What happens when even the experts take a loss? In this episode, Steven Pope from My Amazon Guy shares the hard truths about his $250,000 mistake in the Amazon world and how you can avoid the same pitfalls. Whether you’re a seasoned seller or just starting, Steven’s insights into product launches, sourcing, and managing an agency will equip you with the knowledge to succeed.
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$250K Loss: What Went Wrong and How Steven Bounced Back
Steven Pope shares the story of losing a quarter million dollars on Amazon and why focusing on sourcing and product selection is critical. Learn from his personal experiences to avoid the same costly mistakes.
The Importance of Cutting Your Losses
Sometimes, it’s better to walk away. Steven explains how he sold his brand to save his energy and focus on his successful agency, and how making these tough decisions can ultimately improve your business.
Why Click-Through Rate (CTR) is King
Steven reveals why CTR should be your top priority and how spending time on your main image can drastically improve your sales. He shares actionable tips for optimizing your Amazon listing and boosting your click-through rate.
The Power of a Great Product
Steven emphasizes the need for a high-quality, well-sourced product. Discover why taking your time to find the perfect product can make all the difference and how the wrong product can sink your business.
Resources From This Episode:
- My Amazon Guy: myamazonguy.com
- Click-Through Rate Optimization Promo: myamazonguy.com/img (Promo Code: CT)
- Helium 10: helium10.com
- Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink: Book Link
- Radical Candor by Kim Scott: Book Link
- Prosper Show: prospershow.com
- Seller Sessions Podcast by Danny McMillan: sellersessions.com
- Zulay Kitchen: zulaykitchen.com
In Conclusion:
Navigating the Amazon marketplace is tough, but the key is learning from your mistakes and optimizing every step of the way. Whether it’s focusing on CTR, cutting your losses, or choosing the right products, take these lessons from Steven Pope and apply them to your own business journey.
Transcript
Steven Pope (00:00):
Choose one thing that has the most maximum guarantee to improve your sales as a seller. And that is always going to be click through rate. CTR is where it’s at. Spend 10 hours fixing your main image, add a keyword, add the accessories, shift around how it looks, run some ab tests. And I’m telling you, there is no better place to spend time as a seller.
Announcer (00:22):
Welcome fellow entrepreneurs to the Amazon Sellers School podcast, where we talk about Amazon Wholesale and how you can use it to build an e-Commerce Empire, a side hustle, and anything in between. And now your host Todd Welch.
Todd Welch (00:43):
All right, what’s up everybody? Welcome to another episode of the Amazon Seller School. I’ve got my good friend Steven Pope here today. He is the owner of my Amazon guy, and if you haven’t heard them of them and you’re in the Amazon space, uh, you might be living under a rock because they’re one of the largest agencies in the space doing 20 million plus per year, over 500 employees. But what we’re here to talk about today is, uh, hard lesson that Steven Pope is gonna give us a lot of the lessons learned from be. Before we dive into that, Steven, uh, welcome to the show.
Steven Pope (01:23):
Thanks for having me on. Todd. Todd, congratulations on your acquisition of Mommy income as well.
Todd Welch (01:29):
Yeah, I appreciate it. Very exciting to, uh, move forward with that and hopefully help all of her students keep growing in the Amazon space, even though it’s continually getting harder and harder for everybody.
Steven Pope (01:41):
Yeah, it, it, it is. And that’s, that’s the story of Amazon these days, isn’t it? Right? Like it’s, uh, every year it gets harder. If, if I could just take the wealth that I have at 2024, go back 7, 8, 9 years, and then get PPC clicks for 2 cents a click for position one, man, those were the days .
Todd Welch (02:01):
Yes, for sure. But that’s with everything, right? I mean, 10 years from now, we’ll be looking back on something that’s going on today and be like, man, I wish I would’ve taken advantage of that. So you gotta figure out what that is ahead of time, as much as possible.
Steven Pope (02:16):
That is the truth.
Todd Welch (02:18):
So tell us about this big loss that you had. You lost $250,000. What’s that all about?
Steven Pope (02:26):
So I had a brand on Amazon. I’ve been a private label seller for 10 years on Amazon. Um, this was my second private label account, second go. This time, it was by myself. First time I used a partner and I invested very deeply. So in my best year, I made a quarter million in net profit as a private labeler, primarily selling wine glasses, wine glasses with funny sans. So a little, little personalization. And that was very well, my, my best glass was it positioned number one for the term wine glass at one point Valentine’s Day, three or four years ago and whatnot, I took the money that I, I made in profit and I reinvested into the business. So we started manufacturing in the Carolinas. We created multiple brands, a holster brand called Holit Age of Sage for my soap and my Tumblr brand. We had Lily posh, which, which was a clothing brand.
Steven Pope (03:13):
And, and I had planned on giving one of these brands to each of my children. So I had names picked out, trademarks filed for each of my children. That was the idea. Anyway, so I was pretty invested emotionally from a business standpoint. I was invested full nine yards. So last Black Friday though, I wake up and Amazon had revoked half my catalog. And that’s the day, that’s like, like the story of every Amazon seller ever, their greatest fear Black Friday weekend. Congratulations, Steven. You’re an Amazon expert and you have half your products yanked. Uh, what did you do wrong? So, . So I was selling some, um, some tumblers that were in, in the parody space, right? So I was, I, I was combining, uh, IP for multiple things and kind of putting ’em together. So I take like Starbucks and combine it with Star Wars, right?
