you up in the right direction.

Most important, is to take out a notepad and jot down 5 tasks you can work on today to move you in the direction of your goals. Knock those off, then rinse and repeat tomorrow. @NeoDialectic and I did that to the tune of 15 years before we had our first successful exit.
Hey fastlane_dad,
Firstly, thanks for the response, i really haven't expected it (though i kinda knew i will get it :D).
I really get to admire the fact that you are really wanting to generously help people, knowing there may not be a payback.
I read your reply a couple of times just to be sure i didnt miss out on anything.
Also i read the threads you sent me, they will surely be a lot of help to me, ESPECIALLY the "Enterpreneurship as a way of life" thread.
As of right now, i dont have any special questions, i think i should just act toward my goals( will write off at least 5 tasks everyday). But knowing the fact that a 8 figure fastlane graduate is by my side, someone sucssful i could ask for help, is boosting my confidence through the process. Believe me!
I see that this forum has a "Start a conversation" option. If i have any personal questions, can i get your answer through there? Maybe even guide you through, and update you about my process, if not here publicly on the forum.
Surely, i will follow this forum, as well as your posts and let the time do its magic.
Still if u want to add some piece of advice, maybe a next step i should take... i will glady listen to it!

Lastly, i can't say goodbye without complimenting your profile picture, look at that beauty! I can imagine how does it feel driving it? :D

All the love, all the power!
 

NeoDialectic

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I was pleased and somewhat relieved to read this. I would never buy such products from China. In 2008 there was a scandal due to the chemical Melamine being added to baby formula to give the impression that the milk contained a higher level of protein than was the case. 300,000 children were affected, 54,000 of them were hospitalized and 6 died.

According to the China Daily, of the company executives, 2 were executed, 3 got a life sentence, and 2 got 15 year sentences. About the same time melamine was discovered in eggs and other food.
As a PS, a similar aduleration of cough syrup (some from China, but numerous other sources) has resulted in the death of hundreds of children in many countries.

An American pediatrician Michael L. Bennish published in a medical journal in 1995 his opinion that "death tolls must be in the tens of thousands".

Supplement and cosmetic sellers beware!

Those who have my book know that I warn that copies of products being made in China often appear on the market before the designer sees a prototype.

Walter
I just noticed your reply now. Thanks for adding your experience.

We always stay away from importing these type of products from China. However I do know it is still pervasive in the field. It seems like you are well versed in this particular area. Do you have any advice for those that decide to work with overseas companies anyways? Anything specific to improve their chances of success and a decrease quality control issues?
 

Walter Hay

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I just noticed your reply now. Thanks for adding your experience.

We always stay away from importing these type of products from China. However I do know it is still pervasive in the field. It seems like you are well versed in this particular area. Do you have any advice for those that decide to work with overseas companies anyways? Anything specific to improve their chances of success and a decrease quality control issues?
Yes I do have something very specific to offer on this subject. It is a sub-section of the chapter on Quality in my safe sourcing and easy importing book:

31.2 Cost Cutting Measures.

Although China is renowned for low prices, those notably low prices often result in manufacturing down to a price. I have seen prices for very low value items quoted to 2 decimal points of a cent e.g. $0.0624 per pc.

Once haggling or huge buying power causes manufacturers to trim every fraction of a cent from their cost they will resort to extreme measures in cutting costs of materials and labor.

Here are some of the things I have seen and they can be very difficult to detect:

● Brass plating instead of gold plating looks attractive and is in fact the preferred look in some market sectors, but it is not gold and should not be described as gold. Large surveys have found that most women prefer the look of brass rather than gold because they think the brass looks more like their perception of gold, so cheapskate buyers get away with it.

● Silver painted mild steel instead of stainless steel. If it is well done you have to scratch it to be sure, but sooner or later it will rust.

● Thickness of plastic moldings reduced very slightly. The total weight of plastic resin saved over huge production runs can be in the tons. Reduced thickness means reduced strength. See Ch.10.11 regarding prices.

● UV stabilizer is sometimes left out of plastic products or simply reduced unless very strongly specified and checked. Even if not regularly used outdoors, light entering a room through a window will shorten the product’s lifespan.

● Mild steel components such as screws are sometimes plated to look like stainless steel, but they corrode, sometimes in a critical part of equipment.

● Items supplied as leather are often made of polyurethane (PU) plastic, with a leather perfume added. Beware of items described as leather in advertisement headlines, but in another part of the ad, described as PU leather or Faux leather.

In view of these possibilities you might give more consideration to paying for a quality inspection service.

WALTER
 
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NeoDialectic

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Yes I do have something very specific to offer on this subject. It is a sub-section of the chapter on Quality in my safe sourcing and easy importing book:

31.2 Cost Cutting Measures.

Although China is renowned for low prices, those notably low prices often result in manufacturing down to a price. I have seen prices for very low value items quoted to 2 decimal points of a cent e.g. $0.0624 per pc.

Once haggling or huge buying power causes manufacturers to trim every fraction of a cent from their cost they will resort to extreme measures in cutting costs of materials and labor.

Here are some of the things I have seen and they can be very difficult to detect:

● Brass plating instead of gold plating looks attractive and is in fact the preferred look in some market sectors, but it is not gold and should not be described as gold. Large surveys have found that most women prefer the look of brass rather than gold because they think the brass looks more like their perception of gold, so cheapskate buyers get away with it.

● Silver painted mild steel instead of stainless steel. If it is well done you have to scratch it to be sure, but sooner or later it will rust.

● Thickness of plastic moldings reduced very slightly. The total weight of plastic resin saved over huge production runs can be in the tons. Reduced thickness means reduced strength. See Ch.10.11 regarding prices.

● UV stabilizer is sometimes left out of plastic products or simply reduced unless very strongly specified and checked. Even if not regularly used outdoors, light entering a room through a window will shorten the product’s lifespan.

