Amazing Selling Machine Review

I wish I checked here before wasting time and thousands of pounds with this company.

I honestly believe they should face criminal proceedings. They are just a cash grab.

If you want to find ecommerce or marketplace courses they are all very much the same content-wise.

Amazing Selling Machine gives nothing worth three times the amount of their competitors.

If you are already a member DO NOT under any circumstances purchase their Expert Product Package or Pre-Vetted Product – this is an absolute rip-off.

I purchased one – it was terrible, super competitive, and low margin. I complained and they gave me another which was just as bad.

They oversell the product so what you end up with is a product far more competitive than one you would ever source and invest in yourselves – and you pay them over a thousand for it.

Just don’t do it!

While there are some competing courses that I have worked with in the past, Amazing Selling Machine beats them all. Although ASM has a BIG price tag, the success rate is super high compared to other Amazon FBA courses.

The best part is that you are also covered by a 60-day money-back guarantee. If for any reason you are not happy with your purchase, you will get your refund in full. Not to mention, they will also buy your inventory.

The course is constantly updated and re-recorded to include what’s evolving in the space, for example, the use of AI and more.

My Amazing Selling Machine experience was a ride with many surprises and lessons learned along the way. After many attempts to get my product working, I had to exit my Amazon business due to running out of money to pay for it.

I joined ASM when the fee was $4,997 (about CAD 6,700). It was a lot of money for me, but the promises were enticing, and reviews suggested that ASM was one of the better programs. However, I wasn’t aware of how much the Amazon business would cost me. It turns out that the investment would become massive, and I would have to repeat the investment several times before finding a successful product. If I had known that, I would have never joined ASM. Moreover, I would still have a savings account.

At first, finding out how much things cost was difficult. It wasn’t until I was deep into the ASM modules that the costs became obvious. Starting with all the tools and subscriptions, you will pay hundreds of dollars monthly. You will also have design costs for your product packaging, website, logos, etc. Product sourcing and purchasing were not cheap, but they were clearly calculated early in ASM and expected. Still, getting the product to the US, moving it between countries and warehouses, and storage was more expensive than planned.

The ASM community was helpful and provided solutions to many of the unexpected problems along the way. Matt Clark even sent a few messages of encouragement. He told me to get more reviews as the key to success. Still, each solution was based on spending more money and waiting for the business to take off. That’s when I realized that I should never have started this business unless I had significantly more money to invest than what I did have.

With storage fees, advertising costs, and paying for products to rank and be displayed on the search page, I was losing about $1,000 per week. Eventually, my bank account became empty. After extensive calculations, I decided to dump my remaining product inventory and cancel my Amazon Seller payments. In total, I spent $32,124.41, and I could not afford to do this a second time.

Several people seem to have had some success, but this business broke me. It might work if you have a lot of disposable cash, but use caution. Don’t dive in unless you can afford to repeat the process and invest several times before having any success.

For me, none of those promises mentioned above worked out. I have more debt, worry about bills, and I can’t afford to travel. I’m working my full-time day job to earn back what I lost on selling on Amazon. I will be working my job longer, and I might need to take another part-time job to recover what I lost. Good luck!

I introduced some friends to take the course back in 2017. I also bought their Amazon course and Beyond FBA Mentorship. Both were very expensive but provided simple tips you could find on YouTube.

They created a community to help students. But it was more like students helping each other. Now it seems like a dead platform. If you have problems and questions in that group, most of the time people don’t even bother to answer you. Sometimes the volunteers aka ‘coaches’ will answer your question. Still, in general, questions are not paid attention to. That has happened to me many times!

The worse part is that they removed a lot of files on their Beyond FBA Mentorship II. This was a course on which they worked together with Ezra Firestone and built it on the ASM platform. Those files were very important, so I reached out to them and asked them for the files several times. Although ASM representatives answered my emails, none of it was helpful.

In the end, I reached Ezra Firestone’s team and they helped me super fast. I got all the files I needed in one day! ASM still didn’t recover those files on their platform even though I told them I got the files from Ezra’s team. After all, they promised lifetime access to every course you bought.

I also tried reaching them by phone. Nobody answered at all. It seems like they only hire people for customer service during promotional periods. Then, after the course delivery period is over, they cancel their customer service! Don’t buy this course because you won’t get the great services they promised!

I spent $3,997 on Amazing Selling Machine. It introduced me to Amazon and its unfriendly attitude to sellers. Amazon blocked my listing because of the word “lightning” that I used on my product page. The person who introduced me to the course made 50% of my $3,997. She promised they would give us 100 units of a free product to start to sell on Amazon, but this promise never got fulfilled.

Anyway, ASM pays more attention to what profit they make out of you than how well you are doing in the course. If you become super successful, the creators will promote their course with you. But if you are struggling, they don’t care!

