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Adam , you sell products online now. But what was your start in entrepreneurship?
Adam has been an entrepreneur for over 20 years. To find out more about Adam, look here: reliable.education.
Adam got started right out of high school. He knew he didn’t want a boss and was captivated by the idea of entrepreneurship. He has had several businesses but not focuses solely on Amazon. He has had online and offline businesses including a flight simulator business, hair salon, and a finance company. He has a very diverse background, to say the least. He moved over to exclusively sell products online more recently.
How did you come to sell products online? And why on Amazon?
Adam got into selling on Amazon part-time while he was running an animation business. He sold that business last year and moved away from service businesses in order to start a product business with Amazon. Part of the allure of selling products online is that it gets away from the “selling your time” type job where you make more money the longer you work. With products, once you do the hard work and develop the product, you can sell products online all over the world and get paid over and over.
His animation business was growing and financially successful but he had a lot of people and a lot of moving parts. With products, it so leveraged and you can get away from that.
FIND OUT MORE about Adam and Amazon.
What made you decide on Amazon specifically?
As a business guy, Adam found Amazon very impressive. It’s a phenomenal company. In terms of their growth and numbers you know they are doing it right. He really loved that you didn’t have to build a website, that you didn’t have to find the customers because they were already there and that they handle fulfillment and shipping. FBA just changed the rules of product distribution. It was appealing to sell into the biggest markets in the world from wherever you were. To get more of Adam’s thoughts on the Amazon opportunity, CLICK HERE
Do you think it’s too late to get started with Amazon?
It definitely isn’t according to Adam. He did an experiment this year. He started with 6 products that sell online in February or March to test what it would be like for a newcomer. They are currently around a million dollar a year products at this point. So it isn’t too late. There is a lot of opportunity to those with the necessary education.
Where do you think the opportunity is? Is it still in .com in the US, or has it shifted to somewhere else?
It’s interesting because right now his European business is doing about 70% of his US business. What’s truly amazing is that his cost-per-customer (CPC) in Europe is about ⅓ of what it is in the US. Also, Europeans give more feedback than Americans. He has automated emails that go out and he gets about twice as many emails from UK residents than the US.
Are you only in the US and European markets or are you in others?
Adam is in .com and then Spain, Italy, Germany, France, and the UK.
What are the big pros and cons of the US market versus the European markets?
The US is always appealing because it’s so big but because it’s so big means there is a lot more competition. Also, America is home many of the Amazon course gurus that have pumped out a lot of courses to those wanting to start an Amazon business. The challenge is that there are a lot of sellers that have been educated on the same strategy at the same time. So America is still a great opportunity if you have the right education and the right lens. You can’t beat the US market because it’s so big and broad.
However, if you live in the UK and feel more comfortable working there, Adam would recommend starting in the UK. It’s a fantastic market, much easier to access, much easier to rank, and a much more appreciative group of consumers. However, if you don’t live in the US or the UK Adam recommends starting in the US because it’s much easier to get started. The regulations for foreign sellers are a lot tougher in the UK and it’s a lot easier to get your account set up in the US.
Another issue is that not everyone is registered for VAT and many people won’t until Amazon requires it because it will add 20% to your prices and put those that register at a disadvantage.
You mentioned before how everyone was educated on the same flawed strategies. How were they flawed and what should be done differently?
One of the biggest promoters put out a course telling people to sell items for under $40 with high Best Seller Ranking. When they first launched they recommend being in the top 100 of any category. Once they began selling this idea they realized they needed to expand because they had 5000 people looking to be a top 100 in about 15 categories.
One of their flaws was the emphasis on BSR because it doesn’t really matter. That only measure who sells the most. But in business, it doesn’t matter how much you sell, rather how much margin you make. That’s the difference between turnover and leftover. Adam is looking for higher margin, less contested spaces. People don’t realize how massive Amazon is. Over 2 million sellers with hundreds of millions of products. There are a lot of unsophisticated sellers that have two images with ten reviews and are on page one. There are a lot of small sellers that looked for cheap products with high turnover where anyone can get into it. What Adam looks for is something that is difficult for people to compete and isn’t as obvious.
What are some things you would suggest in order to put a moat around things? If you have $5000, $10,000 and $20,000 to start.
Adam cover a lot of this in his course at reliable.education. His first product was $160 retail. But it was costing him $40 a unit. So there was an $80 margin which gave him options someone selling a $12 product just doesn’t have. He could spend more on advertising. Even if he spent $20 per sale he was still making $60. He was completely out of the top sellers and in his subcategory there was around 45,000 and he was nowhere near the top. He still came in and started making $15,000 a month in sales and $8,000 profit.
When you sell products online, start with looking from a consumer viewpoint
The first thing people need to think about is that whenever you look at a market for anything, you need to think about it from a consumer’s point of view. Why will a consumer notice you? And why would a consumer buy from you and not someone else? It can’t be something they need to read about. Don’t expect them to read your copy and find some feature. Think of Amazon like Tinder. People put in a few details about what they are looking for, then go through the pictures and start dismissing them. You need to have good photographs, but you also need something good in the photograph. So try to get something that is visually different. Some key detail or feature that will grab the buyer’s attention.
For example, if you look up desktop calculators on Amazon, they are all black or grey except for one that is green. Now if you look at car covers, they are all black or grey or blue. But if someone came with a car cover that had a cool saying, or was bright pink, it’s going to stand out. The question is, how can you innovate, visually, at the core design level. It’s not about the best title or description, anyone can do that. The big thing is to think like a customer. Just follow Jeff Bezos advice, “Be in business for the customer.” In the end, the best products are going to win.
To get more advice or free training from Adam, just go to reliable.education
