Ryan Daniel Moran leads a Tribe meeting where Amazon sellers Brian, Nelson, Sean, Kathryn, Joe, Ken, and Greg share tactics for launching products, fighting fake reviews, sourcing inventory, and pricing for volume. Kathryn pitches supplier-inspection services in China.
Chapters
In the kitchen. Does anybody here drink bulletproof coffee?
No, but I suspect we're going to start. It didn't involve anything with your neighbor's dogs and cats, did it?
No. So I make bulletproof coffee and bulletproof coffee is coffee with grass fed butter, coconut oil, and I put a little bit of almond butter in there and I put it all in the blender and it went like this. Now I make it all the time, but today it decided to go and it just went all over my kitchen. So I had a bit of a coffee disaster on my hands. But what do you do? How's everybody doing?
Wasting perfectly. Good cough.
I am Brian.
Living the dream.
Good, good.
Ryan, thanks for unblocking me there.
Of course. Nelson, thanks for fixing your little pop up problem.
Yeah, hopefully we don't have that problem today. I mean, I have no idea how that happened.
Everyone, I want everyone to turn their attention to our neighborhood friendly Sean Coyne who is playing video games while on a hangout. That's just. That's just. This is how badass Sean Coyne is.
He's enabled Donkey Kong 64.
Awesome. Hey Anthony, it looks like you're on here twice which may be taking up a spot. Do you mind if I try and remove the version of you that's not moving? It might end up booting both of you, but I want to open up that spot if it's okay. So hopefully this doesn't make you go away.
Are you still there, Anthony? I am. Oh good, it worked. Okay, cool. I just got rid of something that.
Actually worked on a hangout.
So I want to update you guys that we actually had a very frustrating week. So just so you know, it is not always roses in this, this business.
Right now, between my Amazon brands, I have one brand that consistently does between 150 and $175,000 a month. And then the other two are, they're newer, so they're younger and they're smaller. But altogether we do over 200,000 plus on Amazon every month. And when you're at that level, some really bad things can happen. So let me look into my crystal ball here and show you what you guys look forward to.
Two nasty things happened. And.
You guys know of the one, we had a competitor who just insists on not playing the rules fairly and has a collection of hundreds of fake accounts and is using them to leave positive reviews on his own listing and negative reviews on our listing. This, as you can imagine, is the most frustrating thing in the world. It's like trying to deal with A moody girlfriend, there's just no way to win. And the process that we've gone about handling it has just been consistently going to the top, calling Amazon every day, talking to reps at Amazon. But the most helpful thing has really been working with the contacts that we have. Who do you know? Who do you know that knows somebody? Who do you know that might know somebody that we could contact in this process of trying to go up and up and up and up the chain? This has happened to us one time before and we went just straight to Jeff Bezos office and they were able to handle it. It took them about 30 days to handle it, but they finally did handle it. So we're hoping that that is the case. The second thing that you guys have to look forward to, and this is a warning.
Because we totally did not see this coming, is about a month ago we had an offer to buy somebody, buy us retail. We researched the company and we were all excited because this was a reputable retailer. They ordered 2,000 units of our product. After we ordered it, it showed up on Amazon, wasn't a retail buy, it showed up on Amazon. So we contacted the person, did some more research, found out that the person misrepresented themselves. They didn't work for the company at all. They were just looking to flip product and make a quick buck. A great little, a great little cash scam to have to buy something at wholesale that you see on Amazon selling really well. Turn it around, put it on Amazon where you know it's going to sell because it's already a top product on Amazon. They sell it, they make a quick buck buck. That hurt. But lesson learned to be very, very, very careful about who you, about who you work with and how you research.
The people.
Who are taking your product. Now this wouldn't have bothered us if it hadn't hurt our sales. But since we then had to compete for the buy box with this guy, half of our sales went to this guy. So we ended up, what we ended up doing, the way we handled it is that we bought out all their inventory, sent it back to Amazon because we didn't want to lose those sales, we didn't want to lose those customers. And most importantly, we did not want the customer experience to be in some someone else's. We wanted the customer experience to be controlled completely by us. So that was our week.
Those are our trials that we faced this week.
Usually I try to have good news for you guys and the good news is that we still are selling. That company is still on pace to do 130, $150,000 in sales. Even though we've been hit by competitors and we have scam artists hitting us.
That's what's going on for Sean and I and the yoga brand. We are launching products number two and three. I'm going to mute somebody because there's some nasty feedback here. Is it still there? Oh, Susan was the culprit. Susan, I'm blaming you. So we're launching products number two and three, yoga blocks and yoga towels. And we're using the existing audience that we have from our.
Previous launches combined with some new advertising that we'll be doing. And in my experience, it's been that product number two is always easier than product number one. In fact, a lot easier than product number one because you have that existing customer base. You have those existing nucleus of reviews, you have the seller feedback, which helps you rank higher in search engines and rank faster.
And you have a lot more exposure as a result, and things move a lot faster. So the second product is always a lot easier. So we're really excited about that. Unfortunately, it's on a boat somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. Should be here first week of July, and that's where we are. So give me an update on where you are and how we can help you get to the next level.
Actually, I want to hear from Brian, because, Brian, last I heard from you, you had done about $1,000 in sales. I'm not sure what happened since then. I want to help blow things up for you. Where are you at?
Okay, so while you were dealing with your coffee explosion, I was giving a quick update to the early joiners. I launched in April. I sold seven units. I sold eight in June.
I'm ecstatic. My goal was 50 units for June. I'm selling a family of four products. So I'm doing something that ASM really said don't do, focus on one. But out of those four, two are related and one I'm ignoring.
And one of them is my main focus. The reason I started focusing on the second one is without doing anything, I was getting.
Sales on it, almost half the value of the one I was focusing on. So I threw some pay per click stuff up there. I put a process in place, a call for review process. I'm using the ASM email tool to email for feedback. My seller feedback rating is, I think, five, all five stars.
I had two, three star reviews on my main product.
And actually one of them was my second customer from April.
He actually left the review as a result of my guy Calling him for product review ended up being a three star review. He told my guy on the call that he wasn't happy with the product. This particular suite of products.
It'S very subjective to the user. I refunded his money. He had stated in his review he'd lost the discount code. I gave it to him in a nice email. Hey. From the founder of the company. And he circled back around and bought the other product and actually bought two of them.
