Proven Amazon Course Review – Did You Miss Out On The Amazing Selling Machine?

February 20, 2016

Product: Proven Amazon Course
Product Type: How to become an Amazon seller
Price: $349 single payment or $128/mth for 3 months
Where To Buy: Click here to go to the sales page
Guarantee: Unconditional Money Back Guarantee
My Rating: 4.7 out 5

Why I Choose The Proven Amazon Course

If you read my previous posts, you’ll know I was interested in buying the Amazing Selling Machine a couple of years ago. In case you don’t know what that is/was, it’s a course that shows you how to make a business out of selling products on Amazon. This isn’t about building Amazon affiliate websites, but actually selling physical items through Amazon.

The course covers everything from how to set up an account with Amazon to how to source products, how to re-brand white-label products and how to have stock shipped to the Amazon Fulfillment Center. This way, you don’t have to personally warehouse stock and can leverage the low shipping costs Amazon can get through its volume sales so your profits are higher. There’s also instruction on how to boost your product on Amazon using various techniques, which again increases your profits.

Sounds great except for the price. The course was $3,988! On top of that you’d need an additional $600-$1,500 to buy stock and get your business started. So people were looking at around a $5,000 investment. Obviously, that put it out of the reach of a sizable number of people who would otherwise have been interested in the course.

Turns out there’s been another Amazon-selling course around since 2011 (and continuously updated) that’s less than a tenth of the price. It gets great reviews.

It’s an absolute steal at its price point, and so what I did was buy that course instead. I had seriously thought about buying the Amazing Selling Machine at the time (it reappears about once every year) but I just couldn’t justify spending the asking price.

So why is there such a price differential between the two courses? Amazing Selling machine came bundled with about 7 software apps so you were paying for those in addition to the training. Buyers get the use of the software free for 2 years but then have to stump up an undisclosed recurring fee to continue using the software. That also put me off buying the course.

The Proven Amazon Course Review

So, now that I’ve bought Jim Cockrum’s Proven Amazon Course (PAC), here’s a quick review of it so you can make your own decision about whether it’s something for you or not (several of my readers have already bought it on foot of what I said in my previous post).

Proven Amazon Course Overview

The Proven Amazon Course Member’s Screen

The important initial steps (Start Here section) are:

Video on Opening Your Amazon Account (69 minutes long so it covers everything about how to set up your Amazon Seller account
5 Step Starting Check-List (PDF)
Helpful Facebook Posts – more background information on things like Holiday Selling Guidelines, How To Sell Clothing on Amazon, Inventory Insurance, Image Sizes for Amazon, Promoting Amazon Listings, Success stories and more (to get you motivated).

Next Steps is pretty much all about using Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA) where you either ship stock or have your manufacturer ship stock to Amazon so that Amazon can handle delivery when orders come in. Using FBA means you don’t have the hassle of handling shipping yourself and because of the volume of products Amazon ships, their shipping fees will be lower per product (saving you money).

Advanced Steps looks at things like Understanding Sales Rank, Sales Tax for FBA Users, Dealing with Negative Feedback, Scaling Your Business, UPC Codes (when you need them) and some other goodies.

The Sourcing section looks at various ideas and places you can go to get products to sell from auction to white labeling products.

Tools looks at software (including mobile apps) that sellers can use for checking prices, scanning barcodes, inventory management tools, etc.

The International FBA section takes an in-depth look at using the Fulfillment By Amazon service to sell outside of the USA (if you’re based there) and to sell into the USA (on Amazon.com) if you live outside the USA. This will be of special interest to people outside the USA who want to sell on Amazon.com as it still sells more product than any of the other Amazon regions.

Bonus Content includes the Amazon 90-Day Experiment, 4 Things Amazon Doesn’t Want You To Know, The Quick & Dirty Amazon Guide and Additional “Selling on Amazon” Resources.

And the final section Interviews and Suggested Reading includes “How to Sell at Margins Higher Than Your Competitors” and “The Long Tail”

There’s also a very active community on the site’s forums who are willing to help you and answer whatever questions you may have.

Some Caveats

If you live outside the USA, this course will still work for you. There are some additional hurdles to overcome though and some of the business models will not be cost effective.

A case in point is product arbitrage – where you buy products locally at a cheap price and sell them for a higher price elsewhere. If you live in the USA, shipping charges to get product to Amazon warehouses will be quite cheap. If you’re shipping product from Europe to the USA, especially heavy products like books, shipping charges will mount up very quickly, eating into or completely eradicating profits.

Selling books from Europe to the USA presents additional problems – books should be in English (sourcing English language books in non-English speaking countries could be difficult) and Americans want to read books in USA English, not UK English where some spellings are different, local colloquialisms may not be understood and metric rather than imperial measurements may be referred to.

For international sellers, the most promising model is sourcing product in the USA, having that shipped to a prepping company who in turn will ship to Amazon warehouses. USA based Amazon sellers will face similar logistics if they’re sourcing goods in China for shipment to Amazon warehouses in the USA.

That said, about 40% of Proven Amazon Course members do live outside the USA and they’re making successes of their Amazon businesses.

If you don’t want to go for the full Proven Amazon Course, then from the same people comes this less comprehensive but equally compelling course. Just click the image to go to the sales page:

BTW, Proven Amazon Course members get access to this, and many other additional courses that are sold separately, for free. The $349 PAC fee gets you a lot of bang for your buck.

I hope you enjoyed this review and if you have any questions about the Proven Amazon Course or want to leave your own personal review, leave a comment below.

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