Serious Sellers Podcast: Learn How To Sell On Amazon FBA & Walmart

#562 - From Working 9-5 To Amazon Failure To 6-Figure Seller

Join us as we embark on a captivating journey with Clarence Cheang, one-half of The FBA Bros, who takes us through his inspiring transition from a full-time civil engineer in Singapore to a successful Amazon FBA entrepreneur. Clarence opens up about the rocky start to his online business back in 2019, where he faced a series of setbacks in the highly competitive niche. Despite facing compliance issues and patent infringement roadblocks, Clarence's relentless spirit and innovative product research techniques eventually led him to leave his day job behind. His story is a testament to the power of perseverance in the face of adversity.

Listen in as Clarence shares a remarkable case study on the unpredictability of the Amazon marketplace, illustrated by the unexpected success of doormat sales amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. The surge in home decor interest during lockdowns provided a boost for one seller, but also taught a harsh lesson in inventory management as stockouts led to a loss of organic ranking on Amazon. Clarence walks us through the seller's recovery process, employing meticulous data analysis and keyword research, culminating in the serendipitous success of an egg pan product that turned their fortunes around.

In this episode, we delve into the nuances of product research and the strategic brand-building essential for standing out on Amazon. Clarence Cheang highlights the crucial role of competition analysis, discussing the tools and techniques necessary to dissect competitors' keyword strategies and assessing product viability. Clarence exemplifies the success of this approach with his 'egg pen' product and underscores the importance of value addition through bundling, which propelled his egg pan to market prominence. We wrap up by exploring the advanced capabilities of Helium 10 tools and the pivotal insights provided by Amazon's Product Opportunity Explorer, emphasizing their role in sustaining a product's top-selling status amidst the ever-evolving marketplace challenges.

In episode 562 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Clarence discuss:

• 00:00 - Amazon FBA Seller Success Story
• 01:55 - Career Exploration And Amazon FBA Launch
• 08:33 - Amazon FBA Success Through Product Research
• 09:15 - Stock Mistake Leads To A Big Loss
• 11:48 - Amazon FBA Success Through Research
• 13:55 - Product Research Success and Brand Building
• 19:17 - Strategic Niche Domination
• 24:32 - Amazon Success and Helium 10 Tools
• 28:24 - Competitor Conversion Analysis and Cerebro Queries

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Transcript

 

Bradley Sutton:

Today we have Clarence on the show, also known as one half of the FBA bros, and he talks about how he had over two years of Amazon failure but didn't give up and then hit Amazon success and was able to quit his day job thanks to his new product research techniques that he's going to share with us. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that's completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed. Organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. And speaking of serious strategies, we talk a lot about Helium 10 on this show. So if you are interested in giving it a try, if you've never tried it out, make sure you use our podcast discount code, SSP10. Ssp10. Go to Helium10.com, sign up for your account and save 10% off for life. Somebody who's been using Helium 10 for a very long time and coming to us from the opposite side of the world, where it's like almost midnight over there Go ahead and introduce yourself. It's your first time to the show.

 

Clarence:

Yeah, so thanks for having me on board, Bradley, it is an honor. So my name is Clarence. I've been selling on Amazon for close to five years now, actually. I started in 2019. And at that time, I was just treating it as a regular side hustle, right? So I worked as a full-time engineer for the government and I was working in the civil industry Basically, it's like construction, right, I think that's the most common term for about close to five years. Yeah, so that's really my background, and I dabbled into Amazon FBA in 2019 after about close to five years in the construction industries, and that's where, as you can see, the rest is history.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. So you born and raised in Singapore that's right, that's right, okay. And then went to university there Is being an engineer. Like at what age were you like, hey, this is what I want to do. Or did you just decide once you got to university, or had you been wanting to do that for a while?

 

Clarence:

Yeah, I mean it's an excellent question because, for I think, majority of my life I didn't really know what I wanted to do. So it's more like oh, my grades allow me to enter to this program, so why not just give it a try? So I was pretty much aimless, you know, for the better part of my earlier years. Only after that, when I went into the workforce and I realized, oh dang, I don't want to do this for the rest of my life, man. So that's the epiphany moment. And it took me about five years into the job to realize that I need to start a side hustle. And that's why I started researching. And lo and behold, Amazon FBA came out.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Your first start was what year again? Your first product that you launched.

 

Clarence:

I launched in 2019. 2019.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, so pre-COVID still and you launched in Amazon USA, or did you try Amazon Singapore, or where do you launch first?

 

Clarence:

Directly on Amazon US, just because it's the largest marketplace.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. So at this time, you're still doing your full-time job and you're like hey, let me, let me go ahead and start researching products. Now, the product that you launched way back then. Are you still selling it, or did you get out of it before? What's the situation there?

 

Clarence:

Yeah, I've gotten out of it already. It's just when I launched my first products, I made a lot of mistakes and I realized that that's actually not really the best niche to be in. Right, it's in the lighting. What was it? It's in the lighting niche for lighting OK room. Yeah, so that was a pretty brutal market. It's high competition, you need compliance and literally like one year later I got slapped with this compliance issue that I need to show Amazon that I need to get ungated for this entire category.

 

Bradley Sutton:

So then pretty much your sales went to a complete stop, because you couldn't provide that compliance? How much did you sell of that product before you had to get out though?

 

Clarence:

I sold about close to 1,000 plus units, and that's in a matter of like two to three months. How much did you sell of that product before you had to get out though? I sold about close to 1000 plus units, and that's in a matter of like two to three months, and, lo and behold, I thought I was doing well, and that's where the ungetting email came in.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, so you're still making some profit on it, right I'm? Assuming until you couldn't sell anymore.

 

Clarence:

Okay, yep, and then so did you lose a lot of money, like did you have a lot of inventory that you just had to throw away? Or I didn't really lose a lot, thank god, because it's more of like, uh, I just need to get the ungating done. But that stopped me from selling in the q4 season because the email came in on october and I took one to two months to get the compliance issues are settled up. So I missed the q4 season and when I'm ungated it's January and yeah, it's back to normal.

 

Bradley Sutton:

So you were actually able to get the approval and everything for you. You didn't have to give up on that product. No, I don't have to.

 

Clarence:

Okay.

 

Bradley Sutton:

So now 2020. Was that 2019? Q4 you were talking about?

 

Clarence:

So this is now 2020, the Q4. I mean Q1 when I started selling in January. So I was I mean, I'm happy with that one product and I managed to launch another variation right. And then another tragedy hit, which is at around June, the June of 2020, I got hit by this patent infringement from a competitor, and that is like the last straw for me for this product, because it's just, yeah, it's tough, it's tough, and eventually I found out that, yes, actually I was in the wrong. I didn't do my research properly and somehow I infringed on the design patent that was already approved and somehow I didn't find it out earlier. Yeah, so I spent quite a bit. My lesson here was I spent some of bit, uh. My, my lesson here was uh, I spent some amount of money, uh, to to fight out the case. I actually hired the? Uh, a lawyer to even help me write letters to Amazon and all these things, but it just got nowhere because clearly I'm in the wrong Right. So I think that's my very first knockout punch on Amazon. Okay, yeah.

 

Bradley Sutton:

So at that point did you go to zero, or had you launched other products already?

 

Clarence:

then I had to go to zero for a while I was fighting this case. So I think the recovery moment was when Amazon asked us to recall all the units because it was just sitting there right, not selling. So it's the right thing to do. We call everything back to our 3PL, the third-party logistics warehouse, and I had to make a decision to take out the offending design, which is just a stand it's like a stand for the lamp and that's the only offending design that's been complained about. So I had to took that out, destroy all the offending design and get my supplier to send in more stands to replace it. So I had to pay a lot of money to get this product out and going, and I remember I had about 800 plus units just to get that retrofitted. And once I got it in, I sent it back to Amazon and I just told myself after this, I'm done with this product, I'm going to move on to the next one. Yeah, so I did sell all 800 and thankfully it is still not too great of a loss at least.

 

Bradley Sutton:

You sent the new product in, but then you still gave up on the product because you said you're not selling it anymore today. Right, that one, no more already.

 

Clarence:

So as of 2021, I'm out of that market. Yeah, I'm done with that.

 

Bradley Sutton:

At what point did you start looking for another product, though?

 

Clarence:

That was when I started getting hit with the patent infringement. That was right. That's my epiphany moment and, yeah, I know that I need to have a second product.

 

Bradley Sutton:

How did you do your research, trying to find a new product?

 

Clarence:

Yeah, I mean back then, you know, in 2019 to 2020,. There were a lot of advice, so I was just figuring things out along the way and I think I fell into this trap where I sell product that I think that it could work. Basically, my gut tells me to work. I mean, looking back right now for what I learned today, that is the foolish mistake that I have done right. So, in essence, the second product that I sold it was a home product like a very simple doormat right, something that's for your, for your entryway, and that product, wow, is also tough. It's a lot of competition, the PPC  cost is high and you can't really raise your price as much. So I also learned another valuable lesson there all right, right.

 

Bradley Sutton:

So. So then you, you started selling this other product. Now you know some people. You know already a year, two years, a lot of problems, failures and headaches, and lawyers and stuff. You know. Might give up, uh, at this point. But what kept you going? We're like you, just like no, I have to make this work.

 

Clarence:

Yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah, the things that I go through will probably allow like majority of other sellers to give up on Amazon, but I think it's just. I know that this is a viable business model. I've seen it to work for other people and I just tell myself why not me, right? Why not just give myself another shot? So that was like the tenacity that I had in me to just want to make this work so that I don't have to keep getting stuck in the nine to five red race. I think that was my main driving factor.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, so then you know all the time you're still at your, your job. Now are we almost in in COVID times.

 

Clarence:

Now that's right 2021, that's when COVID hit and the sales boom right. So that was when I the second product, the Dormat product, that one really flew off. I mean that one flew off the shelf really well because of the COVID boom, All right, and I ran out of stock, the doormat sales went up during COVID Doormat of all products doormat.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Why, like nobody's visiting your house anymore to wipe their shoe?

 

Clarence:

I guess I have more time spending time to decorate the house and doing, okay. So that was the time where a lot of people were doing, yeah, a lot of things at home. So one of the ways, all right, whatever, I don't know. Yeah, okay. So now things are looking up. And then what happened? Exactly? And I ran out of stock. So this is my second mistake. I didn't buy enough, right? The demand just spiked out of nowhere. So I ran out of stock for a good two to three months. And that is where I learned another valuable lesson on Amazon. As you know, right, if you run out of stock for a long period of time, the algorithm literally punishes you in terms of the organic rank. And I lost it all in terms of the organic rank and I thought the sales was good. I had this illusion where this product is doing great, right? So I literally ordered, like, like, doubled the number of inventory as the first inventory and, wow, that was a huge mistake, because I lost all my organic rank during the season where I sold very well. And when I restock, when I'm back in stock, I realized that, hey, my sales is I don't know are no longer like 50 or 60 units a day. They were like trickling, trickled down to like five units or even like three units a day, and that was very worrying because I had doubled the number of inventory I needed to clear right. So that was another great learning lesson for me, which is, hey, manage your inventory well. I think that's really-.

 

Bradley Sutton:

How many months were?

 

Clarence:

you out of stock. Three months, that was a long-. Okay, yeah, and I'm sure everyone recall that was the period where there's a lot of shipping delays because of COVID and etc.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, so that affected me quite a lot, and that was your only product at the time, that doormat, exactly. Yep, all right, so now, another kind of problem. Now you invested so much money in all this inventory. It's just sitting there. So now, what's your next step?

 

Clarence:

So after that, we have like 2000 units of doormats right Stuck in Amazon and I just, yeah, I'm unable to sell it. So what I did was I tried to reduce the price. I did all I can, you know like, increase my PPC budget, reduce the price to even like, like it just doesn't make sense to sell it anymore. So even then I couldn't really sell it as fast as possible, so I had to liquidate that batch of uh doormats right. So that is my second product and it failed spectacularly.

 

Bradley Sutton:

yeah, all right. So then you went back to zero then at one point because you didn't have another product going at the same time. So again back to zero. Are we already now in?

 

Clarence:

this is like round 22 or two zero.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Two to amazon, zero to me all right, yeah, now you're two, or was it? Was this about q1 2021 or q1 2022?

 

Clarence:

we're talking about. This is about q still 2022, roughly q3 yeah rightly okay.

 

Bradley Sutton:

So about q3? Now you're just like I can't sell these things. So, but again, still, you didn't uh give up. So what was your next step?

 

Clarence:

Yeah. So, after learning the actual ropes and I realized a lot of mistakes that I've made, which is, I need to go deep into the data before I choose a product, make sure that the competition is not too great, so that I can win them in PPC in the keywords. So I really learned a lot, Bradley, in that year. It was probably one of the lowest season of my life in my Amazon FBA journey and this is like my final chance, right? If this doesn't work, that's it. Man, I'm stuck in my nine to five right, so I have to make this work. So, and thankfully, when I launched my third product and this time around, it finally took off. So this one is actually one of the more public case study, which is the egg pen right, which I showed that off in a lot of my social medias and even on YouTube channel. So with that launch itself, it set the trajectory that, hey, this is a system that we actually, after we take the inputs from many sellers, we combine it together and we didn't just take it wholesale right, we also tweak it in a way that we want to test some, some items so that we can rely on this proven system to keep launching products on Amazon. So now yeah, by the way, that's 2021, right, that's when we started launching our Egg pan and it became a great success, all because we note down on product research and keyword research. I think these two items really make the breakthrough for us.

 

Bradley Sutton:

The FBA. So how did you find that specific opportunity Like, how did that come Like? First of all, let me tell you, I probably never would have found it because I hate eggs. It's funny because now I sell egg trays in the Project X but, like, I hate anything that does with eggs. But how did you find that product opportunity?

 

Clarence:

Yeah, that's a great question really, because the egg pan product came to me when I was just I'm just walking around in Singapore. There's a lot of malls, right, there's nothing much you can do other than go to malls after malls and in one of the shops I encountered this Japanese kitchen store. Right, it's just a store that specializes in Japanese kitchen items and, lo miho, I just took a photo of the category out there Basically it's an owl and I went back home and did my research on all of those products and, lo and behold, I found the Japanese egg pen to actually pass our funnel, which is our product research funnel that we have developed.

 

Bradley Sutton:

All right, talk a little bit about that. What are those? I know you have something completely fancy. I've even seen the videos. Somehow you have some bots that connect to Discord and connect to Helium 10 and a lot of crazy stuff. But like in a nutshell, like what are the things that you are looking for? That means, hey, there could be some opportunity here.

 

Clarence:

Yeah, I mean, I think one of the big deciding factor in choosing a good product is the competition level, which I think a lot of sellers may have missed out in the earlier stages of their product selection. So how we deep dive it is by the use of Helium 10, Cerebra too. We compare or we picked out the top 10 competitor in any of the niche because basically they're doing well, right and we want to learn from them. So by analyzing their keywords and how many of the keywords do they rank on page one and we can have the. It's a very beautiful Excel sheet that we have developed in a way that it allows us to show us how strong each of the top 10 competitors are in terms of keyword strength, right? In fact, I went through that in great detail in one of my YouTube channels I mean YouTube videos, right. So when we did that, we realized it's an epiphany moment, right? Because we realized, oh dang, now we have this tool to analyze competition level for any market on amazon.com. And that is so powerful because it allows us to, even before we invest money into the product, we can roughly tell how easy it is to defeat the top 10 competitors and if it is easy to defeat them roughly, we can win the market. So that is really the initial epiphany moment in our product research journey. And the egg pen right, bringing back to the egg pen, that is one of the products that actually showed us that there's actually like eight in the top 10 competitors. There are eight really weak competitors, as in they don't rank very well on Amazon, and two of them it's just okay, they're good. They're just ranking about 40 to 50% of the overall keyword for this market. So I think that's a no-brainer decision for us to enter.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, so you're looking, hey, at their strength. It's not just, oh, I mean, which also is a case like, oh, these people don't even have A-plus content, they don't even have a full image, their listing sucks, but you're also looking at the keyword level. Um, you know, how strong are they in like their, their, their, uh, their SEO and things like that, right, all right, so I'm actually, um, while you were talking, I went and I found your product on Amazon and, and, yeah, you're like still the number one seller on this, so that's pretty impressive. But let's just take a look at your listing here Now. Did you start off with all of these like little accessories at the beginning, or did you like develop this over time? How did you know, like, not just to come up with just the pan, but to have all of these little things as well?

 

Clarence:

Yeah, I love that you bring up the screen here, right? So, like I have all the different bundles to the egg pan, so one of the amazing tool is basically to answer your question. I have all of those bundles right from day one, right? That's how I really win the competition in terms of adding a lot of real value to the market. Yeah, so I found this through Helium 10 Blackboard's product targeting, using a comparison of the top ASIN and see Amazon's frequently bought together items. So this is one of the way to think of some bundles for me to get into.

 

Bradley Sutton:

So like people were buying the other competitor's pan but with like the serving plate or spatula and stuff like that Exactly.

 

Clarence:

And, to be honest, those smaller items are not really expensive. They are less than like 20 cents USD each. So I can just bundle it together, add a lot of value and at the same time, still sell for a decent profit in this market.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, Okay, cool. So you found this opportunity. Now, what kind of sale. You know, I see that you're selling. You know, looks like you know five, six hundred units a month. Now, back when you first started, what were the main competitors doing as far as sales? Like, were the top ones selling also this many, or was it less? Was it more? What's going on?

 

Clarence:

So the main competitor right now is going to be it's this neon color, pink color competitor, right? I'm not sure if you can search that up also on Amazon they're probably still there. So initially when we did our research, that guy is the top selling competitor, so he was doing close to about 600 to 700 units a month, right. But if you look at, I think today because the seasonality do change along the way and I think he's doing close to 200, 300 units a month right now, I think yeah, I mean, we basically snatched a bit of its market share.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah.

 

Clarence:

So that's true from the first week, right the moment we launched, when we have zero reviews, just because we understand keywords and we differentiated a little bit. In terms of bundling, yeah, we managed to get like the top the best selling in terms of sales velocity in a matter of one week for this market.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Wow, wow. All right, what was your launch strategy in those days? Was there still like search, find, buy and stuff back in those days, or was that already past the time where you're not allowed to do that anymore?

 

Clarence:

I can't do SFB. It's gone already. Those methods are.

 

Bradley Sutton:

So then, what was your launch? Just PPCs is what got you there, to page one for those things. That's right, PPC. PPC only launched?

 

Clarence:

Yeah.

 

Bradley Sutton:

All right. Now what's kept you at the top? You know, like anybody can find a new niche, right, or not new niche, but a niche where there's weak players, right. But then usually somebody comes in and does the right thing, even if they have the right bundle and they got the right keywords. Now the other competitors like, oh man, we better step up our game. And now we're, we're, we're doing it, but but you've still kind of staying almost near number one. Um, here you know, two years later. So what, what has helped you?