Steven Pope (04:06):
Two ips slam ’em together on a Tumblr, and it was going very well until it wasn’t right? Which is the story of every Amazon seller ever, right? So I could not get those products reinstated. I, I flat out failed as an Amazon expert who can reinstate almost anything, couldn’t ate, reinstate my own products. Amazon repeatedly told me there is no pathway to reinstatement. They nuked my entire category for parody in the Tumblr space. Nobody can do it anymore. And I’m probably the reason why nobody can do it anymore. Um, but like they completely flat out nuked it. I never once had an IP cons like flag on my account just one day. Amazon’s like, we’re, we’re not gonna allow that anymore. You’re gone. So they, so that was
Todd Welch (04:55):
For trademark violations, I assume?
Steven Pope (04:58):
No, they, they, they never actually came out and said it . They just said, these are, these are violate terms, we’re not gonna tell you which term and and goodbye. Right? They revoked my brand registry, did the same thing. Not gonna tell you why. It’s one of these eight listed reasons you figure it out. I got brand registry reinstated the first time, but the second time it never came back, right? So we’re going on eight, nine months of that just totally gone forever. So I made the difficult decision, right? So I, I knew how this was gonna come across in our space. Like, oh, if Steven can’t do it, then who can? Right? Mm-Hmm, , uh, if Steven can’t do it, I’m not gonna hire Steven to do it for my brand. Right? Like, I knew those objections were gonna come out and I still made the choice to go ahead and reveal my hand, right?
Steven Pope (05:42):
I didn’t have to say anything. I could have, I could have just like gone into the sunset and worked on the agency. But like, that’s not my brand. . Like my brand is radical transparency over communicate, share everything I do. And I believe that if I stick to my brand, that I will get richer because of it. I believe that more people will flock to the message, um, and be part of that process. And so far, I believe I’ve been proven true, right? So $20 million agency, 400 clients, 500 jobs have made, it’s been going well, but my private label brand was a flat out disaster. There’s no question about it. So I decided that that was the age of Sage one, right? Yeah. So the, the whole account was, uh, a cluster, right? Like total cf. And so like, I decided that I needed to separate myself from it.
Steven Pope (06:33):
So I didn’t have, so I wasn’t losing money every month, right? So I, I lost a quarter million in inventory, was losing on warehouse fees, you know, had 11 employees. All of those expenses were adding up. I couldn’t list new products on the account. I couldn’t load a new brand. Like once you uh, lose brand registry, you can’t load another brand to the account, right? So like, it was just, it was just dead, total dead. And I needed to cut the cancer out. So I decided to sell it. We had an offer we were gonna go through with it. And at the last second, my partner said, you know what? I’m gonna continue your dream, Steven. Maybe I’ll give it to your kids someday. Maybe I won’t, but I’m gonna buy it instead of this other guy. And I’m like, fine, no problem. I don’t care.
Steven Pope (07:13):
As long as I don’t have to deal with it. The net benefit for me was I got to keep access to the account and I can still shoot videos, uh, ’cause he doesn’t care. So that’s the nice thing. But I sold it out and I decided that like, you know what? I’m gonna gonna focus on my agency. It was a great decision for me as a person. ’cause when I was, I’d wake up in the morning and I’d look at my account and I’d just be like, oh my gosh. Like, I can’t, I can’t move this forward. I don’t, I don’t know what to do. I’m stuck. Nothing is working, right? I put my best people on it couldn’t move forward. So I was burned. Amazon burned me. And this is, this has happened to hundreds of Amazon sellers. They, you know, some of you could say, Steven, you did something wrong and you could be right.
Steven Pope (07:54):
Who knows, right? I shouldn’t have done parody tumblers. It could be, it could be a, a wrong choice. Um, but I decided that, you know, I needed to take a step back. Now, simultaneous to this, I’m big on diversifying, right? I was like, you know, private label is cash intensive, minimal profit, 15% net profit maximum, right? My agency is closer to 43% net profit. And, and that’s after I paid myself a salary even Mm-Hmm. . So I was like, you know, where should I be spending my time here? I also opened up a retail arbitrage account where I would buy pallets of stuff, diapers, tweezers, whatever. And, and especially in beauty category. And we would sell, uh, on a retail arbitrage account. So I opened up the second account almo about, about a year ago to the, to the day. And we have sold over $8 million in goods on that account, and at a 17% net profit.
Steven Pope (08:54):
Oh, bad. So, so I was able to outscale my private label brand and it was easier. And I was thinking to myself, why? So, so I, so I had this other win. I had two wins on the board and one loss. And I was like, I, I’m gonna cut my losses and just focus on what’s working. So that’s what happened. That’s what I chose to do. Um, and, and I gotta tell you, when you cut your losses and, and walk away from a bad situation, your health tends to, to recover, right? Like I was getting up and I had energy again. I was able to look things and understand things and, and make better decisions. Mm-Hmm. , I immediately went in my agency and I cleaned house, right? Like, I got rid of everything I hated about my agency that was personnel related, just to set the tone there. And, and I cleaned house and it was easier to run my company after that. So I cut my losses, I cut my annoyances, and I’m just a happier person today because of all that. So that, that’s the story. That’s what happened.
Todd Welch (09:54):
Very good. So, uh, tell me a little more about that. What do you mean by you cleaned house? You like just got rid of the parts of the agency that you didn’t like doing or you outsourced them to other people? Or how’d you do that?
Steven Pope (10:08):
So it was all personnel related. And so to walk the fine line of what I should and shouldn’t share on a podcast here, I gotta, I gotta be careful on this. Sure. But essentially there were, there were, there were members of an agency that were working in opposition to my vision. And I had tolerated behaviors that I think shouldn’t have been tolerated. Mm-Hmm. , right? And, and so I actively corrected that problem, very good. And, and so know
Todd Welch (10:38):
How that goes sometimes.
