Episode: 94
Title: Norman Farrar Introduces Ryan Cramer, an Affiliate Marketing Manager at PingPong, a Podcast Host and a Brand Ambassador.
Subtitle: Selling on International Marketplaces
Final Show Link: https://lunchwithnorm.com/episodes/episode-94-how-to-save-on-international-marketplaces-w-ryan-cramer/
In this episode of Lunch With Norm…, Norman Farrar introduces Ryan Cramer, an Affiliate Marketing Manager at PingPong, a Podcast Host and a Brand Ambassador.
Ryan has worked for various companies in the ecommerce/Amazon space for 6+ years, specializing in partnerships, marketing, business development, and branding. In this episode, he will discuss how to save money while selling internationally.
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Norman 0:02
Hey everyone, it’s Norman Farrar, a.k.a The Beard Guy here and welcome to another Lunch with Norm, The Rise of the Micro Brands.
Norman 0:20
Okay, so today I’m joined by PingPong Payments’ Ryan Cramer on this podcast. Ryan is going to be talking about the hidden fees of international marketplaces, but also the best ways to save money when selling internationally. So before we get to that, Kelsey are you around?
Kelsey 0:38
I am. Welcome. Welcome everybody. Happy Monday.
Norman 0:40
Happy Monday, sir. How are you?
Kelsey 0:42
I’m fantastic. How are you?
Norman 0:44
I’m doing fine.
Kelsey 0:45
Okay. Alright. So let’s get into it. Join our Beard Nation. It’s our Facebook group. You can find it by going to Lunch with Norm Amazon FBA and eCommerce Collective. That’s where all of the main info goes. If there’s any other questions, follow ups, stuff like that, where the community is. So if you ever want to meet the people, let’s say from last episodes, Beard Nation episode, they’re all in there and that’s how we all got to meet each other. So definitely check that out. I’ll put the link in the bio. I also want to give a quick shout out to our Patreon supporters. Faye Green, Marcia Reese, and Mark Conch. They’ve donated some money. So that’s awesome. Thank you guys.
Norman 1:28
Hundreds of 1000s of dollars. Thank you so much.
Kelsey 1:33
No, they’ve bought us some coffee.
Norman 1:39
We love our coffee.
Kelsey 1:40
Great and let me see. Is there anything else?
Norman 1:42
Other than the most important thing, we’ve got Fatiha, Marcia. I’m not sure who the Facebook user is and Mark.
Kelsey 1:51
Yes. So welcome everybody. Welcome to the show. If you guys have any questions at all, put them in the comment section and I’ll throw them up on the screen whenever we can get to it and yeah, hope you guys are excited for this one. It should be good and we have some giveaways today too. So yeah, it’s gonna be a good show.
Norman 2:09
Yeah, and one of the things that you’re supposed to do
Kelsey 2:14
Smash the like button.
Norman 2:16
Smash the likes, hit the subscribe, share the episode and ring the bloody bell. Okay, that’s what I’m supposed to do. That was one thing I was supposed to do, ring a bell. Okay. Oh, we got a bunch more people coming on now.
Kelsey 2:32
Okay, the year name is showing, that’s great. I’ll send you the link to fix it. If anyone has problems as a Facebook user. I’m just going to say this right now. I’m going to send you a link that says streamer.com/Facebook, follow that link. It’s a one time thing and you’ll be able to see your name after that. So I’ll put that in the group.
Kelsey 2:54
Yeah, so welcome, Simon, Radd, Facebook user. We’ll get started right now.
Norman 3:01
Yes, that’s right Simon, ding dong. Alright and just before the podcast, I saw that the newsletter was out. So anybody interested in looking at our newsletter or subscribing, go to Lunch with Norma or go over to normanfarrar.com, and you can subscribe to it, it really doesn’t suck. It’s got tons of content for online users. Alright, if you do have any questions, just throw them over in the comment section and we will get to them during the show or we will answer them right after if we don’t get to it. So sit back, relax, grab a cup of coffee and enjoy the show. Welcome Mr. Ryan.
Ryan 3:38
What’s up Norm? How are you?
Norman 3:39
I like that. Quick and strong.
Ryan 3:41
Look at that. Exactly. It’s a good day. It’s Monday, it’s started snowing where I’m at. So that kind of sucks. But other than that, it’s a good day to be online.
Norman 3:50
I don’t even know why I live in Canada.
Ryan 3:54
I live in Indiana. So there’s nothing great about that either.
Norman 3:59
Well, I like Canada. It’s just the bloody weather and alright. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself and about PingPong?
Ryan 4:07
Yeah, so my name is Ryan Cramer. I’m actually a partner, manager, affiliate marketing/podcaster for PingPong payments here in the United States. We’re actually an international payments company that helps sellers around the world here in the United States as well save money when they either send money or receive it. So it’s almost like a virtual bank account, it’s the easiest way to do it. So if you’ve heard of companies like Payoneer or FX or Transferwise, and you just don’t know what they are basically, we are the same category, but we’re here to help you in terms of international transfers. So instead of a wire transfer, you’d be using our services and saving money when you pay your supplier, for example, or pay your VA or even receiving for multiple marketplaces around the world so that long and short is kind of what we do and it’s always fun to educate people on the ways to save on Amazon as a seller because margins are just so thin. When you’re starting out, it just sucks when you know that you could be saving two to five, two to four, two to 5% on just simply conversion rates. So that’s kind of what we do in a nutshell and have a podcast so I had you on as well and just talking Amazon all day, every day eCommerce all day every day and help people save money. That’s what my job is.
