Online Empire Academy

Dean Soto

How to Market Research like a Ninja… Seriously…

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Before you create a product or jump into a market, you need to know your buyers very well, because worst case scenario is you can create a product without knowing your market, jump in, and wonder why it doesn't sell. We want to prevent that situation from happening and help you understand how to do proper market research, competition research so you know exactly who your competitors are, and how to do product research so you create the best quality product that your buyer wants to buy that will solve their problems. Let's get started.

How well do you know your market?

The question is: How well do you know your market? Even though there are plenty of resources that you can go online for information in this respect, it's a fact of life that many products are released with little to no prior research at all. If that sounds like you and you really want to jump in without really knowing your market, you need to stop right now. I'm going to help you right now figure out how to research.

What You'll Learn in This Series

Now, before we jump right in and talk about how to find your right market, I'm going to talk about a quick overview here on the content in this specific blog series. This post is the introduction to market research.

Blog post two is going to be what is your product. You want to get a clear idea about what your product or service is about, and what your customer sees in your product and service, why would they buy, and things like that. If you have a better idea of what you're about to sell in terms of your product, then it will be easier to do market research, because that way when you're doing the market research, you have a better idea of, “Oh, okay. This can be applied to my product.” You can see how to improve your product, but not only that, you can see how to better reach your potential buyers. Because if you into market research blindly, it's a little bit harder to do that.

Part three is going to be different types of markets. Now, it's easy to stick with one particular market, for example, specific location, and things like that, but I want to open your eyes so that you are aware of the many different types of markets that are out there, so that you can expand your reach, thereby, expanding your profits.

Then, we move on to post number four and talk about some general market data mining sites. These are quite general, but they give you a good idea of the trends that are going on in the broader market, so that you're aware of how to improve your product or service.

That brings us to post number five, which is starting your research. At this point and on, I will actually show you the step-by-step process of what you need to do to actually begin your market research. I'll actually give you an example of a specific market, and we'll dive on in. From that point on, all the way to post number 10, I will use that same example. In post number six, we're going to talk about finding market trends to figure out what kind of trends are going on in that specific market, you know, what is going on, what trends are going away, and things like that.

That brings us to article number seven, which is researching keywords and checking the stats. Now, keyword research is little bit more detailed than market research. Market research is more broader, then you have little niches inside that market, but keyword research, I'm including this in this series because I wanted to take you from the broader market to the specific niches, the specific keywords, and that way you can get some hard data and get an idea of what's working and what's not.

Next is post number eight, which is what is selling and what isn't. It's a good idea to take a look at your competitors and competing products to see what is selling and what isn't.

Blog post number nine is what people want and what people don't want. It's a good idea to figure out this because this will help you improve your product further and help your product stand out among the competition. Because if you have a good idea of what people don't want, then you can not include that, but if you can figure out what people want and maybe your competitors don't have that specific thing, then that could potentially improve your product if you have whatever they want.

As you can see here, we're pretty much going from the broader market research to competitor research, down deep into product research, because I want you to be able to not only examine and find markets, but also utilize that information to actually apply it and succeed.

Last is post 10, which is finding the chatter. Once we figure out what people don't want and what they want, we want to figure out what people are talking about, what are people talking about in application of the trends, in application to what they don't want, what they want and everything like that.

Finding the chatter through social media, forums, and other things like that is definitely important to understanding more about your customers. At this point, we're going from market research, product research, all the way down to understanding the consumer.

Let's get started…

By the end of this series, my goal is to get you to really understand not just how to find a market, but really understand your consumer and your potential customer really, really well so that you have a product that will convert into sales. With that said, let's jump right in and go to post two, and get a good idea of what your product and service is all about, because I know it's easy to think about it, but have you really thought about it? Let's move on.

Keyword Inspector Product Research Tool KIPRT Tutorial Field Overview

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Check out www.academytrainings.com/kiprt

Dean Soto:
Hey, this is Dean Soto, from The Online Empire Academy. Hope you're doing well, and in this video, I want to go a little bit deeper into the Keyword Inspector Product Research Tool, otherwise known as KIPRT. It's a pretty cool tool. A cool tool, that rhymes, and it is also one of the most confusing tools out of the Keyword Inspector suite, but I wanted to go through this, just to show you how I go about using it, and kind of go into some of the data. Not the data, the fields that you can use.

In a previous video, we talked about the data that comes in KIPRT. It's kind of crazy, really weird data that you get, but it's really cool data at the same time, sales price. You can get the different prices that it was at at some point in time. You can get how many things it's selling now, et cetera et cetera, so you want to check out that video if you haven't seen that.

In this video, I'm going to show you the actual fields that you can use, then just give you some quick ideas on how to use them, then at the end of the video, I do have a really cool free course on how I use this to find wholesale products. You can use it to find wholesale products, private label products, things like that, that you can get as well.

All right, so first things first. Let's just go through some of this data, then we'll actually run one search. Sorry, not the data, the forms. If you go to KIPRT, if you ever used it, you go to this KIPRT button, you've got to go to this “New product research,” right here, and you're just going to see this form, and you're going to go, “What the heck is this? I don't know what to do. I just want to find products. Please help me find products,” and it's a little confusing. It totally is, but hopefully this video will make it a lot less confusing.

Let's just go down the line. The first thing you can do with KIPRT is you can search product titles. That's what this is right here. You can search product titles. Now, to me, if you're doing product research, and you have no idea, really, what you want to start trying to sell, or maybe import, or get a wholesale vendor, or whatever, you're generally not going to want to use this. Now, you can, so if I put in, say, like “Turtle house,” or something like that, because I already know I want to go after turtle houses, I can do that, but generally what this is going to do, it's going to search all of the titles that KIPRT has within its database, and give you back those titles, and give the data associated with those titles.

Personally, I don't use this pretty much ever, because I'm using it for finding other different types of products, but you can. You can, so you can type in whatever you want there, and it will search the titles.

One thing to note with KIPRT is that it's going off its own database that it gets, and it continually processes, and processes, and processes, so sometimes, say a new product that just came out, it might not actually be in there. Sometimes, it might have wacky data, or data that was old, or whatever. It's because it's constantly refreshing, and sometimes it takes a few days. Sometimes it takes a week or so. Okay? All that being said, that's your product titles right there. You can search by that.

Include products from the first page of the keyword on Amazon. Now, what this is basically saying, and you can hover over this, and because the keyword is only searched for within the product title, products that show up on page one on Amazon, for the keyword, it might not necessarily show up on KIPRT. Okay? The KIPRT results, when you're looking at this. This is what it's saying, is that because KIPRT's going into its database, and finding just the keywords you used to search product titles, it's not going to necessarily be the thing on the first page if you went to Amazon and searched. What you can do is you can click this, and it will try and get the things that are on the first page of Amazon for you, or at least at some point in time were on the first page. Okay?

The negative keywords. Say you searched for “Battlefield,” oops, what am I doing? “One,” but you wanted to get rid of any negative keywords. It might be something like, maybe you were looking for Battlefield One pillows or something like that, and you didn't want the game. Might do something like negative keywords being, “Video game,” I don't know. That'd be kind of weird, but yeah, maybe “Video game” would be the negative keyword, so it will search the product title, you put in this right there, and it will not bring anything that has “Video game” in there.

You can also use a list of ASINs. ASINs, if you don't know what those are, if you've never used them, basically they're the unique identifier that Amazon uses for each product. You can put a whole list in there. I generally don't do that. UPC list, you can search by UPC. I don't do that as well, because why do I use KIPRT? I use it mainly for finding new products.