That's where I'm at. I don't know what my objectives for July are going to be, but I'm excited.
The next thing I'm going to do is take take Joe's template of the Facebook to squeeze page to products and I've got a couple ninja ideas I'm going to test on that as well. So update on that probably around the time of the live event in our mastermind.
Very cool. How many reviews are you up on your main product now?
Main product is at 14 and the secondary product is at 8.
Okay, so do you know what I'm going to tell you your update, your objective for July is.
For years.
Yeah, right. All that matters, right?
Yep.
I'm calling them.
I've been giving out as many free ones as possible to people who will leave reviews until you're at 30 reviews or so. Are you driving Amazon Paperclip?
I did a quick campaign just to get that long search URL, just to get some ranking and I got about 50 click throughs on that and I think it kind of helped. It's hard to tell, but I am totally focused on calling the people that have bought and getting them to leave.
Reviews in that process. Are you driving Amazon ppc, meaning are you regularly advertising your list?
Yes, absolutely. My budget's $150 a day and I think it's, it's not going 150 bucks a day, but I think I'm spending $10 or 15 a day.
Okay, so this is why you see kind of the exponential jumps happening is because those reviews carry so much weight that you might make a handful of sales in April and then in May when five reviews show up, it has this much of an impact. And so you see 40 sales, but then when 10 more come in, it has this much of an impact and you have the 80 sales. So when you get up to 30, 40, 50 reviews, that's just going to increase conversions that much more and you're ranking in Amazon. So there's an exponential effect that happens. It kind of looks like it's exponential until it finally flatlines, which actually takes a year or two in order to flatline. So that's why you see that jump. And if you continue to be aggressive with your reviews, you'll see that exponential growth continue to happen.
Yeah, I track my unit session percentage daily and then I look at a lagging 7 and a lagging 30. And my lagging 30 is right around 8 to 9% on my unit session percent.
There's room to improve on conversion.
Yeah, that's not bad. You'll settle when you get all your reviews in it. When you have like 40 reviews, you'll be at probably about 15. So that's a doubling in sales. And that doesn't count the increased traffic and exposure that you'll get as a result of the increase in rankings when you have all those reviews.
Yep.
So I've been doing a couple promotions as well. Two of the products are complementary, so I was doing a discount. Buy the two together, get a 15% discount or something like that. That's actually kicked a couple things too.
Good. I'm excited for you, Brian. Good work.
Thank you.
Appreciate the feedback. Anything anybody thinks that I should be doing, feel free to message me on Facebook or whatnot. If you have some thoughts or criticism. I'm open to it. Cool.
Would anybody like some feedback on what they're doing right now?
Yeah, right here.
Ryan, go ahead.
I'm a little stuck between a domestic and. I mean, I found suppliers of Giant Quotes, but I'm kind of stuck in between using a domestic supplier, which I think, I mean, obviously they do have the product I want, obviously at a bit higher price. But I'm not sure if.
The numbers will work. I mean, what I'm stuck in between now is will the price that I put on Amazon as my selling price, will that work?
So I'm not sure because the product I want.
It'S similar to the top selling product right now, but at the same time, I'm not sure if I can sell it at that same price. For example, they're selling it at about 32.99. The product I'm getting, I think has to be a little bit lower. But my question, I mean, I should have started off the beginning asking, is it worth it going with a domestic supplier? I mean, even if it's a little bit higher in price.
A couple questions for you. Is it a supplement or something different?
No, it's not a supplement. It's a physical product.
Okay. And what is the price difference between ordering overseas versus ordering domestic?
It's not that much. I Mean, it's probably, I want to say, right around 250.
Okay, how heavy is the product?
About two pounds. Just about.
For the love of God, please go domestic.
Even if. I mean, because even with the shipping, I was. If I can avoid the headaches, I'll do that. But how.in terms of pricing it with Amazon, like the actual selling price? I mean, I know you guys said to go ahead and play around with the price and go up a little bit higher than anything and just kind of play around with, see if it sells or not.
I don't quite understand, Nelson. Why does the $2.50 play such a big difference in that pricing? When your product, the top person in your industry, is selling at over $30, why does that $2 make such a big difference?
Well, I'm trying to keep it at 40%. When I do it in the profit calculator, I'm trying to keep it at about 40% profit margin. So sometimes when I'm pricing it up, maybe just me, where I think pricing it too high.
So my question is, should I go at the same exact price as the top competitor is selling right now?
Probably not to start. But here's my analysis. Shipping is going to end up being an extra dollar per unit anyway, right? So maybe even more. But let's say it's a dollar, a dollar extra per unit. So at that point, you're looking at you only have $1.50, $2 difference between the two, and you get to save about eight weeks of waiting time where you can be moving product rather than just sitting like this, like Sean and I are doing right now with blocks and towels. We would love to pay an extra $2.50 per unit in order to have them magically show up, but we can't do that. We have to pay the dollar or $2 and then wait like this for them to show up. So.
If you want to be open to making a change later, then.
You.
Can just save about 8 mega mutiny.
Wow.
Where you can be moving product.
Okay.
The one thing you can do is you could order domestic and get things moving and firing and then go back to the international supplier and say, let's negotiate. Or you could go back to the domestic supplier and say, okay, let's negotiate. I want to order more, but I need $2 less on the unit.
My suggestion would be get things moving as quickly as possible, and you'll move two months faster if you go with the domestic supplier than if you go with the overseas supplier, because it's not sitting on a boat. Somewhere that will allow you to get your process in place. Start collecting reviews. You may not make as much money, but you can play with the price. You can raise it $2 to see if it makes a difference. You can raise it $250 a dollar. You can play with it to see what makes sense. But get those systems in place, get some reviews in place, and then if you decide the margins aren't quite where they need to be, then you can go back and look at ordering overseas or negotiating or doing what you need to do to get your numbers perfect.
Okay. Kind of what I had in mind, but I think that we're probably going to place the order hopefully by Monday.
Like I said, my whole thing is just get started. This way I can get on with the marketing. I have most of the stuff up already, but I can't make it live, obviously without a product.
And one thing I forgot to mention, they do have experience sending over to fba. So that was a big plus there. So I think I'm going to go with it on Monday and I'm just going to go ahead and place that order and get going and see what happens from there.
