How To Guarantee You Make Money Selling On Amazon...
Emanuel Ruiz, who runs three Amazon FBA brands, lays out three rules for new sellers: validate that recent sellers are making money in your niche using Helium 10 or Jungle Scout; aim for at least 45% profit margin before ads, since advertising costs 25-35%; and improve products through small fixes found in competitor reviews, not expensive rebranding.
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All right, so how do you guarantee success selling on Amazon? And this isn't going to be a philosophical type of video where I tell you that you have to believe in yourself and you have to go through the bad times in order to go ahead and see the good times, because I've been in the trenches of Amazon FBA for 7 years since 2018. I currently run 3 Amazon FBA private label brands, and I'm going to exit one of my brands for 7 figures, multiple 7 figures, very, very soon in 2026. And, um, let's get into it. Like, I want to go ahead and give you as much value as possible, especially from somebody that operates the actual business and teaches people how to sell on Amazon FBA. And I'm going to give you all the basic straightforward facts that separate people being successful with Amazon FBA to those that try Amazon FBA and call it a scam. So number one thing I always teach, regardless of what product or category that you are selling in, is that new sellers have to be making money in that actual niche. Let me give you an example. So let's say you want to go ahead and sell any type of product on Amazon. You can name any product. If you go on Helium 10, Jungle Scout, Smart Scout, any software, are there new sellers that have launched in the last 12 months that are currently making money? If the answer is a no, do not come out with that product. Why? Well, 2 reasons. One, it can be a category that just doesn't have enough search volume. You see, Google and Amazon are kind of similar in the fact that they rely on search volume based on how many people are searching up this type of keyword every single day, every single month. But on Amazon's side of things, Obviously it's way more important. So if the search volume is low and new sellers are not making money, what makes you think that you are going to make money in that niche? The thing is that a lot of people say that you don't want to get into a category that has a bunch of demand and a bunch of high competition, where in reality, the inverse is true. You actually want to get into saturated products and just take a sliver of that pie. Because you're, if you're able to go ahead and get a sliver of a pie, you're still making life-changing amounts of money. Or have the potential to make life-changing amounts of money. So that's the number one thing as far as finding a niche or a category that is actually making money for new sellers. Okay, so that's point number one. Point number 2, do you have enough margin in that actual business? Because as a brand new seller, you have to fully rely on running advertising. And I've seen other YouTube videos or other type of you know, Amazon FBA gurus say that you want to sell a product that minimum has a 20 to 30% profit margin before ads, which I think is insane, especially as a new Amazon FBA seller, because your marketing advantage or your positioning as far as driving traffic is going to rely solely on how much you can spend on ads. So that means your TACOS, not your ACOS, but your TACOS is going to be at least 25 to 35% when you first launch. That means that if you are launching a product and you only have a 30% profit margin, you're going to be negative if in the best case scenario. So I always aim that if you're going to launch a new product, you have to know all the expenses up front, right? Like the expenses as far as like Amazon selling fees based on your price point, fulfillment costs, Right, based on like the white— the, the size and weight of your actual product and the cost, right? Like how much are you actually getting this product produced and shipped into Amazon? And you have to have at least, at the very bare minimum, a 45% profit margin before running ads, because the last thing you want to do is to validate your product but you're negative 20% every single month. Because even though you're getting sales, you're losing money after every single sale. So now you're confused that like, hey, I have demand for my product, but every sale that I make, I'm in the negative, right? So we want to be able, especially in the first production run, to understand that both we have demand and we have enough margin that over time, once we start optimizing our ads, it's a really healthy and scalable type of business model. So those 2 things are probably one of the most crucial things when it comes to Amazon FBA is understanding that there is demand for new sellers to come in here and actually start making money, and that you have enough margin where you can run ads and actually be profitable and scale efficiently, right? Because in the grand scheme of things, when it comes to Amazon FBA, I don't care who you talk to, once you're scaling and you're in the scaling phase of your actual business, you're going to be operating at a 20 to 25% profit margin. That might sound low to a lot of people, but that's just the truth. If you're really trying to scale out your business, once your