SHOWNOTES
Have you ever been curious about selling on Amazon? Either to make a little money on the side? Or even as a main revenue stream?
In this episode, Janis Carmena shares her journey to creating a multi-six figure e-commerce business on Amazon.
Janis was a full time police officer for 15 years until she was injured on duty (you have to hear this harrowing story of her foot chase to catch a criminal!).
This life changing moment pushed her to reinvent herself and start another career, one that she is in total control of….selling on Amazon.
In this episode, Janis shares:
✔️ all the ins and outs about the different ways to sell on Amazon (including “retail arbitrage”).
✔️ How anyone can do this...not just the “tech savvy” peeps.
✔️ How to create your own personal brand on Amazon, and more!
RESOURCES
To learn more about how to sell on Amazon, visit ecommercequeenbee.com
TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:03] - Gary Vee Hey, guys, it's Gary Vaynerchuk, and you're listening to the Front Row Entrepreneur Podcast with our girl, Jen.
[00:00:12] - Jen Lehner Our guest today has been a full time police officer for 15 years until she was injured and couldn't work on the road anymore. Not being able to work as a patrol officer anymore was a life changing moment. And she decided that she needed to reinvent herself and start another career, one that she was in control of.
[00:00:31] - Jen Lehner And this is how she discovered e commerce and specifically, Amazon. As a trained teacher before becoming a police officer, our guest has now gone full circle and returned to her roots. She wants to help other women become e-commerce queen bees and take control of their own income. She's a true believer that your journey is yours alone. And she's here to help everyone who chooses to take on the e-commerce journey. Welcome, Janice Carmena.
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[00:01:00] - Janis Carmena Hey, Jen, how are you?
[00:01:01] - Jen Lehner I am doing so well. I cannot wait to talk to you because I've always been fascinated by Amazon. I mean, from its very beginnings, like I was an early adopter. I think it's hilarious that we used to laugh at the fact that they were going to try to sell books online because like, who's going to buy a book online?
[00:01:23] - Janis Carmena I know it's that crazy. Jeff Bezos did a smart job starting Amazon.
[00:01:27] - Jen Lehner And think of just how brazen it was that he named it what he named it.
[00:01:31] - Janis Carmena Oh, I know. It's crazy.
[00:01:33] - Jen Lehner It's like the perfect day. I mean, he grew into his name, but it is fascinating. And now people, you know, obviously, like we all order everything from Amazon. But as it relates to what we're going to discuss today, many people are able to build very lucrative careers on Amazon.
[00:01:50] - Janis Carmena Many people don't even know that Amazon is actually made up of a whole bunch of third party sellers, which is what I am. Who knew that anybody can sell on Amazon?
[00:02:00] - Jen Lehner OK, so let's start there. What do you mean third party sellers? And how did you specifically fall into this?
[00:02:08] - Janis Carmena Well, I think it was about seven or five years ago. I was kind of bored. So being a police officer, I was working two days, two nights far off, and my kids were getting older and no one was home during the days I was off. And I was like, OK, what else can I do here with these four days off? So I was looking, you know, I looked at MLM, I looked at, you know, jobs you can do at home anything to just make a little bit of income and to keep myself busy.
[00:02:31] - Janis Carmena And I just happened upon a YouTube video that says, hey, what about Amazon FBA? And I'm like, what the heck is Amazon FBA? And I did a bit more research and learned that I could have my own Amazon store. Amazon could sell everything for me, ship everything. I just have to find things to sell.
[00:02:52] - Jen Lehner OK, so that fine things to sell piece is key, right, because you have to do a lot of research, right? Like you have to know what's going to have the margins and what's hot. I know you can't tell us all of it because I'm sure that that's in and of itself like a day long workshop. But what's the gist of that? Like, how do you find what's going to do well?
[00:03:14] - Janis Carmena Well, there's about four different ways, really, that you can sell on Amazon. So I started with what's called 'retail arbitrage', or they use a short term RA. So I was basically shopping. I had started an Amazon store, which is not hard to do if you go to Seller Central. And I went around with my Amazon app on my phone and I would just scan barcodes in stores because I was kind of bored.
