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 six years now this will be
my sixth q4 and i'm super excited to get started so i'm out here in oklahoma on my property and
i guess i'm just doing a tour of the different ponds so this is the front pond
which we call cow pond because there used to be cows here and they were always in it but anyways
so it's a little dry right now but hopefully it fills back up soon because it looks really pretty
i'm literally sitting in the guest rv spot it will be up on hip camp soon if you want to stay
in an rv you have to have an rv so anyways it's here and there's cows across the street which are
probably going to make an appearance in this video but we'll see how good my software is if
it removes them or not all right so if you like this video please do me a favor and subscribe to
my channel if you are not already it is free for you and it means a lot for me so thank you so much
i am getting ever closer to 50 000 subscribers and i'll be doing big giveaway when that happens so
thank you so much for subscribing and hopefully you win something when we hit that 50 000 mark
while we're talking youtube real quick i want to give a shout out to my august super thanks so i
think on every video there's a way to give super thanks which is like just a small like thank you
to me for the video it means a lot to me so thank you so much to my august super thanks
jennifer whitton and chuck everett in today's video we are continuing our q4 prep series here
and we're going to go over the 10 mistakes to avoid during q4 there are mistakes that i have
made and other sellers have made so hopefully they can help you not make those mistakes if this is
your first or second q4 i actually created a new playlist so it's q4 2022 it is right on my channel
and all of my q4 prep series are in there so if you missed any of them you can go right back there
and check it out also today is super exciting because it is officially my q4 bolo plus coaching
group is open it is now open for you to join for a limited time only there'll be a limited amount of
sellers in there and then it's going to close so if you want to join it here's what it is it is 16
weeks of bolos and included in that we'll have seven live hangouts two holiday parties i am super
excited because who doesn't love a holiday party where you're literally at home and you could just
leave whenever you want to so i'm excited for those we'll be going over different aspects
of how to prep for q4 in the very beginning as well as there's a lot of different dates that
come up throughout q4 that you want to be aware of and know what to do and what to look for and
all that so we're going to cover it all and of course awesome bolos now you might have heard me
talk about this before but last q4 everyone in the group was on the hunt for that hot product
and we were fbming it and we were fbming it fast we were all making crazy profits and it
was super exciting everyone's sharing their like screenshots of how much money they made that day
so i sold myself in 48 hours i fbm'ed these products and made over 1400 profit that's
profit after i paid to ship the items profit after i paid for the items cost of goods right
that's pure profit that i made in 48 hours so i'm really excited to see what we're all hunting and
chasing this year i've already got one item that i'm pretty sure is already hot so i'm excited for
the group to officially be open and we can start sharing q4 is the most exciting time of the year
so hopefully i see you in the group if not i will still be doing videos right here on youtube
alright so let's jump into the 10 mistakes to avoid during q4 mistake number one if this is
the only one you watch in this video it's a big one it's not sending in enough inventory almost
every like new seller including myself your first q4 you're probably going to make this mistake
maybe because you don't have the capital i'm not sure if you're just not new and you just
don't know right you don't know what you don't know so here is a tip everything sells during q4
like everything people are just spending money like left and right and so everything is selling
if you have your store full of inventory as much as you possibly can it will sell so it's really
exciting time but every seller's regret from their first q4 including myself is simply not having
enough inventory so you a lot of sellers start running out if they didn't properly plan for it
in like late november early december you'll start running out of inventory and at that point
you can fbm you can go buy more and fbm it but it's too late to fba and so if you're only doing
fba you're kind of like done for the year because you can send stuff in and hope that
it'll sell and stuff will sell into january january is just as good as december november
however you're missing out on that last time of the year and the hot like selling season so
plan to have as much inventory as you possibly can because that is the number one mistake to avoid
is running low on inventory keep that steady flow of inventory going into amazon as much as you can
all q4 and into january and you will have a really great sales season for your q4
mistake number two is simply running out of supplies okay you guys here's the story this
just happened in august so i ordered a bunch of poly bags because i was running low on polybags
if you follow my instagram i had this massive like fifteen thousand dollars or no sixteen thousand
dollars that i spent in one day sourcing and i it was like fifteen thousand dollar potential profit
and i it was a lot of little things and i needed those dang polybags and amazon
lost the order or ups or someone lost the order so it took two weeks to get my polybags from amazon i
had to wait for it to be like officially lost then i got a refund now i didn't have to necessarily
wait i thought i had enough polybags turns out i was three little polybags short but you don't
want that to happen during q4 now there's a lot of sources for polybags and i had the luxury that
i was like oh i can just put them in you know the eight by ten instead of the six by nine poly bag
i had all my other supplies that was the only one i was running short on but you don't want to run
short on supplies during q4 so stock up now if you need to go and get a bunch of boxes from uline or
from lowe's walmart wherever you get your boxes do it now if you're gonna fbm get that supply now get
like as soon as you buy the product that you're gonna list fbm get the shipping box also while
you're in store or on your trip that day nothing is worse than selling something and then running
