#147: Amazon Expert Answers Amazon FBA Seller Questions

Norman Ferrar   0:02  

Hey everyone is Norman Farrar aka the beard guy here and welcome to another lunch with Norm. The Amazon FBA and E comm podcast.

Norman Ferrar   0:22  

All right, everybody. Today’s episode is about a returning guest, one of my good friends. You probably recognize him all over the internet. You know, talking on podcasts, he’s also involved. He is the founder of the billionaire dollar. Kevin helped me with this. The billionaire dollars summit. I think I said that right. Right. The Billion Dollar seller summit.

Kelsey  0:47  

No, no billion dollar I believe. Billion dollar summit?

Norman Ferrar   0:53  

All right, sorry. See, there I go again, how did I write a It’s Friday give me give me a break. And I’ve only liked attending it and being on it before. So like, Oh, God. All right. Is that I’m just so excited because he’s gonna be on the you know, on the podcast again. Anyways, for those of you who don’t know, Kevin King, he’s not just an Amazon guy. He’s been involved with some incredible businesses. He’s been on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. You gotta listen to him on my I know this guy podcast, he dumps some crazy stories about the mob about Michael Jordan about Tigers attacking models in his studio. It’s, well, it’s kind of hilarious, but I guess it wasn’t. But anyways, Kelsey, before we get to Kevin, what do we have to say?

Kelsey  1:43  

We got to smash those like buttons. I see. We got Simon, Andrew, Darwin and Tony joining us already. Let us know where you’re watching from. And if you have any questions, just throw them in the comment sections. We’re going to try and get to them all. But sometimes we get a little overwhelmed with the questions, but we’ll do our best. And if we ever do miss any questions, just put them over into the Facebook group. We had a great community there. And they’re always looking to help us out with questions. Welcome. Welcome, everyone. I believe that’s Roslyn. Hi, welcome. And also, if you’re looking for an episode, Kevin’s been on numerous times, I think he’s on maybe six or seven, maybe eight times already. So if you’re looking for any extra Kevin King content, go over to our YouTube page and  lunch with Norm. That’s where all the good stuff is. Full Episodes are their daily highlights. And yeah, also our Patreon is starting up, which is a monthly subscription service. Basically, if you’re looking for extra content, any value we add discounts deals. We got consultation, we got giveaways. Bunch of entails over there. 

Kelsey.

Yes

Norman Ferrar  2:51

The main thing? Yeah, also he’s got to get paid. So that’s why we did it. Exactly, exactly. Alright, so if you have any questions, throw them over into the comment section. We’ll get to them right away. And let’s get on with the founder of billion dollar seller summit. So sit back, relax, grab a cup of coffee, and enjoy the show. I only it only took me like three times to get it right. You still didn’t get it right. billion dollar seller summit. There you go. The btss That’s it. Oh my gosh. Ah, man. It’s Friday. It’s Friday. Kevin. It’s Friday. It’s okay. Hold on. Just a sec. What was that? Oh, it is Friday. We’re on lunch with norm. Jeez, I like the mug. Oh, yeah, it’s a it’s a pretty cool mug. No, I was talking about your head with the new hairstyle. Oh. How are you? How are you? How’s Texas? Texas? Good. Texas is good. Everything is good. Great. Hey, for those people who don’t know who you are and what you do, can you just give us a brief explanation explanation of who you are?

Kevin King  4:09  

Sure. My name is Kevin King and I’m the host of the dollar billion summon seller somebody thing? No, I’ve been. I’ve been doing e commerce for about 20 some odd years, 25 years, something like that. selling on Amazon. Since 2001. And various formats run several different businesses that sell on Amazon and off Amazon developed and evolved in television production produced 30. Television national television shows prior prior to getting seriously involved in e commerce. Deuce do a billion dollar seller summit which is a high level event for advanced Amazon sellers. Next one’s coming up in September here in Austin once once in person per year and once a virtual per year. Then also do products a box with Steve simonsson. It’s a product sourcing and discovery and sourcing program for experienced sellers, and also hosts the helium 10, elite, high level training and also from the creator of the freedom ticket, which is a free course that helium 10 gets out to anybody that has a membership that’s looking to learn how to sell on Amazon from A to Z. I’ve also seen you frequenting club hosts recently. Yeah, got pretty heavy back in November, not late December and January, February, was on clubhouse quite a bit. Try not lately, not quite as much. Bradley and I do a one hour clubhouse every other Tuesday at five o’clock, Eastern Time, called the freedom tickets, where we just basically live q&a. So if you’re on clubhouse, be sure to check that out. And then you know, Ronna up there from Canada, from your neck of the woods, he does a great event every other Friday, which is not a q&a, but it’s more of a roundtable kind of thing, where he brings on a lot of experienced sellers, and just throw some topics out there. And everybody discusses discusses them. And those are pretty good too. So I participate in that. And occasionally, I’ll be on something else. But I’m not quite using it. As much as I was originally kind of played with it for a while. I still think it’s good. But it can be a big time suck. And so yeah, I kind of make money somewhere. I love to give back and love to help people. But I gotta delegate my time and portion that out to make sure it’s utilized properly.

Norman Ferrar   6:33  

And that’s the important thing. Like if you’re going into a clubhouse, you have to really understand, you know, are you It’s great to hear it’s great to like I love watching Judge Judy, but you know, if I watched judge duty, twice a day at six and 630. You know, a might be nice. I might be learning something about law, but how can I make money from it? And that’s the same thing with clubhouse or you you go on at the beginning, you go on the clubhouse for eight hours a session, and it would still be going on. But I still like clubhouse? I think there’s I think there’s gonna be different ways of even for Amazon. And we could even start with that building a brand on clubhouse.

Kevin King  7:17  

Have you ever thought about that? building an actual, like a brand, but a coaching brand, or an actual brand or

Norman Ferrar   7:24  

an actual product. So let’s say that you’re in the pet. So bully sticks, we, we both played around with bully sticks, right? So we might want to start a group of pet lovers Group, a dog group, it could even be depending on your your the size of your bully stick, a small dog, dog, club host group. And then you can start bringing people in like a Facebook community. And then I’m not sure if you’re we’re at that spot yet. But get somebody to sponsor your group, you know, somewhere to monetize, you’re allowed to tip Now, did you know that? Yeah, I saw that it was in beta. I don’t know if they’ve rolled that out completely to everybody. Yeah, they’ve A lot of people have it. But it’s not available to everybody. I guess you have to put a few hours in speaking before they’ll they’ll put out the tip jar. But there are little ways that you can monetize the room while building a brand. And I don’t I see a little a lot of digital guys out there. I see a lot of people in e commerce and coaching there, but I don’t see brands building yet. And that might be an interesting platform for them.

Kevin King  8:33  

It could be that, you know, people discussing the different the Yeah, I don’t know, it’d be interesting, it’d be interesting test to see because you don’t have the ability to link out or put pictures or interactive content really, it’s just all audio. So like if you’re a dog trainer, I would wonder how I can see people coming on there and just talking about their dog and talking about different tips and tricks or something for the dogs. But yeah. How would you to leverage that I don’t think the tools are quite there on clubhouse to really integrates seamlessly, you’d have to be begging people to go somewhere a lot. Which I don’t know this is gonna be quite as effective. But you

Norman Ferrar   9:10  

could use your profile. So when you’re resetting the room, so in clubhouse you’re allowed to or you should, there’s a certain etiquette and one of the things that you would do is reset a room and you just tell people what the rooms about what to do possible introduction of some of the panelists and it could be either you know, the the sponsorship of the room, or it could just be talking about for more added value tips or advice on dogs. Check out my Instagram account or Facebook and maybe you drive them over there, get them into the group. And then of course, you know, you can promote to them and drive back to drive back to your Facebook page.

