How to Sell on Amazon Revealed
Ben DeVries revealed how to sell on Amazon during this live interview. In only two years, he started and grew his brand into a multi-million-dollar Amazon business. Just last week, he was able to quit his full-time day job to just work on his Amazon business due to the success he found on FBA. Here, Ben shares his insider tips for creating a million-dollar Amazon business using the Amazing Selling Machine, finding like minded people for support, and competing against the big brands on Amazon.
Index:
Amazing Selling Machine 9 (ASM9)
Starting an Amazon Business Using Amazing Selling Machine (ASM)
Working with Your Wife
Surround Yourself with Other Sellers and Likeminded People
Next Steps for New Sellers
Investing in New Ventures to Diversify Income
Selling an Amazon Business for Millions
Amazing Selling Machine Review
Competing with Big Brands on Amazon
Employee to Million Dollar Business Owner Video Transcript
Ben DeVries went from an employee to a full-time entrepreneur in just two years. During his interview with Jason Katzenback, he explained that he felt a huge weight lifted off his shoulders when he finally quit his job last week. After watching Amazing Selling Machine (ASM) free training videos, he realized he could start an Amazon business with very little capital up front. The free training videos led him to Amazing Selling Machine, where he enrolled as a member and gained access to a step-by-step guide and course teaching him how to start and grow his own Amazon business.
Amazing Selling Machine 9 (ASM9)
Amazing Selling Machine offers a free four-part video training series, complete with free, downloadable tools and software. Amazing Selling Machine 9 (ASM9) recently launched and offers a comprehensive step-by-step guide, teaching sellers to start and grow their own Amazon business. ASM9 members receive access to live weekly coaching calls, the ASM private community and mentors, the ASM private resource vault, and a free product listing evaluation.
Starting an Amazon Business Using Amazing Selling Machine (ASM)
Ben and his wife started selling on Amazon two years ago after he joined Amazing Selling Machine. They continued working their full-time jobs, but spent their nights and weekends building their business. While they were starting and growing their business, they lived off their work income, and invested the money they made from Amazon back into their business.
Once Ben realized he could replace his full-time income with his Amazon business profits, he made the decision to quit his job. Quitting his day job gave Ben more time to invest into his business, in addition to more time with his family.
When Ben first started his Amazon business, he thought each year his sales would remain the same. Now, he is up 127% from the previous year in sales. As more and more customers flock to Amazon’s platform, his sales increase. Last year Ben made 1.4 million in revenue, and averaged a 34% conversion rate. His net profits for the year were 27% of revenue, and the average ASM member takes home 20-40% of their sales.
Working with Your Wife
Communication is key when a couple goes into business together. Ben’s wife works with suppliers to keep their business in stock, while he markets products to run the stock down. They communicate with each other to ensure their business has balance. His wife is detailed-oriented, and helps keep him grounded in the business.
Surround Yourself with Other Sellers and Likeminded People
New sellers should surround themselves with people in the Amazon business. Whether you are a new seller or a seasoned coach, finding people who understand the entrepreneur lifestyle are essential to getting necessary support. When Ben and his wife have lunch with other seller couples, they discuss issues and strategies for their businesses to solve problems and generate ideas.
Ben works to surround himself with people in the same situation, who are developing a business of their own, and offer support and lift him up when he is down. The sellers that Ben connects with all offer different skill sets (photographers, lawyers, and trademark attorneys), and they have been able to help each other with services for free.
The Amazing Selling Machine has mastered providing a community of helpful Amazon sellers, and understands the power of likeminded people working together. ASM offers live events that act as an opportunity for sellers to network and find people to help with business problems that may come along.
Next Steps for New Sellers
Anyone seeking to start their own business should start off by watching Amazing Selling Machine’s four free training videos, gathering information, and understanding how the business works.
Ben started off that way, and that led him to join the in-depth ASM course and gain the freedom to not be stuck in one place. Instead, he can now travel with his family. He wanted to spend time with them and work from anywhere. He’s now reached a place where he can turn his computer off at 5 and play with his kids without feeling drained.
Investing in New Ventures to Diversify Income
In addition to living off his Amazon income, Ben has taken the money he has made on Amazon and invested it into different ventures, to diversify his income even further. One of their projects includes a brand for their six-year-old daughter who wanted to sell her drawings online. His daughter has even begun to think of ways she can market her products through platforms like YouTube.
