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Category: FBA

Documenting my strategy and journey starting an FBA business.
FBA

How I Sold My FBA Business for Six Figures and Generated a 530% ROI in 8 Months!

Today’s post is an exciting one! The success of my authority site conversion to an Amazon FBA brand has been a huge success and today I can announce that a successful sale has been completed!

In this post I will share everything (except the URL) of the business I launched and the sales process from my FBA business.

Sell Your FBA Business FAST!

If you are looking to sell your highly profitable FBA business with a lot of history and have time then this post will show you all the options available to you. 

​

However for those of you who were like me and don't meet all those requirements your options are limited. If you want to explore all your options for selling your FBA business click on the link below and I can see if the team I have built to buy FBA businesses is the right setup for you...

​

Your Options Are Limited If You Meet Any Of These Criteria...

  • Not making over $2k/month
  • Can't wait 1-3 months for money to hit your account! (regardless of size)
  • Your business hasn't been running for at least 12 months

However, even if your businesses situation is the same as any of the items above click on the button below and fill in the form and you will be able to receive an offer on your business today!

Sell Your FBA Business TODAY!

​How Much is My FBA Business Worth?

​If you are interested in seeing the state of the industry when it comes to Amazon FBA business sales then I highly recommend checking out this free report!

​

If you are like me you want to see the results…the money…the numbers… I won’t make you scroll if you don’t want to…

Initial Investment

53 k$ Initial Investment

Final Sales Price

​

334 k$ Final Sale Price + Net Earnings
530 % Return on Investment in 8 Months!
  • My Original Plan = Invest $100k and build a business to sell for $297k (197% return)
  • The Actual Results = Invested $53k and sold the business for a sticker price of $281k in 8 months (530% return)

If you like numbers and graphs enjoy this beast of a post showing you all the gritty details about the business.

If you enjoy reading this post as much as I enjoyed writing it… you probably have issues 😉

Table of Contents
PART 1 - My Authority Affiliate Site to FBA “Can’t Fail” Business Plan
3 Benefits of This Model:
PART 2 - Previous Posts Regarding This Case Study
PART 3 - Original “Can’t Fail” Amazon FBA Business Plan
PART 4 - Business Timeline (Approximate)
PART 5 - Original Plan vs Actual Results Compared
PART 6 - Unique Amazon FBA Business Sale Multiple and Deal Terms
Where I Sold My Website and FBA Business
Creative Win-Win Deal
Valuation Bridge
Key Deal Terms:
Earn out Basis:
Detailed Transition Plan:
6 Learning’s from the Sales Process:
Hijackers Almost Killed the Deal BUT… an Idea was Born:
PART 7 - How to Sell an Amazon FBA Business
7 Tips to Setup Your FBA Business Now to Sell Later
How Much Is My FBA Business Worth?
5 Places to Sell or Buy FBA Businesses
Should You Use a Broker or Sell Your FBA Business Privately?
PART 9 - Conclusion
PART 10 - Opportunity For You – Work With Us To Take This Brand To The Next Level!

PART 1 - My Authority Affiliate Site to FBA “Can’t Fail” Business Plan

​

The plan with my move into Amazon FBA was first shared here. After hearing about Amazon FBA for over a year I swore I was not going to jump into a new business without an advantage.

This advantage took the form of a website that I had purchased from my eventual partner of BrandBuilders.io (affiliate site creation package is equivalent to what I bought) which was making $100/month that I had grown to make $1,000/month on Amazon Affiliates.

Seeing that many of the products this site was selling could seemingly be easily imported from China and private labelled I decided on a weekend my wife had left me alone to jump in an start a new business!

The basic concept of the model was to turn the 8% affiliate commissions into 48% private labelled product profit margin!

The simple model is to use the traffic from my website to promote the private label brand I import.

The simple 3 step plan was as follows...

3 Benefits of This Model:

  1. Product Selection Is Easy – You are now selecting a product you know you can sell because you are already selling a similar product. Product selection can be a large stumbling block and this strategy helps remove that problem.
  2. Huge Initial Promotion Not Required – The common strategy is to run at a loss while you continue to promote until you have “bought” sales rankings…this is not required (but can still be effective) with this model since you are already driving sales to your listings. Plus as Amazon turns down the weight they put on sales generated by huge promotions this strategy will become even better!
  3. Minimal Risk of Capital to Buy Inventory – Since you can be reasonably confident your site will drive sales your capital is not at substantial risk. Buying the first order everyone has the fear "what if none sell" but since you have a website to drive the sales you can again be more confident you won't be stuck with product that won't move.

PART 2 - Previous Posts Regarding This Case Study

If you are new to my website or haven’t seen the previous posts here is a summary of all the locations I have talked about

Posts On AuthorityWebsiteIncome.com About FBA Business...

No results have been returned for your Query. Please edit the query for content to display.

Podcast Interviews on This Business Model

  • Empire Flippers Interview - https://empireflippers.com/fba/
  • TheAmazingSeller Podcast 1 – How to Build a Brand
  • TheAmazingSeller Podcast 2 – How to Fight Amazon Hijackers
    • ListingEagle (Real Time Hijacker Monitoring and Alerts For Your Listings)
  • NichePursuits – Not Yet Published

PART 3 - Original “Can’t Fail” Amazon FBA Business Plan

So going into this business I made several assumptions about how the business was going to perform and shared them publicly on this site when I first started back in September.

Basically I created a model trying to answer the question of if I invested $100k and spent $50k to purchase affiliate site(s) and used the other $50k for working capital what would the return profile look like?

  • NOTE – In my case I spent substantially less because I grew the site from a $100/month to $1,000-$1,500 per month site. For the purposes of this post/analysis I will treat the site as if I purchased it for $30k.

Here are the assumptions I had back when I started…

Keep reading and I will show how each of these assumptions actually turned out in reality!

PART 4 - Business Timeline (Approximate)

Below is an overview from the time when I decided to start building this business to the point when the deal closed.

PART 5 - Original Plan vs Actual Results Compared

This business had a lot of assumptions when I built the plan back in September. Many of these numbers were flat out guesses and I truly didn’t have a clue at how they would turn out.

Original Plan Summary – Invest $100k and generate a return of 191% within the year

So What Were The Actual Results Compared to the Plan?

Above shows a lot of the data for the business including the affiliate site engine driving this business and the substantial traffic increase it is experiencing right now!

There was a substantial failure in the business and that was one affiliate site I purchased died shortly after purchasing it. I have included none of the revenue it generated in this analysis but did include the $12k cost in the upfront capital. 

The potential sales price is $270k but what did I actually sell it for and what were the terms of that sale?

