Strategies for Successful Amazon Selling

you can easily make money selling on Amazon because Amazon is a$ 1.3 trillion doll company and they allow you to sell products on their website and every single month 2.4 billion people are going to amazon.com looking to buy products that you could be selling in fact last year alone there was over $600 billion dollar in revenue on Amazon's website and 60% of all the products being sold on amazon.com are being sold by third-party sellers that's people like you and me selling our products on Amazon's website and over 40% of all Amazon sellers have made at least $100,000 this is a huge opportunity and it's actually continuing to grow because right now only 18% of all retail sales are happening online that number is projected to grow to 20% next year 22% the year after that and it will probably keep growing every single year if you s sell a product on Amazon you're going to be taking advantage of a trend that's going to be continuing to grow year after year and this video is going to be a complete Amazon FBA course where I'm going to show you from a toz step by step how you can actually make money selling products on Amazon and there are three most common ways that people make money with Amazon FBA the first is where you find a product at a huge discount like this product that's being sold on walmart.com for $229 but this exact same product is being sold on amazon.com for500 $99 so what you can do is go to walmart.com buy this product at the discounted price and then flip this product for the increase price on amazon.com the second method for selling on Amazon is called wholesale and this product right here is making over $200,000 per month on Amazon and we can find out how much any product on Amazon is making by scrolling down and going to the bestselling rank number copying that and pasting it into the jungle Scout sales estimator you then select the marketplace in the category and we can see that over 7,000 units of this product are being sold every single month we go back to the product listing and when we multiply that by the price of the product which is $32.99 we can see that this product is making over $200,000 per month and what's crazy about that is you can buy this product with a wholesale discount on globalsources.com for just $18 so what you do is buy this product in bulk with your wholesale discount and flip this product on Amazon.com for the increased price and you can keep all the profit and I will share later in this video how much actual profit you should expect to make with this method the third most common way that people make money selling products on Amazon is called private label and this product right here is making over $50,000 per month in sales and we can see that this product is being sold on Amazon.com for $15.99 but this exact same product is being sold on alibaba.com for just $299 so what you can do is buy this product in bulk but this time you slap your own brand on it your own private label and then sell that on Amazon.com for the increased price this is different from wholesale because you're actually putting your own brand on the product these are the three most common ways to sell products on Amazon but there's actually a fourth way to sell on Amazon that I think is the best way for you to make money on Amazon right now and my name is Travis and I've made over $6 million selling products on Amazon using the method that I'm going to show you in this video so smash the like button because I've taught people just like you how to make an extra $100,000 to million dollar per year using this method I do want to be clear that it does take hard work for you to start your Amazon business but once you get your business up and running it's easy to to run because Amazon is getting all the customers to their website for you and on top of that when you get an order Amazon will do the work of picking packing and shipping out the product to the customer and that's because you're going to be taking advantage of the Amazon FBA program FBA stands for fulfillment by Amazon this is where you send in the products that you want to sell on Amazon's website into their warehouses and when Amazon gets an order they're going to pick pack and ship it from their warehouse to your customer this makes it so all the product s that you are selling are prime eligible meaning that customers can get the product in just 2 days and when you're selling a product that's Prime eligible you're going to make a lot more money in sales because people know that they're going to be able to buy it and get that product quickly and it also makes it so that you can travel and live anywhere in the world and you can keep running your business because you don't need to be in the United States in order to ship products to your customer and here's how you can do it this product last year made over $1 million but what's crazy about this is Brent was able to buy this product for just2 $20 ship it from overseas into the Amazon warehouse and sell it on Amazon for $99 that is a 5x markup and I'm going to show you in this video the exact five-step method I taught to Brent so that he could make over a million dollar last year and Brent has a full-time job as a first responder helicopter pilot and he's also a father to two beautiful kids he didn't have a lot of money to start this business he didn't have a lot of time so if he can do it and I can do it you can do it too if you follow this five-step formula and the first step is to figure out exactly what you're going to sell and I have a stepbystep method that'll help you to find exactly what product you should be selling on Amazon the second step is finding a manufacturer and you can go to sites like alibaba.com if you want to find a manufacturer overseas or thomasnet.com if you want to find a manufacturer in the United States you're then going to buy your product at a discounted price because you're going to be going straight to the manufacturer you're then going to create a listing on Amazon's website which is Extreme ex easy to do and I'm going to show you how to game the system so that you'll get the most sales for your product after you've done that you're going to ship the products that you purchased from the manufacturer into Amazon's warehouse this will allow it so that your products will be prime eligible and it'll make it so that when you get an order on Amazon's website you don't have to do any work Amazon will handle the Fulfillment for you this is why it's called Amazon FBA FBA stands for fulfillment by Amazon and since your product are going to be prime eligible that means that you get access to the 300 million Prime customers that Amazon has spent billions of dollars marketing to get to come to Amazon and buy from their website and the fifth and final step for having success on Amazon is to launch your product and the goal is to get as many sales from day one as possible and I'm going to talk about the secret strategies that I've used that I've taught to Brent AJ and hundreds of other students that I've successfully taught to sell on on Amazon now warning I know you might be wondering is it too late to sell on Amazon is Amazon FBA already too saturated and the truth is yes it is too saturated if you're going to try to do the old school methods of selling on Amazon things like private label and wholesale don't work anymore in this video I'm going to teach you my method for selling on Amazon a method that still works right now there are over 9 million Amazon sellers and around 4,000 new sellers joining every single day so you might be thinking there's so much competition but keep in mind of those 9 million sellers only around 2 million are in the United States selling products and of those only around 1.1 million are actually active Sellers and as I mentioned earlier over 40% of all Amazon sellers have still made over $100,000 and that's because even if there's 1.1 million active sellers there's over a 100 million Prime customers in the United states that means for every Amazon Seller there are a hundred customers and I know this method that I'm going to show you in this video works because I launched this product and in my first year I did over $300,000 in sales I was able to buy this product for around $7 a unit and sell it on Amazon for $27.99 so when you subtract out my product cost the Amazon selling fee and the Amazon FBA Pick and Pack fee and all the other Amazon fees that I'll be talking about later in this video I was still able to do over $120,000 profit passive income I was able to make that $100,000 while traveling the world and actually enjoying my life and I'll explain exactly how I did that in just a minute but in order to have success on Amazon let me show you the biggest secret that nobody's talking about and that is that Amazon is basically just a search engine people go to Amazon to search for things that they want to buy and since it's a search engine you can hack the machine you can hack algorithm to get your product up at the top of the search results because when people go to Amazon to search for things that they want to buy they are most likely to buy the product at the top of the search results and I'm going to show you in this video how to get your product to the top of the search results once your product's at the top of the search results people are going to click on your product they're going to buy your product they're going to leave reviews and it's going to make it so you get more and more sales and you might be wondering how do I know all of this about Amazon and that's because if you're new to the channel my name is Travis I'm a seven fig Amazon FBA seller and I've been selling on Amazon for over eight years I've been a full-time e-commerce entrepreneur for over 10 years most the people on the internet teaching this stuff right now have only been doing it for one two maybe three years and yes they have valuable information but I've been doing this for a long time I've been teaching this for a long time as I mentioned I've taught hundreds of people how to do this so I've seen a lot of the failures a lot of the mistakes that people make and I'm going to talk about every single mistake that I've made and every common mistake that I see students making and by watching this video all the way till the end it's going to save you thousands of dollars because I've made mistakes that have cost me thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars so learn from my mistakes and by learning everything I'm going to teach you not long you going to save money on mistakes you're going to end up finding some secrets that's going to make it so your product does better meaning more money in your pocket and as I mentioned there are four common ways to sell on Amazon and some of these methods are better than others this fourth way of selling on Amazon is the best way that actually still works for making money on Amazon and I'm going to tell you what that method is in just a couple minutes but first let's talk about the pros and the cons of all these different ways of selling on Amazon so you can figure out which method you should actually do because even though I did say the private label in wholesale is dead sometimes you can get lucky and you can find a private label or a wholesale product and make a little bit of money and let's start with Retail Arbitrage which is as I mentioned where you find a product that's at a huge discount either in a retail store where you actually go and you physically buy the product or on an online website where the price is hugely discounted you would then buy that product at a discount send it into the Amazon warehouse and sell it on Amazon.com for the increased price and this works because a lot of people only buy products from amazon.com now the big con with this method of selling on Amazon is you're going to be constantly needing to go out and hunt for deals find new products buy them and sell them on Amazon and it's a lot of work but a big Pro for this method is it's relatively quick and easy to do and it doesn't take a lot of money to get started the only money that you need is the money that you're going to use to buy the products that you're going to flip on Amazon but a huge con for this method of selling on Amazon is that it's not going to give you passive income and my goal with this video right here is to teach you how to build a business how to build a machine that's going to print you money even when you're traveling or sleeping with Retail Arbitrage you're going to constantly need to be putting work into your business to keep it going the next common method is wholesale where you buy products in bulk with your wholesale discount and then flip them on Amazon for the increased price and the biggest con with this way of selling on Amazon is there's nothing stopping other people from contacting that same wholesale manufacturer and selling the exact same product as you on the exact same Amazon listing now one big Pro with this way of selling on Amazon is that you don't need to create a product or create a brand and it's pretty easy to do all you have to do is contact a wholesale manufacturer buy their products in bulk sell them on Amazon and make some money and yes sometimes you can get lucky and find a manufacturer or a wholesaler that no one else knows about buy a product in bulk and sell it on Amazon but this is really rare there's also nothing stopping the manufacturer from selling their own product on Amazon and cutting you out as the middleman and I've seen a lot of people that get into wholesale they start selling a product but then other people start buying that same product wholesale selling that product on the exact same listing as them and they end up not getting any sales so one solution to this is private label and this is where you buy a product in bulk but the difference here is you slap your own brand on it which allows you to create a brand new listing on Amazon and that is one of the pr of private label is that no one else can sell your product because you own your brand and no one else can sell your branded products on Amazon one of the biggest Cons with private label is if all you're doing is taking a product that's on Alibaba slapping your brand on it and selling it on Amazon there's nothing stopping other people from creating a copycat of your product and that will make it so you have a lot of competition in the Amazon search result in fact there's over 9 million sellers on Amazon with 4,000 new sellers joining every single day but the biggest con with both private label and wholesale is that 85% of all Amazon sellers are either doing wholesale or private label so these ways of selling on Amazon are really saturated and that leads me to the fourth way of selling on Amazon which I call creating a a passion product and this is where you create a unique product and make it better than the competition with private label you're just taking an existing product slapping your brand on it and selling that on Amazon and I'll talk about in- depth how to do that in this video but this is the best method to actually make money on Amazon right now I was probably in a similar situation to where you are right now when I first heard about selling things online I was stuck in a deadend corporate job I was exhausted depressed I hated my life and when I first heard about the opportunity that selling things online is I was scared I was scared to quit my job I was scared to take that leap because I didn't want to make mistakes and this is why I've put together this massive video I understand what it's like to be exactly where you are and I don't want you to make the same mistakes that I made I want to show you the path so you can have success since quitting my job I've been able to start multiple successful Amazon businesses I've been able to travel the world spend more time with my family and do things that I never thought was possible and I want to show you exactly how you can do that for yourself in this video all I ask is that you smash that like button right now because when you hit the like button it lets YouTube know that I did a good job making this video and I've spent hundreds of hours putting together this one video for you right here so if you haven't yet hit that like button and let me show you why I chose to sell on Amazon and why I think you should too because there are a lot of different ways that you can make money online there's Drop Shipping affiliate marketing starting a social media marketing agency and even freelancing but I still think that starting an Amazon FBA business is the best way to create a passive income business and that's because with dropshipping affiliate marketing and a lot of the other ways to make passive income out there they're just too saturated if you start a Drop Shipping Store there's nothing stopping other people from Drop Shipping that exact same thing same thing is true with affiliate marketing you might become an affiliate for one website one product and there could be hundreds of other Affiliates all competing when you start an Amazon FBA business you can create your own brand you can own that brand and you can get a trademark or a patent and no one else can sell the same product on you I've seen other people that want to make money by doing a social media marketing agency or freelancing the problem with this is you're trading your time for money and when you're trading your time for money that means that you need to keep working and one of the biggest reason reasons I like to create an Amazon FBA business is the business can be run without me Amazon's handling all the Fulfillment and handling getting all the customers so that if I want to grow my business I can spend my free time growing my business or if I want to spend my free time just laying on a beach I can do that as well and Amazon is projected to grow every single year this year they're supposed to do over $600 billion do in revenue and next year is going to be over $700 billion in Revenue so by starting to sell on Amazon right now you're going to actually be getting in at the perfect time because it's easier than ever to start an online business if you use Amazon on top of that this is a growing segment people are buying things online more and more often and since Amazon is the number one e-commerce retailer in the United States that means that by starting an Amazon business you're going to get to take advantage of this huge opportunity and I've taught people like AJ who did over half a million dollars in his first year ever selling this product on Amazon but I do want to set realistic expectations for you before get started with this video and before I really show you step by step the process for selling on Amazon there are a few things that you should know including one of the biggest reasons why people fail on Amazon most people when they're learning how to sell on Amazon they go to YouTube and they watch one video from one person another video from another person they watch videos out of order and they watch people that are teaching different methods the reason I created this video that you're watching right now is because I wanted you to have the most comprehensive the most complete guide for selling on Amazon in one place I also put a lot of work making sure that every step of the process is laid out in a linear A2Z fashion so if you haven't yet save this video to a playlist or bookmark this video right now because you're going to be coming back to this video again and again and I recommend the first time you watch this video don't worry about taking notes I've set up this video to be as easy to follow as possible and I actually recommend that you watch it all the way through so you have an idea of how all the different pieces connect then on your second time watching this video take out a pen and a paper and take notes because the only way you're going to be successful watching this video is if you actually pay attention and take action on all the things I'm going to be teaching you in this video and if at any point I'm talking too quickly or things are going too fast you can go down into the settings and you can slow this video down if however it's too slow for you you can play this video at 2x speed and you may want to do that on the first time you watch this video just to get that overview of how this video works or if you ever need to work on a specific part of your Amazon business you can click on the timestamps down below and it will take you to the exact spot you need to go to and keep in mind this one video has a value of over ,000 I've seen a lot of fake gurus out there selling Amazon courses that are less valuable than this for over $8,000 and I will say that if you are looking for more help more handholding in launching your Amazon FBA business I do have a fulllength Amazon FBA program that comes with even more in-depth videos a weekly Q&A call and a bunch of other stuff and right now registration for that program is not open but I will be opening up registration very soon there's a link Down Below in the weit list so if you are looking for extra help click on the weit list down below put in your information and I'll let you know as soon as I open up that program but for now I'm giving you this free 8 Hour course but I know that usually when people don't pay for things they don't pay attention so do me a favor and really pretend like you've spent $11,000 on this video and treat it as as valuable as it really is because this is 10 years worth of my experience that I've condensed down into 1 8 hour video and I know that if you're anything like me you're probably suffering from analysis paralysis you obviously want to make money online you want to get Freedom you want to change your life but you're probably scared I was scared it took me a long time before I got up the courage to quit my corporate job and one of the biggest reasons I was scared is I didn't want to waste money I thought that starting an online business was going to be really expensive and I was scared about making a mistake cuz if I made a mistake that could cost me thousands of dollars now first off I'm going to show you a way that you can sell on Amazon even if you have Z I helped AJ launch cocktail cards and he didn't have any money to invest in his business he was able to raise over $100,000 using Indiegogo without spending a dime top of that the biggest lesson I've learned in my entrepreneur Journey the way to kill analysis paralysis is to understand that every minute you are waiting to start your online business you are losing money most people think that the only way to lose money is by spending money and making mistakes it's not true I'm going to tell you right now that eventually if you follow the steps in this video and you launch an Amazon business eventually you could be making over $100,000 profit per year that's around $10,000 profit every single month but the longer you wait the longer you're going to have to wait to make that $10,000 profit per month which means every single month you were waiting to start your online business you were losing $10,000 that you would have had if you would have started that business now so get started now take action as I mentioned watch this entire video come back take notes and do the work but now let me share with you some of the biggest mistakes that I see new Amazon sellers making because if you're suffering from analysis paralysis it's probably because you're nervous about making mistakes and one of the biggest mistakes I see new Amazon sellers new entrepreneurs making is they don't have a mentor they don't have someone showing them step by step how to do it as humans we learn from other humans so go find someone that's already done exactly what you want to do and follow their method step by step and I'm happy to be your Mentor even if you don't pay me by watching my YouTube videos and watching everything that I have in a way I get to be your remote Mentor but if you do want a little bit more one-on-one help and a little bit more guidance from me directly as I mentioned I do have that Amazon FBA program Link in the description down below the next mistake people make is they don't set realistic expectations you are not going to become a millionaire overnight this is not some kind of a get-rich quick scheme this is the best and easiest way I've ever found to start a legitimate online business and since you are starting a real online business it is going to take some hard work upfront don't think that in one or two months you're going to be a millionaire now what is a realistic expectation I do firmly believe that within 6 months you could create and launch a business that'll be making you over $10,000 profit per month I've done it I've helped a lot of other people do it and you can do it to too in fact let's take a minute and let's set a goal for you right now and the reason that you need to do this right now is because people that set goals are 42% more likely to actually hit their goals and by writing down your goal you're even more likely to hit your goal so right now I want you to think about what is it that you want from your Amazon business and type it down below in the comments for example you might want to make $100,000 a year in passive income so that you could travel the world in do whatever you want or maybe it's so you can spend more time with your family and that's an important part of setting a goal is asking yourself why most people think I want to make an extra $100,000 a year but why why would that change your life because when you get excited and emotional about what you want your entire body your entire subconscious is going to move you forward towards your goal because if your brain knows that one day once we start this Amazon business you're going to get to lay on the beach in Thailand it's going to get really excited it's going to start producing more dopamine more serotonin it's going to start moving you in the direction of actually accomplishing this task so right now if you haven't yet close your eyes and ask yourself what is it that you want do you want to be able to travel do you want to be able to spend time with your family do you want to be able to pay off all your student loan debts what does that look like for you and write it down in the comments down below when I first quit my corporate job as I mentioned my goal was to make six figures passive income because in my head if I could be making $100,000 a year automatically but I also had all my my free time to do whatever I wanted to I could live the life of a millionaire because most people think they want a million dollars but the goal is not to have a million dollars in the bank the goal is to get to live like a millionaire should live I myself am a millionaire I know a lot of millionaires and let me tell you most millionaires are miserable because they're working extremely hard they're working 80 hours a week that shouldn't be your goal your goal shouldn't be to just have a certain amount of money in the bank your goal should be able to live a life that excites you and what I'm going to be teaching you in this video is one of the ways you can get to that kind of a life so let's start right now with an overview of what's going to be in this video and as I mentioned there are timestamps down below so you can skip around but before you go any further in this video watch this overview so you can have an understanding of what you're going to be learning and the first thing I'm going to show you is how to start your Amazon seller account and it's easy all you're going to have to do is go to sell. amazon.com and follow all the instructions that I'm going to give you in this video but warning there are some common mistakes that lead to people getting banned from being able to sell on Amazon so make sure you watch that section to know those common mistakes so you can avoid them then I'm going to show you a complete product research guide it's over an hour of me showing you how I find real Amazon products and I'm going to have some different ideas that are really $100,000 plus ideas that you can take and I've done product research where I find real ideas and what's funny about it is no one actually ends up taking that idea and going to start the the business so I've actually taken that idea 6 months later and started the business so what I'm showing you in this section is ideas that you can take for free to start your Amazon business I know a lot of people struggle because they can't come up with an idea well I'm going to show you step bystep how to do that but if you still can't come up with an idea then use one of the ideas I'm going to show you in that section we're then going to talk about how you'll know that your product will sell before you spend any time or money on it I want to make sure that you know for sure that you're going to be creating an Amazon business that will actually lead to money in your pocket after that we're going to be talking about how you can brand your product including how you can create a logo in a box design because when selling on Amazon people can't actually pick up your product hold it in their hands all they're able to do is look at the photos that you've created and by doing proper branding it's going to make it so you can charge a premium for your product which means more profit for you for instance these two products are the exact same product but this one has way nicer branding which means that this company can charge more money for this product and that ultimately means more profit for them and since that both these products cost around the same amount of money to make that means more profit for this company you want to be like this company you don't want to be like this company I'm then going to show you a cheat code shortcut on how you can create social media for your Amazon brand and this is how AJ was able to do over a half a million dollars in sales in his first year even though he started with 0 and you can use the power of social media I'm going to show you step byep how you can do that in this section of the video we're then going to talk about every single step of finding a manufacturer and all the different ways you can do it whether you're looking to find a manufacturer in China in the United States or in any country in the world there are different websites that can help you to do that and I'm going to show you all those websites and how to use everyone and alibaba.com is one of the most amazing websites that I found in the last few years and the reason is you can buy products for such a huge discounted price from overseas ship them into the United States and sell your productss on Amazon for an increased price but obviously if you're looking to get a product made in the USA then there's websites for that as well we're going to talk about every aspect on how to find a manufacturer talk with your manufacturer how to negotiate the best price for your products everything you need to know will be in this section of the video next we're going to talk about all the legal aspects of starting an Amazon business and it's so much easier than you think I remember when I was first quitting my corporate job and I was nervous I'm like I've never started a business it's going to be so much work so much paperwork it's super simple and I'm going to show you how and you have a couple different choices you can do an LLC a DBA or an escort I'm going to show you which one you should choose and why I'm also going to share with you all the legal documentation that you need how to get it for free a lot of this stuff people pay money for you don't need to pay money for it I'm going to show you how you can get all the different paperwork for free and I'm going to show you how you can get a bank account even if you live overseas how you can still get a US business bank account after that we're going to be talking about how to create a product listing on Amazon and they make it so simple it's so simple all you have to do is type in what the title is upload some images type in your bullet points in a description and you're pretty much done but there are some secrets to actually creating an effective product listing that's going to make you money as I mentioned the key when selling on Amazon is to get your product ranked at the top of the search results so one of the things you're going to want to make sure you do is include the things people are searching for in Amazon in your title these are called keywords I'll explain in depth during the section how to do this another thing to keep in mind that I'll talk about in depth in this section is you want to make a high quality main image because when people are searching for things on Amazon all they can really see is the main image the title the price and the amount of reviews but most people make the decision on whether or not they're going to click on your product based on the main image so you want to make a main image that's going to stand out that's going to get people's attention that's going to look professional and it doesn't cost a lot of money to do this I'm going to give you all my secret techniques during this section I'm also going to give you an in-depth overview of Amazon Seller Central so you can know what to expect as well as some different little hidden features that a lot of Amazon sellers don't know about there's some different reports that are going to make it a lot easier for you to sell on Amazon and it's going to make it so that you can end up making more money there's so many secrets in the Amazon Seller Central and most people don't really know what they're doing I'm going to show you a complete overview of this so that you're prepared when selling on Amazon after that we're going to be talking about shipping your product into the Amazon warehouse and there are a few different options when shipping a product into Amazon you can do sea shipping or air shipping and C- shipping is going to be cheaper but it's going to take longer air shipping is going to be faster but it's more expensive we're going to talk in depth about how to find a company to ship your products even if you're shipping from China into the Amazon warehouse how to deal with customs and duties and all that stuff that seems like a big pain in the butt it's not it's very easy to do especially if you follow the step-by-step method I'm going to give you during this section after that we're going to be talking about launching on Amazon and this is one of the most important things that most Amazon sellers even most Amazon gurus don't really talk about you need to get as many sales from day one as possible and I've got some secret hacks on how you can do that how you can Spike the algorithm to make sure you're getting a ton of sales most people will tell you you have to spend money on Amazon PPC it's not true I've launched a lot of products without spending any money on Amazon PPC and have still had a ton of success now there are a lot of different I'm going to give you during the section on how to spike sales so make sure you make it all the way to this point in the video after that we're going to be talking about brand registry and trademarking your product this is optional but I highly recommend it Amazon has a program called brand registry where if you have a trademark which is very easy to get I'm going to show you how you can get a trademark if you have a trademark for your brand you can apply to Brand registry this is going to make it so your product's more secure and so that people can't come in and change your listing or do a lot of the malicious things that people used to do on Amazon am it's also going to make it so you're going to have a ton of extra features that are going to lead to more sales if you have brand registry it gives you access to A+ content and makes it so you can upload videos of your product which is going to ultimately lead to more sales and more profit for you after that I have a huge in-depth section about Amazon PPC PPC stands for pay per click this is a way for you to advertise on Amazon where you pay Amazon every time someone clicks on your app that's why it's called pay per click and what's great about this is once you get this working you might spend a dollar per click but end up with $5 worth of sales this is a huge hack that a lot of beginner Amazon sellers don't know about it's amazing that you can actually advertise on Amazon's website this is where people go to buy things and you can advertise on that website and I'm going to show you how in this section of the video after that I'm going to share with you five Amazon FBA tips that I wish I knew when I first started and as I've mentioned I've made thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars worth of mistakes so this section is really really important if you are a beginner seller I highly recommend making it to this section of the video then towards the end of this massive course video that I'm creating for you I'm going to have an FAQ section and answer some of the questions that I get over and over again including I'll take some time to explain the Amazon FBA fees as well as talk about how much it will cost you to start your Amazon business we'll break down all the different costs then we'll talk about can you start even if you have Z spoiler alert the answer is yes now I will say before I go any further that if you spend some money starting your Amazon business it's going to make it easier but if you don't have any money that's okay I'm going to show you techniques that you can use to start an Amazon business even with Z also be sharing the top 10 biggest mistake that new Amazon sellers make after that I'm actually going to share all my mistakes exposed every single mistake I've ever made and exactly how much money it costs me and I've had some very successful students that volunteered to tell their entire story to share all their numbers including their product cost their Amazon selling fees everything their revenue their profit all of that so you can actually follow along step by step during their journey and see exactly how they did that and Brent's going to come on during the section and share his story on how he was able to do over a million dollars last year as well as AJ's going to share a story Jeremy's going to share a story we're going to have a bunch of very successful Amazon sellers showing you exactly how they did it so this section I highly recommend the most important section of this entire video comes at the end and this is how you can guarantee success when selling on Amazon and during this section I'll also give more information about my Amazon FBA mentorship program if that's something you're interested in and I'm so confident that my Amazon FBA program will work for you that I will give you $2,000 if you join my program follow all the steps and don't make at least $1,000 profit in your first year I will personally give you $22,000 on top of that this program does have a 14-day unconditional moneyback guarantee in this free video that you're watching right now I go into way more detail in my paid Amazon FBA program in fact there's over 150 step-by-step screen recorded lessons showing you every step of the process of launching your Amazon business in addition to that you'll get access to weekly Q&A calls where you can join and ask whatever questions you have to either myself or a coach and I sometimes go on the calls sometimes I have coaches go on the calls right now AJ from Cocktail cards has been doing a lot of the Q&A calls but another bonus when you join my Amazon FBA program is you get two one-on-one private coaching sessions and this is going to speed up your results and one of the biggest things that people don't think about is when you invest in yourself you're investing in getting to your result faster when you join this program you're also going to get access to a private Facebook group just for students in my Amazon FBA mentorship program as well as a bunch of other bonuses I'll talk about at the end of this video and I do limit the amount of people that can join my program I will be opening up registration next week but I'm only going to be allowing in 50 people to join this program and that's why I recommend if you are interested to get on the wait list right now so you can be one of the first people that know as soon as I open up this program and one of the biggest reasons why I'd recommend you join my Amazon FBA program as I mentioned is that people that don't pay for things don't pay attention I wanted to learn how to surf I got a surfboard I got a wet suit and I never really ended up going surfing until I ended up spending $1,000 to pre purchase 10 surfing lessons as soon as I actually spent some money it guaranteed that I was going to have success this the same is true with starting a business and let me tell you starting a business is harder than learning how to surf you're going to need to put more energy more effort into it but I'll also say that the rewards are 100% worth it starting an Amazon FBA business has completely changed my life and let's jump right into it let me show you how to start your Amazon seller account but really quickly before we do that I do want to introduce myself a little bit more because if you are new to the channel you may not know my story and the thing is when I had my corporate job and I was deped press and I I quit my corporate job with that goal of making $100,000 per year in passive income I didn't have success right away I actually first started an online dance clothing company with my mom I wasn't passionate about it I didn't really care about dance clothing I just wanted a way to make money and I spent the next several years struggling it was hard for me to make money online because I was doing something that I wasn't passionate about then I found out about the idea of selling on Amazon and I launched my first Passion product and as I mentioned within just 2 months of launching this product on Amazon I was doing over $30,000 in Revenue per month that's over $10,000 in profit and the reason I was able to have so much success with this product is because I followed the formula I'm going to give you in this video so let's jump right into it and let's start off by showing you how you can start your Amazon seller account the first step to starting your Amazon FBA seller account is go to seller central. amazon.com and then you're going to go down and click the sign up button now warning be careful because there's actually two different ways that you can sell on Amazon you can sell with a professional account which is going to cost you $39.99 a month which is this account right here or you can go with the individual account and the individual account is actually free but you do have to pay 99 Cents for every item that you sell so generally speaking if you plan on selling 40 or more items I would go with the professional account the professional account also comes with a bunch of other features that we'll talk about later in this video I'm also going to be talking about five of the most Comm common reasons why people get denied from selling on Amazon they get banned from having a seller account and you want to pay attention and you want to make sure you avoid these common mistakes that people make when applying for their Seller Central account and if you want to go with the professional plan go ahead and click sign up if however you do want to go with the individual account which I'll talk about more later in this video you'll want to click on learn more and then scroll down to the bottom of this page and click sign up to become an individual seller they kind of hide this feature and that's a good hack to save a lot of money especially if you're just starting your Amazon account and the truth is you can always upgrade your account to a professional selling plan later on the other hand you can just sign up now for the professional selling plan if you want in if for instance let's say you don't sell any products for a few months you can actually message Seller Support and tell them hey I haven't sold any products for the last 3 months can you please refund me for the last 3 months worth of selling fees and one very important thing is you do want to make sure you sign up for your Amazon seller account a few months before you actually plan on starting starting to sell on Amazon because sometimes there's delays it takes time for you to get approved and different things like that so once you're ready you're going to click sign up and that leads me to one of the most important steps of this entire tutorial make sure you hit the like button because I'm going to share with you right now one of the reasons why people get banned from selling on Amazon and one of the most common reasons why people get banned from selling on Amazon is they started an Amazon selling account maybe a few years ago or they already have an Amazon account that they kind of forgot about and then they go to start a new one and Amazon says hey wait a minute are you trying to create a second account that's not always allowed there are certain situations where it is allowed for instance if you do have a legitimate new business or a business need to start a new account then you can do it and Amazon used to be a little bit more strict with this they've kind of loosened up some of their rules especially if you have a new business then it is often times worth starting a new Amazon account though if you do already have an account that you're you've sold previously on I would contact Amazon and ask them how you can get that account fixed though if you do have old account that you use to sell on Amazon or if you already have an Amazon seller account I recommend at this point just logging in but if you are creating a new account for your new business click create your Amazon account you're then going to put in your name an email and a password another important tip when signing up for your Amazon seller account is you don't want to use a Gmail or a Yahoo email ideally though you can use those and often times that can be fine it's more professional and it looks better to Amazon if you actually use your business email this lets Amazon know that you're a serious ious business owner and that you're going to be a great seller this is another reason why a lot of times Amazon will deny people from being able to sell on their platform is they don't think that they're actually a legitimate seller that's going to be adding value to the Amazon platform and after you type in your password you're going to hit next they'll then ask you for a phone number which should be easy you should already have one but if for any reason you don't have one or you've already used your phone number with a different account you can always get a Google Voice number and use that instead they'll then send you a one-time password to your mobile phone you'll enter that and click create your Amazon account and I do have a complete checklist that includes everything that you need to have ready before you start your Amazon account I'll link that up here and down below and there's some things you may not have thought about obviously as we already mentioned you need to have an email address you should have a phone number in your phone handy but at this page they'll start asking for more serious things for instance they're going to ask about your business information as well as what your best contct addresses so you're going to want to make sure you have all your paperwork ready for that as well as a mobile or telephone number a chargeable credit card now a very important part about this step is do not sign up for an Amazon seller account with a debit card if you sign up with a debit card for an Amazon seller account they will suspend your account they will ban you and they're not going to tell you why when signing up for an Amazon seller account you need to use a legitimate credit card and at the end of this process they're going to ask for some different identity details some information such as either a picture of the front and back of your driver's license or a picture of your passport now I'm going to walk step by step through through this with you and explain a lot of different things that people mess up on that end up getting them in a lot of trouble or making it so they can't even sell on Amazon so the first thing we're going to do is we're going to go here and we're going to select the business location and for me that is the United States but even if you're not located in the United States you can still sign up to sell on Amazon from pretty much anywhere in the world and I'll go into more details about that throughout this video and at this point you're going to select what is the entity type of your business now if you don't know the answer to this you're probably going to put but none I'm just an individual seller and you can sell on Amazon even if you don't have a legitimate business structure you're just going to have to use your social security number if you're located in the United States if you're not located in the United States I do recommend setting up an LLC you can use sites like Wy registered agent.net to set up a LLC based in Wyoming and Wyoming is a great place to set up an LLC especially if you're from outside the United States another option is to set up an LLC in Delaware and Legal Zoom can help you to do that there's also a lot of other websites out there I'll put links to both of those down below in the description but if you have a different service that you recommend leave it in the comments down below and I've personally used Legal Zoom to set up both a DBA and an LLC now a DBA stands for doing business as and it's a lot cheaper way to actually start a business but it doesn't offer you any legal protection an LLC stands for limited liability company it's going to be a little bit more expensive but it's going to make it so that your business is a separate entity from yourself and if anyone ever tried to sue your business they can't come after your personal assets and for most people watching this tutorial you're probably going to pick privately owned business however if you're a charity obviously click that option there's also a spot for state-owned businesses and publicly listed business and a publicly listed business means a giant company so for most people watching this video you're probably going to select privately owned business you'll then want to enter your business name and confirm that your business location type and everything are correct then scroll down and click agree and continue they'll then ask for your company registration number which for most people watching this video that's just your EIN or employer identification number and to get an EIN for free and really fast you can go to this website right here that I'll include in the link Down Below in the description and you basically just fill out some information tell the IRS tell the government about your company and they will give you an EIN number within just a few minutes so once you have that you're going to go here and you're going to paste that number in and obviously I'm going to blur out a lot of this information because it is private information they'll then ask for your registered business address and so you're going to want to put whatever the address of your business is and it's okay if it's your home address as long as your business is registered to your home again if you're not located in the United States you can hire a company to be your registered agent it's relatively inexpensive and they will provide you with an address that you can use they'll then ask for your business phone number and this can be the same phone number that you gave to them earlier it can be your personal cell phone number it doesn't have to be anything complicated and you'll click send an SMS and then put in the pin that they they sent to you and click verify they'll then ask for your name go ahead and put in your name or the name of your registered agent if you prefer they'll then ask you some personal information like the country of your citizenship and Country of birth again if you're from outside the United States don't worry about half the people that join my Amazon FBA program are from outside the United States and they're able to sell on Amazon without any problems so then be asked to either put in your passport number and date of expiration or your driver's license number and date of expiration so part of the reason Amazon is so strict about who they let be Amazon sellers is because there's a lot of people out there that are trying to scam them and trying to scam Amazon customers as long as you're a legitimate person or business trying to sell on Amazon you should be fine but I will say again at the end of this video I'm going to talk about two of the biggest reasons why people get denied from being able to sell on Amazon and oftentimes get banned for life and after you're done with that you're going to scroll down here and click if you're the owner of the business or click on this box if you're actually using a registered agent and you're just putting information about the legal representative of your business in this case I am the owner of the business so I'm going to click right here and if you're the only owner of the business you're going to click yes if you're not the only owner of the business you'll click no right here and it'll ask for some more information about the other owners of the business now before we go to the next step Amazon is going to warn us that we do need a few really important things for instance we do need a valid bank account number and this needs to be a bank account that Amazon can easily send money to deposit money into and that you can easily withdraw money from if you don't have a business bank account you can easily get one all you need to do is take your business paperwork whether it's your DBA paperwork or your LLC paperwork and again sites like Legal Zoom or any site that you register your business with will provide you with this paperwork you then go to your local bank and give them the paperwork and they will set you up with a business bank account I personally recommend if you're in the United States to go with us bank because you can get a free business bank account however if you're outside the United States you can go with a bank like paneer or world first bank and the name on the bank account should match your name or the business name that you're using to register with Amazon and it goes on to say to verify your bank account you're going to need to provide some documentation for instance you're going to need to provide at least a bank statement they also tell you that you're going to need to have a valid credit card number for the next step and this is going to be used to pay your monthly fee though obviously if you're signing up for an individual seller plan you won't have that monthly fee but they still need a credit card on file to charge you as you sell an item because there is a 99 cent charge for every time you sell a product on their website so once you have all this different documentation ready you're going to click I understand and the first thing that they're going to ask is what is the name of your financial institution and they have a list of banks here but if for any reason you do not see your bank you can go click on others and then specify the name of your bank they then ask for your n-digit routing number as well as your bank account number and you can find out what your routing number is or your bank account number is by looking at the bottom of a check and you can see the routing number as well as the bank account number and again I'll blur these out for obvious reasons and since my bank is not eligible for instant verification they're going to require me to upload a bank statement later in the process we'll go ahead and click continue they'll then be asked to provide your credit card information and again make sure you do not use a debit card a prepaid Visa card don't use anything like that you want to have a legitimate credit card at this stage now at this point they're going to ask you what you want your store name to be now a lot of people get tripped up on this part and the key thing is here you can put pretty much whatever you want and realize that you can always change it later and I recommend for most people to pick a store name that's relatively broad so that if down the line you want to sell other products you want to have different businesses Under the Umbrella of this one Amazon account that you can however if you're first starting out and you're just selling one single product and you want your store name to be the name of that one single product that's okay because you can always change the store name later and this name doesn't need to match the name of your LLC it can be different I do recommend to make it the same name that you have on your LLC but for the purposes of this video I'll put passion products unlimited and it tells me that that store name is available then it's going to ask you a few questions here the first thing it asks is do you have Universal product codes for all of your products now UPC codes are those little barcodes you see on products now if you're going to be selling a product on Amazon it needs to have a UPC code you can get a UPC code for just $30 by going to gs1.org I'll put a link to that down below for your products and so for this first question I'm going to go ahead and put yes and I do recommend getting a UPC code for your products before you start your your Amazon seller account then it's going to ask do you have any diversity certifications that you would like to add to your business account I do not have any of these certifications so I'm going to go ahead and put no I'm sure that if you do you can always add them at a later date but this is a new question I've never seen these questions before but if you do apply for one of these certifications I'd recommend going and getting that certification before you start your Amazon seller account and the last question is going to ask you is are you the manufacturer or brand owner or agent or representative of the brand for any of the products you want to sell on Amazon now this question also trips up a lot of people and basically if you're selling your own product on Amazon no one else is selling that product on Amazon that means maybe you're starting your own passion product or you're selling a private label product you're going to hit yes now if you're doing wholesale or Retail Arbitrage on Amazon you're going to hit no for those that don't know private label is where you take a product that some manufacturer is making and you put your own sticker on it you put your own brand on it and you sell it on Amazon and you can find these manufacturers on places like alibaba.com or you can even find manufacturers right here in the United States I've done videos on how to find manufacturers on Alibaba or how to find them in the United States on the other hand what I recommend doing is selling a passion product on Amazon which is what I usually talk about on this channel so again if you haven't yet hit the Subscribe button on the other hand if you're doing wholesale or Retail Arbitrage you're going to click no and wholesale is where you buy products in bulk at a discount and then you flip them on Amazon for a little bit of a higher price where retail arbitr charge on the other hand is where you go out to stores you find products that are on a deep discount and you just sell them on Amazon now for the purposes of this video I'm going to go ahead and put yes and if you do put yes it's going to ask you do you own a registered trademark for the Branded products that you're going to sell on Amazon and I do recommend if you're doing private label or selling your own passion product to go ahead and get your logos trademarked but at this point since this is just a dummy account that I'm creating I don't have any trademarks and it's okay to say no and always get your trademark later but by having a trademark this gives you access to Brand registry which makes it so people can't mess with your Amazon listing if you add a product onto Amazon and you don't have brand registry anyone can come in and change your Amazon listing which could cause a lot of issues for you on top of that by having brand registry it gives you access to a bunch of other features including enhanced brand content which allows you to add images videos and more information to your product listing page which means that people are more likely to buy your product again this is not required but I highly recommend getting a trademark for any products you're going to be selling on Amazon and keep in mind it often takes about 6 months to get your trademark so I'd recommend getting started on your trademark process as soon as possible let's go ahead and click next now before we complete our application I do want to let you know if you're new to selling on Amazon I have a complete free Amazon FBA course I'll link it up here and down below it's an entire playlist of a bunch of videos that are going to show you step by-step how to sell on Amazon and at this point they're going to ask you a couple more questions before you submit and finalize your app application to sell on Amazon and one of the first things they're going to ask you to do is upload your identifying documents now I chose a passport and I do recommend picking a passport it's a little bit more professional but don't worry if you don't have a passport you can upload the back and front photo of your driver's license they're also asking me for a bank account statement now I don't recommend taking a picture of your bank account statement I recommend going to your bank's website downloading the PDF and uploading it right here and once you're done with all of that you can go ahead and click submit but a huge warning a lot of times after you submit your application for your Amazon seller account they email you and they ask for additional information additional documents sometimes it's things like a utility bill and you're going to have to submit to them a real utility bill showing that the address that you claimed to be your business address actually is your address now again for any reason if you don't have access to a utility bill maybe you're a digital Nomad you're traveling the world or maybe you live in a country where you're not able to get that utility bill or you're living with your parents or anything like that there are ways around that and I'll talk about that in a future video but there's two more reasons why a lot of people end up getting denied for their Amazon seller account and you want to be careful one thing is if you do get approved for your Amazon seller account and you go in the back end within a month or two and you start switching the details you switch your bank account information you start switching what your address is this is a huge red flag to Amazon and a lot of times this will lead them to suspending accounts or Banning accounts so make sure if you do get approved for your Amazon account that you don't do anything like that basically again keep in mind that Amazon is trying to avoid having any kind of fraud on their platform so anytime there's something suspicious happening they're going to ban you first and ask questions later and trying to recover your account can be a huge pain in the butt the other reason and probably one of the most common reasons why I see people struggling starting their Amazon seller account is you need to make sure you're being patient and professional anytime you're interacting with Amazon if they ask for more information make sure that it's clean it's professional when you're writing them any messages make sure there's no typos no grammar talk to them the way you talk to someone where you're trying to actually get a job with their business on top of that keep in mind that Amazon is a giant company when you apply for an Amazon seller account they're going to take some time vetting you and making sure that you're a legitimate business and a lot of times I see people making the mistake of harassing Amazon constantly messaging them calling them and saying where what what's the deal with my account how long is this going to take don't do that be patient and pretty much everyone that I've ever worked with was able in the end to start their Amazon seller account though some people it did take a little bit of time and keep in mind starting your Amazon account is just the first step in the process to making money online using Amazon you've set up your account now but you need to make sure that you're selling the right product because there's over 4,000 new sellers joining Amazon every day looking to sell products but 99% of them are going to be selling junk products I'm going to show you in this next section how to find a product that's going to be profitable that's going to make it so you are one of those people that actually have success on Amazon now one of the big questions that I get is can you still make money on Amazon and and how much money can you make and so one of the things I like to do when people ask me like well how much money can you really make on Amazon is go to Amazon themselves and if we go to Amazon and we go into the best sellers this is something that's just fun for me to do every once in a while you can see a lot of the different products that are bestselling products in all over the different categories so here's the bestselling products in Beauty and personal care and let's pick this product because I think they've actually got good branding it's actually a really interesting story I'll talk about this story later but let's look at this product and as you may know you can find out how much any product on Amazon is making you go up here to this helium 10 Chrome extension and then you click on the X-ray tool and you can see this product is making over a million dollar and this is per month a million dollars per month now I'm not saying that your first product is going to be a million dollar per month product another way that you might want to double check to see how much any product on Amazon is making you can scroll down to the bestselling rank number right here and you can see this is number two in Beauty and personal care wow I mean that's pretty high go to the free jungle Scout sales estimator tool paste that in there put the marketplace United States and put the category which is Beauty and personal care and click estimate sales I mean this is an insane amount this is selling over 100,000 units per month you'd multiply that by the cost of the product up here and we can see that's about the same it's like 1.7 1.8 million do in sales now obviously these products are established products they're big products I'm not saying that you're going to make that same amount of money but let's look to see the second question is can you still do this or is it too late and this is where I like to go to the new releases tabs and as you're scrolling around the new releases tabs you'll see a lot of products that are newly released on Amazon and these are some of the categories but you can look at some of the other categories here and one of the categories that I like to look at is pet supplies and either later in this video at some point I'll be showing you uh which category you should actually be selling in the product right here the first product look it's got seven reviews three and a half Stars we're going to find out how much money this product is making let's scroll down to the bestselling rank number but before we do that I want to point something out this product was first available June 3rd of 2023 uh it's it's got I mean it's got a decent main photo it it doesn't have the best branding I think we could definitely do better branding here but this product hasn't been on Amazon for a long time so it's not like it's a big player that you'd be competing with in fact their reviews aren't even that great so we probably I would argue we could make a better product especially considering if you follow my passion product formula you're going to get more than seven reviews within your first month but still despite this let's see how much money this product is making in sales so we'll paste that in here we'll change this to Pet Supplies click estimate sales in 8,000 units per month 8,000 time $19 we got over $150,000 per month now again I'm not saying that you're first product on Amazon you're going to be making $150,000 per month but I am saying it's possible there's a lot of people doing crazy numbers like that and if you follow all the steps that I'm going to be talking about today in this video then you might be one of those people you might be able to do some of the stuff so let's talk a little bit in depth about why I think Amazon is such a good opportunity and one of the biggest reasons why is because retail e-commerce sales are growing like crazy people are buying things more and more online every single year we can see in 2023 around $6 trillion do that's 6,000 this is in billions $6,000 billion dollars or6 trillion dollars are spent online it's projected to continue to grow every single year the number of people buying things online is continue is is expected to continue to grow every single year this is old information but this is still going to continue to grow every single year and that's not surprising uh we've all seen this we've all started buying more and more things online but the question is where are most people buying things when they're buying things online Amazon around 50% of all e-commerce sales happen on Amazon I look at my own purchase Behavior I almost never buy things unless it's on amazon.com if if I have to go to a website I'm just not going to do it so if I'm buying everything from amazon.com I think it makes a lot of sense to sell my products on Amazon but let's talk about now good products what kind of products should would you be selling versus bad products what kind of products should you not be selling on Amazon and this is the first thing you need to understand in a little bit I'm going to show you how to actually find a product but the first thing we need to establish is some ground rules on bad products versus good products bad examples bad products things you don't want to sell you probably should avoid is products under $15 so here's a product it's being sold for $9 and the problem is when you sell a product for $9 on Amazon you have a lot of fees and costs first you have the the product cost and you're going to have to subtract that from your Revenue so for every product you sell you got to subtract your product cost there's also a 15% Amazon fee an Amazon selling fee every product that's being sold on Amazon whether it's FBA or fbm which I'll talk about what that is a little bit later no matter what it is you have to sell you have to spend that 15% fee so you got to subtract that out as well then after that you have to subtract out your shipping cost now if you are using FBA which stands for fulfilled by Amazon you're going to have to pay the FBA fee and that's the fee for them to pick pack and ship your product from the warehouse to the customer and they charge money for that because they got to charge for postage they got to charge money for the handling the the storage in the facility all that kind of stuff so you have to subtract that out as well now if you are shipping it yourself it might end up costing you around the same amount of money and you're still going to have to pay for shipping so you're gon to have to subtract that out then there's just other random expenses and other random business fees and you can see that if you're selling a product for $9 it very quickly can add up where you don't you're not left with a lot of profit but if you're selling a product for $15 or more it helps to give you better profit margins I think The Sweet Spot personally is around $25 to $30 because you also don't want to sell products that are over $85 if a product's over $85 and there's there's times where this isn't always true but generally speaking if a product's over $85 it's not an Impulse buy it's not something that people are going to go to Amazon and just quickly bu they're probably going to want to do a little bit more research now I'm not saying you can't have success if you sell a product under $15 or over $85 I have a student Troy who sold a product under $15 and he had a ton of success it was one of my most viral videos it's got this video has gotten over a million views I'll put a link to that down below but he for example was able to make pretty good money selling a product under $15 U Brent with seir Pro sold a product over $100 and he was able to do over a million dollars in sales so don't take this as rules brought down from God these are just general things that people that I've seen that have the most success tend to be selling products between $15 and $85 you really want to avoid competitive products as well if there's a ton of people like a can opener here there's so many freaking can openers on Amazon I do not recommend selling another can opener unless you have something very unique a differentiating factor which let's be honest most people people do not most people are trying