Imagine being able to grow your eCommerce business WITHOUT being hand-braked by investment capital, without complexities of Facebook ads, without customer services, and without building a brand or developing a new product.
That is EXACTLY what we’re planning on doing in 2018, here’s our $1,000,000 plan…
Holy crap, it’s 2018!
Happy New Year, I wish you and your families all the best for 2018! ☺
I find it a little hard to believe, 2018 already? Where did 2017 go?
I do love when a New Year rolls around, it’s an easy time to set new goals, plan new initiatives, and start with a clean slate. You can let yourself off the hook for the things you didn’t achieve the previous year, and have another crack at it this year.
Today I’m going to share a secret plan that Steve and I have been working on for the past 14 months, and how it’ll net us an extra $1,000,000 this year.
Before we dive in to that though, if you haven’t been participating in our ’12 Day Giveaway’, it’s not too late! We’re only 8 days in, and STILL have over $30,000 in prizes to give away…
Find out all the details here: http://www.the12daygiveaway.com
Live Training on FRIDAY
This blog post talks through our new big initiative for 2018 and gives the 10,000ft view.
In a live webinar on Friday (this week), we’ll dive into everything discussed below in more detail.
We’re not selling anything on the webinar, it’ll be ‘information only’, and during the workshop we’ll also announce the BIG winner of our 12 Day Giveaway celebration, a $30,000 private luxury yacht cruise.
An EXTRA $1,000,000… What’s The Big Idea?!
In November 2016 (14 months ago) Steve and I started running ‘pilot tests’ for a new way of selling physical products online… well, not THAT new to us, but at least a significant new channel of income.
In the past 14 months we’ve done a LOT of testing, and we’ve ‘tooled up’ our business to be able to explode with this in 2018.
In a nutshell, the idea is simple:
- Buy products from USA based wholesalers
- List them for sale on Amazon
- Sell at profit margin of 30% or more
- Rotate inventory every 15 days
Just to be clear:
- This is NOT white label/private label Amazon selling (where you develop your own product)
- This is NOT dropshipping from China (aka 100k Factory)
This is buying tiny quantities of random products, and publishing them for sale on Amazon WITHOUT any form of brand building, without any paid advertising, without any customer support, and without even needing a website (because it’s all sold on Amazon).
In fact, the products we’re talking about are ALREADY being sold on Amazon, that’s an important thing actually, because it means we can analyze the sales volume and determine what our revenue could be… more on this shortly.
We’ve had a unique inside look at this business model for quite a while now.
As you may know, we own a warehouse in North Carolina (www.yourwarehouse.com), our partner in that venture (John) sells these kinds of products BY THE CONTAINER LOAD on Amazon, it’s HUGE business.
Another couple of our friends have also been doing something similar for a while now, like our partner John, Chris and Todd sell millions on Amazon every year leveraging the exact same method we’re talking about today.
So… it’s not like we’re inventing anything radically new here, or going into unchartered territory, we’re just focusing on leveraging a system that is already proven to work.
The Amazon Land-Grab Is Here…. AGAIN!
In the past 14 months it’s become VERY apparent that there’s an entirely new ‘land grab’ happening on Amazon.
We saw a similar phenomenon back in 2012-2013 when there was an enormous influx of ‘white label’ sellers to Amazon, people selling their own brands. It was easy, and thousands of new millionaires emerged.
During the .com boom the same thing happened with domain names, people were snapping up amazing one-word domain names, and many of these people became MEGA-rich in the process.
A land-grab also happened when Facebook started allowing people to advertise and laser target their buyers, the first-movers cashed in enormously, and millionaires were made.
The exact same thing is happening now.
But this time, unlike the last Amazon land grab of 2012-2013, it’s not about developing and selling a new brand, it’s about piggybacking on EXISTING brands and leveraging the thousands of USA based distributors and wholesalers who are screaming out for a way to market their products.
It’s Synergistic
For the past few years our main focus has been on building up our 100k Factory style stores (using Facebook ads to drive traffic to Shopify websites and drop-shipping products from China) and our white label Amazon brands.