Selling an Amazon Business for Millions
Some Amazon business owners work to grow their business, then sell it for millions of dollars. Ben shared that he had his business evaluated to see how much he could sell it for and found it is worth over a million dollars. He has decided to grow the brand a little bigger before they sell it, but shared that after he sold the brand, he would create a new one.
Amazing Selling Machine Review
People of all skill levels can start this business with the help of the Amazing Selling Machine training. Ben recommends that new sellers set an end goal to their business and put a date on it.
Competing with Big Brands on Amazon
Amazon works to level the playing for new sellers competing against big brands. Big brands do not spend time and effort to create photos, bullets, copy, or keywords that are specified to Amazon. They usually just copy the listing from their website and put it on Amazon. This means that there is plenty of opportunity for sellers to create better listings and compete against the big brands.
Employee to Million Dollar Business Owner Video Transcript
Jason K.: Hey everyone, Jason Katzenback here, hope you’re having a fantastic day. I have a great call for you today. I don’t know about you, but I always had the dream of quitting my job. I got to fulfill it and I can tell you what an experience that is. Well, on this call right now, I have an individual that has been able to just quit their job last week because in two years’ time, he was able to generate a hugely successful, million dollar business selling on Amazon. My special guest you can see right here is Mr. Ben DeVries. I’m going to get back to him in just one second because I know you guys want to hear from him, but first, I want to remind you about what’s going on right now with the Amazing Selling Machine and if you go to amazingsellingmachine.com/build, you’ll see we have a very special limited time opportunity bonus that we included.
Jason K.: If anyone signs up for the Amazing Selling Machine today before you’ve got six hours 57 minutes, we are going to throw in a one-hour coaching session, actually two 30-minute coaching sessions with one of our mentors, who are Amazon experts and collectively as we’ve told you, our mentors are running businesses at least a million dollars a year. You’re going to have an expert like that get on the phone with you and be able to help you with any part of business, but this offer expires today in just a few hours. It’s a six hours 56 minutes, so I’m assuming that’s midnight tonight, so you’re going to be wanting to sign up. Remember if you haven’t watch the videos, if you’re brand-new to this and you’re looking, “How can I start my own business?” Well, right here is in my opinion the absolute best solution to that question right now and my proof is the person I’m going to be interviewing in just a couple minutes with Mr. Ben DeVries. I keep calling him mister, he’s actually my friend, but he’s a mister. He deserves respect with all that he’s done, so I’m super pumped to be able to interview him, but again, go to an amazingsellingmachine.com.
Jason K.: Right now, we have a four-part video series, four free videos that also include some really cool tools you can download, but if you’re ready and you’re wanting to jump in and really start doing this business for yourself, I recommend you check it out right now. Go to amazingsellingmachine.com/build and then you’re going to want to see the bonus, it’s available, which is a one-hour, one-on-one you get collectively two 30 minutes or you could probably do them both, but we’re recommending two 30 minutes, so sign up right now before that expires, you’ll get that bonus.
Jason K.: Right now, I have the privilege of getting back to him again Mr. Ben, where are we here? There we go. No that’s not it. There we go, there he is, hey Ben, how’re you doing buddy?
Ben DeVries: I’m doing great.
Jason K.: Awesome, awesome, so first of all, I want to say a huge congratulations to you. I mean just explain to me what that was like to be able to actually finally quit your job, so you could use something that you’ve always dreamed of?
Ben DeVries: Yeah, it felt amazing. Just as I was walking out the door, you push the doors open, I just felt a huge weight just lift off my shoulders and it was just the best feeling in the world.
Jason K.: That is so so cool. Tell me a little bit about the process getting to there because a lot of people, there’s different ways to do this business, but what you guys decided to do is as your business was growing, you were reinvesting profits back in and you were keeping working. Did you initially have a plan that when you got to this point, you would quit or was it the workload, like the business and everything just kind of pulled you out? How did that story happen?
Ben DeVries: Yeah, so my wife and I jumped in and joined ASM6 about two years ago. It took me a little bit to convince her to join the course and we watched the videos and I’m really glad that she jumped in and joined the business by my side. The stipulation was really that we were going to continue to … I was going to continue to work my full-time job and on the nights and weekends, we would just be building this business and using our income from our day job to live on and then, we would use the income that we receive from Amazon to roll into new products on Amazon, to be able to scale it a little bit faster. Basically, we’ve been doing that for about two years now.