to sell the same generic products over and over again you also don't want to sell products that don't ship well and this could be products that are heavy or products that might break and here's an example of uh one of my first products a nut butter product and this was my first Passion product and we would sell it in pouches but people kept asking for jars so we decided to sell it in glass jars because I don't want plastic I don't want you know any of that junk or those chemicals and so we sold it in glass jars what would happen the jars would break they would leak there was tons of issues you also want to avoid things like chocolate because or anything that might be meltable because if it melts in the summer that could cause a lot of issues so let's keep going here and another thing you want to avoid is seasonal products so a lot of people think that oh well I'm going to sell Christmas decorations or Halloween decorations or something because they they do the product research which I'll I'm going to be showing you later in this video how to do the product research they do the product research maybe during this That season and they're like wow this is such an amazing opportunity but what they don't realize is that that you're not going to be making money passively all year round in fact you're GNA have to buy a ton of inventory and you might sell out of that inventory uh which could cause issues or you might be stuck might buy let's say you buy 10,000 units and then you only sell 5,000 units well what are you going to do with another 5,000 units you're going to have to pay for storage until the next season now again I've seen people that have had a ton of success selling seasonal products so all these rules are like what I've seen as the best uh the best things what things you should do what things you should avoid but sometimes you can find an exception to the rule and I you know definitely follow that so let's keep going here so we have uh some good products to sell I always recommend selling premium products you don't want to be the cheapest product you want to be the best freaking product on the market because what happens is you get better profit margins and all uh talk later about comparing the profit margins on a premium versus a non-premium product but trust me it doesn't cost that much more money to do powerful branding but you can charge a lot more money and I mean imagine this product right here my my first Passion product performance nut butter versus some generic peanut butter this product looks I was selling this product for $28 for a 10 pack versus peanut butter for the same kind of thing would cost like $7 and that's the power of branding That's The Power of marketing obviously my ingredients were also better but my ingredients didn't cost double triple quadruple what the ingredients for a peanut butter did it was because of the branding so I want you to think about that another thing is you want to be the first one to Market a big mistake a lot of people make is they make uh they they create products that are products that are already existing that are already out there and they try to make a another one of those type of products you don't want to do that you want to be the first one in your category you want to be a category of one I was the first premium paleo keto Nut Butter product on the market uh this product right here cocktail cards was the first cocktail flash cards this sear Pro was the first torch product that it wasn't a small torch you you've probably seen like the small torches for like cream brulee it wasn't a large torch for like burning down uh like I've seen torches where people are burning down like Shrubbery it was a mediumsized torch and it fit a very special need so let's keep going here um some another good examples Evergreen products what are things that people need all season long so fitness equipment could be a little bit I mean fitness equipment people buy more of in January February but more or less all year round people are buying this pet supplies is a great example of this because people always love their pets they're always buying you know things for their pets doesn't matter if it's January February March April May June doesn't really matter people are going to want to buy dog beds um so yeah here's some different good examples of products here's some of my students products that I haven't really talked about yet that'll be talking about later as well some other good examples that I've talked about in my videos these products we'll be going into depth and I'll be sharing these later some different bad examples all right so let's put 5 minutes on the timer and let's see how many products that we can find and the tool that I recommend more than any other tool on this platform is the magnet tool now now before I show you how to use that and before I actually start the timer let me explain really quick what Amazon is and how to actually do product research in in a a much more in-depth way because Amazon is freaking just a search bar people go to Amazon to search for things that they want to buy like energy booster for instance people search this and then they look at all the products that show up these are all the search results and the goal here is if you can get your product to show up at the top of the search results people are most likely to click on it and buy your product and if people are going to be buying your product then you're going to make a lot of money not surprisingly so we need to figure out what things people are searching for in Amazon and also what things people are searching for in Amazon that we could actually show up at the top of the search results and the way to do that is using this magnet tool so let's look at energy booster now the first thing that we're going to do when we look at this is we can see how many people per month are searching for energy booster so over 5 200 people per month are searching exactly energy booster now that's not even including people that are searching for like energy enhancer or other things that are related to that but energy booster alone over 500 people per month are searching for that now what I recommend doing when using this tool is to sort everything by the magnet IQ score this is basically a score of how good of an opportunity helium 10 thinks that these search phrases are and how good of an opportunity these search phrases are for you to make them into into a product and what you can do next is you go down one by one and you look at these so testosterone Cate I don't know what that is it looks like steroids almost but um it is something that there's already people that are being it's already being sold on Amazon I would not recommend it now one trick you can use when looking at this is this title density thing I'm going to be talking about that later in this video this is maybe one of the most powerful features of this product but we'll save that for later and let's go down Tylenol Extra Strength you're not going to sell Tylenol Extra Strength and you're going to go one by one looking at all these and what I recommend doing you can take this down here put it to 150 that way it shows 150 results and earlier I was looking through this and on page two I found something that was kind of interesting and let's go to this product melatonin Vape now I don't know what this is but there are over a thousand people per month searching for this product and what's interesting about this is when we go to Amazon and we search for melatonin Vape there's no products that are like this there is this nasal inhaler natural nasal sleep inhaler but it doesn't say the words melatonin Vape in fact none of these products are melatonin Vapes there's melatonin gummies melatonin drops all these different things and over almost 2,000 people a month are searching exactly for Mel meelin Vape so you have to imagine if you were to sell a melatonin Vape on Amazon you'd be getting a lot of money in sales because not only would people searching for melatone and vape buy your product but people searching for things like sleep Improvement or uh sleep pills sleep all all kinds of different sleep help people would be buying your product I'm going to show you seven different Amazon FBA product techniques and these are all different ways that you can use to find a product to sell on Amazon and let's get into the first technique that I call the keyword method and this method only takes five minutes in fact I'm going to put five minutes on the timer and show you how quickly you can find a great product to sell on Amazon and before I start the timer you need to know that the key to having success on Amazon is to realize that amazon.com is just a search engine and people go to Amazon they type in what they want to buy in the search bar and they hit enter and what they type into the search bar is called their search phrase or their keywords that they're looking for and if you can find out what people are searching for in Amazon you can find out what they're looking to buy on Amazon and if you know what people are trying to buy on Amazon you can sell them that exact product and make a ton of money so this is a huge opportunity but you need to know what type of product you should be selling on Amazon's website and you can find out exactly what product you should be selling on Amazon using this technique I will show you right now let's start the timer and if you're new to the channel my name is Travis and I've created multiple six and seven figure Amazon FBA businesses and smash the like button right now because I'm going to show you exactly the seven different ways that I use to find profitable products to sell on Amazon and if you're having a hard time finding products to sell on Amazon I just launched a product research challenge it's only $1 there's more information about that down below it's 5 hours worth of content I'm going to show you how in 5 days you can find and start your own Amazon FBA product so click the link down below to join but let me show you how to find a product and to use this method to find your first profitable Amazon FBA product you're going to need to use a tool called helium 10 here's a little secret if you actually click on get started today and then scroll all the way down to the bottom you can actually sign up for free now the free plan does have limited features but if you're on a budget this is an option another thing to keep in mind is there is a 7-Day money back guarantee so you can always sign up for this tool and then cancel after you find a product to sell but once once you've signed up you're going to log in and from here you're going to go up to tools now a lot of people make the mistake of going and using blackbox trender or one of these tools because it's under the product research section but here's the real secret if you want to have success on Amazon use this tool down here called the magnet tool this is a keyword research tool this is going to tell you exactly what people are searching for in Amazon but you need to start with an idea you need to type something in here and I recommend typing in something that you're interested interested in and recently I've been reading about the carnivore diet and this seems like a diet that's probably going to start taking off in the next few months so let's type this in and let's see what comes up and you can see down here that over 2,000 people per month are searching in Amazon for carnivore and there are a bunch of filters that we're going to talk about in just a second here that are going to help you to find a product specifically title density is the Hidden Gem if you're looking to find a successful product on Amazon this is something we'll talk about in just a minute but what recommend doing is coming down here and sorting this list by magnet IQ score and the magnet IQ score tells you how good of an opportunity helium 10 thinks that this product is going to be you're then going to go down this list and look at every single keyword phrase until you find a winning product now this first one is butter wart carnivorous plant it's a type of plant that we're probably not going to want to sell on Amazon you then scroll down and look at every single one of these things until you find something that you're going to actually want to sell and I found a product on page two that I think is a really good opportunity we can see that over 400 people per month are searching for carnivore electrolytes and when we go to Amazon and we search for carnivore electrolytes there aren't really any electrolyte powders that are specifically being sold for the carnivore diet there are a lot of generic electrolyte powders but none of them are branded or marketed towards the carnivore diet which means that this has a potential to be a huge huge product in fact you could start with carnivore electrolytes then you could do carnivore ketones and then carnivore snacks and this could turn into a multiple million dooll business easily but the key is starting with that first product that we know people are searching for in Amazon but there's no product like that being sold let me show you another example of how to do this and I actually had a student that did this method and found a product and in his first year did over $500,000 in sales his name is AJ and he lost his job as a bartender during the pandemic he ended up joining my Amazon FBA course and when he told me he was passionate about cocktails we went into helium 10 we went to the magnet tool and we typed in here cocktails we then went one by one and looked at all these things that people were searching in Amazon that were related to cocktails until all the way down here on page two we found that people were searching for cocktail recipe cards we also saw that people were searching for similar things like bartender flashcards bartender recipe cards and what's even better is we went to Amazon searched for this and no products like this existed there were cocktail recipe books but there was no cocktail recipe flashcards so we made this product together and in our first year we did over $500,000 in sales and this is the key if you want to have a lot of success on Amazon you want to find products that do not yet exist and the secret to making this easy to find is this trick right here to use the tial density filter this is so powerful and so easy that later in this video I'm I'm going to show you how I can find four or five products using this feature in just 5 minutes now let me show you the second product research technique and this technique is free you don't have to pay for any tools and it's how I found this $100,000 per month Amazon FBA product but before I show you that method we should talk about what type of products you should sell on Amazon versus what type of products you should not sell and I actually have a complete checklist on what I look for in products that I'm going to be selling on Amazon and let's talk about what not to sell there are four things you definitely do not want to sell on Amazon the first is products that are under $15 you should pretty much never sell a product that is under $15 because if you're selling it for under $15 on Amazon it's hard to make money because there are a lot of different fees you have to pay for the product cost you have to pay for the Amazon FBA selling fee and it costs 15% to sell any product on Amazon you'll also have to pay for the Amazon FBA Pick and Pack fee and when you subtract out all these costs plus all the other business costs you're going to have if your product is under $15 it's going to be very hard to make a profit the second type of product you do not want to sell is a product that's over $85 that's because if a product is over $85 usually people need to do a little bit of research it's not really an Impulse buy and it's not the best type of product to be selling on Amazon I'll share the rest of the list of things you should definitely not sell on Amazon soon but first let me show you how I found this $100,000 per month Amazon FBA product using the second product research technique all you have to do is click on this best sellers link right here and you can see the bestselling products in every single category but what's really interesting to me is this new releases tab these are products that were just recently released on Amazon but are having crazy amount of sales and you can see the product that I showed you earlier in this video and when we click on this product as I mentioned this product is doing over $100,000 in sales now warning be careful you don't want to just take a product that's already selling well and copy it exactly this is called private labeling and in my opinion this way of selling on Amazon is dead what you want to do instead is try to figure out how you can improve a product or make a better product than what exists in fact that's what this product did most swimming goggles look like this and they might leave you with those raccoon eyes but this product fixed that problem so when you're looking at the best sellers or the new releases always think how could I make a better product than this and one key to do that is to look at the one star two star and even three star reviews for a product that is making a lot of sales but now let me show you how I found this $70,000 per month Amazon FBA products using the blackbox tool by helium 10 and best of all it only took 2 minutes so let's start the clock and this is the product research tool that helium 10 has it spits out tons of product ideas for you all you have to do is type in the criteria that you're looking for and one of the first things you want to think about when selling on Amazon is what category do you want to sell in and not all categories are created equal there are some categories you should absolutely avoid for instance I always recommend avoiding Electronics if you're a beginner Amazon seller because this can get very complicated very fast however let's go through this list and I'll tell you which products I do recommend also I'd avoid most appliances because a lot of appliances are Electronic Arts crafts and sewing maybe Automotive maybe baby products is an amazing category to sell in Beauty and personal care another great category camera and photo sometimes CDs and vinyl and books I would avoid cell phone and accessories is another good category to sell in clothing shoes and jewelry is okay Grocery and gourmet food although this can be tough as a beginner my first Passion product was in this category and it's sold really well you can also look at the health and household the kitchen and dining the home and kitchen Office Products patio lawn and garden pet supplies Sports and Outdoors tool Tools in Home Improvement and toys in games then you're going to tell this tool what the price of the product that you're going to be selling is going to be as I mentioned minimum you want your product to be priced at $15 and maximum around $85 you can also specify how much money you're looking to make every single month and let's say $5,000 and for fun let's put this as a Max at $80,000 remember your first Amazon FBA product you don't need to be making $80,000 $100,000 every single month you can always start with a smaller product that's maybe maybe only making you a couple thousand and then repeat that process and sell more and more Amazon products when using this tool you can also specify the review rating of your competition and let's say a Max of 3.5 meaning that if a product has a review of above 3.5 stars on average helium 10 won't show it to us and this is because if we can find products that have really poor reviews but a lot of sales it might be a great opportunity for us to make a better product than our competitors after you've entered all this in you can click on search before I show you the results and how I found this $70,000 per month Amazon FBA product I'm going to share with you the rest of the list of things that you should avoid selling on Amazon and the third type of product you should avoid selling on Amazon is products that have a ton of competition there's over 4,000 new Amazon sellers joining amazon.com to sell their products every single day on top of that there's over 9 million total Amazon sellers now to be fair of those 9 million sellers only around 2 million sellers are in the United States and only around 1 million active Amazon sellers in the United States and as I mentioned earlier over 43% of all Amazon sellers have made $100,000 so I don't want you to think that the opportunity to sell on Amazon is dead but I do want you to be aware that most those 1 million Amazon sellers aren't doing a very good job they're selling generic boring private label products and I don't want you to do that if all you do is take an existing product slap your own brand on it and put it on Amazon you're going to fail you need to somehow try to improve the product even if that just means making really strong powerful branding I do want to let you guys know about a $10,000 Amazon FBA mistake that I made and it's the fourth type of product you should never sell on Amazon and that is anything that doesn't ship well when I was selling P&B on Amazon I wanted to start selling it in jars because a lot of people were asking for it in jars and I didn't want to do plastic jars I obviously wanted to do glass jars except for glass jars do not not ship very well we had a ton of products that were leaking we had a ton of products that broke and we ended up having to throw away half of our production run which was over $10,000 worth of inventory now the good thing is because I did sell the first half of the production run I ended up breaking even on this and and that's a big point that I want to make is that when you're selling a product on Amazon a lot of people are afraid that they're going to lose money and usually that's not going to happen usually at a minimum you're going to break even even if you make a giant mistake and have to throw away half your inventory you also want to avoid items that are really large and are going to be expensive to ship or anything that's meltable like chocolate bars now there are four products you do want to sell on Amazon and I'm going to share all four of these products with you after I share with you this $70,000 per month product I found using blackbox right now after You' filled out all the information in blackbox that I just showed you how to do you're going to hit search and this tool is going to show you a bunch of different products that meet your exact criteria including products that are making over $70,000 a month and and don't have any reviews this is a crazy opportunity but you're going to go through one by one and look at all these products until you find an opportunity that's something that you're actually interested in and on page two I found this product and it's doing over $70,000 a month in sales and it has a 3.2 star average which is not very good which means if this product is getting so many sales if we can create a competitor product that's actually good we can steal all their sales so let's click on this listing and let's go down to the one two and three star reviews and see why people are complaining so the first complaint is that they put a UPC code over the instructions and that even a razor blade couldn't get it off so that's an easy fix we can make a better product than this another person said that it wasn't covering their gray hairs which seems like the whole point of this product another thing that we can easily do to fix the next product research method I'm going to show you was used to find a million dooll Amazon product this product did over $1 million in sales last year but let me show you this product right here that last year did over a million dollars in sales and this product was created by Brent who's a student in my Amazon FBA program and he created this product while he had a job as a full-time first responder helicopter pilot and he was a father to two beautiful children so he was doing this on the side but still in his first year he did over $700,000 in sales and in his second year last year he did over a million dollars in sales so let me show you how he found this product and how you can find find your own product and there's a tool on helium 10 called The cerebro Tool and this is another powerful tool that you can use to find a profitable product to sell on Amazon and the way this tool works is you put in an Asin in the search bar and it'll tell you what things people are searching for in Amazon in order to buy this product and as for those that don't know stands for Amazon standard identification number and every product on Amazon has its own unique as number and to find that we can go to the product page and we can go to the URL and it's this information right here and you can copy that and take it and paste it into the search bar if you have a hard time finding the as number just go down to the bottom here and you can see as and it's this information here so we go back here we're going to click on get keywords and there are a lot of different filtering options here that you can use to filter out what results are being shown to you but for now we're just going to look at what we have here and let's sort this by the magnet IQ score to start and we can see things like weed burner torch has a search volume of over 7,000 tiki torch canister over 6,000 butane torch gun over 5,000 now I'm not saying all these are going to be good products you're going to want to go one by one and look at what products are already being sold on Amazon but using a technique similar to this Brent was able to find this product that did over a million in sales last year and what's cool about this tool is it's going to tell you exactly how many sales this product is getting from all these different search phrases now I want to show you a free product research method that helped me to find this $300,000 per month Amazon FBA product I also used it to find this $40,000 per month Amazon FBA product and the way this works is you go to amazon.com and you start to type something and Amazon will autocomplete whatever you're going to say and at the top is going to be the most searched thing followed by the second most searched thing third most search thing that starts with the letter a and all I did is I went to the search bar and I typed the letter b and then a saw what was there nothing was that interesting to me I did B nothing was that interesting C D and when I typed E I saw something that I've never seen before berberine I don't know what berberine is so I clicked on it to try to learn a little bit more and up came all these products and this product right here caught my eye because it's exactly what we were talking about it's a premium product you look at all these other ones The Branding is pretty terrible but this product looks premium so I clicked on it and I used this extension from Helium 10 to see how much per month this product is doing and if I click on the X-ray tool it's going to tell me exactly per month how much this product is doing in sales and it says that this product has a revenue of over $300,000 per month in sales but what's interesting about this is this branding doesn't really hit the target market this is super premium but I'm wondering if you could do branding that's premium but that hits the target market which I did some research on what berberine is and it's something to help with blood sugar so my guess is that the target Market's going to be older individuals that maybe have some health issues and I think there's a way to do premium branding that's a little bit more niched down but I want you to take a look at something here this product is being sold for $29 and down here there's this product that's being sold for $2 now let's compare these two products and this perfectly illustrates why you should sell a premium product the premium product is being sold for almost $30 while the cheap knockoff looking product is being sold for $20 even though the cheap product has a 120 capsules at 1,000 milligrams and the premium product only has 90 capsules at 500 Mig so with that in mind when we look at the cost these two products probably cost pretty close to the same amount of money to manufacture the products and when selling on Amazon there is that referral fee no matter what product you're selling on Amazon you have to pay 15% of the total price that you're selling the product four so for the premium product that's a little over $4 and for the knockoff product that's around $3 the other cost when selling on Amazon is that Amazon FBA Pick and Pack fee again that's the fee every time you sell an item that you have to pay to Amazon to pick pack and ship your product out and since these two products are roughly the same size and weight they're both going to be charged around $4 for the Pick and Pack fee which means in total this product has a profit of $15 and this product has a profit of $7 which means that the premium product has double the profit margins and that they can spend way more money on marketing on branding and getting sales for their product than the cheap knockoff product can on top of that if a cheaper product comes along and undercuts this product they're probably going to lose all their sales and it's going to ultimately be a race to the bottom to see who can lower their price until neither one of these companies are making a profit but the category of berberine supplements seems to be relatively crowded and it may not be a good idea to do another supplement so you can use the search bar product research method and start typing things to see what it autocompletes to and I typed berberine G and I saw berberine gummies and I thought that was interesting so I clicked on it and what's amazing is the results out of all the products that were listed here only one product is actually berberine gummies and The Branding in the marketing is pretty terrible but let's click on it and let's see how much money per month this product is making so I go back to the helium 10 extension and I click on the X-ray tool and I can see that this product is doing over $40,000 per month in sales even though they have pretty terrible branding which means that if you come in as a premium product you can probably steal a lot of their sales which leads me to the four types of products you should be selling on Amazon and the first type of product is a premium product and my first ever passion product that I sold on Amazon has done over a million dollars in sales and the reason it was able to make so much money is because because it was a premium product and within 2 months of launching this product on Amazon I was making over $30,000 in Revenue every single month that's over $10,000 in profit and by the end of my first year I'd made over $100,000 in profit and this was relatively passive income and the reason I was able to make so much money and not really have to work that much is because my product was a premium product it wasn't the cheapest product on the market in fact it was probably the most expensive product on the market and there are some people that go to Amazon that want to buy the cheapest thing but there are a percentage of customers that want to buy the best most premium product and if you sell that product you can charge a lot more than the competition my product was priced at almost $28 where some of my competitors were only $6 which means even if I'm paying more money for my product When You Subtract out all the cost I'm going to have way more profit than my competitors which means I can spend more money on marketing the other thing you want to consider when selling a product on Amazon is are you the first and if you can't be the first product can you be the first premium product and I was the first premium keto paleo vegan Nut Butter product on Amazon and what's crazy about this is even when you start to get competitors they end up spending money on marketing and they grow the entire pie meaning that you're not making 100% of the money in that space But because there's more customers coming to buy the product and since you were the first one on Amazon you're going to have more more reviews and people are more likely to buy your product which ultimately means more money for you and in my second year selling this product ever on Amazon I did over $400,000 in sales over $150,000 in profit even though I was spending my time traveling and enjoying my life I wasn't actually actively working on this business but because all these competitors came into the space and they grew the entire pie I continue to make more and more money but let me show you these two free product research tools that almost nobody talks about and they're extremely powerful the first one is Google Trends and this is going to let you know that if the product you're looking to start selling is trending upwards or trending downwards and let's take a look at berberine and this shows how often people are searching for berberine in Google and you can see that this product recently shot up in popularity now we do want to be careful because this might have been a trend that is dying now but it also might be a trend that's about to continue to grow and since this is a term that seems like it is growing over time we can use this second tool which is the Google Keyword research tool also known as the Keyword Planner and since we know that we're interested in berberin we can click on discover new keywords and type in berber and it will spit out a bunch of related keywords that it thinks that we might be interested in and while searching I came across this phrase berberine tea benefits which means a lot of people are searching for berberine tea in fact 170 people per month are searching this exact phrase berberine tea benefits so I went over to helium 10 to see how many people are searching for berberine te in Amazon because the key thing with this is this will show you how many people per month are searching for something in Google but just because they're searching for it in Google doesn't necessarily mean they're searching for it on Amazon and that's what we care about because people that are searching for this in Amazon are the ones that are likely to buy and we can see that over a th000 people per month are searching for berberine tea but what's crazy about this is when we go to Amazon and we search for berberine tea there are no products that show up there is no berberine tea there's a lot of berberine supplements but zero berberine tea products being sold which means that this is a golden opportunity and I think this product at a minimum could be doing $10,000 per month in sales and I think it's a very beginner friendly product now let's talk about the two other types of products you should sell and you should sell this not this most trees that look like this lose all their leaves during the winter on the other hand an evergreen tree even during winter keeps all of its leaves it keeps staying beautiful and keeps making all that juicy juicy chlorophyll now your business does not want to make chlorophyll or glucose it wants to make money and you want to make sure that your business is making you money all year round a huge mistake that a lot of people make is they try to sell seasonal products they try to sell maybe Christmas decorations and what happens is is you end up spending way too much money on inventory and you may either sell out of your inventory too early and miss out on a bunch of sales or you might end up buying too much inventory not selling all of it and having to pay a ton of money in storage either way seasonal products are something I would definitely not recommend you do however want to sell the fourth type of product and this is the most important thing in my 10 years of Entrepreneurship this one idea is the most powerful idea I've ever found and that's that you should sell a passion product a passion product combines everything we've been talking about in this video and ideally if you're going to be selling a product you're going to want to sell something that you're actually interested in that you're actually passionate about it's going to make every part of this process easier and when I first quit my corporate job I started selling dance clothing on Amazon and that was hard it was a drag I didn't understand the product I didn't understand the customer and it wasn't until I started selling a passion product that I started having having a ton of [Music] success it's the trend report 2023 there's a lot of different Trend reports I'll be talking about this is one of my favorite ones and they talk about how we're entering a new world of chaos a new era of chaos and how you can profit from this and I know that sounds maybe a little bit bad but how you can help people go and cope through this New Era of chaos and in going through this report there was a number of different things that I thought you might be able to use to make some brilliant products and one of the first pages I want to point out is you want to be thinking how could your brand make its customers lives easier we're having some of the most chaotic uh experiences as humans obviously things are really great there's a lot of amazing things but at the same time people's things are changing more rapidly than ever before we have ai we have social media we have polarity in political parties there's a lot going on right now and you want to be asking yourself how can you make people's lives easier and better another thing that I saw here on page 49 that I thought was interesting is how could your brand better support its customers in their goals we are a nation of individuals we are a world of individuals that are starting to have more goals or try starting to have more ambition and how can your product specifically help people now maybe you're selling a a healthy food product or a supplement and you can make it so people feel better maybe you're selling sports equipment we'll we'll talk about that actually in just a second here and maybe the sports equipment is getting them exercised so think how you're actually helping your customers and on page 65 another question to be asking is how could your brand better adapt to the push for inclusion this is a big thing that I'm seeing is that people of all sizes shapes colors whatever it is we're we're starting to and rightfully so incorporate them more into our branding into our products into our world and one of the things we'll be talking about is and I actually have it in my PowerPoint here is sports how can you create products like this spikeball set I love spikeball that's a little bit more inclusive how people love playing games people love playing sports but not everyone's extremely athletic how can you get people to move around have fun play games even if maybe they're not as athletic or maybe you know other different issues and this is going to be a trend that we talk a lot about is disabilities or people with different issues there's a lot more of a push towards mental health and awareness that not everybody is built the same and inclusion this is what we're talking about here uh some other products that were that are going to be really big is climate pledge products so this is things that help to offset some of the carbon that's being released and we'll we'll talk about that in the Trend report here so let me go to one of the next ideas now let me show you an amazing way that you can use to find profitable Trends where you could take these Trends and you could make products with them and make money selling on Amazon this is where we start to actually get into real products that could make you some monies vegan lunch so kids lunch foods and snacks are offered in vegan formats and the push there's a big push towards plant-based health and now you could argue whether or not this is healthier for the individual but a lot of people do believe that and there is some truth to I I don't know I'm not a I'm not a dietitian all I know is that this is a trend more people are buying vegan and plant-based products and there is also some aspects to this where it's it turns into a healthier world people want to support a healthier world and obviously a lot of people the reason they'll go vegan is because it's more friendly to the environment so that's something to consider but on the other end of the spectrum if maybe you're not big on the vegan trend is nose to tail eating in the past and maybe still for a lot of people we only eat certain parts of the animal even though almost all of an animal is edible you can make a lot of money by selling parts of the animal that before people maybe would turn their nose up on they they weren't likely to want to eat but a lot of these parts think of liver liver is something that a lot of Americans do not eat but it's actually extremely healthy for you same thing kidney organ Meats all these different parts of the animal that before we throw away or turn into cheap cuts are actually relatively premium items and think about maybe you could do something with that whether it's a food item or some other type of product can you use the parts of the animal that before we were being wasteful and throwing away and this could actually help reduce climate change as well and that's going to be a big uh theme throughout this so let's go into the next one this microalgae meat this is something that's interesting it may be hard for the typical person to create a product out of this but could you create a a jerky that's a microalgae jerky another trend is this idea of Eco sweeteners and a lot of people like sweeteners in their products but sugar is probably not the healthiest thing for us so this is another thing that this trend report is talking about sustainable bar and you can see with this next product sustainable bar that there is a trend towards more sustainable products and people still are going to be drinking alcohol although the trends do suggest they'll be drinking less alcohol but they want more sustain aable more craft type Beverages and even though I don't really recommend selling alcohol per se but maybe you can sell bamboo glasses or maybe you could sell uh bitters or different mixes that go into the cocktails that could make it more sustainable more premium more eco-friendly and if we keep going down this list carbon neutral cooking this is actually a key one and we're going to talk about this one later so this trend of carbon neutral cooking actually extends to a lot of different things I'm going to show you an example later of how you can use this idea of carbon neutral and basically what this means for anyone that doesn't know is that they're going to offset whatever pollution they might create they're going to plant trees they're going to do things that offsets that in some way now affordable vegan also related you're seeing a pattern here uh people want to eat vegan or plant-based but it can get relatively expensive so think about how can you make it a little bit easier a little bit more affordable for people to do it while still creating a premium product my mic greens is another Trend that I see and it's micro greens for anyone that doesn't know they're they're becoming more popular uh with consumers and a lot of consumers are even growing them at home so this might be something where you could sell a micro greens growing kit or a micro greens bar a micro greens drink mix a lot of different options here and as we go through this different Trend report it starts to get some of these things aren't necessarily perfect for Amazon products so I'm going to scroll down to 152 here and in this section it talks about fashion and Trends and longwear tint tinted Cosmetics pro products promise long lasting formula so people don't want to have to put on makeup every single day maybe they can put it on once a week things like that adaptive shapewear is another example where this is kind of going to that idea of more inclusive Trends I think in the past we'd see the Victoria Secret models and we think that's what you know everybody needs to look like but what this is saying is like can can your shapewear adapt to you can it enhance your natural beauty waterless skinc care this is something interesting that I don't know a lot about but this is another one of those trends that you might want to be aware of and you might want to start thinking a little bit about anti-pollution toner again we're seeing another Trend here people are thinking a little bit more holistically about the Earth in the past toners you'd wash it off your face it'd go down the drain it would be polluting but how can we make a more green a more friendly thing like that body blurring is something that's it's kind of to me this seems kind of like Photoshop in real life it helps to get rid of some of the different issues you might have on your body that you might be uh worried about bamboo apparel again the trend we're seeing here is sustainable things that are going to be helping the world and let's go down to 172 and let's talk about health and wellness and focused mood boosting so if you think about like your typical genen Z person and what they care about well they care about mental health they care about the world and as gen Z gets older and Millennials are also taking on a lot of this and it kind of trickles upwards in a lot of ways where the older Generations are starting to become more aware of how some of our consumerist Tendencies actually might have a negative effect but how but people still want to buy things people still want to purchase things that will improve their life especially during these chaotic times so with all this stuff in mind all these Trends let's talk about the idea generator and the way the idea generator works is you're going to write down everything you interact with today this would be an example day for me of everything I interact with and let's say I sit in a meditation chair I do I have this 5minute journal that I do I have a small notebook where I write down all my to-dos I have a clipboard that I use I have like weekly to-dos this is actually old I don't do this exactly anymore I drink tea so this is something that is interesting I drink tea pretty much every morning I have a hot water tea maker I usually use a French press I have a mug that I'll drink out of so again a travel mug I I have a travel mug and a regular mug take a shower uh shower affirmations I'll say certain things while I'm in the shower just to well I I don't do this as much anymore but in the past I would say I have a list of things that I would say basically saying like hey I'm smart I'm hardworking I'm successful um and this served a couple different purposes but one is for me to really internalize that and feel it like wow yeah I am smart I'm hardworking I am successful I would sometimes even talk about some of my accomplishment ments just to remind myself like when I'm feeling low that like well I have done a lot I'm a very capable individual and in the past before I would also read out my goals I'd have a list of what my goals are and I would read it and the reason I would do this in the shower is because every day I take a shower and so when I'm in there it's a trigger it's a cue for me to do this I eat breakfast in the morning I have breakfast food um so this again is something that we'll we'll talk about how to turn all these into ideas go on the computer I interact with a mouse a microphone a keyboard I go play basketball I have basketball shoes athletic socks athletic clothing in general I have a ghee because I'll do Jiu-Jitsu I eat lunch food I eat uh what is this say plates oh yeah because I'm I'm eating food off of plates cooking utensils Tupperware self-help book I'll read a self-help book I'll watch TV I I'll be looking through uh I was reading a cocktail book when I was talking about this learning how to make Cocktails so let me show you an example of how to use this information you can pick any one of these and go down the list so first off what would make this item a five out of five star experience so for T let's say five out of five star experience would be something like I love the taste it makes me feel great after I drink it uh and I can keep going on more and more details uh it's a premium experience where I feel like I'm treating myself and it's a great way to start today so basically what I'm doing here is I'm going through and I'm trying to think how could I make the tea that I'm drinking every morning better what what would make the next question here is what would make me pay double for this okay this is a great this starts to make you think how to make this premium if I knew everything was organic if it tasted better if it made me feel better if I felt like I was supporting small farms or individual tea Farmers so has I'm actually doing this I have an idea for a Tea Company where we have pictures of the tea Farmers on the box and it's like a smiling tea farmer from Indonesia or wherever the tea is made and and in that way like and maybe every time we do a production run it's a new person and we say that hey we're giving a certain percentage of the proceeds to these Farmers what would make me want to tell my friends about that actually yeah if some money went to Farmers or small like guess small farmers or individuals because then that starts to be a story it's like wow when you drink this tea you can feel feel good about yourself because you're helping out the world in general another thing that might make me want to tell my friends about that if if I felt really good afterwards or if it tasted great so what is my biggest pain point and how can I solve it so with t my biggest pain point is I don't always love the flavor I don't know if I don't know if it's organic or or healthy for that matter and for everyone watching this you can make a copy by going file make a copy and I'm not you can't edit the actual the original one itself but so what you can do is you can go down the list for every single item that you interact with and ask yourself and this is what I'm trying to do is to get you to tune your brain into thinking how to make products that are better than what already exists out there and so you know same thing with a French press what would make a French press better what would make uh a basketball a better basketball and I have a friend that's selling a vegan basketball and this ties back into those trends that we were talking about earlier so next up is the activities list let's look at activities what do I do I meditate I plan the day I I I give gratitude I have like a three-minute thing where I'm like thank I I say thank you to the universe to whatever higher power for all the different things that are going well in my life uh basketball Jiu-Jitsu lunch board games all of these things and I could go down the list with this and instead of asking the questions I did in the last one they're slightly different questions what is my biggest pain point with this activity and how could I solve it so meditation my biggest pain point is my chair is not that that comfortable so I could make a better chair for meditation what would make me want to tell my friends about this experience if it was a premium chair that supported small manufacturing or went to a good cause and I could I could think of a chair where as you're meditating you feel good about it because you know that you're sitting on something that was made by a a person in a underdeveloped country and by buying that chair by sitting on this chair you're supporting them and then I want to tell my friends like hey there's this really cool company that makes meditation pillows or meditation chairs uh meditation pillows that's another example instead of a chair you can do a meditation pillow and again maybe it comes with some kind of like a print out saying hey your chair was created in a factory in blah blah blah not a factory maybe like in a small village or something like that so and that's a super premium product what item invention or idea would make this a five out of five star experience I'd say a chair a pillow or cushion to sit on maybe a timer maybe there's some kind of a a meditation timer that has like a special gong or helps you somehow get into the flow so again you can do this with all the different activities here so for gratitude maybe I my biggest pain point with this is sometimes I don't know what to be grateful for and so maybe having some kind of a gratitude journal or instead of um maybe it it gives you prompts like hey what is something that you took for granted today that worked really well or what was something that happened yesterday that you expected to do well or you expected to happen so for instance here's an example I clicked on an a button and an elevator door opened and it worked I didn't have to worry about like oh my God am I going to die like everything works smoothly I turned on my computer and it worked and so with gratitude you could do the same thing shower how could I make a shower better well I actually talked a little bit about this in the last example here is maybe I could have something that I place on the wall in front of me where it's like a whiteboard where I write down my goals or affirmations we can just go down this list Jiu-Jitsu uh I'm learning Jiu-Jitsu and Jiu-Jitsu flashcards to help me learn Jiu-Jitsu so every cooking um I mean drinking wine we have wine flashcards as well there's there's so many different examples here board games maybe I could create a new board game my problem with current board games is maybe it's very competitive and I want to have a board game that's a little bit more fun and light-hearted and good for connecting and then the last one I have here is what are you interested in and what we can do and throughout this as you're coming up with your own ideas anytime you have a product idea I'd recommend listing it here so I could go back uh what ideas have I had so far so far I've had te that supports Farmers tea that makes you feel good slash makes you feel like you're treating yourself could do something like uh the cushion for for meditation chair for meditation Jitsu flash cards I keep going on like there's a lot of things that I already thought of now I'm not saying all these are going to be winners we'll talk about later in this video how to figure out which which of these products will actually be winners but uh things that I'm interested in I talked about this before the carnivore diet so right here now that we know you know the carnivore diet is something and I showed this in a recent video I did but let me show you how you can take that kind of an interest plug it into helium 10 and just start coming up with ideas go to tools and then magnet tool just going to put it in the magnet tool here click get keywords I recommend again for title density putting zero zero and clicking apply filters and then going down here and going to the magnet IQ score putting it in order and just start going through this list and start looking one by one carnivore flower that's an interesting one let's look at this yeah it's flour made out of meat and this product is pretty terrible branding let's look at this chicken flour let's look at how much money this product is making it's the only uh product on the market that's like this and this product right here is making $111,000 every single month just the chicken there's also beef flour pork flour all these different types of flowers so think about how you can take your interest plug it in this tool and see what people that have similar interest to you see what they're buying on Amazon already if you're still stuck and maybe you don't know what you're interested in and you want an even more in-depth way to find products I have this Amazon full category list and this is a list of every single category on on Amazon and you can find these categories if you go to amazon.com click on the best sellers tab here and these are all the categories over on this side you can see health and household if you click on health and household there's subcategories among subcategories and as you click on the subcategories all of them are listed here there's over 20,000 different subcategories which is a lot so what I recommend doing and there's filters at the top here I recommend going through in unchecking everything that you're not interested in selling and I already started doing this in the sample here so I unchecked all I I I only checked a few of them Beauty and personal care that sounded a little bit interesting Grocery and gourmet food that's an interesting category health and household home and kitchen Office Products patio lawn and garden pet supplies Sports and Outdoors I unlicked appliances I don't want to sell an appliance that's a lot of money it's hard it's technical Arts crafts and sewing not something I'm super interested in Automotive ah they're they're if you're really interested in automotive obviously you know click on that baby products I'm not interested in that product books CD and vinyl cell phones and accessories clothing shoes jewelry Electronics industrial and scientific movies and TV musical instruments all these things are things that I'm not interested in and as we go down this list and we start unchecking things the list is going to get smaller then we can go to the next subcategory and you can see here uh I I kept the check marks on some things but I uncheck things like makeup I'm not that interested in makeup I unchecked Meat and seafood ironing products household cleaning supplies a lot of different things that I know I'm it's a categories that I'm not interested in and I I didn't uncheck everything here but you can slowly start going down category by category and narrowing down and sharing what you're interested in then um as you start to get more specific you can go through this list and put down between one to five how interested you are if you're not interested at all just leave it blank I think it's easier and you could write down some notes so I did find something that I thought was interesting so when you do find a category that you're interested in so Beauty and personal care skin care products body skin care products body cleansers bath and soap when you find something you're like all right that's something I'm you know a little bit interested in maybe it's something I could sell you're going to go to this best sellers tab go into the category so this is Beauty and personal care next up we had skin care products body then it was cleansers and then it was soaps so now as I'm looking at these soaps there's a lot of products here let's see how much some of these products are making so this Dr Squatch men's soap bar gift set this is a very Niche down product this is exactly what I'm talking about here let's see how much money per month this product is making now as a guy this is probably the type of product I would have made this this product's only existed for I don't know five 10 years and so if I would have look at this almost $900,000 every single month and that's the power of niching remember the riches are in the niches so how could we using the information that we learned from the trends report how can we create a product that's niched down that's going to be a premium product that's perfect well the idea I came up with is a vegan carbon neutral product something that every time you use it you feel good about yourself you're like you're washing your body and you're like I'm helping to make the world a better place and this is something that I think would end up doing really well and you can see there's not really anything that markets itself heavily as good for the environment good for your skin uh something that you know hippie hippies would use there is Dr Bronner but even Dr Bronner I don't think it's not carbon neutral it's not it doesn't The Branding and the packaging is a little bit outdated in my opinion so what you can do is you can go down this list and start looking at all the things that you might be interested in there's about 7,000 different options that I've narrowed it down to I could continue to to narrow it down further and further and further CU a lot of these things I'm not that interested in but you start to get ideas of products that you might want to sell another thing that you could do and let's go here let's look at the see let's look at the second bestselling product here we can take this product we can go down we can get the Asin and remember Amazon standard identification number we're going to take this product we're going to go over into helium 10 and we're going to figure out what people are searching for in Amazon to buy this product using the cerebro tool so we're going to go to tools and we're going to go to cerebro we're going to paste that in there and get the keywords we're then going to go to title density let's put z z as well and this is just going to make it so whatever search phrases come up have as little competition as possible we're going to go here we're going to go to cerebro IQ score and start going down this list now we we want to avoid any phrases that has the brand name in it so Ivory Dove these all sound like brand names so far that's okay we just keep going until we find a good option so one product that we found here is baby dish soap let's click on that there are some competitors let's see how much this product is making in sales every single month and so this is bottle and dish soap dish liquid plant-based hypergenic their their listing could use a little bit of um more work what's interesting is it they actually don't have the phrase baby dish soap located in the title even though baby dish soap gets a search volume of around 10,000 per month so if we made a product that was literally called Baby dish soap maybe it had baby dish soap really big on it we might be able to steal some of their sales and let's look here and I think they're really the only competitor well I'm going to do a double check in a second here but let's see how much money they're making and this product is making hundreds of thousands of dollars every single month and when we go back here baby ganx and dapple baby they're really the there's okay okay there might be one or two other ones but there's really not a lot of good competition and I think this branding isn't the best so this is a product that we could potentially make if you were passionate about babies and baby health and you wanted to make a better product then you could again make it carbon neutral make it vegan I don't none of these talk about vegan even though they maybe are they're not really adding to that and you could you could create a whole social media account you could create branding around this you could create all kinds of different marketing around this idea if you're still unsure about what you want to sell use this look at all the different categories and then go to Amazon look at the bestselling products in those categories you can put it into helium 10 or you could just start using your own brain on how you could make a better product like I did with the the soap bar that's carbon neutral I just looked and I saw that this was something that I know I could make a better more branded more Niche down product than what is out there so this starts to turn your brain into an idea making machine and after all of that if you're still unsure about what your passions are what you want to sell here's a couple other ideas that you can do one download all your credit card history look at where you spend money more so than maybe other people do so for instance for me I've actually been spending a lot of money on this studio on my business on working uh in in creating a really amazing YouTube channel and so I could start thinking what products do I wish existed for Content creators and maybe it's a a certain type of tripod in fact I had an idea or a camera I don't want to create a camera but I had an idea for a camera that films both in horizontal and vertical that way I don't have to do two separate filming and there's things like that where you can start looking at your own life so credit card history the other thing is look at your Amazon browse history start looking on Amazon for products that you would buy if you had more money because a lot of people I know or or maybe you're not cheap but I know a lot of people maybe if they had more money they would buy products uh that they aren't buying and so start thinking about cuz remember there's a lot of people out there that are willing to spend money on things that maybe you're not yet that's actually with my first Passion product performance Nut Butter I don't know if I would have paid $28 a box for the nut butter but I knew that there was people out there that would so other things that you can do is also look at your Google browse history to see what things are you interested in what podcasts do you listen to and start thinking about all the different categories of products that you could sell in and that is a quick guide on how to find a product to sell on Amazon but I go into way more detail on how to find a profitable product in my Amazon FBA program the passion product formula link down below and another key part of this program is when you join you get access to live weekly Q&A calls with either myself or one of my coaches so if you ever have a question you can ask either myself or the coach that's on the call and this is really helpful because a lot of people get stuck they're like should I sell this product or should I sell this product and in the live weekly Q&A call we answer that when you you join you also get access to a Facebook Mastermind that's only available to students of the program so there's a link down below if you want to join that but one of the big questions I get from students is how do I guarantee that my product's going to sell and that's what we're going to talk about right now and here's a secret you can actually find out how much any product on Amazon is making per month and the way to do this is to go to the product that you want to know how much money this product is making scroll down to the bestselling rank number cop Cy that and paste it in the free jungle Scout sales estimator you'll then choose what Marketplace you're looking at and what category the product you're looking at is in and then you'll hit enter and this will tell you how many units per month that product is making if you then multiply it by the cost of the product you'll know exactly how much in Revenue that product is making every single month another way to find out how much a product is selling per month is to go to the product add 999 of them to your shopping cart Amazon will then tell you how many units of that product are actually in stock come back the next day at the same time and do the same thing and then look at the difference between the two values if you do this for a couple days in a row you'll see the difference and that is about how many units per day that that product is selling again multiply that by the cost of the product and you'll know in Revenue how much that product is making every single day the problem with both of these methods is it takes time it takes energy and you have to find products that are already being sold on Amazon so you can figure out what the sales numbers are and don't skimp on the research when you're finding your product you want to make sure you validate your product and Edgar who I've had on the channel before he didn't properly research parts of his product ended up launching a product that had non premium packaging which was a mistake that ended up costing him around $110,000 but another key part of when you're designing a product is to be thinking about The Branding because if you create premium branding it's going to make it so that you'll have more profit because you can charge more money for your product even though it's not going to cost you that much money and that's what we're going to talk about right now but once you have a product idea something that you want to sell on Amazon it's time to start creating a brand around this product and this is an extremely important step that a lot of people skip over and the reason you want to create a brand is it means you're going to make more money for example look at these two products this product right here can sell for double the price of this product because it has a strong brand and it seems like a premium product even though both these productss cost the same to manufacturer which means every time this product gets a sale it's actually getting triple the profit of this product even though it's only double the price on top of that you want to have a strong brand for your company because you're going to have a higher lifetime value for your customer your customer is going to come back again and again and buy your product they're also much more likely to recommend it to their friends and ultimately having a brand is the thing that's going to differentiate you from the competition and to create a brand the two things that you're going to need to do is to create a logo and to create cool package design and out of these two in my opinion the logo is the most important one because it sets the tone for all the rest of your branding your package design social media everything else that you're going to do and this is one of the most common questions my students have is how do I get a really good logo for my product should I go to Fiverr 99 design should I hire a friend or is there some other option so I'm going to show you how to create a logo for your brand and I hired five different designers at five different price points starting at $10 going all the way up to $900 and I used different platforms Fiverr upwork onlinejobs.ph I also hired a friend referral and I used 99 designs all at these different price points so you can see examples of what you'll get if you use these different platforms at these different price points approximately so I gave all the designers the exact same instructions and I got very different results and I'll share what the instructions were in just a minute let's get started with the first logo that I paid $10 for from the website Fiverr and this logo is terrible with logo design it's true that you get what you pay for and fiverr.com is a cheap place that you can go to to get logos made and there are some designers on this platform that are absolutely amazing but for the purposes of this video I went with the cheapest designer I could find on fiverr.com and throughout this video as we move up our price point for logo design we're also going to try out different platforms to help you decide which platform you should use to find a designer including Fiverr upwork onlinejobs.ph friend refer referral and 99 designs but before we get into that here's the description of the logo I wanted I told the designer I want to get a logo for my Amazon FBA course the passion product formula this is a program where I teach people how to create a product that they're passionate about I then teach them how they can manufacture this product and sell it on Amazon to make over $100,000 per year passive income I also tell the designers that they can learn more about my program by going to my website passion product formula.com and that I'd like the logo to be inspiring and ideally include the idea of formula or passion if possible I also told the designers that I'd like orange blue or red to be incorporated in the logo I posted this description on Fiverr and I had around 50 different designers submit their bid for my project and if you are going to go with a website like Fiverr I highly recommend looking at every single designer and looking at their portfolio of work I did not do that for this video I picked the person whose title said I will make all kind of logo so that definitely should have been a red flag but I wanted to see what kind of a logo you can get for cheap and it turns out it's not very good there are a lot of great designers on Fiverr and if you look through all the portfolios sometimes you can find a great designer at a reduced price with this website next up for $50 I got this logo made from upwork.com and already you can see that this logo is a lot better than the $10 logo and yes it's five times the price but the $10 logo isn't really something that I could use especially for a premium Amazon FBA course that I'm I'm trying to show that this is a high quality program so at $50 this isn't bad but it's still not quite what I want the same thing I mentioned about Fiverr applies to upwork you can find a really amazing designer at a discount but you're going to have to put in the work to sort through all the different portfolios and really search for that perfect designer for you but next up for $100 I had all these logos done and this next website is my favorite website for finding a virtual assistant you can find someone that will work fulltime just for you for around $3 to $5 per hour and it's called onlinejobs.ph and hiring my first virtual assistant using this website completely changed my life think about all the extra work that you're doing that you don't really need to do that someone else could do for you well if you could hire someone for $3 to $5 an hour to do all that work I bet you probably would and I did an hourlong tutorial video showing you how you could hire your first virtual assistant I'll link