Both of these businesses continue to flourish, and both will benefit from our new venture.
There are lots of synergies at play here, including:
- We already have Amazon accounts (in the USA, UK, etc)
- We already have warehouse/logistic facilities (we own www.yourwarehouse.com)
- We already have a team of staff, and the know-how to grow that team
- We understand the power of eCommerce and that it’s here to stay…
In addition to this, the new model offers:
- The ability to cash-in WITHOUT running Facebook ads (so it’s diversified income)
- We can get started WITHOUT investing much capital into inventory (unlike Amazon private label, the investment required here is under $100)
- It’s a cash-friendly business, meaning when times are lean in the other businesses, this one can prop it up.
We Actually Started Doing This In 2010…
If you’ve been following Steve since 2010 (before he and I were partners), you’ll know that he hit it big selling pitching machines (excuse the pun, I couldn’t help myself!).
What you might not know however, is that in addition to selling pitching machines on his own website, he ALSO sold them on Amazon!
He didn’t develop his own pitching machine, nor did it have his brand on it, he simply set it up to sell on Amazon, leveraging the manufacturers existing Amazon listing and made a decent chunk of change as a result.
Back then Steve was using ‘FBM’, which stands for ‘Fulfilled By Merchant’. Basically this meant that every time he got an order, the manufacturer (or wholesaler) would send it out to the customer.
Amazon FBA (fulfilled by Amazon) was in it’s infancy, in fact, 8 years ago Amazon was quite a different beast altogether.
What we’re doing now is selling products (like pitching machines, but normally much smaller, much lighter, and much cheaper) on Amazon, but we’re leveraging FBA… it’s one less thing to worry about, and in 2018 Amazon makes it EASY to leverage FBA.
Although Steve was selling pitching machines on Amazon and doing well from it, the focus way back in 2010, and where he was doing even better, was selling pitching machines on his own website, and driving traffic using Google SEO, and Google Adwords (Facebook ads didn’t even exist until 2012, and they were VERY different to what they are today).
Selling products on Amazon remained part of the business, but there was never any focus to expand it.
The $1,000,000 Plan…
Now that you’ve heard the back-story, it’s time to get into the exciting stuff… how we’ll earn an extra $1,000,000 from this new business model in 2018!
First, let’s reverse engineer what $1,000,000 actually looks like (it’s not really all that intimidating).
$1,000,000 is $83,333 per month.
If we assume an average revenue of $35 for each product we sell, that’s 2,380 sales per month.
2,380 sales per month is 79 sales per day.
The products we’ve found are the easiest to cash in with, and where the real ‘land grab’ is happening right now, are products that are kind of off the radar, and ignored by other marketers.
Most sellers on Amazon look to sell products that are capable of making them $10k/month or more.
What we’ve found is working incredibly well is focusing on products that tick over slowly, making 1-2 sales per day.
So based on a $35 sell price, to get to a $1,000,000 per year run rate, we’d need to be selling 40 different products, and have each product selling 2 units/day.
Remember, you do NOT need to develop 40 products, you’re selling products that already exist and that have other peoples brands on them.
Furthermore, you don’t need to buy large amounts of inventory for the 40 different products either. You can get started with tiny inventory orders of even just a handful of units, send them in to Amazon, and let Amazon do the rest.
Where Can You Find The Products?
Good question.
The answer is through using distributors/wholesalers, who you can easily find by doing a Google search, or by browsing through trade association websites.
Distributors are great and buying bulk products at low prices from manufacturers, but they SUCK at selling these products to the mainstream market.
This is why distributors are screaming out to work with marketers, people like us.
One distributor we’re working with has a catalog of over 40,000 products… that’s 40,000 DIFFERENT products. We can cherry pick the ones we want to sell, and sell them.
Most suppliers have much smaller catalogs of between 500 – 4,000 products. To find 40 products that meet the criteria, you’d likely need to work with about 7-8 different wholesalers.
The BEST Part Of All This…
If you remotely like what you’ve heard so far, it gets EVEN better.
