Podcast Episode 100 – Top Amazon Reseller Lessons Learned from 100 Episodes

This week we celebrate episode number 100 with a jam packed podcast episode! In today’s podcast we’ll be covering the top Amazon reseller lessons that we’ve learned over the span of the first 100 episodes. It was hard to narrow down from 100 episodes to come up with our top ten, but that’s what we’ll discuss today.

In today’s show we’ll cover four sourcing lessons, three sales & profit lessons, two troubleshooting lessons, and one big mindset lesson. Each of the ten lessons we discuss today will be linked directly to a podcast episode that you can listen to for a more in-depth deep dive into the lesson learned. Join us today for this “best of” recap. Plus, learn more about our $100 giveaway!

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Key points from Episode 100:

• Why online arbitrage can be a highly lucrative reseller strategy.
• How buying items on Amazon to sell on Amazon can be a profitable online arbitrage strategy.
• Why selling wholesale items on Amazon is one of the safest and most profitable reseller strategies.
• Buying replenishable items, or replens for short, is one of the best ways to build up a long-term sustainable reseller business.
• How to optimize sales and profits for your Amazon business.
• Profit leaks and how to prevent them.
• How Amazon’s generous return policy can actually benefit you in the long run.
• How to troubleshoot issues that might come up with your FBA business.
• The importance and strategies to avoid having your account suspended.
• Life skills for Amazon FBA success: how your mindset can make or break your business.
• How to enter our $100 giveaway contest!
• And more!

Links and resources mentioned in this episode:

• Episode 31: Online Arbitrage – Beginner Strategies for OA Success
• Episode 39: Amazon to Amazon Flips – Online Arbitrage Strategies with Jo Ann Zimmerman
• Episode 92: 8 Things You Need To Start Selling Wholesale Items on Amazon
• Episode 88: How Replens Boost Your Sales and Profits in Your Amazon FBA Business
• Episode 49: Five Major Profit Leaks for Amazon FBA Sellers
• Episode 68: Why Are My Sales So Slow?
• Episode 24: Inauthentic Claims and How to Respond, with Kim Coghlan
• Episode 55: Overcoming Your Fear of Amazon Account Suspension with Lesley Hensell
• Episode 63: Life Skills for Amazon FBA Success
• Sourcetember – FREE video based sourcing training for the month of September.

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Episode 100 Transcript:

[WELCOME]

[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.

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:21.7] STEPHEN: Welcome to episode number 100 of the Full-Time FBA Show, it’s exciting to be here, I’m excited to be here, I’m excited my co-host Rebecca is here, how is it going, Rebecca?

[0:00:31.4] REBECCA: It is great, I am excited too. I mean, just so much excitement right now for episode number 100.

[0:00:37.7] STEPHEN: Yes, today, we’re going to be talking about the top Amazon FBA reseller strategy lessons that we’ve learned and you’ve learned over the last 100 episodes and it’s going to be an awesome time. We also have a giveaway at the end of the episode so be sure to stick around to the end and you have a chance to win $100.

[DISCUSSION]

[0:00:59.6] REBECCA: Yeah, today’s episode, we’re going to be going over the top 10 reseller strategies that will move your Amazon business forward that we have covered in the first 100 episodes. Don’t worry, we are not going to be recapping a hundred episodes, this will not be that kind of thing and it’s also not like a top 10 list like these are in any particular order, these are just categorized by topics.

We have four different topics that we’re going to cover and these 10 strategies and podcast episodes are going to fall into those four categories. The first one that we’re going to cover is sourcing topics and we’ve had a lot of really great podcast episodes on the topic of sourcing but the ones we’re going to give you today, we feel like are the top four.

With all of these that we are mentioning, we’re going to talk about the strategies that are covered in the episode but if you want to check out the show notes for this particular episode number 100, it will have links to all of the other episodes that we are mentioning today.

[0:01:58.3] STEPHEN: Yeah, if you hear something that you like in each of these strategies and you want to learn more then you can go check out the show notes page to find the link to the regular episode of that particular strategy.

[0:02:08.4] REBECCA: Okay, the first topic for sourcing that we’re going to cover is online arbitrage in the fact that it can be a highly lucrative reseller strategy, we’ve had some podcast about online arbitrage in the past that have kind of gone into more detail on this subject and we’ll point you in the direction with some great resources but the one that we want to talk about right now is episode 31.

