A review of working alone: ​​a total investment of 120,000 yuan in 6 months, and a return of 33,000 yuan; share some details of working alone on Amazon and personal experience, and hope that everyone will leave a message!

Let me clarify, although I do this on my own, the products I select are completely different from the company's products, so there is no case of plagiarizing the company's product selection.

Early days

I made the first mistake when registering a store in the early stage, because I asked my cousin from my hometown to register. As a result, the first facial recognition failed, and the second video verification failed. Finally, I found a service provider and spent 1,500 to register. This experience also prompted me to register a new store with my father's information in November when the store review was the most relaxed (as a backup store to prevent problems with one store)

Then I decided on the product selection smoothly. Since I know how to use Photoshop, I saved money on making pictures. I arranged to ship a batch of goods directly. The cost up to this point was about the same as the budget, except that I spent 1,500 more to register the store, and gave my cousin more than 100 as a red envelope for his help. Every other expense was lower than expected. It only cost 2,400 to register the company, and only 9,000 for the goods and shipping.

After the product was launched at the end of August, I was looking for reviews to get one or two reviews. I didn’t dare to use Vine because it was too uncontrollable. I could only accept that the first review from the link must be 5 stars. After that, the order was placed normally, and here the second pitfall appeared.

When I sold half of my inventory, I found that the payment was not right. I took a closer look and found that the commission was charged at 45%. I lost it because the product was classified wrongly (in fact, theoretically, my product was classified as 45% commission, but it was unacceptable to me). Then I hurriedly opened a case to find a solution and changed the category.

After that, we start to arrange the second batch of goods. At this time, we don’t get much money back because we sell them at a loss. And because only 1-2 of the 5 SKUs sell well, the remaining SKUs sell very slowly, so the money for the second batch of goods is still pure investment.

But in short, it is a good start to test that this product can be sold. Although there are some problems, they can be solved. The initial investment is 1500+2400+3000+9000=15900 yuan

Mid-term

The second batch of goods was replenished in early September. This time, only the two SKUs were replenished, and the total cost of shipping was 14,000 yuan. At that time, I thought it was a lot, and I also took into account the amount of the autumn promotion in October. But it still seemed a little less.

At the beginning of September, an incident occurred, which cost me an extra 10,000 yuan. The price of trademark registration in the United States will increase after October, and I registered 3 trademarks in one go from the perspective of backup and investment. Because I don’t know much about investment, the E Fund I bought in 2019 is still losing money, which makes me feel a little uneasy about this investment.

Then came the third batch of shipments in early October. After the previous batch of goods was delivered, it was also sold smoothly, so this time we also shipped goods worth 14,000 yuan.

On October 20, the fourth batch was a big investment, considering the coming of Black Friday and to make more money. So first of all, I reissued 17,000 yuan of goods from the old link. At the same time, I planned to create a new link for the same product and make changes in the pack, so that there was another 9,000 yuan investment.

In this way, the total investment is 14,000+10,000+14,000+17,000+9,000=64,000 yuan. At this time, at the end of October, my store's return was only 13,000 yuan, and the cumulative investment was 79,900 yuan. At this time, I felt something was wrong, but I couldn't tell what was wrong. This investment was more than I expected, but after thinking about it, I had no choice but to do it.
 

status quo

There were problems with the third and fourth batches of goods entering the warehouse. When the goods arrived one by one, Amazon transferred them all to other warehouses. Bad memories came to my mind (because for the first batch of goods, there was one SKU that was transferred for a month and a half, and I thought it was lost when it suddenly became sellable). Damn Amazon, I spent extra money on the configuration fee to get the goods to the West Coast of the United States in order to speed up the delivery, but the West Coast warehouse turned out to be a trap during the peak season!

Fortunately, after being out of stock for two weeks, the products started arriving in mid-November. By the end of November, I had received a total of 33,000 yuan in payments, and the total balance, including some that had not been received, was 47,400 yuan. It seems to be getting better.

However! Black Friday discounts started on the 21st, and the product unexpectedly exploded in orders. I suddenly realized that if I continued to sell like this, I would be out of stock after Black Friday. I calculated that if I wanted to replenish the two SKUs, and the quantity must not be out of stock, I would have to ship 46,500 of them this time!

