Some saw it as a waste of money while others used it as a substitute for learning how to source.

Like most topics, the answer is somewhere in the middle.

In this article we’re going to do a quick refresher on what leads lists are, how they work, if they’re worth it and how to use them.

What is a leads list?

Simply put, a leads list is a subscription based service where a person (or group of people) will send you a list of items that you can buy and sell on Amazon for a profit.

Most lists will give you somewhere between 3-10 leads per day while giving access to 10-40 sellers at the same time.

Typically these leads are spread across different suppliers and categories, but some services offer leads lists that are specific to one niche (clothing, beauty, etc.)

The average leads list can cost anywhere from $50-$300 per month depending on factors such as amount of leads given daily, average profit per lead, and how many sellers can have access to the list at any given time.

Back in the day these types of services used to be very popular and would fill up very quickly.

As more people have been quitting Amazon, a quick glance tells me that some of these mainstream services are having trouble keeping their slots full.

Why Most People Are Doing It Wrong

On the surface, the idea of a leads list sounds pretty awesome.

They send a list, you buy the items, and you make a profit.

However, this is very different from what actually happens.

Since the average leads list has 20-30 sellers on it, blindly buying all of the leads usually ends in something like this happening:

As you can see in the Keepa chart above, most leads on a leads list end up seeing their price tank to a point where it is no longer profitable while the seller count skyrockets to a point where there is more supply than demand.

This is by far the biggest criticism of leads list, and it’s certainly a valid one - this happens all the time.

Despite this I think still think that leads lists can be a great investment - let me explain why.

How to Use Lists Effectively

Directly buying leads from a list will probably make you some money, but it’s not the most profitable thing to do since you have a lot of competition.

Let’s discuss a couple ways you can maximize value out of leads lists.

Source more on your own

The best way to use a leads list is to use it as inspiration for your own sourcing sessions.

Instead of just buying the items given to you, take the information that you’ve been given and try to use it to find other profitable items.

If you’re given an item that has a 20% off code on a site you’ve never sourced before but you recognize the brand, see if they have other items from that brand.

If you get a lead from a website that’s having a sale, see if there are other items on sale that are also profitable.

See if you can find the item on another website at an even lower price.

By taking the information given to you and using it to source more items, you can easily separate yourself from those who are just blindly buying from the list.

Some of my most profitable items came from using leads lists to find new brands I’d never heard of - and I didn’t buy a single item from those lists.

Tracking your competitors

While being on a list with 30 people doesn’t sound profitable…

It can be very profitable if you know what you’re doing.

One of the easiest ways to find profitable items is reverse sourcing, which is the process of looking at other sellers’ storefronts and trying to find the items they’re selling at a profitable price.

If someone is subscribed to a leads list you can safely assume that they’re also an online arbitrage seller.

That means they likely have some items in their store that you can find profitably and start selling yourself.

You might not make any money on the leads directly, but you now have 30 new storefronts that you can check every couple weeks for new opportunities.

Should You Subscribe to a Leads List?

In my personal opinion I think leads lists can be a good investment if utilized properly.

You certainly can buy items that look like good opportunities - you just need to account for a worst case scenario in which everyone else buys it and the price starts to drop.

But the real profit comes from taking the information given and using it to find your own items.

There is one exception to this rule - if the list you’re subscribed to has a very low subscriber count (10 or less), buying all the leads can be profitable since there is much less competition.

Putting that aside I would recommend leads lists to newer sellers who want to expand their knowledge of new brands and websites to source from faster than they would if they just didn’t on their own.

Leads lists are a useful tool that can be a great addition to your business but you shouldn’t rely on them as your only method of sourcing products.

The way you become profitable is by developing your own edge and knowing how to find things at a lower price than your competition.

A leads list can certainly help with that but you don’t want to rely on them to do everything for you.

Leads List Recommendations

Over the years I’ve had a lot of people ask me for leads list recommendations and I never felt comfortable giving them an answer because pretty much all of the services I used back then are no longer active.

Not to mention a lot of the mainstream ones that come up in google searches are usually 40+ sellers and the leads aren’t very high quality anyways.

Today I actually have a solid recommendation that I can give to my readers.

My number one recommendation for leads is Sentri Group.

This is a service that I used myself last year (and may use again in the future) and it has a lot of the things I look for in a good leads list:

• 5 sellers per lead max

• 7+ leads per day

• Solid sales rank on all items

The reduced competition does come at a cost though - lists start at $300 per month.

If you have more capital to work with they have a $600/month tier called Bespoke in which leads are specifically sourced for your storefront - leads in this tier are capped to 2 sellers each.

I have personally worked with the owner of Sentri Group in the past and I can say with full confidence that he is someone with a lot of experience in the space and knows what he’s doing.

We are running a special promotion where you can get 10% off your first 3 months by using code BOWTIEDMAHI at checkout.

You'll also get the Sentri Group - Ungating Guide for Amazon 2026 ($300 value), which includes best practices for getting approved for restricted brands, with sources by category, a distributor directory, application template, and invoice checklist to help improve your odds of getting approved to sell profitable brands.

If you’d like to see a list of tesitmonials, you can do so by clicking here.

http://www.sentrigroup.io/services

It gives you all of the necessary information to make an informed buying decision if you understand how to use it.

In this post we’ll go over the basics of using Keepa, what to look for and some examples of good and bad products.

What is Keepa?

Keepa is a tool that tracks the sales history for all items on Amazon.

From the date an item goes up for sale you can see how much it’s sold for, how many people have sold it, and other important information.

There is no other tool on the market that can do what Keepa does - which is why I don’t understand how they’re only charging ~$22/month for it.

Keepa tracks a lot of different data points, but in this post we’re going to focus on just six of them.

Sales Rank

Sales rank is how well an item is selling relative to the rest of the items in its category.

