Just sent off my first few packages to a fulfillment center. Have any of you guys had success or failure with FBA?
FBA
tried it once,had some very mild success. probably needed way more money and time but if you find the right product, you can definitely make money out of it.
How much money did you have to put into it? What were you selling?
I resold textbooks. I had go go through a middle man to receive the books in USA and send them to FBA. I probably bought like 500-700 dollars worth of books. If i scaled and picked the right books, I would have definitely made money out of it.
$10k or so. Working with my brother so potentially double that
Mind sharing your supplier? Currently fucking with home & garden stuff as well as electronics but would be stoked on getting into books
this might sound crazy but i mostly bought books on amazon and resold them through their fba. prime members pay much higher prices for the convenience of an amazon fulfilled product, with the free and priority shipping. if you notice, the difference in the used textbooks can be pretty big. i would buy the book, send it to a middle man who would check the conditions of the book, repackage it and send it to the fba.
If you live in usa i would recommend you check anywhere that sells used textbooks and check the difference of price with amazon. its a very good product because a) its expensive, so the difference can be big b) kids buy a shitload of used ones because the difference to new ones is quite big c) there's certain seasons where they sell a shit lot.
there's a lot of info and tools about book flipping online.
Shit, will definitely look into this.
Any reason you sent them to a middleman instead of just checking and repackaging them yourself?
I don't live in USA and wanted to use amazon-us fulfillment centers. No way for me to a) get packages internationally and b) send them back. I suppose you can make it cheaper. The only big advantage of the middle man would be to never worry about physycal stock management.
Might be able to shave some costs off if I just get it all sent to my apartment. FVA fees are just fucked up expensive, gotta run the numbers. Any textbooks/publishers that sold well? Or your gotos?
i trialed a bunch of tools that allowed me to pick books based on price difference between the fba ones and the others, the price itself and the amazon rank (if they sell well enough). that was the main criteria.
Haha. If you want to take it one level deeper, when I was in high school, me and a friend went to the back dumpster of a book store late at night and filled up bags with carefully selected books that were likely to have value.
Then, we smoked some blunts and went to another store location within the same franchise to sell them.
We literally sold their trash back to them.
The story above is fictional.
Lost 5k with my first product. I ranked it to first page with 200 unit giveaway and after that bezos decided to transfer my whole inventory to another warehouse and it made my product to start plummeting in sales rank. I have not got any sales with ppc or without it. I have got 350 units now and will probably thrash them.
If you try it start small and with cheaper product than I did.
retard here.
what is fba?
fulfilled by amazon. you send your stuff to their warehouse so they can ship it directly to customers from there. This should improve sales as amazon customers can use their prime membership for free shipping this way.
I’ve been looking into a hunch of different tools for analytics, care to drop any that you were using?
What product?
Got any tools that helped you learn how to get items ranked higher?
Shit like zenarbitrage or eflip. Google book flipping or something you find info. Those tools sorta helped me get started, i think after a while you can sorta know what to search for
I did this too. Best month was $10k profit. It’s kind of fucked now, I stopped after fba started charging fees for books. They didn’t used to. It took a lot of the edge out.
Oh great dropshipping anons, please tell me more about the art. as a NEET I see dropshipping a way out of my hellhole life. Please share your expertise, if at just this once.
Please. lol.
get a JOB NEET
success or failure with FBA doesn't actually have anything to do with FBA but with the market/chinks. No matter what you sell, if it performs well, some chink will undercut you eventually. There's only 2 ways to do this and be profitable.
1. the very hard way: build some sort of a "brand" and ranking that you can milk long-term
2. the stressful way: find a trend (fidget spinners, kendama, other retarded shit like that), exploit it during its lifecycle which is around 2-6 months and then move on to the next thing.
i got FUCKED HARD. enjoy.
Going to local thrift shops and buying up books is tedious but there are good profit margins you just working with smaller amounts to profit from. Every now and again you’ll find a book for .25 worth $25
3. the best way to start: Niche items that can't be mass produced : My mom sold vintage clothing and jewelry from the 60's and 70's for an insane mark up. Find things at second hand stores or yard sales etc. You can find other industries like that as well, but finding a consistent wholesale supplier can be the most difficult part.
It was a beauty product, I made 97% off coupons and used facebook ads to distribute them. I got ranked to the first page fast but it cost a lot of money giving away those units for free and paying fba fees and ads. I think I failed because my product wasn’t different enough even though it was private label and I didn’t have those initial reviews which you should try to get before trying to rank your product.
I am building a ecommerce store right now in one niche and I will be ordering my products from china which I will send to fulfillment center in yurop and maybe later to fba warehouses. Im starting small this time and will be focusing on social media and marketing.
You need to build a brand and differentiate yourself if you are not selling known brands like some sneakers or something.
Thanks man, really appreciate it
There are not only 2 ways to do this and be profitable lol
FBA is about to collapse. If you want to do eCommerce I highly suggest you only use FBA in conjunction with merchant fulfilled. If you aren't an Amazon expert FBA will fuck you in the ass
>use FBA in conjunction with merchant fulfilled.
What do you mean?
You can use the FBA service and still sell and mail things directly to customers yourself. You don't have to do either or
And why do you say FBA will fuck you in the ass?
GET A JOB NEET