That was online arbitrage, beginner strategies for OA success. That episode, we covered beginner OA lessons and strategies, some mental speed bumps that you’ll possibly encounter along the way as you’re getting started with online arbitrage and also some things that I personally wish that I had known before I got started with OA.

Be sure to check that out if you are beginning in online arbitrage or if you are a beginner in FBA in general or just looking to change up your sourcing methods at all. Be sure and check out episode 31 on beginning online arbitrage.

[0:03:04.9] STEPHEN: Yeah, online arbitrage can be very profitable and so yeah, that’s the first strategy that we’re talking about today. The second one kind of goes hand in hand. If you’re no longer a beginner with online arbitrage, the second strategy is that buying items on Amazon to sell on Amazon can be a profitable online arbitrage strategy. Back in episode number 39, I interviewed my friend, Jo Ann Zimmerman who is an expert on Amazon-to-Amazon flips.

Being able to find stuff on Amazon at low prices and being able to find the times where she can resell those items back on Amazon to customers at a nice profit. We walk through all the different type of strategies for Amazon-to-Amazon flips, how to make sure that you’re following Amazon’s rules while doing that because there is a right and wrong way to do that and what is the best strategy when it comes to finding the actual leads to sales on Amazon and the times you might have to compete with Amazon in order to get the next sale.

We follow lots of rabbit trails in this conversation and interview and it’s really awesome and I really appreciate Jo Ann coming on the show to talk about Amazon-to-Amazon flips.

[0:04:09.7] REBECCA: All right, for our next episode on sourcing for Amazon FBA, we’re going to be taking kind of a turn from online arbitrage to something similar but different and that is buying wholesale items to sell on Amazon. That is one of the safest and most profitable reseller strategies. We love talking about buying wholesale items to sell on Amazon and in episode number 92, this is a more recent episode, we talked about eight things you need to start selling wholesale items on Amazon. These are things that your business needs or that you personally need if you want to get started in wholesale.

We cover the basics of how to get started there. We also kind of go into the benefits of wholesale sourcing which we think is a great method for building up an Amazon business in a very safe and profitable way. We talk about sales tax certificates, starting up an official business that’s registered in your state, how to find inventory, things like that.

Be sure to check out episode number 92 for the eight things you need to start selling wholesale on Amazon.

[0:05:16.8] STEPHEN: Yeah, out of our hundred episodes, we probably have about nine or 10 episodes that are solely focused on wholesale. If you’re wanting to get started with wholesale, episode 92 is a great place to start.

Another strategy when it comes to sourcing that we talked about on The Full-Time FBA Show is about Replens. Replens, Replens is short for replenishable and how buying replenishable items is one of the best ways to build up a long-term sustainable reseller business. I mean, replens are items that you can go, buy to sell on Amazon that as you begin to sell out, you can actually go back and reorder.

You can buy again and so, every month you go and continually reorder or go to the store again to go buy those items to sell on Amazon and you’re not just kind of looking for one offs or just low inventory items every now and then, that you can find here and there. You can continually replenish on a consistent basis and this is an awesome way to grow your Amazon business, gives you more sustainable business and we talk about that in episode number 88.

[0:06:18.1] REBECCA: All right, now we’re going to take a little turn away from the topic of sourcing new inventory or in the case of replens, sourcing inventory that you’ve already found and just need to replenish, we’re going to talk now about sales and profits for your Amazon business. This is of course, why you’re in the business, right? You want sales, you want to have profits, you want your business to be profitable.

This is another topic that comes up quite regularly on The Full-Time FBA Show and we’ve got some great episodes that can go into more detail on a topic for you. The top ones that we have for you today are these. First is episode number 49. In episode number 49, the five major profit leaks for your Amazon FBA sellers, we talk about how your Amazon business has profit leaks, they need to be plugged or they need to be fixed or you’re just losing out on money.

Profit leaks, what we mean by that is places that your business is leaking out money. Money that you could be saving, money that you’re spending unnecessarily that you could just do a little tweak to your business and that’s money that you keep in your business instead of letting it go to something else, this is money that is wasted on fees that you don’t need to be paying, it’s money that could come from letting go of dead inventory, it’s money that you could make if you just spent some time doing some pricing, some repricing of your inventory.

