Menu
Attend A Wholesale Workshop

Blog

Report Finds 1 in 5 Amazon sellers sold over $1 million dollars worth of products in 2018

by

REPORT FINDS 1 IN 5 AMAZON SELLERS SOLD OVER $1 MILLION WORTH OF PRODUCTS

“It’s too saturated.”

“It’s too competitive.”

“It’s nothing but a fad.”

We hear all kinds of reasons why becoming an online seller via Amazon is a waste of time. And ultimately, one of the biggest reservations that people have about selling on Amazon is not being able to turn a decent profit, let alone scale it into a full-time income.

It’s understandable. After all, every time you turn a corner, someone you know seems to be telling you they’re selling on Amazon. Your Facebook news feed is probably jam-packed with paid ads featuring online retail gurus who struck it rich and now want to show off their mansion and collection of fancy cars to any stranger they can reach.

If it seems too good to be true, it probably is, right? Maybe not…

We could sit here and argue about the viability of selling on Amazon until the cows come home. For every person you talk to about it, you’re probably going to get a different opinion.

Instead of telling you our personal opinions on the matter, we want to go in a different direction and let the data speak for itself. That’s right: There’s actual research proving that selling on Amazon can be immensely profitable. You don’t have to just take our word for it.

Let’s start with Feedvisor’s survey: The State of the Amazon Marketplace in 2018, which was based on survey results from 1,200 Amazon sellers. The results might surprise you — and even change your mind about pursuing a future as a seller on the marketplace giant.

1. More Sellers Are Making at Least $250K in Yearly Revenue

Let’s nip the myth that you can’t make money on Amazon in the bud because the survey results say otherwise.

In 2017, 28% of merchants made over $250K a year. In 2018, that increased to 40%. More specifically, million-dollar Amazon businesses are on the rise, growing by 9% in 2018.

It doesn’t end there, though. Multimillion-dollar sellers are seeing a boost too — from 1% in 2017 to 3% in 2018.

So, not only is there a substantial number of sellers making significant revenue, but that number is growing year over year. There is an increasing amount of room to be wildly successful in selling on Amazon. This is because although the number of people selling on Amazon is growing, at the same time, so is the demand. More and more people are shopping on Amazon than ever before. It’s the biggest online retailer in the country, and it makes up a whopping 50% of e-commerce growth.

The number of sellers can’t keep up with the demand. That’s how quickly Amazon is expanding.

Here’s how the survey broke down revenue:

With all of the money being made here, don’t you think there’s room for you? We sure do.

2. More Sellers Are Expanding Beyond the United States

Another pesky myth is that selling outside of your own country requires too much hoop-jumping and additional costs. Is there a learning curve? Sure. Might it take extra effort on your part? Probably.

Is there real money to be made? Without a doubt.

Online retail knows no geographical boundaries, and Amazon sellers are proof of that. According to Feedvisor’s survey, 37% of sellers said they were already selling outside of the United States, and an additional 26% said they planned to expand internationally throughout 2018. In 2019, the number of sellers going international increased to 45%!

This is one of the best parts of running an online business. You’re not confined by state lines or even country borders. There are no limits, no boundaries. If you want to, you can grow your business as big and as far as you’d like.

Isn’t that one of the reasons we want to ditch our 9-5s and start our businesses — to determine how much money we can make? This isn’t something you can get from any employer, who has total control over your paycheck.

You can stay domestic if you want — and still make an insane living, by the way. But just think of the possibilities when you can sell to the entire online world.

3. FBA is the Way to Go

Understandably, aspiring sellers sometimes express concern regarding the fees associated with selling FBA. Yes, Amazon offers to handle tedious and time-consuming tasks like packaging, shipping, and all matters of customer service, like returns, refunds, and replacements. In exchange, they take a cut of your sales.

But is it worth the additional cost? Wouldn’t it ultimately be cheaper to manage everything yourself? The survey says no.

