Podcast Episode 004 : The Top 6 Amazon FBA Profit Accelerators

If you’re looking for a boost in your Amazon FBA profits, then take action on these 6 easy-to-implement profit accelerators. Each one of these action steps can help you see a nice boost in your profits if done consistently.

Some of these profit accelerators might be obvious to you, while others might take you by surprise just how easy they are to do. In fact, it’s our hope that after you listen to this episode and implement these 6 profit accelerators, you’ll say to yourself, “Why have I not done this sooner?!”

Listen on the podcast player below.

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Links and resources mentioned in this episode:

• My review of Amazon’s Automate Pricing
• Amazon’s Automate Pricing (sign-in required)
• My review of BQool Automatic Repricer (includes how to get my own personal repricing rules for free)
• BQool automatic repricer’s 2-week free trial
• Why You Should Consider Raising Your ASP (Average Selling Price)
• How to Increase Your Amazon FBA ASP (Average Selling Price)
• The Reseller’s Guide to Selling Shoes: Kick Up Your Profits Selling New Shoes on Amazon
• Using a Prep Center for Your Amazon FBA Business
• Top Features of the Scoutify App for Amazon FBA Sourcing
• My Review of Rakuten (formerly Ebates) – Get Cash Back For Your Amazon FBA Purchases
• Rakuten (formerly Ebates) – Get a bonus $10 for signing up

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Episode Transcript:

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, now your hosts of the show, Stephen and Rebecca Smotherman.

Stephen:           Welcome, everybody, to episode four of the Full-Time FBA Podcast. Today, we’re talking about the top six Amazon FBA profit accelerators. If you are wanting to push the pedal to the metal to accelerate those sales and those profits, then this next 30 minutes or so is going to be a valuable time for you to hang out with us and talk about these FBA profit accelerators.

Rebecca:           I’m really excited about this podcast episode because, really, who doesn’t want to accelerate their profits? We’re all here to make money and to grow our businesses, so this is going to be pretty fun talking about some ways that we can implement some pretty basic strategies that will be very beneficial to our businesses.

Stephen:           Yeah. A lot of times people like to brag about their sales numbers, but we want to be focusing on the profits. Sure. If some of the things that we’re talking about today will help you get more sales, but, overall, we want those sales to be profitable because a lot of people can brag about their big sales numbers. But you know what? If their profit levels are really low or who knows, they might even be losing money on these sales. But we want to help you make some good profits.

Rebecca:           Okay. Let’s not waste any time and let’s get right into talking about these different profit accelerators. Stephen, what’s the first one we’re going to talk about today?

Stephen:           The first one is actually a free one. Throughout this podcast, we’re going to be talking about some profit accelerators that are free. Some of them that cost money you got to spend money to make money, but you don’t always have to. Some of them are free. This first one is free, and it should take you just five minutes to do. That is signing up for FBA Global Export. What that is, is that for those of you based in the United States, if you have your inventory at United States FBA warehouses, this opens up the world to be able to purchase from Amazon.com your inventory because the default for Amazon FBA sellers in their accounts is to just have United States addresses purchase from your Amazon FBA inventory. This opens up the world to be able to purchase from you. And I mean the more eyes that can see your products, the more sellers you’re going to get.

Rebecca:           What you’re talking about FBA Global Export, is this different from Amazon Global Selling?

Stephen:           It is. It’s totally different in the fact that Amazon global selling is where Amazon encourages you to send your inventory to another country and to store your inventory in another country to be able to purchase from particular country. There’s Amazon FBA warehouses in Asia and Europe and all over the place. That’s a pretty big investment in being able to send your inventory to those locations. It works for a lot of people, and it’s profitable for some people, but FBA Global Export, just as a simple little click in your account that allows Amazon customers from around the world to be able to purchase from you so you don’t have to do anything differently. You just keep your inventory, any United States based warehouse, and the world can now purchase from you.

Rebecca:           Do you know how many countries are then opened up to us as US sellers when we turn on this setting in our account because that’s really all it is, right? It’s turning on a setting,

Stephen:           Right. You just have to turn on a setting, and I think upload a signature file to be able … You can just do that like Microsoft Paint or another type of program where you can just sign your name. But, yeah, it’s clicking a button, sign in your name, and uploading your signature and, boom, you have millions of more customers allowed to be able to see your products.

Stephen:           Currently right now, there are over 100 countries and territories that are opened up to be able to purchase from the United States on Amazon.com. I don’t know the exact count. In fact, it’s just getting bigger and bigger all the time. But over a hundred countries and territories around the world can go to Amazon.com and purchase your inventory, but only if you have FBA Global Export turned on.

Rebecca:           As we’ve talked about this and through our own experience selling through FBA Global Export in the past, are there really any downsides or drawbacks to having this setting turned on?

