How To Start An Amazon FBA Business With $1,000 Or Less #WednesdayWithWyan

Hey, capitalists.

Ryan here. And this month at capitalism.com, our content theme is Succeeding on Amazon in 2020 and Beyond. CNBC recently predicted that Amazon would be the most important company of this upcoming decade. The next 10 years, not just the last 10 years. Because as interesting as Amazon has been and as profitable it's been to sell there over the last few years, there's a good chance that we're just in like the second or third inning. Because if you look at the trend, voice search is just warming up. There's international shipping probably coming to the table pretty soon. And also Amazon will be opening to probably as many as a billion new people over the next few years as third world countries start to come online. So there's a lot of interesting developments happening here. So we decided to make it our theme for the month in terms of content. For those of you who follow my work because of my success on Amazon or because you're an Amazon seller, we're going to be featuring individuals from the community that have either had a lot of success selling on Amazon or who are those behind the scenes ninjas who know what's working right now for ranking products, getting reviews, and maintaining profit margins on the Amazon platform, there's still a lot of opportunities, just like the good old days. Now, if you want to be active in these conversations, we're doing some trainings inside the 1% for this month for our members. You can get your spot over@capitalism.com join and there you can test it out for 30 days for a dollar and come hang out with a bunch of people who are actively doing this stuff, including everything that you're going to hear on the podcast, you can attend live. So the trainings that we're doing on what's working right now with Amazon, you can join that live and we'll leak some of it here on the podcast. But if you want to be here and involved in the community, go over to capitalism.com join and you'll be with a bunch of your peers who are doing this stuff together. On today's episode of the podcast, I'm going to share with you, those of you who are just starting out, some basics on how to start an FBA business with $1,000 or less. This is taken over from the YouTube channel and it was a training I did for new entrepreneurs and new Amazon sellers.

So if that's you, you'll get the basics out of this video or video podcast.

Enjoy.

Hey capitalists, it's time to crack open your favorite beverage. I like Zevia this is Wednesday with wyan on capitalism.com today we're going to talk about how to get started selling on Amazon FBA with $1,000 or less. Now, I've been teaching business for over a decade, been an entrepreneur for over 14 years, and six years ago went really heavy into Amazon FBA. I documented basically my entire journey. And what a lot of people don't know is that my first order of product was only cost about $600. So I started with $600 and over time ramped that up into more and more sales and kept rolling all of the cash into the business. Eventually got it to about $100,000 a month about eight months in, and then eventually, several years later, sold that company for more than $10 million. And today I still own a piece of that company and I serve as an advisor of that company. I've also helped hundreds of entrepreneurs start from very, very little, many of whom started with just a few thousand dollars or less. And many of them now have seven figure businesses. And I tell you all of that because I want you to know that you can get started with very little money. Now, it's my preference. It's my preference that somebody has a few thousand dollars to start a business, but you don't have to. It just means that you've got to be a little bit scrappier and a little bit more cunning.

In order to get the job done when you're starting with very little money. And so that's what we're gonna spend our time talking about today is how to be more cunning and crafty and scrappy as you start to build up your Amazon FBA store and business. All right, so if you had more money, if you had a few thousand dollars to start the business, then you would do a big, big inventory order, or at least a bigger inventory order. You might build a website, you might run some ads, but when you're starting with $1,000 or less, you don't have that luxury. Now this can be a really great advantage because many entrepreneurs work way too hard before they take a sale. They do way too many things to try and complicate it and delay taking a sale. But when you are bootstrapping and you've got just a few hundred or a few thousand dollars, it means you, number one, can only focus on taking sales. That means this. Do the smallest inventory order possible that your manufacturer will allow you to run and then just start taking sales. You don't need to complicate it. Post about it on Facebook, do videos on YouTube. You have to be super scrappy at the beginning. I think the stuff that Gary Vee talks about, about putting stuff on Instagram and following people on and sending them messages and dms and responding to every content, every comment is so important for you to do at the beginning stages. If you are bootstrapping this. So you have to put all of your energy into getting those that first inventory order and getting those first customers and following up with every customer, making sure they're happy, asking them for reviews. You've got to get really comfortable with the dirt of getting into the grind of it all and be be talking about your product to people who will listen, doing podcast interviews. If people will ask you to be on the show doing everything you can to throw attention at that first hundred customers or so. If you are, if you are putting together a few hundred or a few thousand dollars to start this, one thing for you to consider at this stage is to, if you've got a product you're really proud of, to do a Kickstarter instead of going straight to Amazon. And we've got some content about how to do Kickstarter and how to start with very little money, but it's something for you to consider if you're starting with very little. However, I started right on Amazon fba. The vast majority of my students get started going straight to Amazon and doing the grind, just getting into the dirt of it all and hustling those sales with one on one interactions, posting content, everything you can to get the machine moving. So that's number one, cut out everything. You don't need a website, you don't need to run ads, you don't need a bunch of fancy packaging. You need sales. That's what you need when you're starting with under $1,000. So place the inventory order of your first product and just start taking sales. That's all that matters. All of the complicated stuff comes after you make sales. Got it? Don't complicate it. Don't get a website, don't make a fancy Facebook page, don't pay a designer if you've only got 1,000 bucks. You need inventory and you need to make some damn sales. That's what you got to do. All right, so number two, focus on high profit margin products. This flies in the face of most people's advice, which is sell what everybody else is selling, but do it better or more. Look, if you are scraping together a few thousand dollars or less, you've got to go after high margin products. Now I recently did a video that Will link below about criteria to choose your first product. And I'm going to give you one of those right now because it's the secret to having high margin products, and that is to differentiate your product. Now, that doesn't mean you need to invent something from scratch. It just means that your product needs to be different enough from all of the other options for you to charge a few bucks more. So even something like this is a journal. I paid like 40 bucks for this journal. Why? Because it looks like a $40 journal. People ask me if I'm reading my Bible and I say, well, it is my word. So if you can't differentiate the product, then you're not going to be able to charge a premium price for it. Again, that doesn't mean that you need to invent something from scratch. You differentiation can come in the form of branding. It can come in the form of who you target. And there's a lot of different ways for you to get your product to stand out from everybody else. But if you are just selling spatulas and it's the same spatula as everybody else, you cannot be successful with Amazon FBA and only have a few thousand dollars to start. It's just not going to be possible. People have too much Runway on you. They're too ahead of you for you to be able to compete. So the secret is go after markets where you can bring some differentiation to the marketplace. This is really easy to do in pets, it's really easy to do in food, in supplements, in beauty, in some household items, in a lot of consumables, in anything bathroom related. There are differentiation. I hate that word. There are ways to differentiate your product to make it different. In almost all cases, you just can't do it with.