See below…

PART 6 - Unique Amazon FBA Business Sale Multiple and Deal Terms

Where I Sold My Website and FBA Business

I considered a few options to sell my FBA business including EmpireFlippers.com but in the end my decision was to first attempt to sell to my audience directly by announcing the business was for sale here.

In the end there were a few groups that were interested and the conversations progressed over several months including…

  1. Private Equity Group
  2. Marketing Company
  3. Private Investor

The synergy with the private equity group was low while the marketing company had some solid upside opportunities but in the end the most benefit that could be realized by the buyer was for the private investor.

I can say that the entire process took longer than expected (although in hindsight I shouldn’t have been surprised).

Creative Win-Win Deal

The buyer is a highly talented/hard working Sr VP of a fortune 100 company who is looking to apply his considerable focus and skills into a new venture. As part of the terms of the sale I will remain heavily involved/invested in getting him trained up to ensure he succeeds online! He was looking to purchase online businesses and for a very small premium he is getting a business that comes with extensive 1:1 training and me very incentivized to see him succeed all while investing only a portion of the final value of the site up front.

Valuation Bridge

How did we come up with a fair price? We used the baseline for FBA businesses selling in the marketplace and then made adjustments (some negative & some positive) to come to what was believed to be a fair number for all.

The $284 sticker price (tweaked to get to $281k) is only part of the deal terms with many additional terms added in to help protect the buyer and make this deal more of a win-win.

Key Deal Terms:

  • Closing Date – May 10, 2016
  • Down Payment = $100k (due once transition is complete)
  • Earnout = $87.4k (Due Jan 15, 2016 based on the table below)
  • Detailed Transition Plan to be Executed (See transition plan below)
  • Ownership & Earnings 
    • Jon – 1/3rd partner
    • Partner – 2/3rd general partner

Earn out Basis:

Detailed Transition Plan:

6 Learning’s from the Sales Process:

  1. Lawyers can cost a lot of money – Although not going through a broker I thought I was saving the 15% by making this deal a little complicated the legal fees added up on both the buyer and sellers side. The vast majority of the terms were solved before they even got to the lawyer but it still cost a lot of money to work through the deal.
  2. Sales Process Is Complicated – This was my second sale of an asset with a sticker price over six figures and both times it took a lot of time for both the buyer and the seller to be comfortable with one another. Trust is huge and we certainly have it now but it takes time to naturally build it.
  3. Find a Win-Win or Don’t Sell – I hate inefficiencies in life and business and unless I was selling in order to make the pie bigger or to create a better win-win I would not sell again. Since much of the effort of selling a website is simply wasted energy working with people who ultimately don't buy, no fault of them it is the process but it is a lot of hard work that doesn't generate real results. Talking with potential buyers to see if they would be a good fit is part of the process and I am thrilled with the people I met as part of the process but it was not pushing the business forward.
  4. Data Transparency is Key – For all my spreadsheets calculating every number I had it built into a spreadsheet that goes right back to the raw data dump for every line item for both my affiliate site and FBA account. This level of detail helped to provide confidence with the data.
  5. Finding a Good Deal & Working With a “A” Players Is Fun and Pushes Me to Be Better!
  6. Accountants Can Help – The way a sale is structured can have significant tax implications. Reviewing the deal with my lawyer helped save a minimum of $14k in taxes by correctly structuring it.

Hijackers Almost Killed the Deal BUT… an Idea was Born:

During the sales process we started to get our first hijackers on our listings which…

  1. Increased the perceived risk of the business and could lower the sales price
  2. Stole sales again decreasing the sales price of the business
  3. Could damage the brand hurting the sales price of the business

The result of these hijackers was my wife checking our listings at every hour of the day to help fight them off since rapid aggressive responses are key!

Due to this problem I parterned with some awesome people to put together a tool that helps people monitor their listings and help their sleep deprived wife get some sleep J

See the solution to monitor your listings and the full story here…

Try ListingEagle & Defend Your Listings!

PART 7 - How to Sell an Amazon FBA Business

7 Tips to Setup Your FBA Business Now to Sell Later

  1. Make Sure All Data is Transparent - Don’t mix up multiple businesses or tracking codes. Data that is easy to check results in a better sales price.
  2. Setup a Business You Are Going to Sell On Its Own – For businesses you are thinking you are going to sell for a reasonable price tag it is best for it to be its own entity. For me I made the mistake of not doing this and as a result will forgo any small business capital gains tax breaks (Canadian specific tax credit).
  3. Build a Brand – Having a branded website for your private label brand will help increase your multiple by presenting yourself as a more established business.
  4. Get Diversified Traffic – I achieved this through my affiliate sites but however you do this it is important to not have any single point of failure in order to earn a premium multiple.
  5. Run Lean but Don’t Stop Running – If you are preparing to sell your business make sure to keep costs down but don’t stop pushing your business forward. The sales process can take a long time and it is vitally important that you continue to push your business forward during that time.
  6. Diversify Suppliers - Similar to above it is never a good idea to have a business that can fail with any single point of failure. If a business doesn't have a backup for its main supplier(s) it can hurt the sales price.
  7. Position Product in a Growth Niche – Positioning your product offering in a growth niche can provide a lot of interesting upside for a buyer. If you are looking to sell for a premium a dying market is not going to demand a premium.

How Much Is My FBA Business Worth?

FEInternational.com has a great post talking about selling an FBA business and from the image below shows that generally expect an FBA business to sell for 2.0X – 3.0X annual earnings (24X-36X monthly)

Source - http://feinternational.com/blog/how-to-sell-an-amazon-fba-business/

DigitalExits.com did a great summary analysing 15 deals in 2015 and found the multiple to be closer to 1.83X or 22X monthly earnings.

Source - http://www.digitalexits.com/amazon-fba-business-worth-want-sell/

EmpireFlippers have multiple FBA businesses for sale in their marketplace and have them priced from 22X-25X compared to 25X-30X for the websites for sale on their marketplace.

4 Places to Sell or Buy FBA Businesses

  1. EmpireFlippers.com
  2. DigitalExits
  3. FEInternational
  4. WebsiteClosers

I haven’t had much experience with these but certainly don’t recommend Flippa and can say that if I was going to list with a broker I would have listed with EmpireFlippers.com

Should You Use a Broker or Sell Your FBA Business Privately?

Reason to Use a Broker – The biggest benefit of a broker is the access to buyers who would be out of reach otherwise. The other large benefit of using a broker is their help in guiding you through the process with structured deal terms and some security to ensure you don’t get ripped off.

Hidden Cost of Using a Broker - Inflexibility to come up with a unique deal structure – If me and the eventual buyer had connected through a broker we would have struggled and been discouraged from coming up with this creative deal structure.

