our amazon bible · 2017. 4. 20. · everything you need to know about product barcodes ... (in...

COVER PAGE

OUR AMAZON BIBLENEW TEAM MEMBER TRAINING MANUAL

Our Amazon Bible - New Team Member Training Manual

Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA) ��5

Introduction & Welcome ��6

Our Business Model ��7The Amazon Private Label Business Model �� 8What is Private Label? �� 9The Long Game: Building a Brand �� 10

Amazon Basics ��11What is Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA)? �� 11Amazon Fees �� 13Everything You Need to Know About Product Barcodes �� 15Multiple Seller Accounts �� 18

Choosing a Winning Product ��23The #1 thing we are looking for �� 24The Proven Product Criteria �� 25The Manual Method �� 27The Advanced Method �� 31Pitfalls to Avoid at this Key Stage �� 33The Secret Trick to Find Out How Many Units a Product on Amazon is Selling ��37

Suppliers & Shipping ��46Domestic vs International Suppliers �� 46Where to find Suppliers �� 47Dealing with a Chinese Supplier �� 49Shipping Options �� 55

Our Amazon Bible: New Team Member Training Manual Table of Contents


The Freight Forwarder �� 57The Import Process Step by Step �� 58Inspection Services �� 62

Product Design ��64Our Philosophy �� 64How to Design Product Packaging that Influences People (and doesn’t get you into trouble with the law!) ��65The Elements of Product Packaging �� 67Critical Design Concepts �� 69How to Get the Packaging Designed �� 74

How to Create the Ultimate Amazon Product Listing ��79The Mistake Most Sellers Make �� 80The Formula �� 81The 4 Vital Elements to an Amazon Product Listing �� 82Product Images �� 83How to Create a Killer Main Image �� 84What Shots to use for Secondary Images? �� 88Product Title �� 97Bullet Points �� 98Product Description ��100How to Make your Product Listing Stand out from the Crowd ��102

The Importance of Keywords ��103How We Find our Competitors Valuable Keywords in under 5 minutes ��104Choosing Our Top Target Keywords ��105A Clever Trick to find which are the Highest Volume Keywords ��106How to Use Keywords ��107


Getting Products Ranked on Amazon ��109Ranking Factors ��110The #1 Reason why some Amazon Sellers Fail ��111The Launch Formula - The ONLY Things to Focus on with a New Product ��112The Secret Way to Rank a Product Quickly ��114How to Drive Traffic to our Product Listing ��116

How We Know What is Working and What is Not ��119The Importance of Measuring Everything ��119Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) ��120The Daily Tracker ��123

Product Optimization and Growth ��124The Compound Effect ��125The Golden Rule of Optimization ��126Product Listing Optimization��127Keyword Optimization��128Review Management ��129Pricing & Profit Optimization ��130Promotion & Marketing ��131Inventory Management ��132

Providing a Great Customer Experience ��133The Amazon Buyer-Seller Messaging Service ��134Critical Amazon Rules��135The Two Tools We Use to Automate the Follow-up Process ��137The Almost Magical Email Follow Up Chain to Build Product Reviews ��139Dealing with Negative Reviews or Customer Complaints ��146

Training Videos ��148

Links & Resources Directory ��149

Our Amazon Bible - New Team Member Training Manual Back to table of contents

Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA)

The terms of access to this training manual are governed by the Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA) that you signed either physically or digitally prior to access.

This manual or it’s contents may not be printed, given, transmitted or in any way shared, whether that be in part or full, with anyone who has not signed the Non Disclosure Agreement with the publisher.

It is your responsibility to ensure the confidentially of this manual and it’s contents under the terms of the NDA.

© Copyright 2016 eGaming Media Ltd. All Rights Reserved. This document may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the prior written permission of the publisher.


Introduction & Welcome

Welcome to the team! We are delighted to have you on board and can’t wait to get you integrated into our team as soon as possible�

You are joining an amazing team of people who are the reason for the success and fast growth of our company.

The first step we always take with every new team member is to provide training on all aspects of our business.

Even if you will not be directly involved in some areas it’s important for you to understand our business model and an overview of how each area of the business works.

We have produced this New Team Member Training Manual with this in mind. Although the manual is detailed, it cannot exhaustively cover every area. So treat this as an introduction to our business, to our team and the roles they undertake.

For all areas that your specific role entails you will receive further detailed training to expand on this training manual.

Looking forward to working with you,

Adrian MilewskiCEO


Our Business Model

Our business model utilizes the power and might of the ecommerce giant Amazon�

Amazon just keeps getting bigger and bigger, now past $100billion per year in sales, 100’s of millions of visitors each month and account for over 50% of all online purchases.

And they give access to their marketplace to third party companies like ours which is an incredible opportunity.

Our strategy is quite straight forward...

Ʈ Find products that are already selling well on Amazon

Ʈ Find low-cost but high-quality suppliers to make the product under our brand names

Ʈ Add value to the product to make it stand out from the competition

Ʈ Ship it directly from the Supplier to Amazon warehouses

Ʈ List it for sale on Amazon

Ʈ When an order is received Amazon will ship it to the customer

For a detailed introduction to this business model, then watch the first video in our Amazon Tycoon series (in fact you should really watch all 4-videos in the series which will cover a lot of topics from this manual).

http://secretentrepreneur.com/training/amazon-tycoon/opportunity


PRODUCTResearch & Find

Products that are already High Selling Products

on Amazon

SHIPPINGShip it directly

from the Supplier to Amazon

Warehouses

LIST FOR SALEMake it available

for sale to millions of Amazon visitors

AMAZON FBAAmazon will ship

all orders received to the customer

(we never touch it)

SUPPLIERFind Low-Cost

but High-Quality Suppliers to make the product under our brand names

DIFFERENTIATEAdd Value to the

product to make it stand out from the

competition

The Amazon Private Label Business Model


What is Private Label?

Private label is simply a term used to describe a third party manufacturer making a product under your brand name.

Look at the pictures on the right hand side. They are basically all the same product, a very simple Kitchen Spatula. But they are all sold by different companies under their brand name�

They could even be made by the same supplier / manufacturer in China, but you would never know, because the packaging, labels and marks on the product will all be the brand name of the company selling the product.

We have a number of different brands in our company that have a collection of similar products in various niches and categories.

We simply identify a product that sells well on Amazon and then find a supplier that can make the product.

Then we design packaging that has one of our brand names on it and it’s as simple as that, we have a product to go and grab a slice of the pie on Amazon with.

There’s a bit more to it than that as you will see in the rest of this manual, but that is basically it!


The Long Game: Building a Brand

Really there are two options to approach the private label business:

Specific BrandYou can build a specific brand which operates in a particular niche (e.g. lets say the Kitchenware niche). You would choose a relevant Brand / Seller name to that niche (lets say KitchenGenie) and then you would base your product range within that niche (so Silicone Spatula, Oven Gloves, Kitchen Scales and so on).

Generic BrandThe alternative is to choose a generic Brand / Seller name (lets say Dynamo) and then plan to launch products across different niches (so Silicone Spatula, iPhone Charger, Cleaning Cloths etc.)

Our ApproachWe take the specific brand approach and build our brands in specific niches, keeping them separated and their own Amazon accounts and Legal Entities.

Ʈ It just makes more sense to a customer to see a range of products in a similar niche and portrays to them that you are an expert in that field.

Ʈ It’s easier to cross sell products to your customers if they are in the same niche and they trust your brand.

Ʈ Thinking about the bigger picture in the long term individual brands with a cohesive range of products is a more attractive prospect and has the potential to be sold (there is actually currently a thriving market buying Amazon Private Label businesses for 6, 7 and 8 figures).


Amazon Basics

In this section you will learn some on the basic information about Amazon and running third party seller account on Amazon.

You’ll need to have an base understanding of these topics before we jump into the actual stages of an Amazon Private Label business.

What is Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA)?

The first thing to note is that you don’t have to use FBA to sell on Amazon�

You can list a product for sale on Amazon and be notified by Amazon when an order is received and you can then ship this item to the customer. This is called “Fulfilled by Merchant”.

Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) on the other hand allows you to take advantage of the massive Amazon infrastructure.

Instead of your having to fulfill orders one by one, Amazon stores your products for you and even picks, packs and ships them out to customers.

It’s a completely hands off approach and you don’t even have to touch the product as you order from the supplier... they ship directly into the Amazon warehouses... who then ship orders to the customer.


This makes it a lot easier for us to build our business quickly without having to worry about the logistics of warehouses, packaging materials, couriers and so on.

It doesn’t matter if we receive one order in a day or 100,000 Amazon has the capacity to deal with it.

It’s an incredible opportunity for entrepreneurial companies like ours to very quickly scale. We just focus on finding product opportunities and marketing while Amazon handles the rest on our behalf.

To ship inventory into Amazon all we do is book the shipment into their system and include a special barcode on every unit (called an FNSKU) which identifies the product and tells Amazon that product belongs to us.


Amazon Fees

Amazon fees can be broken down into 3 areas:

Referral FeeThis fee is charged each time a sale is made on the Amazon platform and is a percentage of the sales price of the item. It applies to both Fulfilled by Merchant and Fulfilled by Amazon items.

This is effectively Amazon’s commission charge for you selling an item on the Amazon website.

It varies by product category, but is usually 15% of the sales price with a minimum of $1.

View the full referral fee schedule

FBA FeeThis is the fee Amazon charge to pick, pack and ship an item to your customer when an order is received on the Amazon website.

The fee varies by product type, size and weight and the full FBA fee schedule can be found here�

Storage FeeThis is the charge to store your goods in the Amazon warehouses. It is based on each cubic foot of storage your inventory takes up.

Amazon storage fees are relatively cheap although during Q4 October to December they do charge more.

https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/seller/registration/participationAgreement.html/ref=asus_soa_p_fees?itemID=200336920&language=en_US&ld=ELUSSOA-www.amazon.com

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/?nodeId=201119410


However we always aim to sell inventory within 6 months. This is because Amazon do an Inventory “cleanup” every six months on 15th February and 15th August.

On these dates they look at the inventory you hold and for any units that have been in the warehouses for longer than 6 months get charged a “Long Term Storage Fee” which is very high. Any units that have been in there longer than 12 months are charged an even higher fee.

Inventory Storage Fee details and examples

Amazon Fee CalculatorAmazon provide a free calculator tool where you can input any product on Amazon and enter a sales price and it will calculate all the different fees for you.

This can be useful when researching products as you can just input the products ASIN (amazon reference number found on the product listing page) and find out all the relevant Amazon fees.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200627230

https://sellercentral.amazon.com/hz/fba/profitabilitycalculator/index?lang=en_US


Everything You Need to Know About Product Barcodes

To setup a product listing on Amazon then it needs to have a UPC or EAN product barcode.

What is a UPC / EAN Barcode?A bar code also known as a Universal Product Code (UPC) is a unique code that allows wholesalers and retailers to identify and track your product.

Barcodes are used to convey prices to the Point of Sales Systems (cash registers) in stores and are also used to help manage inventory.

In the case of Amazon, barcodes act as unique identifiers for your product and distinguish it from others in their catalogue.

There are two main types of barcodes that are used for physical products:

Ʈ UPC stands for Universal Product Code. The alternate name is GTIN‐12 (Global Trade ID Number) and is the type of 12 digit barcode used for products in the United States and Canada.

Ʈ EAN (formerly European Article Number) stands for International Article Number. The alternate name is GTIN‐13 and is the type of 13 digit barcode used for products outside of the US and Canada�

The only difference between UPC and EAN barcodes are that EAN’s have an additional thirteenth digit at the start of the number which represents a country code.


If you look at the graphics above, you will see they are exactly the same. The width of the bars and the width of the spaces between the bars are exactly the same.

The only major difference is the placement of the numbers below (human readable numbers) which are there only as a back-up in case the barcode doesn’t scan properly and the information has to be manually entered into the point of sale system.

UPC or EAN?It’s really simple…

Ʈ If you are selling your product in the United States or Canada then use a UPC barcode

Ʈ If you are selling your product anywhere else such as the United Kingdom or Europe then use an EAN barcode.

You will need one UPC or EAN for each product or variation of product that you sell. For example if you are selling t‐shirts, you will need one for each design, color and size.


Do you include the UPC / EAN Barcode on the product packaging?The short answer is no but let me explain why.

Every product on Amazon requires a UPC or EAN barcode number in order to register in the Amazon database (unless you are brand registered but lets not complicate things for now).

However Amazon allocate you their own barcode for each product called an FNSKU.

It is a specific Amazon rule that the only barcode showing on a product is the FNSKU.

So it is pointless to include the UPC / EAN on the packaging design as it would only have to be covered up with a sticker showing the FNSKU.

This is so the automatic scanners at the Amazon Warehouse only read the FNSKU.

The only time that we would include the UPC on the product packaging is if we were producing stock to place outside of Amazon, for example you may get your stock into another retailer in which case you would have to have the UPC/EAN barcode on your stock for them, but for Amazon it is not required.


Multiple Seller Accounts

We have multiple different Brands operating in different niches and categories. I explained why we take this long term approach in the last section.

All our brands are kept seperate, with their own Amazon Seller Account and Legal Entity (for reporting and tax purposes).

One of the main reasons for doing this is to give us the option of selling a brand with ease without affecting any of the other brands (we simply sell the legal entity and hand over access to the seller account to the new owner).

The problem is that it is against Amazon’s Terms of Service to have multiple seller accounts. You are only permitted to have one seller account on each Amazon Marketplace.

They have various reasons for this but the main one is to control the accounts and ensure they know who is in control of each account and allow them to monitor the sellers activity and performance.

If you just go off and set up multiple accounts then there is a high chance that it will be detected via things like IP address tracking and the data they collect for each seller account profile.

How to Get Multiple Amazon Seller Accounts (without getting Banned!)I’ve heard of some people using VPNs and all sorts of technical wizardry to hide the fact they have multiple seller accounts. That sounds pretty risky to me - their accounts could be shut down at anytime wiping out the business they’ve built up.

We don’t take that approach, we do everything above board. We ask Amazon’s permission to operate multiple seller accounts.


If you read Amazon’s Prohibited Seller Activities then under the Multiple Seller Account section it states: “If you have a legitimate business need for a second account, you can apply for an exception to this policy”

There are a number of requirements to get this approved:

Ʈ Must have separate Bank Accounts for each account

Ʈ Must have a separate email address for each account

Ʈ Must have good history and seller metrics on existing accounts

Ʈ Must not sell the same products in multiple Seller Accounts

Ʈ Must present the reason why you need a separate Seller Account

Usually an acceptable reason for requesting multiple seller accounts would be that there are different legal entities or people (partners) involved and you need to keep the accounts separate for accounting, tax and tracking purposes.

To apply for permission we just simply open a new Case with Seller Support, tell them that we are requesting permission for a new Amazon Seller Central Account and outline the reasons why we need it.

On the following page is an sample request...

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=help_search_1-5?ie=UTF8&nodeId=200414320&qid=1384797021&sr=1-5


Hello,

This is an official request for permission to open a new Seller Central Account to ensure that we are not in violation of your policies regarding Multiple Seller Accounts.