We aim to turn inventory around (i.e. sell out) ever 15 days. That means we have two ‘stock cycles’ per month.
And each time we sell out, we expect to get about 30% profit margin on the goods sold. This means that over the course of a year, you can cycle through your inventory 24 times, and increase your money 30% each time.
It’s like compounding interest… earning growth become exponential.
You cash in on a ‘snowball effect’ that has no end…
Here’s an example…
You invest $1,000 on day one.
15 days later you’ve sold all your inventory and you’ve got $1,300 back, for a profit of $300.
You reinvest that $1,300 and in 15 days time, you’re now holding $1,690.
You reinvest that, and in 15 days time you’ve now got $2,197.
You reinvest that, and 15 days later you’ve got $2,856.
Reinvest that and you’re at $3,712, then again and you’re at $4,826, again and you’re at $6,274, one more time and you’re at $8,157…. I think you get the idea.
NOTE: You could start with much less than $1,000, this is just an example.
Here’s a sketch I did, showing how this can quickly snowball, even if you start with just $100:
Now, clearly, just like in any business model, it’s NOT always smooth sailing, and the reality is that you won’t always sell out of all of your inventory every 15 days.
Perhaps during your research phase, you assumed a product would get 2 sales/day, and in reality it gets 1/day, it’ll take you twice as long to sell it, so your cycle for that product would be 30 days (which is still amazing by anyone’s standards!).
Or perhaps the market price will change, and instead of selling it for $35, you’ll be selling for $28… this isn’t the end of the world, because you’ve got built in margin as a protection, but it means you won’t hit the 30% benchmark margin.
Of course, the opposite of these ‘worst case scenarios’ can also happen…
Perhaps you’ll sell out in 10 days instead of 15… and your stock cycle becomes EVEN faster!
Or maybe you’ll sell at a 40% margin instead of 30%, and your profits increase significantly…
These positives tend to balance out the risks and however you slice and dice it, we end up with a very attractive plan.
How Much Can You Scale…
We know people who are working this exact model and doing upwards of $25,000,000 PER MONTH in sales… even with a 20% margin, you’re talking $5,000,000 PROFIT per month (and these are small businesses run by just a handful of people).
In fact, some searching through Amazon sellers, and you’ll bump in to these kinds of people, you’ll see they have hundreds (sometimes thousands) of products in their Amazon accounts…
Scaling potential is unlimited, and Amazon encourages it (because the more money you make, the more they make).
You’re not hand-braked by the need for huge capital investment, or by the time it takes to develop products, or by complicated logistics, shipping times, customer support, etc.
All that stuff that has traditionally been a business hand-brake has been eliminated with this new model.
We’ve Already ‘Tooled Up’
We’ve been tinkering away at this for 14 months, and already have two full time employees who dedicate themselves to this (and we’ve actually already built a lucrative business using this model, what we’re talking about here is EXPANSION… netting an ADDITIONAL $1MM!).
One deals with the wholesalers, the other identifies the products we want to sell (after the wholesaler has given us their product list, this person analyzes it and finds the winners).
We’ve also got a plan in place to bring on more outsourced labor as is needed, this won’t be a roadblock.
I’m sure you’ve got questions…
This blog post was only designed to be an ‘intro’ to what our big initiative is in 2018.
Leave your questions below, and we’ll do our best to answer them all ☺
Join Us LIVE On Friday 5th…
In addition to answering your questions below, we’re running an informational workshop on FRIDAY (this week) to dive into this business model in more detail. We’re not selling anything at all on the webinar, it’s just to provide you with more information, and answer your questions live, register for that using the link below:
Thanks for reading, and again, all the best for 2018!
Aidan
Very interesting Aidan. Coming from a finance background, I’m drawn to this in a big way, I can see how the compounding cash really builds in a short timeframe. I’m registered for your workshop to learn more. Should I have my credit card ready?!
Hi Rob, yup, the compounding cash really is a big drawcard for this model. No need to have a credit card on hand, we’re not selling anything on Friday. It’s more about wrapping up our 12 Day Giveaway stuff than anything else 🙂
Happy New Year Aidan. I’ve been reading your blog for about 3 years now, and I’m always amazed at how you come up with new content each month, thank you.