Norman 5:21
So, just before we got on, I’m kinda curious. I’m asking almost every guest right now, what their thoughts are on Clubhouse? Are you on Clubhouse?
Ryan 5:33
I’m not, that’s the weird thing. I was telling Kelsey this too earlier. I’m not on Clubhouse, but I’m going live every day with people. Like my show went live five times last week. So I feel like I’m talking to a similar community. It’s weird that Clubhouse took off like it did, because I think we’re just hankering for networking in any sort of capacity just because we can’t get together. But Clubhouse I feel like if I’m on Android, I’m an Android user by definition, so I don’t have an iPhone or an iPad that’s like most recently up to date, so I can’t even get on. So that’s the most frustrating thing. Otherwise, I would.
Norman 6:10
Wait. You don’t have an iPhone?
Ryan 6:15
Isn’t that crazy?
Norman 6:16
I love iPhone. There’s gonna be some haters. But I really do all I have, you know what? I’m a sucker for Apple. Apple products, I buy it.
Ryan 6:27
I like my Mac like I have a Mac and I would be in Clubhouse. I just think it’s funny that half the market, I think it’s half the market, it fluctuates back and forth for Android users and I have a Samsung Galaxy like, I don’t hate it. I love it. Actually, I just think it’s that’s what I grew up with and that’s why I’m used to it, so there’s nothing that one versus the other ones good at one thing one was just gonna be very similar. Yeah, exactly. I call people. I text people. It all goes through, it kind of all works the same in my mind. It’s just I can’t get on the Apple Store.
Norman 6:59
Oh Hey, if anybody’s listening right now, and they’re not on Clubhouse, because they can’t find an invite. Let me know and we’ll get, I’ve got three that I can send over. I’ll need your phone number as well as your name. So I can enter it into my contacts and we could do that at the end of the podcast as well. So if you are looking and you haven’t been able to get on, let me know and I can send that over to you. So we’ll take three people. All you have to do is I want Clubhouse, and like #IwantClubhouse, and we’ll get you some invites.
Kelsey 7:38
Yeah, just put the hashtag, you don’t need to put your phone number. Once we pick the people, will message you and get all that information. Don’t post your phone number. Yeah, just we’ll send it.
Ryan 7:51
Privacy. We’re gonna make sure we all have privacy.
Norman 7:53
Yeah, I guess that would break. Who cares? Alright. So let’s get into this. So where do you think the international part of this whole fits into the plan for the average Amazon seller over the next one to three years?
Ryan 8:12
Yeah, good question. I think a lot of Amazon sellers saw in 2020 that their sole reliance on amazon.com, or just like selling on Amazon alone and I think that was scary for a lot of sellers who either couldn’t get their inventory in because it was not deemed necessary. Or I forget what the technical term was, but where they couldn’t get enough of their inventory to launch new products. I think their cap on all these different inventory levels was frustrating for a lot of sellers. So what we’re, I’m hearing a lot from my show, but also just other people who are selling on Amazon is their ability to diversify and find different revenue channels not just solely reliant on Amazon and when I talk to Shane over at prREACH, he was very much building out a brand on both off Amazon and so that you can either that’s on Shopify or that’s on different marketplaces so that you can grow that community like you are or another brand would do. Internationally, I think that there’s so much opportunity for people not to start taking a serious look at growing into different marketplaces like Europe or the UK. A lot of people are touting Brexit, it’s not as big of a deal. It’s just you put inventory in the UK, and also in Germany, for example, and then it can still fulfill everywhere. Even marketplaces like Japan or budding markets like Singapore and eventually, hopefully India and whatnot, those are gonna start to grow and get traction once Amazon figures out their way into that marketplace and be competitive. So it’s still not a tested market. It’s a tested market, but it’s not something like where the US market is currently. But that can change in an instance like the US market did and once you ride that wave upward, I think a lot of sellers will start to see the benefit of international growth as well.
Norman 10:03
Where do you see the fastest growth coming from?
Ryan 10:07
Yeah, from PingPong’s perspective, the data was interesting this year because it was an outlier year, I think we saw everything speed up. In terms of everyone who tried to get on Amazon, everyone was trying to get on eCommerce in general. But when you talk, when you look at actual tangible numbers of growth, and you look at like the big days, like Prime Day or on Black Friday or Cyber Monday, those didn’t grow as much as they did in years past and I think that’s because overall, just daily habits of buying online were spread out so much that people weren’t just focused on those singular days. He saw it on advertisements, like on Target, he saw it on Walmart, they touted big, really long month long promotions instead of just one major day where there was so much growth and volume happening. But I think in terms of growth, it was recently announced that Target is going to be a marketplace. So Target, by definition is a retailer but is trying to grow their online presence. Walmart’s really still popular, but not competing with Amazon. But on different marketplaces like building your own channels, I think those are gonna start to take off and then international marketplaces for US sellers, such as they in Europe, is really a budding market and then, of course, in Japan. I keep telling Japan, I think Japan is really the third most popular Amazon Marketplace. But it’s really hard to figure out what’s going to do well there, obviously, you’re talking about four plus languages that you have to decipher for your PPC for your listings and all that kind of stuff. But it’s a really budding market in terms of what’s popular over there with Rakuten, with Amazon. So I think those are the major places really where you’re gonna see growth.