We currently have the following seller accounts in good standing:

- login email: [email protected] - Legal Entity Brand1 LLC (Registration# 11111111)- login email: [email protected] - Legal Entity Brand2 LLC (Registration# 22222222)- login email: [email protected] - Legal Entity Brand3 LLC (Registration# 33333333)

We require a new Seller account for the following reasons:

1� It is a separate registered legal entity and must be kept separate for statutory and tax reporting.2� The legal entity has a different ownership structure to the other accounts and must be

accounted for separately.3� Employees of the company require access to the new Seller Account without accessing the

other entities activities in the current Seller Accounts.4� It has it’s own separate legal entity structure with it’s own company bank account and email

addresses5� It will be selling unrelated products to existing Seller Accounts (under it’s own brand name) and

be a totally unrelated business.

Please would you provide written permission to have an interest in a new Amazon Seller Account based on the above�

If you require any further information, then please do not hesitate to email or call me.

Thank you for your assistance.


The case will be forwarded to the Seller Performance team who will review and respond to the request. If they accept the request, then we will receive an email giving us written permission.


Different Accounts on Different MarketplacesJust to finish off, I want to clear up the fact that we are talking about multiple seller accounts in the SAME MARKETPLACE. This is the only situation you need to get permission.

If you simply want to open a seller account in a different Marketplace (say for a brand on the US marketplace where we wish to start selling on the UK marketplace) then that is not a problem and we can just simply open a UK marketplace account in addition to our existing US seller account.

This is not in violation of Amazon’s policies and will not get you in trouble.

However this assumes we have no other accounts on that marketplace. If we do then we have to follow the same process, but this time we will be applying to the other marketplace’s Seller Support team.


Choosing a Winning Product

It all starts with the Product. The products we choose to sell set the tone for our whole business.

The choices we make when selecting products to make will be the basis of our brands and will in some way influence future products that we also launch.

We have a very specific way we go about choosing products and that’s what this section will introduce you to.

You should also make sure to have watched Video 2 of the Amazon Tycoon Video series which deals with this topic...

==> http://secretentrepreneur.com/training/amazon-tycoon/product

http://secretentrepreneur.com/training/amazon-tycoon/product


The #1 thing we are looking for

We are simply looking for products that can be private labeled and have the potential to sell well on Amazon. We are not looking to reinvent the wheel, but we are looking for opportunities where we KNOW that the product will sell on Amazon if we can stand out from the competition.

But how do we know the products that sell well?

Let me ask you this…

If you were to walk down to the local mall and there was a big dollar sign above each shop door telling you how much money they made… do you think you would be able to figure out which was the most profitable business to start?

Well, as insane as that sounds, this is exactly what Amazon does by literally telling you the best selling products.

Simply go to Amazon… click on any category… then click the bestsellers link and you’ll see the top 100 bestselling products for that category.

In fact every single product on Amazon has a Best Seller Rank (or BSR) displayed on the listing page. So we can look at any product and get an idea of how well that product is selling.


The Proven Product Criteria

So now you know how to find this valuable data, we use a set of criteria to sift through the millions of product opportunities on Amazon�

Best Seller RankThe first criteria is the Bestseller Rank should be less than 3000 in a top level category. This is displayed on every product page. Only choosing products that are between rank 1 and 3000 ensures it has massive potential to generate sales�

Be careful to only look at the top level category, we’re not interested in the sub-category rank that’s also displayed.

Selling PriceThe second criteria is selling price, and we look for products selling for between $10 and $50�

We don’t want to be selling for less than 10 dollars because shipping costs and Amazon fees can make margins a bit tight on low prices items.

And we don’t want to choose a product that is higher than 50 dollars because the cost of buying inventory will be much higher and tie up our cash flow.

Also higher priced items are less of an impulse buy, and from our research this $10 to $50 price range is where most customers feel more comfortable buying at.


ReviewsThe third criteria is that the number of reviews is less than 1,000. Any more than that and it can indicate that it will be harder to compete with the existing products as it will take longer to get to that level. The lower the better.

Private Label PotentialThe final criteria to apply is to consider if the product has private label potential.

This is really a common sense step where you ask yourself...

Ʈ Can a similar product be easily and inexpensively private labeled?

Ʈ Is it a complex design that has taken years of research and development to produce?

Ʈ Does it have lots of moving or hi-tech parts?

Ʈ Is it protected by a patent?

Items that are not suitable should be pretty obvious, for example an Apple iPhone, and you can always order a sample unit and see if there are patent marks or symbols on the packaging.

Another common sense thing to consider is whether it’s heavy or bulky, in which case shipping costs may be prohibitive and eat away too much of your margins.


The Manual Method

We don’t really use this manual method in our business anymore (see the Advance Method in the next section) but it’s important for you to understand how the manual method works.

It involves browsing through the Best Seller Lists on Amazon. These are conveniently provided for us by Amazon in each category.

There are two ways to access the best seller lists:

Method 1 - Top100 Best SellersTo access the Top 100 BSR Lists for a category…

From the home page click on the “Shop by Department” in the top left corner.

Then select the category that interests you (most of the categories we are interested in are on the right half of the page).

Now click on the “Best Sellers” link in the menu bar.

You will now be presented with a list of the current top 100 Best Selling Products in that category for your research.


Method 2 - Expanded Best Seller ListThis is really an expansion on method 1 above which makes it a lot easier. The above method is all well and good but only gives you access to the top 100 products in each category.

But we also want to be looking at products in the range 101 to 3000 in the Top Level category and the way to get access to those is by drilling down into sub categories.

In method 2 we use a special link to get easy access to the Best Seller lists for all categories and sub categories.

Here is the exact steps for Method 2:

Ʈ Go to http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers/zgbs/

Ʈ Choose a category from the left hand menu (lets say Cell Phones & Accessories)

Ʈ This now gives you the same list as before of the Top 100 products in the overall category (called the Top Level category)

Ʈ Check out all of the products in the top 100 and make a note of any potential products and include the Title, Category, URL, Price, BSR, and Number of Reviews.

Ʈ Then click on a sub category in the left menu such as Accessories (this is called a level-2 category)

Ʈ Repeat the process and note down any potential products. Note that some products will be repeated and already have appeared in the top 100 of the top level category – you are looking for the ones that didn’t make that list and are ranked 101-3000 in the BSR for the Top Level Category.

Ʈ You can then drill down even further into a Level 3 category, like “Chargers”.

http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers/zgbs/


This is a manual process, but it makes sure that you get a good look at the category in question and spend some time looking through what’s hot. You soon start to spot trends and good product niches to be in and by the time you’ve worked through a category and are ready to move onto the next you should have noted down many potential products.

Top Level Category vs Sub CategoryI just wanted to take a moment to emphasize a very important point when it comes to looking at the best seller rank of a product.

When we are analyzing a product and looking at the Best Seller Rank of a product we are looking at the rank within the Top Level Category. Often on a product page it will also display the ranking within the sub-category, but we are not really interested in this.

The reason we only look at the ranking in the top level category is that we have no idea how small or large a sub category is so a number 1 ranking in a sub category might look impressive but may actually be achieved with very few sales.

Also we want to be consistent when comparing products so if we compare only the BSR in the top level then we are comparing apples with apples and can make proper decisions.


Other Places to Look for Product IdeasThere are a couple of other places I keep my eye on for product ideas…

The first is the Hot New Releases and Movers & Shakers boxes and lists which appear on the right hand side of the top level category BSR list and is a great place to spot the current trends and hot products.

Also when I have found a potential product I look on the product listing page in the “Frequently Bought Together” box and the “Customer Who Bought This Also Bought” box.

This not only gives me ideas for other potential products, it’s a great way to start to build up a list of related products that could form a brand.


The Advanced Method

In this day in age there are tools available that can automate extremely time consuming tasks. We use one such tool for product research called ASINspector.

ASINspector basically allows you to do product research that would normally take several hours in just a few seconds.

It basically integrates into your Google Chrome browser as an extension and allows you to quickly pull up data on products.

Just browse Amazon as normal, search for any keyword or bring up a category or best seller list and then click one simple button and all the products are instantly analyzed and data extracted.

It extracts rank, gives you estimated sales data, tells you the FBA fees for the product and you can even find out what other sites it is being sold on and at what price (ebay etc).

You can also search for a supplier right from within the table of data.

Watch this video to see exactly how we use the incredible ASINspector tool to Shortlist Products...

http://secretentrepreneur.com/training/find-products



ASINspector takes seconds to quickly pull up data on products that would normally take hours to collect


Pitfalls to Avoid at this Key Stage

Size MattersThat might send shivers down us bloke’s spines but when it comes to private label then size really does matter. We are looking to avoid bulky items, and if we can find lightweight and small products to sell then it make our life a hell of a lot easier�

I’m not saying we ignore larger items, some of them are still more than viable, but a small and lightweight product opens up cheaper or faster shipping options (air freight) and are just generally easier to handle.

PriceDon’t be tempted to go lower than the lower end of our price range ($10). In fact in most cases we are trying to achieve much higher.

The problem is that Amazon fees are only partially variable (vary with the sales price), some are fixed fees per unit. The lower your sales price the larger % the fixed fees take up.

So for low priced items, margins will be tight after you take into account shipping costs from the supplier and Amazon FBA fees.

There are ways around this for lower priced items, such as adding value to raise the price, or selling bundles of multiple units to be able to charge a higher price, but remember you will always be competing against the lower priced competition.


Avoid Restricted Categories & ProductsThis might seem obvious, but some people aren’t even aware that some categories on Amazon are restricted. New sellers are not permitted to list items in those categories without first getting approved.

The last thing you want is to do a load of the ground work on a product, negotiate with a supplier, maybe even place an order with a supplier and then find you cannot list the product on Amazon.

We are already approved (or un-gated in Amazon terminology) in a number of categories but there are some where we are not�

So always check if a category is “gated” whilst researching products and then check if we already have access to that category.

Usually to get approved in a restricted category is just a process of fulfilling a set of criteria and then making an application to the seller performance team and jumping through a number of hoops to get approved status.

So if there is a really good product opportunity we may seek to be approved for that category but it requires extra consideration.

View a list of the categories that are restricted and require approval

Further to this there are also restrictions on some products, both in terms of products that are not allowed to be sold on Amazon, and then secondly products that FBA won’t accept in their warehouses.

View Restricted Products details

View FBA Prohibited Products

View FBA Requirements for Date and Temperature-Sensitive Products

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=hp_rel_topic?ie=UTF8&nodeId=14113001

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200277040




Patented ProductsAgain this might seem like common sense, but we can’t choose a product that has been patented.

For those that don’t know what a Patent is, it is where the inventor applies for a Patent to protect an invention, idea or design. In order to be awarded the Patent then they must demonstrate that they have a unique invention that qualifies for protection. Once a patent has been awarded then this protects the owner and enables them to take legal action against anyone who copies their product.

General product ideas can’t be protected, there has to be something unique in order for a patent to be granted. So normally it’s quite straight forward to work out whether there’s a danger that a product is likely to have a patent.

In general if it is a very unique idea or design and there is only one manufacturer you can find that makes it then there is a chance that you might be entering patented territory.

One way to check this is to actually order the product and see if there are any markings on the product or label stating that it is patent protected.

Another way is to search the US patent database. The only concrete way to check this out would be to hire a Patent and intellectual property rights lawyer to do a full search and give you a definitive answer but this would be costly.

Just apply a bit of common sense and there shouldn’t be a problem in this department.


Competing with Amazon / Big Brands / Other ASMers or OPPersThis is a common concern I hear ASMers / OPPers talking about. The product they found is being sold by Amazon themselves, or a big corporate brand, or they’ve even noticed that the listing looks like it might be another ASMer or OPPer (due to the techniques used and taught in the courses).

Lets clear this up, we are not concerned about going up against this type of competition.

It does NOT matter if Amazon is selling the product or any other seller… using the skills and techniques we have in our business we are confident that we can compete with any of them.

Also using the techniques we do in choosing products, we are choosing high selling products, which means there is a large slice of cake to claim. Look at it this way, even if we only claim a smaller piece of the cake to start with it will still be a very good situation and over time we can build that slice.

Another way I look at it is if Amazon is selling a product we are considering then that has to be a good sign because Amazon only take on products that sell well.

Brand driven search results

The one exception I will make to the above section about competing with big brands is if the search results for a potential product is dominated by just one brand.

To me that suggests that people don’t search for the generic product, they search for a brand keyword and our generic private label product is going to really struggle to compete with that. So in that situation I steer clear of that product niche.

An extreme example I know, but think of an iPhone, people who want one will search for the branded keyword “iPhone”, or “Apple iPhone”…. they won’t search for “mobile phone” and see a generic private label phone!


The Secret Trick to Find Out How Many Units a Product on Amazon is Selling

We get sales figures from using ASINspector to pull the data for potential products.

However those figures although a great guide and in the “ballpark” do contain an element of estimation based on the category, BSR and sales history.

We also use the Best Seller Rank on Amazon as an indication of the level of sales the product achieves.

Well, although the BSR of a product is a valid statistic to look at… if you really understand what the BSR means it is really just an indication of how recently a product sold.

The reason it is used as an indicator of good sales volume is that if it maintains a good BSR for a period of time, then it must be continually generating “recent” sales.

The trick that I am going to show you here doesn’t work for every product, but for the ones it does is a way to collect actual sales data for a product which is absolute gold!


The Sales Volume TrickAmazon doesn’t supply sales volume data for products that you haven’t sold, and to be honest you wouldn’t expect them to. So we have to get a little creative to get the data we need.

Here is a method that you can use to get accurate sales volume data for the majority of products on Amazon, in any marketplace.

1� Find the Product that you want Sales Volume Data for and go to the product listing for that product.

2� Add the product to your cart

3� Click on the “Edit your Cart” link

4� Select the drop down box next to Quantity and select 10+ then type 999 in the quantity box and click update

5� Your cart will update to the maximum available… i.e. the total number of units held in stock by the supplier. In the case of the example here it is 182 units. Note the quantity and delete the item from your cart to clear it.

6� Leave it a period of time (say a day or a week) and then repeat the process. You will now get an updated quantity in stock. The difference between the two figures is the volume that has sold during that period. For example 182 minus 128 = 54 units sold in the last day.


Step 1:Find the Product that you want Sales Volume Data for and go to the product listing for that product.


Step 2:Add the product to your cart


Step 3:Click on the “Edit your Cart” link


Step 4: Select the drop down box next to Quantity and select 10+ then type 999 in the quantity box and click the update

button underneath


Step 5:Your cart will update to the maximum available… ie: the total number of units held in stock by the supplier.

In the case of the example here it is 182 units. Note this quantity down and delete the item from your cart to clear it.


Step6:Leave it a period of time (say a day or a week) and then repeat the process.

You will now get an updated quantity in stock. The difference between the two figures is the volume that has sold during that period. In this example 182 minus 128 = 54 units sold in the last day.


This Won’t Work When…�

Ʈ The supplier holds 1,000 units or more in stock as the maximum you can add to your cart is 999 units.

Ʈ When there are multiple sellers for a product… as you can only track a single seller’s stock levels using this method. You can try and ensure you are watching the same seller, but the sales volume may be incomplete as other sellers may take some of the sales.