[00:03:36] - Janis Carmena Right. So the scan barcodes and say, look, this item that I found for sale for five bucks is selling on Amazon for twenty five dollars. And then I look to see how many fees Amazon would take in order to sell it for me. And they take about 30 percent. I'm like, well, that's a no brainer. I can make 12 bucks on each one of these products. I would just buy out all those products out of that store, shipped them all to Amazon and Amazon would sell them for me.
[00:04:00] - Jen Lehner So that's called FBA?.
[00:04:03] - Janis Carmena Well, that's retail arbitrage. Yeah. FBA is fulfilled by Amazon, which means Amazon, when I ship everything to Amazon, Amazon stores it all, pixsell over to the warehouse, puts shipping labels on it, packages all up and ships it to their customers. That's fulfilled by Amazon and they usually charge around 30 percent per product for doing that. So I don't have to do anything but find products and send them in the hundreds to Amazon to sell for me.
[00:04:30] - Jen Lehner When you are doing that, when you are doing the arbitrage, what is like your single biggest score? Do you have one that you remember where you were like, oh my gosh, I'm paying four cents for these and I'm making four dollars.
[00:04:44] - Janis Carmena I think my biggest score was the scooters that I found. And you remember those razor scooters? They were like, yeah, yeah. But I was buying them in Canada for like thirty nine dollars and they were selling at a drugstore for some reason. I had no clue why they're blowing up these scooters. I was selling them in the States for $125 America, which is like a thousand dollars Canadian in my world right now.
[00:05:05] - Janis Carmena So I was I seriously went around to every London drug store in Vancouver Island that I could find. And I was sending in scooters. I think I was able to find about one hundred of them.
[00:05:18] - Jen Lehner All right. And that's where this is the part where I be like, yeah, I'm out, because now I got I've got to figure out how I'm going to ship scooters like, you know, envelope's or one thing or whatever. Yeah. But like, how did you did you have to secure a reliable shipper to do a thing or did you just go to the to the post office and what did you do, how did you ship scooters.
[00:05:40] - Janis Carmena I just went to the post office. I went to Canada Post and I would package up five, six scooters per box and I would ship the boxes to Amazon, United States and Amazon made the shipping plan for me and would tell me where to ship them to. So I just let Canada Post do it for me. And then Amazon sold them for me. And then every two weeks I had the money deposited in my bank account.
[00:06:00] - Jen Lehner And then were you having to do any stuff on your end, like hustling on, you know, trying to get people to leave your reviews? And would that make your stuff show up better than the other people doing arbitrage, or was it just based on, like, consumer demand?
[00:06:15] - Janis Carmena Well, back with arbitrage, I didn't ,because it was actually someone else's listing that I was selling on. Right. So we talked about retail arbitrage. You can do online arbitrage, too, which is exactly the same thing. But in this Covid world we live in right now, online is actually better because you don't have to go to the brick and mortar stores. Right? Then there's wholesale, which is just getting wholesale accounts, which I'm not going to quite get into.
[00:06:39] - Janis Carmena But what you're talking about with reviews is private label, which is what I totally got into after I decided that I didn't like sharing the listing with other sellers. I don't like competing with other sellers. I want it to be the only seller on my listing.
[00:06:52] - Jen Lehner So how do you get to be like? Because I always buy the Amazon preferred. Yes. And I never buy the sponsored ones.
[00:07:00] - Janis Carmena No. So you do Amazon preferred, which is the organic listings. So Amazon sponsored is pay per click advertisement, Amazon preferred. Are you looking for the ones with the badge, do you mean?
[00:07:12] - Jen Lehner It's like it's got like a black line and maybe it has like the badge I always filter by prime. Yeah. And then I usually will go with the one like if there's like two air poppers. Right. Or Air Fryer's let's say and one is, has a lot of reviews, a lot of positive reviews, the other one has about as many positive reviews is the same price but has the badge. That's the one I always go with.
[00:07:35] - Janis Carmena Perfect. So what happens with that is that is the fact that you're filtering with prime being that I sell Amazon SBA, that means I'm a prime seller. Amazon can control the shipping because everything's in their warehouse and that's a key to them. Right. So I'm not I'm not sending out anything that gets bought for me by, like, I don't do it myself. I let Amazon do it. So that means I'm an Amazon prime seller.
[00:07:58] - Janis Carmena To get that badge, it's just how good your metrics are as a seller, like with your reviews, the quality, there's been no complaints, stuff like that, that's how you get preferred. Also how many you sell. So the fact that if I do pay per click advertising, I increase my sales. Right. So you can get that preferred badge.