Jason K.: With your business, at what point, going from an entrepreneur to an employee to an entrepreneur, like for you, at what point, were you like really excited, how long did it take before you really realized like, “Oh, man I’m going to be able to quit soon.”
Ben DeVries: Yeah, really, it was to the point to where we hustled a lot and worked really hard to build this up, but really it became to the point where we were able to replace our full-time income. We joke around and say that we wanted to get the boat closer to the dock, so my wife, she really wanted to feel secure in our finances. I wanted to support her in that and I didn’t want to be an entrepreneur that shiny object syndrome and just jumped into stuff. I felt like this was the smartest business to get into because it required very little capital upfront compared to like a brick-and-mortar and overhead and employees and staff and insurance that you had to get. The goal was really once we were able to replace our full-time income is when I could leave my day job.
Jason K.: Very cool. That’s great because I know like people listening right now will worry about the security thing. I want to emphasize to people like what we’re talking about here is building a real business. A lot of people sometimes assume, “Oh is this MLM, is this something like that?” Absolutely not, what this is is the Amazing Selling Machine is a step by step system, where we teach you to build your own business, selling your own physical products and the idea of Amazon is you’re just initially launching your product on Amazon because Amazon, if you’re on the news at all today, you’ll read about how much explosive growth Amazon has. In fact, just over the last two days, the CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, his wealth increased over $9 billion just over the last two days because of the explosive growth and how investors are jumping in, Amazon is exploding. They’re all over the world. Actually, Ben, do you guys sell internationally at all?
Ben DeVries: We use the export program right now. We’ve decided to focus on just US.
Jason K.: [inaudible 00:06:52].
Ben DeVries: Kind of the 80/20 type scenario and we’re looking at actually expanding now that we’ve got everything in the US, we’ve expanded to about 11 products right now on US.
Jason K.: Okay, cool. What’s your next step, are you thinking … Hang on one sec, sorry there’s a guy at the window, can someone handle that? It’s very distracting. Sorry about that Ben. Because that’s the other thing with this, so right now, you’ve got this business, you did what in the last year, I think you said 1.4 million?
Ben DeVries: Yes.
Jason K.: This business is just over two years old?
Ben DeVries: Yep.
Jason K.: That’s phenomenal first of all, but you’re getting this growth just focusing on amazon.com, nowhere else right now?
Ben DeVries: Right, yeah and we’ve been doing about 1.4 million a year, so we just did about a little over 2 million in two years.
Jason K.: It’s incredible, so you haven’t even yet had the opportunity to tap into the other opportunities because there’s still so much focus that can be done just on this one platform to grow your business and that’s exactly the point I’m trying to make is that’s why launching your product in Amazon is huge is just by using one of the platforms, we’re now like Amazon Germany, all these other countries, it’s a fantastic opportunity to explore, but you haven’t even needed to go to those opportunities yet, you’re just focusing on one. Amazon is incredible guys. It’s a platform, where first of all it’s become the biggest shopping search engine in the world, meaning people don’t go to Google anymore when they’re shopping, they just default to Amazon. Conversion rates are crazy. What is some of your products, what are the higher conversion rates you’re getting on your products Ben?
Ben DeVries: Yeah, about 34% conversion rate.
Jason K.: Like 34% that means that so every 100 people, he gets, convert three purchases, no more than that. You get 34 purchases. I’m sorry, every three visitors you get a purchase. That is insane. You don’t get that off of Amazon and the reason is because it’s buyer traffic, people are going to Amazon already with a buying mindset, “I’m going to buy something.” When they go to places like Google for example, it’s an information mindset, I’m just exploring, but when they go to Amazon, they’re a buyer. That means that you send more traffic to your listing on Amazon, you get more sales because Amazon’s also always testing, always optimized, plus they have this super powerful internal system called Amazon Sponsored Products among other things, which I’m assuming you leverage right?
Ben DeVries: Absolutely yeah and they’re doing all the remarketing and pixels and sending emails to customers and really, I would have thought that each year, my sales would have basically stayed level at least but I was just looking at my app right now and we’re up 127% from last year. I don’t know if you can see that or not but [inaudible 00:09:53].
Jason K.: Well, it isn’t really coming in, but you can see, it looks … Oh, yeah, we can see it, $3,637 just today so far, is that right?
