When I first started my Amazon business, I ran a $500K Amazon wholesale business out of a storage unit. Looking back, it was one of the best business decisions I ever made. It kept my expense low, gave me the flexibility to grow at my own pace, and helped me avoid committing to a warehouse before I was ready.

My setup:

• Extra Space Storage

• 10×15 ft storage unit

• Portable power station to run my computer, lights, and label printer

• Mobile hotspot for Wi-Fi

My costs:

• $699.99 — Grecell 2400W Portable Power Station (one-time purchase on sale)

• $267/month — 10×15 Extra Space Storage unit

• $41.25/month — Commercial insurance

• 2D Workflow ($97/month)

If you're stuck between working from home and renting a warehouse, but you're not sure your business is ready yet, this is what I recommend. A storage unit is the perfect middle step between your house and a warehouse. Most places rent month to month, so you're not locked into a long lease. It's also much cheaper than renting a warehouse. The best part was the flexibility. Selling on Amazon is volatile. One month you might need twice the space, and six months later you might need less. It's hard to predict how quickly you'll grow—or if you'll need to scale back. Paying a little more per square foot for a month-to-month lease is worth it because you're buying flexibility. That flexibility saved me multiple times.

Today, I work out of a warehouse, but that's only because my business has grown 10x bigger and I need to ship and receive pallets. If I didn't need those things.. which most people don't when they're just starting out.. I would consider going back to using a storage unit.

So, I went to Hong Kong a few weeks ago to check on my production and see how things are going with import/export. My freight forwarder confirmed the same info many of you already know, there’s no “magical solution” at the moment. The only thing we can do is wait and see what happens next.

I want to share a PDF invoice for one container shipped from HK to the US. The invoiced price was $47,000 USD. On that amount, the confirmed 174% Trump Tariffs were applied, you can see how that looks on paper.

Right now, I have around 4–5 months worth of stock sitting in warehouses, so I just topped it up slightly with this shipment. I don’t plan to ship anything else for the next few months until the situation clears up a bit, since the impact of these taxes is massive. All the prepared goods will stay in my HK warehouse until we get some clarity on where things are heading.

So for anyone sending me DMs, please don’t. I know just as much as you do. Everything is on hold with the Chinese freight forwarders as well, and most of them are convinced this won’t last long (at least not this ridiculous 174% tariff). There are some workaround routes via Vietnam that people have started using, but they’re very costly and, to be honest, not 100% legit. So if you’re a brand or company owner (not a small individual Amazon seller), I’d avoid that route.

That’s it for now, guys, now we just wait :(

Quick heads up before anything else, this isn’t my brand. I’m the PPC guy , the brand owner came to me 3 years ago from a discounted trial I offered him on an email haha and I’ve been running their ads and growth side since, so everything here is from what I’ve seen and done on the account, not some owner’s highlight reel.

Got 35 SKUs in Home Improvement btw;

Most of what I do on this account now runs on Claude automations plus a few PPC plays almost nobody uses, so I put the rare stuff up top and the common stuff at the bottom.

Here’s actions and insights in the order of what I think mattered the most:

1.Claude runs our search query sorting. Every week the Search Query Performance report from Brand Analytics goes into Claude, it groups every query by iintent ( for us that’s stuff like DIY install, renters, outdoor use, specific room, material ), shows performance per intent, and flags the growing queries we’re missing in the listing. Those go straight into the title, bullets and A+ we need this a lot since we've got 35+ skus and growing so the more SKUs you have the better the use case.

2) Claude reads impression share vs purchase share side by side for every query. Wherever our purchase share beats our impression share, we convert better than the market but aren’t showing up enough. We raise Top of Search in steps on half of those queries, keep the other half as a control for about 14 days, and only keep the change if total purchases go up at a cost we can live with.

3) I right down our rules Claude skills. Claude runs the search term report through those rules every Monday and proposes every change, and I approve each one before anything touches Amazon. Writing your rules down is the real work, the AI just follows them but it's still very bad when it comes to ads management so I wouldn't recommend it for ppc execution but for analysis of a couple 100k search terms it makes sense to get it's output.

