Along my journey of coming up with an idea for a business, starting up a business, running a business and now trying to grow and optimise my business, I’ve learnt a lot.
I thought it might be interesting / useful to share with you all the places I go for information, advice and inspiration. Consider this my Christmas gift!
So, in no particular order…
A podcast episode (and blog post) that helped me out loads right at the beginning is
Ryan Daniel Moran’s Building a Million Dollar Business in 12 months. This is a step-by-step guide as to how Ryan launches and scales his Amazon businesses. Obviously, I haven’t made a million (yet!), but it’s useful information and worth checking out.
My inspiration for starting this business in the first place came from Pat Flynn and Smart Passive Income. I love Pat’s style and, while not all episodes/posts are relevant to an e-commerce business there are a lot that are. He has great guests and I’ve found some of the episodes on personal development particularly inspiring.
I listen to Amy Porterfield, Online Marketing Expert’s podcast most weeks. Again, not all of it is relevant (her speciality is creating and selling online courses), but I’ve heard some great episodes on Facebook and Instagram marketing and building up an email list that would be useful to all of us.
On the subject of Facebook ads, Rick Mulready has a great podcast on this topic, plus a free article on the 4 biggest mistakes businesses are making with them.
The Shopify blog has lots of articles about ecommerce (as you would expect!) It’s great for inspiration, as they give lots of examples of stores doing new and different things to attract and retain customers. They also hold free webinars. (Although I haven’t attended any, yet.)
Aidan Booth blogs about financial freedom and one of the models he recommends is e-commerce. Posts are released monthly (so not as often as most people I follow) and they are all actionable. One particular post you might like is on Amazon PPC.
Now, we’re back on the subject of Amazon, the big one to talk about is Jungle Scout. The site has a lot of free resources (although some are just geared for the US) and a fantastic blog. I’ve been following the Million Dollar Case Study: Europe, which is a step-by-step real-time guide to launching a product on Amazon’s European marketplaces. There are so many great articles, covering topics such as PPC, optimising your listings, shipping, etc. This one is my top tip!
FBA Allstars also have a lot of content about selling on Amazon. I personally don’t enjoy the podcast, but there is some good information on the site including resources (some free), articles and guides. I particularly like the copywriting bible, which I used for creating my towel listing and refining my swaddle listing.
Finally, if you’re on Facebook, there are loads of groups out there for Amazon FBA sellers. I’m a member of a few and the ones I find the most useful (in terms of getting decent responses to my queries) are:
- Amazon FBA Competitive Edge. This is run by Jungle Scout, so is well managed and moderated.
- Amazon FBA Scientists. I’ve found some useful tools and articles here.
- FBA Allstars. I get the most helpful responses to my questions here.
- Amazon FBA Sellers London Meetup. This is the only UK-based group I can find, so worth joining if you’re a UK seller.
Thank you so much to everyone on this list. I’ve emailed you all to say thank you.
I’m sure there are plenty of things out there that I’m not even aware of. Please do comment below with your suggestions of people to follow in 2018!