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At roughly 3 pm Pacific Standard Time on September 20th, 2011, my status went from New Merchant to Featured Merchant.
I've been selling cosmetics, fragrances, and beauty/health-care products on Amazon for several months now. Looking back, I'm quite proud of everything that I've done to lead my store to be featured today. Many many 2-hours sleep nights, and days where I only have time for 1 single meal (dinner). I literally poured in all my time, energy, effort into this business. And finally it's starting to pay off.
Before yesterday, I was doing on average maybe 15-20 orders a day.
From 3pm to 11:59pm yesterday, there were 60 orders, for a total of 75 orders for the day.
Many people already told me of how becoming a Featured Merchant would bring in so much more business. I didn't know it's THIS much more. I'm currently overwhelmed, with joy and happiness, but also physically. I'm thinking it's probably time to hire more people. I'm currently hiring 1 part time employee to help me with generally everything. But that won't be enough for the coming days ahead, especially with the holiday season approaching.
I've been making very very good money even with the New Merchant status. At this rate I'm hoping to be a millionaire in several years. A man can dream <3
September 20th, 2011 will mark a major milestone in my life.
 
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Congrats man. Good luck with future hires and find some time for yourself! PS. don't lose your featured status because you become overworked
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Congrats! That's pretty awesome. It feels great to work hard at something and have it pay off.
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Thats awesome! If you don't mind me asking, how many suppliers do you use? Just curious if its one or many.
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Congratulations! I've always admired people who go out and start a business of their own. It can be a risky venture that requires a lot of hard work. Glad your hard work is paying off for you.
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Congrats dude, send some money to me, I'm broke
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Thank you everybody for the encouragement, I really appreciate it.
On September 21 2011 23:05 UnRealXenoth wrote:
Thats awesome! If you don't mind me asking, how many suppliers do you use? Just curious if its one or many.
No I don't mind at all. I'm currently ordering from about 5 different suppliers. When it comes to fragrances, you have to be really careful on who you order from, because not all of them carry authentic products. I've been doing this (not only on Amazon) for several years now, and these 5 suppliers are the culmination of all the time leading up to today.
I learned the hard way with many suppliers, having heard promises that they deliver authentic products, but failing to do so within a couple orders. Anyway if I can give an advice for people looking for a good supplier, it would be: "Don't ever give up no matter how many shitty experience you've gone through. Because there are many honest suppliers out there, you just have to look past the gimmicky 'great' prices to find them."
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Yea, I deal with a lot of suppliers and subcontractors where I work, and the really cheap ones usually cut corners/sell low-quality products.
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Grats, when you put in a lot of effort it usually pays off well. What are you selling btw?
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Congratulations! Wish you best, hope you keep getting bigger!
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Congratulations, it's the best feeling in the world when you worked really hard for something and it finally comes to fruition. I wish you all the best in the future.
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woa. reminds me of that guy who sold his cell phone on ebay and eventually got a car! grats on the good fortune
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Germany38463 Posts
Congratulations! I am very jealous to be honest, I wish I had a way of making a decent income.
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Osaka27174 Posts
Congratulations. Any advice you can give for someone who wants to get started like you did?
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Why did you decide to start selling beauty products? Do you know something about them or what? Just seems random for someone to just start selling beauty products for women, especially when you're a man. I mean, you gotta have to know something about the products right? Like what sells and what doesnt?
Anyways, congratulations! 
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On September 22 2011 00:13 Manifesto7 wrote:
Congratulations. Any advice you can give for someone who wants to get started like you did?
Sure Mani. Though my experience is costly (literally tens of thousands of dollars), I'm happy to share whatever I can without giving away too much of my trade secrets.
1. The source of your products is the most important thing (duh!). You won't be able to immediately find a good supplier on a first try. It's a trial-and-error thing that you would have to personally experience. My advice is to not commit too much financially on the first few orders. Don't be too hasty, just take your time and build up the mutual trust.
2. Good suppliers don't need you, you need them. Be very polite and accommodating to their (reasonable) demands. Trust me, you're only a small fish to them. For them to even spend a minute communicating with you is already nice enough on their part. They'd much rather sell to some bigger business than to a new merchant like yourself. That being said, don't be scammed by fake wholesalers. Use your common sense, and use a credit card (so you can dispute any fraudulent transaction later)! Don't ever EVER use cash/wire transfer/direct deposit as methods of payment.
3. This advice is Amazon specific. Even if you make a mistake (listing the wrong price, whatever), just accept the consequence. Don't try to avoid it. The money you may lose now will be a grain of sand compared to the money you can make down the road. Treat each and every single customer with the utmost politeness and respect, even the ones who try to scam you (trust me, this will happen every now and then, it's part of the cost of doing business on Amazon) like complaining they never received the order, that the order arrived defective, etc.. Just eat the cost and treat them like you would with the best customer. Scammers are plentiful, but compared to the honest buyers out there, it's probably 1 to thousands, so you won't lose much in the long run. Do keep in mind those suspicious buyers in case of future orders from them though.
4. If you want to make it big, make sure this is really your passion, make sure you actually enjoy doing this, because otherwise you'll be burned out very quickly.
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On September 22 2011 00:25 Deadlyfish wrote:Why did you decide to start selling beauty products? Do you know something about them or what? Just seems random for someone to just start selling beauty products for women, especially when you're a man. I mean, you gotta have to know something about the products right? Like what sells and what doesnt? Anyways, congratulations!
Hmm long story short, one thing lead to another, really. No specific reason. Actually if I have to say, it'd probably be because in my country (Vietnam), beauty products have to be imported, and there's a really good profit margin for stuff made in the US. That made me got into the business, but I gave up trying to get into Vietnam because of the bullshits I have to put up with their customs bureaucracy. So now I'm only doing business on Amazon, catering only to US customers.
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grats! now the hard part... work a lot harder or delegate work to trusted employees!
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EPT