Thanks Jared, awesome to hear you’re still coming back after all these years, thank you!
I already sell on Amazon, so this seems like the natural progression for me. Anxious to learn more. Question for you, I live in Australia, is that going to be a roadblock, given that we’re dealing with USA wholesale suppliers?
Hi CJ, similar to the Amazon ‘Whitelabel’ model, it make no difference where you are in the world, the Amazon wholesale model can be run from anywhere.
Just to clarify please Aidan. I also reside in Australia and in the past US suppliers have requested either an LLC or EIN # or both? Will this possibly limit the US suppliers or have I got the wrong end of the stick?
Hey Tom, it can be a hurdle depending on how you do things, but it WON’T be a hurdle if you do it the right way. As a Blueprint Academy member, check out the recording of our presentation in Chicago to find out more 🙂
I was part of the original Niche Blueprint, and I remember the stories about the baseball store, amazing that now the business model has kind of gone full circle and we’re back here talking about wholesale again. I’ve chuckled a little to myself about this. Can’t wait to hear more. Walter
Hey Walter, yeah, it is kind of amazing when you look back at the big trends of online marketing over the years. Amazon FBA has certainly had a huge impact on the internet marketing landscape, and it really does makes the wholesale model a lot easier than it was way back when Steve started selling wholesale almost 10 years ago!
Aidan, very interested and excited to hear all about this!
As a BPA member, you already have an inside peek at this Jemma (see the Chicago meeting recordings!) 🙂
Hi Aidan, as usual, it all makes a lot of sense. Thanks for your efforts to let us know about it. Planning to be on the call on Friday… Best wishes for 2018 for you, your family and Steve…
Hey Jacobus, thanks for your comment, and we’ll see you on the call on Friday 🙂 All the best for 2018!
Thanks Aidan. Do well!
Happy New Year guys!
Thanks for sharing this powerful
content.
Looking forward to kicking 2018 off and seeing and reading all the
success stories ahead, including my own ☺
Awesome Scott, happy New Year!
Hey Aidan, I love the sound of this! Can you give us the basics of how that full time employee analyzes products to find the winners?
Hey Andy, sure thing, but we’ll go over that on the call on Friday, it’s a bit hard to do it justice here in a comment 🙂
Thank you very much, Aidan, I just check my PayPal account I received 400 us dollar from you.
I do not know what to say, I am very happy, I wish you a happy new year to you and all your team.
Thank you, Aidan, big Like and respect
Adel from Algeria
Well, you entered the draw Adel, and you won! I’m really glad you participated.. who knows, you could even win a second prize in the coming days!! All the best for 2018!
I remember looking at Chris/Todd’s product about this where you piggyback on existing liatings. I thought with wholesaling you have to deal with other sellers using repricing software taking buy box and affecting margins constantly?
Hey Brian, repricing software isn’t really needed, although you can use it. Margins fluctuate, but you can average out at a very solid and healthy margin.
Happy New Year Aidan and Steve! You know I have followed you through all 100K Factory programs and the roadblock I hit each and time is “too many moving parts’ for me to process and manage. I’m a retired health care professional with no business ‘genes’ whatsoever. This new model seems to address the ‘moving parts’ issue with FBA but I’d need more information/training on how to find and negotiate with reliable wholesalers in addition to learning how choose winning products. Being retired, I’m on a shoestring budget… so being able to start with $100 is very appealing. What are the other operating costs? Will there be software in this new model, to help us with product selection or research? My biggest concern with AMAZON is that all the customers are AMAZON’s and not ours – so no email list for us to build and increase our customer value. Have you found a way around this? I have also heard of FBA vendors with winning products being either out-priced or even shut down by AMAZON – you may have a business on AMAZON but it’s not really yours, AMAZON is the boss, or so I understand it. Perhaps I am wrong, as I admit, I know little about FBA… Anyhow, this all sounds interesting and it would be really great to finally earn some online income online after years of trying different systems with zero success. I pretty much need something that’s brain dead simple which doesn’t require me to spend my retirement days chained to the computer. Hoping this is The One for me 🙂
Hey Jordan, I know you from the 100k programs 🙂 Operating costs are mainly just shipping and logistics.. you can do it all yourself, but I’d definitely recommend using services that take care of these things for you, otherwise they risk becoming headaches. The logistical operating costs only really become costs when you make sales though, with very little capital required up front (due to the small inventory quantities). Selling on Amazon does mean that Amazon has ultimate control of your listing, but as long as you play by the rules, then Amazon has no reason to want to shut you down… when you make money, so does Amazon 🙂 All the best for 2018 Jordan!
