This is the third post in a series of three posts about selling on Amazon. You can use the links below to read the other two posts:

Post #1, where we cover finding a product to sell and finding a supplier

Post #2, where we cover getting set up to sell on Amazon and creating your product listing

The team at KillMyJob.com has been entrepreneuring (is that a word?) for a long time now, and teaching other people about entrepreneuring for the last several years.

We get a kick out of helping other people start their own business, and we are constantly on the lookout for opportunities that will make it easier for people to achieve their dream of business ownership and financial independence.

That’s why we are super-excited to share our experiences with selling products on Amazon.

This is probably the simplest business we’ve ever started, and if you follow the model outlined in this series of posts, the likelihood of success is very high.

Now, let me be clear with an earnings disclaimer: EVERY business requires hard work at some point or another. Your success in this model is NOT guaranteed, just like it’s not guaranteed with any business. The results we have experienced may not be typical, and certainly shouldn’t be expected for those unwilling to do the work!

That being said, some business models are just easier than others, and this one is great!

I’m so excited and confident in this model, that I’ve even been pushing my own mom to get involved so she can generate some extra retirement income!

Our goal is to help you get started generating an income on Amazon as quickly and easily as possible by providing you with the fundamentals.

In our case, our very first attempt at this process resulted in us reaching about $5,000/month in income in just about 60 days.

Depending on your situation, $5,000 may not seem like much, or it may seem like a dream come true. Considering the average American family doesn’t make much more than that each month, I believe it’s a number that can be life-changing for most people.

The process we followed to get there can certainly be done more quickly than that (we’ve found that the biggest variable is the time it takes to get products from China), but it’s also realistic that it could take up to 90 days. Be patient and keep your goal in mind!

Does the Amazon business interest you? Then download our Amazon Quick Start Toolkit and we’ll give you a few of our favorite resources to help you get started with this opportunity:

Ok, let’s get to it!

In our previous post, we covered steps #3 and #4 in our six step process – ‘Getting set up for business on Amazon‘, and ‘Creating your product listing on Amazon‘.

If you missed our first post, you should go read it now!

Here are the six steps again to recap:

In this post, we are going to cover #5, which is ‘Setting up Fulfillment by Amazon’, and #6, which is ‘Marketing Your Product’.

These are the final two steps in our Amazon process! By the time you are done with step #6, you will officially be ‘Open for Business’ and actively marketing your products.

You’ll be generating sales and seeing firsthand the magic of this business!

But first, you have to…

Now that you have a product to sell, you’ll need to figure out a way to deliver your product each time a customer buys.

Many people take the approach of keeping their inventory in their garage and packing and shipping it themselves, but the team at KillMyJob.com thinks that’s a terrible idea!

Why?

Because we are all about creating lifestyle businesses that allow us to travel and work when we want to; getting stuck packing and mailing boxes from our garage isn’t our idea of fun, or the best use of our time!

That’s why we use the Fulfillment by Amazon services (commonly known as FBA by those in the industry) and let Amazon handle this for us!

Amazon is possibly the most sophisticated logistics company in the world, why wouldn’t you want to let them handle this for you?!

Amazon FBA will pick, pack, and ship your orders for you, so you don’t have to lift a finger – and they’ll do it more cost-effectively than you ever could on your own.

In addition to just being easier and cheaper for you, there are real business-building benefits to using FBA.

When your products are fulfilled by FBA, your products will be eligible for free shipping and two-day shipping for customers of Amazon Prime. The reduced shipping costs are a huge competitive advantage for your products, which results in a boost in your sales.

In fact, Amazon reports that 73% of FBA partners report that their orders increase as a result of becoming an FBA partner.

Here’s a quick video from the folks at Amazon FBA to tell you about their services:

Using FBA is simple enough (although admittedly, the first time you send products to them it can be a little intimidating to feel that you are getting everything right!). The process goes like this:

You can even have your product supplier ship the products directly to Amazon FBA on your behalf, so you never even have to see or touch the products you sell! So cool!