Search brands. This is actually really, really cool, and I use this a lot. I actually go through this in my free course, and I show how I use this, but you can actually go and search by brand. In Amazon, there's a little brand field. You can search by brand, and it can give you some really, really cool data.

Now, the thing with this is that it has to be case sensitive. It is case sensitive, so say it's Tyco, you have to use the capital T right there, or else it's not going to work. If you do “tyco,” like that, with a lower case, it will not work, or it might find products that are not what you're looking for. It has to be case sensitive, and no spaces unless there is a space in that thing.

All right, filter best seller rank. Filter best seller rank, so you can start filtering from lowest to highest on the BSR, the best seller rank. Now, the cool thing is you don't have to enter in anything if you don't want to. Say I want to find anything that is 500 BSR on the low end, but I want everything else after that, you can just leave this higher thing completely empty. Likewise, if you want to just see everything that's below 100,000, or whatever, you can put that right there, and it will get everything that's 100,000 or below. That's for the best seller rank.

Next is filter estimated sales per day. This is based off of what the algorithm is for KIPRT, so say if you want 50 sales per day and above, you just put 50 right there, or if you want anything that's under 100 sales per day, you can just put 100 there, or whatever, or you can say, “I want between 25 and 100.” You can do that as well.

Sales price, this is actually pretty cool. Me, as a drop shipper, when I'm drop shipping on Amazon, I generally like to find things that are a little bit more expensive, so for me, I don't mind going $100 or more. Sometimes I don't even mind going $1000 or more. KIPRT will only show me those things that are $1000 or more. Pretty cool.

Current review count. This is how many reviews the product has, so if it has five or more reviews. This is not the stars, so maybe it would be 10 or more reviews from people. It will try and find anything that has 10 or more reviews. Now this, sometimes can be a little bit wonky as well, just because Amazon does a good job of getting rid of fake reviews, so sometimes you'll find things that it might have 100 views on KIPRT, and then you go to Amazon and it ends up having five reviews, because Amazon, maybe that week, took away a ton of reviews. That sometimes happens, but the cool thing is you actually have the historical data, so you can see if that's your competition, you know right away that they're buying reviews. That's how they're doing it, so it's a little bit more intelligence on your data.

Then you have filter current review rating. Filter current review rating, which is right here. What this is is a one to five, so say you want anything that's three stars and above, to only show, you can put that right there.

Number of new offers, this is really, really useful, especially if say you're doing wholesale, in my free course I show how to do this on wholesale, and how to find products that you know that you could be able to sell via wholesale, and still be able to make a profit off it, even though you know there is other people in there.

A couple of number of new offers. You can say, “I only want to see things that have at least one new offer,” or, “I want to see things that even have zero new offers.” Maybe things that are there, and are maybe out of stock, or there's only used or something like that, there might be something there, or maybe I want to see things that have three new offers, but less than 10. Okay?

All right, then filter the number of images, so how many images does this product have. If it has more images, generally it's something that's being promoted more. It gives you a little bit more data into how much the person has vested in it, so the more images, the more likely that it is selling as well, just because it has a ton of images there. It seems that there's more of an investment there, so you can do it from one to whatever, if you want to, but number of images is what that's for.

All right, so then filter estimated FBA monthly net profit. This is a little bit confusing to people. When it says “Monthly net profit,” they don't know your cost of goods. Okay? Keyword Inspector does not know your cost of goods, so you have to kind of figure that in, but say you want to make at least $10,000 per month off of this item, after FBA fees and everything like that, then you figure out what your cost of goods is going to be. That's what you would put there. That's what that's there. There are a lot of people who say, “Well, how could you know your net profit without cost of goods?” Well, duh, you're not going to be able to do that, unless it had its own little setup to put in how much this particular product costs from a vendor.

Product size, you can select standard or oversize. You can just do that by clicking there, or if you hold the control key you can select both. You can filter by weight of the product, so for any shipping concerns, things like that, you can filter by weight, that's pretty cool.

Filter number of page one keyword searches product is ranking for. This is interesting. This is using the Keyword Inspector Reverse ASIN thing, other tool that they have, and what it's doing is it's going and saying how many keywords, in the Reverse ASIN tool, is this particular product, or whatever product, how many of those keywords does it rank on the first page for? That can be pretty darn powerful, especially if you're doing wholesale or something like that, you know it's selling, that is pretty powerful. You already know that you can take that, and then you can find the keywords, and you can start promoting even more with that, so that's really interesting. It's a really interesting thing.

All right, and next you can start selecting the categories, whatever categories you want to start searching in. You can click whatever, you can hold control, you can hold control to take it off, et cetera. Then this, where it says “Get historical data,” I always leave that checked. Basically, you get a bunch of graphs and things like that, showing how many reviews per month, what the price change has been, because sometimes there might be a huge spike in sales, but it might be because the price changed. It went from selling at $89 down to $29, because they're doing a promo, or to $9 because they're doing a promo, and that's why, boom, the sales rank gets way, way better. It's just really, really good to see the historical data on that.

Then, get child variations, I always leave that on. It will get all the child variations from the parent. Batch size. This is a confusing little thing. Batch size. It depends on, they have a fledgling version, a savvy version, and I forgot what the last version was, but basically, with the fledgling version, you can only do a 25 batch size, and basically what this is, from what I understand, it is caching the amount of products that KIPRT gets for you, so that when you're looking through the products, it's all cached and so on.

If you do a 25 batch size, it will come and bring 25 products to you at a time or whatever. I think fledgling is 25, then savvy is 75 per batch, so I usually do 75 per batch. You click that, and it should change it to 75. Anyway, that's my understanding.

Then, include products sold by Amazon.com. You can have that checked or not, and any product that KIPRT finds, that also has Amazon.com on there, if you have this checked, it will put in there. If it's unchecked, then it won't. Then, include deleted products. This is really interesting, because this will go and find products. This is why I love the historical data. It will find products that people are no longer selling, or a listing that people are no longer listing on. Because of that, you can exploit that nobody else is selling that product anymore.

It might be because the supplier didn't want to sell on Amazon anymore, but it might be because the supplier themselves weren't selling on Amazon, and they were relying on dealers who were selling on Amazon, and the dealer stopped selling, or he didn't want to sell it anymore. It might be something like that, so really really interesting to see this, and this is why I love the historical data from KIPRT.

All right, so all that being said and done, let's run a quick thing. I'm going to give you a quick tip, then I'll share my free course with you that goes more into how to find wholesale products. This is really like a one, two punch with KIPRT, and it's really awesome. It's a great way to find suppliers, and find products that are selling really, really well on Amazon.

Okay, so my biggest tip, with KIPRT, for anybody, is to put as little as possible into these fields. Now, what do I mean by that? I don't typically search for keywords. I don't search for ASINs, things like that, because I'm looking for products that I want to buy, or sell, that I never would have thought of before, so for me, I might search for something like … Let's just say, number of new offers two. I'm just going to say two right here, so I want things that I know people are selling, but there's not too many people on there. Then what I want to do is let's just say estimated sales per day five, then the sales price over 100.

That's it. Okay? That's it. I want to do something like that, or if I wanted to do, say, automotive, or health and beauty, I'll just keep it very, very light, as to what I want to do. I'm going to even just do that, right now.