Reason to Sell Privately – Ability to structure a unique win-win deal was the main reason I liked the private sale model. In addition I was able to save the ~15% brokerage fees.

Hidden Cost of Selling Privately – Lawyers! Although they were necessary and did add value they certainly aren’t cheap!

Final Thoughts on Using or Not Using a Broker:

  • If you have a straightforward deal and don’t have access to potential buyers than definitely list with a brokerage.
  • If you have access to potential buyers and are looking to structure a unique deal than listing privately definitely makes sense.

Using a Broker Update (May 21) - Differing Opinion From Justin/Joe...

1. Yes, you avoid the broker fees selling yourself, but I think it's a bad idea for MOST people. (You're fine, Spencer's fine, etc. I'm talking about your average site owner) They don't know the ways they could be screwed over and aren't likely to get a great deal. In many cases, they sell for less. Avoiding the brokerage fee is only worthwhile if you're getting the same value, of course! (Jon Comment - I don't disagree here, getting experts to help is definitely worth it)

2. You mentioned not being able to get a "unique deal structure" is a hidden cost to brokers, but that's just not true. That's exactly what brokers DO! 🙂 We do earn-outs and deal structuring all day long as part of our value add. You COULD argue that a broker is more likely to offer complicated deal structures as their goal is to ultimately get the deal DONE, not to necessarily get the best price. (I think that's a better point, heh) (Jon Comment - I can't imagine how we would have gotten to this unique deal going through a broker...however I have not had enough experience with buying/selling sites to truly understand the unique deals brokers are able to structure so I believe it is possible to get some to truly unique deal structures with the HELP of a broker). 

Learn more about unique deal structures with this podcast episode​

PART 9 - Conclusion

Obviously this is a great success! I am thrilled with the growth of the business, the sale of the business and the next steps for me in this space!

Effort + New Problems = Opportunities

For the past 9 months in addition to building my other projects I have been putting a lot of effort into the FBA business and where effort flows opportunities follow.

The combination of effort and new problems has presented new opportunities which I am progressing with and excited about…

New FBA Projects:

BrandBuilders.io – Was born by partnering with the person who I purchased the original affiliate site from when it was only making $100/month and focusing on creating a web development service specifically focusing on FBA sellers looking to establish a “big brand” presence online. Or for people looking to repeat the model above a done for you affiliate site.

FBA Brand Websites & Done For You Affiliate Sites

ListingEagle.com – This SAAS was created due to the massive pain we had monitoring our listings for hijackers. Partnering with a great team including a programmer, business development lead and a couple advisers has helped this idea take shape within the span of a couple months.

Get Notified Immediately If Your Listing Gets Hijacked!

Partnership with Investor Syndicate – One of the groups I was first in talks with included a very accomplished group of investors who are looking for additional acquisition plays and working with them we are looking to rinse and repeat this model and then do so on scale once the model is validated again.

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR SIT AMET ELIT

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Buy it Now!

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Jon May 18, 2016 19 Comments
FBA

AMZTracker Review and my Amazon FBA Product Launch Process

With the start of my new Amazon FBA business back in September I needed to add new tools into my toolkit and systems to my business.

In this post I am going to show you how I use of one of these tools to help run my FBA business.

This will be a review (and I am an affiliate) but more important I will share exactly how I have worked this tool into my business systems!

My unique FBA strategy includes driving traffic to my listing from my authority site and the tool AMZ Tracker has become an integral part of my overall Amazon FBA Business strategy.

Start Your Trial Now
Quick Navigation
My Amazon Product Launch Process & How I Use AMZ Tracker in my FBA Business
Review of AMZ Tracker Features
AMZ Shark vs AMZ Tracker
Does AMZTracker Have a Discount or Free Trial?
Final Comments

My Amazon Product Launch Process & How I Use AMZ Tracker in my FBA Business

amztracker
  1. When sourcing a product add competitors to AMZ Sales Tracker
    • This can be done while you are researching products and if you want very accurate sales tracking (assuming they have < 1,000 units in inventory).
    • Or the way I have done it is as soon as I decide I am going into a niche and start ordering samples I add the competitors I have identified into AMZTracker to get a historical graph of sales rank etc. This historical view will help me see how often people use promotions in this niche etc.
  2. As soon as listing is live add it to AMZ Tracker
    • As soon as you have created your listing add it to AMZTracker. Even if you don’t have any inventory in yet you can still add it in.
  3. Add keywords (I limit my focus to ONLY 10 keywords)
    • TIP – Although you can enter a TON of keywords I highly recommend you add only ~10 or so per listing so that you can optimize and focus your listing and other efforts around these. I learned this lesson the hard way bye adding in dozens and dozens of keywords for a listing and as a result spread my efforts too thin. I don’t know what the “right” number is to focus on but for me an initial focus on 10 seems to be the right manageable number to both optimize around and focus on.
    • One of the tools AMZTracker has that I am not a huge fan of is its keywords research tool. It simply doesn’t give me the data I want in the way I want it. Maybe I am too used to using Google Keyword Planner or LongTailPro to have given it a fair shot.
  4. Create a SuperURL that rotates through the 10 target keywords
    • One super URL link for my website that has my Affiliate ID
    • One link for promotions, emails, advertising that does not have my Affiliate ID
  5. Launch a ReviewClub promotion
    • Typically I do a 95% off 20 code promotion
    • Like everyone has told you a 100 times! DO NOT use a general Claim Code.
    • I do look at each reviewer and pick reviewers that seem to be in my buying demographic to both get a better review and ideally get a more genuine review.
  6. Track movement on 10 target keywords for one month
  7. Optimize listing to focus on the 5 leading keywords
    1. After 1 month I will see what I am ranking decently for and will focus my efforts on those keywords. I believe it is better to rank in the top few positions for a few keywords and let. To select these keywords I have essentially let Amazon tell me what they want to rank my listing for out of the 10 initial keywords I was targeting and then
      • Adjust my SuperURL that is driving traffic from my website to only focus on the 5 leading keywords
      • Adjust my listing based on the On Page Analyzer
    2. Ongoing Monitoring (daily or weekly)
      • Monitor Negative Reviews
      • Monitor Keyword Ranking
      • Monitor Sales Rank
        • My Listings
        • Competitor Listings

