Make or Break Decisions for Amazon Sellers With Casey Gauss

I think that product selection is the biggest make or break decision when it comes to selling on Amazon. You have a budget of $2,000 and you get into Garcinia Cambogia on Amazon expecting to really do something. Generally you're sadly mistaken. And that's where we see a lot of people not have success because they don't understand the markets they're getting into.

You're listening to Freedom Fast lane presented by capitalism.com this is the show about building businesses and investing the Prof. So that you can live life on your terms. And now your host, the future owner of the Cleveland Indians, Ryan Daniel Moran.

Casey Goss, the smartest person that no one talks about, is a genius when it comes to creating success as an Amazon seller. His company, Viral Launch, has more data than anyone else in the same space and is able to track Amazon trends and profitable niche markets effectively for their users. In this episode of Freedom Fastlane, Kasey tells us how the competition is heating up and how tactics are changing every day. So if you're not willing to be a student of what's working on Amazon right now, then your success is going to take a hit. The two discuss the sophisticated strategies Amazon is bringing in to make it impossible for long term success for when you're cutting corners. They speculate about the future of Amazon and what it could mean for the sellers. So now listen in as Ryan Moran interviews Casey Goss.

Hey fastlaners, welcome back to Freedom Fastlane. Today I am back with probably the smartest person that no one talks about in our space, Casey Goss, the founder of Viral Launch. What's up, Casey?

Hey, Ryan, thanks so much for having me, man. I don't know if that's warranted, but I appreciate the kind words.

Well, here's the thing, man. I mean, you have more data than anybody else in our space. I think at this point, I mean, even more than other people who have similar services than you, you just are a mad genius at getting the data. So you obviously see what's going on in the market and I'm hearing more and more that Amazon sellers are struggling right now because we have fully consolidated, especially the people who don't follow our trainings and don't build a real brand that are just selling product. I see them struggling more and more with price wars and going into markets that they think are hot, that aren't really hot. So what are you seeing be the macro trend right now with all the data without all the emotion? What do you see going on?

Yeah, I mean, I'm definitely Seeing what you're seeing. The thing is, I guess it depends on who you're sampling or who you're asking, because there's still a lot of sellers that are absolutely killing it. I think that one demographic of sellers that we're seeing struggle are definitely the people that had success early on, and they think that that success is just going to continue to carry them forward. And they think the same tactics that they used to get to where they're at are going to continue to carry them forward. And so they hustle hard and then they start to go hang out on the beach, not pay attention so much. Things are going well and the next thing you know, like, they start to pay attention and they realize, hey, things aren't as easy as they were when we got started. Or, you know, I'm starting to lose market share. Yeah. And then they start having issues or, you know, another thing that people don't realize is, especially in these common markets, the grill brushes or a lot of the niches that people are paying attention to, competition is just heating up so much. Tactics are changing every day. It's getting more expensive. And so we're seeing so many people. It's really interesting. We're seeing so many people, you know, kind of bow out of selling on Amazon or they're starting to look for, okay, what's the next gold rush that I can be a part of? Simply because their old tactics aren't working and they're not really willing to be students of what's working on Amazon. Now, following Ryan Moran's training, people aren't nearly as interested in hustling anymore. It kind of sucks because they were off to a great start and they could have really used it to their advantage. They just didn't, I guess.

So you're seeing this frustration like I'm seeing, but you're also seeing what's working right now, and you're seeing people who are crushing it and doing extremely well. What's the difference between those two camps?

Being hungry is one of them, like, hungry for more, hungry to continue growing and realizing, you know, what got you to where you're at and then just doubling down on that. You know, Gary Vee talks about that all the time. Focus on your strengths, Double down on it, trickle down on it, because that's, you know, what got you here. We see so many people that get to the million dollar mark, maybe, maybe they're doing a couple million dollars a year, maybe more, and then they, you know, they get distracted by the next shiny object or something like that. And they don't really realize, you know, what got them there and what, what that is a lot of the time is just launching more products through this process of success. I am a fan of differentiating your income on your product line. So moving outside of Amazon once you're at this critical mark. Right. But what people forget is, okay, I get to a million and then they get really scared, oh my gosh, you know, Amazon is going to shut down my business and so they start focusing 80% of their time, pushing out to Shopify, pushing out to Facebook, whatever, and definitely people make that work. But what they forget is to have people on their team or have a process in place for people on their team to continue launching new products. That's how you got to a million dollars. You know how to build a million dollar business on Amazon. So double down on that, get to 2 million. How do you do that? You just launch more products on Amazon and then yeah, you or somebody on your team or a couple people on your team can then focus on building out to Shopify, building out to Facebook. But definitely, I think it's so easy to forget what got you there. You start focusing on what's next and in reality you already have the secret, you're just not employing it.

