what's up guys thanks for joining me for
a new video today
i am joined by brian who has been on the
channel a few times before
and we are back to just kind of check in
with each other where we are at with our
online businesses so what's up brian
hey what's up ryan how you doing hey man
doing good doing good how about you
i'm doing pretty good awesome i'm glad
you could find time to uh join me
for this interview so you were telling
me before we started recording that
you had uh because me and brian actually
met
in my college web development course but
like we would be
seriously like waiting for class to be
over so we could start talking about
merch by amazon
and um so what tier are you in now um
i'm at the hundred thousands here and i
have about
35 000 listings up on amazon
and that was without automation right
yeah without automation
dude that's impressive that's uh that
takes a lot of dedication so
what was is that what you were doing
while you were still in school because
you graduated and now you're working
a real job so like have you found time
to upload like
with your job and everything else going
on yeah i have a pretty easy job so
uh i have one computer in front of me
for the job and then my laptop right
next to me
looking at amazon and just uploading to
amazon and stuff so
dude i i mean i've definitely been there
before man for sure
i used to do that with like world of
warcraft honestly like i can think back
the first time i started doing that was
it was like computer and then like world
of warcraft
network of bots just like running around
making the in-game gold that i could
then sell on paypal for like real money
that's crazy yeah the business mind
right yeah
uh so how are your merch sales going in
uh 2021
uh my march sales have been kind of up
and down lately i've been focusing on
uh getting started with fba
oh that's cool man so um that's also
good it's like part of the i feel like
it's part of the natural evolution
a couple weeks ago i had an interview
with
jason on my channel and we actually like
started by talking about amazon merch
and his success there
and how he should probably like as a
logical next step get on seller central
and like at a minimum
be able to take those trending designs
and put them up on uh
you know various other products uh so
you're gonna do fba what are you
what like i guess let's talk about what
where are you caught
like what is your is there anything that
you're stuck at
uh right now i finished the product
research phase and i'm just trying to uh
source the product
and uh place my first order with my
supplier
nice nice uh how long did you spend in
the product research phase
uh i think it took me a month or so
the final product i didn't use any
software like jungle scout or
viral launch i just found the product
actually through um
google images i typed in certain uh
keywords into google images and i just
looked through the uh
search results and i found that uh first
product no that's a cool way of doing it
so i know you're in my like fba course
too i think right
yeah yeah have you like filled out the
workbook to do like the financial
validation
um for the product ideas that you get
uh yeah uh being in your fba course one
of the perks you get is that uh workbook
where you can validate a product um
product ideas and stuff like that and
the financials of it
so yeah i did put in all my um my
product costs and my shipping cost
and the profit margin is uh before ppc
for c shipping is like 45 which is crazy
for this
damn that's like a dream product man
that's crazy
yeah and it's definitely possible i've
seen products i think as high as like
the best one i've found that was
practical was like
maybe 40 actually no you know what i'd
be lying actually
the first product i ever launched it was
like selling in 10 packs and i sold it
in a 20 pack
and by just doubling it my first
products profit margin was like 44
so i think i've been there yeah dude
those profit those products where you
have huge profit margins are the best
yeah it's that it's that like safety net
you know because if your ppc runs crazy
uh it's like it's not gonna break the
bank at least as long as you're
generating some sales to offset it
um yeah yeah you got some wiggle room to
play with around with ppc
yeah dude so that's good though that
that workbook in the course that like
lets you do the financial validation
before you really spend money
to me like i tried to make that as good
as possible because
i remember the first time i went through
the process and like someone was
teaching me
and i had like a variation of that
workbook that i was using
and like i openly talk about i spent
three months almost like just under
three months
doing the like research and validation
and i probably done it on like
25 products it was absurd but
each time i did it too i felt like i
learned something new and i felt like i
was
really seeing things like from a seller
perspective
you know yeah i i hear you
yeah so no jungle scout too that's uh
that's interesting but you know it's
like better not
you don't need it it's kind of a crutch