[00:08:20] - Jen Lehner So as a private seller, is Amazon still fulfilling your orders? Are you doing that from home?
[00:08:25] - Jen Lehner Oh, they do it for me. I'm a bit lazy sometimes with stuff like that. That is not my zone of intelligence. I don't have time.
[00:08:32] - Janis Carmena Same.
[00:08:33] - Janis Carmena So what is the deal with returns? Do they go back to Amazon or do they go back to you? And do you have to deal with that headache?
[00:08:40] - Janis Carmena No, they go back to Amazon. Amazon does everything for me. They go,
[00:08:43] - Jen Lehner wow, yes, we need to get in on this, OK?
[00:08:46] - Janis Carmena Yeah.
[00:08:47] - Jen Lehner So what about like, I've always been fascinated. Like, I know when I buy a product on Amazon nine times out of ten, I know that that's a lot of that stuff is coming from Alibaba. Yes. And I've gone to Alibaba and I'm like, I'm just going to get it there myself.
[00:09:03] - Jen Lehner Like like I remember I had these, like, this little cube timers. And I don't know if you've seen them. They're like these auto cube timers. And there's like one side is five minutes, one side is ten minutes, one is whatever. And I used to use it with my students as a productivity tool and everybody loved it, but they were cost prohibitive for what they were. They were like twenty bucks. If you bought on Amazon.
[00:09:25] - Jen Lehner I knew that I could get these on Alibaba and sure enough they were there, but I didn't do it because it was so daunting. I was like, because they're in China, I couldn't understand it. I didn't know how to look for a reputable seller. The shipping was really confusing. So do you order from Alibaba? How do you where do you get your stuff?
[00:09:47] - Janis Carmena I do. I have a manufacturer from Alibaba that I've altered stuff with. Right. So that's where I find my manufacturers by alter the products with them. So I want little changes. So what I do is I look at the competing products. So say your timer cube. I look on Amazon for anybody else selling time or cubes and I read their reviews and the people doing the reviews will tell me what they find wrong with them. Right. Like the ten minute part, does it work or I wish it was this color or something like that.
[00:10:15] - Janis Carmena So then I go back to the manufacturer that I found, say I want to do the cubes that you're talking about. Say, you know what? Everybody really wants purple. So I'm going to launch purple cubes and they're going to make sure that whatever people said in the reviews that didn't work, works now. I'm going to fix those issues and then I'm going to make it premium. I'm going to use premium packaging. I'm going to add something extra like you use it for productivity. What an awesome way of putting it instead on how to increase productivity and the productivity cube. See what I mean?
[00:10:44] - Janis Carmena Like, I'm going to make it a bit more premium and then I'm going to get a whole bunch shipped to me. And shipping is actually not as hard as you think from China. You can do air or sea. It's really easy. And if you really wanted your manufacturer can ship it straight to your door or you can get what's called a freight forwarder. So it's just taking it step by step, Jen. And don't look at the whole big picture.
[00:11:07] - Jen Lehner Well, I guess, like, are there safeguards built in the way like eBay has with the honor system or the reputation system so that if you pick, you know, how do you know you're going to purchase five hundred units of something? You do the transfer. I never even looked at how you make the payment. And then what if they just if you or I mean.
[00:11:27] - Janis Carmena Yeah, Alibaba, there's lots of safeguards. It's very similar to PayPal. So first of all, I look at reviews and it's the same. The reviews make our world go around a business, that's for sure. Yeah. Everybody needs reviews. Oh, by the way, everybody just pop on the podcast to give Jen a review, please.
[00:11:43] - Jen Lehner Thanks. I always forget to ask for that
[00:11:46] - Janis Carmena Because again, reviews make the world go round. But Alibaba manufacturers have reviews also from people who have purchased off them. And then they also have what's called trade assurance. So when you purchase through Alibaba, usually they want 30 percent ahead of time. Right. And if you send the money through trade assurance, you're guaranteed that if something screws up or they don't deliver or the product is horrible, you can get the money back.
[00:12:09] - Janis Carmena Also, I always have, if it depends on how much money my product is that I'm bringing across, if it's in the thousands and thousands of dollars, I get a third party inspector. So an independent inspector over in China or Thailand or India or wherever, I'm getting my product made to go in and inspect it. And they give me a full report with pictures of everything they do, random inspections of a random sampling of products.