Steven Pope (10:39):
And so I let my people know that these behaviors that I had previously tolerated are no longer acceptable. And if these behaviors exist, I will remove you from the organization. And then I did, and I took care of it. And so now we’re back on like, full Pope vision. Now, I, I gotta tell you, that wasn’t easy to do, right? Like, there were members of my organization I made a lot of money on. They were profitable people, which is why I tolerated some of those behaviors. And so by no longer tolerating those, I took a financial hit, right? But it’s, it’s the right thing to do when you want to get back to your vision, right? And get back to how you want to run a business. And so, so those are hard things business owners have to do from time to time. It’s even harder when you run everything pretty publicly, right? . So, so people can piece together the puzzle, um, of, of some of the elements I’ve said here, and they could look somewhere else and put the rest of it together pretty easily. So yeah,
Todd Welch (11:39):
I think, uh, makes a lot of sense. And a hundred percent true. I mean, when you’re smaller, not necessarily as much of a financial hit as a time hit, right? Because you might hire someone mm-hmm. who is okay at what they’re doing, but not great where they should be great. And yeah, you can fire those people, but then you’re gonna have to do a lot of that stuff yourself and train a whole new person. So you just kinda keep tolerating medioc for too long. And that can be rather harmful to a business long term.
Steven Pope (12:12):
It really can, because then the rest of the team’s, like WTF like, I’m sticking to the vision. This guy’s not right. Like, why should I? Right? And so it creates a, you know, so, so sometimes when you, when you cut the cancer out, um, you have to go an extra layer deeper because what you can’t see on the surface is that the per it permeates underneath, right? And so the cure is not just simply to remove the cancer, sometimes you have to remove things underneath that as well. And so that, that was the most shocking development for me is, is that I didn’t realize the permeation of the effect of, of that situation, right? And, and, and so it, it, it took longer, um, to correct that than I had expected, right? And some of the things that I had tolerated ended up getting tolerated a layer deeper, right?
Steven Pope (13:01):
And, and so multiple level layers of removal sometimes is required, uh, to, to cure that. Um, but, but a lot of the, the books that I’ve read, um, are part of my culture are part of our core values, like extreme ownership, radical candor, consistent communication. And so some of those things were violated and had to be fixed and had to be corrected. And, and so that accountability always starts with the guy at the top, right? Like that’s what the whole point of the, the book, uh, extreme ownership is about. Like he’s, he’s basically, Jocko is saying like, Hey, after all was said and done, what happened on the field? I didn’t have anybody to blame but myself. So he looked inwardly. That’s what I did. And I’m very much happier for it.
Todd Welch (13:41):
Yeah. Yeah. It’s not an easy thing to do either ev everybody at from time to time wants to blame someone else for your problems. But if you do that, then you’re just a victim and you lose control of whatever it is you’re blaming someone else for. But if you take ownership of it, then you can control it at least in some way,
Steven Pope (14:03):
Way. And that’s honestly what a lot of what an agency does, right? So we get fired by clients all the time, right? We get fired for doing our job. They don’t wanna pay the commission anymore ’cause we do our job. So well, we get fired by clients because they take it in house. We get fired by clients because they need somebody to blame, whatever it might be. There’s like 20 reasons why an agency could get fired. And and that’s like, agencies have to be built and prepared to handle that as well. One of the positions I’ve taken as an agency is like, try never lose a customer. Even if they’re not a perfect fit, we’ll take ’em on and we’ll do parts of the business or we’ll have an a la carte option, or there’ll be things that they keep after they exits that, you know, but they’ll stop the core part of the service. But agencies are, are structurally built in a way that like, you have to be ready to shovel manure every single day. Like, and, and there’s money in shoveling manure, don’t get me wrong. Like, but at the end of the day, it’s, it’s stinky dirty jobs sometimes and you gotta be prepared to do it.
Todd Welch (15:00):
Yeah, absolutely. Especially in the, in the Amazon world when there’s so many things that you can’t control when it comes to Amazon, right? You know, with the brand registry and listings being taken down and just today a whole bunch of variations. People are talking about variations being taken down randomly because Amazon doesn’t, like, however you set up your variation, there’s just always gonna be problems to be fixed. But then at the same time, when you’re shoveling that, as you mentioned, there’s money to be made. There are, people are gonna be willing to pay you for that, right?
Steven Pope (15:37):
Very much so. Uh, and speaking of variation theme, breakages and parentage, breakages, I had, I had somebody email me this morning about just that like, so like every single day we see something with Amazon breaking down. It’s not passive income to sell on Amazon, despite what you might see on YouTube from a couple of kiros here and there, it’s very difficult work, very difficult. There’s so many things you have to know and how to do. And if you don’t know how to do them, you’re prone to make mistakes. You’re, you’re gonna be paying your tax, so to speak. Yeah. There’s, there’s no four year degree in selling on Amazon unless you go spend four years selling on Amazon, right? . So it’s, it’s, there’s nothing you can do to prepare for some of these situations, uh, other than become a stoic monk in some ways. Like, okay, I I, I accept this. I’ll, I’ll deal with it. PPC costs went up 25%. Alright, all right. I I I can manage that, you know, um, Amazon yanked my catalog. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Let me, let me, let me deal with that. But in my particular case, with the age of Sage account, it got too much. I was like, I, I’m no longer able to be stoic. I I can’t handle this. Uh, the hot was, the fire is too hot, the kitchen is too hot, I gotta get out. . Yep.
Todd Welch (16:44):
So what do you got to say to people who maybe have a brand that they’re trying to grow on Amazon or maybe are just getting ready to launch a new brand on Amazon as far as lessons that you learn from, you know, the failure of one of your brands, but of course the overwhelming success of your agency.
