hi and welcome back to another amazon selling video if you're new to my channel hello my
name is nikki kirk and i'm officially in my sixth year of selling on amazon
doing retail arbitrage this year will be my sixth q4 which is crazy it's exciting
that i've been doing it this long and it's also kind of crazy that i've been doing it this long
but i have no plans to stop because i absolutely love it it works on my time i get to make money
and it's just awesome so anyways if you like this video or any of my amazon selling videos
please be sure to subscribe to my channel because it helps me out and it costs you nothing so it
really is awesome so thank you so much if you are already subscribed and if you are a new subscriber
welcome in today's video we're going to continue with the q4 prep series that i've been doing here
and we're going to dive into ipi and what it means for your amazon fba inventory now towards
the end of every quarter this email goes out it says this hello your inventory performance index
ipi score and mine at this point was 526 because your ipi score is at or above 400 you will not
be subject to storage limits for standard size oversized clothing or footwear inventory starting
on october 1st 2022 or whatever year you happen to be watching this video however all products
are subject to restock quantity limits like i said this email goes out every quarter or the beginning
of the next quarter to let you know what your ipi is and if you're going to have any storage limits
but because we're close to q4 everyone is like super conscious and aware and sometimes it freaks
people out when they get this email now with amazon every q4 they increase their storage fees
a little bit so there's already going to be some extra fees during q4 and actually they've just
sent out another inventory fba fee that's going to be 35 cents an item on top of whatever it was
so the fba fees are going up which is totally normal for this time of year um it's just you
know kind of annoying but i promise you there's still stuff out there so don't let it deter you
if you're not aware q4 is the absolute best time to be selling on amazon because everything sells
you're gonna see your inventory fly off the shelf so just a quick reminder to prep for that now
plan for your capital situation and plan to have inventory more than you think you're going to need
at amazon or fbm whatever however you're going to sell it just plan for that now so amazon increases
their fba storage fees during q4 because they don't want a lot of stuff that's not going to sell
in their warehouses they have limited warehouse capacity they have limited workers and they want
to have the best experience for their customers so they need to have everything like selling
that's going to be at the warehouse and that's why you'll see some dates like it's a towards the end
of december they're going to say okay now you can send stuff for 2023 they only want stuff that's
selling right now at their warehouses and to do this they increase the storage's fees every q4
last year from october to december i did just over 72 000 in sales and my storage fees was just 408
so don't freak out about the storage fees okay they are so small it's like half of a
percent of my total sales with storage fees so again don't freak out about the storage fees
in fact here's a grab from my inventory planning dashboard where you can see that in june of this
year i only paid 46 dollars for storage fees so it's really it's like you're probably paying 40
50. if you have a lot of inventory you might be paying like 100 a month but again it's such a
small part of your total sales don't let it freak you out okay so if you're following along with me
in your seller central dashboard you're going to go to inventory and inventory planning
and you're gonna see this dashboard this pink and green bar right here that's your ipi it's a number
that amazon has assigned you based on a variety of factors that we're gonna dive into in this video
this number is basically telling amazon hey this seller is good with their stock or they're poor
with their stock and if the seller is poor with their stock they are going to limit
how much they can send because again they only want stuff in their warehouses that is selling
that's why if you've been if you've had inventory over a year then you get long-term storage fees
and honestly as an ra an oa seller you shouldn't have inventory that long that's really for like
private label who's like shipping a ton of stuff pallets of their item from china into the amazon
warehouse because where else are they going to put it right so side note but anyways as
an rao seller you really shouldn't have stuff that long now here's a quick breakdown of the storage
limits based on a different thing so if you are an individual seller you're only ever going to
get 10 cubic feet of storage at the warehouses so individual again is that free account that
maybe if you started out you're not sure you're going to do this you don't want to pay that 40
a month of the professional fee and so you're going to have limits on your stock right if you're
not a professional professional if you're not like in this and you're not telling amazon yeah you're
doing this for real they're going to limit how much you can send so that no one is just sending
a ton of stuff to the warehouse and then if you are professional you have no storage limits if
your ipi is in that green it can be right on the edge of the green and pink and you are perfectly
fine as long as it is in the green you have no storage limits if you do have a poor ipi and
you're in that pink area then you were probably maybe gonna have storage limits again it's up to
amazon you can't say for sure you're going to but it's a possibility and if that happens it could
be just 25 cubic feet of storage for your account so if you are close to the pink line and you want
to make sure you don't go over it or if you're in the pink line i'm gonna walk you through the
four factors that go into that and how you can fix them so in your seller central if you go ahead and
click on this performance tab at the top here it's gonna take you to this next screen while you see
the breakdown so again you have this colorful ipi right here and then you have the four breakdowns
so here are the four things that make up your ipi score you have excess inventory your sell through
your stranded inventory and you're in stock inventory now in stock doesn't totally influence
your number all that much and as you can see here it's my worst number but it's always bad because
again i'm an r a o a seller and so because of that i'm not able to just keep ordering from a
distributor a wholesaler and keep my stuff in stock so i find a couple things that tj
maxx or ollies or whatever i'm sourcing i send it in i find as much as i possibly can but at
the end of the day there's only so many of those stores have and there's only so many i can find
so i haven't for four years i never would delete old listings from my inventory i would just leave
them because maybe i'm going to find it again in a couple months so i'm going to find it again next
year and it was just easier to relist it when the listing was already there in my inventory
now for a variety of different factors one of which was that i got like a counterfeit or ip or
something can't remember what it was but something happened to something i had not had in stock for