● Mild steel components such as screws are sometimes plated to look like stainless steel, but they corrode, sometimes in a critical part of equipment.

● Items supplied as leather are often made of polyurethane (PU) plastic, with a leather perfume added. Beware of items described as leather in advertisement headlines, but in another part of the ad, described as PU leather or Faux leather.

In view of these possibilities you might give more consideration to paying for a quality inspection service.

WALTER
Thank you for the information. Your books are on the list for me to read as I've seen alot of great input from you on these forums.
 

fastlane_dad

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Wanted to leave this here as well for whoever comes across this thread.

@NeoDialectic and I have (in the last year) started a whole new line of products as one of our small projects, using the EXACT METHODS outlined in this thread here.

The results so far have SURPRISED US. We had our best sales day few days ago $400+ in sales. When this keeps up and grows, that's already $150K in sales in ONE YEAR. And this business just began with very limited effort and limited products (3). We always preached to focus on making $5 before $10 -- and in all ways this is again one of the best examples of such.

Few things to note, while going through the methods outlined here, I'd like to point out there was -

-No reinventing the wheel (several value skews in a large competitive field)
-No huge marketing budgets
-No custom products made yet (working the details of that now, and will add more value adds).
-No TENS of thousands of dollars invested in products (common misconception). All in cost to
order 3 products was ~ $1K.
-No warehouse or office space rented
-No team of employees (outsourced all of the design to FIVER!)
-Not a single piece of software purchased (outside of basics like Photoshop and Microsoft Word)

We still overthought. We still took too long to get products up and running. We are still learning lessons daily.

BUT most important lessons?

1. EVERYTHING sells if you give it time and attention.
2. GRIT AND PERSEVERANCE above all (post on this later).

We are most likely not gonna give this business the attention it needs to turn into another 8 figure exit, but nevertheless it's a start, and like all starts -- the END IS STILL YET TO BE WRITTEN.
 
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DCDeuce

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Wanted to leave this here as well for whoever comes across this thread.

@NeoDialectic and I have (in the last year) started a whole new line of products as one of our small projects, using the EXACT METHODS outlined in this thread here.

The results so far have SURPRISED US. We had our best sales day few days ago $400+ in sales. When this keeps up and grows, that's already $150K in sales in ONE YEAR. And this business just began with very limited effort and limited products (3). We always preached to focus on making $5 before $10 -- and in all ways this is again one of the best examples of such.

Few things to note, while going through the methods outlined here, I'd like to point out there was -

-No reinventing the wheel (several value skews in a large competitive field)
-No huge marketing budgets
-No custom products made yet (working the details of that now, and will add more value adds).
-No TENS of thousands of dollars invested in products (common misconception). All in cost to
order 3 products was ~ $1K.
-No warehouse or office space rented
-No team of employees (outsourced all of the design to FIVER!)
-Not a single piece of software purchased (outside of basics like Photoshop and Microsoft Word)

We still overthought. We still took too long to get products up and running. We are still learning lessons daily.

BUT most important lessons?

1. EVERYTHING sells if you give it time and attention.
2. GRIT AND PERSEVERANCE above all (post on this later).

We are most likely not gonna give this business the attention it needs to turn into another 8 figure exit, but nevertheless it's a start, and like all starts -- the END IS STILL YET TO BE WRITTEN.
This is awesome @fastlane_dad!

I just stopped by to say I finally got up on Amazon, I outsourced basically all my digital design on Fiverr, my product photos were outsourced on Fiverr but to photographers in the US for the shopify site.

I ended up going with a state-side manufacturer as well.

Been on AMZ for 5 days as of today and have 7 sales so far, I also opted to use Vine which was a bit of a surprise. Hoping things keep trending up but haven't figured out how to reduce the marketing budget yet. Everyone says to pour money into it so I am but jeez it's getting expensive.

Hope you guys continue to find success.
 
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fastlane_dad

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This is awesome @fastlane_dad!

I just stopped by to say I finally got up on Amazon, I outsourced basically all my digital design on Fiverr, my product photos were outsourced on Fiverr but to photographers in the US for the shopify site.

I ended up going with a state-side manufacturer as well.

Been on AMZ for 5 days as of today and have 7 sales so far, I also opted to use Vine which was a bit of a surprise. Hoping things keep trending up but haven't figured out how to reduce the marketing budget yet. Everyone says to pour money into it so I am but jeez it's getting expensive.

Hope you guys continue to find success.
@DCDeuce That's fantastic progress. Care to chime in on any lessons learned so far, or what you should of done more of or different?

In which ways was Vine a surprise ? Are you clearing any profit after your advertising expenses?

How did you zero in on the final product / idea that you went with? Do you have a plan to expand the line currently?
 

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@DCDeuce That's fantastic progress. Care to chime in on any lessons learned so far, or what you should of done more of or different?

In which ways was Vine a surprise ? Are you clearing any profit after your advertising expenses?

How did you zero in on the final product / idea that you went with? Do you have a plan to expand the line currently?
Lessons learned....

Well, the first lesson I learned is probably not to use Amazon Vine, I read a good amount of mixed reviews prior to signing up with Vine. I made 15 units of my product available and the first review that came in was a negative review from Vine. The review is one sentence and says my product doesn't work after one use. I clearly stated on the company's website and in the listing that my product needs to be used for at least two weeks to see the effects. So now I have to hope a few people leave 5 star reviews.

If anyone reading this decides to go the AMZ route, I would skip Vine altogether, the reviewers are intentionally harsh and AMZ charges you to ship the units to the customers AND it cost money to be a part of Vine. So I lost product and spent money on the shipping only to have a bad review. *insert facepalm emoji here*

The second lesson I learned was to get good enough out to the door and don't reinvent the wheel. At first, I obsessed over every detail because in my head it has to be "perfect" and how I must create something new and novel. I know this sounds cliche but I have a buddy who had a great idea for his first venture into AMZ, after going back and forth with two manufacturers for 7 months, he woke up three weeks ago to find out someone else had a very similar idea and released it on AMZ. Yikes - 7 months down the drain. Get good enough out the door and don't reinvent the wheel. My product is already being made, I just make it in a different way.

