You don't need to go and invent your own product

or find a product on Alibaba. It's very hard to compete unless

you've got something completely unique. So what I now do and what I

since did in my journey was everything you're gonna do is to grow that business,

but it has to be in the context of your overall wealth and

where you're sitting in your current situation. I'm not married to

any type of platform, whether it's Amazon or

eBay. I'm really married to any platform or any business model

that makes money. That's where you got to start thinking. If you knew Kim Kardashian, your

bag could be the worst beach bag in the entire planet and it would still make

sales. What is the business model for the future? It's

digital. I'm Matthew Fraser, and

this is Amazon Ecom Secrets. I'll be

sharing with you the secrets that helped me go from millions in debt

to an eight-figure entrepreneur. If you're ready to escape the

nine-to-five and live life on your terms, let me show

you the way. Hey, guys. Welcome to Amazon Ecom Secrets. My name

is Matthew Fraser, an eight-figure entrepreneur. Apparently

that means something but I can tell you I'm still stuck in

the business matrix but I did get out of the 9 to 5 matrix and

that is what I want for you to at the very, very least. I

want to share some of the insights I now have having

now achieved over $50 million in sales across Amazon and

e-commerce and spending tens

of millions of dollars on social media and Google ads.

I've learned a little bit. And as I look back on

the period, because I'm still actually selling this. I'm not doing this podcast with

you as if that's in the past. I still am

in the trenches today selling products using Shopify

and Amazon and eBay amongst other platforms. There's

something that I want to share with you, which is I guess, the

downsides of this model, some of the positives of

this model, but more importantly, having had all

that experience, what would I do differently and

what are the business models that I'm now considering moving

into? You would say, Matthew,

you've done over $50 million in sales. Everything must be just rosy

and perfect. And you've got a car collection and a beautiful

home and what have you. Yes, that's true. But

I tell you what, it's been fraught with ups and downs. And so let me share you. Let

me share with you just the business model itself, if you're not even familiar with Amazon

and what have you. So Amazon is a very good business model.

You can create a product and ship it into the

Amazon warehouse located throughout the world. And

I sell on about eight different Amazon

platforms around the world, Canada, USA, Australia, UK,

Japan, Europe, and many countries through Europe. And

it's a great system because it allows the everyday person

to get a product and sell it to a global audience. That

is kind of the nuts and bolts of it. And in

doing so, I don't need to worry about

finding the customer, shipping it to them, because

Amazon is going to take care of all that for me. They've created this

incredible distribution model

where they're attracting millions of customers every single

day to buy products. And all you have to do is

have your product in one of their warehouses and listed

on the Amazon platform. That's all you have to do. But of course, there's more

to it than that. Which product do I buy? How many of those

products do I buy? Do I have a profit

margin in it? Because obviously you need to make money. You don't want to be doing this just to lose money. And

so that becomes the difficult part, is

the product itself. Which is the right product to buy? And

I guess Through that period now

that I've started from scratch, having tested products, my

very first product, if you haven't heard this story, was a car chamois

of all things. And I developed this from nothing. I

didn't invent the car chamois, of course, but I created this unique bullet-shaped

tube that I thought was super awesome, and I came up with the brand name, and

the car chamois was camouflaged, and I thought it was really cool for

the American market. And that was a great learning

lesson for me. to the tune of about $15,000. Now, looking

back, the $15,000, I didn't have any money back then, but

I somehow scrounged credit cards and what have you together to

pay for this $15,000. That included the inventory. But

looking back now, and in the position that I am now, $15,000 was nothing, right?

$15,000 I'd spend on marketing, easy. But when

you've got nothing, it seems like a lot of money. But

I got through that process, then went into a different product, which

was again, a kitchen-based product started from scratch. And

this was, I guess, the training that I was receiving at the time was telling

me to go down this path. But the whole time, I'm also

thinking, how can I make this business model better? Do I really

need to go and manufacture my own product? Why

can't I? Just find an existing product, someone

else's product. And that is the key part of

what I now teach people amongst other things is to, you don't

need to go and invent your own

product or find a product on Alibaba. You

could do that. It's very, very red. It's a red sea of

products out there, right? It's vicious out there. It's very hard to compete unless

you've got something completely unique. So what I now do and

what I, what I since did in my journey was I found Just

by chance, actually. It actually came to me. But it

was a product that didn't exist on Amazon in a very,

very small niche with very, very

little competition, which ended up becoming high

profit margin as well and an in-demand product. And

I was able to get an exclusive distribution on

that product for places like Amazon, eBay, and

on multiple territories around the world in the healthcare niche. And

so what I teach people now is, what if you could go and

find another existing product? And you're going

to say to me, Matthew, where do I, they don't exist.

