I sat down with Alex who is interested in learning how to sell things on amazon and answered all of his questions. Alex is currently selling his own products but not on Amazon and is looking into how to make money selling on amazon.
Links:
Get more tips in your email, join the awesome email list: https://amazonseller.school/
SELLER RESOURCES: All of the Tools I Use: https://amazonseller.school/amazon-seller-resources/
Video Transcription:
0:00:09 Todd:So Good Morning Alex. Thanks for joining me here today. You got some questions for me so why don’t you start off just by telling everybody a little bit about yourself and what you’re wanting to do on Amazon.
0:00:21 Alex: So I have always had an interest in internet marketing. You know my background is mostly in sales. I’ve been a sales person for most of my life but recently I found made a shift from doing some corporate work, having a career and then to just trying to kinda be a business owner, be an entrepreneur. And I started out doing a little bit of consulting for a martial arts gym about specially about their website and my goal was to have the website actually do work for them so to generate leads and then ultimately that was pretty successful so he kept me on payroll, he kept me working. Started to do some advertising and I got to learn about Facebook ads and some really cool stuff, which led me to another client that was a member of the gym that was interested in having me do some work for their website as well. So I had took down and this website is more of an e-commerce website and what they sell is skin care products and cosmetic. So what I wanted to do is I noticed that there were some folks on Amazon the where reselling some of our products and rights and I wanted to learn more about how to use Amazon effectively and kind of chase those resellers out of there hopefully and do that.
0:02:02 Todd: Alright, excellent! So yeah, basically what they’re doing probably is some kind of online or retail arbitrage because I’m assuming you said you’re selling your products on your own website and then you’re selling it in stores as well correct?
0:02:18 Alex: There’s a just a couple retail store that still have it so we’re almost completely out of that business and the owner hopes to just sell direct to the consumer at some point but there’s a couple relationship there saw out there all.
0:02:36 Todd: Alright, so you’re bringing it all into the e-commerce website then but the products been out there and the price on amazon is probably quite a bit higher than what you guys are selling it directly.
0:02:48 Alex: It is. It is. In fact an order just came through with like 20 or 30 quantity of a certain product that we carry. And I’m going, yeah, that’s probably somebody going to resell that and that’s probably good indicator that our price is too low and then on that given product and I do happen to know that they’re selling it for about 40% more
0:03:17 Todd: So definitely they’re doing retail arbitrage. They are just buying from you and then selling it for a higher price on Amazon. And I do a lot of that as well a lot of times it’s clearance stuff from different stores. I don’t do a lot of the online arbitrage but there’s a lot of people who do which basically just means buying a product at a lower price and selling it for more on Amazon and if it’s a product that people want and it’s not on Amazon you can pretty much get away with selling very things at a very high price that you wouldn’t think people would pay the price but if that’s the specific item that they want they’re gonna pay a much higher price on Amazon than they otherwise might. So you guys are looking to get on and sell on Amazon so that you can be making that profit instead of the people who are currently selling on there .
0:03:17 Alex: Yeah, I thought that you know being in the marketplace that just gets just such an enormous amount of traffic and having a product and having building all the reviews and having kind of maintaining a good well a good social proof would help us there would be some synergy maybe with that to our current website you know but also just Amazon is, is a good place to be I think it’s the future so yeah…
The own commerce store kind of afraid of amazon
Todd: So definitely they are doing retail arbitrage They’re just buying from you and selling it for higher price on amazon and a lot of that as well as a lot of times it’s clear and stuff and different stores i don’t do a lot of the online rp charged but there’s a lot of people who do which basically just means buying a product at the lower price and selling it for more on amazon and if it’s a product that people want and it’s not on amazon you can pretty much get away with selling very things at very high price that you wouldn’t people think would pay the price but if it’s pacific Gonna be a much higher price on amazon . they otherwise might so So you guys are looking to get on and sell on amazon so that you can be making that profit instead of people who are currently selling on their
Alex: Yeah i did you know being in the marketplace that just gets Such an enormous amount of traffic and having a product building all the reviews any kind of maintaining a good social proof Our current website you know but also just amazon is is a good place to be I think it’s the future so yeah it’s
Todd: Yeah definitely a lot of people have their own ecommerce store kind How can i get afraid of amazon they don’t want to lose their product competing with themselves but really they really on amazon is created in market place where there’s millions of people who are only going to come to your ecommerce store and buy your products if you’re not on amazon you’re really just losing out on those people and places you can see there’s the opportunity for some products to sell at a higher price on amazon to be able to do on your own Lobster builder brand and stuff like that to be on amazon and since You’re the manufacturer and the maker of the products you can all be asleep go on and undercut price that people are currently selling there’s no way that they can compete with you so you can push them off the product but that’s one thing to keep in mind with amazon is that it’s an open marketplace so even if you were the one who created the listing and charlie amazon on that list thing and anyone can come on and sell on that list think there’s certain rules that product has to be exact Listing so that something you do have to be a little careful Love is that those other people are in selling knock off products and just selling it under your name because your name has a good good standing in the marketplace and taking advantage of that you know like nike has big problem with people selling knock off shoes it can happen to the small business Because it’s easier to get away with a don’t have lawyers out there looking for knock offs And stuff like that but yeah i definitely highly recommend starting to sell on amazon because there’s a lot of profit that you’re living there and one thing you can do is down the road Is one’s that you send in or sell on amazon you can include little Cards in them directly people back to your own website to register for deals on different products or whatever it might be you have to be a little bit careful with that on amazon Because amazon isn’t the big fan of directing people off of the website But know if you open up let’s see if sony camera you have the instruction manual in there with their website and link to where they can register the products get discounts and stuff like that so the president is there and you’re no different than sony or nobody else who selling on amazon or something to think about But as far as starting to listen amazon its it’s really very Very easy anybody can go to the website its seller central . amazon.com and you can sign up for you can start with a personal account I’d highly recommend them to sign up for a perfect professional seller account It’s only 40 bucks a month and allows you to list a lot more products plus You just more like a business and amazon Going to treat you more like a normal business as far as getting into amazon so it’s really easy all you gotta do is answer a few questions about your business and your set up And basically ready to start selling on amazon
Alex: do they care if you’re a sole proprietor corporation or and you know what you like what information do they need from you did you need to have a federal tax id and
Todd: i believe it is required to have a federal tax id on the professional seller account if you do the personal account then its just gonna go off a social security number but a sole proprietorship is fine you don’t have to like a business registration number I would highly recommend that you if you haven’t already set up LLC You’re in wisconsin right and and it it’s really cheap in wisconsin i forgot exactly how much i think it’s less than Hundred dollars to register an LLC and it’s no different than doing your taxes and such really as a sole proprietorship but you get the benefit of the LLC where it gives you a little protection against if you got sued or something like that obviously not a lawyer so you don’t talk to a lawyer For sure but basically the way under it Is that if you got soon or they sold my business it would protect myself from them being able to come after Things that i don’t personally like my home in my car And my personal bank account they could only go afterwards in the business like my business bank account and wintery and things that the business owns a lot people do that the biggest thing that i heard over and over from accountants and lawyers and stuff like that that is to make sure you have everything separate som have a separate bank account even if you’re doing it as a personal bank account have a separate bank account that all transactions Go through and a separate credit card even if the credit cards in your personal name Because you can always get a business credit card right off the bat as long as its separate then that shows that if anything was to happen that the business is separate from you so it gives you a lot little protection there.