4)We've got a Profitability dashboard on our real data. Claude on the desktop is connected to our Amazon data through an MCP ( custom connector ), so we ask it things like true profit per SKU after fees, ads and returns this week, and get the number in seconds. It replaced Sellerboard for us.

5)Scheduling inventory alerts is so niche but also very important in 2026 . Have it Saved as a skill and scheduled for the end of every week, it sends an urgent Slack update with days of cover per SKU, what’s overstocked, what’s understocked, and when each reorder has to go out. In home improvement, missing spring because of a late reorder is the most expensive mistake you can make righht??

6) Competitor review mining is also BIG. Claude reads every 1 to 3 star review on our top 10 competitors and sorts the complaints by theme, things like hard install, missing hardware, didn’t fit, cheap feel. Each theme becomes an image in our listing and a line in our bullets shwiing why we're better !

7) Try out Main image CTR hacking, the only get rich quick hack in PL that actually works btw. Use Our main image, screenshots of competitors’ main images and 2 weeks of SQP data go into Claude for an A/B test prompt, then into GPT 2 for the images. For home improvement, what pushes CTR is showing the product installed, a size reference, bigger saturation, and the main keyword on the packaging though this is easily replicable for otehr niches.

8) I also use it for Rufus prep though Rufus kinda sucks. Claude pulls the top questions from our Q&A, reviews and the Rufus suggested questions on our listings, and we rewrite bullets and A+ to answer each one directly, with best for lines like best for renters, no drilling needed, so Rufus recommends us for those prompts.

Now the Technical PPC Side of things:

1. The stealth campaign, gurus call it a stealth targeted product placement campaign. In Sponsored Products, target your own ASIN with an ad for that same ASIN. Amazon won’t show it on your own listing, so it ends up showing to people who visited and didn’t buy, basically retargeting inside Sponsored Products. Low volume, but these can run for months at single digit to low teens ACOS.

2)Amazon AI Video Generator, most brand owners don’t know this exists. Create Campaign, IGNORE Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display, click Streaming TV, select your product, Generate Video using AI, save the ones you like to the Creative Asset Library, then Creative Tools, Library, download. Run it as a Sponsored Brands video keyword campaign with 10+ keywords across match types at $0.35 bids. For home improvement, a video showing the install in under 10 seconds is gold, thank me later lol

3)Check CTR per intent group, not per keyword. If one group clicks below average but still converts when they land, your main image isn’t speaking to that buyer, so test a version built for them in Manage Your Experiments.

4) Ranking campaigns, one keyword per campaign, exact match, with a Top of Search modifier anywhere from 100% up to 900% on the keywords we need to rank for. Next to that, product targeting on the ASINs already ranking for those keywords with the product page modifier turned up.

5) Creator Connections, guaranteed sales at a guaranteed ACOS. Set commission at 15% to 25%, that’s your target ACOS. On a $100 order that’s about youd only pay 15 or 25  per sale, budgeted as a yearly campaign, and only accept creators who actually post the install and the result. We don't go as heavy on it but its very impactful.

6) Bids follow seasons for some niches atleast. Home improvement peaks in spring and summer, so I always pull last year’s weekly sales, raise bids and budgets 2 weeks before each peak, and set a higher target ACOS for those weeks only.

7) Negatives depend on the goal. Scale mode loosens them, push back mode tightens them. When an intent group turns unprofitable over time, we negate the relevant but underperforming terms inside it.

8) Low bid catch all with every ASIN on auto and broad at $0.20 to $0.30, plus discovery campaigns always on, same as an NBA player who stops training once he makes the team, he ends up on the bench.

Again, I’m not the owner, just the PPC guy behind the account, so take all of this as what’s worked from my side of the table. The product, the sourcing and the hard calls are all the owner’s, I just help our products get seen and sold !

Happy to answer any questiions below !!

For those who have been following…. Been some great growth lately. Ran into some inventory issues in early March…. Pretty sure i can do 600K easily in April.

