Full Disclosure: I am writing this review based on what has been released to the public. I do not have review access and I do not own the product.
EDIT (6/29/13): I’ve changed my recommendation about the program. I still suggest you read through this post to follow my original line of thinking, and you will find a link at the end which takes you to a post describing why I changed my mind.
EDIT (9/13/13): A LOT has changed since I first wrote this post. I’ve personally gone through the course and it has changed my life. After just a few months I’m making more money than I’ve ever made in my life – JUST from Amazing Selling Machine profit.
Read my updated review here: Amazing Selling Machine Relaunching on September 24th
This is honest feedback. I am not an affiliate of this product and there are no affiliate links for it on this page.
Amazing Selling Machine – What is it?
I have to give Matt Clark and Jason Katzenback credit for sharing a lot of information about the product for free. You can get a very good idea of the business model just by watching the teaser videos and going through the free PDF’s.
It may be a little confusing to those who don’t have any experience with Amazon FBA, but it’s actually fairly simple and the same strategy I’ve been using for some time.
I’ll skip over any of the “how to get started with Amazon” stuff that describes FBA and how the selling process works. Basically, their idea is that you browse through Amazon.com to find best sellers across various categories. As you go through them, you are looking for items priced between $7.00 and $40.00 that have “private label” potential. The strategy is to create your own brand of products that have high demand and use various techniques to rank them well within Amazon.
While the concept behing Amazing Selling Machine is very simple, the difficult aspects are obviously (1) finding reliable sources that can private label the product at a profitable price and (2) ranking your products within Amazon.
So, looking at point number one, how do you find reliable sources. In the video, they tell you to perform a few simple Google searches and that you’ll find more than enough with a little leg work. Of course, I don’t know if they provide any other tips to those who purchase the course, but in my experience it’s difficult, but possible.
If there’s any value in the course that can’t be found elsewhere, it’s probably in point number two – ranking your new product within Amazon. They provide a few tips in the free videos/PDF’s, but I bet there’s a lot they are holding back only for paying members. In the free info, they recommend soliciting (real) reviews from friends, family or an existing buyers list, sending out a press release with coupon, and using YouTube to drive some traffic. The purpose of these steps is to show Amazon that your brand new product is “hot”, at which point they’ll begin to rank it higher in search. Once you are ranking and have more reviews providing social proof about the quality of your product, you can start raising your prices to increase profits.
Now, I can’t tell you if what they are holding back is any good since I haven’t seen the course, but if I had to pinpoint where value is created, I’d say it’s here. If this were a less expensive course, I’d say buy it right away, but it’s actually being sold for $3,500, so I have a difficult time recommending it at this price (from what I’ve seen).
I like the strategy, but it’s not rocket science, so don’t be fooled into thinking this course is the best thing since sliced bread just because it’s priced so high. Keep in mind everyone promoting this right now is an affiliate, so they are likely earning BIG commissions on each sale. Read their reviews with a grain of salt.
If you’re looking for a less expensive, quality course on how to sell on Amazon, check out Jim Cockrum’s Proven Amazon Course or read my review (full disclosure: I will earn a commission of you buy through this link, but I personally bought a copy of it myself.)
Jim Cockrum’s strategy for sourcing product is very different, but there is some really great info about selling on Amazon, and you can of course use the idea of private labeling products in conjunction with this.
So, in conclusion, this looks like Matt Clark teaches a good business model, but I wouldn’t recommend buying the course at $3,500 unless it’s truly disposable income. Save some money by buying a less expensive course, and implementing the free info that’s been provided in the Amazing Selling Machine videos/PDFs.
UPDATE: March 12, 2013
I did some more thinking about this and came up with some additional reasons why I think this is an overpriced system and I DO NOT recommend you buy it:
I certainly believe that money can be made with this approach. That being said, there are a few reasons why I wouldn’t recommend buying this, but ultimately it’s all about price.
Their stated reason for releasing this course is that there are plenty of opportunities to go around and the shared knowledge actually helps their business. Matt Clark claims that his business tripled since Amazon Money Machine was released last year. While this may be fact, my BS radar goes off for a few reasons:
- From what I understand, Amazon Money Machine (which I don’t own), focused on private labeling health supplements. If he expanded to other types of private label products after the AMM release, this is probably the cause of his increased business and it has little to do with the fact that he shared his knowledge with a network of Amazon sellers.
- Matt is claiming that he and Jason are each PROFITING more than $100,000 per month with this just a HANDFUL of products, so that’s at least $1.2 million in profit, each. Let’s do the math: If they sell 1,000 memberships to ASM (which is a high estimate), that’s $3.5 million in total revenue. Not all will be sold through affiliates, so let’s assume they pay an average of 25% commission (I bet it’s higher than that), their gross profit is now about $2.6 million before all expenses associated with the launch and running the business. I don’t know what their cost structure is like, but let’s be very, very conservative and round their net profit down to an even $2.5 million. If they split this between the two of them, that’s $1.25 million each. If you read through the PDFs Jason claims to have only 3-4 products and Matt claims that 80% of his revenue comes from just 5 products. WHY would they go through all this trouble of selling this great system if they could make that much money in a year by just adding a few more products?
While there may be several million products available for sale on Amazon, the universe of products that fit their model is relatively small. My guess is that they are having a difficult time finding new product’s to sell, so they are selling the ASM system instead.
On page 5 of the 2nd PDF, although Matt claims about 5 products drive 80% of the money, he sells about 30. That means that less than 20% of the products he selects are “winners”, indicating that the opportunity may not be as large or as easy as he makes it seem.
If a “winning” product is so profitable, yet difficult to find, there is no reason why any rationale person would share this strategy (through the free videos and PDFs) with THOUSANDS of other people if he was capable of adding another $1.2 million annually in profit to his business vs. a one-time profit of $1.25 million for selling ASM. Remember, they published 17 “hot” products in the 2nd PDF. If these easy-to-find opportunities were nearly as lucrative as they imply, they could have made millions of dollars by keeping the information to themselves. Ask yourself why they did this.
Now imagine 1,000 new ASM members trolling through the same Amazon Best Seller lists. My guess is that a small number will do very well, but the rest will have wasted their money. For $3,500, that’s too big a chance to take.
Instead, I’d recommend taking a close look at the Proven Amazon Course. You can read my review or access the official site. As a reminder, I will receive a commission if you purchase the Proven Amazon Course through my link.
UPDATE: September 13, 2013
I’ve changed my position about the course. You can read full details in my posts Amazing Selling Machine: I Admit I was Wrong and Amazing Selling Machine Relaunching on September 24th
Please don’t hesitate to post questions or comments below.
Dax