Ryan Daniel Moran leads a group coaching call with Amazon sellers sharing wins: Jesse tripled sales to 9 units and gained 3 reviews, while Todd and Sean are selling 20+ yoga mats daily. The group discusses generating reviews through capped coupons and giveaway sites, sourcing from Alibaba, and why a fish oil listing with 46 reviews still isn't converting.
Chapters
Tell me, how was. How was one more week of Amazon stuff?
Pretty good? Not as good as I'd hoped. Last week we talked a little bit about me trying to get some more or getting some of my friends to purchase and then do some reviews. I think you'd mentioned something around the number of like 15 or so, which I thought was a pretty good number. And I blasted probably a good 50 or maybe 70 of my friends on Facebook, you know, texting and whatnot. And I kid you not, man, it's like pulling nails, trying to get them to do anything. But anyway, I was able to. Let me look at my Amazon here.
Pause. Tell me your approach. I got booed. My mouth. Forgive me. Tell me your approach because I can help you.
Up that response rate. So tell me what you were actually saying to people.
Cool. I actually took something that you.
Messaged me on Facebook and I just basically plugged in my own, you know, rather than saying yoga mat, I, you know, obviously put in a, you know, iPhone case. So I just basically took that and sent it to a bunch of them.
Okay.
And obviously, you know, I did get a few responses.
We can't hear you, Jerry. I know you can hear us.
Hello there.
There he is. Hey, Jerry.
How are you doing?
Hey, Todd. Hello.
How's it going?
All right. Keep going, Jesse.
Okay. Yeah. So I was able to get a few people to purchase.
Looking at my sales summary here, I think last time we talked, I had three sales. I got nine now.
Great.
And I do have three.
I do have three reviews.
Good.
A couple days ago, I noticed that my BSN ranking was like 200,000. Now it's at 68,000, I think. And I'm actually on the third page for, like, this long tail set of keywords that I was trying to rank for.
That is what we call progress, my friend.
Yeah, Yeah, I was. I was really surprised. I mean, I actually tried checking the page, you know, that I was on this morning. Like, I remember like a week ago, I was literally checking every page, even past page 20. I wasn't even on it.
And like, now I'm on page three for my specific long tail keyword. So I'm pretty excited about that.
Yeah, like I said, it's a snowball because once you start seeing conversions and you start to rank, and as you rank more, then you get more reviews and then obviously rank even more. And it just. It's slow, but it starts to pick up. Todd, do me a favor and put something in your ears that will project the sound into your.
If you don't have them, then just put yourself on mute.
I will try. Last time, I couldn't get my headphone jack to work for some reason. But let me give you a shot.
Okay, thanks.
Jesse. So you just modified what I was using, right?
Yes, yes.
Hey, Sean.
Hey, guys.
Look at that. Well groomed, man.
Got a haircut this morning.
Ah, very cool. I. I dressed up like Ron Burgundy for the anchorman premiere and I had this ridiculous mustache going on.
Once it was over.
I was clean shaven for the first time in a year and a half. I haven't shaved my face in over a year and a half.
My hair was long from Ron Burgundy, so I just looked terrible. And then I went and got.
Just.
The worst haircut I've had in forever. And I texted the lady I've been seeing, and I said to take the attention off my face. The girl at the barbershop gave me the worst haircut of my life.
She asked me how it. She's like, how's it look, hun? And in my brain I'm like, it's great. If I want to be alone and childless for the rest of my life.
This is why I look a little different. Anyway, Jesse.
Try something quick. One thing that I have, I've noticed is that even when you're giving away free stuff, it's hard to get people to take action unless you get them to commit to a very small yes. It's kind of the theory of a squeeze page. The squeeze page is the first yes that people give to you. So in this Amazon world, it's what's the smallest yes we can get? And for me, it's something like, hey, man, do you want a free iPhone case?
Or.
Hey, I know you've got an iPhone. I've got some really cool cases. Do you want one?
Okay.
If you're texting them, something like that will work.
Okay. Yeah.
All right.
Yeah, I can definitely do that.
You've got three reviews now. You said you had two last week.
Yeah, yeah, I got three. I noticed.
Obviously, with the nine sales, I've noticed that there's. I was checking my ASM central.
Thing, and I noticed that some of them have already received their cases. So I'm going to take a page out of your book and actually give them a call to see if I can, you know, see if they like it. And if they do, obviously, if they can give me a positive review. Of course.
Good. Very good.
How many of those reviews or those sales are not your friends?
That's a good question.
See, out of Nine, maybe. Maybe three. Sales are not my friends.
Okay, cool.
Hey, Jordan.
Hey, what's up?
Look at you, back home for Christmas break.
Yeah.
He's so sleepy. You just woke up. You're so cute. I did.
I did.
Recovering. Recovering from school.
Yeah, not too bad, not too bad.
Good.
All right, Jesse, So.
Again, I say getting reviews is the best use of your time. Okay, so what can we say for this week and the week after the holidays would be a good action step for you in order to make that happen?
I guess. Aside from just trying.
Man.
I guess. I guess. Keep trying. The same people that I've already contacted once, maybe.
Who could you give away iPhone cases to.
That would love a free iPhone case?
Aside from people that I know who are using them.
Yeah.
First of all, that's a great start.
Yeah.
I'm just trying to get you to expand your mind a bit. Who would love to have a free iPhone case?
Shoot.
Okay, I'm going to help you here.
All right.
Actually, Sean's going to help you here.
No, phone a friend.
Don't put me in the spot.
No, Sean.
What type of. Remember those sites that we did the. We attempted to do giveaways on.
On Reddit?
Well, we did. There was that one site that was like the deal site that we tried to give away a bunch of product on.
Oh, yeah, Slick deals.
Slick deals.
Slick deals.
Now we got ours pulled because it looked like an ad.
The first time.
The second time went through.
Okay, do you remember how much of a response we had?
I would have to look at the adsense. I think we got maybe one or two purchases through that.