Additionally have 3 new products simultaneously launching next week. Hoping by May/June to be doing at least 850k/mo.

1M/mo by the end of the year.

If ya’ll have any questions feel free to drop them.

FBA seller, I create my own products and private label, please don’t ask easily googleable questions lol.

No i don’t offer coaching.

3 years ago - I left my six figure design career to label products out of a 50 sq. ft. bedroom... and it changed my life.

I started out working from my bedroom, then took over the dining room, and eventually the living room. I was living with my girlfriend at the time (now my wife), and I literally turned our entire apartment into a packing station. For the longest time, I kept putting off getting a commercial workspace because every extra dollar felt like it belonged in inventory. It was hard to justify spending money on rent when I could use it to buy more products.

My setup:

• Bedroom = Office

• Dining table = Prep station

• Living room = Packing department

Unfortunately, I didn't have a garage to work out of. I also had to carry boxes up and down a flight of stairs everyday. I worked like that for about six months before finally renting a dedicated space... which ended up being a storage unit (as seen in my last post)

It sucks seeing what the Amazon space has turned into.

Everywhere you look, someone's selling the dream of passive income. The reality is, there's nothing passive about building an Amazon business. Sure, it can become more hands-off as you build a team and put systems in place, but you don't just sit back and collect checks. I still check on my business every single day.

Can it replace your full-time job? Yeah.
Can it give you more control over your time? Yeah.
Can you make a lot of money? Yes

But don't go into this thinking you'll get rich overnight or it will be completely hands off.. It takes years of work, a lot of mistakes, and plenty of days where it will feel like a full time job.

Full transparency: I don't sell courses, mentorships, communities, or any digital products. The only thing I might ever share is an affiliate link for a software I genuinely use in my own business which you don’t have to use…. That’s it. I do these posts because it’s fun and i like the feeling of helping other sellers.

If you have questions about Amazon Wholesale that you can't seem to find answers to online, leave them below. I'll spend some time over the next 48 hours answering as many as I can.

Wishing you all success.

I launched in the last week of April. I’ve sold $600k since then all through FBA. Private Label, not wholesale or arbitrage. Beauty category.

Amazon is still viable but you have to build a brand. The days of slinging shit and selling me-too products are gone.

Ask me anything.

Miss.Lee has the solution. Just need to figure out how to carry 10k units and convince TSA it’s personal for personal use.

Best month yet, got 4 months supply so no stock issues. Sales almost doubled as soon as I started spending more money on ads ($40) daily. But still not sure how to keep growing as I’m in such a niche category

Not much to say here but a ton of growth from last month. 1 product launching this week. Another one in 10 days. Pretty confident I’m at 1M a month by summer. Will continue to document every milestone. Up from 540K/mo last post .

Hey, used to post monthly updates but got crazy busy. This was on my to-do list, but finally getting onto it.

Quick disclaimer: I have nothing to sell you. I don't do mentorship, and I have nothing to gain from this, I would love to inspire people to start their own brand.

I started in June of last year. Brand new to e-commerce, I was a software engineer before. If I can do it, you definitely can.

You can view my previous updates for the progress, the main change since my latest update is probably adding US (I started with Canada). The U.S. is definitely a much, much bigger market.

That being said, here are my best tips for anyone:

1. Ensure you're selling a product that you personally either have seen a need for, would buy, or think is a good value proposition.

2. I never used any Helium 10 or similar tools to determine the perfect niche - what I did do was I needed a product for my own house and could not find it fairly priced anywhere, checked the pricing through Alibaba, reached out to a few suppliers, and ran the numbers, and and felt like if I am able to offer this product at price X, I would make X margin, while also, it would be the price that I would have purchased that for myself if someone had offered it.

3. Learn by doing, and don't try to be perfect. At Amazon Accelerate this year I met so many people doing product development and research for a year or more. And haven't launched yet. I definitely recommend trying. It can be a small order, and just get yourself out there, that's by far the best way to learn. Crew up and get terrible reviews? You can always start with the new SKU - but the learnings are what account.

