Engineer quits his job to work for Amazon, earning $100,000 a month

Not long ago, an Amazon seller shared that he made 500,000 yuan a year from his side job, which was more than three times higher than his main job, making many people envious. In fact, there are many sellers like this, and many of them even gave up their main jobs and focused on Amazon .

Engineer quits his job to work for Amazon

Joe Reeves has been trying various side jobs over the past decade. It wasn't until September 2020, when his son was born and family expenses increased suddenly, that he decided to try e-commerce, which offers higher returns.

At the time, he was working as a project engineer for a construction company in Denver. The job required him to start work at 6 a.m. and finish get off work at 6 p.m., which did not allow him to have much free time. Therefore, he used the four weeks of accompanying his mother to figure out what business to do online and how to ship goods.

Finally, in August 2021, Reeves began selling men's wallets on Amazon.

Surprisingly, in such a category, he achieved a revenue of $63,000 in the first two months of entering the market and achieved a break-even after deducting costs. At the same time, in early 2022, he began to make considerable profits and reaped $233,000 in profits in the three months of February, May and June.

June 2022 was a breakthrough month, during which his profits reached $140,000, almost doubling his annual salary at the time ($85,000).

Reeves' pace on Amazon is very fast. From March 2022 to March 2023, in just 12 months, he achieved sales of more than $5 million, and the highest monthly sales exceeded $1 million. Including operating expenses, his monthly profit has been more than $100,000.

Obviously, it is difficult for a job to match such income, and this is also the case with Reeves' job. When the profit of working in Amazon for one month was more than the salary of working hard for a year, Reeves resolutely quit his job and devoted himself to Amazon's wallet business.

Reeves's success is due to his character. Reeves is a person who likes to take risks, try new things, and is willing to take some risks.

In fact, before joining Amazon, he consulted a friend who was doing Amazon shipping, and the answer he got was: "Amazon is already oversaturated."

But even so, he still tried. And unlike many sellers, he did not first research products that could be sold, but registered a company, that is, he registered a company before he knew what he was selling.

Bold and cautious product selection

While studying, many people taught Reeves how to find smaller niche markets, but the men's wallet market was the opposite. It was a very large category with fierce competition, but he took the risk.

“If there’s a $1 billion market and a $10 million market, where is there more opportunity?” Reeves believes that while it may be more difficult to enter a highly competitive market, it also means there are more opportunities.

In the end, Reeves's bold attempt paid off handsomely.

In addition to the large market, Reeves chose to sell wallets for another unexpected reason: the supplier is easy to communicate with. "The reason I chose wallets is because it is the easiest manufacturer to communicate with," he said.

Of course, this is a business after all, and everything is about making money. Relatively speaking, the wallet is small in size and light in weight, which helps reduce shipping costs, and its price of about $40 per piece is in the middle.

Reeves purchased 1,000 pieces in his first order. At that time, a wallet cost about $7, plus $3,000 in shipping costs, and he began his Amazon journey.

To save money, he sent the wallets to his home and had them labeled.

“Amazon charges 55 cents to label each individual item. If you have 10,000 items, that’s $5,500 just for labeling,” Reeves said.

At that time, Reeves and his wife would label and pack the goods in the kitchen after dinner every day, and then send them to the Amazon warehouse.

However, sometimes professional matters should be left to professionals. During this period, Reeves also found a contractor to take product photos for him.

He considers it one of the best dollars he’s ever spent, saying: “People like to take shortcuts and save money by taking their own photos, but if a professional’s photos can help you increase your conversion rate by 5%, that 5% will pay off over time.”

Must have an ordering strategy

If the cost of taking pictures is a small amount of money, then the inventory cost is definitely a heavy burden. Therefore, Reeves believes that sellers must have a strategy when ordering, and they cannot have too much backlog or be out of stock.

He learned this the hard way. Around the peak season in December 2021, his sales were huge and his inventory was sold out. Due to the shortage, his product ranking plummeted, which eventually led to a loss in January 2022. Fortunately, the situation improved in February.

But as the scale continues to expand, inventory costs are becoming increasingly heavy.

"I didn't realize at all at the beginning that when you sell half of the products, you need to place the next order." Reeves said that the money spent on inventory now is much more than he imagined in the first few months. The cost of purchasing 1,000 wallets is obviously different from the cost of purchasing 10,000 wallets.

There was enough money to cover the costs, but once sales stopped, it was over. “If the listing was removed by Amazon, I would be stuck with $100,000 worth of stuff,” Reeves said. “They’re only valuable if you can sell them.”

Reeves' wallet sold almost immediately after it became available in August 2021 and performed well in its first month, earning $60,000.

Speaking of his experience, he said that what new sellers have to do is to strive to break even and continuously transfer the initial investment into new inventory, rather than spending too much on advertising.

He believes that getting product reviews is one of the most important things, if not the most important thing, to do as an Amazon seller.

He explained that about 4% of users on Amazon leave a review, which means that to get 10,000 reviews, you have to sell 250,000 products.

Ads can help sellers sell, but they cost money. At first, Reeves spent $300 to $500 a day on ads. He said: "It can be very shocking for people who are not used to spending money, especially in the beginning, you don't see much return, more like just burning money."

Note: I am only publishing this case to let you know how a successful seller does it. It is not to encourage you to quit your job to work for Amazon or start a business. Always remember that starting a business is risky and you should be cautious when quitting your job. Once you decide to do this, you must be prepared to take the corresponding risks.

Amazon