$0 to $400k a month with Amazon FBA

Hey, how's it going, YouTube? This is Emanuel Los Angeles. I'm an Amazon FBA private label seller and I do $400,000 per month in revenue. And for those of you that like to go ahead and see proof, here is the proof. I currently own 3 brands. The first one is Maverick. And as you can go ahead and see, last month I made over $260,000 in just a single month for this brand. The other brand here is Emanuel Los Angeles brand, which is Factory Lace. A lot of content on this YouTube channel is based on this actual product. As you can see, month to date, we still have 5 to 6 days left in the month, and this has pulled in $60,000 in revenue. And last brand here, which is Relax Support, which is a lumbar support pillow. Again, month to date, still 5 to 6 days left, $50,000 in revenue. So as you can see, around $400,000 when it's all said and done at the end of the month, we'll be making per month with Amazon FBA. And again, these are crazy numbers. I've been doing Amazon FBA for 6 years now since 2018, and a lot has changed. But in this video, I hope that regardless if you haven't started Amazon FBA but are interested, if you dipped your toes with a couple of products and they haven't been successful, or maybe if you are a successful million-dollar per year in revenue seller and want to break through, I hope this video is helpful for everybody because I've done a lot of things in my business, a lot of pitfalls, and I'm— there's still a lot of room to grow as well. So in this video, I'm going to basically be an open book and hopefully you get value regardless of what stage of Amazon FBA you are at. But one of the big pitfalls that I see a lot is people focus on that revenue number. People are going to see $400,000 and seem like that is what I take home. When in reality, e-commerce is very thin margins from these $400,000. Now I probably only make around 15% of that. And that's because there's a lot more expenses as far as going ahead and scaling to this type of level. But I remember back when I first got started in 2018, I was probably experiencing right around 30 to 35% profit margin because I didn't have a team behind me. And going back to 2018, my very first product was a shoe cleaner. And at that point, my brand was actually called Deadstock. And I got into some trademark issues. I had to go ahead and hire some lawyers. That's a different video. I'll go ahead and pin it over here or wherever YouTube goes ahead and allows me to go ahead and do it, explaining a little bit more. But I had to go ahead and pivot to Factory Lace as a brand name back in 2021 because of those trademark issues. But lucky for me, my very first product on Amazon, quote unquote, hit, right? And what do I mean by hit? It actually became profitable very early on of me going ahead and selling this actual product on Amazon, which I've tried different types of products and they have failed in the past. For instance, I'm very open that I came out with a blackhead remover right after going ahead and launching this shoe cleaner brand and it failed. I also came out with a men's moisturizer. It failed. A men's eye cream and it failed. And it got me to thinking like, why did I go ahead and try and basically cast this net of different types of products that I might not have knowledge in where I had a good moneymaker going with shoe cleaner. Right. And that brings me onto this actual point here. You're going to be successful with your product if you really understand your target market. You see, back in high school, even in college, and now today, I love going ahead and purchasing sneakers, especially limited edition sneakers. So by going ahead and coming out with a shoe cleaner, I understood what a sneakerhead was looking for, the different types of brushes, the different types of products. So I'm able to go ahead and expand that product line, knowing that I am that ideal customer at the end. So all my marketing, all my photos, all my actual, you know, wording on my actual listing page, all has to do with going ahead and actually talking and resonating to me, which makes it a lot easier when you're going ahead and selling a product. Right? So instead of going ahead and coming out with different types of niches and different types of target markets for different products, I decided to go ahead and focus on shoe cleaners, right? So expanding my product line that was already working, but product selection and product expansion is just the first hurdle that you have with Amazon FBA. After that, you come up with the biggest hurdle where I feel like a lot of Amazon FBA sellers fail. And that's because of cashflow issues, because as you know, sometimes Amazon does delay your payments. And if they delay your payments, how are you supposed to order more of your inventory? How are you supposed to expand if you don't have that money? So again, being able to balance the P&L sheet and being able to know that you have money in reserve to be able to go ahead and launch new products is very, very important. And if you don't, you're going to fail with Amazon FBA because the name of the game is trying to get the most revenue and the most profit and scaling out. You need to have money to invest into actual products. So again, being able to keep a day job, right? Don't go all in on Amazon FBA if you don't need to, because the other consequential thing that you could do is take out loans or max out credit cards. And that's something that at the end of the day, if it doesn't work out, you're still stuck going ahead and owing that money. So again, being able to reinvest and having maybe a job secured is going to be very, very pivotal as far as being successful with Amazon FBA, because you, need this cashflow constantly with Amazon FBA. And after you get past those 2 product selection, product expansion, and cashflow issues, the next biggest step for me that took my business to the next level is really honing in your skills. As I talked about before, I was my target market, but at the end of the day, I still looked at competitors. What are they doing right? What are they doing wrong? How can I improve on this actual product? How can I make my copy better than theirs? And by copy, I mean, how do I make