Jon tells us how he turned his Fulfillment by Amazon business side hustles into an entrepreneurial lifestyle and multiple online businesses.

Today’s guest, Jon Haver, is Co-Owner of BrandBuilders.io, owner of a few Amazon Private Labels, Founder of Listing Eagle Software, and Founder of AuthorityWebsiteIncome.com. 

Jon is a 31-year-old husband, father, engineer, sports fan and huge geek. He has been pursuing an entrepreneurial lifestyle so that he can spend more time with his family, and for the last 8 years he has built up many businesses and a healthy passive income portfolio. Along the way, he has helped hundreds of others do the same! In July 2016, Jon was finally able to quit his day job and focus entirely on his family and online businesses.

We’re going to learn how Jon turned his side hustle into his career over the past 8 years, how Fulfillment by Amazon businesses operate, and Jon’s unique influencer marketing strategy.

In this episode, you’ll learn from Jon:

• 5:55 – Amazon FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) allows business owners to send a product to Amazon, so that they will fulfill orders of that product for you
  • The most common model is to pick a product from a sourcing website like Alibaba, apply a private label and then sell it through Amazon
• 5:20 – One Sunday afternoon in September, Jon noticed a private labeled women’s fashion product was selling well. By Monday afternoon, he had his first order of 100 placed. “That’s definitely not what I recommend doing.”
• 8:30 – “The right way is to determine what product you want, try to improve it somehow, source from different manufacturers and pick the highest-quality one then ship.”
• 9:10 – The most popular market research site for private label product sourcing is Jungle Scout
• 9:25 – You want to find a product that seems to have the right balance of market demand and moderate competition that you can also beat. You can identify beatable competition by poor listings, but you may not be able to beat competition that already has a lot of good reviews on Amazon.
• 9:45 – When you find a good product, look at the negative reviews of the best-selling products on Amazon to see if there is a common thread.
  • For example: Greg Mercer, owner of Jungle Scout, researched marshmallow-roasting sticks. When he looked at the negative reviews, he saw that people wanted longer sticks. He contacted the manufacturer, and then began selling longer marshmallow-roasting sticks.
•  11:00 – BrandBuilders.io is a website design development firm for Amazon Associate website owners and Amazon FBA sellers
  • To receive official recognition from Amazon that you are the official manufacturer of a product, you need to have a website
• 13:40 – Listing Eagle is a web app that helps monitor Amazon FBA listings for the presence of hijackers
  • Hijackers are sellers claiming to have the product on your listing. They will steal sales, and lower your brand reputation by selling lower quality products.
  • Rapid response to potential hijackers is the best strategy to prevent prolonged hijacking
• 17:40 – A key to success for Amazon FBA businesses, like many other businesses, is quality and follow-through. “The guys who are having success are the ones who are doing every step of the process right, and committing to having a high standard as far as the quality of the product, the quality of the listing, the speed with which they are going to follow up with any questions that people ask. The guys that throw enough intensity, and have their standards high enough when they build a FBA business, they seem to be the ones that have success.”
• 19:45 – BrandBuilers.io and Listing Eagle have grown through Jon’s unique influencer marketing strategy
• 20:35 – Influencer marketing is a pretty common tactic. Jon tweaks the practice by making deals with influencers that encourage long-term commitment to the success of the business, and the influencers are involved with improving the offering.
• 21:45 – If an influencer can bring an exclusive offer that no one has yet to their list, it improves their position as an authority and an influencer within their audience. “Understanding what an influencer is after, developing a solution that benefits their audience, while at the same time providing them with some exclusivity.”
• 25:00 – BrandBuilers.io uses Zaxaa, and the affiliate program within Zaxaa, to track earnings per visitor and how much an affiliate can typically make by sharing an offer with their list. It’s a checkout cart process. For Listing Eagle, a similar system is set up through Click Bank.
• 30:35 – Quickfire Q&A

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Resources mentioned in this episode:

• BrandBuilers.io
• Listing Eagle Software
• AuthorityWebsiteIncome.com
• Jungle Scout
• Scott Voelker‘s The Amazing Seller Facebook Group
• Zaxaa
• ClickBank
• Boomerang
• The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber (affiliate link)
• The ONE Thing by Gary Keller (affiliate link)
• The Fish that Ate the Whale by Rich Cohen (affiliate link)

Answers to Quickfire Q&A:

1. If you could chat with anyone, dead or alive, who would it be and why?
   1. Jon just finished reading the biography by Sam Zemurray, The Fish That Ate the Whale by Rich Cohen, “and I find conversations to be the most effective means of shifting a paradigm.”
2. Name a tool, app, or website that you can’t live without and why.
   1. For my business, it runs off of Google Docs and Gmail exclusively. “The one thing I will say I use a ton of is Boomerang, an app for gmail.” When Jon sends a task off to a VA, Jon can “boomerang” the task and it will come back in about a week.
3. Tell us something unique and interesting about you that not many may know.
   1. “I used to be a competitive ski racer. The stat that I like to share is that I got clocked at a speed of 83 MPH on skis.”
4. What is your favorite business book and why?
   1. “The book that has been fundamental in how I set up my businesses has been [The] E-Myth Revisited … The big takeaway I’ve had from The E-Myth Revisited was that every businesses needs the entrepreneur, the manager and the technician.”
   2. The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber (affiliate link)
5. What is the top characteristic or trait that you look for in people you work with?
   1. The ability and willingness to grind
6. What is something you believe, but few others agree with you?
   1. I’m a big proponent of hiring fast and firing fast

How to contact Jon:

You can see everything Jon is working on at AuthorityWebsiteIncome.com.

You can find out more about his businesses at BrandBuilers.io and ListingEagle.com.

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