Amazon FBA sales training is all the rage right now in the world of online courses. Selling on Amazon is an attractive business opportunity, because it can easily be done as a side business. These courses that provide training vary greatly in terms of their curriculum, as well as their cost. On the expensive side of the spectrum, there are courses that cost as much as $5,000. Many of these higher end courses are aimed at teaching students how to import private label goods from China for sale on Amazon. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, “private label” simply means a product you brand with your own label. There are literally thousands of generic products on Alibaba.com that can be turned into private label brands. Sometimes this branding is done with some functional changes to the product or placed into a product bundle, but more often it just means slapping your own brand name on the same item that others are selling.
I’m often skeptical of courses that come with a slick pitch at the end of a webinar. I’ve sat through many of these on a variety of topics, but always avoided the temptation to buy the course. This wasn’t because I was being cheap or that I didn’t think there was value to be found in taking such courses, but it was more my skepticism about the results they promise. StartupBros struck me as different, largely because podcaster Jordan Malik recommended it and was on the webinar the night I purchased access to the course. The two creators of StartupBros, Will and Kyle, were enjoyable to listen to during the free webinar. They seemed pretty straight forward and they offered a lot of value during that introductory session.
The price of the course was $1,800 for the 9-week “Holiday Jumpstart Program”. This price included 9 live group webinar training sessions, instant access to all previous jumpstart program webinar videos, access to a community forum, access to a Facebook group, discounts on various sales related tools, and most importantly to me, VIP coaching for 9 weeks via email. The ability to pay for the program in installments and the offer of a 30-day 100% money back guarantee left me with little excuse to not try out the program.
The first week of training wasn’t incredibly useful to me, because it covered retail arbitrage topics and I was already pretty well schooled in that subject. Nonetheless, many in the class got value out of it and I personally found it very motivating. What impressed me was the willingness of the staff to stay on the call for upwards of three to four hours until everyone’s questions were answered. Week 2 and Week 3 is where we got into product research. These blocks of instruction were pretty intense and they moved very fast. Even as someone who is pretty technically oriented, I found myself getting confused and frustrated. I stuck with it though and ultimately built a product research matrix according to their instruction which yielded me approximately 25 products that appeared competitive enough to do “deep dive research” on. This mostly consisted of evaluating margins after customs and shipping expenses were factored in.
I was pretty satisfied with the course up until this point. I felt like I was learning a lot and the group webinars were a great place to ask questions. The forums on their site were dead though and of the couple threads I participated in, no one seemed to respond. Their Facebook community was lively however, so if I had questions in-between webinars I often went there. What unfortunately did not work out well was the so-called VIP coaching. This was sold as step-by-step hand holding. We were instructed to send our final cut of products to the VIP inbox and we would be given feedback on what to purchase for samples. It took nearly a week to get a response after I sent my list in and the response lacked detail. Nonetheless, I ran with what they suggested and I started contacting manufacturers.
While negotiating with manufacturers, many questions came up. I would email the VIP inbox and then not get a reply for days. Someone else in the class had requested that VIP coaching be extended to 12 weeks, because that’s usually how long these jumpstart groups are. To their credit, StartupBros agreed. Still, 12 weeks is not a long time when you’re waiting for days before you get an answer about a negotiation you’re involved in. I decided to give the StartupBros the benefit of the doubt and stick with the course beyond the 30 day refund mark. My reasoning was that I believed their excuse that the Thanksgiving holiday played a part in their slow response time.
It wasn’t more than a week or two before I regretted my decision to stick things out. I had sent a fairly detailed email to the staff regarding product negotiation and some unusual issues I was running into. I put a great deal of time and effort into making the email as understandable as possible. The response I got from Edmund (one of the coaches) was, “It sounds like you have a lot of questions, can we do a Skype call?” While I was a little annoyed that days later I was still trying to get coaching assistance, I was happy that they were willing to do a Skype call to clear things up. I suggested a number of times over the next couple days and waited. No response came.
Beyond the 30 day money-back guarantee or not, I decided to ask for a refund. In my mind, this is a breach of the agreement they made when they took me on as a student. They told us that we can usually expect an answer within 24 hours and it seemed like they had a hard time even replying within 72 hours. I spelled this out to them, along with the fact that coaching was the primary reason I was in the program, and they granted me a full refund. I definitely respect them for doing that. Edmund said he still wanted to call me on Skype though to help me out. I thought that was nice and I agreed. I had to be online at 6am, because he was somewhere on the other side of the world. I waited and the call never came. In fairness, I think there was some technical trouble on his end, but either way I parted ways with StartupBros after that.
