Today we’re talking tools and tackling the number one question I get asked – what does this business really cost. Before we start, I wanted to share a tip that helps me accomplish as much as I can each day to move my business forward.  Before I go to sleep I make a list of three things I will accomplish the next day and I attempt to get through all three.  I suggest you do the same and let me know how well it works for you. I’ve been using Feedback Genius for some time as it works to automate seller feedback, and handle product reviews for my Amazon business.  I believe anybody who uses a tool like this will do better in their business.  I’m going to explore a new tool, Salesbacker which does the same types of things, but also provides stats on how well your emails are performing over time.  I’ll be checking it out and may switch if it performs well. The next tool I discuss is actually many tools in one.  Amazoworks, only has a few tools ready now, but additional ones are coming and will do everything from automating tweets to getting reviews.  The third tool tip of the day is Snagshout, a pay per coupon code redemption that I have found is resulting in getting back a higher level of reviews.   Running an Amazon FBA is really one of the most cost-effective businesses I’ve ever seen.  I often get asked just how much does it really cost.  It certainly has less overhead than what’s associated with a brick and mortar business.  It is inexpensive to get started.  I’ll fill you in on cost amounts associated with these main areas: Education Inventory Marketing Promotion Overhead Costs People have a fear that this is going to cost a lot of money.  Investments, like inventory, are the things that are going to immediately make you money. I have another free online bootcamp coming up.  My  private label FBA bootcamp will give you the help you need to get started, step-by-step.  If you’re already a seller, we’ll have some tips to propel you further. Sign up today! What crazy thing have you done today to move your business forward? I’d love to hear about it. Let me know marketingcrazy.com/crazy. Please check out my podcasts at marketingcrazy.com/podcast.   If you enjoyed today’s podcast, please leave a review at iTunes.

Today’s podcast comes to you from Las Vegas. I’m at an Amazon Conference along with about 800 other people.  Today I’ll take a look at a few things all the sellers are buzzing about here.  There is another conference in early August that I’ll be here for.  It’s a sourcing show and a good place to get ideas for merchandise, to meet people and do some wholesale sourcing.  You can find out more about it at asdonline.com One topic of discussion here is cash flow.  The cash flow problems associated with growing quickly can be crushing. It’s sometimes hard to be able to reorder product as you wait for the money on your sales to come in.  Banks don’t generally lend large sums of money to at home businesses and credit cards can pose some difficulties. I solved this problem by using Kabbage.  They are able to analyze your bank transactions and business accounts very quickly and pre-approve you on the spot.  They will then debit your account monthly with a small and reasonable fee.  It’s a very fast process. The sellers here are also talking about the abundance of tools.  I feel that if a tool impinges on your cash flow, don’t buy it.  Get educated and get your product going and then take a look at tools you think you need for your business.  Don’t get overwhelmed by all the tools that are out there. Lots of talk here too about the use of Youtube and Facebook video ads.  Those ads lead to rankings on Amazon.  The great part about them is the re-targeting ads which tell somebody, especially on Facebook, that we saw you didn’t buy the product and here’s a discount if you buy now.  These types of ads are really taking off. The last thing I talk about is Amazon Prime Day.  The media may have downplayed the success of it, but a whole lot of people saw a big increase in sales during the one day event.  Amazon says it was a bigger sales day for them than Black Friday. Please check out my upcoming free online bootcamp.  My  private label FBA bootcamp will give you the help you need to get started, step-by-step.  If you’re already a seller, we’ll have some tips to propel you further. Sign up today! What crazy thing have you done today to move your business forward?  Let me know marketingcrazy.com/crazy. Please check out my podcasts at marketingcrazy.com/podcast.   If you enjoyed today’s podcast, please leave a review in iTunes.

Today’s topic is tools.  I’m highlighting two tools that will help you keep track of your Amazon FBA.  You can find out more about them by heading over to the resource section on the MarketingCrazy website. The first tool is Manage By Stats.  This is a great tool that allows you to get all the stats on your business.  It will tell you how much you’re paying out, items that need restocked, Amazon fees, warehouse fees, promo rebate totals, track conversion rates and much more.  A really awesome feature is it allows you to see a list of all your customers and with addresses.  I’ll give you some ideas on how you can use that information. The second tool is Amazon Tracker.  Features with this tool include the ability to track the rankings of your products based on keywords, a Super URL builder and an Amazon review club. Again, please check out my resource section to find out more about these tools and links to get started using them. Please check out my free online bootcamp.  My free private label FBA bootcamp will give you the help you need to get started.  This live training webinar will go in depth on how to get started with your own private label. What crazy thing have you done today to move your business forward?  Let me know marketingcrazy.com/crazy. Please check out my podcasts at marketingcrazy.com/podcast.   If you enjoyed today’s podcast, please leave a review at iTunes.