Yeah, I 100% agree with you. And I think kind of the pivot point is when you're using Amazon to get all of these customers and you continue to launch new products and get new front end customers and then you can develop that customer journey to buy other products and then get them involved on Facebook or Shopify and use that customer base as your source for everything else. I think that's how you grow beyond 10 million. Now, Casey, you see a lot of data, you see all the changes that are happening. What are you seeing from a strategy perspective, be effective for getting products off, off the ground and adding additional revenue to an existing business?

Yeah, the tactic hasn't changed too much. I mean really the heart of it, or if you really want to boil it down to a few points, I mean at the end of the day you have to have a great product at a great price. Really, please don't skimp. You can't cut corners. I mean that has not really changed or it's becoming more and more fact because as the standard of listing, quality of photo, quality of execution continues to increase, you have to rise above with it. So anyways, making sure you're spending plenty of time on your keyword research, on crafting your listing, you know, those things are so important. Having Great photos. More and more people are investing in great photography. Definitely make sure you're using lifestyle. Make sure you're using callouts in those photos to amplify the perception of your product and amplify the features so people are really aware of what's going on. Make sure you have great ebc. I mean, you really have to be doing everything well, which wasn't the case two years ago. And then from there, again, just being aggressive in your. The way that you drive traffic to your listing at the end of the day. What drives keyword ranking? Sales. Right. So whether you're running Facebook campaigns or you have an email list that you're able to leverage to promote a product, or you're using a service like viral launch to drive your keyword ranking, whatever it is, you have to be aggressive. You can't skimp on that. And so whether that's giving away 30 units because you're in a really niche market where sales volume isn't that high, or whether you're in a really aggressive market where you're giving away 100 units a day, you need to be aggressive for that market. And I don't think people realize how valuable their Amazon businesses are right now. So if you look at review quantity, generally, that's the barrier to entry, right? So as a function of time, reviews continue to build in terms of review quantity. So let's take Vitamin C serum as an example. Okay, so let's say everyone on page one has 1,000 reviews on average. Well, five years down the road, everybody's going to have 5,000 reviews, 10,000 reviews. And so I think review quantity is actually the currency that you need to be paying attention to. And so by not being aggressive in terms of getting ranking, in terms of maximizing sales as soon as possible, you're really not pouring into the value of your. Your brand. And so what happens is we see so many people that are spending a little bit of money here, a little bit of money there to try to get their sales to trickle up. And in reality, you know, looking at opportunity costs, they're missing out on so much. So the guys that are winning, the guys that are being aggressive and not cutting corners, you know, there's a lot of hacks, there's a lot of tactics that people are trying to coach. What we see is like, generally, again, these are the shiny objects that people get distracted by. So you get to that $2 million, $3 million, and you're like, I'm an expert. What's the latest hack that that's going to get me to the next market. And again, they forget really the answer is just launching more products through that process. You are, you've already developed. And so we see so many people doing these, these things that are a lot of the times black hat. And then they grow their sales incrementally. They grow to, you know, 10% here and there versus adding a whole nother product, a whole nother $50,000 a month, a whole nother $20,000 a month in terms of a product line. So hacks are always going to be popular, I think. But as much as you can really think about, how is this contributing to my bottom line? What is the 8020 here? What is the time cost to me, to my team? And is this going to help my bottom line more than launching another product through the process I already established?

Yeah, yeah, I once again completely agree. I'm waiting for you to say something that I don't agree with.

So from a rankings perspective, are you seeing an increase in the number of products that need to be given away or blasted? Are you just, are you seeing anything change in terms of the actual process for getting that product off the ground?

