Massive Scale Cross-Border Amazon Arbitrage

[GoldFibre]

Current SaaS MRR: $87

Weekly Goals​

• Work a total of 20 hours (3 / 20)
• Add lower tier option DONE
• Improve upgrade flow to provide more info DONE
• Fix conversion tracking WIP

My friend is helping a lot with testing and finding basic usability issues. I have a nice little backlog of things to fix, and most of them are minimal effort.

9-10pm​

Transactional work.

10-11pm​

• Added a lower tier plan for $9 / month
• Made flow and descriptions clearer on the path to payment
• Started looking at my conversion tracking and tried to figure out why it isn't working

 

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[GoldFibre]

Current SaaS MRR: $186

Weekly Goals​

• Work a total of 20 hours (6 / 20)
• Add lower tier option DONE
• Improve upgrade flow to provide more info DONE
• Fix conversion tracking WIP?

4-5pm​

• Fixed the display of the plans
• Fixed a deployment issue

9-10pm​

Transactional work.

10-11pm​

• Got another sale for $99 / month (more than my profit today from Amazon )
• Ran my script to update all the paying accounts, although there isn't any visual feedback except the logs.
• Took care of a couple of issues my tester found
• Maybe fixed my conversion events? Pushed a potential change and will see in the morning if it worked

 

[GoldFibre]

Current SaaS MRR: $186

Weekly Goals​

• Work a total of 20 hours (8 / 20)
• Add lower tier option DONE
• Improve upgrade flow to provide more info DONE
• Fix conversion tracking WIP?

5-6pm​

• Built some basic admin screens to help me look at users and their activity
• Looked at the NextJs codebase for the GA integration and discovered that this was broken for a while, was just recently fixed, and the API has changed from the documentation I was referring to. So I put the correct parameters in and deployed a new version.
• Checking later, this didn't fix it

9-10pm​

Transactional work.

 

[GoldFibre]

Current SaaS MRR: $186

Weekly Goals​

• Work a total of 20 hours (9 / 20)
• Add lower tier option DONE
• Improve upgrade flow to provide more info DONE
• Fix conversion tracking WIP?

9-10pm​

Transactional work.

 

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[GoldFibre]

Current SaaS MRR: $195

Weekly Goals​

• Work a total of 20 hours (11 / 20)
• Add lower tier option DONE
• Improve upgrade flow to provide more info DONE
• Fix conversion tracking WIP?

8-9am​

• Found more info on the Nextjs bug with GA custom events and applied another attempted fix
• Found there is some bug with clicking the upgrade button, which is a big issue. To fix it I think I need to refactor the entire flow to get it working properly

9-10pm​

Transactional work.

 

[GoldFibre]

Current SaaS MRR: $195

Weekly Goals​

• Work a total of 20 hours (12 / 20)
• Add lower tier option DONE
• Improve upgrade flow to provide more info DONE
• Fix conversion tracking WIP?

9-10pm​

Transactional work.

• Fixed a bug that was overstating my margin on Amazon orders, so now it's come back down to where it was historically.

 

[GoldFibre]

Weekly Update​

Current SaaS MRR: $195

Weekly Goals​

• Work a total of 20 hours (12 / 20)
• Add lower tier option DONE
• Improve upgrade flow to provide more info DONE
• Fix conversion tracking NOT DONE

This week was pretty much a wash. My routine was all messed up due to my son's spring break and I didn't find a way to put in the hours.

I'm back to normal in the coming week and need to get major work done.

My profit has been overstated the past few weeks and so I'm further away from my goal than I thought.

I'm increasing the MRR on my SaaS product but the ad spend probably makes it not profitable yet. I need to put in some effort now to try to optimize and get it to a profitable state and then most likely I will move on to the next project.

 

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[GoldFibre]

Current SaaS MRR: $195

Weekly Goals​

• Work a total of 20 hours (1 / 20)
• Fix conversion tracking
• Fix any bugs in the main funnel
• Review and adjust ad campaigns
• Automate the script for updating all the paying customers' sites

9-10pm​

Transactional work.