Don’t get us wrong: FBM certainly has its advantages, and under some circumstances, it’s the better of the two approaches. For instance, it offers you more control over your inventory, since you’re never sending it off to Amazon’s warehouses so that they can take over from there.

However, the survey reveals that in terms of revenue, FBA is where it’s at. Looking specifically at profit margins above 11%, sellers that are over 60% FBA always beat out sellers that are mostly FBM. Around 33% of sellers who were at least 60% FBA experienced a 21-30% profit margin. Only 25% of FBM sellers could say the same.

This tells us that while, yes, FBA means an additional cost to the seller, the benefits far outweigh that cost. It was a popular approach in 2018 and continued to dominate in 2019.

Clearly, there’s no doubt that you can sell on Amazon not just as a casual side hustle (although that’s totally okay) but as a lucrative, full-time income. The next question, then, is how?

It’s in your best interest to find an approach that requires the least risk but still offers a big reward. Private label demands a hefty upfront investment, so if it fails (which happens to some sellers, let’s face it), you’re out quite a bit of money.

Dropshipping is unstable, and Amazon is not a fan of drop shippers. It’s not a logical long-term approach.

Retail and online arbitrage are both difficult to scale. Stores and brands are catching onto resellers and starting to limit how many units of one product you can buy. Similar to dropshipping, this won’t be feasible in the long run.

But there is an option that can work for you: wholesale.

Wholesale excels where all of the other methods of online selling fall short. Because there’s a formula for finding products that are already winning, it requires far less risk on your part.

Plus, you’re forming long-term relationships with distributors and manufacturers, meaning you might be working with them for years at a time to sell their products on Amazon.

There are a lot of people out there teaching a lot of different ways to sell on Amazon. Very few of these people, however, can prove that their methods work.

The Wholesale Formula has countless success stories — people whose lives have changed as a result of following our strategy for selling wholesale on Amazon. It worked for them, and it can work for you too.

We Closed Our Warehouse!

by

You read that right, after five years of operating our Amazon business in our own warehouse, we are closing the doors. We have finished our warehouse lease and moved ENTIRELY to a prep center!

So…we took our own advice…FINALLY

One question our TWF students often ask is “Why do you recommend using a prep center when you don’t use one yourself?”

And I always had to answer, “You’ve got a good point!”

When we first started selling on Amazon, we didn’t know prep centers existed. There is no doubt we would have utilized their services from the beginning, instead of having to manage employees and a warehouse. By the time we learned about prep centers, we were too invested in our own warehouse. Until now!

Dan prepping our FINAL shipment at the warehouse! 

You read that right, after five years of operating our Amazon business in our own warehouse, we are closing the doors. We have finished our warehouse lease and moved ENTIRELY to a prep center!

So…we took our own advice…FINALLY

One question our TWF students often ask is “Why do you recommend using a prep center when you don’t use one yourself?”

And I always had to answer, “You’ve got a good point!”

When we first started selling on Amazon, we didn’t know prep centers existed. There is no doubt we would have utilized their services from the beginning, instead of having to manage employees and a warehouse. By the time we learned about prep centers, we were too invested in our own warehouse. Until now!

For those of you that don’t know what a prep center is, they are 3rd party companies that will receive, store, prep, and ship your products to Amazon FBA. This means you can sell thousands of products on Amazon without having to ever physically see or touch them. It’s great!

This change is going to save us a ton of money, time & energy. We no longer have to worry about hiring and training warehouse employees. We no longer need to keep regular business hours to receive and send shipments (my favorite perk), we no longer have to worry about staying up to date on prep procedures and processes. We basically just outsourced half our business.

There aren’t many business models out there that allow you to outsource half the business at basically 0 cost. Our Reverse Sourcing Wholesale Model happens to be one of them. And if you are wondering what I mean by 0 cost, you can pay to do it yourself, or pay a prep center to do it. We found that it’s actually cheaper and more efficient to have the prep center do it. So to us, it’s better than free because we outsourced half our business and it makes us MORE money.

I am also happy to say that we didn’t have to lay anyone off! We made an agreement with another local business who absorbed our warehouse staff at equal pay.

