You've got to start from the beginning. You've got to learn the Amazon platform before

you can then take your service to market. You've sold some product

on Amazon and it's not really working out for you. What are

the other ways to make money is to become the Amazon agent. One of

the questions to consider if you're thinking about becoming an Amazon agent

is Most people who go through this Amazon journey,

there's a lot of failure rate. And the reason why is because 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, welcome to Amazon Ecom Secrets.

My name is Matthew Fraser. And in today's episode, I'm

going to talk to you about some of the different ways where you can make money using

Amazon. Specifically, I want to hone in on one which is very,

very rarely spoken about, which is becoming an Amazon agent.

Now, what is an Amazon agent? How much money do they make? And is

this a possibility for you? This question sort

of always comes up when I'm doing coaching calls with people is, what

are other ways to make money on Amazon? Most people think the

only way is to either come up with your own product or license

another product and sell it on Amazon. But what if

I was to tell you there's a way where you don't even have to

own the product, you don't have to invent the product, you could

simply become an Amazon agent, which means you're

simply acting on behalf of another person to sell their product.

You're managing their Amazon seller

account. Now, sounds really simple, right? But of course,

there's a few things that you're going to have to know before you step into

that type of position. The first thing would be actually

how does the Amazon ecosystem even work? How does a

seller central account even work? And

so that's why my clients that I see, I

say, look, let's go through the very, very basics. Let's get

an Amazon account open. Let's get a product, a test

product into the system so you can learn the ecosystem, how

to ship something in from China, how to make

sales, how to optimize the listing, how to

look after customers, how does the money system

work within Amazon, you know, do you have to put money in, when do they pay you?

Knowing all those intricacies is going to help you to

become a better Amazon seller. And most

people who go through this Amazon journey, look, there's no

doubt about it, there's a lot of failure rate. There's a lot of

failure rate. And the reason why is because In

my opinion, they don't have a mentor or a coach because that

is going to help you fast track your way to success within

the Amazon space. But let's say you've gone through all that,

you've sold some products on Amazon and it's

not really working out for you. What are the other ways

to make money is to become the Amazon agent. So what you

would do is you would have to speak to other Amazon brand

owners or just brand owners in general and put

forward your service to them to say that you would like to manage their

account. Most times you're going to have to get into some sort of a community

to network and understand who are the different players, who

could use your service. It could also mean you go knocking

on doors and speak to existing brands,

perhaps they're already on Amazon, you approach them, or maybe you advertise

your service on something like Fiverr or

Upwork so that other brands can find you as the

Amazon agent. And the next question that always

comes up is how do I monetize that?

What is the system? Do I charge an hourly rate? Do

I charge a monthly fee? Do I take a percentage of

profits? And there's a whole heap of ways which

you can negotiate with the brand owner

in order to manage their account. The

easiest way would be to do a monthly rate. And I think in

today's economy, it's probably going to be somewhere around $1,000 to

$2,000 a month, depending on what sort of workload is

involved with a particular brand. If it's a huge brand, it's

going to require a lot of work. Maybe you might want a

bit more. But if it's a very, very small brand,

not much work, maybe $500 even a month. Now imagine,

let's just use the average of, say, $1,000 a month. You would

only have to get, let's say, five brands to

manage. And then you've got a passive income. Well, I say passive. You've

got an income coming in that you didn't have to really do much for

as far as stock inventory, look after all

the expenses of operating their business. And you're just managing the brand's

account You could make like $5,000 on the side. You could literally do

this around a day job. Some

of the Other ways to monetize that

would be through not just taking a fee

per month, but think about a percentage of

profits. So it would be up to you to make

great sales, and that might be through helping them optimize the

listing, through doing PPC, which is

pay-per-click. Perhaps you become the person who is so

good at doing advertising within Amazon that you

can really crank up the dial and get the advertising really

working to increase the sales. So let's just say you can

get a brand up to doing $100,000 a month and you

say, look, I'm just going to take 10% of gross sales. 10% of $100,000 is $10,000. Now

that would be, you would forfeit the upfront, let's

say the $1,000 a month and just say, look, I'm so confident in

what I can do for you and your brand through my agency

that I'm going to just simply charge percentage of gross sales. So

$10,000 would be amazing. Imagine if you could get a company and you get

them to $250,000 a month, you're talking $25,000 to you. every

single month. And just let me remind you, you didn't have to

come up with the brand, you didn't have to do a trademark, you didn't have to do

a patent, you didn't have to invest all the

money into inventory, you didn't have to pay for

the PPC, right? All that is still being covered by

the brand owner. But what you're doing is you're managing the

whole account. Now, why would a company do that?

