Amazon FBA vs Shopify?

[egoless]

Do you guys have experience in any of those? Which one is worth starting at this point. People say they are oversaturated. Sny viable sources or courses to learn everything? My brain sponge is ready to absorb all the info!

[Space]

@egoless I do have experience yes. They are saturated, there's no doubt. But if you know what you're doing they can still be viable options. Just understand that despite what you see on the internet, they are not get-rich-quick schemes. A very small handful of people get lucky and/or just time it perfectly, but realistically for most people they both take an enormous amount of time and effort, and in the case of FBA, a lot of up-front money (unless you get lucky). Not trying to put you off, just stating the facts. If you are serious about it you should buy a course, but don't be spending any more than $500. I'd probably advise you to go for a course that not many people have bought, because otherwise you're doing exactly the same thing as 10,20,30 thousand other people. DM me if you want some more advice. I'd rather not disclose all my secrets to a whole new community of people.

[d0ornokey]

Yes, my main income is from amazon fba. It's a very viable source of income. Yes the market is pretty saturated. But yes, you can always find opportunity. Opportunity is still fucking massive

"An entrepreneur is somebody that finds a way"  - Gary Vee 

I've taken like 8 courses and the ones I recommend are: 

Freedomfastlane's course 

Sophie howard's course

Thatlifestyleninja's course

Each of these courses has their own strengths and weaknesses. They are also expensive though. If I had to pick one, it would def be the freedomfastlane's course. You can pull a refund on it after you take the course if you want. It's great because it goes over good business fundamentals, teaches you how to not be like everyone else and be unique, and connects you with other sellers. But the connecting with sellers you can just get yourself through facebook groups.

My favorite FBA youtube channels (thick with free info. You can get everything you need from these guys. Just takes longer without the course.) 

Everymansempire

Asteroidaim

Sellerstradecraft

Tom Wang

Jungle scout (for beginners. but good fundamentals) 

 

Scott voelker (for beginners. but good fundamentals) 

Hurricaneliz 

I would honestly go to Amazon FBA FB groups and learn from people there. There are a lot of successful sellers that would be happy to help. Many sellers do coaching in their free time so you can get an hour of someone's time for $100. May be a lot, but I did one of these calls when I first started and it was amazing help. 

Key skills you need to learn: 

- How do to product research (running the numbers on the viability of your market) 

- Figuring out all costs involved 

- How to do market research 

- How to communicate with suppliers 

- How to differentiate yourself 

- How to market your product and on what sales channels (many forms of marketing) 

- How to brand yourself 

- How to communicate with your customer

 

some mistakes to avoid: 

Not differentiating 

Not branding

Not planning out costs

Getting fucked by prices by suppliers 

Not running an inspection on your inventory before it's shipped 

Not planning your steps and taking short cuts 

Not learning from other sellers

Being dogmatic in a business philosophy 

Not having long-term vision 

Staying on Amazon 

Running a purely amazon business and not learning business fundamentals 

 

 

[egoless]

@Space @d0ornokey Ty guys for good tips! I was thinking what's the safest and cheapest way to get started. Tbh I don't trust it yet fully. I still think that maybe it is late to get in. So I want the free education, I would like to avoid expensive courses if possible. I have seen some cheap courses on Udemy. What do you think about that guys? 

How much starting budget should I be looking into?

[d0ornokey]

you need like $5000 imo

You can play the game risk free

you can test and validate your idea for 500 

and then if your product for some reason doesnt sell, you could bring the price to break even to offset loss 

it's a decently capital intensive model

Shopify I heard is less, but I have no experience in it 

Thats how i would do it

Edit:

I don't know too much about Udemy courses, never got one of those. 

Jungle scout has a series called millionaire case study on youtube. Which is essentially a course, they explain all the parts of running an Amazon business. It's quite long though, around 20 hours. But 100% worth it. They did the case study twice so you got all the content you need. it's great for confidence too. 

I know it feels scary and shit, I went through the same exact feelings, but I can promise you this shit is legit, it's just time and effort 

Ways to de-risk yourself: 

-Get product, market and business model validated by a coach, and other sellers/entrepreneurs in a similar space 

-Validate your product idea by testing with little inventory (minimum viable product strategy) 

-Make sure that you have thick margins so that if it does fail for some reason, you bring the price down to break-even (so if your costs were $15 and intended to sell for $25, bring price to $15 and nearly any product sells when it's deeply cheaper than the competition)

Edited April 29, 2018 by d0ornokey

[egoless]

@d0ornokey Do you have any idea about FBA future? Is it going to sink any time soon or is it just getting better and better with time?

[d0ornokey]

Yeah, the way to get around that is by building a brand. Brands build emotional connections to the buyer and they will buy from you, because they specifically love you. So you would change platforms to shopify, walmart or whatever took over if amazon dies (which doesn't look like it for a while as it's rapidly expanding). But you should definitely diversify platforms regardless

For example, if Leo changed platforms, you wouldn't care because you love Leo and still buy his product

You should also be getting external marketing done to offset any hits to Amazon: (instagram ads, instragram influencer marketing, fb ads, fb content marketing, youtube ads, youtube content marketing, google SEO). You don't need them all. Popular ones are instagram and facebook marketing. The type of marketing also depends on the kind of product you choose but not that much. 

But again, Amazon is in a rapid expansion phase, more than  almost 100k jobs in 2017 and every year the company's quarterly earnings go up 30%

I'm happy to answer more questions  I love this topic 

 

Edited April 29, 2018 by d0ornokey

[egoless]

On 4/29/2018 at 2:58 AM, d0ornokey said:

you need like $5000 imo

This is too much of investment at this point for me. Is there a cheaper way to get started?

[d0ornokey]

yeah. you can do it with less, youll just go out of stock quickly because of lack of inventory and it hurts your ranking when you are out of stock and might be a tad bit more expensive. but doable for sure if you research well 

[egoless]

58 minutes ago, d0ornokey said:

yeah. you can do it with less, youll just go out of stock quickly because of lack of inventory and it hurts your ranking when you are out of stock and might be a tad bit more expensive. but doable for sure if you research well 

Can I sell on US market from anywhere in the world? How is money withdrawal process done? 

[thehero]

this is intruiging

Edited May 5, 2018 by thehero

[d0ornokey]

you can sell on any market from any country 

Popular ones are Germany, UK, USA

India is on a super upward trend 

Small markets have less demand (but accompanied by less competition)

USA has insanely high demand, but it also has most of the competition 

You can win in either market. I sell in USA but I'm intruiged by other markets because e-commerce still has a lot of room to grow there in those countries. Not to say there isn't a lot of room to grow in the usa though 

Amazon forwards the money you earn from each sale to your bank account 

[ExodiaGearCEO]

How long have you been selling on Amazon doornokey? 

[andrae254]

I am just starting making business on Amazon and with my research so far, FBA is a good investment in Amazon to make your business work.

@d0ornokey you seem to be experienced in this field, I wish to hear more from you.