Podcast Episode 180 – How to Earn 5 (or even 6) Figures a Month on Amazon

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Episode 180 Transcript:

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:01.8] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Full-Time FBA Show. In each episode, it’s our goal to help you turn part-time hours into a full-time income, selling almost anything on Amazon. Now, your hosts of the show, Stephen and Rebecca Smotherman.

[WELCOME]

[0:00:20] STEPHEN: Welcome to episode number 180 of The Full-Time FBA show. Today, we’re going to be talking about, How to Earn Five or Even Six Figures a Month on Amazon. To talk with me about that, and to help explain how we’re able to do this, is my wife Rebecca. What’s up, Rebecca?

[0:00:36] REBECCA: Not a whole lot. Looking forward to getting into this topic. I am always very intrigued to go back to origin stories. I feel like this is an origin story of an episode as people will see when we get into it, but it’ll be good to cover it.

[0:00:51] STEPHEN: Yeah. We’re no superheroes, but we’d like to pretend to be… dressing up on Halloween. Anyway, let’s get into this in The Full-Time FBA Show today.

[DISCUSSION]

[0:01:03] REBECCA: For anybody who’s selling on Amazon, or thinking about getting started selling on Amazon, we all start off with some big dreams of making really good money while working from home. Maybe you thought that Amazon was going to be the answer to paying off your debts, or paying off a mortgage. Maybe you are trying to save for retirement, or you have some travel you want to do. Maybe you’re looking to have the life of financial independence. It might be that you’re listening to this, you’ve already arrived at some level of any of those. I know that we’ve achieved a certain level of some of those, not all of them, but we have experienced that, and we love to talk about how we’ve done that.

For those of you who haven’t yet experienced the reality of making five or even six figures per month on Amazon through FBA, then this episode is for you, because we’re going to get into how we grew our business to the point it is at today financially. Stephen, there was a time when our Amazon business was not making five figures per month. Looking back now, that seems like so long ago. It’s hard to imagine, we weren’t even making five figures a month on Amazon at one point, but it’s true, we weren’t. Now that’s just unthinkable, but how did we get here? How did we get to this point from that point?

[0:02:23] STEPHEN: Yeah. It was about 10 years or so ago when I started getting really frustrated with our Amazon business. I was missing opportunities, things were going on, I felt like I was showing up late to money making opportunities. I felt like, I was getting left behind. I decided, I wasn’t going to let that happen again. My solution was just a spiral notebook, nothing fancy. I logged everything for a year in the spiral notebook, every sale, every store closing announcement, so I could pivot my plans to source as much as possible. I wrote every clearance push, everything that I could think of, that would be good to know the following year, because most stores follow a pattern when it comes to sales or clearance schedules. And if you know the pattern, then you can know what to expect and be the first to take advantage of the arbitrage opportunity.

Anyway, I logged everything that I could think of, and the year after that, I had a full notebook. I was prepared with all of that knowledge. When the sales were going to be, when the clearance markdowns were going to be, I understood a lot better how these stores reacted to get those sales and when the best opportunities were to source. I used that spiral notebook, and I was able to finally experience multiple five-figure months and our first six-figure year. The year after that, my profits grew even more. Today we’ve grown to a place where we can sustain mid six-figure years on just part-time hours.

[0:03:53] REBECCA: That seems like so long ago to even be talking about that. At this point, things have grown so much. We’re at a place where we sustain, and it’s just amazing to think about, and I love hearing how we got to that point. There’s a lot more that’s involved, but the spiral notebook and how you started taking notes, detailed notes, it really is the planning and preparation of that whole year that became the launch pad for where our business went from that point forward. When you were doing that, I mean, I’ve never actually seen the actual notebook. I’ve seen the typed-up notes and the things that came from that, and I’ve heard you talk about it.

[0:04:31] STEPHEN: It might be in a box in here somewhere. I think it might be in the attic, but yeah, it’s around here somewhere. I probably didn’t throw it away.

[0:04:38] REBECCA: I don’t think you would have thrown it away.

[0:04:39] STEPHEN: No, no, not at all.

[0:04:41] REBECCA: In that notebook, though, back to the notebook, was it just filled with store sales and things like that? Because like, that’s not what we do now. We don’t just do clearance –

[0:04:51] STEPHEN: Right.

[0:04:51] REBECCA: Sourcing, and that’s been the case for a while now. So like, what were you doing besides just store sales schedules? That’s really hard to say. Store sales schedules in that notebook.