Alex: you come they’re real to the LLC over therefore in terms of anything reducing your tax liability
Todd: know it’s a pass-through and so ever come through to your personal taxes it’s basically just for that liability protection Down the line as you get bigger you can convert it over Do like an s corporation and if your already an llc a little easier to convert to an s corporation from what i understand And then you get tax benefits in where let’s Say make you $100,000 in profit as an llc or a sole proprietor You’d have to pay taxes on the 100,000 but if you were an s corporation you instead of taking a That entire hundred thousand on your personal taxes you decide the salary for yourself it’s supposed to be reasonable salary of what it would cost u to hire someone so lets a 50,000 Instead of taxes on the 200,000 then you’d only pay taxes under 50,000 Not something you want to worry about right now but the line that’s something that a lot of accountants will recommend to save a lot of money because you know on the average 30% taxes on just saving a 10,000 dollars in taxes thats 3,000 So now look at 50,000 and saving a lot of money really quick
Alex: as far as the The amazon store so it’s easy to set up you know The the professional seller account sounds like and then it’s $40 a month what do you do get for $40 is it just the ability to do more listings or automate some things or…
Todd: i’m not a hundred percent sure all of the benefits but the big one is the number of products That you can sell ok so with the personal one i’d have to look At the exact number but i think your limited to like 40 products or so many sales it might be a dollar amount and have to look on their page It says there but it’s that’s the biggest limitation is That you can only do so many sales per month on the personal b4 they make it up to the business one
Alex: there is a month right and they also charge hands on charges a commission on each sale And if you actually use the fulfilled by amazon HR Some sort of storage fee if you use that Right that’s…
TOdd: That’s really important thing to decide how are you going to do it’s so on amazon you really have two main ways of selling either fulfilled by amazon the FBA which is where you’re going to take a bulb amount of your products basically what every think you can sell on the air in a month and send that all in into amazon warehouses and amazon will tell you which warehouses to send to alternately you can do FBM fulfilled by merchant which would be selling single items and then shipping single items to the people buy them on amazon so amazon Would get the sales for you tell you that this old and you would then ship through amazon now amazon gets really good rates and shipping so that’s nice you can buy the shipping labels right through amazon so that helps keep shipping costs down but the big thing with FBA is that’s not real time check mark that you see on amazon and that’s very important if you’re going to build a really successful business on amazon now there’s ways to get prime selling as a fulfilled by merchants if you keep your metrics good so if your shipping i think if you wanted to be a prime seller And ship the items yourself you have to ship everything within like 4 hours or something like that and keep all this different metrics metrics so you can do it but it’s really difficult unless you’re really all that kind of stuff so for someone who’s just starting out I’d highly recommend doing fulfilled by amazon and you’re going to have those fees and all those fees are dependent on what the product type is how big the product is So basically how much square footage it takes up in amazon and then also the selling price so they are going to take a percent Based on all those variables
alex: do they charge for the beat so you said like you when the ship them if you’re doing the FBA i want to Ship them about a month’s worth of stuff that you think you can sell today charged for that first month or do they begin charging after the first one?
Todd: it’s going to be after the first month that’s why i say you want to try to manage your inventory so you have 30 days in there like a rolling 30 days and if you can keep stuff under the 30 days then you never really get charged a warehouse storage see the warehouse storage fee is just charged after some things been sitting there for a full month
Alex: if If you try to put everything together what percentage of my sales am i going to be giving the The amazon
Todd: like what percentage in feu mean?
Alex: yeah in sales
Todd: well most i’m going to assume since its beauty products you probably a lot of
Alex: yes
Todd: ok so your your storage fees are going to be very low because they’re smaller items so you’re basically going to have Like the FBA fee and then the referral fee so basically amazon providing the traffic for your sale and i’d have to look for sure but it could be anywhere from 20% to 40% depending on the price of the product and a lot of people only do the FBM Because there i think they’re getting ripped Ripped off by the FBA but you have to think about what you’re getting for that so with the FBA your getting all of the marketing of amazon or getting to store your stuff in their warehouses you’re getting the employees to ship your product when they sell your getting amazon space for all the shipping 2 the customer and the customer gets free shipping we all know nothing is free but we get free shipping included in that FBA free that your getting the customer has any problems they call amazon support and amazon handles all of the support if they want to return something amazon Space for all the return shipping as well so you get a lot included in that FBA even though it Sounds like a higher percent just Think about that price those prices that you would have to pay for someone else to do that or shipping and all That’s tough it’s actually ends up being a pretty good deal for most products if you’re talking about really big and heavy stuff and be a little more questionable but for something small i think it would be more than worth the money that FBA charges
Alex: does the seller get some feedback that if you’re seeing some sort of recurring pattern something getting returned or something getting more down for the satisfaction from the customer and i going to see if i’m using the FBA Am i going to see that feedback am i going to know to change anything
Todd: yeah so it’s a little bit buried but there are route is a report in your business report that will tell you the reasons that the customer’s stated for the return so you can get an idea of what the problem might be it can be a little Skewed and i’m not really familiar with the makeup thing but we could get a little bit of skewing there because amazon has free returns as As long as there’s something wrong with the product if they go on there and say they want to do a return because they don’t like it or they bought the wrong one then amazon will try to charge a small return shipping fee for that so you will have customers say that there’s something wrong with the product just to get the free return shipping from Amazon you have to kind of way that in there but like you said if you see a recurring pattern that you know the makeup doesn’t stay on my face or whatever the color is wrong And you see that over and over on the same product then that would be something that you could take into consideration to figure out what might be going on there
Alex: i see listing on amazon That are that i really good and once they’re not so good so i feel like i have a little bit of and just having a written a whole bunch of different pages and things like that and sales emails i think i have a little bit of an edge Maybe on some of my competitions there but i do notice that a lot of things in SC on amazon order same pressure cheaper than You would find on someone’s website on the direct sellers website which confirms meaning that you like you would think that they would market up because amazon is taking a little bit of commission on that but then it does kind makes sense because there’s probably one another people compete with you and that’s just driving down price probably
Todd: yeah It’s you gotta remember on amazon you’re competing with everyone else Who sells a similar product as yours so you’re not only competing with potentially other people who might be selling on your listing Let’s see if you had wholesale sailors and stuff like that i’ll also be competing with anybody who has similar products so you can have two way that and find the perfect price on amazon for maximizing your profit and maximizing your sales you know you don’t want to be too cheap and get a ton of sales but not me enough profit Too expensive and then not get any sales so you go to find that happy medium so it really depends and some song you got the position yourself where you want to be as well do you want to be in the top of the market the middle of the market or the bottom of the market and i would say probably you want to go to the top of the market be one of the more expensive players and sell your product based on value or perceived value from the customer and that you are a better product because It could take to same products and sell them on amazon under different names and wants $5 higher than the other and the 5 dollar one might get more sales or at least more profit because of the perceived higher value of the product so you can keep that in mind the people kind I think that way if it’s cheap then they think they’re getting a Cheap product if it’s expensive and they think they’re getting a good product.
