If you are here, chances are, you would like to try your hand at Amazon FBA. Whatever business venture you are in, you want to make sure you are fully equipped to succeed.

Being involved in eCommerce, you definitely are looking to invest in not only great training but in the best tools that will equip you to earn and be successful. In this post, I spent a good amount of time researching Product University Sophie Howard.

So, let us go ahead and dive in to know— what is Product University Sophie Howard about?

Product University Sophie Howard Review Summary

Product Name: Product University

Founder: Sophie Howard

Price: $3,995 at time of writing, depending on her promotions this can vary

Rating: 34/100

Best For: those who would like to try their hand at Amazon FBA

Recommended: Not Recommended

What is Sophie Howard About: A course on best practices for Amazon FBA

Summary: Sophie Howard started Amazon FBA during her maternity leave. In the course, she shares her experience and best practices to help you discover markets to sell products that are hard for dealers to copy because they won’t know how to get to your “uniquely sourced products”. 

What is Product University Sophie Howard About?

So, what Is Product University by Sophie Howard about?

Product University is one out of 2 Amazon FBA courses created by Sophie Howard called Blue Sky Amazon Sellers Academy. It is 35 hours worth of video content that deals with how to make a business in Amazon FBA.

So this is how her website looks.

When you click on the register button you’ll be sent to a page offering her book but to also sign up for a free webinar. You sign up by giving pertinent information such as your email and phone number. I actually kept waiting for the email from them only to realize they sent the link through text.

Obviously the webinar won’t really tell you anything juicy except her success story and some testimonies. But it does give you some information such as how to choose products that are low maintenance and are trivial and unique such as tarot cards, toothbrushes, etc.

Sadly, the book she is selling isn’t that impressive and everything seems like an elaborate roller coaster to get people to buy more from her. I mean, if you sold a book, people would expect some juicy and educational stuff that could help them in their Amazon FBA journey wouldn’t they?

Anyways, she has also now crossed over to podcasts too. 

Sophie Howard—The Amazon Selling Queen

Sophie Howard started selling on amazon. It was only as a part-time gig in 2014 while she was on maternity leave from her job.

Sophie Howard is an Amazon Seller based in New Zealand, selling into both the United States, Australia and New Zealand marketplaces.

At present, Sophie Howard would often combine her vacations with business by scheduling them to coincide with local product fairs. These product fairs are actually offered to students often bringing some of them along with her.

So how did she start her journey? So, during her maternity leave, she learned from a friend from Australia about an eCommerce opportunity. It was quite a promising opportunity, however, she quickly realized how it can also be overwhelming and decided to employ a team of high performing virtual assistants. After this, in just a year and a half, Sophie quickly established a 7 figure eCommerce business on Amazon. 

How Does Sophie Howard Product University Work?

This course is anchored on the concept of Amazon FBA. It is a business model that lets entrepreneurs start an online business and sell products without stocking the items themselves.

In the length of 26 hours, you will learn different concepts related to her success at Amazon FBA. These are the best two courses she has created: “Product University” and the “Amazon Navigator” (recently rebranded as “Blue Sky Amazon”). When you invest in Product University you get the Blue Sky Amazon course included, I reviewed this separately.

Her courses discuss valuable approaches such as:

• Strategies on creating unique products
• How to set your product apart from the competition
• Product selection
• Sourcing of products

Basically, most of the things she would introduce are still significant to this day because, it’s not tricks, loopholes, or ways to beat the system that she teaches.

The Blue Sky Amazon Sellers Academy has two courses comprising 14 modules. Product University has 6 modules that will walk you through all of the Amazon FBA eCommerce process. Amazon Blue Sky Training Program formerly known as Amazon Navigator has 8 modules, reviewed separately here.

These modules are focused primarily on:

• Helping the mid-level seller create long-selling products
• Scale the business with the help of virtual assistants
• Using sales funnels and online services such as Feedback Genius

Sophie got some virtual assistants on-board with her when she entered the Amazon FBA business, perhaps she is sharing the practices that worked for her.

What is Fulfillment by Amazon?

Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA) is a service provided by Amazon for you to sell products online. Basically, what it does is:

• provide storage;
• handles packaging;
• gives shipping assistance to sellers;
• tracks orders; and
• deliver customer service.

The program allows sellers to ship their merchandise to an Amazon fulfillment center, where items are stored in warehouses until they are sold.

You might need a lot of money to launch a business with Amazon FBA though. Especially with regards to Ads. Consequently, it will also require a huge amount of hard work.

Some of the concepts you have to master when you get into Amazon FBA is to select a niche, perform competition research, secure a supplier, and build your eCommerce website.

These are only some of the ideas that you will learn in the course.

Inside Product University Sophie Howard 

The length of this course is a total of 26 hours. It is one of the two courses created by Sophie Howard to share and profit from her successful experience selling on Amazon.

