Any REALLY good FBA courses?

Two FBA sellers offering courses that I liked:

How to Sell on Amazon FBA

Sell on eBay - eBay Tools and Tips, Selling Online, Wholesale Products

I am not interested at all in retail arbitrate or couponing; to me that's not running a business. That's running around hustling for deals. The problem is that it seems like that's what a lot of courses focus on.

I already import products to sell on Amazon (private label), sell existing products on Amazon that I don't own, and have a system in place for upselling customers or bundling products. This is stuff I just figured out on my own.

I'm looking for something similar to what Stompernet was to E-commerce site owners. There was a whole group of e-commerce site owners in the mid-2000's that were doing pretty well, but Stompernet opened up new ideas for us to test out. A lot of the content kind of already assumed you had a store up and running.

50% seems pretty high. I would think most people are turning over the majority of their inventory in 3 months if they are selecting products with a good rank. Obviously, some items like certain books can take longer to sell but the people should know that going in.

Yeah, that video is exactly like the stuff I was seeing as far as courses go. From what I've seen, Matt Clark's system is the only one that seemed halfway decent. But I still doubt I would pay money for that course because I think most people could figure it out by spending a little time (which they would have to anyways) by going thru the progression of selling on amazon. Playing around with it is the only way you're going to be able to spot opportunities. Take your $3500 and use that as a testing budget and you will, organically, figure all this stuff out.

But a few pointers:

1) I think people underestimate the sales bump that you get by converting a product from merchant-fulfilled to FBA. So test out finding a product that doesn't rank that well and sending inventory to Amazon. In some cases, you'll double the sales even if the price is the same. Much easier than trying to win the buy box.
2) In the "real world", there are product leaders and followers. But in some cases, on Amazon the "off brands" are actually the leaders due to the fact that the product is stocked in the warehouse and, thus, has more reviews. That should be a lesson to you as you move forward.
3) Clearly, private-labeling products is the crux of the course...and it is the best way to make money on Amazon. What happens with typical listings is that you send inventory to amazon, you get some sales, others see that and then copy you, and then your margins take a hit. With private labeling, it's your product so nobody else should be able to list it. This also gives you more latitude with getting reviews to your product. You can price the product low for a period of time, build up reviews (thru automation), and then you'll slowly rise thru the ranks. Once you're established, the rich get richer. More sales=more reviews. More reviews=more sales.

Once you get to a certain point with a private label product, you can't be stopped. I have more reviews for my PL products than products that have Top 50 rankings in top-level categories. What does that mean? It means that if you have 300 reviews and your competitor has 25, you can command a higher price.

When all this starts to happen, you can start to squeeze others because your volume is higher. You have the data to support the sales so you can go to the vendor and ask for bigger discounts. And a huge cost, shipping TO amazon, is reduced because the big cost is getting them to pick it up in the first place....after that it levels off as you add more.

Seriously....in the Jim C. course, one of the larger webinar series had a guy that was supposed to be some FBA genius. And as far as I can tell, he basically went around to Target buying stuff on sale and then selling it on Amazon. He also became a "coupon engineer" and was able to save even more by putting his purchases on credit cards with points. The webinar host asked if he got any special treatment at stores like this and he said something along the lines of "Yeah, sometimes the manager will ring me up or they will open a register up for me" WTF???

I wouldn't say I know that much, but after seeing the content out there, I think I might be close to a huge LAUNCH BABY!!!!!

I think in that more expensive course, there is probably a little bit more steak, but there is a whole TON of sizzle along with it. I think, based on my experience, their system is valid...but I don't see how they are justifying the $3500 price tag. There were even certain aspects of their process that they alluded to in the video where I thought "They are doing $3M/year and they are doing it like that!!"

They are right though, private label stuff is the holy grail on Amazon. But I don't think there is too much of a secret to actually making it happen.

1) Find "generic" product that sells.
2) Find manufacturer for that product.
3) Sell product, generate reviews.
4) Lower cost of goods by going overseas and buying larger quantities.

Sure, I'm simplifying some steps, but it's not that hard if you have your eyes open. Finding the manufacturer is, potentially ,the hardest part. But realistically, you just need to prove your concept early-on. If you want to sell boomerangs under my private label, you could start by just going to a manufacturer that makes generic boomerangs and stick your product in a bag and call it your own. Once you start selling, you look for a cheaper manufacturer.

Scouting for someone else is a terrible, TERRIBLE idea. One of the things that people don't realize is that it's not THAT much risk in selling on Amazon FBA. If you find a product that would work on FBA, then you should just go for it.

I think if people just would take the plunge and send something into FBA, they'd be SHOCKED at how fast the stuff sells. Sure, the gurus will scare you into thinking that you will sit on the inventory for a long time if you do it wrong, but Amazon sells so much stuff that you can liquidate very easily.

I can putz around amazon right now and find tons of stuff that is priced at $20 that I could sell for a $3/profit per unit. The question is if it's worth my time to putz around with it. But you play around with sending stuff like that in and see how it works out. That's the best education that you can get. Sometimes your competition will run out of inventory and you'll have a window where you can jack up the price to $30 and get a little extra money out. Sometimes it's tight where you have to sell for $19.99 and be elbowing competition out of the way. But worst case scenario, you can always blow the inventory out and come out at even or a small loss.

I just found a product now that has 10 reviews on amazon, no prime sellers, and lists for $120 (shipping included) as the lowest price. My cost is $75 so if I buy 5 of them it would be $375 plus $25 shipping to get them to amazon. If I price it at $119.99, I'd net $99.52 on the sale. I deduct my $75 cost plus $5 shipping and I wind up with $19.52 profit on the sale. That's a ROI of 25% and I guarantee that all 5 of them will sell quickly.

In fact, you might be better off going after products that are above that $25 sweet spot because a lot of people aren't willing to dump money into products that cost too much, but the margin may be better there.

That's the way I'd get started because at least you're learning how the entire process works and you're seeing how quickly things sell. Once you've got that down, you're closer to narrowing things down to a product that you could private label.

"Private Labeling" probably sounds fancy dancy, but it can be very rudimentary. There are certain products that people just stock up on and are willing to buy 5 of them, as opposed to 1. Well, you can just package an existing product into a set of 5 and list it under a new listing. It's not the best way to private label, but it would separate you from the competition. The upside of this approach is that amazon charges less fees for shipping 1 product as opposed to 5.

Just reading the Amazon Help carefully would be the best choice, buddy

You are correct Walter- a team of over 30 successful entrepreneurs are constantly updating and improving that course! It's never been better. It's the gold standard of creative Amazon selling strategies.