The emergence of prep centers over the last few years has made selling on Amazon easier than ever. By outsourcing the prep of your products to one of these facilities you are able to fully scale your Amazon business without the prerequisite of a processing team or warehouse facility.  Today you are able to buy and sell tens of thousands of products without ever having to handle, prep, or pack a single product so, in that regard, prep centers have done to the Amazon wholesale business model what Fulfillment by Amazon did for 3rd-party marketplace sellers.

As you can tell, I am very pro prep center and encourage anyone thinking of scaling their Amazon business to, at the very least, research the possibility before diving straight into opening a warehouse. Beyond prep centers, it is not uncommon to have your vendor ship your products directly to FBA centers for you. Many vendors are versed in doing this already, but even ones who aren’t are generally receptive to the idea and learning how to do it for you, creating huge savings on shipping to your facility or prep center and any prep cost.

And you don’t have to just take my word for it. Check out this piece from The Wholesale Formula Alumni, Suzanne McDuffee. She travels all over the world operating her wholesale business:

“When I was learning the mechanics of FBA I did my own prep to learn. But as soon as I had experience packing and prepping in a variety of product categories, bundling and multi packing, etc., I outsourced 95% of my prep work to prep services. I’ve never looked back. I have used five different services to date, and I would say that pretty much all of them have been great to work with – some more than others. I would encourage anyone considering investing in running their own warehouse to try prep services before making that commitment. Not only do I value the freedom and flexibility it gives me, but they actually do a better job, and it is more cost-effective for my business.

Thanks to my prep service partners, my VA, Google Apps, and some other tools, I am 100 percent location independent. I can run my business from anywhere in the world as long as I have an internet connection. At first, I would travel domestically in the United States to make sure everything went smoothly. But I just put my business to the test internationally by traveling to Spain for 3 months. It went great with no major issues, and I plan on making more trips abroad regularly, which has always been a dream of mine. I’m pretty sure I would not have been able to pull this off if I had a warehouse to run. Next up I plan on visiting Cuba, Argentina, Singapore, and who knows where else. It has been by far the most fun, challenging, and satisfying year for me in a very long time. It’s a really exciting time to be in business – even just 5 years ago prep services were not so widely available to small businesses like mine. I still can hardly believe I can live this way – I love it!”

– Suzanne McDuffee

Suzanne McDuffee enjoying a trip through Europe while her Amazon business operates back in the states thanks to a prep center.

Outsourcing is designed to provide a solution that you are unable to do or, in the case of prep centers, are too valuable to do. Prep centers grant you freedom and time to focus on the highest level tasks of your business, eliminating constraints normally reserved for operations and infrastructure of in-house processing, thus serving as a catalyst for growth.

Ultimately, deciding which manner of processing and prep is best for your business should be evaluated and determined by you. Be sure to consider alternate solutions and methods you otherwise may not have for scaling your business to our level without making the substantial investment of capital and time we have. While time may not truly be able to be bought, by outsourcing prep, time spent on your business can be and if you are driven toward success, the price paid will be minuscule compared to the return gained.

How Private Label Sellers Can Use Wholesale to Double Their Business

by

If I said you could start with no product idea, have a bestseller on Amazon in 30 days or less, and you could do it without a product launch…would you believe me?

What if I told you this could be completely automated into a process that not only generates fast cash flow but builds up equity over time into sellable assets?

Not only are both of those things possible, in this article you are going to learn exactly how you can get started doing them as early as tomorrow.

We are also going to discuss how to turn your private label expertise and knowledge into a sellable asset. How to turn the information in your brain into a sellable asset in addition to your private label brands.

So who the heck am I?

My name is Dan Meadors. My business partner and I own an Amazon business that has generated over 12 million dollars in sales over the last two years.

Do want to know what the best part about our multi-million dollar Amazon business is?

We only work 1 hour per week.

And that 1 hour is a weekly meeting we have with our employees.