 

Clarence:

to do that, do you think? Yeah, yeah, great question. In fact, the observation that we had was the moment we launched into this market. I mean, the competitors got spooked right and they will definitely improve their product bundling or even in terms of offering. So we did see new entrants number one, that came into the market. Number two, we did see our current competitors improve, basically, their offering. So, to combat this, I think the number one thing is understanding the keyword basket for this market. So, like example, we did our research and we found out there's actually 241 relevant keywords for this specific market and we definitely want to get page one on all those 241 keywords. And I think that's where our advantage comes in in terms of a keyword basket for ranking, because a competitor will come in later on. They, he or he or she may not understand that there's 241 keywords to rank for this market, but we do and we already know it at our product research stage. Yeah, so we keep doing that again and again and use PPC to rank for them and it has been doing us, yeah, a lot of success so far. Just okay excellent.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Now, at this point you know, like you, you got a lot of success. Did you start other accounts and start selling other uh products? Or what was your, your, your next step? Because you know you could have one successful product, uh, but this one successful product maybe is not enough to like, make somebody like, yeah, okay, now I can quit my engineering job, you know yeah, yeah, it's not.

 

Clarence:

it's definitely not enough. You definitely need a lot more products. So with this first launch, in a way, it's like a proof of concept to our research formula and we are repeating it again and again. So to date, I think we have close to at least I think we have 10 different products right now across multiple stores. So our brand building strategy is very simple we want to launch one store in one niche and grow that product line right. So basically, let's say, the egg pan niche, right, or the Japanese kitchen niche, so you will launch other products that's in a similar niche for the brand Yamomnom. So, similarly, we are also launching other brands. Like, we just recently went into this camping and outdoor brand and is selling a lot of these kitchen utensils for outdoor camping. So we have been seeing a lot of success in that area as well. So, yeah, that's our brand building strategy there.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. So did you already quit your job or you're still doing your job? I've already quit long ago. Already Quit long ago. So now you get to just enjoy being an entrepreneur and not having to work the nine to five. So now, uh, now you get to just enjoy being a entrepreneur and not having to work with the nine to five. So your original purpose of getting into Amazon finally got fulfilled. Now talk a little bit more about your, your strategies. You know, like. One thing is about, you know the, the, the keywords, but is that the only thing you're looking at for the validation steps, or are there other steps of your, your validation? Or is just, hey, looking at the keyword strength? That's, that's enough for you.

 

Clarence:

Yeah, um, it's definitely keyword strength is just one of our many criteria to look for in a product to launch. Uh, we have like up to 14 different criteria that we look at. Uh, one of them uh, maybe the easier one is like a return ratio. We don't want to enter into market with, uh, let's say, higher than 5% return ratio, right? So the egg pan shows us it's only about 2.86% return ratio, so that was perfect for us. So that's one of our criteria. The other criteria is like the seasonality and the kind of the trending kind of a season for the product. So that's something that we want to avoid as well. The other one is like the differentiation opportunity. Are we able to find improvements to the product? Can we add value in terms of bundle? How about the premium packaging side of things? Yeah, so we do have a lot of criteria in our research funnel right now that we have tested for many years and we have seen a lot of great success coming out of this funnel.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Actually, yeah, now this funnel, actually, yeah, now, some of your you know, you also do a lot of out there and you have a big, you know a lot of students, um, you don't, you don't have to mention their name or their product or anything, but can you, can you describe like one of the success stories, like somebody who came and they had no idea what was Amazon. They found this product and now they're selling this amount or something like that.

 

Clarence:

Yeah, yeah, I'm truly very proud of this student. He's based in the UK and he just recently crossed the seven-figure mark on Amazon using the exact formulas that we have teach him. And, yeah, we have so many success stories just by repeating and reusing this formula that we have developed. And, yeah, at the moment, our students like one of them based in Singapore as well. He's just, like, I think, 19 years old. He launched his first product on Amazon ever following this product research funnel that we've created, and he instantly made like 30K sales revenue in the first month of launch. So we're very proud of a lot of these success stories and we're always fine tuning this research funnel. We're not perfect. We're not saying that we have made it there. It's just I think we've got something going on and we are always open to test the system out to make sure that we refine the criterias so that we can increase our probability of success when we launch products on Amazon.

 

Bradley Sutton:

You don't get a little jealous sometimes of your students where they get success right away and you had to have three years of failure in Amazon?

 

Clarence:

I mean all power to them. And yeah, I always tell my students right, don't do the same way as me. Invest in someone who has been there, done that, and you catch up the learning curve and they really have All right yeah.

 

Bradley Sutton:

So let's talk about you. Know how you got connected with Amazon, like, like, how did you get on Amazon's radar? Because you know I'm wearing my like, uh, my project X hat right now. We actually did a filming with Amazon Singapore, but actually in Vietnam where we were filming a new show called project X mini, not out yet, probably be out in a couple of months, based on when you're listening to this. But how? How did you get like on Amazon's radar where, now that you know, they invite you sometimes to their headquarters there in Singapore and doing trainings and stuff like that?

 

Clarence:

Yeah, yeah, I mean it's interesting that you brought it up because, to be honest, we we do not know until today, right, I mean David is my business partner as well. I'm just one half of the FBA bros, right, and I mean David runs the social media and the business development side of things for us. Yeah, that's out of blue. One day amazon just reached out to us, I guess I believe that's from social media. And, yeah, and I think one of the one of the employees I believe her name was Yuri, right, so shout out to you, Yuri, for organizing all of this together. And she saw one of my TikTok videos. I was in Egypt and I was just filming some FBA content near the pyramids, and I went to the dead sea as well and just filmed some FBA contents, right, and I think she took some inspiration from that and proposed the entire project and it turned to be Project X Are you talking about Yuri from Amazon Singapore.

 

Bradley Sutton:

She's Korean. Yes, that's her. I was just with her in Korea. As a matter of fact, we're doing another film and I was. I was just talking to her, like literally two hours ago on Kakao, talk about hey, when is our project? I didn't realize you. You, she was your first connection, also with Amazon way back.

 

Clarence:

Yeah, so you raise the. It's the main guy right, the main person that's in charge of this entire thing. So yeah, kudos to her Okay.

 

Bradley Sutton:

All right, cool favorite tool in Helium 10 is probably Cerebro. So so tell me, why is Cerebro your favorite tool in Helium 10 and what's your like your second favorite tool then, next to Cerebro?

 

Clarence:

Yeah. So I love Cerebro because I mean, frankly, it has made us a lot of money. I think the investment that we made in Helium 10, which is a no brainer right. I mean, we're just paying, I don't know, sub $200 plus a month, but we're getting close to 10 to 20,000 plus in profit every single month. So, yeah, I think it makes sense. So why I love Cerebro? Because it works right. It helps us to identify all the keywords, like what I mentioned earlier 241 keywords. Even before we invested into the eggpan market, we found it through Cerebro, right. So we have a certain way that we adjust the filters to bring out all those keywords. Yeah. So second tool I love I have to give Amazon their own shout out as well. Amazon's product opportunity explorer. I think that one was. Yeah, it's really a good tool because it's directly from Amazon. The data is, I think, as close as you can get to accurate and, yeah, they display a lot of valuable data.

 

Bradley Sutton:

So, I love what are some of your, your, your, the things that you like in Product Opportunity Explorer to look at Awesome.

 

Clarence:

Yeah. So I love two main metrics that I see over there. Number one is it will tell you when you search for any of the keywords and Amazon will niche it down for you. It will tell you how many competitors are there or are you going to be competing with. Right. For example, there's this number that said the top 90% of the clicks and there's a number right, so that number itself is going to be a foreshadow of how many guys are you going to be fighting with in terms of your PPC campaign, because these guys are getting 90% of the clicks right and you're probably going to be fighting out with them. So if that number is as low as 25 or lesser, that means you don't have a lot of competition to fight and thereby your Amazon PPC bids will be a lot more favorable. Right, below $1 per click, right. So that's my number one favorite matrix to look at. Number two is when you go to trends under Product Version Explorer, you will see the average search conversion right, and this is something that is a very valuable data, because this shows you, out of the basket of competitors, how well are they converting for that market right. You can even go down to keywords and it will show you the individual keyword search conversion rate itself and when you compare it to your own business reports, especially your unit session percentage, it's like a yardstick for you to measure how well are you performing compared to your competitors. So I always go back to that matrix to see hey, do I need to improve in my conversion rate?

 

Bradley Sutton:

so let me see and compare to my competitors okay, now going back to Cerebro, do you have like a diamond account with helium 10 or higher? I, I think I got a diamond account. I'm so sure have you ever used? Then the new I mean actually just recently got to diamond but the, the Historical Cerebro, where you can like kind of like look back over time where somebody was ranking any time in the last two years. Oh, yes, yes, I've seen, I've seen that, yeah, and I think I tested. So then you know, like, like, what are your thoughts now on seasonal products? Like, do you stay away from seasonal? Or now that you know, like now that there's the historical Cerebro, you can kind of really understand what were they making sales for in their season, or do you like only products that are like evergreen throughout the year?

 

Clarence:

I think it depends on the level of selling journey that you're in. Like for me, after I've launched a few products already, I'm a little more confident now. So I think I'm willing to go into the seasonal product niche, like the camping niche. That sells out very well in summer and in December, but for the rest of the year it was a little slower right. So I think we're fine with that. But if you're new and you're just starting on Amazon, I will not recommend you to go into seasonal products, just because there's a little more nuances in inventory management. So I love that tool that you mentioned. It allows you to instantly see literally how many units you need to buy. You know in advance in terms of your inventory management based on your competitors, and that is yeah, it's a very helpful tool.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Okay Now the other question I asked my guest who used Helium 10 is if I give you the keys to the kingdom, like hey you, you get to direct the product team to make some new tool or some new feature that we don't currently have, what's the first thing you're going to tell them to do, like what's on your Wishlist of something that Helium 10 doesn't do for you right now that you'd like?

 

Clarence:

Yeah, I love that because, um, I mean, the one thing that I would love is I I wish there's a way that we can automate product research. Right, like I mean, ai is all the rage we can go through the funnel, like the funnel that we have, and if there's a software right, I'm praying Helium 10 will be it If there's a software that we can just put the top 10 ASINs in there and it will tell us okay, this is your top 10 competitors. They are ranking for this amount of keywords. They are not very strong in a keyword rank, so maybe that's an opportunity there for keyword competition. Maybe another one will be return ratio. Pull the data from Amazon and say, oh, this is the average return ratio, it passes this criteria. Let's move on to the next check and then go all through the 14 checks and at the end it spits out the answer for you it's a pass.

 

Bradley Sutton:

All right, Well, hey we actually we started something like that. It's called Product Launchpad, not fully exactly like you said. I'm going to connect you with our product team and maybe you can help guide that tool. But yeah, we do have an AI powered product research tool that is like 50% what you said, so so maybe you can bring it now to 100% with your direction there. So I'm going to connect you to a Vincent for that. But anyways, what about last 30 or 60 second tip of the day? Our 60 second tip? What is a? An Amazon strategy you can share with the community that you think is beneficial for them?

 

Clarence:

Yeah, TST right, 30 Second Tips. So I think number one is I think we as Amazon sellers, after we sell for quite a while, we tend to be very detached to the customers because it's all the numbers, right. We download Excel sheets, we look at Helium 10 data, we look at Amazon's data. So I think the number one thing is always go back to the human being, because you're actually selling to the actual human being on the other side of the computer screen. So understand them, right. Like, really, you're selling your products to, let's say, a mom or a father who's buying a gift, right? So if that's your customer profile, then make sure your listing resonates with that as a customer profile. So I think the biggest tip that I can leave you guys is understand your customers, create your customer profile and make sure that your listing speaks to them directly, because the first trick is always click-through rate. Yeah, I mean, click-through rate is a little easy to get, just get your main product, I mean your main images and your pricing right. But the moment they are on your listing right and a lot of customers do bounce away sometimes from. So you need to find out why are they bouncing away from your listing? And this is one of the way customer profile and create images that speaks to them directly. All right?

 

Bradley Sutton:

Well, people want to reach out to you, get more information. Find you on the interwebs. How can they find you out there?

 

Clarence:

Yeah, so that's. You can search us on either Google YouTube the Google YouTube or Instagram the FBA Bros. So I'm Clarence, so the FBA Bros, as in T-H-E, f-b-a-b-r-o-s. So that's our handle on Instagram, tiktok and YouTube. So feel free to follow us for a lot of the advanced level tips that we share. And we don't hide things, right. I mean, we show our products. We even launched the egg pan in a mini PPC series on our YouTube channel. So we even go through the steps on what we click to launch the product. So I think there's a lot of value that you can learn from there as well. Looking forward to add value to that.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome. Well, clarence, thank you so much for joining us, and I hope to be invited again to speak at the Amazon Singapore conference that they usually do in fall, and so maybe we can connect again at that time. But don't try and serve me any eggs in your egg pan because I can't eat eggs. All right.

 

Clarence:

I will see you later, man. Yeah, thanks for having me on board, Bradley.

 

Helium 10 Buzz 5/17/24: New Amazon High Return Rate Fee | TikTok Shop Expand

Amazon's new fee policy is shaking up the game for sellers with high return rates. But that's not all - we're also unwrapping TikTok Shop's leap into markets like Mexico and Europe. This and more buzzing news on this episode!

We’re back with another episode of the Weekly Buzz with Helium 10’s Chief Brand Evangelist, Bradley Sutton. Every week, we cover the latest breaking news in the Amazon, Walmart, and E-commerce space, talk about Helium 10’s newest tools and features, and provide a training tip for the week for serious sellers of any level.

Amazon has announced some changes to the returns processing fee, which is expected to impact sellers on the platform who experience high return rates.
https://www.helium10.com/blog/return-rate-processing-fee-update/

TikTok to expand e-commerce business into Mexico and major Western European markets amid scrutiny in the US, EU
https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-trends/article/3262039/tiktok-expand-e-commerce-business-mexico-and-major-western-european-markets-amid-scrutiny-us-eu

Amazon VP Alan Moss Tells Advertisers At Tech Giant’s First Upfront That Putting Ads On Prime Video “Connected The Dots Across Our Universe” – Update
https://deadline.com/2024/05/amazon-upfront-mike-hopkins-paul-kotas-streaming-advertising-1235915381/

Join us for an exciting in-person event held in the heart of the thriving city of Madrid. Home to the Kings of European Football Real Madrid, the Spanish Royal family, and some of the largest cultural events and landmarks in Europe, and now the AVASK Plus / Helium 10 Elite Madrid Seller Workshop!

We have a day packed full of amazing speakers and topics that we’re sure you’ll love. Join some of the largest sellers in the e-commerce space as we deliver no-nonsense guidance for e-commerce sellers serious about making it big.

Did you know that in Helium 10, you have a heat map of where in the USA your inventory is being held so that you can see the distribution of it, as well as a heat map of where your sales have been at the city or state level, over any date range?  In this episode, we show you how you can find these maps and how you can use them!

Plus, Helium 10 is changing the product research game by bringing back the Pinterest Trend Finder and adding the new tool Amazon Trending Keywords tool, revealing hot items with a simple click. Get set to spin the wheel of fortune and discover what's sizzling in the market on this episode of the Weekly Buzz.

In this episode of the Weekly Buzz by Helium 10, Bradley covers:

• 00:46 - Amazon High Return Rate Fee
• 04:57 - TikTok Shop Expansion
• 06:55 - Amazon Sponsored TV
• 09:31 - Event in Madrid
• 10:31 - Pro Training: Inventory Heat Maps
• 12:53 - Helium 10 New Feature Alerts

#561 - Strategies from an 8-Figure Amazon/Walmart Brand: VitaCup

From eBay to the e-commerce big leagues, Jason McLellan of VitaCup joins me to unpack the strategy behind his success in Walmart's evolving online marketplace. We kick off with an exploration of Walmart's responsive improvements to seller feedback and their platform, which has leveled up from just another retail site to a critical component in the omnichannel market. Jason's transition from an individual seller to a mover and shaker with VitaCup showcases the agility needed to thrive in today's digital retail space, and he doesn't hold back on sharing the victories and challenges of managing inventory and leveraging Walmart's coupons and subscription beta programs to forge lasting customer relationships.

Then, we wade into the realm of subscriptions and coupons, tools that have become indispensable in the arsenal of online marketplaces. We dissect how VitaCup uses initial discounts to reel in customers and the art of maintaining them through smart cohort analysis. It's all about the numbers as we dive deep into data-driven decision-making, assessing how to track subscriber trends and harness coupons to boost conversions and brand credibility. And for those looking to sharpen their product listings, we provide a masterclass on balancing keyword richness with Walmart's preference for conciseness, ensuring your products shine brightly amidst the digital shelves.

 

To wrap up, we tackle the nitty-gritty of optimizing product listings for peak sales performance on Walmart, balancing the act of keyword incorporation without tipping into overstuffing. We peer into the crystal ball of Walmart's future advertising enhancements like negative targeting and muse over the challenges of price parity and infringement headaches. If you're navigating the Walmart maze, the Helium 10 Winning with Walmart Facebook group is your compass – a community where sellers come together to trade secrets and solutions. So, stay tuned for the next round of insider tips next month on Walmart Wednesday, where we'll continue to chart the course toward success in the Walmart marketplace.

In episode 561 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Carrie and Jason discuss:

• 00:00 - Strategies for Success on Walmart.com
• 05:57 - Optimizing Listing Quality for Success
• 10:43 - Difference Between Amazon and Walmart
• 13:57 - Optimizing Subscription and Coupon Strategies
• 0:19:32 - Optimizing Walmart Product Listings for Sales
• 0:29:44 - Helping Sellers Navigate Walmart Issues

#560 - Amazon, Walmart, TikTok, & Target Strategies From A 9 Figure Seller

Listen in as Grace Kopplin, a seasoned e-commerce expert with a marketing background and former Helium 10 blog writer, shares her journey from a Midwest upbringing to managing an Amazon team for a nine-figure e-commerce business. Grace's initial forays into retail buying and planning led to her pivotal shift to the e-commerce arena. As she recounts her experience honing analytical skills as a business analyst, we get an inside look at the strategies driving profitability and sales growth on the ever-evolving Amazon platform.

During our conversation, we tackled the significant changes that Amazon sellers are facing, especially with the latest coupon and sales strategies in Q1 2024. Grace reveals how the new minimum discount requirements for coupons have transformed selling approaches, impacting product badging and organic ranking. We also talk about the intricacies of Amazon PPC advertising, including the exciting new video campaign options and store spotlight formats. Additionally, Grace provides insight into how resellers can navigate sponsored brand ads amidst fierce buy box competition and the potential for platforms like TikTok Shop to skyrocket brand awareness.

To wrap up this episode, Grace and Bradley explore the implementation of AI in Amazon-selling strategies, noting the platform's dominance and the emerging significance of marketplaces like TikTok. We delve into how new Amazon data points and tools, like the Product Opportunity Explorer and Helium 10's Cerebro, are essential for content strategy and maintaining a competitive edge. Plus, don't miss our discussion on the unique challenges of managing large assortments in categories like apparel, footwear, and jewelry. Whether you're a seasoned seller or new to the e-commerce game, this episode is packed with actionable strategies and expert insights you won't want to miss.

