You might not like to hear it, but there are a number of reasons why an Amazon FBA business can fail. Nobody likes to focus too much on the negatives when it comes to business, but it isn’t all plain selling.
Though we like to talk about how much money we make, where we’ve been on vacation, the luxury house we’ve just bought, and the new fancy car we can now afford thanks to our Amazon FBA earnings, we can all benefit from looking at our mistakes and learning from them.
While it’s more than possible to make big bucks from your Amazon FBA business, it is true that it also takes a lot of hard work and dedication.
Even then success is not guaranteed. We’ve noticed there are 6 main reasons why FBA businesses don’t work, so to ensure you’re not one of them, we want to help you out.
In this article, we will go through the 6 reasons why an FBA business might fail. We’ll also touch on how it is possible to succeed.
If you want to learn from your mistakes, avoid future mistakes and develop your business, be sure to read on.
1. Believing The Hype That Amazon FBA Is Easy
One of the most common mistakes people make when it comes to running an Amazon FBA business is falling into the trap of thinking it is going to be super easy and take no work at all.
Admittedly, this isn’t always the fault of the person starting the business. There are a lot of sellers out there who lure people into Amazon FBA with the false promise of easy success and the millionaire lifestyle.
Yes, you can make a lot of money, and yes it is fairly easy when compared to other jobs, but to become a serious seller, you still have to work hard.
Becoming a successful FBA seller requires a number of sacrifices and a lot of learning. This is a complex learning curve that consists of more than just signing up, scanning an item, and sending it to FBA.
You must learn different strategies, Amazon regulations, laws, and fees to find the best and most profitable niches.
2. Only Looking At Today’s Data
If you buy your FBA inventory solely based on today’s Amazon price and rank, you are making a big mistake. This mistake could even lead to your business failing.
By doing this you will spend a lot of money and time building an extensive FBA inventory that will sit in the warehouse growing stale.
During this time you can expect to see other sellers come in on products as your bigger and better competition.
At first, you will think they have tanked the price of the item, when in fact, you accidentally bought the product at its high price when other sellers didn’t have any stock available.
The “tanking” price will just be the price falling back to its usual price when supply and demand are back to normal. In the end, you will be left with inventory that you’ll be lucky to ever see.
3. You’re Doing Everything On Your Own
Among FBA businesses, burnout is one of the biggest factors that causes failure. It isn’t unusual for your FBA business to start really strong with plenty of early profits, for you to then quickly realize just how much time and energy is required to continue at such an intense level of profits and sales.
You’re getting up early before working what can be an extremely long day, and more often than not your hourly wage doesn’t look much better than working any other decent job, only now you work at home.
If you want to be successful in the long run you need to realize you cannot be the only one in the business. Some aspects of your FBA business need to be outsourced.
Outsourcing aspects of your business to a VA gives you more time to focus on the more important tasks at hand.
4. Not Taking Calculated Risks
Whenever you run a business, an element of risk is involved. In fact, it’s almost impossible to run a business without at least taking some risks.
When we talk about risks we don’t mean stupid, uninformed, uneducated guesses, we mean, well-thought, calculated risks that will see our businesses grow into something bigger and better.
If you find yourself unwilling to take calculated risks, your FBA business could suffer dramatically. For example, if you only ever sell one category of items on Amazon, you risk the chance of missing out on tasty profits from another.
Taking time to learn other categories could see you risk failing in said category, but you also risk losing out on amazing profits if you don’t try it.
5. Not Taking Any Action
The fact you’re reading this article would suggest you are a perpetual learner. This is excellent and the reason you will grow more successful both personally and financially.
However, perpetual learners like ourselves must be careful when it comes to doing too much learning without putting it into action.
Learning is great, but if we don’t take what we learn and put it into practice the benefit of learning is eliminated, and we just spin our wheels.
By not turning knowledge into action, FBA sellers run the risk of falling behind sellers who put everything into practice. This can have disastrous effects on your business.
6. Not Investing Enough Of Your Own Money
We all like to save money, but there are times when we need to make good investments in order to further our knowledge and develop our business.
On a number of occasions, we have seen individuals complaining that a course is too expensive and that they want a free alternative.
While we understand that not everybody can afford certain things, when it comes to business sometimes money needs to be invested to be more successful.
To create a successful FBA business money has to be invested in tools, services, and inventory. Without this investment, your business will fail.
Related: How to start an Amazon business with little money
How To Succeed
While we can’t guarantee success because that depends on you, we can provide you with a number of key points that will give you a better chance and help you avoid mistakes.
1. Work Hard
Simply signing up and trundling along won’t make your FBA business a success. Things will get hard at times, but everything is doable if you work hard to learn more and grow. This is a learning curve that takes time.
2. Outsource Tasks
Outsourcing some simpler tasks will not only save you time and prevent burnout, but it will also give you more freedom to work on more important business tasks.
3. Look At Historical Data
It may take longer but by researching historical data instead of today’s data, your business has a much better chance of success.
Historical prices and rankings will give you a better understanding and knowledge regarding the best products to choose.
4. Take Calculated Risks
Our advice is to always take calculated risks early on in your business’s development when stakes are lower. Trying out new techniques, strategies from training courses, and categories can open up new avenues for potentially huge profits and success.
5. Act Now
You should always act on what you have learned. By putting practice into action, you can implement new strategies immediately before learning something else. This should help grow your business.
Final Thoughts
That concludes our article. As you can see from our points, running a successful FBA business doesn’t just happen by accident. You have to work hard, invest time and money, and avoid making any stupid mistakes.
Now you have our list of mistakes at your fingertips, you should be able to take on board other sellers’ past mistakes and better your own business.
By learning from your own mistakes and avoiding others, you give your FBA business the best chance of success.