Review of AMZ Tracker Features

  • Amazon Keyword Rank Tracking – The keyword tracking tool is pretty straightforward and provides enough detail to show you how your keywords are performing.
Amazon FBA Keyword Tracker
  • Amazon FBA Sales Rank Tracking – I find this tool VERY useful. By adding in competitors you can really see how much they are doing promotions (high sales in 1-2 days) to determine the cost of buying the same organic sales they are experiencing. I don’t care much about the total inventory number shown but care more about the total sales. Again the best part of this tool is the ability to see on competitors if they are heavily using promotions to drive up their sales rank. This then gives a rough idea of how much you need to be prepared to drive to get equivalent sales rank.
Amazon Sales Rank Tracker
  • FBA Listing Negative Review Alerts – The negative review alerts is not overly helpful. Maybe I am missing the point but there is not a huge benefit I realize with this tool compared to simply logging into my Amazon Seller dashboard and reviewing all feedback both positive and negative to be able to make adjustments to the product.
  • Amazon Listing Search Optimizer – This tool is very handy especially when just starting out to get your listing decently set up. I have continued to use it as a double check to make sure I have my listing optimized. IMPORTAN – Although this tool is useful make sure that your first priority is creating a listing that flows well and converts a human. You can have a perfectly optimized listing according to this tool but if it is terribly written keyword stuffed garbage it won’t be helping you make sales. So first priority should be the “real” people visiting your listing and then you should also ensure you have done a sufficient job of including the components required for Amazons Search Algorithms and this tool is a great check for that second priority.
  • Amazon FBA Keyword Research - This feature I don’t find very useful, unless I am using it wrong it simply generates a TON of suggestions but gives no indication of volume or competition.
  • Super URLs - ONLY use super URLs with your affiliate ID on YOUR website. Do not email super URLs (with your affiliate ID),
  • AMZ Tracker Review Club – This was one of the main selling features for me. Having a review club tied in directly to a tool I already planned on using was a huge bonus. It allows me, as I showed above, to incorporate a large amount of the monitoring and promotions within 1 tool!

AMZ Shark vs AMZ Tracker

Features

AMZ Shark

AMZ Tracker

Listing Keyword Tracking

150 keyword tracking

500 keyword tracking

FBA Sales Rank Tracking

300 listings for sales rank tracking

Unlimited keywords for rank tracking

Negative Review Alerts

300 products monitored for negative reviews

100 products monitored for negative reviews

Listing Optimizer

N/A

Yes – Useful one off optimizer to help especially new sellers create a well-optimized listing.

Amazon Keyword Research

Unlimited keyword explorer

Unlimited keyword explorer

Super URL Generator

Included

Included

Review Club

Not Included

Unlimited – Big differentiation for me!

Niche Research

Included – NicheScout

Not included but AMZTracker has a free stand-alone chrome extension “Unicorn-Smasher”

Price

$100/month (with only more expensive options)

$100/month (with both less & more expensive options)

Free Trial

Yes

Yes

Start Free Trial
Start Free Trial

The reason why I went with AMZTracker (although I have only heard good things about AMZShark from experts like Scott from TheAmazingSeller and his detailed resources page) is because of the higher limits for the price as well as the review club.

The edge for AMZ Shark seems to be the niche research but I have been using JungleScout for that and very happy with it.

If you are already using another review club like SnagShout or similar and aren’t using JungleScout than potentially AMZShark would be the right solution to try.

If you don’t already have JungleScout (also highly recommend) than using AMZ Tracker and their Jungle Scout Alternative (Unicorn Smasher) would be a good “

If you would want to think AMZShark is a better fit but want to find an alternative to their review club you can checkout SnagShout.

Does AMZTracker Have a Discount or Free Trial?

I do not have a discount code for AMZ Tracker but as mentioned above there is a free trial for AMZ Tracker.

AMZ Tracker Free Trial

Start Your Trial Now

Final Comments

I don’t know about you but typical review articles which are re-hashes of a sales page frustrate me. What AuthorityWebsiteIncome and I stand for is providing useful/actionable/systematized information to help you build your successful online business. My hope is this article although a review of a tool that I am an affiliate for has achieved that…however, I always welcome feedback and if you didn’t find this useful/actionable please let me know!

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Jon April 3, 2016 1 Comment
FBA

How To Conduct Keyword Research For FBA Sellers Website

Today we have the next post in the series on How to Build an Authority Website for an Amazon FBA Business. This monster post is a complete A-Z on how to complete Keyword research specifically for your brand

Dont have a website for your brand - Checkout BrandBuilders.io!​

In the previous article in this series, we talked about the importance of developing an authority website to compliment and drive your FBA seller private label campaign.

An authority website gives you more control over your brand, products, and ultimately your sales. Amazon gives you insane reach, and access to its huge marketplace, but your own website based around your brand can drive high value sales that make all of the difference.

If you want to enhance your passive income stream, building a website is the next step.

Keyword research is the important first stage of your website. It will shape the content of your site, and dictate the words, phrases, and content themes that you will use to target customers who are most likely to convert into buyers.

Why is Keyword Research Important?

Keyword research is considered the foundation of SEO and web development. This is due to search engines, and the phrases that potential customers enter when looking for something. A search engine's job is to provide highly relevant SERPs (search engine results pages) for user queries, and your job is to clearly stand out as a relevant match.

Google alone deals with 100 billion searches a month globally. Keyword research allows you to tap into the market, create content based on responding to search queries, and appear higher on results that are most relevant for your product or niche.

Keyword research helps you to gain valuable information. You can find out how popular a certain search term, gauge the interests and user intents of your niche, and respond to them. You can also find out the competition for keywords, and get an idea of how valuable they are to target in terms of both traffic and conversion.

The overall aim is to target the right audience using the right search terms.

A Quick Overview

The process of keyword research is, in itself, not too difficult. There are three major steps:

  1. Create a seed list of potential keywords, based on knowledge, research, and brainstorming
  2. Expand the list using keyword research tools
  3. Refine the list using keyword analysis tools, and by theming your keywords and content

You will create a small sample list of terms related to your product, based on what you expect people to search. You will then expand using tools that analyze search data and competitors. Then you will refine the list to leave you with your best keyword an keyphrase options, which we will group together.

You can these target the most profitable keywords, by grouping them into into themed content silo, according to their meaning.

Software and applications, many of which are free or inexpensive, allow you to make light work of your keyword research, and leave you with nothing much to “do” in terms of expansion and analysis.

Soon, I will walk you step-by-step through the entire process of building a keyword list. First, you need to know a bit more background information so that you can produce keyword lists that are meaningful and valuable, and know how to utilize them to get the best results.

What's Changed?

Keyword research, and the world of SEO in general, has changed dramatically since the early days of keyword-stuffing. Back then, websites could simply place huge volumes of popular keywords anywhere on their site; in the text, html, wherever, and would quickly move up the ranks.

Then came “keyword density”, where keywords were used a certain number of times to try and mimic natural text. What a load of nonsense.

Thankfully for all internet users, search engines now use more sophisticated algorithms to create more relevant and high quality SERPs. Keyword stuffing isn't just useless – it will now get you penalized really quickly. Your site will be seen as spam.

