hey what's up guys ryan here i wanted to
talk about amazon fba i know it's been a
while since i talked about fba on my
channel
but uh just a reminder when i started
this channel i thought that i was gonna
be
uh more of like an amazon fba channel
but the youtube algorithm
was rewarding me more for talking about
print on demand the rest is history
right so then i started
appeasing the youtube algorithm because
i'd rather make videos that people
actually view
as opposed to making videos that nobody
sees anyways with
amazon fba uh i'm helping marielle
start her fba business she has opened
her seller central account which is
great
that didn't used to be a big thing it
used to be something that you just kind
of sat down
clicked next five times and your account
was open but now they've made it a
little bit harder to open your seller
central account so if you're struggling
to get through that step
i did do a youtube video on it i'll put
a link to it in the youtube cards right
here
that you can check out but once you have
your seller central account open guys
you need to figure out what you're going
to sell
and there are a lot of different
ways that this step in the process is
taught
i personally like to spend a lot of time
on the product research and product
validation phase
a lot of courses out there only talk
about product research i am a
huge proponent of product validation
when i say validation i mean validating
the financials with fba
we are pre-paying to a manufacturer
to run their uh factory produce
our products from the raw materials and
then
you know brand them uh prepare them in
the right packaging put the amazon
sticker labels on them unless you have a
upc code
that you would get printed on the
packaging and then
put them in master cartons ship them to
the united states
i prefer to have them shipped straight
to fba and
then amazon receives them and then our
listing is available for our customers
to buy on amazon
in a nutshell um i just made it sound
pretty simple i mean
it really at a high level is that but um
you know
with respects to like kind of the
conversations that i've been having with
marielle trying to have
trying to help her be successful with
her first product
um she's you know she's exploring some
different things
some things that she brings personal
expertise to with brand potential
all things that make a lot of sense that
i'm a you know i think are great
uh and i think she actually found like a
perfect product which is
the word perfect gets gets thrown around
a lot but i think for a first amazon fba
product
what she is considering selling checks
basically every box now without telling
you what it is because i don't want to
blow up her spot
she would hate me if i did that uh it's
complementary to
another business that she is i mean it's
i guess it would be the same business
but
it's complementary to another product
that she is going to be selling on
amazon fba as well
now when you first open your seller
central account you don't get a lot of
space at amazon warehouses they restrict
how much they can receive
and store for you all at one time so you
need to be strategic
about like how many units you send into
fba
uh when i say fba like they literally
have warehouses scattered around the
country
and they typically if it's not a large
shipment they'll just have you send it
to one location and then my
understanding
is they will if you sent enough units
they'll like
kind of redisperse it for you uh when
they probably when they have extra room
in their trucks
but anyways when you first start off you
typically only want to launch one
product at a time because kind of as
you're making sales and proving yourself
to be a good seller they'll increase
your storage limits
at fba centers they actually have like a
little metric for it they have a little
bar
and they grade you and you have to kind
of stay above a certain score i think
they call it like the ipi like inventory
performance indicator i think is what it
is
um i'm not at my computer obviously so i
can't check but it's something like that
anyways so
so launching two products that initially
is a little bit ambitious
but i'd like it because you can also do
something else you can
store the inventory at your house and
then kind of ship it in
as needed which enables you to
deal with the inventory restrictions
that you face with a new seller account
um and then when you ship it into fba
that would mean like go to your basement
at your house grab some more product
put it in a master carton or a couple
cartons and then
create an inbound shipment in your
amazon seller central dashboard where
you tell them
what you're sending how many boxes how
big are the boxes etc
and then they know to expect it from you
and they factor that into your uh
inventory restrictions and they'll
probably tell you how much you can send
and you buy your shipping through amazon
so it costs like nothing costs like less
than 10 bucks
to send in you know a pretty big box
right um
so it's not as bad if you're thinking
about like oh shipping's crazy it's
going to eat all your margins it's not
that bad
so as a new seller that's something you
might want to do
and i just wanted to okay we just had a
conversation we were using jungle scout
we were looking at products doing some
validation
and this is what i would do before
validating the financials i would say go
use the jungle scout chrome extension to
do a keyword search on amazon
you click the extension it will come up
with a score out of 10
kind of grading your pro your product uh
niche
as a whole from from the search results
returned by amazon
and you you know i'm not like the the
10-point scale score thing is nice but
it's not a um
it's i don't make any decisions based on
that score but it can definitely help
you exclude something really quickly
as a result of that score so there were
some products that were not the perfect
