#127: Amazon Market Forces - Amazon Aggregators - Chinese Sellers

Norman Ferrar  0:02  

Hey everyone, it’s Norman Farrar rise. I’m so frazzled. It’s Norman Farrar, the beard guy. And today,on today’s show on lot, lot, let’s start this one more time. You ever sit, you know, one of these days, I always thought that I would be having a problem with this bloody podcast and today’s that day. I have been in the fetal position. So I’m going to start this over right from scratch. How’s that? This is Norman Farrar, aka the beard guy here and welcome to another lunch with Norm the rise of the micro brands. 

Norman Ferrar  0:49  

And we are going to put that on our blooper reel holy Geez. Yes. Believe me before the podcast. We didn’t even know if we’d have a podcast today. So we’ve been scrambling. I just threw on my camera and the camera wasn’t working. The mic wasn’t working. All I need is better equipment. Okay, Kelsey, how are you?

Kelsey

You’re okay there?

Norman Ferrar

I don’t know. You know, it really does take a lot to frazzle me, and I’m frazzled today. So,

Kelsey  1:23  

I know you’re relaxed. I got it.

Norman Ferrar

You got it? Okay, you just take it from here. I’m gonna sit back.

Kelsey  1:30  

All right. It’s gonna be lunch with Kelsey today. Welcome, Dr. Caz, Victor, Rad. Welcome to the show Fateha, it’s great to see you guys. How is your Monday going? I just want to say that my Monday is going? How is everyone doing? Hopefully better than Norm here. So we have our contest, our airpod Pro contest. I’m going to drop the link in the comment sections here. But you can win a pair of airpod pros. So why not? What’s there to lose, you know? Next, we also have our second contest happening exclusively in the group. So all you have to do for that contest is share a video and hashtag LW n bear nation, and tag the podcast. That’s the easiest way to do it, if you haven’t, and that’s going to be with a consultation with me and norm for an hour. So I highly recommend you guys take advantage of that. All that information is in the Facebook group too. If you have any questions, please leave them in the comment section. We’ve got a great topic today. And yeah, I think let’s just kind of jump into it. Hopefully, like buttons.

Norman Ferrar  2:42  

 I had a really great guest today. Hopefully he can do all the talking and I’ll just shut up and sit back. But anyways, we’re gonna be talking about Amazon market forces including Amazon aggregators, Chinese sellers and more. So why don’t we all sit back? I think I’m gonna put something into this coffee and enjoy the podcast. Steven,

Norman Ferrar  3:06  

Where are you? I guess I’m just talking cuz Stevens is not here now. All right.

Norman Ferrar  3:16  

Okay, holy Geez. today’s podcast. I’m going to adjust. No, I’m not going to delete it because you’re on

Steven Pope  3:25  

groundhog mug Monday, if you will. Oh, my God. No, no, I’m not stressed at all. It’s a pleasure to be here. This is my second time at lunch with Norm. And with the beard guy here, guys. So super excited. We’ve also had norm on my podcast when norm came on my pod. He talked about the secrets of sourcing. So if you guys haven’t seen that one yet, come check that one out. But yeah, pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me on.

Norman Ferrar  3:50  

Hey, it’s a pleasure. And you know, today’s topic is pretty interesting. You know, I like these outside forces and how they’re affecting people. So I’m not sure exactly where you want to begin. But is there is there a starting point that you think that Amazon sellers should get into?

Steven Pope  4:09  

So I would say that a lot of what I’m going to talk about today will sound scary, but it’s not. It’s just informative, right. So we have seen sectors in the past go through a lot of merging and changes. And I think what we’re experiencing right now on Amazon is the beginning of a lot of changes to come. So anybody that has questions while we’re here today, I’m happy to answer any questions. It’s definitely part of my style. So you guys are welcome to add it to the comment section. But the starting point of our conversation today is that there’s a lot of market forces in in Amazon right now that a lot of people need to be paying attention to. So to start us out, we have the Chinese on the left, the Chinese are going direct to consumer more and more and what that does is it puts pricing pressure on you the idea of Private labeling a look alike item is dying because of that. On the right, we have the Amazon aggregators. These are FBA acquirers who are coming in and throwing around millions of dollars, putting a million on red and rolling the roulette table. And what these guys are doing is putting pressure on you from a competition standpoint for making it. So you have to have better and better assets, your A plus content, your title, your photo, all that kind of good stuff. They’re increasing your competition. So you got pricing pressure from the left aggregators on the right, increasing complexity. And then finally, from the top, I wish I had three hands for this. From the top, you got Amazon themselves, increasing the documentation required, and the complexity required to actually run your business as a couple of examples for that. supplements world, you get more documents needed for Certificate of analysis, pesticides, documentation affecting multiple categories. And just the overall customer service experience of being an Amazon seller is at an all time low, arguably, as one key example, a lot of this is going to be new. So a lot of people most people don’t know this. The the Amazon call centers in the Philippines were just closed. And that might come to a surprise for a lot of people because their support is barely even functioning right now. So like, what is Amazon doing? I don’t have the answer to that question, by the way. But what I do know is I like to think of myself as the taxi driver of Amazon. So when enough people get in my taxi car and we go to destination a 50 times in a row, I know something’s happening it destination a well. It’s a pretty big market force change. When Amazon’s like, Hey, we got three call centers in the Philippines, they’re closed, see, all of a sudden, and I don’t know if they’re moving them to the States. I don’t know if they’re moving to Costa Rica, I don’t know what it is. So there’s all these market forces coming in from the left with the Chinese aggregators from the right with pressure, and then Amazon’s policies pressing down. So it can feel a little claustrophobic these days as an Amazon seller. And my message today is informative. Be aware of these market forces, navigate them, be ready to pull up pull up your your Dukes and weavin dodge a little bit. Because if you can’t, you might as well sell now, go sell to one of those Amazon aggregators buying all of those businesses. And by the way, I don’t want you to sell. But I’m giving you the CO OPT, giving you the opt out now at the beginning of our conversation, if you’re not ready to increase your complexity, and take on more, you should just go sell. That’s the easy answer. or lower your prices and death spiral trying to fight the Chinese. That’s another easy answer. But your business will fail. So the tough answer The answer that we’ll be talking a lot about today on how to deal with these market forces is about building a community. So norm With that in mind, where would you like to dive in?

Norman Ferrar  8:00  

Well, I think it’s kind of interesting about the the Philippine call centers, just dying, you know where they’re gonna go. And my thought is, I can pretty much guarantee you this, that they probably just went to a cheaper call center. I don’t think they’re going to send them to India, though. No, I don’t think so. Well, let’s try to figure out you know, one of the cheaper come countries in the world coming up with a little bit of tariffs, Rica, maybe Brazil, possibly I wasn’t gonna even say Costa Rica I it’s all speculation, but I’m thinking it’s gonna be a different country that’s coming up with some sort of incentive to get Amazon there. I mean, the Philippines, for the most part was bad enough. Every time I called I out of 1010 people, I would get one correct answer. And then nine, yeah, variations on the answer. And most of them are wrong. Those are some copy pasta. They buck, they’ve cost me, they’ve cost me 10s, maybe hundreds of 1000s of dollars, because of misinformation that came back to bite me. Even though Amazon gave me the information and I had a case of it. They would tell me the wrong information, especially with my sope split it up, do it the right way. Well, the right way was getting me tons of sales. They would tell me to split it up, then they would tell me to do it a different way. And it ended up you know, most of the sense that I had I ended up just closing down because there were and right now with all these stupid regulations. You know, it’s very hard to sell what I was selling at the price that I’ve been selling it for the

Steven Pope  9:41  

right hand, Amazon does not know what the left hand is doing. not fighting each other.

