My Selling Account Suffered a Bad Rating. Here’s What I’m Doing About It

The picture above describes my feeling when I logged into my account to see a ‘Poor’ performance rating. Now before you think ‘Well are you ripping people off?’ or something like that, it’s not that at all.

Amazon has VERY high standards, and there are times when I don’t reach them. This week in particular, was one of them when I had to cancel more items than I cared to quite simply because I was out of stock of some of my sales. I promptly cancelled the orders and refunded the buyers their money, but because I cancelled so many, my rating took a nose dive.

I reached out to a friend, we kicked it back and forth and he gave some great advice. After sleeping on it, this was my action plan.

1. Slash Inventory- I just finished deleting over 150 or so products that just weren’t selling. I’m embracing the notion it really is about identifying those hot sellers and selling them over and over and over again.

2. The Rule of 100- I’m limiting my inventory to 100 items with the expectations of selling 10%-20% of what I list. So let’s say I list 100 items for sale. My items bring in a net profit of an average of $25. Now my quantities aren’t one, they’re always more in case an item is a hot seller. So out of 100, I have 15 hot sellers that sell 100 units in a month.

$25 net profit per item X 100 items sold = $2,500 net income.

I’m also going to give a product a week or two to perform, and if it doesn’t it’ll be removed and replaced with another. But staying with the rule of 100 will help me manage my inventory instead of throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks.

Eventually as I outsource more, I’ll ramp up to 200, but for now, 100 is enough.

The bad news is, of course, my account has a bad rating.

But the good news is, it’s fixable.

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The Richest Man in Babylon Audiobook

Awesome Audiobook for free.

Don’t confuse the price of it with its value.

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I Spent More in a Day Than I Used to Make In a Month (And other goodies)

It hit me yesterday, after blowing through over $3,000 in one day filling orders.

I just spent more in one day than I made as a teacher for my state.

Now this isn’t to brag or anything, I’m not out here taking lavish vacations or getting a new car. That money was money invested for a return. Anyway, it was a good day yesterday as the money from Kabbage came through in a SERIOUS clutch because I was at $0 to fill pending orders.

They gave me $2600 and I’ll have to pay back $2,900, which they will have in full next week. I’m not about carrying over debt balances. So far I’m expecting another deposit of about $5,100, so I’ll probably end up bringing in over $3k by the time it hits next week.

What really sucks is that I’m back at ZERO. I’m not even listing anything right now, nor will I until Friday. I’ll have to increase my ship time as I wont’ have anymore operating capital until next week.

The money’s not coming fast enough, so I’m thinking I’ll have to have at least $10,000 a month on tap to be comfortable.

We’ll see.

But it’s been a fun ride thus far, I’m enjoying it.

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It Was a Two Thousand Dollar May Day!

Wowza, I knew this month was going to be crazy, but I didn’t know it would start with such a BANG.

Two thousand dollars, actually closer to $2,500 in ONE DAY. I figured it would be busy with this being a payday weekend. These numbers far exceeded my expectations. It truly is a blessing. Crazy to blow through $2,500 to fulfill orders then get it all right back in the span of a day.

Now this isn’t typical, I don’t make $2,000 a day every day. I wouldn’t even have the capital (currently) to handle that kind of volume.

So I’m looking forward to a FAT deposit to keep the momentum. My goal for may was $12,000, and as of this writing, I’m at close to $3,000 in sales.

The funny thing about it, when I wrote that post about everything sucking in my business, I felt like the END was near. It was TERRIBLE to have  no money, all these orders, and just be stuck. That was one of the longest weeks of my life. Such is business though, you got your highs and your lows.

Gonna keep it going.

So I Paid Myself for the FIRST TIME… Here’s How Much…

A whopping $525… 🙂

Not much, right? Well, it was all by choice and that’s by no means an random number. It’s the cost of my youngest son’s daycare.

I decided to reinvest the rest.

That’s the beautiful thing about owning a business, you decide how much you want to make. For me, for now, this is enough and it takes care of one of my family’s biggest expenses.

By the end of the year, which I think is a fair goal, if I can pay myself $5,000-$10,000 a month net profit to handle household expenses and pay all the bills, that’ll be fine.

For now, tying compensation directly to bills is my first step. Probably schooling for my kids first, then my mortgage, and go from there.

Exciting times though, I’m thankful!

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When Should I Go Into Debt To Build My Business?