I purchased an e-commerce course based on Amazon’s FBA program back in 2015 called Amazing Selling Machine by Matt Clark and Jason Katzenback. The price tag at that time was several thousand dollars and it was the most I’ve ever paid for a course. I was hesitant to pull the trigger at first, but Matt and Jason seemed like real genuine people and I loved the idea of selling online by using Amazon as the fulfillment center.

At the time, it was a very unique business model and I believe Matt and Jason are one of the first pioneers of this brilliant business idea. So I decided to take the plunge and I opted in for their split payment plan.

It was super detailed, providing step-by-step instructional videos that included everything from showing us how to set up our accounts to find a supplier on Alibaba, and then finally launching our very first product. They even had an in-person conference which was hosted in Las Vegas and I’ve met and connected with some awesome people there! We still keep in touch to this day.

So how was my business success by taking the course? My first two products didn’t go too well, but my third product did make enough profit to recover my initial investment plus my investment in the Amazing Selling Machine course. I never re-invested further for more products as I ventured into another business model, but it was very profitable and was my first e-commerce success online.

Overall, it was a great ROI. It didn’t make me a millionaire, but I think the knowledge that I’ve acquired along with the experience I’ve had with the course, helped me get my feet wet in the world of e-commerce.

The course still exists today and you get free upgrades to the newest versions. It was a pleasurable experience and well worth the investment if you put the time & energy into it. They have an incredible cast of coaches that’ll help you along the way, but of course, your success depends on your ability to take action and can vary from person to person.

I have been an Amazing Selling Machine (ASM) member for over 3 years now. I know all the ins and outs of the course, the community and the company.

Amazing Selling Machine (ASM) has a price tag of $5000 or 6 monthly payments of $997. The course has an affiliate program which offers a 40% commission. So, if an affiliate signs up a client and the client pays the 5k upfront, the affiliate earns a whopping $2000 commission – hence the massive affiliate following on the course!

As far as their content goes, I admit that ASM’s videos are thorough and up-to-date. The video training material reflects the changes in Amazon and business in general.

ASM has also a community where members ask questions, share updates and accomplishments, and network with fellow sellers. The community has a bunch of mentors who ASM claims are active sellers and help community members by answering questions in their free time. This isn’t entirely true, though. These mentors are in fact employees of Amazing (the company behind ASM).

Also, beware of ASM’s done-for-service (DFY) package, in which they offer to build your Amazon business for you. The package includes sourcing, branding, shipping and launching your products. It is a monthly subscription, the first month is $5,000 and thereafter $2500/mo. Still, I know members who had a pathetic experience with this service – all of their money went down the drain!

My biggest problem with ASM is the illusion they are selling. They sell you the dream that you can have a brand that’s selling products on Amazon and earning extraordinary figures. Most members who join ASM don’t have a business background, so they don’t know about additional expenses. In the course, it is rarely mentioned that you have to factor in shipping costs, branding costs and advertising expenses. To put this into perspective, a product with a factory cost of $10/unit ends up costing $20/unit by the time it reaches the FBA warehouse, and that price is without the expenses for advertising!

All in all, Amazon’s FBA business model has reached a stagnation period and newcomers hardly succeed. FBA was less competitive 5-7 years ago, and any Amazon seller who has been selling for a while will confirm that. It is not impossible to succeed, but it’s way tougher than it used to be. Just to give it a shot you need deep pockets and the willingness to operate with losses for years. So, be wise and make a thoughtful decision before opting for this course!

TLDR: This course barely scratches the surface for a beginner. Most beginners will spend way more than $5k and probably not generate a positive return from it. If you’re serious about selling on Amazon, look beyond beginners’ courses and dive deeper into real product differentiation, invest in branding, and start building a community.

Build the stamina for a lot of hard work, sudden policy changes, patience, and potentially even higher blood pressure when receiving 1-star customer reviews like: “Bought this when I was drunk. Not what I expected”.

— Summary —

Most information presented in this course (e.g. product hunting, market and keyword research, listing optimization, product development, dealing with shipping, etc.) is already commonly known and easily available in the Amazon seller community.

You don’t really get an edge from your competitors because there are 10,000+ people out there who did this course and are doing exactly the same thing. You actually get disadvantaged by implementing the same framework.

If you want long-term success, look beyond beginners’ course and dive deeper into product differentiation, invest in branding, and start building a community.

— Product & Market Selection —

It’s commonly known that by selecting the right product, your chance of success is drastically increased (accounts for ~80% of the result). Of course, you’d still need to do good product development, cost control, listing optimization, etc.

In terms of product research, ASM provides a list of criteria (e.g. ideal price range, product weight, product category, etc.). But I’ve come to learn that those are the exact ones to *avoid*. I tried sticking to the criteria at first but soon found that it was a mistake.

