How To Launch Your Amazon Business - Tribe Hangout 5/30/2015

That's a loud noise. Hey, tribe, Ryan Moran here with your neighborhood friendly Sean Coyne. I look like I'm on the dark side of the earth right now because half of me is light and half of me is dark. I'm probably going to close that window at some point.

I can close the window.

It's alright, Sean, we need you here. I'm expendable. We need Sean here. We have got quite the group on hand. We have. I just want to publicly congratulate Brian Krieger for quitting his job this week.

And Katherine Chung goes wild.

And what is this? Who's calling me right now? This is.

We're having a weirdest entire group is calling us. Kevin, Katherine.

I know.

They're not actually calling us, we're talking to them.

We're having the weirdest technical difficulties right now on Google Hangouts.

You know what's funny is Google Hangouts always has trouble and yet it is the best piece of technology we can find for this. That does not bode well for all of the other services, but we have quite the all star cast here. I also find it necessary to announce the tribe now has two moderators in Clement Wan and Bryant Krieger. So welcome aboard. They will be helping us keep things a little bit more on point in the tribe. So two gentlemen who have been very successful in their businesses. I'm very proud to call them moderators in the group. And thank you to all of you who left Q and A questions. You have obviously bored Sean over here. You're not bored, just very sleepy.

It made planning these hangouts much, much easier. So thank you so much for leaving that feedback. So the chat box is going nuts already. Any technical issues going on here?

Some people still see last week's video. People are saying Brian is awesome. Congratulations, Brian.

People are saying Brian's awesome. That's pretty much the consensus.

Someone else is saying it already started. Refresh your page.

5 second link. Turn it off. Turn it back on.

Okay, so I want to address a couple questions that came up this week and then I want to tell you about a little accidental experiment that happened this week. I know.

So a couple things. So a couple of you have this comes up every round. Have talked about proprietary information, have asked a question about keeping things a secret. And I don't believe in this idea of proprietary information. I don't believe in this idea of you have to keep what works a secret. I believe in speed of implementation and I believe in sticking to it to beat your customers. I believe in out marketing your customers. So we talk about a lot of things on these hangouts and it is a speed of implementation game. So if you're worried about things being in front of the group, you don't ever have to share anything in your business. But just because we do these on hangouts and they go to YouTube so that the rest of the tribe can find them, I'm not going to censor what we talk about. I just realized I'm using a Christmas coffee mug. I'm not going to censor what we talk about here on these hangouts just because some people find them outside of the group. It's just not my nature. My nature is to provide the best free possible and make sure that you get it. And sometimes some outside people find it. And that's just the consequence of the tools that we use. So I know that makes some of you unhappy, but. But that's how it's going to be. And I don't worry about hiding things proprietarily. I worry about speed of implementation. So I hope that answers the questions that came up this week about proprietary information. And I want to tell you about an experiment that happened this week actually on Pamela's business. Pamela, she texted me one day and she said, when did you edit my listing?

And I said, I didn't edit your listing. And she said, a bunch of my pictures are gone. That's kind of weird. So I checked some of my business listings and they were missing images too.

So I think Amazon here on my account, I don't know, but I think Amazon actually went in and edited some images.

But here's the crazy thing. Pamela's conversion rate skyrocketed.

This is totally relevant to where most of you are based on the questions that you asked in the Q and A about setting up your listing and starting to take sales. Now get this. The pictures that they removed were only the lowest quality images. They were the ones that she had done with her iPhone. They were the ones she sells. A cat scratcher. Are we all good? Are all our images there appears that way? Okay, so she had a couple photoshop images of things that she had taken with her iPhone and it had been edited out. Or there's one that a cat was using the cat scratcher and it was our highest clicked through image.

But it was a photoshopped image that got removed. The ones that stuck were the really high quality photos that we got from product photography service, productphotography.com. okay, so product photography.com is a service that we use for getting really high quality images. Of our products. And those were the only ones that stuck. And this conversion rate skyrocketed. And when I looked at it, I was like, pam, this listing looks so much better because all of the highest quality images were the only ones there now. So the product looked really high quality. It wasn't high quality mixed with a bunch of low quality images. It was just high quality stuff that's too much. And that meant that the product looked really, really good. Brian Krieger does a fantastic job of getting really, really good. Brian, are you cool sharing the service that you use or is that.

Yeah, well, actually.

I'm going to be.

Doing a webinar in a couple weeks how to create cool product images, which with your permission, we'll invite the tribe.

All right, cool. We'll wait for that.

But we use productphotography.com and we've had really good experiences with productphotography.com so I wanted to bring this up because I want you to keep this in mind as you're making your listing and getting ready for launch. As you are getting ready to launch your business, having your internal conversion rates really high comes down to like we talked about last week, it comes down to reviews, it comes down to photos, it comes down to copy. How do you make sure that those things are really good? I would say that. Whoa, what is this more technical stuff?

I would say that having really high quality photos is something that you can and should consider early in the process. Now, if it delays you, don't worry about it. Our first photos were taken on our iPhone. But if it's something that you can work in during the gap, meaning while your products are shipping, you've got 30 days or so to worry about.

Getting your listings right and writing your copy and getting your launch plan together.

Brian's waving at it, so.

One second, I was just raising my hand. I agree with you in the gap, but absolutely use production product. Don't use a prototype product in your product photography because you won't like the results.

Do you have any experience with that?

Oh, yeah. From the corporate job, the engineers are always pushing to use the prototype products and the images that you create, if you get them high res enough, and you should, you ought to get tied in on the features that you're trying to talk talk about in the images.

You really need your final production product. It can be a pilot production run, but it should be the right color, it should be the right texture, it should be the right product. Because if you use a prototype, you won't be happy with Results.