It's a great question. And the reason why a company would

do that is because they're time poor. If you've got a company, let's

say they're doing $100,000 a month on Amazon USA, but

generally they're probably not just on Amazon USA. They've probably got a UK account.

They've got an Australian account. They're selling through potentially their

own Shopify store right across the world. Maybe they're

even in bricks and mortar stores. And

this one little piece of the puzzle of selling on Amazon is

just something that is just taking up a lot of time for

them or something they don't even want to do. And if you come in

a knight in shining armor and say, I'll take that all the way

for you, I will handle the whole account process for you and

I'm only going to charge a percentage of sales, that could be

a winning formula for you and

also the brand owner. So let's talk about what

are the negatives to being an agent

for an Amazon account. And the negatives are really a few

things. One is that it's not your brand. So

you're putting in a lot of time and effort to help build this brand

on the Amazon platform and there's no reward

for you down the track, which means that if it was your

brand, you could be, you're putting in a lot of time and effort into it and

day in and day out and the brand's building, the sales are

building and then let's say three years down

the track, you decide to sell that brand for $5 million. That

now is not your money, because you are just an agent. So

here's something that I think you could possibly do. And

I've done this in the past with one of my products.

Now, although I wasn't an agent, I realized at some point

that the manufacturer or the brand owner could

sell his business. So what did I do? I put

a clause in the contract. This is the exclusive distribution contract. I

put a clause in there to say that if he was to sell his

company to somebody else, and I

was possibly removed out of the equation as the exclusive distributor

for his product on many platforms across the world, I would

either get one or two things. My last year's sales,

sorry, my last year's profit as a lump sum,

or 10% of the gross sale price,

whichever was the greatest. Did you hear that again? My

last year's sales profit, or 10% of

the gross sale price of his company, whichever

was the greatest amount. Now, we're talking this

company has the potential to sell for anywhere from

$50 million plus. This is a global company that I have exclusive

distribution on. And if he was to sell for $50 million,

what's 10% of that? That's $5 million. So

that would be a win for me. And that was something I put in the contract to make

sure that I wasn't left in the lurch if he was to go off and sell his business.

So back to the agency model. Thinking

about that, that could potentially be something you put in. However,

If I was the brand owner and you came to me and said, I want to

be an agent, it's probably not something I would put in there. There'd have to

be a really, really big upside for me as the brand owner to put something in

there like that. But what you may want to have in there is something

to give you, let's say, the first right of refusal when

doing an agency model for other territories. So let's

think about this. Let's say that you are the agent for

this particular brand in Amazon USA. You've now

proven yourself. The sales are going so great. The brand owner

is thrilled with you. But somebody else comes up and says they

now want to sell that same product in the UK. Now,

under your agreement, because you had the first right of refusal, the

brand owner would have to offer you that territory first and

that way you could secure that territory and then essentially another

agency income for that whole new territory. A good question

that comes up all the time is, should I start out as an agent?

Yeah, particularly amongst some of my coaching clients because

they're thinking that's the easier way to market. I don't have to

have my own brand or my own product. And the

answer is, it is an easier way because

you don't have to have all those things. However, you still have to

know the Amazon platform. There's no way that

a brand owner is going to hand you the keys to their Amazon business if

you don't have any experience whatsoever. So that's why I

always say to my clients, you've got to start from the beginning. You've

got to learn the Amazon platform. The ins and outs, I

suggest they get a product to market so they understand the

full process from finding something in China, shipping it all the way through to

the USA for example, selling it, learning PPC, etc. So

that is definitely something you need to do. You fundamentally need

to build your knowledge, get your experience before

you can then take your service to market. That could

be considered another con in thinking about whether or not you

want to be an agent for another Amazon brand. So I've just spoken about

being an agent for a brand on Amazon. But what

are some of the other ways you could become a seller for somebody

else's brand, but perhaps without being an agent

specifically? And that would be tying up someone

else's product under an exclusive distribution agreement. And

how does that now look as far as money? There are a

few ways you could tie this up. One would be you

buy the products from the brand owner for a particular cost

and sell them on Amazon. The other way would be The

Amazon brand owner could provide you the

inventory, the stock, the product, for absolutely no

money down. And that would be considered consignment sales.

