Published on September 12, 2023

Written by Jacky Chou

Amazing Selling Machine 12 Review 2023 – Unbiased Opinion.

Amazing Selling Machine 12 Course Review

Length: 19 hours of video content

Content: Comprehensive, everything you need to start your FBA journey.

Rating: 4.0 / 5

Price: $5,000

Who put this course together?

The Amazing Selling Machine is a 19-hour course presented by Rich Henderson (right) and Mike McClary (left).

One of the best things of their courses is that they are direct and honest.

Rich and Mike demonstrate their respective paths (not just like some "gurus" out there).

Rich has been in online marketing for over 15 years and has both an SEO and affiliate marketing background. He has been dropshipping for over six years.

They are very involved in the class. You can build a physical product business from start to finish if you follow all of their steps.

Mike is one of the first successful students of the original ASM course that came out in 2014. He had a cushy office job but wanted to spend more time with his family, so he looked for other ways to make money.

It's kind of the dream to be able to take care of your family financially without having to spend time with them, right?

I chose to do this review because I wanted to give others a first-hand, unbiased opinion of the ASM course so they can decide if it's for them or not.

For some, paying $5k for ASM makes sense, but for those on a tight budget, a $2k course like the FBA Ninja might be a better option.

What can you expect from this class?

The Perfectly crafted Machine is a course taught by two men who have sold on Amazon before. (Not some course sales guru posing as an expert to drum up business.)

They have a straightforward manner and don't use a lot of technical jargon.

Mike and Rich keep it simple and tell you exactly what you need to know.

The course segments go over how to build a massively successful Amazon business the ASM way in great detail.

When you log in to your amazing selling machine, you'll be able to:

Choose a product with low competition.
Connect with a supplier and order samples
Scaling the brand by adding more products.
Drive traffic with social media and Amazon paid to advertise

Module 0: Introduction and Overview

The course begins with Rich conveying the message of how to properly set up your Amazon Seller account, ignoring all of the common blunders that will come back to haunt you later on.

Here's an overview of Module 0:

Always a 40,000-foot view of the entire course
Navigating the ASM dashboard (where course content, badges, and Q & A are located).
Learning the only way to achieve amazing results
Structuring your physical product business
Suspension proofing your Amazon seller account.

He is meticulous in his work. Module 0 appears to be the longest of all the modules, as it seems to go on forever.

Rich goes into everything from why Amazon is a wonderful company to work for right now to a comprehensive overview of the ASM dashboard.

The ASM Exclusive Q & A Forum.

I found the intro a bit long, possibly getting caught up in the weeds of details, but overall, Rich did an excellent job of laying the groundwork for the entire course of the amazing sales machine.

Total video time: 2 hours & 18 minutes

Module 1: Creating a list of product opportunities.

In Module 1 of the Amazing Marketing Machine, Rich helps students understand why branding is better than selling a single product.

He then dives into the seven characteristics of what he calls "a hot product. ""

A characteristic is the selection of a top-level category, not a subcategory.

Rich demonstrates the distinction.

To provide additional feedback to course members, Rich provides an exclusive list of products that he and other ASM course members have learned to avoid while attending the School of Hard Knocks.

I strongly advise you to follow his advice and avoid the items on this list for a variety of reasons, the most important of which is red tape.

One thing you should pay attention to right away is where Rich starts: the product.

It's not a terrible place to start, but if you start with the product instead of the audience that will buy your product, your product's lifecycle will be short-lived.

Rich's Product Opportunity phase, on the other hand, is probably a good place to start if you're a novice learning the ropes of the Amazon system.

Hell, I started there as well, but the products I started with were only popular for a few years.

In the end, Rich demonstrates a good way to get started selling on Amazon, but it's primarily a beginner's tool. Long-term FBA sellers who plan to sell in 2021 will target a specific audience to whom they will sell exclusively.

Total length: 2 hrs and 35 mins

Module 2: Profit, product procurement, and professionalism are all important factors.

Although I'll offer my thoughts on the module below, here's a quick rundown of what's covered:

While Rich does a great job of covering the basic branding requirements, he could have easily added an hour of training for the mid-level Amazon seller to show them how to go places not common to most Amazon sellers. (To see a course on how to find unique vendors, check out Sophie Howard's Blue Sky Amazon series.)