That's a good point. Thank you for bringing that up.

With all that said, I think you're getting high quality.

Images is worthwhile for those of you even if you're just starting, because it is a good way of setting you apart from your competition. So, Madhavi, we were talking last week about images and some people kind of pushing the line in what they're doing with their images. What was interesting is Pam had a bunch of her images removed, so she only ended up having three. But her conversion rate went way up, which is going to help with ranking, it's going to help with sales and cash flow. It's going to make everything a lot easier. Her BSR went way up, which was really interesting to see how much removing low quality images impacted conversion rates. So on the top of listing, of writing your listing, getting high quality product images and did we talk about lining up reviews last week? Did we talk about this process? No, no one's moving so.

We did not talk about it.

Before we go into talking about product launching and getting reviews, any of you have questions about images or your listings right now?

Oh, question was comments. No, we didn't.

I was just going to ask if.

You lost the spots for those images.

Or if they just turned them off.

They just removed the image that was in that spot so we could add more images. They just disappeared from what was there.

They were just vanished in thin air. But we were able to, we could edit them. But Pam was like, my sales are way up double what they usually are. So that was cool. So thank you Amazon for messing up our listing.

So do you guys have any questions about images, getting images ready your listings before we talk about reviews, product launches?

Okay.

Do you know if Amazon wants all nine images to have the white background? Do you think that might be a reason why they removed your pictures or is it just the main image?

You address this issue because we've done both.

I think Amazon would prefer the white background we've only had in Xenactor. We've only had problems with a non white background primary image. We've had Amazon pull our first image and let the second image roll up and the second image had a white background. We have pictures of models using our products as like the third or fourth and doesn't seem to be a problem. But I think Amazon's official stance is white background.

So to rephrase.

When we've had a non white background be our first image, they removed it when it has not been our first image. We've never had any problems. So Cam's photos.

Some of them wore white background and on my own business some of them were. All the ones that were removed were white background. So why they removed it, I do not know.

They do have rules about the minimum resolution. So if it didn't meet those, this.

Is news to me.

It didn't meet those, that might be.

Why they pulled them. Can you expound on that? Do you know what they are? Does anyone know what they are? That's news to me.

I think it's a thousand pixels.

Could have fooled me. I had no idea.

Any questions about.

Just so you all know, I'm not trying to be rude. I'm looking at the questions in the chat, on the phone because we're using my computer at the moment.

We're at my house using his computer.

We are.

It has lots of problems and that's Arnold's work.

What about using one of your photographs for your product packaging?

What exactly do you mean? How you using that photo? How for packaging?

Just to show your customers what your packaging looks like from both angles. Maybe having multiple shots on the one image so you can. Then maybe they can use that so they can get an idea of what your packaging looks like. Is that something you recommend?

That if you can have photos, high resolution, high quality photos of what it looks like in packaging and unpackaged, I would say that's best. So I would definitely recommend having pictures of it in. In the packaging.

Now let's talk about packaging for a second. Thank you, Dan for bringing that up because there are a lot of questions in the Facebook Q and A about that and I meant to address it and then Dan reminded me that I didn't. So packaging, in my opinion is a nice thing to have but not necessary for launch. There are people who disagree with me. I think it is one of those things that can delay action and I never want to delay action. So we will regularly push product to Amazon without having packaging and then once it starts to sell, go back and make packaging for it. There are people who think I am crazy for doing it this way or even recommending it this way because they say that packaging can play such a role in differentiating your product. So yes, in a perfect world you would have awesome packaging, awesome images, the Perfect listing and 50 reviews all lined up before things ever hit Amazon. In reality, those things are probably going to prevent you from taking sales which are much better than having things perfect. It is much better for you to just go get sales and to tweak the process later than delaying the process. I was Consulting with someone this week who was saying, how can I save a few hundred bucks on shipping? And I said, stop trying to save a few hundred bucks on shipping and just go pay the money to get it shipped and start making some darn sales. Make the money back.

I will pay for speed of implementation, and I will also sacrifice some sales to for speed of implementation. So I believe in going after sales as quickly as possible and then tweaking the process after that. So I have never got packaging all lined up before getting a product selling on Amazon because packaging can delay the process a bit. But yes, in a perfect world, you would have packaging, you would have images, everything perfect lined up. It is one of those things that if you can do ahead of launch, if you can get it ready, by all means, please do so. But it is not necessary for you to start moving forward. Shawn, have you ever looked into any services for packaging? There are some really good ones.

No, we've only used. And I just want to clarify too, when you're saying packaging, are you meaning ship the generic white label or ship with your label on it, but not fan fancy packaging?

I didn't understand.

When I say packaging, I mean outside of the like a box around your product.

But you're not recommending shipping, just the plain white label yoga mat with nothing identifying brand.

Right.

So I just want to be clear there. We're not saying don't label it. We're saying don't. If you look on Amazon, some people have really awesome packaging. Our yoga mats, it's nice, but it's not. I mean, it's just a label.

Yeah, we have a label that is wrapped around it that you do need. And that shouldn't take long.

That should take. I mean, you can get a designer to do that over the weekend. I wouldn't recommend shipping it without anything, without your brand name, because then you're. It's not going to work.

I mean, like a box around packaging and I totally agree with you.

Then I thought you were going crazy.

Okay.

No, we haven't. So our supplier for the yoga mats could do the packaging, but the price was just ridiculous.

What did it end up adding? The packaging was only like 60 cents.

But the shipping was thousands of dollars because it took up so much more space. Because we went from being able to jam a circle into now a big square and we could fit like 8 in a box instead of 11. So it increased the volume by a significant.

