The Amazon Life
This past month has just been this HUGE Amazon learning curve. I'm trying to expand my business from just reselling what I can find in stores and online. In typical Ashley fashion, instead of trying one area, I decided to try out several areas. I did above my expectations on selling in June and July, so I had some extra cash from those sells to take some risks. The first area I am delving into is wholesale. That is a field full of rejection after rejection. Basically I watched videos by the Wholesale Formula, read blog posts, and decided to buy a subscription to Jungle scout so that I could jump all in. I (with some help from Andy) spent a good two weeks going hardcore looking for wholesale sites. Now, I don't think I've found one yet, that is going to be the big gold mine I'm looking for more consistent income, but I have gotten a few wholesale accounts with products I am trying out to see if I like them and if they are worth it. I'll let you know as I get all the products into Amazon how they go. Currently, I am trying to dedicate one day a week looking for wholesale accounts.
The 2nd thing I'm delving into is Bundling. It's still in the wholesale vein, but in a different way. For bundling, I watch videos done by Barbara the wholesale bundling diva. The idea is that I take things that are already selling well but maybe aren't profitable, buy them wholesale, and put them together in a bundle. If you follow her teachings, it's a bit more complicated then that, but I've put together 4 different bundling ideas and my hope is to sell them during Q4. Bundling is it's own beast. Not just do you have to come up with a good bundle idea, I had to learn how to do a UPC exemption so that I could sell under my bundle since they don't have UPCs, take my own product photos (which should be easy cause photographer, but I've never been good at photoshoo and getting rid of backgrounds), and then I have to make my own Amazon listing which is easy enough except for the whole relevant keyword thing. I struggled through my first listing, but it's up and live, and I sold one of them, after two weeks, so even though my listing kind of sucks, I'm just glad to have gone through the whole process! This is the listing: Bundle I still have the rest of my bundles to complete and my goal is to have all the listings up and product shipped in within the next two weeks! All the other products I found the companies by going to a Tradeshow in Biloxi. The tradeshow was a cool experience and I actually enjoyed myself. It was getting to talk to like minded people. Much better than our daily experience here in Nola.
Lastly, I got approved to do Merch by Amazon. It's a platform where you design tshirts and Amazon prints them as people order them. So once again, another learning curve! Just figuring how to design and what are good keywords (still don't know if I'm using relevant ones) has me back to watching videos and reading blog posts. I don't have high hopes for Merch cause I'm a crap designer. I figure one of these avenues has to work out for us. If you want to see the tshirt designs, look at our FB page and go under the shop button: Dracarys Facebook
This has been my month of August. It's been a full month and I'm looking forward to September. To see how these avenues progress, which are profitable and which are duds.
In my next post I'll update you on our garden. We've started making improvements and getting it together so that it can be what we dreamed. Adios.
The 2nd thing I'm delving into is Bundling. It's still in the wholesale vein, but in a different way. For bundling, I watch videos done by Barbara the wholesale bundling diva. The idea is that I take things that are already selling well but maybe aren't profitable, buy them wholesale, and put them together in a bundle. If you follow her teachings, it's a bit more complicated then that, but I've put together 4 different bundling ideas and my hope is to sell them during Q4. Bundling is it's own beast. Not just do you have to come up with a good bundle idea, I had to learn how to do a UPC exemption so that I could sell under my bundle since they don't have UPCs, take my own product photos (which should be easy cause photographer, but I've never been good at photoshoo and getting rid of backgrounds), and then I have to make my own Amazon listing which is easy enough except for the whole relevant keyword thing. I struggled through my first listing, but it's up and live, and I sold one of them, after two weeks, so even though my listing kind of sucks, I'm just glad to have gone through the whole process! This is the listing: Bundle I still have the rest of my bundles to complete and my goal is to have all the listings up and product shipped in within the next two weeks! All the other products I found the companies by going to a Tradeshow in Biloxi. The tradeshow was a cool experience and I actually enjoyed myself. It was getting to talk to like minded people. Much better than our daily experience here in Nola.
Lastly, I got approved to do Merch by Amazon. It's a platform where you design tshirts and Amazon prints them as people order them. So once again, another learning curve! Just figuring how to design and what are good keywords (still don't know if I'm using relevant ones) has me back to watching videos and reading blog posts. I don't have high hopes for Merch cause I'm a crap designer. I figure one of these avenues has to work out for us. If you want to see the tshirt designs, look at our FB page and go under the shop button: Dracarys Facebook
This has been my month of August. It's been a full month and I'm looking forward to September. To see how these avenues progress, which are profitable and which are duds.
In my next post I'll update you on our garden. We've started making improvements and getting it together so that it can be what we dreamed. Adios.
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