He's not talking about going to your local businesses and saying, "Hey, I know you guys are always looking to sell more, and I have experience selling on Amazon, and I was wondering if this might interest you?"

My own experience: I found another product just by going to the supermarket and finding some local organic honey. I called the owner, told him how much I liked his honey and how it benefits my health (local honey helps my allergies), and then planted the idea of selling his product through Amazon. I explained to him that by doing so, others would be able to profit from the same advantages I had.

Nothing happened right away, but a few months later, I reached out to this guy again (his name was Dale), and he and I started our partnership locally. He said he couldn't get the thought of selling on the internet out of his mind.

When you source your product from places that are clearly sourced, and you offer a solution to a specific group of people (i.e., people with pollen allergies), it has a number of benefits:

1. Your product will be difficult to clone from your competitors, while if you only sell from Alibaba, every Amazon seller will have access to your product source!

2.Your Facebook and Amazon funded ad campaigns now have a simple starting point. (When I first launched Organic Honey, I used Facebook groups to target people interested in natural medicine, and Amazon Marketing Services to target allergy sufferers.)

With my generation, Millennials, we are very interested in knowing that our products are responsibly sourced, not just the benefits or features.

PS: In case you're wondering how the small business went, local honey took off like the SpaceX rocket!

Module 3: Creating your brand and ordering your inventory.

Rich continues the vendor selection process in this foundational module and demonstrates how to build a skeleton Amazon listing.

The two main topics:

Selecting the best samples
Start your product list

Rich provides extensive information on what to look for when viewing product samples (ahem, cough, cough, **quality**) and what's okay to let slide (like another company's logo on your sample product).

Rich shows how to set up your listing on Amazon to get it approved quickly and easily and walks through how to first set up an item listing in Amazon Seller Central.

I must hand it to Rich on this one; he explains the preliminary listed setup process in a simple, tropical manner.

Rich pointed out a few points I hadn't considered before, such as why you can only enter the bare minimum of details first.

Module 4: Ensuring the success of your startup.

This module is basically a series of solutions that show how to set up social media profiles.

Module 4 Heads-Up:

Although this lesson could be beneficial to Generation X, I believe that setting up these accounts and adding content (images, copy, GIFs, and videos) is fairly intuitive for my generation, Generation Y, and that this module could easily miss a problem.

However, you may want to check out the videos on the LCP (Lead Capture) page, as Rich has some helpful optimization tips.

Setting up a simple brand website with Wix.
Building a brand Facebook page
Building a brand YouTube channel
Building a Brand YouTube Channel
Starting a Brand Pinterest Board
Initiating a brand Twitter profile
Creating a lead capture page

Here's a module that could be easily tweaked to suit the needs of mid-tier sellers!

In 2021, social media will be one of the most important aspects of an online presence.

Rich should have spoken about the nuts and bolts of his media content policy, which I was hoping he would.

In addition to showing beginners how to get started, He could have easily talked for a few minutes about his ongoing posting tactics and hacks.

For example, I would have included a 90-day content strategy as well as using a social media content management system to post coordinated posts on each platform (like Buffer or Hootsuite or Social Pilot, I've tried all three, and Buffer works best for me).

I also would have suggested ways to use Sketch 3 (app) or Canva (online editor) to quickly and easily create my own custom images.

Total video time: 1 hr & 57 mins

Module 5: The eight components of the perfect product list.

In this module, Rich names the eight components of a flawless product list and walks through the creation process.

Here are 4 of them:

Researching initial keywords
Creating a traffic-snatching title
Creating a compelling product list
Calculating profitable product prices

Personally, I was amazed at how quickly Rich did his keyword research, using a proprietary research tool that allowed him to sort through the keywords and come up with a potent title that would grab the attention of both the consumer (by being readable) and the Amazon search engine (by containing crucial keywords.)

Total video time: 2 hrs, 8 minutes

Module 6: The Perfect Product Launch

In this module, Mike provides an overview of ASM's proprietary, proven process for successfully launching a product.

Three-phase process: LB&R

Launch
Flash
Rank

Mike walks you through the most important aspects of the process, from the traffic characteristics that Amazon's search engine prefers to creating many special landing pages that Amazon rewards you for.

The pre-launch checklist Mike presented was by far the most useful aspect of this module, and it greatly improved my belief that I was well prepared for the rapid launches of my goods.

It's a confidence booster when you know all your ducks are in a row.