In episode 560 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Grace discuss:

• 00:00 - E-Commerce Strategies for Serious Sellers
• 01:21 - Grace's Backstory
• 06:11 - Managing Brand Registry and Fees Strategy
• 13:24 - Amazon Advertising and Selling Strategies
• 14:45 - New Amazon PPC Strategies and Challenges
• 20:02 - Amazon Launch Strategy Evolution
• 23:01 - Amazon Strategy and AI Implementation
• 25:12 - Leveraging Amazon Data for Strategic Advantage
• 32:22 - PowerPlay Hockey Jerseys and Conferences

► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast

► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension

► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup  (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life)

► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft

► Watch The Podcasts On YouTube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Today, we've got a seller who used to write blogs for Helium 10 but now works at a company that's a nine-figure seller online with Amazon, obviously, being their number one moneymaker. But you might be shocked when you find out which marketplaces brings in the second most amount of sales. Find out what that is plus get her Amazon strategies in today's episode. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think.

Bradley Sutton:

Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that's completely BS free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. And just wanted to throw a quick shout out here, we have a new TikTok channel at Helium 10. It's helium10_software. So if you want some unserious strategies you know sometimes we got some serious strategies on there too. Make sure to give us a follow. All right, go. You can even see me singing in Chinese on one of these videos here but go to h10.me/tiktok or just type in Helium 10, one zero underscore software and follow us on TikTok. We're going to have somebody who I don't think I'm not going to ask her to do a TikTok dance for us here. But Grace, first time, I believe first time on the podcast, right, for you.

Grace:

Yes, yes, first time.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome, well, welcome. Like you, actually, you know, we met years ago at different conferences and stuff but also for a while when I was running the content team, you were one of our actually contract workers where you would, you know, write some Amazon related blogs. But it could be that I know some of your backstory, but since I'm like 10-second Tom from 50 First Dates, I just forget everything. So, regardless if I remember or not, let's go into your backstory because nobody else on the show might know who you are. You just told me that you're in Minnesota, but it sounds like you're not from there. Where are you from?

Grace:

Yes, I was born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, so I'm still a Midwest gal, but I made my way to Minneapolis about six years ago now.

Bradley Sutton:

Well, how can you be a Twins fan? Shouldn't you still be a Brewers fan then?

Grace:

Fair Weather fan, I suppose.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, all right. So Milwaukee, the Frozen Tundra of Milwaukee, and then going into college. Where did you go to college at?

Grace:

Yes, I went to University of Wisconsin in Madison, so very big party school had a great time.

Bradley Sutton:

What is the mascot? Why can't it? It's not the

Grace:

The Badgers.

Bradley Sutton:

See? I was going to say I knew it started with a B. I was like no Beavers is Oregon State. What B is it the Badgers? Yes, all right.

Grace:

Bucky Badger.

Bradley Sutton:

Well, what did you? What did you major in over there?

Grace:

Yeah, I got my BBA in marketing. I've always been just like super business oriented and I wanted to do something that was pretty broad, so I did what anyone would do and got a degree in business, and I've done a lot of different things since then.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, and what like. Well, as soon as you got out of university, you know, got your degree. What was your first gainful employment that you did?

Grace:

I feel like in business school they always teach you. It's like you can either go into finance and be a consultant or if you want to work in retail and you like business, let's go be a buyer. Those are like the two things they tell you that are options. I was like I need to be a buyer so I started my career in retail in a buying office doing buying and planning. So that gave me a pretty good basis of just how retail works. So I focused a lot on brick and mortar retail, buying products for stores, allocating the inventory and doing the forecasting for that.

Bradley Sutton:

And what was your first exposure to e-commerce?

Grace:

Yeah, it was actually my first job out of college. We actually slated all of our ads by writing it down in a journal and submitting it through marketing, and our e-com business was super small back then. It wasn't that long ago but that was my first exposure to e-comm and it was always really interesting to me. And as the retail atmosphere changed in the early 2010s, I knew that's where I wanted to be for longevity, for my career.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, was it at the same company that you're working at today?

Grace:

No, I've bounced around a lot and my career has led me in a lot of different ways. Unfortunately, a lot of the large big box retailers I worked for all had their demise for any reason or another. So I kind of bounced around until I found an e-commerce centric company, which is where I'm at right now.

Bradley Sutton:

What did you start doing at this company and then? What have you been doing over the years and not now? What is your main role?

Grace:

Yeah, so I started as an e-commerce business analyst, which is pretty much jack of all trades when it comes to anything analytical. So I was kind of the person who would be pulling all of the reporting from Amazon, creating forecasts, pitching to our executive team. This is why we need to buy this inventory for Amazon. This is how it all works. So I was really in the weeds and I feel like that gave me such good experience in what I'm doing now, which is kind of managing the full Amazon team really a strong focus on profitability, but also sales growth, which has been such a hot topic recently. So I've done a lot of different things.

Bradley Sutton:

Is this like a company that has its own brand and manufacturers own products?

Grace:

So the company is called Powerplay Retail. We started as a manufacturer's rep group, so working with brands, helping them get into retailers. It was really focused on brick and mortar retailers. Obviously, we have Target and Best Buy here in Minneapolis, so companies like us exist to help brands who don't know how to get into retail do just that. And then we kind of morphed into a distributor, as brands needed help actually shipping into retailers. And then when brands were like, hey, can you help us sell online, we were like yes, 100%. So then that's why our e-commerce arm exists.

Grace:

So we're a third-party reseller that partners with brands that don't want to bring Amazon in-house. So we buy and sell inventory out of our own large 3P account. We're also an Amazon agency, so I manage brands in their own 3P accounts. So I manage brands in their own 3P accounts. So I kind of do it both ways and it kind of just depends on what brands need. And over the years we've also dabbled in private label. We've created our own products and sold those in our accounts as well. So it's been a really cool experience being able to try it just every different way of selling on Amazon.

Bradley Sutton:

How many seller accounts do you guys have?

Grace:

Yeah, right now from an owned perspective we have three or four, but just from our full partnership perspective, I'm probably in maybe 20 different accounts on a daily basis.

Bradley Sutton:

So how does it work for when you're managing somebody else's stuff, like for brand registry? Like do some of these brands already have their own brand registry and then you somehow just get authorized or are you the one who is actually registering their brand because they never were before? How does that work?

Grace:

Both. So some companies are more Amazon savvy and right from the beginning and get go they registered with brand registry, which is great, and in that case we just become an authorized reseller and an administrator under their brand registry so we can act on their behalf. And in some cases they don't know, so either I'm kind of coaching them through that setup process or actually registering it on their behalf and managing everything. So it kind of just depends on how hands-on they want to be or how hands-off I want to be. So whatever works best for the brand, always the brand in mind for us.

Bradley Sutton:

Let's just skip ahead. We're going to talk a lot of strategy, but I think the thing top of mind for so many Amazon sellers and I think you have a unique perspective because you're dealing with so many different accounts I'm assuming you've got customers in many different categories, many different size of products, different, you know, types of products. The fees, you know, there's low inventory fees, that's coming. You know, there's low inventory fees. That's coming, you know, depending on when people are listening to this episode, maybe it's already there. There's the inventory placement fees, so that's been out for a little bit longer. How has this affected the brands that you're working with and what are the different strategies that? Like how you guys have pivoted? Like, are you doing your shipments any different or are you just like taking in the chin and it's costing us 20% more? Like, talk a little bit about some different experiences with different brands.

Grace:

Yeah. So these fees have been a huge topic of conversation for us in my operations team on how we can best handle these. Obviously they're real and we have to figure out a way to respond to them and maintain profitability above all else. So in terms of the shipment processes, we've been kind of going back and forth between the Amazon optimized shipments and just kind of eating the cost, depending on what our profitability looks like. So when these fees were introduced, our first step was like recreating our Amazon profitability model. I know there's a good Helium 10 one out there. Amazon kind of has its own Revenue Calculator tool.

Grace:

But what we did internally is create a very, very extensive profit and loss model outlining all of those different new fees and how they could impact us, so estimating at like a per pound dollar amount what this inventory placement fee would be an impact for us by SKU. So we can just first see how much can we afford to spend on advertising now that we have to spend more on logistics and operations costs, because that's kind of our flexible cost. And then, two, how is that going to impact our sales if we're investing less on some of the advertising side of things and then when it comes to the low inventory fee side, I was actually surprised that the fee even rolled out when it did. I know there's some concessions that Amazon is making right now and I think they're going to probably continue to make more concessions as some of the loopholes are found. But the fact that it's getting charged at the parent level is a huge problem, especially for a lot of brand partners that we have in the clothing and apparel and footwear side of things.

Bradley Sutton:

Wait, hold on, hold on. I've just been so busy with stuff I haven't even been checking that. So at the parent level means like you could have 10 variations and nine of them are cool, but then what? Don't tell me. You're saying that if one of them is low inventory, everything gets charged.

Grace:

No, it's not one of them, it's the sum of all of the children up to the parent. So no, it's not one of them, it's the sum of all of the children up to the parent. So they take like the average part of the supply chain, like it's not under my control if there's an issue with the supply of the raw materials needed to create my product and I can't ship it into FBA. So we're definitely looking at those, estimating them and seeing how we can respond, and there's definitely been some strongly worded emails to my Amazon Account Manager about just how these are impacting us and how critical it is to our business, as profitability right now is, it's hard for all third party resellers.

Bradley Sutton:

So your team is not the one controlling the inbound? I mean, obviously you're not controlling the manufacturing. But what about from, like you know, some of these brands have 3PL, are you the one who created the transfer shipments?

Grace:

Yes.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. So how are you doing those differently, if at all?

Grace:

Yeah. So we have decided because Amazon is encouraging us to send in more units at once to decrease our frequency of shipments into Amazon. So in efforts to maintain a very lean weeks of supply, we've implemented a process to send in weekly replenishment orders based on the last week sales which makes a lot of sense, right. But now as Amazon is encouraging us to send in more and more and charging us more to send in less, we've had to weigh those costs and benefits of sending in shipments weekly. So now, depending on the size of the product, it might even be monthly that we're sending into Amazon, and we've been relying a lot on LTL shipments to save on prices. But now it seems like small parcel might be a little bit more cost effective for us in some cases. So it's definitely changed how we've managed this and I'm really interested to see how these fees potentially change moving into Q4, as we're sending in a ton of inventory into FBA and shipments just become so much more regular.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, okay, interesting. We've got Prime Day coming up in July and what you know. You've got a number of Prime Days under your belt. What are some things that you're planning on doing the same or and or differently as far as what kinds of deals, if any, you're doing, like how you tackle your PPC? Let's just have a quick Grace's Prime Day Playbook 2024.

Grace:

You know what I was thinking about this today, because Lightning Deals and Prime Exclusive Discounts are due by midnight and with all of these changes, and also I don't know if you've heard about the new return fee assessment happening on June 1st but this, I think, is going to have a huge impact on us and just our profitability and how much we're going to be able to afford on markdowns and promotions.

Grace:

So my theory, at least for Prime Day this year, is people are going to be a little bit less promotional just because of how hard it's been to be profitable with these new fees. But then again, there are those discount minimums that we need to meet in order to get that prime day badging which means so much to your sales. So for our top moving, best products, I'm still going to be at least 20% off, like I need the badging if I don't get the sales. It doesn't matter if I'm profitable or not, so I'm definitely be. I'm definitely going to be pulling back on some of the costs, like PPC, in order to fund my promotions. So I think, to answer your question succinctly, I will be definitely promoting steeply on my best products, but maybe my middle tier and my lower selling products. I might just keep those at full price because of profitability reasons.

Bradley Sutton:

Speaking of discounts and things like that. You know another thing that kind of rolled man 2024, when I think about it, the Q1 was just like a doozy for a few things. So the restrictions on, like coupons and discounts and, like you know, the sales history yeah, minimum discounts for coupons.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. So like, how has that effect? Like I mean, for me it didn't affect me too much on the coupon side, because I don't always use coupons. But what about you? Were you guys using coupons? And if so, has your strategy had to shift now?

Grace:

Yeah. So I wasn't even aware of the new discount minimums for coupons until I was looking at one of my listings and I was like why is my coupon not on? We used to really heavily do that like 5% coupon on one week, off the next week, five on the next week, just to keep some like badging on our listings Because we believe that has a really significant impact in like bestseller ranking and organic ranking and keywords. So we used to do that quite a lot. We're not doing that anymore just because we can't afford to be that steep of a discount on coupons. So we haven't actually come up with what our strategy is going to look like since that is so new. In the last like month-ish, we've kind of just been keeping our normal like promotion strategy and hopefully it doesn't impact sales too much. But that's something I can't answer right now.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, yeah, a lot of this stuff is so new that it's going to take us all a little bit to try and figure out what. What we're going general PPC strategy you know PPC is they're doing more adding, as opposed to like taking stuff away or changing big rules. Like I hadn't added new video campaigns in a while like could have been maybe a year even and then I noticed, like a couple months ago, now all of a sudden I can do ASIN targeting video campaigns and keyword targeting video because I'm like, oh, that's new, that's pretty cool. But, like you know, Amazon's always launching new kinds of targeting and new kinds of, you know, what is it called for the sponsor brand? Is it like the vertical ads and things like that? What new-ish things are you doing, if any, on the advertising side?

Grace:

Yeah. So I agree with you. I think if you're not in Amazon every day, you're missing something. So that's something that I try to do. I'm not like actively in charge of PPC or managing campaigns, but I always like to stay abreast of like all the new different techniques and see how it works with the team. One thing that I'm really excited to try is the new store spotlight format, where you can actually click to different store pages in the sponsor brand placement, which I think looks really cool. If anything else, definitely, want to test to see if it drives extra sales.

Grace:

One thing for us that's challenging with sponsored brand ads, though, is as a reseller, and a lot of times we're not the exclusive reseller. Spending on sponsored ads for sponsored brands leads to sales for the brand but not necessarily sales for us. So if you're rotating in the buy box spend on sponsor brand, you're driving sales for the brand. It's not necessarily just for us. So how do we manage that? That's been a hot topic for us.

Bradley Sutton:

Are you personally doing anything on other platforms, be it Walmart, TikTok shop, or if so, or if not, is there anybody at your company who is focused on those channels?

Grace:

Yes, we are. We are really focused on TikTok shop right now. We've been using it more so as like an awareness driving tactic, more so than a sales driving tactic right now is a lot of the brands that we work with are more in a premium price point, so we've found that the TikTok items that work the best are really kind of almost that impulse item. So we've been using it to drive awareness, drive conversations around the products that we sell and the brands that we work with. And we've seen great halo effects on Amazon with branded search going up as engagement and content goes up for the brand on TikTok. So we've been using TikTok shop in that way.

Grace:

In terms of Walmart, that's always been a strategy for us. Transparently, Walmart just hasn't been a volume driver for us. It's been a steady but it hasn't really been a place that's warranted a ton of focus for us. But another marketplace that has been great for us is actually Target's marketplace, Target Plus, and that's been a key piece of our success, especially with working with brands who are looking for store placement at Target. For example, we've had a few items that we've listed on Target's marketplace that have done really well that have gotten the attention of a buyer and actually got store placement, which is really exciting. And at the end of the day, getting an item placed on shelves most of the time can drive more volume than a mid-tier listing on Amazon, so we tend to try to use that strategy.

Bradley Sutton:

How do you get on target these days, like wasn't it invite only back in the day or now that Target is adding that 360 or some kind of like?

Grace:

Yeah, I think it might still be invite only, but I know they've been actively adding a lot of sellers. I know that their back end is still quite archaic compared to what Amazon is. It's probably what Walmart was like four years ago. But I think it is still invite only but definitely something to reach out to your connections and see if you can get a connect with a Walmart e-comm buyer.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, I mean, that's what I've been saying about Walmart for years is the end game and the reason for Walmart.com. You know there's people who say, oh, you know, like you know a lot of the SKUs, I'll just have like 10% of my Amazon sales. No, you're not trying to. I mean sure, if it's profitable, why not increase your sales by 10%? But the main end game is you could get on the radar of Walmart buyers potentially and go 1P which increases. And then the next step is getting into 4,000 Walmart stores, which is like yes, is now going to dwarf your Amazon sales even. But on the target side totally makes sense. That you know there's not that many people buying. You know consumers buying stuff on Target compared to Walmart or Amazon's even less than Walmart. But then that's not the end game. The end game is if you can get well like, give me an example, some of those that you said you've been able to get them in Target stores, like those POs are for what? Like how many units? Like thousands, right?

Grace:

Yes, tens of thousands.

Bradley Sutton:

Tens of thousands, wow.

Grace:

And what's also really cool about Target's marketplace is that it's gated from a seller perspective. So once you list a product on Target, it is gated for you to sell it, which I know has become more and more an issue on Amazon, with unauthorized resellers and different brand protection strategies that are maybe a little bit gray market. So I think that's something that is really interesting to sellers who fight for the Buy Box on Amazon, and it's a little bit of a relief to be able to list it and not have to check it or wait for the Helium 10 notification to come up that the Buy Box has changed and also your advertising spend, as you can continue to advertise when you have a Buy Box. It's something that we love about Target.

Bradley Sutton:

Going back to Amazon, now. Let's say you've got a brand who's launching a new product, what is your go-to launch strategy these days? Obviously gone are the days of things like two-step URLs and search, find, buys and giveaways and things like that. So for your launch, are you just doing PPC and maybe having a lower price, or you're only launching stuff where there's already some kind of brand recognition, where you don't have to do too much special?

Grace:

We do both. So we've worked with brands who have sold on Amazon for a long time and already have hundreds of thousands of monthly searches for their brand on Amazon and we've also worked with brands that are brand new and maybe are selling a new product that doesn't quite fit into a category that exists yet on Amazon. From a review perspective, we definitely lean on Amazon Vine. I think it has been getting better - the quality of reviews and just the ease of use of that tool, just to ensure that we're adhering to Amazon's policies. But just from an overall launch strategy, we've been thinking about top of funnel marketing a lot more. It's easiest to win when you have branded search on Amazon already, just so you're showing up on that first page of search results. But we've been using we talked about TikTok shop. Using TikTok is a really important part of our launch strategy and also just advertising outside of Amazon. So working with content creators to introduce a brand or introduce a product, if it's like a new product line under a brand that maybe people are already familiar about, using promotion codes that type of thing, as well. Are you then those influencers sending people to a TikTok shop product, or sending people to go search on Amazon, or a mixture of both?

Grace:

We'll mostly send to TikTok shop, but we do see just like an organic halo effect and someone sees it on Amazon. They maybe have more trust for the marketplace and they go and try to find the product on Amazon. So we've got a couple of cool case studies on that.

Bradley Sutton:

I probably should have asked this at the beginning. But, just like you know, I know you don't have the numbers in front of you, but if you were to talk about last year's sales or projected 2024 over all the stuff that your company manages, what do you think it's going to be on Amazon, Walmart, TikTok shop and Target rough? You know I don't need exactly. Yeah.