Alex: And we’re actually in the natural niche so to speak so i think you guys think i would be wanting to Be in the higher end segment but i heard a lot of internet marketers talk about this a little bit well at least some of the courses and stuff that are floating out there about how to reset and reduce them Is harvard trust stuff they’re talking about i was on above a certain price The pricing is less of a factor in the minds of the customer and i’ve heard that that threshold would be like about $30 or something in your experience what is that number
Todd: personally ‘m not exactly sure but you know it really depends on what category you’re in as well because let’s say you’re selling tvs you know for the most part now it is tvs are mostly very similar from the cheap one to the more expensive one of us l differences now you have curved tvs and 4k and 8k and 50,000 k Weather coming soon i am sure but a lot of times people are just know they’re looking for the cheapest tv 55 Inch tv that has good reviews And that’s the one they’re going to grab but like as you said in the natural health and beauty area is going to be different because The people Who are looking for the product are used to pay more For something that they know or believe is good or better than what other people are selling out there what the number is i don’t know if there’s an exact number it’s really going to depend by the category of course i mean you’re not going to have A $30 tv so it really depends but once you get over a certain amount ya it’s going to be less a factor until You reach the point where it is a factor again because if you say you’re selling a $30 off makeup everybody selling it at 30 and yours is at 100 well that’s probably Going to be too big of a variance Someone’s doing that are boy in yours but everybody else is selling it at 30 and you’re selling it at 40 will the $10 to the perceived well you might be enough that they’re going to go ahead and purchase the higher value one but
Alex: I’m really glad you Brought up the reviews because i know it’s such an important when You’re selling on amazon The reviews are super Important when i do a search on everything i’ll for I’m filtering my prime and 4 stars right it’s like so this is how i do a challenge to build up reviews when when you just put Your cart when your your products brandnew on amazon or your this thing is you can you speak to some of the ways to get those reviews get those built up quickly and anything else i might want to do for the first few listings
Todd: Yeah sure so Reviews are definitely important no doubt about that how important they are depends on the category that you’re in and also depends on the quantity that your competition has so let’s say in your market if you do a search for your main keyword that you think someone would search for and your product has 5 reviews and everybody else has 500 then it’s going to be a factor but let’s say you have a hundred reviews and everybody else has 200 reviews it’s probably not going to be a big difference In getting this is from a hundred 205 204 204 more then that could play a role And people’s decision and specially the star rating you know how high the treating is if i’m looking at the products and everybody’s got 500 reviews But this guy’s got 4.9 everybody else has 443 then the kind of a no-brainer is that i’m going to go with the 4.9 stars and i do the same thing and sorting by reviews and all that stuff but we have to keep in mind to you and i as an entrepreneurs are not normal people so we’re not the people who you want to look at at As well the normal amazon person is searching normal amazon is probably searching and they’re going to search for the word natural makeup Or whatever it might be and they’re gonna look at that first maybe they’ll click the prime button because they want that free shipping that’s probably most common thing but from there they’re probably just looking at that first page and buying from there which is why it’s so crucial that you get up to that first page when someone searches for your search terms that you expect people to be searching for that you can use out there determine what those are for your competition Like the one that i use
ALex: so this is like any chrome extensions just stand alone
TOdd: it’s a chrome extension and it’s called scope S-C-O-P-E just like it sounds and its made by the people over at the seller love so i just lost money to get the service but that does is you can do anything and just open it up and shows you all of the keywords or search phrases but they are ranking for and an estimated number of sales that they think they’re selling for now it’s not gonna Be perfect but it’s going to give you an idea of what those products are ranking for and how much they are selling for
Alex: so this sounds like a really powerful tool are you under you you probably have your own proprietary secret sauce method of doing things but you know what are some tips to make sure your get on the front page of that search
Todd: so it’s not really not really a secret you do you know Scott Volker over an amazing celler
Alex: i heard it the name come up in one of your videos but you posted on facebook and then i looked it up and i think i just read a little bit on on the sales page but i have a course like that
Todd: ok i would highly recommend checking out some office stuff everything most of what i’ve learned and that got me started has come from his podcast and from his is going to private label workshop which is free that would be something i would highly recommend you run through i think it’s about an hour long and it kind of goes through all the steps because you’re basically selling a private label products the private label is basically just means it’s your product of your brand on it but in terms of getting that your product ranked what you want to do another great chrome extensions jungle scout you can install that chrome and then you go to your search for the search term that you believe is the most likely term that people are going to search to find your product and then you click the jungle scout app and it will show you the estimated number of sales For all of those products on that first page then you can figure out how many products they are selling in a month You divide that by 30 and that’s The number of products that they are selling per day And you want to try to sell that amount or at least 8 days in a row 8 days or more so you can do that either by giving a discount out so i don’t know do you have me be an email list built up
Alex: i do yeah kind of a big one but…
Todd: If you are place to start thats a big big thing to do for building your brand is getting a big email list because what you can do is say hey we’re launching a product on amazon and because you guys our our loyal customers going to give you 30% off or 50% off or whatever amount you think will take for them to To get excited about it since they’re already your customers they probably will take less or to get them excited so maybe thirty or forty percent you can play with others see you what starts getting you some sales you can start off by launching your list like that and then you could also use services like jumpsend.com to try it your to a market or a group Of people that are basically there to try to get cheap products It’s not quite as good Because you’re going to have to get of give A lot bigger discount now maybe 70 or 80 or 90 percent to really get people interested but The goal is here to get people to buy enough of your product every day for 8 days to match those number estimated number of sales and the reason for 8 days is because i’m a kind of has a rolling count of the numbers of products that you said nobody knows for sure but it’s like the first our last 24 hours the last week last month the last 3 months here and whatever maybe and that’s how they determine what ranking People are going to get on their website because obviously For amazon they make money by selling products or they want the products that are the best sellers and the best for the customer to show up first and the best way for them to determine that the number of people Are buying it if more people are buying your product then there must be good product so they’re going to move it up in the rank
Alex: select it and you did the you know you are you’re going to give the more traffic as a result of ranking
Todd: yeah
Alex: what do you mean are you going to have to maintain lets say you know you do an email blast and you do get a bunch of people in that first eight days do you have to maintain that level of sales and kenny rankin high kind of do that for you are are you still gonna have to you know keep hustling month every month to give discounts and or try to our booth so
