Are you looking for The Selling Family reviews? If you’ve been researching Amazon FBA opportunities, you might have come across The Selling Family.
If you’re wondering whether The Selling Family is legit, look no further. This review will explain what The Selling Family is, its cost, whether it is worth it, and whether it can help you be successful at starting an online business with Amazon FBA.
Let us get into it.
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What Is The Selling Family?
The Selling Family is a website that claims to help people earn money with Amazon FBA. It has blog posts, a newsletter, and various courses for sale.
The Selling Family brands itself as a family-owned business. It is owned by Jessica and Cliff, and they have a young son named Aiden.
According to Jessica, she lost her job in 2008. Over several years, however, she learned how to make money online with Amazon FBA.
In 2011, her Amazon FBA business was booming, and she was earning a nice income from home while being her own boss.
Your step-by-step guide to making money on Amazon. Includes modules on Amazon selling, account set-up, scanning apps, Amazon ranks, categories, Buy box, pricing, product listing, prepping, packing, shipping & more.
Cliff, her husband, decided to quit his job and focus on making money online with Amazon FBA when Jessica got pregnant with Aiden.
In 2012, the couple decided to start selling courses on Amazon FBA so that they could teach other people how to emulate their success and earn money from home.
In this article, I will review those courses and help you decide whether they are a good investment.
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What Is Amazon FBA?
If you already know what Amazon FBA is, feel free to skip to the next section.
If you are just searching for ways to make money online and came across The Selling Family, this section is for you, as I will briefly explain what Amazon FBA is.
Amazon FBA allows you to sell products on Amazon without storing any of them at your house or in a warehouse.
Many people think that they can’t start an Amazon business because it is too complicated.
After all, most people don’t have enough room in their house to store a lot of products, and most home entrepreneurs don’t have enough money to rent an entire warehouse upfront for a new business that may or may not be successful.
That is where Amazon FBA comes in. Instead of storing the products yourself before shipping them to your customers, Amazon will keep them for you.
Not only that, but Amazon will package and ship the products to your customers for you too! All you have to do is arrange with the manufacturer to send the products to Amazon’s warehouse, and Amazon will take care of the rest after that.
You only need to pay for the storage space you use. In other words, if you buy more stock and use up more storage space, you will pay more; if you order only a few products, you will pay less.
Amazon FBA provides a lot of flexibility and makes it easy for entrepreneurs to sell on Amazon without too many upfront costs.
However, that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily easy. There’s a lot of competition, and there’s a lot that goes into running a successful Amazon FBA business, including:
- Choosing the right niche
- Choosing the right products
- Choosing the right supplier
- Writing a good listing
- Responding to reviews and complaints
That’s where The Selling Family comes in. They promise to teach you how to run a successful Amazon FBA business, even if you are a complete newbie.
But do they live up to the hype?
In reality, The Selling Family places a large focus on retail arbitrage, which differs slightly from the eCommerce method I just explained and is not as good.
Your step-by-step guide to making money on Amazon. Includes modules on Amazon selling, account set-up, scanning apps, Amazon ranks, categories, Buy box, pricing, product listing, prepping, packing, shipping & more.
Instead of getting suppliers to ship products to Amazon FBA warehouses for you, you will be buying them yourself in person and sending them to Amazon FBA, so they can store them for you.
As you read through this article, you will understand more of what I am talking about.
Also Read: Best Amazon Keyword Ranking Tools
The Selling Family’s Courses: What Do They Teach?
Alright, you already know that The Selling Family sells courses on how to sell on Amazon. But what do these courses cover?
The main course is the Amazon Boot Camp 4.0 course, which promises to teach you how to get started with Amazon FBA.
However, if you already run an FBA business, there are various other courses that can help you improve your success, and I will cover those courses as well.
The Amazon Boot Camp 4.0
The Amazon Boot Camp is The Selling Family’s main course. In this section, I will provide a brief overview of the course, its modules, and its price, as well as whether I think it’s worth it.
The Amazon Boot Camp focuses on teaching you how to do retail arbitrage.
I will explain more about what retail arbitrage is soon, but for now, let me say this: While you can make money with retail arbitrage, it can be a hit or miss, and it’s not very scalable.
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Here are the modules included in The Amazon Boot Camp:
- Modules 1-2: In the first two modules, you will learn how to set yourself up as an Amazon seller. You will learn the basics here: How to create your account, getting your taxes in order, etc.
- Module 3: Tools and apps you will need for your business
- Modules 4-6: How to find the best products to sell, how to know if a product is profitable, how to decide how much stock to buy, etc.
- Modules 7-8: How to find products in local retail stores and online to flip on Amazon (retail arbitrage).
- Modules 9-13: How to list your products on Amazon, how much to charge, and how to send your products to Amazon FBA’s warehouse.
- Module 14: How to manage your business every day, how to respond to customers, etc.
So, how much does the Amazon Boot Camp 4.0 cost?
