How To Sell On Amazon FBA For Beginners
Transcribe of “How To Sell On Amazon FBA For Beginners – Part 4”
I’m actually only on about continually negotiating and it’s such an important thing. Every time you do a new order, you renegotiate, build the relationship up. We tend to pay a lot, to pay a bit more at the beginning, because we like to try to and build the relationships up.
Set up a good foundation for a good relationship
So the first order, we’re not trying to do the killer price because that doesn’t set up a good foundation for a good relationship and a lot of time it’s all build on relationships. You can, if you want go overseas to fairs. I used to do this a lot, don’t do it, I hardly really ever do it anymore because it’s just not worth it. Like take the Canton Fair, 25,000 exhibitors. Each table’s between three or 10 feet long. You guys do the maths of how long it’s going to take you to walk around those 25,000 table. All right and then think about you go over there, and you’ve only got half the information.
You go and negotiate
You go and negotiate, you negotiate a great price, $20 for that. Is that a good price or not? Well, if you don’t know how much it sells for, you don’t know its velocity, you don’t know if that’s a good price or not. It could sell for 15, it could sell for a hundred. So and of course, you can get your iPad out and try and fight for bandwidth, and try and do some research while you’re there. But you know, you’ve got 25,000 exhibitors there.
Do some research for the price
You can do that same research back at home or get a virtual assistant at Philippines to do it all for you overseas, without leaving home. Yeah, you don’t have to go, bear in mind. You really don’t. So if you only sell proven products, trips to China and Asia are optional. You don’t need to do it. All product research can be done anywhere including by VAs in the Philippines or any other country, yeah.
How To you find reputable VAs
[Student] How do you find reputable VAs?I guess it’s only at the beginning which goes to outsourcing.
[Student] Ah, okay.If you follow our link, it shows you, it’s a full course all about how to find them, and where to find them.
[Student] OkayAlways look at your competitors profile for product ideas
Okay, always look at your competitors profile for product ideas. I mentioned about that, shows you that greenie’s one as an example. Always just go into your competitors to find where are the products. So unproven product sourcing. So unproven products are stuffs that’s not already selling. It’s a brand new idea.
So unproven products are stuffs that’s not already selling
And now, you know, he’s starting off. If you get good at this, ask yourself how am I ever going to get out of this business? ‘Cause you’re awesome at doing product sourcing for brand new items that have never been sold, how are you ever ever going to get out? How are you going to train someone else to do this? You cannot get someone in the Philippines for one or two bucks an hour to do it for you. Or if you can, you’re very lucky. More like you can be paying someone like 100,000 a year to do this. So that’s why another reason we got out of doing that.
Doing new products, you can go on trade associations, fashion, toy
Associations So if you’re doing new products, you can go on trade associations, fashion, toy associations. I’ll give you the links in a second. Trade magazines, Google trade magazine plus your niche. So if you’re into co-sharing, trade magazine plus co-sharing. Whatever niche you like, trade magazine plus, you can find the trade magazines for that.
Trade shows local and overseas
Trade shows local and overseas. These are the two URLs, where you can find things like the Canton Fair, and all those overseas ones plus you can also find the local ones in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide as well in this little link. So if you’re particularly if you know about, a lot about say car parts as an example, and you want to go to one of those fairs, awesome. So again, for the people that came in late, all these slides are available. I’ll give you a link in here tonight, where you can download these slides and all these links.
How to rank well on Amazon
Okay, so here’s a quick overview of how to rank well on Amazon. So if you know enough to be dangerous, you can find other sellers quickly that aren’t doing these things. And we call it the rule of seven. There’s only seven main things you got to know about. Just like in eBay and websites, optimization is the number one way to get your listings to the top of the search results. Will get your website to the top of the search results. Get your eBay list to the top of the search results.
It’s all about optimization
It’s all about optimization. Don’t guess, over 90% of sellers guess it. Over 90%, which means there’s a massive opportunity. It’s always been that way, and I think it’ll always be that way. With Amazon, it’s all about the Buy Box. I looked for a camera, Canon 80D. And Amazon looked at where I live, and it said to me, this item here 1,748, and it puts this Buy Box here. And all I have to do is click Add to Cart. So this seller got the Buy Box. All the other sellers go all, whoops, all the way down here.
