Tribe Hangout 11/29/14

It.

Thank you, Godson, for pointing to your ear and letting me know that I hadn't unmuted myself. Now I feel like an idiot.

So, hey, everybody, thanks for coming to the chat. And I want to point out that Brian is currently my favorite person because he's got the Cleveland Indians as his background. So, Brian, you are my favorite tribe member of the week. Thank you very much.

There you go.

I just put it back up for you. Very cool. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. We're looking good this year, too. So as usual, what I would like to do is find out where you're at in the training and then we can kind of adjust the conversation based on that. So if you're watching on the chat, you can type it into the chat box. There were some problems loading the Hangout for people who are streaming for some reason. Hopefully they got fixed now that we're broadcasting. But if you're on here live, we'll talk one on one. If you're on the chat, just type them into the Google hangout or onto the tribe page specifically, and I'll get to them. So tell me, for those of you who are live on the call, do me a favor and tell me where you're at in this training. As usual, what I would like to do is find out where you're at in the training and then we can mute yourself based on that. So if you're watching on the chat, you could type it into the chat box. I had problems loading the Hangout for people who are streaming for some reason. You're killing me, man. Hopefully it ain't gotten fixed now that we're broadcasting.

So let's. Alex, you cracked me up, man, because you laugh at the same time every weekend is when I yell at Godson for echoing.

So there's James, Kurt, Alex, I know the three of you specifically are ASM4, so I'd like to hear from you specifically, because what I like to do with these calls is find out where you're at in the training and where I can adjust this conversation so that I can be of the most help. So do me a favor and tell me where you're at and where your inventory is and where you're at with sales, and then that can help me kind of coach you from here.

Well, I can go first.

I already have two products already launched and working on my third one. Just had a very nice Black Friday and sold over 100 units yesterday. So that's where I'm at.

So you did over 100 units yesterday? Yeah. Congratulations. This is your first 100 unit day. Yeah, yeah, it was Hooray for Black Friday. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm in sports and outdoors and you wouldn't think my.

My niche would do so well in the winter, but it did and I'm.

Very excited about it. Yeah, well, you know that I'm in yoga and yoga always does really good in Christmas time because people are gift giving. So sports outdoors does very, very well in the Christmas time. It tends to be a slowdown in the fall for some reason, probably because people are waiting for Christmas sales and then they pick up Christmas time. So.

How long ago did you start to have three products by now?

I started in May and.

I first got 600 units and finished those in a month and then ran out of stock for a month and a half.

And started again in.

July. Okay. Been there. Been there a hundred times.

And since then I've been selling two products.

I've been around the 1000 rank in sports and outdoors.

Great. Good for you, man. Congratulations. Yeah, thank you. So what I'd like to do is I want to come back to you because I have some specific stuff for people who are at your level and kind of how to handle the Christmas rush as well. So let's come back to you. I want to go to the people that I know are new through ASM and are just getting started just so we hit those first. So, James and Kurt, I'm going to put you on the spot and ask you to share where you're at this week.

Yeah, for sure. I finally got some samples from my guy. I think they were shipped with cart and buggy, so that was crap. And I'm in Canada, so I probably just cleared customs. Anyways, I've got to get. He's whipping up some custom stuff for. This is a beauty product, so to speak. So that should. I got on the fast track to shipping because I just can't wait any longer.

So I'm getting that and I'm now sort of in the throes of getting everything done, like designing packaging and labels and all the rest of that because now I actually have the product so I can see what it's like, the size and all the rest of that. So I've basically been doing 10 different things this week. So I'm doing the packaging. I'm putting together a bonus ebook. I'm writing email copy for both the sort of autoresponder once you sign up for the VIP list, which I'm hoping to do as well as the sort of. You just Bought on Amazon. And here's the follow up.

I'm trying to get labels and stuff priced out too, because the guy who does my stuff is sort of a smaller shop. And I got to get all that stuff brought in.

And then I'm still building the launch list, which is about 180 people now. So that should be a pretty good, nice list to launch to. And one of the things I was wondering actually is when do you throw that brilliant little phone call into the mix for follow up? Because it says in ASM you can put four emails and maybe only do two. Do you send that your order is shipped and then you call them like two weeks from then? Or do you send them your order shipped and then can you leave a review and then do you call them? Where does that fit into the email sequence? What's the best way to do that?

That is a fantastic question. And it depends on the market that you're in. If you're in a physical product, if you're in yoga, if you're in sports and outdoors, if you're in something that is tangible, it should be within probably three days, three to five days of them receiving the product. So if it gets shipped, wait five to seven days and then give them a call. The reason for that is because you can have feedback on a product by the time you open it. That's when you're most excited about the product. It's when you can address the problems the quickest. If you get to somebody within five days of them ordering, get them a new one shipped to them, they're happy. Whereas if you wait a month, they're not going to be as happy. If you've waited a month in order to fix that problem, if it is a consumable or something that needs time to show effect, like a supplement, sometimes a beauty product, depending on what it's there to do, then I would wait two weeks until after it ships before you get to them. But the sooner the better.