But.
Yeah, I think that would be a good thing for the iPhone cases. It's a more tech heavy type site, so anything with tech seemed to be really big on there.
IPhone case is like more of a mass market thing than yoga. Anyway, there was one. Was it slick deals? No, no, no, no. It was when we did the giveaway and somebody posted our free coupon and it started to go.
Like haywire and we were getting a bunch of free purchases.
Right.
We never did find out where that came from, did we?
Yes, we did. If you have the box checked when you make. And someone else had the same issue. If you have the box checked when you make the coupon code, it shows up on your details page.
Right. But we never find out where the traffic was coming from that was purchasing all those. Right?
Oh, no, no. I just assumed it was just through Amazon. And then they saw the coupon and they said, well, I'm not passing Up a free yoga mat.
You'd be surprised at how few people actually read that.
Really?
Yeah. Yeah.
I suspect that somebody saw that and put it on a forum somewhere.
Yeah, we did. Never. We never discovered where that.
Where that popped up. Well, anyway, Jesse, there are forums where you can do giveaways and massive discounts.
Okay.
For products that you find tax sites. One of them is slick deals, and there are others out there. If you did you. And you can also limit the number of coupons, the number of purchases that can go through coupon.
Oh, really?
Okay, so I've been actually wondering if I could do that.
Yeah.
Okay.
So you could put a cap on 25 and do a 25 iPhone giveaway.
All right.
And call all those people.
Okay.
So look for places where tech people hang out.
Okay.
Do your. Do your coupon there.
All right.
I will get on that asap.
Cool.
I just had an idea. A good place might be somewhere that there's, like, iPhone developers that write apps. They would probably already have an iPhone if they're writing apps for it, and they probably don't make very much money unless their app took off. So they wouldn't mind a free case.
Right.
Thank you so much for that.
Tell us again what's different about your case.
Let me see, like, what makes it a cool case?
It's slim. It's hard.
Kind of like a designer case.
It's. Oh. Very easy to put on and take off. Should you do that?
I got an iPhone5 and I've bought a bunch of cases in a lot of cases. It's ridiculously hard to take off if I ever needed it to.
I'm sorry, does anybody else think that he's describing this sexually?
You.
Yep.
Okay.
All right.
It's just me.
Okay.
You're nasty, Ryan.
Okay, well, it's slim. Hard and easy to take off.
Wow. Okay. Maybe I should get on those sites. Get on those sites.
You guys just don't live in that world.
I'm usually the clean, super clean one.
In the group, but.
All right, fine.
I can see why I'm having a hard time trying to get rid of these things, even for free. My goodness.
But I do back it with a 100% guarantee. No hassle, all that.
Okay.
Why would somebody buy your case over a different case that's out there?
There's a lot of iPhone cases on the market.
Oh, yeah.
So some of them have, like, a credit card holder. Some of them have padding. Some of them.
Yeah.
With this particular case, I'm.
I'm definitely trying to Go for the. Like, for the. For the trendy hipster, obviously not your construction worker. You know, they're probably going to want something a little bit more ruggedized, like a ballistic case or something like that.
So design is like your biggest hook.
Right, right, right. Yeah. That's how I was trying to rank for the keywords. Like, you know, once again, slim, hard.
So, yeah, I'm definitely trying to target, you know, the more trendy hipster with this particular case.
Great. So I think those places that we just mentioned are good places to do a giveaway.
Okay. Yeah, definitely.
Mr. Decker?
Yes.
How are things going?
Pretty good. I ordered, I think, Monday, so they started, and she said, I think it was on Tuesday, maybe 10 to 15 days till they're all made. So then. And then another few days for shipping or whatever. So, yeah, I mean, I wrote all my.
Description, product description and all that, so. And now I'm just working on trying to get images. I've been talking to a guy. Other than that.
I guess I'm. I don't know exactly how I'm going to approach it. I know I can give away. I mean, I can go to college, so I can give away stuff so easily, so that's not going to be a real issue. And I can bug people till they give me a review, basically. So that's a nice advantage I have, I guess. But as far as. Yeah, I mean, I don't think I'm gonna have to have too much to start ranking. Well, honestly, there's few people, and the few people are pretty much asmers. So, yeah, I think. And I know they're doing well.
This group can beat pretty much any asmr. Yeah, I mean that, like, we have more resources and tools and experience collectively.
And I see. And I guess I kind of see weaknesses in every one of them in either images or just different things. So I guess that's good, too. But I guess one thing I was toying. Well, I mean, the whole Facebook thing. I don't know.
I don't know if it's worth it to me at this point, because I know I can get reviews. I don't know. I mean, did it work really well where you're, like, saying, oh, I still think it's worth it? I mean, I think obviously I can bug people. I see people every day to give me the review, and I can hand them out? I mean, what kid's not gonna want to take one, you know?
Well, Sean and I were in.
The yoga space. I don't. Neither of us do yoga.
Yeah.
So it made sense for us to have the Facebook page and do massive giveaways. If you think you can do enough giveaways and get reviews without doing the Facebook process, go for it. Okay. And you don't need to.
Yeah. And another, I guess another thing because I kind of have downtime here as far as waiting till my product arrives. Would you, I mean, this might be a stupid question, but do you think it's worth it to try to get pre orders? I mean, obviously it kind of is, but I guess how would you go about doing it? Do you really, would you drive traffic to your listing or would you just kind of hope like, okay, maybe someone will come across it, Is it worth it? Because I mean, I don't want to, I guess, I don't know, pay money.
The only person that I know who has done this is Zach.
Yeah.
Zach unfortunately has a family and so new daughter, so he couldn't be here today, but he's the only person that I know that has done this and he saw pretty good results with it because he was ranking while all the other Asmers were loading their guns.
Yeah.
So he was there while everybody else was, was waiting to be there. So it was advantageous for him. The volume, I know was fairly low, but once he had inventory, he grew really fast as a result because he had momentum and everybody else did not. I personally have never done it, so I know you can do just fine without taking pre orders.