So far, no. And again, this is where data and kind of like market perspective really helps us out. So, you know, there's this common myth right now that's spreading across Amazon or in the Amazon seller communities that, you know, Amazon is taking into account the purchase price. Right. So if someone buys my product for 90% off or a dollar, let's just say I get significantly less ranking power than when they buy at full price. So what people are doing is they've put together, I don't want to get into it because I don't want people to do it. They're doing black hat tactics to drive sales at full price. And so I understand the logic. Yes, it would make sense for Amazon to more heavily weight in terms of ranking full price purchases. The problem is that the data just doesn't line up with that. And so a really quick, easy example is again, let's say I'm selling fish oil and it's selling 100 units a day organically on page one. So if we're running a promotion through that keyword fish oil, if we're running a promotion, we're going to run that promotion through the keyword fish oil at 100 units a day. So but then the logic would say that or what, what this myth is is that, no, that wouldn't work because, you know, these guys on page one are seeing 100 full price sales and they're ranking page one and your promotion is at 90% off or a dollar. So we should be getting some fraction of the ranking power. So we shouldn't be able to rank. But again, you know, we are to boil it down, that would mean that our promotions have significantly less weight. If that is true, and it's just not true, the way that we run promotions is been working the same as it did two years ago. Okay. I will say that Amazon is more heavily weighting the word that the sale is driven through. So if someone goes and buys my product after searching fish oil, I'm getting ranking for fish oil. And before we would see around 75% of other keywords that we're tracking. So for every promotion we're tracking 10 keywords on average. These are keywords that we find in the title and the bullets. So we would generally find about 75% of those keywords, hit page one, page two, or see some kind of significant boost in ranking. Well, now we're seeing about 35% of those keywords move. So this isn't the targeted keyword. This is as an example, let's say we run a promotion for fish oil. This is like best fish oil, omega 3, fish oil supplement those kinds of terms, we're seeing only about 30% of those keywords move. So it's definitely meaning if you want to blanket the search results, you're going to have to run more promotions. But in terms of the actual targeted keyword, in this example, fish oil, we're still giving away just as many units as we would have in the past and it's still just as effective. Do I think this will last forever? Probably not. So we definitely have plans for all these, you know, different contingencies, but it's working right now. That's why I think you should take as much advantage of it as possible. Obviously I'm biased. You know, I'm not biased. You can use whatever service you want, drive whatever kind of traffic you want. But I do think it'll change. But right now, no, it's still working, you know, really well. As an example, a case study is this guy came to us, he's doing, I believe it was 400k a month in sales, but a lot of his products weren't ranking. And so he spent a month running viral launch on a bunch of his products and within 30 days that next month he did 650k. So pretty significant month to month increase just because he wasn't ranking. Just ran some product promotions to increase organic visibility and boom, there goes sales.

So you mentioned that the review velocity, we all know that that doesn't really necessarily matter for ranking, but it'll matter for conversion rate, which increases sales, which increases ranking. So are you seeing any interesting strategies to up the review velocity as more and more people already have a thousand reviews on products?

You know, I'd really like to encourage people not to go the black hat route. I mean, we've recently been seeing people that use the friends and family approach being suspended or yeah, largely being suspended and getting policy violations. So please don't use that approach. I think that's dead and gone. You know, Amazon is definitely increasing their technology around finding fraudulent reviews. So you know, if you're using a black hat tactic and it's working now, you know, don't bank on it working a month from now or six months from now, you know, you know, really at the end of the day, I think that you're a huge advocate of this and really it's just building the customer experience, right? So making sure that that customer is having the best experience possible with you, which naturally incentivizes them to say something positive about you. But when you use that email follow up sequence to ask them for a review or hint at leaving a review after your second or third email of, you know, really boosting that customer experience, really, that's, that's where we're seeing the best results from. A lot of people use product inserts. We're, we're seeing really good results from that. I think that that's a pretty gray line when it comes to Amazon's terms of service. So I don't heavily suggest or endorse that method. Have I ever seen anybody get in trouble or heard of anybody getting in trouble for it? No, not at all. So you know, if you're willing, again, please don't say that this was Casey's suggestion, but I'm definitely seeing people have success around again, improving the customer experience through hey I bought you buy pre workout or protein or something from somebody and then oh for a free shaker bottle or highly discounted shaker bottle or something. Visit this link and then that link leads you're actually giving them a free shaker bottle. Maybe you're having them pay for shipping, but then you're in some way encouraging them to leave a review. Please don't bribe them to leave a review. Please make sure you're following terms of service because reviews are not something to mess around with. But those two methods, email follow ups, cart inserts or messaging on the packaging are really the two most effective ways that driving reviews right now.

