Back in 2017, John Muscarello was working full time and flipping furniture locally. He’d look around Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist for furniture, he would pay $50 for a piece of furniture, and then he’d flip it for $200.
After a while, he wanted to move his business online and away from furniture, so he began his research and came across a few videos on YouTube about selling books on Amazon. That was the moment he decided to change his business strategy.
Selling Books on Amazon
John’s first move was to look around thrift stores for books and to get all the software he needed to get started. He noticed that business was profitable, and his full-time job was not how he wanted to spend his days.
About two years into selling books on Amazon, John quit his job and scaled his online business. And scaling his business is exactly what he did. At the moment, John has been able to hire a lister and is in the process of searching for warehouse space. Pretty great for someone who started out flipping furniture locally.
Finding Books to Sell Online
John started by going to thrift stores in search of books to sell online. He tried to go to library sales and found that those sales were not his cup of tea. His most recent encounter at a library book sale saw two people getting kicked out for fighting and throwing books, making it just a little too cutthroat when there are other (less stressful) options out there to find books. John now deals with a bulk model to find his books.
This turned out to be fortuitous when the pandemic hit. While many sellers relied on getting their inventory from thrift stores, which were closed for some time back in March and April, John had found that he was still able to get books.
Scaling an Amazon FBA Business
Even though John feels he scaled his business pretty quickly, it wasn’t an instant or an overnight success. While still working his 9-5 job, John was using his breaks and weekends to find inventory. Often during his lunch break, he was trekking over to a local thrift shop to find books. When the weekend hit, he was off on the road looking for more shops and locations to find even more books. He sacrificed time with his family and friends because he believed in what he was doing. It’s easy to see someone’s Amazon FBA success and think that it all came to them quickly but what Instagram and YouTube don’t always show is all the hard work that goes into building up the business.
John advises to put in at least $200 to get you started the right way. You can get the right tools and software that will make life just a little easier. As with any business venture, you have to put in the hours to make it grow. John himself saw a lot of growth in a short span of time, but many hours were put in to get there. Now he’s ready for the next steps– a warehouse, a couple more employees, and AccelerList there to help him along the way. He has a plan to help people starting out with his blog, and he’s just ready to scale his business even more.
You can listen to John Muscarello’s interview on our podcast The Seller’s Corner.