I think Zach would probably recommend that you do take pre order, pre orders. But I personally don't have much experience on this.
Fair enough.
Just give me a thumbs up.
Alright, cool. Jerry. Yes. What's going on?
Not too much, just searching for a supplier right now.
Okay. You have your product picked out. That was fast.
Yep.
Good.
You know that fits your home. Oh, sorry, sorry. And tell me about the supplier searching process.
Well, right now I'm trying to find domestic and not having much luck. So I don't know, it's a bucket caddy for a garden tool thing and the one that's in there is Chinese and I'm just trying to find local right now, but I'm not getting much response back from people at this stage of the game. But I'm just starting.
So something like that is definitely going to be sourced better overseas. Yeah, definitely American.
I'm kind of a buy American type of guy, but I might have to look elsewhere so.
Okay, well, I'm Americans profit kind of guy.
Yeah.
The only way you're going to do that is if you, is if you Source overseas.
Yep.
And I'm going to have to turn into an American prophet.
Yeah, correct. So. So I'm a Buy American guy, too. As long as they're competitive and priced accordingly and something like that, they're not going to be because.
Not by what I've been seeing. I don't think so.
Yeah. So, yeah, you're going to have to go overseas, which is fine. The volume is going to be a lot easier for you then. Are you looking on Alibaba?
No, I have not looked at Alibaba yet.
Okay. I'd recommend looking at Alibaba. Okay. For something like what you're doing. There's probably going to be several good suppliers there.
Yep.
Yep.
And I want to make some changes to it, too, so.
Cool. You know, Sean and I found it surprisingly. I should put an asterisk. Sean found it surprisingly easy to make some changes. Did my camera just go off? No. No. You're on.
We found it surprisingly easy to customize our product and actually have them make the type of product that we really wanted. And I expected that to be harder than it was, but it really was not a problem. Correct, Sean?
Correct. Sorry to interrupt. I. I think I accidentally muted Jordan. I wasn't able to hear him before.
Oh, okay. I thought Jordan muted himself.
Time to reset it. No, I think he can unmute himself, so I don't know if he can hear me or not.
Yeah, he can hear you.
Yeah. There you go. Sorry about that. I think I might have somebody else before, too.
I didn't even try that. I'm like, what did I say?
That's so weird. I don't really know anything about computers, so.
That sounds hilarious.
But, yeah, we found it real easy to customize. In fact, the only hurdle was deciding what we wanted to do. Our supplier pretty much was willing to do whatever we needed as far as the colors, the patterns, different stamps, different labels, different materials. Really, it was overwhelming almost because I didn't really know what would work for the market. And we kind of just went back and forth for a while with our supplier until we kind of decided what we have. Now, that may depend on your product. Something like a toaster isn't going to be easy to customize internally. Maybe a label, something like a cell phone case where they're just making a mold. I mean, if you could get, like, the color change or things like that, it's probably pretty easy for them to make adjustments depending on what you're asking to be adjusted.
Okay.
Did you find without. Was it better to go through Alibaba find your supplier, then work with the supplier directly after, like, you've ordered some first.
You mean, like, customize it after an order?
No, I want to customize it first.
He's saying, do you find it better? You're taking more seriously if you approach it like you've done this before?
Oh, absolutely, because I approached it like I hadn't done this before, and it was pretty clear that the lady thought I was crazy.
So, yeah, I mean, if you go in and just say, we need this, I would say that they'll probably just agree with you.
I don't think that they're not. I think they're expecting people to customize their product to some extent. So, yeah, if you go in and tell them what your needs are, I think they'll respect that. And you'll probably get a better price than going in the way that I did and said, well, I don't really know. How about this? Or this?
Or this?
Or this or this.
We used Alibaba, and it's kind of weird to get used to, but once you get the hang of how the site works, you kind of narrow down to a specific supplier. It's actually pretty easy to use.
Then do you keep going through all of Alibaba every time or once you have your supplier, you just work directly with them?
We just work directly with our supplier. That is probably against the terms of service of Alibaba, but we just kind. I just. I just contact her through email or Skype, you know, because China's pretty much the opposite of our time zone, and we just did. Our payments were through wire transfer. If you can find one that can take credit cards, you can rack up some pretty good points. But we just did, like, a bank wire transfer to the supplier.
Okay, great.
I want to swing back to Jordan since we cut him off.
Sean did.
You can punch him when we're in Austin.
I still can't hear him. He must be wrong on my end, so I'll just keep smiling.
We can talk behind his. I can talk behind his back.
There you go.
Look back at him.
Tell me, is there anything else that we can do to help you kind of get to that next step?
I don't know. I mean, do you think. I mean, because I'm kind of at a standstill right now. There's nothing I can really do that much.
I don't want to be building a buyers list, whether that's on Facebook or just making notes of people that you're going to contact once it's ready and talking about it to those people.
Yeah, I've already. I haven't made a list, but I've talked to people already. Just because I'm starting a business or whatever, I talk about it. Hey, you want a free one? You know. Oh, yeah, sure. You know, so I've done that.
Just tell Dr. Milledge. He'll get all excited because there's someone that's an entrepreneur. He'll go crazy and he'll tell everybody that he knows. He'll do all your networking for you.
Maybe I'll do that. So, yeah, I know when I go back to school, I'm going to have unlimited people to go to. So what I'm going to do is probably take, I don't know, 50 or so back to school with me and then just hand those out and do those FBM and then do it that way.
Interesting. Are you having them shipped to you rather than shipped Amazon?
Yeah, that's what I'm doing first.
What's the reason you're doing that?
People recommended to check and make sure they're good. I know it's a little more and whatever, but plus I want the. Because in the long run I'm gonna save. Because I'm gonna do FBM with those 50 and then I don't have to pay, like, I don't know, the extra fees and whatnot. That much. So.
Yeah.
