#72: Amazon FBA Q&A Dec. 2020

Date: December 4, 2020

Episode: 72

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

Subtitle: “Play by the rules, but be ferocious”

Final Show Link:https://lunchwithnorm.com/episodes/episode-72-amazon-fba-qa-dec-2020-w-kevin-king/

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

He has been involved in internet marketing and e-commerce since 1995. He sells millions of dollars on Amazon. In this episode, Kevin helps breakdown what happened during this year’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday. 

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

In this episode, we discuss:

• 7:05 Kevin’s backstory
• 9:00 Billion dollar seller summit for 2021
• 9:40 Nothing special about Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales on Amazon
• 11:00 Ideas to spice up your Brand and boost online sales
• 22:40 Percentage of online retail sales that are done on mobile
• 23:50 Tips to boost sales in December
• 28:04 Online shopping tips to save money
• 29:32 How COVID restrictions affect IPI on Amazon
• 32:06 Solutions for shipping out LTL
• 38:01 Product liability insurance for seller and why is it important
• 42:31 How to manage emails received through seller central
• 43:52 How he raise funds for business expansion
• 50:02 Talk about brand names on the listing title
• 56:33 What is stranded inventory on Amazon and how to fix it
• 58:50 What is the best platform to sell used items
• 1:02:11 Talk about the percentage of his business on Amazon
• 1:11:04 Profitable product ideas to sell online
• 1:13:02 Overview of toy market
• 1:16:21 Tips on selling Amazon this holiday season (December-January)

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Explore these Resources

In this episode, we mentioned the following resources:

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-king-9b992017a/
• www.ebay.com
• www.prreach.com
• www.blackfriday.com
• www.cybermonday.com

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Norman  0:01  

Hey everybody, it’s Norman Farrar a.k.a The Beard Guy here and welcome to another Lunch With Norm, the rise of the micro brands.

Norman  0:20  

Alright, so today’s episode we bring back my buddy Kevin King and I think if you’ve ever seen any of the other episodes, here’s Kevin the dog, cigar buddy, Kevin’s a cigar buddy. So anyways, Kevin’s gonna be on, we’re going to be talking about anything Amazon. If you want to be on the podcast live and ask Kevin yourself a question, just let us know in the comment box. We’re trying to do this a little bit differently now. So if you’d like to come on, ask, we’ll send you over the link. You can come on and ask. If not, if you’re shy, just put it over in the comment section and we’ll get to those questions right away. But before we do that, I just wanted to let you know, there’s a lot of people that don’t know a lot about Kevin and he’s got an incredible life. If you ever want to hear more about this life, check out the podcast on I Know This Guy, and you’ll be blown away. Kevin has been featured on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous Entertainment Tonight. He’s been featured in USA Today, Wall Street Journal and he’s just a really cool guy. So anyways, Kelsey, where are you?

Kelsey 1:32

Hello. 

Norman  1:33  

How are you sir?

Kelsey 1:34  

I’m fantastic. 

Norman  1:35  

Can I call you sir?

Kelsey 1:36  

Yeah, you’ve been doing it for quite a while now.

Norman  1:41  

Oh, I just realized I’m doing that sir. It should be Squire.

Kelsey 1:47  

Yeah, I remember a friend of ours.

Norman  1:51  

He always calls you squire. 

Kelsey 1:52  

Yes and I loved it.

Norman  1:57  

So what are we doing? 

Kelsey 1:59  

Okay. So you guys know the drill. Like and follow the podcast, if you’re watching on Facebook, give us a like and share YouTube this thumbs up. It looks like we already have tons of people joining us, Dr. Koz, Victor, Dolman. Let’s see Mark, Angie, and we got a Facebook user trying to figure out who that is, Henrietta. 

Norman 2:26

All right. Very good. 

Kelsey 2:28

So welcome everyone. Yeah, so this is a place where you can throw your questions over, put them in the comments. If you do have a question that you really want to ask in person, just put let’s say #askKevin and I can send you the link to the stream yard. You can ask in person so you can be on the show part of us but if you do that, please have a working earphones and webcam too. So yeah, we are a podcast too, so you can search us and find us on Apple and Spotify too and I think that’s about it. We got a Facebook community, so go ahead. It’s lunch Norm Amazon FBA and eCommerce Collective and yeah, that’s it for me and looks like we got Leonard, Allen.

Norman  3:21  

Marina’s back. Simon’s back.

Kelsey 3:23  

Rad, Angie.

Norman 3:25  

Yes. Thanks for joining again. 

Kelsey 3:27

Justin. Okay, fantastic. Looks like we’ve got a good turnout already and we’re three minutes in. That’s awesome.

Norman  3:34  

Alright. Well, start liking, smashing. Kels, you forgot your job.

Kelsey 3:39  

Smash the like button, ring the bell. Whoo.

Norman  3:42  

Yeah, subscribe there.

Kelsey 3:46  

I’m gonna interrupt you one more time. Also I don’t know how to change the name. I’ll change the name one time. Yeah, so. Yes. For the question to start off. How is your Black Friday, Cyber Monday? Put it over in the comment sections. Welcome, Tom. Welcome to the show and yeah, let us know how your Cyber Day or your Cyber Monday and Black Friday was.

Norman  4:13  

Okay, so we are broadcasting to you live on Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn. If you’re watching the replay, you can just skip ahead all this stuff. If you’re watching on my personal Facebook page, you can always skip over to the official fan page, Norman Farrar a.k.a The Beard Guy and you’ll see the whole episode highlights and video content that Kelsey has been posting. But now like Kelsey said through your questions over into the comments section, sit back, relax and grab a cup of coffee and enjoy the show. Where is my buddy?

Norman  4:48  

There he is.

Kevin 4:48  

Hey, what’s up man?

Norman  4:51  

Here’s my other buddy.

Kevin 4:52  

Oh, my proxy right? 

Norman  4:55  

That’s right.

Kevin 4:56  

I hope it’s a good cigar though.

Norman  4:58  

Of course it’s a good cigar. Only good cigars, that and Kobe beef. The dog wouldn’t eat Kobe beef so I gave him a cigar.

Kevin  5:05  

The dog wouldn’t eat Kobe beef?

Norman  5:07  

No, not this one.

Kevin  5:13  

I’ve never seen a dog who doesn’t eat Kobe beef. 

Norman 5:15

Believe me. How are you?

Kevin  5:17  

I’m good man. How are you doing? How’s the frozen tundra of Canada?

Norman  5:23  

Oh, can you just invite me down there? Like I’ll go, I’ll break quarantine. It’s just it’s that time where it’s really damp, dreary, there’s snow on the ground. I can’t do anything like usually I have the excuse, I could go and travel. But now I got to sit down and I can’t travel anywhere. So

Kevin 5:44  

Maybe next summer, maybe next summer.

Norman  5:46  

Maybe I’ve been hearing some wild stuff. I know, we talked about COVID quite a bit. But like the impact that’s going to be happening even with these vaccines that are going to be rolling out. But how bad it’s going to be. I was talking to a friend of mine who’s in politics here in Canada and he was giving us some stats yesterday that the amount of businesses that will be closing over the next couple of months is staggering. So anyways, for us in the eCommerce world, we’re lucky right now. I mean, as long as economics keeps on our side, it’s an easy way to learn how to make money as long as you put your mind to it.

Kevin  6:33  

My sales are up. For me, it’s about 40% this year, year over year. So definitely, eCommerce is the place to be and yeah, we’re lucky that we’re in that space and not really affected too much by this other than maybe some delivery delays in Amazon not allowing us to ship some stuff in or something. But yeah, this is definitely the right place, right time.

Norman  6:57  

Hey, if just in case people don’t know who you are, can you just let people know a little bit about yourself?

Kevin 7:05  

Sure. Yeah. My name is Kevin King. I live in Austin, Texas. I’m married, have two dogs, love cigars and Kobe beef. No, but so I’ve been an entrepreneur my entire life. I’ve only worked two jobs in my entire life. McDonald’s and pizza delivery is the only thing I ever did. So for the last 30 some odd years, I’ve been my own boss. I’ve had ups and downs. Everything from a bankruptcy to multi million dollar companies. I’ve been selling on Amazon for over 20 years as an FBA seller since 2015. Five different Amazon accounts on either own or on partners with different lines that are all active. I also host a billion dollar seller summit, which is what we’re doing twice a year. It’s a $5,000 ticket item summit. For high level Amazon sellers averaging the rooms like eight, 9 million a year. Norm has been and partners with Steve Simonson and Product Savants, which we help advanced sellers discover new product opportunities and also in the lead trainer for Helium 10 Elites and the creator of the Freedom Ticket which is Helium 10 offers for anybody that has a Helium 10 subscription, which was actually just voted the the best training course for Amazon sellers in the Danny’s a seller poll. 