Now, it is all about using keywords and phrases in a natural way. Content should respond to search queries, and keywords should remain relevant to themes and topics. Google understands much more about the meaning of search enquiries, and tries to give the most relevant results to match the user's request.

The implication is that you (or your writer) should now be creating content primarily for readers. There is no doubt about it. Keywords should never be used at the detriment of the quality or relevance of your content and your website.

This does not mean that the use of keywords should be abandoned. They are still very important. Keywords tell search engine algorithms what your website is all about – the themes and intentions of your site, and help to match your content with a relevant audience.

One of the tricks (if you can call it that) you can still use, is to integrate well researched keywords naturally into your content, as well as into other key areas like the content title, headings, image alt tags, page title, and URL.

Never look spammy!

Overall, the aim will be to use keywords and phrases to facilitate a highly relevant and top quality website structure and content plan.

Long Tail Keyphrases – The Low Hanging Fruit

You can't stuff keywords anymore and expect to get away with it, so you will have to choose your keywords and phrases wisely, and try to gain authority in your niche.

When you conduct your research, you will choose keywords according to the volume of the search term, and also according to the level of competition. These stats will help you to determine what is worth targeting, and what it is possible to rank well for.

It is extremely difficult to become an authority for primary keyword like “swimming goggles”, or “goggles”. Difficult, but not impossible. If I type “swimming goggles” into google, the top results are from brands such as speedostore, proswimwear, zoggs and other companies that have pretty much dominated the top spots.

This doesn't mean you can't try to rank for major short keywords within your product niche, but it is likely that you will remain invisible for some time if you don't mix up your strategy. It's going to take a while before search engines recognizes you as being an authority worthy of ranking for the most popular short terms.

In the meantime, you will want to pull in some traffic and sales.


So, how do you use keyword research to compete?

As an FBA seller, it is likely that your product research came first. You found a product that qualified as a best seller, and that you could source from a supplier to turn a profit. (To find out the exact method of becoming an Amazon FBA Seller, see this article.)

Because you already have your product, let's say swimming goggles, you have no choice but to work with the keywords available in your niche.

The answer to this dilemma is long-tail keyphrases, known affectionately as the 'low hanging fruit' of the SEO world. Ripe for the picking, these keyphrases usually have a much lower search volume than major keywords, but also have much less competition, and are easier to rank for.

With well researched long-tail phrases, you can attract an instant audience, and you might even pull in some sales early on. As an added bonus, long tail terms are usually more specific. The user is looking for something specific, and by working with longer phrases you can create content that will match their enquiry closely.

Long-tail keywords collectively make up 70% of search volume. So, while it might seem pointless to target a single low volume long-tail phrase, a content plan which targets multiple long-tails will yield some pretty good results.

All the while, as you rank for more low volume long-tail phrases, the overall authority of your site will improve, and the search engines will begin to recognize you as a valuable source in your niche.

LSI & User Intent

A huge advancement in Google's algorithm over recent years, is Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI).

Google updates such as Panda, Penguin, and Hummingbird, have offered increasing sophistication when it comes to knowing the meaning of words and phrases, and matching this with the meaning of a search enquiry.

The bots can understand, through a complex mathematical process, that “swimming glasses” and “swimming goggles”, pretty much equates to the same search.

They understand that “purchase swimming goggles” and “buy swimming goggles” imply the same user intent. “Best swimming glasses for the sea” and “what swimming goggles are best for the ocean” are understand to have pretty much the same meaning.

As another example, the search engines know that when the words “Apple” and the word “laptop” are seen together, the user is nearly always looking for a brand of computer. It will not give you results for anything related to fruit.

The overall goal of LSI, is for search engines to understand what exactly the user is asking for when they search, and to match the enquiry with the most relevant web results. It is the next step in giving accurate and relevant SERPs.

Clever, eh? But what does all this have to do with your approach to keyword and content strategies?

Well, for a start it means that targeting single keywords and phrases is not as important for your rankings. It is now more important that your website be recognized for its main themes or silos.

It also means that you can use related keywords and phrases pretty much interchangeably, as long as they have the same meaning, and respond to the same user intent. It is therefore now best practice to group keywords according to meaning and search intent, and to focus on targeting these groups with an effective content strategy.

In effect, the semantic abilities of search engines have greatly improved. Google now indexes your website according to themes and overall meanings, as well as looking at individual keywords and phrases.

This means that you can gain authority by:

  • Making sure Google can recognize the main theme of your website, via primary keywords that are relevant to your product.
  • Grouping together keywords to create a structure of content around a certain topic or search intent (known as a content silo, which is covered in detail later in this article).
  • Using related long tail and short keywords naturally and interchangeably in content, targeting one theme per silo.
  • Providing peripheral content which is relevant to your overall content theme and product.

The aim is to become an authority in your niche. Eventually, by targeting longtail phrases, you can start to rank for a whole bunch of related terms without even having to target them individually – all due to the LTI of the search engines. You will also eventually begin to see higher rankings for your main keyword.

So, how do you theme your keywords and develop a content plan?

Interest, Intent, and Grouping Keywords

For FBA sellers, the best way to understand and group your keywords and content, is in response to audience interest and search intent.

This allows search engines to recognize the relevancy and authority of your site, and match it with search terms related to various stages of the buying process, which yields maximum impact for sales.

Pretty much all web searches can be broken down into four intentions, which make up a sales funnel: Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action. The further down the funnel the searcher, the more commercial their intent.

Awareness/Informational – These searches are purely informational. The user wants to be informed, inspired, or educated. Searches are often based on the “who, what, where, when, and why.” For example, “Who won the gold medal for swimming”, “What is lavender oil?”, “Can lavender oil be beneficial for skin”. Usually, the searcher has no commercial intent, though they can sometimes be directed down the sales funnel or towards a sale.

  • Keyword Value: Search terms at the awareness level have a medium value. They make up around 80% of all searches, and although they don't often have direct commercial impact, they do help you to gain brand awareness, attract links, gain SEO authority on keywords, and therefore increase your chance of future sales. You can also use your content at a purely informational level, with informational keywords, but drive soft sales calls to action or sign-ups.

Interest/Navigational – This is the search intention that you should be least concerned about for your keyword strategy. If anything you should actually eliminate any keywords that target this intention from your list. Navigational searches involve the user typing a destination into the search engine, out of laziness, or because they do not know the full URL of a business. Although they may have commercial intent, they are have already chosen their destination, and are just trying to get there. Search examples include “BrandBuilders”, “SEMRush”.