Norman 11:55
I guess you have to think out of the box, outside of the North American box, because like you said, Rakuten’s over there. In Australia, you’ve got different marketplaces. All over the world, Amazon isn’t the biggest play. So you could explore different marketplaces, depending on where you are, and you probably do your research on that as well before entering it. I do know, I know the Japanese market fairly well and people will just say, Oh let’s get into Japan. So they go to Japan, and they register, but they don’t realize the demographic over there, and one of the things I was able to see, I lived in Hawaii for five years and I was able to see the Japanese tourists coming over and dying. I mean, they pay anything for certain products and so that’s where I took my advantage, just marketed as a Hawaiian type and it actually went for two to three times what we would pay in North America for. They love these types of products. So you just kind of got to look at it that way.
Ryan 13:02
You mentioned culturally, and I tell it with like Amazon sellers and service providers all over the world, even like in Mexico, which is not far from the US, it’s just a lifestyle thing, or in Europe, they just rather go down the street to a market instead of buying on their phone for the sake of convenience, like they can just walk down the street, which is nice, in a non COVID world. But even in Mexico, it’s a little bit slower paced, they would rather just take their time in terms of logistics or building out factory wise, getting goods to you. It’s a slower pace. So it really hasn’t picked up in terms of the eCommerce wave. Where here in the United States where literally, I need it in two hours, or I’m going to die. Like it’s almost to that point where just culturally, people aren’t where we are in the United States and I think that’s tough for a lot of people in terms of trying to figure out psychologically, what really what a seller’s or what have buyers looking for in those marketplaces, because in the US, it’s saving money, I want it cheap, and I want it fast and that’s where I always find the most interesting kind of customer segments is that the United States, we spend a lot of money, we want to save a lot of money and we want it fast. What is it internationally and that’s kind of the next tier, if you will to grow your brand.
Norman 14:15
Yeah, I take a look at India, for example. I’m not sure who I was talking to about this. It was maybe it was Tim Jordan, or maybe it was Meghla. But one of the questions I had was about the popularity you can go and you can sell it on .in but who’s gonna buy it and whoever was just said, shake his head, I must have been Tim.
Ryan 14:43
Sounds like Tim.
Norman 14:46
Do you know how many millionaires are over there? Do you know how many people would want this product or a product because first of all, they can afford it and it’s just understanding the culture. Yet others, people want beautiful products in India. Now, here’s another thing. I talked about this a little while ago, weeks ago, but I was talking to somebody who came over to prREACH and we were talking about supplements and the guy says, Oh I sell supplements in India. I said, Oh, that’s good and he says, Yeah, I do about 10,000. I thought, Well, that’s really good. 10,000 a month. Yeah, that’s great. He’s like, No. 10,000 a day.
Ryan 15:31
Pretty good.
Norman 15:32
Damn good.
Ryan 15:34
Yeah, for sure. I think anyone is hankering for those kinds of numbers, no matter what industry you’re in.
Norman 15:41
I really, I always thought India was a very tough market to get into, it still is tougher. But a lot of things have loosened up and that is definitely a market that I want to get into this year and I know, like with Tim and Meghla, they’re doing what Sourcing Asia, to try to get people to take a look at India, outside of China. But that’s just another marketplace now with your service. Just kind of curious. Can you send payments to India?
Ryan 16:14
Yes, you can. So you can send an INR from us, and that’s when you mentioned it’s tough to get in there. I think it was Meghla, when I was talking to her on our show Crossover Commerce, they’re trying to do it so that they protect the Indian community and ecosystem. So just trying to get into that marketplace where there’s competitive advantage, like Amazon coming in there, for example, and selling, dying, those are difficult compliance issues where it’s just hard to send and receive money, but you can send money with PingPong into India, for sure. But in terms of receiving it, like out of a marketplace, not yet, but that’s just in terms of commerce in general. But you can definitely send an INR through our services. So you can pay out a supplier in INR in local currency.
Norman 17:04
So let’s talk about the other international marketplaces right now. So the UEA. Sorry. I was wrong. UAE.
Ryan 17:19
The United Emirates, that’s another one that we actually that you can receive in funds too. So the dirham, it’s definitely a marketplace that there’s a lot of money over there, there’s a lot of money overseas, and you just think as a seller, or when you’re consuming these kinds of things and you look at this, the landscape in terms of like where you’re at in that community, even though it’s not a lot of eyeballs, it’s a lot of money where that is located. So selling in that marketplace, obviously, is something that’s coming up I think. Again, it’s just the velocity of money look at sole audience numbers, it’s not appealing to someone who wants to sell a velocity amount, but if you want to start becoming a brand, and being International, I think that’s something also super fascinating to me. Even Singapore too, once they open up like their logistics chain in that South East Asia area where you can start to ship from island nation, island nation, that would be something very fascinating to me. I think Meghla, I keep going back to Meghla, because she’s my go to person over there. When they open up that kind of ecosystem, you can talk to billions of people and get it prime shipping within a really quick amount of time and now would just be a really cool market to get into I think if you’re looking at it, like under the radar boat budding to boom, for sure.
Norman 18:47
Yeah and are there any others that you look at like I’m looking at, like Australia, for example.