Norman  8:35  

Very good. Yeah and that billion dollar seller summit is one of if not the best event out there. When I went last year, just meeting the caliber of people that I did. The speakers, everybody was just networking, speakers go hide in a back room. They were just networking with everybody. So it was a really great event. So I can’t wait until we can do this again in person.

Kevin  9:00  

It looks like August. August, September is when we’re pushing the next one to go and do a virtual one, I think in February, and then there’ll be a next live one, was going to do it in May, but I don’t think everything’s gonna be quite back to normal enough for people to travel. So I think by August or September, a lot more people are going to be traveling and going out.

Norman  9:24  

Very good. Okay, so why don’t we just dig into what we usually talk about what’s going on in the month. What was or what have you heard about Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales overall?

Kevin 9:40  

For me, there’s nothing special and I have giftable items. I mean, I know some people were posting. I didn’t see a lot of activity on Facebook. Normally a lot of people are like, how’s everybody sales and people are bragging and I saw a couple people that are in the toy category. I think Brandon Young was one, he’s posting but some of that was just to promote his course. But it was, it looks like he did pretty good with some toy stuff. But to me, I didn’t. I sold more yesterday than I did on Black Friday or Cyber Monday. So they were both decent days. But, it’s not some 3x or 5x or 10x a normal day. What I’m seeing, and I had been saying is that it looks like the sales are more evened out. People started shopping earlier because they’re sitting at home. It’s not this, Black Friday or Cyber Monday, a lot of times, that’s when people are off work, or they have an opportunity to be at home in front of a computer and so they’re ordering but since a lot of people are working from home or not working, they’ve started buying earlier, and seems to be more evened out. I think you’re gonna see a continual upswing for the next couple of weeks, I think. But those are just marketing ploys. Basically, Cyber Monday, and it’s really, the media likes to run with him thinking that these are huge days, when in fact, they’re usually not the best days on Amazon.

Norman  11:00  

Yeah, we experienced the exact same thing. We represent about 20 different brands, I’ve got my own brands, and we saw some increase somewhere the same, but nothing explosive, like we would see a year or two ago and people that I’ve talked to, it’d be interesting to hear we asked a question in the comments. How were our listeners’ sales, and we’ll get to that in a second. But you’re right, I think it’s an overall experience now, because so many people are selling, and this is a really great way to take advantage of it too. So we talked about, look, do a pre-sell, if everybody’s going to be buying on Black Friday, Cyber Monday and your sales, my sales, at least, or slower coming up to Black Friday, Cyber Monday, because everybody wanted to see what was happening. But if you could do a pre-sale for next year, or for the next holiday, do a pre-sale, either letting people know what’s happening on Amazon, through Facebook, or wherever, or do an incredible sale pre Black Friday. So I mean, these are some things that we’ve done. We’ve also, I don’t know about you Kevin, but on the website, just been adding just different packages together, or creating one of the things that we’re doing right now, with all the listings, putting the products under Christmas tree in a stocking with a bow and that’s either on your A plus pages or within your slide deck. So people are already getting that kind of holiday gift idea. Yeah, any thoughts on that?

Kevin 12:49  

Yeah, I know, a lot of people do that. I’ve never done that. But if you have something that’s highly giftable, I think that makes sense where people are deciding, I don’t know what to buy for my dad. So I type in gifts for dad and if you’re ranking on gifts for dad doing something like that, I think it could definitely benefit and it’s kind of just, it’s a subtle message like, Hey, this is a gift. I mean, people know they’re looking for a gift, but it just, it’s a subtle message. But if I’m selling something that’s not truly giftable, I think it’s a waste of time to do that, but and or something that’s not in one of those general categories, it’s very specific. I don’t know if it’s, it could, I guess make it stand out, technically violating the terms of service if you do it on your first image. But it could make it stand out with a little Santa Claus or a gift bow there and if you can get away with that, I’m not gonna say it’s gonna hurt. But I’m not a huge fan of doing that.  Me personally, and, on your A plus pages of doing that, then you got A plus pages right now, or EBC takes for me at least it takes about a week, every time I touch it to get approved between six and 10 days and so you got to get ahead of that. So if you got this idea to go do it now just understand that it’s probably not going to be live until sometime in mid December and then you got to change it back and I find that on a couple of my product lines. Every time I change the page, I run the risk of it getting suspended or an EPA claim or going to Amazon jail. So I don’t like to touch my listings a whole lot after the first two, three weeks, yeah and also every time you update the listings and doing that, I mean, if you’re just updating the image, but still it refreshes and it goes through, I’ve noticed that every time you update your listing, if you just go into Seller Central, and go into your inventory tab and just update the price where you’re not actually touching the listing, you’re doing it in that in the column format, I think that’s fine. But every time you update your listing, whatever new filters Amazon’s applied to look for stuff, whatever, it goes through like a little vetting internal AI vetting process, and then I think it also forces a reindex, which could be good or it could be bad. So just after the first few weeks, I really don’t try to touch my listings too much.

Norman  15:08  

Yeah, when you touched on that, one of the things, I made this mistake when I was new on Amazon, redid my whole listing, titles, bullets, everything. Worst mistake I ever did, and I could never get the products and I did it all at once for a bunch of products that I had launched and they were doing really well and then I did this, because some guru told me to go and do this and it just blew, I could never get the ranking back and also, it fell on, you remember the incentivized reviews? I had a ton of them and they all got removed at that point, too. But yeah, the sales just collapsed. So one of the tips is, if you are going to go in and do this, make sure you make notes. So even on Helium 10, you can go into the note on the date. So you can timestamp it and say that you made a title change, this is what you did. Run it for a week or two, make sure that you watch your keyword and your keyword research, and make sure that it’s not dropping and if it does, don’t have a panic attack. Wait for a couple of days, and you’ll see it pop up or change. But if you’re going to change the whole title and the bullets, it could be a disaster.

Kevin 16:29  

Sometimes it works in your favor, especially if you’re having trouble selling and you’re just kind of stuck and you need to do a refresh, it’s not gonna really hurt. But if you’re already doing very well, and you go in and change it, there is a risk that it could derail you, I just don’t like taking that risk unnecessarily.

Norman  16:49  

We have, and this is kind of risky as well. So we’re in the holiday season, I’ve got a product that it’s an eight figure product, it’s a brand that I represent and everything is against TOS. Like the image is against TOS. I’ve told my client, we can’t do it, I want to replace the image. But because the sales are so high, they won’t allow me to go in. I don’t even want to go in and change but like they’re doing like over $200,000 a week in sales. Do I want to play with that listing? I know it’s gonna get suspended one of these days.

Kevin 17:31  

I will not touch that listing unless there’s some legal reason and like, if the images are against TOS, it’s not gonna suspend the account at some point, if Amazon clues into that, they’re gonna suspend that one listing or they’re just gonna make the pictures disappear and give you a warning to go in and update it and change it out. But a listing doing $200,000 a week, I would not touch it with a 10 foot pole.

Norman  17:54  

Yeah, it does well over 200,000.

Kevin 17:57  

Yeah, I wouldn’t. I would not touch that.

Norman  17:59  

Yeah and so the other thing that’s been crazy, have you been affected, I have, with the uppercase bullets?

Kevin 18:10  

No, I haven’t. I’ve heard some people said that they actually got a message from someone on Freedom Ticket saying, Hey, your Freedom Tickets’ out of date. You can’t use uppercase letters in your bullets anymore and I’m still doing it. I just created listings last week that have the first five or six words uppercase bullets, no problem. But I’ve heard a couple other people said that Amazon is now taking action against that. So what have you experienced?

Norman  18:40  

I’ve had a couple of clients and myself get immediate suspensions. So the listings’ down, like one of my listings is down right now waiting to get back on. I’ve had Vandana, you know Vandana. She’s gone through and gone to everybody’s listings, and changed it just from uppercase to title, lowercase or titles, sentence type title case. Because the people that this happened to, we’ve all been suspended.

Kevin 19:19  

Not your account, but the product. But usually if that was something minor, like that’s a minor thing. Something minor like that happens usually if you just go in, change it and re update it within 15 to 30 minutes, it’s back. But that’s not the case. It’s not happening. I’m gonna go through a manual review.

Norman  19:37  

Yeah. So what we’ve said to all of our clients is that, look, let’s just get it down. Like there’s no reason, especially right now, to just wait for a suspension. It might not happen. It’s kind of like those primary images, there’s so many that are not TOS compliant, but they’re there. This is a little bit different because we have experienced the suspension and we’ve had to apply to get the account or the account relisted. Same thing with the clients, and it’s taken a week.