So it would have only made sense for us to do it had we been ordering like 10,000 units at a time time.

Right.

Okay, got it.

But the actual packaging wasn't. I mean it was just cardboard. I want to say it was like.

60 cents or so. Could we have got that to the states and had them package it in the states?

Yeah, if we had found a supplier or. A supplier is not the right word. A factory that could repackage the yoga mat.

First of all, if anybody has had experience doing this, please interrupt us or put it in the chat box if you're watching. Okay. Brian, your neighborhood friendly, Brian Krueger has experience with this.

Somewhere.

In a 23 year career of designing and launching products. I've dealt with packaging, yes.

Have you ever ordered from China and then have it packaged in the states?

Yes.

Would you tell us about that process?

So the company I work for actually has a partnership with a corrugate manufacturer. They happen to be in Atlanta. I'll be happy to share that resource with anybody. Others in the tribe have used them, but this company, well, when you spend $4 million a year on cardboard, you get their attention.

But it's exactly what you described there where you have a bulk product which may have some interim labeling. Whether it's that paper sleeve around it, shrink wrap, you bulk pack that, you bring it over to the US this particular supplier will do the box manufacturing and the packaging and ship it into Amazon for you if you want to do that.

The cool thing with that is you get the cost effective product out of China. You get really dense packaging in the container and you get beautiful looking boxes made in the US and you get that great first impression from the product for your product.

The yoga mat.

It may or may not make sense to put it in a box, but something smaller definitely for sure put it in a box. Put your insert card in there. This is actually something I'm working on right now with that same supplier.

That'S Lay flat Art. Beautiful four color box. But I'm adding a buck per unit by putting that box in there with that lead capture. But that's visual impression of a high end product and lead capture is the whole reason you put beautiful packaging.

Agreed, 100%. Now do you recall what it added per unit when you were shipping overseas to us and having us packaging?

It's going to depend on the physical size of the unit. The cost to manufacture a four color box in the US is about four times what it is in China or more for this product that I'm doing And it's a one pound bottle of, 16 ounce bottle of.

Well, it's in the beauty space. But it weighs a pound. It's adding a dollar per unit for me to put it in a box here in the US because even though my product's made in the US for the inventory that I have, I'm going to be boxing it myself.

Okay, so a dollar per unit is about what I. That's what I expect. That's what I expect to pay. For those of you who are thinking about adding packaging to your products, a dollar per unit is fairly reasonable. That's about what I expect. It might be a little bit less if you've got a really small product like a supplement, but $1, $1.50 is not.

Now, all of these details we just covered at some point would make my head explode. Especially when I was first getting started. That's why if it delays your action, if it delays getting it over to Amazon, don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. I had a friendly debate with my buddy Joey Coleman at one of the amazing selling machine events where I laid out exactly what you have to do in stage one of your business. And then he spoke and he said, I got all the respect in the world for Ryan, but one thing I'd add in is I would add high quality packaging to the first stage of your process. And I yelled out, you're wrong. And everybody laughed. And Joey and I have a nice relationship. But I think for the average person who's just getting started, that going through all that work is going to just confuse and delay the process. So I say slap a label on there, have really good copy, get good images, start making sales, then go back and say, okay, we're making sales now, even if it's five a day, I've got cash flow coming in. I don't have to worry about this not working because now I'm actually making some sales. What do I do now? If I want to be a perfectionist about it, that's when you perfect the process. Once you have launched, you're getting reviews, you are making sales, in my opinion.

Are you raising your hand.

Gal? Are you raising your hand or are you cooling yourself off there? No, just super hot here. Okay, cool. Any questions to move on to talk about launch planning, getting reviews?

Yes.

Just a quick question, not related to this, but what's the process of getting an insert into your box? Would that. I don't know how, what the process is. Would I have to have somebody ship it to the manufacturer and they put it in the box when they're doing it, or was it process that is.

Working that is whoever is doing your packaging is going to do that process for you. So their pricing, will you go to them for pricing on that? You go for them for design. Like you could design it, but you would hand it over to the person that's doing your packaging for that process and they'll do that along with it. Okay, thank you.

Can I ask a question? We're already talking about inserts. Go ahead.

Can you maybe share some strategies for inserts? What you guys putting in the inserts, what you are asking your customer, what call to action you put in it, and this kind of stuff.

I would say just like I feel that you shouldn't worry about packaging until you are making consistent sales. You shouldn't worry about inserts until you're making consistent sales. But inserts in your packaging, you can send them to a webpage, you can send them to a repeat buyer offer, you can send them to. I like to put in inserts for other products. And one quick tip. I think one of the most underutilized resources, like one of the most underutilized sources of traffic, is working out relationships with other people who have complementary products for yours and putting inserts in each other's packaging for your own products. I think it's one of the most underutilized. I don't know why people don't do it. So strategies for increasing sales. So any of those, I mean, having an insert is like having a free eyeball. Where do you want the eyeball to go? Do you want them to go to a website? Do you want them to go to.

See your other products? Do you want them to go to an opt in? Where do you want them to go? Do you want them to find you on Facebook? Do you want them to see your blog? Do you want them to download your podcast? What action do you want them to take? That's how you answer that question of what you do with inserts. And what some people say is, how do I monetize this? Can I rent this space? Can I charge 50 cents a unit to somebody else to advertise their product here? Or can I do a swap with somebody else.

To put my insert in theirs and they put their insert in mine? There's a lot of flexibility there, but those are all the areas that I would recommend you at least start the conversation.

Is there anything.

Of Amazon Terms of Service?

I didn't catch that.

Yeah, I hear myself twice as well.

So there is anything Amazon won't allow.

