#108: Amazon Expert Talking Shop

w/ Kevin King

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About This Episode

Amazon expert Kevin King is back for our monthly “Talking Shop” episode! We will talk about the current affairs of Amazon and a whole bunch of tricks and tips for Amazon FBA sellers. But best of all, we open up the floors to have your questions answered! Kevin is a monthly recurring guest and helps answer any Amazon questions our audience may have. Kevin King has been involved in internet marketing and e-commerce since 1995. It’s been 30+ years since he last received a paycheck from someone else. He’s traveled to all 7 continents and 90 countries. He was named one of the Top 40 Direct Marketers by Target Marketing magazine, has been featured on Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous and Entertainment Tonight national TV shows as well as the front pages of prestigious newspapers like USA Today and The Wall Street Journal.

About The Guests

Kevin King has been involved in internet marketing and e-commerce since 1995. It’s been 30+ years since he last received a paycheck from someone else. He’s traveled to all 7 continents and 90 countries. He was named one of the Top 40 Direct Marketers by Target Marketing magazine, has been featured on Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous and Entertainment Tonight national TV shows as well as the front pages of prestigious newspapers like USA Today and The Wall Street Journal.
 
He sells millions of dollars of product on Amazon.com. He has been a recurring guest on over 30 FBA and e-commerce podcasts and is a highly-sought-after speaker at Amazon conferences worldwide (spoke at more than 30). He also mentors sellers collectively doing over half a billion US dollars per year on Amazon.com in the Freedom Ticket and Helium 10 Elite Masterminds. He also organizes the Billion Dollar Seller Summit.

Episode: 108

Title: Norman Farrar Introduces Kevin King, the King of Amazon,  an Amazon expert, Co- Founder of Freedom Ticket and an Entrepreneur.

Subtitle: “Business All Comes Down To Two Things: Marketing And Innovation.”

Final Show Link: https://lunchwithnorm.com/episode-108-amazon-expert-kevin-king-talks-shop-february-2021/

 

In this episode of Lunch With Norm…, Norman Farrar introduces Kevin King, the King of Amazon,  an Amazon expert, Co- Founder of Freedom Ticket and an Entrepreneur.

 

Kevin King has been involved in internet marketing and e-commerce since 1995 and now, he’s back for his monthly “Talking Shop” episode. He will answer any Amazon questions the audience may have.

 

If you are a new listener to Lunch With Norm… we would love to hear from you. Please visit our Facebook Page and join in on episode discussion or simply let us know what you think of the episode!

 

In this episode, we discuss:

  • 6:09 : Kevin’s Background
  • 9:05 : Amazon 200 Storage Limit and Insurance
  • 11:07 : Two Types Of Insurance
  • 17:52 : Outsourcing and Having Partners In Managing A Business
  • 21:37 : Perceived Value
  • 33:32 : Getting The Most Out Of Packaging
  • 37:45 : Factors That Weigh Higher on Amazon Algorithm
  • 42:03 : Has The Amazon Algorithm Changed?
  • 45:37 : Getting Ahead With Competitors Through Imagery
  • 50:27 : Crushing Competitors Through Branding
  • 56:32 : Ranking Methods
  • 58:51 : Amazon Editorial Recommendations
  • 1:05:36 : Ideal FBA Inventory Level 
  • 1:08:59 : B2B Transactions
  • 1:11:47 : Sweet Spot for Keywords
  • 1:21:57 : Wheel of Kelsey

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Norman  0:02  

Hey everybody, it’s Norman Farrar, a.k.a The Beard Guy here and welcome to another Lunch with Norm, The Rise of the Micro Brands.

 

Norman  0:19  

All right, welcome to the show today. We have my buddy Kevin King coming back on. He’s going to be joining us in just about a minute and we’ll be diving right into it. So we’re going to be talking a little bit of anything Amazon, we’ll be talking also a little bit about brands. I just had an idea just as I came off onto the podcast. So I had to go up and grab some really cool brand related things that just came and anyways, before we get into it, Kelsey, where are you?

 

Kelsey 0:53  

I’m here? 

 

Norman 0:54

Hello, Kelsey.

 

Kelsey 0:55  

Hello. How are you?

 

Norman  0:56  

Is it sunny in Toronto today?

 

Kelsey 0:58  

I haven’t looked outside today. To be honest, I’ve been in my room working away. 

 

Norman 1:07

That sounds like a beach boy song. Alright, so welcome everybody. Load up your questions. This is gonna be a good one. I’m not sure exactly how long Kevin has today and we will be doing a special giveaway for the chocolates, right?

 

Kelsey 1:22  

That’s right. So we have a great sponsor, Brit Treats, I highly recommend you check them out. But I put the links in the bio but if you use #the king, you’ll be entered into the draw to win. I believe it’s a 10 of Cadbury heroes chocolate, it’s like even your crumbs.

 

Norman  1:41  

If you want to check out a really cool brand, check it out. Allen’s a great friend of the show. We don’t have an affiliate. We don’t do anything like that. But he has done an amazing job on branding his product that we were lucky enough to get a box a couple of weeks back, and just the way that he’s packaged everything. It’s everything that we preach. So anyways, next. What do you got to do Kels?

 

Kelsey 2:10  

Okay, so just to remind everyone, that’s US only. Yep, sorry guys. Yep, sorry. Sorry, everyone.

 

Norman  2:17  

By the way, we’re just waiting for Kev to come on. I know that he was a little bit delayed. But if you do have the questions, just put them into the podcast. If you have any specific questions for myself or Kelsey, happy to talk to you about them.

 

Kelsey 2:34  

Of course, you can join our Facebook group Lunch with Norm Amazon FBA and eCommerce Collective. That’s where everything is. So head over there. That’s where you can talk to me and Norm. You can just be part of the community, ask questions. I’m trying to get some TV recommendations at the moment right now from the group. But yeah, it’s a great place to be if you want to check out highlights. Any daily clips, you can go over to the YouTube page as Norman Farrar and let me see. 

 

Norman  3:10  

I see Daniels here from Brazil and we got Simon from sunny England.

 

Kelsey 3:16  

Yeah. Awesome, guys. So really excited about this episode. Share it, like it. Get the word out. It’s great for any Amazon seller, even eCommerce sellers. So hope you guys enjoy it.

 

Norman  3:29  

Yeah, don’t forget # the king and you’ll be entered in for the box of chocolates, tag two people and you’ll get an extra entry. Okay, now, Kelsey is Kevin back yet?

 

Kelsey 3:48  

Kevin, give me a thumbs up. Yeah, he is good to go.

 

Norman  3:51  

Alright, so here we go. I gotta do Kelsey’s job for him. But don’t forget guys to smash those like buttons, subscribe, follow, do everything that Kelsey was supposed to say and forgot to do again. Maybe it’s just because it’s Friday. Maybe it’s because it’s sunny. Maybe because he’s got no windows. I don’t know why, but he just didn’t do it and if you have any comments, throw them over in the comment section and we will get to your question. So sit back, relax, grab a cup of coffee and enjoy the show and maybe we don’t have Kevin quite yet. Oh there he is.

 

Norman  4:31  

How are you sir?

 

Kevin 4:32  

Good. How are you man?

 

Norman  4:33  

Good. You do notice that during our show, I have to change the little mascot from Norm the Gnome to Kevin. Ah, yeah, this is my cigar buddy. I can’t meet you in person. Yeah, so this is formerly Kevin the dog.

 

Kevin 4:52  

Awesome. I love it.

 

Norman  4:54  

How are you sir?

 

Kevin 4:55  

Well get me in person though. One not too much. Not too much longer. Maybe later this year.

 

Norman  5:00  

I hope. Man, I really really do miss having our cigars and everybody that joins us for the cigars.

 

Kevin 5:08  

I know that’s a good time. Remember that one time that the Billion Dollar Seller Summit? There’s like 20 of us sitting up on that porch. Just people had never smoked a cigar. We’re trying them and if you’ve never done it, don’t use a good one. Yeah.

 

Norman  5:23  

I got and I told you the secret that Ron McDonald, the nephew of the McDonald’s, right, the big McDonald’s chains. He taught me this. He goes into cigar places and people crowd around him because of who he is and he has his labelled cigars in his pocket. He has his unlabeled no name cigars in this pocket. He’ll talk to you for a bit, if you’re a cigar smoker. He goes into this one if not, he goes into this one. But Oh man, we have a lot of fun at these events, and watching people turn green when they’re smoking cigars for the first time. Okay, so in case somebody doesn’t know you, can you just give us a little bit of background about yourself?

