Today I’m writing an unscheduled and unsolicited Course Review. There’s been a lot of talk about replenishable products in the various Facebook groups the last couple of days, so when this course came across my desk, it was quite timely. Beyond that, I’m probably the most objective FBAMaster to write this review, because I’ve known Jason the shortest period of time and he and I have had very public disagreements. Additionally, like Jason, I’m a full time seller that has an emphasis on replenishable products. Finally, I’ve publicly criticized some of the info-products that other “Amazon Gurus” have put out. If I can’t give you a fair assessment of this course, I’m not sure anybody on this site will be able to.
Let’s start with a description. This is a video-based course that is a compilation of 30 (currently — more are schedule to appear in the future) screen-captured videos that are anywhere from 4-18 minutes each. The course begins with a couple background chapters that explain what computer tools to use, how to read various charts, etc. After the brief intro, Jason quickly moves to 18 different tips for sourcing replenishable products. Sample categories include Sourcing via other sellers, Sourcing store brands, Finding wholesale sources for products, and an FBAToolkit hack. Finally, the course ends with some shipping hacks and little tips for getting the best deals at many of the major stores out there.
Why do replenishable products matter? We had a discussion in the donation group lately where we looked at a $3.96 product from WM that returns $2.17 in profit, ranked 12,000 in grocery. Some people weren’t a fan of the product, but I love products like this. Just a bit over 50% roi and I can grab these every time I walk into a WM or buy 12 at a time online. The reason I like these is that I don’t have to do any thinking. I can just buy them over and over again. Selling 5 a week (definitely doable with 12k in grocery) profits you an extra $500 a year. Adding a repertoire of these types of products is one of the easiest ways to scale your business.
So, now, time to review the course. Let’s start with the potential negatives:
Cost: The biggest reason that people will not purchase this course is because it costs $97. When it comes to education products, this is actually quite reasonable, but I’m quite sure that there will be many who balk. We try to provide so much free content so save people from expenses like this. And, let’s be honest: Jason provides so much free content on Facebook or his YouTube channel that it isn’t hard to believe that you could learn a lot of this material for free. And you probably could. What this course can do for you is to speed up your learning curve. Instead of the months and months that it took me to learn most of this stuff on my own, you can get it in a few hours, at your own pace. In a business where time is money, it’s a trade I wish I could have made a couple years ago.
Style: This is not a slick Hollywood production. If Jason develops temporary dyslexia and reads 19.60 as 19.06 he doesn’t reshoot the scene. Sometimes things don’t go as planned. Not every product he looks at is a perfect example of a product you could use tomorrow. This is both a strength and a weakness. Slick editing could probably save a few minutes here or there. On the flip side, you get raw footage. This is what it actually is like to source these products. News Alert: Every product I research isn’t something I can sell. Rather than painting an infomercial-quality fantasy of what sourcing looks like, Jason gives you a genuine peak into how it is done in the real world.
Speed: This is probably personal preference, but YouTube has conditioned me to listen to most speakers at 1.25x rate, and, as far as I can tell, Udemy does not have this feature.
My happiness: I’ll admit it, there is a part of me that doesn’t really want a bunch of sellers to watch this. I make a living on a lot of the stuff in this course. He has a 17 minute section on sourcing store brand products, which is really category that I excel in. Part of me cringed to see Jason explain so clearly to other sellers how to do this. That said, one thing that I’ve learned is that there are more than enough products for everyone to make money. This isn’t a Product List that will tell you 72 products to source today. That’s never been Jason’s style. He’s much better at teaching a man to fish than handing a man a fish. If you want to learn to ‘fish’ this course will be good for you. If you want a product list, buy something else.
Some strengths:
Everything is in one place and conveyed in a progressive manner that really teaches someone how to do everything. In a facebook group, or even a blog-based website (like this one), it’s very challenging to present a comprehensive overview of a subject. That is much better suited for a book or a video/lecture series. Jason has stepped into the market on this topic and created a course that I suspect will become quite popular.
There are some immediate tips that will make you money before you even think about sourcing. If you use Inventory Placement, you’ll probably make back the cost of the video just in IP fees by using one of his shipping hacks. If you don’t know about the various rewards cards, coupons, credit cards, etc., that can save you money, Jason’s store-by-store guide will probably make you back the cost of the course as well. This is all before we even talk about learning to better source replens.
Jason targets how you think. He doesn’t want to do it for you, because he knows that if he does it for you, you’ll be lost once those products are tapped out and he’ll have to repeat the process. As it turns out, creating dependents on him might make him more money in the long run, but that’s not Jason’s style. Jason wants to sit you down, have a heart to heart, show you how to actually think like a successful seller, give you some tools, and then let you go to work.
There’s stuff for everyone to learn. I’m not joking or exaggerating when I say that I do this for a living and didn’t really expect to get a whole lot out of this. But, it only took me getting to the second video (out of 30) before I learned something new. I have been using FBAToolkit from the beginning (months and months before it was the cool place to go to get estimates about how many sales a given rank will sell), but in watching his video on that subject, I learned I hadn’t even been using one of the best features. Here’s another one: I literally have entire articles written about which Chrome Extensions sellers should use. You’d think I’d have a pretty good idea of all of the valuable extensions out there. Not so. There was one free extension that I wasn’t using, but have since downloaded. It saves me time on Amazon by showing the rank information on the search results of Amazon, rather than having to click through. I could go on, but it’s not really fair to Jason or to paid students for me to cover every little trick he has.
Continuing Education: Jason has said that he plans to add some new sections to the course in the future, which is a commitment that he certainly didn’t need to make — the course is solid as is. Beyond that, though, is that Jason is quite reachable. This isn’t like purchasing a product from some guru who you don’t know. If you have a question that pops us, or need some clarification, Jason is always around to answer … assuming no concerts or football games are going on!
In conclusion, I think that this will be a helpful resource for the person who 1) Has already figured out how to make money using Amazon and 2) wants to up their game by adding replens to to their product mix. On a scale of Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, Expert, I would rate it as intermediate. On Udemy, it uses a 5 star system, and I rated it at 5 stars. If it were a 10 star system, I would go with 9 stars. It isn’t perfect, and I doubt Jason would claim that it is. That said, I’m not sure I could find a better product on the market right now for learning how to source replenishable products.
If you’re interested in checking it out, head over to his Udemy Course: Sourcing Amazon FBA Replenishables.