Make money with Amazon FBA

Best Book to Learn Amazon FBA - https://amzn.to/2PdRz3b

Why sell on Amazon? So firstly why sell on amazon? While a lot of people know of the ecommerce giant and how huge it is in terms of shopping and their lightning quick shipping, what a lot of people don’t realise is that it’s actually made up of a lot of small sellers, everyday people like you and me. It’s not just big brands selling on there! And it’s not as hard as you think to set up a business. That’s the opportunity and there’s two BIG reasons why you should utilise this platform over other ecommerce platforms out there. Firstly, it’s a huge marketplace with over 300 MILLION customers. So selling on this platform gives you exposure to a lot of customers! The other key element is Fulfilled by Amazon. This means you send your products to Amazon’s warehouses, where they look after all the shipping, handling and refunds. So it’s a physical products business, that you can run remotely from anywhere. No storing stock in your garage or running to the post office every day. This also makes it a very scalable business because you’re not limited by how many sales you can make in a day!

PRODUCT RESEARCH  You want to find a product that lots of people are after, and isn’t too competitive. A mistake people make when starting out, is just selecting products they like or that they think will do well. We don’t want to take that risk, and strongly recommend making data-driven decisions on what to sell. PRODUCT RESEARCH YOUR BUSINESS MODEL Now, there are different models you can take when selling. The one we recommend is called Private Label. This means you essentially take a generic version of a product, perhaps make a slight improvement or adjustment to it, and then place your own logo onto that product and sell it under your own brand. Other models, such as Wholesaling or Retail arbitrage, mean selling someone else’s products. We prefer the private label model because it gives you more control over the product and listing, and higher profit margins. This allows you to build your brand and not someone else’s. Product research is our specialty at Jungle Scout. You can do this without any tools, however it is a lot harder, and we believe it’s just much easier to use a tool, even if it’s not ours.

5 The Chrome Extension This is the Chrome Extension. It runs on Amazon.com, as well as 8 other marketplaces. With it, you can quickly assess a product idea on Amazon. So let’s say we wanted to look at “yoga mats”. After the search is complete, just click the extension. Now you’ll see a great breakdown of this page. 6 DEMAND Let’s focus on the top 10 listings listed in the Chrome Extension. We mentioned that we wanted high demand? Well, that’s represented by sales. We can see here estimates for all these top listings. As a guideline, we’d like to see at least 3000 sales combined in this top 10. We easily have enough here. In addition to having 3000 sales, we also want to make sure that these sales are fairly well spread out. For an example. If a product matches the 3000 sales criteria, however, two top listings have the majority of the sales. This would indicate that customers are mostly purchasing from these two listings, for whatever reason. So even if we got our listing into this top 10, on page 1 of the search results, it’s going to be very difficult to pry sales away from these dominant sellers.

COMPETITION Next, is low competition. The way we gauge that, is by the number of reviews on a listing. Most people tend to buy from listings that have higher numbers of good reviews, so that’s why we use it as a metric of competition. Usually, we’d like to see at least 4-5 listings with under 100 reviews. This makes it easier for us to catch up, starting from 0. Outside that, we’d want no more than a couple of listings with up to 500 reviews. Anything closer to 1000 reviews is getting quite competitive and will take a long time to compete with. Keep in mind, these are general guidelines. You can bend them a little, but the lower the reviews overall, the better. It’s worth spending more time finding less competitive products, as this is often the biggest barrier. 8 PRICE Next we want to look at price. To keep it easy, you want to sell products between $15 to $60. Below $15, the profit margins get very slim by the time Amazon takes their cut, and above $60, customers are less likely to make impulse buys on a brand they don’t know. So when looking at these top 10, you want to get an idea of what price you could sell for. If it falls between $15 to $60, then you’re good! 9 The Product Database We also have another great tool that really helps when you have no idea what to sell. It’s called the Web App. Inside is a tool called the Product Database. Here, you just select the categories you’d like to look at, and the filters you’d like to set such as high demand, cost or sales units. 10 The Product Database Remember we mentioned aiming for 3000 sales in the top 10 listings on page 7? Well that’s the same as 300 sales per month on a single listing, so make that your minimum. For low competition, we can set a maximum of 100 reviews. Also in the price point of $15 to $60. And click search! What we’ve done is re-catalogued Amazon’s best selling products into a database that’s user-friendly for sellers! The product database is really great to help you generate product ideas! You can then take one of these ideas, and then look up the niche on Amazon, so you can assess the top 10 listings, like we did earlier. And if you use the chrome extension as well, this process is made super simple! SEASONALITY The next consideration is seasonality. Imagine looking at Christmas tree lights during December. The numbers would be huge! If you decided to sell that product, thinking you would get these sales all the time, you’d be in for a bit of shock come January 1st. So we want to sell products, that sell all year around. The best tool to use for this is Google Trends. Just input a search term, change the view to the past 5 years, and then search. Using the Christmas tree light example, you’ll see that there’s a big spike around December each year. This is what we’re trying to avoid. Instead, look for products that are more even all year around.

