What Does It Really Take To Be A 6-Figure Seller?

Hey, how's it going? It's Ollie here. Welcome to the Ecommerce Freedom Podcast. Before we dive in with today's episode, I've got two cool resources for you. The first one is my new E Commerce Q and A group on Facebook. So in this group, the point is you ask questions in the Facebook group and I answer them with daily videos, okay? So you can get your questions answered really, really, really quick. It's a great resource. If you go to ecommercefreedom.com and look at the top of the page, you'll see a button for the Q and A group. Click on that, it will take you to the Facebook group. Second resource I got for you is an Amazon accelerator call. So what I'd love to do with you is talk about your goals, talk about where you are now and talk about the stuff that could prevent you from hitting your goals right together. On a strategy session, we will come up with a plan for you to replace your income with an Amazon business. If you'd like to book a call where we can do this, go to ecommercefreedom.com, look at the top of the page and click Amazon Accelerator Call. You'll be taken to a very short application page. You can fill that in on the next page. You should be able to book your call. Alright, hope you really enjoy the episode. Hey guys, how we doing? So, been trying to record this video actually for the past 20 minutes and there's a guy on the roof of this building drilling and he's been there for about five months now, on and off, just arbitrarily drilling things. And you know when you're like trying to imagine all the ways that you could kill someone, I was thinking maybe we could just push him off the roof. Maybe I could kill him with his own drill. I don't know. Anyway, some great questions today ranging from what to do if you want variations, how to start a brand with very little capital, and what does it really mean to be a six figure seller? How do you get there? So we're starting off with a question from Kevin Bursnal. This is a great question. So Kevin says, I have a wooden home storage product that is manufactured in one size. If I added extra sizes, would it be best to create a separate ASIN or add the existing ASIN as a variant? Any thoughts on the best option? So this is a great question, man. And you know there's two ways you could go about it, right? You could launch the products on separate listings, have them compete with each other, and with all the other products in the niche and have a little bit more dominance in the niche because you've got more products in the niche. The only problem with that is when you have several listings, you have to get each one of them ranked separately, which can take a little bit more marketing spend and it takes a little bit more effort. If I were you, I would put them all on the same listing because then they share the ranking and share a lot of the reviews as well, because people would see the reviews for all the sizes. And I mean, it's the same product. Right? And you're doing less work. I think you'd get a better ROI if you did that. Also, if one of your products is selling well with the variations, you essentially just get to piggyback on the same listing and you get all of the SEO juice and everything else that's happening happened from that. That's the way I would go about it. And yeah, that should make things really, really easy for you. Good question, Kevin. And hopefully that product sells as well as your current one. So we've got a question from Ann. Ann asks, how can I build a successful brand that people want to buy without it costing an arm and a leg? She says, I want to be reputable and I want to get customers, but I have a limited budget. How can I fulfill my request without it being costly? What are the steps required? So, great question, Anne. And when anyone's thinking about building a business, the last thing you want to do is just constantly throw money at it and not get any return. We want to take things gradually to make sure every step of the way you're making progress with the least resources used up possible until you can get confidence that you're going to get a return on your investment. So you're asking the right questions and thinking about this in the right way. So there's a few things you want to do. First of all, you want to find a very, very hot niche that has all the elements you need for an opportunity on Amazon. So if you haven't done that already, then please look in the resources at the top of this group so you can learn how to use my Smash IT product radar to find products. By the way, if you're watching this video outside of the Facebook group, then click the link either below or above the video, join the Facebook group, and you can access all those resources to. So that's the first thing, Anne. Right? Grab those resources, find a really hot niche. Then what we want to do is import a test batch. Think of a way that you can Add value to this niche. What are the customers complaining about in the reviews? How can we solve their problems? Then find a supplier who can give you maybe 50 units of product, starting small with less money. Ship those into Amazon, see if it sells, see if it sells for the price you want to sell it at. If it does, then launch gradually. Okay, so rather than going from a test batch of 50 to, you know, a thousand units, go from a test batch of 50 to maybe 150 units. Important thing to do when you're launching is to make sure you do the calculations before you order the units and make sure that you can at least theoretically make a profit after all of your expenses. Right, so when you sell the product for say £15 and you're getting a quote for a larger order, will it be possible at some point to make profit after your FBA fees, after the cost of the product, after the customs, after packaging costs, etc, etc, etc? Will you be able to make a profit after all of those costs? If you can, after doing your test batch, then move on with the launch and sooner or later you'll get that product to at least a grand a month in profit, hopefully and your business will be off. Right, you can approach this gradually, you don't have to go all in and take a huge risk. Great question, Ann. So Julian asks, what does it really take to be a very successful Amazon six figure seller? Honest and brutal answer only because. Please Ollie. So that's a big question man. And I've been thinking about the answer and I've been thinking about a few things. Number one, what I did to achieve it in my first year and what a lot of my successful clients did to achieve it as well. And I think I can sum it up pretty quickly. If you want to be a successful six figure Amazon seller, then you have to act like there's no other option. Because if you're thinking maybe I can try this and see if it works and you know, put one foot into it but leave the rest of your body behind, then it's just not going to work out for you. It's too tough out there for you to be half arsing this. If you act like there's no other option and if this doesn't work, then you'll have no other way of earning money, then you'll put your all into it, you'll grow as a person, as you build the business, you'll go the extra mile which most sellers aren't willing to do. They just want to coast along and hope and that will get you the success, it's that attitude that gets you there. The reason I got there is because this business was my ticket to being able to travel to Europe and live somewhere else. And there was no other way I could do that. I couldn't