Kevin King   9:54  

I think that one of the lessons would be that you’d have to study what works in radio advertising because clubhouse is very similar To radio advertising, but with a much more targeted market. So you know, if you’ve got a, if you’re advertising on your local radio talk show that has a reach of, you know, I don’t wanna say, I don’t know, 3000 people at any given time or listening to your talk show on the on your local radio, you’re in a big city, out of those 3000, you know, half of them, probably have a dog in it. And then out of those, some of them really don’t care. So it’s a very small audience. But if you got 200 people in a clubhouse that are all dog lovers, that’s probably as good as a three or 5000 reach audience on on a radio station, because you’ve pinpointed down that niche. And then it’s a matter of how do you market what’s effective on radio and direct response, to actually get people and take that kind of approach. And something like that actually might work. Or even advertising other people’s club houses of clubhouse? Somehow I could figure out a way to allow you to have five second or 15 second little ads. Because I think a lot of people on clubhouse there’s a lot of people that are highly engaged. But probably the vast majority of those people are not that it’s background noise. I know they’re working the guy there well even see that when people are on stage. Sometimes someone, a host will say something Hey, Norma, what do you think about that? It takes you like 10 seconds, because you’re like, forget about your papers, like pulls out a browser window or whatever, like, oh, sorry, sorry, guys a control with the mute button, or you make some excuse or whatever. So I think figuring that out. And if you look at some of the software like daikon or your app, you can see there’s a lot of people that come in and out. So you might have 100 150 people in that room. But during the course of an hour or two, you might have 400 500 people come in today

Norman Ferrar  11:44  

yesterday, Kevin, so I don’t know if you know this, but I’m involved with the largest club or I might be second but it’s it was the largest club last week on clubhouse with 500,000 members, entrepreneurs around I’ve got a every Thursday at one o’clock we have our room our eecom Learn to sell online room would you got to come on. We and we only have like one guests it carries on from the podcast over and the guest talks. It’s not like you have 25 people up talking on a panel. But we looked at our stats yesterday. And we I think it started off at 169 people, it dropped down. But when I looked at how many people were actually listening was 750. Yeah, we never got that, because you only see the stat of you know, oh, it’s going up, it’s going down.

Kevin King 12:41  

But that’s a problem, though, if you had 750. And their number was constantly around 150. That means six out of those people were bored or dropped out because they do migrate to different rooms. Yeah, they migrate to different but that means they’re bored. So that means that you’re not they’re not engaging. And that’s part of the problem with sometimes a clubhouse you get one person, especially if it’s a q&a type of thing, that will hog it for 20 minutes, and they’re just boring as hell, and people are going to leave. So you got to have the moderation i think is critical. I mean, there’s a talk show here in Austin, that’s a that a guy does the host so there’s like three people that hook that are the guests that are co hosted, but one guy drives it. And when people call in, you know, he’s very quick to like, if they don’t get to their point, he’s like, Alright, thank you very much. Next, yeah, you know, you’re softening on and keep keep the thing moving. Because otherwise, you’ll be like, this guy’s voices annoyingly, or this is gonna take forever, I’m gonna see what else is going on. And people bounce. And so I think that’s that you haven’t 700 people come through there and only 150 pretty much when you’re checking it is actually a problem. That means you got to figure out a way to keep the market you’re always gonna lose some people people hit it by accident or there’s curious or whatever. But, or some people have other stuff to do. But that’s, I think that’s critical. And that’s where there’s a lot of people missing the ball right now on the opportunity to clubhouse.

Norman Ferrar  14:07  

Yeah, I usually see about a three to one ratio to where people will come in, and you’ll see how many minutes that they’ll actually stay. We keep it tight. And you know that we’re talking about clubhouse today. But I think it’s important for people on Amazon to take a look at clubhouse and take a look at what you can do for your brand on clubhouse. So I want to I’m just sticking with this subject for a bit longer than we’re going to move on. But with with clubhouse, like you said you can go that direction or what just sec. There we go. That’s that’s our sponsorship there. But, you know, there there are ways to monetize. Here’s another way on clubhouse where I found it to be very useful. And again, if you’re putting up your brand, there Is with those 700 people that came in. If I take a look at my Instagram account, right after, right after the the clubhouse session, I’ll get an extra 100 followers. And so that’s helping me build my community as well. So if it’s a brand out there and a lot of people, I probably 99.9% of Amazon sellers aren’t doing it at all. And I don’t know what kind of success rate you’d have. But you’re starting to see a few more groups being built out over and over clubhouse. Now have you seen any other type of social media that’s working for Amazon sellers?

Kevin King 15:41  

Pinterest, and depending on what you’re selling Pinterest can work very good. And Instagram can work really good for for beauty brands especially. And I’m starting to see more and more on Tick Tock. This seems to be more and more people doing some product kind of placements stuff and people doing a little quick product review type of stuff on Tick Tock. I don’t know how I have not played with that. So I don’t know how effective it is. But I’m seeing some more more of that. Especially on Tick Tock.

Norman Ferrar  16:15  

Yeah, I just saw something about Yeti here. I guess we’ll get to that in a second. I can’t wait. You know what? I don’t know about you. I can’t read a bloody thing. I’ve got to crunch this down. To get into my screen. I got Kelsey having to read all I see is a word that might catch my eye like Yeti. But I’m an old guy. put my glasses on. So excuse me that snuck up. Sorry, guys. All right. So let’s talk a bit more about Amazon. One of the problems that we talked about the last time still a really unruly problem that I’m seeing is are these new acent or storage restrictions? Got any strategies?

Kevin King  17:01  

No. I mean, that’s it’s a tough one. I mean, if you’re new, it’s actually a benefit for you. If you’re brand new, it’s your walk, you’re launching your first product, now you’re not restricted to 200, you probably can do 500 or 1000, depending on your account. So that’s a good thing for a brand brand new person. But for someone like me, like me right now I’ve got, I have a PP brand. And I’m restricted on shipping. I’ve just I’m overstocked a little bit on one item, and the other ones about to run out. But I can’t ship any it’s telling me you know, the recommended quantity to ship in is whatever number is 813. Ship today. And but if I go try to create a shipping plan, it says no, sorry, you’re restricted. So that even their systems aren’t talking to each other. So I have to wait. Or I have to pull some stuff out here to sell some stuff to lightning deal or something that but most Lightning Deals don’t work for me, very probably one out of 20 Lightning Deals actually work for me. So I don’t even do waste my money or time really unlikely deals anymore. It’s a total waste of money in most cases. So I go ahead and pull some stuff out, I ended up donating some stuff just to try to free up some space. So it’s a balancing act. And I actually had to create a little spreadsheet special spreadsheet like putting in the cubic storage and the weights and the projected sales and like okay, how am I going to balance this, it’s gonna take me about three months to balance his inventory to where I can actually get a system down to where I can like, Alright, I know every Monday I need to ship in X number use it but instead of sending in 500 at a time on one, I’m going to be shipping more regularly. So it’s going to be instead of shipping a pallet or a couple pallets or something it’s going to be shipping some stuff ups. Yeah. So that that can increase your cost as well. But it’s not as efficient for me to much more efficient ship a pallet mess within once, pay those charges once rather than having to pay little chunks and pieces. So that that’s part of the change that I’m I’m having to deal with. And yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s a, it’s a problem. And I know it’s gonna be interesting, I have a brand new company launching this company supposed to start last March but we kind of put it on hold with the pandemic with launching, it’s in the pet space. Two products in the pet space that are made out of recycled ocean waste. And the first two products are coming out and should be live in July. And so it’s gonna be interesting to see how with a brand new account how that’s gonna affect me and then with by the calendar business that I do that it’s gonna be interesting this year to see how that affects that to

Norman Ferrar  19:44  

that one is gonna be I’ve really never come across the seasonal side, but you’re seasonal with these calendars. Yeah, how do those restrictions work like there?

Kevin King  19:55  

Yeah, I’m sure it’s gonna be your lettuce kind of account limits and in the big Getting, you know, those those will come in stock probably late July, early August, which nobody’s really buying on them. Right? Well, I started looking at least the sales history. I mean, you’re selling a couple a day at that point. But come October, November, December especially, it’s gonna be an issue. I mean, like last year, I had to revert to, I think I told this story before I had to revert to fbm. Because Amazon actually D indexed some of our calendars. And you could even take the ACE and find them, so that they shift them over into an adult adult category, basically. And they said, they just disappeared. No, no, BSR, no, nothing and overnight sales plummeted. So I actually had to put up a second listing, a completely second listing with a different asen different skew. And just ship them fbm I didn’t really label anything but same UPC and everything, because it doesn’t matter. It’s not going anywhere, it’s just coming out of my warehouse. But I had to do that to salvage it. And there’s a point where I was actually me personally, because I didn’t, I was shipping four to five, one day, I just shipped like four or 500 orders, you know, just calendars, sleeve and out. And, and but if I hadn’t done that would feel lost 10s of 1000s of dollars. So that might be I might have to do more of that. And luckily, that product has the margin. But some people don’t have those margins that they can absorb that because Amazon could fulfill that for bigger fulfillment fee, like 348 or something. You know, I can’t send those the postage alone cost $5 and something on that even in bulk discounted rates, plus the labor plus the cost of the big envelope, they gotta go in all that, you know, it adds up. So yeah, it’s a, it’s a problem. So I think that the bigger sellers have multiple skews, you got to have some sort of just in time inventory system. And it’s gonna take a little bit of time to adjust. And hopefully, Amazon will take note and actually adjust this properly, like they should offer more successful sellers. But from Amazon’s point of view, I understand it, even though they’ve added what 50 or 60% more capacity, they’re still growing, and they don’t want to be a warehouse. And they’ve over and over tried to do things to say, hey, look, we’re not a warehouse, we’re filming center, but using us to store all your crap. And then since there’s so many people getting into the into the game, a lot of people will just send stuff in to Amazon just let it sit there. And it doesn’t sell, you know, so the new sellers over 500,000, send it straight in. And they’re selling a couple a day. And that stuff is just sitting out there taking up massive space and Amazon having to deal with it. Yeah, they’re charging you storage fees and stuff. But at the same time, it’s still, that’s not, that’s not where the profits at. They need to be moving that stuff.

