What Happens If People Copy My Product?

Hey, how's it going? It's Ollie here. Welcome to the Ecommerce Freedom Podcast. Before we dive in with today's episode, I've got two cool resources for you. The first one is my new E Commerce Q and A group on Facebook. So in this group, the point is you ask questions in the Facebook group and I answer them with daily videos. Okay? So you can get your questions answered really, really, really quick. It's a great resource. If you go to ecommercefreedom.com and look at the top of the page, you'll see a button for the Q and A group. Click on that, it will take you to the Facebook group. Second resource I got for you is an Amazon Accelerator call. So what I'd love to do with you is talk about your goals, talk about where you are now and talk about the stuff that could prevent you from hitting your goals right together. On a strategy session, we will come up with a plan for you to replace your income with an Amazon business. If you'd like to book a call where we can do this, go to ecommercefreedom.com, look at the top of the page and click Amazon Accelerator Call. You'll be taken to a very short application page. You can fill that in on the next page. You should be able to book your call. Alright. Hope you really enjoy the episode. Hey, how's it going? It's Ollie here. So two quick announcements before we dive into the questions on today's video. So number one, as always, every single day I get tons of people in this group asking me how to find hot products to sell on Amazon. It is the number one most asked question question and I've analyzed more than 150 questions as people have entered the group. So rather than answering the same question every single day or just doing it very quickly in a video, what I've decided to do is host a live product research masterclass especially for you. So if you still aren't 100% confident in how to find a product that is going to make profit the Amazon Marketplace, then please sign up for this masterclass. It's going to be really eye opening. I'm going to be walking you through step by step my process how to find products. You'll actually see me on the marketplace with Jungle Scout looking for products and any products that I find you can keep. So you'll see a link either above or below this video for that masterclass and you'll be able to click the link and sign up. It's going to be held on Thursday 8pm UK time. That's the first thing. The second thing is I wanted to let you know that there's another way you can actually watch or should I say listen to these videos. So I'm actually posting them as podcast episodes. So if you go to any of the main podcast hosts, iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, etc. Type in E Commerce Freedom Podcast and you will get the audio version of these videos and you can listen there as well. So whilst you're on the go, whilst you're working out or doing the dishes or laundry or whatever on your commute, you can also listen to these videos as well. So search for Ecommerce Freedom Podcast and you should find it and you can subscribe. Awesome. Okay, so some great questions today from people, really excited to help you guys out. And I don't know if you notice, I've got a plaster on my neck there, cut myself shaving this morning and it just won't stop bleeding. So I had to put something on before doing the video so it doesn't look like a bit of a murder scene. Anyway, Melanie Davis asks, I've heard you teaching us to see what's selling well on Amazon and copy, but by making improvements to the product, does this mean when I'm successful with a product and others copy my products that I will lose sales from my successful products? This is a great question, Melanie, and you're clearly looking forward into the future at some of the potential risks of running a business. So I mean, this is just the nature of how business works, right? People innovate in marketplaces and as soon as someone's innovated, other people copy, right? And that's just the way it works. That's the way business works. So the simple answer is yes, people are going to copy the type of value you're adding to the marketplace in your niche, right? But there's a few things we can do to actually make this into a non issue. So number one, if you establish yourself as the genuine article in your niche of the way that you've added value to that niche, then all the other sellers that copy you will seem like copycats, fakes. It's like, you know when you've got an iPhone, right, and it's made by Apple, and then you've got the cheap Chinese knockoffs of the iPhone, pretty easy to spot what's the real iPhone and what's the fake ones, right? You use it for like five seconds and you know it'll be the same thing with your product. You know, if you've been selling your product for a long time, you've got a lot of reviews, you've got great branding, then if there's other people selling the same thing with way less reviews and it's cheaper and you know, it looks different and the branding is not on point, customers will buy your product because they'll trust it. So you can establish yourself in the marketplace and solve that problem. The other thing you can do is you can add value, add better value than anyone else and be more creative in how you add value. Most Amazon sellers don't really add much value with their products, right? In fact, they do zero market research. They don't find out about the customer, they don't think about what the products actually going to be used for, how it's going to be used. Therefore they don't really know how to add value to the marketplace. So you might end up adding value to the marketplace in a certain way that the other sellers don't get and they don't understand, they don't know why your products going to be so valuable to customers, so they won't know to copy. So there's two things you can do to get around this problem and there's another thing you can do as well, which is launch lots of products because at some point some of the products you sell are going to do less well, you're going to not be able to charge as much, the volume is going to drop a little bit. So you want to have lots of products on the go and constantly be launching new products. So your business is always profitable. That's generally the best way to go. So great question, Melanie, and hopefully the answer was useful for you and you came up with a bit of inspiration from it. So Andrew asks, when testing new products, would it be better to concentrate on just one at a time or launch two or three at a time and then concentrate on the one that does better? This is a great question, right? Because when you're testing products, there's a lot of time you have to wait before you realize which one's gonna work. So if you test one product and you find the niche and it looks great and you go to China, you talk to the suppliers, you get all the quotes, you