I think that's a good call. I think that's a really good call. You see, here's a little bit of perspective for you guys. My men's health and fitness company took its first order June 5th of last year. It currently does about 160, $170,000 a month in sales. Sean and I took our first order of yoga mats on Black Friday of last year. There was a six month difference. We started this business six months after my men's health and fitness company. This business does between 15 and $20,000 a month now. The pace of growth has been the same actually with yoga. It might even be a bit different, faster. Here's the difference. We've had half of our time, maybe even more of half of our time with units sitting in the ocean waiting to be delivered. That's three to four months of not being able to take sales. Three to four months of waiting for us to ship out products and do launches. The three, four months of waiting to get reviews. We've done everything we possibly can to reduce that time. But that's the reality of when you have products on a boat overseas. Now we're moving forward anyway because Sean and I have a two to three year window here and we know that a year from now we'll have a thousand reviews. We'll be probably a top five seller in yoga. And that market is enormous. It's enormous. So we knew going in that it was going to be a longer time before we could take profit, but that the end result would be we were going to go into an industry where the barrier to entry was a lot higher for other people. So there would be less competition in the long run and it would be a much easier.
It would be a sellable company. So we're after the long game here. That's just the difference. We don't have profit margins to start, but we have a sellable company in two to three years. That's the difference. That's our window for success here. If you can order domestic to start or if you have a product that's light enough that you can airlift it over to Amazon rather than have it on a boat, I always recommend that because Sean and I would be much ahead of the game if we could have had a shorter shipping time. And a lot of our conversations Saturday is at 9am Central Time are about is there anything we can do to expedite this process? And if not, what can we do in the meantime while we have products on a boat in the middle of the Pacific, what can we do about what can we do in the meantime in order to get things ready for sale once they're in our warehouse? So if you can mitigate that by having a product light enough to airlift over or by ordering domestic, I always recommend starting the process there and doing that for six months before rolling over into having things on a boat because, well, that was something that, something that I didn't know going into the business and something that we learned along the way.
Who else who would like some help on what they're doing analysis on what's the next level? What's the next step for them?
Hi.
Hi Kathryn.
Hi Ryan. Hi.
I have some personal issues in the past and I'm ready to immediately kick start. I have products on my already sourced supplier in China. But the question because I personally asking you because the selling price of the top seller, it's below $10 and the number third, it's a bundle pack, it's a piece of two, two pieces. It's selling 20 something. So because I'm afraid if I sell at below $10 it will lose margins to do extra thing. So thinking about move along to sell a bundle pack. So in two pieces but I saw the competitor also apart from selling bundle pack, they also selling individual pieces. So therefore they have two sku. One is individual pieces, one is bundle pack. So my question is should I follow this strategy of my Thinking sell bundle pack at the same time and individual pack. But the question is, if I wanted to follow Joe's strategies to promote to send traffic from Facebook to Squeeze page, which sku should I promote, the bundle pack or the individual pack?
Okay, question for you. Are you locked into this product? Meaning if you order this product, are you dead set on this product?
I have not yet order.
Okay. So I'm always skeptical of any product that sells for less than $20 just because I don't know how people make it work. To this day, I don't know. I've run the numbers a hundred times for friends and family who are like, what's this Amazon business thing? I'm thinking about selling.
Toy gnomes for five bucks. And every time I run the numbers, I don't understand how people make it work for less than $20. If any of you have a product that's less than $20 and you've run the numbers and you find economies of scale, I would love to hear from you, but I don't know how it happens. But then again, I'm ordering overseas, so we're factoring international shipping and wait times. So I don't know about domestic suppliers. So if you're open to it, I'd encourage you to. Well, first of all, to answer your question, if you're going to do this product, I would definitely say do the bundle pack. I would say 100% do the bundle pack. As far as your product like that as your main product. Being that for a giveaway, I don't know how you would manage this. If there was a way that you could just do a giveaway of single units, it would obviously save you half the product inventory to do that. But as far as selling goes, I would 100% recommend you do a bundle pack. So I'm not sure how you would manage that of giving away single units, but selling the bundle pack, if you were to only do one, I would say just go for the bundle pack because that's going to end up being over your $20 or over. So your margins might be there. But if you're open to it, I don't know what your product is. If you want to message it to me privately, I'd be happy to look at it for you. But I'm always skeptical of any product that doesn't sell for $20 or more.
The question is the second question. If I really focus on promoting the bundle pack, it's a good idea to only give away one piece, but the traffic will be dedicated to the SKU where you send traffic to. So it's difficult if I just give away one piece if I really wanted to promote everything to bundle pack. So every promotion, every giveaway logically should be focused on one SK only and just set aside the individual pack and just leave it. It is as a comparison and no promotion is it. Then my giveaway has to be double. My trial offer is just like normal $20, something like that. So the single pack is meaningless. It's just to be there and for people to compare and I don't bother to sell it just according what you said.
I don't know how to do this, but you guys probably all have seen this on Amazon how there's different buying options about how you can select the size that you want or the color. Brian's about to drop some genius on us, but I wonder if this is going to be an option for Kathryn. Brian, I see you raising your hand. What's your genius you want to drop on us?
Thank you, Sean, for helping me this week on another issue related to this. It's called parent child variations. What you need to do. And I do this because I have multi packs of my products. So I have a single and I have a multi pack. But go through the seller central help on parent child asins. You have to set up a parent asin and then your child asins and you have to do it through flat file uploads.
For the category you're selling in. Get the flat file template. Actually, the seller central help is pretty good to help walk you through it. If you need some help, direct message me and I can help you. But what happens when you organize it properly? All of your reviews pool together under the parent asin. So if you get a review for the child, it shows totaled up for all the children under the parent listing.
Oh, great. Yeah, I would really love to study that. Yes.
Thank you. Thank you, Brian.
Thank you, Sean. Genius. Sean, do you have anything to add to that?
I think there's a way to do without the flat file because for our yoga mats, we actually have the black yoga mat that we sell. We have a green and a blue listing. So when we do come out with green and blue, they'll all kind of bank reviews together. So you could give away, you know, just like Brian was saying, you can give away the single pack, but it'll add reviews to the overall like clump, which means your multi pack will have. It'll look like it has reviews, but really it's reviews for everything. But I did it without uploading A flat file, but I don't remember how and it was kind of a pain. So if the flat file is easy, just follow whatever, whatever Brian said. But that's definitely the way to go.
