“This opened my eyes to the possibilities of being my own boss and living life on my own terms. That’s when I discovered building a business using Amazon.”
By Catherine Turner
From a young age, I loved the idea of creating and owning a business, working on creating a school magazine when I was 10 to wanting to own my dance school at 16, but never knowing anyone that had owned or started their own business I didn’t know where to turn. Probably like so many people who want to have something different, but don’t know anyone to turn to or how to make it happen.
At the age of 21, after suffering with panic and anxiety attacks in a very stressful job at the Crown Prosecution Service, I had the opportunity to go travelling and loved having 3 months exploring and travelling around South East Asia and then another 2 months on the East Coast of America.
However, very quickly after my return I got myself a full-time job on a good income for a 22 year old, although this soon took its toll and I found myself again dreaming of travelling and living life on my own terms, but now I had fallen into the salary trap, always short of money at the end of the month and not knowing how I could ever save to go away for such a long time. My way out came from seeing a small advert to a 3 hour seminar in my home town and I ‘cheekily’ took a long lunch break on the day I worked from home, taking my mum along with me.
That was the start and opened my eyes to the possibilities of being my own boss and living life on my own terms. That is when I discovered building a business using Amazon. The start-up investment was minimal compared to other cashflow businesses like property or trading, and I loved that it was a step-by-step system, no having to deal with builders, tenants, property maintenance and you could build this business using just a laptop and WiFi, from anywhere in the world. This was right up my street!
I decided we needed to learn from the experts and invested in our future. And we haven’t looked back. We started our training in October 2014, I quit my job and we took a long vacation in November and our first product went live in the February (you can go quicker, I just decided to give myself a break over Christmas after 5 years being in a job I hated) and that first sale, I can still remember was so amazing, because it showed the system and process we had followed worked!
Over the next few months, we continued to work and build our business and by October 2015, my husband Steve has been able to leave his finance job in the city and we decided to treat ourselves to a 3 week break to travel around Europe, something I had only dreamt of when working in my public sector job. I love this business and the opportunities it has been able to give us and now I love paying it forward to other people, and showing them what is possible.
Many people choose to use this e-commerce business model to generate additional income to supplement their existing earnings. Others use the additional income to pay for holidays, school fees, investing in property or to afford the little luxuries in life. I’ve met others with Amazon businesses who’ve chosen to be more aggressive with their business growth, scaling up quickly and replacing their main income.
Some have even ended up leaving their full time jobs or given up their ‘time for money exchange’ to put all their focus and effort behind their e-commerce business. I love the freedom I have now to work from where I like and the feeling of not being tied to a fixed office.
I wish this business model had existed years ago. It’s now available to all of us as Amazon is providing their well-oiled and vast operations systems and service infrastructure.
Here’s my top tip: Your critical step is choosing the right product at the right size, weight, and price point.
Choose a product that’s small and lightweight because Amazon charges more the heavier and bigger the product - ideally a product that fits in a shoe box. You also want to sell on average at a price between $20 and $60 in the US and £15 and £40 in the UK. This is the ‘sweet spot’ because most customers make an impulse purchase at this price level.