The third lesson - have some savings to outsource. If I had to do everything on my own I would probably still not be up on AMZ. Coding the website, writing the scripts, product videos, product photography, product renderings, back and forth with AMZ for multiple different things, learning AMZ PPC, the website blog, and SEO...a lot goes into this and I chose to outsource due to the sheer time commitment. It's obviously not impossible to learn all these things but as with my first business, I learned that others can do it better - especially the product photos and renderings.

The next time around (if there is a next time) I would probably do a bit more product research and I would have chosen a product with considerably lower competition. My chosen category has steep competition but I've somehow been able to amass 8 sales (got another sale since posting my previous message) in 6 days. I do not know if the trend of sales will continue with my first review being a bad review but I guess time will tell.

To be completely honest, I zeroed in on my product by listening to MJ sounds cliche, I know but a friend of mine who is a woman said "why isn't this made this way" (not her words exactly because it would completely give away my product). It hit me like a ton of bricks, she thought nothing of it but I saw opportunity. I hopped on Amazon, my variation wasn't being made, I searched through 7 maybe 8 pages, and google searched the keywords in every way possible - still wasn't there. For me, that was enough. I did more product research but those were the main parts.

I'm sure I'll have other lessons learned nuggets to drop but if anyone has any questions feel free to reach out, but now I need to get back to addressing this review, thankfully it's not a 1-star review but it might as well be.

Good luck to anyone else on their journey, hope to see you in the Fastlane
 

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@DCDeuce That's fantastic progress. Care to chime in on any lessons learned so far, or what you should of done more of or different?

In which ways was Vine a surprise ? Are you clearing any profit after your advertising expenses?

How did you zero in on the final product / idea that you went with? Do you have a plan to expand the line currently?
Sorry - I'm not profitable yet, if the trend continues I should be profitable sometime in my fourth or fifth month, not because of sales but because every penny of profit is going right back into PPC and to buying more product. PPC seems to be one of the best ways to launch on AMZ based on what I am seeing so far. Please correct me if I'm wrong @fastlane_dad.
 
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I would like to 2nd or 3rd this problem to be solved. I am a heavy jacuzzi user but have had to stop after frying my hands and back, been jacuzziing heavy since I was a kid and only suffering from this now. Never knew I had eczema until I couldn't use my hands or bend over without itching to death after a recent jacuzzi or pool session.
 

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Not coming in to put holes in this thread, I've been reading some of your posts @NeoDialectic and have found them valuable enough to chime in with this question:

I ran an Amazon business back when it was just getting cool to do it in 2015. And, I got hosed. I did a TON of research, picked my niche, nailed a couple of product launches, and was generating around 5K/mo in revenue, but spending more than that in advertising + COGS and inventory management, fees to Amazon, etc. So, I was in the red, and losing money daily.

Competitors kept coming in, doing something similar, because there's no real way to avoid that, and you're completely owned and operated by Amazon's will with algorithm's and with whoever has the most money can win, pay for others to give you bad reviews, push up their rankings, literally copy everything you do, and crush you.

Two questions this leaves me with:

- What would be your advice for someone getting into an e-commerce space and nailing a niche where they aren't going to just get crushed by someone who has more money that can steal their idea?

- For someone who doesn't want to venture down that rabbit hole again with Amazon having full control and with e-comm being easy enough for anyone to steal and throw a competing product on Amazon, do you have other execution tips / advice / threads you can point me to, on how to generate ideas for solving problems that are not going to easily be stolen and beaten out by someone with more cash on Amazon?
 

Bro Rex

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Wow.Great read. But, does it mean some of the inventions we have around us went through the same process? Anyway i thank you for your thought on this!
 
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Hi @NeoDialectic
I did come up with a few new product ideas using the ‘Amazon review method‘ and your process here.
Besides your detailed testing process from this thread, do you think there is a way to determine from the get-go, if the project can turn into a 8-figure brand (= >1M profit/year)?
I feel like with a lot of niche problems there might be a couple search queries on Amazon for the issue, but even if I do convert 100% of them, I might profit only low 5 figures per year from that product. Adding a few more products might result in a low 6-fig/year brand - but still far from what you achieved with your 8-figure exit.
Sure there are other channels as well, but when solving a problem for a small niche, the market potential is tapped out at some point.

Do you recommend to just repeat the process and get a second thing going, which might hit big?
I‘ve started two brands already (one sold, one still going) so I am not desperat to get anything going - I‘d like the next thing to be big enough to achieve that 8 figure exit. The question is, is it possible to determine upfront which project/idea can scale to that figure or does one have to repeatedly follow the idea generation/testing/execution process until something takes off to the point that the 8 figure exit is possible?

Do you think in 2022, with so ‚many of the easy solutions been done and tackled‘ - as @fastlane_dad put it in the ‚Is E-Commerce Still Alive For 2022 / 2023‘ thread, the best way to achieve an 8-figure exit is to have a portfolio of smaller, niched down brands, rather than 1 that is doing crazy numbers because the products/categories which do the big numbers are flooded already?
 

D. Entrepreneur

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OK guys, I thought the testing framework was going to be the next step, but as I sat down to write it I realized there is another in between step. Never fear, I should have the juicy testing framework that many have been waiting for written and posted by sometime next week.

