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
all from a fifth wheel rv over the last four years so today i'm going to do a q a video answering
some of the most frequently asked questions about retail arbitrage and selling on amazon so
hopefully if you are a beginner or just wondering what this whole thing is this answers some of your
questions hands down the number one question i'm always asked is what scanning app am i using so
i have a lot of sourcing videos where i take you along sourcing with me and in those videos i am
always using a hundred percent if i use something else i will tell you the amazon seller app it is a
free app for your phone android or iphone and it comes with your selling account so until you're
approved for your amazon selling account you can't actually use it but it is just a free app once you
have your account you just log in with your email and password that you made for your amazon selling
account and log in and start scanning i have a whole video that goes over all the like beginner
amazon seller app questions and i will link it here so you can go to it if you want a further
walkthrough of the amazon seller app some of the other apps that i use in store are the keepa app
i use the keepa chrome extension on my desktop or laptop but i also use the keepa app in store
keepa is so essential i also have a video going over in-depth keepa and i will link that here
and i'll just go ahead and link both of those below so you can watch this video and then go
to those if you want to there are other apps out there there's buy bot pro which i do use sometimes
not all the time because it's a little bit slow in store it'll like think it takes too long to
think and i'm just scanning i don't have time to wait around for that but buy bot pro is awesome
because it has ip alert built into it and then another one you might hear people talk about is
scoutify 2 which goes with inventory labs i do use inventory labs however i don't use scoutify yet
i will probably learn that next because i hear that also helps speed everything up when you're
making a shipment but anyways those are other apps you might hear of at the end of the day the very
free amazon seller app is good enough for you if that's how you're starting with limited funds the
other most frequently asked question i get is profit so it never fails that any video i do
showing the sourcing showing my profit everyone will say this but nikki if you spent two thousand
five hundred dollars and you're only made two thousand you're losing five hundred dollars
that is not how that goes i'm talking about profit if you don't know what profit is
you should learn that first before you start this whole amazon journey but i'll fill you in
so the profit is the money you are making like money in your pocket that you didn't have that
you're not paying out so if i'm saying i spent two thousand five hundred dollars on cost of goods
and i say two thousand dollars profit from that shipment first of all that's always estimate on my
sourcing videos because i have just sent them in i haven't sold it yet so that's just an estimate
of what i'm going off of from everything i sold you can get that estimate from the worksheet that
i have which is free in my if you sign up for my email list you get it for free or you can use
inventory labs which will show you your estimated profit for a shipment that profit is always after
i made my cost of goods back so i made that two thousand five hundred dollars back in this example
i made all the amazon fees i paid for all that i paid for the shipping and i made two thousand
dollars extra profit so when a company talks about profit they're talking about literally profit that
is money that you made doing your business so it's not that i'm trying to scam you that oh
no i really lost five hundred dollars to make a video on youtube no i'm talking about profit so
using the amazon seller app you can see profit for any specific item and so i'll walk you through one
really quickly so here is a plush my little pony that i scanned at walmart so you can see right
here on the first screen it's selling for 11.96 that's what the buy box is at now when you click
through at the top here you're gonna see the profit screen so you can say let's say this was
4.99 at walmart for me to buy so already not even there not including shipping if i bought this item
i would make a dollar 71 profit that's after amazon's fees now if i want to add in how much
it's going to cost me to ship let's say it's about 50 cents it's a little lightweight item
it'll cost me 50 cents to add a new shipment so now my profit went down to
a dollar 21. again that's after the fees which you can see here so the referral
fee for this for fba is 179 and the pick and pack fee that's the fee i paid at amazon to
pack the item up and send it to the customer handle all the customer service is 3.44 so after i
sell the item for 11.96 pay the shipping pay the fees get my cost of goods back i would have an
extra dollar 21 leftover of profit that means i got the 4.99 back plus an extra dollar 21. so that
is what i'm talking about in my videos on profit and that's how you see it in the amazon seller app
another question i get often is how do i see my total profit roi how do i keep track of all
my expenses and all that i use two tools i use quickbooks and i use sellerboard sellerboard
is relatively inexpensive i think it's 15 or 19 a month to use it it comes with a really handy
app and it actually tells you after you've sold everything how much profit you're making for your
items right and it's cool because it has a photos of all the stuff you're selling it tells you
individually you add the cost of goods in there so every time i go in there probably once or
twice a month i add the cost of goods for any new stuff and it'll tell you uh it actually forecasts
out for you like what it thinks you're going to do that month both profit and shows your margin
and your roi and all that stuff so it's really handy it's a nice to have tool quickbooks is
something i regret not doing from the very beginning not learning a software and accounting
software it is not very hard to figure it out but it does take a little bit of time for those people
who don't like the business side of it like me i like the sourcing i don't like the business side
of stuff but quickbooks is pretty easy you can use there's like an online one or self-employed one
hot tip that if you sign up for quickbooks and then you ever go to like cancel it they'll be like
oh do you want it for this cheaper so you can always try that to get a little cheaper
if you need to um but yeah quickbooks is something i regret not doing from the very beginning once
