Episode #45 Show Notes: Will Tjernlund Interview Part 1 of 2
How did you get into Amazon Private Label Selling?
Will’s brother started selling on eBay around 2003 and ordering from Alibaba.  Will was 13 asking million Qs. Aged 16 he did different forms of RA selling on eBay using his dad’s CC! He started selling on Amazon Full Time about 3 years ago.
Where are you at today with Amazon Private Label?
Will has sold $10m in 3 years. He’s outsourced the part where he has to be there. He’s travelling and running his business from his laptop (like Greg Mercer! – see episode #42)
How did you do that?
Some wholesaling from US brands and Canadian brands and Private Label. If he can see a risk free dollar to invest for $1.20 in a couple of months, that’s where he’ll go. Basically he’ll follow the cash! 
How do you know where the cash is?
Two paths
1. People do a bunch of research for 2 months, order a sample, test it, brand it, get logos made, finally get nice packaging, get 2000 units into amazon, give away a few hundred units.
2 Will might call a US based brand, lots of products on Amazon, 100+ reviews but they’re not Prime.
He’ll call them, say, “Your account is not being well run,  so most of your customers have to pay for shipping. We can run it better.”
He’ll order lots of product. He can see if that they sell $50k, he can buy $5000 worth and flip it in 10 days and make $2500 while the other person is still doing their research!
Do you just go after individual keyword opportunities or build a brand?
If you see a wholesale company where say 10 of their 100 SKUs sell like crazy -Will often will Private Label one of those so as to offer the illusion of choice to the customer. But he will sell both the wholesale product and his Private Label product.
So it’s going after a microniche?
If you can take over all the listings on one page, it’s very valuable. Make all the listings individual rather than Parent-Child IF it is a low-competition keyword.
Do you just not bother with Parent-Child relationships?
P-C makes a lot of sense if you’re after a competitive keyword because you’re trying to drive all your sales to one listing. But if you have a low-competition keyword, it makes more sense to own the first page. 
Does that take a lot of capital to invest?
If Will sees that a brand sells $50k a month, the first order was still just $5K to return $7.5K. Then you reinvest for $11K and then keep doing that. Turn the cash around as fast as possible. Go after their hottest sellers and this is much easier. 
Example: One brand Will bought from recently had an average selling price of $150 for its products.
He ordered about 50 of their hottest selling products and sold those out within 5 days.  It’s all about turning your cash as fast as possible.
For those just starting on first product, how can you use this approach?
Fake it till you make it! Find products sold by a wholesaler that  are not being presented properly on Amazon. Make a free one week Shopify store, put in pictures of products and prices. “willsshovelstore.com” and an email.
Email them and say: “We’d love to sell your products. I’m looking to Place an order for $5000 right now. “ If it’s a $5m company,  that’s over 1% of revenue so you’re a salesman’s dream.
Then on to the next?

Yes! You cut so much BS out: creating the UPC, photos, listing creation etc. because they already exist! So you just accept products in, send them back out to Amazon and then move on to the next brand.
If Will calls the brand and spends 2 hours on the phone and ends up making $40,000 profit in a year, that’s $20,000 an hour income!
He’s not wasting his time building a brand.