Ben DeVries: Yeah.
Jason K.: That’s pretty awesome.
Ben DeVries: We’ve done a 150 sales so far today. Yeah, we’re basically yeah up 127% over last year. There’s more and more customers coming onto amazon.com with Prime and each year and what I’m excited about is I’ve been doing this during working my full time job. Now that I’ve been able to quit my day job, I’m going to be able to put a lot more time and effort into my business and grow it even more. That’s what I’m really excited about.
Jason K.: Very exciting, cool. How has this changed your lifestyle because a lot of times people that have businesses, they’re slaving away 16 hours a day, they’re tied to a job essentially because they have to go somewhere, like what’s this lifestyle like for you guys?
Ben DeVries: Yeah, for me, really it’s different for everyone. Some people just want to use this as a side income and really me, I’m an entrepreneur at heart and it’s in my blood and I’ve always wanted to create a business of my own. That’s why I jumped in is because I wanted to create my own destiny, control my own destiny and my kids’ destiny because working for someone to me, it feels a little risky because you’re at the mercy of your employer, like they could fire you at any time or lay you off and I just did not like that. I felt like I needed to have a little more control and what I figured, why don’t we just dabble in this? We’ll jump in, we’ll do this on the side, we’ll see what happens and that’s what we did. Really when it really hit me was the other morning, I quit last Thursday, my day job and I’ve been there for about 13 years. I’ve been doing this for quite a while and it didn’t really hit me until a couple days later on Monday, my daughter came up to me in the morning, woke me up, I’m like, “Wait a sec, I can sleep in right now, why are you waking me up?” She was so excited and she was very talkative and I was like, “This is crazy.”
Ben DeVries: She came up to me and she’s like, “Dad, I found this date box that you and mom had.” It was a box that we put together when we were first dating and we cut strips of paper and put stuff to do on them during our date night. She wanted to do the same thing with me and her. She was like, “Dad, now that you quit your day job, you and I can go on dates in the middle of the day.” She’s like, “Let’s go and create our own date box.” We did that. We went down and sat on the kitchen table and cutter up strips of paper and wrote down a couple of them. The first one that we pulled out was a go watch a matinee movie in the middle of the day and that was the coolest thing because I pulled it out, I’m like, “I can actually go do this, I can go on Monday and we can go and watch a matinee movie.” That’s when it hit me.
Jason K.: That is awesome and it’s just those little things like that and for them, to your kids like that is so huge. That’s something that knowing that you’re able to [inaudible 00:13:32] those kind of things. Oh an I see someone behind you right now, great, which is another cool thing of this because this is actually family business.
Speaker 1: Daddy.
Ben DeVries: Here, come and say hi really quick.
Jason K.: [inaudible 00:13:44] dude.
Ben DeVries: Say hi to everyone.
Speaker 1: Hi.
Jason K.: Hello.
Ben DeVries: All right buddy.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Ben DeVries: What do you [inaudible 00:13:53]?
Jason K.: Hey buddy, how are you doing?
Speaker 1: Good.
Jason K.: What’s your name, you got to stand up.
Speaker 1: [inaudible 00:14:01].
Ben DeVries: [inaudible 00:14:02].
Jason K.: All right cool. This is a family business and I’ll let you talk, family first. I’m cool with that. Being a family business, meaning that you have the privilege if you’re partnered with your wife. For some people that’s a real a hard dynamic, how do you guys make it work?
Ben DeVries: Yeah, it’s really about a lot of communication. We are up on the panel at SellerCon and she kind of let everyone know kind of how we did it, but really, it’s caused us to really dive deep and really learn how to communicate with each other and be able to kind of close the loop with any … She works with the suppliers and she keeps us in stock and I’m the marketer and I run us out of stock. We have to somehow come together and work together. It’s really good balance because-
Jason K.: That is. That’s a great balance actually. That’s cool.
Ben DeVries: Yeah, she’s very detail-oriented and I’m more on the shiny object syndrome side, so she kind of brings me back, kind of grounds me, which is a good thing.
Jason K.: Very cool. With everything that you’ve been through, there’s people watching right now that are hopefully going to sign up today, but what advice do you have for them that could help them see success like you, like what was it that you think and I know it’s great sale, pick a good product and everything, but like really if you’re sitting across the table from, what would be the best advice that you could give them to really make this work for them?