And the other important thing.
That's all right. I'm just making sure that Kathryn's getting what she needed as far as solving that issue.
I have the high level idea that I need to study, but this is very good input from all you guys. Thank you.
Cool.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Yeah. Again, if you want to message it to me privately, I'd be happy to look at the industry just to make sure it's something you should pursue. If not, that's totally cool, too.
All right. Okay. Sure, sure, sure. I can PM you.
Ryan, quick question.
Yes. Is that Nelson?
Yes.
Okay, go ahead.
How big of a deal is it? I imagine it is, but when obviously a product is like, I'll go to Google Search and I'll search for this product with a keyword that I've researched a little bit that I know is obviously relevant to the product. And I mean, this product completely dominates everything from obviously in the organic search is Amazon, and then it goes to the company's webpage. And I mean, they completely dominate that first page. And I've also noticed they're selling on other websites. Wayfair.
From what I think so far, I think Amazon is. I know they mentioned about Amazon buying the product from that supplier or from the seller. I think they're at that stage. I mean, they do have a high number of reviews and they kind of somewhat dominate the space on Amazon. When you look for this product, is that a huge challenge for me to enter?
I just want to make sure I understand correctly. You're saying that when you do an organic search in Amazon, they have multiple listings and they're showing up all over the place because.
They have a pack of three, they have a pack of two, they have different sizes, they're all over the first page. Right?
Yeah. And it also says, like, Amazon's the one. It's saying it's being sold by Amazon or delivered by Amazon, but obviously it's a different brand.
Okay.
So Amazon has taken over the marketing of that product?
I believe so. I mean, how is that a huge challenge? Even if I. Let's say I do very well with my reviews and.
I do everything right to the T and I did everything to compete with that, with that product. I mean, the fact that Amazon's involved, I mean, is that a hard barrier to entry there?
I would argue that it's not any harder than having another competitor. Matt Clark told me previously that at one point, one of his products reached a level where Amazon was doing all of the marketing and they started doing all of this split testing and stuff, and their sales were actually hurt as a result because Matt had already done all the split testing. He already found out what all the best prices were. Then Amazon went back and had to rediscover it, and their sales were hurt for a while. I'd also argue that from a natural perspective, if I was shopping on Amazon for certain products and I saw the same company for every single one, but then there was one different one, I would 100% look at that one that was different because you have nothing else to compare it to. If all you're looking at is different sizes and different amounts, but if all of them are the same and then there's one that's different psychologically, that's a psychological decoy, which means they may or may not buy from you, but they're definitely going to notice you. They're definitely going to look at your product. So I would actually. I don't know about Amazon being involved in the marketing and how that's going to affect it, but from the perspective of it all being one company being sold, that actually gets me really excited. That lets me know there's not a lot of competitors in that space. And I would want to. I'd actually get really excited about that because it means you're going to get a lot of traffic because people are going to be like, okay, give me one other buying option and they're going to see you and they're definitely going to look at you.
Yeah, that was kind of my thought process right away, because they have a time reviews, but then the next person in line has way under 100 reviews. And like you said, probably out of the top 10 spaces, they probably own about six. And then there's like one or two other competitors, but they're not. I mean, they're not killing it, I'll tell you that.
What's their seller ranking?
I can't remember exactly, but they're. I want to say 62 in that category.
Okay, so what I'd like you to do, Nelson, is while we're working on somebody else, I want you to pull up those other people that are. That are not the same company and tell us what their BSIN is. Tell us what their ranking is. Not in the category, but in the overall Amazon store or their overall category.
You guys give me a second. I'll do this real quick.
Yeah, we'll move on to somebody else and then you can report afterwards.
Cool.
Joe, if you're cool with it, I would love to hear the week aftermath of your launch. Like, what happened as far as reviews go, what happened as far as sales, and if they kept up after you were done with the launch.
I'll tell.
You exactly where I am right now. I am out of stock. So I burned through the remaining 150 units this past 17 days. I'm looking at my stats now. Did 90 units over the past seven days. They're all organic. But I am on the low end.
Kind of a funky situation right now because I'm out of stock and I'm trying to fool around with the FBM thing.
And I don't have my own. Or I didn't have my own buy box, which was a little weird because it's not like I'm competing against anyone.
So I don't know what's up with that. But I'll tell you what, Here's a tip to everyone. Stay in stock. Don't go out of stock because your sales will dive. I went from about 17 to 18% conversion rate down to like 6% yesterday, which was ridiculous. So I'm slipping on page two. I'm like mid low page two at the moment.
Yeah. Running out of stock is the biggest deflation that you can have, but sometimes it's inevitable. The good news is you'll recover quickly. It'll take about a week after you're back in stock to be at full force again. Okay, that's good to know. So you had 150 units back after launch, left after launch? Yeah, something like that, yeah. How quickly did they sell out?
Well, I think it was yesterday morning or late Thursday. So what's that, nine days, 10 days? Something like that.
Okay, so you're what, selling 15 to 20 a day? Yeah. That's fantastic for being just launched. That. That gives me goosebumps. That's exciting.
What? The top person in your. In your market. What's his BSIM like? What's his. What's it like? How high does he rank? How many units per day do you estimate he's selling?
Estimate anywhere from 80 to 100. I think he dominates the. The niche right now.
80 to 100. Dominating a niche means a fairly small niche. My projection is. If you're already at 20, you'll be taking him over pretty quickly.
Sounds good to me.
Yeah.
Cool.
Also, one more question for you. I saw 19 animals walk by while you were talking.
Have you claimed a free Cat scratcher.
I'm going to now that we have.
Three cats, a dog.
All right, in case you all don't know, I'm working on my girlfriend's her cat brand. The name is the Meow Mommy, which she came up with. I thought that was a fantastic name. And her first product is Cat Scratchers. So if any of you have cats and would like a free cat scratcher, message me for your free coupon code. You know the drill. You have how many cats, Joe?
Three.
You have three cats.
I didn't know I was a cat person until I started dating Pamela. And now she'll like, she'll text. I talked to them.
