Trevin Peterson found out about Amazon FBA in 2017. Six months later, he quit his job. Before that, he tried many different side hustles but was unsuccessful. He uses a software tool and his observational skills to determine which products to sell. For as long as Trevin Peterson can remember, he has wanted to be an entrepreneur.
He has tried just about anything to build a business. When he was 12 years old, he made flyers and handed them out in his neighborhood, offering services like lawn mowing, poop cleaning, and garbage disposal for $5 to $20 per request, he told Insider. His early entrepreneurial attempt added about $40 a week to his pocket.
College was another path he tried. He began in 2016 by attending Utah Valley University, where he received an associate’s degree in arts but dropped out before receiving his bachelor’s degree. He didn’t feel like he was learning anything useful or new and so he felt that college wasn’t worth the cost.
One assignment really hit home for him. It was a task to put together a business plan, which Peterson not only completed but executed online — an additional step that wasn’t asked for. It was an ecommerce business on Shopify selling iPhone adapters and chargers, and it was his first introduction to selling things online.
Peterson annoyingly received a “C” for the assignment. It also didn’t escape him that his professor was formerly a business owner whose venture had failed. “And I was like, ‘okay, well I can’t really learn from somebody that’s failed a business, this doesn’t make any sense,” Peterson said.
The ecommerce store wasn’t wildly successful but he managed to sell about $500 worth of products, he said.
He also learned a lesson: It’s hard to get people to buy things online.
Tried, tested, and failed attempts While in college, he tried a clothing popup shop where he bought wholesale clothes from a boutique, and then hosted events at his house to sell them. He used a $1,500 gift from his mother-in-law to purchase the initial inventory. It wasn’t a complete failure: Peterson and his wife made a little bit of money but nothing significant enough to live off of, he said.
The couple then attempted to nail down brand deals by growing an Instagram page for their dog. The account reached about 12,000 followers when some deals began to trickle in from pet brands. However, it was mostly in the form of free products and, at times, a few hundred dollars a month, which also couldn’t pay the bills.
He also tried selling call-center software for six months but didn’t make a single sale.
“The best part is, I had no idea what I was selling. I was hired to just cold call, cold email, and I was basically an appointment setter,” Peterson said of the experience.
Instead of continuing to spend his time and money in college, in 2017, he decided to work for his dad who owned a construction company. His role was that of a superintendent project manager who oversaw subcontractors for various projects. It was a job he kept for over a year. In the interim, Peterson also tried additional side hustles like selling a sports app for a network marketing company, which didn’t work out because the company went out of business.
Finding fulfillment in AmazonIn November 2017, Peterson heard about Fulfillment by Amazon from a seller friend. He didn’t know that anyone could sell on Amazon and became interested in the idea. So Peterson began doing his research and within a few weeks, he was ready to launch his first product: A seatbelt gap filler. It was an item that was placed between the center console and the seat to prevent things from falling. The initial idea came from a company that was featured on Shark Tank, but he didn’t know that.
Trevin Peterson He was able to find the product on Alibaba, the Chinese ecommerce company that provides wholesale products. He said he ordered 100 units of the gap filler for $400. To his surprise, the product did well and he sold 50 units within a few days — until he received a cease and desist letter from the patent holder of the product.
“I didn’t know I was infringing on anyone’s patent, and so I basically closed down that product,” Peterson said.
He created a removal order so that Amazon’s warehouse would dispose of the remainder of the units.
He realized that the hardest part of the process was figuring out what to sell. So he began trying his luck with different products. Next, Peterson launched a car phone mount. He spent $500 on inventory and a few hundred dollars to advertise it and sold nothing. Altogether, he recalls losing about $900 on that idea.
“I was like, ‘oh, everyone loves this’. But little did I know, the competition on Amazon for this particular product was super, super high and I lost a bunch of money on that,” Peterson said.
The biggest lesson he learned from that experience was that you don’t want to sell a product that has a lot of competition. This means other Amazon sellers have already amassed thousands of good reviews for the same product.
The next product he tried was a fidget pen, which helps with ADHD. Again, it began to do well until Amazon banned selling the product without documents and approvals due to safety issues, he said.