Product University Course Content

Product University has 6 modules and is more than 25 hours long

What does Sophie Howard cover in her course?

• How to discover a unique product that will be hard for copy-cats to snatch
• How to scope in on an interested audience to sell to
• How to launch your product into the marketplace through Facebook
• How to multiply your sales by scaling your products and team

Module 1

Length: 5 hours

Content: Foundations – Sophie’s Resume, Mindset, Annual Plan, Exploring other options

With four sessions, module 1 covers introductory concepts, such as why Sophie is qualified to teach the course, how to have the right mindset, creating a yearly plan, what the Pros and Cons of different business models are, and a discussion on sales funnels.

So, keeping in mind a practical mindset, Sophie helps develop the consistent actions and focus needed to persist to FBA success. She tackles what we call a shiny object syndrome.

The shiny object syndrome is when you seem to always see something new and more exciting to do than what you are already doing. When you succumb to it and abandon what you are already doing and move on to a new thing, you start over. This means you forfeit all the progress you have already made and if you keep doing this, it becomes very detrimental to your success.

Module 2

Length: More than 5 hours

Content: Product selection, Minimum Order Quantity (MOQ), creating a long-term goal

Module 2 focuses on product selection strategy mainly on advocating a minimum order quantity (MOQ). According to Sophie, having a high MOQ is highly proportional to long-term success.

MOQs are really a big deal for suppliers because it tells which businesses they’re willing and able to do business with. MOQ helps with creating products that will sell for a long time because this helps with keeping their uniqueness and exclusivity.

In this way, products will be sellable for a long time. 

Module 3

Length: More than 5 hours

Content: Sales Funnels Basics

With four sessions, module 3 discusses the basics of sales funnels.

You will get an overview of sales funnels, setting up a sales funnel, creating a graphic design, using Facebook campaigns, and using Merchant Words to drive traffic in. She teaches how to setup a funnel using Clickfunnels by Russel Brunson which has an additional cost.

The last section involves evaluating your sales funnel, giving update of her own sales funnel and a good amount of Q&A.

Sales Funnels helps your market, sell, and deliver your products online. It simplifies online marketing, selling, and delivery of your products and services by providing users with funnel options that are pre-built for a specific business, product, or service.

Module 4

Length: More than 4 hours

Content: Hiring a virtual assistant

With four sessions, module 4 discusses how to hire virtual assistants to help monitor the business.

The first session is basic and introductory, recruiting and training new VA’s, setting your own expectations, evaluating prospects, managing your high quality team. 

Throughout the module, Sophie goes through Upwork applicants. Here is her criteria:

• Native English Speaker
• Work ethics
• Proactive

Sophie finds it important that a VA is always being respectful and considerate rather than ignore an issue. The ideal VA should acknowledge an issue right away and provide great customer service.

Module 5

Length: More than 5 hours

Content: setting up a seller’s account, getting a business license, using tools, product listings, Amazon PPC

Module 5 is where Sophie talks about how she got started on Amazon.

You will hear about some pros and cons of doing business on Amazon FBA as Sophie discusses a lot of the basics such as setting up a seller account and provides sound advice on which business license too.

Module 6

Length: less than an 1 hour

Content: sourcing products

Sophie does a great job of covering a lot of different ways you can get very unique product ideas. Some of the things discussed in this module is the Amazon Catalogue Technique, Amazon Scroll and Search Technique, Browsing the Local Classifieds, Visiting Markets and Bazaars, and various others.

One of the best practices Sophie does is sourcing the products herself. This gets more money coming in because she was able to bypass brokers, distributors, and middle men.

Product University Sophie Howard Costs

So this course will cost you around $3,500-$3,995 at time of writing. This may changed though depending on her promotions.

So if you are really dead set on Amazon FBA or are already starting, this will be an addition to your already growing expense.

Can You Make Money With Product University Sophie Howard

The business idea in which this course is anchored is legit. Amazon FBA started in 2006.

Realistically, you’ll need around $5,000 to $10,000 just to get started and place your first order. Selling on Amazon FBA is a capital-intensive business model. Unfortunately, if you are someone with limited start up capital, Amazon FBA might not be the business model for you. You can be as hardworking as you want but if you don’t have cash up front a loan might just be such a big risk and other business models will suit you better.

If you look back at the overview of the course, you’ll already have an idea of how much this kind of business is going to cost you. From sourcing products to hiring VA’s. So if you don’t think you have this kind of money, I can tell you of another great option.

How to Make Money with Product University Sophie Howard?

To make money with Blue Sky is to really do your best to follow what the course tells you. If you can’t go all out with what the course is teaching and have a fair amount of capital to invest, you might just be wasting precious money.