Steven Pope (17:05):
The clients that we work with, the brands that we work with that are highly successful, all have one thing in common, products are fantastic. They’re sourced really well. And, and so what I learned, and we even tried to start a division at our company that was built for sourcing products, and it was a massive headache, like ridiculously difficult work and, and trying to, trying to build that out. I, you know, we shut that down. Like we decided, you know what, we’re not good enough at that, right? So I got burned on my age with Sage account because I chose the wrong products. I got burned at my agency for trying to help other people source products because we weren’t good enough at that either. So lemme go back to my core roots and focus on marketing. And so typically what happens for people who are really good at sourcing products or really good at building or manufacturing or sourcing, they tend to succeed on Amazon despite everything else. Now they can accelerate their success with the, with the aid of a partner, Allah, my Amazon guy, or a marketing agency of some kind. That’s why PP C’s the most outsourced thing at an Amazon seller does. But my advice would be to take a full six to 12 months picking your product. Now you go, you, you go on YouTube and they’re like, oh, it’s 30 days, and go on Alibaba and order samples and you’re off to the races.
Todd Welch (18:26):
Ali Express
Steven Pope (18:27):
don’t do that, right? Like, if it, if you can do it that quick, then so can every other dude who lives in an apartment or is bootstrapping out of the garage, like that’s not ideal. So being more selective on product selection seems to be the common trend that I have found where, where highly successful brands have, have made their their big cash. And there’s also the counter to that where China will come in and rip your product off the second you’re successful. And that’s true too, but that’s where trademarks, patents, copyright and some IP protections can come into play. And there’s also the fact that if China is copying, that means you succeeded. That means you have a successful product. And, and you’ll still have a market share even despite that.
Todd Welch (19:13):
Yeah, for sure. So, so high quality products and, uh, is it more high quality, like really good products that are gonna do what they’re supposed to do and last, or having some kind of really good differentiator that sets you apart from all the competition
Steven Pope (19:35):
And any of the above or all of the above, right? So if you listen to podcasts from six years ago, you got Jungle Scout talking about all they did was take marshmallow sticks and extend them and make them longer, right? They solved a, they, they went and looked at negative reviews. Wish this was longer, wish this was longer. Okay, we’ll make it longer, right? So every business ever can grow their business if they solve this problem. Ask customers what they want, give it to them, then ask, did I give you what you wanted? And, and if they say yes, cool, give them more. And if they say, no, cool. You wanted brownies and I gave you cake, my my bad, here’s brownies. And then correct it, right? And so the same thing can be done whether you’re an agency, whether you’re a consultant, whether you’re a brand owner, that that framework is what built my $20 million grossing annually agency.
Steven Pope (20:23):
Like it’s structurally exactly how every brand could build a framework around. So if you’re sourcing your product and you solve a problem, you’re going to be successful if you have sliced bread and you’re the greatest thing since sliced bread, by the way, it took 10 years for sliced bread to catch on, right? Like they had a demand gen product versus a co-opting demand product, right? So a co-opting demand product would be marshmallow sticks that you just extend and modify, right? You’re co-opting the demand for marshmallow sticks. You just have an extra feature work versus sliced bread. When that went to market, it was a demand gen product. ’cause nobody knew, knew they needed sliced bread before it got to them, right? And so if you have a demand gen product, your trajectory is totally different. You have very little chance of success, first of all.
Steven Pope (21:11):
’cause you have to penetrate market. You have to teach the consumer that you have a solution, right? They don’t, they don’t even know they have that problem in many instances. Yeah. But a co-op co-op demand product is, is just enhancing a feature, adding some value. And so as a brand developer, as a, as an inventor, as a sourcer, your job is to find and choose one of those two things. Co-opt or create demand. And, and once you understand the answer to that, your marketing strategy will be very different, right? Because if your, if your demand gen and you go to market, like there’s the keywords that you use don’t exist yet in many instances you’re like, I’m, I’m gonna make this product you’ve never heard of, uh, and, and, and make you want to buy it. And then you might have to like co-op some generic keywords like gifts for men or whatever. But it’s not easy to do that. Yeah.
Todd Welch (21:59):
Especially on Amazon. I feel that’s gonna be an even harder row launching something like that on Amazon without a huge advertising budget.
Steven Pope (22:07):
And that’s been fundamentally key to a lot of businesses, right? Is to spend a lot on ads. It hurts the margins, but it’s the reason why supplements are so successful on Amazon. Huge lifetime value, right? Yeah. $5 A PPC click to acquire the customer, but it pays out over time. And, and so what, what we’ve seen, and, and, and if you wanna know like the easiest starter category to go private label, it’s very clear it’s home goods. Why? Because it’s 80 cents a click. Why? Because it’s 35% of the whole market, right? Yep. And so if you’re looking for something e easy to start with and, and without the complications of, uh, certificates and compliance that you might see in kids toys that you might see in supplements that you might see in all these other challenging things without the high skew counts of apparel and variations and those challenges, home goods doesn’t have any of those constraints. And it will always be a safe category to be in. The margins won’t be as good, but it’s easier to make the profit to begin with.
Todd Welch (23:07):
Yeah. Something like, uh, Zula Kitchen, right? That’s a case example. Really good example in the home goods. I mean, they’re just dominating, but
Steven Pope (23:16):
In, but in their case, he spent two years without a profit, right? Like he spent, uh, hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses in that first year, year and a half before he tried to flip the, the profit. It’s a really good case study. For those that aren’t familiar with the story, um, Aaron puts out some really good content on this. Mm-Hmm. . And I would highly recommend checking that out. I think Chad Rubin did a piece on, on Aaron with Zule Kitchen as well. Uh, but, but if today you go on Amazon and you type a a kitchen gadget type phrase in, you’re probably gonna find one of his products. You’re gonna find, uh, you know, uh, garlic mincer and, and lemon squeezer and all those sort of kitchen tools, they dominated on that. Yep. Now, their key to success though was massive advertising budget and cheap as hell products. And they, they chose the pricing gain market share Strat, and then they slowly raised the prices to gain profit two years after launch. Most people don’t have balls of steel to do that, let alone the bank account to pull that off. But, but that clearly is a case study in and, and it’s replicatable. No, no question about it. Hard to do though.
