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Used to be Amazon FBA. I actually jumped into that thing with the highest of hopes. I had fully convinced myself I was going to break out of the cycle of wage slavery. When I launched in 2019, I envisioned myself living off passive income by this time in my life.

And the business was relatively successful for a short period of time, however I wasn’t able to supplement my income and the supply chain interruptions killed my supplier company. I decided to shut down shortly thereafter due to a lack of capital needed to restart.

Here I am today with no more side business, still working a miserable 9-5, living paycheck to paycheck, barely any better off.

How hard was it?

I've been in IT for 25+ years. I run a very small side hustle of doing IT on the nights and weekends.

Easier than an everyday normie would think, but way harder than the FBA “gurus” like to claim. Most of those guys are just selling courses because they failed to make enough money in their own Amazon venture. Hustling $500+ courses and generating views on social media for commission payouts is a lot more lucrative for basically zero startup $$$.

The biggest thing they don’t tell you is how much you’re going to drop on PPC advertising just to gain traction. No first page = no sales. No PPC = no 1st page. There are other ways to drive traffic of course, but Amazon sorta gamed the system so that the most effective way is through them.

I learned what I did just watching YouTube videos. There was also a misc thread years ago that was very helpful. Brahs were making BANK. But also Amazon FBA was a WAY better opportunity in the early to mid 2010s. Back in those days you could literally import a box of genetic chit from Alibaba, sell it for a 200% markup and live good. Wish I knew then what I know now.

Unfortunately today the Chinese manufacturers have infiltrated the marketplace and undercut American sellers. They can afford to. They have no aversion to using illicit black hat tactics either. Fake reviews, sabotaging competitor listings and so forth.

Also, Amazon has become oversaturated in most niches. Your best bet is to build a brand. Meaning extensive market research, product design, some sort of innovation to differentiate yourself, advertising, etc.

If you have a good idea and a pile of cash, go for it. It’s still a decent opportunity. If you’re just planning to sell private label items, there are way better opportunities out there and there’s a chance you’d lose money with FBA.

Wizard^Nice bro, mirin trying to make it.

What were you selling & who was your supplier?
How much money did you use to get the prices low enough?
What amount of capital did you need?
Did you advertise your chit?

Tell us the details mang

Stock market. FML

I have a rental property and dividend stonks, that's about it right now

1/3 or 2/5 No limit Holdem

Thanks brah. I’m glad I tried it.

See above reply to ftreironmik3 for most info, but my supplier was a medium sized manufacturer based in China. I think they shut down when covid hit.

I was selling vape accessories, which is funny because I don’t even vape and never have, but I identified an opportunity in the marketplace where my niche was not saturated. Most people wouldn’t touch that category because TECHNICALLY I was selling “restricted items” that Amazon did not allow, however they did not enforce their policy on these accessories because they didn’t contribute to the function of vapes nor any other smoking products. Really they could be used for other things as well.

As far as money, I want to say I put in about $2,000 to get started. Maybe a little more. That covered paying the supplier, shipping, importing, a logo designer on Fiverr and PPC. I took my own photos with an iPhone 7 and photoshopped them over a white background. In the business world $2k isn’t much, but it was literally everything I had to my name at the time srs.

Ads were pay-per-click (PPC), which if unaware basically boosted my listing to the top of the first page at the expense of paying a small amount each time a customer visited the link whether or not they bought. Eventually I was able to organically rank without advertising and was the #5 product of my type on Amazon.

Also worth noting it took roughly 3-4 months between starting negotiations with my supplier and actually getting my fist sale on Amazon. Production is not quick.

I'm Procurement Director at a dispersion and pigment company. I would love to start selling pails and drums of excess/unwanted raw materials that the company quarantines until expiry or disposes of at a loss. Cash in hand, baby.

Besides that, I set up Amazon accounts for small businesses and get them ready for both FBM and FBA selling, as well as educate them on how to manage everything.

Selling paintings of anime characters on the streets without a proper license from the IP.

Lawn and Landscape business. It's been extremely good to me. It's always nice to have a fully paid off setup to fall back on if you get let go from your 9-5.

lmao repped

My Robinhood brokerage account srs. Up 30% YTD.

p4g

Candle production and sales with my wife. Have hit great sales figures for the past three years and we started at the beginning of the pandemic. Some people got worried and rotted. We started another business.

that is what i heard too, that drop shipping and FBA type selling had way better margins back in the day and by the time it got "popular" and mainstream it was basically over and amazon and the chinese captured up those huge margins, FBA fees went up a lot ect.

That sounds like fun

Would love to start a side hustle that involves making stuff, got a friend of a friend who just started forging knives

Crypto but its really my main hustle (ded fkn srs)

What makes PPC ads better than regular ads and why would it boost you to the top ? Are they much more expensive than regular ads ?

I trap and remove nuisance animals.

Uber

hanging christmas lights SRS



tradie crew

Flipping camera gear, easy way to make 100-300 bucks here and there.

Forged steel products are awesome. Wished there were more businesses that did it locally.

Yeah man, have watched my share of Forged in Fire

A lot of metallurgy stuff is interesting af, welding would be cool too

I did that for a bit and it turned into a great big hassle.
stopped like 8 yrs ago when i got my first really big promotion.

during pandemic i was selling off some of my vintage motherboards on ebay.
i never threw any pc stuff out so made a few bucks off that.

currently working on an actual hobby shop area in my basement so i can utilize my CNC, laser engravers, and 3d printers in an organized environment in order to sell stuff made with them.
i burn photo's to wood ornaments and custom engrave cutting boards here and there.
it's just my hobbies but if I can make a few dollars off it then why not?

Lmao. Bruh, my mom hired some smuck to hang our Christmas lights like 7 years ago and they are still up there. Our house has a higher roof which makes it difficult but he did a really good job. Our lights is very simple but its really aesthetic. But because they've been up so long, they've becomed misaligned.