And I don't know, I would like to have some to. To give them out by hand so then I don't have to. Then I can just give them to them right there. They don't have to wait. Then I get my reviews out faster because they have it there. They don't have to wait it to ship through fba, you know.
Okay, cool. I usually don't recommend that approach, but you have all your bases covered. You know that you don't want to do that long term. You know that it's good enough easier doing it to collect reviews. So it's fine.
Yeah, I'm just doing 50. And then the other everything else I'm sending to FBA right away and then I'll be all FBA after that.
Great. I'd say you're in a really good spot then you're using a domestic supplier. You'd seem to be. You seem to mention that shipping was going to be very quick.
No, they're China. Yeah, I mean, I've heard three to five days. I heard people get it really quick. I heard it takes longer. It just depends. So whatever.
Yeah. Are you going by air or something?
Yeah.
Okay. Okay. Do you know what it's gonna cost you to go air? Yeah.
It's like, well, per unit, it's like 75 cents or something.
Okay. Man, it must be nice to ship small things, huh?
Yeah.
I couldn't hear what his answer was, but I looked into shipping by air for us and was like $9,000.
Yeah. So we have to go by C. Yeah.
Mine.
Like, I think my product weights, like, one and a half ounces or something. It's, like, really low, so it's. It's nothing.
Nice.
Yeah.
Our next product, Sean, has got to be small and light.
Well, that's what I figured.
Yoga stickers.
I was seeing the prices, and I'm like, okay, I don't want to wait till. For C. You know, that takes forever, and I want to get going. So I'm like, okay, I got to pick something small, and I could do by air cheaply. I mean, I'm sure I could do this. I never have to do by C with this product because I don't want too much inventory anyway, and I can just keep doing the same thing that I'm doing, and it'll work out fine.
That's great. You're in a bit of a unique position for that because it's usually very expensive to ship by air if you've got anything that weighs anything. So you're in a. That's a really nice position to be in where you can get it quickly from China. We're experiencing some challenges there because it takes two to four weeks just to ship.
That is frustrating, to say the least.
I can see that.
Yeah. Yeah. Hey, Todd.
Howdy. What's up?
Will you tell me what's up?
Well, things are starting to get a little. Little exciting for us this week.
Cool.
We had our. So we've got two products hit at the same time. One that we're focused on and doing a lot of giveaways for. Our secondary product hit FBA on Thursday.
Our primary product hit yesterday, and I've already put in a second order for the primary product to give us some inventory, but got up this morning, and it looks like we got our first two organic sales in the half day yesterday, so, boom. So I'm very excited about that start.
That's fantastic. That is absolutely fantastic.
Yeah, I'm very excited. I don't know yet if they came from the Amazon ads that I also started yesterday, because we had two clicks for the Amazon ads and two sales, and it might show up there later, but either way, it looks like we got some initial success. So I'M very excited.
And you haven't even begun your momentum yet.
Your giveaways yet to friends and family yet, right?
Yeah, yeah, we've already done all the giveaways. We've got six reviews posted so far, another 1314 still coming.
Great.
We're following up, just started following up on those last night. So those should be rolling in over the next few days.
But you know, so for our primary keyword that has 18,000 plus search volume in Google, we, you know, we're on, we're number 20 in our category for that keyword and we're like number 32 in the all departments search for that primary keyword.
Fantastic. So when you say 32, do you mean you're ranking 32?
I mean in the keyword results.
Great. That is on the page. That is, that is really good for a first start. I mean, really good for a beginning.
That's what I was hoping. That's what I was feeling.
So, yeah, we're, you know, everything's looking on track for us right now. Just gonna.
Congrats, man. That's exciting. Congratulations.
Thank you very much.
So, yeah, right now, you know, this morning I've just kind of been brainstorming. Okay, well what's our, what's our next step to keep the momentum going besides the, you know, just getting the rest of the reviews in, obviously.
And I think the first step we're gonna take. I was just watching the week six coaching call with Daniel. Daniel from Iceland. Mr. 350,000amonth guy. Crazy. And you know, he was talking about his video approach and doing the big discount code on his videos and all that stuff. But I decided we still haven't tapped into Julie's online foundation that she's got.
Nice.
So I'm thinking what we're going to do first is just run a big discount code through there to try and drive some sales, some break even sales.
Yeah, it's exactly what I would Recommend.
Like a 60% off or something like that and try and try and just get some momentum going that way. And if we don't see enough there, then I'll start pushing the video side of it. Get some quick. You know, he said he does PowerPoint videos with a voiceover with a big discount code and drives plenty of sales through there. So that's my next.
And what, he puts them on YouTube?
Yeah, he just uploads straight to YouTube.
And does he market those for, does he promote them for keywords or what?
I don't know. I don't know that he actually does Any promotion of the videos outside of YouTube. But he just like, you know, his example was he's got 50 keywords that he wants to target, he targets five and each video does 10 videos, puts them out there and he's getting a few hundred views a month on these things. 10% conversion. So he's getting 300 sales a month just from 10 videos he's got out there with discount codes.
Interesting. Makes sense.
I kind of like that, I kind of like that approach. Seems pretty basic and I've got a lot of experience with the video side of things. So I figure that's my next step after pushing it on a blog.
Yeah, your low hanging fruit is pushing it on the blog and that is going to be enough momentum, especially if you're ranking position 32 after being live for 48 hours.
Getting that blog and those reviews and some momentum there is going to rocket you to page one pretty quickly. So that's your low hanging fruit.
Awesome. Yeah, that is definitely the next step.
Cool. If it's cool with you guys, I'm going to do a bit.
Of an update on the stuff we've been working on because I had some wins and some major losses and some head scratching this week. It was a very interesting week where we are, we'll start with the wins. Sean and I having just monster, monster progress. I think it's far exceed both of our expectations. We had one day this week that had 39 units, 39 units sold in a 24 hour period of a $45 product. Which is, I think I sent Sean a text and said I just did the math. That's 100k for you and 100k for me. And.