[00:12:32] - Jen Lehner All right. Well, how is a regular human going to know how to do that? How are we going to find an inspector in China? Is there like I imagine there's a whole ecosystem or Web site devoted to that, or is that within Alibaba?
[00:12:43] - Janis Carmena There is Alibaba has just started doing their own inspections, which is great. But there's also different Facebook groups and stuff like that to talk about inspectors and give references, of course, and and reviews and like that. So it's not hard to find an inspector and to liaise with them. But you know what? Four years ago when I started this with private label. Right. I was doing it. Everything was going great. I've got two six figure brands that are building exponentially right now.
[00:13:08] - Janis Carmena And then, like you said, I got hurt. So I was like, OK, now what am I going to do? It got hurt on the job, doing a foot chase. It was a little bit tough to go into the story later with you if you want.
[00:13:18] - Jen Lehner Yeah, yeah. We want to hear all of.
[00:13:19] - Janis Carmena Out that, oh, anybody hear my chase story? Yes, it was about it was about two years ago now. Yes, crazy. I was on patrol and a patrol here, Victoria, British Columbia. I work by myself, so imagine I'm forty seven years old at the time. I'm in full uniform. It's about two o'clock in the morning and I hear over the radio laptop was stolen.
[00:13:42] - Janis Carmena And I'm like, OK, well, that's a pretty normal laptop. Got stolen. Guy's got the backpack. But what was different about it is the owner of the backpack, the owner of the laptop was actually tracking it on his phone. So he was giving us updates on the radio on where it was. So listen to the updates. I'm like, I bet I know where this person with this backpack is going. So I tucked my car in next to this electronics store and I just waited.
[00:14:05] - Janis Carmena And seriously, I was not there about 30 seconds. And if you can imagine, it's all dark out and the streetlights are there. And this guy comes out from between the buildings, all dressed in black black backpack, black baseball cap pulled low. And I'm like, well, that's got to be him, right? So I jump out of my car. I'm all excited now. I jump out of my car and I'm like, stop police.
[00:14:26] - Janis Carmena And he looks at me and I look at him. I'm like, oh, crap, this is not going to go well. And the chase is on. Like, he's just, he just takes off. And if you imagine I'm sitting there, I've got like twenty two pounds of gear on. Right. And my twenty year old brain is telling my forty seven year body you can catch him.
[00:14:45] - Janis Carmena So I'm hoping it down the road after this guy in my head I'm like, what the heck am I doing. Why aren't we waiting for a police dog. But anyways the guy jumps the fence. I've gotten cornered, I'm like, OK, this is good. And I'm waiting for another person and my other partners to show up to help. And he looks at me, he knows he's kind of cornered. And I look at him and he's got drugs on board.
[00:15:08] - Janis Carmena You can tell just by the way he's looking at me and I'm like, no, he's going to jump the fence. And that's exactly it. He came at me. He jumped the fence. I went to grab him. I turned to the right. He went down on the ground. I went down on the ground, ripped off my pants, blood everywhere.
[00:15:23] - Janis Carmena He dropped the backpack, which was great. Right. But then my partner, thank God, showed up and he took off chasing him. Right. I was trying to get up right again. Forty seven year old body going, oh, my gosh. And I was listening to the radio again on my partner chasing him. And I heard him go around the building and he pulled a knife on my partner. My partner tried to taser him.
[00:15:47] - Janis Carmena There's pepper spray involved and he came around the building and he came right at me again. And I pulled my gun at that time and I said, stop, police, get on the ground. Like did the whole it's just like you see on TV, right? Yeah. Get on the ground. Got him handcuffed and everything. And it was actually somebody we've been searching for a couple of weeks.
[00:16:04] - Janis Carmena And then I went back across the road to the parking lot where he dropped the backpack and I sat down next to backpack. I was like, oh, I really hurt myself. And that was the moment where my patrol career ended. I was walking with a cane two months later.
[00:16:17] - Jen Lehner That's amazing. But do you know what I thought this story was going? Oh, I thought you were going to say. And then I walked back to the backpack and I tripped in a pothole and I ruined my ankle
[00:16:33] - Janis Carmena No, I wrecked my back going with that guy down to the ground.