For example, a book with a sales rank of 1 is the best selling book on Amazon.

A “good” sales rank is relative since each category has a different amount of items being sold.

For larger categories like Shoes & Clothing 300k might be a decent sales rank.

For smaller categories like Pet Supplies you’ll want to stay under 75k.

Sales rank in Keepa is shown as a green line:

An ideal sales rank chart is constantly going up and down, meaning that the item is selling units on a regular basis.

New + Buy Box Price

The “New” price is in blue, while the “Buy Box” price is in purple.

New tracks the lowest price on the listing, while Buy Box tracks the Buy Box price.

In case you weren’t aware, the Buy Box is the featured offer on an Amazon listing where you go to add a product to your cart.

Notice how in the following image that the Buy Box price is almost always higher than the New price:

Good products will have a buy box line that is somewhat consistent (fluctuating up and down a couple dollars is perfectly fine).

A common misconception is that you need to be the lowest price to win the buy box and get sales - this is not true at all.

As long as you are competitively priced (within $1-$3 of the other buy box sellers) you should be able to get sales.

There’s no need to race to the bottom.

Amazon Price

A gold shaded area indicates that Amazon was selling on the listing and for how much.

Most people think that you’re unable to compete with Amazon, but that’s not necessarily true.

There are some special cases where you can share sales with Amazon on a listing but if you’re a beginner I recommend staying away from these types of products for now.

New Offer Count

Below the main Keepa chart that shows sales rank and price, there is a secondary chart that shows the offer count.

This line tells you how many people have been actively selling on the product at any point in time.

Knowing how much competition exists on a listing is important for being able to determine how many units you can sell.

If an item is selling 100 units per month and there are 4 sellers, we can estimate that as the 5th seller on the listing we would be able to sell around 20 units per month.

Putting It All Together

Your typical Keepa chart with all the attributes we care about looks something like this:

This item has a relatively stable sales rank and price, without a ridiculous amount of competition.

If we could find it at a profitable price, I’d have no issues buying some units.

Red Flags

Now that you have an idea of what you should be looking for when evaluating Keepa graphs, let’s go over some common red flags and types of items to avoid.

Seller Count Increase

This one is a classic - seller count rapidly increases and the price quickly drops anywhere from 10-50% in a matter of days.

Items will typically fall into this category for two reasons:

1. The item went up for clearance on a popular retail website (Walmart, Target, etc.) where almost everyone can see it

2. Someone posted this product to a leads list (a paid service where someone gives you a list of items to buy - you can read more about them here if you’re a paid sub)

Items that are easily accessible attract lots of competition, which is why you need to be cautious when purchasing items from the biggest retail chains.

Otherwise you end up in a trap where you think you found a winner, only to see 50 other sellers competing alongside you and racing to the bottom with pricing in order to get rid of their stock.

Seasonal Products

Seasonal products are a great way to increase revenue during specific times of the year as long as you can identify when those items are going to be in demand.

A big mistake I see from new sellers is blindly buying these products without understanding the future demand of said products.

Here is a chart for a hoodie from a popular clothing brand:

As indicated by the green rectangle, the demand and prices are the highest from September-December when temperatures start to drop.

A huge mistake that people make is buying these items when they go on clearance in February / March.

This is a bad idea because the demand won’t be as high, and as such you’ll be fighting the other sellers who made the same mistake to offload your inventory.

One thing leads to another and eventually you’re racing to the bottom with pricing trying to offload your last 2 hoodies in the middle of June.

This also applies to holiday themed products - there’s no point buying Christmas decorations in December because you won’t have them stocked and ready to be sold until after Christmas is over.

Seasonal products can be very profitable, but you need to do your research and purchase them weeks in advance to capitalize on the short window of demand.

Brand Direct Seller

One type of product you need to stay away from is items that are being sold directly by the brand in question.

A couple of ways you can identify these products include:

• The buy box price rarely (or never) changes

• The seller with the majority of the buy box share is the name of the brand or the company that owns the brand

• Seller count is mostly flat

In this example we can see a product from the brand Summer Fridays, with Summer Fridays clearly having the majority of the buy box share.

Competing with brands directly is almost always a bad idea - even if you can find the item profitably, there’s nothing stopping them from kicking you off the listing via IP complaints or by threatening you with lawsuits.

If you’re serious about building a successful Amazon business, there’s two ways I can help you:

• Check out my course Arbitrage Tactics, which gives you a step-by-step guide on how to scale your store to six figures and beyond.

• Sign up for my email list, where I occasionally offer 1 on 1 consulting (currently I am only accepting 1 client per month).

When I started selling on Amazon in 2021 my view of how the process worked and the best ways to do it were much different than how I operate now.

The overall sentiment with selling on Amazon in 2026 is somewhat negative compared to past years because the game has gotten harder.

Many people have quit selling and a lot of gurus have disappeared off the face of the internet.

If Online Arbitrage was a stock, it’s price would be close to an all-time low.

This has actually been a positive change for my business, as a lot of listings I sold on in the past have significantly less competition.

The game can still be beaten for anyone who wants it bad enough, and I’d like to provide updated resources for the 5-10% of you who will take action.

Expect more up to date articles in the coming weeks.

The Business Model

Arbitrage is a game that’s easy to learn, but difficult to master.

You’re simply identifying inefficiencies in the marketplace and making a profit as the middleman.

In ancient times, merchants would buy gold and silver in one civilization and then resell them in places where they had a higher value.

In the context of selling on Amazon, you’re buying underpriced items from retail stores and selling them to Prime customers.

The reason this works is the convenience that Amazon provides to it’s 200 million subscribers.

There are a lot of people out there who will happily pay double (and in some cases triple) the price of their favorite products to be delivered to their front door.

While that sounds crazy, you have to remember we live in a world where people will Door Dash a Chipotle burrito for $30 without batting an eye.