Grace:

So our goal is always double every year and we have in the last two, three years, as we've expanded marketplaces, our brand partnerships and ASIN count. I think the ASIN count that I manage right now on Amazon is upwards of 50,000 ASINs, so we're always adding more products. It's so many.

Grace:

That's a topic for a different time of how frustrating that can be at some time. But I mean we're in the triple digit millions going into 2024, at least for the e-commerce side of things. So it's really exciting and there's a lot of growth ahead of us and I think the biggest challenge for us as a three-piece seller and a distributor is managing the profitability and the agency side of our house is looking a lot in terms of outlook is looking a lot more profitable for us.

Bradley Sutton:

Nice, nice. What about what's this number two thing, so the nine figures? Is Amazon only or everything together? I mean, obviously it's going to be everything, but does Amazon by itself hit that?

Grace:

Or not everything together? I mean yes, Amazon by itself hits that.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, so what's number two then marketplace?

Grace:

Target.

Bradley Sutton:

Target over Walmart, what in the world?

Grace:

It is. It is.

Bradley Sutton:

What? That's a shocker.

Grace:

It is. But again, like I said, that we work with a lot more premium products and premium brands tend to lean more towards the Target customer rather than the Walmart customer. So it's probably Amazon, Target, Walmart, TikTok, right now, but that will probably change pretty rapidly.

Bradley Sutton:

For TikTok, where is the inventory coming from for the orders. Are you doing fulfilled by TikTok or is it coming from Amazon?

Grace:

No, we're doing MCF from Amazon FBA centers. We can also drop ship from our own 3PLs as well, but we like MCF cause it's easier on us.

Bradley Sutton:

Amazon strategies. You know like things are changing on Amazon. New data points you know come out like search query performance and new things in product opportunity. Explore just in the day, today, things of Amazon. What new things is part of your SOPs now. That maybe wasn't there two years ago. Or maybe you just think you've got some unique strategies even on something that's been around for a while because you know you can't get to nine figures without having some cool unique strategies. That's setting you apart from the competition.

Grace:

Yeah, I love using the Product Opportunity Explorer. It's now a daily part of what I do. I also use it to do competitive research, which might be a little bit different. So grabbing an ASIN that I'm interested in learning more about and looking at the customer insights, specifically around returns, which is a hot button topic, obviously, with this new fee coming into place with if your return rate is higher than what the threshold of the category is, there's new fees that come into play. So, just understanding what those negative insights are about your competing products and taking advantage of those in your content and I mean in your second image or in your first bullet point has been something that's worked really well for us. And as I'm going and I'm potentially auditing a new brand partner or I'm doing a pitch for new business, I'm always looking at that. I think the data that Amazon's been able to provide there is really useful and we've never had that access before. It's always been like here's how much they sell directionally. Here's what their seller ranking is. Here's the keywords that they rank on.

Grace:

Here's what the keyword sales are but, like, the actual sentiment from the customers is really interesting. And something that we like to use in our content

Bradley Sutton:

Favorite Helium 10 tool and why?

Grace:

I like the Cerebro. I love doing keyword research, as we just talked about and I think, finding those niche keywords and using those in your PPC. Even though it's an old strategy, it works and it's always changing and not everyone has auto campaigns anymore, so it's something that's really important to do and I still like to do it because I love to know, like, what's changing. And another, really important, like leading or trailing indicator either one would be like branded search around your competitors branded search, so just understanding how many people less are searching for your competitors versus you. I think that provides a really unique opportunity to win.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. If I were to give you the keys to the Helium 10 Product Roadmap. Something you know like hey, you're in charge of all of our product team a tool or a feature or a function that we don't have that you need, what would it be?

Grace:

I have two, okay, I think I asked about this already but Target Plus. I'd love to get a plugin, cause I love your dashboard, where I can see, like all my different marketplaces US, Canada, Mexico, Walmart all of that rolled up into one. I know it's probably still far out, but that would be really cool to be able to see that. Maybe TikTok shop I don't know if that's coming or maybe

Bradley Sutton:

What would help on TikTok shop specifically?

Grace:

I really like the sales product performance. That's like when I come in the morning I'm like what sold yesterday. That's where I'm looking okay and that's probably my favorite part about selling on Amazon is just seeing what's selling and how I can sell more of it. And then the second piece of it would be a Walmart ask. I know there's a tool where we're able to see kind of what the sales are on the listings for Walmart. I think there's probably opportunity to get that tool just sharpened a little bit so we really can see where the opportunity is on Walmart. I think there's still a lot of questions from everyone on like who's winning on Walmart? Like we know like CPGs are winning, but what brands are winning? There's a lot of information about amazon brands who are winning, but I think Walmart's still a little bit of a Black Box. So any tools that are available from an Amazon perspective, rolling those out and sharpening them for Walmart, would be great too.

Bradley Sutton:

Cool, cool, all right. So, what other strategies can you help people with out there who you know like, obviously it. You know somebody might be listening to this and like, well, what does this apply to me? I'm not a nine figure, I'm not even an eight figure or even seven figure seller, but some strategies that you're doing that, hey, even if somebody's new on Amazon or maybe you know six figure seller, they could. They could definitely be doing something you haven't mentioned yet today.

Grace:

Yeah, I think I'm going to speak to specifically the apparel and footwear and jewelry sellers out there. It's really hard to manage the assortment and I know I manage the 50,000 ASIN count, but we've developed processes internally to make that a lot easier. And I know catalog management is probably a hot button topic for all those apparel sellers out there. Managing sizes, colors, widths, all of that, tracking the variations that's something we can help with. So, whether it's managing variations, bringing them into one listing, separating them out, testing variation strategy, that's something that's kind of niche that we do all the time with our footwear brands to see how we can gain more share of shelf or share of click on different keywords, mostly branded. And then there's also way different style guidelines for apparel and footwear and we've learned how to harness those and utilize those to the best of our abilities. So just know that you don't have to do that on your own. There's agencies and sellers out there that specialize in just that and can help you free up your time to work on the strategic stuff and we can handle the catalog management side of it.

Bradley Sutton:

Last question I guess would be you know, I'm assuming maybe you might use some AI things, especially having to manage so many listings like have you leverage AI in your amazon management business and, if so, how?

Grace:

Yes, we've definitely started utilizing it from a copy perspective. We use a bunch of different AI tools, but one thing that's worked for us is taking our keyword research, plugging it into pick the engine that you want to use, give them your product description and have them help at least get a starting point for what your bullet points and your title should be. It just saves so much time instead of sitting there and being like okay, here are my keywords, here's what I want to say, but I don't need to type all of it out on my own. So, yes, it's not going to be perfect, but it's a great place to start and, honestly, a great place to start with really anything, whether it's Amazon copy images or even just writing an email to a brand partner or a proposal to leadership it. Leadership Like it's just a super helpful tool that'll save time across the board.

Bradley Sutton:

Cool. Cool. All right. Last non-Amazon question. I see your Instagram. You're traveling a lot, favorite travel spots and what's on the bucket list for you that you haven't been to?

Grace:

Oh, my gosh. Okay. So recently my friends and I rented a beach house in Oak Island, North Carolina. It's like a tiny little town on the coast, but it was so beautiful and so fun and it was like a great way to disconnect. We literally saw dolphins from our balcony. It's like so cool.

Bradley Sutton:

Wow.

Grace:

So that was really fun. I was just kind of wholesome and nice to be able to unplug a little bit, although I never truly unplugged because slightly addicted to selling on amazon. Um, that's why we're here, right. And then, in terms of bucket list, I've never been to Europe, which is crazy. I need to get to Italy. I'm such a wine person, I'm such a like I love food. So that is on my bucket list. I hope I can get out in the next few years.

Bradley Sutton:

Maybe get your boss to send you to. We're doing a it's not Italy, but nearby to Madrid. End of May we are doing a workshop, high-end workshop, in Madrid. So, that could be an opportunity to business expense for your company and learn some new strategies. And you get to, you know, maybe make a side trip to Italy on your own dime. So if anybody else is interested, I'll know. I going to try and get Grace to go. h10.me/elitespain. It's open to everybody to join. All right, well, Grace, thank you so much for coming on here. It's been great to see all that you've accomplished on Amazon. I wish you the best of success in the future and maybe we'll bring you back on and let's see how you know how deep into the hundreds of millions that your company has been able to sell next year.

Grace:

I want to plug. I have an amazing team. This is not just me. I just happen to be the voice of them so I want to make sure I give them a shout out too.

Bradley Sutton:

If somebody wants to like maybe find you on the interwebs. I mean you can be incognito if you want, you don’t have to answer this. But how can they find you out there?

Grace:

Yeah, so if you're interested in services from PowerPlay, powerplayretail.com, find us on LinkedIn. Otherwise, you can find me on Instagram or LinkedIn. I'm also like a LinkedIn crazy person, so I will respond probably in the first one minute but that's the easiest way to reach me.

Bradley Sutton:

Is the founder of your company, like a hockey fan or something. Is that the name? Is that where PowerPlay comes from?

Grace:

I get that question a lot. No, but we always like use that as kind of like a hook, and we're also in Minnesota so hockey and Minnesota.

Bradley Sutton:

So that's what I was about to say. Minnesota is a hockey. Yeah, okay, all right, well, Grace.

Grace:

PowerPlay Hockey Jerseys, so I will say.

Bradley Sutton:

Hey, you know me about my Helium 10 jersey, so I'm all about those jerseys. All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us and I hope to see you at maybe what Amazon Accelerate in Seattle, where's the next one.

Grace:

Yeah, I'll be at Accelerate. I'll be bopping around to different conferences but maybe I'll see you in Spain.

Bradley Sutton:

Hey, let's do it. Let's do it, all right, we'll see you later, Grace.

Helium 10 Buzz 5/9/24: Amazon South Africa Launch | INFORM Act Re-Verification Required

We’re back with another episode of the Weekly Buzz with Helium 10’s Chief Brand Evangelist, Bradley Sutton. Every week, we cover the latest breaking news in the Amazon, Walmart, and E-commerce space, talk about Helium 10’s newest features, and provide a training tip for the week for serious sellers of any level.

Amazon launches Amazon.co.za in South Africa
https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/retail/amazon-south-africa

Amazon announces the launch of Amazon.ie in Ireland in 2025
https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/retail/amazon-ireland-store-launch

It’s getting harder to avoid commercials: Amazon joins other streamers with 'pause ads'
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2024/05/08/amazon-prime-video-pause-ads/73614614007/

Walmart shopper data will soon feed targeted ads on Disney Plus and Hulu
https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/8/24152172/walmart-disney-plus-hulu-targeted-ads

Amazon Marketing Cloud now supports offline sales insights
https://advertising.amazon.com/en-us/resources/whats-new/amazon-marketing-cloud-now-supports-offline-sales-insights/

Starting in March 2024, Amazon began rolling out a new experience designed to make it simple for sellers to comply with certification requirements related to the US INFORM Consumers Act.  Now, starting in May 2024, if you have 200 or more transactions or $5,000 or more in revenues during a continuous 12-month period, you may receive a formal notification to review and certify that your business information is correct.  However, you do not need to wait to receive the formal notification and can take action now to avoid the risk of account deactivation later which could affect your upcoming sales events.

The episode continues with a must-attend call to action for all sellers aiming to refine their competitive edge: the Elite Workshop in Madrid, Spain. We've got an impressive lineup of speakers who will share invaluable insights on strategies for success on Amazon and Walmart. Tune in for Bradley’s tips on harnessing Helium 10's Insights Dashboard for effortless competitor tracking, covering everything from pricing to sales and keywords. And don't miss out on the discussion about the critical role of click-through rates versus conversion rates, using Helium 10’s Chrome Extension with Amazon Brand Analytics data to illustrate why attracting clicks is only half the battle in e-commerce. Discover the power of coupling high clicks with strong conversions, ensuring your products don't just catch the eye but also seal the deal.

(Time Stamps) - 

In this episode of the Weekly Buzz by Helium 10, Bradley covers:

• 00:45 - Amazon South Africa Launch
• 01:50 - Amazon Ireland
• 03:37 - Prime Video Ad Update
• 05:52 - Walmart Video Ads
• 07:34 - AMC Update
• 08:33 - INFORM Act 2024
• 10:42 - UPS Ground Saver
• 11:34 - Instagram Integration
• 12:45 - Seller Workshop In Madrid, Spain
• 13:42 - Pro Training Tip: Competitor Tracking Using Helium 10

► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast

► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension

► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup  (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life)

► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft

► Watch The Podcasts On YouTube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos

Transcript

 

Bradley Sutton:

Amazon has launched a marketplace in two new countries. There's soon going to be another way to use sponsored TV ads. Make sure you confirm your seller information with Amazon so you don't get your account suspended. These stories and more on today's Weekly Buzz how cool is that? Pretty cool, I think.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that is our Helium 10 Weekly Buzz, where we give you a rundown of all the news stories that are going on in the Amazon, Walmart and e-commerce world and we give you training tips of the week that'll give you serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. Let's see what's buzzing. All right, let's go ahead and hop right into the news stories Now. The first one is actually about a new marketplace that has launched. All right, there was a while where Amazon was launching marketplaces left and right. Then there was like a year or two where it seemed like there wasn't many new after the ones that launched in, like Poland and Netherlands, et cetera. And now we have a article from Amazon entitled Amazon launches Amazon.co.za in South Africa. All right, so Amazon has now launched and customers in South Africa can now shop on this website that I just mentioned, and they've got desktop browser, mobile browser, everything. Well, there's 20 different product categories that they have, and they actually get free delivery on their first order and then free delivery for any subsequent orders above 500 of their currency, which is about 27 US dollars. Interestingly something different in South Africa, they receive their status updates via WhatsApp. All right, so that's how they can track their orders there, and they also have hassle-free returns. So here's another English language-based country that is opening up, and so, as the opportunity to sell there come for foreign sellers might be a little bit easier to get your listings ready for that market.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Speaking of English-based countries where Amazon is expanding to, another announcement was made this same week, again from Amazon, entitled Amazon announces the launch of Amazon.ie. You guys know where that is Amazon.ie in Ireland. All right, not this year, but next year, 2025, amazon is going to launch there. Now, this article mentioned how there's already a lot of people in Ireland who are searching on Amazon, but they're having to search from other countries, and so now there is going to be a dedicated Amazon marketplace in that country. Now, right off the bat, there's going to be a lot of local sellers who will be able to take advantage of that platform. This article says that there's already over 1,000 small and medium-sized Irish businesses already selling on Amazon and they generated over 150 million euros in export sales in 2022. So, you know, sometimes when they launch new marketplaces, there's like a slower rollout or a local rollout that you know starts before the major rollout. So I would assume, if things go similar to these other launches, you know some local sellers might have first access to be able to sell on that marketplace, but again another marketplace where it's English language based for the most part and you're not going to have to, you know, go through some like heavy duty translations to get your listings live in that country. So what about you? Any? Do we have any Irish sellers who are selling in other marketplaces Amazon UK or Amazon USA? Are you looking forward to having your own Amazon Ireland? Let us know in the comments below.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Next article, also about Amazon, and this is about advertising. So we this article is actually from the USA Today and it's entitled it's Getting Harder to Avoid Commercials. Amazon Joins Other Streamers with Pause Ads. So what is the pause ads mean? So that's like, let's say, you're watching a streaming program and you hit pause. Got to go to the bathroom or you're doing something on your phone or whatever, so you hit pause. Well, instead of just the screen pausing, now there's going to be ads that will be visible and also shoppable carousel ads that are going to play during scheduled commercial breaks on Amazon Prime Video. Ads on Prime Video is nothing new, you know. This article reminds us that. Hey, earlier this month, you know, prime Video started to push advertisements on its basic tier viewers and remember it costs $8.99 per month or $14.99 per month as part of Amazon Prime, and then you have to pay $2.99 a month more if you don't want to see these ads. Now, ads on streaming television is nothing new. You know, like Hulu, peacock have these pause ads before, and so now Amazon is doing it.

 

Bradley Sutton:

