It has been a year and a half since I launched my first product on Amazon. In this video, I will share with you all my numbers, how I launched my product, and the biggest mistake that I have made.

My Numbers
On Amazon, I’ve sold 24,183 units of Performance Nut Butter so far. This is about $650,000 in revenue. However, you have to keep in mind that revenue is not profit and there are expenses that need to be considered. The first expense was buying the actual units. It cost me about $177,000 for the 24,000 units. For the Pick and Pack Fees, I spent around $95,000. I also spent around $98,000 for the Transaction Fees. Every time I get a sale, Amazon automatically takes away 15%. Aside from these, I also spent around $10,000 on other random fees by Amazon. I also spent $32,000 on Amazon PPC as well as $9,000 on other fees in running my business. Out of the $650,000, Performance Nut Butter gave me around $232,000 in profit. On Shopify, I had $31,323 in revenue and around $15,000 in profit.

However, that profit does not go to my pocket. I re-invest most, if not all, of it back into the business. Of that profit, a lot of it goes back to inventory. At any point in time, I need 3 to 6 months of inventory which costs me anywhere between $40,000 to $80,000. I also used part of that profit for the Research and Development of a new product.

Private Labeling is Dying
Basically, private labeling is taking a generic product and putting your own label on it. While it worked for a few years before, it is no longer effective at this time. Below are some of the reasons why private labeling is dying:
1. China – China manufactures all (more…)

Google Ads Walkthrough Tutorial:

FULL Passion Product Amazon FBA Course Wait List: https://effectiveecommerce.com/ppf

To understand how Google Ads work, It’s important to understand how Google works. With Google, it always starts with a person. This person has a thought/idea and they have a question that they want to search on Google. When people search on Google, they want to find the answer to something. This is the opportunity to show your product, to show the solution that your company has to this person’s problem. Within Google, there is what’s called the Organic Results. These are the things that Google puts in the search results for free because it is high-quality content and Google knows that they are going to provide a solution. What Google posts on the top of the search results are Paid Ads. The way to get to this spot is through the Google Ads platform.

The benefit of using Google Ads is it accelerates your results. The way it works is that you would tell Google that you want your ad to be on top of the search results of a certain keyword. A keyword is whatever someone searches on Google. Google, in turn, wants to be paid for this. You will tell Google that I will give you $1.00 every time someone clicks on my ad. You don’t pay unless someone clicks on your ad.

For Google Ads, it’s a bidding system. Someone may come along and say he/she will give $1.10. They would go on top of the search results. The more people involved, the higher the bid potentially could be. The way it works is that you know that every time someone clicks on your ad, it’s going to cost you $1.00. If you make $2.00 on average every time someone clicks on your ad, then it makes sense.

One (more…)

This video will show my advice to new sellers, what I wish someone would have told me when I was just starting out. I also made this video is to tell you that I’m still nervous. I remember when I was launching my first product, I was absolutely terrified. I have these spiraling negative thoughts. I think about how my business might fail. I might lose all my money, become homeless, and all kinds of crazy thoughts. I’m here to tell you that it’s not the case. I want to give you some tactics and things I wish I would have known when I started out on Amazon. I also want to tell you that it’s completely normal to be terrified when starting any entrepreneurial venture and you’re going to be okay.

Below are some tactics you can actually implement when starting out on your entrepreneurial journey. The most important thing you have to remember though is to take those baby steps.

1. Start a Product Launch Group
The Product Launch Group is a big thing. You want to validate that your product is a good idea every step of the way. What I do is I create an Instagram first. I put a link in the bio to capture their emails. In the email capture, I put in something like a chance to win a free product by signing up with their email. If nobody fills that out, then your product is not that interesting. The next step is getting them to join the Product Launch Group. It’s a Facebook group and you invite all your potential customers, all those people that are interested in your product. They help you develop a great product.

2. You Are Not Alone
If you’re nervous about launching your first product, then you should know that everyone was. People (more…)

In this video, I will be sharing with you the 7 Facebook Ads Secrets. I will talk about the different tools you can use to create a successful Facebook ad as well as how you can ethically steal your competitors’ audience.

1. Super Niche Targeting
Most people make the mistake of trying to make their audiences too big. You need to niche down and be specific as much as possible. If you pick a big audience, Facebook is going to take a lot of money from you. Having a small group will also allow you to test different groups and see which one responds to your ad.