Kevin 20:13  

Over capital letters.

Norman  20:15  

Over capital letters.

Kevin 20:16  

How many were in there? The whole bullet one capital, right? 

Norman 20:21

No, no. The way that we do a lot of our bullets is we do the first three or four or the first part. Oh, con. Oh, okay. Connie denied me a coffee. So anyway, it’s usually the first three or four words that are all caps, then we either have a colon or space-space and then somewhere, if there’s a word that needs to be emphasized, that will be also in upper caps. Not all the time, but sometimes and yeah, I don’t know if it’s a glitch in the system. I don’t know. Like, I’m agreeing 100%. Usually, if it’s a small thing like this uppercase, it’s usually a suppression and you just go and you change it and everything’s back to normal.

Kevin 21:12  

Yeah, that’s, I don’t know, that just seems like the ticket extreme actions for something petty and minor. I don’t know why. If you updated it, it should go back live. They can tell instantly on that there. There may be something else on those listings that’s like I just said that some other filter AI that’s looking at something else on the listing that it’s going through that could be causing it.

Norman  21:35  

Henryetta 10, same thing. Andy Sleeman, same thing deactivated for two weeks. 

Kevin 21:41  

Wow. I know, I see a lot of people, the new little trend seems to be a brackets putting a what used to be in capitals inside brackets in an open bracket that like the letter C, and then everything, whenever you want to emphasize in another bracket, close bracket, and then the rest of the bullet point a lot. I’ve been seeing a lot of that lately in place of the capital letters. That kind of sets that little phrase apart.

Norman  22:06  

Yeah and the other thing, too, I don’t know what you think about this, but going into December, January, just taking a look at your bullets, and restructuring and re optimizing for mobile.

Kevin 22:22  

Yeah.

Norman  22:23  

So one of the things that we found, one of the stats I’ve heard is that well over 60% of people search your phone for the product. But higher it’s 60% plus, by when they get back on their desktop.

Kevin 22:40  

70-80% are starting on a mobile device. Yeah, some people just aren’t comfortable buying or they don’t have to go on without their credit card, if this is all for Amazon, you have to whip out your credit card. But yeah, I’m the same way. A lot of times I’ll buy some, if it’s on Amazon, and I’m using the Amazon app, I’ll buy it right on the mobile device. But if it’s usually another website, or I get a Facebook ad, something that comes through my Facebook scroll, and I’m like, Oh, that looks interesting. I usually just copy the link and email it to myself and check it later on my desktop. That’s just me, because then I can just surf easier and search the site easier and then if I want to buy it, I’ll buy it there. But that seems to be the case with a lot of people, they kill time, add stuff to their cart, on mobile, but they end up buying it sitting in front of a desktop or laptop. A much bigger device.

Norman  23:38  

What’s the advice for December? Anything that you can add about, maybe if you’re not doing you can get some immediate results, if you go in right now and change something,

Kevin 23:50  

Get some immediate results if you go in and change something? Your images are the number one thing that a lot of people, I mean, you can get the fastest results on sessions stay in the same. Increasing sessions would be adjusting your title or something. But the thing that I’m looking at this month, more so than changing your listing, is I think on December 16, Amazon’s making some sort of announcement about this inventory restriction of 200. So the latest update of how that’s gonna, what’s going to happen with that is coming and I’m very interested to see what they say. My gut feeling is this is gonna continue and they’re gonna put with some adjustments where they’re gonna make some sort of modifications to it. Who knows? Maybe they’ll say, come January, and this is going away. But I think this 200 is going to be here to stay and then what they may put is something where if you’ve been selling for a certain amount of time, it’s increased or you can or there may be something where there’s some sort it’s not so tight and rigid. But I’m very curious to see what that is. Another thing that’s happening out there right now, is with the increase in sales. I think marketplace pulse just put this out just a few days ago, a study about this, with the increase in sales on Amazon, Amazon’s up 30 40% this year, but the number of sellers is not up 30 or 40%. So marketplace posted a go check it out on their website, they did a pretty interesting little study saying that the opportunity is actually even gotten better now for Amazon sellers, because sales are higher and there’s less sellers, percentage wise. So in the past, as Amazon sales increased, the number of sellers increased. But right now, it’s disproportionate, it’s not in sync. So the number of sellers is growing at a much smaller rate than Amazon sales. So that’s a really good thing for both older sellers and newer sellers and what’s also doing is increasing the depth of some of the niches. So some of these really small niches that maybe in the past, Left Handed specialists for one eyed people or something, I’m making this up, something crazy, where you saw in one a week, maybe now selling three or four week, something like that. So there’s a lot of freakin opportunities that’s happening right now. Because despite the number of courses and everybody saying that the people that are out of work, that are looking for new opportunities, and maybe starting Amazon, it’s not keeping up with the sale. So that’s a good thing for all of us as well.

Norman  26:24  

Right and not only Amazon, but eCommerce in general. Yeah, I’ve seen a large increase, just people looking for deals on eCommerce sites, rather than Amazon. Although I have no stats on this, I’m sure they go over to the website, then go over to Amazon, to check it out.

Kevin 26:45  

Most people start on Amazon, but if they can’t find it, there’s things that I buy a lot of eCommerce, we spend probably five to $10,000 a month on buying stuff, everything for the house.

Norman  26:57  

Just for your wife.

Kevin 27:00  

Just for the wife. Like, No, but I mean, from groceries to whatever, we spend a lot. I usually start on Amazon. But there’s a lot of times where you can’t, especially stuff you can’t find on Amazon or I look on Amazon, I’m like, this is all Chinese junk. I’m not buying this or I want something a little bit more unique and so I have to go off Amazon to find that on more specialty types of sites. So those guys are doing better, too.

Norman  27:28  

We have a pet product that, again, represent, that does 10 times better off of their website, and probably has 10 or 20%. No sorry, about 100% increase on chewy. So chewy, brought it on, chewies pushing it and then off of the website. It’s selling, it’s killing it and on Amazon is doing okay. But anyways, it’s not the end all what is it and end all to be all or what.

Kevin 28:04  

Yeah, but a lot of times I’ll see something on Amazon too. But if it’s a wholesale type of product, someone selling say, I’m looking for Eric. It’s like a Caramel sauce and I’ll see someone selling on Amazon for 8.95, and I’m like this is a third party seller that’s just going down to his local grocery store and buying it for $1.99 and reselling it for 8.95. So in that case, that’s a local grocery item. It’s a little bit different. If it’s something that’s like a beauty product or a cream or something often go and just type, take the title from Amazon, search it on Google and find the original site and actually order it there and save a lot of money. It’s just weed out the arbitrageur and can often save a lot of money too.

Norman  28:54  

So we’ve talked about the IPI restrictions. So we think that and I agree with you, there’s going to be this announcement. I’m thinking that they’re here to stay, at least for the next quarter because of COVID. Amazon said in the past, the reason why they put this into place to get rid of inventory, so that they could make way for the products that were affecting COVID. So they wouldn’t have these huge delays. I’m thinking that COVID is climbing, we’re probably going to be sticking to that 200 units for the new product.

Kevin 29:32  

That applies to even PPE stuff. I mean, Amazon comes up publicly and says, well, we’re making room for essential goods. That’s BS, because one of my brands I have PPE and I’m limited to 100 on every new item.

Norman  29:45  

Yep, good old Amazon. But the other thing and you have to be really careful about this. So we have a product that we couldn’t use your tip, ship UPS ground with freight services. That is a great tip. We use it for everything. But there’s certain products, you can’t ship that way. Liquid, like liquid in bottles. This product was like a non spirited alcohol or a non alcoholic spirit, couldn’t ship it, it had to be by pallet. Well, what happens? It sat there for three and a half weeks. We got it, the campaign, it took off, it was killing it, it went from 200 to 300, 500, 750 units, then 300 and we’ve switched it over to FBM. We did all free shipping. But Amazon waited and waited and waited and so we only got it on, now we’re back. Well, it’s 200 and some odd units, we shipped 744, but they won’t receive them. So they’re actually storing the 744 saying that they can’t go into inventory because of our IPI or our restrictions now, we’re only allowed under 300 units. So they’re only taking it and putting it in as required.