Ryan 18:53
Yeah, that’s a big one. I think Australian market, I think they’re really figuring out those another thing I think like culturally, they were just a little bit slower to catch on in terms of like the mobile and eCommerce way but now a lot of their sellers are selling in the US but I think just in terms of as a consumer, you can really start to see it take off and in terms of people are purchasing over there, it’s just harder and if you think logistically amount the amount of people and how to get your goods there. I think the supply chain is the biggest issue for a lot of sellers, is how do I get my goods to certain countries without being super expensive? I think there was a lot that was like quadruple the amount to get goods from China over to Europe even and now it was the logistical nightmare of Amazon, just the amount of volume they’re doing. But also just the logistics system is so bogged down right now. It’s hard to get it there quickly. So I think Australia is a big one. I think once Amazon figures out South America honestly like Brazil, a huge marketplace, big eCommerce opportunity, but once they have opened up there. I think that would be a huge market in South America, to be honest with you.
Norman 20:06
Yeah and one of the things I think we should discuss, and we’ve already had a podcast recently on this. But with translation, if you’re getting into these marketplaces, and you’re going to Google Translate, forget it. Yeah, you’ve really got to have proper translation and you want to go to a translation service, like Jana’s, and she was on just recently, and her service or there’s other services out there, but go to a service is actually going to translate your listings properly and there’s so many really bad examples. I don’t have to get into it. But when you’re getting into international marketplaces, make sure you spend the money, there’s good money and bad money to be spent and that’s definitely good money. The other areas, what do you think about global? Kevin King was on the other day, and we were talking just briefly about setting up global shipping. So you don’t have to really worry too much about getting into all these other marketplaces, play around with it for a bit before you really jump in with two feet. What are your thoughts on that?
Ryan 21:18
Yeah, so there’s programs that Amazon touts to easily, almost like dip your toes into international marketplaces. So for example, if you’re selling in the United States, you can actually apply to the North American Remote Fulfillment program, which is NARF. It’s a really terrible acronym. But it sounds really unsexy. Like it’s a terrible acronym, but it does its job. So we actually have a lot of sellers. Scott Needham, I don’t know if him, but I think he’s the buy box expert. He tells a program up and down all all day long, because having your goods, what it is, is you can have your goods in United States, and but how the Amazon fulfill to Canada into Mexico, if that listing actually warrants it, so you can have it listed on .ca or .mx and if there’s goods that if you’re translated, and you’re listed on those marketplaces, you can have it fulfilled from North America, like, obviously, in the United States, wherever if you’re in an FBA facility. So it’s really interesting to think that I think those programs are definitely super valuable and on the flip side, same thing with the European program. I think if it’s in Germany, or one of those countries, I want to say it’s definitely Germany, that they’ll fulfill all those European countries in terms of like your goods being logistically getting to different marketplaces over there in different countries.
Norman 22:48
So remember, you heard NARF here first.
Ryan 22:51
I think it’s a beta program. But we can definitely give more information about it. Like how sellers can hook it up. If you do a quick Google search of it, it’s in Seller Central somewhere, I think I would have to definitely look it up again. But it’s like an invite only, you have to do a certain velocity. But I think they’re gonna start opening that up more in terms of just fulfillment reasons, I think that they would have to.
Norman 23:17
So why don’t you send over that information? We’ll put it in the show notes and make sure that everybody gets it. Kelsey, do we have any questions?
Kelsey 23:24
Yeah, we sure do. Let’s see, we have one from Radd. When you guys were talking about the Indian marketplace, do you have to be an Indian to sell in the India market?
Ryan 23:36
Good question. I don’t know all the logistical.
Norman 23:39
I think it’s like Japan, you have to have a presence. So last time, this could have changed. Last time I checked, that you have to have a company represent you in India
Ryan 23:54
That was the same thing with banks too. You’d always always have to have a physical presence in that country and that’s kind of where companies like us where we kind of took that over and now you don’t need to. So it’s possible. That’s a good question.
Norman 24:09
Oh, Andrew says No, you don’t. So maybe they changed that.
Ryan 24:13
Everything’s constantly changing. So they might be opening?
Norman 24:15
I’m gonna check with Meghla, because she was just on the show a month or two back and she said that you still needed to have somebody there to open up a company, I believe, but I am going to confirm that and I’ll get back to you. Or if Andrew wants to. Hey, Andrew, do you have time to pop on and talk about this? Just let me know.
Ryan 24:41
Yeah, that has to be something new because I swear you still have a business entity, but that might have opened up recently. Yeah,
Kelsey 24:50
Darwin’s saying, I received an invite from Amazon to sell in India, but not sure how it works.
Norman 24:55
You know what, we’re going to talk to Meghla right after this and by Wednesday’s episode, we will have all the information for everybody.
Ryan 25:03
Great question.
Kelsey 25:04
Okay and Darwin, I’ve started selling with Amazon Global, got a few sales from Canada. How does taxes work? Does Amazon handle that?
Ryan 25:14
Yeah, so there is something called GST and VAT, which are more acronyms that really suck, think of it as sales tax. Because of Brexit, it changed for the UK, but anywhere in Europe, UK, and then also Canada, you have to pay what’s called GST. There’s a couple different ways, they will either credit you if you pay all that, or if they pay month by month, but you have to pay these tax authorities in order to be compliant and to continue to obviously pay the government, again, like sales tax here in the United States. So you can actually pay those authorities through PingPong, you should have contact information, the tax authorities information, you just input it, and then you can pay them for free. That’s where accounting services are also fantastic. Because they can have access to PingPong or they have their own software and they can pay those authorities. It’s free to pay them but you have to pay them. But it’s called GST and VAT for different capacities. It has to be a certain threshold dollar amount for you to be qualified for it. But I think, especially in the UK, almost all sales are VAT, you have to pay for those goods.