Is this possible to do in the UK market? And if so, what approach should we take to 1) find suppliers and 2) find potential products to piggybank off.
I know some people don’t really like being sold to but, considering this is a new wave, creating a step by step course would be really attractive.
Hey Donald, YES, it’s doable in the UK, absolutely. See if you can get on the call so you can get all the details. As I mentioned, we won’t be selling anything on there, but will have more info about the process, and how we might be able to put something in place to help with more info in 2018 🙂
Thank you.
When you mentioned having ‘40’ different products, does that mean 40 units to start off with to sell — or is it 40 different products, but each has a certain amount of units e.g. each products has 30 units to last the cycle?
What you need (in my example) Donald, is to be selling 80 units per day… it could be 1 unit of 80 different products, 4 units of 20 different products, or whatever. Hope this makes sense! Let me know if you’ve got more Q’s.
Right I understand.
What I’m really intrigued about is how to find these products at a 30% profit margin.
I live in the UK – so if I were to go about sourcing these products, would I have to manually search and pick these products out of a UK wholesalers catalogue, THEN use a product research tool to see how they’re selling on Amazon?
If so, it feels kind of like retail arbitrage…
And you also mentioned how you need to be working with 7-8 different wholesalers. If you’re only buying one unit from each wholesaler, won’t they raise the price (which lowers your margin) since they want you to buy in bulk?
Hi Donald, arbitrage is, simply, buying items to take advantage of price differences between two markets. Usually retail arbitrage is things purchased at retail stores (almost exclusively, actually). What the strategy I’m discussing here today is however is the age-old retail model. We are doing exactly what Target, Wal-mart and even Amazon does… Source direct from a wholesaler (a company that sells to retailers, not a retailer themselves). Retail arbitrage rarely has the ability to negotiate pricing or terms. We are building a business, not taking advantage of price differences between Toys R Us and Amazon. So because of this, it’s actually not difficult at all to get a 30% margin, and often push up to 50% or more. Relating to your final Q, we’re not actually buying just 1 unit from a supplier.. the goal is to buy THOUSANDS of units of a range of different products, so it’s mutually beneficial for the wholesaler and for us. Hope this help, and I hope it clears things up. if you’ve got any other Q’s, just let me know 🙂
I’m just starting on Amazon FBA, so I’m looking forward to learning more about this model. Wholesale from the US will certainly simplify and speed up the process, even though the profit margins are less than from China.
Sounds great Barry, check out http://www.blackbirdsuite.com, it might help you with what you’re doing 🙂
Hi Aidan: Interesting to read about this Amazon Wholesale business. A couple of things:
1) You mention it compliments what we already have going. How can / does it relate to 100k eCommerce sites and finding products; or our TRex stores.
2) It sounds like we can start low capital, but it also sounds like it may be a large time commitment searching for products.
Still working the system … developing my 2018 plan.
Deborah
Hi Deborah, you could certainly sell the products you find through wholesalers on your 100k stores.. you’ve identified they’re viable products, it’s a nice change that they’re sourced in the USA (avoid annoying delays), and you could fulfil these using Amazon, or something like http://www.yourwarehouse.com. Regarding #2, if you’re searching manually for products, yes, it’d be unsustainable, and take a LOOONG time. We’ve got a tool in beta at the moment that streamlines all the viability analysis for you, we’ll have more on that towards the end of January 🙂
Hi, Aidan,
Thanks for all the great content!
