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…create a plan to increase profits and choose better future products and this is actually a little bit of a hybrid of an episode because I’m having a guest on, Megan Lofton who actually has been emailing me probably for the past year.

She’s gotten started little over a year ago I believe and she’s just been emailing me saying like she’s really enjoying the content and she’s actually documenting her process kind of like an accountability partner in YouTube. So she’s posting over there which is pretty cool but she’s been reaching out saying like when are you going to do a meet up in North Carolina because there’s a lot of people in North Carolina that would probably like to do a meet up? So we’ve been just kind of having this conversation back and forth and then she started telling me about her recent success. As far as like, “Well I’m generating some revenue now.” Like that’s a success, like we’ve earned our first dollar.

And I always tell people, like that’s one of the biggest… The biggest thing in the beginning is just proving that the concept works not necessarily that you got to make a huge profit. But what I said was listen, you’ve learned a ton through this process which she agreed and you are going to hear in this interview and then she’s also got ideas for future products. So she started to kind of like pick my brain through these emails and I’m like let’s just do this. Let’s hop on a call, I’ll have you come on the podcast, you can talk about your first experience as far as like going through, picking your product, what you’ve done, or what you would do differently, what have you learned like all of that stuff and then I can maybe give you some advice moving forward on those future products or maybe even look at your current product and see what we could do to increase profits on that.

Because her profits are really low on the first product because of a couple things that she overlooked and she’s aware of that but we were able to find a place where she could probably save about $4 a unit and then this way here that would come back into her pocket. So then it might make it worth continuing with product number one.

[00:02:02] Scott: So you are going to hear about all of that stuff. So like I said, it’s kind of like a hybrid call. We are doing an interview to kind of let you guys see how someone started from scratch and now is doing around $1,600 a month in revenue, not earth shattering, not like huge numbers but it’s numbers. Like some people don’t even get to $100.

Like so I wanted to share this because a lot of you do like these little case studies or these little interviews where I have someone come on that talks about their victory. Like their victory in the beginning is like ‘yes it works’ but then also like, okay I learned a ton, what did I learn? And then we can go ahead and do a better job moving forward. And that’s what I wanted to do here and then we really get into some strategy, we start talking about how she can take product number one and still make that a success and then from there launching new products in the future.

So her name is Megan Lofton. Like I said, really excited to share this with you, I think you guys are going to get a ton out of it. So I just want to remind you guys on the show notes, theamazingseller.com/341. You can get all the transcripts, the show notes, all of that stuff, the links that we talk about and then I would remind anyone, if you’re brand new, I just had an email, just before I got on here and someone was like, “Scott, I’m brand new, where do I start?” And I usually tell people to go to theamazingseller.com/start. That’s a great resource, but then the other place is if you want like the entire like process laid out for you, that would be our free workshops.

And I would say, just head over to that page theamazingseller.com/workshop and register for an upcoming workshop because there we will lay out exactly step by step in about a 60 minute time frame to where you can get started from scratch to launching your first product. So guys if you are brand new and just maybe tuning in for the first time, number one, thank you for joining us and welcome and hopefully you’re going to get a ton of value and I think this one here is really good because we kind of go back to the early stages of Megan and we talk about how she got to where she is, what here future plans are and where she wants to grow this and then also we talk about how to increase what she already has in motion right now. So as usual I’m going to stop talking now so you guys can listen to this recorded coaching call and interview that I did with Megan Lofton. Enjoy.

[INTERVIEW]

[00:04:17] Scott: Hey Megan, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. How are you doing?

[00:04:21] Megan: Hey Scott, I’m great. Thanks for having me.

[00:04:23] Scott: Yeah, no problem. I’m excited to have you on. I know we’ve had a little bit of communication back and forth, I know you live kind of close to where I am. Are you in North Carolina or South?

[00:04:35] Megan: I’m in North Carolina but right on the border.

[00:04:37] Scott: Okay. Yeah, we are too. You’re just more, I think you are west you said?

[00:04:40] Megan: Yeah, yeah. A little west of you.

[00:04:42] Scott: Yeah. Okay cool. So and we had talked about and you were like, “Come on, come on, you got to do a meet up here in North Carolina.” Now that you are here and it is something that we are definitely considering. But yes, we’ve had some communications back and forth and then you have recently, I say recently, I’m not sure exactly the date but not that long ago, you’ve kind of launched your own product and you’re in the process of launching more products. So what I want to do is I want to get a little bit more of your back story and it’s funny because when I said, “Hey Megan, you want to come on to the podcast and just kind of chat about this stuff?” And you were kind of like, “Well I don’t know. Is my story really that compelling or this and the other thing?” And I’m like, you know what? It’s real. Right? It’s like where people are in certain stages.

I don’t always have to have the people learn that are doing $100,000 a month because to me, a lot of people that I talk to they say, “I like the people that are just starting or the people that are still working their way up.” And I think a lot of people get value from that as well. And the other thing I wanted to do because you had some questions and you were just talking about things you were working on and I’m like, “Maybe we can turn this into kind of like a coaching call too where I can kind of walk through some of those things you are thinking about or that you might be you know struggling with or a couple of sticking points.”

And we can kind of discuss them here live on the podcast. So again I want to thank you for coming on and spending a little bit of time with us. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about Megan and then also how you got to where you are right now in the FBA Amazon space.

[00:06:11] Megan: Yeah, I’d be happy to. That’s a lot to walk through at once but I’ll do my best and keep it short.

[00:06:16] Scott: That’s all right.

[00:06:17] Megan: So I first found out about FBA about a little over a year ago. Probably about 13 months ago or so and the way I found out about it was through Steve Chou of “My wife quit her job.” He was on another podcast that I listen to and I just got really interested. I went and read his entire blog over the course of about two weeks and through that I found out about the FBA opportunity and actually he led me to you. To listen to the amazing seller podcast.

[00:06:43] Scott: Oh cool!

[00:06:44] Megan: And yeah. So I’ve listened to probably, over the course of last year, probably everything that you’ve put out.

[00:06:51] Scott: Nice.

[00:06:52] Megan: And I just really was attracted to the business model of it. I’m somebody that, I do work a day job in a very high demanding, high stressful field but I love it and I don’t want to quit my job to do other stuff. But I’ve always just had this little inkling to do something that was just for myself. I just I’ve always wanted to build a little side business just for myself that like this is mine and no matter what happens in my day job I have this little thing that I can work on and play with.

[00:07:21] Scott: Sure.

[00:07:22] Megan: And the FBA model is really attracted to me for that reason because there’s a lot of work that you have to do and it’s absolutely work but I don’t have to physically be there doing something. I can manage it during the night, during nights, weekends, slow times, on my lunch break and whatever. So for me it just really seemed like the perfect model to pursue.

[00:07:42] Scott: Yeah, totally. Totally it’s a great model and again I think you kind of illustrated everything right there by saying like, once you’ve got kind of go through the initial the pains of getting started it can become semi-passive in a sense, to where once you get it rolling you have some things that come up things you’ve got to look at but to me it’s the closest thing to a digital product to my eyes because once you get stuff into Amazon, that’s your products they take care of a lot of the heavy lifting.

[00:08:09] Megan: Exactly. It’s so nice to get an email that says Amazon shipped the product you sold and like, “Oh, I sold something, fun.”

[00:08:17] Scott: Right.

[00:08:18] Megan: That’s awesome. Yeah. I love that aspect of the business and so I learned about it last year. It took me up until February of this year to actually get a product into the warehouse and last year the same time I was starting the FBA channel I also started a YouTube started the FBA sales process. I also started a YouTube channel called ‘The bootstrap boutique’ just to get myself some accountability to keep going and if you watch those videos you’ll notice that I got very distracted about summer time because my husband and I were going through a move and all this stuff. We moved again in December about the same time I sent my wire for my products to China.

[00:08:56] Scott: Okay.

[00:08:57] Megan: And the wire got held up for five weeks with a bank here in the states and I didn’t even realize because I was so distracted. Had so much other just life stuff going on.

[00:09:05] Scott: Yeah, of course

[00:09:06] Megan: And so I feel like I’ve made you know all the mistakes. I feel like I’ve done them all and then I got my product like you said, I just recently started selling about five or six weeks ago and finished up my first 30 days with what I would call it very average $1,600 in sales. I was not one of those people that launched a product straight out of the gate you know and hit that $10 sale a day.

I’ve had some days over 10 sales a day but I’ve had a lot of days where I’ve had three or four sales and you know part of that is my fault for probably going into a category that was a little bit too competitive for maybe a good first product but you know it’s been a really good learning experience too. I’m happy that I am still making these sales and have just really been able to learn a lot through the process of doing it.

[00:09:54] Scott: Well I think that’s key though. Like let’s highlight that. Like when you’re going through that process you’re like learning and so many people discount that. They are like, “I spent $3,000 or $5,000 to get my products live or my product live and it’s just it’s not giving me the results I want, I failed.” And I’m like no, no you did not. Like you can now go back and take all those lessons learned and correct those or make better choices like you said maybe you went into a little bit of a competitive market and maybe now you would scale that back a little bit because of what you’ve done or maybe you would just do it differently and when you launch because you learn something to that process. But you won’t you won’t learn anything unless you actually do it. Like you can listen to my podcast, you can listen to other people’s podcasts or blogs or whatever and you can get an idea of what it’ll be like for that person or those people but it’s never going to be the exact same thing for you. You’ve got to do it, you got to live it so, I agree

[00:10:50] Megan: Yeah, I learned by doing and so yeah there’s some things that I would do differently for sure the next time around that I will do differently but it’s just this experience has been invaluable for actually learning by doing and realizing like I can do this and I can actually launch in a competitive market and still sell products. So it’s not a loss by any means.

[00:11:10] Scott: Yeah, no and I think that’s huge for a lot of people to understand like if you want to learn do. That’s what I’ve always said like if you want to learn how to do something be willing to go there and fail a little bit in a sense or make mistakes and then learn from those mistakes. What happened with the wire transfer? Is that something that you learned that you could do differently or was that something that you couldn’t avoid?

[00:11:30] Megan: Well, what happened was it was, I went to the bank you know you fill out all the wire paperwork they send that and then it gets reviewed by someone else in their wire department and I think just the fact that I was sending you know what was it? $3,000 or so to China and I had never done that before they held it up for more questioning but there is an issue with communication at the bank because the person that held the wire I think they went on Christmas vacation and forgot about it honestly.

But they were holding the wire, they did not relays that to my bank they just needed more information about the breakdown what was cost of goods, what was shipping and it just got held there and my supplier emailed me and they were like, “We don’t have our money yet.” And I was like, “What?” And so I went to the bank the next day and got it worked out, but you know and I just have say that was my fault because I believe nobody cares more about your money than you do, so I should have been monitoring that.

[00:12:23] Scott: But you were busy, you were moving? Yeah, yeah. I get it. I get it. Yeah, what have you got to do?

[00:12:29] Megan: I take the blame for that though. But that was very frustrating.

[00:12:32] Scott: So okay, let me ask you this. So okay let’s dig into really quickly like your first product like through that process like a lot of people want to know like, “Okay so how did you find your first product? Like what was your technique there? Was it just using a tool or was it you know doing a touch list or was it doing something that you were involved in?” Like what gave you the idea to start going into that market?

[00:12:52] Megan: Yeah, the product that I launched with was actually the third product that I seriously tried to move forward with. The very first product I tried to move forward with I got to the purchase order place with my supplier and I sent the purchase order and they came back and they said “You know what we don’t want to work with you this is too complicated for this simple order.” And then I never heard from them again.

Yeah, the second product I was really excited about was going to be huge as in you know volume, size and all the freight forwarders were like giving me quotes that I just couldn’t make money off of it. So I set that one aside too.

Then I finally got to the third product and I found it through Jungle Scout. I’m a big fan of Jungle Scout, I really like, I just use their Chrome extension I don’t use the web app because I like going through and digging around on what I call the bowels of Amazon. Like the subcategories of the sub category and it’s kind of following down the rabbit hole of what I think is interesting and different and I think that, that gives me opportunity to find things that maybe other people are looking for. But I also have noticed in myself a tendency to go back to those same categories over and over again and not really explore the full variety of everything Amazon has. So there’s pros and cons to doing it that way but that’s what I’ve been doing so far.

[00:14:11] Scott: Do you find yourself like when maybe something new happens in your life or you start looking for something because you need to fix something or whatever do you automatically now like think to yourself like, “I wonder if that’s selling on Amazon?” Does that happen to you?

[00:14:27] Megan: I do and I have on my camera roll on my phone so many pictures of things like that. When I was in a Cabela’s store at which is way outside of my wheel house and I was just taking pictures of random things like, “Oh I wonder if they sell this on Amazon all this looks like a good private label product.” Or I was home visiting my parents a few weeks ago and my mom mentioned that she needed to buy something for her patio and she’s like I got the last ones on the Amazon, I’ll just get it from there too and I was like, “Huh good idea.” So I immediately went on Amazon looking it up. She’s like what are you doing?

[00:15:00] Scott: That’s so funny. Yeah I mean we’re doing that all the time. My wife just yesterday had said something to me about a product that she was like, “You know like these are, these I mean I have to get these now,” because I’m using this one technique or whatever and she’s like, “I really think that you could probably sell these on Amazon.” I’m like all right listen like there’s a brand I’m already working with it we’re already like so many products deep like we’re working on I’m like I don’t need any more products right now. It’s a distraction to put it on the list right now, I’m good right now and she started laughing and she’s like well I’m just saying and I go, “Yeah I know you’re saying but it’s actually more work for me right now.” I’ve got so many right now with this one brand that I’m working with that it’s like it’s going to keep me busy for a while like there’s a list of products that we want to launch. Yeah but it’s, I just do that all the time.

If I’m fixing something or something broke I’d be like, I wonder if these sell and all of a sudden you’re like, “Oh wow they are wow this is crazy, yes people are buying these things.” It’s like I think that just being aware of what you are doing and even like you said your mother had something… My father just had hip surgery replacement surgery so he’s got some different devices that he’s buying and recovery stuff and all this and it’s like those are things that could be potentially be a product. So anyway I just wanted to kind of talk about that because a lot of people say I think all the products are already taken and I’m like no, no. There’s just so many that you could use, aren’t even scratching the surface.

[00:16:31] Megan: Exactly, exactly. And once you start looking then… I mean I have two notebook pages full of ideas and there’s now the hard thing is but which one?

[00:16:40] Scott: Yeah, yeah. Exactly.

[00:16:42] Megan: Finding products is not the problem.

[00:16:43] Scott: Right, it’s like picking them.

[00:16:45] Megan: The right one.

[00:16:44] Scott: Yeah, yeah. So okay, so let’s just go really quickly through your launch. So when you launched that product what was your strategy moving forward? How many units did you order first?

[00:16:57] Megan: 250.

[00:16:58] Scott: Okay, so 250 nice small little order. Was it an oversized product or…?

[00:17:03] Megan: The product is not oversized but the box that… I mean the product is about two pounds.

[00:17:09] Scott: Okay. That’s not bad.

[00:17:10] Megan: So it was still a very large order that has been sitting in my guest bedroom because I only ship in a few at a time. About 50 at a time. So it was a small order quantity wise. So I did not do any giveaways which that strategy is maybe not as effective now anyway because you can’t do in exchange for review. So I have not done any giveaways, that was never my plan. I do have a strategy I want to employ, I just I need my husband to help me do it and he’s been really busy with work lately so he hasn’t been able to but which would have been creating video tutorials to put on YouTube with a link back to the product. That’s my plan on how to actually move some of these units.

[00:17:54] Scott: That’s a good strategy.

[00:17:56] Megan: Hopefully a little faster, and then I just turned on PPC as soon as the product landed, as soon as it went live on Amazon and that has driven sales. I mean that’s been effective and I email people for reviews. I have not used an email service? The ones that will email for you. I haven’t done that I’ve just gone into sellers central where you can email people and…

[00:18:20] Scott: Yes you may do that.

[00:18:22] Megan: Yes and I just manually do it every Friday. My whole thing is bootstrapping which is like in my YouTube channel to bootstrap routine because I want to just try and invest as little as possible where it makes sense. There’s certainly things where it makes sense to spend money. But if I can do something manually for not a lot of time investment then I’m just trying to do it that way and that’s generated some great five star reviews for me so I’ve been really excited about that and that’s my strategy. It’s not much stuff.

[00:18:51] Scott: No, no. I love it. It’s a lean strategy and I like it and the thing that I like about that is like you’re not using the tools yet unless you start to grow to where you see that now you’re spending too much time sending those emails. That’ll be the time when you’re going to be, “All right I think it’s time.” If I’m sitting down for you know an hour plus each day like that’s an hour I could get back like is it worth it for me just to automate that process or hire a VA or whatever.

[00:19:17] Megan: Yeah, for sure and one thing also that makes it easier is when we’re talking about one product. So what you don’t want to do is you don’t want to request customer feedback on something that they didn’t buy.

[00:19:26] Scott: Exactly.

[00:19:27] Megan: I basically can’t screw it up right now which is why I’m happy to do it myself but when it becomes more complex then I will absolutely be going out and buying the tools I need to be more efficient.

[00:19:36] Scott: Yeah, yeah. Totally I love that and it’s funny. Jarret, I had him not that long ago and very similar to you, he didn’t do any giveaways. Just found a really good market and him and his wife are a team and he launched it with no reviews and just turned on some pay-per-click and off to the races and he had phenomenal months. I mean months that are just mind blowing. But again he tapped into a really good market and he’s got a good product and he’s invested in those products and it’s paid off for him but now he’s got growing pains as far as I how do I keep inventory in and how do I launch the next product because it’s a lot of capital. So anyway you have different growing pains throughout the process but I love it.

I think a lot of the strategy moving forward is like finding the right products that don’t require thousands of reviews or even hundreds and then you know being able to use sponsored product ads the best that you can. Like to start getting those initial sales so you can start ranking. I think that’s the key. I think the other part of it is… Does your product lend itself to having an email list? Like could you like do something where you did like some type of give away or something to attract people that were in your market and then and then follow up with those people about a discount on your product?

[00:20:57] Megan: Yeah it does. It absolutely does and that’s been on my mind also. So I know I’ve got a lot of work to do.

[00:21:04] Scott: Yeah, I know and I like it that you’re going slow and steady though. I mean I like that. There’s things that you can do but you got to prioritize those what’s going to be the best for you to do. And I think that’s definitely something that I would put up there as one of the next things that I would say for you to do because that will help you boost sales. Like right now you say like, “Well you know some days I might only get one sale, I might get zero sales but then one day I might get three to five.” And that’s cool but it’d be nice if you could email your list and get five sales a day even if you just broadcasted that out to maybe a quarter of your list every day for the next four days to just kind of get a little bit more of a boost so then that might help you rank so then you start doing more of those organic sales.

So there’s definitely a huge advantage to that and being able to get feedback on your next product as far as not feedback as far as I’m even leaving feedback like feedback like, “What do you guys think? We’re going to be launching this. Do you like it in red or black?” Like you know what I mean? Like getting that feedback from people that are in your market is huge. So I think that that’s huge to do that but again you got to do one step at a time for sure. Okay, so all right, so you’ve launched, you’ve did like $1,600 in sales which is great, it’s again, it’s proven yourself that okay this kind of works all right. So what’s the plan moving forward? Where are we at right now and I guess how can I help you in that next move?

[00:22:25] Megan: Yeah, so right now I feel like I’m at a bit of an inflection point. I need to make a decision on am I going to reorder this product or am I going to move on and launch product two? I don’t have the capital to do both so I have to make a decision on that. The issue I’m having with product one is that the cost for me to land it at Amazon is $13.59 which is kind of high and a lot of that is to do with the shipping cost per unit, it’s $6.92. That’s via FedEx Air Express. I have not looked into freight forwarding because that just to me adds layers of complexity. I know I can bring the cost down but I wonder at what mental cost to me it would take to do that.

So when you figure in Amazon fees which they went up and right in the middle of the period so they weren’t quite as high when I started but my profit per unit right now is only $2.33 which is not good. It was a lot more, when I talk about I’ve made a lot of mistakes and have still managed to launch a product. I originally thought that I was ordering 500 units and that my product cost was $3. But when my boxes came and I was counting and I was like it was only 250 and went back and looked at my purchase order and sure enough were 250 units which means my product cost was $6. I’m, just for cost of goods.

[00:23:54] Scott: Okay, that was a little boo boo, right?

[00:23:56] Megan: Yeah, yeah. Right. But it was definitely a mistake. So I’m not making, I mean almost no money off of this. We’re pretty much called $2 of break even and when you think about your ancillary costs that you have with selling on Amazon such as pay-per-click.

[00:24:13] Scott: Right, okay but I mean you’re getting experience?

[00:24:17] Megan: Exactly, exactly.

[00:24:18] Scott: Okay so forget about that that you know $2 profit. Yes that’s not what I would launch with but you didn’t think you were going to launch with that either you thought you’re going to be you know at least going to be at least probably $6 a unit?

[00:24:29] Megan: Yeah. I was forecasting between $7 and $8, with lower fees and lower product costs.

[00:24:35] Scott: Right, okay so my first thought would be all right if you think that this could… If you could get you a list bill that you could then push sales and you can dial in pay-per-click and you can get a steady five to ten sales a day on this product that you already have sourced all that stuff how can we get the cost down? The first step is you would do freight forwarding. You would do by sea and I know that sounds scary but I would recommend hiring a service to do it. Like I would have either Guided Imports or Flex Port do it. They charge a very small fee to do it but they handle it all, like it goes literally like you just basically paying them and letting them take care of all that heavy lifting for you and if you can get that cost down you said it’s like $6 for shipping?

[00:25:18] Megan: Yeah. $6.92 per unit.

[00:25:20] Scott: You can probably get that cost down to a dollar a unit maybe a dollar fifty a unit, so you’re going to save $5 maybe $4 even on shipping on these units and I mean that’s money in your pocket. So now you did go from $2 to $6, let’s say and then that makes it more attractive and it’s already done. So that would be one thought but the question is do you think you’re going to be able to get a steady five to ten sales a day? Like that’s the thing. Is there enough sales in that space right now is there enough depth, is there enough demand?

[00:25:50] Megan: Yes there’s definitely… The demand is not an issue on this product.

[00:25:55] Scott: Okay, so then that would answer that question and then so the next question would be like, are you fully optimizing or taking advantage of sponsored product ads? Can you still improve that to get more sales and if you can, can you rank? Are you ranking anywhere as close to anywhere near like first page for your keywords?

[00:25:17] Megan: For, yes, for one of my keywords I am on the first page, the bottom of the first page but it is on the first page.

[00:26:25] Scott: Okay, so if we got that up to the top of the first page you’re probably going to get… How many sales are they making the top of the first page versus the bottom of the page?

[00:26:32] Megan: Top of the page is doing like 3,000 sales in month on its own according to Jungle Scout.

[00:26:37] Scott: Okay, so let’s just even say that that’s 2,000, that’s a ton, right? What about like the fourth or fifth? Like let’s move down the list a little bit let’s say you’re not number one.

[00:26:47] Megan: Yeah, that drops to between five and six hundred.

[00:26:50] Scott: Okay, so the number one is definitely taking the majority so that’s going to be hard to get there but if we can get you in the middle of the page it seems like we could probably grab you know some of those sales. So even if it’s at the 500 then we’re saying okay we’re still over you know 10 units a day. So there is room for you to do that. Well, how do we get there? We need more sales. How do we get more sales? Pay-per-click and having your own list? Like there you go, like that would be the plan for that. So those would be the two focus points if you think you can push it to that page because you’re already there you just got to get higher up on that page. How is everything as far as your images go? How is your conversion rate? Like if you look at your conversion rate in the back end like I mean are you converting at 5% are you converting at 10%, 15%?

[00:27:37] Megan: No, it’s closer to between 1% and 2%.

[00:27:39] Scott: Okay.

[00:27:40] Megan: Yeah, it’s pretty low.

[00:27:41] Scott: Okay. So do you think that has anything to do with your images, does it have to do with the product? Like is your product similar to the one that’s selling 3,000 units a month?

[00:27:51] Megan: It’s not and I’m a little confused even with the product that’s selling 3,000 a month. I think that the keyword they are targeting there is kind of ancillary to their primary keyword.

[00:28:01] Scott: So they’re probably getting traffic from those other ones too?

[00:28:04] Megan: I think so. Yeah and so I don’t really look at that top listing sitting and say that’s what I want to do because their product is different and somebody ordering my product would order it for a reason instead of the top listing.

[00:28:16] Scott: Got you. So let’s discount that one, let’s get that one out of there.

[00:28:19] Megan: Yeah, I don’t pay that one a lot of attention except to say wow it would be nice to have that many sales, but I don’t consider them a direct competitor.

[00:28:25] Scott: Okay. So the ones that we are focusing on those there, are they similar to yours?

[00:28:29] Megan: They are.

[00:28:30] Scott: Okay. And you said about 500, how many reviews do they have?

[00:28:35] Megan: They have between one and two hundred reviews.

[00:28:38] Scott: Okay, so and how many do you have approximate? How many? Three?

[00:28:42] Megan: Three, yeah.

[00:28:43] Scott: Okay, so again we got room to improve their, right? So but that comes with sales, right? The more sales that you get the more that they’re going to naturally happen. If you only have two sales a day your chances of getting a review you have to probably wait. Generally I see about 8% to 10% that will leave reviews if you have a good follow up. So if you’re having a hundred sales you’re going to get let’s say high, let’s take ten reviews. So that means you’ve got to get a hundred sales before you can get those 10 reviews. So how do we get a hundred sales? That’s the question.

So it always comes back to how do we get sales? How do we get velocity going? And that comes down to like I said pay-per-click and your own list. So my recommendation here would be to number one, dial in the pay-per-click and really try to hone in on those keywords looking at the search terms that are actually being… We’re actually doing a whole week this week on sponsored product ads which…

[00:29:38] Megan: Yeah, I’ve been watching.

[00:29:39] Scott: Yes, so that there should help you a lot because you’re going to start mining for those keywords that are actually search terms from the keywords. So the keyword is going to be the one that’s going to trigger the search terms and then from there we can start to expand on those but also optimize your listing for those. So that would be like a focus and then the second part of that would be, I would come up with something in your space maybe even including your product and I would come up with some type of really awesome giveaway and I would start to advertise that whether it’s find an influencer in your space, on YouTube, on Instagram channel, Pinterest whoever is in your space that’s really doing you know really well as far as like a leader or someone that has an audience or some followers and then I would advertise that to those people. I would even pay to be on that page so we did one recently a case study.

We did it for a pair of sneakers in the sneaker head market for my son and we did this just at the case study and what we did is we took a pair of Kobe sneakers. Really well known sneakers and it’s $160 value we raffled those off and then on the back end of that now we can offer products of those. Know we did this as a case study, so I don’t even have products to sell to these people but if I did it would be related to a sneaker. So there’s another one that we’re doing actually currently right now which is a bundle that we put together it’s about at $200 value so we bought these products. We bought these products. We didn’t even have a product to offer in the bundle yet we just wanted to build our launch list but we know that people that want this they’re also going to want what we have to offer.

So that’s what I would probably do. If you can add your product into a bundle because a lot of times people are like, “Well I’ll just give away my product, it’s $25.” Its like people aren’t really excited about that. They’re like, “okay great, I guess” but if you do something like I always use the example like a guy that’s into fishing. If you did this like awesome like fishing rod that you know is like the top fishing rod this year in 2017 and all the fishermen like are going after, they’re buying it or they’re loving it.

[00:31:50] Scott: You do that, you do your tackle box because you sell a tackle box and then you add in maybe a vest and then maybe you may be a pro net or something and it’s a $200 value but you buy it and you’re going to spend $200. That’s your promotional cost and then you drive traffic to that give away and then you let that run for 30 days, you collect the emails and on the back end of that you can then sell your tackle box to anyone that doesn’t win and give them a discount.

To me that’s the future. Like that’s the future of whether you want to sell products on Amazon, whether you want to sell products on your own site, if you want to do affiliate deals like anything you own that list, you control it, you drive the traffic and then if you can drive those sales through Amazon in the beginning especially that’s going to also allow you to start ranking higher because you’re driving sales.

[00:32:38] Megan: Yeah makes sense.

[00:32:40] Scott: So I would focus on those two areas if you’re still interested in selling that product. That would be like homework, like that would be, that’s what I would set out to do like that would be my main focus. Now you did mention another product potentially wanting to launch, know is this product related to the product you currently sell?

[00:33:00] Megan: No it’s… I mean it would not be necessarily in the same category, sub-category on Amazon but it’s within the same room of the house I would call it.

[00:33:10] Scott: Okay, so I guess my question is, if someone bought your first thing could you up sell them something that’s the other thing on the back end or would it be kind of like, “Why would you why would you offer this to me?”

[00:33:21] Megan: Yeah, it would be a little too far apart for that.

[00:33:23] Scott: Okay, so then I guess my thing here is, that’s fine to do that but then that does mean that you’re kind of in a sense you’re doing like what we call an open brand. Where you’re going to launch multiple types of product which is fine but then what I would still do is I would want to create three… Like let’s say you’re going to launch three different products in three different markets. I would still want to create some type of contests around those markets so this way here I can draw people in that are interested in that space so I could use those. So like us we have an open brand that we’re working with and we basically have five different markets in there right now. So we’re going to build email list in each of those markets so when we go to launch products in those in those markets we can drive sales.

It’s easier when you have a product that’s related to each other because now all of a sudden you start to build this product line but it sounds like you’ve kind of learned through that first product and you’re not necessarily thinking you want to keep going down that road, you might want to start over new and over here now that you’ve kind of learned through that process, is that what I’m hearing?

[00:34:22] Megan: Yeah, I think so. I mean I will definitely look into you know the things like the shipping costs and seeing if I can get that down and make some profit that way. I’ve talked to my supplier and I’m trying to negotiate just a lower per item cost…

[00:34:34] Scott: How much does a unit cost you before shipping?

[00:34:36] Megan: $6

[00:34:37] Scott: Okay, so and you’re ordering 250 or 500?

[00:34:40] Megan: Right.

[00:34:41] Scott: Okay, so I would say what if the price breaks if I order 1,000, if I ordered 2,000, if I ordered 3,000 like get those price breaks because then that’ll show you what you can as you grow what that cost will start to come down. The big one is the shipping I think you can definitely cut that in half like without a doubt. Like when you’re doing you said Air Express right?

[00:35:03] Megan: Right.

[00:35:04] Scott: Yeah, that’s like, that’s going to be the most expensive.

[00:35:06] Megan: Yeah, yeah. And I understood that but I was at the point where I had sat on this product for so long. I was like, “I just want to launch it.”

[00:35:13] Scott: But you validated it. You validated it and that’s cool. I tell people that like you know don’t get hung up on all the cost as long as you know that those costs can be reduced once you seen and establish that this is going to work. And that’s exactly what you’ve done so now I start refining that and I’d start ok now let’s start getting that cost down. How do I do that? First off, shipping, let’s look into that. Let’s focus on that this week only, shipping.

How do we get our shipping down? let me contact Guided Imports, let me contact Flex Port like let me just see what they come back at for, sea shipping for 250 units or 500 units or whatever you’re going to order. All you have to do is you literally just give them the dimensions and the weight of the boxes that are going to be shipped and they’ll come back with a quote and then from there they’re going to take care of everything from port to port and even shipping it directly into Amazon if you choose to or shipping it to your location.

So it is pretty much a seamless thing. That’s what’s so cool about it. It’s A to Z. It’s like they’re going to you’re not going to contact 11 different people like you would if you were doing it all manually yourself. Which I think that’s the scary part for a lot of people including myself like I don’t want to deal with 11 different people.

[00:36:16] Megan: Including US Customs.

[00:36:18] Scott: Exactly. Exactly, we don’t want to have to deal with that. So I totally get that. Okay, so how excited are you about the second product here that you want to launch? Are you really excited about that? Like are you like, “Oh man, I really want to get this thing.” Or are you just kind of like you’re doing it just because you think that that’s the right thing to do next?

[00:36:35] Megan: Yeah. I’m pretty excited about it, it’s a pretty niche area that I think is kind of an interesting one. I’ve ordered a couple of products from Ali Express. Not really, I guess they are samples but you know from Ali Express is a little different than ordering Alibaba, so I’m just waiting on those to come in so I can… One I ordered was kind of a higher priced one and then one with a lower price and just to check out the differences and quality of the different manufacturers. So that’s as far as I’ve gone with that besides you know doing the Jungle Scout validation and then ordering the products and just waiting on them to come in and see if this is something I want to move forward with because it’s a product and I’m not familiar with, I’ve never used myself and so I just know more about it. I want to get one to play with it a little bit.

[00:37:21] Scott: Sure, okay now that sounds really good. So you won’t really know that until you get that so that’s where that is but I think you’re in a great spot. I think you’ve learned a lot so moving forward it should be easier. Again that thing of the freight forwarding thing I think that’s like a little bit of a sticking point that I think you can get through very easily if you outsource that necessarily to you know go to a company like Guided Imports or go to Flex Port. I’ve had both of those, the owners of each of those companies on the podcast and I believe too if you go on my resource page I know for guided imports you do and I think Flex Port too, there’s some type of discount that’s there for the TAS community, but whether you do or not it’s a great company both of them I know personally. I’ve had both on the show and I talk regularly with them guys.

So they’re good people and if you have any questions they’re easy to get a hold of and what’s cool about their companies is they are people that lived here in the states that moved there and now they run companies there. And they manage people to do the work that we would necessarily have to communicate through. Which makes it really cool because they’re there on the ground with a company they can speak you know the language and all that stuff, so there’s no barrier there.

So I would definitely do that though Megan. I think that’s definitely something you can do like right now just start getting prices on it. I would just contact one of those companies and just say, “Give me a price like, here’s the box size, here’s the weight and I want to ship by sea, what’s the cost?” And then they’re going to come back with a quote and you’re going to say, “Okay cool.” And then at least you’ll know that now wow I can reduce that cost by $3.75, that’s crazy like that’s money in my pocket so maybe I still want to do this. Yeah, I like that, I like that a lot.

[00:39:05] Megan: That will be done today.

[00:39:06] Scott: Cool, I like that action, taking action, all right cool. So is there any other last things that you wanted to discuss before we wrap up this all?

[00:39:17] Megan: No, I think you walked me through a lot of good things and I’ve just got like you said look at the numbers and make some decisions about what I want to do going forward. So I’m excited to put some thought into that in the next couple of days.

[00:39:30] Scott: Yeah and I think the other thing I want to kind of go back to real quick before we wrap up is that, you know like you mentioned like you want to have your husband create some videos and stuff and I think that’s useful for not just the traffic that you’ll get from YouTube, but it’s also good for people that buy your product can see how to use it better so when you send those follow-up emails you can say, “Here’s a video or here’s a PDF.” And maybe you can have screenshots from the video and then you can then have a link in your PDF that goes over to the video. So this way here again you’re giving that user a better experience and then that’s going to also help with reviews and feedback and in all that fun stuff. So I think that’s definitely something that when the time is right definitely adding that will separate you from your competition because I’m sure that not everyone is doing that. It’s more work.

Whenever there’s more work, a lot of people tend not to do it. So yeah I like it, so all right this has been awesome so hopefully this has been helpful to you Megan?

[00:40:27] Megan: Super helpful. I really appreciate you walking me through all that.

[00:40:30] Scott: Yeah, awesome and I know that you’re going to be looking into maybe doing a meet up in North Carolina so it’s not official yet but we’re talking about that because you are in North Carolina and you’ve agreed to maybe give me a hand with that maybe finding a location or something we can do that and we might do like a unofficial one like I’ve done in the past where we just do like a meet and greet and I also might just do a I might do a small workshop for a day or something like that but you and I will talk through that. But anyone that’s in North Carolina or that might want to pay a visit to North Carolina be on the lookout for that we might be doing that soon. So that’ll be fun.

[00:41:04] Megan: Yeah, I’m excited to get that set up.

[00:41:06] Scott: Yeah, that’ll be awesome. All right Megan, I want to thank you and good luck and keep me posted and I think that you’re on the right track. You’ve definitely learned a lot and I think your future looks bright.

[00:41:18] Megan: Well hey, I appreciate the vote of confidence. I’ll take it.

[00:41:21] Scott: All right Megan will talk to you soon, all right?

[00:41:24] Megan: Thanks Scott.

[00:41:26] Scott: All right, so I hope that you got value from that, I enjoyed that so much, I love talking about this stuff one on one and with Megan that’s what I was able to do and I’ve done this at meetups as well or our live events and I really, really enjoy that because a lot of times, I can dig in to where some people might not be able to see it. It’s hard when you’re in the business and when other people look from the outside they can start to pull apart the business itself but also maybe some of the things that you can do to increase profits or just expand the product line and that’s really what we talked about here and I just love talking about this stuff and digging in where I can.

So hopefully you got a ton of value by listening to me brainstorm as we went through her journey so far and I think the one thing I want to highlight here and I think Megan did very, very well at explaining was how she learned through this process and she’s not deflated she’s not like, “I’m going to give up because my first product’s only making $2 a unit,” because she learned through that process. Even if she didn’t figure out a way to make that profitable she’s okay with that and I think a lot of people need to understand that getting started is the hardest part and she actually went through the process, learned through that process and she was ready to go on to the next product which she is going to do but again you can sometimes look and see what you already have currently going and moving and see if you can enhance that or make it better and again I just want to highlight that that you learn through this process.

I’ve always said that you learn by doing not by consuming so you’re not just going to sit here and learn by reading all this stuff or listening to all this stuff. You have to actually get it in motion you have to actually get started and it’s really, really important that you do that. I want to remind you guys the show notes you can pick those up by heading over to theamazingseller.com/341. All of the show notes, the transcripts, the links that we talked about will be there for you as well. You can also link up with Megan herself and she’s got a YouTube channel that she really just documents her journey and she even said it was you know part of the reason of doing it is so she can hold herself accountable and also see where she’s gone.

[00:43:35] Scott: Like where did she start, where did she go and where is she going and it’s kind of all documented and I think that’s a pretty cool idea. Know I know some people don’t want to get on camera, they don’t want to you know post on YouTube and I get that but you can always keep a journal, you can keep a notebook and kind of log what you do on a regular basis or even write down what you want to do in that 90 day sprint.

I think it’s a great idea to track your progress and this way here you can kind of see where you came from and see how you’ve grown or what you missed the mark on and then from there you can you know decide if you want to improve that or if you want to you know give it another go. So definitely, definitely I’m big fan of tracking your progress but then also a way for you to be accountable. So definitely do something along those lines.

All right guys, so that’s going to wrap up this episode. Again the show notes are at theamazingseller.com/341 and as always guys remember I’m here for you, I believe in you and I am rooting for you but you have to, you have to… Come on, say it with me, say it loud, say it proud, “Take action.” Have an awesome amazing day and I’ll see you right back here on the next episode.

[END]

Click Here to Download Transcript <<

Click Here to Download Transcript <<

…Let me just give you a little bit of a back story. I don’t know if you’ve heard of Noah Kagan. Noah Kagan is a very, very smart guy. I’ve seen him around the internet for probably the past five to six years myself personally.

He runs a company called AppSumo, he’s the founder of that and it’s got a lot of really cool tools there but he’s got a great history as far as just being an entrepreneur. When I had the chance to get him on the show I was pretty excited because being able to talk to someone that has been through many businesses and some successful and some not successful and kind of how to reverse engineer what he’s done and the mindset…

He’s a seven figure, almost eight figure business right now. When I get a chance to sit down and have a chat with someone like this I get really excited. The cool thing is I had no idea the direction that this was going to go. I just said, let’s hop on, these are a couple of things I want to make sure that we cover because I want to give value to my audience and that’s exactly what we did.

Now let me just give you a little bit of a back story on Noah if you don’t know him. He was one of Facebook’s first hires; the 30th employee of Facebook. That’s right, 30th employee. He said even on the podcast interview that I did with him that if he was to stay he would be worth about $250 million right now. He was like, “It kind of hurt to hear that but that’s reality.” He’s still doing pretty good.

He was also the creator of a top Facebook game before getting kicked off and he’ll talk about that. He’s also, like I said, the creator of Appsumo which is a pretty large company right now. Like I said, almost eight figure business.

[00:02:01] Scott: At least at the time of recording this he told me it was just about eight figure. Pretty cool stuff and I’m able to pick his brain. Like I said, we just sat down, more or less had a cup of coffee together and just chatted.

In the beginning I wanted to talk all about how to pick physical products. He’s done some case studies. He did a really cool case study with beef jerky. It’s kind of funny. It was like a 24 hour challenge that he was challenged to basically make $1,000 in 24 hours and he documented the whole process and we’re going to talk all about that. He’s got a couple of other experiments, actually how he was creating and he still is… He’s working on a gum that you chew.

He’s going to talk about that. He talks about minimal viable product. That’s what I think I took away the most here. Here’s someone that you would look at from afar and go, “Man that guy’s made it.” And he has made it to a certain, I guess person’s expectations but to him the first thing he said to me and you’ll hear it was like, “I’m happy right now. I’m excited but I’m also asking myself, when is the problem going to happen? When is the day not going to be so good?”

There’s always struggles and problems no matter what level of business you’re at. The other cool thing is just he’s a humble guy, he’s a great guy, awesome to talk to and you’re going to see it. It was like him and I just had a casual conversation talking over that cup of coffee and being able to peer into someone that’s very, very successful and been through so many different business models and he knows a thing or two about running business and minimal viable products and all that stuff.

If you guys want to download the show notes, the transcripts or get any of the links that we talk about head over to theamazingseller.com/342. The other thing is I actually recorded the video of us talking back and forth and I did that just because him and I were face to face in this interview and we had a pretty good connection. I don’t always do that because I save on the bandwidth and stuff as far as like keeping it smooth.

[00:04:03] Scott: Him and I decided to go face to face and I recorded it. I’m going to actually post that as well on the show notes’ page. If you want to actually see us talking you can actually do that and you can find that on the show notes’ page. This is epic guys. I’m telling you you’re going to want to do that. Again, he’s just got so many stories and so many things that we dig into. It was funny because he kind of pointed it back to me a lot of times. He’s like, “Well Scott tell me a little more about that I’m curious. Why did this happen to you and why do you think that that mattered?”

So, he started to kind of turn the tables a little bit and interview me a little bit. It was cool. It was really a lot of fun. I’m excited for you guys to listen so I’m going to stop talking. It did go longer than I expected but I promise you it’s going to be huge amounts of value and you guys are going to get a ton from it. I do believe so. So sit back, relax, enjoy this conversation, this casual conversation that I had with my good friend Mr. Noah Kagan. Enjoy.

[INTERVIEW]

[00:05:03] Scott: Well, hey Noah. What’s up man? Thank you so much for stopping by the podcast. How are you doing man?

[00:05:07] Noah: I’m doing excellent today. I’m in a great mood.

[00:05:10] Scott: You said that you were in a great mood. You said something very interesting and someone that’s very successful in my eyes looking at you you’re like, “I asked myself a question though and I said to myself, ‘how long is it going to last?’” Things don’t always go as planned Noah?

[00:05:26] Noah: No. I was supposed to have hair but I started balding at 30. I was like, “No, no, stay there don’t go anywhere.” That’s part of life. I think it’s like how do we respond to these things and it’s like we have to take responsibility for our lives.

[00:05:39] Scott: I agree 100%. I thought that was funny what you said there because I think a lot of people they talk about that too. They’re like you get to a certain level and you think that you’ve made it but at that point you’re always like, “Okay what’s next?” I think it’s interesting to pick people’s brains and see where they’re at in their journey and then say, “Well you made it there now what? Now what do you do?”

There’s always like things I think that you want to grow. I think Tony Robin says like if you’re not growing you’re dying and I do believe in that for sure. What I wanted to really… We got a ton we could talk about with you. We can go on a whole bunch of different directions but really to make this really valuable for my audience I wanted to really talk about some of the things that you’ve done in the physical product space and coming up with product ideas.

I know you’re a big fan of minimal viable products and how to do a lean start up and stuff. I really want to dig into that but before we do do that, could you tell us a little bit about you? I want to hear a little bit about you and let people know that don’t know you maybe, a quick little background as far as like where you come from and how you got to where you are today.

[00:06:47] Noah: Totally. It’s always funny if you ever asked someone tell me your story and it’s actually one of my new favorite questions doing in person. I say, “Can you tell me a snapshot of your life?” I’ve actually found that to be a really nice question to just learn. What’s actually been interesting about that is what people choose to share. I think your listeners probably want to hear the business side they don’t want to hear my dating history.

[00:07:06] Scott: I don’t know that could be interesting. That could be interesting.

[00:07:08] Noah: Possibly, maybe a follow up episode. Born and raised in California. My father’s an immigrant from Israel, didn’t speak English. He actually sold carpets. That was like his thing. He sold carpets and copiers. I was always trailing him around when I was a little kid. He would go to these stores. He would like give them meat and then he’d go to businesses giving meat and be like, “Do you have any copier stuff?”

I was always like this entrepreneurship thing seems kind of cool. Graduated at Berkeley, didn’t do s*** at Intel. I just hang out there. Ended up being one of the first people at Facebook, just totally lucky. I just submitted a resume. I was building websites and running businesses. One thing that I’ve noticed… I just finished this book Steve Martin’s biography. You know Steve Martin?

One of the things I’ve noticed is that a lot of the people who are successful have been doing it for a long time. Steve Martin started doing comedy at 16 and he didn’t actually didn’t get famous until he was 30. I think one of the things I’ve noticed just about myself and other people it’s like… I actually started building websites at like 17 and now I’m 35.

I think a lot of us want those results immediately and I’m like, “How am I not rich in six months?” I’m like, “Dude, I’ve been doing this for 17 years,” which is still relative but it takes a long time to get where you want to go.

[00:08:20] Scott: That’s so true man. That is so true.

[00:08:21] Noah: We want it right away and it takes…

[00:08:23] Scott: We’re impatient.

[00:08:26] Noah: You’ve got to be persistent with it. Short story is I always selling… I started a discount card business called Ninja Card. I started a Craig College Craig’s List called College Up. I did all these different businesses and I got the job at Facebook doing product management and then I went to… I did all the market in mint.com. I got fired at Facebook, went to mint.com, quit there. I started a business doing Facebook games and then after that I ended up getting actually sued by our competitor and banned by Facebook.

That was actually on the same day. You want to talk about a bad. That company we were generating like $30 million a year in revenue and I think profit was about 10% profit margin. On the same day Facebook banned us and you can Google it ‘Gambit gets banned’. Our largest competitors sued us which is very different. I’ve never had that happen but that is actually a sign of success I’ve realized.

When you get sued, either you’re a scumbag or you’re very successful. It’s generally not both. You generally don’t sue poor.

[00:09:24] Scott: I don’t know if I want to look forward to that though. I don’t want to look forward to getting sued and say that I’m successful I guess.

[00:09:32] Noah: Well, I just talked to a famous author that everyone knows and he was like… I was like, “You’re rich,” and he was like, “Dude I just got some lawsuits because people… The bigger you, you become a bigger target.” He’s like, “I spent like a million on legal fees,” and I was like it’s not something that he’s really going to put out…

I did the Facebook games and then we did Facebook payments for games and that’s when we got sued and banned. It was a very big realization about what kind of company I wanted to run. I wanted to run a company that people needed. A payments company people… It was nice to have and it was somewhat of a commodity. I work about this for a lot of business where you have a product and it’s like anyone can have that product and just put a different sticker on it.

Where’s your advantage? What is something that is differentiated about you that people are going to need to have you? Is it a brand thing? Is it a pricing? Is it like a distributor thing? I said the next business I start I want people kissing my *** and I know that sounds bad. But when I was doing payments company I literally was like begging for business.

I’d would do whatever people wanted, I would do all nights of work and we’d get the business but it was like… And then they would kick us out. They’d be like, “Thanks for your payments company, all right you’re gone.” I’m like, “What do you mean?” They’re like, “Well your competitor offered 1% better terms I’m going to go to them.”

I wanted to create a business that people are going to have to have. That’s where I started AppSumo where I recognized that everyone needs help with marketing and if I have customers and I could bring them customers they’re going to need me. If I can go to companies and go like, “Give me your product at a deal and then I can bring those deals to people.” Like everyone wins and that company is actually be like, “Dude can I use your business? Can I please get on AppSumo?”

AppSumo started seven years ago and now it’s almost an eight figure business. It’s crazy. I can’t believe it’s doing so well. I’m not bragging that I’m not involved just that we hired this guy in and he’s hired a team and these guys are just amazing and I could talk about maybe some of those elements.

[00:11:30] Noah: From out of Appsumo which is the group on for geek business, our newsletter daily deal business, out of that we created sumo.com which is our marketing tool. All the marketing tools will built at Appsumo we basically were like, “These tools are really good and we could probably sell them.” And then Chad was like, “Yeah let’s just go do that.” I think the point there, one of the best takeaways that I’ve learned is like how can you make the byproduct of your business a business?

That was one where the byproduct of just running our business became a business. Chad runs sumo.com and now I spend my time in Noah Kagan presents podcast or like okaydock.com which is my marketing blog. I hope that was ok, I don’t know if that was too long or…

[00:12:10] Scott: No, no that was great and actually we could probably do a whole another episode digging into all of those details but maybe we’ll have to have you back on for that because I’d be interested to hear that, a little bit more of the ins and the outs. I think a lot of times people don’t see how things lead to where you are today.

There’re so many twists and turns. On episode 300 of our podcast here I go through my story of when I was 18 years old, the construction worker and now I work for my father and then how I got to where I am. All of these different things happened because of something that I started and then that led me to that next thing. I’d seen an opportunity and then I would pivot a little bit and then I’d go to that direction.

It allowed me to reach more people and then I was able to network with more people and that person led me to someone else and then that door appeared. Then it was like, do I go through it? Let’s go through it. It’s crazy on how those things happen and I think it’s really cool to hear your story that here’s someone, like you said, one of the first… What were you? Were you a 30th employee? I think I read that.

[00:13:09] Noah: Yeah. I was 30th.

[00:13:10] Scott: The 30th employee on Facebook which is crazy.

[00:13:12] Noah: I may have been worth like $200 million which is pretty crazy to like actually think about how much that is. One of the guys who was like 20th he’s building a hotel by himself in Austin. I was like, “I live in 700 square foot condo,” which is great, but it’s just been interesting. It’s like your life… I think a few of the things that I’ve noticed is that bad things are going to happen to everybody.

It’s just how you choose to deal with it afterwards that makes all the difference. You could choose to be like I’m going to blame this person for my business. I’m going to blame this partner. I’m going to blame… No, it’s like, what are you going to do about it? Bad things I’m sure have happened to you. You were a construction worker, I’m sure you’ve had some tough times.

[00:13:52] Scott: The thing that I learned in that business back then when my… I was in business with my father who had a partner. The partnership is what I… I learned the lesson of not being in a partnership especially in the beginning that if you didn’t have the same beliefs or the same mission or whatever it wasn’t going to work. I learned a lot about that at a young age.

It also made me a little hard to want to partner with someone else. Recently, I have been partnering with other physical product brands now which has been really awesome but there’s been a lot of thought going into those before I would enter into that arena again because I know if it’s not a good marriage it’s not going to work. You got to have your own strengths.

[00:14:36] Noah: One thing I’m curious about for you, how did you make that transition because I notice for myself lately like I have certain beliefs that I’m like, “I don’t know if I want to challenge that?” How did you go from no partner to let me actually explore this?

[00:14:47] Scott: It’s been several years since that happened. I’m 44 years old so it’s been a lot of different things that have happened. For me, it’s happened recently because for me… Amazon’s really what allowed me to see the physical product side of things. I was doing a little bit on the side but my wife and I were photographers and stuff too, ran our own photography business.

From there, we wanted to sell some physical products as another revenue stream and then Amazon showed me that I could do that without having to spend a lot of time because I didn’t have a lot of time. Then I said, “Okay I’ve got this podcast which I started.” Again, that was just a thing that I was like, let’s see if this thing… Let’s see what happens here. I go ahead and do it and the thing blows up and I’m like, “Now what do I do?”

I’ve got an audience and people want things from me and they’ll learn and all of that. Then it became the idea of, how do I still continue to grow businesses without or with having limited amount of time and having a family and wanting to still spend time with them? The only way for me is to… It’s like you said before we got started, you’re like, you should know the business.

You should know how to do the aspects of the business. Not that you have to do them all the time but you should understand how to do those. I know how to do all of the different pieces but I don’t need to do all the pieces now. Now it’s about finding that partner that can do all of those pieces and then I can just be maybe the marketing driver behind it or maybe the creative thinker or something like that that I really enjoy doing to push the business forward.

To me, it came to the point where I had to do it or I wasn’t going to be able to stay in this when I’m still… I feel like I still need to be in it because number one I want to build business but I’m also teaching how to do it. I to be in the mix. I want still my hands in it.

[00:16:28] Noah: You want to stay sharp.

[00:16:29 Scott: Exactly.

[00:16:30] Noah: How did you validate or trust the partner that you chose? I’m sure you said no to some and then the ones you said yes to what was the difference?

[00:16:37] Scott: I think it was the skillset and also that I built a relationship up first. I knew their morals, I knew what they were about. It wasn’t just about land grabbing, money. It was more about like I knew they were on the same page as I was and also that we didn’t have the same skillset.

If we were both the same drivers then it’s like you’re going to butt heads but if you’re able to separate that and say, “Okay, you’re going to be the one that…” Maybe I’m the one that finances it and then I’m able to then be the creative. You’re going to basically establish the products and you’re going to be able to establish… Maybe you’re going to be the front person of the business and I’m not. Maybe you’re going to be the one that’s demonstrating the products or creating the following or the brand and all of that stuff.

That’s really where it came for me, just it made sense but it took time to be able to have that trust because like you said, you do I’m sure as well, you get a lot of offers. It’s like you’re like I could launch a new business every day if I wanted to but I also don’t want to do it half-heartedly. I want to be able to put everything I got into it. It was a struggle. It was again one of those things that I felt like I needed to do it in order to grow.

[00:17:46] Noah: I thought about growth and I think growth can only happen in two ways which is either people or technology. If you’re really trying to scale a business you either need more people or you need better technology. It’s interesting because I’ve had two different business partnerships like major ones. In the Facebook games company which became the payments company I was mentioning earlier, I hired people and they were like we’re going to quit because…

I basically moved to Argentina and I was just like chilling. I was literally doing tango and drinking wine and I was like having like a quarter-life crisis. It was like a real quarter-life crisis. Tim Ferriss was hanging out with me down there. We were just chilling.

[00:18:21] Scott: That’s pretty cool.

[00:18:22] Noah: It was great man. The two people I was working with were like, “Dude either you quit or get back to work.” I was like I didn’t know what I wanted to do and I felt uncertain, I was scared so I was like, “I’ll just go back to work.” It was kind of safer. I think I regret that a little bit. I’ve never thought about that. I think I regret it because I really wanted to get in a little Fiat and drive around and camp South America, thought that’d be cool.

[00:18:42] Scott: That would have been cool.

[00:18:44] Noah: I went back to work and I loved these guys as people but what I realized as partners is that it was like a three-headed dog where each of us had our own direction and I just had a lot of resentment. I decided that when I started AppSumo I was like I want to do it alone. I think as you’ve done it it’s like build the relationship with someone and then you can talk about the partnership with them.

It’s like you guys are employee and now you’re partners and we didn’t have that communication. With AppSumo I started it and I hired a guy who actually was my customer before and I think that’s a great way for hiring. Look at your customers they really like you. I don’t think people think about that enough. At Sumo we always look for our customers to higher or people we’ve worked with in our referrals.

With that I had Chad who was my customer and he was amazing. He was a customer who used to do coding for my business. He’d be like, “I want the speech, I coded it for you.” I was like, “That’s awesome.” I actually hired him as a consultant to come do work with me with AppSumo. After working with him for a while I was like, “Dude we’re a great partnership.” I’m like the, I don’t want to say the Jobs but I’m like the business-y guy, the sales, public and you’re like the tech, stable, reliable, smart one. We’ve just had an unbelievable relationship. I’ve had times where I’ve had not crisis but like moments where I’m just not motivated to work.

I took a month off to walk around India and I remember the day I went to Chad and I was like dude I’m losing it and I need to go to India. I don’t know why I thought that was the answer. I remember thinking and I was like… I was talking to someone at a conference and they were like, “India is the answer for you with your depression.” I was like, “Okay I’m going to India.”

I grew a beard out, I went to India but before that I went told Chad my partner and this is how I knew that I’m going to work with him forever. I went to him and I was like, “Hey I think I need to go to India and walk around and not work for a month.” He’s like, “I think that sounds like a great idea for you. You need to do what you need to take care of.” I just felt like a lot of a good partner

[00:20:33] Scott: That’s great.

[00:20:35] Noah: He’s like go for it. I just remember at that moment realizing like that’s a partnership. That’s who I want my wife to be, that’s who I want my friendships to be and my business partner to be where like he’s actually genuinely cares about my interests. Not just like we make money and all that. It’s like I want you to go and take care of yourself. That’s how we also want to treat people we work with too. That was like the clear moment. I’m like this is a partnership. This is what a partner looks like.

[00:20:56] Scott: That’s huge. It’s scary in some aspects until you really feel like you trust that person. I think, like you said, you start to know that person before you partner. I think that’s the big one. It’s like you have to know the person and it sounds like you did.

[00:21:12] Noah: It’s funny, he actually quit… He quit after working with… When I hired him as a consultant on AppSumo he actually quit after three months because we never worked full time together. The details are not as interesting as that, we just didn’t communicate. I went back to him… I called my advisor he’s like, “Dude go get him back.” And I was like, “Okay, sorry.” I called Chad back and I was like, “Dude what’s happening?”

He’s like, “We’re not talking and you’re just giving me more and more work.” I think what happens with physical product people or like business people that work with technical people is that they kind of just throw it over the wall and expect it to come back perfect. The three things that we implement literally seven years ago and we’re still doing it to this day. One, we talk every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 11:00 A.M. We’ve never changed that because we weren’t communicating enough.

Two, we have real-time chats. That’s common now but back then Skype was the thing but he wouldn’t be online and I’m like, “Dude what are you doing? You’re not online, you’re not working.” He’s like, “I work? If you want me to be online and distracted then I’ll get online.” A lot of people are like, “I want to see you in the office. I want to see your screen name lit.” He’s like, “Do you want me to work or for people to see my screen name?” He’s like, “I’ll just pay somebody do that.”

The third thing, actually, this was really interesting and this is something that was surprising for me is that I think sometimes when you have like an employee at a point or a teammate as I like to call them you just give them tasks. You’re like, “Do this and do this and do this.” And so I kept giving him more tasks without actually being like let him finish it instead of adding new ones on. Subsequently, I also didn’t tell him what I was doing.

I’m like, “You go over there and get to work monkey. And then I’m just going to stay here and eat bananas.” I was like it’s kind of unfair if I’m telling him to do all of these things and he doesn’t know what the hell I’m doing all day. Those are kind of the things we adjusted then. I think one thing that you said Scott which is really strong one we identify like all success takes time but I think the other thing and you said it really well is that it takes iteration.

[00:23:05] Noah: How we started the business is not how we run it today. It’s because we keep learning and improving. I think most businesses that fail they’re like, “Well it’s just how we’ve always done things.” I’m like, “Well it’s not that you have to change your business. It’s just like keep looking for a theme once a week to improve and just keep iterating.” Like how we do our meetings has changed dramatically and how Chad and I work together keeps improving because every week we try to do things that make it better.

[00:23:28] Scott: I love it. It’s one of those things that we want that instant gratification of success. It’s like if you stay the race… I don’t know if you read the book The Compound Effect, Darren Hardy, it’s a great book. It’s all about stacking on those little, little improvements like compounding over time and it just makes such a huge difference. It’s like weight loss. If you think about, “I worked out for seven days and I didn’t see the results, I’m quitting. ‘

But if you do it for 30 days you’re probably going to start to see some results and then probably 60 days you’re probably going to see results but you got to stick to the plan. It’s in business, it’s in life, it’s huge.

[00:24:06] Noah: You’re preaching brother. My friend Taylor Pearson said a great quote to me and it stuck with me. It says “plan for the goals but build with the habits.”

[00:24:16] Scott: There you go.

[00:24:17] Noah: I didn’t drink for a while and I was exercising a lot, this is what I’ve been doing this year and I didn’t lose weight. I was like well my goal was to have a certain type of body… My plan was to have a certain type of body but my habit was like… My habits were good. I just was not seeing the results but I stuck with it and after the 30 days, as you exactly said, I had planned for my goals but I built with my habits.

I was doing the right habits and eventually it hit the goal. I think that’s something I’m trying to get better at because I’ve noticed for myself I’ll have a goal like Noah you want to get… We have a company goal and we always have one goal, just on goal or like my podcast I’ve like a single goal. Sometimes I’d struggled where I get to my goal and I’m like… Like we’ve hit our goal in October instead of December and I’m like, “Well I guess November and December we’re taking off.”

Seriously, we’re like, “What do we do now?” I’m like, “I don’t know. I didn’t plan for this part. I only planned like the movie ends at this hour.” I think if you focus on just building habits like I know every week we do these activities and these lead us to grow the business. That will supersede the goal at some point where like you can just keep changing your goal but if the habits are strong you’ll always be improving. That’s something I’m getting better at.

[00:25:25] Scott: I think you’re always getting better at that. I think if we all said we figured it out we’d be lying. I’m figuring out things every day to keep my life the way I want it to be managed. I’ve got a family. I’m a dad of three. I’ve got a 21 year old, 18 year old and a nine year old. I’m busy. It’s really important for me to stick to the schedule of I’m going to be at my daughter’s volleyball, I’m going to coach my son all the way… He’s 18.

I’d coached him all the way through little league, all the way up to travel baseball but that was a big thing for me to be able to stick to that.

[00:26:00] Noah: You look like a baseball coach by the way. I’m trying to think of the baseball player you look like. Did you ever get that?

[00:26:08] Scott: Yeah I did and the ones that… Everyone used to say I looked like A-Rod. If I have my sunglasses, my Oakley’s on, I’d look like A-Rod they say. I’m like, “Really, you see that?” It’s funny. I enjoyed that.

[00:26:21] Noah: How has that changed for you? How have you iterated or changed like how your business and family interact? I don’t have kids and I’m dating and I finally saw people with kids and I’m like I don’t know how you do that and run a business. I didn’t realize how hard it actually is.

[00:26:33] Scott: I think it’s really just about being disciplined with your time. You have to set yourself a hard cutoff. I think the hardest part with us being entrepreneurs is we could be working all day, all night. We can do that. For me it’s like right now you and I are recording this, technically I’m “working”. I enjoy this so it’s not really work to me but I don’t schedule this stuff at night time or I don’t schedule it around dinner time.

It’s like that stuff… Today let’s see today… No, so tomorrow, Wednesday it’s time to recording this my daughter’s got volleyball. I’m going to volleyball with her. There’s nothing scheduled in that block of time. I just schedule everything. I’m very disciplined in the morning. I do my work out, the whole thing to keep myself there and then I just go through my day and I try to theme my day as best as possible.

Tuesdays, Wednesday are podcast stuff and then the other days are partner stuff. I try to keep things… I try to stay disciplined but there’s going to come times that maybe there’s a guest that I’m trying to get on and they want to meet at a certain time I might need to sacrifice to do that. It really depends, sometimes I have it and sometimes I haven’t. It’s funny, you know John Lee Dumas from EOFire?

He’s become a good friend of mine now but when I first talking with him I was like I’d really like to get on his show, he wants to get on my show. He literally wanted to get together at a time that I was busy with my family and I told him, I said, “Listen I hate to do this to you but I’m not going to be able to make it.” It was that important that I did not miss that event for my kids and he totally respected it. We figured out another time but I didn’t even bend on that rule. It would take a lot for me to bend and to miss something that I felt was really valuable.

[00:28:21] Noah: I think once you start settling and compromising certain things it’s addicting. It’s addicting and it’s easy to just settling at other things. I’ve noticed this in business like that thing is not that good or I think of it sometimes… A more obvious example for everyone it’s like when you see trash on the ground and you walk around, you’re like or dish in the sink, “I’ll just get it later. That trash on the ground I’ll just leave it there,” and then you just start accepting it in everything.

I’m like, “No you have to fight it. You have to say no.” I love that you did the no sacrifice. It’s funny, sometimes I think it is a sacrifice. You sacrifice getting your show bigger for your priority. It’s like sometimes on a Sunday when it’s nice out and I’m doing some work I’m like, “This is why I get what I want because I’m willing to sacrifice for it.” It’s not always the most fun at that time.

[00:29:09] Scott: I think there’s a balance there and it’s funny because a lot of people… I’m a fan of Gary Vaynerchuk but I don’t agree with all of his hustle, hustle, hustle and no time. You got to build, you got to sacrifice. I get that, if you’re young maybe but for a guy like me… And he admits it. On Saturday and Sundays he doesn’t do a lot of social media. That is his time but like he said you don’t see that, you only see me posting all the time during my days and traveling and all of this stuff.

You got to have a balance, you got to see what fits your schedule and what’s important to you. I think actually one thing he always says which I love this is any time you feel like you’re going and you’re just hustling and hustling and you’re not enjoying, take a second to imagine that you just got a phone call that your mother was on her deathbed.

If that doesn’t wake you up and say wait a minute here. Does that really matter this thing over here? I didn’t get girlfriend something but I’ve got a few hours with my mother or I’ve got a whole something in the future that’s going to be three months or a year worth of someone going through something really, really bad. Sometimes that gets you to slow down a little bit. I can go 100 miles an hour. I’m like let’s go, let’s go, let’s go.

I think also my kids have seen that and my kids have also taken on that mindset of you got to go out there and you got to go work at it and it’s not going to come overnight. I think there’s got to be a balance. Hustle is hustle and like you said, on a Sunday afternoon if you have kids and you were missing that one thing that you were never going to be able to attend again that’s going to be that sacrifice. Is that important to you?

Are your kids going to say to you later, “I wish my dad would have been there.” I don’t know, maybe that’s not important to you or someone else but it’s really important to me and that’s what I build everything around. It’s the lifestyle for me. It’s about lifestyle. It’s not necessarily about the money that we’re going to make is great but it’s going to afford me to be able to enjoy those certain things in my life.

[00:31:06] Noah: Just to add sideways to that, I’m not trying to plus one you because that was epic. The one thing I’ve noticed when we talked before the show started around… It’s funny it feels like everyone missed out on the earlier part that we didn’t record. That was the best stuff by the way. When I was at Facebook and after I got let go and I didn’t get that money I actually went to this business coach or life coach or therapist. I don’t know what she calls herself.

She’s like, “I know you miss the money and all that stuff but why don’t you just make a list of everything you would have wanted to buy or that you want to buy now? What do you want to buy now?” I wrote M3, I don’t know why I remember that. I wrote house, I think it was like food and to like travel somewhere. She said, “Show me your list.” So I show her the list. She’s like, “Well on that list right now is there anything you can’t buy?” And I was like, “No. There’s nothing I can’t buy.”

She’s like, “Okay, so you have everything you want.” I think it’s just interesting we want to keep working to make money and do more of these things but it’s like do you have everything you want? What is it towards? Versus, I think your point is very valid, is it just to work for work’s sake because we want to just feel like we’re keeping busy? I just think she exercised for me.

[00:32:12] Scott: I think it’s a great exercise for a lot of people because it comes down to the number that you… A lot of times for people it’s really the number that can get them out of their nine to five or that could allow them to spending more time. It’s like all right, what’s that number? Once you find that number how do you work backwards?

[00:32:28] Noah: I actually think people should get nine to fives. I think everyone should not be an entrepreneur. I call it my 4Ps of why being an entrepreneur sucks. Everyone’s like you’re an entrepreneur and life just becomes great. I’m like, “No it gets worse.” It’s like guess what, you have to do…

[00:32:43] Scott: There’re some hard moments.

[00:32:45] Noah: There’s always hard moments. It never gets easier and like the 4Ps… I’ve thought about it a lot. It’s basically like whatever one wants whether you run the company or whether you work in the company it’s the same exact thing. You work at a company or like yourself run a company because you want to get paid well? If I could go work somewhere and get a million dollars a year I would just take that job. The second thing is you want to be around great people.

You want a great partners, you want great coworkers and then purpose and product. I want to have a good purpose and I want to have a product that I like. I think people are too enamored like I’m an entrepreneur and I go to watch some YouTube videos and then I go hustle all day and then it’s just great. Actually, it’s not bad but the fifth P which is where you get when you’re an entrepreneur is problems because you’re the one responsible for it.

When you’re an employee you go home at 5:00. You go to home at 6:00 and the rest of the day is yours.

[00:33:33] Scott: Punch the clock.

[00:33:36] Noah: It’s not that I don’t think being an entrepreneur is great. There’s good things about running a show but I think people should think about their 4Ps; purpose, product, paid and people. If you can get that out of a job don’t sweat that it’s going to be life will be fixed because you still have to deal with yourself whatever kind of company you’re running or a part of.

[00:33:51] Scott: I think the purpose thing is big for me right now. That’s changed over the years. For me it was about the money. It was like how can I get to a place where I don’t have to work the nine to five so I could make my own schedule? It was always annoying for me to have to put in time to take off and I get two weeks or three weeks a year. It’s like that’s all I get all year long and then I have to report. That was like I felt like I was caged in a sense and I was also limited on how much I could make.

Because of that, I was like if I want to raise I got to work my butt off and I might get 3% maybe or I’d have to work on the side. In construction I was doing side work. I’d work my 60 hours and then I’d go build a kitchen remodel or I do like a renovation of some kind to make that extra money. I was working more and more to try and make that. Over the years, now I think it’s more about… It’s really becoming even more clear these past few years it’s like purpose.

How many more lives can I help and change and people that don’t think they can do it because I’m the perfect example? I never went to college. I used to be ashamed of that and now I’m like it’s probably been the best lesson because I’ve learned so much going through that. Now it’s like, how can I help people that don’t think that they can actually do it because they don’t have that formal education? I think that’s a big one for a lot of people.

Me personally, I even told to my wife like not that long ago, honestly I just want to be able to travel and go… When I travel, make a stop, talk to people and encourage people and let them know my story and then hopefully inspire them to just do it themselves and get out there and do it and believe in themselves because they can do it. Anyone can do it it’s just a matter of… Like you said, do you want the problems of being an entrepreneur or do you want to punch a clock? Both sides of the fence there’s problems. You’d agree.

[00:35:40] Noah: I had one of the most amazing dinners, not that the food was amazing but I met a construction worker about four years ago. This blew my mind. I was like, “Dude it sucks to be a construction worker. It’s got to be the worst thing ever.” He’s like, “I actually think it sucks to be you Noah.” I was like, “What?” I’m like, “What are you talking about?” You have to go sweat and you have to… It’s cold.

I respect the s*** out of construction workers. I see these guys in the rain, in the cold and I’m like I barely want to go outside. It’s just interesting how much we assume about others. What he said though to me was like, “You have control over your…” It’s like when he’s a construction worker he has his mind to himself but when I’m at work my mind goes to the company and my mind goes to the work. I never really reflected it on that.

He’s like I’ve to give the physical but the mental is all mine. At desk job it’s actually the opposite. There’s no physical but the mental is all theirs. It blew my mind to think about that.

[00:36:32] Scott: That’s definitely a pretty cool little insight there.

[00:36:37] Noah: I was just like it’s amazing how we assume that someone’s job sucks or they must have crap life. He actually preferred it. The one thing I was curious with you is, do you remember…? And I’m sure you know this but, were there inflexion points or what was the catalyst where you were…? I’m thinking of sharing this episode with my cousin. What were the catalyst points that started changing your trajectory?

[00:36:56] Scott: It really was because I was married a young age, I got married when I was 21 so we had our first kid when I was 22. I was working and I thought I was going to own my father’s company. That’s what I was working towards. I thought I was going to build that company with him. We built it to… I think at the time and this is going back like 20 years ago to over a $2 million a year business.

Back then it was a pretty good business. Really at the time it was like four of us when we started it and then we grew it to… I had about seven or eight crews working for me and stuff but I got burn out. I’m like how am I ever going to be home enjoying my family. I was working 60 plus hours a week. If you’re vested in the business like your family business you’re working when other people don’t want to work.

I’m going to stay till the job gets finished. I’m staying till 8:00 o’clock at night. Everybody else said, “Hey Scott it’s 5:00 o’clock I’m going home.” I’m like all right, see you later and then Scott’s there finishing it up. It motivated me to want to do… But I didn’t think I could do anything Noah. That was the problem. I thought what am I going to do? All I do is, I know how to work with my hands that’s it. That’s all I know.

I’m not smart. I can’t go out there and… These were the self-doubts that I kept putting in my head. My wife is really the one that said, “Scott you’re smart.” There’s a lot of things that you can do. We started on the side just to supplement our income so I didn’t have to go out and do side work was we started a photography business.

We knew nothing about photography. My wife loved it but she didn’t know anything about it. We taught ourselves and back then they didn’t really have a lot of YouTube stuff going on so read books. Digital cameras were just getting introduced and we built that into a six figure business from scratch. Then I left my job.

[00:38:28] Noah: Taking photos for people?

[00:38:30] Scott: We did family photography.

[00:38:33] Noah: How did you get your first customers? Sorry, keep going.

[00:38:35] Scott: Well, no I was going to say, we basically went and… We went to get our daughter’s picture taken, we had a bad experience. My wife’s like, “We could do a better job than that.” We basically put in one of the journals locally in a paper, maybe 50 bucks we would take pictures or something just as practice and we did that and we started getting a little following. Then we got so busy that… I think around in July we would fill up for the holidays. We would take a waiting list.

We built that locally and we were like the local… A little bit of the high level. We charged more than everybody else but people came for us. They came for us taking the pictures and us interacting with their kids and then we grew that. Then from there I started seeing the opportunity of maybe selling some of our digital templates on eBay and then we started selling digital templates on eBay with CDs and grew that into a little business.

Then I started doing digital transfer stuff and it just all led because of that moment but then from there we started seeing about people are asking us how to do these certain things so then we started teaching it. That’s where I got introduced to education online it’s really by that.

[00:39:42] Noah: Coming back to the first point, you did for a while and you kept iterating, you kept noticing what’s working. I’ve been on this big thing about focusing on essentials which is just like, “How do I do more of what works AND is killing things or removing…” It’s too violent, “Removing things aggressively that are working.” I think we’re too way too easy to be like it’s seems it’s okay let’s just keep it.

Here’s a stupid one. We have Instagram for Sumo and we have 100,000 followers. It gets a bunch of likes and then we actually try to sell something or we try to have people go read an article and no one does anything. I’m like why are we spending even… We’re spending $200 a month now maintaining it. I’m like, “Why are you even spending $200?” “Well, I don’t know.” No, kill.

It’s like the more that you can focus just in the essentials the more that they’re going to work better for you. I love how you guys just kept focusing on they like this then we can do more of that one and let’s do more of that one, let’s do more of that one. I think that iteration is very impressive.

[00:40:36] Scott: Yeah. It was one of those things too like we got into the video transfer business like people would come to us and they’d go, do you guys know who does any transfers for like old eight millimeter films or do a slide show for a wedding or do a slide show for an anniversary? I’m like no but I could probably figure that out and then I figured it out and then I started a side business where we had our car lettered up where were a video transfer extension over our photography business.

We were double dipping in there and then I started… I already told this story on the podcast but I’ll briefly tell it again. I bought these old transfers… Basically it was a device that someone made to transfer old films. I’ve seen how it was built and being a construction worker I reverse engineered it. I’m like this is just an old projector that someone bought from the 40s and 50s and 60s and they just modified it.

