iGen Entrepreneur Deal Sheet

At iGen Entrepreneur we have been running a small, no subscription deal service where we share deals that we use within our own business, we are in a position to expand this out, in line with our business goals and also provide an intimate Mastermind feel which is outlined below.

Summary of Service

To summarise the service:
£150 per month (Not VAT registered, and won’t ever be as this will be a separate business)
No contract, you can come and go as you please. I only ask that you give me as much notice as possible if you intend to leave service
Slack will be used, this will hopefully help get that “mastermind” feel and allow for efficient communications
5 (max 6) people per deal sheet
Will be an ever improving service as I constantly look to act on feedback
There will be an option to subscribe to more sheets, should someone drop out
Deals are submitted Mon-Fri at around 7:30-9:30 AM UK time

VAs

Deals from all my sourcing VAs are batched together, and 2/5ths of the deals are added to each deal sheet.

The Service

Summary

In summary, my proposal is that:
Each deal sheet will be shared between 5 people
Each deal sheet will cost £150 per month
Deal sheets will be delivered daily (on weekdays)
You may subscribe to more than 1 deal sheet
There are 2 sheets available

Monthly Subscription

The price is £150 per month, and will be paid using Gocardless https://pay.gocardless.com/AL0005M20BR6T8

There is no contract, and you can stop whenever you want.

(below might be slightly outdated as not reviewed in a while)
Costing of Sheet

Please note we’re not VAT registered, and never will be for this service.

I’m going to try to be as transparent as I can about the costing of this sheet.

VA wages: currently 20,000 PHP (Philippine Pesos) per month. There are other costs as well, such as Google Suite licenses and transaction costs. Bonuses for them. Currently this equates to a total cost per VA of around £350 per month. So if 2 VAs are required per sheet, this would be £700 per sheet in VA costs.

Based on feedback and my own thoughts, I believe £150 would be a fair cost per sheet per month. If VAs are anywhere near their targets, you should make a lot of money. Not to mention the value of a mastermind type scenario with other sellers. As with all of this document, I welcome any feedback.

So obviously 5 x £150 is £750, £50 more than the £750 per sheet cost. There are a few reasons for this:
Compensate VAs for bonuses if they exceed targets (this will be beneficial to all)
Cover any costs overlooked
Cover training and recruitment costs (£750 in wages, £300 for a course to supplement training, recruitment fees, and the countless hours I invested in recruitment and training)
Some compensation for our time, if anything is leftover. My profit will predominantly be from the deals that I buy.

I will be looking to give VAs a promotion in the future. If that happens, would you be flexible with cost of sheet? I don’t want to charge based on a future wage, but also understand some people may not be happy paying more in the future

Number of People Per Sheet

Each sheet to be shared by 5 people, but I don’t really want to go any higher than 5.

Sheet numbers may fluctuate slightly. Sometimes sheets have been at 4 people, after people have dropped out and I have had to look for new members to service. Occasionally sheets may go up to 6 members, but this would only be temporary for balancing purposes.

Schedule for Sheet Delivery

I will utilise the Slack chats to notify when deals have been delivered

My plan is to deliver deals by the following times in the UK: (often they will be delivered at around 8AM)
10AM Tuesday, ideally by 8pm Monday
10AM Wednesday, ideally by 8pm Tuesday
10AM Thursday, ideally by 8pm Wednesday
10AM Friday, ideally by 9pm Thursday
10AM Monday, ideally by 9pm Friday - I tend to give VAs more flexibility over the weekend and this would mean deals are delivered by 10AM every weekday

Reviewing Deal Sheet

My senior VA will review and distribute deals.

Information About Deal Sheet

Structure of Sheet

The sheet will have an explanation tab to explain the contents. I am flexible on the structure of the sheet, and I am happy for suggestions

Gatings/Restricted Items

Based on discussions with a few people, to begin with I am going to include all products, even if we am gated for them. This is because it only takes a matter of seconds to check if you are gated for a deal. We would rather include a deal we are gated for, than not include it. This is because if someone else isn’t gated for it, then it could be a really good find (less competition). The time spent checking this is worthwhile for the chance at a really good deal. This will be something we will work on with those people who join this deal service. We are very open to feedback here.

The above was from the start of the deal service, and has worked well so far.

Out of Stock (OOS) and Hazmat Items

These will not be included.

Number and Quality of Deals

We hope you agree that judgement of sheet quality should be based on the number of deals acted upon, as opposed to the number of deals delivered.

We will be looking to include at least 4-6+ buyable deals a day, based on feedback.

VA Expectations

We try to keep it quite simple with our VAs, whilst also making it a fair reflection of their performance. After conversations with Thomas Parkinson, I decided to record performance of VAs based on their “estimated profit per month” from deals found. In summary, we get them to estimate how many sales we will make, by analysing the Keepa graph and the competition, and then multiplying this by the profit at the price point they think we can sell it at.

Why are we telling you this?

Hopefully it will give you some idea of what you can expect, and also the kind of capital you’ll need.

The target for VAs is to generate 5x their salary in gross profit. Currently VAs are paid 20,000 PHP a month, roughly £300. So if sheet has 2 VAs, let’s call that £600. My hope is that this deal sheet will generate £3000 in gross profit.

By looking at your average selling price, and gross margin, you can work out the capital you’ll need to buy all these deals, if VAs meet their target.

Hybrid Between: Deal Sheet, VA Sharing, and Mastermind

We're sure by now you’ve gathered that we don’t want this to be just another deal sheet.

We will create a Slack channel for this service where the 5 people on each sheet, and myself, will work together to not only develop the service, but also general Amazon selling ability.

This will develop naturally, but hopefully there will be a lot of conversation between those sharing the same deal sheets.

The idea is simple: Working together for mutual benefit.

Expectations of Service Users

In simple terms, don’t ruin it for everyone else. I don’t want to flirt with price fixing, you all know what I’m talking about.

If you’re reading this, you’ve been invited for a reason. We know you have experience.

You’ve probably all come across a seller with a name of something like “PRICE DROP LTD”. If you want to be that guy, this service isn’t for you.

We're not saying that people who try to dump all their stock as fast as possible are right or wrong. We're not interested in having that argument. However, a deal share service won’t work if some people involved are crashing prices.

We expect you to use Slack (or agreed alternative communications method) to communicate honestly and effectively with people on the same deal sheet as you.

Our Commitment to You

We have been, and will continue to put in a lot of time to making this work.

We will work with you to make this service work. I just ask you provide as much feedback as you can, and my promise is I will act on that feedback to the best of my ability.

If You’re No Longer Interested

That’s cool. All we ask is that you let me know as soon as possible! Thanks :)