Norman Ferrar    22:51  

Right? You know, I used one of your examples, with our mentoring group. This week, we were talking about this exact issue. And having a lot of sale, excuse me, having a lot of sales come in, and then getting hot. Oh my gosh, too many cigars, Kevin. So after this, we’ll have to go for a cigar. Anyway. If you have a lot of sales, and all of a sudden your sales either plateau or go down. You could be stuck with either a removal order, as you were saying the last time like you blew me away when you said you could have gotten hit with a I think it was a $60,000 fine, because you were moving all that product. And then all of a sudden there was a dip because they suspended you for you know, whatever Amazon does, you know, and it was it. You’ve already proven that this PPA product. You know, there was no issue with it. But you got a random suspension again, which made your sales go down. And then what it was 60 some odd $1,000 if you didn’t react correctly. Yeah, yeah, it was very expensive. Yes, people have to realize that. And the reason why I’m saying this, this is a segue is we’re this Prime Day, Prime Day is coming up. And if we’re pumping a ton of product into prime date, and we’re expecting that there’s going to be a lot of sales. Are people going to fall into the trap where they have tons of inventory? They use up all their storage to put their inventory in. And then after Prime Day, your sales slide back because we’re not in fourth quarter.

Kevin King   24:32  

Yeah, I’m in private people. I see that a lot. You see a lot of people now their blog posts and different things coming out or people asking what are you doing to prepare for Prime Day? What are you doing to get ready and my answer is nothing. Nothing what what’s the point it’s a single day or it’s actually two days or whatever they might get three days where they make it now. A decent sales and as long as I have some, make sure what do I do I make sure I got some inventory. Make sure I mean, make sure I’m not down to my last 20 units or something. That’s all I do. I do nothing else. I don’t put a prime banners, any special logos, I don’t email my list. And if you got a lightning deal on Prime Day deal the day or lightning deal, then yeah, you need to really make sure you get your inventory in there. But other than that, it’s just a nice couple of days of sales. And for me, there’s nothing else to do. Hey, how you doing?

Norman Ferrar   25:27  

I see enormous fault for interrupting you. Now. coffee, please. So So for me, I mean, it’s not like the fourth quarter I you know,

Kevin King 25:42  

prime prime day is like a in there’s there’s a there’s 45 Prime days between mid November and early January. So that’s, that’s my philosophy on It is I, I don’t see it as it’s a great marketing tool for Amazon. It’s a great reason for people to come in. But usually the levels off because everybody, all you’re doing is forwarding some sales. Because usually after Prime Day, the next week after prime, that usually sucks, sales, you’re gonna go out because you’re us, all you’re doing is compressing some sales. It’s just great marketing for Amazon and getting selling prime memberships and whatever. But unless you got deals of the day or something else going on, it’s just make sure you have some inventory. And and now with the new rules, like you just said, That scares me. You got to be a little even extra careful. Yeah.

Norman Ferrar  26:31  

Yeah. So I mean, with that extra inventory. That is like you said the sales slowdown what’s How is that going to affect? You know, the removal orders and playing around with it. So it’ll be interesting to talk to you in July, after all, this kind of settles down and see how it fares out. But the one of the things that we don’t we never do. And I think you’d agree with this, there’s so many new sellers that will go out there. And at you’re receiving an email from Amazon saying, oh, to have better chances of winning the Prime Day battle, increase your bids. And you know, one of the things that we’ll never do ever do is increase our PPC. Now, I do do something a little bit different. I like I won’t bid anything at the beginning very low. And I’ll start to gain speed throughout the day and add a little bit while people’s inventory is going out. I don’t do a ton of Prime Day changes. One of the things that do you ever do a pre launch a pre launch or a pre Prime Day launch? So for you have done in the past with my own list? Yeah, I like that. And what will either do is we’ll send out just a notification to our list. Is that good? Coffee or tea? It’s actually I got soda in there. Oh, actually no. Nw right now trying to make changes having too many changes. But the Prime Day the pre launch for Prime Day works extremely well. If you want to let your listeners know that they first of all that they can go over to Amazon for Prime Day and take advantage or take advantage now and get an additional 5% off. And that works extremely well. We get a lot of pre Prime Day. I’m not really worried. Like last year. Prime Day absolutely sucked for us the year before it was a different story. But I’m not expecting a huge boost in sales. So

Kevin King   28:45  

anytime you leverage like what you just said anytime you can leverage off holiday a holiday or an event can be good whether it’s Prime Day or you know I used to do this a lot more of my bit not Amazon stuff I haven’t done as much but driving smaland store, I would do you know Labor Day specials, Memorial Day specials, Valentine’s, you know, Presidents Day, whatever some sort of excuse to here’s 10% off or 20% off or get a free item. Those kinds of sales that are tied around an event can work very well and gives you an excuse to send out an extra message that’s technically maybe not as spammy in some people’s eyes. A lot what a lot of people don’t realize in the in the catalog business if you think about this, especially in the states i don’t know so much in Canada but in the states with Dragon mail, snail mail, one of the postman brains sticks a little box. If you look if you pay a certain paying attention you’ll notice after any holiday so here in the US Monday is a holidays Memorial Day. So watch your mail Tuesday through Thursday of next week. If you live in the US and if you’re a mail order buyer if you if you’re someone that’s bought from catalogs or mail order in the past, you’re one of those types of buyers, you should see an uptick in catalogs arriving on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Next week, because the days, the three days after a holiday goes at all times, by those companies on purpose, you know, you’ll get the Crate and Barrel catalog or we get the sharper image catalog or we get whatever it is. A lot of those will show up extra ones, you know, an extra stack of them will show up a couple days, within a couple of days after a holiday because it’s proven in the direct marketing industry. It’s one of the best times to actually hit people is actually after after a holiday. And so I’ve never actually tested that fully online. But I actually maybe should that logic actually may apply there too. So so a post Prime Day Sale, like you were saying a pre Prime Day Sale, maybe it would be good as something you know, maybe you’re driving them to your Amazon page, or even to your own website, doing a review of your own list, a post sale. So if prime days on a Tuesday, you know that following Wednesday and Thursday, that’s when you actually give your best discounts. And I’ve done stuff in the past, like on Christmas around Christmas time. I’ve done stuff was 10 Days of Christmas. And each of each day is a different item I’ve done around the holidays around Thanksgiving in the US, or I’ll send out an email on a Wednesday. All right, here’s today’s deal on Wednesday, coming tomorrow is another deal. And the deal is progressively getting better all the way until Monday. So Cyber Monday. That was at work as well, too. I would think that, uh, yeah, actually, now I’m thinking I was brainstorming here out loud. A post holiday sale might actually be even more effective than a pre holiday.

Norman Ferrar  31:35  

Yeah, yeah. And if you wanted to even add another layer, if you drive those people back to your website for products that aren’t available on Amazon, so let’s say it’s so you know, so maybe your lavender soap and and some tropical scents are on Amazon, but you have dead Dead Sea, you know, mud soap, and you know a few others that you just can’t get on Amazon, you drive the traffic using your list over to your Shopify store, they get this you know, 15% discount, and they buy two or three, they go over to your shopping cart. And because it’s a Prime Day Sale, when they go to exit, now they have your coupon for your prime day to go back to Amazon and buy your regular so

Kevin King  32:25  

Yeah, something like that could work too. Yeah. So yeah, I think both were even tell them up front is you buy you buy two soaps from from our website, you get a something a heavy discount or a free soap off Amazon or whatever. Yeah, or rebates will give you by two songs from our site and one from Amazon. Send us your Amazon receipt and we’ll refund your Amazon the money for your Amazon by using but be sure to use this stuff if something like that could be effective. Yeah.

Norman Ferrar 32:56  

What are you excited about? Anything new? Any? It doesn’t have to be Amazon but like eecom wise, anything that’s, that’s making you perk up and listen.

