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what's up guys Ryan here welcome to my
Amazon FBA miniseries for 2020 and
beyond now if you missed part 1 go back
and watch that really quickly where we
talked about what Amazon FBA is and how
much it costs to start today in part 2
we're gonna cover important FBA concepts
where we start to shift our perspective
from that of a buyer to that of a seller
on Amazon and we're gonna go over our
definition of what makes an ideal
product Before we jump into things real
quick let me recap this one more time my
name is Ryan Hoke I've sold over 1.4
million dollars on Amazon and I've been
teaching at the college level for over
five years going into my sixth year now
I wrote an amazon FBA mini course that
you can check out for free everything
that I have a link to on these slides
you'll be able to find in the
description you can also check out my
transparent monthly passive income
reports on my blog since day one since
my first profits I also spent over a
year writing what I believe to be is the
most in-depth Amazon FBA course it goes
into much greater detail than I can go
on or go into on youtube so if you want
to check that out there's a link as well
and the price is gonna go up when I
finish this mini course so you'll be
capturing a discount if you choose to
enroll anytime before the last video and
I'll let you guys know ahead of time
also find your why Warren Buffett the
Oracle of Omaha a legendary investor
once said if you don't find a way to
make money while you sleep you'll work
until you died that honestly whenever I
first heard that quote it has stuck with
me ever since and that really fuels the
flame inside of me to pursue not just
one passive income stream in the form of
Amazon FBA but multiple alright let's
dive into it first we're gonna cover
some important Amazon FBA concepts we're
going to look specifically at what BSR
is what the buy box is and we're gonna
make sure that we're all in the same
page and understand the distinction
between revenue and profit
alright so you might want to pause the
video for a second and go download these
two free Chrome extensions now I did say
free helium 10 has
hade upgrades but you don't need them
for what we're gonna be using helium 10
for there's always a link in the
description but if you need to pause the
video and go grab them go do that so DS
Amazon quick view is gonna help us see
the BSR of products in search results
now first we need to understand what BS
r is BS r stands for best seller rank it
is literally a rank that Amazon assigns
to each product in its catalog that has
made at least one sale so there are
products in the catalogue that do not
have a BS R that is an indicator that
they have not sold before but for the
most part when you search for like
standard products on Amazon the ones at
the top are gonna have the lowest BS are
indicating that relative to their
competition in their Amazon category
they are selling amongst the best so
that might be kind of counterintuitive
but think about it like if you're in
first place you're getting the most
sales and first would be the number one
which would be the lowest bs are
possible so in this case low PSR is
better alright and remember that it's
unique to each category and subcategory
so I went ahead and clicked one of these
garlic presses and scroll down and
listing and you see it's number 408 in
kitchen and dining so BSR 408 in kitchen
and dining and number two in garlic
presses so they just know that like they
have relative vs RS to their subcategory
as well
or at least relative ranks and then this
data point is extremely valuable data
point it updates multiple times
throughout the day at unknown intervals
there at least unknown to me and helium
10 is going to help us see BSR history
because if we go back one slide DS
amazon quick view shows us the BS RS of
each product at that moment in time that
we're searching but with DS amazon quick
view when we click a product listing so
now we're leaving the search results
what the thing I love most about the DSM
is on quick view is said you can
literally just perform a keyword search
and it's right there in front of your
eyes
you don't have to go clicking each
listing with helium 10 you do need to
click into each listing and then it will
inject the BSR and price history for you
and this is the free version of helium
10 so what you see in this picture right
here the Purple Line is the BSR so when
you see a climb like that it most likely
went out of stock a couple times for
this product and the the blue line is
the price history so you can kind of see
how they've changed the price over time
and then look at the BSR to see if that
had any effect on it one thing that you
commonly see is when you see the BSR
spike indicating that maybe they went
out of stock third-party sellers might
jump onto the listing and charge like
three times as much so you'll see like a
climbing VSR as well as a climbing price
I actually talked about that in my video
from a couple days ago and real quick
while we're looking at BS ARS in terms
of BS our history using helium 10 and
I'll probably go over this in the next
lecture as well but real quick I just
wanted to show you an example of like a
good one um
a medium one and a bad one so this is
what I would call a good BSR it's
consistently low and those massive
spikes again are probably just going out
of inventory like they got like a surge
in sales that they didn't foresee or
maybe their supplier had delays or who
knows what but they this is good this I
would call a little bit more of a
suspect PSR because it is spiking in
between you know as low as 10,000 BSR
and as high as 40,000 BS are those are
some pretty wide swings and unlike the
previous where we see it climbing
climbing climbing and then dropping
which would be indicative of running out
of stock and then coming back into stock
here you're just seeing a lot of
variants now I should note that what
you're selling matters a lot here
because it really each category and each