The Preliminary Research Framework:

So now that you have a unique issue that needs solving, it is time to move on to the next step. Here are the first questions I ask myself when starting this part. Some of the steps blend together and feed into each other.
  1. What is the actual issue that I am solving or value that I am providing?
    • We like to call this The Rub . It's your angle. It's why people are buying your product or service. This is a crucial thing to nail down as it will be your guiding light. You need to know what is setting you apart from the other guys. It could be the product itself, where you are marketing the product, how you are marketing it, or some combination of them all.
  2. Is this issue solvable?
    • This should be self explanatory. You now have to do the preliminary research to see if it is possible to solve this issue. There are SO MANY resources out there these days that make this possible. My favorite ways of doing this is starting by googling the issue and reading as much as I can about it. Articles are a good start. Forums are great resources as well. See how everyday people are solving this issue. The hive mind sometimes knows things before the experts. Speaking of experts, see what experts are saying about it by going to scholar.google.com. Read the papers on the topic. If you have access to a college/university login, alot of times you get free access to databases of research that may otherwise be paid to view. The point here is not necessarily to become an expert. It is to figure out if there are any realistic solutions to the issue and maybe even what other value to your customers you can provide with your product.
  3. How much expertise, resources, and dedication would it take to solve it?
    • After doing the preliminary research in the last step, you should have a general feel for what the problem is and the roadblocks in solving it. Think about what it would take to solve the issue.
  4. Can I physically do what is necessary and do I want to do it?
    • These questions kind of blend together, but they are both very important. Is this realistically possible for you to do? Do you want to make the sacrifices that it takes to do it? As someone that is already successful, I am much more particular with the sacrifices I am willing to make. As an aspiring entrepreneur, you should be willing to do ALOT more to succeed.
The answers to these questions should help you decide whether you should move on to the next step. There are always trade offs involved. The harder the issue is to solve, the easier time you will have protecting your market share. The easier it is to solve, the faster you will have competitors at your doorstep. There are unlimited things to solve, so if you are a beginning entrepreneur, I suggest going with less challenging solves that you can come up with good ways of testing.

The Preliminary Research Example
  1. What is the actual issue that I am solving or value that I am providing?
    • This is an easy one for my example. My product will address the special needs of people with colored and blonde hair. The issue that I am solving is that sunscreen discolors blonde and colored hair.
  2. Is this issue solvable?
  3. How much expertise, resources, and dedication would it take to solve it?
    • Sunscreens that do not have Avebenzone, Butyl Methoxydibenzoylmethane, and Octocrylene are the solution. These already exist out there so it would take minimal work to get this idea off the ground. I don't even have to move onto the next steps or other research techniques because of how simple the answer was.
  4. Can I physically do what is necessary and do I want to do it?
    • Another easy one! Googling "how to produce a sunscreen" produces a ton of examples how to make sunscreen. Everything from homemade solutions to contract manufacturers that will make one for you.
So far, this is the ideal result for a beginning entrepreneur. There is an issue, there are people talking about the issue, there seems to be easy solutions to the issue, and there are no products directly marketed as a solution to the issue. Your own example may not line up as perfectly and that may be ok! You may still be able to figure it out and produce a very strong product that sells like hotcakes.

Testing is next!

I am very grateful for this amazing free advice and want to show you my gratitude with this message. You are a hero.
 

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Not coming in to put holes in this thread, I've been reading some of your posts @NeoDialectic and have found them valuable enough to chime in with this question:

I ran an Amazon business back when it was just getting cool to do it in 2015. And, I got hosed. I did a TON of research, picked my niche, nailed a couple of product launches, and was generating around 5K/mo in revenue, but spending more than that in advertising + COGS and inventory management, fees to Amazon, etc. So, I was in the red, and losing money daily.

Competitors kept coming in, doing something similar, because there's no real way to avoid that, and you're completely owned and operated by Amazon's will with algorithm's and with whoever has the most money can win, pay for others to give you bad reviews, push up their rankings, literally copy everything you do, and crush you.

Two questions this leaves me with:

- What would be your advice for someone getting into an e-commerce space and nailing a niche where they aren't going to just get crushed by someone who has more money that can steal their idea?

- For someone who doesn't want to venture down that rabbit hole again with Amazon having full control and with e-comm being easy enough for anyone to steal and throw a competing product on Amazon, do you have other execution tips / advice / threads you can point me to, on how to generate ideas for solving problems that are not going to easily be stolen and beaten out by someone with more cash on Amazon?
My immediate question would be what kind of product are you selling and what was your value add? Does it abide by the principles that were laid out on this post?

Your pricing should reflect the fact that Amazon takes it's fees, advertising is expensive, products are expensive to make, and that the Lamborghini isn't going to pay for itself.

I did my best to describe an easy way to find a profitable niche. Going along with my sunscreen example.....If you started having success with it, I don't think you will have competition for a good amount of time. More than long enough to make a name for yourself and enough profit that you shouldn't be outspent right away. Sunscreen brands are not constantly searching Amazon for what new sunscreens people are selling. If people are noticing you right away, the failure was likely during the idea generation phase. You may have went into an area with one or two small competitors already, with too small of a value add that was easy to copy.
 
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Isaac Odongo

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After posting my general advice post here , I realized that one of the most burning questions that people struggle with is "how do I come up with an idea that isn't already done?" and "how do I test whether I can successfully sell this product without a huge investment?".

This is the first time I am writing down this process on paper, but this process in general is one of the ways my business partner and I have successfully launched multiple big products that have been in the hands of hundreds of thousands of happy customers.

Hopefully this thread will show you how to do that with a real step by step example of how to do this. I will also try to include my reasoning for decisions along the way. So this will be a long thread with multiple parts. Even though I have already went through the example all the way through posting; Writing detailed accounts take a long time. So today I am tackling the idea generation part. Depending on the response over the next week or so, I will add a post detailing how to bootstrap your way through successfully testing the product. I can also add a post detailing a few unsuccessful iterations, to showcase what failed attempts look like.

