I spoke before about how I came to the decision to start my own business.
I needed to find out more about what it was I’d decided to do (selling products on Amazon) as I had no idea what I wanted to sell, let alone how to source products, where to source them and what else went along with that.
Obviously I had lots of ideas and I was getting pretty excited about it all, but ideas and enthusiasm will only take you so far. You need some kind of plan – plus a goal you’re aiming for. (More of that in a separate post.)
I listened to another Smart Passive Income podcast (episode 144) with an interview with a guy called Ryan Daniel Moran. He has a site called Freedom Fast Lane, which is mainly about helping people make money selling on Amazon.
A lot of the content you need to pay for, but he does give away quite a lot for free. I went to his site, listened to all the relevant podcasts, read all his stuff, watched a video (recommended if you’re interested in starting a business in this area) and felt I had a much better understanding of what needed to be done.
In fact he sets out a roadmap of “building a million dollar business in 12 months or less” with what you need to do at each stage.
Now, I know that sounds really gimicky and a bit like a ‘get rich quick scheme/scam’ (that doesn’t even happen very quickly – but it’s actually ALOT of hard work.
In short it’s:
– Work out what kind of business you want to have (i.e. are you in it to make some short-term, or are you looking to build a brand, which is a longer term approach.)
– Figure out what you want to sell – then go away and source it.
– Get it onto Amazon (and physically into their warehouses).
– Start making sales and getting reviews. This is probably one of the hardest parts, as you don’t get many sales without reviews – and Amazon now don’t allow you to incentivise people (i.e. offer the product at a discount in exchange for one). I’m not sure yet exactly how I’m going to do this myself, other than giving away swaddles to friends and family to review.
– Re-invest any money you make into buying more stock and/or adding new products.
This is really helpful, although pretty scary as I’m not even at the stage where my products are ready to sell right now (they’re in a factory in China – pretty much ready to ship – I hope) and I’ve already put in months of hard work. This definitely isn’t the fast track to getting rich!