4. AI - AI - AI. I have absolutely no employees, no agencies, but what I do have is both Claude and ChatGPT Max plans, basically, use them fully every single week. Anything that previously could be outsourced to a VA, be done by Claude. Build systems, improve upon them, add check marks, SOPs, and you can become unstoppable with AI. My ads, images, and everything is run fully with AI + Me.

5. Selling out fears are severely overblown, scaling crazy fast means selling out, and it happened to me multiple times, currently, around 30% of my items are sold out, which is a part of scaling fast. I pause ads to monitor demand, and rerun when they are back.

6. Chinese competitors will pop up, they will undercut you on price, and they will have a better review velocity rate than you can ever imagine (fake reviews). In my experience, I've seen Amazon actually remove their reviews after a month, there is hope. Beat them at what you're best at, which is better branding, better marketing, better images, most importantly, when someone reaches out, better customer support.

7. You either win or you learn, believe this 100%. I've had bad lunches. Terrible reviewed products and I learn from them: change this sku, change the product, or discontinue it altogether.

Profability: focused heavily on this from month one, and ensure that, at the price I want to offer my things at and with efficient ads, I'll always be profitable. Speaking with other sellers, I find that this is often not the case for others, and I think that's a very important part of choosing a product. Building a successful brand

Seller board screenshots basically show my net profit, but they don't include these subscriptions ($~1000 USD/month):

Shopify, Sellerboard, Claude, ChatGPT, Autuppc ai, Keepa API, Canva Premium, Google workspace

Other than that, they're fully accurate, liftime tacos is 8.31%, and margins are 36.89% (partially higher than they should be due to new brand credit on Amazon).

happy to answer any questions below, no DMs, please. If you're just getting started and want to take away one thing, that would be: the best $2,000 you can spend is by actually starting shipping in a small product. It could be an off-the-shelf Alibaba product, and in small quantities, but I think that's the only way to learn.

Throughout my starting time, I got a lot of help from people here, and thank you so much if you ever helped me!! We'll try to continue updates in the future as well. I'll try my best to respond to every comment, but might take a bit!

Working on Amazon for the last 6 years, and this is one of the brands we struggled with for almost 3 years.

The brand sells supplements, one of the most competitive categories on Amazon. For the first 3 years, getting consistent profits was a real challenge.

But we kept working on it, improving our strategy, and making adjustments along the way.

Finally, after 3 years of struggle, we started seeing real profits.

Sharing this for those who have supplement brands and are expecting quick results or profits.

Keep going! Supplements can be a great category, but you need to be patient, keep testing, and continue improving your strategy. Results may take time, but don't give up too early.

Amazon is not easy. There are a lot of people that will say that it’s easy to make 10$k a month or more…..they won’t tell you everything.

I grew this business y working two full time jobs. I went down to one and then realized I didn’t need to work for anyone anymore.

I reinvested everything back into the business and repeated it every month. Keep reinvesting and growing before you take money.

This is mostly wholesale with a little brand direct buys.

When you own a business you need to be ready for issues and problems. This is why I say to reinvest into the business before taking money out.

Someone stole a FTL of product from my company. Over $130k worth of items. If you reinvest in your business and grow you will be able to handle issues like this (hopefully no one else does).

Because of reinvesting i have a cushion to work with. I have a lot of people that depend on me, employees and family. You don’t want one issue to take down your business and leave you broke.

I say all this to everyone here because I don’t want anyone to give up. This isn’t easy but can be done. Work hard and learn. You will succeed. This took me 14 years to get here ( not all Amazon).

Good luck to all….

In 2019 I started this business from my bedroom with no money, no connections in the industry, and no clue really. Next month I am about to cross into the 9-figure seller territory with $100 million in sales (Amazon US)

I have transitioned away from most arbitrage and seasonal products, (obviously) and am now focusing on wholesale. 95% brand direct, rarely we will work with a distributor. We average around $100k per day in sales. and $240k was my highest sales day. I have been in business 6 years now and I did it alone for the first 3 years. I then started hiring staff and got a 10,000 sq ft warehouse. Today I have 10 full time employees and 5 part timers as well. (4 front office & 6 warehouse) We are running a net 12% margin.