It'S just far exceeded our expectations on how fast it has progressed. Some of that is probably the Christmas rush, but we've been averaging north of 20 sales a day and we're creeping up to the top of page three for just the term yoga mat. Yeah. So our momentum, both of us have, I think have spent a lot of energy this week maintaining our excitement.
So that has been great momentum wise. Now keep in mind, even at that amount of volume, all of it is being rolled into more inventory. Since our unit, since our product is oversized, we can only keep a certain amount in inventory. We can't keep more than 500 in stock at a time.
Oh, wow.
So we will sell out in a month and then we have to reorder and wait and we can't even have it in transit until we've completely sold out. So basically because we're Oversized. We have to run out of inventory before we can get things moving again, which is frustrating because it means we have to take a week or two without sales.
That will change because Amazon ups your limit as you sell more and more. But there's a 10 week minimum of a 500 unit limit. So progress wise, momentum wise, we're doing great. I think we're the number 20th or 25th yoga mat. Is that right, Sean?
Yeah, it was somewhere in there, in the low 20s.
Pretty cool. So we're very excited at the progress of that. So, green pastures on the yoga business, supplement business. Matt, who you met on one of these hangouts that have seen on the Facebook forum, we are about to just start punching animals. We are so frustrated because we've worked with three suppliers, count them, 1, 2, 3, uno, dos, tres, un du trois. And we've ordered from all of them and none of them can fulfill. For us right now, it is the most frustrating thing. We've blown through our inventory. We hit number one in our category. We were doing 25 to 30 sales a day. We knew we were going to run out. We placed an order with our supplier in plenty of time to have them fulfill it and they've delayed it by five weeks. So we then went and went to our backup supplier and we said, how fast can you fulfill this? And they're like, we've got it in stock. We can have this shipped out in 48 hours. Awesome. Put in the order, paid for 1,000 units. We're like, well, phew, crisis averted. They got back to us yesterday and said after a week they were already late. They called back, they called us and said, hey, I'm so sorry, I didn't know somebody bought up all the inventory before I took your order. So it's going to be a minimum of four weeks. And I said, cancel and refund my order.
So then we went to supplier three and we said, hey, we put a backup order in with you two weeks ago.
Is this going to be in next week like we hoped? And they said, nobody filled this order.
So we've gone through three suppliers and nobody can supply us. So I'll tell you what we've been doing with our downtime because we're essentially not taking orders on the business right now, which is very frustrating. We've just been planning for stage two with the time that we have on our hands. It's frustrating, it's annoying, but what can we do with the time? Let's do something productive. So we've been working on product number Two and we've been doing exactly the process that you guys are going through which is we are giving out free product, we are collecting reviews, we're calling all of those customers.
It's like we're, even though we're not starting over, we're back at square one with a second product and we're running that gamut. Just so you guys know, with our downtime, I'm doing the exact same process as you are, which is collecting reviews, giving away as much product as we can, getting feedback, connecting with customers, getting that product ranking and the momentum is starting there. We've done a lot of giveaways. I don't think there's been any organic sales yet, but we've given away about 50 units. So that's where we stand there. That company is going to continue to grow. It's just this is like the dip in an otherwise very, very profitable venture. But the third one is a head scratcher and I'm actually going to ask for your guys opinion on this. We have had, you guys have seen that I have one other supplement brand that's a fish oil and we have just had the darndest time selling this thing.
We've got 46 some reviews, everybody loves it. Copy is great but it is actually falling in the rankings. It is not going up, it's going down in the rankings and this is a head scratcher and I have no idea what the problem is. Hi Michelle.
And it's a head scratcher and I'd be curious. I want you guys to look at the listing and I want you to tell me how it sits with you. So I'm going to. I don't know if I can post a link in the chat or something. Let me see if I can. I'm going to post the link in the chat and I would actually like your feedback on it.
Because it is perplexing to me.
Was it selling before, before you start dropping, are you still selling some?
It sells like three units a day. We did this big giveaway and there has been a bump from that but not in rankings yet. So I just posted the link in the chat box.
And what I'm looking for is how does the listing sit with you? How does the headline sit with you? If any of the bullets resonate with you and then I'm going to run a couple ideas by you and I want to get your feedback.
Did that link work for you?
Yes.
And I think a handful of at least half of us are using this fish oil, including myself.
I've read over this quite a few times before when I purchased, like, I think I've actually purchased, like two of them now, and I've never.
Never saw anything that I thought would have. Would be questionable.
And yours is actually price competitive to some of them. I mean, I see some that are like 30.
So that's kind of weird.
There's a couple things that could be going on, and I'm bringing this up because.
I've had three projects. One that started off slow and then took off, which was my first supplement brand. One that took off like a rocket ship faster than we all thought, which is the yoga brand. And then.
This other one has been so far, very frustrating. I'm bringing this up because.
A third of us are probably going to fall into each category. A third of us are probably going to have rocket ship success. A third of us are probably going to start off slow and then grow over time. And a third of us are probably going to be scratching our heads. And this is a good opportunity. I'm a few steps ahead at this point. We've got almost 50 reviews to look to say, okay, what do we do with a project that's a bit of a head scratcher, that's slow? And the first thing that I'm looking at is conversions.
So what do you guys see when you look at this, at this listing? What jumps out at you? What does anything come up when you're looking at it?
I want to hear Jerry's opinion.
Because, Jerry, you're kind of the target market for this.
Oh, boy.
Yeah. Why the old guy?
Ouch.
No, no, no, no. What I mean is, I take fish oil. What I mean is, you live in Minnesota. It's winter right now. People take a fish oil often in winter months where there's not a lot of sun because it's. Because it optimizes brain function and you get the vitamins that you get when it's gloomy outside. Also, target market is usually over 35.
And it's often male. So you're. I mean, you are my target market, especially at this time of year. So if you're. If you're. If you were looking at this, does anything jump out at you as questionable?
