first we're gonna share with you
Ariana's actual numbers for her first
year of selling on Amazon including her
actual revenue her expenses her profit
everything including what her product
that she sells on Amazon actually is
which I know most people on YouTube
don't share but we're gonna try to be
completely honest completely transparent
with you about everything in this video
yes and then the second thing we're
gonna talk about is the biggest mistakes
I made selling on Amazon and there are
some big ones and if you watch any part
of this video watch this part because it
could save you a lot of money selling on
Amazon and the third and final thing
we're gonna talk about is how I did it
because even though I did make some
mistakes I still made six thousand
dollars in profit and she did that while
traveling while working a full-time job
last year and actually living in loving
life last year so let's get into her
real numbers for her first year of
selling on Amazon yeah sure but before
we do that at the very end of this video
I'm gonna share my number one tip of
what I learned from selling on Amazon
last year I did about twenty five
thousand dollars in revenue with this
one single product but there's a lot of
costs associated with doing business so
revenue again is not profit so the first
expense you had was actually buying the
unit's to sell on Amazon how much was
that that was about six thousand dollars
and then on top of that there's fees for
selling on Amazon's platform including
the Amazon FBA pick and pack fee that's
where you take your product you put it
in Amazon's warehouse and when you get
an order Amazon takes it packs it
shipped it for you to the customer how
much was that that was roughly around
five thousand and on top of that there
is the 15% fee just for selling on
Amazon's platforms so the first fee is
if you're using FBA fulfilled by Amazon
the 15% fee is just for selling on
Amazon which was on top of that there's
a lot of other arraignment fees when
you're selling on Amazon I had about
$1,400 in those fees and for PPC it was
about two thousand so after you factor
in all those different expenses for
selling on Amazon Arianna ended up with
a profit of about six thousand dollars
which how do you feel about that
compared to how much revenue you did and
everything yeah well for the first time
selling on Amazon and looking at these
numbers I'm a little disappointed I mean
it's twenty-five thousand dollars almost
in bad
and then I only walk away with 6000 of
that so in surprising yeah but at the
same time last year I don't feel like
you you didn't spend a ton of time
working on this business so to make
$6,000 for the amount of time you put in
what do you how do you feel I think
that's very true I mean I did spend a
few months really trying to get the
product up and running and after that
once it was on Amazon it was smooth
sailing so and great on top of all this
she made some and we made some really
big mistakes for her first year and
selling on Amazon so let's get started
with the first mistake she made which
was ordering too much product we ordered
way too many units of product we ordered
about two thousand units of vino cards
which it was a mistake like what are
your thoughts on that yeah so the reason
we did that was because once you order
more units the cost of the individual
product goes down so it made more sense
to purchase two thousand versus one
thousand it was just much cheaper whose
if we were to order just one thousand I
think it would have cost us about seven
dollars per unit how much when we
ordered two thousand and went down to
five dollars but the downside of that
there's a lot of downsides one of the
first downsides is there were some
mistakes on the card so we're stuck with
two thousand units and very minor
mistakes but we're stuck with two
thousand units that have mistakes your
honor yeah so I didn't spend extra money
to have them ship me one of the products
just to see how it looked like which is
a big mistake and so I would have been
able to catch those mistakes but because
I felt very confident with the
proofreading and everything we order
those two thousand and then once I have
the physical product I notice what went
wrong so now I'm stuck with selling
those into like and this is there's a
lot of big lessons here one of the big
lessons here is there's going to be
mistakes with your product how Ariana
reviewed it so much we hired a Somali a
to review the product she had friends
look over the product and she told me
I'm 100 percent confident there's not
gonna be any mistakes yeah and I told
her there's for sure again because
there's so much text on our product I'm
like there's for sure gonna be one tiny
spelling mistake so understand you're
gonna make a mistake
and it's not that big of a deal
like now I know what the mistakes are
and I'll change it for next time and
people are still gonna buy it and one of
the things is it costs a lot of money to
buy two thousand units cause that's a
lot of money up front and all those
units are just sitting in her parents
garage and luckily her parents let her
put the units in the garage but for the
average person that doesn't make sense
for the average person I recommend
bordering three to six months worth of
inventory and this is for a few reasons
one if you make a mistake you can change
it you can iterate pretty fast another
reason is that way you don't have too
much money out of your bank account like
stuck in inventory now overall this
process was a lot more expensive to
start then I think we thought it would
be but luckily Arianna did run a
Kickstarter to help pay for some of the
inventory you want to talk about that
yeah so I launched the Kickstarter I set
a goal for $5,000 and I surpassed it
with 550 100 and so that profit that I
ended up getting was about three
thousand there's about four thousand
dollars so with Kickstarter you have the
she raised about five thousand dollars
on Kickstarter but then there's the
Kickstarter fees and then there's the
cost of actually shipping the
Kickstarter products but that helps pay
that helped her pay for her first round
of inventory and if we would only
ordered five hundred units or a thousand
units it would have paid for the entire
inventory run but we ordered two
thousand units so overall though
launching on Amazon was a lot more
expensive to start than I think we you
know one of us thought it would be let's
let's talk a little bit about that what
were some of the big expenses yeah well
overall the shipping costs are major so
we're air versus sea shipping makes a
huge difference if you're in a rush air
shipping is gonna be your best solution
but it will have a greater cost than sea
shipping which sea shipping takes about
six weeks so if you do have the time
worth the cost definitely if you do have
the time do the sea shipping and right
after this we're gonna get into how
Arianna launched her company
step by step and we'll talk about all
the costs associated with doing business
in that section but one other mistake
that I want to talk about and I think
this is the biggest mistake that I made
is I put a little bit too much pressure
on Arianna I had a little bit too high
like unrealistically high expectations
and part of the reason that is is as
some of you guys might know I sell on
Amazon I I've been selling on Amazon for
about two years
and I make about six figures passive
income from selling this one product and
I was so excited about this idea of this
whole method for how to sell on Amazon
that I wanted to teach Arianna my
girlfriend and I was expecting her to be
doing six figures but the difference is
I was working on my business relatively
full-time I've quit my job seven years
ago I've been a full-time entrepreneur
for seven years this is the first
entrepreneurial adventure you've ever
done yeah and it was doing it with a
full-time job because I wasn't ready to
fully commit 100% to it like you have
and so she was only able to work a few
hours a week on this company so I'm
really proud of her for only being able
to work a few hours a week on this
company and still making six thousand
dollars profit which obviously is not a
crazy amount but it's enough that she
recently quit her job and so now she is
gonna be working on Vino cards full-time
so I'm really excited about that me too
and especially it was a long process to
get to this point but I did save up
enough to be able to feel more
comfortable with pursuing this full-time
and so to me the reason I felt like a
little bit of a failure because I felt
like I let her down and I felt like
maybe I didn't give her the correct
step-by-step process or any of that kind
of stuff but I think it was just setting
more realistic expectations so I'm
extremely proud of her and let's get
into how she actually launched her
company on Amazon step by step and now
my process is a little bit different I
do not recommend doing the private
labeling or any of that other kind of
knockoff boring type stuff I recommend
creating a passion product and a passion
product is something that you're
passionate about it's a creating a
unique product that does not yet exist
in creating it and that's what she did
with our company veno card you want to
talk about your company real quick yeah
so vino cards is a single product it has
a set of 50 cards with wine information
on them so it's all the essential
information in flashcard for him this is
something that didn't exist before and
she wanted to learn more about wine and
so she created it my product is also
another product that did not exist
before it was a premium nut butter
product and that's what I recommend you
do so the first step is really to come
up with the idea and we already talked
about it she came up with the idea
because she wanted to learn more about
wine the next step and let's talk about
this is creating what I call a product
launch through creating raving fans and
how did you go about doing that so
Facebook is
great platform for that I created a
Facebook group added all my friends and
family who then shared with their
friends and family and it became a group
about over a thousand people and on
there I share my process of creating the
product getting their feedback and it