product
and she liked them and she's like man
but everybody's buying this stuff and i
said like
you are correct and you know better than
i do that people are buying this stuff
first of all
here's the thing i know people are
buying them because look at the bsrs
they're extremely low look at jungle
scout it's telling us that these are
selling
40 units a day 50 units a day and
there's multiple sellers
selling that many units in a day right
so they're making crazy sales you can
see it in the
monthly revenue projections there were
there were products making like 50k
60k 70k in a month multiple in the same
niche
now here's the thing when you see those
types of numbers you're attracting
bigger fish bigger whales you know what
i mean in the scope of like amazon
sellers
uh so you're gonna face tougher
competition jumping in there
so i did want to make that clear to you
guys always consider that also i wanted
to
just mention that the size of your
product matters okay her
her perfect product was a very small
very lightweight product that also is
flexible
like you know what i mean like i have
this like shoe shoe box test where
can you fit your product in a shoe box
and can you drop it from
you know five or six feet without it
breaking if yes to both
i think you're in good shape for a first
product like those are just nice to
haves they're not requirements but
um so her perfect product yes to both of
those things
uh this other product doesn't fit in a
shoebox you'd probably survive a drop
but like it's uh with amazon like when
they when you add something to their
catalog
they have like these tier
classifications for the size of products
as well as the weight and these products
were like
either um large tier i forget what it is
it's like standard large
and then other ones were like lar uh
small oversized
they have like the tier system used to
be a lot more clear-cut now it's like
kind of weird how they did it they have
like more classifications
basically in summary the bigger and
heavier your product is
the more you're gonna have to pay amazon
to
store it to pick pack and ship it
and you're gonna pay more when you
inbound ship it from most likely china
is where you're gonna have to get it
manufactured
and here's the other note that i just
wanted to share if your product is big
it is and when i say big i guess it's
relative but if it's like oversized
or even like large tier and this isn't
just exclusive to those it can also be
smaller products but typically it's the
larger ones
amazon may make you send it to multiple
locations
when you import it and as you would
expect
shipping it to one location is cheaper
than shipping it to two locations
and i've seen it go to as many as three
locations in my own personal experience
which means who knows maybe they
sometimes tell you to ship it to four
but um shipping it to three different
locations because i was selling in the
past
like probably at this point two years
ago maybe even longer two and a half
um large oversized heavy products
and i mean the shipping alone man i
think i probably broke even on them
just because it cost so much and then if
there was ever a return
you had to pay the return shipping too
so it was a it was a trap so what i'm
really trying to say like
in this video i'm just trying to give
you some insights guys if you're
thinking about starting an fba business
you're a first-time seller or you're
still relatively new
keep it simple keep it simple give
yourself a chance if you're selling like
these big
heavy products you're most likely going
to start in the hole you know just from
shipping costs and i mean i don't
want to say most likely i hate doing
that i don't want to guarantee anybody
anything
you can easily prove me wrong but like i
can guarantee you the bigger and heavier
it is the more money you're going to
spend on shipping
and returns are gonna also burn you
because there's always returns
inevitably
and if you can find like a lightweight
product that doesn't break easily
uh that's relatively small like you're
in good shape uh she found one
that's also just perfect it's like a
perfect complement to the other thing
that she wants to sell on her
her new amazon seller central account
and keep in mind that when you start off
guys like
you can't just send in a bunch of
inventory to fba you're gonna have to
kind of
slowly gradually send more and more as
they allow you to send more and more
which means that like if you're just
importing from china as needed
there's going to be periods of time
where you're sold out and that's
something that even i'm facing
because of these inventory restrictions
like this is constantly evolving it's
not like it was always like this
um since you know covet and everything
it's gotten tougher on us
and um you know if you subscribe to my
channel and watch my monthly income
reports you can probably
go back and hear me when i'm talking
about my fba business uh hear me rant
a couple months in a row about the whole
like inventory issue because it's really
been a big pain in the butt
so anyways guys i just wanted to kind of
talk about this stuff while i was fresh
on my mind
if anybody's looking to learn fba i did
write a full course i spent over a year
writing this course and i'm currently
updating it for 2021 even though it's
still up to date i'm just kind of like
going through it and um
making everything look i guess cleaner
and look a little bit newer putting some
polish on it you know because i've been
the longer i've been on camera the more
natural it feels right
uh that fba course was the first course
i ever did which is why i ended up
spending over a year on it so
anyways guys thank you so much for
watching do me a quick favor like and
subscribe if you're not already
appreciate you appreciate your time
hopefully you learned something and i
will see you guys tomorrow
[Music]
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