I got started by taking grocery items from Walmart for $4-6 and selling them online for $12-$15 back when FBA fees were lower.

At the other end of the spectrum, high income earners have no problem ordering a $50 bottle of perfume on Amazon for $90 when the alternative is driving 30 minutes to the mall and picking it up themselves.

Since there’s no product creation, website creation or marketing involved it’s a business that anyone with a half-decent work ethic can get into - however, making a full-time income doing this is no cakewalk.

How Amazon FBA Works

Amazon FBA is the primary method for how we sell our items.

In a sentence, we send our items to Amazon and they take care of the rest - this includes shipping, customer service and other logistics.

They obviously charge fees for this, but considering that they do most of the heavy lifting the fees are more than justified (and most profit calculators take these fees into account anyways).

Once our inventory is in the hands of Amazon, all we can really do is adjust our prices and wait for our items to sell.

I wrote a full post about the inventory life cycle here, but I’ll give a shortened version:

Stage 1 - Inbound shipping to Amazon

Amazon will give you a specific location where you will ship your items to.

They typically have ~10-15 fulfillment centers nationwide that are dedicated to receiving your FBA shipments.

You can’t just drive to the nearest Amazon fulfillment center and drop off a box of your shit (it honestly baffles me how many people have asked me this question).

Shipping prices for FBA are incredibly cheap, averaging out to $0.25-$0.50 per pound (done through UPS, Amazon’s partner carrier).

On average it should take 3-5 days for your shipment to be delivered.

Stage 2 - Check in / receiving

When your shipment makes it to the fulfillment center, it will be marked as “Delivered”. Delivered shipments are usually checked in within 24-48 hours, but depending on the time of year and how backed up they are it could take up to a week.

Once your items are received, they move to the next stage.

Stage 3 - FC Transfer

This is the stage that takes the longest and where most people get confused.

Your stuff does not immediately go up for sale with prime shipping.

Once your stuff is checked in, Amazon takes it and redistributes it to other fulfillment centers across the country.

This is commonly referred to as an FC transfer, and can take 2-3 weeks before your items are available for purchase with prime shipping.

Your items may be listed on Amazon, but the shipping time will be at least 2 weeks out.

The reason Amazon can provide 2 day shipping to so many places is because they spend so much time doing FC Transfers in the backend.

Stage 4 - Active Inventory

After a couple weeks, your items are now available for prime shipping.

You sell your items, and you get paid (Amazon obviously takes a cut).

The entire FBA process can take a while to get used to and you have to wait a few weeks before getting your first sale, but after you send in your items the logistical aspect becomes more or less “automated”.

Example Product

I’m going to save product research methods for future posts, but I’d at least like to give you an example of the types of items your could be selling.

Here is a product from the beauty company Typology that you can buy right now for $39.50:

It’s currently selling on Amazon for $67.99:

Plug those numbers into SellerAmp (a tool I will write more about in another post) and you get the following output:

If you were to sell this item on Amazon, you would make just under $13 for simply putting a sticker on it and sending it to an Amazon fulfillment center.

This item sells between 50-100 units per month on average, and there are 7 other sellers on the listing.

You can jump on this listing and sell 10 units per month, making you over $100/month for this one product.

While that might not sound like much, the magic in this business model is in volume.

If you have 100 products in your inventory that are each generating between $50-$500 per month in profit, you have a storefront that is generating full-time income.

We are not looking to hit home runs - we just want to hit singles and doubles on a consistent basis.

I will post more in the coming weeks with product research / software tutorials - until then, drop your questions in the comments.

Buy cheap stuff, sell on Amazon for a higher price and repeat.

It’s still a great way to get started with making money online since it doesn’t require a huge investment like other businesses.

In this post I will do a full breakdown on how much capital you need in order to start selling on Amazon in 2026 and beyond.

Subscriptions

You need 3 subscriptions to get started.

This includes the Amazon professional seller account, Keepa and SellerAmp.

Professional Seller Account

In order to send your items in to Amazon’s warehouses, you need a professional seller account.

This subscription is $40/month, and gives you full access to Amazon’s logistics system.

Once they have your inventory, they take care of shipping, customer service and returns.

The $40 is taken directly out of your Amazon balance, so after your first payment this fee shouldn’t come directly out of your pocket.

Keepa

There are a lot of different software tools for selling on Amazon, but as a beginner you only need two - Keepa being the first one.

Keepa is by far the most useful and most cost effective software for every Amazon seller.

It is a product research tool that gives you a full breakdown of a product for the entire time it’s been listed on Amazon.

You can see really valuable data like how much the item has sold for, it’s sales rank and how many sellers have been on the listing.

In some ways, it’s similar to analyzing a stock.

Doing effective product research without Keepa is nearly impossible.

At 19 Euros/month (usually comes out to between $21-$24/month), the value it provides far outweighs how much it costs.

Most Amazon businesses would fail miserably without it - if I owned Keepa I would 10x the price tomorrow because there is quite literally no alternative.

I currently have 4 Keepa subscriptions, one for myself and one for each member of my product research team.

SellerAmp

Similar to Keepa, SellerAmp is an inexpensive tool that is very useful for product research.

It’s main function is giving you a basic overview of a product with a built in profit calculator to help you make well informed buying decisions.

The basic plan is $20/month, and combined with Keepa you have two very cheap tools that are worth their weight in gold.

Supplies

One thing I should note is that technically you do not need any sort of supplies since you can hire a prep center to receive, handle and send your products in to Amazon for you.

However, as a beginner I think it’s important that you spend the first few months doing everything yourself so you can understand how the business works and be able to effectively vet a prep center in the future.

Thermal Printer + Labels

Items sent in to Amazon need to be individually labelled so employees and scan them and check them in.