 

Kevin 6:09  

Sure, yeah. My name is Kevin King and I’ve sold a few things. I’ve never worked a corporate job. I’m in my early 50s. Last time I worked a job when I was 17 delivering pizzas. So, and the only other job I’ve ever had is at a McDonald’s actually, like a month at a deli I guess. But that’s it. So I’ve been an entrepreneur my entire life. I’ve been selling eCommerce since before Google existed. I’ve been doing Amazon since 2001. Started FBA in 2015. Run either run or I’m partners in about eight different businesses. Five of those are eCommerce brands, some on Amazon, some off Amazon. I do training in partnership with Helium 10 software, I do their training for new people called the Freedom Ticket and I do the advanced training called Helium 10 Elites. I also host my own events called the Billion Dollar Seller Summit. I’m partners with Steve Simonson in a company called Product Savants and a bunch of other stuff so yeah, I sell a few things.

 

Norman  7:17  

A few things. You’re a little busy.

 

Kevin 7:21  

A little busy. Yeah.

 

Norman  7:22  

I just looked at Victor’s comment about buying a giant souvenir cigar and smoking it and puking. I’m just gonna go down a whole different other topic for a second. Cigar smoking is really stupid. Because the first three, four or five times you smoke cigars, you puke. You keep going back for more. It’s kind of like Amazon sellers. Right? You get kicked in the legs 12345 times and you keep going back. 

 

Kevin 7:57  

The first time I smoked though, I didn’t puke. Actually the first time I tried a cigar I was actually in Cuba. I never smoked my whole life. I tried cigarettes when I was like 13 years old. I snuck one on my aunt’s great aunts purse or something and I was like, I hate this. Yeah, never did it again. I never smoked drugs or anything at all and then I was actually in Cuba in like 2008 and like, you’re in Cuba, you get to smoke a cigar. So I actually tried it for the first time there and my second cigar was actually when I was in the Dominican Republic. So two of the best places for cigars is where actually what popped my cherry on a cigar and now, every time I see Norm, it’s the tradition to find cigar places every night.

 

Norman  8:48  

Okay, so sir, what is happening on Amazon that people got to know about?

 

Kevin 8:59  

Yeah, man, Amazon’s just what’s happening on Amazon?

 

Norman  9:02  

Yeah, is there anything new? Good, bad, ugly. 

 

Kevin 9:05  

The biggest thing that people are waiting on the answer right now is this 200 limits. I think there’s a Amazon backa last summer, I think it was in July actually put a limit of 200 units for any new product that you ship in whether you’re an experienced seller or a new seller and there’s a lot of rumors and scuttlebutt that that’s about to change and get raised up to maybe 1000 or perhaps more. So that’s a waiting for the official word to come down and I think that’s probably the biggest thing people are on pins and needles for and also I’m seeing on Amazon, they’re really starting to crack down on the insurance requirements. I received a notice that I need to submit my insurance documents which we have but probably 99% of sellers don’t have it. But I have it and we sent that in but our policy expires in May because we got it last May, early May last year, and actually Amazon kicked it back saying sorry, this is unacceptable, it has to be good for at least 180 days. So, anybody that has a policy out there right now that if it’s due for expiration, you may have an issue, you’re gonna have to try to renew it early, or you’re gonna have to find a workaround to actually get that otherwise, Amazon is threatening to close down your account. 

 

Norman  10:28  

Do you know Michelle Love?

 

Kevin 10:31  

I don’t.

 

Norman  10:32  

So she’s a dedicated eCommerce insurance person. I met her at Prosper years ago and anyway, she’s going to be on the podcast in about two weeks talking exactly about this, the different types of insurance because what type of insurance do I need? How much should I get? I know what the minimum is that Amazon is looking for. But if you buy it for Amazon, and let’s say Chewy wants it, Chewy requires double the amount that Amazon does. So anyway, she’s gonna go through all that, but it’s out there. Now, I knew it was gonna happen. But you have 30 days to comply once you receive the letter and like you said, if you don’t have enough time, that 180 days, they’ll just decline it.

 

Kevin 11:17  

Yeah, I do it. I mean, like you said, Amazon, I think is a million. Is that right? Others are 2 million. So I always do mine for 2 million. It’s only like 20, I think in my case, there was very little difference in price, 20 bucks, 50 bucks, something like that. Now, there are two types of insurance, I just want to clarify for people. So there’s general liability and this is not something you can call your local state farm person and usually get, this is not part of your homeowner’s policy or something like that. This is a special type of insurance called general liability and general liability, generally, it’s not going to cover you if someone uses your, if you got an exercise product, and someone’s working out with your product, and they break their back and so you your that this insurance is not going to cover you, this insurance is going to cover you for general liability. It’s like product safety, handling type of issue. So if a UPS driver slips on the ice, and with your box in his hand, and it hits his head, and he sues, it’ll cover you for something like that, or something happens in the warehouse at Amazon, or on the way or if you’re in a truck with other stuff and something explodes in the truck, or it’s a FedEx truck, and it skids off the road and that type of damages stuff. But the other type is product liability and product liability is a completely different thing and Amazon at least right now is not asking for product liability. Product liability is substantially more expensive and it’s based on how much, what you sell, where you sell it and how much you sell and it gets adjusted every year, your general liability pretty much stays the same unless there’s been a claim. That’s usually in the five to 600 US dollar range generally. Product liability can be into the 1000s or 10s of 1000s of dollars and that’s what covers you if  someone actually uses your product and gets injured or dies or whatever.

 

Norman  13:10  

Right and one of the things I know Michelle is going to cover also is insurance internationally. So if you’re coming in from Canada, we get that question all the time, about how do we cover ourselves? So she’s got some people that she works with, that she will provide information for. But that’s timely, it’s really timely. People of Amazon sellers have gotta take that as another step, which we didn’t have to do in 2013 or 14?

 

Kevin 13:39  

Well, the rules have always been there.

 

Norman  13:41  

It’s always been there. You’re right.

 

Kevin 13:42  

But the rule is three months in a row of $10,000 or more in sales. So I don’t know if it’s, have you seen it? Are they enforcing that rule? It’s three out of 10,001, three months in a row? Or is it just everybody across the board now?

 

Norman  13:55  

What I understood was it was the non pro Amazon accounts that were getting hit first. Now I’m starting to hear pro sellers getting the email now and I think it was just to roll it out to see how they were going to handle it. But yeah, technically you were supposed to have it in place at all times. But I can go and talk to probably 60 or 70% of Amazon sellers white label sellers that don’t have insurance. Yeah. Which is scary. Yeah, you need insurance.

 

Kevin 14:30  

Yeah, you do. I mean, insurance is that thing that you pay for for 10 years. You never use it, man, why am I just pissing this money away and then that 11th year is when it all comes in and you’re like, Thank God I have that. Thank God I was paying that.

 

Norman  14:44  

Yeah, absolutely. All right. So what else is out there, Kevin?

 

Kevin 14:49  

What else is out there? On the Amazon front? 

 

Norman  14:55  

Anything. Oh,you know what? We talked about brands a lot of the time right? So the other day, Kelsey was here and this product came in, I ordered this product and this is timely. So I ordered this shampoo for my beard, I don’t have hair. Yeah and it came in and the reason why this is so great, it was the most incredible shampoo that I’ve ever got and so the reason I say that it was cognac, and Cuban cigars, and it smelt incredible. It’s the best smelling thing like it was really the best. So anyways, it was that good. It packaged so well, that I reached out to the company. I’ve never done this in my life and I said, I want to represent your company. I will be your marketing arm and they turned me down. Because they said that they’re just a very small company and I went, Oh my God and then what do I do? I go to their website, I buy their beard oil, I buy their shaving crap that they have. But it all smells absolutely incredible. Then I go out, I said, Well, this is incredible. I got to get their Nautilus. I got to get their sandalwood. I bought hundreds of dollars of their product and it’s this just a small little company out of Quebec, but they sell in the US. But talk about perceived value. The name, I’m not going to mean it’s I just wanted to talk about the reasons why. But the way that it came in, it was highly perceived, it was double the price of anything else and I wasn’t going with a bottom dweller. Probably the ingredients are the same as everybody else. So they probably doubled their profit and they picked a brand that they could be consistent on and go wide on. So they have all sorts of beard products, they have all sorts of it was actually a beard shampoo. So which could easily have been put onto hair and conditioner, but I just really liked the product and so imagine this, you like it so much. You reach out to them and say, you know what, I think I can make this thing explode and they go and I really I don’t want that.

 

Kevin 17:18  

They don’t know who they’re talking to.

 

Norman  17:21  

Or they probably did. That was the problem.

 

Kevin 17:27  

I’m the Lunch with Norm guy.

 

Norman  17:28  

Oh man, you suck.

 

Kevin 17:32  

But how would you represent them? You’re already involved in 177 businesses. We have so many things going on. So every time I’m turning around and Norm’s like yeah, that’s my partner in that business. That’s my partner. Oh, yeah, we just started this business. I don’t know how you, I got eight and I can barely keep up. I don’t know how you’re doing so many.

