hi and welcome back to another amazon selling video if you're new to my channel my name is nikki
kirk and i've been selling on amazon doing retail arbitrage for five years now and i'm currently at
oklahoma in oklahoma where we bought some land and that behind me is a gravel pad happening
but pretty soon hopefully in two or three months it is going to be my future workshop where i can
hack all my amazon shipments record these videos have a nice background all that stuff
super excited so i thought it'd be fun to kind of show like right now what it looks like
nothing but hopefully soon there will be a warehouse there so in this week's video i
thought i would take a look back at my very first couple weeks of selling and walk you through my
first month of shipments showing you what i sold and kind of the eclectic mix where i found it
and now that i've sold it and looking back on it tell you some of the errors and fun things that
happened with that shipment to hopefully inspire you if you are new of what to look for or just how
things shake out when you're starting selling on amazon so how i got started and maybe you
can relate is i got started pretty much when we left in june and to travel the country in the rv
i knew i was going to be selling on amazon i had already purchased a training however i really was
dragging my feet because up until this point i had works you know 12 or 13 years full time working
and so i was just kind of enjoying that i had saved up enough money and could take a couple
months off to figure out what i wanted to do so i did take a couple months off and it took me about
two months to go through the training which really probably could have been done in two or three days
so at that point i had started scanning in july and by august i was sending in my first shipment
so now fast forward five years later i actually have my own training beginner fba to help new
sellers get started they actually i released it last year and i updated it just recently this
month it's now fully updated for 2022 including 16 trainings and if you are used to my youtube videos
i don't really have any fluff i'm not rattling off long long things i'm just getting to the point
which is exactly what that course is so it walks you through step by step everything from how
to set up your amazon selling account two how to source what to look for tools you're going to need
tools that will help you out along the way how to run business reports how to see what's selling
all that kind of stuff all the way through the end so it's really meant for like your
first six months of selling but it comes with this really awesome community of sellers who are both
experienced and getting started just like you it's friendly helpful and you can pop in there anytime
and ask any questions and i'm there to help answer them so that's available to you it's lifetime
access as long as you need it so you can be in the group you know for the first three months the
first year the first five years however long you want to be a part of the community you are welcome
so grab that course at beginnerfba.com if you want my help getting started selling on amazon
so like i mentioned i did the course in july and or finished it by july and then in august i was
you know scanning stuff not really purchasing anything kind of second guessing everything
is this good enough is this gonna work so if you are doing that as a new seller it's totally
normal but by august 17th i had my first shipment up and ready to go so all together ended up being
25 items which is a pretty good size for shipments you want as many items as you can
just so that you don't pay a whole lot in shipping eating up all the profits that you found
so as soon as you have a decent size that you're comfortable with go ahead and
send that in as your first shipment so here's mine so 25 units broken up into three different
shipments because i didn't have inventory placement turned on and i actually never have
if you're not familiar with inventory placement it's a service where you can pay amazon an extra
fee per item to hopefully pack your stuff into fewer shipments now the thing that you have to
realize is like you'll see a lot of my stuff is oversized that was gonna go to its own warehouse
anyways so i would still be sending two different shipments only now i'm gonna have to pay more
money on top of it i'm not 100 sure on the fee but it is an extra fee per item to do this and
it might still break up your shipment so just know that but if you ever do need it you want inventory
placement if you have like 50 things going to five different warehouses and you're like this is crazy
look if they are oversized or shoes those are always going to go to their own warehouse
but if it's just everyday items that you don't see an issue you can go ahead and turn
inventory placement on in your fba settings and then it will hopefully consolidate it all that to
say i did not ever have inventory placement on so 25 units went to three different warehouses
so let's break down and take a look so shipment one was 19 units total and it just consisted of
these six items so these odor eaters and this toilet bowl cleaner i found in the walmart
clearance aisle i highly highly recommend scanning the walmart clearance aisle when you're starting
literally scan everything on it it just gives you an idea of what to look for and we'll get into
why it was a great thing that i did in just a bit these two wonder woman makeup bags i actually got
at cvs or walgreens i can't remember exactly which one it was but i remember that's where i got them
at it was a drugstore which is kind of interesting because i couldn't sell any you know brand
toy brands like that so these were just i was able to sell them even though i was gated probably in
mattel or whoever makes wonder woman anyways besides the point if you can sell it you can
sell it so go ahead and send it in these two items this was a pc game and this was a
jansport backpack those i got from a local mom and pop liquidation center so all together i
had these items and they were all sourced at three different places so i sent in six odor
readers five of the toilet bowl cleaner two wonder woman makeup bags one of the other wonder woman
one pc game and four backpacks so a lot of times people are wondering if you only find one of
something is it worth it and if it's worth it for you so if the profit's there and it's worth it