If the product can have feedback within a few days of being tried, hit them whenever that first use or first notice of effect is going to be. In yoga, it's going to be first use, they're going to use it probably within three to five days if they're an active yoga user. Christmas is a little bit different. Christmas this time of year is going to be different because you're going to get a lot of people that say it was a gift. I have no idea if they liked it or not. That makes things a little bit interesting. But throughout the year, normally it is. As soon as that first effect is going to be felt, give me a thumbs up eventually. Oh, you're off mute. So go ahead and say yes.

Oh, yeah, sure.

Yes.

That was good. What is sort of like the actual package look like? Do you send like a thanks for buying, it's on its way, then you call them and then do you send like a follow up two weeks later by email, just saying, hey, in case.

You haven't left a review.

Well, not such direct, but how's it going? Is it still what you're after, by the way, leave a review sort of thing?

Or is that like a free touch? That approach would be perfect. The only thing that I'd add is I have my little script for calling people, which is those four questions. Did you receive your product? Was it what you expected or did you try it yet? Can I send you a coupon? And in that email, can I leave you a review? Right, okay.

And what about during Christmas, like you were saying, what does one do to sort of get around that? Well, I just bought it for a gift. Like it could be, it's a male product, so it could be like a woman with no ability to use it. Did they leave the review like, oh, I think my so and so is.

Going to love this.

Or you know, how do you get around with those reviews?

If you can come up with a great way, I would love to hear it. We only had one Christmas to figure it out and I will confess, after Christmas, we never gave it a never thought.

Fair enough.

If you or anyone else on this call could come up with.

A good solution to that, I would love to hear that.

Okay, thanks a lot, that's helpful.

Cool. So for those of you who are just getting started and are just getting products to Amazon and are taking sales or you had your first hundred sale day like Alex did. Yes. One thing that I would note is you're launching at a perfect time because Sean and I took our first sale a year ago yesterday for our yoga business.

And we had a great kickoff because it was the Christmas rush. But that definitely, definitely drops off.

Once, actually mid January for some reason, that's when things kind of taper off. But if you're launching right now, it is the perfect time to get your systems in place and to also take advantage of the spike in the algorithm that is going to happen. So this is the time that if you can put your energy on certain key keywords, you can put yourself ahead of other people who are just doing things kind of haphazardly. So if you're doing coupons that you're promoting via Facebook or you have a list that you're launching to. If you can funnel all this extra attention towards certain keywords, you'll put yourself in a position to rank higher so that when the glory days of Christmas end, you're still doing better than you would have done had you not funneled your energy. I want to head over and put James on the spot, find out where you're at so that I know how to. You just got all revved up and ready to go, James. Tell us where you're at.

Alright, so the last time we talked, I think I was dealing with the fact that I had lost a lot of rankings and my rankings had finally come back. But then I lost the reseller bag. I don't know if I'm gonna see that or not.

I lost the bestseller back, but I have it back now. So the biggest issue that I'm having right now.

Keep going. You have me on pins and needles, James.

All right. Yeah, I'm sorry. So I reclaimed my bestseller badge and at this point right now, earlier this week, I ran into a hijacker issue. So the hydraulic is finally gone and now I'm back up to around 21 sales a day. But now my problem is I'm about to run out of inventory. So I put in an order, but because of the Christmas rush and just the delays, my manufacturer won't be able to get me back in inventory until about December 12th. So in the meantime.

What I'm looking to do now is since I already have like over 100 reviews on my product, I'm looking to start another product in the same niche while I'm waiting on inventory. So me and my wife, who's right behind me, is.

Helping me figure out what will be the next product for launching this niche.

Cool. So my recommendation. So you're going to be doing it in the same brand, Correct? It's just an extension of your existing brand?

Yes. Well, that's the initial plan. I've really been all over the board because again, I'm in the baby niche, but then again, I'm looking at other niches as well. But I'm pretty much. It's weird. I mean, I'm pretty much on the top page for most of my keywords in the baby niche right now, and I'm only getting around maybe at most 20 to 25 sales a day. So I was wondering, I'm like, okay, is there a market? Well, maybe it may not be a market for what I'm doing. But.

I'm wondering, should I stay in the same baby niche or look into other niches as well?

Okay, that's just from the one product, correct?

Yes.

And what does that mean per month? 10,000 to 15,000.

It's around $10,000 a month.

All right, cool. So first of all, I want to pause. It might be the coffee buzz kicking in or it just might be my overall excitement. I love on these calls how I've been teaching Internet businesses for eight years and I've never put on a webinar where half the call is people saying, I did 100 units yesterday or doing $10,000 a month. But I'm not sure there's a market here. It's usually like, how do I install WordPress? Or people saying, I've ordered my inventory and I got my samples on the way and I'm so excited. I am always baffled at the action on these calls. Thank you for being such an active group and for being such a successful group. You make my life so much fun.

