Peter Valley started selling books on Amazon in 2007 because he had promised never to work for another company again.
He’s the author of several popular books on Amazon, such as Amazon Autopilot and Book Sourcing Secrets.
He owns and operates the website FBAmastery.com, where he educates existing and aspiring Amazon sellers on using Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA) to achieve time and financial freedom.
Is Peter the best Amazon guru out there? Or is he a scam?
Let’s find out.
Peter Valley is pretty similar to most other FBA programs. They pitch you on the “dream” of running a profitable e-commerce business that can generate cash while you sleep.
All without having to invest much money upfront into things like inventory & advertising…
Too good to be true?
Not necessarily – Amazon FBA programs have certainly minted a few online millionaires.
It was actually one of the first online business models I made money with.
So as far as making money online goes, there are A LOT worse things you could be doing than Amazon FBA.
That being said, you shouldn’t start a business because “it’s not as bad” as some other type of business – it needs to stand on its own merits.
Choosing between the lesser of two evils always results in, ya know – evil.
So in this Peter Valley review, we’re going to break down exactly who FBA is good for, and who should avoid it.
There are a few important things you need to keep in mind when considering FBA as a business:
- Operations
- Finding winning products
- Time (the most valuable thing of all)
Again, it’s 100% possible to make legitimate money with FBA, but it’s NOT a simple business.
Let’s talk about why:
Operations: The big pitch with FBA is that you don’t really need to do much, because Amazon handles all the heavy lifting (shipping, packing, returns, etc.).
That’s cool and all, except for the fact that Amazon actually has incredibly strict guidelines that you need to follow even to be able to ship out of their warehouses – something most programs don’t tell you about in their “awesome” marketing materials.
This process typically takes a solid 4-5 hours alone. So unless you have a very large team, this step is going to take up a lot of your time.
That doesn’t mean FBA is bad – it just means you need to know what you’re getting into. A “passive income business” is not what you’re going to get with Peter Valley.
Some courses will teach you how to outsource all of this prep to another company, but that significantly affects your margins. Amazon is already taking 30-40% just for being part of the FBA program, so you don’t exactly have a lot of wiggle room.
Finding winning products: “Hot” products are typically only popular for a few glorious months, and then they fall off. Again, that doesn’t make FBA a bad business – it just means you need to be constantly on the lookout for the next hot thing.
If you have a supplier that you’re on really good terms with, sometimes they’ll drop you hints and tell you what’s about to trend. But this won’t happen until you have a history of making 6-figures with one another.
What this really means is that you need to be innovative and detail-oriented when it comes to staying on top of trends. You want to be the first one to the product, not the last one struggling to turn a profit off of the big dog’s leftovers.
There’s always the option of serving the “evergreen” markets that have always been around, but to that, I say good luck selling meal prep containers against the Tupperwares of the world.
So – we can safely add on another 3-4 hours worth of time each day trying to hunt for hot products.
Time: Despite what any Amazon FBA course seller tries to tell you, when it comes to FBA (or any e-commerce business model), you’re looking at about 3 months of serious trial, error, & testing before even making $1 back.
It could easily take 6 months or more before you’re even at break even.
And this all assumes you’re actually getting it right out of the gate, which isn’t impossible with a good program – but it’s not necessarily the norm.
To be honest, it’s not uncommon to operate at a LOSS for the first year of any new business, so I’m not bashing FBA here – I’m just talking facts based on my own personal experience selling on Amazon.
But what if you could build a different (non-FBA) income stream, and start seeing profits within your first few days?
I’m talking about a system that doesn’t have:
- Inventory
- Crappy margins
- A 12-month wait time before you turn a profit
- A continuous guessing-wheel trying to find “hot products”
Something that you could make anywhere from $2,000 – $10,000 with consistently, month after month?
A stream of income that you can build as high (or low) as you feel like building it?
If that sounds interesting, you might want to think about using the Digital Rental Method.
If you wanna see what Peter Valley looks like on the inside, keep reading.
Who Is Peter Valley?
