#218: Product Opportunity Explorer, Flat Files and More

Norman Farrar  0:00  

Hey everyone it’s Norman Farrar aka the beard guy here and welcome to another lunch with Norm. The Amazon FBA and ecommerce podcast.

Norman Farrar 0:20  

Okay,today we have an awesome show. Now, I’ve got to say we’ve got a I mean, I really appreciate our guests. She came in on such short notice, but it’s gonna be an awesome topic. We’re going to be talking about the new product opportunity explorer, and we’re going to talk about the proper way of editing and adding flat files. So, as the founder and CEO of online seller solutions, our guest has helped many sellers free themselves from pain and dealing with managing with your Seller Central account. I feel that pain. Anyways, she is a problem solver for the unsexy stuff on Amazon. And she’s also the co-host of wizards of Amazon. I’m gonna blow this off Espanyol. I don’t know, I probably messed up the Um, anyways, I can’t even speak French. Well, maybe I know one or two languages there. I can say french toast and mayonnaise. But as for Spanish, I’m gonna have to let her teach me a little bit of that. Okay, so her name is Vanessa Hung. She’s awesome. Carlos Alvarez, I got to give out a shout to you. I went over to him and said, Hey, I need somebody for the show. We got 30 minutes, 30 minutes. And anyways, he said I’ve got the perfect person. I know Vanessa from all sorts of different conferences and she is awesome. But before we get to her, I just want to give a big thank you to our sponsor, global wired advisors. They’re leading. They are a leading digital investment bank focused on optimizing the business sales process. For more information, please contact Chris and his team over @globalwiredadvisors.com. Boy Wonder

Kelsey  2:10  

Hello, Hello. Happy Friday. Hello. A little bit of excitement. Welcome, everyone to the show. Welcome, Marina. And I believe this is Rad joining us. If you’re watching, let us know that you’re watching. Say hi. In the comments. Let us know where in the world you’re watching from. I’m over here in Toronto, Canada. I believe Vanessa is in Florida. So we got a Yeah, we love to hear where you’re watching from. And where we’re in the world of beer nation is So welcome everyone. It’s gonna be a fun show. So this is a little short notice, but we managed to put everything together and yeah, I think it’s gonna be great. smash those Like buttons. If you haven’t already. We’ve got someone from Queensland, Australia. That’s awesome. It’s got to be bullied for you. Anyways, if you have any questions, put them over in the comment sections. This is a live podcast. So if you have questions, concerns, it’s something that you want advice on that we’re talking about in the podcast, just put them over in the comment sections. We have a great giveaway as well. So yeah, we’ll be holding a small q&a session throughout the podcast, and it’s going to be good.

Norman Farrar  3:28  

Victor, you’re joining us right now I see. And unfortunately, yeah, Brandon, he had a cancellation with his flight. So sorry about that. You can raise them next time. Okay, so one of the things I wanted to talk about is this is going to be about flat files. This is going to be about the new Explorer tool that’s coming out, the product opportunity Explorer tool. And we’ll get right to that in a second. If you have questions or comments, throw them over into the comment section. So sit back, relax and grab a cup of coffee. Hi, lady. 

Vanessa Hung

Hi Norm. How are you?

Norman Farrar

How’s my Spanish?

Vanessa Hung  4:11  

Ah, yeah, yeah, we need some lessons to improve. 

Norman Farrar

Do you think so? 

Vanessa Hung

Yes. You’re almost there.

Norman Farrar   4:20  

Okay. Okay. Almost fluid. Okay. Yes. All right. So just in case people have not heard of you or what you do, can you just give us a brief update?

Vanessa Hung 4:32  

Sure. So I’m the CEO and founder of Online seller solutions. So what we do is help sellers to relieve their pain or take away their pain to handle Seller Central. So anything in Seller Central by PPC meaning catalog inventory account health. So what we do is make sure that your account is active that your products are running that you don’t have any issue going on in the backend optimizing as much as possible for you to sell better. So in that way, we let sellers to focus on what it really matters for their business, which is keep growing, keep adding products and stuff like that, and not that like the day to day issues that they have. And I’ll also I’m the co host of the podcast with our of ECAM en Espanol.

Norman Farrar  5:25  

That’s how it’s pronounced, right? Yes. There we go.

Vanessa Hung  5:28  

Yes. And, yeah, I’m in this mission of sharing information about what sellers think is the unsexy stuff of Amazon. Because obviously, when you talk about PPC ROI, aka stuff like that numbers that are very sexy. When I talk about flat files, people like it, I don’t know. So I really put a lot of energy into our social media channels to explain very simple in simple ways, what are the things that you can do in your account that will help you manage your account better have very results on it’s easy, it’s not boring, it’s not reading a policy in Seller Central. So I tried to make that fun.