Ʈ From time to time the supplier is going to re-stock and so you will see the quantity increase instead of decrease in a particular period.

This isn’t 100% perfect, but you can use it to track the sales of a range of products over time to really give an insight into the sales volume potential of the product or niche you are researching.

It may just be the difference between picking a great product or picking a real stinker of a product!


Suppliers & Shipping

In this section we’re going to deal with the process of finding and negotiating with suppliers and then shipping / importing the product from the supplier into Amazon.

Domestic vs International Suppliers

Most of the time you will find that we source products from an overseas supplier�

It will really depend on the product and whether there are suitable, competitively priced suppliers locally, but often the most cost effective suppliers will usually be in China or overseas.

There are some circumstances that we only source domestically and the general rule is as follows:

“If the product goes on the body, or in the mouth then we ONLY source domestically”

The reason for this is there is heavy regulation on these types of products and a manufacturer within the country will more likely (and reliably!) have all the certification and tests in place.

Pretty much any other product is sourced from overseas, usually China.

Finding, negotiating and then importing from Overseas can be a daunting prospect, but it really isn’t that bad once you have an understanding of the process and steps required.


Where to find Suppliers

We use a mix of resources and directories to find suppliers for our products. Even just simple google searches can find good suppliers.

Here are a few links to websites that can help locate suppliers.

Overseas Suppliers

Ʈ alibaba.com

Ʈ hktdc.com (Hong Kong Trade Development Council)

Ʈ made-in-china.com

Ʈ alibaba.com/AliSourcePro (post a buying request and suppliers send you offers)

Ʈ aliexpress.com (source products / suppliers with lower MOQ’s)

Ʈ ttnet�net (alternate to Alibaba)

Domestic Suppliers (USA)

Ʈ thomasnet.com

Ʈ hellotrade.com

Ʈ 4wholesaleusa.com

Ʈ americansworking.com

http://www.alibaba.com/

http://www.hktdc.com/

http://www.made-in-china.com/

http://alibaba.com/AliSourcePro

http://aliexpress.com/

http://www.ttnet.net/

http://www.thomasnet.com/

http://www.hellotrade.com/

http://4wholesaleusa.com/

http://americansworking.com/


A few notes of caution when using these directory websites…As a general rule do not place too much reliance on premium status, such as Gold, Silver, Platinum, Premium, or Stars.

Always research what is involved in being awarded that status – sometimes it’s as simple as paying a subscription and simple company checks – something that is of little value in protecting us as the buyer.

We always do our own due diligence on a new supplier before doing business with them. Simple things like:

Ʈ Checking the address they supply is consistent with other information found on the Internet

Ʈ Searching online for reviews and any “bad experience”

Ʈ Using Google Maps, go into satellite and street view to see if their address is a real industrial / commercial area and whether you can see evidence of their existence in that location such as signs

Ʈ If they have accreditations / certifications then check that they are real (especially if they are vital to your product (eg: required to legally sell the product in the USA or country you will be selling in)

There is no set process here, we just have to do our research and be comfortable that the whole “story” you have been given makes logical sense and there are no alarm bells going off.

Note that you may also come across trading companies on some of the larger sites like Alibaba. These trading companies act as agents who merely resell a manufacturers products.

This is not ideal and really we want to be dealing with the manufacturer direct, so that we can get the lowest price and also so we can work directly with them to make the product to our specification / design. However, there may be situations where we will deal with a Trading Company because they offer a lower Minimum Order Quantity that we can get by going direct to the manufacturer (usually this is only for the first order of a new product).


Dealing with a Chinese Supplier

The goal is always to establish a great relationship with our supplier which will prove really valuable to our business as it grows. In order to establish a great relationship, you need to take into account not only our needs, but also theirs as well.

Chinese suppliers specialize in mass production – that is how they offer such competitive prices.

They may also produce multiple products on the same production line and have to change tooling / train their staff to produce a run of your customized private labeled product. So bear this in mind when you are trying to negotiate design, quantities and price with them.

You are no longer dealing with people in your own Country. You have to approach this with an open mind and expect there to be some differences in the way the business transaction is carried out.

There are cultural differences, language barriers and different business practices which you must come to expect.

Time DifferenceBe aware of what Timezone the supplier is in and how that relates to your working day. For me (based in the UK) the Chinese are about 8 hours ahead of me (depending on time of year / daylight saving etc).

That means that their working day is during the early hours of the morning for me approximately 1am to 9am. For someone on the East coast U.S.A. then it will be approx. 8pm to 4am.

When working with a supplier it’s best to try and adjust your work hours so that you overlap theirs as much as possible (or at least be available). Otherwise it takes a long time to reply back and forth as you only get one interaction per day as you are always waiting for the other person to start work again.


Language BarriersMany suppliers will have quite poor English skills... but still probably better than your Chinese skills!

Emails you receive may be in broken English, or may not seem particularly professional. They may even have used tools like Google Translate to communicate with you resulting in patches of gibberish.

Bear this in mind when you are writing your emails to them…

Ʈ Use very simple language

Ʈ Avoid using slang terms or sayings

Ʈ When writing to Chinese speakers remember that they mostly have a limited vocabulary, and words that may seem straightforward to you might mean something different to them. So avoid complex words with multiple meanings�

Ʈ Read and re-read your email and try and simplify it further where you can

Ʈ Do not overload your email – deal with a few requests / inquiries per email, get the answers to those first and then email again with more. If you send an all encompassing email trying to cover all 25 points you can think of then don’t be disappointed when you get a reply just addressing one or two of your points and glossing over the rest (been there – done that – learned the frustrating way!)


Cultural & Business Practice DifferencesChinese culture places great stress on trust. Moral influence is more important than legal practice.

So because of this you will find that Chinese business people tend to rely on a person or company’s moral obligation, rather than on legal obligations. This is totally different to the way businesses in the West operate.

If you can build a trusting relationship where both parties will feel morally obligated to perform, you will generally have as much security as if you had a signed contract.

About as close as you will get to a legally binding contract is a Pro Forma Invoice when you get to the order stage.

When negotiating price, be careful not to cause offence. Do not treat your supplier like a market trader and just haggle over price willy nilly.

They will normally be quite happy to work on small margins if the quantity and future business is there, however you must justify any challenge to their pricing that they provide you. The best way to do this is to obtain multiple quotations and then negotiate on price based on lower quotations received from other suppliers.

The Chinese often have long holidays where the factories shut down for extended periods of time. This can be for a week or so or even as long as a month (for Chinese New Year).

Always be aware of Chinese Holidays (we maintain a calendar) and be aware that during that period you will get no response from the supplier and that there will be no production or shipping. So it’s important to plan well in advance of these periods to ensure that we have enough stock in place to ride out these closures. Also be aware that everyone is doing the same, so the supplier will be very busy in the periods just before and after a Chinese holiday.

And the final thing is always be very polite in all communications. Chinese people are extremely polite and they will have a much higher regard for westerners who are also very polite.


QualityMost people are looking for the best price, and to achieve this Chinese manufacturers may base their products on the lowest quality material or cut corners in production to achieve a low base price.

However Chinese suppliers can produce high quality as well.

Our philosophy is to never compromise on Quality and we look for the highest quality product before even considering price.

This focus on quality just needs to be made clear to any supplier and ask what options are available to achieve this and at what incremental cost.

There may be a different material they can use for a few cents extra, or a high quality packaging option. As long as the supplier is aware that we are prepared to pay a reasonable premium from their base product for a higher quality product.

$1 or $2 extra paid here can convert into $10 or $20 extra we can charge on our sales price, money saved on returns and unhappy customers and a much easier time building up 5-star reviews.

We ALWAYS obtain samples from any supplier we have shortlisted. This costs some money as although the supplier will usually be prepared to provide the samples for free they will expect us to pay the shipping cost.

Samples will be sent via a courier (UPS/DHL/Fedex) and it will usually be cheaper to use the suppliers accounts with these couriers and pay them for it (tip: ask to pay via Paypal or Credit Card for this smaller transaction to avoid costly bank transfer fees).

We also ask for multiple samples (say 3 to 5) so that we can check consistency of production across units.


Payment Terms & ArrangementsThe most common payment terms are 30% paid at the time of order and then the remaining 70% after the supplier has completed production of the goods (and they are ready to ship). I’ve also seen 50%/50%.

For smaller orders we will usually just pay 100% at time of order, because it’s too costly to send two separate payments and incur two bank transfer fees.

Before releasing the final payment the supplier can provide photos of the finished goods both the individual unit and the shipping boxes. This provides some evidence that the units have actually been produced, that they “look OK” and also that any box labeling has been done correctly if you are shipping direct to Amazon from China.

For some orders we will also use an Inspection company based in China. We pay them to send an agent to the factory to inspect the finished goods and provide a report alerting us to any quality or other issues before we release payment or ship the goods thousands of miles across the world.

The common payment method is via International Bank Transfer (Chinese companies still call these T/T’s – Telegraphic Transfers) which you will incur bank fees for (usually about USD$50).

Alternatives may be available such as Paypal or Credit Card – which if your lucky enough to find a supplier who deals in these will provide better protection in the unlikely event that the goods don’t turn up.

The one I would like to point out as “one to avoid” is Western Union. This is basically a money transfer service where you send an amount then someone can go and collect at their local Western Union outlet (usually a shop or similar).

It is untraceable and once the money is collected it is gone. This is not to mean that some professional organizations won’t offer this as an option – but it is the payment preference of choice for scammers and one we NEVER use.


If Western Union is simply offered as part of a range of payment options then that is fine, just steer clear of it and choose another but if you have a supplier that is pushing for Western Union then we walk away immediately.

I’ve had experience of it before where a potential supplier gave me all sorts of stories about why he needed us to pay in Western Union the funniest being “Your order is too small to go through our books, so you must send Western Union so the factory workers can be paid directly by your payment” (LOL!)

With large orders and large sums of money involved then there are more advanced options such as Letters of Credit (L/C) arranged via our Bank but there’s no point confusing the waters with them now other than to be aware of them.


Shipping Options

The cost is probably the number one factor which influences type of shipping to use, but there is also the question of time�

There are 3 main types of shipping to be aware of:

Air CourierUsing the major courier companies (UPS/DHL/FEDEX) and their dedicated infrastructure. This is the fast option and will arrive at the destination in as fast as 2 to 7 days.

However this is also the most expensive option and as a guide will cost around $5 - $7 per Kilogram. As a result we usually only use this option for samples and small shipments that need to get to the destination fast.

Air FreightThis is a cheaper but also slower option to Air Couriers. The major difference is the shipment is sent via the cargo services of the major airlines (rather than a dedicated UPS plane for example it might use China Airlines).

With an average time to destination of 7 - 14 days, this is still a much faster method to Ocean freight however is still quite expensive and is only viable for smaller items or shipments. Charges are based on “chargeable weight” which is calculated from a combination of the weight and size of a shipment.


Ocean FreightThis is the usual method for transporting large shipments. Everyone has seen a big ship loaded up with large containers and this is what we are talking about here.

The upside is it is much cheaper than Air Freight the downside is it takes a lot longer to arrive (for example, China to USA typically 20 to 30 days, China to UK typically 30 to 40 days).

There are two terms regarding Ocean Freight that you need to be aware of.

The first is FCL which means Full Container Load and basically means that you hire a full container on a ship. This is unlikely for a new product as a 20 foot or 40 foot container holds a lot of cargo, although with good planning you can ship a mixture of products in the same container.

More likely is LCL which means Less than Container Load and means you rent space (based on cubic meter volume of your shipment) within a container and share it with other shippers.


The Freight Forwarder

If we choose to ship via Air Courier, then it is usually cheaper to use the suppliers (or their agents) accounts with one of the major couriers. This also makes it simple as the supplier will just invoice you for the shipping cost on the same invoice as the product.

However if we choose either Air Freight or Ocean Freight then we will work with our Freight Forwarder to arrange this.

We are not, nor do we wish to be experts in importing laws and processes. So we outsource this all to a company who is an expert and does it for a living. This type of company is called a “Freight Forwarder”.

A freight forwarder is basically your agent who arranges everything for you to get your shipment from the supplier in China (or wherever) to it’s destination.

They will arrange to collect the shipment from the suppliers factory, ship it to the port, load it on a boat, unload it at a port in the destination port and then transport it to the final destination (usually an Amazon warehouse).

They will also complete all the paperwork on our behalf and ensure that all laws and rules are complied with and the shipment doesn’t get held up. They will also clear the shipment through customs and deal with any payments required.

They handle the whole process for us and will give us a quote upfront for all costs and a single invoice covering everything.

Our freight forwarder is a key partner to our business and makes the process of importing goods from overseas very straight forward and stress free.


The Import Process Step by Step

Even though our Freight Forwarder will do all this for us, it’s still useful to have an understanding of the process he will go through�

We will use Ocean Freight with LCL (Less than Container Load) Shipment as the example (as this is the option we use the most).

Now, the negotiation is complete, order has been placed and the goods have been manufactured. We’ve paid the balance to the supplier and the goods are now ready for shipment.

The first thing to be aware of is that the supplier at this stage will probably be keen to get the boxes out of his warehouse as soon as possible to clear the space, so some of the steps below should be done in advance of the production run completing.

So lets summarize the process from A to B to make it as clear as possible�

1� The price we negotiate with the supplier will usually be based on “FOB” terms – This means the price paid includes the supplier transporting the goods to a nearby port. (Guide to standard shipping terms (Incoterms) - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incoterms)

2� Ask for a quote from our freight forwarder from “FOB Port to delivered door”. What this means is that the freight forwarder takes over the goods from your supplier at the port in China and then arranges all the transport through to the final destination address (usually split between 1 to 3 Amazon warehouses). Asking for a fully inclusive cost here will ensure no unexpected costs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incoterms


3� Confirm the booking with the freight forwarder. We will accept the quote, provide confirmation of weight, cube (dimensions), number of cartons and type of goods. We will also give them contact details for the supplier including name, address, contact number/email and contact name along with any references required.

4� We ALWAYS pay the small additional cost to insure the goods while they are in transport. We ask the forwarder to include this in the quote and confirm in writing that the goods should be insured (It’s not unknown for goods to get damaged in transit).

5� Ask the forwarder for details of their agent/office at the port in China (they will use an agent to receive the goods and load them into a container and onto the ship).

6� Provide the supplier with the forwarders agents details and tell them that they will be in touch.

7� At this point behind the scenes the forwarder will get in touch with their overseas office, who in turn will make contact with the supplier. Once the supplier has been paid they will deliver goods to the forwarders agent’s warehouse at the port of origin.

8� Goods will be loaded into a container, put on a Vessel and will be on their way. The forwarder will be able to tell you which ship they are on and when it is due to reach the destination port (probably 20-30 days or so).

9� A bill of lading is issued by the overseas agent to the supplier, which shows the confirmed shipping details. This is a very important document as the ‘holder’ of the original bill of lading has legal title to the goods.

10� The supplier should then send the original bill of lading and any other documents to us (or direct to the freight forwarder) via courier. Other documentation may include the Commercial Document, the Invoice and any certification required for the product. The Freight Forwarder will need these documents as he will not be able to clear the goods through customs or release the goods out of the port until he has these documents (but there is plenty of time while the goods are in transit at sea for this to happen).