Todd Welch (24:23):
Yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah. That’s a really interesting story. Especially since, you know, if you remember, uh, Scott Volker with the garlic press back in the day about Yes. A perfect example of what not to do. They basically took that Yeah. And they dominated it. So , it’s pretty cool.
Steven Pope (24:41):
Yes. So, so sometimes bucking the trends of the market and doing the opposite of what everybody says to do is a valid strategy. And as one small case example of that, I went to the market with pink hot tumblers when everybody else was doing teal and I launched a Mother’s Day gift box. The mommy income folks will probably appreciate the, the kidding element of this particular story. And we sold $144,000 of mom boxes in the first 30 days when I launched that product. Let me lemme share a screen if you don’t mind, and just kind of show this product real quick so people can see that trajectory. So it’s this mom box kit right here. And, and if you look at the, the sales history on it, you can, you can look at the, uh, all time on the BSR. Uh, we’ll see if that loads for us here. Should I’m logged in and everything. All right. So we’ll refresh that and give that a second. But, but in the first 30 days, I spent like $11,000 on PPC generated $144,000 in revenue. Of course, either 10 is totally not loading, loading for me here live demo. Yeah, of course. But if you guys load this product, oh, there we go. Here we go. So there, I just wanted to show you guys like the BSR rank, right? I, I broke the top 1000 BSR in the first two weeks of launching this product, right?
Todd Welch (25:58):
Very
Steven Pope (25:58):
Nice. So it’s a case example of a, of a perfect launch. Now you can look at the BSR crap after that, right? So like, doesn’t do well and then it does well on Christmas. So highly seasonal product. But, but launching a highly seasonal product going into the season, it’s a valid strategy. And I did what everybody else wasn’t doing. I went with hot pink. Everybody else was doing teal at the time. So just a good case example, if you do the opposite of what everybody says, it can work. Doesn’t mean it will, but it can work and it did here.
Todd Welch (26:31):
Yeah. At a minimum, it’s something to test out. You know, if you’re able to test it out and not break the bank to create a whole new product or something when it comes to color, sometimes that’s a lot easier to test out and see how it goes.
Steven Pope (26:45):
Color is a lot easier. I agree with that for sure. Price also can be easy to test, but still hard on the margin, right? So, but, but when you first launch a product, there’s no question about it. There’s nobody, nobody has a reason to buy your product if there’s 10 other solutions out there, right? So that’s a co-op demand product issue. So going to market at a lower price, it makes it much easier for your product to succeed. It gives a consumer a reason to take a risk to buy your product. Otherwise why would they buy your product? ’cause they don’t know if it’s the best. There’s no reviews on it for
Todd Welch (27:16):
Sure. You gotta have something that sets you apart, catches their eye, or lots of marketing as we talked about.
Steven Pope (27:23):
And the PPC can be very beneficial. But, you know, a lot of the time when I launch a product, I’ll have zero reviews and I’ll spend thousands of dollars on ads. It still works. And you, and if it does work within the first couple of weeks, you can often get the new best seller badge. And, and that new number one hot new release badge is super powerful. That, that is worth like 200 reviews by itself. Like instantly improves your conversion rate 5%. And that usually hangs around for six or eight weeks. So it’s very possible to launch without having to generate lots of reviews, just go at a low price and go high PPC spend to get that velocity.
Todd Welch (27:59):
Yeah, it something that just popped in my head talking about reviews. I seen a video recently of a, a guy talking about, uh, reviews in the fashion niche on Amazon. And how one thing cool about the fashion niche is that reviews are mostly irrelevant. It doesn’t matter really how many reviews you have or you don’t have any reviews. It really comes down to, you know, if you catch their eye with a fashion that they’re interested in. But then of course you’re at the whims of, uh, people’s what they like for fashion at the time.
Steven Pope (28:37):
Yeah. Whim, whimsical, changing all the time. High skew count. ’cause you gotta deal with colors, sizes. Uh, it’s, it’s a very difficult one. Now, there, there are thousands of clothing and apparel companies out there, but it’s very rare for, for somebody to start an apparel and succeed. It’s usually you need a full fledged brand to, to make it work.
Todd Welch (28:58):
Yep. What is your thoughts on, uh, licensing of, uh, you know, like maybe college logos or sporting teams and stuff like that? Do you guys do much with that? In my Amazon guy,
Steven Pope (29:12):
Well, I, I’m actually speaking at Steven Key’s, uh, webinar. I’m their keynote speaker this month here in a couple weeks. Um, and, and he’s all about licensing. In terms of clients that hire my Amazon guy, I would say licensing is, is minuscule. Maybe two or three clients at any given time have a licensing deal. And that’s generally because, uh, when you go into licensing, you’re, you’re basically choosing, I’m gonna give up some of my margin for a higher conversion rate. And, and so you don’t have a, a lot of margin to get assistance and help, but your conversion rate is higher. And so it’s pretty rare for, for licensing deals to, to utilize marketing services. They, they’re, they’re basically hiring an agency. Allah the license, uh mm-Hmm. instead. But, but I, I do think it can work, but I think a lot of people underestimate how a, how much time it takes to get the license to begin with. Mm-Hmm, , and B, how much it costs to purchase. Like, it is very expensive to buy some licenses, especially if you get like, you know, the NBA or the NFL or college teams, even those, those are some of the most expensive licenses. You know, DC Marvel super expensive, uh, but if you’re just gonna license, uh, kind of a middle of the road license brand, it can be a lot more competitive.
Todd Welch (30:26):
Yeah. Something like, uh, American Soccer teams or something like that,
Steven Pope (30:31):
That’s getting more popular. I mean, that’s coming up.