that video up here and you can hire workers in the Philippines to do just about anything for you for instance all my video editing is done by a team of video editors that I hired from this website I've also hired people to run my social media respond to frequently asked questions or frequently Asked emails handle all my customer service and basically do everything for me that I don't want to do myself so I can focus on doing what I love like making these YouTube videos so I ended up hiring a full-time graphic designer to help with my thumbnails and help edit videos so I told them I need a logo for the passion product formula and here are all the logos that he came up with and these logos are a lot better than what I've been getting so far you can see that he used the orange in a really cool way he also included the ppf logo into a cube which you could think about almost as like a little Amazon box Andy created a hexagon ring to make it look like a formula so this is really the passion product formula but when I showed these logos to the people that are in my Amazon course they didn't love these they didn't think this really represented the product perfectly so I continued my hunt for a logo and I asked a friend do you know a designer that might be able to help me design a logo for this program and at $200 these are the logos that I had designed you can see that these logos are professional but again when I showed them to my community they didn't love them so I gave the designer some feedback and these are the new logos that he came up with he turned the two PS that stand for passion product into a circle logo and put the words passion product formula underneath and although both these logos look professional they still don't really capture what I'm trying to convey with this logo so finally a little bit defeated I decided to go to 99 designs and I spent $900 on this logo now before I share with you this Final Logo from 99 designs there's two things that are really important to know first thing is that a passion product is this idea that I came up with and it's a product that you sell online or a product that you create that you're actually passionate about something that you love something that you wish existed in the world and what I found in my life is if you're selling something that you actually believe in that you're actually excited about you're going to make more money than if you're just selling some kind of junk and I learned this the hard way because I quit my job I struggled for years trying to sell things online that I wasn't passionate about and then finally I launched a product that I actually was passionate about and within two months of launching this product that I was passionate about on Amazon I was making $10,000 profit every single month that's a $100,000 profit per year so I want to make sure this logo conveys that idea of passion the second thing you should know is that the way that 99 designs works is they crowdsource your logo for you and they tell all the designers on their platform if that Designer comes up with a logo that I like that I'm willing to give them this $900 chunk of change they do have different tiers starting at $300 going all the way up to $1,300 the more money that you pay the more designs that you're going to get and I actually used 99 designs to design the logo of performance Nut Butter which was my first original passion product that was able to make me over six figures passive income so I went through and I submitted my contest they show me other types of logos to try to get a sense of which logos I like so that they can see what kind of design elements that I want in my logo they also ask what kind of a color scheme do I want as well as a description of what I want in my logo I also shared some images of other logos that I like and 99 designs is the perfect platform to use if you want to get some graphic design done or a logo done but you have no idea what you actually want CU all these different designers are going to use their own ideas their own creativity to come up with a logo design and with the 99 designs contest there's actually two rounds for the first round everyone just submits all their different ideas and then you select six finalists and you tell those six finalists hey here are the concepts and the ideas that I like and in the first round of my 99 designs campaign this was the logo that I liked the most so I told all the finalists that this was the logo to beat and that they should try to put their own spin on this logo and one of the key secrets to using a 99 designs campaign is you want to get your tribe you want to get your community to vote on what logo they think is the best and I had my students in my community YouTube viewers vote and this is the logo for my Amazon FBA course that ended up winning and branding is another thing that I dive into way more detail about in my program the passion product formula this is a key thing that there's just not enough information online and this is one of those things that takes a little bit of time to learn but once you learn it you can charge a premium for your product but the next section we're going to talk about is how to use social media to boost your sales because when you're selling a product on Amazon it's all about getting as many sales as possible from day one and you can do that just using your phone just using social media and 58% of gen Z people will buy a product if it's recommended on social media 56% of Millennials will as well so this is a huge way to Market your product in fact AJ he didn't have any money when he was launching his product and so he ended up using social media specifically Tik Tok to raise over $100,000 in sales in pre-sales for his product using Indiegogo as I mentioned in his first year he did half a million dollars in sales and most of that was because he used the power of Tik Tok AJ had one Tik Tok that went viral and he raised $22,000 in one day for his Amazon FBA business and in total he used Tik Tok to raise over $40,000 and in this video we're going to give you five secrets on how to use Tik Tok to make more money with your Amazon FBA business yeah so I was a bartender for 10 years and wanted to quit my job and try and figure out how to make money on online it was a struggle but I found Travis I joined the course and he helped me create this product called cocktail cards and it turned out being a lot more expensive than we thought about $20,000 to create this product we didn't know at the time but it it was very expensive so we were able to use Tik Tok and some other social media platforms to raise over $40,000 and keep in mind all the money that was raised with Indiegogo was before production so he actually didn't have to spend any of his own money even though it cost $20,000 to get the product produced and all that he didn't have to spend any of his own money and most of that was because of Tik Tok and we're going to share with you the five Secrets he used to make his Tik Tok go viral so we could raise all that money so let's talk about what's the first secret people should know if they want to use Tik Tok to grow their Amazon FBA businesses well first of all we have to understand that Tik Tok is a pretty special platform it's very unique you only have up to 60 seconds to explain what you want to talk about so it's really its own beast and you got to create content that is specific for Tik Tok and it seems like you really have to grab people's attention cuz if you only got 60 seconds and people are on their phone scrolling if you don't get their attention right away they're going to keep going how do you get their attention right away really uh I kind of follow this method that's that's really getting a hook a story and some sort of ending so try and get that really really quick in there and another thing to keep in mind is set up a Creator's account by having a Creator account you can use trending sounds and all of the tools accessible for you do not use a business account this is one thing that AJ told me early on is don't use a business account use the Creator's account so what is the second secret people should know when trying to use Tik Tok and trying to make money with their Amazon business yeah so I will I'll be totally honest for my first month I completely flopped on the Tik Tok app but I also had a personal Tik Tok that was doing pretty well and one thing I realized was I was copy and pasting YouTube videos that didn't really make sense on the app and my personal account was just that it was a lot more personal so I decided to start creating content that was more personal about the brand with a lot more in interaction and engagement and this is one mistake I see so many people making on all Platforms in social media they want to focus on their product and their business but they don't want to talk about themselves or share their own story and I highly recommend no matter what platform it is to talk a little bit about your own story so let's get into tip number three secret number three for using Tik Tok what's that it's all about Trends it is all about Trends it's a copycat platform it's fun these Trends are fun but these things are there to capture your attention and Tik Tok wants to share those videos more so what you really got to do is kind of study the trends see what people are doing the sounds that they're using but what's really important is don't just copy the trends but add your own flare your own unique personality your own story and your own message and this is one thing that's different from a lot of other social media platforms is other social media platforms I feel like if you kind of copy things people will call you out and say oh you shouldn't be doing that it's actually like encouraged it's part of the fun of Tik Tok it seems like yeah absolutely and even some of the content I do I literally they have this thing called a duet where you take someone else's video and you react or you respond or you do something to it as well so it's a very it encourages almost copycat trending type personalities and that brings us to secret number four what do you got got to be consistent Tik Tok they're pretty picky if you don't show up every single day they're less likely to you know push your content out there and they're a relatively new platform as well so random videos do get kind of viral um you would think certain ones would go viral and they don't so you got to be consistent post every day it increases your chances of doing that and not only that you know we're not creating we're not lip syncing we're not just dancing we're creating real content about your product sharing your story creating um these emotions these uh relationships with people and if you're doing that every single day it's a lot easier to create those relationships and when I first heard about Tik Tok I thought it's only people dancing it's only people doing goofy stuff but then when I started kind of scrolling through it I realized you can actually provide a lot of value for instance I saw a video that's talked about how to save money on your taxes and basically they took a 10-minute YouTube video condensed it down to the most important things the guy wasn't dancing he wasn't doing any kind of Trends or singing it was just really valuable content I also Al thought with Tik Tok that it was going to be a bunch of jenzy you know people that don't have any money to spend like why am I going to go on this platform they're not going to buy my products but again I want you to remember that AJ raised $22,000 in one day for his product that's geared to people that are over 21 years old and these are real people that saw his Tik Tok went to his Indiegogo and and bought and the really crazy thing about this is he didn't even have a link in his profile they had to go and search and figure out how to buy this product it was on indie goog go it wasn't like it was on Amazon with like two-day delivery they actually knew that they weren't going to get this product for I don't know 90 days 3 months something like that and they were so excited from this Tik Tok video that they spent money for something they're not going to get for three months so I I want to reiterate this is a very valuable platform and it's worth being consistent and I know you recommend ideally posting two to five times a day but you don't need to like it seems like you could post once a day and you can also another thing I want to mention is you can film seven Tik toks in like 30 minutes and post them one by one by one it's not like you have to actually be on your phone every single day posting Tik toks and that brings us to secret number five with Tik Tok what you got your followers want to be a part of something special right by sharing your story and doing all this stuff they want to help they want to support so one thing you got to do is put some sort of call to action in your videos whether it's follow me or like this video or go check out and support my product I can't tell you how many people message me they don't even drink alcohol but yet they went and they purchased the product for friends and family as gifts because they wanted to be a part of the story they wanted to support me and my journey that I've been sharing with them on Tik Tok and the call to action doesn't always have to be to buy your product it could be something like like this video for instance right now if you've enjoyed what AJ has been saying like this video or you could use a call to action to follow you or join the email list or a number of different things but it's important to remember if you're going to use a call to action there's some secrets to doing that which want to talk about yeah so first of all if you want to have a clickable link which you talked about before I didn't have it and the reason why is cuz I didn't have a th000 followers so you do have to have a th followers before you have a clickable link so make sure if you do cross that thousand follower threshold make sure you put your link up right away but one thing I want to add is even though he didn't have a clickable link people were still copying and pasting his URL and putting it in so even if you don't have a clickable link and you don't have a th000 followers you can still get success but what was the other yeah and also create a simple URL right very important so you could send them there without them clicking it you know that helped a lot um and then the the second thing would be you know use some graphics or arrows or something just direct them you know where you want the call to action to be like the video uh follow me go check out my link really simple subtle things like that uh really helps people make that decision and to me the most important thing is don't be afraid to ask for the sale don't be afraid to ask people to support you and in my Amazon FBA program we actually have an hourlong talk from AJ where he shares all the secrets that he used to go viral on Tik Tok and how he keeps the momentum going but even if you have a ton of marketing and you have a ton of people coming to buy your product if you don't have a highquality product this could be a disaster so you want to make sure that you're going to find a manufacturer that's going to create a high quality product and in this next segment I'm also going to show you how to negotiate with your manufacturer so you can get the cheapest price possible for your product I'm going to share with you step by step how to get your product manufactured including an a toz screen recording showing you exactly how to find your manufacturer and at the end of this video I'm going to share with you the biggest mistakes people make when finding and working with manufacturers including why 99% of people fail with Amazon so if you watch any part of this video make sure to watch this last part at the end of the video it's the most important part of this entire video let me show you right now the first most common way that people find Manu manufacturers or suppliers for their product and that is to use the website like alibaba.com and as I mentioned you're going to type into the search bar whatever you're looking to purchase then another secret is you're going to want to go down here and you're going to want to click trade assurance and you're going to want to click verified supplier and by clicking trade Assurance Alibaba will only show you companies that are enrolled in the trade Assurance program this means that when you pay one of these manufacturers for the product that you're going to be purchasing Alibaba guarantees that you're actually going to get what you pay for and the way they do this is they actually hold some of the money that the supplier is going to get and if there's ever an issue you can easily get a refund on whatever you purchased on this website verified supplier on the other hand means that Alibaba has sent out a thirdparty inspector to actually go and verify that this manufacturing facility this supplier is actually a legitimate company that they actually exist and I know a lot of people are nervous about sending money overseas to these manufacturers but if they have trade assurance and they're a verified supp there's nothing to be afraid of because if there's ever an issue Alibaba will give you your money back now instead of looking right here which right now we're seeing all these different types of products that's not really what we really care about what we really care about is clicking on this button right here called all suppliers and this will show us all the different suppliers now I'm going to be using the word supplier and manufacturer somewhat interchangeably but technically a supplier is someone that supplies you with a finished good where a manufacturer is someone that actually is going to be manufacturing the product from scratch and when you click on all suppliers you can see a list of every single T supplier that is listed on Alibaba and you're going to go through this list and you're going to figure out who you want to contact to purchase your product and you can click the contact us button some things to look for is you want to see how long they've been in business for instance this company's been in business for five years this business for eight years you also want to see how big they are and you can see the volume in sales that they're doing as well as how big their staff is you can also look at their rating and reviews this is a 4.9 rating with over 200 reviews this is probably a very reputable company you can then click on the supplier and learn more about what they do you can look at their Quality Control process their production capacity R&D capacity and much more information and when you're ready to start working with them all you have to do is Click contact supplier and even if you're looking to buy something that's not exactly what they sell on alibaba.com often times they can customize the product for you now for a product like te I don't want to get it manufactured overseas I actually want to have this product manufactured in the United States and as mentioned with thomasnet.com this is going to show you suppliers that are in the United States and it's very similar to alibaba.com you can see the location of where the manufacturer is you can see what year they were founded and how many employees they have and if you click on the manufacturer you can see a lot more information than just that things such as their capabilities their certifications even diversity and all kinds of different things if you want to you can even call the supplier or visit their website now when working with us manufacturers for the first round it's fine to send out an email and just get a feel for if they can actually do the product that you're looking to do but once you start getting a little bit more serious I recommend giving these manufacturers a call because often times even if they can't help you they might know someone else that can this is part of the way I found my first Amazon manufacturer is I called one manufacturer and they said you know what we can't help you but I think Bob over at Bob's Nut Butter can help you so don't be afraid to get on the phone and call me manufacturers another way to find a manufacturer is to Simply go to Google and you can type in whatever the product is you're looking for space manufacturers space private labelers or even sometimes space suppliers again start emailing them and getting on the phone and you can see we have a list of a ton of different Nut Butter manufacturers but if it's a us-based manufacturer I highly recommend calling if you don't feel comfortable doing that you can always send an email but when you actually call someone it develops a lot stronger of a connection it makes you seem like a lot more serious of a potential client remember these manufacturers are busy they probably get a lot of messages and by picking up the phone and calling you seem like a more legitimate business the other benefit of calling is if they can't help you there's a higher probability that they can recommend someone that can help you and it allows you to rapidly ask other questions where if you send an email or a message and they say hey sorry we can't do this they're probably going to end the conversation there they're not really as invested in helping you you find other people that can help you do manufacturing now some tips when contacting a manufacturer you want to sound like is legitimate of a business is as serious of as a potential customer as you can now I'm not saying to lie now some people do give the advice that you should say that hey I'm I'm part of a bigger company not call yourself the founder or CEO maybe call yourself the COO which is chief operations officer or some other ideas is you could be the the chief purchasing agent or come up with whatever title you want now the benefit of this is it makes it seem like you're part of a larger company another big benefit when it comes to negotiation which I'll talk about in just a second it allows you to say hey that sounds like a great deal but my boss is saying no so then the person the manufacturer when they're negotiating with you they don't take things as personal I have had people tell me that when you say that hey my boss says it's not a good number that it's easier to negotiate with that because people don't take it as personal now that's up to you I've also had a lot of success by doing the opposite and calling up companies and say hey I'm the founder I'm super passionate I really want to get this thing started but truth is I'm somewhat new to this and asking for their help in educating me and that's a double-edged sword I found that it helps because people they empathize and they they want to help me out as a beginner but they could also potentially take advantage of you and now that you know the basics on how to actually find a manufacturer for your product I'm going to share with you step byep how Willam and I found a manufacturer and this is Willam he is the one that actually found the manufacturer for Rocket te how did you find the manufacturer so I emailed as many manufacturers as I could find all across the world I copy pasted the same email template to all of them just hey I'm looking to kind of create this project because this be something that you and I could discuss and uh I sent it to 50 to 60 different manufacturers is copy pasting the email to all the different infos at or whatever email address I could find on the bottom of their websites sometimes I would fill out an online form if that's kind of what the website was steering me to do I opened the website for every Google search I could find from like the first page to the 10th page of Google open them up in different tabs and just went through each one to email all of them separately so there's some key things here first off he went to page 10 of Google which a lot of people stop at the first page and like I can't find a manufacturer no it's like keep going all the way down I and I assume you did you have some kind of a list of who you had contacted yep I made a bit of a like a spreadsheet of who I had contacted who I hadn't contacted but I also found that not everybody replied to me I didn't get a reply to everybody so the ones that didn't reply to me I sort of wrote off as not paying enough attention to me anyways and like I could have followed up with them and in some cases I did if I really identified their business as something that looked like I wanted to work with but if they didn't reply to me I kind of didn't really want to work with them anyway so I kind of just in my own inbox kind of started to filter out who was who was worth kind of following up with anyways and we'll share the exact email that you sent to everyone later in this video but once you started contacting people what did they respond to you what did they say well a lot of people that replied to me regarding my high caffeine tea project did not want to touch it they were really not that interested they were like we don't do that we don't add anything unnatural to our te's or we don't change our te's everyone was very in the tea industry it seemed to me that there was a lot of proud owners of these tea blending or these tea manufacturing places and they're very like proud of where the tea comes from they don't want to like mutilate their otherwise perfect blends of tea with my high caffeine tea kind of concept so I got a lot of nose I got a lot of people saying that they wouldn't do it that they're not interested in do it that it was impossible to do it that they didn't understand how it could be done I actually in my email gave them links to the current high caffeine tea products that are out there and I sort of was fishing for information of like well how did they do it like they did it and I still kind of got like I'm not sure how they did that I even had one guy sort of tell me that I wouldn't be surprised if they're lying about it right like maybe they didn't actually do it at all and they're just saying that they did because I don't understand how that could even happen a few things right here so you had a lot of people that told you it's impossible that this can't be done because for anyone that doesn't know rocket tea this company it's going to be the highest caffeine tea out there and to do that you have to add caffeine to it so it's going to be 200 milligrams per cup of caffeine and so a lot of people told you this is impossible you want to talk about why they said it was impossible yeah well there's no tea that exists that's 200 milligrams worth of caffeine in a serving you know there's green tea and black tea and then matcha but like all that does not have 200 milligrams of caffeine my tea required additional caffeine to be added to the the tea leaves and that is what nobody was sure how to do like no one had a process of how to do that a lot of people were saying like that's not the kind of tea that we make so to do that I basically had to some add caffeine powder to these dry tea leaves and to do that I had to stick caffeine powder to these dry tea leaves and no one knew how to do that a lot of people were telling you that you have to make the tea wet and if you do that it's going to ruin the tea and you told me that a lot of people were like upset at you like you're you're ruining the Integrity of tea and like you don't know what you're talking about and the reason I bring all this up is a lot of people when you're trying to manufacture a unique product they might tell you it's impossible but they don't know what they're talking about yep sure well I got on the phone with one team manufacturer who was pretty much trying to steer me away from this project altogether the Pally trying to talk me out of it saying like the only way that this can be done is if we spray the tea leaves slightly with water and by doing so we're going to ruin the Integrity of the otherwise dry preserved loose leaf tea and then sticking the caffeine powder onto that slightly wet Tea Leaf you know we could run into an issue with like a rot or a mold or or a problem with the Tea Leaf now being slightly wet so he was like this can't be done that's the only way it could be done and because we can't do that therefore it can't be done so when all these people were telling you it can't be done how did you feel well I was getting a little bit nervous because like I was really planning on this being my product and this being what I'm focusing on I already kind of started like a few other gears in motion to like help kind of support this product being coming to fruition so when I was hearing note from all these manufacturers I was starting to think like okay well could I get my teab bag like submerged with caffeine powder like I was trying to think like if there's other ways to do this or I was even thinking like could I put a caffeine tablet into the tea bag that would dissolve like I was I was starting to think of like other options but at the same time starting to get a little bit nervous that everybody was basically telling me like this wasn't going to happen or that they weren't going to help me or that like you know this isn't really what te meant to be like anyways I was getting kind of just discouraging news so I was getting a little nervous yeah I remember you T telling me that you were kind of discouraged at one point during this entire process but eventually you found one or two manufacturers that wanted to work with you what was that process like and what kind of questions did you ask to the manufacturers yeah so I finally started hearing back from one or two manufacturers I was like I can help you with this uh these were specialty te blenders like people that would work with you on specialty te's you know if I was to say I really wanted like a cinnamon and orange flavored tea like they would help me blend that so this tea blender was fine with me adding caffeine to my tea using a proprietary process that he still hasn't even told me about I asked him recently because my tea is now being produced I asked him if he could film my tea being produced so that I could use footage of my te like going through the machine like as part of a video and he told me no because all their machines are like top secret so you know so he's doing his thing but questions that I asked him when he finally kind of presented himself as someone I could work with was what would my minimum order quantity be um what how long would this take to do what tea we would use uh he was asking me a lot of questions about like what kind of flavor I wanted and I of course was involved in that process of making the tea taste good which next video that we do together we'll talk about the process of actually creating the product the logo The Branding but yeah keep going yeah and uh yeah I also want to know like what tea bags this could get put into um you know I would I wanted to do more of an environmentally friendly tea um so he actually had biodegradable tea bags that we're using um with no string and no tag so there's not extra excess waste so I was just asking him like questions about how long it was going to take how what the minimum order quantity I could use is and then the process of like putting that tea now into tea bags because it seemed like it was such a process to kind of create that tea in the first place I I was worried that every step of the process was going to be a big thing but it ultimately wasn't and one of the big issues I know that we faced and we talked about is okay well so we have one manufacturer can they do everything and it turns out they can't they can do most of it but one thing that they can't do was the actual packaging that the teabags go into how did you find that person to make the actual packaging right so I was interested to know like what his scope of work could be like if he could be like a One-Stop shop for like all of my needs but it turned out that just since he's like a very niched down specialty tea blender he just Blends the tea and then the te just sits there and a warehouse and requires packaging to be shipped in from a different packaging manufacturer and then they take that packaging and they fill the tea with it so he gave me a recommendation to a packaging house that they use that's actually just here in the United States that has pretty low minimum order quantities and um even though I could have looked for packaging overseas that would have cost less I went with his recommendation just to sort of keep the process moving along and I'm using the packaging company that he recommended and at the beginning a lot of times even if you could save money by maybe going overseas or doing things like that sometimes it makes more sense just to spend a little bit more money and make it easier now obviously certain products you still want to make overseas but with this kind of a product your most expensive cost or the tea itself and in the manufacturing which kind of needs to be done in it doesn't need to be done in the US but it's very helpful to have it done in the US I think so yeah because the tea is essentially being like somehow caffeine powder being added to that and there's already kind of enough like warning labish things to worry about with having like so much caffeine in the tea and like I didn't I felt more comfortable doing that in the United States as opposed to like somewhere else where I didn't quite know like what was going on and how much caffeine was really in it or where the caffeine came from and like I didn't want to do go into like unsafe territory with my high caffeine tea so it helped me feel more comfortable that it was out of Florida with someone that I could just call and speak with and then as terms of the packaging yeah like I could have got the packaging done cheaper but I have like a dedicated account manager who's talking to me about all of my graphic design issues and everything and you know the colors and how things could bleed and all of that stuff that I've never done before was much easier for me to do with someone here in the United States and so just to keep in mind some of the other questions that will mentioned is what is the minimum order quantity you always want to ask a manufacturer that what was your minimum order quantity do you remember uh well for the te bags itself it was either 1,000 or 2 ,500 and there's a little bit of a price like discount if you go a little higher yeah another question you always want to ask too is what are all the costs cuz sometimes the manufacturer like yeah it costs $5 per unit minimum order quantity is only 100 units but they're not telling you about all the other costs was what other I mean we can save this for a future episode but did you ask what other costs there would be and what other costs were there yes so it did cost like a small amount to initially get the blend going you know for me to like hire him to create the blend and then it cost a small amount for me to receive a sample of the tea from him you remember how much those were it was like maybe like $400 for him to like be hired by me to create the tea and then to get a sample of the te made which was about like 20 servings of tea I think that was like another like $100 or something and I always recommend getting a sample of your product before you go spend thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars on a manufacturing run the sample allows you to see is this a product that you like or you want to sell yeah what was it like when you got the sample what did you think about it well the sample just came into like a like a package with loose leaf tea it was not individual tea bags and it smelled really great it had a really nice smell to it I was very excited about that I could kind of see how it was dusted with caffeine powder which was interesting and um yeah I brought samples actually to all the different coffee houses and tea shops in the town that I live in in Montana and I asked for their like more professional opinion of what they thought it tasted like and they give me some notes so I left samples with everybody and they all me on me back telling me that it tasted great um so it was encouraging and uh I tried it my family tried it my friends tried it and it tasted good and gave everyone like a nice clean smooth energy yeah um so yeah that was great and one of the biggest things when trying to find a manufacturer is just reaching out to those manufacturers now I do recommend whenever you can especially if you're dealing with us manufacturers pick up the phone and give them a call but if that seems a little too daunting you can always just send them an email and we actually we promised that we'd share the actual email that Willam sent do you want to share that yep sure so I I wrote this and I just literally copy and pasted it to every different email 60 different manufacturers same one after the other one after the other and the email just said hello I am creating a brand of tea that aims to have close to 200 milligrams of caffeine per tea bag or serving the tea will have more caffeine than is natural additional caffeine will need to be infused to loose leap tea somehow do you have any process in which this can be done a loose leaf tea product with 150 milligrams of caffeine allegedly for reference is zest tea which I gave a link for please let me know if this is something we can work on together and if you have time for a call to discuss this what are your thoughts about sending that email versus calling people well I basically just like copy pasted this to one after the other I had all the different tabs open like for all the different like one through 10 Google search results so as soon as I sent it I closed a tab as soon as I sent it I closed another Tab and I kind of just did this as a sort of a passive way of hearing back from somebody because I just figured like now I have this big net out there and they're going to get back in touch with me but if there was a few companies that like really seemed like they would be perfect for what I needed like their website was like exactly kind of aligned with what my mission was then I would just call them got just to see if I could like just speak with somebody because it's always nice like I've never done this before so it's always nice to hear from somebody like why they think this can't be done or what process is involved in this or why it's going to cost a lot like this is where I learned that it's like the only way to do this was to get the tea wet and then like roll it in powder like that was not something that I learned like over Email exchange that was something I just learned on the phone and that's another big thing that you were telling me is as you were contacting these manufacturers you were learning a lot so then the next time you talked to the manufacturer you seemed a little bit more knowledgeable like a little bit more of an expert another thing that we didn't mention is that when you sent this email you didn't use your regular random Gmail account you actually set up specific email for sending out this email for a number of different reasons want to talk about that y so I just like since I was going to sort of like blast out this email to so many different people I made a Gmail account that was called like Special Blend 2000 and I use that email to send out to all these different people and in doing so I got signed up for a lot of newsletters that I also kind of expected would happen so a lot of these team manufacturers now are like putting me on their T blending newsletters and I didn't want that on my personal email and I also just wanted it to be sort of more like an anonymous email kind of because if they get a an email from Special Blend I could still give him a call as Willam and it's sort of two different people so if I got information from somebody on email I could use that information as willm without them knowing that I'm actually kind of the same person yeah so that's smart another thing that I would do it's not necessary but if you have a domain name let's say you have drink rocket tea you can have Willam drink rocket.com be where the email is coming from that's like next level professional but don't think that you need to do that you can even just do a Gmail account that's just rocketmail.com and it seems uh professional but I actually really like your idea of you could send this emails from multiple different accounts even and um I may maybe just make sure that the price is going to be the same or like you said get on the phone and be like hey is this thing you told me actually true so that's that's a really smart idea yeah yeah and it did seem a little bit more pressional my my email Special Blend whatever at least kind of made it seem like I was in the industry somehow like it doesn't just like random random person and if you're struggling to find a manufacturer there are four other techniques that you can use to find a manufacturer you can actually use a tool in Jungle Scout to find who is the manufacturer for almost any product on Amazon you'll just go to suppliers here and then to the supplier database click on the company Tab and type in the company that you're trying to figure out who their manufacturer is so if I type in yogamat into Amazon I see a bunch of different yoga mat companies one of them is this Guam company right here I'm going to copy this and I'm going to paste it into the jungle Scout tool right here and we're going to click search and you can see this company listed and you can see who their top suppliers are so if you have competitors in your market and you want to figure out who they're using as manufacturers this is an absolutely amazing tool if you want to search by aens so instead of searching by company right here we could take the as number which if we scroll down to the bottom we can see the as number and we can copy this and we can paste it in here and you can find like I said the manufacturer for just about any product on Amazon now this tool isn't always 100% accurate but it's very surprising how often it is accurate another way I highly recommend defining manufacturers is to type into Google whatever your product is space conventions go to the website of the convention that is in your industry and you can look at who are exhibiting and you can either go to this convention yourself walk around the convention and talk to everybody or you can go to the list of people that are exhibiting at the convention for instance we see here this is the 2023 exhibitor list and there's a growing list right here and you can contact each one of those people individually often times at these kind of conventions it's going to be suppliers and manufacturers now I know a lot of people are not based in the United States maybe for instance if you're based in the UK or in Europe and you're looking for a manufacturer that's based in your home countries you can use websites like europ pages. co.uk to find a manufacturer in the UK or in Europe and it's very similar to the way that Alibaba works you would just type in whatever you're looking for a manufacturer for scroll around and you can see for instance this manufacturer is based in France and they're verified by europ pages.com you can click on their profile and you can navigate to find out more information about them but if you're still struggling to find a manufacturer my last piece of advice before I show you step byep how we actually found a manufacturer for our product is to hire somebody and you can hire a sourcing agent and this is one site makers row where you can hire a conator service for about ,000 and they're going to be an expert in the industry and they're going to help you to find a manufacturer now makers row is a website that you can use to find manufacturers for on your own and it's about $400 a year or you can hire a coner service in addition to this website you can just go to Google type in whatever your product is space agent and they'll be able to help you to find a manufacturer now if you're still struggling you can always go to LinkedIn and find people that are in your industry send them a message and ask them if you could pay them for their time another important thing to note is when you're first starting out you probably don't want to buy too much inventory so you may at some point in the conversation want to ask what is the minimum order quantity orq you'll see this a lot of times and that is what's the minimum that they're willing to sell you basically now I would not recommend opening a conversation with this because they're less likely to take you serious in fact again a lot of people say you should say hey I'm looking to order 50,000 units even if you're only looking to order 500 because it makes you seem more serious and then later on down the line you say you know what we could do a test run of those 500 units and this is a negotiation tactic cuz there is a chance that the manufacturer is going to say well for $50,000 it's a dollar a piece and then you say okay well let's just start out with $500 and and try to negotiate your way into getting that $1 per unit price that doesn't always work and in general I recommend ordering around 3 to 6 months worth of inventory figure out how much you think you're going to sell within that 3 to six month range and start with that as an order and there's a lot of reasons for this one of the reasons is if there is a problem with the order well at least you're not out too much money it's not that big of a deal also you need to store all that inventory somewhere if you order more than 3 to 6 months worth of inventory where are you going to store it and you might have to pay storage fees but you also don't want to order too little inventory if you only order one month's worth of inventory by the time you realize that you're selling out you'll have to place another order anyways and you might as well take advantage of a discount for buying lots of items and I haven't mentioned that yet but generally speaking the more you buy the lower per unit price you're going to get and this can make it so your business can be a lot more profitable if you can order a larger quantity of items I have three other quick things to keep in mind before we move on to the next step of this process the first is whenever communicating whenever sending messages or emails with your manufacturer make sure to spell check to grammar check to make sure your email looks as professional as possible if you look like a beginner they're going to treat you like a beginner the second tip is make sure to establish a connection with them this is something I've historically been fairly bad at with my manufacturers a lot of people treat their manufacturer as just a business transaction but if you can somehow create a real relationship maybe send them a small gift not you know don't do this in a way that seems manipulative but once you've had your first successful production run send them a small gift a thank you something really heartfelt and that what that's going to do is it's going to be more likely that they're going to want to help you out in the future and then the third tip I have for you is the cheapest company isn't always the best part of the reason it took me a year and a half to get this product manufactured is my manufacturer that I was working with even though they were a really good deal and they produced pretty good products they were not organized and when I tried to create a new flavor they were just too disorganized to be able to do it they had a lot of different moving Parts a lot of other clients that they were prioritizing so I switched to someone that's slightly more expensive but they're a lot more professional and my hope is even though I'm going to be paying more money working with these people that the stress that I'm going to save because they're more professional is going to be worth it next step is to design your product and I mean this in a lot of different ways first off you're going to have to design the dimensions you're going to have to design the look and feel of what you want but you're also going to want to design a logo in all the different graphical elements now the first step of this that people often get hung up on and they really shouldn't is how do they design their product do they have to hire a cad professional all these different things first thing I'd recommend is emailing messaging with the manufacturer and telling them in words maybe write out some sketches show them exactly what you want they can help you their entire business model is around helping you because they need to make it as easy as possible for people to work with them so what you can do is you can email them and say hey hey you've got this product on Alibaba that looks like this what I want to do is change Dimensions maybe make it a little bit longer maybe make it a little bit taller change some of the graphical elements tell your manufacturer exactly what you want now there is a chance that they're going to say hey that's outside of our realm of being able to to help you with this you need to go hire some kind of a cad designer or something like that and that's really easy to do you can go to Fiverr or upwork and you can find someone where you can tell them in plain old English exactly like what you're trying to do and they can help you out just keep in mind the manufacturers even if you're working with a Chinese manufacturer they're really smart this is what they do for a living they can probably help you out chances are you won't need to go hire someone unless you're looking to do something extremely complex the next part of this is the design and logos of your product and do not skip on this this is an extremely important part that a lot of people forget about your logo is going to represent your company and ideally you're not just going to be selling on Amazon you're going to be selling on your own website and you're going to be promoting your product in social media so a logo is really important I personally recommend doing a 99 designs campaign or at least if you aren't going to do that hire someone on upwork now you can find people on Fiverr it's going to be a lot cheaper to get a logo off Fiverr but you usually get what you pay for in this scenario the next step is to get a sample sent to you and I highly recommend doing this I have in the past not done this and every time I've not gotten a sample it's come back to bite me in the butt so I highly recommend telling your manufacturer you want a sample now a lot of times they'll send you a sample for free you'll just have to pay shipping for instance I help my girlfriend start this company it's called venoc cards and with this company they sent us a sample that was blank so we could at least see the dimensions and that was free to do and if we wanted to get a a sample with the actual the logo the design on all the different cards that was $300 we decided we didn't want to pay the $300 that we just wanted to get the regular sample and that was beneficial because we got to see the dimensions of it but we should have paid the $300 it turns out there were some tiny little mistakes that we would have caught if we would have just paid the $300 for the sample now how much it costs you to get one sample made from your manufacturer is going to depend wildly on a bunch of different variables sometimes they're not able to do one for that cheap it's going to cost a lot of money for instance I've lost about $115,000 in doing the R&D do just to get one sample of my product the new performance Nut Butter cacao how to actually pay for your products because this is probably the scariest part of the entire thing because this is the part where you actually have to put your money on the line everything else we've talked about sure it might cost a little bit of money here and there but usually to get your product manufacturer it's going to be a few thousand at least it could be more expensive if you have a more custom product and there is of course a chance that it could be slightly less for me personally the hardest part has always been when I have to send a wire when I have to actually send the money to the manufacturer because that is the that's the moment of TR truth that's the black and white moment of entering the cave and there's no turning back anymore and there's different ways to send money to your manufacturer historically for all my manufacturers I've done a wire transfer and a wire transfer to be honest with you is really scary because unlike a credit card transaction where you can call up the the bank and say hey uh that was fraud I want my money back with a wire transfer there's none of that once you send the wire even if you send it to the wrong person you accidentally put in the wrong bank account number it's gone forever and I personally use US Bank to send a wire it costs around I think $25 or so if it's domestic it's something like 75 to $95 to send a wire over to China and what you do you can either go into a bank and do this you also have to give them the routing number or the Swift number if it's in International Bank account and again like I said it's scary because if if you accidentally mistype one of those numbers they can send it to the wrong person you're never getting that money back now a little bit safer way to do it is PayPal and I do know that some manufacturers accept Paypal some overseas manufacturers most of the ones I've worked with they don't want to deal with that because they know that if you send a PayPal transaction you can contact PayPal and say hey this was fraud and it's very hard for them to fight some manufacturers even do take credit card though that's pretty rare keep in mind when you pay with something with credit card there's a transaction fee that the the manufacturer would have to pay of around 3% so most manufacturers don't want to deal with that they want you to send a wire transfer and as I said this is the hardest part of manufacturing a product at least from an emotional standpoint it's scary when you have to send that money and know that it's not coming back unless your business is successful it's really hard and the reason I'm saying this is just to let you know that this is a common fear that a lot of people have and to be honest it's why in some ways I feel like I've lost $155,000 on this product even though logically I know this product's eventually going to be successful I'm going to make my money back and probably make a lot more money in this moment in time I don't know and it's terrifying and I'm just saying this to let you know that there probably is going to be that moment in manufacturing your product where you are terrified and that's okay but keep moving on keep going through it because once you send the wire something magical happens you have no choice but to make your business successful and that's a really powerful tool and that brings us to The Next Step which is actually getting your product shipped either to your Warehouse or the Amazon warehouse and this is another one of those things that a lot of people aren't sure how to do it seems really complicated and hard but it's actually extremely simple and there's different options obviously if you are ordering your products and you're getting them manufactured in China you can use DHL or FedEx to get your product shipped via air and that's going to be a lot faster it's only going to take a few days but it's going to be a lot more expensive the other option is you can do c shipping which going to which is going to take about four to 6 weeks and that and it also has to go through customs it's going to be cheaper but you're also going to have to pay for an annual bond which is $100 if you want a single-use bond or $400 if you want a bond that'll last you for the entire year and the reason you do the $400 bond is if you're doing multiple uh multiple shipments from China then you can use that that multiple entry Bond and to be honest with all this I don't recommend dealing with this yourself I recommend finding and hiring a freight forwarder if you want to join my Facebook group then I do have a freight forward I can recommend to you but otherwise you can find a freight forward just Google it someone local in your area that you can talk to and they can help you find a a ship to to send your products on they can help you with the logistics from getting your product from the manufacturer's Warehouse to the ship dealing with Customs dealing with all that different all those different things and there is last I checked I think it's around like a 10 to 20% Duty from sending products from China to the US it depends on your your product category but keep that in mind it's not Manufacturing in China isn't as cheap as it once was because of the duty because of the shipping because of all those other costs sometimes Manufacturing in the US can be just as affordable depending on the different product category a lot of things are still much cheaper in China but that's something to keep in mind and if you do have a us-based manufacturer you're going to have to hire some kind of a shipping some kind of a trucking company and a lot of them they do what's called less than truckload LTL shipping which is usually a pallet two pallets something like that and that's going to cost it really depends on how far away you are if it's a 6h hour drive from you to your manufacturer it's going to be maybe 150 bucks to get a pallet ship if it's a two-day drive maybe $300 depends on things like that and if you want to get LTL shipments you can use freightquote.com you can also get truckload shipments or the other thing is if you're doing extremely small shipments you can ask your manufacturer to ship it to you or to Amazon using UPS FedEx USPS like all those different things now the last thing that a lot of people get hung up on is how do you actually send your products into the Amazon warehouse but it's extremely simple literally Amazon makes it as easy as possible for you basically you just have to follow a step-by-step thing where you put in the information and they'll send a truck to come to your house to pick up the pallet or or your Warehouse or wherever the pallet is of your items or if you're going to send in items that are just you know smaller than that it's basically just like fedexing a package to your friend I've worked with a lot of Manufacturers from alibaba.com and I've made hundreds of thousands of dollars on products that I've sourced from alibaba.com but I've also made manufacturing mistakes that have cost me tens of thousands of dollars and in this next segment I'm going to share with you step-by-step my negotiation technique how I find manufacturers on Alibaba just about everything and by watching this next segment it could easily make it so you can cut your production costs in half a lot of people don't know how to properly negotiate when working with an Alibaba manufacturer I'm going to share with you some of my tips there's seven steps to finding a manufacturer and getting your product manufactured using alibaba.com the first step is to to search for suppliers and I'm going to show you the secrets on how to find the best manufacturers on alibaba.com the second step is to identify the best suppliers the best manufacturers and there's some really key things that you should be looking for when trying to decide which manufacturer you're going to go with and I'm going to share that later in this video the third step is to get samples of your product because once you've narrowed it down to the top three to five manufacturers that you want to work with you want to get a sample to make sure that they have high quality products step four is to negotiate I'm going to show you how you can cut your cost of your products in half there's some amazing negotiating techniques that I've learned that I'm going to share with you later in this video step five is to place the order and a lot of people are afraid about sending money to overseas manufacturing companies but you don't have to worry I'm going to show you how you can send money to these companies without having anything to worry about step six is to get your products inspected I'm going to share with you how you can get your products inspected for extremely inexpensive and this is going to guarantee that you don't get scammed that nothing bad happens a lot of people are worried about that but I'm going to show you how to avoid any kind of problems when ordering from alibaba.com step is to get your product shipped from the manufacturer overseas into the Amazon warehouse and there's a few different ways to do this I'm going to share with you a complete guide on how to get your product shipped over from your manufacturer to the Amazon warehouse alibaba.com will also be introducing a new section called trendy Hunter and this is where Alibaba is going to use its data as well as Internet Trends to announce the top 10 new products in every category now here's a secret what I recommend doing is taking those top trendy products and using that as inspiration to either make a a better product or try to come up with something completely different in that same Niche I do not recommend just copying those products private labeling those products and selling those exact products but this is a great opportunity to use alibaba's data to figure out what are people going to be buying in the next year before we get into all seven steps of how to find your manufacturer with alibaba.com one thing I want to mention is a lot of people are nervous about buying products using alibaba.com but one thing they're doing to combat that is they're really trying to focus on high quality suppliers High quality manufacturers but now let's get into the first step which is to find a supplier and throughout this video I'm going to use the term supplier and manufacturer interchangeably now I recommend finding someone that's going to create a unique product for you do not just find a manufacturer or a supplier off alibaba.com and private label their product in the past that used to work in the past people would go to alibaba.com find a bunch of junk products slap their brand on it and try to sell that on Amazon now what I recommend doing instead is is to contact the different manufacturers suppliers on alibaba's website and to actually ask them hey can you customize this product can you improve this product I'm going to show you an example of that right here but a mistake a lot of people make is they think of alibaba.com as just being people that can supply already existing products that's not the case a lot of these people have the ability to manufacture something completely unique for you now what you want to do is you want to find people that are already making products similar to the product you're making and ask them if they can change it up for instance for this video I'm going to use an example of a product that I co-created with a student in my course we partnered up on this product called cocktail cards and it's basically a set of 100 flash cards showing people how to create unique Cocktails so what we did is we went to alibaba.com and we typed in here flashcards obviously we're not going to type in cocktail cards cu no product like that already exists but there are already people that are selling flash cards and we're going to click search and you can see there's all these different products here that you can buy and you can buy these products in bulk you can buy a thousand of this exact product but what you can do instead and what I recommend doing is instead of doing products click on suppliers and what this is going to do is instead of showing you all the different products available on alibaba.com it's going to show you all the different suppliers because right now let's see this product right here it's made by this supplier and you can see that there's probably going to be some repeat like this supplier was listed twice because they have this product and they also have this product by instead changing it to suppliers of flash cards we get a list of all the different suppliers and it focuses on their ability to to manufacture products to supply products as opposed to the individual products so it'll give you right here the three different products that they're offering and we can see here's the company that we saw in the previous search results now a lot of people are scared that they're going to get scammed that they're going to overpay or they're going to get bad quality products but I'm going to show you what to look for in a manufacturer to make sure that nothing bad is going to happen or at least lower your chances of something negative happen happening drastically to start with one of the first things I like to do is I like to click up here trade Assurance I like to make sure that the suppliers that are being shown have trade assurance and the way trade Assurance works I also like to click this verified little button right here because what this does is it only shows manufacturer suppliers that have been verified and the way that a manufacturer gets verified is someone from alibaba.com or a third-party inspection company actually goes over into their warehouse into their manufacturing facility and verifies that they're a real company a legitimate company and let me put it this way any manufacturing company that's willing to sign up for trade Assurance that's willing to get verified they're probably a legit company they're probably not trying to do anything shady but we want to make sure when we're working with someone that everything is going to go as smoothly as possible so here's some other things to look for another thing I like to look for is how many years have they been in business this company's been in business for eight years this one's been in business for 13 years 7 years and if they've been on there for that long the chances are that they are a leg legitimate company a reputable company they're not going to try to make some quick cash by scamming somebody another thing I like to look at is how many transactions have they had in the last 6 months this one's had 166 transactions which is pretty good 90 transactions 47 transactions you can even see their total revenue their total revenue is $2.5 million to $5 million so if you're placing an order for a few thousand they have their reputation on the line as well as years worth of good standing with this website they're probably going to work with you and they're going to probably try to make sure that you are happy another thing you can do here is look at their top three markets What markets are they selling their products to and 50% of all the business that this company does is in North America which means that they're probably used to working with Americans or or Canadians most likely which means they're probably used to working with people that are English speakers they also work with 15% of Western Europe which means that they're probably they're used to producing high quality products because what I find is in North America and Western Europe we want high quality products and if it's not high quality we're going to send it back and this company's done a lot of business with North America with Western Europe so they probably make high quality products they also probably have pretty good English they're probably used to working with people that speak English you can also look at their their country region that their manufacturer is located in this one is in China a lot of these ones are in China because that's a good place to get products produced for relatively inexpensive but on alibaba.com they also have all kinds of different countries they have India they have Vietnam they have many ufacturing companies from all over the place now if you are looking to get a product produced in the United States I did this video a link up here which I recommend checking out because alibaba.com is more for purchasing products that are made internationally which let's be honest it's a lot cheaper to produce a product overseas than it is right now in the United States when searching for a manufacturer you really want to make sure you get the best one possible and so what I recommend doing as well is looking at the main products that each manufacturer creates and you want to make sure that they specialize in whatever product you're trying to create so we're creating a set of flashcards and this company does book printing box printing notebook printing paper bag printing card printing okay so they do specialize in card printing let's look at some other ones here we have gift box suitcase box station art stationary item jigsaw puzzle that's not really exactly what we're looking for they don't even have any kind of card printing on here uh this one packing box ring binder game box it's Loosely related Maybe not perfect uh playing cards okay so this one has playing cards so they can probably do something like flash cards and what I recommend you do as you're looking through all these different manufactures the ones you like click on the favorites Tab and so far my favorite company has actually been this top one now I'm just doing a quick tutorial video here normally what I would do is I would go through all these different manufacturers all these different suppliers look there's 34 Pages worth if you're trying to get a product manufactured you want to make sure that you have the best possible manufacturer that you're working with so take the time to really go through here and look at every single one but let's dive in a little bit deeper what you can actually do if you click on the name of the company you can see even more information about the manufacturer now before I get into this one thing I want to note is you can tell a lot about a company based on their name for instance a lot of times these companies have the name of the city where they're located so this one is located in Shanghai in it's ston doing industry Company Limited so what we can tell is it's located in Shanghai which is a good thing you want want to look for companies that are located close to the ocean or close to a port because it's going to be cheaper for you because if they're located in the middle of China it's going to be really expensive for you to ship your product from the middle of China to a port so that it can go across the ocean via a ship it's just more expensive if it's in the middle of China so we have dongan which I'm sure I'm pronouncing that wrong but another thing you want to look for is look at this company's name is printing Products Manufacturing Co which is a good thing because that means their entire company is around printing products and and Manu facturing products so they might even though they they don't put as their main products exactly what we're talking about we know that at least they specialize in printing where this company right here it's called bonroy cultural creativity Co it's very broad we don't really know what that means um obviously we can dig a little bit deeper by clicking here and and looking at some other things now one thing I will mention is they have a 4.9 out of five which is a really good sign that means that most people that work with this company are really satisfied you can also look at video and you look at different pictures of their warehouse which I would recommend doing make sure that they actually have the machines to produce the products you want to make sure they're not just a middleman because sometimes through alibaba.com you're going to work with people and it turns out someone else actually manufactures the product they buy it from them and resell it we can go down here and we can there's a ton of other information right here we can look at some of their main products and and see if it fits with what we're doing and I think it it pretty much does you can also look at the production flow and see the raw materials to cutting PL PL making printing uh detecting everything they got it all you can look at what production equipment they have now this is really helpful because you can see do they actually have the stuff to create the products that you're trying to create and in the future if you want to work with a different manufacturer you can say hey do you have a a platemaking machine do you have a sample printing machine do you have all these different machines because this is what's needed to produce my product now the these machines are pretty standard pretty easy most manufacturing companies would have them and if you keep scrolling down you just there's so much information right here all the different transactions the total total amount of transactions they've done so what we'll want to do is we're going to want to go back here and we're going to want to click on everyone that we think is a a good option we're going to want to click on them do a deeper dive make sure that they are a really good company and for all the ones that we want to potentially work on we want to hit favorites here find the best supplier so how do you do that well the way to find the best supplier is to first off narrow it down you know there's probably hundreds of different companies here yeah more than hundreds of different companies that you can work with what I'd recommend doing is start a spreadsheet go through and list out all these different companies and and decide what are the top three to five companies that you want to work with and