Secret Sauce #1: Speed Kills & Money Loves It

The Auto-Ungate List & Necessary Tools to Find Profitable Items

First and Foremost

Learning this skillset is similar to working out and getting in the best shape of your life. There are no shortcuts. The work must be done. However, the knowledge you have dictates the quality of your work, which dictates the speed at which you accomplish your goals. You can work out every day, but if you have poor form, a bad program, or poor recovery habits, then you may never reach your goals, whereas someone with the best knowledge, the key exercises and form, along with good recovery habits, might only work out two days per week and attain the physique you wish you had. The same can be said of this skillset. Knowledge is the critical difference in between being able to source profitable items vs. not being able to find them. However, even without that knowledge, you can still discover a profitable item that sells so fast you’d never be able to keep up with demand on your own. While rare, it has happened, but that item may run out of demand or supply eventually, and you’d have to start over, whereas someone with the knowledge of how to interpret the data and purchase accordingly, find discounts or suppliers, as well as organize a system and duplicate that over and over again with both year-round and seasonal items, will eventually be able to grow and leverage himself out of doing everything on his own by delegating those responsibilities.

• Think about how good Spirit Whirled is. Think about how much time and resources I saved you to bring you up to speed in those subjects by giving you the tools to empower you. Now, imagine me applying those standards into learning another skill in an unrelated field, which, if you’re interested in it, will make your experience that much better and easier than mine. It’s the same technique applied differently.

You Have Two Choices

You can see the world for the way you wish it was, or, you can see the world for the way that it actually is. You can let your decisions be governed by your emotions, or, you can let your decisions be governed by data. While the data can be manipulated or incomplete, there are enough different variables in the tools to make educated decisions on what to purchase regarding the following subject, i.e., BSR, Sales per Month, Max Cost, Profit, ROI, Buy Box Statistics, Offer Count, and more. When all of these data points are favorable, then you know that the product is profitable and sells fast, regardless if you know anything about the product. The data is the data, and your opinion or knowledge of the product is irrelevant. That’s the time to buy it and test it. If it doesn’t sell quickly, return it risk free. If it does sell quickly, replenish it and repeat. One of the oldest adages in commerce is buy low and sell high. This is no different, and since you’re still a month away from Black Friday, you have that much time to get your shit together and be ready to make some purchases on one of the biggest sales day of the year (at the lowest prices) so that you can sell those items during the most demanding time of the year: the following month (at the highest prices.)

Speed

If you like business, you’ve likely heard successful people claim money loves speed. If you like sports, you’ve likely heard the phrase speed kills. It wasn’t till I learned how certain aspects of Amazon work that I realized how important that concept was in all avenues of life. Amazon prioritizes speed above all else. Dozens of people sell the same items on Amazon and are able to compete and share in the sales because the seller that makes the sale is often chosen by algorithms based on how close they are to the buyer and how fast the seller can ship the item. Someone who can ship the item the day of purchase is likely to get the sale over someone who needs at least 24 hours of handling time if their prices are comparable. The seller who is closest to the buyer will also likely get the sale because it means the package will spend less time being delivered. Amazon prioritizes you getting your orders as fast as possible. That is one of their many competitive edges.

The Opportunity Born From Misfortune

Over the last few years, due to the policies of the nations induced a supply-chain breakdown. Prior to the situation, it was difficult for regular people to sell name-brand products on Amazon because most couldn’t meet Amazon’s requirements (from what I gather; I don’t know from experience because I’ve sold my books through Amazon which doesn’t have restrictions). As the supply-chain broke down, Amazon relaxed its requirements in order to enable merchants to sell name-brand items to fulfill orders that it couldn’t. This has created a window of opportunity for people who can source profitable items to satisfy demand and profit off of in ways that most couldn’t have imagined even half a decade ago.