Norman 26:26
Yeah, in Canada, it depends on the province and if anybody needs any real detail, like let’s say that you’re moving into Canada into sales, you’re opening up a business, you can just send us just a PM, or dm or whatever these acronyms, are message us and we could put you in touch with an accountant or an accounting firm up here. There’s plenty of them. But yeah, you definitely want to do it right. I got a message. I think about two weeks ago, somebody who didn’t and now they’re having problems in Canada, because they owe a ton of tax and by the way, one of my clients did a No, no and hopefully they’re not listening. I’m not gonna say the name, of course, but they owed over a million dollars in tax VAT that they found out. So pay your tax. That’s it. Don’t hide it. They will catch you.
Ryan 27:23
Yeah, absolutely. It’s something that’s always hidden. You never think about it. But that is something for you as a US seller, if you’re selling in Canada, you do have to pay those taxes.
Norman 27:34
Alright Kels, next.
Kelsey 27:36
For Yelchin, can we make wire transfer via PingPong for any countries?
Ryan 27:41
Yeah, so we support over 160 different currencies. So by any country, there’s obviously some No, no countries like North Korea or Russia and those are just for compliance reasons. Because since we work with tier one banks, we have to follow strict security and compliance regulations for every single country and every single state provenance that we support. So sending to those countries, it’s basically a bank account, like a wire transfer, if you will. So if a bank doesn’t, if it red lights, then we can’t support that, but that’s for any kind of money entity and the reason for that is so that on the very like, ugly, dark side of being compliance in money, so you’re not supporting like terrorism, or like child sex trafficking, or any sort of like very disgusting habits, or I say entities around the world, so that there’s bad money going back and forth between entities. So there’s a list of countries we don’t support, but they’re for good reasons. But in this case, I think you’d be okay. If you’re sending to like, of course, like China, that’s a one that we work with a lot. But there’s just like certain countries around the world we would not support.
Norman 28:59
Alright, I just saw that Andrew posted something here. Just check it out Kels.
Kelsey 29:04
Yep, it’s a Selling to India, the Facebook page or Facebook group.
Norman 29:07
I’m still gonna go back. I’m gonna talk to Tim and Meghla, that maybe we’ll do just a quick live to get that straightened up as well. Okay, next question.
Kelsey 29:20
Alright, we have two more from the audience. So from Darwin, my trademark works in the US and Canada. Is there a way I can transfer A plus content without having to rewrite everything?
Norman 29:33
In a different language Darwin? So I’m sorry, I’m not sure I understand that. So if you’re going into Japan, or if you’re going over to India, do you need to change the content? Well first, I’m not sure if you’re talking about translation or not. So if you could just clarify that that would be awesome.
Ryan 29:58
Same language, he said.
Kelsey 30:01
So yes, just transferring the content.
Norman 30:03
Yeah, transferring the content and I’m not 100% sure that every platform supports A plus. I don’t know. But if they are, if they do support A plus, yeah, you definitely do want to do anything, you can translate it into the same language.
Kelsey 30:24
Last one is from Fatiha, how do you compare better to Payoneer or Transferwise?
Ryan 30:30
It’s like she was paid to do this. Now that’s a great question. So they’re both great companies. They’ve been around longer if you can imagine. So Payoneer is established in Israel. Transferwise is established in the UK and we actually started our company in New York City. But our international headquarters is actually over in China. So a lot of the differences were very popular with the Chinese seller marketplace, just because there is no other solution out there that was supporting them. So I think a marketplace puzzle of the new sellers was coming from China. So you help other international sellers everywhere around the world sell on multiple marketplaces. So it’s not just for US sellers, it’s for people who are located in China, or if they’re located in Europe, they’re located all over the place, we can definitely support those kinds of entities. How we’re different, everyone can send out to a lot of the same countries and different currencies, we all have roughly the same amount, it’s going to be your rates, and what’s the best thing is you have options as an Amazon seller. So first off, if you have the ability to negotiate your rates, or you didn’t know you can negotiate your rates, that’s number one, because maximum that we charge in terms of our fees for inbound or outbound would be 1%, that can go down depending on the threshold and how much you’re sending and receiving. So 1% of PingPong’s fees is going to be better than if you’re sending again, for your supplier, you might be sending through PayPal, and they might be charging you 4 to 5 or 6%, even to your supplier. So think about 6% all the way to 1%. That’s where you do cost savings and then obviously with us, we have the ability to pay on RMB and CNY. So if you’re paying your supplier and you have a good working relationship, and you’re only paying in USD, with PingPong, you can actually load in money from either your receiving account from your different marketplaces or you can actually put money into the account and you can pay your supplier in that RMB or CNY, which is local currency for China and you can say, Hey, if I paid you on local currency, what would be my savings instead of paying you in USD, and you’d have to convert it for you and a lot of the times your supplier will come back and say, Hey, this is what you’d be saving, you do a side by side comparison, you’re saving roughly anywhere between 2 to 3%, just on your supplier paid, because they don’t want to have to convert it themselves, they have to pay those fees and most often than not, you’re going to get charged those fees, they’re just going to put it into your invoice. So that’s where having that ability to negotiate with people that that’s where there’s all that value added in terms of those relationships. So that’s why I would say those, there’s number one things and then we’re going to walk you through if this is something new, if Amazon is all you know and you’re using Amazon services, you’re getting charged that 3 to 5% conversion rate. So if I’m selling in the UK, and I’m receiving pounds, think about it this way, Amazon’s gonna convert those funds for me, from the pound to USD, if I’m in the United States, and that conversion, that’s my money, but they’re converting at a cost. Again, with convenience comes cost, as everyone knows, and then Amazon will take that cut to your bank account, but they will charge you 3 to 5% just to do that and so that’s where you’d be saving money with our entity. But you should always be you should always know where you can save money, but also know in what capacity you can save it because a lot of people are just not aware, Amazon doesn’t tell you outright, Hey, by the way seller, in the UK, we’re gonna charge you this amount just to convert from British pound to USD. That’s not how it works. It’s actually they tell you, this is what your revenue is in the United Kingdom and then this, they’re going to pay you out in your bank account, which most often than not, for US dollars, is in USD. If it’s in any other country, they’re gonna still convert it in that currency. But what you have to do is take all of Amazon’s fees, take the revenue amount at the end of the day, go into Google and you can actually look at what day that Amazon or Amazon paid you on can go into Google and look at the currency conversion from whatever currency to your local one and you can see what you should have got paid based on that rate versus what you did and that’s where that fee is that discrepancy. That’s the fee that Amazon charges in the US.