The course is $495 — this is a one-time payment. However, if you can’t afford to pay that much at once, you can also pay $195/month for 3 months, for a total of $585.
If you wish, you can purchase the more expensive Extra Support version, which costs $995 (this is a one-time fee).
Always check the sales page for updated pricing information.
It will give you three months of direct access to Jessica via email/text so that you can ask her questions about your business. You will also get one 30-minute personal call with her (this happens only once) and three live Q&A sessions every month.
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The Problem With Retail Arbitrage
The business model Amazon Boot Camp 4.0 teaches is retail arbitrage. They also teach online arbitrage, which is very similar.
Retail arbitrage involves buying products from local retail stores in your area and then selling them on Amazon. The course will teach you how to find cheap products in retail stores and sell them for a lot more on Amazon.
A common strategy is to look for clearance sales at your local Walmart, Target, or non-chain mom-and-pop store.
Your local Walmart might be selling a bunch of toys or moisturizers for a fraction of their original price due to a clearance sale; you can buy those products at a low cost and sell them on Amazon for their actual price.
Your step-by-step guide to making money on Amazon. Includes modules on Amazon selling, account set-up, scanning apps, Amazon ranks, categories, Buy box, pricing, product listing, prepping, packing, shipping & more.
Online arbitrage is similar, but it involves buying products at online retailers, like Target.com or any other online store, and then selling them on Amazon.
It gives you more flexibility and allows you to run a business without leaving the comfort of your home.
The problem with the retail arbitrage method is that it is not very scalable. Your local Walmart isn’t always running clearance sales, and you might not even live near a large store, making it quite inconvenient.
Online arbitrage is a bit more scalable, as there are unlimited sources and retailers to buy from. However, it is not nearly as scalable as other Amazon FBA business methods, such as private labeling or regular wholesale buying.
Private labeling is a business model where you order products with no label on them and slap your own brand on them before sending them to Amazon.
Usually, the manufacturer will slap your logo on the products for you before shipping them to Amazon’s warehouse.
That is a scalable business model because you are essentially starting your own brand. You can create new clothing lines, for example, or introduce new products to your brand.
On the other hand, with retail arbitrage, you miss out on the marketing and scalability possibilities that come with having your own brand.
You also are limited to what is available in local stores near you for cheap.
The Selling Family claims that they teach retail arbitrage because it is the easiest way to start an Amazon business.
You don’t have to deal directly with manufacturers or spend a lot of money upfront on a private label deal.
That is definitely true. Retail arbitrage has less of an entry barrier compared to private labels.
On the other hand, you must be aware that your options will be limited when you want to scale and that retail arbitrage is not a very good long-term business plan.
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Is The Amazon Boot Camp 4.0 Worth It?
Don’t get me wrong. The Amazon Boot Camp has excellent content.
The modules are great, and they are packed with information. Jessica really makes the course content easy to understand, even if you are a complete beginner at Amazon.
However, when it comes to price, I was a little put-off. For an Amazon FBA course that only teaches you retail arbitrage, $500 is not very affordable for most people struggling to make ends meet.
There are so many cheaper courses on Udemy and elsewhere that also teach you how to start an Amazon FBA or retail arbitrage business.
While they might not be as thorough as Amazon Boot Camp 4.0, they are only a fraction of the price.
Also, I didn’t like that you had to pay double the price to be able to ask questions. If you pay for the regular course price ($495), you can’t chat with Jessica or join the monthly Q&A sessions; you have to pay $995 for that.
An extra $500 just for support might be a bit hard for struggling moms who want to be entrepreneurs.
Of course, Jessica is very busy, and her time is precious, so she can charge that much; however, it might be unaffordable for you.
I do like that the course has a 60-day money-back guarantee, so you can get your money back if you are not satisfied.
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The Other Courses They Sell
While the Amazon Boot Camp is the main course that they sell, The Selling Family has many other courses and products. In this section, I will go over these courses and their prices.
Training
- Liquidation Gold — $47: Learn how to make more money by sourcing products from stores that are being liquidated. These products are usually very cheap.
- Category Ungating — $300: This training course will show you how to get approved to sell products in restricted categories on Amazon, even if you are a newbie seller.
- Q4 Profits — $97: Learn how to make more profits in the fourth quarter of the year. That’s when many sellers make more money due to buying sprees on Black Friday and before the holidays.
- Disney Store Profits — $48: Learn how to source products from The Disney Store.
- Niche Book Profits — $47: Learn how to make money by sourcing books from used book stores, thrift stores, and yard sales to sell on Amazon.
- Merchant Fulfilling — $47: You can fulfill the products yourself instead of using Amazon FBA, and this course will teach you how to do that.
- Quickbooks Course — $197: This course will teach you how to use Quickbooks to manage your Amazon business.
- Catch Up Accounting — $98: Learn how to catch up on Amazon business accounting that you have been neglecting.
