Welcome! On this blog, we talk about our journey towards making FBA our full-time job. We give out free tips and tricks to help you make the most of your time, money, and resources. If you want to subscribe, just fill out the form over on the right side of the screen.
To show you our appreciation, we’d like to give you a free download link to our newest book, Seller Central Tips: Reimbursements, Refunds, and How To Correct Other Possible Amazon Glitches. When you confirm your subscription, the download link will magically show up in your inbox.
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Stephen & Rebecca Smotherman
Hi Stephen. Thank you for the wealth of information that you are sharing. I’m starting my FBA journey this coming week and I was wondering how much starting capital I needed. I understand that there will be initial cash flow issues. I have opened a new account and have deposited $2500. Is that enough? I do have lot of credit cards but I’m afraid of using credit cards in case I’m not able to pay them off in full. You’re guidance would be appreciated.
Sunny,
The question about how much starting capitol you will need is a complicated question because so much of it depends on your own personal situation. Personally, I think $2500 is a great starting point. What you need to do next is to write down all of the business related monthly fees you expect to be charged and set aside that amount so that it’s there when the fees are taken from your account. From there, I’d start buying up products to resell and send them to Amazon FBA as soon as possible. For me, I stay away from credit cards, but everyone has their own opinion on that topic. I hope this answer has helped some. Let me know if you have any other questions.
Stephen,
This ebook could not have come at a better time! I just finished reading it and the next day I had an email from Amazon that several of my items I shipped in were damaged by the distributor (me). I’m relatively new to selling FBA and if I hadn’t read your ebook, I would have just assumed I’d have to eat the losses.
Instead, I followed the steps in your ebook and was fully reimbursed for all of the damaged items PLUS I ended up with a $25.00 profit to boot!
Thanks again for all of your great advice!
Joe
Joe,
Happy to hear that you were able to get the reimbursements! So glad that the book was helpful to you.
Hi
I just purchased and read your book about board games (that is the item that seems to attract me the most when I am out thrifting..) and realized that every game you listed in the BOLO were ones that, after checking their rankings on amazon, would have never purchased!
How can you distinguish between a bad ranking game and one that has just doesn’t sell often? You say on a few of them that they sold up to once a day or once a month etc… yet the ranks are still so high..
hmmm , I must rethink something in my purchasing selection, as I have passed on several of these games before (some even just this week!) I guess I need to look beyond ranking?
Thanks for the info!
Donna, I’m a very patient man (I have 4 kids that help grow my patience), and I’m ok with waiting a month, or even a year for some high priced board games to sell. If I only have a few dollars invested in the board game, and since FBA storage fees are pennies a month, then I can afford to wait for the $50, $100, and even $200 sale.
I really enjoy getting your emails; they are always so informative! I’m looking at doing FBA but I do not quite understand it. I’m trying to figure out the fees associated with FBA. When shipping items to Amazon, there is the shipping fee and then Amazon charges a handling fee plus another shipping fee. Is this correct? If so, it seems like it could be very costly to the seller. When I sell an item on Amazon now, rarely does the shipping allowance allowed to me, cover the actual shipping cost. Therefore, I lose more money off my item. Any help would be appreciated!
Thank you!
Sherry
Thanks for your kind words about the blog. Yes, when shipping items to Amazon, you pay a shipping fee to ship a box full of inventory to Amazon FBA warehouses. When the item sells, Amazon takes their fees, but it does not include shipping costs to the customer. For me, it’s worth ALL of the FBA fees for Amazon to store and ship out all of my items to my customers. They also take care of customer service. I have thousands of items at FBA warehouses, and I can’t imagine storing these items at home, trying to find that item when it sells, and then ship them to the customer on my own dime. Just be sure that when you find items to resell, that there is enough profit to take care of the fees and still leave you with a nice profit.
Hope this helps!
Hello I have been selling on Amazon for years and I just started doing FBA. I found out about your site from a FB group and so far I love all the great information you are sharing. WHere is the best place to start on your site? Thanks
Tam, I would suggest looking at the topics on the right sidebar of the blog and pick a topic that interests you and go from there. Hope this helps!