We’ll go into more details in that episode if you want to check that out, episode number 49, the five major profit leaks for your Amazon FBA sellers.

[0:07:54.2] STEPHEN: It’s an episode where we talked about Amazon’s generous return policy and how it actually increases your sales. Most Amazon sellers, when you first learn about how generous and how flexible Amazon’s return policy is when it comes to the customer, Amazon sellers can get really frustrated. No one likes getting returns, returns can be really frustrating part and it seems like with Amazon, you get more returns than other places but that’s because Amazon has a strategy when it comes to their return policy.

They make with the return policy is so customer-centric that it helps customers trust Amazon more and those costumers go back to Amazon and continue buying and buy in more quantities and so, the customers that are getting with this really – you know, nice and friendly returns and easy process are actually going to be coming back to Amazon to buy more from you.

That’s a long term strategy that Amazon is implementing and we go into that, in the episode on The Full-Time FBA Show number 30 about the truth behind Amazon’s return policy, it’s actually helping you get more sales, we break it down in that episode on why the return policies actually going to get you more sales and the only reason you’re getting a lot more returns is because you’re getting a lot more sales. We walk through that in episode number 30 and that will help you with that mindset to be able to get more sales and profits.

The next strategy that we talked about in The Full-Time FBA Show especially when it comes to sales and profits is the problems of slow sales can be solved in multiple ways. If you’re experiencing slow sales, then you should worry a little bit but not too much because there are multiple reasons why you might be getting some slow sales.

Some of it might just be a bad day for you and you look at the overall sales numbers and you are doing fine and the other reasons might be, well, maybe you are just stuck in a certain category or stuck only sourcing certain stores and you just kind of in a rut and so we will breakdown on episode number 68 of The Full-Time FBA Show, exactly why you’re experiencing slow sales, the reasons why and some strategies on how to kick up some of those sales especially when it comes to understanding the buy box.

We go a lot into the buy box in this episode The Full-Time FBA Show and it can help you increase your sales and you can get some more profits.

[0:10:05.3] REBECCA: Another topic that comes up pretty regularly on different episodes of The Full-Time FBA Show is how to troubleshoot issues that might come up with your FBA business and this is an area where we like to have other people come on the show and we do interviews with them to let other experts talk to you about how you can solve some of these problems that are pretty common at times and also honestly pretty frustrating and that they can give you their expert advice.

Episode number 24 is a great example, this is one of our most popular episodes with Kim Coghlan. She talked about inauthentic claims and how to respond and it is important to deal with these genuine inauthentic claims the right way and Kim goes into a lot of detail in this episode about how to tell if an inauthentic claim is real, what to do if it’s not a real claim, how to tell the difference between those two and then just really house the best way to handle it so that your account is protected.

This is an awesome episode that you’re going to want to listen to at least once, maybe twice, take notes, look at the transcript on the shownotes, it’s an awesome episode, number 24.

[0:11:15.8] STEPHEN: Another type of troubleshooting episode that we discussed on The Full-Time FBA Show, deals with Amazon seller suspensions and when an Amazon seller gets suspended or even worries about getting suspended, it is like one of the most frightening things because you think this is my livelihood. This is how I am making my money or my side income and if I don’t have an Amazon seller account that’s active, they can be really scary.

In episode number 55, we walk through how to overcome your fear of Amazon seller account suspensions. We asked Lesley Hensell of Riverbend Consulting to come on the show and answer our questions on what the strategies are to avoid suspension in the first place and then exactly what you need to do if you get the dreaded suspension email from Amazon and she walks through a lot of different things that some people are scared of that they shouldn’t be scared about.

Then some other things that people aren’t scared about that maybe they should and so we go over that in episode number 55. It is really helpful if you fear Amazon seller account suspension, listen to this episode. It will give you the tools and give you the peace of mind that you know that you know you’re in the right space to continue to run your Amazon business without worrying if you are doing something wrong that might trigger the suspension bot. It is a really great episode, number 55.

[0:12:28.3] REBECCA: All right, so wrapping it up here, we get to our last episode that we wanted to remind you of if you haven’t already listened to all of these episodes that we’re talking about, we hope that you go back and check some of them out. Our last one that we’re mentioning really goes into a lot of our philosophy here at The Full-Time FBA Show through our Full-Time FBA website that we’ve had for years now.

