hey what's up guys today i'm gonna share
a story with you
it's gonna be a story of one of my most
successful
amazon fba products that ultimately
i'm gonna classify as a failure i'm
gonna explain
what i mean by that i'll tell you
basically what the product is i'll tell
you why it was so successful
and why it fails as well as what we can
do
to prevent this from happening again so
you basically get to learn
from start to finish how i launched this
product
why what made it successful and then
ultimately what made it fail as well as
how you can avoid this so
you're learning directly from my
experience you don't have to experience
it yourself
hopefully you can avoid the downside and
only experience the upside that i'm
going to be sharing with you so let's
get started
[Music]
real quick i just wanted to plug the
weekly giveaway that i run
if you would like to enter it's
completely free and two winners are
going to be selected
you'll each receive a license to merge
titans upload automation
merch ninja research tools all sunsets
premium graphics and bubble scout the
only redbubble niche research
and validation tool you can find a link
in the description
all right so i told you i was going to
reveal the product
to you guys but can anybody guess by the
blurred photo behind me
uh what this product is and you know
what's funny is i actually
uh sold a couple different variations of
it so
i was selling on amazon i know what the
big reveal for anybody that doesn't sell
on amazon fba you're probably like oh my
god i want to see like what he was
selling
and think it's some amazing thing no it
was super super simple
i was selling these like plastic shot
glasses
you know like instead of a glass shot
glass which actually it's in the name
isn't it glass
um but they do sell disposable plastic
shot glasses
and i was one of the people selling them
on amazon
now it did not exactly grade out as a
great opportunity
you know if you follow pretty much any
fba course out there including my own
when you're looking at like different
criteria in what makes a good product or
what makes a product that looks like it
will be successful
this didn't exactly stand out um i just
kind of said you know what i'm just
gonna do it anyways
um so i did it and it turned out to be a
very fortuitous product
um now i don't think the listings that i
ran are even on amazon anymore so i
haven't sold this product in years
however
and i'm gonna explain why that is here's
an example of what a
listing would look like very similar to
what i was selling
there was different counts so for
instance people sell them
in low quantities middle quantities like
100 count
as as many as i think i've seen like 300
count
so when you list a product on fba you
get to decide all the things like
do you want to sell a pack of 100 200
300 typically it's a best practice to
look at what's out there what's selling
as a good indicator of
what the um customers want right
and you can use best seller rank as your
guide the lower the bsr the more sales
they're getting
so that's basically what i did now
you'll notice you can sell a hundred
pack of these for
eight dollars right and that's not very
expensive typically
i think it's a good practice to sell
products
generally above like ten dollars however
it does all
you know ultimately boil down to what
you're paying for what you're selling
that includes like the unit cost so it
would be
in this case i'm not actually like
thinking of i'm not going to my supplier
and saying how much would you charge me
for 100 of these cups i say how much you
charge me per cup
and then i'm gonna order you know 50 000
of the cups
and i'm gonna ask them to bag it for me
in the quantities i need so i may order
you know a hundred thousand of the cups
and say can you put a hundred
in a bag and i remember when i was
selling it i even paid
extra to have it like very
professionally like it was almost like
ironed on
um i don't know how to describe it
really but like the bags that they came
in
felt very professional because otherwise
how else do you really distinguish
yourself from the crowd
that's selling these cups on amazon and
plus i mean are most people gonna be a
repeat customer
probably not so does it really matter no
but when they leave a review i want them
thinking okay five star because this
felt like quality
so anyways that's my story about selling
these
and here's the part that really made it
awesome what made it one of my most
successful products
the profit margins that i had built in
now i don't think i was selling them for
eight bucks i'm pretty sure i was
selling them for like
i don't know 10 12 even 15 i don't
remember exactly
however profit margins were
in the range of 32 to 48 that is
extremely rare
on amazon or i don't know if it's
extremely rare it's rare though
as more people jump on amazon to sell
you get a lot of people undercutting
each other
and hoping that they can offer the
cheapest product build up sales momentum