Now, James, to your point, I love telling the story and I know I've told it a hundred times, but this is going to be 101, and that is that my first product did about 25 units a day. And we were like, eh, okay, I guess that's all it's going to do. And we actually ran out of inventory, released our second product. And we remember this call to the day we were on the phone and we were like, well, remember when that first product comes back in stock, it'll cap out at about 25 units a day. We were using that for our calculations. But what happened was when our second product got up and started selling, that first product doubled in sales. So it went from 25 to 50 units a day. And that made the other one double. So it went from 25 to 50 units a day. And all of a sudden this product that we thought was never going to do more than 25 units a day today does well over 100 sales a day every day because we expanded our product line and captured more of that market. If you're doing 25 sales a day with one product, I would not deviate from that market. I think that is a good, healthy sign that you're in a market that is going to do enough significant volume to be a really substantial business. The thing that concerns me more about the number of sales per day is that 25 sales only equals about $10,000 a month. I'd be curious if you can bump up your margins a bit or if your next product that you can release can be a more expensive product, when you have a second product, it then makes sense for you to go into a little bit of a more competitive or expensive, extensive market because you have enough sales coming in through your account to be a more established brand. And that allows you to rank for higher and more competitive keywords. And it makes it a little bit easier for you to do that when your first product may not have been that easy because you were starting from a dead start. Does all that make sense?

Yeah, that makes sense. One of the reasons why it's only around 10,000 is that I'm only doing okay. I set my price at 18.95, and now I'm throwing a discount just to get personal sale. So that discount is like a 10%. So I'm really probably selling around $16.

Okay, and what's your cost per unit?

Cost per unit is about $5.50 a month.

What about after Amazon fees and everything? Are you about like 11 or 12?

Actually.

Come back to me on that. Actually have a sprint.

So let me ask you this. What's the most? Are you below, at or above average for your market?

I'm probably number. I'm fluctuating between number three and number four in my market right now.

Sorry. What I mean by that is, price wise, are you below average, above average price?

I'm average. There's only one. What I did is I set my price around what everybody else was. I'm about average. There's only one person selling their stuff about 2195, and they're the most in my market. Everybody else is around the 1895 mark.

Okay, cool. So.

Sorry, I cannot. I can never turn off my. My business brain. If I were you, James, and I don't know if you're gonna be comfortable with this, but if I were you, I would try. I would. I'd be very curious to see what would happen if you position yourself as the second most expensive in your market. The second most expensive. And the number I have in mind is like $21.99. If there's. Are there people selling for more than $21.99 in your market?

No, the most expensive is $21.90.

Okay, then maybe even 1999.

Yeah, let's do that. The reason I want to be around that point is because that'll put you near $10 profit per unit after Amazon fees. But you need your $10 a unit. And I personally avoid anything that won't give me $10 profit unless it's like the fourth product in the line. Once you're at the fourth product in line, you have other things that are making all your profit. Then you can roll out things that are a bit less margin because now they are just volume place. Does that make sense? Right? It does. Cool. So I'd be interested to see if you can get your margins up a bit. And I would encourage you to stay within that market at least until you've got that second product and you know how that is going to affect overall.

All right.

Just to be clear, that last architecture.

Did you. The second product that you launched was in the same market that you were originally in.

Correct. Okay, Brian, what were you trying to say?

Yeah, I just wanted to share an observation with James on my main product. I was at 1999 and I just raised it about three weeks ago to 2197. My conversion rate went up.

And I'm thinking about bumping it another buck to 2297. And that's pure profit right in my pocket.

Okay.

Brian, do you remember that competitor of yours that we talked about?

No, that was months ago. That was back in the summer.

I remember.

Hold on.

Yeah, it was that dude. It was competing with you too, wasn't it?

Your Competitor sells for $44.

I wonder if there's even room for you to go up further. So if he's selling for 44, there's no reason why you can't continue to raise that. Yeah, just not as ratio.

I'm looking at this listing and there's James. There's also a psychologic thing with the number ending in 7 versus 9. 97 versus 99. I don't know if that's a part of it as well, but 97 is better than 99.

Tell me those numbers again, Brian. You were doing. It was 18 and then you raised it to 21.

I was at 1999 and I raised it to 2197.

So I raised it two bucks.

Cool. Yeah, keep us posted on that. I'd love to see what happens when you continue to raise that.

I will.

Cool. Am I echoing? I can hear myself. No, maybe it's just my. Alex says I am echoing. Okay, then Google Hangouts is just being bipolar. Then before I head back over to what I wanted to address with Alex, I want to hear from Sophie. I don't know if we've ever heard from you before on a call. Hi, Sophie. Hello.

How do I do this?

Hang on, you just. Can we listen?

Can you hear me now?

Yep.

Ah, cool.

Hello?

Hi.

How are you doing? I haven't managed to get on it before because I'm normally on a course on a workshop when this is on. So it finished early today, so. Hello.

So for me, I'm a little bit behind.

So I'm still waiting for some samples of my product to arrive.

But the thing is, the only question really I would have is about when it's in a restricted category.

Because I'm trying to do my apply for the authorization.

And it talks about the three purchase orders and what have you. Is that, do I have to. How do I get around that?

This is actually really easy. All you need to do is provide invoices of your product, which Amazon will pretty much take. You could probably go to Walmart and get a receipt and send it to them. They would take it as a. I'm exaggerating, but they would take that as.