you know what i mean so i always tell
people to like
if you use it you can use it but also do
manual validation
go through count your actual competition
you know yeah these tools like that
everyone else just use
uses like jungle scout and viral launch
you're probably gonna find the same
products as everyone else so
i think one of the big like reasons that
i have success with amazon is that
the way i do product research is like
completely different from everybody else
i don't use
tools like merchant former for merch or
jungle scout for fbi i just manually
looked through the internet
for product ideas dude that's a good
that's a good tip
and i it's kind of like zigging while
everybody else zags
you know and um being being a contrarian
can often pay off so i do like that as a
as a tip um for me also actually
speaking of the research tools like
there's one called flying research
for the print on demand stuff that was
interesting
like i don't know how they're doing it
but they seem to have like dug up
different
t-shirt ideas then a lot of the overlap
that i would see looking at like
merchant former and merch ninja so it
was kind of nice like when i first saw
that tool i was like oh man i look like
a genius now because i'm coming up with
these new ideas but in reality it's just
they're just being kind of given to me
on a silver platter yeah
yeah um so how is uh how's working nine
to five and kind of
balancing work work and life to um
build your you know passive income
business uh so for me my job's pretty
easy
i have a good amount of free time so i
do spend
a good amount of time on the amazon
stuff while i'm working my job
so it's pretty easy to balance out nice
man any um do you listen to like any
business uh
podcasts or like youtube channels that
maybe you'd like to recommend to people
yeah i watch a lot of seller sessions i
think danny does a really good job
really he goes really in depth with the
pvc and marketing stuff which i really
like
since that's not something i i'm too
strong at
and also there's another guy called my
amazon guy he posts
like pretty much every day um all sorts
of updates within like seller central
and stuff like
uh ui changes new tools new brand
registry stuff and
and stuff like that so those two i
really like
nice i think i've heard of the my amazon
guy um have to double check but i love
danny i forget his last name but seller
sessions
uh he's he's incredibly well versed when
it comes to
anything amazon fba and he actually dude
he had like
my favorite episode of seller sessions
was he got like an
all-star team of amazon experts together
just to without saying his name but i'm
not afraid to say it kevin david
just to bash him and they went on for
like an hour and a half
just ripping him to shreds but they
never named him but like pretty much
everybody knew who they were talking
about
well i didn't know he did that i gotta
go watch that dude yeah find it it's
from probably like a year and a half ago
but like that's how fired up everybody
was
like that they all like got on there but
i think like if you say his name
and you're prominent enough on youtube
like he has lawyers that just go after
you so
wow that's stupid yeah it's crazy dude
um
like anybody that doesn't know who we're
talking about basically like kind of the
one of the original fake gurus of um
the amazon fba space and definitely like
a master marketer you know like his
marketing efforts are um
top-notch so he's made quite a bit of
money
uh selling an fba course when he doesn't
even sell on amazon fba he's been caught
like faking his numbers and stuff like
that but
yeah you can watch like one of his
videos and then he'll follow you around
the internet with all these retargeting
ads on like facebook and like read it
and like literally everywhere
infinite budget yeah um yeah you
i i definitely see a lot of them and
every now and then i accidentally click
them
yes yeah uh so what else can we talk
about man like sir you're gonna shift
kind of
from amazon merch where last time we had
you on by the way
what did you what had you sold like two
2 000 shirts in like two days or
something crazy yeah back in august i
hit a big trend with the uh
byden harris um of politics
niche i was one of the first people on
amazon to put up a bottom hair
shirt i put it up back in like july or
something and
uh i got a few sales between july and
august and then once like joe announced
that
uh kamala was his like vp uh my sales
just like exploded that day
and i ended up selling like over 750
buying hair shirts that day
and that was like the most i made in a
day
that's so crazy man i was like excited
that i sold 100 in a day
oh man so dude now that you're gonna be
are you on you are on seller central
right
yeah yeah so just think like
with seller central if you're early to
that trend and you know it's gonna be
big
like literally you can be first to
every single biden harris
on this product niche
yeah man like that's like i feel like
you know the
t-shirts are probably what's gonna sell
best but you can unlock
so many more sales just by using the