around and if that walmart doesn't happen to have padded envelopes because it happens all the time
you have to go to the next city over or whatever it is you don't want to run out of supplies
so stock up on supplies now if that means ordering from the post office their free priority supplies
do that free padded envelopes free flat rate boxes get your supplies in order now order more than you
think you might need because all your supplies and tools are a tax write-off so if you join
the q4 group that's a tool for your business a tax write-off if you need to get on gating
all those things are tax write-offs including your supplies so you might as well stock up now
i always stock up at the end of the year anyways so mistake number two running out of supplies all
right q4 mistake number three going too deep on a product so last year gabby's dollhouse was really
hot and those items those big doll houses i think they were about 70.69 or something
at walmart and they were selling for like 130 so they were a hot product however they might have
actually been selling for more however amazon price capped it they price kept i want to say
it was probably in october or november they price capped it so if you were sitting on all of those
in the warehouse you were probably making like ten dollars instead of the you know whatever profit
you wanted i didn't actually sell one or no i did sell one i can't remember what the profit
was anyways you're probably not making the profit that you thought and you know 70 is kind of a lot
for a product and if you went deep on it and you got like 10 or 20 however many you happen to find
because it was a hot product you're gonna buy them all right if you went deep on that
you were kind of screwed because now there's a price cap on it and you know anything can happen
alternatively what could happen is if you go deep on a product you think it's
secret product no one knows about it it's awesome product and then suddenly they show
up all over at walmart and now all these sellers are going down down down and you're again losing
profit or even worse the item doesn't sell you thought it was going to be great and it doesn't
sell and now you're sitting on it so don't go deep on one product that's why we say go wide
meaning a lot of different products instead of deep on one product to where if that one product
kind of fails you have tied up a lot of your money and resources in that product so go wide and not
deep this q4 right in hand with that mistake is mistake number four don't take risks and tie up
your capital if you are in your first or second q4 and you have limited funds or if you're in
your fifth q4 and you have limited funds don't take needless risks and tying up your capital so
while you might think an item is going to be hot that doesn't mean that it actually is so i don't
really take any risk now when i'm out scanning and i'm looking at the ranks if it's a christmas item
and the rank is let's say it's a home item we're in september i know everyone celebrates faster and
faster now but or sooner or whatever that anyways i know that happens now but still if it's like 500
000 and home that is a good risk because i know that it's already selling at that it's just going
to get better as christmas approaches however if if it's a million something in home i'm just going
to scan it the next time i see it i'm not going to take that risk and tie up my money right now
a lot of people ask if they should buy toys now and hold them toy sell year round i don't buy i
don't i'm not going to say that anymore i have some legos that will eventually stop being made
and i'm storing them and next year i'm gonna sell them other than that because i have the capital i
don't buy stuff and hope to sell like i'm not buying stuff right now and holding it for q4
even though q4 is already here i'm not buying it and holding it for like december or november no
i'm just sending it in now because if i send it in now sell it now i'm going to flip it take that
money and profit go buy more stuff and it's just going to snowball into more profit so don't take
any needless risks um use all the tools like keepa you know if you're in any of my groups you can ask
you don't have to tell the product but you can say hey this is what's going on would you risk it
and get other sellers feedback because it's not just me everyone has different ways of selling
so it's always great to be in a positive community and get that feedback from other sellers
as far as what ranks are good during q4 i have my q4 retail arbitrage guide which will tell you like
what ranks i am comfortable with mean in my comfortable ranks mean that they are going to
sell for sure like they will sell and then for q4 ranks which you can go a lot higher in ranks for
q4 so that is part of my q4 guide as well as so many other things like when's the best sells what
to look for what actually i have sold in the past i have it all in the guide and it's really like
if you're new to retail arbitrage it's really like a little cheat sheet to read to arbitrage overall
but specifically for q4 so it's a really valuable guide i edit it every year to update so it's been
updated for 2022. the link is below if you want to check it out but anyways so there's ranks that
you can go up higher but again you don't want to go into the millions unless of course it's books
mistake number five is sending in fba products too late again i break this all down in the q4
guide but you don't want to send any products like if you're gonna sell it for thanksgiving it needs
to be there by a certain date right this is fba it takes a while you have to pack it up you have
to ship it ups has to get it to them amazon has to check it in and the warehouses get backed up
so don't send holiday specific stuff too late you're really going to have to fbm that stuff
as the holidays get closer mistake number six is miscalculating how much it's gonna cost to ship
if you're doing fbm and believe me if you've not heard me before you're gonna want to do
fbm this q4 but you want to make sure that you are calculating the shipping costs correctly
or you might lose money on your fbm orders so i have a video coming out next week which is like
a deep dive into shipping templates and all of that on fbm i have some other fbm videos
as well on my channel but basically you don't want to miscalculate that shipping cost because
you're gonna end up losing money or like breaking even and you're not working to break even right
i always say if it's lightweight under a pound fits in a padded envelope you're
probably gonna pay at the very most for first class um usps you're gonna pay six dollars but