Seller gets the most of the business
So that seller gets the most of the business. And Amazon figured out that’s the best seller for me based on my location. It looks at the location, your location, the seller’s location. Because of course, let’s say there’s another seller in say Italy, selling the same item. Of course, it’s going to show you one of you guys as a seller, as opposed to a person in Italy because it’s going to take much longer to get here. It looks at that, it looks at the price, it looks at the seller reputation, all of those factors, and it figures out this is the best seller. That seller gets the Buy Box.
This is a whole lot of sellers selling with a lot of reviews
So that seller gets the majority of the sales. What I’ve been talking tonight about is about this is a whole lot of sellers selling with a lot of reviews. You going from the bottom and getting up here, if it’s got over 400 views, it’s going to be very challenging. This is why we don’t touch anything that’s got over 400 reviews. It’s also why we also do bundling. And why we looked at . So a Canon camera like this is one of the most competitive things you could possibly sell on Amazon. Most seller rather don’t have anything like the competition this thing’s got.
FBM or FBA
[Student] But this strategy is talking about for FBM only right?Or FBA, so this Canon camera could be FBM or FBA.
I know but if it is FBA, then Buy Box is not applicable because in that case, the location would not matter. The location of the warehouse will be the location.
Correct, correct but it will take that into account. But if another seller got up to say $1,600, that will go in a Buy Box. It weighs all the factors out. Just like eBay goes with its best match. It’s very similar.
Here’s how to get it
So here’s how to get it. This is a rule of seven. Show your product being used. So like this, for instance, I got an LCD display. Show that being used. Well, it turned on. Have a picture of the product packaging. Show the box that comes in. People love boxes, it’s crazy. If you go and sell, if you’ve got an iPad, an old iPad lying around, it’s you know, 10 years old, five years old, whatever. If you sell that same iPad with a box, you’ll get more money for it. Is anyone going to use the box?
[Student] The kittens?
Anything that’s bigger tends to get more money
Yeah, the kids. And if you got a kitten maybe, that might sleep in it. But no one’s going to use the box. You’ll get more money every time if that’s got a box. Human beings are not that logical sometimes. Include photos that show the size of the product. If it’s small, make it a little bigger. Anything that’s bigger tends to get more money. I tell you that people aren’t logical. Show the product from multiple angles.
Show the product from multiple angles.
If a buyer cannot get the information that they want, they’ll go ahead and look at another seller. So if this show the front, the back, the size, every single picture. ‘Cause if they can’t get enough information, they’ll go to your competitor to get the rest of the information. Power the item up is a must. So much stuff gets is listed on eBay and Amazon that’s not powered up. People want to see the LCD display.
Power the item up is a must
They want to see what it looks like turned on. Amazon images, at least 1001 pixels. So the eBay sellers in the room, eBay’s got a minimum of 500 or preferably 1600. If you hit the 1600 in eBay, you can zoom in. So the rule is always with eBay, it’s 1600. Amazon’s 1001. Always a color photo. Pure white background. With eBay, you can do a graffiti. So you can write all the stuff on your gallery image. Amazon, no, you can’t do that. It must be a pure white background. If anyone doesn’t know how to do pure white backgrounds, basically, you cut out, cut it all out. And you can do it with free software.
Always a color photo
Don’t need fancy things like Photoshop. You use probably like, what’s an example? GIMP, G-I-M-P. GIMP is free. And the great thing about it, because it’s free, if you’ve got VAs working in the Philippines or whatever, they can do it for you. If you don’t know how to use GIMP, I’ve got a free video, which is via neilwaterhouse.com/gimp, G-I-M-P. It’s a four or five-minute video. Shows you how to use it, how to cut out anything. Much at five minutes, you will know how to do it. So you don’t need to buy, we used to buy Photoshop license for our staff, we don’t do it anymore. Must cover 85% of the image area. But you should be doing this already.
Image should be always touching as many of the sides
Your image should be always touching as many of the sides as you can. Don’t have your image here. It looks small, it’s got, it’s worth less money because it’s small. I know it’s a stupid thing to say but we’ve proved this over and over. Try to always touch the sides. Either two sides or four, or three, whatever, biggest possible. No graffiti.