Another critical factor with the Amazon FBA business is how to source some good products. Sophie was able to do this during her early years on Amazon. However cheaper retail products are starting to be very hard to find these days due to intense competition at the entry level of the marketplace.

Some might even say that a few things she discusses on her course is a bit outdated, and a few things were discussed over and over again. One example is the topic of hiring virtual assistants. This was discussed in Product University AND in her other bonus course as well.

Was her purpose for mastery? I don’t really know.

Is Product University Sophie Howard a Scam?

Just to be fully transparent with you, I am not a student of Sophie Howard myself and I do not endorse it in any way.

I have researched the website, testimonials, and information on the Internet to get to the bottom of what Product University genuinely does. This is because I have been burnt from programs just like this in the past and I want to prevent others from making the same mistakes. If you’d like to learn Ways to Avoid Online Scams then click the highlighted text.

What Is Product University Sophie Howard About? Is it a scam? The business model in which Product University is anchored in is a legitimate business model.

However it might not be the best business model for everyone. It is good that Sophie Howard is sharing the information that made her what she is. However, I find the price of the course quite expensive, and as I look into her website there are a lot of upsells and it seems as if they want you to buy more and more from her (her book, another one of her book, one of her courses, a promo, etc.)

What I Don’t Like About Product University Sophie Howard

Outdated. Sophie Howard’s practices may have worked for her a few years back, but doesn’t seem to be working now.

Repetitive. Some of the discussion seems to have repeated over the course. Same as my concern about the book having not enough substance, I hope this isn’t the same for Product University.

Money is the key. It is good that Sophie teaches students who enrolled in her course about ambition. But I guess being ambitious is easy when you already have money. Her target is long-term, yes, but this also means getting a high MOQ, and hiring VA’s which other people’s budget just can’t make happen.

What I Like About Product University Sophie Howard

Ambitious. The lessons that she teaches in the courses all have a long-term goal. She teaches how the products you sell could stay sellable for a long long time.

Smart. To be honest a lot of the things that Sophie did in her business were quite brave and smart. To go all in on the buying of products, the sourcing of her products herself, and the hiring virtual assistants to increase her productivity. All combined, this made quite an effective concoction for her success.

Speaking from experience. The first module shows you Sophie Howard’s resume and this is actually something to prove her qualifications to teach the course.

My Opinion – Product University Sophie Howard

Amazon FBA is a legit way to earn a legitimate income online. However, it also has its share of nightmarish downsides.

You’ll really struggle if you start on Amazon with only hundreds of dollars to spend. It could take around 6 months of working part-time to find the right product to be successful in Amazon FBA, in which time you might have already saved a few thousand dollars ready for launch.

Amazon charges both storage fees and fulfillment fees. Amazon will also take care of customer service as well as also handle returns and refunds. As you know, they actually provide quite a stellar customer service and all this does come at a price. 

Also you should be aware of some big risks of Amazon FBA:

• Amazon FBA had a big risk involved if you are just starting out in eCommerce. You’ll need to find a supplier overseas, then you send them large amount of money and they ship your products to Amazon’s warehouses.
• Storage costs at Amazon’s warehouse can really mount up.
• With increasing competition, you’ll find you spend more and more time in your day just to try to make a profit.
• Your suppliers can compete with you once they see what you are doing, they can easily do the same.
• More hours and effort to source products profitable enough to promote as well as detailed descriptions and quality product photos
• Advertising. This really hurts, to get on page 1 of Amazon, Amazon Pay Per Click (PPC) is becoming increasingly necessary. Also the cost of ads is increasing with the competition. If you are not one page 1 of Amazon, you will not be selling.
• Shortages of Stocks
• Higher Fulfilment Costs
• Increasing Prices of Goods
• Competition can destroy you, anyone seeing you be successful with a product can copy what you are doing.
• You will have to learn selling timing and trends, will you be on the right side of the fad as the trend is rising or falling?
• Your net profit can be low after all the rising advertising costs and increasing competition.

A Better Way To Start A Home-Based Business

Thanks for reading until the end of this review to understand what Product University Sophie Howard is about.

All you need to do is create your own affiliate website which will create a great amount of traffic for you every day. There are many ways for you to monetize this specific type of traffic. 

Sounds great right?

But hey, if you are already set on getting into the Amazon FBA business you can learn how to get FREE traffic and other traffic sources for your Amazon FBA from my #1 recommendation below. Plus I can personally coach you to build your own online business, with the right blend of best practice training, community, tools and support.

Joana is a dedicated content writer. She learned how to search for keywords well and write straightforward perky content writing for EFYL. She loves learning a lot of new things as she writes about them.

Above all, she sees herself as a cool wife, mom, and furmom. She used to be an elementary and college teacher but chose to work from home to have more flexibility with her time and be more connected with her family and rescuing stray and abandoned pets.