11� Not really relevant to us, but if this was the first time importing there will probably be Importer registrations and paperwork to complete which the freight forwarder will complete for you to ensure these are all done in plenty of time before the shipment arrives. This will vary depending on the country that you are importing to and the freight forwarder will advise on this.

12� A notice of arrival may be received from the freight forwarder a week or so before the goods are due to arrive at the destination port, confirming the arrival details and often asking for any information he needs for customs clearance. Please note that it is not a legal obligation to send out notice of arrivals so you should not rely on this alone – we always track when shipments are due in port and about a week before chase the forwarder and ask for an update (you can also track the ship using online tools nowadays).

13� Ensure that the forwarder has all the details they need. This will include our Importers registration details (called an EORI number in the UK), the commercial invoice, the original bill of lading and the customs tariff code for the goods which classifies the exact product we are importing and determines the Import Duty rate payable on the goods. The forwarder will often be able to suggest the right one for you but it is your legal responsibility to ensure this is correct.

14� Back to ‘behind the scenes’ now. The Vessel has arrived, the container has been unloaded and the forwarder will likely move this to their own customs warehouse to unload and carry out customs clearance.

15� The forwarder should then issue a sales invoice covering the shipping costs as quoted (check it matches the quote – if it doesn’t, ask why). We will also get a Duty/VAT invoice for those costs which the forwarder has paid to clear your goods through customs. The forwarder /customs broker will charge a fee for paying customs on our behalf. We do have the option of paying direct, but we find is easier to let the forwarder handle it and given the time constraints often a same day bank transfer is required which can cost more than the fee charged.


16� Pay the forwarder. Credit arrangements are rare nowadays unless you are a very established importer so we will need to pay the invoices before they will book delivery. Payment methods vary we will usually pay via a bank transfer.

17� Rent charges – This is something we usually need not worry about as long as everything is done promptly. You will usually be given seven days free of charge from the date the container was unloaded (called the devan date) to get goods delivered to you. After this date we will incur daily rent costs, hence the need to be slightly on the ball and not delaying payment, etc. (check with the forwarder for the exact terms / days for the specific country / port)

18� Confirm delivery. Check payment has been received (don’t wait for them to contact you if you know payment has been sent and received as they may handle thousands of transactions a day and they can get lost in the system) and ask when the goods will be released for delivery. Depending on location this might be next day or 2/3 days afterwards.

19� Delivery to Amazon - We will usually delivery direct to Amazon warehouses. The delivery will need to be booked in to Amazon and the freight forwarder will arrange this. The goods will also need to be packaged and labeled correctly to be accepted by Amazon. We normally get the supplier to do this before the goods start their journey but we can also get the freight forwarder to provide this service for us at the port.

So… that is the import process from A to B in a nutshell. I hope it doesn’t seem too daunting now after seeing it step by step.


Inspection Services

This is optional, but a service that we sometimes use. In particular if we are using a new supplier and do not feel 100% comfortable.

There are basically two options:

Local Inspection CompanyYou can hire an inspection company based in China who will send an agent to the suppliers factory to inspect the finished goods before you make the final payment and before they are shipped thousands of miles around the world.

For a basic inspection this is usually very inexpensive around $150 - $300.

The agent will sample check a number of the finished goods and provide a report back to us on the quality and state of those tested. They will classify the tested units into categories, those that are perfect, those with minor defects and those with major defects.

It is best to notify the supplier at the order stage that we will be sending an inspection agent and agree the acceptable levels of each classification. This should be put on the Proforma invoice so that it’s in writing. If the supplier doesn’t meet these levels then they will have to rework / re-manufacture the batch.

Destination Country Inspection CompanyThis is where an inspection company based in the USA or the destination country is used.

With this option, then instead of delivering the shipment directly from China to Amazon, it is delivered to an Inspection company’s warehouse.


The inspection company would then unpack and inspect every unit and report back to you on the condition and any problems they find.

They would then pack the units back up and prepare the shipment as it is required for Amazon (box labels etc) and arrange for the boxes to be shipped to Amazon using the preferred partner program (amazon’s cheap shipping rates with UPS).

An example of this type of service in the USA is FBAinspection.com�

Why use an Inspection Company?The main benefit is that the products will be inspected before they reach Amazon so we can be made aware of any issues�

Amazon won’t inspect your goods like this, they will simply go into stock and the first you will hear about any issues is when a customer complains and leaves a bad review – not a good situation to be in.

We prefer to use the China inspection option when we feel the need. It’s better to discover issues while the goods are still at the suppliers factory so they can be resolved easier and you can also hold the supplier accountable for any issues�

The downside of this option is that the goods can still be damaged in transit.

Using a destination country inspection company would notice items damaged in transit also, but although you will be able to stop damaged units reaching your customers, it will be much more difficult to hold the supplier accountable for these and reach a resolution. Also there will be additional freight costs involved between port to inspection company to Amazon.

http://fbainspection.com/


Product Design

This stage is where we work with chosen suppliers to create and design the product under our brand name. The supplier will have a base design which we can then customize and add value to.

Our Philosophy

When it comes to designing our products then we have a clear philosophy that we stick to.

Ʈ We are happy to price our product slightly above competitors and justify that by adding value to the product.

Ʈ Quality is the highest priority - we will never buy from a cheaper supplier unless the quality is as good as a higher priced supplier.

Ʈ Great packaging is worth paying for and can add a lot of perceived value and help us stand out from the competition. For example it may cost $1 extra to have a custom full-color printed box for the product, but the perception of quality that the customer sees in your product images may allow you to charge an extra $5 or more� Also the first impression the customer will get when they receive the product will increase the chances of them leaving a positive review�

Ʈ Add value by including a bonus in the box - although this must be something that is highly relevant to the product and that the customer actually would want.

Ʈ Provide every single customer with a great experience with our product / brand with extra touches that matter such as following up and checking in with them, providing videos to show them how to use or install the product, and resolving any issues promptly.


How to Design Product Packaging that Influences People (and doesn’t get you into trouble with the law!)

There are several factors that influence a consumer’s decision to buy, but you only have one chance to catch their attention and that is done via the product packaging.

Think back to the last time you were at the supermarket and walking down the aisles. You know you want to buy a jar of marmalade but which one do you buy?

Without you knowing your decision is probably going to be influenced by the product’s label and packaging design�

An eye-catching more attractive label conveys professionalism and improved quality and will catch your attention ensuring that products gets more consideration time during your decision making process.

Some items won’t even get a glance if their packaging does not grab your attention.

This is exactly the same with Amazon – think of the search results as someone walking down the aisle at the supermarket – the eye catching and professional looking label / product designs will get the most clicks and most consideration by buyers.


So this is why investing time and money into a great packaging design upfront can pay dividends further down the line. And it’s a one time cost so always go for the best design you can at this stage.

However don’t let it delay the process, this can always be changed at a later date and on subsequent supplier orders so the main focus is to get a good and quick design done so you can get your first order placed.


The Elements of Product Packaging

There are some elements that are standard and required on all product packaging / labels:

Ʈ Your Brand Name

Ʈ Name of the Product

Ʈ UPC / EAN Barcode

Ʈ Name, Address and contact details of the company selling / distributing the product

Ʈ Adequate Instructions of how to use the product

Ʈ Description & Benefits of the product (the sales pitch)

Then you need to consider the specific product and whether there are any additional legal requirements that you MUST include on the label.

Every new product needs to be researched. You could look at similar products labels to get some clues as to what you need to include. You can also ask the supplier who will be very knowledgeable on the subject and know what past customers have included. Finally you can also seek advice from regulatory bodies on what the labeling requirements are and there are also legal experts who can advise you if you wish.


Now, it would be impossible and irresponsible of me to try and list out every possible legal requirement as they will differ between product categories, regulatory bodies and country to country.

However, here are JUST A FEW examples to give you an idea of what I am talking about:

Ʈ Product Weight (eg: “100g”), Volume (eg: “1000ml”) or Quantity of items included (eg: “100 wipes”)

Ʈ Product made overseas eg: “Made in China”

Ʈ Ingredients (usually required to be listed in order of quantity) and also possibly Nutritional information.

Ʈ Warnings eg: “Keep out of reach of children” or “Avoid contact with eyes”

Ʈ Certification marks and numbers (if the supplier had to be approved or certified they will have been issued with a number or logo which should be displayed on the packaging) eg: “CE” (European Conformity) “FCC” (Electronics products sold in US) “RoHS” (restriction of dangerous substances in electronics products).

Ʈ Nutritional Information

Ʈ Storage and disposal instructions

Ʈ Best Before dates, production batch numbers and dates.

That list is no where near complete so comprehensive research must be done to ensure we comply with legal requirements and that the supplier has all the necessary accreditations that is required to sell the product in your chosen country.


Critical Design Concepts

Before starting to design product packaging / labels, sit down and decide on the story that you want it to tell…

Ʈ Do you want it to portray a professional image, or more of a fun, modern funky feel to it?

Ʈ What are the key messages and benefits it should get across?

Ʈ What size and shape of label will it be and will it be a label (printed and stuck to the bottle) or silk-screened (printed direct on to the bottle) – your supplier will give you this information / options.

A really great website to get some ideas from is thedieline.com – it’s basically a website where designers and students put their design ideas out there for discussion and comment. It holds awards for the best designs and is a really cool place to just spend some time browsing around and picking up creative ideas that can maybe apply to our product packaging and labels.

When you have an initial concept and overall picture then you can start to fine-tune some of the details.

Here are some of the factors that should be taken into consideration...

http://thedieline.com


Make it Clear at A Glance What the Product IsThe first thing to ensure with the main product image is that when a customer glances at a page of competing images that it’s very clear straight away WHAT the product is and that they have found what they are searching for.

The way we do this is to ensure the main keyword is in large print and prominent on the packaging – this normally forms part of the name of the product anyway – but it must be the first thing that people see by just glancing at your product.

Looking at just the images, which one makes it clear what the product is?

The second one down is the only one here that clearly states it is Garcinia Cambogia

(a supplement) the other two focus on their brand logo’s or other features like

“100% Pure”.


Keep it Un-ClutteredThis can be the biggest challenge when designing a product packaging / labels, with so many ideas of things to include into quite often a small space, things can get cluttered very quickly.

The packaging needs to have a clear message, and be kept un-cluttered so that you can make that message stand out.

So resist the urge to fill every bit of space available with something else – it will actually have a detrimental impact overall.

ColorsThe colors used are very important as they can directly influence the buyer’s purchasing decisions.

Color has a huge psychological impact on people and their first impressions of a product. There is a proven correlation between color and feeling / emotion and as such can easily influence a consumer’s behavior.

For a great article on how different colors convey different emotions and how you can apply that to your product read this great article: How Designers Use Color to Influence Consumers�

http://www.youthedesigner.com/graphic-design-tips/how-designers-use-color-to-influence-consumers/



Several factors should be considered when choosing the coloring for product packaging. For example, you should take into account the coloring of the container or, if the container is clear, you need to consider the color of the product and so on, as you don’t want your product label to negatively impact these items.

There are some good tools online that can help you choose color sets such as Adobe Color CC color wheel. However if outsourcing the packaging design then they should be experienced in choosing complimentary color sets.

Also check with your supplier if there are any restrictions on the number of colors that can be used.

FontsFont choices are important and deserve careful consideration and planning. Don’t settle for the typical system fonts like Arial, Times New Roman, etc. when designing product packaging. Choose a font that will help the product to stand out, or one that captures the personality of the product.

However bear in mind that your font choice can also make your product look cheap and unprofessional. Keep all your fonts consistent and don’t include 5 different fonts all competing with each other. Make sure that your font choice still looks professional and not like something that has been hacked together in Microsoft Word (like the tacky WordArt).

One of the most important considerations of font choice is to ensure your text is easily readable – both from a distance of several feet (for the main text on the font) and from up close. You literally only have a few seconds to attract the attention of potential buyers, so your font must be easy to read at just a quick glance.

There are many online sources to get ideas, download and buy fonts such as dafont.com and fonts.com�

https://color.adobe.com/create/color-wheel/

http://dafont.com/

http://fonts.com/


GraphicsGraphics can be used to draw attention to your product, however again you need to be aware of your overall message and how best to deliver that to the consumer. Don’t just add graphics for the sake of it, only if they help to deliver that message�

Inexpensive graphics can be purchased on sites such as iStockphoto and 123rf.com and many others. You will find graphics for a very reasonable price here, usually just a few dollars, but you will need to check the licensing agreement for any restrictions on usage.

Buzz WordsThis may not be relevant to all products but often there are buzz words or phrases in your product’s niche that will draw consumers attention when they see them. eg: “Fat Free”, “Free from Additives”, “Natural” etc.

Try to include some of these on your label design if they are relevant to your product.

Product Range ConsistencyIf you have a range of products that are all closely related, or maybe you have different variants of the same product (size, color, flavor etc.) then it’s important to keep major design elements of your packaging consistent.

Whether someone is looking at the peach, orange or lime flavor they should be able to recognize instantly that it is all the same company and brand.

http://istockphoto.com/

http://123rf.com/


How to Get the Packaging Designed

The first step is to ask the supplier for the Template for the chosen packaging / label.

This will be an image possibly with a sample design on it. We are not really interested in the design that is on it as we will produce our own (although it may contain some useful data such as ingredients that you may need to copy).

The important thing is that we now have a template that is the right size for us to overlay our design onto. There may also be cut marks to indicate where the label will be cut after printing before being applied to the product.

You should also check with your supplier what file format they require the completed design sent back in so that you can ensure that you or your designer can arrange that.

Once you have the template, and you have considered your concept and requirements for the label then you need to decide how to get the label made.

There are really three options:

A� Produce it in-house

B� Use an Outsourcing site to Hire a Graphic Designer

C� Hold a Design Contest


A� Do It In-HouseFor most of our designs we will do it in-house utilizing members of the team that have skills on graphics package such as Photoshop or Illustrator. We will brain storm with a group of us to come up with creative ideas and do the required research.

If we have nobody available, or we are struggling creatively then we may use one of the outsourcing options below.

If there is not a team member available with the skills then we won’t hesitate to outsource it - there is no way I would compromise on quality just to save a few bucks.


B� Use an Outsourcing site to Hire a Graphic DesignerYou can find professional graphic designers waiting to be hired to do work just like this on many of the online Outsourcing sites.

There are many about but a couple are fiverr.com, upwork.com, freelancer.com. Fiverr might be a little on the cheap end of the scale so if you are taking this option you may want to jump straight to one of the more professional freelancer sites.

The basic process at an outsourcing site is as follows:

Ʈ You post a job specification – outlining what needs to be done

Ʈ Freelancers / Outsourcers bid on your project

Ʈ You decide who to hire based on price, outsourcer reviews, and their responses to you

Ʈ You hire someone

Ʈ They do the job

Ʈ You accept their work and pay them!

This is a good way to find a professional graphic designer with experience of designing product labels to work with and get a great design produced.

This is probably the best method to use if you have a specific design in mind and you just need someone to execute it�

http://entreprenr.com/fiverr

http://upwork.com

http://freelancer.com/


C� Hold a Design ContestIf we are struggling creatively or we have no specific design in mind then this is the option we would take.