Total video time: 2 hrs & 39 mins

Module 7: Advanced Marketing and Traffic Tools

In this module, Mike talks about the day-to-day maintenance required for a successful dropshipping FBA business, from reviewing your listing to content marketing to email your subscribers.

In this lesson:

Writing a list of daily business tasks.
Using Amazon lightning deals
Fine-tuning your Amazon ads

The daily agenda Mike provides dramatically improves efficiency by giving a list of tasks to train a VA on, which can help increase the autonomy of the business and allowed one to work more on the Amazon FBA business.

Because of my lead generation company, I found the Amazon Ads setup process to be very similar to Google Ads setup.

As for the Lightning Deals feature Mike covers, I find it most useful when I need to reduce or eliminate my old inventory by offering products at a moderate discount until the required reduction in inventory is reached.

(A little update) As of July 2020, Amazon is charging sellers for their inventory space, and Amazon just decided this year that their inventory fees will now be adjusted monthly instead of every six months. This relatively recent change makes it especially important to have a forwarder.

To learn the importance of a forwarder, Tim Sanders does a good job of explaining how they fit into the process in his course, Private Label Masters).

Total video time: 2 hrs, 28 mins

Module 8: Taking the company to new heights.

Mike and Rich provide advice on the future of your business in this short module, covering everything from inventory management to introducing new items to deciding on your company's end target.

You'll learn about:

Managing your inventory
Introducing additional products
Scaling your business
Going global
Deciding on the end game of your business: cash flow or cash out.

This is a great way to finish the course and really an eye-opener for those new to their own business.

Rich and Mike's experienced opinions boosted my confidence to expand my team and bring more automation to my business so that now it almost runs itself.

Total video time: 50 mins

Amazing return policy for sale machines

ASM provides a "30-day, 100 percent money-back guarantee for your licensed access to Amazing Selling Machine," according to their terms of service.

I've taken a few of the best Amazon FBA courses, and this is one of the most generous refund policies I've seen. It's a positive thing that they believe in what they're selling. If you need assistance with a refund during this period, you can contact Amazing Selling Machine customer service.

Conclusion:

With all that in mind, I have a few final thoughts for you:

1. Rich Henderson and Mike McClary certainly provide a lot of insight and experience for those looking to develop their Amazon-based businesses. September 2019, News9.com reported on ASM,

And the course itself is well structured and contains fairly current information.

They have a high level of popularity on Amazing.com, their Facebook page with over 127,574 followers as of October 22, 2019.

They have a lot of free advice in their 60 Plus videos, but the ASM course is not available for free. But the $5,000 price tag was still worth it to me because I knew I could recoup my investment because I was already profitable on Amazon. As far as I'm aware, there are no significant sales machine discounts in February 2021, but you never know what could happen.

I bought the course because I wanted to get out of the day-to-day operations while increasing profits.

Many people suggest getting at least $10k in working capital to get started on Amazon, and I would recommend at least $15k because after you pay for the course, you just have $10k left for inventory and ads, which is a pretty tight budget. (Note the importance of product testing further down).

But for those who have or can get a good-sized loan, it's a viable business option, but definitely not a get-rich-quick scheme, as some YouTube advertisers have suggested since the Amazon order inventory process often takes 45 to 90 days (depending on whether you ship the product by air or sea).

2. My experience with the lead generation process has given me another perspective on this business model.

I can leap into any niche, rate a website, and sell leads to service providers in lead generation.

The beauty of Amazon FBA, on the other hand, is in the product selection process.

To be profitable with Amazon's fulfillment services, you need to have selected the right item that appeals to the right audience.

If you've selected a dud product as a new seller, you're pretty helpless because you've invested all your money in an item that you have no idea if it will pay off.

To be really successful with Amazon, other successful sellers and I discover winning items by testing the waters of the Amazon ocean, i.e., We set up listings for several different items at once and sift through the duds and winners that way.

But I wouldn't have the capital, the money to do that kind of testing if I didn't have the foundation of my lead gen business because it's super expensive to do all that product testing.

Pros and cons of Amazing Sales Machine 12

Pro

Rich and Mike provide a comprehensive introduction to FBA.
Both teachers are actual Amazon sellers
Lots of step-by-step solutions
Active support group
Annually updated (ASM an individual forum)

Cons

Short term product selection method
No content marketing strategy
Facebook ads Not well covered
Branding strategies Neglected