I figured out what they did so I just did that myself and I started selling them on eBay for 900 bucks. I would build one or two of those a week. I did about $50,000 in eBay on those little projectors all because I needed one.

[00:41:37] Noah: Are you still doing it?

[00:41:38] Scott: No, no. Too time consuming. I graduated from there, I’m just like… But it was a great experience it also opened up my eyes to eBay and I’m like people are buying stuff on eBay. Everything has led to the moment where I’m at.

[00:41:55] Noah: Just to share some short story around that is that I think one big takeaway for me when you’re talking about that is like start today. If you’d have said hey I’d be running like a very popular podcast and I have all these big successful Amazon businesses you’d be like no. You’re like I’m just going to go out and take photos of families.

I think for everyone listening who’s like, “I want to be like Scott,” or I want a certain type of business or a certain type of life, you start something now and you keep working on it and you keep working on the habits and the habits eventually things will keep going but you have to go and start today. I think that’s where people are like it’s easier just to listen to the podcast up on their earlobes and it easier to just read the blog post.

It’s hard to actually not get the domain, it’s hard not to just play business. It’s hard to actually go get the customer and start but that’s where you’re going to get the results. The two other things I wanted to add to that, I think it’s kind of a similar and just as a good lesson. I was walking around the Arnold Bodybuilding classic last year and I met this random kid he’s like, “Hey, you’re Noah Kagan.” Like cool.

He’s like, “Hey we should hang out or work out when we’re in Austin.” So we go work out. Then he said, “Can I take free headshots for your company I think you guys would like it? There’s no charge I just thought you guys would appreciate it.” Him asking that and doing free headshots has turned into… I pay him $2,000 a month to do videos for me.

[00:43:08] Scott: That’s awesome.

[00:43:09] Noah: I think the two things that were interesting there is that if you’re trying to start a business and you’re kind of shy or you don’t want to ask for things that’s kind of a skill you need to just practice. It’s like a muscle you need to develop. Go offer things for free until you get too busy, so that’s one way like for someone to start a headshot business. Just go do it for free and then when you get too busy and then you’ll eventually be like I got to charge for this because I’m too busy.

The second thing that he did I thought was interesting is kind of finger out your angle. If you angle was like in this town we are the family photo people. His angle was like, “I do photos and professional headshots for your LinkedIn or for your company ‘About’ page.” I was like it’s a cool angle.

[00:43:46] Scott: I’ve carved it out, yeah for sure.

[00:43:49] Noah: Then I was going to refer him to other companies to go get their headshots taken.

[00:43:52] Scott: That’s how it happens. That one thing that he decided to do… Again, it was that moment. He bumped into you, asked you to go work out, you said yes. You go work out and then he starts talking about what he does and he offers that for free for you and now you refer people to his website.

[00:44:09] Noah: I refer people and then I hired him to do my videos. He gets $2,000 a month. I think it is amazing that he just took that initiative to do it. I think it’s like you have to go for it and it’s going to be a little weird at first but eventually like you get better, it gets easier and then you keep growing.

[00:44:25] Scott: To me you learn so much through those experiences. You learn what works, what doesn’t work. What you’re like what you don’t like and like you said you go through different transitions and stuff. I love that. I wasn’t expecting I’d go on this long with this but we haven’t even talked yet about any of these other things. Let’s just do that. Let’s wrap up with that.

People that are just starting especially people that are listening again they’re stuck. A lot of people they are stuck, they don’t want to risk, they don’t want to go out there and launch a product. They think they’ve to spend thousands of dollars to launch products. I’ve always told people. There’s simple ways of testing or validating before you have to go out there and spend a ton of money.

I know that you’ve done some pretty cool little experiments and I want to drill into one of those. One of them is pretty funny. It’s the sumo Jerky. I want to talk about where did that come from? You have here the results of a 24 hour business challenge, what the heck happened there? What makes you want to try to sell beef jerky and start this 24 hour challenge thing?

[00:45:33] Noah: The back story was that I created a course which I won’t even mention because I don’t care if you guys buy it or not. I’ve created a course of teaching people how to start businesses because, to your point, everyone kept asking me though how did you start AppSumo, how did you start the games business? I was like just go buy this course. It’s exactly what I do.

I don’t know if I’ve share this yet but the number one way we’ve ever sold the course was when I started this jerky business because then they actually believed that they could do it. Not just like here’s a course and you’re going to… It’s like no, let me prove it to you. Actually, the way the jerky business started is I emailed the AppSumo emailing list which is almost a million people and I said I’ll start any business you guys want just choose it.

They choose… It was basically three business options. I don’t know why they were all food and I couldn’t use my network. I couldn’t use anything… I already have a decent following and I have some attention. The three business options were lemonade, hot sauce and jerky. I was like, “Fine, whatever.” I truly believe… This has become more cemented as I’ve gotten older, I’m 35, is that I do think you just need to solve your own problems.

I just think you need to solve… It doesn’t have to be a problem. It could be just solution to something that doesn’t exist that you want and solve yourself because you’ll always have one happy customer.

[00:46:51] Scott: That’s right.

[00:46:52] Noah: I love jerky. My cabinet right up here like I have jerky. I eat jerky almost every day. It’s easier for me to understand the customer, it’s easier for me to understand the market, it’s interesting to do everything because I’m already interested in it. Frankly, I would buy this myself. I think if you wouldn’t buy it yourself probably not something you should do. People always say, “I’m not a child should I be making children’s toys?” I’m like no honestly probably not unless you have kids or you’re creepy.

[00:47:24] Scott: The one thing I would say to that or if you had a partner that was into that stuff and then you were able to tap into that expertise. Like you said it’s, if you’re just randomly doing it then it’s going to be harder for you for you to understand that customer. I think it’s true.

[00:47:39] Noah: I think so. I’ll tell you man, I’ve been doing this for 17 years and I’ve started a lot of businesses. Every time I get one of these one to ones it’s like I heard about this podcast. He just started an FBA business and now he’s rich and he’s in Vietnam, it’s awesome. It always seems more awesome than it is. The grass always seems greener than it is.

Everyone’s business always seems bigger than it actually is and it seems like it’s running more smoothly than it actually is. People are like, “Man Noah you guys are doing so well…” It’s like, actually we are doing really well but the point is that things are never as easy as they seem.

[00:48:10] Scott: You’ll still have struggles. You’re not saying that there’s no struggle.

[00:48:13] Noah: I got to say that there’s tons. You have to figure a business that you want to struggle through. You have to find a partner like a wife that you’d want to struggle with. The jerky business I think… Basically, the challenge was I’ll start any business, 24 hours, I have to make $1,000 profit, I can’t use my name. Meaning I can’t email my mailing list which I would have been able to do.

I think there’s a lot of major takeaways by it. Number one, the fact that I already built a mailing list or built an audience of people who trust me that I had access to is essential. I think for ecommerce stores that’s almost one of the stupidest thing I’ve seen none of them do and I’m like you guys are all… I want to say the R-word but they’re really stupid. I’m like why don’t you collect email addresses and build a relationship with is our R-word with your people so that when you want to sell something they trust you.

It’s like pen handling. How many give pen handling people money? Very few. How many if they’re a brother, a mother, a sister or Scott hit them up would probably give them money? They’d be like of course. What’s the difference? The difference is the relationship. I think that was number one.

Number two, I did an excel model that was stupid simple. You have to work backwards from your goal. I said I need $1,000 profits, how much do I need to buy the jerky for? How much do I need to sell it for so I can have my goal? The amazing thing about doing the excel sheet it’s not complicated. It’s really stupid math. You can just do it on a paper. What I realized was I couldn’t sell it a pack at time. I couldn’t just sell jerky $20 and make 10. I’d have to sell a lot of freaking jerky. The only way I could do it is if I made it a subscription and I made people pre-pay so like buy three months of it or buy six months of it.

That was one insight. I think to your point, look for things that could work and then I want to do more of that. I looked at it, I was like, I have to sell subscription because why one wouldn’t work.

The second thing that was insightful about it was that I was like who would buy this that I can sell a lot to? I was like, you know who would buy a lot from? Offices. I was like well, offices have budgets for food and they’re already spending money. Like for them to spend $100 on jerky for their people, especially if it’s premium jerky, would be easy.

[00:50:18] Noah: So this is before I did anything. A question that people always asked afterwards, I was surprised, is like, where did you find the jerky? I was like I don’t give a frig. I don’t know if you swear in your podcast, I’ll try not to, but my point with it was that finding the jerky is the easy part. Getting people to give me money is the hard part.

That’s the same with all physical products and even digital products. Everyone’s like, well, how did you build it? I’m like building it is the easy part. Sitting on my a** at home is easy, going out and asking people for money, hard. Doing the hard part of this and then the other part becomes easy.

So the harder you work, the easier life gets. So I went and did the hard stuff. I didn’t worry about getting the jerky. I figured if I could get $4,000 in revenue and a thousand profits, I can go to a jerky person and say, “I have a thousand dollars for you or $3,000 for you, can you ship jerky to these people?”

They’d say, “Yes.” It’s easier if you already have the money to go do that.

[00:51:17] Scott: So let me ask you though this question. Okay, how did you pre-sell the jerky? You knew that was coming. How did you pre-sell the jerky without having the product to show them like this is premium, and it’s got to be certain blends of the seasoning and like how did you sell it without having it?

[00:51:38] Noah: It’s actually fun. I’m doing in podcast so today about this. It’s called “the dream 100.” It’s a challenge tactic and I love it. I think what happens with a lot of online businesses is people pray and hope for Amazon miracles. It’s like Christmas. Amazon will be Santa Claus like, “If I put it out there, oh, Timmy, it will just be so magical, sales will just start coming in.”

I don’t believe in hope. What I did is, I made a list of every person I believe is interested in healthy living or exercises, and they’d probably buy jerky, and so I just made a list of them.

Then I literally just went through that list of people. Here’s just a few things I needed to make the sales, and I’ll just go through ones that I think are interesting. Number one, I don’t just put it up somewhere and hope it works. I guarantee it works. If it doesn’t work, that’s great.

Now I didn’t waste so much money and time.

I went and I made a list of 100 people. I was like all right, well, these people will probably buy it, let me hit them up. I did that, and actually a lot of them didn’t buy, which was great. I hit up my brother, and he said, “No,” I hit up my mother, she said, “No.” What you do is every time you get a rejection, a rejection is a free referral. That’s the way I look at it. When I got rejected by them, I was like, well, who’s someone that you think likes jerky? The recruiter at Sumo was actually referred by someone that didn’t want to work with us.

I think they liked their job until like well, this guy is actually really great. Every time I get rejected, I always ask for referral. Second thing is don’t do passive activities so I did… A lot of people were posting and be like, well, no. Maybe anybody who’d want this. It’s like that’s passive. Be active. So, I went out and did a few things.

I went to Facebook groups that I’m very active in for healthy living, and I just said like, “Hey, does anyone want jerky in these?” Like, “I’m starting a jerky business like does anyone want to buy, it’s 20 bucks a month, does anyone want a pre-sell?”

A few people were like, “Yeah.” And I was like I can’t believe they’re actually doing it. That’s actually also as I started realizing the one by one sales are very inefficient. This was kind of I think of the more creative ones.

[00:53:36] Noah: I looked at the people that I already paid every month as a service provider that had offices. All of my friends worked at a company. I was like all of my friends work at companies, and I pay all these other people that work at companies like I pay for Stripe and I pay for e-mail provider. I was like, what if I just hit up the people that I’m already giving money to that know me, and be like, “Hey, you have an office. Can I just like talk to your office manager?” I think there’s two take-aways. Number one, look for who you already have access to.

I think a lot of times in business, we make it harder than it actually has to be. We’re like, “Oh, I got to go like hopefully this ad will go to this landing page, will go to this other thing,” and a miracle happens. I never like spending money on ads until I know that I’m going to make money. Meaning that unless I know that there is a profit margin available for advertising, I won’t advertise. Number one, look for the people already in your network or look for the people they know in their network.

Number two, what was really appealing was I did calls and texting. I think that was actually kind of surprising because like I think it’s very lazy to send an email like even getting on the show, Scott, I didn’t have an assistant do it, I didn’t like just randomly… I had my sister doing it, I was like how do I make it good for Scott?

How do I make something that Scott is excited to have me on? I was like well, I can talk about these stories, I think people will enjoy. I think calling and texting and being very pro-active, made a huge difference in the success of people actually saying, “No, I don’t want it, or yes,” and they had to decide right then, versus kind of emailing and waiting because I think the last… And there’s probably few other good take-aways but I think that the last thing is I limited my time. So I called people, I’d be like, “Hey, I’m selling the jerky, it’s only available today. “

[00:55:15] Scott: Yeah, right.

[00:55:16] Noah: I think what happens in business, and I noticed this for myself, I keep reminding myself is that the more time you give yourself, the more excuses you’ll make.

[00:55:23] Scott: 100%.

[00:55:24] Noah: The fact that I only had 24 hours, I remember this dude, it was so interesting. I was on the stair master, it was like 6 o’clock the day before it started. It was 6 p.m. I was like, “Dude, this is going to be cake,” and I was like, “I can’t use my network, I can’t use any of the things that I’ve asked like my email list and my twitter and social media kind of stuff.

I was like “oh, it’s going to be easy.” I’m on the stairmaster joking about it, and then I literally woke up at midnight, kind of like paranoid. I was like, I’ve only got 24 hours and if I fail, this is going to be pretty publicly embarrassing. “

And I still fail a lot. Like failing is going to happen, and I think you have to practice your fail muscle, like you have to get the fail muscle so strong that you’re like, “Dude, let me just keep going. I’ll keep going.” I remember waking at midnight and being like all right, cool. Like this is scary, let me get to it. Limiting that time was one of the key things I think most people if you limit the time, like you’ll actually increase the creativity.

[00:56:19] Scott: Oh, I agree with that, yeah.

[00:56:20] Noah: You know what I mean? Like I’m building a WordPress plugin. So for okdork.com I built this email capture thing that I want and that’s what Sumo.com does too. Everyone go grab some email list go use sumo.com. For my personal site, I also built just like a new feature that maybe we’ll roll into Sumo, and the developer I was like, “Dude, we should just give this away for free.”

He’s like okay, and I was like, “Hey, when do you think it’ll be done?” He’ll be like, “Oh, two weeks.” I was like, “Well, what would be different if you had to do it by tomorrow?” He’s like, ‘Well, I won’t make it pretty,” I won’t make it this, I won’t make it that. I was like, “Yeah, let’s do it tomorrow.”

[00:56:53] Scott: Yeah, let’s do it tomorrow.

[00:56:55] Noah: Yeah, I was like, “Let’s get it done.” And then from there, we can actually make improvements. I’m sure there’s like some Mike Tyson quote or something, patent quote about planning and execution but the point is that like I’ve spent a lot of time and money in my life wasted.

[00:57:08] Scott: Yeah, I agree.

[00:57:09] Noah: Like I’ve built businesses where I’ve spend a lot on lawyers and a lot on developers and a lot on the domain  and all this other crap but then actually seeing that people wanted it, which is the most thing, I spent a little amount of time on. I try to just do that.

When I generally recommended people is 48 hours, three paying customers, and if you could do that, you can go in and probably get more customers but if you can’t do that in 48 hours, it’s not going to get easier.

I don’t like the mentality of like let me just put it on Amazon and kind of hope like randomly sales come in and like I just bought this course and so that person said to look on Alibaba and just put it up there, because everyone else can do that too. Go and validate yourself, do a little bit of the hard work and then keep iterating and growing and making it easier on yourself.

[00:57:55] Scott: Yeah, and that’s what we’ve kind of talked about here too. Yeah, there’s easier ways to get that product to market, wholesale, obviously you could wholesale it. If you went to Ali Baba or Ali Express, you’re testing out the product but like you said, there’s got to be a unique twist of some kind or a different use. Let’s say that. Let’s say for example you did find that generic thing but it’s not used for this but you’re using it for this now.

That would be another spin on it, versus just saying that it’s another… We always use garlic press because no one wants to really sell their products in the Amazon space because then everybody will start going after each other and all that fun stuff. We always use garlic press. So let’s just say you had a garlic press, but if that garlic press was using for crushing something for your garden, for seeds, well if now it’s a different spin so you have a different angle, you have to come up with a unique spin of some kind.

I always tell people, even if you did go that large, do something. Learn the process. Whether you buy something that you’re going to put up there, and you’re just going to see if it sells, whether it’s Amazon/eBay or any other market place, or even just your own website and didn’t drive traffic, you still are further ahead than thinking about doing it. I mean so many people do that.

[00:59:08] Scott: I’m going to give everyone like this is… I think others have mentioned it but this is a business… I’ll give everyone this business idea. If you’re like and a lot of people, “I don’t have a business idea, I don’t have a product.” I’m like I’ll give it to you. I’m going to give everyone exact solution.

I mean literally; it’s not fluff. I have a bunch of s*** at home and I literally just throw it away or I just like put it outside, and I’m like, “I hope someone takes it.” So I literally think there’s an enormous opportunity to just hit up your friends. Like get on your phone, if you’re listening to this on your podcast, like on your phone right now, get on your phone and text five friends, or just text one.

“Hey, can you give me, put everything you want to sell or just donate in the corner, and I’ll take care of it for you, and I’ll give you money.” You go pick up their stuff. Like Scott, you have a bunch of stuff in your house; I can see stuff in the back. I’m sure you have a pile of books, and a pile of electronics and then text them like let me come pick up.

I pick it up for you, and then I go sell it on eBay or Amazon. That is a great way to start. You can literally start that business today. I don’t know why people aren’t doing that. I actually had to pay someone to take my stuff out.

[01:00:13] Scott: It’s funny that you say that, I told you we have like a little, it’s a small course that we do, just to get people started. We call the 1K Fast Track and basically, the very first kick-off call that we do, is cleaning out your house and selling it on eBay.

[01:00:27] Noah: Yes. You’ve got to do that for your friends.

[01:00:30] Scott: Exactly. Well, here’s the funny thing. The first one we did, we did a beta group, again we always do… We practice what we preach. We did a 50 person beta group, we filled that in six minutes, when we sent out an email, we got those people through and the very first week, those people in seven days, they made $3,500 in revenue they brought in.

So now all of a sudden they’re believers because now we’ve taken them from where, “I don’t know if this thing can work,” to, “Oh my gosh, I’ve cash coming in.” And we actually just started another group. Right now it’s fresh. We just did the kick-off called last Saturday, and I just looked into the group, there’s already been over $600 created in cash that they literally, they listed the stuff that they found in their house because we told them to do it, and they had till next Saturday to report it. We also gave a little incentive that said, “Whoever has the most earnings, we’ll give them 100 bucks.

[01:01:16] Noah: I love it.

[01:01:18] Scott: You know what I mean this is like how to give a little bit of a kick in the butt is what we sometimes need in the time frame.

[01:01:24] Noah: Totally man. Yeah, that was that, I did another one like two other stories I think people would be interested in. So I did the same thing with gum. I chew a lot of gum.

[01:01:31] Scott: Yeah, tell me about that.

[01:01:32] Noah: Well, I chew a lot of gum and I was at a gum store and I was frustrated. So I think solve your own problems so I was frustrated that there’s no new flavors out…I like…

[01:01:39] Scott: So you made your own flavor?

[01:01:41] Noah: Yeah well so I, basically it was like well, what would be a cool flavor? I was like coffee flavor would be cool, and if it had caffeine. So instead of having coffee in the morning, you just pop some gum before the gym.

I was like, “Let me see if people will buy it.” I hit up my friends who drink coffee. I hit up three of them I was like, “Hey, give me $10, and I’ll make coffee gum for you?” And they’re like, “Sure.” They gave me money and then… Literally, you can see all this stuff.

[01:02:12] Scott: Yeah I see it.

[01:02:13] Noah: What I did is I sold it, so I kind of thought that there would be some interest in it and then… One second. I basically, I hit up a friend who likes cooking and I was like, “Hey, do you think you can just figure out how to make coffee gum, because I don’t want to make it, but I want it.”

She’s like, “Sure, I’ll make it.” She actually figured it out. She went on Amazon and there’s this company called Glee Gum, who sells like gum kit. She bought Glee Gum, she bought coffee ground and caffeine powder, and then mixed it together and then like wrapped it in a parchment paper.

I gave that out in a zip logged back, it’s kind of like a drug dealer but I gave it out in a Ziplock bag and the people were like, “This is pretty good. Here’s what I’d change about it.” Like the size was too large, I think it was not sweet enough and so I went back and gave her that feedback. That’s how it goes. I mean I think people are looking to side step or short cut it but I think part of it is like, part of the fun and enjoyment is the hard part. It’s like the process of like getting that going.

[01:03:10] Scott: Yeah, it really is. It’s funny.

[01:03:12] Noah: Can I do one other story?

[01:03:13] Scott: Yeah. Do one more. That would be cool.

[01:03:15] Noah: I think people will love it. So a buddy of mine, his name is Dustin. He is a fitness freak. He’s got a great body, it’s kind of weird for another guy to say about another guy. Dustin… I don’t know, microphone’s going to fall off. It’s too far in the back but anyway so Dustin goes to the gym a lot, and he was frustrated with always having to like to bring his protein bottle.

So what he did, and I’ll talk about the marketing because I actually think the marketing is going to be more helpful for your people but basically the short answer was that he realized that like bringing protein to the gym was a pain in the butt. He created his own disposable bag. He went on Alibaba, and he found disposable bags that you could put protein powder in, and then bring it to the gym, fill it with water, shake it, drink it and then throw it away. There’s always that one lesson like, “What about recycling?” Like yeah, it’s recyclable, it’s fine.  

The point though is two things. One, I think him just getting it going is great. I actually gave him the money for it. He’s like I don’t have cash. I was like I don’t want any return, I don’t want any equity. I think I gave him like 1,000 bucks to go build them.

What was interesting about it, is a few different things. I talked some of the market things that are workable, but I think him getting going is really important and then secondly, so number one, get going, number two, iterate the product. So as people are using the product now, we can actually be like, hey, it’s really not gym people, it’s like more… I actually started using it for travelling. Because I can bring this plastic bag, fill it with water on airplane. Or you can use it as a flask when camping because it’s really light.

[01:04:43] Scott: Okay, yeah.

[01:04:44] Noah: So it’s interesting, I think, for him and I think well he’ll be more successful and I don’t think it’s doing amazing if he sells a $100 a week. So people will be like oh, you know. It starts there. Every business starts somewhere.

[01:04:52] Scott: Yeah, exactly. Hey, it’s something. Yeah.

[01:04:57] Noah: Number one, get started, number two, iterate. Now he’s like “all right, who are the people using it, and how do I serve them better?” The ceiling is not good. The bag size could be larger. Figure out the person and keep improving it for them and then some of the marketing that he’s done that’s worked really well.

He’s collected emails and I see a lot of ecommerce people not doing this. I’m like “control your own fate.” Have direction. Scott I’m guessing you want to talk to your wife directly, you don’t want to talk to her through a third party.

[01:05:20] Scott: Yeah. That wouldn’t go over so well.

[01:05:23] Noah: No, but for some reason with ecomm, all these people are super excited not to ever talk to their wives.

[01:05:28] Scott: I know, right?

[01:05:29] Noah: He’s done three things that I thought were interesting. He did surveying, and that’s actually a way that he learnt about his customers, and made sales. So after his surveys, he’d be like, “Where do you know normally hear about these product for? How do you like using it?” At the end of the survey, he’d actually give a discount.

[01:05:44] Scott: I love it.

[01:05:45] Noah: As a way of learning about his customers and that actually is one of his highest ways of converting people so number one surveying, number two opening up international sales, so when he actually said, “Hey, I can ship internationally,” it increased the sales a lot. Third and fourth thing is reaching out directly, as we talked about like reaches out one by one so he has a quota each day of how many people he’s reaching out to.

The fourth thing with that is repeat buying. He actually goes… Your best customers are your existing. He goes back to his customers every month and be like, “Hey, do you want to buy this again?” If people aren’t selling things like that, see if you can sell them something else.

[01:06:17] Scott: Yeah, something that’s related to it.

[01:06:19] Noah: Yeah, exactly. Everyone’s trying to reinvent the wheel. You already have people that love you. Just serve them better.

[01:06:23] Scott: No, I love all that and especially you hitting on building out your prospect list and your customer list. I mean that’s gold to me. It’s like for you to be able to leverage that list later, and not just sell them stuff, but it’s kind of like you’re going to give them value and like you said if you’re in the jerky, you could come up with some really stuff to basically give those people, that isn’t even your product.

It could just be like showing someone eating it because it’s really hot and you’ve seeing that, the posted it on Instagram or they posted it on YouTube of them eating it and seeing how hot it really is and you can say someone so and so, “John Smith, he tried some of our hot jerky and he videoed himself on YouTube. You’ve got to go check this out. It’s amazing.”

Then you could put us up on your PS if you wanted to, “We’ve got 25% off this week or something.” Like there’s all the little things you can do but you don’t get to do that if you don’t have that connection. So many people think that it’s got to be through a Facebook post or it’s got to be through an Instagram post.

To me it’s about doing it through the communications, through an email and then yes, you can still follow up with them through Facebook or during targeting or any of that stuff but men oh men, people just, they don’t look at the email as being valuable or they think it’s too complicated.

[01:07:32] Noah: Yeah I mean a lot of people are like… I think what they hear or what I think they hear is that like, “Oh, you just could just email.” It sounds like it comes out of magic, like you just create this email list and it just prints money for you, but I think the question’s like how do you do it? The point is like literally an email list is like just get ten people and email them through Gmail. That is called an email list. Then if you want to get more fancy, go on Mailchimp. It’s free for your first 2,000 subscribers, and just manually enter them so like it’s fine with my podcast.

It’s funny as you may think. Oh Noah has got a lot of followers and I’ve got a mail list or something. I still when I need people one by one like at lunch today, I’m like hey, have you subscribed on podcast? No. can you get on your phone and do it right now.

[01:08:07] Scott: Yeah.

[01:08:08] Noah: One by one I’m still doing it to hit my goal.

[01:08:11] Scott: I think it’s awesome.

[01:08:13] Noah: I think people want to skip the hard work on that.

[01:08:14] Scott: No, it’s true. Because everyone wants the shortcut. To me it’s all about the hard work.

[01:08:19] Noah: It is I mean I think there’s blueprints like is your courses to get to somewhere faster because you’ve already gone through it because you’ve already gone through it. So I think you should look the courses of someone that you believe in or look for mentors or experts that you can pay for to shortcut things, but at the same time like you can’t go and get a great body without doing the work.

[01:08:35] Scott: Right.

[01:08:36] Noah: And you can’t go to the gym one day and expect a six pack. People are like “yeah of course” but for the business, we think otherwise. We’re like “well I worked out one day, why am I not rich?”

[01:08:47] Scott: Sometimes it’s just the kick start too, it’s funny. I’m 44. When I was in 40 I was in really good shape, I got into the BeachBody products, I did insanity which…

[01:08:55] Noah: Oh, dude it’s so good at.

[01:08:57] Scott: Yeah. Crazy, right?

[01:08:59] Scott: I couldn’t do anything for 15 seconds.

[01:09:01] Noah: So I basically did that, I got really in shape, my kids were saying, “Oh dad, you’re looking ripped,” this that and the other thing. I’m like, “This is cool?” Then I fell off the wagon. Like a lot of people I fell off and I got an extra 20lbs on me and stuff and just recently my 18 year old son, again he said, “Dad, you’ve got to get back into it. You’ve got to go back into doing some BeachBody stuff.” I’m like, “No, I get it, I can do it in the gym. I’m my own motivator.” I go “you know what? He’s right. I got to get back into the program.”

So I went and I did T25. I just did that one. That’s his latest one. That was awesome. It’s 25 minutes a day, 5 days a week, and who can’t do 25 minutes a day, right? So I did that, I got my diet dialed back in. I lost 20lbs in 60 days.

I’m back to where I was and I’m probably going to be even better moving forward because I’m working out now with weights and stuff but I needed that plan. I needed that… In 60 days, this is what you need to do. Everyday there’s something to do, right? You have that blueprint and I knew what I had to do but I needed something to guide me and get back on track again. Now I’m dialed in. Now you can’t even derail me because I’m just so locked in.

[01:10:06] Noah: I do want to highlight this because I think… Well, a few different things. I think people miss the fundamentals and the foundation of life. What I mean by that is like get your health together, get your bedroom together and get your tools together meaning like I spend a lot of time… I sleep eight hours and that’s my foundation for the day, so get a good bed. If you’re on your computer all day get a good computer that’s your foundation. Then your body, if you’re tired or if you’re not in good health it’s going to be hard to work when you’re dead.

It’s going to be hard to enjoy life if you’re not healthy and people are like whatever but I think if people just go for a walk or exercise a little bit and then you build it up, they realize how much that will actually spill over into their business, into their personal life.

[01:10:45] Scott: I love it. Hey man, this has been awesome and I had no idea where it was going to go. I had no idea where this was going to go but it went really well. I’m sure we’ll have to have you back on in the future again and just hear all the different things that you’re doing because you’re moving 100 miles an hour too which I love. Just want to say thank you once again Noah. This has been fantastic. Any last little bits of parting piece of advice and maybe let people know how they can get in touch with you?

[01:11:15] Noah: I put some notes of things that I thought that I would say but… I’ll just repeat because I think sometimes we’re looking for new things but it’s the existing things. For anyone running a business, go look at what worked in your business in the beginning that you’re not doing anymore and go back and do more of what worked. I think that’s one thing.

I think we’re always looking for new things but I’m like what’s worked well in the past. For sumo.com like content’s worked really well. Why don’t we just do more content? Figure out what’s working … What worked and do more of it and then be aggressive in killing it. For my blog OkDork or for my YouTube channel, I removed over 50% of my content. Actually, I’m doing an ecommerce review with the… Do you know ecommerce fuel?

[01:11:57] Scott: Yeah. Actually I met with him last year at Steve Chou’s event.

[01:12:03] Noah: One of his customers… This is one of the things, so number one, do more what’s working and if you’re not sure what’s working just go look back what you did six months ago or twelve months ago. Number two, we’re doing a review of an ecommerce business and what’s been interesting is this guy has 10 products and this is one of the scenes where everyone would be like, “I know they know it shut up.”

The guy has 10 products, three of the products make 85% of his revenue. I’m like, “Why are you selling the other products?” Focusing on essentials is do more of those three and remove the distractions. For my blog and for YouTube, I killed off almost 80% of my content because when people come to my restaurant I want every dish to be great. If people come to your ecommerce store and they only buy up… We get a few sales out of this one.

If you remove that every dish will be great and they’ll want more dishes from you. Those are my two things I want people to… That’s what I’m thinking about and I want to encourage everyone to think about in their business. If people want to learn more about me at Noah Kagan Presents Podcast or okaydork.com. The two business I run they’re free, you don’t have to pay anything.

Appsumo.com is a groupon for geeks so if you want tools to grow your business we promote them with deals every week. Sumo.com is a free tool to grow your email list, so go check that out if you want to grow your email list.

[01:13:12] Scott: You’ve got some really, really cool tools and great products out there in the market place. I’ve heard a lot of good things about you so it’s been really awesome to be able to sit down and have a chat with you and hopefully we can do this in person one day. This would be cool.

[01:13:26] Noah: Where are you going to be this year? I’ll make sure I’ll find you.

[01:13:30] Scott: I’m not even 100% sure where I am going to be but the one I am going to be is Sellers’ Summit, that’s Steve Chou’s event that’s in Fort Lauderdale. I’ll be there in May so we’re going to be there. I’ve got a couple that I might be hitting but not 100% sure yet but I’ll be around. Maybe you and I will have to chat to see where we’re going to be and maybe we can hook up.

[01:13:45] Noah: That’d be cool.

[01:13:46] Scott: All right man, so this has been awesome. Again, have an awesome day there Noah. Thank you so much brother and I appreciate it.

[01:13:53] Noah: Same here man.

[01:13:55] Scott: Okay that was really, really awesome and it went on longer than I expected but you guys could see, there was so many twists and turns and just a great conversation. What’s really cool is when you end the actual recording of this podcast when you have a guest on and your guest says, “Wow that was a lot of fun. That was really cool.” That makes me feel like we connected on a personal level, on a business level and we delivered some value.

Hopefully you guys got value from that. I would assume that you would because there was a lot of golden nuggets in there. You may even want to go back and listen to that one again because Noah is a smart guy. He’s been in this business world for a very long time and he’s just got a great track record and he’s willing to share. He’s also not saying you got to go out there and build these big companies to start with.

He’s talking about the MVP model; the minimal viable product as far as like how to go out there and listen to your market and offer a product but then you get them to vote with their wallets. Really that can happen on Amazon as well as we talk about here a lot on this podcast or just even running a Facebook ad to a landing page that could get people to sign up for a special that you’re going to be offering in the future.

That could be a way to test and validate. There’s a whole bunch of different ways. Again, we talked about a ton here and I’m not going to carry on here too much because this went a little bit longer than I expect. I would definitely recommend you checking out Noah’s stuff and I’ll link everything up on the show notes. The transcripts can be found at theamazingseller.com/342 and the other thing I’m going to do is include the video of us actually having this conversation.

That’ll be found there as well. Guys that’s it, that’s going to wrap it up. I want to remind you once again that I’m here for you, I believe in you and I’m rooting for you but you have to, you have to… Come on say it with me, say it loud, say it proud, “Take action.” Have an awesome, amazing day and I’ll see you right back here on the next episode.

[END]

Click Here to Download Transcript <<

Click Here to Download Transcript <<

…a lot to share with you and I also want to answer some of those questions.

Now let me just remind you, if you want to ask your own question and have me listen to it and then possibly air it on an upcoming Ask Scott session, just head over to the theamazingseller.com/ask and you can do that, leave a brief voice mail, just include your first name, maybe where you are tuning in from and then your question, and I’ll do my best to air it on an upcoming show. I love doing this guys, I look forward to this every single week and I am totally pumped today. There’s a lot of things I want to share with you.

The one thing I wanted to start off with here and I’ve talked about this and you are going to hear me talk about this in the future and I’m just going to really keep hounding you on this and that is, why? Why are you busting your butt to do this? Hopefully you are busting your butt if you really want this and if you have a strong enough why you will bust your butt and I mean, you know it doesn’t mean that you have to work like extra, extra hard. You got to work smart with your time, you got to figure out to you know figure out the time that you can spend and all that stuff, but I really just want you to understand that if you don’t know why you are doing it, it’s going to be hard when you start to get through these struggles and these obstacles as being an entrepreneur.

Which they will be there. So let me just tell you like, if you think the grass is greener on the other side of the fence, it’s not always the case, I think you probably know that. But I think if we have a “why” and then we can remind ourselves of that “why,” now I’m going to give you an example, okay? And this has nothing to do with money but this podcast has really opened my eyes, to how important it is to help people, and why that’s so important to me.

[00:01:59] Scott: When I get notes, when I get like thank you notes which I have a board at which I’m looking at right now, I have a board in my office that has a lot of these thank you notes pinned on this board. And I do that to constantly remind me why I hop on here, I try to get on here with a lot of energy to show you guys that I’m excited about this and just helping you and I want to be able to project that energy, but I also want to be reminded of why I do it. The other reason is, is because sometimes you get people especially in this arena where you’ll get people that will bash on you and they will be what we call, “haters.” And they just want to drag you down. You might have some of these people in your life or you are like, telling them about what you are excited about and they are like, “Yeah, that will never work.”

And you are like, “Aah, that was a downer.” But if you have people around you, that’s going to constantly bring you up. It keeps you in that positive energy, and I always share this story and I might have already shared it with you guys. But back when I was in construction business with my father and his partner and everyone that we had working there, we used to send out postcards in the mail. We used to send out postcards to our customers and we would get hundreds if not thousands probably about, at the time we left, yeah we had thousands. Thousands of postcards that had come back so literally we would send them prepaid postage to send it back on a postcard.

This wasn’t email, we should have did back then. Email wasn’t really big back then, but nowadays we could have did that so much easier but we would literally send them a card in the mail and we would do this to see what we were doing good and what we could improve on and we would get 95% of them would be positive. Maybe more, maybe 98% would be positive. We used to always like say, “Were the guys polite? Did they clean up after themselves, were you satisfied with the job?” Just basic stuff. Not a huge… Just check boxes and not a huge list, just a small thing that you can fit on a postcard. And we would get those and then we would file them away. Well you’d get 5 or 10 of those back in a week and they’d be all positive and they would just put them in the filing cabinet.

[00:03:56] Scott: We’d get a negative one and “Oh my gosh” like everyone would just lose their mind and we’d have to have a big meeting about this. And it’s always like those negative things always bring us down. Now what I would have done or what I would do now if I was in that same situation is I would take all of those, all those positive ones and I would have them on a board so everyone could see how good we’re doing and why we do what we do and what our mission is and all that stuff, like I would have that on a board. Maybe not all thousands of those but I would have some of the top ones there to remind our company and everyone working there of why we do it and that’s the standard that we are going to live up to.

So what I want to just encourage you is to, maybe you are not receiving those thank you letters or maybe you are not receiving any of that stuff right now, but anything that you have that can remind you of why you are doing it. And then also if you do get some thank you notes from some of your customers, definitely post them on a board or maybe you are going to do a follow up with them on a post card. Maybe go back old school and follow up with them in the mail and then get something back and actually be able to pin it up on a wall. I think that’s a really positive thing for us to do as a business so this way here we can see how we’re doing as a company and I think it’s really, really awesome.

And like I said, I have a personal notes board right here and I have some that are hand written which it’s not really public as far as how you find my address as far as The Amazing Seller podcast. I’m going to give you that address because I love receiving mail myself from listeners. So if you guys have not found that address, I’m going to give it to you. It’s a P.O Box, so just pay attention right here, you don’t have to write this down if you want. I’ll give you a nice easy link that you can use. But if you want to send a personal note, let me know how the podcast has impacted your life or what it’s done for you, definitely do that. I want to hear from you, I want to pin it up on my board and keep adding to that.

So I’m going to give you that right now. It’s The Amazing Seller and then its P.O.Box 995, that’s Fruitland Park, Fruitland Park Florida and then it’s 34731, it’s the zip code. Now I’m going to put that on a special page.

[00:06:01] Scott: If you want go to theamazingseller.com/notes you can do that. And then you can send one there, a personal handwritten letter. I would look forward to that. I would really love reading those and just you know being able to pin those up on my board and that would just be awesome. So if you guys have had a tough time finding that address because it’s not really, I don’t like publicly put it out there but I’m going to do it right here that’s a P.O Box, it’s for our podcast and I have someone there that takes care of all the mail so if you guys want to do that definitely do that I would love that and I think you guys should do that I think you should do that in your business like make it available for people to be able to do that and encourage them to do it because then again you can look and see how well you’re doing as a company.

So again guys theamazingseller.com/notes if you want to literally hand type something or if you want to write something I have a few that are handwritten I would love to hear how the podcast has helped you and I think you guys should get out there and do the same thing kind of going back to the old way that we used to do with the postcards for my construction company years ago, I’m kind of on back to those roots. I really love seeing and hearing how things are working or not working in some cases and then how we can do a better job. So definitely do that.

The other thing I want to do is give you a couple updates before we jump into some Q&A today. The updates I want to share with you is I posted a rare episode, that was episode 339 and that one there really came about because of the Ask Scott session. A question was asked and the question was, “Hey Scott I would love to hear more about your work life balance, how you do it as being a husband, a father and how do you balance all of that stuff?” And it was a question that I was going to answer on an ask Scott but I actually flipped it around and I said you know what I’m going to reach out to that guy and see if he’ll interview me on my own show and will just dig deep into it so he can ask all the questions he wants and then we can dig into that because I think it’s a really, really good topic and I think a lot of people struggle with that.

[00:07:58] Scott: So this way you can kind of see a little bit of into my life and kind of how I do balance work in life and all that fun stuff. So definitely check out that episode, a lot of people have said that they’d like to hear more about like just working life balance but then also just day-to-day operations and I’m going to be doing more of that stuff in the future. So that’s episode 339.

Another update real quick that I’m really, really excited about and that is the 1K Fast Track, you guys may or may not heard us talk about that. We opened it to a 50-person beta group our first round, which was very successful. I think they generated over $3,500 in seven days in the class and then total was it was just about $16,000 for the five weeks that we ran that. We just started a brand new class with just about 100 students in there and right now as I’m recording this we’re only four days in and the class hasn’t even officially started. It doesn’t start until this Saturday, but we always do this kick off call where we say, “Listen, in the next seven days I want you guys to go out there and do this and this and come back and report your earnings,” and literally they’re going out there and earning money right now and the last I looked we were over $3500 in four days of the class going out there and taking massive, massive action.

Actually I outline a lot of what we do in the kick off call in the weekend challenge as we call it and that was on episode 312. So I encourage you to do that and if you do go to 312 and you listen to that and you do take me up on that challenge and you earn some cash, I want you to definitely email me, scott@theamazingseller.com. Let me know what you did and how much you generated in that weekend challenge. It’s really easy, anyone can do it, there’s nothing holding you back other than you getting out there and doing it. So definitely check out that episode.

As you guys can see I’m pretty fired up, pretty fired up. A lot of cool things going on, not to mention like all the stuff that’s happening too with our other brands that we’re working with inside of, we’re launching products on Amazon. We’ve got about three products that are in pre-production they’re going to be launching and I can’t wait to share some of the results from our first set of products that are going to be hitting amazon soon and then we’re building a list already we’ve got a list of over 6,000 people already.

[00:10:08] Scott: Currently we’re also starting a new contest for that, that’s building and I think the last I look we had additional 300 emails in about 24 hours so I’m going to be sharing all of the ins and outs of what we’re doing there and I’m really, really excited to do that. So guys I’m going to try to calm down just a touch because I am fired up today but let’s go ahead and let’s start answering some questions today. Let’s go ahead and listen to today’s first question and I will give you my answer let’s do this what do you say let’s kick this baby off.

[Q&A SESSION]

[00:10:38] Ivan: Hi Scott. My name is Ivan and I’m a 20 year old student from Ukraine Kiev and I am recording this voice mail from my rented apartment in the centre. So first of all I would like to say that man, I really, really enjoy your podcast. It’s such an amazing thing and it’s so useful and it has given me such a bunch of valuable information and just keep doing that, I love it. So my question is, have you ever observed social media marketing and Facebook as a one of the major sales funnels? I mean that, you have talked about Facebook as a methods of launching your product or making giveaways, making your mailing list.

But what about generating your sales? I mean that we would be 10,000 or 5,000 subscribers enough for making five or ten sales per day. That is worth investing money in that stuff and developing this page of group on the Facebook or it’s much easier and cheaper to invest funds in just ads on your squeeze page or paying money to bloggers? So that’s my question. Thanks.

[00:12:08] Scott: Ivan, thank you so much for the question and I love it that you’re a 20 year old kid getting ready to jump into being an entrepreneur. I think it’s really awesome and from what I’m understanding out there they’re actually having classes at college now, that’s diving into entrepreneurship. And I think that’s awesome because years ago it was always looked upon like you know well you just didn’t want to get a job. I really liked that because there are certain people that are built for this that want this but they don’t have the introduction to it either and I think yes there’s only so much you’re going to learn in a college class. I think the best education is getting out there doing it and so many of my students have said that like Scott now that I’ve actually gotten through that process I’ve learned so much by going through that process, what worked what didn’t work and some of the things I’m going to have to consider and all of that stuff.

But I think it’s great that they’re introducing that. I’m not sure if that’s you or not but I just love it that you are taking action you’re like you know what I want to give this thing a shot you got some really good questions and you’re actually thinking on the right terms as far as like what you need to do to build a brand or a business not just focused on Amazon. We are talking about launching on Amazon because it’s a great platform to start with and it’s a great platform because everything’s in place.

But really we should be thinking about too is how do we build that external list and do we use social media? Do we use an email list? Do we use Facebook ads? Like what is the right thing to do? So I’m going to give you my thoughts on this and again this is just my opinion but it’s what I believe in, it’s what I practice. So I think that social media is a great tool, okay because social media is like all of the different things that fall under social media Facebook, you have Twitter, you have you know now Snapchat, you’ve got let’s see Instagram, you got Pinterest, you got all of these different platforms that they’re you know they’re classified as social media.

[00:14:14] Scott: Social media for me personally is a way to get attention on that platform or to use that to grab the attention of that audience in a certain place where they’ve already been hanging out. So think about like if you could go to a certain area or a certain group in your local town and you knew that they were all focused on you know I don’t know like old muscle cars and they had a meet up every Sunday and you can go there and you sold stuff in that market you’re going to have a pretty good chance of them buying some of your stuff or at least being interested in your company.

So what I like to do is I like to use those platforms to get awareness so I can then get those people to start paying attention to our brand and you know there’s a lot of different ways you can do that. But then not just directing them to Amazon to buy our product but to really get them to become an email subscriber so this way here I can communicate with them later and I can also use that email address to further target them, a great example is Facebook Ads. We can actually target them and retarget them and get them back or get our message in front of them. So here’s an example, let’s just say that I found a group on Instagram and this actually is a real story I’ve actually done this and I actually share it in a case study that I shared and you guys can go check that out. I’ll put it in the show notes but it’s theamazingseller.com/buildlist and we actually talk about how it’s all kind of unfolded.

I do this exact same thing in the brands that were working with right now. So basically we found an Instagram page that had… Well it ranged. One of them had like 250,000 one of them had 500,000 one of them had a million and I paid to get my post on there. So they will post your picture because basically Instagram is a picture and a little bit of maybe in the bio if you can get them to put something in the bio like a link but basically just an image and that image is going to then say whatever it is that you want them to do or get their attention by that picture because its image based.

[00:16:24] Scott: So what we did is we just did this big bundle in our market. So again let’s go back to the muscle cars, if I was into muscle cars which I am kind of I got a 73 Mustang, so I kind of am. I’m not a huge like muscle car guy that you know like I just go out there and tinker with it all day long, I like driving them but I like looking at them as well but I should say that I was into that space and I was going to sell product in that space. Well I would, what I would do is create a giveaway so if I knew that that market really, really wanted like car covers or something for their car or maybe it was a car cover that was a $200 car cover and I use that as my lead magnet as we call it, as a way to attract them so I would then put that up on Instagram if that’s where they were hanging out.

Now again if they’re not hanging out an Instagram that’s not where I’m going. I might go to in this case let’s say it was Facebook and I found a Facebook group that had 150,000 people in a group and I was able to get my post inside of that group that might be something that I do or maybe it’s a fan page that has a hundred thousand people then maybe I retarget that page or I target that page in an Ad that I run and then I would just have that come up and say, “hey win this free $220 you know car cover to protect your muscle car.” And then maybe I have a couple other little things that go in there too.

Maybe I have a whole cleaning kit, maybe a professional buffer or something like that. Whatever it is right and let’s say you got that up to a $250 value or $300 value and then you literally spend the money to buy those products, they’re not even your products maybe and then you are attracting the right customer because maybe you sell something else that they can use on their car. Okay? To maybe I don’t know maybe it’s a maybe it’s Jacks or you know what I mean to jack up your car or maybe it’s some type of thing that’s universal for muscle cars. I don’t know that market and I just kind of threw that out there randomly. I wasn’t even prepared for that but let’s just say that that was the case well now I’m building an email list from…

[00:18:24] Scott: I’m extracting those people that are highly targeted in this space and they’re all raising their hands like that’s what I want to do. I don’t want to just say I’ve identified the group, I want to then extract the ones that are really, really like into this market and I want them to raise their hand and the way that I get them to do that is I’ll put something up of great value, a bundle to get them to say yes I’m interested in that, get their email address and then from there I can then message them. I can give them a car tip every single week. I could give them maybe a guy doing a burnout at one of the meetups, there’s a lot of different things that I could do and I kind of call that the reporter model where I’m going to just go out there and find really cool stuff in this market and then when I email them I’m going to give them these things.

Then I might have something in the PS that says, “Oh by the way this week we have a 25% off all car covers,” or whatever right maybe that’s your thing maybe you’re selling car covers. So that would be a great thing. I mean ideally if you were selling car covers and that was your giveaway and then on the back end of that maybe people that didn’t win you offered them a 25% discount or a 30% discount, you’re going to boost your sales on Amazon which is going to also help you rank. So that’s what I would do.

I wouldn’t necessarily say that you want to spend a ton of money building a platform on social media. I’d say you’re able to go out there and tap into people that have already built this audience, that’s the quickest way. Now yes if you can do both now we’ve done that in one brand that we’re working with. We’re building a Facebook group, a Facebook fan page. We’re also doing some Pinterest, we’re also doing some Instagram. But all of that stuff is just getting the attention so then we can extract those people and put them on an email list so we can communicate weekly with them, with other updates in and little tips and again we’re the reporter.

So again I mean I can go on and on with this stuff. I love this stuff because I think it’s a great, great discussion and I think it’s a great thing to do if you’re building a brand of any kind because it’s so powerful.

[00:20:26] Scott: But a lot of people don’t do that and in your case, you’re asking, “Should I go out there and spend a lot of money building an Instagram page?” The answer is no. I wouldn’t spend a lot of money building the Instagram page, if it’s a byproduct of you doing that. So an example would be, let’s say that you’re doing it on Instagram which we’ve done and you create an Instagram page, well with the Instagram page you got to post four or five six things a day you’re going to want to do that to constantly stay fresh in the feed if you can do more do more. Then what you can do is when you run that that giveaway or that contest what you would do is you would say here’s what you got to do to enter the contest.

One you have to like us on Instagram or you know follow our page. And you would just give the @ whatever your pages is and then you would say step two go to you know www and then give your link so that way there they have to go to that page to enter their name and email address. So some people are going to do both, some people are just going to do the second one to enter the contest but again it’s just you’re getting your kind of double dipping you’re getting two things out of one Ad spend. So if you’re spending money on that Ad to drive people to that page well at least now you’re going to also get people to start following you on Instagram and you’re going to slowly build that page or Facebook or any social media platform.

So again I don’t think people should build the Instagram page or the Pinterest page just to sell products. I think it’s great to kind of get a community built around your brand that would be awesome. If you could do a group, like if you were into muscle cars and you built like this awesome group where you had a community of guys hanging out in there and girls hanging out in there talking about muscle cars all day long, I mean it’s going to give your ideas for products it’s going to also allow you to build this strong community. You can do local meetups and you can do all kinds of cool things. But I would not base everything on that. I would not be selling products in there necessarily I’d be more or less allowing them to build the community or build the resources so then I can also have an email so I can follow up with them and remind them of maybe something that I posted inside the Facebook group.

[00:22:28] Scott: So hopefully that makes sense. I know it was a long winded answer, but again I could do a discussion on this every single day because I believe so strongly in it. I think it’s so powerful and again guys if you have not checked out theamazingseller.com/buildlist, do that. It gives you the entire roadmap and blueprint of how that all works totally free, we did a workshop on that. So definitely check that out we’re going to be updating that as we as we have other case studies that we’re working on and stuff so definitely check that out. Alright guys so hopefully that helped you and also congratulations on being 20 years old and out there thinking about building a business and getting started in this world of entrepreneurship. So congratulations and I’m rooting for you bud. All right so let’s go ahead and listen to another question and I’ll give you my answer.

[00:23:13] Cynthia: Hi Scott, my name is Cynthia and I am a new podcast listener. I’m into podcast number 17 now and I really love the information that you’re giving the audience and I think it’s very valuable and useful and I also attended the webinar which was great as well. Thank you so much for what you do. My question is, once you’ve found a product that you’d like to make modifications to after looking at reviews, looking at the competitor and what they have out there, do you need to have that product patented?

I’m kind unclear because it sounds like you’re doing modifications to an existing product but if that product is modified to your liking, that’s your product and you don’t necessarily want anybody to mimic that or have the supplier sell that to someone else. So do you need to get a patent or does that even work with doing this type of business? I’m kind of unclear about that but if there’s a podcast that you can lead me to, that would be great and again very much appreciated. Thank you Scott.

[00:24:34] Scott: Hey Cynthia, thank you so much for the question, thank you so much for being a listener, a new listener and I want to say thank you. That’s awesome and I really do appreciate it and I appreciate all the kind words. To answer your question on patents and trademarks and all of that good stuff, I’m going to direct you to an episode that we did a little while back, episode 186 and I did an episode with Ted Limus who is an attorney and we talked all about that. But here’s my thoughts on that. If you’re going to launch a product and you’re going to make some modifications to it, you can file for a patent. And when you do that it’s going to be under the status of patent pending and I think I mean we just did one not that long ago it’s about 200 bucks 250 bucks to file that.

But once you get to the stages of where you actually will be you know officially making it a patent and stuff there’s going to be more things you’re going to have to do. You are going to want to hire an attorney to help you with that process and it will be more expensive at that time, but at that time you’ll probably know if the product is selling or not. So that’s totally up to you, if you want to go down that road.

Because then every product that you launch, if you’re going to do this you’re going to file patents that’s more expense, it’s more time and all that stuff but I also want to say that depending on where you’re sourcing is from, a patent is really only as good as you’re going to be able to enforce it. So if you have a patent and someone does violate that patent, you’re going to have to go through all of the necessary steps to enforce that which means hiring an attorney having proof of all of your stuff and at that point it’s like is it really worth it or can you just file something through seller central, if it’s through Amazon or have your attorney send them something to kind of almost scare them off like there’s nothing saying that China or wherever you’re having this thing sourced isn’t going to go ahead and start making it for someone else.

[00:26:27] Scott: Now you could put something in writing, have them sign it but again you would have to then go after these people and for me personally I’m about you know MVPs which is basically minimal viable product like I want to do the least amount to get a product to market to see if it’s going to work before I invest a ton of time and a ton of money into protecting it. Now if you have something that’s totally unique that you’ve created, you’ve got your own like 3D modelling and you got like you know maybe even 3d printing done and you’ve really spent a lot of time on that stuff, that’s a different story. But we’re talking about if you’re just adding a little bit of you know a different look or maybe you just customize that handle a little bit or whatever it is, it might not be worth your time to do that, but again I can’t say I don’t know what you’ve done, I don’t know how extensive it is, your thing might not even be patentable, you might not even be able to get a patent for it because it’s not modified enough.

So again I would direct you to episode 186 anyone else that’s listening about patents, trademarks or copyrights any of that stuff we had a deep discussion on that. Definitely I would look into that and again I would find an attorney that you trust with and I actually I may even have a resource on that so by the time this airs I may have something on the resources page. We’re supposed to have lunch with a patent attorney that lives near me. Actually he lives in Charlotte and we’re supposed to have lunch, we’ve been trying to make that happen and I may have a resource for you at that time. Right now currently, I just say find your local patent attorney and start picking their brain and it’s going to probably cost you 100 or 200 bucks to even talk to them to them.

There are some services out there that it doesn’t cost anything to file as far as like them to do it it’s just like the filing of the patent itself but again I don’t have those resources off the top of my head but I will locate something and put it on the resources page. The resources page for any of you that don’t know is the theamazingseller.com/resources and I will have everything there for you and that’s always constantly being updated with resources of tools or things like this; patents or liability insurance or any of that stuff. That’ll all be there as I become more aware of new whether it’s tools or whether its services, I will put them on that page and keep that up to date.

[00:28:37] Scott: Hopefully that helped you and congratulations on getting started and keep me updated, keep me posted. I want to hear your progress and I want to hear how you’re doing so definitely do that. Let’s listen to one more quick question before we wrap up today and I’ll give you my answer and then we’ll call it a day and you guys can wrap this up and have an awesome weekend. What do you say? Let’s do it.

[00:28:57] Rich: Hey Scott, this is Rich. Fighting off a little bit of a cold here so forgive me. I have a question for you to answer for me and the audience and you’ve probably done this in the past I’m not sure. But what does it mean to have a best seller ranking under the 3,000 and over the 10,000? If you could explain those, the reason for those ranges. I found a product recently that’s in the 650 BSR range and I’m just trying to figure out what I would get myself into if I purchase this product and pursued it. If you could give us an idea of the, what would happen if we choose something below the 3,000 and above the 10,000 what those scenarios would look like. I really appreciate everything you’ve done. I tell everybody about you all the time and encourage all my friends to stop running the rat race and be your own business owner. But thank you, really appreciate it from all of us, have a great day. This is Rich, out.

[00:30:08] Scott: Hey Rich, thank you so much for the question and thanks so much for being a long time listener. I appreciate that, means a lot. So let me dive into your question and what I want to say here though is a lot of people they base all their decision on the BSR. Best seller rank for anyone that’s brand new it’s listening to the podcast. BSR is the best seller rank, most categories have that on their listings. Amazon gives them a rank that’s always changing. Hourly it’s changing and it’s all based on sales and that’s a way for us to get a gauge as how well a product is selling. Now there’s tools like Jungle Scout that will also help us see that because they’ve taken that into consideration and then they’ve done some really cool things with an algorithm and they can not a project or not project they can actually see what the past you know sales, I guess they could project.

They can tell us like what is done over the past you know month or a year and they kind of take an average and kind of do all that stuff. So if you want to really understand numbers I would say Jungle Scout would be that tool that would give you a really close idea without even worrying about BSR. If you guys are starting from scratch, I think Jungle Scout is probably the number one tool that I would recommend like out of the gate. Like if I had a buddy come up to me right now and go, “Scott, I really want to get started in this thing what do you what do you suggest I do?” I’d say, “Well number one do your touch list.”

I tell everyone to do that you know figure out what’s happening in your own life with things that you’re touching products. If you’re in the muscle cars like I said before obviously you’re going to have a lot of stuff there. If you work on muscle cars there’s tools that you use, this and the other thing and then you can start to see if there’s any opportunity there for you. And using a tool like Jungle Scout is going to make that a lot easier, a lot faster and it’s not that expensive. If you guys have not checked out Jungle Scout, if you guys are brand new, I definitely recommend you doing that. There’s two versions. There’s the extension which goes in chrome which that’s the one I would recommend first and then there’s the web app and that one there is more about this product discovery.

[00:32:12] Scott: But if you guys want to get a discount on that I am an affiliate for Jungle Scout but I use the tool almost every day. I know Greg Mercer very well, we’re good friends and it’s a great product, great company. You can get a discount on it if you head over to theamazingseller.com/js for Jungle Scout or you can just go to the resources page. But I think that’s the one tool that I say everyone should have when they start, because it’s going to speed up that process and you’re not doing that much guessing, you’re letting them guess for you but they have some algorithms that make it really close. So I would definitely do that because here’s the deal, you can look at BSR, you can look at the numbers that you think that they’re selling or what they’ve done in the past but there’s no guarantee that that’s going to continue.

There’s no way that you can do that other than sometimes you have to trust your gut, you also have to see if it’s a trend that’s on the up or if it’s on the down. You got to look at those different things and if you think that there’s a product that’s selling well right now and you can put your own spin on it will make it better by looking at reviews and all that stuff that we’ve talked about in the past then there’s no reason to do a test order. I like doing smaller test orders like 250 to 500 units is a good batch of test products that you can really see if it’s going to work and you can get some marketing behind it, you can do some promotions, you can even build a little bit of a list and do a launch like all of those things.

I think the one thing that a lot of people they miss out on is looking at the number of reviews and if it’s still selling well and it has low reviews then that’s a good opportunity for you because then that means that you don’t have to battle and you don’t have to fight for reviews. You can let them naturally happen which I think is going to going to be very important moving forward but this way here you know that it’s got steady numbers and it’s not driven by reviews. So again and I wouldn’t just look at one or two sellers, I’d look at probably five sellers so they can all validate that this is a good market and a good product to go into. So again to answer your question that is really a moving target.

[00:34:13] Scott: I have given the example like if you can find a product in certain categories that’s 10,000 or less, it’s a pretty good market but you could say that same thing and go into a market or a category that’s not that popular and you look at that 10,000 and they’re selling like one a day if that or maybe one every two days. So it’s going to change, that’s why using a tool like Jungle Scout will definitely help and speed up that process and also take a little bit of the guesswork out of it for you. So hopefully that’s helped you, again I wouldn’t want to give you a BSR number. Like if you said it’s 650 in a good, well heck, not even in a really good, good category, they’re still selling some per day but if you found something for BSR of 650 in home & kitchen for example or beauty or one of those categories selling lots.

And sometimes that might be too much, like sometimes that will make me not want to go into that space because then I know that they’re a target. There’s other people that are trying to get into this business that are going to go after those because they have great numbers. They might be selling 50 a day and that’s not really my strategy. I want to go after products that I can land and I can sell without having to put a ton of marketing behind it where I don’t have to do a massive giveaway and play that game and I have to worry about competing on reviews and I have to worry about 10 other people coming in every single week like those are the ones that people are going after because they want that home run. Like I want base hits and I think that everyone should go after base hits and I think there’s more opportunity there.

So hopefully this answered your question and for anyone out there that’s thinking about product research definitely, definitely check out episode 189. That one there, I go through number one taking the information and then really going back and looking at the history and then looking at the trends and all of that stuff to really make it an easier process for you to make that decision by not just looking at the surface numbers because a lot of times we can get fooled by the surface numbers and then we get the product and we’re like wait a minute why aren’t there any sales?

[00:36:16] Scott: Even my competitor it doesn’t have many sales now because they just ran a massive promotion and they’ve only been selling for a month and a half. We got to go back and we got to look at the history, we got to look at the trends, we got to look at all that stuff and I do that in episode 189 and I’ll probably be doing an update on that one. Not much has changed but I think I should probably just revise that a little bit but 189 will give you a really, really good idea on how to look at a product and then do a little bit more data in the background. So this way here you have a better chance of landing a product that’s going to sell and you’re not going to be fooled by the numbers on the front end.

So hopefully this has helped you, again thank you so much for the question and everyone else that submitted questions, I want to thank you and if you have submitted a question and I haven’t gotten to it yet, be patient it still may air on an upcoming show. I’m trying to stay as you know up to date as I can but they’re coming in faster that I can’t answer them but don’t let that discourage you. Definitely ask your question and I’ll do my best to get to it. You can head over to theamazingseller.com/ask and you can do that. You can ask a question and then the other thing is I want to remind you about sending in a note.

I would love to receive a personal note for you so I can pin it up on my board. I’m going to probably do a video of my office and my workplace and I’ll show you that board and who knows maybe your note will be up there but yeah go ahead and send me a note. A handwritten note would be awesome or type it whatever but you can do that by heading over to theamazingseller.com/notes and I will leave the address there that you can send it and then I will get them generally about every two weeks is when that mail will get sent to me directly.

Alright, so guys that’s it, that’s going to wrap it up. Remember that the show notes can be found that theamazingseller.com/343, transcripts, show notes, links, all that good stuff will be there and yeah you can get all the goodies on that page. All right guys so that’s it, it’s going to wrap it up. Remember I’m here for you, I believe in you and I’m rooting for you but you have to, you have to… Come on say it with me, say it loud, say it proud, “Take action.” Have an awesome amazing day, weekend, wherever you are and we’ll see you on the next episode take care.

[END]

Click Here to Download Transcript <<

Click Here to Download Transcript <<

…Amazon’s hidden fees and knowing your true profit numbers. I’ve invited on a good friend of mine, he’s been on the show before, Mr. Greg Mercer. He’s going to be hanging out with us for the next 45 minutes to an hour.

I forget exactly how long this one goes for but it’s a great conversation that we talk all about the numbers. A lot of times people don’t want to look at the numbers 100%. We always talk about top line but we don’t look at the bottom line and really all of the numbers that go into that. We’re going to be covering everything that we should be tracking and then we’re going to talk about some of those hidden fees that I wasn’t even aware of and Greg wasn’t even aware of.

Now we do know what those numbers are and you can use this as a guide and also a way for you to start tracking these even if you’re just starting and you are using a spreadsheet, this is going to help you. Now I have had a lot of people ask me, “Scott what software would I use if I wanted to start to track the expenses to give to my accountant and all of that stuff?” In the past I’ve used Wave apps and that one there works really well but you have to import all of your data and it doesn’t give you any Amazon data, only the stuff that you actually tell it.

It doesn’t connect directly. The other ones that are out there is Quick Books and Fresh Books and Zero. They all do good things but they’re like for a wide range of businesses. Greg actually struggled with this as well and that’s why he created a tool called Fetcher which we’re going to actually talk about at the end of the podcast.

I wanted to give you guys the opportunity to give it a test try and you can head over to theamazingseller.com/fetcher and you can get a 30 day free trial there. The thing is with this software, it literally is focused on Amazon sellers. That’s who it’s used for but you can also track other additional expenses. That’s the one that I’m currently using. I really like it.

[00:02:00] Scott: It’s easy to use. If you want to check that out head over to theamazingseller.com/fetcher and you can check it out for yourself. Like I said, even if you just take this to import all of your data and then have it tell you your profit-loss and taking all of those expenses it’ll go back in time which is really cool. I believe Greg said it goes back all the way I think about two years which is pretty crazy and it’ll give you all of your statistics, all of your expenses that Amazon has pulled that you might not even be aware of.

It’s kind of eye opening especially if you have more than one product because you can see the products that are doing well and you can see products that aren’t doing so well and where you might have to make some changes. Like I said, you’re going to love this conversation that I have with Greg because there’re some fees here that we’re not even aware of and he’s going to expose these for us and we’re going to be able to get down to your true numbers.

The other thing is here real quick, I forgot to mention this, but we actually recorded this on video. If you want to see our conversation, our talk in person, on video you can actually get that on the show notes. I’m going to take that video and embed it into the blog post over at theamazingseller.com/344. The transcripts will be there, the show notes will be there and the video will be there which I haven’t done too many of those.

Definitely if you want to check that out go over to the show notes page. What do you say? Let’s get rocking and rolling here. Why don’t you guys sit back, relax, enjoy this conversation, this in depth conversation about accounting and about your true numbers with my good friend Mr. Greg Mercer. Enjoy.

[INTERVIEW]

[00:03:34] Scott: Well, hey Greg welcome back to the podcast man. What is up? How are you doing man?

[00:03:40] Greg: Scott I’m fantastic. I’m really stoked that you’re having me back. It’s always blast chatting with you. It’s been a while so we have a lot of catching up to do.

[00:03:47] Scott: We do have a lot and actually you told me you might be coming to my town here eventually, my neck of the woods.

[00:03:57] Greg: Just few weeks.

[00:03:57] Scott: We might be able to grab some lunch or something. It’ll be really fun. Maybe we’ll have to do a Facebook Live or something on that too that’ll be cool.

[00:04:04] Greg: We should definitely do a Facebook Live, that’ll be awesome.

[00:04:06] Scott: That’d be cool. Lots going on and I know you and I talked a little bit before we got on here but let’s jump on and let’s catch up. A lot of things have happened. I don’t really want to get into the things that we’ve really talked about in the past because we’ve already talked about those things. What I did want to have you on for is really talking about some of the things that you’ve been exposed to or been seeing it now that you have a tool that you guys created called Fetcher.

You’re starting to see from all these different sellers and maybe even the support tickets or whatever. You’re seeing that people are having issues with certain parts of their business with money, with like financing and understanding all of the expenses and what is profit? What is really the profit number? I know before that software was even built, was actually last year… I think it was in Miami I think it was when we were at Steve Chou’s event you showed me a demo before it was even live and you were like, “This is what we’ve been working on. I really like it.”

You’re like, “The one thing that I’m realizing is there are products that I have that aren’t doing as good as I thought they were doing.”

[00:05:12] Greg: Scott you weren’t supposed to say that out loud.

[00:05:13] Scott: It’s true. If you don’t know the numbers how do you really know, we’re kind of guessing. Maybe what we can do here is give people like a checklist of some kind of maybe just give them some of those things that you found that people might be making mistakes or don’t know what to look at so they can really know their numbers and they can track it better and maybe even talk a little bit about inventory and all of that stuff. If you want to go ahead and kick that off that would be awesome. Just tell us a little bit about that part of the business because that’s not really the sexy part really. I mean the money is but not like losing money isn’t really that fun.

[00:05:50 Greg: Absolutely. I could say myself and I think probably you too and a lot of other sellers don’t have a great grasp on their Amazon financials because Seller Central makes it tough on you. If they made it easy with like a nice to read dashboard and easy to find all these numbers and stuff it’ll be a whole different ball game but that’s not the case. We have to work with what they give us.

What I used to do, what a lot sellers I think do is try to download all these different reports, put them together. Maybe if you’re real savvy excel you have some macros you create to automatically put this stuff together but it’s tough. What I found with my business and from talking to a whole bunch of Fetcher users I found three or four areas that I’d say surprised the most people or they didn’t quite understand or they were shocked to see that stuff.

I’d say one of the big ones is refunds. All Amazon sellers know that they’re giving refunds. It’s like another refund is being sent back but Amazon doesn’t make it easier on you to understand your return rate for particular products. It’s like, “I’m getting these emails saying it’s being returned or I know they’re being sent back but what is my return rate?” If it gets too high they send you a nice email saying, “Hey, we’ve suspended your listing and you can’t sell this until you address this issue.”

Before that it’s like what is this? Is it 3%, 5%, 10%? I was pretty shocked once I was able to see this in an easy-to-read graph like how much returns I was getting for some of these products. Some of them I was pleasantly surprised, sweet, 1.5% that’s fantastic. Other ones it’s 9% or 10% like holy crap, I need to A, put more attention to figure out why this is being returned and B, I need to make that I’m factoring that in at my profit.

[00:07:13] Greg: Me personally, I don’t put returns back into circulation because what I found is that opens it up to people repackaging a product, it gets put back in circulation and then Amazon ships that to another customer and I ended up getting a bad review. I actually decided that it’s worth it for me to just dispose inventory or have it repacked and never ask Amazon to put it back in circulation.

I need to be understanding if I’m getting 10% returns I need to factor in that 10% of my inventory I’m usually disposing off. That’s a pretty significant amount that you need to be factoring in. I’m not the only one. After talking to a whole lot of our customers I realized that a lot of people are realizing the same thing. If you’re listening to this and you’re an Amazon seller you need to be thinking about that too.

You need to be understanding what your return rate is and make sure you’re factoring that in at your end-of-the-day profit.

[00:08:40] Scott: What is the trigger? Do you know the trigger that Amazon comes up with that it’s a high return and we’re going to suspend or suppress your listing until you get that figured out? I know for me and it was weird. We might have had like 100 sales but five returns or something and they flagged us. I was like really? Why? That wasn’t even that bad, I didn’t think but to them it was enough and now the problem that we ran into was I still got 300 more units in there. How do I know that some of those aren’t bad?

How do I not mix new inventory with the old inventory? We ended up doing a whole order and then bringing it back to our facility and then being able to inspect it and then we were able to ship it back in but I lost money there. I had to do it because I didn’t want to ship new inventory on top of the old inventory.

[00:09:38] Greg: It’s mixed in. From what I’ve seen, you normally don’t get those emails I don’t think until 10% or 12% returns. That’s what I’ve seen with my own emails and from talking to other sellers. However, I’m sure they take into account the reason that buyers select when they’re returning a product. If you’ve ever returned anything to Amazon there’s a drop down you select what the reason is.

If it’s like it doesn’t fit I’m sure they don’t ding you. That doesn’t negatively affect the health of that listing but if it was something like not as expected or whatever other defects then I’m sure those are the ones they can count. I think I’ve seen that it’s usually above 10% when they suppress your listing and make you tell them what are doing to fix it so you stop getting as many returns.

[00:10:28] Scott: Have you found though that if you say what you’re going to do to fix it and it’s not pulling the inventory? How would you get around that? Do you have any suggestions on that?

[00:10:37] Greg: I’ve actually found just by… I’ve found that pretty much whenever you respond to them that they’ll reinstate your listing for that reason. You could just say like…

[00:10:47] Scott: Okay. Acknowledging it.

[00:10:48] Greg: I acknowledge it. Often times what I’ll do is I’ll change my listing to make sure that the buyer understands better what they’re getting. I found that often can help. I usually do something like that and they’ll usually reinstate it.

I think I’ve had one time I had a listing suppressed twice and I was able to respond to them and get it reinstated twice. If that were to happen a third time I don’t know if that would still work on that product. I ended up selling out and not restocking it. I have been able to do it twice just responding to their email like acknowledging it and telling them like, “Okay, I’m changing this listing or I’m making it more clear that…” Whatever the reason is.

[00:11:29] Scott: I think, like you said, yours might have been just it not described as they thought so that’s an easy one. Now you got to describe it better. Ours was missing a part. We’re missing a part and what we found is there’s different types of poly bags and the one that we had was breaking at the seam.

An Amazon employee could have pulled it out of there, the part could have fell out, they didn’t even know it and now they’re packing it because of the poly bag that it was in. We had to contact our supplier and say, “Hey, don’t use those poly bags anymore.” They’re like that fused welded corners versus it being it like a full seamless bag with just an opening. We learned from that the hard way. I had to pull some units but for yours, it’s like if it’s not described, oh I thought it was round but it’s square. It’s like I probably should put that it’s square in there if it’s not there. Something simple like that.

I get it. If you respond to them, give them, “Okay we’ve updated our listing to make it explained better,” then they’ll probably say, “Okay cool, we’re going to reinstate you.” That makes sense.

[00:12:39] Greg: Same thing. Even if it’s just like overall a crappy product that’s just not getting as good reviews as you would have hoped for and is getting returns too I think you could still do something similar like that. Just respond saying something along those lines. From what I’ve seen they always reinstate it for that particular listing when it gets suspended.

[00:12:56] Scott: Got you. That’s refunds. Like you said, a lot of people they don’t see their refunds. Where would you see your refunds in the Seller Central if you wanted to do it manually? Do you know that off the top of your head?

[00:13:09] Greg: I don’t think there’s a good… There’s no aggregated area that shows you the number of returns for a particular product or…

[00:13:18] Scott: You just see that in your statement. At the end is probably you would see returns? How do you know which ones are what? You’d have to dig into that and again that… You’re digging in.

[00:13:31] Greg: If you’ve like a smaller business, if you’ve only have one product they do send a notification when a product’s getting returns. If you only have one product and you’re getting a few returns a month it’s like you can just figure it out through their emails and stuff but it’s really hard to do if you’re starting to get a few different products and keep tracking more products.

That was the thing that I think it shocked myself and most sellers that we talk to the most. It’s like now I finally understand that this product’s getting a ton of returns. I need to devote more time to that or nothing else. I need to make sure I’m factoring that into my profits that I’m disposing off 10% of my inventory.

[00:14:11] Scott: That’s returns. That’s one thing that you see that people are overlooking or they’re not even realizing. What’s next? What do we look at next?

[00:14:22] Greg: Underestimating fees or expenses. This can be a real doozy. Amazon has some pretty sneaky fees. I never knew that for them when you get a return that sometimes… I don’t even know when they do this and when they don’t or sometimes they charge a commission for, I guess, accepting the return or maybe putting it back in your inventory if you have that turned on or just the customer service that they’re providing around that. It’s called a refund commission or a return commission.

There’s other little fees like that that… It’s like 20 cents here, 50 cents there, a dollar there. It’s like, “What the heck is this fee? I’ve never heard this in my life.” There are some sneaky fees like that. If you’re trying to do this without any software, in your settlement report you can see the balance after all of those and you can start to become aware of some of those a little bit better but it’s pretty hard to do.

The other one is just keeping up with their ever changing… Just like last month they changed their fees again. It seems like they’re doing it about twice a year. It’s not always raising it. I think this last time they did it for a certain I think large oversized items underneath a certain dollar value actually got a little bit cheaper but most got a little bit more expensive.

Trying to keep up with those I like a never ending battle with Amazon if you’re trying to do it manually in the excel sheets and stuff. That’s the other thing I think most people are surprised by. The other fee and I’d say this is single handedly the biggest opportunity for a margin premier in your business is the storage fees. I think most people are aware of these. They’re not too bad the first few months but once you get to like six months and especially once you get to a year they can be very significant.