Then I'm going to hit the search product key, right there, and it's going to take a while to do this, but I'm going to get a ton of ideas that I never would have thought of before. While this is going on, I'm going to pause it, and we'll come back right after.

All right, cool, so here's what it gave. Now, if you haven't seen the data video, go check out the data video that I did on this, so you understand what the data is, because we go through that whole thing. Yes, I know, these videos are boring right now, but you have to know these things. These are the data videos. The data video, and field videos, et cetera, so sorry, that's the way it is.

But here, so now we can see that … Let me see if … Okay, I always go to the right, and see how many sales per day. This has a average sales per day of 395. It always goes from top to bottom, here, so let's see what this is. [Bested 00:19:27] raised air bed with built-in pump, in queen. Obviously, you're going to have things like the hover boards, some beds. I'm trying to look for something that's just kind of … let's see …

You're going to find cell phones and things like that, a lot of electronics happen if you don't use the categories, but that's okay. Sometimes I don't like using the categories, so one thing I also do, on the left hand side over here, is there's a page … Sorry, this is really weird. I always think that the page size is here. This is actually the batch size, but the page size, you can click on that, and I always try and go to like 100 page size.

Let it do its thing. All right, cool, so let's scroll down. It should give us some more. Okay, there we go. We have a kind of ice maker, top load electric ice maker … Ooh, respirator. Interesting, but you'll see, like there, I would never have thought of a gas mask respirator. I would maybe see if I can get an account with these guys, or something like that, or have something made. This looks like it's made in America. Yep, “Assembled in America.”

But yeah, things like that. I never would have thought of a kind of gas mask. I didn't even know you could do that. Here, we have some dust, pollution masks, things like that. Let's see how much this was actually selling for. Not selling for, but how many are actually selling. So 95, this is 95 per day, and that's not bad. 95 per day, at $249 I think it is. Yeah, $249. Pretty sweet. I like that.

Cool. That's how you run a search on the Keyword Inspector Product Research Tool. I really like it. It's awesome. This is the boring stuff. This is how to actually run the searches and things like that, but one thing that you'll want to do is know how to do this for business, how to find suppliers with this, how to find good products that are going to sell, et cetera, so if you like, you can check out my free course on how I use KIPRT to find wholesale vendors, then when I find wholesale vendors, if I end up getting the wholesale account, I then use some Keyword Inspector Product Research Tool fields to find other things that that particular supplier has that's going to be profitable, and sell those as well.

If you want, go to www.AcademyTrainings.com/KIPRT. That's AcademyTrainings.com/KIPRT, and you'll get my one, two punch training that I do for KIPRT, for Keyword Inspector's Product Research Tool. All right, guys, hope that you enjoyed that. Academy members, you are amazing. Also go to the OnlineEmpireAcademy.com, check that out, and if you like this, give it a thumbs up. We've got some more training coming up for Keyword Inspector in the next few days, and we will see you when that happens.

Have a great one. Dean Soto, with the Online Empire Academy. Catch you later.

How to Training Your Virtual Assistant by Building Systems and Processes

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Check out my free training at http://www.academytrainings.com/systems

Dean Soto:
Hey what's up Online Empire Academy, this Dean Soto. If you hear a huge echo, I am in the process of moving to a brand new house, and I'm in my empty, completely empty office, filled with hardwood, and so there's just a ton of echo, so bare with me.

I wanted to do this video 'cause I think it's super important. I actually don't even know … It's funny because a lot of people who are part of the academy, think that I am an extrovert and think that I am like this, you know, uber guru, teaching people how to make money online, and I'm so extroverted, and all I do is talk to people and stuff. Honestly, I am an introvert. It takes so long for me to even come up with these ideas that I want to share, 'cause they're super important to me, but I'm not even sure, like sometimes how to structure them, and how to go about sharing this stuff.

I thought this one was super important, got to be as honest as possible with this, because I think this is probably the most important lesson that I've ever learned being an online entrepreneur. Yes, I do this full-time, so if you don't know who I am, I do this full-time. I have an online business. I do dropshipping on Amazon, I do a whole bunch of stuff.

One thing that comes up over and over again, that I see as really something I wish I would've learned a long time ago. This comes up whenever I'm doing coaching calls based around outsourcing. ‘Cause that's … Outsourcing, come on. Anyone who sees any of the outsourcing guru stuff out there, the majority of the time it's based around your being able to give all your tasks to these people overseas for a couple hundred bucks, and you never have to do any work whatsoever, and you just make a ton of money.

I've been outsourcing for a long time, I want to say eight years, seven or eight years, and what I've found personally, what I've found is that I … When I was outsourcing before, I would be doing a lot of the work, and what I mean by that, is I would have to be doing video training, and then they would ask me a lot of questions, and I'd have to answer those questions, and things of that nature.

Ultimately, it did save time, but it was also a pain in the neck with outsourcing. Then on top of that, I was always still kind of in my business, and I didn't know why, I mean I had some great developers, I had great people who were doing administrative stuff, but I was still kind of in my business doing a lot of the work. Doing a lot of other things that I didn't think that they would be able to do. Okay? Why am I saying all of this? I'm kind of blabbering, apologize, it's the way it is, it's what you get with me. If you don't like it, leave.

Why I'm bringing this up is, had I known how to create systems, had I known how to create documentation, not me, and actually having my guys create it, but understanding how to create systems in general. Had I known this years and years ago, even while I was at my full-time job, I could have been growing a business on the side, pretty much without me, if not totally without me. At least been growing … Have something that was working on the side that was bringing me some additional income. It's something that is so important, and I want to show you …

I'm not even exactly sure how to relate this yet, but I want to impress upon you how you can easily start offloading a lot of stuff from your business. Even if you're doing systems just for you, or if you're doing it for someone in your family, or whatever to do on your behalf. When you understand this concept, it transforms your entire business.

This is what real big businesses do. Like McDonald's, I mean they have systems, systems on systems, and systems. Yes, to me that word is, that word gets overplayed, and at the same time, that word is kind of scary if you don't understand what a system is, but I kinda wanted to go through and show you my systems, what my guys use to run multiple aspects of my business, and how I go about doing that, and why, K?

I'm gonna go into just one of these, let's go into this Cash Machine project thing. K? Let me give you the why. Why do you want to do this? Well, with systems when you're outsourcing, the big thing with outsourcing is having a system that your guys can follow. K? Having a system that your guys can do over and over and over again. Like, if we look at McDonald's, or Del Taco, or all these other places, they have systems. They have how much cheese you put on a quesadilla. What is a quesadilla made of? It's a tortilla and you put two handfuls of cheese on there, you put it into the flat oven thing for five minutes, take it out, wrap it up, and you wrap it up this way, and then you put it off to the side.

Like, those systems, those ways of doing things, that's how they're able to get people right off the street, who have no clue how to do any of this stuff, and bring them right in. I kinda wanted to go through my systems, and what I use. I actually use a thing called Process Street, you don't have to use this, Google Docs works amazingly well. It's really understanding the concept behind creating systems, that's most important.

I'm going to give you an overview real quick, and then we'll talk a little bit about creating systems. Going back in here, this is just one of my systems. This is a Cash Machine project, what I call Cash Machines, this actually comes from Frank Kern, if you ever seen some of his stuff, Frank Kern has a thing called Cash Machines. Essentially what a Cash Machine is, is you deliver a high value training, and when someone goes into that high value training, then afterward they get sold a product. Okay? If they don't go into the training, then they don't get sold a product. K?