By this calculation, at the end of November, the total investment was 126,400, and my current payment was 33,000 yuan. And the payment for the batch of goods I sent now will be collected around mid-February.

In other words, the small project I originally expected turned into a project that required a net investment of 93,400 six months later. If I didn't have so much money, I wouldn't be able to cope with this surge in orders and seize the opportunity to continue to sprint sales.

This is what happened when my links, payment collection and other things were going well. This is something I had never realized before. My boss always mentioned the importance of payment collection and turnover, and I thought I understood it. Now, from actual experience, if any link in the above circulation process is stuck, it will lead to the collapse of the entire project, unless there is a continuous transfusion from the outside.

The difference between having ten chips and one chip is that to earn one chip, the one-chip holder has to try to win twice as much, while the ten-chip holder only needs to wait patiently for a 1/10 chance to make a profit, and may even make more by accident. This is the importance of capital and assets.

Looking back on the first time I opened a store at 8 p.m., if I had encountered such an opportunity at that time, would I have been so calm in shipping and replenishing goods?

• Continue to explore other opportunities in this category

  
  

• For the second store, choose another product. This time, you can go further. Maybe you can launch three or four different products, 30-50 pieces each, and the cost of each piece is about 20 RMB. In this way, the total cost of goods is only about 5,000. Prepare for 25 years.

  
  

• Will I go out and work on my own one day? I am not sure if I have the ability to start a company and work on my own. The main reason is that I have some psychological defects that I have not overcome. I always have a burst of passion and confusion (laziness, just not wanting to do anything).

 
If you can read this patiently, it means you are really patient. What I wrote is a bit of a diary, and it should be boring to read. But I am not a public account, so I will review the details and share them with you, hoping that you can gain something. I also hope that everyone will leave a message, give me a level increase, and communicate and learn together.

Finally, share two tips

1. New stores and new brands enjoy a 5% sales commission reduction, which is equivalent to directly calculating a 10% commission when calculating profit statements. However, it seems that some sales are not counted, so the commission can be calculated at 12%.

2. There are a lot of discount coupons for new store advertisements. My store has been in operation for 4 months and I have received discount coupons worth 750 US dollars. For a small project like mine, it is very cost-effective. I wish everyone a big Black Friday sale and good fortune every year.
 
Additional update:
1. A new store will get a 10% commission discount on the first $50,000, and a 5% discount on the next $950,000.

2. Regarding the advertising discount coupons issued by Amazon, I am not sure if there is a pattern. Someone mentioned it in the comments section. That is, turn off the display ads and brand ads, and turn them on after the discount coupons appear. After receiving the discount, turn them off again, and then the discount coupons will appear again, and then repeat the process.

I originally thought it was random, but I received another discount coupon today, and someone mentioned it in the comments section, so I'd like to add some information here.

"Wonderful Reply"

Anonymous user

Agree with: ZZZY0426, Amazon is so hard to do, hahaa321, Yuchen's e-commerce journey, Akboom more »

I have been in business for three years. I hope to be able to help you with my personal experience, write down some expenses that could have been avoided, and some suggestions for the next step (some of the words may be a bit hindsight, but they can help those who have not yet started a business)

1. Company registration: You can register a company on the local government website, the fee is 0, and the company's agency accounting 0 declaration fee is about 1,000 per year

2. Freight: In the early stage of business, you can choose to ship overtime for the first few urgent shipments, and choose to ship ordinary ships for the later ones, which can save a lot of freight. The time difference between them is only about half a month.

3. Product: When the capital chain is not sufficient (cash flow is less than 100,000), stop losses in time for some products that are not selling well, continue to restock those that are selling well, and reduce prices in time for products that are not selling well and have no prospects, reduce advertising budgets when necessary, or clear stocks in batches, etc. Calculate how much cost can be recovered under the best operation. A healthy capital chain is very important in the process of entrepreneurship. These products need to be dealt with as soon as possible to speed up the return of funds.

4. Store planning: Even if the brand cost increases in 25 years, there is no need to stockpile trademarks, because a TM mark will only increase by more than one thousand yuan, and it is basically not used in the early stage. If the annual profit is less than 500,000, one account is enough. If there are new products and store plans in the future, you can register the TM mark.