[00:16:25] Scott: Especially fourth quarter.

[00:16:27] Greg: As I was about to say. In fourth quarter they changed the fee structure. I know this past November and December… Especially December I think I got hit pretty hard. This is something to be very mindful of. The big picture all these things that we’re talking about, this whole podcast, it’s mostly important that you’re understanding all this so when you’re calculating your profit at the end of the day you can actually be getting true numbers.

Everyone wants to give you revenue numbers. It’s sexy to talk about revenue like a million bucks, 200,000 bucks but at the end of the day your profit… Especially if your cash flow is what is most important. I just want to make sure people are understanding all these things.

[00:17:07] Scott: Absolutely. I think it’s definitely needed. We definitely need to break this stuff down because for the longest time… I come from old school business where it’s like I spent X and I charge this and I paid this, what’s left? That’s my profit. If you don’t know those expenses how can you increase your margins by just maybe tweaking something like you said?

At least understanding that… Like you said, a very simple thing is as if you know that after six months you’re going to be getting hit with a bigger storage fee, you probably want to manage your inventory a little bit better. When a few years back you could send in 1,000 units and let them sit there and it wasn’t that big of a deal. It was like Amazon was your warehouse and they wanted it that way in the beginning and then all of a sudden they’re like, “Wait a minute we’re bursting at the seams.”

Now we’re going to start charging you and we’re going to hammer you. I think you have to be able to see your inventory better and you have to be able to manage that and almost project what it’s going to be in the next 30, 60, 90 days I think is the best thing. It’s hard because a lot of people and I get this a lot of times now, it’s like I want to order 1,000 units so I can save on money to order that stuff but I don’t want to send it all on Amazon so what do I do?

My thought is always Garage. If it’s not going in your garage then you might want to get a little storage facility. There’s one local here. I’m actually working with someone here. A little storage unit, a little 10 by 10 storage unit. It’s like 75 bucks a months. You might just have it shipped to a little storage unit and then you got to fulfill it, I mean if you’re small. If you’re bigger obviously that’s not going to work.

You’ll have to use some type of third party storage company which they’re out there. That’s a big one too because if you miss that and you wake up one morning and you get that notification that you’ve just been hit with this monstrous bill because you have a ton of inventory because you thought you were just going to store it there for pennies, that’s going to change the bottom line too. It’s a big one.

[00:19:06] Greg: Absolutely. The other thing is again about understanding your true profits for all these different products. If you only have one product this stuff isn’t as much of a concern for you but once you have multiple products…

What I found with a lot of sellers once they truly understand that product has 35% margins, this product only has 10% margins instead of spending my cash reordering that product that only has 10% margins often times it’s much better people, for the cash flow purposes it’s like why don’t you ditch that product and replace it with another one that has the opportunity to have 30% margins and 40% margins. Better understanding your finances can help you make these overall much better business decisions as well.

[00:19:51] Scott: That makes a ton of sense. Like you said, you wouldn’t know that unless you can see or if you create your own spreadsheet where you can see line by line the different products and what each product is costing you. What the margin is for each product and then you can gauge it off of that.

Again that’s something that you have manually do which I’ve done. I’ve definitely done that and it’s work and it also makes it really hard when you want to sit down at the end of the quarter and you need to send stuff into your accountant and you need to figure out what was my profit-loss with the inventory that we have too? I’ve had my CPA on, Josh Bauerle, and he says one of the biggest mistakes that a lot of sellers make is they think they’re going to buy a whole bunch of inventory and use that as a write-off.

You can’t use that as a write-off until you actually you’ve actually sold that item. Again, at the end of that quarter you need to know each product that you’ve sold and then you use that… Whatever you paid for that, then you use it as a write-off but you need to know that number. Then you got to go back in to Seller Central and you need to figure line by line all the items, all the ASINs, all the SKUs and you need to figure out what they were or what they cost you and all of that stuff. You have to do this stuff. It’s part of business. It’s not sexy at all.

[00:21:10] Greg: Exactly. With Fetcher or if you’re going to do this manually… I want to emphasize what you were just saying here again about using the accrual method of accounting as opposed a cash basis. A lot of people that I think come into this space might be trying other types like online businesses or other things like that. With other things especially let’s say just like online marketing where we were selling an e-book or something it’s very nice to do… Very easy to do like cash basis method of accounting which is very simple.

It’s like dollars in dollars out. What you’re describing is the accrual method of accounting which is much more difficult. You realize expenses or sales… You realize expense of a product when it’s sold not when you’re… It’s not like I’m going to order $5,000 right before 2016 and cycle it right off this year. It doesn’t work that way.

[00:22:04] Scott: No, it does not. It’s funny because… It’s not really funny, people had contacted Josh who’s been on my show a few times. He said that’s the number one thing that people make the mistake of thinking that I’m going to buy before 2017 ends, I’m going to put a big order in for $20,000 and I’m going to use that as a write-off. That’s not the way it works.

This isn’t a CPA lesson here for anybody. I’m not a licensed CPA or a financial advisor but I do know that rule and that’s a big one. For cashflow purposes, you want to definitely know where you are at all times. A lot of times people… It’s scary for a lot of people because it’s numbers. Who likes to… Well, I like numbers but I like to see the numbers when they’re in my favor.

I like to also know where my business is all the time because I want to know at every given time I’ve got enough money saved for my taxes. That’s just me. I think anyone rather than getting surprised should know where they are at every moment and especially for inventory; reordering inventory and stuff like that. What else have you got? Those are some pretty big ones. You got any other things for us?

[00:23:23] Greg: The other thing that we see from a lot of sellers is being surprised on their PPC spend. Let me explain why this is true and why it actually surprised me a little bit too. When I’m in there managing my campaigns I usually feel pretty good. I’m like the ACOS of this product is only 15% or 12% or 18%, I’m doing pretty good. I’m decreasing bids.

What a lot of sellers, I was guilty of this myself, don’t take into account are all of the keywords that they’ve bided like a small amount and only gotten a couple clicks, have never gotten a sale they’re not showing up in that area that’s showing you the ACOS. That’s where a lot of people are managing their campaigns at.

If you have 100 words that you’ve gotten a couple clicks on each at 50 cents or a dollar each that can… It’s just pennies here, quarters there but it starts to add up at the end of the day or the end of the month. A lot of people are surprised when they see that their overall PPC spends are higher than what they thought. They’re like, “Wait a second. My average ACOS was only 12%. That should really good and it should be really profitable.”

It’s like wait a second, you also have 500 clicks that never resulted in a sale. Seller Central wasn’t showing you the ACOS there. The overall PPC spend is a little bit higher than what you think. Those would be the main things that people need to be thinking about and taking into account when they’re trying to determine their profit at the end of the day.

[00:24:55] Scott: I agree with that 100%. I’m pretty aggressive with pay-per-click. You’ve said that you are too especially when you’re launching a product and stuff. That stuff I get it. We understand that but if you can start to whittle that stuff that down to where you’re only focusing the money on the ones that are converting preferably it’s not always going to be that way. If it was we’d all have it figured out but there is going to be some spend. If there’re some there that have gotten clicks over clicks over clicks and they just have not resulted in a sale those are costing you money that you’re literally giving away.

The only time we want those keywords or search terms is when if we actually are making sales eventually. That’s when they make the most sense. I would rather have a handful that converted than 1,000 that didn’t that I was getting impression and I was getting clicks that I was paying for but you’re absolutely right.

I think that’s a big thing that people will a lot of times they’ll set and forget their pay-per-click. They’ll just go ahead, set it, forget it and okay I guess that’s what I was supposed to do. You’ll be amazed if you just go in. I’ve done it. I’m guilty of that. I’ve done that. I’d go back in I’m like I haven’t really tweaked this in a couple of weeks. I go in there I’m like, “Holy crap, I spend a ton of money on keywords and I should have come in here a week away and I would have been able to pause those and I would have save 50 bucks.”

50 bucks that’s dinner. That’s something that could have been in your pocket that didn’t result in a sale and didn’t result in any positive thing for your business other than it’s a lying item that’s a negative. That’s big. That’s really, really big. Let’s talk about, if someone was to do this what would be…? We’re going to talk about Fetcher here but I always want to give people like if you’re going to do this on a spreadsheet, are those the main things that we should have down? How do we figure out all of those little miscellaneous FBA fees? Can we just go to the FBA calculator? Will that give us all the fees?

Is there any way that we can kind of get a good idea if we just wanted to manually do this?

[00:26:59] Greg: The FBA calculator it’s… To answer your question, no the FBA calculator is not the best place because that’s great when you’re doing product research and you’re trying to figure out, what are the typical fees for this product on every sale? What the FBA calculator isn’t going to take into account is those things that I’m saying like refund, commission, they charged you a few dollars because some of the labels were falling off and they had to redo them. All of those types of things is what the FBA calculator is not going to be able to do.

There is a report called a Settlement Report inside of Seller Central. That is a good one. That shows you how your payment was calculated. A lot of times that should show you a lot of the fees like the long term storage fees, that shows you the fee like Seller Central charged you 40 bucks a month to have that professional sellers account. Other kind of miscellaneous fees should be labeled line by line on that particular settlement report.

This is for your whole business as a total. That gives you a good snapshot view. The tricky part about this now is it shows you, you were charged 100 bucks this month for long term storage fees but there’s nowhere that breaks down which product was the one that occurred those fees. If you only have one or two products this is pretty simple. You can still do it on an excel sheet without many headaches.

Once you start getting a few products it’s pretty tough to understand. That’s a really good one. Other than that, there’s other reports that you can download, like the report tabs and then the business reports. There’s different ones you can download to try to understand what your PPC spend is, you can match… You should know your campaign names, you can match those up with your different product and that kind of thing.

[00:28:59] Greg: It is possible by looking at those different things. Like I said, if you have one or two products or even a bunch it is possible to do that. At one point I was thinking about, why don’t I try to create this spreadsheet that has these macros? What I found was different people like to calculate these things a little bit differently.

I wish I could give you the secret report in Seller Central that had all this information but you are just going to have to piece together a few of these different reports to understand those full costs.

[00:29:34] Scott: I guess that’s what I give people. I want to give them… There is a long form way of doing this and I’ve done it that way. Now pretty much any brand that I’m working is definitely using the tool now and that tool is Fetcher. I want to talk about and I want to say how excited I was after it pulled in the data and I’m like this is pretty amazing.

The one thing that’s really amazing, let me just start off with this, is that it literally almost and maybe it is real time, you can maybe clear that for me. Let’s say I have 10 SKUs, 10 ASINs and they might be in the same category. For that day if go into my seller’s account and I look at how many sales I have it says that I have 20 sales in that certain category but it doesn’t tell me the different ASINs.

I have to wait till the next morning and then I have to wait till they publish that new report and then it will tell me all of the different SKUs and what they sold for that day. The one thing that I loved about Fetcher was I was able to go in there and look that day and see the ASINs that had sold.

[00:30:50] Greg: Fetcher is actually up-to-date to the minute so it updates everyone’s account every minute.

[00:30:55] Scott: That right there alone is huge.

[00:30:57] Greg: I don’t even go into Seller Central and check my sales anymore. I just go into Fetcher because it’s way easier and you see actually which products there are and not what category.

[00:31:04] Scott: That was one feature I was… I was always like why did they 24…? Isn’t Amazon big enough to create something to give us like up-to-the-minute data? Why are they …?

[00:31:13] Greg: It seems ridiculous. Why do you make it so hard on us at Seller Central?

[00:31:17] Scott: It’s like I’m excited I’ve got so many sales in a certain category but I want to know what SKUs. What ones are selling today or which ones aren’t selling today? That was one big one that I was excited about. I’m like this is cool and I didn’t even know that when I signed up to start using it. I noticed then I’m like that’s pretty cool. I’m looking over here and it says this and I look in here and it tells me every SKU that’s selling. That’s pretty cool. That’s a cool feature.

The thing that I did notice is depending on how old your account is it starts to pull in the data but it takes a little while to pull in that data. It takes a little bit of time. It’s pulling in data from months back. Does that start from the beginning or does it go all the way back? How does that work when it starts pulling the data?

[00:31:59] Greg: It goes up to two years ago. If you have an account for longer than two years you only get two years’ worth of information. If you have a small account it can probably pull all of your data. If you only have one or two products it can probably pull all your data in a couple of hours. If you’ve a big account let’s say 100 grand or more it might take 24 hours maybe 36 hours.

What it is like we get the information from Amazon’s API and they only let you make 100 requests a minute. We’re pulling it as fast as Amazon will let us.

[00:32:28] Scott: I got you. That’s pretty exciting. When that data starts… Kind of walk us through it. The data starts getting pulled in, literally connecting your account. It’s funny, before you and I jumped on, there’s a brand that I’m starting with a partner and I literally just set it up this morning before I got on with you. I’m like I’m talking about Fetcher today I probably setup that one now because I’ve been meaning to do it and I want to tell Greg that I did it.

Greg thank you for that. I went ahead and I did that additional account. I’ve got that one setup and it’s starting to pull in some very beginning data. We don’t have a ton yet. It’s a fairly new account. What happens now? We go ahead, we set this thing up. It’s really easy I got to be honest. I’ve setup some other ones with APIs and it’s just… The directions alone are hard. Yours was very, very easy to connect the account through the API, so self-explanatory and you had step 1 do this and step 2 do this.

Once it’s connected it’s like boom! It says enabled and then all of a sudden your account starts feeding or getting fed with your data. Literally, probably when I get off with you I’d be able to go back and refresh and then see some data coming in. The only thing that I really have to do on my end, from what I understand, correct me if I’m wrong, is I just have to plug in my numbers of what I’m paying for that item.

[00:33:48] Greg: That’s exactly right. That’s the one thing that we’re not going to be able to get from Amazon. You have to go under the expenses section, spend a few minutes filling in those; the expense for the item, maybe the expense for getting it shipped to you or shipped to Amazon. Those will be the only things we don’t know.

If you use Amazon’s shipping services, like you’re printing off labels off Amazon then you don’t have to enter those shipping costs to get your product into Amazon because we can pull in that data. That’s really all you have to do. That’s the one step after that it’s on auto-pilot. It downloads your new sales every day, it calculates your profit, it shows you your refunds, it gives you your P&L statement. It’s almost tax time.

If you’re worried about last minute taxes it’ll probably be… Even if you just use the free trial and cancel it it’s like you might as well get the P&L statement out of there and then give it to your CPA they’ll love you for that.

[00:34:39] Scott: It’s funny, I worked with another partner that I helped out, it was a small account. We did $100,000 last year in revenue and we used the Fetcher to basically… I wanted to use that as an example to share with people some of the dashboards and stuff like that. I haven’t done that yet, I’m going to. We did over $100,000 in the first 12 months. We did 33% margin because everything that we plugged in Fetcher told us that’s with pay-per-click, that’s with all the expenses, the refunds all that stuff.

It wasn’t too bad. It was like 33 grand basically in the bank account. I was pretty cool but it also allowed me to play around the software when you just launched it and then getting to see how it’s evolved and stuff. It was funny because he had contacted me, last night actually, and he said, “Hey, how do I go in and find all of the different SKUs and how many they sold?” I go, “It’s super simple. You do this, you do that.”

I shared with him what to do and literally in a matter of a couple clicks line by line every single item broken down in great detail and all he’s got to do is hand that off to his accountant now. That was super easy because it just did all that hard work for us. The one thing that I wasn’t sure on it and I had this question I think I might have emailed in. I said we’ll just talk about it when we get together.

What about inventory? Does that help us at all see what happened in the past and what we’re going to be doing in the future? Any type of projection? Anything like that?

[00:36:16] Greg: On your dashboard, the main page of Fetcher it gives you a snapshot. The dashboard’s like an overall health of your account. In there, it does have an inventory section that shows you your inventory level, the average daily sales and based on how it’s been selling the past month how many days you have remaining.

It does help you a little bit. Fetcher’s mainly like an accounting and profit analytics tool so it’s not going to do anything sophisticated like gauge your inventory projections based on seasonality or anything like that. It gives you a great little snapshot to understand how it’s been selling for the past month. I would have 45 more days at this level. That’s really useful too.

[00:37:02] Scott: It’s very useful actually and again I think just to keep it simple is always best and I think that’s what you guys have done. It’s a super simple dashboard. It’s so easy. There’s options but there’s not too many options. It gives you all the stuff you need and then just with a few clicks you’re there and then you can just set different times frames and instantly it pulls in the data, it shows you nice, pretty graph.

That’s one thing you guys do really well with Jungle Scout and everything that you guys have put together is a really clean interface and just easy to use which I love. What else about the software should we talk about? What are you seeing that people are enjoying the most by using it? Is there anything that comes to mind that the people are saying that they just love this or is it just they love being able to see it in a snapshot within a minute they can exactly where their business it?

[00:37:53] Greg: When you talk to a lot of our customers, one thing everyone loves is the P&L statement. Everyone loves being able to see that and printing it off and giving it to their accountant or whoever else. They also love how it’s like up-to-date. I guess this is what you were saying too like up-to-date to the minute. They love going to Fetcher and check their sales instead of going to Seller Central so it’s awesome.

We do like a product by product breakdown and in that we give some really nice like PPC data. We’re not trying to optimize keywords here but what we’re trying to do is show you your spend on a daily basis and that’s been correlated to PPC sales both on a one, seven and 30 day basis. You can nicely see in the graph like this day… I spent this money here but it did correlate to a sale like in a 30 day period and maybe not in 24 hours but it did a seven or 30 day period.

That’s pretty cool. Overall though, I’d say the number one thing that people are stoked about or excited about is just how easy it is to visualize their business. Like you said, it’s like just looking at the graphs it’s very simple and intuitive and easy to understand right away. It does a really nice job at that but then the other cool thing it is robust enough to be able to dig in.

You might not even know this Scott but you can actually click on some of the expense pie charts and it gives you a breakdown of all the fees that are in there. We spent a lot of time, devoted a lot of effort and energy to try to make sure that this… We didn’t want this to be like Quick Books that a lot of people get super overwhelmed and not sure how to use it.

We made it simple enough for the everyday user to quickly be able to visualize and understand their Amazon business yet robust enough to be able to dig into the numbers when you need it to, to understand how this was calculated? What fees are included in this? What my refund rate was? All of those types of things.

[00:39:46] Scott: It does a great job at that. It really does. It’s super easy and like I said, it is pretty much a set and not forget but just set it up once and then let the data speak for itself and then you can see it all without having to dig through 100 reports and start to create these spreadsheets and stuff.

Like I said, one of the bigger features is your inventory is how much inventory have you sold for that tax period to let your accountant know that’s what we spent. It’s right there. That makes it really, really easy when before you’re pulling that report inside of Seller Central and you’re trying to do the math here. This actually calculates the math for you because it has your data. It has your, I spent $3.75 for this item and I paid 25 cents to get it here and that’s all calculated.

All that’s in there, all you gotta do is basically say here it is. This is what we spent and you can give them the breakdown and all that stuff. I love that because it makes it so easy to see. You’ve made it where it’s not, like you just said, it’s not scary. To someone that gets into Quick Books or Fresh Books or any of the accounting softwares… Not saying that you won’t need one of those softwares. Those are useful because you have other things in your business other than just Amazon expenses.

There’s other things that you’re going to have that software for this one here is, like you said, it’s Amazon stuff sales that’s happening, all the expenses broken down in great detail without you having to do the work. I love it.

[00:41:22] Greg: When I’m giving like a demo these are some of the common questions I get so I’ll just address them real quick Scott because some of the listeners right now probably have them. Everyone wants to know what marketplaces it supports. It supports all of the North American and European marketplaces.

[00:41:37] Scott: Good question.

[00:41:38] Greg: You can sync up as many accounts as you want. I can have like 10 Seller Central accounts, put them all under one Fetcher account. I can have five from the U.S. and one Canadian and one from Italy or wherever else. You can put them all in one Fetcher account and you can either look at all of them together or one by one. That’s pretty cool.

[00:41:57] Scott: That’s really cool.

[00:41:59] Greg: That’s pretty nice. A lot of people want to know if your expenses change. The last order you did Scott of one of your products maybe it was like $1 but this new order you negotiated your price for 80 cents, so yes they can do that. You can input a price change for a specific, like an effective date.

It does do that which is nice. That’s always one of the big question a lot of people have. One last one, people wanted to understand does this… You touched on this a little bit, does this replace Quick Books or Zero or is it like a complementary product? This is the best answer I have for them. If your only business activities are your Amazon business then what we found is most of the time this will replace Quick Books or people because you can put in other expenses like home office or mileage.

[00:42:54] Scott: I didn’t even know that.

[00:42:55] Greg: You can put all those other expenses into Fetcher. If your business is a little bit more like a larger and more complex where you’re trying to do things like depreciation of different items or things like that, Fetcher’s not going to be able to do that. It is designed specifically for Amazon sellers and we’re going to keep it that way because that makes it very specific and direct and easy to use for Amazon sellers.

If your business is just your Amazon business and nothing else then Fetcher works great for that. If it’s more complicated then you probably also need to sync it up with something like Zero or Quick Books or whatever else.

[00:43:35] Scott: You could add in… I didn’t know that. You can add in like if I wanted to do mileage I could add that in there or if I wanted to…? I could add additional expenses into Fetcher?

[00:43:46] Greg: You go under the expenses tab all the way to the right is an ‘other expenses’ section and you can categorize them like this was legal fees, this was photography fees, this was my staff, this was for design fees, all those types of things. You can input those directly in Fetcher too.

[00:44:02] Scott: That’s huge.

[00:44:04] Greg: It’s like a legit, robust, accurate P&L statement at the end of the year that you can hand over to your CPA and say, do my taxes now.

[00:44:12] Scott: I love that actually. That’s a huge little bonus there. I didn’t realize that you could actually do that. I guess that’s as much as I know about the inner workings of it. I thought that it was just those line items that we fed them there but that’s even better. I’ve told people, I’ve used… It’s a free accounting tool called Wave Apps. It works really well.

It’s free. It’s an online cloud based. The only thing that they do is they run ads on the side bar or they offer you accounting services and stuff so that’s how they pay for their free service. It’s a great tool and I told people that but it doesn’t allow you to basically pull in data from Amazon. This here to me would be, for any of my Amazon business or anyone I would partner with, I would set it up all here. Like you said, most of everything we’re talking about is just like office expenses or maybe you had meals in there because you did some travel or you may be entertained or whatever you did.

You can probably put all that stuff in there as you would have if it was your Wave Apps or Quick Books or Fresh Books or any of those. That’s really cool. Let’s let everyone know what you’re going to do special for TAS which you always do. I know we have a 31 day free trial. If you guys do not try this you’re not listening to what we’re saying here today.

You got to basically give it a try for 31 days because it’ll pull in all your data, you’ll be able to see it a snap shot. You guys have… I’m very surprised that you guys actually price is really, really affordable too. I was looking at that actually this morning before we got on because I didn’t know what you current price was. I know what it was when you launched and it’s really affordable for what you’re giving in return. Maybe we can talk about a little bonus that you’re going to give for TAS-ers.

[00:46:09] Greg: Absolutely. If you go to theamazingseller.com/fetcher I set you guys up your own landing page. On there, there’s a section to opt in for a free account consultation or audit. One of our account managers will actually hop on either at the phone with you or Skype or Google Hangouts. He can help you look at your account, your Amazon account, your financials and he can help you optimize it to help you save money.

He’s actually super good at that. He knows way more about these fees and stuff than even I do so you can understand you could be saving money by doing this here. He’s just really bright all around at optimizing Amazon businesses. A free consultation… If you go to that link theamazingseller.com/fetcher he’s more than happy to do that, hop on the phone call with you so that’s really cool.

Like Scott said, it’s a month free trial and you don’t even have to enter your credit card. A little bit like you enter your email address, you sync up your Amazon account, log in the next day, all your numbers are there. Even if you just try it for a month then cancel I think it’s a no-brainer.

[00:47:18] Scott: That’s definitely a no-brainer. That’s a great offer. Again, not even a credit card entering in so you can basically just go ahead and get your data, get your numbers. Like you said, if he just wanted to do it just to see where your business is right now definitely try it. I do think that once you see it you’re going to love it and I think Greg knows that too. Definitely just give it a shot depending on where your business is. I think it’ll definitely… At least it’ll give you a great idea as far as the health of your business right now.

If you’re brand new and you’re just starting it’s a great time to start for you because you can kind of start with the right foundation in place so this way here as you grow you’re going to be able to have all that stuff imported and you can start using that tool and then grow with the tool. I have to mention this too Greg, I love it that you can sync other accounts. I love that. From what I gather, the only way that you would increase your subscription is really the amount of products you sell per month.

I think that your first package is like 2,500 sales per month and it graduates up from there to the next package and stuff. If you’re only doing 2,500 sales then you’re going to be at the one package and then from there. If you’ve got four accounts and they all combine to do 2,500 you’re managing four accounts. Is that right?

[00:48:37] Greg: That’s exactly right. We only charge actually 10 bucks to sync up another account. Sync up as many accounts as you want the tiers are just for how many orders you do each month.

[00:48:46] Scott: All right man. Well, this has been fantastic. A lot of information. I know it’s not a sexy topic but I think it is if people can… You’re going to know where you are at every second. Up-to-the-minute you’re going to be able to know where you are and login and pull that report or see how the products are doing and see all those fees and not have to worry about going in and calculating them.

That time that you’re saving is going to be your time either to spend with your family or whatever you want to do or go source more products. It’s going to free up time for you and I think it’s a no-brainer. Greg I want to thank you so much buddy. It’s always nice chatting. Any last little bit of words of advice or anything you want to give anyone? We haven’t really talked about anything else other than accounting. Is there anything else you want to talk about accounting or did you cover it all?

[00:49:37] Greg: I think we covered most of the stuff with accounting. Last words of advice like what’s on my mind, Amazon’s been in the news so much lately and it’s just crazy how much of a behemoth they’re turning into like taking over the world. I’m actually more optimistic about Amazon right now than I ever have been. They’re expanding to more market places and it seems like their market share just keeps growing and growing like more shoppers and more shoppers.

I’m really excited about the future of Amazon and especially like our role like third party sellers. It’s exciting. It real special to be part of.

[00:50:14] Scott: When people say that I shouldn’t probably get in because I’m too late you’d probably say that that wouldn’t be a smart move?

[00:50:24] Greg: I’d say that it’s a good time. I saw that on one of my webinars and I think the comment was that saying that there’s not enough oxygen for all of us to breathe in the world or something. It’s still great.

[00:50:35] Scott: I think it is. I always tell people, yes, you’re entering a marketplace where there’s going to be a lot of competition in some categories and some markets but you’ve supplied some really great tools that help us weed through and find those golden nuggets. You’ve got a lot of great training as well.

I think it’s a great opportunity. They take a lot of the heavy lifting out of it for us especially if you’re brand new, you want to get started or if you just want to start another side business they’ve got the platform, they’ve got all of the different pieces in place. Yes they charge us money and yes they charge a little bit much money at times but it’s still you’re getting in front of their traffic.

It’s like just dip the bucket down into the river of money and just grab a little bit because you can have it. It’s just a matter of going out there, supplying some good products to a market and then tracking all of your expenses with Fetcher. All right Greg, thank you so much. We’re going to hang out in Charlotte though when you come to town so we’ll definitely make that happen. We’ll do a Facebook Live or something, that’ll be fun. Just want to thanks again…

[00:51:47] Greg: Look out for our Facebook Live.

[00:51:49] Scott: Look out for that. I just want to thank you again buddy, it’s always a pleasure to talk to you and hangout with you and I look forward to hanging out for lunch and we’ll be in Fort Lauderdale in May at Steve Chou’s event. That’ll be fun. A lot of hanging out with Greg Mercer. Greg thanks again buddy I appreciate it.

[00:52:07] Greg: Thank Scott. Take care bud, bye.

[00:52:09] Scott: There you go. Hopefully, you now can see a little bit clear as far as the fees that we talked about. You may want to download the show notes on this one, the transcripts because he does go through a lot of those things that you should be looking at. Again guys, theamazingseller.com/344. Also if you want to pick up a 30 day free trial to Fetcher, head over to theamazingseller.com/fetcher.

I am an affiliate with Greg on this product but I only back products that I use or other people that I know are using and enjoy and I know the team behind those people. Just want to throw that out there but it is a great product. I actually seen it before it was even revealed to the public in beta and I was blown away back then and I know what he was creating. The thing that I love about the stuff that Greg puts out with his software is this, it’s super easy and it’s affordable.

This here is so affordable I actually thought it would have been a lot more and being able to connect more than one account is really awesome. If you have two different sellers’ accounts or three or maybe working with a partner you can load in more than one sellers’ account which I think is really, really awesome. I think once you see this you’re going to see how easy it is to use and how it gives you everything you need in a dashboard. Super simple, nothing like Quick Books, nothing like Fresh Books.

The other thing that I learned which I wasn’t even aware of is that I can plug in like travel expenses. I could plug in any other miscellaneous expenses so it is my accounting software for that business now. I don’t have to use Wave or Quick Books or Fresh Books or Zero, I don’t have to. I can use just this. Definitely check it out. I’m a big fan of the product but also of Greg’s company.

He’s built some really awesome products but he also has a really, really awesome team behind it and I think anyone that’s listening that has used any of Greg’s products knows exactly what I mean.

[00:54:09] Scott: Definitely check that out, theamazingseller.com/fetcher and you can go ahead and get a 30 day free trial for that. All right guys, that’s it. That’s pretty much going to wrap up this episode. I want again thank you guys for listening, thank you guys for all of your comments and emails and Facebook posts and all of that stuff that you guys are doing to support the TAS community. I just want to say thank you guys, I really do truly appreciate it.

Remember, as always, I’m here for you I believe in you and I am rooting for you, but you have to you have to… Come on say it with me, say it loud, say it proud, “Take action.” Have an awesome, amazing day and I’ll see you right back here on the next episode.

[END]

Click Here to Download Transcript <<

Click Here to Download Transcript <<

…license your product to major brand and collect royalty for years. Yeah, kind of different. Something we haven’t really talked about, something I wasn’t even aware of as being someone that might not invent that product. The cool thing is I’ve invited on an expert Stephen Key who is actually a licensing expert and he talks all about this and really is some eye opening stuff that he talks about and really also how to discover product ideas and then how to improve upon them and then how to pitch them to major brands to possibly get them to sell your idea and then you collect royalty.

Now you guys have heard me talk about Shark Tank a little bit here and there and I am a fan of the show, yes it’s some entertainment Kevin O’Leary and everything is he really that way? I don’t know, he’s a character on the show but you can learn some valuable business high level stuff when they are talking about investing in products but not necessarily that everything is a hundred percent true and accurate and all those things. I’m sure things are made a little bit better for the show and it’s funny because Stephen calls me out on that in this episode but you guys have heard Kevin O’Leary talk about maybe collecting royalties on a product like a dollar per unit forever or maybe for the first five years or something like that. That’s what we are talking about.

We are talking about taking your product that you may be modified, made it different and then you pitch it to a brand. It doesn’t even have to be a major, major brand that you might see on shelves. It might be just someone who has a lot more reach in certain retail stores and then you get in their product line. Again it’s a very interesting topic something I haven’t talked about at all so it’s brand new. I think you are going to get a lot out of this whether you use this information now or in the future or if it’s just something to think about and keep in your back pocket I think it’s going to be definitely valuable for you.

[00:02:01] Scott: Now the show notes can be found at theamazingseller.com/345, all of the show notes, the links, the transcripts all will be there so if you want to download those definitely head over to the show notes page. All right guys I’m going to start talking so you can listen to this very, very interesting topic that I had with my good friend Mr. Stephen Key. Enjoy.

[INTERVIEW]

[00:02:21] Scott: Well hey Stephen, thank you so much for hanging out with us today man how are you doing?

[00:02:26] Stephen: I’m doing great Scott thank you very much for having me.

[00:02:28] Scott: No problem, this is exciting. Before we got on we were talking a little bit about Shark Tank and you told me that it is not real. Come on Stephen really, are you kidding me it’s not real? I was believing it this whole time.

[00:02:40] Stephen: No I hate to burst everyone’s bubble here but stop watching that show.

[00:02:44] Scott: I love it.

[00:02:45] Stephen: There is nothing real about it.

[00:02:48] Scott: It’s good entertainment.

[00:02:51] Stephen: It’s good entertainment and you can learn a little bit but that’s like gambling. It’s so hard to get on the show, it’s so hard for them to help you and at the end of the day I will show you ways to increase your chances of success and not going on Shark Tank and all that.

[00:03:07] Scott: Sounds good. Well the reason I brought that up is because you are a licensing guy and we hear Kevin O’Leary always talking about licensing. He wants to get that, collect the royalty which sounds amazing. I mean if you can make that happen which you have done for years… You just actually told me you worked with Tim Ferriss years ago and exposed this idea to him which is cool but…

And I learned of you through Nick Loper from Side Hustle and he basically said, “He’s probably a good person to have on the show.” And myself personally didn’t even ever think of licensing a private label product technically that I didn’t necessarily invent. I think that’s one of the big things that people think like if I’m not the original inventor of a certain product how would I license that product?

That’s where I’m coming at and I think my audience would be like, “This sounds interesting Scott but how does this actually happen?” You are going to actually get us up to speed here right?

[00:04:07] Stephen: Yeah I’m going to share all this great stuff and I think your audience is going to be shocked because the old way of bringing an idea to market, the traditional way is that, “I’m going to start a business, I’m not about running the business, I don’t want to run a business. I want to collect checks and I want all those companies to do the work for me, all the heavy lifting.” That’s what it’s all about. Licensing is basically… And it doesn’t have to be your idea it could be somebody else’s idea. It doesn’t even have to be a new idea but you are going to take a mark, you are going show… It has to have a unique benefit though don’t get me wrong.

You have to come out with an idea, a simple idea. You don’t have to change the world or reinvent the wheel but come out with a small improvement and that small improvement you can license to a company that is selling something similar. It’s as simple as that. This appetite for new is so great in our country and all these companies are looking for something new but it doesn’t have to be this great big idea people think it is, no way.

[00:05:14] Scott: Okay, cool and again I mean my audience is primarily private label sellers whether it’s on Amazon, they are on ecommerce you are taking a product and you are basically making some improvements. I always use garlic press as one of my examples and so if we have a garlic press we want to read all the reviews and look at all the negative reviews and make it a better product.

[00:05:35] Stephen: I love that idea. In fact what’s amazing what you just said Scott that’s the largest focus group in the world those reviews and people like to b**** so a lot of companies are doing the same thing. They are looking at the reviews on Amazon and they are looking at what people are complaining about and if you can look at that and come up with a slight improvement you can go back now and find those companies that are manufacturing that and present them that small improvement and collect royalties for that small improvement and you don’t need patents. You are hearing about patents on Shark Tank, stop it. It’s not about patents anymore. It’s about speed to market.

[00:06:21] Scott: I love that. I always go with the MVP, the minimal viable product. You get it there, get results, start to see what’s happening, all of that stuff and this way here then you can react to what the market is actually saying. That’s why I love that and so what you are saying… I love it that you are like, “Let’s go go go.” I like that because I’m an fast taker I like to take action and get out there and get going. Maybe what we can do though is let’s start from the beginning. Actually you know what I’d like to do before we even do that? Give us a little bit about your background. How did you even stumble on this licensing play? How did you get into this?

[00:07:00] Stephen: Well I’m a young man I’m going to school. I’m a business major and I hate business.

[00:07:07] Scott: Oh come on.

[00:07:09] Stephen: So sure enough I take an art class and I love creating things with my hands and I went down that journey of how to make things and sell them that’s all it was and my first job was at Worlds of Wonder. We created Laser Tag and Teddy Ruxpin and I’m overseas in China making sure that those teddies are going down that assembly line and that they are looking great and I’m hating that too. I’m realizing that the inventor of Teddy Ruxpin was collecting millions of dollars in royalties and that’s when my dad had said something to me that didn’t really make sense but it did when I was standing on that production line. In order to create great wealth you are going to have to find something that does not require your hands or your presence and you need to find something that has a multiplying effect and licensing just makes sense.

Ken Forsse the creator of Teddy Ruxpin licensed that idea to Worlds of Wonder and I saw it firsthand. So I quit that job and started coming out with slight improvements on existing ideas and showing those to companies and they would say yes and if they took it they would bring it to market for me and I would collect royalties. I could really design my life and they were working for me. That’s how it started, that was about over thirty years ago.

[00:08:30] Scott: Wow, there is probably a lot to take in as far as how the whole process works so what I’d like to do is go back to a beginner like myself. I’m a beginner in this, I have no idea about this and you and I just met for coffee and you are like, “Scotty did you hear about this licensing thing?” And I’m like, “Stephen I know what licensing is but how can I do that? I mean I just take a product make it a little bit better and then I sell it as my own as a private label seller like I’m doing that.” What does someone like me do with that product now that I have it I’ve got it selling on Amazon, it’s proving that people are buying it, they are selling it, they are giving me good reviews? What do I do?

[00:09:09] Stephen: Hey this is even easier than that, even easier. You are looking at products that are doing really, really well on Amazon and you are looking at the reviews and you realize maybe it’s too big or maybe it’s too small or maybe add one little feature. You find a 3D computer generated graphic artist on some freelance site and you show him a little sketch. It could be just an awful sketch and these guys can create your idea, your vision with graphics, 3D computer generated graphics that looks real like you can buy it so you can get that done for fifty bucks, $50 you gotta be kidding me!

I find this guy and he creates this and it looks wonderful. That’s the first step. See that first step was studying the marketplace, that’s what you did, you found an opportunity to make something better. And then what you want to do is find companies that are selling that product. That’s so easy because you are doing that now. Send them a one page sell sheet. Basically it’s an advertisement that’s all it is and you have one line at the very top. That one line is your one line benefits statement. Why is it better? And then has a couple bullet points of the features and has a picture of your product. It doesn’t even work, you haven’t even created it yet.

Then what you want to do you want to file a provisional patent application. It’s called a PPA. Now I’m a big patent holder. I believe in patents but not for all of these other ideas. You just don’t need patents but you need perceived ownership and you can file one yourself for as little as $65 and put patent pending on your sale sheet so now you have this perceived ownership. Now I’ll tell you this, all the licensing agreements I’ve seen I see one once a week now from my students no one has a patent. So throw that notion out the door.

[00:11:12] Stephen: Just throw it out the door. It’s not real anymore because the speed to market is all about selling. You know that, your audience knows that. Its first to market let’s sell a bunch of it. So you can put together this one page sell sheet it doesn’t even have to work Scott but you are showing them the benefits. They get it. So you show them, if they like it and they… And what’s really great about this is you’ve already studied the marketplace. You know these guys are selling something similar so you know there’s demand and you know it can be produced because you are doing something similar to it now, they take it and the next thing they do they license it or rent it from you. You still own it and every time they make one, every time they sell it you collect royalties.

Guess what, you know what’s really great about this? When you do this that manufacturer is paying you loyalties and everybody else that’s selling it on Amazon or wherever you are collecting royalties from those guys too.

[00:12:10] Scott: Nice but my only question would be this. Do I go and do I bring that to someone, a manufacturer in China or is that States side?

[00:12:20] Stephen: Well it’s amazing. The world’s changing very, very quickly and I would have told you years ago don’t mess with China. But that’s not true anymore because they do respect intellectual property, they are looking for new ideas, they have to. It’s so competitive now even those guys are looking for an edge now. It’s not about being the cheapest anymore because they are not even the cheapest anymore so I would suggest first of all find that company in the US that’s manufacturing over in China because everybody does, everybody does so find that guy. You’ll find him, he’ll be out there and reach out to him first because the communication is going to be easier and faster.

If you have a product that is a generic, that’s selling well just reach out to a manufacturer over in China, build a relationship, talk to them for a while and tell them what you are trying to do and tell them you’ve got a provisional patent application. Find that company that embraces open innovation that’s the catch here. Do a little homework on these guys to make sure they are not knocking everybody else off or they are doing something weird. Find one that’s going to respect you, find one that wants to work with you. It’s all relationship based. You will be surprised at how many students I have now that are licensing their companies over in China now because they need a point of difference. It used to be just cheap, cheap, cheap that’s not true anymore it’s changed. It’s a big world.

[00:13:46] Scott: Okay because I mean my first thought is I’m going to go ahead and I’m going to say, “Okay China, I’ve got this product,” maybe I can’t find a supplier over here that’s making it or they are making over there. Again they are the middleman but I want to go directly to the source if I can. I find out where they are making it, there’s ways that I can find out where the US supplier is getting it made, trace it back. Let’s say I find that company and I reach out to them and I say… There’s actually a product right now that I’m actually developing with a partner of mine and we’ve already done very similar to what you are saying.

We’ve already filed for a provisional patent on the item because we didn’t want to present our product out there in the marketplace without having it saying ‘patent pending’ even though I know that that doesn’t mean anything until you have a patent. But it looks nice and to the person that doesn’t really know might be, “Okay cool I’m going to stay away from that because they’ve got a patent pending on it.” My other concern is and this is a concern that we’ve had is well if we give it over there to China and they’ve got this mold that I just created, I’ve got this 3D model made, I’ve got everything done and all we are doing is taking something that they already currently create and we are just adding modifications to it; a little bit different size this that and the other thing and now we give it to them, even though I think I’ve got a good relationship with them, what’s to say they are not going to then take my mold and use it for one of my competitors?

Now and again I know a lot of people are going to think that and I can see you are ready to tell me don’t worry about that but it’s a normal reaction for a lot of people because I’m spending $3,000 to $5,000 on a mold, that’s my mold right?

[00:15:30] Stephen: Hey, it’s real, it’s going to happen so what are you worried about?

[00:15:34] Scott: So just go out there and market the heck out of it and get it to market and be the first to market.

[00:15:38] Stephen: Yes because look at it this way, Apple pretty big company right? How many thousands of patents do they have? They have an army of attorneys. They are chasing everybody trying to stop people too right? All right so the bottom line is this, you can’t stop it so if you make that improvement that’s selling so well congratulations. That’s the way I look at it you are not ever going to own everything, I don’t think people own anything. I don’t care how many patents you have you don’t own a thing it’s. It’s just fair game now so it’s speed to market and that’s why I think your audience is really going to love this because they know that too.

But don’t think you are going to protect it, don’t think you are going to keep everybody out. Yeah the small guys they’ll be scared of it. The bottom line is you are going to sell so many that patent won’t even be an issue and you’ll be off to another product.

[00:16:32] Scott: Okay so then the manufacturer and again I’m not really going to be able to stop them unless I lock the thing down which I was told that’s actually a strategy. You actually tell them that you have a box that you have locked and someone’s in control of that whole thing literary. That’s what someone said that if you want to protect a mold that you have created you have it put in a lockbox in the factory and you basically have one person from an inspection company go there and unlock it. That doesn’t mean that they are not going to take that mold and go make a reproduction of it somewhere else so they don’t have the design.

[00:17:02] Stephen: Hey, you know what’s amazing? I was working over there years ago and we were working on some special project and everything was hush hush and they were working on the competitors next door I mean ten feet away they were working on the competitors. They look pretty differently. So I just think you have to switch your mindset. You can’t protect it no matter if you have the biggest box and the biggest lock. They are going to be selling it off the back door a different way.

[00:17:31] Scott: How do I license it though if they are like, “Why would I license it? I don’t need to license this I’m just going to take it and steal it. I’m going to start selling it to everybody else.”

[00:17:38] Stephen: Yeah because you are not going to come back with the next one.

[00:17:41] Scott: Okay I got you.

[00:17:43] Stephen: See this has happened so many times in the toy industry. The toy industry has been licensing ideas for seventy years and you ask anybody that’s in that industry they’ll say, “Why don’t companies just take your idea?” “Well then I’ll come back with another one.”

[00:17:57] Scott: Got you, okay. You are a resource in a sense to them, you are an innovator.

[00:18:03] Stephen: You are bringing new business, you are a great guy they are going to love you. I’ll tell you how much they are going to love you. If you keep on ordering volumes they are going to love you even more so they are going to be doing some stuff on the side okay big deal.

[00:18:18] Scott: Okay so basically like you are saying you are building that relationship, you are letting them know that you are the innovator in a sense you are making these tweaks, you are making these ideas, you are paying for the mold cost all of that stuff. If they are going to basically take you off you are going to basically go somewhere else and you are not going to have your business and they are not going to have your new creative ideas.

[00:18:38] Stephen: Hey the fastest way of stopping your competitors is having your competitors make your product. I did this with these little guitar picks at one time I was the largest producer of these little guitar picks and I made them out of skulls and vampires and monsters and Jimmy Dunlop at the time was selling guitar picks to all the new musicians and he was making them for me and he didn’t understand these crazy little designs I had. He didn’t get but I told him. I said, “Jimmy you don’t understand. I’m going to sell more guitar picks than you are.” He goes, “How’s that?” He goes, “Because I’m selling them to fans?” If anybody was going to knock me off it was going to be him but he didn’t because he was making them for me. Before you it I was selling more than he was. He was loving me.

[00:19:26] Scott: Got you, yeah that makes sense, that makes total sense. What does the process look like? Let’s just take people through even my experience like right now. I’ve got this product that I’ve had a 3D model made already they’ve already agreed to the mold cost all that stuff I’m ready to go I’ve just got to make the decision to go with it. What would be my next move? Would I go and produce the product or would I have this thing in place of the licensing play next? When would that all come into the equation?

[00:19:58] Stephen: Well first of all I tell everybody I don’t like to spend my own money Scott and I want everybody working for me. So if I have an idea what I could do instead of spending my own money, I might find someone else that wants it, I might find a retailer that might want it, I might find something that helps me pull it through. So for instance, let’s say I had a product that I was going to sell great at Target or Walmart whatever and I might show it to one of those buyers and say, “what do you think?” “Oh we love this Steve.” That type of demand, I can go back to a manufacturer really quick to say, “Look I got demand at Walmart.” That type of pull through is going to help. They’re going to pay for your molds.

You know because it says volume going through the door. It’s called pull through marketing, it’s really, really simple when you think about it. If you come up with an idea, I wouldn’t even test an idea that I didn’t even have, I’d put it on Amazon or whatever and fake it and see if people will order before I even make it sync. I wouldn’t make anything like that anymore. Everybody’s testing and you can test today without going in production having 5,000 in your garage somewhere. That’s crazy. Test the market, find the demand, find that manufacturer that wants to supply it and say look I’ve got a lot of volume coming through the door now. Because you don’t want to be floating that money yourself, do you?

[00:21:20] Scott: No, if I don’t have to I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t want to. No.

[00:21:23] Stephen: I wouldn’t want to either. Find a partner, see the thing about licensing is that you’re finding that perfect partner. Maybe you carve out Scott that you’re going to tell this company you’re going to license it to that’s got great distribution at Walmart. You say, “Look I’m going to do online, I want to carve it out so I have part of the business still.” Licensing you can carve out so many different ways but it’s really finding a partner that Scott, that has relationships has manufacturing, marketing, advertising, distribution, shelf space and they’re going to help me bring it to market so much faster than I can.

See I tell everybody because of the knockoffs which you just mentioned? The copy cats are going to be there, so you’re selling online which is great and there’s a lot of business there but there’s a lot of business at bricks and mortar still too, there’s tons of it. I want to cover all my bases. We have a lot of students that do produce their own product, they sell online and then they’re going to license the company that’s going to do the stores. So they just carve it out. So licensing is really leveraging a power someone else that has, that’s bigger than you are.

[00:22:37] Scott: Well I was going to say but that comes down to then having those relationships beforehand and that takes time. I mean you’re going to go out there and figure out who’s going to be the players, who’s going to be the potential partners that could help you out.

[00:22:48] Stephen: Okay, let me tell simple that is now.

[00:22:51] Scott: Okay, good, tell me.

[00:22:53] Stephen: Everybody is on LinkedIn. I mean if you’re not on LinkedIn, come on you gotta be kidding me. I mean I can reach out to any company, any buyer, anybody in marketing sales on LinkedIn and I can make a small introduction I don’t want to pitch but I can get their name, it’s really simple. I have students that are pitching ideas every single day. They’re pitching ideas and are building relationships with companies. So another thing you can do, go to LinkedIn, call them directly, I talk all about it in my videos and articles and books, but you know what else you can do, go to a trade show.

I’m going to go to a trade show next week. I’m going to The Kitchen Trade Show in Chicago, there’s going to be 2100 companies and there’s thousands of those guys that want ideas and I walk the show. I build relationships and I just feed them ideas. So it’s not as hard as you think it is. Let me explain why it’s not that hard. Companies need us. Open innovation means a company will take ideas from the outside. I might have 20 designers working for me and I can tell you those guys are not happy.

Any designers that’s working for a company, they’re not happy, they’re getting a paycheck, they’re not getting their name on the product, they’re getting a lousy paycheck. But for us creative entrepreneurs, this is our income. We’re much more motivated to show them the next great idea. So when we submit an idea to a company, they don’t have to pay us. They only pay us when they license it from us. So it’s a perfect world.

[00:24:22] Scott: Okay and the thing that I’m struggling with a little bit is and is not really struggling but where I’m coming from. Because I’m at, like I want to get that product to market myself like right now because that’s what I do. That’s what my audience does.

[00:24:36] Stephen: Got it.

[00:24:37] Stephen: Like we want to go out there and we want to start selling in our primary channel when we start because it’s easy, I say easy it’s easier to get started where the traffic already is which is Amazon. It’s a buyer’s search engine, 244 million plus you know customers on there right now with credit cards, prime shipping, get it in a day, even sometimes the same day. So I can instantly launch my product and then have sales almost the next day if I want to start running sponsored ads and all that stuff.

So my thing is, with what you’re saying is go to the… Let’s say I go to a trade show and I have a kitchen item, let’s say I have a garlic press, I’ve made some really nice tweaks to it. People have complained about this, that the other thing. I can show them like look at all these reviews, people are saying that they hate this, mine fixes that problem and because of that I’m going to be able to create this. It’s not created yet but I’m going to create it and if you’d like to be a partner in this, you know I could show you. Okay, so you got a better idea?

[00:25:29] Stephen: I got a better idea. Much better, much better. Go ahead and do what you’re doing. Show demand.

[00:25:37] Scott: Okay and that was going to be my next question because I would prefer to go sell it and then go I’ve already got sales over here. You know what I mean?

[00:25:44] Stephen: That’s the fastest way of licensing an idea. I have students that come to me that have been selling. Like I have a twelve year old boy that’s selling on Amazon, he did a million dollars on his own little like a coffee mug with a little basketball hoop. Okay, so now he’s in business, his parents have been running this business for him, shipping it out all the kind of great stuff, they’re finally getting tired of doing it. So they said, “Steve, can we license it?” I go, “Yeah absolutely you can.” Because you’re going to go to a company now that’s got great distribution and say look you know I’m a mother and father, full time jobs, we got this little product we’re selling on Amazon, we do a million dollars a year. You’re going to license that so fast, they’re going to love you.

[00:26:28] Scott: Okay, so again and that’s where I was going like for me personally I’d rather go out there and establish that the products are already selling and then say, “Hey if you want to license this, you can.” The problem with that is, that I see is that one company is now if you license it to them now they’re directly competing with me. Correct?

[00:26:49] Stephen: Well, it depends on the carve out. There’s another person I’m working at, he’s doing millions of dollars on Amazon. He doesn’t have one store, he’s not in one store and the largest company on the planet that’s got a 133,000 outlets wants it and I’m going to bet they’re going to sell more than you. The bottom line is, I think they’re going to let him do both. They are going to let him sell on Amazon because he’s got a presence, he does really good on the marketing and let them do their other business. There’s so many different variations, the bottom line is it’s always numbers. You have to look at what you’re producing each and every day, how much work you’re putting into it and you can look at how much, what they can bring to the table? How can they help you sell more? If the numbers don’t work out, you don’t license it, perfect.

[00:27:38] Scott: So if you’re licensing it to them then it automatically is going to become their brand name? They’re going to put their brand name on it? Like so, if it’s a I don’t know a generic brand of their company, are they going to now say okay we’re going to, you can still sell yours as XYZ garlic press but we’re going to sell your exact same thing but we’re going to put ours on there as our brand or are they just going to sell your brand on their marketplace or both?

[00:28:02] Stephen: It could be done many different ways. And you also have different packaging for different price points too. Okay, so you have to let them… The thing I like about licensing so much is that they understand their space very well and they’re going to understand what the price point needs to be, their audience needs and all those type of things. So let them do that and you might sell something completely different. That’s a variation, that’s packed out differently with a different price point. So it’s fine. But it’s not just one set thing I mean, you have to ask questions, understand their business, look at the numbers, see what they’re going to bring to the table. So it’s not just once, you know, you have to be a little flexible in understanding their business model and what you want to do too.

[00:28:54] Scott: Okay, so let’s go back to how we find these people because I think that’s going to be a question. So what would be I mean you said go to trade shows. I think that’s probably an easy one because you’re going there, people are in there, if you’re going to a home & kitchen type gadget, type place, you’re going there and then you could say, “Hey just want to let you know I sell a garlic press and it does this that and the other thing, I’m looking for partners and I’m not sure if you’d be interested.” Is that kind of how the pitch would go, like something like that?

[00:29:24] Stephen: Well I think the easiest way is that just go down to where you think your product is going to sell in the marketplace and if you think your product is perfect for Walmart, go down to Walmart. Take a look at it. Find that shelf space that it’s going to be on and then call all those companies that are there, simple. Don’t overthink it.

[00:29:42] Scott: Okay, so the companies that are already on the shelf, those are the ones you want to go with because they’ve already made their way in.

[00:29:48] Stephen: Yeah. In fact that’s how you’re going to piggyback on them. See they’re already there. So don’t reinvent the wheel again, find the guys that are there, find the guys that are selling a lot of product, show them a slight improvement on what they’re currently doing and they’re going to love you.

[00:30:02] Scott: Okay, so the next question is… I’m going to keep giving you questions. The next question is, a lot of those are probably made your big brands, how do you get to the gatekeeper or through the gatekeeper?

[00:30:13] Stephen: Well, it’s like anything else. They’re there to keep everybody out because there’s a lot of noise. But you’re really helping their business moving forward, you want a good sell sheet or maybe a one minute video, if you have a prototype, show the problem, show the solution. You’re a great call to them, you’re not a pest, you’re a great call. See here’s what people don’t realize. I was just at the New York Toy Show interviewing companies that they’re saying on video,”We want your ideas.”

Okay, so you have to stop that. Everybody is thinking, “Why do they need me and why would they pay me and I don’t have experience,” that’s not true. People will love, you show them an idea that’s going to sell and they’re going to love you they’re going to say, “Come back with another one.” You’re not a problem. You’re an asset, so you have to shift your thinking. Some industries have been working with outside product developers and ventres, I don’t care what you call yourself for years. It’s standard.

It’s just now what I’m trying to do and what I’ve been doing my whole career is knock on people’s heads say hey look you don’t have to start a business anymore that’s crazy. You don’t have to raise capital, you don’t have to quit your day job, you don’t have to take risk anymore because these companies have embraced open innovation and there’s thousands and thousands. I have on my webpage 3,000 companies looking for ideas. And that’s why I’m going to Chicago and I’m going to interview a bunch of companies to put it on and say, “Look you guys am I dreaming here listen at what they have to say.”

[00:31:47] Scott: Right, no that’s good. That’s really good.

[00:31:49] Stephen: You know what’s crazy, everybody thinks it’s new. This isn’t new. This has been going on for a long time.

[00:31:57] Scott: All right, all right.

[00:31:58] Stephen: I’m just trying to share. I’m actually speaking at quite a few universities now. On Thursday and Friday I’m up at the university of Michigan talking about the traditional way and how this is an alternative to that traditional way of writing a business plan doing all that kind of great stuff. So I’m showing them another way of doing it and they’re loving it because they just realized that everybody wants to go into business.

[00:32:23] Scott: Yeah, it’s definitely, it’s a great concept and I can see it working for sure. It’s just, it’s a whole other angle but it is a mind shift. I think a lot of us think, “Oh wow.” You know like why would this major brand that’s on Walmart like want to listen to me. I’m just a guy that just came up with something because I did some research. I mean that’s normal thinking. I mean think we all did that.

[00:32:43] Stephen: It is but when I was at Toy Fair this one company comes up and they’re the fastest growing toy company in the world and says, “Look if it wasn’t for this one inventor, we wouldn’t be the fastest growing toy company. So please you have another idea?”

[00:32:53] Scott: Yeah, please give it to us. Right.

[00:32:55] Stephen: So and I also going to say one thing, don’t go after the big companies. Don’t go after the big guys. We always chase the Coca-Cola’s, the Pepsi’s, the PNG’s. Don’t go after those guys because they don’t need us. Go after the mid-sized companies. The big guys don’t innovate, they buy innovation.

[00:33:14] Scott: Got you.

[00:33:15] Stephen: All right, find the mid guys that are hungry. Those guys will love you. So avoid the big guys, we always chase them. Don’t do that, it’s a waste of time and go after the guys that are hungry.

[00:33:25] Scott: Okay, all right. So the last thing I want to talk about quickly is the, as far as the royalties. Like how is that decided? I know it’s going to probably vary on price point and all percentages and all that stuff but could you give us like just an idea of what someone could, like if I’m selling a $20 dollar garlic press and I made these modifications and that’s the going rate I mean I’ve established it because maybe I’ve already started selling it on Amazon and it’s doing well and you know what can I expect to give that away for as a licensing play? And then are there also and this is a double side question, is there also going to be which I’m assuming there’s going to be also some terms in there that say we’re going to buy your licensing you’re not going to go license it to other people now because we want to be the only one selling this product.

[00:34:18] Stephen: Of course. Royalty rates, everybody thinks the royalty rate is what’s important. It’s not my opinion but standard royalty rates are about 5%. If you’re Disney you can get 12%. We’re not Disney, so we get five and it could be a little bit more. It depends on how much work you’ve done, depends if you’ve got a patent, it depends on a lot of stuff. Maybe get 7% but 5%, if you’re doing great, if you’re doing huge volumes, it could be as low as 3%. Okay so do the math, simple as that.

Now of course everybody’s greedy, everybody wants an exclusive. Okay, so give it to them. Carve out what you need but before you give anybody an exclusive, find out how many stores are in. So it’s simple and plan on selling one a week. If they don’t sell one a week, that product is going to get kicked to the curb pretty fast. So do the math, estimate the wholesale price which your royalty is going to come off of, do a 3% to 5% to 7% so you know what, you know how some variations, figure out how many stores one a week, do the math and see if it’s even worth it.

[00:35:28] Scott: Got you. Okay.

[00:35:30] Stephen: So to me it’s quite simple. If you go to my website, you probably have. You’ll see this, our page were all these students of licensed ideas. Take a look at it. It’s in the hundreds and there’s inventors that make a million dollars a year easy and some don’t, some maybe $50,000, $100,000. It’s all over the board. So it all depends on the volume, depends if you get a hit. It’s like any business some of them. Some ideas are going to do great, some ideas will never see the light of day too.

[00:35:59] Scott: Well, it’s the same thing with us, like you know us launching our own products on Amazon or our ecommerce store. Like some are going to win, some are going to be you know it’s okay, you know what I mean but that’s all about diversifying as well too. And that’s being an entrepreneur, you’re always pivoting, you’re always coming up with new ideas, new strategies and all of that stuff and business plans.

[00:36:21] Stephen: It’s a numbers game.

[00:36:22] Scott: Yeah, for sure and I think that’s great and I think that, that definitely gives us an idea as far as like if we were to license something and I think too the other thing is if you have something that does okay like you said then that’s not going to be the only product that you’re going to license now you’re going to have multiple products that you’re going to license and then you can be collecting the revenue on those in multiples versus it just being a single product. You probably could have a term in there, I’m sure that it’s also too like you know if after 12 months we don’t sell a certain number then I have the option to go license it to some of those.

[00:36:55] Stephen: Yeah, every licensing agreement should have a performance clause. It’s called minimum guarantees. It’s really a gun to their head, I love this thing. It’s a gun to their head. If they don’t sell X amount, you get it back and there’s a number if you estimate the number of potential sales to 25% of that for the first year. If they can’t hit that number you get it back. Second year, raised it to 50% and third year maybe raise it again. I had one idea where the minimum guarantees was at $250,000 a year. They had to hit the number and I added a couple more technologies to it in that to being $750,000 were the minimum guarantees a year. They had to hit. So you know it depends on volume, it depends on a lot of things but the bottom line is this, it’s always a numbers game and so you come up with a lot of ideas, you submit them to a lot of companies and hopefully you’ll get that big hit or hopefully a lot of little hits and all that stuff.

[00:37:54] Scott: Yeah, base hits are nice too. Yes.

[00:37:56] Stephen: Yeah. I tell everybody, look really love this business and if you love it you’ll never work a day in your life and if you’re chasing dollars that’s usually a hard way to go. Don’t chase it, just enjoy it. Trust me the dollars will follow.

[00:38:11] Scott: Yeah, I know and I love it. This has been great. This has been definitely eye opening for me as well as going through this process and I’m sure we could dig into it even more but if anyone wants to get more information from you and maybe a little bit more about this whole licensing thing, how would they get a hold of you Stephen?

[00:38:29] Stephen: Well it’s real simple. I have this one book, that’s been selling for five years. It’s called One Simple Idea. It’s a yellow book, you can find it on Amazon. We have over 400 five star reviews. People love it. All the steps that I’m talking about from the very beginning to the end, there’re in the book. So get it. Or go to the public library, rent it, whatever.

Number two, I have a YouTube channel called Invent Right TV, where we also talk about the ten steps all the time. I give this stuff away for free you guys. Just go get it. And then my main website is called Inventright.com where you can see a lot of information to give away for free. We have the largest library on this topic in the world. We have a licensing library, so if you want to read about it, I write for inc.com, I write for entrepreneur.com and core77.com. I love licensing, it’s been a great income for me, for my whole career. So find out about it, read about it, watch our videos, read the articles and do it.

[00:39:39] Scott: Yeah, cool. That’s awesome. Yeah, definitely. I’ll be definitely checking out that book myself for sure. That’s awesome. So, yeah, I would definitely encourage anyone that’s interested in learning more about this to definitely go check out your stuff and I know I will. So again, Stephen I just want to say thank you so much for taking time out of your day and I’m sure I’ll be hitting you up for some questions I need answered on this topic when I get my couple of things that I’m working on right now. I might be looking at that licensing play. So that might be an interesting twist.

[00:34:07] Stephen: I think you’re right there Scott. From what you’ve told me, you’re finding your small improvement and you want to get going. So thank you very much for having me on and let’s do it again sometime.

[00:40:18] Scott: Yeah, absolutely man. Thanks so much. I appreciate it.

[00:40:22] Stephen: You bet.

[00:40:23] Scott: All right, so there you go. I mean that was a little different than we’ve talked about in the past, actually a lot different. Something that I never even thought about and it’s got me thinking and not something I’m necessarily going to do right this second but I’ll definitely keep my eyes and ears open and I’ll also be possibly exploring this with any future products that we think could fit this criteria or if we think that we could get a licensing deal. Definitely be looking into that and following what Stephen has laid out here for us. So again guys I want to remind you, if you want to check out the show notes, all the links we talked about, how to get in touch with Stephen, you can head over to theamazingseller.com/345.

Again this is just information for you guys to be able to either use now or come back to in the future and say, “I think Scott talked about licensing with someone before,” and then you can just go and look it up on the blog. That’s where all the information is stored, that’s our home base, is theamazingseller.com and you can always search inside of the blog and find anything related to what you’re searching for right now today. So again remember, this is just something that I wanted to kind of hear a little bit more about maybe you know educate myself about it but then also let you be aware of this licensing thing which I have not heard much about in this space.

So hopefully you got value from it, hopefully you enjoyed it and remember you can always get all the show notes by heading over to theamazingseller.com/345. All right guys that’s it, that’s going to wrap it up. Remember as always, I’m here for you, I believe in you and I am rooting for you but you have to, you have to, come on say it with me, say it loud, say it proud, “take action.” Have an awesome amazing day and I’ll see you right back here on the next episode.

[END]

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Click Here to Download Transcript <<

Now those questions today, I’m going to give you guys like a little bit of what we’re going to be talking about. One of the questions was about split testing, one of them was about ungating and one of them was about enhanced content which are all pretty important stuff and I’m going to give you guys my thoughts on these questions that were submitted by you the listener. Now if you do have a question you want me to air on an upcoming show and give you my thoughts just head over to the theamazingseller.com/ask and do that. Ask a question, leave your first name, maybe where you’re tuning in from and then just ask that question and I’ll do my best to air it on an upcoming show.

Now I’m super excited again, not just for this show. I mean I’m super excited about the show but I’m really excited about things that are happening, whether it’s within the Amazon business space, I mean we’ve got some really cool things that we’re doing in our own brands and I’m really excited to start sharing some of those things with you. We have a brand right now that we’ve started from scratch and it’s a full fledged brand. Like we’re talking like a front person, we’ve already started building lists inside of that market, we don’t even have a product there yet but we have three in pre-production, we’ve got about two or three more that are in the development stages and it’s just really, really awesome and I can’t wait to see how everything kind of unfolds and I’m really excited if I haven’t said that like 100 times already since this show has started the recording. But I am, I’m pumped about that.

The other thing that I’m really excited about is, I’ve had a lot of you reach out to me and say, “Scott when is the next TAS breakthrough live event going to be?”

[00:02:00] Scott: The actual in-person event and the last time we did this we actually broke up into two days, we did one day of hot seats and then we did another day of workshopping in a sense. It was like us going through a case study that we had built a list in. It was all about list building and funnels and all of that stuff and we had a lot of people say, “We really would like more on that. We would really like to be able to have you show us and maybe build with us our own little funnel or our own little list building machine.” And so what we’ve decided to do and actually by the time this thing airs it could be totally filled because it’s going to be very small. It’s going to be only 15 people at this little closed event.

So it’s not going to be a full-fledged TAS Breakthrough Live, but it’s going to be more of a workshop, more of us in the same room, going through the strategy, the technique but also then building it along with all of these people. And we’ve decided to do it in my neck of the woods this time in North Carolina.

The other thing that we’re going to be doing is having an unofficial meetup in North Carolina. So we’re going to do that the night before our small workshop, so this way here we can kind of get together with TAS listeners that are in this area or that want to make a short travel to North Carolina. It’s going to be in Charlotte which I know a lot of people have reached out to me and said, “Scott when you’re going to do one in Charlotte?”

So that’s part of the reason why we wanted to do this, also because I’m doing a lot of traveling this summer myself, whether it’s a family vacation or speaking engagement or my daughter’s wedding, there’s a lot of different things that we’re going to be doing personally. So I figured I’d keep it closer to my home base but then also be able to do an in-person workshop type thing and that’s what we’re going to do. So if you are interested in that you can head over to theamazingseller.com/live and you can see details on that or you can look and see exactly what we’re doing there. Now let me just say that I am recording this after I’ve already kind of semi announced that.

[00:03:57] Scott: I announced it to a very small list of people that have been to our past live events or that even have been interested in our live events and I’m giving them the first option to go. Now it will be a paid event. It will be like I said a full eight, nine hours worth of us hanging out together and then you guys walking away understanding the entire process and having something built so you can start building your own launch list and your own product launch list to boost your products or you know boost your BSR or whatever. That’s what we’re really doing here.

So if you are interested definitely check that out. I’m super excited about it. Like I said, by the time you listen to this and you go there it very well may be filled, but it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t jump on the early notification list because those people always get first option to grab a ticket when we do a live event. So again just want to kind of throw that out there, if you’re interested it will be at the end of June or the third week in June is what we’re shooting for, so we don’t even have the exact date as the time I’m recording this Ask Scott but by the time you go there, by the time this thing airs, it will be there. It will be public.

We’re pretty sure that it’s going to be the third week in June. It’ll be on a weekend, but the unofficial meetup that’s going to be for anyone. So anyone that wants to come, totally free. If you want to come hang out with us for a few hours, we’re going to do that as well and that will most likely be on that Friday and then we’ll do our workshop on Saturday and what I’ll do is if you just go to theamazingseller.com/live, if you go to that page, I’ll have the free unofficial meet up on there as well so you can click on that link and it’ll take you to the event page.

So we can at least get a head count as far as how many people are going to be showing up for the unofficial meet up, the little meet and greet and the hangout so definitely go over to that link and that will allow us to see how many people are coming. Again just want to throw that out there, let you guys know again how excited I am to be able to do this and wanting to do this it’s going to be really, really awesome. I’ll link everything up in the show notes to this episode which is theamazingseller.com/346. That’s probably going to be the easiest link for you guys to go to because all the links will be there.

[00:06:02] Scott: And the last thing that I’m super excited about is our 1K Fast Track group which it’s our second group that’s going through this and I have to say I’m just blown away as the results are ready. The first 7 days before we even started the class that class generated over $5,900 in 7 days. We told them what to do on Saturday the following Saturday they came back and reported the numbers and it was $5,900 and some change. It was just insane. So it does clearly work and for you guys that want to go out there and try to earn your own money in the first 7 days without even having a product right now, visit theamazingseller.com/312 and basically that’s what we told them to do, it’s the exact same thing inside of our 1K Fast Track group.

So definitely go check that out, give yourself that little challenge and do it and you’ll be surprised, you’ll probably walk away with a few hundred dollars in your pocket just by looking at stuff that you have in your possession right now and just selling it. It’s a matter of just what to do it and then see the results and it’s all about momentum you guys have heard me talk about that before.

Two people in that group already and we haven’t even been through our first official week, have already generated $1,000 each, which is crazy. They actually, they blew me away because we didn’t have that result in the first group. The first group we had a few that did but it took them probably 3-4 weeks. But this is like within a week, within about actually about 10 days they’re already at 1k which is insane. So again if you guys want any information on the 1K Fast Track, it’s closed right now currently but when we do re-open we may even make that an ongoing where you can come in at any time. Right now it’s a closed group but if you want more details on that you can always head over to 1kfasttrack.com. Again that’s 1kfasttrack.com.

All right so, let’s get ready to rock and roll. There is one thing I want to share with you, my message of the week and this is pretty simple and here it is. There’s two words for you, movement plus patience.

[00:08:01] Scott: What the heck do I mean? Work on something, let it happen, like let the results happen and as you’re doing that work on something else while you’re waiting. So many people, they do something they sit back and wait and then they get impatient and then they start tweaking things that they shouldn’t be tweaking at, perfect example is pay-per-click, if you’re running sponsored product ads and you’re not letting it run 14 days, 30 days before you start tweaking, you’re rushing it. Do that, set it, forget it for a little while, move on to something else that you can work on. So movement plus patience, that’s going to equal results. So definitely, definitely do that. It’s something that I have a tough time doing as well because I want to always be kind of tweaking but whatever you’re doing it’s always a smart idea to create movement by doing something but then having the patience to let it actually happen and don’t start overreacting too soon and start adjusting because you’re panicking in a sense.

Just let it happen and one of the one of the biggest things is with sponsored product ads, a lot of people just they want to see results like two days. It’s just not going to happen, you gotta let that data to kind of come in. So I just wanted to share that with you guys, my message of the week is movement plus patience equals results. So maybe even write that down, that’s a good one to write down, that’s a writer downer, if I haven’t said that before. All right guys, so let’s get rocking and rolling. Let’s go ahead and listen to today’s first question and I’ll give you my answer, let’s do this.

[Q&A SESSION]

[00:09:30] David: Hi Scott. This is David. I’m a long term listener and do it from Northern Ireland. I love the show, this is my second question actually so thanks for your help previously. A quick question today regarding split testing and what volume would you look for before you’d consider running a split test? My main product gets about 50 to 60 sessions a day and converts at 12 to 15%. This is in the UK so volumes are much less than the US. I know 50 sessions isn’t a whole lot but it’s okay, so I’m keen to start testing some variables but I know that volume is the key to statistical significance. Would you want to see more volume than that? Maybe I should concentrate on traffic right now more than conversions but I would love to get stuck in and do some testing so my question is do you think it’s worthwhile testing variables with only 50 sessions a day? Okay, thanks again Scott.

[00:10:28] Scott: Hey David. Thank you so much for the repeat question or the repeat guest that is. Yes this is the second time that you’ve made the show so I want to thank you for that. Thank you for being a long time listener as well, it’s a great question. Now you have 50 sessions per day. Now people that are brand new and they don’t know what that means, that means that that’s how many visitors were getting to the listing. That how many eyeballs were getting on the listing. So that’s 50 you know 50 people or 50 sessions. So just to kind of clarify that for anyone that’s new. Now, when you have traffic and I think 50 is great.

I mean it’s 50, I mean would you like 100? Yeah. Would you like 200? Yeah. So should you be working on getting more traffic every single day? Yes of course, especially if you’re converting at 12%. Well if you get an extra hundred people to show up at that page, that’s an extra 12 sales if they still convert at 12%. So a lot of times, we try to figure out like what are all the products that we can launch versus how do we optimize what we currently already have? I think it’s really, really smart if you can focus on those things.

Now with that being said, I think you have enough traffic to start running tests. That means, what’s going to happen is, when you have 50 sessions you’re going to have those 50 sessions that day showing one thing and then the next day it shows something else and it just keeps flip flopping back and forth. That’s why they call them AB tests, because you have A you know version A and then you have version B and then you kind of use that to gauge how it’s converting with different elements that you’re changing.

Most of the time you’re changing price, sometimes you’re changing an image, which I think I had Greg Mercer on not that not long ago and we talked about split testing and I’m actually going to direct you to that resource. The resource that you can go to and there’s actually some downloads there on split testing, there’s also a statistical significance calculator free that’s there as well. He does have a tool called Splitly which that’s there. If you want to go ahead and test drive that you can do that as well but there’s also some split testing 101 stuff, some hacks and things that he’s put together for the TAS audience.

[00:12:36] Scott: So if you want to check that out, I strongly advise you doing that and that can be found at theamazingseller.com/splitly, full disclosure. Yes I’m affiliate, yes I earn a cup of coffee if you end up deciding to use that software. But it’s a great tool to do this because you can set it and kind of forget it and then come back and let the traffic kind of tell the story and it allows you to kind of flip flop back and forth without you having to manually do that and he talks about that even in these reports that in order to do it properly you have to do it at the exact same time every single day so it’s really important that you do that.

With only having 50 which I say only, it’s still good but by having 50, you’re going to need to wait a little while and I think your question was like when is there enough. There really isn’t one set rule and that’s why it’s statistical significance, that’s a hard one to say by the way. Statistical significance. Statistical significance calculator, that will also help you do that because it’ll take some of those other metrics and figure it into the equation, but if you weren’t going to be using a tool, I would say, I mean usually like a thousand sessions would be like a good chunk of like visitors that are seeing that offer.

Now if you have 100 sessions a day, that’s only going to take 10 days. And it’s pretty simple math. If you have 50, well it’s going to take 20 days. Now I’m just throwing out a number there, in my own head it’s like a thousand sessions, that’s a good chunk of sessions. That’s a thousand different people seeing something and then reacting but there’s also a lot of other factors that come into it. The day, it could be a certain time of the day, it could be certain days of the week, that’s why you want to let that run for not just two days and then decide. Even if you had 500 sessions a day and you got a thousand in two days that wouldn’t be enough data because you didn’t give it enough time.

[00:14:30] Scott: Usually I think even Greg had said, like 14 days is like the minimum that you want to let a test run but again that it’s going to depend on your traffic and all those things. So I think at 50 you’re going to need to let that run a little while. If you increase your traffic then obviously that can make that time go down a little bit but I would say you’re at a good place. Let it run, give it time. I talked about the beginning like you know the beginning of this of this podcast about how we want to do something and then let it sit, be patient with it. Well that’s where this comes in as well. You have to be patient when you’re doing a test like this and I think by being patient and putting something in motion like this it can be really, really rewarding on your end because you can discover things that you never would have known if you didn’t test these things.