An invoice. So if you take your supplier's invoice and then if you buy your own product or if you have multiple orders from your supplier, you just need to show that there's real invoices within your product. I know some people have just taken the invoice from their supplier and given that to Amazon, and that is how they've gotten through. That is basically there to scare you, not make it difficult to get approved.

I have got an invoice, obviously, for all the samples I've ordered, so.

So.

Should I just try? It's only one invoice, though. Can the other invoices be from other.

Or should they all be from the manufacturer?

They can be from other places, too.

Okay.

All right. It's a very, very simple process. It's there to look complex, but it is not. It's very easy to get approved.

Cool. And you all got tingles in your stomach while Sophie was talking and all of a sudden felt a twinge of excitement and attraction. It was because Master Joe just joined us.

Yes, I saw that.

Thank you.

That's outstanding. Can you, like, record that for me? And I can just play that whenever I enter rooms or anything?

Sure.

He's recording it.

I'll just call the Attractions. Excitement move in Your insides because Mr. Joe has joined us.

Joe, how's business? It's been a while since I've had you on the call.

Yeah, well, I saw you had a seat open. I thought I'd drop in and say what up? Business is outstanding. As you know, as the tribe knows, I crossed the sixth mark. It was three weeks ago.

Four weeks ago.

Per month.

Per month.

I think right now, probably at the 20ish mark per month. It's cranking all up. I have no complaints, rolling out, you know, more products and just a matter of scaling. I have finally hired my first guy.

My work here is done. We have finally gotten Joe to outsource.

More like insource, actually. I don't know if you would want me to mention on the call, but it is someone in the tribe.

He's handling some content work for me.

But that's it. My chief fun officer, he's helping me with the books.

Yeah, Cracking along, man.

While we have you, you have my curiosity and the rest of the tribe curiosity. What the heck is this surge and what the heck are you doing?

I'll tell you what I'm not doing. I'm not incentivizing. I'm not saying, hey, you enjoyed a free product or nearly free product on Zomblast. Here's another one in order.

If you leave a review.

I don't do that. I'm appeal to emotion and I get my folks, my community, who is becoming increasingly well trained to go back and leave a review. It is nothing fancy other than the copy itself.

I cannot take credit for.

Like an hour.

Yeah, I don't want to go into Zoom, but what I'm able to do is I'm able to blast the people who actually click on a link in the original Zomblast. So it's really targeted. It's people who absolutely, positively minimum whether or not they purchased on the promo, I don't know.

But I have field. I basically.

Again, without going into details, I go leave a review. Not incentivized, 100% kosher, 100% clean. And I've done three tests this week. We're starting with actual, actual customers. And in fact, mine is going out on tomorrow or Monday for a supplement.

And it's, I would say probably 80, 90% of the reviews that these folks are getting come within an hour. Honestly, I think it's more like 30 minutes. But just to be generous, say an hour and then a slow trickle with people opening their email late or whatever coming after that.

The copy is so good that I occasionally even get unverified reviews. People just out of the kindness of their heart wanting to go give a review. But, you know, I'm pleased with the results. 55% to victory in the tribe. It was 84% buyer to conversion rate. So I'm excited to say the least.

Yeah. One thing I want to point out is there's some of us who have kind of, I'm sorry, somebody is echoing and we have to break some.

Brian yourself.

What's that?

Yeah, that was Brian.

Oh, it was Brian. Oh, Brian. So.

Everybody give Brian a thumbs down or a sad face.

For those of you who are just starting with ASM4 and are within the tribe, what's cool about your situation is there are those of us who have blazed the trail ahead of you and have really cracked certain things. So when ASM 1 and 2 was around, yes, there was less competition, but it was also really friggin hard to get reviews.

Joe and I were sitting in person a couple of weeks ago and we've each kind of come up with our own ways to kind of crack reviews and are both able to generate hundreds of reviews at a time, sometimes very quickly now. And there's other people in the tribe who kind of come up with their own way. So one of the cool things about being in the tribe is we share those internally and other people don't have those ways of generating a massive amount of reviews. So you have a very strong advantage of following in the trails of those of us who have been at this for a year or so, sometimes more, sometimes less. So just know that even though there's always this question of what about competition, you just do things better than the competition and that's how you continually win. Before I get too ahead of myself, I want to go back to what Alex was talking about, which was he, for the first time ever, just did 100 sales and.

Has got two products, has a third on the way. I just want to address for the people who are in that position where they have multiple products, if you're familiar with my three stage formula of going from zero to a million dollars a year in this business, Alex, for people who are in your position, I think the number one thing you need to be focusing on right now is reinvesting this surge in sales into more products as quickly as you comfortably can handle. So for people like me, for the people like me on my team, we only really feel comfortable rolling out a product about every two to three months a new product. Whereas some people like Joe roll out like nine products at a time across multiple brands. And I am not that.

I cannot balance that many things at a time. So my comfortably handle is about one new product every two to three months. But your number one priority right now is taking this spike of sales that's coming in through the Christmas rush and reinvesting that into new products, additional products to continue growing that line. If you get that, give me a thumbs up.