12 SEASONALITY Let’s use Baby hooded towels for example. This has a similar search volume all year around without any obvious spikes. The other good sign to look for is an upward trend. Let’s take an extreme example - “artificial intelligence”. You can instantly see that this topic is getting more and more visibility. While it’s not necessary to have this when looking for a product, if you do find something with an upwards trend, then you may have discovered an emerging market which could be a great opportunity!

13 VERIFY YOUR SALES So let’s say you’ve found a product or a niche that seems to be a good opportunity - it has high sales, low competition, good price point and not too seasonal. Before you go ahead and order this product, there’s an additional step you should take to further verify this niche before spending a lot of money on it. This is called PRODUCT TRACKING. Instead of just checking the sales estimates that one time, you continue to check them for a period of time. We recommend at least 2 weeks, to 4 weeks. The reason being there are times when a product’s sales are inflated, due to the seller running a discounted promotion, or some other once off type of situation.

14 VERIFY YOUR SALES But by checking the sales every day for several weeks, you can see if the sales stay consistent or drop down. You can do this manually using the Chrome Extension like we showed you, but a much easier way is using a different tool of ours called the Product Tracker, which is part of our Jungle Scout Web App. You don’t need this tool but it does make the process a lot faster and automated.

15 VERIFY YOUR SALES Let’s show you an example using our Product Tracker in the Web App. Say you like the look of these baby hooded towels. This is in fact a product that we publicly launched in 2017, and you can check out the entire case study right here. You want to track as many listings as possible on this first page of results. If you have both the Chrome Extension and the Web App, you can just simply, click the + sign next to each one and it will add to the Product Tracker.

16 Go  VERIFY YOUR SALES You want to track as many listings as possible on this first page of results. If you have both the chrome extension and the web app, you can just simply, click the plus sign next to each one and it will add to the Product Tracker.

17 VERIFY YOUR SALES Inside the Product Tracker, click on the dropdown and you’ll see the sales over time for all these listings. You can change the view to the past 60 days. ADD SCREENSHOT HERE

18 VERIFY YOUR SALES The blue bars here are the inventory levels, and as they go down each day, so you can see how many sales have been made, by the orange bars. If you hover over each day, it will show you the average daily sales.

19 ADD SCREENSHOT HERE VERIFY YOUR SALES If you’ve only tracked a product for 2 days though, and had one day of 23 sales and another of 50, you really wouldn’t know what the regular amount of sales is to expect. This is why we recommend to track listings for as long as possible, to get as much consistent data as you can, and be confident in the number of sales a listing is getting. So that’s how to perform the second step in product research - verifying the sales of a niche! You can be confident of the sales numbers in your product’s niche and are ready to take action on the next step!

21 SOURCE YOUR PRODUCT Once you’ve narrowed your research down to a single product, the next step is to source your product. Most commonly, people go to Alibaba , but you can also go to Global Sources, or Aliexpress for smaller orders.

22 SOURCING YOUR PRODUCTS Alibaba is by far the biggest marketplace. Here you can search for the product that you're looking for. We recommend searching by ‘Suppliers’ rather than products because often suppliers have a bunch of listings that are all more or less the same. Also, tick the gold supplier box. This narrows down your results to what's usually a better list. Now you want to contact 10 to 15 different suppliers. A tip here is to favourite suppliers that you like, as you go. From a search page, click here to favourite, or you can do it from inside a company profile over here. Now, from the favourites page, you can contact them all at once.

