If I could only give you one piece of sourcing advice, it would be this. When you are scanning leads on Amazon Canada, the very first filter you should set is Amazon out of stock. Every single time. No exceptions. Here is why. When Amazon is selling a product directly, they have basically infinite inventory. They control the listing. They set the price. And they win the Buy Box roughly 90% of the time. You are not going to out-compete Amazon on their own platform when they are actively selling the same product. I learned this the hard way back in 2022 when I was just getting started. I found what I thought was this amazing lead. Great margins on paper. I bought 20 units, sent them in, and then just sat there watching Amazon hold the Buy Box for weeks. My units collected dust in the warehouse while I paid storage fees. I think I ended up breaking even after everything, which honestly felt like a loss considering the time I put in. After that I made it a rule. If Amazon is on the listing and actively in stock, I move on. Period. There are thousands of other products where Amazon is NOT competing with you. Why would you pick a fight you are almost guaranteed to lose? Now there is one exception. If you have solid data showing Amazon is going out of stock soon or they tend to go in and out on that ASIN, that can actually be a great opportunity. But you need the data to back it up. Keepa is your best friend here. Look at the stock history, see if there is a pattern, and only then consider jumping in. For everyone just getting started, keep it simple. Filter for Amazon out of stock and focus your energy on leads where you actually have a shot at the Buy Box. You will save yourself so much time and money. This one filter alone probably saved me from dozens of bad buys over the last few years. And when you are doing $1.8M in total sales like I have since starting in July 2022, those saved bad buys add up to tens of thousands of dollars. What about you? Have you ever gotten burned buying a product where Amazon was the main seller? Or do you already filter them out? Drop your experience below.

Something I want to talk about today because I see this come up all the time, and honestly it tripped me up for a long time too. When you're new to OA, the standard advice is: test order. Buy 2 or 3 units. See if they sell. If they do, buy more. Makes sense on paper. It's safe. It's how you limit risk when you don't know what you're doing yet. But here's the problem nobody mentions. Test orders actually work AGAINST you when it comes to winning the buy box. And if you can't win the buy box, your test units don't sell. And if your test units don't sell, you think the product is bad. So you move on. But the product might have been great. You just never gave it a real shot. Let me explain why. I used to think the buy box was about reviews. Everybody told me that. Seller with 500 reviews beats the seller with 10 reviews. I believed it for over two years. Then my second mentor flipped my whole understanding. This guy started selling AFTER me, but today he does $300K a month. He was dominating buy boxes everywhere. I asked him what his secret was. He said, "Why do you think reviews matter?" I said, "That's just what everyone told me." He said, "Don't you think it's more about inventory?" And that changed everything. Here's how the buy box actually works in Canada. Amazon's goal is to get the product to the customer as fast as possible. If you and I both send 10 units to FBA at the same price, my stock might go to the Ontario warehouse and yours goes to Alberta. A customer in Quebec is going to get my product faster because it's closer. Amazon gives me the buy box for that customer. Now here's where it gets interesting. If I send 300 units instead of 10, Amazon takes 50 and puts them in Ontario, sends 30 to Alberta, ships some to BC. Suddenly my inventory is everywhere across the country. I can serve customers in EVERY region fast. Amazon rewards that by giving me way more buy box share. That's why big sellers dominate. It's not because they have 500 reviews. It's because they have inventory distributed across the entire fulfillment network. Amazon is going to reward the seller that gives them the most flexibility to deliver quickly.

Everyone talks about finding leads. Scanning. Keepa. ROI calculators. Cool. But nobody teaches you how to actually buy the stuff efficiently. And that's where most new sellers leave money on the table. Here's what I mean. You find a product at a Canadian retailer. Great ROI. You want 20 units. But the site has a limit of 3 per order. Most people either give up or just buy 3 and move on. I don't do that. There are ways around order limits. Different addresses. Different payment methods. Timing your orders across a few days instead of all at once. I've been doing this for 4 years and never once had an issue. Never had an account flagged. Never been at risk. The key is not being greedy about it. Space things out. Be smart. Retailers care about resellers buying 200 units in one shot. They don't care about someone placing a few normal-looking orders over a week. Here's my approach when I find a solid lead: 1. Test order first. Always. Buy 2-3 units and confirm the product matches the listing, condition is right, no weird surprises. 2. If the test checks out, scale up. Place multiple smaller orders over a few days. Different shipping addresses if you have them (home, office, family). 3. Track everything. Every order number, every unit cost, every retailer. This feels boring now but trust me, 6 months in you'll be glad you did. 4. Know when to stop. If a deal is good, other people found it too. Don't over-order thinking you're the only one. Check Keepa offer count before going heavy. The sourcing part gets all the attention. But the purchasing part is where you actually make or lose money. Get good at this and you'll scale way faster than someone who finds better leads but can't execute. What's the most units you've ever ordered of a single product? Drop it below.

You still gotta eat s*** for a year to really prove to Amazon that you are a legitimate seller. And that's the only way out. The only way the light on the other side of the tunnel is showing up every day.

Since I just turned 18 I was wondering what bank statement I could provide to get me verified as a void check was not enough