Norman 34:48
Yeah, 4% of $100,000 is a pretty good chunk of change.
Ryan 34:53
Exactly.
Norman 34:54
Yeah. So let’s talk about are there more hidden fees like I consider that a hidden fee. Because you don’t know it’s gonna be four points. But are there any other hidden fees that we could talk about?
Ryan 35:06
Yeah, I mean with banks, too. I think that Amazon’s not the only thing.
Norman 35:11
Not the only evil.
Ryan 35:13
Well, yeah and again, when you’re first to a market, like a PayPal with convenience, you can charge whatever you want if you think about it, if you’re first to market, and you’re the only solution, people are not going to not use you, especially with paying not just your suppliers, but your VAs. A lot of people are just used to the way things were and you don’t shop around and you think about how can I save more money, like, that’s not a constant thing people are doing. Just like if you’re a buyer, you’re obviously always looking for coupons, you’re looking for free shipping, you’re looking for different ways that you can just save for time and convenience, other with banks, those are kind of the most the most difficult ones in terms of like you really don’t realize how much you’re spending and fees unless you are going through it all month by month, even as a beginner seller. Think about this, if you’re paying a bank or paying your supplier, you have to pay. First off, you have to go in person to make an international transfer, you have to go to a bank, so you’re wasting your own time, which is a commodity you don’t get back. So you have to go to a bank, you have to make the international transfer with your bank, and they will give you a set rate at which this converted currency is going to be transferred over, you have no negotiating power. So the bank has all control. They don’t want to have to deal with those in their minds, small transfers, it’s not small d because it might be five, six figures that you’re sending over there. But to them, it’s small potatoes, they don’t want to have to deal with those one off currency conversions. That’s why they charge you those incredibly crazy rates. So they’ll charge you 5%, just for the convenience of sending off to an account, they don’t verify it with you. So if a seller is sending 6 figures, it’s gonna be a pit in your stomach for all those days until you see that, Hey, money got taken on my account, I hope it was the right account. Or if you made one number that was incorrect in the account you have to send to. How are you going to get that money back? You have to go through the wire tracing all that other fun, disgusting stuff that hopefully you can get that money corrected into the right hands and that just takes more time off your plate and then banks again, for every time you do wire transfer, it’s 50 to $150. So if you think it and add that up over the course of how many times you’re paying a supplier, that money also starts to add up. So the banks are pretty, pretty bad when you’re paying like VAs, or you’re paying employees around the world like freelancers. Again, those are also ways that money is just escaping out of your pocket and you need to have control over those like there’s convenient ways to sell and, and help people or even pay your employees. So this is what I would say is like, just be wary, I say now way. They’re obviously great entities. But just kind of do your homework and know other ways you can save time and money when selling online.
Norman 38:10
Yeah, it’s really important. That’s another part when when sellers come on, you want to make sure that you’ve trapped your costs and you’ve got those under control. The second step is where else can I start shaving? A lot of the time, what I’ll find are people using these crazy ways of paying and then let’s take a look now and see where else you can start saving. So like PayPal, for example. It’s so convenient to pay on PayPal, but you’re being charged through the nose. Amazon, the banks. So we’ve talked about foreign exchange quite a bit. I know Afolabi comes on, he talks about that quite a bit as well, Tim. But if you’re not doing it, Tim Francis comes on and he’s talking about knowing your numbers. These are one of those little things tucked away that if you do it, you can save two three points at the end of the day. Now, think of it not at $100,000, think of it at a million dollars. Yeah, that’s a lot of money that just because you’re doing it wrong and you don’t know. I come across people, I’ve got clients right now. They had no idea. They came on to Amazon, they became really good 8 seller figures. But guess what they’re paying through? They’re paying through the bank thinking that they have money. So anyways, is my volume low?
Ryan 39:38
Speak louder now. Well, I’ll say like we have real case studies, like if you’re a million dollar seller and you’re selling on multiple marketplaces, we took one customer obviously you can’t name that they just converted just one of their marketplaces over to us and they save 90 grand a year just ensure like FX savings. Yeah, you can think about just in one marketplace flipping that over and saving $90,000 shoot, put that in your back pocket, buy yourself something nice that you’re working hard for, put a down payment on loans or anything of those that you can put that money and apply it to because it is your money at the end of the day. It’s just why would you want to waste it for the sake of convenience when there’s other solutions you can use to keep more of it. I mean, that’s why we’re entrepreneurs. We’re doing it to either grow our brand, grow yourself and step away from either your 9 to 5 job or you’re trying to just like, take the next step and secure your family’s financial future.