 

Norman  17:52  

I get great people and you know Shane. Shane, Afolabi. I mean, what I try to do is get people and this is important. Like even for any Amazon seller, eCommerce seller, people starting in business is you have your strengths. I know what my strengths are, Kevin, you know what your strengths are, and all the crap that I’m not good at. Or if I see somebody who can run a business like Shane, I let him do it. He’s got full rein, he’s got the rope to hang himself. So I hope he doesn’t hear that. But you know what, let’s go talk a little bit about VAs. I know you, I’ve known you for years and I know for a fact that you ran a multi billion or million dollar enterprise with no VAs. None, you did it all yourself. But, you’re organized.

 

Kevin 18:52  

I’m organized but also work smart like you said, I partner with people, it’s like a guy do the training stuff for Helium 10 so I could have gone out and created my own course got out done all my own Facebook ads and done my own all that and and kept all the money other than my costs, but at the end of the day, you take a look at you’re going to be paying affiliate commissions for this, you’re going to be paying for software’s tools, you’re gonna be paying for VAs to answer customer service, to deal with password issues. If I partner with Helium 10, we have a good partnership that makes sense for both of us, that takes that entire burden off of me. So all I gotta do is show up and do my thing and I don’t have to worry about any of the little details or setting up to go to webinars or any of the marketing or any of that. At the end of the day, I probably make as much or if not more money and so that’s how I look at it. Just like what you said is try to work smarter, not harder. But it’s still, it keeps you busy and bouncing because I have to do it. Sometimes we’re alright, these three days are focused on this business and the other ones just get a little bit of time and then have to switch it to the next one. So I have to rotate them around like right now my huge, big focus is a Billion Dollar Seller Summit, because that’s a virtual one the next live ones in September, which hopefully, you’ll be able to travel by then and we’ll be able to have a cigar together. But there’s a virtual one next week and that’s taking some of my time and because I do the marketing for that, which is not a whole lot, but I have to hire somebody. Mark helps me, he’s setting up all the software and everything in the backend right now. He’s working around the clock right now, getting that ready for next week and then he hired some people to help and I know, it’s in good hands, just like you did. You work with good people and you don’t have to worry about it. So that’s, but still it takes time and energy and creative thoughts and everything and at the same time three of my Amazon business like, Hey, what about this? Or what about this? Or what if we expand this? So it’s a constant juggle around and but with the way I manage is I compartmentalize and focus and say, Okay, today is this business, and tomorrow, we’ll deal with the other bits that way. I’m not trying to do a little bit of each one of them every day or not, they don’t get the full focus that they deserve. Does that make sense?

 

Norman  21:16  

Yeah, it does. Yeah. Let’s talk a little bit, I saw that people were talking a little bit about the perceived value and we’ve talked about it a lot. But the importance for Amazon or eCom sellers, to be able to optimize your listing with perceived value, can you give him a little bit, a few tips on that?

 

Kevin 21:37  

Sure. Yeah, the perceived value, I mean, business really comes down to two things all business doesn’t matter what you’re, whether it’s Amazon or any other business, it’s marketing and innovation, those are the two most important things in any business and innovation doesn’t mean coming up with the something brand new doesn’t mean you got to come up with a new iPhone that never existed before innovation can be improving a way something is done or improving an existing product or a different approach to it and then the marketing is people eat with their eyes first and perceive value is everything, what someone thinks it’s worth is what it’s worth, not what you think it’s worth and so you got to convince other people that this is worth, it’s gonna solve their problem, or it’s gonna give them the status that they want or appeal to one of those eight emotional needs and all humans have that is going to resonate with them and so that’s part of perceived value, and so on Amazon, especially, you can’t touch the product, you can’t feel it, you can’t really see it sitting in a nice box on a shelf. So the perceived value on Amazon typically is imagery, imagery and video. The text is there for the people that read it, but text is there mostly for the search engine to know how to index you and how to show you. I still, some people will disagree with me on this and the copywriters listening to this will say, Kevin’s full of it, people always read everything I write, and that’s the I can lift the conversion right. But I still don’t believe people read listings on Amazon. I think they skim them and they might read it if they’re really trying to make a decision or if it’s technical or something. I think a small percentage of people probably do read every word. But I would venture to say 70 to 80% of the buyers on Amazon never read the copy. I personally hardly ever read it and I don’t know anybody. Really, that actually truly reads it, they look at it, they skim it, and they look at the pictures and so the pictures of the perceived value and so how you convey your product, and that imagery is crucial and a lot of people just don’t get that. They just flat out don’t understand how important that is and we’ve talked about in the past my bully stick thing, and that’s where I sold three bully sticks for 50 bucks instead of everybody else selling 30 for $30 and it’s all perceived value in marketing and the marketing goes beyond just what’s on Amazon and it’s when they get the package too. When that package shows up and that Amazon boxes in mail and when they open it up, does it look like it’s in some cheap cardboard box from China that it’s that thin cardboard that smells and whatever else or is it a nice iPhone type of case or something that’s all perceived value too. A lot of people just the way even Apple puts the iPhone in there with little plastic on it you got to lift off, that’s perceived value. With the little lift tabs for your fingers, sometimes you get something you got to peel the plastic off you got up my man I don’t have any nails and you get your wife or something that pulled a little plastic off the edge. Now they don’t do that, they have a little easy lift off thing that’s all marketing perceived value stuff and people just overlook that or they’re not willing to spend the money, the extra five cents or whatever to do that and it baffles me sometimes people just try to cut too many corners and they don’t understand the perceived value. I mean, yeah, it’s crazy. 

 

Norman  24:59  

If I take a look at perceived value, it’s probably the least expensive thing that you have to do to increase your profit. By putting that little lifter in, by putting a transparent seal a half a penny, just to make it look secure. It’s psychological. Like if you’re buying supplements, the way that it comes packaged, is it sealed or is it double sealed, all takes pennies and then of course, the packaging, the packaging, and I’ve seen this in case studies that we’ve done, where it’s almost the exact same. Sometimes, in one case it is cheaper to go to a different type of packaging, and yet get a lot more like 9.99 to 24.99. Oh, yeah and it was nothing, it was the same amount of money. So, yeah, and also that this comes back to people who are doing your design work. So I don’t want to spend $500 on a logo, I want to spend $5 on a logo, well, then you’ll get what you pay for product design. I see a couple people here, where are you Jeffrey, Jeffrey Anderson. I was talking to him the other day. This guy puts thought into what he’s doing. When I first met you, you were talking about, it wasn’t the bully sticks. It was a product that you designed for an iPhone and you put thought into it and it was incredible. Because I looked at it, I went Wow, this guy really came up with an unique idea for your iPhone, you had the charger, you had a bunch of different things in it. So I could see how if somebody came to the listing, and he also had phenomenal for everything that you did, you did phenomenal photos, and you spent a lot of money on your photos, didn’t you? So we’re not talking about $25 of a session. I think they were what 1200 or more for your shots?

 

Kevin 27:11  

I spent about $5,000 per product on product product imagery and I would group them together so we would shoot three or four different products in over a course of a couple days. But yeah, is around $5,000 per product and lifestyle photos, the actual stuff on the white background. All that Yeah, I would spend the money but it’s not always though, I just want to make a point here about slick marketing. I mean, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig. So you have to have the fundamental product behind it as well and I mean a good case in point is like my Billion Dollar Seller Summit and that’s you’ve been to the live event. People love the live event that we do and because we do it differently it’s not your normal type of summit, an event the way we organize that we had the day in the middle. It’s all fun that we’re going out to the vineyards and drinking wine together. We’re going shooting guns, throwing axes, eating barbecue.

 

Norman  28:15  

Lots of barbecue. Oh, by the way, just a sec. Come over here. Oh, look who’s here Kev.

 

Norman  28:23  

Hey, how are you doing? 

 

Connie 28:25

Hi, Kevin. I just get dragged in here sometimes but nice to see you.

 

Norman  28:32  

We’re promising that we’re going to get together with him as soon as the border lifts, right? I’m counting on you to say yes. 

 

Kevin 28:42  

Norm, you need to do this more often. You’re gonna get more viewers when you bring her in.

 

Norman 28:48

With my ugly mug, right?

 

Norman  28:55  

So where were we?