Does this model require becoming “ungated” by Amazon in categories that are traditionally hard to get into?
If so, do you provide guidance or help for this?
Hi Denise, if you’re selling gated items, then yes, you’d need to be ungated. But there are literally tens of thousands of products to sell that are already in ungated categories. And yep, we’ll provide info about how to get ungated as well 🙂
Hey Aiden,
Love yours and Steve’s work 🙂 I’m battling my way through the 100K model at the moment, but hit a wall with capital trying to find that elusive winner! Definitely not beaten..plan to return to this in the near future.
The AMZ wholesale looks good. In regards to shipping ex the wholesaler. Generally, do they ship direct to AMZ warehouse for you with the relevant labels etc that AMZ require?
Regards
Gary.
Hi Gary, the wholesalers don’t put labels on for you, but there are logistics centers (such as http://www.yourwarehouse.com) that’ll do it for very reasonable prices. Keep battling forward with 100k, it’s a great model!
Hi Aidan, I currently have been selling FBA for about a year and looking to expand my business… Missed the informational webinar… Is there a replay?
Hey Stephen, yup, you can see the webinar replay here: http://the12daygiveaway.com/replay/
Hi Aidan…. I’m actually hungry to make money online. Even I just start with one of your business models, which one do you suggest and how can I get started?
Hi Dean, I think the wholesale model is the most attractive right now… but it really depends on your situation. Check out these videos, they might help you make a decision: http://the12daygiveaway.com/the-opportunity-matrix and the other one is: http://the12daygiveaway.com/the-12-day-giveaway-2017-day-6-building-gameplan
Hi, Aidan,
Interesting to read about this Amazon Wholesale business! What kind of initial approach would you suggest to a potential distributor?
Edwin
Hey Edwin, make a shortlist of suppliers, then just reach out and ask them if you can be set up with a trade contract. You then get their product list, and start filtering to find winners 🙂
Hi Aidan,
I am starting in Amazon, and what you have described is the route I was planning. Do you have a coaching program with details on how to accomplish this model? Thanks for all the great information!
Info coming next week about what we have Rod
Hi, Aidan,
Do I understand that you and Steve will be releasing a manual covering this system in the very near future?
Is this going to be a course or membership like 100k or OMC?
Thanks
Eric
We will Eric, it’d be a training program, like 100k Factory kind of thing.
Hello Aidan,
I wanna ask a question that is this new business model which you are talking can be build as an asset and sold for multiple fold times ?
Yes, it can be sold off Tarun, it’s actually one of the easier types of online businesses to sell.
Hi Aidan,
Just found out I have been paying $97 for BLUEPRINT, but can not log in. What is it and why can’t I log in if I am paying for it?
Sorry, could not find another way to contact anybody
Ann, it must be OnlineMarketingClassroom.com. To contact support, go here: https://support.blueprintcentral.com/
Hello Aiden,
I am interested in looking at this to increase my income while working… How does this work when sending products from a USA supplier to Amazon when we are based in Australia? should I register as an Australian business or operate it as a division of my existing business or just do it personally under my name?
Hi Charles, being located in Australia (or any other non-USA country) won’t be a barrier.. we have our infrastructure set up in the USA to be able to help streamline things for you. We’ll have specific training for you in the inside 🙂
Hi Aidan,
I have been wading through all the “opportunities” out there to start an online business through FBA. I came across your program – 7 Figure Cycle – and I believe the model is just right. The only thing is, it’s February 23, and I’m afraid I may be too late to get in. Is there a way to get into the program now?
Send us an email Randy, we’ll see where we’re at with the waiting list: support@blueprintcentral.com
Hey Aidan, Just got message from 7FC, that you were forced to shut down the FB group (I’m a 7FC member).
Really sad that some people abused the group!
Hope, the integrity of 7FC wasn’t damaged too much!
Keep up the good work! Looking forward to see the new communication channel soon!
Thanks for your message Sang, we’ll have the new community open soon!