If you want to test your price point at let’s say you’re charging $19.97 right now and then you bump into $23.97 and you all of a sudden find out that $23.97 converts higher for some reason, you’re making more money and you never would have known that if you didn’t run that test. You’re just assuming. Don’t assume, let the numbers speak to you. Same thing with sponsored product ads, it’s the same thing. You have to be patient with this. So I think you’re in a good place, I would give it at least a thousand sessions or again like up to 14 days.

I would strongly recommend anyone that’s thinking about this and I think that everyone should be thinking about this, is definitely go check out those resources, theamazingseller.com/splitly and just download those and kind of understand split testing but then also use that calculator even if you’re not going to use the tool. If you want to automate this thing then I definitely strongly recommend using the tool and then this way here you can just set it, forget it, look back at the data and then it’s going to let you know. It’s going to let you know the winner and it’s going to let you know the one that did better and then you can just keep improving upon that, so I definitely think it’s smart to be thinking about split testing.

So let’s go ahead and listen to the next question. One thing I want to say about this next question, it was a little glitchy on the audio, you can still make it out, there’s nothing wrong with my end of the recording, just want to let you know that it’s a little skippy here and here but you’ll be able to make it out and then from there I can answer that question. I think it’s a good question that’s why I wanted to definitely post it here and then share it with you and then give you my feedback and my thoughts on this question. So let’s go ahead and listen to that question now.

[00:16:49] Rick: Hey Scott. This is Rick calling from Erie Pennsylvania. Big shout out to you guys. You and Chris and Dom just for everything you guys do and making this thing happen, really appreciate it. So I’ve been listening for a while, probably last eight months and just recently pulled the trigger, sourced my products, took all those steps and ordered my product and ended up ordering you know I did this [Inaudible 00:17:23] rate which I got really fortunate there because there’s an awesome freight forwarder here in town and he’s really taking care of me and made that whole process as simple as possible which is awesome.

So I have my product kind of put the cart before the cart before the horse though because the category I want to sell in, where all my competition is majority of sales, that’s in the, what is it? Home and personal care and big problem here that’s gated. Now I went through and I listened to your other show about how getting ungated and that whole process and how that works and kind of screwed up a little because I should have had my invoice split into three. Then didn’t get that done but nonetheless as you know, I decided just to go ahead and try anyway and so I have my one invoice and some other documentation [Inaudible 00:18:22] and all that good stuff, so I thought maybe you know, maybe I can get in.

I tried it, got rejected, tried it, got rejected. I probably got rejected like four times, it’s like crazy but each time I get rejected it’s some other vague statement as to why. So one of the recurring things though in these rejection process is, they can’t validate my vendors address. Which seems crazy to me because I mean they’re a pretty big manufacturer, they have a hundred plus people, they do $10 million a year in sales. I mean what’s the problem with getting their address validated?

So I guess I’m at a little bit of a stalemate their, so I was thinking about going it a different route. Now correct me if I’m wrong, if I was to get ungated in that category for another product, something I could source maybe locally or within the United States, I am then good, I open that category for all products. So I was thinking about possibly just taking that route and curious what your thoughts are with doing something like that. Let me know what you’re thinking. Thanks so much for everything you do.

[00:19:43] Scott: Hey Rick. Thank you so much for the question and thanks for being a listener, I appreciate it and yeah this is a great question and I just want to say anyone out there that is trying to get ungated into a category it can be frustrating, trust me. It definitely, definitely can. Now you kind of said, whether it’s a couple things that you might have did, that you could’ve did differently before you submitted it and yes that’s true. But let’s talk about your solution that you kind of came up with here in a minute. Before I do though, if anyone else is thinking about getting ungated we did an episode, episode 212. So theamazingseller.com/212, the simple process for getting ungated is one that I did with Chris Shaffer.

We break it all down, we give you like the steps on how to do it and we also talk about being frustrated because sometimes you do everything by the book and then they still come back and they’re vague. My one recommendation would be, get on the phone with someone. Like call during the business hours, speak to someone there. You can also request the catalog team and talk to someone there that might also be a way to talk to someone that can help you further rather than just going through the email communication. But you really just want to be very persistent about this and just keep asking questions and then eventually you’ll probably get ungated but like you said there’s probably going to be a workaround and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this workaround that you came up with as long as you’re not trying to launch a product that wouldn’t get ungated for some reason.

I’ve always said that, like don’t use like something to get around something so you can do something evil. We want to stay above board, we want to do things white hat, we want to do things for the long haul but you have a great solution I think and that’s something that I would definitely consider because you’re right if you get ungated in a category, you’re now ungated for all of those products.

[00:21:42] Scott: Like now you can sell in that category, they’re just gating you to get in. Once you get in you’re in and yes if you have products that are going to violate terms of service and all that stuff you’re going to eventually get found out and then you’ll get your account banned or suppressed or whatever. So you gotta be careful with that, but I think your solution is a great solution. I think that’s something that I would definitely consider and really what you’re saying is maybe find something here in the States that’s going to be easier for them to be able to validate the product. It would be a product that you would want to sell and that you’re going to sell. I wouldn’t say just do it for this purpose, I would say do it so you can actually sell it maybe that’s your second product that you’re going to be doing in this space and then from there you can then start to sell your other product that you’ve been trying to get ungated for.

So I think that’s a great solution, again use it in the best way possible as far as like you know for good. Like don’t do this to try to sneak your way in. I just want to stress that. I’m not about that at all. I would never recommend that but if you’re doing this just because you’ve had a tough time communicating what you’re doing with your rep or whatever this would definitely be a way that you could probably get around it and I’m okay with that myself personally. If I was to do it, I would feel okay about that as long as I knew that the products that I’m selling are legit and they’re okay and there’s nothing I’m trying to sneak by anybody.

So I think it’s a great idea. So hopefully that helped you and great solution by the way and way to come up with that on your own and again guys if you want to know more about getting ungated the episode 212 would be the resource that I would point you to and I’ll put all this in the show notes to this episode. So let’s go ahead and listen to the next question and I’ll give you my answer let’s do it.

[00:23:27] Roman: Hey Scott, my name is Roman. I’m from Kiev Ukraine. It’s in Eastern Europe for those guys who doesn’t know and my question is regarding enhanced brand content. How do you see in your opinion which option from the five available is the best working for you right now because currently I’m using the one with a big banner and I didn’t notice a huge difference in conversion rates? So I was wondering whether it is at all so useful taking into account that I suppose starting this February, it will be not free because currently it is in the promotional state which is good for us sellers. Thank you so much and hope to hear your answer soon. Bye.

[00:24:30] Scott: Hey Roman, thank you so much for the question and another international seller. I love it and I love it that you’re a listener. Thank you so much for submitting this question and being a part of the TAS community. I thank you man, I appreciate it. So, this is a great question as well and there’s not really an exact answer that I’m going to give you. What I am going to say is you probably want to test. So we talked a little bit about split testing, I don’t think there’s one set template that’s going to work for everyone.

What I will say is however you can explain either the story about the brand better and visualize that for people or give a visual for that. That would be the way I would go or if it’s a way that describes your product and shows the benefits and then the features not just the features, a lot of people focus on the features not the benefits trying to incorporate lifestyle images in the brand or the I’m sorry inside of the enhanced content. We also did another episode on this, how to use the new enhanced content features and why you should and that’s episode 294.

So again I’ll give you that free resource, you can head over to theamazingseller.com/294 or you can just go to the show notes to this episode, it’s there and we talk all about the rollout of the enhanced content. I think it’s a great thing to have.

The one thing I will say, is I’m not really sure that everyone that visits your listing will actually look at the enhanced content, depending on what template you pick of course but the ones that are more like the description down below a little bit, they’re probably less likely to see that. So you want to take that in consideration but I what I would say is you might want to run a split test, like we talked about. Maybe you have one version that has the stuff more towards the top and then from there you take that same content but then you just lay it out differently in another design and then you test that.

[00:26:30] Scott: So you have two running tests, so it will basically flip back and forth. I’m pretty sure splitly will do that. Again I’m not 100% sure but if they will that’s what I would do, if they won’t then I would run it myself. I would just go in and change it and it’s going to take some work if you have to do it yourself but I’m pretty sure splitly will do that for us. I’ll have to actually look into that myself and maybe even reach out to Greg and see if that’s the case but I’m pretty sure because I know you can you can adjust the description and all that stuff and they’re pretty much up to date on everything there. But I would say split test it, that’s what I would do and you’re not going to really know until you actually get visitors to land on those pages. I do know that your images are going to be something that will change your conversion for the good or the bad, so you have to play with those.

I think that’s my first thing that I would always tell people. If you’re split testing anything, it’s going to be the main image and then images in general. Enhanced content allows us to then take those images or different images, you can’t use the same images in your images that you have posted versus the enhanced content, they want them to be differently, different content, unique content. So it’s another way for you to add more about your product, better description about it, benefits showing it being used, maybe the story behind the brand like all of that stuff, showing a face to the brand like all that stuff you’re able to do now in enhanced content.

So I would say test it that’s all I can really say. I’m not going to say like yeah you know version A is going to do better because it has images that are stacked vertically and then the other one is more horizontal and that one’s going to do better. There’s no really one set template that’s going to work for everyone the same, I think it’s got to be tested. So I know it wasn’t an exact answer but hopefully it gets you thinking about split testing it, not just wanting to know what one should I use. I would test them, that’s what I would do. Hopefully this helped you. Again I’m going to throw all of these links we did drop a lot of links in this Ask Scott session today.

[00:28:34] Scott: So an easy way to find all those links and the transcripts and the show notes is to head over to theamazingseller.com/346. So just go to theamazingseller.com/346 and you’ll get all of today’s show notes and the links and everything that we discussed. If you guys want to know more about our live list building workshop that we’re going to be doing in North Carolina, definitely head over to theamazingseller.com/live see if there’s any spots available.

If you’re interested, I’m really looking forward to that and yeah just keep me posted in the Facebook group too. If you guys are not part of our TAS Facebook group, you really need to be. We have just about actually just crossed 45,000 active members inside of the TAS community and if you’re not part of that yet you really need to be. There’s a lot of people in there helping each other through this process and supporting each other through this process which I think is huge.

So definitely go check that out, again I’ll link that up in the show notes, the quick link is theamazingseller.com/fb and I hope you guys can see. These are all free resources that I’m giving to you because I want you to take action. I want you to have the resources but I also want you to have the support network and that’s what we’re trying to create here within TAS. So hopefully you get yourself involved, you get out there, you get yourself moving.

Whether that’s the smallest thing, do one thing that’s going to move you closer to your goals or what you’re working towards. All right, so guys that’s it, that’s going to wrap up this session of ask Scott in this episode. I want you guys to remember, as always, I’m here for you, I believe in you and I am rooting for you. But you have to, you have to… Come on say it with me, say it loud, say it proud, “Take action.” Have an awesome amazing day and I’ll see you right back here on the next episode.

[END]

Click Here to Download Transcript <<

Click Here to Download Transcript <<

…on my good friend Mr. Chris Shaffer. What is going on my friend?

[00:00:19] Chris: Not too much brother, how are you doing?

[00:00:21] Scott: I’m doing fine, the birds are chirping, the sun is shining, so yeah life is pretty good over here in South Carolina and you and I started this and we had to do a retake just because I wasn’t making any sense.

[00:00:33] Chris: They were words, they were just words coming out, they weren’t in sentences.

[00:00:39] Scott: Yeah, I don’t even know what I was thinking. I don’t think the coffee had registered yet in my brain but I’m feeling good now. I’m feeling good but I’m excited because you and I like to do these every now and then. We’ve also done them at our live events and I think a lot of people get value from these as far as like us being able to kind of dig into someone’s issues or questions and a lot of times these happen from questions that I get through email and a lot of times there’s just a lot of questions and I’m like I think it’d be easier if I just jumped on and answered these like on a podcast and maybe invited you on if we can kind of dig into it and that’s kind of how this one happened as well. This one here is going to be about someone just launching a product about three weeks in, getting some slow sales in the beginning which is normal and basically saying that pay-per-click isn’t working. So Chris, we’re going to dive into that today. How does that sound?

[00:01:37] Chris: Let’s do it.

[00:01:38] Scott: You want to jump right in or did you want to…?

[00:01:40] Chris: Let’s just, let’s just jump right in man.

[00:01:42] Scott: I was going to say, did you want to say how your morning is going?

[00:01:45] Chris: My morning is going fantastic. I started the day off right.

[00:01:48] Scott: That’s good.

[00:01:49] Chris: I got my water. I have my bone broth and I’m talking to you first thing in the morning, so it’s going to be one of those days I think.

[00:01:58] Scott: You think it’s going to be a good day?

[00:01:59] Chris: We started off in the right direction, let’s see if we can help out our friend Alex here and get things pointed correctly for him and if we can square him away that means the rest of our day is going to go well as well.

[00:02:10] Scott: Yeah, cool. Now do you have his email up in front of you and the screenshots that he sent us just so we’re prepared?

[00:02:17] Chris: I do.

[00:02:18] Scott: Okay. I’m going to go ahead and read the very first email quickly and then I’ll have you read the part about the pay-per-click and stuff. So basically says, “Hey Scott I’ve been listening to your podcast for a long time now and finally took action as you say. My product was delivered to Amazon about three weeks ago and so far, sales don’t look good. I’m having only around one sale daily unless I spend loads of money on pay-per-click. Would you care to take a quick look at my listing and maybe you’ll see something wrong right off the bat.

I don’t want to take a lot of your time, just a quick glance.” And he just goes on to say that it’d be awesome if I could just take a look at it. And I don’t do this all the time. I got to be honest, I get a lot of people that request this. But I said you know what? Let’s just go ahead and see what’s going on here, really quickly I’ll just take a quick peek and immediately I did see some things that I think is going to be worth addressing here that will be of value to everyone listening and to Alex.

[00:03:14] Scott: But you know the very first thing that I want to say, is like when you first launch a product you can’t expect out of the gate to get regular sales unless you’ve done some type of promotion, some type of push, BSR like boost, whatever you want to call it like you have to get some traction. I’ve had people email me and they’re like, “Scott I just launched. I’ve optimized my listing and I turned on pay-per-click and I’m not getting any sales.” So it’s kind of like the guy that just opened up his brick and mortar business and just said, I’m open and kind of maybe even mentioned it outside the front door, “Hey I just want to alert everyone I’m here.” It doesn’t work that way.

They’re investing a lot of times in grand opening of some kind maybe newspaper ads or maybe something mentioned on the radio or maybe something mentioned on a local TV network or something to get attention. Banks do it all the time. Free hot dogs and whatever for the kids and bouncy bounces and all this stuff to get people coming in the door to let people know that you’re there and that you’re open for business.

So I just want that to be kind of thrown out there, right from the get-go because if you just think you’re going to launch a lot of times it’s not going to work that way. Now sometimes you can do that because maybe you don’t have a ton of competition and there isn’t a lot of listings currently, that could happen, but very, very rarely. What’s your thoughts on that Chris?

[00:04:42] Chris: Right. It’s going to work and let’s go back to the brick and mortar example. If you are at a frozen yogurt shop and you get put right next to a gym in the shopping centre you might not have to do that grand opening because everybody just burned off all those calories now they want them back. But if you’re next to a haircut place, you’re going to have to do that grand opening and a lot of people because they’re not as particular about product selection as somebody like say Dom, who looks for products where he can launch without doing anything other than a little bit of PPC are going to launch a little bit more of a competitive product.

And if you have like any competitive hurdles to get over then you’re going to need to do some of that crazy inflatable arm waving tube man promotion. You have to do a little bit of work up front to really get that traffic flowing and PPC is one of those ways to do that. And it sounds like Alex has kind of figured that out and that he knows PPC is going to be important but it’s not something that it seems like he’s figured out at this point.

[00:05:44] Scott: Yeah and again I mean you and I took his listing and then we started to kind of look at like what are the keywords that he’s targeting? If we look at those keywords or those search terms are they getting traffic, are they in demand and do they have depth and all of that stuff? Because I think that’s the very first question like, okay you might have your listing optimized, you might have even pay-per-click running but if there’s no traffic, there ain’t going to be any sales.

So that’s a very first thing that we looked at. Let’s kind of go through what we discovered like within the first five minutes. I don’t know if you want to start with that and then I can kind of dig in? As far as like, when you looked at the listing for the very first time, you looked at the title, you looked at the images, which we’ll talk about that later but like the very first thing like is he targeting correctly?

[00:06:38] Chris: Honestly from the context that you and I have from his emails, I don’t think so. I think and you immediately said images and the first thing that I looked at was the title and I said, “That’s not what I would call this.” And you said, the images don’t show me anything and those are kind of the two things that we always address in these hot seats, but the title to me is kind of the thing that stands out immediately. The images depending on what we end up making the title will have to change differently. Does that make sense?

[00:07:09] Scott: Yeah, yeah. Totally.

[00:07:10] Chris: And it seems to me Alex that you’re going for like one size fits all generic title and I think that’s actually a bad thing in this case. Do you agree with that Scott?

[00:07:22] Scott: 100% and I said that to you. I said like, “I’m not really quite sure if this thing is for the 10 things that you have listed here. It’s kind of like the one thing that could do 10 different things.” And I think that’s fine if you want to mention that in like your bullets or even show a picture of it being used but you know in different contexts but I think you have to have a clear message to who’s looking for this thing. Because if I land on this product, I want to know it’s for me and it doesn’t seem like… And we always talk about like how to differentiate yourself. You can take a product that could be used in 10 different areas but if you can specifically say it’s designed to work for this well then you’re going to stand out right there alone because now you’re saying that yours is built for this one thing.

So I would find the one thing that is really getting the traffic and really getting like sales and people are searching for and I would start to tailor it towards that or find even maybe it’s not the top, maybe it’s the middle and it’s still getting 300 plus sales maybe you’re not trying to go after the most competitive keywords and search terms. Maybe you’re going to try to find the low hanging fruit by going after something that’s not as competitive but still has steady sales and depth and demand.

This way here again when someone lands on it they say, “Oh this is exactly what I was looking for.” Versus, “Oh I guess this works.” It’s like a universal remote. It’s like it’s a universal thing. We don’t want universal in this case. In this case I would say, he would be better off finding something which we already kind of pointed that out when you and I looked at it, like totally you could definitely tailor this towards probably three or four different things but I would find one and then go with that. What’s your thoughts on that Chris?

[00:09:19] Chris: And I agree with that completely. I think the challenge that Alex faces is using something like the Danielle Fritz Test which you and I have talked about on some Facebook lives. Which is basically she walks around her warehouse and asked her employees, what do you call this thing. And I think by not doing that, he went the broad route and said well I can appeal to everybody and while that may work in the case of, and I’m just going to go with the universal remote example, the Logitech Harmony which is a fantastic universal remote. It’s not going to work in the case of like the Radio Shack one, where you have to like push the button and like type in the codes and all of those kinds of things.

In his case I think he’s more of like that radio shack type remote. It’s not something that is really one size fits all. It fits one or two really specific applications and I think he needs to either pick one and focus the listing on that or maybe do one of Dom suggestions and like relaunch one the other way and position one for each product and just scrolling down you’ll see what did customers buy after viewing this item is actually available on his listing. It’s not on every listing on Amazon but you’ll see that occasionally and Scott I said I would call this thing X and looking at this, the items buy after they view his item is the other way to refer to it. And it’s the number one thing, you know it’s the one thing is something and if you look at the title of that it is very specific to what the product is being used for.

[00:10:55] Scott: Yeah, I think that’s great to actually do exactly what you said. Like even if it wasn’t on his listing, if it was on someone else’s listing and he was targeting that particular item geared towards that market or that search then the other thing that you could do is you could look down below like you just did there and see frequently bought together or like getting ideas of like other suggestions. People who viewed this also view this, like that’s ways for you to start to understand that.

But the other thing that you could do and we always talk about this as far as like how to find other keywords that you might be missing or that might not be you might not be aware of the other way to do it is to use a tool like Scope where you would go on that listing, your competitor that you’re thinking of and then just pull those keywords or search terms that are basically being found by that listing and then you might identify something that’s getting sales for this one listing in this one product that you weren’t aware of and then maybe you can start to custom tailor it towards that.

[00:12:02] Scott: So that’s something that I would recommend doing and then also to help you optimize it further in the back end and stuff but right now we’re just looking at the front of this thing and we’re not even like thing like okay how do we fully optimize the back end of this but we have to have the messaging right. I think that’s key and we’re going to get into a little bit of pay-per-click stuff here because he gave us some numbers there and he’s kind of feeling like it’s not working, why isn’t it working and we have some thoughts there as well.

But again if you’re running pay-per-click or any type of even just organic traffic and people are finding you, if it’s not messaged properly, I guess if the targeting isn’t done correctly your conversions will be lower. It’s that simple. Like if I’m selling a garlic press but I know that people search for, I don’t know I’m just going to kind of throw something out there but let’s just say…

[00:12:55] Chris: Garlic crusher

[00:12:57] Scott: Yeah, a garlic crusher that may work but if I’m like, well you know what gets a ton of traffic is a garlic not even a garlic, maybe it’s a shovel of some kind for gardening but yet it has to do with you know something like that and I’m like it gets a ton of traffic. If I can get in front of those people, I might be able to sell my garlic press. The thing is, yes you’re going to maybe get in front of eyeballs, but those eyeballs don’t really need a garlic press. They need a shovel to garden outside or something like that. Does that make sense or was that a terrible example?

[00:13:30] Chris: No, I’m just thinking about shovelfuls of garlic and that makes me hungry. No I think it does and Scott, what you’re getting out there is, again you don’t want to be generic. You want to call out to your audience and you did an episode a while back with one of my good friends Joel and do you happen to know that number off the top of your head? I’m just going to put you on the spot.

[00:13:48] Scott: Yeah, you just terribly put me on the spot there.

[00:13:51] Chris: We’ll find that and we’ll link that up in the show notes guys and you guys talked a lot about this. You have to talk directly to your customer and you can do that through text and you can do that through images and you need to do that through both in order to maximize your conversions. And when you’re generic, you will appeal to some people who understand that it is the same thing. But most people are looking for that instant connection. They want to see the image and know what it is and if they can’t make the connection between your image and the title they’re not going to click or they’re going to click and they’re not going to buy. Does that make sense?

[00:14:24] Scott: Yes. That makes total sense. It’s again, it’s that message. It’s the targeting. Everyone wants to… It’s kind of going back to the Google days of like, okay I want to rank my website, you can rank your website for all of these random keywords that might not even be related but you’re getting traffic and you might get a small percentage like you might get one percent of people that might be interested but it’s just, it’s bad traffic. It’s just like it’s not targeted.

Like it’s the same thing here. We want to be targeted because then that’ll also makes our conversion better and if our conversions better, then our pay-per-click numbers go down and we have better costs and all of that stuff and we get rich better. All of those things start to happen and I think a lot of what Alex is struggling with right now is due to poor messaging and poor targeting. That’s what I think right off you know right off the bat. That’s the first thing that I would look at. Now, let’s address the images really quickly.

[00:15:20] Scott: The images number one, don’t really tell me exactly what it’s used for. We already kind of mentioned that but the images to me do not look professional. No offense Alex, but they do not look professional. I would not see that image in a catalogue of best buy or you know I don’t know home kitchen gardens or whatever magazine like I would not see like that in there. It looks really, really almost cookie cutter. Man, I’m really having a tough time here today.

[00:15:55] Chris: Also let’s go back and address home kitchens magazine. I like that.

[00:16:01] Scott: That’s a nice one. Isn’t it?

[00:16:02] Chris: Not home and garden, home and garden. I think it’s something, is what you’re going for.

[00:16:04] Scott: Yeah, I was.

[00:16:05] Chris: Will go at home kitchens magazines. That’s kind of a thing in his primary image here at least on the one variation that I’m looking at kind of contradicts what the product is supposed to be and Alex you’ll kind of get what we’re talking about but everybody else won’t because they’re not looking at what we’re looking at. But Scott I see it along the left hand side of the image here.

That kind of throws me off because it’s supposed to be used to take care of a problem and the problem is still in the image. If you have no idea what I’m talking about we’ll just move on. Actually Scott, the supporting images I think are better than the primary image. Like images four, five and six look a little better, they’re more lifestyle. But the images of the product by itself not in a lifestyle setting I think are lacking.

[00:17:03] Scott: Yes. Yeah, I agree.

[00:17:04] Chris: Does that make sense?

[00:17:05] Scott: Yeah, yeah. No I agree but I just think that the images and I talked to Jarett on a past episode as well and I mean he spends a lot of time and a lot of well not even a ton of money really if you break it down he does like six products into one session which it might be an eight hour session and it cost him like 1500 bucks but he’s getting 6 products done and they have you know models come in and they might even like rent a kitchen for the day or you know or whatever or a certain room like you know they’re going to spend and invest in those images because they are going to give you their perceived value in that product.

And if I’ve seen that image alongside some of the other ones that we’re seeing when you go and look for these, it’s just clearly amateur versus professional. So that would be one expense I would definitely invest in. I would definitely do that. I think that it’s well worth the money and the time to have killer images. I truly do and I know I’m going to get the question well where do you get them done? Jared talks about he hired a local photographer in his area and now because he’s got that connection that’s where he goes every single time and he just waits till he has two or three or four maybe even six products that he’s going to do and he does more.

[00:18:26] Scott: He has a lot of SKU’s, a lot of variations, so that’s why he might have one product but then maybe three variations of each or something like that but I definitely think the images need to be enhanced here. I think they need to be better. I think you need to take a little bit of time and do that and then I think the messaging and the targeting needs to be dialled in. I think those are two things right off the bat that I would do. What else Chris?

[00:18:53] Chris: Yeah and just to go back to the targeting for a minute you mentioned a couple ways and I’ll Segway this in into where we’re going. You mentioned a couple of ways that he can kind of drill that down. The first thing that I would suggest is to take a look again at, basically pretend you’re doing product research again on this market. See which keywords generate the most sales and the most consistent sales.

So take a look at that Jungle Scout screenshot. Type in the main keywords in your in your niche and take a look at those Jungle Scout screenshots, see not only which ones have the most gross sales but which ones seem to bring up the most consistent results. So the guy in the number one spot is selling the most, the guy in the number two spot is selling like the second most. If you see those results all jumbled around, a lot of times that tells you that that’s not the main way that people are describing that product. Does that make sense Scott?

[00:19:41] Scott: Yeah, that makes total sense and I’m glad you brought that up because that’s so important. Like if you’re not seeing them in sequential order when you search for that keyword it means that like Chris said there’s they’re probably having other keywords that are bringing the sales. So that’s definitely something to look at and to be aware of. All right, I know I want to keep this at our 30 minute mark because this is kind of like our live hot seats that we do at our live events which I probably should bring up.

I should have brought that up in the beginning of the episode Chris but I got so excited to jump in here and start digging in but you and I are going to be doing a live workshop in the near future actually and depending on when this airs and when you are listening to this. If you’re listening to this six months later than after it airs and well it’s probably not going to be happening but we are doing other live events. So if you want more information about one of our live events where we do hot seats or we do critiquing or we do actual workshopping where we sit down and help you build like an email list and all of that stuff, that’s actually what we’re going to be teaching here coming up.

[00:20:47] Scott: Head over to theamazingseller.com/live and you can see  all of the past live events that we’ve done and the workshops and all of that stuff and any information will be there. So if you’re interested in hanging out with us at a live event definitely go to theamazingseller.com/live and you can get all the details there. I’m excited about the one coming up Chris because that’s going to be more of a hands on, let’s kind of build your email list and get that thing ready to rock and roll as soon as we leave that day. So I’m excited about that.

[00:21:19] Chris: That one’s going to be a lot of fun. I have a feeling. You know we always have a lot of fun when we get together but that one specifically I think is going to be a really interesting experience for us.

[00:21:29] Scott: Yeah, I totally agree and I’m excited. It’s going to be in North Carolina which is my home or my neck of the woods. So that’s going to be, that’s going to be kind of fun but let’s go ahead now and transition into the second part of this because I knew that we were going to eventually go here because while it was something that we were going to bring up but he already gave us more information so can you read what he’s been doing with sponsored product ads, pay-per-click.

[00:21:55] Chris: Absolutely.

[00:21:56] Scott: Can you read what he had wrote here to it us and we can kind of break it down, give some advice and then we can wrap this up?

[00:22:02] Chris: So Alex said, “I started PPC right away with an automatic campaign. I put a $5 bid on a $20 budget,” so he’s going the Dom Sugar root of ‘just get me the data baby.’

[00:22:12] Scott:  Yep, that’s aggressive.

[00:22:13] Chris: “I gradually increased the budget for several days. I was getting two to four sales a day but the ACOS was bad.” Guys your first few days running PPC even your first few weeks you can expect the ACOS to be bad. Then he says, “I increased daily budget dramatically to a $150 and then $200 the next day. I was having seven to eight sales a day but again the ACOS was terrible.” So any time you scale a budget like that, if you already have a bad ACOS, yes you’re going to sell more because you’re going to show up for more stuff for longer times in the day but it’s also going to spend on the things you don’t necessarily want to spend on. So scaling your budget with a bad ACOS is going to tend to result in that guys.

He said, “I cut the bid back to $204 and the budget back to $150. The ACOS seemed to get a little bit better but it was still over 100%. I decided it was time to stop losing money and I had enough of impressions and clicks accumulated for some stats. Many keywords from the auto campaign were showing up as well. I changed the bid on my auto campaign to 76 cents and transferred all relevant keywords to a manual campaign inside of ignite.

My daily spend fell to $10 and ACOS is now closer to 24%. I included all sales to calculate ACOS for now but I’m getting one sale a day and actually Amazon doesn’t show these sales in campaign manager so they’re probably organic which means my PPC isn’t bringing me many if any sales. I’m attaching a few screenshots of my PPC spent.”

So it sounds like he started to do somethings to start to refine that PPC but the thing that you guys need to keep in mind is, the sponsored product ads up front are almost always going to perform not as well or poorly compared to how they will over time. Especially if you start off with something like the automatic campaign and Scott you and I used to suggest that and we’ve since found a little bit of a better way to do that.

[00:24:07] Chris: You can get some results a little faster by spending a little bit less money actually and if you guys want to find out a lot more about that you can go to theamazingseller.com/ppc and we have like six hours’ worth of content there I think that you get a dive through. So we won’t dive into all the nitty gritty details on those things right now but the biggest thing for me is he uses the term keywords and that always sticks out to me because in PPC we want to make sure that we’re optimizing for search terms, not for keywords.

[00:24:38] Scott: Why don’t you talk about that really quickly though. Just for people that are just tuning in, they haven’t been through any of the pay-per-click training that we’ve done. Keyword versus search term. What does that mean?

[00:24:49] Chris: Keywords, we like to think of those as seeds. We’re telling Amazon we might you know, this might be something that works for us. And when Amazon starts to run your ad, they run it on what’s called a search term which is what the customer is actually typing in. The keyword triggers it to show up, the search term is what the customer is typing in. I don’t care why it shows up, I just care that it shows up. Does that make sense?

[00:25:11] Scott:  Exactly. Yeah, yeah.

[00:25:12] Chris: And so the search term is what we need to be optimizing for. So Alex make sure you’re optimizing for the search term and not for the keyword just to kind of get started. The other thing that I would do is, you know you mentioned you moved some things around, I think he said he moved the manual, the keywords from the auto to the manual but he didn’t mention what match type he’s using.

So this is the other thing, you have three different match types in PPC, you have broad which basically means it will run for anything that ever contains any of those words. You have phrase which is whatever words back to back and then you have exact which is only exactly what you typed in. Does that make sense as a kind of a high level overview?

[00:25:55] Scott:  Yep.

[00:25:56] Chris: When you start to see things that are working, Amazon kind of by default especially in that auto campaign is going to run everything as broad. So you want to refine that down and use it as phrase or exact once you’ve seen things that are starting to work.

[00:26:09] Scott: But it’s going to be a little while before you do that. I just want let people to understand that. Like yes he’s got some data which is great but a lot of times people think they have enough data and they really don’t. And what we mean is like they don’t have enough impressions or they don’t have enough clicks and they don’t have enough sales. The one thing that I want to bring up and I think it’s going to kind of come back to what we were talking about before but like I would love to see how this would convert if our images were better and if our targeting was better. Because I think you could instantly see a difference just by improving those two things even with your pay-per-click.

I think the pay per click didn’t perform well because yes you might have got impressions, yes you might have got clicks but you didn’t get those sales and that could be because the images when they got there they were like I don’t know. It looks like maybe something that I was going to buy on like eBay. You know I mean? Like it just doesn’t look that quality and that perceived value that I would think. So that would be one thing because in the thumbnail you might not be able to tell but once you get into the listing and you see that full size image and then if you have your images that are big enough which I think his are you can do a roll over and you can see the quality, it’s just, they might back out.

It’s kind of we call that abandoned cart. It’s like they’re going to go in, there going to be ready and then they’re like, “I don’t think so.” You know, that’s my thought. So with all this being said, like everything you said, like yes we have to refine this, we have to get the data, all that stuff but if we were to improve the front end of this, we’d probably see better results with our ACOS and our data on the other end.

[00:27:46] Chris: And that’s kind of exactly where I was going with the PPC conversation, like okay, he’s clearly spending the money which means he’s getting the clicks. Scott you and I have gone through this in the past. There’s three like sticking points in PPC. The first is, am I getting impressions? If you’re not getting impressions, you need to raise your bid. He’s clearly getting impressions because he’s also getting sticking point. Number two, which is clicks. Am I getting impressions, am I getting clicks? And then the third one is, am I getting sales? So he’s getting lots of clicks, he’s getting lots of impressions but he’s not getting any sales, so it’s a listing optimization issue.

It’s the same thing we see on the organic side. So the other way that you can use this data Alex is the same way that we were talking about, looking at your competitors, scrolling down on that listing and looking at the people who didn’t buy this thing after looking at it but bought this one which is on both of your listings. You can use PPC data exactly the same way. What are your customers calling this thing and by calling this thing they’re clicking on it in an ad. So what are the search terms that they’re using when they’re describing this? Are they describing it differently than how you’re describing it? Because that connection and I mentioned this earlier, the connection between the image and the title and the expectation of your potential customer is what creates that conversion. Does that make sense?

[00:29:04] Scott:  Yeah.

[00:29:05] Chris: So if your customer goes, “Ooh that’s the thing that I want,” based on the image and then they get to the listing and they see that it’s a garlic shovel and not a garlic press, they’re even though it might be a shovel that also presses garlic, they lose that connection in their mind and they’re going to abandon the cart and look for something that more closely meets their expectations. So you have to make it very obvious that it is the thing that they’re looking for and by using the customer search terms data, you can start to understand that, you can reshoot your images to set that expectation, you can redraft your title and your bullets to match that expectation and you’re going to see conversions increase by all of those things.

You’re going to see your PPC perform better but you’re also going to see better organic sales because you’re going to show up for the most relevant search terms on Amazon, on the organic side and when people click through to your listing they’re actually going to then purchase which creates, you know relevancy in the eyes of Amazon, which moves you up that organic search rank and makes everybody happy because it creates more sales.

[00:30:10] Scott: Yeah, it makes total sense and like this is pretty clear as far as like what we’ve seen and now kind of going through and digging through everything. Now it doesn’t mean it’s a sure thing but there’s definitely, definitely room for improvement here all the way around. And I don’t think that the product is the issue. I don’t think it’s a bad product. It looks not good quality, it looks you know it looks nice, it’s just, it doesn’t look as far as the images, they don’t look polished and the messaging is off and like Chris said if you took some of those search terms that people are actually searching for and then you started to tailor your messaging towards those, well now you can really start to drive traffic using those and then from there you’re going to naturally have better conversions which then will also help you rank and it just starts to kind take on a life of its own.

And that’s the big thing that I just want to you know people to take away. Not just Alex here, but anyone is that there’s usually reasons why something isn’t moving. Now there’s a lot of different reasons.  I mean if it’s seasonal, that could be a reason you know or maybe you just didn’t do good product research and you thought you were going to get 800 sales a month but there’s really only a hundred because depth isn’t there or the demand. So we’ve kind of ruled out some of these things and I think as you can see Chris and I going through this we’re kind of like ruling things out.

[00:31:38] Scott: Our first step was like, look at product research as if we were going to sell this product and then what are the numbers, what’s the depth, what’s the demand? Okay clearly there’s not enough volume here. We can definitely move on to the next step and then we just kind of work ourselves through it. If that was a problem there, then that might be a decision to make, well how much more energy do I put into this thing? Do I try to liquidate it and then bail on it and go to the next product or is there a way that I can pivot on this thing or you know add something additional to it to make it more desirable? Does that make sense Chris?

[00:32:09] Chris: It does indeed.

[00:32:10] Scott: Okay, cool. We’re going to wrap this up. That was a lot of great, I think great content because we’re diving through this thing live like we’re digging in to the listing and hopefully you’ve got value from this even if you are again thinking to yourself well my images are awesome. Well there’s other parts of it that we just went through that might not be awesome. That could be tweaked especially messaging. I think as far as like the targeting on whoever you’re targeting you got to make sure that that’s aligned or everything else doesn’t work. So Chris is there anything you want to wrap up with before we officially wrap up this hot seat session?

[00:32:48] Chris: Yeah and it’s one thing that I think a lot of people get stuck on and I went on a tear about this recently on a Facebook live that we did. But we can’t get attached to our own listings and it’s one of those things and I don’t think Alex suffers from this because he raised his hand and ask for help but it’s something that I see a lot not just in the Amazon community Scott but just in ecommerce in general.

We really like our stuff and we get attached to our products and we get attached to you know kind of our first draft of things and something that we all need to remember is that testing against our assumptions is always going to result in a better end result and so by doing some small tweaks, even if we are selling what we think we should be selling a day. Even if we’re not in Alex’s situation, making some of these tweaks, revisiting our listing to make sure that we’re doing all the things Scott that you and I just talked about, can lead us to some other ideas that we may be able to test against our current assumptions and increase the number of sales that were getting. Does that make sense?

[00:33:50] Scott: Yeah, it makes total sense and I just pulled up his screenshot that he sent as well as the sales that he’s generated and this is for just about two and a half weeks that he gave me the screenshot and he’s had 47 sales. He’s generated $1,362.53. You know and he’s selling it for $28 to $29. So again you’re learning through this process and I want to really, really stress that. That you know the education that Alex is getting through this process to me is like awesome because you are, you’re never going to get this unless you start going through this process.

Now maybe you don’t go with a thousand units to get this education maybe you go with 250, maybe you go with 300. There’s ways that you can minimize the amount of risk and still get the education and who knows maybe land a product that could do steady sales. I think Alex can get this thing going. I think he can get to where he’s selling probably 10 a day, I do.

It might be a price thing too, he might be able to adjust his price a little bit. Maybe he could again play around with the price. Once you get to that point now where you’re testing, you had everything else kind of dialled in, you might then want to play with the price. Maybe you start you know playing around with maybe $3 less and then you do a split test on that, so there’s a whole bunch of other things you can do. We didn’t even really mention pricing but I think there’s other things that need to be done before we even talk about the pricing before we even entertain that. I just wanted to share…

[00:35:22] Chris: Scott…

[00:35:23] Scott: Yeah go ahead.

[00:35:24] Chris: One last thing because we can never actually finish without saying one last thing at least five times. Something you and I touched on briefly and Alex something you may want to look at, you have two different listings here and honestly it should be a parent-child type of a situation. Your product lends itself to a variation and just quickly looking at your category, you should be able to do that.

One other suggestion that I would have for him is to combine those into a single listing that has the variations on it that may help as well increase those conversions just a little bit, because he is working with different colours and that tends to work. You also get to combine those reviews then, so people get a little bit of a better idea of what they’re looking at.

[00:36:10] Scott: Yeah, no. I love it. I did want to share though, Alex when I had responded back to him. I said hey do you mind if Chris and I jump on and do a hot seat about this and he messaged me back and he said where was it here he says, “So you want me to be an example of how not to do Amazon business? LOL.” He said, “Sure I don’t mind let’s do this.” And I just want to say Alex, this is not about how not to do business, it’s how to learn how to do business and I want anyone else out there that’s thinking to themselves wow I screwed up on this one. You know what? Screw ups are your best lesson because you’re going to learn through this process and you know the biggest thing is you know you kind of reached out for help whether it’s through us because we can’t do this for everyone. I mean I have a lot of people that request these but we do have the Facebook group. And it doesn’t mean you have to give your listing away.

You can just talk about like numbers or you know maybe about your pay-per-click or I mean we have a whole group now devoted to just sponsored product ads. So you know there’s a whole bunch of different resources that we’re making available to you inside the TAS community. That can be found at  theamazingseller.com/fb for the TAS community and help each other over there and share what you’re doing and I’m telling you like there’s a huge amount of value in helping each other and being able to kind of walk through the process like we just did. Sometimes it’s just walking through the process or walking through where you are and kind of dissecting each part each element of your listing or a process that you’re running currently right now.

So I just wanted to say Alex you’re doing a great job because you’re up there, you’re launched and you’re trying to figure it out that’s the key and anyone else that’s listening don’t get down on yourself. Stay positive about it because you’re actually learning through this process. Understand that, yes you might not be making a ton of money on it right now but if you stick with it then you have a better chance than quitting. The people that give up are the ones that aren’t going to be able to succeed. So I just want to stress that.

[00:38:18] Scott: So Chris, I think that’s going to wrap up this hot seat. This was awesome. As usual. I did want to remind anyone, the show notes for this episode if you want to download them, the transcripts, the notes, any links that we mentioned can be found at theamazingseller.com/347 and I did want to remind you guys about our live workshop that we’re going to be doing depending on when you listen to this.

If you wanted to spend an entire day with us, talking about this Amazon business stuff and the one that we’re doing here in the future is going to be more about how to build your own launch list and we’re actually going to build it with you. Head over to theamazingseller.com/live and you can get all of the information on any upcoming live event there. We’re also doing an unofficial meet up in North Carolina, the day before the live event, so that’s totally free. If you wanted to come down shake hands and just meet each other in person, we’re going to be doing that in North Carolina and all the details will be found on that page as well. So Chris I think that’s going to wrap it up man. Are we cool?

[00:39:22] Chris: Let’s wrap it up.

[00:39:24] Scott: All right let’s do it. Guys remember, I’m here for you, I believe in you and I’m rooting for you. But you have to, you have to… Come on say it with me, say it loud, say it proud, Chris is going to do it with me

[00:39:35] Chris: What?

[00:39:36] Scott: On the count of three. On the count of three. Are you ready Chris? Are you ready?

[00:39:38] Chris: I am.

[00:39:39] Scott: All right one, two, three, “Take action.” Have an awesome amazing day guys and I’ll see you right back here on the next episode.

And my wife and I just talked about that the other day on our walk, we were like wow can you imagine like back when well gosh it’s been not even a year and we’re like imagine that doesn’t make sense imagine. Chris why am I saying imagine. I think we got to start that again Chris. I think we got to start this again. Alright let’s do it again. You’re ready?

[00:40:18] Chris: Let’s do it.

[00:40:19] Scott: Maybe we’ll use that as an outtake. All right, here we go. I don’t even know where my thoughts are today. All right here we go.

[END]

Click Here to Download Transcript <<

Click Here to Download Transcript <<

…I’m going to give you guys a recap of a recent coaching call, that I was on and I’m going to explain how this call even happened because it wasn’t something that I had planned. But I’m going to be talking with a seller, a fairly new seller about 18 months in, doing about $200,000 a year, has a bunch of SKU’s already, but he’s struggling with growth. And let me just tell you how this whole thing even happened.

You guys may remember, I had a guest on, Jamie Masters on episode 333. If you haven’t listened to that episode, you definitely should. She’s a really smart lady and she’s awesome. She’s a friend of mine, also a mentor and a coach of mine as well and I interviewed her on her biggest takeaways after interviewing millionaires and billionaires. That’s what her show is all about, her podcast and she talks about the top three millionaire mind hacks and how to apply them to yourself. But the cool thing is, is she reached out to me and she’s like, “Scott I do this high level retreat every year for six figure business owners and I’ve got someone that’s coming in that needs help with Amazon stuff and I was wondering if you would give me an hour of your time and spend with this guy and his name is Christian.”

And I said, “Well of course, you know I mean, you’ve done so much for me and I would definitely do that and I just love talking about this anyway so definitely let’s schedule this thing.” So she had him create a video to kind of give me a little bit of a recap of like where he is in this journey and who he is as a person and family and all that stuff and the crazy thing is, is he’s actually a listener of the show. And he’s been a long time listener, a fan, all of that, so it really made it even that much more special and it really got me fired up to sit down and talk to Christian.

[00:02:00] Scott: And that’s exactly what we did. We sat down for an hour, maybe even a little bit longer than an hour and we talked all about his business, where he is in life and how we can take him from where he is now and move him to where he wants to go. And I’m going to give you guys a recap of what that looks like and what we talked about. Remember, he’s a he’s a seller right now on Amazon only and he’s doing $200,000 a year and he thinks he can definitely grow that but he’s having some sticking points, he’s having some questions in his mind, like what should I do here, what shouldn’t I do and all of those things. So that’s what we’re going to dig into.

Now before we jump into this recap that I’m going to do here, I’ve got some notes here that I’m going to walk through with you just so I can remember what we talked about. I made notes so I could kind of guide you through what we talked about, which I think you’re going to find really interesting, but the show notes for this episode can be found at theamazingseller.com/348, all the transcripts as usual will be there, any links will be linked up there as well.

The other thing I wanted to do really quickly and it’s going to really go hand in hand what we talk about today, a lot of the recap, is we actually are doing a live TAS event and meet up in North Carolina at the end of June. Third week in June, I don’t have the exact date yet but it’s looking like the third week in June. If you are interested in doing an unofficial meet up with us, a TAS meet up in North Carolina, it’s going to be around the Charlotte area, head over to theamazingseller.com/live and you can see all the details there. Where it’s going to be, we’ll update that page. If you’re listening to this after June of 2017, you can still go there and any upcoming live dates will be there.

But the other part of this, is we’re going to have a second day that we’re going to be hanging out. We’re going to be doing a workshop, a lot of you reached out to me and said, Scott what are we going to do the next TAS Breakthrough Live? Well this is going to be like a breakthrough live, but we’re going to custom tailor it towards building your launch list and how to actually build that funnel out and we’re going to take one day with 15 people and we are going to teach it and then we’re going to actually build it and then we’re going to actually help you build it.

[00:04:08] Scott: Now this will be a paid event. Only 15 people though, so if you’re interested in that, it’s going to go hand in hand with what we talk about in today’s podcast episode. But if you want more information about that, about hanging out with us at this live event, whether it’s the unofficial part of it where we’re just going to do a TAS meet up or if you want to actually be one of those 15 people in that room the next day building out your own launch list, then you’re going to want to head over to theamazingseller.com/live.

Get on that early notification list and then this way here we’ll notify you as soon as we open that up for that small intimate workshop which we’re going to be doing like I said live in North Carolina and all the details will be found on that page. I’m super excited about that, it’s going to be a lot of fun, it’s going to be in my neck of the woods and it’s going to be a lot of fun. So definitely go check that out if you’re interested. So guys let’s dive into this recap of this coaching call that I recently did.

Now the guy’s name is Christian. Great guy, family guy, I can totally relate to his story. He’s married, he has I believe it was a son and young, not that old I think under five and again just wants to enjoy more time with his family. Now he’s currently running a full time marketing agency, where he’s building other people’s businesses or helping to build other people’s businesses, not in Amazon, just how to build their business. Like social media stuff or website stuff like a whole bunch of different things.

So he’s got a full time agency, he’s running VA’s, all of that stuff. So he’s a busy guy, busy guy. But he’s working for clients. He’s doing client work which is fine, but he’s telling me like some days are eight, 10 hours. Sometimes 12 hours, depending on the project. So I want to be able to build out this Amazon business and allow that to take some of the strain off, of this other business.

[00:06:01] Scott: So his main thing for me that he asked me, was like, “All right Scott like you’re like exactly like where I was in a sense where maybe you had your photography business and you were working a ton for clients and the only time that you would have a break is when you weren’t working but then the business wasn’t running so no income was coming in and I want to move into the direction where I can have the Amazon business running which it’s doing fairly well right now and I want to grow that and scale that so I could possibly not even have the agency.

So my first question was like, can you still run the agency even though you have an Amazon business?” Some of you may have a business right now that you’re running, maybe brick and mortar and you think to yourself that you want to get out of that business and you just want to solely focus on an Amazon business or an ecommerce business. And the first question I would always ask anyone is like, do you have to give up that other business or can you hire other people to run that business and then you have two streams of revenue coming in because we don’t want to just bank on one stream of revenue.

You guys heard me talk about that time and time again, you want to have more than one revenue stream coming in. Whether that’s an Amazon channel or whether that’s an eBay channel or whether that’s your own ecommerce store or maybe it is Jet or whatever other platforms or other revenue streams coming in. So don’t just think that I mean it has to be like a totally separate, separate business. That would be cool because now we’re not relying on that ecommerce business, but if you take and go out there and find other channels to sell your products on, that’s like the easiest way to diversify and have other income streams coming into that same business. But if there’s a way for you to run that advertising agency or that marketing agency and still run the Amazon, like he said, he’s like the Amazon business doesn’t take me a ton of time.

[00:07:51] Scott: It’s just right now in order to bring it to that next level, I am going to have to make that decision because the time that I’m spending eight to 10, 12 hours a day over here, I could be building this over here and you may be you know thinking that same thing whether you’re working a job or if you’re working for yourself in another business you’re saying to yourself, “If I could focus…” And I’ve said this, I’ve had this conversation with myself. “If I could do this 100% of the time man what I could do. Like I could scale this thing like crazy. And then obviously you get to that point maybe and then you’re like, you’re not putting in as much energy as you thought you would because well it’s nice to only have to work two hours a day.

And I’ve had that and I’ve had this sense readjust my thoughts not as of recently but you when I was starting like when I left my construction job and went over and started working for myself as a photographer that was awesome. I’m like, “Oh my gosh, like I got up this morning, I made my coffee, I made my breakfast, got the kids off to school, I didn’t have to report to work, it was awesome. It was amazing and I’m going to work and I would sit down and I would do a whole bunch of work,” but then as we started to settle in, I started to see that I was slacking off a little bit. And you don’t want to do that either, but you got to have a balance. But that’s not really his problem here.

Christian was really asking like, “So what should I do there?” His thoughts were you know yes I could probably still do the agency but I’m not 100% sure if I want to. But it’s still an option, you still have those connections, you could probably outsource, you could pick and choose what jobs you do, you don’t have to do them all. You know if you’re doing web design and then you’re doing social media and then you’re doing funnel builds and you’re doing all these different things, you can maybe just focus on one thing that doesn’t take as much time. But you can still have that revenue stream coming in. So that was my first recommendation to Christian.

The other thing that he said was, “I’m only selling on Amazon.com right now.” Now let me just back up a little bit. He currently has about 18 to 20 SKU’s right now. Which is pretty awesome and I think he said he’s got variations with those so maybe he’s got six products.

[00:09:58] Scott: I don’t know the exact. I’ve kind of forget. I probably should have wrote that down. But let’s just say he has eight or six products but then with variations off of that, which brings him to about 18 to 20 SKU’s. But now these are in the same market. Now just remember that. These are in the same market. Now my first question or his question to me was like, “I’m already selling on amazon.com. It’s doing fairly well but I’m not selling in any other marketplaces with these products.” And I’m like, “Okay, that’s one thing we can think about. Now, so what are you asking should I sell International, should I sell in my own ecommerce store, like what should I do.”

Well I said, “What’s the easiest thing for you to do right now?” And he was like, “Well, probably just sell more of my product on Amazon.com because I don’t feel like I’m done. I’ve got other products I can launch.” And I’m like, “Okay well then that’s probably what we want to do. We want to continually relaunch products.” And that’s always been the case for anyone that has products that can keep being served to a market, why not continually just expand out that. My good friend Dom Sugar always says, if you can go wide in that market, you’ve got a much better chance of being stable because you’re now you’re not just going deep on one product. So that’s really, really important to understand.

But my other thing was, okay if you go International you have to figure out all of those things, which doesn’t mean that you can’t do it, you totally can do it and if you’re in another country and you’re selling in U.S right now, you might want to just start you know selling in your country. That’d be the first and the easiest thing to do. My other thing was okay, you have these products, they’re selling decently and let me just kind of go back to his products range between I think $20 and $30. Somewhere in that range, but he also brought up, he’s got one product right now that he just launched because he’s seen it was selling, he thought he could sell it, he thought it could make a good margin, it’s a more expensive product, it’s a bigger product, so it’s going to cost more money. He did that and it’s selling.

[00:12:00] Scott: It’s selling well. Okay. But the problem is, it’s taking a lot of his capital. So a lot of the money… So figure this, if you’re selling a product for 100 bucks, you’re probably paying $25 to $30 to source that product and you’re having a lot less of them shipped in depending because their oversized or they’re bigger and now you got less in inventory and then in stock and now you have to worry about, “Well if I don’t get rid of these things in time, I have to pay long term storage fee,” and that can add up because it’s a bigger unit. So you have all of these other things you know that you’re considering.

So my question to him was, okay well you have this one product, it’s not related to your current brand that has 18 to 20 SKU’s. You’re telling me that you can launch 10 more SKU’s in that brand but you have this one over here that kind of sells, maybe you sell one or two a day. It’s still selling and you’re making a good margin on that but in order for you to buy another 300 or 500 units, you got to take a lot of capital and invest in that and it’s a slower moving product where you got two sales a day let’s say but it’s still selling. So his question to me actually was should I just pause that for right now and take that money because I could probably launch three or four products in that other brand with the money that I’m investing in this other product.

So my first thought was, well if you want to continue to sell that product, maybe you want to find an investor. Maybe you want to find someone that you know or someone that would be willing to say you know what I’ll take 20% of whatever margin you make and I’ll just lend you the money. Like that’ll be an easy one. So don’t not sell it. Still sell it but you’re going to have to find out outsource funding because you’re one brand, you don’t want to have to pay for the other brand necessarily, if that makes sense. Hopefully it does. And he kind of said it to himself, he’s like and he said it to me he’s like, “If I took that money that $25 or $30 per unit that I’m investing in that one product.

[00:14:00] Scott: If I could take that money and launch three more products, I think I could sell more in my own brand.” I’m like, “Well you almost answered your own question. That’s definitely what you should be doing. It’s not saying you can’t go and sell the other product but you have to, as far as money goes, you have to find an investor of some kind or some other channel of money other than taking the profits out of the one and bringing over the other one. If you keep going at that pace, you’re always just going to be taking the one, making the money and then funding the other and you don’t want to do that.” So that was something to definitely think about and I think he’s definitely on the page of saying, “I think I’m going to take that money and invest it in three more products in the current brand.”

So the other question I had for him was, “Do you have an email list in your current brand or is everything basically being done through Amazon.com?” And he said, “I have no brand right now currently. I mean I have a brand name but I don’t really have a store yet. I don’t have an email list. I haven’t done any of that stuff. I haven’t done any Facebook ads. I haven’t done anything.” And the whole thing that Jamie wants at these retreats is for them to have something to focus on and then accomplish before they leave the retreat. That’s what she wants them to do.

So you’re going to hear here in a second how he totally took my advice and he’s running with it and which is really awesome. But he doesn’t have an email list, he doesn’t really have any brand kind of established yet even with 18 products and he also said that his market would definitely be hanging around Facebook groups or Facebook pages and I’m like okay. So now we can do exactly what I’m saying as far as building an email list and then communicating with that email list, having a weekly email go out to them, giving them tips, advice, you’re being the reporter. You are going to be the reporter of your market.

[00:16:01] Scott: This way here, you don’t have to create all the content. You just have to go find the content, point people to the content and then in a PS on that email you can say, “Oh by the way we’re having a 25% off sale this Friday,” or this weekend or something like that. If you guys are listening to this and you are in a similar place as Christian, you definitely want to be building that email list like almost from scratch. Like right from the start, because there’s so much power and leverage in that email list that now number one you’re not depending on Amazon 10%.

You’re controlling the traffic and you can boost any listing you want, obviously if the people want your product which I think they will. You’re going to be able to do that whenever you want, so now you can play around with your ranking. You can go ahead start getting sales. The more sales you get obviously the more reviews are going to come in because you’re going to probably have your sequence in place on the back end to communicate with your audience and then through the email you’re going to be able to follow up with those people and see how their experiences. You can probably do surveys to that list and ask them about your next product that you’re going to be launching. Would you guys like this in red, blue or yellow? Or what texture do you guys think is the best one? Or what one do you think that your spouse would like? Or whatever your market is, you can custom tailor that message to let them give you feedback.

You can also do that on a Facebook page or a Facebook group. There is so much power in being able to reach out to your customers and ask their feedback and letting them see what you’re potentially going to be selling or launching and then from there let them be part of the process. I can’t stress that enough. That’s a huge, huge tip there guys. Let them tell you what they want and then give it to them. Like it’s that simple. But you can’t do it unless you have an email list. So I said to him, I said, “Here’s the deal. Do you have a product right now that you believe that people will maybe put their name in for a discount?”

[00:18:03] Scott: He’s like, “Yeah they might, they might do that.” I’m like, “All right, how much does your product sell for?” He’s like, “$20 to $30.” I’m like, “All right. If I’m going to give up away a product for free, probably not going to be that like crazy where people are going to go nuts over it if you just give away that product. But if you can do some type of giveaway related to your product,” now pay attention here. “If you can do a giveaway that’s related to your product and maybe even having that bundle where your product is included so they’re aware of your product now we’re onto something.”

So what I said the Christian, I was like, “You have to find something that’s related to your product but big.” I don’t mean big in size. What I mean is, in value. Like you want something that’s valued over $100, preferably up to $200. Now you are going to be buying these products. These are going to be physical products that you’re going to buy and have in your possession. But now you’re going to set up a way for them to enter their name and email address so this way here they have a chance to win this grand prize, this giveaway, this bundle of products that are related to your product and maybe your product being included.

So now we’re on to something. Now I also get this question from people they say, “Well Scott, isn’t that just going to attract people that want stuff for free?” And the answer is yeah. Some people will on that list that you’re building, will be people that are just looking to get that thing for free. But here’s the deal. If you target it correctly, meaning if you target people that are in your market, you’re getting people to raise their hand in your market that say, “I’m interested in this stuff.” I always go back to the fishing example. If you’re selling fishing gear, if you’re selling a tackle box and you want to get people that are interested in fishing and I’m saying like competitive fishing, let’s say that people that do bass tournaments and stuff like that.

[00:20:01] Scott: Well there’s certain you know fishing rods that, that market is like they’re loving right now. Like there could be a magazine that has like five different you know fishing pole shootout or something. They have that for cameras and stuff like that and you find this like really, really like popular or very in demand fishing rod and then that’s going to be part of your giveaway. Maybe you pay 100 bucks for it and then you add in a fishing vest for bass fisherman and then maybe you throw in a net and then maybe you throw in your tackle box. And now you have this big value of $200 or $250 and now people are going to raise their hand because they want to win that thing because they’re in that market because you targeted those people in that market.

Now a lot of people say, “Okay so what does that do for me really? Like you know what happens? Like do I get to sell them stuff?” And the answer is yeah you can but the thing is we’re just trying to attract the right people so they can give us feedback on future products or if they don’t win this contest we can follow up with a special offer, “Hey sorry you didn’t win thanks so much for entering but we’re going to still give you something because you entered, we really appreciate you taking the time, here’s 25% off our tackle box. It’s available for the next 24 hours,” or something like that. You can do that and then from there you’re going to pick up some sales.

Now the other cool thing is when you’re ready to launch your product, you can then just follow up with them with something that you’re doing here. “Hey we’re really excited about releasing our brand new updated triple 3,000 tackle box,” or whatever and that’s a terrible name but you get what I’m saying, “and we want to do something special for you because you’re an avid bass fisherman and I want to make sure that you guys have all the right tools and I want you guys to celebrate with us as we release this brand new tackle box. So here’s your special code and go over and grab it.

[00:22:00] Scott: You’ve got 24 hours and then the coupon will expire, have an awesome day.” Something really simple but again these people raise their hand because they are into bass fishing. We know that because they raised their hand when they entered their name and email to win the grand prize of the fishing kit or the fishing bundle. You get what I’m saying? So that’s what I told Christian. I said listen, you have to come up with that thing. He’s like, “I totally know what I could give away already.” And I’m like, “Cool that’s step one and step two is how are you going to collect the email addresses.” Well you have to have a landing page. What’s a landing page? A landing page is a place where people land when you send them there. A web page of some kind and then they enter their name and email address.

Now I’m not going to go into all of the steps here but if you want to see how everything is put together we actually did a workshop where we actually share this with you and you can find that by going over to theamazingseller.com/buildlist and it actually walks you through that. I’ll actually show you a case study and all of that stuff there too. Again, just to save time here because I want to be able to finish up on this recap. Definitely go check that out but it gives you all of the components needed to make this work and it’s really not that big of a deal. You need a landing page, which is a way for you to capture name and email addresses. You need to find the traffic. The traffic is basically found the way that I like to go find it is on either Facebook or Instagram but it depends on your market.

It could be over on Pinterest but for the most part Facebook is going to be a great starting point because you can almost find anyone you want there depending on your market. But then once you find that traffic, you need to direct that traffic to a landing page which captures their name and email address. You need to give them the ability to be able to share that because that’s the other power of this component, is people want to share it because if they share it they get extra credits and then if they get extra credits they get more chances to win so it helps feed itself from external traffic without you even having to pay for it.

[00:24:01] Scott: You almost have to just get it started with the traffic and that traffic can be found like I said, on Facebook. Facebook ads are super easy to get going and again you can just go find a group or a page that is related to your market and target that page or that fan page. That’s the easiest way to get started. The other part of that is once you and again not to get too technical but once you get some email addresses, like let’s say you get 250 email addresses which shouldn’t take you that long, you can then upload those into Facebook ads and then you can go ahead and start finding lookalike audiences and then that can expand that 250 emails to 1000, to 5000, to 10,000 to 100,000 and then that way there you can start to really drill down into your market. Again not to get too technical here but you there’s a ton that you can do and again at that workshop that we that we did we actually walk through all of those steps.

But this was the main thing that I said to Christian and he was excited. He’s like, “This makes total sense. It’s something I could totally do right now.” And I’m like, “So think about this, you have 18 to 20 SKU’s right now. All you need to do is get people to see these 18 to 20 SKU’s. How do you get them to see it? Well you go on Amazon, you make sure that you’ve optimized well. Make sure that you’re running your sponsored product ads which I believe he said too. He could probably improve on what he’s doing there. So that was another step in this.

But basically don’t overthink this thing. Look and see what’s the low hanging fruit, number one. So you already currently have stuff on Amazon, you’re selling pretty well.” I think he said he’s netting like $7,500 a month already. Netting, not revenue, like netting and he said he wants to get to about $10,000. Well that’s going to be easy especially if now he can drive his own external traffic to these listings because these listings probably aren’t getting all the sales that they could get if he had more ranking to help him or more sales to help him rank and then get more organic sales on Amazon. See the outside stuff can feed the algorithm inside of Amazon.

[00:26:06] Scott: So that’s why his best bet is to really start to build that email list and then when he wants to have a little bit of a boost maybe a listing is starting to drop in ranking and he wants to bump it up, all he’s got to do is run a little flash sale to his list and he’ll probably get increased sales which then will increase his ranking. And then it’ll also help his reviews and it just kind of starts to feed itself. So that’s the biggest thing that I gave him and he was like ready, set, go. Like let’s do this and he gave me an update after we had this which he loved it, he was excited he couldn’t wait to get off and start implementing some of this stuff and that’s what he’s done at the retreat.

He sent me screenshots of his landing page that he already created. He already went and found his targeting as far as his Facebook ads and he said I’m ready to go. So I can’t wait to hear how this works for him. I think his market definitely will land itself to this type of email list building, so this way here in the future he can, like I said, drive people not just to his listings to buy stuff but also to engage with his audience and learn more about the audience, so he can launch more products successfully. And then eventually he can start running his own traffic to his own ecommerce store, in his own sales funnel because… The other thing I asked him there was another part of this call.

Are there products that someone would buy one and want to buy one of another thing or is there a product that you have that you could buy more than one? Maybe they would buy it you know because they could use three of them or maybe it’s because they want to buy them as gifts whatever it is. If you have a product that you know that will land itself to that, I mean that’s a no-brainer. Because now think about this for a second. Let’s say we send an email out to our email list and we let them know that we’re going to do something crazy. We’re going to do a free plus shipping offer.

[00:27:59] Scott: So now we’re going to give them one of those products away maybe for free plus shipping, we wouldn’t sell it through Amazon now. We could still fulfil it through Amazon, but we’re not going to sell it through Amazon and then we would have a page setup that would say, “Just pay for shipping and we’ll send you one of these for free.” Now why the heck would you do that? Well on the back end of that, we can say, “Hey before you go we’ve got a special offer for you. Seeing that we’re going to be shipping you one of these, let us throw two more in there and we’ll just charge you $29.95 and normally they sell for $39.95.” Instantly we’ve just generate sales, we didn’t pay Amazon commissions, okay or the advertising fee. Because we did it through our own sales funnel. You see where I’m going with this?

There’s so many things that we can do externally now that we have it. Whether want to boost our BSR and our ranking in Amazon we can do it. If we want to start directing our own sales once we’ve already gotten them basically off of Amazon or maybe we didn’t even get them off of Amazon, maybe we just did it through our giveaway. Now we’re able to then direct them to our own sales channel. Our own sales funnel. So that’s what I said to Christian. He’s all in. He’s already got it being built as we speak and that’s what he was working on for that retreat but that’s basically what we went over. And again and that’s what Jamie really taught me, is like there’s so much more that we can do but let’s not focus on all of that stuff.

What’s the thing we can do right now that’s going to move the needle? Like what can we do right now that’s going to move the needle for you? Whether it’s sales, whether it’s you know optimization, whether it is how you grow more products, like whatever it is, you have to figure out what that one thing is that you can do like right now and double down on it. That’s what you have to do and that’s what I said to Christian. That’s what he had to do so again this is just a recap of what we talked about and I get fired up about this stuff because it’s so powerful to be able to do that and when you are just selling on Amazon and I told him this…

[00:30:03] Scott: I said, “Listen, if you’re thinking about leaving your job and all you are is relying on Amazon right now that’s risky. Just understand that. If you’re going to do that, you might want to have some cash in the bank because if something happens and Amazon shuts you down, you’re screwed. Like you’re out of luck. And you’re going to figure out how to get back on Amazon or else you’re not going to get your sales back and then you’re going to be playing catch-up. If we can start to do this now slowly, then we have options, then we have other revenue streams coming in. Not just Amazon, okay.” And the other thing that I said to him, I said, “Hey are you selling ebay.com.” And he said, “Well I was,” and then something happened with his account and he couldn’t sell anymore so he just kind of like let it sit and he just didn’t even try to get it reinstated for whatever reason.

So I just said well that’s another low hanging fruit. Like we probably want to do that. We probably want to get those products listed on eBay even if you only get a couple of sales a day per product, that’s going to add up and that’s another revenue stream. So anyway guys hopefully this has given you a little bit of an insight as what it looks like when you’re at a certain level like $200,000 a year and it’s funny because I’ve got people that I’ve coached that they’re doing $100,000 a month and they still haven’t built their own email list. They’re still relying on just Amazon and they know it’s risky.

I had one guy say, “Scott I’m hooked on the Amazon crack, like the drugs, like that’s what I’m hooked on. It’s so easy to get comfortable because once the sales start flowing in, you just expect that they’re going to continue to flow in, until something bad happens and then it’s like oh my gosh and then you can’t focus because everything is just turned upside down,” and we don’t want that. Like I don’t want that for you. I don’t want that for me. I don’t want that for anyone. So definitely this is something I think everyone should be focusing on and even though to some of you it may seem overwhelming it’s really not.

[00:32:01] Scott: Once you figure out like what the offer is, what the giveaway thing is, that’s like one strategy. You don’t have to use that strategy. If you have a product that sells for $75 and you want to do a free offer on that and just start collecting emails on that then do it. That’s fine or if you want to even do like 50% off your item and start building an email list that way. Like so many people say, “Scott why wouldn’t I want to drive like Facebook ad traffic directly to my Amazon listing?” And my answer is, “Well number one, if they don’t buy you’re hurting your conversion rate.” That’s number one.

Number two, that’s a great opportunity for you to snag an email address because now you’re able to intercept it and say I’m going to give you this 50% off in exchange for your email address and then most people that’s like common like if you want to get, if you go to Applebee’s website or I don’t know another chain restaurant. They’re going to give you like a free appetizer if you put your name and email address in. Why do they do that? So they can communicate you with future deals. Like we’re all kind of conditioned for that, so you can do that too. There’s 100 different ways you can do it, but you have to figure out which one’s going to work best for you.

I’ve found that the giveaway of a bundle related though to your product, that to me has been the best as far as getting a large volume of email addresses and then again not to get too technical here but there’s so much we can do with those that even if they don’t convert to sales, we can take those email addresses, we can upload those inside of Facebook and then we can start to retarget those people. So imagine having a billboard sign in front of all of those people that we know that are interested in our market and if they didn’t buy our one product they might buy our other product and we can continually swap out different offers to those people on a daily basis and the only time I’m going to pay for that is when they click on that ad. I’m not going to pay for it every time it’s shown and displayed an impression as we call it. I’m only going to pay if they click on it.

[00:33:55] Scott: So guys I can continue to go on this because there’s so much that you can do but I just wanted to give you guys a general recap of what I talked about with Christian and that entire conversation and what it looked like and I thought it would be beneficial to you guys and helpful and hopefully it has and I also want to do you know thank Jamie for allowing me to do that. It was really fun and Christian was an awesome guy. I feel like I know him really well now and he’s been a listener of this show ever since the beginning and I just, I love it. I mean someone listening to the show, taking some of the advice and then applying it and taking action and now doing at $200,000 and growing a year and 18 SKU’s up to 20 SKU’s whatever he’s got  and he’s going to be launching more.

So just really feels awesome to be able to be a part of this and I just want to thank everyone in the community for allowing me to continue to do this. I generally love it and I care about you guys. I really truly do. I want to see you guys succeed. So that’s pretty much going to wrap up this episode. I want to remind you I’m the show notes. If you want to download the transcripts or the show notes to this episode head over to theamazingseller.com/348 and the other reminder is if you want to attend one of our live events, one of our live workshops, the next one we’re going to be doing, is going to be building this exact same thing with you and alongside you. So if you’re interested in that head over to theamazingseller.com/live and you can get all the details there on that workshop and upcoming workshops that we’re doing plus any unofficial meetups that we do.

So get on that early notification list and you’ll be notified when we announced that stuff. All right guys, so that’s it, that’s going to wrap it up. Remember, I’m here for you, I believe in you and I am rooting for you. But you have to, you have to… Come on say it with me, say it loud, say it proud, “Take action.” Have an awesome amazing day and I’ll see you right back here on the next episode.

[END]

Click Here to Download Transcript <<

Click Here to Download Transcript <<

…if you want to ask one of your questions and have it aired on an upcoming show possibly, well head over to theamazingseller.com/ask and do that. Just leave your first name, where you’re tuning in from and a brief question and I’ll do my best to answer it here on the show. I love hearing from you guys. So definitely head over there and do that.

Now today we’re going to be talking about bundles, we’re going to be talking about testing products and ungating and we’re going to talk about Trump’s import tax. Oh my gosh, we’re going to get into politics. Not really but we’re going to touch on that as well. Now I want to remind you guys about the show notes. You can find them by heading over to theamazingseller.com/349 as always, the transcripts will be there for you, show notes, any links that we mention will be dropped in those show notes. So definitely go check those out. I just want to say guys, like I’m getting so many people in the Facebook group that are just reporting as far as like their journey, as far as like what’s going on, like their ups, their downs and I love it and I want to really kind of highlight one here right now.

So I think it’s really important and the one thing I want to highlight, you guys know on Fridays I generally give you guys like what’s on my mind, kind of like a thought or maybe a phrase or something that’s kind of top of mind for me or something that’s just resonating with me for that week. Well this one here has to do with milestones. I want you guys to really think about this. I want you to maybe even go back to when you started this journey or maybe any other journey because I think it’s important to go back in time a little bit and see where you started and where you are now.

[00:02:03] Scott: A lot of times we don’t look back at where we started. We just kind of look at where we are in the present and we don’t reflect back on the things that really got us there and the lessons learned through there. So I want you to remember where you started maybe even start to journal it right now, like maybe today is the day or maybe you know what it was like when you first started and maybe the things that got you to where you are today even though you might not be where you want to be yet.

There’s still milestones, ways for you to celebrate but also ways for you to reflect and learn from each of those different parts in the journey. So what I want to do here real quick, real quick before we jump into today’s live questions is give a little shout out to one of our TAS’ers. And that TAS’er is Lee Winters. So Lee, I just want to say thanks so much for posting inside of The Amazing Seller Facebook group and this is exactly what he did here and I love this because he’s reflecting and he’s also not getting down on himself and he’s just moving forward.

And he looks at this as a milestone and really, really sweet and simple he writes, “Exactly 60 days since my first Amazon sale.” So he’s saying okay my first sale was 60 days ago and he says one milestone at a time and he shows a screenshot and that screenshot gives the 30 day window as far as like what he’s done in the past 30 days. So basically the screenshot has today’s earnings. It’s $154.89, 11 units. Seven days was $1,468.98, 102 units and then 15 days was $,3054.83, 217 units and then 30 days was $5,011.32, 368 units. So number one let’s give Lee a round of applause. That was an awesome job and thank you so much for posting that because I think people need to see this.

[00:03:59] Scott: Like there’s not going to be all of these numbers all the time of people saying, well I just did $25,000 last month or I just did $100,000 last month. Like it’s funny, I was doing a periscope the other day and someone on there said, “Scott I love it how you know you’re not one of those guys that goes out there and just you know talks about the millions or talks about you know the hundred thousand dollar months and all of that stuff and having all these people on. People a lot of times like to hear stories like this because it shows progress but it’s more obtainable. It’s more real like that’s why I always talk about the 10 x 10 x 1 and that is if you guys are brand new to the podcast you don’t know what that is but that just basically means where you’re shooting for $100 per day.

Like starting there and then growing from there and you can see Lee has done exactly that. I mean he’s on his way like but he’s also not getting down on himself and he’s also reflecting on what he’s done here and a bunch of people jumped in and said well done, keep learning, keep pushing forward, it seems as though you are on the right track. So just a lot of great support inside of that group. So if you guys are not part of our Facebook community for TAS definitely go over and say hello and just look around. I mean I think you’re going to learn a ton just from going there and if you have any issues or any problems with whatever you’re struggling with at that time just go to the search bar inside of that Facebook group and type in what you’re struggling with.

Whether it’s sourcing, whether it’s shipping, maybe it’s product research and you’ll get a bunch, a ton of other threads that have already been started and you can go ahead and start looking through those. So definitely wanted to just highlight the Facebook group because it’s amazing and TAS’ers out there, that you guys are awesome. And I just wanted to let you guys know I appreciate you guys for being so supportive to each other inside of that Facebook group. The other thing I should probably mention, some of you may or may not know but we generally do I say we, myself, Chris Shaffer and Dom Sugar, we generally do pretty much we’ve been doing it for the past few months every Friday at 2 o’clock p.m. eastern time.