Your product title should be around 80 characters
Your product title should be around 80 characters. Now, for the eBay sellers in the room, they know that on eBay, you can have a maximum of 80 characters. It used to be 55, eBay figured out 80 works the best. Amazon allows you to put over 200. Problem with that is it confuses Amazon to what the hell you are selling, like it does with Google. It doesn’t know what you’ve got because you’ve got so many keywords, so what the hell are you selling? So reduce it back to 80.
When you look at problems like Egrow, it looks to how many keywords in the title, and it figures out well
Now, when you look at problems like Egrow, it looks to how many keywords in the title, and it figures out well, that seller’s got 200. It tells you, hey, here’s an opportunity for you because this seller’s got 200 characters, so they’ll screw it up. So there’s an opportunity. So One of the things that, it puts weight to Egrow. 200 is bad, less is bad, more is bad. You want to be as close to 80 as you can. That’s why eBay, I don’t know, it must have been about seven years ago, made a change from 55 to 80. And so, okay, we’re going to. Also include your brand, your model number and your model name, product type in your title.
Who has got the most, feedback makes you rank higher
Also with Amazon, feedback is critical. Who has got the most, feedback makes you rank higher. But you gotta have some methodology in place to increase your feedback. We’ve been using FeedbackExpress for many many years. But this FeedbackFive is getting a lot of media attention. A lot of people love it, so. We don’t use it, we use FeedbackExpress. But FeedbackFive is a lot of people using it as well. So you should have one of those in place to and what it does, it prompts people to leave feedback. And it also help gets involved with helping get rid of negative feedback. So with Amazon, like eBay, you can get rid of negative feedback, and that works with you to do that.
Excuse me.
Yup.
[Student] Your little FBA for example, is it sends in an email clue–Yes, contacts from directory. Used the software goes direct through that.
The review is going on your Amazon account
And many review goes from your Amazon account, you may say?
Sorry?
The review is going on your Amazon account? You may state even?
Yes, if it go, if that anything, it’ll also let you know, it’ll email you if you’ve got a negative. And then you can work with the customer to get rid of it. Okay, so avoid duplicate content. Also, let me see. Yeah, so fill out all the relevant categories. What’s there, fill it out.
Avoid duplicate content
Avoid duplicate content. And this is a summary, the summary of sevens. The headline of your product, a set of five bullet points. A paragraph of, this is critical. We call this the story. The story is your ground floor to the 10th floor to explain what on earth is it that you’re selling. Every single item on eBay, Amazon and your website should have a story, like this. You don’t just assume everyone knows what it is because they don’t.
You got to always assume visitors know nothing about what you’re selling
You got to always assume visitors know nothing about what you’re selling. And you’re always writing it for 10-year-old. So this is a Logitech PowerPoint presentation tool that has an LCD display, which shows you the battery life, et cetera, et cetera. You got zero to the 10th floor to explain what it is that you’re selling. And every single item must have a story. ‘Cause if they don’t get the story, they’ll go out searching for more information.
A story makes every item more valuable
A story makes every item more valuable, absolutely critical. At least one photo of the product on a pure white background. The weight and dimensions, of course, of the item. The keywords and I’m talking a lot about keywords tonight. But keywords you can get, I have missed a bit, you can get ’em from Google, actually now, I’ve got some more slides coming up. I’ll leave that. SKU code, which can be anything you want. But everything on Amazon must have a UPC code.
Amazon must have a UPC code
Now with UPC codes, you can get those like at the moment, are about 22,000 on eBay, it’s $24. But if you’ve invested a lot of time and money in creating your own product, then you need to get original GS1 one, whoops, which is down here. GS1 which will cost you a hundred dollars or you can get them in bulk for like $24 for 2,000. The difference is that GS1 code is originally registered to you, whereas the ones on eBay were originally registered to somebody else. Okay, so summary of Amazon metadata. Vital information, any variations you have, the offer, which is your price. Images, a description, keywords, any other details you have about yup?
Amazon’s driven by UPC codes.
[Student] A lot of people rip that information.Yeah, don’t do that, yeah.
