📝 10 Biggest Mistakes I Made on Amazon My First Year
Are you planning to start selling on Amazon? If so, you're in the right place. In this article, I'll share with you the 10 biggest mistakes I made during my first year on Amazon. These mistakes resulted in three failed products, $15K lost, tons of headaches, dwindling bank accounts, and stress. I didn't think I was going to be able to run this business, and it slowed me down tremendously. I wasted so much time doing dumb little mistakes, or I could have gotten there 10 times faster if I just knew what the hell I was doing. Hopefully, this will give you a little insight into what not to do and what to do so that you can get there without the costly errors that I had.
📌 Table of Contents
- Keep Your Job
- Being Impatient
- Terrible Suppliers
- Not Getting Help
- Over-Consuming Content
- Not Verifying Your Product
- Not Getting Inspections Done
- Blowing Way Too Much Money on Amazon PPC
- Opening Up Multiple Seller Central Accounts
- Check Your Ego
1. Keep Your Job
The first mistake I made was quitting my job and relying solely on my savings. I watched my account dwindle as I failed time and time again with advertising, products, and photography. This didn't allow me to reorder what I needed, and I felt the pressure of my dwindling bank account. I was rushed, and I felt like I needed to make money now with Amazon. It doesn't work quite that way. You need to take your time with product research, suppliers, launching, ranking, and getting reviews. This stuff takes time, and it could take three to six months to get your initial footing on Amazon. It's not a get-rich-quick scheme. This takes time to build the foundation of your business properly.
2. Being Impatient
I've always had an act for winging things. I got by in school, did homework last minute, and essentially did everything with the least amount of effort. I thought I could figure this out, and I didn't have to work hard. I wanted results now, and that's exactly what I did with my Amazon business. I couldn't wait and figure out product research, so I just bought three products and threw them on there and expected results. No, I failed miserably. We want to go slow and fast at the same time, meaning that we're patient, but on the activities we're doing, we're having some sense of urgency. We're taking our time, but at the same time, we're not just wasting time or spinning our wheels. We're taking action, but we're patient with that action.
3. Terrible Suppliers
I never vetted suppliers like once when I first started. I just saw one on Alibaba, went there, and picked it and got some samples in, and I was like, "That's good enough. Let's go." Well, with my first product, this bit me in the butt pretty hard. We were in fidget spinners, trying to sell fidget spinners. We saw the hype for those, and so we tried to get them on Amazon. Great, we're selling actually like 9 to 12 a day, which was fantastic. But as soon as we got that momentum, it was gone because we had 10 one-star reviews come in like per every two days because these things were literally deteriorating in people's hands. They weren't spinning properly, and they were falling apart because I didn't vet the supplier. I didn't know what I was doing. Same thing with my next product, pizza stones. I got those delivered to my home, and half of them were broken. The manufacturer packed these in like these thin bubble wraps stacked them so high together, they're so heavy they were just crushed into dust when they came to my house. That's how bad it was because I didn't know what the hell I was doing. In hindsight, I would talk to 15 to 20 suppliers, talk to them, felt them out, got pictures, got samples, and it would have been a non-negotiable about settling for a supplier. You have to feel 95% confident you're never going to feel 100% confident in anything you do on Amazon, really, just because there's so much uncertainty. That's how it is in every business, though, right? Because there's always going to be some risk you didn't think about, and if you try to calculate everything to 100%, you're never going to move anywhere because you're just going to be scared of an action or think of a new variable you didn't think about before.
4. Not Getting Help
I've never asked for help. That's just the way I am. That's the way it used to be. I thought asking for help or talking to a community was a sign of weakness. To me, it just seems like weakness, right? If you ask for help, you're emitting defeat. I can't tell you how wrong I am about that because if we ask for help, we get help from someone who's been there before. We learn from their mistakes. Essentially, you're getting out of your comfort zone, going to talk to someone who's been there before, getting help, getting mentorship, whatever it is, doesn't have to be me, of course, right? This is not a pitch for that. This is something truly that held me back because not only my first year but three years into it, I refused to ask for help, and I've had countless stories. Every time I've gotten help, gotten mentorship, or just reached out to people, I've always learned something, and I've moved on from the issue I was having. So ask for help, find your little community. I'm telling you; you'll save so much time, so much money, so much headache from doing this.
5. Over-Consuming Content
I am totally guilty of this. My first year, I consumed blog post after blog post, every YouTube video I could find. There wasn't a ton back then, but there was enough where I could sit there just reevaluating everything, reading things again, doing another Google search, doing other YouTube video search, and essentially just re-watching the content that I've already watched a thousand times before or learning way too far in advance from the steps I'm at right now. If you are just sitting there consuming YouTube video after YouTube video after YouTube video, watching the same content essentially and not taking action, this is huge. You're going to waste so much time from this. At some point, turn YouTube off and just go for it. Yes, there's some type of learning you should be doing before you try something, but you're going to learn the most by taking action. So if you feel 70-80% of the way there, that's perfect. That's business. That's entrepreneurship. The next 20-30%? That's fine. You're going to discover that once you go in. But if you see yourself just essentially procrastinating by watching video after video, just know that you're going to move nowhere essentially. So put the YouTube down after this video, of course, and just do it. Take action, and if you reach a barrier, that's where you go back. Essentially, you're just following along, searching the content you only need and not just binge-watching anything that pops up.