Beautiful.

In this part of the interview, Casey explains how the new viral launch tool, Market Intelligence, gives Amazon sellers the comprehensive data to be able to get ahead of the curve and make the best sourcing decisions possible.

Now, I know that at viral launch, you've put a lot of effort into the actual product selection process at this point, which is a lot of people's biggest hangup, where they're trying to figure out basically what's a good product to sell or what's the next product that I'm gonna release. In that line, would you talk a little bit about kind of the breakthroughs you've had and what you've developed over on that side of the fence?

Yeah, yeah. So I will definitely say that probably the biggest tip to what is working right now is finding the niches. Like so many people still ask two things. One, they're still asking us, you know, are there any niches left? Are there any good markets to get into? Or has everybody found everything? The answer is absolutely not. There's still so much opportunity there when it comes to Amazon for a little bit. You know, I was wondering because we. So the second thing is that we still see so many brand new grill brushes, so many brand new Garcinia cambogias, like, it just blows my mind. But anyways, there's still so many untapped markets and the opportunity is incredible. The opportunity for brand new products, right, like fidget spinners right before everybody else is selling them is an absolutely killer market. Same with solar eclipse glasses, stuff like that, hopping on trends. As long as you're ahead of the curve, that's awesome. But yeah, anyways, I think that product selection is the biggest make or break decision when it comes to selling on Amazon. You know, if you get into, you have a budget of $2,000 and you get into Garcinia cambogia on Amazon expecting to really do something, generally you're sadly mistaken. And that's where we see a lot of people not have success, is they don't understand the markets are getting into. And so with that, you know, we're, we're talking earlier about this new tool that we, we developed called market intelligence, which is, you know, we're biased, obviously the most sophisticated, you know, product research tool when it comes to validating ideas and really a market for Amazon sellers. I mean, we're, you know, we're seeing so many sellers have success, but on the flip side, we're seeing so many people not have success because they're Getting into markets, like I said, they don't have the budget for or, you know, it doesn't fit their personality or their team makeup or they're just not making good decisions when sourcing that product. So anyways, what we've come up with with market intelligence, the main features are one, just the amount of data that we provide. So we're tracking data on, you know, million tens of millions of products. Last I knew is 18 million products daily we're tracking. And so what we do with this kind of data is we're showing you, you know, when we provide a sales estimate, we're not just looking at the BSR right now, we're looking at historical bsr because we all know bestseller rank is changing hour to hour, day to day, week to week. So if you go look at a teapot on Saturday morning, it looks a lot more popular than if you look at a teapot on Tuesday night or Wednesday night or something like that. Because people aren't buying as many teapots on a Wednesday night as they are Saturday morning when they're having their tea. So we're trying to take into account all these different fluctuations. And so we're, we're averaging sales per day and then giving you that sales estimate over the last 30 days by, by combining all that, your daily sales, and you can actually go in there, you can see how sales are trending anyway, so, so sales estimate, most accurate sales estimates. Again, I'm biased, but that was our focus. Two is showing market trends, right? So if you go look, here's a great example. Like, I didn't know this. So vitamin C serum is still a popular product, but if you just go look at a vitamin C serum right now, looks like it's selling great. But if you look at the market as a whole, actually you'll see sales are down, I think like 30% year over year. And so you get into a market thinking you're going to sell, okay, maybe a thousand units a month over the next year of vitamin C serum. Well, in reality, as if the market continues to trend the way it is, you're going to be selling 700 units by the end of this year. And then by the end of next year, who knows, you know, where, where you'll be. And so really what we're trying to do is paint this really comprehensive picture for sellers. So you can see, wow, price is currently at $20 a unit, but it was at 40 three months ago. So now, you know, maybe It'll be at $10 in the next three months. So I should not get into this market. This is a bad idea. So yes, we're showing all kinds of things. We're showing what your competitors review rates are. So you can see, wow, these guys are doing some black hat stuff when it comes to reviews. Maybe I don't want to enter the market. Or you can see, hey, I'm only getting half a percent review rate while all my competitors are seeing 3% review rate, 5% review rate. I better tweak my email follow up sequence or whatever. There's so many different stats that you won't find anywhere else in just the comprehensive picture we're trying to paint for you. We'll also show you, hey, sales distribution across this market is really poor. There's two guys that are owning sales for this market. You should not get into it because it's unlikely you'll succeed or whatever. So really, especially for sellers that don't have the experience, really trying to paint this really broad view of hey, this is what you should expect when you're getting into the market. Here's how many units you're going to have to give away daily if you want to rank page one, you know, just all kinds of stuff. And really again, the intention is so that you'll make better sourcing decisions. When you go search fish oil, we're like, hey, that's a two star product idea. Don't get into that market. You won't get into that market. But if you go find this great niche and we're like, hey, this is a four star or five star, then you're like, wow, you know, this is worth looking into more. And then you can go, you know, have the confidence when you're looking through the stats at hey, actually this is a good fit for me. Water Launch also thinks it is, you know, I think I'm going to jump in or whatever.

