It seems I have always been the person that’s been looking to walk off the sidewalk, cross over the slow lane, and then take a drive in the Fastlane! But at that time I just didn't know what they were all called? Thanks to The Millionaire Fastlane I’m now here and aiming to learn, help, and in general be around like-minded people.
I've probably purchased more so-called “guru†how-to ebooks than a wanna-be Buddhist! More crash courses than a blind driving Nun! But everything I seemed to do was either old news, bad news, or just outright wrong.
As an example, I tried the Google PPC to an affiliate product technique, and in one day made $220 which at the time was more than I’d ever done before, I thought I had made it! The next day, I was banned from Adwords by Google! Then I followed another ebook all about blogs and Google Adsense, but a couple of weeks after the website vanished from the rankings. Then I had somewhat of a good thing going with an affiliate E-commerce website I had setup, until they changed the State tax law and introduced that Amazon/affiliate tax bill, meaning all my out-of-state affiliate companies dropped me like a stone.
However it’s all been a great learning experience for me, and in that time I learned how to code and build websites, do my own website SEO, learned basic PHP, and just got a general idea of what not to do basically. But the biggest thing I learned was that everything I tried was of no real value to anyone but me! I was only in it for the money, and the dream that I could eventually quit my day job and fire my own boss.
After all these lessons learned I really want to create something of value and something that is just more than me, something I can be proud of. So I wanted to start a progress thread that would chart my own progress toward an E-commerce business (real products), and eventually the creations of my own products in that niche. I will also aim to earn enough from this business to be able to leave my current job and do this full-time/part-time/whatever time-I-want, in eight months or less!
I’m hoping to be as transparent as I can while I progress through this journey, but obviously keep certain things close to my chest for now. So…. some of the character names(products) have been changed, and the main title of the movie(niche) will also be adjusted a little, but whatever I use for examples they will be as close as possible to my real targets numbers.
I’ve been selling on Amazon FBA for the last year as a pro merchant, and mostly using retail arbitrage techniques to find and sell inventory. I also dabbled in a few products from Alibaba manufacturers that I also sold on Amazon, but unfortunately due again to my inexperience hardly made any profit on two of them, and the third product was sold at a loss! But the experience was worth so much more. And at least everything sold!
As many of you will know the “retail arbitrage†system of finding products and selling them at a profit is a great way to start, but hard to scale if you can only buy a couple of products at a time(depending on that stores stock). But with experience you can find some great sources, or at least enough inventory to keep the profits coming in.
I will fund this project at first using retail arbitrage and FBA for now, as well as my own funds when and if it’s needed. I’m going to try and cover every step I take, but if I miss something, please feel free to ask away, and please jump in with any tips and advice along the way. ## I apologize in advanced for my poor grammar and punctuation ##
So with all that being said, here is my plan of action….
1) Find and research a niche ( already may have an idea on this )
2) Establish/research product selections
3) Research comp
4) Find suppliers/manufacturers
5) Probability of creating my own product
6) Buy domain
7) Setup E-commerce store
8) Fill with products
9) Start creating my own product
10) Add it to my store
Some background costs to start…..
LLC already formed (2012) – Legal Zoom Express Gold - $800
Amazon FBA Pro Account - $39 pm – 1 year so far - $468
Some life targets to aim for...
My starting balance for this thread: - $1200
I've probably purchased more so-called “guru†how-to ebooks than a wanna-be Buddhist! More crash courses than a blind driving Nun! But everything I seemed to do was either old news, bad news, or just outright wrong.
As an example, I tried the Google PPC to an affiliate product technique, and in one day made $220 which at the time was more than I’d ever done before, I thought I had made it! The next day, I was banned from Adwords by Google! Then I followed another ebook all about blogs and Google Adsense, but a couple of weeks after the website vanished from the rankings. Then I had somewhat of a good thing going with an affiliate E-commerce website I had setup, until they changed the State tax law and introduced that Amazon/affiliate tax bill, meaning all my out-of-state affiliate companies dropped me like a stone.
However it’s all been a great learning experience for me, and in that time I learned how to code and build websites, do my own website SEO, learned basic PHP, and just got a general idea of what not to do basically. But the biggest thing I learned was that everything I tried was of no real value to anyone but me! I was only in it for the money, and the dream that I could eventually quit my day job and fire my own boss.
After all these lessons learned I really want to create something of value and something that is just more than me, something I can be proud of. So I wanted to start a progress thread that would chart my own progress toward an E-commerce business (real products), and eventually the creations of my own products in that niche. I will also aim to earn enough from this business to be able to leave my current job and do this full-time/part-time/whatever time-I-want, in eight months or less!
I’m hoping to be as transparent as I can while I progress through this journey, but obviously keep certain things close to my chest for now. So…. some of the character names(products) have been changed, and the main title of the movie(niche) will also be adjusted a little, but whatever I use for examples they will be as close as possible to my real targets numbers.
I’ve been selling on Amazon FBA for the last year as a pro merchant, and mostly using retail arbitrage techniques to find and sell inventory. I also dabbled in a few products from Alibaba manufacturers that I also sold on Amazon, but unfortunately due again to my inexperience hardly made any profit on two of them, and the third product was sold at a loss! But the experience was worth so much more. And at least everything sold!
As many of you will know the “retail arbitrage†system of finding products and selling them at a profit is a great way to start, but hard to scale if you can only buy a couple of products at a time(depending on that stores stock). But with experience you can find some great sources, or at least enough inventory to keep the profits coming in.
I will fund this project at first using retail arbitrage and FBA for now, as well as my own funds when and if it’s needed. I’m going to try and cover every step I take, but if I miss something, please feel free to ask away, and please jump in with any tips and advice along the way. ## I apologize in advanced for my poor grammar and punctuation ##
So with all that being said, here is my plan of action….
1) Find and research a niche ( already may have an idea on this )
2) Establish/research product selections
3) Research comp
4) Find suppliers/manufacturers
5) Probability of creating my own product
6) Buy domain
7) Setup E-commerce store
8) Fill with products
9) Start creating my own product
10) Add it to my store
Some background costs to start…..
LLC already formed (2012) – Legal Zoom Express Gold - $800
Amazon FBA Pro Account - $39 pm – 1 year so far - $468
Some life targets to aim for...
- Work less hours at day job 1-4 months
- Not work at all at the day job 8 months
My starting balance for this thread: - $1200
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