Hello and welcome to fbajourney.com!

If you’re reading this, then you must be interested in Amazon’s FBA (fulfillment by Amazon) program.  I’m going to share with you the story of how my own FBA journey started, and how I went from wanting to make some extra cash to succeeding with my own FBA business!  ***For a detailed year by year version of my story, see this post***

In 2014, I was actively searching for alternative ways to earn some cash, what some people call a “side hustle”.  At the time, I would have been happy to just supplement my current income, maybe make an extra $100 or $200 per month.  By a stroke of luck, I stumbled onto a winning idea that would produce far greater results, although I didn’t realize it at first…

Like many people, I spent my lunch break at work, or evenings at home, researching ideas for making money on the side.  I didn’t have any particular focus at first, researching stock market “day trading” strategies online, or reading books about flipping houses; really anything I could find.

I needed something I could do while still holding a full-time job, as there was no way I could afford to live without working.  Neither the stock market, house-flipping, nor anything else I found, were realistic given the amount of spare time I had available (almost none), and amount of starting capital I had available (almost none).

I eventually discovered blogs about people’s personal experiences selling products online, and they kept talking about some Amazon thing called “FBA”.  I had no idea what that was at the time, but their results seemed promising, so I decided to research it further.

Fulfillment by Amazon, or “FBA”, is a service whereby you list items for sale on Amazon, send those items to Amazon’s warehouses, and (this is the important part), Amazon packs and sends out those individual products to customers for you!

It’s important to understand how powerful that last part is, because that’s the real value of Amazon FBA.  It’s what makes FBA so useful as a side-hustle, because it allows you to live your life, work a full-time job, while someone else sends out customer orders on your behalf!

At first, I didn’t know what to think, as I’m a skeptical person by nature, and it seemed too good to be true.  Could there really be anything to Amazon FBA?  Were the results these blogs were claiming real?  They showed lots of screenshots, with sales of thousands of dollar worth of products, and they seemed genuine.  How were they doing this?

One of these blogs suggested selling items you have lying around your home that you no longer need, and specifically mentioned books.  I thought about it for a bit, and decided I would give Amazon FBA a try.  At worst, I would lose some of my time and some old books that I would never do anything with anyway.

So in January of 2015, I created an Amazon Seller Central account, listed a dozen or so old text books for sale, and sent them into Amazon.

I honestly didn’t expect much from this.  I hoped maybe 1 or 2 books would sell, I would make a few bucks, and that would be it.  However, the unexpected happened—all the books sold within a few weeks, and in total I made over $200!

From my perspective, these books were just lying around and didn’t have any value.  I was blown away that people actually paid me real money for them!  This experience went exactly as I had wished, but didn’t think was really possible: something I could do in my spare time to earn some extra cash!

After this success, I started looking for sources where I could find more books, or anything else for that matter, that I could resell on Amazon.  My FBA journey was underway!

Thanks to my hard work and dedication, I’m now able to make a living selling on Amazon. I have no job, no boss, no commute, or any of the other stressful things I use to have to deal with every day. I’m free and it feels great!

Thanks for taking the time to read my story.  I hope you find the rest of this blog useful as you contemplate your own FBA journey!