You also need to print shipping labels so that your shipments can be sent to Amazon fulfillment centers in the first place.

A thermal printer allows you to print both of these - there are a lot of brands out there but in my opinion Rollo is by far the best.

Yes, there are cheaper options but this one is extremely high quality and will last forever.

Don’t cheap out on the printer because you’ll be using it a lot - not to mention some of those cheaper printers are incompatible with shipment creation software that you may end up using down the road.

If you’re really looking to cut costs, you can find a used Rollo on eBay in the range of ~$75-$150:

Labels are super cheap and you can buy them anywhere - I would just buy them from Amazon for the sake of convenience.

4x6 shipping labels ($10 for 500):

2x1 product labels ($10 for 1000):

Tape + Boxes

Any decent quality tape will do - I personally like the Scotch heavy duty rolls:

Moving boxes from your local hardware store work great for FBA shipments.

My personal favorite is the 18x18x16 from Lowe’s, but it doesn’t matter too much which ones you use:

Polybags

Some items may be required to be put in a polybag to reduce potential damage while in transit.

Example include:

• Loose clothing

• Shampoo bottles

• Liquid soap

• Plush toys

• Small cosmetics

Depending on what types of items you end up selling, you may not need polybags at all but it’s important to have some on hand just in case.

They also need to have a choking hazard warning on them - you can buy them on Amazon for cheap (~$25 for a pack):

Tape Gun

Makes packing boxes a lot easier and a lot faster.

Zero reason not to get one - best ten dollars you’ll ever spend.

Brand doesn’t matter.

Bubble Mailers

If you decide to fill orders yourself via FBM, you’ll want bubble mailers for packing items.

These usually come out to ~$20-$30 for a pack of 100.

Shipping Scale(s)

Boxes sent to FBA need to be less than 50 pounds.

To ensure this, use a shipping scale.

I prefer this Dymo one:

For individual FBM orders where you’re shipping directly to the customer, I like this smaller one:

Inventory

Now that we have our software and supplies, it’s time to start buying inventory.

This is where the question “How much do I need to start?” can get a little ambiguous.

How much you’ll need really depends on what your goals are.

If your goal is just to create some side income and make an extra ~$1500/month, you don’t need a lot of capital for buying inventory.

If you want to scale to 100k/month in revenue and quit your job to sell on Amazon, it’ll take a long time to get there if you only start with $500.

For the average person, I think $1,000 is a good starting point because it allows you to get your feet wet with testing different products and seeing what items are profitable.

Once you’ve proven the concept you can reload with more cash to start scaling up.

Summary

Let’s put everything together.

Software / Subscriptions: $80

Shipping Supplies: ~$500

Inventory: $1000

Total: $1600

As a conservative estimate, I think $1600 is enough to get started with selling on Amazon.

This number assumes you bought the Rollo printer at full price and 20 medium boxes (which should be enough for several FBA shipments).

You can always start with less, but it will be far more difficult.

If you’re serious about scaling to 6 figures I would want to start with at least $5000 so you can start buying lots of inventory and turn that capital around ASAP.

Hopefully this post gave you an idea of what investment you need to reach your goals.

I’ll gladly respond to any questions in the comments.

One thing that I occasionally mention in my tweets is the sheer amount of rewards you generate with inventory spend.

Between credit cards, cashback extensions and rewards programs you can stack a lot of cash that if redeemed correctly is not taxable (not tax / financial advice).

Even though I talk about it a lot, I’ve never sat down and done the math on how much I actually make in a quarter outside the P&L in my Amazon business.

For this experiment I will be excluding store rewards programs (Kohl’s cash, Ultamate rewards, Macy’s star money, etc.) since those almost always go back into buying more inventory.

Credit Cards

This is probably the most obvious way you can squeeze extra value out of your Amazon business since pretty much every business credit card offers some kind of rewards / cashback.

The card I use the most in my business is the Capital One Spark, which gives me a flat 2% back on everything.

The great thing about Capital One rewards is that I can redeem my cashback on Amazon.

This allows me to get gift cards for stores / restaurants I frequent without any money entering / leaving my bank account (great for tax purposes).

Combined with another method I’ll talk about later in this post, I almost never pay for food out of pocket.

It’s also just nice to be able to order something off Amazon if I need it for no cost.

The other main card in my setup is the AMEX Gold. There’s nothing special about what it offers, AMEX is just a good company to do business with and you have a lot of options with their rewards points.

This year I also started implementing some methods from BowTiedBum, something I wanted to do for a while but held off on because I was in the process of buying a home.

By getting a new card or two every few months I’ll be able to squeeze out extra cash with signup bonuses that I can easily hit with a day or two of inventory spend - if I do more of these posts in the future expect the credit card rewards to be higher.

One thing I should also note is that I regularly use the AMEX Plum, which does not provide rewards but adds an extra 30 days to your billing cycle.

Although I am not getting the maximum amount of rewards, this allows me to gradually increase my inventory spend without worrying about missing payments.

For simplicity, all points are calculated as 1 cent per point.

The credit card rewards I generated this quarter are as follows:

Capital One: $1,354.29

AMEX: $684.79 (68,479 AMEX points)

Chase: $1,188.38 (118,838 Chase points)

Citi: $371.56 (37,156 Citi points)

Credit Card Total: $3,599.02

Cashback Extensions

Time to talk about my favorite way to earn rewards.

For the last few months on Twitter I’ve been a huge advocate for Topcashback and in this section I’ll explain why.

Cashback extensions are a very easy way to make extra money with selling on Amazon - you activate the extension before checkout, buy your inventory, and then you get paid out (usually in 8-12 weeks).

While the most well known extension is Rakuten, I pretty much only use it when Topcashback isn’t an option.

