After introducing friend to selling books on Amazon, he turns dumpster diving into a $40,000 a year business.
I have a friend who is an Amazon bookseller, and his story is insane. Check out the breakdown of his business:
- 100% dumpster-sourced inventory.
- Two hours a night.
- All sold via Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA).
- $40,000 a year.
True story.
Here’s the thumbnail of his business (I’ll plan on posting an interview with him soon). This is an Amazon seller case study in some truly innovative book sourcing.
The outline of his “dumpster diving for inventory” business
JJ, as we’ll call him, has a circuit of dumpsters which he goes to every night. I’m not going to give away too much (he may reveal more in this upcoming interview), but his route is a mix of media (books) and non-media, and includes both retail and “industrial” dumpsters.
His dumpster diving methodology
His methodology for finding which places threw out items he could resell on Amazon was simple detective work:
One can reasonably assume that some (or much) of whatever a business sells, eventually ends up in the trash.
From there, it was just a matter of doing the footwork until he hammered out a route of business that consistently threw away sellable products (again, mostly books, but also other things)
His “footwork” involved a lot of trial and error, and 99% dead ends to find the handful of dumpsters that provided consistent product.
Once that was settled, his business was basically on autopilot. He hits every dumpster about twice a week, working about two or three hours a night.
Now that is an Amazon business.
More on JJ soon..
-Peter Valley
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