The No Bullshit Guide To Going From Zero Dollars In The Bank To 6 Figures On Amazon

Everyone wants to know if it’s possible to go from having $0 in the bank to making over 6 figures in sales on Amazon.

Not only is it possible, but you can do it in a year or less.

I know this because that is exactly what I did.

I started selling on Amazon in May 2022.

I found out about reselling when I was watching a video of some dude scalping Pokemon cards and selling them online.

Naturally, I assumed he was going to be selling them on eBay or Facebook Marketplace.

I was unaware of how easy it was to sell on Amazon.

I watched this dude scan items with the Amazon Seller app, buy the profitable ones and generate massive sales.

I couldn’t believe how easy it was to sell on Amazon.

The factors that held me back in the past no longer were necessary.

I did not need to create my own listings, take product photography and spend money on advertisements.

That being said, I had no money as I refused to be a corporate slave to the machine.

I made a good amount of money but could never seem to accumulate it in my bank.

After dropping out of college, I worked a variety of jobs and tried several different business ideas.

I bartended at several NYC bars, stocked shelves at Target, cold called at BMW and finally sold cars at Mercedes-Benz.

I made a little bit of money through several businesses, such as private party bartending, Poshmark, Fiverr, eBay, Shopify, and selling CBD.

But it was never enough to replace a job.

I always had to go back to a job to make enough money to survive.

My Shopify business went bust and I ended up in bunch of debt.

The lessons I learned from this were pivotal to my future success.

I did not know how to sell.

I needed to learn how to sell.

While working at Target, I listened non-stop to sales training tapes by Brian Tracy and Grant Cardone while working.

I quit the day my manager told me I could no longer wear AirPods while working.

I did not give a fuck about what people thought about me.

I was a college dropout working at Target.

I must’ve looked like a complete fuck-up, but I was going above and beyond most people my age.

I was learning high-ticket closing skills that would benefit me for the rest of my life.

My gut instinct was right, and I thank my past self for doing whatever it takes to win.

At BMW, I learned how to take massive action and to not take no for answer.

I made hundreds of sales calls every day, which is why I am now able to scan thousands of items every day.

At Mercedes-Benz, I learned how to sell 5-6 figure products.

That made selling 1-3 figure products a breeze.

I honed my visualization skills and knew for a fact that my visions could become reality.

I learned I could do what other people considered impossible.

People told me to get a job at Ford and Honda and work my way up over the course of many years.

I walked straight into the Benz dealership, sold the manager on my potential value to the company and got hired right on the spot, even though I had only been in the automotive industry for less than a year.

Since then, I’ve gotten everything I want and more.

If I don’t have something yet, that’s because not enough time has passed.

In due time, I will have every single thing I want.

This is not an entitlement mentality, but the mentality of complete self-belief.

I know I will do the work needed to achieve the results, which is why the results are virtually guaranteed.

This is the mentality you need to have every step of your journey from being broke to being rich.

Even working at Mercedes-Benz did not make me rich.

I sold cars like there was no tomorrow.

There were days I sold 4 cars off the showroom floor and they had to rearrange all the cars inside.

I could not accumulate life-changing money in a job because I lacked freedom, had to pay taxes, did not have free time and was bound to a single company and single source of income.

I needed freedom and money, which is what drew me to e-commerce in the first place.

I just failed so many times that there were times I didn’t even know if it was possible for me.

If you feel the same way, I’m here to tell you that there is a way out.

All of this changed once I saw that scalper’s video and instead of hating on him, like every single loser in the comment section, I took inspiration.

I decided to follow the path set out to make real money on my own terms, away from the confines of a job.

I became obsessed with learning and watched every video I could on the subject.

More importantly, I left the house every single day and gained experience from trying it out in real life.

Several Amazon sellers recommended starting off selling used books if you are starting off with little capital.

I decided to begin right away.

Unlike the poor losers who are broke and feel like they are above going to thrift stores and scanning books, I went all in.

I started going to 3-4 thift stores (Goodwill, Salvation Army, Value Village) every day and scanned all the books and DVDs.

I respected the process instead of trying to skip ahead like the nerds who want to get rich tomorrow.

I bought an Eyoyo scanner and got a subscription for a book scanning app called ScoutIQ.

This app basically downloads the entire book catalog of Amazon to your phone.

You can scan thousands of books and not have to stop and look at the covers.

Just scan the barcodes, put on your AirPods and listen to the sounds.