 

[GoldFibre]

Current SaaS MRR: $195

Weekly Goals​

• Work a total of 20 hours (3 / 20)
• Fix conversion tracking WIP
• Fix any bugs in the main funnel DONE
• Review and adjust ad campaigns DONE
• Automate the script for updating all the paying customers' sites

10-11pm​

Transactional work.

11pm-12am​

I had a discussion with my friend whose son is looking for a summer internship. I told him he can basically run my FBA business and take 50% of any profit he can make, both handling my returns and trying to launch a women's underwear brand. I think he is keen to try and this is a cost-effective way to explore those avenues further.

For the SaaS, I cut the ad spend on my global campaign, because I think the conversions are all coming from the US campaign.

• Fixed a bug with the upgrade button and some async race condition that stopped people from being able to upgrade
• Bumped the Next version to the latest, which should have the fix I'm looking for with GA

 

[GoldFibre]

Current SaaS MRR: $195

Weekly Goals​

• Work a total of 20 hours (4 / 20)
• Fix conversion tracking WIP
• Fix any bugs in the main funnel DONE
• Review and adjust ad campaigns DONE
• Automate the script for updating all the paying customers' sites

10-11pm​

Transactional work.

I lost buy box eligibility in both countries, so my orders are low. In addition, there was a severe weather event today which probably suppressed sales for Amazon overall.

 

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[GoldFibre]

Current SaaS MRR: $195

Weekly Goals​

• Work a total of 20 hours (5 / 20)
• Fix conversion tracking WIP
• Fix any bugs in the main funnel DONE
• Review and adjust ad campaigns DONE
• Automate the script for updating all the paying customers' sites

10-11pm​

Transactional work.

 

[GoldFibre]

Current SaaS MRR: $195

Weekly Goals​

• Work a total of 20 hours (6 / 20)
• Fix conversion tracking WIP
• Fix any bugs in the main funnel DONE
• Review and adjust ad campaigns DONE
• Automate the script for updating all the paying customers' sites

10-11pm​

Transactional work.

 

[GoldFibre]

Current SaaS MRR: $195

Weekly Goals​

• Work a total of 20 hours (7 / 20)
• Fix conversion tracking WIP
• Fix any bugs in the main funnel DONE
• Review and adjust ad campaigns DONE
• Automate the script for updating all the paying customers' sites

9-10pm​

Transactional work.

I had nine orders to confirm and when I went to book the deliveries, I found my account was blocked. It was already 10pm and nobody from my vendor picked up the phone or replied to my chats. So my account is going to get in trouble.

I need to change my daily routine and move the order confirmation to the start of the day, rather than the end, to avoid this happening again.

 

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[GoldFibre]

Current SaaS MRR: $195

Weekly Goals​

• Work a total of 20 hours (10 / 20)
• Fix conversion tracking WIP
• Fix any bugs in the main funnel DONE
• Review and adjust ad campaigns DONE
• Automate the script for updating all the paying customers' sites

6-8am​

Finally woke up early again to get some work done.

• Added more context to submissions UI component
• Paused my US ad campaign and re-enabled the global one, because I had zero conversions since pausing the global one
• Actually read the gtag docs and then added all the required parameters in the API - then deployed to see if it will work to fix the conversion tracking
• Added a login event and turned on the tag assistant debug mode to test
• Probed around and eventually figured out I had the wrong package version of the Next sub-package. Adjusted that, deployed and tested - I finally saw my event show up in the debug screen. To fully verify this will work I need to wait for the events to show up in GA and then ensure they get into Google Ads as well
• Looked at the GA interface and saw some other events I could add to fill out the conversion funnel detail. Added 'View Item List', 'Add To Cart', 'Add Payment Info'
• Fixed a bug with displaying unrelated charges on the upgrade page

10-11pm​

Transactional work.

 

[GoldFibre]

Current SaaS MRR: $195

Weekly Goals​

• Work a total of 20 hours (10 / 20)
• Fix conversion tracking WIP
• Fix any bugs in the main funnel DONE
• Review and adjust ad campaigns DONE
• Automate the script for updating all the paying customers' sites NOT STARTED

I meant to get on track this week and then I let a further disruption to my normal schedule serve as an excuse to not get things done.