Now, this is done in Infusionsoft, all right, this is done with campaings that are Infusionsoft . A long time ago, I thought that I would never be able to outsource or offload any of my Infusionsoft stuff. I thought I was a genius, I am the marketer, I'm the marking automation guy, and I would be able to offload this, but this entire campaign, this entire concept of a Cash Machine is in Infusionsoft. It's actually in a number of different places, it's in Asana, which you can see right here, says, create a new Cash Machine project in our Asana task list. Look, in every single one of these, there's a number of steps, K? Sorry about that. There's a number of steps.

In each of these steps, if I go here, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight steps in here, there's also a number of different tasks within the steps. I can run this checklist, and go through all of these steps. K? That's just one, that's 1201 how to create a new Cash Machine project in Asana, that's how to get the thing actually going, K? The next thing would be creating a draft Cash Machine pages and click funnels. They're actually creating pages within Click Funnels.

If I go here, I go to template, it actually shows, like how to create pages into Click Funnels. K? Pretty crazy, huh? They go through the entire process from start to finish. Even in Infusionsoft, so if i go to Infusionsoft real quick, they're creating, they are actually creating the … Let me log into Infusionsoft, go to campaign builder, configure the sales sequence, so they're going in, and they're actually doing creating sales sequences.

They're creating in HTTP posts that goes and uses Deadline Funnel to create a deadline and all that other stuff. They're configuring tags, add and configure tags right here, all of this. This is all my staff doing this. They're doing a delayed timer, all this stuff. They're going step by step in these, K?

Now, this right here, by itself can be worth thousands of dollars, and I don't have to do it. In fact, I have like, my business partner, he can create a video, he can create what we're going to use for one of these Cash Machines, press a button and then my guys go through this entire thing setting up just the entire Cash Machine project … setup. Then he can actually go and get it started and people getting emails, and everything like that, K?

Where do you learn? Where's the best place to learn to create systems like this? Well, I'll give you two resources. One is actually a book that I like a lot. In fact, when I got it, I thought it was just absolutely awesome. Let me go and get that book. Workthesystem.com oop. It's a free book, I have no affiliation whatsoever with it. It's called Work the System, you can either buy the hard copy book, but if you actually log in, or sorry, not log in, but if you go and get on their email list, they will give you the book for free, which is cool. I think you can even share it online, you'll get the … If you share it via social media, you'll get the audio book version, K?

Now, why this book? You know, I do not use … I do not do the systems the way he does it. My guys … and I'll share an interview with the guy who taught me how to do it the way I do it now in just a second, but, the reason I love this book, is it helps to change your mind, to train your mind to understand how systems work, K?

Let's think about a system and why it's important when you're outsourcing, K? Let's think about a system and why it's important when you're outsourcing. What is a system? All right. We see all these things. We hear people say, “Oh create systems.” Or “Go outsource.” And, you know, “Offload your work.” Or whatever. Well, if we understand what a system is first, that makes things a lot easier.

What is a system? Let's think about your computer right now that you have, you know, or heck you're probably listening to this on your phone, or watching it on your phone. Let's think about your phone. Your phone, that entire phone, is a system, okay? There are sub-systems within that system. All right? Yes, I know it sounds complicated, but let's just bare with me. In that phone, you have a camera, right? If you did not have a camera, say you took that camera out of that phone, right? If you took that camera out of that phone there's something missing from that entire system, because it's not fully working et cetera. But you have the camera inside the phone, you have the battery, and the battery does what it does, right? It has its chip to be able to understand when it's charging. It has its chip to understand when it's being drained, et cetera, et cetera.

You have the camera that works in its own way, it has the ability to record, it has the ability to store into memory. On top of that, you have memory, right? The memory is there, it's flash memory, it does its thing, it is able to store data, it knows when to delete data, it knows when to store data, based off of the central processing unit, right? That's in there, the central processing unit takes the input and output and basically tells all the other things what to do, right? These are all little systems, sub-systems within that larger system, right?

There's a larger system, and if you were to take each one of those little sub-systems, perfect them, and put them all together, then they'd make that entire full system. Same thing with your car. Your car has a engine, it has a engine, and it has a motor, and it has the catalytic converter, it has the pistons, it has the spark plugs, and all of those little sub-systems do their specific little thing for the … If you perfect those specific little things, each one of them makes the whole. Each part makes the whole, which makes the entire system. Okay?

This book, is great at getting your mind to understand systems, and how they work. Let's take for example, if we go back to my Cash Machine example, and I have a lot of different things, I have new team member onboarding. I have Ebay Drop Shipping, how to do things on Ebay. I have just my normal, oh sorry, my management and hiring things, how to hire people, how to do all that stuff. I have my Cash Machines. I have a whole bunch of different … These are entire systems right here, and then there are sub-systems within that system, K?

Going back to this Cash Machine example, sorry I'm kind of all over the place, but going back to this Cash Machine example, I have fifteen sub-systems. I have how to create a new Cash Machine in Asana. How to create a draft Cash Machine pages in Click Funnels. Why Asana? Because, that's where we have our project management … That's where we manage the project. That's where our entire team can start working on this thing, and we can assign tasks. If I perfect that sub-system, it's going to help the system as a whole.

Why Click Funnels? Click Funnels we use for our pages. We use it for our opt-in pages, our sales pages, things like that. How to create sales copy for the new Cash Machine. Just because we create pages in Click Funnels, we also have to have copy for those pages, right? There has to be a copy writer who's going to do that. That's where this comes into play.

Then, adding copy to the pages, K? To the pages themselves, because my VAs might not be the one who, they might be the one who add copy to the sales pages, but they might not be the ones who are doing the copy, K? How to do the initial Cash Machine draft set-up in Infusionsoft. Setting up the actual like structure of it, and connecting the Cash Machine opt-in page to Infusionsoft.

This is where it's connecting on Click Funnels, to be able to do opt-ins and so on. Then, how to do the email copy for the Cash Machine. How to set up initial pages for Deadline Funnel, because I use automated deadlines on certain things. Yes, if you ever get into one of my sales things, now you know one of my secrets. It may, or may not, you never know, I don't know, maybe it's … maybe it is a real deadline. I treat them as real deadlines though, so people who ask … anybody who asks like, “Hey can I get it after the deadline?” I'm like, “Nope. Sorry.”

How to set up Cash Machine bridge email, that's kind of like the … in the email that goes from training, to moving them toward more of purchasing. How to integrate Deadline Funnel with Infusionsoft and Click Funnels. You can see going on and on and on. These are all sub-systems that lead to the bigger system, K? Sub-systems that lead to the bigger systems.

When we do this, what this allows us to do, is completely offload this entire process. I do not have to be involved in this at all. My business partner or someone else that we have on a team can kick all of this stuff off, and have this entire thing done. Is it because I'm absolutely a genius, and because I've hired the most brilliant people? Which, I did, I love my people, they're awesome, my staff's awesome, and they just know exactly what to do without being told?

No. It's because they get step by step instructions on how to do this. The way that I do it … how this actually happens, is I'm in here, I do videos for them, and through those videos, they are able to look at those videos, and they create this documentation for me, right? They create this documentation for me. When they create the documentation after that, they're able to go step by step and do it themselves.

Anybody can do this. Anybody. Anybody who speaks english can go and do this. I have my own little McDonald's now. It has nothing to do with me hiring the absolute best people who can read my mind. It's about having people who are super detailed and they are able to create documents like this based off of my videos.