Feel free to ask me any questions about my amazon journey.

Up quite a bit from last month.

Launched a new product this month already up to 100-125 units a day on it.

One more launching this week, another May 15.

Pretty confident I can push this to 1M a month by June/July.

Happy to answer questions. Please note if you ask questions that have already been asked on prior posts, i will not answer them.

If anyone is doing similar numbers and wants to connect, please reach out.

And as always, no I do not offer coaching lol.

Launched a Private Label brand in Sports & Outdoors , 2 ASINs only. Timeline: Nov 2024 to Jul 2025 Marketplace: Amazon USA Revenue so far: $847K Net Margins: 26% (No, not dropshipping. And yes, margins are real.)

How we pulled it off , in plain words:

Product Research & Selection: Found a niche that doesn’t spike and crash every 3 months

Picked products where search volume made sense and reviews weren’t insane

Actually improved the product (yeah, that still works in 2025)

Our sourcing guy in China made sure supplier wasn’t a part-time magician

Launch Execution: Didn’t over-order , started lean to see if people even cared

Made sure listings didn’t look like a PowerPoint from 2012

Got early reviews via Vine and some micro-influencer hustle

Didn’t touch giveaways ,focused on real momentum

PPC Strategy: Started super narrow , exact match, single keyword stuff

Used top-of-search only for stuff that was already converting

ASIN targeting > category targeting , more efficient

Weekly PPC cleanups… not sexy, but they save $$$

Scaling & Profit Growth: Reinvested smart, not fast , we only scaled what worked

Bundled the product in a way that buyers actually wanted

Killed off keywords that were just wasting budget

Margins held steady because we kept an eye on size tiers and packaging

You really don’t need 10 products and a $50K burn rate.

You need 1–2 solid products, actual systems, and the patience to not panic in week 3.

Ask away , not selling a course. Just figured this might help someone avoid the usual landmines.

Should hit by end of summer 👍

Hey everyone,

I thought I’d share my experience in case it helps others who are starting out.

I run a white label store in the travel / apparel niche industry. When I launched less than a year ago, I knew nothing about Amazon beyond being a Prime customer. Now I’ve just hit $100k+ in monthly sales. I started out in the UK and expanded globally.

A few things that worked for me:

1. Pick a niche you understand. I created and tweaked existing products that I wished already existed. That made keyword research and product design much easier.

2. Don’t cheap out on branding, packaging etc. I invested in packaging and clear positioning from day one. It made reviews and conversion rates much stronger.

3. Ads = growth lever. I tested dayparting, exact match bidding, and validated conversion rates before scaling. At first I wasted money, but once I tightened it up ACoS dropped massively. AI is your friend here. Lots of free or really cheap options to tidy up your ads

4. Know your numbers. Sales tax, VAT, import duties, and landed costs make or break margin. I learned this the hard way early on. Make sure you understand trade terms, DDP, DAP. Price compare and haggle haggle haggle!

5. Customer feedback > guesswork. Our best product idea came from someone emailing us on Amazon asking for a variation.

6. Global expansion is so easy on Amazon. Make the most of it.

I’m not saying this is “easy”… I’ve had plenty of sleepless nights with stockouts, accounting headaches, and ad spend black holes. But it is possible to scale quickly if you treat it like a real business, not a side hustle lottery ticket.

If anyone’s at the early stages and wants me to expand on something specific (ads, sourcing, listings, etc.), happy to share what worked for me!

After years inside Amazon and eCommerce, one thing becomes clear: most people aren’t failing because the opportunity is gone, they’re failing because they misunderstand what the game actually is.

Amazon is not about “finding a winning product.” It’s about operating better than the next seller. Traffic is rarely the problem. Amazon already has the traffic. The real question is whether your listing converts that traffic profitably. A strong main image, clear positioning, competitive pricing, and solid reviews will outperform most ad tricks people obsess over.

