Why Amazon is Hands Down
THE BEST Model to Create a 
Passive-Income Online

Hi, I'm Riley. I've been running my Amazon-selling business full-time for 5 years now, while living & working in Southeast Asia for most of the year, and traveling often – visiting a total of 33+ countries so far.

(but not as much work as you do for your job)

One thing I DO know for sure, is that there are more opportunities nowadays to create your own location-independent income than EVER before in history.  Even in our parents' generation, this was NOT possible!

If your goal is to TIME Freedom, SCHEDULE Freedom, and TRAVEL Freedom, there is NO better way to have all of that than by building an online business. 

In my post-college job, I was knocking door-to-door for Comcast, getting one-time sales commissions from $50-$300 per sale.  This was a good learning experience, but I had a fundamental realization... this is not SCALABLE!  

I had to shift my thinking from an 'employee mindset' to a 'business owner' mindset. In order to become rich, you need to create systems that get sales for you! Well, the world of online shopping is a system that now works for us 24/7, all day, all night, 365 days a year!

For the past 4 years now, I've been able to start my day on my own time, hit the gym in the afternoon or whenever's convenient, and overall live a more healthy and balanced lifestyle.  In the end, that's what it's all about! Life is a balance, and it ebbs and flows.  A balance of family, fun, business, fitness, passion, adventure, and love. 

Making money online isn't the one-all-end-all of having a more exciting and balanced life, but is a great TOOL that allows us to have more freedom to achieve our visions of our ideal life.  

By the way:  you don't need online marketing experience to sell on Amazon. That's the beauty of it. Bring a good product to the marketplace, and Amazon gets the traffic for you.  

My story:  

As a recent college grad in 2013, some friends and I went out to visit Parker in Thailand while he was on semester abroad there.  Well, this trip to Thailand hooked us both on the travel bug / international lifestyle.  It was our first time traveling outside of North America, and 2-weeks (aka 'too weaks') was definitely not enough . We left wanting more of the tropical life. Not wanting to jump into a 'serious' career too soon, we decided that we wanted to explore the option of 'working abroad' in Thailand.

Parker had connections to some major hotels & resorts thru his Hospitality major, so we looked into working in that industry for a year in Thailand. We moved into a small 1-bedroom studio apartment together, with this as our mission. A Major Breakthrough for us was: not signing up for cable TV.  Because of this, we started consuming only YouTube.

Through going down the YouTube wormhole about living and working in Thailand, we stumbled on the one and only Johnny FD's channel.  It was about his journey with ecommerce and living in Thailand.  This was our first introduction to the 'digital nomad' lifestyle. We even bought his book called '12 Weeks in Thailand: Living Good on the Cheap."

From then on, we realized that having an online business would be way better than working at a resort or teaching english abroad – if we could make money online, not only could we live in Thailand, but have the freedom to travel other places as well! Perfect! Sounds good right!

There are two types of mindsets:

1) Johnny can do that because he got lucky / is a computer whiz / got in early, etc.

2) If Johnny can do that, why not US!

Luckily, we had the right mindset going in, because we are naturally ambitious and optimistic.  We bought his recommended drop shipping course called Dropship Lifestyle for $597 and got to work looking for our niches *nights and weekends* (this is what it takes!). 

What's crazy is, not long after joining the course in early 2014, Johnny and Anton announced that they were putting on a eCommerce CONFERENCE in, where of all places? ... Chiang Mai, Thailand! And it would be happening in October of 2014.

This was it! We thought. This was our ticket - our excuse, not only to get back to Tropical Land, but to jump in with both feet into the online hustle. So we put it on the calendar, and started to tell our friends and family that in October we would be going Thailand to do a 'semester abroad' studying internet marketing. 

Well, that's kind of what it was! Lol. We saved up nearly 10 grand each from our jobs (I was doing door-to-door sales, Parker was front-desk at the Marriott) and flew to Chiang Mai (the digital nomad capital of the world) to attend the conference.  

Our drop shipping sites were still in beta-mode, after a few months of niche research and playing around trying to design the Shopify site (I actually switched to Wix halfway thru and then back again because I got frustrated over the design stuff).

Longstory short, our shopify stores weren't getting sales because we weren't getting cheap, targeted traffic. In order to get a sale, we had to budget $30/day on google PLA ads, which would barely get enough traffic to get one sale to break even.

 The method the course taught was 'high-ticket drop shipping'.  This is where you create your own niche site like "ModernFurnitureDeals.com" or "PortableHotTubUniverse.com" (< my actual site! XD) and list 'high ticket' items, like $200 to $2000 items, like furniture or inflatable jacuzzis, or whatever small niche you select. The idea being, some customers don't like to buy from Amazon – they'd rather order from a site that specializes in that one thing. 