So the three types of ads that USA Today reports that Amazon is going to have number one carousel ads. It's going to pop up in a sliding lineup during prime video ad breaks and pause ads, which I just mentioned. If a show, movie or even a live sport is paused, there's going to be these like translucent, transparent ads that'll have brand messaging and imagery and even add to cart buttons on there and then brand trivia ads. That one I'm not sure about, but it says it's going to share facts about the brand with the viewers while also giving them opportunities to add the product to their Amazon cart. So again, if you, I'm just wondering, you know, has anybody been using amazon sponsored tv? These are things I might not even have mentioned in in weekly buzz a couple years ago, because no regular sellers would be able to have, you know, be able to qualify for this kind of advertising. But now, with sponsored tv, it's kind of made it available to even smaller sellers. As a matter of fact, I just started the sponsored tv campaign in project x and was able to do it for like $20 a day budget, so even smaller sellers are able to get into this.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Now, speaking of streaming video ads not to be outdone. Walmart made an announcement this week on the Verge. Isn't it funny how Amazon will announce something, then Walmart will do the same, or Walmart will announce something. A few days later there's going to be an Amazon announcement about something similar. It's like they don't want the other one to one-up each other. Right. I love it. It's great for us consumers out there that they're competing for new features and good for sellers, giving us new opportunities to advertise, right? Well, Walmart here in this article from the verge, says Walmart shopper data will soon feed targeted ads on Disney plus and Hulu. All right, so now, uh, information about shoppers, both in store and also those who shop on Walmart.com are going to be kind of like shared um for Disney's streaming portfolio, which includes Disney plus and Hulu. Now this article says, as part of this deal, Walmart advertisers will be able to match the retailer shopper data with Disney's audience graph tools, helping them target audiences and measure data better Now, I'm not sure you know and measure data better.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Now, I'm not sure you know how you know, if a regular you know Walmart sellers, how many of them can participate in this. But again, it's just interesting to me to see where we're coming. You know, three, four or five years ago, not only were people not even selling on Walmart, but you know, nobody would have dreamed that. Oh yeah, let's go ahead and maybe put some of my Walmart products on Disney show or a Hulu show. There was, no, I don't even know if there was a Hulu like four or five years ago. But anyways, it's just interesting how you know the ecosystem of advertising and streaming is progressing and it's affecting, you know, amazon and Walmart sellers Going back to something advanced.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Now. This might only affect some of you, but I wanted to bring it out those of you who are using Amazon Marketing Cloud. Amazon Advertising announced this week that AMC, amazon Marketing Cloud, now supports offline sales insights. All right, so to get this, you subscribe to something called NCS CPG Insight Stream. It's a paid feature in AMC. Now, the difference of what this is providing compared to before, well, well, you know, you could use AMC to be able to see hey, how is our ads impacting online engagement of what you know our consumers are doing after they view our ad? But now it's going to you're going to be able to measure the impact of offline sales. All right, I'm not going to go too deep into this because I know it only affects. You know very few of you are of the level that you're doing AMC, but if you are, make sure to take a look at the article that I linked to below about this and see if this is something that you could leverage Now, something that affects every single third-party seller on Amazon.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Some of you already might have got it, but you saw the announcement that, hey, you've got to review your business information for Inform Act requirements. Inform Act that's a law here in the United States where you've got to confirm your contact details and your address and stuff. It's hard to believe it's been a year already since this came out. We talked about this a lot in the weekly buzz last year, where, you know, amazon was like sending all these like warning messages hey, you might get your account suspended if you don't do this. Well, now you're you're starting to see these notifications come up again and you need to act on it right away. So what the threshold is is starting last month. If you've got 200 or more transactions or $5,000 or more in revenue during a continuous 12 month period, you are going to get this notification that you have to review and certify your business information. This is not just some Amazon rule. This is like the law you know, like any marketplace is going to have it. I'm sure Walmart will have something similar as well. However, you don't need to wait for the notification. All right, you can go to your account health page, all right, and review your account information. If you look in your news on your seller central dashboard, you can get the link where to check this and you're going to be able to kind of like proactively do it because, let's say, you do get that notification. Well, you only have 10 days, all right, in order to certify this information. Now there's a lot of questions that sellers are having about this, like you know different scenarios. So um Shivali has been writing a blog about this with all your frequently asked questions. By the time you're watching this, if you're watching this live, I'm not sure it'll be available yet, but sometime later on today, Thursday, go to h10.me/blog and you should see it towards the top a blog article about the INFORM ACT. It's going to have the links where you can go check in your Seller Central dashboard. It'll have pretty much the answer to any question you might have about this. So make sure to go to h10.me forward slash blog later today and you will be able to get more information about what you need to do to make sure your account does not get suspended.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Another small announcement from Amazon Seller Central. Last week we talked about a new FedEx service that you can buy if you're doing merchant fulfilled FBM Right. Well, now you also can do UPS ground saver. That's like one of the cheapest forms of shipping for UPS for residential deliveries, all right. So you, it's a new option that you can go ahead and buy shipping labels for UPS ground saver All right, and I didn't even know this. Uh, ground saver actually deliver seven days a week. I was like, what UPS delivers on Sunday? Didn't, didn't realize that, all right. Um, you can even deliver two PO boxes. Uh, with this, all right. So you know, like you know, normal UPS, you can't really deliver UPS, but I think what this does is like transfers it to post offices or something like that. But anyways, check out the Seller Central dashboard. You'll get more information on this. I'm all about shipping.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Next article is not really an article, but you guys remember last year, like about last November in the weekly buzz. Remember last year, like about last November in the weekly buzz, I talked about this news article that came out that said hey, meta is letting Amazon shoppers buy products on Facebook and Instagram without leaving the app. So this was something that CNBC and other articles were reporting way back in November of last year. Well, if you look on LinkedIn, our Serious Sellers podcast, buddy Liran, he's talking about how he's actually now seeing it in his Instagram account. He had a video here that that showed how he was on his Instagram and there was an ad that he saw and then it allowed him to sign in, while he was still on Instagram, to his Amazon account and, you know, able to purchase that product. So he had a lot of like discussion, uh discussion on his LinkedIn about, you know what he thinks is coming, uh, if this really is rolling out, or maybe he's just special. I'm not sure, and that's why he got to see. I haven't seen this yet, but you know, like I said, it was announced way back in November and so, hopefully, maybe this is finally going to get rolled out. We might see some more official announcements about how, uh, amazon sellers are going to be able to leverage advertising on Instagram, perhaps even in Facebook. Yeah, it's going to open up a world of opportunity. Uh.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Last thing, I just want to remind you guys, uh, in a few weeks, I'm going to be in Madrid, Spain, with a lot of other sellers, all right, so make sure to sign up. I don't care if you live in the United States. If you can make it to Madrid, get out there. If you're in Europe, man, that's like a $60 Ryanair flight away. Hang out with us in Madrid, Spain, we are doing our Elite Workshop, normally only open to Elite members, but we're opening it up to others, together with AVASK. We've got some amazing speakers like Leo Sgovio, Alina, Carrie, we've got Vincenzo Toscano. We're going to be talking about a lot of high-end Amazon and Walmart strategy. We're going to have a lot of networking opportunities. Really looking forward to our first ever event in Spain. So if you'd like to get there, make sure to go to h10.me/elitespain.

 

Bradley Sutton:

All right, let's get into our training tip of the week, and this one is about a couple of things I want to highlight, and the first thing is about competitor tracking. This, I think, is something that people sleep on. I think you know competitor tracking is not new. A lot of people have been doing it, but it's a manual process, like what kind of things do you want to track with your competitor? Do you want to track if they're getting sales from new keywords that you might not know about? Well, what do you do? You probably run Cerebro once a week on them, or once every other week or something. Do you want to check if they have price changes, like they're lowering their price or raising their price, maybe they're running a coupon, maybe their category is changing, maybe If you're monitoring that, you're probably like having somebody go to their Amazon page and refreshing it or something, right? Well, remember, you don't have to do that.

 

Bradley Sutton:

So, Helium 10 members, diamond and up, you've got access to what we call the insights dashboard. So how you can have Helium 10, do all this work for you is just go to your dashboard, go to one of your products, click the arrow that opens up the details of it, and then go to the competitors tab and make sure to add competitors. All right, so you can see right here those of you watching on YouTube. I added four main coffin shelves right here that I'm monitoring and I now will know, hey, if any of these coffin shelves change their price, or maybe their sales get better than mine, or sales get worse than mine, or maybe other fulfillment type changes, or maybe they start running the coupon or maybe they end a coupon. I'm going to see that.

 

Bradley Sutton:

In addition, if they start getting sales from a new keyword that I might not have in my listing, I can actually get a notification of that. I don't have to go checking Cerebro all the time. So how I did that was I went here to my insights and I hit insight settings at the very bottom, and in insight settings I was able to make new insights. Where I do that, there's two kinds. The keyword one is right here. Under keyword, I select the thing that says keyword suggestions based on my competitors, and after I select that, I can set the parameters where I can say, hey, if I'm not ranking for a keyword but one of my competitors is ranking from one to 20 or whatever ratio I want, it's going to give me a notification that they're on page one for that keyword. The other one here is under competitor. I can start selecting things like competitor changed their price, or they started or ended a coupon, their performance changes. That could be anything from their BSR is more or less than mine, the review count increases by a certain percentage, their sales increase by a certain percentage, or maybe I want to see when they change their listing, like their title or their main image, their category, their subcategory. And so we've got all of these options that allow you to set these notifications so that we're doing the work for you and you're not having to go constantly every day refresh the listing to see what your competitors are doing.

 

Bradley Sutton:

One more thing, speaking of competitors, you know I've talked about this before, but to me this is just like an amazing asset. Whenever you are going on Amazon, this is like one of the things that I look at, and anywhere, as long as you have the Helium 10 Chrome extension installed in the search results. Now you are going to see a blue bar above the three products that are the brand analytics top click for the previous week. All right, so you'll? You'll say ABA most click, number one. This is super, super insightful, because now it's not just a matter of oh, I think the products that are performing best for this keyword. Maybe they're the ones at the top, or maybe they have the most sales or whatever. No, I can literally get the information from Amazon, from brand analytics. Now, the only way you'll see this is if your account has brand registry, because by Amazon terms of service, we can only show it to those who have brand registry. But you can now see which are the most click. And not only that if you put your mouse over that ABA most clicked, it's going to tell you what the conversion percentage is like, like the one that was most click. Look at that. They only have this coffin shelf has only 7% of the sales. Now this one that was the second most click they've got 38% of the sales.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Now take a look at this one. Here's the third most clicked. It's actually a makeup shelf. So you might think, oh man, this person probably has a third most sales on this page. If I mouse over it, even though they're the most third most clicked, I can see that here they have 0% of the conversions in a full week. So, like I'm not even worried about that coffin shelf, if they're not getting any sales, let them have all the third most clicks on the page, because people aren't liking what they have, right? So, really, really beneficial tool that is available if you have the Chrome Extension. All right, guys. That's it this week for the Weekly Buzz. Hope you found this insightful and make sure to join us next week to see what's buzzing.

#559 - Can I Still Sell My Amazon Business in 2024?

Ever dreamt of cashing out big time on your Amazon business? Scott Deetz of the Northbound Group, an Amazon business exit expert, joins us today to unravel the strategies that could lead to a windfall sale in 2024. His expertise in the shifting sands of Amazon acquisitions is not just a beacon for those sailing towards a lucrative exit, but a lifeline for those aiming to navigate the complex seas of e-commerce business sales. Together, let’s dissect the importance of positioning your business as an alluring catch for an array of buyers, from eager individual investors to the more discerning eyes of private equity firms. Scott shares golden nuggets on how diversifying your business and sharpening your niche can amplify your business's appeal and, crucially, its final selling price.

The conversation takes a turn towards the post-sale horizon, where your involvement could sweeten the deal even more. We dive into the world of non-competes and post-sale roles, revealing how your sustained presence and niche passion might command a higher premium and ensure a smoother transition for the new owners. Moreover, Scott illuminates the strategic planning and negotiation maneuvers that can elevate your business from a standard market offering to a premium, sought-after asset. With his guidance, even the most veiled aspects of exit planning become clear, from managing the intricacies of your financials to negotiating earnouts that benefit both parties.

Wrapping up, we pivot to the ultimate goal: securing seven to eight-figure exits that transform your financial landscape. Scott's advice ranges from the practical—such as maintaining a robust product pipeline and savvy capital management—to the tactical, like understanding the fresh impact Amazon fees may have on the buyer's calculus.

In episode 559 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Scott discuss:

• 00:00 - Amazon Business Exit Strategies in 2024
• 05:19 - Evolution of Successful Amazon Business Exits 
• 07:07 - Maximizing Amazon Seller Exit Strategies
• 16:11 - Financial Freedom and Business Exit Strategies 
• 16:28 - Maximizing Business Exits With Strategic Planning
• 22:08 - Exit Planning and Negotiation Strategies
• 25:03 - Maximizing Business Value Through Strategic Planning
• 28:25 - Strategies for 7-8 Figure Exits
• 31:08 - Capital Strategy for Business Growth
• 34:43 - The Importance of Business Forecasting
• 36:00 - Actionable Knowledge and Contact Information

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► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft

► Watch The Podcasts On YouTube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Is exiting your business just a dream now, in 2024? Are people and companies still buying Amazon businesses? Today's guest is going to talk about a deal he just helped close for an Amazon seller that got him a payday in the millions of dollars. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think.

Bradley Sutton:

And before we get started, just a quick shout out I want you guys to make sure to check out our Helium 10 Elite program. If you want to get in private meetings with Kevin King, you want to have one-on-one calls with me and Carrie and get some exclusive help, get access to certain cool exclusive training, like the exit ticket, like we're going to talk about today, make sure to go to h10.me/Elite and find out all the benefits of this program. As a matter of fact, we've got a special workshop that we are doing in person only for Elite members in Madrid, and I was just talking to our guest today, Scott, that you know. We tried to get him to go out there, but the schedules couldn't make it. But we'll have to get you out to one of these Elite workshops soon. Scott huh?

Scott:

Sounds great Absolutely.

Bradley Sutton:

Might not be in Madrid, though, like that's kind of like a one-time thing. We'll have to pick one of your other bucket list places. But anyway, Scott, you know you've been on the podcast a few times. You know you're one of the world's most known experts as far as how to exit your Amazon business and setting up. You know your company for exit, but in case you know, this might be one of the somebody's first episode listening to you, just maybe a little bit of brief background on your self-introduction.

Scott:

Yeah, so no, happy to be back here again. I got my start. I've been an entrepreneur all my life and I completed my first exit. It was a software technology company. A little over 20 years now. I tried to do it myself and I actually screwed it up, and then I met my mentor, who was an investment banker, which is another name for a broker. He helped us exit and the short version is he got more than three times the price that I would have gotten on my own, and when that check cleared, I recognized that I needed to pay it forward, so to speak, and spend a lot of my time in my life helping entrepreneurs get what they deserve out of their company. So, I've been doing that ever since, after taking some time off, and then I found Amazon 2013. Just really at the beginning of the sort of FBA journey, started up Northbound Group, which is the investment banking firm that I co-founded in 2016. And essentially, the purpose was to help anybody that was either a physical good seller, like a Helium 10 client, or tech and tech-enabled software that works within this industry, to be able to get the valuation that they deserve and, more importantly even than that, structure it in a way that meets their life goals. So I've been doing it ever since and you know we've done a significant number of exits in the space probably, you know, six or $700 million worth of exits up until this point, and it's really fun to help entrepreneurs kind of get that life-changing payday.

Bradley Sutton:

You got to prepare something special. Once you hit that one billion, you know whichever seller is going to help you hit that one billion mark. You got to have something special for them. But if you guys want to get more of his backstories, it's funny, I just looked it up what episodes he was in. This was not planned at all, but his first episode was 295. His second episode he was on was 395. So this one is not going to be. We already passed 495, but, uh, but there we go, I, I, uh. If you guys want to get some more of his backstory, uh, make sure to check that out Now. Uh, the first thing I wanted to talk about today was, you know, 2024,. Um, this conversation about exiting is probably completely not completely very different than the conversations we had, uh, in episodes 295 and 395, which might've been at the peak of the aggregator space and things. Somebody might think, oh, wait a minute, I thought aggregators were done. Does this mean that pretty much, I have no chance to sell my business anymore in 2024. How can you correct that erroneous thought?

Scott:

Yeah, absolutely so. First thing is yeah, just about everything has changed, but I don't look at it as any more changes than what sellers experience on the platform right. Amazon comes out with new algorithms, there's new techniques, DSP advertising, all those things. We live in an industry that has that. My answer to it is twofold.  First of all, more than half the money you're ever going to get from your business and actually put in your own pocket not leaving in your business comes from when you exit. So you know, I always like to say that fundamental is the one thing that hasn't changed, whether it was three years ago or now. And the reality is for most people. You're building up an inventory business. You're putting a lot of your money back into funding your growth and that exit is what gets you that out of your business and into your personal account. So, said differently, more than 50 cents out of every dollar that you ever take home will come through your exit. So if you're not doing that last step, you're going to. You know you're giving up more than half the money. You're leaving it out on the table. So the fundamental need hasn't changed. What has changed is the type of business that you're going to need to have in order to get a successful exit, and we can spend more time talking about that.

Scott:

But the easiest way that I like to describe it was three years ago you could get a very high multiple for a company that wasn't really a business, it was just sort of a collection of successful products. Now you need to be thinking more about this as a real business with an audience, with a brand, with a cohesion to it. Three years ago, you could sell an Amazon business if it had five products in automotive and five products in supplement. Well, today you know, people are much more focused. They're smarter buyers out there. So the demand for why you should do it hasn't changed a bit. The way that you go about it needs to be more sophisticated because the buyers are more sophisticated. But to your last point, there are still a lot of buyers that are out there, not only the aggregators that have now merged and kind of gotten through the difficulties, but a lot of what are referred to as financial and strategic buyers beyond the aggregators. That can be exit opportunities for you.

Bradley Sutton:

I mean, I know there are still some aggregators out there, but other than that, what kind of companies or are they mainly individuals just looking to invest? Who's buying Amazon businesses these days?

Scott:

Yeah, sure, so it does vary. A lot of things vary by sort of size. So if I'm thinking about, if I want to build up a business and let's say I get the business to be a small business, it's maybe making $200,000 to $500,000 worth of profit in a year. Maybe it's selling around a million dollars. The type of buyer for that is not going to be the aggregators as much anymore. It's going to be more, like you said, individual buyers that are looking for a good return on their money. But also what we're finding is a lot of our larger Amazon sellers themselves are now looking to expand into new niches or to expand in their current niche. So you take an Amazon seller that sold their business three years ago for $5 to $10 million. They're now faced with the decision do I decide to start from scratch or do I find a small business that I could apply some capital to and grow it faster? And you'll find those types of buyers I will call them individual buyers in the smaller size market.

Scott:

When you get over a half a million dollars worth of earnings in the business, that opens up now kind of the aggregators, and they're still out there. There's less of them. They're more focused on niches. But the key part is if you're in a specific niche, you'll have a good chance for an exit. What you can't do now that you maybe could get away with three years ago is you can't just say I'm an Amazon business and I've got a bunch of products in a bunch of different categories. That is much a harder exit to do because it's no longer just about optimizing on Amazon, it's about really having a customer channel and a pipeline. And then if you get over a million dollars worth of profit, if you are a larger seller out there, your options also start to include what are referred to as private equity companies. And you're now big enough that a company that is in the business of owning companies that's essentially what a private equity company does they will look to you as what's called a bolt-on to one of their existing platforms. So let's say they bought a large business in health and beauty and you're in a niche of health and beauty and they can continue to expand their reach and capability. You start to open yourself up to that buyer. And then the top niche, which is a very small minority. But for those people out there, if you get north of three or $4 million of profit yourself and you become a very large seller. Then you can actually go to the private equity companies directly and become what's referred to as a platform company, which means that they may then look to have you buy other types of businesses underneath your organization.

Bradley Sutton:

I'm not 100% sure I remember this correctly, but I vaguely remember, you know, in one of your previous episodes asking uh about, like, the importance of multi-channel. Like me, you know, maybe I'm not a gigantic seller, but hey, you know, like our two people does, does it increase my valuation if I, if I already started selling on Walmart or had my own website, and if I remember, like I'm not sure which one it was, you know it wasn't, it didn't seem to be too big of a thing. Is that still the case now? Or is it now more important? Does it give you some more valuation if you are established on some other platforms instead of just an Amazon USA exclusive company? And when I say other platforms, I also mean, you know, Amazon Germany or Amazon Japan, like what are some things that do add value to your valuation?

Scott:

Yeah, it is more value today than it was maybe a few years ago. So, I think that that is correct. I'm going to say that with a couple of caveats. The first one is that the diversification is really what you're referring to, right? The number one thing that my mentor taught me that I have lived with now for 20 years is we have to remember that it's not what the seller is selling, it's what the buyer is buying, and the easiest way I explain that to an Amazon seller is it's the same thing that you do on your product listing every day.  You speak in terms of the benefits that your customer is going to have when they buy your particular product. It's the same thing with your particular business. So, what is the benefit that your buyer is going to get when they acquire your business? And one of the things that they think about first is all of the things that can go wrong and all of the risk that might be in the business, and diversifying across channels reduces risks.

Scott:

So if I've got all of the least diversified Amazon business would be. I'm on Amazon.com only and I have 80% of my revenue is in one product SKU right If that SKU goes down game over. So if you think about diversification of risk, you can diversify in a few different directions. One of them is diversifying by number of products out there. Okay, so, even if I'm all on Amazon.com but I have, you know, 25 or 30 products that are out there and no one product has, you know, 25% of my revenue, that's one level of diversification. The next level of diversification that I would encourage people to explore would be diversification by Amazon marketplace. So, like you said, whether it be Canada or the UK or Europe, diversing by marketplace. The next level of diversification would be by other marketplaces. So think Walmart.com or other types, if you're in a niche of pets being on Chewy or other types of things. And then the next one is diversifying by e-commerce, and that would be think of that as Shopify direct to consumer, where it's a different. You're not on a marketplace Now, you're driving your own traffic. And then the next level of diversification is if you get into retail and wholesale.