niche and each type of product has
different expectations so I mean we
don't need to go too in depth but just
understand that like depending on the
category
your product like do some some research
evaluate your competitors when I say
value evaluate your competitors I
literally mean doing what we're doing
right now except I'm looking at slides
and I prepared these ahead of time you
would go to Amazon and do a keyword
search and open up a bunch of browser
tabs to your competitors and then look
at the charts and see if you're seeing a
lot of variants or a lot of consistently
low BS RS and then try to figure out why
there's the discrepancy now this I would
call a bad DSR or sorry bad BSR history
so whatever product this graph is from
you probably want to be very careful
about selling now this is a relatively
small sample size if you're actually
looking at the dates across the bottom
this was only you know less than a week
but pretend that this was over the span
of a year anytime you see that trend
going up into the right you know unlike
on the stock market where up into the
right is a good thing that means it's
gaining value remember BSR is opposite
we want low BSR so if you see up into
the right that's not good this is a bad
indicator for this product you want to
see the DSR steadily going down or
consistently low not climbing alright
moving on let's talk about the criteria
of what makes a product an ideal product
so now we're starting to brainstorm
about like what are potential product
that we're gonna sell as a first product
is going to be and real quick before we
dive into that I just wanted to shout
out to Google Drive I think that running
your business and hosting your like
critical files in the cloud is a an
optimal way of approaching running an
online business I was not a fan of this
prior to starting my FBA business I mean
I I'm a you know IT person so I
understand the benefits of using the
cloud but like really when I started
with Amazon I had to get real serious
about that and move a lot of my business
to a place where I could access it from
my home computer my work computer my
laptop you know any different devices I
could still be running my Amazon
business because everything was in a
central location in the cloud on Google
Drive it's free it's easy to use
keep it simple guys check out Google
Drive if
you haven't all right and then I wanted
to just drop this in here we're starting
to think about again what products we
want to sell on Amazon this was the most
recent data point I could find on how
big Amazon's catalog was and I honestly
don't think this is true it says
amazon.com as of April 2019
has about 120 million products on the
catalogue now I think that number is
much higher personally but I don't want
this lecture to go on forever so I'm not
gonna get into it but you can probably
project that that number is definitely
over 200 million today and I honestly
would expect it to be closer to like 500
million personally alright so what makes
the ideal product these are gonna be
attributes that we want to have in our
potential product so things that we
bring personal knowledge and expertise
to it's always a plus it's not a
requirement but it definitely helps more
than it hurts high demand and low
competition now that's obviously asking
a lot that's asking for a golden egg in
a lot of cases and you know I spent
three months in the product research
phase when I was launching my first
product which is way too long and the
person that I had coaching me one day
said why haven't you placed an order yet
what products are you looking at I
showed him my list he said all right
that one right there looks perfect
you're gonna do it and I said well it's
not perfect here are the reasons and
he's like well nothing's perfect
just order that product and the rest is
history that's my best son well that
product wasn't my best seller but I grew
that into a brand and that's my
best-selling brand of products on Amazon
a low seasonality meaning we don't want
to see fluctuations based on this is
just ideal
it's not a absolute requirement but low
seasonality means that it sells
relatively consistently as far as volume
those year-round so if we're selling
anything related to like pools like
outdoor swimming pools we can expect
like if we're selling like rafts
floatation devices whatever water wings
we can expect to see a nice healthy dip
in BSR or
increase in demand in the warmer seasons
for those of us that don't live in the
southern United States and then outside
of then we're gonna expect to see the
BSR climb and less demand so we would
need to like project our inventory
levels appropriately and if this is your
first product guys don't don't introduce
that headache into the equation there's
no need
brand potential is always nice can we
expand this product into a brand of
similar products down the line because I
really think that establishing yourself
as a brand which probably sounds harder
than it actually is I really think that
that is a must in 2020 and moving
forward now it's not a like absolute
must if you don't do it you'll won't be
successful but seriously if you're like
willing to go that route the likelihood
of you achieving success and it's not
just like oh I'm in the positive and not
the negative therefore I'm successful
but like as far as cash flow goes to
generate the most cash flow possible and
project yourself to have the highest
chance of succeeding
I really think brand potential is
important now the shoe box test is again
not a requirement either it just is
basically asking like can the product
fit in a shoe box it's a good kind of
rule of thumb in an ideal scenario that
it would be able to because Amazon will
charge you different amounts as far as
storage tiers go based on the size of
your product as you would expect and as
well as shipping is going to be variable
based on the size of your product when
it's like packed and the weight of the
product so if it can fit in a shoe box
you're doing yourself favors and can it