Norman Ferrar  9:45  

Yeah. And you know what the you also brought up another good point. So survival, if we’re talking about, you know, forces on the Amazon landscape right now. You’re 100% right. Well, in my opinion, we had a person on the other A day that was talking about finding a product and not changing it, just go with the flow. And I’m on the opposite side. So off the lobby, Kevin King, there was a few other people that came on here and said, in today’s environment, you have to be an innovator. And that’s it. That’s, that’s simple. You know, you just can’t go to Amazon go to Alibaba. And I’m surprised I said that right. But Alibaba. Yeah, yeah. See, that then dives in anyways, you know, just pick a product, you know, if it’s, if it’s even a slightly different thing, like a different color, same material, different color, spring, slightly different, just something to differentiate yourself, even in your copy. So, you know, Diane bolster was on and she was talking about making up making up words, you know, just that you differentiate yourself from the competitor? You know, it was it’s really cool what she does with words. But anyways, yeah, I’m seeing a huge change. I know, over at honu, we’re seeing where we used to go out and just source the average product. Now it’s product innovation, product, innovation product, and those, those are the types of clients that are coming in. So I don’t know about you, but that’s what we’re seeing.

Steven Pope  11:23  

And I’m like secretly holding out that Amazon’s gonna just open up like 20 American call centers, like that’s what I’m secretly hoping for. Right? It’s like, hey,

Norman Ferrar  11:32  

yeah, and I’m thinking that norm, the norm will come to life.

Steven Pope 11:38  

Well, we know that Jeff beezus wants to get off the rock, right? So like, he doesn’t freakin care. And now he’s not even CEO later this year. But I don’t know. I mean, like, after Amazon has abused sellers for this long, like, there has to be a light at the end of the tunnel at some point. You know, they throw us a few bones like, Hey, you know, we’ll call you before we suspend you the next day. Like That was a nice bone. That’s cool. At least I won’t wake up in the morning and be suspended before I get a phone call to tell me why I’m suspended. But you’re right. Normally, the ability to get accurate, transparent information out of Amazon is an all time low. I think I have like 17 videos on Brand Registry bugs. There’s 17 unique Brand Registry bugs that I’ve like documented. And that’s, that’s ridiculous. Like, why why isn’t there some UX guy over Brand Registry like following the content and just fixing them? And like solving it for millions?

Norman Ferrar  12:33  

Can you imagine so? Amazon’s whole business model is around customer experience. The customer expect how many times you hear that? What about the seller experience? seller experience on Amazon is horrible. It’s gone from Okay, to bad to worse to I don’t give two hoots. You know, it’s it’s it’s incredibly frustrating. I’m venting today, not only because I started off bad. But

Steven Pope  13:06  

when I said Amazon gave you some, you know, a nice little blessing here and there.

Norman Ferrar  13:10  

Yeah, but you know, there’s and I don’t want to give people who are selling on Amazon, like you said the beginning a scare. But it’s things that you have to consider. It’s informative, though

Steven Pope  13:23  

it dictates like your strategy. It’s it’s not like scare scare and go away. It’s more of like informed decision making. need to know what you’re getting into.

Norman Ferrar 13:33  

Right, exactly. And on that note, let’s go down that path. What are some things that people can do to to prepare themselves for the 2021 Amazon.

Steven Pope  13:45  

So we’ve seen the Chinese just completely break every possible rule, ride every official and done everything unethically possible to destroy many people’s businesses and listings. And Amazon has put in some barriers to protect you, but not enough of them. The most important barrier though, if you’re not taking advantage of this is to have Brand Registry. If you don’t have Brand Registry today, you’re a fool. You’re a fool. It costs less than 800 bucks to get a trademark. Go get it done. And you can file your brand registry and under seven days, you can take a pending trademark and file for Brand Registry within a week. So get that done. If you don’t do that you are begging for hijackers. There are hijackers who will come in and change your brand data, your brand name everything. Then there are unauthorized resellers that could also show up in addition to that, by having your brand registered, you cut out a lot of those problems like at least 80% of those problems. Okay, so

Norman Ferrar 14:45  

sorry, but you can have Brand Registry. I’ve had this where I’ve had Brand Registry, and I’ve still had people come on yes. And hijack and take, take images and take what we know Basically do what they wanted with the listing, and it took forever to unlock it.

Steven Pope 15:05  

But Brand Registry will solve like 80% of those before they even get to you. So you’re right, this the problem still exists, right. So if we’re looking at the level of catalog control, you get the retail team up here, get Brand Registry, you got the first seller of record, and then all other sellers down here. And occasionally, one of those other sellers like leapfrogs up the ladder and cut you know, changes something or they it take an Amazon insider at the retail team and changes something in mucks with it. Like that’s happening. There’s lawsuits galore, you can see him publicly. But what I would say is, though, is one of the things that people should be doing that they probably don’t know they should be doing. And this is probably the first big takeaway of of today’s session. If you sell in the United States, and and do not sell anywhere else, at bare minimum, go load your data to Canada. And the reason I say to do this is because those hijackers, those Chinese abusive sellers, are going to load your data to to Canada, and change it to try and get you taken down. We’ve seen this in at least 20 accounts. They’ll add words like cocaine, heroin, drugs, etc, into your keywords to get your listing yanked in the United States by changing data in Canada. We’ve also seen this happen in the UK, Germany and other markets. So the most important takeaway I would give you to fight hijacking is to load your data to all core Amazon platforms at bare minimum, Canada, potentially United Kingdom as well.

Norman Ferrar 16:33  

Okay, so let’s back up on that. So if you’re saying, add your listing to Canada, Mexico, okay, so the unified accounts here in North America, what I’ve heard, and I’ve seen is that, yeah, they’ve gone and they’ve changed a word or two,

Steven Pope  16:53  

in Canada, and it’s caused problems. But won’t that still cause a problem? If you at least load the data, then they can’t change it, because you’re the seller of record. Okay, so it locks the listing. But if you don’t show up and somebody else does it, even if they’re like one of those dropshippers, who were, you know, jacking your price up 50% in Canada in hopes of selling one of them out of the US and shipping it out of Amazon FBA us into Canada, not even talking about North, just typical drop shipping one on one, it will prevent a lot of that problem.

Norman Ferrar  17:26  

Another thing that we were talking about, haven’t talked about anything on the podcast was talking in our cinterion group was flat files, and loading up every bloody field you can in flat files. Because another way that these guys are coming in, are through empty fields. They’re loading secondary attributes. Yep. And so if you fill up as many flat files, or every flower, every field that you possibly can, that’ll prevent that from happening.