Cool. I want to address one comment that was made on the chat and that was by Anonymous. 1752. Ryan is right. I don't know what that's referencing, but I'm going to take that one.

One question. If we want to sell items for Christmas, what is about the last day that we should get inventory in Amazon? How late is too late for selling Christmas items?

This is an interesting question because as far as inventory goes, the last day to get any Christmas sales is like December. Well, I mean, Christmas sales happened through Christmas. We saw a spike last year that went from like until about December 30th for some reason. I don't know why that was. That's how long the Christmas spike lasted. But I would not recommend. If you're starting from a dead sprint, like a dead zero, you're going to need reviews and to get things moving. So if you're taking inventory on a product with no reviews after December 15th, I can't imagine much of a Christmas rush coming in. Unless, of course, you're in something that you can position as a New Year's sale. And then if it's a supplement or something in beauty, something that you can hit as a New Year's rush instead of a Christmas rush, then you're fine. Just get it in before January 15th and you'll still get the same bump. Supplements and beauty and a lot of consumables don't have their rush, their Christmas rush until after January 1st because they're not Christmas items, they're not gift items, they're New Year's items. And because of that nature, their spike comes in later. And you can still position yourself for that, even if your inventory comes in after Christmas.

Hey, Ryan, quick question about the getting verified in the health and beauty category. How long does that process typically take?

You know, I don't even know. I think it's only a few days. If I'm wrong, somebody speak up.

It took me about two days.

Two days.

Took me less than 24 hours, actually.

Beth, is that you? Yeah.

I don't know how to get my picture on there. I'm not sure what happened there, but yeah, I just got approved, actually, in health and in beauty and in a few hours.

Two hours.

And I'm going to throw this out there.

Just.

I've just been wondering, does that seem like those categories are those ones where the. I guess the big volume is made or. I'm just sensing that from where everybody else is on the tribe and just from within the group that I've been in.

I can't speak for health and beauty. Although I do know some people who do a lot of volume in health and beauty. But I can tell you this is from Amazon itself. Amazon itself has told me that supplements are the biggest market on Amazon, meaning that more volume goes through supplements than any other market on Amazon. People are comfortable buying supplements. I buy a ton of supplements on Amazon and I don't go to the store to buy them. They're cheaper on Amazon. I do know that that is where a lot of volume comes into play. But that's not to say that there's not a ton of volume in other spaces too. For example, when I sell a yoga mat, I make a lot more dollars than when I sell fish oil in my supplement line. I make more actual dollars because I'm selling a yoga product for 36, sometimes 39 bucks. We make 18 bucks per unit, whereas a fish oil I'll make.

10, sometimes less, depending on if we're doing a sale or something.

Yeah, there's a lot of times more volume in supplements, but you can do just as well in other categories.

Hey Ryan, maybe you could share a couple thoughts since you got a lot of people in product selection. Consumable versus non consumable. Your yoga mat, a non consumable somebody will buy it once versus a consumable product. Product somebody buys gets hooked on it over and over again. Thoughts on that?

As far as product selection goes, from a volume standpoint, I prefer a consumable product. However, consumable products don't make as good as for a sellable business as.

Physical products that you would buy once often do. Now, this is not 100% of the case, but in a lot of cases, things that you buy once, that you build a brand around are often easier to sell because they're not based on hype or fads.

My yoga company, when I was negotiating with this company, who's now buying my yoga company, we're getting some paperwork done right now. The yoga company was the one that they were most interested in because it was stable. It didn't have any legal things to jump through that a consumable would or there weren't any things the FDA is going to change about a yoga mat unless people start eating their yoga mats, which is the newest health craze sweeping starting in Austin, Texas, eating your yoga product.

Those types of businesses that are more stable that people buy one time are often easier to sell. But I prefer from a cash flow standpoint the.

Consumable for obvious reasons, because you're going to buy more. That's Why? I say for your first business, if you can get a consumable, I prefer that over a non consumable. And then if you do a different brand later, you can wait to do a non consumable. So in a perfect world, your product would be over 20 bucks less than a pound, easy to ship, made in the usa. And a consumable, that would be your absolute perfect world. None of my brands meet that perfect world, but we can get close on all of those things. So.

Our supplements meet most of those criteria, which is why for a first brand worked perfectly. My other brands don't all fit that criteria. And that's totally cool because I don't need to be in a perfect world. So from a cash flow perspective, consumables are often better. From a selling perspective, it's not always that case.

Cool. Anybody else want to share where they're at in their business.

So that we can kind of keep the conversation on those lines?

All right, cool.

I'm gonna man the chat box for a second.

Let's talk a little bit about.

I'd actually like to hear from some of the more seasoned vets, including Alex, Joe, Brian. I'd like to hear your opinion on this. I'll give mine and then I'll turn it over to you for a second. Let's talk for a second about.

The actual listings themselves, where you should be in your process. I gave you this assignment last week of writing a couple of different headlines and starting to create your listings for your products. I want to give you the formula that I followed that I currently have been unable to beat as far as.

