today we're going to share exactly how
much it costs troy to start selling his
passion product
on amazon including how much it actually
cost him to start selling
all the design all the initial
production run then we're going to go
month by month share his revenue his
amazon fba fees his product costs
all the other expenses associated with
selling on amazon
and his final profit and make sure to
stay till the end of this video because
at the end of this video
he's gonna share with us some of his
biggest mistakes and his biggest lessons
learned and
he made one mistake that cost him
sixteen
hundred dollars in one day it was a very
easy to make mistake very simple
I felt really bad when I heard it so
let's get started off let's talk a
little bit
about what your passion product is and
let's get right into how much it cost
you to start selling
yeah so I was a college tennis player
so I'm very familiar with tennis
products
and when I was doing research and what
For the product I wanted to do I had some other
ideas
in mind and then I just like well I like
tennis let's see if there's something i
can do with tennis and came across that
I can get into tennis scripts affordably
for my first
uh initial production run and I think i
can
get into that market space and so the
the first cost that we
I sat down with him and we listed out
everything every single expense and the
the first cost he had was the trademark and
to be honest I thought he spent a little
a bit more but let's talk a little bit
about that
yeah so I was intimidated in getting a
trademark and I didn't want to mess
anything up so I talked to a guy a
a lawyer who could help me out
and he was like a hundred ish bucks to
do it for me and I was like great you
take care of it
and I actually enjoyed him because there
are a couple like things that he was
able to hash out
and now that I'm building into more
products he's already taken care of
those products in the trademark so i
don't have to like
add or edit or do anything yeah and
that's totally fine
I'm just pointing out you don't need to
necessarily pay someone you can always
go to USPTO and do it yourself but
let's back up even further how did you
find a manufacturer for this and
let's talk about the process including
how much it cost you to get samples
totally so I just went to Alibaba and
went through I typed in tennis scripts
into
their search engine and it came up with
a thousand different products so I found
one
that fit my budget and my
uh moq yeah um and so an moq for anybody
that doesn't know minimum order quantity
some people are like you got to buy 50
000 grits which is a lot for yeah
yes I did have to buy a little more than
I wanted to but in the long run, it ended
up
working out just fine to get the price
down to where I wanted to be
um but I just had like 10 different
companies ship
out uh maybe a little less than that but
I had uh
I got like eight different grips that i
was able to sample like tacky grips not
like dry grips
and I found the grips that I liked to
use the most and what I most commonly
see out there on the tennis courts and
this is one of the keys
things why I think troy's story is so
great is he understands his product it's
something that he is passionate about he's
a great tennis player I've played with
he and he crushes me and it's
he understands what makes a good grip
versus a bad grip or someone like me
if I was just following the numbers i
wouldn't know what's a good grip first i
mean sure this one's stickier but maybe
maybe stickier is not always a good
thing right and how much did it cost you
to get the samples
it cost me well the samples were cheap a
dollar too but the shipping is where
they get you so it cost me about 20
per shipping for each sample so let's
just say anywhere from like 100 to 150
bucks I spent on sampling stuff
and then the next fee you got to keep in
mind is the
amazon fee and the amazon fees are on
39.99
at what point did you start did you sign
up for the professional account and
start doing it did you wait
until the inventory was ready or
I did it early I kind of wanted to
familiarize me with the seller
central account so I probably
paid for three months of not selling
anything so the 39.99
cost me what a hundred and I wish i
would have talked to you so there are
times i
this happened to me where I was able to
get reimbursed for the first two months
so it might be too late now that you've
yeah and it's not that big of a deal
but the other really big cost is the
production run how much did your initial
production run cost you
so it's supposed to cost me 3 600 um
which was totally good with that
so
when I first was talking to my
manufacturer they sent me
uh like the logo and everything that
they were gonna put on the packaging
and I was like great looks great let's
do it so they
packaged everything up and then I found
out from my trademark lawyer
that I couldn't use my logo that i
wanted to use I wanted to use Aiken but
Aiken was already
taken so and his brand is taken so
that's why yeah
taking grips and so um I had to talk
to my
supplier and be like hey I can't use
this packaging I need you to repackage
my grips and so it cost me an extra 400
for them to repackage which I was kind
of pleased with how much
that cost me thought I thought that it
was going to be a bigger deal
yeah and this will be a repeating theme
you'll see some more mistakes coming up
but
there are usually solutions to different
mistakes and so then
after you got so it's four thousand
dollars for your total production run
what about
ship how did you ship it over did you do
sea shipping did you do air shipping
I did sea shipping took about the 30
day
sea shipping is a lie because you like
when you
finalize give them the money it takes
them like five days to package it and
get it off and then it takes a couple
days to get to see and then 30 days on c
and then Amazon has to get it and then
it takes amazon seven days to get it up
and running so like maybe 40 45 days is
like
the 30 days another key principle of