Kevin 31:05  

I’m wondering what they’re doing with it. I see that with one of my accounts too, or they’ll say it’s received, but it sits there in receiving for three weeks. I’m like does it come in, they dump the trailer, and they dump it in another trailer in the parking lot and there’s like these, what are those little boxes, little temporary boxes out in that basically containers out in the parking lot where they just keep it and then when it starts run though some guy goes out there and digs around and finds it brings it in? I have another friend who’s in the beauty space, they send in some pallets of stuff and it’s taken about a month to get checked in and three or four times, the freight companies had an appointment, they go show up to Amazon to drop it off. Because Amazon says come on this day between these hours, the driver sits there and Amazon never gets to the driver, and the driver has to go back and take it back to the warehouse and every time that happens, they’re getting charged a waiting fee and a non delivery fee and it’s adding up significantly and there’s nothing they can do about it.

Norman  32:06  

I was on Seller Sessions and Brandon Young was on and I was saying I have this problem. He came up and he said he had two solutions for it. The first solution was if you’re shipping out LTL change it, order a full truck. So you pay more for the truck, but it gets received almost immediately and then the second thing was, order a pickup direct. So you order a pickup, the trucking company books the appointment and for us like with Afolabi, he’s an hour away which is in Hazelwood, Pennsylvania. So just pick up the phone, get the driver to book an appointment, and then you can get scheduled within a few days. So those are two other options that you can do depending on how I’m not going to do that with plastic shoe stretchers for an order full truck for a few boxes. But like with my product, I wish I would have known about that prior. Because that’s what I would have done is just order the whole bloody truck. Yeah. Oh hey, my old army buddy. Hey, Dave. Okay, so Kelsey, do we have questions?

Kelsey 33:28  

Yes, we got lots of questions.

Norman  33:31  

I thought we would. At least one.

Kelsey 33:32  

So before we get to that, should we talk about a little surprise package? Yeah. Just so we can get some entrance in. So yeah, Kevin, you want to explain it’s a surprise package?

Kevin 33:50  

Sure. What I’m gonna do today for two of you actually, I’m gonna give us a way to two people. Most people don’t know everything that I sell. But I’m going to actually give away a package worth about $300 of multiple products from one of my brands, so long as you live in the United States. Unfortunately, I’m sorry, since I’m in the US, I can only ship it in the US and that’s not just because I won’t ship internationally. There’s actually some restrictions on shipping internationally on this. So it’s a product, it’s one of my brands that we created from scratch. It’s not something we just private labeled out of China or something and I’ll ship you a complete package of about eight different products, seven, eight different products along with some cool little swag that especially if you have kids that they’ll love it as well or women love it too. So you’ll get a nice little package of some cool stuff.

Norman  34:48  

Oh, that sounds great.

Kevin 34:49  

I’m not gonna say the name of it right here. But you’ll know one of my product lines when you see it. You’ll be one of the few people that knows it.

Norman  35:02  

So how do people enter Kels?

Kelsey 35:05  

So I’m thinking, because we’ve got a large audience, we can take two people in the comments and then once that happens, once you take two people, it’ll go into our little wheel spinner to be entered into the contest.

Kevin 35:22  

So what do they have to do?

Kelsey 35:23  

Well, what they have to do is take two people in the comments.

Kevin 35:26  

Take or tag? 

Kelsey 35:29

Tag. 

Kevin 35:30

Tag, okay.

Norman 35:31  

So we’ve had this problem before, where people don’t know how to tag?

Kelsey 35:36  

Yes. So all you have to do for people that want it, you hit the at symbol, and then you write the name of the person and it should autofill into the person’s name and hit enter. So you just need to tag two people, and you’ll be entered in, we’ve got a wheel spinner. So it’s all fair. But yeah, it’s super easy, @ and you have to be a US resident for this contest. Okay and yeah, so just for an example, Doctor Koz right here has tagged two people, so he is going to the draw. So yes, Henrietta only US residents.

Norman  36:11  

Yeah, there’s issues getting this product across the border.

Kevin 36:14  

Norm and Kelsey know what it is like, there’s issues shipping this, and it’s a good product to have right now for the holiday season, and for what’s happening in the world right now. It’ll be very useful to anybody. It’s not something if you’re a guy, this is not something that it’s not a woman’s product, it’s not a men’s product, it’s a unisex product. So no matter who you are and literally, this is something the entire world, anybody in the entire world could use.

Norman  36:43  

Right and by the way, just to make this Uber easy, and if you don’t know how to tag, just put #Iwantit and then that’ll be the other way of letting us know that you want it. But I know this product, you guys are gonna love it and Kevin’s been really generous. He’s gonna do this for two people. So that’s awesome.

Kelsey 37:05  

Okay, so question time. Yep. Okay, yeah, let’s dive into these. So because there are a lot of questions, I’m going to go through each person one time. So one question per person and then if we have time, we’ll go back through any people that have double questions. For Simon, I get a heap of emails from Amazon every day suggesting keywords, nearly budgets. Are these suggestions helpful to me, or more beneficial to Amazon’s profits?

Kevin 37:35  

My suggestion is ignore them. Ignore them. Don’t listen to them. The daily budgets, the daily you should sell this, you should sell that, I find most of that stuff utterly useless. Yeah.

Kelsey 37:50  

Okay. All right. Dawn, Mr. King, you’re the man. Question, I am in the baby niche and I am having a difficult time getting product insurance. Any advice?

Kevin 38:01  

Yeah, those sorts of categories, depending on what you have, I don’t know. I’m sure you’re talking about product liability, not general liability, you should be able to get general liability fairly easily and then the difference for those of you that don’t know, a lot of people don’t know this. General Liability is usually for most Amazon sellers, somewhere in the range of five to $800 a year, somewhere around that, depending on the insurance broker. General Liability usually have to have a million or $2 million policy. Amazon technically requires it, it’s in the contract you didn’t read when you sign up for Seller Central, that you have to have it and usually the rule say, unless they’ve changed it recently, I haven’t gone back and looked at in a year, so it could have changed, but if you sold over $10,000 a month for three months in a row, you were required to have insurance and that’s something I think you’re gonna see Amazon probably start to enforce in the next year or so. Like, I think a lot of people are gonna get suspended if they don’t have it. But to get that general liability covers you for problems with shipping. If the UPS guys trips when he’s delivering your package, and sues you or sues Amazon, it covers that. It covers more general warehousing shipping types of things, but it doesn’t cover if someone uses your product and if someone puts your facial cream on their face and their face all of a sudden, the skin starts falling off and they sue you, general liability would not cover that. That’s where you need product liability or in the case of these baby products, if a baby swallows something and chokes or something that you would need product liability. So product liability is based on, it costs a lot more and it’s based on your sales and if you don’t have sales, you have to give an estimate and then it gets audited every year and they look at your numbers and they adjust it but it’s based on a risk profile where you’re selling and what it is and so that can cost anywhere from 600 to 1000 bucks all the way up to we have one right now it’s like $20,000 a year to cover. So, if you’re having trouble, I would recommend you reach out to Ashlin Hadden, A S H L I N H A D D E N in insurance. She specializes in eCommerce insurance and she has some resources that the average insurance guy might not have or not understand for eCommerce and see if she can help you out.

Norman  40:23  

Kevin, can you give Kelsey that information after the call? 

Kevin 4:27

Yeah.

Norman  40:28  

Perfect. 

Kelsey 40:30  

Okay perfect. Let’s see. Okay.

Kevin 40:34  

She, in fact, is actually able to get us on one of my products that originally is a high risk product. The original quote came back at like a $19,000 for the year and she was able to get that down to like 8000, by some negotiation, and some without me losing any of the benefits of that policy, or changing the policy and so she’s good and she knows this eCom business backwards and forwards.

Norman  41:00  

Is that for women posing with Tigers for your calendar shoots?

Kevin 41:05  

Now that’s for something else, okay. You’d be surprised, we get emails now on this product line. I’ve had three so far since probably about July, where people say they use this product and now their husband has had this issue or their wife has had this issue, or they had to rush to the emergency room for this issue and luckily, when I get those through Amazon Seller Central, or through my own website, I ignore them. Because I don’t want to send something back. I’m so sorry that happened. We take care of our products, I actually totally ignore them. Because I don’t know if they’re just people fishing to see if I will say something because anything you say in an email can be used against you in court. So if those people actually did decide to pursue something, I want to be careful, like, No, I never got that email. I didn’t know this happened. Because even if I just acknowledge and say I’m so sorry that happened. Would you like a refund or whatever, that can be used against you. So be careful out there. If you don’t have insurance, anybody that’s making some sort of claim, that could end up in taking you to court over, be careful, very careful in how you respond. If you respond, in some cases, you need to respond, if someone says this, but be careful on that, whether you have insurance or not.

Kelsey 42:21  

Okay, great. Alright, from Alan, on the subject of delivery delay, Kevin, how do you handle replying to the emails received through Seller Central?