Like if out of Amazon Terms of service.

With this insert.

You know, I don't not that I am aware of. Because once you've opened the box, it's your product. So you own that space as far as I know. So one thing, actually, here's one. One thing you can't say is thank you for buying on Amazon.com.

To get a free additional product. Leave us a review. You violated two things there. One, you can't say Amazon.com you just can't say it because Amazon doesn't want to be liable for any marketing practices that you have once they get the product. That's why you don't get their email address. That's why you can't solicit your customers. You can't say thanks for buying on Amazon.com can't do that. And you cannot incentivize reviews. So you can't say, get the next bot, get the next unit for free. Email us at this Now. Are your competitors doing that? Yes. Can they get in trouble for that? Yes. So there are people who violate that, just like there are people who violate listing terms of service. I got.

Some insider information this week, but that is going to be majorly cracked down soon. So there are people who are breaking those terms of service. Those are not terms of service that you want to mess with, but it's simply incentivizing reviews in your packaging by saying, like, leave a review and we'll refund your purchase. People do that. And you can't say thanks for buying on Amazon.com you just can't reference Amazon.com in an insert. Does that make sense?

Cool. Absolutely. Thank you. Cool. Any other questions on packaging before we move on?

Cool. Anything interesting in the chat box?

Ashram Yoga says yo.

Probably not the best way to get the attention of the question you're asking.

Answer. Miyoga also says ppc.

I don't know the context of these questions.

I don't think it's an appropriate time to talk about PPC just yet.

Okay, well, we'll talk about that in the line here. Okay, cool. So.

Once. So let's recap what we've got up until this point. Picked your niche. You picked your three to five products. You've ordered your inventory from your supplier. You're continually getting new suppliers. You have listing strategies like, you know what you want your images to look like, you know what your listing needs to look like. You know how to get it over to Amazon. And based on your Q and A, most of you are either about to order inventory or you have ordered inventory. Thank you, Matt Davis, for that text. I agree, Sean and I Do look very handsome today. Yes, we do. Every day. Even Shawn looks so handsome.

Well, thanks, man. He is. You look handsome as well.

I'm going to put it right here. This is social proof right here. Matt Davis says it's backwards, but it says, you and Sean look so handsome.

That's what we call shows.

Matt Davis says it.

You know it's true. Matt Davis does not lie. So most of you don't know Matt Davis. Matt Davis and I did all of the calls together before we did it on Google hangouts back in the olden days two years ago. Still haven't met him. You not met Matt Davis? What? I do. You have not met Matt Davis. This is crazy. For all of you who are in the last round of the tribe, when we had our mastermind meeting in Vegas, it had been. I had been running my business for two years and I had not seen Matt Davis in that entire time. He's a very mysterious man. He lives in like Kansas or Canada or Minnesota or Indianapolis someplace. He's near Minneapolis or Texas. Oregon. Oregon. He lives nowhere and I hadn't seen him in two years. We had built our entire business together. And then he walked into Vegas room and I freaked out. I cried, took my pants off. It was crazy. So the last round is very familiar with who Matt Davis is. No one else knows what I'm talking about, so I'll shut up. So at this point, you have picked all your products. Most of you have said your product is either on its way to Amazon or it is at or it's about to be ordered. That's where most of you are. So where you need to be focusing right now is getting your listing dialed in, your images dialed in, and getting your launch plan ready. So let's move into that. Let's talk about preparing to take orders. He just sent it again. Or my phone buzzed again and said, he looks so handsome. Anyway.

Here'S what you need to have lined up. I have preached this over and over and over and over again. The three things you need to do in order to get your product selling once it's live on Amazon. Would anyone like to repeat them for me since I've said them a thousand times?

Reviews.

Reviews. What type of reviews?

Friends and family.

Yep. Line up at least 25 friends and family reviews.

Do a launch.

Do a launch. RALPH gets all kinds of brownie points today.

Now, what type of a launch? Ralph, how could you fulfill this criteria of doing a launch?

Either a Zonblast.

It could be a Zomblast. It could be through your Facebook page. It could be through an email list, it could be through a blogger list. Just dual launch to get product moving, greasing the wheels of Amazon's algorithm. And third.

Amazon.

Well, I think Ralph said it. Say it again, Ralph.

When do you have 25 reviews turned on? CBC.

Thank you, sir. Ralph has been watching me on YouTube. Yeah. So those are the three things. 25 reviews, do a launch, turn on Amazon, pay per click. That is how you get sales flowing. You don't have to do anything else but do those three things that will get sales moving. You can add stuff on top of that, but not until you've done those three things. You are wasting your time doing anything. If you don't have 25 to 50 reviews, if you don't have that many reviews, there's no amount of sales, there's no amount of promotion you could do that will get your product converting, you are toast. If you don't have at least 25 to 50 reviews, just do nothing else but get 25 to 50 reviews. Quick story in the third round of the tribe. No, maybe it was round two. There was an individual came in and he was like, I got my listing live. I've got advertisements going. I'm talking about it on Facebook. I'm building a list. I'm doing this, this and sales. I'm getting like a sale every other day. What should I do? And I said, your only assignment all week is to come back to this call with 15 reviews. Call your neighbor, call your dog, call your mom, whatever it takes. Go get 15 to 20 reviews. You have no other assignment. Do nothing else but call everyone you know to try your product and to leave honest feedback. Call your customers.