The main place to hold such contests is 99designs.com and the difference is that you just have to outline the requirements of the job and then you have multiple designers competing to win the contest – all putting their own creative ideas forward for you to see.

You can give them feedback as they submit designs and they will do revisions or alternate designs. They work hard to please you as they are trying to win the contest and get the money.

It’s a little different to just simply outsourcing:

Ʈ You post your job specification

Ʈ Designers actually send you draft versions of their work

Ʈ You select finalists who then send you final versions of their work

Ʈ You decide on the “winner”

Ʈ They get paid

Ʈ You get the final product!

http://entrprnr.org/99designs


The pricing is tiered and you get to choose from a Bronze package through Silver, Gold and ultimately Platinum.

The bronze package will usually be OK and they suggest you will get about 30 designs submitted but the higher packages will attract the better designers and more submissions so it’s up to you how much you wish to spend.

I think contests are a great concept because you get to feed off all those designers creativity. They are experienced in this sort of thing and will come up with things that you had not even thought of, but is actually exactly what you are looking for. On top of this designers are very motivated to give you high quality work as If they do not win, they just worked for free!

The downside is it will work out more expensive than using UpWork but at the end of the day the competitive advantage you get from a high quality design will be a huge benefit for the life of the product.

We’re giving our product a great start with a great first impression.


How to Create the Ultimate Amazon Product Listing

It doesn’t matter how much traffic we get to our Product’s Amazon Listing page, if it not set up well and designed to convert those visitors then they will not become buyers.

Our aim is always to concentrate on conversion so that even if we get very little traffic to our listing page (as will probably be the case to start with) then those visitors convert into buyers and happy customers.

It’s actually not that difficult to create a great product listing for the product once you know what the important elements are and the best ways to present them.

In fact it still amazes me how poor 90% of product listing pages are on Amazon. See for yourself, once you understand the elements below and how to optimize them just how many listings on Amazon don’t even do the basics.

It takes time to learn and perfect this art via research and trial and error, so here is what I have learned over the past years that can hopefully give you a head start over the rest of the competition.


The Mistake Most Sellers Make

The first thing that most people do when creating their product listing is to go straight to the competitors who are ranking the best to see what they are doing and copying them.

While I can understand this and certainly seeing what is working is not a bad thing, but in my opinion this is the wrong approach to take.

On Amazon there is sometimes high competition and customers are faced with many options. Reality is that they don’t get the chance to analyze every product and listing page and so even if you have the greatest and most innovative product on the planet, they still may not get to purchase one.

Firstly you have to catch the customers attention to even get them to look at your product and then once they are there you have to complete the job of selling to them and making it imperative that they purchase now�

So, the most important thing is that we should be standing out from the competition, not copying them. Some of the things that they are doing, we want to be doing the complete opposite so that our product listing doesn’t just blend in and merge with the 100’s or 1,000’s of other products our customer is being faced with.


The Formula

My whole formula when developing a product listing is based around standing out from the crowd, especially with the elements that appear in search results and sponsored ads such as the main product image and title where we want to be the listing that the eye is drawn to as a customer glances at a page.

Goal #1 --- is to stand out from the crowd, not blend into the background

The other aim I always have is to write my product listing page as if I was a reviewer of the product and not as a salesman. If you keep this in mind then you’ll find you’ll use a different language all together and one that resonates with the customer on a whole different level.

Goal #2 --- is to write like a Product Reviewer and not a Salesman

My final goal is to treat each section as a complete sales pitch. Not every customer will read the whole product listing page, some will only look at the images, others will just read the title or bullet points, they may miss your description completely.

So in each and every section you have to be giving a complete story of why the customer should buy your product and then give them a call to action. So those only reading the bullet points will get enough information to convert them into buyers, same with those just looking at the images and so on.

Goal #3 --- is to produce each section as if it is the only section the Customer will view

These 3 goals are what underpin our product listing pages.


The 4 Vital Elements to an Amazon Product Listing

There are 4 vital elements to the Product Listing page and you must give due attention and optimize each in turn.

Element #1: Product ImagesIn my opinion this is probably THE most important element. If you don’t get this element right then people won’t even click through to your listing page.

Element #2: TitleThe title is vital for including the main keywords that you want to show up for in the Amazon search results. But there is a fine balance to be drawn between a long title that includes all the keywords and one that is attractive and informative to the customer and will make them click through to your product listing.

Element #3: Bullet PointsFor me the bullet points are the main selling pitch for the written part of the product listing. Like it or not, many customers won’t read the Product Description further down and just want the quick version which is the bullet points. So these deserve a lot of time optimizing and selling every benefit of our products and always include a call to action.

Element #4: Product DescriptionThe final element is the product description and this is where you can really spend time laying out the benefits of your product and there are even ways we can format this area to make it stand out, otherwise it can get a bit lost with the way Amazon lays the page out.

So… without further waffle, lets get on and look at each vital element in turn and how to optimize it.


Product Images

Put simply, the images are the most important element on your product listing for the following reasons:

Ʈ Most people don’t read – so the images need to do the job of selling the product on their own.

Ʈ Images are what get the clicks from the search results and sponsored ads, and other places that Amazon shows the product off.

Ʈ The Image is the first thing a customer sees and therefore creates the first impression which is very, very important and sets the tone for the whole product.

Images can be created in a couple of ways. The first is by taking real photo’s of the product and the other is by hiring a graphic designer to create digital renditions of your product.

Most of the time we prefer real photo’s and we use a professional photographer to do the shots for us in a professional studio with professional equipment and lighting. The cost is very small (usually about $20 - $30 per shot) and the results are amazing�

Most categories allow 9 images to be uploaded and we will utilize as many of these slots as we can. However of these the most important image is the main image with the other 8 slots acting as secondary images.

The Main Image is the most important as not only is this the default image that shows as your product page loads, but also it’s the image that displays in the Search Results, in Amazon Ads and in other sections such as “Frequently Bought Together” etc. This is your “First Impression” image.


How to Create a Killer Main Image

Make it Clear at A Glance What the Product IsThe first thing to ensure with the main product image is that when a customer glances at a page of images and at our image that it is very clear straight away what the product is and that they have found what they are searching for.

The way we tend to do this is via the packaging design and by ensuring that the main keyword is in large print and prominent on the packaging. If you are not using the packaging in an image then you need to ensure it is obvious what the product is and does, maybe even add text to the image to state it clearly.

Looking at just the images, which one makes it clear what the product is?

The second one down is the only one here that clearly states it is Garcinia Cambogia

(a supplement) the other two focus on their brand logo’s or other features like

“100% Pure”.


ColorDoesn’t always need to be a different color to competitors to stand out, but the color of your image can be made more vibrant with simple image editing techniques which can either be done in-house or very cheaply outsourced to somebody on Fiverr, or another outsourcing site.

SpaceThe product should take up a large proportion of the space in your image. The larger the image the more it will stand out, however you do need a bit of padding around the image to allow it room to breathe so don’t go right to the extremes of the image and leave some white space around the outside. I aim to fill 3/4 of the image space with the product.

Which image is your eye drawn to?

The bottom image with more vibrant colors and where the product is utilizing

more of the image space.


AngleAnother weapon you can use to make an image stand out is the angle of the product. If all your competitors products are straight then photographing your image angled can make it really stand out.

The different angle of the bottom image make it stand out from the other two

“straight” product shots.


Eye PathNow we have an eye catching image to get the attention of our customer, we can subconsciously use the image as a guide for the customers eyes. If you have your image pointing towards your product title then that is where the customer will look at next and is where we want them to click on to visit your product listing.

Look how the second image naturally directs the customers eye path to look at

the Product Title and details next whereas the other images direct the eyes away


What Shots to use for Secondary Images?

So we’ve nailed the main image and have visitors flocking in from the search results because we stand out from the competition and guided them to our product listing.

Now we need to come up with 8 or so ideas for secondary images to fill up the image slots and ensure that all those visual buyers that don’t read the text are catered for.

I always try to fill these slots with images that sell. There is no point in just having 9 images of different angles of your product. I want to use these slots to highlight the points about the product that are going to sell the product to our customer. That way half the job is done before they even have to read any text.

So here are some ideas of the kinds of things that can be included…


Image Idea #1: Label ShotSome customers who like the finer details will like to read all the details from the label, for example there might be ingredients, or instructions of how to use the product that a customer wants to see.

Rather than take up multiple slots with different angles of your product where the label is still hard to read I include a flat shot of our entire label in hi-resolution and easy to read.


Image Idea #2: Action ShotAn action shot demonstrates the product in use and allows the customer to resonate with how they would actually use it. It makes it feel much less like a commercial product and more like something they can see in their life and something they could use.


Image Idea #3: InstructionsInclude an infographic with instructions of how to use the product. This allows the customer to feel like they understand how to operate the product before they even have it, and reassures them that it is not difficult to use.


Image Idea #4: Before & After ShotsIf the product is promising a result then a before and after shots image can be included to help sell what the customer can expect to achieve.


Image Idea #5: 100% Satisfaction / Money Back Guarantee CertificateIf any kind of guarantee is being offered with the product (which we always do!) then that is a great selling point and one that can be highlighted with the use of an image slot.


Image Idea #6: InfographicUse an image slot to present an infographic to the customer telling them why they should buy the product and explaining the benefits to them in a pretty, diagrammatic way.


Image Idea #7: Fun / Novelty ShotsIf there are spare slots that are not required for shots that also sell, then fill them up with some fun or novelty shots. We sometimes even run competitions with our customers and ask them to send in the strangest shots of the product in use that they can (great social media idea!)


Image Idea #8: CertificationIf relevant to the product then include any certification or proof that we have (or can be produced) to back up the claims as an image to really build trust levels with your customer.

Image Idea #9: Comparison Charts to Competitor productsAn image showing a comparison chart of features our product has that competitors do not. No need to name your competitors, you can just call them Competitor A, B, C etc.

Image Idea #10: CouponUse an image slot to increase sales. Offer a coupon code that gives the customer a discount when they buy 2 or more of the product, or cross promote other products and offer them a discount if they buy both products.


Product Title

The main purpose of the title is for keywords as they are so important in showing up in Amazon search results and getting traffic to your product listing.

However there is a balance that you need to strike as an ugly title that doesn’t make sense will seriously affect the click through rate, after all, it is the title that a customer has to click on to get to the product listing.

Tips for creating that balance between keywords and click through:

Ʈ Start the Title with the Main Keyword and make it very obvious straight away by just glancing at the first few words what the product is.

Ʈ Your Brand name is not important when you are starting out so that can be left until further down the title rather than what most people do and include it right at the start.

Ʈ It needs to be informative, only using keywords that can be utilized in informative sentences which explain benefits & features of the product. Never just stuff keywords into the title.

Ʈ Use separators like – or ~ or similar to break your title up and make it easier to read at a glance.

Ʈ For new products, use a shorter title focusing on the main keywords that converts better.

Ʈ In the search results and some other places Amazon truncates titles at around the 110 character mark, so make sure the Customer focused information is earlier on in the title and some more keyword related content can be after the cut-off. Also include a call to action such as “100% Money Back Guarantee” or a teaser such as *Free*… around the 110 character mark so that is the last thing they see and are forced to click through to see the rest of the teaser.


Bullet Points

Bullet Points sit on the product listing page just beneath the title, and after the main image is probably the second thing that a customer will see on the page.

This is really the best chance you get to convert the customer in written form and bearing in mind that the Add to Cart button is right next to them you can understand how this is a very important area to focus on.

Remember, we want to write as if we are a reviewer, not a salesperson so get yourself into this mindset as if you are leaving a product review.

Ʈ List out the benefits that you want to get across to the buyer. Aim to list as many as you can… at least 30.

Ʈ Now group as many of the benefits as you can under 4 headings so that you now have 4 groups of similar topics.

Ʈ The final stage is to write 4 bullet points, one for each group / heading you have just created and written in the style of a reviewer.

Ʈ If you are struggling for idea’s then read reviews of similar products and see what sort of language and benefits people are talking about.


As a quick example:A Salesman might write: “Our Custom Made Formula is tailor made to curb hunger pains without changing your daily routine� Most Users report zero side effects, No Jitters, No Nausea, No Headaches�”

We would write in a reviewers style: “Curbs hunger pain well without adversely affecting normal daily routine� Zero side effects with no jitters, nausea or headaches�”

The Fifth and Final Bullet Point should be saved for a call to action. You’ve sold the benefits with the first four bullet points and now you want to close the sale and encourage them to click the add to cart button.

“Order Now with No Risk due to our 30 day money back guarantee� No Questions Asked Refund if your not 100% happy�”


Product Description

The Product description is the last thing I focus on after all the other sections are complete. You finally have a bit of room to really sell your product, however you are still limited to 2,000 characters (some categories allow you a longer product description for some reason but 2,000 is the general rule).

I like to keep my description organized with multiple short sections each with a Sub Title. I’ve listed below some of things I include in my product descriptions. Obviously not all of the below can be fitted within the 2,000 character limit nor will they all be relevant to your product but it will give you some ideas as to what you can include and the kind of story that needs to be told to sell.

The ProblemDescribe a problem that exists that the customer may be suffering from and which the product will solve.

The SolutionStraight after I’ve laid out the problem and got the customer to identify with it I explain why our product is the solution to that problem�

CredibilityIf our product has any certifications or testimonials or social proof or similar then I’ll list them out here to add credibility in the eyes of the buyer.


Benefits / FeaturesI’ll continue to list out benefits of the product and I’ll try to focus on the benefits to the customer rather than just stating features of the product.

OwnershipI will try and help my customer subconsciously imagine that they already own this product, and are already enjoying the benefits of it.

BonusAny bonus that I am offering with the sale will be stated and I’ll tell them why the bonus is so brilliant!

GuaranteeI’ll remove any doubt the customer may have by offering a money back guarantee to make the purchase risk free.

ScarcityWe want the customer to buy on impulse now, not go away and think about it and never get round to returning so I’ll encourage the customer to purchase now with a scarcity statement such as “limited stock at this special price”

Close / Call to ActionExplicitly tell your customer what to do now… “Order Now”… “Click the Add to Cart Button” …. Don’t presume the customer will know what to do when they reach the end of your sales pitch.

How to Make your Product Listing Stand out from the Crowd

You can really make your product description jump out from the page with the use of basic HTML mark up code.

If you don’t then the text will just appear as one big blob that nobody will notice and if they do they certainly won’t read it�

Bear in mind that the extra mark up code involved does eat into your 2,000 character limit.

There are only really 3 markups that we use.

Ʈ tag - this is added where you want a line break.

Ʈ tag - for bold text

Ʈ tag - for italic text

Example:Main Headline 

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Donec ornare urna sit amet eros rhoncus, at venenatis quam faucibus. Pellentesque habitant morbi

tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas.

Sub Headline 

– Bullet Point 1


The Importance of Keywords

When it comes to Amazon keywords are a really important topic.

Keywords are the first indication to Amazon of what your product is.

Amazon A9 algorithm decides which listings to show in which search results and other areas.

And this is important because we want to rank in the search results for various search terms. This is how we claim a share of the 100+ million visitors Amazon gets.

