5 Mistakes I made with My Amazon FBA Business When I Started

In this video I talk about the 5 mistakes I made when I started selling on Amazon. Looking back when I first started selling I have gained so much more knowledge and I thought this would be a good topic to talk about so if you are just starting out you can maybe learn from these mistakes I made.

#1 Rank

Understanding the Amazon sales rank is very important, especially in each category you are selling in. When I first started selling I was pretty much buying anything and didn't have a game plan to how fast the items would sell. This didn't cause a major problem for me but my money wasn't working as fast as I wanted it to. I believe when you are selling on Amazon that there are three different strategies to selling.

• Fast Flips: Items with very low ranks that will sell within 2 weeks
• Replens: Items that sell on a monthly basis
• Long Tail: Items that I really don't count on for my overall Amazon business and are more just bonuses I get when the items sell.

If you can incorporate all three of these strategies when it comes to selling on Amazon and you work on your business by adding new inventory on a regular basis you will be ahead of the curve. This way of thinking is what makes me a 6 figure seller on Amazon and I'm never really worried about "Will this Sell".

#2 Having enough inventory for Quarter 4

I believe anyone selling on Amazon will say Quarter 4 is the best time to sell because the amount of volume that you will be selling and also not having enough inventory. I think it is fair to say you can never have enough inventory but early on when I was selling on Amazon I thought I had enough and boy was I wrong. I remember saying to myself after the first week in December, damn all that stuff sold so quick. This is so true when it comes to selling during this peak time. My strategy now as I'm more experienced is to make sure throughout the year I'm adding more and more items and saving money for quarter 4. Having a bank roll is very important in my opinion to be very successful during Quarter 4. You can prepare all year by buying items (long tail) but truly the hot items that are selling for big profit will show their faces during the peak time. So with that in mind if you don't have funds to buy these "Hot Toys" you won't be able to realize the profits from them.

#3 Cash Flow

This ties into not having enough inventory during Quarter 4 but also applies to year round. This is why I'm such a big advocate of having a "Picking Fund". I stress this to anyone who is first starting off as a reseller. If you can't put away money for replenishing your inventory you will soon find yourself out of this business. For me I have 2 different "Picking Funds". The first one is my month to month amount that I spend on my Amazon business and the second is my Quarter 4th / Black Friday savings. There is nothing like being in a position where you don't have enough money when you find a bargain at the stores. Each year since I have implemented this into my business my numbers have grown year in and year out. If you get one thing out of this video / post. Start today by creating a "Picking Fund" and manage your money.

#4 Patience

For me when I started Amazon I was so excited that I just assumed everything would sell right away. I learned after my first 30 days really fast that this wasn't the case, especially with high ranked (long tail) items. This took some time for me to adapt to but once I figured out this was the name of the game I mastered this. To become successful in this business you have to be patient not only with Amazon but any platform, whether it be eBay or your own website. Sales come with time, I say this over and over, let your items marinate. I truly believe there is a buyer for everything you find and I'm always amazed everyday when an item I buy for pennies sells for twenty or more. If you don't have patience you will either start to drop your price or get so frustrated that you will end up quitting. Reselling isn't for everyone but if you talk to anyone with experience selling, patience is the key.

#5 Creating New Listings

This was intimidating for me when I first started because I had this notion that it was complicated. Man was I wrong, I remember purchasing some items that weren't on Amazon with intentions to create a new listing and those sat in a box for 2 months until I finally said the heck with this and I created the listings. Going through the process of creating a new listing is actually very simple and it is not complicated at all. The advantage of creating your own listing is huge, especially if it is a product nobody else can get such as a private label products. I have made so much money off creating new listings not only with private label products but by creating bundles. One of first bundles I made on Amazon was for K-Cups, I took 30 different flavors, took a photo and created the listing. It was awesome I owned the listing for about 6 weeks before I had someone else jump in on the listing. There was no competition with me and that is what I love about finding products that don't exist on Amazon, you are selling an item where you create the price and there is no race to the bottom.