Scott:

So, for each business here's the key point I listed them from the easiest to do to the hardest, typically. And so you don't want to diversify just for diversification sake, because each channel that you bring up has to be a meaningful amount of revenue and profit. Otherwise, it's more of a distraction than a diversification. So if, for example, if I'm going to diversify into Europe, I want to make sure that my European presence is, at a minimum, 10 to 15% of my profits as the US. If I diversify and I only do two or three or 4% now, I'm maintaining a whole bunch more work in my business but I'm not really adding meaningfully to the value of it. So the rule of thumb that I like to use is that any channel that you bring up, you'd like to have it be able to be 15% of your main channel's revenue. So if you're doing a million dollars on Amazon in revenue and you diversify to Shopify, you'd like to be able to be doing, over a course of a certain amount of time, 150 to 200,000 at similar profit margins. When you can do that, it is definitely more value because it shows the buyer that your brand is valued and it also diversifies the risk across multiple platforms.

Bradley Sutton:

I'm going to go back to the beginning, a little bit about how some people can start to get ready, but just to skip to the end, you don't have to give names or specific details, but just to help people understand what's happening, 2023, 2024, with what the potential is, can you give us a rough picture of a recent exit that an Amazon seller had, like maybe you know some details? Like hey, they started selling Amazon three years ago and they built it up to this amount of sales and they just had an exit for this amount and now they're living full-time on a cruise ship. I don't know, just uh, talk a little bit about a cool, inspiring story you know about, just so people understand the importance of this conversation that we're having here, what it could mean for them.

Scott:

Yeah, absolutely. I'll give an example of a transaction that we did. Let's call it maybe around the beginning part of the year. So I had a seller that was on Amazon, grew up the brand, tried to diversify off from Amazon, actually really struggled. It did not go well. The performance of the company went down. They repositioned the company around some different types of products. We started taking them to market call it middle of last year. We completed an exit sort of Q1 of this year, and think of it in this terms. We like to think of it as everything is a multiple times your profitability. So think of it as they had grown up and by profitability we refer to something called EBITDA or net profit, and so they had gotten the company. It had struggled. It had gone down to where it was only maybe as low as $100,000 a year profit when COVID and everything was changing, Very nervous about could they keep going forward. They doubled down, they worked really hard, they got the profitability up to north of a million dollars and we were able to exit the company for around what's called a four and a half multiple, which meant that if you had a million dollars of profit, you multiply that times 4.5. So you got a $4.5 million exit and what was really exciting about that one was that they sort of tasted defeat. They were really successful and they're really the story of sticking to it.

Scott:

They had to change a lot of things, a lot of stressful times. They could have given up when it was at its low point and literally walked away from it, buckled down, really figured it out, repositioned some of the products and product lines, got it back to that level and now they have an earn out on top of that, which, for people on the call, just means that, in addition to the initial amount, they have an ability to earn more. If the business does well, they're helping the buyer out for a year and they have a chance to get you know, call it between five and a half or, you know around maybe five and a half million dollars. So really fun and exciting. Someone I'd known in the industry for a while and obviously, depending on where you want to live and how you want to live, that goes a long way toward setting your financial freedom in place so that you can go decide what you want to go do in life.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, okay, that's pretty good, that's pretty cool. That's a big payday for that person. I think for anybody listening to this episode, we would be happy to have something like that as a goal. Now I'm just curious. I don't know if I've ever asked you this before, but from when I talk to people who have exited, there seems to be like two different ways. Like sometimes they're just like complete exits, like they have nothing to do at all with the business anymore. It's like you know they maybe check on it every now and then just to see how the, how their baby is doing on Amazon. And there's others where it's like they stay on as advisors and they even have a, you know, something built into the contract, where they still get a piece of the profits in the future as long as they consult, and things like that. What's more common nowadays? And would you suggest that somebody does one over the other?

Scott:

Yeah, this is a big area where the market has shifted, because the original thesis three years ago by the aggregators was I can run these businesses better than this small little seller that doesn't know what they're doing. What they found out was is that? The answer to that is generally no. The marketer that understood the niche, that understood the audience, that was passionate about it, is a valuable part of the equation and we've always taken that approach. So most of the exits that we have done and I would actually recommend that most sellers think in these terms is you used to be able to exit a business and then leave within 60 or 90 days transition and a lot of people, when they think about an exit, they think about I'm going to get one check at closing for 100% of my business and then I'm done within 60 days. The reality is that those types of buyers are often what I refer to as bottom feeders. They're paying you 100% cash up front and they're generally going to offer you a lower valuation than anybody else. So think of it as back to if I have a half a million dollars of profit and I could exit, an all cash buyer might be willing to offer you two times your profit, or a million dollars. Okay, the buyers that will be willing to pay more.

Scott:

One of the other things my mentor taught me was Scott always ask the question who should pay the most? And the person that should pay the most is somebody that values not just the SKUs but the skills that you bring to the equation, and they don't want to be dependent on you, but they want a good handoff period. So I like to tell people, think in terms of staying on and I would rather get you a multiple of three and have, you know, 30% of it contingent on you staying on and the business going well, than a multiple of two because it's all upside. And so I think you should be thinking in terms of staying on for six months to a year, depending on how complex your business is. A premium buyer is going to ask you to bear about 25 to 30% of the deal in some sort of contingency, and then there's two types of contingencies. There's what's called an earn out or a stabilization payment and the problem that a lot of people I'm sure people have heard about this in the industry. A lot of people didn't hit those because they sold to a buyer let's say it was an aggregator and the profits went down and it was what's called a cliff. It just fell off, they didn't hit, they got $0 on their earn out. We like to do a lot more of what are called rolled equity or synthetic rolled equity, where it's not a cliff, it's just a percentage of the deal that gets paid out pro rata based on how well it does, and so there's more to go into maybe than the scope of this. But if you're interested in getting a premium deal, recognize that if you can stay on and give the buyer comfort that they're going to be getting a good business and you can help it continue to succeed and continue to grow, you can earn a lot more because the buyer is going to be. You know. It's a true win-win deal as opposed to a sell and a walk away.

Bradley Sutton:

Another question I was thinking about when it comes to exits and I'm no legal expert, but I'm just wondering if this something I saw on the news has anything to do with the exit businesses. I know in the past, like, let's say, my coffin shelf business is 10 times as big as it is and then I sold it. Like usually that person would want me to sign some kind of maybe like non-compete, where I'm not going to go the day after I sell the business and start a new coffin shelf company to compete with them. But does this new ruling that I read about non-competes are not allowed or something in the employment world non-competes are not allowed or something in the employment world does that have anything to do with the exit, where now aggregators or buyers of businesses can't get the seller to agree that they are not going to dabble in that niche anymore, or what's going on with that?

Scott:

Yeah, so this is a really good point and I'll make the point about the non-compete and then I'll talk about a little bit more globally. Specifically, regarding non-competes, the legislation that is being proposed in certain types of states like California is that you can't have employment non-competes, but has not extended to what are called acquisition non-competes. So when you're buying an asset and you're a buyer, you can still require the seller to not compete in the niche. And the broader point is that all of these things become negotiating points with a particular buyer. So we like to negotiate what are called really narrow non-competes, which will essentially mean that in your example, I will not compete with any product, that I will not start up a new business that has any product that is directly or sometimes indirectly competitive. Some buyers will come to you and the most broadest is they'll say you cannot do anything when you sell me the business you're in supplements. You have to be out of the supplements category really really broad non-compete. So it's very important that you recognize that there's two things that are going on in the deal there's the economic terms and then there's all of the legal terms and negotiations that are going on.

Scott:

How do you make sure that your you know your buyer has enough money to be able to pay your earnouts? Or, if you haven't paid your sales taxes for your off Amazon sales, does that kill a deal? We just did a deal where there were some unpaid sales tax liability to the tune of more than a million dollars, but we still got the deal done. We just negotiated it that that money went into an escrow and then we were able to save the deal, so to speak. So I think it's really important as a seller, you know and I found this out when I did my first deal, and you know now we've done dozens and dozens and dozens of them you just keep getting better at understanding what are the best terms to negotiate, which is why I recommend whether you use a northbound or anybody else in the space. It really isn't something to try and do yourself, because you really need. Your job is to be the good person that the buyer likes you. My job isn't to be liked, but it's to be respected and to know what is the market that my client deserves. And so there's a natural call it mutton, jeff or however you want to look at it, there's a natural tension on the system that you want to have and you want to be able to push on and negotiate these terms, like non-competes and other ones, as aggressively as possible to protect yourself.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, Good to know. Good to know Now. You recently updated your module in our Freedom Ticket course. This is the one that all Helium 10 paying members have access to, regardless of the level, or even the starter plan has access. A brief overview of what you talk about in the module. I know we touched on some of the subjects today, but what is somebody who is a Helium 10 member? They can literally, after listening to this episode, go into Freedom Ticket and switch or go to your module. What are they going to learn in that one?

Scott:

Yeah, why I was excited to put it together and we put a lot of time into doing it is the key thing is that it talks about is exit planning from day one, and so the way that I like to think about it is, the time that you figure out how you should get out of a business is before you get into it, and so the exit ticket program. It's broken up into six modules. It starts out and it's got a workbook that goes along with it, and it starts out with you as an owner. What do you want out of this business? If you want to exit this business for $2 million, that's a lot different than for $20 million. So what niche you go in, what products you select? It goes through all of that first. Then what it does is it helps you. In module two, it helps you understand your finances. So for many Amazon sellers, they're more marketers than finance and they need someone to give them an understanding of what's important financially to have accurate, but I want it specific to e-commerce. I don't want to go learn a general accounting class, and so module two is it's all about the numbers. Module three then talks all about the buyers. So if I have to start thinking from. This buyer is my ultimate customer mindset, because that's what they really are. How do I learn more about what they value?

Scott:

Then module four goes into what I like to refer to as the mini exits. How do I raise capital for my business? How do I maybe bring on a partner? How do I reward a key employee as I grow? But there's usually about five or six key inflection points that you're doing when you're growing your business that have a huge impact on the value of your business. So that's module four, and then it moves sequentially to module five and six, which are essentially how do I go through the deal process itself? What do I need to have ready? It's something called a data room. What do I need to put in there so that I know that I'm doing this correctly? And then how do I negotiate a premium transaction for my business? So the thing I like about it is, even if you're not thinking about exiting right now, we built it in a way that it gives you the chronological journey for how to do everything right and when you put all of those things together, that's what's going to give you the highest likelihood of hitting that other 50 cents on the dollar payday of actually getting a successful exit. So for me, that's what I think, people, wherever you are in your Amazon journey, you might not need to go through all six modules at once, but start getting in there and start thinking about this, because it is a critically important topic and it takes a little bit of time to really digest how you want to go about doing it. So why not start early?

Bradley Sutton:

So everybody, after this call, if you have a starter up plan, get the base, the first module which is just recently updated in Freedom Ticket in your you just hit your learning hub on the top of your screen in your Helium 10 dashboard. So hit Freedom Ticket 4.0. and on the left hand side, go hit financial fundamentals and then his module right here, preparing your e-commerce business for exit right here, this good looking guy with a northbound shirt that you might recognize is going to be right there. And then, once you got that foundation, then definitely, if you're a dime member or above, go to the exit ticket program that he highlighted. All there a very, a lot of lot of modules there. There's, there's, you know, a good um, you know 10, 20 different videos on different topics. That, really, from A to Z, is going to help you get your company ready for exit. And again, like, like he said, you know this isn't something that, oh, you don't need to start thinking about this once you hit the seven figure or eight figure mark. You know, from day one, he, you know, Scott really has always said that you need to be preparing for that. So make sure to go to Exit Ticket.

Bradley Sutton:

If you want more information on the Exit Ticket program, go to h10.me/exitticket, h10.me/exitticket. Just some strategies for some of the newer sellers, but they've got some lofty aspirations. I'm not just some person who's doing arbitrage or wholesale which there's nothing wrong with doing but I'm trying to build a private label empire here and I do want to exit one day and have that four or $5 million payday like somebody else you just mentioned just got. What are some things I can be doing right now, today, to put myself get started on the right foot here?

Scott:

Yeah, so a couple of things come to mind. First of all, this point about why you want to study learning how to exit. One of the phrases I like to use is what's good for selling a business is usually really good for running a business as well, and so a lot of the strategies that you'll learn in the full exit ticket program, or even in the module as a part of Freedom Ticket, these are good things that are going to help you run a better business, so it's very important for that. You think, from that lens, for those of you that are really going for a seven or an eight-figure exit, there's a couple things I'd like to say. Number one is it can happen. We have taken dozens of e-commerce entrepreneurs that were just like you. They were starting out maybe five, six years ago, and we've done exits that 35 million, 20 million, we've done 60 million. These big exits, they can happen, and so it's a mindset thing. I'm not saying everybody needs to go for that big of an exit, but I just want to let you know that there is a market for these types of businesses to be able to exit for seven and eight figures.

Scott:

The key part that I would really focus on is two things. One of them is having a brand such that you can always bring out new products, because, whether it be on Amazon or other marketplaces, there's a shelf life to products, and so you have to always be thinking about you know how can I continue to successfully launch new products? A lot of people will you know they'll get a couple of good products going and then they kind of get you know. They rest on their heels a little bit there. I always like to think about you need to really focus on always having new products in your pipeline. And then the second thing that I would really focus on is getting very clear understanding of not just what's called your accrual profit. Accrual profit is very important to understand because that's how you're actually valued and the way to think about it is if I sell $1,000 worth of products and they cost me $200, I match the amount of costs that I have to the revenue, so it's what's called a smoother way of tracking it. But what most people don't focus a lot on and that's in the full exit ticket program is your cash flow and making sure that you have enough resources, whether it be debt, that you have access to line of credit or whether or not it be inventory financing.

Scott:

But as you grow, you're going to find you increasingly need what's called networking capital, and so I think from that side of things, I would really say to people make sure you kind of understand what's the cash that I'm going to need in the next year to actually launch these products successfully. Because a lot of people will think of it as, oh, it only cost me like $5,000 to launch a product. Well, that's the initial order, but if that thing is going to be successful, it's probably going to cost you $30,000 or $40,000 to scale up your orders in terms of cash flow into it. And so sometimes you'll find people that they'll say, oh, I'm going to launch five products, but they don't have $200,000 of free cash to be able to do it. You launch them, they run out of stock and you do that. So that would be other than the typical things that you might get with your Helium 10 tools. The thing I really would encourage you to focus on is the people that we see get the seven and eight figure exits. They almost always build, they have good launching capabilities, they've got good products, but almost all of them have found a way whether they're raising equity from I call it rich uncle Bob who's going to put $50,000 and say, hey, I'm in the Amazon game, or whether or not it's a lender or something.

Scott:

But you are going to need to figure out a capital strategy which leads to and we help people with capital strategy all the time at Northbound. And the one adage I've learned I've been an entrepreneur for 30 some years now is the time to raise money and get financing is when you don't need it, because nobody ever wants to give you money when you need it, and so you've got to be thinking. It's kind of the exact opposite. You get a successful couple products that's a great time to show profitability in the company and get a line of credit from someone, and then you use that. But if you actually need the money, then it seems like nobody's out there to borrow it to you. So that'd be a few things I'd really focus people know your numbers really well and figure out how you're going to grow and raise money to grow.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, two questions we as Amazon sellers and thinking about selling our business. What should we be thinking about that you find that most people out there aren't thinking about? And then the second thing maybe deals that started already happening early January or something that are still in process. Are you seeing some of these new Amazon fees affecting it? Like are some buyers getting a little bit hesitant? Like, wait a minute, I think the profit's going down. Or maybe some sellers like, oh my goodness, like I'm having to pay these new fees. Like are buyers going to get cold feet? So let's go ahead and close it off with those two questions there.

Scott:

Yeah, yeah. So the first one that I think about is most sellers don't spend enough time learning about buyers. So what I would say to you is take 5% of your time, two hours a week, and start thinking about your exit. And don't do it on a Monday when you're stressed out or something like that or you're burnt out, but really just say if more than half my money is gonna come from an exit, I'm gonna start spending 5% of my time and I'm gonna just start thinking about if I'm let's just say I'm in the automotive niche, who are the automotive buyers that are out there? I'm gonna start researching them. I encourage everybody, two or three years before you want to exit, just calling up a buyer and scheduling a meeting and learning how do they think about it. Go through courses like Exit Ticket. The smarter that you understand your buyer, the more you'll be kind of building it for that particular buyer segment. Now, I'm not saying you'll know your buyer by name, but you should start to learn your buyer by category and start to think about what they value. For example, a lot of them want to have a minimum of 15% profit margin, so you might as well learn that that's what the rules of the game are and start learning how to talk their language. And the analogy I use for that in the Midwest is you can't just go at harvest time and try and harvest. You have to plant the seeds early and you got to grow it, and that's the same thing for your business. You have to think about what is going to make my business exitable and then start building toward that.

Scott:

And then the second. I think the second thing that you talked about is Amazon is always changing fees. You've got different levels of profitability. Absolutely, buyers are going to be only concerned about what the future profitability of the business looks like. They may calculate it based on something called your trailing 12 months earnings, which basically means your profit for the last year, but they don't get a dime of the profit that you had the last year. You already blew that out in Vegas or whatever it is that you did with it. All they care about is the future profitability of your business. So at Northbound we spend an enormous amount of time presenting a very logical forecast, and I encourage sellers that's probably another thing. I would say not enough sellers spend enough time doing is actually forecasting the growth of your business out into the future, even though it's going to change. The better you can show a buyer what the potential of the business is, the better you can break out of a low multiple and really show them that. And so if your forecast is showing that with new Amazon fees you're getting less profitable, well then you're going to have to account for that and be able to explain that you're either raising prices or you're shifting your inventory strategy or those different types of things.

Scott:

But really the key to that is having a really solid understanding of what start with. Don't make it too complicated, but start with all of your products that you already have in your funnel. List the number of sales that you make per day and forecast out for the rest of 2024. And then list in any new products that you're going to do. Do the exact same exercise. Look at your you know, do I get a holiday bump or not? And start to be thinking about your business in what I call looking through the car's dashboard. Don't just look out the front window, don't just look in the rearview mirror, and that's another big thing that people get too busy to forecast and then they don't really understand and set goals for their business.

Bradley Sutton:

100%, 100%. Well, Scott, thank you so much for all this actionable knowledge that you dropped on us. If anybody wants to reach out guys, don't forget to go to hubHelium10.com. Just type in Northbound and there'll be a contact form right there and links to Scott's website. Hit that get in touch button right there and Scott and his team will be more than happy to help you guys out with your exit questions. Scott, thank you so much for joining us and although, sad, I can't see you in Madrid, I'm sure we'll link up at a conference soon.

Scott:

Okay, that sounds great. All right, take care, Bradley. Thanks a lot.