Searches are how Amazon buyers find products. There are other ways to find product listing by searching through categories but pretty much everybody who goes to Amazon looking for something will enter a search term into the search bar to find relevant products.

So if we wanted to rank in the search results for specific search terms then we first have to tell Amazon A9 that our product listing is relevant.

The way to do that is to include the search term in your product listing. This should get the product listing “indexed” by Amazon for that search result but there is a lot more involved in actually getting it ranked on the first page of the search results.

So the first critical step is to come up with a list of keywords to target that will bring us the most amount of visitors to our product listing.


How We Find our Competitors Valuable Keywords in under 5 minutes

We have a really good process for coming up with a list of target keywords for a product.

Once again we look at similar products that are already doing really well on Amazon. We have already identified most of these in the product research stage. So if we were to find all the keywords that these already successful products were ranked for on Amazon then I’m sure you will agree those are good keywords to target.

But how do we find what keywords these products rank for? It’s certainly not data that is available, or that you can go and find manually.

We use a tool called Keyword Inspector. Full details here

This is basically a data mining service. It scrapes millions of points of data every day and saves it into a database.

Using the service you can then do what they called a “Reverse ASIN Search”. All that means is you input an ASIN of a competitors product (or our own product if you want to see what search terms we rank for) and Keyword Inspector will give you a list of all search terms that product ranks for.

It’s a pretty mind blowing tool and in just a few seconds we have all our competitors keywords / search terms.

We usually run this for the 3 main competitors that we identified during the product research stage and that usually provides at least 100 keywords for us to work with. If not then we’ll just run it for more competitors until we do.

Running a Reverse ASIN Search is done by purchasing credits and one search will cost between $0.60 and $2.40 depending on how many credits you buy at once. As you will see when you log into our account on Keywords Inspector we use the tool a lot and so buy credits in bulk at a very cheap rate.

http://entrprnr.org/keywordinspector


Choosing Our Top Target Keywords

Now we have a list of 50-100 of our main competitors keywords from the Keyword Inspector Reverse ASIN search�

We then have to decide which keywords are our top targets.

We choose 10 keywords to be our primary targets and then another 20 to 50 to be secondary targets.

The primary keywords we will actively work to get ranked for, the secondary keywords we will work to get indexed for and also use for things like Amazon Sponsored Ads.

To decide on our 10 primary targets we want to include the following:

Ʈ The main keywords our product is described as

Ʈ The Keywords that will deliver the highest number of searches

Ʈ Some keywords that are a little less competitive (and we will be able to rank easier for) but may be lower volume



A Clever Trick to find which are the Highest Volume Keywords

So how do we know which keywords deliver the highest number of searches?

Keyword Inspector provide some data but these have to be taken as just a guide. There is no way to get accurate data as Amazon doesn’t provide that�

So we had to come up with a clever way to do this by using the Amazon Sponsored Ads platform...

Using Sponsored Ads to determine high volume keywords

Ʈ First, we use common sense to shortlist 20 to 30 keywords from the Keyword Inspector reports.

Ʈ Then we run an Exact Match campaign in Amazon Sponsored Ads for those keywords.

Ʈ Set a decent a decent bid so that we get impressions (c$2 a click)

Ʈ Run the campaign for a few days (normally we leave it running for a week to get a good set of data)

Ʈ Review the campaign stats and in particular the number of impressions

The number of impressions is a good guide to how many searches were actually carried on for that keyword. If one KW got 10,000 impressions and another only got 50 then we can definitely say that the first is searched for a lot more than the second.

With this impression data in hand we can now choose our Top 10 primary target keywords.


How to Use Keywords

Now we have our list of both primary and secondary keywords we now need to do something with them.

We want to tell Amazon that our product is relevant to show in the search results for all these search terms. To do that we have to include all the words in our product listing page.

There are 4 places you can include keywords (listed in order of importance)

Ʈ Title

Ʈ Bullets

Ʈ Description

Ʈ Back End Search Terms (doesn’t appear on the page the customer sees, only entered when editing the listing in Seller Central)

The real skill here is to work the keywords into the different areas while still making it read naturally and as good sales copy.

If you concentrate too much on keywords then the conversion rate will suffer and this is especially important for the title as this is what people see in the search results and you need to convince to click on.

The title is critical here, and we will try and include as many of the primary keywords as possible in here, but again without affecting clickability.

One final important thing to note here, is you only need to include a keyword once (repeating it doesn’t have greater effect) and you don’t need to repeat individual words.


So if you have two keywords “Silicone Spatula” and “Blue Spatula” you only need to include 3 words “Silicone”, “Blue” and “Spatula” to cover both search terms.

We use tools again to help us in this process - Helium10 has some great tools (both free and paid) that make is easy to break keywords down into individual unique words and also work those words into an Amazon listing.

http://entrprnr.org/helium10


Getting Products Ranked on Amazon

This is the holy grail for our business model.

Getting a product ranked at the top of the first page of search results for our top keywords means that we will get a constant stream of visitors to our product listing page�

Best of all, it is completely free.

It’s a simple numbers game. Normally we enjoy a conversion rate of 15% to 30%. That means for every 10 visitors to the page we normally make about 2 sales.

Now if we organically rank for just 3 of our top search terms that each send 500 visitors per day to our listing, then that is 300 sales per day, or 9,000 units per month.

If we’re selling the product for $20 then thats $180,000 per month (or $2m+ per year) in revenue. Just from 3 search terms�

Sounds great doesn’t it, but you have to remember that all our competitors are also fighting for those top spots, so it takes some work to get there and to maintain the position once you are there.


Ranking Factors

The understand how to rank, you first have to understand Amazon’s goal which is to “Maximize Sales Per Visitor”�

So the Amazon A9 algorithm is only going to rank your product high if you support that goal.

With that in mind there are really three main ranking factors used to decide who is ranked in the top spots for a search result�

1� Relevancy - Amazon only want to display products relevant to the search term being used

2� Sales Velocity - this is the number of recent sales of our product

3� Conversion Rate - this is the percentage of people who actually buy after visiting our product listing

It’s really very logical when you understand Amazon’s goal.

If Amazon displays our product in the search results and a customer clicks on it - that is the first indication to Amazon that “this product must be relevant to the search term as the customer clicked on it” - Relevancy

Then if that customer buys our product it is further indication to Amazon that “the customer bought the product - it’s definitely relevant to the search term used” - Conversion

Now if lots of different customer repeat this process then it is a very strong indicator to Amazon that “lots of customers are looking with this search term and going for this product so it is VERY relevant to the search term - lets rank it even higher” - Sales Velocity


The #1 Reason why some Amazon Sellers Fail

I see this all the time. A new sellers gets setup with Amazon Seller Central… finds a hot product to sell… finds a supplier to private label the product for them and gets it shipping into the Amazon FBA warehouse… then gets very few sales!

And the reason? They just sit and wait and expect hundreds of sales to come flooding in.

It doesn’t work like that - well most of the time anyhow - you do get an occasional product that is an “overnight success”.

As you can see from the detail in this training manual there are a lot of things that have to be worked on and pulled together for a successful product on Amazon.

The good news is, most sellers don’t understand this and just launch a product and sit there HOPING to get a slice of the Amazon traffic and sales.

This is great for us, because it means with the strategies and methods we use in our business we can quite easily beat a lot of the competition.

We don’t sit and wait, we are proactive.

Ʈ We set our products up for success with high volume keywords.

Ʈ Then we pro-actively use marketing strategies to drive traffic to our product listings without Amazon’s help.

This sends signals to Amazon to rank our product higher in the rankings and then we start to see natural sales coming from the search results.


The Launch Formula - The ONLY Things to Focus on with a New Product

When launching a new product it’s easy to get overwhelmed and waste time on things that have small impacts.

There are only two things that we focus on with every product launch to get the biggest impact. Everything else can wait.

Objective 1: Complete Your Product Listing with Social ProofGood reviews of our product on Amazon is the cornerstone to our business. Although it is not a direct ranking factor it does have a very big impact on your conversion rate which is a ranking factor.

Just step back and look at this from a consumer point of view…

There is a new product that looks pretty good but it’s from a brand that they have never heard of and there are no reviews from customers who have already bought it to give them that social proof and confidence to buy from you.

This makes your sales job a heck of a lot harder!

So, this really has to be the number 1 focus when you launch a new product.

Our first objective is to “complete” our product listing page with the social proof that we need to make our sales pitch genuine�

To do that we really need about five to ten 5-star reviews with some decent comments about the quality and how the product is “as described” and “fit for purpose”.


There are a couple of ways we do this:

Ʈ Utilize our existing customer list , explain to them we have launched a new product and ask them to try it at a discount.

Ʈ Ask friends and family of our team to purchase the product on Amazon and leave a review (some caution has to be used when doing this).

*A Very important note here: It is against Amazon Terms of Service to give a discount on a product with the expectation that a review is written. So, when we offer a discount on our products we never mention a review at all. We have a follow up process with every customer which will naturally result in some people leaving reviews so there is no need to specifically ask for a review in return for the discount and break Amazon TOS.

Objective 2: Climb the RankingsWhen a product is first launched we assume that we won’t get any sales from the Amazon search results yet.

This may not be the case, but to start with, it’s likely we’ll be quite a way down on the searches for our target keywords as Amazon really doesn’t know yet whether your product is relevant to that keyword other than you telling them it is by including those keywords on the product listing.

So it’s up to us, to start to send those signals to Amazon, and start to “stimulate” the ranking factors.

We will run marketing campaigns that sends outside traffic to Amazon and if we can get them to buy our product then that starts to send those signals�

Now the issue is, we could just direct traffic to our product listing page and if they purchase then that does stimulate the Sales Velocity and Conversion ranking factors, but it doesn’t relate that to a search term. To do this we use another very clever trick...


The Secret Way to Rank a Product Quickly

In a perfect scenario we want a customer to search for one of our target keywords, scroll through the search results, click on our listing page and then buy our product.

This sends all the signals we want to the Amazon A9 algorithm that we are relevant for that search term and it should move us up the rankings.

So how do we achieve that when we are driving external traffic to Amazon from our marketing campaigns?

First let me show you how it used to be done��This used to be done via a “SuperURL” which was a link you could use and when someone clicked on the link they would go directly to your Amazon Product Page.

However the clever thing was that there was parameters in the link that made the Amazon algorithm think that the person had actually searched for the Keyword phrase in their search engine, found your product and is interested in it.

The SuperURL still works, but it was being so widely used that Amazon changed their Terms of Service which has now cast doubt on whether the use of a superURL to “game” best seller rank is permitted. It’s now a little risky to use.

The new “Branded SuperURL” we now useWe now use another clever method to stimulate ranking factors when sending external traffic.

Instead of sending directly to the product listing page, we now send them to the search results page for the search term we are targeting.


But surely they see all the other products - how do they find our product?

This is the clever bit, we include a parameter in the link used that only lists products from our brand. So they will land on a search results page with just our product on it.

Then when they click on it, they will be taken to the product listing page to buy and as far as the Amazon algorithm sees:

1� They have searched using our target search term

2� Chosen our product from the list of results

3� Bought our product

This is just the result we want, stimulating all the ranking factors and sending signals to Amazon that our product is relevant to that search term and please rank us higher.

How to generate the new Branded SuperURLThis is really simple. Just go to amazon and search for the keyword you want to target. On the left hand side of the search results will be options “Refine by”. Under the heading “Brand” tick the box next to our brand name and this will narrow the search results to only our brand.

If our brand is not listed, just click on any brand, and then a “+See more” will appear at the bottom of the list of brands which you can click to find our brand.

Once you have a search results page with just our product listed you can simply copy the URL in the address bar of the browser and that is the new Branded SuperURL we can use to drive traffic to buy our product on Amazon.


How to Drive Traffic to our Product Listing

We start every product launch with two traffic strategies:

Ʈ Amazon Sponsored Ads

Ʈ Facebook Ads

These have proven to give the best results for us, and although we do use other methods to drive traffic, these are the two that we always start with.

Amazon Sponsored AdsNow our product listing is “complete” with our social proof then we can start to send some targeted traffic to our listing. The first obvious place to start is through Amazon Sponsored Ads.

These adverts allow us to appear on the first page for a keyword search even though we have not yet earned the right to do so. The only downside is that we have to pay for that right, but the cost is relatively cheap compared to the conversion rates and sales that you can generate by using them.

Sponsored Ads are managed from within the Seller Central dashboard and to start Sponsored Ads, you just setup a new campaign and enter a list of keywords and a maximum bid.

We have a set process for setting up, analyzing and optimizing our Sponsored Ad campaigns, which you will be fully trained on if you’re role involves this.

We always have Sponsored Ads running for all our products in some form or another as we find them to have such a good Return on Investment.


Facebook AdsFacebook Ads are a phenomenal way to send a load of buyers to our Amazon Product listing via a Branded SuperURL ready to purchase and leave a review.

You can send them over to Amazon with a coupon code in hand (coupon codes are setup within Seller Central) or you can run a conventional sale on Amazon by setting up a sales price within Seller Central (although this sales price will apply to all visitors to your product listing).

Facebook allows us to target our Ads to a very specific audience which is why it is so effective. We can make sure that our Ad is only put in front of people who will be interested in our product.

For example, if the product was a Silicone Spatula then we could target facebook users who are interested in cooking AND are fans of Gordon Ramsey AND have liked a certain recipe.

Can you see how powerful that is?

It costs money to run Facebook Ads but if they are targeted well with a good advert then you can get really good conversion rates, make real sales and absolutely overload Amazon with good ranking signals to boost us up the rankings for our target keywords.

The key here is that just a few days running a sales price and driving traffic to it with a facebook promotion can get enough sales and reviews to drive you up in the rankings far enough that natural sales will start to kick in, which will then continue to drive us up the rankings on autopilot.

You can work on Facebook advertising with a small or a large budget, but as you will see, we are really aggressive on the platform because we see a big impact and real results with it.


Other StrategiesWe are never sitting still no matter how well a product is doing and we are always looking to drive external traffic to Amazon to buy our products.

As you will see we use a number of other strategies in our marketing approach and are constantly brainstorming and testing new ideas.

Here are just a sample of some other strategies we use:

Ʈ Video Ads and Content (great for advertising on Facebook and Youtube)

Ʈ Social Media contests

Ʈ Building a presence in Facebook Groups that are on-topic with our brand / products

Ʈ Raising awareness of our brands through press releases and guest content

Ʈ Building email lists of potential customers through great content and lead magnets

Ʈ Using “Pre-Sell” content to transform a customer from the information stage to buying stage

Ʈ Using different sales funnels and offers to drive buyers to Amazon

We are constantly testing and trying new ideas, so if you think of something to try then please come forward with it and we’ll probably give it a go.


How We Know What is Working and What is Not

The Importance of Measuring EverythingBecause we take a proactive approach to our business we are constantly optimizing and trying new strategies and marketing methods on our products.

Ʈ We split test our product listing titles, images, bullets, descriptions and search terms to see if we can improve search term ranking and conversion rate.

Ʈ We run facebook and other marketing campaigns to drive sales and rankings

Ʈ We run different Sponsored Ad campaigns

But how do we learn and understand what works if we do not monitor and measure it properly?