Norman Farrar  6:16  

Great, and we’re going to try to make that fun for the listeners today. So flat files, I, we’ve talked about this a few times on the show, and it’s so important that you use flat files to upload, I tried to tell people not to do manual listings like this, don’t go in and change it. And let’s talk about that. Why is it important to use a flat file?

Vanessa Hung  6:40  

Well, there are a lot of benefits. Um, so let’s talk about the flat files related to catalog optimisation. Right. So those are the category flat files that have the information on all the attributes that at least in can have, right? So if we put in a balanced those flat files versus what you can do in Seller Central, like the UI of Seller Central, there is a lot of missing information in Seller Central. That is not, it’s not showing. So what happened is that you may see you’re missing the opportunity to optimize. So those spaces, and when you contribute to your listings through a flat file, that will stick in the backend of the catalog. So it makes it more complicated for high doctors or even Amazon itself to change the information in your listing. And that’s something that many sellers suffer from. So for no reason, they will call and say like Vanessa, the size of my brother changed for no reason. So now, customers are confused. So things like that. Normally, it happens when the Holy sin was built in South Central. When we start using flat files, those contributions are, for some reason harder or more important for the system. It has a higher contribution rights. And that’s what I love, especially not only in the power of the creation of the listing, which I really advise sellers to create their listings through a flat file. I know that there be I know why the beginning is a little bit intimidating. But literally knowing how to handle that will change for sure the management of their catalog. It’s a game changer. Okay, go ahead. Yeah, and the other thing that I’ll say about flat files is that is the best tool for problem solving. So if you ever have an issue, instead of going immediately to talk to Seller Support or email Seller Support, flat files can give you answers before Allah. So you can literally create a diagnostic of your listing if there is an issue through a flat file, and it will give you the answers that you may you may be looking for when you contact Seller Support.

Norman Farrar  9:15  

So I just want to talk a little bit about the hijackers and in case people don’t understand, you know what’s going on when we’re first of all, when we’re talking about hijackers, somebody that’s taken on your listing, that can manipulate your, your information. And there’s there’s a difference between somebody selling and coming up. You’re like if you have your race and up there, and somebody is selling your product. It’s a free open marketplace. People can do that. Your Brand registered, you can protect that. And usually it’s just people that don’t really know about it. They’re new sellers and they’re just seeing your product and they want to market that but then you’ve got those other people who really want to do damage Because you might be, you know, you might have more market share than anybody else. Or for one reason or the other, they want to hurt you. They can go in. And I’ve seen this 1000 times where they can change an image, you can change your title, you can’t do anything you’re locked out, basically have your own revisions, you try to upload flat files afterwards, or do manual changes. You can’t do it. And the reason for this is because you’ve left well, for the most part, it’s because you’ve left it a flat file or an opening for them to come in and scoop up your listing and take the control away from you. So that’s how important it is. Can you expand on that?

Vanessa Hung 10:41  

Yeah, for sure. So that’s, that’s one of the most interesting parts and the biggest benefit of using flat files. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the flat five court call the category listing report, yo, yeah. Okay. So many sellers are not aware of the that that flat file. And this is an Excel sheet with all the information of your whole column. So everything is there on not only the information of your prayers, but also all the attributes that can go into those listings. Each cell that we have in that spreadsheet, it’s an opportunity to fill in information. And each cell that is left blank is an opportunity for other people to contribute to your listing and hijack. So what happened is that Amazon have this system that they reward contributors, right? Amazon likes people that create listings, Amazon likes people that make better listings. So they it’s different. It’s difficult for the algorithm to identify who’s a hijacker and who’s a true contributor. So when we leave spaces in blank and our competition or somebody, I want to hurt our listings, download a report and try to find that information that is left in blank and change it. All of a sudden, they have the rights to contribute to our brand to contribute to our products. This is something so there is layers of contribution rights. Normally, for people that have brand registry, that’s more difficult for hijackers to do, for people that are doing just reselling, or they have their own private label, by the by they don’t have brand registry or they don’t have their trademark, it’s extremely easy to lose control. And we already gave a lot of control to Amazon. And the way I see it is that the only thing and this is my opinion, the only thing we really have on Amazon is the information that we put into listing anything else is not under our control, the only thing we can control. So I see contributions. And I see filling in information in flat files as an investment. Every time you invest in optimizing your listing, you will get more control. And once you get more control, Amazon will reward you for that. So your seller score, your contribution rights will go higher. And hopefully that will help you to sell better, because you have an optimized listing, almost impossible to hijack. I wouldn’t say that only by using flat files, you will be completely protected. But it’s the best shield that we can build on. It’s something that if we start getting control of and understanding the importance of it, you can find those on and yes, you can start using it as a tool. Instead of just Oh, does this is a an information file.