[00:16:35] - Jen Lehner Oh, my gosh. Wow. That like, you have my blood pumping when I was listening to my heart racing. That's so scary. Well, I'm glad you got some way to stick to the chase.
[00:16:45] Janis Carmena Well, adrenaline, right. That gosh, your adrenaline.
[00:16:48] - Jen Lehner So do you miss the adrenaline because you can't be having that much adrenaline selling on Amazon?
[00:16:52] - Janis Carmena No, I do miss it. But what I miss the most, I think, is helping people. Yeah, I love to help. You know, it sounds so cheesy when you're like a police officer, just like helping people showing up to my shift and when people need to, you're there. And that's what I missed. So that's where I need to figure out and reinvent myself because I was already doing Amazon and stuff.
[00:17:11] - Janis Carmena I needed to reinvent myself on that whole need to help people again. And so that's where I reached back to my teaching. And now I run courses that coach, people on how to exactly do what I do on Amazon and help people through the process of starting their Amazon store and get in their own private label and figure out Alibaba and shipping and doing all of that. And it's so much fun, Jen.
[00:17:31] - Jen Lehner So give our listeners and me, please, a glimpse into real numbers of what's possible, you know, maybe six months in, one year in sustainable, that sort of thing.
[00:17:44] - Janis Carmena Real numbers if you're looking at so it depends on what you choose. If you're doing retail arbitrage and stuff like that, then you're probably looking at a 30 percent return on the money you put in. So if I put in ten bucks, I'm going to make thirteen fourteen after all the fees. OK, so if you're looking at private label, which I specialize in, so launching your products and building your own brand line and then growing your brand line off of Amazon too, I start using sales funnels and everything like that.
[00:18:13] - Janis Carmena Then you're looking at probably six thousand dollars to launch a product properly with advertising and Facebook advertise and everything like that. But you're looking at probably a 50 percent return on your product. So for the first six months, you're probably going to take all that money that you make and you're going to reinvest it and buy more product. And then it was after that you can start taking the money out.
[00:18:36] - Janis Carmena So you're building a business, you're building a product based business. So it's going to take time. So say six thousand to launch a product. You'll make that back in about depending on your sales and your giveaways at the beginning. You can make that back in three weeks easily. Right. And then taken that money and maybe launching a different product or you're going to have to buy more product. So that's the one thing with a product based business is you're going to have to have thousands of dollars for the product ahead of time in order to sell. And more on the way for when those sell out.
[00:19:07] - Jen Lehner Because they require that you have X number of units in stock. Right.
[00:19:14] - Janis Carmena They don't you can run out of stock, but you don't want to run out of stock. Right, so once you get the ball rolling in six months time, you'll have a system all set up where you've got product on the way, you've got product on Amazon and you've got product selling. And then you can start paying yourself as an employee and pulling money out.
[00:19:30] - Jen Lehner How comfortable do you feel building your business on a platform that has ultimate final say and control over things? I mean, like I always tend to surrender to those sort of things that I'm an optimist and it's served me well thus far. But I guess what I want to know is over these years, have you been pleased with the way you've been treated with any new fees they add in or rules that all of a sudden they decide to throw your way? Have you overall been happy or has it been a bumpy road?
[00:20:00] - Janis Carmena You know, I love Amazon just because I don't have the overhead, so I'm not running like a brick and mortar store. I don't have a lease. I don't have mortgages. I don't have employees. They're doing everything for me and they're making sure the customer comes first. The only thing with Amazon is that they control their customer, it is their customer, and they do not want you taking their customer off their platform. But that's where I start scaling and using like sales funnels and I give Amazon promo code.
[00:20:26] - Janis Carmena So I do a Facebook ad where I'm like, hey, do you want to buy this for 50 percent off Amazon? They go in the Internet email to unlock the promo code. So now I own that customer. I've got their genius. Yep, genius.
[00:20:38] - Janis Carmena They get the promo code for Amazon. Right. And then they then I tell them what keyword to search for on Amazon to find my product. Right.
[00:20:46] - Janis Carmena And then they enter that keyword, find my product and buy some kind of doing two fold there. And this is a bit more advanced, which we talk later on in my course on how to scale is one. I'm getting the customers. I've got the email so I can follow up. And as you know, the fortunes in the follow up and I can launch new products to them and ask them ideas for new products. And number two is I'm telling them what keyword to search for on Amazon.