you'll probably end up paying like if it's like really really light it'll
probably be like 350 or four dollars if it's a little bit more towards a pound it might be
five dollars but it's really like if you do six dollars if you buffer in that amount into your um
profit calculation then you are comfortable that you are going to make a profit and always just
list one only list one if you are uncomfortable with or you don't know what it's gonna cost just
list one so that way if you sell it and lose money you didn't sell ten okay mistake number seven
this is another big one okay don't panic drop your prices like i said january is just as good as
december and november so you don't have to panic drop your price because christmas is getting close
people are going to still buy it you know people have parties all the time they have
their different friends parties and families parties that are after christmas there's other
things out there that people are still going to be buying for people are going to be using
their gift cards and so there's no reason to panic drop your price and you will see
people who didn't watch this video panic dropping their prices so don't match them let them sell
out because i promise that price is going to come back up if it's a hot item and so you don't have
to panic drop and lose out on money your items will sell into january mistake number eight
not using your sales tax exempt form okay why not get the most profit you possibly can out of an
item not only that if it's an expensive item not having to pay sales tax on it can really help you
like that item be profitable for you whereas if you had to pay sales tax maybe it wouldn't be
as profitable and you would have just passed on it so you can use your sales tax pretty much anywhere
like you should always ask the only and people do use them at target but that's the only place
that i don't use it i ask at ross i've not had any rosses take it but some do so it never hurts
to ask just ask you can use your sales tax exempt at checkout and you are good to go so definitely
if you have one use it if you don't have one you can get it from your state's department of
revenue or secretary of state like one of those places just google your state plus sales tax
and you can get to that form mistake number nine is not knowing your numbers so if you are thinking
this product is profitable but you're not taking into account the supplies it's gonna cost how
much it's gonna cost to ship to amazon your time because your time is valuable and worth something
so if something is like gonna make a dollar and is that really worth your time i mean maybe it is
for you i don't know but for me i always stick to my five dollars minimum profit at 50 roi
but if you don't know your numbers like same hand in hand with that fbm if you're not totally sure
that this item is making money with the shipping then wait take it home and figure out how much
it's gonna cost to ship before you list it like knowing your numbers is so important for any
business owner and so many business owners do not understand them so while you think you might be
making money you actually might be losing money or cutting even and you don't want to do that in
your business so knowing your true profit numbers like how much profit is this item going to make
me calculating in your time money like if you had to go drive somewhere and gas is expensive for you
or you just don't have the time and it's not worth it like there's so much fomo that is gonna go
around during q4 when you see everyone outsourcing and selling and if you can't for whatever reason
you get serious fomo but you have to understand your numbers and your value on your time so maybe
it just isn't there for you whatever the reason is for your business you have to know your numbers
nothing is worse than thinking something selling and that you're making money and you're
actually not like you might be like oh yeah this item's selling but you forgot that you kind of
dropped it two dollars and now you had five dollars now you're only making three dollars
and is it worth it to keep re-planning it i don't know that's up to you and you know your numbers
now i absolutely love seller board i talk about it all the time not only is it an expensive tool
but it's two months free if you've never used it before so they gave me a code it will be linked
below but i love it because right there on your phone you can see what you've sold and the profit
for that item it also forecasts like where you're at this month and where they think you're going to
be what you did last month what you might do next month it's a really awesome tool i seriously enjoy
it because i love to be able to easily see right on my phone what's selling that day what's selling
that month and just filtering around to see how i did you've probably seen in my videos i always
i'm sharing earlier this screenshot of that fbm profit that was seller board so i highly recommend
seller board if you just want an easy way to know your numbers like that right on your cell phone
okay mistake number 10 it goes hand in hand with everything i'm talking about not having enough
capital it's really number one and number ten i like bookended that so not having enough capital
is really going to hinder how much inventory you can send in so if at all possible make sure that
you are rolling over all your profits of your business into more inventory throughout the rest
of the year and come january you can pull out all those profits that you made from your hard work
during q4 but you want to have enough capital now to have as much inventory as you can now so that
means not taking those risks right on bad buys that may or may not pan out that means flipping
your inventory now instead of waiting and holding all of these different 10 mistakes all come into
number 10 which is having enough capital so if you haven't already plan out how much capital you
have how you can increase it if at all possible responsibly but you want to have as much capital
as you possibly can because things are going to move super fast if they have not started already
they are about to in the next couple weeks so thank you guys so much for watching if you want my
help getting started selling on amazon i have the beginner fba course if you want to join the bolo
group the q4 bolo group plus coaching it is now open doors close october 1st so definitely check
it out and see if you want to join i look forward to hanging out with you there we have the live
hangouts where we all get a chat i learn something new every time it's really such a great time but
thank you guys so much for watching i will be back here for another amazon selling video