Kevin 42:31  

Well, you have to answer those within 24 hours or Amazon will ping your account for being late. So I don’t get too many of those. I personally answer them on all my accounts, I don’t have a VA doing it. But I can tell you, I get one or two a day on all the accounts. The only time I get more is we did have a problem this summer, where we had one of our products, one of our products was leaking. So people were receiving a wet box in the mail, or in from Amazon and so that got to be pretty hairy, where I was getting 50 to 100 a day, we’re having to ship out replacements and stuff. But other than that, it’s very minimal. I try to cover that stuff in the bullet points. I’ll go in and that’s one of the things that as far as adjusting, listening, if I start seeing a pattern of people asking questions like that, I go in, and I have someone, either, if it’s within the first few weeks of the product, I will go ahead and update the bullet points or pictures to clarify that. Like, just to take those away or I’ll have someone ask that question down the questions and answers and answer it there to try to reduce that. But if I get very little.

Kelsey 43:40  

Okay. Let’s see, from Leonard, what did you do for capital as your Amazon business was growing? I work on Amazon full time. But capital is limiting me expanding as quickly as I would like.

Kevin 43:52  

Cash Flow is probably the number one killer, whether you’re selling on Amazon or any business in the world, whether you have a restaurant or whatever. Cash Flow is what puts about 80 to 90% of most businesses out of business and so for capital, that’s a tricky question. I’ve done it multiple ways. One of my businesses, I have partners that have put in money, so they have equity. So you could go to someone and give them equity. Give them five or 10% of your business or whatever you need to do to get that money or you can go and get loans. My number one preference is to get a loan, even if it’s a really high interest rate. But even if I have a loan that’s at say, 20% interest, which is pretty high, that interest rates better than giving someone 50% of the business because in the end, I’m hoping to sell my business and if I’m planning to sell my business for a million dollars, and someone just gave me $100,000 in capital and I gave them 20 even 20% of the business, that’s $200,000 they just made for me, versus if they just gave me a loan on that hundred thousand at 20% interest. I just paid them back 120 and I pocket 180 grand more when I sell it. So you have to look at those situations. But there’s companies out there, once you’ve been selling for a year on Amazon, if you meet certain criteria, it will start to offer you some loans, but you have to have a professional account for a year. Other than that, there’s seller’s funding, or Helium 10, you need to be selling for three to six months on most of those, I have a history, they take a look at your history. Then there’s also sites like Bluevine, Kabbage, OnDeck, there’s a ton of those that you can get short term 10-$20,000 loans, if you have a credit score above, if you’re a US citizen have a credit score above 600 and meet some other criteria. So there’s a number of sources, there’s the mafia. 

Norman 46:02

You’ve done that before. 

Kevin 46:04

I’ve done the mafia loans. I had in the past. They’re the cash advance type of deal guys. There’s tons of options out there. But the best one is friends or family, if you can get your friends or family to give you a short term loan. Don’t ever take money from someone that if they lost the money, it would change their life and don’t ever do that to yourself, don’t ever, oh, let me just take a mortgage on my house or something and if you lost your house, be very careful on those kinds of things. Never take money from someone that can’t afford to lose it.

Norman  46:42  

Okay, another thing when we’re talking about this is remember, if you are going in with two feet, and your product takes off, you have to refund or you have to capitalize or invest in inventory, right. So Kevin knows the one company that this happened to, their product took off, and it was a home run, they refund or they bought their inventory, they got it back into Amazon, it took off, and the guy ended up, he just sold his inventory off because he had no more capital. So it killed them.

Kevin 47:22  

One thing you can do too, is if you’re you can go to your supplier, and you can tell the supplier look, appreciate the business and look at what we’re doing. We ordered 1000 for me, now we’re ordering 3000 man, if I could just order 10,000 of these things, we could both make a lot more money and try to negotiate with your supplier to either let them give you terms or may not be full hundred percent terms, it might be okay, you can pay us 30% down and then rest 70 other 70% pay us in three months or whatever. Anything you can get can help. So that’s another place. You’re not gonna get that on your first order. But if you’ve been ordering a couple of them, they can see it and you can make them projections and show them, look, this is the projection. Look, this is what the other 10 guys, here’s the Helium 10 snapshot of my competition. Look how much at what they’re doing compared to me, help me out here and let’s both make more money and sometimes that can work as well.

Norman  48:18  

All right, Kels. 

Kelsey 48:20

Okay, sorry, I’m just adding all the names into the contest. Okay, we had one from Dr. Koz. Hey, Kevin, if one is going to stock out, do you recommend increasing the product price to slow sales? If not, why?

Kevin 48:34  

Only do that if you’re a moron, if you’re stupid. 

Norman 48:38

So many people do that. 

Kevin 48:40

Doctor Koiz you’re not stupid. So do not do that. That’s an old wives tale that gets spread around Facebook. It’s the absolute worst advice in the history of advice on Amazon. Do not do that. You want to go out on a bang. If anything lower your freakin price. I mean, if you’re gonna don’t, I’m not saying lower your price. But if you kind of do something with your price, lower the price. So you go out with a bang, you don’t want to slow sales. That’s a killer in the algorithm, a killer in your ranking and when you come back into stock, it’s just gonna hurt you even more. So do not do that.

Norman  49:16  

Same thing with PPC, like Kevin says, you want to have momentum going out, there’s so many people, I’ve heard so many people on podcasts say oh yeah, raise your price and it’s absolutely the wrong advice.

Kevin 49:33  

That’s like saying if I’m playing a sport or playing a football game. We’re gonna purposely lose so that we can come back and play next year or something. It’s stupid. Yeah.

Kelsey 49:48  

Okay, we had one about the bullet points I believe, this came in when you’re talking about the uppercase. What about the brand names in the beginning of the listing title? I have heard Amazon is getting more strict on that.

Kevin 50:02  

Yeah, that’s technically been the rule all along that they want. There’s a certain format, they want the titles they want the brand name part I forget exactly. It’s brand name, part number, model number some and this. So yeah, it’s best to put the brand name at the beginning of it. I used to say, don’t do that, if you can get away with not putting your brand name in there, try it because it’s valuable space. They have a field for brand name, if someone’s typing in your brand, they’re going to find you. Because there’s another it says your brand name right underneath it. But so if you can get away without doing that, I would recommend you not put it there. But if you cannot get away with Amazon’s forcing your hand on that, then yeah, you’re gonna have to put that in the beginning of the title and that’s why you want to have a fairly short brand name because it takes up a lot of space. I don’t want a brand that’s a Pastries by Kevin and Austin or something very long, it just takes up too much space. You want short brand names. That’s why you see a lot of these brand names on Amazon, if you ever search as a buyer, and they’re just like weird names. They’re like x2713, or whatever. These are all Chinese sellers. All these weird, like strange names that don’t make any sense. They’re really short, usually five, six characters. That’s for two reasons. One, so that when Amazon enforces it, it doesn’t take up a lot of valuable character space for indexing. But also, those are easy to get trademarks on because no one creates these random weird stuff except most of these Chinese sellers so they can get quick trademarks for Brand Registry without any friction.

Norman  51:40  

Yeah, good point.

Kelsey 51:41  

Okay, let me see. Marina’s next.

Norman  51:43  

Oh, hold it, one sec. One of the things that we’ve done, if your brand name, let’s say it’s xyfg, whatever you said, if that’s what your brand registered under, so it shows brand xyfg, as long as it’s the same, I don’t usually put it in front and unless Amazon forces the issue. If they like on a flat file or whatever, and they force the issue, then I’ll do it. But typically, if I found that my product, like let’s say Wildlife, if it’s brand Wildlife, and I don’t typically put Wildlife in front of the title. I think that’s what I’m trying to say. But I don’t usually get the fort like I do know people that have a brand name and then they have another name that they put in front and that doesn’t work. But as long as it’s the same. So Anchor sold by, not sold by, sold by could be flatworld network, but your brand registry is Anchor and when you put your brand in front, it would be Anchor app, but as long as it shows Anchor below, then it should be fine. Am I making sense Kevin?

Kevin 53:12  

Sounds like you’ve been drinking.

Norman  53:14  

I have been.

Kevin 53:15  

There’s something in that coffee. No, that didn’t make sense.

Norman  53:19  

So when you take a look at your listing, so if you take a look at any Amazon listing, and you go and you see the brand name underneath it, okay, so you’ve got, let’s just use Anchor because Anchor’s easy. So Anchor is the brand name, you see that on the product. If you put Anchor speakers like in front, you don’t have to do that because the Brand Registry is already showing Anchor. So 99% of my listing, 100% of my listings, I usually get away with not doing it. Because it’s the name of the Brand Registry.

Kevin 54:00  

Okay. Yeah, that’s similar to what I was just saying that that shows up anyway right below it. Okay, yeah, I see what you’re saying now. Okay, that makes sense. 

