3 Reasons Amazon FBA is Dead in 2019

FBA vs. Create Your Own Product

1st Year Selling on Amazon:

In this video, I will explain why the old way of making money off Amazon is dead. The old school Private Labeling does not work anymore because of three things: China, Over saturation, and Amazon Basics. Fortunately, with the death of this old way comes a better opportunity to make money off Amazon that defeats those three things mentioned above.

Why Private Labeling is dead?
1. China
Most people that private label buy their products from China. However, China is getting smarter. They find profitable products, copy them, and sell them at a better margin, cheaper than you possibly could. Some people are avoiding this by properly branding their private label product.
It used to be that you just find a product on Amazon that has good sales but a bad product listing. You make your own brand in that product and make a better listing of it on Amazon. This does not work anymore because there is so much competition.

2. Oversaturation
Because there is so much competition, it is more difficult to find products now than it used to be. Even when you do find a good product, you’ll have dozens of competitors by the time you launch the product.

3. Amazon Basics
When you have a really good private label product and start making money out of it, Amazon will find out about it and eventually create their own Amazon Basics version of it. This version will always rank higher than your private label product and will most likely steal your customers.

New Opportunity
Amazon FBA is not dead, but only Private Labeling. Most people who are making real money out of Amazon is creating their own product. One of the good things about this is that there is no startup capital required if you do it (more…)

How to Sell on Amazon in 5 Steps

In this video, I will share with you the different steps on how to sell on Amazon.

Pick a Model
There are four different models for selling on Amazon: Retail Arbitrage, Wholesale, Private Label, and Create Your Own Product. Each of them has its own advantages and disadvantages.
1. Retail Arbitrage – This model is when you go out and buy things on sale and sell it on Amazon.
Pros: It is easy to setup and does not require much money to get started.
Cons: It’s not a scalable business.
2. Wholesale – This model is when you go to manufacturers and buy things at wholesale prices and then sell it on Amazon.
Pros: It is also easy to get started and requires less startup cost.
Cons: Manufacturers can cut you off. There is also a lot of competition.
3. Private Label – This model is when you slap your private label on an already existing product.
Pros: You are the only seller.
Cons: Other sellers can copy you.
4. Create Your Own Product – This model is when you take an existing product and make a better version of it or create a new product that does not exist yet.
Pros: You can create a better product and a new category. This would mean that you have a bigger moat around your castle. If in case a competitor comes in, it will then be hard to copy your product.

Pick a Product
How you pick a product will vary depending on the type of business model you are doing on Amazon.
Retail Arbitrage – You need to look for items that are on sale and cheap.
Wholesale – You need to find items that are not yet sold on Amazon.
Private Label – You need to look for products that have a lot of sales but have bad listings.
Create Your Own Product – Ideally, what you (more…)

My First Amazon FBA Private Label Product – 5 Month Results

It has been 5 months since Ariana launched her product, Vino Cards, on Amazon. There has been some big successes and some failures too. For this video, we will share with you how she started her business, why the sales went down since the 1st month she launched, and what we will be doing to fix it.

Ariana created the product last year. We came up with the idea of wine flashcards which we thought would be something useful for us and for everybody else. The second step was coming up with a prototype of the product and shared it with a Facebook Launch Group that Ariana created. She used Instagram to get people into the group. The benefit of the group is to get feedback and crowdsource ideas on how to improve the product. This is also a way to validate your product.

Here are different ways to validate your product:
1. Emails – Did people gave their emails?
2. Launch Group – Did people join the launch group?
3. Interaction – Are they interacting with you?
4. Crowdfund – Did people give you the money when you launched on Kickstarter?

One of the mistakes we realized was having the product airship with the boxes being too thin. It resulted to having dents and damages on the boxes. Another mistake was ordering too much.

For the first month, Ariana sold 150 units and made about $1,000 in profit. Since then, she was only able to sell 60 units per month. Ariana admits that she hasn’t put in much time and effort into it, but I still would give her a lot of props. It’s tough to balance having a full-time job and growing a business on the side. Aside from these, she also takes care of me and puts the house in order.

From the updates that we’ve (more…)

Stop Your Amazon FBA Account From Being HACKED!! (My Horror Story)

My Amazon FBA account was hacked and I lost control of it for two weeks. In this video, I will share with you what happened so you can prevent the same thing from happening to you and how I managed to fix it and retrieve my account.

Here are some important notes that you should remember if you have an Amazon account:
• Once you lost control of your account, it’s a pain to get Amazon on the phone.
• Make sure you have a backup account that has access to your Amazon account
• If you are able to get a hold of someone on the phone, request for the case to be transferred to VCAC.

I am not 100% sure how this happened. I might have been sent a phishing email or I could have typed in my password while connected to a public WiFi during my vacation in the Philippines. I was also able to download a PDF editor app that was full of virus and my password could have been stolen from there. To prevent having your passwords stolen, take note of the following:

1. Don’t reply to phishing emails
2. Don’t log in to unsecured WiFi
3. Don’t Install Unsecured Apps

One thing that saved me was my second account. It is the account that my virtual assistant used to log in to my account and do certain tasks. Although that backup account has limited access, it still allowed me to send in more inventory while I was locked out of my account.

For added security to your accounts, you should enable the two-step authentication. You can do this not just for your Amazon account, but also for your email accounts. With this, you are not only required a password but a code as well before you can log in to your account.

The trick I used (more…)