Norman Farrar  14:07  

So let’s talk about the manual listing. It seems that manual is very easy. You know, it’s graphical, you can go in and you can change it. But your are going to miss like you were talking about at the beginning, different fields that you don’t see in in, you know, the in the back end. Yeah. So when you go into Edit, to get your flat file, first of all, there’s a gazillion different fields there. But if you take a bit of time, and you just spend like 510 minutes to understand the layout when you go and there’s three or four tabs, right so that you’ve got examples validations

Vanessa Hung  14:49  

finally, values, images, definitions, yes.

Norman Farrar  14:53  

So let’s go through those. So to understand the flat file, they have a template there, but You need, you really should, if you want to, if you want to make it easier on yourself, if you understand what each of those tabs will do, you’ll have a better understanding. And by the way, one of the reasons why I like these not flat files as well is you have a specific definition. So a specific value, when you try to do it manually, you might not be putting up the right value. And that could hurt your listing rather than make sure it’s correct. So let’s go through the tabs. So we do have the example tab. And then what are the other tabs.

Vanessa Hung  15:32  

So there is a definition tab, which is the first one when you open the file is the first first one that shows there is just like instructions from a surgeon and the definition of what is that flat file for then you have the valid values. Barley values is the one of the best ones, the complimentary tab, because when you go through a column, right, and it has an attribute that you want to fill in, sometimes, and this is something that happened with platforms, there are open fields on drop down menus. So open field, it means that you can literally put whatever you want, the only be mutation, there is just the amount of characters that you can input. But with the drop down menu, sometimes it’s difficult, because when you download the report, or the flat file, it doesn’t show what are the options. So when they don’t show in the template that you go to the ballot values, look in the list, you look for that attribute that you want to input, and it will tell you what are the valid values that you can put there. And it really needs to be a sadly as a race. Because if you tried to put something different or spelling a different way different spacing or whatever, it one, it won’t work, and it will give you an error. The common error for that is not matching or invalid values. It will it will say once you upload it on, you get the report back with the problems. Then there is the Images tab, which is just the example if you want to upload images in your flat file. And this is a question that I get a lot. People asked me heaviness, I really want to change the information in my listings, but I don’t want to I don’t I don’t have the URLs for my images, or I don’t really want to hurt my images or whatever. It’s as simple as deleting the whole section. So of the category listing report, for example, that’s a protected sheet. Okay. And what you do in Excel is that you go to the Data section, and you unprotect the sheet, one, once it’s unprotected, you can make changes to the columns. So what a, what I advise people to do is just delete the whole section. That is images. Normally, in a category listing report, it’s like the yellow section, and just take it away and upload it like that. And that’s another benefit of using flat files. They are customizable. You can you can literally use them to just upload or update what you want, right? It’s not. And that’s something that happens in Seller Central. For example, when you’re filling in information in your you UI, it will tell you all the things that you need to you need to fill in. If something there, you don’t fill in, it won’t let you click save and finish. But with the flat files, if I just don’t want to fill in the images, because I still don’t have it, but I want to create my leasing or I want to optimize my listing, I just can’t delete that section and upload it. It doesn’t give you any any problems. On top of that, if you get savvy enough to play with them. What I do, as some categories don’t have and this is like going into a little bit more intermediate advanced knowledge is the category listing report will tell you and give you all the attributes that your subcategory or the subcategory where you’re selling have, for example, you’re selling in the category of pets right. But you’re selling water or water bottle, whatever for pets. That sub category have a specific attributes that are related to that specific role. But there are some other stuff categories within the pet category that had the opportunity to fill in information in your listing, even though it doesn’t

Vanessa Hung   20:11  

show in the front end, necessarily. But you can use that. So you can, you can optimize based on the whole category, the whole attributes that a category provides. And that’s super important. Because most of the times when people get hijacked, it’s because they fill in information that is not in the front end, because the front end is easy to know. And now, actually, Amazon give you warnings, when something in your listing is not optimized or, or is not feeling, it will go to suppress listings or enhance dashboard. But the other part where you can literally take all the attributes of the whole category and put information in about your product. That’s where it makes it interesting. So I can add columns that are not there. I can force columns on. So this is a super easy example. There was a time where a sudden came to me and say, like my brother got hijack ISO tools. And now he’s getting flagged by us an adult product. But when he downloaded his flatfile, they, the column that’s called a Senado product did not exist. So you’re like, Okay, how can I fill in that information, if that doesn’t exist? And I’ll tell you just need to copy from one other flat file and paste it in that one. And transfer the information is, is that customizable? And it’s amazing. And I love it, you can play a lot with it. So sorry, people don’t know about that. Yes, I have fun with it playing. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t work. But the important part is that no matter what the backend, it’s like optimize, because that’s why we don’t see on. And this is cool. Now, sometimes, I cannot tell you if it will work in every single category. But there was one time with that same category, the tools category, you know, under the pricing your product detail page under the price, you sometimes have like a table of technical details. So the seller did not have it there. He was like, Oh my God, how can I have the details because my competition have it because I feel that if my meet my customer See, they will buy more Baba Baba, we optimized the backend of the whole category of tools for that specific probe not only for the subcategory attributes, and all of the sudden that the technical details table show up. So imagine how important is to understand how customizable customizable can be and start playing with it. Because every single time we input information, we have an opportunity to change something in the front end, that will make you index better get better traffic or stuff like that. And if you optimize it, and nothing changes in the front end, it doesn’t matter, at least Amazon have it in the backend, and they will that will prevent hijackers to come in and fill in something that is weird. Oh,