There is definitely some value to be found in this course and I think the staff does legitimately care about their students. I think that in my jumpstart group they simply took on too many students. I have heard that they will be changing their curriculum, so perhaps they’ll change their class size and how they do business on the coaching side of the house.
Thanks for your frank review of the StartUp Bros course! I appreciate it, as all I’ve been able to find online are “reviews” from their paid affiliates, which really doesn’t offer a balanced view. I did their free webinar and considered signing up for the full course, but wondered if it was worth the price. This past week, they were offering a 12-week course for $1500, but it was buy one-get one free, so you could split the cost with a friend. I had also considered Steve Chou’s ‘My Wife Quit Her Job” online course too ($1000), but they all seem a little too good to be true. Do you know anything about Steve Chou’s course? The one thing I notice is that all of these eCommerce guys all use the same list of experts, and also interview each other a lot. Trying to figure out whether it would be worthwhile to pay for one of these courses, or just continue to try and figure it out on my own.
Hey Janice,
Glad my review was helpful. I know what you mean about hyped up e-commerce classes. There is a lot of that out there these days. I’ve heard of Steven Chou and his blog, but I did not know he has a course. I’ll have to take a look at that. If you want to stay up to date on our blog and future course reviews we do, sign up for the email list on the main page and/or join our Facebook community at https://www.facebook.com/groups/JPCashFlow/. I think the advice I’d give you on selecting a course is to carefully consider your exact desired result before signing up. It has to be something very concrete. Not just “making extra money” or “learning about niche blogs”. With StartupBros, my goal was to get my first imported PL product negotiated, delivered to me, shipped to FBA, and making it’s first organic sale by the end of the process. I’m still pursuing that goal, but it turned out StartupBros just wasn’t the system to get me there. It turns out that the Amazing Seller podcast and Facebook community are assisting me more on my mission than an expensive course did. Just because a resource is free doesn’t mean we should discount it’s value as a solution and likewise, we shouldn’t be shy to invest in education when it’s going to deliver a specific result.
Thanks for the insight. Are you using your experience w/the bros to do any importing today?
Hey Tomoko,
I did eventually import my first product and I’m at the point now where it’s listed. Trying to gain reviews and sales at the moment, though it’s been slow going. After the Bros’ course, I delved into all the free material that The Amazing Seller podcast/website put out. I found that material the most helpful.
– James
Were you able to yield any profits within the 12 week course with them?
Hey Kirk,
I’m afraid not. I’ve only launched one PL product (two listings, with 3 color variations and one listing is a bundle) and it took me months to get going. One issue was that I ran into was Chinese New Year and the whole country shuts down for that. It probably took me 4 or 5 months to bring my product to market and it has only turned a small profit. I’ve have had far more success with retail arbitrage personally.
I would like to pursue another PL product, but when I do I’ll be following the stuff I’ve learned from TheAmazingSeller.com. If you want formal training, he offers that, but honestly his free material is probably enough to get your first product. I sat through his Product Research webinar last night and it was really good. I got some great notes out of that. The sales pitch at the end for his course was tempting (about $1000 course), but I didn’t go for it, mainly because I feel like I understand the process well enough now. I rather spend that money on investing in another product.
Product Research/Selection is really the only point (and it’s probably the most important) that has snagged me up in the past. Getting the hang of Amazon Sponsored ads has been tricky too, but I’m going to see what resources I find on YouTube and elsewhere to get more knowledgeable on that.
My advice to you is that if you haven’t already started selling on Amazon, get out there and try some retail arbitrage right now. In fact, that was basically what the first module of Startup Bros was. Get a hang of the platform, start listing to The Amazing Seller podcast (there are over 300 episodes), and maybe sign up for his free webinar on product research next time he runs it. When I start my product research for my next PL product, maybe I’ll create a new article or video here on JPCashFlow outlining the steps I used. Freedom Fastlane is another good podcast that talked a lot about Amazon when it first came out.
Good luck and let me know if you have any other questions about selling on Amazon!
– James
Thank you for the review. Ive recently bought the startup bros courses but i dont feel that it provided what i needed i been trying to cancel my subscription but i cant seem to find the cancel page. any advice?
Hi Jonathan,
This is a program James did so I am not familiar with what you need to do. I will text him tonight and have him get in touch with you.
Peter
Sorry Jonathan, thought I had replied to this previously. I would suggest reaching out to their team by email. That’s how I mainly dealt with them. Not sure what their current contact info would be because it’s been about two years since I have dealt with them. Good luck.
