Thanks for doing this thread OP.

I have a couple of questions...

How much did you pay to get your site developed?
How many different products are you selling? Are they all in the same niche?
Do you use Facebook advertising? If so, what are your thoughts?

Subscribed, thanks for doing this AMA.

I'm interested in your work setup - are you in an office, working from home, on the road, etc? What about product - do you drop ship or have some type of storage space?

Really interested in the day-to-day and also if this is something you could do virtually while living "on the road"?

I'll let RU handle the rest of the questions that are more particular to his business, but for this it's importantly to clarify what you mean.

In a lot of situations, people say "on the road" and really mean "I don't want to have to do much" which isn't really going to fly. Amazon expects you to respond to all customer inquiries within 24 hours and will suspend your account if you can't do that. You also need to be able to do that in the native languages to sell on some of their int'l marketplaces (like Japan).

Even if you're selling 100 units a day, that turns in to a steady stream of emails that need answering, which yes, you can do on the road but still require active management.

Then there's also the piece of managing your in-house fulfillment from afar.

If you want to outsource all of this you definitely can using FBA and consolidated warehousing, etc. But that's going to cut in to your profit margin and, in my opinion, shorten your window by commoditizing the product faster (people in these industries all talk and figure out quick what's moving and how). If you want to do things like that, you're best strategy is probably always looking for new differentiated products as your stuff will probably only last at it's margin for a year or two. I had a couple friends bringing in cheap android tablets from China and reselling those on Amazon and eBay in 2012, and they've stopped completely at this point because the margin isn't there for <1,000 piece orders.

When you start talking about shipping to orders on other channels all those issues crop up again. FBA and other intermediaries can and will ship orders from those marketplaces, but Amazon only provides discounted shipping and customer support on Amazon orders.

Now, that said, there are a ton of software packages that try to make all of this easier to manage from afar. Just one example, eCommHub is a pretty new company from some Georgia Tech students that does a tremendous job of tying all the different services together.

how much capital was required from inception to first sale (not including the mall misstep)?

thank you

Thanks for the detailed and thoughtful response.

I wasn't thinking about a 4-hour workweek situation, but more a job that gives you the freedom to pick up and move - e.g. Working from a rented home in southern Florida during the winter, then heading up north for the summer, etc. From your response, it sounds like a physical space with a storage area is ideal.

I mean, you can certainly do it. Depending on the size and qty of material, it's not even that hard to do a lot of fulfillment out of a small space in both locations like a storage locker since there are post offices everywhere.

And again, if you're willing to spend more time on the research (and it's gotta be deep, heavy research) and planning you don't need to have near as much physical presence because you can shift between products more frequently. But I also think that's a much harder game to win.

When you are more hands on with fulfillment and customer support I think you have a much better chance at growing a B2C business, which I imagine most businesses selling through online marketplaces are going to be. You cut out middlemen which means less chance for error and miscommunication, and also less cost from your side of this.

In my opinion, it's "easier" to be the person who works harder to make your customers' lives easier than it is to be smarter than everyone else out there. People are more willing to buy a B+ product from someone they like than they are to buy an A product from someone they don't like dealing with.

hey guys,

will reply to questions soon, busy with WSOP stuff

subscribed thx for doing this

Tag for later.

Great thread.

Awesome thread, really great stuff.

Can you talk a bit about how you developed your brand and brand loyalty?

What software do you (or others) use to automate lowest pricing on Amazon to win the Buy Box?

Lowest price isn't the only factor that contributes to winning the buy box. I get into the buy box rotation by repricing 1.8% higher than the lowest offer using the same fulfillment method, for many sku's.

The key with repricing software is one that reprices UP instead of only downward. For example, if you set your repricer to automatically undercut by $0.01, you would be amazed how quickly the race to the bottom ensues. Some competitors' repricers will drop the price even if you simply match their price.

I use a custom built script that is tailored to my needs(specifically strategic pricing against certain competitors) but in regards to software that is publicly available, I have heard good things about AppEagle. More options include RepriceIt & Sellery, and there are a lot more options. Some software is downright stupid, 1% of gross sales or something to that effect(I think Sellery uses that fee structure.)

Thanks.

Why wouldn't you recommend Magento?

I'm researching Magento and am curious what problems you had with it.

Can you walk through the process of how you went from this milestone

1. Finding a couple of niche markets u wanted to sell products for after researching through Google Trends/Adwords

to this one

2. Making your first sale

Also beyond playing poker what is your background?
Did you know someone already dealing in this online marketplace industry?
Do you have a tech/dev background at all? Or did you essentially have 0 knowledge?

By finding a product and researching its origin back to the manufacture. Almost everything is branded and you will be able to track down the manufacturing company. Most of the time it will be in China


The site development was right around $3k. Me and my business partner are pretty good at graphics as it is, but the majority of the costs were for the site software. We hired a firm from India on elance.

As for facebook, watch this video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag

We prefer google, groupon and buying social media posts/tags etc


I use one of my bedrooms as a home office, my business partner does the same and then in addition we have a office location for mail and meetings. Storage units work great for inventory and are really cheap. As you scale you could expand to a warehouse obv.

As for capital, probably around $10k

Business cards in each package and natural advertising helps. Something we have been playing with lately that we are really fond of is having a popup on one of our stores where you are offered a discount code for any item (10%) however, in order to show the code you have to just quickly share it on one of your social media platforms (facebook, twitter, instagram etc) and then they will be shown the code. Our site software (shopify) has an app for this already developed.

First off, its a eBay company. Anything eBay does is god awful. Secondly, its not user friendly (even for someone who has HTML and PHP basic knowledge). You can find really efficient eCommerce software on the internet for a very cheap monthly fee. Those sites have TONS of working developers ready to create apps and alter themes.

In a nutshell;
list of probable products > narrow down the list based off market price, competition, demand etc > research the market > locate manufacture to get quotes, shipping times, price & avl > determine if the product has enough margin after packaging/shipping costs > list the item for sale

I have been an entrepreneur since i was 15. At the age of 16 i sold an internet forum (similar to 2p2) that was AIM themed (the instant messaging program) for like $1,500. That rush got me hooked. I also developed the FPP Pro plus software for Caleb and the fpppro.com team. College was all about side projects and poker.

Good thread thanks for taking the time to share.

1. Any specific adjustments you make when selling between platforms?
2. Worse China experience?
3. This thread is a year old and you mentioned that competition is getting tougher. Is that still the case? And has your end goal for the business changed since?

Good stuff!

I hope I can bring this thread back to life.

1. Are there any decent forums for FBA? I want to learn, but almost all info seems to be for sale and appears to be Amazon Get Rich Quick type schemes. I certainly don't mind paying to learn, but have no idea if any of it is actually decent.

2. Any advice on finding your niche? Admittedly, I need to put in a lot more time. It's just been rather depressing thus far. Everything I look for has numerous third party sellers, appearing to price leaving very little margin.

It just gives me the feeling that, without a unique product which I produce, I have missed the Amazon boat. Hopefully, it's it's just more a result that I have little idea as to what I am doing.

3. Do you pay for Sponsored Products/PPC? Do you subscribe to the initial large discount coupon/get reviews strategy?

Thanks,

Oscar