Ben DeVries: To be honest, what I did is I would surround yourself with people that are in this business and doing it. It doesn’t matter what level they’re at. I mean if they’re at your level or a little bit more advanced than you, I would do that or get a coach or get into a mastermind because I think that was the most valuable thing to us is just to dive into it. It kind of gets you excited when you’re having like where we work with members in our mastermind and basically when someone’s having a bad day or something happens, you have other people to kind of lift you back up and get you excited. We just had coffee with a couple the other day or lunch and it was great. We were able to kind of tell each other about issues we’re having and they helped us out with some issues that we were having and we helped them out. It was just a win-win for both of us. I would say just get together with people that are like-minded and doing the same thing as you are.
Jason K.: Very cool. That’s something just so everyone knows, you heard him mention SellerCon, so within the Amazing Selling Machine, we are all about community networking and getting people, so not only do we provide you with an 8-week web class, where you’re going to learn everything you need to know over eight weeks on how to do this business, but we’re also very focused on community. We really understand the power of everyone working together, but we also do live events that most of our members always attend. That’s where Ben was because at these events, we focus so much on networking and so Ben, I just really want to emphasize a great answer like the cool thing is you don’t have to do this alone and we set up with the Amazing Selling Machine way so you can really meet people quickly, but great advice because often times that’s why I have a business partner. It’s helped me in so many times. When you’re doing this new business, especially if you’re surrounded by a family that doesn’t get it, if they’re not entrepreneurs, if they’re stuck with the mindset, you need a pension, all that kind of stuff, they’re going to bring you down.
Jason K.: You need to really surround yourself with good … Well, I shouldn’t say good because everyone’s good, your family’s probably good, but with people that are focused on the same goals as you are that are going to go through the same challenges that can pick you up when people are bringing you down. Great answer. That’s awesome. Yeah, I mean there’s so many people like us, everyone like we become friends because when you have those like-minded focuses, your conversations, your dialogues and the cool thing too is what’s really interesting is that like competition suddenly doesn’t become an issue with these, like you’re helping each other because you realize that when you give a good tip, they give you back a good tip. Both of your businesses grow. It’s a really, really cool thing, a really cool family we have in the membership. I’m glad you brought that up.
Ben DeVries: Yeah and one thing we’re noticing is that in our group of people, we kind of surrounded each other with is everyone has a skill set like there’s a photographer, there’s a lawyer, a trademark attorney. It’s like everyone has something that they do and we’ve been able to work with each other with each other services. I build websites. We were helping each other out kind of for free.
Jason K.: Very cool.
Ben DeVries: That’s been just another great perk.
Jason K.: Nice. People always ask, “Oh that’s great to see how much money they’re making, but how much are they actually taking home.” Do you mind sharing approximately what your net profit is?
Ben DeVries: Yeah, our net profit margin is 25 to 27%.
Jason K.: Very cool, so what that means is that’s take home, like that’s after everything’s said and done, they get to bring that in. That’s a very healthy profit margin. Your business is just skyrocketing, so that’s fantastic. Just so listeners know too that is about the average. We see between about a 20 to about a 40%. I know that seems big, but it really depends on the product, but rarely ever do we see anyone less than a 20% profit margin, which is absolutely fantastic. Great, so Ben, I won’t keep you much longer. I want to thank you so much for doing this, so maybe one last thing for all those people that are sitting, we have a great bonus out there that they’re going to get an hour coaching call, you just said that your wife is really nervous. She didn’t trust it. I mean a lot of people watching this probably have no clue who we are. They’ve just heard of the opportunity, they may be heard of other testimonials, what’s your advice to them?
Ben DeVries: Yeah, I would get together with your spouse and just sit down, take an hour or two and watch the four videos that are on Amazing because that’s what we did. We sat down together and really, it’s just a matter of information, just understanding how the business works and that is not as complicated as you may think it can be sometimes. Really, it’s not. There’s ups and downs just as in any other business, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything else. We’ve been super happy. We jumped in together. It’s now allowing us the freedom to … In a couple weeks now, when the kids get out of school, we’re taking the RV out to, we’re heading all the way down to Myrtle Beach and up to Washington. We’re taking a month and a half in our RV that we just remodeled and with the kids, so now we’re going to be able to make memories and as long as there’s a KOA or a anywhere with a Wi-Fi connection and in my phone with a hotspot, we can get some work done. That’s what I love about this business.