then contact them and you could contact more if you want you can contact 20 30 40 different companies but I like to try to narrow it down as much as possible first and then you contact them what you can do that's going to save you a lot of time is you can let's just say we wanted this one we can start it we can put it as our favorites and what this is going to allow us to do is we're we can star some of our favorite ones here and we can go through and we can actually group them and we can contact all these people at once because the next step would be to contact all the different companies so we're going to go up to favorites here we going click on view all items and then we can click on suppliers here and you can see here are the different ones that we have added together in click on all of them and we can click contact supplier that way we can send one message out to all these different companies B basically what you're going to say is first off introduce yourself just like you would in any other email and tell them exactly what the product is that you're looking for and tell them the size the dimensions tell them how many units you're going to order now here is a little Pro tip if you're looking to just start with a production run of 500 units you don't need to start with that tell them we're looking to do a production run of 10,000 units 5,000 units whatever like a really big number and then after some back and forth you can say okay this is great the pricing looks good but we'd like to start with a test run of 500 unit now they may change the price but they may not you they may after the back and forth they may just go ahead and go ahead keep that original price so this is a really good negotiating tactic because a lot of times they don't want to work with smaller companies but by saying we want to do a production run of 5,000 units they're may be more likely to work with you and here's the truth in my opinion it's it's you're not you're not being deceitful because you do want to do a production run of 5,000 units eventually and your first 500 unit is a test run you're testing out the market and the truth is you want your business and you want your product to be as successful as possible and if it is of course you're going to eventually order 5,000 units so don't think of this as being um by any means like deceitful so you'll paste in here whatever message you want to send to them the exact specifications and you will send the inquiry to those people now a warning alibaba.com messaging service can be really slow and the reason for that is they might only check it once a day but then with the the time delay it might take a few days before you get responses and it just everything slows down so what I'd recommend doing is moving people over to Whatsapp WeChat or Skype as soon as possible from alibaba.com messaging service and this will allow you to communicate a lot faster because a lot of times you can say hey let's meet at this time and let's just have the fullon conversation ask a bunch bunch of questions back and forth maybe even do a zoom call or a Skype call or you know call on WhatsApp or WeChat or whatever different service you want again think about this as a funnel you're going to start with a really big list you know hundreds of different manufacturers that you find on the website narrow it down to the top 20 30 40 that you actually want to contact of those people narrow it down to the top two to three that you want to purchase a sample from and this brings us to point number three in the next step and that is to purchase a sample from the manufacturers that you actually think you want to work with for instance with venoc cards and cocktail cards our manufacturer wanted $2 to $300 for a full printed sample and the reason for that is they don't want to do all this work and basically us just to take this product and be like hey cool thanks it's really expensive for them to manufacture that type of a custom product so they they charge a decent amount of money now if it's an off-the-shelf product something that they have tons of samples of they'll send it to you for free you just got to pay shipping now the trick with that is shipping from anywhere International China India Vietnam to the US can be really expensive it's going to be 25 $35 or so depending on the size of the product I recommend going usually with DHL you can also look at FedEx and there's some some other services as well sometimes they can even get everything ready for you and send it over but expect to be paying around $25 to $45 or so just for shipping the product so even though the sample is free you're going to have to spend some money but it's worth it get as many samples from as many different manufacturers as you can early on because this is one of those things and ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure you don't want to skimp on on the samp and then end up getting the final product and find out it's of poor quality and that's going to be step number four make sure that you actually do this make sure that you actually negotiate with the people you can leverage the other quotes that you're getting from the other different suppliers and say Hey you know Bob over here is willing to do it for $5 a unit you want $6 we like you better can you meet the same price that Bob is doing and if they can't then you know you have to decide is it worth the extra money for the higher quality and the answer is usually yes but it really really depends remember you don't want products that are going to have high defect rates you want to make your customer happy you want on Amazon to have the best product possible also remember that you're building a relationship with this person it has to be a win-win if if you're trying to take advantage of them and just get the lowest price they're going to feel that and it's not going to lead to a long-term successful relationship one of the keys to having success in business is you're developing these relationships and you want to make this person happy you want to get to know them ask them about their family ask them about their life in whatever country that they're in try to actually build a connection and build a deep relationship and what's going to happen is they might be able to pull strings for you that they wouldn't for other people and once you've negotiated with your manufacturer then the next step is to actually pay them for the production run now different companies will accept different forms of payments one way you can see what forms of payment that they accept is by looking at the products that they sell and it'll show the different forms that they accept now every company's going to accept a wire transfer but a wire transfer is very scary cuz when you send a wire transfer you can't get the money back you can't call your credit card company you can't call the bank and say Hey I want that money back it's gone it's gone forever now one way to avoid this issue is first off again if they're on alibaba.com they probably are fairly trustworthy what you're going to want to do is send 30% of the wire up front and then hold off on sending the other 70% until you've gotten the product inspected but another thing you can do is Paypal you can use PayPal you can use alipay you can use all kinds of different sometimes you can even use credit card so let's click on one of these products here and see what forms of payment that they accept now a lot of times if you're going to be using PayPal or credit card or some other form of payment that's a little bit more secure you're going to have to pay high you're going have to pay higher fees because if they accept Paypal there's transaction fees and you're going to have to pay for those so this company accepts Visa Mastercard uh they accept online transfer Apple pay Western Union they accept a lot of different things so that makes me feel a little bit more secure sending you know I could pay with visa and then if there's an issue I can call up my my credit card company and get my money back now again they're probably going to do an upcharge for that it's probably going to be a 3% upcharge So eventually once you work with them a few times you can start doing a wire transfer which will probably save you some money but as I mentioned you only want to give 30% UPF front and save the other 70% until later until after you get the product inspected which is Step number six is to get your product inspected and there's a lot of different inspection companies out there that you can hire but basically it's going to cost you around $100 or so to have someone go to the manufacturer and inspect the product I'll put a link down below I believe the name is global inspect.com that's the company that I've been told many times is an amazing company I actually personally have not used them yet but I have a lot of friends that have and they've all had great things to say about them alibaba.com even offers its own inspection services and you can go under service into production monitoring and inspection services to find out more information and that's a really easy option if you don't want to hire a separate company to do inspections for you and it's around $118 for a full days worth of inspection and what happens is they end up sending you a report of your product they they check a bunch of the different random products to see is the quality up to standards you you want to make sh sure that the the barcode scans because if it's a a poor quality printing job maybe the Amazon FN skew won't scan and that could cause problems down the road but really what you're doing here is making sure that they actually produce the products that you said and it's up to the quality standards that you need for your product and once you get the you know go-ahead and you can start to arrange to ship your products from your manufacturer over to your Amazon warehouse whether that's in the US or whatever country that you're in and there's two main ways to ship your product from your manufacturer over to the Amazon warehouse and that is either by air or by C and I recommend if it's your first time often times you're just going to want to do it by air it's so much faster it's so much easier but it is more expensive se- shipping is going to take so much longer usually air shipping is going to take 5 to 10 days C- shipping is going to take four to six weeks maybe even longer there's a much higher likelihood that you're going to have issues with sea shipping because what happens is the ship goes from your manufacturer over to the US or whatever country you're in and it might get stuck in the port and there might be Customs issues sometimes that happens to also keep in mind when you're thinking about shipping your product that you're going to have to pay a customs or a duty fee now I have heard about people saying to their manufacturer you know what I know I paid you $6 a unit but can we just say that I paid you a dollar a unit now I'm not advising to do this but I've heard stories of people doing this to lower their their customs and their duties fees this won't work if you're doing large volumes but if you're only doing a 500 unit or a th unit run it could be a tactic to save you some money maybe not the most ethical thing out there but I'm just saying it again I do not advise this but it's something I've heard about people doing now if you're going to ship by C you're going to want to hire a freight forwarder 100% it's going to make it so much easier and a freight forwarder is a company that arranges everything from you they'll arrange a truck to go to the warehouse in whatever country that you're manufacturing the product in pick it up send it over to the docs where a ship and and load it onto a ship get it from the ship to cross over into your Port get it through customs all those different things and it's relatively inexpensive to do this and then they'll get from the port your wherever your home country is your home Port they'll organize a truck to come pick it up and get it to the Amazon warehouse if you're going to be doing air shipping you can go with DHL usually they're the cheapest option um I've also at times used FedEx I believe and there there's some other options as well but DHL is usually the one that I go with and now that we've talked about alibaba.com and I do want to say the manufacturer on Alibaba end up doing around 58% of all overseas manufacturing but there are other options I'm going to share some of the pros and the cons of other websites if you don't want to go with alibaba.com there are a bunch of other websites and I'm going to talk about that in this next section right here you don't need to use alibaba.com to find a supplier often times the best suppliers are not even on alibaba.com and I'm going to show you where to find the best suppliers including 20 different Alibaba alternative websites and we're going to go over the pros and the cons for every website so by the end of this video you're going to know exactly which website you should go to to find your supplier and alibaba.com owns 58.2% of the entire Chinese Ecommerce Market but just because they're the biggest doesn't mean that they're the best and let's start with the pros and the cons for alibaba.com and the first con is that a lot of the suppliers on alibaba.com are middlemen they're trading companies they buy products directly from the manufacturer they mark up the price and then they sell it to you other websites we're going to be talking about later in this video allow you to buy directly from the manufacturer another con with alibaba.com is 63% of all suppliers are based in China meaning if you're looking for a supplier that's not in China it's going to be very hard to find using Alibaba another con is slow and expensive shipping some of the other websites we're going to be talking about later will have faster and cheaper shipping options and there are a couple other cons that we'll talk about throughout this video and let me share with you the first of 20 different Alibaba Alternatives and the first one is called Global Sources this is a Chinese supplier directory that connects buyers with suppliers all over the world and it's actually the leading Chinese supplier directory with over 1.5 million suppliers on this website and it's one of the main competitors to Alibaba and one thing that they specialize in is electronics so if you're looking for a supplier in the electronics Niche this is your spot another Pro with Global Sources is the suppliers on this website tend to be more established there's also more real manufacturers as opposed to on Alibaba where there's a lot of trading companies it's a very easy to access and quick and easy platform to use to find suppliers on the cons however there's usually a higher mq suppliers on Global Sources are bigger more established and they want to work with bigger and more established companies there's also a lot of unverified suppliers so the chances of you getting scammed are a little bit higher it's also harder to get quotes using Global Sources because they want to work with bigger companies which means that they're going to make you prove that you're actually a legitimate company versus Alibaba where a lot of the suppliers there are willing to work with smaller companies there's also no shipping or payment channels like there is with Alibaba with Alibaba you can actually pay directly on that website a manufacturer with Global Sources you have to send a wire or figure out some kind of other way to send the money to the manufacturer which makes it a little bit scarier the second platform I recommend you use to find manufacturers or suppliers is Google especially if you're looking to find manufacturers in the United States and the pros of Google is it's the largest search engine in the world and a lot of Manufacturers already have a website on Google Now a con is if you're looking for Chinese manufacturers the chance of them having a website on Google is very low but another Pro of Google is it allows you to find smaller manufacturers that maybe don't know to go onto websites like thomasnet.com which we'll talk about later and thomasnet.com is a great website for finding manufacturers in the United States and since Google is free to use there's no extra fees there's no middleman it'll connect you directly with a manufacturer and really all you have to do is type in what you want a manufacturer or supplier for in Google and go through the results and one trick I recommend using is actually picking up the phone and calling manufacturers rather than emailing them another unconventional way to find manufacturers is by going to conventions almost no matter what your Niche is there is a convention that meets in the United States for your Niche for instance one of my first products that had a ton of success was a food product so I went to a convention called Expo West which is the largest natural food convention in the United States and often times wholesale and manufacturers are actually at these events looking for people to buy their product in bulk or to private label their products and one of the largest conventions in the world is the Canton Fair it's held every year in guano China and it's split into three different phases the first phase is electronics and Machinery the second phase is gifts in toys and the third phase is building materials and Home Furnishing the pros of going to the Canton fair to find your supplier is they have over 25,000 exhibitors and over 200,000 people go to this Fair every year it allows you to meet hundreds of factories in the span of a week and it's a great way for you to actually build a relationship with your supplier because you're going to get to meet them in person you're going to get to shake their hand and actually get to know them a little bit better than you will from just going to Alibaba and sending a message it's also going to allow you to see and touch the product sample so you can see if they're high quality material plus a lot of factories that are not on Alibaba actually go to the Canton fair so it's going to show you a lot of hidden gems you can even negotiate and close a deal on the spot but there are some pretty big Cons with the Canton Fair the first one is you have to actually travel from wherever you are to guano China an airfare in the hotel can be relatively expensive there's also no detailed guide or magazine for the fair so it can be a little bit chaotic when you go in the last con is there's way too many buyers with over 200,000 participants it can be fairly chaotic the fifth way to find a supplier is to use an import database and every single CA shipment that's sent from China into the United States is recorded in the import database which means this is a way for you to find out who your competitors are using As A supplier overseas and there's there's a tool that will actually help you to do this it's called the jungle Scout supplier database tool and it's going to allow you to figure out what any company in the world is importing into the United States and at what quantities they're doing so it's also going to give you the exact factories that they're using overseas to buy their products and you'll get to see how often any company in the United States is importing their goods into the US the pros for this is it's easy to find competitors exact manufacturer you can also approximate the sales volume for your competitors and you can even get product ideas by see what other companies are importing into the United States the cons for this tool is that it's not free another con is that some of the manufacturers and suppliers may be relatively large and they may not want to work with you if you're a smaller competitor another con is that there is ways that companies can hide their information from this public record though most smaller to midsize companies aren't going to go through the trouble to do that six is using a sourcing agent this is a third-party person that specializes their entire job is helping people like you to find manufacturers in the United States or overseas and there are people that specialize just in finding manufacturers in China so if you are looking to go the China route you can always do that pros of using a sourcing agent is it's a lot less work for you you're going to get connected with prev vetted companies that this expert already knows about and probably already knows other people that have used them before they'll help you with quality control and help you with shipping they basically make the entire process so much easier they can also help you to negotiate pricing because they're an expert at this they know what things should actually cost they're also more than likely going to be an expert at the negotiating side of things and if you're looking for a supplier internationally these agents will often times have people on the ground in countries like China or India or wherever you're looking for a supplier and those people can actually go to the factory meet the owners and actually vet to see that if it's a legitimate business another big Pro with using the agent is they can Bridge the language Gap because these agents often times speak the language of whatever country you're looking to get a supplier from if there's ever anything that gets lost in Translation they can help you out and keep in mind that some suppliers do not speak English if they're overseas and often times the cheapest and the best ones do not speak English so this is a way for you to bridge the gap in the language translation but there are some pretty big cons when it comes with using a sourcing agent one of the biggest cons is that it costs money usually it's going to cost you around at least 5% of whatever your total cost of the supply that you're looking to purchase now if you're looking to do a relatively small order they may charge some extra fees on top of that another con is once you use an agent to find a factory it's too late you can't really bypass the agent you're kind of stuck with them forever there's also not as strong of a control of the relationship between you and the supplier you have a middleman that's helping you to negotiate deals and things like that but you don't always know if they have your best interest in mind in fact sometimes the agents get secret backdoor commissions they have relationships with existing manufacturers and even though that manufacturer may not be the cheapest they're going to get a little extra money from that manufacturer or supplier so they may direct you to use that company instead of other ones that might be better and that brings us to made in China which is another online directory of suppliers in China and the pros of this is it's the third largest supplier directory obviously Alibaba is still number one but this is a contender it's the third largest one in the world and they offer a wide range of products over 40 million products are possible for you to buy from made in China but with the really specialize in is construction and industrial based suppliers so if that is your Niche this is the website for you another Pros that you can request quotes and place orders with suppliers directly and they do offer some services like quality control and Logistics which to be fair alibaba.com also does offer these Services as well another big Pro is that all of the suppliers on made in China are verified for quality but however there are some Cons with using this website the first big con is they are smaller than alibaba.com they are smaller than GL glal sources another big con is that the suppliers on this website tend to be more expensive than Alibaba or Global Sources last con is the buying process is a little bit more inconvenient than it is with alibaba.com and sometimes this is going to cause issues next up is Aliexpress which is owned by alibaba.com but a big Pro with using AliExpress is that there's lower mqs than with alibaba.com and this website is perfect if you're a first-time buyer it's your first time ever buying something overseas they make it easy because they also have an S escro service which means that you can send your money into the escro service and it won't be released to the manufacturer until you get your goods but there are some Cons with AliExpress the first one is it's more expensive than alibaba.com another con is there's a lot of trade companies in middleman and with AliExpress there's a lot higher rate of defective and lowquality goods that you might be buying next up is europ pages.com which is a supplier database for European suppliers so if you're looking for a supplier in Europe This is the website for you and they have over 3 million companies on their database and it's very easy to use all you have to do is search for the kind of product that you're looking to find a supplier for and it'll give you a list of tons of different suppliers based all over Europe another Pro is that if you're based in Europe you're going to have a local supplier for you but there are some pretty big cons the first con is that it's going to be more expensive than going with alibaba.com or pretty much any Chinese supplier another con is that if you're based in the United States getting a European supplier is still going to have a ton of lead time because you're still going to have to get that product shipped into the United States India is one of the fastest growing economies they have over a billion people and they're growing like crazy in their manufacturing capabilities and India Mart is the place to go if you're looking for a manufacturer based in India and the first pro of using a manufacturer based in India and using India Mark is there are a lot of products that are not made in China or that you don't want to get made in China that would make sense to get made in India another Pro of going with India Mart is they're not going to have the same holidays that China does if you're looking to buy products from China during end of January February during Chinese New Year it's impossible the entire country completely shuts down for about a month and so it's always good to have a backup which is another Pro of getting an india-based manufacturer is it's a backup because what if something happens to us Chinese relations it's good to have another lowcost country that you can get your products manufactured in on top of that a lot of people will get products made in India because they don't like the government of China they don't like all the different negative things that are happening over there but with that being said there are some pretty big cons when it comes to using India Mart and the first one is it's going to be more expensive than going with Alibaba or Chinese suppliers the second thing is sometimes the shipping times are actually longer because India is further away from the United States than China is another con with India Mart is the suppliers are not verified to the same degree as they are with Alibaba so it can be a little bit sketchy when looking for a manufacturer and when something goes wrong you're not as protected with indiamart as you are with Alibaba and keep in mind that Alibaba does have a lot of india-based companies on their website now stick with me if you're serious about finding a supplier we have a few more websites to go through and again at the end of this video I'm going to share with you exactly which one you should use and the next one we're going to talk about is dhgate and this is an online Marketplace that connects Chinese manufacturers and wholesalers to buyers like you and they have a wide range of products low minimum order quantities and inin tracking meaning that when you buy products through dhgate they're going to track the shipping and the logistics from the time that you buy it all the way till the end destination but there are some pretty big Cons with dhgate the first is it's not for private labelers unlike with Alibaba the majority of sellers on dhgate are individual businesses not factories so if you are looking to do private label then dhgate is not a good option for you the quality control on dhgate is very poor and a lot of the products end up being defective overall the merchandise is relatively cheap with dhgate and there's lots of trading companies in middleman and overall I don't recommend for most people to use dhgate trade key is an international marketplace that connects suppliers with international buyers and sellers they have 9.6 million members from over 225 countries and they have a large list of Chinese suppliers including a lot of companies that may not be on alibaba.com they also offer a bunch of other services like market research and trade show promotion but for cons they are quite a bit smaller than Alibaba they also have a relatively outdated website that's a little bit harder to navigate and if you want to use all the features that this website has you have to pay an additional fee ec21 is another option and they have over 3 million Global buyers and over 5 million monthly visitors not to mention they have 2.5 million registered users in over 190 different countries it's also easy and free to use but one of the big cons again 10 is it is smaller than Alibaba now keep in mind there are going to be some suppliers on ec21 that are not on alibaba.com but overall it's still is quite a bit smaller than Alibaba there's also no vetting process for sellers so the chances of you getting scammed are quite a bit higher than it is with Alibaba 1688.com is a Chinese supplier database but the interesting thing about this is It's specifically targeted to people that are based in China buying from Chinese suppliers so this is a website that you're probably not going to use but it is something that I recommend that you should be aware of because it does have a huge directory of Chinese suppliers including some that are not on Alibaba and often times it's going to have cheaper prices so if you do speak mandrin or cantones or if you have an agent that does you may want to have them check this website but the big Cons with this website is you are going to need a translator and usually they're going to be working with Chinese companies and let's quickly go over some other websites before I share with you what is the best website for you to find your supplier chener Brands is the best site for people that are looking to do Drop Shipping but it Cons with this is it takes a long time to ship products from China to the United States China vision is great for people that are looking to do wholesale where you buy products in bulk and resell them on Amazon or on your own website in the United States but they do have poor customer service and a lot of fake products wholesale Central is another website that you can use if you're looking to wholesale products but it is smaller than a lot of the other websites worldwide Brands is a directory of wholesale suppliers that drop ship in the United States in Canada they have a ton of productss but membership is expensive at $299 a month and eworld trade is another platform you can use to find suppliers but it not only is for physical products it's also for services and it caters more to businesses looking to connect with other businesses and it's not as good for individual entrepreneurs so what platform should you use to find a supplier for your business well if you're looking to find a supplier in the United States use thomasnet.com if you're looking to find a supplier in Europe use Euro Pages or if you're to find a supplier in India use indiamart but I will say no matter what always check with alibaba.com and even though there are a lot of cons to using Alibaba there's also a lot of Pros to using Alibaba they have relatively low mqs which stands for minimum order quantity meaning that you don't have to buy tens of thousands of units of a product they also have one of the largest databases of suppliers in the entire world and last year they did over $130 billion in revenue on their website making them one of the largest e-commerce Platforms in the world they also have the verified supplier program where they send people to the manufacturers facility to verify that they're actually a legitimate business on top of that they have the trade Assurance program meaning that if a company that you're buying from on Alibaba does have the trade Assurance program enabled and you buy from them and there is an issue you can always get your money back and Alibaba will be a middleman for you to make sure that you'll be able to get your money back so I would recommend for you to check out alibaba.com to find find your supplier but I would also recommend for you to check out some of these other websites to make sure that you'll get the best products at the best price you should always make sure you have a backup for your supplier I've had a ton of success using alibaba.com but I've also used a lot of other websites and I've had success using those websites as well and keep in mind the biggest downside of using alibaba.com is everyone else is doing it so that's why I always recommend checking with the other websites and seeing if you can find a supplier that's maybe a Hidden Gem that other people don't know about before we go into the next section I do want to let you know that in my Amazon FBA program I have a checklist for exactly what you should be looking for in the manufacturer as well as I share with you all my exact templates of emails that I send messages that I send for a bunch of different products that I have released in the past so if you do want to get those templates if you do want to get that checklist there is a link down below to join the passion product formula but one thing that you should know is that 72% of all manufacturing is done outside of China and a lot of people think that they need to go with China they need to manufacture their product in China it's not true in this next section I'm going to show you how you can get a product manufactured here in the United States in Europe in South America in India in just about any other country other than China and I'll talk about some of the negative side effects of manufacturing in China and why you might want to avoid it you're going to know how to find a supplier in the United States Mexico Canada India Europe and just about everywhere else in the world and we're going to go over the pros and the cons of working with suppliers in all these countries and let's start with the pros of working with China because China is the leading manufacturing country in the world accounting for 28% of all manufacturing done and last year China exported around 600 billion do worth of merchandise into the United States and they're able to do this because the cost of Labor in China is so much cheaper than in other countries which means the cost of the products that you would be buying is also going to be lower but one of the first cons of buying products that are made in China is you are contributing to some unfair labor laws and that's how they're able to keep their labor prices so low there can also sometimes be huge language barriers between you and your manufacturer now this is not always the case I've had a lot of good experiences of working with manufacturers overseas but keep in mind sometimes there is a problem you tell them what you want and they give you something slightly different there's also cultural differences for instance every year around February they take a month off for Chinese New Year and this has driven me and a lot of Americans crazy in the past because during that entire month China is completely closed down there's also High import duties when you ship your product from China into the United States you're going to have to pay an extra 25% on top of whatever your cost of goods already is so even though China seems like it's cheap once you start adding up things like shipping and duties the cost of products made in China may not always be cheaper than something made in the United States this also means that you're going to have longer lead times when you buy a product that's made in China it it can take around 6 weeks or more to ship it from the manufacturer into the Amazon warehouse which means if you see on Amazon that you're running out of stock you may not even have time to reorder with a Chinese manufacturer because the lead times and the shipping times are so long there's also an issue of communicating in different time zones when we're awake they're asleep and when they're awake we're asleep so everything ends up taking longer because you'll send a message and they'll answer on the next day you'll send a response and then they won't answer again until the day after that and before you know it a ton of time will have passed by there's also a higher lack of quality control and you can hire people to go over and make sure and inspect your products and do detailed reports but still when you get your shipment there is a chance that there's going to be issues and the last big con of working with Chinese suppliers is there is IP security issues meaning there is a chance that your manufacturer in China will copy your product rip it off and sell that exact same product on Amazon or on Shopify now there are ways to avoid this you can have them sign what's called an nnm and ndas in China do not work but this nnn agreement does carry some weight the other thing you could do is actually file for a patent in China this costs around $11,000 and manufacturers in China care more about that than they do if you file a patent in the United States but if you want to be extra careful you can file a provisional patent in the United States as well this only cost $75 and it gives you a year before you need to sign up for a full patent and now let's share the top five countries to get your product manufactured in as well as the pros and cons for each one and I'm going to show you how to find a supplier in each one of these because for each country it's a little bit different there's a trick that you can use for each country to find a manufacturer and before we go to the first one warning I'm not saying to never buy from China I'm just saying that there are other and sometimes better options to find suppliers in other countries and I want you to explore these other countries before you just default to purchasing from China and the first country we're going to talk about makes up 18% of all the manufacturing in the world and this industry accounts for a revenue of $8 trillion and it's the second most popular country to do Manufacturing in and that is the United States and Manufacturing in the United States is actually growing every single year and there are a ton of Pros to getting your product manufactured in the United States you're going to have higher quality control no language barriers faster shipping times the cost of shipping is also going to be less not to mention you're going to be able to save money on import duties and tariffs you're also going to have greater intellectual property protection the chance of a US manufacturer ripping you off is way less than a Chinese manufacturer and on top of all this you're going to be able to put the stamp on your product that says Made in the USA which could contribute to more sales but before I show you how to find a us-based manufacturer you do need to know there are some Cons with using a manufacturer in the United States the first and the biggest one is there is going to be higher costs some of the products that I've wanted to produce in the United States would have cost five times as much money than having them manufactured in China there's also limited production capabilities in the United States there are a a lot of things that Chinese manufacturers just do better than us manufacturers we've lost a lot of our manufacturing capabilities in China has actually invested in some top quality machines but keep in mind not everything that's made in China is cheaper there are some products that are actually cheaper to make in the good old United States and that's because by the time you factor in the shipping fees the duty and tariff fees and all the other costs that come with buying products in China it is sometimes cheaper to buy a product that's made in the USA and there are three different ways that you can find suppliers or manu ufacturers in the United States and the first is reference USA which is now called Data axle and this website is 100% free it's also the best and most comprehensive database of us suppliers in the world you can actually use it to locate any business in the world and find out a ton of information about them however the cons for data axle is because there's so much information on this website you're going to have to sort through a lot of junk to find the right supplier for you another huge con is reference USA dat axle is only available in your local library so if you want to access this website you actually have to get a library card walk into a library and go onto the website from a computer at your library and when you're doing searches on this website it will sometimes include retail stores and you're going to want to filter those out because you don't want to buy your products from a retail store and then try to resell it you won't make a lot of money so to get access to this website one call your local library and ask if they have access step two get your library card and step three is go to the computer at your library and and type in your library card number and if that sounds complicated don't worry the second resource I have for you is a much easier way to find suppliers here in the United States if you're looking for a supplier in the United States you can use thomasnet.com and thomasnet.com has over 950,000 active users in over 500,000 company profiles and another Pro with thomasnet is they only include real suppliers they don't include any retail stores which means that you're not going to have to do as much sifting through the data in fact on thomasnet the suppliers are very specifically categorized based on what kind of products they sell and this is an excellent resource if you're looking to create your own product and this is what I recommend you do create your own passion product this is what I've done and a lot of my students have done like Brent who's a full-time first responder helicopter pilot has a family of four and still was able to make almost $2 million in his first two years selling this unique product on Amazon but the last option I recommend if you're looking for a supplier in the United States is maker row and this is specifically help ful if you're looking to create a more unique product but keep in mind maker row is a lot smaller than thomasnet they only have around 10,000 profiles and it has a monthly membership cost but still if you're having a tough time finding a supplier you may want to check out Maker's row another popular country to find a supplier in making up over 1.5% of the entire world's manufacturing and it just happens to be our neighbor to the South is Mexico and it's in 10th place in the world for manufacturing capabilities but despite being in 10th Place Mexico meico may still be a great option for you to find a supplier in and that's because Mexico is so close to the United States that shipping is going to be a lot faster and a lot cheaper duties and taxes from Mexico in the United States are also a lot less and if you're looking for a manufacturer in Mexico you have three different options the first is called season way the second is called Coppel and the third is called Marcato Libre you can also look at y trade which is an industrywide platform that covers all of Latin America and it's a great B2B platform meaning that your business canect connect with another business another upand cominging country you may want to look at to find suppliers making up over 3% of the total manufactured products in the world is India and if you're looking to find a manufacturer in India I recommend going to India Mark it's India's largest busino business Marketplace and it's a great place to find suppliers they have over 7.4 million suppliers listed on their website and they offer over 90 million different products another benefit of indiamart is they do have a payment Protection Program meaning if you're a little bit nervous about sending a payment to a manufacturer over in India you have nothing to worry about because they have you protected when you send that money if for any reason the manufacturer doesn't give you the goods he promised they will refund your money however there is one big con and that is poor customer service in slow delivery so be careful you can also check out the India sourcing Network or go to India in person and check out the India handycrafts and Gifts Fair it's a twice a year trade show that runs for about 5 days and it's a great way to connect with suppliers the next option for finding a supplier makes up over 13% of the total manufacturing happening in the world and that is Europe and Europe is a great place to get certain types of products manufactured also if you happen to live in Europe you may want to find a supplier that's closer to home and to find a supplier in Europe you can go to Euro Pages or esources I'd recommend checking out Euro Pages first because it's the most comprehensive database of suppliers in Europe and although I don't recommend it one country that I get asked about finding suppliers in a lot is Canada and if you live in Canada this might be a good option but if you don't live in Canada I don't really recommend it because you're going to have to pay higher prices and you're going to run into other issues of getting your products across the border and things like that and the fifth option for finding a supplier for your product and this is something I do recommend looking at is the entire rest of the world all the different countries we didn't talk about here and one of the best ways to find suppliers all over the world is using alibaba.com and yes alibaba.com is a Chinese company and most of their suppliers are based in China but they do have suppliers from all over the world and for the most part if you're looking for an affordable supplier this is probably the first website you should go to when you find the perfect manufacturer overseas you need to protect yourself you need to figure out how to make sure that your manufacturer is not going to copy you and this is exactly what happened to one of my students Leanne and Logan and they had a product that was a really good idea and one of the big mistakes that they made is they didn't move quick enough they didn't do a big social media push they kind of of just launched the product and then a few months later they ended up having manufacturers copy them and now the key thing here I do want to stress if they would have done a big launch and got a bunch of reviews it honestly wouldn't have mattered if the manufacturers copied them because they would have been so far ahead of the curve but in this next section I'm going to show you how you can protect yourself to make sure that you don't get copied how do I legally set up my business what permits do I need do I need to start an LLC or a DBA and the short answer is you technically don't really need anything if you're a US citizen as long as you have a Social Security number you can actually sell on the Amazon platform but I highly recommend creating some kind of a business structure and you could do a DBA an es Corp or an LLC this is going to allow you to open up a business bank account and keep your business funds separate from your personal funds and which one of these three is right for you really depends on your situation and I'll talk about that in just a minute so in addition to a business entity structure you're also going to want to get an EIN and a reseller permit both of these are free to get in for the first one if you go to irs.gov slab bunch of different things you can get your EIN number I'll put a link to that down below and an EIN is basically like a social security number for your business you'll also want to get a sellers permit and this allows you to be able to buy things tax free as long as you're going to be reselling those items this is also free to get and it depends on what state you live in for every state you're going to have to go to your state and get a reseller permit for instance I live in California so I'd have to go to the California IRS government website and apply to get my free state reseller permit when setting up your business structure you have three different options as I mentioned you can use a DBA an LLC or an escarp now in addition to these you can just use your social security number if you're a United States citizen but generally I recommend setting up some kind of a legal business entity now a DBA is stands for doing business as it's going to cost you around $99 you can go to websites like legal zoom.com and there's a bunch of other ones as well and you can apply for a DBA this will allow you to go to a bank and open up a business bank account I'll talk about how to do that in just a minute so this is going to be your cheapest option and it doesn't give you any kind of legal protection if someone sues you and you're a DBA they can come after all your personal assets so in response to this another option is called an LLC which stands for limited liability company you can also go to Legal Zoom and a bunch of other websites to get an LLC this is going to give you legal protection if someone sues your business they can only take assets from your business they can't actually take any of your personal Assets Now an LLC is generally speaking a lot more expensive than a DBA with Legal Zoom I think it costs around $200 to $250 to apply for your LLC in addition to that a lot of states have Franchise Tax fees in California it's an extra $800 every single year if you have an LLC plus as you make more money they charge you even more to Main maintain that LLC a third option is an escorp and an escorp stands for a small Corporation I believe we can fact check that but with this it gives you some tax benefits basically you pay a little bit less tax it's a little bit complicated the way it works is you're able to take a salary so let's say your business made a million dollars you can pay yourself a salary of $100,000 and the rest of the money you can pay yourself out as kind of like a dividend and that dividend gets taxed at a lower rate so there are some tax advantages with an escort now the secret here is you can actually create an LLC which is a little bit easier to maintain than an escorp and then you can elect for the es Corp taxation as far as the IRS is concerned which means that you get all the benefits of the LLC Plus on top of that you're going to pay a little bit lower taxes so generally this is what I recommend but here's the truth if you're running a business that's not likely for someone to come and sue you a DBA is fine you still have all the benefits of having the business bank account and in Amazon's eyes it's very similar to having an LLC so there's no problem if you want to just do a DBA if you're not worried about getting sued a DBA oftentimes is a great option now if you don't live in the United States but you want to sell in Amazon USA often times it's not 100% necessary but I do recommend getting an LLC and you can pick whichever State you want to get your LLC in I recommend Wyoming often time once you submit for your DBA your LLC or your escorp whichever business structure you want the next step is to take that paperwork and go to a bank and open up a business bank account there's a lot of different reasons you want to do this but you want to try to keep your personal and your business finances separate now if you have an LLC you need to do this legally if you intermix your business and personal uh finances and someone goes to sue you they can actually go after your personal assets but it's just standard practice it's very smart to keep those two things very separate and one of the reasons you want to keep your personal and your business separate is you want to know if your business is actually making money or losing money and if you start mixing personal with business finances then sometimes it might look like your business is losing money but it's actually making money or it might look like your business is making money and it's actually losing money so keeping those separate is very important another way to keep those two things separate is opening up a business credit card this is one of the best things this is one of those hidden secrets that no one tells you about when you open up a business credit card not only is it going to help you to keep your business and personal finances separate but on top of that there's so many perks so many benefits with business credit cards for instance I rarely pay for flights I rarely pay for hotels I make so much money off the points from the credit cards that I am able to pay for my flights and all my hotels and this is a great hack and a lot of credit cards give you 50 60,000 points or 60,000 miles just for signing up maybe you spend a th000 or $2,000 which is very easy to do when you have a business and you get 60,000 miles and 60,000 mil is enough miles for a roundtrip ticket most places in the world you can get a roundtrip ticket to Europe for 40,000 miles if you book it properly so signing up for a business credit card is one of those secret perks that a lot of people don't tell you about that you should absolutely I will say the MX gold is a classic one American Express gold you get I think it's like 5x points when you spend money on Advertising so if you spend let's say $1,000 on Advertising you get 5,000 points which is worth like around $50 in Flight Credit and I do share with you screen recording showing you exactly how I get my LLC taxes and escort my trademark all that kind of stuff in my Amazon FBA program again link down below but once you have all your legal paperwork done the next thing you need to really be considering is how are you going to launch your product cuz you only get one shot at launching your product and you want to put all your energy that you can into getting a really big launch because if Amazon sees that your product is selling a lot and doing really well it's likely that it's going to put it towards the top of the search results which is going to lead to more sales and you need to remember that Amazon is a search engine people go to Amazon to search for things they want to buy and this is the key to try to get your product to the top of the search result in this next section I'm going to tell you a ton of my secrets for launching a product on Amazon I'm going to show you how to list your first product on Amazon and the first thing you need to do when listing a product on Amazon is to sign up for an Amazon seller account you can go to sell. amazon.com click sign up and sign up for an account once you've signed up for an account you're going to log into that account and it'll take you to your Amazon Seller Central once you're in your Seller Central account you're going to click on these three lines up here you're going to go to catalog and you're going to click on add products if you're looking to sell a product on Amazon that's already being sold on Amazon you're going to type in the product name here or you can use the UPC code or the as number but if the product that you want to sell on Amazon is not yet being sold on Amazon you're going to click on I'm adding a product not sold on Amazon the next step is you're going to tell Amazon which category to put the product listing that you're creating in and there are a ton of different categories appliances baby products Beauty and personal care all kinds of different things and the easiest way to figure out which category to put your product in is type what you're trying to sell on Amazon so we're going to be selling a type of black tea so we'll click on this search button and it'll tell us what it thinks the best categories would be and it gives us a bunch of different options and after looking at all these different options I think that this Grocery and Gourmet beverages tea black is the best option now if you're not sure what the best option is for you you can look at similar products that are being sold on Amazon and try to figure out what category they're being sold on once you figure that out you're going to select that category and and the first question it's going to ask you when selling a product on Amazon is does this product have variations and our current product does not we only have one flavor in its passion fruit now in the future we're going to have other flavors So eventually we will come back in here and we'll change this to yes but for now since it's only one product without any variations we're going to say no if you're selling your product in multiple colors multiple sizes you'll select yes the next thing you'll need to fill out is the external product ID and you can select what kind of an ID you want to use do you want to use an EIN a GTI UPC or as now most people watching this video you're going to select a UPC code and UPC stands for Universal product code and just about every product in the world has a UPC code that is the barcode that you see on products that they scan at Walmart at Target or just about anywhere that they sell products and you need some kind of an identification number if you're going to be selling on Amazon as I mentioned a UPC code is the most common one and to get a UPC code for your product you're going to go to gs1.org and select get your barcode and it used to be that you had to buy 10 barcodes at the same time which was around $250 but recently gs1.org has allowed you to just buy one barcode for $30 and I highly recommend paying the $30 and getting a legitimate barcode they're are other websites where you can get barcodes for cheaper but often times by trying to save a little bit of money it's going to cause you a lot of headaches down the road so don't cheap out get the legitimate authentic barcodes from gs1.org and once you get your barcode you'll type those numbers in here if for some reason you're selling a product that does not require a UPC code you can select I don't have a product ID and it'll make you apply for an exemption the next thing Amazon's going to ask you is to put the name of your item and this is going to be the title of your Amazon list and so when people go to Amazon and they search for your product they're going to see the title the main image the price and the number of reviews so the title is one of the most important things and a lot of people don't pay enough attention to this so the title that we decided to go with for this product is high caffeine tea passion fruit black tea extra strong flavored 14-pack bag healthy coffee alternative 200 milligram highly caffeinated substitute by rocket te now the reason we have such a long title and the reason that we started with high caffeine tea is because the way that Amazon works and Amazon at the end of the day is just a search engine people go to Amazon to search for products they want to buy usually people are not going to Amazon to search for your product they're searching for what they want to purchase and they happen to find your product so in our example people go to Amazon and they'll search for things like high caffeine tea and we want to let Amazon know that our product is a high caffeine tea so when people are searching for it our product will go to the top of the search results and the way that Amazon works is that the product at the top of the search results gets most of the sales here's a graph of how many sales products get depending on what position they are in the search results and as you can see the top product gets most of the sales followed by the second product third product fourth product and it's actually exponential so the higher up in the search results you can get the better your product is going to sell and the only way that Amazon's going to know if your product should even be in the search results is based on your title and your bullet points and the keywords you give to Amazon because that lets Amazon know what searches are relevant to your product so I'll go into depth later in this video talking about how to figure out what keyword you should put in your title but for now this is the title that we use the next thing is the brand name and you're going to put the brand name of your product now if your product that you're selling does not have a brand name you can check this box right here to let Amazon know if your product does have a brand name though you are going to have to go through the brand registry process to let Amazon know that you actually own the brand that you're talking about and part of going through brand registry is you do need to file for a trade Mark but don't worry if you don't want to go through brand registry you can always just select this box and it just won't show the brand name of your product on your listing once you're done filling out this information you're going to click on continue the most important part of listing your product in my opinion is the images and the bullet points and we're going to get to that in just a few minutes but first we need to fill out this Vital Information and the first question they ask is who is the manufacturer and you can put almost whatever you want here and if it's your product you can put your own brand name here even if you used a third part manufacture it doesn't matter we're just going to put rocket t for this example for each unit count we're going to go ahead and put one because we're going to be sending one bag of Rocket tea the next question is is the product expirable and the answer to this is yes because our product is a tea product it has a shelf life of around 2 years it will expire after that now if you're selling a product that does not expire you'll select note to this for instance AJ a student that I also partner with on his product cocktail cards since that product is made out of cardboard board it never expires so in that case we'd select no after that you'll let Amazon know what the country of origin is and since our product is manufactured in the United States we're going to put United States next question is the unit count and our product comes with 14 teabags and under unit count type we're going to put count uh you can change this to different things there's other options you can put ounces or different things depending on what kind of a product you're selling but to keep things simple we're going to put 14 count then you'll select whether your product contains liquid or not no for us is the item heat sensitive no and it'll also put the form factor and for this I'm just going to select stand alone because it's a standalone pouch and it'll also ask you is package level orderable and for most people watching this video you're going to select yes this is a little bit more of a complicated one don't worry about it for now if you want more information you can hover over the question mark for any of these different things we're going to go ahead and select yes what this basically means is is this package that you're creating a listing for is it something that people can order and before we click save and finish there are some other things that we need to fill out so let's go to the offer next and the first field is what is the skew skew stands for stock keeping unit and you can put whatever you want here if you want to leave this blank you can but then Amazon's just going to randomly assign you a stock keeping unit that's just going to be a bunch of numbers and letters this is mostly just for organizational purposes so what we're going to put here is rocket te passion fruit that way in the future as we add more flavors we can just change rocket tea to orange rocket tea to raspberry Amazon's also going to ask you what your price is going to be so we're going to put 27.99 and this is the standard price I'll show you later how you can always discount your product and put it on sale for a limited time next up Amazon's going to ask you how much quantity you have of the products that you're going to sell and this is only relevant if you plan on doing fulfilled by Merchant and I'm going to explain that in just a second but before I get there it also asks you what is the condition type of the product that you're selling and for most people selling products on Amazon it's going to be new but now we get to an important question and that is what is the Fulfillment channel of this product and fulfillment Channel basically just means are you going to ship it or are you going to allow Amazon to ship it and so the way that this works is you have two different options here this first one here is Merchant fulfilled often times you'll hear people talk about this is fbm which stands for fulfilled by Merchant and this just simply means that every time you get an order on Amazon's website Amazon's going to give you a notification and you're going to have to print out the shipping label you're going to have to package up the item you're going to have to put that shipping label on the item and ship it out to the customer and that's not what I normally recommend for most people watching this video right here I recommend instead doing Amazon will ship and provide customer service this is often times known as FBA or fulfilled by Amazon this is where you send a number of units of your product ready to go into the Amazon warehouse and when Amazon gets an order they're going to pick pack and ship it out to the customer this is going to save you a lot of time but also a lot of money because Amazon has cheaper fulfillment rates in addition to that by selecting that Amazon will ship and provide customer service you're also going to get more sales because when you send your products into the Amazon warehouse and you select this option it'll put a little Prime badge on your product listing meaning that everybody that goes to Amazon that's a Prime member will see this and they'll know when they buy your product they're able to get the product shipped to them in 2 days and Prime customers are much more likely to buy Prime eligible products Amazon knows this so usually they'll put Prime eligible products at the top of the search results meaning ultimately more sales for you and there are over 150 Prime members in the United States and this number is continuing to grow and these people all want Prime eligible products so I highly recommend if you want to create a passive income source for yourself then select Amazon will ship and provide customer service once you're done with that we're going to go to the next section which is the images and this this is one of the most important parts that so many people Overlook and the reason again is because when someone searches for a product that they want to buy all they see for the different products is the main image the title the price and the number of reviews and the main image is probably the most important thing if you can capture people's attention with your main image they're highly likely to click on your product and if they click on your product they're very likely to buy your product so you want to make sure that you have the perfect main image and to create the perfect main image you want to have an image that's going to stand out in the search results and perfectly match what people are searching for that's why for this product we created packaging that says high caffeine tea and big red letters in its black packaging this is going to strongly contrast with Amazon's white background people are going to see this black packaging and then they're also going to see that it says in Big Red Letters high caffeine tea which is exactly what they were searching for because most of the sales that we're going to get are probably people searching for high caffeine tea so for our main image we're basically just going to be showing the product packaging and to upload your main image you're going to click right here on upload and you're going to select the image that you'd like to use and this is the image that we have right now but it's actually not perfect we're looking to improve it a little bit before we launch one of the first things that you always want to do is make sure you have as little white space around your image as possible because the less white space you have the bigger your product's going to look in these search results on top of that these tea pouches don't look very premium and they're also adding some space here we're probably going to move those tea pouches up around here so that we can make our product packaging even bigger so it'll stand out more on the product search results in addition to your main image you can also add up to eight additional images and you want to make sure you add as many images as possible for your product because when people are buying something on Amazon they can't pick it up they can't physically hold it and the only way that they can know what it's like to own your product is by looking at these other images so this is a chance for you to really sell your product and convince people to actually buy your product instead of the competition and some examples of things that you should use for the other images is always use some kind of a graph or chart showing how your product is better than the competition here we have what a normal cup of green tea looks like black tea coffee and other leading brands of tea and we have how much caffeine we have all the way up here we also have a chart here that shows how much more powerful and better rocket tea is over coffee we have some more charts here and we show also that the product is made in the USA all these other images still need to be improved we have another one right here that shows the flavor it shows passion fruit that hopefully is going to convince people to buy our product now there are some things that I want to let you know and that is that there are some image guidelines when adding photos now your main image needs to have a white background the images that you upload also need to be at least 1,000 by 1,000 pixels this is so when people are hovering over the images on your product listing it'll be able to zoom in jpeg is the preferred image format but you can also use Tiff or GIF files all your other images don't need to have a black background but something to be aware of is you're only supposed to show in the images things that are actually being sold you're not supposed to use any props or anything like that but a lot of people still use props and they never get in trouble for it but there is a chance that if you do show something in one of your images that doesn't come with your product there's a chance that Amazon might take down that image if that happens it's not a big deal you can just add a different image later so once you've added your main image and all the other images we're going to go over to the description and this is where you can add the bullet points for your product and the bullet points are crucial because this is another chance for you to convince people to buy your product it's also a place that you can enter keywords and keywords are things that people search for in Amazon so just like we did with the title we're going to want to put things in here that people search for in Amazon because if Amazon sees that the keyword that people are searching for is in your title and it's in your bullet points it's very likely that Amazon will put your product towards the top of the search results and these are the bullet points that we're going to use for Rocket te now one of the biggest mistakes that most people make when creating bullet points is one they don't sell the benefit of the product you can see here that we have highest caffeine tea in the world when Willam first wrote the bullet points he actually just put 200 Mig of caffeine per tea bag nobody cares that the product has 200 milligrams of caffeine that doesn't sound cool that's a very technical feature most people don't even understand what that means but what people do care about is that it's the highest caffeine tea in the world they understand what that means another thing that he did in the original bullet points was put 100 milligrams of alanine per tea bag again no one really understands what's the benefit of having eleanine and the benefit of eleanine is smooth energy so I highlighted that first you want to go through and figure out why do people want to buy your product put that in capital letters and the last thing I'll mention about the bullet points is I always like having my fifth bullet point say something to the effect of 100% money back guarantee need to try it and see for yourself and basically letting people know that they can buy this product they can test it out and if they don't love it they can get 100% of their money back and here's a secret every single product on Amazon has a 100% money back guarantee but by letting people know and putting it in their face they more likely to feel comfortable buying and trying your product out so once you have your bullet points you're going to paste them in here and then you'll click add more and you'll put the next bullet point in after that and you'll do this for all five bullet points once you're done filling out your bullet points Amazon asks you is there any kind