Understanding Amazon Selling and its Business Model with Carlos Alvarez

Why you have to check out today’s podcast:  Find out how to achieve greater financial independence through Amazon selling  Learn how to choose the right Amazon business model  Learn how to sell on Amazon and achieve greater financial independence    Carlos Alvarez is an Amazon Marketing Consultant and Teacher. He is the CEO of Blue Bird Marketing Solutions and Founder of Wizards of Amazon.   Twelve years ago, he took the “plunge” and decided to sell full time on Amazon, didn't know he would create, let alone grow his brands into nine figures a year in gross revenues. And nine years ago he had no idea his love for online selling would be rivaled only by his passion for digital marketing.  In this episode, Carlos shares his mission to empower brands to take advantage of selling on Amazon as well as help entrepreneurs break the shackles of their nine to fives and achieve greater financial independence through Amazon and digital marketing.    “Merch is probably one of the newest, most attractive models that Amazon has. I don't believe anything is ‘get rich quick’, but this has to be the closest thing to a money tree in Amazon that I've seen.”  - Carlos Alvarez  Increase Your Pricing Knowledge: Become a Champions of Value INSIDER!  To sign up go to insider.championsofvalue.com. Use the promo code ‘INSIDERNOW’  to take advantage of our special $5 offer for the first month.   Topics Covered:  01:55 - What are the different business models he teaches on how to play or compete in Amazon  03:08 - What is a Private Label business model  06:52 - How do you take off what you sell on Amazon  platform to your own platform  09:10 - What is a Resale Business and how does it differ from Private Label  10:53 - What is Amazon FBA?  13:33 - What is an arbitrage business model  15:01 - What is the pricing and value consideration of an arbitrage model  15:56 - What is Merch by Amazon and why it is considered as the money tree in Amazon  19:18 - What is Self-Publishing business channel and how does it work  23:47 - What is a good thing about Kindle in Amazon  24:51 - What is Carlos' business and how does he make money  25:53 - Carlos' best pricing advice    Key Takeaways:  “Merch is very exciting! I don't treat it like a business. And if I did, it would just make so much more. I have this really as a side thing on Amazon, but the revenues that it makes, and if you did treat it like a business and you dedicate some to it, it can be a lot more attractive than even what I said.” - Carlos Alvarez  “Buy low, sell high.” - Carlos Alvarez  “Depending on your business model, you can sell your Kindle books for free. How does that work? What happens is when someone downloads your book and they're much more likely to download it and take a risk on it, when it's free. Amazon's gonna pay you a royalty for that download and the amount of pages consumed. So it can be a very lucrative model and everyone feels like they won. Well, so with Kindle you can add links. So you can do a form of lead gen there, send people to a landing page, your YouTube to your podcast.” - Carlos Alvarez     Resources / Links:  GoDaddy  Amazon  eBay  Alexa  Target.com  Walmart    Connect with Carlos Alvarez:  E:[email protected]  LinkedIn  Instagram  Facebook    Connect with Mark Stiving:      Email: [email protected]       LinkedIn       Twitter