HI, my question is this. with just books what would you say the starting capital would be. I see alot of people who have three or four memberships the up to date pda’s and scanners, all the shrink wrap tools ect.
I want to know what the down and dirty is. I understand I need a scouting app so is amazon seller enough. I do know I need a scanner for my phone cause the camera is just not good enough. Do I have to shrink wrap books. Do I have to print labels or is it worth the money to let amazon do it.
Any help would be appreciated, thank you.
If you’re only focused on books, then I would say that there was no need to shrink-wrap books unless it’s a very old or high-priced book. I use Profit Bandit for my scouting app and absolutely love it. Amazon Seller is ok, but Profit Bandit does all the ROI math for you (which is worth the monthly fee in my opinion). Hope this helps!
Hi Stephen,
I literally just subscribed 20 minutes ago, scanned over your Facebook page and and your twitter and your blog here, and got me 2 books for free to educate my self more about FBA.
I’m excited to be talking to you soon and following some tips you may share. I have been doing FBA for the past 4 months now and it’s great.
Cheers,
Hope you find everything helpful, Ferea! Let me know if you ever have any questions.
Hi Stephen,
Like everyone else here, I’m a newbie trying to find my way. I just quit my financial planning practice….cold turkey. Thankfully, my husband has a wonderful income to provide for our family, so it was possible.
He imports from China for promotional marketing purposes and has done so for 3 decades now. He also travels to China 2x year and I have been fortunate to go…
I would love nothing more than to piggy back on his endeavors, but I literally don’t have a clue as to where to start. Ex: how to form a company, website, name, pick a product, oem vs selling someone else’s brand….just to name a few.
Is this something that you could help me with or guide me? Or do you deal specifically with retail arbitrage.?
Thank you for your time.
Danna
I think your best option is to look at Amazon Bootcamp. It’s a video course that walks you through (step-by-step) how to set up your Amazon business, find good inventory, and grow your business! I love the course. One of my favorite things about the course is how it continues to get updated with new videos. Since Amazon changes, this course updates to adapt to the changes. It’s really, really good! Check it out.
Frustrated that you charged my American Express Card $10.79. I signed up for your newsletter & clicked on the free book. I never got the email from you regarding the newsletter sign up. I didn’t get the book — only a JPEG of the cover. So, no confirm of my signup for the newsletter. I didn’t know about a charge for the book, because I never received an email of any kind from you. Then I found a jpeg of the cover for the book @ your website. How did you get my Ameican Express Card Number? Are you members of the Mastermind Group that my brother- in-law Lance Williams& his wife, Lisa, is taking place this week. I got a warning from American Express that my card had been charged & did I want to dispute the charge. Please let me know what the charge is for & how you have my American Express number ASAP. Thank you.
I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you’re referring to. We do not charge credit cards on this site… only paypal payments, and we don’t sell anything for $10.79. I think you may have me confused with someone else. As for the free book, I will email you again the files. It’s a PDF download, not a jpeg.
Hi Stephen,
I recently picked up a product from a store which does not have a listing on amazon.. well not this particular model. So i started creating a new listing but realized there where certain requirements for the pictures that i would have to follow.. i’ve read about the subject lightly but so far it seems like people pay to have their pictures edited…i dont have the budget for such an investment so if you have any advice or solution for me it would mean a lot.
Thank you.
You don’t have to pay to get the pictures edited. You can use the Amazon Seller app and it has a feature that you can use that will help you get pictures of your item and make sure it has a white background.
Hi Stephen,
I recently came across the idea of selling on Amazon so have done a little research via website and videos. To be honest, the information is a bit overwhelming but I am very interested and determined to learn. Let’s say I’m at level 0, where should I start?
Thank you,
Ryan Lee
Hi, I noticed that Amazon has a way to upload videos right on the product page. Is there an analysis you’ve done on how much a video will boost sales? and what kind of video helps the most? Here is what I’m talking about:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74eAkBE0Ltw
I don’t have any data to support it – and I’m not saying the data is not out there – I just don’t have it… but I think videos help increase sales.