When you find a winner, don't just reorder it. Find its cousins. I had a kitchen brand doing 60% ROI. Instead of just buying more, I searched Amazon for "frequently bought together" and "customers also viewed." Found 4 similar products from the same retailer. 3 of them hit 40%+ ROI. One winner turned into a whole category I now own. Your winners are telling you where to look. Are you listening?

i failed at amazon the first time. at 18 i was convinced private label was the move. spent months trying. researching products. talking to manufacturers. got absolutely nowhere. so i did what most people do when their business dream dies... i got a job. not a cool startup. not a side hustle. the SAQ. the quebec liquor board. literally one of the most corporate, bureaucratic jobs you can imagine. i spent 5 years there. worked my way up to director level. and every single day i thought i was wasting my life. inventory management. supply chain logistics. vendor negotiations. sales forecasting. reading spreadsheets until my eyes bled. none of it felt like it was leading anywhere. then at 25, i came back to amazon. this time doing online arbitrage instead of private label. and something weird happened. all those "boring skills" from the SAQ? they were the entire game. → tracking inventory across locations? that's managing FBA shipments → reading sales velocity data? that's keepa graphs → negotiating with vendors? that's understanding margin → managing a team in a slow-moving organization? that's patience when amazon takes 3 weeks to check in your inventory i didn't realize it at the time, but those 5 years weren't a detour. they were training. the stuff that makes most new sellers quit: the spreadsheets, the tracking, the waiting, the boring daily grind of checking numbers...that was literally my day job for half a decade. i'm not saying you need to work at a liquor board. but whatever you did before amazon: retail, office work, trades, whatever, you probably have skills that directly apply to this business. you just haven't connected the dots yet. the people who win at amazon aren't the ones with the best product sourcing instincts on day one. they're the ones who treat it like a real business. who track everything. who don't panic when things break. who show up even when it's boring. because this business is boring 90% of the time. the 10% that isn't boring is when you check your dashboard and realize the boring stuff is printing money.

How do you pull your tax info from Amazon to do your taxes? Or do you just fill out the paperwork on Amazon and they automatically send it to the government?

How to Actually Read Keepa Graphs (The Canadian Way) You're in FBA Canadian Academy, which means you're not here to play around. So let me give you something real. I've been doing this for 4 years. $117k/month in sales on Amazon.ca at peak. And I still use Keepa on literally every single purchase decision. Not because I don't trust my gut - because my gut has cost me thousands when I ignored the data. This post is going to save you money. Probably a lot of it. But I'm also going to be honest with you about something at the end. Your going to want to read until the end THE PROBLEM NOBODY TALKS ABOUT You've probably watched some YouTube videos about Keepa. Maybe from American sellers doing $500k/month on Amazon.com. Here's the thing: their advice will get you killed up here. When some US guru says "BSR under 50,000 is golden" - yeah, in THEIR marketplace, that might mean 100+ units a month. There are 350 million Americans buying stuff. Canada? We've got 40 million people. Our market is roughly 1/10th the size. A BSR of 50,000 here might mean 3 sales a month. Maybe. Then there's the 3% DST they tack onto our fees. The harder ungating. The slower velocity on everything. American advice applied to the Canadian market = expensive lessons. The flip side? Less competition. Easier to establish a presence. Fewer sharks in the water. The barrier to entry IS the moat. But you need Keepa skills tuned for Canada specifically, or you're just guessing with extra steps. WHAT YOU'RE ACTUALLY LOOKING AT When you pull up a Keepa graph, most people see chaos. Squiggly lines going everywhere. Here's what matters: Green Line (Sales Rank/BSR) - This is the heartbeat. When the line drops, a sale happened. Counterintuitive but you'll get used to it. Steady drops = steady sales. Flat line with occasional drops = slow mover. Orange Line (Amazon) - When you see solid orange, Amazon is selling directly. They have infinite inventory and will win the Buy Box 90% of the time. Unless you KNOW they're going out of stock, this is usually a "stay away."

I see this pattern constantly. You find a product. ROI looks good. Keepa shows sales. You order 5 units to "test it." It sits. Barely moves. You think the product sucks. You don't reorder. You move on. Here's the thing nobody tells you: the test order was the problem. Not the product. Every US guru will tell you reviews determine buy box rotation. The seller with 500 reviews dominates, so don't bother competing. That's not how it works. ---->Inventory distribution determines buy box rotation <---- Here's what's actually happening with high-review sellers: They're not scared to send 200 units. Amazon distributes those units across multiple warehouses. When a customer orders, the seller with inventory closest to them wins the buy box because Amazon prioritizes fast delivery. That seller with 500 reviews? He's winning because he has units in 8 warehouses. You have 5 units sitting in one. Amazon literally can't give you the buy box. There's no inventory to distribute. The test order catch-22 - You send 5 units to "test" - Amazon can't distribute 5 units across warehouses - You never win buy box rotation - Product doesn't sell - You think it was a bad product - You don't reorder - The product WAS good... you just never gave it a chance So what do you actually do? Stop looking at reviews as competition. Start looking at how many other FBA sellers are on the listing and how much inventory they likely have. If there's 1 FBA seller with 1,500 reviews, yeah ... skip it. But if there's 3-4 FBA sellers with moderate reviews? Your 20 units can compete because you're not fighting warehouse distribution against a giant. The analysis happens BEFORE you buy. Not after. Pick battles where your inventory size can actually win rotation. That's how you turn "tests" into actual sales data. Anyone else been stuck in the test-order trap?