23 EMAIL TEMPLATE Here’s an example of the email we would send:

24 Hi There, My name is Greg from Jungle Creations. We are looking to purchase baby hooded towels for the US market. See attached photos. Our primary sales channels will be online. We estimate up to 20,000 to 30,000 pcs annual purchase volume after a trial order of 500 sets and samples evaluation. Specifications: ● Size – 34in x 34in (92cm x 92cm) ● Hood should have “ears” ● Material: 100% Bamboo, organic preferred ● Quality: high thread count and very soft ● No loose threads ● Color: white, no dyes Do you manufacture these types of bamboo baby towels with hood? If so please provide the following: 1) Photo, Specifications and EXW Quotation 2) Are you a manufacturer or trading company? 3) What is your lead time for samples and trial order? 4) Can we add our logo to this item? If so, where can the logo be added? 5) What is the sample cost with shipping by express to USA? Appreciate your reply. Thank you. Greg Mercer SOURCING YOUR PRODUCTS You want to ask as many questions as possible in your initial email. You’ll be contacting a lot of suppliers so you don’t want to be constantly going back and forth with each one. Also, it’s a good first test as you’ll see which suppliers answer your questions, and which ones just send you a generic response. You want to work with people that have made an effort to answer you personally. Other questions you might ask, include: do you offer samples? How much for a sample to be sent to your postcode or to the US? How much for 500 pieces? How much for 1,000 pieces? Can I make a first order of only 200 pieces, and how much for that? Plus anything else specific to your product. Can you make this product to this size or out of this material?

25 SOURCING YOUR PRODUCTS Once you’ve received some replies, it’s time to evaluate them. Do they have good English or communication? Did they answer all of your questions, or did they just give you a generic answer? Write down all the prices they've given you. Some other things to note: Suppliers will often ask to continue the conversation on Skype or email. This is totally normal! Expect to pay anywhere from $50 to $100 US for a sample. I know this can sound like a lot for a single sample but just put it down to the cost of doing business. If you can, it’s a good idea to get a sample from 2 to 3 different suppliers. Sometimes you might get a better price from one but better communication from another. To help with this, get a sample in your hands and then you can compare the actual quality of the product between the different suppliers as well.

26 Once you’ve received and inspected your samples, perhaps followed up with any additional questions, then go ahead and tell your supplier that you’d like to place your first order. Often you can negotiate paying 30% upfront, and then the remaining 70% before they ship the product. Or, sometimes it might be 50 upfront and 50% after. Some of us here at Jungle Scout have worked with suppliers that we’ve had to pay 100% upfront, but we’d built up enough trust with them, so it was fine. So it really can vary, but aim to negotiate terms if you can. As far as payment methods, Paypal is fine for samples. For larger orders though, it's going to incur a 5% fee. So you want to stay away from Paypal. SOURCING YOUR PRODUCTS

27 SOURCING YOUR PRODUCTS TT or telegraphic transfer is common which is basically a wire bank transfer. You can also pay via Alibaba. And, some suppliers will offer trade assurance which is really nice to get because this basically insures your shipment in case anything goes wrong. This is only if you order through Alibaba, so try to go for this option if you can. We recommend staying away from Western Union though because there's no real means of recourse if anything goes wrong. Production will typically take anywhere from two to six weeks. This gives you time to get a bunch of other things done.

28 USING AMAZON S SETTING UP AN ACCOUNT Firstly setting up an Amazon account. You have two options. You've got a professional account which is 39.99 a month, or an individual account that doesn't have a monthly fee, but you pay $1 per sale. So if you're serious about building a business on Amazon and plan to sell more than 40 products a month, you're much better off going with a professional account. This also gives you access to other advertising and business metrics that the individual doesn’t. So click start selling to begin the process, then follow the prompts. You’ll be asked for a bunch of information, including a credit card for any charges, a bank account for you to receive payments and also what you’d like your store name to be. You’ll also be asked whether you’re selling as an individual or a company. Now, keep in mind that you can start selling as an individual, and then switch to a company later on if you choose. Many of us here at Jungle Scout chose the Individual account initially, so we know it’s super easy to upgrade!