5. Regarding procurement and payment terms: From your copywriting, I found that you purchased from Alibaba. Here are some suggestions. For Alibaba procurement, when your purchase amount is more than 5,000, you can try to bargain for 5-10% with the top few companies. According to their marked prices, when your purchase amount is stable at more than 20,000, you can go to offline sources to find small workshops. The product cost can be 20%-30% cheaper than Alibaba. At the beginning of the cooperation, you can negotiate a deposit. After several subsequent cooperations, you can ask for cash on delivery, or negotiate a longer payment period. In addition, in terms of logistics, you can negotiate a one-month payment period, which can make the capital chain much easier.

6. Answers to questions about repayment and investment: When the link is stable, the time to generate cash flow (in months) = (product cost + freight) * 4/net profit, and the funds required to hold goods = (product cost + freight) * 4, but the initial promotion costs of the link and the green label also need to be taken into account, which is also very expensive.

7. In terms of testing products: My personal suggestion is that if the capital chain is insufficient, try to invest in products that you have a high degree of confidence in. If you are not very confident, don’t invest in them. Once the product has a trend, you will have to invest hundreds of thousands of funds.

8. Capital chain suggestions: Cash flow is king. It is useless to make money without cash. Reasonably grasp the rhythm of product development and try to keep some cash flow in hand in case of emergency, giving yourself a way out.

• Anonymous User • Hangzhou

  I have now reached the stage of reducing costs during the elastic account period, but my core problem is that I am worried that the evaluation will deteriorate after the new product is replaced. The price of the factory I am cooperating with is very high, but the service is good, the cooperation process is very worry-free, and the quality is also acceptable. However, I have not used the prices of other factories. The cheap price of other factories is 67% of the current purchase price, which is a considerable part of the profit. I can only send a batch of these low-priced products to make new links and try it out.

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  Anonymous User • Jinhua

  @Anonymous user Just compare the two products together and you will see the difference. If it doesn't work, send the old factory's products to the new factory and ask them what the price is for such quality.

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  Arashi • Shenzhen

  The time to generate cash flow (in months) = (product cost + freight) * 4 / net profit, the funds needed to hold the goods = (product cost + freight) * 4" How do you calculate this? I have been doing this for so long and the most troublesome thing is this cash flow. I don't know how to calculate it. What logic is used?

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  Anonymous User • Jinhua

  @Arashi: For example, if your product cost + shipping fee equals 10 yuan, you have goods in stock for two months, goods in transit for one month, and funds reserved in the account for one month, the value of the goods you have to stock = 10*4*30*daily sales, and this money actually has to come out of your pocket. If the net profit of each product is 2 yuan, your monthly income = (10+2)*30*daily sales, your monthly expenditure is 10*30*daily sales, and the profit you can get in a month is 2*30*daily sales, because you have stockpiled 10*4*30*daily sales, the two divided by = 10*4*30*daily sales/2*30*daily sales = 20 months, after 20 months, you will earn the value of the goods in the account, and then you can see the monthly cash flow = 2*30*daily sales

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• Arashi • Shenzhen

  @Anonymous user Thank you very much, it is very clear. I will go down and calculate it.

Anonymous user

Starting a business is not an easy road, and it is not easy to succeed. I have been working alone for a year and have invested more than 300,000 yuan.

I have worked in operations from small companies to large companies, so I have more experience and experience in hot products. The core of e-commerce is to grasp the product and traffic. So I took the only way, which is 1:1 plagiarism. Yes, I directly plagiarized the hot products I made in my company. As long as there is no patent, I will copy it to death. The biggest taboo in starting a business is to overestimate yourself.

1. Copying a hot-selling product can make you confident about the product and increase your success rate.

2. You have no money, you need to grasp the traffic you need, find the core traffic of your product, and spend more time researching your competitors (if you copied your old company like me, then you know where the traffic of your product comes from). Although it is very unethical, you don’t need to consider morality when you want to make money. If you don’t sell, others will, so why don’t you sell it yourself? What’s more, it’s a hit product that you made yourself.

