Many people get started in FBA as a side hustle. But at some point, if they’re moderately successful, they start thinking about whether it could become a full-time job.
The trouble is, it’s not whether FBA can be a full-time job. It can. Enough entrepreneurs have already shown this.
The problem, instead, is whether you are ready to become a full-time FBA entrepreneur.
The first thing that you’ll need to do is to change the way you look at life. When you go buy groceries, you probably fill your list and go home. If you’re going to do FBA full-time, you’ll need to be looking at what’s new in the store, what’s selling, what’s in other customers’ shopping carts. You will be thinking about the big trends, and about individual new products, and you’ll be thinking about what opportunities there might be there for you.
You’ll be looking for products, if not 24/7, at least all the hours that you’re awake!
The second thing you’ll need to do is to move from sourcing one product and then selling it, to sourcing existing and new products on a continual basis. You’ll need to update specifications for some products, as you learn about customer glitches and wish lists; you might need to change suppliers. And at the same time you’ll be finding new suppliers, sourcing new products, and new versions of existing products.
You really need to be ready for this. It’s a lot of work. And it has to be done at the same time as maintaining your sales side.
You’re going to need to set clear values for your business, and communicate them in a way that customers value. For instance, if you sold kitchen equipment or ingredients, which of these would you be?
• We save you money every month.
• Bringing you new and fresh tastes!
• Traditional kitchenware like your grandmother used.
• For stylish entertaining.
• Cutting-edge labor-saving technology for the home chef.
• The family that eats together, stays together.
As you can see, the kind of products and the kind of customers you’re going to target would be quite different in each case, and so would your content for social media. This is very different from the side hustle attitude of “just one product at a time”, because you’re trying to create a brand.
And the other thing you’ll need to do, however well focused you are, and however many hours you put in yourself, is to outsource. This is the part that a lot of side hustle players find very difficult. They’re used to doing everything themselves and having total control. But at some point you have to move on from that to running a team.
What you outsource first will depend on what you find most difficult and where someone else can add the most value. It might be running the sourcing and freight transporting parts of the job; it might be graphic design and photography, copywriting, or social media content. This is where having established your brand really helps to establish very quickly with your outsourced team the look and feel and tone of voice you want.
These aren’t changes you can make like one, two, three. They’re things you’ll really want to think about for a while. And there’s one other thing you’re going to need, too, which is focus.
If you can’t focus on a single task, whether that’s monitoring and optimizing your PPC campaigns or learning about the preferences of Latinx consumers, your FBA business will never be as good as it can be. And occasionally, you also will need to be able to focus a hundred percent on actually taking some time off!