On today’s episode of Sellers Gone Wild I’m going to talk about the hurdles that keep people from getting started selling their first product on Amazon. I always planned to be the CEO of a company.  I was very driven in law school.  I then went into a video game startup because it was one of my passions and it worked out quite nicely.  Dancing is another passion of mine and I built a brand around products relating to that.  Now I am hooked on selling on Amazon and it has worked out so very well.  Where you find the intersection between passion and products that make sense to create because they are in demand, you will find success on Amazon. If you find you’re stuck in getting that first product on Amazon, here are some tips that I explain: * Think of your first product as your training wheels product. * For your first product select something cheap and light. * Don’t know what to sell?  Start with your passion and the products you use. * Find out what products are already selling by going to the Amazon best sellers list. * Don’t be afraid of competition. * When you find a product, think of ways to improve it. Need more help getting started?  Please check out my free online bootcamp.  My free private label FBA bootcamp will give you the help you need.  Get started, take action.  You can do it! What crazy thing have you done today to move your business forward?  Let me know at marketingcrazy.com/crazy. Please check out my podcasts at www.marketingcrazy.com/podcast.   If you enjoyed today’s podcast, please leave a review at iTunes.  

Today has been a crazy business day. I have a list of things that I’ve accomplished just today in launching a new product. I want to take you along on my trip down the rabbit hole and give you some key points about what I’ve done today. First, an important reminder that my free online sellers bootcamp is coming up on July 22.  It’s time to sign up for the bootcamp which will give you an overview of what it takes to become an FBA Amazon private label seller. I am putting out new products on a steady basis and here’s a quick summary of what I accomplished just today: * Got a product out starting with a bare bones listing to generate things for a shipper to use and my product arrived at Amazon * Contacted people for professional pictures of my product * Set up a page listing on Amazon – using search terms and keyword analysis, I developed and submitted a two thousand word description * Created coupon codes with four different price points for four different groups of people * Got a super URL through Amztracker and posted a listing on Tomoson to begin to drive traffic. (For more details on these tools, check out my previous podcast.) * Sent out a friends and family email to about 100 people, giving them the super URL link and asking them to purchase the product at full price * Organized a special promotion on Facebook. (I’ll have more details on how to do this on our upcoming bootcamp.) * Sent out a press release on the new product * Set up a tool which will allow me to track and manage the numbers side of things * Thought of four more products and learned they were available so began the process for those The product is already selling and there are still a few more things for me to do today! What have you done today? Let me know at marketingcrazy.com/crazy. Please check out my podcasts at marketingcrazy.com/podcast.

The topic today is all about product reviews.  Customers that leave feedback impact the buying decision of other potential customers and that’s a big part of the reason product reviews are so very important. For reviews, my first step is to reach out to family and friends.  I will record a quick video that has them go through the process of searching for my product on Amazon and purchasing it.  This usually involves 100 people for me.  I then continue to email them to see if they followed through.  I usually get a 50% response rate and end up with 20 to 30 product reviews.  As I explain, this is an involved process which requires me to be tenacious. My next step is using Tomoson which allows you to give away products to bloggers and target groups who then create word of mouth buzz about the product. Then I follow that with a Facebook funnel review group. I add AMZ Tracker and private Facebook review groups. A very important step is an automated sequence of emails, where the buyer is told their order has been received, then the product has shipped, asking if they received it and asking if they could leave a review.  There are tools that automate the process and I recommend Feedback Genius.  Another automation tool is Feedback Five.  Tools like these keep sales and reviews going over time. Please understand that the review process takes time, but the reviews will be worth the time it takes. I will be offering a one and one half hour Boot Camp that will tell you what the first stages are in starting an Amazon business.  Head over to Online Sellers Gone Wild to learn more about it. What have you done that’s crazy that has propelled your business this week?  Let me know at marketingcrazy.com/crazy. Please check out my podcasts at marketingcrazy.com/podcast.  