Jason K.: That’s fantastic. The idea is too like you’re sitting there right now and it’s just like, at the end of the day, this is about having a happy life. If you’re sitting there in a job that you love and you wouldn’t want to do anything else, then this probably isn’t for you. What we’re doing is, the idea of this business is if you’ve ever dreamed of having your own business, if you’ve ever dreamed about being able to like not be stuck in one location and be able to just have your laptop, where you could go on the beach and do work, if you’ve ever dreamed of being able to have the financial freedom to be able to do what Ben and Charity are doing, to be able to invest and travel with their children, this is such a great opportunity. You’re learning how to build a business and the other thing Ben with all this that you learn from this, how has it change to your confidence and knowing that now, you truly are in control because you have these skills? Does that make sense I’m asking that?
Ben DeVries: Yeah, I feel very confident because what it’s done is it’s allowed us to really take the money we make from Amazon, just like I did with my day job, we rolled it into the Amazon business. Now, we’re taking the money from Amazon and now, we’re starting little ventures and diversifying our income now off of Amazon. We’re just kind of piggybacking on each one of them. The greatest thing is like our daughter is now starting to talk Amazon. It’s funny, she’s six years old and my son now and we just created an Amazon merch account, [inaudible 00:22:46] for Trinity because she wanted to be able to sell shirts that she drew pictures of and upload them to Amazon. Now, she’s like talking about, “Oh, how can we market this, can we put this on YouTube and then, create a landing page and put my video on it.” I’m like, “You’re six years old, this is crazy, you’re going to be paying for your own college. How cool is that?”
Jason K.: I mean how many members have we had, I know one of our great testimonials John Gill, now he’s actually helped his son create a business and by the age of 30, his son is now super successful with his own business. John is like more or less helping him because his business is taking off more than John’s, which was hugely successful. To be able to do that for your children, I mean that’s the thing too, like explain like you have your own brand of physical products, so you guys have an asset that nobody else owns, it’s yours. I want people to understand, this isn’t about building something that someone else has [inaudible 00:23:47]. This is your legacy. This is something that you build a brand. You look at GoPros, you look at Pepsi, any of those, those are the kind of things like these huge brands you can create [inaudible 00:23:56], but the other cool thing about this and I don’t know if you guys have looked at this at all yet is the amount of people that buy these kind of businesses.
Jason K.: We have so many students that learn this process, they build a business and then within a couple years, they sell their business for millions of dollars and then, usually what do they do next? They start another business on Amazon because it’s such an easy platform to start with. Are you guys ever considering that? Are you right now in the mode where you just want to grow it?
Ben DeVries: Yeah, we did. We actually received a valuation on our business and we were very happy with the outcome.
Jason K.: Oh nice.
Ben DeVries: It was over a million dollars to be able to sell it and so we were like, “Okay, this is the real deal.” We decided we want to grow the brand a little bit bigger. We enjoy it and I think, yeah, I would probably get bored if I sold it, so I would probably start up another brand again [inaudible 00:24:51].
Jason K.: I can see that with you guys very much. One thing I wanted to stress on here because we talk big numbers, like, Ben you got to admit, in two years and we’ve heard so many success stories, but for a lot of people to think, “Oh in two years, to have a business doing over like $1.4 million a year,” sometimes people, like that intimidates them or maybe they just want to be able to make a couple thousand dollars a month or enough for a mortgage payment. I don’t want to say, I want someone else to say that’s a member, like what is your opinion of using the Amazing Selling Machine for just those kind of goals?
Ben DeVries: Yeah, really, you can start at any level. I just had a different goal. Really, you just have to set your goal, your end goal and put a date on it. A lot of you’ve heard our story, we wanted to basically travel with our kids, like I wanted to be able to get home at five o’clock and be able to play with our kids and now, I’m able to do that. I can come home, get done with work and I actually turn off my computer at five o’clock and go play football with my kid. I don’t feel drained, whereas before it was like we had to hustle a little bit and work a little bit harder, but it was harder to do that in the short period of time, but that was our goals. We wanted to grow this thing bigger and faster to where we could go out in the RV. What we did is two years ago, we took a picture of us, a selfie with us in front of an RV at a local RV shop and stuck the picture on our fridge. Every morning when we walked past it, we just had a goal in mind that said, “Okay, in two years, we’re going to be able to do this, we’re going to be going out and purchasing our RV and you’re going to be leaving your day job.”
