This is a post by staff writer Jeff. Jeff blogs about finances and going green at http://sustainablelifeblog.com and has started a new project detailing his efforts to earn money online at onlinesideincome.com
There are plenty of ways to earn extra money and a lot of ways to do it solely online as well. You may need it for more security, perhaps work from home to watch your child(ren) or some other reason. The reality is that no matter your situation, a little more income every month never hurt.
If you spend your time reading online a lot, you may have heard about various ways of making money on Amazon. There’s the popular Pat Flynn interview with Jessica Larew, talking about how she buys things at clearance sales in department stores and places like CVX/Walgreens and resells them on Amazon for a profit.
There’s another way, sometimes called “white labeling”, which essentially involves creating your very own product, having it produced in China and then selling it on Amazon FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon). While this takes a lot more capital than the other method, you “own” the buy box (meaning you’re not competing on price with anyone because your item is original) and you can decide the margins of your product. This is very much a capital-intensive business, but as you can see from these few posts about Amazon FBA, the potential for returns are huge.
If you’re interested, here’s what you’ll need to do.
First, you’ll want to select a product. This is without a doubt the most important step. You need something that you can buy in China (look on alibaba.com for suppliers) and sell for 3-4x on Amazon.com. You’ll need to make sure your product idea is profitable, which you can do with one of 3 tools: Primeseller.com, Unicorn Smasher, or Jungle Scout. With these tools, you can filter out some lower priced product and find something that you can sell on Amazon.
Second, you’ll need to find a supplier on Alibaba. I was lucky and had a group to reach out to and got a recommendation from someone who has been manufacturing in China and selling online for almost 10 years, so I greatly trusted his recommendation, and it did not disappoint. The product was high quality and made with high-quality materials, and I was very lucky. This probably took a few weeks off of my total product to Amazon time because many need to try out 2-3 suppliers to find one they like.
Once you’ve found a supplier and a product, you need to go through and look at competing products and see what other people who own the product like or do not like about it. There are plenty of reviews online (and on Amazon.com) and there are great ideas in there. For instance, one of my competing products did not have the ability to do something that I (and many others) thought was a requirement, so I easily adapted the product and added that feature. This differentiated my product from the others in the category and allowed me to charge a higher price point.
What’s important here is finding the right product and making your product better than what’s already on the market. If you can nail those 2 things, you should be fine with your product.
If you’re looking for a few more resources on Amazon FBA, this 17 part series is very through and helped me quite a bit when I got started.
Readers – are you interested in Amazon FBA as a side income source? Or would you prefer something else?
Share your experiences by commenting below!
***Photo courtesy of https://www.flickr.com/photos/emmajane/65585561/in/