Disclaimers:
  • This is FAR from the only way to do this. By providing the following steps, I am not saying that this is the best way to start a business. But these are difficult questions to answer in an actionable and generalizable fashion, so I have chosen a niche and path that I could do just that. I believe others methods have been posted before on these forums. For example like searching for everyday items on Amazon and seeing what all the 1 star reviews have in common and solve that issue.
  • The best way to think of an idea is to be familiar with a product or field and try to solve an issue that you or someone you know runs into. In this exercise I am attempting to answer not just how to test a product, but also how to come up with an idea when your mind is running completely blank. The point is to show that the only thing holding you back is your willingness to put in work/time and not your experience/age/finances/etc. If you have an advantage in either of those (know a problem to solve or you have sufficient finances to fund faster experimentation) then I would recommend using that.
  • You are taking a peek at my exact process that I would take to think of and test a product under these circumstances. That means I have not actually made and tested this product but I actually do believe this would be a good product to test. My bar here would be to test X amount of products and only 1 has to catch on to be a success.
  • My example will be testing on Amazon as it is the most lucrative marketplace and simultaneously probably the hardest to do so as your are playing by their stringent rules. However you can apply the same methods for any other marketplace and/or search engine and you would just be dealing with less traffic but likely have more control.
  • If you want to copy any part of this, you can. But please know that I only went surface level for the purpose of this exercise. I don't endorse any of the companies mentioned (I haven't necessarily worked with them) and I haven't done all the legal research and due diligence.
Prelude:

What do I need?
  • An Amazon seller account
  • Willingness to spend $50-$200 on product and another couple hundred on advertising. There may be cheaper ways to do this with close to zero investment and I will annotate those options, but they all come with drawbacks

The Idea Framework:

When starting to brainstorm ideas from scratch, I am thinking about the question "what scenario or group of people can I provide value to in a specific way that others haven't?" Thinking about the question this way helps me find a niche. Here is an outline of the steps that you can follow.

  1. Think of attributes that separate people into groups with possible unique needs or requirements. Example: Height, age, sex,race,hair color, eye color, skin color, disability or special needs, left/right handedness, location, etc...
  2. Think of questions that could expose unique needs that these people would have just as a byproduct of being in this group. You are proding for problems to solve. If you had personal experience and unsolved problems, you wouldn't need to do this step. But you have none, so here we are. Examples:
    • What ingredients are X sensitive to?
    • What ingredients should X avoid?
    • What do people with X have to be careful of?
  3. Literally google the questions and read a good amount of results. Each problem that you encounter, add it to a Problems List and then see if there is a solution that is specifically marketed for this problem on Amazon. If the group itself is super niche, this may actually be enough! However this is usually not enough as most issues in the big groups have been addressed in the marketplace. You can also type that same question with the word "forum" afterward to see what people on forums have been complaining about as well. This can sometimes be gold for finding budding problems that the market hasn't caught up with yet. These base problems could also be harder to test sometimes because you may need to come up with a completely new invention or product versus repurposing other products that provide a solution.
  4. If you have found that all the very general problems have been taken care of, you should move onto the next step of the niche discovery process. Put yourself in the shoes of this group and think of ways your Problems List can be affected by everyday tasks or common products. Lets call this the Interaction List. This list obviously has unlimited iterations. Just make sure it is something that would have a large enough audience.
  5. Use google to see if the things on your Interaction list are actually issues or not. Example language: Does (some product or action) cause (some issue) for (group of people) . This is a good time to also see recommended solutions to these interactions. This will help you gauge whether this is something you can solve without reinventing the wheel.
  6. Search Amazon to see if there is a solution for this specifically.
  7. Go through steps 1-6 over and over again until you find a problem that has not been solved and that follow a majority of MJ's CENTS model. Ideally it would be something that you can creatively test without too big of investment. This isn't a requirement, but with unlimited problems to solve, why not make it easy on yourself?
OK. So those are the basic steps I recommend you follow for this method. If you are confused about any of the steps see the next part.

The Idea Example:

Here is the process I went through for this thread. I went through many FAILED iterations before coming up with this final product. However for brevity's sake, I will post a few examples in a follow-up post and not here. The steps line up to the previous chapters steps.

  1. People with blonde hair.
  2. Here are the two questions that made sense within the context of the group
    • "What do people with blonde hair have to be careful of?"
    • "What ingredients should blondes avoid?"
  3. Here is a short list of things that made my sample Problems List. If you google my questions from #2, you will see that this list is easily made just from the first page of results.
    • Hydration
    • Heat
    • Sun
    • Fading
    • Staining
    • Using things with dye's
    • Chlorine
    • Harsh Chemicals
    • Using color-safe hair care products
  4. All these issues are either things that the people in the group can just avoid, or there are solutions to the problem. So now I need to make an Interactions List. A good way to whittle down the list from unlimited is by excluding things that are directly related or unique to the specific problem. For example, it should be obvious that products designed specifically for blonde or colored hair are already solving the issue. There is no need in wasting time to see if you can make a shampoo that avoids those things (unless you have reason to believe otherwise). So I will think of things that may touch or expose blonde peoples hair to things on the Problems Listas a byproduct of normal daily activity and not specific to blonde people activity. A small list of immediate thoughts:
    • Hats
    • Scrunchies
    • Sunscreen
    • Lotions
    • Shower water
    • Going swimming
  5. I start googling and cross referencing with Amazon. With many of these it becomes immediately apparent that these issues have been solved (and I would have known that if I had colored hair). However I land on jackpot with "Does sunscreen discolor blonde hair". The answer is YES. Normal sunscreen discolors colored hair. Yes there are ways to continue to use sunscreen without discoloring hair. For example, further google searches shows that common ingredients like Avebenzone and Octocrylene are what cause the discoloration and mineral sunscreens do not.
  6. I search Amazon for "sunscreen for people with blonde hair", "sunscreen for people with colored hair", "sunscreen for blonde hair", and many other iterations. What I find is that there are sunscreen that you can specifically apply to colored hair to protect it, but there is no SKIN sunscreen that is advertised as being color safe. So when someone applies their generic face sunscreen, it can fade their bangs, eyebrows, mustache, etc...
  7. Bingo. This is an issue that affects a large group of people, so its scaling potential is huge. Even better, it has no direct competitors. This may seem like a home run, but I wouldn't get ahead of myself. Just because this is a common and unique problem that can be solved, doesn't mean people will actually search for or care for you to solve it.
That's it folks. Thats the idea part of the process. Next is the testing phase. Research Phase and then finally comes the Testing Phase.