entrepreneurship that nobody talks about
everything takes longer than you think
it will and you got
15 days longer isn't as bad as I've had
it where it takes months
longer sometimes I'll email people and
this actually just happened to me I'll
email them and they won't get back to me
for
a week two weeks and then it's just i
have to wait for that person I have to
wait for the next person
so that's not too bad and then other
fees
another big one is done you go with an
Llc or a dba
and how much did that cost you I did
like a sole proprietorship
so a dba and uh it cost me about eighty
dollars
okay so that's not bad and the only
the thing you need for that is to get a bank
account and
it just makes it a little bit easier to
sell on amazon and a lot of people
you don't need an LLC unless you need
legal protection
like for performance nut butter my
passion product I need legal protection
because if someone eats it and gets sick
I don't want them coming
and suing me it's a limited liability
company
another fee that a lot of people have to
deal with is bar codes and
some people cheap out and they get
the cheaper barcodes
did you end up getting the legit gs1
and how much did that cost you I did end
up going with the gs1 I'm I'm in it for
In the long term i didn't want to
exactly i didn't want to do the cheap
ones then it gets taken away
um but yeah that was barcodes were
confusing to me between the SKU
and the asin and all those different
like
numbers were I had to kind of watch i
mean I came across your video on that
and like I had to
really pay attention to that because i
was confused so I ended up watching a
a video that said just get the
gs1 if you're gonna do it so I paid 250
for 10 barcodes because at the time i
only had two items but i knew I wanted
to get into colors so
I was going to add more products so
that's why I was comfortable doing 10.
and it can be confusing at first
basically the fn sku
is the barcode that goes on the package
so that you can send it into the amazon
warehouse where the upc code is i think
it's universal product code
basically if you ever see the upc code
if you ever see an item scanned at
walmart or some store that's the upc
code amazon needs you to have a upc code
to show that it's a legitimate product
but they want you to put the fn sku on
the product so it can get a little
a little bit confusing and then the last
i think expense you had
was software and you wanted which
software did you go with
right i think i just found the best deal
on viral launch and i'm actually i've i
follow those guys on podcast and i'm a
big fan of those guys i really enjoy
listening to them and i think they're
honest about a lot of the information
they get so i
like they did good branding in my
opinion um so i've i haven't tried
jungle scout or in the other ones but
i've just been happy with viral launch
so
i've stuck with them uh they can be a
little pricey at like 85 bucks a month
when i'm getting started
oh wow um because i wanted to do the
they have cheaper packages but
for some of the analytics that i needed
i had to go to the bigger account
um and definitely think it was worth it
and then once i got my product up and
running and i didn't need them then i
don't
pay the 84.99 a month totally yeah yeah
and there's helium 10
viral launch and jungle scout i did do a
video i'll link up here and down below
where i compare the different platforms
one thing i also want to mention is i
did pay for pictures
if we didn't that's good that's a good
thing to include um so i paid 150
for i think it was viral launch's team
like they have a
another third party that does pictures
so i paid 150
for like seven pictures so i got a main
image and then a bunch of uh
side images and did they take was it
computer renderings or well
so what i did is i bought a white board
and then took pictures with it and sent
it into it and then they
got creative with it and put text with
it or they put it like a
tennis player in it i had to like ask
them they put a tennis player that holds
a rocket like this and i was like
that person doesn't look like a tennis
player can we get a different person
for this image again this is where
having passion and actually
understanding your product comes in
handy because
i'm sure if you were on amazon and you
saw grips with someone holding it up
like this you'd be like what
this isn't right you feel legit yeah but
in total it costs you around 5 800
to get started which isn't an insane
amount but it also isn't cheap like what
are your thoughts on that
right yeah well i thought that it was
gonna cost me 3 600
to like do it and then so there's
another 2 000
of unexpected fees that a lot of people
don't tell you about
another principle of entrepreneurship
there's always unexpected fees
always unexpected delays but you'll see
we'll we'll go over month by month his
numbers in the long run
it's 100 worth it so let's get started
with
your first month selling on amazon and
we talked about this before
your launch strategy was pretty much
just launch it have some
friends so have some people buy it and
leave reviews
so the first month you sold was around
250 units or so
and what total revenue from that was
around was it
yeah so total revenue was around 1200
and
i was selling at a cheaper price point
than what i'm selling at now
and so for selling 250 units i was
pretty stoked on that like looking at
the numbers i was hoping to be
i was hoping to get to about 500 units
so the fact that in my first month i had
done 250 units
i was pleased with that and i was
definitely using a lot of friends and
family that don't share my wi-fi to
to get some purchases to get started
so technically it's against the terms of
service to get friends and family
to buy products here's the little i mean
you know i don't want to get anybody in
trouble
but as long as you don't share wi-fi
amazon doesn't always know so be careful
though you know
be just be aware of that kind of thing
and it was like 10 family
and friends so i wasn't go every person
