All posts by The Musing Greg

My Amazon Journey | Chapter 4 – Overflow

So, dear reader, if you’ve followed the past three chapters patiently, you’ll be pleased to know I’m now starting to reach the core of why I started recording all this stuff in the first place!

Back in 2002 I started my first business on the side, selling bespoke products for the coffee industry. It was a great little business, which really only started through a personal need that someone else saw, and told a friend who told a friend, I launched a website and started taking orders. 10 years later it was recognised as the premium brand in that niche of the industry. Things were always very busy because I was learning so much about running a business, and didn’t have great systems, so at this point I sold the business as it was too much to keep plus my day job.

The next 12 months were so peaceful! I’d come home from work and not have to worry about suddenly remembering an order I had to deal with, or a quarterly tax submission due that day, or a hundred other things a business owner has in the back of their mind. It was so nice to be free from all that.

Continue reading My Amazon Journey | Chapter 4 – Overflow

My Amazon Journey | Chapter 3 – Accelerated Growth and Hurdles (2020)

By the time 2020 kicked off I had two new product ideas ready to go, so pushed ahead with the first of these. By the time we headed off on our road trip in February 2020 I had reviewed samples, chosen my supplier and placed my first inventory order. I had also found a new supplier for an existing product who could produce a better version, and this was ordered too. It would be a few months while they were closed for Chinese New Year, and then producing my products, so I had other things to be getting on with.

Continue reading My Amazon Journey | Chapter 3 – Accelerated Growth and Hurdles (2020)

My Amazon Journey | Chapter 2 – Amazing Accelerators (2019)

In my last post, I outlined how I got into selling on Amazon, and that the first three years were profitable, but always felt very busy and not particularly directed. If you’re thinking of selling on Amazon or just want a bit of an idea what it’s all about and the opportunity, I’d recommend you start with Amazing.com’s 4-part free training series.

In June 2019 we started a three month road trip, and while we were travelling I got an email from Amazing.com about a free webinar series entitled ‘Accelerate your profits on Amazon’. It sounded like a good growth program, so in July 2019 I spent a few days sitting by a caravan park pool in the outskirts of Darwin watching these webinars. It was helpful in terms of putting a structure around your work. And like all amazing.com ‘freebies’, there was something they were selling at the end! One gets to know this pattern after a while (although it’s interesting also to analyse how they work and learn how to grow one’s own business). I wasn’t ready to jump into anything else just then so I finished the free webinar series and that was it.

However I knew something had to change. I was busy doing ‘stuff’ in my business, but the business wasn’t growing; which was a bit demoralising. Things I was doing were helping, but I’d find other things I wasn’t watching would go wrong so things wouldn’t improve. No matter how I looked at it, my business had basically stagnated, in fact in 2019 it went backwards.

USA Revenue 2017-2019 – 2019 was well down on 2018 ($140k vs $180k)
Again – this is REVENUE (purely sales, before looking at any costs), it’s not profit.
Continue reading My Amazon Journey | Chapter 2 – Amazing Accelerators (2019)

My Amazon Journey | Chapter 1 – Background (2015-2018)

Hi guys,

Since 2015, I’ve been running an e-commerce business selling a suite of products on Amazon. The past six years have been a series of ups and downs but I’m on a new track now. So over the next little while I want to share where I’ve come from and what my current mindset and work process is, so you can see how things change (or don’t) throughout this new process I’m following.

So…

…in 2015 I was looking for a small business and found an Amazon business for sale on Gumtree Australia. It had been set up by a guy who’d followed some you-beaut training and started a single product business selling on Amazon USA, but he’d grown bored and wanted to move it on. I bought the business, partly because about 2/3 of the price of the business was the expensive training course which would teach me to do the same thing. When I looked into the course, it was very exclusive as to when you could join (they only opened once or twice per year) and it came with a whole suite of tools and membership benefits. However while he confirmed this all came with it, once I bought the business I found this wasn’t the case, and in fact he’d just found some pirated versions of the training videos and was ‘selling’ those to me as part of my purchase! Needless to say I was pretty disappointed. However I followed through these as best I could and learnt some interesting points. I reordered the product (which he’d let go out of stock), dealt with all the poor reviews (as he dropped the customer service ball as soon as he decided to sell) and restarted the business while dealing with the fall-out of his poor decisions.

Nonetheless the business grew well, and when I got back in stock things moved quickly. In 2016 I sold about 4,500 products which generated just over $100,000 in revenue. Let me say at this point: that is REVENUE, i.e. it’s just the value of the sales. It is NOT PROFIT. But it’s a useful comparison point over time.

USA Revenue (NOT profit) for 2016
Continue reading My Amazon Journey | Chapter 1 – Background (2015-2018)

Top 5 Meat Injectors 2020

Before we start… why this review is more accurate than almost all others.