Conversion goes, and the actual formula for your listing. And it looks like this. It looks like your bullets calling out four. You get five bullets, right? So four of them calling out benefits of your product, with the last one being either calling out a money back guarantee or a customer quote, meaning one of the reviews is.

The actual bullet. Just be careful when you do this that the reviews don't violate any of Amazon's terms of service. Reviews can violate terms of service all you want, but you can't quote a review that violates that. I found this out the hard way when one of my fish oil buyers said, I take fish oil because it safeguards against dry skin, something, something, something, and cancer. And I was like, wow, this is such a great review. And I quoted it like an idiot and then got shut down on Amazon for about two weeks because now I was making health claims. So reviews can claim whatever they want, but you can't make that claim in your listing and by quoting that review, you do that. But the formula that we follow is in the Bullets, four benefits and then either a money back guarantee or a quote. And then in the listing itself, starting off with a quote of a review.

And then the rest of your description restating the benefits and the 100% money back guarantee. There was a question posted in the Tribe just this morning.

About using images in your product description. Amazon is cracking down on that. They just hit our yoga. They're probably going to hit my other brand as well pretty soon. And by hit, it just means that they tell you to remove it sometimes they'll shut you down for us. They just told us to remove it with my other brand. They said you cannot prevent you from editing any of your listings until you remove that image. So until there's some sort of new either way around it or there's a new change at Amazon that allows this to. My hope is Amazon is going to make this okay to put images in your description because they're starting to do it for people that are sold by Amazon. They're starting to allow product images there. My hope is that they're going to allow that for everybody at some point. But until then, we're just going back to text and we're not worrying about images.

I'd like to hear from you seasoned vets, if you have any. Oh, it's the baby hour. I don't have a baby to hold right now.

I could hold one of our cats, but she's not around right now. I'd like to hear from some of you seasoned vets if there's any formula that you follow while you're making your.

Listing on the bullets. Something I took from you. I don't know if you still do it. It's been a while since I looked at your listings, but the first bullet I put.

Whatever the star rating is, like 4.9 out of 5 star rating. And then I go into.

You know, grill kings. Agree our meat hooks are the best ones on Amazon or something. Basically, I've done that for every single listing of mine. I took that from you.

So to your point, let's actually talk about this thing. I'm going to pull up one of my listings.

When I say benefits, I should have clarified. Thank you for bringing this up. When I say benefits in the bullets, this is one of the things that I found works really well.

In this particular example. I have it in the headline. 4.7 out of 5 stars. Let me grab it from Camelosia Skin. Here we go. So for the Meow Mommy, which is the cat scratcher business or the cat products business, the first bullet is 4.7 out of 5 star reviews. And then I quote a customer. My cat loves this thing. She sits on it plumply as her new bed.

And then I just quote that person as Michael, one of the many happy users of the Meow Mommy cat scratcher. So we treat one of the benefits as it having really good reviews. And if you've got three reviews and they're all five stars, guess what your average is five out of five stars. So we'll take that as one of our benefits for this one. Specifically for the Meow Mommy, the First one is 4.7 out of 5 star reviews. The second benefit is thicker and more dense. The third is reversible design so it lasts longer. The fourth benefit is that it's environmentally friendly because it's recyclable and compostable. And then we go into the 100% money back guarantee. Let me pull up one of my other listings just for fun to pull out the benefits we use for that. Let's take the fish oil.

No, I lied because it's going to be a better example for the Yoyo company. We had to really dig for the benefits on our yoga block. How do you make a yoga block have benefits? Here's what we ended up going with.

Fully sustainable and recyclable and environmentally friendly was the first. Longest lasting and highest quality so it's good for the environment was the second. Firmer and more dense than harmful plastics was the third. Perfect for travel was the fourth. And then we went with 100% money back guarantee. We also had to dig really deep for the yoga towel. How do you make a towel have benefits? First one is 4.8 out of 5 stars. Second is lifetime guarantee. Third was custom non slip design, makes it the best yoga towel for hot yoga. Fourth was environmentally conscious yoga company, not product but company, which we are. And then the fifth, of course was the 100% money back guarantee. So you can see a common theme with the benefits that we're using for our bullets. And then with the description we start up with a customer quote, restate the benefits and then end with 100% money back guarantee. Give me a thumbs up if this is all clear. If it's not clear, go ahead and you can ask me a question about this since this was your homework the week.

How much conversion do you get with that?

How much conversion? Well, it depends on the different products of course, but a good conversion rate, 13% is considered good. Anything below that means it needs work. Anything above that means you're doing okay. I have products like our fish oil converts at 25%. Why that converts at such a high rate? I'm not 100% sure, but a good conversion rate is 13%. That's kind of like the benchmark. If it's not doing that, it needs some work.

Okay.

Does that help? Sure.

Ryan, I'll just share a little observation. I think this was in the Tribe, or maybe even the main group a couple months ago.

Videos on our listings. As pro sellers, we can't put videos on our listings. Only sold by Amazon can. But we can have reviewers post video reviews. And if you upvote them properly, you can keep them at the top of your review list. And that can be pretty powerful for conversions.

Have you tested that, Brian?

