Hey, guys.
In this video, I'm going to be warning you about five different items that are potential
traps for private labeling and selling on Amazon.
If you fall for one of these traps, it can cost you a lot of money especially if you
are a new seller.
To find out what these five items are and to watch some sweet Sarah dance moves, keep
watching this video.
So, like my video from last week, I'm going to be making this one a fun interactive game.
I'm going to be showing you an item and be giving you five seconds to figure out why
you should not private label and sell this item on Amazon and if you get it right, you
win points.
Yay!
Now, I'm actually going to start this video off with a bit of a challenging one so if
you don't get it right, don't worry.
But if you do get it right, you will win 20 points, so it is quite a big prize.
All right, so here is the first item that you should not private label and sell on Amazon.
You have five seconds to guess why you should avoid it.
Go.
Time is up.
Let's see if you got it right.
Before we do though, I just want to tell you a quick cautionary tale to show you just how
easy it is to fall for this trap.
Let's imagine George, a new and eager Amazon seller who is looking to private label and
sell his first item on Amazon.
He's searching through Amazon looking for ideas and he sees that people are selling
dog leashes designed for walking two dogs at a time.
He decides to go to Alibaba and do a search for dual dog leashes.
He goes through the listings.
Most of them look pretty standard and quite similar but as he's scrolling through the
options, he spots a unique and interesting design that is different from the others.
"This is amazing," George thinks.
Rather than sell those boring other dual dog leashes, he's going to sell this ingenious
design and make a ton of money.
He goes and he orders a bunch from the manufacturer.
But unfortunately, George made a big mistake, because this item has an active patent from
the company Wigzi.
When George puts his new dog leashes up on Amazon, not only will Wigzi get it taken down
when they spot it, but they could potentially sue George for patent infringement too and
it would be a really tough lesson for George to learn that there are many Chinese suppliers
out there manufacturing products that they do not have the right to do so.
Taking a look at the product listed on Alibaba, we can see that it has a reel separate from
the handle that rotates so that the leashes don't get tangled which is the first feature
specifically stated in Wigzi's patented design.
Looking at it again, we can see that it has two different triggers for each leash that
operates separately which is the second feature stated in Wigzi's patent and each of the triggers
is the same color as the leash they are attached to so that you don't forget which trigger
is connected to which leash, which surprise, surprise, is the third defining feature listed
in the Wigzi patent.
The moral of the story here is to not be a George.
If you see an item that looks really great to private label, stop and check to see if
there are any active patents protecting the design.
Luckily, it's really easy to do patent searches.
I like to use Google Patents.
It is simple to use and free.
Did you get that one right?
If you did, you won 20 points.
If you didn't, don't worry because there are plenty of chances to earn more.
The next item is going to be a little bit easier so for this one, if you get it right,
you will win 5 points.
Here is the next product that you should avoid as it is a potential trap.
Can you figure out why that is?
Go.
That is it.
Time is up.
Let's see if you got it right.
The reason why you should not private label and sell this item on Amazon is it is a seasonal
product.
Think about it.
When do you buy beach towels, when it's warm outside, not when it's freezing cold in the
middle of winter.
These blankets sell like crazy over the summer but during colder months, the sales massively
drop off.
Now, there is nothing wrong with seasonal products, don't get me wrong.
There is a ton of money to be made in them, but they are not consistent money.
You make a lot of money for one period of the year and then for the other times of the
year, it is super slow.
For beginners out there looking to sell their product and probably hoping to use it to make
enough money to quit their jobs, I recommend picking a product that has consistent ongoing
sales so that you could have reliable consistent income every month.
Did you get that right?
If so, congratulations, you won five points.
Let's play a game.
Now, this time, the item is well, you could say interesting and this one is also worth
20 points.
Here is our interesting item.
You have five seconds to figure out why this item is a trap and should be avoided being
private labeled and sold on Amazon.
Go.
Time is up.
Let's see if you won the 20 points.
The reason why I chose these penis enlargement pills is because I received a comment recently
from someone asking if it would be a good product to sell.
Honestly, I've never tried to sell these pills, so I didn't know.
I've decided then to put on my detective hat and figure out the answer to this question.
Now, I have my suspicions that this was not going to be a good product, but even I couldn't
predict the twist ending that this case was going to have.
My first course of action during this investigation was to go to Amazon and see if any of these
pills were listed and selling.
I went to Amazon and started to type in penis enlargement pills into the search bar but
interestingly, once I started typing in the word enlargement, Amazon stopped recommending
search phrases to me even though I was 100% certain that people probably type this in
a lot.
Very curious.
After I did the search, I found some interesting results.
Most of the items listed have very few reviews with only a handful having over a 100 and
funnily enough, the reviews were extremely mixed.
No five-star rated products here.
The fact that there were very few reviews for each listing was even more curious when
after checking it out on Jungle Scout, these pills were selling like crazy.
Very interesting.
After opening up the listings with very few reviews and taking a look at them, it became
apparent that they had already been on Amazon for about three months which was why they
didn't have many reviews.
Very suspicious.
Of course, I still had some lingering questions.
One of them being why are there a few listings that are breaking the trend and have been
up for a couple of years and have over a 1,000 reviews?
Well, upon further inspection, while these pills contained the exact same ingredients
as the other, they never ever mention the words penis or enlargement in the product
listing.
Instead these listings would say things like, "Use these pills to increase the performance,
size and stamina of your workouts."