So once the product sells, you now have to pay the brand

owner back. The other way would be, let's say,

a consignment steal, but a profit split. So

that would mean the product cost might be $50. You're

going to sell the product for $100, and you've already predetermined with

the brand owner that you're going to share the remaining $50. So you

get $25, and the brand owner gets $25. So

there are many different ways to split this up in

different percentages so that it's a win for you and also a win

for the brand owner. Now, while we're on the topic of agents and

dealing with brand owners, I had a conversation with a friend of

mine the other day. And he said, and he's in the Amazon space and

he's been in the Amazon space for years and years, but he just hasn't

made it yet. He's, he's one of these guys who he goes to a

lot of conferences. He gets a lot of coaching from different people, but

he just hasn't taken the steps required. And

there's something internally, I think that that's holding him back. And

I was talking to him about, obviously, what I do. I have an exclusive

distribution on a health care product that I sell globally. I

didn't invent it, OK? And I said, why

don't you either do that, or why don't you

become an agent? Because you understand how the Amazon system

works. You know a lot of people. His network is vast. And

I said, you could simply get out of your day job, which he kind of doesn't really

want to do. Get out of your day job, and you could potentially $5,000, $10,000 a

month simply being an agent for somebody else's brand. And

he sort of looked down and he looked up at me and he said, Matt, I

wouldn't want to do something like that. I said, well, why not? He said,

well, I've just got this thing. I just feel like I

need to own the brand. I need to become the brand owner.

And I said, you've basically trying that, it's not even working.

So why don't you get out of your day job by taking on agency roles

and at least you're going to gain more experience working in the Amazon space,

continue building up your network and then by doing the sales, you

might also come across other products that you yourself might want to

become the brand owner for. And I said, thinking

about that. What about the gentleman called

Simon Baird? One of the greatest entrepreneurial stories in

Australian history right now. And he was the creator

with his wife of Culture Kings. Now, as

the owner of Culture Kings, he wasn't even selling

his own brand. He had a store that was selling other

people's brands. So do you think that he walks down the street

now and is holding his head in shame because he's made all of

his money off other people's brands? that

he sold in his store? Absolutely not. He

doesn't give a shit about that. He created a brand of the store,

yeah, which is essentially he was the agent for other people's

brands but he did it in such an incredible way that he was able to

leverage his store power and himself to

take his sales to the next level and ultimately do something in

the hundreds of millions of dollars as an exit and it's now kick

an ass on the Gold Coast, driving Lambos and stuff. So

I said to my friend, wouldn't you rather do that than

sit in your crappy job right now and doing absolutely nothing

and wishing that you could be in his position? One of the questions

to consider when if you're thinking about becoming an Amazon agent

is, should I sign a contract to be the exclusive seller of

a particular brand? Is that brand now trying to lock me out of

potentially taking on extra work? And my answer to you is

that it's really something that needs to be considered on a case-by-case basis.

Let's say the brand that's coming to you is, let's think of a

really, really good brand like Nike. Let's

say Nike is coming to you and they want you to be the exclusive

seller. You're not allowed to sell for anybody else on Amazon. What

are you going to say? Are you going to say no? No, I don't want

to sign that contract. You're going to say absolutely fucking yes, I'm going to

take that deal with both hands and run with it, right? But

if it's some obscure brand that you've never heard of that

maybe, I don't know, is in the kitchenware niche or something and

they're trying to tie you up, but the sales probably aren't going to be as

big as something like a Nike or anywhere close to it, then I would,

if it was my first deal, I may consider it because I want to get a run on the board. Because

what I would do, though, is I would make sure that I was only going to be secured

against, let's say, if they were in the kitchenware niche, you would say,

look, I promise I won't sell any other kitchenware, which

means you're open to selling other things like homewares, t-shirts,

shoes, mechanical things, automotive, skincare

ranges. So there's still a lot left on the table for you to go

and secure from other brands. If you're thinking about becoming

an Amazon brand agent, one thing

that might come up, which comes up with some of my clients, is imposter syndrome.

Am I good enough to be an Amazon agent?

And what are these brands even going to say to me? How do I approach these

brands? I don't have many runs on the board, so am

I good enough to do it? These are all natural fears

that a lot of people face, not just in this industry, but most

industries. But you've got to push through those fears, and I can tell you,

The one way to get good and break

down those fears is to build experience

and build knowledge. And the only way you can do that is

by taking action. So go get an Amazon training course.

Go meet up with a mentor like myself. Go onto YouTube

and just do your own research and get the ball rolling because

knowledge equals power, which equals experience, and

you take things to the next level. So we've highlighted one

particular method in detail about becoming an Amazon agent.

