First of all, I want to thank all the regular readers of my blog! I started this blog in the summer of 2018 as a way to showcase the case study I did. Meanwhile, I have written loads of other guides about PPC, product research & manufacturing. Now the blog has hundreds of daily readers and I am very grateful that I am able to help other FBA sellers.

My FBA Story

In 2015 I had a standard 9-5 job and I was bored out of my mind. I felt I was wasting my life away with a simple desk job with no future perspective. I found out about Amazon FBA and figured this could be a way to get out of my boring 9-5 job. I started learning, and I was serious about this. I was devouring every piece of information about Amazon FBA I could find. On my way to work I was listing to FBA podcasts, I was watching FBA video’s, reading case studies & following discussions. These days I have compiled all these resources and have them automatically posted to our subreddit; r/AmazonFBATips

First product

After a couple of months I felt ready to pull the trigger and order my first product. I had $7,000 in my bank account and spend around $2,000 on my first product. Thinking back about it now, I really had no clue what I was doing. I had no purchase agreement, no inspection planned, forgot to properly label the shipment and overpaid by quite a bit. Despite all of this, the product went live December 2015. It was a toy product that I launched right before Christmas. So yeah, the product was an instant hit. After Christmas the sales died down quite a bit though, but I was hungry for more!

I quickly invested the rest of my savings and started expanding. More variations of successful products, new products, new niches. Everything to grow as much as possible.

Out of money

Soon enough my own savings were not enough to keep up with my growth. Capital was now my biggest bottleneck. You have to realize that it takes quite some time to get your money back on an FBA investment. It takes about 1 months to manufacture, 1-2 month to ship, 3-6 months to fully sell out. So it takes can between 5-9 months before I see a return on my investment and invest in more products. I started taking out loans to keep up with my growth. I realize now that this was a pretty risky step. However, this has definitely paid off and is a major reason I was able to grow my FBA business very fast.

I QUIT!

I was still working my 9-5 job and honestly, it was getting rough. During the day I would be at my normal job. And in the evenings & weekends I would focus on my FBA business. After about 1 year I was making $4,000 per month with my Amazon side-business. This was almost double as what I was making with my normal job. So decide to take a big leap and finally say those magical words to my former employer: I QUIT!

My fails

However, I have definitely had my ups & downs. I have had suppliers screw me over, customs seize my whole container & hijackers try to take over my Amazon listing. So don’t believe anyone out there who says Amazon FBA is an easy way to make some passive income. This is a real business, that requires hard work!

Where I am now

This is my fourth year doing Amazon FBA and I can honestly say I have seen it all. My Amazon business is quite successful. And I am in a position where I can share my knowledge on this blog. I am very grateful for this, and I am very happy to see that I am able to help out other FBA sellers.

I think Amazon FBA is always evolving and I’m stil learning myself everyday. I am very active in the Reddit FBA community and I am always open to have a discussion about FBA. You can also contact me by leaving a comment or by asking a question in the Q&A section of the blog.

Cheers!

Garlic Press Seller