just to list the one item you don't have to have multiple then in shipment two i had these walmart
dolls that i got on clearance and these accordion minions um sunshade so those went to one shipment
again these were walmart clearance items and just one of each went in that shipment now this
minion shade was pretty long you know how long car shades are so and the doll is probably i don't
know 24 inches tall shipment 2 also included this guitar hero playstation game and i do remember
that they were just in the area around electronics like in the middle there and one of them had like
a a dent or something was wrong with the box so i could only get one even though they had two there
but i mean it was pretty decent sized item so i'm excited that i got it and it's kind of like
this is what i mean i was literally scanning everything i could tell you right now that a lot
of this stuff i probably wouldn't scan anymore but in the beginning you got to scan everything and
then shipment three had one doll and one minions shade and at this point i was recycling boxes so
i was going to grocery stores calling trader joe's asking them to save them i hadn't bought any boxes
for a while i was trying to just recycle because you can recycle boxes with fba so that's what i
was doing okay so if you remember i said that i was kind of dragging my feet sending in that first
shipment but what happens once you sent your first shipment in you kind of break through that fear of
the unknown you're not sure what you're doing and boom you are off and running so august 17th was
shipment one right around the corner august 21st i sent in a whole nother shipment so i don't totally
remember exactly where i was or what i was doing i know my first shipment i sourced in utah but now
i'm like up and running and ready to go so let me tell you about shipment number two this one had a
variety of items 26 items total and you can see i had my first replenishable so what happened in my
first shipment is i found those odor eaters in the walmart clearance aisle they were not supposed to
be there for whatever reason that specific walmart didn't want to take the time to put them in their
planogram of their regular aisle where those kind of odor eater insoles go so they just put them on
the clearance that was a huge win for me because i found them in the clearance i can guarantee you
i never would have scanned them in the regular aisle however now that i knew about them i was
literally grabbing them all over so i replend my first replan i found on my very first shipment
that's one key takeaway i hope you take from this video is just because i found it on the clearance
at one walmart every walmart store level has the ability to put whatever they want on clearance so
just because it was on clearance i'm now looking for it on regular shelf everywhere else which is
what i did so just take that away just because you find it on clearance you might be able to
find it at other stores or on regular shelves at other walmarts so anyways now i had this
beaten path book which is a book that i had in the rv so i was skating stuff around the rv as you do
when you're learning or your house if you don't live in an rv so i had bought this for the travel
and i didn't really need it so i went ahead and i sent it in to amazon to sell it similarly this
is like a camera caddy thing that my roommate had purchased so it was brand new and we saw it
was selling for like 150 on amazon so we're like heck yeah let's send it in these water babies i'm
pretty sure those were walmart clearance a mouse i got it big lots this noodle i got at big lots
these petty eggs i got those at sally's beauty and i don't know if they didn't have as seen on
tv then or i just didn't know i wouldn't sell them now because as seen on tv is ip alert like they
will probably send you an ip but i was sending selling a lot of these so beginner's luck or
they didn't have it at the time i'm not sure but i got those at sally's beauty and then a shilling um
horse and writer i can't remember where i got him could have been tuesday morning could have been
walmart just a couple days later i've got another shipment going out so on august 23rd was my third
shipment honestly i don't know what i was doing i was probably just so excited i probably should
have held some for make it all in one shipment but i didn't know so anyways i'm sending them out
i don't care i'm just fulfilling sending as much stuff as i can so that i can feed the beast
and make more money back and go buy more stuff so august 23rd again i'm on the walmart clearance
aisle for pretty much all of this i believe i scanned the power tools so i had this screwdriver
these mattress pads were from walmart they were one of the bulkier things that i'd ever sent in
i got another clearance this is just a craft mat of course we've got our odor eaters some
golf balls and then again we're in august so technically some are still going strong however
walmart's getting ready for back to school and getting ready for their fall stuff so all
these swimways were on clearance so i scanned them and they sold and then i also had some
battery packs that i sent in for power tools so all of this was completely random clearance stuff
but they fit my rank guidelines and they made five dollars profit so i was sending them in
it's funny to note that there's a couple of things like i don't think i could sell those
minion accordions i'm gated in automotive so i could sell them at the time but i don't think i
could sell them again if i found them same with swimways i believe i'm gated in swimways now so
things happen all the time and things change but i could sell it if you can sell it
sell it if things change they change but if it's letting you sell it go ahead and sell it
if you want my free rank guideline of guidelines to stick within when you're starting out as you're
just to make sure that you'll know that what's the rank that's gonna sell you can get it for
free when you go to my email list and sign up for my email it's delivered right over to you the link
is below it's a helpful tool for you when you're sourcing to know what to buy and what to look for
august 24th again we got another back-to-back shipment why didn't i hold up i have no idea
i know we were on the move a lot so it could have been i was just trying to get them out before we