We’ve tried to have the same kind of mindset and philosophy that we want to convey to other FBA sellers that we feel like has lead us to the success that we’ve seen and really, this just all comes down to the fact that your mindset can make or break your Amazon FBA success and so our most popular episode ever of The Full-Time FBA Show is episode number 63 and it is life skills for Amazon FBA success and it is a real treat.

In this, our son Peter, gives some success quotes that he has learned that have helped shape his mindset, it is the best seven minutes of The Full-Time FBA Show that you will listen to. Seven minutes, you’ve got seven minutes, go download it right now and listen to it after you’ve finished with this episode if you haven’t already heard it. If you have, you might even want to listen to it again. Peter is awesome, he is the hardest worker we know.

He has a great mindset, he continually even to this day brings up some of his success quotes to us and reminds us of that and he uses them every day when he is at school and he faces challenges at school and with autism being something that he deals with, he really needs to have that kind of mindset and he works so hard at it and we are so proud of him and want you to enjoy his podcast episode, number 63.

[0:14:18.3] STEPHEN: Yeah, we recorded that episode back when Peter was in the 8th grade. He’s in the 9th grade now in high school and still using this success quotes to help him get through high school and find success in high school and we have taken his success quotes and applied it to Amazon FBA sellers, so be sure to listen to that episode. Again, like Rebecca said you are not going to regret it, episode number 63.

Those are 10 episodes that give you 10 lessons, big lessons that we have learned with The Full-Time FBA Show during the first 100 episodes. I just want to thank you so much for joining us in this journey. We’ve had a lot of fun, we look forward to next 100 episodes and helping you take the time to turn part-time hours into a full-time income.

[0:14:59.3] REBECCA: Yes, we truly have enjoyed putting together this 100 episodes for you over the past couple of years and we are so thankful for every download, every subscribe, every review. You are the reason why we are making this podcast because we truly love to see how you are being successful at your Amazon FBA business and we just want to give you all of the support and help that we can in order for you to make that happen and you are making that happen.

We love hearing your success stories and we just love that you spend time with us every week on The Full-Time FBA Show.

[0:15:33.5] STEPHEN: To help celebrate our 100th episode, we want to give away a $100 to a lucky listener. Starting when this episode drops until September 20th of 2021, we are having a contest where you can win $100 and all you need to do to enter this contest is to leave us a review of The Full-Time FBA Show on whichever podcast platform you listen to it on.

What you do, you go to your podcast platform, you leave a review, leave an honest review about the show and then after that, go to fulltimefba.com/contact and send us a message saying, “I just submitted a review. I did it on this platform and here’s the username that I used to submit it” so that we can double check to make sure that you are entering the contest correctly and so be sure to put that information in that and let us know.

Again, you have until September 20th to enter this contest and if you’ve already left us a review in the past, just go back and find where you left the review before and send us that information that you left it on Apple podcast and your username was this and if you left it in the past, please let us know about when you did that so we can find that and verify that but I want to give away a $100 and I want you to win that $100, so leave us a review and you have a chance to enter that contest.

[CLOSING CONVERSATION]

[0:16:57.9] REBECCA: Just as a reminder, as always, the links that we have talked about and the transcript for this show will be in the show notes for this episode, that will be at fulltimefba.com/100, the number 100 because this is episode number 100.

[0:17:13.1] STEPHEN: Woo-hoo.

[0:17:13.5] REBECCA: Yehey, we’re so excited. I’ve been waiting so long to say that this episode 100, so thank you again for listening and be sure and check out the links that we mentioned to these previous episodes or any other episodes you might be interested in listening to.

[0:17:27.2] STEPHEN: Next week on The Full-Time FBA Show, we’re going to talk about how to know what to do next in your Amazon business. Maybe you’ve listened to all 100 episodes and you’re like, “Stephen, well how do I choose what to do? What do I do next? I mean, there’s so much to do. How do I know what’s the right thing for my business to do next?” we’ll talk you through that on the next episode of The Full-Time FBA Show.

[OUTRO]

[0:17:47.9] ANNOUNCER: That is all for this episode of The Full-Time FBA Show. So head over to fulltimefba.com/podcast, where you will 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 have learned today so you can find success at turning part-time hours into a full-time income with Amazon FBA.

[END]