Peter Valley is an online entrepreneur who has been selling on Amazon since 2007. He is credited with coining the term and concept of “online book arbitrage.“
Furthermore, he’s the world’s most published author on Amazon selling. On Amazon, you may find some of his books:
Amazon Autopilot: How to Begin an Online Bookselling Business with Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA)
Outsourcing Amazon: A Straightforward System for Automating the Three Most Difficult Aspects of Your Amazon Business: Complete Webinar Transcripts (FBA Mastery Transcript Series)
Online Book Arbitrage: A Step-by-Step Guide to Finding Books On Search Results While Wearing Your Pajamas
Condition Hacking: The Secret Art of Book Repair and Every Trick for Raising the Value of Your Books
Trade-In Arbitrage: Get Paid to Search Amazon for Hidden Gold and Know Your Profits Before You Spend a Penny
And a lot more!
Peter Valley is not just the creator of Zen Arbitrage, but he is also the creator of:
- On-Demand Book Arbitrage Webclass
- RepriceAlytics
- TruRank
NEW: Zen Zenith (this is reserved for Zen Arbitrage members, but this may become available in the future, so keep an eye out!)
You can find more information on Peter’s other products later in this review.
Peter Valley’s Most Popular Program: Zen Arbitrage
Peter Valley has more than 150 hours of high-quality training videos that will teach you everything you need to know about Zen Arbitrage.
However, all you truly need to get started using the Zen Arbitrage tool is the first training video, which takes about 1 to 1.5 hours to complete.
What is arbitrage?
This is the “Buy Low, Sell High” principle in layman’s terms. There are several ways to use this strategy to earn money, but for this review, we’ll focus on online book arbitrage.
How Can Online Book Arbitrage Make You Money?
How are books flipped? Simply pay less for the book, sell it for more, and keep the difference in your pocket.
For example, imagine you searched Zen Arbitrage, and the system notified you that a bookshop sells a book for $10 while Amazon sells the same book for $100.
After that, you purchase the book from XYZ shop for $10 and sell it to Amazon for $100. You’ve just multiplied your initial investment by ten. Now picture yourself being able to do this whenever you like, anywhere you are in the world.
And you could be putting money in your bank account even if you’re still in your PJs. There are hardly many opportunities to earn such significant amounts of money while working from home.
Other Products By Peter Valley
Peter Valley does not just teach about flipping books. If you’re interested, here are other Peter Valley products:
Online Book Arbitrage (web class) – This is essentially the Zen Arbitrage approach but without the app.
RepriceAlytics – An app that assists you in repricing your books for optimal profit.
TruRank – An app that allows you to sales rank on Amazon with precision.
Amazon Altitude Bookselling Training – The most in-depth step-by-step course ever developed for beginning and scaling a six-figure Amazon bookselling business.
Book Sourcing Secrets – Odd places to find cheap secondhand books to resell for high profits that your competitors are too lazy to look for.
Pricing Mastery – An FBA pricing approach to increase your book profits.
Zen Zenith – Currently reserved for Zen Arbitrage members but may become available to the general public in the future.
Prep Service – If you don’t like to handle the books at all, this service will pack, list, and deliver your books to Amazon for a nominal cost, ideal for business-minded people.
There are search options and a price drop functionality. Additionally, you can customize your search criteria.
For other course options, you might look into Sourcing Mogul or Tactical Arbitrage.
Are There Alternatives To Peter Valley?
Yes, there are plenty of other business models to choose from if you want to pursue making money online. Here are just a few:
Is Peter Valley A Scammer?
Time for the million-dollar question: is Peter Valley a scammer?
No, it’s not a “scam,” technically speaking. They aren’t going to take your money and run away leaving you empty-handed.
You can make money with the program, but not nearly as easily as Peter Valley wants you to think it is.
As with most FBA businesses, there is A LOT of work that needs to be done up-front, and there is really no guarantee of you being successful.
You’ll need to get very lucky and find an awesome product no one’s heard of and then pump a ton of volume into it while it lasts.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big proponent of front-loading work now, so you can make money later and sip out of coconuts on the beach.
But if I’m gonna do that, I want the rewards to be HIGH and virtually guaranteed.
I’d rather put in that same 3 months of work (in my spare time) & build a handful of Digital Rental Properties that each produce $500-$2,000 checks every single month afterward (AKA recurring income).
And the cool part is that you can do it in a lot less time than 3-months (I personally did it in my first 2 weeks of using the Digital Rental Method).