   
   

3. Concentrate your funds and don't disperse them too much. You must keep some money on hand. As I said, don't overestimate yourself. Just build one or two links first. Even if your daily sales are only 500 US dollars and the profit margin is only 10% to 20%, you can accumulate funds slowly.

   
   

4. Don't think that it's easy to sell 500 US dollars a day. According to your customer orders, if your customers are around 20, you need 25 orders, if they are around 30, you need 18 orders, and if you do more than 20 orders, then you basically need 20 orders a day. It sounds like very little, but as long as you can do it, you can basically exceed your time at work and achieve a certain degree of time freedom.

If you want to do it, you need to take the right steps.

• The supply chain you cooperate with must be reliable. Even if there are 20 orders a day, your monthly inventory must be 600 pieces. Add the shipping date, etc., as well as the receiving time, you need to have at least 2,000 pieces of inventory. Supply chain cooperation, payment terms, etc. must all be reliable. If you have a good discussion, many of your problems can be solved.

  
  

• For logistics, Mason and general ship are basically the first choice. Express delivery and card delivery both depend on the warehouse. The price of card delivery is very high, so you can compare prices. Mason basically has no price space. Try to find frequent cooperation partners to lay the foundation for the future. What foundation should you lay? Get acquainted with people. When you have traveled more and have a certain volume, you can talk about the payment period and other things.

  
  

• Check your emails more often. Amazon often sends out advertising discount coupons. This is very important. Each time it is sent out, it is worth several hundred RMB. Isn’t it great? (A little trick: if it has not been sent out for a long time, if there is no improvement, Amazon will send out discount coupons after the advertising is shut down for a period of time.)

  
  

• Find the traffic accurately. As I said, you copied it, and you copied the traffic framework. There are so many reverse-checking software, and the correct answer is there. Why don’t you copy it? Spend the money correctly, that’s what you should do.

In summary, if you want to expand, take it slow and maintain cash flow, especially now that Amazon changes its policies frequently and the payment terms have been extended, which puts even more financial pressure on you.

Also, Lei Jun once said, "Entrepreneurship is something that anyone can do."

If you want to start a business, first check whether you are an ordinary person.

Blue Fat Man loves you

Agree with: JuliaWong, device, NachoWu, 洪三666 More »

I agree. Investment in Amazon is like a snowball. The more you roll, the bigger it gets. The 3-5 million you planned to invest at the beginning will unknowingly grow to 3.5 million. Most of the money is either in the account or in payment for goods. Very little goes into your pocket. At the same time, you have to pay attention to the malicious competition of competitors and the various charges of the platform. If you are not careful, you will lose all your money and be heavily in debt.

• Anonymous User • Hangzhou

  Yes, at first I thought the product I chose had a good profit, but even so, it still took such a long period of time and required such a large additional investment. If the product was more expensive, the investment would easily be hundreds of thousands or even millions.

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  Blue Fat Man Loves You • Changsha

  @Anonymous user: That's it. Every year, there are still many newbies who join Amazon. They are all brainwashed by various marketing articles on Douyin and Xiaohongshu. They think that as long as they do cross-border business, they can just stay at home and make money. Everyone makes millions a year. There are several newbies around me who want to join Amazon, but I persuaded them not to. If they have money, can't they just live a good life? Why do they have to waste it?

Anonymous user

Agree from: rainco, 123juaner123

I have been working on my own for exactly four years. I started my career with 50,000 yuan and worked in a rented house. Later, I found that 50,000 yuan was not enough to make a few products, so I borrowed 100,000 yuan from a friend. I made low-priced products and spent every penny carefully. I knew how difficult it was. At the beginning, I created five products, and one of them was very popular, so I focused on this product and was satisfied with the other products to maintain a small profit.

After all, there is only so much money. Fortunately, as the time for this potential product to be built increases, it ranks in the top three, with 250 to 280 orders per day, and a profit of 25 yuan per order. I am very satisfied with such a high profit margin for a low-priced product.

Maybe I am timid and don't launch new products all the time. I think I must be stable. I will keep these products as the core and put other new products aside. I don't have the ambition to expand or form a team. I just want to improve my quality of life and the quality of life of my family. I wish you a big sale!