[Student] How does that work in Amazon if they, I don’t know, open up their own? How does that work in Amazon?Well because Amazon’s driven by UPC codes. So once it’s already written up there. It’s more of you’re creating your own product or your new bundle, when it’s not there. So you’re starting something from scratch.
[Student] Okay.When I see, selling this it has now got a case, it has now got a battery or whatever with it. It’s when you’re just creating your own stuff.
[Student] I mean with the actual description of your product, that story that someone has written in their own store.Yeah, people rip stuff off and you can’t do anything about it.
[Student] Yeah.Create your own actual description of your product
But don’t rip off some of your supplier, who’s written in Ching-lish, right. Create your own. ‘Cause that’s a great thing to do. And you know, when you get VAs, always proof-it to make sure it sounds Australian. They can write it but you need to proof-it yourself. Or you can outsource that too to an Australian. Okay, so tools. So I’m going to show tools.
Some tools here work in Australia, some don’t
Some tools here work in Australia, some don’t. And you’re probably thinking why is he showing me stuff that doesn’t work in Australia? Well, the reason why is because we’re using it, we love it but it’s coming, it’s coming, it’s coming. So I’m showing it to you. Just put in your diary every month. Just check to see if it’s available. Keepa is a great product, it’s a Chrome extension.
Keepa is a great product, it’s a Chrome extension
What that means, if you use Google Chrome, for those real newbies on computers, you got browsers like Safari, which is your Apple browser. You have got Firefox. You’ve got Microsoft Edge. And you’ve got Google Chrome. These are all browsers. And this is a Chrome extension. So if you’ve got Google Chrome as your internet browser, it’s an extension that plugs into it. And it shows you the price history and sales rank for any item on Amazon. There’s also CamelCamel now. This one probably doesn’t work in Australia yet. Again, it’s coming out. CamelCamel’s another one. It does which is similar.
FBA Toolkit,
It’s a price tracker, which is also coming out shortly. Still not out yet though. FBA Toolkit, now FBA Toolkit is available but it doesn’t work. Now, FBA Toolkit gives you a list of products in any category by sales rank. We talked a lot tonight about sales rank. Number 219 and number a hundred, number a thousand, whatever. Well, FBA Toolkit does sort them by sales rank for you. So it’s a huge time-saver.
FBA Toolkit, it doesn’t work with all products
Now, the only thing with FBA Toolkit, it doesn’t work with all products, which is a bit of a weird one. And it’s getting better.
Over the last couple of years, it’s been getting better but if it doesn’t work. Don’t be surprised if your product’s missing. All right, I’ve got that in there. Okay and again don’t bother with items ranked greater than 500 because it’s just it’s no point. You’re not, it’s getting very difficult for you to try, unless you’ve got some amazing method of getting them really cheap or some methodology, you’ve rewritten the manual.
Google Ad Planner for free
If you haven’t been, don’t bother. Find something else. Okay, I talked to you a little bit about Google Ad Planner for free. Get the most popular related keywords. I mentioned before about PowerPoint, device, or pet, or whatever. It’ll show you all the other keywords. Type in the word Harry Potter, it will show you what everyone else is typing in for Harry Potter. Barbie, it’ll type you all the other keywords for Barbie.
Use best keyword
Use best and then the keyword. X or Barbie reviews, best Barbie or it’ll come up and give you all that kinda stuff that other people are searching for, all for free. MerchantWords also does work in Australia. Does the same thing as just for Amazon and it works on Amazon Australia. Like on here, I typed in reading glasses and it shows me the results in Australia. So we can find out the competition. We can also find more words. MerchantWords, which is a great tool. And I believe they have 30-day free trial, yup?
[Student] Yeah, when you talked about not going for products over 400 reviews.Yup.
[Student] Are you also talking about, in terms about the actual product or the category?Product.
[Student] Okay.Just in each product.
[Student] Yeah, right.Google, the Keyword Dominator is also another great tool for finding out Amazon keywords
Google, the Keyword Dominator is also another great tool for finding out Amazon keywords. Okay, you’ve done that. Yeah and again, like I mentioned before, make sure you always select the Out Of Stock in any Keyword Tool Dominator. It gives you the ability to turn on and off the Out Of Stock items. Always make sure you turn it on. So again, like I mentioned several times tonight, you may set an awesome fantastic opportunities, the hot-selling stuff, which is just all out of stock. And you need to know about that stuff.