I have to have good videos. I have to go step by step and say, you know, “Go to Infusionsoft. Go log in via LastPass. Go to click on the campaigns button. Do this. Do that.” Showing the videos, and then they make these. Now my entire business is able to run by itself, which makes my business into an asset, that I could even sell later on, if i wanted to, which is pretty crazy.

Why do I bring this up? Mainly because, and for those of you thinking like, “Hey, he was going to share a second resource.” I will share that in just a second. Mainly because, I get so many questions about outsourcing and what can I do, how can I find the best people? Really to me, it's not even just finding the best people, usually it's like, especially if they have Amazon, like an Amazon business, something like that, how can I find, they'll say, “How can I find someone who has Amazon experience?” Or, “How can I find someone who has whatever?” In my mind, and that's the way I used to think for sure, that's the way I used to think. In my mind, the better question is how can I develop processes and systems that can essentially clone myself.

I can clone myself because I know my business, I know my business best, and I can clone myself, create documentation that other people can use to then learn and not just learn, but they're learning as they're doing … Learn how to run my business the way I want to run my business.

That's the other thing, a lot of business owners they say, “Well, I do it best. You know, I can't hire anyone, they just don't do it as well as I do.” Well, what if you had the ability to make systems, or documentation like this, that essentially makes other people able to do it the way that you wanted them to do it? That's what this is about. That's what this is about.

Just, this little shift, has been so instrumental in my business, K? So instrumental in my business, that I wish, I wish I would've learned this five to seven years ago. I don't think when I first started out this would've been good, 'cause I mean, it would, but I don't think I even had the money for it, but maybe five years ago when I, you know, was getting profitable with my business and so on, and able to start hiring a lot more staff … Yeah, it's pretty amazing man. Man. I always imagine I'm talking to one person.

Yeah, the other resource is I actually did an interview with the guy who taught me how to do this. It's free training. He goes through how to actually do this, like why you want to start doing this type of thing. He give you a very big paradigm shift, K? It's about a 35 minute interview, he talks about this whole entire process, how to create systems, why we don't create systems. Then how to turn the ideas that we have in our head about outsourcing and stuff like that, and turn them into our advantage, and start doing stuff like this, and offloading your entire business. ‘Cause this has nothing to do with outsourcing, say, to the Philippines, or to other places outside of the United States, this really, like, when you understand systems, which yeah, I outsource to the Philippines, so does he, et cetera, but at some point in time, that's not even going to be the place to outsource, so it's not even about that.

It's more about learning how to build processes, how to build procedures like this, so that you can offload your stuff to anybody. It could be your neighbor down the street, it could be your wife, it could be your husband, it could be your nine year old, but the idea is that you have step by step procedures, step by step processes that run your entire business.

The cool thing is, a lot of people will say, and I'll give you the resource for that interview in just a second, other people they'll say, “Well, you know, I don't want it to be so rigid, and yada-yada, you know,” the thing is, that when you make things this rigid, and make it to where they understand exactly what you're doing, then your staff ends up being able to own your business, 'cause then they understand, they end up getting really, really good at stuff.

I'll even have my guys saying, “Hey, you know, this part's wrong, you know, it's been updated to this, should I just update the process?” They'll update the process for me. If they find better ways of doing something, they'll update that process to do something better. What you find is that because you are so strict with your processes, you end up just having such a more efficient business and making a lot more money. All that being said, the other resource that I have, which is the interview that I did with my mentor Gonzalo, if you go to www.academytrainings.com\systems, www.academytrainings.com\systems I do an interview, it's about 35 minutes. I want to say it's around there with him. Guy is amazing.

When I was starting to do my systems in the beginning, my procedures, my processes and stuff for my guys, I was probably spending about an hour per process writing them out. ‘Cause with the Work the System book, which is great book, he has you write out the entire process yourself. Gonzalo does it completely differently.

You create a video, and your guys create the processes. He goes into that, and why that's much more efficient. ‘Cause I can do a five minute video, and be done with it, right? I can do a five minute video, I think the longest process video I've ever done was about 30 minutes, and that was for a huge process, that was actually … that process was this one right here. Not a huge process, but it took a long time, it's a quality control check for my Cash Machine.

I have my guys going through and making sure that each part in this quality control, they're checking, and making sure that each section is correct, so that we didn't mess up somewhere. Which is great, right? They're going in and doing quality control which is another you can do. If you want that … if you are one who wants to outsource and to really just build a business that runs by itself, go check out academytranining.com\systems, it's about a 35 minute interview.

You just enter your email, your name and email, and you get directed immediately to that interview with Gonzalo. Guy is amazing with systems, and completely transformed my business. If you see all of these right here, you know, these were, I mean, they have a ton of stuff in here. These were all just about five minute videos.

I really think that it is, I don't even think, it is amazing what he is able to teach you. Go check that out, and if you have any questions, feel free, one, like this video, two, subscribe if you're not subscribed yet, and three, comment in the comment section, any questions you have. I'll make another video, specific to those questions.

I love talking about this stuff. I'm a nerd. If you're a nerd too, if you're a nerd too, and you like this stuff, and if you really want to offload all your stuff, please leave me a comment, I will totally make another video to answer that comment, and tell you how I did it in my business. Hopefully that was good, and hopefully you enjoyed it. All right. This is Dean Soto, and I'm with the Online Empire Academy, and we'll see you next time.

 

Keyword Inspector Tutorial: KIPRT Introduction and Data Overview

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Check out www.academytrainings.com/kiprt

Dean Soto:
Hey, this is Dean Soto with the Online Empire Academy. I'm here with another tutorial. This time we are going to be talking about KIPRT, the keyword inspector … keyword, sorry, the keyword inspector product research tool. This is a tool that I use in my business. It's also one of the three tools that Keyword Inspector has and it's pretty cool. It basically allows you to get a ton of data about different products and do a lot of research for wholesale and private label.

Now in this video I am not going to show you how I use it for my wholesale and for my drop shipping and everything like that. I actually have another training video that I'll share later on in the video. It's much more for the business minded folk, for people who want to know how to use this to actually move their business forward, to grow and to find wholesale vendors or private label suppliers and different private label ideas, etc.

This video is going to be for those who need to know like what every little column means, so it's going to be a little bit of a boring one, but if you want to get more into the business aspect I'll share a link with you later on how to do that.

All right. Cool. Lets first things first, go to KIPRT. There is a beta version of KIPRT, it's not very good yet so I don't go it, I just go to this KIPRT right here. K-I-P-R-T. If you have KIPRT you'll see two things on the left hand side, new product research and product research history.

In this video I'm just going to show you what the data means. There's tons of different things that you can search for, but I'm actually not going to use those yet. We're just going to search for and see what the data means when you actually do a search.

First things first, let's just type in something right now, automotive parts, yeah let's just do automotive. I'm going to click SEARCH PRODUCTS and I'm going to pause this cuz it's going to take … All right, cool. I had to pause it and actually change up some things cuz if you do something super super broad it usually seems to break the thing, cuz it's going over like 80 million stuff, so I just added a little price range thing. We're going to talk about that in another tutorial.

All right, so let's go through some of the columns. We have the RANK column, HISTORY, IMAGES, etc, etc. We're going to go through all of these columns. First things first, all of this data that's up on top here, if you click into that and then you do the arrows left and right you can see that. I honestly have no clue what that is. I use KIPRT for my business but I've never used that up there before, so I'm not sure. It's obviously data, but whatever.