Do whatever it takes. Do not come back to this call without having 15 to 20 reviews. He came back the next week and he had done that and more. He had like 25 or 30 reviews. And I said, and how's it going? He's like doing about 10 to 15 sales a day. He's like, why are you not more excited right now? Because we just 20x'd your business with one assignment and then the next week it was like 20 to 25 sales a day. All because now his product converts. So any advertising we do will actually work because there's reviews. So that is insanely important. When your product hits, the first thing you got to do is to get as many reviews as possible. We used Facebook to do it. That was our strategy. We built up a Facebook following. We built up a following of about 5,000 people, launched to that group. And then we followed up with them for reviews and use that as a launch source. So reviews, then do a launch. When we started, we didn't have things like zomblast.com we had Facebook and we had building up our own list. Now, here's an important point. If your product is in a market that you are exposed in, meaning you have an affiliate blog, you have a list, you already have a Facebook following, by all means, please leverage that as a resource. By all means, please leverage that as a resource. So it's kind of like me, like, if I were to talk about. If I were to start a business talking about.

Hip hop dancing, I'm probably not going to talk to the tribe about would also be a deviation of my time and energy. But if I launch a business course, an investing course, how to get handsome course, anything that we talk about regularly on these calls, you better believe I'm going to use the tribe or my list or my podcast or my email list or speaking from stage to leverage that and to promote that. Because it's synergistic with my messaging or if I write a book and launch that or whatever it is. So if you have an audience, a business, a following, a blog, a website, anything that is in line with what you currently have, please, by all means, leverage that. We talked about this in the last round. The guy named Kirk made all the difference in the world that he went into a market that he already had exposure to and he leveraged his websites in that market to promote his new products. If you don't have exposure in your market, consider going to people who do have exposure. Have we ever done that? Have we ever leveraged people have done when? Oh, a really great blogger we had.

A lot of people on the tribe were using her.

Kelly.

No.

Cindy. Sarah, maybe. Sarah.

No.

Michaela.

We were close.

Sam was a blogger that actually got one of our yoga mats for free from our Facebook page. We didn't even ask her. Wrote up a killer review unboxing awesomeness on her blog, awesomeness. And then sent us a letter like, hey, is this okay? Like, yes, it's okay. And we hired her. So she was pushing on her blog and on our blog. It was great for her. She got more traffic. It was great for us. She really loved our products. Didn't have to do anything because she found us. But you could definitely. I don't know what the question was, but that's what happened.

Leveraging other people's audiences. Right?

So if you find someone that is passionate about the same Things that you are, then that would definitely be a great partnership.

My supplement company has done this. We've gone to bloggers in the health and fitness space and had them do a write up about our product. There's also a service called thomason.com. i personally never used Thomason.

There's some people who swear by it. There's people who swear by press releases too, please. Such a waste of time. But there's people who swear by that as a service.

Anybody who's got an audience, building an audience. I cannot stress enough how having a responsive audience is the nucleus for every business. Every business, having a responding audience. Some of the biggest mistakes people make in business is not turning their customers into a raving audience. But if you don't have an audience when you're starting, go or consider going to the people who do have an audience and working out an arrangement, a mutually beneficial arrangement to promote your products to that audience. Whether it's free product, free exposure, reciprocal promotions, whatever it is, leverage those audience. And that is a potential place for you to do a launch. So launches can be leveraging audiences, your own or somebody else's. Using a Facebook launch, building a list, or if you just want to skip all of it, run a zomblast from zomblast.com any of those things will fulfill. Doing a launch for your product. How big does your launch need to be, Shawn?

Depends.

No, that's not the answer.

I'm just saying, like, what do you. That's a. What do you mean?

Oh, it depends on. On the competition of your market. I mean, I would say I wouldn't do less than 100 regardless. But if you're trying to get into something competitive like yoga, it's gonna take more than 100. If you're trying to do something kind of super niche like, I don't know, look around and see what might work.

Waterproof baskets.

Yeah, waterproof baskets. 100 will probably get you to the top. In yoga, 100 is just going to move you up a couple pages. What do we do for the yoga towel? We did 300 one time and that took us to the top. Yeah, I think.

You could always do a blast of 100, see how it goes, and then in two weeks do a blast of 200. I wouldn't waste your time with less than 150. To that point, someone asked, could they use a Zonblast to get the reviews? That would be a very expensive way to get 25 reviews.

Say it again.

They want to know, can they use a Zonblast to get their first 25 reviews.

Do not depend on launch services to get reviews. Will you get reviews from them? Yes. But do not factor them into your overall review getting strategy.

There's actually some pretty good questions right now.

Let's go through them. I say a launch is as big, as big as you can afford. That's how big your launch needs to be.

I have a friend that is actually.

Helping out.

Six units on Sunday. Sunday.

He said six units.

Six units singular.

Six. Like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

I don't know if we just listing so well.

Like a really super niche product.

Not that much.

That's really interesting.

So Amazon's doing a lot of experiment like lot of changes their algorithm lately. I'm interested to see what comes out but that's actually very interesting. What else did that person do, Ralph? What else was he doing?

He only had about 50 views also.

So it was nothing like I expected.

I was planning on this is my confused face.

Did everything wrong. Still got 20 sales a day in a week.

Well good.

Good for you need to make more mistakes.

That's a testament to just moving as fast as possible because sometimes stuff like that happens. We did keep.

I actually want to talk about that for a second. But first Carmen, were you raising your hand earlier? Yes, yes, go ahead.

When you do a launch.

Do you run?

I recommend and I am question on this all the time. I still swear by doing them in as short a window as possible. Not spreading them out but putting them as quick as possible on one keyword and blasting it for that hour or whatever. I recommend doing it in a very short period of time.

Thank you. Thank you. Question for the more experienced.

Sorry Madhavi, you're cracking me up just because there's. I see two heads floating.