Nothing jumps up. I'm looking at it right now, Ryan. Nothing really jumps out as questionable to me. I mean, I think it looks good, and I'm not really probably a great target market. I never use any of that stuff, but it's. Yeah.
Okay. Does anybody here actually. You? Somebody. Go ahead.
One thing I find interesting, what you were saying there at the beginning how, you know, up in Minnesota or Michigan and, you know, there's not a lot of light or whatever like that little bit. I had no idea that fish oil actually helps for that.
Really?
And I'm not seeing that on your copy here.
Okay.
Yeah, Like, I literally had no idea.
My comment would be similar. The only. The only reason I've ever heard of anyone taking fish oil is for their joints, like for running. And if I look at.
Yeah, that's what I.
If I look at your competitors, their product description reads almost very informative, like, fish oil helps support heart health. Natural ingredients for a healthy supplement. You know, it's kind of teaching you why you need it.
Kind of for yoga. People know why they want a yoga mat. It seems like maybe if you change it to more explaining to why they need the fish oil. Not even specifically yours, but why they need fish oil in general.
There's been a lot of discussion. My partner's name is Paul. He might be in Austin. He's going to try and make it down. We've had a lot of internal discussion about this because.
I'm a big advocate of. I write sales copy. You all know this. You all are on this call because you read some of my sales copy, right? So.
I'm more in line to have a more salesy.
More salesy approach to the listing, whereas Paul is not a salesperson. And he's of the opinion that people who come to Amazon who type in fish oil already know why they want fish oil. They want to see the features, not the benefits. So this is my copy right now. Paul really is pushing for.
His opinion. Is that saying that it's sourced in Norway and triple distilled for purity is more of a selling point than reduces joint pain and optimizes eye health. Now, this completely goes against everything that I know as a marketer, and so I'm not convinced yet. But based on the sales that we're seeing, I'm starting to scratch my head a bit and think he might have a point. But I'm not ready to admit defeat just yet.
Well, that's interesting.
Oh, sorry. Go ahead.
Yeah, I was just going to say my first impression, looking at it again from a marketer's perspective, is that it's almost trying to be all things to all men. You're hitting all those different categories across there from the label specifically, it's saying it can do this and this and this and this and this and this and this.
To me, it kind of lacks some thought. You're trying to be all Things to all men and you're not talking directly to anybody is my first impression.
Interesting. You mean picking a certain demographic or.
Benefit and pushing that, even a couple of them, but trying to hit the happiness, the heart, all those different things. I think the message, almost trying to be all.
Chris, put in some earbuds for me. First of all, hello.
You are echoing like the Grand Canyon.
Is it still echoing now?
You're good now.
I had the other window open, so that's why.
Okay, cool. Todd, keep going.
Oh, I think I was done. I just wanted to hear whether you thought there was something to that for.
The rest of you. Does that.
Would you agree or disagree?
Agree.
I would go with Paul on that one, Ryan.
Yeah, yeah, I would agree with that.
It's interesting.
I agree. It's almost like information overload.
Yeah, that's a.
That's really good feedback. And also, if we just took one or two benefits, like if we said joint pain and we just hammered the fact that this is the absolute best fish oil for joint pain, then the 40% of the market that's looking for that benefit specifically could come in and say, oh, well, I want this one. They're the best for joint pain.
Absolutely.
That's interesting. I would either go with joint pain or heart health, because those are the two biggest.
Well, I have a question. Do you think people may be looking for a joint supplement or whatever? No. Oh, fish oil. That's what I need. Do you think that's what they're typing in? Or do you think they're saying joint supplement or something like that? Because when I look at it, I'm saying fish oil. Well, I feel like maybe not so many people know, okay, fish oil. This is what it does. Maybe they're saying joint supplement. What do I get? And fish oil comes up. But I guess that was one thing I was kind of. I don't know if that's what you think, people.
Yeah.
If it was on Google, we'd be targeting joint supplement on Amazon and Amazon. People come to Amazon once they know what they want. So we're targeting specifically fish oil versus a joint supplement.
I know you're talking here for a reason.
I was going to chime in on your Fisher L thing here.
Yeah, please.
What Paul was saying is more right on with that market. I think the people that are into fish oil, they're really concerned about the source, how it's made.
And make sure there's no artificial ingredients or preservatives or anything like that. I think they already know a lot about fish Oil, and they want to find the best possible one.
Especially the purity, where it's sourced, how it's made.
Killing the wrong fish, that kind of stuff. I think that's really important to buyers of that product.
One thing I've been thinking about mentioning is I had somebody say somebody order it to leave a review for me. And I contacted them this week and was like, hey, will you leave a review for me? And they said, I'm not taking any fish oils or any fish right now because of the.
Of the. The fallout from. Forgive my international ignorance, the fallout from the nuclear explosion in Japan a couple years ago. And ours is sourced in Norway, so it's not affected by that.
And that's a feature that I didn't think that people were looking for. But once I told him that, he was like, oh, great, your stuff is awesome.
Oh, no kidding. Your stuff is sourced in Norway.
Yeah.
Because a few years ago when I actually started taking fish oil, I did read a lot in like, a muscle and fitness magazine that the best stuff is actually from Norway. So whenever I would go to, like, Kroger's, into their, you know, health section or whatever, like, that's the stuff I'd be looking for was, you know, Norwegian fish oil.
Yeah.
And so, I mean, well, it's freaking awesome, you know, that you're actually sourcing it from there. So what's up?
Congrats.
Do you take fish oil yourself?
I've got some in the fridge. I don't actually take it on a regular basis.
When you think of fish oil, what do you think of as the benefits?
I don't even know for sure. I should know this because it's kind of in the market that I deal with a lot. But I guess I don't know offhand what the big benefits of fish oil are other than okay.
Yeah, I should know it and I probably do know it. It's just not coming to mind.
That's fine. I appreciate this insight, guys, because this is.
This is a head scratcher for me. When I wrote this copy to me, I thought it was a slam dunk. I mean, I thought it was just. I mean, I always love my own copy.