We aren’t CEOs. We are more like shareholders, or a board of directors. And all of this is possible because of the simplicity of our business model.

Want to know my second most favorite part about our multi-million dollar Amazon business?

I can sell it at any time.

Our business is a sellable asset because it runs, grows, and sustains itself without me.

Now there is a very important distinction here I want to point out. I said our BUSINESS is a sellable asset. Business.

I didn’t say our brands or our products. Sure, those are also sellable assets too, but a business is much more valuable as an asset than a brand or a product. Let me explain why.

Let’s roleplay a bit. Imagine you are an investor. What would you rather buy?

Rights to a brand, but you still have to manage it and take over the day-to-day operations for selling those products.

-OR-

You could buy a business that runs itself. You are just the owner, and nothing more.

Now I ask you, which of these is more valuable? You got it. The second option.

My goal here today is to help change your mindset so you can start making more money. Yes, building a brand is great, but if you build a business around that brand, you’ll double what it’s worth(or more).

So let’s double your business!

Now for the big reveal. Just how are you able to do this? What is the big secret to doubling the value of your business?

It is to incorporate selling other people’s products. Not just your own.

By incorporating selling other people’s products into your business, you can significantly increase the value of your business. That is because selling other people’s products not only adds diversification, but it can be done with a repeatable and outsourceable process, while still adding assets to your business.

Doing this is actually a really simple process we call wholesale, and we are going to break it down right now step-by-step.

Step 1: Identify bestselling products and brands on Amazon. We are talking about products selling hundreds or thousands of times every month. Turns out, this is really easy to do with Jungle Scout.

Step 2: Reach out to the brand owners of those products directly, get their approval to be an Amazon retailer of their products, and then buy at direct, wholesale prices.

Step 3: Sell those products on Amazon at a profit.

It really is pretty simple. And as I mentioned, you can automate all of these steps just as we have.

You can also kick all this up a notch. If you get good at this, brands are willing to sign contracts that make you the exclusive Amazon retailer of their products. This means you are the only one allowed to sell those products on Amazon.

These contracts are an asset. When an established brand gives you exclusive rights to sell their products on the world’s largest marketplace, it is very valuable! It’s predictable, defined revenue and profit. Investors absolutely love this.

The two big questions I usually get when I explain all this to someone are:

Why don’t these brands just sell their products on Amazon themselves?

And:

Why would they want to let me sell their products on Amazon?

Maybe it’s not painfully obvious, but the vast majority of brands don’t retail their products. They sell their products to retailers and allow THEM to sell their products. There is no Pepsi store, Proctor and Gamble Store, or Johnson & Johnson store.  And likewise, these companies, and many more much smaller than them, aren’t selling their own products on Amazon either. In fact, they have no desire to.

These companies want to have expert Amazon sellers handle the sales of their products on Amazon for them. They want someone who understands how keywords work. They want someone who understands how to create a great listing. They want someone who understands the nuances of Sponsored ads, product reviews, and ranking a product.

Does that sound a lot like you? That’s because it is. They need you!

Traditional Retail is dying. Every year more and more people are buying things online instead of in stores. So every year, the demand for companies needing an Amazon expert like you grows. And your expertise gives you a ton of leverage. It is a very scary time for brands that have depended on physical retail store sales.

Let’s take a look at an example. I want to make it real for you.

Here we are looking at Dominique’s US Senate Bean Soup.

This product averages about $3,000 in revenue per month according to Jungle Scout.

I looked into it a bit. The Dominique’s brand is owned by a company called World’s Finer Foods.

Here is the kicker: World’s Finer Foods is a 100 million dollar a year company and they have been around since the ’70s, well before Amazon even existed. They are huge. Even though I have never heard of the brand before, apparently it is in stores all over America.

Again, this product does about $3,000 in revenue per month, but it should be doing way better than that, right? So what gives?

Well, this listing is terrible. The pictures don’t even show what the soup looks like. There are 3 lousy bullets and no description! These are simple fixes that would take 20 minutes to handle and could increase the sales 2 or 3 times over! They could easily be doing over 10K per month or more with a few really simple changes.