Steven Pope  17:59  

So there’s a few questions that are coming in. As we’ve dialogue, I would love to answer a few of these. So one person asked, Does narf take care of loading data to Canada? And the answer is, no, it does not. You need to load the data directly in Canada yourself. Okay, explain knarf. So north is the North American remote fulfillment program. And what that does is it syncs your inventory into other countries. So you still need to supply the fields, you can launch north, but then if you left, like your description, or your keyword spot blank, that’s insufficient. So narf is a good idea. Add anywhere from three to 6% to your bottom line, but you need to have all the fields present and filled in. Very important.

Norman Ferrar  18:44  

Okay, very good. Okay, let’s stop for a second. Because, yeah, we could go off on this topic forever. First of all, you have a you have a giveaway today. Can you explain what it is?

Steven Pope  18:58  

We do? So anybody listening today, every single member, we’re gonna give away our phase one SEO plan. It’s an actual SRP. It’s what my actual team uses. And this will get your SEO in good shape. So if you’ve got a listing, you haven’t done a lot of SEO work to it. This SAP will be a huge lifesaver. I believe Kelsey will post a link in the comment section so you guys can check that out.

Kelsey  19:23  

For me right now. So yeah, look out for that guys. And yeah, if you’re enjoying today’s episode, please like and share. If you like the blooper reel, yeah. Oh, I think I think people will. I can just hear the comments.

Steven Pope  19:37  

And then one, one, Kelsey, are we doing the special one giveaway we’re doing that later? We can talk about it now. So yes, for our special one, only one person who in this what is the prize? So we’re giving away a my Amazon guy t shirt. These t shirts are amazing. They’re soft, silky smooth t shirts. I personally vetted out like 10 different t shirt companies to find the nicest t shirt that I actually wanted to wear myself. And high quality. So we give one t shirt away, Kelsey, you can decide how to make that happen.

Kelsey  20:14  

Yeah, so Oh, you guys need to do is put the hashtag we’ll have Kelsey, and you’ll be entered into today’s contest. Is that really how you guys do it? Yeah, that is Yeah. We’ll Kelsey in the comment section and then we’ll, we’ll show you the wheel after and don’t forget the two tags. That’s right. If you take two people you’ll be entered, you’ll get an extra bonus entry as well. So all right. Do you have them in triple x? Steven?

Steven Pope  20:40  

I have some on order. Oh, okay. I might be short on that at this very moment. But I do have some order.

Norman Ferrar 20:47  

Okay, so let’s, let’s continue on. Oh, let’s continue on with a couple of questions because it looks like there’s a bunch of came in.

Steven Pope  20:54  

Yes, let’s let’s grab at least Danielle’s trademark question. Calcio go through them. Okay, Daniel’s okay. If he’s done. So Daniel said, I’m planning to get my trademark pending trademark number even before launching my first product. It’s not necessarily a question, but I think it’s a good observation topic because you have to have your brand name affixed to your product. And stickers are getting a little bit more scrutiny nowadays. So if you can try and get your brand packaging printed, it will help you get through that process. This is one of the 17 Brand Registry videos I have. Because it’s getting a little bit more troublesome to get your your trademark to go through. I just filed one last week for one of my new brands that I’m launching this summer, it took a full five days for them to finally get mine approved. Yeah. We got a lot of viewers love this. Lot of people love Kelsey, I think might be the free t shirt. I don’t know. And

Kelsey  21:54  

they miss her. And so it’s a we’ll have Kelsey now we love Kelsey, but I’ll take it anyways. Thanks, everyone. All right, we do have a second question from Marsha, if you guys want to go that way. So Marshall is asking. So when you’re designing create a new product, do you recommend waiting until you get Brand Registry before you launch? It’s really hard to wait that long, when you’re excited about bringing a new product product line to the market.

Steven Pope  22:18  

Yes, and just in case you missed it, you only have to wait seven days, you can take a pending trademark got a brand registry@amazon.com this is regardless of where you buy the trademark anywhere at all. And shameless plug we do sell trademarks at my Amazon guy. But if you get that trademark from any source, you can go to brand registry.amazon.com and file it and within a full seven days, you can have your your brand registered. And there’s a lot of benefit to that. Because then when you go to list your item for the first time, you don’t have to go through the approval process. You just have Brand Registry and it’s done.

Norman Ferrar  22:52  

So people were they and we’ve talked about this before, but it was the acceleration program, the AI acceleration program. That I mean it exists, you’ll see it but like you were just saying it you don’t have to go with one of the recommended lawyers. You can just now. Get it approved and within days. Be up and selling.

Steven Pope  23:16  

I find the we love Kelsey and we’ll have Kelsey a hilarious malfunction. Sorry, Kelsey, I made that one happen, didn’t I?

Kelsey  23:27  

Oh, no, I love it. I I’m basking in her and now I just rebranded your giveaway. All right. Do you guys want another question? Or Yeah, yeah. Okay. All right. So from Victor, are you hearing anything about Amazon’s live video verification requirement for Brand Registry? Showing inventory etc.

Steven Pope  23:50  

I have not heard anything about this. All I know is that the iPhone is required to do Amazon lives. And I think it’s ridiculous that Android users like myself have not been given access. Yeah, I I can’t answer anything there, Victor.

Kelsey  24:07  

Okay. All right, from Doctor cause, hey, Pope, I trademark the names of my suppliers where possible. So if they do decide to go, DTC, they need to come to the end. The other strategy is up your sleeve.

Steven Pope  24:21  

So, so Dr. Cause I think I think you’re fighting dirty on this one. And as long as you have the branding of a package item with those suppliers, then it’s probably kosher. And you would want to own that you would want to own that. Dr. causes a super fan also attends our podcasting. So it’s nice to see here over over on norms podcast and what I would say though, is you know, try and protect your intellectual property wherever possible, because you will have challenges down the line. But But if you are trademarking brand names so that the Chinese don’t go direct to consumer What I would say is they’re probably going to just make a new brand name and do it anyway. Probably wants to happen. Something similar.

Kelsey  25:09  

Okay, so we do have lots of questions. So if you guys want to go back real quick. Okay, from red, when you create a variation for a product, why Amazon lists your product on different categories,

Steven Pope  25:23  

Amazon has come out with a lot of new categories. And so sometimes there’s some defunct old categories. And so when they load new listings, they have a different one. When you create a parentage, you’re supposed to have the same category on all of them, including the parent, the brand name attribute must also match in all of the parent and children. So if you have it misspelled one, capital letter difference, proper case, etc, space, whatever your parents age will not go through. There’s a lot of parentage theory and technicalities to be aware of. tons and tons of things to keep in mind.

Norman Ferrar 25:57  

Yeah, I’ve seen that just recently where somebody had their Brand Registry as uppercase, and then all lower, but then they put it as with other products, all uppercase, and uppercase, lowercase, uppercase, lowercase, and it screws everything up. It’s not the same

Steven Pope  26:14  

brand. You can you can request what’s called a trademark alias, but it’s a pain in the butt to get so better off just get it right to begin with. I like proper case personally. And by the way, a lot of attorneys when you file a logo, Mark will just put it in all caps, and they will eff it up. So I recommend word marks, not low marks.