you get everything in there it ties your account so you should be having all of your business stuff
on a separate bank account separate credit card everything business and personal separated makes
it really easy to track everything and it all just goes right into quickbooks quickbooks does not tie
into your amazon account but because you're using those bank accounts and credit cards only for
amazon and all your amazon payouts go to those bank accounts which show in your quickbooks it
really is tied into it just not directly another question is like do you have to have a business
license a do you have to have an llc can you start as an individual or a professional account
you can start however you want to start so professional selling account on amazon is what
i started with because i was all in on this like i wasn't just playing around with it i went all in
and when you put a little money into it which on this case is 39 for the amazon professional fees
it actually kind of drives you to do this more however if you are limited under funds or you
just want to kind of play around with it you could start with an individual free account there's some
differences in it and the main one is that with the professional you do win the buy box and you
want to win the buy box with the individual you don't and you have to pay an extra fee on anything
you sell as an individual account i think it's a dollar so if you're selling 40 items well now
you're paying more than you would have paid if you just got a professional account so all that to say
you can do either one you can switch you can go back and forth if you're trying to get ungated
it does not matter which account type you have you can be a professional get ungated as an individual
account go to a professional go professional back floor doesn't matter it all works because
it's still your account you don't need an llc or a business license to sell on amazon you can get
started as a sole proprietor you can get a sales tax certificate as a sole proprietor if you want
to you don't have to business license llc all that stuff is more of a protection for you as you grow
your business and also help you get ungated getting wholesale accounts and all that stuff
some require it some don't i specify all that in my guides if you're trying to go with me to
get help getting ungated you don't need any of that to sell on amazon if you do do that
and you're in the process of getting ungated your legal entity has to match the invoice and your
amazon account so i don't recommend switching while you're in the process of getting ungated
you should have it all the same so if this is not if this is confusing you just forget about
it but if you it's helpful to you you'll know it because you'll understand what i'm saying
but basically your legal entity if you switch that to be a business or an llc
it has to match the invoice so if you place your order and they're like oh i'm going to switch this
it and it won't match that's a problem so you want them to match you can switch your account
any time again you can go from sole proprietor to an llc or s corp or whatever it is partnership
however you've structured your business you could do that at any time it's perfectly fine
amazon doesn't care you just have to update your tax information like a w
four or two or whatever it is where you sign up like if you were gonna start working it's the same
thing you just fill out the tax form i'll just add a disclaimer here i am in no way a professional
tax person accountant business expert i'm not an expert in anything i'm just an average person who
sells on amazon and makes videos about it so please consult a professional if you have any
questions i am not that and since we've just covered that i'm going to go into sales tax so
amazon now collects sales tax in every state except for missouri so if you are a reseller
only selling on amazon platform if you sell on other platforms this would not apply because you
every platform has its own rules and if that platform you're selling on is not collecting
sales tax and you might be eligible taxjar.com is a wealth of information on all things taxes on all
different platforms amazon specifically but other platforms so for amazon exactly if you go to your
account under settings and tax settings you'll see the a box there with all the different states
and if they're grayed out that means amazon is collecting it so missouri is the only one that is
not and if you have nexus in that state you might have to be remitting your sales tax again not a
professional i'm just telling you how it works if you do have a sales tax license in your state you
do need to make sure to file whatever sales tax is due even if that is a zero because the marketplace
facilitator who is amazon is collecting it for you you still have to file please don't forget to file
because they will hit you with penalties thank you florida i have been hit with that last thing about
taxes is how do you file your taxes and all that stuff it is not very hard i know it's like again
i don't like the business side of it i really don't like filing taxes i don't mind the process
of it it's just like i don't like having to do it so anyways it's not hard i use turbo tax i did
self-employed and you just enter in all the stuff like even amazon has a whole sheet that tells you
how much you paid for shipping how much you paid amazon and referral fees and all that kind of
stuff and that's an expense on your business and you gets tax deducted out and all that
turbo tax walked me through it i did it for three years with them i now have an accountant who does
it for me but before that i did it all myself and it was really easy so don't freak out about it
it's not actually all that hard as long as you keep your receipts have everything separate um
even if you wait to the last second like i do and do it all at the last minute it's still not that
hard it takes about a week of me like sitting down to do it other questions how often do i source
so i personally source about once a week it's this year it kind of was like every other week
um so like two or three times a month however now we're in q4 and i am going every week again
because everything is hot and selling and i want to get it all in so i do it part time i source one
day i pack it up one day or two days depending on how long it took and when i started lots of people
source multiple times a week so it's all up to you and what you can do like i sourced this week
the first store i did was walmart i spent three hours in there and honestly i got most of my stuff
there i probably could have just stopped after that i was marshalls was a dead tuesday morning