I've got a video review sitting there and I'm testing a bunch of different stuff in conversions on the main listing right now. I think it affects it exactly how.

Much, I don't know.

Has anybody tested this by getting. I was actually contacted by somebody once who said they focused on video reviews very heavily and saw a massive increase. I think this is probably one of those things where it depends on your product. I know our main cheating ass hat competitor who leaves fake reviews for everything that I'll break his knees if I ever meet him. I know he puts fake video reviews up, votes them up and does really well with them. He's a cheating asshat, but he does really well with video reviews. So my guess is with focus there, they would work. I've never tested them heavily. We've had a very hard time getting our customers to be willing to leave video reviews, and I won't. I refuse to fake anything.

So if anybody here has tested that, I would love to hear that. In fact, I'm gonna make a note.

We should test that. We should put some energy there.

Thanks for that, Brian.

In fact, let me put this out there. If anybody watching this in the Tribe.

Want to do a cool experiment that will probably grow your business, put some energy this week into recruiting five people to leave video reviews. And either the Tribe can upvote them or get your customers to upvote them. Upvote those videos so that they show up. See what that does to your conversion rate. My suspicion is that it would make a significant difference.

Brian, thank you for this. I'm not going to be able to shake this creative idea all day.

A couple of questions are coming in on the chat box about.

What Brian brought up. As sold by Amazon. The difference here, just for clarification, when you are selling a significant amount of volume, Amazon hand picks people to sell your products for you. They'll, they'll do price testing for you, they'll do advertising for you and they basically will sell your product. You sell to them a wholesale, they buy from you and do all the selling. When you hit that level then you can do things like videos in your listing, you can do images in your description. But the trade off is you have to sell it wholesale. Now I don't personally feel comfortable doing that. I think I can sell better than Amazon does. There's mixed reports on these. Some people say that Amazon did really well for them. Some people say that they sold better when they weren't selling directly to Amazon. So there's a little bit of a dispute on this. I would not want Amazon to be selling my stuff and I wouldn't do that for the trade off of being able to have videos. And.

I don't know if you remember but maybe a week or two ago I hit you up saying I got contacted about the vendor program and I had looked into it. It's not appropriate right now because I think you lose control of your listing number one. Number two, you're on a net 90 basis for payments, which sucks. You know, wait 30, you know, three months for payment for, you know, for inventory that you've already sent in. There's a bunch of logistical issues.

It's very different from FBA where you send your inventory to whatever facilities they tell you to. You need with vendor, you need to send it. I think it's on a weekly basis. I didn't dive in this this much with, with this guy but on a weekly basis to certain facilities and if you're not there on time there's, you know, I don't know if there would be want to call them penalties on the account or something but they keep it a well oiled machine. You lose control. Most important for me was you lose the ability to contact customers post order. That's been huge. My first product I launched June 5th. I'm now past the 600 review mark today. I never would have gotten there with Amazon selling and not having a follow up sequence. I think that's appropriate for.

Once you're well underway. You have several products under your brand.

It wasn't working for me.

Right now though, I'm with you. I just don't see the trade off benefiting any of my brands right now. I guess maybe if I wanted to sit back and Just almost like sell a business and not worry about it anymore maybe.

But I don't want to be there yet. So for now we lose the ability to have images and video in our description.

I want to throw a curveball at you guys because I posted this in a while. I posted this probably about three or four weeks in the tribe. So in my niche, actually my top competitor, he has or he or she has videos in their listing just as though they were sold by Amazon, but they are not sold by Amazon. And I've been trying to rack my brain around how the heck did they get a video in their listing. And I mean, it's not a video by a customer or nothing like that. It's actual as though the listing looks like it would have been sold by Amazon. So the only thing I can think of is like maybe at one point they were sold by Amazon and then maybe they decided to take back control of their listing, but never got the video removed. But that's the only. Like I said, without giving you what product I have, I'm like looking at, I mean I told you what the product was and you know exactly what I'm selling. But I'm looking at the listing right now. Again, they have video in it. But I mean that's the only theory that I have right now that will believe. Let me know why they have video and I can't.

So just to recap, you have a competitor that has a video as if they were being sold by Amazon, but they are not being sold by Amazon and is the only example that you found that is able to do that, Correct?

Correct.

Do you know how long they've been around?

It looks like they've been around for. Actually tell you right now. I know it's been a few years, but they're not a new listing.

Okay, so they're grandfathered into something. What they're grandfathered into? Not sure. They either were selling to Amazon or they were grandfathered in the old system where you could have videos, but Amazon used to.

Allow people.

Sorry, we were talking over each other. But a few years ago, Amazon used to allow sellers to have video and they don't anymore. So they could just be grandfathered in some way.

Okay.

Cool. So if anybody would like to test doing video reviews this week, this would be a very interesting thing. And I'm going to put some energy into this this week as well. In fact, I'm probably going to email my list and do some sort of contest video reviews. So these last five minutes, let's go over some Assignments from the week.

Last week, your assignment was to have some headlines written.

To start writing your listing, to start writing your descriptions, your bullets. Your assignments this week, assuming that your inventory is on its way somewhere, are to start preparing images and if you haven't done this yet, to.