A bold claim to make? Well what makes this meat injector review different to almost all others is that we actually physically bought ALL the injectors in this test and then ran actual tests ourselves! Almost every other online review site simply summarizes customer reviews on Amazon and other sites and puts this into their review. They almost never have any hands-on experience. This makes it a lot cheaper and quicker for them to throw up lots of reviews, but it means you the reader aren’t getting fair results because it’s not based on real-world testing – everyone is just regurgitating the same (possibly incorrect) comments.

So with that said… read on and find out what you REALLY need to know about meat injectors!

Introduction

There are lots of meat injectors on the market with lots of different factors to consider, so what may be best for one may not suit another.  To make your decision easier, we’ve bought and used a number of them and summarised our findings in this review.

We found so many important differences to consider that we wrote a separate article –  ‘Choosing a Meat Injector’ – which explains the main criteria you need to consider.

Continue reading Top 5 Meat Injectors 2020

Giandel 1200W Pure Sine Wave Inverter – Detailed Testing and Review

I recently purchased a Giandel 1200W Pure Sine Wave Inverter for our caravan, and spent extended time testing it under a variety of load conditions.

 

1200W Pure Sine Wave Inverter picture
Collage of Giandel 1200W Pure Sine Wave Inverter

At A Glance
Overall rating: five-stars themusinggreg.com
Price: $AU130
Customer Service: n/a
Product Quality: five-stars themusinggreg.com
Product link: Purchase on eBay

What I liked

  • Affordable price – $130
  • Fairly clean sinewave
  • Waveform remains clean under load
  • Fan only runs when needed
  • Lightweight
  • Includes mounting cut-outs for screws

What I didn’t

  • Waveform not perfectly clean
  • One mounting point directly below battery terminals, making access difficult
  • 1A no-load current slightly high

Continue reading Giandel 1200W Pure Sine Wave Inverter – Detailed Testing and Review

Choosing A Meat Injector

Introduction

Meat injectors are a great tool for increasing the flavor and moisture in meat.  They basically look like a giant hypodermic syringe, and they’re used to inject brine, marinade or sauces into meat before it’s cooked.  Normally with marinating, you just sit the meat in the marinade and let it soak in, but it only soaks a few centimetres in.  With injecting, the flavor and moisture gets deep inside the meat where it can permeate the whole cut of meat, ensuring the finished cooked product falls apart and is full of flavor!

Read this in conjunction with our Top 5 Meat Injectors review to find out what we liked.

What to look for?

Continue reading Choosing A Meat Injector

How to change the remote control battery – VR-VZ Holden Commodore (1993-2006)

The remote control for my VY Commodore recently started losing a lot of range.  I’ve had this before with a VS and knew the batteries could be changed, so decided to show you how it’s done.

Tools Required

  • Car key
  • Soldering iron
  • Solder
  • Some kind of desoldering tool – either solder wick or a solder sucker are easiest to come by
  • A new battery – you’re after a horizontally-mounted CR2032 with solder tags. I bought mine from Retro Sales for $1.80
  • A selection of flat blade screwdrivers – a couple of jewellers ones and a couple of medium sized ones
  • Philips #1 driver
  • Wire cutters
  • Super glue

Method

  1. Unscrew the two Philips screws holding the key blade in place
  2. Use a thin screwdriver to start to prise apart the two halves of the key fob. Take care that you don’t damage the fob too much, and that the screwdriver doesn’t slip and either cut your hand or slip inside and damage the electronics.
  3. Once you’ve got it slightly apart, get another person to slide a thin screwdriver into the gap between the two halves to hold it open. You can then start working a larger screwdriver into that gap to open it further.
  4. Slide a larger screwdriver into the gap when you can, and then slowly slide this around the fob until the two halves are separated.
  5. Unclip the pin attached to the front of the key fob.
  6. Slide the rubber gasket off the end of the electrical contact and remove the circuit board.
  7. Desolder the two battery contacts and remove the battery.
  8. Install the new battery, noting the polarity. The negative terminal is at the edge of the board.
  9. Push the rubber gasket back into place.
  10. Run a thin line of super glue on the key fob just inside the gasket and press together firmly. If necessary, clamp the key fob together and apply further super glue from the outside.
  11. Test!

 

Review – NaturaHappy Felt Letter Board

At A Glance
Overall rating: five-stars themusinggreg.com
Price: $US34.95 (+$19.99 for extra letter set)
Customer Service: five-stars themusinggreg.com
Product Quality: five-stars themusinggreg.com
Product link: Felt letter board | Extra set of letters

What I liked

  • Package presentation
  • Product quality
  • Double-sided – black and grey
  • Letters don’t fall out
  • A range of mounting options

What I didn’t

  • Not enough compartments in letter storage box for utility pieces e.g. emojis, and extra letters
  • No usage tips

Continue reading Review – NaturaHappy Felt Letter Board