printful integration or whatever you end
up using and uh listing some more
products for sale
uh yeah back then i wasn't uh on seller
central but uh now i
am so if i hit a big trend i'll
definitely push all those like printful
products into uh seller central and get
even more sales and
uh take up more internet real estate
dude yeah uh you know what's funny too
one of my biggest successes
but the benefit of being on like the
youtube channel one of the biggest
successes i had last year was
uh gifted to me by somebody who like
wasn't using anything but amazon merch
so they were like hey like this trend is
gonna be big just go ahead and list it
on like anything that's not an amazon
merch product and i was like
all right and ended up selling like a
bunch of uh the printful catalog stuff
you know that didn't overlay or
overlap with merch um they just sent it
to me on facebook so i was like all
right thanks
so you have any plans for diversifying
like onto
um youtube or anything like that i know
i've seen a lot of new youtube channels
pop up
in the print on demand space uh no
probably not
for me i just stick to the uh amazon
selling i think that's best
that's a good i mean it's a good
strategy there's no no harm done in
being becoming an amazon expert so you
mentioned you weren't looking into kdp
are you thinking about doing anything
like for instance you know if you launch
the fba product
one of the first things i did when i got
it in stock was i listed it for sale on
ebay so are you gonna
like go after ebay even etsy or
walmart potentially um
i think maybe once my fba products are
established
um right now i'm just focusing just on
amazon and
once all my products are organically
ranked in the top of the search results
for their main keywords i think i'll
think about going to like
either ebay or walmart cool cool yeah
ebay for me was like
i didn't get a lot of sales but i got
some and it was super easy to set up you
know ebay
you can do it like a and you know what i
noticed too on ebay actually it probably
won't come as a surprise but like
i swear there are bots that just scrape
amazon's catalog and relist on ebay for
more money
and so i found a bunch of like my own
products on ebay my fba products
like with the same brand and everything
just marked up and i was like oh okay
so people are basically most likely
selling them for me and just doing the
drop ship
oh yeah that's best once you get free
those free sales yeah so and i've
definitely been the victim of that too
where i've like
i've like argued with my girlfriend that
like no things are cheaper on ebay than
on amazon
and i like buy something from ebay don't
check amazon and then it comes in an
amazon box and i'm like
damn it yeah you know you overpaid
yeah yeah cool man so like what is your
um
what's your plan like moving forward i
guess we can wrap the interview soon but
like what's your
near-term goal is it to get back into
the swing of things
like maybe fill fill up some more of
your amazon merch upload slots or is it
to kind of keep pushing with fba and
see where that takes you uh right now
i'm just
keep pushing with fba i think my goal is
to try to get like 10
products up for sale on amazon through
fba
and i think after that i'm not really
sure what to do
dude i really think like that fba is
presenting a better opportunity today
than it was
what's the date let's say one year ago
right like kind of like when everything
kind of started to hit the fan
yeah and i've said this publicly but
like
sellers started disappearing and that
doesn't mean that like the seller
disappeared but like listings were
disappearing
and it could be that they went out of
stock and amazon was limiting the
inventory that we could send um
also like ads man the ppc
i mean i don't sell like every product
in every space
right so i'm just speaking to my
personal experience but like ppc got a
lot cheaper too
so i really think that like right now is
a good time to
be on amazon and like be selling fba you
know contrary to what
people may think yeah and amazon sales
have increased
like a ton because of the cerveza
sickness so
if you're not selling on amazon you
gotta get on it right now
exactly man that's like the best advice
that we could wrap with because it's not
going anywhere
it's gonna be around you know soon we'll
have the little drone robots
dropping off our fba products on
people's doorsteps right
yeah that's gonna be awesome i can't
wait for that dude
you know what that just reminded me too
there was this really cool amazon
robotics video that i saw a couple
months ago maybe i'll do like a youtube
video
and just kind of like do like a watch
along or something because it was
showing like the future of the um
you know fba centers and the integration
of robotics basically
and basically replacing humans but it
was super cool from a tech perspective
so
yeah cool man hey i appreciate you being
here uh
anything you want to leave with um i'd
say
uh get on selling on amazon if you're
not already
hey that's right any way you can right
amazon merch kdp
ignite seller central whatever it is