The answer is, we can’t.

So it is essential that we accurately measure and track our products and business.

This gives us a major competitive advantage over everyone else.

Ʈ We can see what isn’t working and put a stop to it straight away.

Ʈ We can also see what is working and scale it up quickly to have a big impact

We track a set of Key Performance Indicators on a daily basis and also log any changes we are making. That way we can correlate any big movements in the KPIs and attribute them to a particular change or action we took.


Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

KPI stands for Key Performance Indicators.

These are the areas of our business that we measure and monitor because they give us a critical indication of how our business is performing.

We track the following KPIs for each product…

Ʈ Sessions / Page Views

Ʈ Conversion Rate

Ʈ Number of Units Sold

Ʈ Number of Orders

Ʈ The ranking of the top 10 target keywords

Ʈ Number of Reviews and Rating

Let’s look at each in a bit more detail...

Sessions / Page ViewsThe number of sessions is the number of times a product listing is viewed by a unique person. This is one of our main Key Performance Indicators. It tells us how much traffic is coming to our business. Obviously, this is extremely important. We need traffic to stand a chance of making sales. The more traffic we receive, the more sales we can make. We want to be taking action over time to increase the number of sessions.


Conversion RateConversion rate is another main Key Performance Indicator. It tells us how well we are converting traffic into sales and is basically the percentage of those who viewed the product and then bought it.

Conversion rate equals the number of units sold divided by the number of sessions, which is called the Unit Session Percentage inside Seller Central in the business reports. We consider a good conversion rate as anything above 20%.

Conversion rate is critically important. We need to convert our traffic into sales or we will never succeed. The better the conversion rate, the more sales and success we have.

Because this is also an Amazon ranking factor, a great conversion rate for a product triggers more traffic and rankings too. So we always want to constantly optimize our listings to keep our conversion rate as high as possible.

Number of Units SoldThis is straight forward and is the number of individual units of a product that was sold.

Number of OrdersThis is the number of orders received from customers. This may vary from the number of units sold as one customer may have bought multiple units. We track this so we can see the Average number of units sold in each order which can have a really positive impact on the conversion rate.

The ranking of the top 10 target keywordsWe track this to see the impact on our rankings with the actions we take. So if we are running a marketing campaign and targeting a specific keyword we expect to see the ranking for that keyword improve. We only track the top ten because there is a lot of data here. We use a service called AMZtracker to monitor the rank of our products for various keywords.


Number of Reviews and RatingReviews are an important social proof and conversion factor on the product listing page. It has a major impact on conversion rate, so it is a critically important KPI to monitor and take actions to maintain and improve over time. A couple of bad reviews can really hurt your product.

Not only this, but this metric will also flag up to us any potential quality issues with our products. If we see the rating drop due to negative reviews, not only can we respond to the customers and try and resolve it, but if there is a consistent issue then we may need to revisit it with the manufacturer.

Where to Find Data for these KPIsYou can find the data for most of these KPIs in the Business Reports section of Seller Central. Reports > Business Reports > Detail Page Sales and Traffic. Ranking data comes from reports out of AMZtracker and the Reviews data is taken directly from the Product listing pages.


The Daily Tracker

We track everything in our Daily Tracker. It’s a spreadsheet which is updated once a week on a Monday which all the data for the previous week.

It looks like this...

We note down every time a change is made or any significant event happens such as Marketing Campaigns or negative reviews, or anything that could affect the listing.

There is also a summary sheet, that summarizes the KPIs by week and by month for a more top level view.

Having a document like this for every product allows us to see the cause and effect of everything we do. When we find something that has a positive effect then we do more of it and scale it if possible. If something doesn’t have an effect or a negative effect we stop it immediately.


Product Optimization and Growth

This is where the money is made.

By split-testing and optimizing individual areas with the aim of small improvements then the compounding effect of all these small adjustments can drive results up in a big way.

By improving the KPIs little-by-little over time, eventually, it will lead to us becoming the number one bestseller in the categories we operate in.

Most sellers on Amazon fail to focus like this and instead are looking for the latest hack or loophole to get overnight success.

In the previous section you learned how to track and analyze the Key Performance Indicators.

Now in this section we’ll look at the different areas of optimization we use and how they drive up the KPIs and ultimately the growth in sales of the product.

This doesn’t always happen overnight, although sometimes you may find a major improvement can occur quite quickly. In any event, within the span of just a few months you can usually dramatically improve a products performance.


The Compound Effect

Small continuous improvements over time can lead to huge results.

Once we started thinking about our business this way, it radically changed how we operate.

Shortcuts and loopholes do NOT work. Instead we focus on adjusting small elements that truly impact the performance of our business - by a few percentages at a time.

Small tweaks can increase each of our KPIs by a few percentages and suddenly we have a big compound effect and we can consistency double the performance of a product every couple of months.

For instance, if we were to...

Ʈ Increase the page views by 5%.

Ʈ Improve conversion rate by 4%.

Ʈ Improve ranking on a primary keyword from 11th to 6th

Ʈ The compound effect of all of the above could amount to increasing revenue by 50-100%

Just by moving these KPIs a few percentages, we can increase our total revenue by a significant margin.

So, by split-testing and optimizing the most important areas of our business, we can drive results up in an impressive way.


The Golden Rule of Optimization

With lots of areas to optimize plus a stream of ideas you want to try out it’s very easy to just do it all at once.

But if you make multiple changes to a listing, whilst also starting a Facebook Ads campaign and at the same time running a promotion to existing customers, how are you going to know if they are working?

If sales increased by 20% does that mean the Facebook Ads campaign is working? You just can’t tell.

So the golden rule of Optimization is... “Only make one significant change at a time”

Make a single change or promotion and then let it run for a few days. Note the impact on the KPIs and then move onto scaling that item or optimizing / testing another tweak.

Normally we use a minimum of 1,000 sessions / page views here to judge the impact of any split-test or change to the listing�

Its important our whole team collaborates to ensure we maintain this golden rule and are not working at cross purposes�

To ensure this, all Split Tests and Marketing Campaigns must be entered onto the Daily Tracker and signed off by me before they can go-live.


Product Listing Optimization

This is possibly the most important area of optimization as it deals with our core asset, the product listing. There are very few things more important than our product listing. Everything else is dependent upon it.

If the product listing doesn’t do a good job of selling your product, everything else will be a struggle and all other optimization less effective.

It doesn’t matter how much traffic you send to your listing page, if they don’t buy, we make no money!

On the other hand, if we are able to improve our product listing over time, it will in turn have the effect of making optimizations in other areas have a bigger impact.

We can split-test changes to 4 areas:

Ʈ Images

Ʈ Title

Ʈ Bullet points

Ʈ Description

The primary KPI we are trying to improve here is Conversion Rate. This is a key KPI that directly effects the number of sales and is absolutely critical to the success of a product.

We always start with the Title and Main Image as these not only impact conversion rate, but also appear in the search results and have a big impact whether someone clicks on our product listing or not so also impacts the Sessions KPI.


Keyword Optimization

We continually review our target keyword list for a product. Although we have our primary Top 10 targets and list of secondary targets we will always be looking for additional relevant keywords to add to the list.

We will regularly go back and use the Keyword Inspector Reverse ASIN Tool to find the KWs our competitors are ranking for and see if there are any new ones to add to our target list.

We will also be discovering lots of new keywords and gathering data via our Amazon Sponsored Ads campaigns.

Remember, any time we want to target a new search term, we need to add it into our product listing to tell Amazon our product is relevant to that keyword and get it indexed.

The more relevant keywords we are indexed for, the more opportunities we have to rank and get traffic to our listing.

So the main KPIs we will be impacting by optimizing Keywords is Sessions and Rankings.

Secondary impacts here are the conversion rate KPI, as any time we change the product listing to add new keywords this can be effected so this should also be monitored to ensure no negative impact.

One important point here is we never want to just SPAM our listing with non-relevant keywords.

This has no benefit at all, as even if we could fool Amazon into thinking our product was relevant to that search term and rank it, people are unlikely to click it and if they do they won’t buy so will just kill our conversion rate.

It is much better to focus on a smaller set of highly relevant keywords that can impact rankings and sales in a positive way.



Review Management

Reviews can really make or break a product on Amazon. This is why we never compromise on quality when sourcing and a really good high-quality product is so critical.

With a poor product, you’re setting yourself up for failure long-term. But even with high quality products like ours, we still need to manage our reviews and look out for the occasional negative review. Some things are out of your control and some people are just unreasonable, so it happens, no matter how much we try to prevent it. Also be aware that these negative reviews might even come from the competition.

Review management is an ongoing process and part of our brand management. But it’s also an optimization item as we must do whatever we can to keep the number of reviews and average star rating as high as possible.

To do this, amongst other things we:

Ʈ Optimize and test new email follow up sequences sent out to all customers. We want ensure they have a great experience buying from us with awesome after-sales service (and ultimately leaving a glowing 5-star review).

Ʈ Respond immediately to all negative reviews in a measured and sympathetic manner and try to resolve the issue with the customer. This is firstly to try and turn things around from a negative situation into a positive, but that’s not always possible and it’s also important for other potential customers to see that we are a reactive company that are trying to help out when issues arise.

Ʈ Manage the way our reviews are presented on the product listing page. We always want the best reviews to appear at the top of the reviews section and there are methods that can help to sculpt how the reviews appear!

Reviews and Rating is a KPI in itself but one negative review can explain a major drop in other key KPIs, so we monitor this closely. It is also a key driver of the Conversion Rate KPI and can also have an affect on Sessions and Rankings.


Pricing & Profit Optimization

This area is very simple. It involves optimizing our pricing to maximize profits.

There are a few ways we approach this:

Ʈ Split Test pricing to find the best possible long-term price point to sell at - this is not always about finding the price that gets the most sales. Sometimes a higher price, although it results in fewer sales can actually make more profit due to the higher profit margin on each unit.

Ʈ Using price as a promotional strategy - we often use lower pricing temporarily as a promotion to drive up rankings and sales, and subsequently sessions and conversion rates.

Ʈ Improving Profit Margin with Cost Reductions - this could be through negotiating with our supplier, placing larger orders to get volume discounts, better inventory management so we can use slower but lower cost shipping options like ocean freight, work with our freight forwarder to save cost in the various transport stages.

The goal here is to optimize our pricing to maximize profit by increasing the sessions and conversion rate of the listing relative to our profit margin.

It is a fine balance to balance rankings and sales with profit margin, to the point where we maximize the profit.

The main KPIs we are focusing on here are conversion rate, but also sessions and rankings and of course profit.


Promotion & Marketing

This is a huge area and one that we spend a lot of time and resource on. It’s all about the external traffic that we drive to Amazon and the effect it has on our KPIs.

External paid traffic is not free and can be expensive if you don’t optimize it, so there are really two elements to optimizing promotion and marketing.

1� Optimizing the campaignWe always want to optimize the way we run the marketing campaign and make sure it is as low cost as possible.

For Facebook Ads we are always testing new audiences and drilling deeper down into existing audiences to get the lowest cost campaigns which the best conversions.

For Amazon Sponsored Ads we review the data on a weekly basis, pausing non-profitable terms, scaling those that are performing well and testing different match types and new keywords.

2� Scaling or KillingWe have to monitor KPIs very closely to see if a promotion or marketing campaign is working or not. If it is then we want to scale it as quickly as possible. If you can turn a $1 into $5 then you would throw as many $1 notes at it as you could.

On the other hand if we do not see results and the campaign is just costing money, then we either tweak it and test again, or just kill it and put our time, effort and money into a different test.


Inventory Management

We dedicate a lot of time and resource to plan and manage inventory levels, even though it is not a direct KPI.

The first reason for this is that if we run out of inventory on a product then because there is no activity on that product then Amazon is not getting the ranking signals it needs and our rankings will drop off.

Even if this is just for a short period all this does is undo the good work we’ve done to build up those rankings.

So running out of inventory will certainly result in a decline in our KPIs and will require some effort to recover when the listing becomes active again.

The second reason is that this is an area where we can have a considerable impact on the profit margin.

With good planning and understanding of our KPIs we can place orders in advance and schedule them to arrive in time before running out.

We can use slower and cheaper shipping methods like Ocean Freight and look at taking advantage of order quantity discounts from the supplier, or perhaps they can give us lower prices to manufacture at certain times to suit their spare capacity.

Another key thing here is we can plan and make sure that we don’t fall foul of the 6 monthly Amazon Long Term Storage fee (which is extremely high). We can plan for our inventory to be stored and sold within 6 months in an Amazon warehouse, or we can arrange outside storage in a third party warehouse and drip feed inventory into Amazon FBA as it is needed�

We use our own Inventory Planning spreadsheets together with Average Sales data for each product from the Daily Tracker.


Providing a Great Customer Experience

Last but certainly not least is the subject of providing a great customer experience to EVERY SINGLE customer of ours.

This is a foundation of our business for a number of reasons�

With competition rising on Amazon and rise in popularity of the private label business model then it is harder than ever to differentiate from the competition.

One way that we do that is by providing a “Wow” experience to every customer.

We follow up with every customer through an after-sales follow up email sequence - but importantly we do this in a very different way to other sellers (which I’ll outline in this section).

We also follow up with any issues a customer is having and any negative reviews or feedback and we go above and beyond the call of duty to try and turn that negative into a positive, whether that be with helping the customer get started with the product, giving refunds and free products, whatever it takes to satisfy the customer.

Happy customers, lead to great reviews, which leads to great conversion rates and also we see repeat business from those customers for the same product or one of our other products.


The Amazon Buyer-Seller Messaging Service

It’s important to understand that every email with customers goes through the Amazon Buyer-Seller Messaging service.

The service masks private email addresses of customers so we just see the masked address such as d1ssd5hvtbkv095@marketplace�amazon�com�

We do use strategies such as package inserts to incentivize the customer to sign up for our email lists with their real email address so we can market directly to them, but that is another subject altogether.

This means that emails we send to a customer are routed and logged via Amazon and they have access to all correspondence between sellers and buyers.

Because of this there is a set of guidelines and rules that must be complied with when sending emails.

Failure to do so can land you in trouble with the Amazon Seller Performance team and in extreme cases can lead to your seller account being banned - obviously something we want to avoid.

So lets take a look at some of the critical Amazon rules that must be followed at all times...


Critical Amazon Rules

You can view the detailed rules and guidelines for the Amazon Buyer-Seller Messaging Service here�

However lets go through a few of the most critical rules.

Every Customer Email Needs a Response!This is actually one of the seller metrics that Amazon measures and displays in seller central. If these metrics fall off too much then a seller can be pulled up before Seller Performance team and potentially have their account shutdown.

We aim to have perfect Seller Metrics at all times and monitor them to ensure there are no issues.

All buyer messages have a target to be replied to within 24 hours.

There is a quirk to this in that sometimes we’ll get a response from a customer that doesn’t need a reply, such as “thanks” after we’ve just helped them out. However in Amazon’s eyes that email is sitting as not responded to.

The solution to this is to either just send a quick reply to “always have the last word” (in the example above we might just say “no problem - let me know it you need anything else”). The alternate is you can mark that message as “no response required” inside Seller Central.

