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Shipping Essentials – DYMO LabelWriter Turbo Thermal Label Printer

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If you are labeling your inventory for inventory management or you ship inventory into Amazon FBA, you need a label printer. Paying Amazon $.20 per label to label your FBA items for you is a waste of money and time, as their labeling can delay your items from going live and may lose sales. Many use the 30 up labels from Avery or generic brands, but these are very inefficient and wasteful. These are standard sheets of 8.5 x 11 inch paper with 30 labels precut on each piece that you can print on. With the 30 up labels you print the labels when you are done listing items and preparing to ship them to Amazon. This adds extra time. It also wastes labels when the inevitable happens and you needed 31 labels, and so a whole second sheet of 30 labels is wasted for the one extra label (though a partial solution is to turn around the used sheet that now has 29 labels on it and print from the other side when you need less than 30 labels printed).

Now, I want to be clear. When you are a newbie the 30 up labels are perfectly fine, especially if you already have some laying around already. If you are a newbie you should strive to be as cost-effective as you can be at first. If things don’t work out, or you decide this business is not for you then you will have very little money lost. If you start to get sales and are more active in your business this is when you should start reinvesting some of those profits to make your business more efficient. This becomes even more important if you are like many newbies and still have a full-time job. In that case it is wise to invest in your business with tools to make you more efficient, since you already have a full-time job and do not need to create a second one with inefficiency taking up lots of your time.

One of the most popular label printers is the DYMO LabelWriter 450 Turbo Thermal Label Printer. This is a thermal printer, so the label is printed thermally and not with ink. This is similar to how retail cash register receipts are printed, except the labels do not fade like those thermal receipts. With this label printer and the service Inventory Lab, you can print each label as you list an item for Amazon FBA. Instead of waiting till all your items are listed and having to find and label each item, they are labeled as you list them. If you have been listing and labeling your FBA inventory with the 30 up labels then you can immediately see how much time this would save. If you list 100 items and then print up your 4 sheets of 30 up labels and then have to find each item to match to the corresponding label, it is a time-wasting nightmare. It is even worse when the items start with the same title, so, for example, the label may read, “Holy Bible King James…” and you do not know if it is the red one you listed or the black one. Inventory Lab solves that issue by printing the labels as you list, so when you list one item, the labels immediately print and you attach them and move to the next item.

The label printer above is fast and efficient, but we use a number of the dual model as seen below.

The stock images Dymo uses make it look like this printer is for printing different sizes or styles of labels, and it can do that, but the nice thing about these is you can have the same label size in both spools. When one roll runs out it will switch the next spool and keep printing. If you have ever had a printer run out of labels in the middle of listing then you know what a pain it is to have to stop everything and replace the roll.

The labels I use are below. There are two reasons I use these:

1. The size is perfect, not too small or too large.
2. They are removable, which is a requirement for FBA labels and ensures the box is not damaged when the label is removed by the customer, because on items like collectibles the box needs to be perfect or you may get a return.

Newbie Help – What Does BOLO Mean?

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What Is A BOLO? TaughtToProfit.com

If you are new to retail and online arbitrage you may see people say “BOLO” and then list a specific item. You may also have no idea what BOLO means. Very simply, BOLO is an acronym for “Be On Look Out” and just means to be on the look out for the item they are mentioning. BOLO’s tend to be hard to find items, which can make them more valuable if you happen to be able to locate any.

Business Essentials – Barcode Scanner

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USB Automatic Barcode Scanner Scanning Barcode Bar-code Reader with Hands Free Adjustable Stand

Whether you sell on Amazon, eBay, Bonanza, or others, a Barcode Scanner is an inexpensive and valuable time-saving tool. There are many brand and styles, but today’s barcode scanners are inexpensive and reliable. If you have been putting off getting a barcode scanner because of money, now is the time to invest in your business. Save yourself time in the process by making your listing and inventory management become more efficient with a barcode scanner.

One of the least expensive ones I have found is below. It is a fraction of the cost of other barcode scanners and works just as well. We have 5 barcode scanners in my business, including one expensive Bluetooth version, and this generic/unbranded USB barcode scanner is better than most of them.

Shipping Essentials – This Is A Set Do Not Separate

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If you are using Amazon’s Fulfillment By Amazon service or any other third-party fulfillment for your inventory then you may have items that require two or more items together as a set, and separating them would cause the customer to have a bad experience with missing parts or a missing item. Just placing items that are supposed to sell as a set together does not mean that the third-party fulfillment center will know that. They could separate the items and when the set sells your customer would receive only part of the set they ordered.

What I do is put these neon orange (very noticeable) labels that say, “This Is A Set Do Not Separate” on these sets. For example, if it was two bottles of shampoo that sell as a bundle, I would poly bag them together and put a “This Is A Set Do Not Separate” label on the bag. These labels are very inexpensive and can save you the expense of a return or a negative feedback from items in a set getting separated.

Time Management – Aqua Notes Review

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Aqua Notes Review - TaughtToProfit.com

We have all had moments in the shower where we have a great idea, and by the time we get out of the shower we have forgotten the idea (or we have a nagging feeling we are forgetting part of it). The solution is to get out in the middle of showering and writing the idea down, or keeping your phone or tablet near to try to document the idea without getting the device wet. A company called Aqua Notes had an idea to make holding onto those ideas easy with a waterproof notepad that you can use while in the shower.

The Aqua Notes pad is a waterproof note pad that has suction cups built into the pad that attach it to your shower wall. It comes with a standard graphite pencil to write on the pad (the pencil also has a suction cup attachment as well to hold it to the shower wall). There is not really much more to say about it. If you get ideas in the shower that are important and worth documenting then the Aqua Notes pad does the job you need it to do.