Instead of having an edge, you’re basically inviting yourself to a bloodbath filled with sharks selling similar products at a similar price point. Very soon, it’s just down to a price war. For new beginners, it’d be wise to get ahold of this list of criteria and use it as “what not to do”.

— ROI of Your $5000: Unforeseen Costs & Risks —

It’s important to note that the $5k cost of this course isn’t the end of your upfront investment. You’ll need an extra few hundred for product research software, email auto-responding software, not to mention the capital required for the inventory itself, marketing, and PPC cost.

There are many unforeseen costs that you may not have budgeted for from the get-go. Some examples from my experience were:

1) When part of my shipment was stuck somewhere, I had to pay extra to get it recovered. There was another time when a large portion of my products was lost by the Amazon warehouse, and it took many, many hours to prove it, made many appeals to only receive a small reimbursement in the end.

2) You need to be ready for new regulations by Amazon that could have a major impact on your business — be it a sudden increase of storage prices, or a new regulation that could put your product listing on hold, causing a loss in ranking and sales that took months to build.

It can be dangerous to start a business by being $5000 in the hole. For most sellers, it’s likely that the income you generate from selling on Amazon won’t even cover the $5k. Not to mention the time you’ve invested and your opportunity cost.

— Important Business Lessons ASM Did NOT Teach Me —

Selling on Amazon is of a capital-intensive nature. This means that even if your products are selling well, you’ll need to keep pumping money into the business because of the cash flow cycle.

You always need to pay money upfront for suppliers and/or service providers before you get the profits trickled down after passing through Amazon (warehouse costs, ad costs, FBA associated fees, refund costs, etc.). A number of successful sellers I know have had to apply for loans in order to continue growing the business. They usually only receive dividends once they have stopped growing, or when they finally sell the business.

If you’re planning to (or already) embark(ed) on this journey, you need to have the stamina and patience for this before cashing out.

— P.S. —

*Disclaimer 1: I had free access to the course so I didn’t experience the coaching calls and the Facebook groups. But I would have been furious if I’d paid $4,997 for it. Better keep the capital for inventory (or other types of business).

*Disclaimer 2: I did this course in 2019, so I could only comment on the structure and content available at that time.

I believe ASM is a pretty good place to start to learn Amazon FBA. HOWEVER, there are tons of cheaper and free resources you can follow like the Scott Voelker podcast, for example.

5000 dollars is way too much money for what they offer. And honestly, you better save that money for inventory, marketing efforts, etc.

Plus, I never found info on how successful the tutors are. I get the feeling they are like any teacher who teaches without being experts in the matter.

Disclaimer: I don’t know how it is now. I bought the course around 2018. Got scammed into it by Stefan James, an affiliate for ASM. You know… The same scammer who sold Amazon books on curing stuff like snoring and Polio under a pen name. Yes, Polio, an incurable disease…

While the overall material of the course was “okayish” presented, it’s nothing groundbreaking. I basically got 80% of the same information the course taught from free YT videos and blog posts.

One of the biggest flaws of the course is the group. I don’t know how that’s going now, but when I bought the course the group was mostly comprised of complete beginners, who kept posting very basic questions that the course covered in later modules. (The marketing at the time was that this group was full of professionals who can give detailed/advanced tips, etc.) Clearly, this was misleading. And the admins, while they did give good advice, weren’t too responsive.

Also — I know I was naive at the time — but Amazon FBA is way harder than I thought. And despite working like 13 hours a day, following the course to the letter, building up my following, etc., I barely made any money.

And most of the people in the group kept getting the same results — we talked privately, of course, otherwise, we would get banned. So overall, no, ASM wasn’t a good experience at all.

I really loved the ASM course especially when I first joined in late 2018.

I dedicated the last 2 years to studying and implementing the course and starting my own business. I followed all the training and basically devoted my life and energy to it for the first year straight.

The course does a really good job of presenting all the concepts and materials in an organized way that leads to execution and has an amazing community that is a lifesaver in most situations.

But the reality is at the end of the day I am not sure if I have broken even yet.

I wouldn’t say that it is the course’s fault because they can’t guarantee success. Although I did everything they instructed, went to the live events, and DID learn so much about myself and entrepreneurship in the process which has been life-changing… there are variables involved that are out of the course’s hands.

Such as the pandemic hit shortly after I got up and running. And the other main variable was that I did not have much upfront capital which I think all courses greatly downplay.

These days Amazon gets more and more competitive by the day and I never had enough capital to keep up. And with my supply chain being affected by COVID, I never gained the financial momentum I needed to succeed.

I learned so much about branding and business through this course but I haven’t reaped the financial reward by any means yet.

But I still have only been able to afford 1 product after these 2 years and that is not how this business model is meant to be executed.

