Working online-an update

It's been a while since I've posted here so I'll try to update what's been going on in my life, at least the online portion of my life.

I have been very busy for the past few months launching a new income stream. (Multiple income streams is something I've mentioned several times in the past)

In this case, after spending a couple of months working with the DSDomination drop shipping program (linked on the upper right of this blog) and doing pretty well, I stepped up my game and added Amazon FBA to my bag of tricks. FBA stands for "Fulfilled By Amazon" and it simply means that you source products from wherever you wish, box them up and send them into Amazon. Once they hit Amazon, they take care of everything else. You no longer have to worry about shipping individual items creating listings, customer service or any of the time eating activities that you may be suffering from working on eBay. Don't get me wrong, eBay is great for getting rid of your own stuff and for sourcing from Amazon and drop shipping. 

The upside of DS Domination is that it teaches you how to work in the online arena and source and sell products. It's basically the boot camp of this type of retailing. After you've done it for a few months and if you want to up your game and make more money, the next move is to Amazon FBA.

Another upside is that you are not working with your own money if you follow the program. When you list an item on eBay, you don't actually possessed the product at that time so you have not put out any money upfront. When your item sells, the buyer send you money directly into your PayPal account which you then use to go to Amazon and purchase the product and have it shipped to your buyer. It's a great way to shoestring your way into online retailing without having to invest a lot of money.

While it is an awesome program that DS Domination teaches, the downside is that it can be very much of a time sink to keep it going at any significantly profitable level.  It is a constant cycle of searching on Amazon to find products, checking on eBay to see if you can make a profit, creating a listing and then waiting to see if it sells. If it does sell, then you must go back to your source on Amazon and order the product and have it shipped to your eBay customer. You also need to handle your own customer service and the back-and-forth communication's with your buyers if there are any. If you are only selling 10 or 15 items on eBay, it's not that time-consuming. If you only need to make another $100-$300 a month and keep it on a part-time casual basis, this is really all that's needed. If, on the other hand, you actually want or need to create a significant income, eBay becomes a major part of your day and it's not really possible to do this while you're working 40 to 60 hours a week.

The next step is to up your game by starting an Amazon Seller's account. 

There are two types of Amazon Seller accounts; The first one is called "Merchant Fulfilled" and is similar to eBay in that you are doing all of the product handling and shipping and creating your listing on Amazon rather than eBay. There is some benefit to this because Amazon is effectively the world's largest retailer and has a huge following and a tremendous customer base. Potentially, your listing will be seen by a lot more people than if it were just on eBay. Amazon's customers are very loyal and typically will shop at Amazon and not price shop other places. Amazon also has the benefit of their Amazon Prime program which offers free, two-day shipping for Prime members. This is a huge draw and prime members will often pay a higher price for the same item just to get that free two-day shipping.

The next is the Amazon FBA program. FBA stands for Fulfilled By Amazon and this program allows you to send all of your products directly to an Amazon Fulfillment Center where Amazon handles everything for you for a fee.  There are numerous fees involved which ultimately can add up to approximately 1/3 of your sale price. While that may sound like a pretty steep hit to take, if you run the numbers and take into account the amount of time you are saving by not having to deal with your own packing, shipping, and customer service it actually works out pretty well. Add to this the Amazon customers loyalty that draws premium prices and this game can be quite profitable.

If you want more information about this feel free to contact me directly.

If you are interested in getting started just use the link in the upper right-hand corner of this blog under favorite links to jump over to my intro video and sign up page for DS Domination.

Deals-by-Dana on both Amazon and eBay