Kelsey  26:35  

Okay, great. This is from Brett FBA Excel. Steven, what’s the most ninja way to quickly quickly load my USA listing data into other marketplaces the fastest to prevent blackhat attacks, which flat files Do you need for this process?

Steven Pope  26:49  

So I would I would request the category export report which you have to file a ticket in the US to do and then I would try and push that into the Canadian marketplace at bare minimum. Some of the fields are a little bit different may not be perfect, but it should still load. Another method would be to click the international Sync button between platforms. That’d be another way to do it. Okay, great. And that catalog.

Norman Ferrar  27:14  

catalog export of file does not kick around forever. It’s about a week.

Kelsey 27:22  

Yeah. Okay, Marshall is saying thanks, Steven. wish I had known that when I first launched my last brand on Amazon would have saved me so many headaches and sleepless nights.

Steven Pope  27:31  

Yes. This is why we talk about it to help the next guy for sure. But I feel free Mercia.

Kelsey  27:38  

Okay, from fatigue. do you suggest we put in no Mark pending in our listing?

Steven Pope 27:42  

Nope, not necessary. As soon as as soon as you have Brand Registry, that’s all that matters. Avoid any our symbols. Amazon hates them. Attorneys tell you to put our symbols everywhere. But Amazon hates them. Not needed. Just file Brand Registry. You’re good to go.

Kelsey  27:57  

Okay, great. And I believe that’s everything for now. So yeah, I’m just double checking. I think that’s good for questions for now. So yeah, I’ll come back if there’s any more.

Norman Ferrar  28:07  

Alright, so we talked a lot about the well, the scary things happening? How can we prevent these scary things? Or how can we combat it? You know, to continue to grow because Amazon is still a very viable platform. We’re just, you know, spouting off and venting, but, you know, how do you go and defend yourself against all these things that are happening right now. Other than the flat file,

Steven Pope  28:33  

there’s not a lot of proactive measures you can take right now, from a from a hijacking standpoint, beyond what we just talked about, you got to be reactive beyond that. So what I would say, though, is there are ways to be proactive against the competition going up. And so perhaps it’d be good to pivot that direction. And what I mean by that is, just take your listing to the next level. Right? So So normally, if I were to ask you, you know, what the target demographic of an item is, you can pick the item on let’s let’s do this. It’ll be kind of fun pick pick any item that’s found on Amazon. Norm the norm, norm the norm, okay, so not sure if that’s a real item or not. But so, so this gnome item, who is the target demographic,

Norman Ferrar  29:22  

it’s for let’s see, I’m going to be making this up is probably for men or women. So it’s gender neutral. People who like the outdoors, like working in their gardens. I don’t know. Probably something along those lines.

Steven Pope  29:43  

What is their number one problem?

Norman Ferrar  29:45  

Then number one problem. Let’s see. I know this is a weird line of question. Yeah. What’s their number one pro are you talking about? Like why they would get the gnome

Steven Pope  29:59  

what what’s something that All of the people in this target demographic would share. So do they have, you know, mites in their gardens? Do they have, you know, a need to scare away birds? And that’s why they’re putting the gnome up or do they, they don’t have enough items in their garden, they’re looking to fill it up with slots. And

Norman Ferrar  30:16  

I would have to say the number one, like, at least for me is a podcast. mudcat mascot, which I didn’t have for number one problems out in their gardens would probably be garden decoration. You know, maybe that’s what it would be?

Steven Pope 30:33  

I don’t know. And, and so with that in mind, our target demographic becomes a little bit more clear as we have this conversation, right? So one of my favorite ways to cut to the chase on this is to use a silly metaphor. So if we were to sell a Russian mail order bride, and I know this is a weird example, our target demographic would be three time divorced truck drivers. And the reason why I use this example is because it hits straight to the core of of the target demographic conversation, right? You know that if somebody has been a truck driver, and then divorced three times that they’re absolutely going to be your target demographic to buy a Russian mail order bright. And so when we talk about market polarization discussions, and if we go back to the gnome for a moment, right, so, we would have to tailor in that deep to understand who should be in the pictures next to the gnome in the secondary images, who should be demonstrating the video concept of the item, what should be in the title, the keywords the A plus content, it needs to be done at that kind of level of scrutiny. Because if you were to sell like a hand sanitizer wristwatch, right, you could sell that item to kids, you could sell that item to joggers. And if you tried to sell it to both simultaneously on the same listing, your conversion rate would be 1/5. What it could be, if you picked one audience over the other, casting a narrow tent will increase your conversion rates considerably. Okay.

Norman Ferrar  32:10  

I used to think that way. So we do create lots of personas, when we’re putting together our products. And it was very specific. Then, we started thinking a little bit further outside of the box and saying we’re missing out people who are on the overflow. So these are not people that were specific enough to be targeted in the persona. And they we started, we noticed that when we started to broaden the persona, that we would get a lot more sales.

Steven Pope  32:41  

So I think it’s a great case in point of always test anything you hear on a podcast, right? So here you have Stephen entering the space saying hey, go narrow and norm saying go broad. So the audience, whenever you hear an expert like me, come on and talk, you should always test everything. Don’t take it for granted. Yeah. But in but and I would say there might be some differing data sets that would prove norm correct and some categories and would prove me right and others. And by the way, this might be the first time we’ve ever disagreed on anything. But I would say if you put a picture of both a kid at a playground wearing said, watch with, you know, push button hand sanitizer, and had a photo of a jogger in their 40s. I think your conversion rate would be considerably less. I think I would agree with that. Yeah. So I think it matters to have a hyper specific target demographic, by casting a shallow net, your conversion rates will go up. And when conversion rates go up, your keyword rankings increase, and you actually reach more audience and higher traffic numbers, because so that’s that’s my operating thesis.

Norman Ferrrar  33:45  

Okay, very interesting. Now, are there any other questions while we go forward?

Kelsey 33:51  

Yes, we do. From URL if I create a listing with fbm skew, but asen is not searchable for three days. What do you do? Hidden suppression,

Steven Pope  34:01  

hidden suppression to top two reasons for this. Number one, it’s the main image number two, it’s the title. If you have the word gift in your title, it will be suppressed. And it’s a hidden suppression. I have a video on hidden suppressions just type into YouTube, my Amazon guy hidden suppression. watch that video after a podcast today. If it’s the main image, it’s usually because there’s an icon in the image somewhere and you remove the icon or the secondary item. That’s not the main product.

Norman Ferrar  34:30  

Let’s talk about hidden suppression a lot. We don’t normally, you know, talk about this topic. What are some other Well first of all, just for our audience, especially if they’re new, what is hidden suppression.