Start making a list of people that you can bug to death to get reviews for when your product goes live. So that first part is to make a list should be 25 people that you can give free product to and bug to death until they leave a review and not sacrifice that relationship. The other part of the assignment, if you haven't started doing this yet, is to start preparing to take sales from day one. Whether that is creating a Facebook page or a launch list or it is going over to just if it's booking your time on Zonblast, which is Joe's launch service, whatever it is, to start preparing to take sales from day one, the shortcutted way is to get your friends and family to leave reviews. Use whatever assets you have. If you have a website like Kurt does, going to your own list to do a giveaway or a heavy discount and booking a Zonblast or something else that does that type of a service. Those are three things that right off the bat will get sales moving from day one that you don't have to do a whole lot of preparation for, but yet nine out of ten people don't do these things, which is why they complain about competition suffocating them out of the market. Those three things, you'll start taking sales from day one because you'll have reviews which will get conversions. You'll have your customer list bringing in organic sales. You'll have something like a Zonblast, which is getting you spiked in the algorithm so that you rank for keywords. Those are the things that you need to be focused on. Start preparing those things, whether it's booking your Zonblast, building your list, making your customer list. That is your assignment for this week to start getting that process going. Joe, just so we have it on the record, what is the tribe discount code.

For the standard Zomblast? It's Tribe Solo, all one word. The VIP is Tribe vip.

And I think that's it for codes. But Ryan, I wanted to put something out there. Maybe you'll object, I don't know.

But as for bragging rights, I kind of, I was thinking about this the past couple days. I want to take someone, a brand new account, Virgin account, no seller feedback, and a product just launched, no sales on it yet. No reviews on it. I want to take a product from day one of launching to day 15 or 20ish, so probably non consumable where they have 100 reviews. I want to see if I can basically in a little over two weeks, I want to see if I can take someone from launch to 100 reviews and also well underway in gaining rank.

And I would like to do that on the house, you know, post results in the tribe.

Like I said, it would have to be a virgin account. No history on it, no solid feedback, no reviews obviously.

But purely for bragging rights, I want to see if I can literally launch someone. Not just send a surge of, you know, reviews and send a surge of reviews and sales at this point, but I want to see if I can push someone to, you know, top two top three pages in very short order. And I wanted to put that out to you, you know, if you wanted to pick someone.

Yeah, sure. I was gonna say doing anything this weekend because you're about to get slammed Facebook messages in the tribe when people only taking one.

You're welcome to post that in the tribe and get some takers if you'd like.

Just be prepared not to do anything for the rest of the weekend.

Kathryn, I want to hear from you about how.

The process is going of getting people.

Through your certification process and what your supplier negotiation process has looked like for members of the the tribe. If you give us an update on that.

You're talking about the sources I'm providing, right? Sourcing. Oh, yeah. I'm really excited because I'm now expanding this sourcing business that I can work with more and more people. I'm having a new team in China to set everything for the tribe and the people that I'm working for. So I'm not only doing sourcing, I can even doing quality control and visit the factories and taking up a lot more people than I'm able to do by my own. And those people are professional, doing much better work than I do because they are the best quality.

Factories and inspections. So that I'm excited to expand beyond what I'm able to do right now.

How's that process going of working with certain tribe members right now to get all their inventory certified?

Yes, I'm ordering all the samples from them. The samples. What I'm working is I order Amazon, the top competitors and comparing the competitors samples, competitive product actually in Amazon with the samples that we are ordering right now, specifically from the factories in China so that we are knowing how well we go as compared with the competitors. So that will be great recommendation. I'm actually working on one of these tribe members who is we are experimenting the product of the competitor and the china sample and we knowing that we can even doing better than the top competitor. So I already served one tribe member and decided to go for tailor made product. You know what is tailor made? It's not long it oem you can make your own product that your competitor is not able to do only because of me.

And working in that specific aspect of serving the tribe members. That is true and that is what happening right now. And I'm going to take more if they're interested to be here about developing this asset of products.

I love that. That's so sneaky. We just ordered all the top people's products from the competitors. Oh, I love it. I love this group.

I had something else I wanted to bring up and now I don't remember what. Oh, I remember. Just for fun, if any of you have listened to one of my recent podcasts about performance enhancing brain drugs, he finally convinced me I ordered a whole bunch of things that are showing up at my house a few days. So if I'm dead by the next call, it was just because I experimented with some brain drugs. I'll let you all know how that goes on a future call.

That'll be a fun experiment to do. I'm actually experimenting with a bunch of different productivity experiments this week that I'll be sure to report on in coming weeks. Unless you guys have any final questions or any final comments.

We will call it a day.

Cool.

So this week, remember to have your listing done. Be prepared to take sales from day one if you haven't already. And I'm going to be posting something in the tribe. Probably start writing it as soon as I hop off about the future of the tribe, where things are headed next. Would love to hear your feedback on that in the Facebook group. And until next week, I will talk to you then. Thanks for coming everybody and I will talk to you in a week. Bye. Bye guys.

Bye.