Sorry I haven't written much on here lately. I've been reading a few books lately about how to sell products on Amazon, so I figured I'd take a stab at it. First off, it's not nearly as easy as these books make it out to be. There's a lot of things that can go wrong when trying to sell items on Amazon. No one ever really mentions Amazon fees, having to pay to ship stuff to Amazon, or the amount of time it takes to label your products. Also, shipping things to the US from overseas (China, Thailand) can be quite expensive, and you may have to deal with custom fees.
Not to mention that if you're not someone with deep pockets, you may have trouble finding an item to buy at wholesale because most suppliers require a minimum order quantity. Nevertheless, I found a few items to sell, and I think I did okay for my first month.
I managed to make a little over $400, which is good I think for my first month, but of course that doesn't include the money I spent on a label maker, or the fact that Amazon will often make you split up your shipments to send to multiple fulfillment centers. Also, Amazon actually lost one of my shipments so about half of that $400 was from Amazon reimbursing me for my lost products.
The first month was also tough because some items just weren't able to sell, and I also had to spend a little bit of money on advertising. As with any business, getting started is the hardest part and I have definitely made my fair share of mistakes along the way.
Still though, it's a great feeling to know that I was able to make this money on my own as a side business.
My goal for next month is to make at least $600, and hopefully get to the point where I can consistently make over $1000 a month.
Interesting article. I've been considering starting something on Amazon for a while now. How much money did you have to invest to make that $400?
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DeleteI wish I had kept track of the actual dollar amount. I think my biggest mistake was choosing several items at once instead of starting with just one item.
For the $400, I'd say it was probably an investment of about $275. If I had to do it all over again, I would have just bought more of ONE item to start with. Also, shipping things from China can be pretty expensive.
One of my purchases was for $100 wholesale, but I had to pay $48 extra for shipping. I would also suggest choosing a product that doesn't weigh much to start with. Not only will you have to pay to have the product shipped to you, but you also have to turn around and pay to have the product shipped to Amazon.
Once you get more comfortable with certain suppliers, you could then maybe hire a customs broker to help ship the products from China directly to an Amazon fulfillment center. I wouldn't start off doing this at first though, as you'll want to the check the quality of the products before sending them to Amazon.
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