in my contact hey man i'll send you a
venmo for seven bucks to buy my product
it was just like a couple people to get
me off the ground and really amazon
doesn't care about i mean my experience
has been and other people i know his
experience has been amazon doesn't care
about that
they care about the giant companies in
china that are getting 500 fake reviews
that's the people they're really trying
to target in all honesty you gotta
imagine if you're amazon
and someone's promoting hey go to amazon
and buy some stuff they probably are
gonna turn the other cheek but
yeah i don't wanna i don't wanna get any
comments about how i'm going to get
people banned yeah so let's
so obviously that's really great and so
total revenue was around was it 1200
or so and it's great revenue is amazing
but as you
and i both know revenue is not profit
let's go over all your different costs
so how much did it cost you to do
how much to actually make the products
each individual product well so my
unit cost came out to be about a dollar
37 including packaging including
shipping including the product
everything so if we let's just round it
out 1.50
so because then ppc also takes so if i'm
selling
at that point i was selling it for six
dollars so a dollar fifty
i was about 450 amazon was taking about
350 at the moment for that so i was like
profiting almost a dollar of
a sale okay so in total for your first
month it was
about breakeven which this is another
big wake-up call for a lot of new
sellers breaking even on your first
month's actually a good thing because
what troy was doing
was he was paying for ppc he's paying
for data he's paying for the algorithm
to recognize that he's got a legitimate
product
and it's okay so the people that win in
amazon in entrepreneurship
they're the people that are in it for
the long run so let's let's keep going
month number two uh how many units did
you sell how much in revenue did you do
yeah one two one two was great i did
about 250 units so i was 50 units better
i'm getting towards my goal
i did about 1600 in revenue
i also at some point decided to try
seeing if i could sell at a little
higher price point and it didn't affect
my sales at all
so i was able to keep it there and i
also came across something called small
and light shipping
which basically it means i can only sell
on amazon so if i wanted to sell on ebay
or
self sell i couldn't have ebay
or i couldn't have amazon ship it for me
but it took my cost from amazon taking
about three dollars and fifty cents to
taking
three dollars so that added 50 cents
back in my pocket
and i raised my price of dollars so it
added a whole a dollar fifty
of straight profit into my pocket and
another very important principle
is if you want to make more money you
can either decrease your cost which troy
did
or you can increase your price which
troy also did and that that's
really an easy way and a lot of times
another big principle people aren't
always as price sensitive as you might
think
on amazon people if it's a dollar more
or a dollar less a lot of times they're
just gonna buy whatever they want and
whatever looks good
it doesn't make that big of a difference
so i would recommend always trying to be
within reason the most expensive and the
best product rather than trying to be
the cheapest
and the you know trying to just be the
cheapest and the worst product
that's not a long-term strategy so let's
move into month
number three how much revenue how many
sales
month three actually decreased a little
bit which i'm not exactly sure why i
think i also might have run
into a little problems with revenue as
far as like i did
uh when i did my first shipment i did
three packs and then i also did
like a bulk 60 pack which weren't
selling at all
so that was a big problem and so what i
had to do was i had to create a removal
order for all those
and i sh and then i bought my own
packaging and my own
fn sku numbers to put onto the packaging
and then eventually i shipped those back
into amazon which was a couple
unexpected costs that you know i had to
do 100
worth of baggies and then to print the
labels and then about another
50 to 100 of shipping it back into
amazon
right so after after product cost amazon
fba fees
all those different things you have a
total profit of around 200 i think
yeah okay so at this point how are you
feeling about amazon are
you feeling like it's a good opportunity
or are you still kind of
iffy yeah i'm i'm feeling good about it
as far as
i'm profitable after month three which
which i was stoked on
to be making money there and i knew that
i could keep going
and that if i started to do things right
because i i knew i was making mistake
after mistake and i knew like eventually
i would get things
streamlined and like get costs down and
so if i could get that up to like five
hundred dollars to a thousand dollars
like i would have been
i would have been really happy because i
was just my goal is kind of about to
to pay for rent basically with it's like
make around a thousand dollars-ish
with with it but let's go into month
number four where you did about eighteen
hundred dollars in revenue
and sold around 300 units
right so i was getting back on track i'd
also put colors
into my repertoire now because i took
those mix
60 packs and i now sent them back in as
three packs with
different colors i think that helped get
me back yeah so then i had my best month
um again profited around 300 ish
um and so i was like okay well i'm
growing a little bit
here by month by month but now comes
the really big mistake that cost you
sixteen hundred dollars and make sure to
smash that like button because this is
troy he's bringing the value here
like he made 600 1600 worth of mistakes
so you can learn from him
smash that like button but let's talk
about the mistake and let's talk about
month number five
yeah so month number five is when
everything changed for me so i had
i was doing about 10 or 10 units a day
which is about 600 of of profit but then
the 300
of ppc i was doing so 300 so sticking
around 300.