and then increase their price when
they're like the ranked number one
organic product but here's the thing you
don't even need to do that
and i mean again there's no like like
cookie cutter
way of selling on amazon there's lots of
different things you can do but if you
have like margins like this built into
any product what you can do is
not be the cheapest product and then
complete my sentence for me i know
somebody knows
exactly advertise if you have a 40 plus
percent profit margin built in
you can still buy your way to the top of
search results
and let's say it costs you 10
of your 40 profit margin well you still
keep 30
as profit and each sale that you get
counts towards boosting your organic
rank so
you know selling on amazon still very
exciting it's like a puzzle that doesn't
necessarily only have a single solution
and um yeah this product was very
profitable um and it sold pretty darn
well
it wasn't like making me rich but let's
just say i don't remember i could go
back in time and look it up but i don't
i didn't put that much prep into the
video sorry i i guess i could have
um but let me just estimate that it was
making me in the range of six hundred
dollars to a thousand dollars a month
that's pretty good right wouldn't you
take an extra 600 to a thousand a month
um over the course of 10 months six
hundred would be six thousand
so two more months it's about seven
thousand dollars a year extra
profit for what for selling like a
product that
virtually is completely automated and
scalable once you set it up and launch
it
not bad right so all of a sudden amazon
fba is not sounding so bad
and i'm even showing you a real product
that i actually sold now here's the
downside oh yeah
oh by the way i was gonna plug if you
follow me on instagram which i will put
in the description
every day i try to do it every day
unless i'm like traveling
i take a picture on my instagram story
and i show you my
daily profit from the day before it
includes my sales
and my profit so in this software that i
use it's from jungle scout i can also
link to that in the description
and you can use this for fbm print on
demand just as well as fba you can use
it for all of your amazon sales
but i put a picture every single day on
instagram if you want to check that out
and i'll put a link to the software in
the description but here was the problem
that i dealt with
that ultimately led me to abandoning
this product
and it's one that can be avoided but i'm
just going to walk you through the
problem first uh-oh
and i know somebody knew it was coming
yes
i had some people call them hijackers
here's the thing though everybody that
jumps on your amazon listing is not
necessarily a hijacker because this is
how
amazon intended for their catalog to
work
the only thing is like they should be
selling the exact same product
now in the case of what we're talking
about i did mention that like my
the way mine were bagged was like about
as nice as you could get it done
and chances are the people that jumped
on my listing were not doing that
but either way there's not anybody
that's really enforcing that because
think of the scale of amazon's catalog
it's not
reasonable they don't really even
attempt to so
ultimately my product was easy to
replicate
and they had recently kind of opened the
doors up to
really i'll just say internationally but
a lot of the manufacturing goes on in
asia and a lot of the asian sellers were
able to jump on and kind of
replicate a lot of simple products and
create offers
and then ship them out and maybe they're
the manufacturers all of a sudden you
may have been competing with the
manufacturer
and they can basically sell it for dirt
cheap now they may get into issues with
like
if they're not doing fba and they're
doing fbm and it's shipping from
overseas
yeah if shipping doesn't get there in
time it could get them in trouble
this is all like i don't want to make
this video go on forever so we'll save
that for a different day
a lot has changed since uh since the
time period that i'm referring to
but anyways a lot of people jumped on my
listing and just kept undercutting me
like you can actually pay for software
that will constantly reprice your
product so that you have the cheapest
one like you see the one at the top
there
21.98 they undercut the 21.99 and the
21.99 again
um you can actually just have software
battle it out and constantly reprice by
a penny
because typically the cheapest offer
gets the buy box which means that when
someone hits add to cart they get to
sale
so this is something that everybody
deals with and i had to just call it
quits eventually because i didn't want
to play that game and constantly be
repricing and stuff like that
now i did promise i would also share a
solution that i wish i had done back
then but you live and you learn like
this product that i
was selling was one of the first
products that i had launched
wasn't the first but i still consider it
