User Power
Value/Post Ratio
123%
- Mar 13, 2015
- 137
- 168
- 29
Hi everyone! Been lurking a bit and in fact started trying out FBA before I found this forum. Almost finishing reading the book as well. This place looks chill, and I was pretty inspired by the progress thread of @BusinessBen so I've decided to make this post.
A bit about myself and my situation: I am a young Manchu woman from China, & currently what I'm hoping to do is to bootstrap selling some generic items in a niche that targets females, and gain some capital before I figure out what to do next. My monthly salary right now is $800 and it's considered a very privileged wage where I live, so obviously I don't have a lot of capital starting out.
In my niche I face a lot of competition from Chinese sellers, some selling identical products as mine, but they usually ship from HK instead of using FBA so I feel I stand a chance, even if they often sell in bundles and frequently at a lower per unit price than where I price my items.
Their listings are also commonly poorly made with lots of misspellings, so I figured that's an area I could improve on as well.
I don't really worry about competition from domestic (US/North American) sellers because lots of my items are quoted as twice the price on Alibaba than the quote I could obtain by dealing directly with manufacturers who do not themselves export. If I'm careful with product selection, I can bar enough US sellers from entry as their margin would be too small while outcompeting the Chinese ones using FBA and optimised listings.
What I've done so far, is I have four different items sitting in my FBA inventory, all on my own new listings, and it's been 2 or 3 days since I put the keywords in and they've started to show up on page 2 and 3 of the search terms, but no sale yet. I didn't have the time or energy to figure out the listings earlier.
I'm probably going to order and send in some more inventory for another product I've been eyeing soon, but right now the sales or the lack thereof are bothering me a bit.
Stuff I'd appreciate some suggestions on:
-Going forward I plan on polishing up the listings as much as possible, as soon as possible; I've realised although the photos are clean-looking, real and zoomable, they aren't all that appealing on a search page. Gotta improve on that and write some more descriptions too.
And then I'm considering throwing some Amazon PPC ads at them, Y/N? How do people usually launch their new listings on Amazon? All the FBA private labeling material I've read make it sound like everything automatically sell out once you get a new listing all for yourself and have no competitors on the same item details page.
-Do I go ahead and send in more inventory for a new product now, or wait until I've figured wth I'm doing and get at least one sale? It's in the same niche, but not the same type of products as the once I previously sent in.
My reasoning for doing that now is my cash sitting around wouldn't have much better use anyway, and the earlier I get one more product in the earlier it can begin to sell, and I can take more advantage of my first month of pro seller status. Penitential downsides would be spreading myself too thin and being too optimistic while I should focus on getting at least one sale to validate the need and buying power of the niche, and to validate this whole FBA thing would work out and I'm not just daydreaming.
So other than fixing the listings and using Amazon's PPC ad, an idea I've got from reading up around here is that I'm going to do some marketing on Tumblr. Not as a company or for a brand or anything, but just interact with people in the niche, maybe post a photo or two of my stuff, and then do a giveaway with coupons to boost my sales rank on Amazon. Since it's a female niche, and Tumblr's user base is skewed towards young females, and doing giveaways is a pretty common practice among them for celebrating events such as gaining a certain amount of followers.
I'm not going to build a website or mailing list just yet, since I'm only selling generic for now.
No Facebook, Google ads or Instagram promotion in the picture, even though Instagram is especially popular with women, because all of these are banned in China and can only be accessed through proxy.
Basically my action points for now:
- fix up listings, including photos, descriptions and keywords for some products
- order new product?
- make a tumblr account and interact within the niche
- once the listings are done, switch to pro seller status, do Amazon ad and tumblr coupon giveaway promotion
One last question: do I throw ppc at my listings now, or switch to pro only after I sell 40 items a month and justify the switch? I feel it's a catch-22 right here.
Anyway, thanks for reading and sorry if my thoughts are too jumbled. I'm both excited, and worried.
Edit: spelling.
Edit: clarity.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
A bit about myself and my situation: I am a young Manchu woman from China, & currently what I'm hoping to do is to bootstrap selling some generic items in a niche that targets females, and gain some capital before I figure out what to do next. My monthly salary right now is $800 and it's considered a very privileged wage where I live, so obviously I don't have a lot of capital starting out.
In my niche I face a lot of competition from Chinese sellers, some selling identical products as mine, but they usually ship from HK instead of using FBA so I feel I stand a chance, even if they often sell in bundles and frequently at a lower per unit price than where I price my items.
Their listings are also commonly poorly made with lots of misspellings, so I figured that's an area I could improve on as well.
I don't really worry about competition from domestic (US/North American) sellers because lots of my items are quoted as twice the price on Alibaba than the quote I could obtain by dealing directly with manufacturers who do not themselves export. If I'm careful with product selection, I can bar enough US sellers from entry as their margin would be too small while outcompeting the Chinese ones using FBA and optimised listings.
What I've done so far, is I have four different items sitting in my FBA inventory, all on my own new listings, and it's been 2 or 3 days since I put the keywords in and they've started to show up on page 2 and 3 of the search terms, but no sale yet. I didn't have the time or energy to figure out the listings earlier.
I'm probably going to order and send in some more inventory for another product I've been eyeing soon, but right now the sales or the lack thereof are bothering me a bit.
Stuff I'd appreciate some suggestions on:
-Going forward I plan on polishing up the listings as much as possible, as soon as possible; I've realised although the photos are clean-looking, real and zoomable, they aren't all that appealing on a search page. Gotta improve on that and write some more descriptions too.
And then I'm considering throwing some Amazon PPC ads at them, Y/N? How do people usually launch their new listings on Amazon? All the FBA private labeling material I've read make it sound like everything automatically sell out once you get a new listing all for yourself and have no competitors on the same item details page.
-Do I go ahead and send in more inventory for a new product now, or wait until I've figured wth I'm doing and get at least one sale? It's in the same niche, but not the same type of products as the once I previously sent in.
My reasoning for doing that now is my cash sitting around wouldn't have much better use anyway, and the earlier I get one more product in the earlier it can begin to sell, and I can take more advantage of my first month of pro seller status. Penitential downsides would be spreading myself too thin and being too optimistic while I should focus on getting at least one sale to validate the need and buying power of the niche, and to validate this whole FBA thing would work out and I'm not just daydreaming.
So other than fixing the listings and using Amazon's PPC ad, an idea I've got from reading up around here is that I'm going to do some marketing on Tumblr. Not as a company or for a brand or anything, but just interact with people in the niche, maybe post a photo or two of my stuff, and then do a giveaway with coupons to boost my sales rank on Amazon. Since it's a female niche, and Tumblr's user base is skewed towards young females, and doing giveaways is a pretty common practice among them for celebrating events such as gaining a certain amount of followers.
I'm not going to build a website or mailing list just yet, since I'm only selling generic for now.
No Facebook, Google ads or Instagram promotion in the picture, even though Instagram is especially popular with women, because all of these are banned in China and can only be accessed through proxy.
Basically my action points for now:
- fix up listings, including photos, descriptions and keywords for some products
- order new product?
- make a tumblr account and interact within the niche
- once the listings are done, switch to pro seller status, do Amazon ad and tumblr coupon giveaway promotion
One last question: do I throw ppc at my listings now, or switch to pro only after I sell 40 items a month and justify the switch? I feel it's a catch-22 right here.
Anyway, thanks for reading and sorry if my thoughts are too jumbled. I'm both excited, and worried.
Edit: spelling.
Edit: clarity.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum:
Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.
Last edited:
