Realistic Expectations for Shopify & Amazon FBA Businesses
Reddit Post Mentioned In Video...
A lot of people ask me, are Youtube Entrepreneurs and eCommerce sellers pitching courses really making the money they claim to make, and is it really possible for someone like me to make that kind of money with a Shopify Store or an Amazon FBA Product?
I've been meaning to make a video addressing this for a few weeks now, and while stumbling through Reddit the other day I saw a post which touched on this topic.
A girl was essentially asking if she could really make enough money to support herself off a Shopify store or Amazon FBA Product. She mentions how she sees all these Youtubers talking about making all this money, but doesn't really know any "real people" who are doing the same. Is it really possible?
I don't want to write everyone off as just being entrepreneurs who pitch courses and don't actually do what they preach. I don't want to say that none of them are "bout that life" so to speak. That said, I personally find many of the claims hard to believe, in relation to the type of business they are running.
For example, if someone comes out with an entire private label line of bedding or kitchen products and actually creates a brand, by all means someone can absolutely make thousands per day.
However someone dropshipping $10 products from Ali Express, I find it hard to believe their business can add up to hundreds of thousands per month.
For one just the sheer number of $10 or $20 products you'd have to sell to total those figures is huge. Add to that dropshipping tends to have worse margins than traditional retail, it also has additional challenges such as long shipping times which makes getting return customers tough, and chargebacks from upset customers who don't want to wait weeks to get their item. That all cuts into profits. Add to that a dropshipper, especially an Ali Express dropshipper has nothing proprietary or unique about their products and there's no barrier to entry so the competition is endless with each new seller undercutting the prices of the previous one.
In this video I take a look at my businesses sales numbers, average ticket price, and margins and stack up my businesses numbers with those of dropshippers and Amazon sellers pitching courses.
My business isn't even close to doing the numbers many mention so many of these claims do seem far fetched to me.
Give the video a watch and we'll dig into the numbers and get to the bottom of whether a real person like you or I can make huge money selling online, and furthermore, is it possible to support yourself even modestly?
Excellent video !!!! This is exactly why I started following you on YouTube probably a couple of years ago at this point. I could tell you were the real deal and knew what you were talking about.
I liked in the video that you even said how you guys collect the rest in dividends over $65,000 which even shows more that you know what is going on....etc.
The thing that really showed me that I was actually doing way better on some of the affiliate stuff was that every year I get a Christmas card that is hand signed by the office staff at ShareASale which is one of the largest affiliate networks. And by no means and I ball'n out of control on the affiliate commissions but I'm still an upper tier affiliate with them. They obviously aren't going to hand sign 20,000 Christmas cards.....etc.
I'm doing ok on my stuff but having enough time in the day to do everything can be a struggle for sure. I almost need a couple of employees to do everything. That is what makes it really tough.
But yeah man I get pissed at some of these guys pitching the programs and I can tell they don't know what they are talking about. That is honestly why I think you would be a great person to have your own program or do some more consulting for this stuff.
One of the things I want to do with the channel I talk about crypto currencies on is to get more into the other avenues of making money online like eCommerce and all that but ultimately if I don't get monetized there it probably won't make sense for me to do any of it unfortunately.
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Hey buddy thanks for the thoughtful comment. That's awesome your doing well with the Share a Sale stuff. I actually got a call from the CEO of another merchant processing affiliate program I'm a member of. It was actually to tell me they didn't have a 1099 on file for me lol, however we did chat for a minute and told me he appreciates all the business I send their way. One funny thing about this program is that they still send out paper checks. I find that so funny now that everyone has moved on to either Paypal or ACH. Some months I'll have a couple checks a week show up for $100 maybe $200 or even $400 on a good one , they'll show up every couple days. Then I could go months without getting anything. I'm actually glad I just commented on this as it reminds me I have to fill out that 1099 lol.
I also get frustrated by a lot of the nonsense in the marketplace. I know I should probably not hate and just be concerned with myself but it almost pisses me off seeing people who are motivated and hardworking be taken advantage of.
Kind of a funny related story. I saw this dude who made a video about attenting a Damon John seminar. He was obviousl motivated but maybe a little bit off track on how to effectively go about hustling. At the end of his video he talked about how he saw an opportunity to stuff envelopes and was going to send in $250 to try it. Stuff like that just makes me sad, someone trying to make a better life for themselves but who's a little less saavy who gets taken.
I also find it hard to believe anyones course is worse $997 or even thousands of Dollars. I just bought Tim Ferris book Tools of Titans, a huge book almost as big as the bible, full of great knowledge, as well as a book which is physically printed and it sells for $30 or so. How a digital course is worth $4900 is beyond me. Especially when most of them are very cursory vague products that really don't delve into what someone needs to know.
I think I'm especially critical of myself to the point I'm not willin to sell something unless I'm giving people like 1000x the value so that's probably something I'm a little overly crazy about but to see people sell $500 courses that are slapped together just makes me sick and also embaressed for them to put their name on something like that.
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I completely know where you are coming from. This is part of the reason I never ended up coming out with my own coin or ERC20 Token yet. I have the technical capabilities to get a project started and assemble a team but I want people to really feel good about the fact that there will be a real product produced and not all hype.
Also why I haven't come out with some sort of course talking about affiliate marketing or eCommerce related stuff.
I really think your YouTube channel could really be a great platform to sell a course or even host an event in the future because you have proven yourself over and over again that you are providing real value. I like what David Hay and some of the Crypto guys did having an event where it was about $60 for tickets. Very reasonable in my opinion.
Have you thought about going to some of the big Crypto events / conferences?
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Hey buddy, funny you mentioned confrences. I actually attended my first meetup last night. Not a huge one or a convention just a local thing but that's something I've been wanting to do is get more involved in the communities and meetup with people in real life.
It was actually very cool to sit down across the table and talk crypto with people in person. Cool to see other peoples backgrounds and experiences. Something we talked about doing is all investigating ICO's and then getting together and sharing notes.
Another interesting thing to see was how much people were diving into the space. There were several guys who'd only been into crypto for a month or a few months who'd already been to a confrence in Miami or San Fran, one guy was going to Singapore here in thenear future.
I have thought about putting together some type of local event as we don't have much here in Chicago but it's also a city I think people wouldn't mind traveling to for a weekend to hit up a confrence as well as checkout the city and maybe turn it into a mini vacation over a long weekend. I was thinkiing about doing the same thing making something pretty reasonably price or at least as much as could be done while still trying to have a decent venue and get some speakers and such.
I really want to roll out a course, honestly I'm not too organized and lack the attention span to do so, also everytime I sit down to do it I'm never happy enough with the product to actually put my name on it and charge money.
I think I am going to roll out my first real course here soon. I'm actually going to keep it very introductory. Moreso than become a shopify expert it's probably going to be more big picture and an introduction for people looking to start creating additional revenues online but who don't know where to start or even what options are available to them and then maybe briefly touching on each of those, however to try to cover everything would be crazy as I could probably make a 10 hour course on one single topic.
I also would like to charge something reasonable, not gonna charge $997 probably more like $9.99 to maybe $29.99. I want to make a little bit of money but don't want to take advantage of people and also want people to have some money to throw into FB ads or hiring some freelancers or whatever else to get started.
If you ever do wind up rolling out a course I'd be happy to promote it or have you on for an interview to talk about it.
In regards to ICO's I have kind of a funny story. I have a buddy who wanted to create an app in the crypto space. Then it turned into creating a coin. He is completely clueless in terms of how to do this. I have along the way tried to help him a little bit even though in the grand scheme of things I know he's creating a garbage coins that adds no value and does nothing unique, so I totally get wanting to actually do soemthing unique to enter the space as it's already kind of filled with enough nonsense and money grabs.
If you do roll out a coin lemme get in on that founders early investor sale ;)
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The part you said about your buddy wanting to create a coin rings a familiar bell. It is very odd but I run into a lot of people who don't know the first thing about how to create a coin or anything and they are the ones acting like they want to do it the most. It is very strange to me.