I’m on the road again!  Today’s episode is all about how to move along the process of sourcing your product and how not to get hung up on forks in the road.  Once you’ve done all the research and have a product you believe people will want, now it’s time to get it!  Woo Hoo!! On today’s episode of the Online Sellers Gone Wild podcast, I’ll go through the steps of sourcing and the things that need to be done while you are engaged in the act of sourcing. First stop is Alibaba.  Search your product out there and then contact 5 vendors that catch your eye as far as matching your request and your pricing.  This will be your starting point for negotiations.  And you’ll have to do a lot of negotiating.  Ultimately, you’ll want to work with 3 to 5 vendors who can produce your product and can continue negotiating.  Instead of doing this by email and waiting on responses, consider using Skype to speed up the process.  However you negotiate, keep good records of which vendor is sending what to you. While you are doing that, also check Google for a supplier in the U.S.  It can be a good way to save time and shipping costs.  If you find a vendor in the U.S. call them and negotiate by phone. While you are continuing the sourcing process, start to hammer out the details.  Here are some things you need to work on while the sourcing is ongoing: * Use one of the freelance sites, like Elance, Fiverr Work, and Upwork to find somebody to design your logo, your boxes, your product inserts. * Also set up your initial Amazon listing. * You’ll need to get a UPC Code or a Bar Code. * Do keyword research using a tool such as Keyword Inspector. As for the forks in the road, those are the things that sidetrack you from getting your product in a box and listed.  Especially if this is your first product, stay away from the distractions.  The only exception to that would be any legal matters you need to get straight. What have you done that’s crazy this week?  Let me know at www.marketingcrazy.com/crazy.  If you’re enjoying the show please leave us a review in iTunes.

This time I’m actually driving in my car while podcasting…Woo Hoo.  That’s crazy!  I’m inspired by John Lee Dumas and his daily podcast Entrepreneur on Fire. He inspires me to do more podcasting which in turn allows me to break down what I’m doing as I discuss it. On today’s episode of the Online Sellers Gone Wild podcast, I talk about product selection as it applies to Amazon business.  When you are choosing a product there are two really important factors to consider: * Choose a product based on your passion. * Research it thoroughly to really be sure it’s a product buyers want. My product selection method has changed dramatically.  I now go through a number of very important steps before settling on what I’m going to sell.  It’s all about research for me. Some of the tools I use in research include: * Amazon searches and that includes selling ranks, categories and all similar products. * Jungle Scout, an Amazon product research tool. * Camel Camel Camel, an Amazon price tracker which I use to see how a product performs over the long term.   * MerchantWords, a tool to which shows what Amazon users are searching. * Amz Shark and Amz Tracker   Knowing the conversion rate of a product is essential and using tools like these will help you determine if your passion is going to translate into a business. Here is the lineup I have planned for future episodes.  Leave a message with your vote for the topic of the upcoming shows.  I’ll discuss the results of the poll in upcoming shows: * Review Mastery – How to Catapult your Review Getting Process. The before, and the after. * Review Automation – How to Automate your Reviews * Keyword Domination – Find All your Keywords, Rank them in Order, Spy on your Competition * Product Listing Optimization – List your Products on Amazon Right, the First time. * Sourcing Workshop – Step by Step Sourcing from China, with Examples * (Secret Sauce) How to Make Your Box, and what to put IN IT, besides your Product * Google Adwords and Other PPC Traffic – The Right Way, the Wrong Way, and the difference. * Keep your Product Ranked, Selling and Dominating – on Autopilot * The Top 3 BEST Places to Promote your Products, and How to Use them (versus the other way around) * Your Business as a Business – Get Legal, Stay Legal, It’s easier than you thnk * Cease and Desist – The Impenetrable Shield of Your Product Protection * Work less, Make WAY More – The Top Tools for your Amazon Business * Amazon Coupon Code Creation and Use Workshop – Top 3 Coupon Sites for Amazon * Youtube Domination – Capturing the Right People for your Amazon Product (PPC) * Youtube Video Creation Workshop – How To Create, And Advertise, your first video * Autopilot Amazon – The Top 3 Things to do Every Day, and the Top 5 to Do Every Week * Before and After : Interview with a new seller before and then after, they “made it”. * Moving off of Amazon: Why, How, and When * Shopify – Beyond Amazon FBA, The World Beyond Amazon * Ecommerce – Data Feeds? Shopping Networks?