#558 - Amazon Brand Building, Celebrity Partnerships & More!

Have you ever wondered what it takes to build a brand that thrives in the crowded e-commerce marketplace? Janelle Page, a brand-building expert, joins us today to unfold the strategies behind her success. She's the mastermind who's been turning heads with her product launches, teaming with celebrities and YouTubers to elevate brands to unprecedented levels. Janelle breaks down the art of weaving brand identity and storytelling into products that not only look good but solve real-world problems. From stylish protective eyewear to celebrity-backed health supplements, tune in to learn how Janelle's approach is revolutionizing the industry.

When it comes to spreading the word about a brand, influencer marketing is the game-changer. In this episode, we dissect how to navigate through this landscape, striking genuine partnerships and leveraging platforms like TikTok and Amazon to maintain brand momentum. We get into the nitty-gritty of budgeting for influencer campaigns, the secret sauce of engaging organically with online communities, and the savvy of paid advertising to funnel traffic. Whether you've got a hefty budget to play with or you're scrappy and bootstrapping your way up, this episode is packed with actionable insights to help your brand shine.

Beyond the confines of Amazon lies a vast expanse of e-commerce potential waiting to be tapped. This episode paints the transformative journey of Dolce Foglia, a brand that's soaring by mastering a clever blend of SEO and influencer marketing, with a strong B2B backbone. Janelle shares the blueprint for expanding into international marketplaces and prepping for the future of global online trade. If you're eager to discover the next chapter in your brand's story or just love a good entrepreneurial success tale, this heart-to-heart is your front-row ticket to inspiration.

In episode 558 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Janelle discuss:

• 00:00 - Brand Building Strategies With Janelle
• 01:18 - Entrepreneurial Success and Brand Partnerships
• 08:36 - Influencer Marketing Strategies and Tips
• 15:27 - Choosing the Best Marketplaces for Launch
• 16:35 - Maximizing Sales With Amazon and Shopify
• 22:57 - Building Brands Through Storytelling
• 25:52 - Product Launch Strategy Without Revealing Secrets
• 31:34 - Expanding E-Commerce Success Beyond Amazon
• 31:58 - Expanding Amazon Brand Into Other Marketplaces

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Today we've got Janelle back on. The show sold over 100 million dollars in her time on Amazon and other platforms, and now she's working with a lot of celebrities and YouTubers to launch their brands and she's going to share her best brand building strategies with you all today. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show. That's a completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. And, as we do, we start off these episodes with a serious strategy. And, as we do, we start off these episodes with a serious strategy. And one thing hope you guys know that in Helium 10, there is a full inventory management tool, and that's exactly how I am able to manage all of my accounts in just a couple of minutes a week, making sure I don't run out. I don't have too much inventory in Amazon. So if you guys want to find out more information about our inventory management, go to h10.me/inventorymanagement. And now we've got somebody who has done everything from inventory management to launching brands, to working with celebrities and whatnot. We got Janelle back. I believe this is the third time you're now on our show. Welcome back, Janelle.

Janelle

Hey, thank you, Bradley, it's a pleasure. I always enjoy shooting the bull with you and learning what you've been up to too.

Bradley Sutton:

I love it. I love it. Now. In the past, you've been on episodes. By the way, if anybody wants to check out her full backstory episode 294 and episode 401, you can hear about how she was working for companies that were doing nine figures a year on Amazon. We talked about stuff like my love for red iguana, uh, Mexican food from her, uh, salt Lake, uh, where she's at now. But we want to catch up because we haven't had you on since, like December of 2022. So you know, around that time, you were talking a lot about how you had done this crazy Shopify launch. I did $500,000 in a weekend and you were doing Kickstarter launches and stuff like that launch. I did $500,000 in a weekend and you were doing Kickstarter launches and stuff like that. So, since that time, what has been your?

Janelle

main things like in 2023 and now almost halfway through 2024? Wow gosh, I didn't realize it had been so long since we last talked. So last year I was saying 2023, I think I did over six or seven new brand launches and even like brand new brands and also new products, and they were all six to seven figure launches Shopify, and then we moved to Amazon. I've been partnering with YouTube, YouTube celebrities I guess we call them YouTubers and celebrities to build products and brands and that's what I've been doing. So I mean we could probably include links to a lot of those products or whatever would be the easiest way if people wanted to go check them out. But we did a power tool line Athena power tools. We've done more products with Matt's off road recovery If anyone's familiar with that YouTuber super, super fun channel. We did shop shades with John Malecki. He's an incredible carpenter, woodworker.

Janelle

He does like live edge furniture and those river tables We've launched these totally sexy like protective eyewear, personal protective eyewear Cause, like you know, safe is sexy and usually like the if you think about traditionally eyewear, like for people who are in the woodworking industry, they're like ugly, they're hideous, they're these big plastic goggles and nobody wears them. So you know, he even noticed in his own shop, like my people aren't wearing their protective eyewear. Heck, I don't even want to wear my protective eyewear. It was kind of a thing. So he came to me with this idea like I want to make, like you know, the Oakley or like the sexy shop shade.

Janelle

So maybe we'll throw some links because these products they turned out beautiful, the branding which you know I kind of love. That's why I'm seeing I want to make it super sexy. Super was a. Oh, Dr. Eckberg, we launched his supplement line, did incredible. So you've XCS. So I'll throw those links, cause I always think it's so helpful for people to see. I think when you you do a killer launch, you gotta have a killer video, you gotta have a great brand, the look and feel, the storytelling, and if they just go to my landing pages and check it out, I think maybe they'll get some ideas for their brands.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, Now you know you're talking about brand building. That's actually part of your module that you recently recorded for the new Freedom Ticket 4.0. Anybody who's a Helium 10 member can go get that module. But what were some of the main points from there as far as brand building, and why do you think it's probably more important than ever before here in 2024 to talk about this subject?

Janelle

Yeah, definitely go check out the module, but for me, that's the only way I know how to build and sell brands. Is I build a brand Like I didn't come to Amazon, the traditional way that some people, like they use tools to look up, like what the top selling products are and they try to enter into, you know, the market and create something that already has search, demand, the customer and like thinking about, like a problem that I have. Or when I partner with, like, say, a celebrity or YouTuber, there's usually, like I was just saying with John, a problem that he wants to solve, like hey, man, I don't want to wear my personal protective eyewear because it's hot, ugly and I can't see through it and it's there's. I look like a goon and I'm on YouTube trying to look cool, so I don't want to wear this, so that's want to solve. I always tell someone if you've got a problem that you want solved, there's a chance that there's a lot of people like you out there that also want to solve that problem, and so that's how I approach a brand.

Janelle

Building a brand is first, let's solve a problem for a person, and I keep that person in mind Because then when you're trying to think well, which product should I launch next? It's like well, what other problems does a person a carpenter or woodworker have that I can solve? Because John is the avatar. He's intimately acquainted with all the frustrations or the opportunities within the realm of a serious or even just a hobbyist woodworker, and so you know the next product he starts talking about that he gets passionate about. He's like man, I want like a pocket chisel. You know like, yeah, you have like pocket knives that like you know like a switchblade or things like that, like guys like tools, it's like a power tool. But this is like not a power tool, it's like a cool like. Can you imagine having when you're doing woodworking, like a chisel is just kind of like a boring tool, but it's actually something they use a lot when you're doing like live edge type furniture work. So why not make a pocket ch almost like a switchblade? That becomes super cool and fun that people would geek out about. If you're a woodworker, you know, and so you have this ability to start creating stories and products to serve that person that you can geek out about.

Janelle

I just got off a console I was doing with a client that they own. Basically they're a wholesaler of ATV parts. You know the side-by-sides stuff like Polaris, St. Polaris, Hondas and stuff and they were asking for brand help because they're like we just feel like we're just hawking wares all day long. We really want to be a brand. So I spent the hour talking to them like how could this I haven't said the client name, but how could you become like the Tesla in the side-by-side space? That's what they want to be. They want to be the premium go-to innovation, like if, if you are into ATVs, this is the brand for you, because they have everything and anything under the sun and the way that they teach and educate and innovate is going to be, you know, heads up, shoulders above everybody else, instead of just selling a bunch of parts on Amazon or on their website.

Janelle

So that's what we're working to create. What's the story going to be? You know how do we convey that in our messaging. What's the look and feel like, who is our avatar? So we spent the whole time fleshing that out and you know they're excited now. Now they have a very clear direction on what type of content they're going to create, what type of ads, like messaging, to attract that ideal customer. And also we created a product roadmap for them. Like, where do we go next with our line extensions that will best serve this person that we now have in mind with everything that we do in our brand? So we create this movement kind of a thing.

Bradley Sutton:

You've talked about working with YouTubers, celebrities and stuff, and obviously I think when people come with that personal brand awareness, it's a leg up on the competitions. You've already got a bunch of raving fans and it doesn't necessarily have to be celebrities. Everybody might have some kind of specialty. I used to do the Zumba stuff and so I had probably a following on YouTube and stuff, and so that would have been something where, first of all, just like you said, I would have known the pain points that maybe other Zumba instructors had or people dancing Zumba, and then I already had the initial following. So I always think that if somebody does have something, yes, you should double down.

Bradley Sutton:

That being said, let's flip the switch. You know I'm sure you have clients who are not celebrities, so they're not YouTubers, they're not famous. So how do you and that's actually most of our listeners, you know potentially might not have a following? So if I'm just you know, joe entrepreneur, sally entrepreneur sitting out there listening to this podcast, how can I do what you just said? But where I kind of maybe don't have that headstart on the audience and the people who know me, etc.

Janelle

Love it? That's a great question. So, like there's people that you can hire that do this right and you can do it yourself. You can reinvent the wheel Like I have a vast network now. So when I am working with clients I usually will just be like hey, here's my guy that will build your influencer marketing program in-house. Like we're going to use him, like I have options, like we can do the training we can. I can show you how we've built it out and you know you can do this. Or I can bring in this guy and he will do it in three months and it's this amount of investment and you will have like a fully flown, blown out, like gifting program, influencer marketing program which, honestly today, like it's the fastest way to grow a brand like influencer marketing. So if you don't have the audience, you aren't the influence and you don't partner with one, you've got to build out an influencer program and you know there's a lot of people that take oh, do you use, join brands or use. You know like, uh, drawing a blank on all the 50,000 I've used over the years, but really it's, there's so many softwares now you can use and to have someone in house all day long just reaching out and doing gifting and getting influencer content Cause the thing with the influencer marketing why it's so beautiful is not only do you get these people posting on your behalf about your product, but they also create content for you that you can amplify. With paid, you can run ads behind it. That's the best type of content and the highest converting ad material that you're going to get is content from actual people using your products and talking about what they love about it Social proof built right in. So brands I think that everyone knows that that's what you need to do now to like generate traffic, generate brand awareness.

Janelle

And Amazon, to me, is like this ecosystem. I always think like, think of a wheel right, and there's all these different sales channels and Amazon is just one spoke in that wheel. It's a very important spoke, but your website's a spoke. You know Walmart.com is a spoke. You've got retail. You've got affiliates. You've got I mean how many other places that you sell? I don't know.

Janelle

I've sold on so many different marketplaces Temu, you know, TikTok shop. There's so many spokes now and I don't like to have just one that I rely on. All of these make my wheel run true, right and spin like a flywheel and I can get speed. So when I think about that, with influencer marketing, anytime we build out this influencer wheelhouse, which we need, or influencer marketing program, they're going to be driving sales on Amazon website Temu, TikTok. It doesn't matter, I am I am sales channel agnostic. What I'm doing primarily when I build a brand is I'm creating desire, demand and a movement so people can buy wherever they want to buy. Okay, so influencer marketing today is just. It's just how we market best. It's how I do it. It's been very successful.

Bradley Sutton:

Let's say I don't have that huge of a budget. Is TikTok the most economical way to find potential influencers? Or should I go use one of those services?

Janelle

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, all those Influencers are on a lot of different platforms. I really like having a well diversified like just how I diversify in my investments. Yeah, have influencers on all types of platforms, but how to go find them? I mean, you're going to need to have. I say, if you want to launch a brand, you're going to need to have a budget to give away product or get product in people's hands, like you should plan on that. That's why sometimes you know, I see all these gurus on you know whatever YouTube or in my feed running ads saying you can make millions. You know, starting an Amazon business and you know, with only $2,000 investment and I'm just like man, that's so not true. You need money to get the product and the development and you've got to buy inventory, and then you're going to have a budget to give product, you and you've got to buy inventory and then you're going to have a budget to give product. You know, get product in people's hands to get some feedback or just some traction, or you've got to pay for it. You have to generate sales somehow. You have to generate awareness somehow. That's paid or that's organic or you can use your time. I do want to suggest and I have done this the scrappy way because I have more money than time now I will short circuit things by paying ads. It's the fastest way to generate traffic. Buy it right. If you don't, if you have more time than you have money, then there's organic strategies that work incredibly well.

Janelle

I mean 10 years ago, how I built my brands, when I had no influencer marketing strategy and I had no celebrities. I was partnering with is. I was literally in Facebook communities, on Reddit, and I was posting in communities that had people like me. I knew where my avatar was. So, like, let's just say, right now I'm working on that celebrity line with the Huffs they're dancers, right, let's pretend that I didn't have celebrities. But I wanted to create a supplement line for artistic athletes or dancers. I would be on every subreddit right now that has, you know, artistic athletes or dancers in their hip hop. Um, you know Zumba, like you said, salsa, cha-cha, tango, and I'd be talking about my product and what I've developed and what I'm working on. I'd start just from conception, taking them through that whole journey. I think there's been some great books written over the years, like show your work. Um, you know, build out loud, like taking them along on the journey, getting feedback the whole way, so that I start building that audience right. And then also Facebook. There's groups. There's so many Facebook groups about dancing.

Janelle

Right now I'm working with a brand that does flavoring right, and so we're in every group that has a baker's, confectioner's, like coffee makers anyone that's like would use flavoring we're in there. We're asking questions all the time about a new flavor we're developing, wondering if anyone has any. You know new flavors they want developed. We ask them about pricing. We ask them about bundles and people are like, oh, you can't make sales. You know posts in those groups where you get kicked out. I'm like, yeah, don't make sales posts. Get in there and ask questions, like I'm just doing. I'm like literally just put together what I call a Mother's Day bundle and I wanted to ask the group what would you pay, you know, for these products if I put them in a Mother's Day bundle? Like what would be the discount that you think would be like motivating you know to grab this and are these the three flavors that you think most mothers would like, based on, you know, the flavors that we offer? That post gets through all day long and I have all these people telling me what they think I should add, you know, for my mother's day, or the essential baking, you know, um, flavors that should be included in the bundle. You can just kind of be strategic. I think people are so like intellectually lazy or they're just looking for excuses to not have to do something. They're like, oh, that doesn't work. I'm like man, you're pathetic, like you couldn't figure out how to make that work. Like you know, just put a little elbow grease into that. So much free traffic. So now I don't do that anymore with my time, but it's one of the first hires I make is a VA. That's just my organic poster in these, in these forums, adding value. They're in there answering questions.

Janelle

The thing about you guys I think Helium 10 did this so well originally, um, and you still do it. You're in these Amazon groups and even in your own groups that you've cultivated on Facebook, answering questions. When somebody asks a question, you could count on Bradley answering it. I know you're not maybe doing that anymore, but you have people doing it. That's huge for the brand Any business. You can build a business like that in any industry. When I just built my marketing company. That's what I was doing. I was in chamber of commerce, answering posts, answering questions. I literally helped a guy I was dating. He was an electrician and he was like I don't have a lot of business. I'm like dude, get on Facebook in your county and every little like real estate group anyone that asks an electrical question you have someone that is just chiming in and answering and adding value, like you will have so much business coming out your eyeballs. It works, so just get in there and start organically drumming up your business if you don't have a lot of money but you have more time.

Bradley Sutton:

You know, let's say I'm going ahead and I'm going to push forward with this plan. You know, supplements, the supplements that you've done, the other products that you've been doing. What are your main marketplaces? You're starting off, you know, like you said, there's like 20 marketplaces probably nowadays. You know even Target now, you know, is starting something. Obviously, there's Walmart, there's TikTok shop, there's eBay, Esty, amazon, you know, like Shopify, WooCommerce, whatever. Do you have like a set, two or three that you suggest launching on, because it sounds like, unless I'm mistaken here, that you rarely do something that's exclusively Amazon or exclusively one marketplace. So what are like your two, three, four go-to marketplaces for somebody to start?

Janelle

Okay, perfect, yeah, so if it's a celebrity launch or YouTube or someone with an audience already like and I know I'm going to do six figures or a million dollars, it's like it's always Shopify, cause, like we control the audience, we have a list or we have a channel like a platform we're going to be posting on. We're going to control that flow of traffic, and the best place to do that is on your own website. So we drive them to Shopify. I've done Kickstarters. I do have strategies for Kickstarters that I will talk about maybe some other time. Just send them to your website. Shopify now allows pre-sales too. So even if you're like nervous, you don't know, like, will I get enough funding or I want to pre-sell it, you can do a pre-sell. The shop shades that I'll maybe include a link to that was all a pre-sell that we did. You know, we didn't know, like, how many units we'd want to initially order, how much interest there would be, but like, yeah, we, we blew it out of the water. So Shopify is number one. If, even if you didn't, if you didn't have any audience at all, then I'd probably say launch on Amazon, right, because you're going to steal keyword traffic. You're going to be like, basically, take the hotdog stand and instead of sitting it in your cul-de-sac where nobody's at, you're going to go to the state fair and put your hot dog stand out. You're going to sell a lot more stuff. So, even with celebrity launches, if you do Shopify, you know whatever or influencer, you have an audience. It's definitely Shopify or whatever. Your own website, I don't care if it's WordPress, but I really just love Shopify now because I just know, like the suite of apps that I need to install for everything, for optimization and you know, increasing average order value and my ATV, and you know I just have my little toolbox for high converting. You know Shopify sites, but I know some people like a WordPress site, fine, but go to Amazon for sure. Like we list everything on Amazon because there's just still a subset of people that want to buy everything on Amazon. It's just so easy for them. You know, and we call those Halo sales. Even with my celebrities and my YouTube launches, we still have a large portion of people that will go over to Amazon, even though it's not listed yet, and you can see that in Helium 10, you can see the branded search.

Janelle

So when I launched Euvexia that's a brand, new brand. Nobody had heard of it. This is Dr Sten. You know he has a pretty large following, like a couple million, on YouTube. They went and we see all of a sudden Helium 10, Euvexia has searches like overnight shooting up right. So we created that brand demand and you know we weren't on amazon yet because we didn't have products shipped in there. We just launched on our website. So, yeah, we probably lost some sales, people who wanted to buy it on amazon. Maybe you can say well, maybe everyone who wanted it actually ended up buying on your, on your site. But I I do believe a lot of people won't buy on a website. They're just like, especially the older generation they don't want to put their credit card in, they don't want to have another password, they have to whatever. So I just think you're silly to not list on Amazon and I have strategies that you know. We have one of my very large brands. We will hold back certain products that we don't list on Amazon because we still want that consumer to come to our website ultimately, so that we can capture their information, we can pixel them, we can remarket to them and so some of our best used or like our limited editions won't ever go on Amazon because people have to go buy that on our website. So there's different strategies you can use, but just make sure the halo sales that you will get on Amazon especially as you incorporate influencer marketing, you start doing paid media, even you know, creating some organic like where you're blogging or you're doing YouTube and you're just driving your own traffic You'll have people that will still go to the Amazon looking for your product, that halo sales, and you want to be there to capture it. So, website, amazon those are the top two. If you didn't do anything else, you'd probably be just great. You're probably capturing 80% of the market.

