The Amazon FBA Workbook
The Amazon FBA Workbook by Profitable Inventors is a guide to product development, from idea to the Amazon FBA marketplace. It’s an excel spreadsheet that gives you the framework, structure and guidance you need to profitably get your ideas into the world.
What is the Amazon FBA Workbook?
The workbook is a spreadsheet that you fill out while you are working through your product development journey. It is both something to read, and something to fill in. As you complete the earlier chapters of the workbook, it forms a business plan for what you intend to do moving forward. As you move later into the process, it is a method of documentation to tell you what you’ve done. Documentation is underestimated, especially when you are far into the process, as it’s easy to ask: “What did I do there again?”, forgetting what you’ve done.
A highlight of the workbook is a “profit calculator” that includes all the costs that you will encounter during the process, with space to make notes aside each expense, to accurately calculate an estimated profit margin when finding potential products. There is also a cash flow calculator, that predicts the amount of cash you will require for your second order dependent on the values you’ve entered into the profit calculator. With these calculators you should be able to gain clarity with your projected finances.
The spreadsheet is also printable. This way, if you prefer, you can keep a hard-copy portfolio of your business plans or product descriptions of your business.
There are action checklists after each section to ensure that nothing is forgotten, and that each step has been completed in a logical and sequential fashion.
In total, there are 23 excel sheets and 551 excel formulas.
Who is the Amazon FBA Workbook for?
It’s for those who are curious about developing a product to sell
It’s for inventors who have an idea for a product but do not know how to get it to market
It’s for people who are looking to start a new side-hustle or hobby in the product development space
It’s for those who want to be clear on profit margins when testing the viability of a product
It’s for those who want a template to easily document everything related to the products they develop
It’s for those who have failed their first or second product when selling on Amazon
It’s for people who want a step-by-step checklist on how to execute on their product development ideas
Its for people who want to find clarity on the product development process
It’s for people who prefer to learn the information on product development by reading
What’s included?
Overview of entire process
Checkboxes after each section to tick off progress
Notes on product research
In-depth profit margin calculator
Cash flow calculator
Space to document expenses
Guided questions to build up your business strategy
Guided questions to build your preliminary customer avatar
Guided questions to complete competitor analysis
Guidance on Amazon product launch and Amazon paid advertisement (PPC)
Print-friendly formatting
Where did the Workbook come from?
This spreadsheet was written on reflection of my experiences on producing “reusable” tea infusers, sold in the U.S. via Amazon’s FBA program. I procured these, and tried to build a brand around them after learning that teabags have a film of plastic around them. I wanted to help the environment (and hopefully also make some profit) by selling re-usable tea bags, that you would not throw away to land-fill after a single use.
I used courses from YouTube, read many, many books (there is such a thing as reading too many books) and took a course. I used Jungle Scout to gather Amazon data and made the leap of faith and made my order. I was quite naive but managed to break even in the end. This spreadsheet is now a result of learning from my mistakes, learning from better quality resources and my time spent working in the UK manufacturing sector as an engineer.
It’s always been my dream to own a product development business but I’ve never had the frameworks available to me to enable or help me get to where I want to go. This is why I wrote the spreadsheet. It’s an attempt to get the product costs right, and to get the process in a straight line.
To the best of my knowledge, it is accurate at the time of writing and I can assure you that the spreadsheet is good value for money which is why I personally use it myself when assessing products for their viability. The reason it is not free is because I have accumulated and added to the spreadsheet for over a year now, and I have a spent considerable amount of time writing it, and I will continue to add to it going forward. The price is therefore an attempt to recoup my time spent, if any of you readers deem it suitable for your purchase that is.
Furthermore, if you do actually download it – please actually use it! Get if touch with me if you have any questions about the process, or if you want to offer feedback to further improve the spreadsheet for everyone’s benefit.
Happy inventing,
Ollie.