But with this method, you have to get the traffic yourself. Whereas on when selling Amazon.com, the traffic is already there inside Amazon.  So we failed in creating a good, cheap, targeted traffic source. Now do I know people who are successful with this method? Yes. And it's all about getting what I call 'tricky traffic', either thru FB ads, retargeting, influencer marketing, etc.  But we didn't know much about different traffic generation methods back then so, our stores weren't profitable (Park and I had one store each).

It was at the conference that we had our revelation.  It seemed like most drop ship newbies were having similar struggles.  We met one guy who had recently gotten into Amazon Private Label sales, and was already crushing it, making over $5,000 profit per month.

We were sick and tired of struggling to optimize our Shopify store conversion rate and trying to get traffic at the same time. I remember when Parker finally said "You know what, F--k drop shipping"... lol ...  And the rest is history! We decided to try the private-label method on Amazon, and here I am writing this nearly 4 years later!

Keep in mind: of course there were many struggles, obstacles, and ups and downs along the way, but our Amazon private label products have been our main income that has allowed both of us to live in SE Asia for the past 4 years.  

The way I think of it is, selling on Amazon = selling online in general! Over 50% of products bought online in America are off Amazon!  So saying that selling on Amazon isn't profitable, is to say that selling online in general isn't profitable. 

So yes, it's still profitable, and I will continue to create and sell physical products as part of my online-income portfolio for the long term. 

Also remember that what you're looking at is only a template. Maybe you want to spend more time on the story. Maybe you want to add several more headline + text blocks, to really elaborate and evoke emotions. With Thrive, you can easily do so (just duplicate some of the existing blocks). Let the template inspire you, but don't let it limit you.

We do the private-label method, aka white label method.  This means that we create our own brand of product, not just re-sell products from other brands.   Our products have our custom branded packaging, and the logo on the product.  This means we control the pricing on Amazon, and we are building a brand that we OWN, that we can sell in the future for a six-figure or seven-figure exit.  

I tell people there are basically two ways:

Option 1)  Watch a bunch of YouTube videos and read a bunch of articles

Some people aren't into online courses, and would rather learn it themselves as they go down the rabbit-hole that is YouTube and blog articles.

Option 2)  Buy a Course

Some people prefer to have things laid out in an organized way, a that goes thru everything you need to so in an organized, 1-2-3 step by step manner.  With no distractions. 

Are there people who succeed AND flop using both methods? Yep!

Keep one thing in mind: your ultimate success will come down your product!  And there's no one single way to skin a cat.  There are different philosophies out there as far as how to pick a profitable niche, and how to differentiate the product to stand out.

I do know one thing for sure, if your product doesn't stand out from the pack, it won't make good money. Okay, maybe it could make a few hundred profit per month, but it won't be that 'home run' that we are all after –  making thousands in profit per month. 

My honest recommendation is to get the best course possible, and just dive in, and treat it like a University class! If there was a college course called "How to $1,000 a Month Passively within 12 Months by Creating a Unique Physical Product"... Would you enroll? Of course! Everyone would. Buying a 'business creation' course can AT LEAST make you back the money you invested! While college business courses just teach you concepts and not ACTUALLY how to create a business! Let alone a lifestyle business, one that operates lean, with little upkeep, that gets sales while you sleep. 

You already know you want to take advantage of the power of Amazon to make extra income.  The opportunity is there and I'm living proof, every single day of my life. Every single day as I  go about my day on my own time, it's literally fueled by Amazon.com (wow, crazy).

So the only thing standing between you and your cash-flow product is, putting your money where your mouth is!  Honestly, by watching tons of youtube videos, you are just procrastinating!  Investing a course is the quickest way to start because it puts SKIN IN THE GAME!  Not only is it the most effective way to go about the process of creating your business (hundreds of checkmarks to be completed), but is psychologically FORCES you to take action!  Because now you've invested money into something, and you want to get a return on that investment! 

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There's a reason why all the top entrepreneurs say "What is free has no value".  If we get something for free, we don't take it seriously! But if we put up a few grand of our hard-earned cash towards something (like a college course), then we put ALL our effort into it! Because if we don't succeed with it, then there are real-life consequences! E.g, in college, if you don't put in the time & effort to study, then you will not pass, and be forced to pay for the course again! Even worse another semester! Which could cost tens of thousands. 

Same goes with online courses. If it's free, there's no reason to go quickly NOW and succeed. You might just look at it and forget about it (and it will be sh*t if its free). On the other hand, if you invest $$$ into your success, not only will you get the best strategies, but if you quit, you will feel stupid that you just lost all that money. So it forces you not to quit and stick with it! And as all entrepreneurs know, it usually takes many swings of the bat before you get that home run! (or even base hit!)

This course is the perfect solution to everything you've been looking for.

While I was were holding back before, it's now time to get very specific. About the course, what it is, and what you gets when you enroll.  At this point, after all the buildup, I'm sure you are dying to know.