Topcashback is my preferred extension for 3 reasons:

1. The payouts are higher on average

2. TCB has more redemption options (and I think they’re better too)

3. You can cash out a specific purchase when it’s eligible instead of having to wait once a quarter like with Rakuten

While Rakuten only allows you to get paid out via PayPal, check or wire transfer, Topcashback has way more options.

Most of the variety is in gift cards - and they’ll also give you a bonus multiplier for cashing out this way.

My preferred method of cashing out is to get the virtual Visa card (5% bonus).

You also have the option of paying a $5 fee to have a physical version mailed to you (covered by the 5% bonus).

This is my secret weapon - I call them “bird cards”:

I always have at least 2-3 of these sitting in my office, which is the reason I haven’t paid for groceries in the last 6 months.

Combining the bird cards for groceries and the restaurant gift cards I buy on Amazon with my credit card points, I rarely pay for food out of pocket.

This allows me to save / invest most of the money my business makes outside housing costs, which is a huge mental burden lifted off my shoulders.

The Cashback extension rewards I earned this quarter are as follows:

Topcashback: $2,773.96 ($2,641.87 x 1.05 visa card bonus)

Rakuten: $249.24

Cashback Extension Total: $2,891.11

Shop Cash

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to include this as it’s technically a rewards program, but since so many stores online use Shop Pay I consider it the same as getting a Visa gift card (albeit more limited in usage).

I would say at least 20% of my inventory purchases are through stores that use Shop Pay.

This leads to me racking up a decent amount of Shop Cash, which I can use to buy a bunch of different household essentials.

This includes supplements, kitchen supplies and trying out various products launched by other members of the BowTied community.

This only accounts for a sliver of rewards I earn, but still a decent amount for doing basically nothing.

Shop Cash Rewards: $331.14

Putting It All Together

In total, I earned $6,821.27 for rewards in Q1.

This was generated from zero extra effort on my end, just a bonus for buying inventory for my Amazon business.

While selling on Amazon certainly has its struggles, there’s a lot of perks that come with it as well.

I expect my Q2 rewards to be even higher due to increased inventory spend and more credit cards.

I recently launched a new version of my course, Arbitrage Tactics.

This contains 50 videos with over 10 hours of content, giving you everything you need to build a six figure Amazon store.

If you own the old version, email me with your proof of purchase and I will give you a discount code for 80% off.

The reality is that this is a very simple business model.

You buy cheap shit, sell it and use the profits to buy more cheap shit.

How much your business makes is directly correlated to the amount of inventory that you purchase - there is no magic pill that changes this formula.

You can build whatever systems you want, but they mean nothing if you can’t source profitable inventory.

The Truth

Words like “scaling” and “systems” in a reselling context are mostly buzzwords used by people on social media to sell info, giving people the idea that there are ways to automate their business or skip doing the hard work.

Read more

As the name implies, a replen is an item that you're able to replenish over and over again while adding consistent profits to your business.

When making the transition from books to arbitrage, I also strongly believed in this concept.

I've also had several of my coaching clients ask me the best way to find these types of items.

However, over time I've come to the realization that it's not that simple and you can't realistically find items you'll be able to sell forever.

This doesn't mean that every item you buy is a "one and done" type deal, but you need to be smart about restocking items and the risks that are associated with doing so.

Read more

“Which is better? FBA or FBM?”

The question should be:

“When should I be utilizing FBA vs FBM?”

While you have multiple people who claim one is much better than the other, like most “X vs Y” discussions the answer is a lot more nuanced and can vary based on your specific situation.

This article assumes you have the infrastructure in place to take advantage of both FBA and FBM - your business won’t fail if you can’t do both but having the flexibility to do so in the early stages will allow you to grow faster and take advantage of more opportunities.

Read more

You find an item on sale and the numbers look really good.

Well above your minimum profit and ROI.

You buy 50 units, send them in to FBA and then this happens:

All of a sudden your “banger” product is a brick, and you’ll be lucky to break even.

Read more

2023 was looking to be a rough year for my business due to a major slump, but I was able to pick things back up in July and finish strong.

Let’s take a look at the goals I set for myself last year.

2023 Goals

1.5 million dollars in revenue ❌

Didn’t clear it but I’ll easily hit this number next year

5,000 Twitter followers ✔️

Easily doubled this number thanks to some help from my Jungle pals

Launch a TikTok ❌

I never ended up getting this off the ground, but in hindsight I’m glad it ended up that way - My Amazon business needs my full attention and I am more than content with just posting on here and Twitter.

Launch a coaching program of some kind ✔️

Although not exactly a 1-on-1 program, I have built a community for sellers to get personalized help with growing their business.

I’ve mostly kept this under wraps because spots are very limited and I’m more focused on my Amazon business than being a full-time “guru”.

The few people I’ve worked with are seeing great results and I hope to have some case studies available in the coming weeks.

Main Accomplishments

One thing I’ve noticed is the less I focus on numbers, the bigger they get.

By focusing on the important tasks that move the needle (sourcing, repricing, etc.) I’ve been able to increase the amount of income my business makes.

Going forward I don’t envision myself setting number based goals, but rather key areas to focus on that will by extension make the number go up.

Putting that aside, let’s take a look at what I managed to accomplish this year:

• 7 figure revenue year

• 5 figure revenue day (~12k on Cyber Monday)

• Quit W2 to be a full-time Amazon seller / cartoon

• Cut a lot of unnecessary expenses (e.g software I wasn’t using)

• 10,000 Twitter followers

• 4,000 Substack subscribers

• Helped 10 people combine for $1 million in revenue on Amazon (10x my 2022 goal)

• Helped over 500 people start their own Amazon reselling business

On paper, growing 48% sounds great but I’m still disappointed in myself because I know I could’ve done more.

I’ll explain why I think this is later on but overall I’d say 2023 was a really good year for me (and the people who executed on my content).