Todd: It really depends on the depth of your market and how much competition i should say is in the Market on amazon so if you search for your word and everybody’s got a thousand or more views and you and everybody Celine like 3000 products of their items then you’re probably In it where you going to have to be given product away every month every week to maintain that spot because of those other people are going to be doing the same it just becomes a competition so you have to determine what your profit is and how much it going to have to give you away those products and calculate that into your final your bottom line for what you’re willing to take off of the product and that’s when i just have to have included in as part of your marketing you gotta you gotta kind of thing it as advertising you know your ecommerce store you advertise it to get traffic to their advertising Are you do search on google or you do search engine optimization you advertise on facebook and your brain to do that kind of thing on amazon Amazon is doing all the marketing to get people to their platform and now you do the advertising to make sure that your product shows up first with With those people now in addition to that Do amazon does have advertising inside Office so you can run ads for your product because everything you search on amazon like the first few are going to be sponsored ads you see the little sponsor underneath there and then even scattered down below and in the middle there’s going to be sponsored ads as well and that’s People paying so for so much per click so you could say i’m willing to pay $2 per click and you’re going to be it against other people and be ranked on the beach depending on those dates now you only pay if people click though so that’s a whole another game that you have to dig into a And that you’re going to want to turn on & do for your lunch because it’s going to help you start getting more sales through those sponsored ads but the goal with sponsored ads at the beginning your going to lose a lot of money but for example i use a tool called whats its called called ignite by the same people over there at cellar labs and what that does is the tracks all advertisements what people are clicking on and what terms they’re searching for and it’s loading a rose in the term so that it becomes cheaper to advertise so that you can get it down to let say your profit on an item is 50% if you get your advertising down below 50% average cost of sale is what amazon cause it Acos if you get your acos Your average cost per sale down below 50% you’re getting those Sales breakeven or below the Goal obviously get it below but you find of got to think of those sponsored ads just additional advertising and traffic to boost your listing together organic sales and more organic sales Role in As well
Alex: you know sometimes When i click on things on amazon i see some of stuff on is there The ability to retarget to other platforms & always good ads
Todd : yeah yeah Definitely so Amazon does a lot of that For you if you you search for your if you product on Amazon or not Amazon but on Google you very well might see amazon Ads for your product right on there because i’m a girl does a lot of that for you now on the other hand you can run your own google and i would more Recommend probably facebook and instagram but you’d have to figure out where your market s hanging out and Drive Traffic that way You wouldn’t want to drive the traffic directly to amazon because you cannot track it from there you don’t know if they bought or anything else or what happened to them after that what instead what you want to do you have your own ecommerce site so from facebook you want to drive drive Them to your ecommerce site maybe a landing page you’re doing a giveaway at $200 basket of your Cosmetics or whatever you want to giveaway People Can register to win That Product so you are going to build your email List that way and you’re going to have Maybe A series of emails after people Sign up you try to get them to share The giveaway for more entrance and Different tools out there Help with that as well Who
Alex: Owns the email addresses let’s say Somebody else purchases From amazon From from you do You get to keep that customer information can i import that into my email list and all that
Todd: no unfortunately not the email addresses are all on anatomized because the amazon doesn’t want you to steal those customers but that’s why i say doing a facebook id for your products to a contest now you get their email address and then after contest is over you give a winner and you send an email and say hi with picked a winner click here to see if it was you and it takes them to another page and it shows the name of the winner and then offers them maybe 30% or 50% off the product that gave to both books sales on amazon as well but then also you have their emailforever unless they unsubscribe so you can keep providing value to them and marketing to them now you just don’t want to mark it to your email list you want to start providing value like i don’t know on your current website if you have a blog and you do tips and tricks and things like that for using your products
Alex: it’s very new i just launched in january and all i’ve done is when shameless website launch and he built you know and kind of revenue from from the discount that coupon so but you know who successful we got a whole bunch of orders in but and we just got this started and yeah absolutely i agree with you we’re gonna be doing some value giving emails and all of that in the series hopefully warming up that relationship more
Todd: yeah it’s really important i don’t know if you know who Gary Vaynerchuk yes
Alex: i do yeah
Todd: yeah he has a book called jab jab jab right hook
Alex: yeah
Todd: and that’s exactly what you want to do more emails so you have provide value you provide value provide value and then you go with the with a sales pitch but you always want to provide more value than sales because people aren’t going to stay signed up to your email list if you’re just trying to sell them all the time but if you’re saying hey hey check out this way to get rid of acne or whatever the case might be and you’re breaking it down writing a nice long blog post or making a youtube video whatever is easiest for you on how people can help themselves and live a better life or use their cosmetics better or beauty products or whatever it is that’s going to help people stay on your email list and also build up kind of a loyal following because people will be like well this guy helped me with all this free information now when i need the products well i’ll buy through him he’s giving me all this free stuff so
Alex: i work with many many different bloggers and different websites that i follow that person this thought leaders are kind of in a completely different place now because i approach i’m a big believer in them
Todd: yep yeah it’s kind of the only way to do it nowadays i mean people are so used to being sold to that they can smell it a mile away and they’re there tired of it and specially the younger generations as well i mean they don’t even pay attention to half of that stuff there blasted so much that you just don’t eat out so but if you are there providing value and giving them a reason to follow you that when you do go ahead and make a sale or try to make a sale no one’s gonna care and some people will even buy her from you just to thank you for providing the content that you provided
Alex: we’re really digging deep here but i just had a quick just to come back to the ranking factors for a second how how much of a ranking factor is like the sales volume compared to other things i meant is that the only ranking factor right like there’s got to be just the quality of its just how many images you have and your listing i’m guessing these people want to live i’m speculating here so correct me from totally off on on this stuff there’s probably a couple other ranking factors that are you know if your volume is lagging a little bit you can at least make up for a little bit mutters
Todd: the ranking and again nobody knows exactly how amazon does it but the ranking is pretty much all the quantity of sets if not all of it i would say probably 95-96 percent or higher everything else is conversion factors which please just as important overall because let’s say amazon a bunch of sales from your lunch that we did and so amazon moves you up to the top and now you’re getting thousand people to visit your listing but only fan of those are your product amazon’s not gonna keep giving you all those clicks if you’re not getting the conversions and the conversions have to do with number one your pictures having awesome pictures that are highly and professionally done so i would highly recommend getting like a professional photographer Do it to do them for you if you can find somebody local it’s awesome because you can keep going to them and in the long run the price is usually cheaper but then also your title having a good catching title that is easy for the customer to read but also has your keywords in it your key phrases and then the bullet points from there having bullet points that don’t only say like the benefits of the product but emotionally connect with a customer so your makeup might be natural so you could say well we have all natural beauty products and that’s fine but you want to say why that’s important and tell a customer that if you want lyrics can get a acne cream because It’s all natural and safe for your skin and its not whatever cause wrinkles or whatever the case may be i don’t know enough about it but
Alex: know exactly what do you mean absolutely and try to you know put that into my mind copywriting making sure that every Feature That it was connects emotionally to a problem thats because i think thats a really good point as far as the the tigerlily browse The table i see sometimes when i search for products my god my website my ecommerce website now you know optimized for certain keywords that are in my mind the person is looking for products and i often get some of these sponsored google product image kind of things pop up and i often see amazon things pop up which tells me amazon is getting index quite a bit thanks you’re searching for a product amazon Gets gets you know it gets indexed in that search results so how important is thinking about google se when creating your amazon listing title it’s definitely important