[0:05:03] STEPHEN: Yeah. That was just the beginning, because yeah, that’s mostly what we did at that time, focusing on clearance sales and things like that, but more than that, I wrote other things down in the notebook, because I started to understand the timing of how to get ready to stock up for a certain seasonal reseller money making opportunities. I mean, think about all the different holidays and wanting to be stocked up for reselling Valentine’s Day items, or Mother’s Day, or Halloween, or the mother of all holidays Christmas.

Here’s a quick little tip. If you haven’t started sourcing for these holidays by the time you see those items for sale in your local stores, then you’re too late. You need to be way ahead of the curve when it comes to sourcing and being stocked up before when that seasonal rush comes, you have plenty of items in stock for your customers. With my notebook, I started creating schedules of when to start sourcing for these holidays, set reminders on my phone and calendar to make sure that I was stocked up in time for each holiday sales rush. That way, I was not going to get left behind on making good money on both the major and minor holidays.

[0:06:02] REBECCA: I know that the notes that came from that notebook have helped us keep our Amazon business, both organized and structured to make sure that we’re taking advantage of almost every reseller money making opportunity that can come our way throughout the year. But what I also like about it is how it helped us maximize our profits on specific times of the year like, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Prime Day, which when we first started out, it was Prime Day, but now it’s more a week and it could be twice a year, but with the knowledge from that notebook, we knew about those events coming up, we could be prepared for those types of things too, and we’d be stocked up and ready to make some really good money on those days when customers are coming to Amazon.

It’s not just about being prepared by knowing how to source for certain times of the year or knowing when the schedules are for clearances, but also like, when are the big times when Amazon is going to be the place that people are going to sell? So we can keep tabs on the mood of customers and making sure that when they’re in the mood to buy that we are stocked up and we’re not missing out. A big side effect of this was figuring out how to better handle Q4, which Q4 is the last quarter of the year, so it’s October, November, December.

Technically for an Amazon seller, I think January should be included as part of Q4. Technically Q1, but you still see a lot of those same numbers we do over the last however many years since we started doing our yearly schedule according to these notes. We’ve seen a January that’s as higher, higher than December. Those effects from Q4 and how we’ve been able to manage Q4 better every year have really increased our overall annual sales and profits. A lot of people get started selling on Amazon, because they’ve heard about that Q4 bump in sales.

If you’re doing the same thing that you’ve been doing throughout the rest of the year, you’re going to see that bump in profits, but if you’re prepared for Q4 the way you should be, you’re going to see some really amazing boost in Q4 profits. Just every single year our Q4 and that includes January are the highest months that we see out of the year by far exponentially higher, I don’t know, technically if it’s exponentially, but you get almost some of that little hockey stick type curve going with our Q4, because of the way that we have been able to prioritize scheduling and keeping track of things from these notes.

[0:08:30] STEPHEN: Yeah. Definitely October, November, December, and January are our biggest months and a lot of that came from being ready and being prepared, because of what I took as notes in that notebook. I mean, I went to Boy Scouts for a couple of years, I remember the motto, it’s be prepared and that’s helped me to really follow through. It can help you, too.

Talking about the amazing Q4 profits reminds me of something else. I realized that because of my little spiral notebook that almost the opposite of Q4 happened during the summer months, during the summer sales just really seemed to slow down. The longer I sold it Amazon, I started to realize that even had a name, the summer slowdown. When I noticed that this was happening almost every summer, I investigated and I found solutions to the summer slowdown and I found those solutions and implemented it into our Amazon business. Now our summer months are strong with great profits throughout the entire summer.

[0:09:24] REBECCA: We’re not still using that same notebook. We don’t know where it is exactly, but we do have digital notes that you’ve converted it over. What else do you have that we are using for our Amazon business that came from that original notebook?

[0:09:37] STEPHEN: Yeah. I definitely made it digital. It made updating it every year a lot easier, because times change, things change, stores change. I used to write about Toys ‘R Us and now they’re not a thing. Now they’re becoming a thing again, I don’t know. I decided that any Amazon seller who wanted to benefit from this knowledge, since I put it in digital, can have the opportunity to purchase this information and use it for their own Amazon business. I put all that knowledge that I have, what to do from January to December, into a course called The Reseller’s Guide to A Year in FBA, a month-by-month guide to a profitable Amazon business. You can check it out, fulltimefba.com/ayearinfba.