So if you have the upfront capital in the amount of tens of thousands of dollars to start and the determination to make it everything for the next year or so, I think it is currently still a good investment.

Amazing Selling Machine helped me navigate Alibaba/Amazon for sourcing and fulfillment of my product. The training is good quality and professionally put together in actionable pieces of advice.

But I would only recommend it if you have deep pockets and already have a product that you think will sell.

I did the course under the impression Amazon FBA is all about finding a small pain point. Get it made cheaper in China. Then all you need to do is get to the top of Amazon store listings and with the millions of people using Amazon, it will sell out instantly. All you need to worry about is restocking. I’m not sure if ASM gave me that impression or if I just had tunnel vision at the time so there wasn’t much they could do.

Here’s an overview of my Amazon FBA journey…

I found a niche where people were complaining in the comments about current saddles wanting a light and then ones with lights that batteries were going dead too quickly. So, I found a seller of extra-large comfortable saddles with detachable light that you could charge. This met the requirements of selecting a product in the course.

Used all software recommended, it had a low competition with high search traffic, pricing seemed right from purchasing materials and shipping to the retail price. Got samples, did custom packaging, built the corresponding website to have a brand presence. No issues using Alibaba and shipping to Amazon FBA fulfillment centers.

What I realized after was the competitors had websites where they were sending people to their Amazon page but only interested in purchasing their product. This would have skewed the research I did.

The only issue with the supplier was some products had faulty lights so I had to ship out a complete package to people who complained as I couldn’t just send a light. At least I got positive reviews from these people.

Used Amazon ads which weren’t very effective but helped at selling at subsided price and getting my listing at the top. Used paid software services to utilize ads. Got my 5-star review rating. Even got “best seller” for some terms.

All this led to was my listing getting hijacked numerous times, where my exact same listing/pictures etc were taken by a rogue seller who could take orders. All I could do is report to Amazon and they would take it down after a few days. It all seemed like a flywheel for Amazon to make money, to be honest. All profits were spent on ads and fulfillment.

In the end, all I wanted was to sell my 500 saddles. I made no money and only recouped around $5k of $8k spent.

It was a great experience and I’m happy I did it as I always wanted to dip my toe in eCommerce. But it was an expensive experience.

I think for me to be successful I would have had to double my investment of $8k. Since when you finally get selling you need to restock ASAP and you don’t really have a cash flow so you need to keep investing.

My plan was to upsell but Amazon makes it very difficult to send people to your own website or email list.

The course itself does have some realistic disclaimers in it, yet they seem to push multiple other tools and products which they of course are affiliates themselves for. I don’t think there is too much wrong with it, as they are mostly upfront about the costs involved and some formulas and what to look out for.

Their method focuses on picking a product in a niche that is a hot product opportunity, then tweaking that product to enhance it or make it better in some form with your own brand.

I do think they have helped a lot of other people thrive with a business, but honestly if you don’t have another person working with you on it who understands business finance or fine details, you should not be doing this. They do say, “anyone can do this with the right training and focus.” It’s possible, but I think that claim is a bit misleading, because it really is not for everyone. You have to be willing to put in the hours, hard work, diligence, dedication, a lot of extra time outside of your 9-to-5.

Oh, and about $10,000+ saved up or laying around to get it off the ground when you factor in website, product costs itself, subscriptions, high-quality product images, ad spend, Amazon fees, etc. and everything else on top of the course costs. You need to understand cash flow and COGs, and what profit really means versus just sales. You also have to have a passion for your business and a “don’t quit” mentality when you don’t see immediate results.

Things I love about this course:
– They are super clear and methodical in the step-by-step process of what you need to know and do.
– They guide you on what to look out for and pitfalls to avoid.
– They provide some helpful tools and resources (some are free and some are paid subscriptions) to run an effective brand on Amazon.
– They update the course each year with new information, and if you bought the course originally, you have access to those updates.
– The Facebook community group is helpful, along with the community inside the course.

I was very excited about the course and put a ton of effort into developing a product and getting it manufactured and into Amazon. So this part of the course went just fine.

However, the course fell far short of support when I went to launch my product on Amazon. I was spending hundreds of dollars on ads with no results and there was not effective support to help me out with my questions and issues during this difficult process.

Then they changed the course instructor and his teaching style was difficult to understand and connect to. Again, I had no support or personal coaching available to me to address my unique issues.

I ended up having Amazon dispose of all my products because I was tired of paying storage fees and endless advertising feeds for a product that WAS NOT SELLING.

In the end, I spent over $10,000 and over 8 months of effort into a FRUITLESS business. My product didn’t sell and this whole experience was devastating. Do you think ASM cares? No… the burden was all on me.

Not a fun experience and I do not recommend this course. Waste of time and money.