Annual sales of 5 million! Amazon sellers only work 10 hours a week

As a seller on Amazon, everyone has a different experience. Some people work hard for two years and then go back to where they were before the Liberation, while others run their business for several years and now their business is booming. Before the Spring Festival, I will share two positive cases to give my peers more expectations in the new year.

82 products on sale , with profit margins of about 20% to 25%

Ben is a 30-year-old Amazon UK seller who started selling products on Amazon FBA in June 2018. His annual sales have now reached US$800,000 (RMB 5.75 million).

Before joining Amazon, Ben worked in recruitment. He didn’t like the job, but he didn’t have many options. That year he bought a house and needed more money to pay the loan, so he started looking for another way to make money. After trying multiple channels, he chose Amazon.

At the beginning, he didn’t know much about Amazon FBA. There were many things he needed to learn, such as entering the product homepage, obtaining orders, shipping and calculating costs, and investing in products and sales collection cycles.

After learning about it, Ben and his partners invested 1,200 pounds to make the first product . At that time, he noticed that a seller was selling gloves for applying tanning spray . By looking at the comments , he found that buyers said it was difficult to touch the back with the gloves . So he talked to several suppliers on 1688 and found an improved new product of the same kind. He bought 600 pieces at 2.21 pounds per piece, about 2.81 US dollars. At first he used self-delivery, and later used FBA.

He believes that pictures are the most important selling point on Amazon, more important than descriptions. Ben is lucky that his partner is a graphic designer who can take professional photos for the products.

After the first product gloves were put on the shelves, Ben started selling them at £7.99, and then kept raising the price until he raised the price to £10.99, and the sales of the product plummeted. He finally priced it at £9.99, and after deducting Amazon's commission and delivery fees, he made a profit of £5.83 per sale, about $7.42. In the first month, they sold 250 to 300 pieces and made a considerable profit.

In the next two years, they invested their profits in buying new products , changing products when newer and better designs came out . The products they bought for four years were toys because they always sold .

During the epidemic , Ben was fired . He and his partner decided to focus on the Amazon business. At that time, they spent 50 hours a week on it . They sold a mask rope , which they purchased at 0.39 pounds and sold at 3.50 pounds . The profit of this product was relatively high, which was not the case for other products. The overall profit margin of their products was about 20% to 25% .

Ben's Amazon journey was not smooth sailing. He once sold a mini camera with an order price of 18 pounds and 400 units were ordered. However, the camera received many negative reviews after it went on sale. Fortunately, he recovered some losses from the supplier. Another lesson was inventory. His products were unsalable due to negative reviews, which resulted in higher storage fees in Amazon warehouses.

Ben's sales hit $1 million in 2022, and he made about $802,000 in 2023. He now has a simplified Amazon business with 82 products for sale, working only about 10 hours a week.

With his product selection ability and the photography advantages of his partners, Ben 's Amazon business is developing well. Another seller, like Ben, also achieved good results on Amazon after stepping on some pitfalls.

Monthly sales are nearly 400,000, and 20% of products contribute 80% of sales

Shanshan Fu makes a living by selling products on Amazon. In October 2023, her sales reached US$53,000 (approximately RMB 380,000).

At the beginning of the epidemic, Fu Shanshan started selling masks, but later she changed her business and most of the products she sold were clothing, such as socks and tights. However, fashion is the most fickle, and returns are high.

In 2023, Fu Shanshan decided to expand her business beyond fashion and diversify her products. She designed a pickleball plush toy. She thought that many people were addicted to pickleball and it should be successful. However, after the product was launched on Amazon, she was stunned.

Fu Shanshan said that products that perform well often have a ROAS of 2.0, and brands can earn $2 for every $1 spent on advertising. Products that perform very poorly often have a ROAS of only 1.0 or lower.

When she launched the Kimchi plush toy product, the product ROAS was directly below 1.0, and many people clicked on the product but did not buy it. She could only slowly clear the inventory and eventually ended up losing money.

This is not her first failed product. In the early days of Amazon, she listed underwear and found two major problems: size and advertising. Amazon prohibits underwear advertising, and without advertising, it is difficult for the product to attract traffic.

Fu estimates that she launches about 30 new products each year, of which 20% account for 80% of sales. Most products are so-so and fail to generate noticeable revenue, but they still sell.

"These products are very tricky, but we are reluctant to give up because as time goes by , the sales of some products may increase significantly, but they may also slowly decrease. In the end, you have to make a judgment, " said Fu Shanshan.

Product selection is very important for Amazon, and product selection failure is common. Fu Shanshan shared the core strategy to minimize product failure - product testing. She skipped this step when making Kimchi plush toys , and ended up falling into a trap. She has several different methods for product testing.

First, ask as many friends and family members as possible for product feedback;

Second, she would run a poll on Instagram. For example, if she was considering launching a new line of bodysuits, she would post two styles and ask her fans to vote for their favorite.

Third, use the PickFu website to get feedback from real users;

Fourth, another way to validate products before Amazon is to sell on Etsy, which is cheaper and easier for sellers. For example, if she wants to list socks, she will pick 10 to 20 different designs, take pictures of the products and post them to Etsy, check the click-through rate and conversion rate to see which ones perform best, and then list the popular products on Amazon.

There will definitely be many failed products or setbacks in Amazon, but this has not slowed down her motivation to move forward. Fu Shanshan believes that Amazon is like playing video games, except that the points are real, it is real money . She is excited every day when she wakes up and sees that the products are making money.

In addition, she also stays motivated by connecting with other successful brand sellers and learning from them. Fu Shanshan will participate in some e-commerce activities and build connections with experienced peers. When she sees some peers who are younger than herself and doing better than herself, she will be more motivated. If her peers can do it, she thinks there is no reason why she can't do it, so she will actively try various possibilities, on the one hand to learn, on the other hand to stay inspired.

Like Ben and Fu Shanshan, many Amazon sellers encounter various problems and pitfalls in their operations, but eventually they slowly upgrade and fight monsters, moving forward.

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