You have no choice, Ryan.
I yelled at them last night, like, how dare you tip over the cat feeder.
Ryan, quick update here. Actually, the top selling product, the one that I was referring to, they're in the top 20. They're actually at 16.
Now the next two that follow them, one is at 2,900, the other one's at 11,000.
Okay. In the top category at 2,900, you're selling like 20 per day, maybe a little bit more, maybe 30 per day.
A full time business is when you're selling 50 units a day or more. So.
I was hoping they'd be higher, but I still think that you're going to do, you're going to be just fine. I think if most of the top people are the same company, I think you're going to be able to step in there pretty quickly. It surprises me though that if they're number two and three on the search page, why they're so far down on the list. Why are they.
What are they ranked in their own specific category?
No, they're very high on their specific categories. They're like I said, 16 in their category.
Okay, got it.
Yeah.
16 is still, I mean, if they're, they're on the first page of the search results. Correct?
Yes. Once I type in that keyword, I mean, they're the first two. As a matter of fact, the top two is the same company.
Which I find with two different price points. And it looks like the same product to me. One's at 3150, the other one's at 2750.
Yeah. So what I'm saying is, it's just.
What I'm saying is it sounds a little bit interesting that somebody can be on the first page but they are not ranking that high in the actual category.
I see what you're saying.
They're not in the top 10. That's just interesting to me. That lets me know that there's some room there in the middle, to be honest with you. If somebody is 19 or whatever it was in their category and their BSIN is 2,900, that's actually really encouraging. That means that even though they're not even in the top 20 or they're in the top 20, but towards the end they're still selling 20 to 30 units a day. That's actually fairly encouraging. Okay, what I'm saying is it sounds a little bit.
Whoa.
Sorry, I had to. Had to mute you. You had an echo bigger than the Grand Canyon. So when you've got a question, just go ahead and let me know and you can unmute yourself. I'm just looking at the questions. Great question from Hat Welsh. And this is good for sir chucksalot as well, which is some advice on copyrighted advice on bullet points and the description. Yes, I have a formula that's always worked really well for me as far as bullets and description. It looks like this. You can look at our yoga pages for examples on this. The bullets look like this benefit at the beginning . Capital Letters. For example, benefit being 100% satisfaction guaranteed or benefit being 4.5 out of 5 stars or.
Most highly reviewed product on Amazon or whatever it is, we have one product that has the best reviews in its category on Amazon. We use that copy in all capital letters followed by an explanation of why that's the case. Do that all the way down in your description. Always start with a positive quote about the products, preferably from a product review that someone has left or about an ingredient in the product, an aspect of the product that someone else has said. For example, before all this Dr. Oz noise happened, if you were selling Garcinia Cambogia, the opening quote may be.
This may be the greatest weight loss breakthrough in history. Dr. Oz, start with a quote in your description. That is the first part, followed by basically a restatement of the bullets and a call to action. Click add to cart now to start blank. Now, that's my formula, capital letter bullets followed by explanation in all of your bullets. Start with a quote in your description. That is the formula that we have always followed. Now, sir chucksalot, you had me look at your bullets and I tried to explain that to you in text. I don't think it came through. So that is the formula for.
Good bullets.
Robby, I see your question on the thread. He says.
He has a product that will cost $5 shipping to the US if that's per unit, that's really high. Sea shipping would be 5 cents per unit. I decided to go air as I want to run things faster. My profit would eventually be 300%. I don't know what the heck you're selling that would have 300% profit margins. Heads up. Look at the volume of that product. But if you've got 300% profit margins, by all means start with Air Shipping and then switch over to Sea Shipping once you have your systems and processes in place. But if you got a 300% profit margin, go for it.
Kevin asks. He's got three to four strong competitors. They're priced between 18 and $20. My thought process is the pricing should be the same, but to start slightly higher, like $22. Premise is that some people assume that higher the price, the better the product. Your thoughts? I agree 100%. I think that is a good strategy. Most people are competing at the same level. They're going to look at two things. They're going to look at the most expensive, they're going to look at the most reviews, and they're going to look at the cheapest. So if you're looking for a way to differentiate yourself, I say 100%. You should be going for a higher price. That's one of the reasons, Joe, why I think when you're back in stock, you need to raise that price like immediately. Staff yesterday.
100%. Yeah, I intend to. I just right now with the inventory situation and being on, you know, sliding on page two, I just wanted to leave it.
There. Yeah. There is some benefit to going for volume when you begin because you get more exposure to reviews. Amazon ranks you faster when you have that momentum volume. So there is something to be said about lowering your price. But as soon as that starts to flatline, raise that price for your profit margins. 100%.
I'd like to hear from Sir Gregzilot.
Last we spoke, I think you had it in a. You were just about to order it or it just.
Shipped. Yeah, actually it just shipped on Tuesday. So we had to wait for DHL account to get finalized and that happened. And we've got two, actually three different types of samples coming from two different manufacturers and they're supposed to be here Tuesday. So everything looks good. We're going to immediately go with an order. And even though I've quoted what the eventual peace order out to be, which is $4,000 for air versus $500 by C, I think I'm still going to do the air just to. To get moving quicker and do what your plan is But I guess one of my questions is how do you know until you really start seeing your sales volume of when to order, if you're going to be going by sea, just so you're not running out of stock? That seems like that's a.
Challenge. Yeah, I mean, it's really as soon as possible. As soon as you're comfortable with the expense is when you want to do it. Unfortunately, there's not like a science to it. It's hard to predict now. But this is why I say the bigger the order that you can place when you begin, the better you are, because you can have more time to figure that out, to figure out what that pace of sales is going to be. But there's really not a good way to predict it until you do see sales. But I say as soon as possible, keep as much in there as you.
Can. Okay. And you know, when evaluating your competition, you kind of touched on it where you'll see the number one person that's ranking, say in the top one to 500 of the main category. But then, you know, the number two, number three, number four guys, they rank 2,000 and up. So in that case, you see that as a good.
Opportunity. Well, in, in Nelson's case, he was saying that he had, excuse me, that like the number 14 or 15 person was still selling, was still ranking 3,000 or so.