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lol yeah totally. He was calling me today asking for advice/help. I'm like dude I'm not a technical guy, I've never rolled out a coin or an ICO, I don't really know what you want from me. I've tried to tell him he's really not in a position to roll out a coin nor is his coin really going to add anything to the crypto space but he's dead set on doing it and tells me it's going to be a billion dollar coin blah blah blah.
On an interesting side note, I met a guy at this Bitcoin meetup the other day who is rollin gout his own coin, I was meaning to ask you if you've ever heard of it, it's called Dnotes?
The guy seemed very knowledgeable about SEC issues and from what I can gather he's trying to raise money an IPO as opposed to an ICO. He didn't speak great English so I had a hard time wrapping my head around what he was doing but I will say he seems pretty accomplished, he's gotten numerous multi hundred Dollar million contracts from the Department of Defense, he has one of the largest lilly growing companies in the country, he created one of the first tablets back in the early days of tablets and writes for a lot of different publications. I'm curious to chat with him more at future meetups but was meaning to ask you if you'd ever heard of Dnotes?
https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/dnotes/
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Hahah, That is pretty funny. Well maybe we should give him what he wants!
Is he trying to bootstrap the whole thing or does he actually have money to invest in getting the coin rolled out?
I can get him his own coin and the seed nodes to support the wallet and all that for 100 Litecoin
In regards to the guy who has Dnotes..... I haven't heard of that and initially I was thinking it was one of the early cryptonote coins but I looked at it and it is a Litecoin clone from 2014.
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The one thing I will say for my buddy is he's not scared to put his money where his mouth is. He's paying thousands for sponsored articles on various Bitcoin and crypto sites.
he also put up billboards all over the southwest for his app and coin and actually caused a bit of a controversey and got some media coverage.
I don't want to talk shit about his coin and then post to him so I'll have to hit you with a pm on youtube or something with the news clip as its pretty funny.
I guess the problem is his coin just isn't going to do anything unique or add anything to the space and also to some extent I feel it's nothing more than a self enriching money grab, but not really trying to do anything unique for the community.
If he actually rolled out his app, the app itself isn't a terrible idea and a coin could be a utility coin for the app and I could see some use case there but he's kind of moved on to being all about the coin and the ICO and I told him dude your coin is a utility coin, without the app there's no purpose for it.
Gonna try to help him get on the right track but I have a feelling its just going to be a big waste of time and money for him that's not going to end up going anywhere.
If he comes to me for help again I'll mention that 100 litecoin offer, it's potentially something he might be interested in doing and he does have the money.
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One of the best posts I have seen of this topic. I use your videos as a guide to start my own side hustles. Thanks for all your inspiration.
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Thanks @rulesforrebels for you insightful post.
Well I can say after being a member at the Warrior Internet MArketing forum for 10 years now...this kind of stuff exist and is pervasive i.e people writing e-books and courses to sell for profit and in actuality they are not really successful with the topic of those courses they are selling. Shopify is a good example
This is unfortunately very prevalent in the MMO niche. Thats the make money online niche
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Yeah lately people are asking me how come you don't really do much content on Amazon FBA anymore. I still sell on FBA but honestly as soon as I start seeing everyone and their dog getting into something I try to switch my attention to something else. Literally EVERY youtube preroll ad I see these days is how to get rich off FBA, so I'm putting my attention towards some other things at the moment unless I find a product or niche that I just can't resist. At this point though I dont really feel like putting a ton of effort into amazon with all their fees and all the stiff competition just to sell random one off products. ive even let some of my older products die off, stuff that sells and makes a few bucks a month but i honestly just dont feel like even keeping up with and continuing to order inventory for the little bit of money it brings in
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This is so great! You got the great point here......
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Well video posting thank you for shering @rulesforrebels
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I just upvoted your post please 100% support me
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With hard work and dedication, disruptive and great ideas, everything is possible I think. I think you can make way enough money with those kind of businesses
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Awesome content, like always! Thanks rulesforrebels. Following you on yt aswell! :)
cheers,
Didi
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