#144: Online Entrepreneurship and Making Income on Amazon
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With us today is private label expert Ashley Kinkead, the mastermind behind thousands of third-party products sold on Amazon today. Ashley has inspired countless people and entrepreneurs around the world with her skills and strategies to build full-time online empires from the ground up. Founder of Private Label Mastery, host of a top-ranked Amazon FBA podcast and author of Million Dollar e-Com Secrets: How I Went From an Unfulfilling Corporate Job to a High-Income, Extraordinary Life on My Laptop, there’s no other woman currently in the industry who’s worked with more 6, 7, and 8-figure Amazon sellers than Ashley Kinkead.
In this episode, we’re discussing…
[1:31] How did she get into private label?
[3:41] Fulfillment by Amazon
[5:25] What is private label?
[9:31] What is the photon method?
[11:22] How long does it take to build a product on Amazon?
[13:19] How to pick a product that that’s competitive
[17:47] Why she loves Amazon Prime
[19:17] How much does it take to become an entrepreneur?
[22:47] Mentorship and mentorship
[23] Where can people find Ashley
Resources from Ashley
LinkedIn | AmzPrivateLabelMastery | Facebook | Instagram
+ Read the transcript
Mike Stohler
What if you could be doing something smarter with your money that creates income. Now, if you're wanting to get ahead financially, and enjoy greater freedom of choice, if you want a comfortable retirement, and you know you'll have more choices, if you can do more with your money. Now, if you've wondered who else is creating ways to make their money work for them, and you want actionable ideas, with honest pros and cons, and no fluff. Welcome to the Richard geek podcast. Where you here helping people find creative ways to build wealth and financial freedom. I'm Mike Stohler, and in this podcast, you'll hear from others who are already doing these things, and learn how you can make good afternoon everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Richer geek Podcast. Today we have Ashley Kinkead, she's one of the premier and rare women in the Amazon seller and E commerce space. She does private labels, we're going to talk about how you can set up your own private labels and sell them on Amazon. And how to get to that wonderful first page of the Amazon products. You know, you want to be on that first page, not page 4000 of the products. How are you doing nationally?
Ashley Kinkead
I'm doing awesome, Michael, super excited to be on the richer geek. Thank you.
Mike Stohler
Absolutely. So what got you started? I'm sure you you also started buying things on on Amazon. But what made you get in the private label stuff?
Ashley Kinkead
Yeah, well, Michael, I used to be like a lot of your listeners, maybe just kind of working in corporate America had a typical day kind of job lifestyle working for somebody else. And I discovered selling on Amazon in 2015. It was actually my first I never heard about e commerce before then or knew that someone like me could make money online and start a business. So I just started selling on Amazon in 2015 amazon.com. Through the FBA program, I'm not sure if you're familiar with it, it's called Fulfillment by Amazon and back then it redshirted 2015, like anybody could sell on Amazon, you know, super easy to get started. And it still is today, in a sense, but anyways, started in 2015. Kind of just as a side hustle, if you will to make some side money and never could have dreamed I would have a multimillion dollar private label brand on Amazon. So it took me a couple of years to get there. I had about 15,000 products on Amazon over the years and built two really successful private label brands on Amazon. And today I have a company that helps people do that. And we have literally 10s of 1000s of products on Amazon. So it's been a lot of fun. But it all started just like with a credit card and some products. It's on Amazon in 2015. So private label has been very life changing for me for the last eight years. And I really love to just like talk about it and introduce people to it. And you know, no matter where you are in E commerce, Richard, I think that there's value in having a brand of your own, whether that's on Amazon or anywhere. But Amazon's a good place to start. You know, if you're out there listening to the show, you don't have a following like I do, or you don't have a Instagram or a website. Amazon really is like one of the easiest places to start making money. If you don't have expertise or like a skill set have to offer people selling on Amazon is a great way to like get your feet wet and like make your first dollar and online make your first e commerce business.
Mike Stohler
Yeah, it's, I mean, my gosh, you know, you order something at eight o'clock in the morning. And so your front front door, you know, by three? And you know, and I think that's the importance of the fulfillment part, right? Is that true? If you do the fulfillment by Amazon FBA, you're getting it directly from their warehouse. You don't have to worry about the third party shipping it to you.