get the test batch shipped in, you prep it, label it, send it into Amazon, you create the listings, you get it to sell, that's sometimes a two month process. I mean it can be 30 days, but sometimes it can be dragged out a little bit longer. So if you want to test out three products, I mean that could be Three to six months before you figure out which product could do well. You know, worst case scenario, let's say, you know, the first two products fail. That's going to take you like three months. So here's my answer. It all depends on experience. If this is your first product and your first test batch, never do multiple. You could do a couple of different angles for a product, but never do multiple different niches and different products altogether. It's going to cause you major headaches. If it's your first import, just do one at a time in the beginning. But Andrew, I happen to know that you have experience because you've worked with me and you've definitely launched your first product. So now that you've done it, once you've got your Amazon account set up, you know how to send stuff into Amazon, you're clear on the process? Yes, you can definitely launch several products at once and I would recommend it. Once you've got one product tested, then definitely go ahead and test multiple products at once. You can test multiple angles, multiple niches, and you'll get your test results much quicker and figure out which products going to be profitable is going to sell better and which one you should launch properly. Great question. Andrew Frank asks how do you find high margin products in your research? So another great question again, you're thinking about, you know, how to stay profitable long term while building your business and obviously the higher margins you have, the more money you can put into marketing and advertising, the more aggressive you can be with that and the more money you have at the end of the day, which is essentially what we're aiming to do, create profit, right? Not just make sales and break even. So two things you want to consider when looking for high margin products. Number one, the price point you can sell at. Okay, so if you look at your niche, is there a way you can charge more than everyone else? Is it evident that people are charging a lot for products? Right. You know, if everyone's charging 799, there's probably not much room for much margin in most instances. Some cases you can make a decent margin, but most instances probably not. If everyone's charging £29.99 now, you're looking at a very profitable niche, right? So that's the first indicator. The second indicator is the cost of landed goods. So what that means is how much is it going to cost for you to source the products, get them manufactured and get them shipped to the country you want to sell them in? Alright, so if that cost is very high, obviously your margins are going to be smaller. So what we really want with high margin products is products that cost very little, where you can charge a lot right now, quite often it can be difficult to find products like that because when there's a big profit margin on products, what happens is they get quite competitive and then sellers inevitably reduce the price. Right. And it gets a little bit more tight over time. So the way to get around that is to actually develop a brand that people trust so they will be willing to pay for your product because they know it's going to be good quality. So that's one way you can get around it. But yeah, looking at those two things is the first indicator of a high margin product. Great question, Frank. Steve asks how much time is needed to invest in an Amazon business when starting out on a daily basis. So another great question. So you can get moving and start to get results and start ramping up income, putting in an hour a day on average. So whether it's looking for products, whether it's contacting suppliers, whether it's getting stuff shipped over from China, whether it's writing listings, you know you're going to find most of the stuff you're doing while you're launching your first few products is waiting. You're waiting for products to get shipped, you're waiting for stuff to go into the Amazon warehouse, you're waiting for products to sell. You know, it's, it's more waiting than anything else and it can actually get a little bit frustrating. Sometimes it feels like you could be doing more with your time when actually there isn't that much to do. You just have to wait for stuff to get tested, to see results and then decide what to do next. So an hour a day is usually what it takes in the beginning. Now sometimes something will go wrong or something will need your attention and you'll need to put in a good four, six hours into something. So maybe a Saturday will be spent, you know, really researching and writing a great listing, for example, or dealing with some kind of shipment, you know, to put in a few hours. But that's, you know, special circumstances. On average we're talking about an hour a day. And yeah, that will remain pretty much the same until you start to really grow. When you start to really grow the business, then it will take up more of your time and then we're talking more so part time hours and it will get to full time if you really want to scale to like high six, seven figures. And then you'll be managing staff and other things as well as your business grows. So I hope that answers your question. And really, it's a good thing. I mean, you can run this business with relatively little time put in. That's not to say that it's easy. And it's not to say you shouldn't put in real energy and take it very seriously, because that is what's going to make the difference whether you're successful or not. Awesome. All right, guys, so I really hope this video was helpful for you. Hope I answered your questions. Well, if you're watching this video outside of my Facebook group, then the whole point of the group is to get your questions answered on these videos. So it's called Ollie's E Commerce Q and A Group, and you can click the link above or below the video to join you, direct you to Facebook, right where the group's held. As you enter the group, a box will appear asking you to ask a question. Type in the box, ask a question. I'll approve your request to join the group and I'll answer it in one of these videos. So you'll have all the help you need to get moving and start selling on Amazon. If you haven't done so already, click the link on either above or below the video to sign up for my Product Research Masterclass. It's going to be really, really valuable for you. It's going to help you finally get really clear on how to select those hot products to sell on Amazon. And also check this out on your favorite podcast website. And you can listen to these videos as well. All right, thanks so much for watching today's video, and we'll speak very soon.