Hey guys. So for those of you who are more experienced. Keyword optimization. Sean, you as well. Sean, Brian, Ralph. Keyword optimization. This is something I just write copy and I try to get my keywords in there a few times. But let's talk about keyword optimization. What do those of you who are more experienced do as far as focusing on keyword optimization?

Nothing else other than what you're.

Now I don't know.

I don't know how much that affects.

The ranking but we put the main.

As possible.

And that was it.

Basically.

Some in the description.

Having as many keywords as possible in the back end having it sprinkled throughout your listing. Anything else that anybody's doing differently? One thing I do and I don't.

Embedding keywords into your images.

That I've heard.

I'm not sure.

Have you ever tested anything with this or any of your clients, tested any new strategies that worked differently than what we talked about?

The only thing that I do that hasn't been mentioned, I guess we do for Zen Active is we use the automatic pay per click and the manual pay per click to just kind of see what. It's not a super great estimate as to what organic keywords would be, but it's kind of just a high level look at. All right, well, are Yoga Mat is not converting for Xbox. We should probably not focus on Xbox. It is converting for long yoga mat. Maybe we should start doing a blast for long yoga mat. Or maybe we should incorporate that into our listing more. So there's not really. It's more of. I wouldn't even say it's an art. It's just kind of like certainly not a science. Just some extra information that you can scrape out of what Amazon thinks your product is related to with the automatic keywords because their algorithm will try and figure out what they think you're about and that's why they're advertising for those keywords which might give you some cool keywords that you hadn't thought of. It might be small ones, it might be big ones, but then we just do exactly what you talked about. Make sure it's in the keywords in the back end in the listing, sprinkled throughout. Definitely not keyword stuff in the description. People are actually going to read this so I wouldn't make it too crazy.

And then our approach for blasting was for the yoga mats. We started with some of the middle and pieces words like long yoga mat, thick yoga mat. And then as those ranked then we moved up to yoga mat.

Did you just call it a logarithm? A logarithm. A logarithm. The algorithm thinking words up. The logarithm algorithm.

So here's a question for discussion please.

And whatnot.

With given month.

I didn't hear the first part of it very well. Would you say that again?

Yeah, there's a heck of a.

That's what people say in the chat box. I wonder if it's on you.

Okay. Is that better?

Okay, so the question or the thought for discussion is you can look at keyword search volume with merchant words. It could be anywhere from 50,000 to. Some of the words I'm looking at are 1.5 million. It's going to take a heck of a lot of units to start ranking for million plus search Volume keywords. Sean, do you have any thoughts on number of units to rank? Because I have my own thoughts as to number of units to give away for something of modest volume, a couple hundred thousand or six or seven hundred thousand and frequency with which you should blast.

I have some thoughts, but we haven't. So for the yoga match, we haven't really used Zomblast. We just used our Facebook. So we didn't really get into the reoccurring blast, which I know have been really successful for a lot of my clients.

We used it some.

We used it strategically, but we used it. Sorry, but go on, go on.

Ryan used it and didn't tell me.

So the question was what volume? And I think the second question was how often is that correct?

Perfect. So what volume? For the longer keywords which were probably in that same volume that we were talking about, that middle range, I think we did 100 to 250. And that took us right to the top of page one for those keywords. Now that didn't drive crazy traffic. Not too many people are buying long yoga mats. Not too many people are buying thick yoga mats. But once you have five or six of those keywords where you're getting not too many people to buy, when you have a bunch of not too many people, it starts to add up. As far as the re accruck.

I.

Guess I would say I would look and see how long it's sticking. If we stuck at long yoga mat after one blast, I probably wouldn't blast it anymore unless it started to drop off. I would also make sure that Paperclip was turned up for that keyword to kind of keep it in the top ranking. So those are just my theories though.

Clement just posted in the chat box about the interview I did with Joe where Joe suggested that on a low competition it's up to 150 units, mid competition up to 250, and then a high competition is 250 to 400 and that is going up over time. That's kind of where it stands right now. I'd like to hear Brian's take on keyword.

Keyword density or on page optimization. Brian, I'm curious if you're doing anything different than what we talk about. Putting it in your headline, putting it a few times in your description, putting as many keywords as possible into the back end. Are you doing anything besides that or any of your clients doing it differently?

I've got multiple listings and one of them right now, the main one, has a fairly compact packed description. One of the Other ones has a real long keyword packed description and actually I'm seeing higher conversion rates on the shorter, tidier description.

Significantly better conversion rates and I actually saw increased conversion rates when I did some tweaks to the listing out of the Zon Optimize and getting some additional creative bullet points.

I'll share one thing that I did which didn't help me and I thought it would because I'm in the beauty space I thought which is highly brand sensitive and there's competitors. I put some copy into the product description which talked about use my product instead of this competitor and I actually mentioned the competitor's name in the product description trying to rank for their and I had the competitor's name in the back end as well. Stuffing the keywords in the back end and that actually I don't think helped me in my space. It actually worked against me because it kind of hurt conversion rate for people searching for the competitor's product. They were indeed looking for the competitors product product not looking for an alternative.

For the competitor's product.

I had a similar experience once when we first started our business. We found that we were getting a lot of sales through a keyword but that the people who bought from that keyword were not happy with the product. We had the same thing with the yoga mat where people were buying. One of our best converting keywords was hot yoga mat. But our product really wasn't built for hot yoga. So people.

Would use for hot yoga and be like this isn't what I wanted and we'd get negative reviews. People often weren't happy. So we stopped targeting that keyword. So ranking for every keyword is not always better. More strategic keywords for who it is that you're serving makes for a better listing, better offer.

Any questions on the launch process on anything regarding the back piece of stage one about launching. Any questions there? Yeah.