Norman Farrar 23:31  

that’s fantastic. That’s really great news. I was thinking when we were talking about the images, and not getting rid of the images. But I’ve had listings where people have changed the images on me primary limit images, whatever image if I were to upload the images from a URL instead of going through manually and uploading them, because normally I’ll just put them in manually. It’s too much of a pain to do it with a URL. But would that protect the images at all?

Vanessa Hung  24:06  

Yes, for sure. Actually, I we work on that same issue maybe a week ago. This seller the the know where the change was coming from. But the second image now was the first image and the first image now was like the seventh. So it was weird. Something changed. I don’t know if it was Amazon, a hijacker. But she contributed those images through the Seller Central. What we did is just get the URL and upload the flat file on it, change it and it’s been now a weekend she haven’t had any issues. So my point is every time you use flat files and you contribute with that their contribution it’s more important or is harder in a way that the system is locks that better than what you contribute to Seller Central. So yeah, I agree, I think it’s important if you, for example, if you have everything optimizing your listing, and you download the category listing report, and you don’t have the URLs for your images, I do recommend you to fill in everything. The other thing that we can do, as far as protection with the flat files, is that once we go through the whole process of optimizing the category listing report, which is the report, I will give you the most amount of attributes to fill in. You have an optimized, and you will upload it. So for people that are suffering from hijackers, or for people that are suffering from changes, or or getting shut down, you upload that category listing report constantly, meaning like, maybe once a week, maybe once a month, it really depends on how much you get problems. I’m serious, because yes, because so see that, imagine you want to hijack my receipt, and you upload a flat file with the things that you want to change. So Amazon will see in the backend that the last contribution came from you, right. But what I do to protect myself is every week, I upload my category listing report, so I try to every week be that on top. So the last contributor, or Yeah, the last one, we will get the most amount of importance, because it will be the more updated information. So keep updating, updating, updating, updating, so you will always be the last one to contribute. And that’s really important. If you’re suffering from hijackers,

Norman Farrar  26:51  

okay, so I want to if the people that are listening, I just want a really quick answer. Is this news to you? It’s news to me, I didn’t know you’d have to upload, like I know that you should go through and check it once in a while. But I had no idea to put it up that frequently. So that’s that’s a nugget for me. One of the other things I think that we should talk about, before we talk about I was so late for the giveaway. But one of the quick things is, how do you even get to the category report? There’s a lot of people here that would won’t know how to get it,

Vanessa Hung  27:27  

of course, so I’ll explain it. But I also have an SOP. So I’ll give it to you so you can share with your community. It’s super simple. Well, it’s, um, the problem with the category listing report and why people are sellers don’t know about it is because it’s not public, you need to request that information. So what you’re going to do is, you’re going to open a case with Seller Support, email, call, whatever. And you’re going to request like, please allow me to download the category listing report, within 10 or 15 minutes, you will go to the inventory tab. And in the inventory tab, there is our inventory reports. So that will get you to a dashboard. On top of that dashboard, a drop down menu with all the inventory reports that you can download. If you go right now, and you haven’t request for the category listing report, you won’t see that option. Right. Once you open the case and they tell you it’s open, you will see in the drop down menu category listing report. And then you can download it. The cool thing about a set, you can download the category listing report filtering the categories. That’s cool, I wouldn’t do it. Because why will you miss the other attributes that you can fill in. And you can also download it by dates. So for example, I want to see my Corolla, the last six months of products that I launched not everything in my catalog, so you can filter that, and then you download it. That’s super easy. The only thing that I’ll say is when Seller Support gives you access, they will normally tell you in the case for how long do you have? Because it’s not open forever. So every time you need you want to something you need to request for that. And hopefully if you requested enough times they so in one account I requested so many times that they’re like you know what, there is six months of your category C report. Don’t call us again. So I got to have a while was that 180 days, but normally they give it for seven days to 14 days. But yeah,

Norman Farrar  29:49  

so a lot of people that are probably listening are using a flat file that they’re getting there are finding their flat file like a regular flat file that they’re getting from our where’s it up?

Vanessa Hung  30:07  

Download? Yeah, yeah, exactly. specific categories?