Stephen:           Yeah. A lot of people are curious about that, and it’s obvious question to ask and a lot of people wonder like what is the … Are the return rate, is it worse? Are there people who are keeping my product and getting a return and then keeping my money? Is there anything negative? In my own experience, I see that there’s zero negatives. The return rate from international sales is actually lower than my return rate for US sales. There’s no negatives when it comes to that.

Stephen:           When it comes to international fees or international taxes or international, anything that is over and above the cost of purchasing that product, the customer bears that fee, and so they’re paying the extra shipping costs, but they’re paying whatever type of fees go along with that and, and you don’t have to worry about that there. They know that upfront. They’re not surprised at that at the checkout. They know about that upfront that they’re getting into it. Honestly, I don’t see any negatives and the huge plus of having millions of more people see your products to purchase, that just will completely help give you a nice little boost in your profits and sales.

Rebecca:           Okay. Basically, there’s no reason for you to not stop what you’re doing right now and go turn on this setting in your account if you don’t already have it turned on.

Stephen:           Right. And we’ll be sure to put it in the show notes the links to where you can learn more about FBA Global Export and where you can go in your Amazon account to be able to turn that on. We’ll put that at fulltimefba.com/4, that will give you our show notes and all the links that you need to know more about FBA Global Exports.

Rebecca:           Okay, so moving on, what is the second profit accelerator that you would like to talk about today?

Stephen:           All right. This is another free wine, but for some reason, a lot of people struggle with this. But it’s just shipping your inventory to an FBA warehouse as soon as possible. Now, I know a lot of people love sourcing. They love going out and buying inventory. They love going to stores. They love filling up carts, but when they get back to their house, that inventory, the longer it sits at your house, the longer more competitors have time to come in and either tank the price or … I mean the more competition you have, the less opportunity a customer will have to purchase from you. You just want to be able to get your items to Amazon as soon as possible, so your prices the most competitive and, of course, the sooner it’s there, the sooner it can sell.

Stephen:           Ship it to Amazon as soon as possible. But again, a lot of us just end up having inventory hidden away in our garage or in our kitchen table or somewhere that it’s just collecting dust. Don’t waste any time. Get that inventory to Amazon as soon as possible.

Rebecca:           What I hear you telling me right now is that I should, after we’re done recording this podcast, take this stack of shoes next to my desk and do something with them.

Stephen:           Yeah, absolutely. The inventory that’s just sitting in your house is not going to make you money. Get it listed. Send it to Amazon as soon as possible, and I’ll help you with that shipment as well.

Rebecca:           Okay, great. Thanks. Okay. Moving on, what’s the next profit accelerator that we’re going to talk about today?

Stephen:           The next one, there’s a free way to do this and then there’s a paid way to do this, but I totally recommend the paid way because it’s a better way. It’s using an automatic repricer. When we set up our inventory to send to Amazon, we try to pick the best competitive possible price. We send our stuff off to Amazon. But, of course, it takes a few days to get to Amazon. It takes a few days to get checked in and then by that time, maybe sometimes our prices, it’s too low. It should actually be a little bit higher or our price is too high and it needs just to be a little bit lower to be able to get in the buy box.

Stephen:           Using automatic repricer and setting up repricing rules to be able to adjust your price both up and down is a huge profit accelerator. In fact, the very first time that we added a repricer to our Amazon business, we used a tool called BQool. Now it’s not spelled like it sounds. It’s actually spelled B-Q-O-O-L. We used BQool and it literally doubled our sales in the first month of using it.

Rebecca:           You told us about BQool, which is as you said a paid repricer. But talk to us for a second. There are free options for repricing, right?

Stephen:           Right. Amazon has a free option called automate pricing. Now, it’s free for those who are pro-sellers, the sellers who are paying the monthly fee to sell on Amazon. They offer a free repricer. The only problem is that the repricer that Amazon provides for us only prices downward. It does not price upward. There are hundreds of different times and instances where your price actually needs to be higher.

Stephen:           Amazon loves having the lowest price possible because they know low prices make for happy customers, and happy customers come back and buy more. But while sometimes your price, they need to be a little bit lower, other times, they need to be higher, sometimes, a little bit higher, sometimes significantly higher. But Amazon’s free repricer does not price upward and that’s a big drawback for me. I would much rather pay a reasonable fee to be able to have BQool price my items a little bit lower at the right times and a little bit higher at the right times, and I’m able to make more and increase my profits that way.

Rebecca:           Yeah. I just want to add to what you’re saying. We’re talking about accelerating profits here. Obviously, a repricer is going to accelerate your prices in that it’s helping you to get the next sale. It’s making sure that you’re priced competitively. But I would add to this. One way that I think that using a repricer has really helped me in particular and I mean our business, in general, but also me personally, I feel like since we started using it, Stephen started using a repricer before I did, it took me a few more months to get on board.