But there are so many other ways to sell on Amazon, and

I've covered a lot of them myself. I haven't personally done the

agency model, but I want to tell you a story about that

and why I wish I hadn't become the agent. And

I was at a conference one day looking for products. And

there was a particular brand there called Dynamic Tape. And

this is a tape, it was like a sports tape. And the brand owner, actually the

inventor of this Dynamic Tape was at

the conference showcasing his products. And

I was on the hunt for products to take to market on Amazon USA.

And so I stumbled across this product and I thought, wow, what a fantastic product.

It was unique. The design was unique. The

inventor was right there. I could speak directly to him. And

I quickly checked Amazon and realized it was a huge market. I literally

just pulled out my phone and just started checking the details of

what was in the US to get some sort of understanding of what the Amazon

sports tape niche was like before I started a conversation with

him. And it was massive, right? As you can appreciate, a huge,

huge industry of sports tape in Amazon USA.

So I thought, wow, this could be an incredible opportunity

for me. And this is the thing though, as

I looked on Amazon USA, I realized, because

what I'm trying to find is a product that's not on Amazon USA.

But when I looked on the app, wow, this

product was already selling in Amazon USA. So

how did I engage this guy? You know what I did? I approached

him, and his name's Ryan. And, hi,

my name's Matthew. I'm an Amazon e-com seller. I look to

take products global. And, Ryan, you've got an

amazing product here, I said. But I'm looking at, you've got this listed in

Amazon USA. And you know what? It looks shit. I

said to him, I said, it looks so bad. I said,

what have you done? Who's controlling this? I said, you've got

horrible pictures. And I'm not joking, they had the worst pictures you

could possibly think of, just like done with an iPhone, right? Nothing, just

so horrible, horrible key, no keywords, no

title, no SEO. I think it was like one picture.

And it really was a really bad listing. And so

I've just told him straight out to his face, I said, man, your listing is shit. I said, these

guys, whoever is selling your product in Amazon USA, they're

ruining your brand. And that hit him, right?

This is the inventor. Imagine he's put his life

into inventing this particular sports tape. His

face is behind it, right? If you went onto YouTube, you

could see him everywhere. Dynamic Tape, Ryan, you'll find him. He's

a great guy, but what had happened was, and I see this with

a lot of inventors, is he invented the product, but

then kind of just let it go, just sort of gave it to whoever wanted to sell it.

And the problem with that was he just lost sight

of the, I guess, the landscape and the possibilities of

what Amazon provides. So some random person

has simply picked up his product, threw it up on Amazon, and

did a horrible, horrible job. But did you know Amazon

is one of, if not one of, if not the largest

search engines for products in the

world? So when people are going to Amazon, they're typing in

dynamic tape and boom, up comes his listing and it looks

like crap. So what do you think that says about the

brand? So as I'm telling this to Ryan at

this conference or the trade show, I'm saying, look, what

we could do is I could actually take over, we'll get rid of all

these sellers, I'll take over the brand and we

can start making sales together and we'll take things to a whole new level. We'll

do better pitches, better SEO, we'll do proper PPC. And

what ultimately ended up happening with that was I

did a deal where we put the products into USA, no

money down. I didn't take a single cent out of my pocket to

put into inventory. And the deal was, it

was on consignment. So when the product sold, I

would then split the profit. And it was actually a 50-50 profit

split. And he was happy with this. He was thrilled that

I had approached him to do this deal. So

one lesson there is don't be afraid of approaching people, especially when you see something

like this where the listing is bad. In fact, now that I think of

it, that could be something for you to check out. You can actually go into Amazon

right now and just start scouring the shelves, so to

speak, and find really, really bad

listings. As I said before, what does a bad listing look like? It's

got one crappy picture, it's got hardly anything in the title, it

might just have a brand name and no other keywords, it might have no

bullet points, it's going to have No

SEO whatsoever. So even finding the product might even be difficult. So

that could be something that you could do right now. Go to Amazon, find a crappy product, and

then reach out to that brand owner and say, I've

found your brand on Amazon. It looks, maybe, I don't

know how you want to nuance those words. I could say to it because I was face

to face. and say, look, I think your product

could be better on Amazon. And look, see where it

goes. You never know. You could end up becoming the person that

does a deal very, very similar to this. Now, what I want to get to is how I structured

the deal. Like I said before, consignment and a 50-50 profit

split. So what would happen is Ryan would send, or I would

organize with Ryan to send products into Amazon FBA in

the US. And then after It was

about three months. I would give him a report sort of every, I

think it was every month, I would report to him the sales. There was

a lot of trust here, by the way, a lot of trust. But the good thing that the brand owner should

know, if you're watching this, is that everything in Amazon is

documented, right? You can't really fudge the figures. You can send through reports, but