pass a drop test can you drop it from
about five feet and it not break because
if it's gonna break from five feet
you're gonna have some problems and then
price range twenty to fifty dollars it's
just a general rule of thumb depending
on how much money you have to invest you
may be able to target like a high ticket
item but if it's your first product you
probably don't want to go that route
just so that you don't get burned
because there are a lot of variables
there's a lot of detail that goes into
this whole process it's just it is what
it is it's why so many people struggle
to succeed as FBA sellers so keeping on
the lower end is probably a good idea
but there is never
there's no actual saying price point
twenty to fifty dollars doesn't
translate into any like matter-of-fact
thing as far as like you selling on
Amazon that's just a general range that
I would suggest to first-time sellers
all right so it's not like it's not like
the things that we're going to talk
about on the next slide which actually
matter and they'll actually like
manifest as action items some of them
let's look at what we want to avoid in
our product so first thing we want to
avoid fragile items again if it can't be
dropped from like five feet without you
being sure it's not gonna break then
trust me you just don't want to deal
with this headache like Amazon customers
are very comfortable returning items and
leaving negative feedback and you're
rolling the dice with any product that's
breaking easily even if your suppliers
tell you like oh they'll pack it really
nicely and snugly and it won't break
trust me I have gone this route before
and who tried and thought that I knew a
better way and I've had to cut that
product loose after two reorders even
though it was profitable because it was
just breaking too much the returns were
killing me don't do it
avoid print-on-demand items now if
you're not familiar with the concept of
print-on-demand think like apparel you
know think made to order so products
that you may think like if you see a
t-shirt on amazon you think okay
someone's got like a massive warehouse
full of these pre-made t-shirts but it's
kind of evolved now to be where they can
sell products that don't exist and then
after they are sold they go and they
grab the blank t-shirt like a blank
canvas they feed it through the machine
and the machines can print the design
that was ordered onto the t-shirt this
is called print on demand it's actually
exploding in popularity over the last
few years in amazon has their own
program called merch by amazon if you
can see it there over my shoulder and
you definitely do not want to compete
with any products that they sell and you
can see all the products that they
currently sell above my shoulder here
but there's also people selling print on
demand like
coffee mugs leggings hats just all sorts
of things cell phone cases so stay away
from those steer clear also while I'm at
it
I do have a full-blown course on how to
succeed at Amazon's print-on-demand
program called Amazon merch I have made
over fifty thousand dollars a profit I'm
into your twenty thousand and if you're
interested there's always a link below
figured I'd plug it while we're on the
subject alright continuing avoid
oversized items again it's not just that
they're gonna cost you more with
shipping because they're bigger and with
storage cuz they're bigger and probably
base cost because they're bigger but
also when you're doing inbound shipping
like when you tell Amazon hey I'm
sending in X amount of products they're
gonna be packaged this way and they're
gonna be labeled this way if they're
oversized Amazon will tell you that
instead of sending them to one location
you're gonna have to send them to three
locations three Amazon warehouses and
that may not sound like a big deal but
trust me it's gonna impact your bottom
line negatively you have to spend more
money on inbound shipping than you
otherwise would have and it's it's a
pain it's just something not worth
dealing with alright avoid items made
from chemicals not only is there often
restrictions on these items you may have
to provide like an SDS safety data sheet
basically specifying like what your
products are actually made of you're in
need to get that from your supplier hope
that they have it and it's just more
headache than you need for your first
product items that include batteries
again are subject to much stricter
regulations and rules it's not that
people aren't selling plenty of products
that include batteries on Amazon but you
do not need to go through that for your
first product alright that's it for
today's lecture I have a homework
assignment for you though before you
come back for part three I want you to
create a list of about 40 products that
meet the criteria that we just covered
they don't have to meet everything but
also stay in that realm of like products
that you bring personal expertise to
because part of like what we you know
we'll talk about stuff in the neck
videos but if you can bring personal
expertise to something and make an
existing product on Amazon slightly
better through something that's not like
a big ask to your supplier or maybe it's
just including an add-on then you can
really you have the potential to stand
out and above your competition and the
cream tends to rise to the top on Amazon
again assuming that you can get some
visibility which I'll show you how to do
that through PPC advertising you should
be able to rank your product and start
that cash flow coming in on a regular
consistent basis so try to get 40
products written down and again this is
a great opportunity to go to google.com
slash drive it's free assuming you have
a gmail account you won't even need to
do anything it'll just pop up for you
and create a Google sheets which is
their version of Excel create a
spreadsheet and write down 40 products
all right next time part 3 we're gonna
go in-depth into the product research
phase and thank you guys for watching to
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