Rebecca:           But once I did, the amount of time I saved from having to go back and manually reprice, I was repricing my inventory. I was just doing it manually. It was taking a lot of time. Our profits from the inventory that I was manually repricing have gone up, but also, I’m able to use that time that I’m saving to do other more profitable tasks as well. I’ve really enjoyed that aspect of it too.

Stephen:           Yeah. The only drawback to using automatic repricer is trying to decide what are the right rules that you want this automatic repricer to follow. I’ve got a free gift for you. If you go to fulltimefba.com/4, this will be in the show notes, I will give you my personal repricing rules that literally helped double my sales the very first month of using it. Again, there’s going to be more on the podcast show notes page, fulltimefba.com/4.

Rebecca:           Okay. The next point that we’re going to talk about is something a little bit more that requires a little bit more strategy, but it really does pay off in giving you higher profits and accelerating your profits. Talk to us about ASP and how can that impact your profits overall?

Stephen:           Yeah. Being able to increase your ASP, and ASP stands for average selling price, when you’re able to increase your average selling price, overall on your Amazon inventory, that’s going to be a huge profit accelerator because you’re not wasting time on prepping and putting a sticker on a lot of low priced items. You’re also saving money on the fees on low priced items.

Stephen:           Let me give you an example. Say, I’ve got 10 items and I’m going to sell them on Amazon for $10. Well, with each of those 10 items, I have to prep 10 items. I have to put an FBA label on 10 items. I might need to polybag or sticker or take stickers off of 10 items. I have to do something with 10 different items. Then, I have to ship those 10 items to Amazon. Maybe, five will go to one warehouse, and three will go to another, and two we’ll go to yet another.

Stephen:           There’s a lot of work with selling 10 items at $10. What if I sell one item at $100? Then, there’s just one item that is going to be needing that prep. There’s going to be one item that’s going to have fees taken out of it. The percentage of fees on the $10 items, that might end up being like almost 50% cut down in fees. My ROI is going to be going down. But on $100 item that I’m selling, Amazon might only take about 25 to 30% in fees with that. I’m able to actually make more, take home profit from a higher priced item, and I’ve got a lot less work going into it.

Rebecca:           Absolutely. That’s one of the reasons why I have been focusing on selling shoes for the past few years because I love that the time that’s required for sourcing and prepping and then maintaining my inventory is really cut down while our sales still remain high because the average ASP for that particular category is pretty high.

Stephen:           Yeah. if you want to know what your current ASP is, you can actually go into your seller central account and look at your numbers. Amazon will tell you what your numbers are. You can change the time range of where you’re looking at your numbers and you will see, hey, from the beginning of the year until now, my average selling price has been $15 or my average selling price has been $40, whatever it is. Then, you can start to see, okay, maybe I need to start looking for items that are a higher priced item.

Stephen:           I understand that there’s a lot of fear with that. That’s a lot safer to buy and sell low priced items because you’re not putting a whole lot of profit on the line with selling those lower priced items. It’s a lot scarier when you’re like, “I’m going to put $100 in one item. I mean that’s, that’s kind of scary.” But it’s been amazing to see how our profits have grown with selling shoes, which is a higher ASP item. We’ve got some wholesale relationships where we have some higher priced items that we sell via wholesale. It’s really helped increase our profits and we saved a whole lot of money in less fees and less work upfront in in getting ready for Amazon FBA.

Rebecca:           Okay. Going from there, let’s talk about how using the right tools and services for your Amazon business can really help accelerate your profits. What are we talking about when we say using the right tools and services?

Stephen:           The tools and services that you use, obviously, anybody who is worth anything, make sure that they use the right tools. The baseball players, they want the right kind of bat, the right kind of glove. The same thing with Amazon sellers. You need to make sure you’re using the right tools and services. I know, as an Amazon seller, a lot of times, we want to try to be as frugal as possible to try to squeeze out as much as we can out of our inventory and out of the time that we have.

Stephen:           Sometimes, that can be added detriment because we think, “Okay. Why pay for a service when I can do this myself? Why pay for this tool when I can do it myself without the tool?” It might take a little bit longer with us, not a big deal. But when you look at the big scheme of things and you get the overall perspective of everything that needs to go on, you’re basically shooting yourself in the foot if you’re not using the right tools and services.

Stephen:           I’ll give you an example. A moment ago, we talked about shipping your items to Amazon as soon as possible. Well, the fact that you are prepping your inventory yourself and sending off to Amazon yourself, that is a job that almost anybody can do. If you are able to find someone else to do this for you, then it’ll free you up to do other things like source for more inventory. Maybe the thinking about hiring a prep center to prep your inventory for you, some prep centers allow for retail arbitrage drop-offs. Almost all the other prep centers allow online arbitrage or wholesale deliveries. That can open you up and free up your time to be able to do more profitable items, things like sourcing for more inventory. Being able to use the right prep center instead of doing it yourself is a big deal.