Search for a single keyword, you get a phrase
Yeah, search for a single keyword, you get a phrase. We’ve done that tonight. Search pet, discover pet carrier, et cetera, et cetera. All right, you can also do this with eBay and Google. So you can do this, if you go to eBay, and you type in pet, it will show you all the other top 10 keywords that everyone searches for. Google does the same, it’s called the auto suggestion tool, which is a search box.
With Google, eBay or Amazon, if you type in one word, it will show you all the other things
With Google, eBay or Amazon, if you type in one word, it will show you all the other things. So if you type in say, solar, it will show you some panel and all the other keywords. It’s all there already for you, which is awesome. The only thing it won’t do though, is it won’t show you what someone typed in before the word solar. So let’s say they typed in 12 Volt Solar. It won’t show you that. It’ll just show you the words after solar. So that’s where the Google tool is awesome. And it will also, these other tools, did you have a question?
[Student] That’s cool, Keyword Dominator is Amazon, right?Keyword Dominator is Amazon
Yes, it is, yeah it’s Amazon, yeah. So there’s other, the auto suggestion tools, which are brilliant, they only show you after, not the beginning. Another tool which is really cool is Google Trends. Google Trends shows you the trend of an item. So like if we research say, iPhone 7, you’d see here there’d be a spike. And then it’d fall off, right. So we always, the rule in marketing is the bigger the party, the bigger the hangover.
The bigger the party, the bigger the hangover
We tend to like things that more of a flat line or maybe with a slight uptick. Anything that’s got a big spike, bigger the party, bigger the hangover. So obviously, the iPhone 7, iPhone 10 comes out, bang, traffic falls off. But Google Trends is free. I mentioned before earlier on tonight about the promotion section in Amazon now. And there’s a, and that’s more information about it. I’m not going to get in it because tonight’s a beginner one. But I gave you a link earlier on about the information.
Other tools that don’t work in Australia that we use
Other tools that don’t work in Australia that we use are these. Now, we don’t, so we don’t use all of these tools. We just use some of these tools but these are very popular tools in the industry. And again, you can just go through it and continually research them again. These links are all available for you guys. So you can just continually check. These are very popular ones. I’ve made a little bit of a listing of what they do, automation, listing, et cetera.
Steps you’ve gotta do to go through and get your product from FBM to FBA.
All right, so what are we up to? So if now, when you start listing, and you want to send stuff to Amazon, to the FBA program, there’s certain steps you’ve got to do to go through and get your product from FBM to FBA. You’ve got to print out some labels. You have got to stick them on boxes. Now, so rather than go through that tonight because most people who are beginners aren’t there yet, here’s a video again that shows you how to do. Well, I sat on a computer and I go through step by step when I do it. So you just follow it through. And there’s a link there for when you’re ready to get send stuff to their warehouse.
Yup.
[Student] Can you get say Alibaba to send direct to the–Alibaba is just a search engine
Yes, you can. Just bear in mind that Alibaba is just a search engine. It’s just to find the supplier. So it’s the supplier that sends direct to FBA. So as long as you’ve got all the paper, you can, and it’s all done correctly, yes. But you of course, you want to triple-check to make sure everything is done correctly. Otherwise, Amazon will reject it. So now, just before we wrap tonight, diversification is such a great tip.
This Amazon FBA is brilliant, it rocks
This Amazon FBA is brilliant, it rocks. But it’s just another marketplace. So don’t put, you know, I hate having all my eggs in one basket. You do tend to sleep better if you don’t put your eggs in one basket or split the eggs over the years. I definitely, for me, diversification rocks. So you can do Amazon, you can do eBay. You can do your own independent website. You can do sell on Gumtree, Facebook Marketplaces.
You can do sell on Gumtree, Facebook Marketplaces
So if you’ve input some products you’ve got your own products, you can stick ’em on Gumtree and Facebook Marketplaces as well. Now, I don’t recommend doing these two as a commercial venture because it’s painful. Anyone here sell stuff on Facebook Marketplaces? Okay, how many times do you get people saying, is it still available?