Norman 40:40
Now, I’ve seen a couple of comments come up and anybody who listens to this podcast knows I’m blind as a bat and we got it set up. It’s about a 16th of an inch going across. Sometimes I catch it, sometimes I don’t. But Kelsey is gonna read out some of them. I saw Baptist come up. You know what’s really cool? So if you go to Clubhouse and you check into Clubhouse, you’ll see there’s a really cool picture of me, cooler than I am. It was Baptist, he made this really cool image for me and he sent it over and he said, Hey, you should use this. So I got to thank you. I never did. But anyways, okay. We have a short podcast today. Because I’ve got to get on to another podcast for my other podcast called I Know this Guy, which is a really good podcast. So anyway, subscribe today. But I have an interview with that in a few minutes. So why don’t we do this? Look, we were talking about Clubhouse a little bit earlier on. If you don’t have a Clubhouse invite, just put what is it Kels? #Clubhouse and you can be entered, I’ll take three people, Kelsey will reach you out, and we’ll send you over some invites, I got a bunch of them. So we’ll send them over, don’t put in your phone number, I was told because that’s a privacy thing. Not everybody wants their phone number published in this chat. The other thing is, we’ve got a couple of giveaways and if you don’t know about this, let’s talk about the other thing that Ryan’s going to be working on, or the giveaway that he has.
Kelsey 42:24
Yeah. So Ryan, if you want to explain what people can get if they sign up?
Ryan 42:30
Absolutely. So if you sign up today, for everyone who’s a listener, obviously, if you have questions, you can obviously tag me on social media and I’ll give you my Calendly. We can talk one on one, for sure. But for anyone who listens to this, and you mentioned you heard about me or PingPong through Lunch with Norm, we’re gonna give you up to the first $500 in FX, a wave to you for free. Yeah, so you’re not paying any PingPong fees or anything like that you’re doing just a simple conversion rate, the mid market rates, you sign up for our service, test it, it’s free to sign up. So you can go through all the motions, we can walk through everything with you, handhold yourself through getting signed up, pay a supplier, pay VA, receive money from multiple marketplaces, test drive it. Almost like a car dealership test driven, if you like it, keen to needies it. But yeah, we’ll make sure we hook you guys up as listeners. So all of our contact information, either tag me or email me, ryan.cramer@pingpongx.us and I think we’ll put that in the information as well.
Norman 43:32
Okay, very good. Alright. So that is you just have to sign up for that. That’s very cool by the way. Thank you. Alright. So you know what, to talk about fair and balanced. Where have I heard that before? Ryan and I are competitors, by the way. So I want to bring in people that have great content and just like my Amazon, I’ll tell everybody all day long my brands, but I don’t care about competition or competitors. He brought on some really cool value prior to the podcast to bring them on. That’s what we asked. We wanted to have something cool that we could talk about that our listeners would listen to. But anyways, guys, if you like it, go over, sign up. Check it out. That’s a really great deal that Ryan put together for us. Alright. So let’s see. We had some swag, didn’t we?
Ryan 44:32
Oh, yeah. So also, if you want to spend the wheel. I know we were talking about that, we have a PingPong water bottle and I believe a notebook as well. We would give away as well. I even have a T-shirt. So if we have the size, we can also give a T-shirt away.
Norman 44:45
Okay, so Kelsey, let’s do the Clubhouse thing first and let’s see how many people signed up for Clubhouse.
Kelsey 44:52
Right now, we only have four for Clubhouse and you said only three.
Norman 45:00
Just get that three information and we’ll send them four.
Kelsey 45:04
I was gonna say, Radd is offering to give out two invites too. So we have those four covered. I’ll talk to Radd about this afterwards and arrange everything but yeah, so that’s covered and then the giveaway so #PingPong
Ryan 45:24
That works.
Kelsey 45:26
Okay, great. So if you want some cool PingPong swag, water bottle, notes and T-shirt. Put #PingPong. US only. Yep, that’s it.
Norman 45:41
So we’ll wait for a sec, if anybody wants that. Not that they want it. We just announced it now, we should have said it in the beginning.
Ryan 45:52
So someone said if I played table tennis. So a T-shirt with PingPong would be great. Yeah. Not an ideal name everyone. Because if you can think about the customer service calls that we get off, where’s my PingPong table? It’s pretty bad.
Norman 46:05
I was asking for coupons. I don’t know. Yeah, the coupon for the signing up for your account? Is that what you’re asking for Radd?
Kelsey 46:16
Okay, that might have been a bit confusing, because we usually do hashtags for the giveaways. So if you’re interested to sign up for PingPong and get the $500 credit with the currency from Ryan, you can email him. Yeah, the email is right here. So ryan.cramer@pingpongx.us. So go ahead and email him and just mention Lunch with Norm and he’ll set you up.
Norman 46:45
There we go. Okay, so let’s do the PingPong now. I’m not sure if people had a chance to.
Kelsey 46:53
Mark and Olga. It looks like.
Ryan 46:57
Brenda, Olga, Radd, Mark. Yeah, it looks like four so far. That’s okay. We’ll make sure people get if they come in late. We can hook them up.
Kelsey 47:08
Okay, just a second.
