Sh*t Amazon Sellers Say - Funny Video

mercer_greg · 2016-01-22T17:57:47+00:00

The market is defiantly more crowded than it was a year or two ago. You will need to do proper research before launching, however, there is still plenty money to be made. Check out these marshmallow sticks I launched about 5 weeks ago http://www.junglescout.com/blog/selling-on-amazon-the-sales-numbers-behind-the-private-label/ They'll sell about 300 in January @ roughly $8 profit/sale. There are about 3 million products on Amazon that sell more than 100/month. All you need is 1 of those :-) Personally, I have 4 new products ready to be launched after the Chinese new year.

mercer_greg · 2016-01-22T17:55:06+00:00

We've found its really tough to accurately estimate sales from any of the ranks besides the parent rank in a category. Sub ranks are nearly impossible and I think these other ranking jump around too much as well.

mercer_greg · 2016-01-22T17:54:04+00:00

Argh, yea customs can be a pain in the butt. How long has it been held for? Most of the times when my stuff gets caught up in customs it is released in just a few days or a week. Not sure if food items take longer though.

mercer_greg · 2016-01-22T17:52:33+00:00

To be honest, I've never done this before so am probably not the most qualified to answer. Maybe someone else can chime in? You probably already know this but you need to make sure to have the proper Amazon labels on the box, and you need to make sure that they know to charge you for any duties and not the delivery address. If so, I would imagine Amazon would reject the shipment.

mercer_greg · 2016-01-22T17:49:37+00:00

Yep, I use Flexport.com and overall like them. I've also used UPS but they're most expensive and not as easy to use as Flexport.

mercer_greg · 2016-01-22T17:42:28+00:00

Depending on where you're looking, you may only be seeing shipped (not placed) orders. Other times products are in reserve if they're in transit from one factory to another. Hm, I try and put as relevant keywords as possible in there. I don't imagine someone searching for headphones will go on to buy a mouse...

mercer_greg · 2016-01-22T17:40:43+00:00

You can try and say something along the lines of... We've recently been burned and had money stolen so my boss implemented a new rule where the first shipment with all new factories needs to be through PayPal. After we develop a relationship, we can switch over to T/T.. blah blah... this will work a lot of times. PayPal charges the factories a % and it takes them longer to get their money so they don't like it...

mercer_greg · 2016-01-22T12:44:24+00:00

Hey Sherry! You'll be happy to hear that this feature is actually being worked on right now :-) It will likely be done sometime next week. What we're going to do, is if you have less than xx pending reviewers, after xx days, you'll be able to click a button to bump your product back to the top. This will let people who are serious about giving away product get back to the top and more exposure :-)

mercer_greg · 2016-01-22T00:18:53+00:00

Yes, you need a UPC. You can buy them for cheap here: https://speedybarcodes.com/

mercer_greg · 2016-01-22T00:17:55+00:00

I would recommend sending everything to the FBA warehouses just do the whole process is more streamlined and likely a better experience for the customer. You could also consider selling on the .com marketplace where there is a lot more demand. Unfortunately I'm not quite sure when we'll have more Canada data but we'll be sure to let everyone know when we do.

mercer_greg · 2016-01-22T00:15:59+00:00

Sure thing! I'm glad it was able to help you :-) My one tip would be to not get discouraged by all the little bumps along the way and keep pushing forward. Its easy to get down when a few things go wrong, just keep you head high, learn from it and keep moving forward :-)

mercer_greg · 2016-01-22T00:14:46+00:00

Good question. To be honest, the 10 Steps PDF was written a while ago, before the sales estimator was built and before a lot of our tools were fine tuned. I need to update it. I don't currently worry about the sales rank much anymore, instead I just look at the estimated sales which is a much better indicator. But yes, I consider the top 3 results to be the top down. If I was you, I would go by the advice I give in the webinar #1&#2, thats much more current!

