how did you start this business it cost me $144 to own a membership for canva it cost me $30 to do a 3D render in in California it cost me about $800 I did $250 units which cost me $44,000 shipping cost me $1,250 gs1 cost about $30 Legal Zoom cost me about $650 and we're going to share with you step by step how Calvin built his $400,000 Amazon FBA business but Calvin what do you sell on Amazon I was working full-time as an engineer but I realized I didn't want to work 9 to5 for the rest of my life I wanted to build a business that I could retire young uh so I tried to make money Drop Shipping but that didn't really work out for me and I realized that a lot of people were shopping on Amazon but I was unsure if a beginner like me could still make money on Amazon so I tested it out by selling a print on demand t-shirts on Amazon and I made some money but I didn't want to sell t-shirts because I didn't think there was a lot of profitability moving forward so I needed another way to sell on Amazon and that's when I found Travis's videos on YouTube and his FBA program which ultimately made me 400k in my first year and we're going to share with you what Calvin sells on Amazon as well as step by step everything he did to start this business including every cost he had all his startup costs his design cost his shipping cost and his Revenue as well as his final profit for his first year selling on Amazon but make sure you stay till the end of this video because at the end of this video Calvin is going to share the three biggest mistakes he made in his first year selling on Amazon and he made one mistake that cost him over $20,000 it's a very easy mistake to make almost all sellers make this mistake but by watching this video all the way till the end you you can avoid making this mistake and smash the like button because Calvin's sharing everything in this video Calvin tell us how did you start this business so the first step was actually sign up for helium 10 using your discount code and so helium 10 normally cost $99 but I do have the hookup with them there's a link down below that'll get you a discount so after you signed up for helium 10 how did you use it like what was the next step and for people at home helium 10 helps you find products to sell on Amazon so I did research for about 3 months uh it took a while uh I really focused on the numbers and data and then I realized there was a gap in the market I actually noticed an UT seller was doing about 500k a month but I figured I could do better than what he was doing and also uh do a better product how did you know that you could do a better product I think it just came down to looking at his listing um seeing that I could optimize on his his photos uh what the the price he was selling at and everything and actually just create a product that was differentiated from his own and that's a key when selling on Amazon you can find people that are already having success and just make better products than them and make better Amazon listings than them so as far as your brand and all that how did you do your branding I actually used AI uh to come up with my brand I did some research on it I used Ai and it it generated a name for me and then cross checked that with the USB to to figure out if I could actually trademarket and then it was actually available and then now that you have your brand name how did you come up with like the design the logo all that kind of stuff yeah again I I kind of leveraged the AI I typed in what would be a good design for this name and it kind of gave me some feedback and then I I kind of use canva and some other software tools to kind of design them myself how much did it cost you then to design your brand Des design your logo to design all that stuff uh it cost me $14 to own a membership for canva and it cost me $30 to do a 3D Rend written from someone on fiber and we're going to talk about how Calvin found a manufacture our first product in just a minute but before you did that the next thing you did was you signed up for an LLC and LLC stands for limited liability company it's how you legally are able to start a business here in the United States how much did that cost you in California it cost me about $800 and you can get an LLC in different states for different amounts but the problem is if you live in California you have to pay $8 $100 for an LLC where how much is it in Florida uh I think it's under 300 so it's a big difference but you also don't need to sign up for an LLC when you're starting a business you can sign up for a DBA which stands for doing business as and that's only going to cost you $99 for around five years but the benefit of signing up for an LLC is it does offer you legal protection where a DBA does not offer any legal protection but at this point you're ready to do your first production run how did you find a manufacturer for your product uh using your course actually you you listed how to reach out to manufacturers so I I used your template and I reached out to a bunch of different manufacturers on Alibaba and I I to chose the top three to decide who I would use my product with and how much did you spend on your first production run do you remember how many units you had produced I actually did 250 units which cost me about $4,000 and I know at home that might sound like a lot of money but keep in mind this was the start of Calvin's $400,000 business and we're going to be sharing month by month how much money he made with this business but there are still some other costs Calvin had when starting his business and the next cost he had was shipping the product from his manufacturer over in China into the United States Amazon warehouse and how much did that cost you my shipping cost me about $1,250 uh I did it by SE uh doing it by air was about 3 to four times more expensive in when shipping from overseas you have two options you can do C- shipping which is what Calvin did which is going to be way more affordable but it's also going to be a lot slower or you can ship your products by air which is going to be faster but it's going to be a lot more expensive and at this point Calvin had his products produced and they were shipped into the Amazon warehouse but in order to sell a product on Amazon you need to create a title for your product you need to upload images bullet points and a few other things how did you create the images for your product listing I actually did that myself using canva and also using Photoshop how much did that cost you then uh $ Zer boom Another cost that a lot of people don't think