Norman 54:08

Not that bad. 

Kevin 54:10

Not that bad. You sobered up really well.

Norman  54:13  

Yeah. There we go. Kevin gave me a nudge here. So Kevin, the dog.

Kelsey 54:24  

Okay, Marina, one of my listings has had one unit stranded and I’m not able to remove it and not able to ship a new inventory. I refreshed the listing, created new skews, opened several cases that kept saying I don’t have the ASIN in my inventory and I still don’t know the solution. Any advice on how to solve it?

Kevin 54:43  

There’s two things here. That one that’s stranded and you can’t remove it. Yeah, I see that sometimes too. I think that’s just a glitch or that’s something that’s in some sort of reserve status or there’s something where one part of Amazon’s system is not talking to the other part. So I usually just ignore those and I’ll get emails and say, Hey, you need to remove this, you get seven days or like whatever, y’all take care of it. I’ve tried, it doesn’t work. So I basically usually ignore those. But that should not prevent you from being able to ship a new inventory. I’ve never seen where you having one stranded unit is not allowing you to ship in additional inventory. Have you ever seen that Norm? 

Norman 55:24

What was that? 

Kevin 55:25

Where it’s having something stranded is preventing you from being able to send a new sending an additional inventory?

Norman  55:30  

I haven’t seen that.

Kevin 55:31  

I’ve never seen that either. So that one, that should not affect you. Well actually on stranded, what you can actually, that shouldn’t. But if it is, I mean on that stranded one, what you might be sometimes on the stranded if you try to reactivate it, on stranded, it could be for a number of reasons. It could be because Amazon’s misplaced because you deleted the listing in the past and something got returned by a customer. That’s usually what stranded is, or your FNSKU fell off, the label fell off or something like that and if Amazon’s telling you it doesn’t basically exist, and you can’t remove it, that’s one that like, I would just leave I think I have one it says stranded for like the last three years in one of my accounts, but I’ve never seen where it doesn’t allow you to ship a new inventory.

Norman  56:31  

That shouldn’t have any bearing on it. 

Kevin 56:33  

Yeah, unless it’s because she’s trying to ship in the same inventory, with the same FNSKU and the same ASIN and it’s because one is stranded, it’s not allowed, that could happen. Yeah, that’s a good one, you might try escalating that from Seller Central and next time you call ask for the catalog team and ask to get redirected to the catalogs, even call there in the daytime in the US. So hopefully, you get someone in South Dakota or Costa Rica. If that doesn’t work, call in and just start speaking Spanish and they should route you to Costa Rica and those people have Costa Rica or South Dakota, which is catalog team, they have a little bit more of a clue of what to do, than the guys in India that you probably are getting, when you’re just talking to normal Seller Central, that’s where I would start to see, they could look into your account to see exactly what’s causing that a lot better and talk to someone. Don’t just do it via opening a ticket and Amazon’s making it harder for you to talk to people now. You gotta jump through some hoops and sometimes it’s they just keep redirecting you in these circles like to fill out a form because they’re trying to reduce the amount of talking they have to do. But there’s ways to actually get to be able to talk to someone. Another way you might do it is go and say you have a tax issue and open a ticket under the tax issue settings and that will go to the people in the tax department and they’re going to get that and they go What the heck, this is not a tax issue. This is not for us. They will often forward that to the right department and it goes straight to the top or a manager at that department to assign it and sometimes that can be effective at getting results. It’s a little work around. 

Norman  58:23  

Yeah, I’ve heard of that working.

Kelsey 58:26  

Okay, we are just about hitting the hour mark. So Kevin, how are you for time?

Kevin 58:33  

I’m good. I got another 10 minutes or so.

Kelsey 58:36  

Okay, Irena, I have sold on eBay for some two to three years but not recently never sold on Amazon, I just resell my own or friends used clothes, shoes, books, small items, which platform is better for me to profit?

Kevin 58:50  

For selling used items, eBay is gonna be definitely better for what you’re selling there. If you’re selling I mean, used books actually, Amazon might be better than eBay on the books. Some small items, if it’s a brand name item, it has the option that says sell yours if you’re looking at the listing page on Amazon and a little button on the right hand side says have one to sell or sell yours. That can work but books are probably better on Amazon but the clothes and shoes, I would think are going to be better to sell on eBay.

Kelsey 59:25  

Okay, from Rad. Hello, Amazon King. How about Amazon live? Is it a way to sell the products in the future?

Kevin 59:32  

I have not used it yet. But I know Norm has talked about it on some of his podcasts and he’s interviewed some people that are having some good success with that. But I do think, is it the way of the future? I don’t know if it’s the way of the future, that will be one of the channels of methods of selling in the future. But I have not personally experienced it but I know a couple people that have tried it and some are having great success. Some are like it’s okay.

Norman  1:00:01  

So, one of the things like, I think it’s gonna be all about a community. Yesterday, Emma. You know Emma? She was talking about, I had no idea. But there’s a beta program about brandstory, actually a page that you create your brand’s story. Okay, great. Well, all this is exactly about Amazon’s has been talking about, they want to build a community around your brand. So micro brands now can have a voice. How does that start? Start it with posts, continually using posts, so that’s the image side. On the video side, Amazon live, and it’s so bloody easy to do. If you’ve noticed that they’ve started to show you how many followers you have. So now driving traffic over from Facebook or wherever you want to drive traffic to, to get people to watch your Amazon live or to your brand feed helps build these followers. So I think building a brand community is definitely something to definitely think about. I would be doing it especially Amazon live, it’s so easy. Just pop up your camera and start talking about your product or getting influencers to do it, they’re a dime a dozen.

Kelsey 1:01:28  

Okay, from Victor, what is your take on dealing with the California proposition 65 lawyer, extortion scheme?

Kevin 1:01:38  

I’m not familiar with what you’re referring to there Giz. I know what California proposition 65 is; it’s some special rules that govern a whole number of products. The ticket beyond what’s just the federal government does, but the lawyer extortion scheme I’m not familiar with.

Norman  1:01:59  

Victor, if you wanted to expand on that, that would be great.

Kelsey 1:02:04  

Okay. From Henrietta, Kevin, you are still selling on amazon.com, what is the percentage of your business on Amazon as a whole?

Kevin 1:02:11  

95% on Amazon, 5% elsewhere.As usual, Amazon US, Amazon Canada, but start selling Amazon Europe, in the UK and Germany, but Canada right now in one of my lines, I don’t sell all my products aren’t in Canada. A couple of my accounts are, it’s about 10% of my US sales. So those two I mean, I have Shopify sites. We’ve tried the Facebook storefront stuff, we’ve tried some of that, that just pretty meaningless compared to what you can do on Amazon. So I focus primarily on Amazon and some people say that’s scary. You have all your eggs in one basket, it can be but it’s also where the money is.

Norman  1:02:54  

So I’m curious about your Amazon Canada account. So .ca, what kind of price point are you going in? I have beauty products that I’ve tried to sell in Canada and because of the shipping and the FBA fees here, they just were too expensive. 

Kevin 1:03:13  

I have a product, it’s 19.95 in the US and I sell it for 27.95 in Canada. The exchange rate now is about 25% difference. Canadian dollars are about 25% more, 20 bucks in the US is 25 in Canada, in Canadian dollars. So I jacked that up a little bit more just to cover my inbound freight and I’m not having a problem.

Norman  1:03:36  

Oh, that makes sense. I was selling. I was dumb, but a $14 item $7 and 95 cents for picking and handling. Pick pack ship. Yeah. 

Kevin 1:03:49

From Amazon Canada? 

Norman 1:03:50

Yeah. So who’s gonna buy a $14 item at 7.95?

Kevin 1:03:56  

Yeah and I have the margins and my landed costs on these into the US is $1 and a half. So there’s enough margin there to absorb some of that.

Norman  1:04:07  

Yeah. Okay, next question.

Kelsey 1:04:10  

Victor’s asking if he should mic up.

Norman  1:04:13  

Oh, yeah, sure. Mic up, Victor.

Kelsey 1:04:16  

Yeah. So Victor, I’m gonna send you a link on Facebook through Norm and yeah, just come on and join the show whenever you’d like. Okay and let’s see, we have just a couple more. Fahad, people facing a lock 32 issue. Keywords are seeing dropping down to ranks around 32 and not improving at all. Do you have any advice on that? What is triggering this if you have any insight?