[00:06:06] Scott: We’re doing a Facebook Live, where we’re answering the questions in the TAS community. So if you are not a part of that or maybe you didn’t even know about that, definitely make sure that you’re connected inside of our Facebook community but then also make sure that you’re around at 2 o’clock p.m. eastern time and you can get on there live, you can ask us questions. It’s a way again for us to connect with you and help you wherever you are in your journey at that moment.  So just definitely wanted to remind you of that. And the last thing I did want to say before we jump into today’s live questions that I’m going to be answering here. I want to quickly give you a little update on our North Carolina meetup.

Some of you have asked in the past, “Scott when are you going to do in North Carolina. I know that’s close to where you are now. I’m in South Carolina but I’m about 30 minutes to Charlotte.” So we decided to do an unofficial meet up in North Carolina and we’re also going to do a private workshop. So we’re going to do Friday night, will be like an unofficial meetup where anyone is invited and from there we’ll go ahead hang out for three, four hours generally that’s what they’ve been and we get to hang out, we get to meet each other, we get to talk, shop a little bit and it’s just a really cool way for us to connect in this community.

So that’s what we’re going to be doing there and then we also decided to do a really, really small intimate workshop focused on building your external email list, your launch list and really we’re not just going to be showing the strategy which we are going to do. We’re going to show that. We’re also going to build one in front of you and we’re going to build yours with you. So again, it’s going to be very, very small and the reason is, is because we’re going to be more hands on here than we have in the past but it’s only going to be for 15 people.

So if you’re interested, head over to theamazingseller.com/live and whether you just want to come to the unofficial meet up or if you want to come to the small workshop that we’re doing, definitely go there, get all the all the details, get on the early notification list and depending on when you’re listening to this, it may have already wrapped up but you can still get on the early notification list for whenever we do other workshops.

[00:08:07] Scott: And if this works out, I might do other ones here more frequently in this area because obviously it’s easier for me and then this way here we can reach more people. So definitely go check that out. So guys, I’m pumped up. I can’t wait to jump into these questions. Let’s kick this baby off. What do you say? Let’s go ahead and listen to today’s first question and I’ll give you my answer.

[INTERVIEWS]

[00:08:27] Phillip: Hey Scott. My name is Phillip and I’m from Italy. I want to thank you first of all for all the help and useful info’s and advices that you give us and I couldn’t imagine this starting with the private label without your podcast. I have found product which has few listings which are very similar to each other. Most of them are well done and I believe that the only way to enter this market is by differentiating myself by using another material which no one else is using and by entering the market directly with a bundle with other five accessories which would be something like a starter kit and no one else is selling a bundle for this main product.

The problem with the bundle is that my price would be double or more than competitors for every possible main keyword and I fear this would prevent me to reach the first pages. Do you think I should start small with just the main product in a different material or give more value and uniqueness from the beginning with the bundle? Thank you very much again and I hope you can answer. Bye.

[00:09:57] Scott: Hey Phillip. Thank you so much for the question all the way from Italy. That is awesome. So thank you so much and I’m a big fan of Italy. I would love to visit one day and have some authentic Italian food that would be amazing. I’m a big Italian food lover. Recently I’ve been staying away from the pasta and the chicken parms because well you know trying to stay in shape and stuff but definitely on a cheat day I would definitely be going for that chicken parm. Maybe a little pasta that’d be really good. Okay, now that I’m really hungry, let’s go ahead and let’s address your question here.

And what you’re basically asking I believe is you want to differentiate yourself with bundling because there’s two products that you think go really well together and if you put those two together then you’ll stand out and not a lot of people are really doing that right now. But the fear is now you’re going to be priced more so people that are searching for one or the other, you’re going to be more expensive even though you’re bundled. I get it. I understand that. So here’s my thought.

Number one if you’re going to bundle something you probably should just list them individually too. Now when you do that though it’s going to add a little bit more complexity to it, meaning you would have to source three different products in a sense. Because you’re going to have individual ones, so that’s you know, one of each. So now you’re you have another SKU. So you have two SKU’s now and then if you bundle it that’s got to be in one package. So technically you have three SKU’s. So there’s advantages to that as well but then this way here you can still compete on the singles but you now have the bundle which then people would buy because if they look at the two individual and you would price it that way too. You would price it where yours let’s say it’s $9.95 for the one $9.95 for the other, I’m sorry let’s do $14.95 for each and then your bundle is $19.95. So it’s a no-brainer to do that.

[00:12:01] Scott: The other cool thing about doing that is, if you have people coming in searching for the one item, you’re going to show up. You almost use those lower price point products as your lead in offer. And if you bring people in there and then they’re exposed to the bundle, again it’s a no brainer. They’re going to look at it and go, well that makes like so much sense. Like I need both of them and I would buy both of them but I’m going to individually buy one for more. If I spend an extra five bucks I get both. No brainer. But like you said, if you go at this thing with just putting the bundle together first you can try it but it might be harder to get things going.

The other cool thing about this though, I keep going back to the positive things here, is now you also get to have more search terms and keywords around your listings because you to have two different types of products. So I guess what I’m saying is you got to look at the competition that’s there right now for the singles. Can you compete with the singles even though you might not be like really super different or can you do something to each of those products to make them a little bit unique by not going out and doing new molds and all of that stuff? Like are there things you can do there and is too competitive to go singly with each of those products and could you even compete there if you wanted to.

So I know I’m throwing a lot of questions at you but these are things that you need to think about and there’s things that I can’t really decide unless I had this stuff in front of me with the numbers, the depth, the demand and the history and all that stuff that I’ve talked about before, which is in episode 189. So if you guys want to know more about like depth, demand and stuff and how I look at the history, that’s episode 189. You definitely want to check that out because that’ll give you some insight as far as how to kind of reverse engineer those numbers and see what it’s done in the past and the depth and all of that stuff, but I think you’re on the right track.

[00:13:59] Scott: Now let me ask you this. Again I’m asking you. You’re not going to give me the answer but you can ask yourself this question because this is what I’d be asking you if we were having that cup of coffee is, if you were to take your bundle and let’s say you put the two together, are you still able to make that a really attractive offer? So meaning if they were to buy one you know one product of each, let’s say it is $15 each and you’re going to come in and do a bundle for $22.95 and you’re still going to make a good margin on that. That’s a no brainer too because then you can come in to the market a little bit higher because now when people are searching for that single item, you’re going to be displayed hopefully on page one if you do a lot of promotion for it, if you do a lot of sponsored product ads and stuff like that.

Think about this now. If you have, if you have that bundle and let’s say it’s selling for $22.95 and your competitors are selling theirs for $15 or maybe even $19.97 that would be great if they were because now you would come in at $22.95 for two of them. If you started running sponsored product ads, to each of those products, so when someone is searching for the single thing, they’re going to see your bundle for just $22.95 or even $24.95 and theirs is $19.95. Again you‘re showing up to the right people and you know we talk a lot about that. About messaging or finding the right message for your audience or the right target and by you going after the garlic press but actually people that search for the garlic press also search for the garlic bag.

And now when they search for the garlic press they see that bundle in front of them and it’s really a great deal because they’re like well I buy the garlic press for $19.95. I can get the garlic press and the garlic bag which the garlic bag normally is $12.95. I could buy those two together for $24.95 or something like that you get what I’m saying. So those are some things to think about, to consider. Hopefully this has been helpful or anyone else out there thinking about bundling. Bundling is a great way to differentiate yourself, but you have to look at exactly what you’re seeing here and making sure that you’re not going to be over pricing yourself to where no one will even want it because it’s too expensive.

[00:16:08] Scott: You have to make it attractive and you have to make it where it’s a no-brainer and by doing that yet you really need to go over your costs and go over what you think the max is going to be and if you can do this as a test run that would be my first bit of advice. If you could do like you know 50 or 100 and then just bundle them together. My good friend Rich Kibble has done this in the past really well. Where he took two popular products, merged them together and he really did that in the beginning by having two items shipped to his house, put them in a poly bag or a box and then shipped them in. So he did it by hand just to really validate the market and the concept that it was going to work and then it did and then he had the manufacturers start to package those two together. So hopefully that helped, let’s go ahead and listen to the next question and I’ll give you my answer.

[00:16:55] Ramiel: Hi Scott. This is Ramiel from Ohio. First of all, thank you so much for helping and inspiring so many of us every day. You’re truly doing an amazing job. So I have recently started listening to your podcast and I’m in the product research phase right now. Can you please talk about the process of getting ungated, sample ordering and testing the market first and then ordering the big order like 500 units from Alibaba for a gated category. I’m struggling with the sequence of these three steps.

So if you just order the samples to test the market, is it possible to sell it without getting and ungated? If not then how do I get ungated just with the samples? Does Alibaba suppliers provide invoices for samples? Would Amazon ungate me with such a small quantity like five units? I would appreciate if you can shed some light on this topic. Again thanks for all the help. Have a nice day.

[00:18:01] Scott: Hey Ramiel, thank you so much for the question and this is a good question. I like this question because well it can be challenging to get ungated with a handful of your product. Because we need to split that up into three invoices as of right now to get ungated that is one of the pieces that you need to do, to get ungated. The other option though, that you have and there’s a couple things that you can do here and I’ll kind of go through these with you right now. But the first thing is maybe what you do, is you look for a different category that fits what you’re selling without it being gated. It has to make sense though. I wouldn’t say to do this just to kind of game the system so you can get your product up and running.

I would try to find something that’s a related category that makes sense but yet might not need to be ungated at this point. And then if you start to see that you can get sales because now even though you’re not in that category, you can still promote that product, you can still get sales. It’s just pay-per-click will be more expensive and things like that. The ranking might be a little bit more challenging but again it’ll still get validated so that would be one option. The other option would be to buy more than five units. I know you’re trying to do this probably low cost and you’re probably trying to do it with you know just five units.

I mean that’s really a small order. I would say if you’re going to try to get ungated, you’re going to want to split like maybe 50 up into you know three batches or maybe 60 and you do 20, 20 and 20 or something like that and this way here you have those three invoices. If you guys are brand new and you don’t know the process of getting ungated, we did a full episode of this in episode 212. So theamazingseller.com/212 and we go through that myself and Chris Shaffer and give you a detailed kind of a way to kind of go through this process step by step and you guys can check that out. If you’re interested, I’ll also link that up in the show notes.

[00:20:01] Scott: But that’s like my recommendation, like if you’re going to go into a category that’s gated, you are going to have to go through that process or you’re going to have to find another category that isn’t gated that you can still sell that product in that makes sense. The other little bit of advice would be well maybe you hold off on this one and you start with another category that’s not gated with a different product. Maybe one that’s related but then you know if you wanted to later, you can then take the two products and help them sell each other by you know showing up this frequently bought together and all of those things. So this way here or if you’re doing like an open brand concept, it doesn’t really matter.

You can just say okay on this category I’m going to hold off on right now. I’m going to go over here to this category because I had another product over here that I was thinking about launching, that’s not related to this one and that’s what we call our open brand concept. It’s where you’re launching different types of products under one umbrella brand. Meaning something like a Walmart or a target they are the umbrella of the brand and then they sell sub-brands underneath their main brand.

So yes they have sometimes their own PL products. Like Target has their own brand. Walmart has their own brand you know usually the grocery stores have their own brands but I’m not talking about that. I’m saying like you know let’s say the grocery store sells Tide but you know the name of the you know or Walmart they sell Tide detergent, well that’s a sub-brand obviously underneath. It’s a brand that they sell under their umbrella, if that makes sense. Hopefully it does. That’s kind of the open brand concept.

But again depending on what you’re doing is going to decide what you can do here. But hopefully that’s giving you a little bit of direction there on what to do. If you have not went through episode 212, I strongly recommend that you do that because that is the process and it might be more challenging if you have only a handful of products to do this you’re probably going to need to order more and then have your supplier break that up into different batches.

[00:22:02] Scott: So this way here you can show three different invoices because that is part of the process. So thanks again for the question. I appreciate it and good luck to you. Keep me posted and let’s go ahead and listen to one more quick question. We’ll wrap this baby up. Let you get on with your weekend. We’ll call it a day. What do you say? Let’s do it.

[00:22:17] Jake: Hey Scott. My name is Jake Bass. I’m calling you from my morning commute to work right now. I just wanted to call in and let you know that I appreciate everything that you do. So does the TAS community, we are all grateful for the information that you provide us. I’ve been a long time listener. I finally sourced a product and it’s being shipped into the United States from China right now.

My main question is, with the current political situation that the United States is in and the possible trade deals being changed or modified are you concerned at all about sourcing from China and if so are you looking into alternative options about sourcing from the United States? I’m sure everybody pretty much inside of the TAS community would love to source from the United States but pricing is a valid concern and even selection.

So I wanted to see if you had any recommendations or if that was in your future plans and if so what the steps you’re planning on taking to source from the United States is going to be? If you could answer my question, I would be very grateful and keep on pressing on man. I love your show and I’m going to continue listening to it. Have a good one Scott.

[00:23:48] Scott: Hey Jake, thank you so much for the question on the morning commute. Man, the morning commute. I hope that it’s a decent commute for you and I’m glad I’m able to help you with that journey by putting out some of this content for you to consume while you’re going to work. I’m not sure if you love your job. Some people do still love their job. I know myself, it was really hard for me and they didn’t have podcasts and stuff when I was getting into the online world or even my brick and mortar business in the beginning. Like podcasts weren’t even really a thing.

So I can’t even imagine how distracted in a sense I would be going to work and thinking about, I have to go to work, focus on what I’m hired to do but then in the back of my mind I got all of these other things I’m thinking about that I want to work on as soon as I get out of here. Like the minute I get out of here, like I got to start working on this stuff and yeah. So anyway, hopefully it’s a good drive. Hopefully you still enjoy your job a little and yeah so I just wanted to kind of throw that out there. But hey thanks so much for the question.

Okay, so you know I’ve had this question when the whole you know politics things started and the whole election was happening and all of that stuff and the big thing was Trump is going to be slapping importers with this humongous tax and all of that stuff and what are you going to do. Like what are you going to do Scott? Are you just going to stop now? Are you going to stop private labelling? Are you going to stop you know physical products or what are you going to do?

Are you going to stop? And the answer is no. I’m not going to stop. Am I really thinking that far down the line? Not really. So many things can change. If we sit here and we think about everything that could happen, we’ll never do anything. Never. So I’m still looking at products in China. I’m still sourcing products in China. I’m still selling products that we get from China and if that happens it happens you know. And then we’ll deal with it you know.

[00:25:56] Scott: The worst case is, we’re going to pay more money for our products. We better have good margins and then we’ll probably have to then consider U.S suppliers and say can we work with them at that point maybe we have a good volume going that we say to a U.S supplier, “Listen  we order 5,000 units a month of these. What you can do for us?” Maybe it works out to our favor. I don’t know. But I will say this. If all we do is sit here and think about what’s going to happen or what could happen. I mean heck, I mean Amazon just came out with another update about their reviews. Well I’m sorry, not about reviews, about follow ups but they did reviews a little while back that was a big thing.

And now all of a sudden it’s like with the follow emails. Like they’re giving the customer a way for them to stop getting your emails. Oh no, now what do we do? Do we stop? Is it over? Are we able to you know still you know reach our customers some way? Yeah there’s still ways, you know. You’re still going to follow up as of right now you can still send emails you know through your Amazon account as you always could. It’s just they have the option to opt out which I don’t think is a bad thing. Because if you’re hitting them over the head every day with an email to buy another product. I actually had someone reach out to me and say Scott can I email through Amazon, all of my past customers and let them know of a new product that I have coming out, and the answer is no. Like that’s what they’re saying.

If you’re following up with them on a recent purchase and you’re making sure that they are happy and that they’re satisfied and you’re giving them extra value, they’re not going to care. I mean they’re just not going to. Yeah you’re going to get handful that are like you know what, I don’t want to hear from this company. I just bought from you. I don’t want to keep hearing from… You’re just going to get those cranky people and that’s okay. We don’t want those people on our list anyway. So it’s just a way for them to be able to unsubscribe. So it’s not a big deal.  And I know that’s not your question. But what I’m trying to say is, there’s a lot of changes that are going to happen. There’s more changes coming guys. I’m telling you that right now.

[00:28:00] Scott: Amazon is going to do other changes as more sellers come in, as they get bigger you know as they get bigger, as they get more traffic, as things happen. As things evolve. They’re going to change things and guess what Google is going to change things too. They’re going to, they’re going to change the way that they rank websites. Guess what? Facebook, they’re going to change their ad platform again and they’re going to change how we get to communicate with people on Facebook and guess what, Instagram is going to change. Like there’s always going to be changes.

The other thing that’s going to happen here, I’ll tell you this right now, I’m going to predict this. If you’re in a local area or your local area and there’s a coffee shop there, “Mom and Pop.” I can guarantee you that there’s going to be another coffee shop within probably five miles launched or opened and that person is going to be devastated because now they have competition. More competition. I mean I remember with my father’s business going back in the construction days where there was a Lowe’s that was getting ready to build about a mile down the road from us, one mile. Now you would say well okay, that’s just building supply materials. No they started offering installation services.

Oh my gosh, we had a meeting and we brought everyone in and we’re like we got to step up our game, we got to focus more on customer service, we got to offer lifetime warranty with free exchange and like all of these different things we started to panic. Because Lowes was coming in but you know what, it didn’t really hurt our business. If anything people came to us because they didn’t want to deal with a big major company. Yes some people did still. They went there because it was cheaper. But you always have people too that still want to get service. They still want to know who they’re communicating with. That’s just like our photography business. Like we could’ve grew that, bigger without myself and my wife being a part of you know the picture taking but then we would have lost the personal touch.

[00:30:01] Scott: You could have Sears, who I don’t even know if they still do photography but people would go there and get package that they would advertise, get a one pose but you get 100 different pictures in this little package for like 15 bucks. We were still selling ours for over $150 and we had people coming in every single day. So my point is this and I know that I’m kind of going off on a little bit of a tangent here but I think it’s necessary. Don’t sit there and think to yourself, I just heard something’s going to happen, so should I not do anything? The answer is, if you feel like you’re going to be thinking like this all the time and you can’t get past it then being an entrepreneur is not for you, period.

If you are going to be dwelling and thinking about this stuff day in and day out, it’s not the right business for you. But let me ask you this. Like you know, you’re driving to work right now maybe and you’re thinking to yourself, this is a slam dunk. I’m going to work. I’m going to get paid next week. You know how people have been let go at the end of that week. There’s been a lot of people that go to work that morning and they find out at the end of the day that they no longer have a job after the next two weeks or they’re downsizing. Like that’s happened all the time to people. It’s been happening for years. So there’s things that are going to happen.

This Trump thing I have no idea if it’s going to happen. Do you how many things it has to go through, how many channels it has to go through to get approved. Everyone thinks that Trump came in and all of a sudden everything he says he’s going to do is going to happen. We all know that that’s not the truth. He can just voice his opinion or he can say this is what I want to do start the bill and it’s got to be passed. It’s gotta be voted on like it’s not just his decision. He’s the driving force yes but it’s just him giving oh this is what I want to do and he’s going to get his team behind it but then it’s gotta be voted on by congress and you know whatever other channels it has to go through.

[00:32:02] Scott: But so many people think just because he said it, it’s going to happen. Now I’m not saying it’s not going to happen. It might happen and if it happens, it happens. Then I’ll deal with it. But I’m not worrying about dealing with something that I have no control over right now and I’m not going to stop doing what I’m doing, like it’s just not going to happen. So anyway sorry for the tangent. I think it was necessary and you know I just feel very strongly about change and pivoting and it’s been happening for me you know since I started out of high school working for my father and seeing all the changes in that business and then going into photography and then being in that business and seeing all the changes there and then building websites and getting them ranked and then Google change things and then we lose our rankings.

Like I’ve seen all this stuff happen. Facebook ads like I was running Facebook ads for my photography business and then they made changes and then all of a sudden was harder. Now all of a sudden what, you do you stop running ads? No. You just adapt. That’s it. You’re just adapting and pivoting and not thinking too, too far ahead because things are going to change. So you heard it here first. Things are going to change. And you’re going to have to adjust. It’s just the way it works. So guys I think that’s going to wrap it up.

I got a little fired up there at the end but I think it was necessary and I hope you guys got some value from that and hopefully it sets your mind at ease or it lets you say to yourself, maybe this isn’t for me and if that’s the case, I want to be that voice for you too to let you know that it’s not all rosy. Like there’s not always going to be this awesome part of the journey going to you know going through this entrepreneurship, it’s not.

Like there’s ups and downs through anything. You’ve always heard people say grass isn’t always greener on the other side of the fence and I believe that. Like you think it might be until you get there then you’re like you start complaining. I mean think about it, how many times have you done that. You’ve probably said the exact same thing. You’re like, man if I could just do that my life would be perfect and then you go ahead and you do it and you get and you’re like, you start complaining about that thing  and it just it’s just a matter of time.

[00:34:07] Scott: So just think about that. Every time you’re thinking about complaining, think about it for a second and ask yourself is it really worth complaining and are you thinking too far down the line. All right guys, so that is going to wrap up this episode. Remember the show notes can be found at theamazingseller.com/349 and you can get all the show notes, the transcripts, links that we talk about there and I just want to remind you guys about the milestone thing in the beginning that I talked about. Remember where you started. I think that’s important to remember. Remember where you started. Write it down today where you are and then look back at it three months, six months, nine months, a year and you’ll be amazed at what you’ve done.

Not just all of the good stuff you’ve done, yes that’s cool but you’re going to also see what you learn by going through some of these sticking points and I really truly believe that. So guys that’s it. That’s going to wrap it up. Remember as always, I’m here for you, I believe in you and I am rooting for you. But you have to, you have to… Come on, say it with me, say it loud, say it proud. If you’re in the car, if you’re on the run, say it out loud, “Take Action.” Have an awesome amazing day and I’ll see you right back here on the next episode.

[END]

Click Here to Download Transcript <<

Click Here to Download Transcript <<

…What? Episode 350! That is crazy. I can’t believe we made to episode 350. Last episode I talked about milestones, well this is one to celebrate. I need to give myself a high five. Way to go! That was kind of weird but this is awesome. We’re at episode 350 and I plan to continue and I just never would have imagined that we’d make it to 350 when I started episode number one.

I had no idea where this was going to lead and now we’re talking thousands of people that we reach every single episode and I want to thank you guys for making this possible and for sending in your questions on the Ask Scott sessions and being able to connect with you at the meet ups that we’ve had in the past or the live events.

I just want to say thank you so much, this has been an awesome rewarding journey so far for me to be able to reach you guys and help you guys in some small way and again it means a lot and here we are, episode 350. So what are we going to be talking about today? Today actually, I was thinking about I really wanted to address this because so many people are looking for the next new tactic or the hack or the silver bullet or the shiny object. Everyone wants to know the shortcut and the reason why I want to address this is actually I was on one of our private hangouts for our class and one of our students said, “Scott, when are you going to show us maybe a new tactic or a new strategy?”

I was like, “Wait a minute here, let’s timeout for a second. I want to go through where you are at right now. And have you done everything up to this point like why are you looking for new tactics and strategies unless you’ve mastered everything else that we’ve already covered?” He was like, “I understand now. Thank you for that.”

[00:02:00] Scott: Sometimes we want the new thing, the tactic, the hack because we want that short cut but I’m not here to give you shortcuts. Yes, I will give you a new strategy that I’m trying or that I’m playing around with or that someone that I’m working with is. Like that’s fine. Like a new split test, like split testing an image like, “Wow you’ll never believe what happened here. I was selling sunflower seeds and I had a bag showing or I had a picture of the bag and then the other one I spelled out seeds and it ended up converting better.” I got that one from Greg Mercer because in our split testing webinar that we did we actually went through that and that was one of the split tests.

Stuff like that is fine but some people are even trying to go like grey hat or black hat and for those of you that are brand new that you don’t know what that term means or that terminology means it means just really you’re trying to game the system and you’re trying to find a shortcut to get an advantage and a lot of times it’s a shortcut that will be short term but then also can get you banned. I’m not going to be covering any of those. At least in my eyes, I’m not going to be looking any grey hat, black hat type stuff.

What I do want to cover though is I want to cover the seven things that to me if you focus on these seven things, then you will always, always be growing. You’ll always be moving the needle. Really what I mean by that is really just growing as a business and you’re going to be learning through this process but you’re also going to be feeding Amazon and your own channel what it needs. That’s what I really want to go through. I want to go through like the winning formula. There’s like three things to the winning formula for me. Again we’re going to break these down into these seven things. The winning formula to me is good products.

[00:04:02] Scott: Obviously you’ve got to have a good product. If you don’t have a good product you’re going to market it and maybe you’ll get some sales but you’re going to get really bad reviews and stuff and then it’s going to tank. You’re going to do terrible. That’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about good product, serving a good market. That would be a little extension there as far as like, you probably should go after a good market but a good product. A good product that’s in demand, it’s got depth like all of that stuff which we’ll talk about. Optimization like that’s the other part of the winning formula because if your listing isn’t optimized then you can’t really do that well on Amazon.

We’re just talking about Amazon right now but I’m going to show you through these seven things that we’re going beyond Amazon and that’s really, like there’s so many different things that we can be focusing on but I want to bring you through these and then have you maybe even write these down or maybe you can go over the show notes page which is going to be easy, episode 350, theamazingseller.com/350 that’s an easy one to remember. That there will have these seven things that you can actually use and follow and maybe even like I said, have it as a cheat sheet and when you think to yourself, what is the new strategy?

What is the new tactic? What is the new technique? Look at each one of these and see where you can improve upon these. The winning formula, good product plus optimization plus sales. That’s the winning formula for Amazon but it’s also even if you’re off of Amazon. That’s the winning formula. The sales are going to naturally obviously bring in cash but then it’s also going to help you in a lot of cases like with ranking and reviews and feedback. It just feeds itself. So that’s what I want to do here. I want break down these seven so that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to go ahead and jump into these and like I said the show notes can be found at theamazingseller.com/350. You might want to download these. The transcripts will be there for you as well.

[00:06:01] Scott: Here’s what I want you to think about. I want you to master these seven things and you’re going to be way ahead of your competition. So let’s just get it rolling right now.

Number one it’s like we said, good products. Well, one skill that a lot of people will just, they’ll find their product or they think they found their product and then they move on and that’s fine but you should always be refining. You should always be mastering product research. Like that’s one skill that I think you can always get better at. You can always, always learn from going through product research. The way that you learn a lot of times is by doing the exercises. It’s doing the exercises over and over and over again. Like so many people say, “Scott I spent the weekend, I couldn’t find a product. What do I do?” You keep doing it.

You just keep doing it and it’s going to get better and better and you’re going to refine it and you might have something you think are winners and the next week you go and you look at it again and you’re like, “Eh, I don’t know because I just did this whole over here again and oh, I seen this one thing because I did what Scott said in episode 189 and basically I look at the depth, the demand, the history and it doesn’t check out.” You’re going to have your own system, your own set of filters but that’s a big one because you can get really, really good at product research, everything else becomes easier. It all starts there. It also goes into market research.

You might even want to take it a step further and look at it and go, okay, let me find the market and then after I find the market what products can I serve to that market. So that’s a great one. And it’s always like starting to learn and dig deeper into your market a great way is magazines. I talked about this on my workshops. Like go to your local bookstore and it’s going to be like a mile long rack of magazines. It’s insane on how many magazines are still being produced even though we’re in this digital world like people still like to pick up a magazine. Well, guess what? These magazines are loaded with products that are serving a market.

[00:08:03] Scott: So again like just understanding the market and then figuring out products rather than just going and saying, “I’m going to find that product.” I think that’s another one but again I’m saying it’s a skill. It’s something you’re going to be learning and getting better at every single time you do it. It’s not a set and forget I’m done, I did the product research, it’s over and now I’m moving on. That’s fine. You’re going to move on when you start to source and launch that product but you’re still never going to want to stop that. You’re always want to get actively flexing that muscle or those muscles I should say because there’s different parts of it that you’re going to be doing. So product research it’s a big one.

Just because you think that you’ve made it, you still need to be working on product research and market research. Like that should be like a steady diet like all the time even if you’re not necessarily even looking to launch a new product you still be actively doing that. So that’s one thing that I think everyone overlooks and they still should be mastering and I should probably mention we do a product research workshop. It’s totally free and depending on when you’re listening to this, there could be a replay up or we be doing an upcoming one so you can head over to theamazingseller.com/workshop and you can see when an upcoming one is there. We kind of break down all these different things for product research. So moving on, so the next thing.

Number two, the second thing is sourcing. So many people say, “Well Scott I went to Alibaba, I went to Aliexpress and I didn’t really have good luck or I can’t really find a good supplier.” Well you gotta dig deeper than that. You have to go and start building those relationships. It’s funny that I have a partner that I’m working with and they are actually building a personal relationship with one of our suppliers. Like literally on a personal level. They always talking about relationships. Like relationships. Like this is a supplier that’s a female and she’s having some guy trouble.

[00:10:04] Scott: They got talking about this stuff. So now there’s all of sudden this another level of trust. Like I’m not saying you have to do that but what I’m saying is the relationships that you are building in the sourcing will make it that much easier moving forward when you’re finding other products because even though they might not source it, they’ve got connections there because they are there. Don’t overlook again building the relationships in sourcing. You might even want to take a trip to China. That’s not on my list right now. Actually I spoke to a good friend of mine, Mike Jackness who I had on the podcast and great guy, building a really large brand, seven figure brand. It’s only two years old and he’s going over to China right now and I asked him.

I said, “Are you going there to find more products?” He goes, “No. I’m just going there to strengthen the relationships.” So he’s just going over there to strengthen the relationships with his suppliers and building out that relationship and maybe even networking. So once you do that and once you start to establish these relationships again when you have product ideas and that you want to find someone that might not even be selling on Alibaba or Aliexpress that’s how you do it. So again that’s part of again, mastering these different elements to build your business. So sourcing is a big one.

Three, optimization. This is thing number three. Now optimization, what do I mean by that? Well, optimization is your listing on Amazon or optimization could be your listing on your own website. And making it SEO friendly. So changing optimization for those of you that don’t know what that means. You can be starting to rank for keywords outside of Amazon, on your own platform or maybe you’re optimizing your Facebook ads or maybe you’re optimizing maybe one of your other social media channels.

[00:12:00] Scott: Like wherever you are optimization is another part that you can be optimizing on to move the needle. But let’s just talk about Amazon for a second. There’s so much that you can do with optimizing your listing and you can test things and you can split test things. Again, that’s your high level strategy. That’s your “hack”. That’s your hack like do a split test with two different images. You know how easy that is? Like literally just take two images and do an A/B split test and you can set that up very easily in Splitly. If you guys have not check out Splitly I recommend that you do.

I am an affiliate for it to be totally transparent but again I only promote products that I believe in but it’s a tool that I definitely think is really useful if you are at that stage. If you’re not at that stage don’t’ worry about it. We are talking about high level in a sense or really moving the needle like optimization is a big one. So images, doing keyword research on a regular basis and understanding by looking at some of your search term reports in pay-per-click or maybe you’re doing something using Scope on one of your competitor’s listings and you’re seeing what are more of the popular keywords so you can start to tailor your message towards that audience and towards that market. Optimization again, people want like, what’s the new hack?

What’s the new shortcut? These are shortcuts. These are ways that you can then move the needle but just make your stuff better but also get more skilled. When you’re building these assets and then you’re learning through this process you’re also building your skillset. When you learn optimization and when you start to go through all this stuff you’re going to be getting smarter and you’re going to be getting more information to then help you on your other products when you go launch them. Then it will become easier. So again, three is optimization. Don’t overlook optimization.

[00:14:02] Scott: I’m a big fan of not doing this. Of not over optimizing meaning that you’re optimizing every single day and you’re changing things so you don’t know what really works. Like one thing at a time. I’ve said that before. Like do something now or set it forget it for a little while come back, look at the data. Obviously if you’re doing the optimization thing, you set up a split test, you walk away, you come back and look at it in two weeks, see what it’s done but in the meantime you’re doing other things to build your business. Optimization is a big one.

Number four, outreach or list building or both. And what do I mean by that? Well, you’re thinking about like the next new tactic or the best hack, I say you start doing something good old fashioned outreach. Find bloggers in your network. Find YouTubers in your market. Find Instagram pages that you could potentially use to basically show your product at a discount. Building your email list is a big one. I think if you are not doing that that should be what you should be focusing on. If you’re like what’s the next tactic and hack that I can do, it’s building an email list. Then learning that process. Learning that process guess what? You’re building your skill set. As you build the skill set you start to build your business.

You’re getting more sales, you’re getting more reviews, you’re getting all of this stuff because you’re doing this on a regular basis. So everything I’m talking about right here are ways for you to get more skilled but then also to build your business and always be moving the needle. Always be moving the needle. Now with the list building stuff, we can go into deeper discussion there and that which I’ll mention that a little in one of the steps coming up here. But for list building like how does that help you? Like how does outreach help you? Well, it allows you to launch your products in the beginning with give aways or flash sale, with discounts and then you capture the email address in exchange for the code that you’re going to give them for the discount.

[00:16:06] Scott: Not in exchange for a review. Let’s not get misunderstood here. It’s basically you’re saying like instead of driving people from an outreach like let’s say that you had someone that you found as a YouTuber and you said, I’d love to give away five of my units to your audience. You can do whatever you want to give them away. Maybe you do some type of contest or whatever and that’s it. Then when they go over to enter the contest they enter their name and address and then you’ll announce the winner or you can give a discount to their entire audience. Hey someone’s got a YouTube channel of 250,000 subscribers and you say I’ll give your viewers 25% off because…

You can just say you know me and I’m extending this offer to your subscriber base and then you announce that on your YouTube channel. And now you would then send them to a landing page which then would intercept the email address in exchange for the coupon code. That’s how that would work. Again, I don’t want… If you guys are brand new and you’re listening to this don’t get overwhelmed by this stuff. I’m just trying to really break it down and chunk it down that these are strategies. These are techniques, these are hacks if you will. It’s just these are long lasting, these are long lasting business building skill sets that you are creating, you’re doing and you’re learning through this process.

And you’re moving the needle. Okay, so again. Outreach and list building, do not overlook that. That’s a big one that a lot of people overlook. That to me moving forward in 2017 and beyond, to me that is critical and that is one component, one key piece that if you really start to master that, you’ll be able to jump over your competition without them even knowing what happened.

[00:18:00] Scott: Again, you can do surveys to your audience now to your list that you build. What do I mean by that? You can ask them, “Hey, I’m going to be launching this new product and I want your opinion on this. What color do you think we should go with? What’s your favorite? A, B or C?” Then you get that feedback. Then guess what, you make it the top color now that you know from your audience that you’ve built, you know what you should be creating. Then it makes it that much easier. Then you say, “Hey, thank you so much for that and oh by the way, next week we’re going to be launching it, we’re going to be giving you guys, 25% off because you guys helped us out, thanks.”

Then guess what, you boost your sales on Amazon or on your own ecommerce, whatever you want to do and you’ve just moved the needle again. That’s something you can do over and over again. So that’s outreach and list building. That’s number four and I want to stress that that’s most of the time it’s overlooked by a lot of people. A lot of people the only focusing on internal stuff on Amazon. I want you guys to think bigger. When you’re thinking about like, “What’s the next thing? Scott you showed me everything up to this point. I want the next new thing.” Then new thing is everything I’m talking about right now. Like you can constantly be tweaking and looking at your business and kind of seeing the pulse off your business and then seeing where you can dive in and make the most impact with the least amount of work. Then learn through that process.

Number five, let’s move on, sponsored product ads, pay-per-click. If you’re not thinking to yourself that you have room to improve you’re limiting yourself because I don’t know anyone out there that even someone that is an expert at sponsored product ads which I think Chris Shaffer is probably someone that knows a lot about this topic and sometimes he starts to geek out about it and I’m like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down big fella. Like I got to catch up here.” Because he can start talking about well we’re going to take this campaign, we’re going to take a negative keyword, we’re going to do that, there’s a phrase match and it’s just a whoa, whoa. Like wait a minute. But what I’m saying is there I always, always room to improve your sponsored product ads, your pay-per-click and learn that.

[00:20:05] Scott: If you learn that, number one it’s going to help you get more sales. What’s that going to do? That’s going to help you rank, it’s going to help you possibly get more feedback, it’s going to help you possibly get more reviews because naturally you’re getting sales. So, the other thing that it will do for you is it will give you intelligence. It will give you data. What do I mean? If you think that your main keyword is garlic press it might be stainless steel garlic press. And you wouldn’t know that until you look at the data inside of your sponsored product ads. Well, guess what now? Now you can start to focus on that keyword or search term and you can then optimize your listing.

Go back to number three and say, “Let me plug this in to my title or let me plug this into the back end or let me make my images reflect this so now I can really target who my product is for,” because maybe your pictures were targeting someone else but then once you figure that that search term is really different then you can make your images match what they really looking for and then that’s going to bump up your conversions. Even by a half percent or a percent, that’s big. So these are tactics, these are strategies, I keep going back to that because people ask me, “Scott, what’s the new thing? Like what’s the thing that’s going to make everything happen?” It’s these things.

You have to break these things down. So again, sponsored product ads, we did a whole week worth of Facebook Lives and we did a free workshop where we walk through like setting up your first campaigns and then looking at the data and then using the new tool ignite. Like all of that stuff we did for free. It’s still available. You can head over to theamazingseller.com/ppc and you can get all that for free.

[00:22:02] Scott:  So definitely go check that out if you’re at that point. Again if you’re not at that point, don’t worry about it. Now, let’s move on.

This is thing number six. I love it how I made these things. I should have made them even more sexy but they are a thing. These are the secrets. The seven secrets. The seven secrets that will get you way ahead or that will help you crush your competition. That’s a good line. Let’s us that one. I’m kidding! Let’s just use a thing.

So thing number six is Facebook ads. Why would you want to focus on Facebook ads? “Scott, should I take Facebook ads and drive them to my Amazon listing?” The answer is no, you shouldn’t. At least in my eyes, in my opinion it’s no. What should you do with Facebook ads? Well, you should go find your audience, number one. That’s the first thing. Go scope out your audience.

Go see where they are, see what they are talking about. Just go there and be a fly on the wall. That would be the first thing. For Facebook, that’s going to be huge amount of value for you and it’s going to establish where your market is hanging out. Now, once we’ve established this now we can start to put our little billboard and I always love using the billboard analogy because years ago even now if you buy a billboard on the highway you’re paying no matter if anybody goes to that address that you put up there or the number to call. You’re paying for every time someone sees that for the month. You’re just paying to have it sit there.

With Facebook ads, we’re getting our ad in front there, our billboard if you will, in front of the traffic and we’re only paying if someone actually clicks on it. Wow, that’s pretty amazing. Listen to what I just said. I can put that billboard in front of thousands of people and I’m only going to pay if someone clicks on it. It’s the same thing as sponsored product ads. Every time that someone sees my listing, I don’t pay for it until someone clicks on it.

[00:24:03] Scott: Now, with Facebook ads though we can custom tailor the messaging, we can custom tailor the offer with sponsored product ads you can. You have to basically just use what your listing is. That’s how it works. But with Facebook ads we can drive targeted, very important that you understand this, targeted traffic even by demographic if your audience and you will start to see this stuff again once you start to learn Facebook ads and mastering it and all of that stuff. Okay, you’re going to learn about your demographic. You may think that right now your target market is 30-year old women and moms. Maybe it’s moms in their 30 years old, 30 to 35 years old.

But then after you start running ads you start to see that it’s actually 42 year old women. Maybe they are married and they are average household income is $75,000. Like you can literally get it that refined. You can even do it by zip code. We started like, we’re going way back when Facebook ads first started coming out, like I could target people, you still can but back you still could do it locally. So for a local business we could then target people in our zip code. You can still do that by the way. If you have a brick and mortar business you should be using that. Then there’s a whole bunch of other things that you can do with Facebook ads like retargeting.

So let’s say that someone comes to my page that I created with my offer and maybe that offer is a discount to my product. Again, imagine this, you put your ad in front of your target audience your billboard and then they see it and it’s attractive and they go, “Oh yeah I would love to get that for 50% off.” They click on it, they go to a landing page, we call that a landing page, we capture their name and email address and then on the next page we give them a discount code. It’s that simple. Like that’s how that would work. Then from there we build that email list of people that are interested and at this point those people are customers.

[00:26:02] Scott: Because they are buying the product but here’s the other cool thing that you can do with Facebook ads. It’s now we can drop a pixel on that page. Now guys if this is getting a little techy a little geeky, please understand this I am not a tech guy I can kind of work my way through it, I can kind of figure things out but I’m not the tech guy but I do know the basis of how everything works and I’ve set some of this stuff up myself. But don’t think you have to know all of this stuff. But if you don’t know this that means you have room for growth. Just understand that. If you’re listening to me right now and you’re like man I haven’t done that or man, I don’t even know where to start with that.

It means you have room to grow. There’s your strategy. There’s your tactic. There’s your hack. So Facebook ads, if we put a pixel on that landing page now and they don’t enter their name and email address, guess what, we’re going to build a customer audience inside of Facebook just because they landed on that page. Now I can start to show them other offers within Facebook. So I can do that. If you’re not doing any of this right now and you’re asking yourself of what can I do to move the needle, Facebook ads will be a big one because then we’re going to drive targeted traffic to an offer that will then capture their email address also pixel them so that we can retarget them later with other products or maybe a different version of our product or just maybe a different offer.

So that’s Facebook ads, that’s number six. That’s just Facebook ads, we didn’t talk about Google, we didn’t’ talk about Bing, we didn’t’ talk about Instagram stuff. We didn’t’ talk about any of that stuff because right now I’m just like Facebook… Like I haven’t even scratched the surface there yet so why go to all these other platforms trying to learn them. They are there if we want to so Facebook ads will just be traffic. That’s your traffic. What do we do with that traffic? We list build. We get sales. We can build a community. We can start to once we get an email list we say hey guys we’ve got a community that we are building in this market and all you have to do is go here, it’s free to join and we’re going to be showing our example or our samples or our pictures that we took with this new thing that we doing or whatever.

[00:28:13] Scott: So you can start to build that community and then with that community guess what, you start to build that around your brand maybe. Then you can start to get more information. You can start to put up those polls like I said, “Hey guys what are you like better, A, B or C?” And then they are basically helping you design and pick your next product. That’s the data that you can get from that. Again, it’s a little bit more down the line, a little bit more advance, if you’re running Facebook ads, a little side tip, you’re going to building a Facebook fan page regardless because in order to run Facebook ads you have to have a Facebook fan page. It’s just the way it works. Naturally without you even asking people are going to like your page. It’s just the way it’s going to happen. It’s just going to work like that.

We just started this in our brand that we just literally started to promote and start to get some emails and stuff. We started to run our first give away for this market and we’ve already got, I think it’s just over 2600 Facebook fan page likes. Our community that we’re starting to build has a few hundred in it already. Our email list is over 7,000 just from what I’m talking about here with this Facebook ad stuff. Now, again do not get overwhelmed to do that. I’m just giving you guys like the basic stuff, more advance stuff and there’s always room to grow. There’s always room to dig into each one of these things. These “secrets” that you can always dig into and learn more about, get more advance and start to move the needle. So let’s finish up with number seven. This one is pretty big actually. It was a tosser between the one that I said was most overlooked was number four, which was outreach and list building, I think number seven is another one.

That is email follow up whether it’s on Amazon or your own list.

[00:30:03] Scott: What I mean by that is good copy. Good email copy. What do I mean by that? Well, if you are sending emails to people you don’t want them to just be sales pitches, one after the other. You want them to be value add in every email. A good book by Gary Vaynerchuk which was Jab Jab Jab Right Hook and the jabs are value, value, value and then the right hook is an ask, which could basically be like you can still send out that really good blog post that you wrote or YouTube video that you found and then in the PS you can say, “Oh by the way we are doing a flash sale this weekend. 25% off for all of our garlic presses.”

You can do that. You’re still adding value. But with email follow up again if it’s on Amazon you’re a little bit limited on what you can do as far as like subject lines or even like call to actions and stuff like that but you still can do some of that. But what you need to understand is writing good copy, and we talk about like ad copy or copy meaning just like the writing. It’s just like the basis or even the formatting of an email all of that stuff but the thing that you always should be focusing on is how to better communicate with your customer.

What I mean by that is when you know your customer better than they know themselves in a sense where you are talking their language by listening in Facebook groups and Facebook communities and communicating with them yourself through email, asking open ended questions, all of that stuff you’re going to learn how to speak to your market. Then what’s going to happen is when you send out an email you’re going to get more people to open your email because your headline, your subject line is going to be well written because you’re going to be learning how to do this and then from there, once you get them to open the email now you’re communicating in a nice tone in your email.

[00:31:59] Scott: Hopefully it’s the front person writing the email. That could be you or someone else. And then from there you’re able to write in a way that keeps them engaged but then also delivers value and then hopefully gets them to do one call to action which could be click here to go watch this new video, click here to go read this new blog post, click here to go to our flash sale. Like whatever it is, like that’s another part of the piece that you could always be getting better at. You can always be looking at like once you get an email list you are going to be sending out an email and you’re going to be able to look and see how many people actually opened the email.

Depending on what service are you using. We’re using for our brands right now, Convert Kit. Convert kit works really well. It gives you all the stats and everything. Aweber does, MailChimp does. They all pretty much do. Click Funnels does and what it will do is now we’ll send out an email and you can split test that email too. Like let’s say you have a thousand people on an email list. You can split it and say, “All right subject line A, I want to go to five hundred and subject line B I want to go to the other segment.” Now what you can do is say oh this one got a 30% open and this one got let’s say it got 38% open. That’s an 8% more just because I used the word special or something like that. You can literally add one change to that subject line and then see what performs better and then you can learn from that.

Then you can test the stuff ongoing. Same thing goes inside the email. You can see how many clicks you get on a link. So then you might want to put three different links in there and then you can maybe it’s three different topics in your market and then you can see which one got the most clicks. Well, when you see which one got the most clicks, guess what you’re going to be writing about more the next time. Or you’re going to be maybe creating the next product around. Whatever was the most clicked on thing because that’s the most interest. So again, that all comes down to the email follow up. Whether that’s on Amazon or whether that’s on your own list it all works hand in hand.

[00:33:59] Scott: So guys that is the seven things to me that it will take you way ahead of your competition because most people are not thinking this deep. They are thinking about what’s the next new trick, the tactic, the hack that I can do right now to game the system to get to page one and start ranking and then from there maybe I get more sales. Obviously maybe more reviews but then also what can happen is I can get banned from Amazon because I did something that was grey hat or a black hat and they suspended my account.

Like so what I’m looking at is what can we do long term? What are the long term strategies and skillsets that are going to help us move this business or any other business that we work in in the future. Again, let me just to kind of recap here really quickly. Master these seven things and I’m telling you it will take you way ahead of your competition and you’ll be skilled in so many other areas to help scale your business.

So number one is product research and market research. That right there is a big one. Number two is sourcing and building those relationships and really getting those connections set over time. Three, optimization whether that’s listing optimization on your Amazon listing whether it’s eBay, whether it’s maybe your own ecommerce store optimization you should be always trying to make those better and learning more about split testing and doing that through optimization is to me a great way to move the needle.

Number four is outreach to bloggers, to YouTubers, to Instagrammers, to any social media platforms and list building and you are going to be doing giveaways and flash sales and surveys and discounts and all of that stuff. Number five, pay-per-click, sponsored product ads. That’s inside of Amazon. Again, it’s a whole beast in itself that you should be trying to figure out on an ongoing basis and learning more about your market and your products and what people are actually searching for. Then taking that information, using in your sponsored product ads but then also further optimizing your listings.

[00:36:00] Scott: And then sixth thing is Facebook ads. Traffic. Getting the traffic not to your listings but to build your list. Then to start getting sales from that. Then to start learning about retargeting and then starting to learn about how to create a lookalike audience. We didn’t even talk about that. Like taking your email list and then uploading it into Facebook ads and then creating a lookalike audience from those emails or then retargeting that email list. There’s a ton that you can do there. Again, I don’t have a ton of time here on this. I’ve already went over what I wanted to but I wanted to really drill into each one of these.

Then the last thing is number seven and that is email follow up whether that’s on Amazon or your own email list and learning how to write better copy. How to communicate better with your customers and with your potential customers because if you’re building an email list they might not be a customer yet. That would be all of the things that I would say depending on where you are, learn these. Dig into each one of these and if you do that on an ongoing basis you’re going to build up a really, really powerful set of skills and also you’ll be moving the needle while you’re doing this. Again, what does all this do for us? Well in a nutshell sales are really what we are going after. Because sales on Amazon will help us get better ranking. It will help us get feedback, it will help us get more reviews, it will help us get more data in pay-per-click, so we can do all of those other things that we talked about.

But right now I want to remind you guys, stop looking for the next new tactic or hack. Focus on these seven things. I’m telling you, these are so powerful and so many people again are just trying to look for the next new hack and to me you’re always going to be looking for that and you’re also putting your brand at risk. I would not want to see you do that. Now I get a lot of people that ask me about this whole like how to build that list and all that stuff. We actually have done a workshop where we show you exactly what we’ve done and how we’ve done it.

[00:38:02] Scott: We give actually a case study. If you guys want to check that out, head over to theamazingseller.com/buildlist. It will give you the entire roadmap in a sense and will actually go through a live case study there. The other thing that we are doing here depending on when you’re listening to this is we’re going to be meeting with 15 people, only 15 people in a live room, in a room live. We’re going to be doing a workshop building this in front of you but then also building it with you right alongside you. So if you are interested in that it’s going to be in North Carolina, third week in June. If you want details on that or just to see it’s availability because again there’s only going to be 15 people and I’m sure it’s going to fill up fast.

So head over to theamazingseller.com/live and you can register for that or you can be notified when we have an upcoming one. Definitely check that out. So that’s pretty much going to wrap it up guys. Like I said, the show notes, the transcripts probably going to want to download this one. This one here got a lot of different components. Those seven things are there for you to look at and see where are you in this process? Where do you need to work on your skills? Where do you need to focus a little bit more of your time and energy and really build this thing out bigger that what you are doing right now. Look and see what it is you can do like right now. Like what’s the low hanging fruit in these seven things.

Guys, remember, as always, I’m here for you, I believe in you and I am rooting for you but you have to, you have to… Come on, say it with me, say it loud, say it for the 350th time on this episode, “Take action.” Have an awesome, amazing day and I’ll see you right back here on the next episode.

[END]

Click Here to Download Transcript <<

Click Here to Download Transcript <<

…do it again. Super happy to be here and super excited that you’re here with me on this Friday or depending on when you’re listening to this. If you’re listening to this on Monday then happy Monday to you or whatever day it is.

Really, really fired up today. Actually, today that I’m recording this, my father’s on his way from Florida. He’s going to be spending about 12 days with us so I’m pretty excited about that. My son’s birthday is coming up, he’s going to be 19 years old. I cannot believe it. It just seems like yesterday that he was a little baby, a little kid and it’s just crazy how time flies but I’m enjoying every single moment of it.

I think we all should be taking time to enjoy life and not necessarily always focusing on the business aspect. I understand when you’re in the grind you got to stay in the grind sometimes in order to get to where you want to be but you always do need to sit back and look around you and appreciate what you currently have.

I know sometimes it’s really hard to do that but I’m going to be doing that these next 12 days when my father’s here and I’m going to enjoy every day with him and with my kids. My son’s going to be coming back and visiting from college and hanging out with us for about four or five days. It’s going to be a lot of fun, so really excited about that. With that being said, I want to talk about what we’re going to be talking about on today’s episode.

We’re going to be answering a question about pay-per-click budgets, we’re going to be talking about product certifications and we’re also going to be talking about variations and some BSR confusion. That is the main topic that we’re going to be talking about.

[00:02:00] Scott: If you guys want to ask a question here, all you have to do is head over to theamazingseller.com/ask and do that. Just ask a question. Just do me a favor, say your first name, where you’re tuning in from and then just a brief question and I’ll do my best to air it here on an upcoming show.

I did want to remind you, the show notes can be found for this episode at theamazingseller.com/352 and you can get the transcripts, the show notes and all the goodies over there. Now, before we jump in though, you guys always know, I like to give you my thoughts for the week or something that might have either inspired me or made me say, “wow should really think about that.”

Today, it’s actually something that was posted in my newsfeed and I’m not even sure if it was in the TAS group or if it was just in my general newsfeed but I seen it and it really struck accord with me and I’m like, “This is exactly what we should be thinking about.” The little info graph or the little graphic that I’ve seen said, “Three ways to fail at everything in life.”

You may have seen this already and if you did, you should probably print it out because it’s pretty important and I think it makes a lot of sense. Three ways to fail at everything in life. Number one, complain about everything. Have you ever noticed that sometimes you just find yourself complaining? Well, it’s just I can’t do it because I don’t have enough time. I just don’t have enough time. I work too much or I don’t have the advantages like someone else does. They already know how to setup a landing page and start getting email addresses or they already know how to do product research so they’ve got an advantage. So you’re complaining.

Do you ever notice yourself doing that? Don’t be ashamed for doing it, we all do it. It’s a way for us to feel as though the cards are stacked against us and that’s why we’re not successful. Understand that, if you complain about everything it’s going to be a lot harder to succeed at anything in life. Number two, blame. Blame others for your problems. Again, very similar to complaining, you’re now looking for someone else to blame or something else to blame.

[00:04:00] Scott: That could be like, my supplier screwed up and sent me the wrong sample and I didn’t do an inspection. I should have did an inspection but they should have told me I should have gotten an inspection.

Have you had something like that happen? Not necessarily that example but you understand what I’m saying. Finding a place to point the finger. That’s huge. In basketball, in baseball, in sports, football, you always find it where a team say, do not point blame. Do not look at someone and say, you screwed up and that’s why we lost or you screwed up and that’s why we didn’t score.

It’s going to happen but there’s going to come time that you are the one that actually might have made something happen that maybe you didn’t get the results because you screwed up and someone else was depending on you. In any aspect of life, it doesn’t just mean business but we are relating this to business but again, that’s blame.

Three, never be grateful. What we mean by this is like thinking about what you are so grateful for right now. Right now, take a second. There’s gotta be something that pops in your mind and you think to yourself, I am so grateful that I have this. It can be the simplest thing. I’m so grateful that I have a voice that I could actually speak. I’m so grateful that I can hear. There’s people that can’t hear that are deaf and I feel so bad for those people but we don’t think about that as ourselves like how grateful we are to have these things that we take for granted every single day.

I’m so grateful that I have kids. Some people struggle to have kids. I’m so grateful that I’m able to have three kids, healthy kids. There’s things that we can think to ourselves that we’re so grateful for that we don’t even realize that we should be grateful for. The simplest things. Like I said, some of those are big things like having kids but I mean the simplest thing. It could be like I’m so grateful that I have a car even though the car might not be the best car.

[00:06:00] Scott: It still gets me from point A to point B. I’m so grateful that I can have that. There’re some people that don’t have that.

There’s a lot of things that we need to be grateful for and I think if we do that it also reminds us that we don’t have it so bad. We’re just trying to strive for something a little bit better.

Three ways to fail at everything in life is:

1. Complain about everything.
2. Blame others for your problems.
3. Never be grateful.

Think about those things and I’m telling you if you can put that into perspective it will definitely make a difference and it’s simple. Just go out there, create the life that you want. You’re in control. You’re 100% in control. Yes, you’re going to depend on people to help you maybe get things done. If you’re sourcing a product you’re going to be relying on the supplier. You might be then relying on the third party inspection but it’s part of the process. If it doesn’t work then you figure out a way to make it work. You’re still in control.

Just think about that over the weekend or during the week. Whenever you’re listening to this, think about that and you might even want to write that down. Actually, I will post this graphic inside of this blog post. If you want to print it out go for it. Print it out, stick it up on your wall or somewhere near you every day so this way here it reminds you that you’re in control and don’t push blame and don’t complain and be grateful. It’s really simple. Those three things are huge.

[00:08:00] Scott: With all that being said, hopefully you guys are fired up. It’s Friday or it’s Monday or it’s Wednesday, depending on when you’re listening to this, it’s an exciting day because guess what, you got up this morning and you’re able to do whatever you want meaning, you can go out there and build this business. I’m going to get off of this because every day should be a new day and you should be excited to be able to work on whatever you’re working on.

With all that being said, let’s go ahead and answer today’s first question and I’ll give you my answer. Let’s do this. Let’s dig in.

[Q&A SESSION]

[00:08:09] April: Hi Scott? This is April from Ohio. I have a quick question again for you. My question is about Amazon pay-per-click overall budgets. When I first started and only had one product, my budget was about $15 to $20 a day in Amazon pay-per-click for that one product. Now fast forward 12 months I have four products and I’m just wondering what you would recommend for the overall budget of my pay-per-click campaigns. That’s the one in the advertising settings where you set the overall daily budget.

If one product had $20 on it, should four products have $80? That sounds really, really high to me but I’m just wondering your thoughts. Thanks Scott. Bye, bye.

[00:09:00] Scott: Hey April, thank you so much for the question, a repeat question actually or getting on the show two times, so congratulations for that. It was a good question and I haven’t really answered this directly I guess. Let’s talk about that really quickly. What April is talking about is like setting the main budget for your entire sponsored product ads budget.

You can setup individual campaigns for all of your different products or even if you just wanted to do an automatic campaign and then maybe a manual campaign, you can do all that stuff but you also can set your overall budget. Your overall budget would mean that you’ll never spend over that. You’re saying, Amazon, that’s as much as I want to spend even though I might set up two campaigns for $25 each and my budget’s $50 I’m never going to go over that.

Sometimes even though you set your budget at $25 for the campaign, they’ve been known to go over a little bit but if your main budget is capped they’ll go under. That’s been my experience. Going back to, you’ve got a few products and you’re setting a budget for those individual campaigns for $20 and it’s scary to set your overall budget at $80, here’s the question, is it profitable? Are you generating sales? Are you getting data?

To me, that’s not expensive. I say keep pushing as much as you can using sponsored product ads to collect the data, the search terms and then from there start to refine and trim some of the non-performing keywords and dial that all in. Honestly, $80 a day is not that much for sponsored product ads campaign or the overall budget. I’ve seen people spend $1,000 a day or more.

Me personally I’m around $250, depending. If I’m doing some type of product launch inside of a campaign, I might go up as $500 a day.

[00:11:00] Scott: It doesn’t mean I’m going to spend that, it mean I’m willing to spend up to that. Even though you set that budget, it does not mean that you’ll go there, it just means that that’s what you’re willing and you’re okay with spending but just be careful with that.

I always tell people when you are first starting, if you say, the most I want to spend in a day is 75 bucks then set your overall sponsored product ads budget for that amount and then individually set your other accounts. Now, some people have said, if you have an overall budget of $200 but all of your campaigns added up collectively are over $200 if they were to spend all of that, that could also hinder the amount of reach and stuff that you’re having on those campaigns.

I don’t have proof of that but that’s just what I’ve heard. What I would suggest though is looking at your campaigns and making sure that your ACOS is where you want it or at least it’s… If you’re concerned about money spending there, you want to definitely keep an eye on that stuff. We did an entire free training… I believe it’s like five days-worth of pay-per click-training.

Totally free. You can head over to theamazingseller.com/ppc and you can get all that there. We break down just different strategies for using sponsored product ads and also how to determine when you have a winner, when you have a loser and how to discover the “real” search terms not just your keywords. We talk about broad match, phrase match, exact match and how to create those campaigns and then those ad groups and all of that stuff.

If you are at all interested in that, it’s totally free. Head over there and check that out. We do use a tool that helps us manage that stuff now called Ignite and that also is there if you wanted to check out that there’s a 30-day free trial. You can check that out as well. If you want to go directly to that information like I said, theamazingseller.com/ppc. Again, going back to your question just to wrap this up here for you April, yes.

[00:13:00] Scott: You want to give your overall budget enough so that way your campaigns can spend as much as they can spend. This way here you’re not hindering the amount of impressions that you’re getting and the amount of clicks that you’re getting and all of that stuff. You want to definitely keep an eye on that. I would say, in the beginning guys, when you’re doing a product launch, pay-per-click is going to be one main driver for getting exposure to your products.

In the beginning… I’ve said this, Chris has said this, Chris Shaffer that is, Dom Sugar has said this. We go in the negative a lot of times in the beginning just to get things rolling. Again, if you guys want more information about that we talk all about it in that free training. April, thanks for the question and good luck and keep me posted. Let’s go ahead and listed to the next question and I’ll give you my answer.

[00:13:52] Chris: Hey Scott, how’s it going man? My name is Chris Ekman and I’m a private label seller myself and I’ve been listening to your podcast for months and months now at this point; big fan of all the stuff you’re putting out. You’re a huge inspiration to me. I listen to it just about every day on my way to work, so thanks for being you and all you do. My question for you is, I have a product that I believe that I needed to get certification to sell in the United States. Long story short is that it just came back as it failed the specific certification for being too magnetic or something along those lines.

The weird part is that there are people who are selling the same product or a similar product, not the exact same, on Amazon and it’s pretty much the same thing that I’m selling but I failed the certifications. My question for you is, do I really need to get certified and if so, how do go about finding which certifications and product warning labels do I need on my packaging? If you can help me out with that that’d be awesome. Thanks a lot man.

[00:14:54] Scott: Hey Chris, thank you so much for the question. It’s a good one, by the way, and yes, it’s pretty important that you understand that stuff. I believe what you’re talking about is certification meaning like your product if it’s being sold in the United States or whatever country that you’re in, there’s going to be certain guidelines, FDA approvals, stuff like that. Yes, you can reach out to your manufacturer and ask them for their certifications. If they already have been certified then that will help you.

Let me just say though, this is probably a question for an attorney or someone with liability insurance experience. That will probably be someone that I would reach out to and ask. Now, why are other people selling without…? Saying that they have certification or maybe without certification? That’s just because they’re doing it.

We can all sell and not necessarily have that certification or we can sell a product that’s patented, technically but we’re going to get caught and we’re going to get in trouble. The problem with your product that you’re trying to sell that could be a major problem is, if you have something that could harm someone and then they come back and say, “Well, you weren’t certified so you’re clearly in the wrong.” Well, now you got major problems.

That’s why I say, an attorney or someone that’s dealt with liability insurance or that has that information that can guide you I think that would be a good phone call. The one I’m going to give you is Michelle Love. Actually, I met her at one of our TAS Breakthrough Live Events. She’s actually a student of our PLC but she’s also a liability insurance broker and she’s been running her business for over 20 years; I believe her and her husband. She knows all about this. Liability insurance is something that she also offers which I wasn’t even aware of until after our event.

[00:16:54] Scott: I would listen to episode 293 or just go to 293, episode 293 that is, and reach out to Michele. She’s very willing to help anyone out that has any questions. I would definitely reach out to her because she does know a lot about that.

She can tell you, probably, what you will need or what to be aware of because you’re going to have to get liability insurance at some point too, so that’s going to be a phone call anyway. That’s where I would probably start. Then from there, I would probably reach out to an attorney and see about that and let them guide you. The main thing is understanding what is required, what you need to have and then also what will help you be protected if anything was to happen you’re definitely doing things by the rules.

I would not look at it as far as like, well, on Amazon there’s already people selling in this category and they’re technically… They have all the certification or maybe they don’t have the certification and they’re still selling. Don’t look at that as that’s an approval for you to do the same thing. Like I said, there’s people right now that are selling patented products that haven’t been caught yet and once they do they could have $30,000 of inventory and then they’re going to be sitting there wondering how they’re going to get rid of it and that’s a major issue.

You want to definitely be careful with anything with certifications or patents or any of that stuff. Hopefully, this has been helpful. Thank you again for being a long time listener or a fan of the show. I appreciate it and I want to just hear more from you in the future as far as an update. That would be awesome and I would really appreciate that. Again, thanks for being a listener.

Let’s go ahead and listen to one more quick question. We’ll go ahead and answer it and then we’ll wrap this baby up so you guys get on with your day, with your weekend whatever time of the week it is and enjoy the rest of your day. Let’s go ahead and listen to the next question.

[00:18:46] John: Hey Scott? How are you doing? My name is John from Dallas, Texas. I have a question about variations. I have a listing that I started late last year. It’s in the office products category and there are four different colors, so I have them all listed with a parent/child relationship all in one listing. One thing that I’ve noticed is the BSR for each individual SKU is different. Previous products that I have listed were in the clothing category.

With those, there’s a single BSR that appears to be share throughout the whole listing and every SKU that is a child. Every sale that you get will contribute to that BSR in the clothing category but it seems like in this office products category that they’re each individually looked at and the BSR is associated with each individual SKU. It seems like I’m actually hurting myself by having this listing setup as a variation because the sales are spread out amongst the four different colors. Therefore, I don’t have as good as a BSR as I could.

I’m just wondering if you’ve had any experience with that or have any information about those two different types of variation listings and the way the BSR is treated. Hope you can answer my question, thanks.

[00:20:20] Scott: Hey John, thank you so much for the question and this is a good question. I’ve had people in the past ask me this question as far as like, well, why is the BSR, best seller rank that is… If you guys are brand new listening to the show. Why is the BSR different for the red garlic press versus the blue garlic press? That just means that there’s more sales for the red than there is for the blue.

Now, this can also be an advantage for anyone that’s doing any type of product research because now we can specifically see what product or what variation is selling the best. Another way to see this is if you are searching for a standard garlic press, stainless steel garlic press and the red one appears that’s most likely the one that’s selling the most.

If you are in product research that’s something that you want to pay attention to as well. For you, John, that’s selling these four different variations under this parent listing and you want to know like, well, I got one product that’s got a BSR that’s higher and I got one that’s lower and that’s hurting my other one. It’s not necessarily hurting anything. If anything, all of those are feeding that one listing. Yes, you are going to have one that’s doing better than the other because it’s more popular and that’s fine. That’s still going to take the overall parent and rank it.

The other ones are just other variations that could also rank a little bit further down the list and that’s fine. I don’t look at it like you are hurting yourself. If anything, you are giving people more choices which in some cases is a great thing because now, people that couldn’t have bought because you didn’t have a blue one bought. That helps you and it also will allow you to then feed that listing with reviews because now you have other people buying it that might not have not bought it before because you have another color that wasn’t available.

[00:22:20] Scott: I don’t look at it like you are getting a disadvantage, if anything, you are getting more advantages than disadvantage. I wouldn’t worry about that. If you guys are selling in a category that everything is grouped under one, it’s pretty much just the way that the category has been set up and formatted.

I don’t know why they do this but they do. For example, in home and kitchen, if you are selling your garlic press that’s what it would be. A variation would come basically with different BSRs, best seller ranks. At this point I wouldn’t relay worry about that because, again, like I said, if you are selling a whole bunch of the red and you really doing well with that but you have blue, yellow and green, that’s okay even if those don’t have that great of BSRs because it’s still feeding the main parent listing.

Hopefully, that makes sense. I wouldn’t get too hung up on that. I would just look at your overall sales like how many sales are you getting? It’s like, if you have one that’s getting you ten units a day, you have the blue one that’s getting you five a day and then the yellow one giving you one a day, and then you have a green one that’s getting you one a day, collectively you are selling… I just did all that math, what is it, seventeen? Like ten, five, one and one, is that right? I mean, it’s not a bad thing, it’s just you are widening your net because you are adding more variations under that parent and then that parent will share all the reviews.

It will technically share, in a sense, the BSR or the sales because that’s going to help you rank but the one that’s getting the most sales would be the one that will be more or less on the cover. It’ll be the one that people see when they are searching for that but now if someone searches for blue, stainless steel garlic press, your blue one will most likely come up because it’s got the keywords right in it and it’s optimized for the blue version, versus the red.

If someone comes in and looks for a stainless steel garlic press and they happen to see that there’s a red one that’s listed and then they go into the listing and they happen to buy the blue one, well, that’s fine you are still going to get credit for the blue one.

[00:24:20] Scott: Don’t look at it individually you’re competing against each other, if anything, you are just more to the parent.

I wouldn’t worry about it. I think it’s awesome that you have four SKUs under one parent. I think that’s a great advantage for you and I think you’ll pick up additional sales because you gave those extra features because not everyone likes red, not everyone likes blue and not everyone likes yellow and not everyone likes green.

You’re going to be able to fit a wider audience but with that same specific thing. Hopefully, that makes sense. Hopefully, that helps. Anyone else that’s looking a product research, definitely pay attention to the one that showing up. If you’re doing a search for that stainless steel garlic press and the red one happens to come up every time you search for it, that’s most likely the one that’s selling the most then you can count on the side which one you want to sell starting.

A lot of people say, “Scott there’s four of them I can sell, which one do I want to start with? Do I want to do them all but if I do them all that’s a lot of SKUs to start with? I don’t even want to start with one.” I’d start with the main one that you think is going to have the most searches for and the most purchases for. I’m actually doing something very similar to this in a brand that we’re just starting right now and there’s one parent that we have two different colors.

We basically did this exactly this, we found the ones that were selling the most in that certain color and then we added a second color. We’re only starting with two colors even though we know there’s two other colors. There’re probably four colors total that we could launch but we’re starting with the top two and then we’ll add variations to that as we move forward and get a little more of intelligence.

That is pretty much going to wrap up that question and this Ask Scott session. This is pretty much going to wrap everything up. I want to remind you guys about the three ways to fail at everything in life. If you guys didn’t listen to the beginning of this and you just fast forwarded, shame on you. You should have listened to the whole thing. There’s a good lesson in the beginning of this episode. Definitely check that out.

[00:26:20] Scott: Head over to the show notes page as well and I’ll have that graphic there for you. You can print it out. I think you should. I think you should look at that and really think about that. All the show notes, the transcripts can be found on the show notes page as well at theamazingseller.com/352. The other thing is, I would love for you to ask your own question. Head over to theamazingseller.com/ask. You can do that. Leave your first name, a brief question and I’ll do my best to air it here on the upcoming show.

All right guys, that’s it. Officially, we are wrapped up. Go out there and enjoy the day. Remember, as always, I’m here for you, I believe in you and I’m rooting for you but you have to, you have to… Come on say it with me, say it loud, say it proud, say it with some energy, “Take action.” Have an awesome, amazing day and I’ll see you right back here on the next episode.

[END]

Click Here to Download Transcript <<

Click Here to Download Transcript <<
…one of our recent TAS power hours which I never know how these are going to turn out because we just jump on. I say we, it’s myself, Dom Sugar and Chris Shaffer and we meet once a week on Friday’s and we just happen to do it on a Facebook Live. And a lot of times, it’s us just discussing things randomly that were either in the news or that we’re working on or that have questions that have came in and then we just start to deep dive into these topics.

This week we’re going to talk about, the most recent email follow up disruption in the Amazon space which a lot of people are a little confused with honestly but we’re going to dig into that. We’re going to also talk about split testing and it actually turned into a little bit of a debate between Chris and Dom, kind of funny actually and then we talk about some sponsored product ads stuff, some pay-per-click as far as just how to use it properly, but then also when is the right time to use it? What to look for? What data to collect? And all of that stuff. We also talk about patents and trademark infringements and a bunch of other random discussions that were also inspired by a lot of the Facebook Live listeners and viewers because we ask questions there.

Now you are going to get most of what we talked about here. I really did just try to give you the meat of it, but if you want to see the entire broadcast, I’m going to embed it into this blogpost for this episode and you can find that by heading over to theamazingseller.com/351 and you can get the show notes there, the transcripts and you can also see the video embedded inside of that blog post if you want to see us on camera with all of the shenanigans that are happening and the heated debate by Chris and Dom. Can’t wait for you to see that one. Really kind of funny.

[00:02:02] Scott: So, really excited to share this with you. Like I say I never know where these are going to go and this one here I think is packed with a lot of really great discussion and things that you can take away and decide to either use or not to use and really custom tailor it to your business and where you are in this journey. I did want to remind you, if you want to attend one of our Facebook Lives that we do on Friday’s, generally we’ve been doing them on Fridays at 2pm Eastern time. So definitely make sure that you’re around the page or on the page at that time or in the group. We do post it on the fan page and in the TAS group.

So if you want to get alerted of these, you are definitely going to want to be on Facebook at that time on Fridays and that’s at 2pm Eastern time. If you have any questions, that’s the time to get them answered right on the fly. Like we answer them live and you can actually listen to some of the questions that we answered on this one that I’m going to share with you today. So with all that being said, let’s get to it. Let me turn it over to the TAS power hour that we did. I did want to say also that the audio a lot of times isn’t the best because we’re coming off of a Facebook Live. I still think it’s pretty decent but it’s not this quality here.

But I think that you guys have gotten value in the past and that’s why I continue to add these when I think that they’re a good episode that is relevant and then also is going to benefit you the most. And a lot of times you can kind of hand pick what you want to use or listen to and that’s why I want to you know give you guys access to this on the podcast. Because sometimes you just might not be on Facebook and you’ll miss it and I don’t want you to miss it. So let’s go ahead and jump into this power hour, this TAS power hour with my good friends Dom Sugar and Chris Shaffer.

[POWER HOUR]

[00:03:54] Scott: Yeah actually, I did want to kind of address the, and I want to address it but I also want to put it to rest, is the whole update that supposedly Amazon has said as far as the emails being delivered to our customers and what that actually means? If you guys missed last week’s Facebook Live, we talk all about that and really what it means and in a nutshell, it doesn’t really change all that much. What it does do, is it allows our customers to say that they don’t want to receive any more communications from us. So they can opt out. So it’s no different than it is if you sign up for my emails. There’s going to be an unsubscribe thing on the bottom. Like that’s like a canned spam kind of thing that you know they have to enforce.

Amazon has never had that really there. Now they’re allowing you to opt out of emails. The problem is and it’s not really a huge problem, but one thing that we have used in the past and we still use it and I’m still using it is, more or less like an auto responder for Amazon messaging. So let’s just say for example, I send something out to a customer after they purchase, I could automate that. I use a tool called Sales Backer, there’s another one out there called feedback genius and there’s a few others. But the thing is, is right now their API and API for those of you guys that don’t know what that means, it basically just means that, that’s the connection that they’re using to be able to communicate.

So what they’re doing is, they’re allowing us to basically do something on the outside of Amazon and then connect it through an API to actually work inside of our sellers account. That’s what they call an API. Their API has not been updated yet to allow us to put people on a certain blacklist or a list of not being able to communicate with. So Amazon has said in their communications with you know people like Sales Backer or Feedback Genius or just their terms of services.

[00:06:03] Scott: They’re still going to allow you to send those emails. They’re not going to make it where you can’t send emails. They’re aware that the API is not communicating, so in the meantime, it’s going to be okay. But Sales Backer and Feedback Genius I believe, they have like a work around that you can start building your own little black list or your own list that you’re not going to be sending to. Chris, do you know exactly how that’s working right now?

[00:06:27] Chris: Yeah. So both of them just have a black list feature and it existed previous to this where if somebody asked to be unsubscribed manually, you could just blacklist them. So that’s all that you are going to have to do right now and Amazon is aware. And one of the greatest things I saw was a screenshot of somebody’s communication with seller central about this. And that was basically like, “Yeah we know that, that thing doesn’t exist and so I wouldn’t worry too much about it.” Because it’s just like, we know that it’s not there and it’s going to be so in the meantime, just keep calm and carry on. So that’s kind of been like the reaction that we’ve had as well.

[00:07:00] Scott: Yeah, so that’s really in a nutshell. I just wanted to address that and I wanted to let people know like, it’s not a huge deal. Now if they had said and came out with, “We’re no longer going to allow you to connect with you know, your customer”, that would have been bigger news. That’s not what we’re saying or that’s not what they’re saying. They’re saying that, they’re going to allow your customers to raise their hand and say, “Don’t send me any more messages.”

And really the way that I would look at this is like, if you’re hitting your customers over the head with emails, shame on you. You shouldn’t be doing that. You should be sending them useful, helpful information or at least making sure that they’re, that they’re getting what they signed up to get. Meaning, did they get you know the product on time? Did they have any issues with the product? Do they have any questions?

