How to sell on Amazon And the benefit of an Amazon FBA Course

Next to the different ways of selling on Amazon, like for example arbitrage, wholesale or private label.

People often approach us and ask us how to sell on Amazon.
And the answer is multi-faceted, as the question is quite open.

The first problem is, that when you start something new, you often make a lot of mistakes.
Simply because you lack the knowledge.
And that is true for anything, not just selling on Amazon.

What is specific to Amazon however, is that because it is so easy to set up a seller central account and get started, people tend not to approach it as a business.

I believe the popular term nowadays is a side hustle, or passive income.
These are both terms I absolutely dislike, but as I already said why in this article, I won’t get into that here.

So the first thing I would advise people to do, is to go to their local chamber of commerce and start a company.
Now depending on where you live and what your personal situation is, I would definitely ask for advice from say an accountant first, as they know all the rules and regulations in your area

But in most cases you won’t pay any taxes, if you don’t earn anything.
What it does help you with, is the fact that you have put that proverbial foot behind the door and kind of force yourself to treat it as a business.

Obviously this is not something you should do on a whim, but once you go for it and want to make a business out of selling on Amazon, it is something you should consider.

Not just for motivational purposes, but also because that trip in your car towards Walmart to buy inventory, might be tax deductible.

Another thing you should is figure out how to sell on Amazon.
This means either just start doing it and learn along the way, or pay for a course.
And I would argue taking a course, over learning it by experience.

You see for a course you might have to pay several 100 dollars, however making mistakes can be a lot more costly.
And there are lessons you won’t recover from, financially speaking.

So it is my belief that either way you’ll pay … and investing in knowledge before you go of the deep end, is in my opinion a smart thing to do.

Now let us assume you have the knowledge and have determined you’re going to sell on Amazon.
The thing you then have to consider is what you’re going to do and how much work you’re going to do yourself and what not.

There are two things that will influence that choice:

Capital and knowledge.

The capital variable is an obvious one.
If you have money, it automatically means you have time.
Which you can invest in gaining more knowledge or inventory.

With knowledge I mean, what do you know about the Amazon system and also about (Digital) marketing.

Now if you have enough working knowledge of the Amazon system, money to burn and are good enough at marketing, I would start with Private Label.
If you lack any of these, start with Arbitrage.

Some course will tell you can start a private label brand/product with zero investment, but the chance of you succeeding is very slim, extremely slim … so please don’t fall for it.

With Arbitrage I would argue to start slow  and slowly build your inventory while you gain the knowledge to do it right.
Especially if you don’t follow a course and learn from experience, this is very important.

One of arbitrage’s greatest pitfalls, are people not understanding their costs.
Which means they buy recurring subscriptions to software they don’t need, or rather can’t afford and buy products that will never in a million year will ever be profitable.

But the biggest issue I think, is that people think that because it’s accessible, it automatically means it will be easy.