Norman Farrar  30:11  

Yeah, exactly. So what I was gonna say there is that you can do that this is much better. But the other one like the one, we were just the the latter is something that you have to download on a regular basis, don’t go like a month or two months and think it’s the same file. So make sure that if you are going to upload that flat file, that you do download a new file. I’ve made a mistake early on in Amazon when I was uploading some of my products. And it was the wrong flat file. And it was an old flat file. So I saved everything. I thought, Oh, this is really cool. And it’s easy to do a partial update. And I messed things up, because it was an old, old flat file.

Vanessa Hung  31:04  

Yeah. So that’s when if you want to know the version of your flat file, you go to the top row. In the top row, there is information of what’s a template? What’s the version? And when did you download it. So I wouldn’t say that the old versions are bad, because and this is something for problem solving. All versions sometimes can be helpful, because when Amazon changes stuff in the algorithm, nine algorithm in the back end of the catalog. They, for example, and they released that the news, it was something that they will get rid of what was the field? Well, they were they’re going to get rid of one field that is not going to have value anymore. In in the color. Okay? When they do that they change the template, they change the flat file, okay. And once they change it at the beginning of the change, those have glitches a lot. So if you use them, if you use the last version, sometimes those tend to have more problems than the old ones. So I use all ones sometimes to change stuff that was in there, especially when they change the name of the attribute. So for example, there is one attribute that before was school style, okay. And now they are changing it and they are putting it loss on those style fabric. Okay, that difference make a huge change in the backend. So now when you fill that information, it will change stuff in the front end. And at the same time, they don’t change at the same time. So Amazon can make changes in the catalog in the backend changing list the attributes, but in the front end, you’re still seeing the old if you don’t find the old in the new version, it’s almost impossible to change it. That’s why I save the old versions. I’m I’m very aware, what’s the date of that version? Because if something changed on it need to change that attribute that is no longer there or whatever I go, I refer to the old one. So yes, download the fresh the new. But if you ever get stuck into okay, it’s not let me change something that it was a It’s not there anymore. Go to a once and it really doesn’t give you a lot of issues if the file is optimized. So yeah,

Norman Farrar   34:05  

all right. Very good. I saw a comment from Jeff just saying that he’s had a hard time interacting, I saw um, I saw another comment that came up just shortly after but, Jeff, if you are having problems interacting or asking questions, or maybe you’ve asked a question earlier on, we’ll get to the question shortly. Usually, it’s what are you gonna say Kells?

Kelsey 34:32  

Oh, no, he was just saying he hasn’t been able to come on time. Like, okay, so you’re come on to the podcast. So yeah, just get any

Norman Farrar   34:41  

other way. Get there. He’s off the screen now. Okay, so we got to get to this giveaway. You’ve got a great, a really awesome giveaway today. You want to just talk a little bit about it?

Vanessa Hung  34:55  

Sure. So this is what we do for clients. to work with us, sometimes people reach out and say, like, Vanessa, I have this issue. And they’re like, I know that my account is not optimized. I know, I know, my account is not like to its full potential. So I want you to take a look at it. So what we develop is a system of report that it’s a return report with a lot of information on on the sections or on the three main areas of your account, which is the catalog inventory and account health. And in that report, you will get the status of what is happening there. So if you feel that you have a lot of issues, if you feel that your account can can perform better, you will probably get advantage of having an audit, which we go there we go in depth of what is happening. So the presentation is a written report, if each section is divided in its little areas, and we give you the situation, we give you a possible solution, and the importance of why that needs to be solved. So that they are current only, if you get to engage with us, we will obviously use that as a roadmap to fix your account and get you to work wherever you want to go to the full potential. Or if you already have a team that is working in your account, you can give that report and say like, look, this is it’s like going to the doctor, look, this is what the doctor said, like fix. So if you already have the team, it’s beneficial. If you are engaged with us. It’s also like the roadmap of what we’re trying to accomplish. Just for the audit, we charge 750. But if the client gets too engaged into a monthly management or whatever, they’ll get deducted from the from the monthly fee. So yeah, it’s extremely valuable. I had a lot of good feedback from it. People that had a lot of issues get up heavy report, like the longest we have done is like 22 pages. So 22 pages of problems. And, and yeah, it can be very valuable for for people that are there that thing that they don’t know how to handle stuff, because I know, maybe one listing, sometimes he’s like, Okay, I handle that issue. But when you have fires everywhere, so you never reconcile inventory, you have a lot of problems with your catalog, your parents are not together, like trials are all over the place your account held this mess, there is a lot of issue with voice of the customer. So all this stuff that can be very overwhelming. What we give you in the audit is just the roadmap, like this is the situation, just stay calm, and let’s fix it.