Lessons Learned

Outsourcing =/= Automation

I have a team of Virtual Assistants from the Philippines who do great work on both the product research and administrative side of things.

That being said, I got a little too comfortable in the first half of this year and took my foot off the gas - this is what led me to my slump.

I fell into a state of going through the motions of just buying whatever my VAs found every night without doing proper vetting or buying the correct amount of units.

I ended up buying too little of the good products and some bad ones slipped through the cracks.

By realizing this was my business and nobody was going to care more than me, I was able to get myself back on track and make better decisions.

Get Bookkeeping ASAP

One of the big differences between 2022 and 2023 was having a professional bookkeeping service.

Let’s just say that the P&L reports I did in 2022 were… not as accurate as I thought.

Getting in-depth reports on where my money was going not only opened my eyes on how much money I was actually making, but also allowed me to see where I could cut on spending and increase my bottom line.

It also gave me some perspective on how much returns affect your total profits - the next time you see someone boast a 50k sellerboard screenshot with a return rate of over 6%, just know that they aren’t even close to “rich”.

Cough up the extra money for bookkeeping - it’s well worth it.

If you want more info on how this stuff works I highly recommend following Chris Potter.

2024 Goals

Here’s what I plan to do next year:

• Improve current reconciliation processes (tracking missing units from supplier to prep center to Amazon)

• Handle reimbursements in-house instead of paying for a reimbursement service (I think I have the resources to pull this off)

• Stop underbuying good inventory

• Keep finances lean so I can take more money out of the business

I hope everyone kicks ass in 2024.

Until next time.

The basic premise is that it’s better to buy a small quantity of multiple items as opposed to buying large quantities of a few items.

If you get burned on a bad buy, it hurts a lot less if it was one item out of twenty instead of one item out of three.

While this advice is well intentioned and I don’t completely disagree with it, there are times where you need to put your foot on the gas and squeeze as much as you can out of a particular product.

Read more

Most people will get one order cancelled and just give up.

In this post, we’re going to talk about some ways that you can get around order cancellations and go further than the thousands of people who don’t know how to fight them.

Read more

This will result in me easing off the content for a bit, but I still want to provide some value so fire off any Amazon / Q4 related questions in the comments and I’ll answer them throughout the week.

Read more

In today’s post, we’ll go over a feature that I initially ignored when I started using SellerAmp but has helped me stay organized over time - the sheets tracker.

Go to the SellerAmp web app (sas.selleramp.com) and go to the Google Sheets page (located in the top right corner).

Read more

I wrote a post about them over a year ago, but my stance has changed slightly and I’d like to give an update on if I think they’re really worth it.

What They Are

A leads list is a service that will send you a list of profitable items every day from Monday through Friday.

Most lists will give you somewhere between 6-10 leads per day, and give access to anywhere between 10-40 sellers at a time.

Read more

Given that Amazon sellers use credit cards to spend lots of money on inventory every month, there’s plenty of synergy between our niches.

If I didn’t plan on buying a house next year I’d be all over this stuff so please take advantage of it.

Intro

BowTiedBum here. BowTiedMahi did an incredible job showing you how to launch your own Amazon FBA biz. I’d like to show you how you can parlay that knowledge with some credit card tactics. For every $100K in spend, we should expect around a $15K return on our spending by signing up for credit cards in a strategic fashion.

Let’s get right into it.

For those that don’t know me, I write a Substack and have a Slack community that discusses how to use credit cards to generate lucrative returns. My Substack outlines exactly which credit cards to get, which order to get them, how to generate spend to make sure you get the signup bonus, and my Slack Group helps you answer any questions you have along the way.

Almost all of the members in my Slack Group are on track to earn $10K+ credit card rewards their first year in this game. They can expect to earn an additional $10K each year of their membership, by using these tactics.

Basic Overview of BowTiedBum Tactics

Quick high level overview. Credit card issuers love to compete for your business, and offer lucrative signup bonuses as a way to do so. You’ll often see credit card commercials showing a couple vacationing at a lavish resort or sipping a frozen cocktail while lounging on the beach. The credit card issuers can afford to do this for two reasons. First, they charge merchants a processing fee for each transaction. Second, they know that many of their customers will get sucked in, thinking they can get a free vacation, but will fail to pay their bills on time and rack up tons of debt at high interest rates.

Here’s how it works. Banks offer a signup bonus for premium credit cards (usually between $500-$900) after you hit a certain minimum spending requirement (usually $3K-$5K). Once you complete the spend requirement in the time period (usually 3 months), you get the points deposited in your account.

Again, they offer this knowing that many people will go into debt, will not hit the signup bonus, and just be overall irresponsible with their spending in general.

The banks are playing a game where they try to hook you in and trap you, like a fisherman using bait.

My job is to help you rob the banks and beat them at their own game!

Chase Business Cards

Business cards often offer more lucrative sign up bonuses than personal cards.

That’s great news if you’ve been following BowTiedMahi’s guide and have started your Amazon FBA business! If you haven’t? There’s still hope!

A common response I get to this is, “I don’t have a business though.”

Many issuers (particularly Amex and Chase) are very lenient in who qualifies for business cards and will issue them to basic sole proprietors. To be clear, if you sell anything online such as baseball cards or furniture on Facebook Marketplace, you can often qualify for a business card.

My favorite card is the Chase Ink Business Cash, because with a few tricks, you can generate 8% back on all purchases.

It also has a $900 bonus after spending $6,000 in the first 3 months after opening.

That’s a 15% return on $6,000 spending. Best of all, this card does not have any annual fee, so you can keep it open forever.

Good news! There is also an additional no-annual fee Chase business card that also has a $900 sign up bonus. The Chase Ink Business Unlimited also offers a $900 bonus after spending $6,000 in the first 3 months.