Give them a way to for them to show how they’re using your product or show them other people that have used your product. Like just get them more connected with your brand if you have a product that lends itself to that. So a few questions are coming in I see. Why don’t you go ahead and continue to throw a couple of those out there Chris and we can address them.

[00:08:13] Chris: Absolutely. Brett says, “do we have to blacklist them if we don’t want them to get the second message?” Yes, you have to completely unsubscribe or use the blacklist feature. Eventually like Scott was saying, Amazon is going to be rolling out a field inside of their API that posts to Sales Backer and Feedback Genius and some of the other solutions that do emails like Cash Cow Pro use, so that you won’t even be sending that first email. But I would be blacklisting them, unless you’re getting you know hundreds a day at this point. I would at least you know put in a good paid effort to blacklist those people.

[00:08:44] Scott: Yep, really quickly. On Periscope, I got to address my periscope page. Someone was just asking how you can connect over to Facebook Live. Just go to theamazingseller.com/fb and that will take you to the TAS page, the main Facebook page and it should be pinned at the top. Chris is it pinned currently?

[00:09:03] Chris: It is pinned to the top of the group. Yes.

[00:09:05] Scott: Okay, so the top of the group. If you’re on your mobile, you have to expose the pin. It’s weird why they do that. You have to say show pin, if you’re on desktop it should automatically be there. Ok, he says “thanks Scott I’ll be back. I’ll be over there.” Cool. Is there any other questions that we had, that came in around that?

[00:09:25] Chris: No, but we do have a whole bunch of people GC and Gino both said, “Dom you’re looking great man. You look like another person, huge props. It looks like you’re losing weight.” GC says, “Totally agreed, Dom looks fantastic. And by the way Chris and Scott, you guys look great too but I want to give props to Dom. You look like you’re killing it.” Gino, we know we know where you’re at. So he says, “What’s up Dom is looking good, Scott’s putting everybody on a strict diet.”

[00:09:59] Scott: There’s some truth to that actually but anyways, let’s move on. That’s awesome though Dom. That’s good stuff. People are seeing that you’re starting to reshape which is pretty awesome. How does that feel Dom?

[00:10:14] Dom: It feels a lot lighter, that’s for sure. Now physically I’m feeling good. It’s good, I mean I’m fighting a cold again I don’t know if it’s these winters here that never stop. It snowed today again. I mean it’s April and it’s snowing. Doesn’t make any sense but yeah. Just a change of lifestyle, that’s all it is. It makes a difference.

[00:10:36] Scott: We’ll definitely be reporting on that soon but we’ve got some goals set aside, don’t we?

[00:10:41] Chris: Gino has an idea. He said you should call it The Amazing Body Podcast. Bret says, “What if we don’t blacklist them? Is there any threats of suspension from Amazon?” No they’re not like directly threatening you with suspension right now but do the good thing. Do the smart thing. Don’t put yourself in that situation. Take the 15 minutes today that it’s going to take you to blacklist those 10, 15 people that you get that email from and that’s if you’re selling 100 units a day. If you’re only selling 10 or 20 you might get one back.

And a couple of the brands that we work in Scott, I’ve only seen a handful and we’re selling you know dozens to hundreds a day in these brands. So it just depends on your audience but yeah take the time to do it. Put in the good faith effort. It takes five minutes to do the whole batch of them. So yeah, just go ahead and do it and that way you don’t have to worry about it if I ever decide to come back and go you don’t play by the rules, when we rolled that thing out. Even though we told you it wasn’t ideal.

[00:11:35] Scott: Yeah, Sales Backer just emailed too. I was going to pull up that email but I’m not going to now. You’re just going to read it but basically, they tell you exactly what to do. I’ll probably do an update of some kind whether it’s video or even just a blog post sharing what they’re saying to do with their system and their software. But basically it’s just what Chris said. It’s just putting them on that blacklist so this way here you can start to separate them. One thing I did want to bring up Chris, it just kind of came to mind as we were talking about that as far as like just not just like the changes but it’s like when we’re trying to see, and this is off topic of reviews and stuff like that.

But it’s more about like if you’re trying to get reviews then you’re trying to obviously up your conversions for the most part. I mean that’s what people would say, like if I’m getting more reviews I’m trying to get better conversions. I want to ask you a question, both of you guys because this question was asked to me and I answered it on an Ask Scott session which should air next week I think. And the question was, currently I have 50 sessions a day and I want to start testing maybe price or maybe images. How many sessions do I need before I think that I’ve got enough data? What would you say to that Chris? What would your thoughts on that be?

[00:13:06] Chris: And that’s why I would rely on a tool like Splitly to give me that information and it comes down to two things from a statistical nerdy standpoint. How confident do you want to be in that change and what margin of error are you willing to have? And so to me it’s going to depend on those two factors. I would like to see hundreds to thousands of sessions before I make that call because here’s the thing you have to keep in mind, it may be statistically relevant at 50 session but it might not be statistically relevant when you get to 100 or 200 sessions.

That being said, I would let the data take me where the data takes me. If I am hooking up to something like Splitly and Splitly is saying you know, you change the images and the images made a huge difference and you see that your conversion rate jumped five times. You went from 5% to 25%. I’d roll with it and then test it again in two months or three months and see if that makes a difference. Does that make sense?

[00:14:06] Scott: Yeah, yeah, it totally does. Here was my answer in a nutshell, not to go into the entire detail of it but 50 sessions it’s okay. You know it’s 50 sessions but I would say at least the 1,000 sessions you want and you want those sessions spread out over at least 14 days. So you don’t want to just go for like three days and then say, “Oh I wonder what it is,” because Monday might be different than Friday. You know you have different times of the week that you have more sales or you have more traffic or different quality of traffic or different times. I know Dom you play around with pay-per-click depending on if it’s morning you know or night.

There’s different traffic, there’s all of that stuff. So if you’re getting 50 sessions a day, that’s a good number. I mean I’d like to see 100 but if you’re getting 50 then you just gotta wait. So wait 14 days at least and then at least you’ve to let it run for two weeks. But you want to be alternating back and forth on those, so this way here you’re not just doing it for one week a and then switching over and then the other week because now all of a sudden the statistics would say, well it’s not exactly the same because one week is different from the next week. So we have to kind of do it every other day for a while and we have to have enough people seeing it and it’s the same thing like we talk about.

Like conversions, like if you can just increase your conversions by 1%, if you get 100 sessions, that’s an extra sale. Like just from doing something simple. If you get it to 2% extra on top of and I think he said he was already converting at like 12%. So if we can get him to 14% now every 100 sessions he’s getting two extra sales, so definitely do that. If you want to do it yourself, Greg Mercer actually had talked about exactly how you would do this and it’s still not going to be as accurate as if you use the tool but you want to do it at the exact same time and you want to do it for a full 24 hours.

[00:16:03] Scott: Now he did create some nice resources at, if you just go to theamazingseller.com/splitly there’s actually three downloads. He actually created a Google calculator that will give you some of that data that you can input and then it’ll tell you that over time. If you don’t want to use the tool and then he’s got like two guides that actually break down A/B testing. So definitely check that out, it’s free resource and again I think running Splitly even if you did it for 30 days be well worth it. I would give that a shot but I just wanted to touch on that because I thought that was an interesting question as far as sessions go. And Chris, what does a session mean? Maybe we can kind of address that really quickly for anyone that’s brand spanking new.

[00:16:43] Chris: And that was a question that Brett asked. He said, “Can we describe sessions.” Sessions are a unique person on your listing in whatever the time period it is that you’re looking at.

[00:16:51] Scott: It’s eyeballs?

[00:16:52] Chris: If you’re looking at today, it’s 30 people or in this case 50 people saw the listing and Scott just for reference. I ran a really quick A/B significance test. Now again it’s going to depend on what the difference between those two things is but at 50 sessions a day, over 30 days you could get to 99% certainty. Now again it’s going to depend on what the differences are there but 50 sessions a day you know just from a calculator standpoint, I would want to see that run at least three or four weeks then.

Just based on that quick math and I’m sure my college stats professor is having a heart attack because I’m describing statistical significance right now. But it’s just one of those things where we need at least three to four weeks of data at that level yeah versus something where we could say okay you know we get 20,000 sessions per day. That becomes statistically relevant or faster. Does that make sense?

[00:17:47] Scott: Right, but I think that’s a good point. So if you had 20,000 you could say well I could get my results in a day.

[00:17:53] Chris: No. But the longer you let that run, just like with anything else, the longer you let it run the more valid it’s going to be. So there’s always a minimum threshold for whether it’s valid or not.

[00:18:02] Scott: Yeah because even if you’ve got 20,000 sessions a day, you’d still want to see what it did over 7 days or 14 days because you got different types of traffic, you have different types of days and maybe more people go and put stuff in their cart on Monday but they check out on Wednesday. Who knows? You know, there’s a whole bunch of different factors that come into that mix.

[00:18:25] Chris: And the other thing to keep in mind is, when you cut it off too early and this happens all the time. I see this on the non-Amazon side of the stuff that we work and people will run a split test on their website Scott. And they’ll change like the colour of the button from red to blue or something, which is ridiculous splits. But anyway, you know they’ll see that in the first week that it’s outperforming by 15% the other one and they’ll go, I’m going to change that. No, it’s because people that have been to your site before saw a blue button where it used to be green and they clicked on it because they’re interested. You let it run for the full 30 days, it turns out it actually performs worse. So you gotta let it run for that amount of time to make sure that you’re getting accurate data.

[00:19:00] Scott: Chris do you have any quick questions that came up through the chat that we can maybe address right now?

[00:19:05] Chris: Yes, Sayed says, “I have a question about a software that’s using BSR and the 999 trick to determine the listings daily sales. Aren’t these data insufficient anymore because some categories limit sales per transaction?” So let me start with that, the answer is no. The 999 trick even if you could only get it on 70 percent of listings to work, it’s still going to give you a big enough data set to start to make those differences. The other thing is something like Jungle Scout utilizes BSR for that. Now in the web app they also do some real time inventory tracking I believe. Where they’re using the 999 trick to calculate all of that. But if you’re just looking at BSR and you have a large enough data set like Jungle Scout has years’ worth of BSR data now, they don’t need the 999 trick to understand where that falls on the curve of sales. Does that make sense guys?

[00:19:54] Scott: Yeah, totally.

[00:19:55] Chris: And that’s one of the reasons that I am a Jungle Scout fan. Because they’re using their algorithm based on the data they’ve gathered not just over what is it right now but what has this BSR meant over the last year, two years, three years consistently and that data it just gets more and more accurate over time. Dave says, “How long would you leave a listing without sales before using ads to drive traffic or would you launch ads immediately?” Dom what are your thoughts on that?

[00:20:24] Dom: Well I think you don’t do any ads at all. You let it run forever. I mean that’s what you’re here for.

[00:20:30] Chris: No of course. What? I was like no.

[00:20:36] Scott: That’s not the Dom that I know. He’s got pay-per-click running before the listing’s even live if he could.

[00:20:42] Dom: I’m doing pay-per-click right now on retail arb. No, I’m not even doing that but you know, this is the only way you can survive pretty much with, especially if you’re in a competitive market now if you don’t want to do giveaways throughout…

[00:20:55] Scott: Yeah, but forget about the competitive market right now Dom. I mean we’ve got a product that just recently launched, you know it very well and you just did pay-per-click and you didn’t do any really giveaways. We had no reviews when you started running it and it’s selling out every time.

[00:21:10] Dom: We have not given out a product in a year now since the change. In eight months. Not even friends and family, nothing. It’s all been PPC and low entry point. And it’s working. I’ve worked with lots of people. If it was just our stuff working then I’d say, okay maybe we fluked out because we know how to pick products. But there’s a lot of people that I’ve helped with you know same thing. Like the low entry point. Again it doesn’t work if you’re in a competitive market because you’re going to have to spend lots of money on PPC. You’re going to be clicked a million times at a dollar. So yeah, you have to put PPC on right away.

That’s just the way. Like how are you going to get to the first page? That’s the only way you can get to the first page. It’s by having your PPC. So yeah for sure. It’s integral, the days of waiting, I don’t think you have to wait anymore. If you got to get a product and you did your research and that’s the same thing when you run out of stock, it’s exactly the same thing. If you run out of stock, you’re going to have to fight your way back. Obviously your ranking is going to move up a lot quicker but you’ll need to do PPC and then figure out where you’re comfortable with that. How much you want to wait until you get to break even or just a little bit of loss and then every day, trigger it down.

For me that’s more essential than, I know you guys just talked about sessions and nobody asked my opinion, which is fine because I really don’t have an opinion because I don’t have time to worry about those. But if you have one product, you can worry about sessions. For those guys out there that have 20, 30, 40 products, you don’t have time to look at everyone and see their sessions so you can get 1% more sales. Just keep releasing new products. That’s an idea. You’ll get lots of sales that way.

[00:22:34] Chris: I’m going to violently disagree with you on that.

[00:22:36] Dom: Of course you are. Of course you are.

[00:22:38] Chris: And it comes from the data nerd side of me. Because here’s the thing. If you take five minutes to talk to your graphics guy and say, make me a different image for this or you have whoever writes the copy for your listings, write an alternate title. That 1% change over 100 sessions, is an additional sale a day on that unit. Yeah that doesn’t seem like a lot until you remember that you have 50 SKU’s where you can take that lesson that you learned and test it on those and see if your sales go up. So now you’re talking 50 extra sales a day. Is 50 extra sales a day worth the five minutes it takes to set up that test and let it run?

[00:23:18] Dom: If I had somebody doing it for me, yes. For me to do it manually or my team right now, no. We should concentrate on releasing, working on PPC, getting that algorithm going.

[00:23:28] Chris: So when you release a new product, you’re shooting to get 50. Let’s say you have 50 SKU’s right now, you know that when you release that new product, you’re going to get 50 additional sales a day. Whereas if you improved your conversion rate, you could do that and it runs in the background while you’re doing the other stuff. Do you understand what I’m saying?

[00:23:44] Dom: Well, I’m going to tell you, it’s going to be in the first few months anyways because you’re not going to unless you’ve got a really awesome product. You’re going to start selling 30, 40 a day. So you kind of you go for one to three to five to seven. So it’s going to take you months before you can get your stuff moving and then if you want to play with it between that time, I could just… Again everyone does it differently. I understand guys want to look at that. I just never been a proponent. Maybe because I have lots of things going on and we’re working on so many brands together and so many items and you know my goal is to launch two to three products a month. So…

[00:24:13] Scott: And that’s where I think that the collaboration amongst us is a really a good mix because we don’t that and Chris loves that.

[00:24:24] Dom: Yeah, sure. If he wants it spend all day doing the sessions, go ahead.

[00:24:30] Chris: It doesn’t take all day.

[00:24:30] Scott: But then he points around and says, “Dom we just got an extra 25 sales because of that.” You’re like, awesome man.

[00:24:39] Dom: I’ve never had one person say to me, no matter what change you do and all the years I’ve been doing to say, “Hey we were doing 12 a day, now we’re doing 25 a day because we changed the picture.” Not one person said that to me.

[00:24:50] Chris: But you’re not looking for that increase.

[00:24:52] Dom: I get that.

[00:24:53] Chris: What you’re looking for here is the lesson. So you’re saying, okay here’s what we changed, now let’s apply that change to maybe one other listing. It takes you 10 minutes to make the change. One time you let something like Splitly run it automated for you and then 30 days from now, you take another 10 minutes and you go, it worked, it didn’t work. You can then roll that out across your other 30 products so those two sales a day turn into 60.

[00:25:15] Dom: So then I got to take those, all the products, take my graphic designer off what he’s doing. Pictures the five, six images times four products, hey, can you stop and do these new pictures for these other 100 products. Do you know what I’m saying? Like I get all…

[00:25:25] Chris: No, you get another graphic designer.

[00:25:27] Dom: Yeah, sure. I’m not trying to be the bad advocate for watching. If you’ve got time to do that, you’re not launching enough products, is what I’m telling you. Like who cares. I’d rather have 10 products selling 25 a day rather than trying to raise the other 25 to one extra day.

[00:25:47] Chris: That’s the other thing Dom. That data that you’re collecting, helps you more intelligently launch the new products. So I get that it’s an extra step and it’s not something that’s in your workflow and I’m not saying you have to implement it. I’m just playing devil’s advocate because if you’re launching three products a month, what are you shooting for on those three products? Like what’s your sales flow on that? Is it 10 by 10 by one?

[00:26:09] Dom: Yeah, that’s standard.

[00:26:14] Chris: If you launch three products in a month, you’re shooting for 30 additional sales per day. Every month. That’s what you’re trying to add your bottom line. If you took 10 minutes on the first day of the month, you could potentially make that improvement.

[00:26:37] Dom: And go back and look for new keywords, go back to do funnels so you can get people to sign up to the list, go back and get…

[00:26:43] Chris: But all that stuff…

[00:26:44] Dom: You know what I’m saying like it’s endless. You can just do…

[00:26:45] Chris: All of that other stuff is a ton more work and yet that will add exponentially. The small tests and tweaks that you make are going to add on in on average a few percentage points but a few percentage points across 30 products in 60 sales.

[00:27:00] Scott: But the thing is, the thing is though too is like Dom like not everyone can launch three products a month.

[00:27:05] Dom: I get that obviously for everybody. I’m just talking to you guys…

[00:27:08] Scott: And honestly and honestly I mean, I know what you got going on and you’ve got way more than just a few products. So the thing is you’re trying to do all of that and we’re going to be able to come in and help with that. And it’s funny, Megan said she feels like three of her uncles are in there fighting around the campfire or something. This is good. This is good stuff.

[00:27:30] Dom: That’s what the show’s about.

[00:27:33] Scott: This is how we would be if you weren’t even listening right now. This is the beauty of it. Dom’s is going to be Dom, he’s going to be aggressive. We’re going to try to hone him in. Chris and I are usually pretty much on the same page. Not always, but yeah we’re going to have to team up on Dom and hold him down and say, listen, how about this? We’ll get the extra sales and then we’ll let you know what we did and you don’t have to worry about it.

[00:27:56] Dom: That’s the type of deal we have.

[00:27:59] Scott: That’s a good deal, that’s a good deal.

[00:28:02] Dom: That’s why I’m working with you guys. Exactly, you want to take a stock, you want to do all the funnels for our brand? Go ahead. I don’t have time to do it. I don’t even know how to connect them yet, you know. I don’t know how many TAS meetups I go to. I’ve known the basics but I haven’t, you guys do it. That’s your thing. You want me to find products and find catchy names and look for niche markets and…

[00:28:22] Scott: He loves doing names. Dom loves names. I mean Dom we should just do it. We should do that like maybe like for like ten minutes on one of these. We should have people send in like a brand name and have you just go crazy with like all of these different taglines. I think that would be interesting.

[00:28:38] Dom: No, I mean Chris, I’m not dead. I’m not, I don’t want to take away from anything, you’re right. It’s definitely an implement. I just think with one product, to two, I know what you’re saying, great. When you have 60 products, 100 products, that’s even better. But there’s so many things you got to learn and get the process. I would say PPC would be your number one thing. Once you’ve got that down pat, then you start moving to other stuff.

[00:28:59] Chris: That I think is the thing. I’m just going to keep yelling over you I guess because I don’t possess the ability to shut up. That’s the thing, I think that you’re missing. Like PPC, like split testing is more of a set and forget thing. And I hate to say that because you do have to like look at the data. Like PPC you’re going to be tuning a little more unless you’re getting hundreds of sessions a day. You’re going to be tuning that a little more and it takes more work because we’re not just saying it works or it didn’t, you’re doing that a thousand times over a thousand different search terms. With a split test, you’re saying yes or no and it’s one listing, one test at a time. So you’re just like, it worked, awesome. Now I’m going to do this on the other 30 and we’ll add 30 sales a day to the bottom line.

[00:29:45] Dom: So my take to you, Chris isn’t sure, when we launch a product should we already have two pictures ready and two titles ready, so we can just intertwine them? Is that a good strategy or…?

[00:29:53] Scott: Technically that would be a great strategy because while the graphic designers Chris? I think that’s a great idea.

[00:29:58] Scott: And that that’s what I was going to say. I was going to say you don’t necessarily need to set the split test up from the beginning, but you can get when you have your person create the listing have them write two different sets of bullet points. Have them write two different titles. Get two different versions of the images and then you’re not adding Dom then you aren’t adding time you know as you’re doing those tests. It’s just here’s the other version that we want to try. So once you’ve set up you get that baseline, which with what you think is going to be the best then you can test against it.

[00:30:28] Scott: But honestly, the really the main things that you’re going to be testing is image and title. That’s really all you’re going to really be, bullets… I would say the only thing I would test with bullets is the main thing on the first two versus having two other different things on the top of the of there because that’s really as far as people are going to read. Your enhanced content, that’s another thing. Maybe you change out two different templates but your main driver is going to be price, higher/lower and I’m experiencing that still since the last Facebook live that we’ve had. I still have increased sales with raising my price $2 per unit. Sayeed says he got his by-box finally.

[00:31:10] Chris: Ignite baby.

[00:31:11] Scott: Yeah and he says next is ignite. Guys if you are at all interested in pay-per-click, you should definitely check out that training that we did. That’s all set up and ready to go so if you guys are at that point, I know someone had posted that they’re new and they’re thinking about doing pay-per-click, that’s a great resource for you. Yeah Chris just put it up there, theamazingseller.com/ppc, definitely check that out. There’s a special sponsored product ads Facebook group too. So you can go check that out once you’re using that software, that tool. They have a 30-day free trial on that as well. But yeah, so that was fun though. That was a good argument. I like that.

[00:31:48] Chris: I got to get Dom’s heart rate up.

[00:31:51] Scott: How many calories extra did you just burn Dom? What are you for your heart rate?

[00:31:56] Dom: 86.

[00:31:57] Scott: I’m at 85.

[00:31:59] Dom: I’m resting that’s 71 it says. I was at probably about 93 by then.

[00:32:05] Chris: This is a big spike because I’m yelling at you.

[00:32:07] Scott: We don’t just focus on the comic.

[00:32:14] Dom: If we agreed for everything, then we’d be like okay, we’re not, these guys don’t, like they’re all the same. They’re all thinking the same and that’s why we all have different opinions. We’ve always been in a different…

[00:32:23] Scott: And you grow that way.

[00:32:26] Chris: I call this yelling. I mean you’ve met my business partner Joel. Right?

[00:32:31] Dom: My wife’s Portuguese. Everything is yelling, that’s why we have a bumper sticker on our car, “I’m Portuguese, I’m not yelling, I’m Portuguese.” That’s what the bumper on our car says.

[00:32:39] Scott: Nice.

[00:32:45] Chris: I bring up Joel because that’s the level of like intensity with which we have every conversation and it gives people heart attacks. Like people walking by. It’s just like, this is just how we talk. You know, and we’re trying to get our point across. Ben Fair, changing gears mid stream here. He says, “Facebook ads. Do you use it to drive traffic to your Amazon listings?” No, I don’t drive traffic straight to my Amazon listings from ads and there’s two reasons for that. One you cannot track it accurately. You can try to give them a promo code in the ad but if they don’t use it then you can’t attribute that sale, it’s just a mess.

The way that you would use Facebook ads and we go through the entire thing at theamazingseller.com/buildlist is you drive them to a landing page and you capture their email address. That way you can actually track how well the Facebook ad is converting because you know how many emails you got versus how many people clicked and then you can start to market to that customer. If you drive them to your Amazon account or your Amazon listing from email, then you’re not paying to drive them there. If they don’t convert right away, no big deal because you have their email and you can communicate with them and try over and over and over and over again. Does that make sense at a high level guys?

[00:33:54] Scott: Yeah, yeah.

[00:33:55] Dom: You’re just going to kill your conversion. That’s the biggest thing, you’re going to get 100 people click on you and not buy one thing.

[00:34:00] Scott: This way here you’re intercepting it with qualified, yeah sure. You’re getting them more qualified by having them say, “I really do want this and I’m willing to give you a name and email to send me the code.”

[00:34:14] Dom: But even if you don’t get any one sale out of that which is impossible, you’d still get their emails. Which is better than going straight through to get 100 emails like you said, people would pay a dollar to three dollars to four. This system it’s cheap.

[00:34:27] Scott: And the other thing that to not get too geeky here because I’m not that technical when it comes to this stuff but I do know a lot about this is and then on that page that you’d be collecting the email address you’ll put a Facebook pixel and then you’ll start building an audience inside of Facebook as a custom audience and then we can retarget that and do all that fun stuff. So again not to get too geeky but you can definitely do it better than just driving them straight to Amazon.

You do not want to do that. What you do want to do is get them on an email list and then send everyone when you’re ready to that listing and say here’s your code or here’s the discount, we’re doing a flash sale today and then you instantly get you know 25 sales maybe or 30 sales or 50 sales or whatever you want. At that point you can pretty much regulate, by your list. You kind of know how many people are going to do it and all that stuff.

[00:35:16] Dom: And then like you said to Scott and Chris earlier, like before when we talked, you could also send them to your own stuff and you could also do some associated stuff, some higher end stuff and you might not be carrying golf clubs but you’re selling the golf club covers but you can send them for ping balls or…

[00:35:34] Scott: Or hiring golf club, like I said, I bought a cheap set about 300 bucks for Callaways but you know I still bought a set. But if I want, if I was just looking at golf balls and I’d seen the Callaways, I might have bought through your listing or maybe you sent me an offer, I don’t know.

[00:35:48] Dom: The affiliation is endless basically.

[00:35:51] Scott: Chris what else do we got? We got some more questions? I’d seen a bunch popping in.

[00:35:54] Chris: A whole bunch to get to.

[00:35:56] Scott: Lauren…

[00:35:58] Chris: She says, “Can you guys discuss a little bit about patent infringement when picking a product. Scott talked and hinted about an upcoming podcast on the topic, but I’d like to have some understanding of how this works in PL terms and also when you’re creating your private label product listing, do you make slight changes to do so.” So the first thing is, if it’s patented, you either need to just avoid that product or you need to talk with a patent attorney and see what changes you could make to it or what that patent actually covers.

[00:36:29] Dom: You could ask somebody who’s had to talk to a patent lawyer lately that would be cool.

[00:36:34] Scott: I sat down and I had one of these. I had a starbucks coffee with the guy. The guy’s name is Nate and I am going to have him on the podcast. So it’ll probably come on our PLC classroom through to do an expert interview for us. Real nice guy, but here’s the deal, there’s two different things that we have to think about with patents. Number one is the main thing that a lot of people want to know it’s kind of kind of what Lauren said, is like, is it something that’s already patented so I don’t violate it. Like I don’t want to get $30,000 worth of inventory and then find out that I’m violating a patent. Like I do not want to do that. So that’s the first thing. The very, the simplest way to do this, is do a Google search. Just do a Google search for patent on that product and then from there you can see.

We just recently did this Chris in the space that we were doing our case study in and honestly we haven’t really talked about it and Dom I haven’t talked to you recently about it, but I’m probably going to stay away from that product now. I mean they’ve got a pretty good patent on that one product that we were looking into and I looked, I showed it to my guy and he was like, “Yeah we could probably find some things.” And I go but here’s the deal though, those guys are probably going to come after me regardless if I make changes. I can make all the changes I want. They’re probably still going to file a cease and desist and then they’re probably going to have file at infringement and then I’m going to have to take my money and fight it.

[00:37:57] Chris: That’s exactly where I sit on patents and Scott I think you’ve heard me tell this story in the past. I used to work in a small business incubator and we had patent attorneys that would come in all the time and I was having lunch one week with the patent attorneys and there was a guy talking about a multimillion dollar lawsuit. Multi-millions in just legal fees to his firm and other firms about the definition of inside in a patent. One company made it and they put widget B inside and the other one put it inside the other way but the language in the patent said inside and so anything either of those two pieces inside technically are covered by the patent.

Not according to the drawings but according to… Millions of dollars spent litigating the definition of the word inside. There’s no reason to, unless there’s a really easy way around it. If they have a decent patent and it’s a product you really want to go after then you can do it but there’s so many other products out there that aren’t patented that it’s just honestly, it’s not worth your time in 90%.

[00:39:00] Scott: Well here’s what I thought and I actually, I was talking to my son about this because that was something that possibly for those of you guys that have watched that case study that we go through. We basically expose the market and then from there we talk about like we eventually want to launch products in there. We’re actually in the process of that right now, slow process but we’re in the process and this was one of those first products but now what I thought about Chris and Dom, I said you know what, well maybe what we’ll do is we just, we won’t try to make that product. What we might do is maybe reach out to them and see if we can wholesale the product.

[00:39:31] Chris: Or private label from them

[00:39:33] Scott: Or private label from them. I think that they would wholesale us because I think that they’re already trying to get into retail. So this way here, at least I can still offer it but then on the back end of that, if I can wholesale it then I can throw something of my own on the back end of that, so I can sell them something else additionally. The other product that we’re looking into, we are going to probably move forward with, and I actually got samples coming. Actually I ordered some samples this morning and they’re going to be definitely easier. It’s not patentable, it’s just kind of like a substance like that applies to the thing. So it really can’t be patented easily at all and it’s just too, it’s too broad.

But again if you just go to Google and search for the patent and if you find it like real easy, that might be something that’s going to tell you no, I probably want to stay away from this thing. But he did say the patent attorney that I met with, said if you want to see exactly what the language means in our you know language, just scroll to the very bottom and it’ll say the description of the patent and it will tell you the different elements and there’s usually three different elements, he said. It’s usually A plus B plus C. But he said if you want to still go for that product, as long as you don’t have all three, if you only have two and you don’t have all three, technically it’s not the patent then. You’re not going to be violating the patent.

[00:40:51] Chris: So just to clarify that into English because I’m dumb. Basically what you’re saying is, there’s a patent on a garlic press, it needs to have round handles, a square screen and a removable grate. And if it has two but not three of those then it usually won’t violate the patent.

[00:41:09] Scott: Exactly, because the patent is A plus B plus C.

[00:41:13] Chris: So if it didn’t have the removable grate, it wouldn’t violate?

[00:41:17] Scott: Exactly, exactly. But it could just have the one element in it and that’s what makes that thing so… Like it could just have the handle that’s shaped better for your hand and it’s special. Well you’re just going to not make one with that kind of handle that would be an easy one. But again anytime that you’re getting, like he also said too, if you have a product that is not going to sell like more than like $50,000 a year or something probably not worth going after that because you’re going to be spending a lot of money on legal fees. Like just don’t marry a product. That’s what I would say. Do not marry into a product, because if you do you could later down the road if you’re not really selling a ton of that, you could be sorry.

So you want to do your research up front and I think the biggest thing like I told him, I think the biggest thing that we need and that anyone that’s listening needs is really before we launch we want to know, is this thing patented? And even if you don’t find it on Google does that mean that it’s not patented? No, it just means that it might not be there yet or maybe it’s patent pending. So then you would pay an attorney, usually a couple hundred bucks two, three hundred bucks and then they’ll do an extensive search and then from there they can come back and say, these are some things that could be potentially like it, but it’s not a 100% so I think you’re okay.

That’s how that would go. So I think that’s where a lot of people are going. It’s the people that think, can I patent this or should I patent this? That’s a little bit more involved. Because now like he said, 99% of the patents that you submit will get declined. They will not get accepted and it’s then, it’s going back and forth with your attorney to the patent office and figuring out okay well what’s going to make ours unique. And then you keep going back and forth and that’s where the money starts to add up. Because he told me he’s like 400 bucks an hour. Like literally, so imagine what that can be a couple phone calls is going to add up quick.

[00:43:02] Chris: Especially because he charges in 15 minute increments like most attorneys.  

[00:43:06] Scott: Exactly.

[00:43:07] Chris: One phone call could cost you 100 bucks.

[00:43:10] Dom: I was going to say Scott, I’m assuming we’re talking about one of the products that you were working on before. So remember when I talked to you about that, I said you know here’s kind of an idea. I said maybe we combine two different competitors into one then to make it a new element which you could do because now you’re taking two. So that’s definitely an option because I thought that was a big struggling point when I started working with you on that. I was like okay, we already know there’s going to be patent on this but what if we take two, we take the best from the one best for the two but I see a lot of people do that all the time. The luggage. They take one good part for one luggage, that’s how they came up with four wheels instead of just two wheels. One company said hey let’s make all four into the two and whatever.

My other thing was that, I mean the quick giveaway on Amazon is if there’s a bunch of people selling that product, there’s usually no patents on it. That’s the thing. I would never trust your China supplier, they’ll tell you anything to be honest. Unless you know their spot, “Oh no, no patent, no patent at all.” Sure, okay. And again, if you’re the only one that’s selling it, the only one or two, then there’s a chance. And again we kind of run into that because a lot of stuff we do there’s only a couple of us doing it, so we’re like okay it’s a patent or maybe they just don’t know how to take one part and put it together to make it one item. So those are just little tidbits to watch out.

But most of the stuff on Amazon, you gotta be careful. Obviously if you want to… And it’s a brand that you’re going to be copying too, guys. Like you know I here sort of you, I got suspended, I got yeah. I mean your product looks like the Nike Swoosh. Or it looks like your product looks like Shrek’s face or it looks like a Mickey Mouse’s face. You just can’t open a McDowell’s and have a golden arch.

[00:44:57] Scott: What was that movie? Coming to America or…?

[00:44:58] Dom: McDowell’s. Instead of two M’s it had one. You know you can’t do that. So a lot of people didn’t find out all you know, you have to use common sense, don’t…

[00:45:10] Scott: If you’re trying to deliberately confuse, then that’s where you can definitely get in trouble.

[00:45:14] Chris:  And it’s called the, the legal term is called Intentional Confusion.

[00:45:22] Dom: So anyways, if you’re doing the correct thing or you’re doing a Reebok thing like that you any enemies any of these type of big companies, don’t make it exactly the same.

[00:45:32] Chris: Don’t call your washing machine, My Tag.

[00:45:34] Dom: Yeah, even your company name guys… I mean one of our best selling products our main competitor got washed out because all they changed was one or two letters in their name so it sounds exactly like the real product and that’s it they just got shut down. I mean that’s just like what’s his name, said in, I can’t remember now. Oh, the Wedding Singer. Where we get all the benefits.

[00:46:05] Scott: Actually there’s a good example of that. I’m not going to say the name but if you do a little bit of research, you’ll find it. But Dr. Oz, has always said that he’s never put his name on a supplement, ever and he never will. Now he’s recommended some different ingredients or this and the other thing but he never and there’s people out there using Oz in their name and they’re killing it but man, oh man. I mean there’s going to come a time that…

[00:46:34] Dom: You got to watch all that. One of our good friends that we met, we talk about he had a company with the word Intel in his company name. They were after him every day cease and desist. Just Intel, root and own. But that’s called a federal trademark. They own the word Intel, just like the word, I’m going to say it, “cozy.” You know those things that you’d put on beer bottles, you know all these companies they own… ‘Three peats’ which is owned by Phil Jackson.

We’ve talked about before, you know back to back. You know Johnny football, all this type of stuff they’re a federal trademarks, not just a trademark. So you can’t use them on anything though. You have to search your name and don’t try to be picky exactly what a state tag or you’re selling something for a bay tag or your rig your selling stuff for Keurig, you’re going to get cease and desist right away.

[00:47:27] Chris: The K is silent.

[00:47:28] Scott: Hey Dom. I got a question for you. It came in for an ask Scott session. I didn’t even answer it, I just gave my opinion. What’s your thoughts on this? Someone was trying to get ungated, they did everything properly except they might not have split the invoices into three invoices upfront and then they requested it. So then they did it later and then it kind of brought a red flag to their trying to get ungated. So his thought was, if I just go and try to do a different product now and start over but with a different product and then I get ungated, can I now launch that product I was trying to get ungated before?

[00:48:11] Dom: Yeah, well I mean this is what it works. Chris has already said. Yeah you’re getting ungated for the category not your product necessary. But I will let you know they really cracked out on, I’d like to answer in Italian style here. If you get ungated for a product, you better make sure that you list that product. Even if you don’t plan on selling it, just put one or two. I mean this is really big in the DVD market. A lot of guys are getting manifests and they might be real or not but they’re not even you know listing that stuff and Amazon is going, “You just told us you bought 30 of this, 30 that but I don’t see it listed.” Maybe they borrowed somebody else’s list. That’s what’s happening. So if you do that yeah. So once you ungated a category, you could list whatever you want.

[00:48:54] Scott: That was the main question and he wasn’t saying that he was going to do it to try to manipulate it so we can get ungated. I see what you’re saying and that’s kind of what I said. I said I think it’s a great strategy, if you plan on selling that other product, but if you’re just doing it as a way to get ungated, you better make sure that you’re doing that and then you’re going to sell that product but then also the product that you’re trying to get in is legitimately supposed to be in that category.

[00:49:16] Dom: Because they know, they have all your cases there. It’s not like it’s hidden. It’s not like a seven year record or you know comes off your driver’s license seven years or you got bad credit, it’s going to be there forever. They’ll just go back and see that you opened it. Yeah, if you’re going to release that product, you better launch that item.

[00:49:30] Scott: What he was thinking was, there was a product that he was going to launch like later and he could get a test order done in the States. He was going to do that and then do the split of the invoices and all that stuff and he thought that that would be an easier way to get ungated rather than keep trying to battle with this one and once he gets ungated then he can launch different product.

[00:49:48] Dom: No, I’ve heard lots of people even that work, that got you know won’t get accepted because they had sent one receipt and they just have to put the next three. Another option would be to just go re-buy that stuff again and do 2, 3 more receipts. Buy one on one day 30 units, go back a week later buy another 30 units and then do that.

[00:50:06] Scott: I think the problem too though Dom, I think that’s the problem too because I haven’t heard of this before. He said that they were having a tough time validating the address of the factory, even though he’s seen that the factory was legit. It’s been there for like 15 years.

[00:50:20] Dom: They have a list that they go by. And that’s it. If it’s not on that list they say no. So if you buy your toys from a liquidation store  they don’t care. They need to know that you got it from Mattel, Hasbro or a distributor of their stuff and they have a list. Nobody knows what the list is. The only thing is I’ve been told even by a couple guys is, go by the ASD, by the gift show list. Like go to ASD and they’ll list you all the vendors and that’s a lot of those vendors on there. But again it’s hit or miss.

There might be 25 people that sell health and beauty and you might pick the one that they don’t. So, but at least you get a chance and there’s a lot of chat rooms that kind of talk about that stuff but that’s how you would do it. At least if it’s ASD, nobody looks it up, it’s basically it’s a sales show that has all the vendors including apparel, health and service, sporting goods and then you’re pretty well. Because I think that’s probably what they do. They just go okay, G&M supply supplements, yeah, no problem we’ll take the thing. But again if they get abused they get blacklisted.

[00:51:22] Scott: Okay, Chris we got any other questions?

Okay, so I’m going to cut it right there and that was pretty much a wrap up. We did answer some more questions to the live audience. But I just wanted to give you really the meat of the TAS Power Hour and let you guys experience a little bit of what we do there. Like I said, it’s totally random, like we don’t plan like a ton when we hop on here, we just kind of have a few things that are on our minds or things that we’re working on and then we kind of dig in and then we also ask live questions and that’s kind of how it all kind of takes place. But hopefully you got some value here.

I did want to remind you about the show notes for this episode and the transcripts can be found at theamazingseller.com/351. Also want to remind you about upcoming TAS power hours. Those are on Fridays at 2pm Eastern time. So definitely make sure that you’re part of our Facebook community over at theamazingseller.com/fb and enjoy that resource over there in that community because it’s awesome. I mean the people inside of that TAS community are always helping each other and constantly learning and sharing and all of that good stuff. So definitely get yourself connected there, not to mention you’ll be notified of our updates as far as our Facebook lives or any live events that we do, unofficial meetups, all of that stuff can be found there as well.

And I did want to remind you guys, if you’re brand new to the podcast and you haven’t subscribed yet, so you don’t miss any of these, any updates that we do here, which we publish Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so this way here you can make sure that everything is delivered right to your phone. Well definitely make sure you subscribe to the Amazing Seller Podcast and then also share it with anyone that you think that would get value from it. That would mean a lot and that would be really, really awesome.

[00:53:11] Scott: All right guys, so that’s going to wrap it up. I did want to remind you though, if you wanted to check out the video of us goofballs on our Facebook live of this particular one, just go to the show notes and you’ll find that, it’s embedded inside of that blog post and there is some other questions that we answered at the end. If you wanted to listen to those, those are there as well.

All right guys, so remember as always, I’m here for you, I believe in you and I’m rooting for you. But you have to, you have to… Come on, say it with me, say it loud, say it proud, “Take action.” Have an awesome amazing day and I’ll see you right back here on the next episode.

Now let’s go ahead and listen to that funky beat one more time. I don’t know, I really like this beat. You guys like this beat? This is pretty cool. All right, see you guys.

[END]

Click Here to Download Transcript <<

Click Here to Download Transcript <<

…and this is a Live product brainstorming session and part two will be a Website Teardown where we talk with other E-commerce experts and people that have been doing this for a while and those people are Noah Kagan. I had him on the show before. He was episode 342 and then Ian Schoen from Tropical MBA. So another great guest. And then Steve Chou, a repeat guest on our show here. He was on episode 93 and 323. Really excited to have him on as well and this what was here… Let me just kind of talk about how this whole thing kind of happened.

Noah had reached out to me and said, “Hey, maybe we should get together sometime and we can kind of do this round table thing and maybe get Ian on, maybe Steve, maybe you and we can just sit around and kind of talk about product research and brainstorming and how to test and validate and all of that stuff.” And then he went ahead and he asked people on his Facebook page, would they like us to review their website. So all they had to do is just submit their website. So we picked the three websites and the way that we approached this was, let’s take these websites with fresh eyes and land on the page and then talk about how we would improve it and all of these products have to do with physical products.

But it’s a website that you would land on if you were just searching for something related to these products. So that’s going to be in part two. So you are going to want to definitely listen to this one on part one and then part two will be the website teardowns which is again another great session. And this was actually recorded for all of us to share if we wanted to. So I went ahead and I took all the highlights and it went on for almost a couple of hours. So I broke it down, got really to the meat of it, and I think you guys will get a ton of value from this recording.

[00:02:02] Scott: And just imagine being at the table with all of us and just digging into this topic and I had a blast doing it and I felt like again I was not the smartest guy at the table, which I never want to be. Which is great because I learned a ton as well going through this process and I really enjoy doing it. So definitely listen to this episode and listen to part two because you guys are going to get a ton of value. There’s tons of golden nuggets scattered amongst these episodes.

Now the other thing I wanted to do really quickly is just remind you on the show notes. You will want to download the transcripts to this episode and part two. That will be coming next. But right now you can head over to theamazingseller.com/353 and then you’ll get all the transcripts, all of the links and the show notes that we talked about will be there on that page. So guys I’m going to stop talking because this is a great episode. You guys are going to enjoy it. I’m fired up for you guys to listen to this awesome conversation that I had with my good friends, Noah, Ian and Steve. So enjoy.

[DISCUSSION]

[00:03:05] Noah: Brag the most about yourself in 15 seconds and give us how much you’ve made in ecommerce revenue so that people can take you more seriously. I want some status updates or some brag updates.

[00:03:14] Steve: This is going on your podcast?

[00:03:18] Noah: I originally thought everyone could take the episode and put it in their own and that’s up to you guys if you want.

[00:03:23] Steve: Okay, but it’s going on yours for sure? Right?

[00:03:25] Noah: Yes. If it sucks I’m not going to put it out. But if it’s great, I’m going to put it out. No pressure

[00:03:33] Steve: Because I’m telling my intro. All right, so this is going on your podcast. In that case, it’s your boy Steve Chou aka Papa Panda aka Chewfusious aka the emperor. I run a seven figure store called Bumblebee Linens. I started it back in 2007 before there were all these popular platforms around. Grew to six figures in profit in the first year and it’s been growing in the double and triple digits ever since. That led to my blog mywifequitherjob.com

where I kind of document my experiences running my store, which has led to a popular podcast and an ecommerce conference called The Seller Summit.

[00:04:10] Noah: Damn, one. Four plugs, one intro, 15 seconds, impressive. The Asians always overdo it.

[00:04:16] Scott: He prepared though for that. He prepared for that. Don’t let him fool you.

[00:04:19] Noah: The Asians are like, “Oh I’m not ready, I’m not ready. A plus.” Alright, Ian Schoen, hit it off.

[00:04:25] Ian: I’m a little bit slow. I don’t know if I can do this in 15 seconds but 2007-2008 time frame. Me with my business partner, we started an ecommerce site. We’re selling valet parking equipment. I grew that into portable bars, grew that into cat furniture. It was a mid seven figure ecommerce operation, had product design, manufacturing, sourcing and sold it in 2015 and since then I’ve just been kind of hanging out on the porch. Not all hanging out on the porch, so Noah comes over once in a while. Started a blog and a podcast back around 2010 called The Tropical MBA and that’s where we were musing about the company that we used to own and now we interview other people that are running successful companies.

[00:05:13] Noah: Alright Scott, the finale.

[00:05:15] Scott: Yeah right, okay. I’m going to go a little different angle here. The most thing I want to brag about I think is that I’ve been married for 22 years. Can I hear a round of applause on that?

[00:05:22] Noah: Yes.

[00:05:24] Scott: That’s impressive, right?

[00:05:25] Noah: That is really impressive.

[00:05:26] Scot: And my wife has been my partner in a lot of those businesses that I’ve come up with. So yeah and she’s been a huge supporter. So basically I’m a dad. That’s my first and foremost passion and I’ve created lifestyle businesses. No college degree, never stepped foot in college and was able to build a photography business locally, a six figure business that allowed us to work from home and then from there started selling on eBay and some of our own digital products on CD and that’s really where my first product was kind of sold. But then since, have built multiple six figure businesses in ecommerce and in digital. So yeah, that’s pretty much my spiel in a nutshell.

[00:06:07] Noah: And Scott for a lot of people who don’t know for my audience, he was actually a construction worker. So a lot of the times are like, “Oh Noah you’re already like Jewish, so you have an advantage.” Like you know, literally someone was a construction worker, not with that experience that college was able to do. So we have a good show for you guys today about how to be the best in ecommerce. So let’s just get going in and go back to the basics like for each of you guys I know. What was the first product you sold online? Like how did you guys sell your first product, make your first dollar, with your ecommerce business? So maybe we can go backwards in reverse so Scott to… Just jump in where other guys want to jump in.

[00:06:39] Scott: Yeah, cool. My first online sale was really, wooden cedar bridges that I found, I was doing a little bit of retail arbitrage back then, I didn’t even know what that was. What’s that?

[00:06:48] Noah: What is a wooden cedar bridge?

[00:06:50] Scott: It was a wooden cedar bridge for a garden. So little four foot bridges and my wife and I had seen that these things were selling on eBay and we had no idea what we’re doing but we said you know what let’s try to sell these things because we’d seen we could buy them for like 25 bucks at a local store. We sold them for like 130 bucks a piece and they were selling like hotcakes. We were buying 20 at a time.

[00:07:09] Noah: How did you even think like, oh there’s wooden bridges, like I can put them on eBay and make money?

[00:07:16] Scott: I’ll tell you. Yeah, I’ll tell you exactly. I think I was selling something else just because I was getting rid of something like something around the house and I just, everybody is saying that you could sell it on eBay. Let me just go ahead put it up there and like within like two hours I had like five bids and I’m like holy crap, like I never knew you could sell something online. I mean this is going way back.

And then I started looking at other things that people were selling. I started looking around the house and stuff and then my wife had said that she’d seen that these wooden bridges were you know, people were buying them off of eBay. So I said well let’s just try to buy some and sell them because she had said she had found some at a store. So we kind of looked it up and just kind of reverse engineered it and we actually put our kids through private school selling those wooden bridges.

[00:07:54] Noah: So one thing to add Scott. I think that’s what we talked about on your show. Which is just like, for anyone out there who’s like I don’t even know what kind of business to start, just grab all the stuff in your house or all the stuff in your friend’s houses or your office or wherever it is and just start putting it on eBay or Amazon or Etsy. Just get it going and then you probably find some type of angle or thing that should work for you.

[00:08:13] Scott: Yeah, so just again just to kind of really wrap up. So that was like just the thing that got me kind of like excited but then from there we had a photography business, a brick and mortar business and then I started seeing that people were selling different templates and stuff online or on eBay. So I started selling my digital wedding templates on eBay and that was really my first fledge business in the ecommerce world as far as like it was a physical product but it was a CD. So that was that was my first round.

[00:08:41] Noah: How do you feel because you know you were doing construction work, you’re doing manual labor all day and now you’re like, you know throwing… I just keep thinking the gardens of Madison County and you’re just making easy money. Like how did that feel for you?

[00:08:52] Scott: It was insane because I’ve dreamt of it. I was out there in the construction site, like you guys are probably seeing the guys are out there on the roofs or in the hot sun or in the cold winters because I was in upstate New York and I dreamt of it. I mean I did all kinds of things. I mean I was even in Amway, imagine that. Way back when in the day. I went to meetings and all that you know, so…

[00:09:10] Noah: What’s Amway? Is that like alcohol anonymous? MLM

[00:09:13] Scott: Yes. I think a lot of us entrepreneurs have gotten started in that way but it definitely introduced me to the business concept and stuff. But yes, so yeah, I was a hard labour for construction and then just never thought I could do it and then I started getting the taste for it on eBay and that kind of I guess gave me all of the knowledge to kind of keep moving and the motivation to keep doing it.

[00:09:37] Noah: Ian.

[00:09:38] Ian: Yeah, so back in 2007, we started our first ecommerce company and it was selling valet parking products. So going through college, part of the way that I paid for everything was as a valet parking attendant. I thought it was a cool way to drive nice cars. And then I got out of college.

[00:9:59] Noah: Do you have a favorite valet story.

[00:10:03] Ian: I mean back in the day like most of the stories are like you get like a big rush that you’re not expecting and of course like it’s a bunch of like degenerates working at the valet.

[00:10:14] Noah: That’s nice to know. Well maybe is there something that most people don’t know about valet? Should we not be doing valet?

[00:10:20] Ian: It really depends. I mean if you go on YouTube, you can see plenty of destruction going on but the valet industry or the people that work valet are not so dissimilar to the service industry. You know the cooks and the waiters and things like that. So they all like to party. They all spend every dollar that they have. That was me and so there was many days where you’re very hungover, you come up to work and all of a sudden there’s a rush and you’re puking behind the parking garage because you’re having to run around like a crazy man.

Anyways I was a valet parking attendant. I got out of school, I went to school for product design and started working at a firm and then I just started to look around. I just had like a different lens and I saw these valet parking stands. Did a little bit of research, they were all manufactured at the time in the United States and they weren’t manufactured very well at all. The equipment hadn’t really been thought through as clearly designed like by mom-and-pop operations out of necessity. No one had figured out how to make it efficient for shipping. No one had figured out how to make replacement parts for it.

No one had really thought through the industry. At the time, a lot of these valet parking companies were turning from small mom-and-pop operations to big corporations and none of these companies knew how to speak corporate either, the ones selling the equipment. So we saw an opportunity to start making that equipment and that’s what we did back in 2008. And the way I got started in e-commerce was, I kind of had an idea of what I wanted the valet equipment to look like. So we designed it, we developed it. I had $50,000 worth of equipment on a container coming over from China and I had no idea how to market this stuff through the internet and so it was..

[00:12:00] Noah: One second. Just want to take you back. How did you, so you see valet and you’re like, “Oh I can make a better valet box?” And then, did you just like draw it on paper or did you use CAD, like what did you like that’s the part, did you just jump to like oh then I have stuff coming from China?

[00:12:15] Ian: Yeah, so I drew it on CAD. So I went to school as a product designer. So that was part of my skill set, was being able to design products.

[00:12:23] Noah: If someone doesn’t have that knowledge, like let’s say I want to design a better garbage can because I think garbage cans are overpriced. I don’t know if that’s just me.

[00:12:29] Ian: Totally overpriced. So the way to hack it, it’s very easy. So if you go over to China and this has been the case for a long time. If you go to them with a sketch or a half an idea, they’re unlike a lot of American manufacturing companies. They will put in the design and development work to make that product for you.

[00:12:48] Noah: Where do you find those kind of people now? Or where would you?

[00:12:52] Ian: I used to make pilgrimages. I mean I used to go over there for a month, two months at a time. Hang out.

[00:12:59] Noah: Like you could just show up in China and they’re like, “Hey, it’s the white guy.”

[00:13:00] Ian: Absolutely, yeah. I mean I had a fixer, so I had a guy that spoke the language and that could take me around all the different factories. I mean these days a lot of people sell on Amazon and eBay and all these sites. It’s relatively easy to find products through Alibaba and things like that but I was looking for unique manufacturing capabilities and unique products and to do that I was on the ground over there.

[00:13:23] Noah: So one thing I think you’ve mentioned to me in the past is that, when you actually get a product and you kind of like the way that it’s made, you can actually just look on their tags or their stickers to see and try to work backwards of the manufactures. Is that possible?

[00:13:34] Ian: Yeah, absolutely. I mean the way that China is set up is actually in like small towns or small communities of manufacturing expertise. So if you want to get buttons made, chances are like you’re not just going to get a one button factory. In China you’re going to land at the button factory and then all the neighbours around that factory are also going to be making buttons. And so there’s a lot of efficiency there in the way that they’re set up. So…

[00:13:58] Noah: Oh excuse me,

[00:13:59] Ian: Go ahead.

[00:14:00] Noah: No it sounds like, so for most people if they don’t have the skills of being able to design a better one, it’s like find a product or I guess I don’t know how… How would you find a fixer? Like if I want to make my garbage can or how do I do that?

[00:14:11] Noah: Find an existing manufacturer of garbage cans. Whether it be on Alibaba or directly in China and chances are they’re going to help you to create a better garbage can. So one of the rules that I use, is like most products, I mean sophisticated products are made up of many different materials. So it might be like wood, plastic, metal, figure out what the majority of that material is. So let’s say the majority of a valet stand is metal. I’m going to go find a metal manufacturer that makes something that looks like valet parking equipment. For example toolboxes and then if you have plastic or something like that that you also want to add on to the unit, a lot of times they will subcontract out for that plastic. So your manufacturer will do a lot of that work for you. Does that make sense?

[00:14:54] Noah: Yes, so they’ll actually do work once you’ve found the person?

[00:14:57] Ian: Yeah, so you don’t need a design, you don’t need a background design or anything like that. I mean it was very helpful for me because I was able to get exactly what I wanted kind of you know in the first and second try whereas you’d probably have to go through a lot of different iterations with these factories.Go ahead, it was helpful.

[00:15:15] Noah: So you make the design and then you find a fixer who gets you the people in China and then they send you $50,000 worth of valet boxes and you hadn’t sold any at that point?

[00:15:25] Ian: We hadn’t sold any. So I didn’t know what my plan was. I think my plan was like, okay get this thing designed, order it and then as soon as I got on the water I kind of started to panic because I had all this money out there number one. Number two I didn’t actually know the quality of the product. I mean I’d ordered the sample but as I found out later on, in China not necessarily what you order is what you get. So I had all this product coming over and I wasn’t like an Internet power user at the time. Like I kind of understood what search results were and like how the internet worked, but I was very far away from understanding SEO.

And so that was the first thing we did was we basically sat down. We were like, alright, we have to figure out how to get this site to number one and one of the ways that we did it back in the day, I think this is like 2007, was we signed up for things like Yahoo. What was it, Yahoo Commerce Listings or something like that? I mean, it was like pretty rudimentary back in the day. But that first year, we spent tons of time understanding how to manipulate the search results.

[00:16:24] Noah: What was like your first sale?

[00:16:26] Ian: Okay, so the way that we actually sold the product… I don’t know if people think this is sketchy these days but back then it was definitely sketchy. We had a rendering of the product. So it was like a computer generated image. We put up a website and then we started cold calling people in the valet industry and then also as we got better at SEO…

[00:16:47] Noah: Can you say that again? You kind of cut out right at the good part. How did you get the first sale? You’d started to say something shady which I liked.

[00:16:57] Ian: So yeah. What we did was we made a computer rendering of the image. So it wasn’t actually the image, it was just what we took out of our solid modelling program. We took an image of the valet equipment. We put it up on the website and we put a “Buy Now,” button and we started cold calling valet parking companies and eventually our ranking started to increase. So as soon as we got a couple of sales, we would respond back and say, hey this product is out of stock, thank you for your interest. We’d refund their money immediately and that was basically how we validated the products.

[00:17:30] Noah: Oh, so you guys listed it on your site and sold them even before you even got them?

[00:17:34] Ian: Yeah.

[00:17:35] Noah: And then when people actually were like, “Hey I want it.” You’re like, “Oh we don’t have it right now,” and then…

[00:17:39] Ian: Yeah, we said it was out of stock

[00:17:41] Noah: Was that before you ordered or afterwards?

[00:17:44] Ian: That was like as we were going through the ordering process. So I think at that time when we launched our website, like we had already negotiated with the factory like the pricing and like what the design was going to be and all of that stuff. But we didn’t actually have the products in stock. It was going to be a couple months. But I think, if I’m remembering, this was a long time ago, we got our first sales before we actually paid for the purchase order in China.

[00:18:05] Noah: So you got listed online, people would buy it because you had a basically fake page, I mean a pre-order page now is what they call on Kickstarter or you know Shopify or whatever it is. And then that validated that oh, s***, people actually buy this. Do you remember how you got links back then, I mean how you got people to actually like…?

[00:18:21] Ian: So, one of the things we did was, gosh this was like way back in the day. We actually started our own link network. I don’t even know what they call it anymore but it’s like a private link network.

[00:18:33] Scott: It’s like your private blog network, right?

[00:18:36] Ian: Yeah, we did that. We actually started a directory for our industry. So no one else was doing that at the time, like no one else had pulled together all these companies. So we started approaching them and saying like, “Hey we’re going to put you in this directory.” And at the time none of these valet companies knew what SEO was either, so it was like oh this manufacturing company, they’re going to supply us with supposedly better equipment which I think we did and they’re also going to list us and they get rankings when I type in valet parking, they come up first, that’s pretty sweet. So that’s one of the ways that we got links back in the day.

[00:19:08] Noah: Alright Scott, set it off. What was the first sale? Oh not Scott, Steve.

[00:19:11] Scott: I was going to say, come on man, I already did that.

[00:19:14] Steve: Dude, my story is a lot geekier man. So I used to go on craigslist, comb the computer listings and what I would do is I would buy the computer system, strip it apart and then sell off the pieces for a lot more money.

[00:19:27] Noah: How did you know you could do that? How did you know you can make money doing that?

[00:19:30] Steve: Because I was trying to sell my computer stuff and I noticed that people were overpaying and then I noticed that people were selling this stuff on there really cheap. That career came to an end real quick though because I ended up like in a bad neighborhood one day to pick up these hard drives and like it was out of this guy’s van and then like it was hard drives, I remember. And then he cut like all the hard drives had like the cables cut and then it was just a box of drives and he said, do you want them. Meanwhile like I had my Stanford sweatshirt on. I had my glasses on like an Asian and like an all like black neighborhood. So I ended up just like buying all those and then I left and that was the end of my career there.

[00:20:06] Noah: So it’s kind of interesting you and Scott both just did things out of necessity and noticed you’re observant about what’s working. People actually really want more of this. How do I get more of those? And that actually got you more into ecommerce.

[00:20:18] Steve: Yeah, I mean I was just doing for fun. I was just doing for fun really, just some spending cash.

[00:20:23] Noah: No but actually in Berkeley, this is you know, it’s funny now, it sounds so archaic but like craigslist and eBay and Amazon, I don’t think how their marketplace were really early. So I would buy broken or laptops on eBay and then arbitrage them to craigslist and vice versa and similar to you, I stopped doing it because I sold one to the Philippines and it was one of these things where like everyone’s like, oh don’t sell to the Philippines. You’re going to get scammed and I was like, no, this person her name is Stephanie. She’s definitely there, she promised me it’s okay and then I sent the laptop, it was a Sony Vaio little one and a week later it’s like that account is hacked, we’re taking the money and you lost the laptop. And I was like alright, this is maybe not for me.

[00:21:04] Steve: Yeah for me, I was like fearing for my life because I was ending up going to all these sketchy neighborhoods to buy stuff.

[00:21:10] Noah: So let’s, before, I want to definitely go into a few of the listeners websites. Before you even get into that, I kind of want to know how you guys think about going about it now that you’ve done this for so many times. Like maybe let’s go back to a new beginning if you’re starting today. So for example, let’s just say I create a garbage can. Like Noah’s garbage. So I create Noah’s garbage. How do you guys go about getting it to like $1,000 a month through ecommerce? Like I’m just curious how you guys would even start processing that and going about it and then try to create somewhat of a framework that other people can replicate from this.

[00:21:40] Steve: I mean for me like I’d have to know what’s special about the garbage can first. So like what’s special about your garbage can and is there a market for it?

[00:21:46] Noah: I like the waving thing. Have you guys seen where you wave and it just opens. But it breaks down after a while and there are $100. Like I think they should be cheap like 30 bucks and then just have a better motor so they don’t break down after like you know a week. Is that not interesting?

[00:22:01] Ian: Okay, so your garbage can is $30. It has a waving motion sensor on it. What else does it have?

[00:22:08] Noah: You know it’d be cool if it had like a little counter and it shows how much garbage you’re using.

[00:22:114] Scott: So it’s got like a gauge on it so it shows you how full it is?

[00:22:16] Noah: Yeah, either how full it is. I mean, I guess what’s the problem with garbage, I don’t know. I guess well maybe can tell us about, how do you guys even go about figuring this out? Like what kind of,

[00:22:24] Scott: Here’s my take on it Noah real quick. It’s like, first off, like okay, I think we all can have really great ideas. But I think the one thing that Amazon allows us to do, is see the product that you know products that are currently selling and then looking at the reviews and seeing what people like and what they don’t like. I think that’s like the easiest way kind of test the market, see a market, because it’s already there. You don’t even have to do any of the work. You can just kind of spy on the competition.

[00:22:47] Noah: Why don’t we do that for garbage cans while we’re talking. I’ll pull up the Amazon.

[00:22:50] Scott: Then from there you just dig in to, and again you might have stuff on your bucket list but like things that you like maybe two other people would really care. I don’t care if I can see if mine’s empty. I’ll just lift the lid. But for you it might be important. Maybe you don’t want to lift the lid. You know what I mean? So I think there’s different needs and wants for those people and I think again if we’re looking at it, we got to be able to validate the market even exists before putting in like Ian. I mean he put in 50 grand and before he really, I mean he knew there was a market but he didn’t really… I don’t know Ian, was there already a product that was selling like yours or did you just come up with something and said, I think people are going to like this?

[00:23:29] Ian: Yeah, there was already a product that was selling. That’s an important distinction to make. The least successful products that I’ve ever sold are ones that I’ve developed myself. So like I had an idea about something that I thought was great and turned out to always be a flop. What I’d look to develop a new product like I looked to who’s selling the best product out there. I generally like to be at the top of the market not at the bottom of the market and what innovations can I bring to that industry or what innovations can I bring to that product.

And I think to Scott’s point, like looking at Amazon reviews and seeing… well first of all trying to sift through the real ones. That’s a big challenge he says and then trying to actually figure out what people want in a garbage can. I think that that’s important and it’s not, never my ideas by the way and I think a lot of people that are selling and making products would agree with that. Like even as the product manufacturer, I generally don’t have the best ideas, it’s the customers that do.

[00:24:24] Steve: I just pulled up some garbage cans just for kicks here. Here’s some complaints about some of the metal garbage cans out there. The containers are a lot smaller than I thought. There’s no way you could put a cereal box in the recycling side without smashing into a ball. The trash bags didn’t fit perfectly like there’s a lot of give on there. So based on this feedback, we could probably create a better trash can and…

[00:24:50] Noah: It’s funny the one that I actually bought before, the 9 stars. So I really like where you guys are going with this, which is just like I think sometimes we solve our own problems which is good but you also have to make sure that people actually want to pay for that and it’s a really great point. And just because it’s selling on Amazon I personally don’t think it’s guaranteed that’d be a success for yourself.

You know let’s say we like this 9 star. So they have a touchless gas garbage can and if you look at their one and two stars, the number one complaint that everyone’s doing is like it broke really early. Kind of what I mentioned before. So it’s cheap, there’s no warranty, I can’t call anyone, so what do we do from here? Like it seems like this is an opportunity that, make one that actually doesn’t break and then they can contact someone.

[00:25:32] Scott: Yeah, I think that’s the easiest solution. I mean fix those really, those simple problems that you see on the surface and I think Ian like you had said, like how do you sift through the ones that are real? I think you’re going to see more of the ones that are 5 star, that aren’t as real than the ones that people are complaining. Yeah we’re going to have sometimes you have competitors that are going to jump on there and try to bring your listing down for the most part though.

I think if we look at those we’ll get a good understanding especially if they’re being repeated. So I think right there, I mean making the bag fit better so you’re actually using the 13 gallon bag and not just 10 of it. I think that’s something that you can look at. I think you can look at like you said if it breaks too easily, why is it breaking? Like what part broke? Is it lightweight material? Can we increase the gauge of steel or stainless steel that they’re using?

So like I think those are like great ways. The other thing is too is though is maybe just don’t go there but you know you can go at other marketplaces and look at the reviews there. I mean look at it look at Sears, look at any of them, Walmart or any other ones that have reviews, Home Depot, any of those and just start to kind of uncover some of those simple ones that could be easily tweaked and then you’re going to call those out as yours is the better one because yours has this, this and this which your competitors had all complaints about. So that would be my angle.

[00:26:49] Noah: I think making a not break, I think sounds like the number one thing and two maybe having like, hey how much garbage have I used, so it’s kind of like I don’t know that’s negative reinforcing. I don’t if I actually want to know that. I think it’d be cool if it just tells me when to take it out. It’s like, yeah well I guess I already know that too. There’s not really that like, you know what I mean?

[00:27:06] Ian: I’m not liking this product but yeah go on.

[00:27:08] Noah: I’m not liking it well. So that’s not okay. So I think the thing I want to get clarity on though is, like I come up with my garbage can idea that’s just not going to break or I and what do I do with that, how do I actually see if you want to buy it?

[00:27:19] Scott: I think there’s a company,

[00:27:20] Noah: How do you guys do it?

[00:27:22] Scott: Like I’m saying, I think there’s a couple things that I want to highlight here first. So this garbage can, are you thinking like you’re just going to sell this one off garbage can and you’re just going to you’re going to run with that one garbage can or is there other products you’re going to be serving to this? Is it going to be a brand? Is it just going to be one hit wonder like what’s it going to be?

[00:27:36] Noah: Taking a step back, It’s more like I want everyone who’s listening, that has like, hey if I created a product like how do I actually get someone to buy it and how do I then so get someone to make it. That’s part of what I’m looking for, what kind of process you guys go through when you’re thinking about your products.

[00:27:48] Scott: I think another simple test is kind of doing what Ian did. But you can do it now very easily with Facebook ads. I mean you can literally just go target people and put up a landing page and ask them whether they buy it or whether they want to be notified when it’s available or something like that to at least get some interest level. That would be one angle that I would have.

[00:28:08] Ian: The other thing too you know and this is like we haven’t talked about like specific platforms yet like Amazon or Etsy or eBay or anything like that. But you know these days I think you have to understand what you’re trying to accomplish and Scott mentioned this too, like are you trying to make a one-off product, are you trying to create a brand, are you trying to compete with other professional sellers on Amazon? Meaning people that are market focused and not necessarily product focused. There’s a rabbit hole there but basically meaning like there are a lot of people on Amazon right now that are market focused and they will attack a market and they will flood it with their professional experience. They make it very hard for you to compete with them.

So that might not necessarily be the best place for you to introduce, Noah, your new trash can especially if it’s not a differentiated product from much of what’s out there. So if this was my product and I was hell-bent on building a trash can, I think I would probably go with old school content marketing to begin with. Like I would start talking about trash cans. I would talk about the problems with trash cans. I would try and develop a line of trash cans that solve the multitude of different needs. I might do Facebook ads but I would also question whether or not I wanted to be in the trash business too. Because if I’m developing this line of trash cans like I better be willing to talk about it. Better be willing to talk about it, like five years down the line.

[00:29:30] Steve: I think I would probably get a couple of samples made and just see if I can unload them on eBay also. Because that’s kind of how we started our business. We sold on eBay for a while until we knew there was demand before we actually placed a large order for them and by that time we already knew that we could sell them and the worst case if we didn’t sell them on our shop, then we could at least liquidate them on eBay. So there’s tools like Terapeak out there that will tell you all the sales. They collate all the sales for you on eBay so you can get a pretty good idea.

[00:29:59] Noah: What’s that?

[00:30:00] Steve: Terapeak.

[00:30:01] Noah: Terapeak. How do you spell that?

[00:30:03] Steve: T-E-R-A-P-E-A-K. It’s basically a scraper for eBay. Tells you what all the completed listings are.

[00:30:09] Scott: That’s a good tool definitely. It’s been out for a long time too. Right Steve?

[00:30:14] Steve: It has, yeah.  For as long as I can remember.

[00:30:17] Noah: I’ve never used it. Okay, you guys are professionals.

[00:30:20] Ian: So the cool thing about completed listings is actually taking people’s money. So it’s not like what products were sold but it’s like who actually paid money for this product.

[00:30:28] Scott: Yeah it’s a great point.

[00:30:29] Noah: So it’s interesting it’s almost kind of like three different approaches. So Scott you are saying maybe do the Facebook ad to a landing page and see if you’ll get a pre-order. Ian you’re saying Etsy potentially or content marketing as a way of validating the product and then Steve you’re saying put it on eBay or used you know to see if you will buy or use Terapeak to see if there’s a market demand for it.

[00:30:46] Steve: I think so. I mean assuming we all have samples already. In all our scenarios I would just try to sell on eBay and see what happens.

[00:30:55] Noah: Well so two questions. I’m curious, Ian if I wanted to make my trash can that would work better than this one, would I just try to find the manufacturer of the original one? What would you do?

[00:31:04] Ian:  Yeah, I think I would probably go over to China. I would find out where all these people are manufacturing their trash cans. Like I said, they’re probably in one concentrated area in China and I would figure out what their shortcomings are that so if everyone’s saying you know the motors breaking or the optics aren’t working on the trash can, well I would figure out what model of the optics that is. I would figure out what the step up from that optics is and you could probably do that from interfacing with these companies in China.

[00:31:34] Noah: I guess for you guys like on the flip side, what products Ian you mentioned something. Like what products have you guys created that you thought there’s going to be a big market for, why did you think that and why did it flop?

[00:31:44] Ian: So the product that comes to mind for me is, we were in the cat furniture niche, so I had this idea because I’m a cat owner that cat owners like to spend a lot of money on their cats too but they don’t get the opportunity because there aren’t enough products. Whereas you go into Petco or Petsmart, it’s just chock-a-block full of dog products. And so that was our thesis. It was like, hey these cat owners are willing to spend just as much they just don’t have the opportunity. So we came out with like a high end line of cat furniture. And the products that sold really well, were the products that were already on the market. Basically enclosures to hide litter or litter boxes and so we made like a couple versions of those as always sold really well.

I had this version of what I called like the modern cat tower. You know people probably a lot of our grandmas, they have these carpeted cats towers that sit in the corner of the room and they like drag them into the closet when company comes over and drag them back out or they don’t. And so my idea was to make like a cool looking version of that and it totally flopped. Part because I think it looked like a spaceship and then the other part is because you know these product’s take a lot of consumer education and I think that that’s one of the things that we don’t realize is like, a new product it takes a lot of education and so a lot of times it’s great to be like a second or third mover because the first mover has to spend all the money educating the market as to what this new product is.

[00:33:08] Noah: So what did that change for the future for you with this cat product?

[00:33:13] Ian: We pretty much from that point on like solely focused on what I’ll call like rip pivot jam which is like you rip an idea or part of an idea, you do a little pivot and then you jam on it. So like with the valet parking equipment. Like I said you know the companies that were making those, there were like completely welded units. So like after you rolled it over gabbro stone for a while, it would just completely disintegrate. We started making ours with componentry. So basically parts that were bolted together so you could replace them. So like finding little innovations like that, I think is important to build a sustainable, we looked at that as like a sustainable company/brand and probably less of like an ecommerce company.

[00:33:52] Noah: Sorry I’m not super clear because I guess I’m curious. So your point in general is like instead of trying to be breaking brand new just copy someone and innovate on that?

[00:33:59] Ian: Yeah, that’s pretty much the idea. And it’s the same thing like we’re talking about big four which is like looking at Amazon listings and see what’s working, what’s not working. So you know a lot of people they’ll do that through Amazon. They like read comments, questions, reviews of products and then they’ll figure out how to build a better product. For me like I’ve always been interested a little bit more in B2B products and actually interfacing directly with the customer and having them tell me what’s going on. So like that was one of the cool things in the bar industry for us was like people were so excited that we were developing products specifically for their industry and I wanted to talk with that middle manager about that.

Like no one had ever sat that guy down and said like what do you want better in a bar? He’s like what? The industry leader’s coming to me, asking me what I want better in the bar and like it was amazing the kind of feedback that we were able to get. And in turn I think I build the best products. So you know you can do some of that I think through reviews. But one of the reasons that I’ve kind of shied away as I’ve gone further and further in my career from consumer products is because it’s very hard to get that kind of feedback to make better products.

[00:35:02] Noah: Scott or Steve?

[00:35:04] Steve: It’s interesting, I mean my experience primarily lies in linens and so like the biggest flops we’ve had have been like designs that we didn’t really test and we just went ahead and bought some and turns out like people didn’t like them. So for example, our napkins. Like we only sell them white napkins pretty much today because we try to do different colors and you know today if I were to approach that differently I would probably just email my list and say hey, are you guys interested in different color napkins instead of just going off and buying them. In terms of Ian’s comment about B2B and B2C.

I find it pretty easy to get feedback from B2C customers just mainly via email and you give them a list of designs and then you just have them vote on it or send out a survey. The B2B customers that we have, they tend not to give us any feedback but maybe it’s different because we sell napkins and that sort of thing. They’re more interested in consistent service as well as lower prices so…

[00:36:09] Ian: Yeah, that’s interesting. I mean I think that Steve my experience could have been unique and also you know we were selling very high touch, very expensive products. So I think that some of the difference could come there.

[00:36:21] Scott: Yeah I think Steve brings up a great point though on that is like and I think Ian does too, it’s like if you’re going B2B you know, you got more expensive products obviously, you got a different clientele. So with the everyday customer especially in Steve’s world with the linens and stuff and Steve you know he does a really good job too, I think, with interacting with that email list that he has and stuff and he can get that direct. And I know Mike Jackness has done that Steve very well in his business was the coloring book stuff and getting people’s feedback and then not creating a coloring book versus you know what people actually want.

I think kind of going back to him, I’ve got a couple going way back I mean my wife and I dabbled in selling physical props for photographers just because we were buying them ourselves and backgrounds and backdrops and stuff like that and I think the biggest thing comes down to for that that we just guessed on design. Like we thought that people were going to like, it’s similar to what Steve said. We were kind of B2B at that point because we were selling to people that were photographers like us and then having hand painted backgrounds and backdrops and stuff like that and then just certain type old antique type you know kind of like replica props for because we did a lot of family and baby photography. So we used a lot of antique props and stuff like that.