It wasn’t until the sixth product that Peterson began to see real progress. By this time, he started to understand that there are key variables that make up a good product idea.
“On Amazon, there are millions of shoppers, and the goal is to find a product that people are already searching for. And I didn’t quite understand that concept,” Peterson said of his first few attempts.
Within six months of starting, or by May of 2018, he told Insider he was able to replace his income, which wasn’t much money at the time. His 9-to-5 salary while working for his dad was about $36,000 a year. Peterson was 22 years old and his expenses were minimal. Rent living in Bluffdale, Utah was about $1,000 and he wasn’t living any lavish lifestyle. Once he began to make about $2,500 in profit, he was comfortable enough to quit his job.
“Looking back on it, it didn’t feel real. What’s crazy about Amazon is I’m not doing the fulfillment. I’m just the middleman. Amazon is doing the fulfillment and all I see are numbers on the screen saying; ‘Hey, I got X amount of orders’,” Peterson said. “And I don’t see the inventory being processed. I don’t see the inventory being sent to the customer. So it didn’t really feel real until I got a big fat deposit from Amazon. I was like, wait, this is real.”
A few key lessons he learned included that the keywords related to a product that people are searching for should have a certain amount of search volume, and there are software tools that provide that data from Amazon. Peterson started by using Jungle Scout, a tool for search and market analytics. Today, he uses something similar called Helium 10, a Chrome extension that also shows him how much other sellers are making from that same product.
With these tools, Peterson realized that the sweet spot was finding products with low competition but high demand. Finally, the few competitors already selling the product should have high profits. He’s now selling keychains, small wallets, and party decorations because they’re in that sweet spot.
His first recommendation for anyone starting off is to look around at the products you already use on a regular basis. For example, he was driving around his neighborhood and saw a house with a big “happy birthday” sign in the yard. He thought to himself that might be a good product to consider selling.
Once you have a few ideas of the products, you can do keyword searches to determine which ones fall within that sweet spot, he noted.
Setting up the product In the beginning, Peterson spent more than 40 hours a week researching and setting up his products while he was working for his dad. Often, that meant he’d be on his computer after work from 6:00 p.m. until 2:00 a.m. on some days. This was also because the manufacturers were in different time zones.
“The interesting thing with Amazon is it’s definitely front-loaded. So the majority of the work is all upfront. You’ve obviously got to find a product, you’ve got to find a manufacturer, you’ve got to create your listing and take professional images,” Peterson said. “There’s a lot of work that goes into it upfront. But what’s cool is once you have it set up, you basically just click a few buttons, you reach out to your manufacturer to reorder inventory, and your manufacturer actually sends it directly from their manufacturer to Amazon.”
There are usually numerous manufacturers available on Alibaba for any given product. Peterson reaches out to as many as he can to request quotes, understand the materials they use, and what type of customizations they can do. He will often add his designs to certain products to make them unique. Once the product reaches an Amazon fulfillment center, it’s ready to sell, he said.
Trevin Peterson There are also costs associated with getting good photographs of the products. To keep costs down and make it simple, Peterson told Insider he uses a photographer in China. The manufacturer ships one unit to the photographer who will take five to seven images for $150, he said.
When it comes to monthly expenses, Peterson spends a lot on Amazon fees and advertising.
Overall, his biggest expenses this year have been the cost of goods, which amounted to $237,025, followed by FBA Fees at $281,079, and advertising costs at $162,282. Amazon advertising is important because it allows customers to better find your product, he said. It’s a pay-per-click model. And, the more clicks that result in a sale, the more his product gets boosted to the top of Amazon’s search page.
This year through November, his revenue was about $961,000. From that, he has a take-home profit of about $282,000 before tax, according to a live video and screenshots of his payments dashboard, which tracks his sales. November has been his highest month this year, with over $107,000 in revenue. The last two months of the year tend to be his most profitable as people shop for the holidays, he said.
He now also has an Amazon sellers consulting and education firm called AMZ Champions. He also shares free tips on his YouTube channel, Instagram, and TikTok where his largest following is at over 374,000.