of mandatory cautionary statement look through these different examples here and see if any of these apply to your product if none of them do you can click on no warning applicable before we click on Save and finish there's actually more options that are hidden and to get those other options you can click on all attributes and you don't have to add all these attributes but there are some secret hidden gems that I highly recommend doing and one of them is the product description this is completely optional but this is another chance for you to sell people on why your product is amazing so write out a compelling reason why people should buy your product and go ahead and paste it in there you can add a sale price for your product another hidden thing that's very important is this offer start date and you want to make sure that if you're going to be selling a product in the future that you don't want to release it too soon because if you don't select an offer start date what's going to happen is as soon as your listing gets approved your product's going to be available for sale and that's really bad that's something you want to avoid because the way that Amazon works is you want to try to get as many sales as possible from day one so if the first day that your listing is available is just whenever Amazon approves your listing it's going to make it so your product has no sales when it first comes available for sale so you always want to make sure you put this date as a date in the future and another key thing to selling a product on Amazon is you want to try to build up your audience and the reason I say this is because you want to try to do a bunch of promotion you want to try to get people excited so that when you launch your product on that first day you're going to get as many sales as possible and I'm actually going to be releasing a video next week that's part of this series that I've been doing about rocket te showing exactly all the things that we did to launch our product so that we were able to get as many sales as possible from day one if you're going to be selling a new product on Amazon you need to come back to this Channel next week and make sure to watch that video because I have a ton of secrets that we use to make sure that our launch is going to be as big as possible another key thing that a lot of people skip is this keyword section and this is gold you need to go in and you need to add keywords because this is telling Amazon exactly what search results are relevant to your product and I'm going to show you how to figure out what Search terms you should be focused on and this tool helium 10 is a crucial tool if you're going to be selling a product on Amazon because it's going to help you to figure out which keywords you should be targeting and this tool helium 10 is a crucial tool to use if you're going to be selling a product on Amazon because it's going to help you to figure out which Search terms which keywords you should be targeting and by using this tool it's going to make it so you have a better title better bullet points you can figure out these Search terms and ultimately it's going to make it so that your product gets more sales and once you sign up for helium 10 there's actually two different tools here that are going to help you to figure out which keywords to Target one is the magnet tool and the other one is cereo and the way that the magnet tool works is you type in what things you think people would type into Amazon to buy your product and William and I think that high caffeine tea is the thing that people are going to type into Amazon to find our product and helium 10 lets you know how many people per month actually search that on Amazon it turns out over 2,800 people per month search high caffeine tea which is a great sign and that means that this is one of the things that we want to make sure that we include in our title and in these Search terms and the bullet points but the other thing that this tool does is it actually gives us other ideas that people might be typing into Amazon that we might want to try to use as search term now not all of these keywords are relevant but you can go through and you can try to figure out which ones are the most relevant to your product that also happen to get the highest search volume by doing that we came up with this list of things that people are searching in Amazon where they might be interested in our product and we have things like energy drink mix Natural Energy drink mix high caffeine caffeinated tea energy tea and a long list of other things the problem is when putting in Search terms in here they specifically say no repetition and no comp compor brand name so you don't want to ever put something like apple or the exact trademark name of one of your competitors so another tool that you can use to do this is this tool called Frankenstein you'll take the list of keywords that you have you can copy it and then you can paste it in here and it will remove any kind of duplicates and convert everything to lowercase so that you can just simply paste it into the search term so this whole long list of everything got condensed down to just these words right here we're going to take that and we're going to paste it right here as I mentioned you should also use use those keywords and make sure you include them in your title and in your bullet point and in this next section we're going to talk first about how to create the listing for your product because this is a crucial part as I mentioned Amazon is a search engine which means that they don't really know what your product is unless you tell them and the way that they know what your product is is because of the title the bullet points the description and another key component we're going to talk about is how to make the perfect main image because when people go to Amazon and they search for something they they can really see is the the title the main image and and a couple other things like that but they're really going to make their decision whether or not they buy your product based on the main image this is another thing that I go into way more depth about in my Amazon FBA program I show you a bunch of different examples of different products and how I would create a listing for them also if you're interested in getting some help for this I do have a company called FBA creatives where we design your entire listing for you link to both of those down below but once you have your listing created it's important to understand the backend of seller Central and in this next section I'm going to show you a little walkthrough of the entire backend of Seller Central including some little secret features that a lot of people don't know about like how to do reports and how to know exactly how much money you're making so now that you have your listing set up let me give you a quick overview of Amazon's Seller Central and show you some things that you might find really useful to start out when you log in you're going to see a few different things here at the top you're going to have how many marketplaces are currently being sold in and in this case we're selling in United States Canada in Mexico but we're not actually actively selling in Canada or Mexico there's also the total number of open orders which is 78 in this case today's sales any messages any buyer messages and these are messages that your customers might be sending to you we have the number of buy box wins which should be close to 100% if you're selling your own unique product sometimes this number dips down a little bit but that's a more advanced topic you're also going to see this which is really important which is restock inventory and it'll tell you how how many days of supplies are left and in this case it's only eight which means that inventory is selling out really quickly and we probably need to restock as soon as possible and it has the recommended number of quantity to send in and it says a little over a th so that is the basics of the home screen but then if you come over here to the three lines you're going to see all the different things that we are going to dive in deep to also over here there is the gear icon which has your account info login settings shipping settings user permissions and histories and a bunch of other things we'll go into that in more detail later there's also here if you do get messages from your customers or from technical support it'll show up here you can click on that and you'll see any messages there's no messages that require response now it's very important if you do get messages from your customers you're going to want to try to respond to those as soon as possible otherwise sometimes Amazon will dock you some points so let's go over here to the three lines and one of the first things I like to look at is the inventory so under inventory you can go to manage FBA inventory and this will show you the number of inventory that you currently have available and right now we have no inventory left I think we just recently had a bunch of sales which led to inventory going out of stock which is not good you want to try to avoid that you're also going to see the number of inbound inventory which is 96 and the number of unfulfillable which is six which is damaged inventory and the number of reserved which reserved could be a few different reasons usually reserved is because people purchased it uh but it's not fully left the Amazon building yet so they're going to be sending this out sometimes it's under reserved as well when they're transferring inventory from one Amazon warehouse to another and I'll talk about later how to send in inventory to the Amazon warehouse the next thing I actually want to show you one of the most common things I do in Seller Central is I go and I look at the business reports we can come in here and we can see what the sales have looked like so far so let's look at the month toate sales we're going to click apply and we can see so far this month there's been over $177,000 worth of products sold and over $489 units of cocktail cards in this case that have been sold and you can see that there was a huge Spike and that's probably part of the reason why we are about out of inventory and so this also these lines down here you can see the red line is last month and the yellow line is the same month last year so you can see last month is around 13,000 this month is around 177,000 so this month has been doing better than last month and you can scroll up here there's a lot more detailed reports that you can look through you can look at the sales in traffic for instance and this will show you the total number of sales I always like to view by week or by month so let's look by week so it'll show you the total number of sales but it'll also show you things like total page views so we can see that last week or actually the first week of June page views was at around 2,000 and then last week it was around 4,000 so there's a lot more page views last week you can also see things like the unit session percentage which is basically your conversion rate which means what percentage of people that came to your listing on Amazon actually made a purchase and even though there was more traffic the conversion rate was a little bit lower but that's okay it still ended up leading to more sales for that week in the seller menu there's also pricing and this is really helpful if you're selling a wholesale product or if you're selling a Retail Arbitrage product if you're selling products that and you're competing with other people the pricing and this this whole thing is very helpful but if you're selling your own unique product you don't really need that orders is something that I find very interesting especially if you're doing fulfilled by Merchant it's going to be helpful for you but if you're doing fulfill by Amazon you don't really need to look at this you can see that there's been zero orders and the reason there's been zero orders is because this is zero fulfilled by Merchant orders we don't need to do anything if we scroll over and we look at view FBA orders we will see all the different FBA orders and you can go up here and if you have the order ID for a certain order that you're looking for you can paste it in sometimes customers will message you and they'll want some kind of a help they'll want a refund or something like that you can paste it in there the next menu item is advertising and I'm going to go into depth about this later in this video but if you want to do Amazon PPC you're going to go into campaign manager and you're going to go through and I'll share all the details with you about that later in this video on how to set up PPC the next item on the menu is stores and manage stores and right now for cocktail cards we don't have a store set up we're eventually going to go in here and click create store there's a lot of benefits to starting a store but I mean in my opinion the most important thing to do is just get your product on Amazon and get sales on Amazon but there is some benefits to actually starting a store under growth it'll show growth opportunities and it'll show some advice on some potential sales lift for instance one of the things that's saying right here is that we have the potential to lift sales by over $5,000 and the way that we would do this is by creating better A+ content again I'll be talking about what A+ content is later in the video but it's basically a way for you to add images videos and other more Rich cont content to your product page which is going to make people more likely to buy your product another piece of advice it has for us is to set business-to business discounts and it says it can lift sales by around $200 we already talked about reports but there's some other reports in here that are very helpful as well like advertising reports fulfillment reports other more advanced topics I will say though the advertising report is necessary if you're doing Amazon PPC once a month or so you're going to want to run some advertising reports here under performance we can look at the account health so let's take a look look at that and this will tell you the order defect rate and so far it's been 0% so of the last 743 orders there's been zero defects which is good no negative feedback no a toz guarantee claims no chargeback claims overall zero major issues so this will show you if there is ever problems it'll show you what the problems are and how to solve them you can also come in here and look at your feedback and so far for this product it's been you know mostly five star reviews all positive except for this one person right here that did have a negative review so we might want to try to find out who that person was reach out to them and try to get them to fix their negative review under the menu there's also the partner Network and B2B and I don't really use these two but if you are looking to set busines to business discounts you can go in here and mess around with it I honestly don't think it's really depending on what your product you're selling is I don't think it's worth your time to really go into depth about that but I'm sure that there's people out there that have had a lot of success with this another thing I'll point out is this Brands tab you can go under Brands analytics and there's a bunch of different things in here that you can do manage experiments you can do ab test experiments which is something we haven't really been doing that I want to start doing more of you can also look at the brand dashboard here and one thing that I absolutely think everyone should be doing that has a brand on Amazon is the brand referral bonus this is a way that when you send traffic to your Amazon listing page they actually give you back around 10% right here that's the average bonus is 10% so let's say you had a $50 item and you drove someone to your Amazon listing page to to buy that item Amazon's going to give you a bonus of an extra $5 which helps to offset some of the Amazon FBA fees the last thing on the menu is resources and they have seller University forms and news I don't really go into these that often but if you ever have questions you can always go into the forms and ask them now that you have an understanding of The Seller Central account let's talk about how to actually get your products from your manufacturer or from your house into the Amazon FBA warehouse and this is a crucial step because if you're selling on Amazon you want to make sure that your products are prime eligible and the best way to do that is to use the FBA program FBA stands for filled by Amazon and in this next section I'm going to show you how you can get your products shipped into the Amazon warehouse the first step to send inventory into the Amazon FBA Warehouse is to sign up for a seller account you go to sell. amazon.com to sign up for your seller account once you have a seller account you're going to go ahead and log in the second step step is to make sure that the item that you want to send into the Amazon warehouse is listed under your manage FBA inventory if it's not you're going to go to inventory and click add a product but once you've added your product into Amazon you're going to go to inventory and click on manage inventory you're then going to scroll down and find the product that you want to send into the Amazon warehouse and click on this little drop down next to the edit button you'll then select send sreenish inventory now if you don't see this option it may be because you you are currently fulfilled by Merchant and you'll need to switch that and the way to change that is to click a button that says change to fulfilled by Amazon and for this video I'm going to be using venoc cards as an example and this is actually my friend Ariana's product I taught her how to create a product that she's passionate about and sell it on Amazon so we're going to click here and we're going to click Send and replenish inventory and make sure to like this video because I'm going to be talking about the top five mistakes that beginner Amazon sellers make when sending their products into the Amazon warehouse and these mistakes can cost you thousands of dollars but by watching this video till the end you'll learn how to avoid all the most common mistakes that a lot of new sellers make and the first mistake is selecting the wrong ship from address now I'm going to blur out what our ship from address is but you always want to check this and make sure it's correct I've made mistakes of using old addresses and the way to change this is to click here ship from another address you can then click add contact and put a new address here now this is really important because if you're shipping from your manufactur 's address you'll want to put their address instead of your own personal address now here's a hack that could save you a lot of money if you're shipping products from China directly into the Amazon warehouse you might want to find an address that you can use that's located in California as your ship from address this way when you're sending products from a Chinese manufacturer into an Amazon warehouse Amazon's going to pick a warehouse that is in California which will save you money because if for instance they told you to ship your products into a warehouse that was in the middle of of the United States you'd have to pay more for shipping fees because you'd have to pay for the trucking fees from a California port all the way over into the middle of the country now technically this is against Amazon's rules so do it at your own risk but I know a lot of people that have done this and have had a lot of success and saved a lot of money doing it the next thing you'll look at is the marketplace destination for most people watching this video it's probably going to be in the United States if you're shipping into a Marketplace that's not the United States select the correct Marketplace after that we can look at the Fulfillment capabil if you're planning on just selling your products on Amazon then you're going to want to select standard fulfillment by Amazon however if you're looking to sell products on your own website and you want Amazon to be able to ship out the products for you you're going to want to select a blank box now if you're selling both on Amazon and on your own website and you're going to have Amazon ship out the products for both you can do a mixture of both again for most people if you're just selling on Amazon click standard fulfillment by Amazon now we're going to scroll down here and since Ariana has already shipped products before she already has a template here if this is your first time shipping a product on Amazon you're not going to already have a template you're going to need to create a new case pack template and before I get into that it's important to explain that a case in this scenario is a box that holds multiple units of the product that you're sending in to Amazon and for venoc cards we use the same boxes that the manufacturer shipped the venoc cards product to us in but if you don't have boxes you can go into your local Walmart or order them from Amazon or one of my favorite places to order boxes at a discount is you new line.com when picking a box that you will use as a case to ship your units in to the Amazon warehouse there are some requirements you need to make sure that no side is longer than 25 in and once you put all your units into the box you need to make sure that it's not going to weigh over 50 lb you also want to make sure that all the units that you're going to put into the box will fit as snugly as possible so they don't wiggle or get damaged during shipping there are some other recommendations on Amazon's website and I'll put a link to all the recommendations down below and we're going to give this template a name so I'm going to call this venoc cards test and then we're going to have to select the number of units per box and this is the number of her actual units that she sells in every box that she sends into Amazon and we put 16 into every case that we send into Amazon you're then going to take out a ruler and measure all three sides of the box and for her product it's 14.4 by 11.6 by 11.8 in then you're going to take the case with all the units in it and all the tape on it and weigh it and see how much it weighs I do have a link to a scale that you can buy to weigh all the products that you're going to be selling on Amazon you also need to fill out what your prep category is and this product has no extra prep needed but you're going to click on here and you're going to see if any of these categories apply to you if your product is adult if it's apparel or hanger apparel fabric plush baby products fragile SLG glass liquids perforated packaging powder sharp or small there's extra prep that needs to be added added to your package now this product that we're selling none of these things apply so we're going to click no prep needed and then we're going to click save the last thing we need to fill out for this template is to answer who's going to label the units and if you plan on doing it or if you plan on having your manufacturer label the units you're going to select buy seller on the other hand if you want Amazon to label the units you're going to select Amazon but there is a 55 cent per unit fee and it's very easy to label your products what this is referencing is there's a little sticker that you're going to need to put on every single product that you sell on Amazon this is usually the FN skill and I'll talk about that more later in this video but I highly recommend just selecting buy seller and either having your manufacturer do this for you or for you to do it yourself once we're done with the template we're going to click save and we're going to come to this screen and we're going to say how many boxes are we sending into Amazon and this is the cases is what they mean here so we're sending in five cases each has 16 units in there and so it's a total of 80 units and then we're going to click ready to send the next step is to click confirm and continue but before I do that I want to tell you about the second mistake that I see a lot of Amazon sellers making and that's not properly prepping the products that they're going to send into Amazon now the prep is different for different categories so if your product falls under one of the categories we talked about where prep is needed I recommend you do the research and find out what you need to do to prep your specific item and different types of prep are needed depending on the category but I'll put a link down below to an article that goes over how you need to prep your product depending on which of the prep needed categories it falls into another mistake I see beginning Amazon sellers make is they don't properly label the products they're going to be sending into Amazon so what you want to do is you'll click on this print all SKU labels and it'll give you different options on how to print the labels now the most common one in the United States is this 30 up labels you can actually buy sticker paper on Amazon to be able to print out the fnc labels I'll put a link to the labels that I recommend down below but you'll click on this and you'll click print all you'll then download the labels and when you open it up this is what it shows here and this number is your FN skew this is how Amazon tracks the products that you're sending into Amazon and identifies that product as your specific product that you're selling on Amazon down here is the name of the product that you're selling and the condition which in this case is new a lot of my Amazon FBA students get confused on what's the difference between the FN skq and the up UPC code a UPC code is a barcode that all products have it's the universal product code and you do need a UPC code to be able to sell a product on Amazon and this is because Amazon wants to know that the product you're selling on their website is a real product a legitimate product and it's just one extra hoop that you need to go through if you're going to sell a product on Amazon so you do need to get a UPC code but often times the barcode that is on the actual product that you're sending into the Amazon FBA Warehouse needs to be this FN skew so you just need to have a UPC code so Amazon knows that your product's legitimate but on the actual product itself this is the barcode you want now if your product is brand registered you can sometimes send your product in just with the UPC barcode printed on the product you don't actually need the FN skill another thing to note is that if you ask a lot of times your manufacturer will add stickers of the fnq onto your product another idea that I've actually done with a lot of my products is print the FN skew directly on the product that'll save you money on having to do stickers every single time so if you don't already have your FN skew printed on the product you'll want to print out these stickers and attach it to the products that you're sending into the Amazon warehouse you're then going to go into confirm shipping we're going to view this down here and we're going to select a ship date and I'm going to select Wednesday as the ship date now there's two different options that Amazon gives you here they give you the small parcel delivery which is what we're selecting but they also give you the option of less than truckload and you'll select this option if you're planning on dropping the boxes off at UPS or basically if you're just sending small amounts of your item on the other hand if you're sending a whole pallet of your product into the Amazon warehouse you're going to select the less than truckload and this is another mistake I see people making if you are sending a lot of your product into the Amazon warehouse don't keep doing small partial delivery start doing an entire palette and this is how I used to send my product performance nut butter into the Amazon warehouse we'd send in a th000 units at a time and if you're sending in that many units you can actually schedule a truck to come to your house with a lift gate and pick up the entire pallet from your house or from your warehouse and if you're sending in a lot of inventory this will cut your shipping costs in half but I do want to note that generally speaking it's relatively inexpensive to send your products into the Amazon warehouse and that's because you're using Amazon's discounted UPS shipping rates so we're sending in five boxes and it's only costing us about $40 and the total weight of that is $140 if you were to try to do that yourself it's going to be a lot more expensive and if you want to use a shipping service other than UPS you can but remember it's going to be a lot more expensive if you wanted to do that you would click on this option here you'd click on which service you're going to use DHL FedEx USBS or another one but generally speaking if you can I recommend using UPS I do also want to note that if you select less than truckload as your shipping option you're not going to be using UPS Amazon's going to connect you with a local trucking company and that process is a little bit different that's something I talk about in much more depth in my Amazon FBA a program the passion product formula I'll put a link to that down below but for most people watching this video you're just going to be doing small parcel delivery and you're going to select UPS as your carrier and once you've done that you're going to click accept charges in confirm shipping you're then going to need to print out the box labels and these are the labels that you're going to put on the outside of the cases that you're sending into Amazon and you're going to get two labels the first one is the UPS label here and this is the label for UPS to scan in your package and to be able to to track your package and there's a few things that you're going to want to look at here to make sure everything's okay the first is that the weight's correct because if you accidentally put your weight to be lower than your actual weight of the box that you're shipping sometimes UPS will ding you this can cause a lot of issues this is another mistake that a lot of Amazon sellers make same thing when you're looking at the dimensions of the box that you're shipping in you're going to want to look at this and make sure that this is correct now they rounded up the numbers here to 14 x 12 x 12 you're also going to attach to the same box that you put the first label on this second label over here and this is the Amazon FBA box ID label the purpose of this label is when you ship it into the Amazon fulfillment center Amazon will scan this label and know exactly where your package is in the warehouse and every time your package moves around the warehouse they're going to scan this label so this is a very important label please leave this label uncovered basically don't put any tape over the parts that need to be scanned cuz sometimes that can cause some issues on this label you're going to want to make sure that your ship from and your ship to address are correct and that your ship to address over here matches the ship to address over here and you see that I have five pages here and these five pages correspond to the five boxes another interesting thing to note is the ship two address on these two labels is actually different than the ship two address on these two labels and that's because Amazon's sending your packages into different Amazon FBA warehouses you can then print out these labels using sticker paper or if you prefer instead you can use regular paper and then just cut out the labels and use tape to attach it to the big boxes that you have that will carry your individual units in this scenario we have the big master case that holds 16 units of Ariana's product venoc cards we'll put all 16 units in that box and then we will attach both these labels to a box we will have five boxes in total all with two labels on them you can then take your boxes to your local UPS Store and drop them off or if you prer you can actually schedule UPS to come pick up the boxes from your house which can be really beneficial especially if you don't live close by to a UPS Store once you've sent your products into the Amazon warehouse you can track them and see the status of them by going to inventory manage FBA shipments in here you'll see the shipment name when it was created and when it was last updated you'll also see where it was shipped to in this case it's multiple destinations but sometimes it's just one destination you'll also see the number of SKS and skews stands for stock keeping units it's how many different types of products you're sending in in this case it's just one type of product the units expected and the units received and there's a discrepancy here and we're going to do a little bit of digging and figure out why that is it said that they expected 80 units but so far they've only received 48 that's not necessarily bad and we can see by the status that it's still in receiving so receiving means that it's already been sent to the warehouse they already started receiving it but they're still kind of unpacking everything now we can click over here on the shipment name to get a little bit more details and to see the entire status so we see when the shipment was created and it wasn't shipped out until June 16th which is accurate and we can see here it was delivered a few days ago and then it was checked in and as of right now it's still in receiving and it goes on to say that Amazon will confirm the receipt of all units in your shipment on or before August 14th so there's still some time before then and sometimes it does take Amazon some time to check in all the inventory that's why I always recommend if you're about to run out of inventory to send in your inventory as soon as possible because sometimes it does take Amazon a little while to check in all that inventory same thing if you're planning on launching a product on a certain day make sure that you send your products into the Amazon warehouse way ahead of time there's also in the past been a lot of issues during the holiday season sometimes it's taken Amazon up to 6 weeks to check in all my inventory so make sure and be careful about that and under the status tab there's a few different things that you might commonly see and Amazon has a list of them along with the definition of what the different statuses mean some common ones that you might see are in Transit which means that it's going to the Amazon warehouse delivered which means it was delivered to the Amazon warehouse but no one from Amazon has actually checked it in checked in meaning that they've acknowledged that they do have your products checked in but they haven't really opened them up yet and they haven't started receiving the actual items receiving which means that they're in the process of cutting open the boxes and actually checking in the individual units into the Amazon warehouse and closed once all your units have been checked in and accounted for the shipping plan will be closed and in the shipment summary if you go to shipment events you'll actually see the entire timeline of everything that is happening and something to look out for is sometimes there will be discrepancies for instance you'll send in a certain number of units and they'll say that hey we didn't receive all those units in this case we said we sent in 582 units they said that they only located 573 saying that nine are missing you can actually upload documents and follow up and show Amazon that you actually did send in all the units that you said you did and if you submit sufficient amount of proof they will actually credit you for the difference between the amount of units that you said you sent in and the amount of units that they received if they really do believe that you sent in the real amount because sometimes in the Amazon warehouse units get lost or damaged another thing I want to mention is if you're sending in an entire pallet full of your product you're going to have to go into the individual shipment summary and print out a b b stands for bill of lading it's a piece of paper that you're going to have to give to the truck driver when he comes to your house to pick up the pallet this just verifies that he's picking up the correct palette now there has been times for me where I had not printed out this paper and they don't really care they still pick up the pette but sometimes this can cause issues and sometimes you'll be charged a little bit extra of a fee and when the truck driver picks up the pallet he will also give you a receipt make sure you put that receipt in a safe place because if your units get lost this is proof that you actually did send in that entire pallette and it happened to me one time that Amazon lost an entire pallet of mine and I had misplaced that receipt and so it took a month or two they eventually did did locate the pallet but for a month or two I just assumed that they lost the pallet and I was going to lose that money and it was my fault because I had lost that receipt so be very careful about that another important thing to note is on the bill of lding will be the information about which trucking company is going to be coming to your house or your Warehouse to pick up your pallet I highly recommend calling that Trucking Company because sometimes they actually need you to schedule a time also if they're picking up the pallet from your house you need to call them and let them know that it's a residential address because they're going to send a smaller truck same thing if you don't have a forklift if you don't have any way to actually get it on the truck you're going to need to let them know about that as well and tell them that they need to bring a truck that has a liftgate and a liftgate is a way to get the pallet onto the truck there is one more mistake that new Amazon sellers make when sending an inventory and that's sending in too much or too little of their inventory and if you send in too much inventory into the Amazon warehouse your inventory just sits in the Amazon warehouse and Amazon actually charges you a monthly storage fee so you want to be very careful that you don't send in too much inventory on top of that they have long-term storage fees if your inventory is sitting in there for more than 6 months they start charging you even more money so you want to be really careful when you're sending in inventory that you're not sending in way too much on the flip side if you send in too little this can also be a problem because if you start to have a lot of sales for your product on Amazon and you run out of inventory and you're out of stock this could cause issues this can actually cause Amazon to Blacklist you or to at least lower the rank of your product because if Amazon sees that you're running out of inventory they're going to think that you're not a reliable company and they're going to put you lower in the search results which is going to lead to Less sales for you so how do you know how much inventory to send into the Amazon warehouse I generally recommend sending 3 to six months worth of inventory into the warehouse this way you don't run into any kind of long-term storage fees and if your products start to sell really quickly you can send more inventory in before you run out of stock now if you do have a question about how to get your product shipped into the Amazon Weare house or anything else we've talked about here remember that if you do join my Amazon FBA program there is a live weekly Q&A call and there is a Facebook Mastermind where you can constantly ask questions and get other students to give you feedback but now we need to talk about a crucial step of selling on Amazon and that is launching your product because when you launch your product properly you're going to get more sales if you get a ton of sales from day one Amazon is likely to promote your product put you higher up in the search results which is going to lead to a Snowball Effect where you get more and more sales and since Amazon is a search engine the product that's at the top of the search results gets most the sales so that's our goal and in this next section I'm going to show you how to properly launch your product using these Amazon FBA launch strategies you're going to get sales for your Amazon FBA product from day one and you're going to get your product to the top of the Amazon search results which is going to lead to more sales and I've used these 10 techniques to launch a lot of products on Amazon including one product that I launched on Amazon that got over $111,000 in sales on the first day of launching the product and this is going to be a complete guide on how to actually launch your product with Amazon FBA so that you're going to have massive amount of success from day one and the first technique I'm going to share with you is how to use social media to get a lot of people following you following your product and ultimately getting them from social media to your Amazon page so that they'll purchase your product and it's important to know that the way that Amazon works is ultimately it's a search engine people go to Amazon to search for things that they want to buy and your goal when you're selling a product on Amazon is to try to get your product to the top of the search results because the products that are on the top of the search results get the most sales in fact here is a graph of how many sales every product gets depending on where it is in the search results and you can see products at the top of the search results get most the sales and then as you get to the second place product you get Less sales third place product you get Less sales and as products are lower on the page in the search results they get less and less sales and this video is going to show you how to get your product to the top of the search results which is going to lead to the most money for you the second secret to launching your product on Amazon is to create an email list for people that are interested in buying your product so that when you go to launch your product you're going to email out all those people and I'm going to show you how to get people to join your email list and how to properly use your email list because a lot of people even if they have an email list of a 100 or a thousand people that are interested in buying their product they don't know how to actually convert convert that list into people that want to buy the product and I'm going to show you all the secrets on how to do that the third launch secret is to use a Facebook group this is something I haven't heard anybody else talk about and it's crazy because it's so powerful basically you get people that are interested in buying your product to join a Facebook group before you launch your product on Amazon you ask them questions you engage with them you get them really excited about the product that you're going to launch so that when you do launch your product on Amazon you're going to post in that Facebook group and let them know that your product is live they're going to go to Amazon they're going to buy it Amazon's going to see that you're getting all these sales and guess what Amazon's going to put you to the top of the search results the fourth launch technique I'm going to share with you is how to use influencers to help you to drive traffic to your Amazon product and there's a lot of people out there that have massive social media followings and all you have to do is send them one of your products for free and they'll post about it share it with their audience Their audience is then going to go and purchase your product one of the product that I recently launched I actually sent out 85 boxes of my product to influencers and it had a massive effect on the sales of my product ended up leading to my product going to the top of the search results and ended up making a lot of money for me and later in this video I'm going to show you how to find influencers that want to promote your product I'm even going to show you a brand new technique secret number five which is Amazon live so this is a new thing that just came out recently and it's basically QVC on Amazon influencers go to the Amazon website they create a live stream where they talk about different products that they're excited about on Amazon and you can get influencers to talk about your product with Amazon live and then there's a link down below that people watching the live video can actually purchase your product this is an extremely powerful tool because the customers are watching an influencer live talk about how amazing your product is and all they have to do is click a button and then they can purchase your product this is one of those secret techniques that only the experts are using right now that I'm going to talk about how you can use this later in the video and one of the best tools to find influencers to promote your product is rebate it's a powerful tool that will help you to find influencers that will talk about your product on Amazon live but you can also find influencers and they'll talk about your product on YouTube on Instagram and a bunch of other platforms this tool makes it extremely easy to find influencers to promote your product and I'm going to do an in-depth tutorial of rebate later in this video technique number seven is to do giveaways search find by and ultimately just get as many people as possible buying your product and leaving five star reviews and that's something we haven't talked about yet one of the best ways if you want to launch your product and get to the top of the search results not only do you want to get a lot of sales but the other part of it is you want to get as many five-star reviews as possible as quickly as possible and I'm going to share all my techniques on how to do that including how you can get strangers how you can walk around town and get people to actually buy your product and leave five star reviews I've seen seen a lot of very successful Amazon sellers use these techniques that I'm going to be sharing with you later in this video on how to actually not only get sales but get reviews as well launch technique number eight that I'm going to be talking about is how to use Amazon PPC and a lot of people right now they'll as soon as they launch their product they're going to use PPC to get a ton of sales to their product and this can work there are some downsides to this though because if you're sending a lot of PPC traffic to a product that doesn't have any reviews your conversion rate is not going to be as high that being being said Amazon PPC is actually the easiest way to get to the top of the search results right away all you have to do is give Amazon a little bit of money because Amazon PPC stands for pay per click and basically you pay every time someone clicks on your advertising but the benefit of Amazon PPC is immediately you can get to the top of the search results for whatever search phrase that you want to appear at the top of the search results for secret number nine I'm going to share with you some of the best internet marketing principles out there if you watch any part of this video this is going to be the most important part of this video because I'm going to be sharing how to actually influence people to buy your product and there's six principles of influence on how to actually convince people to click the buy button on your product and I'm going to talk about those in depth and number 10 at the very end of this video I'm going to share with you the 8020 of launching your product if you only could do a couple of these different techniques what would they be and why but the other thing that I want to share with you is how the Amazon algorithm works and a lot of people don't understand this but as I mentioned Amazon is a search engine people go there to search for something then Amazon shows what it thinks are the relevant products for instance if someone goes to Amazon and types in cocktail flashcards which is one of the products that I've launched with a student of mine Amazon's then going to figure out which product most closely matches what the person searched for in this case cocktail flash cards Amazon wants to make money so it's going to put the product that it thinks people are most likely to purchase at the top of the search results so how does it determine what products people are most likely to purchase well one factor is the click-through rate and the conversion rate so the click-through rate is out of every hundred times Amazon shows your product for a given search result how often do people actually click on it and ultimately purchase it so how do you increase your click-through rate well I've talked about this in other videos but basically when someone searches for something on Amazon all they see in the the product search results is your main image your title the price and the number of reviews so you want to optimize your main image and you want to optimize your title now a secret here is you want to make sure your title contains the keywords which are basically the same words that you're trying to rank for in search results so with cocktail cards since we're trying to rank for cocktail flash cards we have the word cocktail and flash cards in the title which lets Amazon know that if someone's searching for cocktail flash cards you probably should show our product because it is relevant but just because you have an optimized title an optimized main image doesn't mean that Amazon's going to put your product to the top of the search results another very important factor is the number of reviews because Amazon knows that the more reviews you have and the better the reviews are for your product the more likely someone's going to purchase your product and ultimately be happy with that purchase the next factor that we're going to be talking about in depth in this video is sales velocity and that's how many sales has your product gotten in the last week or so and if Amazon sees that all of a sudden your product is selling like crazy meaning you have a high sales velocity it's going to put your product towards the top of the search results because it's going to say wow something crazy is happening with this product right here and here's the biggest thing to remember from this entire video is that you want to get as many sales on day one as possible because Amazon's going to realize that you have a very cool legitimate product and it's going to want to put it at the top of the search results because it sees that people are buying your product like crazy and so it's going to say hey this product is hot right now let's put it at the top of the search results and I bet you more people are going to buy it as well and in this video I'm going to be sharing how to get as many sales as possible from day one which is going to lead to Amazon putting your product towards the top of the search results which is going to lead to even more sales which is going to lead to a snowball where you just get more and more sales and this is the exact technique that I use to launch my first Passion product where within two months of launching my product on Amazon I was doing $10,000 in profit per month which if you do the math that's over $100,000 in profit profit per year to have success when launching your product on Amazon and the first technique that so many people forget about and so many people Overlook is as I mentioned social media and this is one of the easiest ways to build an audience for your product before you launch it on Amazon this is one of the easiest ways to get a lot of people interested in your product so that they will ultimately buy your product on Amazon we have a bunch of different social media platforms we have Facebook we have Instagram we have YouTube we have Pinterest we have Snapchat we have Tik Tok and podcast and a bunch of other ones that are missing but let me tell you what I think are the best social media platforms and right now I personally think that Tik talk is the easiest thing I've ever seen to get a lot of views a lot of marketing on your product and it's ultimately going to lead to a lot of sales AJ used Tik Tok to Market his product and that ended up leading to him doing over $140,000 in sales just in his first 3 months launching cocktail cards on Amazon and if you're going to be using Tik Tok I also recommend using Instagram you can post videos as Instagram reals which are still doing extremely well there's also the option of doing Facebook where you can also post videos so you really what you can do is you can start posting videos on Tik Tok Instagram and Facebook or you can use any platform that you prefer maybe you prefer to do YouTube videos which is another very powerful tool that you can use or if you want you can do things like podcasting now another option if you don't want to grow your own social media is you can do collabs with other brands with other businesses or as I'll mention later in this video with influencers as well once you start getting a lot of people viewing your Tik Tok Instagram YouTube whatever it is your goal is to get them to join an email list which will be a wait list for your product and the way to do this is to add a link to your Instagram bio your Tik Tok bio or if it's a YouTube you can always put links down in the description podcast same thing just tell them what the link is to join the email list now the reason this is so important is because you're going to be hyping them up you're going to be getting them excited so a month 2 months 3 months before you launch your product you're going to be engaging with these people sending out emails letting them know that your product is coming just like when they release a big movie in the movie theaters they hype it up for months before they actually launch the movie you're going to be doing the same thing and on the day that you actually launch your product on Amazon you're going to send out an email letting them know the product is live with a link so that they can easily click on that link and go purchase your product one of the ways to get people to join your email list is let them know that when they join your list they're going to be entered for a chance to win a free item of whatever you're going to be selling let me show you a powerful way to build an email list if you don't want to do social media and that's to use rebate.com and what you can do is you can run a sweep Stakes campaign and this allows you to grow your email list and you're going to click right here and let me show you what a live example of what this looks like so this is what your potential customers are going to see they're going to see when whatever your product is and all they have to do is put in their their email address so this is an extremely powerful way for you to grow your email list and it's very easy to set up you just got to put the name put the title put an image right here of the product that you're going to be giving away and some other information technique number three is to start a Facebook group and this is a hack that I learned because it's hard to get people to see your posts in Facebook but if they're part of a group and you post in that group Facebook is much more likely to recommend those posts in the Facebook group group another thing that's really important about this is you start to build a community because if you have a Facebook group where all the different people that are interested in purchasing your product before you start selling it on Amazon if they're all these people are in this Facebook group what's going to happen is they're going to start to build a community you can post questions in there you can ask people hey guys this is what my product looks like what do you guys think and people are going to comment and give you feedback and suggestions and ultimately it's going to lead to you creating a better product but the other thing is they're going to get to start to interact with each other and they're going to see that there's other people that are excited about this product and I think a Facebook group is a lot more powerful than just an email list the problem with an email list is it's not interactive it's not really a community a Facebook group starts to have this feeling of community secret technique number four is to use influencers there's a lot of people online that have built up really big social media followings and I know a lot of people don't want to start their own social media following from scratch and that's okay you don't have to but there's a reason they call people with large social media accounts influencers it's because they can influence people to do things like buy your product so the first question is how do you find influencers well I recommend going to Instagram YouTube and Tik Tok and searching for your relevant Niche your relevant field then you can find a lot of people and start messaging them and ask them hey if I sent you a free product would you be willing to post a photo or a video talking about my product and a lot of people will say yes now The Sweet Spot with influencer markeing if you're trying to do it for free is to find someone that has a following of around 5 to 10,000 people because at that point they're still new to the game they probably have a small dedicated audience and they're small enough that they're not going to ask you to pay them now sometimes it is worth it to pay people to post about your product especially if they have really large audiences and I use this technique to find 85 different influencers I sent them all out a box of my product for free and it ended up leading to some massive results from the first day of launching one of my products on Amazon now another secret to connecting with these influencers is to use what I call Spotlight marketing you can create a podcast and you can ask these people if they want to come on your podcast then you can develop a relationship with these influencers and they're much more likely to promote your product for free if they actually have a relationship with you now I want to share with you one of the newest launch strategies out there and that's to use Amazon live and so here's what Amazon live looks like you can see that we have a person right here talk talking about the dresses that she loves and she's talking about how cool they are how amazing they are and as people are watching this and right now there's 640 people watching this live stream as people are watching this they can click right down here and they can buy the dress it's that easy and that's extremely powerful now you can have influencers talk about your product live on Instagram Tik Tok YouTube but the thing that's so powerful about using Amazon live is that people can just in one click purchase your product so this is an untapped marketing strategy right now technique number seven is just to do whatever you can to get sales to your product and ultimately to get reviews I know one person in particular that would just go to bars and pubs and coffee shops and talk start talking to people and say hey if you buy my product I will give it to you for free I'll send you a PayPal or a venmo right now like just buy it right now and I'll send you the money and just promise me that you're actually going to leave a five-star review he then would get the people's phone number and information and then follow up with them 1 2 3 weeks later to actually make sure that they leave the festar review another thing that a lot of people do which is technically against the terms of service is they get friends or family members to leave reviews now this can get you banned if you're not careful you need to make sure if someone's buying your product on Amazon and leaving a review that you've never shared an internet connection with them meaning that you've never logged on with your Amazon Seller account to a Wi-Fi or a network that they have also logged in with their Amazon buyer account but I know a lot of people that will ask their friends to buy it and leave a review and usually this is absolutely fine you can even go to your gym or go to whatever local coffee shop or wherever you normally hang out and just tell people hey I launched this product on Amazon if you buy it I will give you a A venmo or a PayPal giving you all the money back that you paid for the product just promise me that you're going to leave a review the ideal way to do this is to have them actually to search whatever keyword you want to rank for have them search that in Amazon and then buy the product so if we were trying to do this for cocktail cards we'd have people search cocktail flashcards go through buy the product leave a review and then ultimately Amazon's going to see that a lot of people when they search for cocktail flash cards go and they buy the cocktail cards product and Amazon's going to say hey so many people are buying this and leaving a fivestar review we should put this product at the top of the search results for that search phrase so get creative I've heard of a ton of different ways of people going out and getting people to buy the product in leave review again this is a little bit gray hat and Amazon kind of frowns upon it but please be aware if you're going to use this strategy that technically it is against the terms and service so Amazon could technically shut down your account but it it almost never happens for this kind of a thing technique number eight is using Amazon PPC but at a minimum when you're launching your product you can set up the Amazon automatic campaign this allows Amazon to promote your product to who it thinks is likely to buy your product and it will pick what kind of search results that your product is going to show up at the top of the search results for again PPC stands for payperclick you only pay when someone clicks on your ad so just because someone's seeing your ad doesn't mean anything unless they click on it you're not going to pay and if they click on it chances are that they're going to buy your product that's going to lead to you getting sales and then Amazon's going to see that you're getting a bunch of sales and put your product higher up on the search results and now let's talk about what I think is probably the most important part of this entire video and that is these six principles of influence and this comes from the book influence by Robert chalini and he has studied how people can motivate people how people can influence people to do things for years and years and he came up with these six principles and the first one is reciprocity as humans if someone does something nice for us we feel obligated we feel compelled to do something nice for them and you're going to want to use this principle when you're launching your product so think about what can you do what's something nice you can do for your customers something small you can give to them that's going to make them want to ultimately buy your product another way of looking at this is maybe you can do something nice for an influencer that's going to make them want to promote your product and an example of how you can use reciprocity to help your product launch do better is to have influencers on your podcast you can create a podcast have them on your podcast then the influencer is likely to reciprocate by promoting your product now be careful with influence these principles can be used for good or bad so make sure when you're using these principles that you're doing it from a healthy and a good place principle number two is scarcity as humans we want things that are scarce if tomorrow there was a gold bar on every single person's front doorstep gold wouldn't seem so valuable the reason gold is so valuable is because it's scarce so when you're selling your product on Amazon one thing that you could do is make it so that only 200 are available at a discounted rate and you can tell your email list you can tell your social media you can tell everybody there's only going to be 200 available at this discounted rate and that once those sell off the price is going to go back to normal the third principle is Authority and as humans when someone that's in a position of authority tells us that we should buy something that we should do something we're much more likely to do it this is another reason why you should hire or use influencers to promote your product influence principle number four is consistency as humans we're likely to do things that we have done before again and again and if we make a commitment saying that we're going to do something we're much more likely to actually follow through and so one way to use this principle to your advantage is get people to join a Facebook group get people to interact in the Facebook group because if they're interacting in the Facebook group they're much more likely to actually purchase your product when it comes out because they're going to feel feel like that they need to stay consistent with their behavior principle number five is liking we're much more likely to buy something from someone we like so one of the most powerful things you can do is introduce yourself to your audience introduce yourself to your social media following to your email list maybe even make an about us video you can also post about us videos on your Amazon page principle number six is consensus also known as social proof when a lot of other people like something as humans we automatically think that we should also like it and one of the ways that you can use this is to get influencers talking about your product you can also get other people in your Facebook group or on your email list talking about how cool your product is you can share real stories of people that have tried your product and ultimately if you utilize all six of these principles you're much more likely to have success with launching a product on Amazon but the question is what is the 8020 if you could only do a few of these things what are the most powerful things well I think no matter what you want to get some kind of social media you can use influencers or you can do it yourself then you want to get people on an email list and try to establish some kind of a connection and lastly when launching your product you want to make sure that there's some kind of scarcity let people know that there's only 200 products available at the discounted rate or say that the discounts only going to last one week warning theft can occur on Amazon if you're not careful if you don't follow the right steps people are going to copy your product sell the same product hijack your listing there's a bunch of different issues that can come up but in this next section I'm going to talk about how to avoid a ton of these and in this next section we're going to talk about brand registry and I'm going to show you why you need brand registry how to apply for brand registry and what to do after you have been approved for brand registry and I'm going to be using my new Amazon FBA product rocket as a real example on how to apply for brand registry and to sign up for brand registry you're going to go to Brands services. amazon.com and you'll sign sign in to the account that you want to apply for brand registry through and the reason I say it's crucial to sign up for brand registry before you start selling on Amazon is because all the features that this gives you and we're going to actually go down here I'm going to show you all the different features that you get when signing up for brand registry and show you why it's so important that you do it and one of the first things that you get is access to A+ content so let me show you what A+ content is if you go to an Amazon product page and scroll down to the bottom most products on Amazon just have a normal boring description that is text but A+ content allows you to be able to put images to put infographics to really sell your customer and when you have A+ content it's going to make it so that more people that go to your product listing are going to buy and Amazon's going to see this and it's going to put your product higher up in the search results because it knows that every time someone clicks on one of your products they're more likely to actually convert A+ content also allows you to put videos on your product listing page which again is going to make it so people will watch watch your video and be even more likely to purchase your product when you have brand registry you can also report a violation if someone is copying your product if they're infringing on your intellectual property you can report it to Amazon and Amazon will know that you're the actual owner of that copyright and if there's a people that are listing your product and it's a counterfeit of your product you can remove those listings by letting Amazon know about that another big reason to be part of brand registry if we scroll up here we can actually see the new seller incentives and you'll get 5% back on the first million dollar in branded sales that you do that's literally $50,000 that you're going to get when you apply for brand registry you're also able to enroll in the Vine Program for free usually it costs $200 but if you're brand registered you can do that for free and the way the Vine Program works is it allows you to get 30 trusted reviews basically Amazon goes out and they find the people that are giving reviews most often and very comprehensive reviews and they'll message them and say hey do you guys mind reviewing this product and these people write out long detailed reviews often times they include images so this is a great program that you're getting absolutely for free and then another feature is you can receive up to 2,000 free transparency codes another $100 value this allows that when you send your product into Amazon you can put a special code on it letting Amazon know that it's 100% authentic and anyone that sends a product in that doesn't have that transparency code they might get flagged and if they're trying to sell your product on Amazon they won't be able to because it won't be in authentic version you also get access to sponsored Brands and this is a way to advertise on Amazon it shows up at the very very top of the search results and it's a banner style ad and so this is a way to set your product apart from others and another way to make more money when you get brand registered you can also set up an Amazon store this is a way to set up your own storefront on the Amazon website so that if people ever click on your name in your Amazon listing they can go to your storefront and it's a custom branded store where you can show only your products and people can learn more about you as a seller you can share your mission and about us and just some more information on why people should buy from you this will also help you to increase your sales and get your customers to know a little bit more about you the next feature is the customer engagement and this is for Brands who want to build better customer relationships it allows you to increase retention and drive engagement by sending targeted email marketing campaigns and I'm going to show you step byep how to sign up for brand registry in just a minute but I want to go over all these features first so you know why you're doing it and also more importantly that once you get brand register you know how to properly utilize it so we already talked about the video shopping and the and the product videos this also gives you access to the Subscribe and save feature this is where you can offer a discount for anyone that buys your product and subscribes to your product so that they maybe get it delivered every single month every two months every 3 months they can pick how often they want to purchase and receive your product but this allows you to let customers buy your product autom automatically and this is especially important if you have a product that people are going to eat or drink or somehow consume and you know that they're going to want to buy it again and again and it's a very helpful feature you also get access to Amazon brand analytics and Amazon brand analytics allows you to get a lot more insights and get a lot more reports on who you're selling to this includes search term reports where you can see what people are searching for in order to buy your products it also allows you to see the demographics of who's buying your product and here's all the different reports that you get you get item comparison report alternate purchase report Market Basket report all these different things and all this is going to help you to see not only who's buying your product but how they're finding you and why they're buying your product when you sign up for brand registry you're also going to get Amazon attribution and this is crucial if you're doing marketing off of Amazon itself for instance if you're doing Facebook ads Google ads social media you can use Amazon attribution to track how many people are coming from Tik Tok to your actual Amazon listing and actually making a purchase and a lot of people use this to run paid ads from off of Amazon to their Amazon listing and they can track and see how well are these actually doing is it actually resulting in sales and speaking about making sales the brand referral bonus is one of the most important parts of this entire program that a lot of people don't do this is going to make you more money because normally when you sell a product on Amazon you have to pay a 15% referral fee meaning if you're selling a product on Amazon that's a $100 Amazon is going to keep $15 but if you enroll in this brand referral bonus program the referral fee goes from 15% down to 5% meaning in the example I just gave instead of Amazon charging $15 as a referral fee they would only charge $5 which ultimately means more money for you more money in your pocket and this is a feature that's only available if you're part of brand registry but one of the most important benefits of joining brand registry that they don't really mention is that by being part of brand registry it's going to help protect you from hijackers and if you sell on Amazon there's always a chance that someone will come onto your listing start messing with things start changing things around and if you're part of brand registry it allows you to escalate cases and show that you own this brand that you're the one that's in charge and you basically have more proof that it's your product and it means that you're able to get all those kind of things fixed a lot faster and so in the long run it's going to stop hijackers from coming on your listing and making changes and last year there was over 2. 