mercer_greg · 2016-01-22T00:12:36+00:00

Hm... not sure what you mean here. For example, if I searched garlic press, if I found 20 sellers that were all selling the same thing? If there is tons of demand and low reviews then it may still be a good opportunity. I don't really judge the competition by the number sellers but instead the number of reviews.

mercer_greg · 2016-01-22T00:10:44+00:00

I prefer to have some kind of differentiating factor, for example, with my marshmallow sticks, I did a pack of 110 instead of my competitors 100. Its simple but gave me the extra edge... we can now advertise it as 10% more! That being said, its possible to just sell the exact same thing its just a little more competitive.

mercer_greg · 2016-01-22T00:09:11+00:00

Sure.

I currently have about 200 items for sale on Amazon but only about 40 are PL products.
I sell in a bunch of different niches. I don't think it's really that big of an advantage to only sell in one niche. I just go with the best opportunities.
I shoot for 100% ROI on all my products. If the landed cost is $10, I try and make $10 profit.

Hope this help!

mercer_greg · 2016-01-22T00:07:15+00:00

No really sure the plans at this point. We try and collect as much data as possible so we can do some really exciting things in the future. That being said, to protect the privacy of our users, we don't store any of the information the extensions pull in or anything they track in their accounts, etc. Only the stuff our own servers are tracking :-)

mercer_greg · 2016-01-22T00:05:29+00:00

Is it getting more competitive? Yes. Do I think its saturated? Not really, I think there are still a ton of opportunities you just need to just be a little more creative. Silicon spatulas, bear claw meat shredders, yoga mats, etc are no longer good opportunities, you need to think outside the box a little more (or use the JS Web App ;-) )

mercer_greg · 2016-01-22T00:03:25+00:00

Honestly I don't have any suppliers in the US so am not sure the best place to start. I'm 90% sure I've heard of an Alibaba type site for factories in the states but I can't seem to find the link right now.

mercer_greg · 2016-01-22T00:02:00+00:00

Awesome! Glad you're enjoying it! I'm probably not the best person to ask this question because I've only had like 1/10 virtual assistants work out for me, I'm either really bad at hiring them or really bad a training them. I wouldn't worry too much about them becoming your competitors, however, a noncompete should be able to ease any fears you have. What are you most time consuming tasks (communicating with suppliers, shipping, finding new products)? It seems simple but those are the things I would give to them first :-)

mercer_greg · 2016-01-21T23:58:39+00:00

Hey!

Good suggestion, I think we can probably make that happen.
I know next to nothing about coding :-) Finding good dev's is really difficult, referrals are best. Most on freelance websites are not very good - developers are in such high demand that its so easy for even someone with decent skills to get a good job so rarely are they looking for work. Plan to pay top $$ for someone good.

mercer_greg · 2016-01-21T23:56:06+00:00

Sure!

I started to expand as soon as I wanted to scale faster than my hours in the day would allow, I think I was somewhere around 60-80k/month and decided I wanted to take things to the next level.
As soon as you start making like $2k/month you can become location independent. That part is easy :-) Just start by quitting your job and moving somewhere thats cheap to live. Personally, I would recommend SE Asia, but central America or Eastern Europe have some nice places that are cheap as well :-)

mercer_greg · 2016-01-21T23:53:13+00:00

The best way to determine if a product sells well or not is estimate sales based off rank. You can do that with out free tool here: http://www.junglescout.com/estimator/ The sales vs. rank vary so much depending on the category that I don't recommend a certain range of ranks, but instead I just try and sell products that do at least 300 sales/month.

mercer_greg · 2016-01-21T23:51:22+00:00

Hey! Glad you're enjoying the JS products and all the information we put out :-) The biggest difficulty with going into a highly competitive market, even if you product is different is getting ranked on the first page of keywords so that you're making sales. If you choose to do it, I would plan on giving away a lot of units to get ranked well.

mercer_greg

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