have a job somewhere else. I just wouldn't. I wasn't willing to do that, wasn't willing to have a job anyway. With all my other clients, the pain from being in their job is too much, right? So they're not willing to continue with that job. The pain from the job is so much they want to get out of it and they put all their energy into the business and the business is to take it out of that. If you're cozy in your job and you're relatively happy and you're thinking that Amazon is going to give you Lamborghinis and all this stuff and it sounds like a nice dream and so you kind of half ass it and just expect it all to go your way, you're going to fail, I promise. So act like there's no other option, put everything into it and then there's a chance you could be a six figure seller. Hope asks, how do you set product prices after you found a product that should sell? In theory. So this is a great question and pricing is something that requires a little bit of strategy to get right. So you know, it's funny, when we see prices in stores, we assume that they were set by some, you know, board of people and they decided this is the price for this thing. And everyone agrees in the world. Yep, that's the price for this thing and that's the official price and that's what we should be paying and it's not a ripoff, etc, etc etc. That's a load of rubbish. Okay? Prices are completely made up. They're completely made up. So the seller of any product makes up the price. Then the customer comes along and depending on whether they're willing to pay that price or not, that determines whether the seller changes the price, lowers it or reduces it. Now there's some funny psychology with pricing. Sometimes I know a marketer who was trying to sell a product in the health niche. It was a product that helps you improve your heart, health and decog arteries, etc, etc etc. They tried pricing this product at 15 pounds, okay? Because they wanted to be the cheap alternative in the marketplace. Now most products on the marketplace of similar quality, etc, etc were 60 pounds. Because of that reason, this person's product never sold. Customers didn't trust the quality of the product because it was Priced too cheaply. Imagine that. Exactly the same ingredients, better quality, in some ways better product. Customers didn't believe it because it was priced too cheaply, so it didn't sell. They had to raise the price from £15 to £60. Then the sale started flying out the door. What am I trying to say here? Pricing is down to psychology. So here's what you do with your price on Amazon, okay? You start off undercutting everyone in the marketplace. Why? Because you have no reviews, right? No one's heard of your brand, no one's heard of your product. So the chances of you making sales, charging more than everyone else in the beginning is actually quite low. Okay, so cheap in the beginning, then you'll get some sales, you get some momentum, you might get a couple of reviews as well. As you start to get sales, gradually increase the price of your product. Right now you can charge less, get more sales. As you increase your price, the volume of sales will decrease, right? Because people, less people will be willing to buy a product as it gets more expensive. Okay, but obviously when you charge less, you make more sales, but you make less profit. When you charge more, you make less sales, but you make more profit. Okay? There's going to be a sweet spot in between the lower end of pricing and the higher end of pricing where you make lots of sales, but you also have great sales volume. And this will mean that you have more profit in a seven day period. Okay? That sweet spot is where you want to price your product. So you need to test quite a few price points. It's not a static thing. It isn't decided by some magical council, right? It's all about testing, seeing what happens with the marketplace and finding that sweet spot. That's how you price, right? This is known in economics as price elasticity. There's a certain, like with a rubber band, you can pull it certain amount, but then you pull it to a certain length and it snaps. Same with pricing. You can charge certain amount, keep charging more, more, more, and then all of a sudden it will get to a point where nobody pays that price anymore because they determine that it's not worth that value. This is how you do it, right? This is how you find the perfect price. Great question. That's going to help a lot of people. Interestingly, we've got two questions from people who live in Brazil and want to start Amazon businesses. And the first one's from Carolina, who asks if I'm doing Amazon in Brazil, which suppliers should I look for and where? And we've got another question. From Kel, who says, does it apply for any country? And can I start this business in Brazil? So first of all, you can sell on Amazon from any country on the planet as long as they're in the approved banking regions that Amazon allows. So that's pretty much every single country. If you're not in an approved banking region, you can actually get an international bank and still sell on Amazon. So the simple answer is yes, you can definitely do this from Brazil. So if you want to sell from Brazil, I would sell in the US marketplace because it's next door to you. Right. Pretty much compared to the UK anyway. And of course you want to import from China, right, Because that's where they do most of the cheap and easily accessible manufacturing. So go to Alibaba, you can search for suppliers there and find a freight forwarder who's based in Brazil. Okay. And they can organize the shipment of your products from China to Brazil. Sorry, to the U.S. right. And into the U.S. fBA warehouses. Okay. Now you could get some samples sent to you in Brazil from the supplier. All right? So you can check the quality of the goods, then you can get the products shipped into us. You can also use a prep center. They're companies who put the products in boxes, quality check the products. They can put products in packaging, bundle things for you, and then ship them into Amazon for you. Or some freight forwarders do this service for you as well. So it's a question of finding suppliers, finding freight forwarders, contacting several of each, not just contacting the first one you see. Contact, get five quotes at least. Remember, deal flow is key and then go from there. Totally doable. You can do this stuff from anywhere. I've got clients in Europe. I've got clients in Africa, Australia, New Zealand. I've got clients in Canada. I mean, you pretty much name the country. I've helped people build Amazon businesses there. So don't let that discourage you. Great. Alright, so if you watch this video anywhere outside of my Facebook group, then please look for the link. It should be in the description of this video or maybe above the video. If you're watching on my website, you can join the group. It's called Ollie's E Commerce Q and A Group. And the point is, as you enter the group, you'll see a little box that allows you to ask a question. You have to fill in that box to be allowed in the group. Just because I want real entrepreneurs in there, not people who just want to jump in and spam. So that's kind of my filtration system to check that you're real. And then once you've asked a question, I'll answer it for you in one of these videos so you can get your questions answered. Also, there's a bunch of great people in there, so definitely check it out. Thanks so much for watching this video and I'll catch you very soon.