No Promotion or Marketing MessagesThe messaging service is only designed to be used to contact buyers to facilitate the current order they have placed with us or to deal with a customer service inquiry.

Any marketing message or promotion is strictly prohibited. This includes promotions for the same product or any of our other products (even if they are sold on Amazon) or even for referrals to third-party products.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/?&nodeId=200441880


This is the reason why we use alternate strategies to get customers to opt into our email lists so that we can communicate with them outside of the Amazon system and include marketing messages and promotions.

No Links to Any Website This is another critical rule that prohibits us from including any links within an email to a customer. In fact the Buyer-Seller Messaging service will actually strip out any links included, so it’s not actually possible to do so.

Also prohibited is to include a seller logo if it contains or display a link to the seller’s website. So the logo we include is just for our Brand Names and doesn’t include a website URL.

The only exception to this is some limited Amazon links related to the order. So you can include a link to the product page for the item purchased and you can also include a link to leave a product review or seller feedback.


The Two Tools We Use to Automate the Follow-up Process

With hundreds of orders a day, it soon becomes an administration nightmare to follow up with every customer, however it is absolutely vital to our business so how do we do it?

We use two more amazing tools to help us manage this and automate a bulk of the process.

ManageByStats Seller MailManageByStats is actually a suite of tools. It links in with our Amazon accounts and integrates data. We can access all our customer data, addresses, phone numbers etc from within the ManageByStats dashboard so it’s kind of like our customer database.

We can do things like find repeat buyers and high value customers, or export customer data to upload to Facebook Ads to directly run marketing to.

It also includes a tool called Seller Mail. This is the Automated Customer Follow-up tool.

In Seller Mail we setup a series of template emails and schedule them to be sent to our customers at set intervals after an order is received.

Seller Mail will personalize every email sent so it looks like you have individually mailed the customer directly.

It is extremely customizable and we can setup different email chains to go to repeat buyers, or for different brands and products.

So as I sit writing this, Seller Mail already has hundreds of emails queued up to automatically be sent out today, without us doing anything. If a customer responds to an email then it comes straight through to us so that we can deal with it and respond. For this we use another tool called GrooveHQ.

http://entrprnr.org/managebystats

http://entrprnr.org/managebystats


Introducing GrooveHQ - Our Customer Help DeskGrooveHQ is the customer ticket system we use. Every email that is sent to our customer support email addresses for our different brands comes through to GrooveHQ.

This allows give different people in our team logins to GrooveHQ to help in responding to Customer emails.

We can direct emails relating to certain brands or products to a specified agent to respond to and we can see which emails or “tickets” are still open and have not been responded to yet.

Another great feature is we can setup “canned responses” which are templated responses to the most common queries / responses which can be very quickly inserted by an agent responding to a ticket and used as a base for the response�

Using an organized system like this means that we never miss responding to a customer and that we can measure how long it is taking to deal with a ticket to ensure we are meeting Amazons 24 hour target.

We also have a log of all email communication with our customers, so if there are lots of emails back and forth between us and a customer, it is all there in a chain for an agent to read before responding.


The Almost Magical Email Follow Up Chain to Build Product Reviews

We take a different approach to most sellers on customer follow up.

Most sellers have cottoned on to the fact that they need to follow up with customers to get product reviews but the traditional approach is now very overused and rarely works anymore.

Buyers are tired of seeing generic emails in their inbox asking them to leave a review for a product. The seller has made no attempt to connect with the buyer and is expecting them to take time out of their day to do them a favor.

In fact the only ones likely to do so in this situation are ones that are motivated to because they have something negative to say!

We take the approach of trying to engage our customers and give them a complete and caring after-sales service.

By doing this we are getting the customer to interact with us and connect with our brand.

We are letting the customer know that we care about their individual transaction and that we are going to follow it through and make sure they are happy with everything.

This kind of approach sticks in their mind, and it is much more likely that someone who has already engaged with us in a positive way will respond to us asking for a product review, and it’s much more likely to be a glowing review when they have that recent memory of a great after-sales experience.

So this is how we do our after-sales follow up...


Follow-up email #1 - The “Why”Sent on day of order

This is the introduction email. We thank them for the order and tell them a bit about our brand.

It’s important to explain a “why” for the brand. What is the underlying goal for the brand or why did the founder start it?

For example, for a fitness brand, the founder may have changed their life by losing weight and getting fit and now they want to combine that passion to help others and build a business at the same time.

Stories are powerful, and suddenly by explaining your “why” to a customer you are no longer seen as a faceless company and they feel like they are connected to you because they know your back story.

Finally explain that we’ll do everything to give them a great experience and if there is anything they need just to hit reply and we’ll be right there to take care of them.

This email is the first “wow” for the customer. No sales pitch, no requests for them to do anything, we’ve just taken time out of day to say thank you and explain about our company and passion.


Follow-up email #2 - The Formalities Send 1 day after the order

This is the “while you’re waiting for your Amazon delivery to arrive” email and is where you pass over some helpful information or advice about the product that they can use as soon as they receive it in their hands.

This could be some installation instructions, some tips on different ways they can use the product or even some important safety advice.

This email serves a couple of purposes. It is getting the customer excited about the package they are about to receive and it is the second “wow” moment in quick succession... “Wow these guys really care, and want to help me”.


Follow-up email #3 - Has it Arrived? Send 1 day after delivery

This is a really short email, just a couple of lines...

“Hi {first-name},

Did your {product name} arrive?

I hope so - let me know!

Thanks”

This is a killer email as it does the following:

Ʈ Looks like a personal email written by a friend not a corporation

Ʈ It shows caring as it’s pro-actively following up with them to check they received their parcel.

Ʈ It is specifically asking for a response and in most cases we are stimulating the first “positive” response to us as most people will reply to say “yes thanks we’ve received it”.

At this stage we will simply reply to those that respond positively saying “Awesome, let me know what you think of it once you have installed it / used it / set it up�”

If we receive any negative responses, then that is also good because we are now involved early and can help them resolve it. Believe it or not even if they have had problems, it we can get in at this early stage and get it resolved then they will actually be very impressed and we have nipped a potential problem in the bud (and probably avoided a refund or negative review).


Follow-up email #4 - How did we do?Send 10 days after delivery

This is the final automated follow up email and again is pretty short and written in the style of a friend rather than a corporate email.

“Hi {first-name},

I need to know��

Did we do our job? Did you have a great experience with us? What do you think of the {product name}?

Please just reply and let me know�

Thanks”

This is our final check-in and again we are aiming to stimulate another positive response.

Notice that we have still not sent out a link and asked them to take time out of their day to leave a product review. We have simply asked them if everything is OK and whether we have done a good job with their order. Then we’ve asked them what they think of the product.

For those that respond positively to this email and say nice things about our service and product then we will respond to them explaining how that means the world to us and ask them if they could do us a favor and leave a product review on Amazon as this really helps us compete against the “big faceless corporations”.


Because they have engaged with us and connected with our “why” or back story they are much more likely to take the few minutes it takes to leave a product review and help us against the “big faceless corporations”.

For those that reply with a negative response, then again we are now in a position where we know about the issue and can try and do something about it (Knowing about an issue is the key to being able to turn it around).

If a customer doesn’t respond to either of the emails where we’ve asked them to, then we can just leave it there. It is very unlikely that this type of customer will leave a product review even if we ask them and we don’t want to hassle them too much.


Why Our Approach WorksHopefully that is a good explanation of our approach to the after-sales process and how it is very different to the traditional approach of just sending a link out and asking for a product review.

Our approach engages the customer, gets them to connect with our back story and “why” and shows caring and a proactive follow up throughout the whole after-sales period.

All of these factors make it much more likely that a customer will “help” us when we ask them to leave a product review.

An important secondary purpose of our approach is to be made aware of any problems or issues our customers have early, so that we can dive in and turn it around. If we didn’t take this proactive approach, most customers with issues will just ask Amazon for a refund and even worse leave negative feedback or product review. This is something we want to avoid at all costs.

Which leads me onto the final subject...


Dealing with Negative Reviews or Customer Complaints

Before we get started I just want to say a few words on unsatisfied customers.

It is inevitable that we have to deal with them at some point, some will be genuine, some will just be trying it on but to be honest it really doesn’t matter which category they fall into we have to find a way to satisfy them.

The golden rule is…� “no matter how unreasonable the customer seems – we will bend over backwards to do everything in our power to rectify the situation and turn them into a happy customer”

If that means sending replacement products out to them, or giving them partial / full refunds or even sending them bunches of flowers to apologize for inconvenience then we will do it!

It doesn’t matter if they are in the wrong – our personal feelings do not matter. We have to do everything in our power to prevent a negative review and turn them into a happy customer.

We try and catch issues early through our proactive after-sales follow up sequence, but sometimes a customer will just go straight to Amazon to vent their frustration.

If a negative review is left by a customer then we will try and contact them and see if we can sort it out. 9 times out of 10 we will be able to do so.

Although we are not allowed by Amazon rules to specifically ask them to edit their review, often, the customer will be so overawed by the personal attention they are getting that they will edit their review of their own accord and turn it into a 5-star review (yes people can edit their reviews after they are published and change the rating and everything).


The final thing I want to say on this is that we can get certain reviews or feedback removed by Amazon, here are a couple of examples:

Ʈ Review in wrong place – if a customer leaves a negative product review that should really have been left as seller feedback (eg: poor customer service or late delivery etc) then we can ask Amazon to remove it as it is not relevant to a product review (similarly if you are left poor seller feedback based on an issue with the product then again you can get that removed).

Ʈ Caused by Amazon FBA – for example late delivery, package damaged… anything at all to do with the Amazon FBA service that we have PAID them to provide. Although Amazon will not remove this feedback they will strike out any feedback of this nature and put a note next to it admitting it was Amazon’s fault and the score will not be counted to our overall feedback score.

In both cases above we just put a ticket into Seller Central Support and they will remove the reviews.


Training Videos

Amazon Tycoon Video Series

Ʈ VIDEO 1: The Amazon Opportunity

Ʈ VIDEO 2: How to Find the Best Products to Sell on Amazon & Find Low Cost Suppliers

Ʈ VIDEO 3: The Secret Methods to Launch a Product to the Top of the Rankings on Amazon

Ʈ VIDEO 4: Pulling it All Together - How to Get Started Building an Amazon Business

Product Research

Ʈ How We Find Private Label Products to Sell on Amazon - The Exact Steps

http://secretentrepreneur.com/training/amazon-tycoon/opportunity

http://secretentrepreneur.com/training/amazon-tycoon/product

http://secretentrepreneur.com/training/amazon-tycoon/launch

http://secretentrepreneur.com/training/amazon-tycoon/build



Links & Resources Directory

Amazon Links & Help

Ʈ Seller Central

Ʈ Amazon Seller Rules

Ʈ FBA Fees

Ʈ Amazon Seller Plan & Fees

Ʈ Amazon Seller Fees by Category

Ʈ FBA Fee / Revenue Calculator

Ʈ Amazon Brand Registry

Ʈ Packaging and Shipping Inventory to Amazon

Ʈ Packaging and Prep Requirements

Ʈ Prohibited Seller Activities and Actions

Ʈ Seller Performance Measurement & Targets

Ʈ Amazon Product Detail Page Rules

Ʈ Business Terms Dictionary

https://sellercentral.amazon.com/

https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/help-page.html/ref=ag_200421970_cont_scsearch?ie=UTF8&itemID=200421970

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/?nodeId=201119410

https://services.amazon.com/selling/pricing.htm/

https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/seller/registration/participationAgreement.html/ref=asus_soa_p_fees?itemID=200336920&language=en_US&ld=ELUSSOA-www.amazon.com

https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/fba/revenue-calculator/index.html/ref=xx_xx_cont_xx?ie=UTF8&lang=en_US

https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/help-page.html?ie=UTF8&itemID=200955930

http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/02/image/FBA_Shipping_Inventory_UK.pdf

https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/help-page.html?ie=UTF8&itemID=200141500&ref_=ag_200141500_cont_scsearch&

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=help_search_1-5?ie=UTF8&nodeId=200414320&qid=1384797021&sr=1-5


https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200414280

http://businessdictionary.com/


Product Research

Ʈ Amazon.com Best Seller List

Ʈ Amazon.co.uk Best Seller List

Ʈ List of Amazon categories that are restricted and require approval

Ʈ Amazon Restricted Products

Ʈ FBA Prohibited Products

Ʈ FBA Requirements for Date and Temperature-Sensitive Products

Ʈ Google Adwords Keyword Research

Ʈ Google Trends (use keywords to see if product is upward trending or seasonal)

Ʈ Amazon Price Tracker: camelcamelcamel.com

Ʈ Amazon Product Visualization (funky product idea tool – just type a keyword in and see)

http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers/zgbs/

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Best-Sellers/zgbs/

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=hp_rel_topic?ie=UTF8&nodeId=14113001




https://adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner

http://google.com/trends/

http://camelcamelcamel.com/

http://www.yasiv.com/


Sourcing Suppliers

Overseas

Ʈ alibaba.com

Ʈ hktdc.com (Hong Kong Trade Development Council)

Ʈ made-in-china.com

Ʈ AliSourcePro (post a buying request and suppliers send you offers)

Ʈ aliexpress.com (source products / suppliers with lower MOQ’s)

USA / Local

Ʈ thomasnet.com

Ʈ hellotrade.com

Ʈ 4wholesaleusa.com

Ʈ americansworking.com

http://www.alibaba.com/

http://www.hktdc.com/

http://www.made-in-china.com/

http://alibaba.com/AliSourcePro

http://aliexpress.com/

http://www.thomasnet.com/

http://www.hellotrade.com/

http://4wholesaleusa.com/

http://americansworking.com/


Shipping / Freight

Ʈ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incoterms – Guide to standard shipping terms (Incoterms)

Inspection / Repackaging Services (service in-between Supplier & FBA)

Ʈ FBAinspection.com – USA based Inspection service

Product / Packaging Design

Ʈ Design Ideas – thedieline.com

Ʈ Article: How Designers Use Color to Influence Consumers

Ʈ Adobe Color CC Color Wheel (Choosing Color Sets)

Ʈ Fonts: dafont.com and fonts.com

Ʈ Stock Graphics: iStockphoto and 123rf.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incoterms

http://fbainspection.com/

http://www.thedieline.com/


https://color.adobe.com/create/color-wheel/

http://dafont.com/

http://fonts.com/

http://istockphoto.com/

http://123rf.com/


Outsourcing / Freelancer Sites

Ʈ 99designs.com

Ʈ fiverr.com

Ʈ upwork.com

Ʈ Freelancer.com

Ʈ guru.com

Ʈ peopleperhour.com (Graphic design focused)

Ʈ LogoInn.com (Logo design)

Ʈ logonerds.com (Logo design)

Ʈ onlinejobs.ph (Outsource / Find Virtual Assistants in Philippines)

http://entrprnr.org/99designs

http://entrprnr.org/fiverr

upwork.com

http://freelancer.com/

http://www.guru.com/

http://www.peopleperhour.com/

http://logoinn.com/

http://www.logonerds.com/

http://www.onlinejobs.ph/

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