- One of the questions I get asked the most
about Amazon selling is how do you start?
So here I am today with a much needed Q and A.
I have been selling on Amazon
for a year and a half, a little more.
Yeah, a little over a year and a half.
This was my second Q4, so October to December.
The first one, I didn't really know what I was doing.
I had just started a month or two before that.
Q4 is really amazing
because you just see your sales skyrocket
and it's really fun just to watch it all come in
and you hit numbers that you've never hit
for the rest of the time in the year.
This is my second January and already I'm
on track to double what I did last January.
And this Q4, I doubled what I did last Q4.
So if you're not familiar with how I sell on Amazon
I do what's called retail arbitrage.
So I go to stores like Target, Walmart, TJ Maxx,
Marshall's. I'm here in the west coast.
I'm doing Grocery Outlet.
I go to those stores and I find stuff that is going to sell
and make me a profit on Amazon.
And I ship it all FBA, Fulfilled by Amazon.
So I've put it all in a box, ship it to Amazon.
Amazon warehouses it for me.
They will send it out to the customer.
They do the customer returns, customer service.
So I don't have to do any of that.
One of the questions I get asked the most
about Amazon selling is how do you start?
So for me, I actually found out about The Selling Family,
which they have a training
on how to do this retail arbitrage FBA.
So I bought the training.
I did the courses.
I actually took a long time to do it.
Some people can like power through it
in a day or two, a week.
I took my time.
The way I learn best is by doing it along with them.
So powering through just wasn't going to work for me.
What I did was I watched the training videos and I set
up my account as I was doing it, as they were doing it.
When I had products to ship, I rewatched those videos
on how they packages and how they ship it.
The selling family,
I'm going to link it right here.
I promote it all the time on Instagram because I love it.
It's so easy.
They have a Facebook group where you can literally
ask any question.
And as a newbie, you have a lot.
Someone in the group will answer you.
A moderator who's been selling
for years will answer you almost instantly.
I was in stores being like, oh my gosh, what is this?
I've never seen this before on the app.
And someone was helping me.
Honestly, the trainings are amazing.
And you can, there's probably lots of trainings out there,
but this one is the Facebook group is so worth it
because you find out like, Hey
there's ungating happening right now.
But when you start out, can't sell everything.
So you might be gated in grocery
and you can't yet sell beauty.
You can sell toys, not all toys,
like you can't sell Star Wars,
but you can sell lots of other toys.
What happens is they'll be like, Hey,
there's an ungating happening in grocery
because someone in the group just happened to do it.
And so you're like, yes.
And so you can go and you can get ungated in grocery.
Sometimes you'll find out about like,
a hot selling item in the group.
Honestly, it's worth the cost of the course.
The other question I get asked the most is how
much money do you need to start?
You can honestly start with as little as you have.
The course was $350, totally worth it.
And then I started with $500 in addition to that.
So it was around $200 of supplies, boxes,
poly bags, labels, a scanner.
You don't need the scanner.
You could type in the USPC's, but for me,
just scanning it into the computer is way time-saving,
and a little Scotty peeler to get price tags off.
I use the other $300 to start my inventory.
So then another question off of that is
how soon do you see a profit back to Amazon?
My first $300 worth of inventory, that sold pretty quickly.
And then every two weeks, Amazon will send
to your bank account whatever profit money you have.
So, two weeks after that, they sent it to me.
I used that money to go buy more inventory,
and you just keep rolling it over like that until you get
to an amount where you're able to take some profit out.
So for me, I started
in September of 2017, and by December of 2017,
I was able to take a profit out, to pay myself.
And I've been able to do that every month since.
So that's what I live off of.
Another question I get is how do I know what to buy?
Well, I have an app.
It's the Amazon Selling App.
Once you set up your selling account,
you download the app and you can log in and start scanning.
You'll literally scan UPC's with it in store.
And when you scan something, you'll pull
up the app and it'll show you how much it's selling for.
If Amazon is selling it,
how much profit you'll make, you can input your, the cost.
So say I found this item and it costs $5.
I put $5 in it'll tell me the total profit after that.
The Selling Family outlines how to pick profitable items.
You know, they even give you a ranking sheet.
Another website I use when I'm shopping is Jungle Scout.
And you can put in the category, the rank,
and it'll tell you about how many you'll sell every month.
So that's helpful.
I go, and I look for things that are low rank,
under $10, ideally, but I will go up to $20.
Another question I got is what sells best for me.
It really depends.
So, I can have something that's selling like hotcakes,
and then all of a sudden other sellers get on it,
and suddenly I'm one of 20 sellers,
and it's not selling as well or someone tanks the price
because they got a really good deal on it.
And I'm like, okay, that's out.
I sell in all the different categories. I sell baby.
I sell toys.
I sell grocery.
I sell beauty.
I sell health products, the kitchen, I sell a lot of stuff.
When I'm first starting,
I'll usually buy two to six of something.
It really depends how much it is,
how many other sellers are on it, how much the profit is,
how high or low the rank is.
If it's a really good rank,
there's not a lot of sellers and I'm gonna make money on it,
I'll probably buy six.