2. Audience Insights
You can use this tool to figure out exactly what audience works for you. You can upload any email list you have and Audience Insights will tell what kind of things those people are interested in. You can also look at the people that liked your page and even your competitor’s page. Audience Insights will be able to give a lot of information about what kind of audience follows you or your competitor’s.

3. Split Testing
This is a technique that the professionals are using that most beginners miss. Basically, you are testing one ad copy vs. another ad copy and you see which one does better. Even if you make the perfect ad, there is a chance that it could be made better.

4. The Perfect Ad
One of the biggest mistakes that people make when they’re creating their first ad is they make it look like an ad. When people are scrolling through Facebook, they are going to ignore an ad if they see it. They key is to make it look like a native content as much as possible. The perfect Facebook Ad has below three elements that work together:
Great Image – This captures the user’s (more…)

FBA vs Retail Arbitrage vs Private Label Vs Wholesale:

Amazon FBA is dead:

Idea Generator:
https://effectiveecommerce.com/ideagenerator

Amazon Product Research:

Amazon Product Launch Group:

In this video, I will share with what Amazon FBA is and how you make money off of Amazon.

Amazon FBA is a way for you to make money from Amazon where they do most store. This is not a get rich quick scheme, but it is the easiest and the best way to make real money and create a real business online right now.

There are four different ways to sell on Amazon:
1. Retail Arbitrage – You go out to retail stores, find items on discounts and flip them on Amazon.
2. Wholesale – You buy products from a company at wholesale prices and sell it on Amazon.
3. Private Label – This is the old school way of selling on Amazon. You find a product and put your own brand on it, and sell it on Amazon.
4. Create Your Own Product – This is similar to private labeling. You could take an existing product and make it better. You have to make sure though that there is a differentiator. You’re not only creating your brand, but you’re creating something unique and does not exist yet.

There is a lot of benefits from creating your own product. One of them is that there is no startup capital required. You can do a Kickstarter or crowdfunding campaign to raise money for your initial production run.

Here are the steps that you need to take to create your own product:
1. Idea – You need to come up with an idea for a product. One tip is when you type a product on Amazon and you can’t find it or you’re not satisfied with what comes up, that is already a million dollar idea of a product that you can create.
2. Launch (more…)

FBA vs. Create Your Own Product

1st Year Selling on Amazon:

In this video, I will explain why the old way of making money off Amazon is dead. The old school Private Labeling does not work anymore because of three things: China, Over saturation, and Amazon Basics. Fortunately, with the death of this old way comes a better opportunity to make money off Amazon that defeats those three things mentioned above.

Why Private Labeling is dead?
1. China
Most people that private label buy their products from China. However, China is getting smarter. They find profitable products, copy them, and sell them at a better margin, cheaper than you possibly could. Some people are avoiding this by properly branding their private label product.
It used to be that you just find a product on Amazon that has good sales but a bad product listing. You make your own brand in that product and make a better listing of it on Amazon. This does not work anymore because there is so much competition.

2. Oversaturation
Because there is so much competition, it is more difficult to find products now than it used to be. Even when you do find a good product, you’ll have dozens of competitors by the time you launch the product.

3. Amazon Basics
When you have a really good private label product and start making money out of it, Amazon will find out about it and eventually create their own Amazon Basics version of it. This version will always rank higher than your private label product and will most likely steal your customers.

New Opportunity
Amazon FBA is not dead, but only Private Labeling. Most people who are making real money out of Amazon is creating their own product. One of the good things about this is that there is no startup capital required if you do it (more…)

In this video, I will share with you the different steps on how to sell on Amazon.

Pick a Model
There are four different models for selling on Amazon: Retail Arbitrage, Wholesale, Private Label, and Create Your Own Product. Each of them has its own advantages and disadvantages.
1. Retail Arbitrage – This model is when you go out and buy things on sale and sell it on Amazon.
Pros: It is easy to setup and does not require much money to get started.
Cons: It’s not a scalable business.
2. Wholesale – This model is when you go to manufacturers and buy things at wholesale prices and then sell it on Amazon.
Pros: It is also easy to get started and requires less startup cost.
Cons: Manufacturers can cut you off. There is also a lot of competition.
3. Private Label – This model is when you slap your private label on an already existing product.
Pros: You are the only seller.
Cons: Other sellers can copy you.
4. Create Your Own Product – This model is when you take an existing product and make a better version of it or create a new product that does not exist yet.
Pros: You can create a better product and a new category. This would mean that you have a bigger moat around your castle. If in case a competitor comes in, it will then be hard to copy your product.