5 million seller accounts that were fraudulent that this program has stopped and when you join brand registry there's a team at Amazon of over 12,000 people that are dedicated to helping to protect you and basically give you an advantage over the competition so again if you're going to be selling on Amazon you need to make sure you sign up for brand registry so let me show you how to do this and again you're going to go to Brands services. amazon.com so we're going to click get started with brand registry and then you're going to click on get started and to get started there are three steps involved and there's three things that you're going to need the first thing all brands signing up for brand registry must have are a pending or registered text-based or image-based trademark so there's two different types of trademarks that you can get one is image based basically this would be if you trademark a logo a certain type of design on the other hand there are text-based trademarks this is where you would trademark a word like Coca-Cola no matter what font Coca-Cola is in Coca-Cola has a trademark on the words Coca-Cola on the other hand for Rocket te we did not trademark the words rocket te because it was too competitive and there was other products out there that had similar style names but what we did do is we trademarked the logo so nobody in the world can use this logo except for us and generally speaking it's easier to get an image based Mark than it is a word mark an example of this is for my first Passion Product Company performance Nut Butter I decided to get an image base mark because I knew that if I tried to get performance nut utter as a word mark it might cause some issues basically the words performance Nut Butter are a little bit too generic but my logo is very specific and it's very unique so it was easier to get that as a trademark than it was just a bunch of words the second thing you're going to need to be able to do is verify that you own the trademark and this is easy they're basically just going to send you an email you're going to have a code and you're going to copy that code to show them that you are the owner of the trademark and the third thing that you're going to need to do is have an Amazon seller account now before I go into the next step I know a lot of people have questions about how do I even get a trademark and there are multiple different ways that you can get a trademark but the most affordable way to get a trademark is just to go to uspto.gov and you can file for your own trademark and to do that you'll go over to trademarks and you'll click on apply online you're then going to follow the step-by-step instructions to apply for your trademark it is so much easier than you would think it'd be they ask you very basic questions like what kind of category are you selling your products in for instance with rocket te we said we're going to be selling it in beverages then they ask you to upload your image as well as to write out the text that appears on your image and it's going to cost you around $275 if you apply online for your own trademark however if you don't want to do this yourself you can always hire a lawyer and that's going to cost you an extra couple hundred doar depending on the lawyer that you hire sometimes lawyers are going to charge a th000 or $2,000 obviously I think that's overpriced but if it's helpful for you to pay an extra $ few hundred to H a lawyer that is always an option you can email me at Travis effective ecommerce.com if you want a lawyer that I would recommend but you can always just go to Google type in your city followed by trademark lawyer and it'll give you a list of people in your area who are good at doing trademarks give a bunch of them a call and see who's the most affordable that you think would be a good fit for helping you to get your trademark but once you've applied for your trademark and it's processing you can go ahead scroll down here and you can click to enroll now you're then going to pick pick which country you're located in and if you haven't yet make sure that you sign in you're then going to click on enroll a new brand there's a few things you're going to need when applying for brand registry you're going to need the trademark number you're also going to need an image that clearly shows The Branding of your product on the actual package that you're going to be selling which means that you need the finished product of the product that you are enrolling in brand registry or here's a secret hint you can always just create a mockup of that product and that's what I did for performance N I found some competitors products that were relatively similar Dimensions to my product and I printed out stickers I put those stickers on the packaging and I was able to fool Amazon into thinking that the product was already created even though we had not yet created it you're also going to need a few other things but we'll talk about those as we go you're then going to put in your brand name and it's important to note that the brand name is the same name that appears on your trademark it doesn't have to be the same name that's your seller account and it doesn't have to be the same name that your title is for your Amazon product so in this case we're going to put pocket T after that you'll select a trademark office and if you're in the United States and you applied through the USPTO you're going to select United States then you'll enter your registration or serial number after that you'll upload a photo of your product that clearly shows the brand on the product then you'll hit next next up they're going to ask you some information about your selling account and you'll select whether you are the seller a vendor or if you're neither 99% of the people watching this video you're going to be a seller meaning that you're selling your products Direct to customers using Amazon Seller Central however if you are a vendor meaning you sell your products to Amazon as a third party using Amazon vendor Central you use this and if for any reason you're neither then you can always select that and you might select neither if you don't want to sell on Amazon but you still want to apply for brand registry just to protect your product from being sold on Amazon but again for most of us it's going to be seller that you're going to select you're then going to select the Amazon selling account that you want to apply through and you'll scroll down and you'll select what category best describes your product in this case it's grocery in gourmet food then Amazon requires you to provide your top selling asens for each product category where your brand is sold so basically what they're looking for is you to put in the ASA number of a product that represents the brand that you're going to be using this brand registry for and Asin stands for Amazon standard identification number and all products being sold on Amazon have a unique asent and when you create a new listing on Amazon every single product will be assigned n so one thing that you need to make sure that you do is that you create your product listing before you apply for brand registry even if your product listing isn't perfect maybe you don't have the perfect main image or the perfect title you need to have some kind of a listing you're then going to go into your Amazon seller account you're going to copy the as number and you're going to paste it here Amazon also says that you can provide a URL to your Brand's official website if you have a website and this is optional but if you do have a website where you're already selling your product online I highly recommend doing it it'll make the process of getting brand registry a little bit easier The Next Step applying for brand registry is are going to ask you some information about your distribution so the first question they ask you is does your brand sell to Distributors and in our case no it does not because we're creating our own product rocket te and we're selling it directly on Amazon then it asks where are your Brand's products distributed in our case it's only in the United States so we're only going to select that if you have other places you can add those as well and then the last question ask is license information does your brand license trademarks to others who manufacture products associated with your intellectual property in our case it's no the only people that are making our product are us now on the other hand if you're a company like Disney who licenses out their trademarks you would select yes but for most of people watching this video the answer is going to be no if for any reason you have gone through the contract and you've sold the licensing rights to your product of course you'll just select yes and it's a little bit different of a process but now that we're done we're going to go ahead and click submit and once apply it may take a couple weeks for you to be approved and sometimes you might need to apply more than once but once you are approved you're going to get access to all kinds of new features here for instance there's A+ content manager there's Vine there's deals there's coupons there's promotions there's all these things that were locked before that you now get access to top of that if you go into Brands you'll see brand analytics brand protection all this different stuff including the brand referral bonus which I highly recommend that you apply for has all been unlocked now that you've launched your product on Amazon and and you're making a ton of sales the next thing that a lot of people wonder is how do I make even more money how do I do even more sales and one of the most powerful ways to do that is to use Amazon advertising also known as Amazon PPC this is a way for you to advertise on Amazon and if you do it properly for every dollar you spend you could be making four or $5 and in this next section I'm going to show you exactly how to do that this is the exact formula that you can use to game the Amazon algorithm get your product to the top of the search results and make as much money selling products on Amazon as possible and this works even if your product has zero reviews and I know that because I was able to use this method to launch a new product on Amazon and get to the top of the search results from day one even though my product had zero reviews and the crazy thing is this graph right here shows that the top product that comes up in the search results gets most the sales followed by the second third and fourth product and it's actually exponential which means the higher up your product is on the search results the more sales you're going to get and the way to get your product higher up on the search results is through sales velocity and sales velocity basically means over the last 8 days how much of your product have you sold and the more you can sell of your product the higher up Amazon's going to put your product on the search results and that's where this formula comes in you can think of sales velocity as three different components the first component is the click-through rate meaning when your product shows up on search results how often does someone click through from the search results into your actual product listing page the next number is the conversion rate so once someone sees your product listing page how often do they actually purchase the product and your goal is to optimize these numbers as much as possible and we've talked about in previous videos in the series how to do that and here's some new research that shows how to optimize your clickthrough rate and researchers hooked customers up to a computer and the computer tracked where their eyes were looking and this heat map shows where they were most likely to look and the more red something is that means that more people were looking in that area and we can see here that the number one thing that people look at is the main image that's where it's all red for this main image and it's all red for this main image so what this means is the most important thing that you need to optimize to get a high click-through rate is your main image the other thing that we can see that people look at is the sales price in the title so using this information we really want to make sure we maximize and make the best main image that we possibly can because the better that your main image is the more likely that people are going to click through to your actual product listing the second metric is is your conversion rate so once someone's actually clicked into your listing you need to make sure that you maximize the chance that they're actually going to purchase and that's where this heat map comes into play so again researchers hooked people up to a computer to see where their eyes are looking and again the main image was one of the most important things that they looked at at this point once they've actually clicked through the next thing that they look at is the number of reviews and your goal is to maximize the chance that when someone clicks on your product listing that they're actually going to purchase your product and I talked about in a previous episode episode of the series how to do that but just as a quick refresher your main image all the other images the bullet points the title and the number of reviews you want to optimize all of those so you're going to do everything that you can to maximize that when someone searches for a keyword that they're going to click on your product from the search results then once they get to your product listing you're going to do everything you can to maximize the chance that they'll actually purchase your product but that's only half the equation the other half of this equation is the ET and this stands for extra traffic because when you first launch yes some people are going to find your product from searching for whatever your keyword is and organically finding your product but most people for the first couple weeks that buy your product they're not going to find your product organically they're going to find it from one of two different possible ways the first one is through your tribe if you follow the passion product formula you should be growing your social media you should be growing your email list you should be growing your tribe so that when you launch your product you have email list that you can send out an email to and let them know that your product is live on Amazon this is going to drive a ton of traffic to your product listing page and a ton of sales this is going to let Amazon know that you have an amazing product and it's going to make it so Amazon puts your product higher in the search results but I know there's a good chance that you at home watching this video did not follow the passion product formula you did not grow a tribe so this is where the second thing that you can do to drive extra sales comes in and that is Amazon advertising or Amazon PPC and Amazon PPC is is one of the most powerful tools that you can use to get sales for your Amazon product from day one even if you have zero reviews and the way that Amazon PPC works is you can advertise on Amazon so that every time someone searches for whatever keyword that you choose you will show up at the top of the search results people will then click on your product and buy your product and every time that customers do that Amazon will realize that your product is a really good fit for this search phrase which means that over time Amazon's going to rank your product higher up in the organic search results and it's important to know that on Amazon there is the sponsored search results that shows up at the top of the search results and then there is the organic search results that you don't have to pay any money for and those show up right below the sponsored search results so if you want to really get to the top of the search results you need to pay to play but in order to have long-term success on Amazon you need to get to the top of the organic search results because still most people that buy Products off Amazon do actually purchase from the organic search results most people do have somewhat of an awareness that the products at the very top are sponsored and a lot of people will scroll past those and go to the organic search results not everybody but a lot of people and I'm going to show you in this video how to quickly and easily set up Amazon PPC in fact we're going to be able to do it in under 5 minutes I'll put a timer right here an Amazon PPC also known as Amazon advertising works like crazy and did you know that 66% of all people when they're searching to buy a product online they start their search on Amazon and on on average people that use Amazon PPC see an Roi of Forex that means for every dollar they spend they get a return on their investment of $4 so let me show you right now a method that you can use to use Amazon advertising as soon as you launch your product even if you have zero reviews and as I mentioned when you first launch a product you want to get as many sales as possible so Amazon PPC is a great way to get a lot of sales and let the Amazon algorithm know that your product is relevant for certain searches so we're going to go up to those three bars right there we're going to going to click on it and we're going to go down to advertising and campaign manager from here you can see there are a few different types of campaigns that you can choose the easiest way for beginners to start is just sponsored products we're going to click continue right here you're then ready to get started and the first thing you're going to do is create an ad group name and we're just going to call this one automatic rocket T then we're going to scroll down and select the product that we want to advertise for and we're going to select this product and right now this product says out of stock and it's not actually out of stock it's just we've made it so it's not available yet but we're still going to be able to set up everything in the meantime we're going to scroll down here and we have two different options we can either do automatic targeting or manual targeting and I recommend everybody that's just about to start selling on Amazon to do automatic targeting at least later in this video I'll also show you how to do manual targeting so we're going to start off with automatic targeting and we're going to set a default bid so it says that we should do a default bid of $143 for now we're just going to leave it at $143 but in the future we can adjust this depending on the performance as we scroll down we can see that there's a few different bidding strategies we can use we can do Dynamic bids down only Dynamic bids up and down or fixed bids now usually I just do fixed bids but I don't see any downside of doing Dynamic bids down only it basically means that we're telling Amazon we're willing to pay a $143 every time someone clicks on our ad or you can always adjust it down now the way that this works is you're not actually going to spend a $143 every time someone clicks on your ad that's just the maximum you're willing to spend and the way Amazon calculates how much you'll actually spend is it takes your competitors so if your competitor is willing to spend a dollar and you're willing to spend $143 Amazon will charge you a penny above your competitor so you'll end up paying a11 we can then come down here and we can put a name for this campaign I'm just going to put rocket te automatic and we can select a start date and since our product is not even launching until September 20th I'm going to select that is the start date and I don't recommend having an end date let the campaign run for as long as possible you can always come in here manually and pause it if you feel the need to do that from here we're going to select what we want the daily budget to be I'm going to put a daily budget of around $50 but it's up to you how much you want to spend on your daily budget from here it asks you do you want to launch on other marketplaces and no we're just going to launch in the United States Marketplace and the last thing that you're going to do is click the launch campaign button from here you can click on go to campaign manager and I'm going to show you how to create another type of campaign so that was the automatic campaign and the way the automatic campaign works is Amazon just basically advertises your product for whatever it thinks is a relevant search phrase and you can always add negative keywords and tell Amazon hey these are the things that we don't think our product is relevant for but you're not really going to know what those negative search phrases are until you start getting some data and this is a key part about paying for Amazon PPC when you first launch your Amazon advertising PPC campaign you're probably not going to make money but what you're going to get is a lot of data a lot of information you're going to be able to learn from that information how to optimize and maximize your campaigns and over time you're to actually be able to create a profitable campaign and one way to make it so that you're even more likely to actually be profitable with Amazon PPC is click on that create campaign click continue for sponsored products and this time instead of doing the automatic targeting we're actually going to do manual targeting and manual targeting allows you to have a lot more control and your chance of having success with manual targeting is a lot higher on the other hand the benefit with the automatic targeting is it's easier to set up and sometimes you'll be able to find things that people are searching for in Amazon that you had no idea about so we're going to go back up here we're going to call this ad group rocket T manual campaign and then as we scroll down we have two different options here we can do keyword targeting or product targeting we're going to go with keyword targeting and as we scroll down here it gives us a list of different things that people search for in Amazon and we can choose to advertise for them so we could see here that we could show up as an ad every time someone searches for high caffeine tea and we have the choice between advertising it as a broad campaign a phrase campaign or an exact campaign if we advertise it as a broad campaign that means that anytime someone searches for the word high caffeine and tea no matter what order it's in no matter what else is in the search phrase and no matter what else they are searching for so for instance they might say something like high MCT caffeine tea and our ad would still show even though they're not exactly searching for high caffeine tea the next option we have here is phrase match and that means that our ad will show as long as the phrase high caffeine tea shows up it doesn't matter what words are before or after it as long as that phrase shows up then our ad is going to show up and the last option here is exact and this means that our ad will only show up if someone searches exactly high caffeine tea in that exact order and there's nothing else before or after their search phrase and you can see here that high caffeine tea is actually the most expensive thing to advertise on so from there what we're going to do is we're going to look at all the different other options here and see what else is relevant for instance I see that energy tea That's relevant because our product is a high caffeine tea that's going to be giving you energy and what you do from here is continue to look through all these different search results and see what keywords are relevant to our product for now in this tutorial I'm just going to do something very basic right here and we'll scroll down and we're going to name this campaign we're also going to name this campaign rocket T manual targeting and we're going to select a start date and an end date if you so choose and the daily budget and once we're done with that we're going to click launch campaign and Amazon PPC is extremely important this is one of those things that I go into much more depth about in my Amazon FBA program we actually show you real examples of a couple different products and how I would set up PPC for them and I think this is a really important thing when you're learning something make sure that you see lots of different examples because then when you go to do your own product you'll be able to understand at a deeper level how to properly do it but I've made over $10 million in online sales yet I could have made even more money if I would have known these next five tips that I'm going to share with you and these are five tips that I wish I knew when I first started Amazon FBA and I've worked with a ton of different students I've had over a thousand students join my program launch products on Amazon and I've seen that they make a lot of the same mistakes over and over again so pay attention to this next section because these are the five things I wish I would have known when I first started Amazon the first thing I wish I would have known when I first started selling on Amazon is that you should use tools using tools will make your life easier in so many ways and I'm going to show you all the tools that I recommend you use but one of the first tools that's going to make it a lot easier for you to find a product to sell on Amazon is called helium 10 and this tool is how I found this product that's doing over $40,000 in sales every single month and you can actually sign up for this tool for free and once you've signed up you're going to use the magnet 2 tool and this tool is so amazing so special it shows you exactly what people are searching for in Amazon to find things that they want to buy and if you know what people are searching for in Amazon that they want to buy you can make make a product that they're searching for sell it to them and make a lot of money because using this tool you can see that thousands of people are searching for this product every single month which means that people come to Amazon search for the product buy it and then new people keep coming and coming and again you've made a machine that's going to print you money another tool that you can use to find out how much any product on Amazon is making per month is the jungle Scout free sales estimator all you do is go to a product you take the BSR number which stands for bestselling rank number you copy it you paste it into this tool and it'll tell you exactly how many units per month a product is selling then you multiply that by the amount that the product costs and you can get the revenue and you can see how I realize that this product is making over $40,000 in sales every single month and there are a lot of other tools that I've used to grow my Amazon Brands like MailChimp lead Pages mandrel zapier and a bunch of others and I'll talk more about these later in this video but the problem is most of these tools do cause money and when I was first starting I was so cheap I don't want to spend any money CU in my head well if you're spending money you're losing money but the truth is these tools will make your life easier and the real way that most people lose money on Amazon is by making some of the common mistakes and that brings me into the second thing I wish I would have known when I first started and that is to avoid the common mistakes and I didn't know what the common mistakes were when I first started but I'm going to tell you right now in this video all the most common mistakes I've taught over a thousand people how to sell on Amazon and yes there's been some crazy success stories like Jeremy Troy and Brent who made over a million dollars in his first year but some students especially in the beginning when I was teaching this have failed and what I did is I learned why these students failed and I learned the most common mistakes that people are making and I'm going to share what those mistakes are right now and I've also made a lot of mistakes myself and if you can avoid the most common mistakes that people make when starting to sell on Amazon you can almost guarantee that you're going to have success and I've lost thousands of dollars due to manufacturing issues tens of thousands of dollars due to having too much inventory and that inventory expiring before I could sell it on Amazon and probably over $100,000 because of the rest of these mistakes that I'm going to share with you right now now the biggest mistake that's going to cost you a lot of money if you make is selling the wrong product a lot of people go they do a little bit of research think that they have a good product to sell on Amazon they go buy a th units of this product and it turns out when they list it on Amazon no one wants to buy it so you need to avoid trying to sell a product that nobody wants to buy but how do you know what people are going to buy on Amazon again that's where a tool like helium 10 comes into play you can actually see exactly what people are searching for but an even more advanced way to do it is to actually validate your product before you sell it and you can do that by running a Kickstarter or an Indiegogo before you even sell your product I did that with my first product raised about $115,000 AJ did that with cocktail cards raised over $100,000 so we knew that these products were going to do well before we even sold it on Amazon because we had already pre-sold it on Kickstarter and Indiegogo another mistake I see a lot of people making is they do fbm which stands for fulfilled by Merchant instead of FBA because they think they're going to save a little bit of money and it's true with FBA there are extra fees you have to pay Amazon a Pick and Pack fee which which is the price that you have to pay every time Amazon picks packs and ships your product out from their warehouse to a customer but the truth is when your product is FBA it makes it so it's Prime eligible and people on Amazon are much more likely to buy Prime products which means that your sales are going to be four or 5x higher than if your product is fulfilled by Merchant on top of that usually the fees for FBA aren't that much more than you would have to pay in shipping yourself my first Amon brand was a dance clothing company and it was fbm we did all the shipping ourselves but when we started taking some of our bestselling products in converting them to FBA our sales for those products skyrocketed the third thing I see is beginners trying to save money by paying for lowquality designs they go to Fiverr or some website like that pay $5 for a logo and their branding and their packaging and what ends up happening is it looks absolutely terrible and nobody buys their product this is one of those things where people think that they're saving money by not investing in the high quality branding and packaging but in the long run you'll make way more money if you have high quality branding the third thing I wish I would have known when I first started selling on Amazon is that you should follow a formula you should follow some kind of a stepbystep guide now when I first quit my corporate job over 10 years ago I thought I was so smart that I was going to be able to figure everything out on my own and that I didn't need anybody else's help and boy was I wrong I spent years struggling trying to make money online I tried tons of different businesses and none of them really worked until I found Amazon FBA and the problem was I was trying to figure everything out by myself what I recommend doing instead is following a formula follow a step-by-step guide find someone that's already done exactly what you want to do and you need to know exactly what your goal is when I first quit my corporate job my goal was to make a 100,000 per year passive income that was it that's all I wanted and it took me five years to do that because I was trying to figure out everything on my own don't make the mistake I did find someone that's already hit your goal and ask them how do they do it ask them to give you a step-by-step guide now you might make mistakes along the way and your first business might not be successful but that's okay people say that four out of five businesses fail now that's actually wrong it's actually four out of five businesses fail within the first 5 years and when I was quitting my corporate job people would tell me that stat all the time trying to discourage me from starting my own business but what I would say to them is well if four out of five businesses fail then I'm going to try once and if that fails I'll try again and if that fails I'll try again and again and again and by my fifth business statistically I'll have a successful business but another thing to keep in mind is even if four out of five businesses fail four out of five people whose businesses fail it's because they're probably not watching YouTube videos like you are right now so understand that you're already ahead of the curve you're already doing better than most people but that brings me into the fourth thing I wish I would have known when I was first starting and that is stack the odds in your favor even if you have a chance of failing how do you make it so you can pretty much guarantee that you're going to succeed and as I've already mentioned yes you want to make sure that you learn about all the mistakes that other people make so you can avoid them and yes if you can try to pre validate your product by doing a Kickstarter Indiegogo before you even sell on Amazon that's a no-brainer but what else can you do to stack the odds in your favor and this brings up the idea of inevitability thinking this is where you think about what you want and you set up your entire life so that thing that you want is inevitable for instance if you want to create a passive income business you want to start making money online you can do some of these tricks I'm about to share with you to stack the odds in your favor and one of the most powerful ways to stack the odds in your favor and start using inevitability thinking is by putting your money where your mouth is and the best way to do this is to start spending money on your business start spending money on your goal because as humans our brains are afraid of change we don't want to try things that are scary or unknown and starting an online business is scary it's unknown it's going to be hard work so what you need to do is to trick your brain into thinking it's going to be easy and to trick your brain into already thinking that it's committed to doing one of the best ways to do that is to start spending money on your business and you can do this in a number of different ways you can start by paying for an LLC or a DBA or paying money for a tool like helium 10 that I mentioned before and helium 10 does have a free plan they also do have a paid plan that comes with some extra features but the most powerful way to put your money where your mouth is is by joining a program or hiring a coach to teach you step by step how to create a successful online business in the fifth thing I wish I would have known before I started Amazon and that I think is very important for you to know is that most people that fail fail because they never even try they never even get started so if you're serious about selling on Amazon take the leap congratulations you've followed the formula so far but there are five questions and these are the five most important questions and most common questions that I get and in this next section I'm going to be answering these five different questions first I'm going to tell you about all the Amazon FBA fees associate with selling on Amazon second I'm going to answer how much it's actually going to cost you to start your Amazon business and you need to know what to expect when selling on Amazon and I'll talk in depth about how much it will cost you to start your Amazon business and also how you can do it with little to no money and that's exactly what I'll talk about in The third question that I get is can you start Amazon with $ Z and the answer is yes I'm going to talk about how to do it but I do want to be clear that it's easier if you have some money but even if you don't have any money to spend on your business you still can do it I've had students do it I'm going to show you exactly how they do it in this part of the video fourth I'm going to reveal the biggest mistakes that new Amazon sellers make and specifically how you can make sure that you avoid getting blacklisted by Amazon and fifth I'm going to share with you every single mistake I've made on Amazon I've made over 00,000 worth of mistakes I'm going to go one by one and share from my seven years eight years of experience selling on Amazon every mistake I've made and how you can avoid these mistakes so the first thing that we're going to talk about is all the fees when selling on Amazon and how you can lower your fees and just make you aware of some different things that Amazon kind of hides so now let's talk about all the fees when selling on Amazon there's three big fees when selling on Amazon FBA the first is the Amazon referral fee and this is a flat percentage just to sell on the Amazon platform and this fee will depend on the price of your product for example if your product cost $27.99 you would pay a referral fee of $4.20 for every unit you sell the second is the Amazon FBA Pick and Pack fee and this is the fee that you have to pay every time Amazon picks packs and ships your product from its Warehouse to your customer's door and this fee depends on the size and the weight of your product and this fee is typically going to cost you around $2.16 per unit all the way up to $568 per unit and I'll show you in depth later in this video exactly how you can calculate how much you will be paying for this fee as well as some secrets on how you can save a lot of money on this fee the third is the Amazon storage fee and this is the fee that you have to pay to store your inventory in Amazon's Warehouse there's also four other smaller Amazon FBA fees that no one talks about and I'm going to show you how to save money on all these different Amazon FBA fees with a few hacks that I've learned as well as show you in- depth how much each of these different Amazon FBA fees are going to cost you so that you're prepared to sell on Amazon and what I usually tell people is assume that you're going to spend 33% of your margin on your product cost 33% on Amazon FBA fees and the other 33% is your profit for example in the last three and a half years of selling this product on Amazon I've done $1.2 million in sales and the first fee that I had to pay so that I could list my product on Amazon and make all these sales was $172,000 in Amazon referral fees I also had to pay over $150,000 in Amazon FBA Pick and Pack fees I also spent another $23,000 in other Amazon fees including storage fees and some other things we'll go into later in this video I also spent 39 $199,000 on actually purchasing my product that I was selling on Amazon and another $30,000 on just other random business expenses and in total selling this one product on Amazon I did over $380,000 in profit over these last few years now let's break down all these different fees and show you exactly how much it's going to cost you to sell on Amazon as well as I'm going to show you a bunch of hacks on how you can save money on all these different fees the first small fee you're going to have to pay if you want to sell on Amazon is the Amazon account fee and there's two different options there's the individual selling plan and the professional selling plan now the benefit of the individual selling plan is that it's free but every time you do sell an item on Amazon you have to pay a fee of 0 on the other hand the professional selling plan costs $39.99 a month and you can sell unlimited products for free there are also a lot of benefits to having a professional selling plan you get access to Promotions reports and just a ton of other benefits but I'd recommend starting with the individual selling plan if you're planning on selling less than 40 items a month but once you plan to get serious about your Amazon business it's worth it to upgrade to the Amazon professional plan the next fee is the Amazon referral fee and it's a flat 15% fee just to sell on the Amazon platform but there is a trick that you can use to get that percentage down to 5% and I'm going to show you that hack in just a minute and whether you're using the Amazon FBA program or you're using fbm which is fulfilled by Merchant which means that you're actually packaging up the items yourself and shipping them out to your customer either way you're going to have to pay this 15% fee because this is the fee that allows you to list your product on Amazon and it allows you to get access to Amazon's 140 plus million Prime customers now a lot of people get upset about this 15% fee and think that it's too high and that Amazon is taking too much of their earnings but I actually think that paying Amazon this fee is 100% worth it because they've spent billions of dollars marketing the website of Amazon they spent billions of dollars getting customers to their website and getting people to actually trust their website and by paying that relatively small fee of 15% it gives you access to Millions upon millions of Amazon customers now compare that with if you were to start your own website you'd have to spend a lot of money in marketing just to get people to your website you'd also have to spend a lot of time and energy trying to convince people once they're on your website to trust your website and to actually put their credit card information into your website Amazon already has built-in customers and built-in trust so in my opinion they've earned that 15% referral fee but here's a hack that you can use to get that referral fee down to 5% and that's by using the brand referral bonus program by signing up for this program you can create a special link that anytime you send a customer to your Amazon store Amazon will register it and realize that you actually sent the traffic there and they'll lower that percentage from 15% down to 5% which again it's 100% worth it just to pay this small 5% fee because the chance that someone's actually going to buy your product if it's on Amazon is a lot higher than if you were to send those same customers to your own website I have a lot more secrets I'm going to share with you throughout this video on how to save money on your Amazon FBA fees but the next fee I want to talk about is the Amazon FBA Pick and Pack fee now before I get into that I want to make it clear what Amazon FBA means FBA stands for fulfilled by Amazon and it means that you're going to send your inventory into the Amazon warehouse and that anytime you get a sale Amazon is going to fulfill your order the other option that you can use when selling on Amazon is to be seller fulfilled which basically means that anytime you get an order that you have to fulfill the product yourself this is called fbm or fulfilled by Merchant now I don't recommend selling on Amazon using the fbm method because it means that every time you get an order you have to pack all those orders up you have to go to the Post Office ship out all those orders on top of that by using the FBA program it allows your product to be prime eligible meaning that people can buy it on Amazon and receive it within 2 days on top of that Amazon also ranks products higher up in the search results if they are FB if they're Prime eligible and I tested this out I was selling some products that were fulfilled by me and then we switched them over into FBA and the sales increase by 4 to 5x other benefit of using the FBA program is you can travel and live wherever you want because Amazon's handling fulfilling all your orders the next fee we're going to talk about is the Amazon FBA Pick and Pack fee and again this is the fee for Amazon basically to pack up your item in the warehouse and ship it out to the customer it includes the postage and all the handling all the different salaries of the Amazon employees all that kind of stuff and this fee is going to depend on the size and weight of your product and generally speaking there's two different sizes there's small standard and there's large standard to be considered small standard on the longest side your package can't be longer than 15 in on the medium side it can't be longer than 12 in and on the smallest side it can't be longer than 75 in it also has to weigh under one lb on the other hand for large standard on the longest side it can't be over 18 in on the medium side can't be longer than 14 in and on the shortest side it can't be longer than 8 in and it also has to weigh under 20 lb then depending on how much your product weighs you can calculate your fees for instance for small standard there'd be one fee if your product's under 6 ounces a different fee if your product 6 o to 12 O and another fee if it's 12 O to 16 oz the same thing applies if your product's considered large standard there'd be different charges depending on how much your product weighs now I will show you a really simple way to calculate how much you're going to be paying in your Amazon FBA fees in just a minute but another thing to keep in mind is that this pricing tier applies to most products but you'll have a different pricing tier if you're in the category of apparel it costs around 30 to 40 cents more per item that Amazon ships for you if you're in the apparel category same thing if you're selling dangerous goods there is a different fee for that as well now for 98% of people they'll either be in a small standard or the large standard tier but there is also an oversized tier now an example of how much you would pay for your Amazon Pick and Pack fee is my product right here I have to pay a fee of $4.25 every time I get a sale so that Amazon can pick pack and ship out my product to the customer and that's because it's considered large standard and it weighs somewhere between 12 to 16 oun on the other hand this product cocktail cards actually weighs over one pound it weighs between 1 to 2 pound and it's still considered large standard and we have to pay a fee of $4.95 for the Amazon FBA Pick and Pack fee now a really simple way to figure out how much your Amazon ba fees will be is to use this free Amazon FBA calculator I'll put a link down below to it and what you're going to do is find a product that's a similar size and dimension to your product put in your item price and click calculate and this will tell you how much your Amazon referral fee will be as well as how much your Amazon FBA Pick and Pack fee will be it will even tell you how much your monthly storage cost per unit will be which is the next major fee that we're going to talk about and that is the Amazon storage fee and this is something that a lot of people forget about but it's very important because Amazon actually charges you every month that you have inventory in their warehouse and from January to September of every year they charge 70 cents per cubic foot worth of inventory that you have at the Amazon warehouse and from October to December they actually charge you $2 in 40 cents for every cubic foot worth of inventory that you have stored at their warehouse now the reason that they do this is from October to December you're going to be making a lot of money in Q4 sales people are buying things for the holidays and generally speaking people see a huge increase in sales during this month and so what happens is a lot of people want to send in a lot of products into Amazon's warehouse and to discourage people from sending in too much they raise the fee that they charge during this time and the way to calculate how much your Amazon FBA storage fees are going to be is to take the product that you're going to sell on Amazon measure the height the width and the depth of your product for example let's say we were selling a product that is 3 in by 4 in x 5 in that product would be 60 cubic in now now Amazon as we mentioned charges 75 cents for every cubic foot now a cubic foot is 12 in x 12 in x 12 in or 1,728 cubic in so we'd simply divide the cubic inches of our product which is 60 cubic in divided by the cubic Ines of 1ot which is 1,728 and multiply that by the 75 cents per cubic foot that Amazon charges and you can see that Amazon will charge us around 2.6 cents per unit per month that we have this store so if we knew that we were going to store this product in Amazon for 4 months that'd be 2.6 per month it's going to cost us around 10 cents in storage fees just to store this one product in Amazon's warehouse and of course remember that it would cost a little bit more if the product was stored during the months of October through December now here's a way to save a lot of money and that's to avoid the long-term storage fee and if you keep inventory in their warehouse for longer than 365 days they're going to charge you $6 in and 90 cents per cubic foot or 15 cents per item whichever number is greater now keep in mind the long-term storage fee only applies if you send a lot of inventory into the warehouse and your products just aren't selling if for instance you were to send in a 100 units into the Amazon warehouse and you sold 50 of them in one month so you sent in another 100 and you sold another 50 the next month the clock has reset because your original inventory is gone and you're into the new inventory but on the other hand let's say you sent in 100 units into the warehouse and you were only selling about 10 a month then after 12 months you'd still have 20 units in there and they'll start tacking on those longterm storage fees and one hack that you can use to avoid long-term storage fees is watch your inventory and if you see it's not selling and you see it's getting close to that oneyear Mark ask Amazon to send you back your inventory even if that means that you're just going to package it up again and send it right back into the Amazon warehouse but ideally the best way to avoid long-term storage fees is to figure out exactly how much inventory you should send into Amazon and now I'm going to get into the four Amazon FBA fees that no one talks about that you need to be aware of but before I do that make sure to subscribe because I have a ton of free content on this YouTube channel teaching you step- by step how you can sell on Amazon I also share a lot of different real stories from Amazon sellers so hit that subscribe button and let's get into the first fee that no one talks about and that is the return fee we've already talked about every time Amazon ships a product to your customer they're going to charge you the Pick and Pack fee but if your customer decides within 30 days that they they want to return the product you have to pay another fee and this fee again depends on the size and the weight of the product that you're selling but this fee basically covers the cost of the return shipping and the processing in the Amazon warehouse and if your product is in good condition you can actually tell Amazon just to put it back into your inventory meaning that as soon as you get another order that same product will be shipped out to a new customer or you can ask Amazon to dispose of the product and that's going to cost around 50 cents per unit which is another fee that a lot of people don't consider but both these fees are relatively small and it's relatively uncommon depending on what kind of product that you're selling that you'll have to deal with these fees but it is something to keep in mind another optional fee and a way to save a lot of money is by avoiding the prepping fee when you send products into the Amazon warehouse every product that you send needs to have an FN skew barcode sticker on it now usually you can have your manufacturer put these stickers on the product for really inexpensive or you can even have your manufacturer print the barcode on the actual box of your product but if you don't do either one of those and you still want to send in products into Amazon what you need to do is either put on every single sticker on every single unit that you're sending in yourself or you can pay Amazon 30 cents per unit to put the FN skew sticker on the product now I don't recommend doing this just pay your manufacturer to do it or usually what I recommend is just print the actual barcode right on your product there's also other preparation that am Amazon can do for you like putting your products in plastic bags but I don't recommend having Amazon do either one of those they're going to charge you between 50 to $2 to do things like this just read the requirements for your product and just make sure that it's prepped correctly now before I share with you some secrets that I've learned on how to save money on all these different Amazon FBA fees from my years of experience one other thing I do want to point out is there's always just a lot of other fees associated with selling on Amazon associated with starting any kind of business and these are things that you want to keep in mind for instance you might have to pay for a DBA or an LLC to actually start your business you might have to pay for a trademark or samples of the product that you're going to sell there's always little random fees that people generally don't consider but let's talk about how to save money and I've already mentioned a few you want to avoid long-term storage fees you want to use the brand referral bonus program to send traffic to your listings so you can lower the referral fee from 15% down to 5% on all that traffic and all those sales that you generate on your own you also want want to make sure you start with the individual selling account and only upgrade your account once you're ready to actually send inventory into Amazon and start selling a lot of people make the mistake of spending that $39.99 a month every single month and they're not even selling a product on Amazon they've just thought about starting to sell on Amazon but they're not even ready to send in their inventory yet you want to wait to upgrade until you're ready to actually start selling another thing that you'll want to do is make your product packaging smaller for instance I recently started selling jars of my product on Amazon now most people would probably sell a a 16 ooun jar on Amazon of the product but I realized that I'd have to pay a lot more in fees so instead we made a smaller jar and made it under 10 o so we could save money on the Amazon FBA Pick and Pack fees another hack is if you're selling a low priced lightweight product you can use the Amazon FBA small and light program to save a lot of money and if your product qualifies you would pay reduced fees for example you might pay $216 per unit once your product is approved for the small and light program instead of $2 07 cents per unit that is a savings of 64 cents per unit and Troy did this with his product and was able to save hundreds if not thousands of dollars there's also a lot of other ways to save money on Amazon FBA fees like removing undeliverable products from the Amazon warehouse you'll also want to make sure that Amazon has the correct size of your product sometimes what they do is they put your product in a higher tier than it's supposed to be you want to catch this as soon as possible and contact them and let them know that they made a mistake and sometimes they'll even reimburse you for the charges that they've been charging to you and if you like this section where I'm answering some of the FAQ questions you may really want to join my Amazon FBA program the passion product formula because we've collected over 200 of the most frequently asked questions and we have them listed out there as well as as I mentioned every single week There's a Q&A call so anytime you have a question you can go on and get it answered but the FAQ section we recently revamped is worth I think over $1,000 because all the value that's in there again link to that down below but now that you know about the fees associated with selling on Amazon let's talk about exactly how much it's going to cost you to start your Amazon business it costs at least $3,500 to start selling on Amazon if you're going to be doing private label about $2,700 to start selling on Amazon if you're going to be doing wholesale around $200 to start selling on Amazon if you want to use the Retail Arbitrage model and it'll cost you $0 if you're willing to put in some hard work and create your own product the first thing I'm going to do is break down all the costs to start selling on Amazon with all the different business models cuz each model has a different costs associated with starting then I'm going to give you a real world example I'm actually going to show you exactly how much it cost me to start selling on Amazon after that I'm going to explain all the different Amazon FBA fees because even after you start selling on Amazon there's still going to be fees associated with selling on Amazon then I'm going to tell you how you can get product research tools like jungle Scout and helium 10 for free as well as how to get a free full-blown Amazon FBA course people that are interested in this topic are either going to start with wholesale or private labeling and let's break down the cost to start with both of these and then later I'll talk about my favorite way to sell on Amazon which is creating your own product when selling on Amazon no matter which method you pick the first fee you're going to have to pay is a flat $39.99 a month to sell on Amazon now this is only if you want the professional selling plan and chances are especially if you're doing private labeling or wholesale you're going to want the professional selling plan because that allows you to send your products into the Amazon warehouse and then when you get an order Amazon will pick your product out from their warehouse and ship it out to the customer this is what Amazon FBA is Amazon FBA means fulfilled by Amazon one of the big benefits of this is if you do this your products will be prime eligible which means that customers can buy it and get their product within 2 days and most people on the Amazon platform want to buy Prime product and your sales are going to increase a lot if you actually have your product is prime eligible in FBA so this $40 fee is totally worth it so after you do your product research and again you don't have to pay for the tools there's free ways to do this as well I'll explain later you're going to have to design your product now if you're doing private labeling you're going to have to design a logo and the actual label for your packaging because again remember private labeling is taking an existing product and basically slapping your own brand on it slapping your own logo on it and I highly recommend hiring a legitimate designer to do this and that's going to cost you about $150 it really depends you can cheap out if you want you can go to Fiverr and get it done for really inexpensive and maybe you'll get lucky and maybe you'll find someone good I've not had very good experiences with Fiverr I think some things are worth maybe spending less money on like really trying to hunt for a good deal but your design is really important it's like it it represents your brand and you want to make sure that this is really good the next thing you're going to do is you need to go find a manufacturer in either China or a us manufacturer or wherever you want to find your manufacturer and you're going to talk with them back and forth and they're going to help you come up with the product now one of the things I recommend doing is getting sample sent over and a sample to get it sent over a lot of times it'll give you the sample for free but you have to pay for the shipping and it'll roughly cost about $50 for shipping and I recommend getting the first sample and you might want to look at it and make any like changes or improvements and maybe get a second sample just to make sure everything's okay so this is going to cost you about $100 to get samples of your product once you checked your samples and everything's good it's time to actually buy your inventory and this is in my opinion the scariest part and it's also the most expensive part it's going to cost you about $2,400 to buy that inventory depending now this is there's so many different variables I'm saying at about $6 a Unit H to buy 400 units and I'd recommend buying at least at least three to six months worth of inventory probably in my opinion closer to that 6month Mark and the reason for this is you do not want to run out of inventory on Amazon what I mean by this is once you start selling on Amazon if all of a sudden your sales happen too quickly and you run out of inventory in the Amazon warehouse Amazon will ding you they might even Blacklist your product listing and it's going to be a lot harder to like regain that sales velocity so for me personally I'd order closer to that six-month Mark and the reason for this is your manufacturer will probably have some kind of a lead time and if you only order 3 months by the time you realize that you're selling really quickly it might be too late to order inventory and you might run out of inventory now the other part of this equation is how much is your each unit of your product going to cost so we said probably around 400 units and that's just a ballpark it depends on how fast your you expect that your product's going to sell and all that kind of stuff but then the other thing is I would say it's probably on average going to cost about $6 per unit now this could depend you might be able to find a product that's cheaper per unit uh a lot of products are going to be more expensive per unit but for one of the companies I launched recently it was about $6 and one other thing to keep in mind is if you're importing products from China there's going to be an import Duty and I don't remember exactly the percentage on this I think at the time I did it it was 10% but it might have jumped up to 20% and I think it depends on what kind of a product you're importing and all that kind of stuff but just keep in mind I think expecting to pay at least $6 per unit is probably realistic now the more units you buy the cheaper that's going to be if you end up buying 1,000 units it might be $5.50 a unit if you buy 2,000 units it might be $5 a unit you'll have to talk to your manufacturer and figure out exactly how much it's going to cost you per unit the next fee is is going to be shipping your product from China over to the us over to the Amazon FBA warehouse now there's two different ways to do this and there's C- shipping and then there's air shipping when you're first starting out I recommend air shipping it's it's just a lot easier especially if you're doing a low inventory like not that you're not ordering that much then air shipping is going to be a lot easier now technically speaking air shipping is usually more expensive than C shipping but C- shipping takes a lot longer and and what my experience with C- shipping is they want you to have like a minimum like it's it's going to cost $1,000 to do c shipping no matter what because they do it by the pallet now I'm I'm sure that there's ways around this but that was my experience is uh the person that I was doing the shipping through said okay you can ship one pallet worth and a pallet generally will hold about 2,000 lb worth of inventory but it depends on the size and the dimensions and all that kind of stuff air shipping will take about a week to get from China to your house or to the Amazon FBA Warehouse CA shipping will take about 6 weeks assuming there's no delays and these are just rough estimates but like I said for most new people I'd recommend just doing air shipping one other Advantage is if you do air shipping you don't have to pay for the annual Bond there if you're going to be doing C- shipping you have to pay I think it's $100 for a single use entry like if you're just once a year you plan on sending a shipment from China over to the US but if you want to do multiple shipments a year it's going to be about $400 now I've never had to deal with this with DHL because I don't know I don't know if I've got around something and and maybe you are supposed to still buy a bond but when I do this the air shipping from China to the US I've never had to pay for that Bond and maybe it's because my manufacturer I don't know did something tricky or something like that I'm not sure or maybe they included in the price that I wasn't aware of but with C- shipping I've had to pay that Bond air shipping not so much and air shipping is going to cost roughly about $4.50 per kilogram so figure out how much all your products would weigh and it's going to be roughly about $4.50 per kilogram this is using DHL there's lots of different Services out there I've only ever used DHL and let's say for our hypothetical scenario here 400 units it's going to cost about $300 for air shipping another optional fee when dealing with shipping is you can hire what's called a freight forwarder a freight forwarder will take care of all this stuff for you it's really worth it in my opinion but it does cost extra money it's going to cost you about $300 now once you start doing C shipping and you have to deal with all that Logistics I would say it's worth hiring a freight forwarder but in the early days if you're just doing air shipping it's pretty simple you don't have to worry about it and that's why this one is an optional fee the next fee is you're going to need to pay for photos of your product this is what determines whether or not someone buys your product whether or not someone clicks on your listing and I'd say the title and the reviews are also very important but the main image is probably one of the most important things and I don't recommend cheaping out on this and I'd say at a minimum it's going to cost you about $50 to get a computer rendering and a computer rendering is honestly probably better than a real photo you can pay someone to get a photo and it'll range it'll be maybe $50 I think it's about Fair as well to get a real photo but the cool thing about a computer rendering is you can get angles and you can do things that you can't do with a photo and a computer rendering looks a little bit more perfect now $50 is pretty conservative because not only is there the main image but there's all the other other images as well now for the sake of this video I'm going to say that you can do these yourself these aren't quite as important all the products I've done the main image I have a computer rendered like very I spend I spend a decent amount of money on it like $50 to $100 but then all the other images I just do myself personally it's probably a mistake it's probably worth spending money to hire someone to do it but you don't need to another fee if you're going to be selling on Amazon is you want to create a DBA a DBA means doing business ads now another option if you're going to be starting a company you could do an LLC but an LLC is a lot more expensive a DBA is going to cost you about $150 or so you can do that on Legal Zoom uh or you could do an LLC which is going to cost you about $350 to set up on Legal Zoom Plus in California it's $800 every year just to have an LLC and you don't need an LLC unless you're nervous about people suing you and LLC is a limited liability company it basically protects you so if anyone sues you and and wins a court case they can only take money from the company they can't come after your assets where a DBA if someone technically sues your company as a DBA they can come after your assets but if you're selling a product that people aren't going to sue you over I would not waste the money on an LLC now my main company is a food product so I have it as an LLC but for most companies people aren't going to really be able to sue you and a lot of people don't even have enough assets that it makes worth paying that extra fee so for the average person I would say just do a DBA okay we're almost done with all the mandatory fees and then I'm going to give you my real world example like actually how much it costs for me to start an Amazon FBA company recently in just a minute but there's two more mandatory fees that we need to talk about the first one is UPC codes so UPC codes are those little barcodes you see on products and if you're going to be selling a product on Amazon Amazon now requires it now I have seen people that get away with buying these UPC codes from eBay for like 10 bucks and I don't know if I necessarily recommend that basically the way it works is you can buy it from resellers and it's kind of a great area i' I've had some friends that have done this and they've gotten away with it I for the purpose of this video I don't want to get you in trouble I'm not going to recommend that I recommend going to gs1 I think it's gs1.org I'll put the real link down below and buying legitimate barcodes and you could buy 10 of these UPC codes for $250 and I know it's a lot of money but that's just that's one of those cost that kind of sucks that you you probably need to do if you want to take a chance and go with one of the eBay barcodes feel free to try it out and let me know in the comments down below how that works out for you but let's say $250 for UPC barcodes and then the last mandatory fee and I'm going to be honest with you is just other costs there's going to be other costs associated with selling on Amazon things that you can't possibly think of and I recommend having at least a hundred bucks for that for all the just in case things this is going to be costs like sticker paper ink for your printer uh maybe gas to go drop your products off at UPS or whatever there's just all these little things that do end up adding up that you don't think about so let's say $100 in other mandatory fees now another optional fee is getting a trademark for your logo and this is going to cost you about $225 now the benefit of this is it gets you access to Brand registry and brand registry on Amazon does a few different things one it protects protects you basically it protects you so that if other sellers want to try to change your listing they can't if other sellers want to sell your product it makes it very difficult for them not impossible but very difficult and one of I think the best parts about this is it gives you access to enhanced brand content which means that in your description you can add images you can change the text make it bold it makes your product listing look a lot better it also allows you to upload videos to your product listing page so I think it's worth the $225 to get a trademark but it's definitely not mandatory another thing I've seen in other videos when talking about the cost is hiring a trademark lawyer don't waste your money that's going to cost you about $1,000 you don't need to do that you can go to uspto.gov I think it is I'll put the link down below and just fill out the form now one important part about this is when doing a trademark do it as a design Mark do not do it as a word Mark in my opinion and the reason for this is it's very easy to get a your logo as a design Mark it's very hard to get the name of your company as a word mark an example of this would be for my company performance Nut Butter I was able to trademark the logo because the logo is relatively unique the name is not that unique it's it's basically an adjective with the name of the product same thing with the company I'll give as an example in just a minute venoc cards we were able to trademark the logo because it's relatively unique but the the name venoc cards is basically just wine in Italian and the Trademark Office wouldn't trademark something that generic so if you are doing this to get brand registry then I highly recommend going with the design Mark the chances of actually getting approved are a lot higher than it is with a word Mark I've talked to trademark lawyers and they say that if someone does use your trademark even if you have a trademark and you want to go after them and sue them it's going to cost tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars and on the flip side if if someone wants to try to come after you and you want to try to fight them and maybe someone says that you're infringing on their trademark and you want to try to fight them that's also going