Kevin 1:04:46  

I never heard of something called lock 32. I don’t know if that’s something that some guru made up or if that’s a real term. I’m not sure what that is. But yeah, there are a lot of keyword movements, sometimes Amazon’s adjusting the algorithm. As you’re getting some more sales history, or maybe you get some bad reviews or your seller performance rating has gone down or sort of feedback ratings gone down, there’s a number of factors that influence that and I’ve seen that on a few of my products where we’re ranking really well on page one, then all of a sudden, we just died went down to page five, for almost no explainable reason. It’s something to do with the algorithm, and Amazon has their reasons for doing it but I don’t have an exact answer on why. Do you no more on that Norm?

Norman  1:05:40  

I’m with you. Algorithms can like, it might knock you out. You might not be indexed. So one of the things if you drop immediately, check your indexing, go to Helium 10 and use their indexing tool to see if that’s an issue. But other than that, I have no idea. The only thing I would advise is that if you were ranking, and it wasn’t in the title, let’s say it’s something that was either in your bullets or in your back end to play around. So if it was in your bullets, move it over, maybe to your search terms or search terms into title. That would be the only advice I could give you.

Kelsey 1:06:17  

Okay, and we got to actually Victor’s joining us. All right. Hello. 

Norman  1:06:25  

Hello, there’s the man.

Kevin 1:06:26

Hey, how are you doing Victor?

Victor 1:06:28  

How are you doing guys?.

Norman  1:06:30  

I like the beard. 

Victor 1:06:31

Yeah, I got a long way to go to catch up with you.

Norman  1:06:38  

So what was the lawyer extortion question?

Victor  1:06:43  

Okay, I just learned about this last week from Brandon Young, so he’s a source like I trust and he saying that California lawyers are ordering your product and checking for existence of the proposition 65 warning label and if they believe that the product should have it, and you don’t, then they send you a letter saying we’re going to report you to Amazon but you can avoid us doing that by retaining us and it’s like a $50,000 retainer and if you attempt to fight it, apparently, the cost for fighting it is like 100K, so most people just pay up and so obviously, it’s like, not something I wanted to deal with and so I started to, analyze all of our materials and the finishes we use on our products to see if any of them are on that really long prop 65 list. Luckily for us none are, I still don’t know if we could get snagged by this. Apparently, certain plastics that are commonly used, give the warning label.

Norman  1:07:59  

A lot of electronics. Electronics have to have it. That sounds very similar to what’s happened in Germany, where in Germany, it’s required by law to include an invoice with your shipment, or to actually email an invoice separately and there’s some people, some international sellers, I didn’t know know about this, I have to be like a PDF kind of invoice thing and so there’s lawyers in Germany that would do the same thing where they would order stuff and if you didn’t include the invoice, they would come after you and say, it’s a fine of this much, and we are fortunate that you or you can pay us That sounds very similar to that. It doesn’t surprise me that some attorneys would do that. So to answer your question, how do you avoid that. Just do what you did, you got to double check all your materials and make sure you’re in full compliance with it and maybe even reach out to someone at one of these product testing labs that knows that stuff. So you don’t have to sit there and research it. They know it and say this is what I’m selling. Am I in compliance and is there anything about prop 65 that I need to do? Or if you want to cover your ass, if you don’t know, just put the freakin label on there. Say it’s a simple little warning that you could add to your product. I had to add that I was selling an Apple Watch charging dock for a few years and I had to have that on my box. It was a simple little warning.

Victor 1:09:32  

Yeah, it’s one thing if you’re selling a garden rake, where that warning label doesn’t mean much. It’s another thing if it’s a kitchen item. The customer sees this may cause birth defects or cancer. They can go right to Amazon.

Kevin 1:09:47  

Yeah, exactly. But yeah, I think the thing is to do what you did the right thing, check in all your stuff and if that’s something that you’re not comfortable doing, reach out to one of the testing labs. Ask them to check it for you. 

Victor 1:10:01

It was a roaring pain in the neck. My guest appearance.

Kevin 1:10:07  

Yeah. He’s so unhappy right now because he has the cone of shame. He hurt his paw and so again, cat problems. Bye guys.

Norman  1:10:25  

Thank you, Victor. 

Kevin 1:10:26

Thanks, Victor.

Norman  1:10:28  

So let’s do this. Let’s write an article. Let’s do some research. Let’s post it in the Lunch With Norm blog area. So we’ll see if our team can put something together for everybody. So they can go and see at least the list and see what Victor was talking about. Yeah, we’ll get this up in the next week or two for you.

Kelsey 1:10:53  

Okay, great and two more questions. We got Nathan, Kevin, do you like bags? Like backpacks, diaper bags, etc are good products to sell or do you stay away from bags?

Kevin 1:11:04  

Those are pretty saturated Nathan. Backpacks and diaper bags unless you’ve got some unique, really unique feature or unique angle on it. Those would be pretty difficult, because there’s a lot of stuff in those categories that have 10s of thousands of reviews. So to compete against them is pretty hard. Not that you can’t do it, but you need it needs to be highly differentiated to have a chance. That’s gonna take a lot of money to get ranked.

Kelsey 1:11:34  

Okay and last one, from Angie. Hi Kevin, currently taking Freedom Ticket courses now. Once I complete the course, what should I do next? I think I’m going to need a little more experience on how to work the Helium 10 tool. What should I do about that?

Kevin 1:11:47  

Well, Helium 10 has a lot of training that’s for free. So on each of their tools, I think there’s a little buttons called like learn more, or pro training or pro tips or something like that, that mostly Bradley has done. So you could go through all those to learn about the tools. But once you’ve completed the course, you should be ready to start launching. I mean, if you want to get some more experience on the helium 10 tools, that would be great and by watching all those videos, but that point you should be start ready to start doing your product research and contacting factories and hopefully executing I mean, it’s one thing to go through a course and learn. But you got to execute. You gotta take some action. Don’t ever feel like well, I need to learn more. I just did this one whether it’s Freedom Ticket or anything else, I need to take this one course and man, I just need to go take another course and other courses. I feel like I’m missing something. Just learn enough to get started and understand you’re going to make a few mistakes along the way. But that’s just you got to learn to walk before you can run. So just start taking some action.

Kelsey 1:12:55  

Okay, and Yarrow, what do you think about the toy market worth again now?

Kevin 1:13:02  

Toy market can be a good market, it’s highly seasonal for some toys, this time of year is when most of it’s happening. You also have to remember as far as selling on Amazon to sell toys, you have to have been selling prior to like September 1st or something. So you can’t just jump in and start selling toys. By the way, you have to have an existing account. Amazon has, I forget the exact rules. But there’s some specific rules about selling toys during the fourth quarter, where you have to have been selling on Amazon as a professional seller for a while, you have to have a certain number of sales and rankings and stuff to be able to sell toys. The toys market can be good. But it’s also pretty competitive and they’re because you’re competing at some really big well established brands.

Norman  1:13:49  

Yeah, and certification.

Kevin 1:13:51  

Yeah and that’s one that you gotta make sure everything is totally above board and certified. Never take your Chinese factory’s word that they have this certificate, so you’re gonna have to do your own independent testing.

Kelsey 1:14:04  

Okay, so I think we’ve got everyone at least once.

Norman  1:14:07  

I saw one there for the editorials. Oh, yeah.

Kelsey 1:14:12  

I get on editorial recommendations.

Norman  1:14:15  

Okay, I think I can handle that one Kev. So that one. It’s not something usually an individual can do. You need to go to a service like for us, for example, at prREACH. We have a public relations department. So the public relations department is going out to a bunch of magazines and because we’re reaching out to these different magazines, some of them are on this Amazon editorial list and for the most part, again, you can go to a PR firm or there are companies out there that specialize in this, but it would be the same thing. HPW is one of the companies

Kevin 1:15:00  

HPW, they do it for a fee and then a percentage of the revenue that you generate.

Norman  1:15:06  

Yeah, like I know, for us, it’s free, you could just contact Shane and until it gets published, then there is a fee associated with it. But yeah, you don’t pay anything until it’s published.

Kevin 1:15:19  

There are certain companies that have to have agreements with Amazon to provide that content and so that’s what Norm is saying is it’s prREACH can help you reach out to those companies that have those and that’s not a guarantee that you’ll get in there that there’s certain products or certain criteria that those companies look for, they may already have, an editorial feature may already exist and it’s too late to get in there. But yeah, so there’s a number of criteria on it. But it can definitely, if you can get into one of those, it can help yourselves a lot. 

Norman 1:15:52

10 to 30%. So I think that’s it.

Kelsey 1:15:56  

Yeah, we’re at 1:15 right now. So I think it should be time for the wheel.

Norman  1:16:03  

Oh, hold it one sec. Before we do that. Kevin, is there anything? This is the December q&a. Is there anything, any tip that you can give any Amazon seller or eCommerce seller going into December January?