so on June 14th, I woke up one morning
and all my inventory was gone
very good thing usually right I saw like
ten twelve thousand dollars in my amazon
number and I was like wow this is I'm
gonna be out but like who cares I just
made 12
000 of revenue, yeah but then I realized
that i didn't have anything in like my
profit
the center or like where the transfer is over
like I had a bunch of
things in promo and rebates so I was
like what promo rebate do I have
going on so about a week before I had a
customer reach out to me and said hey i
didn't receive my product
Amazon delivered it to the wrong address
so I was like okay I know where is that
here's a free
coupon for uh for code also I don't
think you can give away a free
coupe-like 100 free yeah I don't think
you can so I tried to do it at 99
so I made like a taken free 99 code
to that i customized i didn't know that
there was a difference between
promotions and coupons
and the way it works out is if you
create a custom
coupon it goes out to the entire world
without
or custom promotion it goes out to the
entire world
no matter what so everybody got access
to
my grips so people were buying hundreds
of grips
at a time which I have since seen on
by people reselling my grades oh that
hurts yeah
um so but either way so i
contacted amazon right away luckily i
woke up and like it would only like been
an
an hour past since that had happened so i
called eBay canceled as many orders as
I could
but some of them had already been
processed so about 250 of them had
already gone through
which at seven dollars a grip it cost me
about sixteen hundred dollars
which that's just what amazon took
because I had to pay the full seven
dollars
plus the dollar fifty that it cost me to
make the grip so it was like an
eight dollars and fifty cents error per
the 250 dollar
or to the 250 units that I lost so in
month five
you sold around you did about four
thousand dollars in revenue
sold again around 400 units or so
and then after your product cost amazon
fba fees all the other fees
what was your net profit yeah so i
would have net profit at about a
thousand dollars
but due to that error, I ended up losing
about 600
that month ouch but here is where things
start to get really interesting
is a lot of times what I found in my
life and you'll see in a second here
sometimes the worst things that happen
end up leading to some of the best
things with your business and in life
so let's go into month six and this is
where things start turning around a
little bit
month six how much in revenue how many
units did you sell right so
since I had that huge mess up that I was
doing about 10
units a day I started doing about 15
units a day 20 units a day
all of a sudden I was doing 3 30 units a
day and
was crushing it and I was kind of
taking my pic cost down
dollar by day to like since I didn't
need to spend so much since I was doing
so well
and now I'm doing about a thousand units
a month
ever since that so once five six seven
have now been a thousand units and if
I'm profiting two dollars you know
that's around two thousand dollars a
the month that I'm
profiting so that's enough in Santa
Monica which is where I live where he
lives
at a freaking amazing town where rent's
extremely expensive
enough to pay rent in what I assume is
probably one of your dream locations
there's nowhere else I'd rather live
that to me is the power of amazon and
also the power of thinking long term
but before we go into troy's biggest
lesson comment down below about a
mistake
you've made that ended up leading into
something really amazing and
let's transition if you could go back in
time if you could tell your previous
self before you started selling on
amazon
one thing what would it be and why
yes so many things but I think
the biggest thing would
would be to have somebody to talk to so
that I don't
have to make these mistakes that like i
had two older brothers and it was so
nice to learn from all their mistakes
that i didn't have to make those
mistakes growing up so like when I was
doing this I just watched youtube videos
and then
went ahead and did it which was a great
learning experience yeah it taught me a
lot
but it would have been nice to talk
to somebody about the shipping whether i
want to do
by c or buy a plane and just get my
inventory in and start selling
um so those were would be some things
like I didn't know how to create
a campaign or like what images would be
right or like I kind of knew some good
keywords but there's also like because
I'm competing against Wilson in head but
like
can I use those keywords in my listing i
don't I don't know it's like it would
have been nice to have somebody
to talk to about that who's been there
and done that and this is one of the
most important principles
don't try to do this by yourself the
The biggest success I've had is when I've
surrounded me
with other people at my level and when
I've been able to have people ahead of
me
to ask questions to and if you want my
help for free
you can watch this video right here
learn how to take my course
for free and get step-by-step
instructions on how to launch
your own passion products so click on
that video we'll see in the next video
and thanks for watching
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