So when you are using this word niche, how are you determining what you consider to be one of the best niches to go into? And by this I mean the way I determine it is I'm looking at the person who's making the buying decisions and can I identify at least five products that the person who buys that product would also buy? How is from a data perspective, how are you determining what makes a good niche?

Yeah, I don't know if I have the emotional intelligence to make those decisions that you are. So I commend you for that. Really. I like numbers, I like to be able to break everything down. Right. So really the algorithm in my mind starts at what is so we call it the ROI ratio. So what is the sales to review ratio? Again? Generally considering that the barrier to entry in a market is review quantity. You know, as an example, if Everybody on page one for vitamin C serum had 10,000 reviews, it'd be pretty hard to break into that market. If you only have 100 reviews, a customer comes and they search vitamin C serum, they see you only have 100 reviews, they're going to be like, well, you know, why does this guy only have 100 reviews? It must not be as good as the guys that have 10,000 or 30,000, whatever. So anyways, generally the barrier to entry is review quantity, average review quantity. And so then the upside, what is the potential in this market is generally sales quantity for that month. So what we do is we're looking at, you know, how many sales can I drive versus what is the work to get there? So as a quick example, let's say there's a market where in order to sell a thousand units, you have to have a thousand reviews. That's a sales to review ratio of 1000 divided by 1000 versus a market where to sell a thousand units you only need 100 reviews on average. Well, that's a sales review ratio of 10. So that in my mind, if I can go and compute average sales to review ratio for a particular market and it's between 2 and 3 or actually, you know, above 2 to 3. If it's above 5, that's awesome. If it's above 10 on average, that's incredible. I will definitely want to look into this market where, okay, let's say sales review ratio is great, then we'll look at what is the margin per unit, what is total review quantity? Because maybe sales review ratio is great, but average review quantity is 5,000. Well, that's going to take me years and years to catch up. So that's too difficult for me. Basically depending on what level of seller you are. If you can find a niche where on average the reviews are 100 to 500 and the sales to review ratio is 5 to 10 on average, you've probably found yourself a great niche. You obviously need to look at other things like sales distribution across the market. Is there a couple sellers that are dominating? Are there a couple name brands that you will have difficulty competing on? You know, there's a million different factors. The main one in my mind is sales review ratio. And so the things that you can't compute are the things that you're talking about, right? Like, you know, does everybody have insane, like just amazing images Amazing keyword structure of their listing and they're doing a great job, like building that story and brand building. Okay, those are things that I can't quantify, so I can't compute that. But those are things that you should be making judgments on when you're looking into the market specifically. But when I'm giving you a star rating, I'm definitely leveraging all the quantifiable metrics in computing from there. And that's like your heading, right? Like, oh, yeah, this is a good market worth considering. Or hey, the numbers don't line up or don't make sense here, probably shouldn't consider it.

Yeah. For the beginner who is fresh into this market, that is immensely valuable to be able to point in the direction what type of products or niches are going to do. Well right now if you're not super passionate about something or you don't have an audience in a specific category. And it seems to me like the process now is you'd use the Market Intelligence tool to go find what products to release or what markets to get into, and then you're going to release the launching tools and everything else that helps you rank in order to get the business to where it needs to be quickly. Is that the right order of operations?

Yep, exactly.

Yeah, it makes total sense to me. But my question, I guess, is, are you actually seeing markets that are still open? When you're using the Market Intelligence tool, are you actually still able to identify markets that don't have big players in them, that don't have clear winners, that are still wide open for the taking for new businesses?

Oh, so you're wanting to say, hey, show me markets where there's a ton of opportunity go, and then we suggest the markets to you.