Thank you for your honest review! I still think I’m going to try their renewed course; they now offer a 90 days money back so anyway I’ll be covered even if I’ll not be satisfied. Please keep us updated on your progress with Amazon, curious!
Hi Angelo,
Did you ever try their new course? I’ve been thinking about buying it, but I want to make sure it’s worth it!
Thank you!
Andrea
Hi Angelo,
Have you tried the new StartupBros Course? I was interested in doing so but would like a review.
Thank you,
Hey guys, I have not tried the new Startup Bros course and decided to go with ASM (https://www.jpcashflow.com/asm)
I don’t have a review up of it, but you can see some videos about what it’s all about. The reason I decided to go with them is because some friends of mine had success with it building 6 and 7 figure private label businesses and I like the fact there is a big community surrounding it. I actually attended their conference in Vegas in June 2019 and that was pretty awesome. Within the course there is a large and active forum that is helpful in getting questions answered. This is a pet peeve mine (getting questions answered). As I stated in my Startup Bros review, that was my main problem with them. I can appreciate that they’ve likely changed things since I took the course, but if they weren’t responsive to me then, I don’t really trust them to be responsive to me now. In fact, someone from StartupBros reached out to me like a year ago or so. They mentioned the new course and wanted my feedback. I wrote them back and was open minded about it… then they didn’t get back to me.
ASM isn’t cheap, but given the results my friends got with it and the fact that it is lifetime access to all course updates, I thought it was a good investment. You can see a summary video of what they’re all about at: https://www.jpcashflow.com/asm
With the pandemic going on, that kind of put a pause on my PL efforts and I’m focusing on more domestic aspects of my business rather than importing anything. Hopefully in the near future I’ll do more with that stuff and have another article for you guys on how ASM is going.
– James
Hi James,
Did you have any success with the ASM course? Trying to decide what course would be the most beneficial.
Thank you
Hey Adam,
I still haven’t executed on ASM to be honest. I have lifetime access from the purchase and I get all the course upgrades, so I’m not overly concerned about it. When the pandemic hit, I kind of got concerned about putting any significant money into inventory, especially if it was going to be coming from overseas. Since that time I’ve focused solely on my print-on-demand business ventures and equity trading. Even though I haven’t used it yet, I’m glad I bought the course because I imagine with inflation being on the rise course prices across the board will be going up too. All I can say about ASM at this point is that the course materials/dashboard are impressive and that I personally know a number of people who have had great success with ASM. To date, I have yet to meet anyone who did Startup Bros and had success with it. When I say “meet” someone, I mean in person. You’ll find positive reviews on everything online, because everyone uses affiliate links when putting out content (including me). From 2018 into the beginning of 2020, I went in person to probably a dozen major e-com conferences and talked to a lot of people. ASM was the course that kept coming up. Other than that, some people had one on one coaches or just stumbled their way through private label by trial and error. Others already had local mom & pop type operations that they scaled to Amazon. I think what I’ve learned from those events was that when I do finally execute on ASM, I’m going one of two ways. Number one would be a really boring product that is under the radar and in an underserved niche. Number two and probably the more profitable long term option is to build a real brand with a product that would play well on social media. From keeping tabs on some e-com folks, it seems the best strategy is to get initial momentum on Amazon and then take the product to your own storefront with something like Shopify. Once they do that, then they try to lure people who found them on Amazon over to their own site with coupons because the margins are better not using Amazon. Of course, that second strategy works a lot better if it’s something that people have to replenish (food, protein powder, cleaning product, etc, etc) or if you have a line of complementary products (Yoga mat, towel, bottle, stretching straps, etc).
I know Startup Bros must have made changes since I took their course, so I would hope it has improved since I was a student. If you like what they’re saying now, then give it a shot if there is still a decent refund policy in place. Personally, given the choice between the two though, I’m going with the one that I know people have had massive results with and that’s ASM. As a side note, I finally threw away the last few units of inventory I had from my experiment with private label with Startup Bros method. I was trying to sell them on eBay and sold a few units, but it was far too slow to be worth my time.
A word of caution with whatever course you pick… don’t forget you need money for inventory. Everyone says you don’t need much to get started, but the truth is that with more money comes more options for picking a product. Now that I already own ASM, I think I would want to bring between $5k to $10k to experiment with products. You can do it for under $5k, but from my experience your choices of products are going to be limited and you also need to consider the marketing budget. If you’re working on a tight budget then consider saving a bankroll for the inventory before you buy a course. Any decent course is going to want you to take action as you learn, so if you’re not in a position to execute on what they’re teaching you then it’s best to wait until you have adequate cash to actually follow through with the training.
Hope that helps. Keep use posted how things work out and thanks for commenting.