Ashley Kinkead
Oh, no. Yeah. So Right. So FBA, most of our people that we work with, and ourselves, we don't actually like, see the products, you know, and we don't talk to the customer. So Amazon stores our products, they do the returns, customer service, all that. So it really allows people to build like really big businesses without like the hassles of a traditional business. So shipping, customer service fulfillment storage, the only thing we do is basically source a product like work with a supplier, pick the product, pick the logo, pick the brand, and that's it, and then we ship it to Amazon, and then the sales come in and we just get to focus on that side of the business.
Mike Stohler
So tell me a little bit about our listeners who may not know what private label is.
Ashley Kinkead Yeah, sure. So private labeling is I always use the ketchup analogy. You walk down the aisle of a grocery store and there's 50 brands of ketchup right? it, but if you read the label, they're all 99%. The same, they just have a different label on the front. So whether you pay $2 or $4 for a bottle of ketchup, why? Why do you do that it's brand recognition, it's having a better product, those kinds of things. So are the toothpaste analogy, you know, there's 50 brands of toothpaste, but if you actually read the ingredients label on a toothpaste is 99%, identical, even those major differences in pricing, and, you know, customer branding, and that kind of thing. So private labeling, essentially taking a product that's already out there, aka ketchup, and putting a label on it and calling it you know, Ashley's ketchup brand. So that's private labeling, it's not about going out and like coming up with a whole new product, or like inventing something, it's just about selling something that's already out there. And we recommend on Amazon, people read, Michael, they, you know, go out there and slightly differentiated, they slightly differentiated. So that is as simple as a tweak, or a color or a material. That's it. I mean, there can be 200 sellers of the product already on Amazon. But if you can just slightly change or differentiate that product. That's really how we teach private labeling in 2023. Michael,
Mike Stohler
okay, so you're not there, because there's a couple of different ways you can private label, want to make sure we got what you're doing. One of it is, you find out what is selling, what is what people want. And then some people will kind of create and actually patent something that is very similar but different so that they have complete control over a product. Or people say, okay, you know what, I'm going to sell this widget, and, but I'm going to just slap my name on it, maybe change the color, and then focus on you know, becoming first page.
Ashley Kinkead
Right, there's different ways to do it. There's different ways to do it is it is about getting to the first page. It absolutely is. But it's also about finding those opportunities, right. Like I think you mentioned earlier, Michael, there's so many products on Amazon, but it's about having your own product, finding a manufacturer, and not necessarily going out and creating something new, I think so that was my goal. That's what people think private label is like inventing something. It's not it's just selling an existing product and putting your own logo or label on it.
Mike Stohler
Okay. Yeah, that's because I didn't know it's like, Okay, do we have to find the, the manufacturer in China to, you know, to buy it, or we were already finding a product? And we're just going to change?
Ashley Kinkead
Yeah, how we start the process is finding a product. So we, we will train our students how to actually find a product to sell on Amazon, check their product for them using software. So it starts with the product idea, right? So let's say you want to sell silicone barbecue gloves, okay, you find out through our through our system, that's a good product, it's on Amazon, then we will match you with a supplier. So yeah, none of our students go to Alibaba, and have them do that we actually have our own in house supplier sourcing agents that we've matched them with, with products. So that really speeds up the process a lot. going out and finding a supplier is the hard part today. Like that's the hardest thing with private labeling on Amazon is having to go find a supplier and make sure it's profitable. So right, you start with the product idea, make sure it's like a profitable product to sell on Amazon, which isn't very complicated. But then you either yes, you have to go out to Alibaba, or China or supplier website and find someone to like make you those silicone gloves, you can either do that yourself. Or you can work with someone like our team that can like help you vet those people. And then you work with that supplier, and you literally ship that product to Amazon and you just restock it every month. So most of our students have more than one of those, they usually have two to five products. But that's basically what private labeling is on Amazon. In a nutshell, it's really just following a system, following a system that we already have in place, you don't have to have an idea, you don't have to have a supplier, just follow our system. And then you know, follow it for a few months and then get your product up. And it's just a rinse and repeat rinse and repeat process. That's a privately leads that having a physical product that you call your own, you call it your own brand. You can even get it registered on Amazon just like the huge brands like Sony and Kleenex and all that we have a ton of registered brands on Amazon so that it's actually your own print. It's your own brand. And if you want to sell it, a lot of our students sell them as well. They'll sell their brands. So
Mike Stohler
now you talk about your Photon method. And we've probably been talking about a little bit here and there as a as we've been talking about it but exactly what is this method that you've developed?