was a dud ross was a dead like every other walmart after that was kind of a dud so it really was like
i sourced for 12 hours but really probably could have stopped after three so if you could only have
three hours just dedicate that to one store and then do three hours another afternoon or morning
or evening or whatever you can make this work with whatever time you can put into it another question
i got asked was how many days do i give in between going back to a store that i just went to
so for me since i'm pretty much on the move every week or two i am in a new store every time so it
doesn't really totally pertain to me however i have been in long stays over months so like when i
was at my parents house in oregon there was where i was pretty centrally located so i had a sourcing
place i just called them sourcing loops i had a sourcing loop to the south a sourcing loop to the
northeast and to the northwest and so i would literally alternate one week one week one week
and i would just go like that so it's about three weeks in between the different stores
um and that works for me i think some people go every two weeks two to three weeks so
that would be what i suggest but as you go you'll start to learn whatever like if there's stuff
there or not if there's still nothing there you might need to give it another week or two
what am i doing about toys and toy compliance documents so it was confused in another video
when i talked about this probably because i was sourcing and just rolling through it but the toy
compliance documents are not going away i'm not talking about ip alerts that is something else
toy compliance documents are toy specific they are not like anything bad on your account if
you have to supply one the problem is that we have to supply one so every seller has to supply
their own documents it doesn't go for the whole product page so if seller in new york happens to
supply it for the lego that doesn't mean that i don't have to supply it for the lego because
amazon doesn't know where their stock and my stock are coming from if i'm doing something fake like
that's my stock specific right so toy compliance documents come from the brand or a distributor
who will get them from the brand or manufacturer and if you're in my toy and gating groups
those suppliers can help you get them but it is not guaranteed again you have to get
them straight from the brand or the supplier and the problem as retail arbitrage sellers is that
we don't have those relationships necessarily right so it's harder for us if you get one
i think you get a couple weeks or a month it depends what amazon changes what they do all the
time some come away right away some stay on there forever you just got the document and you didn't
actually have to supply it it's amazon protecting themselves and their customers so if the customer
gets hurt they know that you have the document to prove that yours is authentic it's amazon
protecting themselves now if you get one um it might go that your listing gets deleted sometimes
the entire listing gets deleted and your item goes stranded if it's just your product that got
deleted and the product page is still there i have had luck relisting them from stranded
so you can go try that or you can ask for it back return it to the store or
try and sell it again fbm so that's what i'm doing with them i'm not worried about them necessarily
i deal with them as i come up which fun fact is how i deal with everything on amazon when
it comes up i deal with it i don't worry about it beforehand i just deal with it when it comes up so
that's my attitude and it's been working for me so i try not to i got enough stuff going
on i don't want to boggle more down with worry why do i have my five dollar minimum 50 roi rule
when i'm out buying stuff so i don't buy anything unless it makes five dollar minimum profit and the
reason is that amazon prices are always changing they're always fluctuating and if the price drops
at least i'm still making a profit it might not be the five dollars i thought but it's still
two dollars maybe right so if a price if i got something and it was gonna make two dollar profit
and then the price drops two dollars and now i'm just cut even well that was a waste of my time my
like resources to pack it up and not lose money so that's why i have the five dollars the 50 roi
really comes into play when it's like 20 and above if i'm spending twenty dollars on a product
i wanna at least make ten dollars profit fifty percent roi ten dollars so that's why i have it
every seller is different you can do what you want if you wanna buy something for two dollars and
flip it for two dollar profit by all means do it i just like to make sure i'm using my time and money
wisely and i don't want to get send something in that's not going to make a profit since q4 is here
if you are wondering what cells are in queue for everything if you're in a scanning rut or you're
only thinking toys is all that sells during q4 you are wrong everything sells toothpaste sells
shampoos like grocery everything is gonna sell during q4 not necessarily specific to holiday
but just everyone's shopping online so your sales in general will pick up you can go a
little bit higher in ranks if you want to during q4 everything will be selling it'll be hot and
it's going to be really awesome i can't wait for it i'm so excited it's started to pick up a little
bit but in the next two or three weeks it's really going to pick up if you're in a scanning rut
branch out if you've only been scanning walmart grocery do something else go to a different store
go to different aisle and walmart try something new scan something you wouldn't have thought of
if you want to join the bolo group to get ideas by all means you are free to join it because you see
what other people are scanning and then it helps you like know about new stores or new categories
or new brands that you never would have thought to scan so move out of wherever you are in that
rut go to a different town go to a different city if you can like just take a little drive all right
that's all i got for you for this q a video i hope this video was helpful if you want to learn more
from me on how to get started doing amazon retail arbitrage i have my beginner fba course which goes
over online arbitrage retail arbitrage fvm fba and it comes with a really helpful community so you
can join that i'm in there answering questions all the time i've also got the bolo group on gating
groups or i've got these free videos here for you if you want them so thank you guys so much for
watching don't forget to subscribe and i'll see you back here for another amazon selling video bye