Norman Farrar   38:02  

Okay, very good. So, as you can tell, in today’s podcast, I would be jumping on the hashtag, we’ll have Kelsey or tagged to people and you’ll get an extra entry. But I would be all over that audit report. Vanessa knows her stuff. And if you can’t tell, just you know if you’re new if you haven’t been listening the whole time. Wait till this is out on YouTube and go back and listen, because there’s all sorts of nuggets she’s talking about with flat files, that if you’re not doing you are really missing out on and Simon, by the way, what uh, you don’t like my glasses? I’ll switch them up for you. Okay, so anyway, such a pain sometimes. God, alright, Simon. Okay, so let’s, let’s keep talking about flat files. And then we’ll get over to some of the questions we might not get to the product, the product opportunity to explore. We can come back and talk about that another day. But this has been really amazing. What else can you talk to us about flat files?

Vanessa Hung 39:09  

Ah, what else I can talk to you about flat files. So the catalog flat files are the ones that we already talked about. On I saw question. I don’t know. It was asking something. Will uploading flat file help with suppression due to price? Huh? Not really. The problem with pricing is not the contributions. If that Amazon is saying that your product is off somehow low. Normally it’s like because the price is higher from what the market has. So my advice to you is, you can use a flat file to input the information for the minimum and maximum price And those need to have a huge range. So for example, if you’re selling something or $50, you want, you want to be your minimum to be like 48. Okay, and the maximum, maybe 160. So 50, it’s reasonable for the algorithm to understand that your price is reasonable. You definitely have those attributes in a flat file, and you can upload that. But I have come across to this issue. And flat files are not the best way to solve it. Because what is triggering, that is the analysis that Amazon is doing of the market, and where they put your probe against, or when they compare it against other listings, inside or outside of Amazon. One tip that are going to give you is like, make sure that the unit count is accurate, because sometimes it happens that you get triggered for high pricing error, or, you know, a suppress for high pricing. And the deal is that you’re selling selling a bundle, okay, of three units, and you have the price for obviously, those three units. But Amazon doesn’t have that information. And they think that your listing is just one unit. And when they compare it to the market, inside of outside of Amazon, they say like, look, this guy’s charging three times more, so we’re going to suppress him. So make sure unit count package quantity is accurate. And if you’re still having issues, even when you feel all the information, I the best thing to do is just call Seller Support and ask them to refresh something in the backend. I feel they’d be they’ve been very responsive with that. And if they get back to you saying that they analyze the market and they still thing is there is something wrong. Just try to change information into listing. So make your listing special and differentiate your your product from whatever other people have in a way that Amazon doesn’t put you in that bucket. So that’s important.

Norman Farrar  42:18  

Let’s talk about like, since we’re talking about price for a second, I get a question a lot of the times am I getting that? Am I getting the buy box removed? Because I’m on Walmart or my prices are lower on Walmart? Yeah, have you seen that?

Vanessa Hung  42:36  

Yes. So on this is something that is related to what they’re trying trying to sue Amazon for. Because according to the policies, technically, you need to offer the same for the same price on Amazon, or the lowest price on the on the home home market, like your Shopify, your Walmart, Target, whatever, it needs to be the same on Amazon. So they they literally are getting extremely sophisticated analyzing outside of Amazon. And when they find that your product is cheaper on other in other marketplaces, they will suppress it right away. Like it’s super easy. And it’s a practice that I don’t that I think it’s unfair, because Amazon charges for a lot of things that maybe those marketplaces don’t charge for, and you need to take in consideration that, but it’s the rules is their game. So we need to play along with it. It’s almost or Well, I haven’t had any success, getting out of that situation without updating the price outside.

Norman Farrar   43:56  

Yeah, I’ve talked, I’ve talked to people within Amazon. And they say that that’s not the case. That it’s just a coincidence that that would happen. And I heard I’m not 100% Sure. But I I’ve heard through the grapevine at some of these events, that they had some legal action put against them, because they they said that they had to be the lowest in the marketplace. And that shouldn’t be the case. And I from what I understand they lost in court. And now don’t take my word for it. That’s just kind of what I’ve heard through the grapevine. And it just keeps showing up. A lot of our clients, you know, there’ll be on Walmart, and then the Buy Box disappears. So, Kelsey, How many questions do we have on flat files?

Kelsey  44:47  

I think we have two more questions.

Norman Farrar   44:50  

Why don’t we get to them and maybe we can squeeze in that explore.

Kelsey  44:55  

Okay, great. Here the first question from her Rena, question for Vanessa. Amazon started removing some of my listings from categories. They’re still searchable in sell, but no sales rank is shown. I opened several cases and Seller Support replied that they couldn’t fix it and can disclose the reason.