So I would say that would be one that I would say too is just we guessed. We didn’t see what the market really wanted and then the other one I’ll just touch on too is like I had a great idea because I again I think all of us have connections after you start getting into this stuff and had a guy that I thought would be a great fit for supplements. And I got into that world which I never thought I would, I never wanted to and it kind of backfired on me just because we were creating a better blend, a better brand. He was qualified, he was a nutritionist, licensed nutritionist all that stuff. But then the partnership didn’t really pan out because he just didn’t live up to his end of the bargain and then we kind of fell short with these couple of supplements. So I think there we weren’t able to then kind of help the market.

[00:38:20] Scott: So it’s like one of those things like now what do we do. So we kind of backed out of that market. So again I think just your customers telling you what they want and then if you’re going to get involved in a partnership, know what you’re getting involved in.

[00:38:33] Noah: Have you guys had any crazy experiences where you like order an item from overseas or from someone and then like linen or the valet thing that then it was totally botched or totally off?

[00:38:44] Steve: Dude, happened all the time. All the time. Here’s what happened. We would get samples and they would look great and then we place a small order everything would look great but then when we placed the large order they would intersperse the crap with the good stuff. This happened a lot early on and it actually did not stop until we actually flew to China and then we visited these guys. And after we did that, the quality just miraculously improved. At least in our experience.

[00:39:12] Noah: That’s so interesting.

[00:39:23] Scott: No, I was just going to say, Steve I got to this quick question on that. I mean you went, you flew over and I get that but would it still have worked if you use like a third-party inspector to kind of go through those units before they were actually paid for and shipped?

[00:39:25] Steve: Absolutely and this is before we started doing this. This is like back in 2008 I would say. Yeah.

[00:39:31] Scott: Nowadays, it’s so much easier. You hire a company for like 300 bucks they go through your….

[00:39:35] Noah: I didn’t know you could do that.

[00:39:36] Steve: Yeah, I mean there’s something to be said still about meeting face to face. Like it helps in terms of pricing and it actually helps in terms of just getting stuff pushed through faster. Like for example right now, we don’t even need to put any money down, they’ll just produce our product and we’ll just pay them once it’s ready whereas traditionally you have to put like 30% down.

[00:39:54] Scott: That’s right.

[00:39:55] Steve: And also for them to understand your vision to you know I’ve had like many conversations in China, like oh yeah you just want to order these handkerchiefs or whatever. It’s like no, this is my vision, this is what my company looks like, this is what we’re trying to accomplish for our customers. I think that those conversations are helpful for them as well because they’re flying blind in a lot of ways.

Like they’re just like making these things and if you’re like no dude like we’re the highest quality premium manufacturer of this like we need you to take pride, we need to make sure that your factory is clean, these are our requirements, if you can’t meet then we’re going to have to go somewhere else. And a lot of times they’ll be accommodating especially if your orders are increasing. So I think giving these Chinese factories a vision helps them as well.

[00:40:34] Ian: And if you look at it from their perspective, they only want to work with people that are serious. They don’t want like the one offs. They want people who can drive, sustain business over the long haul.

[00:40:45] Noah: Let’s go into some of the actual like sites that other people… So finishing up the garbage can. So we have a garbage can, we do these things, we see if people want it. Let’s go to some sites that have actually done it and they’re past that part and they’re actually selling a few the things, they have their own websites. I sent you guys three links. learntosolderkit.com, realham.com, and Kuva Coffee.

Why don’t we start at learntosolderkit.com? I guess I was just curious because you guys have seen so many websites. Like what you guys, what would you guys recommend you know that you guys have done ecommerce sites that like right here the best practices that we’d recommend for these guys. So the first one is learntosolderkit.com.

[00:41:20] Scott: Okay, so that’s going to wrap up that episode. That’s episode 353. So definitely go grab the transcripts, the show notes and everything included in that part. That was part one by the way of that session. That round table and that was really us kind of going through like the beginnings and then also like product brainstorming and the garbage can example that Noah came up with and I think you can really see that there’s definitely things that are happening as you’re going through this process. But it is a process and Noah’s asking these questions and then Ian is chiming in with some of his thoughts from some of the things that he’s done in the past and Steve and myself.

So again you may want to even listen to that again because product research if you haven’t really realized this yet is one of the main things that you need to understand and it is a process and there’s ways to test and validate before you even launch a product and that can be on Amazon like we talked about or Etsy or eBay or any of those and I think you can see a common thread there was to test invalidate before you do a full fledge like purchase on these things. I mean Steve came up with a great idea to just do the samples, just order the samples and then sell them on eBay. That’s what he did and that’s kind of how he was introduced to his market that he’s now selling in and he’s been doing that for years now and seven figure business. So hopefully you got value from this.

Now that’s not all. We are going to be now tearing down three websites and each of those websites is currently right now selling products. Some of them on Amazon but some of them on their own website and they wanted some feedback as far as what they could do differently or what they can maybe do moving forward that would increase sales or awareness of the brand and you’re going to be able to hear that in the next episode. Now the next episode will be 354 and if you’re listening to this on the day that this airs well it’s going to take a couple days.

[00:43:21] Scott: It’ll be published the following day or the day after whenever you guys are listening to this but just it’s 354 will be the episode and that’ll be part two. So you’re definitely going to want to pick up where we left off here because that’s what we’re going to do and that there is another 35-40 minutes of us tearing down these websites. Talking about branding. Talking about products. Talking about all of the ins and the outs of a business that’s already up and running and how to get more sales and also get more awareness. So you’re definitely going to want to check out that. But again to remind you guys the show notes to this episode can be found at theamazingseller.com/353 and this is part one of this ecommerce round table that I did with Noah, Ian, Steve and myself and hopefully you guys are getting a ton of value from it.

So guys, that’s it, that’s going to wrap up this episode. Remember as always, I’m here for you, I believe in you and I’m rooting for you but you have to, you have to… Come on, say it with me, say it loud, say it proud, “Take action.” Have an awesome amazing day and I’ll see you right back here on the next episode.

Click Here to Download Transcript <<

Click Here to Download Transcript <<

…randomly just picking a product and brainstorming about it and actually Noah came up with a product that was a garbage can and we talked about if this was even something to consider and if it was, how would you it make it different? How would you get it to selling $1,000 per month in ecommerce and what platforms and how to make it better?

And like all of those things and it was a really good deep dive into live product brainstorming and how to validate and test and all of that good stuff. So that was on episode 353 and that’s part one of this part one/part two session that we did together. And the second part which you’re going to listen to today, is the website teardowns. It’s three different websites that we teardown and these websites were submitted by Noah’s audience. They submitted a whole bunch of different websites, he picked three and then he brought them on to our session and then we all kind of dug into each one.

We looked at each one, we gave our thoughts, our opinions, how we would improve it and all of that good stuff. And I think you guys will find a ton, a ton of value from this. There’s a lot of really good points brought up and also I think for you to understand and then start to listen to how you can better serve a market and also like what that market will want once they land there. It’s not always about what you think. It’s what the audience wants as the end result. The end game.

[00:01:57] Scott: And then from you having these different things on your website to get them to move through that journey or that path and the branding and we mentioned some other websites that are doing it really, really well. And again, I’ll link everything up in the show notes of this episode and this episode is 354. So you are going to want to head over to theamazingseller.com/354. I’ll also link up the part one of this if you haven’t listened to that. So that will be there for you as well.

But again, a great episode and we had no idea where it was going to go and it went in a really good direction and I think you’ll hear after you listen to this from all of us that we really thought that it went well and that there was a lot of great value here that I think once you listen to this stuff over and over again you start to understand it better and also look at things a little bit differently with just a different eye. And I think it’s really important when you’re building a business or a brand. Alright, so guys let’s go ahead and jump into the second part of this roundtable discussion I did with my good friends Noah, Steve and Ian. Enjoy.

[DISCUSSION]

[00:03:10] Noah: So, let’s go into some of the actual like sites that other people… So finishing up the garbage can. So we have a garbage can, we do these things, we see if people want it. Let’s go to some sites that have actually done it and they’re past that part and they’re actually selling a few the things, they have their own websites. I sent you guys a few, three links. learntosolderkit.com, realhamn.com and Cuvee Coffee. Why don’t we start at learntosolderkit.com? I guess I was just curious because you guys have seen so many websites. Like what would you guys recommend you know that you guys have done ecommerce sites that like here are the best practices that we’d recommend for these guys. So the first one is learntosolderkit.com.

[00:03:44] Steve: Yeah I’ll take this first one since I was an electrical engineer. So first of all, this site sells kits that teach you how to solder and for everyone who’s listening out there like as an electrical engineer I used to do board design. I used to start a lot of stuff but when I went on this site, I realized you know I never really wanted to learn how to solder. I wanted to learn how to build these cool kits that required soldering. So for example when I was a kid, I like built my own walkie-talkies from these kits and soldering was a prerequisite but I built it and I learned how to solder because I wanted to build that walkie-talkie.

So I feel like for this site and if you go and you land on it like the first tagline is learn how to solder, I almost feel like that approach was a little bit wrong. You want to have cool kits and you want to demonstrate the kits that require soldering, instead of targeting the people who actually want to learn how to solder because in my opinion at least, no one wants to learn how to solder. They want to learn how to build stuff.

[00:04:40] Scott: It’s a great point. Just to kind of go exactly with what you’re saying Steve. I had on my notes here just, the message was kind of like how to solder but really what’s the end game? Like what’s the thing that you’re trying to achieve and for them to be able to teach like how to use these kits and then the tools or the soldering is just a by-product of the actual thing. So I would personally lead with the content which I didn’t see any way for them to get like a free tutorial or a free lesson or free download of any kind to build this thing to get them engaged and then from there I can introduce the tools that we’re using that make the job even easier and faster and then it could lead to a sale and then we can you know maybe upsell an order bump them or whatever. On that end of it so I just see them leading with content would be the first thing in my…

[00:05:31] Noah: That’s great. I definitely see it like sites into optimization, Ian what’s your thought.

[00:05:37] Ian: So yeah, I think that you guys are like spot-on in terms of the messaging. I’ll come at it from a little bit of a different angle which is like what they’re selling. So when I go to the store, I think like okay this is fine. I would expect there to be like probably a little bit more robust product offering but maybe they’re just starting out and then I go to tools and I see that they’re actually selling products on the tools page. Well if I was them, I’d probably be selling these products in the store because store is where I got to buy things and then even worse in my mind when I get to tools it’s a link to get to Amazon.

So you know I think what they’re doing here is they’re getting Amazon affiliate sales but in my mind if you’re going to go through all the trouble and all the headache and all the money and all the hassle to build your own site to drive traffic to your own site and then to deliver people to Amazon where you don’t actually own the customers, that’s a problem. So I would be keeping inventory in my apartment of these soldering irons. Also, the last thing that’ll say about the tools is I want to know why these are the best soldering irons for me. I want to know what the best tools are to solder. It looks like they’ve kind of like picked a couple but tell me why those are the best tools.

[00:06:46] Scott: Hey Noah, I just want to add something there and Ian you had a great point. But what I think, here also to think about and like for them driving sales to Amazon, I totally get what you’re saying, but here’s another thing. I’ve been actually seeing this especially like with people that are buying like associate sites that they’re building these sites and then they’re going after the affiliate sale. Like that’s also another way to validate a product will sell before you actually create it.

So for example, let’s say that he all of a sudden gets a whole bunch of sales through that site and he doesn’t have the product and he’s making 6% on Amazon for the associates. Well now I know that this product is going to sell. Now I can make that product and then just replace it with my own product at my own store. So that’s another angle to do that. But again you’re creating all that work, getting the site if you’re doing SEO, if you’re not driving paid. I’m usually about paid traffic because I can do it a lot faster and I could test it quicker. So just another angle, just another thought there.

[00:07:38] Noah: I mean I think that’s really great feedback. So Scott awesome point. You don’t even have to go get the products. Just now start a site, sell the affiliate, get the affiliate and if they were actually buying it from you, they’ll be like, well instead of 6% I can get 90% or whatever the margins are.

[00:07:53] Ian: Yeah Scott, spot on. That’s a great way to validate and maybe that’s what they’re doing.

[00:07:58] Noah: Possibly in terms of the feedback that I have for these guys on their website, I think some of the things that are confusing is that actually when it was at Facebook it was one of things that they’re sticklers about, is that the links should be the same and like right now above the fold you should have your main call to action. I just feel like I always talk about this with them because no one does it right. But every major site in the world has their main call to action very clearly on their prime real estate. These guys don’t have anything. They actually have a blue box that is the same as their buttons at the bottom but these aren’t buttons. These are just overlays.

So put a call to action on your top of your page everyone and remove a lot of the options besides what you want them to do and just do that up at the beginning. I think that’s probably the easiest thing that they could do. Second thing that a lot of people, you guys are in ecommerce you know this. They don’t collect any emails or any way of communicating with their customers. Like a great ecommerce, you guys know this too, it’s like a great ecommerce store at best is 5% sales. Meaning out of 100 people who visit five buy and that’s like exciting.

Meaning that 95 aren’t ready. So get the rest of people. Use sumo.com or use free WordPress plugins, Sumo is free too. Whatever it is, just go click emails so you guys can let them know when you have new products or you’re new like because you guys are talking about. Steve, I thought it was a great point. It was like have stories, like here’s how your kid can build in you I don’t walkie-talkie or whatever it is that you want them to be building.

[00:09:11] Steve: Along those same lines, they should probably have the retargeting stuff set up too. I was just kind of looking at the source code now. I didn’t really see that. Along the same lines you want to bring people back over and over and over again until they’re ready to buy.

[00:09:23] Noah: Yep exactly. I mean it sounds like they have you know a few easy things. Do more content marketing, consolidate the store so they can buy stuff and then optimize the site to collect emails and make the purchases easier right from the get-go. Let’s jump into the next site which I thought was really interesting. This guy like invented his own tong like his new like advanced tong called Real Hamn, realhamn.com. You guys want to jump into that?

[00:09:51] Scott: Yeah just before we do, is the about page or did you just link to that page or are we supposed to be critiquing that page or the whole site?

[00:09:58] Noah: No I meant the whole site. That was my bad.

[00:10:00] Scott: Okay, I’ll just start real quick. I mean the very first thing was like why sign up for the newsletter, like they had that at the very bottom, like you were just saying so. Number one like newsletter, eeeh. Again if you’re trying to do something like, we want to get them engaging with that or teaching them a recipe or something like that and then it just happens to be that the tongs are the things or the whatever you’re selling is the thing that you’re using it with. So having recipes would be an easy thing for that and then the other thing is like who’s behind the brand. Like I didn’t see who was behind the brand.

There’s no real story there and I think a lot of times and I think I don’t know maybe you’ll agree, maybe you want Steve but I mean I think having a story about why you created that brand, it just makes it that much more compelling and then people buy into it a little bit more. Probably the person that created them maybe because they were a chef and they hated the tongs that were in the market, so they created their own and they were a better version. Like just something like that or kind of how it all happened I think is a thing that this this site was missing for me.

[00:10:58] Steve: Yeah when I first landed on that site in the first five seconds like I had no idea what was special about these tongs at all and I feel like you need to know that like within the first five seconds and then there’s one page on this site that’s the product page which actually gives all the value propositions of this product. So I would actually rip apart the entire site and turn it into one long-form sales page which includes the story, which includes all the value proposition stuff. But everything about what makes it special should be above the fold right away.

[00:11:25] Noah: It’s like a really good point. When you get to the site, the first thing it says introducing real hamn chef tongs which I still have no idea what that means. And then it’s like you want me to buy right now but I’m even sure what you’re buying and then there’s a video. It’s funny when I saw the video on the homepage, it has two tongs and I was like well they look the same. I don’t even want to play this video? So actually one thing that I’ve seen a lot as I’ve been growing my YouTube channel is like your thumbnail or that first overlay video is really important. So maybe put text there or like you know you can actually see in 60 seconds why this is the best tong you’ll ever have or the tongs that like real professional chefs’ use.

The other thing that’s kind of like a small preference of mine is I always try to put the call-to-action buttons at the top middle and bottom or at least at the top and the bottom if you have longer pages. So their homepage it has like buy now button but it doesn’t really have it at the bottom. I just generally felt like that’s consistency. One of the other kind of little thing too is like, I like when people tell me what to do. It sounds like, that’s why I like my agent dominatrix. I just like it, just boss me around meaning that like on your site tell me what you want me to do.

Like, hey listen to my story then buy the product. So for example on his top navigation bar it’s like home, buy product about video blog. I wanted to actually put one in a colour that he wants me to prioritize which is probably buying and just put that in like a black or bold and black or green or whatever colour he likes so that I can go and buy the actual product that he wants.

[00:12:51] Ian: I think you guys hit on most of what I would say. I mean I had the same problem which I don’t even know why I would need chef tongs. I’m sure as a person that doesn’t really cook that much I could be convinced to buy this product. If you explain to me what it’s for or why people are going to be impressed when they come to my house and they see this or you know what real chefs do with it. Those kinds of things I think would be interesting to learn.

The other thing is, it’s pretty obvious that this person is just getting started. This might be their first product. I think one of the things that we’ve previously talked about on this call is like experimentation with other products too. So it’s called real hamn chef tools. I think I would probably try and throw it a couple more products on the site just to see where people are gravitating towards.

Again like it’s so expensive to get traffic to your site like let’s run a couple of experiments and see where people are actually going. If 90 percent of the people are going to your knives, well then maybe you should be on the knife business not the Tong business and right now the only information you have is, do they like my tongs, are they buying my tongs?

[00:13:48] Noah: That’s great. One thing I’ve seen kind of if you have this product like it’s almost a no-brainer, like why don’t you have recipes? Like give me things I can… like Steve I thought you had a great point. Like hey no one wants a solder kit, they want that like have better relationship with their father. They want that I think that’s a really great point which is just like give me recipes to go make give me like with everyone’s product like I don’t want a trash can.

Like I want something that like makes my house smell better or it looks pretty actually like have a trash can that looks gorgeous and then I guess give me stories about what that would be like or activities that maybe not to do in the trash can but you could talk me out like how to save the environment if that’s the angle I was going at. Scott were you going to say something or Ian?

[00:14:28] Scott: No.

[00:14:29] Ian: No.

[00:14:30] Noah: I mean one thing I’m thinking too like Real Hamn like for you guys. So let’s say you guys are now in charge. Like we kill this guy and we take over his site and we create the pro, the best chef tong, Pro chef tongs. Like the best tongs you’ll ever use in your kitchen ever. How would you guys actually go about getting the word out about this? So one day he needs to collect emails which he kind of did but how would you go about evaluating, getting the word out about chef tongs?

[00:14:56] Scott: I think the main thing is you gotta be you know getting your brand out there whether that’s YouTube videos or Instagram or whatever. It’s like how, I mean if you’re in the cooking business then what better way than to just you show people how to cook certain meals and then your tongs just happened to be there. You could also do like five common things chefs that they want or top whatever. If you’re a chef and you’re looking for the five top tools or something like that but I think more so the use of them and then from there it’s going to lead people back.

To me it’s about leading to the content that they can actually consume and then the bi-product is, the actual tool that’s doing the job and then you can start to explain because you have your attention now so now all of a sudden why are these, why does it make it easier and faster to use these tongs. That’s probably what I would say.

[00:15:46] Noah: Ian, Steve. What will you guys do to market this?

[00:15:49] Steve: I would probably put together a really compelling video that outlines the value proposition and then I would probably run video ads on Facebook and then I would probably just retarget those people that watch the video, a certain percentage. That’s probably the fastest way to do it. What Scott suggested is great. It just takes a lot longer to get information.

[00:16:14] Ian: I don’t know what your guys thought is on this and I haven’t actually personally experimented it so I’m interested to hear. But you know I’m on Instagram like as the rest of the world and I follow people that are like foodies so that I take pictures of the food. This is a whole phenomenon I guess but I mean some of these people have millions and millions of followers just from posting photos of their food. And so I don’t know, have any of you guys experimented it with Instagram and kind of that approach you know starting with the content first like that through Instagram and then leading to the tongs?

[00:16:45] Steve: I’ve done some influencer marketing. Is that where you’re going down with this?

[00:16:48] Ian: I think so, yeah.

[00:16:49] Steve: Okay, yeah. I mean you could give these away to chefs and see if they like it and let the product speak for itself. Right? If they like it they’ll use it in a video and maybe they’ll endorse you.

[00:17:01] Noah: I think that’s a great approach. Just like go find people to give your product to. I mean, I knew it when I talked to the quest bars, which is now a billion dollar company. They got their product out there just giving it away for free and then just getting people to really like it and use it. Influencer marketing is also tough. Like I literally get like one free thing a week and you can always send me free things. But there’s no guarantee that they’re actually going to use it, which is part of the problem. Like, hey I’ll give you tongs if you tweet us. They’re like, no. It’s like pay me $10,000 and I’ll tweet it.

Maybe one alternative is either hosting local parties, like there’s just a bunch of different things. So like the way I approach marketing, what I would do with real tongs, it’s like who are you targeting? You’re targeting men, women. Like who’s the exact person that should be buying this? Is it for house want to be chefs? Is it for actual restaurants?

And then number two is like what’s your goal around that? Like how many are you trying to sell? And then three, where are these people? Because if you’re trying to target to like real chefs, you could go to like poached. Which is like a hiring site for chefs or you could hit up restaurants and be like hey, how do you guys normally find out about your products? And then actually go and work backwards from there.

[00:18:05] Scott: They could also probably even target kids that are graduating from college that are culinary. You know what I mean? They’re coming out of school that are needing professional chef equipment.

[00:18:17] Noah: Well you know it’s funny. I wasn’t even thinking, I mean it really depends who you want to target. I think that’s one thing that most businesses are doing incorrectly which is just like we target everyone, we target people who cook. And I’m like there’s people who cook cheaper meals and there’s people who do microwave dinners. I don’t think they’re probably going to spend $60 on tongs. He would go build it in his garage.

[00:18:35] Steve: This is kind of like why I like the Facebook approach and then seeing who’s engaging and then get more information, yeah.

[00:18:40] Scott: Because you can see the demographics just by running that ad very quickly.

[00:18:45] Steve: To your point Noah, it’s like selling toothpaste. It’s really tough because everybody uses it. But if you can like narrow down your market to specific people like selling toothpaste to people with dentures that are over 75 years old that have sensitive gums. Then it’s a lot easier to figure out where like you said these people are hanging out and it’s generally a nursing home so I would think. So maybe you need to be a traveling salesman, I don’t know.

[00:19:12] Noah: But also what Steve you’re saying, the Facebook thing. Personally I’m always hesitant of spending money on things until I’ve made money.

[00:19:18] Steve: You’re anti spending money in the beginning, right?

[00:19:20] Noah: Yeah, it’s more of like I don’t want to spend it unless I know that I’m going to make a profit on it versus like oh I’ll just find data and then they’ll show interest and maybe it’ll work out. So for me like my first thought is like once I decided who it’s for, I would probably look through my own network and my networks network, even if it’s small people like I don’t have a lot of friends. It’s like you don’t have friends that cook or you don’t know have friends that work at restaurants or know people like everyone does. I’m curious to your approach with Facebook. So you buy an ad and who’d you target for like these tong thing?

[00:19:46] Steve: Well assuming you have some information to start with. Let’s say you have nothing. I would probably make an educated guess based on what magazines people might read. So in this case it might be some cooking magazine or whatnot and then just put together a compelling video and see who watches it and then you can take the group of people that watch let’s say 75% of this video and then you can kind of get an idea of who’s even interested in this product and maybe you can try to sell it to those people. But you run this and it’s actually not that expensive if you target for video views and then you can get insights on the people that are actually consuming this information from you.

[00:20:25] Noah: Okay, what kind of insights can you actually get?

[00:20:26] Steve: You can get demographic information like, are men or women, the ages. Like for example like I found out six months ago and I hadn’t done this because our stores primarily caters to wedding people and it was only after looking through Facebook Insights did I realize that there were a bunch of people aged 55 and up that were buying our handkerchiefs consistently.

So what I did, was I pulled my data for people who bought handkerchiefs more than once and then I plugged all those email addresses into Facebook insights and all of a sudden there was this new demographic that I do not know about. And so that’s why I’ve started to just use Facebook as a way to just kind of gather more data about other pockets of people that I might not even know that I target.

[00:21:10] Noah: So do you just upload your emails and go to Facebook audience insights to get better understand who your current… You basically take your customer lists uploaded it to audience insight and then see what the demographics are?

[00:21:20] Steve: Yes.

[00:21:21] Noah: That’s a great idea. I’m mean, even if people don’t have businesses yet, you can do it with any email lists. Like take your you know most open people or whatever it is, upload Facebook audience and they’ll tell you who all these people are.

[00:21:31] Steve: Yeah and this is kind of where our philosophy is different. Noah, like the way you’re doing is awesome. You’re getting immediate sales but the… I’ve heard you talk about this in the past too like where scalability doesn’t really matter. But the thing is, with Facebook, as soon as you find that right audience, you can scale it pretty easily whereas your way is better to get quick sales with, quick validation.

[00:21:55] Noah: Yeah, I think there’s a separation that I recognize. Which is, part one is to make sure people want it and then part two is how do you get many, many people to want it. But I think people want to jump to part two because it seems easier and like you don’t have to actually deal with the hard part and I don’t people to avoid that because I think there’s a lot of learning in that. So let’s go to the last one. Actually it’s funny out of our conversations, I feel like this is where we’re getting a lot of really good nuggets. What you guys think?

[00:22:19] Scott: I do, yeah. I like it.

[00:22:21] Noah: I feel like this is the part where I’m like, yeah I didn’t think about the Facebook audience insight. I didn’t think about like we should think about the marketing from this angle and like how to do the messaging.

[00:22:28] Scott: Absolutely.

[00:22:30] Noah: Alright Cuvee Coffee, cuveecoffee.com. This is actually based in Austin Texas. This is Mike McKim. He’s a little bit of a renegade and I like him and so I thought we’d check out his site and have the experts roast him. Get it, coffee, roast? Alright, hit it.

[00:22:49] Scott: Who wants to lead?

[00:22:50] Steve: I’ll go first. I’m not a coffee drinker first of all. So I think coffee is a really tough niche because there’s like just so many different brands and everything out there and when I first landed on the site, I honestly couldn’t tell what was special about the coffee, so I actually interviewed someone on the podcast, Death Wish Coffee and they have the strongest coffee in the world. And so when I went on their site, I immediately knew why I would buy their coffee but with this coffee brand I wasn’t sure and I actually even clicked around the site and I couldn’t really get like a good value proposition out of it. So maybe some of you guys who have actually drank this coffee you can comment.

[00:23:31] Scott: I haven’t had any of this coffee but I am a coffee drinker and it’s funny Steve, I think I told you that. But the guys from Death Wish Coffee, there, right? That’s the name? Those guys, they were local from where I was an upstate New York. They were literally about 30 minutes from where I lived. That’s where they started the brand.

[00:23:51] Steve: That’s cool.

[00:23:52] Noah: Alright, let’s go back to, thank you Steve for taking us off course.

[00:23:54] Scott: Yeah, so what I wanted to say was, I agree like when I got here I didn’t know if it was like showing me that they have locations or if they actually have coffee or if they have both or if they have a roasting company or if they do wholesale. Like there was a little bit of everything and the messaging wasn’t clear to me. So I wasn’t sure if it’s coffee shop, coffee brand and I wasn’t really sure who the ideal customer was. I would say too like images of people enjoying the coffee would have been nice to see. I didn’t see any on the front page that we’re smiling or enjoying the coffee.

And again story, I didn’t see any story or mission statement and I guess the one thing that I would like not that they have to but I think it’s always a plus if you can add a cause of some kind of donations especially if it’s like something that’s like organic or there’s something there like I just think that really ties a brand together full circle. That’s just an add-on thing that I would probably look into doing if there were into causes. So that was my take.

[00:24:58] Steve: I want to know what’s special about the coffee as soon as I land on it. Because there’s so many different brands out there.

[00:25:34] Ian: I had the same problem that Steve had, which is that I came to the site and I couldn’t tell what they do best or where they’re making money. So I think that that would be my advice. Is like, where do you guys make money? Is it selling coffee? It’s probably not selling coffee cups and selling coffee cups is like taking a third of the real estate above the fold, whatever small wares is. I don’t know these people but like it falls into the category of like small business syndrome. Like local small business syndrome.

They’re like, hey we have a space, like you can run our space. Hey we have a parking lot, it’s close to the racetrack, you can park there when you go to the racetrack. It’s like they’re trying to sell me everything that they think is an asset, they’re trying to sell to me. Coffee cups, coffee, shirts whatever it is. So figure it out what your number one value proposition is because you have my attention now and try and sell that to me. Don’t try and sell me you know five different things.

[00:26:00] Noah: Well you know it’s interesting. Ian and I were talking about this before we got the show started is that, look at some of the competitors that are like at the top of your industry or look at people that are the top of another industry to learn what they’re doing differently. So like when you guys think of coffee, like Blue Bottle Coffee is one that comes to mind for a lot of people or Intelligentsia.

You guys don’t really drink a lot of coffee but it’s like let’s kind of see what they’re doing and then look at it like alternate fields. So a lot of times like look at makeup companies, look at honest whatever Jessica’s company and see what they’re doing, so that you can actually, yeah it’s interesting so Intelligentsia it’s all about stories. They’ve got pictures of Brazil and pictures of families and all the people who are getting it and they try to sell you actually coffee and subscriptions right away.

At Blue Bottle actually the first thing they try is to get you an email and it’s photos again of great experiences. So I would probably learn from others in your industry or like the top in your industry or others in the top that I would look at Cuvee. The other thing that was strange for was like, I get to the site and it has this like perfectly roasted page and I can’t do anything. It’s like it shows me a cup, a coffee and then the nitro coffee but I can’t do anything. I’d have to actually scroll down and that just seems like a waste. And then it has like featured items of random stuff. And in future I actually think so to kind of coming back to Steve what you said earlier again I’m going to say for Cuvee is like they should just have like videos and articles about how you can have like the best coffee in the world at home.

It seems like they do a lot of like labs like hey come learn how we do it at our coffee shop, they should probably just give me a taste of that number one to kind of get more people to come to their side and I trust them more. Number two seems like a subscription is a great way for coffee businesses to grow and three, what’s your angle of your coffee. Hey like, we’re the premium coffee that’s the cheapest, we are like coffee from the South, we’re coffee from a certain country. Like yeah, I think it’s a great point. Like what differentiates their coffee than others. Yeah so Ian, your point is they just have too much stuff going on?

[00:27:52] Ian: Yeah, I just can’t understand what they want me to do. Like you know, what is your number one value proposition that you provide your customers and how can I opt into that? So you know I see a lot of times like people have this like, oh we offer this, we offer that, we offer this and a lot of times the reason for that is because they’re trying to monetize everything to the sun and their business and I’m not saying that’s necessarily a bad idea but it definitely takes away a lot of your resources from what could be your most valuable proposition.

And so when I look at the site I wonder if they actually know what the most valuable proposition or what the most valuable product is that they sell. Because if it’s coffee then my site is all about coffee. If I’m making the most amount of money on renting out my coffee shop, then that’s what’s on my front page. So I question whether or not they really understand what their business model is or if they’re just trying to over monetize it, if that makes sense.

[00:28:48] Steve: Yeah in fact I just noticed now that they’re featured items are all classes, right?

[00:25:53] Ian: Yeah, it’s kind of confusing. Yeah.

[00:28:56] Steve: So they’re selling a lot of classes. It’s kind of like pick one thing that you guys you kind of want to specialize in and get them and like own that space.

[00:29:02] Noah: Well, I think I’m on the front page I think I mean what it could be and they’re kind of alluding to this which is like small wares coffee black and blue but it could be you know coffee courses event space. So I like land on their page, I’m like, “Okay well I’ve heard of Cuvee before and because I’ve drank their coffee, I’m going to go buy their coffee. I’ve heard of Cuvee before because I went to an event here, I’m going to click on the event.” You know if they must offer three different options for people to do make it, make it distinct, so I know where I should be going.

[00:29:30] Steve: Yeah, I like Noah’s point. Like maybe the call line should be, “Learn how to brew the perfect cup of coffee at home,” and then sell the classes but then of course if people aren’t your classes you can sell your coffee there once you get them in the door pretty easily.

[00:29:44] Noah: It’s funny how much I buy from people that I trust. A story that someone told me is like Ryan Gosling and whether you think he’s good looking or not like yeah whatever I’m guessing. But if you actually know his upbringing, he’s very… He looks like me. So the thing with Ryan Gosling is that he’s actually, I think he was adopted and abused and like he had a crazy upbringing to actually become successful.

And once I actually read more of his background, I was like man, I want to support this guy more. And then that kind of message is really stuck with me with a lot of the companies that and people I support. I’m like, “Oh yeah I really like who they are. I like that message that they have. I like their story.” So if I can learn more about Cuvee Coffee like they actually have a pretty new story. Like the government’s been trying to kick them out and ban them for a lot of reasons and it actually is like, “Hey where is the coffee for rebels.’

[00:30:29] Scott: I like that. It’s a good angle.

[00:30:31] Noah: There’s just something for them to like… Black and Blue is one of the coffee names. Obviously they’re kind of rebels to some extent.

[00:30:38] Scott: But I didn’t get any of that though when I landed on that page.

[00:30:41] Steve: Yeah it just needs to be tightened up. Like give me like more of an experience on the site. You drop me on like an espresso random page.

[00:30:47] Noah: One other thing I think you guys probably know this too, is like when you’re doing your ecommerce store, sort your products from the most popular ones to the least. So I’m guessing when people come to Cuvee Coffee, the first thing they’re not going to do is buy a basic espresso lab, right? So they should probably say like, “Hey these are our most two popular coffees or this is the coffee that we’re known for and really focus on selling the most popular ones instead of distracting with a bunch of other options that may not be as popular.

[00:30:11] Scott: That’s good. Yep

[00:31:14] Noah: And again, collect emails like only 5% at best are going to buy, 95% aren’t. That’s why we have sumo.com, this message was sponsored by sumo.com.

[00:31:22] Scott: Hey Noah, though real quick. What would you say would be a good offer? I’ve got an idea. I mean why not give away some like free coffee like once a month. You pick a couple of random winners or something you enter here to win free coffee or maybe it’s like you said maybe it’s like some type of how to make the best coffee at home without having to attend one of our classes. Like I don’t know, like let’s maybe shoot an idea there real quick.

[00:31:44] Steve: Or a giveaway is in kingsumo.com. What do you think Scott?

[00:31:48] Noah:  Actually this episode is sponsored by AARP, the Association of American Retired People because when you’re about to die, drink some coffee. No so, I’ve been thinking about that. I actually don’t sweat the opt-ins like what Scott was bringing up which I think is a solid point which is like you know try different messaging to get people to want to give you their email, so that you can educate them and then they trust you and then they want to make purchases from you. But the bigger point is just to get it started and I think until you actually see results that like oh man if I send an email I’ll make some money which is what we found out through AppSumo.

Once you start seeing it then you can get more advanced giveaways or you can test like doing like a free coffee of the month or a discount or just like hey find out about our news flavours or the opt-in to me is less interesting. I also think about like how did they get more people coming to their site. I think Ian, you know the beard brand guys. Which they’ve taken beard brand and then just made a bunch of videos in Instagram and that’s actually really how they’ve grown their business if I’m correct.  

[00:32:44] Steve: Yeah, primarily through YouTube actually, right?

00:32:48] Ian: Yeah, so Eric is like a master YouTuber and he just happens to be channelling people to beard products. I mean that he could be selling anything now.

[00:32:57] Noah: And I think it’s a point. So what do you think he’s doing that they could learn from?

[00:33:01] Ian: Eric that beard brand?

[00:33:03] Noah: Yeah, what do you think that the coffee brand could be doing that you know that’s working for him?

[00:33:07] Ian: Well I mean basically what Eric’s doing is, the interesting thing about Eric I guess from beard brand is like he lives out life like through and through. Like I just helped him buy a Volvo station wagon because he wants to be even more of a hipster. Like he is just like the most bearded hipster there is. So, it’s a very genuine process for him and so it makes it really easy for him to turn on the microphone or to turn on the video recorder and talk about things that he’s interested in.

So I think that that’s important too and having that kind of consistency through your life and I don’t know about this coffee brand or whatever but my guess is that they’re passionate about coffee. Can they speak about it in an intelligent way? I would hope so if they’ve been in the business for a long time. So yeah, sure. Share with people your story, share with people why you’re doing what you’re doing.

[00:33:56] Noah: That’s actually so surprising back in the day with AppSumo, this blew my mind. Our number one bestseller for two years was how we built AppSumo. We created this, we’ve literally recorded a video me and Andrew and it was like just us talking about how we built it and how we got it to a seven figure company and grew it and that alone people wanted to pay a lot of money for.

It’s not that I think people should just sell their stories but it made me realize like how much people want to connect and learn more about the companies they like. Like that’s why we buy like Nikes, like biography shoedog. I haven’t even bought Nikes in a few years but I bought that because I like the product, I like the brand and I want to learn more about it.

[00:34:33] Steve: That’s interesting. I didn’t know. I thought it was Nevel’s course that sold the most. At least that’s what he told me.

[00:34:37] Noah: Navel sells everything, he sells the most. So important being, I think just in connecting with the story, optimizing your ecommerce a lot better in terms of like driving them to a specific sale and having more of an experience. I had seen this, I’m curious. Scott or Steve, what do you guys think of like top ecommerce sites or ones that you’re like, hey I should you know go replicate from them. You know, what do you guys think of, what are the first ones that come to mind?

[00:34:59] Scott: Oh man, there’s a lot but I mean it’s funny that you bring up you know beard brand. I mean if you go to their site I mean they’re doing a really good job. They’ve got everything in place, so I would say that’d be a good one to look at and kind of like model what they’re doing in your market for me personally. Like again, I just went there as you guys mentioned. I’ve seen him on shark tank, so I’m familiar with him and I thought it was great then but I mean the brand is totally represented by the website. It’s built exactly what you would want. I think that’s a great example.

[00:35:35] Steve: I think it’s all that story for me so I’ll give you a quick story. A long time ago, when we first had kids, we were looking for slings, baby slings. You guys probably don’t know what that is. Scott you might.

[00:35:45] Scott: Yeah I know.

[00:35:46] Steve: But we were looking at different brands and they all looked the same. They all look the same but there was this one brand and the saleslady pitched it as this like 90 year old guy, he had a kid late in life and he decided to devote his entire life creating the perfect baby sling. This is Japanese guy and like she presented that story to us and then we tried that sling on and all of a sudden that sling felt so much more valuable than the other ones we were trying on. So that story really made a huge difference.

[00:36:19] Noah: So they told a story about it, that’s it?

[00:36:22] Steve: They did. Yes, they told us a story about the guy who developed that sling. This 90 year old guy who spent like the last decade of his life developing this sling.

[00:36:32] Noah: And then he died in it or what?

[00:36:34] Steve: I think he was still living but we did not buy it because it was 200 bucks…

[00:36:47] Noah: No but I think a story is a great thing that’s undervalued and people want to like people buy from who they like and so if it’s like with Cuvee Coffee be like hey you know even make a video of yourself like I think a lot of us make it too fancy. Where the first one can literally use your phone, record it yourself at your home. You’re like hey, here’s where I got started and that’s what you can put on Facebook or your website or whatever. I don’t think people are like you know assuming they need to do something a lot fancier and you could do that after you get something just started.

[00:37:08] Steve: Yeah and that’s so part of your initial autoresponder sequences too. Your story?.

[00:37:14] Noah: Yeah, that’s a great point. Actually I could do that for my own autoresponder. One thing I think Steve is, two things actually. I have two thoughts. Like I think we assume that everyone knows everything about us from the beginning and that’s like we’re like oh of course they know our story, when they don’t know when you don’t put it out there. And two, I realized today that when I put out content or I put out a product, you really have to, if you really think it’s a great content or a  product or service you have to go make an effort to let people know about it. You can’t just assume they’re going to hear about it.

And I think a lot of businesses like that might have worked in the beginning they’re like well it’s not work anymore. It’s like what are you telling me about it, because I put out a blog post I thought it was really great and I was like how are people actually going to hear about it. And so you think you have to go like if it’s a great product don’t be bashful about communicating with email or communicating with ads or whatever it is if you think it’s a great product and having to actually remind people of it. People need to be seeing things multiple times before they’re ready to make a decision on stuff.

[00:38:04] Steve: I actually think you do a really good job there Noah. I remember when Sumome first came out like you know you kept bringing it up and it works actually. Like I wasn’t aware of the product or I might have forgotten about it but you would remind me and then I will go try it and I finally used it.

[00:38:21] Noah: I was telling someone about this two days ago, like you just gotta let people know and I think if you don’t have a product that you’re proud of, there’s two things. Well you can do this well, “I’m never going to be proud of it, I’m always going to be ashamed. Like oh Jewish guilt.” It’s like you know one thing is that like find like you have to get it out there, but when you’ve gotten to a point where you’re like, hey I’m actually really proud of this, I think what you can do is actually go harder than you’re comfortable with and then figure out like where that pendulum lies for you but for me I’m like, I’m proud of this. Like I think I’m doing a disservice to myself if I don’t let more people know and I think more people if they have things they are proud of, like you need to go a little bit harder in getting the word out.

So in wrapping up, it’s been about an hour, so I want to respect our times and obviously we’ll head this down to 30ish minutes give or take. What is the future of ecommerce? Like what are the things you guys are like, “Here’s what I’m really going to take advantage of?” So Ian put out an article today, where he said, “I see a lot of people like buying products on Alibaba trying to arbitrage on Amazon.” And Ian actually put an article saying like, hey go do that on Etsy. So Ian, maybe talk about that. I’m curious Scott and Steve, what do you guys think a lot of ecommerce is going to be going to given that you guys are so immersed in it?

[00:39:27] Ian: Yeah, I mean what I talked about today was how to validate a product for less than $100, so and I think that that’s totally possible through Etsy. So a lot of these platforms like Amazon, eBay there are professional tools and we’ve talked about them, some on this show where you’ll get professional sellers. Essentially people are very good at finding a market, exploiting that market and flooding it with products.

Etsy is one of these places that hasn’t quite happened too yet although it’s starting to happen too. Meaning like they’re still makers producing unique products on Etsy and so there’s still room to kind of get in when you don’t have all this expertise like SEO, content marketing et cetera et cetera and part of that is just because the search algorithm I think is a little bit less developed at Etsy.

But what I found through my research just buying things on Etsy experimenting is that there are a lot of sleeping giants on Etsy. There are a lot of companies that are doing over a million dollars on Etsy with real teams. And they’re selling products that they’re making most of them and so I think that there’s a real opportunity to get on Etsy to figure out what’s working and to bring it either to Etsy or to other markets. It’s not to say that you can’t do the same thing on Amazon or Google or anything like that but one of the points that I made in the article is that I really feel like the internet is getting smaller.

When you like Google barstools which is the example I made like it’s all the people that you’d expect. Like it’s Wayfair, it’s Amazon, it’s Pure One, you know, it’s all these sites. But there there’s a lot of products out there that aren’t on that front page and so it’s just getting increasingly hard on Amazon and Google to market your products and to be in front of people if you’re not a professional marketer. And I think Etsy is one of the places where people can still do that.

[00:41:14] Scott: I mean I’ll just, I’ll echo that. I think Etsy’s a great place. I think a lot of people don’t think of that. But I would also say that Amazon is still a platform where people can do this, Again if you’re going to go into those certain markets, especially the bigger markets then I can definitely see that happening. Where someone’s just going to, they’re going to take over that whole market. But I think for people just getting started it’s kind of what we talked about at the very beginning. It’s just about getting started. It doesn’t mean that you’re necessarily going to hit a homerun.

Like I’m about hitting base hits and then you know just keep capitalizing on those. And then it can bring that awareness to myself or a partner and say all right let’s go all in on this now or let’s go deeper into this and let’s start doing content marketing. Let’s start doing Facebook ads. Let’s start doing all of this other external stuff but I agree with you, whether it’s eBay, Etsy, Amazon or any other platform that has buyers to validate it there first I think it’s just an easy thing to do and I think everyone should be doing that. With that being said, I don’t think that’s it’s always going to work and I wouldn’t necessarily say that if you just did one marketplace and it didn’t work then you would just give up. You might say let me try it on two of them and then see what happens.

But yeah, I still think there’s a ton of opportunity out there and I understand a lot of people say well Amazon’s getting saturated. Well it is but there’s a lot more buyers coming into. You know there’s a lot more products coming in and they’re just, they’re taking over the freaking world. So it’s just, it’s a matter of I think in the beginning just establishing a market and then from there seeing that you can get some sales and then from there building upon that outside of just that one channel.

[00:42:48] Steve: Yeah, I mean I think branding is becoming more important than ever. Like if you got me two years ago I would say that you could almost throw anything up on Amazon and it would sell. Now it’s becoming a little more saturated, so you actually have to sell something that actually has a value proposition. And as soon as you get some traction, it doesn’t matter what the marketplace is, whether it be Amazon or Etsy or eBay then you got to start building your own audience because that’s the best way to future improve your business.

Gathering emails, having these autoresponder sequences in place, talking about your story and your brand and basically humanizing your business. That’s how you’re going to last in the long run. Otherwise someone could just copy your exact same product on a marketplace like Amazon and overtake you, if you don’t have that strong foundation.

[00:43:32] Noah: Alright guys, any other final words of wisdom? Any last tips of things you’re like hey here’s stuff I’m excited about or things I’m thinking about?

[00:43:40] Scott: I would just say I mean the biggest thing for a lot of people is they’re going to listen to this and they may be like overwhelmed with like everything that you can do. But I think you’ve also said that Noah that, it’s just about getting something out there to the market and let them raise their hand with their wallet and then from there you can decide on that next move. But don’t think about figuring it all out right now, right today. Just get started that’s the biggest thing.

[00:44:05] Steve: Get started and make sure you have a strong value proposition. Like don’t just throw out something that’s already out there.

[00:44:11] Ian: I’d say to that point you know it’s you know we’re talking about markets being saturated, get into this, don’t get into that, don’t be on this platform, be on that platform. Number one get started. Number two it has never been easier to build a business that satisfies your needs as it is today. So that means that you want to be a professional rock climber and work two hours a week, it’s totally possible with all the things that we’re talking about. I truly believe that all your dreams can be achieved through these businesses. So yeah, get out there and start today.

[00:44:43] Steve: And one last thing. Consider thinking more B2B. One thing that Amazon is generally catering to the consumer, like they just released Amazon Business but there’s a lot of businesses out there. They want better customer service and once a business starts buying from you, they’ll tend to buy from you over and over again. Like the business customer’s a lot more loyal. So if you can establish a business that caters to businesses that will be a much easier path to recurring revenue than to a consumer per se.

[00:45:16] Noah: Yeah I mean there’s definitely trade-offs. Like B2B, these people have money and they run a business so it’s easier for them to justify expenses. There’s just trade-offs to all this stuff. So it sounds like a few things to summarize some of the lessons learned from this episode. It’s like number one get started today. Number two share more of the story and not just about your product but what is like the benefit, why does that get better with your product? Number three like look at other marketplaces to accelerate your growth. So eBay is great way to validate or accelerate. Etsy, Amazon you know, there’s letgo.com, there’s all these kind of new services so like try them out.

Number four, Scott you mentioned this is and this is how you have been going, just go sell something today. If you’re like, I don’t have a great idea, fine. Then just go sell your junk and that might actually give you an idea. Like maybe it’s in tennis, maybe it’s in services maybe it’s in products, maybe it’s selling other people’s junk, but those are kind of some of the things that I’ve taken away. I don’t know, what have you guys taken away?

[00:46:05] Scott: Noah, I think you said a lot.

[00:46:17] Steve: Yeah, exactly.

[00:46:09] Ian: You know, Noah, on your point of like just selling junk, I mean it’s like when you start thinking like an entrepreneur or business owner, like the whole world kind of like changes around you. Like there’s all these opportunities. If you’re going through life like a consumer, like it’s very hard to see these opportunities, it’s very easy to miss these opportunities. So if you start looking at everything as more you know transactional way like well how did this get into my house, well I bought it. Well somebody gave it to me. It’s like out figure out how these items got into your life and figure out how you can get those items into other people’s lives.

[00:46:37] Scott: Yeah I think basically be aware. You know, be aware of your surroundings, be aware of what you’re touching on a daily basis and what you’re using what other people are using and you just never know but like you said I mean Noah, like when you sell that one thing, it’s going to trigger like wow this thing can work and then you start looking around even a little bit like with a different set of lenses on. So I like it. I like it.

[00:46:59] Ian: I was going to say final point from me over here too is that, the wealthiest people I know are in the most unsexy niches.

[00:47:10] Noah: Ian, drop that knowledge on. So what kind of niches are they just to get people an idea?

[00:47:14] Ian: Oh man, it could be like swimming pool construction, there’s a number of different things. But none of it is things that you would think would make necessarily a lot of money and a lot of it’s not even on the internet. So I mean components are on the internet but a lot of these like big time transactions and this big time money, comes from people actually talking to other people and cutting deals. And part of that is like my bias. Like I’m not, I’m just not good at selling a million products for $15. Like I’m much better selling a million dollar product 15 times and I do that through personal relationships and actually meeting people and shaking people’s hands.

[00:47:50] Noah: Dude you just dropped like too much knowledge right at the end. We are going to have to like rejigger that and then start over. So number one I think it’s like if everyone’s online probably consider offline farmers markets. Like look at Square. They’re a public company that started with farmers markets. That was their big kind of in road. Number two don’t go for the sexy. That’s a great point as well. Like everyone is like, I want to have like more like a digital product or something that… It’s just like no, do something that maybe that is not as appealing to everybody else in it. You’ll have less competition. I love those kind of businesses.

[00:48:22] Ian: Yeah, I mean Steve, I don’t know if you think your product’s sexy or not but…

[00:48:26] Steve: It’s not. It’s not. Yeah.

[00:48:29] Noah: And you have to go tell people at dinner parties and they’re laughing at you and you get in whatever car you drive and drive home and feel good about yourself. So I think that that’s all that’s important. Is that you feel good about what you’re selling.

[00:48:40] Steve: You know it’s funny you bring that up. Because I remember in the beginning a lot of my friends they used to make fun of me for selling those things and I still haven’t really told them how much it generates but I still keep that to myself but yeah I was down in the beginning because I didn’t feel like the product was sexy. But I guess it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things.

[00:48:59] Noah: Well how did you get over that? That’s actually an interesting point.

[00:49:02] Steve: How did I get over that? Good question. I mean for a while I actually wasn’t even going out. Just because we were working on the business and just as it grew and it took a year to get it to a respectable revenue level. After that it was just the money justified itself.

[00:49:21] Scott: Okay, so that’s going to wrap it up. I wasn’t kidding. Right? I mean that went on for a long time but a lot of great back and forth discussion on these three websites and the teardowns and I hope that you got value from that. I know I did and I always love sitting around a round table even if I’m just listening in at other experts and what they’ve done in the past and what they’re doing moving forward and what they’ve learned through their process and then how they would adapt it to a business that’s already up and running and that’s kind of what we did right here.

So again listen to what everyone was saying here and then take what you want away and apply it to your current business or maybe product research because you know moving forward you may want to move in this direction of building a brand, creating that unique proposition as Steve had said. But I think whenever you’re able to kind of look at a website that’s already up and running with products for sale and you have other people coming in that have been through this process and then listening to how they pick it apart, that’s how you really learn and at least that’s how I learn and I really got a lot of value from this as well.

So hopefully you did and I may even do more of these in the future because I had a really good time doing it. And I just want to remind you guys on the show notes. If you want to download the show notes to this episode and to part one which was episode 354 by the way, but you can head over to the show notes page to this episode, which is theamazingseller.com/354. All the links will be there. I’ll even include the links to the websites that we broke down so that’s this way here if you wanted to go over to them check them out, see exactly what they looked like and then maybe we can even see some of those changes if the site owners decide to use this advice.

[00:51:07] Scott: So again guys, that is pretty much going to wrap it up. Hopefully you got a ton of value. Like I said and look forward to doing more of these in the future. If you want me to definitely shoot me an email or a message on Facebook and let me know that you enjoyed this episode because I genuinely enjoyed it and I would love to do more. So let me know. Alright, so guys, that’s it, that’s going to wrap it up. Remember as always, I’m here for you, I believe in you and I’m rooting for you but you have to, you have to… Come on, say it with me, say it loud, say it proud, “Take action.” Have an awesome amazing day and I’ll see you right back here on the next episode.

[END]

Click Here to Download Transcript <<

Click Here to Download Transcript <<

…Today we’re going to be talking traffic to our products. Not just on Amazon, but how do we get more traffic. Traffic meaning, visitors, eyeballs, how do we make that happen? We’re going to talk about that. We’re going to talk about reducing returns and some of the issues that could be happening when you’re getting returns and why and how to prevent that. And the also using insert cards and about some you know, TOS rules. We always have to talk about that when we talk about insert cards. So we are going to talk about all those different things. Those are some questions that came in that we’re going to answer.

But I want to remind you. If you want to ask your own question, head over to theamazingseller.com/ask and do that. Just ask a question, just leave your first name, where you’re tuning in from and a brief question and I would love to answer it here on an upcoming podcast. Now this episode is 355. That means that the show notes and the transcripts can all be found at theamazingseller.com/355. So that’s theamazingseller.com/355.

Now before we jump in, you guys always know I like to kind of give you guys my thoughts of the week or the day or whatever just random thoughts of what I’m kind of going through or what I’m hearing from you guys and that’s what I want to do here. I also wanted to remind you guys and let you guys know that I’m super excited about an upcoming unofficial meet up and I say unofficial, what does that mean? It basically just means that it’s a place where we’re going to meet up. There’s nothing structured. There’s no like you know, set rules or anything like that.

[00:02:03] Scott: It’s not going to be like a workshop, where we’re going to be working on things. It’s a meet and greet. It’s kind of like where we get to hang out, we get to meet, we get to talk a little bit of business you get to meet other TASers, other FBA sellers and all of that stuff and we try to do those in different cities when we’re going to be in town. So this one here is going to North Carolina. And this one here a lot of people said, “Scott why don’t you just have one on North Carolina, you’re not far from there.” And I said you know what, you’re right. I probably should and I also had a bunch of requests for people that wanted us to do another TAS Live Event and we decided to do a workshop.

So we’re also going to do a workshop just outside of Charlotte and that there, all of that information can be found at theamazingseller.com/live and you can get all the details on the unofficial meet up and on the official, the workshop. We’re going to actually do a one day workshop on that Saturday where we’re going to have 15 people in a room and we’re going to be talking all about external traffic but then also how to build your own launch list, so this way here you can launch your products easier and you can also boost sales and you can do a lot of really cool things once you have that asset. And that’s what we’re going to be teaching on Saturday.

But the unofficial meetup is going to be on that Friday and all the details like I said will be on that page, theamazingseller.com/live. What I want to do here really quickly before we jump into the first question is I wanted to play a little recording, a little snippet from one of our unofficial meetups and I wanted to share with you Joseph Wang and Joseph if you’re listening I want to say I enjoyed our time together. We talked for, probably about 20 to 30 minutes and he was there probably for two or three hours talking to a whole bunch of other people.

He’s got a ton of energy. He’s also a bodybuilder. He’s a small guy if you look at him at the surface but the guy is ripped like crazy. So Joseph I’m sure we’re going to talk a little bit about that at the next meet up. And I know that you’re going to be here in North Carolina at that next meetup. So I’m going to really enjoy hanging out with you for a full day talking about external traffic and all that stuff too.

[00:04:05] Scott: But just a great guy. But I wanted to really highlight him because he really had some good things to say on this recording. And this recording just came because what we do is, we carry around a little mic and we ask people how they heard of the podcast and what they’re doing currently right now in their business and what they’re looking to do in the future and all those things and a common thread was really not just with Joseph but with a lot of people was motivation. Like Scott gives me a lot of motivation to keep going and that’s awesome.

But I also want you to hear that it’s not just about the motivation, it’s about the people you surround yourself with. And I’m not going to kind of spoil it here but Joseph gives some really good advice and some words of wisdom just for himself that he was kind of reminding himself but also to other people that are listening. So I want you to listen to this. I want you to really let it sink in because it’s so important that we need the right motivation not just motivation and we also need to be inspired and motivated by the people that we’re surrounded with and it’s really, really important that you understand that in any business or in anything in life that you’re trying to achieve. So listen to this really quick snippet with Joseph. I think you’re going to get a lot out of it and then we’ll go ahead and we will dive into the vast question of today.

[Q&A SESSION]

[00:05:21] Interviewer: So what’s your name and where are you from?

[00:05:24] Joseph: I’m Joseph Wang and I’m from Dallas Texas.

[00:05:25] Interviewer: Do you remember hearing Scott for the first time or how you heard of him?

[00:05:32] Joseph: Yeah, so it’s not super clear but I remember I started Amazon with wholesaling and then I think just through the community of Amazon sellers I heard of Scott and that got me into private label.

[00:05:43] Interviewer: Okay, so you started listening to Scott, how long ago was that?

[00:05:46] Joseph: I don’t remember. Maybe may of 2016.

[00:05:49] Interviewer: Okay, so less than a year?

[00:05:53] Joseph: Yeah.

[00:05:54] Interviewer: Have you gotten started? Has it made an impact? What difference has listening to Scott made for you?

[00:06:00] Joseph: The biggest thing that I love about Scott’s podcast is specifically I think in life you’ve got to have the right influencers and the people who are continuing to give you like the motivation and the influence that you’re going to need. If you’re hanging around drug addicts, you’re going to be a drug addict. And so I think the biggest takeaway for me from his podcast was having that influence and that constant reminder of like, hey this is what I’m working towards and so I actually started my brand in August and that’s how I got started like growing.

[00:06:33] Interviewer: So you know you just a couple months started your brand. How are you doing? Good?

[00:06:38] Joseph: I’m doing about $2,000 a month for profit wise.

[00:06:42] Interviewer: So are you working another job right now or doing the Amazon?

[00:06:46] Joseph: I work full time as a financial analyst.

[00:06:51] Interviewer: So is that something that you want to continue? You want to do both of them and just have Amazon as a side income or is it going to replace your income? What’s your goal on the end here?

[00:07:00] Joseph: I am totally an entrepreneur. There’s huger goals past financial freedom in terms of like trying to build a university in the future that teaches like health, wealth, love and happiness and kind of like ties things. I’m a body builder as well and just I think relationships and stuff like that isn’t taught as a life skill and I think that’s so stupid that it’s missed out in life.

[00:07:23] Interviewer: It’s also like that you would be willing to go in there and try to help people with that because that’s a big thing like Scott helps people to make money. You’ll help people and Scott also helps people to be motivated like you said. If you look into help them have the right relationship. That’s a powerful skill.

[00:07:44] Joseph: Yeah I mean I mentor college students as well right now just as a free thing and one of the guys sent me a text, it’s like last year or something like that or two years ago and he was like, “Hey man, I really owe you a lot of who I am today and you changed how I think and what not.”

[00:08:00] Interviewer: So potentially Scott coming into your life might make you go into a bunch of other people’s lives and make a difference for them?

[00:08:08] Joseph: Yes.

[00:08:09] Interviewer: Awesome.

[00:08:10] Scott: Okay, so I just wanted to share that with you, just to number one, let you see kind of the people that hang out with us at these unofficial meetups. I mean they’re totally free for you to attend these when we do these in these cities that we’re either attending an event or a meeting or whatever. And you get to meet people like Joseph and I just really wanted to highlight him because he said some really important things and I want to highlight them one more time and that is you know motivation is great and all. I don’t like to be just the motivational guy. It’s more about the motivation to take the action and then once you take the action you get some type of result but then when you start to feel like I don’t want to keep going because things are starting to get a little bit tougher, then yes you can get remotivated.

I think that’s the key.I can get you all pumped up and excited and then get you started but then if you don’t actually get started and then get the result that you want or after you start you get a result that you want or you see some results then it’s going to get you deflated. And I think him saying like you need to surround yourself with like-minded people and he did say this and I wanted to highlight this, he’s like if you’re hanging around with drug addicts, you’re probably going to be a drug addict or if you’re going to be, if you’re hanging around with really good athletes, you’re probably going to be a good athlete or you’re at least going to strive to be one. So really try to understand that.

You are probably going to be a lot like the people you hang around and there’s that one saying that everyone kind of refers back to you’re the average of the five people that you hang around with the most like the five people. So maybe think about that and I’ve said that before but I’m going to say it again it’s really, really important that you do that. But again, I just wanted to kind of highlight this and again also talk a little bit about like the ripple effect. What does that mean? Well you can see, you know joseph has bigger plans than just selling something on Amazon and the Amazon thing is really the vehicle that’s going to hopefully allow him to do that. And again a lot of people look at these big numbers. Well this guy is doing $500,000 a month or a million dollars a month. He’s doing $2,000 profit a month and that’s a great start.

[00:10:09] Scott: And I just want also let you guys know that I’m not going to be the guy that’s just going to show you all those big numbers. Because for a lot of people, $2,000 a month is a great side revenue or one that they can build upon. So don’t always get I guess blown away with all these big numbers because you know what, you gotta start somewhere and Joseph is on his way and I’m really excited to hang out with him at our live unofficial meet up but also our full day workshop.

He’s one of the 15 that’s going to be in that room the day that we do our live workshop which we’re going to be building an external launch list and an email list and we’re going to talk about like how to leverage that and all of that fun stuff. So again guys, if you’re interested in hanging out with us at one of our live meetups or any of our live events, head over to theamazingseller.com/live. Alright guys, let’s go ahead and dig into today’s first question and I’ll give you my answer.

[00:11:04] Listener: Hey Scott, actually so I’ve been running my Amazon business now for the past six months now and I’ve got about two FBA products. I’ve got a conversion around 20% conversion at the moment. Only issue is I’m a UK seller, only issue is traffic. I’m not getting enough traffic. So on average before I started and I was up to about 30 per day sessions but I’ve run out of stock for the past two months and I was back down to around 10 to 15 sessions. So I just want to know from your point of view, how can I drive more traffic to my listing? Obviously ranking is a big thing to it that will increase traffic but what external sort of like strategies or social media or wherever that you can advise me to basically increase my traffic. Thank you very much.

[00:11:56] Scott: Okay, so you guys know I love these types of questions. This is where I get to really dig in and I love to talk about this. And I want to thank you for this question. I don’t have your first name or else I’d call you out by first name and again let me just remind you guys. If you’re submitting a question please leave your first name, so this way here I could shake your hand virtually and say thank you to you personally. That’s what I would like to do. But anyway, I know that you’re from the UK obviously you could tell by the accent but you did say that. So I’m assuming you’re selling in the UK marketplace but even if you’re not this is all going to go hand in hand. Although in some of those other International marketplaces, the traffic is less in most cases but doesn’t mean it’s always going to be that way.

I mean there’s a lot of marketplace that are starting to get some momentum. But right now you know in the states .com is going to be one of the most traffic you’re going to get out there. But we’re talking about like okay so you want to get ranked because that’s going to get you more eyeballs, we all know that. That’s what we want to do. So you know, you would say well let’s just go ahead and maybe ramp up some pay-per-click. That would be first the thing. Are you using pay-per-click? Well you might say, well there’s not really a ton of traffic using pay-per-click because there’s not as many people on the platform. I would argue with that.

I would say if you’ve done your product research correctly and your number is, I want to get 100 sessions a day and I’m only getting 20. Then we’ve got room to grow. So I think we got to know that mark. We got to know that number. So if that number like I said is 100 sessions a day and that’s what you know, let’s say sales. Let’s say for example you’re shooting for 10 sales a day then you got to look at the top 10 listings that are coming up for your keywords and you got to see what their volume is. Does that make up 3,000 over the course of 10 listings or of the 10 sellers? Is there 3,000 units being moved, being sold? That’s the first question.

[00:13:56] Scott: After that it’s like okay yes there is. That means there’s got to be enough traffic there to get 3,000 sales or 10 sales a day. So if that’s the case, how do I get in front of them? Well I have to get in the top 10 somewhere. Okay? How do I do that? So these are all of the questions we’re asking ourselves. So it doesn’t really matter how you get the sale because that’s ultimately what’s going to help you rank and help you get more eyeballs and more sessions. So how do we get more sales?

Well the first thing is pay-per-click. That’s the very first thing. If you’re not leveraging pay-per-click sponsored product ads you need to do that. So I’m going to get, I’m going to throw that link out there again, it’s theamazingseller.com/ppc, totally free resource for you, totally free and we actually went through exactly how to set up campaigns and what to look for and how to trim through some of the keywords that aren’t performing, the ones that are performing and all of that stuff. So it’ll give you a good foundation on what to do for that. You also mentioned that you ran out of inventory for two months I think which is a long time.

So to get back up and running again it’s going to be a little bit harder. Now, the one thing I would have to ask you which I can’t because we’re not sitting across the table from each other but if I was there in person with you or I had you on the phone, this is the question I would ask you. I would say, what was your conversion and what was your sessions before you ran out of stock? Now again this can change. If you’re a seasonal product and you’re in the summer and you ran out of stock there and then you relaunch in January and your product isn’t selling well in January, it’s probably just because it’s seasonality.

But if your sessions were 50 and now they’re only 10, then we got to get you back to 50. So how do we get you back to 50? Well we have to look back and look at your sponsored product ads and your pay-per-click and say can we just turn them back on? Did you raise your price to try to slow yourself from running out of inventory and if you did you probably decreased your conversion rate and now that will hurt you when you go to launch again. So then we have to start to get that velocity again, that momentum.

[00:15:59] Scott: Now, that’s all internal stuff. We got to make sure our listing is optimized, make sure that your title is optimized, make sure your pictures are optimized, your bullets, your description, your back end keywords like all of that stuff, you got to go through all of that stuff making sure that it’s there. You guys can hear, like there’s a lot of different things that we need to reverse engineer to kind of see where there could be a spot where we can tweak. Where is there a spot that we can then focus on? Because there could be other things that are already in place that you don’t have to focus on but you have to focus on the sale element. We have to focus on getting the sales because we know if we get sales then we’re probably going to rank.

Now let’s talk a little bit about externally. If we want to really ramp this thing up and have more of our own control, whether we run out of inventory or not or we just want to do a boost, we need an email list. Plain and simple. You guys have heard me talk about this and I’m going to keep talking about it because it’s that important and it’s an asset. I actually talked about it on the beginning of this episode. We’re going to be doing a full live in person workshop with 15 people building their sequence, their launch list, everything is going to be done for them or with them inside of this one day workshop. But to kind of give you guys a breakdown of this and we’re also going to do more of an overview of it on a workshop that we’re going to be doing online.

And depending on when you’re listening to this, you’ll probably be able to get access to that and that’s going to be found at theamazingseller.com/buildlist. So that’ll be updated with the workshop once we do that. We’re going to do an online workshop as well that will hopefully help you through this process and give you kind of what we’ve done and what we’re doing and what we’re helping people to do. So the big thing though to think about and this is like an overview of what it looks like. You need to get attention for products in your market that are similar to your products or your product.

[00:17:49] Scott: A lot of people make the mistake and they just want to take a Facebook ad and drive it right to their Amazon listing and that’s bad in my eyes because we’re driving a ton of traffic and then if only 5% convert it takes your conversion rate and drops it down because Amazon sees it as a session they don’t see where it necessarily came from. They just see as someone landed on your page. So what we want to do is we want to control that. So one little filter that we can apply there and we can start to build an email list is to add a landing page to that. So if we have a Facebook ad and we’re going to give a 50% off discount, well all we have to do then is say, hey to receive your 50 percent off discount code just enter your name and email address and we’ll send it to you. That’s it. It’s that simple.

So you’re basically just taking a Facebook ad, you’re finding your audience, your target audience which is very easy to do on Facebook nowadays. You just go to a Facebook fan page that’s related to your market or look at Facebook groups or just different interests that are in your market and then just target those groups. And you could do all kinds of demographic stuff and all of that stuff. But then what you want to do is drive them to the landing page that gives them the 50% off discount and then in exchange for the code, they’re going to give you the email address. And then from there immediately you can boost your sales. Now, I’ve found and I like doing it this way, is I like to create a little bit more buzz and a thing where it’s more shareable. A bigger bundle in a sense and you might not have all the products to make the bundle.

So what I like to do is take products that are in your market that people would definitely want when they buy your product or if they buy your product and then from there you could always upsell them later on that or you can even include that in part of the of the of the prize. So just imagine again, and I’ve used this example a lot, if you are selling a tackle box well you can find the top fishing pole and then a fishing net and a fishing vest and your tackle box put it into one package and then have people answer to win that and then do that for 30 days.

[00:19:55] Scott: And then on the back end of that, the people that don’t win, there’s going to… Let’s say you get 1,000 people to enter their email address, those 1,000 people there’s one person that wins, there’s 999 that didn’t, you can offer those people a 50% off discount on the back end if you want. And then instantly you’re going to be able to start boosting your sales. You can do a flash sale with that email list, hey guy’s you know  we’re going to offer 25% off this weekend only so be ready and then you send that out on Wednesday and then Friday is this flash sale and then you have a flash sale.

All you do is lower, maybe you just lower your price for those two days, you know, you have a coupon code. You just lower the price by 25% and then you say here you go and then they go directly to Amazon and buy it through your email list. So that’s what I would do. Just some ideas for you. Hopefully this has helped you. I can go on talking about this for hours, which I’m going to be doing by the way in North Carolina, in June, so I’m super excited about that. I’m actually going to be getting hands on and building it with people, which I love doing as well. So anyway hopefully that helps. Keep me posted. Let me know how that works for you and let’s go ahead and listen to the next question and I’ll give you my answer.

[00:21:02] Bret: Hey Scott, it’s Brett from Arizona. I love your podcast. Been listening to it for about six months now ever since I kind of found out about the Amazon thing as far as selling goes and pretty cool. Very useful stuff and inspirational and helpful and keeping us going along the way from finding our first product and getting it live on Amazon. We finally did the first one. We kind of went big. We picked a fairly competitive area and also ordered about 2,600 units I think from China and did the whole sea freight thing, all of that and all went pretty well. Had really good luck with planning our pro forma up front. We had a really good pro forma that we used to make sure that all our costs were in there and we wouldn’t be surprised and we really weren’t.

The only thing we’re running into now is we are getting a couple returns. We’ve had some pretty good traction through pay-per-click. We’re getting some good organic sales but we’ve had a few returns now or at least one return and one request possibly for a return, asking basically why our product isn’t as high end as they thought it would be and we thought that we’ve done a good job in saying that this is a value product. There are higher end products but they also cost a lot more than our product. We thought we’ve done a decent job at that but apparently we’re not getting that across in our listing.

[00:22:36] Bret: I know that quality products are typically preferred and ours is a good product, it’s just not nearly as good as some of the more expensive competitors which is why we’re priced so much less. So wondering if you have any experience on how to get that point across better on Amazon without just coming out and saying these are cheaper and less good than the other ones. But they’re still a great product. I’m not sure how we would say that. If you have any ideas, would love to hear it. Thank you.

[00:23:09] Scott: Hey Brett, thank you so much for the question and Arizona, it’s a nice area. I was there recently at one of our TAS Breakthrough Live events in Phoenix. Love it there. My good buddy, Jim Krill lives there. Grew up with Jim for years. Played Little League together and all that stuff. So yeah I visited there a few times, beautiful, beautiful state. So okay, let’s dive into this. Now it sounds like you’ve taken a product and you’ve actually went the other way with it. And what I’m seeing here, I’m hearing here is that you took a product that is usually more expensive and then you made a more generic version that people can buy. This is a little dangerous to be honest with you because people are expecting higher quality and then you’re giving them like an off brand.

And I know myself personally being in the photography business, like I’ve done this. I’ve bought these little, there’s like these little receivers that connect your camera wirelessly and it’s basically you plug it into the shoe on top and if you guys don’t know about photography you’d probably don’t know what I’m talking about. You don’t need to. Just understand there’s like a component that you buy that slips into the top of your camera that then communicates and speaks to your external lights. I bought one off of at eBay I think and it was like 25 bucks but the good, the more expensive brand was like 100 bucks. And I said, you know what, I’ll just try it and I got it and it was a piece of junk and I sent it back.

And I’m not saying yours as a piece of junk. But what I’m saying is people are going to hold you up to the expectations of the more expensive item. So my thoughts are here, make your product as good as the more expensive ones. So wherever you’re falling short, you need to fix that and that might not be what you want to hear but that’s what I’m going to tell you. Because in the end if you can have a better product and then sell it for a little bit less, that’s great for you because now people are still getting you know they’re getting the same deal as if they were to spend 100 bucks, they’re getting it for 75.

[00:25:17] Scott: I still I wouldn’t want to be that much lower either because why? Like you can make more profit by charging more and if your competitors are charging more and you’re going to split that cost in half and I don’t know what your cost is how much cheaper it is. But if you’re doing that, you’re leaving a lot of money on the table and then also people they perceive it to be not as good if it’s too cheap. Some people they hurt themselves by pricing yourself so cheap because they think people are all going by or you know they’re all going to be basing their decision on the price and that’s not always the case. I ended up spending a $100 on the better one after I spent $25 on a piece of crap.

So you got to look and see what are people saying that are getting the returns or that are requesting the returns, what are they saying, really listen to that and then from there try to address that. Now if you want to make it even more clear for them like let’s say that yours is made with a lighter material than you know the better brand, you might need to make that very clear that, I mean you’re not going to say, “Well ours is less quality than you know the best one that’s being sold out there.” But you could just put all of that stuff and you may already be doing this, but these are just things that I’m thinking out loud about, is I would want to make sure that I was clear that everything that they’re getting, the dimensions, the size, the weight whatever it is, I want them to know that it’s that.

I don’t want it to be hidden in the fine print, if that makes sense. I want it to be right out there in the open to try to reduce that. Now doesn’t sound like you got a ton of refunds, but you did get some. So I would, again I would focus on trying to make that product as good as the one that is selling for more, that is technically better quality. I would try to make yours as good or a very close second and maybe you’re already doing that. But again you asked about how to kind of reduce these refunds or the expectations, those are a few ideas of what I would do.

[00:27:15] Scott: And anyone else out there, that’s thinking about making a product that’s less expensive than a more expensive product out there to try to say like we’ll look at you can get this product over here cheaper, you got to make sure that it’s not technically cheaper. You don’t want them to get it because to get that product and then have the things fall apart in two days, because that’s going to be bad for you. So really got to think about that. If anything, I’d like to go the other way.

Take a product that’s selling for 20 bucks and if you can make yours better sell it for 30, that’s how you can really get yourself to kind of stand above everyone else and not have to worry about competing on price because eventually people are going to buy yours after they’ve tried the other one and it’s broke after two days of using it. So just some food for thought there. Alright, so let’s go ahead and listen to one more question and I’ll give you my answer and we’ll wrap this up and you guys can get on with your Friday. What do you say? Let’s do it.

[00:28:10] Keith: Hey Scott, how are you? I love the show. My name is Keith and I had a question about insert cards. I’m currently selling products using Amazon FBA. And I was wondering if it against Amazon’s TOS to include an insert card into my packaging. So customers receive my product, they open it up, placed an insert card and that insert card simply asked the customer to sign up to a newsletter to get more information about my products, best ways to use it and any new product coming out in the future. You can shed some light on to how to best use insert cards and if they’re approved by Amazon that would be great. Once again love the show, thanks, bye.

[00:28:54] Scott: Hey Keith, thank you so much for the question and it’s a great question and it does kind of lead itself back to like building that external email list and that’s kind of what you’re doing, which I applaud you for that. The one thing I will say here and again you asked the question of like, okay is it against terms of service to put an insert card in there? And I personally don’t know to be honest with you. It’s not clear. Nothing is clear in there as far as it doesn’t… I’ll tell you this, it doesn’t say you cannot use an insert card in your packaging to further educate your customer. Like no it does not say that in there, at least the time of recording of this episode it does not say that.