about is you do need to get a UPC code for your product UPC stands for Universal product code and this is the barcode you see on all kinds of different products like when you go to Walmart or Target and they scan a product that is the barcode how much did it cost you to get a UPC code uh using gs1 only cost about $30 to $40 and before we get into Calvin's first month selling on Amazon there was one other optional cost and you don't have to do this but Calvin decided to get a trademark for his brand how much did that cost you and how' you do it uh it cost me about $650 uh I reached out to Legal Zoom and they they were able to get it for me and you don't need to use a lawyer or Legal Zoom in order to get a trademark you can actually go to uspto.gov yourself and file it it's really easy I actually have a lesson in my Amazon FBA program showing you step by- step how you can do it and if you are interested in joining that program like Calvin did there is a link Down Below in the description and before we share the revenue and profit from that first month at this point you've spent over $7,000 to start your business how are you feeling were you nervous were you scared yeah I was definitely nervous there's always a risk when it comes to starting a business what did your family think about this uh I guess at first my parents were always taught I would lose my money so did my siblings uh but it worked out and it's finally time Calvin launched his product on Amazon and in your first month selling on Amazon ever how much money did you make I made about $99,500 boom now that is revenue but not profit but still over $99,000 in his first month ever selling on Amazon but as I mentioned there are some costs associated with selling on Amazon but the first cost you had when selling on Amazon was paying for those products that you sold how much did you pay in product costs so in total it cost me about $2,600 for all the products for my first month the next cost you have when selling on Amazon is the Amazon selling fee and anytime you sell a product on Amazon you have to pay 15% to Amazon as their referral fee and how much money did you spend on that Amazon selling fee in your first month that worked out about $1,400 another fee that a lot of people don't think about is the Amazon FBA Pick and Pack fee and FBA and Amazon FB ba stands for fulfilled by Amazon and the way it works when you sell a product on Amazon is you ship all the products that you want to sell on Amazon's website into an Amazon warehouse and then when you get an order Amazon will pick pack and ship your product out to the customer but they do charge you a fee every time they have to ship one of your products how much money did you spend in that first month on the Amazon FBA Pick and Pack fees so my Amazon FBA fee was about $1,200 and I know that might sound like a lot of money that you're having to pay Amazon but keep in mind Amazon has over 300 million Prime customers and by using the FBA program it makes your product Prime eligible meaning that those Prime customers can buy your product and get it shipped to them within 2 days on top of that by using the FBA program you don't have to do any of the shipping yourself in fact you can travel or live wherever you want and your business will keep running and keep making you money so in total in your first month selling on Amazon how much profit did you actually make I did about $4,000 in profit boom in his first month $4,000 profit how did you have so much success in your first month tell us all the secrets uh I think it was just putting into work early doing the proper research uh finding a product that sells and then also taking advantage of all the keywords and uh using PBC to leverage that to make sales you need to remember that Amazon is a search engine people go to Amazon to search for things that they want to buy these are the key words and you want to make sure that you take those search phrases those key words and put them in your title put them in your bullet points and what were some of the keywords and search phrases you were targeting uh at the time it was like ziplock bag I organizer bamboo organizers just keywords that would uh show me number one on the listing and if you can find things that people are searching for in Amazon where there's no good product in this case he saw that people were searching for bamboo organizers but there was no white or black bamboo organizers it makes a lot of sense to make those products so that when people are searching for them they'll buy your product instead of the competition that brings us to your second month selling on Amazon how much money did you make in your second month I made about $4,000 what happened how come the numbers went down uh I basically ran out of inventory I didn't I wasn't prepared for the demand that the product had and we'll talk about that more later in this video but after we subtract out the product cost the selling fee the Amazon FBA Pick and Pack fee what was your total profit for that second month I actually lost money that month I lost about $2,000 oh no so is that because you ran out of invent what happened yeah I basically just ran out of inventory and I couldn't fulfill any orders that was being made so in your third month you were completely out of inventory so you had Zer doar in sale Zer doar in profit right yeah basically nothing and then finally in month four you got your inventory back and how much did you do in Revenue month four uh $23,000 $223,000 that's amazing and then after we subtract out the product cost all the different fees the selling fee the FBA Pick and Pack fee how much profit did you do in month four about 8,500 what happened this month that you had so much success uh actually my main competitor his listing got taken down I don't I don't know why but it just did and I just took advantage of it during this month I also uh focused on PBC and I also focused on optimizing my listing and more using A+ content and PPC for those that don't know stands for payperclick this is a way for you to advertise on Amazon where your product will show up at the top of the search results but you do need to pay a little bit of money every time someone clicks on your ad how much money did you spend in PPC in this month for it was about $2,000 $3,000 and taking advantage of Amazon advertising is a great way to reinvest your profit back into your business and now let's get into month five how much in Revenue did you do in month five I did about $99,000 what happened you were making 20,000 and now it's down to 9,000 