The app emits a special ring when a book is profitable.

You set aside the books that ring profitable and buy them.

You pack them into Home Depot small boxes (they can fit around 50 lbs of books, which is the maximum weight for an FBA shipment), and ship it to Amazon so it can be sold via Amazon Prime.

In the beginning of my Amazon selling journey, I drove UberEats and spent all my money on books.

I did everything I could to muster up more dollars that I would immediately convert into inventory.

Because it was money I earned, I had nothing to lose.

This is money that would’ve evaporated on nonsense anyways.

Most NPCs think the absolute worst thing that could ever happen to them is to buy a product that doesn't sell. Meanwhile they buy pizza, cheeseburgers, playstations and other bullshit that has 0 chance of making them rich without any hesitation

— Alex Chung (@mkvln_) July 16, 2023

At least with books, I had a chance to make huge profits with each one.

I would buy books for $1-3 and sell them for $15-$200.

After around a month of doing this, I had enough capital to get into retail arbitrage.

This was in June 2022.

During this time, I hit stores such Ollies, Marshalls, Walmart and TJMaxx.

The goal was to source low priced items that had huge ROI potential.

I downloaded a free trial of SellerAmp and began to scan hundreds of products a day.

I did not have unlimited cash during this time and consistently ran out of money while sourcing.

I remember the days when I had to wait over a week for my next disbursement and couldn’t go sourcing.

The lack of capital was certainly my largest bottleneck in the beginning.

My first win was when I found hundreds of units of these Crayola pens and highlighters at Ollies for $2.99.

They were selling for $16+ on Amazon.

I went to every Ollies near me and cleaned them out.

This was right before the back-to-school season so it was perfect timing.

I sold out of all the pens within a few days and that was when I knew that this hustle had the potential to make me rich.

I just had to play my cards right.

Another obstacle I encountered was that I was gated in pretty much every brand.

I got ungated by purchasing 10 units of Crayola chalk from ChristianBook.com for $1 each, which means I got ungated in that brand for $10.

The profits I made from that product more than covered the cost of ungating.

I proceeded brand by brand, looking for profitable products, ungating brands that I encountered frequently while I was sourcing.

Whenever I saw a brand that consistently had profitable products but I was gated in, I added it to a list on my phone of brands that I needed to get ungated in.

I then proceeded to reinvest my profits into getting ungated into more brands.

This opened up for me the ability to sell more and more profitable products with less competition.

Eventually, Amazon began to recognize my rapid growth and high sales velocity and I was able to get auto-ungated in tons of profitable brands.

I was using only my cash at this time.

I did not have good credit because of my prior business failure (Shopify Dropshipping) which led me to get into debt which I had to work at Target to pay off.

I reinvested all my profits and even drove UberEats when I needed extra capital.

It was a grind in the beginning, but it was worth it.

Eventually, I reached the point where I did not need to trade my time for money anymore.

I could let my money work for me and generate more money.

I took all that money and turned it into products that could make even more money.

I never stopped doing this.

I was now entering a new level.

Going from mass scanning books to scanning individual products.

Going from selling used products to selling new products.

If you are currently making this transition, here are several things you must prioritize:

1. Learn how to read Keepa. This will help you avoid products that Amazon sells and doesn’t share the buy box. This will also help you identify opportunities other people cannot see. Prices on Amazon change daily and it is important to see the full picture. A single scan only shows a snapshot of information.
2. Do not utilize credit until you are consistently generating profit and have predictable income. I did not use credit cards until several months after I began. I didn’t even have any when I started selling. If you want to spend the money you would’ve spent in cash on your cards, that is fine. I just mean do not spend money you do not have and do not take on loans at this point of time.
3. Get ungated in highly profitable brands for your business. Make it a priority. This investment will pay dividends for the rest of your Amazon selling career.
4. Master sourcing. The way to do this is to scan hundreds to thousands of products every day. Scan everything with a barcode. Not just to buy products, but to learn. You only gain an understanding of what products are in demand and what isn’t by analyzing data and making an effort to understand the data that is presented to you.
5. Do not copy what others are buying. If you simply copy what other people are buying, you will always be behind the game. I don’t say this to be rude. I used to copy other sellers, but I often got trapped in races to the bottom. By the time I was selling my stock, they had already sold out of theirs. The only way to win is to be ahead of the game and have a deeper understanding of what is good to sell. Be the one others copy instead.