moved to the next place but i'm not 100 sure so again we have these lexars i got these from
big lots this walmart um fishing princess thing that was from walmart clearance aisle and then of
course more insoles that was i scented 12 insoles with that order and i think around this time we
were getting into ohio because i remember going around all of ohio's walmarts literally at the
city i think we were in cleveland grabbing all the insoles literally we would stop i would run in the
store grab them and we would take off to the next one you gotta do what you gotta do so august 29th
my next shipment this was just a random scan when i was at trader joe's these trader joel's bags
these are those insulated like refrigerator bowl whatever you call it picnic bags so those were
selling so of course i bought them i sent in five with that shipment and then shipment number six my
last shipment in the month of august so as you can see i was off and running took me a while to get
started but then i was all in so now at this point i'm also sourcing toys r us and i can't sell any
toy like i can sell some toys just like you can probably sell some toys but i couldn't sell big
brands like lego or marvel or disney or hot wheels barbie any of that i was gated but there were some
toys that i could sell so these are some toys that i found at toys r us so these chubby puppies which
i don't know if they're still a thing these little lives these little mouse things those were selling
really great and the cool thing is that i also was finding them at t.j.maxx and ross so that's
what i'm talking about whenever you find something in one place go ahead and look for it everywhere
these little lives when they get hard to find like if they're the older generation they go for a lot
of money so that's something to still watch out for i still am scanning them when i'm outsourcing
again i've got more insoles going in and then these two walmart branded ozark whatever tumblers
those were again on the clearance aisle so so much of my stuff was the clearance aisle plus branching
out into other stores so i've got cvs sally's i was sourcing local discount stores because if you
can get it cheaper obviously you're gonna make more money you could even probably sell regular
msrp and make money if you're able to get it cheap enough like at a discount or liquidation store
anything i found i was using that as a branch lead to lead me to other things and you also
see i was just scanning stuff around the house skating stuff when i was already at the grocery
store so just scan scan scan scan scan skin as much as you can as a new seller scan everything
the best place to start is in your house you don't have to sell it but it helps you know like hey is
this something to look for is this brand hot is it not all that kind of stuff you learn a lot okay so
how did all that stuff cut work out and how did it do so those two makeup bags were a complete dead
i think what happened was they must have just sold when i scanned them so the rank was low
but i wasn't using keepa and i didn't think i knew how to use keeper at the time so i didn't see that
the ranks are normally up in the 500 thousands in beauty which is pretty high rank and beauty so
those were a huge dud and shouldn't have bought them but you know you'll learn also those veggie
pillars that i got from big lots that was another dead i should not have bought them i think the
same thing happened i wasn't using keypad so i didn't really check the history of the ranks
but those didn't sell i think i actually ended up getting some back like having them return to me
and taking them the goodwill after a couple months so that was a dead shipment 2 that cam caddy that
we sent in it did sell and then they returned it and it was all damaged so we ended up just keeping
it i think we've now gotten rid of it but it was kind of like defeating i'm pretty sure that was
my first return and it was like what the heck like they opened it it looks like they took it all out
anyways returns happen and they are frustrating when you first start but especially when there's
a big ticket item like that luckily it was just something from the house and it wasn't something
i had spent you know my limited money on to buy shipment number four those fishing things that
was a dud probably shouldn't have bought those and the trader joe's stuff actually turned out
well those all sold i think they're hard to find if not impossible fine anymore but it did turn me
on to scanning inside trader joe's which i still do today and then like i mentioned those toys r
us toys they led me to the whole brand so i was scanning all the chubby puppies i eventually sold
a lot of those chubby puppies and the little lives for probably a year year and a half so those were
great leads that i found within my first couple of weeks now remember this whole time i was gated
in everything i couldn't sell grocery couldn't sell beauty you couldn't sell otc couldn't sell
you know big toy brands i was gated in everything probably a lot like you are in fact new sellers
right now i think are gated in less things than i was at the time um but if you need help getting
ungated i do have guys that walk you through step by step they come with an awesome community who
can help you both getting on gating and your whole amazon journey after that so definitely
check those out if you want my help with those but that is my first shipments first couple weeks i
don't know why i kept sending them in every other day but whatever i was sending in stuff
and i was off and running and it has been such a great experience i'm so happy to be able to
tell you guys about it because hopefully it can inspire you because this amazon thing does work
if you're willing to put in the time and money and energy to do it and make it go it's not get
rich it's not get rich overnight but it does work if you want to build this business for yourself
if you want my help getting started i have the beginner fba course if you want to know what i'm
sourcing and selling right now there's the bolo group where you can get profitable leads to look
for from other sellers so thank you guys so much for watching i hope you enjoyed this video let me
know what you sent in on your first shipment i'm excited to know was it a dead did it go good was
it a replan thanks for watching and i'll see you back here for another amazon selling video
you