MacBook covers that look the exact same as everybody else. So differentiate your product so you can charge a higher price and just so you know, you can lower your price later. So one of my first products on Amazon was a, was a yoga mat. And we came into the market way higher than everybody else. We had like, I think we sold it for $45. Eventually we ended up bringing it down to 2999 because we got more customers that way. But at the beginning we had like 500 units. We had to make as much money as possible at the beginning. And so we were doing the dirt, doing the grind at the very beginning while we were bootstrapping this business so you can start high and lower later. But you got to come out of the gate with a high profit margin product that's number two. Number three, if I could give you one tip on getting sales quickly, then there's one advertising source that's free, that brings in a lot of sales and it's partnering with audiences. If you can make a connection with someone who runs a Facebook group or an Instagram page, a LinkedIn group, a blog, an email list, a podcast, a YouTube channel, anyone who has an audience of people who might want to buy the product that you are bringing to Amazon that is the best source of free attention in the world today. I run a portfolio of physical products brands and I don't start anything until there's already an audience that I'm going to partner with because it's just fuel. You just can throw a product to an audience and you get sales from day one and then you optimize from there. So the best free advertising in the world is other people's audiences and that can come in a variety of different forms. So if that's all you focus on because you're doing things free, then that's the one advertising source that you must consider. So cut out everything except for sales, focus on high profit margin products and consider partnering with audiences who have a following that will support the products that you're bringing to Amazon. Now, one thing for you to consider, and I just want you to sit on this as a thought experiment, you don't have to start with just a few hundred or a few thousand dollars. You see, there's a lot of money in physical products brands. There are companies selling for tens of millions of dollars. I've advised a lot of them. And since there's so much money in these brands, there are investors who are more than willing to put up the first $10,000 that you need in order to do this. Well, to the right investor, $10,000 isn't a lot of skin off their back. But for you who's bootstrapping this, it's everything to get those those first advertisements going, to get that first big inventory going. So there's lots of money out there that wants to find a home in the form of good business ideas. And that's the key. You've got to have an actual good business idea. I run a training called Million Dollar Brands which helps entrepreneurs ensure that their product is a good idea. And we help them identify those three to five products they can get selling at least 25 units a day and at least a $30 price point. And that's a million dollar business. If you know those three to five products that you're going to release. And you know how you're going to bring them to the place, and you bring that business plan, if you even want to call it that, to a potential investor, and you just ask their advice. Watch how fast they offer you money. It's really amazing when you've got a real plan and you go to someone and you say, can you give me some advice? And you go to a few people that you trust, watch how fast somebody says, how are you going to fund this thing? Do you need some money? And that opens up a negotiation from there. So that training is $297, but it's free if you complete it, which means if you just create the business plan at the end by answering a couple questions, you have the option to get all of your money back. So that will bring you the plan that you can bring to an investor. Or it just organizes your thoughts so you know what product to sell, how you're going to take sales, how you're going to fund it, who you're going to target, which makes making decisions much faster and easier, even if you are starting from scratch.