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REMINDER: Free Removal ends tomorrow (4/30/16), so if you need to have any products removed from FBA, you might as well do it today and save yourself some money.
I’ve spent the last few weeks taking questions from the Facebook group and answering them here. This time, I’m answering a question of my own:
What do you need to KNOW to go from $500 to $5000 profit per mont?
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Popular this week:
John figures out how to make a haircut profitable
Chris giving away another ebook
Guest Post about what to do when you can’t source
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Sorry for the Click-Bait title, but I had to compete with all of the folks at the Rocky Mountain Seller Conference this weekend! But, I still hope to make a serious point here. If you know enough to make $500 a month, then you know enough to make $5000 a month. It’s possible that you don’t know enough to make $50,000/month. At some level, there are new skills and new pieces of knowledge that become crucial in order to to succeed. This is the reason why when entrepreneurs grow their business to a certain level, they’re very often replaced with professional CEOs. It’s not that they’ve lost something, it’s just that the skill set necessary to succeed at one level of business is often very different at new levels. But, that’s not the case when you’re trying to move from $500 to $5000/month.
If you know enough to make $500 per month, then you understand a few basics:
- You understand how to look at a product and determine if you’re likely to make money selling it on Amazon.
- You understand at least a few of the tools that help you to gauge this information.
- You understand how to prep, pack, and ship that product to Amazon.
If you’re not at this point yet, fear not. Everybody starts as a beginner. You’re at a great spot for beginners. Make sure to sign up for our free newcomers’ series and then make sure that you read this site, as we constantly have information that will help you.
But, if you have gotten to the point where you can make $500 per month, then you know everything that you need to make the jump to the next level. So, what might be stopping you?
Money. This is definitely a possibility. If you only have $500 with which you can source, it’s going to be pretty hard to jump to making $5000. Now, if you’re reinvesting your profits, you will get there eventually, but you might as well make sure that you’re taking advantage of all of the money-saving options out there. Are you using cash back sites? Are you getting money back after price drops? Are you using discounted gift cards? All of those will get you there faster. Now, if you have proven the model and KNOW (not think) that you can make money doing this, it might be time to invest more money in the business. Some people really like the idea of starting off with $100 or $500 and growing it to a full time business. Nothing wrong with that– and it is basically what I did — but realize that it is likely costing you money, not saving you money.
Motivation. Let’s be honest. There are people who know how to make money in this business, have the money to grow it beyond where it is at, but they just don’t have the motivation to take it to the next level. For these people, I think it really comes down to deciding what you want out of this. Some people just want a hobby where they can make a few extra bucks. That’s perfectly fine, but if you want it to be more and yet you have a big pile of stuff in your garage waiting to be shipped and you’re watching Orange is the New Black, then you really need to ask yourself what is important to you. Maybe you’re watching TV with your spouse because it’s the only time you have together and it’s something she really loves to do. Fine. You have a good reason. But, if we’re telling the truth to ourselves, very often the problem is that we just don’t want to. It seems daunting to pack up a bunch of boxes. It isn’t fun. Whatever the case may be, it’s a motivational problem, not a knowledge problem.
Minutes. Maybe you have a living room full of products, but you have no time left after you work your full time job, take care of the kids, etc. Assuming you’re not wasting time and this is a legitimate issue, then you need to ask yourself how you can fix this problem. If you’re the bottleneck in your business, then maybe you need to outsource some of the work. You’d be amazed at how often a high school kid down the street will tell me that he can’t get a job and somebody on facebook will be complaining that they have too much stuff to ship and they just don’t have time. What would happen if that person hired that high school kid for $10/hr? Would everybody win? Probably. Don’t have time to go source for hours at a big box retailer, how about learning to do OA. Don’t have time to do OA? Maybe you need to hire a VA. Maybe you need to look at purchasing sourcing lists. Maybe you need to look at tools that speed up the process. There are options out there, but it requires you taking action and removing your step one degree from your business. That is scary, but if you want to grow, and your situation has no other alternatives, then you might need to try it.
I’m fairly sure that those three issues (Money/Time/Motivation) explain the reason that at least 90% of people aren’t making the jump from $500 to $5000 profit per month. For most of these, I can help with strategies to overcome the stumbling blocks, but there’s no magic lesson I can teach you that will just make it happen. If you can read a Keepa chart well enough to make $500/month then you can read it well enough to make $5000. If you understand category rankings well enough to make $500 then you know enough to make $5000.
Don’t mishear me: I think there is value in educational resources. Conferences, Courses, Books, Webinars, Podcasts, etc. all have their place. Half of the time, those are better for motivation than that are for information. However, to the extent that it is about information acquisition, it will make a difference at the margins. You will become a better sourcer if you have the latest tools. You will get better at utilizing charts if you read our articles about them. You will have new ideas if you listen to our podcasts and webinars. But, the difference between $500 and $5000 isn’t marginal improvement. It’s not external; it’s internal. It’s about you making a decision to take it to the next level, figuring out what is standing in your way, and then doing whatever it takes to eliminate those stumbling blocks.
So, I’ll leave you with two questions:
What is stopping you from taking things to the next level?
What, specifically, are you going to do in the next 30 days to change that?
Until Next time, Best Wishes
Mike