Vanessa Hung  45:14  

Yeah, so very common issue. The problem is that your ace in fell off the category three. So it’s not searchable anymore actually, like the only way that a seam shows up in the search is because you literally copy and paste the title or you use the async to search for labral. But technically is not searchable, because it’s not inside of our category, or subcategory. So it’s not in the category three. And that’s so that’s the byproduct of felling off the category and you don’t have the BSR anymore, you don’t have a ranking anymore. So the best way to do it now Mary like treat flat first off your saver because they flat file, when you download or the category listing report or less specific category, it really doesn’t matter to solve this issue. There is a column called item type keyword. And the item type keyword is what it recognize your product through a subcategory. So sometimes maybe you know the categories in report and you see information there. By but updating that uploading it again, in Seller Central is what will make your listings come back to that tree. And if it doesn’t have information, that’s where you have a problem. So you really need to take a look at it. In marketplaces like Canada, I know they, the flatfile also have browsing no code, which is a number, so each subcategory have a number. And you can also use that to of course, get it on track. Seller Support is useless for this issue useless. They don’t, they don’t, they don’t know they cannot recognize it. And they don’t know how to fix it. That’s the first approach I’ll do I’ll use a flat file, if that doesn’t work Marina, go to the Help Page, the Help section, right on you know where the the menu of all the options that you can contact them for there is one called Change the listing attribute or something like that. When you click there, on you input the your AC, it will ask you which are tricky. Oh yes, we we we try to meet you want to change, select the category. Okay. And in that case, you you’re not changing it, but you want to update it. So maybe you’ll see there that your AC doesn’t have any category, if that’s the case that the root cause of the problem. And it’s super simple to identify that if it had something, just change it to the same thing as for the same category to be updated. If the system works, it will work automatically. And they will say like, Yeah, you’re good to go. It’s perfect. Other times, they will open a case for the requests. And that’s the worst thing that can happen to you when they open the case. Because what what it means is that in the backend, they will push that change. And when Amazon changes stuff when they internal team changes stuff, that’s like the biggest contribution that we can have. When Amazon contributed like that. That’s yeah, that’s the highest rank of contribution. So that’s how you saw. But yeah, first approach, fun then, or whatever, whatever you feel like doing, but that’s how you solve it.

Norman Farrar  49:05  

Very good. All right, Kelsey, next.

Kelsey  49:07  

All right. Last question is from Argo. How do you get the red limited time deal badge? What needs to be done to the back end with pricing?

Vanessa Hung  49:20  

Limited? I’m not sure is that? I don’t I think that’s more related to lining deals. The ones that have I believe that’s the one that has the time, right? And it’s like 12 hours left. That’s related to lining deals and special Seven Day deals and stuff like that. That has nothing to do with your flat funds or the back end pricing. That’s a different dashboard where you can create coupons and you can create deals, and you need to submit your coupon and your deal through that dashboard. But with category flatfile, there is nothing that you can do, just by the only column there to change prices and put an offer on is you have your your MSRP, your retail price. And you have a sales self price, which is like two different columns. Sometimes when you have a sale price, what you will see is your MSRP, your retail price will have in the Detail page, you will have a line cross line, and then you will see the sales price next to it, meaning that there is an offer. But as far as the time the red one, that’s a Lightning Deal. And that is not you don’t change it or make it through a flat file is through the deals dashboard. And you need to request it they need to approve it. That costs a fee. They charge you depending on the time of the year. They’ll charge you differently.

Norman Ferrar  50:56  

Yes, they will sucker punch you right now. Yeah, yeah. I don’t even use Lightning Deals anymore. Unless I’m trying to liquidate something. But if you have to give up so much.

Vanessa Hung  51:10  

So much. I don’t I don’t think it’s is worth the defeat. The traffic is not really there. I don’t know. It’s because, or in my experience as a customer. I always feel that the pros are in lining. They are like, cheap. I don’t know. I mean, I don’t find value there. I prefer to use coupons for sure. Than Lightning Deals. Yeah, expensive.

Norman Farrar   51:41  

Yeah. They used to be great, but not not so much anymore. Okay, you know what, we’ll have you back on another podcast to talk about a couple of new tools and applications and whatever there is at that time. But I think that this is enough. We’ve we’ve we’ve got some really, really great information. I highly recommend anybody to really listen. Really listen to this, because Vanessa just landed a ton of information about flat files. So anyways, let’s get to you’ve never seen this have you know, okay, this is we’ll have Kelsey Yay.

Kelsey   52:19  

All right, so get ready. Here we go.

Norman Farrar  52:36  

Okay, here we go.

Kelsey  52:38  

Thank you everyone who entered today’s draw. This happens every single podcast where we do a special giveaway called the wheel of Kelsey. I’m going to spin these names. If you are the winner, please email us at K at lunch with Norm comm you have 48 hours to reach us or we will spend again. And so here we go. The winner looks like ooh, Marsha.