Chase usually makes you wait 30 days in between applications, but many people in the BowTiedBum Slack group have had success applying for (and getting approved) for both in the same day!

*Note* In the Slack Group, we have a shared spreadsheet that tracks all approval data points to help you make informed decisions.

To be clear, if you apply (and get approved same day) for a Chase Ink Cash, you can also apply for a Chase Ink Unlimited that very same day!

It gets better (we’re just getting started).

If you have a spouse, significant other, etc. (we refer to them as Player 2 or P2)…You can have them apply as well for the same cards and get the same bonus.

Here’s what $24,000 of business spending looks like following the BowTiedBum tactics:

With $24,000 household spend (2 Chase Ink Cash’s and 2 Chase Ink Unlimited’s), you’d generate $3,600 cash back. Worth SIGNIFICANTLY more if redeemed for airline or hotel travel.

This is simply from just two cards each. Note that after a month or two, you can apply to the same cards and get the bonuses again (refer to the spreadsheet in the Slack group for data points), and many Bums have been doing just this.

Additionally, there are multiple other cards to get, and the Substack/Slack outlines the order so it takes all of the guesswork out.

*Note* If you get denied for any of these cards, make sure to call the reconsideration line. Often times, they just need to verify some basic info like your address. The Slack Group has a 90%+ approval rate after calling the reconsideration hotline.

GENERATING SPENDING

The first question I always get is “but I don’t know how I’ll spend that much.”

We have two options. Either spending with your own Amazon FBA biz (by far the best option). Or manufactured spending (purchasing cash equivalents or items that can easily be converted to cash)

Let’s have a look at the first and best option. Your own biz. Amazon FBA and BowTiedBum credit card hacks pair perfectly together, as Amazon selling requires a lot of spend. If you have any other biz that requires spend, that works too, and will make this game much easier.

If you still aren’t convinced to start your own biz, you’ll have to do manufactured spending. Some of the popular manufactured spending techniques in the BowTiedBum community are gift card reselling (don’t do this during the signup bonus period though), buying groups, and paying rent.

Buying groups are very straightforward and one of the first MS methods that newbies start with. You sign up for a service like mysbuyinggroup.com or BuyForMeRetail, and you purchase products to send to them from retailers like Amazon, and they send you a check or ACH payment in return. Why do they do this? They purchase in demand items that usually have quantity limits, so they get people like you to send them those items, so that they can resell them later. *Hint* If you’re a hustler, oftentimes you can see which items are in demand and either sell them yourself either locally or online. This works extremely well with consoles.

8% Back Play

Before giving away too much sauce, I’ll leave you with a bonus gem. You might have seen it in my Twitter handle, but I get 8% back on every single purchase.

Here’s how I do it. I put all of my spending on my Citi cards (either Citi Double Cash or Citi Premier). This gets me 2% or 3% back. I then buy no fee gift cards online that code as 5X (for office supply category with Chase Ink Cash). I can use these gift cards as “debit cards” to pay off my Citi balance, to generate 2% + 5% for a total of 7%. After, I can use Chase’s PayYourSelfBack feature to redeem my Chase points at 1.25 cents per point.

What 100k of Business Spend Looks Like

While there are multiple paths to take in this game, to get a solid return on $100,000 spending, my favorite is to start by loading up on Chase Business cards. This below example assumes you have a Player 2 playing this game with you.

CIC P1: $900

CIU P1: $900

CIC P2: $900

CIU P2: $900

I would apply to these cards three times (with each player) in the following 12 months, waiting at least one quarter to do so. (Example Q1, Q3, and Q4 apps)

Results?

$72,000 spend

$10,800 cash back

In the addition to the above, I’d grab a Citi card (either Double Cash or Premier) to unlock the 8% play.

Then?

I’d sit tight and wait until one of the Amex cards (Gold or Platinum Personal or Biz) was back at an all time high Sign up Bonus and grab it then.

If I see one of those back at their all time high, I’ll make sure to post it on Substack.

BowTiedBum Q4

Q4 is a fantastic time to join, because the Buying Groups have lots of Black Friday and holiday deals, so it’s the easiest quarter to generate manufactured spending. As always, if you have your own business that is significantly better!

Conclusion and Action Steps

I realize this sounds a bit overwhelming at first, but most people get over the learning curve after they spend a few weeks in the Slack Group and read the Substack articles. I provide all the spreadsheets you need to stay organized and on track.

While it sounds time consuming, once you get over the learning curve, it shouldn’t take more than a couple hours a week max. You could do 95%+ of this game on your phone during your lunch break at your W-2.

The Slack Group is a great place to ask any questions and get a quick response.

If interested in getting involved, join the Slack community by DMing me on Twitter with the email you used to sign up for Substack and make sure to read the “start here” post.

Additionally, make sure to check out the https://www.bowtiedbum.io/p/stop-paying-out-of-pocket-for-your to quickly pay for your membership.

I’ll answer any questions in the comments below, and look forward to helping you guys rob the banks!

Remember, Banks are Zeros.

Feel free to ask any questions below.

Disclaimer: None of this is to be deemed legal or financial advice of any kind.

As many of you have already seen on Twitter / BTB’s Substack, I am now a full-time Amazon seller.

I have left behind the corporate world to work for myself, which has brought it’s own set of challenges but is more than worth it - I can fill my schedule with things I actually enjoy doing as opposed to doing a bunch of calls on shit I don’t care about.

Throughout these last two and a half years, I’ve been approached by many people in DMs. A few of you ask good, specific questions which I happily answer - but the majority ask the same 3 questions over and over:

• “How long does it take to reach x per month?”

• “How much time do I need to put in?”

• “This seems like a lot of work, can I just hire VAs?”

These people almost always disappear after a couple months because they weren’t serious about building a real business.