Ben DeVries: It constantly was in my mind. Yeah, it came to fruition just a couple days ago.
Jason K.: Very cool. I just love hearing that story. I want to remind everyone again today that if you sign up today with the Amazing Selling Machine, there’s a bonus that we have and I’m just going to share that bonus with you right now. Let me get that over here. We talked about it, so if you sign up in the next six hours and 30 minutes, so you got six hours to do this, today only, if you sign up for ASM 9, you get an hour free coaching. This can be able product selection, sourcing, suppliers, automation, marketing. The whole thing here is when you’re going through this, we’re going to have someone that when you’re at that point in your business, where it’s like, “Geez, I’d love someone to really just look in the details of what I’m doing to make sure I’m on the right path,” that’s what you can use them for. If it’s when you want to validate some marketing, whether you want to do anything in your business and have someone that has a successful Amazon business look at you and give you their feedback that’s what this bonus is. It’s a huge, huge bonus.
Jason K.: Now, with the Amazing Selling Machine, you’ve already gotten the eight weeks that you get the eight weekly modules. [inaudible 00:27:52] saying that that are filled with about 10 to 15 videos that are all [inaudible 00:27:59] videos, PDFs. There’s commenting, there’s community, but it’s all focused on walking you step-by-step through everything you need to know to get this business up and running, but on top of that we have the mentors in there. The mentors are people that have the successful businesses, love seeing people succeed with this business. They understand how life-changing it is and they’re in there, coaching you, helping you, directing you. Plus, every week, we have a coaching call because we want to make sure that by the end of the module, there’s no stone left unturned, you understand everything that you have to do. We have those weekly coaching calls that’ll give you everything you need to know. Any questions left over, weekly coaching call will help with that.
Jason K.: Plus, we have the Resource Vault. The Resource Vault is pretty much all the resources over the last few years that we’ve collected, running our own businesses that we know are the best resources for starting this business. Plus, because of our membership, we’re able to work with other vendors that we use that we use in our own business to create really, really cool deals that we estimate that at least will give you a $10,000 savings, just the Resource Vault alone. There’s so much more in there, the community especially and plus on top of that if you sign up today, again I just want to remind you, you qualify for the one hour coaching calls, which is the private coach on call with a mentor directly. All right Ben, so let me get back to you, close that page. You’re going to want to go to amazingsellingmachine.com/build, I want to remind you that one more time.
Jason K.: All right, Ben, so employee to entrepreneur, you’re living the dream. You guys have plans to spend a month away, over a month away from home this summer because all you need is Wi-Fi. You get to spend time in the day with your children. I mean this just sounds incredible. What’s next for you guys? I understand, actually let me say this, so you do sell on eBay and a few other [inaudible 00:29:53]. You have your own website, but out of all of that, I’m assuming the majority of the sales are still coming from Amazon, right?
Ben DeVries: Yeah, really 95% of our sales are coming from Amazon. Yeah, we were on eBay, Etsy and all those, our website, but really, yeah the bulk sales is really on Amazon.
Jason K.: The reason I wanted to mention, it’s so important is because with the Amazing Selling Machine that’s what we have you focused on for that very reason, but once you get through it, you can expand, but the reality is Amazon is just so huge, so I discourage people from thinking like, “Oh, I want to start on all these different platforms.” Nothing can compete with Amazon. I’ll bet that all day long and the cool thing is a lot of the big companies aren’t really catching on to that fact effectively. People think, “Oh, you can’t compete with the big brands,” what’s your answer to that Ben when people say, “How do you compete with the big brands?”
Ben DeVries: Yeah that’s just the beauty of this businesses is the big brands really don’t spend a lot of time and effort, like they have to be on Amazon, right? They don’t spend a lot of time on photos and bullets and good copy and all the back-end search terms and keyword research. They just throw something up from copy on their website and get it up and sell it. That’s the beauty of this is you can compete with these big brands and Walmart and put your stuff up and create better quality products and better listings. That’s what I love about it.
Jason K.: Yeah and you guys are building a brand, so you have your own brand that has multiple products under it, right?
Ben DeVries: Correct.