6. Not Verifying Your Product
My first three products were complete failures because I took the wing-it approach. I didn't know what the hell I was doing. I just picked three products and threw them on there and expected results. No, I failed miserably. With product research, this kind of goes back to the community, finding other people who have sold before to verify your product because if you don't know, you don't know. The only way to learn what to sell and what not to sell on Amazon, of course, you can watch videos, get the idea, but people just give you a criteria that everybody's searching, and that's just not the recipe. There's a thousand different ways to find a product that actually will work on Amazon, whether that's you improving it or a market to yourself or niching down or adding value, whatever it may be. But you don't know that until you have experience, and to get that experience, you have to spend a lot of money to figure that out. You can find someone who's done this a thousand times before, great. If you can't, you can't just settle. You can't just say, "I've been doing this for a month now, and I'm just giving in. I'm picking this one." No, I've seen this a thousand times before too with a lot of clients I work with, and then they give in. We cannot settle with product research. We have to find something that we feel 90% the way there. It's never going to be 100%, just like anything in this business, but we need to feel 90%, and we need to minimize our risk. Don't spend 15-30K on your first product. Keep it between like three to eight thousand somewhere in that range. That way, if you do make a mistake, hopefully, you get that cost of goods back, just sell for break-even, and you learned a crap ton about what this takes, what this actual process is. You're like, "Okay, not do this product anymore. This is why." Then your second product, you're like, "Okay, I'm starting to get this a little more."
7. Not Getting Inspections Done
Inspections are essential. You'll have a third-party company go to your manufacturer, check out your product, send you back a full report, videos, photos, everything, drop tests, smell tests, rip tests, and anything else you want to specify that you improved on your product to go check out. If I would have got an inspection done on my fidget spinners, I would have known they were crap and that we're going to get one-star reviews across the board. Instead of paying three to five grand, whatever it was, for that first order and just blowing that money, I could have seen that my inspections were terrible, got those things fixed, or not sent them final payment. Inspections only cost 200 bucks. Everybody should be doing an inspection for your product. It's literally saved me tens of thousands of dollars. I had a barcode that wouldn't scan because it was too reflective. We had five-six thousand units coming into Amazon. They would have rejected that whole shipment. It would have been a mess to try to get those out of there. We fixed these things, got stickers put over them because I got an inspection done. I cannot stress enough; you need to get an inspection done.
8. Blowing Way Too Much Money on Amazon PPC
Starting my campaigns with 50-100 budgets, so you can literally blow 1500 to 3 grand in a month. If you give this money to Amazon, they're going to find a way to spend it because that's where they make a lot of money. Make sure when you start PPC, start light, maybe 10 to 20 budgets, thirty dollars a max per day. You really don't know in PPC if it's going to work or not yet. We have a product with zero reviews, one review, two reviews. Your conversion rate is going to be low. You're just figuring this out. You don't know what keywords are best performing. So essentially, if you're doing a hundred dollars per day, it's going to be the most inefficient way to spend that hundred dollars. If we take it slow for two to four weeks, we can compile data in PPC, figure out what keywords we should target to make it more efficient. If we want to jack up budgets later, but at first, take it slow, get the data, figure it out. Then once we know like these five keywords right here, they're dominating, then okay, we allocate all our budget to those. It's much more efficient if we want to ramp our budget up. So don't blow 100 a day on PPC. Trust me on that one. You'll regret it later.
9. Opening Up Multiple Seller Central Accounts
Our first year, we opened like four accounts, some in our names, seven different businesses. This turned out to be a nightmare because Amazon does not like it when you have a ton of accounts, and they're in weird statuses. If one gets taken down, they can take them all down because they track the IP address. IP address is tracked to four accounts. One goes down, they shut them all down. To get these back up is one of the worst nightmares you can have. It's called a related account suspension. Maybe you just want to sell with one account. You're like, "Well, I don't need these other three, so I just need to get this one back up." No, that's not how it works. You actually have to get all four of these reinstated to get that one original back up. It's like a domino. You gotta lift one up at a time, figure out what they want for one account, then you're on to the next. So you actually have to open up all four of these if four got taken down that are linked to your IP address. From experience, this could take three to six months or even just not happen at all. Make sure you're not opening up a ton of accounts. Just focus on one. You can have one account with multiple brands. It's just easier to focus on one until you become big, have two big brands. That's when I recommend getting two accounts.
10. Check Your Ego
Check your ego. Learn, take action, go fast but slow at the same time, get mentorship, get a community, whatever it is. Do this business the right way. I'm telling you, in three years, you'll look back and laugh. So make sure you're subscribed if you found this valuable. There's going to be a link down below to my free Facebook group. If you're looking for that community, I do live Q&A's in there as well to get your questions answered and be around people who are doing the exact same thing as you. I'm telling you, community is everything.
🌟 Highlights
- Keep your job and don't rely solely on your savings.
- Be patient and take your time with product research, suppliers, launching, ranking, and getting reviews.
- Vet your suppliers and don't settle for less.
- Ask for help and get mentorship.
- Don't over-consume content and take action.
- Verify your product and get inspections done.
- Start slow with Amazon PPC and compile data.
- Focus on one Seller Central account and don't open up multiple accounts.
- Check your ego and do this business the right way.
❓ FAQ
Q: How long does it take to get your initial footing on Amazon?
A: It could take three to six months to get your initial footing on Amazon.
Q: How much money should I spend on my first product?
A: Keep it between three to eight thousand dollars somewhere in that range.
Q: Should I open up multiple Seller Central accounts?
A: No, it's not recommended. Focus on one account with multiple brands.
Q: How important are inspections for my product?
A: Inspections are essential. They'll save you tens of thousands of dollars.
Q: Should I blow a lot of money on Amazon PPC?
A: No, start slow and compile data. Don't blow 100 a day on PPC.
Q: How important is it to ask for help?
A: It's essential. Don't be afraid to ask for help and get mentorship.
Resources:
- [My Free Facebook Group](https://www.facebook.com/groups/AmazonSellerCommunity/)