 

Kevin 28:58  

I was, we’re talking about beauty. So I was talking about the Billion Dollar Seller Summit. But if you take a look at it, I’ve seen it’s not always you can put lipstick on a pig, but still a pig. So it’s not always about, it’s not always about the best packaging, or the slickest graphics or the most beautiful design. Because if you look at my Billion Dollar Seller Summit that I’m doing next week, the virtual one, if you go to the website, it’s a basic 1990s HTML page. It’s not as slick, you go to most of these little online summits and things and it’s a slick page. It’s not a slick page because it’s all about the content to me. So when the people they’re buying it for a different reason, they’re not buying it because of slick content. They’re buying it because of the information and if you look at the way I’m marketing it, I didn’t even announce who’s speaking at it. You don’t even know who’s speaking. I think you might be coming on Norm. I think you bought a ticket, but you don’t even know who’s speaking at it and nobody knows who’s speaking at it and people are asking like it doesn’t matter who’s speaking, what matters is the content. So I’m actually marketing it, saying, here’s a little snippet from every speaker, this is what they’re going to talk about a few couple sentences and that’s what selling it, that’s what people want. So you got to know your audience and know what they want. So it’s not always about making the fanciest, it’s about actually knowing the audience and zeroed in on that and that’s a good case study there for people and I think that Danny, actually talked about that on Seller Sessions last, because he’s always giving me a hard time, Kevin, you sell a $5,000 event, that’s not what the virtual one cost, it’s much cheaper than that. But the live one is about five grants that you sell that with a PDF, and you go to your website, it’s a simple PDF, and you can’t even buy online, you got to print it out, fill it out, put in your credit card number and fax it or email it or, message it in and that’s knowing the value of the market people, someone that goes to those extra steps, they really want to be there. There’s not someone’s just like, okay, I want to go and, and half assed, that’s someone like I want to we want to be there. So that increases the quality of the crowd, increases the quality of the speakers, you just got to know how to pull all those little triggers. It’s all in the details. A lot of people don’t quite understand that.

 

Norman  31:16  

Yeah, so it’s interesting. So you and this isn’t, Kevin’s got a great event is not a plug it is, and I’m not getting anything for talking about BDS, but I want to talk about how it pertains to Amazon products. So just imagine this, you’ve got a product that is packaged okay, is packaged nicely, right? The tip here is to make sure at least you’re equal or better than your competitors. So Brady bunch, take the images, go to Pickfu, or go to Usability hub, make sure you’re at least there with the quality, but what you’re taught, like the other day, I reached out, and I said, Hey I got some friends. Can you give me a code that they can get a discount, even for here and you said Norm, I can’t do it. The thing is selling, it’s selling out and I’m going, how are you doing this, like you were telling me this HTML code and that’s exactly the same as that box for toe wart remover that went from 9.99 to 24.99 years ago, and people will pay for it, they’ll pay for it all day long. They’ll pay for the knife that started at 49 is now $225. Because the perceived value is there.

 

Kevin 32:45  

Aren’t you doing that? Did I not hear you on something recently, where you’re doing like three the same product at three different price points just changing, slightly changing the packaging are basically the same thing but you’re doing some sort of tests.

 

Norman  32:57  

Yeah, so Tim Jordan, and I and Afolabi are going and we’re taking three products and we’re gonna be using this as an over the shoulder. Everybody listening to Lunch with Norm, we’re going to show you what’s happening with it. But we’re taking the exact same formula, the exact same scent, one that just has, like the, just the jar, the other one that has a nice looking package with a jar in it and a little mail message and insert.

 

Kevin 33:27  

Same product inside?

 

Norman  33:28  

Same product

 

Kevin 33:30  

Same modern with a smell, basically.

 

Norman  33:32  

Yep and then the one that’s out of this world, one will be very low end, it’ll be 30-40 bucks. The next one will be under 100. The next one’s 225 and the reason why we’re doing it is like people are saying Oh, like a lot of people have already heard me talk about these other ones. But hey, look, this is real. This is happening. This is a 19 or 2017. This is 2021. We’re using these exact ways of doing this like, just over the shoulder, this is what we’re doing and we’ve created what we call it the million dollar challenge that will take that product and will bring it to a million dollars in 12 months and so people are going to hold us accountable but we’re also going to show profitability. So that’s what I want to show people it’s not impossible, we don’t even know what we’re going to sell right now. We have no idea and once we get this going, we’ll keep everybody  up to date but I do want to say this and there’s a lot of people on here that have heard me talk about this product before but back a year before we launched, it was a knife, it was a kitchen utensil and it launched that 49 bucks 49.99 and it was a nightmare. It came on December 13. So we already missed the holiday season. But it was priced to sell. We did rebates. We got it up to about 60, some odd 1000 in sales. We took the package, we repackaged it because it was just in a clamshell, we repackaged, brought it up slowly from 49 to 99 to 124. It stayed firm at 124. We’ve played around with 99 to 124. Went back, increased the packaging of wood packaging, which is phenomenal. It’s really incredible. Same knife, place it in there. It is now 224. Two different ASINs. Same cost $16, $224 and what is it? It’s packaging.

 

Kevin 35:49  

Yep. It’s perceived value is what it is. Yeah. perceived value and packaging is part of that perceived value.

 

Norman  35:57  

Right and brand.

 

Kevin 35:58  

So, brand too. Yeah.

 

Norman  36:01  

Yeah. So Kelsey, I’m sure we have a few questions here. Why don’t we get to them?

 

Kelsey 36:06  

Yeah, for sure. I also just want to mention our contest giveaway today, too. So that is #the king for your box of Cadbury.

 

Kevin 36:19  

Yeah, Cadbury chocolates are on the line. These are courtesy of our sponsor Brit Treats. You can check out the website. They’re posted again later in the show. But yeah, let’s get to the questions.

 

Norman  36:31  

He does an awesome job in branding.

 

Kevin 36:33  

Yeah, like the Brit Treats.

 

Norman  36:34  

Yep, very good.

 

Kelsey 36:38  

Yeah. Let’s see, Dr Koz, I noticed when I load up on inventory in FBA, I see more and more incremental sales. Does Amazon AI give preference to SKUs that have higher inventory levels?

 

Kevin 36:52  

Yeah, your inventory level is a factor in ranking. It’s not like the top factor. But it’s down the list a little bit. There’s about I think one of the Chinese hackers guys like at, like a year ago published, he gets some sort of inside information, like, here’s a 225 whatever the number was things that Amazon considers and rank and one of those was inventory level. Yeah, it’s probably done. Round number 10 or below, but it is a factor. So yeah, so that doesn’t surprise me, that you’re saying that.

 

Norman  37:32  

Well, let’s talk about that. What are some of the main factors you rank that are around the bottom 10. What are some of the top factors that weigh higher through the algorithm?

 

Kevin 37:45  

Add to carts, purchase intent is actually add to carts are actually higher than sales actually. This is according, this is not from me, this is from these guys that were able to get some inside information on the algorithm. But, we actually someone from the Billion Dollar Seller Summit share that. I don’t know if you remember, there’s like the top 10 things that that’s considered but add to carts were higher than sales were like, only like, was it like 15 or 20% of it? Add to carts was the biggest one and that’s why people used to game the system. Remember the day when before Amazon got sophisticated. You could do Add to Wishlist, Add To Cart you could have these guys in Pakistan or India that would sit there all night long and add to cart and you’d rank overnight to number one. But Amazon fixed that problem. It’s still part of the algorithm, but they know how to detect all that stuff now and so that’s important. Conversion rates are important. Sales are important, outside traffic advertising, if whether you’re running PPC or not has a factor. What else? I’d have to pull up that list, those are some of the top ones right there.

 

Norman  39:05  

All right, very good. Next Kels.

 

Kelsey 39:08  

This is from Radd. I sent 18 units four weeks ago, it states only 11 units that are available. Someone in the Amazon community mentioned that they’re checking with FCC and FTC. Is it true?

 

Kevin 39:19  

No, I think you get some, if you sent 18 units and 11 are available, the other seven are probably either, I don’t know if they were all in one box. If 18 units were all in one box, if they were all in one box and only 11 are available, the other seven are probably getting transferred. They’re probably in transit to another facility because Amazon will bring them into one and then they have algorithms that look at like, Okay, this is most likely people in Seattle are more likely to buy this and people in New York. So they’ll send less than three units over to Seattle, and two units over to North Carolina and one over to Texas or whatever it may be, what their algorithm dictates, either from a best gas or from sales history and while those are in transit they’re sitting on an Amazon truck that’s taking them over there. They won’t show us available to buy, they’ll show as reserved or in transit down there. So that’s most likely what’s happened. Sometimes Amazon miscounts, sometimes I know I sent 10 and they tell me they received 13. I’m like, you guys just can’t count. How is it? Other times you send 10 and they say they got nine. They can’t miss that happens all the time but it’s not an FCC or FTC thing. I know. That sounds, someone doesn’t know what they’re talking about saying.

 

Kelsey 40:41  

From Peter, can we sell masks on Amazon?

 

Kevin 40:43

No.

 

Norman  40:48  

I mean, it’s a challenge. Almost. Yeah, let’s say 99.9%. It’s tough, right?

 

Kevin 40:56  

Yeah, don’t do it. Yeah. Number one, even if you can, and the listing gets accepted, it’s gonna get shut down. So you’re gonna go through hell. So don’t do it.