Yeah, which is like saying that no new products ever come out,

which as you know, is rubbish. New products are

coming out all the time, but it's a matter of how do you find these types of

products. And I was finding, you know, over the years, I

was finding these products all the time, all the time. They were either coming to

me, I was getting inventors and brand owners contact me. Once

I also became well-known in the industry of

someone who could get these products to places like Amazon because years

ago, not many people could do that. So, these

brands were contacting me and I was being selective in

the products that I was even taking. A lot of these products, I was like, nah, don't

even want to know about that, don't want to know about that because I also

came down to having the right profit margins. So

there's products out there and a classic example is a

client of mine who found a product for the

baby niche, does not exist anywhere. I've just helped

them sign an exclusive distribution agreement for this product with

the inventor who's based in the USA. An incredible story

and just proves, there's just one, which

happened just this year and they're just about to launch their product into

the Australian market under a license of the product.

And it could be turning over, we think probably, not turning over, but a

profit of probably about $250,000 a year for this couple as

a side gig, because they're both working as well.

So it's an amazing opportunity for this couple.

But what are the flaws with this business model? I've just talked

about the great things about what Amazon provides, but what are the flaws with it?

Well, one is that a lot of people do not survive. I

can tell you so many horror stories of people who

designed their own product. Here's an

exact example. I just spoke to someone the other day. They designed, what

was it? It was whiskey glasses and a

flask in a pack. They've gone to the trouble of designing this product.

And it was made in Czech Republic. And

it had a pattern on it, like a pattern design on it. And there was a beautiful, amazing

packaging. It got about 500 or 1,000 of these

produced, shipped them into Amazon. They get

to Amazon, they open it up, all the boxes are wrecked.

And what had happened is the person who packed it didn't pack it properly. So

the pallets collapsed on each other within

the container and just squashed the boxes. I

don't know, it was actually unfortunate, and I'll tell you

why in a second, it was unfortunate that the glasses didn't break.

And he said, Matthew, what do you mean it's unfortunate the

glasses didn't break? Isn't that good? No, because what happened

is, because I said to this guy, well, why don't you just get insurance claim

on that? Did you have insurance on this? He said, yeah, I had insurance, but

the insurance was only for breakages of glassware,

not for the package collapsing and

getting destroyed. And it was cheeky of the

insurance company, because you and I, I probably wouldn't have even

thought of that either, is you have to ensure the package, not

just the contents. Because the thing is, you're shipping glasses, the first thing

you're going to think about is they're getting rattled around or whatever, and they break. So

when you open up the package, there's shattered glass everywhere. You

wouldn't think that it would be the package that would be destroyed. So

ultimately what happened was he's lost a ton of money is the very

short version, probably to the tune of $50,000. And

this was his first product sent into

Amazon, right? So he's like you right now. If

you're brand new to this, you're thinking, how can I escape the nine to five rat race?

I'm going to start this side gig. And you've now invested up to In

his case, it was 20, but there was a whole bunch of other expenses that happened after

that with repackaging and reshipping. So he's now in the hole for $50,000, and

he hasn't sold a single unit. So

there's just one example of a physical product that

if you didn't have it packed right or insured correctly, it

could be a big mistake for you financially. Creating

inventory and holding inventory also is

a flaw in this type of business model. Now, the

other thing is the Amazon system itself can

also be flawed because although you might come up

with an incredible product, you ship it into Amazon, you're

just going to think, I'm just going to start making sales. Well,

guess what, folks? It turns out that it's a little bit more

difficult than that. So you've created this product, you think it's

amazing, you've got amazing images, and It's

in Amazon you think it's going to start making sales and guess what, it turns out

it doesn't do that. Because it requires you to be exposed

to the marketplace within Amazon. So

let's just pretend you've created a yoga mat, it's the best

yoga mat in the world, but your yoga mat you find

that there's actually a thousand yoga mats on

Amazon. So how are you now going to stand out in the crowd? And

even if you said, yeah, but Matt, but I've created the best yoga mat. Okay.