Well, what I'm asking is, by using the tool, are you still able to identify some of those wins? Wide open spaces? Because I hear a lot of people complaining, or worrying is a better word. Am I still going to be able to break into any market at this point because there's so much activity on Amazon? I say yes, because I'm building brands, not just selling products. So I can always carve out a space in any market. But to the person who just wants to see data of what markets are open, can they see that or are they pointed in those directions?

No. So we don't point them in directions. We don't suggest, like, hey, look into this or look into that. We actually have a tool coming out really soon that will kind of help do that. My fear is saying, like, hey, this is a hot product or this is a hot market. Because what happens is, okay, now a thousand people all are looking at the same market and then we create another garcinia cambogia or something like that.

So let me put it a little bit differently. You mentioned, you mentioned sales per review being an indicator of, of a really strong market. And you said that if anything is over five, that's really, really good. Three to five is kind of a cool sweet spot. Are you still seeing those opportunities?

Oh, okay. Sorry man, I wasn't understanding. Oh yeah, dude, there's plenty. There's so many of those opportunities. Seeing tons and tons of those markets. Really, the question is how can you come up with those ideas? Or you really have to try to be creative to come up with those ideas.

Let me see if I have the numbers right. So you're saying that the sweet spot is like 2 to 5 sales per review. So if something has 50 reviews or 100 reviews and that's doing 200 sales a day, that sounds amazing to me. It would sound amazing to anybody. You're saying that those markets still exist. So what would you suggest for someone who was still looking for the next big product to add to their line or to start a business, how would you recommend that they start thinking about new product ideas so they can run them through market intelligence, get that data and then use the other tools at viral launch to launch their business?

Yeah, one, we'll be coming out with a tool hopefully to help you there, but not directly to.

Just do everything. Right. So like try everything. Even a lot of it is like the things that you wouldn't expect. Right? So like as an example, I don't want to give anybody's products away. So like as an example, it's like everybody's looking at the drones, right? But like what accessories come with drones that people still need but maybe are not top of mind. Right. So definitely thinking of like the ancillary products or the supporting products to the main products. I think that's. Those are generally great markets to get into. Markets where people buy but they don't really think about leaving reviews. Right. Like ponytail holders. Well, a ponytail holder is a ponytail holder, so I'm not going to expect it to be bad or good. So I'm not really thinking about leaving a review. I think walking around your local stores, especially mom and pop shops, can definitely help to spur ideas. Walking around Walmart, walking around Meijer Market intelligence. We have a web app so you can use it mobily and just type in your ideas. See, you know, see what's going on in the market. Yeah, but really, again, we're incentivized to not give ideas or not give very specific routes of finding products. Because what happens is it's group think and everybody does the exact same thing and comes to the exact same solution and then everyone's sourcing the same thing, selling the same thing and it's instantly not a good market to get into.

Oh yeah, but I didn't realize you guys had had the mobile app so literally like you're walking around Walmart and you could be saying, oh, this big company is doing it. I wonder if there's a market for it on Amazon and get that data immediately and decide if you want to go into that market. That's pretty slick.

We also have, I think the first Amazon seller tool for the Alexa. It's more of a gimmick than anything. But you can say Alexa open market intelligence and then it'll be like astronaut online. It's pretty cool. But yeah, and then you can search any market and we'll give you the stats right there.

So, Casey, we have the ability now to identify if something is a winning product. We already know that we have what we need in order to be able to blast that to the top of Amazon search engine. So we really, we don't even need to be creative. We just need to be able to put in the work to identify the products and get them up and selling. From your perspective, what do you think is coming next? And I mean this as a, as a twofer, I mean, what do you think is coming next in terms of trends, in terms of markets that are emerging or what you're kind of tracking what's interesting to you. And I also want to know what you think is coming next in terms of Amazon, where they're going with the acquisition of Whole Foods, with Alexa growth, what are you excited about or seeing in both markets and the total Amazon market?