[00:21:10] - Janis Carmena And by that I rank in that keywords. If anybody else searches that keyword, my product will come up first because of the Amazon algorithm is all about sales.
[00:21:21] - Jen Lehner OK, well, tell me about some of the actual stuff you sell.
[00:21:24] - Janis Carmena Yeah, I've got two brands right now and you're going to love them. So my first brand is 'No Straw Challenge', so. Well, yeah, five years ago now we're down to Costa Rica. My family and my daughter Izzy looks to me, goes, mom, do something odd around here.
[00:21:39] - Janis Carmena And I'm like, I don't know. I'm in Costa Rica. They're eco friendly. I love it. I'm surfing. I have a drink in my hand. Life's good. She's like, there's no plastic straws. She was like nine at the time. Only nine year old picked that up. So that look like I'm drinking out of a bamboo straw.
[00:21:56] Janis Carmena I'm like, oh, so a bit more research and realize that they have what's called a'No Straw Challenge'. But we didn't have it in Canada. It was only plastic straws. We just started to banned. Right in Seattle was the first city that did it. And so I brought 'No Straw Challenge" back to Canada. And being that my daughter Izzy was nine at the time we launched a whole line of unicorn straws.
[00:22:19] - Jen Lehner I'm Looking
[00:22:19] - Janis Carmena We had UNICORN and everything. Right. So that brand did great because we got in out the forefront.
[00:22:26] - Jen Lehner I'm looking at the website now, nostrawchallenge.com. These unicorn straws are so cute. They've got cleaners, unicorn colors like sparkly blue and green and purple and then the cutest little bag. This would make the best birthday gift, you know, just keep these in the gift closet. And every time your kid goes to a birthday party after Covid, these would be great.
[00:22:48] - Janis Carmena They're great stocking stuffer, too, with Christmas coming up. And that No Straw challenge takes you to a promo code that you can use on Amazon.
[00:22:55] - Jen Lehner Yes. For fifty percent off. This is sweet. OK, what's the other one?
[00:22:59] - Janis Carmena A little thing with my son, my son. Someone who designed those logos on the bag. So there was a family business to teach entrepreneurialism to the kids.
[00:23:06] - Jen Lehner I love it.
[00:23:07] - Janis Carmena Yeah. And then the other one being a police officer, I hate the smell of marijuana. Like hate it. It makes my nose itch seriously. So it's legal here in Canada. Right. And in many states,
[00:23:21] - Jen Lehner All over Canada?
[00:23:23] - Janis Carmena It's federally legal in Canada.
[00:23:24] - Jen Lehner Wow. I did not know that.
[00:23:26] - Janis Carmena Yeah. So when it became legal in Canada, I launched no trace bags, which is a line of smell proof bags and a bit selfish. People can put their product in these small bags and then I can't smell it.
[00:23:37] - Jen Lehner ok, you solved the problem.
[00:23:37] - Janis Carmena So yeah, exactly. They're bags lined with carbon and they're called no trace bags and they're mostly for marijuana, nut a lot of people are using them for camping and hiking and to keep food away from bears and stuff. Well, you just launched backpacks and everything, so. And that all sells on Amazon.
[00:23:54] - Jen Lehner Oh, this was so smart. I'm looking at the page now and it's good looking product. It really is. The person that you work with on Alibaba. So you found someone that you can make adjustments because I really like that. And so you can make adjustments with this person. Do you tend to work with this person across both brands and future brands, or do you have to, like, find a new person that you trust over and over again? Does it matter with the product is?
[00:24:18] - Janis Carmena I deal with one manufacturer per brand because, you know, business is formed on relationships, so I've created a relationship with them now and we could talk back and forth, no problem. And I can say what specifications I want and what changes I want to items to make them premium to make them better, because I want high quality. I won't want it without high quality products. So usually whenever I launch a brand, I stick with one manufacturer and they do everything for me.
[00:24:43] - Jen Lehner And you don't have any issues with language barriers?
[00:24:47] - Janis Carmena No, never.
[00:24:50] - Jen Lehner OK, let me ask you this, so what is what about the technical challenge, somebody listening right now, they're like, oh, this sounds so good and I don't have to deal with the shipping and, you know, I could do it all online. And this sounds so exciting. And I have so many good ideas for products, but I'm a little bit tech averse. Is this for them or should they just stay away?