to cost you like hundreds of thousands so generally speaking the trademarks are really meant more for like Coca-Cola and big companies like that to be able to defend their intellectual property for the purpose of this it's just to get you access to enhanced brand content so at a minimum it's going to cost you about $3,500 in my opinion to start selling on Amazon and this is pretty much assuming that everything goes perfect which it almost never does and it's also assuming that you find a product that you can put on Amazon and it'll start selling without any kind of marketing which in my opinion is somewhat unrealistic I would recommend having at least $11,000 for Amazon PPC now this is assuming you're doing a private label style model or a wholesale model I'd say $1,000 for Amazon PPC and Amazon PPC it means pay per click it's a way for you to advertise on the Amazon platform and what this does is it allows you to rank first or come up on other people's uh product pages and it's a really good form of advertising so again using the example I gave earlier if you wanted to rank first for the term healthy snack you can pay Amazon a set amount of money let's say $1 every time someone clicks on your ad Amazon then says awesome you pay us a dollar we'll put you at the top of the search results every time someone clicks on your ad give us that dollar and the way this works is you say let's say hypothetically that you know one out of every five times someone clicks on your ad you get a sale and so it'll cost you $5 to get a sale and let's just make up some numbers here if you had if you were making $10 per sale and it cost you $5 to do the advertising for the PPC it's a $5 profit you would do that all day long it's totally worth the money and I'm going to be honest with you it's really hard to rank a product number one on Amazon at least with the private labeling model if you're not spending money on Amazon PPC another thing you can do is product giveaways a lot of people will give away products for free in exchange for reviews and then that'll help get them ranked number one on the Amazon search results now it's kind of tricky on how you can do this there's different things you can do one thing you can do is you can give people a coupon code so when they buy your product they use this coupon code they get it either at a huge discount account or they get it for free basically more or less and then you ask them to leave a review for you and then Amazon sees that your probably getting a lot of reviews it's getting a lot of sales and it's more likely to rank you high in the search results another thing to do that I've heard of a lot of people doing is they'll go to distant friends and maybe very distant family and they'll say hey I'll PayPal you or I'll venmo you uh $30 the cost of my product in exchange will you go to my listing buy a product and leave a review now this is technically against the rules on Amazon but it'd be very hard for Amazon to catch you so that's another factor that you're going to want to keep in mind because even if you spend all this money all this mandatory fees to launch your product unless you have a really good product launch strategy but unless you have a really good product launch strategy it's going to be hard to start getting sales for your product and you're probably going to have to spend money either on Amazon PPC or on giving away products so in all honesty I think it takes about $5,000 for you to start selling on Amazon if someone came up to me and they said I you know they had anything less than $5,000 that they were willing to lose on Amazon FBA I would say do not start now keep in mind even if you spent all this money even if you spent all this money there is a chance that you're still going to have a failing product maybe you made a mistake early on if you are doing a wholesale model obviously it's going to be a little bit cheaper because you don't have to pay for designs you don't have to pay for UPC codes you basically just have to pay for the inventory a DBA shipping the product from the manufacturer to the Amazon warehouse and of course the the monthly Amazon professional selling plan now before I I talk about like my real world example I do want to point out that I think that private labeling and wholesale is dead or at least dying now can you still make money from both these models yes but I don't think it's the best way to make money on Amazon and that's because of these four reasons the first one is manufacturers are starting to go direct to Amazon so a lot of private label products people manufacture them in China and then ship them over from China to the US China is now going directly to Amazon cutting out you the private labeler the middleman and so I don't think private labeling is a sustainable model same things happening with a lot of wholesale a lot of wholesalers in the past would sell to wholesalers wholesalers would then sell it on Amazon well now these manufacturers these wholesalers know how great of an opportunity Amazon is and again they're cutting out the wholesaler the next reason I think these models are dead is because it's getting oversaturated there's 5 million sellers on Amazon 4,000 new sellers are joining Amazon on every day and the vast majority of them that I'm talking to are focused on private labeling or wholesaling and there's only so many products out there that can be private labeled only so many products that can be wholesaled and basically I see a lot of people competing on the same products and what happens is people are having to lower their price and lower their price and then the competitors lower their price and it's just this war and it ends up being a race to the bottom like a race to who can survive on the least amount of profit and with private labeling if you do find a winning product there's Amazon Basics so Amazon will basically copy your product make their own Amazon Basics version of it and that product will rank first on the search results and in my opinion good luck competing with Amazon and that's that's the private label model and then the last thing is the only people I do see doing this really successful are people that have been in the private labeling or the wholesale like world for years and years and there's just these Giants in the space and it's very hard to compete against them because they have more money to spend on these different products they don't care if they're small small margins and they have better connections to the the manufacturers either maybe in China or the the wholesale companies and so what do I think you should do instead I think this is the biggest opportunity right now on Amazon is creating your own product and this is what I do and I'll break down exactly how much it cost her to start selling on Amazon in just a minute but one of the big advantages of creating your own product is you can do a Kickstarter and this is what I did I raised about $155,000 on Kickstarter this is also what my friend did she raised about $5,000 on Kickstarter and that can help pay for your initial production run all your initial startup costs the other benefit of creating your own product is you don't have any competition because you create something that does not yet exist ideally you'd create something that you wish exist in the world something that you're really passionate about so her example is she wanted to learn more about wine so she created a set of wine flash cards and nothing like that existed and this isn't a revolutionary new product but there's no competition because she's the first one to do something like this and it also makes her product unique which means that customers are more likely to buy and here's the big thing Amazon is a trillion doll company Amazon has 33 million customers on its platform Amazon FBA is not dead but I believe that the way that you sell on Amazon is evolving and I think this is going to be the big Trend the more unique and more interesting you can make a product the easier it's going to be and obviously the more interested you are in your product the more you believe in your product the more passionate you are the easier it's going to be so let's quickly break down exactly how much it cost her to start selling on Amazon so first she had to pay $39.99 a month Amazon FBA fee for the professional selling plan so she can be prime eligible then there's the $152 DBA fee which if anyone that starts a business I'd recommend doing this after that her product is very designheavy I mean the entire product is basically paper and design so we ended up spending $2,000 on the design for this product we hired a professional designer to do this now you don't have to do this if we would have shopped around we probably could have been able to get the design for $1,000 which would have been a lot cheaper she also hired a Somalia like a professional wine Somalia to go over the cards and review them that was about $150 now one thing we didn't do that we should have done is actually get samples sent over from China so we could review them that would have probably been like I said about $100 maybe $50 for the first sample and $50 for the second one and this was one of the big mistakes we made is not getting those samples done the cards ended up having some uh like very minor spelling mistakes and we would have caught that if we would have had samples done the next cost and this is where we made a really big mistake is the cost of the product itself now we spent $11,000 manufacturing the product and the reason for this is we did 2,000 units and I'm still kicking myself to this day that we manufactured so many products I wish we would have only done three to 6 months worth of inventory wish we would have done about 400 units if we would have manufactured only 400 units it would have cost us about $2,800 instead of the $111,000 we ended up spending the reason I did this though is I really believed in this product and it's shelf stable like the product doesn't go bad and Ariana's parents allowed us to store the excess product in their garage so in my opinion we let's order 2,000 units and she has the rest of her life to sell these products the the big reason why I did this though is because if we would have only ordered 400 units it would have been $7 a unit at ,000 units it would have been about $6 per unit but we ordered 2,000 units cuz it was about $5 a unit so in my head we were saving money but that was a big mistake because it's taken us a lot longer to sell the products than I had initially anticipated and on top of this there was some very minor mistakes that I wish we would have only ordered the 400 units then we would have fixed the mistakes and ordered more unit another mistake we made is we were in a rut like we were behind and we wanted to get this product out in time for Christmas so we had to end up doing air shipping for about 500 units which cost us about $700 and then we ended up doing CA shipping for the rest which cost us around $400 and of course because we did the C- shipping we ended up paying a $400 annual Bond as well and as you can already see it's very easy to make a lot of mistakes on Amazon and that's why I say you should at least have $5,000 if you're starting out or around that amount now again if you are creating your own product you can launch your product as a Kickstarter and I'll be talking about that in just a minute and that can make you enough to pay for all your initial startup costs the next fee was $250 for the UPC barcodes now technically I already had some UPC barcodes so I let her use one of mine it really didn't she didn't have to actually pay for that but let's say $250 for most people then there is the cost of the photos we spent about $100 getting a computer rendering done and I I think it was 100% worth it and then all the other photos that we have on our product listing we just took ourselves and the last fee for Ariana to get started there's about $270 and just other random fees this is things like sticker paper gas to go to the post office just little things that you might not think about tape all that kind of little random junk it adds up so in total all the startup costs were around $116,000 to launch this product but of course we raised about $5,000 on Kickstarter and after you calculate that in it cost us about $112,000 to start up but here's the important thing we made a lot of mistakes we could have done this for a lot cheaper if for instance we would have only ordered 400 units we would have saved a lot of money on inventory and if we would have properly planned ahead and not had to rush over a bunch of the inventory we could have just paid the air shipping and of course if we would have shopped around and maybe tried to find a cheaper designer we could have saved another $1,000 and so if we would have made so many mistakes would have been closer to $5,000 for us to start up plus we raised enough money on Kickstarter like all that money coming in for inventory we could have started Amazon FBA creating our own product for only ,000 and obviously if we would have marketed a little bit harder for the kickstarter we could have started this company for $0 and this is why I think creating your own product is going to be the future of Amazon Plus you just have way better margin and in my Amazon FBA program I actually have a template that you can write down all your costs it'll help you to calculate how much it's going to cost you specifically for your product to create your Amazon business and so if you're worried about how much it's going to cost you this worksheet could really be helpful but as I've mentioned you don't need money to start your Amazon business you can start with zero and in this next section I'm going to show you exactly how you can do it but first I want to show you the seven tactics that you can use to start your own Amazon FBA business even if you have no money and make sure to stay till the end because tactic number seven is the most powerful tactic I've ever used that I've ever learned and it works even if you don't have any money but the first thing I'll share with you is if you don't have the money you need to start your own Amazon FBA business look around your apartment and sell things and for instance out there I've got a surfboard now I'm going to be completely honest with you I'm an absolute beginner at surfing I'm I'm not good at all I'm trying to learn but if I needed some money to start a business I could sell that surfboard in a minute get a hundred bucks for it another example is I got this hammock out here now this hammock is one of the best things I've purchased in a long time it costs around $100 but the cool thing about it is I'll go out there and I'll I'll read a book on the hammock and I'll I'll look out at the palm trees and it makes me feel like I'm on vacation and so I absolutely love this hammock but if I needed some money to start a business I'd sell this hammock make another hundred bucks and look around your house look around your apartment look for things that you could potentially sell to make a little bit of money and that's some a great way to get some Capital to start your business business but here come with me I'll show you another example so this coffee machine right here I'll be honest with you I don't drink coffee I actually I have I drink like herbal tea I drink tumeric tea sometimes in the morning I can't have coffee I've got too much energy as it is so potentially right I could sell this but I I wouldn't do that because it's actually not my coffee machine it's actually my girlfriend's coffee machine but the cool thing about this and this is tactic number two is this coffee machine retails for $300 but we got it for $150 we got it on sale we got it at a discount so what we could do is we could sell this coffee machine that we got for $150 bucks for $300 on Amazon get $150 in profit now the truth is there are some Amazon fees so it would probably only be about $100 in profit but that's absolutely amazing think about that you can go find things that are on a deep discount and be able to flip it on Amazon and and make the difference and this is called Retail Arbitrage and that's where you go to retail stores you find things that are on discount and flip them on Amazon there's also online Arbitrage where you use coupons and find things online that are a really good deal and then flip them onto Amazon now the third tactic I'm going to share with you and this is a very powerful one is you can actually look at how you can start saving money so for instance uh we actually just yesterday we went to the farmers market we got all this delicious food and the truth is this was kind of pricey you know it's it's a lot cheaper to just purchase food at Ralph but I you know I'm starting to do pretty well financially and I really enjoy supporting local farmers I like you know I enjoy trying local uh seasonal fruits this is guava it's actually pink on the inside it's really tasty and I think it's pans and you know we got some some different organic things but when I was first like when I had my corporate job I was not eating you know $112 a dozen eggs these eggs they're pasturas they're ethical all that kind of stuff but when I had my corporate job I'll be honest with you I was spending this kind of money on food now that I'm doing a little bit better I enjoy spending the money on high quality fuel for my body and I enjoy supporting local people but when you're in that early phase when you don't have a lot of cash look at how you can save money another example actually is this this entire apartment so I absolutely love this apartment but it's really expensive and back when I had my corporate job even though I was making $80,000 a year at my corporate job I was living in a little Studio it was maybe like $800 a month in in downtown Chicago and I knew that I wanted to start a business so I was saving my money and then when I quit my job at one point I even moved back in with my parents and to be honest with you I was spending $400 a month in rent at my parents' place and it it was kind of this is actually a personal thing it was a huge ego kick to me because all of a sudden I went from making really good money to having to move back into my parents house but it was worth it because I was saving money every month that went by I was saving you a lot of money by living with my parents out if you are going to splurge in one area of your life I do think rent is a good place to spend a little extra money because for me for instance living in this apartment it's not just about you know and obviously $2,500 a month for such a small apartment it's a little bit crazy but the reason it's so expensive is because it's really close to the beach and for me to be able to go to the beach to be able to recharge my batteries when I'm when I'm stressed out or if I'm feeling really down I can go jump in the ocean it's completely worth it for that reason but then the other side of it too is the people that can afford to live in this neighborhood are probably doing something really cool something really interesting and I found a lot of my friends in this neighborhood it's cuz there're other entrepreneurs that are really successful and when I was living back home with my parents that wasn't the case you know the people that I was surrounded by in my suburb neighborhood they weren't really doing anything that interesting they weren't other entrepreneurs that I could learn from another tactic I want to give to you on how you can get the money you need to start your business is you can get a second job now I know that's not revolutionary but here is something that I think a little bit more interesting the second job you get you shouldn't just go flip burgers at McDonald's you shouldn't become a barista at Starbucks instead what you should do is figure out how can you learn the skills that you're going to need when you do start your Amazon business so what I recommend doing is contacting different people that have physical products and tell them that you're going to help them sell that product product on Amazon a lot of local shops they sell really cool unique things but they're not selling on Amazon yet you can help them sell on Amazon and either charge them a little bit of money or just take a percentage of the profits and most companies if they have any Common Sense they're absolutely going to want to work with you on that and so that way not only are you making some side cash you're learning the skills you're going to need now some other examples you can use upwork you can use there's a bunch of different online job market places that you can go to offer your services or you can learn different internet Market marting skills but whatever you do if you do get a second job make sure that it's something that is actually going to help you learn the skills that you're going to need so now I I do want to share what's in this box and as I mentioned number tip number seven is actually going to be the most powerful tip but this is a this is a pretty powerful tip as well so in this box is my girlfriend and and and technically my product as well I'm I'm an investor in our product and that's my my fifth tip is find someone to invest in your product so this is venoc cards it's her product and we had this idea for a product but she didn't have a lot of money to start her business so I went to her and I was talking to her about it and I'm like hey why don't I give you the money you need to start your business and some of the best money I ever spent I gave her you know a few thousand dos to start her business but in exchange not only have I been paid back my money on top of that I was able to help her create her own passion product her own product that she absolutely loves and she was able to sell it on Amazon and start creating passive income and and each one of these units it costs us you know maybe $7 8 to produce the unit and then we sell it on Amazon we have to pay all the different Amazon fees and we have to pay some other you know just random fees for owning a business but in total profit it's like around $520 per unit and we're selling 50 to 100 units of this product per month and like I said it's completely passive it it did take some work to initially design the product to initially get the customer base to launch the product but now that it's up and running all we got to do is buy these boxes of inventory send it into Amazon and Amazon ships it out to the customers and that is so powerful so what I recommend doing is looking around your life who could you get to invest in your product and I am starting to invest in more students products specifically people that are in my course the passion product formula but if you have an idea for a business and you're looking for an investor leave it in the comments down below I am looking to start networking and and investing into lots of different Amazon business tip number six is you can actually get a loan you I mean I don't recommend this in most situations you can go to family and friends again Ask for loans you can also go to Banks and there's also a lot of online services that will give you money to start your business so with that out of the way finally the most powerful tip I got for you tactic number seven here do a Kickstarter do an Indiegogo crowdfund your product and I actually did this I I raised $115,000 which paid for most of my initial production run and the cool thing about a Kickstarter the cool thing about Indiegogo or any of those crowdfunding campaigns is it doesn't take any money to start you will have to put in a little bit of time and energy to get your marketing out there to get your campaign up and running but you don't have to pay for the product the way that crowdfunding works is you do the marketing you launch your crowdfunding people give you money in my case it was $155,000 I take that money I go produce the inventory and then I send the inventory that I produced back to the people so people are giving you money in exchange for a hopeful promise that you'll eventually send them a product and this is so powerful I raised $155,000 ariiana raised over $5,000 I recently invested in one of the students of my course he made close to $5,000 and you don't really need to like I said you don't need to spend a lot of money to raise that money on kickstar I've had a lot of other students that have had a ton of success and the good thing is after you're Kickstarter you produce the inventory and you could be once you start selling on Amazon you can start making a lot of money and Tik Tok was the key factor that led to success with AJ being able to start his business for $0 and as I mentioned he did a full hourong talk at passion product live which is an event that I hold every year he did it a couple years ago we recorded that talk and you can get that for free when you join the passion product formula but next up I'm going to talk about the biggest mistake that new Amazon sellers make and pay attention please because I've seen so many people make these mistakes and end up failing when they don't need to fail there's five main reasons why 99% of people fail on Amazon and if you can avoid these five things you can pretty much guarantee your success on Amazon and I'm going to start with some of the more technical reasons why people fail but number four and number five are by far the biggest reasons why people fail once they get started with Amazon but number one let's start with the biggest reason why I think so many people fail on Amazon is they never get started now this might sound obvious but a lot of people get stuck in analysis paralysis I've even got stuck in analysis paralysis and I'm going to show you how to get out of that and why it's so important that you at least try especially if you're interested in Amazon and one of the biggest examples I have is a lot of people including myself are scared to make mistakes they're scared to lose money but I honestly believe if you do Amazon right it can be so profitable that it almost doesn't matter if you make some early mistakes for instance my product does about $10,000 a month profit and what that means is for every month I delayed launching my product it actually cost me $10,000 so let's say I wanted to save $1,000 but it would take me an extra month to make a decision that was a waste of money so an example would be even if I made a ridiculous amount of mistakes let's say $30,000 worth of mistakes which would almost be impossible but in exchange I was able to get my product out 6 months earlier because you know I was doing things fast and I was actually trying I still would have made a profit of $30,000 as opposed to if I would have not if I would have waited and and waited those 6 months then I would have made 0 so obviously $30,000 is better than $0 and a lot of people don't get started cuz they want to know how to do everything perfectly you're going to figure it out like once you get started you will figure it out as you go and don't get me wrong there are some really big technical mistakes that people make and I'm going to share all of them with you in this video but the last thing I want to say on this is a lot of people I see they're not really sure how they want to make money online they're not really sure what the best route is so they try a little bit over here and a little bit over there and they're dabblers most people when it comes to making money are dabblers don't be one of those people you have to have laser focus you have to focus on this so for the next 3 to 6 months focus on this one way of making money do it like 100% And then once you launch your products you're going to figure out how things go now there are two different Big Technical mistakes and one is selecting a bad product and then the other one is having a bad listing and I've done a lot of Consulting I've worked with a lot of people and these two mistakes are probably of the people that get started two of the biggest ones that that people make and let's start with a bad product a lot of people select a product to sell and from the start they've selected a terrible product it's a product that as soon as they show it to me I look at them and I say you're you're never going to have success with this for a few different reasons sometimes people pick products that are just way too competitive other times people just really don't understand how how their margins will work and all the costs associated with selling on Amazon but by far the most common problem I see is people are selling junk people are private labeling from Alibaba they're just taking you know standard private label product slapping their brand on it and maybe they're not even doing a good job on branding it which is another thing like if you think you can just take a product from Alibaba slap a sticker on it that's your brand and throw it on Amazon in 2020 2021 and Beyond I think you're crazy honestly in my opinion private labeling at least the old school way of doing it is dead it used to be extremely easy it used to be you could just go to Alibaba grab any random product and throw it onto Amazon and you would make money I think that's dead for at least three reasons and it's China it's oversaturated and Amazon Basics but I think nowadays you need to have something special about your product something that makes it stand out from the competition and the more unique it is the more likely you are going to be to succeed don't get me wrong I think you can still there is still opportunity to make money off private labeling it's just it's not what it used to be and so you're going to have to start thinking about how can you make your product stand out and maybe that is by just making a really killer brand maybe it is by you have a better way to get a ton of reviews maybe there's a lot of different little things but keep in mind the easier it is for you to do this the easier it's going to be for someone else to copy your product and and do it just as well if not better than you so the more unique you can make the product that you're selling the better but then there is an issue with that you want to make sure that your product's going to sell and I highly recommend before you sell a product on Amazon test it out start an Instagram start some kind of social media see if people are interested in your product there maybe even do what I did I did a Kickstarter I raised $115,000 for my product before I ever launched on Amazon and the whole point of doing this was to test the market see are people actually interested in this and my product was relatively unique so I had to like I couldn't just jungle Scout and and figure out what the sales numbers were for an existing product I had to actually test the market by doing a Kickstarter but in exchange that $115,000 helped me pay for my first production run but even if you have a perfect product you found the perfect product it's really an amazing product it shocks me how many people show me listings of their product and it's just terrible one of the first things you want to look at is keyword research really try to figure out what are people searching in Amazon to find your product like what are the perfect keywords that you want to rank for like that's the foundation and there are tools helium 10 jungle Scout you can also try using the Google Keyword tool it's it's not perfect but what it basically allows you to do is figure out what what is the search volume how many people are searching for certain keywords on Google so it's not how many people are searching for those keywords on Amazon but it can still be helpful some other ideas for doing keyword research is figure out what your competitors figure out what similar products what keywords are they going after look at their title look at their their bullet points everywhere maybe even talk to some customers find some people that would buy your product and ask them what would you search for in Amazon and keep asking them questions until you get every single keyword that you can think of then once you have these keywords and this is the next big mistake people make is in the title make sure you put those keywords in the title and now that might sound obvious but let me tell you this as well the closer to the front of the title they are the better also so something very important is your title needs to be something that people want to click on when they're searching for those keywords your title needs to reflect what people are searching for a lot of people make the mistake of putting their brand at the beginning of their title nobody cares about your brand unless you are Nike or some majorly established brand but even then if you're Nike what what does Nike do they put the product first like what is the product now technically this might be against the rules for Amazon Amazon has weird rules on how you're supposed to format your title but I'm going to tell you from experience they don't really care that much as long as you're not being totally scammy about it so don't start with your brand think about what is the main keyword you're trying to go after and put that at the beginning of your title because think about this first off Amazon weighs that more heavily but from the user perspective if they're searching for rustic wooden table and the first three words of your product title are rustic wooden table then they know that it's a good match like if they have to search through your title to try to figure out what your product's about they're not going to going to be as interested in clicking it one of the big principles of online marketing is don't make your users think don't make other people think the more obvious things can be the more likely they are to purchase your product related to that is your main image your main image should be is clean as clear as big as possible you want to make sure there's not too much white space on the outside I see so many people do this you want to also make sure that your product image is going to pop remember that your product is going to be shown on a white back ground so as little white space as possible is going to help make your product pop and you want to make it very clear from your product image what is it don't show your branding in your logos like at least predominantly like that could be a small subset of it but that shouldn't be the main thing I've seen a lot of people that they have their their brand logo or the box as the big thing and then the product really small nobody cares about what your box looks like I mean they do but that's not as important as what's inside the box it's the product that they're going to buy the third biggest thing is reviews so many people so many people come to me and they've got three reviews and they're like hey why is my product not selling I'm like it's got three reviews you can't find some people that can review your product now this is against terms and service but can't you find someone at your gym someone that maybe you're a coworker or or someone that you know Loosely that can review your product I know a lot of people that do this and I've never seen anyone get in trouble Amazon can crack down on reviews in certain situations but honestly as long as they're not sharing the same internet you log in to log into Seller Central it really shouldn't be a problem now a lot of people might disagree with me on this one so go for it at your own risk but if you can only get three people to review your product or four or five then honestly I don't believe I wouldn't believe in that product and most customers feel the same way so you need to get a ton of reviews there's a lot of different ways to do it my favorite way in the world to get a lot of reviews from day one it's how I got 75 reviews from day one or actually probably the first week I got 75 reviews is a product launch group get a lot of people into a Facebook group it could be Instagram get a long email list get people really excited about your product before you ever launch it so that when you go to launch it you'll get a spike of sales from day one you'll get a spike of reviews from day one or it might take a few days for them to receive the product but from at least the first week Amazon's going to see this and it's going to shoot your ranking it's going to shoot your product to page one maybe even the first result because it sees that all wow this product just came out and so many people have already bought it so many people have already left reviews so there's really no excuse not to be able to get reviews some other things I've seen people do is talk to maybe influencers in your space like go on Instagram or wherever YouTube and ask people ask those influencers to buy it and then reimburse them via venmo again technically against Amazon's terms of service but you know what's the the chance that Amazon could find out about it in worst case i' the worst case I've ever seen is if Amazon does find out about something like this they remove the review and it's it would be very difficult for them to find out about it now again proceed at your own risk but this is a huge reason why people don't fail look the title the main image and the amount of reviews you have those are the three most important things other than of course selecting a good product those are the three most important things and if you can do those right people will click on your product and the chance that they will buy is really high Amazon's conversion ratees really high but to guarantee that you have a a high conversion rate some other things you might want to consider are bullet points so what are the bullet points that represent your product now in these bullet points try to integrate your keyword but remember it's not don't write your bullet points for the search algorithm write them for the customer write them so that when customers look at your product page that they're like wow this is an amazing product make sure to highlight the benefits what are the benefits not the features what are the benefits of your product for instance this product like my product I might say it will give you energy all day long sustainable long lasting energy the feature would be 19 G of fat 19 no one cares about 19 grams of fat what they care about is that that 19 grams of fat is going to lead into sustained long lasting energy so make sure you hit the bullet points make sure your bullet points stand out you can use things like 100% money back guarantee if they're not satisfied here's a hint all products on Amazon have 100% money back guarantee if they're not satisfied so by putting in that guarantee as one of your bullet points you're going to make customers feel more at ease to buy your product but here's the truth I've had that on my product for a year I've only ever had one person say hey I wasn't satisfied with this I want my money back and honestly person was just kind of a scammer anyways he probably would have found some other way to get money it's very rare that people take you up on this guarantee but it makes them feel better about buying your product some other things to help sell your product are the other images this is probably the next most important thing is all the other images you want to show people what it's going to be like to own your product remember they're buying your product online they have no idea they never held it in their hands they don't know what it's going to be like you have to convince them so they can mentally in their head imagine what it would be like to own the product that you're selling and you do this through the other images is again try to highlight the the benefits of your product show them what it would look like in the real world show real humans interacting with it show all the different benefits and try to try to highlight it in image form for instance for my product I Tred to show people how you could eat this like all the different ways because that's a big question people have I try to show people like being active and fun recipes that they could make with it the last element that I see people making is a description you know what descriptions aren't as important is everything else we've talked about but just put a little bit of effort into it you know maybe spend a few hours and think how can you make your description unique and stand out but 99% of people are going to be buying based on the main image the reviews and the title and maybe the bullet points or and the other images as well those five things are what 99% of people that's how they make their decision next time you're on Amazon try to figure out like why do you buy the products you buy for me I've noticed all these things reviews are so important the main images is so important like all these things determine which product I buy when I'm searching around on Amazon now the next two reasons I'm going to talk about are by far the biggest reasons why I see people fail on Amazon and really quick before before I jump into that I do want to note that there are other technical reasons why people fail such as Amazon PPC maybe their Amazon PPC is not dialed in but honestly if you have all the principles down you have a good product and you have a good listing you're going to have success with Amazon as long as you follow these these next two rules I'm going to talk about and one of the other reasons why I see so many people fail with Amazon it's honestly one of the reasons I haven't been as successful on Amazon as I probably should have been is fear fear cripples new Amazon FBA sellers for so many reasons and I see this so often in the comment section of my YouTube video so many people that have this negative mindset but the truth is I I've even been guilty of this at times and I've talked about this before on this channel but I've waited probably a year to launch my my second Amazon Faba product which is going to be a caca version of my original product and the reason that the reason I've been holding back for so long honestly was fear I was nervous I was going to waste money I was nervous that if it messed up and it didn't do well I'd look bad because I'm very public like I share everything but recently on this channel I've been getting a lot more negativity a lot more negative comments a lot more haters and it it really hurts me because when I see that I know that those kind of people are are never going to succeed they're they're going to fail and I know that from firsthand experience because when you have that mindset of everything everyone's out to get you and everything's going against you it's almost guaranteed that you're going to fail I'm going to talk about at the end of this video how to guarantee success but one of the biggest things is if in life you constantly think about wow like this is amazing that this happened because it's going to open up some other door if you have the theory that the entire universe is conspiring to help you achieve your dreams it's almost guaranteed that you're going to succeed and I'm going to point out something really quick if you're watching this video you're already successful like you've got running water you've got food for 99% of human history you're living in paradise and I want there's going to be some hard times with with selling on Amazon which leads into the last point I want to talk about Amazon is not a get-rich quick scheme you're not going to become a millionaire overnight but it is the easiest way to make money online it's the easy I've tried a lot of different ways to make money online in my opinion it's the easiest way to start a legitimate business that you could sell that you could go travel and be on vacation and it would still keep making money it's like one of the only ways I found that actually works to make passive income and they say that four out of five businesses fail but this is another mindset shift I want you to have when I was quitting my corporate job it was about 7 years ago I had a corporate job I got really depressed I was hating life and I was going to do anything I could to quit so I could you know get my own freedom because the truth is in my opinion if you're in the corporate world if someone's telling you when to wake up when to go to work you're a slave and I wanted to get my freedom and when when I would tell people that when I would tell my co-workers that they would all say the same thing four out of five businesses fail and my response was cool I'll start five by the fifth one the statistically I'm going to be successful and obviously I was joking by that but that's the kind of mindset I think you need to have to be successful on any kind of business because the truth is the first time you do something it very well might be successful but you know what the second time you're going to do it better the third time you're going to do it better if you keep going and you start five businesses I would bet a million dollars on you if if you were willing to start five businesses and that one of those five would eventually be successful and let's talk about how to guarantee success on Amazon how to guarantee success on business and I I do have some principles I want to share with you that if you follow these I can guarantee that you'll be successful on Amazon but really quick before I do that I do want to ask a favor if in my future videos If you see people like leaving negative comments be nice to them but just let them know in in a nice of a way as you can that hey that's a a failure mindset like that's a negative mindset because I firmly believe when you are willing to waste your time to leave negative comments when you're willing to waste your time to try to put someone else down the chances of you being successful or I should say of that other person being successful are almost zero but if you're the kind of person that's willing to you know let people know and be gentle and remind them about that and you're trying to build other people up the chances of you being successful are almost 100% because there's just this thing in your in your mind that switches when when you're trying to help other people it helps you be successful and that's I think one of the first principles if you want to guarantee success on Amazon you need to have a bigger purpose than just making money maybe maybe it's like you're trying to help the World out by releasing a really cool product or or maybe maybe the bigger purpose is you really are enjoying it you're really loving it but if your only goal is to purely just make the money it's going to be hell it's going to be hard and the truth is if your only goal is just make money you're a slave again like you know I was a slave to the corporate world and then for the next 5 years I was a slave to myself I was a slave to my business but if you can have a bigger reason why you're trying to do it you will you'll be successful another thing is that starting a business on Amazon starting a business in general and again even though Amazon is way easier than typical businesses like brick and mortar business or any other business model I found it's like climbing to the top of Mount Everest it's not easy and you don't want to be the first one to try to do that you're not you're not the first one to try to do that but one thing I would highly advise is get a mentor again if you're going to climb to the top of Mount Everest you might want to talk to someone that's done it before you might want to get some feedback along the way and related to that is you don't want to try to do this by yourself like you want a community around you my biggest success started happening when I started getting mentors and when I had started surrounding myself with a community of people that were all doing the same thing but I think the biggest way to guarantee success on Amazon is to get a good map and I was too stubborn to do this I was by most my entire entrepreneurial career I thought I could do everything myself I wanted to be the first one to blaze the trail and that was so silly one of my biggest regrets was not investing in in some kind of course like other people have already done it I should have learned from them again don't think that you need to necessarily invest in a course or spend a ton of money but what you should do is figure out someone else's method and just if it's your first time doing it copy it step by step and along the way maybe try to make it your own maybe try to make it better but for the most part you should follow the math my last piece of advice for you is it's going to be a struggle but remember to enjoy it enjoy the journey now at the end of this video I will talk about how you can guarantee success I talked about some of the biggest mistakes people made and to be completely honest one of the biggest mistakes I see people making is they don't ask for help they're not getting help and I'll talk about that more at the end of this video but now let me share with you something very vulnerable very personal I'm going to go down the list and share every single Amazon FBA mistake that I've personally made and this has cost me well over $100,000 probably cost me closer to three4 $500,000 but at a minimum it's cost me over $100,000 all these mistakes that I've made so pay attention to this next section we're going to learn how to avoid all these mistakes and save a lot of money let's start with number one and this is the biggest mistake I made and it is the most common mistake I see beginner Amazon sellers making and that's waiting every month you wait to start your business you're losing money for instance my first real Amazon business made about $360,000 in Revenue in its first year or around $120,000 in profit once you subtract out all the expenses which is around $10,000 of profit per month so if I would have launched my business a month earlier I would have made an extra $10,000 if I would have launched my business a year earlier it would have been an extra $120,000 and the problem is people are so afraid of making mistakes that they delay the start of their business and the thing about Amazon is if you do it right it can be so profitable that it doesn't even really matter if you make mistakes for example let's say I was deciding between two different manufacturers and I took a month in deciding that I lost out on a potential profit of $10,000 so even if I picked the wrong manufacturer and the manufacturer I picked ended up costing me $5,000 and if I would have spent a month researching it I would have been able to figure that out it doesn't matter because I launched my business a month earlier which was $10,000 in profit subtract the $5,000 mistake and I still made $5,000 more than if I would have spent a month in analysis paralysis mode and eventually picked the correct manufacturer mistake number two is another mistake I made and probably the second most common mistake I see new Amazon sellers making and that's selling the wrong product the first e-commerce business I ever started was a dance clothing company and originally we were only selling our product on our own website when I saw the opportunity that is and was Amazon I started selling the products on Amazon and ended up making a decent amount of money but the problem is this wasn't the right kind of product to sell on Amazon for a number of reasons I'm going to give you a checklist on everything you should look at when deciding on what kind of product you're going to sell but one of them was it's a product that's so easy for Chinese manufacturers to copy pretty much exactly and sell for a lot cheaper on Amazon there was another reason that's even more important why this was a bad product to sell on Amazon that I'll get to in just a minute another product that was a mistake to sell on Amazon was jars of my product P&B and the reason that this was a mistake is because the jars were glass jars that would break during shipping on top of that the seal on the lid in the bottom wasn't tight enough and so sometimes the jars would leak because the jars were leaking I ended up having to throw away half of my production R had to throw away a th000 units of this product so I lost around5 or $6,000 of product that I had to throw away but the crazy thing about this is even though I threw away a th000 units I did a total production run of around 2,000 units and since I was able to sell the first th000 units for around $18 a piece after all the different Amazon FBA fees and everything with those first thousand I made a profit of around $67,000 so even though I lost money on all that product I had to throw away in total I actually didn't lose any money by pursuing this product even though I made a major mistake and had a product that was leaking I still broke even and I learned a very valuable lesson so if you're selling an item on Amazon Amon make sure that it's easy to ship that it's not going to break that it's not going to leak that it's going to be easy for Amazon to ship this product to your customers and there's a number of other things that you're going to want to look for when finding a product to sell on Amazon make sure to subscribe because I'm going to be doing an in-depth tutorial on how to find a product to sell on Amazon but a few things that you want to make sure that your product has when finding a product to sell on Amazon is make sure that it's a product that you can sell for $15 or more at a minimum $15 the problem is if it's $15 or less you're going to have to pay all the Amazon fees all the shipping all the other stuff and it's very hard to find a profitable product under $15 you also ideally want to sell a product that's under 20 because if it's over 20 the shipping expenses the Amazon FBA fees start to get really high I also recommend selling a premium product you want your product to be the best product on the market because if your product's the best product on the market that means that you can charge the most which means more profit for you but in my opinion the most important thing to look for in a product that you're going to sell on Amazon and the reason why the first products I sold on Amazon kind of failed is I highly recommend selling a product that you're actually passionate about because if you're passionate about the product you understand the product and it's something that you would buy yourself it's going to be a lot easier to Market and here's the truth about starting an Amazon business it's hard there's ups and downs and when you're in the down phase if it's something that you're really excited about it's going to be a lot easier to overcome those obstacles and get your product launched on Amazon I have a complete checklist of everything you should look for in a product that you're going to be selling on Amazon in my free Amazon FBA course that I'll link down below the third mistake I made and a mistake that probably cost me over $100,000 is selling my products using fbm instead of FBA now for those that don't know fbm and FBA are both ways that you can sell on Amazon fbm stands for fulfilled by Merchant basically meaning that you list your products on Amazon's website and every time you get a sale Amazon sends you a notification and tells you that you have to ship out the products to the customer on the other hand FBA stands for fulfilled by Amazon meaning that you send in a th000 units of your product into the Amazon warehouse and when you get an order for your product on Amazon's website instead of them sending you a notification and having you ship it out they actually take one of the products from the warehouse and ship it out to the customer and the really great thing about this is once you get your product launched on Amazon you can automate and systematize your business so that basically you're constantly getting new orders Amazon sending out the products for you and you don't really have to work that much on your business now the mistake that I made is for the first couple years that I was selling on Amazon we were doing fulfilled by Merchant because I had a warehouse for the dance clothing company and we already had people that could ship things out and I didn't want to pay the FBA fees I also didn't want to send product into the warehouse because I was nervous that they would charge storage fees and things like that and that was a huge mistake because the thing is when you send your products into the Amazon warehouse and you take advantage of the FBA program your products all become Prime eligible meaning that people that buy your products on Amazon can get that product shipped to them in in 2 days and most people that shop on Amazon are Prime members and most people that are Prime members only want to buy Prime eligible products So eventually we stopped doing fbm and we switched over a lot of our products to FBA and our sales for those products increased by 4 to five times and the truth is the Amazon FBA fees were actually less than we were paying in postage so we actually saved money by switching to FBA mistake number four is manufacturing issues and I've lost a lot of money with different issues with manufacturing my product and working with manufacturers and I'm going to share all the most common ways that people end up running into issues with manufacturers and how you can avoid them for instance with P&B the first production run that my manufacturer did there was no tear Notch that cost me $2,000 cuz I had to hire people to come in and individually cut tear notches on every single pouch they also sent me pouches that were leaking which meant I had to throw away a lot of my product and on top of that I had to hire people to come in and clean the other pouches I had another $5,000 I lost on The Leaky jars I also had the film that my product goes in damaged during shipping which cost me $2,000 I also picked a manufacturer that ended up having long lead times and I ended up running out of inventory and I lost out on around $5,000 in sales because my manufacturer was taking so long to manufacture my product but probably the biggest way that I lost out on a lot of money with a manufacturer is I got scammed by a manufacturer for $10,000 but keep in mind it's actually not that common for a manufacturer to scam someone and the manufacturer that scammed me was actually located in the United States now to their credit they didn't completely scam me in their eyes but what they did have is a long complicated contract and it turned out that there were some fees buried in that contract that they didn't really make that clear to me I even hired a lawyer to look over this contract and even the lawyer didn't see that this was a potential issue so some things to consider when finding a manufacturer is you want to make sure that they have simple pricing most manufacturers that you're going to work with they're going to tell you how much it's going to cost per unit I at one point picked a manufacturer that told me well it depends on how long it's going to take us to make this product we think it's going to take about a day but you pay per day and then later they said no it took like 5 days you're also going to want to find a manufacturer with as short of a lead time as possible because as soon as you see that you're about to run out of inventory you want to place an order and know that you can get it as quickly as possible but no matter what if you're looking to find a manufacturer it's actually a lot easier than you would think I also have a complete checklist on everything that you should look for when working with a manufacturer now I know that this is a lot but trust me you're going to want to finish this video because I've made a a lot of mistakes that you can avoid mistake number five is inventory issues specifically at times I've ordered too much inventory and had to pay a lot of fees or on the other side I have not ordered enough inventory and lost out on a lot of sales and one of the big things is if you run out of inventory that's usually really bad Amazon's not happy if you run out of inventory and sometimes they can even Blacklist you or make it so you show up lower on the search results which leads to Less sales for your product now the first mistake I made in this category is or ordering too much inventory the bad thing about this is if you send in too much inventory into the Amazon warehouse you're having to pay storage fees every single month that your inventory is in their warehouse and those fees depend on a few factors but it costs around 75 cents per cubic foot per month that you have inventory in Amazon but another thing that's very important that you want to watch out for is if you have inventory in the Amazon warehouse for too long you start getting long-term storage fees and these long-term storage fees are are a lot more expensive we're talking around $6 per cubic foot now that only applies if you have the same products the actual same units in the Amazon warehouse for over a year if however let's say you sell out of some of them and then you replace them and you keep selling out you will never incur that long-term storage fee it's only if you send in more units than you sell within that next year and I've spent a few thousand doll by mistake on these long-term storage fees what you want to do is if you see that you have product that's been in the Amazon warehouse for too long and you can easily check this in Amazon Seller Central you want to contact Amazon have them ship the products back to you and then just send them right back into the Amazon warehouse that way you can avoid the long-term storage fee and the truth is the cost of the shipping back and forth is usually going to be less than the long-term storage fee would have been anyways so even though there's a little extra cost in the shipping you're going to save money in the long run I also had a product that I had to throw away a bunch of units because they expired it's actually this product right back here I ordered too much I didn't sell them fast enough and what ended up happening was I had to throw away a few hundred units but the interesting thing is again even though I made a mistake and ordered a little bit too much of this product I still ended up doing $80,000 in revenue from the production run of this product and once you subtract out all the fees and the startup costs I still made a profit of close to $10,000 even though I had to throw some away so it's another example of how you can make mistakes with Amazon and still end up making money so obviously it's bad if you order too much inventory but the other really common problem that people run into is they actually order two little inventory and the first time this happened to me was with my first real Amazon product P&B it ended up selling way better than I thought it would have and I ended up selling out of all my inventory within about 2 months I thought that inventory was going to last me 6 months and selling out of all your inventory a lot faster than you think you were going to is a good problem to have but it's still a problem you see my product was out of stock for about a week and during that week I lost out on at least $3,000 worth of sales but another example and even bigger example of this is AJ and I partnered on this product called cocktail cards and he crushed it he did such an amazing job marketing this product that in his first month alone he ended up doing over $50,000 in sales and $20,000 in profit after you subtract all the expenses but the problem is he ended up running out of inventory in fact he's ran out of inventory multiple times and again that sounds really cool that the product sold faster than he thought it would but every time he runs out of inventory he ends up losing out on a ton of sales so you want to make sure that you order around 6 months worth of inventory because if you see that it's selling really fast you have enough time to go to your manufacturer and place another order all right we got two more common mistakes and stay with me because trust me I spent a lot of sleepless nights because of these mistakes and I'm going to show you how to avoid all of them mistake number six is issues working with Amazon and trust me anyone that's ever worked with Amazon ever sold something on Amazon knows that sometimes you can run into some issues especially if you don't read the terms of service if you don't know all the different rules and regulations but I'm going to break it down for you right here a very common issue that people have when selling on Amazon is that Amazon will overcharge them for all kinds of different fees storage fees FBA fees you name it you have to watch Amazon and I've probably lost over $3,000 on Amazon overcharging me for fees now the good news is usually if you catch them overcharging you you can call them out and send them an email and they'll usually fix it for you but if you wait too long sometimes they won't reimburse you for the overcharge of fees and there are software programs that will go through your account and try to figure out where Amazon's overcharging you or where Amazon owes you money and handle it for you and sadly when I was first selling on Amazon I didn't know about these software programs so I ended up losing out on thousands of dollars of Amazon overcharging me but this tool and other tools like it go through your account and make sure that Amazon's not overcharging you another issue I had with Amazon is I sent them a pallet of my product into their warehouse and they claimed that they never got it they lost this palette and they asked me for the BL which stands for bill of lading which is the piece of paper that the truck driver gives to you when he picks up the pallet from your warehouse now the problem is I actually wasn't there when the pallet was picked up I had someone else that was handling this for me because I was out of the country and sadly they weren't sure where they put this paper and this is a big warning anytime you have any kind of paper or receipt or anything like that for your business make sure that you keep it safe and I know that this sounds obvious but this is just a reminder that you want to keep every single scrap of paper that you ever get associated with your business and finally mistake number seven and this is probably the most expensive biggest mistake that I've ever made in my life at least when it comes to business and my first year selling this product on Amazon as I mentioned I did over $360,000 in sales $120,000 in profit but in my second year selling this exact same product I did over $400,000 in sales $150,000 in profit but something interesting happened by year three my sales actually went down I did around $200,000 in sales around $60,000 in profit the the big question is why and the reason is I had always dreamed about making a $100,000 per year passive income because I figured if I could make $100,000 per year but I had the freedom to spend my time doing whatever I wanted to do I could travel and really enjoy life and after launching this product on Amazon I pretty much automated and systematized my entire business and as I said I did $120,000 in profit and even though I wasn't actively working on my business in my second year my profit actually went up so instead of working on my business and trying to increase my Revenue increase my profit every single year I coasted and I enjoyed life and that is the benefit of Amazon once you launch your product once you get the sales going and get everything automated you can spend your time traveling enjoying life and and doing whatever you want to do but the key thing here is eventually your sales are going to drop that's not going to last forever and for me it led to me having 3 years where on average I was making over $100,000 profit per year and I wasn't really having to work that hard but the truth is if I would have doubled down on my business I probably could have blown this up to a multi-million dollar company so even though I had a lot of success with this business it was kind of a failure because it could have been a lot bigger right now I'm giving you a tested path for having success and it's not only worked for me it's worked for over a thousand students that I've had joined the program and in just a few minutes I'm going to talk about a ton of the real life success stories real people just like you that launch products and had success I want to share with you their actual numbers but first I do need to warn you that if you're a new seller and you try to do this alone 99% of the people that I've seen that try to do this alone they get stuck in analysis paralysis or they make mistakes that end up leading to their failure I see a lot of people that have um a certain let's call it arrogance about them thinking that they've never done this before and that they can figure it out and they can do everything on their own and to be honest with you maybe you can but I can guarantee you you're going to have more success and be less likely to fall victim to analysis paralysis if you have a mentor or someone showing you the past someone that's already had success on Amazon you look to them and you find them and you work with them they're going to make it more likely that you're going to succeed in fact did you know that 90% of workers that have a mentor end up saying that they're happier they report higher levels of happiness higher levels of productivity and this ultimately leads to more success because they have support as humans we need other people a lot of people including myself when they first start down this process they make the mistake of thinking they can do everything on their own and again maybe you can but as humans we've evolved to have a support system around us we need other people and that's exactly what I'm offering to you right now in my program the passion product formula it's not just about a bunch of step-by-step lessons even though it has over a 150 step-by-step screen recorded lessons that's not actually what I think makes it valuable you can get most of the knowledge that you need online even though in my program I do share a lot of behind the scenes things that I haven't seen anywhere online still you can figure out a lot of the knowledge what makes this program so so powerful is when you join you're part of a community as I've mentioned you get access to those live weekly Q&A calls you also get access to a private Facebook group and you get two one-on-one calls with either myself or one of my coaches and this is going to speed up your results and I could easily charge over $10,000 for everything I'm offering I've seen a lot of scammy gurus out there charging $10,000 or even $5,000 for this program but that's not how I operate I want to see you be successful and something that makes me different than anyone else out there is if you join my program and you don't make at least ,000 in your first year following all these steps launching a product I will personally give you $1,000 no one else is willing to do that I want to see you succeed in fact I so confident that you're going to succeed with this program as I mentioned there is a $1,000 guarantee there's also a 14-day 100% unconditional money back guarantee so you can always join the program and if for any reason you don't like it within the first 14 days all you got to do is send me an email and you'll get 100% of your money back completely unconditional my program is not always open and when I do open it I limit it to 50 spots because I want to make sure that myself and my coaches can give you as much help as possible and if you want to get on the wait list or see if it's open right now you can click the link down below and if it is open we'll let you get a spot right away but keep in mind more times than not it is going to be closed so if you do have to join the wait list that's okay we'll email you you'll be the first one to know as soon as we open it this course has been proven to work and now I'm going to share with you a ton of real life success stories rapid fire so you can get to know some of the previous success stories and see that this is a real opportunity Edgar after following the passion product formula he ended up taking his family's lime juice business putting it on Amazon and doing over $200,000 in his first year in his second year he did over a million but he didn't stop there in his third year he ended up doing over $5 million and he's been doing about $5 to $6 million every year since then Jeremy quit his 9 to-5 job he needed a way to pay the bills he ended up joining my Amazon FBA program and created the product slim caddy and in just his first 6 months he ended up doing over $100,000 in sales Fred was a struggling salesman he wanted a side business that he was passionate about so he joined my Amazon FBA program and created cable caddies and ended up doing over $10,000 in his first 6 months Brandy created the product stay fresh and did over $20,000 in her first 3 weeks in sales on Amazon one of my favorite success stories Brent was a first first responder helicopter pilot and he has a family of four and we're going to talk about his story in depth later in this video but he launched this product SE Pro and in his first year he did around 7 or $800,000 in sales and last year alone he did over a million dollar in sales Willam joined my Amazon FBA program and I saw that he had a lot of potential so I ended up partnering with him on a product called Rocket tea this is the highest caffeine tea in the world and I do want to say as a side note this is a big