Kevin King  33:07  

What am I excited about? Yeah, I don’t know if I’m excited. I’m excited about a live events coming back and the econ space, you know, going to prosper I’d be the it’s going to be kind of weird, because I you know, since March of last year, I haven’t been on a plane since March of last year. And I haven’t really had all I’ve been doing is working. And I was talking to somebody the other day about this. And it’s like, I might feel a little bit guilty, you know, going to a prosper show for five days. And not actually I’m like, I feel like hey, I’m not getting worked out. I’ve gotten so much in the last year yet. Not because I’m not traveling or not having to take that time. So it’s I’m wondering how that’s gonna feel, I think it’s gonna feel pretty good because I need a break. But, and I’m actually making about a three pronged around, prosper about a three week break, because I’m going to drive out to Las Vegas actually, and on the way stop at a few places. And then after that, I’m going to go to California for about a week spend with helium 10 to shoot the next freedom ticket. So that’s been about a week out there. So just give me about three weeks of July where I’m not sitting at my desk, and it’s gonna feel a little a little odd to think,

Norman Ferrar   34:21  

man I am trying. If my bloody country will allow me to travel, please. Prime Minister Trudeau Lee just lift the bloody travel restrictions in July so I can go to prosper by September, say from a billion dollar seller something absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, I’d love to go. I mean, I gotta say this, you know, your event. You know how to do things, right. What got me going was the Illuminati event that you did in Cancun. And it was just holy crap. Yeah. Well, when we walked into that room, it was all done. And I said who’s like, Who’s the person that actually was the event planner? And I heard it was you as Mara, Mara. It’s mark. Well, yeah, but mark, but you were the guy that Yeah, I guess the both of you. And that was a hell of an event. And then, you know, just what you put on in Austin, at the billion dollar seller summit. I got it. pdss It’s incredible. It is jam packed with education, fun and hospitality. So I just got to say that, I mean, we’re not a sponsor, or you’re not a sponsor, I just have to say, That’s got to be one of the best events I’ve ever been to appreciate that. Yeah. So let’s get back to being excited. Alright, so events, you’re excited, I hope that we can meet at prosper. Anything else? Is Amazon doing anything that you’re seeing that, you know, something different right now that you can just jump on?

Kevin King   36:02  

I mean, I mean, they’ve always got the little, you know, video is up and coming. You know, we’ve talked about the Amazon posts in the past. Yeah, those are kind of hit and miss to me. I think I still think there’s gonna be good opportunity coming in video. I think it’s still better ways to go. And some of the, you know, I’m not 100% sold on Amazon live yet. I know, some people are joining Okay, there, but I don’t know that ever. It’s for the masses just yet. But I think it’s gonna get there. I see Amazon still growing, I see the opportunity is still huge. Every week, I’m I’m still looking for products, because I do that for products events. You know, I have my assistant that I do, we you know, using brand analytics and stuff. And but that, that, there’s still plenty of opportunity. I mean, people are saying, you hear this all the time of is it’s too late or too many Chinese sellers and or there’s too much of this. And yeah, that’s true for for some things. But there’s still plenty of opportunity out there that to make money. And on this platform, it’s amazing what you can do. And, you know, we’re looking what I’m looking for this I don’t I don’t we don’t consider anything if it doesn’t do at least $10,000 a month in sales. That’s the bare minimum, right. So you know, other people, there’s some people that happily launch things that will make them two or $3,000 a month in sales and $1,000 profit stream and get a 10 or 15 of those. That can be a nice little business. But we’re not looking for that because it’s just not worth our time for the way we do this, it because the amount of effort that we put into the sourcing and the bedding and everything. It’s not cost effective. So we’ll leave that to other people. But the range of $10,000 in sales per month and up with 25 to 40% profit margins, or net contribution margins, there’s still a lot of opportunity, tons. And so anybody that tells you otherwise is does another guy, or doesn’t know what they’re talking about, or is approaching it wrong. So that I see that as a good thing. And then, yeah, I mean, I’m excited to be launching a new company, you know that we funded this company and everything. About a year ago, we set this thing up was actually Scott deeds from North bound, helped us set this up in 2019, we had the investment, it’s a significant investment that was put into the company, it evolved a little bit because during the formation, right after we formed the company, we one of the biggest outdoor brands came to us and said, Hey, we want you to take the license for our pets, pet products are especially on e commerce because we’ve tried some other people, they don’t know what they’re doing. So why don’t you guys do it. So we have a big brand that’s involved. That’s had a lot of big athletes. And since these products are all made out of recycled ocean waste, they’ve got to they’re an ocean based brand, beach, ocean based brand. So it’s a perfect fit. So we’re kind of excited to see what happens with their influencers that have 2 million followers on Instagram, as soon as they post pictures with our products with their dogs and talk about it to see. See really what kind of impact that that influence in marketing actually has on an Amazon business. You know, people always talk about going out and convincing an influencer to do something or, or paying them to do something this is going to be basically, you know, free, and they’re really good products. So we’ll see. And it’s going to be interesting to see, I think one of the big opportunities on Amazon is is exactly what we’re doing is branding and not creating your own brand, but partnering with existing brands under license. So that’s what we have, we have to pay about 8% of our top line sales to to you know as a fee to these guys, but we’re gonna see is it worth actually paying that 8% the extra value that we’re getting because of their brand name people are researching already knowing it, or trusting it, is it gonna be worth it, you know, they’ve, they’re already in nordstroms, and Dick’s Sporting Goods and all the pets places, and I could just make a phone call and say, Hey, add this product to the line. And so we’ll see, we’re gonna see, and it’s a good test. And but I think this could be part of the future. of, for a lot of people, as you know, I went with Paul Miller to the licensing show a couple of years ago, you know, he may, he’s done well with licensing on some of his, uh, his products. And I saw some good opportunity there. And I think a lot of Amazon sellers, they don’t understand that, or they don’t get that. But you know, if you’re putting out a flashlight, and there’s tons of flashlights already for sale on Amazon, but there’s room for you to come in there. And you’re like, Yeah, I thought was the 10th Best Selling flashlight on Amazon? I could still do $30,000 a month in sales? Maybe but what if you were the US Army?

Kevin King    40:55  

Tough and rugged. flashlight, you know, you had the US Army logo on the side of that flashlight? Could you bump that up to being a third or fourth best seller? Just by having that license and actually paying a royalty? Maybe somebody you should go for that license? So I think I think there’s a big opportunity in the future for Amazon sellers doing that.

Kevin King 41:16  

And I’m about to find out if it’s if there’s really any value in that or not. Right.

Norman Ferrar  41:22  

And you know, one of our listeners, I think she’s probably listening today, Marsha Reese, she’s had a billion dollars in sales with Power Ranger licenses. Yeah, you know, just licensing is another way another look another way to provide even higher perceived value. So you can go on, there’ll be a flashlight there for 10 bucks. But because you have US Army on there, it could be 25 bucks. So you might be paying that 8% back. But you could go at a higher perceived value, because it’s a higher that is perceived as a higher quality.

Kevin King    41:59  

I mean, we’re doing exactly doing that. I mean, the product, or one of our products that we’re selling the top, one of the best selling brands on Amazon is in the $60 range. Yeah, for those products for dogs. And it’s about $60 items for dogs, and ours is going to come out at 75. Because and there’s two reasons one, we have a higher cost because of the licensing fees. And, and but it’s also has the brand name behind it. So people should actually pay more for it. And then we actually made a lot of significant improvements to the product to that it’s a really kick ass product. So I think it’s not only going to be the most expensive, it’s probably going to be the best on the market. So it’s just how fast can we gain traction and take away and, you know, the top sellers got 10,000 reviews or something like that. That doesn’t scare me, I think we can beat them. And it’s going to be but at the same time, when you’re dealing with a license, these guys are fanatics, like we did a package inserts are a little tag actually, you know, and sent that everything’s got to go through them for approval. So it’s not you can’t do whatever you want. And they actually had to change the fonts, you know, just it’s not a big deal. But they have like, these are the only five fonts you can use in anything that has our logo on it. So we did change one of the fonts that we were using, and then they were nitpicking the whole thing like move this, this image two pixels to the left, please, on the telephone, right? Okay. And so they were nitpicking it pretty good. So it’s gonna be interesting to see once we put up our Amazon listing, how much they’re going to try to influence us there. And that’s where it could be a problem. Where I’m like, Look, you came to us for a reason we know Amazon will go by your rules and use your, the fonts when we can and you know, all this stuff, but let us create the listing. We know what we’re doing with keywords and the way it’s written and whatever. So it’s gonna be interesting to see how much micromanaging, they try to do their right to protect their brand, but I understand that their brand, they want a very consistent image and very consistent message across everything. But it’s gonna be a little interesting test.