How does anyone even know that if they can't find your listing? Right. And

I hear this all the time from people who are new to

Amazon. Here's another example. I'm going to create amazing

beach bags. And this is a true story. And I said, well,

that's fantastic. Yeah, but Matt, these are the best beach bags you've

ever, ever had. And there's nothing like it on Amazon. OK, great. How

are you going to make sales? I always start with that bit. How are you going to make sales? Well,

they're just going to be amazing. Yeah, but how is the customer going

to find your beach bag? And even when they do find your listing in

a sea of beach bags, how do they know that your bag is

the better feel, better material, better rivets, whatever

it is? How do they know that? They don't because they can't pick it up and touch it

because it's on a computer screen. So it becomes quite difficult.

Now, that's not to say that you couldn't do incredible sales

with a beach bag. If you knew Kim Kardashian, for example,

and you could get your beach bag in the hands of Kim or Kylie, for

that matter, of any one of the Kardashians, then yeah, your bag could

be the worst beach bag in the entire planet and it would still make

sales because it was touched by the gods of

marketing, which is the Kardashians. And so that

gives you the juxtaposition from each side. You can have the best beach bag

in the world, but if no one knows about it, you won't make any sales. You have the worst beach

bag in the world, but if people know about it because it's been

touched by the Kardashians, then you could make billions in

sales. So that becomes the challenge. So

you get your product into Amazon, you've now got to pay for advertising. So my point

is, is it's not as simple as just throwing up

all your inventory that you've invested probably in the tune of $15,000, $20,000 worth

into Amazon to just make sales straight away. So now you've got to try and get that money back.

A little bit difficult. Let's

talk about what am I thinking about these days,

having now had years and years of experience in the Amazon

e-commerce space. Drum roll here, but it's actually digital

type businesses, which means that I don't have to hold physical

inventory. Now, what are these

digital type businesses? Here's one that you probably have

never thought about before, which is Kindle. often

referred to as KDP, which is Kindle Direct Publishing.

It's operated by Amazon. Amazon has the

Kindle bookstore, essentially. And your

job is to simply write books,

put them on the Amazon marketplace, and don't forget they're digital.

You're not sending any physical books into Amazon. It's just a digital

upload. And then you're hoping that your book

is going to get sales. And that is simply it. But the average book

to produce is anywhere from 300 to 500 US dollars. That's average. Okay,

so it's not a huge investment to make unlike if

you're making a physical product. Having talked to a client of

mine the other day, they added up, this is the beach bag business actually

that I said probably don't do it but they insisted to me that they really

wanted to do it and I said okay. They worked out that

they've now spent in the tune of $20,000 of basically

R&D. So not a single sale, $20,000 already down.

When I say down the toilet, that's what I was almost going to say. Invested.

$20,000 invested into that. Now,

compare that to a digital book, $300 to $500. So

even if you make that and it doesn't make a single sale because you're

still learning or it was just a poorly written book, it's

not a deal breaker financially, right? You can just simply say, okay, cool. That

one didn't work out. I can now move on to the next digital book, right?

So your job really is to research the Kindle

book marketplace to find where can you get something

that is going to add value to the marketplace and become a great selling

book. But again, you know, it's about also

advertising on the marketplace as well. So getting exposure. You

could have, it's as simple as this. You could have two books

that are exactly the same. They're both on cooking. Okay,

cooking, let's just call it muffins. One book

has an incredible A cover looks

amazing, stands out on the page, the other one is very, very boring.