To be honest I spent plenty of time watching YouTube instead of working, and 20 hours was definitely possible. If I had worked 20 hours then I would have completed my goals.

At least next week I will be back to my normal routine, but I still have to make sure that I don't make any new excuses.

I am going to track adherence to my daily routine and record it in my posts each day:

• Wake up early and get some fastlane work done
• Listen to my motivational audiobooks when I walk my dog or do chores
• Record and play back self-talk on my morning commute
• Stay late at the office to get more fastlane work done
• Listen to my motivational audiobooks on the evening commute
• No YouTube
• No chess or mobile games

I think this is enough to accomplish a lot during the week, even if I don't set an explicit goal.

 

[GoldFibre]

Current SaaS MRR: $195

Daily Routine​

• FAIL Wake up early and get some fastlane work done
• FAIL Listen to my motivational audiobooks when I walk my dog or do chores
• N/A Record and play back self-talk on my morning commute
• N/A Stay late at the office to get more fastlane work done
• N/A Listen to my motivational audiobooks on the evening commute
• FAIL No YouTube
• FAIL No chess or mobile games

I just made up this routine in the evening, so I failed it today. Tomorrow I will be going to the office and so I have the opportunity to do everything on the list.

9-10pm​

Transactional work.

 

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[GoldFibre]

Current SaaS MRR: $195

Daily Routine​

• DONE Wake up early and get some fastlane work done
• DONE Listen to my motivational audiobooks when I walk my dog or do chores
• DONE Record and play back self-talk on my morning commute
• DONE Stay late at the office to get more fastlane work done
• DONEN/A Listen to my motivational audiobooks on the evening commute
• DONE No YouTube
• DONE No chess or mobile games

6-7am​

• Made some progress on the autoindexing feature. It's a complicated component because of the lambda timeout limits in Next. I need to move it from a single function into a series of steps using state on the front end.

5-8pm​

• Had a call with my account manager. He told me he isn't giving me more ASINs because I'm not converting the existing ones. I told him about the filters I put on the ASINs and he asked for the reasons behind it. Long story short, I think I should be able to increase the Amazon volume a good amount through a few conversations with him and some tweaks to my filtering
• Completed the auto-indexing feature only to find that all of my paying customers have submitted every single URL, so the feature wasn't immediately required. So now I have everything I promise on the box at least.
• Investigated my conversion funnel and the service quotas I'm using. I hit the limit on my emails back on April 8. The Google Cloud API limits seem fine
• Looked into some products that are selling well and reached out to the brands to try to buy in bulk. One of them chatted with me and said they have no interest in resellers. I told them their shipping rates internationally were causing them to lose customers and they didn't care. I think there is likely a business in providing cheap shipping to US-based brands, which can significantly lower their costs to go international

9-10pm​

Transactional work.

 

[GoldFibre]

Current SaaS MRR: $195

Daily Routine​

• DONE Wake up early and get some fastlane work done
• DONE Listen to my motivational audiobooks when I walk my dog or do chores
• DONE Record and play back self-talk on my morning commute
• DONE Stay late at the office to get more fastlane work done
• DONE Listen to my motivational audiobooks on the evening commute
• DONE No YouTube
• DONE No chess or mobile games

6-7am​

• Built a script to export all the reasons for not listing against the recommended ASIN list from my account manager. Then sent him those files.
• Noticed a number of reasons already that I should be able to safely eliminate, and removed them

5-8pm​

• Chatted with my account manager and he sent me statistics showing that I was listing 0.1% of several batches of ASINs that he shared with me. I said that that is a mistake, and asked him to reshare the batches. Sure enough there are many not in my DB.
• Started uploading the ASINs to my DB and found a few flaws in the upload process. Fixed those and then let it run. It should finish while I'm sleeping tonight.
• Earlier in the day I said my goal would be to identify 10 FBA products and reach out for wholesale quotes. So I started looking for products I've sold more than once and then contacted them about distribution. I managed to identify and contact 11, so hopefully at least one of them will pull through with a good quote.
• My customer with the $99 plan emailed me and asked why the site wasn't working, so I said I would look into it and then ended up adding an admin feature to process sitemaps for the customer. I also found a bug with processing sitemaps which probably affected a lot of customers, and prevented me from getting sales. So I'm thankful to this customer for helping me find the issue.