Todd: thats kind of where you search terms search phrases Come in so that too that i mentioned earlier scope and a really good one for finding out going to your competition your biggest competition and using that tool to find out what they are actually selling for no you’re going to have to use your common sense and kind of weed out the terms and don’t make sense because what scope does is just find all of the terms or search phrases that they rank 4 and then give you an idea of what they might be selling through there but if there is any nail polish obviously You know there’s a disconnect they’re so even though they’re showing up for it they’re probably not getting many sales true that so you kind of got to use your own common sense for that and determine what phrases are most important and put those in your title and you pretty much you want to use up all the space that amazon gives you in your title but you have to remember that while you’re trying to rank on amazon and amazon is looking for those search terms it’s the buyer who has the read that title and the title house that make sense so you have to kind of weigh it back and forth and make sure you’re getting all the search term in there but the title makes sense and that it’s not just a bunch of words put together
Alex: okay that’s good advice so just kind of finding the happy medium between those things i find that that’s true SEO in general for just a regular like you need you need to know what people are searching for and sometimes they’re searching for a little weird so you got to think about how to stitch that into a good usability experience when they actually do it your website or they hit the page that they clicked on so that there is still looking for this they’re feeling like their matching when they look
Todd: so and that’s where you really have to keep in mind that SEO for amazon search engine engine optimization for amazon is completely different than for google it’s not gonna be the same phrases and that’s one reason you’re gonna want a blog on your ecommerce store Because of it all on google they might search for how to get rid of acne and if you wrote a blog post on how to get rid of acne using your all natural products then that might show up and click on it and that’s what they’re looking for They’re not necessarily looking to buy yet not on google but on amazon you go to amazon to buy products don’t go to amazon necessarily to research how to do something so on amazon the keyword how to do something so on amazon the keyword to or the search phrase my might be at Acne cream or acne cream or whatever They’re searching For For saudi afraid is going to be different so the phrase is going to be differentThen what you’re going to be targeting on google you know some people search and buy on google not everybody’s on amazon obviously but for the majority the search phrase are going to be different between google and amazon
Alex: thats good thats a yes he i mean just the volume thing that you’re talking about how important that is the chick is completely different way of thinking a then how rock to rank on google sure youre this things stays high yeah
Todd: yeah the google is looking for for the most relevant content and amazon is looking for the best product to sell you so completely different ways of looking at the content
Alex: green stuff i guess i guess at this point i mean i need to get my my store open and start putting some listings out there and just start you know think about doing a lunch like you said to try to give that first wave of sales in there quickly yeah i see i see that sometimes i get a box from amazon in it and it got something or there’s an email follow up often where its like telus what you think of the product how it is you know how is it going with it soliciting reviews basically do u recommend and that’s where we approach
Todd: yeah 100% that’s absolutely must and you can either do that manually through amazon’s back and sending emails or you can automate that with a program another service that you’d have to pay for but well worth it i believe the one i use is called sales backer and that automates sending those emails and you can set it up to send u like immediately after the purchase immediately after it ships one day after day you receive it and then maybe a couple of weeks after receiving i believe is the sequence to keep people in form that hey your products Shipped got your product yesterday let us know if there’s any issues and then maybe your week to 14 days after you sent and say hey hope everything is going good if not let us know and can you click here to leave us feedback and that would go to your belief seller feedback not product reviews yet you want to leave seller feedback on your account because you want to be able to your seller feedback becauseThat’s kind of your reputation on amazon and then for the people who leave you positive feedback then you can go back into amazon and send them an email asking if they would review the product
Alex: so you can still send your customers stuff out of amazon as a mass email as i were saying so you can still send your customer stuff out of amazon as a mass email is everything
Todd: not as a mass e-mail really but sales backer basically connects into amazon and just send the email for you through their system so you can have Templates of emails and just automate those emails going out and then customize them for you depending on the product that they bought and things like that
Alex: but If i’m logged in tomas amazon seller account how do i how can i communicate with my cart that’s a recent customer i can only basically send them like a message through the system but now i can’t do like About or group kind of thing
Todd: right correct i Don’t believe that there’s any way to much you get like a scrambled email address so i guess you could collect those and sent a batch but i’m not sure if that would be against amazon’s terms of service or not to do that because they really only want you to communicate with the customer about their particular order so if you star you saying we Got this promotion or whatever then amazon wouldn’t like that very much also don’t want to ask for positive reviews and 5 star reviews or anything because thats against the terms of services as well
Alex: that Brings me to a good segway here what should i do to avoid getting my account suspended or whatever you know what are like big no no’s that you need to steer clear with being an amazon seller
Todd: So like i said i think the biggest one right now specially since Amazon kind of attack in the media over it Was the radio thinkin bout a year ago what people would do lunch is that we would give product away for free in exchange for reviews now wouldn’t say that they had to leave a 5 star review but these groups were basically condition to leave positive review in exchange for free products on amazon came down on that and can’t do that anymore if you do that we find out we’re going to remove the review and if you keep doing it where going to suspend your account
Alex: even if they save you guys for free in their review it’s no more
TOdd: Correct know they don’t want any of that that will get removed
Alex: Solicited reviews gets banned right away
Todd: So you want to be careful with that in addition to the getting kicked off of amazon you kind of just got to think to yourself and just kind of feel that this feel right if what you’re doing kind of feel a little shady or maybe in the area ang you probably want to be Little more careful About doing that
ALex: let’s take a great example and tell me if you if this Would fly or not or tell me you wouldn’t do this so you have legitimate product reviews on your website from customers can you take them and put it down on your amazon
TOdd: um.. You cannot put it on your amazon but what you could do and other people have done and it’s not against terms of service or anything like that as long as you don’t ask them to leave you a 5 star review but you could send an email out to your past customers and say hey we launched on amazon can you go over and let us know what you thought of this product and leave a review over on amazon now if they are still on your email list they probably like the products so hopefully they leave a 5 star but as long as you don’t Ask them to leave a 5 star or a positive review then you’d be fine . Doing that now and that would be actually a really good tactic as part of that Opening launch strategy to start getting some reviews but those people on amazon They’re not going to be verified reviews so there’s an if you look at a product There is going to show verified purchaser next to some people’s name or most people if they’re didn’t purchase it’s the product and they have to review that it doesn’t say that so those reviews don’t have as much weight with amazon in terms of the how good your product is but it can help you convert with other people that may be don’t know your brand or just finding your products so it’s definitely a good idea but i would do that with the thought in mind that they could get removed amazon Thus Go through and clean up reviews from time to time so f whatever reasons They think that those reviews are not valid or there just not good being on there they might just remove them so they look you’ll probably stick for a week a month or year maybe forever but eventually They might just get cleared out of there as the automated system goes through and clean things up
Alex: and I just have a couple last question and it’s been it’s been a really good conversation really
Todd: yeah