They could be exactly the same book but obviously the one with the better cover is going to

make more sales. It also would help if you had a

better title, better keywords, better description

and that is obviously going to help you make sales. But again, you're

not going to bury yourself in a lot of debt or money down the

toilet, let's put it that way now, even if your book doesn't sell. It's

just a matter of learning and reiterating getting better and better. What

is another example of a very similar type business? And

that is YouTube channels. And what I love right

now is the faceless YouTube channel. Now, if you're watching

this video on YouTube, here I am, an actual

person, having to talk into a microphone, into

the camera, which you're watching. Now, that requires me

sitting here for hours and hours filming to

produce the content. Now imagine though if you could create a

digital YouTube channel where you didn't have

to be the person sitting in this chair making or whatever

it is, walking around talking about cars or even cooking, whatever. And

that is the Faceless YouTube channel which you can now outsource to

some other person or a team that are based anywhere

around the world to produce the content. Now what is a good example of

that? I'm going to give you an exact one I saw the other day which is a

Navy channel. It's all about Navy ships, okay? And

all it was was videos about, you know, the top 10 aircraft carriers,

and USA versus China aircraft carriers, and who's got

the biggest destroyers, right? That's- the whole channel was about

Navy. So a very, very particular niche. That

particular channel was- had 300 and

something thousand subscribers. Some

of the videos had upwards of 30 million views on

videos. The average, I think, across the range was about 5 million views.

So this channel was monetized. And

the way, unlike the Kindle books, when you make a sale you get

paid, the way YouTube works is when you get lots

of view time, YouTube pays you, which

is actually Google. This particular channel was actually for sale that I investigated.

So 300,000 plus subscribers, it was doing about

$45,000 a month in revenue. So just having listened again, $45,000 a month in revenue from

Navy Channel, right? That is astonishing. What

was the profit on that, Matt? I'm going to tell you,

$43,000 a month profit. They're only spending about

$2,000 to $3,000 a month in content creation,

which was outsourced to a content creation team based somewhere

in the world, right? Isn't that absolutely incredible? So

you didn't have to come up with the entire video. Someone else comes up with the video,

and as your channel grows, you make more and more money. You

could buy this particular channel and to buy something like that

and keep in mind you're really buying the assets which are the videos which

in turn are creating cash. That particular channel was

about 900 to a million dollars to purchase.

Now, if you had the money to do that, I could put it this way, if

you put that same million dollars and you bought a property, how

much rent would that be producing for you? Right? Think

about that. Probably, best case, $1,500, I

think, in today's climate. $1,500 a week. So we're talking $6,000 a

month. Then you've got to take away all the other costs.

Now, yes, you're going to say to me, but Matt, the property is going to go up

in value over time. And yeah, you're right. But just from a pure cash flow

point of view, the YouTube channel is

far exceeding the bricks and mortar property.

Now, yes, of course, the differences The property you can't sort of just get

rid of, it's always going to be there. The YouTube channel's got other things that, you know,

something could happen with the suspension of the accounts and all

sorts of things. Basically from a cash flow point of

view, the YouTube channel is incredible. These are the

types of businesses and the business models that I currently love.

And I want to share with you now the person, which

is my client, who was actually hell bent

on doing this beach bag business in Amazon. And

remember, although I know you're going to say, It's

Amazon e-com secrets, right? And a part of me sharing

with this information with you is not about me

just saying Amazon and e-com is fantastic, right?

I want to also tell you the things that you need to be looking out for,

some of the flaws with the business models, because these are some things

that a lot of people who are doing Amazon courses don't tell

you about, okay? So I'm not married.

to any type of platform, right? Whether it's

Amazon or eBay, I'm really married to any platform or

any business model that makes money. That's where you've got to start thinking. My

client, who was hell-bent on doing the beach bags, literally

two days ago ended up buying a Kindle-based business. And

the numbers around that were, and this is in US

dollars, it was $88,000 to purchase It

was doing $4,500 US a month in

profit and it came with 88 books. It'd been operating

for approximately 4 years on the Amazon space. And

there's little things that we sort of learned along the way as well with

like a Kindle-based business is things like, you know, you

can actually take your book that you produce and put it out into other

marketplaces. It turns out there's more than one Kindle, right? There's more

than one Amazon Kindle. There's other sort of platforms that

you could upload your book to, right? But what Amazon does, they're sneaky, they

say, look, if you make your book exclusive to Amazon, we'll

pay you extra commissions, right? So that's something incentivizing you

to not put it with other places and keep it on one. So there's pros and

cons with that because, of course, you're diversifying the

platforms. if you have multiple platforms.