SGW 007: One Day on the Shopify Tour, 3 Mind Numbing Realities and how they relate to our Amazon Business, Private Label and FBA, and our Future Woohoo, Episode #7! Something crazy every week. Yes, this episode came out of the blue, as many undoubtedly will, as I went to the shopify retail tour, and spent the day among experts, gurus, and aimless wanderers.  Lesson learned? Canadians Rock. No really. I walked away with an even greater appreciation for what we do, and how we are positioned in the online selling space. I know we’re here to talk about Amazon (for now), but allow me to digress for one short episode. This is something that has the potential to propel your business forward. Join our Brand New Facebook Group here, www.MarketingCrazy.com/fb We’d love to hear from you! Please, comment away, ask your questions, and of course, let us know what you’ve done crazy today at, www.MarketingCrazy.com/crazy/ Did you miss Episode #1? Or Episode #2? or Episode #3? And of course, Episode #4 and #5, – You might want to listen to those first, and #6, which isn’t hyperlinked yet. TRANSCRIPT:   Speaker 1:     Test, test, test, test. All right. It looks like we’re doing good. Hello, everybody. Welcome to Online Sellers Gone Wild, episode number seven of our crazy, crazy podcast. This is an unscheduled episode because something cool happened to me today and I thought I’d share it with the crazy nation. What have you done crazy this week? We’d love to hear what have you done crazy in your business, www.marketingcrazy.com/crazy? Let us know what you’ve done that’s a little bit wild this week. We would love to know. All right, so I’m going to get right to Sellers Gone Wild episode number seven, One day on the Shopify tour. Three mind-numbing realities and how they relate to our Amazon businesses, private label, FBA and eventually, our future. Heavy stuff, but it’s going to be a very short episode, very, very short indeed. This is just how I spent my day and then few big things kind of came up, then I decided I would share it with all of you. This is episode number seven and we’re talking Shopify. That’s right. We’re not going to talk necessarily directly about Amazon and that’s a little bit off because we just finished our kind of Amazon FBA overview, but today, just in my business, I was working on Ecommerce outside of Amazon on a shopping platform called Shopify. We use many different kind of tools to build our online stores that are off of Amazon and we also build stores in WordPress and things of that nature, but Shopify is actually a kind of online monthly fee where they make building a store extremely easy. I’m new to Shopify, relatively new. They’ve been around for a few years and I to say that it was the easiest store I’ve ever built in my life. It was literally about an hour that it took me to build that stor...

Woohoo, Episode #6! Something crazy every week. That’s my mantra! Something that has the potential to propel your business forward. In this episode, we finally continue our discussion from Episode 2, continuing to lay out the overall FBA / Private Label business plan, and reviewing our 8 steps (and ending with #9). The first four steps, we quickly covered in Episode 2 and Episode 5, and now we continue covering with the final steps of the amazon overview. We continue where we left off, right after getting our product on amazon and then getting our initial product reviews, press releases, and videos, and outside traffic. What comes next? Join our Brand New Facebook Group here, www.MarketingCrazy.com/fb We’d love to hear from you! Please, comment away, ask your questions, and of course, let us know what you’ve done crazy today at, www.MarketingCrazy.com/crazy/ Did you miss Episode #1? Or Episode #2? or Episode #3? And of course, Episode #4 and #5, – You might want to listen to those first. Transcript – Episode 6 Speaker 1:     Hello, everybody and welcome to that crazy online sellers gone wild. Loving it. Thank you so much for tuning in to episode number six of our crazy podcast. We’re just getting started. What have you done crazy this week? We’d love to hear: www.marketingcrazy.com/crazy. As I told you, I try everything and I bought pretty much everything there is to buy with regards to this FBA private label thing. The benefit is, for you, that you get this inside look at these things and what results I’m getting in my business. I am living it day-to-day, this is full-time. This week’s episode, we have to finish up our overall private label plans. Over the last few episodes, we’ve dibbled and dabbled, and we’ve gotten up to about step six of the overall FBA plan. Now, we’re going to finish it all up. Now, there are actually ten steps but we’re going to stop at number nine because the tenth is a little more crazy, so we will get all the way through six, seven, and eight today, that’s my hope. Without further ado, I’m watching the clock this time. I’m going to keep it short and to the point. We left off with our product on Amazon, our initial reviews, and we were starting on promotion, which in this business means coupons, giveaways, trying to get reviews, trying to rank your product via certain keywords that you believe buyers are going to use to buy your products, keywords with merchant intent or buyer intent. You’re doing this via sending traffic, coupon or promotional traffic, through URLs that may have the keywords embedded or you’re doing what will eventually be the way that everyone does it, which is telling people to type in a certain word or giving them a step-by-step detailed plan of how they have to find your product on Amazon.