How To Start From Zero

Getting off the ground with next to no money.

Welcome back!

As I pump out more content, you might notice a lack of consistency in how I’m formatting my posts. This is because of the fact that I’m playing around with different styles and trying to see what I like the best, so bear with me - hopefully, the content itself should remain unaffected.

This post will cover how to get started with very little money. I recommend in my other posts that you should have a small war chest to get started as that will allow you to scale quickly, but I also realize that some people either don’t have a lot of money they can use for starting capital or just want to prove the concept before they dump in a large sum of money. This post should give you an idea of how you can start selling on Amazon on a budget, so you can at least learn the process without making any expensive mistakes.

Starting Capital

Let’s say that you have zero dollars that you can allocate to starting your Amazon business (highly unlikely considering the people who read this stack but I’ll entertain the idea). At the very least, you’re going to need $40 to pay for the first month of your professional Amazon seller account.

Emptying Your Closet

The first step to building startup capital for your business is going to be selling your old shit on eBay. I’m sure that everyone who reads this post has something in their home that they no longer have a use for, whether it’s a toy, a DVD, or even some kitchenware. Grab anything you’re willing to get rid of and start seeing what its worth.

Using myself as an example, a few months after getting into book flipping I sold my collection of old Pokemon games for more capital. When you search for your items, go to the bottom left of your screen and check the filter for sold and completed listings. This will show you what the item has sold for in the past:

Filter out listings that have only been sold.

The green text will indicate that the item has already been sold, which will give you an estimate of how much you can expect to sell your item for:

Examples of sold listings on eBay.

Selling my old games got me around $450, which was a good amount for me at the time. You can easily get started with less using the method I’m going to talk about, but the more you can start with the better.

Scanning In The Trenches

The reason I usually don’t like talking about this beginner friendly method is because I’ve never done it, but I think it’s important to give people a way to start from the very bottom. However, it does involve leaving the house.

The easiest way to get started with little money is sourcing books locally - I’m talking about going to thrift stores, library sales, and estate sales. In these environments, used books are incredibly cheap and you can usually get them for $0.50-$2.00 each. With a very low buy cost, you can learn about the process of selling items on Amazon FBA without losing a lot of money. Another reason why starting with these cheap books is good is because there usually aren’t any selling restrictions on them and you can build up a sales history without paying to get ungated in the category or any specific brands.

Using ScoutIQ

If you’re going down this route, you should get ScoutIQ. ScoutIQ is an app for your phone that will give you data on books that you scan which should allow you to make an informed buying decision. The cheapest plan is $14 a month, but you can get a free trial for 14 days which should honestly be more than enough time for it to pay for itself. While I haven’t used it, I do know how it works. Here’s what it looks like when you scan a book’s barcode:

The interface is pretty straightforward for anyone who knows how selling on Amazon works, but there is one data point unique to the application which is eScore. The eScore of a book is how many days the book has been sold in the last 180 days. For example, if a book’s eScore was 90 that would mean in the last six months it has sold at least one copy every other day. The developers of the software have a lot of great free content on how to use the application on a deeper level, so I’ll let you look into that yourself if you’re interested.

Wacky Margins

Sourcing books locally is where you’re going to see some really dumb ROI / profit. It’s very much possible to buy some old ass book for $2 at a thrift store, and sell it for $100 on Amazon. You’ll never understand why it was selling for that much, but you don’t complain. It’s very easy to get 100%, 200%, and even 1000% ROI flips with these books because you can buy them at a really low cost. The reason you should only be doing this in the beginning is because these high ROI flips aren’t consistent, and you’ll never be able to do the same volume as a typical arbitrage seller without driving to several sales across town.

Where To Find Sales

Here’s a couple of websites where you can find places to scan books in your local area:

• estatesales.org

• booksalefinder.com

• estatesales.net

• yardsalesearch.com

• localthriftstores.com

I also recommend staying away from Goodwill stores as I’ve noticed a lot of them sell their books online and are pretty well aware of what they’re worth. They’re a good source for flipping textbooks online but I wouldn’t recommend them if you’re going local.

---

I wish I could give more insight into this topic, but frankly I don’t have much experience doing this because I prefer doing everything online, and the local bookstore near my house has a sign that says “No Scanning!” (imagine hating money… cucks). If you’re really strapped for cash and don’t mind starting small, this is the path you should be taking.

If you have any questions, as always feel free to drop a comment, or DM me on Twitter or Discord. I still plan on helping 10 people hit $10k this year so get off your ass and start grinding.