:bulb:Follow up posts to this series:
---- The Preliminary Testing Phase
---- The Testing Phase
I like this. Methodical. Process.
I think this can be imitated by anyone. A grand post here.
 

NeoDialectic

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Hi @NeoDialectic
I did come up with a few new product ideas using the ‘Amazon review method‘ and your process here.
Besides your detailed testing process from this thread, do you think there is a way to determine from the get-go, if the project can turn into a 8-figure brand (= >1M profit/year)?
I feel like with a lot of niche problems there might be a couple search queries on Amazon for the issue, but even if I do convert 100% of them, I might profit only low 5 figures per year from that product. Adding a few more products might result in a low 6-fig/year brand - but still far from what you achieved with your 8-figure exit.
Sure there are other channels as well, but when solving a problem for a small niche, the market potential is tapped out at some point.

Do you recommend to just repeat the process and get a second thing going, which might hit big?
I‘ve started two brands already (one sold, one still going) so I am not desperat to get anything going - I‘d like the next thing to be big enough to achieve that 8 figure exit. The question is, is it possible to determine upfront which project/idea can scale to that figure or does one have to repeatedly follow the idea generation/testing/execution process until something takes off to the point that the 8 figure exit is possible?

Do you think in 2022, with so ‚many of the easy solutions been done and tackled‘ - as @fastlane_dad put it in the ‚Is E-Commerce Still Alive For 2022 / 2023‘ thread, the best way to achieve an 8-figure exit is to have a portfolio of smaller, niched down brands, rather than 1 that is doing crazy numbers because the products/categories which do the big numbers are flooded already?
Good question.

I don't see anything inherently wrong with adding many low-volume products to eventually build a big business from a compilation of many products.

That being said......We never wanted to deal with a lot of inventory or variations as that is more work for us. Our laziness demands that we try and apply "work smarter, not harder" to all aspects of our businesses. That means that we generally only go into fields with high potential and sell products with high clearances. High potential and niche sound contradictory, but it's not. Standard methods of finding niches end up being precisely what you mentioned. You find a minor problem that no one is addressing or has thought of addressing because it overlaps a lot of small markets. Then you handle it. Our method isn't looking for niche problems. Our approach is looking for niche value adds to big markets versus niche problems in small markets.

Here's what I mean. Suppose you pull up the standard youtube video on how to find a niche. In that case, you may end up providing a plastic hair bleaching tray that holds the mixed bleach, and as your value add, it has a built-in brush holder (ultimately making this up, btw). There may be nothing like it, which may solve the problem of having nowhere to put your brush down.

But the way I see it, how much can you really charge for a little extra molding in the plastic, and how many people are bleaching their own hair and then going on Amazon to buy additional equipment to do it? It's not a big group. Most of the people saving money by doing their own hair (already a smaller group) will probably mix things in the red solo cup they have at home. So because of how big the world is, you may still get sales every day, which is the standard "niche method." But it doesn't have the potential for high-profit margins or the possibility of having a big market, So you end up with a product making 10s of thousands, as you mentioned.

Now let's go with the sunscreen example from this thread..... The number of people that use sunscreen is 100s of millions. The amount of people with colored hair is 100s of millions? The overlap is millions. I can't know how many people have this issue and would be willing to pay for a solution, but the potential market is millions of people. The overlapping criteria still leave for a vast market.

Now moving on to the price. It looks like most products fall within the 10-30 range. We would do what we can to make it high-end and sell it for $60+. Rather than competing on price, I would rather spare no expense on ingredients/packaging/presentation and then charge accordingly... The higher-end market may cut down on your potential customer base, but it allows for much better profit margins. When it comes to beauty, people will always spend much more on themselves than they can afford if they think it's worth it. (i.e., Teenage girls spend absurd amounts on tanning and tanning oils with money they got from a minimum wage job.)

So now the math is simple. You've got millions of potential customers. At 50% profit margins, you need to convince 90 out of millions that they need your sunscreen to prevent discoloring their hair. Ninety a day out of millions isn't crazy. ($30 profit x 90 a day x 365 days = ~1mil). Especially considering that this is a product you reorder, so a customer's LTV is more than the first purchase.

See the difference? My product's value isn't found by overlapping several markets that leave a small market. Instead, I found a niche by overlapping 2 large markets, which leaves a large market, and I found a problem to solve for that market that isn't addressed yet. To the unsuspecting eye, it sounds the same, but it's not.

Since my product is expensive, I have a lot of leeways to spend on advertising. I would advertise the sunscreen product in the general spray sunscreen market. In other words, I have the potential of 10s of millions of eyeballs on it at all times. The person didn't even know they needed it, but while searching for Neutrogena sunscreen, they came up on sunscreen for blondes. "Sunscreen specially designed for blondes? WTF does my being blonde have to do with sunscreen? Wonder what that is? CLICK. Oh, wait, my hair does get a little discolored by my forehead. Wow, this is great; I had no idea there was a solution. BUY".

Hope that helps
 
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Parks

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Hey Neo, could you share some of your failed product ideas? A few more examples could go a long ways with me.
 

kima

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After posting my general advice post here , I realized that one of the most burning questions that people struggle with is "how do I come up with an idea that isn't already done?" and "how do I test whether I can successfully sell this product without a huge investment?".