Steven Pope  34:43  

So this is where there’s no tool telling you your item is currently suppressed. It is just simply not showing up in the search results. And that can be very problematic because if your item is not being found in search, you can’t sell it to anybody outside. of advertising. So I’m going to if with your permission, I’ll demonstrate how to check for this, if that’s okay with you. So just hit share my screen, Kelsey, if you’re welcome to add it. So this is my silly wine glass brands. This particular wine glass is my top seller gets a 42% conversion rate. It’s currently suspended from advertising. And I’m having a lot of trouble with this listing right now. So I’m taking the asen. For this particular listing, I’m I hit enter here, and you see how it shows up like this. This is proof that the item is not suppressed, it shows up in search. And so what you can do to see if your item is suppressed right now, you could test this another tab of your browser, take your ace in and type it into search and see if it shows up. If you’ve never done this, or you haven’t done this in 30 days, it is definitely something I would add to your list of things that you should attempt on a frequent basis. Then once you click on the listing, if it loads, you’re good to go. There’s all kinds of catalog bugs that can happen when the category tree is messed up. Where the category ID is not present, the main image is suppressed, the title is insufficient. And while we’re here, you know, the word drinking, this is something I thought was the reason why they were banning me from ads on this particular listing. So I actually put the word censored over the word drinking, and did not get it reinstated. So now we’ve removed the word wine. These are the sorts of things when when we when you talk about customer service at Amazon sucking, here’s a case example. Right? Like I’m being targeted and banned from advertising this particular listing, and I’m like having to test different things to see if I can get it reinstated. They won’t like give you explicit T and C on like what the cause of the of the ban is. But then if we, you know, type in I’m not social distancing wineglass or whatever. Hold on, we try that again. wineglass social distancing, you’re going to see that I have numerous competitors that show up in our advertise. And and so it’s, it’s really interesting to see that other people can get advertised. And I’d actually didn’t trigger one right here, oddly enough. But I have the same exact glasses, dozens of other people. And maybe they finally took them down like in the last 24 hours. But there’s policies that are not necessarily given to the same same level across seller, so it can be extremely frustrating. Yeah,

Norman Ferrar  37:24  

yeah, definitely can. So what are some other, we started to talk about it, you were just mentioning a couple of things like on the image having a logo. What are some other ways that you can find or look for hidden suppression?

Steven Pope  37:40  

That’s it. That’s the only technique you can you can get suppressions located by General tools, I’m a big fan of helium 10. And they will tell you when an item is physically suppressed, but not a hidden suppression, there’s only one technique that I know of. And that’s it track a hidden suppression. And so the difference between a hidden versus a physical suppression, if you will, is the hidden is just not there’s no indication Amazon is not getting a red flag at all. Whereas if they do give you a red flag, all the tools on the market helium 10 included, can track that and then they can send you an email notification.

Norman Ferrar  38:14  

Could you go in and take all of your products and just put in your ace in in the search field? Do you have somebody do it and just check it out once a month?

Steven Pope  38:22  

Yeah, pretty much. Or if I see sales go down. It’s part of our diagnostic tool set. We’re right. Yeah.

Norman Ferrar  38:29  

Okay, very good. I thought I saw something from Victor Kelsey about this as well.

Kelsey  38:37  

What about invisible degradation rather than suppression, hurting rank, etc.

Steven Pope  38:42  

This is a more complicated subject with not as easy of a solution. Typically what happens in a situation like this is your item has lost some of its keyword rankings in mass or in specific keyword areas. The number one cause of this is typically external traffic, signaling to Amazon rebate giveaways or abuse of a particular like search find by aspects that’s we saw the biggest hit on this back in September, we had dozens and dozens of clients that complained about losing their keyword ranking. And in my conversations with most of them, it’s usually traced back to an external traffic issue. So the solution to this is turn off whatever external traffic you have, at that particular junction, run some Amazon PPC on those terms affected, and hopefully try and recover the terms there’s a high probability that you will not fully recover them because Amazon is physically penalizing you because they perceive you as abusing terms and conditions.

Norman Ferrar  39:46  

Interesting. Oh, I just see. One of the best entrepreneurs I know john Wolfe is on Hey, john, I haven’t talked to you in a long time.

Steven Pope  39:57  

Alright, so our next question is from Tony. The brand is at the end, instead of the front as Amazon requests could that causes depression, most likely not. Their tools are not sophisticated enough to catch that particular issue. Many categories do require the brand name to be in the front, if it’s anything related to health, medical, you know, it’s topical or consumable, then it absolutely must be in the front, you will have huge amounts of problems. If you’re in a gift giving category like me, all bets are off, you can get away with a lot of more, a lot more things. And so clearly, it’s way more important to have a non brand term at the front of the gifting item because all the search volumes are present for that. Now with that said, they no longer wait the title for the front or the end. But from a consumer standpoint, when I’m trying to hit people with just seeing half of my title in the search results, I would prefer them to see, you know, I’m not drinking alone, I’m social distancing versus my brand name, monster. So yes, you can test putting uranium in different locations, it is against terms and conditions. But it’s not something they actively throw down on in certain categories. In certain categories. It’s a deal breaker, but in gift giving categories, it’s there’s there’s no problem with that at all.

Norman Ferrar  41:14  

Yeah, and some time you’ll get you’ll get suppressed from it. Sometimes they’ll force it, they’ll Amazon will put the brand name in in the front of the listing, correct?

Steven Pope  41:24  

Yes, they will co OPT your listing, they’ll do what’s called a retail contribution. And then it becomes really hard to change your listing. If any of you are experiencing difficulty changing your listing Brand Registry tickets are the best way to solve it. That’s not a guaranteed way, it’s just the best way to solve it, instead of putting it through seller support now go through Brand Registry support. This is been true since about January.

Norman Ferrar  41:49  

Okay, a little bit off topic. But what are your thoughts on the transparency of program, anything over $20 you don’t like it,

Steven Pope  41:58  

the transparency program I think is useless. A lot of a lot of hoo ha going around doing a bunch of things and tracking, but no actual benefit. So a lot of effort, little return. Alright, so I got a couple questions for you, then. Sounds like you use it then I do.

Norman Ferrar  42:18  

And these are, this is solve the big problem for me. So I took on a brand. So I became the authorized agent for the brand, right? So the brand has problems right from the get go. And this comes back with capital, lowercase all caps, all caps, eight, it was a mess. So we got that straightened up. The problem was the getting now if anybody else is doing this. This is what this is how I solved the issue. But if you’ve got somebody who you sell to resellers or distributors, so this company sold to two huge distributors, they had a reseller agreement saying that they’re not allowed to sell on Amazon.

Steven Pope  43:03  

By the way, this is the one use case when I would say use the transparency program just so but

Norman Ferrar  43:07  

I’m just kind of curious, because that was my solution to the problem. So anyways, the resellers or the distributors sold to other sellers, who automatically populated on Amazon. Yep. And now we had 23 different people selling against us, lowering the price. And the problem is, you know, Amazon doesn’t honor map. So what ends up happening, you’ve got this brand that wants to be a really highly perceived high perceived value. Yep. Now people are, you know, going 2030 40% off, trying to get quick volume sales, and we couldn’t do anything. So the only thing I could do, like we put out notices to all these brands, saying like this was a cease and desist thing. We couldn’t do anything with the project zero because they weren’t counterfeit. So Alright, let’s try transparency. So the only thing we could do,

Steven Pope  44:04  

this is the one use case read say transparency is a great idea. And that’s because most sellers aren’t selling to distribution networks today. What the larger you get, the more likely you will take on a distribution network. And it’s very difficult for you to hold your own distributors accountable, let alone who they sell to accountable. Right. So that’s the problem. So the transparency program would help you trace and figure out which distributor to cut out and i think that i think that does merit using the program. But for somebody who doesn’t have a distribution network, I don’t see any use case or reason to use transparency.