like in that kind of upswing of my fba
business
so you can use amazon's brand registry
to
fend off people selling imitations of
your products now it's not a perfect
science
but it does it is a very strong
deterrent of
keeping hijackers off your listing and
you can actually use amazon's ip
accelerator
to get into brand registry very quickly
otherwise you have to kind of file your
own trademark
and the trademark must be registered in
any of my print-on-demand subscribers i
know you understand the difference
between
filing one that may say live and
actually having a registered trademark
which is actually required because
without that registration id
you will not get into brand registry so
ip accelerator if you go
and do that in seller central you can
actually get into brand registry in
about two weeks
even though your trademark won't be live
because you did it through the ip
accelerator and because amazon got extra
money because you did that
you can actually get your trademark
which is still going to take the same
amount of time but you can get into
brand registry in
two weeks just about now sometimes you
can also get access to amazon project
zero the reason i say sometimes is
because like i was
able to get beta access for one of my
brand registered brands like so i was in
there right away basically
and with project zero like i don't know
how long it's gonna take you i can't
really speak to that but like
i was lucky and with project zero you
can actually like you have to abide by
the rules
but you can self-police your listings so
if somebody like tries to hijack your
listing you can literally kick them off
pretty cool right but you cannot abuse
it you have to read the rules and they
make you take a quiz
before they give you that power so if
you um misuse it
you definitely probably lose the ability
to do that
so the last thing i wanted to wrap up
with guys anybody that's still with me
that's not doing fba
like most people when they think of fba
they think of that product on the left
some like crazy complex um coffee making
you know this is just an example product
but it's like something that is like top
of the line that like you made
custom and now you're the only one on
amazon selling it and
you know maybe you'll get rich selling
it and like yeah like that's one way of
doing fba
but if you don't have the time to do
that
what i describe to you about selling
these like little ass
cups like simple cups right that anybody
can do with no customization
other than like i was like hey can i get
like nicer packaging and they were like
yeah it's going to cost you more it's
like all right fine i've got like a four
and tell them but it's like i've got
like a 45 profit margin built in
i'll pay extra for it you know what's
gonna cost a penny
you can sell these guys and take home
that extra 600
to a thousand dollars a month right like
and i'm not saying
it could be more than that it could
definitely be less than that right you
could lose money doing fba i'm not
trying to say that that doesn't happen
for sure it does
um but like this is like path of least
resistance
super simple i'm helping my girlfriend
launch a product right now that's
basically
the equivalent of this product in that
it is incredibly easy to um
to sell you know what i mean like it's
it's it's like brain dead
it's super simple by the way she's also
selling another product that's
complementary to this
to what she's selling and it's much much
more difficult so she's doing two at
once
and kind of regretting the difficult one
after seeing how easy the
other product that she's selling is
that's complimentary but anyways guys
i'm just going to invite you to
be open to the thought of doing fba
because it doesn't have to be difficult
you can actually be successful keeping
it simple
and now that i wrap up the video i did
want to remind you that i have a 7 day
amazon fba mini course that's actually
really thorough that will get delivered
to your inbox one lesson a day
if you would like to take advantage of
that there is a link in the description
all i need is your email address
and i have an amazon fba facebook group
if you guys want to check that out is
also linked to in the description last
but not least
i spent over a year writing what i
believe to be the most thorough amazon
fba course in existence if you would
like to check that out
it's also linked in the description i'm
extremely proud of that course because i
spent over a year and a lot of
saturdays in the office by myself in the
dark
working on the course which um again
took me a long long time but i'm proud
of it
so yeah check that out link in the
description and that's it for this video
guys i appreciate your time
hopefully um you like the video if you
did let the youtube algorithm know by
hitting that thumbs up button and if
you're not subscribed and you want to do
so that would be awesome
thanks for watching i'll see you soon
[Music]
you