Stephen:           Also, when you’re outsourcing, using a paid tool like Scoutify instead of using the Amazon seller app to source for inventory, Amazon seller app is pretty good when you’re first starting to get an idea of how selling on Amazon works. But there’s so many different tools and benefits of using a Scoutify that help you make better sourcing decisions that using that tool can help you just make better sourcing decisions, buy the right kind of inventory, know that you’re going to buy inventory that’s going to sell quickly and at a price you expect it to sell whereas just using the Amazon seller app, it’s not as easy to see that right up front if the item that you’re buying is actually a good item that’s going to sell.

Stephen:           Making sure that you use the right tools and services can be a game changer. Sometimes, you just have to try things out and see what works for you. But other times, you can take the advice of others who have tried it before you and you can find really good tools and services that are out there to help save a lot of time and help make you more money.

Rebecca:           Right. That what it comes down to, I think, when we’re talking about using different tools or services for our business is time and money. Can I save time by using this tool? Can I save money by using this tool? Sometimes, it’s a combination of both. Sometimes, saving time really is about being able to make more money because of the time that you’ve saved. When you’re looking at these different tools or a prep service or any other type of service, reimbursement, service, anything like that, look at how much time is this freeing up in your schedule and how much money?

Rebecca:           Don’t just look at how much money am I paying for this every month, but also how much more money am I going to be able to make in my business? How am I going to be able to accelerate my profits because I’m using this service or this tool? Whereas if I was just doing it myself, I would be spending a lot of time to possibly not make as much money.

Rebecca:           All right, so we’re at our last point for the day. Talk to us, Stephen, about one more profit accelerator that we can use in our FBA business.

Stephen:           This one is one that’s really awesome because you almost have to do zero work, just a fraction of a tiny little bit of work to be able to make the most out of this one. Before I tell you what it is, let me give you a story. Imagine you are going to go sourcing for some inventory and you go to one store and they have one set of prices and you go to the exact same store across the street and their prices are the exact same as well. But one store will give you cash back based on your purchases. Which one are you going to go to? Are you going to go to the store that is going to keep all of the money that you pay them or the store that’s going to give you cash back?

Rebecca:           Oh, I want the cash back.

Stephen:           All right, that’s right. There’s a couple of different cash back sites that are out there that you can use. The one we recommend is called Rakuten. Rakuten is formerly Ebates. If you’ve ever used Ebates before or heard about Ebates, Rakuten is a cashback site that gives you 1%, sometimes up to 20% during certain promotions, cash back on your online purchases and select a retail store purchases as well. You can just go and sign up for Rakuten and you can get cash back for your online purchases. Then, you can also set up your debit card or your credit card with Rakuten. If you go to certain stores, you can get cash back for retail arbitrage purchases.

Stephen:           This adds up over time. When you get 1% cash back, 5% here, 10% there, 15% there, 8% there. Four times a year, they will send you what they call a big fat check. We love getting our big fat checks.

Rebecca:           We sure do. We got it in the mail this weekend, and it was so much fun to go deposit it.

Stephen:           Yeah, absolutely. What you can do with your big fat check is totally up to you. Some people like to get their cash back and put it right back into more inventory, which is a great way to accelerate your profits or you can use your big fat check for a personal goal. Maybe you’re saving up for a vacation or maybe you’re saving up for certain types of tools or resources that you want to get for your business. You choose how you want to spend that money, but it’s money you’re going to be getting and you’re only doing one little thing. When you’re sourcing online, you click a little button and it activates Rakuten and, boom, you get your cash back soon after that. It adds up.

Stephen:           Now, some stores have more cash back than other stores. You want to look into those little details. But again, it’s your money. They want to make sure that you get it. If you’re not using it, you’re just wasting money.

Rebecca:           Okay. I think that about wraps it up.

Stephen:           Yeah. Those are the six profit accelerators that really help accelerate our profits and help us a lot. If you want to go to our podcast show notes page to find out more information about this fulltimefba.com/4, the number four, and you’ll find out more about all this information. Thank you so much for listening to this. Hopefully, you can put these into action and see your profits begin to accelerate. Let me know how these are working out for you.

Rebecca:           All right. Well, thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Full-Time FBA Podcast. We hope that you would subscribe if you enjoy this content and it would really help us out a lot if you would do that. Also, if you wouldn’t mind leaving an honest review for us wherever you subscribe to your podcast, that would be great too. We look forward to bringing you our next episode. This time, we talked about profit accelerators, but next time around, we’re going to talk about the top profit killers for your FBA business. So be sure and stick around for that episode next.

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, including a free e-book. 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.