Norman Ferrar   44:11  

You know, you said something about 10,000. You look for products that can sell at least 10,000. And you know that other people might not want that they might be satisfied with two or 3001 of the things that I want to touch on is mentoring or coaching. You are the host of helium 10. Elite, more for advanced sellers. But it’s so important. I know, a back going back to the Illuminati. We really didn’t have a chance to talk back then. And but one of the things I was saying is that just coming to that event, I could see that if you’re a new seller or somebody that’s just coming out where you’re having troubles with 3d 5000 in sales by doing one thing different, or a couple of things different, you can take 10 or turn it into 20. But a lot of people just need that guidance to just get over the hump. They don’t realize if they set up their PPC this way, or if they did, you know, some other form of marketing. So I see a gamey wheezes here, she’s got a great coaching program, I know that you have helium 10, elite as well as btss. But, you know, do you want to give me some information or your thoughts on that?

Kevin King  45:34  

Yeah, I think you got to look at the total overall market, though. So I mean, there’s there’s some markets where you look at the product on Amazon, you pull up X ray or something, and the top 10 sellers are all doing, I’m just making this up, say, and then they wrote up $2,000 each in total sales as a $20,000. Market, basically, because everything below that really doesn’t count too much. So that’s a $20,000 market. So it can you take that by doing some additional things, ramping up your PPC and make it a better product or whatever, can you take your 2000 and and basically eliminate four or five of those guys and take their $2,000, you might need to take some of that you might be able to get that 2000 to four or 5000. By having a better product, better pricing, but it depends on the market. So one of the things that I do like when I’m looking for these these products is, is I have a special spreadsheet that I’ve created in and

Kevin King   46:30  

in a Excel, where I actually I can just I think I mentioned this in the past. But I mentioned this the Leo, I think I was on the freedom ticket, I’ve talked about this a little bit just recently, and he was like holy cow is a smart idea. But what I do is I download the last three months of brand analytics data. So just go on Amazon download, you know, 2 million records or so right now it’s May. So you can do April, March and February, those will be the three most available recent months, four months. I mean, you could do it however you want, you can do it by week, three quarters, or however you want to do it. But that’s how I do it. I download those. And then I have I had someone over in India found someone on Upwork that actually wrote me a special little custom program that uses a language called r which is like a artificial intelligence language. And she runs it through some stuff that she did there. And then it gets important to excel. For the final product, we add all these columns, one of the things that we look for in a spreadsheet, is, is trends. So I’m looking for one of the columns that we create is like what is this trending up? Is it trending down? Or is it fairly steady? Was it inconsistent, there’s four different criteria. So something that has an Fs SFR of 1000, I’m sorry, 100,000. This month, next month, it’s at or next month, it’s 60, that’s trending up with it’s constantly becoming more popular, something that’s opposite, that’s going from 60 to 100 to 200 is trending down that keyword, or a one that’s bouncing around, maybe it’s 100, that goes to 90 and it goes 110 that’s fairly steady, there’s not huge shifts, that’s going up and down because a few shifts, but when it goes from 100 to 50 to 700,000. That’s inconsistent. And so and we look for those things, and we look for conversion rates, which ones have 0%, and especially in the second and third spots, second 30 cents, which ones has 0% conversion rates, that’s most likely manipulation, most likely, so those those get eliminated. And then we look for how many we take the words that are in the titles, and how many of the, how many. And compare that to the brand analytics, where it’s and how many in the whole SFR range. Do these, these, this this phrase appear in different ones. And we have a column that’s created for that. And we see how that’s going we look for ones that there wasn’t an SFR and February but there all of a sudden was one in March. And then then in March, it went up a little bit went down a little bit worse was trending up, that’s a new keyword is emerging. And maybe it’s came in at 900,000 now it’s at 600,000. So that’s something we’ve got to pay attention to. So those are all criteria that you really need to make strong. And we do some other stuff with this whole thing too. But I can eliminate a million SFR keywords by running this through this system down to about 1500 that I can scroll through and I can find probably 200 product opportunities just like that and an hour after it’s run all this stuff. Now there’s more work that’s got to be done beyond that, you know, you start with these and you take a look from through X ray see what the competition is see if the review rates are see what that kind of stuff is. But it eliminates a lot of the work and you can really zero in on opportunities and you got to source it. And sometimes half of all the source products of it doesn’t make the cut because either there’s 80% of this factories are selling direct on Amazon from China. So we did our price and what they’re selling on Amazon. There’s no margin for So that eliminate some other times there’s duties or tariffs, or some sort of other issue. So about half of them get eliminated, or it’s not quite enough margin, we just don’t feel comfortable with it. So another half get eliminated. So, at the end with Sue, at the end of the day, you can find a lot of really good stuff. And it’s amazing how many great opportunities there are. It’s just most people don’t know how to, to look at that data. Right? Look at that, and see. And so back on your initial thing of something that’s 1000 2000, can you learn some techniques of PPC, or some other strategy out of traffic or doing Prime Day post prime date sales, or any of these things we talked about all those can help for sure. But the markets got to be there, the demand has to be there. And you got to be able to take it away, either create new demand, which is you either created or it’s being created organically by the news or by celebrities or something, or by some post went viral on on Facebook, or you got to steal it from whoever’s already got it. So if you can find that angle there to do all that, then then great. And we see that there’s a product we just found for products device that’s in the

Kevin King    51:18  

in the drinking space, for you know, people that maybe had like coffee and tea and, and cappuccinos and that kind of thing. And the market is hugely saturated for these types of products. You go on Amazon and the top 10 guys have 1000s or 10s of 1000s of reviews. But there’s a particular angle that if you take this particular angle on this, and we found a factory that can do this, and you sell one of these things at a premium price, we think you can cut a little piece of the market there and just tear it up. It’s kind of like the whole bully sticks example I’ve given in the past. There’s tons of those types of opportunities as well. But that takes marketing and positioning and branding. And a lot of people that are selling e commerce aren’t very good at that.

Norman Ferrar   52:01  

Correct. I have to again, hate and patience, but that’s why they need that coaching side or the mentoring side. So all right. I think there’s a bunch of questions. cough.

Kelsey  52:19  

Just Just a couple. Yeah. All right. So first off, do we have a cut off time? Kevin? Are you good for Timer? I’m gonna I got 37 seconds.

Norman Ferrar  52:31  

Seven seconds. Good. You know what, when Kevin comes on, I think we should do that hammer song. And instead of Don data, what is it? It’s it’s, it’s Kevin time. It’s not hammer time.

Kevin King   52:48  

Brad always jumps on Manny and used to say this when he was doing the podcast for helium 10. And Bradley now, they say the same thing. Like, Kevin, you’re like the perfect podcast guest because I can sit down ask one question. And then I can leave. I can go drink a coffee, go to the bathroom. But watch an episode of France and come back and you’re still talking. That’s what I’m doing now. It’s all you. It’s Kevin time. Let’s get

Kelsey   53:14  

started. It’s Kevin time from red. What do you think about $30 UPC code?

Kevin King    53:22  

The new the new UPC thing? Is that what you’re talking with referring to? i? I believe so. Yeah, the GS? I think he’s referring to the GS one one where it’s like a little bit cheaper license. I don’t see a problem with that. As long as it’s GS one, you’re getting a straight from GS one. I think that’s

Kelsey   53:42  

Yeah, rad. If you want to clarify at all, just let us know. From good grip. It’s sleek. Question for the king. What do you think of women’s networks?

Kevin King   53:53  

I’m not real familiar with it. I don’t know, do you? Normally you have an experience or then your clients from work? I’m not.

Norman Ferrar   54:01  

I’m not saying I have clients that that use it. I’m not tied into it. So I can’t really give too much information.

Kevin King  54:10  

I think it probably has some good potential from what I’ve seen, but I don’t know enough about it to write an opinion.

Kelsey   54:18  

Okay, and again, about Shopify did a Google partner with Shopify? Yes. Yeah,

Norman Ferrar  54:24  

yes. A big announcement this week. This is gonna be big. So yeah, we’ll be recording a lot more about Google and Shopify and how that partnership is going to work.

Kelsey 54:36  

Okay, great. This is from Simon with inventory limits, causing higher ups through PL costs from buying the CIF freight spikes, weak currency and higher material costs. Will it shake out the weak sellers in late 2022 for the serious guys.

Kevin King   54:52  

It’s gonna shake out some weekend some experienced sellers. Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people are under estimating. Especially newer people, that their three PL and their freight costs. So yeah, I think a lot of people, but that does that shake them out, know that the problem is they still compete and they still come in, and they’re still competing against you. And then they realize that they’re not going to make any money. So they just try to blow this stuff out at cheaper prices. So the consumers went, but you don’t win. So I see. I don’t think there’s gonna be a, it’s gonna shake people out. But there’s, as soon as you shake the tree, there’s some more apples growing on the tree. Right away, so I don’t think it’s gonna. It’s possible.

