Hey everyone!
My name’s Stacey and I want to tell you a little about myself and why I decided to build an Amazon FBA business.
I live in the suburbs of Sydney, Australia. I’m a (happily) single mother of two boys, Jack 4, and Oliver 2. I was an HR assistant until about a year ago when my journey into online entrepreneurship began.
You see, motherhood changed me. I was no longer happy spending nearly 10 hours a day away from home. If I wasn’t sitting in my cubicle with just an 8 x 10 of my young family to stare at, I was sitting in Sydney traffic, wondering how to spend the last precious hours of the day with my boys.
My mother has been a godsend. She often took care of my kids when I was at work, but I couldn’t ask her every day. Other times I paid for childcare, which considering my modest salary, was almost unaffordable (it seemed like they were getting pay rises much more often than I was!)
The worst moment came when I went to pick up my kids from my mum’s, who, standing proudly at the door, told me Oliver just said his first word. I missed it… I was proud of my son and jealous of my mother at the same time. I later got Oliver to repeat the word – which turned out to be gobbledygook but still! – FOMO is a horrible feeling and one I was experiencing more and more. My kids were growing up and I was missing it.
I have to work. And as my children’s father is out of the picture, I’m responsible for putting a roof over our head, clothing and feeding us. As amazing as my parents are, they’re not in a position to support us financially.
I asked my boss if they’d consider letting me work from home, and after much waiting and pestering on my part, they told me I could do one day a week. It’s better than nothing and I thanked them. But in truth, all it did was give me a taste of freedom I wanted more of.
I loved working on MY schedule, I loved the lack of a commute, I really loved working in my PJs, I loved not relying on my mum to take care of my kids or spend a small fortune on childcare. But best of all… I loved being part of my children’s daily routines, not just in the morning and at bedtime.
Taking an hour in the middle of your day to play LEGO with your son is truly a joy.
My mind was made up. I wanted to work full-time at home. The last few months as an HR assistant I spent reading articles and watching YouTube, absorbing anything I could about working from home or working online full-time.
There were plenty of options, but I had some criteria: It had to be work I can do on my computer at home, it had to have flexible hours, it shouldn’t require specific or technical knowledge and it should be low-risk and low-cost. I don’t have much in the way of savings to be throwing at get-rich schemes.
A couple of options took my fancy. I started teaching English online as a foreign language. I’ve never taught before, but all that was required of me was that I was a native speaker. It was easy and I could certainly do it from home but there were drawbacks: The money wasn’t enough to quit my job and you’re pretty much stuck to your computer screen during the lesson (it’s hard to pay attention to your kids AND your student at the same time.) I concluded that teaching English is a nice side hustle, but it’s not the work-at-home solution for me.
Next, I tried freelance writing. I was always pretty good in English class and enjoyed writing as a young girl so I set up a profile on a freelance site. The offers were slow to come in at first, probably due to my newbie status and lack of feedback, and the offers I got were poorly paid. It would take forever to earn an income worth quitting my job for.
One day, during a YouTube marathon, I chanced upon a guy talking about how he made $30,000 in one month on something called Amazon FBA. Now, I’m not easily convinced by things and thought that figure MUST be exaggerated to get more views and subscribers but still, I was curious.
I watched heaps of videos on Amazon FBA and learnt more and more. FBA stands for ‘Fulfilled by Amazon’ and is a program that allows virtually anyone to sell goods on the Amazon platform. It’s fulfilled by Amazon because they store your products in one of their warehouses and ship it to the customer. They also deal with all the refunds and returns, aka, the messy stuff.
The more I learnt about Amazon FBA the better it sounded. I could have my own online shop and not have to worry about storing, packing or shipping products. It allows me to sell on the No.1 marketplace in the world, meaning I don’t have to worry about building a brand or marketing. I can hit the ground running.
But what appealed to me most, was the fact my income isn’t time-dependent. The business can tick over without me watching over it 24/7, so I can spend more time with my kids or even work on scaling the business.
After 3 months, I was earning enough to quit my HR job and today my Amazon FBA is my main income. It feels amazing to finally have control of my life and to spend all the time I want with my little family.
I started this blog to record my journey as a ‘mumtrepreneur’ and to share my advice to anybody who wants to take the leap from 9-5 and start living life on their terms.