Kevin 1:16:21  

Any tip. Well make sure you if you haven’t placed your orders yet for what you’re going to need after the holidays, do it today. Because remember, this Chinese New Year is coming up and everything’s gonna close down for a while and so if you’re needing something before the end of even if you’re probably too late to get it before the end of January most and in many cases unless you’re flying it over. But they might be able to ship it, if you order today, they might be able to ship it before they close down. Otherwise, you’re looking at March or April for having your inventory and so keep that in mind. That’s a pretty important thing around this time of year a lot of people forget about and sales don’t drop after Christmas, if this is your first year. Don’t think that we’ll come December 23 24th. That’s it, the season’s over. January is a very big month on Amazon because people are returning a lot of stuff that they got for Christmas. Remember Amazon has all these anything was bought from October 1st onward through Christmas can be returned until January 31st and so there’s going to be a lot of people returning stuff to Amazon, either gifts or just things they haven’t gotten around to returning that they bought for themselves and they’re gonna have a credit on Amazon, and they’re gonna be looking for something else to buy and it’s not just fitness stuff and New Year’s resolution stuff that sells in January. There’s a lot of people who get gift cards too for Christmas. So January’s a very good month on Amazon. So make sure you have your inventory and your ads and your listings and everything optimized to continue this, you’re not gonna see a fall off really until February.

Norman  1:17:54  

That’s interesting, because Afolabi was here on Monday. He said the exact same thing. 

Kevin 1:17:59

Oh, really? I didn’t see that. 

Norman 1:08:02

If you’re not ordering right now, for Chinese New Year, you’re going to lose out. So thank you, sir. All right. Now let’s get to the big draw.

Kelsey 1:18:13  

Okay, so I just need to share my screen wheel of names. Okay. So if you guys have entered everyone here, you should be US residents. So if you’re not, then you won’t get it and yeah, we’ll have to find someone else but Okay, so here we go. We got lots of names. Tons of names. Okay and let’s see. All right, so 321. There’s two giveaways. So the first winner is,

Kevin 1:18:50  

Peter. Alright, Peter.

Norman  1:18:53  

So we’ll just need to get that info. So Kelsey is going to provide you with an email and you can send it over to him.

Kelsey 1:19:00  

Okay and there’s two.

Kevin 1:19:03  

Get your shipping address. Yeah. Ideally, a street address, not a PO Box.

Norman  1:19:08  

Right. 

Kelsey 1:19:09

Okay, so here’s Peter here. Okay, so there’s two right, Kevin?

Kevin 1:19:14  

Yeah. Two. One more winner.

Kelsey 1:19:16  

All right, here we go. 321.

Norman  1:19:28  

Alan.

Kevin 1:19:29  

Alan. Congratulations, Alan.

Norman  1:19:31  

Alright, so we’ve got two winners. They’re going to be sent over to hopefully your street address written on the appeal box and just get Kelsey that information.

Kevin 1:19:45  

He’ll get that to me and I’ll get this out today or Monday is the latest.

Norman  1:19:52  

Well, sir. 

Kelsey 1:19:53

Great.

Norman  1:19:54  

That’s it for this month.

Kevin 1:19:56  

That’s it. We’re done. 

Norman 1:19:58

That went fast. 

Kevin 1:12:00

That’s too much fun. We should just sit here all day.

Norman  1:20:01  

I know. Next time let’s order Kobe beef.

Kevin 1:20:05  

Kobe beef, smoke some cigars.

Norman 1:20:07

All set. 

Kevin 1:20:08

Have a Coke Zero and we’ll be good. 

Norman  1:20:11  

Hey, I got the Coke Zero. I’m missing the other two.

Norman  1:20:13  

But you know what, thank you so much. It’s always great having you on and talking with you. Again, I wish we could meet up and do something but he’ll be in the new year I think.

Kevin 1:20:25  

It’s coming next year. Yeah. A lot of catching up to do. 

Norman  1:20:30  

We do. All right, Kevin. Well, thanks a lot for coming on and we will see you next month.

Kevin 1:20:34  

Yeah, everybody have a great holiday season and enjoy and have a happy new year and the same to Kelsey and Norm, both of you guys too.

Norman  1:20:44  

You and everybody in Austin. 

Kevin 1:20:46

I appreciate it, man. 

Norman 1:20:47

See you later.

Kevin  1:20:48  

Alright. Take care.

Norman  1:20:50  

Okay, everybody. So that’s the end of the episode. I hope you enjoyed it. Victor was the first person to come on to the show and ask a question. We’re going to try to do a lot more of that and from next week on. So hopefully we have at least one person a week that can come on or two and also, let’s see. If you haven’t joined the Facebook group yet, please reach out and join the group. We also have a newsletter that doesn’t suck, it comes out on Mondays. If you’d like to get subscribed to it, just go into Lunch With Norm or normanfarrar.com, and you’ll see the subscribe to email or subscribe to newsletter. So it’s pretty straightforward. Anyways, we haven’t had any complaints. I guess that’s good about the newsletter. We’re trying just to provide really great content. That’s Amazon and online seller based. So Kelsey.

Kelsey 1:21:48  

Yes. Okay. So yeah, thank you for joining everyone. I think this was our biggest episode yet. I believe I saw 46 viewers like at the same time watching the show. So that’s amazing and hello, Renee. You just missed the episode. Watching the tail end, but the full replay is on YouTube as well. Yeah, so we have our Facebook group. It’s right here. Scrolling across, Lunch With Norm Amazon FBA and eCommerce Collective. So if you ever have any questions for Norm and the guests, if you just want to meet the other people in the comments, tons of these people came from the Facebook group or a Facebook page over to the Facebook group or YouTube and they’re all kind of merging into this Facebook group. So you’ll see lots of familiar names there.

Norman  1:22:41  

Most of the podcast guests are there too.

Kelsey 1:22:44  

Yeah. So it’s a great place to meet everyone and we throw different surveys and polls and Amazon questions or online seller questions. Yeah, so Guzman. Thank you guys. Thanks, Simon. Thanks Fahad. Okay. Yeah and we are a podcasts too. Lunch With Norm podcast. So if you enjoy listening to us, you can find us on Apple, Spotify anywhere you listen to your podcasts, you can find us, but I believe that’s it. Talk about next week’s guest, which there is also a giveaway. 

Norman 1:23:20

Oh, there is?

Kelsey 1:23:22

Yes. 

Norman 1:23:23

Oh, perfect. So it’s Ryan Rigney, that’s next Monday, right?

Kelsey 1:23:27  

Yes. Oh, actually. We have four days next week too.

Norman  1:23:31  

Oh, yeah. Okay, so let’s go through them. So I know Ryan’s on Monday.

Kelsey 1:23:35  

Yes.

Norman  1:23:36  

Don’t miss that one. That’s gonna be a great, really great episode as well.

Kelsey 1:23:43  

Yep. So Ryan Rigney is going to be talking about building brands and then we have a special episode on Tuesday. So we are on four days a week. This week or next week. 

Norman 1:23:56

That’s Mike Cigar.

Kelsey 1:23:57

Mike Cigar. It’s the 12 days of nuggets, I believe. Yep and we have let’s see, how good is my memory, Vince Montero from Helium 10. Talking about some holiday PPC tips and we have Brenda Mendez and she is going to tell her story about how she was able to build a nine figure store. She’s got a great story and yeah, very big lineup.

Norman  1:24:26  

So we got lots going on next week and just quickly with Mike’s on Tuesday. This is also for a great cause. I don’t know if you’ve been seeing this, but he’s got a ton of really great Amazon and online sellers. Just giving out nuggets starting on the seventh and this is for charity that he that he works with called Operation Underground Railroad, which is to help prevent human trafficking. So check it out. I mean, donate if you can. He’ll be on, he’ll be talking about a bunch of different things. But anyways, looking forward to four sessions next week and that’s it for today’s show.

Kelsey 1:25:13  

Sorry and then one last thing. So four episodes this week, and there’s going to be a secret episode only available on the Facebook group two weeks from now on the 15th I believe so you have to be watching. It’s a pre-recorded one, but there’s a prize as well attached to that, but it’s a secret episode only Facebook group members can watch it. So you should join.

Norman  1:25:40  

Now are you gonna interrupt?

Kelsey 1:25:42  

No. Before. 

Norman  1:25:43  

You pass me the flame. Okay. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Friday at Eastern Standard Time at noon and I think that’s it for the day, unless Kelsey has anything last to say going once, going twice, three times gone. Alright. Thanks for watching and enjoy your day.

Kelsey 1:26:03  

Oh, I messed up.

Norman 1:26:05

Where’s the song?

Kelsey 1:26:06 

Here’s the song.