If the number 2 or 3 is that low, it's not necessarily an opportunity. That means that you've got to be in the top three in order to see any significant, significant volume. With Nelson's case, he was saying that way down on the list he still had, they were still ranking like 3,000 around that area. So not necessarily. Is it a good opportunity? Bad.
Opportunity?
Yeah.
Good. So the final question I got is being that we're getting close to our first actual product shipment, I've.
Got.
A friend that has a warehouse pretty close to where I live at that I could initially have the product shipped. I don't know how comfortable I am just having it drop shipped directly from the manufacturer to Amazon. And I was just kind of curious where everybody's experience has been that's either tried that or they like to do something different like Earth Class mail or just have it shipped to them.
Directly. I don't quite follow. Could you explain that for me one more.
Time? So I know Amazon's got these requirements of how they have to receive the product. And since it's coming from China and we don't have a comfort yet until we start corresponding with them more, do you typically just right out of the chute when you're dealing with a manufacturer for the very first time and they're overseas, trusting them to shift the quantity to Amazon in the manner that it needs to be. Or do you touch it.
First? You're ordering from overseas, right? Yep. We have them shipped to a shipping company who then handles all of.
It. And that would be something like Earth Class.
Mail.
Earth Class Mail is a mail service that scans your mail for.
You. Yeah, but they've somehow they're affiliated with ASM and they can receive your product, they can take pictures of it, send it to you, they can repackage it and then send it on. So I've had a couple of discussions with them, but I guess they're just so over consumed right now because evidently ASM is promoting.
Them. That's Earth Class Mail. Yeah.
That's interesting. I use Earth. I've used Earth Class Mail for years, but I use them as a PO box, so when I'm traveling they scan my mail for.
Me. Yeah, we, we talked to a rep there and he said they've got a service that's pretty much designed just for people that do stuff on.
Amazon. I know nothing about.
This. Yeah. So yeah, I was just kind of curious because I right now I don't have a comfort level that when, you know, if the samples look good and we place our order, I don't have a comfort level that is going to show the initial product order is going to ship to Amazon and they're going to be totally satisfied with the way it's packaged and everything.
Else. Well, I just feel like I need to be in the middle of it. Same thing. We took samples, we got a final sample and then we did indeed just have them send the whole lot straight over to Amazon. What Shawn and I did when we started. Right.
Shawn? Yep, that's.
Correct.
Alright, we're getting close. The tea kettle is.
Brewing. Good. Glad to hear that.
We got a few minutes left. So anything else you guys want to cover or about getting to the next level? I'm also going to look at the comments on the.
Page.
I got a question that you or Sean may or may not have an answer.
For.
Sure. Or anyone that has got their product live and has been making phone calls for reviews with the follow up. Have you found a particular time of day or certain day you actually get customers more than others on the phone versus leaving a.
Message?
Afternoon. Afternoon, yeah.
During the week or.
Weekend? During the.
Week. During the.
Week.
Kelly Underhall asks. Sorry, Underdog, how much higher should we price our units? Average price of our product of our competitors is $15. We were thinking launching of $20 or higher, but that really depends on the time type of product it is that you're selling is $5 for a lot of things over what you would expect. No.
Totally depend on the product, though, so it's difficult for me to say.
Dimitri asks, what is your thought on sales business strategy? Push out volume versus profit.
So for when you're starting, I'd go volume. After you have finished starting, I'd go profit.
It's the same psychology, same reasoning behind why Sean and I came up with the launch idea and giving away things for free is because we wanted reviews. We wanted to raise up in the rankings, so we were okay even taking a loss every unit in order to get the volume out there. Same reason why Joe did a laundry. He gave things away for a dollar. So I would start with volume and then switch it to profit. Once you've gotten reviews, once you have gotten volume in the search engines.
That'S where the difference.
What else? Tribe?
How many of you go are you going to ASM in.
July?
Be.
There.
Most of you. Yuri's going.
To see Yuri. We'll have a. I'll have a hard cider and everyone else have a beer in your honor.
Kathryn, will you be.
There?
I'm not sure.
Yet. Okay. Where are you based.
Catherine? I'm in Hong.
Kong. You're in Hong Kong. What's it like having. Because do you have access to all the suppliers there? Is it easier for.
You? Oh, it's so easy. I just go there about two hours by train into Dongguan. So I visited the factory, and the factory is the world's largest one. So the quality is the best. So it really communicates. It's no.
Problem. So here's. This is my entrepreneurial brain at work. Catherine, you might have a nice little business positioning yourself in ASM as the girl who goes and checks out everybody's inventory.
Look at.
This. Do you know I'm willing to hire.
Her? Yeah, Sean, I would have paid 500 bucks, 1,000 bucks to have somebody go talk to the supplier, take some pictures of our inventory, make sure that everything was on time. Like, make sure that it was real product. Like, I would have paid that in a heartbeat if there was a girl who was like, hey, I do that for a living. And there's 5,000 asmers. I can imagine you, like, over a weekend, having 10 clients going into China, taking a weekend, walking out, taking some pictures, and then collecting $10,000.
I think that would be a really cool little business for.
You. Yes, that's good idea.
So how can I start it? Post.
It? Yeah. The first thing you do is you post to the tribe and you say, hey, tribe, if any of you are going overseas, I'm looking to test the services of a new potential business. I plan on charging $1,000 for this. I'll do it for $250 for tribe members to start. I'll take pictures of your inventory. I'll get in touch with the supplier. I'll make sure that everything is that they're legitimate. I'll look at their factory to make sure that they produce quality products and I'll take pictures of everything they've made so that we can see that it's legit. Think of somebody like Greg who just said, I'm a little bit nervous about the, the product that they're going to be producing en masse. People like that are ideal for you to go. I'll go look at their supplier and I'll tell you.
If everything checks out, you go over there, board the train, come out with all your samples and then we all say how awesome you are and I promote you on stage in July. That's how you start.
Okay, cool. Catherine saying.
Definitely.
Interesting.
Yeah. So then I will highly consider Las.
Vegas. Yeah, Catherine, it's actually a two step. One is a supplier qualification upfront and then there's a shipment inspection and if you spend your, if you do it a couple times, you'll be able to put a process around it and then scale it by hiring somebody to do it for you. But I wouldn't do that out of the.
Gate.
