This simple Amazon tool generates $5K/month

Dear starters,

Pat Walls here, creator of Starter Story.

As you know, every Thursday I send you an email highlighting the best stories that we've published on the website. A bite-sized summary of the most interesting experiences that starters have shared with us.

I hope you enjoy it!
 

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Growing an ecommerce 300% in a year

About a year ago we spoke with Andre, who is the CEO of Matcha.com, a leading ecommerce company in the matcha green tea space. Back then they were already making around $190K/mo with the business; today just the ecommerce side of the business makes over $390K/mo (around 70% of the income). Extraordinary! This is one of the most in-depth follow-up stories we’ve had, I highly recommend you to read it in full because it’s full of knowledge gems.

One thing that has been key to their growth? Appearing on podcasts. One of his tips on how to start leveraging this is to find the gatekeepers for successful podcasts. Check on LinkedIn and Twitter. Send texts, DMs, emails, and/or samples; like, follow, and interact any way you can. It’s worth it.

If you want to know more strategies that successful ecommerce owners have used to grow their businesses keep reading:

• Steve and his wife have a 7 figure business selling handkerchiefs online. They have a killer email autoresponders sequence that they use to make money on autopilot.
   
• After selling over $1M of her emu oil soap, one of Carole’s preferred strategies is to use Bonjoro to send a personalized video message to all of her new customers.
   
• Lost Empire Herbs attribute their growth to $300K/mo to affiliate marketing.
   
• Focusing on Product-Market Fit was what pushed Tree To Tub to almost $5M/year. They started emailing surveys and calling up their customers, literally chatting with each of them for almost an hour over the phone to get a deeper sense of their needs and expectations.

In our detailed guide about how to start an ecommerce business, you will find many more examples and other information that you need to know.
 

Bonus: We’ve put together a list of 145 simple million-dollar ecommerce stores to give you an extra dose of inspiration.
 

💰 Start a profitable business

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🎉 Super limited 4th of July deal 🎊

As a special gift to our readers, we're celebrating the 4th of July early and offering a huge discount on both memberships -> our best deal of the year.

Join us today and get premium for $58 (60% off) for your first year, or get premium plus for $179 (40% off) for your first year.

This offer expires on July 5th, 2021. Don’t miss out on this opportunity!

(all of our plans are billed yearly)

Creating a $5K/mo Amazon FBA reimbursement solution

Speaking of ecommerce, here’s another great starter that we spoke to. Robin is an Amazon seller first, but the need to solve his own problem has led him to also start a SaaS company.

Inaccurate charges and inventory management mishaps can cause you to lose potential revenue and can affect profitability. So there he was, spending a lot of time digging into his Seller Central account to see how much of the inventory was lost or damaged and then reconciling the numbers on a spreadsheet to find out how much that cost. Then he had to manually file a claim to Amazon for cases that they failed to automatically reimburse.

This frustration is what gave him the idea for Seller Repay. A software initially designed as an ‘in-house’ solution for detecting reimbursable cases in his seller account. He quickly realized that a lot of sellers who were in the same situation would also benefit from the software. That is when he decided to build a business around it.

Again, as we’ve seen many times before, solving your own problem is one of the best ways to validate a business idea. If something bothers you, it’ll probably happen to more people as well.

“Do not spend months refining a perfectly fine service. Launch. Take action. Then learn how to improve.”

Angela Cote
$50K/mo franchise growth consultant

Turn your hobby into a money making side hustle

Tarah is the founder of the blog Grandma's House DIY. She gives inspiration and motivation for Do It Yourself projects outside and inside the home. The storytelling here is crucial, as they write about the process of renovating and restoring the grounds inside and around their 100-year-old farmhouse and, of course, of all the shenanigans they get up to along the way!

She expects to generate over $20K this year with her blog, but that doesn’t come easy, she spends around 8 hours per post between writing, taking pictures and photo editing.

The main takeaway from Tarah’s interview is that in order to have a successful blog you need to be consistent. Don’t stop publishing, it’ll pay off (trust me).

In our huge database of case studies we have many examples of people that make lots of money thanks to their blogs:

• Emenike blogs about entrepreneurship from Nigeria and makes an extra $3K/mo thanks to that.
   
• By posting games, activities, and crafts, Jodi’s blog generates between $5K and $8K every month.
   
• On her blog, Sireesha helps work from home enthusiasts in finding legit online jobs, side hustles and other extra income options. That has grown to a $13K/mo business.
   
• You don’t need to write original content to make money in the blog space, Lenny has been able to consistently make ~$2K extra per month by proofreading other people’s posts.

Bonus: Here’s a list of 40 successful bloggers earning up to $2M/year. What makes this a very attractive business is

1. Can be easily run by one person
2. Very low costs
3. Lots of monetization options

Job opportunities

Matcha.com ($190K/mo ecommerce) is hiring a National Sales Manager, an extremely talented and Creative Content Creator (video, Youtube/Tik Tok and podcast) and a Social/Business Collaboration Guru/Ambassador Development Extraordinaire.

Miventure ($15K/mo equity crowdfunding platform) is looking for a Growth Marketing Director.

1page ($10K/mo app for salespeople) is hiring B2B Sales Professionals and Growth Hackers.

A Good Company ($220K/mo sustainable accessories brand) is always looking for talented people.

Easy Song Licensing ($375K/mo) is hiring a Marketing Specialist and Customer Service Agents.

Thanks for reading!

Pat
 

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