I know that. You folks watching know that. You know who doesn’t know that? World’s Finer Foods. Dominique’s US Senate Bean Soup. They have no idea.

That is exactly why they need you and want you. That is why they would be willing to let you be their Amazon retailer. And it’s as simple as that. That is why they are willing to give you these contracts to sell their products on Amazon.

“But Dan, Sharing the buy box is scary!”

No, it isn’t. The buy box is mostly determined by the selling price. If everyone is selling at the same price, sales are split pretty evenly. If you can provide real value to the brands with all your Amazon knowledge, they will give you better pricing than anyone else. You can have a price no one can compete with and you get most of the sales. Or, like I mentioned earlier, you can sign exclusivity agreements to be the only seller.

“But Dan, You can’t change or fix other people’s listings.”

That’s not true at all. That is a big myth. It is actually really easy to fix and make changes to any listing.

“But Dan, I’ve heard wholesale margins are small!”

Another myth. Wholesale margins can be as high as 50% to 100%. And yes, it is very common for a wholesale margin to be 10% or 15%. But think about it: If all you have to do is send an email or make a phone call to put in your order, and the brand ships it into Amazon for you and get the sales…a 15% margin is pretty good for that little amount of work.  And it’s fantastic cash flow because the product already has built-in demand and requires little or no cash investment from you besides the cost of the inventory you purchase.

“But Dan, you don’t own the products!”

That’s fine because the contract you sign with the brand is your asset instead. The products have a history of sales so you can project the profitability of any contract you sign to retail their products. That makes it an asset.

To prove that last point to you, let’s look at a real-world example.

Josh Neblett had his own Amazon business, primarily selling a mixture of his own branded products and other people’s in the same fashion we have discussed here today. In 2015, Josh sold that business for $75 Million Dollars to FYE. Yes, I will repeat that: $75 Million Dollars.

That is the story of Etailz, perhaps you may have heard of them. Still today they are among the largest Amazon sellers.

Alright, now we are going to recap some of the benefits of wholesale that we have already talked about, and some that we haven’t. After that, I will walk you through how to find great wholesale opportunities yourself in just a matter of minutes using Jungle Scout.

  • Wholesale is very fast to market. You can go from sitting down at your computer, sourcing for products, to finding one and have it live and selling on Amazon in 30 days or less. That’s because the product already exists. You aren’t creating a brand from scratch. You’ve just got to get it ordered and shipped in.
  • Speaking of getting it shipped in — with wholesale, you never have to touch, prep, or even see the products you sell. Many brands you work with will ship the product directly to Amazon for you, or you can have prep centers receive, prep, and send your products to FBA facilities for you. This is a business you can run from a laptop.
  • The minimum investment cost to do wholesale is very low. You can get started doing wholesale with as little as $2,000. Think about it. You are buying products that already have a sales history and sustained demand on Amazon. You can buy and sell as much as you want because it’s always selling whether you are buying or not(assuming you aren’t in an exclusive contract.)
  • In the same light, the risk is also very low. Because of that built-in demand for the product, your investment is pretty safe. Worst case scenario, you have to sell your product at a 20% loss or something and even that is very rare.
  • Like we mentioned earlier when you sign contracts to retail products, and especially when you sign exclusive agreements, these have value and you are building an asset. The processes to acquire wholesale products are also very outsourceable and can be automated. So as you do that, you increase the sellable value of your business significantly.
  • And one of my favorite parts about this is it just takes one really good wholesale account to change your life. We can just look at some of our successful students as an example.

Don’t just take it from me. Take it from a student of ours, Aymeric Monello. He has a wholesale account that generates $100K a year in profit for him. Profit, not revenue. From just one account.

Or Cheryl Breitman. She has a single account that generates over $200k in profit each year. Again, a single account.

Or many, many of our other students who have gone on to sell over half a billion dollars on Amazon.