The next stage is where most people inevitably fall off.

After riding the wave of excitement of achieving 10K in sales or more, it is so easy to feel like you can take it easy and stop hustling.

Success seems inevitable and repetition is boring.

I know this because these are pathetic human emotions that I had to battle with on a daily basis.

A weaker man would have folded and given up.

It was a total grind and for 3 months straight, my sales seemed like they were plateauing.

I hit around 10K of sales for the first time, and for the next two months, my sales were a little bit less than 10K.

This was worrying, because I had just started and I did not know if I was going up or if I was going down.

I did not know if my first month of 10K in sales was a fluke or if I really was ready for the next level.

The main issue I had during this time was lack of capital.

My sourcing ability had gotten quite good.

It wasn’t great yet, but I was learning which products to sell and which products to avoid.

These are things you cannot learn from watching other people.

Only you can find out through your own experience what is good to sell for your business and your logistics.

I was stagnating because my lack of available capital meant I had to pass on ripe opportunities simply because I had run out of money to spend.

This prevented me from growing even further and also caused me to waste a lot of time at stores.

I had to pick and choose what to buy, when I could’ve bought it all and generated profit if I had enough cash on hand.

I prefer to buy as much as possible during a single trip, so that each trip is worthwhile.

The way you can scale higher at this stage is to acquire credit cards with high limits.

If you get lower limits, get multiple cards and stack them.

Like I said, my credit wasn’t perfect after Shopify dropshipping.

This was nearly 5 years ago, in 2018.

That being said, I was able to get several credit cards with decent limits.

Buying my inventory on these cards helped me rapidly build my credit.

I made sure to buy my inventory on these cards, pay them off and request credit limit increases/apply for new cards every 3 months or so.

Gradually, I was able to expand my working capital, which allowed me to seize upon many more opportunities.

During this time, I also received loan offers from Amazon Lending and a line of credit from Goldman Sachs due to my high sales volume.

I took that money and made even more money with it.

I paid them back, pocketed the profit and then they offered me even bigger loans.

I continued doing this until I began to have too much capital, and my new bottleneck became processing the amount of inventory I was able to purchase.

Keep in mind that capital sitting in your bank is going negative, because of the amount of money printing going on right now.

Your goal should always be to find a place to put your money to work.

I continued to turn my dollar bills into hard inventory that was profitable.

This is the key to exponential growth during this stage.

During this period, I could keep going sourcing all day everyday, buy everything I found and not run out of money.

This was a new problem that I had not encountered previously.

During this period, it became more and more difficult to ship out the quantity of products I was buying and simple things I had taken for granted, such as dropping off boxes at UPS became much more difficult.

I had to begin scheduling UPS pickups to my garage because I could not physically carry it to the store.

It is inevitable that in order to reach my goals I will have to build systems and hire employees.

That being said, I believe in maximizing your results within each level and doing as much as you can within a level before leveling up.

This will adequately prepare you to be ready for the next level, as opposed to diving right in and falling flat on your face.

This goes contrary to the way that most people think, which is trying to shortcut the process and begin a new level before they have even mastered the level that they are on.

It is because of this reason that I ended up moving my business out of my garage and into two storage units.

With more space, I can become more organized and process inventory much more efficiently.

My storage unit is 6 minutes away from Nike Outlet, Adidas Outlet, Burlington and Ross.

I have power, lighting and internet, which means I can pack FBA shipments, ship FBM/eBay orders and develop inventory management systems all from within the storage units.

I plan on going hard until I physically cannot handle the volume that I have.

Then, I can hire help and have more than enough capital to pay them a nice hourly wage.

This leads me to the conclusion of this article.

No bullshit, how do you go from broke to six figures on Amazon in a single year?

It’s simple.

Master the fundamentals.

Make a single sale.

Repeat the process over the course of months.

Stay disciplined, respect the game and persist until you win.

If you know how to make 1 sale, you can make 1 million sales.

How is it any different?

The only factors that will come in your way are new problems, which are things you should welcome, not avoid.

Average people avoid new problems while winners seek new problems because that means they have hit another level.

It is when you find the solution to these problems that the success that you desire comes naturally to you and you level up.

I just told you how I went from working at Target to making multiple 6 figures in my first year selling on Amazon.

If I can do it, you can do it.

The only thing that can stop you is your own doubts and lack of self-belief.

The way to overcome these things is to take action no matter what and refuse to give up.

Best regards,

Alex Chung