Clearly the true purpose of these pills was being disguised.
My conclusion then was that most likely these pills were not allowed.
So, my investigation led me to look at Amazon's list of prohibited dietary supplements and
sure enough, sexual enhancement products are prohibited and banned no Amazon.
Case closed, right?
Well not quite.
I knew I had to dig deeper.
I had to go straight to the source.
I had to go to Amazon themselves.
I went to them and confronted them with the evidence.
I asked them, "Why is it that these pills have not been taken down?
Are they truly prohibited?
Do they not count as sexual enhancement pills?
If I wanted to sell them, would I be able to do so?"
And the answer I got was truly surprising even for a very experienced detective like
myself.
Basically, they told me that, "Yes, these products are not allowed and are prohibited."
So, you'd think that it ends there, right?
No.
Amazon gave me two choices.
Firstly, they told me that even though they are prohibited because some people got under
the radar and are selling them anyway, they would let me do it too because that's fair.
Alternatively, I could report all of the rouge listings and work directly with Amazon to
get them taken down.
There you go, case solved.
It turns out that yes you can often get away with selling prohibited items on Amazon.
Once some people start doing it, Amazon apparently begrudgingly lets other people do it too.
But you would be building your business on a base of sand because all it takes is for
one person to come along, report it to Amazon and make enough of a fuss for them to go and
remove your listing.
It's very clear that Amazon don't want these pills up on their site especially because
of the fact that when you go to the search bar and start typing them in, no search phrases
come up despite the fact that they are high sellers.
But Amazon is not motivated enough by themselves to go ahead and remove them.
That is until someone comes along and makes an official complaint, thus, then gives Amazon
the excuse to go out there and prioritize the issue and remove the items which clearly
does happen since most of the listings were only a few months old.
And while you could attempt to be sneaky like some of the pills were clearly trying to be,
if Amazon ever bothered to take a closer look at the comments, your true motivations would
become apparent.
No, even though you can get away with selling prohibited items for a while, I do not recommend
it because at any moment, Amazon could turn on you, remove your listing and potentially
even ban your account.
Did you guess it?
This item was prohibited by Amazon.
If so, you won 20 points.
Yay!
Let's move on to the next product.
This one is another easier one to figure out so if you get it right, you win five points.
And this time, I will be taking a dance request.
This here is the fourth product that is a potential money trap.
You have five seconds to figure out why you should avoid this.
Go.
Time is up.
Let's see if you won the five points.
The reason why you should not private label and sell this item on Amazon is because it
is built around a fad, the iPad.
Now when I say that iPads are fad, I'm not saying that they're going to suddenly go out
of fashion and nobody is going to want to buy them anymore.
Instead what I mean is that iPads are constantly year after year being updated and changed.
If you're making accessory for one generation of the iPad family, there is no guarantees
that it's going to fit the next generation when it is announced.
Something else to keep in mind is that cultural trends like fidget spinners are a lot less
appealing for private label sellers than they are for drop shippers and that is because
in the private label world, it only takes around two to three months to contact your
manufacturer, get your items produced, ship them into the Amazon warehouses and enlist
them for sale and by the time that the item has reached the shores of the USA, there is
a really strong chance that the fad will have died out by then.
While maybe a little bit least exciting, look to private label products that have historical
stable proven sales so that you can have consistent reliable income.
Did you get it right?
If so, add five points to your total.
Now, pay close attention because you've got one chance left to win points and the final
one is worth 10.
This is the final product that you should not private label and sell on Amazon especially
as a beginner.
You have five seconds to figure out why.
Go.
Time is up.
let's see if you won those final 10 points.
The reason why you should not sell this item on Amazon is because getting liability insurance
for something like essential oils is actually quite a lot more expensive than getting it
for a simpler item like, say, a soap dispenser.
And that is because that essential oil is designed to be applied to the body.
Now, anything that is either designed to be applied to the body or inserted into the body
like pills are going to attract higher insurance premiums.
If that was your guess for product three, then feel free to credit yourself these 10
points because that was a good guess.
In addition, anything that is an obvious accident risk like blenders as they contained blades
also have higher insurance premiums.
And products that are potential choking hazards for children also have this issue, which is
why this is one of the downsides of producing a product that is aimed at kids.
When you sign up for Amazon, you actually agree in their term service that once you
hit $10,000 in a single quarter, that you will have product liability insurance for
your items.
I do, however, want to say something.
If you are sitting there intimidated by the idea of starting your Amazon business because
of things like product liability insurance, don't be.
All these scary things that you've never done before like getting insurance or paying taxes
or importing products, trust me, it's not as hard as you probably think.
Most of these is solved by simply googling your questions and reading the answers.
There is so much information out there to help you.
The successful people are those that instead of coming and when they hit a hurdle that
they don't know how to get over, and so think, "Oh, I'm just going to stop here."
Think instead, "I don't know how to get over this.
Let's find out."
And it's those people that get to quit their draining, uninspiring day jobs and build the
dream life that they've always wanted.
Tally time.
How many points did you get?
Remember that product one was worth 20 points.
Product two was worth five points.
Product three was worth 20 points.
Product four was worth five points and product five was worth 10 points.
Let me know what your score was in the comment section.
And if you have any questions about this video, be sure to ask in the comment section as well.
Here at Wholesale Ted, we do get a lot of questions but we try to answer as many as
we can.
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