Ashley Kinkead
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. So photon is simply an acronym that we use just kind of break down how to explain selling And Amazon in a pretty simple way. So photon Fs follow the demand, oh is only the best products to tap into secret suppliers Oh as outsource and as nurture. So f is follow that demand. So this is the first step of thinking about how to sell on Amazon is to find a product that's actually in demand. Right? Like, as long as you know there's enough people actually looking for that product on Amazon, you will eventually be successful with that product, you don't want to sell anything on Amazon, you know that only a few 100 People are looking for, you want to sell a product that has a lot of demand Michael like 1000s and 1000s of people searching for that, you know, whether it's silicone gloves, I've always sold bath bombs and soy products on Amazon. So there's a lot of people searching for those kinds of products. So at this follow the demand, oh is only the best products. So what we mean by that is do you want to sell a product that's going to make you at least $5,000 a month. So there's enough market demand out there nothing to like niche or unknown T is tap into secret suppliers. So like I said, we don't go on Alibaba, we don't we don't search through those traditional means we have more private suppliers that we work with. And then Oh is outsource. So a lot of we recommend outsourcing, you know, not actually doing everything yourself and your business, you don't have to actually like source, you don't just actually like tape the products in a box, you don't have to talk to customers, you can outsource things. And then n is nurture. So it does take time to build this Michael like a private label brand. And Amazon does take about six months to get going. And to really nurture it to a place where it can be on the first page of Amazon, sometimes we'll see products just go on Amazon. And yes, like page one first day, that's great. But usually it takes a bit more of a building process like actually getting ranked for the a nine algorithm to recognize your keywords. So usually, you know when you send a product to Amazon, maybe at the bottom of search results. But there are some things that you can do as far as like maintaining your listings, optimizing your listings, so that people can actually find your product. So that's really it, it's really just a way of thinking about you don't have to have an idea, you just need to follow the demand, use a tool, whether it's Amazon, you can literally go on amazon.com. Or you can use a software tool like Jungle Scout, there's so many out there, look at Amazon's data, see what people are actually shopping for and just sell the same product. That's really fine private labeling in a nutshell.
Mike Stohler
So really, it's just using key words, you know, because I was thinking like, what does it take to get on? You know, I'm sure you could go and be sponsored. Right. And that's another way to pay. Soon as I click on something the first four or five, six, sponsored ZZ that just mean that they're paying more to be sponsored. And then is it just keywords and just building up and getting reviews? To get on the first page?
Ashley Kinkead
Well, yes, sponsored means peep they have paid for those spots through Amazon pay per click. So PPC is fundamental. But you don't necessarily have to have PPC, we are pretty conservative with PPC, like five to $10. Down Amazon. But yes, when it says sponsored. That's a seller who's investing for real estate on Amazon, if you will, they're spending money for you to click that ad that allows them to get to the the page one of Amazon pretty pretty quickly. So it is about PPC, yes, PPC is like fundamental to success on Amazon. But also it's about all the things I talked about earlier, making sure you have a product that's in demand, making sure you're not picking a product that's too competitive, you don't want it we know there's kind of this like green area where I don't like to go under like about 100 Best Sellers rank. Like if the products under top 100 products on Amazon, I stay very far away from that. But as long as it's under like 10,000 bestsellers rank, meaning it's in the top 10,000 products in a category on Amazon, then I want to look at that. So it's not too competitive. But it's also not like only selling maybe one a day or two a day and selling at least five units a day, at least five units a day. So if you can find those kinds of sweet spots, there's literally 1000s of opportunities like that on Amazon right now, you find this little sweet spots, and you can get on Amazon, you don't have to be on page one. But we do like to see you in the first like five to 10 pages. So the ones someone actually searches for it. They'll click your product.
Mike Stohler
What makes someone click on a certain product? You know, if I'm going through four or five games, why all of a sudden is it wording? Is it the pictures alternatives? Like what is this because there's five and 10 pages of the exact same product? What would you say? Yeah.
Ashley Kinkead
Yeah, I think pictures I think the pictures are I don't know about you. When I shop on Amazon. I usually just look at the pictures. Like if I liked the picture, I click on it. So you know, pictures are huge, you know, we sometimes see pictures like completely changed someone's business like they'll come in our program and have a bad picture and like not selling anything on Amazon. They'll like spend 100 bucks on a better picture and then all of a sudden like they're selling five to 10 units a day of the exact same product so we know that pic tours are super important. And not just any picture, but like high quality image, you know, you want to really invest in like a really high quality image. So pictures are important as well as reviews. Yeah, you got to have some reviews. You don't have to have 100 reviews, but you're going to need to get a couple reviews on there on your product. So I think the most important thing is would be pictures and reviews for sure. Yeah, right. Price pricing. Yeah.