Hi, I'm Jeremy. By the way, we're about to run some Facebook ads. So I have only a little experience doing Facebook ads and I'm just wondering if the budget that I set will.

If I set a higher budget is that going to help with the number of impressions I get and or the cost per click?

A higher budget will obviously result in more impressions. It won't necessarily impact your cost per click. Better question I'd like to know is what is the purpose of those Facebook ads?

To do.

A giveaway essentially for reviews.

Okay.

To build our email list and we're giving away product for a couple bucks to get reviews.

Good. I would say that is the only appropriate way to use Facebook ads to promote an Amazon product, because I have never been able to, and I don't even know anybody who's been able to run Facebook traffic straight to an Amazon listing and have it be profitable. The numbers just don't make sense unless you have some sort of. I mean, you're an outlier if you're able to get that to work. So I. What did we. What did we spend? Click or. Well, when we launched, we just launched to our Facebook following. But to get reviews.

Through a Facebook giveaway, we've had really good success spending 50 to $150. Giving away 100 units or so ends up being about a dollar per unit on a giveaway as far as ad spend goes. So you don't need to be super crazy with it. But I do think it's a good launch strategy. And you get the email list kind of as a bonus. Do you need any help clarifying that process in order to get the maximum result?

No, we have it pretty much set up for. They're going to go to a squeeze page and then opt in. And we have that all set up. I think it was more. I was curious, should I.

Set the limit to how much I want to spend?

Is Facebook.

They want to take my money, basically. Is it gonna maximize the number of people, or is there sort of a cutoff where I say, okay, I'll spend $20 a day on this, and you know, it's not worth spending. It's not worth spending 30.

Got it. Okay, so it's not that precise, but Facebook is gonna spend your money. Amazon won't always spend your money. Facebook will find a way to spend your money. Okay, so go conservative and then inch up if you're concerned about, like, when I. When I run it, I don't care if I spend 200 bucks. So I put it 200 bucks. My 200 bucks is gone.

Yeah.

If I was gonna be more conservative with that cash, I would start low and then ramp up slowly. Okay. Okay, thanks.

Any other questions about launch process, getting reviews process?

Yeah, I have one.

Go ahead, Dan. Whoa, hold on.

It may have just frozen.

Can you hear me?

I'll keep talking. Anyway, it's for those people based outside the U.S. how do you recommend getting the first reviews?

Great question. And, man, I wish there was, like, a group of maybe 500 people or so who sold on Amazon and were familiar with. I just wish there was a group of people that would be willing to help. It's like a tribe of people that.

Were familiar with Amazon. I just, I wish, I wish that existed. So look, I mean you have Facebook, so target people in the US Target people in groups. Go to your mastermind, go to friends of your mastermind members. Go and post in the tribe. Post. I mean, just go to people who are in the US and use it as your nucleus. Unless you're not selling to the US if you're not selling to the US and it's a completely different conversation. But I think your question was, I'm selling to the U.S. how do I get us reviews? Give me a thumbs up if I'm on the right track here. Cool. So just go to Facebook, go to the tribe members, go to family members of tribe members, go to do your Facebook targeting in the US Go to Amazon review group, go to the companies that will syndicate your product out there and have a list of people that will have reviewers. Use Zonblast. Just use all of these services until you're at 25 to 50 and then continue the process.

Give me a thumbs up if that answers your question.

That's exactly what I thought.

And so I'm trying to work out actually how to maximize those 100 units without running out of stock and then having the reproductions of running out of stock. So it's purely trying to work out the best way that I can use those 100 units to maximize my outcome without any negatives, if that makes sense.

Yeah, make a list of people that you know are going to give you a review and then strategically give those units out to those people specifically.

That's how I would recommend you do it. Now, Elliot, you've been awfully quiet today. That means either you had a really wild Friday night or your brain is a churnin. So what's going on?

This is the interactive part of the show, Elliot.

Yeah, no waddle night. Busy, busy week.

Work. No, I'm just. Brain is churning.

Brain is churning.

I'm just waiting to place an inventory order this week.

But yeah, I think I'm okay with the launch process.

I've got some people I know in.

America and a few ideas of how I can get the initial 25 and go from there.

Cool. So I'm going to hold you accountable on that inventory order next week. Cool.

Cool, cool, cool. All right, any other questions on launch process?

Hey Ryan, you may.

Please.

On the getting reviews, don't forget about the Even if you have a small number of organic sales just by having your product out there on Amazon, don't forget your customer follow up sequence. Getting a Hold of those customers to review your product. People that you didn't have to give the product away to. They'll make good reviewers as well. Don't forget to follow up.

Having review systems made the biggest difference in setting my first business up against the competitors. By calling our customers, emailing our customers in cool and ethical ways. Just having some semblance of that made all the difference in the world for destroying our competitors. And now no one can touch us because our review systems are so dialed in. Let's take a quick look at the chat box. Make sure that everybody is good. So your assignments this week are plan outdoor launch plan, plan out your launch plan, have your launch plan ready, have your inventory ordered. Interesting question about verified versus non verified.

Yeah, we can talk about that. All right, so let's talk about verified versus unverified reviews. Do they matter? Not really.

It matters about that much.

Verified or better, you have less of a chance of them getting removed.

Does it really matter? No. In Amazon's eyes, not really.

And review systems review follow up. Having two to three emails in a follow up sequence using some sort of outside tool, using ah shoot, Waiverview. Is that the one? And what's the one we use? Feedback Genius. Feedback Genius, the ASM tool. Anything that integrates with email. Follow up to send 2 to 3 email follow ups reminding them to leave a review, asking them for their feedback, asking them for email feedback and then when it's positive, replying to it and saying thank you so much. Would you mind posting this as a public review.