Alex: i have ben and join it whole page whole page of notes here too So okay It will have It will have It will have These two clients right now i’m working with if i wanted to get something in my own dog because i want to build another streamline i mention the alignment i want to be able to to have some passive income Maybe some other source to where i don’t need to you know track down work with with with clients as much and i could just have many own kind of business there are a bunch of different business models that I’ve seen selling on amazon you know maybe it might be helpful if you tell me like if you can tell me everyone’s it just for sure don’t work or i can just give you a humble examples like Like you know i was in ones ones were by the know i hear A lot of a highly expressed there’s a guy out there named alex some push pushed in this whole you know Buy an anomaly expressed and resell on amazon or whatever You The dropship model versus carrying the inventory i guess i can you give me some pros and cons of i gotta drop should have been you know it’s pretty obvious you don’t carry the inventory or just kind of making a little bit of that different so but it is it you know can you you would have to sell a pretty high volume i think to make the kind of money that you would be able to replace an income with that and at that level you have to automate For sure the ordering process and feeling across those platforms if someone places an order through your website and then Your reordering and through all the express or you know so every place your on amazon whatever it may be what are your thoughts on like what what’s sustainable ism you know to replace that say incoming fifty thousand dollars or more what would you go so yeah there’s obviously a lot of options and i’ve done a lot of them from retail arbitrage wholesale To wholesale the private label i’ve done The ebay flipping as well and i haven’t done dropshipping but There’s a lot of different options out there the one that i’m pushing towards is wholesale and private label through amazon fba covered by amazon and the reason is for that is it’s the most reliable and amazon really likes the fulfilled by amazon part of it unless you’re fulfilled by merchants and you can get to the point where you doing the prime shipping you know you’re on top of everything and your movement product and getting it out the door and you can do that seller fulfilled prime it’s called that would be another option but with that then you have to have a warehouse and keep all the products and ship everything individually as well so it’s a whole nother Business model as a post to what i am looking at the retail arbitrage i still do a fair amount of that and make a lot of good money off of that so that market still very good but with like the online arbitrage and ebay flipping and such like that i think that is going to be getting more and more difficult i don’t really do any of that anymore and you see a lot of tours now that automate just aboutall all that from going out to websites and scraping websites and finding profitable products on amazon and stuff like that and i kind of feel like once you get to that level that a lot of the profit is going to be out of that market unless you are so fast at getting those products purchased and on to amazon its sold that you’re going to lose or have the potential to lose any profit or maybe even their original money that you spent on the products so it’s going to get more and more difficult as it gets easier and easier you know it seems whenever something starts getting more and more easy to do it’s going to get more and more difficult to make profit As it gets easier and easier you know it Seems whenever something starts getting more and more easy to do it’s going to get more and more difficult to make profit
Alex: which thing is get you think wholesaler treasure or retailer
Todd: online arbitrage and ebay flipping and i say easier in that it’s automated and you don’t have to do as much work because that means that people are going to see the quick buck and more people are going to jump in there and do it easier for the people to get into the game and start doing it which is going to drive down prices and the key for online arbitrage andy bay is that you Get in amazon you sell it quickly Before Other people do the same thing and drive the price down
Alex: and where your alternative to this is is ordering a giant calendar something from a wholesaler and getting that on too amazon’s warehouse and and selling it that way is that correct
1:05 Todd: Correct but the big thing with like wholesale for example is that i can order all the Product think i’m going to need for the next month and get it into amazon and kind of keep rolling that and ordering product and sending it in and i can repeat that with the same product as long as the product is selling profitable with online arbitrage and ebay a lot of times you can do that a lot of times it’s a one-off you Only by so many products and then they’re gone if it’s a clearance or the price changes on ebay or the sales and on the e-commerce site that the the Harbor trash products from but whole sale i know how how i’m going to spend i know how it’s going to much it’s gonna be i know my profit is going to be and i know how long its going to take Harbour trash products from but with wholesale i know how how i’m going to spend i know how it’s going too much it’s gonna be i know my profit is going to be and i know how long its going to take me 4 for me to get it and get it into an amazon and so i can keep reordering to keep my stuff in there and keep telling of that same product wear with online Arbitrary with ebay it’s a never ending battle even with retail arbitrage it’s never ending battle of finding new products because the product last month or last week are no longer profitable so you can’t sell on same price anymore.
Alex: so What advice would you have to find because then you know i do have an idea there a sort of a a niche that i know pretty well i am home abroad and i make beer i’ve been doing that many many years pretty well i am home abroad and i make beer i’ve been doing that many many years and there is some higher end products that experienced homework will you know will spend a lot of money on and so I know i always had a little bit of the same you may be doing an amazon store or something like that how would you approach like your or find a wholesaler for you know a product let’s say you don’t know anybody in the industry at all how did you you kind of set up your first who wholesale relationship
1:07 Todd: so So i basically just started cold emailing people then what i did is i have an itch that i like to do my whole sale in because i’m very familiar with it and i know what works and doesn’t and one of the key things that i’ve done to be profitable is create packages are the products sold to products and work that i know good together sawdust as a package in that way i’m the only seller selling that and i can make more profit off of that with finding those products what i did is i went to a niche website for the niche that i meant so for yours for the beer brewing there is probably a ecommerce website out there that is largest e-commerce seller of those products in that needs so you find it and then go in there click through the products and for everybody that can i have a brand name so take the brand name search for it in the google find your website finder contact us link and send them off an email and say hey i’m an amazon specialist amazon retail specialist i would like to get a wholesale price list and sell your product please send me an email i could find on that website you know 20 30 40 1600 and you get a reply from a good number of them in a lot of them will say we’re not looking for anybody to sell on amazon or to sell you have to have a retail store but good number of them will say yeah you go here’s the list or they’ll say if i never love this form and then we’ll send you the list and that’s how i found some of my big wholesalers so i’ve got i’ve got one really big one and then several medium sized and a couple a couple of small ones that i’m doing it selling their products now and those are going very well so that’s kind of a how i did it do just called emailing basically i guess you could call as well but i think people are really busy and email is just easier to send off and then they can reply at their convenience
1:09 Alex: are a lot of them requiring you to submit some sort of you you know your your history as a center of the seller your i didn’t i don’t know i just remember when i had a business a long time ago in a clearly different industry some of these places to set up an account you had to go to a credit check we had to have some kind of references or something like that to finance all all the hurdle in this
1:10:11 Todd : oh yeah definitely for the bigger ones the smaller wholesalers they didn’t really as for me anything they just send me here’s the price list that has no what you want to buy a kind of thing in the bigger ones though they will ask for trade references and i’m assuming you buy your ingredients from somebody so they would be your trade reference specially if they provide you any kind of net terms you know You know they provide your product on on an invoice that you’re going to pay later yeah that’s big and helpful another one that they ask for is like your bank that’s for your banker so if you develop develop a relationship banker at the bank that you have your business accounts helpful so you can provide his information get information from to make sure that your Real business visa that you’re available since you’re not just a fly by night kind of person and if they’re going to give you the terms they want to make sure that your going to actually pay them now some of the wholesalers that i buy from i am still being with credit card upfront which i’m going to be emailing them and talking with them to change that do not terms because that’s going to nice to be able to buy and sell the products before you actually get them or before you actually have to pay them i should say So that’s going to nice how to buy and sell the products before you actually get them or before you actually have to pay them i should say so that’s nice but just try to come up with do usually like 3 trade references and then a bank reference if you don’t have those then you’re going to have to target the smaller manufacturers who are going to give you those terms without any of trade references so you can build a straight reference up and then just let them know that they that say hey i’m applying to sell dispersions products can i use you as a trade reference and most people don’t have a problem with that
1:12:15 Alex: just out of curiosity you familiar with the american express card:
1:12:17 Todd: A american express plumb card?