Mike Stohler
Yeah. And something else that I look at is the verbiage in the description. That's where I can sit, you know, tell real quick that I'm dealing with someone not in the country or even even knows English, you know, if there's a lot of misspellings or grammar mistakes, and I think that's important. Well, that's, that's very interesting. So, and I'm sure like a video of you can, you know, just as much content right? As you can?
Ashley Kinkead
Yes, absolutely. You want to have good videos as well. Now, to do that, you're going to need to have some brand registry. So I agree with you good verbiage. There's a really structured way that we recommend your titles on your products be set, you want to have your most primary keywords towards the front of your title, we call that keyword stuffing, if you will, so that we know that the first five to seven words in your title on Amazon are extremely important. They don't people typically don't read the entire title. But when they're searching on Amazon, the way Amazon indexes the search results, you can just see synonyms of first five to seven words, the title is very important. The photos very important, being price competitive, you do not have to be the cheapest one. But you know, if your product is next to another product, that's half the price, we have to at least look at kind of who's on the page with you as well. And yes, you know, being being competitive with your with your pricing with offers. That's really what what it takes to get on Amazon to be successful on Amazon.
Mike Stohler
And you have to be Amazon Prime.
Ashley Kinkead
Yeah, we see some people do well with we see some people do well with merchant fulfillment, Michael, but generally, I would say, of the 1000s of products we have on Amazon nine out of 10 are on FBA, there's some that there's some that can do well, merchant fulfillment, it's actually a lot of opportunity there. If you're willing to sell a product that can be merchant fulfilled like no one else is willing to do that. There are some products that are hazmat, you cannot store them Amazon's warehouses, literally you can't. The only way to sell them is through merchant fulfillment. Not every seller wants to do that. But you have to have some good business operations set up, you know, being able to handle returns and respond to customer emails and stuff like that. But for a newbie out there watching this, I would say do FBA Fulfillment by Amazon?
Mike Stohler
Yeah, it because that's all I look at, I immediately click that prime. Because I like the free shipping. And I like the two day delivery or one day delivery, you know, so it's, it's whether or not you know, but that's what I like. So let's talk about you've been so successful, you just had to write a book. All of your just the knowledge and you're wanting to share it. Ashley's book is called The million dollar EECOM secrets. Is that correct? Yes, yes. Let's talk about it.
Ashley Kinkead
Sure, yeah, I have a book called Million Dollar EECOM secrets. And I truly just wrote it just to share my story. It's a quick read, you can sit down and read it just a couple hours. And I love it because it's super open about my products. And my brand actually has my pictures of my brands. A lot of times Amazon sellers are very secretive. So I like to show exactly what I've sold on Amazon, my goal. So you can actually see my brand and my pictures and my private label products on Amazon. And really just go through the journey of what I've learned through building a million dollar brand on Amazon, it's a quick read. And I actually have a free copy of it for your listeners, if they want to go to Ashley kincaid.com/ebook, they can download a free digital copy and read about it. I just love to share my story of how Amazon changed my life. And it sounds like secrets, but it's really just pretty much everyday things I have done. And ways I've thought about how to build a business. So
Mike Stohler
so we have all these listeners out there. And you know, 1000s and 1000s people watch these episodes every week. Why would someone it's like, well, I'm gonna rephrase that. If they're working full time. Can they do this? How much time do you think it takes for this? You know, for this to be maybe a side hustle. Not a full time job yet, but a side hustle?
Ashley Kinkead
Great question. We tell people about 10 hours a week. Like if you can commit 10 hours a week to this you can really make some movement in your Amazon business now. Yeah, it's a great side hustle. It's honestly one of the best side hustles I could think of like, gosh, if you want to be a side hustle as a coach or a consultant like that's a really Really time intensive side hustle, but like Amazon is really a time hustle that you can manage in about 10 hours a week really, and like make 10 $20,000 a week. So tend to with as low as a month, just starting off. So I would say about 10 hours a week. And that really includes everything, like talking to your supplier, you know, going through some of our course modules and things like that. Now, obviously, like the first month or so whether you're in our program or not, you're going to need to put some more time into it, you know, finding a picking a product, doing product research, a lot of time doing that stuff. So it's really up to you. But I would say 10 hours a week really good, some good motion in Amazon business.