Awesome. So one, right now we're really excited about international markets. So we see Amazon putting more and more resources towards growing their international marketplaces. And I think that that should be a signal to third party sellers that you need to be in those markets growing alongside Amazon. So, you know, if you miss the 2013, 14, early 2015 US market wave, right, where you got to ride the wave of Amazon popularity and you got to get in before everybody else got in and leverage that and leverage the function of reviews increasing with time. Now is your opportunity to do that in these other markets as Amazon continues to really push themselves Right. And so across, I believe just Amazon, eu, including UK market size is the exact same as in the US and so but the nice thing is there's a lot less competition. So much easier to rank, to differentiate yourself. Differentiate is as simple as instead of having a translator translate your listing, have someone that is domestic write it from scratch. Right. You're going to do such a better job. And so anyways, I really, really suggest people get over there because again, you get to ride that wave up. Right now, everyone for vitamin C serum, let's just say has a hundred reviews. Yeah. Three years down the road, everybody on page one in these other markets will have 3,000 reviews. So get in in the market now, ride that wave of popularity. You don't have to come up with a brand new product or anything like that. You already have the product, you already have the branding, all of that. Now you just need to go and do the little bit of work to get it into these other markets. Definitely worth it. I do think that we're going to see more and more sophisticated. I think it's inevitable. Right. Like this is what people would classify as a cottage industry where basically it takes a while for bigger players or people with bigger budgets to start paying attention to the fact. And so I think that Amazon dominance will continue, but I think that the strategies of having success within Amazon will continue to mature. Right. So I think that you are going to have to work hard. You know, you can't just sit back and expect the same amount of success without paying attention to the new tactics. Just like the people that got in in 2014, 2013 are expecting now to happen now. And it's not the same is going to be true. And so I think that the rate of innovation within Amazon and success strategies within Amazon is going to continue to increase rapidly. And so I think that you really need to be on top of your game following Ryan Moran. Ryan, tell us what to do. Ryan's going to be there with all the tactics. I think that's super important. And I think it's going to continue. Definitely get brand registered. I mean Amazon is just continuing and continuing to come out with new features like, okay, the earlier reviewer program, Amazon stores, headline search ads, EBC showing without having to click into the description video is about to hit for third party sellers. It's already in beta for some people. So definitely spend the money and the time getting trademark because Amazon is continuing to invest in brand registry. Like definitely get in there. I think that's really important. With the acquisition of Whole Foods, I'm not really sure what that means for third party sellers. I'm also not exactly sure what Alexa means for third party sellers. I think that Amazon, you know, here's the thing. Another reason why, so a couple of things. Another reason why you need to be investing more and more in your Amazon brand or brands is because at some point Amazon is going to get into at least to a degree or portion of the market doing a lot more, I don't know, kind of like, I don't know the term for it, but like preemptive buying for you. Right? So like already for their Amazon prime wardrobe, I think they're testing this out in so much as you pick 5 items you like of the items you don't like, send them back, we're not going to charge you any more for it. And so I think these things are going to happen. They see, oh, you buy batteries every 30 days. Well, hey, you just ordered this teapot. We're going to also send you those batteries you normally get. If you keep them, get 15% off. If not, just send them back, we're not going to charge you. And so the scary part there is at that point Amazon, if you've not already bought those batteries or, you know, so with that, the easy thing is let's say you always buy Energizer. Well, Amazon's like, well, hey, you know, these batteries actually have better reviews and we'll give you a discount if you keep them. They just happen to be Amazon Basics brand. You know that that's really scary for the third party seller because at that point, let's say a competitor has more reviews than you or a better rating or lower price or I don't know, something like that. Well, Amazon is now making the decision for the sellers as to what product they're including in their preemptive selling or I don't know what to call it, but in what they're sending you, again, this is kind of like some theory, right? But anyways, those are things that I'm starting to see and I think that we see the precursors now. But I guess I got on a little bit of a rabbit trail. But I really think that I want to write kind of an in depth blog post about this. But I definitely, definitely think that something is going to change Amazon's review system. I think it has to. So the problem is that with review quantity right now, it creates stale markets. It doesn't allow new brands to come in, even if they're significantly better. Take vitamin C serum as an example. Let's Say Everybody on page one right now has 3,000 reviews on average. Well, again, three years down the road, let's say everybody has 10,000 reviews. Well, if you have a brand new vitamin C serum and your serum is 10 times better because you have the secret formula and the price is just as great, you know all these things, it's very difficult for you to break into the market because oh, you only have 100 reviews and everybody else has 10,000. Wow. It must not be as good. I'm not as interested in trying it out. So I think that it really creates stale markets. And so I think there's going to have to be some systemic change to the review system that allows for new products to come into the market and be successful. Because you know, at that point people are making judgments based on reviews that were left 10 years ago or something. Right. That may not even be relevant to the product as it is in its current.