So once I send it into Amazon, if those sell really fast,
then I'll go out and buy some more of those
and replen them.
And I usually, depending on how fast they sold
and how many other sellers have jumped on it,
I'll usually buy another 6, or sometimes even another 12.
A lot of the people who are asking questions
actually have full-time jobs.
And I wish I had known
about this when I had a full-time job, because it's so easy.
You can do it on the weekends or after work.
You can go shop for an hour or two,
and just a couple of days a week,
and get it going to the point where you can quit your job.
I quit my job.
I had a savings and I was like
I'll figure out what I'm going to do.
I wish I'd known about it
because I could have had this income going and ready to go.
And I wouldn't have had any of that.
I would probably still have my savings.
That being said, I was totally unemployed,
with just the savings and I started it and it's paid off.
Another question I got is how many units do you
buy to make a listing?
If it's worth it, I'll buy one,
because it doesn't take long to list it
I'm not creating a new listing.
I'm just listing on the listing that's already there.
So it's really easy.
If it's going to make me a profit
and all they have is one, I'll buy the one.
I have created my own listings in the past.
Sometimes it worked out.
Sometimes it didn't.
Because you're creating the listing,
it's not gonna have a rank starting out,
which is kind of bad, but if it's a hot selling brand
and an item and you believe in it,
it's really easy to create the listing.
You just take photos. I took a photo on the ground.
I put white sheet of paper behind it,
took the photo and use that as the photo.
Of course, everyone's asking, does it still work?
Yes. It still works.
I'm still doing it.
I don't have any plans to not do it.
I'm just continuing to grow
and looking for ways to grow the business.
It's really simple, easy way to start your own business
and start working for yourself.
One of the questions I was asked is
do I think I could be successful
if I hadn't done the bootcamp?
Yes, I could have done it.
I am very capable.
Could have figured it out, YouTube, whatever,
but there's so many roadblocks that I hit,
that I asked questions in the group
or was made aware of, if not
for the group of Facebook, I, I would have never known.
It would have taken me a lot longer.
I probably would have bought stuff that would've just sat
because the ranks were bad.
Maybe I wouldn't have known that.
To me, it was worth the bootcamp.
And I would buy it again in a heartbeat.
I probably wouldn't have taken two months to get
through the bootcamp, but I was being a little lazy
because it was summertime and I was unemployed.
I can't say enough great things
about the bootcamp, honestly.
And that's why I'm always talking
about it because it was really helpful.
And it just made everything so easy.
To have someone there.
You can literally email Jessica.
I mean, that's how easy it is.
For me, it was worth it.
I have always wanted to work for myself.
I just didn't know I'd be doing it at such a young age
with something that I really liked to do.
I mean, I love shopping.
It's pretty fun.
If you liked this video, let me know.
If there's something about Amazon shopping or selling
that you want to know,
or you'd like to see, let me know,
and I'll create another video.
Hit subscribe, hit like, leave me a comment.
Thanks for watching.
Excuse me.
So that's great.
Good morning.
It is Monday morning.
It is 6:35 in the morning and it's freezing.
I am heading out to go for a full day of shopping.
I think I have like 25 stores listed.
Some of them were like Walmart, three different Walmart's.
That should make it easy because
I already know what I want to get,
but it's an hour drive just to get there.
I have made it to Walmart number one.
it is now 7:40 and like, 30 degrees.
I have like, four different stops.
They are about 20 miles apart,
up and down this interstate here.
So I'm at the first one.
Then I planned it so that I'm here
at Walmart first, because it's 24 hours.
Target doesn't open till eight.
And then the next stops probably like, Ross.
Some stores that don't open until like 9 or 10.
It is now 10:30.
I've got stop number one done.
So I'm going to head over to stop number two,
which has another small one, and stop number three,
which is a really big one.
There's literally everything at this one shopping center,
so that's going to take forever, and then I'm hoping to get
to number four. We'll see.
It is 1:30 and now I'm going into Costco.
It's a hit or miss.
It could be quick or I could find some good stuff.
So we'll see.
I haven't been to Costco in a while,
so it's a little bit turning into a personal shopping trip.
And, I can't even say that I care
because it's a lot of fun here.
I'm here at another Walmart.
I was going to say what store number I'm on,
but I honestly don't have a clue.
I have to go back to my notes and look.
I am at the last big shopping center, this is it.
I think there's like seven stores I need to hit here.
And then after that, it's just Trader Joe's,
which I could do in my sleep because I love trader Joe's.
It's three o'clock, it's warmer now, and I am starving.
The treats that I brought in my purse, those apricots
were nasty.
Like, that's what you should eat
if you don't want to eat anything anymore,
because it ruins your taste.
That TJ Maxx had the longest line, like 24 people,
and three cashiers and people walking around not doing it.
And I was just, where's the manager, like, that's insane.
22 minutes I waited on that line.
I got really good product, though, so it was worth it,
but, oh my gosh, I'm exhausted.
All right, and I'm finished. I'm here at trader Joe's.
I might scan a few things, but mostly just grocery shopping
after work and the sun is going down.
and so I've been working from sunrise to sunset today.
Busy day.
(soft guitar music)