Calling your customers if it's part of your system? That's what I mean by follow up sequence.

Karen. Yes, I called the customers. Meadow, best way to give away product.

All the ways we just talked about. Pick any of them.

Yes. Use a coupon code to do your giveaways so that comes through as a verified purchase. There is a video in the chat box. It's of me. Wow.

What is the best capital letters best way to get reviews after a percent discount launch? If using Facebook ads and clicking their email. What type of review conversion rate to expect from buyers? What do we get like 30%? Closer to 20? 20 to 30%. Somewhere between 1 and 100%.

Got a hustle.

20 to 30%. But the more aggressive you are, especially with coupon buyers. I mean sometimes just calling them out and saying some of you haven't left your review yet. You've got this as a coupon in exchange for review. Go leave a review already. I mean it's okay to say that as long as you're putting in your giveaway. We're doing this as a way to get reviews. Go watch a YouTube presentation I did on 12 months to 1 million. I talked about how to do this strategically where you say in exchange for getting your product for a dollar, you agree to leave a review within 60 days of purchase. You can then send them a follow that says here's how to leave a review. You can call it that. Here's how to leave a review or subject line. Your end of the bargain.

Tell them how to leave a review. So email follow ups after saying we're doing this to get reviews is probably what I would say. The capital words best way to get best way to get reviews.

How does do you do a block? Would you read that to me? Am I reading that wrong?

No, you're not reading it wrong.

How does do you do a blast?

How do you do a blast if the competitor product is sold directly by Amazon? The same way you would do a blast if the competitor was not sold by Amazon?

I don't follow.

So if we're selling toilet paper and Amazon sells Amazon brand toilet paper, how do you do a blast to account for that? You don't need to do anything different? I would think.

No. Unless I'm completely misunderstanding the question.

So Amazon sells Amazon.com branded USB cables, but I want to start selling USB cables. Do I need to do anything different when I do my blast?

I like your shirt. I like your shirt.

Any other questions on the yes, Dan, go ahead.

It's just about do discounted reviews. So you discounted reviews, do they carry the same weight as say a full price review.

Reviews? Yes. Sales to the algorithm. That much of a difference? Actually, it's actually gotten more now it's like that much of a difference. But as far as reviews, actually, if it's a dollar, they can be trepidatious. Trepidatious? Is that a word?

I have no idea. I was making up my own words before.

A logithem. So the threat you run, and this didn't used to be an issue, is if it was a dollar that came through as a full purchase and Amazon didn't care if it was free, then you had to disclose that it was a review or else it could get removed. I've only ever had a handful of reviews get removed, but now Amazon is getting a little slightly more aggressive. So if it's like a dollar or two dollars and they don't disclose they got it for a discount in exchange for review, they could remove it. If it's a Few bucks, like three to five dollars. I don't think Amazon factors that in as a discount. So as far as weight goes, no, they don't matter. Do they run the risk of being removed if they don't disclose that they came at a discount? Yes, you run the risk. What is the risk? Fairly low. So there's answer question, Dan.

Yeah. So you still Recommend Doing the $1.

Promotion or maybe increase it might be.

Well, I increased them slightly because now the launch services are so strong. I see that the launch processes are so strong now that we don't have to give them away for a dollar. We could sell them for $4 and we'll still give away 200 units. So I don't worry about it. I like to recoup a little bit of what we're spending, which is why we'll do that. So I don't do many launches at a dollar anymore. I'll do them more at 3, 4, 5 dollars. And that ensures that most of my reviews are going to stick anyway. But it's very, very rare that reviews end up getting removed. It's very rare.

Hey Ryan. Hey Ryan. Yes?

Did you ever test.

Oh yeah, that'll work. Our computer's dying so we're trying to save it. We're going to make it. Go ahead.

Ralph, did you have a test, did you have a test to remember that they're funded and seeing if convergence increased or rankings increased?

Would you say the first part of that one more time?

I believe in the last round you said one of your friends said that he removed all of the keywords that he was trying to rank for in the last listing in the front end and his ranking got better.

I remember this and I don't think anybody ever tested that beyond that.

So no, we never did test it. That was like one of those freak situations where somebody like Ralph says, I gave away six units in my ranking on page one for my listings. That was one of those things that was like, that doesn't really make sense. So no, we never tested that one.

Go ahead.

Clement question for you reviews. I've seen it said elsewhere that some people try to drive all their reviews, at least in the email follow up sequence to the seller feedback and then so if it's a bad review then they just get it removed and then if it's a good review then they try to convince them to copy it over into product feedback. Do you worry about that or.

It'S.

A great strategy for mitigating bad reviews. It's a really bad strategy for getting a high quantity of good, good reviews. So, yes, you'll filter out a lot of bad ones, but you'll also miss out on a whole lot of good ones. I don't do that process because I'm not afraid of getting a bad review. Somebody wants to leave a bad review. Great. Thanks for leaving your feedback. It'll help us improve the product for next time or at least improve our targeting for who we need to target for our ideal customer. I don't run that process. I think it is a good process for getting people engaged, getting people to at least leave some feedback because some people will be more apt to leave seller feedback than the hour of product review. But no, I don't worry about filtering out negative reviews.

Cool. All right, Tribe, thank you. And thank you for being engaged on the Q and A this week. It definitely helped us prepare what to talk about, so we'll continue doing that. I'll send out a summary email to all of you based on what we talked about today. If you have any questions midweek, post them in the Facebook group. Your assignment this week is to get caught up, if you haven't already. From here on out. We will be talking about testing and tweaking and growing your business from here. So thank you for your interaction today. Let me know your questions on next week's Q and A and we will talk to you next week. Thanks, everybody.