This is the first time I am writing down this process on paper, but this process in general is one of the ways my business partner and I have successfully launched multiple big products that have been in the hands of hundreds of thousands of happy customers.

Hopefully this thread will show you how to do that with a real step by step example of how to do this. I will also try to include my reasoning for decisions along the way. So this will be a long thread with multiple parts. Even though I have already went through the example all the way through posting; Writing detailed accounts take a long time. So today I am tackling the idea generation part. Depending on the response over the next week or so, I will add a post detailing how to bootstrap your way through successfully testing the product. I can also add a post detailing a few unsuccessful iterations, to showcase what failed attempts look like.

Disclaimers:
  • This is FAR from the only way to do this. By providing the following steps, I am not saying that this is the best way to start a business. But these are difficult questions to answer in an actionable and generalizable fashion, so I have chosen a niche and path that I could do just that. I believe others methods have been posted before on these forums. For example like searching for everyday items on Amazon and seeing what all the 1 star reviews have in common and solve that issue.
  • The best way to think of an idea is to be familiar with a product or field and try to solve an issue that you or someone you know runs into. In this exercise I am attempting to answer not just how to test a product, but also how to come up with an idea when your mind is running completely blank. The point is to show that the only thing holding you back is your willingness to put in work/time and not your experience/age/finances/etc. If you have an advantage in either of those (know a problem to solve or you have sufficient finances to fund faster experimentation) then I would recommend using that.
  • You are taking a peek at my exact process that I would take to think of and test a product under these circumstances. That means I have not actually made and tested this product but I actually do believe this would be a good product to test. My bar here would be to test X amount of products and only 1 has to catch on to be a success.
  • My example will be testing on Amazon as it is the most lucrative marketplace and simultaneously probably the hardest to do so as your are playing by their stringent rules. However you can apply the same methods for any other marketplace and/or search engine and you would just be dealing with less traffic but likely have more control.
  • If you want to copy any part of this, you can. But please know that I only went surface level for the purpose of this exercise. I don't endorse any of the companies mentioned (I haven't necessarily worked with them) and I haven't done all the legal research and due diligence.
Prelude:

What do I need?
  • An Amazon seller account
  • Willingness to spend $50-$200 on product and another couple hundred on advertising. There may be cheaper ways to do this with close to zero investment and I will annotate those options, but they all come with drawbacks

The Idea Framework:

When starting to brainstorm ideas from scratch, I am thinking about the question "what scenario or group of people can I provide value to in a specific way that others haven't?" Thinking about the question this way helps me find a niche. Here is an outline of the steps that you can follow.

  1. Think of attributes that separate people into groups with possible unique needs or requirements. Example: Height, age, sex,race,hair color, eye color, skin color, disability or special needs, left/right handedness, location, etc...
  2. Think of questions that could expose unique needs that these people would have just as a byproduct of being in this group. You are proding for problems to solve. If you had personal experience and unsolved problems, you wouldn't need to do this step. But you have none, so here we are. Examples:
    • What ingredients are X sensitive to?
    • What ingredients should X avoid?
    • What do people with X have to be careful of?
  3. Literally google the questions and read a good amount of results. Each problem that you encounter, add it to a Problems List and then see if there is a solution that is specifically marketed for this problem on Amazon. If the group itself is super niche, this may actually be enough! However this is usually not enough as most issues in the big groups have been addressed in the marketplace. You can also type that same question with the word "forum" afterward to see what people on forums have been complaining about as well. This can sometimes be gold for finding budding problems that the market hasn't caught up with yet. These base problems could also be harder to test sometimes because you may need to come up with a completely new invention or product versus repurposing other products that provide a solution.
  4. If you have found that all the very general problems have been taken care of, you should move onto the next step of the niche discovery process. Put yourself in the shoes of this group and think of ways your Problems List can be affected by everyday tasks or common products. Lets call this the Interaction List. This list obviously has unlimited iterations. Just make sure it is something that would have a large enough audience.
  5. Use google to see if the things on your Interaction list are actually issues or not. Example language: Does (some product or action) cause (some issue) for (group of people) . This is a good time to also see recommended solutions to these interactions. This will help you gauge whether this is something you can solve without reinventing the wheel.
  6. Search Amazon to see if there is a solution for this specifically.
  7. Go through steps 1-6 over and over again until you find a problem that has not been solved and that follow a majority of MJ's CENTS model. Ideally it would be something that you can creatively test without too big of investment. This isn't a requirement, but with unlimited problems to solve, why not make it easy on yourself?
OK. So those are the basic steps I recommend you follow for this method. If you are confused about any of the steps see the next part.

The Idea Example:

Here is the process I went through for this thread. I went through many FAILED iterations before coming up with this final product. However for brevity's sake, I will post a few examples in a follow-up post and not here. The steps line up to the previous chapters steps.