 

Norman  41:08  

By the way, my family owns a company in China that produces masks, and we do not sell them on Amazon.

 

Kevin 41:18  

Don’t do it.

 

Kelsey 41:21  

Okay, from David, I’ve heard many opinions on this. But I’d like Kevin’s thoughts on having the most important info in one listing near the end of A plus, as this is where most customers in first, right after the check of the reviews.

 

Kevin 41:36  

I’ve never heard that. Yeah, that would be maybe more on mobile? Yeah, I haven’t heard that. I don’t know about that one. My opinion on that would be it’s worth testing. Maybe. But yeah, I don’t know if I agree with that.

 

Norman  42:03  

Yeah, it’s strange. We were talking to a few people recently, and they’ve said that they felt that the algorithm has changed. Now, it’s great timing that you were on here. Because when I was attending your event, somebody came on, I’m not sure who it was that did the algorithm thing and they said, okay, on the listing images are important. The title is important. This is what you need to do on the title. Then it said, it’s not the bullets, go over, and it’s changed now. But subject matter, and then search terms, and then over to the bullets and then. So what’s happening with the bullets now. Is it back to the bullets short? Like I’m getting rid of the upper case and I’m doing mostly benefit, and I’m keeping them very short and that’s probably more because of the mobile side of things. I don’t want it to look like a book. But is that the flow that’s going through? Do you know? Is it going title bullets?

 

Kevin 43:09  

I think titles are still definitely most important. I think there’s no question. The title is the absolute most important and then it used to be subject matter. But I don’t think that was Amazon’s intended purpose of it. It’s just some of us figured out that he put some stuff in subject matter, it would give you a lot of extra juice, for whatever reason. Amazon has been discontinuing subject matter for a lot of accounts, some accounts, it’s still there. But for a lot of accounts, it’s not even there anymore. So next after title, I would say actually, your bullet points would be next and then your search term and then your description. A plus, I don’t think it has a huge factor. But one place in A plus that does is your images. So the images when you create A plus content, there’s and you add an image, there’s a little box there to add like some alt text, or I forget what they call it was a little description, I forget what the exact words but there’s a little box underneath the picture, when you drag the picture in there. For those who know what I’m talking about, there’s a little box underneath where you can put in a little description or something and a lot of people don’t, they don’t put anything in there, or they just write something brief. But you get 100 characters in there, those 100 characters are actually indexed by the algorithm by the search engine. So that’s a great place to put extra keywords, put Spanish keywords, to put what you’re used to put in a subject matter. Including maybe your best keyword phrases, repeat them in there from your title or from wherever and make sure you fill up all that stuff because that is having an effect for not doing that.

 

Norman  44:48  

Right and one other thing that you can do, we talked about it many times, download the bloody style guide in your category and just read it because  A lot of people ask the questions that are right there in the style guide what you can and can’t do. So it’s always a good starting point. All right.

 

Kelsey 45:11  

From Mika, this is a big one. Hello, guys, it’s nice to see you. I have a question for Kevin. When and how do you decide if you need to give up on your product? For example, if my keyword ranking is good, but I see a decrease in sales and many Chinese competitors key presses are entering my niche. How can I decide if I need to give up or keep going with the product? My product is superior quality and has better functionality, but it can’t compete on the price level with the sellers that are decreasing the prices.

 

Kevin 45:37  

Yeah, Mika, nice to see you here. This is a common problem. So for everybody, it’s a different answer for me personally, and this is mine, I give a product six months, and if it can’t reach $2,000 in profit per month, I dropped the product, that’s my personal bar, now yours may be different. Now, if I launch a product in the first 10 reviews of all one star, I’m not going to wait six months. I’m gonna pull that product either fix it or abandon it and I’ve had to do that. But for a general product that’s doing pretty good, like you said, yours is better quality and you got decent reviews but you’re just getting crushed on price, that’s a decision you’re gonna have to make. Like I said, my rule is $2,000 a profit by the six months and one thing you might do if you’re getting crushed by the competition on price, I don’t know, if you’re on the on here, when Norm and I we’re talking about perceived value and stuff. The one thing I would be looking at is changing up your imagery and actually doing some different imagery. If you want to try to salvage this if you want to put a little bit of money and just let’s see what happens. Now you don’t need to go and spend $5,000 on pictures and stuff like I might, but what you could do maybe is actually go to a company called fadevisuals.com they’re doing some amazing 3d stuff I used to be very big against not using stock photos. Because when you go to fiber and or somewhere and you have your picture your water bottle and you say here put my water bottle on a counter and a kitchen or in a girl’s hand that’s running or whatever it always looks fake to me because most of those guys just Photoshop work is not good, the shadows aren’t right, the the curves not right. You can just look at and go man that just doesn’t look fake, it looks like it’s like watching special effects from the 1960s versus today’s modern special effects in a movie or something, it just looks fake and I think that hurts you and hurts perceived value. But these guys  at Fade Visuals are actually, I’m not affiliate with them or anything, I think they’ve done some stuff for me and I only mentioned people that I think do a good job and they were like 400 bucks, I think is their base package. But they could do some amazing stuff with 3d rendering, and putting in lifestyle pictures and doing infographics and some cool 360 degree spans and stuff. So you might take a look at something like that and see, if you can’t compete based on your imagery and try to get a foothold, you still may slide down the page a little bit. But if you can justify a higher price instead of trying to compete on price, maybe raise your price and raise the quality or imagery and yes, your BSR is gonna go down. Yes, you’re gonna sell less. But you actually maybe carve out a niche in a space to actually make some money there. It’s not always about being the lowest price on Amazon. That’s what everybody always thinks I gotta be the lowest price, you don’t. Amazon likes it when you’re at a lower price. I mean, they like giving good value and good prices to customers. But it’s not always about lower prices. My friend, Paulina Mason from shopkeeper did a really kick ass presentation and that Freedom Ticket extra and Helium 10 Elite last year, where she actually broke it down, like how to determine should you go after the bottom? Should you compete on price and be down there with a Walmart ground? The cheap dollar store crowd? Or should you be in the middle? Or should you be at the Louis Vuitton level, and she did a really cool analysis of looking at it and at the Louis Vuitton level, you might sell five units a day and have a BSR of 50,000 and at the dollar store level, you might sell 1000 units a day and have a BSR of 500. But where are you gonna make more money and less hassle and so that’s what you got to take a look at in your market and see if you can carve out a niche that’s not competing on price. That might not be the top keyword either. I mean, maybe you’re trying to compete for the top keyword right now and maybe you need to niche it down and some other keyword has a lot less volume where you can compete easier.

 

Norman  49:42  

Yeah, and we’ll, that’s a great example for like the kitchen utensils, the knives. We don’t have as many sales as when they were 49 but we make a heck of a lot more profit. So at the end of the day, you’re making more probably just to add one thing to what you said Kevin is once you get the better images, split tests, or not split test, and split test, but send them over to Pickfu or Usability Hub and do the Brady Bunch and that’ll give you  whether people are going to to pay the extra or not. Or if you’re equal to or better than the competitors, then give it a shot and if you can’t make it or if it’s not profitable, then yeah, cut it.

 

Kevin 50:27  

Like you said, branding makes a difference too in competition. Because you brought up the example of Pickfu. We did this with a product, I’m actually going to show this in a Billion Dollar Seller Summit next week. I’m doing a case study on one of our products where we’re showing, completely revealing nobody’s ever done this, to my knowledge in this space. Everybody’s always hush hush what they sell, and Amazon, we’re laying it all out, we’re like, here’s the product, here’s the images, here’s the emails from Amazon. Here’s the things that we did with Walmart and Costco and here, we’re laying it completely out, unlike anything anybody’s ever done and then part of that what we’re showing you is the importance of branding and how it can help you and sometimes it’s still not good enough, because we actually did a Pickfu test with this product, and we did a Pickfu test with our brands, with our packaging against three others, sellers on Amazon, good sellers on Amazon, basically Chinese companies that are packaging’s not so great, the the name is not so great. We crushed them on the PickFu test. It was like we had 60-70% of the people said they buy us in the rest that or the other three guys made up the remaining 30%, or whatever it was and then we do the same test where we actually took two of the Chinese poor guys ours and we took a very well known brand in the space, a very well known brand space, that very well known brand beat us. It didn’t crush us but it significantly beat us just because of the well known brand and the comments for basically that it’s the well known brand. So that’s something you have to take into consideration too, when you’re selling on Amazon is who is that competition and what are you up against? So, back on Mika’s question if she’s up in her category, yeah, if she’s up as let’s say she’s selling, I don’t know, a makeup products or something and it’s got Mika’s brand, and it’s against the Chinese brand, her better imagery, her better quality stuff, it’s probably going to crush them. But against Revlon or CoverGirl, it may not. So, but it may give you a chance to actually level up to them, but may not beat them. So you got to look at those kinds of things, too.