And it should go without saying, these results aren’t typical. Not every wholesale account you find turns out this amazing. But they are out there and they are up for grabs, and like I mentioned earlier, as more and more retail moves online, more and more of these opportunities present themselves!

Okay folks, now I want to show you how to find potential wholesale accounts. Below I have inserted a clip from a special webinar training I held with Greg Mercer of Jungle Scout. In it, we walk through one of our many scouting processes to find wholesale products live.

Our Students Have Sold Over $500 Million on Amazon!

by

*UPDATE* As of January 2021, new survey results indicate students of The Wholesale Formula have sold $1,057,143,592 on Amazon.com! Click here to read about it!

Today, Dylan and I are proud to announce our students of The Wholesale Formula have combined to sell over $500 million dollars on Amazon!

Wow! I can’t begin to explain how proud I am of our TWF community. HALF A BILLION DOLLARS!!!

Make no mistake about it, the credit for this amazing accomplishment goes directly to our students. It’s their hard work that made this possible. Dylan and I have been so blessed to serve as mentors to this talented and brilliant group of individuals, many of whom we now call our friends.

We’ve seen students…

Leave their full-time jobs.

Secure their own retirements.

Build 7-figure businesses.

Pull themselves off welfare.

Build 6-figure businesses at 19 years old.

Build 7-figure businesses at 70 years old.

And much, much more. If I took the time to tell just half of the success stories of our students, this article would be 100,000 words long! So instead, let’s look at the data behind $500,000,000 in sales.

Last month we sent out a survey to our 2,357 TWF students asking them to disclose their Amazon selling results if they were comfortable doing so. 421 students responded to the survey with their sales totaling $510,397,441.

That ends up being over 1.2 million dollars in sales per response. That is a staggering figure that really puts into perspective the success rates of our students.

We also had 1,936 students that did NOT answer the survey. I can’t imagine where that number would have landed if we had 100% participation.

And yes, despite these staggering figures, there are also people that take The Wholesale Formula and don’t get any results for one reason or another. It’s important for us to mention that because we like to be transparent. The Wholesale Formula is not a get rich quick scheme and it’s not magic. Instead, it is an extremely viable business plan that has half a billion dollars’ worth of proof it works, but it takes plenty of focus, determination, and hard work, just like anything in life worth having.

Our students are also extremely lucky. That’s because people building Amazon businesses now are getting in early on Amazon’s explosive growth.

We started The Wholesale Formula in 2015, and that year Amazon did $107 Billion dollars in revenue.

In 2016, $136 Billion dollars

In 2017, $177 Billion dollars.

In 2018, $232 Billion dollars

And in 2019, Over $278 Billion dollars

Amazon has more than doubled its revenue since we started The Wholesale Formula, but here is the really crazy part: Amazon is projected by many on Wall Street to grow more. Way more. In fact, Amazon is expected to double their revenue over the next 3 – 4 years as well.

Amazon 2022 Revenue Projection: Almost $400 Billion – Statista.com

Wall Street Bull Expects 40% Amazon growth in just 12 months – CNBC

Amazon closing in on Apple to become world first w/ trillion-dollar value – Bloomberg

Our students have seen Amazon more than double. You have the opportunity right now to get in and see Amazon more than double yet again.

Honestly, I feel lucky to be apart of this opportunity. I won’t be one of those people 10 years from now saying “man, I wish I got in on that Amazon thing in the early stages”.

Today is a celebration of our students and their amazing accomplishments. And it’s also a celebration of the opportunity that is in front us all.

I look forward to my next announcement when our students have grossed over 1 billion dollars! See you then!

(Hopefully, you will be a part of that statistic!)

For more information about how this information was gathered please see our Earnings Disclaimer.

How This TWF Student Negotiated a 7-Figure Wholesale Deal

by

Last week was Independence Day. I spent the holiday with my wife, our two daughters, and a mixture of other family and friends hanging out by our pool, grilling hamburgers and hot dogs.