Norman Ferrar  44:38  

So even to take because you will get the the odd hijacker right now and I’ve seen this before where you know, people come on and they’ll start to undercut you because it’s a free market. Right. They even when so I yeah. Okay, here’s another question about Brand Registry. So I’ve seen some of our clients with Brand Registry. And yet, people buy their product, wholesale wherever they get it from. And now they come up again, rebates. They buy 100 units from a rebate company. And now they become, you know, they they’re on your listing, even though you have Brand Registry. That’s why, you know, we’ve, we were looking at transparency. But have you seen that, like, you can’t, you can’t get those people off of the listing.

Steven Pope 45:26  

I’m against rebate programs. And so I think they cause more problems than then good things that they bring today. And I would rather invest money into Amazon PPC and not paint the distribution network. So that’s, that’s that’s the position that I hold. But I know that a lot of people use rebate programs. And so the the moment you are messing with distribution networks, then yes, transparency becomes more and more valuable. So I’m conceding grants you The more you talking to him?

Norman Ferrar  45:54  

No, no, it’s I’m kind of curious because I wasn’t using transparency, for the most part, and I would only use transparency and higher dollar products. And if if there was a case, like we had with this other one, where we had two distribution companies selling out all these other people, we had 23. And when they they would not give up. All right, so let’s talk a little bit about PPC 2021. What are you doing differently?

Steven Pope  46:25  

There’s a lot of buzz for keyword isolation right now. I definitely think that it’s merited. I think that segmentation is fundamental to success right now. I think that there’s a lot of segmented ad types that a lot of people still aren’t doing. I think they’re basic by now. But I still think it’s worth mentioning them. If you’re not running video ads, you’re behind the curve. If you’re not running display ads in three different ways to target including retargeting past viewers past purchasers, and look alikes, these are all things that are now available in most Seller Central portals not even to mention DSP, which I don’t think is necessary for 90% of the audience. And then on top of that, you can now customize display text, you can write in your particular copy for a particular item, customizing text down to a particular item in display. And you also have the ability to do custom brand headline ads, which is a way to put in a bigger image, which is custom that takes up like three times the amount of space versus a regular sponsored brand headline, ad. On top of that, I think there are 1000 targeting techniques we could talk about defensive targeting Acehnese offensive targeting Jason’s running auto campaigns with negations, which a lot of all indict a lot of lazy advertisers don’t run negations on their automatic campaigns, and I think they’re crazy. Then there are techniques where you can put broad match phrase match exact match, again, about 70% of what I just went through in a very quick manner is technically basic and been done for about a year now. But I think that most people are not taking those proper steps to actually execute some of those basics today.

Norman Ferrar  48:15  

Okay, very good. Now, if people wanted to get more information about that, actually, we should probably get you back on and talk a bit more about that one. All right. One of the other ways that we’re looking at right now, what are the best ways to grow your sales on Amazon profitably, in today’s craziness,

Steven Pope  48:36  

have a great product? That’s the easy answer. The tough answer is find a product that cannot be easily replicated and has intellectual property. That’s the tough answer. Right. And so that means not just having a trademark, but it also might mean having a patent potentially, so that somebody can’t come in and rip you off as quickly. The lifespan of an item. I think, would if we if we polled the audience right now, we would get a very wide ranging response on this. Quite frankly, norm, I’m actually curious what you think is what we think the average life shelf life of an item is right now on Amazon. The life expectancy? Yeah, so like producing an item, like how long it will sell well on Amazon a year and a half. And I would say that’s about right, right, like a year and a half to two years somewhere in that range. And it’s probably going to decrease the longer it goes on. because more people are sourcing better and better. So if you keep that in mind, that means you have to always be launching new products. So sourcing products becomes extremely important and and I honestly do not have a person in my network that can source better than norm. So you guys are listening to what, in my opinion, the most talented sourcing person in my network. Oh, thank you very much, sir. Well, my $20 I don’t have a hard stop here in four minutes if you want to get to a few more questions up to you, norm.

Norman Ferrar  50:04  

Sure. Let’s do that. Kelsey, are there more questions? Well, first of all, before we get to the questions kills, let’s just do the hashtag I, what is it now we changed it. It’s we’ll have Kelsey not I love Kelsey. Okay, so it’s hashtag, we’ll have Kelsey. And that is going to be for a my Amazon guy, t shirt. In triple XL shipped to.

Kelsey 50:31  

Yeah, so just put in a hashtag, we’ll have Kelsey and you’ll be entered. If you take two people, you’ll get a bonus entry, as well. We put this link in before but for a free phase one of Stephens SRP, for SEO. And putting that in the comment section, it’s completely free. And it’s in the comment description. I also put it into the Facebook group to you know, we

Norman Ferrar  50:56  

talked about this before, and it was fantastic. The the way that you’ve laid this out your phase one is very different than most people. And I really liked the way that you laid it out.

Steven Pope  51:10  

So we’ve added a phase zero now, which we haven’t talked about publicly before. So So we have three phases of SEO, and I’ll talk about phase zero. So phase one is all about best practices, no commas, no duplicate words in the back in your search terms. It’s about indexing for as many keywords as possible. Phase Two is the pink word update, also called the Dennis Rodman update, you know, lovingly, because there are words in the back end that are duplicated from your title and bullets that are not required in the search term field. So we wait until phase two to remove those for additional indexing, then you swap them out for additional words. And then phase three throughout every rule proceeding. And phase three is about ranking matriculation, any keywords between ranks 20 through 50, you need about 50 keywords to enter phase three, and then push those to the top of search. And then you redo your title, your bullets re post content all about that. Our new phase zero is we’re looking at competition keywords, and using a new ranking system to basically articulate like, Okay, you got 10 competitors, and four of those competitors are in rank one for this term, let’s give that a score of nine. But this other term, seven competitors are ranking for that one or eight competitors ranking for that one in slot one through three, we’re gonna give that a score of 10. And then you wait your keyword choices. And so now we’re layering in relevancy is more important than ever hasn’t. So for those that are interested in learning more about SEO, we actually did a really big podcast series with ADD badger, which I’m wearing their hat right now, four part series where we go into all the details. Very, very great series, if you want to learn more about SEO, and where can we find that just type in AD badger, Seo? I have a playlist for SEO? If Kelsey, do you want to drop that in the links, just go to my YouTube channel, my Amazon guy, YouTube slash my Amazon guy and then look at the SEO playlist, you can drop that in the comment section if you’d like.

Kelsey  53:02  

I’ll get right on that. Okay, so I’ll go through some questions. So he got in. And one other question, by the way. So I went in with, I went into a category were made in USA matters and did a ton of research on how to source profitable products in the US. So that’s a comment. Okay, I

Steven Pope  53:22  

think that’s an important thing to do. Right, like, so we didn’t, I didn’t spend a lot of time impacting how I think you need to make stuff in the us moving forward. It’s an aspiration. But if back to norms point initially, like you got to be innovative. And so one of the ways you can be innovative is where and how you source and make your items. So for those that can make stuff in the states and get ahead of the curve, before it inevitably comes back to the States. In my opinion, I think you’re going to have a big advantage. Costly advantage, the big one.

