So.
You are ready and primed to start and FBA business, but not sure what to do now?
Let’s get started.
But first…….a meme, from Tony Robbins, because really, what would a day be without some motivation to kick things off.
Still want to sell on Amazon, after seeing that cavernous mouth screaming positive vibes at you?
Then let’s get started, shall we. Here are three things you can to do right now in order to start.
- Open a seller account.
- Learn something. There are many ways to do this, and none have to cost anything. We have an email list here that you can sign up for. There are youtube videos and Facebook groups and TONS of Amazon and FBA related blogs to read, onlinesellingexperiment.com and fulltimefba.com are a few of my absolute favorites. Read everything you can. Even if it doesn’t make sense yet, it will. Spend an hour (or more if you have the time) only reading. You will be amazed at what you can learn when you just sit and remove distractions.
- Get a crash course in economics and how and why FBA sellers can price differently than traditional retailers and get away with it.
Great. You just took the first steps.
You know have an account set up, and you have a basic idea of what FBA is and why and how it works.
You must now source product.
This is the bread and butter of the business, and is also likely the place where most people can get caught up. There are as many sources and ways to find inventory as there are …… colors in the rainbow. Actually, there are likely more ways to find inventory, and my analogy sucked. But I am too tired to backtrack and come up with something clever.
We have written several posts on sourcing product over the past year. It has become not only my living, but an obsession. I am addicted to scanning, and never grow tired of it. Largely because of the treasure hunt aspect of it, but whatever the reason I scan everything, everywhere, including restaurants, funeral homes (I’ll quickly enter an ISBN of a bible sitting on an end table), airports, hell I scan other peoples gifts at birthday parties.
Sourcing can and should become your greatest strength.
There are people who only do RA, and can hit up a dozen stores in a day. They excel at it, and have become incredibly efficient at spotting an item and knowing when to scan. Obviously you cannot scan every item, and only experience will make you truly great.
There are people who wholesale. The buy products direct, slap a sticker on, have LTL shipping pick up pallets and send in.
There are people who OA and send to a prep center. Using tools like TA and OAX they can quickly find online product, purchase and resell.
Thrift stores, garage sales, yard sales, auctions, craigslist, all are viable options.
There is no limit other than your effort on where you can source from.
Hell, you can shoplift boxers and send in to FBA. You may want to steer clear of name brands just to avoid a counterfeit claim, since you obviously will not have a receipt to prove you have legit underwear.
You now know the basics.
It is really not that complicated to start.
Open account.
Find product.
Sell product.
Rinse.
Repeat.
A huge problem I see over and over and over and over is people want to spend months building a website to attract wholesalers, or wait until next year after they decide on a business structure, or until they have an extra 5k to invest in a new business before they start.
This is what Tony Robbins was referring to.
Take action.
Sometimes my friends will come to me, since they know I have a business, and ask what they should do to start. If they should form an LLC tomorrow so they can begin the new dog walking business they want to engage in.
My answer is ALWAYS the same.
No.
First, you start. You may hate it after one day or one week.
If you decide you like it, then you can meet with an accountant and figure out what is best for you legally. But if you spend months creating the perfect structure and then hate the actual business, you just wasted months and money creating something you no longer need. If you like the business after a month, create the structure.
And next week we will talk more about getting legal, both in your state and with Amazon.
But for this week, take action. Just start. Nike.
Cheers.