  1. People with blonde hair.
  2. Here are the two questions that made sense within the context of the group
    • "What do people with blonde hair have to be careful of?"
    • "What ingredients should blondes avoid?"
  3. Here is a short list of things that made my sample Problems List. If you google my questions from #2, you will see that this list is easily made just from the first page of results.
    • Hydration
    • Heat
    • Sun
    • Fading
    • Staining
    • Using things with dye's
    • Chlorine
    • Harsh Chemicals
    • Using color-safe hair care products
  4. All these issues are either things that the people in the group can just avoid, or there are solutions to the problem. So now I need to make an Interactions List. A good way to whittle down the list from unlimited is by excluding things that are directly related or unique to the specific problem. For example, it should be obvious that products designed specifically for blonde or colored hair are already solving the issue. There is no need in wasting time to see if you can make a shampoo that avoids those things (unless you have reason to believe otherwise). So I will think of things that may touch or expose blonde peoples hair to things on the Problems Listas a byproduct of normal daily activity and not specific to blonde people activity. A small list of immediate thoughts:
    • Hats
    • Scrunchies
    • Sunscreen
    • Lotions
    • Shower water
    • Going swimming
  5. I start googling and cross referencing with Amazon. With many of these it becomes immediately apparent that these issues have been solved (and I would have known that if I had colored hair). However I land on jackpot with "Does sunscreen discolor blonde hair". The answer is YES. Normal sunscreen discolors colored hair. Yes there are ways to continue to use sunscreen without discoloring hair. For example, further google searches shows that common ingredients like Avebenzone and Octocrylene are what cause the discoloration and mineral sunscreens do not.
  6. I search Amazon for "sunscreen for people with blonde hair", "sunscreen for people with colored hair", "sunscreen for blonde hair", and many other iterations. What I find is that there are sunscreen that you can specifically apply to colored hair to protect it, but there is no SKIN sunscreen that is advertised as being color safe. So when someone applies their generic face sunscreen, it can fade their bangs, eyebrows, mustache, etc...
  7. Bingo. This is an issue that affects a large group of people, so its scaling potential is huge. Even better, it has no direct competitors. This may seem like a home run, but I wouldn't get ahead of myself. Just because this is a common and unique problem that can be solved, doesn't mean people will actually search for or care for you to solve it.
That's it folks. Thats the idea part of the process. Next is the testing phase. Research Phase and then finally comes the Testing Phase.

:bulb:Follow up posts to this series:
---- The Preliminary Testing Phase
---- The Testing Phase
a very helpful guide for those like me that are new. Thanks!
 

BizyDad

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Start making an Amazon seller account ASAP

Hi. Long time listener, first time caller.

Not my area of expertise, I have a super basic question. Two actually.

If I plan on launching multiple separate unrelated brands on Amazon, am I setting up a seller account for each one, or is there something in the interface where I'm setting up separate stores? I heard you can't have more than one seller account so I'm curious. File separate LLCs and each one gets its own seller account?

Secondly, as far as the testing phase goes. I understood what you were saying there. But if the initial product launches don't take off, or if I start getting some bad reviews, is there a way to recover? Or does that just kind of stick with you the entire time you're trying to build your business?

We had our best sales day few days ago $400+ in sales. When this keeps up and grows, that's already $150K in sales in ONE YEAR. And this business just began with very limited effort and limited products (3). We always preached to focus on making $5 before $10 -- and in all ways this is again one of the best examples of such.

I thought you guys were retired! :eek::rofl:
 
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NeoDialectic

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Hi. Long time listener, first time caller.

Not my area of expertise, I have a super basic question. Two actually.

If I plan on launching multiple separate unrelated brands on Amazon, am I setting up a seller account for each one, or is there something in the interface where I'm setting up separate stores? I heard you can't have more than one seller account so I'm curious. File separate LLCs and each one gets its own seller account?
Separate accounts are technically allowed if they are legitimately separate businesses. First, you have to get manual approval from Amazon, but even afterward, your accounts are always in jeopardy of being automatically flagged by their system. If you had preapproval, it will all work out....but while they figure out your innocence at a snail's pace, you're losing days of revenue.

The point is for simplicities sake; you should start with one account.

Then when it's time for you to expand, there are ways to have separate accounts and stay off the grid. I'm not sure of any official places explaining how but If you are ever in the situation that you need to be, you can DM me, and I can give you advice on how to stay off their radar. For example, we had a separate account for each of our brands.
Secondly, as far as the testing phase goes. I understood what you were saying there. But if the initial product launches don't take off, or if I start getting some bad reviews, is there a way to recover? Or does that just kind of stick with you the entire time you're trying to build your business?
It depends on how bad things go. If it just fails to get any sales, I would move on. If you get a lot of bad reviews because your "test" product wasn't up to par, I would start a new listing. Rename the title of the old listing, remove or replace the images and close it down. Get a new UPC for $30, change the UPC on the final products' packaging, and start a new listing. Done.
I thought you guys were retired! :eek::rofl:
:rofl:

What can I say? Old habits die hard haha

We didn't plan on starting new product lines, but thoughts like, "but we know this industry so well, and it's so easy for us, so why don't we just dip our toe in" start creeping in. So we turned on the engines and quickly whipped something up.

Then I made this thread. I wasn't expecting this much of an overwhelmingly positive response to something that we thought was "obvious". We still don't think it's revolutionary but have since realized it's just a lot of the other advice out there is either generic, outdated or garbage. Based on the bad or outdated advice out there, it seems like "gurus" selling courses didn't make their money doing the methods, but by selling the courses....

So now @fastlane_dad and I have been considering building out a course based on this thread. It would go into more detail, with live examples, and take the person from the complete start (creating an LLC) to end (product selling online). The goal is to give the person no excuses not to start today and try.

We spend a few hours a month on the product line, which isn't the time it deserves or requires to actually thrive. But it's tough stealing time away from other things in life for something you don't "need" ! On the other hand, we believe to continue providing good advice, we have to be in the field ourselves. Especially if we are going to charge for the advice. Things change fast in eCommerce, so we've stuck to it. Restarting the processes has given us insights into hurdles newbies have to deal with nowadays that we wouldn't have known, considering we were at a different stage of our business for years now. We are adding 5 more products in April. :bored:

--BTW, I wouldn't recommend this lax pace to those that want to build a successful e-commerce business. They should be doing a full-court press and giving as much time as possible at the start. Effort, time, creativity, and perseverance are what will separate you from the big guys already in the field who have much more experience than you.--
 

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So now @fastlane_dad and I have been considering building out a course based on this thread.
You'd have me lined up asking to be first customer. I was inspired by the excellent and actionable ecommerce posts you've both put out to recently start down that path myself, and am painfully aware that I don't know what I don't know. A course that could shed some light in the gloom would provide huge value.
 
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