The ‘Other People’s Money’ axiom is so appealing, ain’t it?

Just use a credit card… ask a family member… barrow some from a friend…

There’s just one question: Can you live with the WORST case scenario? If someone got a loan from me and couldn’t pay me back after a failed business, it would be a problem.

But to answer this question, I’ll give you the OLD way on how I did things, and the new way I do them now.

I had a coffee business and just used a credit card for not only 100% of my business. I spent money on payroll for my employee, booth fees and inventory.

I LOST IT ALL. I GOT VERY LITTLE SALES.

The only thing that’s for certain is that you’ll have that debt that will have to be paid back.

So when I started my resell business again to a serious level in December, I did so using my own cash. When I did $10,000 in sales, I DID NOT HAVE ENOUGH CASH ON HAND TO FULFILL MY ORDERS.

I needed help, so I followed some training to get it. Now there were some hiccups on my part and I had to cancel some orders do to a lack of access to capital, but to this day I have used 100% of my own money. When things straightened up, to fulfill the existing orders, I burned through about $2,500 IN ONE DAY. Even today I’m about about another $300. All profitable, but still, I need help.

So I have no problem using a short term loan for debt if I have EXISTING ORDERS THAT NEED TO BE FULFILLED. And best believe, the lender is going to get their money RIGHT BACK, ASAP.

Here’s how it would look, for example.

I need $2,000 to buy inventory that has already sold. I’ll have to pay back $2,250 ($250 fee for the loan). The expected gross profit is $3000. So here’s the math:

1. Spent: $2000

2. Gross profit: $3,000

3. Repaid loan with fee: $2,250

4. Net profit: $750

Could you do this every week? With the right product, heck yes. I’ve made $1000 in ONE DAY.

But in closing:

I would NOT use a loan for payroll.

I would NOT use a loan for unsold inventory.

I would NOT use a loan for advertising.

I’d want 100% guaranteed ability to repay a loan. While you can’t eliminate all surprises in business, you can eliminate a good portion of them.

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Things Suck Right Now in My Business and Here’s Why

Things aren’t terrible, but it’s the worst it’s been since I started.

Instead of ranting and raving, I’ll break it down in bullet form:

-Due to a clerical error on my part, I have ZERO access to money I need to fulfill orders. This has cost me a lot of money in the short term and put my business on hold.

-A customer filed a claim against me because the item she ordered was too small in her opinion. My shipper has taken too long to reach out to her, resulting in the claim. I went ahead and refunded her, which I didn’t want to do until I had the item in my possession, but I’m beyond caring right now.

-My virtual assistant has been lagging on his side of product research, but he’s been getting back on the ball.

The lesson in all of this for me is to PAY ATTENTION TO DETAIL.

When I don’t it costs money which is never cool. As far as customer service, that’s the least of my worries. I have no problems issuing refunds to customers within a reasonable time frame.

Next month should be better, and i did get some more available cash from my lender which just popped out out of the blue. But for right now, things are literally at a stand still.

I gotta blow it out of the water in May, so I’m committing to do $12,000 in sales to make up for this terrible ending in April.

That’s the beauty in owning up to mistakes, with most stuff, the solution is looking right back at you in the mirror.

I will do better.

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Great Kevin O’Leary Interview

Mission Accomplished: $10,000 in One Month

It all started when my oldest said 13 words to me that I wrote down. He was asking for more of my time, in a nutshell. Working long hours, mostly at night, I barely saw my kids for a season during the week. Things had to change and I wasn’t sure how, but I set a goal on July 29th, 2014. It was just one goal I’d read every day, even until today.

The goal was to make $10,000 a month.

The funny thing is, it didn’t happen like I thought it would. I thought it would happen with my cell phone business. Due to some unforeseen changes though, the likelihood of that happening seemed pretty challenging.

But from that day, I took actions that I thought would take me there. Every now and then I’d have to check myself and say “Did you do anything that would make you 10k a month?” Some times it was yes, others it was no.

Then, in December, I got an email that changed a lot of things. It was an email that got me back into the resell game. I decided to take it more seriously this time. Deciding the put my cell phone business on hold, I decided to really go all-in with resell. I took some additional classes/training (none of which were free) using the income from my primary business to re-launch in resell.

I think I started with about $2,000. Some of that went to training, most of it went to inventory. From both I expected a return.