Unlike Amazon FBA, you can do it from anywhere in the world, so it’s a genuine “laptop-lifestyle” business.
All you need is an internet connection.
Some of my friends are Digital Rental Method that run their 6-figure businesses from:
- Camping trips at national parks
- Beachfront in Hawaii
- On the road in a camper van (with a pet pig!)
They focus on living an enjoyable life first, and focus on income second. All thanks to this program.
They can take weeks or months off, and money keeps rolling in.
Living happily is the top priority.
If the thought of living perpetually at your dream vacation spot interests you, using the Digital Rental Method might be for you!
What Is My Top Recommendation For Making Money Online In 2022?
I’ve personally tried all of the major online business models:
Read Our In Depth Breakdown Of The Top 5 OppAmazon FBA Courses For 2024
- I’ve sold fidget spinners through Amazon FBA
- I’ve drop-shipped a toilet bowl putting green on Shopify
- I’ve sold women’s health supplements via Clickbank affiliate marketing
And I made money with all of them, so trust me when I say: there is no “perfect” business model.
That being said, my #1 recommendation for making real money online is, hands-down: being a Digital Landlord.
Whether you’re a complete newbie, or you’ve been around the block before but have never had that “big win” to propel you forward, using the Digital Rental Method is for you.
Here’s why:
1)Time: If you’ve got a spare hour or two each day, you can do this. If you want to drop everything and go all-in, you can do this. More time obviously means faster results, but even putting in a few hours per day is enough to see real success.
And because of that flexibility, you don’t need to trade your time for money. Once the income starts, it’s recurring.
That means you can take a month off, travel the country, pursue a passion project, chill on the beach, or charter a boat across the world.
But you can only do that once you’ve created an income stream that doesn’t require YOU to be there all day, every day.
2) Ownership & Control: With Amazon FBA, you don’t technically own the customer base.
Amazon could literally shut you down overnight. They have a history of kicking suppliers off their platform or stopping payouts to affiliates for certain products once they’ve built their own.
Why pour your soul into a business that could be taken away from you at the drop of a dime?
With the Digital Rental Method, you literally own all of the assets, which means you have ultimate control.
3) Big Margins: With FBA, you’re often going to have really slim margins. That means you need to hit a serious scale to make serious money. This usually entails spending A LOT of money on ads and other methods for growing traffic to your product.
using the Digital Rental Method, your profit margin is nearly 100%. Watch here to learn how.
Just a reminder: these Digital Rental Properties are worth (at a minimum) $500/mo in semi-passive income. And each time you create another one, your income increases, and the effort put into creating the next property decreases.
Best-case scenario, you have properties bringing in over $3,000+/mo on auto-pilot.
4) It’s Effectively Copy-Paste: Here’s my favorite part: once you have your first Digital Rental Property up, you can literally copy-paste another version of it and find another willing “renter” in a few days. DOUBLING your income doesn’t get much easier than that…
If you wanted to double your income with Amazon FBA, you would need to sell twice as much inventory, or double your profit margins. And I can guarantee you (from my fidget-spinner FBA days), that’s a lot harder than a few clicks & a phone call.
5) You’re Helping REAL People: My biggest gripe with FBA is that you’re basically only helping yourself. The world doesn’t need another B.S. gadget to consume.
It’s cool to make a quick buck in the short term, but in the long term, it gets really old fast.
But With the Digital Rental Method, you’re helping solve REAL problems that people are ASKING for help with:
Small local businesses around the world need one thing: customers. Without them, their business would fall apart. If you can provide those customers, they’re going to be really happy – and they’re going to pay you for it.
We’re not helping Jeff Bezos shoot another rocket into space – you’re helping a struggling mother or father put food on the table for their families, put their kids through college, or simply live life a little bit more comfortably.
Having this type of impact on the world is what will help you sleep soundly at night.
So, the rest is up to you. You could keep looking at other FBA programs like Peter Valley, which might make you money 12 months from now.
You could keep researching and researching for the next few months (or few years), never making a concrete decision.
OR, you can look deep inside, think about those dreams, hopes, & desires, and make the decision to ACTUALLY make it happen, just like it has for thousands of other students before you.
Making a fortune while actually helping real people that need it.
If this sounds like you, click here to see how it all works.