over a year and so i was like you know what i'm just gonna start deleting my old inventory and
as you can see so i delete them after the return period has ended so during q4 the return period
is going to go all the way to january 31st but on a normal time so like right now it goes until
60 days so the customer has technically 60 days if they want to return it you can't do
anything about that that's just amazon's policy and we sell on amazon so we follow their policies
so if you want to delete it i would recommend waiting after that 60 day return period
however you can delete it whenever you want to just know that if they return it it might
go stranded if they find it in the warehouse it might go stranded and that again you'll see it
plays into your ipi but you can easily relist from stranded so it's not a big deal but it is a little
bit more work if you delete it before the return period is over now like you see here my number is
low here um and it's always below so i delete the listings it doesn't necessarily help but
improve so just know that like i've never seen it actually help improve my number the other three do
okay so excess inventory now do not get this confused with long-term storage or anything
like that amazon is considering it for ipi purposes ipi is over 90 days always a rolling
90 days and it updates every week so the last 90 days is going to tell you your next week's
ipi score so if you have excess inventory that's over 90 days at the warehouse now i don't like
my stuff to be over 90 days and as you can see here i have quite a lot of excess inventory at
the moment and a lot of it is if you followed my grocery outlet video when i was there in april
a lot of it is that stuff that i just bought a lot of it because i wasn't there for long
i was only there for a week and i wanted if it was gonna sell i wanted the most i could get of
it so a little bit risky and now i'm paying for that risk with my excess inventory that
i'm really just kind of breaking even on on this point possibly even losing some money so anyways
that's why i have a lot of excess right now i don't normally have this much now i like my items
to sell you know i would love it if they all sell on the way to the warehouse but i like my items
to sell within 30 to 60 days that's pretty typical after 60 days i'm like adjusting the price to move
if it's over 90 days i'm just matching that buy box and trying to get rid of it like i'm doing
with some of my items right now um but when i'm really trying to make all the profit i can
obviously i am keeping my prices high and willing to let it wait up to 60 days or longer to get the
money that i want out of it i am not a seller who is price taking quick in and out no i want those
replans i want to make a business out of this i want to make money so don't freak out if you see
that you have excess inventory but you can make adjustments get rid of it ask for it back whatever
you want to do you can do that with your inventory to help your number come down so like right now
i'm gonna try in the next 30 days to get rid of all this stuff if i can't i will probably either
liquidate it through amazon or ask for it back and just donate it to charity because a lot of
it is like toothpaste however as you can see here 14 of my stock is excess inventory which is kind
of a high number but it's not affecting my ipi i have a great ipi still okay so the next factor is
your sell through and it really goes hand in hand with excess inventory if you have a lot
of excess inventory you're probably not selling through so like i mentioned it's a 90 rolling day
average for your ipi so your sell through takes into account the units that you have shipped in
amazon in the last 90 days divided by the average number of units that are sitting at the warehouse
so basically they don't want you sending in a lot of stuff that's not going to sell okay that's the
theme today you want to be selling what you have now again that doesn't mean freak out drop the
price it just means within 90 days you want to be selling your stock the last thing and the number
one factor that can help improve your ipi score within a week or by the next week is managing
your stranded inventory so it'll be stranded and unfulfillable in your managed inventory it'll be
up there at the top and if you see a number there click it and you want to take care of
that whatever it is ask for it back dispose of it now there are some limits on it like or not
limits but like if your thing is transferring around the warehouse fc transfer it won't let
you ask for it back it needs to settle somewhere so just know that sometimes it won't be there but
i always go in whenever i see it and i try it and if it's like not there ready to be removed
or liquidated or whatever you want to do with it disposed then i go back next week and try again
so definitely take care of your stranded inventory because again they don't want stuff sitting at the
warehouse that isn't going to sell and stranded inventory is like it can't possibly sell because
it's just sitting there it doesn't have a listing to it or it's expired and it's unfulfillable or
it's unfulfillable because it's a customer return it was damaged a variety of factors but no matter
what you want to take care of it so to make sure that your fba again ipi is only for fba inventory
to make sure that it's a healthy ipi you really want to make sure you're sending in product
that sells how you know a product is going to sell is the rank now of course rank fluctuates
but for the most part if you use keepa and you look at the rank you can tell if it's gonna sell
or not if you want my help i have a free rank guideline when you sign up for my email the link
is below it's emailed right over to you and it tells you all the good ranks within the categories
or basically the top categories and it'll tell you like if you stay within this rank you are pretty
certain that it is going to sell and so you don't really have to worry about it so a lot of people
keep it on their phone or you can save it in your drive on your phone just to have handy when you're
out shopping to know if it's going to be a good rank that's going to sell again it's down below
you sign up for my email and it's sent right over to you and if you're just thinking about starting
amazon and you want my help getting started doing retail arbitrage and online arbitrage i have the
beginner fba selling course the link is below it's beginnerfba.com it comes with a facebook support
group where i'm in there and other sellers are in there to answer your questions whatever they have
i have 16 video course lessons within the course and so it has the video it has audio so you can
download and listen to it like a podcast and it also has the written transcripts so however you
learn best the course is there to help you along the way i am literally there teaching you so as
you send your first shipment as you go outsourcing or before you go sourcing and right when you're
setting up your amazon account i'm there to help you and walk you through it thank you guys so much
for watching i will be back again for some more q4 videos to help you prepare for your best q4 yet
if you want my retail arbitrage guide to q4 you can go ahead and grab it it's updated for 2022
and ready to help you source like a pro see you guys next week and thank you for watching
you