1:12:22 Alex: Yeah
1:12:21 Todd: No I’m not
1:12:24 instead they look great really so because you said terms and i used to do some sales training for american express and digest google.it still out there is still a thing this was many years ago but it gives you 60 days trade terms basically they marketed as trade terms for everyone so it’s a business credit card that i didn’t do an interest-free thing for 60 days repeated you know over and an hour versus
1:12:56 Todd: No I had not heard of thats interesting but what actually uses the capital one venture card which any credit card you get 30 days to pay it back into a free so that’s kind of automatic terms their butt and i also get 2% cash back on that and between my two cards my personal one in my business one thing in like the last few months i’ve got racked up about four thousand dollars worth of a point so that’s kind of helpful ideas that for like vacations and stuff like that so it’s like a built-in vacation fund that i used so i don’t know if you need needed the longer terms and that other one would probably be helpful but i usually just go off the 30 rolling 30 days on a credit card just pay that off every month so that i don’t get a credit or interest on that and then i also get those points as well which is nice
1:13:57 Alex: so you know i sell this products that are already there not my products there already done but if i want to set up my own store and any other term that would watch this would you recommend me they start in A segment or niche that they already know the product they know the customer may be something like that or would you say that’s not really that important you should just look at kind of the approach of you Where is the demand i’m being filled instead
1:14:32 Todd: It’s definitely easier to do a niche that that you know And the reason for that is because you know the niche if making your own products you’re going to know if it’s a good product or you are in the niche that you are involved in your going to know what’s good what’s not good because one thing you know what to do specially on amazon make it better than everybody else by adding something or whatever the case may be as people should buy your products over someone amazon is maturing so sellers on amazon getting bigger and bigger And while it is still new people can still get it and make a lot of money on amazon it needs to be done a little more professional than what it used to be done so it takes the work of actually building a business rather than just grabbing a product as you said aliexpress and throwing it up and making $50000 or whatever it might be and to bring aliexpress answered that part of it you know you can still do that business just a bay and online arbitrage it’s getting more difficult to on that because so many people are in doing that profit margin getting smaller and smaller were really to the point of on amazon need to build a business in a reason why people buy your product improve your product to make it a better product or people to buy
1:16:20 Alex: i was just browsing on on aliexpress looking at it that was like when we got this robo banks for like half of what we sell robo bank spark that was like this is going to make killing nope i gone to amazon the same exact rubber banks are being sold with the same exact price they are on aliexpress very much so i don’t know who is how they’re making any money on it but it seems like i guess if you find a wholesaler channel that is really accessible to a lot of people then you’re going to find anything that you can markup
1:17:02 yeah, i mean i’ve done it i’ve sold some products direction from aliexpress in the past and i have one that still listed it isn’t so much but i do make a profit off of it not because it’s differently than what else is selling because a branded a different so everybody else is doing it for what i found A market that i tailored my search term as such for dead product that way directly from aliexpress the only reason i’m doing that is because then i’m going to switch it over to a private label manufacturer making them directly for me and better down the line so it’s not something money but if you see an area that’s not being served and use it as a test Let’s say those vacuum Cleaners people selling this i want to see if it was a real work but for not cleaning someone’s house but for cleaning the market or whatever you know or sweeping up your deck or something and the people looking for that you might be able to get some sales off then you can say hey this is selling i’m going to take this and go find them actual manufacturer and i’m going to make this purpose and sell it as my old products so that’s one way to express two kind of test the market but buying from aliexpress as a way to make profit as much as much as a way test in you’re not sure Sure about
1:19:00 Alex : seems like the biggest limitation there is you know the amazon consumer it seems like you know we’ve been trained to like i’m going to get this thing in three days and then everything is like 729 you know that your fastest is going to be dead really slow you know literally shipped on a shipping container probably from china
1:18:50 Todd: aliexpress i’m not buying Aliexpress when i sell i’m saying faded but i think i could be 4% and what’s nice about that expresses you can order 5 10 15 20 small amount get them send them into amazon fba and see if they sell if they sell order or more and keep them ordering kind of like you good for my wholesale wholesale supplier until you either want to scrap it for Say hey this my be a good area to look at doing about them more seriously
1:20:00 Yeah, I was thinking about mor them morrisseya dropshipping thing because i wanted to start out we just a minimalist and hopefully just learn you you know step by step and learn as i go on with it then i’m missing a large number a large pool of money but and then do you know anything like that in the event like when aliexpress is there us-based dropshipping index or some kind of database
1:20:40 Todd: now that i know i there is there is a heard of it but i’m not sure the name of the top of my head but if you do a google search for manufacturers in united states or dropshippers in the united states until you get a lot of insults i don’t think there’s anything as an as nice as aliexpress alibaba but i mentioned earlier that i do i don’t really do drop shipping i’ve never done it and is about what things could get your amazon account suspended and the in and of itself but if you sell something on amazon and you don’t keep it in time or you have to cancel it or it doesn’t end up coming to the customer or if they get the wrong product to much that could cause amazon account suspend your account and your account can very quickly go into a negative status if you do when your drop shipping you don’t control any of product and then hope that the product is still through the drop shipper at the same price and then you make that order for the drop shipper and you have to hope that they ship it out in time that you can enter into amazon because amazon wants to know that information you may you have to hope that there is sending them the right product and then if there’s a return and then you go to dance to get it back to the Dropshipper for me even though dropshipping sound so easy it also sounds to me just like more hassle than i want i would want to go through and more wiz that i want then i would want to take with my business on amazon
1:22:24 Alex: but then mine was the largest shipment that you sent over to fbi field by amazon warehouses
1:22:34 Todd: shipment in terms of quantity on average right now i’m probably sending anywhere between 8 to 15 to 20 boxes when i do a shipment Dollar wise that’s probably the biggest device might been about four or five thousand dollars but i remember i’m trying to i’m trying to get better at managing my inventory i need to improve that area and so that i’m not getting those warehouse fees so it’s not like i’m ordering i’m in the biggest order ever made the ten thousand dollar order from one of the new suppliers that i got because one of the year terms was that i could order as long as i ordered more than 10,000 dollars i could buy it in november and not to pay for it and tell me and i got all this big breaks in terms of discounts for buying volume And i send it up and send it to amazon and maybe a couple of different shipments so probably four or five thousand dollars in the biggest treatment during into amazon
1:23:46 Alex: They’re about the same lot of products that i sell
1:23:52 Todd: what i was doing is a wish i was testing lots of product list of different products and i made a lot of different packages a lot of that stuff and sent them in amazon i bought basically 10000 dollars worth of stuff but only like a couple of each thing or maybe 5 or 6 of each day and then i made the packages send them into amazon and i say as and as they sold in a scene they were part of the ball then i know i’m ordering larger quantities of the one that have been successful