9-10pm​

Transactional work.

While doing procurement I think I noticed a pricing bug which might be costing me some profit. I need to investigate this tomorrow and fix it if it really is a bug.

 

[GoldFibre]

Current SaaS MRR: $195

Daily Routine​

• DONE Wake up early and get some fastlane work done
• DONE Listen to my motivational audiobooks when I walk my dog or do chores
• DONE Record and play back self-talk on my morning commute
• FAIL Stay late at the office to get more fastlane work done
• DONE Listen to my motivational audiobooks on the evening commute
• DONE No YouTube
• DONE No chess or mobile games

Today I had to be at home, so I wasn't able to do a late time at the office, but will be back on the horse tomorrow.

5-7am​

• The import of the recommended ASINs finished overnight, so I tried to start the bot but had some mismatches. I adjusted one of the scripts to avoid those and then re-uploaded.
• The script is skipping over ASINs which are less than 10 characters to avoid invalid values, but I feel that too many have been skipped. So I worked on a more granular test for those particular ASINs and then started re-running the script, only to find out that the problem was something else.
• Investigated why I'm not getting details for a large percentage of the ASINs in the recommended list.
• Got replies from some vendors about buying wholesale. Two of them pointed me to their websites to inquire. One of the vendors has a distributor in my local market, but the asking price on their website is higher than my cost to buy retail in the US and then ship the products here. Another one asked me for my WeChat contact, which I take as a good sign. I negotiated a bit on price and shipping terms.
• It's interesting how much of a slog it is to try to buy something and give people money through cold outreach. I guess this is the appeal of Alibaba - you get right down to business.

9-10pm​

Transactional work.

Plus I fixed a few issues with my pricing calculations which overall should mean higher profit per order.

Amazon US introduced lazy-load to the orders page, presumably to improve the UX, and now it takes twice as long for me to get my order numbers during procurement:

 

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[GoldFibre]

Current SaaS MRR: $195

Daily Routine​

• DONE Wake up early and get some fastlane work done
• DONE Listen to my motivational audiobooks when I walk my dog or do chores
• DONE Record and play back self-talk on my morning commute
• DONE Stay late at the office to get more fastlane work done
• DONE Listen to my motivational audiobooks on the evening commute
• DONE No YouTube
• DONE No chess or mobile games

Today I had to be at home, so I wasn't able to do a late time at the office, but will be back on the horse tomorrow.

6-7am​

• Looked at more pricing anomalies and refactored the pricing code. Again this should improve margins.
• Got another reply on my wholesale inquiry - the company makes pretty high quality products and is again particular about which sales channels I will be using, and so either I lie or this one isn't going to work. On the other hand I can look for a way to make it work that isn't really what I originally wanted by pitching some value to them.

7:30-8pm​

• Had to work my normal job later than normal so barely got any time in
• Fixed some things for my SaaS customer that complained, and then wrote back to her explaining that she really didn't need a paid plan at all, offered her a full refund and also offered to refer her to someone if she needs SEO help.

10-11pm​

Transactional work, and only did the most urgent things as I was zonked.

 

[GoldFibre]

I'm out of town this weekend and I learned again that everything that can go wrong will go wrong.

I tested my remote desktop setup before traveling and everything worked perfectly, so I left my primary computer at home. Now when I'm in the hotel the remote desktop won't connect at all.

So I had to create manual air waybills for all my orders.

Only worked today 10-11pm and I don't have access to check my profit for the day.

With all the new listings I'm making there are many violations coming on the account. Normally I use automation to remove and blacklist those ASINs, but since my remote desktop won't connect I'm going to have to do them all manually like in the 'old days' (6 months ago).

I will be back home Sunday night, so I just need to keep things under control for two days.