Norman Ferrar  53:51  

I know one of the advantages, doing your molds over in China and then saving a ton of money, and then bringing them over and having your us tire molds out. That’s a great idea. Yeah, you can save a ton of

Kelsey  54:08  

Okay, let’s see. So from Brett, Steven, I’m having success selling in one category. Any way to sell in more than one category if I could cross over to others, any way to get another honeymoon period in second category with the same acent.

Steven Pope  54:22  

So white hat tactics, I would say you could load your next item into a slightly different subcategory. Even if it’s technically a variation that would be a white hat tactic to diversify your categorization blackhat tactic dupe the same item and load it to both categories and have completely unique copy etc. The reason that’s blackhat is because it’s typically duplicating an item which is against terms and conditions, but it’s a very common practice that you see, especially in commodity based items. So if you want to sell a particular item to two different demographics, you may sell one to preppers for example, the guy like a knife You might also sell to kitchen stay at home wives. And so you would build two different listings. So that way you can market to both. So I don’t I don’t use that tactic. I’m just generally aware of it. And it answers Brad’s question here. There’s no way to get another honeymoon period in a second category. If the acent already has sales, unless you nuke the listing and started from scratch, you’d have to remove it down to bare bones, like two words, no copy, no bullets, no photos, nothing. Leave it alone for two days and then restart it. That’s how you restart a honeymoon period. But this is not a technique that is used very widely. is very, very few use cases. I might have used this technique maybe like three times ever. So very hard bar said to want to use that technique.

Kelsey 55:42  

Okay, and see, just a second. Britain and France think we did that one. Okay. from Simon for Prime Day, should we amend our titles and bullets specifically for promotions.

Steven Pope  55:57  

Generally, no. Promotional content in titles is prohibited. can also lead to listing Yanks, I don’t recommend it. bowl, it’s a little bit more gray. But I’ve also started to see Amazon signal that they don’t even want promotional comments and bullet points. I do know that there is TNC against it, I just haven’t seen them enforce it. As one example, giving a warranty guarantee statement like money back guarantee, as a very common technique to put in like your fifth bullet. That’s not against TNC. But it is something I’ve seen Amazon signal that they don’t even want that anymore. And you definitely cannot 100% cannot do any warranty guarantee promotional statement of any kind in a plus content. Or in a video ad. If you run a video ad it has to be generic. They’ll just refuse it right? Correct. They won’t even allowed to go up.

Kelsey  56:52  

And I believe this is our last question for many, three times I applied to Brand Registry and the answer after one minute and they tell you cannot find it. I send them a link and screenshot and they didn’t answer any more. What can I do more.

Steven Pope  57:05  

So the serial number, depending many on how long you followed your mark, if it was a word mark, it takes five days before it will show up in the test system. If you’re past that, and you’re having a problem with the word mark, you may want to send me a special note and I’ll see if I can investigate what the problem is. The second problem is if you had a logo mark, and it hasn’t been 30 days, it takes 30 days for a logo mark to show up in the test system for Amazon to find it. You do need to wait that long before to work. I bet you it’s one of those two things. If it’s not reach out to me at podcast at my amazon.com I’ll take a look.

Norman Ferrar  57:40  

Okay, if that’s the last question, I have one. All right, hit me. All right, this is a simple one, you’ll probably just loaded this up. But why are some reasons that people will fail on Amazon today.

Steven Pope  57:54  

They don’t optimize every attribute on their listing, that is the most common reason. So they’ll they’ll show up with their listing, they’ll have like three photos and five bullet points with no a plus content. And then they might have a couple of campaigns advertised. But they don’t have everything fully optimized. And so when somebody loads an item on Amazon, everything needs to be fully optimized head to tow without fail videos, six photos polarize photo contents, that shows exactly what they’re talking about. Thank you, Mark, I appreciate that that ad badger series with SEO that I participated in was a very great piece of content. And so having all of your SEO flux, you know, flushed out behind the scenes and on the front end of your copy not writing enough copy, putting a plus content with zero copies a huge problem. Not using a launch date, when somebody loads a listing for the first time, these are all things that are core competencies that need to be in place. And then finally, the toughest one, we didn’t talk a lot about this today. But I kind of referenced it from time to time is building a community. So if you fail to build a community, you will eventually lose to somebody that does. So in evitable. There’s a reason why all of you guys are listening to norm on his lunch with norm series. He’s built a community with you. And that community has a very high amount of value. Right? If norm said, Hey, tomorrow, I’m launching a new brand. And I’d love for you guys to participate in that and buy my item. He has hundreds of people who are going to come and do that with him just because they like his content, right? Same concept for whatever you sell on Amazon. It’s extremely important for you to consider building a community what are all of the problems that face that particular audience set solving for that content, making sure your photos address the value prop behind solving those problems, making sure that the demographic is represented in those images. I’ll get on phone all the time, even with sophisticated money suit guys from an aggregator with millions of dollars. And I’ll ask them what their target demographic is. And they’ll tell me it’s a woman between the ages of 35 and 40. And they’re showing me men on the listing in the secondary images. And I’ll be like, why are you doing that? And they don’t have an answer. So if you want to beat the competition, who has lots of money, you need to think like a marketer who knows how to profile a target demographic and go all in on it. And then also build content around that target demographic and solve for all of their needs. Become an educator in your space. If you sell yoga mats, talk about the 50 most common yoga poses, build video content, build imagery, infographics, and constantly on a daily basis grind the messaging behind that you sell precious metals and golden silver coins. I used to do that at max calm and and building out Why? Why, you know, what’s the difference between a silver stacker and numismatic seller, or somebody that buys bullion and building educational content for each one of those target demographics? I can go on and on and on about how building a community has never been more important Failure to do so you will lose to somebody that will.

Norman Ferrar  1:01:11  

Okay, and what about the community on Amazon? Are you big into post live?

Steven Pope 1:01:18  

I think it’s an up and coming sector, right. So the ability to load live videos, social posts, if you haven’t loaded a social post, it’s super easy. You can schedule those out in advance just like you can on Facebook and Instagram, just go to posts.amazon.com and start loading social posts. It’s free advertising that shows up on your competitor listings in the millions of impressions like free advertising, you’re tired of paying for your PPC, then you should be building a community in many other ways. Yep. And you’ll see that you’ll actually build fans. You do you get you build super fans, Dr. cars on the screen right now is a super fan of my Amazon guys podcast as well as yours. And you know, they just talked about social posts, I love posts. And you know, what are your take on them? Your clients use them? Yeah, absolutely. We have dozens of clients that are using these as a way to lower and reduce their advertising costs, but still acquire new customers. I can’t speak highly enough of them. Right, do we have any last questions and then we’ll get to the wheel.

Kelsey 1:02:22  

So there were some that’s not in. Okay, if you guys want to go into this. Okay, so from Argo, what would email be if you want to be if you want to sue a competitor who uses title promotional text?

Steven Pope  1:02:35  

So I don’t know what titles promotional text means is that little secondary image? Not sure. But But I would say I would say you could use the seller support system to report a violation. And then if you’re trying to sue or go into the legal standpoint, I will I will take my hat off for that one. And I would say go consult a lawyer.