business is scaled out and you really want to go ahead and put your foot off the pedal, then maybe you can go ahead and come cut back on ads and actually focus on profit margin, right? And you collecting the most amount of profit margin as possible, but just know that the actual net profits overall is going to come down if you take your foot off the pedal. So that's 2 things. The 3rd thing is all about branding, right? And what I mean by branding is that people like to think that branding is like being able to have a bunch of design work and getting custom packaging and doing this, that, as far as like making the customer experience, um, great. And the thing is, the customer experience doesn't matter if you can't make a sale, right? So again, people focus on the wrong things to focus on when it comes to Amazon FBA, especially when they're first launching. And the most important thing is having enough margin and being able to go ahead and sell. But let's get into branding, right? So whenever I teach somebody about branding or going ahead and seeing what your competitive advantage is against stuff that's already in the market right now, because you have to create something that obviously has a pain point to a customer. And if somebody has 10,000, 20,000 reviews at a low cost, why would they want to go ahead and pick your product over theirs? But the thing is that people try and spend extra money trying to improve on their product. Where I like to take like the Virgil approach, right? Or like the Travis Scott approach when it comes to like branding, right? Because what Virgil or Travis Scott did when it came to partnering up with Nike is nothing revolutionary. What you— when I— and what I'm trying to say this in your case is that when you're creating a product, don't revolutionize the idea. Just tweak it to make something 1% better. And what did Travis Scott do? Well, he took the Jordan 1 And instead of making a bunch of different tweaks and fixes to the Jordan 1, all he did was turn that Nike upside down. That's all he did. And they sell like hotcakes because it's a different type of Jordan 1 now, right? It no longer belongs to Jordan. Now it belongs to Travis Scott. Same thing that Virgil did with his old Off-White type of partnership with Nike. So you want to take those 2 things that Virgil and Travis Scott did and implement it into your own business. And this by making it 1% Better. You see, like, I sell a shoe cleaner brand, and basically the shoe cleaner brands, everyone kind of looks the same. But if you look at the 1 or 2-star reviews, maybe you can go ahead and see that maybe you need a pump. People complain about the liquid being able to go ahead and mix water and the shoe liquid in a row the perfect amount. Maybe coming out with just a pump type of ready-to-use foam shoe cleaner will go ahead and kill the entire shoe cleaning game. Right? And obviously people have these products, but just going ahead and making it 1% better is what I'm going ahead and discussing here. So look at the 1 to 2 star reviews in the product that you're going ahead and selling, and if it's just an easy fix including an instruction manual, just do that, right? The whole thing is making it 1% better is not to increase price of the overall product cost of your product, right? You want to be able to avoid 1 to 2 star reviews, and if you can go ahead and fix it just like that Just do that. Do not try and spend all this other extra money. Like when I first started with my shoe cleaning business, I'm like, everybody has a 4-ounce bottle, I'll come out with the 8-ounce bottle. Well, you know, I really can't charge more because people won't know the difference between what they're getting unless they're going ahead and holding it side by side and they're saying, okay, cool, Factory Lace has an 8-ounce bottle and Shoe Magic has a 4-ounce bottle. Obviously this one has way more value. They won't be able to know that unless they purchase both of them at the same time. So my biggest mistake was coming out with an 8-ounce ounce bottle thinking that people want this, when in reality I'm kicking myself on the foot because these people have way more margin than me. So always keep that in mind, right? So those are 3 things that I kind of wanted to go over today as far as like guaranteeing success on Amazon, because it can very be that simple as far as finding out if you're going to be successful when it comes to Amazon FBA, if you're going to go ahead and fail with Amazon FBA. And again, I'm missing out so many steps in between But I'm telling you, it boils down to these 3 different types of buckets. So again, if you guys appreciate anything I said in this video, all I ask for is a like on this actual YouTube video, subscription to this YouTube channel. I'm always trying to go ahead and come out with free game, and you can see I'm not editing any of my actual videos. I'm just sitting here in my backyard. Um, stuff comes to my head and I feel like it's important enough to actually make a YouTube video off of it. So if you guys appreciate anything I said, again, sub, like, and in the comments below, like, what are your thoughts about what I just said? Because I feel like it's the most important thing, and it sounds so simple, but people don't necessarily follow this technique. But let me hear your thoughts. Until next time, guys. Peace.