Kelsey   55:41  

Okay. All right. From Fe, just a clarification, what’s a Prime Day pre launch?

Norman Ferrar   55:48  

Oh, all that is it’s nothing official. But all that is is prior to Prime Day. So whatever date that’s going to be, I start emailing my clients, or my customers, just early a week, early or two weeks early, just letting them know that I either have a Prime Day special going on, or take advantage of a to purchase my product before Prime Day. And I can either drive them over to my Amazon listing, or over to my e commerce listing. So all it is, is just driving traffic before Prime Day to take advantage of the sale.

Kelsey    56:25  

Okay, from Darwin, I’m moving a listing of mine to another of my Seller Central accounts, will the algorithm of that listing stay the same?

Kevin King   56:35  

It should as long as the same as the same skew. It should, it should carry all the all the history over you might actually get a new honeymoon period on it depending on how you make that move. But yeah, you should be okay on that. And that’s what the aggregators and stuff a lot of them are doing all the time.

Kelsey  56:58  

Okay. This is kind of a comment from Kyle. I’ve heard post holiday sales, at least for Christmas are very effective. I wonder if has to do with people using gift cards and cash they were gifted?

Kevin King   57:09  

Yeah, the day after Christmas is usually the Christmas Day. Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are usually pretty weak. And depending on what day of the week, Christmas, the 26th is Boxing Day in some places, depending on what day of the week, that is it can be hit or miss. But one of the best times for 25 years when I’m running my own membership sites and my own websites outside of Amazon is that the week between Christmas and New Year’s was very, very, very good week to actually do sales and promotions, whether you’re selling a course, or you’re selling a membership to something or you’re selling a physical product, those are very good. A lot of people always think that on the holidays, and Amazon is fourth quarter, but it’s fourth quarter and a half. Because for me into mid January and even late January sales are still really strong, especially if you’re selling something that’s new year’s eve New Year’s resolution related weight loss or you know, something like that those really boom in January, but even just normal average everyday things have strong sales into December and into into January. And some of that is exactly what you’re saying it has to do with gift cards. That people redeeming also has to do with returns, a lot of people get stuff that they returning. And instead of taking the money back, they’re just picking something else that they actually want. And hopefully that’s something you’re selling.

Norman Ferrar  58:27  

Yeah, and we see we’ve seen very similar up to January 15th. is usually strong sales.

Kelsey   58:37  

Okay. From Amy’s, do you think the days of Amazon only brands in more saturated categories are over? For example, flashlights.

Kevin King   58:49  

Amazon already made Amazon only brands you mean brands at Amazon’s own like 100 something brands that Amazon has created like Amazon basics, or do you mean people who have just created a brand and they only sell it on Amazon? I’m not sure what Amazon only brands means there? But no, there’s opportunity in virtually every category if you have the right product and the right angle, and money and money. Yeah, I mean, just to go find a flashlight in China and stick your name on it and throw it into the flashlight category. You’re probably not gonna have very good luck. But I don’t know this category specifically, but there’s probably an angle in there that like we talked about with the US Army. Something like that could be a great angle.

Norman Ferrar  59:33  

Oh, and he’s talking about being a one legged stool. So if you’re only selling on Amazon,

Kevin King   59:39  

okay, if you’re only selling on Amazon? Um, no, no, I think. Yeah, there’s a lot of people out there that say you need to have a creative brand and you need to diversify. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. I don’t know that. I don’t think that’s true. I think that strength that strengthens you If you can do that, if you’re experienced at this game, or you come from a background, that I think it’s, it’s wise to consider doing that. But for the average person who just saw a norm and Tim’s Instagram posts about it, here’s three, three key things that make Amazon, Amazon. And they’re like, how do I do this, I want to quit my job. I’ve been working as a dental assistant for the last 10 years. And now I want to go out on my own and have some freedom. Someone like that should focus solely on Amazon, in my opinion, they should not be trying let me get Amazon going, and Shopify going and get my brand here and do that they need to take one thing at a time. But someone like myself, or norm or Amy, who’s got some experience in this, we started new brands, like I’m starting this new pet brands, yet we’re doing full on branding. And we’re not just doing Amazon, Amazon is a major part. But we’re doing wholesale retail, we’re doing Shopify, we’re doing sporting goods stores, we’re doing a bunch of stuff. But I have the experience. And you know, we’ve got a seven figure budget on this. This company, not on this one product, it’s not seven figures on one product, but the company is well funded, and got good people. So it’s set up. And like I said, we’ve worked with Scott deeds in the beginning early, I didn’t finish that, to set everything up to sell. So this company is being built with the with the sole intention of selling it in two to three years. So we made sure our operating agreement and our forecasting and everything from day one is spot on so that we can build on that. And once it comes time to sell, we’re not going to go back and redo things or change things or alter things. So my that’s my take them as I think too many people get sidetracked and stretched too thin and don’t have the resources and the money to do it. Right.

Norman Ferrar   1:01:56  

Yeah, I can’t agree more. I mean, just before this phone call, we were talking, I was talking to Kelsey, and you have to at least try to become the expert. You know, try to understand Amazon’s a big beast, but you know, get to understand it before you move on. If you don’t, and you just taking you know Shopify and Walmart and this and that and every other platform, you’ll never be good at any of them.

Kevin King   1:02:21  

And this restricts I mean, there’s downside, there’s risk by Amazon, I haven’t while you’re playing in their sandbox, they make their own rules. They can they can sync your business overnight, and they suck one of mine. I mean, one of my businesses and the PBE business and we just recently just, we have one of our products and wipes that are really good quality wipes for the hands that are made in Vietnam, I support what I’ll call five star reviews. I mean, real not. We haven’t done anything, no email follow ups, no nothing. So we’re just totally organic. Lot of five star five star average on these products. But selling them since December on Amazon. Just in March, we made one update to the title and didn’t put any bad keywords or anything, just need to rearrange a couple of words, using the malis technique from Bradley to zero and on and the listings got suspended. And saying that these restricted products you see the dog page, these are products that we’re doing, you know, four figures a day, overnight shut down. And you know, I do the appeals Sorry, it’s restricted all the concern team is looking at it though send us a documentation. They come back say sorry, denied. Our SMEs would have special merchandise evaluators or some there’s some term they have have evaluated this. And these are not allowed for sale, you need to provide EPA documents and this and I know this is not EPA. We’ve gone through this seven times before with Amazon legal. And we send the letters from Amazon legal the letters from the state of Texas agricultural commission saying these are not regulated by EPA for the hands the whole night, the FDA registered, still denied again. And then I finally was able to get someone involved at Amazon that I think maybe kind of helped accelerate a little bit and kept I didn’t give up and they just got noticed today on May 28, at least went down on May 7 or eighth I think now now they’re back up over three weeks. These were down for no freakin valid reason zero, but they’ve already gone through the vetting process multiple times. But just the algorithm just keep them down. And then the guys in India don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground. And so it it that is a danger of selling on Amazon. That’s happened enough times on this product, that it makes you scared to even do a launch another launch or another something that we could waste all this we could spend much of money on search, find buyers to get the ranking and then boom overnight, back down again. That is a danger of selling on Amazon. But even regardless of that danger The opportunity is immense. And so by What happens? We’re on Shopify, we’re on other places, we’re on several other places. But the sales during those three weeks are a joke compared to what they would have been on Amazon, no matter what I do. As I think in that timeframe, we sold five units off of our Shopify site. And then there’s restrictions on you know, certain products like PP, you can’t advertise that on Facebook. Google has certain restrictions on it. So you’re limited in what you can do there as well. So this is a challenge. But Amazon is despite its problems, and it’s it’s pain in the asked stuff is still hands down the best place to do stuff. And any business carries risk.

Norman Ferrar   1:05:43  

When you were just to give people an idea, when you launch that product, you’re doing 40 grand a day in that product. What weren’t? Yeah, yeah, we’re doing full without even having the product with a three week shipment. So imagine being shut down for three weeks. And so these are the things when we talk about capitalization, we never touched on this one, this show, but we’ve talked talked about it before being properly capitalized. You know, you want to make sure that you have the cash flow to maintain in case something like this happens. So

Kevin King  1:06:18  

we consider other funding loan on this company. We took a loan in November, no, October of last year, for business sales are going cells are going so well. What we need more. And so we took a seller’s funding loan that has to be paid back every two weeks, whether they don’t care if Amazon shuts you down or not. You know, so you got to make sure that you can cover that because you personally have to guarantee those things. So those are you got to be properly capitalized. And it still it causes problems. You know, I’ve had to dump more money into this company. It’s lost. Its lost over a million dollars. Yeah, this is not an unprofitable at all. We’re getting out of it. But we’re trying to just salvage what we have. And we’re still fighting, fighting Amazon on it. But even despite all that, it doesn’t sell me on Amazon. I’m like, screw this Amazon. I’m just gonna go start doing Shopify or drop shipping or something. I don’t know. I’m super late. Norm asked me earlier about what do you say about we’re launching another company that’s launching initially on Amazon? And yeah, we’re gonna go retail and other places. But the initial feedback, the initial testing ground, the initial, let’s see, lecture, everybody likes this product is on Amazon. All right. Next question.