Imagine Catherine as the supplier broker. So here's what she does. Instead of people going to Alibaba and looking at reviews and such, they go to Kathryn and they say, kathryn, I'm looking to buy this, this and this at this price. And Kathryn goes, hmm, I know this factory, this factory and this factory. Let me call them, calls them all. And then for a fee, connects with the best Catherine approved supplier with her stamp on, she's worked with, she knows produces good products. Like, how many of you would rather go through that person than. Yeah, 100%. I would do that. She's like, I've been to the factory. I'm getting all pumped up right.
Now. How do I get a cut out of.
This?
And Catherine just approves the suppliers that.
She knows do really good work. And then she gets a kickback from the supplier. The supplier sends her 5% of whatever is ordered and she charges an upfront fee from the person that does the work. So she gets $500 to start the research and she gets 5, 5% of whatever is ordered from that person. Kathryn. Oh my.
Goodness. We call this business.
Model. If you don't do this by yourself, contact me because I'll help you set it up and we'll work something out. This is such a good.
Idea. That's a cool thing.
Yeah.
Say.
Again. I already helped one of them, another tribe member. I checked for the website and because I know the language, Chinese, they have really crappy site. And then one of the tribe members decided to go away from this supplier and find another one so that even I browse the site and it is so many things I can help. Yeah, a really cool.
Thing.
There's some people on the thread who are saying they would use your services too.
I'm telling you, Kathryn, if you just had a service where you brokered where you found quality suppliers based on what people were looking for, that is.
You would have a profitable business.
Overnight. Wow. I just even move to Hong Kong and do.
It.
Right. I have an Catherine. I have an international student from China who I coach football and he's new to it, so I'm trying to get him to translate for me. So I mean, just being there itself, I mean, would be a huge thing. So I'm trying to convince him I just can't communicate with him yet.
That'd be.
Awesome.
That's a good idea. You're like, I'm an ASMR and I'm in China. I'll look at a research suppliers where you find the best price negotiate based on on who I know produces high quality products. It's $500 and then you take 5% of whatever they.
Order.
I can source product at the fingertips and in many.
Way. Well, you realize, Kathryn, that's the biggest obstacle for most people in this.
Business. You know what? My product source from Guang by Canton Fair. So you won't get it until you visit the Canton Fair. My supplier couldn't find it in Alibaba at all because Alibaba only have some trading company. So we never found the real manufacturer behind it. You won't see it if you just.
Browsing. Yeah. Expect a Facebook message from me shortly after we hop off this call because I think this is a fantastic idea and it'd be a service that if somebody like I could offer that to the people who come to me.
That need help with Amazon businesses, I'd be recommending people over to that service all day long. Everybody on this call is going, you need to do this.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So Kathryn, I think your decision was just made for you. You need to put this business together and go to Vegas in.
July.
I definitely think you should come to Vegas and just mention that as an.
Idea.
Yes.
Yeah. Yeah, I think I should have booked the.
Ticket.
Yeah. I need to do some confirmations.
Yeah.
Idea land. By the way, since Sean and I do these calls together, this is where.
Partnering really.
Is. Sean put it as two plus two equals five. Where Sean before was talking about parent, child, whatever that was, I have no idea. He was speaking Cantonese there. I don't have a clue. Parent, child, setting up the flatline, ship bio, whatever you call it. I have no idea. Like my head once to explode.
Sean is like, Ryan, give me two minutes and a cup of coffee and I'll have this done. And I'm like, well, thank God for Sean. And then things like this where I'm seeing an opportunity, it's easy for me. Literally give me two minutes and a cup of coffee. And I think we just mapped out a full time business for Kathryn in five minutes.
This is where we're partnering with people who don't have your skills.
Is really beneficial. Whereas I never would have done the yoga business if it wasn't for Sean. Sean would have never started the yoga business if it wasn't for me. And there's a lot of appreciation between the two of us. Sean would still be dropped. Well, he still is drop shipping movie screens from Target.com and I wouldn't have a business. I never would have started my men's health and fitness company if it wasn't for math because I never would have printed out the damn shipping label because that sounds like an afternoon of hell to me. Seriously, going into those details.
I'd rather put flames down my throat than figure out how to print out shipping labels or mats. Like, okay, I just want to come up with ideas all day long. So there's something very powerful to partnering with people who have very opposite skills as you and Kathryn. Just so you know, Karen, David, another David, Kelly, MJ on the thread all just said they want to use your.
Services.
I never thought such.
Popular.
Add another.
One. Yeah, yeah, add Greg, Ken, myself. There you.
Go. Yeah, give me your wish list. I can fulfill this.
For.
You.
Yeah, very cool.
This is about as much fun as I've had on a hangout. Mostly because we just ended with me being able to be in Idealaland. But I want to say.
This happens around this time in asm, I've done it three times now and it happens right around this time. I am so damn impressed with y'. All. Look at everybody on this call right now. Just look at the bottom. Brian's doing sales every day. Kathryn just magically got a full time business mapped out for her. Greg has product on his way getting samples. Joe just did a launch and he's already sold 500 freaking units. Ken, I'd like an update on you. Last I heard, you were about to update or they were on a boat somewhere. Is that.
Right?
Me?
Yeah. No, my product is actually with FBA. There's about 90 units there. I started with 100, so I actually have 10 out. I'm just trying to get the reviews. I don't.
Know. We're going to come back to this because I want to get a good launch plan for you. Nelson's placing orders and has his profit margin space, has domestic supplier ready. So I'm just damn impressed with y' all that there's literally 100% action taking rate, which means 100% success rate for the people on this call. Compare that to people who bought. Well, even the products that I put out a few years ago when I was really involved in the Internet marketing space. You were lucky if you got a 5% action taking rate. You were lucky if you got a 20% rate of people who actually consumed the product.
I'm damn impressed with the participation rate, with the action taking rate, with the success rate. This never happens, but when you get a group of people together like this and you're all making sure that everybody's on the right track, just magic happens. And I'm always impressed. So kudos to all of you guys. Ken, let's war room where you're at right now and get you to the next level. You did 100 units as your first order. You sold.
10. Yes. Two of those were just organic sales and then.
Three of them were giveaways and then the rest were friends that for some reason still have not left the review and driving me.
Nuts. So do you have any reviews at.
All? No.