Okay, so let's go through each of these columns so you know what these columns mean. Then the next tutorial we can actually go into some other things as well. RANK, rank column is usually based off of sales volume. What's selling the most. That's generally what that's being ranked as one, two, three, four, etc. HISTORY you're going to see a check box. That means that it's carrying historical data and you'll see what that is later in this.

Any images that it finds it's going to try and place all the images in this column right here. You can actually change some things right here. It says “Turn off secondary images but leave the main image.” You can make the main image larger, things like that. Any of these, if you don't want any of these, you can click this X and it will get rid of that column.

If you click into this area and go right and left it'll move right and left. Okay. ASIN, obviously that's the ASIN and if you click this icon right there it will open up … Now this is interesting, I'll show you what that means when that happens … When you click into the “See on Amazon” right there, it will open up the item. Sometimes what will happen, as you'll see in this particular case, remember has historical data, so this is actually showing something that is no longer in existence. People were buying it but people were not really, this particular ASIN they ended up taking off for whatever reason. We can see, maybe if we went and tried to find that product or put that product back, we'd get 170 sales per day. That usually tends to be pretty high, so I'm thinking probably more about 80 sales per day. That's what that is. ASIN.

Then if it has a parent ASIN, this is the parent ASIN, so if there's any variations, this is a variation of that parent ASIN. TITLE, title of the item. Then the BRAND, we'll talk about that in a later tutorial. In a later training I'm going to show you how I use brand to my advantage, my one-two KIPRT punch training. I'll give you the link to, totally free, and send that to you after we talk about this.

It'll tell you what SELLER it currently sees. There might be other sellers but this is the seller that it currently saw when it went and made it's pass through. CATEGORY is an automotive. PRICE, it will give the average price, or price as it is right now. But then you'll see this 30-day price graph and it will show you if the price has changed and when it changed and what it changed to. If there is a graph.

CURRENT REVIEWS, how many reviews there are. Past 30-day reviews graph. This is cool because this shows you how many reviews are being added, or if any are being taken away. Usually if you see a new product and you know people are doing promotions on it it'll just be like a rising trend there.

AVERAGE DAILY REVIEWS accrual. It will tell you on average how many reviews per day this thing is getting, or losing. It will actually show if it's losing too. Then past 30-day accrual graph. These might have been fake reviews or something like that. You'll see that a lot.

Then RATING, it will give the overall rating. Past 30-days rating graph it will show you over the last 30 days if it's gone up and down, etc.

All right, CURRENT SALES RANK, that it saw. It might not, okay, so this is something that's kind of confusing to people. It will say current sales rank and someone will go into it and they'll say “Wait! The sales rank is now at 50 when it said it was 7.” You have to understand that this is constantly going out and grabbing information and putting it into a database. Going out and grabbing, going out, grabbing and it doesn't always get there in time. Sometimes it takes a day, sometimes it takes five days, sometimes it takes a week, but it's taken that and putting it into this huge databases with all that data, so sometimes it takes awhile and so it might be off.

LAST MONTH SALES PER DAY AVERAGE, so last month it had an average of 141 sales on this particular item. Then sales per day graph. If it's been going down or up. This one looks like it's been trending down. Then sales per day weekly graph, if this exists, it's just week by week how well it's been doing.

Then you've got your FBA, monthly net profit. Now a lot of people are like “Wait a minute! How's it going to give me my net profit if it doesn't have my cost of goods?” Well, we don't know, we … James, the creator of this, he's not going to know what your cost of goods are, so he's just saying what is your net after all the Amazon fees and then you can calculate your cost of goods. That should say FBA Profit After Fees and Shipping and all that other stuff.

Also it will tell you how many new offers there are. New offers, if it's predominantly FBA or merchant fulfilled, what class it is. Is it standard or oversize if it is FBA. How many images. Number of features, which I believe is the features, like the bullet point features. How much it weighs, if it can find that information. The title length, like the average title length for that product in characters. Description length in characters.

Now what is that good for? Well it's good if, for title length if it's too large or not enough, and especially if the description if the description is not doing too hot, if it's like 30 characters or whatever you know that can be optimized. Not necessarily in this listing, but maybe if you create a competitor you can have a better listing.

Then TOTAL CURRENT KEYWORD COUNT. This is how many keywords for the listing. So say if we go over to the left over here and we see this right here. This is how many reverse ASIN keywords it sees, does Keyword Inspector see, so 3,453. The less popular ones might not see as many, but that's how many it currently sees. You can click into that and it will take you over to reverse ASIN.

CURRENT KEYWORD COUNT POSITION. What this is saying is, for example, with this right here, this 3,453, it's saying how many keywords are in the first position, are in number one organically, number two organically, number three organically, how many are in four to eight organically, and how many are eight to seventeen organically. This particular product right here ranks number one for 649 keywords, that reverse ASIN has found. This one, ranks number two, 338 times. Number three 339 times, and then four to eight 890, and then 8-17 1,237. What this, right here, means is off of those same numbers generally it's growing each of those numbers. The top being how many ranked number one, I think. How many ranked number two on the next, and three and four, etc. etc. You can see that this one has grown over time quite a bit.

Then the month first found. So this was first found in 2014 on July 2014. Is this deleted? If it's deleted, yes or no. Remember that first one we went to it was deleted. That means it's gone, it's not even there anymore. Is that always the case? Yes, sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't, sometimes there's some kind of error or whatever, but yeah, that's generally what that means.

That's all of the columns for KIPRT. I know that was super super super boring but at least you have an idea of what all those columns do. If you want to know how to use this in your business, I'm going to make some other tutorials that go into more of the, next, basically what you can do with all these fields in the next tutorial, but if you want to know how to use this tool to find private label products, find wholesale products, to use this in a really cool way, to use this in a very cool way, for me it's easy to find wholesale vendors, wholesale products to sell and I call it the one-two KIPRT punch, you can go to www.academytrainings.com/kiprt and that way you can learn the secrets that I use to find some amazing products with KIPRT and now that you know what all those columns mean it just makes you even more able to do that.

Until the next tutorial when we go through some of this, go check out www.academytrainings.com/kiprt and I'll see you at the next tutorial.

 

Amazon Drop Shipping Myth: If You Ship Slow You Won’t Sell

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Transcript:
Hey, guys. What's up? It is Dean from TheOnlineEmpireAcademy.com and I wanted to do this quick video for you because this is a myth that a lot of people seem to have when it comes to drop shipping on Amazon. It's a pretty big myth and people tend to not want to drop ship simply because they believe that this is true, even though it's not.

The myth is that if you can't ship at Amazon Prime speeds, you aren't going to make sales, which is completely untrue. Basically, the idea is that if I'm not able to ship within one or two days and get it to the customer that fast, not even just ship in one or two days, but actually get it to the customer within one or two days, then I'm not going to be able to sell on Amazon. I'm not going to be able to drop ship on Amazon at all, when nothing could be further from the truth.

Of course, if you were able to ship that fast, you probably would make more sales but you can still make sales even though you aren't shipping that quickly. Now, the thing with drop shipping that we always have to keep in mind is that we do not control the shipping operations. The person who does that is the supplier, our vendor.

When you actually have a supplier, when you have a vendor that you're working with, they're the ones that's going to be controlling whether or not things get shipped within a certain period of time. All that being said, the thing that we can control within Amazon Seller Central is how fast we say that we're actually going to ship but I'm not going to actually go into how to do that. There's a little section called production time and you can set it to whatever you want in that section when you're adding or editing an item on Amazon.