[0:10:16] REBECCA: Over time, this course has become our number one all time best-selling course. More people have purchased this course, A Year in FBA course from us at Full-time FBA than any other thing, right?

[0:10:28] STEPHEN: Yes, absolutely.

[0:10:29] REBECCA: Yeah, by far. We have two big announcements that we wanted to share with you about A Year in FBA. The first announcement is that you can use the limited time coupon code, FBA50, F-B-A-5-0 and you’re going to save $50 off the course of the course, from now until March 27th, you can enroll in this course. That’s going to include any lifetime updates that we make of this digital year in FBA for free. We update the content every year. We’ll be passing that on to you every year as we have changes and updates to our own business and things that are going on in the Amazon world.

[0:11:04] STEPHEN: Yeah. The things that we learned, we put that into the digital copy of my spiral notebook, A Year in FBA, and pass that along to you. That’s announcement number one, the coupon code FBA50, a limited time coupon code where you can get the course for $50 off. Announcement number two is that this course is about to become closed to the public. From now until March 27th, this will be your last opportunity to enroll in The Reseller’s Guide to A Year in FBA, as a standalone course. Full-time FBA, we are going through some changes here with how we offer our courses and very soon this course will no longer be available to purchase as a standalone product. So be sure you use that coupon code FBA50 at fulltimefba.com/ayearinfba and lock in lifetime ownership of this course at the lowest price today.

[0:11:56] REBECCA: We haven’t even mentioned that along with the course, along with the written digital version of that original notebook that’s written out in an eBook now. You will also get monthly live webinars through all of 2023. Each month, Stephen will walk you through in an interactive webinar, what you need to be doing and avoiding to make the most profits every month of the year. Those webinars are about an hour long and they include open Q&A time, which is a great opportunity for you to be able to be live on video with Stephen, asking your specific questions about selling on FBA.

[0:12:31] STEPHEN: Yeah. You also get 24 months of our previous year in FBA monthly webinar replays. On the live webinars and the replays, I also do some coaching, teaching you specific reseller skills that you need to know in order to take your Amazon business to the next level. Finally, then this is my favorite part of the course. If you enroll before March 27th, 2023, you’ll get a free invitation to a private A Year in FBA Facebook group. This group has around 1,700 members who help each other out with their Amazon businesses. Throughout the year, myself and some of our group members will share coupon codes, store, sale announcements, cash back opportunities, store closing announcements, anything else that might be an opportunity for us to make money, we’ll share it with one another.

[0:13:15] REBECCA: We also use that group as a place to share Amazon announcements and any updates about Amazon guidelines or fee changes so that you’ll never miss out what’s going on right now in the reselling world of Amazon.

[0:13:26] STEPHEN: So taking the time to make this notebook, spiral notebook, really helped me to finally organize and make a plan and get some structure to finally be able to have a sustainable five-figure months and six-figure years for Amazon business. It’s been amazing. There’s also more bonuses. You can find out more about it fulltimefba.com/ayearinfba. We’ve got like a printable 2023 calendar, your own FBA digital notebook starter kit, so you can log your own experiences, things like that. Again, the coupon code FBA50 to get $50 off the course that’s about to be closed now. After March 27th, it will no longer be available. So be sure you go to fulltimefba.com/ayearinfba today, use that coupon code save and then start making that money.

[0:14:18] REBECCA: Thank you so much for joining us for another episode of The Full-Time FBA Show. As a reminder, you can find the show notes for this episode at fulltimefba.com/180, because we are on episode number 180. You’ll also find the transcript of this episode and all of the links and coupon code that we listed here, fulltimefba.com/180.

[0:14:39] STEPHEN: Next week on the show, we’re going to be talking about Dealing with Counterfeit or Intellectual Property Claims on Amazon. It’s not fun to happen, but you want to make sure you respond appropriately, so we’ll talk about that next week on the show.

[OUTRO]

[0:14:54] ANNOUNCER: That’s all for this episode of The Full-Time FBA Show. Head over to fulltimefba.com/podcast, where you’ll find the show notes and links from this episode. While you’re there, subscribe to our newsletter where you’ll get several free downloads of our popular and helpful Amazon FBA resources. Now take action on what you’ve learned today, so you can find success at turning part-time hours into a full-time income with Amazon FBA.

[END]