my listing more compelling to go ahead and purchase. The more analytical you are when it comes to Amazon FBA, the more successful you're going to be because you're able to track every single type of metric, right? Especially when it comes to traffic conversion, going ahead and actually making a sale to the end consumer. And the great thing about Amazon FBA is that if you hone down those 3 systems, being able to do product selection, being able to not run out of stock and maintain healthy cashflow, and being able to understand metrics and Amazon PPC, you see, you're well on your way to getting $1 million in revenue per year. And the great thing about that is that you're still a one-man team, which means that you can get 20 to 30% profit margin based on doing that $1 million in revenue, because you don't have to do TikTok. You don't have to do social media on Instagram. You don't have to do other things because your ecosystem is still Amazon FBA. And there's proof to that. I purchased my first business in 2022 called Maverick, and that business was generating right around $24,000 in revenue per month, right? And I was able to go ahead and scale that to $100,000 in revenue within the first 3 to 4 months by just implementing these systems that I'm talking about in this video. But subsequently, I feel like that's where I hit my plateau for 2 years because I would spend hours, and I mean countless hours per week doing Amazon PPC. And if you look back at my YouTube videos, one of the most successful ones are discussing Amazon PPC and different strategies with sponsored brands. Sponsored products, sponsored displays, driving traffic outside of Amazon to Amazon. And that's when this year I started reading a little bit more books. And my favorite one was this book called Buy Back Your Time. If you guys are interested, I'll go ahead and link it down below. But basically it's understanding where you're going ahead and spending most of your time on and just outsourcing that. Because if somebody is willing to go ahead and do 80% of what you do, meaning that if I think I'm going ahead and giving 100% to Amazon PPC, If I can hire someone, even if they're 80%, it's better than me going ahead and dedicating all my time to that because my job is to grow the business, not to go ahead and be in my business. Right. And I've heard that for many, many years and I've read a lot of books or went ahead and watched a lot of YouTube videos with people explaining this, but I didn't really give it much thought. But when I got to sitting down and I was spending countless hours on Amazon PPC, I knew that I needed to go ahead and do this. And that was a huge breakthrough. But I obviously spent a lot of time vetting people, going ahead and seeing if a software system is better, or going ahead and hiring an agency is better, or bringing someone in-house is better. At the end of the day, I'm not a good manager, right? I did try and bring somebody on board, and I can say myself that I'm not very good at going ahead and kind of teaching someone how to do this, right? Because that just requires a skill of itself. By going ahead and outsourcing to an agency, they did a tremendous job of going ahead and seeing things in my line of business that I just didn't see because I had to blinders on, right? And now that I was able to go ahead and hire someone that I felt like was my pride and joy with Amazon PPC, I was able to see how important it is to delegate basically everything in my business right now. I have systems and operations in place where somebody goes ahead and finds new products within my niche. Once we find those products, sending those samples to different suppliers in China and getting back price sheets. From those price sheets, going ahead and ordering a few samples. After that, going ahead and creating these listing pages, getting somebody to manage the photos and getting all those photos done. And getting someone to actually go ahead and do keyword research and building out a listing page with A+ content, bullet points, all that— people that are smarter than I am and are dedicated within that niche, right? Because that's how you actually grow your business. And I feel like these systems that I have in place right now is completely priceless because let me ask you this question. If you were to go on vacation for 1 or 2 months, would your business be okay? And I would say that 99% of you are going to say yes, because Amazon FBA handles everything for your business. But if I asked you the question of, if you go on vacation for 1 or 2 months, is your business going to grow? That's a different story. But with having these systems of operations in place, having someone do every single A through Z in your business, I feel like I can do 1 or 2 months of vacation and I can see my business grow. And I feel like even today, Amazon is a fantastic opportunity. I have a family of 4 and Amazon has completely changed my life. I feel like when I first started with Amazon FBA in 2018, every single month was like a panic to me because I didn't know if I was going to have an Amazon FBA account or if my business was going to go ahead and grow. And now that these systems are in place, I feel like the sky's the limit as far as what I can take Amazon FBA. And I feel like a lot of people in my position right now, growing a YouTube channel, growing these brands out, is a perfect opportunity to sell courses or services or something to somebody. Right. And I feel like that's not really the case for me. I don't go ahead and want to become a course seller or a guru, but I do find it a unique opportunity that Amazon FBA goes ahead and presents to me now where I'm doubling down. I'm purchasing Amazon FBA businesses. And my goal for 2025 is to continue purchasing and maybe get into private equity where I'm raising funds now to purchase Amazon FBA businesses. So if you want to follow the journey along with me, because now I'm trying to even level up even further. And if you want to learn those skills, I recommend you guys go ahead and follow and subscribe to this YouTube channel because you can look past all my YouTube videos. I'm an open book and I want to go ahead and help your business as well. But until next time, guys, peace.