what what happened uh again it came down to run out of inventory uh I tried to scale I tried to get more units but uh the manufacturer just going to keep up with the orders and how much profit did you do in month five in month five I did about $3,000 in profit okay so what happened in month six what was the revenue for month six uh the revenue was only about $3,000 I was just out of inventory and at that time I was just trying to change manufacturer and see who could Supply me with all these units because I had the demand but I didn't have the product and this is a huge mistake and this is something we'll talk about in depth later in this video but month s did you get back in inventory how much revenue did you do yeah month seven I actually did about 15,000 so if you would have had inventory for 30 days that would have been $445,000 plus of Revenue yeah definitely and how much profit did you do in that month seven about 5,500 so at this point how are you feeling because $5,000 in profit is still really good but it's you know you could be making a lot more money if you stayed in inventory yeah definitely I think I needed to focus on streamlining the business and getting all the right uh people in place to make it happen so that brings us to month 8 and finally for month 8 you had inventory for the entire month how much money did you make in month 8 I did about 78,000 that's insane so how much profit from $78,000 did you actually make once we subtract out all the costs uh it was about $26,000 $26,000 in profit in just one month you haven't even been selling on Amazon for a full year yet how are you feeling at this point are you telling your parents like hey look at me now yeah I was basically like look at me now I'm it's making it work so what about in month nine how much did you do in Revenue in month N I was able to keep my Revenue up it was about $66,000 and then after we subtract out all the costs uh how much in profit about 22,000 month 10 how much in Revenue uh 60,000 and then how much in profit after we subtract out all those costs 70,000 this is amazing this is his first Amazon business ever his first year selling on Amazon and in total uh it hasn't quite been a year yet you're only on month 10 but in this first year how much do you expect to make on Amazon uh in Revenue about 400,000 and after we subtract out all the cost for your first year how much in profit do you think you'll do about $100,000 that is absolutely amazing that's more money than most people make at their job and you did this all while having a full-time job do you think you're going to quit your job and and focus on this yeah I actually quit my job two weeks ago and this is exactly why I tell people it's not too late to start selling on Amazon this is a beginner Amazon Seller and he was able to make $100,000 in his first year be able to quit his job and he's going to probably make way more money in his second third fourth year on top of that you have freedom you were talking about you might even move to South America uh yeah I might go back home uh help out my parents business but I might also stay back and forth in Florida to send them this business more and that's one of the key reasons why you should start an Amazon business or some kind of an online business because it gives you the freedom to live wherever you want to do whatever you want to do with your time to quit your job so you can wake up whenever you want but there are three big mistakes that Calvin made in his first year and the first mistake that Calvin made was the mistake you heard us talking about throughout this entire video he kept running out of inventory how much do you think this mistake cost you uh run out of inventory three times probably cost me about $100,000 that's a lot of money and this is a a key mistake a lot of beginner sellers make what would you do different any advice you would give to yourself uh just once you do the numbers and you feel more confident in yourself just put put in some more money and get more inventory and that's the hard part as a beginner a lot of times you're nervous you're scared you don't know if Amazon FBA is going to work I even recently made this mistake with my new product carnivore electrolytes this product is selling way better than than I thought it would and we're probably going to run out of inventory so even more advanced sellers can still make this mistake but I recommend believing in yourself investing in yourself and buying enough inventory and if you do run out of inventory make sure it doesn't happen again the second mistake is something we haven't talked about yet and it cost Calvin at least $10,000 if not more what was that second mistake uh it was quality control uh I first I got my samples I thought it was amazing but I didn't realize from your samples to bulk runs it's quite different when it comes to Quality so I didn't take the time time to hire a quality control agent to go over everything and my manufacturer was able to produce good qualities resulting in a lot of returns and you can hire someone in China that will go and check the quality of your products for around $100 and this will make sure that the products that you receive are high quality that you're not paying for Junk products and why was having bad quality products why did that hurt you I think ultimately it caused me to get bad reviews which in Amazon uh reviews your currency and now let's talk about the third mistake that Calvin made and that was scalability and it cost him at least $20,000 what was that mistake so at the time uh when I was talking to my manufacturers I we asked them about the mqq stands for minimum order quantity it's basically what's the minimum amount that you can order and what is the question that you wish you would have asked them uh what was the total quantity you could do in one mon so you would ask them what the minimum was but you never said hey what's the max that you can do and why did that end up hurting you yeah that ended up hurting me because as my sales grew I I tried to order more units my man manufactur is just going to keep up per month Calvin did over $400,000 in his first year without any experience over $100,000 in profit the cool thing about this is you can do it too and I have a free 8 Hour Amazon FBA course that you can get just by clicking right here so click on that free course video it's a YouTube video that shows you step by- step how you can start your own Amazon business just like Calvin did so click on that video we'll see you in the next video and thanks for watching right