Pick a Product
How you pick a product will vary depending on the type of business model you are doing on Amazon.
Retail Arbitrage – You need to look for items that are on sale and cheap.
Wholesale – You need to find items that are not yet sold on Amazon.
Private Label – You need to look for products that have a lot of sales but have bad listings.
Create Your Own Product – Ideally, what you (more…)

It has been 5 months since Ariana launched her product, Vino Cards, on Amazon. There has been some big successes and some failures too. For this video, we will share with you how she started her business, why the sales went down since the 1st month she launched, and what we will be doing to fix it.

Ariana created the product last year. We came up with the idea of wine flashcards which we thought would be something useful for us and for everybody else. The second step was coming up with a prototype of the product and shared it with a Facebook Launch Group that Ariana created. She used Instagram to get people into the group. The benefit of the group is to get feedback and crowdsource ideas on how to improve the product. This is also a way to validate your product.

Here are different ways to validate your product:
1. Emails – Did people gave their emails?
2. Launch Group – Did people join the launch group?
3. Interaction – Are they interacting with you?
4. Crowdfund – Did people give you the money when you launched on Kickstarter?

One of the mistakes we realized was having the product airship with the boxes being too thin. It resulted to having dents and damages on the boxes. Another mistake was ordering too much.

For the first month, Ariana sold 150 units and made about $1,000 in profit. Since then, she was only able to sell 60 units per month. Ariana admits that she hasn’t put in much time and effort into it, but I still would give her a lot of props. It’s tough to balance having a full-time job and growing a business on the side. Aside from these, she also takes care of me and puts the house in order.

From the updates that we’ve (more…)

My Amazon FBA account was hacked and I lost control of it for two weeks. In this video, I will share with you what happened so you can prevent the same thing from happening to you and how I managed to fix it and retrieve my account.

Here are some important notes that you should remember if you have an Amazon account:
• Once you lost control of your account, it’s a pain to get Amazon on the phone.
• Make sure you have a backup account that has access to your Amazon account
• If you are able to get a hold of someone on the phone, request for the case to be transferred to VCAC.

I am not 100% sure how this happened. I might have been sent a phishing email or I could have typed in my password while connected to a public WiFi during my vacation in the Philippines. I was also able to download a PDF editor app that was full of virus and my password could have been stolen from there. To prevent having your passwords stolen, take note of the following:

1. Don’t reply to phishing emails
2. Don’t log in to unsecured WiFi
3. Don’t Install Unsecured Apps

One thing that saved me was my second account. It is the account that my virtual assistant used to log in to my account and do certain tasks. Although that backup account has limited access, it still allowed me to send in more inventory while I was locked out of my account.

For added security to your accounts, you should enable the two-step authentication. You can do this not just for your Amazon account, but also for your email accounts. With this, you are not only required a password but a code as well before you can log in to your account.

The trick I used (more…)

In this video, I will share with you 7 Amazon secrets I have tried and tested in selling my own product.

1.LAUNCH GROUP

One of the most powerful tips nobody is talking about is creating a launch group. It is where you get potential customers to a Facebook group. It can also be on Instagram or an email list. Putting people in a Facebook group is very powerful. This is how you share and get feedback on your product. So when you launch on Amazon, the people in your launch group are going to feel invested in your product. They are also most likely to leave comments.

2.OPTIMIZED PRODUCT PAGE

You need to have a good TITLE which contains a lot of keywords. Things that people would search for on Amazon to find your product. You also need to make sure that it’s enticing to your customers. You also get 5 BULLET POINTS where you can highlight the benefits of your product.
The MAIN IMAGE is probably the most important part of your product page. Put as much energy and effort in making a good main image as you can. This is what people look at before they click on your product. I recommend using a high-quality, computer generated image. You also want to add as many OTHER IMAGES as you possibly can. Photos of your product in different angles and all the ways to use it. The REVIEWS section is the next most important. You need to do anything you can to get as many good reviews as possible. If you haven’t yet, get a TRADEMARK as early as possible, to allow you to get brand registered on Amazon. This will allow you to add branded content. Use this section to convince potential customers to buy your product. You can also add (more…)