Amazon sales have increased 40% due to Covid and quarantine since most people are staying at home and doing most (if not all) their shopping online.

A great example is our Project X coffin shelf. It made over $200k in revenue and over $44k in gross profit for a 21% profit margin – and that was with lots of money being poured into testing. Those numbers could have been higher had we been more conservative with ad spend.

Profit is key here. The goal isn’t a huge sales number: Project X is meant to show how you could start with a relatively low investment and still establish a product that is profitable and scalable.

Whether you want to have side income or scale up and grow depends on your goals.

There are tons of product opportunities still out there – don’t give in to the negative mindset of “oh, Amazon is already saturated.” It might take months to find a good product, but don’t give up; there’s a learning curve.

(By the way, don’t imitate the products from Project X because everyone and their grandmother has already copied our coffin shelf on Amazon, speaking of saturation).

In our case, tons of competitors have bandwagoned but Project X’s sales didn’t drop, so don’t get discouraged by saturation and imitations. The amount of bandwagoners is a sign of our success!

Branching out with product variations

In this episode we discuss how we launched variations of our egg tray and coffin shelf core products with new color and size options.

We advise against launching a whole new product in a different color or size; product demand is still based on keywords and will likely be driven to your original successful product.

Three main private label strategies

Tim generally branches product opportunities into three categories:

Yeti product:

Named after the Yeti bottle, these products are in demand (based on keyword research) with little competition. These are rarer to come by, but worth the investment.

Better mousetrap:

This is the most common. You take an existing product and improve on it. It’s probably already saturated and will grow more slowly with more investment required in advertising, but it’s worthwhile if you do your research.

Bright idea:

This is an original idea that people need – but don’t know they need because they don’t know it exists! These are best suited for crowdfunding like through Kickstarter, so you can build awareness and get people excited for your product. They’re initially difficult to sell since, again, nobody knows about it (so it’s up to your marketing skills to change that).

Things change

In this episode we discuss several major changes Amazon has made to selling, such as:

• UPC codes and GS1 barcodes
• Brand name rules
• Inventory limits for new SKUs (and using 3PLs to solve this)
• How to contact buyers for reviews

Scaling, capital, and bank accounts

Have you heard of Alta, Helium 10’s financial solution for Amazon sellers? It’s packed with features to help you scale faster and alleviate many of the cash-related hurdles Amazon sellers often encounter.

Alta offers:

Marketplace payouts. Receive money no matter where you’re selling from or in what marketplace you’re selling. Say goodbye to Amazon’s currency conversion fees.

Working capital solutions. Need a business loan? Alta offers more favorable terms than traditional business loans or even Amazon’s financing options. You can choose how much to disburse so you only pay interest on what you take out.

And more!

What does the future of Project X look like?

Project X will continue to roll out updated intel as Amazon selling keeps evolving. Our more advanced strategies will be available in Freedom Ticket, our comprehensive Amazon training course, which is free for all Helium 10 members!

Make sure to stay tuned and keep #CrushingIt!