  • Keyword Value: Usually very low keyword value. There is a slight chance that you can hijack traffic from its expected destination, but this chance is low, bounce rates high, and in terms of your keyword strategy, navigational searches are not worth targeting.

Desire/Commercial – Here we start to get closer to the money. The search engine user has a commercial desire for something. They know what they want, but they don't know which one they want. Searches on this level of intention often involve phrases like “best”, “comparison of”, “benefits of”. Searches are often problem-based. For example, “what is the best type of essential oil for sensitive skin”, “what are the best swimming goggles in 2016”. “where can I find hotels in Manchester.” The user is trying to gauge more information about the product or service that they are looking for, and if their problem can be answered, they might just get their wallet out.

  • Keyword Value: High. Using keywords at this level of intention will result in more conversions. Your product sales landing pages should aim to solve user's problems, and provide a solution to their search. The solution should nearly always be your product or service. Commercial and informational content overlaps to some extent, and together should form the core of your keyword groups and content plans.

Action/Transactional: In the case of transactional searches, the user pretty much has their hand in their pocket ready to buy. They know what they want, have addressed any problems they needed to solve before buying, and are now they want to make a purchase (or sign up to a newsletter, or use a free service – money doesn't necessarily have to be involved). Search terms may include “buy X online”, “cheap/discount lavender oil”, “meat restaurant in New Jersey”, and so on.

  • Keyword Value: Transactional search terms have a very high keyword value, but are often the most competitive, and involve keyword terms that are tough to rank for. However, you should still aim to target these keywords as part of a long term SEO strategy, and doing so can dramatically increase conversions. Look out for long tail terms that have low competition. They are gold! Always make direct purchase of your item possible on this page, to respond to the user's desire to buy.

Once you have your expanded list of keywords (don't worry, we're getting to the actual method soon), you will group them into the categories of intent mentioned above. You will:

  • Disregard transactional keywords, at least for the moment.
  • Group informational keywords and searches into themes and topics.
  • Identify potentially valuable keywords and phrases on the commercial and transactional level.

You can see here that this creates a structural framework for your keywords and content. Here's how it translates:

  • In general, long-tail search terms tend to be found further up the funnel, especially for informational searches. You can usually find terms with relatively little competition, and use them to quickly rank and gain an audience. Your content can also be tailored to pull readers down the sales funnel with soft calls to action, or lead them to more commercial intent and content.
  • The closer towards the sale the user's intent, the more valuable the keywords tend to be. These keywords usually have more competition and are harder to rank for, but make up an integral part of your long term strategy. If you find a low competition commercial keyword, use it!
  • Use commercial and transactional keywords on your main sales pages. They should make up the “main theme” of your page. They yield a higher conversion rate, and therefore more profits. You will receive backup authority via the web of informational content and related long-tail keywords used in your informational silos, as search engines begin to recognize the peripherals around your main theme.

(So if you are an FBA seller who has a water filter bottle, you want search engines to understand that your main theme is selling the bottles, and that you also offer informational topics related to it. You want to rank for terms related to commercial intent, but have backup from easy to rank awareness searches).

Let's recap. So far we have learnt that:

  • Keyword research is very important for your website page rankings. The search engines need to know what your site is about, and to do this they take a look at the keywords that your site includes.
  • Search engine algorithms are more sophisticated than they used to be, and there are more factors at play. You can no longer stuff keywords and get results. You need to integrate keywords naturally, and refine a strategy around valuable words and phrases that the user will engage, share, and enjoy.
  • Long tail keywords are the 'low hanging fruit' of SEO. They may have less search volume, but they often have far less competition, so you can rank for them much more easily, and start to gain views and engagements on your FBA site.
  • Search engines now analyze the meaning of keywords and phrases on your website, and match them with the user's search intent. They will try to understand what the user is searching for, and match this with relevant websites. This means that you can gain overall authority by ranking for long-tail key phrases related to your product, and will rank for more difficult related terms as you gain this recognition.
  • You should be looking to organize your keywords and content by user intent, and targeting customers at various points in the sales funnel (disregarding the transactional stage). Creating content silos with grouped keywords will help you to theme your website according to search term categories.
  • Each stage of the sales funnel should aim to carry the reader down towards a sale. So, the informational content should link to commercial content, the commercial content to the transactional content, and the transactional to the sale.

The Tools For Keyword Research

It's time to get acquainted with the practical aspects of keyword research, of which the most important is the tools. There are hundreds of keyword research and SEO tools available online, and you might have your own preferences, but for your convenience here are some of the latest and greatest:

LongtailPro: My personal favorite! Enter a seed term, and watch as this software generates 800 more, giving you access to longtail keywords, which you can then analyze search volume, PPC costs, competitor data.

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SEMRush: This is one of your main ally’s in keyword analysis. It will give you rich data about search volume, cost-per-click, the number of competitors for keywords, and shows you a whole bunch of related keywords and key phrases. With it, you can gauge the overall difficulty of ranking for a particular keyword, as well as keep track of how well you are doing in the SERPs. It also makes a great tool for analyzing your competitors. It tells you thousands of keywords that they rank for, what keywords you share, what they rank for that you don't, and more. This is one of our main recommendations for your research.

Google Ads Keyword Planner: This tool is an excellent resource for keyword research. Switch it over to 'keyword ideas' and it can suggest keywords for you based on seeds. Afterwards, you can enter a list of potential keywords and receive data about search volume, along with the cost of running a paid advertising campaign – the higher the cost to advertise, the more valuable a keyword is likely to be to rank for. The 'Planner' replaced Google's old keyword tool, and is now much more orientated towards Adwords, but is still useful for keyword research and analysis.

Keywordtool.io: With long-tail keywords proving to be a highly effective approach to modern content keyword optimization, this is a fantastic tool. Enter a topic or seed keyword, and keywordtool.io will generate hundreds of related long-tail terms based on Google Autocomplete. You can export these phrases into other tools to see how they stack up for search volume and competition.

Buzzsumo: Buzzsumo gives you amazing insights into the social media world. Enter a topic idea to get a list of the most shared content across all major platforms including Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, and LinkedIn. Alternatively, enter a competitor's domain to see which topics went viral for them. This gives you unique insights into what your audience wants, and remember, shares and engagement also help you to rank. It's another tool in your arsenal that can help you to find hot topics and themes.

MerchantWords: Merchant Words is one of the only ecommerce/Amazon specific keywords. Even if you don't use Amazon getting an idea of what people search for on Amazon helps narrow your content focus. 

There are many tools for keyword planning and research, but the six mentioned above will yield more than enough data to provide you with all of the keywords and phrases that you need to formulate your content plan.

With them, you can take a simple seed keyword related to your FBA product or website, and conjure up hundreds more, analyze them, and start to assign them some sort of value.