But I knew it was better than everybody else in the market. And we're getting reviews, but we're not getting sales. And it's just. It's a real head scratcher. So I appreciate this feedback.
Yeah, I have a feeling if once you. Once you focus and target it and possibly add in the.
Norwegian factor in.
There.
I'm thinking I might turn around for you.
I think highlighting that the fishy taste is a good one too. You do have that in there. But that's one thing with fish oil. After burps from fish oil, that's just nasty.
Product really doesn't have that. Then that's a good selling point right there.
Okay, cool. Chris, how is your project going?
I think I'm right on the verge of it doing well. It's not really doing a whole lot, you know, get a trickle of sales here and there. But I'm still. I had that Facebook giveaway that I tried to give away 20 products and maybe 10 people have bought it so far.
Okay.
But I got maybe 8 reviews or so.
Last night. I had 3 sales into today. So I don't know if those are free ones still or if those are real sales yet. But I feel like I needed a big boost again of sales and reviews to really move into the buying position. Because right now I'm sitting at maybe anywhere from page three to six for most of my keywords.
Okay.
When did you take your first order?
It's been a little over two weeks, I think.
Okay. About two weeks. Being on page three is alright. It's pretty good. Are you in a fairly competitive market?
I think it's real competitive, yeah.
Okay. No, I'd say if you're in a competitive market, being between page three and five.
Is really good. Sean and I have sold 500 units of our product and we're in the middle of page three for our main keyword and we're just now getting onto page three. It took some hustling and I'd say if you're getting sales and you're buried that deep, that's a good, healthy sign for your market. That's great. So what do you think we can be doing in the next week or two weeks in order to get you that big point push, get you that surge of sales?
Right. I think I need more reviews. Of course. I think I have eight reviews, maybe seven seller feedbacks. So more people need to come through with those. I think from that giveaway they're probably just receiving the product now. So I don't know if I'll get any reviews from there. If I have to remind them again coming up pretty soon. But I tried the Amazon ads. I just ran it for like six days and then turned it off. Just ended yesterday. So I'm kind of waiting to see what the stats from that. It wasn't an overwhelming success. I think I made one sale according to them so far, but they said it Also can have like a four or five day delay before all the stats show up.
So.
One of the keywords that found through that they had the biggest click, the most clicks was when I wasn't tracking before. So that's one that I just found out that I'm on like the probably top of the third page on that one. So it's probably my best ranking keyword that I'm aware of. So I at least found more keywords I can go after.
The main keyword I was going after with the sales so far, that one still maybe ranks 50th position or so.
It seems like there's a number of them there like that 50, 60 range. So it seems like it's right on the verge of getting into a buyer position where people actually will see it. So I think I just need a big boost of sales again.
Did you hear the part of the call where we were going over Jesse's stuff and how we could be posting the product on forums and doing a giveaway? Did you hear that part?
Yep, got that. Also I was going to suggest too with that if you tried the main group there, Jesse, some people will post like a friends and family request. They'll contact me. If you are interested in a product in this area, you don't have to say what your product is.
Yes.
I did as a matter of fact get a couple sales from there as well. Maybe like two or three.
Yes.
I haven't tried that myself yet, but I just kind of completed that giveaway from the Facebook thing and waiting on results from that. I just resent an email yesterday to the people who hadn't purchased it yet from that group and got another couple of sales from that. There's still probably eight or so people that still haven't purchased their free product.
Yeah, I think posting to a forum where you can do a big giveaway would be beneficial for you. That'll certainly get you a big boost.
Forgive me, your product escapes me, but if you can find any blogs that you can do a guest post on or that you can do a giveaway on their site, huge, huge momentum. That could be a big surge of sales.
I was looking at some of the YouTube videos in that market and then maybe contacting some of them who've done video reviews and have them do another video review or on their blog or something like that.
My thoughts are thinking right now, look at people who are actually blogging about a topic and see if you can do a guest post. Either a guest post or just get them to do a Review or giveaway. We found we've been looking for health blogs that allow guest posts so that we can do a post that will go out to the audience but then link to our fish oil. Huge for SEO purposes and huge for a bump in sales purposes to get some momentum on this fish oil.
I think that was my next step. I did just launch the first press release, actually queued it up to the asm. I don't know if it's gone live yet or not, but did that and also did that promotion tool. So those are kind of, I think, waiting to be processed. So I'm hoping. I also got a backlinks campaign too from that one on one marketing that, that Zach had mentioned. So those are all in the wings there waiting to go live. So I'm hoping I get some results from those pretty quickly.
Great. Great. Well, you guys have two weeks to.
Implement all these things that we've talked about today.
But I must say, I am damn impressed. I am damn impressed.
Everyone who has product in stock has made sales. Every single one of us, Every single person in the group who has ordered their product has made sales. And the big concern of people joining was like, what if I order this product? I never make a sale, right?
Yeah.
And that has not been a problem for anybody. It might have been how do I get more sales, how do I get more reviews? But literally zero people in the group have had a problem making some sales. There's been just been a process of growing those sales. So high fives all around. I am damn impressed by the success of this group.
I am very, very pleased with.
The movement that everybody's taking. So high fives to everybody.
Awesome.
Awesome.
Well, unless anybody has any parting questions, I'll say Merry Christmas.
Oh, I guess. One more.
Yes, please.
You mentioned before earlier about setting a cap for your coupon code for say 25 units. Is that through Amazon or is that.
Just for that one site that's on Amazon itself?
I haven't seen that feature, that option.
Chris, that coupon area has not been friendly to you, has it?
It hasn't, no.
I actually had someone from that. Someone that responded to the free giveaway and was giving me a piece of mine because I had to. They were supposed to be paying for shipping. I could never get a free shipping coupon code. And so, yeah, that's interesting. Lesson learned, I guess.
Sean, you remember how to do how to cap it? I think it's just in the actual coupon area for each individual coupon. Correct.