Kelsey  1:02:59  

Okay. Okay. Next from Daniel, could you please share some bread and butter tips to motivate newbies my Amazon account is finally on now I need only the most important find my first product that makes them money.

Steven Pope  1:03:12  

So I’m going to take a line out of Ilan musk if you need some motivation, stop and get out now. The journey, the journey you are on. He actually said that to entrepreneurs, you need inspiration, comments. But but but Daniel, I would say you need to have your own self motivation to get through this. That’s the best word of advice I would give you. There are many challenges ahead of you. It’s absolutely worth it. Barna, but you need to have a way to get yourself out of bed every day. Because if you don’t have the stone skin, you will get you will die a death of many pricks because Amazon normals actually the guy that said this on my podcast, he said you got to pay your tax. So Daniel, be prepared to pay your tax either through money, time, blood, sweat, or tears or a third born shot, one of those probably will be needed.

Norman Ferrar  1:04:05  

Yeah. And the other thing you can do, Daniel, is you’re listening to podcasts, which are great. But do you have a mentor? do you have? Are you part of any masterminds, good masterminds? Great, these are things that can help out too. So when you do come up, you do have a problem, you do need some motivation. You know, these, these are the areas that can help you out. So I would I would suggest that you probably go and take a look at you know, a good group or a good mastermind or find a good mentor.

Kelsey  1:04:39  

Okay, and our last question from Tony. You can change your different pages, or it’s a comment. You can change your different page titles on the Amazon storefront like Mother’s Day sales cetera. Oh, and clarification from Argos comments.

Steven Pope  1:04:55  

Real quick. I would say using your brand store to be promotional is a great idea, Amazon made it so you can program and scheduling multiple versions of your brand store. I don’t know what the impact of it will be. Maybe it will be a good one. Maybe it’ll be soft. I don’t know. But it’s a new technique that came out last Christmas.

Kelsey 1:05:12  

Great. And clarification on this one. Argo is meant it’s 2021 upgraded on titles.

Steven Pope 1:05:23  

I’m really not sure on this one. I’m sure there are many ideas. Sorry, article, I’m still a little bit confused. So let me see this. Again, if I can read it, maybe maybe it’s about the title limit, like certain categories have limited the number of characters and they have lots more characters. Maybe that’s that. So competitor who uses tile promotional text, I just never heard the phrase tiles. I think he means title, title. Oh, okay. So using promo text in the title. Yeah, you don’t use sue them, just just report them just just just file a typical report violation and say, Hey, this is against TNC. Here’s a quote to the policy, please, you know, please review it.

Norman Ferrar  1:06:06  

Yeah, that’s just, you know, what, I’ve just kind of got this karma rule. I don’t report anybody. Like, you know, some people report some people and that’s fine. Like a lot of people can. But if I’ve got these, these competitors that are on my butt all the time, I just find a way that I can, usually by having a better solution or a better listing, I’ll beat them out. But I just find that if I start reporting people, I just don’t have this feel good about myself. You know, it’s just I don’t know, there’s got to be other ways.

Steven Pope 1:06:42  

I think, I think what normas saying right now is extremely respectful. Right? Like, I don’t know if I don’t know if you’ve read the book, power versus force. No. Destiny wish on, referred it my way, a couple months back. I love that book. And so, norm is attracting people through power instead of forest right there with that comment, right? The ability to lead through passion and building people up versus retraction and taking people down through force is the is the pretty much the the summary of that book. I think you’d love it more. You know, you’re you’re you’re somebody who follows the book without even reading it.

Norman Ferrar  1:07:19  

Oh, well, I will check that out. Alright, so let’s get to now you got to see this even this is the first time that we’ll have Kelsey.

Steven Pope  1:07:28  

All right. I don’t know I like we love Kelsey. Better, but

Kelsey  1:07:32  

Well, I only had a song for we’ll have Kelsey. So here we go. All right. It’s everyone’s favorite time that we’ll have Kathy. I’m going to go shuffle the names. And here we go. So 321

Steven Pope  1:08:04  

suspense, drumroll. Here we go. Got it. Okay. I can’t be so small on my screen. Oh, well, congratulations, mulu. You have a new my Amazon guy t shirt ready for you, Kelsey, we’ll send you the link to get that ordered. So thanks for being a fan and watching today.

Norman Ferrar  1:08:26  

All right, and remember that we have a link here that you can get the stage it stage. It’s phase one, phase one SEO, SEO policy. So anyways, let’s I think that’s about it. Steven? Yeah, it was a tough start. You’re almost going to be talking to Kelsey the whole time.

Steven Pope  1:08:47  

I told Kelsey, let’s go without norm. Who needs that guy?

Norman Ferrar  1:08:49  

I almost I almost put that into Skype from my other computer because I could not get on kills. You’re gonna be the host one of these days.

Steven Pope  1:08:56  

Well, normally, I’m glad I’m glad you made it. It was a pleasure being on and to norms audience, I have massive amounts of respect for norm norm is absolutely one of the good guys and the beer guy in the space. And so none of you need me to say that. You all know it already. But my hat goes off to you half tip to norm the beer gay. Thank

Norman Ferrar  1:09:17  

you and right back at you, Steven. Alright, well, thank you so much. Steven, how can people get ahold of you?

Steven Pope  1:09:24  

So follow our podcasts youtube.com slash my Amazon guy. And if you feel inclined to check us out at my Amazon guy.com

Norman Ferrar  1:09:33  

fantastic. Alright, everybody. Thank you for listening in today. It was a rocky start, but we pulled it off. Kelsey, who do we have coming on?

Kelsey  1:09:44  

Okay, so let me see Monday. Oh, yes, we are Wednesday. Sorry. We have Paul Baron, and he’s going to be on talking about brand ambassadors. So yeah, it’s gonna be a good talk. We also have Shane aglow on this Friday too, as well. Talking about editorial recommendations. So Alright, so

Norman Ferrar 1:10:03  

you know, Paul with with what Stephen was just talking about building communities. I think it’s important because Paul is going to be filling that in with this brand ambassador, a brand ambassadors are fantastic if you can find them. So he’s going to show us how to find them. And yeah, she Shane’s always interesting. So he and I are partners over at PR reach, and he’s going to be talking about the advantages of getting the editorial recommendations. Alright, everybody, so read, please remember, I’m going to do Yep. So you knew that you were doing something wrong, right? to smash those like buttons. And to ring those bells subscribe at our YouTube channel. And reach out and and join the group if you like what you’ve been hearing.

Kelsey 1:10:48  

Yeah, join the group. Oh, I’m gonna interrupt you here. So join our group, we have our special contest for consultation with me and norm, both in our consultation. Go over to the group. It’s pinned to the top of the board it’s in the announcements. It’s tells you exactly how to enter. Basically breaking it down bare bones you easiest way to enter share a video of your favorite lunch or dinner episode. Use the hashtag LW n beer nation and take the lunch with Darren podcast and you’ll be entered. So that’s the easiest way so go over there. And yeah, we look forward to

Norman Ferrar  1:11:27  

antastic Alright, so join us every Monday, Wednesday and Friday noon Eastern Standard Time. And thank you for watching. Thanks for being part of our community and enjoy the rest of your day.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai