Well, my plan to make daily posts isn’t working too well so far, I’m going to have to pick up the pace. I was concerned that daily posts would be too boring and not provide enough useful information, but I’m going to reconsider that idea and try one more time to make daily posts no matter how brief in an attempt to share my journey. So for now here’s a “catch up” of my activity since my last post 2 weeks ago. I’ve been every day, still learning and stumbling as I go.

Nov 10 – Course Refund
I think I mentioned previously that after researching eCommerce and the related courses, communities, etc. that were available for training that I purchased a full mentorship Private Label course for $4,000. After spending several weeks watching the videos and participating in their forum, I was not satisfied or impressed with the quality given the $4,000 price tag. However, by the time I decided it was not the right group for me I was past the 14 day refund period as stated in their Terms and Conditions.

Frankly I was inclined to write it off as a loss and chalk it up to a dumb (and expensive) mistake while accepting that mistakes and missteps are an inevitable part of starting a business. After thinking about it for a few days though, I adopted the mindset that “everything is negotiable” so despite concerns about being rejected or summarily dismissed, I reached out to course founders, explained exactly what had transpired and asked for a partial refund. To my surprise, after a brief Zoom call at the request of the founders to share my thoughts, they agreed to a refund of $2,500. I thought that was reasonable, so I ended up paying $1,497 for the extensive, self-directed video course only. While I’ve since moved on to a different mentoring group and course materials that I’m very happy with (Silent Sales Machine – Jim Cockrum; Proven Amazon Course), I do think I’ll go back at some point and revisit the Private Label training videos that I ultimately paid for ($1,497).

Product Evaluations So Far
I’ve now reviewed and painstakingly evaluated 250 products from Walmart, Home Depot, and Dollar Tree and found exactly -0- ASIN’s that were clear winners. I did find 4-5 that were close, mainly instances where I could purchase a bundle and resell the product as individuals at a profit. However, there were other factors like slow moving product, too many sellers, etc. that were not ideal so I may test them with small quantities to see how they do. At least I’ll start to get the “full circle” FBA experience and hopefully learn more about how to evaluate winning arbitrage ASINs.

I do feel like I”m learning. It’s coming slowly, but I can see I am getting faster at figuring out the kinds of products that are best suited to arbitrage, getting new ideas where to find them, learning the analytics tools like Keepa, Revshare, SellerApp, etc. I’ve only been at this for about 6 weeks, but I can see where it would be easy for someone who had no guidance and no knowledge that this model (arbitrage) could actually work would be inclined to give up. Fortunately I stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before me and figured this out, and I see so many testimonials of people who are making a decent income from FBA that I’m convinced to stick with it.

My Positive Progress
I did find a new FBA analytics tool that helped with online arbitrage that actually found several winning (or at least testable) ASINs. It’s called Nepeto and it does exactly what it should do: It retrieves the price of products accessed from major retailer’s product catalog (e.g. Target, Walmart, Home Depot, and dozens of others) and programmatically compares those prices to the price on Amazon to find opportunities. My only greatest concern now is that this seems too easy. Once word of this tool gets more widely circulated I fear it will make finding good ASINs even tougher, but I’m going to take advantage of it now while I can and if/when it quits working I’ll find something else.

First ASIN Purchase
I purchased 4 items in the Hardware category yesterday (Nov 15) that should be profitable on Amazon. Bought them for $3 each, and they sell on Am azon normally for $20. I expect to make $5 each after all related costs are included, which admittedly isn’t much, but I just want to get started. To send product to Amazon, to see it sell, and if all goes well add it to my ASIN list.

More Pictures
Also went to 3 new stores yesterday and took pictures of products to try to find another brand that I can purchase cheap and sell at a profit on Amazon:
Ross Dress For Less

Ulta
Harbor Freight

The Objective
My goal for now is:
100 ASINs
Selling 10 units per ASIN per month = 1,000 sales/month
$3 net profit per sale = $3,000 month net income

For Today (Nov 16):

• Watch more videos from the Proven Amazon Course Replens 2.0 course (Niche products, Regional stores)
• Upload all the pics from yesterday’s outing
• Analyze latest products to try to find a few more ASINs
• I need to go thru the list of 250 products I’ve screened so far and pull out the 4-5 others that did have good testing potential and purchase them today, so I can send my first small batch of product to Amazon next week.