Mike Stohler
Yeah. And something that I tell the listeners on every episode, no matter who we have, is the powerful form of having mentors. And having someone that's already done the mistakes. And they're like, why don't want to spend the money and say, Oh, well, you're going to spend the money, whether you lose money, or you invest in the mentor or the program. And it doesn't matter what the program is, I always tell how do you how do you get from this to this, find someone that's done it before, you know, find someone who's made the mistakes. So someone wants to reach out to you, you have a program. And everyone, again, don't do this on your own unless you just have a lot of time to try to figure it out. You know, I like just take the programs, read the books. And then it's so much easier on your life. It's so so so much less stressful. Let's talk about your program.
Ashley Kinkead
Oh, thank you. We do have a program. It's called Private Label mastery, we work with 1000s and 1000s of Amazon sellers. So if you're looking for someone to mentor you, and to show you the ropes, we basically speed up the process in about six months or less. So you can come in work with our team, we have dozens of Amazon coaches that work with our students. So this is really a hand holding program, where we walk you through product selection on Amazon, from start to finish, we have our own sourcing team that will work with you, we have all the training modules, you need coaching, really, it's a one stop shop. So yeah, you can absolutely go out and do all those things yourself may take you a lot of time and some failure. But if you want to come into our team, we've we've done this 10s of 1000s of times, we're really the invisible hand behind private label on Amazon. So go check out my book, it tells you a bit about it and read a little bit about Amazon before you decide to reach out to our team, we'd love you to check out our book coming to my podcast, it's called the private label mastery podcast, listen to some of the episodes over there. And yeah, that's really the process of coming in with our team. And we really just kind of the fast track, you know, we'd like to say we're a fast track for people who want to get their business going pretty fast on Amazon.
Mike Stohler
Yeah, you know, and, you know, I always joke, you know, that I'm old enough to where when I got started my my side hustle, which is, you know, hotels and real estate and multifamily. It was pre Google days. So I had to learn the hard way. Because I didn't have the mentors. I didn't have the programs. So everybody don't do what I did. Find someone like Ashley, if you want to do this, do it the correct way. Ashley, how can people find you? LinkedIn, the website again?
Ashley Kinkead
Yeah, for sure. Head over to my website, Ashley can kake.com forward slash ebook, you can download my ebook for free. We've also got a Facebook group. It's called the Amazon FBA breakthrough about 10,000 members over there to good way to get connected, and head to our website if you'd like to get connected with our team to work with us. But I really recommend that book. The book is a great starting place as well as my podcast. You know, check out some of the content and it will direct you to work with our team if you'd like to get some next steps. So thank you so much. I agree. I think mentoring is just a really smart step when you're coming into E commerce to to have someone to guide you on the journey right. You need to do it alone the expensive way you're doing it, do it. Do it with someone else guiding you along the way too. So
Mike Stohler
Yeah, and I guarantee there'll be you'll be happier and it'll be worth the money when you use a mentor. Now, Ashley, thank you so much. Oh, never but I wanted to make sure because it's actually Kinkead Kinkead is k i n k e. A. D. Ashley Kinkead as h le y. Ashley, it's been just a pleasure having you on the richer gig podcast. wonderful night. Thank you so much. Thanks for tuning in to the richer geek podcast, where we're helping others find creative ways to build wealth and financial freedom. For today's show notes, including all the links and resources from our show, and more information about our guests, visit us at www.therichergeek.com/podcast. And don't forget to jump over to Apple podcasts, Google Play stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts and hit the subscribe button. Share with others who can benefit from listening and leave a rating and review to get the podcast in front of your eyes. I appreciate you and thanks for listening
ABOUT ASHLEY KINKEAD
This is Ashley Kinkead, one of the premiere and rare women in the Amazonseller and e-ommerce space. She’s personally sold over $2 million on AmazonFBA - Fulfillment by Amazon - and she’s launched 15,000 products on Amazon.com. No other woman has worked with more 6, 7, and 8-figure Amazon sellersthan Ashley Kinkead. Her unique “FOTON” method helps Amazon sellerslaunch their products in the Amazon.com marketplace fast and profitably in 60days or less. She is also the author of Million Dollar e-Com Secrets.
With no business background whatsoever, Ashley grew her Amazon businessto over $30,000/month in revenue. She eventually exceeded her goal of$100,000/month in income on Amazon.com. This led to the formation ofPrivate Label Mastery. Since 2016, Ashley and her team have served thousandsof e-commerce business owners around the world through their podcast, newsletter and coaching training program.
Today, she is enthusiastic and passionate about teaching new business ownershow to get started with e-commerce through the Private Label Mastery team!