really creates that community of hey
let's like work on this together it
makes them feel part of the product she
also would use Instagram and post about
our product on Instagram and the whole
thing is you get people into a Facebook
group get their opinions on how your
product can be better and then that way
when you go to launch eventually the
next step for her when you go to launch
on a Kickstarter those people are really
excited for you and so she raised as we
said five thousand dollars on
Kickstarter and then after that is where
things start to get a little bit more
expensive and their first real expenses
were starting with the business so talk
about some of the expenses and how you
created the business itself yeah so
everything before actually creating the
business was just all word-of-mouth
getting people hyped up for the product
now that we're actually gonna start
manufacturing is where it gets more
expensive once you have the business
name can create a DBA that was about a
hundred and fifty dollars I also wanted
to get a trademark which is about
another 250 and the good thing about
trademarking is that you can later on
get brand registry on Amazon and the
reason that's important is because it'll
create the credibility you can really
expand your product description and add
photos to your Amazon page so that
really helps boost audience on top of
that there's other random costs with
starting a business just random supply
sticker paper just all kinds of weird
random things yeah after you set up all
the legal stuff it's time to actually
pay for the product and actually make
the product itself so talk about that
yeah so I wanted to hire a designer to
help me create a logo and the Box design
and the cards individually themselves so
that was about two thousand dollars and
he really helped me through every didn't
everything yeah patient's upon iteration
so that was really great worth the cost
next I had a Highland hire Somali aid
because I am not knowledgeable in the
wine industry and I did want to make
sure I had the most accurate for
everything yeah absolutely so on up work
I hired a Somali a and that was about a
hundred dollars yep on top of that there
was manufacturing the product itself
which was about eleven thousand dollars
and then we have the shipping and one
important thing we haven't mentioned
is there's a 400 dollar bond for
shipping so if you want to do sea
shipping you have to pay 100 or $400
just to do the sea shipping and then of
course there's the cost of the sea
shipping and the air shipping is well so
those are all the different costs
associated with selling on Amazon that
nobody tells you about but once you have
your product manufactured you're ready
to finally launch it on Amazon and this
is like this is the big moment
we were so excited it was literally one
year ago like exactly one year ago today
that Arianna launched her product on
Amazon you want to talk about what was
your strategy and this is the same
strategy I used for launching on Amazon
yeah it was mainly all social media
outreach so I created videos getting
people hyped weeks in advance and then a
countdown up to the date so people got
really excited I used that Facebook
launch group that I used for my
Kickstarter to get people hyped up as
well sent out emails so really creative
that excitement for this product and
just in time for the holiday and you
want to do every when you're launching
your product send emails to everybody
you know send emails to your entire you
should hopefully have been building up
an email list in your pre-launch
sequence which I talked about in other
videos then you should be posting on
social media do videos do stories
anything and everything you can do you
want to get as many sales from day one
and as many reviews as possible and what
that's gonna happen it's gonna happen is
when you get a lot of sales on day one
that's gonna spike into more sales and
more reviews and that's gonna snowball
into more and more Amazon success so now
is the big moment let's talk about what
was the biggest lesson you learned last
year in your first year of selling on
Amazon the biggest lesson and what I'm
so grateful for is actually having a
mentor to guide me through the process
because I didn't realize how important
it was to really build tension to get
people excited about a product and it's
made all the difference I think this is
one of the biggest mistakes I've made in
my entrepreneurial journey is trying to
do everything myself don't try to do
everything yourself find someone that's
already done it successfully and just
copy them and that's part of the reason
why I basically I took my Amazon FBA
course I condensed it down to 30 minutes
and I've posted a video on Ariana's
YouTube channel which if you haven't
checked out yet Arianna has a YouTube
channel I made this video it's complete
step by step guide on how to actually
sell on Amazon and you can get it for
free by clicking right here so click on
that video
check out Ariana's new YouTube channel
she just launched and learned step by
step how to sell on Amazon so check out
that video we'll see in the next video I