 

Norman  52:36  

I’ve got a question for you. So launched a brand, look great, really incredible images. We got a smear campaign going. So all of a sudden, over a three day period, we just got a ton of one stars. Okay. So I’ve been trying, I’ve been calling, team’s been calling Amazon showing the dates that they came in, it was getting five, four or five stars. It was very good. Any thoughts on how you can compete with people that just nail you with 20 1 stars all at a time and you can’t bury them anymore?

 

Kevin 53:15  

No, you can’t.

 

Norman  53:16  

Well, you can. But I don’t want to take the chance on hiring somebody to do that.

 

Kevin 53:20  

Yeah, you’d have to hire someone. Oh, man, that’s the thing with Amazon. That sucks and now they don’t even have to write reviews. They can just do the ratings. Yeah and so that is something I don’t have a quick fix on that. That’s one of those things where used to be even put in the comments, and you can counter them or whatever. Yeah, you can’t even do that. I would probably, actually we have a counter to that is I probably put that in my imagery. I probably put one of my images that I don’t know how you do this exactly. I’m just brainstorming here but something in one of my images that alludes to that. Be careful of the star reviews, there’re people that don’t hadn’t even bought the product. I don’t know.

 

Norman  54:05  

That’s kind of interesting.

 

Kevin 54:07  

Something along, that’s not gonna help you when they’re just scanning and they see your stars and the guys five, it means they may not ever click to you, but the people that actually click in because I think pretty much everybody at least scrolls through those first few images before they buy unless it’s something they’ve already bought before. They would see that. Well, maybe that would counter it, somehow counter it that way. Yeah.

 

Norman  54:32  

And what’s interesting, if you went into the first page, all the main players, they’ve brought down under three stars and then there’s one that has four and a half stars and tons of reviews and they just came on so I know exactly who it is. That’s playing the game and I have done this before. reported people for 28 one star reviews that came in and got 23 removed, but the ones that did the most damage stayed up. So

 

Kevin 55:06  

I mean, if you anyways let’s call you go fight back against them. I mean, if you want while you go get some fake credit card numbers and go tie up their inventory you go buy up their inventory using credit card numbers that are fake that won’t go and so that they go on hold for 72 hours, and they have no inventory to sell and just constantly mess with them that way and then the customers name when you make the order. You put I know what you’re doing or we caught you or you’re busted, or whatever and so at some point, they’re gonna start looking what’s going on here and then go shoot someone’s onto us.

 

Norman  55:41  

You know what, we’re not saying go out and do this to your competitors. That was one that kind of slipped through. Alright, once again, hey, we do have a giveaway today is going to be a box of and we’re not talking just a little thing, like a chocolate bar or anything. It’s a really great gift. So #the king and you’ll be entered. If you tag two people, we will get you in twice. All right, Kelsey, next.

 

Kelsey 56:11  

US only too, just to clarify.

 

Norman  56:14  

Yeah, sorry guys.

 

Kelsey 56:16  

So okay, well.

 

Norman  56:17  

Hold on Canada, I could do it in Canada.

 

Kelsey 56:20  

Okay. All right. All right, Canada is allowed. Alright, so this is from Luca, any ranking method without huge giveaways?

 

Kevin 56:32  

PPC, heavy PPC. But I mean, search find buy, I guess you’re calling those giveaways. Those aren’t technically giveaways. Because in the old days, when you did a giveaway, if your product was 20 bucks, you’d sell it for 99 cents. This is four or five years ago and that’s all you got for it and you paid on the Amazon FBA fees now on a search find buy, it’s $20, you’re getting $13-14 of that back. Plus you got to search, find and buy fee on top of it. So depends on price, but you’re actually making more money probably on a search find buy than you did on the old school giveaways. But I mean, the three things that I use are heavy PPC, search, find buy, and some ManyChat, search find buy stuff through Facebook and those three things tend to work for me. I don’t know if you got anything. I mean, there are some other techniques and I know like the Billion Dollar Seller Summit next week, someone’s going to share one. That’s exactly what answered this question. I’m not plugging that, but it’s not something I can share here. It’s a high level strategy that’s very scalable, and very doable and it’s saving this company, literally hundreds of 1000s of dollars in launch costs. But it’s not something I could share here.

 

Norman  57:52  

Yeah, so I’m not sure if you’re talking about the same thing. But yeah, with another company that I own with a group of guys called The Chat Agency, we’ve come up with a launch strategy that instead of spending a ton of money on rebates, it actually, if your profit margin is 40%, you can launch at a breakeven or be profitable while building influencers and brand ambassadors. So Paul Baron came up with that brainchild, so you might want to talk to him.

 

Kevin 58:31  

Yeah, that’s a good one man. How do they get a hold of it?

 

Norman  58:35  

The chat agency? Yeah, we made it a really tough name to remember.

 

Kevin 58:41  

Yeah, that’s a good one, too. Paul is a good guy, and he knows his stuff. So yeah, Paul and Norm get together and do something, it’s gonna be good. So

 

Norman  58:51  

The other thing too, there are other ways and I call it like a pre launch strategy where you’re getting all your ducks in a row before you actually launch. You might be trying to get some possible earned media, it might be getting your social media out there and then announcing with a press release, just to get the content out there. The other thing that’s working incredibly well for about 10 to 30% of our clients sales, the editorial recommendations, so if you can, and you need to have a certain amount of reviews to be considered. But if you can get into the editorial recommendations on a listing, that’ll boost your sales too without having to go in. Well, I wouldn’t recommend not doing PPC, but you’ll see a difference right there.

 

Kevin 59:47  

Yeah, editorial recommendations are a good one. But that’s more for an experienced seller. Because you’re gonna need about 100 reviews. You’re gonna need a four star higher rating. You’re gonna need a certain BSR if you’re using one of the agencies that is to actually get in there, I mean, you can get in there naturally if you know how to do it or get lucky. But there are agencies and our people that will help you do that. But there’s some rules and then they take a cut of it too, but it can be 10 to 30% lift in your sales. 

 

Norman  1:00:19  

Yeah. Okay, what’s the next one?

 

Kelsey 1:00:24  

Okay, just give me a second. 

 

Norman  1:00:27  

Kevin, how much time have you got?

 

Kevin 1:00:29  

I got 26 seconds. No, I’m just kidding. I got some time. I’m gonna be jumping on a Clubhouse here after we’re done. 

 

Norman 1:00:38

Is that Rana’s? 

 

Kevin 1:00:39

Yeah, jso anybody that’s on Clubhouse. Be sure to hop over there to jump on that for a little while while I do some work.

 

Norman  1:00:48  

By the way, I forgot to ask you. We have a clubhouse meet with all the guests that come on during the week. We’ve just started this and it’s Mondays at 1:30. I’m not sure if you have time at 1:30 to join us. But yeah.

 

Kevin 1:01:02  

I saw that come through and you invited me a couple times. But I have a Freedom Ticket extra call at this exact time on Monday. Okay, I have to do a live q&a with all my Freedom Ticket students for about an hour and a half right then. All right. That’s why I can’t make it. 

 

Norman 1:01:19

So you weren’t ignoring me?

 

Kevin 1:01:20

I wasn’t ignoring you. I was on another q&a session that these guys are paying for. So I got to do that.

 

Norman  1:01:28  

Okay, very good. 

 

Kelsey 1:01:30

All right. This is from Daniel. Do you guys include packaging photos in the first picture?

 

Kevin 1:01:35  

I try to, yes, Amazon says you really shouldn’t do that. They just want the products. But I ignore their advice and I show them the packaging. If it’s good packaging, and you don’t want to show your polybag necessarily, but if it’s good packaging, yeah, I think it makes a difference.

 

Norman 1:01:54

By the way, if you’re putting packaging up or if you’re putting just anything that might need Photoshop, make sure you do and I’ll give you two examples. So I was selling these transparent bottles and you have it in the packaging, the packaging had little rips and not little rips but wear and it didn’t look very nice and the packaging of the transparent bottle showed the instructions coming through in the back and it was an eyesore. So go to a photo guy and Photoshop it and it just looked amazing. But a lot of people don’t like it, they’ll just take a picture of their package. They don’t let their Photoshop or graphic artists touch it up and I was talking to a group yesterday, where you’re talking about sheets or pillow cases or stuff like that, where you’ve got just natural wrinkles in them. Well Photoshop the wrinkles out so it doesn’t look like it’s touched up but it looks perfect.

 

Kevin 1:03:00  

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I’ve had that problem with some of my one of my dog tree packaging, not the bully sticks. But another one where it’s in a like a burlap kind of bag and the bag just crinkled and didn’t look good in the photo. So we had to do exactly what you just said, had to clean it up a little bit. Yeah.

 

Kelsey 1:03:21  

Okay, and the question is for Manny, what is your opinion on Brandon Young’s keyword relevancy itself? Is this a good way to eliminate the risk of a product?