Facebook Marketplace came out with paper ads.
[Student] So I’m pretty good. If you work your ads correctly, a lot of the time you, if you’re selling the same thing, if you’re getting the same questions, it’s because you don’t have the same or the correct information. So since what I’m selling is very specific, I’ve actually reduce the amount that is available. Secondly, just don’t take it to heart. You actually just respond to the ones that are more than just is it still available?Yeah.
[Student] And by the way, just today or yesterday, Facebook Marketplace came out with paper ads.
Facebook Marketplace came out with paper ads.
Yes, yeah I saw that, yeah. So that’s one down. Another down solved was on Facebook Marketplaces and Gumtree is you’ve got people coming round to your house to pick stuff up, which is and anyone’s that done that knows that’s a real pain. They going to turn up on a two o’clock on a Saturday and then, do they turn up? No and next thing you know, you’ve written off your whole Saturday afternoon. So if you’ve got stuff, it’s a great place, it’s a great way to learn stuff, yup?
Facebook Marketplaces rocks
Awesome yeah. So you like just can do it and Facebook Marketplaces rocks. There’s a lot of traffic there. A lot of business there. And there’s not too much competition. So it’s an awesome place. If you’ve got stock stuff, it’s an awesome thing to do. Just in case you get bigger though, you might not want to do that. But it’s up to you guys. You can import, you can use FBA. Also, if you’ve got an eBay business, you can do it, set up the same kind of the thing.
You can use fulfillment houses
You can use fulfillment houses, where you can send your goods to a fulfillment house, and they can warehouse your products. Every time you get a sale, they can ship it for you, so you don’t have to get your own warehouse. You can do product labeling. Can do drop-shipping, yup.
Sorry?
Yeah totally. So there’s many things you can do with product. Don’t stand, lock yourself. You don’t have to do just one.
You can do multiple things in this business.
You can do multiple things in this business. So if cashflow is an issue at the start because FBA costs money. All right, you gotta buy stock, you gotta send it to FBA. So it costs money. If it’s an issue, try to purchase samples. There’s no minimum, you can send one item to Amazon FBA. So MOQ, minimum order quantity. Sell used items. Everyone’s got some stuff lying around collecting dust in the house, the garage, wherever. Sell on Gumtree, Facebook Marketplaces to generate cash. And then you can use that cash to buy some new products.
Amazon is known for new stuff
If you want to have sales, normally on Amazon, you can sell used stuff. Normally, Amazon is known for new stuff. You’ve got used stuff, sell it on Gumtree, eBay, Facebook Marketplaces. If you want to know how to sell on eBay, there’s a complete guide here. You can download it for free to, shows you all about how to do it. You can also do drop-shipping, whereas we mentioned before, with drop-shipping, you get paid first. And then you place your order with suppliers.
There’s other ways to generate cash online
So it’s cashflow positive. If you want to know more about that, there’s a link there for drop-shipping. So there’s many I often use. You don’t because probably will say, I want to do FBA but I don’t have the money. Well, there’s other ways to generate cash online. So we’ve covered a lot of stuffs tonight but don’t freak out thinking oh God, there’s a lot of stuff to do. It’s all baby steps. You’ve just gotta think about why you’re doing it. Why put the effort in to do this? And what drives me is always lifestyle, and time and money.
The great thing with online business is it works 24/7, 365
So the great thing with online business is it works 24/7, 365. People buy stuff literally one o’clock in the morning, three o’clock in the morning all the day long, all year long. So and it gives you the freedom of, think about where you want to be the next one year, three years, five years. And it’s all about just baby steps. One little baby step at a time. And realize over 90% of sellers don’t optimize.
Learn those steps
So learn those steps. And don’t get caught up in this procrastination thing with I’ve gotta get it all right before I go live. No, Reid Hoffman, who’s the founder of LinkedIn. He once said, “If you’re not totally embarrassed “by your first effort, you’ve launched too late.” Now, I’m not saying slap up things with a whole lot of typos and spelling errors. But just done is better than perfect. So yeah, I’ve going to wrap it up because of the time. But thanks everyone, and we’ll see you in six hours, thank you. Thank you, thank you.
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