Norman Farrar   53:09  

Marsha. All right. Grats now she has got an awesome product. Really awesome product. I know what it is. She’s actually sponsored some of the podcasts in the in the past. But I think that this listing audit is going to be incredible for her. Do you know martial? I

Vanessa Hung  53:31  

know I know. Martial arts course. Okay. All right. There we go. So anyways, her speaking then power even in Vegas.

Norman Farrar   53:37  

Yeah, yeah, yes. Yes, that would be it. Yeah. Yeah, she’s a she’s a celebrity. Now she’s talking on every podcast, but. But anyways, Marsha, congratulations. I think this is gonna be really great. Vanessa, how do people get ahold of you if they want to get more information?

Vanessa Hung  53:57  

Yes, my channels of social media is full time Amazon on Instagram and Facebook. Vanessa Hahn on LinkedIn, Facebook. Also, if you want to email me for anything, you want to tell me your problem or whatever. It’s Vanessa at full time. amazon.com. Um, but the best way to contact me like super fast is Instagram. So I’m, I’m an Instagram user. That’s full time. Awesome.

Norman Farrar   54:29  

All right, fantastic. So please stick around. I wanted to talk to you a bit after the podcast. But thank you so much for being on. And let’s see. I hope everybody enjoyed the show today. I thought we’d get into a couple of different topics, but his flat file thing was fantastic. So thank you again, and we will definitely have your back. So hey, everybody. So Happy Friday. Let’s see Monday. Ah, Monday is gonna be an awesome show as well. We got one of the top, the absolute top guys in SEO coming your way Steve Widom and he’s been on before. He’s absolutely changed a bunch of the way that we work and optimize a lot of what we do outside of our Amazon listing. But he is a SEO whiz. So every time he comes on to the podcast, he drops a ton of knowledge. If you are an Amazon seller, and you don’t have a Shopify account, make sure you listen. Make notes, this guy will drop nuggets all day long. And it sounds like I’m excited about it. Yes, I am. Alright, so Kelsey. Oh, before I do that, though, Kelsey, you should have reminded me about this. I wanted to give a shout out to seller eyes. solarize is a comprehensive solution for your everyday business needs is everything you need to grow and scale your Amazon business in just one click for more information, contact demoness team over at solarize and solarize is with one R. Now you can come on.

Kelsey56:11  

Right? Awesome. Yes. Today. It was a fantastic episode. I just want to give another big thank you to Vanessa. Oh, man, it came on. You literally had 30 minutes to prepare to come on. So that is amazing. Yeah, so much is a lifesaver? You know what?

Norman Farrar  56:29  

This would be awesome in our Patreon group.

Kelsey  56:32  

Yeah, yeah, that is true. Oh, definitely send an invite and see Yeah, so see if we get a Patreon. Our Patreon is our membership program here at lunch with norm. So if you are interested in getting a bit deeper into your Amazon ecommerce business, this is a place where you can go and get small group sessions with me in norm. And we do q&a sessions, up to three times a month. And then we also do a guest lesson too. So we had Craig darling from Google, my business we’ve had been Leonard, go over Instagram marketing strategies, we’ve got an awful lot, because it’s not like a podcast format it is is traction stuff. So if you are interested, you can go over to the lunch with Norm website and just click on membership. And you can learn more about that there.

Norman Farrar  57:20  

And there’s good merchandise. And by the way, did you happen to see Simon’s review of the Patreon

Kelsey  57:30  

product that he go, of course. So if you are interested in watching our beloved Simon, you can go over to our Facebook group, that’s lunch with nine, Amazon FBA and E commerce collective. That’s where all the good stuff happens. Completely free community. We like to drop some knowledge there, you can ask your questions. And I think we actually have a couple exciting things planned, including lots of exciting

Norman Farrar   57:55  

things planned. But you know what has happening. And we give a we give a shout outs to you know, I we talked about Simon and Tony. And you know, there’s a bunch of community members but like Rosalyn, and Dan, and, you know, I’ve seen you on LinkedIn, we don’t get a lot of LinkedIn viewers, but we’d love to expand that area out. But there’s so many people in our neighbor in our neighborhood in our community. You know, Daniel, thank you for watching, you know, we talked about this community Amar, just going down some of these common Jeff, Jeff velociter. So you know, Marina, there are a ton of people that I can just see, and I can’t even see half of this stuff. I’m making it up as I go. But you know, Stephen loss, and there’s all these guys that are, you know, part of the community that we really love. I mean, we couldn’t really do this podcast without you. And all the engagement, we get 100 You know, there’s another person so anyways, thank you for, you know, being part of the community. Thank you for taking the time out of your day. I know everybody’s got a lot of things going on and just take an hour out of your day. Hopefully, you’re getting a lot out of the podcast. So thank you enjoy your Friday and we will talk to you next week. Mantra

Transcribed by https://otter.ai