Kelsey  1:07:33  

From Manny, love, love, love the value. So far question, Where do I put a keyword that I want to be indexed for?

Kevin King  1:07:41  

Number one place is your title. So number one place would be the title second place would be your first three bullet points,

Norman Ferrar   1:07:48  

then your search terms on the back. And then anywhere else on your listing, you want to put a description where Kevin, you just said title bullet points, search terms, as the algorithm change it because it used to go over to the search terms before the bullets?

Kevin King    1:08:06  

I I don’t know. Nobody really knows what the algorithm is I. In my experience, subject matter used to be more right. But now subject matter is discontinued and a lot of places. But yeah, I usually click the bullets and then the search terms. But you know, some people might say it’s the other way around. And maybe it is the other way around. But I don’t think there’s enough difference. The title is definitely, yeah. I mean, there’s a perfect example, if you want to, this is what got me in trouble with the one I just got suspended, just changing the title. Because I changed the title, it probably went through some sort of algorithm check again, oops, this is why these are EPA. It just triggered something. So that’s a lesson there’s like, unless there’s a major advantage to be gained on an existing product. Don’t fuck with it. But what we were doing was actually keyword based. And so I was using a version of what what I Bradley did on helium 10 called the maladies technique. And so what I did is I took the brand analytics data, and I downloaded it for you the key word is to say it’s hand hand hand wipes. I just hate the word hand sanitizer. So it’s a hand sanitizer so I punch in hand sanitizer into brand analytics. And I don’t remember the exact results but there’s 50 some odd keywords that came up and so they had an SFR with the word hand sanitizer in it. And then what I did is I went over to the Chrome browser pulled up Amazon typed in each one of those manually typed in each one of those 50 keywords one by one, and then ran X ray on it. So I type in hand sanitizer which hand sanitizer gel for example. And the results will come up I hit X ray from helium 10. And then on X ray there’s a filter there where you can filter keywords in the title. So I would hit that little filter and I would type in hand sanitizer gel or whatever the keyword is just search for a habit filter and show We all have all the ones on page one that have that exact phrase in their title. So like hand sanitizer gel exactly in the title, and it would come back and that one, probably, you know, 80% of them that I’m like, okay, that’s a pretty competitive keyword. I just kept doing that all the way down to sfrs. I get down to SFR, something of SFR. I don’t know 150,000, which is decent search time, not not tremendous, but it’s decent enough. It’s got 150,000 search volume. It’s, it’s hand sanitizer. Many, many hand sanitizer party favors for example, many hand sanitizer party favors those little small bottles, that people can throw as a party favor or something for get back getting back together parties or in school parties or whatever. That keyword didn’t exist a year ago. But now it’s an SFR. And so I do that one, a whole bunch of results come up for all these little small bottles. But then I do the X ray trick where I type in an X ray and do the filter by title. I think it’s one or two had that exact phrase and the title of all 60 of them or whatever I’m like, that’s an opportunity. I’m on page three, or four for that keyword right now. Then we do a test and when they take that phrase change my title from now it says many hand sanitizer in this just add many hand sanitizer party Edward party favors to it and put it in my title and see what happens. And then run some PPC on that exact phrase to I did that make the change the rest, PPC got a couple sales, I went from page three to page one in three days, with only three sales on 150,000 SFR keyword, which corresponds to what’s at two or three 5000 searches a month, it’s not huge. But it’s enough. Went to page one just by having that exact phrase that’s very important back when that guy’s question or person’s question. Where are those keywords go. And that’s an opportunity. If you want to do that and look for some of the holes on Amazon, that little trick could actually take a product, we’re talking about $1,000 $2,000 product like norm was talking about earlier and double the sales to 4000 doing something like that might be your ticket. Very good. Awesome. Okay.

Norman Ferrar   1:12:18  

So yes, one thing we haven’t mentioned is the wheel of Kelsey today. So running at the end of the podcast. But anyways, if you’re interested in the will of Kelsey, I was talking to Apple lobby a little earlier today. And he is going to be giving away a 30 minute console on product innovation. So if you have any thoughts of innovating your product, Kevin is a huge product innovator. I’ve mentioned it a million times on on this podcast about, you know, some of the things that he’s done to just make changes. So it’s not the same flashlight that you’re selling. So if you’re interested in having and spending 30 minutes with Apple lobby, just enter we’ll have Kelsey, and he’ll spend some time checking it out. If you have questions. If you’re even if you don’t have a product, he’ll be helping you out, trying to figure out what’s the best way to innovate your product. Okay, so we’ll have Kelsey, if you tag two people, you’ll get entered twice.

Kelsey  1:13:19  

Okay, and making sure everyone knows it’s not Kevin King consultation. It’s awful lobby, so just be aware. Okay, from Adriana, what do you guys recommend to find a good coaching program? I know many offer community Facebook groups or group sessions. But I think the one on one coaching is what I can. What can help sell new sellers the most? Yes, perfect balance.

Kevin King  1:13:46  

Yeah, it’s great. If you have someone that can actually answer your questions directly. Or can coach you there’s there’s tons of them out there. You just got to find something that you’re you’re familiar with. I know. Norm you and Tim kind of do a little bit of that with your with your private label, Legion. I know. Brandon, Brandon young has a group where he does some of that with the freedom tickets. I don’t do one on one. I don’t like that he I wouldn’t get on the phone directly with you, if that’s what you’re looking for. I just don’t have time. But um, I do a weekly q&a call for all the frequent ticket students who are in the freedom ticket to helium 10. If you have the freedom ticket extra, there’s a small monthly charge for that. But it’s about an hour to two hours every Monday, where it’s just not something like this where everybody ants ask questions. And we stay until all the questions are answered. Nobody gets skipped. No questions get skipped. So that that’s one way there’s other people I see posting on Facebook who offer these types of things. Amy, Amy, Amy, here, I think it’s on here does it there’s a lot of people, some of them know what they’re doing. Some of them aren’t worth a shit. So I guess You know, you can you can take some recommendations from some people, policy who you’re comfortable with don’t don’t commit to something long term if you if you don’t have to, and see if you’re comfortable with them, see if they’re giving you value. If they’re giving you value, then then that’s great. And it’s worth the value in which you’re spending. That can definitely be good.

Norman Ferrar  1:15:18  

Yeah, sure. On so I’m sure on Evan, she’s also into the coaching side. With with what we’re doing, we don’t have it’s hard to take on a one to one. But and that’s why like for Tim and I, we put on the group mentoring. So it’s a group environment where you can ask me questions to get it done just like what Kevin’s doing. But now one on one is very hard to do. If it it’s all about time, if you have 10 clients, how do you service those clients or 20 clients? So anyways, what you’re saying Kevin is 100%, make sure your personality fits into the group. If it’s a group mentoring style program, or with the coach, make sure you listen, because you could be spending a lot of money. If you don’t know that personality of the coach if you don’t get along, so it’s important to go and do some research.

Kevin King  1:16:18  

And then the prices are all over the French forum. I tried it a few years ago, because I kept getting asked, and I still check my DMS right now there’s probably a bunch in there. I’m not on LinkedIn, that’s one of the reasons is because too many people reach out. But you blocked me.

Kevin King  1:16:36  

You are blocked. But yeah, I was tired. You send me pictures of yourself.