 

Kevin 1:03:30  

I think Brandon Young’s a pretty sharp guy. He actually is a successful seller. Some people say they are not, but he actually is. He’s got a unique way that he uses Helium 10 and finds keywords and I think there’s some good stuff of what he’s showing there. It’s not the only way. There’s different ways, but it’s been about a year since I saw his spreadsheets. I don’t know if he’s updated it. So I don’t know what the exact latest one was, with what I saw about a year ago. It was good. It’s a good way to analyze opportunity and to maybe find a niche that you can fulfill. So yeah, I think I don’t see any problem with it. Okay, just always, give me a second. Let me say here, eliminate risk. It reduces, it doesn’t eliminate reduces. There’s always risk.

 

Kelsey 1:04:26  

Okay, this one is from our personal Facebook page from Dave. Kevin, who would you recommend for kidding and bundling services in the US?

 

Kevin 1:04:37  

I don’t have a recommendation for you. I think maybe Norm may know some people because I don’t do bundling or kidding in the US and I can’t recommend someone I haven’t used.

 

Norman  1:04:50  

So I know, if you want to pm me or Kelsey, we can get back to him with a guy that I know in Arizona. Excuse me, Brian Lipschitz and if you’re looking, I don’t like promoting my own businesses, but we have a service in Pennsylvania that we can handle, which is Honu Finance and just have two or sorry, Honu Worldwide. That’s another business.

 

Kevin 1:05:14  

I told you he’s got 177 of them.

 

Norman  1:05:18  

Yeah. Honu Worldwide, talk to Afolabi. He’s my partner over there and he could probably do the kidding in assembly.

 

Kelsey 1:05:28  

Okay, this is Simon, what is the ideal FBA inventory level? What is the absolute minimum that doesn’t hurt rank?

 

Kevin 1:05:36  

I don’t know what the absolute minimum is, I don’t know the exact formula. But what I’ve been told from people that I trust their opinion, is you should always try to maintain a 30 day supply. So if you’re selling 10 units a day, I would be trying to maintain a minimum inventory level of around 300. If it dips to 270, probably not going to be that big a deal, but a 30 day rolling supply is what I have heard is what the algorithm is, that or more is ideal for the algorithm.

 

Norman  1:06:11  

I have heard that too. Yep.

 

Kelsey 1:06:14  

Okay, and I saw some comments come in about the internet quality. It seems to be fine on Facebook. But I think some people on YouTube are having some difficulties. If you want to go over to our Facebook page, The Beard Nation. Lunch with Norm Amazon FBA and eCommerce Collective Facebook group, or our Facebook page, The Lunch with Norm podcast. I might be able to fix it. I’m not sure if we got those mixed up. But one of our channels isn’t working. But yeah, thank you for letting us know. We’ll look into that. Okay, from David, do you post have anything to do with ranking? Or is that irrelevant?

 

Kevin 1:06:56  

I don’t have any evidence that posts affect your ranking. I know you do some stuff with post Norm. Have you seen it be a factor in ranking? Other than if you get some sales off it obviously? Yeah. They always make it a factor.

 

Norman  1:07:15  

What I see is higher conversion rates and if your conversion rates can go up, that might be able to help you. I don’t have any direct evidence that it can help your ranking. By the way, when you’re doing your posts, make sure you put a keyword phrase in and that might be something like I don’t hear a lot of people talking about this and I don’t know if you can get ranked. But that’s something I’ve been doing right now kind of on the side is every post that I do I add a keyword. Who knows? Who knows what’s ranking?

 

Kelsey 1:08:00  

Okay, from Jeffrey to either view, enrolling b2b on Amazon upload your user manual, and our technical specifications.

 

Kevin 1:08:08  

I have b2b on some of my products and I do the b2b pricing, but it’s not a product that needs a manual. I mean, I do upload one of my products that has a hazardous material. So we upload the SDS data sheets in the business so that people can some companies need that for their files before they can order, they have that on file. So I need to do that. But I don’t have anything that needs a user manual. But if I did, I would upload it there. But yeah, to answer your question, yes.

 

Norman  1:08:43  

I’m the same. b2b, you would not believe especially depending on the product, but what type of sales can be generated through b2b channel?

 

Kevin 1:08:54  

One of our products about 30% comes there.

 

Norman  1:08:57  

That high. Wow. 

 

Kevin 1:08:59  

Yeah, it’s kind of when we first started selling it, the sales just dropped Friday, Saturday, Sunday sales were just cool. We’re like, what the heck, and then we’re going to the b2b and they give you that breakdown of how many sales you’ve made, and the little reports and stuff and you start seeing stuff show up in your payments reports. I’ve never had this really happen before, because b2b has always been fairly small. But now, I guess some of the b2b customers, they invoice them, they don’t actually pay for it right there. They get invoices, so it shows up in your seller when you go into look at your money, and you’re like, Oh, I got $5,000 in my available funds, and there’s another line right below it, business customers it’s a separate like, bank balance almost, I don’t know if you’ve seen that your accounts Norm where it’s $1,000 in that bank balance and as soon as those guys pay their invoice, that jumps way up and it can make it depending on some products, it can be dramatic. If you set those business to business discounts and are in the b2b program, it can be big, especially if you’re a minority. If you’re a woman owned business or you’re a person of color, or a minority in the United States or you fit some other categories, some are some are veterans, it just depends. But if you can, Amazon has little checkboxes when you sign up for b2b and if you qualify for any of those make sure you check those because there are people that are out there that are buying on Amazon we have the national parks unit, US National Parks buy a whole bunch of one of our products. We had DHL buy one of our products. We’ve had big companies, big corporate companies are going on Amazon and buying stuff for the companies and some of those guys they have quotas where they got to buy 20% of their supplies have to come from minority owned businesses, or we support veterans, so a certain percentage have to be from veteran owned businesses, or whatever and they can filter by that on Amazon. So you can filter by I need coffee cups, show me only coffee cups that are being sold from veteran owned businesses. You go from 10,000 results to six, or whatever the number is I’m making the numbers up, but it can be a significant competitive advantage to you.

 

Norman  1:11:06  

Very good.

 

Kelsey 1:11:08  

Okay, there’s still quite a few questions. Do you want to put a number on it?

 

Norman  1:11:12  

How about we take two more questions, and then we’ll cut it off at that point.

 

Kelsey 1:11:17  

Okay. So Simon, what is your opinion on this theory that 249 bits in the title is the sweet spot?

 

Kevin 1:11:28  

I don’t know that there’s a sweet spot. I don’t know about a sweet spot at 200 that you need to have 200. Exactly 249 and that’s gonna make some sort of magical difference. I’ve never seen evidence of that. I don’t know about you Norm.

 

Norman  1:11:47  

No and I think I learned this from your partner, Steve. He was telling me that he was starting to experiment with shorter titles and so what we ended up doing is cutting back and just playing around with shorter titles, main keyword benefit, and not doing the really huge long titles for men, this helped out with mobile, because most of the people are searching on mobile and then we’re putting our keywords, our main keywords are relevant keywords in the back, we’re not repeating them, which we used to do quite a bit of, and then kind of filtering them through very small sentences on the bullets. But that’s kind of the way we’re playing it and right now, the old 249 characters keyword stuffed, I think more and more people are looking for engagement. So as long as you can rank for the main keywords and I don’t know about you, Kevin, but the way that I’m doing my keyword research and using the title, I used to, like when I first started, I’d go out and I take a look at the competitors and oh, they’re using this main keyword. Oh, I got to use that main keyword I got to compete. Now what I’m doing is I’m taking the keywords, I’m analyzing the keywords and we talk about buying keywords and browsing keywords. So let’s use bully sticks. Browsing keywords is a pet treat, or dog chew, bully stick is a buying keyword. However, bully sticks have 200,000 searches and it wouldn’t be worth it. So you go down to organic bully sticks or natural bully sticks or whatever bully sticks. Now you can see a bit more of a buying keyword. But just because it has high volume doesn’t mean that’s the keyword to use. So we find, okay, if something’s got 20,000 and only has 25 units a month, or something has 5000 search volume, and you get 125 units a month, that’s the keyword that we’re using in our main keyword for our title. Do you do anything like that? Or are you saying that Norm, you suck? Nope, you’re on mute and that’s probably because you said I suck.

 

Kevin 1:14:13  

I know I do something similar. I mean, I do look at what the competition’s using, doing the analysis of the title, the keywords in other titles, and then I look for opportunities and one that there may be missing. I overlay that with my own research and my Cerebro stuff and some of the other tools that I use that are not public tools and brand analytics data and a bunch of stuff to actually see what am I gonna zero in on most titles, actually are between 50 and 200 characters. So the 249 bits are usually a character. I mean, some characters are two bits like the NBA and Spanish and stuff like that. So 249 and a lot of cases actually, it’s going to actually not work because you’ll potentially get suppressed because it’s too long.