Todd Welch (30:33):
It is. But I imagine compared to NFL not compare Yes. Stuff, it’s gonna be minuscule for that very much. But maybe you could catch a trend and, and ride those kind of things. Um, but it’s an interesting category, I think because you, you have the built-in marketing for the brand, uh, possibly assuming you get a good brand that you are, um, licensing and you’re kind of building a moat, right? Because if we go back to your products that got taken down, if you had had a license for Star Wars and, uh, what other one was it?
Steven Pope (31:09):
I mean, I was doing every movie IP I possibly get my hands on. So Starbucks, star Wars, uh, stranger Things, you name it, I I had a piece of those.
Todd Welch (31:19):
Yeah. So if you, if you had a license for that, then you would’ve been fine. Uh, but they might not have, probably wouldn’t have let you get away with a lot of the things you were trying to do. They wouldn’t let
Steven Pope (31:28):
Correct, they wouldn’t have agreed to parody to begin with. Um, yes. And, and, and also nobody asked me if I had a license, right? So it’s not like I, if even if I did have a license, I couldn’t have gone to Amazon and be like, I got a license. They wouldn’t have cared. They, they just decided all of a sudden parody is out. Right? And I, I’ve been buying parody t-shirts online for years. I, you know, my favorite T-shirt, I’m not wearing it today. I’m wearing my mag shirt today. But my favorite T-shirt is, is a, is a picture of link with three hearts with an X-ray, and, you know, and it’s a parody of, of, you know, Zelda. And so combining concepts like Mario and Zelda together and parody. And so I, I, I had been in that sector for a decade and I understood it and I knew what was funny, I knew what people liked, and I, I was a consumer of it.
Steven Pope (32:10):
And, and that’s kind of like another tip I’ll, I’ll give, uh, people listening to this is stick to what you know and understand, right? Mm-Hmm. . So I’m a chess player. If I sold chess sets, I played in the US Open. I, I’ve, I’ve beaten some, you know, masters before, right? If I were to sell chess sets, I’d have a huge advantage over the next guy. But at the same time, if I tried to sell Bamboo Dental floss and I’m not a dentist, I won’t be able to speak to the texture and why that keeps my teeth cleaner. I, I, I’ll, I’m gonna lose to the next guy who has that dental background. Uh, you could say the same thing about supplements. MMA if, if you’re a chemist or you’re an MMA fighter and you do a supplement, you have a huge advantage. You can speak to that element.
Steven Pope (32:49):
You can be the, you could actually put yourself on the infographics. I wouldn’t put my mug on an infographic for a supplement. Nobody wants to look like me. So those are the things that I think a lot of people need to learn is sticking to what you understand. Don’t just follow the data tools. Don’t just follow the fidget spinner trends, because if you do, you’re gonna get burned by the trend. The trend goes up, you make some sales, and all of a sudden it falls off a cliff or a, everybody else is copying ’cause they’re following the trend too, and using the same data tools you use. But if you stick to what you understand, right? And you make a mote, and I think that’s a very, very different successful model.
Todd Welch (33:25):
Yeah. Yeah. I, I can’t agree more. And anybody, I, if I do a coaching call or whatever, when people are looking for what to sell, I always tell them, find something that you know about so that when you’re talking to the people on the other end, you have that connection and it’s not just a business relationship and you know what you’re talking about. Uh, like for example, I had a call with someone who was a retired New York, uh, policeman. I’m like, well, you know, a lot more about tactical equipment and everything else than I will ever know. And if you’re calling these companies or building a brand in that space, you’re gonna know what people want in that space a lot more than I will ever know.
Steven Pope (34:09):
And that’s a huge moat. That’s a huge advantage. And the longer you do something, the bigger your moat gets, right? Mm-Hmm. like the longer I, I own an agency, the, the easier it is to get to run one. Uh, and, and so the same can be true about all of your personal background trying to source products for a brand. The, the more trips you make to China, the more you’re gonna understand like, oh, going to the show was cool and all that one time, but I don’t need to go to the Canton Fair. I need to go into the fricking manufacturing facilities. Right? I learned that after my first trip to China. You know, when you buy multiple times off Alibaba, you quickly realize sending them an email is nice and convenient, but getting on the phone call is where the real conversations happen, where the relationship gets built. So the longer you do something, the better you get at it.
Todd Welch (34:51):
Yeah, a hundred percent. For some reason, everybody always wants to go into some random category that they know nothing about because someone said somewhere that that was a good category. So just because Steven Pope said Home Goods is a good category, it doesn’t mean for sure that’s where you should go.
Steven Pope (35:08):
I too have Helium 10 and can look up data . You know, like that’s the problem. Like if you look at data to make your primary product selection, you, you’re in a world of pain. Just ready, ready to pay somebody else to take all the profits while you have all the pain. Yep,
Todd Welch (35:22):
For sure. So let’s say we’re gonna be, uh, you know, launching our new garlic press. What’s, do you have, uh, like a set of rules that, uh, people should follow for launching a new product?
Steven Pope (35:39):
Yeah, without a doubt. That’s easy. Optimize everything before it goes live. Ship it to FBA, set the release date, the launch date into the future before it goes live. Have your ad campaign set up. Have the a plus content loaded six photos with full optimization lifestyle. Don’t forget to have a picture of a person who is looking at the camera eye contact with the camera in the secondary image photo stack. Have the a plus content built, have the brand store built, have the brand story loaded, have the alt text set, have 500 words of crawlable copy in the a plus content. Have the search terms on the back end set and, and have every one of these things done before it goes live. When it goes live. Spend a couple grand in PPC in that first week. Mm-Hmm. have the price as low as you possibly can, stomach 50% off.
