Welcome!

Introduction

After doing some research and crunching some numbers, I came to understand the costs and time required to have my own products listed on Amazon’s marketplace. As a follow-up to Stage One, I developed a concise “bottom-up strategy” to obtain a trademark – which I’ll outline below.

In my previous post, I explained that to sell your own unique products on Amazon, you need to either purchase UPC barcodes or have your brand registered by obtaining a trademark.

Brand Registry Route

Cost: $450 (one-time payment)

Timeline: 10–18 months for paperwork processing

UPC Barcode Route

Cost: $250 (one-time payment +$50/year after the first year)

Timeline: Instant

You’ll quickly realize that the cost of entry for Amazon is steep, so I continued researching…

Shopify

Shopify is a completely different platform than Amazon. You get your own online store, you ship your own products, and you handle customer service.

Cost: $40/month (+ $20/year for your domain name)

Timeline: Instant

A Comparison

Let’s consider how much each route will cost over 3 years (Y1–Y3).

Brand Registry: $450 (Y1) = $450

UPC Barcodes: $250 (Y1)+ $50 (Y2)+ $50 (Y3) = $350

Shopify: $500 (Y1) + $500 (Y2) + $500 (Y3) = $1500

The Inference

Do you know what these numbers indicate?

1. The brand registry (trademark) route is better in the long run (5+ years) because it’s a one-time payment.
2. The UPC barcode route is best in the medium to long run (1–5 years).
3. Shopify is best for the short term (<1 year), because the cost of entry is very low.

The Business Plan

I don’t want to invest my own money into Chemistryfamous, so I’ll work my way up from the bottom:

The best course of action seems to be to start with Shopify, then purchase UPC barcodes, and then register my brand with a trademark.

Step One: I will use the money Chemistryfamous generates from advertisements to fund the Shopify online store for up to 4 months ($180).

Step Two: I’ll use the profits from my sales on Shopify to purchase UPC barcodes ($250), at which point I’ll discontinue my Shopify subscription and sell my notebooks on Amazon’s marketplace.

Step Three: I’ll stick with that setup until I can use the profits from my sales on Amazon to purchase the trademark. After the paperwork has been processed, I’ll discontinue my UPC barcode $50/year subscription.

Once my brand is registered, I won’t need to make any monthly or yearly payments and I’ll be able to place an unlimited number of my business’ products on Amazon’s marketplace.

Conclusion

I’ve opened a Shopify online store. The next article(s) will discuss the progression from Step One through to Step Three.

I’m anticipating roadblocks along the way; These projects are never clear-cut, but that should make for good content.