Step-By-Step Guide To Keyword Research

It's time. Armed with the background knowledge to know why keywords are important, and what purpose they serve in today's SEO landscape, it is time to develop a keyword list.

Create Your Seed List

  • The first job, is to build a temporary seed list of keywords. To start, you can simply brainstorm your ideas. Think of search terms relevant to your FBA product, or the service you provide. Come up with some primary keywords, like “swimming goggles”. Try to come up with terms that capture what your product does, and what problems it solves.
  • Work with the Awareness – Desire – Action model of search intent, and choose seed keywords for each category – informational keywords, commercial keywords, and transactional.
  • Try to include long-tail keywords at seed level. This isn't crucial, as you can gather more later, but they are such an important part of your ranking strategy, that they should be built in from the early stages.
  • If you already have a website up and running, you can use Google Analytics or a similar tool, in order to see what search terms people already find your site with. This can give you some useful seed words to expand on.
  • Use Google Autocomplete to find popular suggestions based on major keywords and topics, or use software such as Keywordtool.io to do the work for you. Beware though, scraping with software at this stage may create overly-elaborate lists.
  • Be aware of the sphere of information and social sharing that exists for your product and niche. Keep up-to-date with news and relevant blogs to keep up with trends, and familiarize yourself with your audience. Use Buzzsumo to gain a deeper understanding of the social landscape, and find topics that you can use for keyword generation and content siloing.
  • See what terms competitors are already ranking with, using tools such as SEMRush to enter their domain.

The overall aim, is to create a list of relevant keywords for various user intentions and topics. The approach doesn't have to be overly analytical. You just need a starting point to expand from.

Build A Keyword List

  • Use your favorite keyword research tool to expand your list, and gain relevant data that will help you to know which keywords and phrases are worth targeting. We use SEMRush, but other tools work fine.
  • Type one or more of your seed keywords into your keyword tool, and set the results to “exact match”. You can enter a few seed words at once, but make sure you keep them grouped and themed together by intent and/or topic.
  • Check out options and filters to choose the market you are interested in. For example, it can be useful to set locations and languages if you only sell your product within one nation.
  • Select your data columns, so that the keyword tool shows monthly search volume, competition, and perhaps other stats like CPC. These stats can help you to quickly understand the value of keywords.
  • You can export the results to a spreadsheet to build your list. Select results that seem interesting, and get rid of keywords and phrases that are irrelevant to your product or purpose, as well as ones which have obviously unfavorable stats.
  • Repeat the process with other seed keywords, expanding and copying interesting results into your spreadsheet. Remember keep seeds in categories to make life easier in the next stage.

Refine Your List

  • You should end up with a list of keywords which are all relevant to your product, and which target user searches at the levels of information, commercial, and transactional. If you kept your seed keywords grouped, then you can now easily categorize them. Create a new column, and note the search intent for each.
  • Create another new column, and call this “semantic groups”. These are topics and themes within your search intent groupings, and serve to further categorize your keywords to make content planning easier. You don't have to try too hard to find semantic groups, but use it if it helps. For example, if you have a swimming goggle product, you might have all of your informational search keywords grouped together, but within this you could have the semantic group that covers “benefits of swimming goggles” specifically.
  • Identify key target words and phrases. This should include some high-volume, high-competition commercial and transactional words, as well as long-tail keyphrases that have low volume but low competition – to gain an immediate audience and gather authority. If you do find any untapped gems, where volume is high and competition low, then target them immediately. Remember that the main goal is profit, so commercial and transactional keywords with good stats are an absolute goldmine.
  • Eliminate useless or irrelevant keywords that have slipped through the net, as well as any keywords that have unbearably bad statistics, or that cannot be reasonably grouped or themed.
  • Remember, because of search engines LSI, you can use grouped keywords interchangeably, and they will be recognized as addressing the same user query. This means that there is less emphasis overall on finding the exact keyword to use, and more on finding the user queries and topics to address. Try to think about the accessibility (search volume vs competition) of a group of keywords, as well as opportunities to rank for single phrases.
  • Based on the research and data that you have cultivated, decide on a balanced bunch of keywords that you think will gain traffic (informational), and which will result in sales (commercial and transactional). Highlight them in green for easy reference. You can also transfer your green listed keywords to another spreadsheet, to use in the first stage of your campaign.

You want to be left with dozens or a few hundred keywords, conveniently grouped, which are all relevant to your product, and which intercept search inquires at every stage of the sales funnel.

Creating Content Silos

With your list of keywords, you can build a truly beautiful content plan based on the fruits of your labor. The keyword groups on your spreadsheet are all based around responding to user intent, and answering search queries at every level. This is perfect for ranking your product.

The actual terms and topics that you use in your content silos should be based on the data and analysis from your keyword lists.

Your next job is to translate these keyword groups into a content structure for your website. Each keyword group will make a theme. Your main theme, if you are an FBA seller, should be commercial and transactional. You want to sell products. You want the search engines and the customers to know this, and so you will use commercial keywords to build relevant web content pages.

For example, if you are selling essential oils on your FBA store, you will have product pages which use the most profitable transactional keywords, e.g. “buy essential oils”, and commercial keywords, e.g. “best essential oils” from your refined keyword list. Ranking for commercial and transactional keywords will eventually result in high conversion rates, and maximum profits.

To integrate the other keyword themes into your page, you might want to introduce a blog. This will allow you to delve into topics around the peripheral of your product. You can describe more about what it is and what it does, the problems that it solves, and other informational topics that are of interest to your audience.

You might cover topics such as “uses of essential oils”, “benefits of X oil”, “essential oils for skin care” and so on.

Your blog will pull in an audience via long-tail keywords, and will also rank for related search terms due to LSI. This can result in improved brand awareness, and also increases search engine authority for your sales pages. In time, ranking for peripheral topics will increase your rank for major commercial keywords too.

You can also use blog posts to funnel the audience towards a sale by internally linking informational content to commercial content, and then to transactional content, taking them deeper into the sales process.

When you come to write your website, or when you hire a writer, you should be able to hand them a content brief containing the target themes for each page that you ask them to write. Each identified theme or topic will have a list of keywords which can be naturally integrated into the text. You can also make the writer aware of the most important keywords and phrases to use for a particular theme – those that are likely to yield the best traffic and profits.

Creating Your Website

A content silo doesn't only refer to the writing and the keywords, but also to the way in which the content themes are structured on the website.

You don't want all of your themes muddled together in one mess of web pages. You want to try to create definition and distinction in the way that your page is setup.

The overall structure of your website contributes immensely to your rankings. How you develop and design your website really does make an impact – search engine bots need to be able to “crawl” through your website, and understand the themes contained within. An easy-to-navigate structure facilitates this.

