The old saying is true. “Behind every good man is a great woman.” My wife, Rebecca, is a tremendous help in making FBA our full-time job. She’s a part-time writer and a full-time homemaker, but she still finds time to help the family business. She’ll join us along the way and give us valuable and unique insights. I’m looking forward to seeing what blog posts she’ll bring to our community here at Full-Time FBA. But enough from me…
Greetings, everyone! Until recently, my experience with Amazon was mostly related to purchasing books, one of my favorite things to do as an English major and freelance writer. But a few months ago Stephen and I began exploring the idea of my joining him in his FBA business, and I started to see Amazon in a whole new light. As I understood more about how Fulfillment By Amazon works (how it frees up the seller to do more sourcing, the part of online selling that I’m most intrigued by) I was willing to give it a try.
Before we joined forces in the business, Stephen was limited in the amount of inventory he could send in — limited by the time he could spend driving to retail stores, thrift stores, and garage sales, as well as the time he could spend preparing the inventory to be sent in to Amazon. Stephen has a sharply focused mind for business and is always coming up with creative ideas for how to increase the profit margin or find new inventory, but he needed help carrying out tasks that require a few hours of time in a chunk.
That’s where I could help. He handles the financial side of things and developing the direction of our business. I help him strategize how to prioritize our time to accomplish those goals, and I help to carry out the more mundane aspects of the business, like removing stickers, scouting local thrift stores and garage sales, etc. The flexibility of the schedule means I’m able to work part-time helping him with the FBA business and continue writing part-time to pursue my personal publishing goals, as well as keeping the household running smoothly (we have lots of laundry with four boys!).
We’ve found that FBA works well for us as a family and allows us to have the kind of schedule we prefer, as well as allows us to pour as little or as much of ourselves and our time into the business on any given day. We work extra hours some days to make lighter days for family outings at other times. Stephen spends more time with the boys than the average dad who works outside the home at an 8-to-5 job, and we wouldn’t trade that for the world.
My contribution to the blog will be occasional posts about the support aspect of the business. Also, I’ll sometimes add a few lines of my own perspective within Stephen’s posts. I’m looking forward to getting to know the FBA community through this blog and to hearing the experiences of others who are in this business.
Hi Rebecca,
I salute you, Fellow English Major! I am new to FBA, and I hope to be able to do more writing myself one day. Right now, I’m teaching at a community college, and the pay is not making the ends meet–no raise in eight years, and as you well know, prices that I pay for needs have increased. SO, I have really gotten a pay cut over those years. I hope FBA is going to help me “mind the gap.” I look forward to reading ways that you make FBA work as a couple.
Pat
Hi Pat, thanks so much for joining us here. That’s great that you’ve gotten started in FBA to supplement your income — teaching is such an underpaid but potentially rewarding profession, and I salute you for sticking with it. Wishing you great success in FBA and all aspects of life!
– Rebecca
How can I convince my wife to get more on board?
Kalki, we actually address this question in our soon to be released book, Married to Reselling: Balancing Family Life with your Online Business. We do have another blog post that you might find helpful here: https://www.fulltimefba.com/how-to-be-married-to-fba/
Ok, on to actually answering your question: One of the best ways to convince them is to show them your numbers… What the business costs you, how many hours it takes, and what profit you are netting. But the real question is this: Why does your spouse not want to come more on board? Do they not find it interesting? Do they think it’s a waste of time? Really listen to your spouse’s answers to these questions and that will help you decide how to best handle if it’s a good fit for them to join you with reselling.
Not every doctor wants his spouse to be a nurse so they can make together and make more money. Not all reseller spouses will want to resell, and that’s ok. If your spouse doesn’t want to join you, be ok with that and don’t take it personally.
Hope my 2 cents are helpful.
Great post!
Like I always have said, “Behind every great man is a good woman, and if the man’s wife ever finds out about her, the man is in big trouble” 😉
But seriously…good to meet your partner…Likewise, I couldn’t do my online business without the help of my wife…She keeps me grounded, focused, on an even keel, and she looks after details I would miss or simply not do.
Wives are also great for inflating your ego when you need a boost, and deflating it when you need some TRUTH 🙂
Here’s to good wives everywhere..how do they put up with us great men??
I thank God daily for how my wife puts up with me… she’s amazing.
Dear Mrs. Rebecca
The problem I’m having is everything I source online the prices tank as soon as I receive it. What method do you use to keep it from happening so often.
Hi Ron,
That’s a good question and one that we wrestle with as well. I think the biggest thing is to make sure you’re doing thorough research before you make buying decisions. This is a big one for me — to make sure I slow down and do enough research before pulling the trigger. Be sure to look at CamelCamelCamel and Keepa to see if the current FBA selling price is unnaturally high, if the item is actually selling at that price, if AZ is just temporarily out of stock, etc. These are just a few factors in driving a price back down after you send it in to FBA. Besides doing careful research, we also make sure that we’re buying items with enough margin that if the price does go down a little, we still have some wiggle room. It takes a little trial and error to find what kind of margin you’re comfortable with, what kind of sales rank, number of competitors, etc.
Hope this helps!