Sending your first shipment to Amazon FBA can be intimidating, so I asked Caroline from the KillMyJob.com team to record a video showing you in detail how we prep a shipment to go to FBA.

It may be too much detail for you for now, but come back and watch it when you need it!

Now that your products are set up for shipment with FBA, it’s time to really crank up the sales!

That’s what we’ll cover next…

You’ll done all of groundwork, now it’s time for the payoff!

The payoff comes once you have successfully been able to get your product ranked near the top of Amazon’s search results for your primary keyword phrases, resulting in a consistent flow of new orders.

There are so many people shopping every day on Amazon – and the numbers continue to grow like crazy – so getting on page one of the search results gets you incredible exposure to new customers every day.

There are a number of factors that influence where your product ranks, but we are going to keep it simple and focus on just three keys to getting your product ranked high within Amazon:

I covered the importance of your Amazon product listing and the fundamentals of creating a great one in our previous post, so I won’t cover that again here.

But if you download our Amazon Quick Start Toolkit, we’ll give you a few of our favorite resources to help you get started with this opportunity, including training on how to create a good Amazon Product Listing:

Product reviews are an important social signal to would-be buyers. Your mind sees highly rated products and thinks “if other people think the product is good, it must be good”, or something similar.

Therefore, it’s important to you and to Amazon that your product seems to be of high quality and is well-regarded by Amazon buyers.

In short, you want to get as many 5-star reviews for your product as possible.

The way to do that in the long-term is to deliver a good product at a fair price while providing good customer service.

However, we’re looking for a short-term strategy to help us get as many 5-star reviews as possible as quickly as possible.

In a nutshell, here is how you do it:

You are killing two birds with one stone in this process.

You are getting good reviews, and you are also getting credit for product sales with Amazon. Even though you have given someone a discount coupon, it still counts as a sale.

So, in Amazon’s eyes, they are seeing that your new product is selling well and getting great reviews – that’s a big win for your new product!

We’ve found that by doing this simple process, the majority of people will give you a 5-star review. And those that don’t will give you valuable feedback you can use to potentially improve your product.

We aim for 10 5-star reviews before we move onto the second step in our marketing process, which is…

Once you have 10 5-star reviews for your product, it’s time to get your product listing more visibility as quickly and cheaply as possible.

That’s where Amazon pay-per-click (PPC) ads come in handy!

Many people don’t realize that Amazon has it’s own advertising platform, allowing you to pay to have your products seen within their store.

Similar to Google PPC advertising, your ads are only being seen by people who are specifically searching for specific products, so the ads are very effective and affordable.

Here’s an example of two “Sponsored” product listings showing up in the Amazon search results when I searched for ‘mixing bowls’:

As you can see, by leveraging the Amazon PPC ad platform, these two lesser-known mixing bowl brands were able to appear right below the OXO Good Grips bowl, which is a very well-known brand.

And they only have to pay for these ads IF and WHEN someone clicks on them, making it the cheapest and most targeted visibility they can possibly get to these products!

We’ve found that Amazon PPC ads boost our sales and are very profitable, so we run them all the time.

This boost in sales shows Amazon that our product sells, which encourages Amazon to give us even more customer visibility by boosting our product further up in their search results.

And when Amazon boosts our product further up in their search results, we get even more sales!

Soon, our product will rise towards the very top of the search results, and the organic sales we are getting from Amazon’s customers looking for our product generate the consistent cash flow we were looking for when we started this business!

Caroline from the KillMyJob.com team put together a video to show you how easy it is to get started with Amazon PPC.

She also put together a quick resource to help you create your own ad campaigns on Amazon:

I hope that by now you are convinced that selling on Amazon is an amazing opportunity to develop an excellent income that is almost entirely passive, and allows you to live and work wherever and whenever you’d like!

That’s the dream of each and every member of the KillMyJob.com team – to help you become a lifestyle entrepreneur and ‘Kill Your Job’!

Follow the steps outlined in this series of posts and you are well on your way!

And please take a second to use those fancy-pants social media sharing buttons down below to share this with others you think will find it valuable!

All the best,

Mike Cooch and the Be A Capitalist Team