Selling on Amazon: how I started from zero
The spark that started everything
It was 2018. I had no clear plan, no budget, and I didn’t know anyone in the e-commerce world. The only thing I had was a fierce curiosity about Amazon FBA and the belief that it was possible to build an online business without having to invent something from scratch.
The first thing I did was incredibly simple. I opened YouTube and started watching videos about how to sell on Amazon, one after another, for hours. Product analysis, Seller Central tutorials, stories of people who had made it starting from a garage. The more I watched, the more I became convinced that this was the right path for me.
I wasn’t alone in this because a friend of mine had the exact same idea and the same hunger to understand how the FBA model worked. So we started studying together, comparing notes every day on what we were learning. Having someone to share the journey with made a huge difference in the early stages, both because it keeps you motivated and because it helps you filter good information from useless noise.
At first it seems like everyone on YouTube has the magic formula for selling on Amazon, when the reality is that 90% of that content is repetitive. The real breakthrough comes when you stop watching and start getting your hands dirty.
From curiosity to real training
After a few weeks of free videos, my friend and I realized that the information on YouTube was extremely useful for understanding the basics, but it wasn’t enough to take action. We were missing structure, an organized path that would guide us step by step.
So we decided to invest in some paid Amazon FBA courses. We followed them all from start to finish, taking notes and applying each lesson to our specific case. It was an intense but essential phase because it gave us the confidence of knowing exactly what to do and in what order.
With the skills we acquired, we started putting together our business plan, defining the niche, identifying products, and building the plan for our brand. We also started looking for suppliers and everything seemed to be going perfectly. We had the plan, we had the contacts, and we were practically ready to launch.
The project that never launched
And then something happened that nobody expected, but which is perhaps a very common fate for new projects.
Shortly before launch, my friend received a job offer from a large government company, the kind of offer you can’t refuse especially when you’re young and it guarantees stability. He accepted, and with that decision our project together came to a halt. The products we had selected and prepared were never launched.
It would have been easy to give up entirely and file that experience away as a failed attempt. For a while, that’s exactly what happened. I didn’t have the resources to launch on my own and without my partner the enthusiasm had faded.
2018-2019
Project with my friend.
Suppliers found, brand ready.
Launch never happened.
The knowledge stays
Months of study, product research,
supplier contacts.
All still in my head.
But there was something nobody could take away from me. All the knowledge we had built during those months was still there, in my head. I knew how Amazon Seller Central worked, I knew how to do product research, I understood the dynamics of Alibaba suppliers, and I had studied PPC strategies. That knowledge hadn’t gone to waste and was simply waiting for the right moment to be used.
A project can fail, but the knowledge it leaves you is never lost. Sooner or later it finds its way.
The Amazon Campus Challenge of 2020
That moment came in 2020, in the middle of the Covid pandemic.
Amazon organized the Campus Challenge, a competition aimed at university students across Italy. The concept was to form a team with students from different universities, find a real company, and help it start selling on Amazon. All remote, of course, because we were in full lockdown.
When I saw the challenge announcement, I immediately understood it was my opportunity. I had the right skills, I had already studied everything needed, and above all I had a huge advantage over the other participants because I already knew a potential client.
Opportunities never come by chance, but they come when you’re prepared to seize them. If I hadn’t invested those months in 2018 studying Amazon FBA, I would never have had the skills to participate in the Campus Challenge with credibility.
The team and the client
I joined a team of motivated students from different universities and brought with me what would later become my first real client in the Amazon world: Erboristeria Binasco. The idea was perfect because we had a real company with products to sell, a team of prepared students, and the challenge structure as a framework.
But things didn’t go as planned.
The account unblock that ate up all our time
We immediately discovered a huge problem. In the past, the client had tried to open an Amazon Seller account on their own and something had gone wrong, so much so that Amazon had blocked the account. In 2020, unblocking a blocked Amazon account was a much more complicated task than it is today.
We spent entire months working on the unblock between documents, verifications, emails, and endless waits with Amazon support. All the time we should have dedicated to sales strategy, listing optimization, and PPC campaigns was entirely invested in trying to bring that account back to life.
Team formation and client selection
I join the team and bring Erboristeria Binasco as the partner company for the challenge.
We discover the blocked account
The account had been blocked by Amazon after a self-managed opening attempt by the client.
The endless work on the unblock
Documents, verifications, support tickets. All the challenge time invested in this single operation.
Account unblocked, low performance
We manage to unblock the account but don’t achieve great results in the challenge.
The result in the challenge wasn’t brilliant and it couldn’t have been, because we had spent practically the entire duration of the competition solving a single problem. But we had achieved the most important goal of all, which was that the account was finally active and ready to sell.
How I got my first client
Here’s the beauty of true stories. They rarely go as you plan them, but they often end up better than you could have imagined.
The challenge was over and the team had dissolved. On paper we had “lost”, but in practice we had just unblocked an Amazon account ready to sell, and the client knew it well. He knew how much work it had taken, how many hours I had invested in that process, and above all he could see that I had the skills to manage his account professionally.
So he asked me to continue.
Erboristeria Binasco became my first client and my first real assignment in the Amazon world. It wasn’t born from a marketing strategy or a client acquisition campaign, but from months of fieldwork, from trust built by solving a concrete problem, and from the practical demonstration of my skills.
When the client told me “do you want to keep managing my account?” I understood that the entire journey had made sense. The YouTube videos from 2018, the courses, the project that never launched, the challenge. Every single piece had contributed to bringing me exactly to that moment.
The lessons I carry with me
Looking back, my path on Amazon wasn’t linear. It wasn’t one of those stories like “I invested 1,000€ and after 3 months I was making 50,000€ a month”, but a story made of curves, stops, restarts, and moments when it seemed like nothing was working.
Yet every phase taught me something fundamental.
Training is never wasted
Those months spent studying in 2018 gave me the foundation I used two years later, proving that knowledge has no expiration date.
Partnerships change
My friend took a different path and that was fine, because not every project needs to reach the finish line to have value.
You don’t decide the timing
I wanted to launch in 2018 and my first client came in 2020. Sometimes the best thing you can do is simply stay ready for when the right opportunity comes.
Real problems build trust
Solving the account unblock gave me more credibility than any portfolio or certification I could have shown.
Most Amazon success stories you read online are oversimplified. They show you the result but not the journey. My path was long and full of moments when I could have given up.
Tips for anyone who wants to start selling on Amazon today
If you’re reading this article and thinking about starting to sell on Amazon, here’s what I would tell you if I were sitting in front of you.
Start learning right away, even for free
YouTube is full of valuable content for understanding the basics of Amazon FBA, so don’t wait to have a budget for courses before you start studying because the foundations can be built at zero cost.
Find someone to share the journey with
Having a friend, a partner, or even just a community to exchange ideas with accelerates everything because it keeps you motivated in tough moments and helps you see things from a different perspective.
Invest in a course when you’re ready to take action
Free training gives you the basics, but a structured course gives you the complete path and saves you months of trial and error. The key is to follow it all the way through and apply each lesson to your specific case.
Don’t let perfection hold you back
My first project never launched yet the knowledge I gained opened doors two years later, proving that every step forward counts even when it seems to lead to a dead end.
Seize every practical opportunity
Challenges, internships, free collaborations with companies. Any chance to get hands-on with a real Amazon account is worth more than 100 hours of pure theory.
The best path isn’t the perfect one, but the one you start even when you don’t yet know where it will take you.