BoloMart And Other Resources
BoloMart is a group where members share “hot” products. A member might share information about a target clearance sale happening right now, or they may have found a hot product online which you can flip on Amazon.
Each member has to share at least one product per month, and all products will be categorized and added to a spreadsheet so that you can easily find hot products.
BoloMart costs $100/month. Right now, you can also get it for $700/year with annual billing (check the BoloMart page for updated pricing information.)
Your step-by-step guide to making money on Amazon. Includes modules on Amazon selling, account set-up, scanning apps, Amazon ranks, categories, Buy box, pricing, product listing, prepping, packing, shipping & more.
In addition to BoloMart, The Selling Family is launching a membership in which all members will get access to 15 hot new product leads a day, sourced by a virtual assistant based on strict criteria.
This product is not yet active and is still in the making.
In addition, you can buy a list of 1001+ online stores for online arbitrage purposes. You can install this list in your Chrome browser as a bookmark folder; the list costs $37.
There is also a downloadable and printable Amazon Seller’s Planner, which has over 250 pages and will help you plan your business strategy. It costs $48.
The Selling Family: Free Information And Resources
Fortunately, The Selling Family also provides a lot of free information and resources. Just visit The Selling Family Blog, where you can learn a lot of information about selling on Amazon, even if you did not buy the course.
In addition to helpful blog posts, there are also resources and lists available, such as The Ultimate List of Amazon Resources for 2020.
You can also submit a question to Jessica. While this is not guaranteed to be answered (it is not like the direct messaging or live Q&A sessions that come with buying the premium version of the course), you may have your question answered in a future blog post or email newsletter.
What Are People Saying About The Selling Family?
So, what do other people think about The Selling Family? Is it worth it, and are clients satisfied with their purchases?
There are many reviews posted on other blogs about The Selling Family. While some mention the high price as a con, most reviews agree that The Selling Family is legit and not a scam.
For example, Work With Joshua agrees that The Selling Family is a good course, but he says that the fact that it focuses on retail arbitrage is one of the course’s weak points, as I mentioned myself earlier.
Also, he says that it won’t work great for those outside the US due to the emphasis on retail arbitrage, which is geared towards US stores like Target.
Internet Scam Report concludes that The Selling Family is legit but mentions the high price point as a con.
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The Selling Family: Pros And Cons
What are the pros and cons of The Selling Family?
Pros
- It is legit and offers real, useful information.
- The course is very broad and doesn’t leave anything out.
- It is designed for newbies, so you will understand everything even if you never had an online business before and don’t know where to start.
- The course takes you by the hand, so to speak, and walks you through every step of setting up an Amazon account and achieving success.
- There is a lot of free information offered as well!
Cons
- The course is rather expensive. As I mentioned before, there are cheaper courses out there. There is also a lot of free information available online, on YouTube and elsewhere. If you are a struggling mom or a student trying to make money online, $500 is a lot of money.
- There is no direct support offered in the regular plan. You have to pay double (almost $1000) to be able to join the monthly Q&A sessions and ask Jessica questions. I don’t feel like it should cost that much more just for some support.
- It focuses on retail arbitrage. I already explained that while retail arbitrage might not have such a high entry barrier, it is also not very scalable when compared to private labeling. The fact that they also teach online arbitrage makes this less of a con, though.
- It is geared towards those in the USA. Since a lot of the course focuses on retail arbitrage, the information might not be entirely accurate if you live somewhere like New Zealand, Spain, Russia, Brazil, Egypt, etc.
- You have to pay extra for everything! This is one of the biggest cons, in my opinion. I’m not too fond of products that have upsells. While The Selling Course does not have hidden upsells, it also does not offer an all-in-one price. For example, if you want access to BoloMart, you have to pay an extra $100/month. If you wish to access the Disney Store training course, you have to pay extra as well. A lot of these courses cost around $50 or $100, so buying just a few of them can really add up!
Your step-by-step guide to making money on Amazon. Includes modules on Amazon selling, account set-up, scanning apps, Amazon ranks, categories, Buy box, pricing, product listing, prepping, packing, shipping & more.
Wrapping It Up: Is The Selling Family Legit And Worth It?
The Selling Family is definitely legit. If you can afford it, it is actually one of the best courses and resources for newbie Amazon sellers who don’t know where to start.
I really like that they get you started with the basics; you won’t have to worry about getting lost. If you want, you can sign up for one on one support from Jessica herself, who will guide you for a few months as you set up your Amazon business.
Having an expert Amazon seller on hand to answer your questions can really make the difference between achieving success with Amazon FBA and failing.
On the other hand, The Selling Family has its flaws as well. If you are a struggling entrepreneur on a strict budget, you might not be able to afford the price.
In addition, the fact that it doesn’t go beyond retail/online arbitrage and teach you how to branch out to private labeling further down the road is another flaw, in my opinion.
Finally, I didn’t like how you had to pay extra for every single course; I wish there were some option to get all the courses at once for a discount.