Jason K.: Yeah and so like, as you establish this brand, of course, you can start focusing on like getting them in Walmarts and things like that, mind you though, the way the world is going I’m thinking online, staying online, it’s probably a better bet, but that is fantastic man.
Ben DeVries: Yeah, we recently had Walmart reach out to us because they found us on Amazon and that we’re a bigger brand, so they wanted to get us on their platform as well, but really, I just say focus on the 80/20, focus on what really what matters and 1% conversion rate increase on Amazon is going to really yield you a lot more than on your website. Sometimes, I admit, I break my own 80/20 rule and I’m like, “Oh, I should put this on my website and increase the conversion rate by a percentage,” but really a couple thousand on your website that little change gets you a couple bucks as opposed on Amazon, it could be hundreds of dollars.
Jason K.: Yeah, absolutely and I love the comment that actually Charity just put, the big brands don’t understand Amazon marketing, ASM students do and it’s because that’s exactly it. That’s the thing, this isn’t just a course. This is a community, where everyone works in together because we know like when we started this, so the story just, let me go back, back in 2012 I believe it is, me and Matt Clark got together. I had in another business, he had another business. I liked what he was doing on Amazon. He taught me how to sell on Amazon. Within four months of getting my product up in Amazon, I was doing over $100,000 a month. Now, Amazon was a little different then. There were some products I actually jumped in on some health supplemented with garcinia cambogia and raspberry ketones just at the time that Dr. Oz was really pushing that stuff, so things just took off, but I couldn’t believe it.
Jason K.: I have been running businesses online since 2005 and never in my life did I see anything like this. Then, we started teaching other people and the success rate just continued, continued, continued. We have students doing multiples of, like $25 million a year plus. This is huge. We’re talking about people doing a couple million dollars a month because they were able to put their own brand on Amazon. They have only been doing this for about five years because they took the Amazing Selling Machine. Now, I cannot guarantee anyone results and that’s because like Ben, you can justify, it’s what you put into it. Maybe you can explain a little bit about that that this isn’t, because I don’t want to fool people that this is like this magic button. Maybe in your words, kind of explain what the Amazing Selling Machine is to you.
Ben DeVries: Yeah, really, what I explain to people is we have people that we know in our circle that they’re making a thousand bucks a month extra revenue. To them that’s great. You can do a lot with that, a $1,000 a month.
Jason K.: Absolutely.
Ben DeVries: Really, you can take it as far as you want and scale it as far as you want. I just happen to be a little more on the aggressive side on building it as fast as I can, but you don’t have to do that. If you want to just a side income, this is a great business to do that.
Jason K.: Very cool. All right Ben, any closing remarks, anything you want to share before we wish everyone a good weekend?
Ben DeVries: No, just all I can say is just jump in, take a leap of faith and put a little bit of effort into it and be tenacious and just work at it every day, every day. Get up in the morning and grab your coffee and put a couple hours into it and just have a goal, set a goal of what you want to accomplish, what the end goal is and I think you’ll do fine.
Jason K.: Awesome, what a great way to close it because it is all about having focus and a purpose and a goal. I’m glad you said that spend a couple hours a day that’s a perfect amount. We recommend at least an hour a day and especially when you’re just getting going, especially those first few weeks as you’re trying to get things going, getting your products going because it’s the people that take action that move forward. Every day, focus on what’s the best thing I can be doing today to move my business forward are the ones that succeed. Ben, thank you so much. I appreciate you. I appreciate your wife Charity. I appreciate your family. I’m so happy for you guys. I’m so happy that you guys get to not only quit your job, but travel around, make memories. Congratulations and thank you for trusting in us to help you change your life. It’s a pleasure to get to know you.
Ben DeVries: Thank you so much for giving us this opportunity two years ago.
Jason K.: Very cool. Awesome everyone, have a great weekend. Remember, go to amazingsellingmachine.com/build before the end of today because we’ve got that special one-hour coaching call that you qualify for. Check it out, I promise we’ve got a great 30-day money-back guarantee, so you know within the first 30 days and the way the money back guarantee works is when Module 1 releases on May 4th I believe it is, the 30 days start from there. Plus, we have a really special buyback, a six-month buyback guarantee. You’re going to want to check out and that means we take all the risk. You do this business, we got you covered. Check it out at amazingsellingmachine.com. Have a great weekend everyone and Ben, have a great weekend and peace out buddy.
Ben DeVries: Bye.
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