That actually makes total sense. I have never thought of that before. Here's what I think is going to happen. I think that the acquisition of Whole Foods points to a much bigger trend of Amazon acquiring other distribution channels. And I think that the, the, what did you call it? Preemptive purchase. I think that is going to, that will continue as I can see them starting to do buyers clubs. And what I think is going to happen is that as people win in Amazon, you will be able to launch a product. You'll use viral launch to get it exposure. When Amazon sees that its ranking has reviews and that people are repeat purchasing, I think you're going to be able to see that in retail stores. Within six to 12 months of it launching, Amazon's gonna say, hey, this product's flying off the shelves. We have this distribution center, let's test it in Austin, Texas. Let's put it into our flagship store at Whole Foods. And I think you're going to see more distribution for these new brands that are launching right now that find out about you or find out about me, they create a business and they're gonna have new areas of exposure that are not just Amazon.com combine that with opportunity, opportunities in international and the fact that Amazon is acquiring freight forwarders and trying to knock down the barriers to go overseas. I think you're just going to be able to see new brands go from zero to all over the world and even in retail stores even faster.

Interesting. Yeah, I guess I haven't thought about that enough. One, I mean that would be awesome for third party sellers. I think that I can see maybe precursors to Both. Right. But that would be incredible in terms of acquiring new distribution channels. I can definitely see that. And again, that would be incredible because at the end of the day, the more prime members there are, the more people interfacing with Amazon, the more people are eligible or likely to buy your products.

I mean, I'm sure you saw the news of if you're an Amazon prime member, you now get discounts at Whole Foods. Yeah, like that's absurd. That's insane. Like, so what happens when Amazon goes out and gets. They buy sprouts and they combine Whole Foods and sprouts and now they just have more distribution and they have more purchasing power. Or they go out and they buy an automotive company, they buy automotive retail line and now Whole Foods owns Pep Boys or whatever. And now motor oils and car repair stuff and windshield wiper fluid that you sell on Amazon can immediately go into Pep Boys. Because if windshield wiper fluid is windshield wiper fluid, then do we need to carry the same brand that's been on the shelves of Pep Boys for years? No, we could just zip it right from Amazon's distribution warehouse into there and replace that. And I think you're going to see those opportunities continue to open up as Amazon acquires more distribution channels and as they get more of the customers. Cause they have all of the purchasing power right now. Yeah, that's what my crystal ball tells me. Well, what else? What are you guys doing at viral launch? What is coming up down the line? You mentioned that there's some additional products that you're kicking around. What are you guys working on and how are you? I know you are more than anybody. You're always trying to make the process faster and easier for third party sellers. So what do you guys have in the pipeline?

Yeah, I mean, we like to be pretty secretive. I think that we've uncovered a couple new tactics when it comes to ranking that may be quite a bit cheaper than product promotions or these heavy discounted promotions. So I don't want to say too much there, but I'm really stoked at the results that we're seeing. At least right now. We've been investing in the development team. I mean, over the last, you know, month and a half, we've gone from two developers and me to five developers and me. And we're hiring two more developers and another in a data scientist. So we have a ton of stuff in the works. This tool to help you find niches without providing specific suggestions. So we're not destroying markets, but helping you to find markets relative or relevant to what you're currently selling. Yeah, dude. You know, at the end of the day, I think that there's so much opportunity because I just don't think that there's very sophisticated solutions provided to sellers right now. And I think that combined with the amount of data that we have and the way that we think about the market in solving these kinds of problems or selling on Amazon, I think that there's so much opportunity to provide really sophisticated solutions for people. So, yeah, I mean, right now, as a company that we're talking about, again, going international is just a huge push for us and just making. Yeah, yeah.

We'Ll end on that. Well, Casey, I don't want to say too much.

Yeah, dude, I so admire what you do. You just continue to push the envelope and open up new opportunities. And I just so respect and appreciate what you've done for our students and what you continue to do for the market. And I think we'll probably look back 10 years from now and there will be many, many millionaires who will be thankful to both of us. And I just so appreciate what you've done for people and just want to publicly acknowledge you for what you've made possible in the marketplace.

Well, geez, man, I really appreciate it and hopefully I can live up to it.

I think you are already doing that, my friend. But keep on changing the world, buddy. Thanks for hanging out with us.

Thank you, sir. Thank you again for having me.

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