you don't really type them up yourself, right? So there's a lot of transparency there

for both parties. So about every three

months I would send through the report and then we would reconcile the

profit. Meaning that I was receiving all the money. That's

something else to note too. I wasn't taking over his

listing on Amazon. It was my own listing in

my own Amazon account. And all the money was coming

to me. So as you can imagine there, a lot of trust, right? So all

the money's coming into my account, and then every three months we would reconcile. I

would give him the sales report, tell him what the profit was,

because I was also taking out of that PPC. So it was a net,

okay, net of the cost of the goods and after Amazon fees and

PPC. And then he would then just simply invoice me for

whatever the split was. Now,

ultimately, over time, I think if I looked at that compared

to some other models, then

you only really know in hindsight, though, to be honest. But I

would have been better off if I charged Ryan an agency

fee. This is where I'm getting to. I would have

been better off if I charged Ryan an agency fee of anywhere

from $1,000 to $2,000 a month, because that ultimately would have

guaranteed my income. rather than

having to work out the profit, because if I spend a lot of

money in PPC, there could potentially be no profit, and

then I'd be left with nothing. So he

would then take on all the risk, I would simply manage his account, and

then ultimately I would have ended up with a guaranteed salary,

really, for doing all the work for his particular brand. And

you're probably thinking, well Matt, what ultimately ended up happening with that product? Well,

my other product, my other healthcare product became so

big and this was the one that ultimately has done now over $40 million

in sales. But it was kind of new around that time when I

took on Dynamic Tape. My healthcare product got so massive that

I really kind of just lost interest and it was just

taking up time that was unnecessary considering how

great my other sales were. I was kind of

winding it down, but then what happened just when I was about to

sort of let it go and hand the product back to the brand

owner, the brand owner actually ended up selling his business

to a whole new entity anyway. Now, the sales weren't

huge, so I just said, yeah, absolutely, no problem. There

is another lesson in this story too, because when I wound everything up,

I was absolutely transparent and honest with him,

because integrity in this business, particularly for me, is key.

So I gave back all of the outstanding stock,

we reconciled all the numbers, we got all the money, and I always

pay things quick. I never leave people waiting. So they send the

invoice, they get paid. Now, he then sold

that business to another entity who took on all the sales then.

So I was happy to kind of let it go anyway because I wasn't making

a lot of money out of it because my other healthcare product had taken off

by that stage. Now, integrity, as I said, integrity is key. And

Ryan ended up contacting me, coincidentally only two weeks ago,

and asked if I was willing to take the product back on because

he'd done another deal with the existing company and he's taking the product back

into his own possession. And I said, look

Ryan, I'm really sorry but I'm actually moved on

from doing those types of deals now. I don't do any agency or consignment

splits really anymore. I'm open to it. If you want to contact me, I'm

open to it, but I don't do so much of it anymore. And so

therefore, I gave him some contacts of some other people who I know in

the industry who could help him out anyway. So it was good though that

he'd come back to me because I showed a lot of integrity and honesty through the whole years

of working with him. So when thinking about the story with Ryan and

Dynamic Tape, there's a couple of takeaways I want you to think about. One is take

action. There was a time where I was going from trade show

to trade show just talking to people, talking to brand owners,

talking to the inventors, and just getting conversations going.

I would speak to lots of people at these trade shows. And

sometimes I'd get three leads out of it, but ultimately maybe one

actually came through where like in Ryan's case where I actually end up

selling his product. But if you don't go to these trade shows and

you don't talk to people, ultimately nothing will happen. So

that's the first takeaway. And the second takeaway is when

you're dealing with anybody, now it doesn't matter whether it's business or

whether it's Amazon selling, when you're dealing with people you've always

got to come in to those relationships with honesty

and integrity because like what's happened in my case, you

never know what could happen in the future, and those opportunities could

come back to you down the road. All right, thanks, guys. I really

hope you've enjoyed that episode. If you'd like to become part

of my free community, please look down at the show notes. There's a link

down there. You can click on that, come through. I've got lots of free resources

there, and you can also join my monthly Q&A, where

you can talk to me directly and ask questions about

some of the things that I've either mentioned on this show or others in

the past. And if you could do me a big, big favor, I'd love it if you would leave

me a five-star review for Spotify and Apple. It'd really

mean a lot and help the show grow so it can reach more people and help

those who need it. Thank you so much, guys. Take care. See you in the next one.

Bye now. Thanks for tuning into Amazon Ecom Secrets. If

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You can also find more at I'm Matthew Fraser

on all social media platforms. Thanks so much. Take