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Hey, how's it going? It's Ollie here. I've got a question from Braulio today. I hope I pronounced your name correctly. Braulio asks, what are the right tools for beginners?

 

So Braulio clearly hasn't started his business yet. He wants to get moving selling on Amazon - maybe with private labels, and build his FBA business.. And he wants to know which tools are going to help.

 

I'm going to do two things for you, man. I'm going to give you the answer that you don't want to hear that I believe you really should hear, and then I'm going to give you the answer you did want to have.

 

First of all, first thing to understand is, when you want to build your business and be super successful and get results really quickly, it's easy to get bought in to all the marketing that's put out there by companies who own software.

 

For example, you've got big companies like Jungle Scout, Helium 10, FBA Wizard, you name it. There's loads and loads and loads of companies who sell tools to help Amazon sellers. A lot of these tools are great and they're really useful. But you've got to remember it's the job of the software companies to convince you that you need the software in order to be successful.

 

But in many cases, you don't need the software. In fact, the number one tool you need to develop in order to build your business is this one: your mind. You have to develop your mind because at the end of the day, yes, you might be able to find some amazing, magical, shiny new piece of software that helps you find hot products and zero in on one with the right criteria. But when it comes to sending, I don't know, £5,000 to a supplier in China, you're not going to be letting a software tool make the final decision on that.

 

You're going to have to use your mind. Because it's too much of a big responsibility, too much of a risk to let the software decide that stuff. So rather than getting too caught up in which software you should use and which shiny object tool to help you move forward, focus on building up your skill sets.

 

So what does this mean? This means instead of forking out loads of money for the latest software package, just commit 15 minutes a day to learning how to research private label products. If you haven't done so already, I have two resources that can help you to learn how to do this.

 

At the top of my Facebook group in the announcements section, pinned post. There's a free tool, a free PDF document which teaches you what to look for in products. There's also a handbook there which gives you a course on how to find products. So grab either one of those and that will teach you how to get started.

 

Then 15 minutes a day, just look for the Amazon marketplace. Find products. Sooner or later you will start to become a natural and you'll spot opportunities everywhere. Like for example, Suja. I interviewed her the other day. She found one of her best products that's been selling consistently for 18 months. She found the idea for this product at her workplace. Because she developed a keen eye for what is a hot product by practicing product research and then she spotted an opportunity at her workplace.

 

You never know where you're going to find opportunities. So develop your skills and then your business will start to grow. That's the answer you didn't want to hear.

 

The answer you did want to hear is very literally what are the right tools, because you do need some tools. You do need something just to speed up the process. I used to look for products on Amazon before Jungle Scout, before all of these software tools came out, and it would take a lot longer. It was really more tricky.

 

The estimations were less accurate. You have to rely on things like best seller ranks and things which are very volatile. The whole process took a lot longer and it was less fun. Now it's much more fun. So let me walk you through a few things that will really help you.

 

The first tool you should get, number one, is the Jungle Scout Chrome extension. What this does is, when you're looking at products on the Amazon marketplace, you press the Jungle Scout button on the top of your Chrome browser, and it brings up a window with the Jungle Scout information and it tells you the revenue levels for all the products that you're looking at on Amazon.

 

Very useful, right? Because at a glance now you can see the levels of demand in the marketplace. I would get the cheapest possible version of this extension. You don't need anything more sophisticated.

 

There's one that comes with an opportunity score. Personally, I don't trust the opportunity score at all. I think it's all over the place. You just want to look at the revenue levels.. I think they keep changing the price. But at present, last time I checked the website, you can get it for like $20 a month. So it's not going to break the bank and it's very, very, very useful. That's the first thing you should get.

 

When you have actually launched your product and you've got it on the Amazon marketplace, you can use a tool called AMZ Tracker to give your product away for free to people. And what that does is, it gets your product boosted up the search results on Amazon, makes it more visible, and leads to more organic sales. Very useful, AMZ Tracker.

 

This is a like a service where they have their own audience of people who want free stuff. So you list your product on there. Say you want to give away maybe 50 of your units and they say to that audience who wants coupon codes to get this product for free. They all grab the coupon codes, go to Amazon, get the product for free. And it's just great for your SEO of your product. It makes your product skyrocket to page one and then you get more sales as a result of that.

Very useful.

 

Another thing you can use when you've launched your product is Jump Send, which is Jungle Scout's messaging service, which gets people to leave reviews for your product, which is very good. You need lots of reviews. There's other services you can use, such as BQool that can do messages to customers as well.

 

Another couple of tools which are really useful - Xero, for bookkeeping, and A2X, which takes all the data from Amazon and puts it into Xero. Use those to stuff when you need to get your bookkeeping and accounting sorted. So there's a few tools that you can use.

 

None of them are gonna mean anything if you haven't developed your skills though, because you can't fix terrible skill sets and product research skill by having a piece of software because you won't even know how to use the software effectively if you don't know what type of products you're looking for. So develop that first.

 

Then use Jungle Scout Chrome extension to help you. But finally, before you go out there and shut out a load of money on tools, remember the aim with any business is revenue high, cost low. Right? Now, you might not think this is the case when you see big companies just spend money carelessly. But at the end of the day, this is the way to win in business.

 

You want revenue high, want costs low. That gives you the biggest profit margins. It lets you last a lot longer. It gives you more cash in the bank to be able to buy more stock, hire more staff, spend money on marketing, etc. It's the aim. It's the aim of the game. So with that in mind, only spend money on software when you need it. All right? Only spend money on software when you need it.

 

Don't buy all of this stuff today. Buy maybe the Jungle Scout Chrome extension. Then when you've launched your product, get AMZ Tracker, then get Jump Send. Then think about bookkeeping and stuff like that when you're making sales. Keep it as lean possible and you'll have that edge. Cause a lot of business owners don't do this. They spend way too much money on stuff. And it's a bad idea. All right? It holds you back. Hope that answers your question, Braulio.

 

If you're watching this video, you find it useful.. I hope it helps you as well.

 

So if watched this video outside of my Q&A Facebook group, make sure you join us. You get your questions answered on daily videos like this, and you can join a community of incredibly awesome Amazon sellers.

 

So there should be a link either above or below this video so you can join the group and I'll see you inside. All right. Thanks so much for watching and we'll speak very soon.