Then I got a random message from Darryl Jackson who I’ve never met in real life believe it or not, and we traded tips and things we thought could help one another. We were actually both my my cell phone company together, and if I’m not mistaken, he found me on youtube and we connected on Facebook. I’d helped him in the cell phone business with some tips, etc. Now, it looked like the shoe was on the other foot and it was me who needed his help with resell.

I was reviewing 2 courses and asked Darryl which one he recommended. After taking his recommendation, I got started selling on Amazon and eBay.

Starting in December, I made about $400 from Amazon.

But I had to keep reading that goal of $10,000. On the days there were no sales, I kept reading that same goal. Over and over. I paid myself $0.00. 100% of everything went right back into the business. Some sometimes the numbers I share on this blog may be sort of exciting, but to scale quicker, I couldn’t take money out with every deposit. I may have made x amount of money, but that money didn’t go to my mortgage or child care bills.

And this morning, right after church, $10,566 in one month hit.

Looking back, in bullet form, here is how I managed to get there.

1. Once I knew how the business worked, OUTSOURCED a large portion of it to a virtual assistant.

2. Constantly reviewing trainings and reviewing newer training that were released.

3. Reading books that helped my mindset.

4. Reading my goal every morning and every night.

It’ll be a while before a post any sort of numbers via Amazon again, the point is that I’m as regular as they come. I have no special connections. I’m not in the ‘in’ crowd. I’ve been broke.

But with faith, you can make some AMAZING things happen. You can take some pretty big setbacks and keep going. Keep planting. I don’t know what you got going on, but if you’re like me and you’re determined to make it happen, MAN, it’s right there if you keep going. I’m not telling you what I think, I’m telling you what I KNOW.

So I thank God and my oldest son, my hero, who said today when I told him we can go for 20k a month, “I’m sure you’ll hit it.”

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The Amazon Gold Rush (Be Afraid… Be Very Afraid)

It started with an email I got from a famous internet marketer who shall remain nameless.

Lo and behold, he was offering a course on how to sell on Amazon using FBA. Now Amazon FBA is nothing new, it’s been around for a few years. I don’t do it, none of the numbers on my blog are FBA numbers. For those who don’t know FBA is Fulfilled by Amazon, where you buy some stuff from Amazon, send it in, and they’ll fulfill the order for you and pay you as well.

Pretty sweet set up.

So why do I say be afraid? There are about to be a deluge of people thinking they’re going to strike it rich using Amazon FBA. And whenever a group of people have a good thing going, someone has to come along and mess it all up. A lot of FBA items can at times be a race to the bottom, there’s always some guy out there who’s willing to make a $1 less than you until NO ONE is making a decent profit and you’re not making a decent living.

Right now, I wouldn’t touch FBA with a 10-foot-pole. The ONLY way I’ll do it is with a private label product (for more info on that, see my blog How to make $2,500 a Month Using Amazon FBA). But going to Walmart and other store scanning for profits? No thanks. Plus, FBA is a LOT of work, from scanning items, packing them, labeling them, etc, people don’t know how much REALLY goes into it. Now it’s not back breaking labor and it beats a 9-5, but I enjoy my system.

And the reason I don’t go into detail as far as what my exact system is, I paid for the class. It wouldn’t be fair to me to reveal what I had to pay for. Just know that all my numbers don’t involve a lot of my time.

So for a baseless prediction, I’ll say FBA is gonna explode, which is great for Amazon, but may not be as great for re-sellers with increased competition.

If you’re REALLY wanting to monetize FBA, get your feet wet with some Cody Hawk videos on youtube, get the basics down, save your money and go to PRIVATE LABEL PRODUCTS AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. That way, you have very little competition.

In the book, Millionaire Fastlane, MJ Demarco says that a business that has a low barrier to entry is one you should try to avoid. I agree to that to some degree. To do Amazon, you do have to have some disposable income. I’ve spent thousands of dollars on inventory, and everyone can’t do that.

At the end of the day, if you’ve been around business long enough, you know the story of the gold rush where the folks who got rich sold shovels, they weren’t the ones panning for gold. There are gonna be a TON of shovel sellers (there already are a few) who have these FBA courses. And honestly you’d probably make more selling a class teaching folks how to sell on Amazon than actually selling on Amazon yourself (how’s that for irony?). But it’s the truth.

Again, Amazon is great. Just be wary, keep your options open and stay educated.

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