Author: Justin

Value Every Moment

by Justin


I was watching a video by Ryan Moran the other day on how we should value every moment. I have been following his model for selling on Amazon and it is so simple and straight forward. His message in this however, was on life itself and how we see things. The powerful view that he presents speaks to all of us in one form or another.

We have all come across it at one point or another; a feeling of wishing we could go back. While we are in the moment we can’t wait for it to pass, but as we look back, we wish we could return to that time in our life. We wish we could do things different. As we go through life, we should learn to cherish every moment, even the bad or hard times. Don’t wish time away, because we can’t get it back. See his video here.

Whatever your goals are, always strive to reach them everyday. Just remember that success is a journey and not a destination. Part of our feeling of success is not getting “there” but knowing we overcame the obstacles to achieve what we have. It is easy to get frustrated when things aren’t going so well or wishing for what we see as better things to happen sooner. But we should all try to give thanks for the trials that make us stronger and appreciate them knowing that one day, we may miss the days. You choose how to see your life and what to make of it; so choose every day to be the best and enjoy all of life as you value every moment. As Ryan says “These are the good ol’ days”.

 

Freedom Number

by Justin


Many people have heard of the”Financial Freedom Number”. How exactly do we calculate this freedom number? There are several ways that this number comes about, but it also depends on what you are looking for. In order to get your freedom number, you have to break down how much you need financially to reach your goals. The first step is to Figure out how much your expenses are currently. As you grow your income outside of your job, you will take the profits to pay for your bills. This is the start to calculating your freedom number.

For example: Lets say your monthly bills are $2,000 per month. The first goal is to generate enough money to pay for your $2,000. Next, you will be able to estimate the cost of insurance, setting aside for retirement, eating out, entertainment etc. Once these numbers are added, lets say we are are $3,000. You then must come up with an additional thousand dollars. to be at a break even. I would look at it the way Tim Ferris spoke of in his book The Four Hour Work Week. He said that you should earn an additional 30% just to be safe. For example, if you needed $3,000, multiply that by 1.3 for a total of $3,900. Thus your true freedom number would be $3,900. 

Image result for freedom number
For examples of how to generate this type income check out the Income section of this site. There are several ways to earn this extra income, but the best way is to focus on something that takes minimal time investment to get you going. In the digital age we live in, it is now easier than ever to get a side income going and have it work for you rather than you working so hard for it.

One of the easiest ways to get you going is starting a budget which is 100% Free to do, and will get you on the fast track to success that much sooner. One of the best budget trackers is one you can get in an app. It is called Every Dollar Counts and gives you a zero based budget where you assign every dollar to do its task.

Selling on Amazon

by Justin


Selling on Amazon for Beginners

Most people have at least heard of someone selling online from their home and people making a good living online. It turns out that this life style is very much attainable. There are many platforms where you can get started selling on, but the easiest for scaling in my opinion is Amazon. I started by selling books I had laying around the house. I had tons of books I had accumulated from college and decided to sell them for what I could get out of them. I soon realized they sold for good prices and pretty quickly.

I took the money that I made and purchased more books from good will. I would pay a dollar for the paperbacks and two dollars for the hard copies. Sometimes these books would sell for as much as $50. I kept cycling that money instead of paying myself and grew the book reselling business larger. I would also buy books online have them shipped to me and then resell them on Amazon.

The best thing about Amazon, besides the exposure, is that you have the option of allowing Amazon to store your inventory and fulfill your orders through FBA. When I realized how easy it was, I started shipping all my books to FBA rather than doing merchant fulfilled. This way, I would ship the items in bulk, to Amazons warehouse and I was done. When an item sold, Amazon would pick, pack, and ship the items for me. This way I could focus on finding new items to sell. I soon got started selling anything and everything I could.

Some tools I use to help me are listed below as well as links on where you can buy yours.

  • Scan lister
    • This tool is something I use that helps me list my items to Amazon very quickly and keep track of when and where I bought my items as well as how much I paid for it. I would wait until you can wait until you are bringing in a good amount of inventory to purchase this one. It is like $19 per month

Image result for scan lister

  • FBA Scan
    • This is a great tool for selling on Amazon which allows you to calculate whether you will be profitable and relatively understand competition one every item. If you understand the rank, then you can also see if its a fast selling item or not. There are several levels of cost for this, but I go with the highest ($40 per month) It allows you to store a database of info, good for when you have no internet or no wifi as well as a live search which gives you up to date information.
Image result for fba scan
FBA Scan
  • Opticon 2002 or 2006
    • This works the easiest with the I phone but also works with Android. You can pick it up for just over $150 currently which is a small one time investment if you actually plan to make money. (I made that back in one trip to a good will). You can easily velcro it to the back of your phone, free up your hands, and scan that much quicker.
Opticon 2002
    • Tao Hand Scanner
      • I use this with scan lister, its very cheap to pick up (like $20) and it allows me to scan all my items into scan lister or any other platform super fast. As long as you have a free usb port to plug it into your computer, you are good to go.

        $20
        Tao Hand Scanner
    • Professional Seller Account
      • Once I started doing a decent amount of sales, I upgraded to a professional seller account on Amazon. It cost $39.99 per month, but saves you one dollar per transaction. The idea then is to sell at least 40 items per month and it pays for itself. There are other great qualities you get from a pro seller account, but that’s the basic first reason.