Steven Pope (36:26):
I’m not even exaggerating. That’s exactly what I do. And unless you’re launching this on Black Friday into the seasonal rush and you, you have the perfect product and people are willing to pay a premium for it, go low price, get the sales, hit the honeymoon period hard, and then you will have way easier time. Your, your, your PPC costs will go down after you get the velocity, you get that, you get that first a hundred orders and that first couple of days makes a massive difference. Another tip I’ll give you guys is your main image is where you should be spending 10 hours of work, 10 hours on your main image. Okay? AB testing your main image critical. When I first launched that mom box, I shared I had to ab test the, the main image four times and fix it until I was satisfied, until my click-through rate went to 15% until I was able to get high interest.
Steven Pope (37:16):
And, and all of those things made a massive difference. The orientation of how you display your product slam a keyword onto the main image that’s con uh, controversial by the way. Not everybody agrees with that, but I firmly believe having a keyword on the packaging, whether it’s literally on the packaging or it’s Photoshop, just like Colgate does it just like Don does it just like HP Printer does it. That is very important. I think it’s, it’s very advantageous. So those are my hot tips that I’ll recommend. And don’t underestimate SEO and don’t set and forget it. Optimize everything in real time as frequently as possible.
Todd Welch (37:48):
A hundred percent agree with all of that. What are your thoughts on, uh, do you utilize the Vine program or recommend people utilize Vine?
Steven Pope (37:56):
Not anymore. Uh, there’s, it can help certain categories, but, but here is why I reject Vine on face value. First of all. I don’t wanna pay for it. They’re given some for free, but whatever. And second of all, it’s not scalable. It’s, it’s one and done. So like why spend time on the non-scalable? And third, the average review from a Vine program is a 4.1. The average review for not doing Vine is 4.3. So by default, you’re lowering your reviews on your product if you use Vine and Sure. And so, you know, I I it’s not scalable, it’s not effective. And it absolutely stinks in any category where the product needs time. Supplements is the absolute worst category for Vine because supplements are impossible to prove whether they work, right? Like you can’t take the supplement and be like, yeah, I had a good experience. Sure the pill was easy to swallow. That’s it, that’s all you got. Like whether the product smelled or not, whether it came safe and packaged. But none of that is helpful to the consumer. Supplements take months to prove whether they work. So with that in mind, I firmly believe Vine is typically not a good, good fit for most people. Um, gif giftable, you’re just, giftable is probably like the best category for Vine though.
Todd Welch (39:00):
Giftable. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So you’re basically, you’re just launching with no reviews, just a correct perfect listing or as perfect as you can get it. And using ads to get those sales and,
Steven Pope (39:12):
And a low price requesting
Todd Welch (39:13):
Those reviews on the backend.
Steven Pope (39:14):
Correct. You need orders to get orders, you need orders to get reviews. It’s a weird saying on Amazon, right? Like, you wouldn’t say that about a Shopify business or a D two C, you don’t need orders to get orders over there, but on Amazon you do. So on Amazon, if you get lots of orders, your review rate will be somewhere between one and 3% depending on your category. And that means if you want a review, just get a hundred orders.
Todd Welch (39:35):
Yeah. It’s a, it’s a tough row for some people. I see people, you know, complaining online that their product has hundreds of sales and only like three or four reviews. And it’s like, that’s unfortunately, depending on your product, that can be the case a lot of times.
Steven Pope (39:50):
Yeah. I mean if we, if we pulled the audience right now, people that are listening, when’s the last time you left a product review on Amazon? Crickets. Yeah, right. , nobody wants to spend time leaving a review unless you had either A, an exceptional experience or b, the opposite of an exceptional experience. And those are the only two, you know, you’ll, you’ll leave a five star review or you leave a one star review.
Todd Welch (40:12):
Yeah. One tactic that I’ve heard on the Vine, so if for a product that it might be good for is to create like multiple variation packs of your product. If it lends itself to that, create like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 packs, keep ’em all separate, run ’em all through Vine and then put them into a variation. But now with Amazon jumping on variations, that might not be the best tactic anymore, but I thought it was pretty interesting when I heard about it.
Steven Pope (40:40):
I think you could get away with that tactic at this point. Multi-pack variations seem to be fine. It, the, the variation breakage that I’m seeing currently is usually like a theme difference or somebody marked it as a color variation, but it’s really a style difference. Or combining two unrelated products. Those are where I see most of the variations being broken up right now. It’s not impossible to say that like it’s safe to build a multi-pack, but, but of all of the variation types, I think a multi-pack iss probably on the safer side from, from my history and understanding.
Todd Welch (41:11):
Yeah. I mean if your product lends it to that, you could end up with what, 120, 180 reviews, something like that. If you do a variation bundle like that and then roll ’em together after the vine reviews and assuming they’re good reviews.
Steven Pope (41:28):
Yeah. In my opinion, the difference in conversion rate between 20 reviews and a hundred is nominal. And it’s, so that’s a lot of product to give away to do that. Like your first review is the most important, that doubles your conversion rate. And then the 20th review also doubles the conversion rate almost again. But after that it’s like, it’s like a total fall off a cliff. Like you don’t need more than 20 reviews on Amazon to launch a product, in my opinion, which is why Vine only offers 30 to begin with. So I don’t think you need to, to spend time on a tactic like that, but I do think it’s viable nonetheless.
Todd Welch (42:00):
Yeah. And, and of course I think it depends on the product category you’re, you’re in as well. If you’re up against people who have 10,000 reviews, it might make more and and
Steven Pope (42:10):
You’d better be half their price .
Todd Welch (42:11):
Yeah, exactly. ’cause I, you know, I’m not, not a normal shopper on Amazon, but even I’ve been looking at products and this guy’s got 10,000 reviews and this one’s got a hundred and it’s like, yeah, they got a better score, but does that actually mean anything when they, they’re going up against someone with 10,000 reviews,
Steven Pope (42:28):
Although just
Todd Welch (42:29):
Buy both and that was never used.