I just want to show you this quick example that gives you a very, very good perspective as to why people buy on Amazon and why people would buy from you as a drop shipper, even though you may not be shipping quite as quickly. Here's an item that I just sold today, as of this recording, and it sells for $163 plus tax. This particular item has to ship by next Wednesday.

This is going to be, today's Friday, so it'll be Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, at least at maximum, it can ship by Thursday. That's a long time. That's a long time but they were okay with that. The reason why I know that they were okay with it is if you go to the actual order, if you actually go to the order, you will see that, and let me go to it real quick, you will see that nobody has the buy box on this particular order, but you will see that we have one person who actually has a cheaper price than me.

It's 130-something. 130-something over here because of the shipping and everything like that and you have three other people who are also selling this particular item at around the same price. Now, if we look at the dates in which these will all be going, so not only the price, keep that in mind, not only the price, but also the dates, this one should arrive between January 27th and February 13th. This one should arrive between January 27th and February 1st.

Now, this is me, right here. This one, it says it'll arrive between January 31st and February 7th. A lot longer than this guy right here who's selling it at the exact same price. Then, this one says it'll arrive between January 26th and January 31st. Why in the heck …

First thing to note is Amazon is not selling on this listing at all. Amazon.com is not selling on this listing at all and nobody on this listing has Prime shipping, nobody, nobody at all. Nobody's going to be sending it in one day, or two day, or anything like that. The customer doesn't even have a choice in whether or not it's going to be shipping Prime, at all. The customer does not have a single choice.

Now, because of that, the customer is going to have to choose from people who are going to sell their item and ship their item much slower. Guess what guys? I even have listings where I'm beating Amazon on the price and people are choosing me even though they could get it faster and it's only by a couple of bucks but I digress anyway.

I digress and go back to showing you that they could have chosen this guy who has a much cheaper price but they didn't but it does look like he was going to be shipping longer. They could have chosen this guy who's going to ship by February 1st or this guy, who would have shipped by January 31st but they chose me. They chose me in this particular case because I have a 100% rating, which is always good.

I have a 100% rating but sometimes, especially if I have the buy box, they'll choose me just because simply, I have the buy box. They'll choose me simply because I have the buy box. They are not going to get their product for a few days. They're not going to get their product for a few days but they know that. They're not going to get it in one day, two day, three days, in this particular case, it's almost a week before they're going to be getting their product.

It just goes to show you that you do not have to have super-fast shipping in order to sell things on Amazon. The more that you have, the more suppliers that you have and the more things that you have listed, the more you're going to see that the things that we have as concepts, the things that we think customers want, really aren't always what is reality.

Remember, the best thing when it comes to marketing is knowing what customers want. Well, customers want a product in this particular case. They can't get it with Prime shipping, so they will get it any way they can. This is a perfect example of why you don't need to have super-fast shipping. None of these guys have super-fast shipping. I do not have super-fast shipping and I'm still able to sell this particular product.

Don't let that myth get to you. There's a lot of other myths out there when it comes to Amazon drop shipping but if you don't have any suppliers yet, if you don't have any vendors, if you want to get started getting suppliers and vendors, whether you're going to be doing drop shipping or wholesale, if you go to DreamDropShipping.com, that's DreamDropShipping.com, if you go to DreamDropShipping.com, you'll get my three steps to quickly finding profitable Amazon product suppliers.

Super, super-simple to do and when you get suppliers, you get access to their entire price list and you get to sell those products over and over and over again. This is the wave of the future when it comes to selling on Amazon. I can't tell you how many times my friends, who were doing retail arbitrage, my customers who were doing retail arbitrage, or online arbitrage, or trying to sell all these different things from retail stores, they end up getting suspended.

They get suspended for inauthentic items and there's no way for them to prove that they were getting authorized items. When you have a wholesale supplier, when you have drop shipping suppliers, you are able to show that you are the authorized dealer. You are the dealer when it comes to this. Definitely, if you don't have any suppliers yet, get this quick guide. It's super, super-easy to start getting suppliers under your belt and start building your Amazon drop shipping business. Don't let the myths scare you off.

All right. If you like this video, subscribe. If you like it, give it a thumbs up and I'm going to be doing much more. In the comments, let me know what other drop shipping myths or what other drop shipping questions that you have because I'll make videos for those and I'll be able to answer any questions that you might have.

No matter what the question is, I'll do a video on it. If it pertains to drop shipping on Amazon, or selling on Amazon, or selling online. Anyway, if you like this video, subscribe, thumbs up. I'll see you in the next one.

 

10 Silly Amazon Drop Shipping Myths You Think Are True… But Aren’t

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I have to confess… I am an Amazon drop shipper and I love it. Sometimes I feel as though I am an Amazon drop shipping secret agent, alone amongst a pack of Amazon FBA wolves.

Everybody who doesn't drop ship has their own opinion of what is real and what isn't real in the drop ship community. However, in the world of Amazon drop shipping there is nothing more frustrating and more laughable than when those who don't drop ship spread misinformation as if it were fact.

As Mark Twain says:

It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.

So in this article I want to touch on the 10 myths that you will hear about Amazon drop shipping that people think they know, but just ain't so.

Myth #1. Amazon Doesn't Like Drop Shippers

It's not surprising that a lot of people think that Amazon doesn't like people who drop ship on their platform. Most of their third-party sellers do things such as retail arbitrage, online arbitrage, or private label. All of those are done using Amazon FBA for the most part. Very few people I know have ever done merchant fulfilled on Amazon. (On a side note, if you have no idea what Amazon FBA versus merchant fulfilled is: Amazon FBA lets you pack up a whole bunch of stuff into one or more boxes and send it off to Amazon for them to fulfill, and merchant fulfilled means that you have to fulfill every order yourself.)

Since so few people do Amazon merchant fulfilled to begin with, to also add in the idea that you will be drop shipping all orders to customers when they buy ads another layer of mystery. Rather than actually see whether or not this is allowed on Amazon, most people just throw up their hands and assume that Amazon doesn't allow it.

Well, I hate to break it to you but Amazon LOVES people who drop ship on their platform.

And why wouldn't they? Drop shipping has been around for a lot longer than you think. In fact, it's older than the Internet itself.

So if Amazon was so hateful of drop shippers on their platform they would be missing out on a huge chunk of revenue. The last thing that they want to do is alienate people who drop ship on their platform.

One glaring and obvious example of this is that if you look at the Amazon drop shipping policy you'll notice that it is one of the shortest terms and conditions pages they have.

Here's what they say:

Drop shipping, or allowing a third party to fulfill orders to customers on your behalf, is generally acceptable. If you intend to fulfill orders using a drop shipper, you must always:

  • Be the seller of record of your products;
  • Identify yourself as the seller of your products on all packing slips and other information included or provided in connection with them;
  • Be responsible for accepting and processing customer returns of your products; and
  • Comply with all other terms of your seller agreement and applicable Amazon policies.

Examples of drop shipping that is not permitted:

  • Purchasing products from another online retailer and having that retailer ship directly to customers; or
  • Shipping orders with packing slips, invoices, or other information indicating a seller name or contact information other than your own.

Failure to comply with these requirements may result in the suspension or removal of your selling privileges.

That's it.