None. Okay, so I would be more aggressive with your giveaway strategy. Is it expensive for you to give them.
Away?
It's not that it's that expensive. It's just I have.
A Facebook page, a niche page that has about a thousand likes that I plan to push to again this week. I just want to build a squeeze page, which I haven't gotten to yet. I'm also going to get 100 units to Amazon hopefully this week as well, another hundred. So I can be more aggressive with those giveaways. I just got to be careful because I work full time and I want to be able to monitor. I just don't want to something slipping through the crack or someone posts my coupon code and diminishes all my inventory with a giveaway, which on one hand would be great, but then on the other hand, I have no money to reorder inventory.
Again. Okay, so here would be my recommendation, Ken. Rather than putting off action, let's take some really, really small action steps. So use your Facebook page that has 1000 likes and do a giveaway of 10. And just do it as like a little test. You can do a big push later, you can do a big launch later, but just make an announcement that you're giving away 10. And the first 10 people to email you at whatever email address will get the coupon code give out.
The.
June 6, the first day after the product went live. And I only had three people.
Respond. Okay, then you have. The audience just isn't very responsive right now. So you might need to boost the post or you might need to reach out to people individually, people who post on the wall, people who are new likes, people who are active in the interaction. You might have to reach out to them personally, but give away 10 on the Facebook page and follow up with them individually and then close the coupon code and do a big launch later. But rather than kind of wait to take all these actions, I would say what can you do now to get 5 reviews now to give away 10 and then spend all. All of your energy should be on that.
Specifically. Yes, I'm actually trying to fight with myself to call some of these other people, but I'm not a phone person, but I'm trying to just make.
Myself do it, then send an.
Email. Yeah, I have the email set up through asm, the email tool. So that's sending them. And actually the very first person that actually purchased the product, full price, I lowered the product like $3 on the price. I sent her a $5 gift card, followed that up saying, we just wanted to thank you for being a customer. We had lowered our price to show you our appreciation. Except this $5 gift card then followed that with the message from the founder of the company, me asking for.
Review. Still nothing interesting. Try this. Try emailing them and ask for feedback from about the.
Product. Yeah, I asked that in the email. I actually put said, we'd like to hear feedback from you. Being a new product, a new Company, we want your feedback. Email us and gave my email address to try to intercept it first in case it was bad before she goes to Amazon. Still just haven't even heard anything from.
Them. This is the problem. Most people delete every email they get from Amazon because there's such repeat buyers on Amazon like I do it, your order is shipped. Delete, delete, delete, delete, delete. Feedback request. Delete, delete, delete, delete, delete, delete. So there's no use wasting your time on people who don't open those emails. So try asking a question in the email. How has your experience been? Just want to. Hey, this is so and so from so and so company. Just wanted to make sure that your order arrived on time. Would you email me back and let me know that it arrived, question mark. If they respond, then you have a responsive person that you can work with. If they don't respond, then there's no need to keep following up with them or to send them gift cards or whatever because they're probably not seeing the messages in the first place. So look for those responses and then you can work at reviews but also be really aggressive with friends and family. Like you have people that would do you a favor of buying and leaving a review. Right. So hustle those first five, those first 10. Do whatever it takes. Ask for people in the tribe to give you feedback. There's five people in the tribe who will leave you a product review. So hustle those first five, 10 reviews and then you'll have a little bit of momentum that could be moving.
Forward. Yeah. Because my biggest obstacle was with the friends and family. My family, I live in Florida, all of my family's in PA and there's a paper trail between us because they all send gifts. So Amazon has us connected. So I don't think that I can have them leave a review. I don't know if Amazon would even allow it because like I said, there's a big trail between my family and I in.
Amazon. May I coach you for a second.
Ken?
Yes. My suggestion would be to do it.
Anyway.
Okay. Now might they remove the review? Yeah. Happened to my girlfriend last week. Her sister and her sister's boyfriend left reviews. They got deleted. She got all discouraged. I was like, keep moving forward, sweetie. It's a new business. So I, rather than worry about what could happen.
Move forward and expect mistakes, but know that they're a process and a long term view of a successful business. So my interpretation of what's going on is that there's a lot of analysis going on. That analysis will go away once you have some forward momentum. So mistakes are going to happen. They're inevitable no matter how much you analyze it. So I would say what is the smallest action step that you can take to get some feedback and operate there, knowing that if something bad happens, it's going to happen. Keep taking another small action step towards progress because right now you're frozen. You've got no momentum in any direction, so it's really hard to steer you. So I would get some momentum because then we can hop on these calls next week and the week after that and we can steer you a lot faster. But it's hard to be steering you in the right direction when you're kind of frozen up. They might remove that review. I'm waiting for launch. I'm worried that Amazon's going to see the paper trail here. Just get some momentum going and then we can steer and correct that with future calls. Okay.
Cool. With the reviews, I think my biggest fear was just getting my account blocked, but maybe that just don't do.
That. No, that won't.
Happen. Okay.
Cool.
Thanks. You've got friends and family. You've got the tribe.
I'm going to raise my voice at you if you don't have five reviews the next time when we check. Okay, five reviews is easy. Five reviews is easy. As long as you recognize that it's easy and you call up a few people for some friends, for some favors, that's easy. Post it on your personal Facebook, post it in the tribe, go to your friends and family, email your customers. Five reviews just.
Happens.
Okay.
Cool. That's your assignment this week.
Anything else before we hop.
Off? Everybody?
Good.
Info. Appreciate.
It. Thank you.
Ryan. I'm just looking at the.
Red.
Gail asks, have you done brand registry for all your products?
Yes.
To do the brand registry with Amazon, you have to have a website set up. They look at.
That.
I don't.
Know. Sean said.
Yes.
Yeah.
Gail says please tell Kathryn I will hire her.
Thank you.
Susan.
Catherine. Susan said, Kathryn, I'm not going to Vegas and I haven't cancelled my reservation. I got the per night rate that they have for the block. Maybe we can transfer the reservation to you.
Somehow. Oh.
Thanks.
All right, cool. All right, everybody, thanks for attending again. I'm damn impressed with y' all.
And I continue to be. So thanks so much for making this so much fun and I will speak to you next week. Thanks.
Guys. Thanks for helping us.
Out. Later.
Ryan. Later, guys.
