An FBA Advantage – Freedom to Travel!

Here is a guest post that I did on one of my favorite blogs – Adam Bertram’s Sell Your Books Online.  The freedom of location was one of the main reasons I decided to get involved with Amazon FBA and continues to be a huge motivator for me – Let me know what you think of the post!:

“Imagine that you’re an online book seller.  You have a profitable business going, but no employees.  You have a few thousand books and you sell a few each day, seven days a week.  Life is good – you have created a profitable business working from home!

Then one day you decide to take a week vacation.  You long into Amazon and Half.com and put your listings on “vacation” setting.  You remove your books from eBay.  You’re having a good time on vacation but in the back of your mind you know that you are not making any money.  Worse than that, you fear that potential customers are buying books that are usually in your inventory from competitors.  You try to decide when to end your “vacation” settings – when you return or two business days before returning?  Do you really want to get back and have to ship a dozen books as soon as you walk in the door?

This was my experience two years ago.  My long term goal was and is to build a business and travel – A LOT.  I realized that this may not be possible with selling books online.  Did I just waste almost two years learning everything I could about selling books online, finding sources of inventory, and investing in supplies and inventory?

About a year and a half ago I started experimenting with Amazon FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon).  I have found that not only has FBA made my business more profitable – it has also made it less time consuming, easier, and most importantly, given me more freedom.

With FBA, Amazon stores and ships my inventory for me.  I do not need to be chained to my house anymore to ship orders or even to answer customer emails (Amazon does this for me).

A few months ago I decided to experiment with FBA remotely.  I found a huge book sale across the country in a city where my brother lives.  I packed my laptop and my wife and I hopped on a plane.  I spent parts of 2 days at the book sale and the rest of the week I had fun.  Before I returned home I bought some boxes, borrowed my brother’s printer, and shipped hundreds of books to Amazon.

I flew back home at the end of the week without taking any inventory with me.  I realized that two great things resulted:  1) while I was away I was selling books each day and making money, and 2) the books I acquired while away later sold for more than enough to cover my travel expenses!

For me, FBA has changed my entire business for the better – I have nearly all my inventory in FBA now.  Of course there are negatives to FBA – it can take awhile to learn, the fees are higher, and sales rankings are more important than anything (even price).  If you are interested in selling only antique or collectable books FBA will probably not be profitable.  If your goals are like mine – building a profitable business and being able to travel – FBA may be worth looking into.”

I have recently begun to take this to the next level – if I can find used books to resell while I travel, why not other products?  In fact, I have been learning how to sell brand new retail items that I can find at retailers and flip for high profit margins on Amazon!  If you are interested in learning about this as well, I highly recommend the new ebook by Chris Green – “Retail Arbitrage”.  The price is substantial ($97) but if you are serious about learning this skill it is worth the investment.  I will be doing a full review of the book soon on my blog.  Another great book is “Barcode Booty” by Steve Weber, available on Amazon.com or Weberbooks.com.