In the next article, I am going to show you how to register your website, and begin your web design.

Keyword Research – The Final Words

Keyword research and SEO change all of the time. As algorithms become increasingly sophisticated, it has become much more important to add value to your reader, and to respond to search inquires with quality information and services.

Keywords will always have a role in your website, and remain an important foundation that will help you to gain traffic and sales. Analyzing, and grouping profitable and relevant keywords together to form contextual groups and themes, is the way to go.

If this all sounds like a lot of hard work, BrandBuilders.io offer keyword research and ongoing analysis of keyword success as part of their brand building services. They can help you to achieve your goals of increasing your FBA (or affiliate) sales, and developing your passive income.

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Jon March 20, 2016 16 Comments
FBA

Selling my FBA Business – Interested?

Today for the first time I am putting my unique entire FBA business including all authority affiliates websites that drive the sales up for sale!

For those of you that have been following my Journey with FBA (all posts here) you have seen this unique business strategy on a very steady upward trend!

 

Unique Opportunity:

Purchase this $11k+/month net income highly diversified, stable and growing business…

Diversified Business (not simply 1 website)

  • 2 affiliate sites with stable history of driving sales
  • FBA product line and brand generating solid sales on Amazon

Growth:

  • Upward trend for business
  • Growing market (see Google Trends data below)
  • Peak season in May but steady all year long (not a holiday rush product)

Opportunities:

  • No PPC being used to date
  • Ecommerce drop shipping option at Affiliate Sites to increase margin
  • Product Line Expansion (several great options)
  • Value multiple growth (with more data the business/brand value should be 3x annual net income)

 

Validated Unique Amazon FBA Business Model:

The business model of using an Amazon Affiliate site to drive sales to launch an FBA private label product line has certainly proven itself as you can see in the graphs below. This lower risk online business model when compared to simply purchasing a single website provides both risk mitigation along with more opportunities for growth.

 

Simply Buying & Holding Will Result in Upside Plus Lower Risk with Diversified Traffic

The business model I am setting my team up to execute is a higher risk process involving the acquisition of several affiliate sites and the creation of brands around them. This model requires capital and I will look to use the funds of this sale to rinse and repeat the model.

Currently the value I can continue to add to this business is less than growing a new affiliate site and FBA brand.

As a result I know I am walking away from a potential 3x annual income sales multiple if I were willing to simply hold (even without additional growth).

Lower Risk vs Website Purchase – Most online business purchases are a single website that the downside of the investment is a complete $0. In this case with the diversified traffic streams of Amazon Organic, Google Organic to multiple sites there is no single point of failure.

 

By The Numbers:

Income

Nov & Dec Average Net Income = $10,983 USD

The business will be valued based on the numbers from November, December and January…

FBA-Business-Metrics

(sale valuation will be based on Nov, Dec and Jan numbers)

Affiliate Site 1 Weekly Traffic

tcc-traffic

Affiliate Site 2 Weekly Traffic (Purchased Website)

bwc-traffic

 

High-Season Approaching, Steady All Year in a Growing Market

With both the high-season coming (May) for this market and the market growing at a steady rate over the last 5 years shows that the sales are not only holiday seasonally driven.

(17.5% year over year growth from 2006 – 2016 and very stable interest around the entire calendar year)

What Is For Sale?

  • FBA Business & Brand
    • Inventory at Amazon
    • Brand & Brands Website
    • Social Accounts
    • All procedures and marketing plans
  • Affiliate Website 1
  • Affiliate Website 2
  • 600 person email list (growing at a rat of 5-10/day) (30% open rate with 15% click through rate)

 

Effort of Work to Run:

  • 4-8posts per month published (1hr/week – if using a VA)
  • Track inventory & Re-Order From Supplier (2hrs/week)
  • Monitor Listing (7hrs/week)

 

Timeline for the Sales Process:

  • Determine if there is interest in the sale from my audience (Jan 18)
  • Qualify interested parties (Jan 18 – 31)
  • Discuss via Skype with potential buyers (Jan 18 – 31)
  • Determine if private sale will be possible (Jan 18 – 31)
  • Complete private sale (Feb 7)
  • If no sale in the first week in February list on EmpireFlippers.com (first week in February)

For Myself – Rinse & Repeat

For the Buyer – Grow (PPC, Ecommerce Side, Product Line & in 1 year value business at 3x Annual Earnings ideally)

 

Next Steps:

If you are interested I look forward to discussing the sales process with you…

  1. Please simply email me (jonhaver11 (at) gmail (dot) com) including…
    1. Your initial questions
    2. Proof of ability to pay (numbers or recent examples – need to filter out tire-kickers)
    3. Basic information about you/why you are looking to buy
    4. Potential times to get on Skype to discuss the sales process
  2. If interest is significant I will select ~10 qualified buyers to work with and send the due-diligence packages to
  3. Filter number of potential buyers down to 3-4 buyers and find the best fit
  4. If no private sale is in place by early February I will list at EmpireFlippers.com

Depending on the seller and their wishes I look forward to sharing the results of this process for everyone reading AuthorityWebsiteIncome.com

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Jon January 17, 2016 7 Comments
FBA

Invested $50k and 3.5 Months Later the Business is Worth $300k (400+% ROI)?

I started writing this post before I had finished the data analysis…the ROI is a little shocking! I want to make sure up front I say these numbers are still a little “fresh” and it would be stupid of me to consider these last two months as the basis moving forward.

Since my decision (when the wife was away and I had had a couple beer) to launch my can’t fail FBA business on a Friday night mid September I have been moving quickly (especially in the first two months).

This post is an update on my business and I share exactly how many of the assumptions I made have held up.

Apologies to those non data geeks as I share a LOT of data below!

In this post I am going to share…

  1. My Basic FBA Business Strategy (summary)
  2. Recent Success
    1. Increased Price!
    2. Keyword Ranking
    3. Reviews
  3. Recent Failures (plenty!)
    1. Lowered Price
    2. PPC (Amazon and Re-Targeting)
    3. Pushing the business forward
    4. Promo code (lost $1.5k)
  4. Sales and Traffic Numbers
    1. FBA
    2. Net Profit & How are my assumptions holding
    3. Path Forward – Revised FBA Goals
      1. Sell 50 units per day by the end of the year (Completed)
      2. Grow Business to $15k/month average for 6 months and sell for 30x
      3. Launch 2 new brands on the back of affiliate sites

(more…)

Read More
Jon January 3, 2016 19 Comments
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Engineering Your Financial Freedom with Online Business   Sharing everything (except my passwords) as I repeatedly build income streams from online businesses
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Email Me – Jon Gillham at…
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