I couldn't find that section oh, really?
Yeah.
I don't know if there is an option to cap it. We always just cut off the coupon code or at least for the yoga mats. I just shut it down once. I would keep an eye on it and then just shut it down.
Maybe you can only cap the number of orders per coupon. You can cap the number of uses per individual.
That you can do.
You can set it to the. They can only use it once. But that also means within that one use, they can still buy 100 units.
But they can only use the coupon once.
Right.
But 70% off coupon or something.
Well, do a dollar amount. Do a dollar amount off.
Right. And that's what I did for that offer. It was just a dollar off.
Maybe I'm wrong then. Sorry about that.
I thought there was a way.
You know what I'm assuming with the dollar off, say your product sells for $18 and you set the dollar off for $25. I'm assuming it can't go below the price. Right?
Yeah. Just. If it's an $18 product, do an $18 off coupon.
I mean, say if you like, you know, had raised your price or lowered your price at some time, say you're selling for 18, you drop it down to 15, but your coupon code is out there is still for 18. You know, that's not gonna. It'll just take it down to zero still. It won't do anything, I assume.
So they're not gonna take money.
Send them a $5 bill to lock your order.
That's funny.
Do you think that. One quick thing. Do you think that $18 off or whatever is bad for the. Or not bad, but, like, not as good for the rankings as if someone bought it normally.
It's not as powerful as if somebody bought it normally.
Okay.
I mean, it is still effective. Like, we've tested this. It definitely, definitely still is effective. It's just more effective if you give them the money. So the way we did it with the yoga mats was we originally were going to give everybody money and then have them buy through the keyword. And we got pushback from that because people were like, this is a scam. You want us to pay for it and then you'll pay us back. You're ripping us off. So we're like, fine. All we really want is the reviews anyway. So we'll just. Who cares if we don't get a bump? We just want the reviews to increase conversion. But we did see an improvement in rankings as a result of doing that giveaway. It may not have been perfect, it may not have been as much as if we had made everybody a buy. But what we really wanted was reviews. And so we gave away as many of them as we could and collected those reviews. And we did see an improvement in rankings as well.
Do you think there's an incremental boost?
So if you give away for free, you get this boost. If you give it away for 30% off, you get this much. Or if they buy 80%. You know what I mean? As far as your coupon codes, if you give them for 75% off, you get so much that if you buy it for 30% off, then it would get a bigger boost.
I have no idea. My only. Again, I'm only theorizing, and my only idea is that I think if someone has a coupon code, Amazon knows that they're buying because of the coupon, not because of the listing. So I think that any coupon code is going to take away some effect of.
The ranking power because it's very rare that somebody finds a listing then sees the coupon code and buys. Usually they'll see a coupon code, then they go to Amazon and order that specific product. My theory is that if there's any coupon code used at all, then Amazon calculates that as not as effective. Only theorizing. I have no data to back this up, but it doesn't matter because we have seen improvement. Even with people using coupon codes. It's just. It's better if they don't use one. Right.
I just, you know, from my free ones, I haven't seen a dramatic boost for that keyword, you know.
Well, you've only done like 10, right? What? You've only done like 10, right?
Well, there's all total. The free ones for friends and family too. I've probably done more closer to 20.
Okay.
More than that.
It's still a pretty small sample size. Yeah.
The real, like I've said this before, the real, like, the number one factor in where you rank is your conversion. That is the. It's from everything that we have that I've seen. I could be proven wrong on this, but from what I've tested, the number one. I think the reason we're shooting up the rankings for Yoga mat is because we're converting at 18%.
Which is ridiculous. Average on Amazon is like 9, 10 maybe, and good is 12 and up. So to be at 18 is awesome. That's why we're shooting up the rankings.
And I'm fairly convinced that that's the number one, the number one contributing factor.
The biggest movement I did see with mine was when I had three days in a row with four or five sales and then that boosted me the most. So I think consecutive sales or all at once, that's going to give me a big improvement.
Yeah, I think you're right.
One thing I'm suspicious about.
And I'm once again only theory. One thing I'm fairly suspicious about, I'm just starting to question is if with this fish oil we are working the reviews, I mean we are calling everybody and getting them to leave a review. My partner Paul has been vigilant about getting people to leave reviews and I'm actually starting to wonder if.
We have maybe too high of a percentage of people leaving reviews.
I was wondering that too, like you.
Might be buying them or something. They might think, yeah, yeah, we've only.
Sold like 150 units and we have 50 reviews. So I, I'm curious, and again, only theory, only speculating at this point to see if.
If Amazon may be actually thinking that we're gaming it and that's why they're pushing us down rather than up. But I have no way of knowing this. It's just.
It'S just interesting.
What if you laid off for a while on reviews about worrying about them, you know, and just see what happens? You might as well.
It's kind of, kind of the approach. We've also set and put a date on it. If like we haven't, if we're not seeing consistent sales by this date, we've got to roll out a different product and kind of stop giving it attention for a while. I'll be keeping you posted on this because this is interesting because probably a third of people who do this are going to experience this where they have a product, everything is lined up right and they're going, why is this not selling? So I'll keep you posted on this because.
My other projects have been successes, this one has been slow, but yet your review momentum is faster than all of them and it seems like we're doing all the right things. So I'll be keeping you guys posted.
Worries me too because I'm working on the same market with that product.
Oh yeah, like you mean mass market and vitamins. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, we'll definitely compare notes then. Alright guys, have a great Christmas. We'll resume after the new year. We'll probably have one call before we all get together in Austin. Man, it's right around the corner. Yeah, it is crazy. So I'm speaking the first day. I got confirmation that I'm speaking on Friday. Yeah. So we'll get together Thursday. I think we're gonna go to dinner Friday, and we'll have a big celebration and have a great time.
Sounds good.
All right, guys, thanks for coming. We'll see you after the New Year.
Merry Christmas, everybody.
Merry Christmas, everybody.
Bye, guys.
All right, see ya.