benefit when you join my Amazon FBA program I'm willing to partner with you on products this was my idea rocket tea the highest caffeine tea in the world was my idea I didn't have enough time to actually create it and launch it and I saw that William was smart and hardworking so I partnered with him we launched this product and in the first year it's done over $660,000 in sales that's over $5,000 in sales every single month now Willam is laying on a beach in copeny Yang Thailand this is enough money that it pays for his entire life there Carlo was struggling with an autoimmune disease so she created a product called autoimmunity and in her first year she did over $440,000 in sales and in her second year over $80,000 in sales this was enough money that if she wanted to she could quit her job she could pay her bills she could pay all of her expenses Andrew who's another student in my Amazon FBA program launched this product and he's done over half a million dollars in sales on Amazon AJ was a bartender and he lost his job during the pandemic he didn't know how he was going to pay the bills and he ended up joining my Amazon FBA program I saw that he was smart and hardworking and I had an idea for a product called cocktail cards and again I partnered with him this is a huge thing if you do join my Amazon FBA program I'm down to partner with you on products and we ended up taking this idea and as I've mentioned throughout this entire video he did over $100,000 in pre-sales over half a million dollars in sales in his first year this is now paying for his entire life he loves what he does he creates social media and Tik Tok videos all the time using this product as an example and the biggest thing is he actually wakes up happy he used to go to his job as a bartender and didn't really love it but now he loves his job and there's a ton more success UC stories and I've interviewed a lot of these people on my YouTube channel there's a link to a playlist down below and honestly some of the best success stories of students that have joined my program they told me that they didn't want their product to be shared they didn't want the numbers to be shared so there's a lot more success stories than just this but now let's dive into depth about Brent in his story as I mentioned he did over a million dollars in sales last year and I interviewed him on this channel and you're going to see exactly how we did it all the struggles all the positive things and right now I'm going to show you that video as well as some of the mistakes that he's made and some of the biggest lessons that he's learned I've made over a million dollars selling this product on Amazon even though I have a full-time job and I'm a husband and a father of two children I'm going to share with you what my product is how I did it all my startup costs Revenue profits and the three biggest mistakes including one mistake that cost me over a million dollars I sell this product on Amazon called sear proo to give you guys a baseline of who I am as a person a troubled kid growing up barely graduated high school fast forward 20 years later I'm now a first responder helicopter pilot that flies for the hospitals and the reason that I invented my product was there was nothing on the market like it they had big torches and small torches for searing soused Stakes but no one had a big small so I went to Home Depot I spent $25 on Parts started selling them on eBay for $50 each started making money immediately and then as I was selling down the road I was receiving emails from customers asking me is there one with an igniter is there one with a handle after about the second or third message I realized we could start selling this product on Amazon and the reason why is because they have over a 100 million customer base once I realized I wanted to sell it on Amazon I knew that I needed more knowledge and the best place to go was YouTube obviously there's online courses I did my due diligence I looked into multiple courses and that's one of the reasons I took Travis's course because I knew based on all the videos I had saw that his course was legitimate so Brent once you had the idea what was the next step I then found some manufacturers like he recommended on Alibaba I contacted five manufacturers sent the letter to them I found out the perfect fit for me so our first production run was around $114,000 we also paid $2,700 for our shipping costs but we were able to pay for all of this because we raised $155,000 on Kickstarter and a Kickstarter is where you show people an idea for a product that you want to create people then pre- purchase your product before you spend any money on your business and if you hit the certain amount of money that you need to start your business you'll take that money and you'll go start your business you'll spend it on a production run or whatever you need to get your business off the ground so Brent what happened after your Kickstarter so we finally launched on Amazon we made $116,000 our first month ran out of inventory and only sold 16 on our second month got it back in stock and sold 44,000 on our third month 66,000 on our fourth month and it just kept scaling from there so within 4 months of launching Brent had made over $100,000 with his first Amazon FB a product ever but he did make three mistakes that ended up costing him close to a million Brent what was your first mistake about 6 months in we had two attacks on our site on Amazon from outside sources and that cost us around $50 to $70,000 so my first year selling on Amazon I sold almost 3/4 of a million doar and I'll break that down for you guys about $160,000 was for the cost of the product itself Amazon has a selling fee uh several of them one of them was about $70,000 and this is the Amazon FBA Pick and Pack fee it's a fee that you have to pay to Amazon every time you get an order so that Amazon will pick pack and ship out your product to the customer and I know it sounds like a lot of money to spend on this fee but keep in mind that includes the shipping and handling and it actually doesn't cost that much more money than if you were to ship the product out to your customer yourself they also have a 15% FBA fee we paid 55,000 for that one PPC which is our ad spend we spent $50,000 on our ad spend and other fees like our insurance our Logistics shipping it inside our quality control inspecting of the product that costs about $150,000 most importantly our profit for that one year on Amazon was almost a quar of a million dollars in profit for me and my family in addition we also had other sites which one of them sold $113,000 that was our own personal website and the other ones are like eBay and Etsy and e-commerce sites and that sold almost $70,000 in sales we would have made even more money if it wasn't for our second mistake which was running out of inventory during Christmas during Christmas you will sell triple the amount of volume so how I fixed that was I used more of the proceeds of the money that I made and leveraged more of my house and fast forward we've never ran out of inventory ever again and now we're sustainable and in our second year selling on Amazon we did over a million in sales to break that one down for you guys this year we spent $300,000 in our product cost our Amazon selling fee was now almost $90,000 the FBA fee is about $220,000 and then our PPC our ads was almost $8,000 but getting to the profit $300,000 our second year in profit for my family and I on top of that Brent made an additional $57,000 selling his product on his own website and another $34,000 selling his product on other platforms such as Etsy and things like that and in just 30 seconds Brent is going to share the biggest mistake he made with starting his Amazon business it's a mistake that cost him close to a million dollar so pay attention but I want to be clear that Brent did almost $2 million in sales in his first two years selling on Amazon and this is why I recommend selling a passion product because not only can you make a lot of money selling on Amazon but when you're selling your own unique product you can also sell it on your own website and on other Platforms in and if you want to you can even go into retail stores and wholesale your product to retail stores this is the biggest opportunity I know of to make money online so Brent what was the biggest mistake you made with starting your Amazon FBA business one of the biggest mistakes I honestly feel like I made was I didn't launch my product soon enough because the money that comes in was incredible I make about 20 to $30,000 a month and yes a lot of people that are watching this you can do this on your own and you can fine-tune your product and get your website up in 2 years by yourself but why would you want to do that when you could take a course and get it done in 6 months the product sat out in my garage for 2 years and had I taken the course and not delayed each month that I sell my product I make about 20 to $330,000 a month imagine two years lost not with those sales so I would tell most people if you think the course is some kind of scam it never was it's like anything else like college when you go there you learn when you go to take these online courses they will teach you instead of learning something in 2 years instead of delaying you can learn it immediately within 3 to four months you can get your product going quicker you can get the profit revenue and overall what I would tell people this money and this course and being an entrepreneur has financially changed our lives forever and my family's thankful for it now that you've seen Brent's story let me show you another example and this is AJ who I've been talking about throughout this entire video but let me have him explain in his own words how how we created this product I've done over $500,000 in sales and I've only been selling on Amazon for one year now that's revenue and not profit I'm going to share with you guys all of my numbers including my product costs my Amazon FBA fees other expenses and also my final profit today and selling a product on Amazon right now is a huge opportunity last year there was over $400 billion of sales on Amazon and the cool thing is 2third of all those sales were third-party sellers selling their products on on Amazon and AJ is one of those sellers AJ what do you sell on Amazon and tell us your story how you got started so I created a business called cocktail cars that teaches people how to make cocktails at home and honestly I made this cuz I was a bartender for 10 years and I lost my job because of the pandemic and I was out of work for a year it was so rough and honestly I just needed to figure out a way to make money but I still wanted to do something I was passionate about so I found Amazon FBA I found your content online talking about creating a business you're passionate about things that you really enjoy I thought hey let's try and teach people how to make cocktails at home and we're going to share all the cost that AJ had when starting up this business but I got all these costs paid for by the method we're going to talk about later in this video AJ why don't you share how you started your Amazon business and how much it cost you to start your Amazon business yeah well starting a business does cost money this was a little bit higher than most and the startup costs were actually over $20,000 but you had just lost your job how are you able to afford that because that's a lot of money yeah I couldn't afford that there's no way I had very little money to play with um so I actually used one of your tips uh a really cool hack where I actually put zero of my own dollars into starting this business you were able to get other people to pay for your business we're going to share how you were able to do that in just a minute but let's go all the way to the beginning how did you find this product because a lot of people at home struggle with how to find a product to sell online yeah really it's we had this a little bit of an idea it's something you kind of recommended I found this product using a tool called helium 10 and when you are looking for a product to sell on Amazon it's important to remember that Amazon is just a search engine Amazon has over 150 million Prime customers and they all go to Amazon they type in what they want to buy and if there's no products there when they type that in that is an amazing opportunity and tools like helium 10 you can actually see what people are typing in to Amazon and we saw that people were typing in cocktail flashcards cocktail cards bartending flash cards and when people went to Amazon to search for this there were no products so I saw this and I said AJ you got to make this into a product and the first cost you really had was the Prototype yeah so doing a prototype was actually free this is kind of a fun point of making a product because you're just really trying to create something an idea and I would take blank flashcards took out some Sharpies and literally started writing designs on flash cards until something looked like it might look cool so after that we had to come up with some sort of sample right we need some sort of physical product and really the way I did that was I went to Google searching went to Alibaba and really just tried to find a manufacturer um now a really cool hack for you guys if you want to get a sample of a product search for manufacturers that already make products similar to what you want so re we reached out to paper manufacturers flashcard makers all types of stuff until we finally found one that can make the specs of what we wanted and I asked them to give me a sample and they were willing to do it for free so they gave me like a dummy sample it's blank from older projects that they had I just had to pay for the shipping and that was about 50 bucks and you can easily find manufacturers overseas by going to alibaba.com type in like AJ said whatever you're looking for so we typed in flashcards and they'll give you a list of dozens of different manufacturing companies over there all you have to do is contact them tell them the proximate Dimensions tell them what you're looking for in a product and they'll say if they can make it or not and like AJ said they'll send you a sample if it's a product that they're going to make so what was the next step in the process after we got the sample we knew that the the dimensions were right what's the next step so the next step is I got to turn this blank box into something with information and design and the key it looks good uh keyword is design so I had to seek out a designer and that's one thing where I actually got lucky because being sort of in your network you had a designer that you worked with in the past that I really like their artwork and uh so I reached out to him uh the only problem I had was I didn't have any moneyy to pay him um so we were able to get some samples from him first to make sure it was going to be a good fit and of course you know a lot of these people you work with you're not going to give them all the money up front so I was able to to do a small deposit if we were going to work with him so he sent me a sample uh he did a logo a little box design and like a couple cards as a sample well that was enough for me to print out on a printer and glue it to the sample box and that right there was my first real prototype of the product and that was enough for you to go to Indiegogo and Indiegogo is a place where you can tell people hey I'm trying to make this product but I don't have enough money and people will pay you money to buy the product as a pre-order before you even have the product you can then take that money and go pay for design pay for manufacturing talk about that process and how much money you raised and how that whole thing works yeah so a lot of times when you do an Indiegogo or a Kickstarter you have a goal in mind my goal was $1,500 because that was the down payment for the designer I utilized that sample that he gave me did a bunch of videos I made some cocktail videos and I was really building up a social media platform as well I was doing a lot of cocktail videos on YouTube was doing videos on Tik Tok Instagram and uh really was hoping that that would bring a little bit more people over to my Indiegogo and we actually ended up raising over $1,500 initially and then it kept going from there right so after $1,500 I think you ended with over like close to $4,500 on your first Indiegogo that and that was enough money to pay for the design how much did the design cost so the design was around $3,600 and that was awesome the whole like I got a lot of YouTube traffic I got some Instagram traffic and I got a lot of friends and family that pitched in early so that got us over 4,500 which was probably one of the best things that's ever happened to me because I was able to fully pay for that design on top of that with that money you were able to pay for a printed sample of the final product and this is where the magic really happens what did you do with that printed sample and let's talk about how you rais the money because next up was manufacturing and Manufacturing the product can get really expensive in fact I think it was going to cost around $10,000 to manufacture 1500 units and you didn't have that money at the time so how were you able to pay for that manufacturing even though you didn't have the money yeah you want to talk about emotions I went from the scariest point of my life to the most estatic point of my life and this is where that real hack sort of plays in uh I was posted on Tik Tok had no followers no one's watching my Conta it it just was not really popping off but once I got that final sample I did a Tik Tok talking about my journey of losing my job and really designing this product and then showed them a a finished sample and it went viral it got over 600,000 views and I kid you not everyone wanted to pre-order these things and it shot it up to gosh I think it was over $37,000 $22,000 in a single day wow and that was enough money to pay for manufacturing which cost I think around $99,000 and enough money to pay for shipping because that's another thing when you make a product overseas you have to pay from shipping from China into the United States and you really have two options you can do air shipping which is going to be way more expensive but a lot faster you'll get it in around 5 to seven days or you can do SE shipping which is going to be slower but it's going to save you a lot of money it's probably going to be around $2 per kilogram but it's going to take weeks minimum and we chose to do air shipping which I believe cost around $4,200 do you remember why we did air shipping well we did half and half oh it's half that's right half and half um I think me being my first product uh one I was excited I one it is fast as possible uh two I felt like I had an obligation to get the Indiegogo backers the product as fast as possible air shipping unless you really really need it you're kind of throwing money down the drain and I also had a lot of damage units at the same time but then something again very magical happened when you finally received your product and I think it was when you first launched it on Amazon talk about that process yeah it was pretty crazy so when I first got my shipment of cocktail cards we had to send out over 700 orders so I'm boxing up I have friends family over helping me that's a lot of work shipping out 700 orders but I ended up having 200 left I'm like let's send it into Amazon and like actually make this happen and so I sent it in it took about a month for them to check everything in so I created my Amazon listing did all that stuff but I was still going pretty heavy on the Tik Tok and when I was sharing with people that I was shipping out a product um it was here we got we got all of our inventory and now it's live on Amazon that video went Ultra viral I couldn't even I couldn't even imagine what happened next but it ended up getting over 5.7 million views wow and you ended up selling out of all 200 units that you have sent into Amazon in like a couple hours basically two hours and they were gone and for people that don't know Amazon FBA stands for fulfilled by Amazon and it's a way for you to sell products on amazon.com on Amazon's website where you send in the inventory into an Amazon warehouse and when someone buys the product Amazon picks packs and ships out the product to you so it's a lot better than having to pick pack and ship all the units yourself and another big feature about this and why it's such a cool opportunity is when your product is in the Amazon FBA system it makes it so your product is prime eligible there's over 150 million Prime customers they prefer to buy products that are prime so this is a huge opportunity but AJ you sold out of all 200 units within a couple hours but your video was still going viral what did you do yeah it was pretty crazy so those 200 units went in two hours and then I'm like what else can I do I I can't I have to sell them this product while everything's going viral I thought hey I'll just send them back to Indiegogo we'll just continue raising money on there since they're waiting for the product to be available and that actually ended up doing $57,000 in one day and I think it brought the Indiegogo campaign all the way to about $107,000 and amazing as that is you'll see that this is one mistake that was kind of repeatedly made is running out of inventory if we had had infinite product on Amazon you would have probably done $100,000 in sales just in that one day oh it would have been crazy cuz so many people were looking to buy this product now AJ eventually did get back in stock on Amazon and we're going to talk about month by Monon his Revenue all his costs and his profit when he finally did get back in stock on Amazon but what did you do once you ran out of inventory for months you were out of inventory what was that process like I did one really really big thing during this time and that started an email list and if people wanted to buy it on Amazon well I had them join the email list so I let them know when it was available it's a huge deal because when you do launch on Amazon you want to try to get as many sales and as many reviews from day one as possible and when you do that Amazon's going to notice this and it's going to put your product higher up in the search results and as I mentioned earlier Amazon's a search engine the higher up in the search results you get the more sales you're going to get in fact it's exponential the number one result gets the most sales number two is less less less and as you know if you've ever bought something off Amazon you rarely go to page two three or four so you need to be on page one ideally in that first position so finally you ended up getting that inventory and you launched on Amazon using that email list what happened in your first month what was let's break down all the numbers yeah email list was pretty big uh we ended up doing 1,500 units the First full month on Amazon and how much in revenue is that so that was just shy of $55,000 in Revenue now again revenue is not profit there's a lot of cost associated with running a business how much did you have to pay for all those products that you sold during that month so the cost of the product that I sold was around $117,000 on top of that there is a fee to sell on the Amazon platform it's a 15% fee how much did you spend on that fee that was over $8,000 now a lot of people complain about this 15% Amazon fee but what are your thoughts about having to pay 15% to be able to sell on Amazon so that's a referral fee yeah um and a lot of people are not going to really find your product unless it's referred by Amazon it's a search platform like we talked about before however since I was bringing a lot of my traffic there I became an affiliate for Amazon so I would have people go through my affiliate link and they gave me uh probably about 5% of that back also and Amazon spent billions of getting people on the platform to be buying products so even though it's annoying to have to pay 15% to Amazon you're having to pay that instead of having to pay for marketing so I think it's worth it the next fee that you had was the Amazon FBA Pick and Pack fee and that's the fee that every time Amazon picks packs and ships out one of the products to a customer you have to pay them a fee how much did you spend on that that was over $7,700 and worth every penny why was it worth every penny cuz I'm not shipping out product anymore and honestly um they can actually ship the product to the customer and charge me way less than if I shipped it myself not only are you saving money cuz you're not having to pay for shipping but you're also not having to spend your time doing it and it's allowed you to travel and your business keeps going even if you're traveling you even came down and visited me in Mexico I recently bought a house on the beach in Mexico we had a great time hanging out a few times I went down busy yeah and on top of that there were around $1,000 in miscellaneous fees on Amazon as well but in your first month selling this product on Amazon how much profit did you make over 20,000 in profit in one month in his first full month selling on Amazon but let's talk about month number two because maybe your first month is really great but you know you had this big launch what did the second month look like how many units did you sell and how much revenue did you do so we started the month pretty tough we ran out of inventory we're out of inventory for two weeks again again another problem but did manage to do about 650 orders for around $22,000 in sales so even though you were out of inventory for 2 weeks you still did around $22,000 in Revenue but that wasn't nearly as much as first month but something that's really cool is you actually weren't just selling on Amazon you were able to sell on your own website how much money and revenue did you do on your own website yeah that's part of the thing that was kind of nice while I was waiting for inventory I decided to use my website as a pre-order and we ended up doing just shy of $15,000 in sales and that's one of the big benefits about selling a passion product is when you're selling a product That's Unique that's different you can also sell it on your own website and there are a lot of different methods for selling on Amazon this way of sell selling that AJ's done that I've done is not the only one there's also wholesale Retail Arbitrage and private label and all these different methods can work but I don't think they work nearly as well as creating your own passion product but let's finish up the second month numbers for you so you did about $22,000 in Revenue what was your cost of the product that you sold on Amazon was uh over $7,000 I what about your Amazon selling fee for that that was over $3,000 and what about the Amazon FBA Pick and Pack fee also around $3,000 and I think there was another $1,000 of other random business expenses what was your total profit in that second month just from Amazon just from Amazon it was around $7500 and then of course you were also selling on your own website and you probably did a couple extra thousand do of profit there let's go into month number three and what was the revenue you did in month number three so month number three was actually really exciting for me um wasn't my biggest sales month but we're definitely seeing seeing it go back up a little bit after month number two and we did a little over $31,000 and from that month after you subtract all your different product costs and FBA fees and everything what was the profit the profit was over $1,000 and during that time you were also selling on your own website as well how much did you sell on your own website so on my own website I did a little over $117,000 in sales what happened that month that increased your sales so much it was crazy so my Tik Tok and social media really started kind of getting noticed by people I got this random email uh of someone on Access Hollywood a producer of Access Hollywood who wanted to bring me on for one of their shows so I actually got to come down to LA and was able to be on Access Hollywood and that really brought in a lot of sales for like a a whole week being on TV is a pretty big deal and a pretty big way to get marketing how did were you able to do that it's pretty wild it was one of the scariest moments of my life super exciting but honestly if I didn't create a brand from the beginning get on social media take chances um learn platforms try it uh none of that would have ever happened AJ was able to create such great content and so much content cuz he knew the product he was passionate about being a bartender and making cocktails back when I first started my dance clothing business I tried to make content but I didn't know anything about dancing so I would try to write an article top seven tips for dancers haven't never danced in my life and it was draining this is why not only do the numbers need to make sense but you need to create a product that you're actually passionate about which leads us into month number four and this is around November of last year starting to get close to Christmas what was the revenue numbers from your fourth month of selling on Amazon so November was really good of course we're ramping up for the holidays a lot of people are starting to buy them for gifts we did run out of inventory for a few days that month which I'm sure we're going to talk about here but we end up doing over $31,000 and after you subtract your product cost all the different Amazon FBA fees what was the final profit for that month so my profit for that month was actually over $1,000 and we had a big expense that month you were ran out of inventory so we had to fly in in a bunch more inventory we had to do air shipping want to talk about that yeah that was a pretty tough one so we didn't want to run out of inventory for Christmas like I wanted to make sure I had it for the holidays and you know I just did a poor job of inventory planning and committing to the product and we ended up I ended up having to pay a pretty big Bill that month it was well over $60,000 to ship that product so you know a lot of the profit that I made I had to reinvest most of it that month and keep watching this video because at the end of the video we're going to talk about one mistake that AJ made that cost him over $100,000 it's kind of related to this but it's a little bit different but during that month you also did over $20,000 of sales on your own website which is a huge accomplishment let's go into the next month month five and this is during the Christmas rush how much in Revenue did you sell during that month so almost that entire month I had inventory on Amazon which was great it was Christmas time and we ended up doing over 46 ,000 in sales again after you subtract all your costs what was the profit during that month I believe the profit obviously profit margins were a little lower that month but it was around 17,000 and that's why it's sometimes worth paying for air shipping because you're going to get your products into Amazon sooner which means you're going to get more profit especially during key Times Like Christmas and during that time on your own website you did another $4,000 in sales so that leads us into January into your sixth month and January is when a lot of people set New Year's resolution saying that they're not going to drink that they're going to be sober how did that month look in revenue for you yeah right so we have November and then December it's just like 30 40 I'm thinking 50,000 $113,000 in sales wow and after all the costs we subtract all that what was the profit for that month so with the lower profit margins I only made around $4,400 that month what were you thinking like how did you feel during that month I felt like spending 60 Grand on shipping was the worst thing I've ever done right uh I was I was really scared actually I didn't I knew it was going to be slow but I wasn't going to let it bother me the year was so awesome up until that point and the product's done so well up until that point um I kind of just was like you know what I expected January not to do great I'll live with whatever the outcome is what happened the next month after that month number seven sales went down even more how are you feeling at this time are you freaking out I'm like wow maybe I was a one hit wonder um maybe I reached all of my audience I don't know um but we ended up only doing about $122,000 in sales and how much profit did that lead to uh that was around $3,700 in profit I believe that's got to be scary cuz at this point I think we had just ordered 7,500 units or so so you had all this inventory sitting there but now sales have been slowing down mhm yeah not to mention my bank account's getting very very very low after the shipping cost and then paying for the next round of inventory so what happened the month after that month eight are things starting to get better not not even close um it even went lower we ended up doing about $1,000 in sales and how much in profit does that equate to I think that's around $3,400 so what are you thinking at this point it's three months of sales kind of going down are you freaking out I'm definitely freaking out because I've made a lot of investments in my business as well like I'm doing content so I'm buying cameras I'm buying computers um obviously I made the largest inventory yet 75 500 units and I'm thinking what did I just do but in the next couple months something interesting starts to happen so keep watching let's talk about month number nine what what do the sales numbers look like and how are you feeling at this point so month number nine was a little bit better started to get a little bit more momentum and we did a little over $4,000 in sales after subtracting all the cost what was the profit for that month it was almost $66,000 in profit and what's nice is at this point I got rid of all that inventory that was air shipped and we had our new shipment arrive um that was actually shipment so now my profit margins got a a lot better it went from being around $11 per unit landed to around $7.50 per unit landed so even though your Revenue was down your profits actually been doing pretty good so how did you feel at that point were you starting to feel a little bit better at that point I was like thank goodness the profit margins are a little bit bigger in case these sales never go back up but it was a little bit of breathing room for sure and $5,700 in profit in a month is pretty good especially considering it's your own business not let's talk about that cuz when you were a bartender life was very different mhm yeah as a bartender that's actually more money than I would probably make as a bartender I also remember though you talking about how when you were a bartender you'd have to work late night shifts and you have to do all this crazy stuff and I remember you also saying that you woke up happy and excited to work on your business versus when you were a bartender was kind of a drag that's a good point never at any point during those months uh did I ever wake up like depressed or not wanting to work you know bartending I really enjoyed that job I did but I would say 80% of the time I woke up I did not want to go to work I didn't want to get out of bed but really working on my own business it was fun and I was motivated to figure it out so and stick with us cuz we're going to be talking about some of the biggest mistakes in just a minute but some exciting news starts to happen so let's talk about month number 10 what was the revenue like and what started happening during that month so month number 10 we did over $113,000 in Sal still pretty consistent but again with those good profit margins it was around $5,700 in profit and you started to get some good news during that month you want to talk about the news yeah obviously I was a little stressed having all this inventory and not selling as much as I was used to but I thought wait I can kind of expand this business if I'm sitting on all this inventory let's think about wholesale let's think about some other options to sell the product and two things ironically happened that month one I actually did get a wholesale order someone found me on Tik Tok and wanted to put it in their store so that was pretty cool my first ever wholesale order but two I got an email from some people in Europe that actually wanted to expand the product into Europe let's go into month number 11 cuz I know you were still stressed because you still had a ton of inventory we we took a leap of faith and we were like bought 7,500 units worth of inventory had it month 11 go so by month 11 we actually started getting a little bit higher in sales um I had a couple Tik Tok uh get some good views and we ended up doing about $188,000 in sales a little over $88,000 in profit so things are starting to look better did you get any more wholesale orders during that time I did I got like two or three different wholesale orders I even got one person here's a cool story um someone up in Canada ordered some they sold them she sold it so fast she did a reorder and she was actually getting featured in a local magazine for carrying cocktail cards so I mean I'm actually starting to get a little bit more confidence a little bit more more momentum Things Are starting to look up so let's go into month number 12 in month 12 how much did you do in Revenue so we did a little over $166,000 in Revenue so still doing pretty good which was a little over $7,000 in profit what else happened during this last month I know there's some other exciting news that happen yeah so I fully committed to wholesale at that point uh joined a couple websites and also um rearranged my website for people to do wholesale orders and our first like real month pushing it did a little over $117,000 wow and you were also on Etsy during that month as well right how much in sales did you do on Etsy Yeah we actually so Etsy really wanted me to be on their platform I decided hey why not another platform again another platform and we ended up doing a little over $3,000 in sales so in total in your first year selling on Amazon how much money did you make so on Amazon we did $287,000 in sales and after you subtract the product cost all the different Amazon FBA fees and all the other business expenses how much in profit did you do in your first year ever selling on Amazon $106,000 and if that doesn't sound like a lot of money you also made money in a lot of other ways in total when you include wholesale Etsy your own website Indiegogo how much money have you made so far with this business so here's something that's pretty crazy last week I just crossed a milestone uh we did over half a million dollars in sales wow and how much in profit is that for you that's around $180,000 in profit how does that compare it to back when you were a bartender and you had to wake up and do the late nights oh my gosh uh I would it would take me 3 years to make that much money so before we get into the three big mistakes that you made with this business including one mistake that cost over $100,000 let's talk about what's next for you in cocktail cards yeah honestly wholesale gave me a lot of Hope um social media gave me a lot of hope so I really want to focus on those two things get my Amazon sales back up get ready for the holidays and what's really cool is we are expanding into Europe as we mentioned and we just sent over 3,000 units there but we also got into a major retailer over there called Harvey nickels and that leads us into the biggest mistake that AJ made that cost him over $100,000 but there's actually three mistakes and the first mistake was not starting his Amazon business sooner and this is the most common mistakes I teach a lot of different people how to start Amazon businesses and by far this is the most common mistake that people make they get stuck in analysis proces talk about why this was a mistake for you and how you would have fixed it honestly when I lost my job I you know money's just draining my bank account with nothing going in I kind of went down that that rabbit hole of get rich quick or easy money and I knew it wasn't right and it didn't work for me and that was a really big struggle and then by the time I was like look I need to start a real legitimate business then I have the well how the heck am I going to afford it um I don't know what I'm doing like I'm just a bartender I don't know what I'm doing doing uh that was a really really hard step for me and honestly if I wasn't so backed up against the wall I probably wouldn't have been able to do it and now looking at it it's kind of silly right it's like I should have done it right away I should have done it while I was bartending honestly it would have been a million times better and I know you joined my Amazon FBA program the passion product formula did that help relieve some of the analysis paralysis it did uh actually joined a couple courses um but a lot of them were you know private labeling uh St like that I didn't have any confidence in that stuff um I would say you kind of gave me the confidence of creating something unique something my own which is more in lined with what I would want to do anyway um and you know you kind of gave me the idea of taking my bartending knowledge put it on cards and teach people and you know I didn't have much confidence in the idea at first um but the more I thought about it and the more I thought about it I'm like wow and now all of a sudden we're talking about this last night cuz we actually went out for dinner I was the person who couldn't come up with ideas like give me something I'll run with it and now I look around I see ideas everywhere when I was first starting my first Passion product business I spent months trying to decide on which manufacturer I should go with the funny thing is if I would have launched my business three months earlier I would have made an extra $10,000 profit every single month which means I would have made $30,000 in profit by launching my product 3 months earlier so even if I would have picked the wrong manufacturer and I would have had to spend an extra $5,000 it wouldn't have mattered and that's the thing if you do Amazon right it can be so profitable that it doesn't matter if you make a few small mistakes here and there and that leads us into the second mistake that you made and that's not Outsourcing more work sooner want to talk about that yeah for me again money is a very common role with my business and kind of holding it back uh I was terrified to lose money and I was terrified to really hire anyone to do any work even though I know I can get a a v for cheap to do work I just felt like I had to do it myself and at the end of the day what makes me money is my social media um my networking all that type of stuff and that's hard to do when I'm packaging up stuff editing videos doing all that So eventually I'm kind of coming around to it I now have a video editor um I have people in Europe and I think right away I'm already feeling like this alleviation of stress I also have a newborn daughter and I don't have a lot of time to work on the business and that's why I say that Amazon can be a passive income source is that once you get your business up and running you can hire people to do a lot of the different work that you don't want to do for instance I hired people to handle all my customer service I hired people to do everything to run my business now obviously with AJ he's going to continue to do social media but that's something he loves to do he can hire people to do all the boring parts of his business and this leads us into the third mistake you made and this is the mistake that cost you over $100,000 and that was not having faith in this business want to talk about that yeah I would say not having faith in the business slash me um because uh again what have I done before I'm a bartender uh things were pretty bad for me when I started this business and when things were really really trendy really really big on Tik Tok man if I had more inventory it would have made so much more there'd be so much more breathing room and AJ and I met every single week for the last year or two as he was doing his business and this was a common thing that we would talk about is like ah how much inventory should we order and we always order too little inventory cuz we were nervous we were scared we didn't realize how big this business would have been and if we would have always been in stock if we always would have had inventory I think you would have made an extra3 $400,000 in sales easily cuz there was months at a time where you were out of inventory there was months at a time where we even had inventory but we barely had enough and so you weren't using the full force of your Social Med I remember you're like I'm going to stop filming videos cuz I'm too nervous that's what happened partially in Jan you're like I'm scared but now we finally have inventory and I think you have more faith in yourself and in the business now that you've seen Brent and AJ let me show you Jeremy and Jeremy as I've mentioned has done over $100,000 in sales in just his first six months and now he's going to explain to you exactly how he did it as well as some of the biggest mistakes that he made I made $100,000 sell my passion product on Amazon in under 6 months and we're going to share with you what Jeremy sells on Amazon how he did it in every single cost he had including startup costs design costs and all the other cost C because you can start an Amazon business with little to no money if you know the secret that Jeremy used to launch his product Jeremy how did you start this business I had a 95 job and had a passion for ining things and trying to pitch products to companies and not having success with it did that for for several years and I saw how big of an opportunity Amazon was because of their infrastructure and Amazon has over 300 million Prime customers they're A1 trillion company last year alone they did over $500 billion in sale and they allow people like you me Jeremy to sell our products on their website it's a huge opportunity there's over 200,000 sellers that are making over $100,000 per year and Jeremy is one of them so when I found out this trend on Amazon I actually had a few ideas at that point and basically filtered out which ones I was passionate about that also could potentially generate a lot of income for me at the beginning um it had a lot of potential and that's how I landed on Slim Cates slim cadd is an organizer that basically doesn't take up shelf space in your cabinet I basically created it because I had a lot of tumbler Lids drink Lids all these a lot of Lids frankly and didn't have a way to actually store them and I found that all the organizers on the market were just a little bit too big this was something that did not exist that you wish existed so you created it it's the perfect product exactly but you had a fulltime job and I know you weren't ready to quit your job yet what made you decide to pursue slim caddy I actually was a PA in elective spine surgery So eventually work with slow um found Travis's YouTube video and then eventually I let go from my job because of how slow it was during that time needed a way to pay the bills and found of course was watching Travis's course and uh just found everything with Amazon and that's kind of when I jumped right in Jeremy share with us how you did it in all your cost and what was your first cost so it started with design the product it cost $0 for me to do that just some research and design at my own house believe it or not was able you know a kitchen product was able to use my own home as testing facility if you will after that was finding someone on Alibaba talk about how did you find your manufacturer on Alibaba and obviously for those at home that don't know finding someone on Alibaba is free you don't have to pay anything from it you can just go to alibaba.com and start searching how did you find your first manufacturer basically going to Alibaba looking through the manufacturers and found ones that had great reviews were on there for a little bit longer than the rest of them had great expertise in their their field some of them I even value because of the input they had on my product itself for design and then the next step was you got a sample how much did that cost and what was that process like so the samples actually it was more than one sample it was about uh 20 samples because I strategically made it so I could send some to influencers for the launch and that it was about2 $ so $250 for 20 samples and that wasn't dead money that was actually used as marketing and we we'll talk about that later but there was an issue with your first factory what happened so I found out the first production run was going to cost about $117,000 and I didn't have that kind of money and if you don't have enough money to start an Amazon business you can use the secret that Jeremy used that'll explain in just a second to crowdfund your product Jeremy how'd you do it yeah so I raised about $111,000 doing the kickstarter and tell me like how much did it cost you to actually run your Kickstarter so kind of being Scrappy and hungry you know not a lot of funds available basically used influencer marketing didn't cost Z right there and then you shot the video for the kickstarter yourself shout on my phone using the inshot app so another $ Z for that but there was an issue after your first week on Kickstarter you had only raised $3,000 and the way the kickstarter works is you had a goal of $10,000 and if Jeremy didn't hit that $10,000 Mark he would get nothing and usually the first week of a kickstar is when you make most the money so how are you feeling at that point yeah not good at all frankly you know I kind of knew that it was going to be tough because I didn't have uh I kind of jumped in you know literally was this is now or never didn't build an massive email list use Facebook groups like Travis we'll talk about in his in his passion product formula course that really helped that was actually like kind of my Bedrock for making funds on my first couple days but it wasn't enough so then what did you do after that I basically uh did a lot of cross promotions with other kickstarters try to get that Kickstarter fan base behind my product and then even you know just being a kitchen product decided to go around my own neighborhood knocking on doors and literally giving them little pamphlets about it even Christmas time put a candy cane on the actual thing just generate that emotional connection with them and when Jeremy told me that he'd only raised $33,000 in the first week I was nervous but then when he told me that he's knocking on doors he's getting Scrappy it got me excited and he ended up raising the $10,000 he needed two days before the end of his Kickstarter and finished with $111,000 and at this point you took that money you went to your manufacturer to get the product made and what happened the manufacturer I had the samples made for the influencers that same manufacturer kind of bailed on me they actually were scheduled out too far in advance couldn't get me in so I instantly was back at Ground Zero trying to find another manufacturer and then from there you did find a second manufacturer but there was another issue I basically uh did a factory audit just to assess this Factory in China because I want to work with them long term didn't know a whole lot about them Beyond Alibaba they got like a drf on the factory audit so that really terrified me you know especially being new into this business I didn't want to work with someone who failed that bad at a factory audit so then again back up Square W so what' you do next I basically found this other manufacturer it was really good decided to move forward with them based on their camaraderie I had with them and uh they were the ones who ended up making the first production run and when you found this third manufacturer it was time to send them the money were you nervous were you scared about sending $177,000 overseas so most manufacturers actually take 30% so that's a huge thing so you don't have to sweat it so hard right because you can only you only have to give them 30% of the funding up front um and then that gives you time to develop your packaging right and get on whatever else you need to do to your business and then after your product was manufactured the next step is to get your product sent from overseas into an Amazon warehouse and you have to do shipping there's two types of shipping you can do there's air shipping and CA shipping air shipping is going to be faster but more expensive sea shipping on the other hand is slower but it's going to be a lot cheaper and you ended up doing both at first you did air shipping to send it to your Kickstarter backers how much money did you spend on the air shipping air shipping cost me about $3,000 and that was to send 1,000 units from your main manufacturer to your house so you could send out to the kickstarter backers the rest of the other 2,000 plus units you did Via C shipping and how much did that cost you $2,000 and I really want to do that air shipping out front because I needed to get these backers there orders you know they're you know having all these backers you know they're kind of waiting for their products right so you want to get those down as quickly as possible so that's why I split it and now it's finally time for Jeremy to launch his product on Amazon and we're going to share with you his first month honest results but before we do that there were a couple other costs in order for you to launch on Amazon the first was getting photos for your product how much did you spend on the photos for your Amazon listing absolutely $0 I use my own phone in my own home using some of the samples that I had from my original manufacturer did some work with canva and inshot on U on my phone these applications and basically was able to create the whole listing through my phone and the apps on the computer another cost you're going to have when launching a product on Amazon is a UPC barcode and you spent $250 on this but you can actually get a UPC barcode if you just one product for $30 and another optional fee you may want to consider is a trademark and how much did it cost you for your trademark $250 was really easy to file took me a couple minutes you don't need to hire a lawyer you can do it yourself and now let's talk about Jeremy's first month results selling on Amazon and in his first month he did over $117,000 in sales bam Jeremy explain how did you do this so you have to understand Amazon's a search engine and you need to have people be able to find your product and people go to Amazon they search for products that they want to buy and when they search for products what do they see they see the photo they see the title they click on it they might see your actual bullet points and things like that we already talked about how Jeremy optimized all those things another thing you have to keep in mind is you want to drive traffic from outside of Amazon to your listing how did you get people to go to your Amazon listing and start buying so basically had these influencer relationships that I had cultivated through the kickstarter and had new influencer relationships basically that helped me build it sub substantial audience that we generated our traffic on day one so you got those influencers to post about your product people saw this on Instagram and on all the different apps they went to Amazon to buy the product and that leads us to the third step if you want to have success on Amazon you need to get reviews how did you go about getting as many reviews as possible I used this Amazon Vibe program to help generate some really great reviews and showed a little bit more social proof to give people the confidence to buy my product now keep in mind that $177,000 is revenue and not profit let's break down some of the costs so first off you had the cost to manufacture and produce all these products that you sold how much money did you spend to produce the products that you sold in that first month it about $5,700 or so the next fee you have when selling on Amazon is the 15% Amazon referral fee and anytime you sell a product on Amazon's website they charge you a little bit of money they charge you 15% how much money did you spend on that fee 2500 or so another fee that you have to think about is the Amazon FBA Pick and Pack fee and for those that don't know FBA stands for fulfilled by Amazon this is where you send in the products that you want to sell on Amazon's website to their warehouse and when you get an order Amazon picks packs and ships out the product for you also keep in mind when you do this it makes your product Prime eligible but you do have to pay a little bit of money because you have to pay for their handling and their shipping how much money did you pay for Amazon FBA I think it was about $4,000 it's about 364 a unit Jeremy also spent $215 in other Amazon fees these are fees that nobody tells you about but it's things like receiving fees storage fees and other random things like that another thing that people don't consider is you actually paid for Amazon PPC and PPC stands for payperclick this is a way for you to advertise your product on Amazon where you pay a little bit of money every time someone clicks on your ad how much did you spend in PPC in your first month about 3700 and on top of all these other costs in your first month you also spent another $2,000 in other fees definitely adds up yeah how much money in profit did you make your first month so it ended up being negative almost negative ,000 how did you feel about that not good about KN that a lot of those other fees were actually going to in intellectual property that was going to benefit in the long run and we're going to talk about later in this video how Jeremy got a patent for his product without spending any money on legal fees but keep in mind in your first month with a new business you might lose money but what happened in your second month how much money in Revenue did you do almost 27,000 and let's break down all the cost for month two and talk about the product after we subtract out the product cost Amazon selling fee all the different fees how much profit did you make almost 5,500 bam in his second month already he was profitable I know in your first month you were a little bit nervous how did it feel in your second month to already be profitable really good really good especially going through everything at that point uh to hit 5500 or so in profit was was Major felt great so at this point how did your wife feel about the business she was a little hesitant you know up to this point but after started seeing this Revenue com in she was a little bit more for everything started opening up in month three Revenue went down a little bit you were at $188,000 Revenue how much profit did you do in month three about almost two 2500 or so were you nervous that the numbers had gone down good question no I wasn't because I knew that this product the uh peak season was when I first launched and just knew that I was starting to get into this mindset of a steady flow of learning more from a business standpoint of how to run an Amazon business and one thing we didn't mention actually is in your first month selling on Amazon that's when your patent got approved and we'll talk in depth about that in just a minute but let's talk about month four numbers in month four you made $113,000 in Revenue how much money in profit almost $1,000 how about in month five how did you do in sales yeah about 16,500 how much in profit was that about 1,700 so at this point you're seeing steady numbers you're seeing good profit margins how are you feeling now pretty good pretty good about it um and knowing that my my first or inventory order was a little bit more than I knew that I could get it down to over time and in month six you went back up to $177,000 how much money and profit did you do about 1,900 or so and in total in Jeremy's first 6 months he made over $100,000 in Revenue over $10,000 in profit but he did make two really big mistakes so pay attention including one mistake that cost him over $10,000 and the first mistake you made was about patents you want to talk a little bit about how you did your patent and what you would do if you had to do it over again that's a good question wasn't really the mistake more than if I had to do it over again I would uh actually hire an attorney to do it because I did it but it takes a lot of time a a lot of time but this is a key point it is possible to do it on your own and how much money did it cost you to get a patent about $800 for the grant and everything um but with that came a lot of time of working with a patent examiner a lot of prosecution over years frankly and usually if you want to get a patent it's going to cost you 10 if not $20,000 with a lawyer but this is the key Insight you don't need to hire a lawyer you can do it yourself the second and the real big mistake that Jeremy made and almost everybody makes this mistake was waiting to launch the business talk a little bit about that I guess it wasn't really waiting it was just this issue with my factories and it Tak taken months of my time to uh find manufacturer that could actually make it for me and here's the key Insight Jeremy made over $10,000 profit in his first six months if he would have been able to launch his business 6 months earlier he could have made an extra $10,000 profit and most people get stuck in analysis paralysis they never start their business but what they don't realize is every minute that you're waiting to start your Amazon business your online business you're losing money because you could have been making so much money now I'm going to show you how you can guarantee success when selling on Amazon I've been in e-com entrepreneur for about 10 years and on top of that I've taught about a thousand students this method for selling on Amazon FBA and I've seen what works and what doesn't work and what are the patterns the principles that people use to make sure and guarantee that they're going to have success there's five principles that people use to guarantee having success with entrepreneurship the first principle is to follow a plan a mistake that a lot of beginner entrepreneurs make is they try out all kinds of different stuff they take one step forward and then one step backwards and two steps to the right and three steps to the left and they end up going in circles and the reason this is so common is because most people don't follow a stepbystep plan they end up maybe watching a bunch of different random Youtube videos about all kinds of different topics they say well maybe I want to do Drop Shipping maybe I want to do affiliate marketing maybe I want to do social media marketing they're not really sure what they want to do but the key here is to pick one thing and follow that plan and that's part of the reason why I made this YouTube video right here is cuz now you'll have a little bit more of a solid plan to follow step by step the next key to having success with entrepreneurship and specifically Amazon FBA is find a mentor find someone that's already done what you're trying to do if your goal is to make a $100,000 in profit per year with your Amazon business find someone that's already done that in learn from that person now it doesn't need to be me even though I've got a ton of free material on YouTube I'd still recommend hiring someone either for one-on-one coaching or doing some kind of a group program now as I mentioned you don't necessarily need to pay for this there are a ton of free YouTube videos out there the problem with just watching free videos like the one that you've been watching is even though there's a ton of information in this video and all the videos online the reason you want a mentor is because anytime you have a question you want to be able to ask them that question and get a response now if you do have questions leave it in the comments down below and I'm going to try to answer every single one of them but obviously if you find a mentor and you hire that person you're going to be able to ask much more in-depth questions and you're going to be able to get much more in-depth answers the next secret is to find a group of people because not only do you want a mentor that knows more than you do about the topic it's very helpful if you find a group of people that are at the same level as you peers people that are going through the same problems that way you can ask them questions and maybe they know something that you don't know or if nothing else this is another very important point it's good just to have other people to talk about most people that are starting out being entrepreneurs they don't know any other entrepreneurs it's just themselves and maybe a few people that they've watched on YouTube most entrepreneurs this is a huge mistake that they make is they don't know any other entrepreneurs I started having massive success when I actually joined a mastermind which a mastermind in this case is a group of five other people that were also entrepreneurs and I was able to ask them questions they were asking me questions we were all learning together which made it so we learned how to do e-commerce so much faster so try to find a group of people that you can learn from now there's a lot of different ways to do this you can go to meetups using meetup.com that's a great way to do it as humans we're tribal creatures we like being part of a tribe we like engaging with other humans so you want to find that mentor and you want to find a group of other people that you can learn with the fourth secret is to commit as I mentioned most people that watch this video they're thinking maybe I want to do this maybe I want to do this and they get stuck in analysis prcis they get stuck trying to figure out what direction they want if you commit to any method and this isn't just for Amazon FBA but any method of making money online as long as it's a legitimate method you'll eventually be able to figure it out and you'll eventually be able to have success now again in my opinion Amazon FBA and specifically selling a passion product using Amazon FBA is by far the best way I've ever found to make a legitimate passive income business and honestly even if you're not doing a passion product even if you're doing private label as long as you have a strong brand Amazon FBA is still a really great opportunity obviously you can do Retail Arbitrage or wholesale but here's the key whatever method you decide to do commit to that spend six months a year committed to that one thing and if you keep going down that path you will end up having success I can pretty much guarantee it but the fifth secret and probably the most important one out of this entire list is you need to take action you can commit to something but until you actually take your first step it's not going to be very easy to have success so now that you've watched this entire video you know how to start an Amazon FBA business you need to take action make a commitment and do all the other things that it takes to actually be successful and I actually have a special offer for you and first off congratulations for watching this entire video more than 90% of people that started this video did not finish it I guarantee it I've seen my YouTube analytics for longer videos like this you're one of those rare people that you actually watch this entire thing and that's a really big deal and I want to congratulate you on that because that means that you're actually committed and because you're committed I want to share this special offer with you as I mentioned there's five principles if you want to guarantee success with Amazon FBA the first is you need to follow a plan well in the passion product formula which is my Amazon FBA course it's a step by-step program there's over a 100 step-by-step video recorded a lot of them are screen recorded lessons showing you how to start your Amazon FBA business so if you're looking to follow a plan the passion product formula is a great option that alone I could easily charge $1,000 I've seen a lot of other Amazon FBA courses and they don't provide nearly as much value as the passion product formula my Amazon FBA course provides but the passion product formula is more than just a bunch of video lessons it also comes with mentorship from me this is the only way to get my mentorship I do sell actually occasionally I sell one hour sessions but I charge a lot of money for that I charge $750 for one hour but for people that join the passion product formula not only do you get access to weekly Q&A calls with me where you can ask me questions and I'm going to answer them every single week but in addition to that you get two private oneon-one sessions with me and the weekly Q&A calls you're going to get lifetime access which is easily worth at least $1,000 cuz weekly access to Q&A calls with me Plus in addition to that is the two 101 calls with me that's also worth at least if you were to buy that alone around $750 if not more but with the passion product formula I also give you lifetime access to a Facebook group where all the members of the passion product formula are a part of and you can ask questions in the group you can get feedback from all these different members and as you go to launch your product on Amazon you can let people know people have raised thousands and if not tens of thousands of dollars from Kickstarter just from posting their product in the Facebook group in our private Facebook group because other members of this course support you now of course hopefully you'll support them as well and that's what I'm trying to do here is I'm trying to build a community of Amazon FBA sellers of people selling products that they're actually passionate about and that's what I'm doing here is I'm inviting you to join this community again lifetime access to this Facebook group I could easily charge at least $1,000 for that in addition to that I'm also offering $1,000 in bonus courses a course on how to do YouTube if you're interested in marketing your business or creating a a personal brand with YouTube a Facebook ads course and a Google ads course as well I'm bundling all that in again at least another ,000 in value right there in addition to all this I also have a ton of step-by-step checklists checklist for starting your Amazon seller account checklist for product research so you can find an Amazon FBA product checklist for finding a manufacturer for your product really with this program I broke down everything step by step created checklist made it as easy as possible for you to start your Amazon FBA business business now with my Amazon FBA program the passion product formula I only open up a limited number of spots and I only open it up every once in a while if you're watching this video when it first came out it is open right now but there is a chance that if you're watching this in the future that it's not open right now it doesn't matter I do have a link down below to join the wait list and you can click on that link and find out if it's open right now as I mentioned I usually only let in 20 or maybe at times 50 people in for each session and I keep it limited because I like to have small group class sizes and the reason for this is it allows me to pay more attention to every single student so there is limited space available and again this program is not always open at the time of releasing this video it is open and if you want to learn more information about this program again it's over $6,000 worth of value I heavily discounted it there's a link down below again if you want to find out more information about this program and part of the reason why I do charge money for this program is it's a lot of my time a lot of my attention and on top of that what I find is people that actually pay a little bit of money they're more likely to be committed they're more likely to actually have success with their Amazon FBA business so click the link down below to commit to starting your Amazon FBA business and take the action actually do the steps every single lesson in the course I have action items step-by-step action items that are going to guarantee that you have success with your Amazon FBA business and I believe in this program so much that if you join the program and you don't have success if you don't make at least $1,000 in your first year I will personally give you $11,000 that's how confident I am that this program will work for you on top of that there is an unconditional 14-day money back guarantee meaning you can join this program try it out for 14 days see if it's right for you and if for any reason you don't love the program I will give 100% of your money back to you I did everything I can to make this the best deal out of any program take action commit click the link down below to find out more information about my in-depth Amazon FBA program the passion product formula and I'm excited to hopefully have you be part of the community

Transcript for:Strategies for Successful Amazon Selling

Transcript for:
Strategies for Successful Amazon Selling