So if one goes down or something happens with that book on that platform, you've

got the other one coming in. But a lot of guys I find who

are into the Kindle space primarily dominate

on just one platform like Kindle because that's where all

the people seem to go, right? I've never even heard of some of these other platforms, but

I definitely heard about Kindle. The other thing about Amazon

Kindle is you can have a paperback version. And that

is actually a print on demand type system. So Amazon will take

the order for you, print the book and send it to the customer. You don't have

to hold any inventory with that either. So you can actually have best

of both worlds. You can have the digital version being the Kindle version.

and also have a physical product version produced on demand that

you don't have to hold stock on. Absolutely incredible.

So huge opportunities for Fiona, my client, who's

now just bought this Amazon Kindle-based business. The

guy who actually was selling the business was based in Italy, of all places. And

he's world class in the Kindle space. He actually owns four

different Kindle-type businesses. And this was just one that he wanted to sell. And

of course, the question always comes up, well, if it's so good, why would he

want to sell it? Well, he's got other priorities now, right? And

it turned out he was buying a block of land. He needed some money really quickly.

And that was just his choice, right? So he's just going to package up this particular

Kindle-based business, sell it. Keep in mind, too. He's

also getting a lump sum payment as well. So that was something that

was of interest to him. And I can tell you as well, this

came up during the conversations with Fiona, was that there

was opportunity to grow the business. And Fiona's initial

thought was, well, why isn't he doing that? Why isn't he investing the time to

grow his business if there is opportunity to do that? And

I can tell you that once you get to a certain level in wealth,

when you become a multi-millionaire, certain things don't

interest you as much. So you might actually have a business, let's

say it's making $100,000 a year. But you know that if

you spend more time every single week, you could probably get it to $120,000 a year. But

you might also be making another million dollars a year doing

something else. So there's not really a huge incentive for

you to put your time and effort into getting that extra $20,000 out

of that particular smaller business. And so it's a different mindset. We

just think initially that, wow, everything

you're going to do is to grow that business. But it has to be in the context

of your overall wealth and where you're sitting in

your current situation. So that was the reason why he didn't

bother going and increasing the revenue on that business,

which leaves the opportunity for Fiona to

now step in and grow that business. And by growing the business

with revenue and profit, she actually increases the value

of that business. So I just want to give a big shout out to

Fiona for taking the plunge Going in and setting

herself up now for the future bike by obtaining this

established Kindle book business now. I

Say established. Why wouldn't she start this from scratch you say, you

know, because he's now happy to fork out 88,000 US dollars.

Well, you're You're reducing the amount of

time it takes to now start making money because as

I said before even when talked about Amazon FBA type businesses by

sending in your stock You've got so much

risk with that. And what I would now

do is not only would I, knowing what I know now, not

only would I buy a digital type business, Kindle, YouTube,

maybe even content websites, but I would also only do

businesses. I would only start these if they were already existing. I

want to buy the success from

somebody else. They've already been through all the heartaches. So even if

it's books, they might have launched, in this case, there was 88 books

that this guy had launched on this channel. Now, only about

20% of those books make 80% of the revenue. So

a lot of those books don't really do that well. Now, if

you're someone who's just, you've only produced some of those

books that are not doing well, you're easily going to probably give up. This is

not it. This doesn't work. I'm out of here. But

this person has already bought, he's got the books with the great titles, with

the great images, great

content, and comes with a stack of reviews and

revenue. He's already proven the concept that you can

now jump in and buy from day one, exactly

like the Navy YouTube channel that I talked about. It was

already making profit every single month to the tune

of $40,000 plus every single month. Incredible,

right? And so if you're in the position, I would urge you

to get some training on how to go and find those type businesses

where you can always reach out to me. I can steer you in the right direction. And also

then become an expert in one of those particular niches, whether it's Kindle,

whether it's YouTube channels, or even content sites. All

right, guys. Let's wrap up this video. Thank you so much for joining me.

I hope you found that really interesting about what

I would do as a $50 million plus seller now looking back

and how it would go into further businesses. What is the

business model for the future? It's digital. All right, take

care. Thanks for tuning into Amazon Ecom Secrets. If

you enjoyed this episode, the best way to show your support is

to give a five-star review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and

make sure to subscribe on YouTube so you don't miss an episode.

You can also find more at I'm Matthew Fraser

on all social media platforms. Thanks so much. Take