1:24:22 Alex: psychological you at what point did you get comfortable with you know The penguin that time out of money risking you know chunks of money like that i’m in your i’m guessing you didn’t start with those sizes of orders in the sizes of shipment how many months in new york did you get comfortable
1:24:53 Todd: well i started the business officially january 1st 2015 that’s when i register the loc in so i was just kind of playing with amazon a little bit and decided that maybe i want to make a business out of this was my registering as a business yet lots of discounts and write off and things that otherwise you can buy the things but it can end up slowly went from there I was selling on ebay before that and i found out i was selling on found out about this amazon thing through score over at the amazing seller and sent all of the product that i was selling on ebay individually into amazon and amazon lost the shipment it wasn’t me it was like 30th this bed says that i was staying at the time now And i like a man now i’m just lost all this but then i miss you and gave me a credit for the retail value of everything they lost and i’m like wow that’s easy way to sell my project really fast right away that was the first man that ever sent into amazon and i’m like so this is kind of interesting so i started going from there i ordered a bed set that worked out but then i found out that i was doing something that people really hate in and i didn’t know time coming from ebay because ebay doesn’t matter but on amazon with the private labeling so people order from alibaba and then branded and sell it under the brand will i didn’t know any of that at the time so i was just sending my project which was this exact same product and branded and selling under this other person’s resting so i guess i was considered a hijacker at the time even though i didn’t know what that was coming from the bay World because it didn’t matter over there you just sold the products you know so i stopped selling dead and started having been trying to do my own private labels which i’ve got a couple one product that’s doing good that i think i’ll be able to make much better and then i’ve had a couple Products that are not working the way i wanted them to and then i’ve got a couple of other things off to my left ear that i’m going to be working on and possibly starting to private labeled as well
1:27:33 Alex: when you say private label just to make sure i understand what you’re saying because maybe varies from industry to industry i always start of private label as you purchase a product that’s not your own from that say to manufacturer but they allow you to let they give you a license to actually like your own brand
1:28:00 yes that’s actually that is private label but private label can also be considered your own projects so i would consider that your selling as her private label products in basically i say that is because i don’t know if you manufacture your products or if you have a company that makes the packaging and put everything in it and mixes the year formula for you
1:28:26 Alex: do pretty much everything except for you you know we purchased packaging for it in Nba but you know we a better on labeling and everything in it looks like everything
1:28:41 Todd: so you’re basically you’re a minimal manufacturer and a brand or the private label or wear apple apple iphone apple doesn’t make their own iphones they go to manufacture human factors the iphone’s specification and then they put their iphone logo on it and then that’s an apple product so we wouldn’t you know we wouldn’t say anything bad about that or necessarily bad you’re not saying anything bad but you know apple is a private label In a big scale because you know the go-to manufacturer who makes the price of their specs now what you might be looking at is the manufacturer they sell the same products hundred different people who put their label on it that could also be called baby white labeling where you’re taking someone else’s product and doing it and that’s a viable market but what i tried to do if i make tweaks to the products to make them better and to make them my own and make them much more difficult for someone else to just get the same product or sell
1:29:48 Alex: in this case or it’s just not your thing to look for products that are you know sold under the brand for example like getting the year india homebrewing world you know one of the highest and doing keto city from bais blichmann in near in brinquedo brewing Kettle ct us glickman and near and engineering brewing cattle and their brand name is very strong and their brand well across india home whole wide world we’re on them even now is in program gathering place so you know you wouldn’t sell a product like that with a really strong brand name
1:30:25 Todd: so you’re saying as like a wholesale purchaser or private label
1:30:36 Alex: you know buying in wholesale and selling it on amazon again
1:30:40 Todd: yeah yeah definitely if it’s something that is profitable for sure there is no reason not to do that that you know with wholesale i know the same thing with private labeling a product straight from alibaba and not making any changes is that you’re going to get competition most likely so you’re going to be competing on your price in the long run if you’re making your own products in making them different and unique in making them your own your your having the market to yourself because your product is unique in its only one like that and if there’s even if it’s a benefit Looking for those products you’re going to be able to brand around those products because you are you’re a better or more unique or do something different or if targeted a different market than anybody else
1:31:41 Alex: sounds like it’s not like you have a strategy that was trying to distinguish you from some other stuff here and we probably don’t have enough time to vigan and on down on on this at this time i’ll of the times you you more at some point in the future and how you can do navigate all that
1:32:09 Todd: for sure you have to do around to and go a little more advanced we’ve gotten really advanced ready but but yeah it’s basically you know like i said it’s all about building a real business you know the days of the amazon gold rush or anyone could just grab any products from aliexpress enjoy their and become rich those days are gone in a lot of those people who Do it that way leader falling by the wayside or having to be focus on building an actual business so now though i think is the perfect time for someone who actually wants to build a legitimate business to get in because i’m still going Growing and there’s still a lot of room for go there yet and is still with relatively new and someone who comes in and take it seriously and business around it can make a lot of money right now on amazon
1:33:08 Alex: that’s really motivating do know that kind of sad to know that well
1:33:05 Todd: Will the biggest thing with all of this we went through a lot of things and then you’re my head might be going crazy it is just a start where you are already at and where you at now and learn more in in depth of what you actually know like for you you need to do the first thing is go make an account and know your eyes your self with seller central learn how that works and then maybe send 500 one of your products in and see if you can start selling on their get your first sales through Fb or through fbm if you feel more comfortable study out that way you could definitely do that because you could probably an undercut the people that are already in their and just get your first sale see how it goes Familiarizing yourself with amazon so don’t worry about all the launching or anything yet until you get your product in there and you see it there your listing is good to can make me be start clicking your listing and stuff and then get ready for the launch you can have more products about faster than myself over a getaway maybe 45 days to get from china
1:34:40 Alex: alright yeah it sounds like a really good small actionable go and i’ll let you know how it goes because i think within the next and for sure by end of march or going to have some product on amazon
1:34:50 Todd: let me know how it goes keep me posted and maybe we can do it follow up the video in a few months or something to see where you at and how things are going
1:35:00 Alex: i’m sure i’m going to have to tell more questions than thanks for taking all of this time going to know how much this is i’m going to be usable but i’m sure you going to do a good job at it
1:35:16 Todd: you know it’s perfect i think people will enjoy it the weekend just taking over an hour and 40 minutes to a lot of good information though
1:35:25 Alex: but by the way you know how much is the facebook ecosystem advertising and marketing I’m a man for a little while about a year and a half now and it’s like it’s really new frontier so it’s a lot of changes on things to keep up with tilde me know if you have you did everything pixel or custom audience any of these kinds of their
1:35:53 Todd: sounds i’ll do sounds good i will do appreciate it