Myth #2 You Can Drop Ship from Retail Stores to Amazon Customers

Now I mentioned in myth number one that Amazon loves drop shippers… Well that's not entirely true. Not too long ago Amazon made a change to their drop shipping policy. Essentially as you can see in myth one they want you to be the seller of record. What does “seller record” mean? I'm glad you asked…

In 2016 Amazon laid the hammer down on people who were going to retail stores, finding products, and then drop shipping those products when they sold. What was happening was that when customers got their products they also got the receipt from the retail store. They may have spent $100 on a new pair of shoes they thought they bought from Amazon but they would get their shoes along with the receipt that showed that the seller originally paid $30.

If you paid hundred dollars for something that you realize you could have got somewhere else for $30, wouldn't you be best?

Well Amazon was getting tired of having to handle the customer service for all of these fools. So they decided that anyone who was going to try and drop ship retail items were going to have to stop immediately.

That said, Amazon also encouraged the use of true drop shipping on their platform by encouraging people to become the seller of record for their products that they were listing. What that essentially means is that you become an authorized dealer for those products just like any other retail store. That means that you work with the manufacturer or distributor to sell the product on Amazon. The benefit is that you could now sell a product that you could replenish over and over again.

So no… You can't drop ship retail items on Amazon anymore.

Myth #3 You Can Use Amazon Prime to Drop Ship with Free Shipping to People on eBay Etc…

When I first started researching how to drop ship on Amazon I would always come across forum posts, courses, and blog posts talking about how awesome it is to drop ship from Amazon to other marketplaces such as eBay with your Amazon prime account.

This is a big no-no…

Why would you ever want to risk your personal Amazon prime account in order to make a few bucks? Amazon's terms of service clearly states that you are not allowed to use your Amazon prime account in order to get free shipping when drop shipping to other marketplaces.

Don't do this.

Myth #4 Getting Suppliers to Sell You Products at Wholesale Cost is Hard

There's a reason why most people use Amazon FBA and why most people who sell on Amazon prefer to do things such as retail arbitrage or online arbitrage and that is because they think that finding suppliers for wholesale or wholesale drop shipping on Amazon is hard.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Sure, you have to talk to a lot of people, send a few emails, maybe make a few calls, but in the big scheme of things generally if you contact between 10 and 20 suppliers usually between 1 – 5 will say yes.

I used to do a lot of sales calls back in the day when I was selling restaurant franchise opportunities and normally it would take about 100 calls in order to get 1 or 2 paying customers. So if I can get one customer for every 10 emails I send out… Pshh… I could do that all day long baby.

You want to see how easy it is to find and get suppliers for Amazon, I created a very easy and short checklist showing you the exact steps that my staff uses to find great product ideas and how to contact suppliers behind those great products.

You can get my Checklist on how to find wholesale suppliers for Amazon Drop shipping  by clicking here

Myth #5 If You Can't Ship at Amazon Prime Speeds Customers Won't Buy

All of the customers who buy from my Amazon store know that they're going to be waiting a while to get their product. Why would they do that when they can just go and buy from someone else who could ship superfast?

Well, the answer is simple… Nobody else is selling that product.

This is one of the big misconceptions with drop shipping on Amazon… Most people are used to finding one or 2 products that are selling well and they put all of their time and effort into getting as much profit from them as possible. Well, when you drop ship and you get new suppliers you get their entire pricelist. That means if your supplier has thousands of products, you can sell thousands of their products.

You'll find that when you are working with most suppliers the vast majority of their dealers do not buy in bulk. And if they do buy in bulk then it is usually only a few products from their pricelist.

If nobody is buying all of their products in bulk, that means not all of their products are being sent into Amazon FBA.

The majority of my competition have long lead times when it comes to shipping products. You never know how long your supplier is going to take to ship so it's wise to make sure you leave yourself enough room or else you might get dinged on your seller metrics.

All that being said, you don't need to ship fast in order to profit from Amazon.

Myth #6 Your Supplier Can't Ship Fast So You are Going to Get Get Late Shipment Violations

Every once in a while I'll get someone emailing me about how they want to drop ship on Amazon but their hesitation is that they don't know whether or not they are supplier can ship fast enough. Well, there is an easy solution to that.

Don't promise your customers that you will ship your items fast.

Every supplier that you get is going to be different. Some will ship fast, some will ship slowly, but that doesn't mean that you don't have control over the situation.

production time

Amazon allows you to adjust the production time on your products. If your product takes 15 days to ship, put in 15 days as the production time.

If your product takes 4 days to ship, put in 4 days as a production time.

Does it take 8 days to ship? Well… You know what I'm going to say…

It's not rocket surgery.

Myth #7 Drop Shipping Amazon Sellers Are More Likely to Get Suspended for Poor Metrics

Another big roadblock for people who are thinking about Amazon drop shipping is the myth that they are going to be putting their account at risk of suspension because of all the scary things that could happen.

Um… Have you noticed over the last year or so that the majority of Amazon suspensions were people who were doing retail or online arbitrage? Yeah… Who's really putting their account at risk?

Since I've been Amazon drop shipping I have had more five-star reviews than I ever did doing Amazon FBA. Sure you run into some crazy customers from time to time, but most of the time you can call them, or message them and get them on your side rather than trusting Amazon customer support.

Honestly, from what I've seen you have to be really bad at customer support, and basic business operations in order to get suspended from Amazon when your drop shipping.

People are usually scared of things such as not having inventory in stock, shipping the wrong item, etc.… But most of these can be fixed with just some good communication with your customer. Heck one of my five-star reviews came from a refund that I gave one of my customers who was frustrated with their product. I made it super easy for them and they loved it.

If you are too scared to take action, and are scared of all of the possible things that could happen to your account (even though they haven't happened yet)… Good that means less competition for me.

Myth #8 Amazon Doesn't Pay You for 2 Weeks So You'll Need to Fork Up a Lot of Cash When Things Sell

If you are worried about Amazon holding onto your money for 2 weeks. Grow up, learn basic business skills such as leveraging, and get a credit card.

Myth #9 If My Supplier Runs Out of Stock I'm Toast!

Everyone who is so timid about Amazon drop shipping brings up probably the most popular myth there is… And that is that if my supplier runs out of inventory my account is going to be suspended.

That's it… It's over… The world is imploding!

Dude, it's not that bad. Over the last few years that I've been drop shipping I've had a handful of occasions where the product has been out of stock. The question that you need to ask yourself is how would you handle this situation?

The worst thing that you can do is simply go to your Amazon account and cancel the order. That would not only pass off the customer but it also ruins your metrics right off the bat.

Trust me young padawan there are many ways around this problem… Let me give you a few. The first thing that you can do is contact the customer and let them know that the item is out of stock and if there are other variations of the product such as color, size, or if there is a premium version of the product you can offer that to them at the same cost or at a discount.

If there are no other variations, you may want to let them know that the item is going to be late and that you will give them a discount.

Heck if the item doesn't cost that much money, you can even let them know that they will get it for free.

The skies the limit, you just need to smart about it and ultimately if you have to cancel the order, make sure that they are the ones that want to cancel the order so that you can use the “customer canceled” option which does not count against your Amazon drop shipping metrics.

Myth #10 Very Few People are Amazon Drop Shipping and That Proves It Doesn't Doesn't Work

You'd be surprised at how many people are making money with Amazon drop shipping. Over the last few years I've actually grown to know most of my competitors and I see them on a lot of my listings.

Yes, there are not as many drop shippers as there are people who do retail arbitrage, online arbitrage, or private label, but there is a lot. Just about every week I see new people who are becoming my competitors. There's plenty of opportunity as of yet in Amazon drop shipping, so I don't mind too much.