Anonymous user

Agree from: Qingyunlouzhu, NachoWu, pp00001, 123juaner123, rainco

I don't think it's a running account, but a very practical and down-to-earth post that can actually learn experience. I like the thread starter~ I just shared the risks and benefits of doing Amazon with a friend recently. After analyzing it for about 3 hours, my friend decided to give up. He also felt that the risk was too great and the capital requirements were not low~

• Anonymous User • Hangzhou

  Haha, the risk is really high. I have no choice but to find another way out for myself.

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  kopper • Shenzhen

  Cross-border business carries great risks. Next year I want to test the products domestically before adopting an overseas strategy. I have personally seen several small bosses leave, hahahaha

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  Anonymous User • Shenzhen

  @kopper: Yes, the requirements for independent sellers are quite high.

Blue inlb   -noob

The host is very capable. I feel like things are slowly getting on the right track. With a bigger plate, it is indeed more difficult to turn over funds, but as long as you get through the initial stage, things will slowly get better.

I would like to ask for your experience in ① independent product selection (procurement/research) and ② how to avoid violations to the greatest extent in personal store operation. Thank you! I wish the OP can achieve great success soon and reach new heights in his life hahahaha

• Anonymous User • Hangzhou

  As for independent product selection, it is nothing more than using tools such as SellerSprite JS to find data, and find categories of suitable size according to your own financial ability, with indicators such as low competition, promising prospects, and high profits. But as far as I know, although the ultimate goal is like this, everyone has their own set of methods. The most important thing is to see more, do more, and summarize your own set of methods from practical experience. Then as for avoiding violations, I am actually quite experienced and have experienced a lot of messy things, so I know which things are risky and which things are less risky. If you have to say how to avoid it, it is actually very difficult. Amazon's rules are constantly changing, and only pure white hats can be considered 0 risk.

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  Blueinlb • Chengdu

  @Anonymous user Thank you very much. I am now using a pure white hat strategy, but I feel that I can no longer learn much in the company environment. I have to start from scratch (registration, operation and maintenance), select products (the company does not provide any third-party plug-ins), and then do self-delivery and strictly control advertising fees (various old-fashioned strategies). I want to work alone but my experience is seriously insufficient. Which sites/categories/sized companies or directions should I go to in the future to learn more? If you have free time, feel free to reply. Once again, I wish you to achieve the small ladder of life and financial freedom as soon as possible.

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  Anonymous User • Hangzhou

  @蓝inlb: If you want to work alone, I suggest you go to a big company first, then a small company. The requirements in a big company will be stricter, and the details will be in place, but you will not be involved in many things, and you will learn in a one-sided way. In a big company, you should develop your professional operation ability and learn as much as you can. Then go to a small company. A small company will have more opportunities to do projects independently, and there will be more things to do, which will be more tiring, but it is also a place for you to exercise. In a small company, you can make up for your shortcomings, practice all the attempts you should make, and accumulate the resources of freight forwarding resources and service providers you need, etc.

• What is the real Job?

  We still need to ask suppliers for payment terms. For suppliers that we have cooperated with for one year, they are willing to accept a payment term of two months. In this way, the financial pressure will be much less.

Anonymous User • Hangzhou

I still do it on 1688, using the pay later method, which means I have a one-month account period.

What is the real and fake Jobs ? Shenzhen

@Anonymous User Let me talk about my experience.
1. We also had a one-month payment period before, but funds were tight. At that time, we needed to sell almost all of the previous batch of goods before we could get paid and then replenish the next batch of goods. As a result, we faced delays in the time cycle (we knew we needed to replenish the goods, but we could not get enough funds in a short period of time, so we had to delay the replenishment time), and the products were easily out of stock.
2. After talking about the two-month payment period, the financial pressure was reduced a lot. Because the extra month is enough for me to recover the funds and pay the balance. There may even be extra funds to support the down payment of the next batch. In this way, you will find that the financial pressure is reduced and there will be no problem of out-of-stock.

Anonymous User • Hangzhou

@真假乔布什么: Well, for Amazon, a 2-month payment period is just right, one month for shipping and one month for sales.