30 CREATING A LISTING Once you've set up your Seller Central account, come up to catalog, add products in order to create your first listing. Scroll down a bit, you'll see list a new product, and you'll notice that Amazon wants you to search for your product name. If you type it in here, it will find existing listings. Now this isn't what you want to do. Head down and find the most relevant category for your product. Hit select. Now fill out basic information about your product. The manufacturer name is up to you. That can be the same as your store brand name, or it can be different.

31 CREATING A LISTING One tip though on creating your BRAND NAME… What we suggest is creating one that's fairly universal. Jungle Scout’s Office Supplies for instance, is a very specific niche and only relevant to office supplies. Whereas Jungle Scout Creations is a much broader name that you can sell lots of different products beneath and not be limited to one niche.

32 CREATING A LISTING Next, you’ll be asked to enter a Product ID for your listing. This is most commonly a UPC barcode. You will need to purchase one of these, and the best place to do so is at GS1. If you wanted to setup your product with variations, you can do that over here. It asks you to enter in your price, however you don’t have to do this now and can just check the skip box, and set your price later. This is where you add product images which we’ll talk about later. Once you’ve completed the required fields you can click Save and finish, which allows you to access your product’s FN SKU barcode and get a shipping address which you’ll need in the next steps.

33 FN SKU BARCODE So. once your listing has been created, come over to inventory, manage inventory, where you'll see your listing displayed. Click here, and then Print Item Labels. Click print again. This gives you what is called the FN SKU barcode. This is the one barcode that Amazon requires you to have on your product packaging. You don't need the UPC barcode - the one that we talked about before. You only need this one displayed on your product packaging. Now send this FN SKU barcode to your supplier. They can either stick that onto the packaging of each item, or you can include it in the design of customised packaging, so that it never needs to be stuck on by hand, again.

34 PRODUCT PACKAGING DESIGN This brings us to the packaging, which we recommend getting customized. This sets your product further apart from the competition. The sooner you can get this done the better, because it will take a couple of weeks for them to produce it. So ask your supplier for the different packaging options that come with your product. Select the one that you like the most, and then ask them for a template. You’ll want to receive a file type such as .ai or .eps. These are design friendly formats. To get your design made, we recommend the Jungle Market, where you can freelancers specific to Amazon sellers, including designers who are experienced with product packaging and know Amazon’s requirements.

35 PRODUCT PACKAGING DESIGN Here are a few of the most important things to have on your product packaging. Your brand name, the product name, a photo of the product, where it was made such as made in China, and then just make sure that there's nothing else that you're legally required to put on there, based on the type of product that it is. To figure this out, just google “packaging requirements for your product” to nail this down. When you have the final design, send it through to your supplier. They might ask you to purchase a large quantity of the boxes upfront such as 3,000 or 5,000 pieces. This is fine as it brings the price down, and they'll just hold onto those extra ones until you make later orders

36 PRODUCT PHOTOGRAPHY Product photography is another thing you can do while you wait. There are 2 ways to do this - either hire a photographer or do it yourself. We have a great tutorial on how to take awesome product images yourself, just using a smartphone so click HERE to check that out! The other way is to hire a photographer. Again, we recommend the Jungle Market. Here you can easily search out product photographers and pick ones you like based on their reviews or location, and also reach out and ask them any questions you have before booking in with them. The way it works is that you would send them a sample of your product and they will deliver a set number of images back to you within the agreed upon time.

37 PRODUCT PHOTOGRAPHY If you’re taking photos yourself, here’s a couple of things to keep in mind. Your main image needs to be against a white backdrop, take up at least 85% of the image, and have no extra props, text or logos on that image. For your other images, try showing some different angles of your product, show it being used by different people, maybe also include a photo of it with its packaging which you can add later on, once you actually have the packaging. You can upload up to nine images on your listing, so you want to use them all up but, at the beginning, at least try to get four or five there to start with.