Ryan 47:09
Norm you said you’re a competitor of mine. What are you talking about podcasts? Are you talking about just financial? I didn’t know that.
Norman 47:14
Yeah. Financial. So Honu offers financial.
Ryan 47:18
I knew that. Yeah. Just kidding.
Norman 47:23
I had to do a plug in there. Honu, H o n u offers,
Ryan 47:29
That’s fine. That’s all good.
Norman 47:31
There you go.
Ryan 47:32
I forgot about that. Here’s just covering all the assets of Amazon.
Norman 47:38
You know what? It’s called integration.
Ryan 47:41
It’s like you have to be good at everything and in everything.
Norman 47:44
No, you have to hire people to be good in everything.
Ryan 47:48
Exactly.
Norman 47:49
Alright, here we go. Wheel of Kelsey.
Kelsey 47:52
Alright, so here we go. We got five people. Let’s do this. So 3,2,1.
Kelsey 48:06
So Brenda, I will reach out to you. You can also email me k@lunchwithnorm.com and let me just get rid of this.
Norman 48:18
Okay, there we go and I think that’s it. So today, this is actually one of our shorter podcasts. We usually hit that hour mark, but I think we got the information across that we needed. Ryan, thank you for being on. I’m sure you’re gonna get a couple emails from our listeners. Is there anything else you’d like to say contact information?
Ryan 48:39
Yeah, so my email, I’m on social media on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. Also, I do podcasts live just like this. I mean, we compete in that segment, but we’re bringing on guests all the time. Norm has been a guest on my show. It’s called Crossover Commerce. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel PingPong payments, and we have a different playlist. But we go live almost every single day. I’ll be live at 3pm Eastern with Rich Goldstein actually. Yeah, so patent, copyright, all the fun, legal jargon about protecting yourself as an Amazon seller.
Norman 49:13
So he’s got a great book too and it’s a really easy read.
Ryan 49:17
Also a big fan of Clubhouse too. So I’m sure we’ll talk about it.
Norman 49:20
Yeah. So Marcia just asked if we have a room. We’re just getting that all set up Marcia, we’ll let you know. We’ve actually got something really cool setup that I think we’ll be able to get all our guests over the week. So we’ll have the podcast and then we’re going to bring them over and talk on Clubhouse open. So anybody who wants to join us in Clubhouse, we’re trying to figure out the best way to do it because it’s so new. But anyways, Ryan, thank you so much for being on and talk to you soon, sir.
Ryan 49:54
Thanks everyone.
Norman 49:55
Alright. See you. Okay everybody, thanks for joining our podcast today. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you learned a little bit about international markets. Got something really cool happening Wednesday. So this whole Clubhouse buzz that’s happening. We want people to understand it, we want people to get the ins and outs of Clubhouse. So what I’ve got is the hottest thing right now, check it out, you can go and just search out .clubs. Everybody is talking about it because at the end of the day in Clubhouse, you want a club. Well, we’re gonna tell you how to get a club. Why get a club, what it does, and sort of a way to monetize it. It’s hard right now. We’re trying to figure out, we’re trying to find out what’s happening, how we can monetize as an Amazon seller Clubhouse. So we’ll be discussing that plus, we’re gonna have Paul Baron on. Now Paul usually is talking about influencers. Paul, check him out. He’s got like 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of followers on Clubhouse. He was an early adopter and he ended up doing it extremely well. So he’s coming on to talk about this as well. People really aren’t talking too much about it. It is the buzz. But you got to be in Clubhouse to get the buzz. We’re gonna do it as a podcast. So tune in and once again, we’ve got four plus two invites that we can give out and for Clubhouse you have to be invited. You have to have an iPhone, by the way. I guess I should have mentioned that. Other than that, Kelsey, where are you?
Kelsey 51:45
I’m right here. Okay, so Brenda was asking about my email. So I sent it on the YouTube, it just might take a second to upload. But yes, about the Clubhouse group. We were looking to have our own room for Clubhouse and we’re going to be maybe having like a bonus episodes and then kind of cool with like the guests of the week. But we’ll give you more information once we’ve arranged that. Mark was saying he loves the idea. So that’s great. Seems like Marica’s is on board too. So I’m excited for that. Yeah, if you haven’t already, please smash that like button, share the episode.
Norman 52:22
You’re aggressive.
Kelsey 52:24
I know. Yeah. Hang on back. But yeah, we really appreciate everyone joining us today, we have a bunch of questions. Ryan is also part of our group for the Beard Nation. So if you have any questions for Ryan, or if you think other people are also asking similar questions, you can post them inside the group. Just tag Ryan and I’m sure he’d be happy to answer those questions as well. But I think that’s it. I just have one review I want to read. Let’s see from Jack. Alright. So love this podcast. I’ve been searching for a podcast that gives actionable advice that I can implement and this is it. I really appreciate the dedication of the Lunch with Norm team. Love the beard Norm. Alright, so thank you Jack.
Norman 53:13
Alright, Jack. Thank you.
Kelsey 53:15
Alright, so we read any reviews that you guys write on Apple or Spotify anywhere like that will read it on here too. So thank you everyone. Marina, thank you. Mark, Olga, Brenda, Darwin, everyone that’s been here, thank you guys so much. We love you guys and I think that’s it.
Norman 53:34
Okay. So thank you everybody. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at noon Eastern Standard Time. Thank you for watching. Thanks for being part of the community and we will talk to you soon. Have a great day.