 

Norman  1:15:02  

Yeah, depending on those special characters.

 

Kevin 1:15:05  

It’s usually 50 to 50 to 200 is what Amazon’s wanting, not the 249.

 

Norman  1:15:12  

All right, next question.

 

Kelsey 1:15:14  

Okay, so this is the last one. Sorry everyone, we can’t get to everyone. It’s just there’s gonna be here for hours, I think answering these. This is from the personal Facebook page from Claudia, so I can’t bring it up. But why do you have chatbot asking for reviews? We use ManyChat on the channel, asking for reviews always via SMS.

 

Kevin 1:15:37  

I don’t ask for reviews, period. I don’t use any ManyChat flows, I don’t use any follow up email sequences. I let the product speak for itself and the natural review rate for someone typing a review actually written like sentences is about one to 2%. The actual review rate now that you don’t have to type a sentence, you can just do a rating. I’m saying about 4 to 8% and I do use that when I’m analyzing competition, when I’m looking to get into this category, the write a review on a product is something that I do look at on my competition to see what they’re doing. So someone that’s getting a 20-30% review rate. I know they’re doing something fishy. They’re doing some sort of incentivized, most likely some sort of incentivized program to get those reviews someone that’s at 10 or 11%, they may just be doing an email follow up thing or something like that. But those are some of the factors I look at because reviews are currency on Amazon now. I even talked to some of these aggregators, they’re buying up Amazon businesses, a lot of them will tell you the reviews of the moat around the product and they like products that have a good sales history with lots of reviews, because it gives up a big barrier against competition. But I still, people always say, How do I get reviews, how to get reviews, I use the early reviewer program, I use vine and I put out a good product. But I never incentivize them or even done, I used to do the email follow up but just to me, that annoys people more than anything else. I’ve tested hitting a little button to go ask for reviews on Amazon. It didn’t seem like yeah, for me, it was a waste of time. If I had a VA doing it, maybe they can sit there as a software tool that did it. Yeah, for that extra half a percent or 1% bump. Maybe it’s worth it. But for me, it’s like, ust put out a good product that solves people’s problems, they’ll leave reviews.

 

Norman  1:17:38  

Agree 100%, if you do put out a review, I just bought a light for my other for my office. So it came in. Is this 2017 or what? If you liked this product, it said, leave us a review. I’m sitting here going Oh my Gosh, if Amazon grabs that, sees that. I mean, that’s instant see you later.

 

Kevin 1:18:07  

I see it all the time, we always buy stuff, me and my wife from Amazon and I have a file here. I actually keep them, I call it a swap file. I have a little notebook. I put them when she’ll open the box throwing stuff out like no, no, let me see that piece of paper. It’s just some garbage. No, no, no, let me see what they’re saying. I want to reverse engineering. But yeah, you’re right. There’s a lot of people still violating the rules and getting away with it. Yeah and at some point, it’s going to catch up to them and those are the people that I don’t really want to compete against because they’re not playing fair. Yeah. They’re stealing the other team signals.

 

Norman  1:18:45  

Okay, so I think that’s about it. I’m sorry. We couldn’t get to all the questions. But Kevin, so you’ve got a Freedom Ticket. You’ve got the Billion Dollars Summit coming up, Seller Summit coming up. Why don’t you talk a little bit about both and then I will see you on Clubhouse.

 

Kevin 1:19:05  

Sure. Yeah. So if you’re a new seller out there, I have a course called Freedom Ticket, you can go to freedomticket.com. But you don’t need to buy the course, you can get it for free if you’re a Helium 10 member, so if you have just the basic membership to Helium 10 I think it’s $97 a month or I don’t know Norm you might have a code that gets them a discount or something I don’t know if you do or not. But as long as you’re a member of that, you can get access to the course. So it’s about 80 hours. It’s pretty much a to z as voted the best course in the business in the seller poll last year for new sellers so I have that and then if you’re an advanced seller, this is not for new people. But if you’re advanced, if you’re already into the millions of dollars of sales on Amazon or about to hit the millions of dollars in sales, the Billion Dollar Seller Summit is an event I’d normally do in person. I did two of them in 2019. Last year didn’t do anything because of the pandemic, I have one coming up in person in September of 2016. I’m sorry, 2021 here in Austin, but I’m doing a virtual one next week, actually on a Wednesday and Thursday next week. So it’s not the same as in person and in persons a lot of fun, we do a lot of stuff differently than the normal conference. So we’re trying to take as much as we can, to the online one this is not some Zoom or Stream Yard or GoToWebinar type of thing. This is a special kind of event software thing that we’re doing and it’s gonna be pretty cool. It’s with the sponsors and speakers, and everything is about 130-140 people that are in there and it’s next level tactics. This is not stuff you hear on podcasts, not stuff you hear anywhere else, a lot of the speakers are sharing stuff that they’ve never shared before. Part of that’s because of the level of the group. Plus this year, I’m putting cash prizes, so the speakers, whoever’s voted the best speaker, or best presentation is getting $5,000 US cash. So then we have a ninja contest where you can participate and if you got some sort of cool tip or trick, you can share that and you might win $2500 cash. So it’s plus all the content that you’re getting from all the speakers that they’re showing and it’s I’m looking forward to it’s gonna be really good. It’s next level stuff. But yeah, BillionDollarSellerSummit.com is the page if you’re interested. I don’t know how much longer the tickets will be on sale. I know a whole bunch came in yesterday, and I’m limited. The software has a limit on how many it can do and also I’m limited by contract. So at some point, I’m expecting in the next 24 to 48 hours, it’ll probably say sold out.

 

Norman  1:21:57  

Okay, very good, Kevin. So now, it’s about that time, Wheel of Kelsey.

 

Kelsey 1:22:05  

I got a request. What was the Clubhouse that you’ll be on?

 

Norman  1:22:10  

Oh, we’re going to. I don’t know which one it is. But it’s run by Rana.

 

Kevin 1:22:16  

It’s called Amazon Mastermind Advanced Strategy Techniques and Mindset. So if you just search for Amazon Mastermind Advanced Strategy Techniques and Mindset.

 

Kelsey 1:22:26  

There we go. Okay, so it’s time for the wheel.

 

Norman  1:22:30  

Here we go.

 

Kelsey 1:22:32  

Alright. 321

 

Kevin 1:22:44  

Oleg.

 

Kelsey 1:22:46  

Oleg is the winner. 

 

Kevin 1:22:49  

Congratulations Oleg.

 

Kelsey 1:22:50  

Congrats. Oleg, you can contact me at k@lunchwithnorm.com. Also, you can just message me on Facebook.

 

Norman  1:23:05  

Very good. All right, Mr. King, we will see you next month. Thank you again for coming on to the podcast this month and yeah, enjoyed having you.

 

Kevin 1:23:15  

Glad to be here, man. It’s always a blast. I always look forward to it. Anytime I could spend time with Norm, cigar or not, it’s always a good time.

 

Norman  1:23:22  

Now I gotta switch Kevin’s dog.

 

Kevin 1:23:26  

Good to see you too, Kelsey.

 

Kelsey 1:23:29  

Always a pleasure.

 

Norman  1:23:30  

All right, everybody. So thank you for joining today. Like usual Kevin dropped nuggets, lots of them. Let’s see, actually Kelsey, come on back or you’re there. Alright, so I guess we have to say a few things about smashing and liking and things that you forgot the first time. 

 

Kelsey 1:23:54

I thought you snuck it in there. 

 

Norman 1:23:55

You might, maybe you did. I’m an old guy. It’s okay for me to forget things.

 

Kelsey 1:24:00  

Alright, so if you guys are still around, you’re waiting for this little discussion, smash those like buttons, share this video. Get the word out on both of our podcasts. It does so much good and we really appreciate it. Yeah, so if there ever is an issue with the internet or Facebook or YouTube, just try to go into the other one. I’m not sure if it’s on Facebook, or if it’s something to do with their streaming program. But it seems to be that if one’s down the other one is still working and yeah, let me see. Join the Beard Nation.

 

Norman  1:24:37  

Yeah, join the Beard Nation. But Bill King, no relation to Kevin King is going to be on Monday, right?

 

Kelsey 1:24:46  

Yes.

 

Norman  1:24:48  

That’s pretty cool. So like Bill’s been on before. Just a sec here. He’s part of Frase, but he’s the head of marketing over at frase.io which is an incredible tool for building content. However, we’re going to be talking more about the SEO game and how that’s changing over the last or has changed over the last little while and how it’s affecting eCommerce sellers. So tune in for that. That’s going to be awesome and I guess we’re at the end. Tune in every Monday Wednesday, Friday at noon Eastern Standard Time. Thank you for joining. Thank you for being part of the community and enjoy the rest of your day.

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