[00:25:09] - Janis Carmena Amazon has a great seller app. It's easy to do. Like, seriously, they tell you exactly like, can you put in your product name? Can you put in your brand name, can you put in how much you want to sell it for? I am technically averse with things like Photoshop and everything to make the pictures.
[00:25:25] - Janis Carmena So I actually I always outsource also. It's not it's not my zone of intelligence. I seriously. Yeah. I can't think that way to make really fancy pictures and stuff. So I hire out and I use I have a marketing team now that I use down in California, but for gigs which I love the gig economy. So if I have a one off thing I want to do, like write an e-book to add in with the product or something, I'll find someone on Upwork or fiverr. Com or freelancer.Com to do it for me.
[00:25:55] - Jen Lehner OK, all right. Well, I'm totally sold. I am so excited. I am so excited to share this with my audience and maybe even give it a shot myself. So for everyone else who's excited as I am right now, how do we connect with you to learn from you?
[00:26:11] - Janis Carmena Well, what I did is I created a course that I wish existed When I started. I was like, can someone please leave me through this step by step by step? Right. So I created a course, it's on www.ecommercequeenbee.com. It's only $749. It's not in the thousands of dollars like many courses. And it also includes our mastermind group, which is on Slack. I like the Slack up a bit better than a Facebook group.
[00:26:35] - Janis Carmena It's a lot easier to talk directly with people back and forth. And you know what? If you don't know if this is in theory yet, we do have a free boot camp going right now. Again, you can go to ecommercequeenbee.com/bootcamp or just ecommercequeenbee.com. And it's free. It's three videos all about answering your questions. And I guarantee at the end of the boot camp you're going to have a store up and running.
[00:26:56] - Janis Carmena So through that, yeah, and then you know what I say, I always tell people you have a great idea and you probably have a ton of great ideas in your head because you've got that entrepreneurial mindset. Please get them out because you're doing me a disservice, because I'm betting the ideas in your head to make my life amazing or a lot easier. So I really wish people would get their ideas out so I can go buy your products.
[00:27:18] - Jen Lehner I love it. OK, this is fantastic. So I've got the links, everybody. I'm going to put the links in the show notes so you can check this out. I'm really excited to learn all of this stuff. And, you know, I feel like I had one more question and it just escaped me. And I feel like it was a really important question. It's driving me nuts. Don't you hate when that happens?
[00:27:42] - Jen Lehner Yes. But you know what? The other thing I think I know I've got to go. So the question is, do you have to mess with Shopify or you're just purely Amazon
[00:27:53] - Janis Carmena so that's the question Shopify and Amazon are separate things, Shopify is your own online store, Amazon is the platform you sell your products on as you grow, you may choose to do a Shopify store and the Shopify will actually link with Amazon. Right. So Amazon can fulfill your products for you, ship them out for you.
[00:28:10] - Jen Lehner So Amazon doesn't have a problem with your Shopify store being the front facing thing?
[00:28:16] - Janis Carmena Not at all.
[00:28:17] - Jen Lehner As long as they get their cut. So that's what they care about.
[00:28:21] - Janis Carmena Oh, exactly. And you're selling on Amazon. Do they actually prefer if you have a website or other like Shopify Commerce, Wix, whatever, because it gives you a bit more credibility, your product credibility. So when someone says, OK, I want like you said earlier about the air popper, I want this air popper, a lot of people will Google that air popper to look for reviews and to see if it's a legitimate and not just Chinese seller chucking garbage into the marketplace.
[00:28:45] - Janis Carmena Right. So they'll actually go look at the website and say, OK, you know, there's reviews and everything like that, and they'll go right through it and then they'll go buy it on Amazon. So it's good to have that social proof and also a Facebook group and an Instagram feed. Everything
[00:28:59] - Jen Lehner OK. Well, this was amazing. Janis, thank you so much. Come back any time. I can't wait to connect with you over at ecommercequeenbee.com
[00:29:07] - Janis Carmena ecommercequeenbee.com. Thanks so much for sure. You know, I had an absolute pleasure talking to you. If anybody's got any questions, just drop me a message.
[00:29:16] - Jen Lehner Awesome. Thank you so much. Take care.
[00:29:18] - Janis Carmena OK, thanks, Jen. Bye
[00:29:19] - Jen Lehner Bye.