FBM Q4

During the month of December, the amount of sellers go down and the prices of products go up. Because there are so many sales happening, Amazon gets backed up and loses speed, so if you are a merchant that doesn’t need to send your items into Amazon to have them fulfilled it can save weeks on time, and your ability to buy shipping (USPS if under 1 lb or UPS if over 1 lb) and send products to buyers directly alleviates any speed issues that Amazon has, so if you have profitable products (at least a 25% ROI) that move fast (are under 100k sales rank), have no Private Labels on the listing, Amazon isn’t on the listing, and it has no IP complaints or other issues, a somewhat stable Buy Box price (see image below), and have a declining offer counts (sellers), then it means the price will go up during December and part of January, and you can make a profit. That being said, while you may find seasonal opportunities that you can track and take advantage of yearly, everything sells more during Q4, so having a solid list of profitable ASINs (Amazon Standard Identification Numbers assigned to each product) that move fast and you can replenish regularly will give your business stability year-round. But during December, FBM has advantages for those who have the ability to do it.

Here is an example of the Buy Box. You’ve all seen this or made a purchase through this on Amazon, but you probably didn’t know that not every product on Amazon has this on its page. The seller who wins the buy box is determined by a number of things including their location, handling time, price, account health, etc., and the customer generally has no idea that 20 sellers could be competing to win the buy box. This rotation ensures that the best situation is always presented. You being able to have zero-day handling as a beginner will help you win the buy box over a more successful seller that has 1- or 2-day handling because you can get the product out faster.

If This Is Foreign To You…

Then don’t worry about it. It’s not for everyone. I won’t be coaching or giving insight in comments or messages, as I am at the beginning of my journey in this endeavor. I will, however, be organizing my research, charting my progress, and giving tons of value during my own journey of Retail and Online Arbitrage through Q4 and beyond, which will begin with FBM (Fulfilled by Merchant), progress to FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon), and then perhaps to Wholesale, which may finally lead to launching my own brand. I may decide this isn’t for me after a few months. It doesn’t matter because the things I will be sharing will be those that worked for me and are hopefully duplicatable. Should you decide to get involved or know someone who wants to learn this skillset, you can refer to these posts.

Getting Ungated

The biggest hurdle for new sellers is getting ungated. You can find the most profitable products of all time, but if you’re not ungated with their brand, then you won’t be able to list them on Amazon and get access to Amazon’s customers. The best brands to sell on Amazon are gated, which means in order to sell them, you have to be approved, and in order to be approved you have to show an invoice of you buying products from distributors that Amazon knows and trusts. These standards are how Amazon ensures you’re getting the brand-name products you order and not cheap knock-offs. Almost every brand requires some form of application to sell in order to be approved, however, there are brands that you can get approved to sell without ever making a purchase. Here’s an example of what it looks like to apply to be able to sell a brand from your Seller’s Central account:

The following list is composed of 1840 brands. This used to be products that you could apply for and get approval to sell without having to provide an invoice of you buying at least 10. However, as of October 21, 2023, much of that list has changed and only about 640 of them will allow you to ungate without having to submit a purchase invoice from a distributor. However, there are a bunch that I skipped because I have no intention to sell, i.e., categories like Movies, Video Games, Vinyl, etc., but there are also quite a few that get unlocked because certain brands, though seemingly different, are owned by the same entity. I have gone through this entire list and will provide it to my members. It took me about a week of approximately 3-6 hours per day to submit to each brand. If you don’t think money loves speed or that saving your time to avoid 1200 applications is valuable, here is the document for free, with instructions:

Fields of Profit & Flips4Miles Un-gate List (These are the gentlemen I’ve been learning the most from. I highly recommend subscribing to them and watching their YouTube content; the things that have helped me will be included for members in subsequent posts.)

Have at it!

But…

if you recognize money loves speed and think saving your most valuable commodity is worth it…

on account of it increasing the speed at which you can accomplish getting ungated in these brands, which will enable you to sell profitable items sooner, then…

become a member to access the rest of this article…

along with the brands from the list that allowed me to ungate without ever having made a single purchase or sale. I’ll even show you receipts on how I got ungated with one of the biggest brands (the coveted one that everyone in this space talks about) so you know exactly what to do.

I’m About to Save You a Week of Work and Even More Time Doing Research. Enjoy!