Janelle

I then will usually move to other Amazon places. First I'll go to Walmart.com. Usually it just depends A lot of my brands because we're in the beauty space. We can't be on Walmart if we also want to be in Ulta or Sephora, so we have to keep that in mind. So Walmart.com is not always where I can go, but I do like to go to Walmart.com if I can. And then it's expanding. Amazon Canada, amazon UK those are my order that I go to. I haven't played around with many other marketplaces. I know it seems that everyone starts being like oh, you should do Amazon India, and there's Amazon Japan. I tried a couple of those. It was very minimal return. I'm not saying it won't ever work, but for me right now no, I don't have anyone on Brazil, Japan, so yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

You mentioned Shopify being the first place to go, so obviously the beauty about Amazon is it's got that existing traffic Shopify you won, remember, I think before I was even a Amazon.

Janelle

I don't want to say, I don't want to refer to myself as an.

Bradley Sutton:

Amazon guru.

Janelle

People always call me Amazon guru, but before Amazon was like a big thing that I spent a lot of time teaching people how to do well, Um, YouTube was my thing and I still love YouTube. I still do. Uh, in fact, today I do a consult for YouTube channel strategy. I've done a lot, built a lot of channels and brands on YouTube and I think YouTube is one of the greatest ways to drive traffic. And same thing with blogging. You do that with content articles you can write. So a strong SEO strategy where you're bringing in traffic to your website. So I'm a I'm a big content creation junkie because it works. So people will say, oh, I mean, I tried YouTube. I didn't get any traffic. I'm like you have to understand YouTube is an algorithm, just like Amazon, and you know how. Helium 10 has great courses teaching you how to understand the A9 algorithm. YouTube has the exact same thing. There's courses. I have courses and we teach, we consult. There's lots of people out there that do that and teach you how to build a YouTube strategy to drive traffic to wherever you want them to go. Strategy to drive traffic to wherever you want them to go. Usually it's your website and a lot of that YouTube strategy also will carry over to Halo sales on Amazon. So that's probably my favorite way influencer marketing and content creation, your own content creation. The brand should always be creating content and educating to drive sales. That's how you control your destiny. You add value. You teach people why they should use your product. You help them solve their problems. You help them scratch their itch. You become the go to person and the trusted brand in your, in your space.

Bradley Sutton:

You know you mentioned some steps as far as finding that, these pain points and stuff. You know going into Reddit and going into Facebook groups, but but talk more about your process before your, before the actual product is made. You know, like you know, are you doing a lot of samples? Are you just getting some? You know like 20 samples and actually testing it in the market. Are you just deciding that on your own? Are you getting focus groups, like? What's your entire process about? That goes from, hey, finding that initial pain point to validating it and then all the way up to actually having a product.

Janelle

Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is funny because I don't do. I mean I do now because I understand the value of creating the story, but I guess I've been in marketing long enough that I know the power of a story and a story well told. So I always just say story, sell right. And so I guess I know that I can tell a story that will be compelling. And when I first started, my very first brand was a toy brand and I just knew I would crush it because the story was like kids were sitting around on their iPads and playing video games all day. And this was like in 2014, when everyone's like there was no e-sports team, there wasn't kids making millions of dollars, you know, playing video games. It was like grandma and mom were so, so, deathly concerned that their kids were all going to have their brains turned to mush. And so I create this kick fire classics brand line and the whole story is just going to be like good old fashioned fun get your kids off their butts and outside of playing. And I knew that if I ran ads in front of every mom and grandma about these classic toys, that they could get Johnny to get them off the iPad and you get outside, you know, flying a kite or playing with juggling balls or you know the Diablo, it would sell. It was just I didn't need to do market validation that that that whole sentiment existed. I was a mom and I hung out with moms and they were all having the same, you know, battle cry of like our kids are, you know, they don't know how to get outside and have fun. So that that was. I launched the brand, I told that story and it crushed, you know.

Janelle

And then my second brand was a weight loss supplement and I'm like I understand, as a woman living in America, like everyone wants to be thin, you know, and you have to bust your butt to stay thin and and if you can create a weight loss, a meal replacement weight loss shake that tastes good, that helps people lose weight, and you tell that story and you have, you know, results, it's going to sell. So I guess I don't really ever go into a market. I've never. Even now I'm like right now, with this celebrity supplement, like we have created the whole product line, the core four. We're doing a stack right and I work with Derek and Julianne Huff who are these beautiful artistic athletes and they're very well known in the space. I think that's easy because they have followers and they're going to, no matter what they say. You know, we could probably one of our investors is like you could just, you know, bottle dog poop and put it in a bottle and people would buy it. And that's not what we want to do. But you know that's how well-known they are and trusted in the space. But I really don't even think we had to validate anything, but because I understand the power of story and I want to build a movement and a community.

Janelle

I am getting people involved, I am getting their audience to. You know, we are doing what we call a pilot run, which is not everybody does. It's kind of more expensive, it's unheard of but and I wouldn't say unheard of a lot of people it's heard of but people don't do it because the extra time and cost. I want to do it as part of the story, because Derek and Julianne, this works for them. But I want to get it into the hands of their top dancers, like Derek's on tour right now and he's got, you know, he's like 50 to 100 dancers with him. What if I can get all of them using this right now and giving us feedback. You know that's going to create content, that's going to create story and I just want, on tour for the media, to see all of his dancers backstage pouring their little powder packets from the foil and being like what is this stuff that everyone's taking? It's kind of creating that curiosity and building hype.

Janelle

So I'm doing this strategically for my own PR, but I don't need to do this, but I want to to make the story better, if that makes sense. It's like, uh, Paulo Acosta, who does you know his secret juice? And he has that bottle and he has secret juice written on the outside. If you don't know who he is, he's a UFC fighter. Just Google it. He drinks that and everyone wants to know what the hell is in that juice that he's drinking. It's brilliant. It creates such a stir and you know what it's like. We're going to go launch him a supplement drink and then everyone's going to know what was in that dang bottle, right? So that's the thought behind a product launch. When you can build that, everyone's kind of excited. They know you've been working on something. I started posting and teasing out content with Derek and Julianne just on my own socials and they're teasing it out and that's going to be a part of the huge buildup to the launch. If you have an audience, that works great. If you don't have an audience, this also works really well to build the audience as you go along, because people want to be a part of something and feel like they're helping create this product.

Bradley Sutton:

What is just some other, just general strategy Can be about anything you want to talk about. That that, hey, our audience could probably learn a thing or two from your experience.

Janelle

Gosh, you know, sometimes we I really enjoyed your session that you did at BDSS. It was more like life stuff. I think sometimes we all talking about you know business, business and you you talked about your like near death experience. I'm going to say near-death you died. You literally died and got brought back to life, right. So I think, just like the longer and maybe this happens as we get older, like we're more generative, we start thinking about, like what kind of legacy do I want to leave? Like I know, like earlier, when I was in the grind, I mean I was a single mom with four kids under the age of five, like hustling, working like four or five jobs, like I had to bust my ass to get where I am Right. And now I feel like I'm really just so blessed or lucky or I mean whatever it is.

Janelle

I've been very fortunate in my career. I play a lot of pickleball, I get to travel the world, I spend a lot of time with kids, I work with incredible brands, incredible people and I think, just remembering that, you know what like there's, I don't know, you do have to pay the dues, you have to work hard, but we're doing it all for a reason. There can be joy. I've always been happy. I can look back in every phase and it's not like I was like man. That period of my life sucked. It was like that building was super incredible, and to be where I am now and to look back it even makes it such an even more happy memory. To be like I busted my ass and I'm here now and it was all worth it and I love what I'm doing. I even love the hard part shoveling manure in the trenches and so I just maybe reminding people that, like, remember why you're doing it and if you're not enjoying the doing of it, when you get to where you're trying to go, it won't be all of a sudden beautiful, like there has to be that magic along the way. I don't know.

Janelle

I just think if you wake up too many days in a row thinking that I don't want to do this, like you're not doing the right thing, and then I don't know what comes next, I don't know if there's another life and I mean I just want to be able to say this life I lived my best life and so Whatever that means to you. Maybe just take a moment to look at your life and how you're living. Is this your best life and are there any changes that you need to make? Because you almost didn't have a second chance. You know, and it was over and I think you have a new perspective. I have a new perspective. I lost a lot of people I love just in the last few years to cancer. They died young and I'm so grateful I'm alive and I don't take that for granted every day. I'm just like it is a gift and I just I love making money.

Bradley Sutton:

Always got to remember the more important things. You know like, like we, sometimes we can get caught up in the whole business and an entrepreneurial journey and stuff and we forget about what really what really matters at the end of the day. So that's a good, good advice. I like that.

Janelle

Favorite end of the day. So that's a good um, yeah, good advice. I like that favorite helium 10 tool. I'm like magnet. I'm just like. The keyword research tool for me is just like I go look up all the time. I think this is the one I use the most and all my employees is like did you do the keyword research? Like what does it look like? And you get ideas too. Like when I'm doing keyword research, I can see like whoa, this is a good product extension. Like you know, in the search, in the search results, when I see like like the other day I was doing you know, with Glamnetic, we're doing some press on nail launches, and I was just like, oh, like, people are looking, they're calling them false nails. Like I never really even heard of that, you know word. I thought it was press on nails or fake nails, but false nails. So I just think it's a, it's a treasure trove, not only to you can get product ideas from there. And it's like, okay, well, I'm going to do a whole new line. That's like optimized for faults, that whole word Cause there's like hundreds of thousands of searches that can, you know, aggregate on that right there. So I think it's important.

Bradley Sutton:

You know, you mentioned, uh, you know so many different, different things that you've been working on. How can people, maybe you know, find you on the interwebs out there or see a couple of these projects you're working on, either in social or just websites out there? Uh, throughout some, websites.

0:30:23 - Janelle

Okay, so janellepage.com is is my website, and then there's also on that website you'll see like I probably should update it, but there's a lot of projects I've worked on on that website. So it's j-a-n-e-l-l-e-p-a-g-e like a page in the book.com. You can go there and then, like shopshades.com. Euvexia is E-U-V-E-X-I-Acom. Athena Power Tools let's see Vital Kind. We don't have our website up yet, but in a couple months you'll be able to see Derek and Julianne's brand that we'll be launching, working right now with some really big pickleball pros. We're launching a pickleball line, so that'll be exciting. Don't have the name yet, the name yet, but I'll start posting about that as we develop it. We have our kickoff meeting on Monday. Um, I don't know if we put anything in the notes. Oh, matt's off-road recovery. You can check out that. Robbylayton.com, um, oh, m1 motorsports that's our motorcycle line. Glamnetics a great line, gee, is that. Is that good enough or they can all be like that's good, that's great stuff.

Bradley Sutton:

I'm sure people get to be able to get some ideas and take a look at what you've been working on.

Janelle

That one's a hard one to spell, but that one and flavor frenzy. They're beautiful Cause they were originally Amazon brands that didn't have a clue about DTC and I helped them build out their DTC strategy and we're crushing and B2B, so we built out that whole thing. So Dolce Foglia is like D O L C E Foglia is F O G L I A com, and you will see the beautiful website we've built. Just think how fun because if these if a lot of the listeners are Amazon only brands, I want them to see like what you can do. They went from Amazon. Now they have a true e-commerce where we have full build out of like SEO strategy and influencer marketing and we built out the B2B side. It'll link you over to their B2B flavor frenzy and maybe just get you excited about the potential. Let's was like literally just an Amazon brand that's now crushing on all different platforms and we're moving into like Temu and all these other different I guess I didn't talk about any of those Like a lot of other countries have marketplaces that are like bigger than Amazon, as we start to list there.

Bradley Sutton:

So that's maybe something we can see in a year when we have you back on the show and see how those marketplaces are doing. I know a lot of them are making a lot of noise out there, so it'll be interesting, all right. Well, Janelle, thank you so much for joining us. It's always a pleasure to have you on the show and look forward to where we can hang out in person soon.

Janelle

Awesome Thanks, Bradley.

Helium 10 Buzz 5/2/24: Amazon Inventory Fee Postponed | 500K TikTok Shop Sellers

We’re back with another episode of the Weekly Buzz with Helium 10’s Sr Brand Evangelist, Shivali Patel. Every week, we cover the latest breaking news in the Amazon, Walmart, and E-commerce space, interview someone you need to hear from and provide a training tip for the week.

TikTok Shop tops 500,000 US sellers after 2023 e-commerce launch
https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-trends/article/3261114/tiktok-shop-tops-500000-us-sellers-after-2023-e-commerce-launch

TikTok Shop Marks 500,000+ Merchants in the US
https://www.pymnts.com/news/social-commerce/2024/tiktok-shop-marks-500000-merchants-in-the-us/

Amazon’s latest actions against fake review brokers: Lawsuits against fraudsters target the source of fake reviews
https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/policy-news-views/amazons-latest-actions-against-fake-review-brokers

Amazon Business Celebrates Third Annual Small Business Month with New Immersive Educational Hub and Over $250,000 in Grants
https://press.aboutamazon.com/2024/5/amazon-business-celebrates-third-annual-small-business-month-with-new-immersive-educational-hub-and-over-250-000-in-grants

Amazon issued a new policy update in seller forums regarding low-inventory fees.

Moving from defense to offense in the Amazon marketplace, our conversation shifts to the art of strategic advertising. We lay out how to use sponsored brand and product ads to not only protect your listings but also to proactively stake your claim in new territories. Carrie Miller unpacks the wisdom behind a proactive approach, providing practical advice on employing competitor analysis to your advantage. Together, we outline how to harness these insights for defending against competitors eyeing your listings and for targeting theirs, ensuring that you remain a formidable presence amidst the fierce online selling arena.

In this episode of the Weekly Buzz by Helium 10, Shivali talks about:

• 00:50 - 500K TikTok Shop Sellers
• 02:43 - New Amazon Discount Page
• 04:16 - Amazon Fake Reviews
• 05:43 - Amazon FedEx Shipping
• 06:05 - Amazon Grants
• 06:26 - Low Inventory Fee Postponed
• 08:26 - Helium 10 New Feature Alerts
• 10:44 - Training Tip Of The Week

#557 - Two Expats Turn Amazon Side Hustle into a Booming Business

Join us as we explore the incredible journey of Tom and Alex of Honest FBA, two UK expats who have made a name for themselves as Amazon entrepreneurs in the sunny climes of Spain. They've successfully launched a booming business that's on track to hit a remarkable two million dollars in sales. Throughout our conversation, these innovative thinkers share their personal experiences, from their individual paths to Barcelona, where their paths crossed, to the strategies that propelled their Amazon venture to new heights. They offer valuable insights into the world of e-commerce, including a glimpse into Tom's previous venture organizing bachelor parties and how they've navigated the complexities of Brexit as UK citizens abroad.

Listen in as these entrepreneurial spirits delve into the nuts and bolts of their business, from an inflatable games venture to a travel brand that was smartly sidestepped just before the pandemic. Discover how they succeeded in the pet space within the Amazon US market, generating impressive sales figures and expanding into content creation with a YouTube channel and coaching course. They provide actionable advice on inventory management and product innovation, recounting both their victories and hiccups, such as a costly inventory dimension miscalculation, while emphasizing the importance of adapting and reinvesting in the face of product failures.

The episode wraps up with a forward-looking discussion on brand building and the intricacies of scaling a significant e-commerce brand. Our guests highlight the vital role of a strong brand presence, not just on Amazon but across multiple channels, and the use of external marketing efforts to drive growth. They also tease an upcoming London event and a future Helium 10 event in Spain, marking milestones and networking opportunities that promise to inspire and connect like-minded entrepreneurs. So whether you're an established seller or just starting out, tune in for an engaging session brimming with lessons and strategies to elevate your e-commerce game.

In episode 557 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley, Alex, and Tom discuss:

• 00:00 - Expat Entrepreneurs Launch Amazon Business
• 05:34 - From Lockdown to Seven Figures
• 07:11 - Amazon Entrepreneur Journey and Strategies
• 09:41 - Growth in Annual Sales Performance
• 14:32 - Amazon Sellers Discuss Product Success 
• 14:49 - Branding and Supply Chain Success
• 19:12 - Thinking Outside the Box With Subscriptions
• 24:13 - E-Commerce Brand Building Strategies
• 26:40 - Amazon Seller Event in London By Honest FBA
• 31:46 - International Event Plans and Goals

#556 - Crafting Your Amazon Listing for SEO

Ever felt like you've hit a wall with your Amazon listings, unsure how to climb the ranks? Our latest episode is the secret weapon you've been searching for! We dive into Helium 10's Listing Builder, a tool that's changing the game for sellers by revealing how to prioritize keywords using the new Competitor Performance Score. Picture your products climbing Amazon's search results as we dissect the art of optimizing listings with advanced strategies that include leveraging root keywords and their variations. And for those moments when words fail you, discover how Listing Builder's AI feature can effortlessly craft captivating product descriptions.

The battlefield of Amazon is won through intelligence, and we're not talking about IQ. In this tactical session, Bradley pulls back the curtain on importing and scrutinizing your current listings against the competition. We navigate the listing analysis section, showcasing how to pinpoint underutilized keywords that could be your secret ammunition for visibility. Imagine transforming your product images with the touch of a button through the AI image generator feature, leaving your competitors wondering how you do it. This chapter isn't just about throwing in keywords; it's about strategic placement and analysis that propel your listings to new heights.

Closing out, our journey with our Project X products illustrates how to optimize listings with finesse, responding in real-time to questions about differentiation and opportunity keywords. If you've ever second-guessed which Helium 10 membership fits you best on your journey, or how to sync listings without a hiccup, you'll find your answers here. We wrap up with an arsenal of tips and tricks, from saving and restoring previous listings to pinpointing those elusive low competition, high demand products. It's not just about listing; it's about dominating—let's get your products the spotlight they deserve.

In episode 556 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley talks about:

• 00:00 - Listing Optimization Training and Q&A
• 02:57 - Keyword Optimization Strategy Simplified
• 07:46 - Optimizing Existing Listings Against Competitors
• 16:14 - Amazon Listing Optimization Strategies
• 16:50 - Understanding Opportunity Keywords in Cerebro
• 26:58 - Amazon Review Request Guidelines
• 27:53 - Amazon Selling Tips and Strategies
• 29:57 - Optimal Title Length for Niche
• 33:39 - Keyword Stuffing Strategy in Amazon Listings