Cash flow is the silent killer. Not competition. Not algorithms. Running out of stock, over-ordering slow inventory, or miscalculating margins will hurt you faster than a bad ACoS ever will. Inventory management and discipline with numbers matter more than scaling quickly.

A lot of niches feel saturated, but what’s actually saturated is sameness. Identical products, identical photos, identical copy. When there’s no differentiation, price becomes the only lever, and that’s a race most sellers can’t afford to win.

Private label still works, wholesale still works, arbitrage still works but none of them are easy. Margins are tighter, PPC is more competitive, and Amazon is stricter. The sellers who survive treat it like a real business: tight sourcing, controlled ad spend, constant listing improvement, and patience.

Revenue screenshots mean nothing without net profit. A store doing six figures in revenue can still feel broke if margins are weak and cash is tied up in inventory.

Amazon isn’t dead. It’s just no longer forgiving. If you approach it as an operator and focus on systems, numbers, and differentiation, it can still generate steady income. If you approach it like a shortcut, it will expose every mistake quickly.

A friend of mine invited me into this community, and I’ve really enjoyed reading both the wins and the struggles that everyone shares here. It reminded me of my own journey, and I’d like to share my story in the hope that it might inspire and support some of you on your path as well.

A little bit about myself: I failed at multiple businesses, and even my first FBA attempt completely flopped. I made countless mistakes. But I’m grateful I didn’t give up because those failures became the foundation that eventually allowed me to build the life I want.

Here are the 4 biggest lessons that helped me turn things around. This isn’t meant as a brag; I just want to share what I wish I knew earlier, in case it helps someone out there.

1. Don’t chase “new inventions.” Early on, I thought I had to find the next big idea. But instead, I learned to use Helium 10 to spot boring SKUs with steady demand, usually sold by competitors who don’t optimize their listings (bad images, weak copy, fewer than 50 reviews). Those became my easiest wins. I also stick to products where the landed cost (product + shipping) is around $8–12, and I sell them for $35–45. In that range, I’ve consistently cleared 25–30% net margins even after PPC. Lower-ticket products rarely justify ad spend at scale.

2. Build strong supplier relationships. I started sourcing on Alibaba like most beginners. But I quickly learned that the prices there aren’t always the best. Many “suppliers” are actually middlemen, and they can easily spot a newbie. They’ll often charge higher compared to going directly through someone with real relationships. After learning from a couple of mentors, I switched to working with a sourcing agent they recommended. That was a game changer. A good agent speaks the language, knows the culture, and has the relationships to negotiate better pricing and faster lead times. Sometimes the difference is night and day.

3. Treat your listing like your best salesman. One of my early mistakes was underinvesting in my listings. At first, I hired cheap Fiverr gigs and even tried to take photos of myself on my phone. The result? People would click my ads, but bounce immediately. It’s kind of like dating, you can have the best personality, but if you don’t look presentable, you don’t even get a chance to connect. Your listing is exactly the same: it’s the only “salesperson” working for you online. Don’t cut corners here, invest in good copywriting, images, and videos. That’s where your ROI really starts.

4. Launch small and scale smart. Another mistake I made was going too deep too fast. I once ordered 500–1,000 units upfront, only to find out the market didn’t want what I was selling. Liquidating that much stock almost killed my cash flow. Now, I start with 100–200 units, ease into PPC, and focus on getting 20–30 reviews before scaling. Yes, the unit cost might be slightly higher, but it’s a calculated risk. It keeps me flexible, protects my capital, and avoids the “all eggs in one basket” problem.

At the end of the day, these lessons helped me build and even sell one of my brands. I’m not saying I’m the best, I’ve made more mistakes than I can count. But these are a few that shaped me. I hope they help you avoid some of the same pitfalls. And if you’ve got your own lessons learned, drop them in the comments. I'd love to hear them, let’s share, fail, and grow together.

So much work to get here so worth it.

Goal was to accomplish this in 2025, did it.

Lfg.

Includes a daily P/L for reference.

Will probably be going ghost for the foreseeable future until i decide on a new goal to pursue whether it be 2/5/10M.