Steven Pope (42:30):
Just buy both, then use both and then return a used item and then screw the seller. Because that’s what every buyer does. so
Todd Welch (42:37):
Well that, that is the Gen Z tactic from the article that I just read. Uh, baby boomers are more likely to keep whatever they buy. Gen Z is more likely to return at least one of whatever they buy.
Steven Pope (42:48):
I gotta tell you right now, I never return anything I buy, but my wife, let me tell you, she returns like half the things she buys. So you don’t want my wife as a customer, I probably would make a good customer for your Amazon brand. But like some people just have some habitual return tendencies. They regret making the purchase or they buy multiples and then shoes Me, I’m more of like, this looks fine, I’m good with that. But the kind of, the joke I was getting to early in, in this particular segment is there are a lot of fraud buyers right now, and I think Amazon’s gonna have to crack down because it’s becoming a national story. It’s hitting a lot of national circuits. Tucker Carlson picked up a story last weekend. Uh, we’re seeing big national media talk about like what it’s really like the truth about what it’s like to be an Amazon seller. So I think, I think we’re gonna see some, some crackdowns and some, uh, some law fair probably as well to, to crack down on this. But there’s a lot of buyers that are, are sending in used items, wrong items, or sending in bricks, not even the item . And it’s, it’s bad. It’s getting bad out there.
Todd Welch (43:51):
Oh yeah, yeah. I’ve seen that myself. And in addition, more of a black hat thing. The, uh, well it’s been maybe a year ago now, but we had a product that like you could clock it every two minutes. Someone would buy two of them and then cancel the order and then two minutes later buy two and cancel the order. And they were basically just trying to wrap up all of our inventory, uh, that we had in Amazon so that it would show as outta stock. And the weird thing is, there wasn’t anybody else selling on the listing or anything like that, so it just had to be a competitor that wanted that product to be outta stock.
Steven Pope (44:27):
It’s always the Chinese, when you hear about black hat tactics, almost always probably, uh, they, they have hundreds of companies spun up to do shady tactics like that. And it’s just, it’s just part of doing business right now. And Amazon unfortunately has sold out to the Chinese and doesn’t do a lot to break to crack down on that. So they, they, they had a big suspension wave about a year ago. Haven’t heard, heard anything since. Maybe they’re waiting for the next wave, I don’t know. But, but yes, people that are listening to this, this is a real thing. Todd and I have both seen it and you just have to roll with the punches on that kind of stuff. Yeah,
Todd Welch (45:04):
It’s frustrating. Especially since it took us like a, a week, week and a half before it, we were able to stop it from happening. ’cause support was just useless as, you know,
Steven Pope (45:14):
Copy paste. Hey, yeah, let, let me, lemme give you some flowery language, followed by some nonsense copy and paste from the help file. I solved your problem, gimme five stars and I’m gonna call you and ask for a review of my ticket as well.
Todd Welch (45:25):
Yeah. About so much. Yes,
Steven Pope (45:27):
AI could do better.
Todd Welch (45:29):
Absolutely. It’s, it’s frustrating, but, uh, i, I try to always think about, okay, if it’s getting harder for me, it’s getting harder for everyone. So that goes back to that moat that’s around it. You know, if you’re able to be successful there,
Steven Pope (45:43):
I think Todd, you would probably make a good stoic monk. Sir.
Todd Welch (45:47):
, I do my best as long as I don’t have to call seller support. That’s where I lose my temper. That’s
Steven Pope (45:53):
Where you, that’s where you pay somebody else to, to lose their temper for you.
Todd Welch (45:56):
. Yes. Or I go and yell at chat GPT and then it writes me a nice reply and I send that
Steven Pope (46:02):
. Yeah, I’m sorry. I cannot do that for you Todd. I cannot use Explicitives and say that about Jeff Bezos. Sorry. Yes.
Todd Welch (46:10):
Uh, it’s a nice therapy thing. Go and write your angry email at chat GPT and then it spits out a nice copy that you send to seller support.
Steven Pope (46:17):
Yeah. My my least favorite though is when my own employees use that same tactic and they send me an AI written note and I’m like, guys, I know this is ai. Like, come on . Yeah. If it, if it, if the last sentence has the word remember in it. I know it was written by Chad, GPT . I know.
Todd Welch (46:34):
. Yeah. Yeah. That’s interesting. Now that you mentioned that, uh, when you read something that was generated by ai, it sounds like it was a reply from seller support.
Steven Pope (46:45):
Very similar . Yes.
Todd Welch (46:47):
But all right, Steven. Well this has been fantastic. Uh, any last tips that you wanna pass on?
Steven Pope (46:54):
There’s so many things you can do as an Amazon seller at any given point. My last and final tip is choose one thing that has the most maximum guarantee to improve your sales as a seller. And that is always going to be click through rate. CTR is where it’s at. Spend 10 hours fixing your main image, add a keyword, add the accessories, shift around how it looks. Run some ab tests. And I’m telling you, there is no better place to spend time as a seller. And we’ve done this thousands of times for people. We have a CTR uh, deal right now, 50% off your main image. You can go to my amazon guy.com/img promo code CT to get 50% off that. If you guys wanna help us out with that, we’ll, I mean, we’ll help you out with that rather. And, uh, good luck, uh, on your Amazon selling journey. Thanks for having me on, Todd.
Todd Welch (47:44):
Absolutely, Steven. It’s been great. You have a great one.
Steven Pope (47:48):
All right. Cheers.
Announcer (47:50):
This has been another episode of the Amazon Seller School podcast. Thanks for listening. Fellow Amazon Seller, and always remember, success is yours. If you take it.