Later that evening, as it drew closer to dusk, we headed out to a nearby park to watch fireworks. We found a nice spot to park, opened the hatch of our SUV, and sat in the back together awaiting the fun. Even as a grown man, I still love fireworks, but I ESPECIALLY love watching my two girls watch fireworks. Their genuine sense of wonder and amazement fills me with joy.

As we settled in, I turned on the radio to a local station that plays a 4th of July-themed presentation to go along with the fireworks. Right after Lee Greenwood’s I’m Proud to Be an American came a deep-voiced man narrating various patriotic quotes and passages.

When he presented this one, it literally brought me to tears.

“The American dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”

Just hearing these words while being close to my family and reflecting on my life and how I got to this point made me emotional. I am truly living my American dream. I felt so proud and thankful.

As soon as I got home, I typed what I could remember of the quote into Google so I could find and share it with you guys. I felt inspired to write about the American dream because no matter what you hear on the news, or what you read online…the American dream is alive and well.

People need to be reminded of that. We live in a land of opportunity, and you can achieve great things if you just reach out and grab one. You can turn that American dream into your own American reality.

And I’ve got the perfect story to prove it to you!

It’s the story of TWF student Aymeric Monello, who I’ve come to know very well while watching him grow his business to the million-dollar mark in record time.

Aymeric was born and raised in France. When he was 30 years old, he came to Las Vegas on vacation with friends. It was on this trip Aymeric decided he wanted to be an American. He wanted to live and work here. He wanted to pursue his own American dream.

There was one big hurdle… he didn’t speak any English.

Personally, I think this is a real defining factor about why Aymeric has become so financially successful. Most people would scoff at the idea of packing up everything they own and taking off to a foreign land where you don’t even speak the language. But that is exactly what he did. He wasn’t going to let anything stop him from achieving his dreams. The time was now.

Four months after that vacation, Aymeric was back in Vegas, but this time with a visa.

He earned a living by playing poker at the various casinos where you don’t need to know the language to check, call, raise, and bluff. More importantly, it was at these tables he started to teach himself English a little bit at a time.

Flash a few years forward and Aymeric’s English skills had progressed to the point where he could leave the highs and lows of the poker grind behind, first landing a job at Vegas PBS before moving on to be a web designer at the University of Las Vegas. He was happy and content with earning a nice, stable salary… for a while.

In 2016, Aymeric saw an advertisement for our free wholesale workshop that we hold every summer and enrolled. The rest is history.

Aymeric would go on to join The Wholesale Formula, and by the end of his first full year using our Reverse Sourcing Wholesale methods, he had done over $700,000 in sales. He finished 2017 with over $1.1 million in sales, a new home, a beautiful fiancée, and two dogs he rescued and brought into his home(Neo and Dood).

An amazing part of Aymeric’s success is the majority of his sales come from just a single wholesale account. And it was one of the first accounts he ever acquired using the strategies he learned from us to negotiate with brands. Aymeric focused on the tenants of our training: Demonstrate, communicate, and provide value to brands that increase their sales on Amazon and solve their problems and pain points.

In just a few short years, Aymeric went from not knowing how to speak English to negotiating a deal (in English) that earns him over six figures in profit each year. So don’t let anyone tell you the American dream is dead.

You can do great things. You can realize your potential.

What made Aymeric a success is he just got started. He picked an opportunity and he took action. The reason most people never create a successful business is because they never start it in the first place. In fact, over 85% of American’s do not own their own business even though many have dreams of doing so. If you are ready to achieve your dreams, then it is time to get started. And you will be way ahead of Aymeric since you already know how to speak English!

No matter what opportunity, business, or lifestyle you want…whether it’s on Amazon or something completely different…I just encourage you to get started. To take action.

Make this summer the one where you start your own American dream.

Aymeric went all out for Independence Day, coloring his hair and beard!

P.S. Aymeric will become an American Citizen next month!

