Amazon reselling: I make $10 million a year

This essay is based on a conversation with Deanna Slamans, a 49-year-old Amazon seller from Hershey, USA, who also coaches other sellers. Her company’s earnings, Amazing Freedom, have been verified by Business Insider. The following text has been edited for length and clarity.

In 1999, my husband Andy and I became counselors at the Milton Hershey School. Fifteen years later, we heard about selling on Amazon from a friend. We quickly became addicted and had no idea that by 2022 we would be making more than $10 million from Amazon sales.

I had a very tumultuous and at times violent childhood. Both parents were mentally ill: my mother had bipolar disorder and eventually committed suicide, and my father, who suffered from schizophrenia, spent most of my life in prison. When I was living in Pennsylvania, my aunt, who eventually took care of me and my sisters, enrolled me and my twin at the Milton Hershey School.

The Milton Hershey School changed my life. I received an excellent education and saw the opportunities open to me. After I met my husband in college and graduated, we lived and worked in Philadelphia for a number of years. We were naïve when it came to money. We bought a house and put a lot of money into it, bought new cars and just kept spending more and more money. It was an easy decision for us to come back at some point and become caregivers.

During our 15 years of ministry, we helped raise approximately 100 junior and high school-age boys while raising our two biological children. At some point we wanted to spend more time with our own children and had to deal with our debts. That’s when a friend first told us about Amazon – we became Amazon sellers in 2016.

The key to our success at Amazon has been being able to spot trends quickly and follow them closely

In the beginning we sold used books from libraries and thrift stores because that’s what our friend sold. Then we sold a bunch of random items – Nerf guns, Legos and other stuff.

To resell an item on Amazon, simply go to any store and scan the item’s barcode using a feature in the Amazon seller app. The app shows potential profit margins and the item’s value on Amazon. Our approach was to only buy products that could double our investment, allowing us to easily cover Amazon seller fees, app subscriptions, shipping costs, and more.

When the movie Frozen came out, I was convinced it would be a profitable business. We lived near a number of outlets and my husband paired Frozen flip flops with a Frozen hooded towel – he made 200 sets and they sold like hot cakes. Trends like Frozen sell fast, and there’s a lot of money to be made before they die out.

When we found a marketable trend and could get a reasonable amount of products but didn’t have enough time to get them to an Amazon fulfillment center, we sold them on eBay. Selling on eBay is faster because we ship the product directly to the customer.

While Andy worked full-time for the Amazon business, I stayed at the Milton Hershey School and wrote curriculum. I did that for three years so we could put everything back into the business. By this point even our kids were helping with packing, shipping and anything else they could.

It took us two years to make a steady profit from our Amazon business

In the first year, our profits just broke even. We made enough to keep our Amazon account open and cover prep and shipping costs, but it wasn’t something we could live on. We couldn’t really work long hours on our store because we were still parents and it was stressful to keep the products in our online store.

We decided to change our strategy and look for higher-margin items—tools and oversized items like furniture—and we looked for more products that weren’t as saturated. We took a risk, and sometimes our purchases didn’t work out. In these cases, we had to lower our selling costs to get rid of inventory before Amazon’s storage fees eat up the rest of our investment.

One night before we went to bed we set a coupon code to draw more eyes to one of our products. But in our haste, we entered it incorrectly, resulting in the product price showing as $0. Our code was actually a free giveaway that cost us $12,000. We only realized our mistake in the morning when it was too late.

We decided to leave the toys behind, except for the holiday season, and dig deeper to really grow our business. In 2017 Andy started building his own brand of cloth diapers that he wanted to sell on Amazon. This product took off quickly and we sold the brand to a new owner in 2020 so we could put all our energy into a lawn and garden brand that we wanted to bring to market. These sales finally allowed us to buy our dream home.

Selling on Amazon requires planning, investment, and risk-taking

When you start at Amazon, you have to take risks. Don’t be afraid to jump into a product early on that you think has potential. If you wait, someone else could be trademarking your product or claiming intellectual property – especially if you’re interested in creating your own brand like we did with the cloth diapers.

When sourcing products on Amazon, you need to know your budget, the value of the product, and whether you can successfully reinvest your profits. When you generate income, you have to have the discipline to immediately invest it back into the business, because that’s the only way you’ll make money. Plus, you never know what expenses you’ll need to cover to grow the business.

I don’t want new or young sellers thinking they should grow their business before paying off debt. When we first started selling on Amazon, my husband and I used our earnings to pay off our credit cards and pay off our debt. Now we have enough to keep money in business and let it grow. Last year we made more than $10 million in sales and we have a team of 47 employees that we can conveniently pay to run our Amazon business.

To become a successful Amazon seller, you must use your imagination

Think about how you can sell a product and differentiate yourself during a busy time of year. Thinks how Andy was able to bundle items with the flip flops and towels ahead of the Frozen premiere. During the holiday season, you could look into illuminated reindeer antlers for adults, as well as antlers for dogs and babies.

One thing my career has taught me is that in business you just have to keep trying. I’m not saying that there is no such thing as failure, but there are always other options. If one method doesn’t work, try another.

This article has been translated from English. You can find the original here.