But they do word things that, they do not want you to drive people to an external website and they do not want you to try to market your products to them but more or less during a transaction, like there’s all of these little grey areas that I don’t even think they have it clear and I think they do that for a reason to be honest with you. Because this way here if someone complains they have a little loophole there they can go ahead and shut you down if they want to. So you have to be careful.

Here’s my thoughts always and again this is just my thoughts and my opinion and the way that I kind of conduct business and anything that I do, is if you’re adding value and if you’re not collecting an email and spamming that customer and if you’re not directly selling to them in that insert, then I don’t know that it’s a problem. I don’t think it’s a problem. Like I think if anything, add value. And I’ve always said that, like how can you make your customer happier than when they first purchased their product?

Like number one we want the product to be phenomenal. Number two we want them to be protected with their products, so if it’s registering for a warranty, I don’t see any problem with that. Businesses have been doing that for years. Most people will not fill out the warranty unless it’s like a major item. Like if it’s a $200 item, they might because they want to make sure that they are on record and that it’s documented that they bought the product.

[00:30:58] Scott: You buy a product for 25 or 30 bucks, you’re probably not going to run over to your computer or your phone to enter your name and email address to register your product. So you have to think about like what are you going to give them. Are you going to give them more resources? Are you going to give them special exclusive deals in the future? Like, what are you going to do? What is the offer and I think as long as it’s benefiting the customer then I’m okay with it. But again, do this at your own risk.

Anyone listening, this is a do at your own risk type of thing. I again don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. I think it’s smart to have an insert card in there, at least to even just further educate your customer. If you have a product that you know that people are struggling with to get set up or to use or you want to be able to show them other people’s results after using the item, then I think an insert card with signing up for VIP and exclusive resources and tips, I think it’s fine. Because now you’re further educating them, you’re making their buying experience better, they’re going to be a happier customer, they’re going to be a loyal customer and then you have the opportunity to do whatever you want once they’re on your email list. Alright?

But if you directly got their email list and then directly tried to sell them something a day later on your website, I would be careful with that. I personally would not do that. I like this model. I like an insert card that says, “Hey get on our VIP list and our special resources or tutorials on how to use your new coloring pencils,” or whatever and then from there I send them immediately after they register some type of ‘how to’ or some type of cool little thing that was used by one of the past customers and we’re sharing that result with them.

[00:32:56] Scott: Like something like that of value that definitely relates to the product they just bought. To make it better so they’re like they’re totally excited about this. And then we know that they’re into this market. Again if we’re into the fishing space, then maybe five days later it’s going to be a video on how to maybe put the bait on the hook to catch more bass. I don’t know, I’m making this stuff up. But you understand what I’m saying and maybe they bought hooks from you.

Well if they bought hooks from you, they’re obviously going to be fishing and they’re obviously going to be wanting to catch bass because they bought a bass type hook, so now the next move for them would be I want to catch more bass. Well the video would be how to catch more bass by using this rare or you know this secret technique to I don’t know put the worm on the hook or whatever.

So that would be something that you would do to lead people through the better experience moving through using your products. So anyway I kind of went on a little bit of a tangent there, a little bit of a rant, but it’s well deserved I believe because you want to direct people to a resource, not necessarily just to get them to buy more stuff. So if you can switch your mindset on that and then lead them back to a piece of content that helps them further with the product that they bought and then maybe you have additional products that are kind of wrapped inside of that content, that’s another story.

But anyway, that’s what I would do. I’d be careful and as always, I always put the little disclaimer in there, you know be careful with this and use your own judgment and again this is just my opinion. I am not saying at all that Amazon is okay with it. I’m not saying that they’re not okay with it. It’s kind of that grey area. Alright?

[00:34:42] Scott: So that’s it guys. That’s pretty much going to wrap up this episode of Ask Scott. I want to thank you guys. Again, everyone that’s submitting questions, keep doing it, keep submitting your questions. If you have not submitted a question, you can do it anytime. Just head over to theamazingseller.com/ask and that would be awesome. The other thing I want to remind you guys, if you guys have any personalized notes you want to send me, I’m talking in the mail, I want to put them up on my thank you board. I have a board in my office and you guys can check that out by heading over to theamazingseller.com/notes and you’ll see an address there that you can submit a letter if you want to, maybe a picture. I have someone that sent in a TAS Montreal. Ivelyne had actually sent this in. It’s up on my wall about I don’t know eight or ten people in that meet up and they’re holding up a sign.

And yeah, so I want to be able to post your thank you letters or just a note, maybe telling me where you are in your journey and that would be awesome. So if you want to do that, head over to theamazingseller.com/notes. Alright guys, so that’s it. That’s going to wrap up this episode. Remember as always, I’m here for you, I believe in you and I’m rooting for you but you have to, you have to… Come on, say it with me, say it loud, say it proud, “Take action.” Have an awesome amazing day, weekend, whatever time of the day, whatever day it is during week, have an awesome amazing day and I’ll see you guys right back here on the next episode.

[END]

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Click Here to Download Transcript <<

…compete in a saturated market on Amazon and win. Is it even possible? Well I’m going to give you guys a seven step plan that we’re actually following right now, as we speak in a brand new brand. Wow, that’s kind of strange there. A brand new brand. Yeah, so we are going to be talking about that and give you guys a little teaser here. The next episode, 357, I’m going to actually walk you through exactly, exactly how we launched this new product and received 154 sales in 5 days and we did not even give the product away for free.

So you’re going to want to definitely come back and check that episode out because it’s going to build off of what I talk about today. A lot of what I’ll talk about in that episode the groundwork is really what I’m going to talk about today. That is the seven step plan. Now there is a long term play here and there’s also a short term play, depending on where you are and what your goals are for your business… Now I’ll give you an example, if you are looking to build or not build a brand and you just want to go out there and just find product that’s selling and then sell it, that’s totally fine.

Now we have an open brand which we’re working with, you guys probably heard me talk about it with Dom Sugar and we have one product in there right now that is selling really, really well and it has like three reviews and it had no reviews and it was selling still like 25 or 30. Now I’m not saying that that’s going to happen for everything but, it can still happen if you do good product research and you find markets that are not saturated.

[00:01:58] Scott: Now I’m talking today about, if you want to go into a market that’s saturated in a sense or has competition, you still can do it but it is going to be more of a long term play. A long game, as I call it and I’m going to give you those steps. But if you want to go out there and just jump in on a trend right now or if you want to jump in on some products that maybe people haven’t already launched yet, you want to be first ones to market, that’s fine. The thing is, is you’re probably not going to build a brand around that trendy thing. Now, does it work? Yes, you can still do it.

We’re actually doing it right now. Like I said, the last I checked, we ran out of inventory four different times. We were ordering 500 at a time, we blew out of those things in no time and then we just placed another order for 1,000 and one of the big things that we’re having a problem with, is we don’t want to over buy just in case the trend goes away. So that’s the other scary part of jumping on a trend is that it could be over tomorrow and then you’re stuck with 3,000 units. So that’s not what I’m talking about here. What I’m saying is, you got to play it safe which we are doing but we’re definitely not going to build a brand around this one particular product. Maybe around the market a little bit and that’s the beautiful thing with the open brand that we’ve talked about before and we’ll be doing more.

I’m going to have Dom come back on and we’re going to go through that whole open brand concept again. I will link up the discussions that we’ve had in the past on the show notes page to this, about the open brand. If you guys want to learn more about that or even just listen to a past episode. I mean the open brand is a great way to get started and this way here, you don’t have to put all your eggs into one basket as far as a brand. When you start a brand, you’re really kind of going all in because now you’re anticipating that your product is going to sell well and then from there you’re going to be able to build and stack other products on to those or kind of like upsell and cross sell and all that stuff within that brand.

[00:04:01] Scott: That’s what really what we’re talking about. Now our plan for this new brand is to go big. We’re talking like we want to build this into a seven figure brand. And I say we, I have a partner in that and also Chris Shaffer is a partner in that, so we are going all in on this and hopefully, fingers crossed, we have a really good feeling about this but everything that I’m going to be covering here today will give you that framework. That if you want to compete in a saturated market on Amazon or even just in ecommerce, you can do it and you can win. It’s just going to be a competition in a sense and what do you have that your competitors don’t and one thing that we have and I’m going to cover those seven things or those seven steps but what we have, is we have all of the pieces to really make this work because of the partnerships.

We just really complement each other well and I think that’s what’s going to make the difference. But let me just go through those seven steps with you. That’s really what I want here. Again I want to jump right into what they are so you guys have them like step one, step two and you can see exactly what I’m thinking but again I want you guys just to remember, this is the long game plan. This is a brand. This is not just an open brand where we’re going to just launch any products that we see, that we can just go in there and sell which we’re still doing that as well.

It doesn’t mean you can’t do both. But when you’re going in on a brand, remember we’re going for the long game, the long term play. It’s not just about selling something today and profiting tomorrow. It’s going to be, it’s going to take work and it’s going to take time and that’s fine by us because we know that that’s what’s going to win the game. So let’s kind of dig into these seven steps and if I didn’t mention that, I don’t think I did mention it. The show notes guys, theamazingseller.com/356 and you can get all the transcripts for this, you can get the show notes and you can get ‘the seven step plan.’

[00:06:02] Scott: Okay, so building a brand. How to compete in a saturated market on Amazon and win the seven step plan, here we go. Number one is you have to niche down or ni-she down depending on where you’re listening from. If you’re in the U.K, it’s ni-she and or maybe even Canada and or it’s niche. But we’re just going to talk about niching down. Basically meaning, we’re drilling down into the market. So let me give you an example, if we go into the fishing market, that’s a massive market or I’ll give you another example, what if we just go into sports and outdoors, that could be camping, that could fishing, that could be hunting. So that’s like a main thing. That could be hiking, all of these different things.

If you walk into an outdoors store, they have a fishing department, they have a hunting department, they have a hiking, camping like all these different ones. So now what we’re going to do, is we’re going to pick one of those. So let’s say, okay we’re going to dive into fishing. So now we’ve just went down one level deep outside of the big main thing. We’ve carved out one part of the market or this huge market and then we said, we’re going to go into fishing. But now in fishing, we can now drill down further there. We can be in bass fishing, we can be in saltwater fishing, we could do fly fishing and eventually yes we can do them all but when you start, you really want to be really focused on one particular area.

You want to be focusing on, like if I was going to go into the fishing space, I would find out or maybe it would depend on some of these other aspects which I’m going to cover, which one I would drill down into. But let’s just say it was bass fishing. So then I know a lot about bass fishing, I don’t but if I did that would be everything that I would gear things around. There are certain bass hooks that you want to buy for bass fishing. There’s certain leaders that you want to put on. I think there are or catfish there is for sure because they’ll come up and cut your line.

[00:08:02] Scott: So, there’s all of these different things, these different tools, these different pieces, these different techniques which I’ll get into here in a minute when we start talking about content and stuff. But I can really, really just drill down deep into bass fishing. So I just went from this huge market of sports and outdoors to fishing to bass fishing and now I can drill down into bass fishing. And that’s what my brand will be about. If I wanted to, I could just be about bass fishing, period. Or if I wanted to, it could just be fishing and then I could start as one of my niches inside of my, it’s like a sub niche would be into bass fishing. So just to give you a high level view but then we’re going to narrow down into the market that we’re going to go into and that’s what we’ve recently done.

So now, the second thing is, this is step two, is you need to find the target audience. Who is the audience? Who is bass fisherman? What is their age range? Is it a male, is it a female? What’s the time of year that bass fishing is most popular? Like these are the things that I need to find and it’s really easy to find nowadays. We have Facebook groups. We have fan pages. We also have Instagram.

We also have Pinterest. We also have YouTube. We have all these different places to let us see where the market is and then we can start to see who the market is. So we find, we find the target audience and then we see who the target audience actually is. Does that make sense? I hope you said, “Yes Scott, it does.” Because it does make a lot of sense. We’re taking this market and then we’re establishing it, we’re niching down and then we’re finding where they’re hanging out, we’re finding our audience then from there, we’re actually establishing who our audience is.

[00:09:59] Scott: If you get a little bit more advanced, if you start playing around with Facebook ads, you can find out that audience really, really quickly by just running some experiments with using Facebook Ads, which we’re not going to get into here. That would be another thing that we could do. Everything I’m talking about right now though, is going to make a lot of sense in the next episode because I’m going to actually share with you how we actually did this and kind of how that came about. Now again, I’m not going to give you the actual product. I’m not going to give you actually market and all that stuff, but you’re going to understand what I’m talking about and I’m going to give you exactly what we’ve done up to this point.

So let’s move on. So step three, is a front person. If you can find someone to be the front person of your business, to me that’s going to be a huge advantage. Now my good friend Mike Jackness, he talks about this openly. He is in the adult coloring space. He found someone that he knew, that was into adult coloring and then now that’s the person behind the brand. That’s the person that shares the story and that’s the other part of this. When you find that front person, you want to have a story. Why is that person the one that’s the front of the business? The story will help you and if you’ve ever watch the show The Profit, that’s a great show because they always talk about story.

What’s the story about the company? If you have a really good story and then that story lends itself to a charity, boom, game over. Like that’s going to be even better and actually there’s something that we’re going to be playing around with here very soon because there’s just something about me, I want to do something within an Amazon brand or just an ecommerce brand that we can donate part of those proceeds to a charity, a cause and I think it’s really, really good if you can do this. But you can’t make it up. Again there’s people out there that will just do a cause just to make it look good so they could sell more stuff. I genuinely want to donate to a cause

[00:12:01] Scott: So if I can do that and take like part of the of the profits from a sale and let my customers know about that or the front person can let them know about it and why we’re doing that, well then that just ties everything together. So the front person, the front person will be a key part of a successful brand. Doesn’t mean you have to, to have have to, but it will make a really, really big difference and it’ll make it easier when we get to step four here in a minute. But that story like I said, it doesn’t have to be a sappy story. It doesn’t have to be a bad story. It just has to be, why did you decide to get into this?

Like why did you decide to get into adult coloring? Maybe because you had kids and the only way that you could really unplug and not think about day to day stuff that you were doing is at night time, after the kids went to bed, you spend an hour coloring in your adult coloring book with your pencils and your gel pens and all that stuff and it’s just relaxing. Maybe you lit a candle and then you had a certain scent and then it allowed you to really just unwind and then you talk about that story.

Or maybe your story was that, you were a really high stressed person and you actually went to counselling for it for years and there was nothing that you could do to really get out of that stressful environment because your work was a stressful job or whatever and then you discovered adult coloring and that changed everything for you and now you want to, your mission in life is to go out there and help as many people as possible.

Or maybe you are out there and you are struggling to find really good coloring books for adults. All the other ones were just kind of generic and you wanted to come up with your own stuff or maybe you were an artist and now you created your own. You can see, like it’s endless but you’ve got to listen to the story of the front person. So the front person has to be aligned with the brand.

[00:14:00] Scott: Now, I know a lot of you are probably listening, are like, “Scott, sounds like a lot.” Like it sounds like, it is a lot. I’m not sitting here saying that, this is easy but it has to be planned out. All the pieces have to align. But if you even have just one of those pieces, that’s why I’ve said here if you’ve ever or if you’re ever in a situation where you hear someone talking like very passionately about something or shares a story and they’re just so into this thing and this maybe it’s a cause or maybe it’s a, maybe it’s just they’re into fitness or maybe they’re a dietician or whatever it is. If you listen to that and then you see an opportunity and you would want to partner with that person, that’s where that opportunity can come.

That’s exactly how it can happen. It’s actually happened to me. I’m saying this from experience. It’s actually what’s happened to me. So don’t think just because you’re not the front person, you can’t find a front person. You can and it might not be there today. It might be there a month from now or a year from now. But you need to be on the lookout for that.

So moving on, so step four is content creation. Content is going to be critical when you’re building out a brand. Number one Google loves content, I think we all know that.

So when people search for certain things and if you’ve written something on a blog or YouTube or any other platform, you’ve got a chance for people to find your content and then immerse themselves into your world. So content is really, really important. Now a lot of people they get all upset about, well, how do I do content? I don’t know about content or I don’t know how to create content. Well in the beginning, you can just be the reporter. I call this the reporter style. This is where you can go out and find all the resources that are helping you and then you can just report on it and then that can be your content.

[00:16:03] Scott: Like you’re not stealing the content, you’re not going to take that content and say that you wrote it or that you shot the video or anything like that. You’re going to basically just say, I’ve been out there looking for resources for this. This is the top five blog post that I found, that helped me with fishing, with bass fishing. These are the five videos that I found on YouTube that helped me catch more bass this past weekend than I’ve ever caught before and so for you to do that, you can instantly create content or find content and then you can be the reporter.

So now you’ve delivered the content, so now you’re technically the expert even if your front person was doing the reporter style and then just kind of like riffing on what the video was about or what the blog post was about. Like they can just give their review about it or how it’s helped them and then, “hey you should check this out.” So that’s a way to kind of capitalize on other people’s content that you’ve gotten value from. So that’s number four content creation.

Number five, is publishing strategy. Well where do I publish this? Well number one, everyone in a brand, any brand out there, has a home base. That home base is typically a website or a blog. Let’s call it a website but there’s an extension on that website and it’s a blog and that blog just basically means that you post something there, it resides there and it just updates once you put something in there, it’s got something new.

And that way you can just publish on a pretty frequently or a frequent basis and then this way here, you’ve got a home base because you’re always going to want to guide people to your home base because you’re probably and you should or if you’re going to do this brand thing, is go out there and start setting up some social media platforms. Now I don’t say go out there and just go on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook and Pinterest and all of these different social platforms.

[00:18:00] Scott: I say, “Where is your audience hanging out?” If the audience is hanging out on YouTube, then you need a YouTube channel and you need to start publishing stuff on YouTube period. And then you just need to immerse yourself in that world or have someone do that for you. The social media is just extensions of your home base. So it’s a way for you to go out, interact with people and go, “Hey you want to come on over to my house on the weekend? We’re going to have a party. We’re going to talk all about X, Y and Z, bass fishing.”

So it’s a way for us to go out, socialize, meet people and then let people know that we have resources and then because we’re big into this market and then we drive people back to our home base. So the home base in this case, I’m going to say it’s my blog which is your website. Basically the same thing and then from there, again you’re going to have people coming in and they’re going to start going on, “Oh this is pretty cool, you got a nice place. I like this place. A lot of great information here, wow you’re really into this bass fishing thing.” And then they start to learn a bit a little bit about you because you have an about me page. And then it tells your story.

And then it tells a little bit about you or maybe your cause or maybe it’s just a great resource for people to bookmark. So now people are sharing that, which I think everyone in a brand should be the ultimate resource for their market and I think Pat Flynn had said that before as well. You want to be the ultimate resource in your market, period.

If people know, like and trust you and they know that you give out really, really good content around your market, then they’re going to come back to you and they’re going to buy from you, period. So when we talk about competition, if you’re competing on just product, you’re right. If you’re going into a saturated market, it’s going to be hard but if you are doing what we’re talking about here you’ve got such an advantage, such an advantage. Now we’re not even there yet to where people can actually buy stuff from us.

[00:20:02] Scott: But we’re building this thing, we’re building this resource, we’re building this rapport, we’re building the story. Like all of this stuff is going into like the products. The products aren’t even there yet and we might not even have a product picked yet. We might just do this and then decide what product we want to give to people after they tell us or if you don’t want to build all this you could just go hang out in the Facebook groups and the pages and even go on Amazon and read some of your competitions’ reviews and hear what people are talking about, about what they’re interested in and what they’re not interested in and then you’re learning before you even maybe build your brand.

But I’m saying like if you have a good idea that there’s a brand, maybe there’s something you’re really passionate about, that you’re into and you’ve done a lot of research on and you’re always looking at Facebook pages and groups and maybe YouTube channels and stuff like that, then you probably know that that’s what you’re into. There’s probably a market that’s into that, so maybe you want to build a brand around that. So again, going back to these seven steps in this plan, number five is publishing strategy. You need that publishing strategy. You need to have some type of framework. Maybe it’s the top 10 questions, but maybe even that’s where you start, but that’s where you would say, “All right, what is the plan and what is the publishing strategy?”

Well it’s really a home base and then social media channels that lead back to the home base. That’s your publishing strategy.

Now, number six, create a customer journey. What does this mean? Well it means, if your customer, your future customer, if they’re searching for certain things, what is it going to take for them to become a customer? What do they need to understand before they actually make a purchase? So you’re going to probably see, there’s probably 10 or 20 commonly asked questions in your space. Maybe it’s bass fishing.

[00:22:02] Scott: People are always looking for, what’s the best way to put bait on the hook or what’s the best lure? What’s the top five lures? What’s the best color paint on the lure? What is the best leaders? All of these things are being searched for. Those are your pieces of content that you’re going to initially roll out and then from there you’re going to lead people through there. So what’s step one? If you’re going to do a bass tournament this weekend and you want to have them the best advantage what are the five things that you need to know and that you need to do before that tournament?

Step one do this, step two do this and you give them that roadmap and then you’re going to create the customer journey for them. Start here and your result is here, how you get them from there to there, you have to fill in those blanks or maybe they’re doing a research on this one lure. You’re going to have all of the ins and the outs about the lure and then they’re going to say, “Wow, this person gave me a lot of help.” Or maybe when they make that buying decision, it just happens to be on your page because at this point you’ve led them through where they need to go and now they’re just there so they’re going to buy through you and then from there once they buy through you the customer journey is going to continue by your follow-up and by your support and by how helpful you are, all of that stuff.

So that’s number six, creating a customer journey and a standard FAQ, frequently asked questions, commonly asked questions and problems like just go through and start making a list of all of these different questions and then once you have your own Facebook page and group you can ask people. What’s the biggest thing you’re struggling with from your last tournament, from your last bass fishing tournament? Or what’s the one thing you wish you could do better as a bass fisherman? Like, whatever it is and let them tell you.

[00:23:56] Scott: And then, guess what? You as the expert or whoever is your front person they answer that on a YouTube video or they answer that on a Facebook live and then from there they start engaging with that audience and then from there they can lead people back to home base.

See how that works? So it’d be beautiful if you had a front person that could do a Facebook live and be on that boat in the middle of the afternoon showing you three different lures and what makes one better than the other and they’re on a Facebook live and then they can ask any questions while they’re there and then at the end they can say, “Hey if you want more tips like this, head over to scottsbassfishingtips.com,” and then they just go there and then from there they can go on my blog and then from there they can go to the next step, which could be receive this eBook that gives you all of these tips or 100 different tips for catching the most bass over the weekend or something like that. I don’t know. I’m thinking on the fly here. But you see where I’m going with this?

So that’s what we did, we were on a platform, if you can do a Facebook live, those are amazing right now, those things are crushing it. We’re actually doing them in this brand and they’re just crushing it. Literally they’re getting shared and they’re getting liked. And another thing I’ll probably do in the future, I know it’s not related to Amazon, it’s not really related to selling product on ecommerce but really like how to best set up your Facebook live. If you’re going to do them, where to post it because really you should post it on a fan page and then from there re-post it inside of a group if you have one.

If you only have a Facebook fan page, which you have to have one of them to run ads then you’ll already have that piece. But you want to be able to publish that inside the fan page and then from there you can publish it in a group if you have a group and then you get more reach that way because the Facebook fan page allows people to share it, like it and comment and all that fun stuff. So that’s number six, creating a customer journey

[00:26:03] Scott: And now seven, step seven, this is a pretty easy one but a lot of people don’t do this, they’ll do in the beginning but then they won’t continue. And that’s a publishing routine. So when are you going to publish and then if you’re going to publish every single Friday and you’re going to announce that every single Friday, well then you better be there every Friday because people start to establish a routine as well and if you’re not there, well they’re going to just say, “Wow that person is just there, here and there. They’re not there all the time consistently,” and if you do it every single week, let’s say one piece of content every single week, which I think everyone can do, well then all of a sudden you start to get different pieces of content out there that people can start to find.

The more you have out there generally, the more chances you have for someone to find you. So for example this podcast, Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Started it over two years ago. I have not missed a Monday, Wednesday, Friday ever. Now I’m not saying I won’t but I’m committed to not and I’m always usually about a week and a half ahead and I’m always planning, I’m always looking for new things to add, listening to you guys, what you guys need, all of that stuff. If I meet someone that has a great story, I’m always on the lookout for what you need but then also what I think you need. Again it’s being in a routine.

This new brand we have a routine. We’re publishing at least once a week on a Facebook live. We’re actually doing about two to three blog posts every single week and we’re sending out an email every single week. It’s a routine now. I’ll give you another routine that I do as well. It’s on the podcast, you guys probably know and if you don’t know you should probably check your emails on Friday because I send out a TAS weekly recap email where I give a little bit of what’s going on in my life but then also everything that we’ve done through this past week.

[00:28:06] Scott: So again, it’s a routine. I have to do that. It’s like anything else. If you don’t create a routine for yourself or if you don’t create a schedule for yourself, you won’t do it and then those results will be like not that good. Because you haven’t, you haven’t committed to it. I should probably put in there publishing routine and commit to it because commitment is big. A lot of times people will start this process and they’ll be just going after the sale. If you’re going after just the sale, then I would say just go launch products in like an open brand fashion.

Like just go out there, find products that you can launch quickly and if they last two months, three months, you gotta just keep moving on. It’s like retail arbitrage. I think retail arbitrage works well. Actually we have a class on it called 1k Fast-Track which does amazing but that’s for people that just want to earn some capital like quickly and they don’t really care about a brand, they just want to go out there and just flip product and that’s totally fine. But for anyone that’s thinking to themselves, “I really want to be able to get into a market but they all just seem so saturated and I want to really be able to go into bass fishing because I’m a fan of it and that’s part of my life and I would love to be able to do that every single day when I wake up in the morning and just be part of that brand. I would love it.

Like that’d be awesome and I’d be helping people.” Like if that’s what you’re thinking, then this is the plan. This is the seven steps that you need to be following. So now I’m going to give you a few other little tips here. Now and this is what we’ve done and like I said, I’m going to share with you how we did this and again it’s fairly new, so I’m going to give you guys the play by play and that’ll be in the next episode. So that’ll be episode 357. This one here is 356. But I’ll link it up to the next episode on the show notes page of this as well.

[00:30:00] Scott: If you’re listening to this after this airs, maybe it’s a year from now. Well you can still just go to theamazingseller.com/356 or theamazingseller.com/357 because that one will be published. Because I’m going to publish that one immediately after this one about a day and a half, two days, actually it’ll be Monday. It’ll be this episode and Wednesday will be the second part to where I actually give you guys some results from our new brand and kind of how we’re using these seven steps in this plan and in this strategy.

So number one, is to get started doing this really you want to build an email list. You guys have heard me talk about this time and time again and I’m going to continue to talk about it, because it works. It works really, really well. But that’s the first thing. So you need to be thinking about in your brand, very first thing you need to think about is, how do I collect emails? Like I need to collect emails in this market, so I have a list ready that I can number one publish content, two because I know that they’ve raised their hand and guys we did a full workshop on this. A full workshop where we actually walk you through a case study that we actually exposed because we are not launching products in that brand right now.

We did it as a test and as a case study but it’s the exact same thing that we’re doing in any of the other brands that we’re working in and we’ve done it multiple times now. But it’s where you can build that email list and get people that you know are interested in that market and then what we’re doing is, is we’re just doing a giveaway. If you guys want to check that out, head over to theamazingseller.com/buildlist. Again that’s theamazingseller.com/buildlist.

Now that there, will give you again the roadmap to building an email list but also to get the attention in your market and then from there you can do exactly what I said and create that content or be a reporter in your market and then publish content on a blog or on your social media platforms and then that email list will allow you to then share it with those people and then they’ll help share it and then it just keeps, it keeps, it just keeps going.

[00:32:05] Scott: It’s like momentum just keeps happening because you’re constantly feeding the content that you’re creating with an email list but the email list is also the people that are raising their hand, they’re saying, “Yeah I’m interested in this market.” Just to give you a quick example, going back to the fishing, the bass fishing, if I knew that that’s where I was going. I would go out and I would look on Amazon and find the top bass fishing pole and then I would find the top bass fishing lures and I would find maybe a bass fishing vest and then I might sell a tackle box. I would add that into the bundle and then I would raffle that off. I would do a giveaway for that, for 30 days and I would build a massive list of those people raising their hand saying that they’re interested in that market.

Then from there, guess what I’d do? I’d reach out to those people and I’d say, “Hey I’m going to be out in the boat on Friday. I’m going to do a Facebook live. Anybody want to join me, come on over Friday at 1 o’clock p.m. Eastern Time and I’m going to be on the boat and I’m going to be showing you guys how I use this new fishing lure that I just got I think it’s awesome and I’m hopefully going to catch some fish for you.” Like how cool would that be? So does this makes sense? Does this make sense what I’m talking about? I hope it does. I hope the light bulbs are going off. I hope there’s a lot of light bulbs going up. I hope there’s a lot of, “ah-ha’s.”

Now the other thing I want to mention here is once you do this, you’re going to want to communicate and you’re going to want to publish to the audience and you’re going to want to listen to the audience. So let’s say that you do that, let’s say you do a Facebook live and you’re able to get people interacting there. You can say, “Hey guys, what’s your number one struggle with I don’t know, catching bass or what’s your favorite time of the day to catch bass for you, what’s been the best time?” And just getting that interaction.

[00:33:57] Scott: And now you have that interaction, you can take those questions and then repurpose them and answer them on another Facebook Live or a blog post or just a Facebook post or YouTube video, whatever you’re going to be able to do because you’re communicating with the audience. Then the second or the third thing I’m sorry, is email once per week. Once you do the build an email list with the giveaway, you’re going to be communicating with them. If you don’t want to create your own content, be the reporter of your market and then you’re going to email them and you should email them once per week, preferably at the same time and you want to give value, you want to give value, you want to give value and then you have permission to ask.

And it’s the same thing that Gary Vaynerchuk says or has said and I have his book on my shelf, “Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook,” and that basically means that value, value, value, ask and I’ll tell you, I mean you can’t go wrong there. You really cannot go wrong. So that’s pretty much the seven step plan, the strategy, I did want to say this though and this is what I’m going to be sharing with you moving forward as far as on the next episode and I’m going to give you kind of a little bit of a play by play but you’re able, by doing this you’re able to once you do have a product that launches you can spike Amazon sales and you can do it by just offering 50% off.

It doesn’t have to be 75% off or 90% off or like we’ve done in the past maybe free. You can literally make some money by giving a 50% off discount. We’ve proved it and it works and I’m going to share with you how we did it, we actually sold over 150 units in 5 days at a 50% off sale. I’m going to tell you exactly how we did it and the emails that we sent out. You’re also going to be able to get some reviews and feedback naturally because people are buying your product now and I mean we use Sales Backer, you guys probably know that.

[00:36:00] Scott: So we have an automated email follow up that goes through Amazon, using Sales Backer, that’s going to help us get reviews and feedback and then from there we run pay-per-click. We then turn on pay-per-click once we’re done with that first initial round of that promotion, we’re starting to get some BSR boost actually, I think we were like 900 in a pretty popular category, pretty crazy but you’re also able to discover search terms, not keywords, search terms. We talk about that in our pay-per-click training. You can head over to theamazingseller.com/ppc and get all that.

But we really talk about the keyword is, like I put in a list of maybe 20 keywords that I thought people would be either searching for or that it would be around and then now what I’m waiting on, is I’m waiting for those impressions to start happening and then start getting some clicks, then I can see the search term that actually people were using and then I’m able to take those and then really start to drill down into sponsored product ads and that’s pay-per-click and then we find the winners and then we scale. That’s what we’re doing. Like that’s on Amazon of course but that’s what we’re doing. But do you see how the outside part of this, of the brand is able to then drive sales over to the product day one and we were able to get a lot of great feedback?

That’s what I’m talking about. That’s the power of a brand and we’re just getting started. So you know our plan and I think everyone’s plan should be keep building that email list through giveaways or a free download on your blog or maybe a Kindle book that you’re doing which we haven’t even talked about. There’s so much that you can do but when you have that brand every piece of content you’re creating is an asset and that asset should lead itself to an email opt-in or if it’s outside of your home base your blog, it should lead people back to the blog or just lead people to a landing page which we’ve talked about before which then you can capture their email address.

[00:38:05] Scott: And again guys we talk all about that on that free training that we just did on a workshop and you guys can get all of the details by heading over to theamazingseller.com/buildlist. If you guys think it’s complicated to set that stuff up, we’ve actually made it even easier because now we have a plugin that we created for ourselves and now we’re offering it to everyone and that is called giveaway boost and you’ll learn more about that if you go to the build list workshop which we recently did. The other thing I want to remind you guys about is our live event. The first day is filled. We’re doing a 15 person live workshop where we’re actually walking 15 people through this process of building their own email list, their offers and really being able to build this thing out like we just kind of covered.

We’re going to be walking through it step by step and then going through it with them and building it alongside with them, which I’m really excited about and that’s going to be in June and we are thinking about depending on when you’re listening to this opening one more day and that’ll be the following day for another 15 people if we have enough demand for it. I do think I can get the room for that next day. I still have to check on that but I’ve already had about five people reach out and say that they couldn’t make the first one but they wanted to make the second one, so if you are interested in that or if you just want to come to our unofficial meet up in North Carolina, which we’re going to be doing here in June. It’ll be June 24th, head over to theamazingseller.com/live and you can do that. You can, you can register or you can see when we’re going to be doing those live workshops now and in the future. So definitely go check that out.

[00:39:46] Scott: So guys that’s pretty much going to wrap up this episode. I didn’t know how long this was going to go but it always seems to go longer than I expect because there’s a lot of different things that go into this and I want to always make sure that I’m covering everything and breaking it down into as simple as I can and bite sized pieces which you guys know that I’m always trying to do because that how I learn best and hopefully you guys do as well.

So that’s it guys. That’s pretty much going to wrap up this episode. Remember as always, I’m here for you, I believe in you and I am rooting for you, but you have to, you have to… Come on, say it with me, say it loud, say it proud, “Take Action.” Have an awesome amazing day and I’ll see you right back here on the next episode.

[END]

Click Here to Download Transcript <<

Click Here to Download Transcript <<

…build a brand inside of a competitive market or a saturated market. And how actually how we were doing it, the seven step plan and I walk you through every single thing that we’re doing. I think anyone should do if they are planning on building a brand. Now, today I’m going to talk about how we launched and sold 154 units in five days and we actually made money on our first product.

Now why is that like news? Like why is that a big deal? Well, for anyone that has launched products in the past, you know that generally, your first set of products that you’re going to be selling or your set of sales will generally be and they have been for a loss. Like you just want to get sales through the door whether that’s pay-per-click, whether you’re going out and just giving away the product at 75% off or 90% off. In the old days we’re talking about back in probably six to eight months ago, I know the old days, right, you would give away products for free or $1 just to kind of spike sales and to get some sales velocity.

Well, we did this differently and I think it’s an important moving forward that you do it differently. But we actually made money in this process. We did a lot of other cool things because we went through this process which I’m going to walk you through right now exactly what happened. And this way hopefully you can model what we are talking about here. Now, this was like an eight week process from the time we started to build this list to the time we had a product available to sell these people.

[00:01:57] Scott: But a lot happened in those eight weeks and that’s really what I’m going to do is give you kind of a cliff notes version but I’m also going to give you the details. I’m not going to give you like bullet points but I’m going to elaborate a little bit on how this thing all kind of unfolded and how it all happened. Let me just like dig in but before I do though let me remind you guys, the show notes to this episode theamazingseller.com/357 and that will also have 356 linked up there and any other resources that I talk about. Also you probably want to download the show notes because you’re going to get the transcripts as well which you can use as a guide because again like I said this is like a eight week process, I’m want to walk you through each of these steps.

Step number one really in this process was getting people to raise their hand in our market. In the niche that we’re going in we want to know that we have people that are interested in our product. Not even just our product but our market. I used the bass fishing market in episode 356 so it’s like I said you’re kind of reaching out to these people and finding a way to get them to raise their hand so that they will give you their email address. So then you can follow up on them in the future. So let’s say for example I was going after that bass fishing market well I might say something that like, ”Hey I’ve got the top bass fishing pole, I’ve got also maybe a fishing net, I’ve also got a vest and I also a tackle box,” and I’m going to put all that in a bundle.

And I’m going to use that as my lead magnet as people call it or the offer to get people’s attention so this way here they’ll enter your name and email address. It’s exactly what we did. We did this two times in the eight weeks. Two separate contests: the first contest was just around 5,500 to 6,000 emails and the second one was close to that one and then we got rid of some unsubscribes and we just cleaned the list. We got it to about a 9,000 subscribers list.  Now, a lot of people would say what did it cost you for that list? Well, initially it cost us for the product, we had to go and buy this product I think we spent $200 on the prizes, their real prizes.

[00:04:15] Scott: This is a physical product. It’s a prize and then I think we spent maybe $20 or $15 a day on Facebook ads. If we say we spent $20 a day let’s go with $20 a day, I think it was a little less than that. That’d be $600 if we did it on every single day of the month which I only think we did it for five days let’s just say we did it for every single day of the month and that would be 600 bucks and then we also did it again so that would be 1,200 bucks and then we spent 200 bucks. So we got $1,400 invested here in something though by the way we own now. That’s ours, it’s our asset, it’s something we can use over and over and over again and there is so much more that goes into having or there’s so many other benefits than just sales that come from an email list but right now we are just going to talk about how did this will help us launch our product and what do we have in the plans to use or in the future.

And that’s what I’m going to share with you but I just want to really kind of highlight that. If we have content like we talked about in episode 356 and we want to push that content so it can get shared more we can just let our listeners we have new content, it’s free, we are adding value and then from there they go ahead and start sharing it and then we get more reach. And then more people come back to our home base if this doesn’t make sense guys you didn’t listen to episode 356 and you should because then will drive them to home base. And then from home base that’s where we can start to collect the email addresses.

Now in the past if you were to do a giveaway. Let me give you guys an example: if you were give away 100 units maybe you spend $6 a unit so that’d be $600. And then you are also going to spend FBA fees, another let’s say like another $6 so there is another $600 so now you are $1200 and depending you may have even used a service which might have cost you $100 or $200.

[00:06:18] Scott: So it’s about the same. But what you didn’t get from that is an email list which we can now take that email list like I said we can publish content to them. We can let them know about upcoming specials, we can then also up those guys into Facebook, retarget them, create look like their audiences like all this stuff we have now and it’s like I said no more money spent but we have a huge asset and it really is an asset if you really look at this thing like how do you push your product out the door it’s like this.

But again I’m going to lead you through these steps. So we created a contest, a giveaway and it was a $200 value. Then from there what we did is we let people know about it. We started like running some Facebook’s ads. And then from there it started to get a bit of attraction and we started to build the list. So end of the day 9,000 email subscribers in the list. Now the next part of this is while we’re doing all this, not just after but during, when we started a Facebook fan page and a Facebook group. I think anyone that has built a little branch should have both. Number one, you have to have a fan page if you want to run Facebook ads so it’s going to get you likes in that process and you are going to be able to use that page if you want to do Facebook Live it’s shared easier. The group now is great because it’s kind of a closed community and there is real good aspects of having a group.

So we did that. Then the next part of this is we created a blog. So now the blog is our home base, again going back to episode 356. That blog now we’re publishing weekly on, so weekly content. Then we are able to email that list that’s the next part of this. We can email the list and go hey we just published a great article or a great resource or a great video or a Facebook live on our Facebook page or whatever or on our blog. Then we point him there, now we’re not asking for anything, we’re not asking them to buy anything.

We have been doing this right from the beginning. All this have been saying we’ve done it right from the beginning. We didn’t even have our product here yet. So, now moving on we email that list once per week, we also post it on Facebook daily so we’ll post… Most of the people will say what do we post on our Facebook? We just post what we posted on our blog. “Hey we just posted this on our blog go check it out!” So we have taken that so show that social channel that I said before that’s our outside channel and we are driving them back to home base.

The other thing that you can do is and this is what we have also done, we ask questions. “Hey what is the best time that you found to catch the most bass?” Like whatever it is. And people will start to comment and then you start to build a community. Then from there we also posted some random sayings. If you are in the bus fishing there is going to be some bus sayings, you are going to find some memes out there. You can go ahead and share those in your page just to keep that activity going.

The next part of this is building relationships by having a front person. If you don’t have a front person it will be harder. This is what we did I’m just leading you through this this whole entire thing. We’re building a relationship by sharing life stories something that’s happening in our lives. Like why are we using this and then how did it help us and oh my kid thought it was funny when I did this with it or my kid was having a tough time and I had him try and it worked really good and they laughed at me.

[00:10:01] Scott: Here’s a picture of them or maybe this past weekend I was fishing with my son and he got bigger bass than I did. Here’s a picture of us go check it out. People are starting to see the personality, they are starting to hear the personality, they are trying to see the type of person you are or the front person.

I keep saying you but it can be the front person of the brand. Again guys I just want to stress this. Like I talked about this in episode 356, I went through in great detail on how to compete in a saturated and competitive market whether it’s on Amazon, whether it’s on ecommerce it doesn’t really matter, how to do this and really build a brand. And this is everything that we’re doing. Really it’s every single thing that we are doing. I’m tell you right now. So building that relationship is key and consistency again. You want to be able to post daily whether it’s a blog post whether it’s questions. Like I said how long does it take you to just come up with a common question that might get some interaction? Not that long.

Then the next part of this was in the meantime, in the background we’re sourcing product like we’re figuring out what the market wants. We are looking at Amazon, we are looking at Jungle Scout. We are also asking our community now that we have which our Facebook page is over 3,000 and our group is just over 1,000. It’s slowly building but it’s all we really need right now and we are getting some great feedback. We’ve already launched one and we’ve got another launching actually today when I’m airing this or that I’m recording this.

It’s going to be launched so that’s exciting but the first product already launched. We’ve also got like four other ones in queue or in production, going to be in route here soon in about three or four in the pipeline. You can see now the power of this list because now they just helped us and I’ll share with you guys the numbers here in a minute but they helped us launch this first product and really start to get some traction but now we are also been able to push them to our content and giving them value, and then having them be able to share the blog post or the Facebook post or Instagram or YouTube or whatever. They are able to help us there and continually build that community.

[00:12:29] Scott: And two again just in front of mind in this market. We did source the product and again it’s work you’re doing behind the scenes. All this other stuff is kind of there, you’re not doing that every single day maybe. But you’re sourcing your product, you are ordering and so all that stuff is being done in the background. As we start to see what products we’re going to have now we have to create that listing which we’ve talked about in the five phases which I have talked about many times on our workshop.

If you guys are brand new listening to this you got some catching up to do but I would probably say go over to one of our workshops theamazingseller.com/workshop and that will give you a road map to really go from start to finish as far as getting a product picked and getting it launched and all of that stuff and everything in between. So definitely check that out but… So what we did now is while we’re still doing all this stuff we don’t have a product here yet but we do have our first one, it’s going to be here soon. We took some pictures, we created the listing we optimized the listing, we put the pictures up, we did the keyword research, we loaded the keywords in, we wrote the description, bullets, we did the title, all that stuff.

I going to be honest, when we put all that together maybe four, five weeks it was rough and then just recently we cleaned it all up and I said it to guys don’t worry about perfecting it in the beginning. Just get it done. That’s what we did. I’m just going to run through those steps here really quickly.

[00:14:00] Scott: Number one: we build an email list of about 9,000 subscribers. Then we went ahead, how did we do that? Well we created a contest using a giveaway which we talk about too. I should have mentioned that. If you guys want to see exactly how to create your own contest and giveaway go to theamazingseller.com/buildlist that right there will give you everything you need to get your first contest or your give away up and running. We actually just came up with a plugin for WordPress which makes it again super simple, called Giveaway boost and that’s working really, really well for the contest we are doing.

If you want to check that out again, just head over to theamazingseller.com/buildlist. From there we started a Facebook fan page and a Facebook group, we created a blog, a website basically the same thing. Then we published content on the blog weekly then we emailed our list once per week, we posted on Facebook daily, we posted our blog post, our questions, we did some sayings, some funny sayings just some regular old sayings in that market. Then we kept building relationships by communicating with the audience, sharing life stories and personality.

And then from there we sourced the product and ordered it, we optimized the listing and we created the listing and optimized it and then from there we’re ready to go live. So that’s where we were a week ago. Now what’s our first move, what do we do next? We’ve added so much value to our little audience here; we’ve got really good open rates on our emails. I mean we were averaging between 30% and sometimes up to 40% open rate. If you guys down know what a typical open rate is in our email marketing generally 15% to 20% sometimes 10% depending on how often you email your list.

[00:15:58] Scott: Some people think if you email too much then it will go down. A lot of times it’s the opposite. If you give great value and you’re establishing that trust you get a higher open rate. So we average about 30% sometimes its high as 40% on our email opens. So now what does that mean? Well when we send out another email with some type of offer in there, it’s going to reach more people. So here is the first thing that we did, here is what we decided to do, we did this just because we wanted to see how many people actually had the product that we were building accessories for.

Here is an example on how this would look and we call this segmenting the list. Let’s say for example I wanted to know, “Do you have a bass fishing boat currently?” And the answer is just yes or no. So my product might be an accessory for a bass fishing boat, maybe it’s a trolling motor or maybe it’s a propeller that goes on the motor. Maybe it’s a seat that goes on the boat especially a made seat for bass fishermen, maybe that’s what it is.

I don’t want to send that offer maybe right away to people that don’t have a bass fishing boat yet. I only want to send it to people that have bass fishing boat. So what we did is we sent that email and just said, “Hey we just have got a real quick question for you guys can you do us a quick favor. Could you answer yes or no to this one question?” A would be yes I have a bass fishing boat or B no I do not have a bass fishing boat yet.

And then at the end you would say, “Thanks so much for being one of our bass fishermen community members. We really appreciate you and by the way here is another resource if you want to check it out.” You can give a link to one of your past blog posters something like that. Right, so by doing that we got 594 people to click, ‘yes I have a bass fishing boat.’

[00:18:01] Scott: Now those 594 people seen our offer for the very first time. And that offer was 50% off of our product. Now you might say, “Well okay that’s 50% off how well did that do though? That doesn’t seem like so much off.” We have conditioned that we going to give 75% or maybe even give it away for a dollar or maybe even give it up for free.

Like really do you think we can really do that? If we want to get sales out the game shouldn’t we discount more? And the answer is no. If you are aligned with the market properly, if you are giving them value and if you are giving them a good product, again here that’s the keyword. Is it a good product? Then no and I’m going to share with you why that’s the case. So here is what happened, here is the results here is what you have been waiting for. After that first email got sent and we had them click on yes or no once they would click on yes it would send them to the page that gave them the offer and out of that email that was sent on that first day, we sold 25 units. 25 units at 50% off. That’s pretty awesome. That’s like a 4.2%. Again my math is probably terrible. I’m remembering what Chris Shaffer had told me. It’s over 4% of a conversion rate. Now 4% conversion rate for most people is really good. Not on Amazon, Amazon that’s different. If we talk about conversion rates on Amazon we are talking like I would say like 12% to 25%.

But again people are searching for buy a product, here they are not. This is just an email list that is they are interested in our market. So now we have 25 people to say yes. Cool. Our BSR bumped up. We went from nothing, not even being on the map. Our first time that I checked we were like I don’t know 5,900 or something like that in a pretty popular category.

[00:20:00] Scott: Now day two what we decided to do is email the entire list, with a piece of content. So basically, “Hey just want to let you guys know we shot a new video in the boat this past weekend. We had a great time and we caught a couple of bass and there was a cool little new technique that I tried. I think you guys are going to love it. Here is the link to go check it out and P.S, oh by the way we are offering 50% off of our new tackle box.” Something like that. So it was in the P.S it wasn’t even in a direct offer. We gave value and then we added an option to buy something there in that email. Most people are cool with that.

Now, from that email we sold 36 units, 36 units at 50% off. BSR we did it even better we were like 2900. Now I’m starting to check our keywords. Are we ranking any keywords? And by the way we did not any super URLs or trickery there, we just got sales that’s it and our listing is optimized. So now day three we sent no email, none so people that might not have opened their email on day two they might have gotten it or maybe they went back to it because they wanted to see the piece of content or maybe had seen the offer. They going to back to it, well we sold 28 on day three. Day three 28 more sold.

Now, day four we sent no email again and we sold five. So not great but we haven’t sent an email for two days and we still got five sales. Now watch this, watch what happens when you tell people that there is an offer there and it’s going to expire at a certain time. Day five the final day we emailed them in the morning, it was a Sunday by the way which email marketing generally we don’t email on Sundays.

[00:22:05] Scott: It’s always going to be like Monday through Friday. So Monday morning, Sunday we emailed with the piece of content, “Hey you guys maybe getting ready to go out there and catch some bass today. Wanted to give you guys a little tip here.” Maybe it’s just a tip inside the email, maybe it’s just like make sure you do xyz, let me know how you make out of that and let me know if you catch any fish this weekend and then talk to you later, Scott and then P.S just a friendly reminder our special 50% off special ends tonight or expires tonight, click here to grab your 50% off discount now. So now what happens? 60 units sold, 60 units sold from that last email.

We didn’t get a tone of unsubscribes, we got some. Some people would say, “Well, Scott if someone unsubscribes isn’t that bad?” No it’s good. That means they were never going to be a customer anyway and that means they don’t really want to receive your information or your content. So be ok with that, I’m fine with that. That’s fine. So bottom line is guys is 154 units sold, 50% off not free, not a dollar, not 75% off. 154 units sold in a five day window. And our BSR went to 950 and it ranged from 950 to about 4,000 and again I mean it’s all from this little boost that we did.

The other cool thing, actually two cool things is we profited $131. At the end of the day we still walked away with $131 after we paid the expenses for the Amazon fees and for the cost of goods.

[00:23:58] Scott: We still walked away with $131. Now the other cool thing is we are ranking for keywords. And actually, before I got on here Chris had Skyped me and sent me a little Skype message. He says, we are number four for one of our top keywords on page one. It’s crazy and then we’re on the middle of page one for a few others and also at the bottom and we are in page two some of the really, really needy ones. Some of the ones that we really would love to be there for.

Again because we had an email list, we took that email list and we provided value over this eight week process and then we gave them a great offer. We weren’t spammy about it, we weren’t beating over the head with it, we segmented our list as you heard in the very first part of that. We did this in less than a week. We’re off to the races now. Now we are going to turn on pay-per-click for this product and then we going to start drilling into that. Now guess what happens, well in the background we’ve got another product coming. Actually as I speak right now it’s landed. I think we like 50 units checked in in about 300 and we’re now talking when are we going to let the list know about this?

Now, you gotta be careful. We don’t want to just send it today because we just sent them some stuff. What we going is we going to warm them up again. We’re going to send them out some useful content, stuff that we have already posted on the blog. We are just going to repurpose that and say, “Hey just in case you didn’t see this one technique on how to put your bait on this new hook or how use the new X4000 lure and really grab the fish early in the morning.” Or something like that.

So that’s what we going to be doing and then probably towards the end of the week we going to drop a little P.S in then and then we going to boost sales. Now the one thing I didn’t talk about and we didn’t even do this.

[00:26:00] Scott: But we are contemplating doing it, we wanted to see what the email list would do all by itself. But what we could done as well is we could have ran a retargeting campaign in Facebook. Letting everyone know that’s on our list on Facebook because there’s some people have never opened our email. And that’s the other thing I should say too. That’s one thing I left out of this and that was we did mail on one of those no email days we didn’t email the people again that had opened. We sent an email to the people that unopened the email. That just came back to me.

So going back to day three what we did was we sent an email to only people that had not opened our email. This way we weren’t pestering the people that had already opened our email. I forgot all about that so that just came to me and that resulted in 28 sales from unopens. So I just wanted to share that with you but guys this is everything in a nutshell that we’re going through that what we are doing. It’s exciting because we are able to go through this whole process, we are able to share the play by play with you hopefully this is beneficial to you, hopefully you see value in this.

But I’m super excited for all the product we have planned to use this list, to build list as we actually getting ready to run another contest, another giveaway to build that 9,000 email list to maybe 15,000. Then the other thing we’re doing in this process is really then you clean your list.  The way you clean your list is when you send an email to people, if people don’t open the email you can opt to have them get out of your list. This way here you can start to bring that list down in numbers but it can be more concentrated, if that makes sense. Hopefully that’s makes sense.

Guys I can continue from here on days on this stuff. If you guys have not checked out our workshop where we go through exactly how to build your own email list and you own asset you definitely, you must go over to theamazingseller.com/buildlist.

[00:28:00] Scott: I’m telling you guys it’s everything we’ve done exactly to a tee. We share that right inside that workshop. So that’s theamazingseller.com/buildlist. Now depending on when you are listening to this, we’re also doing a live in person, in person workshop with 15 people just like yourself and we going to be setting up that contest and that giveaway creating offers, creating emails all of that stuff. We’re going to be doing it alongside them for an entire day and they’re going to walk out with one of these built.

Now the first day is already filled, we’re thinking about doing a second day. So depending on when you are listening to this, if you have any interest in joining us in a live workshop in person like in person, it’s going to be in North Carolina it’s going to be June 26 would be the second day one if we do it. Head over to theamazingseller.com/live and you can get all the details there.

Alright guys so this episode is theamazingseller.com/357. All the show notes, the transcripts, the links everything will be found there so definitely head over there. Episode 356, I’ll have that linked up in the show notes too but definitely listen to that one if you have not done so already. All of this will be just a lot more clear for you to kind of get it because I referred back to that episode quite a bit because that is the seven step plan strategy that we are using for building a brand inside of a competitive space or saturated market. That is how we are doing it and you can see exactly how that is being done if you listen to that episode.

Alright guys, that’s it. Once again guys I want to remind you that I’m here for you, I believe in you and I am rooting for you but you have to, you have to… Come on say it with me, say it loud, say it proud, “Take action.” Have an awesome amazing day and I’ll see you right back here on the next episode.

[END]

Click Here to Download Transcript <<

Click Here to Download Transcript <<

…to this on Friday, it’s another Friday and I’m going to answer some more of your questions. Now let me remind you, if you have a question that you want me to answer on an upcoming ask Scott session, just head over to theamazingseller.com/ask and you can do that. You can ask a question.

All you have to do is just record your first name, maybe where you’re tuning in from, that’s not, you don’t have to, but I would like it if you did and then just a brief question and then I’ll do my best to answer it on an upcoming Ask Scott session. You guys know I’ve said this time and time again, I look forward to this time of the week. I love listening to you guys ask questions. It’s a way for us to connect on another level like we’re sitting across a table at a coffee shop which I always say and yeah I get really excited to do these.

Now today we’re going to talk about listings and testing products. We’re going to talk about selling electronics. Should I, should I not, why or why should I not? Organic sales after pay-per-click and I’m going to give you some of my random thoughts here in the beginning as well about something that’s been going on in my head and hopefully it can help you. Now let me remind you of the show notes and the transcripts can be found at theamazingseller.com/358 and you can get all the transcripts, the show notes, everything there in one nice package right there for you on the blog and that link again is theamazingseller.com/358. Now a couple things I want to talk about before we jump into today’s first question. First off, I spent the morning packaging up some free t-shirts that I’m giving away to some of you listening right now. And you might be asking yourself, “Well how do I get one of those t-shirts?”

[00:01:56] Scott: And the way that you get them, is you show up at a Facebook Live or one of our Facebook Lives that we do and we typically do them on Fridays but I’ve also been known to jump in there and do one randomly during the week. It just depends on my mood and also if I have anything to talk about. What I’ve been doing is, I’ve been saying like, “Hey listen, leave a comment down below and at the end we’ll pick a winner.” And we’ve been doing that. So I’m sending out right now, I believe it’s about six shirts going to six different individuals all over the world. Actually I sent one to the U.K. I sent one to, I believe it was Idaho. I sent one to New Jersey, so all over the place.

So I just want to say thank you for showing up to them. If you’re not showing up to the Facebook Lives or if you want to, maybe didn’t know we were doing these, just head over to theamazingseller.com/fb. That is our TAS Facebook page and that’s where you’ll be notified when we go live. So definitely check that out, a great resource too by the way. So let me also before we jump in, is talk about you guys know that I do this on Fridays, is I talk about what’s been going on in my head or what I’ve been seeing, what I’ve been observing. And one of the things that came to me this week after I was actually on an interview with John Lee Dumas on EOFire and we were talking about like some of the things I struggled with in the beginning of being an entrepreneur or just working for myself.

One of the biggest things for me, was believing in myself. Now if you can relate to this, you know what I mean. You know that sometimes you just ask yourself that question, you’re like, “Why me?” Like, “I can’t do that.” Like, “So and so, they’re doing it because they have this special skill or they’re really outgoing or they’re not an introvert like me. There’s no way that I could do that or I don’t have a degree. I can’t do that because I think you got to be really smart to do that and smart people go to college, if I didn’t go to college.” I mean, these are the thoughts that were going on in my head. And I wasn’t a believer in myself and it took me a long time.

[00:04:01] Scott: It took me some coaching from my wife to actually convince me that I was smart in my own way. Like yeah, I’m not smart, book smart. I’m not. I’ll tell you that right now. If you tell me to read a book and you want to quiz me on that book, I’m probably not going to do well. Just not. Because my mind’s going in other directions when I’m reading. That’s just the way I am. That’s why audiobooks work better for me. That’s just the way that I can really get the information and the message ingrained in my head versus reading. It’s hard, my thoughts tend to wander. That’s how it was in school.

But growing up, if you went to college, you were going to be successful. I can’t tell you how many people I know that go to college or that went to college and they aren’t doing what they went to college for. Now does that mean that that experience in college didn’t help them get to where they are today? No, I’m not saying that. They might have made a connection in college that now they’re partners on something else. I mean that could happen or maybe a connection that got you a job at a different location or a different place because you had that connection and they said, “Hey we’re hiring over here. Do you want to come over here and get a job?” And then you were an intern over there and then that led you into another job.

Like I understand that that stuff can happen, but for me personally I always thought that if you went to college and had a degree, you’re smarter than me. And that’s just not the case. It’s not the case for me and it’s not the case for you if you’re in that mindset. Because it is a mind set and it’s a limiting belief and it’s something that I’ve struggled with for years. So I want you guys to live by this new little phrase that I’m coming up with and I want you guys to just maybe even write it down. This is a writer-downer as you guys have heard me talk about before. And that is, BYOB. No, not bring your own beer. That would have been at the college party. No, it’s Be Your Own Believer.

[00:06:02] Scott: Be your own believer. Trust in yourself. Don’t let self-doubt get in the way. No matter if it’s this Amazon thing or if it’s this ecommerce thing or whatever, be your own believer. Because I’m telling you right now, you have what it takes. You totally have what it takes. You just have to believe in yourself and believe in the process. Are you going to be tempted with the shiny object syndrome which we always all of us fall in that trap? Yes, it happens to all of us and that would be another topic for me to talk about. It’s how to like eliminate those distractions.

But if you believe in yourself, if you are your own believer no one can take that away from you and for all the time that you’re doubting yourself you should be just working on how to actually move forward in what you want to do. It’s your option. It’s your journey. It’s your story. It’s your decision, whether you succeed in the eyes of whomever or if you fail and I don’t believe in failure. I just believe that you’re continuing to learn through these experiences and through this process.

I know it’s a little deep here guys and I apologize for that, but I think it’s important. Because this is something that I wish I had someone right now like I am to you. I wish I had someone back then which I did, I had my wife. I shouldn’t take that away from her cause she was that cheerleader or that person really saying like, “Listen, believe in yourself.” But it was hard. But I’m here telling you that you do have what it takes and you just have to believe in yourself and you have to continue to work at it. So remember that, BYOB. Be your own believer.

[00:08:02] Scott: I’m telling you right now, you can be unstoppable and I want that for you and I want you guys to write to me. Write to me. Let me know what you’re doing right now to push through some of these obstacles, through some of these barriers. We all talk about strategies and tactics and everything on Amazon and I’m going to continue to do that for you because it’s important. But this here is a huge part, a huge component that people just gloss over and to me that could be holding you back. You might be just getting in your own way. I know that was my problem, was getting in my own way, not believing in myself or limiting how far I thought I could go. So I don’t want that for you. I want you to believe in yourself.

So be your own believer. Write that one down. Maybe we’ll even do a hashtag on that. #beyourownbeliever. A little long but hey let’s go with it. And guys if you want to write me a personal note and let me know a little bit more about your story, I mean like physically handwrite one, you can send me one. Just head over to theamazingseller.com/notes and do that. Send me a letter there. I’d love to pin it up on my board here. So let’s get rocking and rolling. Let’s dive into today’s first question and I will give you my answer. Let’s do this. Let’s rock and roll.

[Q&A SESSION]

[00:09:18] Listener: Hi Scott, I have a question. As far as finding a product and going through all these steps and testing it out. Do I list it under the same ASINs that had located the similar products or do I create my own listing and list it in that category with other sellers? So that’s my basic question. Thank you.

[00:09:40] Scott: Well thank you so much for the question. I would try to pronounce your first name but it was kind of muffled there. So I apologize and I don’t want to butcher your name. So I apologize but thank you so much for submitting your question and this is a great question and I actually wanted to address it because this could be a little confusing. Now what we’re talking about is, if we’re talking about like finding a product that we want to test really fast, like rapidly, like I’m talking like a wholesale, it’s like you’re wholesaling. If you’re going to AliExpress or even Alibaba wholesale, there’s a whole section there guys if you don’t know that. If you go over to Alibaba and you look for a wholesale, you’ll see stuff is in stock right now on the shelf ready to go.

Now with that being said, you are risking doing that, being just like everyone else and then from there having hijackers jump on and all that stuff but if you do your product research properly and you’re finding products that are not competitive yet, I use the word “yet”, because it’s just a matter of time that if you have a generic product, someone’s going to copy you. What this is to do, is really validate that this type of product will sell and then from there you can build upon that. And it doesn’t work for everything. It’s going to be like a small test or it might be like 25 and if you if you sell those 25 then you’re off to the races.

I know my good friend Steve Chou, he talks about doing this and then selling them on eBay. And if he sells it on eBay, then he’s validated that it’ll sell and he actually did that and now they have this seven figure business that they’ve built from scratch and it really came down to them doing like a test order in a sense and selling the rest of them on eBay. So you can definitely do it, but what you’re asking is, “What do I do, do I find a product on Amazon that is like the same product or similar product and then I list on their listing?” No, you would not do that. That’s what we call hijacking by the way. That’s where you would go on a listing, you would find the exact same item.

[00:11:40] Scott: Now preferably, you’re not going to want to find the exact same item that’s selling on Amazon of that generic product. Like that would be maybe a red flag that you don’t want to do because you don’t want to look like everyone else and if you do find something like that then you’d want to make your own listing too because you’d want to have your own listing. You don’t want to share the buy box. So when we’re talking about testing using AliExpress or Alibaba or any other wholesale type site, you want to create your own listing. And here’s the deal, once you make your own listing create it as a variation.

Very important here, because here’s what you can do. Let’s say that you list that product, you create a listing and then you start to get some sales and you go, “Okay cool, this is validated but it’s just a generic product. I want to modify this thing. I want to sell this thing, but I want to modify it, do better packaging.” Well now what you can do, is you can just create another variation underneath that same listing and now you don’t have to start from scratch. Any reviews you got, can carry over all of the SEO factor as far as inside of Amazon, the ranking, all that stuff will stay and all you’re doing then is you’re just modifying and creating another variation. So this way here, it’s like new and improved or maybe this other one that you’re selling has an additional accessory to it and then that now allows you to not be just like everyone else.

But you might just want to take that generic one and let that run out of inventory and then that variation will kind of disappear in a sense, where it’s not going to be there for you to sell against on that particular listing. You could always just close out the variation if you wanted to but I would say just let it run out of inventory and then start a brand new variation underneath that listing. And that’s why it’s important when you’re doing anything as far as listing a product even if you don’t think it’ll be a variation, set up that listing as a variation. A listing, it’s got to be a parent plus a child and then from there you can always add a variation later.

[00:13:37] Scott: So hopefully this has helped you or anyone else that’s thinking about doing this. Go to AliExpress, go to Alibaba or wholesale to test out products before you actually go all in. I think it’s a smart idea. It’s very similar to retail arbitrage too. We have a class right now called 1k Fast-Track and these guys are able to go out there and test products. Their name brand products but they’re at least able to say, “Oh my gosh, there’s a lot of stuff selling in this market or in this category.” Now I’m going to start digging a little bit deeper and then coming up with your own product or an accessory for a game or whatever. It allows you to get into different categories without having to have this huge investment up front. So hopefully that helped you. Let’s go ahead and listen to today’s next question and I’ll give you my answer.

[00:14:21] Listener: Hey Scott, how is it going? I appreciate all the information you’re giving us. But a quick question, I heard you say, don’t go into the electronics market if you are new to FBA selling. The question is, if I were to find a very good supplier, a high quality product and say there are very minimal issues, just issues out of standard electronics, is electronics a high profitable market to go into? Thanks.

[00:14:51] Scott: Well thank you so much for the question and I didn’t catch your name on that one. You had a really good audio connection there too. So if you guys can do me a favour, if you submit a question, just submit your first name as well. Just say who it is and then maybe where you’re tuning in from and then the brief question. But anyway, I’m going to answer this question. I think it’s a good question. I have talked about that. Like what are the products that I generally will stay away from and it’s definitely electronics. That and probably glass or knives or something like that. But something that can break.

That’s really what I’m looking at or a liability issue. Think about this for a second. If you have an electronic product and one little wire comes basically detached or maybe it just wasn’t attached at the factory and now a thousand of those don’t work and then you start getting reviews of people saying the product doesn’t work and you’ve got 950 of them left in stock. Now you got to pull that order, then you got to talk to the factory, see if they’ll make good on it and then you got to get rid of them and ship them back or destroy them or whatever. That’s the things that you’re thinking about.

So my thing is like, I’m not opposed to doing this. Like you mentioned, if you find a good supplier, like a really, really good supplier, maybe you’ve done a ton of different tests  and maybe you have an inspection company that can go in there and really  look at the factory, make sure it’s  really up to par and all of that stuff. I’m not opposed to that but I am opposed to not doing it if you’re just starting out. Like if you’re just starting out like it’s one more thing that can break. It’s one more thing and I don’t even mean the product, I’m saying like in this journey for you to start from scratch, have something that you sell, that’s one thing.

[00:16:44] Scott: There’s a whole bunch of different things in the middle there. Like you got to find the product, you got to find the supplier, then you got to work through all those kinks, then if you want to do sea shipping you got to figure out that. Which I say always start with air in the beginning even though you’re going to spend more just so you can cut down on those headaches and then from there you got to get your listing created and then from there you got to do a launch and all that stuff. So all that stuff goes into it and then imagine having all that work be done and then you find out that a thousand of your units are just not working or they’re broken or they stopped working after a day or something like that, like that would be terrible.

Now to some people, that’s an opportunity. Some people would say, “Well Scott’s saying not to do electronics, maybe we should do that.” That way and you’re right. If you want to basically go where people aren’t going, you’re going to have less competition but you are also going to have more risk. It’s the same thing with bigger products. People are saying, “Well I’m just going to go and sell bigger products, oversized products, more expensive products because less people are doing it.” And you’re right, but you also have the risk of if something goes wrong with those products, you’re out a lot more capital or let’s just say for example, you start getting a ton of refunds. Those refunds are going to hurt a lot more than a $5 product. But is there opportunity there? Yes, whenever there is not people going there, there’s more opportunity. But there’s also more risk.

So you just have to balance that out. I’m not going to sit here and tell you they don’t do it. I’m saying if you think that you’ve done all of the research and you’ve done all the vetting of the manufacturers and you’ve done tests and you feel good about it, then go for it. But I’m personally, I’m not comfortable with that. Like even right now, like me to take five grand and throw it down on electronic product. Like I don’t want to take that risk right now. Like just me personally. That doesn’t mean in the future I won’t, but right now currently, I don’t want to go down that road. But, if you want to do it, go for it. Anyone else listening, again you just have to understand the risks that are involved.

[00:18:43] Scott: So if you are going to do it, just like I said, just make sure you do your research, not just on the product but on the company. Because it’s important that you do that. If you can do it US based, it might even be a little bit better because then you have a little bit more control and maybe you could even go fly there and meet the manufacturer and do all that stuff. But if you’re going to do that, you’ve got to treat that serious. I mean you really do because you mean one product that comes through defective electronically, it just doesn’t turn on and off you’re out of luck.

So hopefully this has helped you, gave you a little something to think about. Again I don’t want to discourage you. I just want to make you aware of all of the things involved here. That’s it, that’s all I’m doing but it is an opportunity that I will say. So let’s go ahead and listen to one more question for today. I’ll give you my answer and then we’ll wrap this baby up and you guys can get on with your weekend or your week whenever you’re listening to this. Let’s do that, let’s listen to the last question.

[00:19:39] Zoey: Hey Scott, this is Zoey. I’m actually from Antigua in the Caribbean, which is pretty cool because I know you said you like hearing from people all over the place. My question is, I’m a new seller and I’ve been selling since end of November 2016. Now we weren’t really doing any pay-per-clicks or anything to begin with and then we decided to up our pay-per-click. Now we did something a little bit drastic. We put on like $200 a day, might sound crazy but it really boosted us up the search engines and things like that. Then what happened, I mean we went from literally selling like one, two, three a week, to selling 79 then the following week 123, the week after that 118. So within our first six weeks, we’d turned over $6,000. Now we obviously weren’t making any money from that but we had boosted our rankings and things like that, our search optimization, we were up there on page one or two naturally.

Now we decided to turn off our pay-per-click and see what happened. We’re selling, we did that for last couple of days, we’re selling three to four a day. So my question really is, when do you start seeing 10 organic sales a day? How do you boost your organic sales without spending a fortune on your pay-per-clicks? One of the other things I was maybe going to consider is putting back on $20 or $40 a day. But I want to know, at what point is the tipping point where you’re getting more organic sales than pay-per-click sales? Really would appreciate your help and thanks very much. I love listening to your podcast. It’s been an amazing resource because actually I’m new, it’s my second month in business and it’s invaluable so I really appreciate your help. Thanks so much.

[00:21:21] Scott: Hey Zoey thank you so much for the question. Love that name by the way. Love it and I love it that if this is a long distance phone call for you. This is awesome. So thank you so much for being a listener and being a fan of the show and I love it also that you’re taking action by the way. So really proud of you there and it sounds like you’ve been pretty aggressive, which I like that too to a certain extent. But I mean you really just ramped things up with that pay-per-click. I mean spending $200 a day, that’s pretty aggressive. That sounds like my good friend Dom Sugar, aggressive, which he’d be proud of that. Because you’re getting data quick, you’re getting sales, you’re starting to move up the ranks, you’re starting to see movement.

But now, the question is, I back off of the pay-per-click, my sales drop and am I still ranking? I don’t know. I don’t know that part of it. Are you still ranking after you’ve stopped your pay-per-click? You’re getting, I think you said like maybe three to five sales a day which isn’t terrible but you want to get to that 10 sale a day. My first thing I would want to do, is I’d want to pull the search term report inside of all that data, inside of the seller central account, all the data that you’ve been collecting at $200 a day with those sales coming in. I would want to see, what are the search terms that brought the sales. Period. What are the search terms that brought in the sales?

Now for those of you guys that are brand new, this might not make a whole bunch of sense to you, but we did a full week workshop where we actually talk about pay-per-click and sponsored product ads and the thing we talk about is that right there. A keyword that turns into a search term. A keyword is like the seed we plant. We plant the seed to see what search terms are being actually searched for. So what we mean by that is, when someone types something in, long handled stainless steel garlic press, that’s a long tail keyword, but it’s also a long tail search term. Meaning that’s the actual search term. We might have been just targeting stainless steel garlic press.

[00:23:20] Scott: So now my question would be, are you ranking on page one for the search terms that have converted for you in the past? That would be my question. I can’t answer that right now. I’m not there. If you ask yourself that question, then that’s going to say, “Oh yeah, there’s like 10 search terms that I’ve been converting for and I’m not ranking on page one.” So the only way I’m going to get sales for that search term is if I advertise pay-per-click. So now I would ask myself, if I converted through that ad, if I converted there then there’s a pretty good chance if I get there on page one I’ll convert too. So now I can probably get all of those sales organically if I can get myself ranked. That’s the big question.

So me personally, what I would do is do that and then I would probably continue my pay-per-click. Maybe not the $200 a day. Maybe I would scale that back to 40-50 bucks a day which I you said you were going to do and then I would still see how that was doing and I would start to really refine that. I’d start to look at the winners and cut the losers and then again I would actively be trying to rank for these other search terms. I would take those search terms and make sure that they’re in my back end. I’d make sure that they’re in my description, in my bullets somewhere. I need them, I need to know that I’m getting indexed for these and I need to be able to get sales through these.

So the best way to get sales through these search terms, is to advertise for those search terms. You might even want to move those into a phrase match search term campaign. So this way here, you’re only showing up for those ones and then I would really start to ramp up that. Like again, think about this, if you’ve converted for 5 or 10 search terms regularly and then you create a campaign with just those search terms in it and then you either pause the other ones in the other campaign or just create a negative match to those and then all you’re doing is driving that budget towards the ones that have converted, now we’re going somewhere.

[00:25:20] Scott: And now we can start to rank for those search terms on page one and then we can say now we’re getting to 10 sales a day. The other thing I would ask you is I would say, “Is your competition, are they getting 10 sales a day?” If they are, then good, then good. Then that means we can definitely get there. But if everyone’s getting like five a day and someone else is getting seven and someone else is getting eight and everyone’s sharing all those, then I would think it’s going to be a little bit harder. But if you’ve got a few people right now that are selling 40 a day and someone else is selling 25 and someone else is selling 29, another person is selling 30, like if those are the numbers, then you’re like, “Okay, I can get to my 10 a day, for sure.”

And that’s what I would do. Like that’s how I would reverse engineer what you’ve already done. It sounds like if you turn on the sponsored product ads, the pay-per-click, you get sales. Well those sales are being generated through search terms. So how do we rank for the search terms? That’s the big question. So Zoey, thank you so much for the question and hey maybe some time we’ll have to hang out in the Caribbean together. That would be amazing. We were actually talking about doing a live TAS event in the Caribbean somewhere. We just aren’t really quite sure yet where we’d want to go. But it’s definitely been a discussion. I love, love just going on tropical vacations when I can, which doesn’t happen often but I do enjoy it when that happens. So that would be awesome to do that in the future. But anyway, thank you so much for the question, everyone that submitted their question this week, I want to say thank you so much.

The other thing that I would say is, if you have a question yourself and you’re listening to this, maybe you’re a new listener and if you are welcome. Then just go to theamazingseller.com/ask and ask a question. And then you can just record your voicemail and ask a question, tell me where you’re from, tell me your first name and we’ll try to get it aired on an upcoming show. And then the other thing is, if you guys want to be in the running for a free t-shirt, then definitely make sure that you’re on our Facebook Lives.

[00:27:18] Scott: We do one every single Friday, 2 o’clock p.m. Eastern Time, on our Facebook fan page and our group. So just head over to theamazingseller.com/fb and you can make sure that you’re not going to miss that stuff and you can get in the running for one of those cool shirts. We’ve got random shirts that we’re giving away. All TAS stuff. And then just the last thing, the show notes guys, episode 358. So theamazingseller.com/358, all the transcripts, the show notes, will be there in a nice little package for you awesome people out there right now that are listening.

So that’s it guys. That’s going to wrap it up. Remember, I’m here for you, I believe in you and I am rooting for you but you have to, you have to… Come on, say it with me, say it loud, say it proud, “Take Action.” Have an awesome amazing day, weekend, wherever you are in the week and I’ll see you guy’s right back here on the next episode.

[END]

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