3 Ways to Move More Inventory & Grow Your Business

by

Dan’s note: When we first started our Amazon business in 2011, we had a button in our seller central account that we could hit at any time and Amazon would deposit any earnings we had directly into our bank account. This was EXTREMELY useful in the early days of our business because we were strapped for cash and had very little credit to access. This is back when we used to do retail arbitrage, but effectively, we were cashing out every day to get more money to immediately spend and buy new products with. Without a doubt, it helped us grow faster. These days, Amazon no longer has this feature, and they payout every 2 weeks.

Today, we have a special guest blog from Payability, a company that provides a daily payout solution for Amazon sellers like we used to have.

How quickly do you move your inventory? Do you find yourself sitting on surplus product? Have you experienced an Amazon stockout? To ensure you’re maximizing your business’ growth, you should be asking yourself these questions on a regular basis and taking steps to move more product more quickly, without running out of stock.

To do this efficiently, you need a sound inventory management strategy. One that tells you how much product to sell at a time, what price to sell it for, and how/when to resupply. Get started with this 3-part guide to maximizing inventory turn:

Part One: Product & Pricing

First and foremost, you need a product that is in demand and sells well. To make sure you’re selling the right thing, check out Amazon’s scanner app which allows you to look up a product’s selling and price history on Amazon. For added certainty, there are third-party services like JungleScout that research the selling history for you.

After you find a sellable product, you’ll want to optimize price to maximize your ROI. This means getting the lowest possible price from suppliers AND setting a selling price that wins you the Buy Box and increases your margins.

For your sourcing price, get competing quotes from different suppliers to see who will give you the best deal. For your selling price, look at Amazon’s pricing history for your product or consider a re-pricer tool like Camelcamelcamel.com or RepricerExpress for help.

Part Two: Sales Velocity

The product and pricing strategy is not just a set it and forget it thing — like any retailer or Amazon seller will agree, you’ll have to plan for your inevitable busy and slow periods. Otherwise, you may go out of stock during a busy season or have too much inventory during a slow season.

To plan for these retail ebbs and flows, you’ll need to understand your sales cycles and sales velocity which tell you how much inventory you’ll turn in a given time, how much to have in stock, and how much and how often to re-order.

Depending on how long you’ve been in business, you can gauge your sales velocity by looking at your sales reports over the last year, checking the Amazon selling history of your product, monitoring your inventory reports in Seller Central, or using a third-party inventory management tool like Teikametrics.

Pro Tip: Understanding your sales velocity will help streamline the re-order process with your suppliers, which will help you turn inventory even faster. After all, knowing when and how much you’ll need to order will let you plan ahead better with them and work around their own production times.

Part Three: Cash Flow

The third pillar of your inventory management strategy is cash flow. Without a reliable source of cash, it will be difficult to cover things like last-minute or increased inventory orders. This means you won’t be able to turn inventory in an efficient manner.

For Amazon sellers, cash flow can be pretty elusive. When you have to wait at least two weeks for your income, it’s nearly impossible to build up the cash reserves you need to buy more inventory and cover other business expenses.

What if we told you, you don’t have to wait those two weeks for your income? In fact, there’s a solution for high growth Amazon sellers like you. Payability allows Amazon sellers to bypass Amazon’s two-week payment terms and get paid every day. Here’s how it works: They advance sellers 80% of their earnings every business day. The remaining 20% stays in a reserve to cover returns and chargebacks and is released to the seller on Amazon’s regular 14-day payment terms minus their 2% flat fee on gross sales. With daily cash flow, sellers can reinvest in more inventory and scale their businesses faster. In order to put even more cash in sellers’ pockets, Payability recently introduced a loyalty program that rewards customers with higher advance rates and lower fees over time.

See how one Amazon seller uses Payability to turn more inventory or learn more about how Payability can help your business at Payability.com. Anyone referred by The Wholesale Formula who signs up will receive a $200 credit.

Victoria Sullivan is a Marketing Manager at Payability. She has over eight years of social media, copywriting, and marketing experience. Prior to joining the Payability team, Victoria developed social media content and strategies for top technology brands such as Skype and Samsung. She holds a degree in Advertising from Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. She can often be found in a yoga class or working on her fashion blog.