I’ve put out a lot of content to help get people off the ground, and posted my progress in real time. I was able to put the work in for almost 3 years straight and quit my job because I had a reason to.

I despised sitting in meetings all day with two-faced dickheads who thought they were important.

I hated the fact that someone else decided how much money I made, and when I would have to be on the phone to work with “customers”.

I feared that I wouldn’t be there for my future family because I had to work extra hours to finish the current sprint.

I recall seeing a video where a 40 year old man making 250k a year had to ask his boss permission to leave work at 5pm instead of 7pm so he could go to his son’s little league game - his boss told him no.

Then what’s the point of making all that money?

With all of these things stacked up against each other, I didn’t have a choice - if I wanted to rid myself of this bullshit, I was going to have to drag myself out. I spent hours every single day sourcing products, labelling products in my bedroom at 10PM and dropping them off at the UPS Store the next day before my morning meetings.

It wasn’t easy.

It took a lot of hours.

But I was able to put the time in every day because I had my reasons for making it work.

Finding Your “Why”

Why do you want to start a business and achieve financial independence?

Do you want to make more money?

Do you want to spend more time with your family?

Do you have a hobby that you can’t put time into because you spend too much time at your job?

Do you want to travel more?

If you don’t have a good reason, you aren’t going to get very far. It’s very obvious that the people who ask questions like “How long does it take to reach x” aren’t serious about growing their business because if it mattered that much to them, they would shut the fuck up and get to work.

It’s not easy, and it does take time - but if you want it bad enough, if your “why” is strong enough, you’ll make it happen. There’s plenty of older guys who started selling on Amazon with kids and a 9 to 5 and created a second income stream - you’re not special.

Just like when it comes to going to the gym, as much as you don’t want to admit it, you do have time - you just aren’t willing to give it up.

Taking Action

This is the second hurdle for most people - they decide they should start a business, but never start a business.

People spend too much time planning, and never make any real progress - a logo, a website, an LLC, a “business plan”, you get the idea.

Doing it yourself and learning as you go will get you much further than any sort of planning. Using myself as an example, I spent 2 weeks sourcing books for my first FBA shipment and came out of it with a whole $60 in profit.

That sounds pretty bad, but the experience itself taught me a lot and I was able to improve because of it - my very next shipment I made that much profit off a single sale.

You need to fail.

You need to make mistakes.

You need to figure out what works, what doesn’t work, and adjust - that’s what running a business is all about.

It won’t be easy, and you’ll certainly get frustrated along the way - but if you really want to escape your 9-5, you’ll make it happen.

Just. Get. Started.

Dickhead.

Read more

Part of this is because they don’t know what profitable products look like.

This week’s post will be a quick list of items I have successfully sold in the past and made money off of, as well as how I found them.

Hopefully this can give you some inspiration on what types of items to look for.

Read more

At scale, you sell a lot of items every single month - and if you’re not keeping track, most of those winning products will fall off your radar. In the pursuit of new leads, you forget about the ones that are already making you money.

I’ve tried a lot of different software over the last 2 years to help with this issue, but none of them have quite been what I’m looking for. A few months ago I stumbled upon Sellerboard, which I believe to be the best software for this purpose.

Sellerboard is unique because not only does it track sales data, but it also allows you to input your inventory costs so you can figure out the best selling items from your inventory that are still profitable.

This post will be a quick guide on how to set up Sellerboard for yourself and my preferred restocking strategy using this software - using any of the links in this post will give you access to a 2 month free trial.

Setting up Inventory Costs

In order to make the best use of Sellerboard’s restocking capabilities, you need to input your cost of goods so they can calculate how profitable your items are.

First, go to the Products page. From there, you can search for a product and input the purchase price. If it’s an item that you purchase for the same price every time, you simply enter the cost per unit in this box:

If it’s an item that you purchase for a different amount each time (rotating discount codes, using rewards points, etc.), the process is a little more complicated.

First, click where it says “Constant” and then select “By period/batch/marketplace”.

This is where it gets tricky. When you open up this menu, you’re going to see a lot of fields that aren’t relevant to us (manufacturing, shipping, etc.) - luckily, Sellerboard gives us the option of deleting these fields and creating custom ones. Delete all of the preset fields by clicking the x on the right.

At the end, you just want one field (you can name it whatever you want). In this field you enter how many units you purchased and the total purchase price. The cost per unit is automatically calculated by Sellerboard. This last step is optional, but I like to put the store I bought the item from in the comments section.

If you ever purchase this item again, you can repeat this process by selecting “Add new period”.

Inventory Planner

This is where Sellerboard really shines as an inventory management tool. By going to the Planner page, you can see a lot of cool data around the products you’re selling:

My favorite part of this dashboard is the fact that they show your ROI at the right side of the page next to the recommended order quantity. Not only are they telling you what the winning products are, but they’re also telling you which ones are still profitable.

I could talk forever about how you can sort through all of the different data points, but I think you’d be much better off getting a 2 month free trial and playing around with it yourself.

Restocking Strategy

Every 2 weeks, I employ the following strategy:

• Sort items by “Days of stock left”

• Build a list of items that have less than 7 days of stock left

• Go through the list and remove all of the items that are:

  • No longer profitable (less than 30% ROI for most products)

  • Out of stock

  • Unable to be bought at the previous price

• Multiply the Sales Velocity (units/day) by 30 (estimated 1 month’s supply) and purchase that amount

I would say that the recommended quantity for reordering is somewhat accurate, but can be a little skewed if you sell a lot of units in one day - If you usually sell 3 of something per day but then randomly sell 10, Sellerboard might tell you to buy 300 units which might not be the best idea.

There’s a lot of other things you can do with Sellerboard that you might find useful, but I’m going to go over them - I mostly use this software for restocking purposes and it gets the job done.

If you think you can make use of Sellerboard, click here for a 2 month free trial.