Kevin King  1:16:46  

But anyway, yeah, I was charging $1,000 an hour. And people were paying it’s but it’s still, I had to look at my time. Because usually I felt bad just doing an hour because I want to help people. So it’s an hour and a half, two hours, three hours. And and and then it you know, they always have follow up questions or have additional things and use responsibility there. So it’s like this, do I want to make that my business? Or do I want to do other things, what they’re more scalable. For some people that makes it makes perfect sense, let’s make coaching my business. And that’s what I’m going to do. And that’s how I’m going to pay my bills, and also a little bit of stuff on the side. But for me, but problem with that coaching is you can’t sell that you’re working, you’re working for your money, your trading hours, your trading hours for dollars. versus if I go and I build a business, you know, like this pet business that we’re talking about. And Amazon is running it 24 seven, for me, it’s shipping and doing everything and all I got to do is spend that same three hours that I would have been talking to somebody for a week on the phone, and doing something on Amazon can make more than $3,000 for the same three hours? And the answer is automatically Yes. So I better off taking that time and doing three hours or something on Amazon, that’s gonna make me for those three hours of whatever, you know, the keyword thing that I just gave an example, you know, that’s gonna make me over time, maybe this year might make extra 20 grand this year in sales. But when I go to sell a company on top of it three years from now, it’s gonna make me another 50 grand in sales price. That’s 870 80 grand, instead of three grand, that’s where it’s better. So that’s how I look at it. And, you know, I have eight different businesses that I’m involved in on. So that’s why I have to delegate my time and work smartly. And so that’s, that’s, that’s how I approach it. So someone else, you know, has that time and that’s what they they want to do. I love doing it. Don’t get me wrong. That’s why I’m doing this with norm. I love answering this stuff. But I have to I rather just give it away for free for a little while and then have that other commitment. Right. Okay, next question.

Kelsey 1:18:59  

Okay, let’s see from Nathan. Would Kevin ever offer an influencer? Joe Rogan deal which deal where the influencer gets a percentage of profits and even owns part of your company? Potentially? Yeah, it was the right influencer. Yeah, absolutely.

Norman Ferrar 1:19:16  

Jordan was on. So he’s the guy from boxy charm. And he teamed up with a bunch of celebrity influencers and oh, and also we had a Ruby Mendez on and they’ve teamed up with snow with Conor McGregor and a bunch of them. So you can like Joe Martin just sold his company for $500 million to Etsy. So teaming up with influencers can be majored.

Kevin King  1:19:46  

You see that sometimes on Shark Tank? on one day, many people watch Shark Tank. You’ll see these people come in there and they’re like, I’ll give you you give me $100,000 for 5% of my company, you know, and then the sharks Like what? No You know, I’ll give you the 100 grand, but I want 50% your company or 25% your company? And I know No, I just can’t give away that much. This is my baby and I’ve got too much work in this. A lot of times that’s stupid. So says the right influencer, giving them a bigger piece or getting getting them involved can make everybody a lot more money.

Kelsey  1:20:25  

Let’s see, there’s one about your email platforms or use from No, no, Andrew. We got five or six Still, we can end to be the number 130. Okay, all right, from Andrew Smith. Kevin, what is your email automation platform of choice?

Kevin King   1:20:49  

Actually, I use right now I use something called forum get is an Indian based company, it’s like 50 bucks a month. I know. MailChimp is another one. But I use actually form gets for all my email automation on I’ve never heard of it. It’s supposed to have a form get they have a mail section, but it’s called mail get gt mail get. That’s what I use. It’s not the most sophisticated, you know, the, with all the bells and whistles that some of the others have, but it does what I need to do.

Norman Ferrar  1:21:22  

What makes it $50 a month like MailChimp is free or they have a $29 version or you know, higher.

Kevin King  1:21:30  

I, you get all of these things. You get form builders, you get mail. It’s a whole package. It’s a whole suite. It’s not just mail, it’s I don’t use a lot of the other stuff I use the mail get. But one of the things that I like is I can use that there’s some advantages to it on some of the SMTP and sex stuff that I can do that some other tools don’t have. And I’m not as limited to.

Norman Ferrar  1:21:55  

Alright.

Kelsey   1:21:58  

Okay, so I think we could do one more question. Sure. Let’s see. Okay, from Adriana, our product suffered the Amazon glitch from a couple of weeks ago, and we haven’t got a ranking factor on all keywords and loss index on money. What would you recommend?

Kevin King   1:22:19  

Yeah, that’s a I know some people take advantage of that. I think Leo and destiny from better ms are talking about how they took advantage of this glitch and actually raised their PPC during that time. And actually, he would get a lot of ranking when it came back. But yeah, so I don’t have an exact answer for you on if you lost your ranking. He could have been someone else took advantage of that timeframe like Leo and destiny, where they pumped up their volume, and kind of over beat you. But I I don’t know what do you what would you say they should do?

Norman Ferrar  1:22:56  

that’s a that’s a tough one. I mean, you might want to play around with your with your title. It is tough because it I mean, there’s different ways that you can do it. Some people take advantage of putting out rebates or search find by throwing them against the keyword. You might want to just go back play around with the PPC See if you can do something there. But one of the things you might want to check is to see if your bloody word is indexed. So we found that some of the ranking didn’t come back. They were they weren’t indexed. So we had to play around with it again, in the listing to get them to index properly. Didn’t happen very often. But we did see it on on the rare occasion. But yeah, I don’t know that. That’s all I have to say about that one.

Kelsey 1:23:54  

Okay, so yeah, we can start into the wheel of calcium.

Norman Ferrar  1:23:59  

Here we go.

Kelsey   1:24:01  

Yeah, okay. I say that ready. Alright, so thank you, everyone who enter the content. If we missed any questions, noise added into our Facebook group, Amazon FBA e commerce collective, and we highly recommend to let’s go with three to one. Central awake. No next stuff. Oh, all right, Nick. Good job, Nick. All right. So that is the 30 minute consultation with

Norman Ferrar  1:24:58  

afolabi worldwide. And by the way off the lobby is doing his lives on what are they Wednesday mornings? It’s Wednesday mornings at 10am. And their bi weekly so every day we want a good job of that, you know? Yeah. Have you ever seen awful lobby talk or speak? Yeah, uh huh. Yeah, he did. Like he’s just starting to do the Amazon lives. He’s doing a good job. Oh, so. Okay, so Nick, I think you’ve won before. So just reach out to Kelsey at K at lunch with norm calm. We Oh, we are having a little bit of problem. I don’t know what it is with our email server, we might have to send it to what? address girls

Kelsey  1:25:42  

receiving emails that haven’t been an issue so far. It’s more just guess. Yeah. But that’s like sending stuff to Kevin. Yeah. All right. I think I’m bombarded Kevin with some emails this week. But

Norman Ferrar  1:25:55  

alright. Right. So, Mr. King, thank you for being on. I look so always shooting the shit with you. Yeah, I really look forward every month to get on and just talk with you. Hopefully. July we actually get to go and look at beard oil. Okay. Ah, yeah. cognac and Cuban cigars. He’s got to have that smell. Don’t y’all do that for beer? Yeah, yeah. So I’ll do this. And then I’ll get some head Polish wax or whatever. That’s exact same. We got a match. All right, sir. Wow, when we’re having a having a Coke Zero and a cigar, that would be awesome. Alright, we will see you later. Kevin. Thank you again for coming on. No problem. Thank you. Alright, everybody, I hope you had I mean, Kevin always comes on and drops tons of information. But anyways, relisted if you there’s some of the things there that was talking about the analytics that you might want to, you know, re Listen, and just figure out, you know, what he’s doing. He knows this stuff. But one of the things I just want to say before we close off, he tries, he doesn’t get like, it’s not a give up Pro. He keeps going and keeps going. If he gets kicked between the legs, he gets back up. And he he always takes action. And I think that’s so important is that you take action if you hear something on this podcast, take action. So with that being said, Thank you for coming on listening, spending your time with us today. Kelsey, do you have anything to close out?

Kelsey 1:27:43  

Yeah, actually, this I guess, may 31 would be will be the episode. But uh, we started this podcast, we started doing our first Facebook Live on May 30. So it’s almost been a full year. So just looking over like the Facebook group that’s happened. I just want to say thank you to everyone that has joined us on this journey. It’s been a little crazy. We didn’t know what to expect when you’re starting this and yeah, if you guys want to go back to the first episode and see what don’t don’t we don’t use check it out. Don’t highly recommended don’t. But yeah, just want to say thank you to everyone that’s joined us in the spirit nation. Also, we’re doing this Patreon, which is a monthly subscription service. It’s starting June 1. This is something where we give you bonus contents. Kind of small group lessons, consultation, giveaways, exclusive deals, free services. Bonus, we’ll have Kelsey there’s a whole bunch of good stuff we’re doing ama’s I’m even doing some social media ama’s and hotseat stuff like that. So definitely go check that out. Just patreon.com slash lunch with norm. And yeah, have a fantastic Memorial Day weekend to our American friends in the south. And yeah, have a fantastic weekend.

Norman Ferrar  1:29:04  

All right, and if you want to check out more about Kevin king and his life, which is absolutely amazing. Go to I know this guy, the I know this guy podcast, and you will be amazed. He’s had such an incredible life. Alright, so please join us every Monday, Wednesday, Friday at noon Eastern Standard Time. Thank you, everybody. We appreciate you being part of this community. We couldn’t be doing this without you. And enjoy the rest of your day. Enjoy your weekend and happy Memorial Day.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai