Podcast

Transcript Below:

Dean Soto:
Hey online Empire Academy. This is Dean Soto, the founder of the online Empire Academy and I wanted to welcome you to this part one of how to use Zapier with Amazon Seller Central series, part one of the series. I wanted to do this because one of the main problems that you’ll find, especially if your merchant fulfilled seller, you don’t have to be a merchant fulfilled seller to use a lot of this stuff but one of the problems you’ll find is that there really is no integration with Zapier or other programs like “If this, then that” with Amazon Seller Central.

One of the problems is, especially if you're drop shipping like me, if you're drop shipping on Amazon like I do, you will find that it is a little bit of an annoyance because you need to be able to communicate with your staff. I'm going to show you in this how I communicate via Slack and Asana automatically when there is a new order or when there’s really anything that I want a new customer inquiry or anything like that, how I communicate automatically with my staff to let them know that they need to do something at some point in time.

It’s a little bit of a workaround, but at least you get some automation and it helps out a lot. So this is my Slack, Slack team right here, my Slack channel and as you can see there is an Amazon order bot right here that says, “Hey, there's an order, and here's the order number etc. It's awaiting shipping. Hey, can you go and assign it to yourself.” I also have a customer inquiry bot. I have a couple different things that I created all using Zapier so when you're a merchant fulfilled seller this is extremely, extremely important.

The cool thing is, and I'll probably show you later in other series, even if you’re an Amazon [FDA 00:02:04] seller, you can use this to track your sales, to send sales numbers, etc. over to a spreadsheet where you can then calculate so that you don’t have to spend money on a whole other service. You can do a whole bunch of stuff, but I have this doing tracking orders. I have it going to Asana, etc.

Here’s my Asana right here. It actually creates a new task and then my guys are able to task themselves with that so pretty cool. I love it. It works really, really well and I'm going to show you how I do it. I'm going to show you the simple way in this particular video and in the next video I'll show you the more advanced way. I'll kind of hint at the advanced way.

Let's go into Zapier right now. This is my Zapier. Easy way to do this is you can have the lowest plan, it depends on whatever you need. I personally have the business plan because I use it so much. I'm about 34 zaps right now. Some of those I can actually get rid of but yeah, like I said, there is … if you search for Amazon, boom, boom, boom. Amazon, there is no Amazon, at least at this particular point in time there’s no Amazon [MWS 00:03:19] like as far as being able to do your Amazon Seller Central which kind of sucks.

I’m sure at some point in time they will but right now they don’t so what we need to do is we got to make a Zap. We got to make a Zap. All right, so the first step is choosing the right name. Let's say, dude, this is going to be Amazon, let's say, “Amazon order.” We'll just say, “Amazon order to Slack and Asana.” We'll just say that for now, okay?

Let’s find the first, let's find the app that we're going to want to use. Okay, there’s two ways to do this. One is the email parser which is much more advanced. I'm not going to show you in this particular video but this actually lets you pull data out of emails that come in and you're going to need that because guess what? When you make a sale, that’s where you are going to get your data from, is from this Amazon Seller Central sending you an email so that’s one way to do it.

The other way to do it is through the, just using Gmail. If you use Gmail, I don't know if they have the Yahoo on here. Nope. No Yahoo. No Hotmail? No Hotmail, so hopefully you're using a Gmail account. If you don’t have one, you probably want to set one up but let’s use Gmail. Allright, now, it's going to ask us to actually choose a trigger. Here we are going to do a new email matching search, new email matching search and we're actually going to create a search in just a little bit so let’s do save and continue .

Then we're going to choose your Gmail account and then save and continue. Now we're going to enter the search string. Easy way to do this. Okay, so here I am in my email. Now what we're going to do is we are going to click this. There's a little arrow right here where it says, “Show search options,” we're going to click that. We're going to do “from” this is going to be seller “Seller–notification@Amazon.com.”

Now we are going to have, we're going to make it to where it says, has the words quote “sold,” comma, space, “ship now,” quote. Now, I’m also going to do one more thing in here. I'm going to do, “Doesn’t have,” quote “listing created.” We'll search that. Okay so now I have everything that I need right here. All right, so now we have our search right now. This is the search that we can use.

We're going to actually copy this right here and then we are going to go to Zapier. Do the search string like that, pop that in there, should be all good. Get rid of any spaces or anything like that that's there. Click “continue”. All right, [“fetch 00:06:58] and continue”. All right, test is successful. All right, so now we hit the continue button. We're going to do the actual action and you can do this with Asana, you can do this with Slack.

I'm just going to show you how to do this with Slack but you can generally do it with … I mean, you can do it with anything. I'm just going to show you how I do it with Slack because I have a little test thing set up for it anyway. All right so what we're going to do, with Slack I'm going to actually use a private channel because I have a private channel set up and I'm going to click this “send private channel message” and save and continue.

I have my Slack account, continue. Now the channel, need to go find the channel I had tested. Sandbox, right here and I'm going to just say … So now we can do this message text right here. Say this is a new order. “This is a test new order alert.” I'm going to say, “Please assign this new order to yourself.” Do colon, and click this right here. If you click this button right here, it’ll give you all of the things that you can use for … to actually send.

In this particular case, I'm going to actually use the subject right here. Click that. Okay, so I use that for the subject and right here where it says, “Send as bought,” I do “yes” because I want people to know that this is automatic. Then right here “bought name”, we'll just call it “Amazon test order bought”. You can say, you actually use, if you click this button on anything, it'll use the fields from the previous, the actual trigger and you could even use the fields from the prior action as well if you have multiple, you can actually chain a bunch of different Zapier zaps together.

Then you can do an emoji of choice. I think … If you go to this sheet, cheat sheet of emojis, it will have a link there for that. Let's just use this kissy face, we'll do these heart eyes right there. You click on it, it will copy. It's all loaded and stuff. Click on it. It will say copied and we go back here. Paste that heart eyes. We're good and then …

Oh yeah. This is the other cool thing, with Slack at least, you can do the send @mentions notifications so if you wanted to mention the entire channel you can say, “@channel” like that and it will actually pop up, it will actually notify everybody in that particular channel. I'm going to click “continue” and I'm going to scroll down and create and continue.

Boom. You see right here, new message in test sandbox. If I click into there, there it is right there. This is a new ord- … test new order alert. We have our heart face right there, pretty neat. “Test order alert, please assign this new order to yourself @channel sold, ship now.” It tells what it is, yada, yada, yada. Pretty cool.

That is the easy way to do this. You can, for notifications and things like that. There are, like I said, there is the harder way to do it which would be with the parser which I might do in a later video, which I will do in a later video but hopefully this helps. This helps me to let my guys know, helps me to let my guys know that there is something out there. Plus, I actually just go on, I added, click right here and I add Asana as well and you can actually create a task, etc. etc. and just do the same thing. You can actually create an actual task based off of that and even assign it to specific people if it comes in.

That’s how you get around the fact that there is no Zapier or If This, Then That connection between Seller Central … between Zapier your Seller Central and this really helps out a lot when you are a merchant fulfilled seller especially if you're drop shipping. If you want to find more really cool tips, go and head over to www.theonlineEmpireAcademy.com. Sign up for the newsletter.

As soon as you sign up you get some, right now it’s about four free goodies. Definitely go and check those goodies out in your email right when you sign up, it'll be sent to your email. Get free goodies, a hundred and something page e-book, you get access to my outsourcing course on [inaudible 00:12:33] which is a $200 value and a couple of other awesome, awesome stuff so go and check out that.

Sign up at www.theonlineEmpireAcademy.com. Last but not least, what we're going to do is click this. Zap is on. Actually, I have to do the … If I didn’t do this Asana thing, let’s get rid of this Asana. Delete, boom. Zap is on and we're good, okay? We actually turn it off because I don’t need it but if you like this and you want more, subscribe as well as going, you can go to www.theonlineEmpireAcademy.com and get your free goodies. We have a lot of really cool stuff coming out and I think you're going to love it. All right, have a great one, Academy, and we will see you next time on The Online Empire Academy youTube channel.

 

Hey guys. Today we're going to be talking about sales copy and the whole copywriting process.

Why are we talking about copywriting when we're e-commerce sellers? Well, the main reason is a lot of e-commerce sellers completely ignore copywriting and that can leave a ton of money on the table. I want to go through the basics of copywriting. What copywriting is and how to get started writing persuasive sales copy in your product listings so that you're able to sell a lot more products in general.

What is sales copy?

Essentially what sales copy is is sales in print. What that means is, you are trying to persuade customers to buy your product using the printed word. It can be email, direct mail, SMS text messages, or even your Amazon or Ebay listings. Ultimately, you are trying to convince your customer why they should buy your product. This is very different than selling in person because when you're in person, you have body language, you have intonation in your voice, you have the excitement that you have for your product, whereas in sales copywriting, you have to do all of that using the written word which can be very difficult to do. You have to be able to convey emotions. You have to be able to hit certain emotion triggers in your customer in order to have them feel the need to buy your product. Let's go through some of that right now.

Understanding Your Customer

With sales copywriting, you want to be in the customer's shoes. Say you're selling a back scratcher. Why would a customer search for a back scratcher in the first place? Are they actually looking for a back scratcher? While that might seem like a very weird question, you'll understand as you get better and better with sales question that it's not that weird at all. The reason why a potential customer might be looking for a back scratcher is not because of the back scratcher itself but because of what it can do. He has an itch on his back that he needs to have relieved. He might have tried forks at home. He might have tried rubbing his back against the wall or the corner of one of the rooms in his house. He might have even asked his friends or his spouse to scratch his back, and he's just tired of not being able to relieve his itch whenever he wants. That being said, he goes out and searches for a back scratcher.

Now, you can see that although something as simple as a back scratcher doesn't seem like it's that big of a deal, when you're understanding your customer and sales copywriting in general, it can open up a whole new world of understanding why your customer is doing what they are doing.

The first thing in any sales copy is understanding your customer's needs, desires, pains, pleasures. If you don't understand those, you're not going to be able to write any sales copy that's going to be effective. Next, once you understand your customer's needs, desires, pains, and pleasures you then have to be able to get their attention. We typically call this the hook, and normally it is the title of your Amazon, Ebay, or Shopify listings, or the title of whatever it is you're selling. If somebody is looking for a back scratcher and you have your title as something else, say, “back itch reliever”, they might look at that and see that the title does not match what they are actually searching for. You want to be able to be congruent with what your customer is actually searching for in order to get them to be hooked enough to go and visit your listing. Likewise, if a customer is searching for a back scratcher and they see 50 listings that have the word “back scratcher” in it, how is yours going to be differentiated?

They don't want your product, they want a solution to their problem

Now remember, most people don't want necessarily just any old back scratcher, they want the best back scratcher. Somebody whose title says “The Best Back Scratcher” or “The Ultimate Back Scratcher” or something that has some sort of superlative associated with it is likely to get more clicks into their listing simply because they are differentiating themselves from the 50 other people who are selling back scratchers. You really want your hook to be something that's going to attract a visitor to your listing.

Now, what do you do once they're on your listing? Well, the thing that you have to realize is, when they're on your listing, they're already interested in what you have. Now it's your job to keep them interested enough to read through your description of the product. As a customer looks at your listing or the description of your product, they're going to start making judgments as to whether or not this particular product itself is going to relieve their pain or solve their pleasure.

Show the benefits

When you are writing up your descriptions, you want to make sure that you are not only giving them the features of your product, but also the benefits. The benefits can be negative benefits or they can be positive benefits. Negative benefits are where you continue to poke at the problem that the person has. For example, somebody who's finding your listing because they're searching for a back scratcher might see on your description something such as, “Are you tired of having to ask your spouse everyday to scratch your back? orr… “Are you tired of having to use your wall as a scratching post just like a cat?” Anything that you can do that shows the negative and continues to poke at the problem really can provide emotional triggers that cause the person to want to buy even more from you.

On the other end, you have the positive aspects of the benefits, such as being able to scratch your back whenever you want, having the independence of knowing that anytime your back is itching, you can scratch it at any time. “Our soft back scratcher will not scratch your skin.” Things that are positive that show the benefits of your product.

Call to action is key

Last but not least, you want to have a call to action in your sales copy. Somewhere in the description, you want to tell the customer to actually buy your product. Although it might seem counterintuitive or maybe it doesn't really make sense since they're there to buy the product in the first place, a lot of people need that extra nudge in order to add your product to their cart. You want to make it clear in your description that they should add the product to their cart right away. You'll see a significant increase in sales simply by letting your customer know that they should buy now.

This was a quick introduction into sales copy. In the future, I'll go more in depth into other aspects of sales copywriting, but for now I want to leave you just with these small, basic steps that you can take right now to go and improve the copy in your listings. Remember that the number one thing that makes good sales copy as opposed to bad is that you understand your customer. Get in your customer's shoes. Learn what their pains, pleasures, needs, and desires are. The more you're able to do that, the better your sales copy is going to be.

 

You are an Amazon seller and you want to start running Amazon sponsored campaigns, huh? Well, you've come to the right place. In this article we're going to talk about why you should be running sponsored ads on Amazon, and we're also going to be going into the three foundations for successful sponsored product ad campaigns.

Why Run Sponsored Ads?

Why should you be running Amazon-sponsored ads? First and foremost, there is very little competition. Why is that? There's not a lot of competition because Amazon sponsored ads are still very, very new. Imagine what it was like over a decade ago when Google add words first came out. Because there was not a lot of competition you could get amazing cost per clicks, you could get amazing conversions on your ads through Google AdWords, because they were brand new. Now it's very hard to tun Google AdWords to products and get a return on your investment. Because Amazon sponsored product campaigns are very new now, you're able to take advantage of the fact that there's not a lot of people who are actually using them.

The second is that Amazon sponsored products allow you to bring new products to market. When you create a brand new product, whether it be a bundle or a private label product, Amazon has no idea what your product actually is. Yes, they can see in your title that you've put certain keywords in your title, but they don't know exactly what it is. They can see your description and see that you have certain information about the product, but they don't know if you're keyword stuffing and just trying to rank for a ton of different keywords. They want to know whether or not your product in relevant or not.

The best way to do that, the best way to understand whether your product is actually relevant to search is when a customer puts in a search term into the search bar, they find your product and then they buy it. That's the best way for Amazon to know whether your product search terms are actually relevant. Amazon sponsored ads let you do that.

They also let you reinvigorate stagnated products that are not selling. If you had products in the Amazon warehouse that are just sitting there that you need to get moving, Amazon sponsored product campaigns can actually help you get those moving faster. The reason that is is because by using Amazon sponsored ads you're able to target ads that Amazon did not necessarily think were relevant to your product at the time. When the customer searches for that particular product using those search terms, and if they actually buy your product, Amazon sees that as a conversion statistic and could potentially raise your organic rankings. If you have products that are just sitting there, you might want to consider running sponsored ads to them.

Ultimately, sponsored ads help you to tell Amazon what your product is about, whether it's a bundle, whether it's a private label product, Amazon wants to know what search terms they can use to get your product in front of a buying customer. Amazon wants to sell product, that's all they care about. They don't make the majority of their money off of your sponsored ad campaign budget, they actually make more of their money off of how much they sell your product for and how much quantity they're able to sell of your product. They want to make sure that you are getting customers who want what you are selling.

The Three Foundations for a Successful Amazon Sponsored Ads Campaigns

Let's talk about the three foundations for successful sponsored ads. When you're running sponsored ads you have to keep three things in mind in order to actually convert on the product that you are selling. There's not a lot that goes into sponsored product campaigns, but if you ignore these three things you're more than likely not going to be able to sell your product at all.

#1 Price

The first thing to consider is your price. You need to understand that your price in relation to your competition is very, very important. If your price is much higher than the rest of your competition, it is very unlikely that you're going to be able to sell your product. Think about why people go onto Amazon in the first place. A lot of people go onto Amazon because they feel that Amazon is going to give them the best deal. When they search for a particular product using a keyword and they see fifteen products on the search results page, they want to know that they are going to get the absolute best deal for their search.

When they see that all of the products on the search page are around fifty dollars each, and the product that you're trying to sell is around the hundred and fifty or three hundred dollar mark, they don't understand why your product is going to be so high. They don't see how even though your product is very similar to all these other products, they don't understand why your product is so expensive, and they are very unlikely to buy your product.

If your price is close to all of your competitors, then it's much more likely that your product's going to sell. At that point in time the things that could determine conversion into a sale might be how many reviews you have, whether or not you have good reviews or bad reviews, and other things like that. More often than not, if your price is much higher than your competition, you are not going to be selling anything.

#2 Market Demand

The second foundation that you need to understand is market demand. If there is nobody searching for your product then you're not going to be able to sell that product very often, if at all. If there's nobody searching for your item you're going to be hard pressed to sell it. In order to determine whether or not you have a product that also has a market, you might want to use tools such as Keyword Inspector or Merchant Words. Both of these tools allow you to quickly determine whether or not there's going to be a market for your particular search term or product.

Something to keep in mind is that these tools only give you estimations. Nobody knows for sure how much traffic goes to specific listings on Amazon. That being said, you have to take the estimated search results of these software tools with a grain of salt. There's been numerous times when these software products have told me that there's thousands and thousands of people searching for a specific item, when really there was zero. The only way to determine whether or not there is actual traffic for a specific keyword is to actually run sponsored ads.

That being said, if you want the best way to test whether or not you have a market, you want to run sponsored ads on your product. Find as many keywords as you can that relate to your product. The more specific the keyword the better. The more niche the keyword the better. You want to avoid broad keywords that a lot of competitors are going to use and really focus on keywords that are very specific to a customer search. The more specific you are the more likely the customer is going to find your product relevant and buy, plus they're going to also be more likely to convert.

#3 Higher Margin Items

The third principle is that you need to have a decent amount of margin on your product. If you don't have a big enough margin of profit it's going to be very, very hard to run sponsored ads. I've seen numerous times when people only have a four to five dollar margin on their product and they try to run sponsored ads, but they don't even have enough of a budget because of their low profit margin to test. They need to be able to have enough padding in their profit margin in order to see what keywords are actually going to be successful and which ones are not in your sponsored ad campaign.

The bigger the margin, the bigger the ad spend that you have. For example, say you have a product that gives you one hundred dollars in net profit. You could spend up to a hundred dollars in ad spend before you are going to go into the red. You can spend up to a hundred dollars in ad spend and still break even. Why is this important? It's important because you have to remember that Amazon is also helping you to raise your organic rankings, so the more keywords that you can find that convert, the more likely it is that Amazon is actually going to reward you with free organic rankings in the end. The bigger margin that you have, the bigger ad spend that you have, and the more ability you have to test what keywords work with your product.

Remember, the goal of running sponsored ad campaigns, one of the best things that you can do is run these campaigns so that Amazon knows what keywords are relevant for your product. When they understand what keywords are relevant for your product, they will raise you up in the organic rankings for that product, which means that over time you will start selling more and more of your item for free, simply by Amazon rewarding you for letting them know what search terms were relevant for your product.

Stay tuned for the next article where we're going to go deeper into why you should be running sponsored ads and how best to set them up.

 

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Whats up Empire,

Joshua Woodward here,

I had the awesome opportunity to have Cynthia Stine on our show. She is an expert on suspension prevention in the amazon world. It seemed rather timely to have her on in the light of everything that has happened with big brother Amazon lately.

She is going to share how to protect your Amazon seller account from suspension as well as giving us top tips to get back if amazon has already suspended you.

If you have questions for Cynthia feel free to comment below.

If you need to get your account reinstated go to, https://theonlineempireacademy.com/cynthia

If you want to read Cynthia's book all about keeping you out of trouble on amazon go to,
https://theonlineempireacademy.com/suspension

Until next time Empire,

Have a fantastic day!

—Transcripts Below This Point—

Joshua:
What's up Online Empire Academy! I am Joshua Woodward, your podcast host. For those of you guys watching on Facebook, this is the first time we're trying this, we're really excited. For those of you on Youtube, hello, iTunes, what's up guys! For those of you who are listening maybe on a podcast platform, we wanted to let you guys know that there are videos; you guys can go check that out either on Facebook or on the Online Empire Academy on Youtube. I'm really excited. As most of you guys know, there's been a lot of suspensions lately, there's been some crazy stuff happening with Amazon and specifically around the region of UPC codes and so much changing with that.

I thought it would be a good idea to have somebody on who's a professional in this field. Today, we have on Cynthia Stine and she is a reinstatement expert, everybody has referred her to me for this specific topic. I am so excited to have her on, how are you doing Cynthia?

Cynthia:
Great. I'm looking forward to talk to your audience.

Joshua:
I'm excited to talk about this, it's so timely right now and something that's been super irritating for me especially loving you guys, loving this community and wanting to make sure everybody is doing everything they can to build as much income as they can. When I find out that somebody's account has been shut down, that's such a heartbreaking moment, I don't ever want that. Cynthia what is your story? How did you even get started in this?

Cynthia:
I was a business consultant for many years and over twenty five I … A long time and I actually started selling on Amazon in 2010 because I needed extra income which is why a lot of people do it. I had ten hours a week to do it. I had no time and this turned out to be the perfect business for somebody who had no time and I only needed about fifteen hundred a month, it wasn't like I was going to build an empire at the time; I just needed a little extra money. That's how I got started in 2010 and I had so many people say, “Well, how's that Amazon thing doing?” Also wanted me to talk about it that I wrote a book about it in 2011, came out early 2012 and that was my Make Thousands on Amazon in 10 Hours a Week. Because of that book, it all led one thing to another, I did a little of consulting. People would hire me and they'd say, “Hey, tell me why I'm not making money here?” Or, “Why isn't this product selling?” Stuff like that.

In 2014, what happened was I started to get people who were suspended saying, “Can you get me reinstated?” I thought, “Well, I definitely will try.” I had not done it before but I just dived into it as a business consultant , I do understand a lot of … I can read a contract for example … I understand a lot of these things. I know how businesses get in trouble and I know how they get out. I used to do turn around work and I've got crisis communications. I applied those skills from my past life to this business and we learned a lot about Amazon and this process. Then in 2015, the spring is when Amazon had a huge change in their algorithm and it caught so many sellers by surprise and my business just exploded.

Something that I thought I might do maybe once a month, twice a month; I didn't really think this was going to be a big deal. Doing reinstatement has far exceeded any expectations I ever had for making money on Amazon and it's been huge. I'm still a seller on Amazon, it's pretty small right now because all of my focus is on helping sellers get back to work basically. I wrote my book Suspension Prevention and I hired people and the story is today I have eight people in the US, sixteen in the Philippines and we're still growing. In fact we brought on three new people this week. It's just insane and I expect it to continue. Amazon has not done anything to stand the tide of suspensions and if anything else there's just new issues that keep coming up and coming up. My job is, I see myself as a seller advocate because I'm a seller too. My job is to try to educate sellers so that they can avoid getting suspended and stay ahead of it as much as possible.

Joshua:
From just researching and following what you've been doing, for the listeners it's not just a reinstatement service, she is passionate about helping people stay away from those pitfalls. You just talked about that, so many people are out there going … Or making dumb decisions honestly. It comes down to how does Amazon want you to play on their platform? Just do that. I think that you have broken it down in such an easy way for people to understand in. We'll post links to your book but one of the things I want to talk about is what kinds of suspensions are you seeing?

Cynthia:
It varies. What happens is, it seems like every few weeks Amazon will tweak the algorithm or they'll go after something new. We'll get a wave of suspensions and all for the same reason. Right now for all of my supplement guys, most of them who are private label, they're getting their listing shutdown for Forskolin … Which I hope I said that right … All of a sudden, ten of them. I've heard several sellers who are getting shut down because they're buying from liquidators, the same liquidator actually and we're having issues with the product reviewer programs. Amazon is very serious about people who abuse the product review system that they have. In the past they've had three rounds where they've sued companies that provide these services then just a couple weeks ago, they sued sellers. This is the first time they've actually gone after sellers for abusing their platform.

They're not just kicking them off, they're suing them. These guys I looked at the case, these were really egregious, there's no doubt that they: A, knew what they were doing and that B, It was way against terms of service. It's not a shades of grey thing whatsoever, this is very black and white but still to me what that indicates is they're serious and they're going to continue doing this. I'm always surprised at how many sellers we get in the door every month for abusing the reviewers program and I have yet to find one who is innocent. They're all guilty; I get them back on but they're not innocent. That just tells me that there's still a lot more education that needs to go on because really it's an awful reason to be suspended and you have to turn over all of your reviews to Amazon who will then take them down.

You could go from hundreds of reviews to zero practically overnight, hopefully that's some organic reviews but they're going to take all the ones that were part of giveaways or campaigns. I don't really understand why sellers want to gain the system so bad but anyway that's a whole other discussion. Like you said the UPC codes, that's new too. The issue started coming to the surface about three weeks ago I want to say and we started seeing it in our suspensions a week later. The way it's showing up in suspensions is our clients were getting suspended for inauthentic claims, usually several. When you look into why they have these inauthentic claims, it will get down to because of the barcode doesn't match the GS1. They're like, “Well then, this is not an authentic product.”

Joshua:
Will you explain GS1 if you know how? I don't know how.

Cynthia:
Yes. Basically what this is, GS1 is a couple of things: It's a registration database and it's a place that you would get extensions. If you're a big company and you have lots of products, you might buy an extension on GS1 and maybe your extension is 12345. Every barcode out there that begins with 12345 is you. You may have hundreds of thousands of them, 12345678910 but it's the extensions that are filed in this database and that are assigned to an owner. Amazon has recently … This is why it started happening … They've recently found a way to automatically search the database and compare it to their catalog. Up until now, they were never really looking or trying to enforce the misuse of barcodes I guess or UPC codes.

Here's the problem though, the GS1 is not necessarily kept up to date any more than any other database, all databases have old data. People who buy from Speedy Barcode or the dealer at eBay, they're usually not buying unique barcodes, they're buying … What's the word … Retired barcodes. Somebody may have owned them before but now they're not using them anymore, maybe the company is out of business, whatever. I went back into the available barcode pool if you like then Speedy Barcode sold it to you and you made a bundle with it or a multi-pack or whatever you did with it.

The thing is Amazon is checking the GS1, it still shows that it's owned by the previous company because they have old data in there, they say, “Oh no, this company owns that barcode, not you.” It's like, “I own it.” What I tell my clients is if you have a private label product and you have already used a bunch of Speedy Barcodes and you've registered your brand, you've registered your listings, you've done all of that with Amazon, you should be fine because Amazon doesn't care about your listings, they know you created them, they know they're yours and your brand because you went through that whole brand registry process, that's not a problem.

The problem is when like I said, maybe you created a bundle and put it out there and it wasn't your product, it was just something maybe … There's a company that does this, I see them all the time; they buy a lot of stuff from the world market and they'll put one product with another product, they buy these things retail arm and they put them up there. They brand it as their brand and they use their own unique UPC code. That company is about to run into problems because again the products that they're selling in the bundle they don't own those brands and they branded it as their own brand but if it's not in the GS1, which I'm almost certain it isn't because nobody buys from the GS1 unless they're big.

If you're buying a hundred thousand barcodes, if you're buying one barcode from GS1, it's sixty five dollars, for the smaller seller … You can buy a hundred for a certain rate and whatever but it's not cheap. Really only a serious seller would buy from the GS1. I know that the database is riddled with Speedy Barcodes and we're going to be saying issues about this for some time to come. That's why the community is perturbed and upset and for every seller that they get off the platform who is doing it improperly, they're going to catch some innocent fish in the net too. That's what's so unfortunate about the algorithm. It's very impersonal and there's no nuance. It's a big net.

Joshua:
What about the people who are maybe selling used or refurbished things on Amazon? What about them?

Cynthia:
There's been a couple of things going on with that lately. With refurb, actually it shouldn't be a problem because a refurb … If you're using the term correctly basically according to Amazon … A refurb is something that has been refurbished by the manufacturer and has a warranty. In that case there should be a unique listing for the refurb on the Amazon database and you should have no problem selling that product. If you're buying refurbed kitchen aid and selling it under the refurbed listing assuming you bought it from a legitimate source, you should be fine. The problem that is coming up with used media is particularly … This is what broke my heart because I started off selling books and media and I still have a lot of long tale stuff up there.

What Amazon has started doing is they've been filing inauthentic claims and counterfeit against sellers who sell used media. I get it, I know why they're doing this because basically the criminals, the people who are selling counterfeit media or whatever, they realized that Amazon was only checking new. To be clever about it, they would list all of their product as used, used like new, used very good and they would put it out there and sell it. Amazon is trying to crack down on the criminals but here's the problem most of us buy our used media at estate sales, book sales, [inaudible 00:15:32] sales, it comes out of our own library and we sure as heck don't have receipts from five years ago when we bought it right?

Joshua:
Yeah.

Cynthia:
When Amazon says, “Okay, I need you to provide an invoice.” I got caught for a Carl Sagan book, Cosmos which I can guarantee you was not counterfeit and I've sold lots of them on Amazon; it's an old book that's why it still sells so well because I'm selling the original 1970s version. I had to shut down that listing, I can't sell anymore Cosmos. I also had to really think about it because you can't have too many inauthentics on your account or you get shut down. I'm trying to decide, I'm struggling with, “Do I get rid of my used media?” I've had clients who could not decide, they didn't have a choice, they have to get rid of it because they were suspended for it and you just can't afford another inauthentic after that. They had this huge database of books and Cds and games and things and they had to remove all of them. I think they're selling them on eBay but it's a real shock.

I went back and forth with Amazon, we escalated this up the chain, I have colleagues who were able to reach out to actual humans at Amazon about this issue. I wrote a letter to Jeff Bezos and the answer came down to this, counterfeit is counterfeit. If they want you to provide a receipt or an invoice and you can't then tough. That is chilling like I said, I tell my people you might just try to sell what you have out and if you get one claim then just eBay the whole thing. You may be able to sell out what you have because they're not quite going after used inauthentic as vigorously as they are going after new; I don't know if that's good news or not but that's huge. Again that was a change that they brought to the community without telling us but they've obviously tweaked the algorithm for it. If I could have one wish, if the Amazon fairy godmother would give me my wish, it would be that Amazon would give us warning whenever they tweaked the algorithm.

If they would just give sellers a week or two to clear out and to say, “Oh no, now we have to worry about this. Okay, let me” I think it would make sellers lives better but also they would probably make Amazon's life better because they wouldn't have to suspend and deal with all these issues, they could just give people enough time to clean up before hand; most of my clients they're good sellers.

Joshua:
To that, I don't even know how … If Amazon told us every time something changed it would get so difficult but I'm there with you, at least give us something, at least give us some sort of notice. This past week I got an email from one of our viewers and she was asking about, she got this email from another company and they were saying, “Hey, you don't have the rights to sell on our listing, please get off. If not we're going to contact Amazon.” I got really mad because I'm sure that she bought it from a wholesaler or something like that. I'm asking her these questions and all that but I realized in that moment, I don't have all the information I need. This is one of the things I wanted to ask you about because I'm seeing this frequently that somebody is coming on and saying, “You can't be on our listing.” Being frankly a bully. She ended up contacting Amazon, Amazon said, “You're fine.” What would you say to the viewers who are in the same situation?

Cynthia:
I would say first of all it depends where the notice comes from; if the notice is coming through the buyer-seller messages and it's coming directly from the complainer, the bully and they're sending you a hostile, bristly message, they're powerless. They don't have any power over this. Only Amazon has power over this. You might wonder, “Are these people vindictive and petty enough to try and make trouble for me?” Possibly they are. That's the hard part because you don't know. That's usually an opening gambit that somebody will make because they know that one angry bristly letter may be enough to get some of their competition off the listing kind of thing. If they're serious and they have rights to protect like they're thinking of … If they think that you really have violated then they'll file it with Amazon and Amazon will then send you the bill, they'll suspend the listing and they'll send you an email that says, “You need to contact the rights holder.” At that point you do even if you don't care about the listing.

I've had clients who were like, “I had two units left, I don't care I'm just going to close the listing, I don't want to deal with it.” Like, “Great, I get it that's okay.” You still have to atleast go through the motions of trying to resolve it with the rights holder. Amazon will give you an email and usually you can just say, “Hey, I've closed my listing, I'm not going to sell on it please let amazon know.” That will resolve ninety percent of the cases. There are other cases where you think … This I see a lot too where your like, “That guy is full of it. He is a bully and he's wrong; I have the right to sell this product. I bought it at whatever.” Or, “I am not violating his rights.” At that point usually we have our clients just ask the rights holder, “Can you please explain how you think that we violated your rights?” Just a nice open-ended question. Again if the company is legit, if they are in fact pursuing a claim that they believe to be true, they will work with you.

You may get a letter from their attorney that a cease and desist and it's all ugly. The fact is legitimately you'll get a letter from an attorney and they'll say, “Blah.” Then you can decide what you want to do and they'll provide the proof. They'll say “Hey, we filed this trademark.” Whatever. You're like, “Uh, okay.” Or if they can't provide the proof or they don't and this is where the bully comes back. There's a lot of sellers unfortunately who have been using this as a tactic. They file the claim through Amazon then they never respond to the seller ever, the seller might call them, email them and they'll never respond because they know that as long as they don't send that email to Amazon saying that the issue is resolved the seller is screwed, they can't sell on that listing; which I find reprehensible on a number of levels especially if that client actually happens to be suspended and this is one of the issues they need to resolve to be able to sell on the platform, I think that's wrong and that a seller should not be able to do that to another seller-

Joshua:
Come on.

Cynthia:
I really do. I just want people to know who are playing games which I'm sure is nobody in this audience. Still Amazon does have a backup for that, people who do this as a tactic if you are up against one of my clients you are in trouble because I know how to get you kicked off and I will do it. I just wanted to say that, I've done that for my clients, I've helped them in the case where the rights holder would not work with them. Amazon expects you if you file the complaint that you're going to work with the other sellers, not to give up your rights but to speak to them about your complaint and if you don't do that then you're obviously just gaming the system.

Joshua:
Let's flip the coin, you've created your own private label product. You may be fearing that your competition is trying to bring you down what are some ways that you can combat that with Amazon?

Cynthia:
You know sometimes is really hard to tell. You start to get some complaints or you get somebody who's saying stuff about your product or you're getting a bunch of inauthentic complaints. You start to see something, you think, “You know, this doesn't seem normal. I was doing great and then suddenly my products sucks, I don't think so.” If you suspect a seller tactic, you know what? Sometimes it's so obvious it's unbelievable. I've seen conspiracies, coordinated attacks by competitors against my clients where they'll actually said the same thing in their negative feedback, it was a cut and paste. It was even … They didn't even freestyle it. Or they'll provide a picture of the product and it's not only the wrong product but it's the same one. If you get five reviews on your account and they each have the same picture and the same text and I thought, “This has got to be the most stupidest competitor I've ever seen.”

We got that one dismissed pretty easily but sometimes it's really subtle if you don't know. If you suspect it, what I suggest is you file a policy violation with Amazon, which you can do with your Seller Central and that you just very politely ask Amazon for their help and you say, “Based on this and this and this, it's possible that a competitor may be doing this on purpose. I can't tell but maybe you can. Could you please look into it for me?” You will never here back from Amazon, that's not their policy for policy violations but I promise you those people act unlike other parts of Amazon, these people act. If they think that there's some merit to what you're saying, if they can find patterns of behavior that maybe you can't see … They can see things like the IP addresses, where the orders came from. They can tell if the woman who bought your product is related to a competitor, they can do all that stuff that you can't. The stuff that they known about their database is scary-

Joshua:
Seriously.

Cynthia:
It's really scary, the thing is though they can do the research and like I said I wouldn't get angry about it, I would just be polite, ask for help and tell them why you think there might be something going on then let [inaudible 00:26:28]. If there's something and they can detect it, they'll act and all of a sudden … I had this happen to me, I was attacked by a group of people and it was in October, a couple of years ago I guess. I knew immediately something was going on and their trick they were playing on me was changing the ASIN so that my product no longer matched the listing. They would go and they would change the picture from a black hippo … It was a stuffed animal … Black hippo to a white dog; big changes they were making on the platform and of course then people would buy my product that didn't match the picture and I was getting all these complaints, it was a really crappy trick.

I pulled together my proof, I went looked at all the ancient changes I'd had for a year and what percentage I would get normally, blah, all these stuff. I could show that in October, it went like this; it was like a hockey puck straight up. The change in my normal metrics … I said, “Somebody is messing with me, I don't know who it is, I hope that you do.” I showed them my proof and the problem ended the next day. I have not had a problem since. It went, right back down to normal. Anyway I do recommend that, don't go crazy, misusing policy violation either because they frown on that. If you feel you have a case, build it as best as you can then just simply ask for help, they usually will.

Joshua:
I have one last question and that is what are ways that us as sellers can start protecting ourselves now?

Cynthia:
Obviously the best way to protect yourself is to have an account that's as clean as possible. The fewer problems you have to begin with, the more lenient and the more leeway the give you if something new comes up. If they tweak the algorithm or change things … I'll just give you an example, I'll have clients that have a listing suspended then I'll have other clients that'll have their account suspended for the same thing. The difference is the ones who had their account suspended, they had already had some other issues going on with their account, maybe previously, maybe several things going on at the same time. Amazon, whatever their magic trigger point is, my client hit it, they shut their whole account down whereas this other client maybe it's just an ASIN and they just shut down a listing, same issue. That usually is a function of how clean your account is to begin with.

I tell my clients and anybody else, “Go and look at your reports every week and look for potential problems that you can't see in your account, that's not on the dashboard.” You should always look at the dashboard and most of my clients are religious about that, they'll check it everyday. Then I don't have to tell people, “Go look at your dashboard.” You do need to look at your … In perfect orders … Your negative feedback of course, look at your buyer-seller messages for trigger words. It's not just dealing with whatever problem they've come to you with but if you see key words like: fake, counterfeit, physical sickness, somebody says, “Oh, it gave me a headache, it made me ill.” All of these are triggers.

Things like that that might be a trigger, they say, “I know the product was new but it looked used.” Or, “It's not as described, I thought it was going to be this and it was that.” Or, “I got the wrong parts.” Whatever, those are all triggers. You want to look for that, every week have a look. Also all of your returns, if you're doing both merchant fulfilled and FBA, you have to look at two different reports. You want to look at the ones that returned your product for what I call a negative return which is a return that was for a non-normal reason, maybe it's inauthentic, not as described, used, sold as new. A normal return is, “It didn't fit, I didn't like the color, I changed my mind, it was a gift they I didn't want it.” Those are what we call normal retail returns but if they're saying that there's a problem with the product or defective [damaged 00:31:00], all of that.

That's what I call a negative return and those are the ones you need to watch and if they're starting to build up on a particular listing, you have maybe one listing that's getting a lot of problems, you should shut that listing down. Find out why and fix it before you turn the listing back on. You've been getting a lot of damaged, maybe it's not being packaged well enough. If you're getting a lot of not as describe, maybe there's something wrong with the listing, maybe the listing doesn't match your product. Maybe you could have the problem that I did where somebody messed with it and now the picture or the description has changed since you listed your product, things like that. That's what I tell people, if you're actually just looking every week at those problems and dealing with them as they come up, it's like house keeping, you'll stay on top of it rather than have a big mess to clean up later.

Joshua:
I know I said this a lot but I'm going to need to go back and listen to this because there's so much good knowledge within this. Community I hope you feel that, if you guys have questions for Cynthia please comment below, I'll make sure that she sees this. If you guys want to go check out her services, especially for those of you who are listening to this and may need to get reinstated, go to the onlineempireacademy.com/cynthia and again the onlineempireacademy.com/cynthia. All the links will be below. Also we'll post links to your book, you guys if you want to stay out of this rat race … It's so crazy … If you want to stay out of that, I would highly recommend her book and seriously Cynthia thank you so much for coming on and all the knowledge you give us.

Cynthia:
You're welcome, it's been great. I look forward to taking questions from your audience.

Joshua:
Absolutely, again guys the onlineempireacademy/cynthia. Thank you so much for tuning in and we'll see you guys soon. Thank you for listening to the Online Empire Academy Podcast. If you want real, actionable and proven entrepreneurial ideas you can use right now, join us for free at the onlineempireacademy.com. If you've enjoyed this podcast, help us make more by rating us on iTunes and Stitcher Radio, we'll see you next time.

Whats up Empire!

Joshua Woodward Here,

As you may be seeing we are stuck on the subject of Amazon adds. I know there is a huge need for this within the amazon community and we want to get to the bottom of it.

I have a habit now of hopping on Udemy to see if someone has created a course about the subject I am stuck on.
In this case I was hopelessly lost with Amazon PPC. When searching Udemy the pickings where slim but the one course that came up most recommended was Justin Croxtons “Amazon PPC Product Ads: Grow Your Private Label FBA Products.”

I knew the value Justin brings in the PPC world wouldn't just be helpful to myself but would also be massively helpful to you Empire. So I tracked him down and asked him to be on.

I love how easily Justin is able to break down these massive subjects and give you bite sized chunks. I know I so appreciated his knowledge and I hope you do as well.

if you want to get Justin's course he has discounted it 20% for us at, https://theonlineempireacademy.com/zoncommerce

If you want to know more about us and all we have going at The Online Empire Academy go to, https://theonlineempireacademy.com/

Until next time,

Have a fantastic day!

— Transcripts Below This Point—

Joshua:
What's up online Empire Academy? I'm Joshua Woodward, your podcast host. Today we have on Justin Croxton and he is in charge of Zon Commerce and, really he's, why I wanted to have him on today, was because he's the master of Amazon PPC. He's created a course on you to me. I have so much respect for this content because I am so lost when it comes to Amazon PPC.

First o, Justin, how are you doing, man?

Justin:
I'm doing great, man. Thank you for having me on. I really do appreciate it.

Joshua:
Absolutely. I'm excited. It's obviously a challenging subject for the majority of the world. For those of us who are …

Justin:
I totally get it. Totally get it.

Joshua:
Dude, it's one of those subjects that's like, I still have not wrapped my brain around it and I've tried.

Justin:
To your point, there's just so much content around it. You're dealing with keywords. You're trying to look at competitive research. You're trying to figure out the right keywords. There's the platform. It's building the campaigns. It's a lot of stuff. Hopefully I can provide some insights, just at least the strategy side that came help folks along with their PPC campaigns through Amazon Search.

Joshua:
Absolutely. Let's start off, well first, share with the community a little bit about your story.

Justin:
Sure. A little bit about my story. Let's see here. I don't know if I should go back to undergrad. But, graduated Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. Worked in commercial real estate for six years. Did a little digital marketing on some of the buildings that I represented. I'm here in the Atlanta market. Made the transition to, I always wanted to go back to business school so I went to Stern Business school in New York, to the full time program. While I went to Stern, I started my own digital marketing agency so I could treat it as a summer internship, picked up a few clients. A few really fun clients, which is cool. Once I graduated, I continued in that whole world of digital marketing. Everything from search engine optimization, Pay Per Click advertising, but more so on the Google side of things.

I really didn't get over to the Amazon side until about early 2015 where I learned this whole world of private label selling and retail arbitrage. My background is more so on the private label type selling on Amazon. Create your own brand and selling those products with your own label on that brand, if that makes us wrong, those products rather.

For me, I've really been in the Amazon space for a little under, I guess it's going on a little over a year now. Let's just say, we've done relatively well. We've sold our products all around the world in that short period of time. We've sold in Canada, Spain, Italy, France, Japan, U.K., Germany, certainly, our main base being here in the United States. There's a, it's been quite the whirlwind. There's been some challenges, but quite a bit of success. I think my, where I like to hang my hat is really on the search engine optimization side of things, as well as the Pay-Per-Click advertising side of things.

I'd say the PPC side, mainly because I have so much experience with Google Adwords and I'll leverage a lot those insights, pulling that perspective into the Amazon PPC side of the business. That's my story. It's been quite the ride. I'm looking forward to sharing anything else I can with you guys.

Joshua:
Absolutely. I mean, we'll have to talk another time about just getting into the global Amazon game. I think it's a whole other subject. Let's dive into it. Will you breakdown what Amazon PPC is?

Justin:
Sure. Amazon PPC, otherwise known as Amazon sponsored ads, is essentially the ads that show up either at the top on the right hand side or at the very bottom, or, sometimes in the middle, of a keyword search that you did on Amazon. Let's say, for example, that you're an advertiser and you know there are certain keywords that you want to show up for. You're new to this business, but you don't have all the reviews. You've only been in the business for like, let's say a couple weeks. Maybe you have gotten a few reviews and you want to start advertising your product. Amazon PPC allows you to do that, literally on day one.

Essentially, it's an auction-based system where you have a bunch of advertisers that are bidding for certain keywords on their auction network. Let's say if I'm selling bamboo cutting boards, that's sort of my main keyword. Then, bamboo cutting boards would be the term that I would essentially be bidding on. Those bids can go anywhere from .10 all the way up to 3, 4, $5.00. Depending on the competitiveness of that particular keyword. You can have a gazillion keywords. You can have five keywords. It really all depends. That's ultimately, the Amazon sponsored ads platform. Very powerful. If you're selling on Amazon, it's an absolute must in order to be successful or have the level of success that you desire on Amazon's platform.

Joshua:
For the people who are just super-new to this and don't even understand the basics of what a Pay-Per-Click System is, will you explain that?

Justin:
Sure. A Pay-Per-Click System is when someone, let's say, you and I, I just had a son, April 13th, his name is Ellis. For Ellis, we're looking for diapers. If I go to Amazon's website, I type in newborn diapers, I'll see a bunch of different listings that will show up. At the very top, I might see Pampers. They may be advertising, or maybe someone else has advertising. When I click on that “sponsored ad”, that's called a Pay-Per-Click. The only time an advertiser pays for their advertising is when someone clicks on their ad. That's the only time that happens. That's sort of the rudimentary foundation of what a Pay-Per-Click is. It's no different than Adwords paid search, where you see some of those ads at the very top or at the very bottom of Google. You see the word “ad” next to it and you click on that ad, that is a Pay-Per-Click. That Pay-Per-Click, or the cost for each click, essentially, can range, well, here at least in the Amazon world can range anywhere from .10 all the way up to five bucks, probably even more, depending on the vertical, depending on the market. I hope that explains what a Pay-Per-Click really is, versus, what it ultimately entails.

Joshua:
That's great. We are the, in the sense, we're going to take it from the advertiser because we want to get on Amazon and want to get on Amazon Pay-Per-Clicks. Just for the audience, just start thinking like, okay, every time somebody clicks, that means I pay. We're just going to get in that mindset. Why should someone, why should our audience start using Amazon Pay-Per-Click?

Justin:
I think the first and foremost is that it gives you the ability to control the keywords that you want to drive traffic through. Let's go back to the bamboo cutting board example. The only way that I'm going to get traffic immediately, there's some other things that we can discuss from a traffic-building standpoint, but if we're talking specifically on Amazon's platform. If I want to gain traffic immediately, Amazon PPC is the one place that you can accomplish that. With Amazon search engine optimization, that can take time. You're trying to optimize your listing. You're trying to rank for certain keywords organically. Obviously, that's the holy grail. That's what everyone wants to be at some point. The Amazon PPC drives traffic immediately to your site on day one. For any reason, that is the one reason that you would ultimately want to do Amazon Pay-Per-Click advertising.

Secondly, this is something that some people may or may not know about, but there's also sort of a dual effect, a dual impact, that Amazon Pay-Per-Click advertising has, which is, being able to also rank organically for those keywords that you have some intuition that's probably the right keywords that you should be ranking for. Going back to the same example, bamboo cutting boards, that's my product. That's ultimately what I want to advertise on. I may have some terms. Some of my terms might be, wooden cutting boards, bamboo cutting boards, best bamboo cutting boards. Probably some other ones that I'm not thinking of. Ultimately, those are the main terms.

Every time I get a sale on one of those terms, it has an impact to my overall ability to rank for that keyword organically. That's huge, right? It's one thing to give away a bunch of product. That's another way that you can rank high, which is sort of a separate conversation. The truly organic way to do it is to just get natural sales through Amazon PPC. If you're getting sales through Amazon Pay-Per-Click advertising, you're getting quite a bit of it. You're putting yourself in a position to rank higher for those keywords that's contextually relevant and ultimately those keywords that you believe, okay, these things are definitely converting for me, it just naturally makes sense for me to advertise, or either to increase my budget or to spend more for those individual keywords.

Ultimately, the last thing in this is something that's a little more nuanced. For me, I'm a really big believer in being able to track and measure as much as you possibly can. I believe that Amazon makes it very easy for us to do that. They have this system that's called, or this metric, that's called Average Cost of Sale. Let's say for example, my product sells for $20.00 and I sold a product, or I had costs associated with the keyword on that, amounted to $5.00. That 5 divided by 20, is essentially 25%. That would be my average cost of sale. Even just knowing that metric in and of itself, gives you the ability to track and measure the success and the failures of some of those keywords so you can pivot accordingly. Turn off certain keywords. Make certain keywords what we call a negative term, where you can add that to a list where your essentially not showing up for that keyword moving forward. Just for those three reasons alone, Amazon Pay-Per-Click advertising is an absolute must for any business that is selling a product on Amazon.

Joshua:
That's actually a perfect transition. My next question to you was, does this work for only a private label seller, or can this branch out into more different avenues?

Justin:
That's a good question. To be honest with you, when it comes to the retail arbitrage side of it, I think that's what you're sort of getting at. You have those big box brands, some big brands that are out there. Fortune 500 companies, big e-commerce sellers that have been doing a lot of business online. You have that bucket. You have the retail arbitrage game where, well, not game, but the business rather, where you're purchasing a product at a steep discount. You're getting those products in-house. You're uploading those through merchant fulfillment and you're trying to sell those. They have a private label side of it where you have your own brand, but your placing your own brand on private label products. I believe, definitely private label in the brand side, can absolutely do Amazon Pay-Per-Click advertising. I also believe that you can still do that through retail arbitrage. I'm just not 100% sure because I haven't done it myself. I can't see there being a reason why you wouldn't be able to.

Ultimately Amazon, I'm not saying they're looking to take your money. They are looking to make money and help you make money too. If it's something that's fair to the system, it's fair to all the sellers. I think that's something that's available to merchant fulfilled Amazon sellers as well. I believe it is. I believe it is.

Joshua:
Basically, it sounds like I wouldn't really want to send traffic to Hasbro if it's not my own product. It's just kind of my [crosstalk 00:13:37]. I don't want to, if I get a killer price on a new superhero toy, I don't want to give them my service. I don't want to pay for those. It sounds like Pay-Per-Click is more targeted towards people who maybe are doing wholesale directly with a company, dropshipping directly with a company and/or are private labeling for their own business.

Justin:
I do believe that's correct, Josh. On the retail arbitrage, I'm just not 100% sure and I don't want to put any false information out there because I know there's this conversation around the buy box. If you go into that whole bit, what does that really look like. I can tell you with absolute certainty, that for private label, all day long, if you have your own brand all day long, I do believe to a certain extent, through the retail arbitrage side of the business, you do have that ability as well.

Joshua:
That's good to know.

Justin:
Here's my philosophy for everyone that's out there, if you don't know it, just go and test it and find out. It's really that straightforward.

Joshua:
I like it. Hey man, that sounds good.

Justin:
Take a product that you bought that you have in the house you want to sell on Amazon, maybe it's an Iphone 5.0. Put it on, see if you can do Amazon PPC. If you can, boom. Retail arbitrage all day long.

Joshua:
That's good.

Joshua:
What about the cost. That's been a concern of our viewers who I've been talking to, is, I'm afraid it's going to end up sinking my ROI in the end.

Justin:
I totally get that. I've had campaigns in the past, at least when I first started, when my ACOS, average cost of sale, was 100%, 150%. Here's a good barometer, it's what I like to look it as. I like to look at it as anywhere, my ideal ACOS is 25-50%. Some people say, “No. No. No. No. No. I need to achieve 10% or 20%.” Sometimes, that's just not realistic. The other side of it is, we're not looking to break even, but don't forget that your ability to rank organically for your products or for those terms, is directly correlated with your Amazon PPC. There may be certain instances where I have an ACOS that's, I don't know, let's say it's 100%. Sometimes, I'm still willing to pay that because I know that's still impacting my ability to rank for that keyword within Amazon.

I totally understand the heartburn that some people may experience when they think about, “Oh man, this is going to cost me a lot of money.” As long as you're staying below, in my judgement, you're staying below that 100%, really the ideal target is about that 25-40%, 50% range. I think you're in a good place. Particularly, if you say for “bamboo cutting boards” you're getting your 2, 3, 4, 5 sales a day off of that term naturally and organically, it's totally worth it because it's only going to boost up your organic rankings over time. You have that cost associated with the Amazon PPC, but then you also have the huge benefit of the free traffic and the free clicks and the impressions you're getting through the organic side of Amazon's platform.

Joshua:
This may be a super basic question, but, I still get the reviews from sponsored ads, correct?

Justin:
Absolutely, without question. Without question. Of course, if you have some sort of an auto-responder set up and those same folks are leaving reviews organically, obviously it's under the verified purchase tab. Absolutely, that's also going to show up within your Amazon sponsored ads in addition to your organic listing as well.

Joshua:
That's good man.

Justin:
Both side of the coin, without question.

Joshua:
The more and more I hear about this, the more and more I talk with people, I don't know why, especially if you've taken the time to develop your own business and develop your own brand, why you wouldn't take the time to start ranking it on Amazon. I just kind of want to take a quick segue. What would it take to get those same products ranking on Google through Amazon, if that makes sense?

Justin:
Makes perfect sense. I'll tell you, it's not easy. There are a lot of folks out there who have been incredibly successful being able to rank their Amazon products on Google. Let me just take it just a step back. I think some people probably don't even understand what it actually takes to rank a product on Google and have an Amazon link. Two things, first is, the Amazon link has to be searchable. It has to be indexed. If it's not indexed, then it can't be, you can't rank. Number two, Amazon typically, well not Amazon but Google will only have anywhere from one to two Amazon links per keyword that's essentially ranked on their system. Don't forget you're also dealing with some of the high level categories that Google has already determined Amazon's category listing for this listing is most relevant so we're going to rank that. Right?

Here's the biggest thing in Google, search engine optimization in Google is clearly slightly different from Amazon. The biggest thing is what we call keyword relevancy and [inaudible 00:19:31]. Keyword relevancy in terms of, let's say, bamboo cutting boards is my product. I have that in my title. I have it peppered throughout my bullets and my description. I have a lot of good textual stuff that really speaks to what the product is. That's how Google determines, okay, this product or this page is relevant to the searcher's query. That's part of the step. That's maybe 20=30% of the process. The other part of the process, Joshua, is what we call, is what I call links. Links that are pointing back to your Amazon listing page. The one that's indexable. Not the other ones because you can get a whole lot of different links through Amazon for your one product listing. The one that gets indexed is the one that matters. Your ability to drive links to those, to that product listing, is ultimately what's going to give you the ability to rank on Google for that product for those individual keywords.

Honestly, Google is nothing more than, I like to call them sort of a voting pool if you will. Your ability to get more votes, from both relevant and highly authoritative websites is ultimately what's going to tell Google, “Hey, this person's gotten a lot of votes in these different areas. Maybe they should rank higher on this page for this particular keyword.” If you look at it from that perspective, and your ability to market your product through other channels whether you're doing a press release, or if you are being mentioned in a blog, you're doing a product giveaway and you're giving out that indexable link. Those are the things that over time, can hopefully get that link ranked within Google for your primary term. It's not easy. It does take time. I've seen folks that have been able to do it. It's very, very doable.

Joshua:
That's so interesting. I'm thinking about there's a few people I've seen on YouTube who will test people's Amazon products. I'm like, “Oh wow, that's a great idea,” because that person gets free products. Now I'm realizing, that's for SEO, that's for search engine optimization. That's to all, link back to their Amazon. That's a genius idea.

Justin:
Yes. It's a duel effect. In the SEO world, I like to look at it as, if an SEO company is doing a great job for you, they're doing two things. One, they're getting you more organic traffic and they're also getting you more referral traffic. They're getting referral traffic from legitimate sites, legitimate web pages. Whether it's someone's YouTube page, whether it's someone's blog, whether it's a press release. Whatever it is, you're getting legitimate traffic through that and the link that's pointing back to that indexable link from Amazon. It's all encompassing.

Joshua:
Gosh, man. There's so much. I know we can probably spend an entire hour just on that.

Joshua:
Dude, it's so cool. Let's get into some of the dos and don'ts. What are the dos and donts of getting started with specifically Amazon PPC?

Justin:
It's a couple things. I would say the biggest, well, if we're talking about getting into the business of doing the sponsored ads, I kind of like to look at it as somewhat of a process more than the things that I like to look at. The first thing that I like to do is do competitive research. By that I mean, taking for example, again, bamboo cutting boards. I'll do the actually search myself on bamboo cutting boards. I'll do the search and I'll see who are the true top competitors. I'm not talking about the bigger brands that are, those folks are doing like $100-200 million a year. I'm talking about maybe some of those private label sellers. Maybe some of those folks are doing some retail arbitrage. There's a great tool that's out there called Jungle Scout that helps discern which ones are big brands from private label from merchant fulfillment. I like to look at the private label and FBA stuff more than anything else. I try to pick the top two, top three brands. I look at their listing. I look at their title. For me that helps gives me a sense of, “All right, these are some of their true terms.” Maybe there were some I didn't think about. These are some of the ones that just further confirms my assumptions that these are the terms that I ultimately want to rank for.

I can't stress enough how critical that competitive research is. It really gives you a sense of where your competitors are and how you can perform, do a little better than what they're doing. That's the first thing. The second thing is, there are certain tools that I use. One is called Google Keyword Planner. Because I'm a Pay-Per-Click advertising guy on the Google side, I use it daily for clients that I work with. It's free to anyone that's out there. The only thing you have to do is get an Adwords account set up. Those folks, through Adwords, they're going to ask you for your billing information. Don't worry about it. Just add it. You don't have to advertise anything on Google's platform. Just enter that information. Your billing information. Then, you have access to this tool. I can't stress enough how incredible this tool truly is. I can literally take that same keyword. Let's say, bamboo cutting boards, and Google through it's contextual search, will find all of the other relevant terms that's specifically centered around bamboo cutting boards. There might be a ton of terms I'm not even aware of.

Here's the other great thing about it. Not only will it find terms that you're not even aware of, it will also share with you the search volume of those terms. That's huge because it's not as if those search volumes are exactly the same search volumes on Amazon. However, it is very similar in that regard. If I'm looking at bamboo cutting boards versus wooden cutting boards and I'm trying to figure out what should my title really be? I notice that out of all the terms that I was thinking about, bamboo cutting boards actually gets way more traffic than best top wooden cutting boards, just as an example, then I'm going to go with wooden cutting boards. You can essentially extrapolate out those, the demand or the searches for those keywords over to Amazon. With a certain level of certainty that these keywords are probably the better ones to go after versus some of these other ones that really are driving as much traffic. Google Keyword Planner, highly recommend that to everyone that's out there, again, Adwords account, billing information. You don't have to pay anything. It's free of charge. Google has a really, really great set up tools that's available to everyone.

I'm trying to think what else. There are some other standard practices that, let me just say this. There's a lot of videos out there that can just train you on how to build a campaign probably [inaudible 00:26:59] talk about that here. I do have some other individual points that I can talk about if you want me to get into some of those other details as well, Joshua. From a, in terms of competitive research, that's a big one. Google Keyword Planner is a huge one, as well. There are also some nuances in the platform, Joshua, that I can also speak to that I think will be absolutely critical to the success of anyone that's running a sponsored ads program on Amazon. They have made a lot of changes. I can speak to that a little bit as well.

Joshua:
Before we hit that, I'd love to know if there's any don'ts. Like, don't do this.

Justin:
Absolutely. I would say my one don't is, let's say I have the word bamboo cutting board versus bamboo cutting boards. Go with one of those. Don't go with both of them. My think is because Amazon automatically considers both of them the same term. Recently, based on my own testing and some of the work that I've done, there's been some cannibalization that's been going on on Amazon where you can have two terms that are cannibalizing the traffic. It can make it more challenging for you to get the right traffic that you want for those particular keywords that you're going after. That's the first thing.

The second thing is, Amazon also has what's called first page bid estimate. It's not a perfect system. Some people will try to bid right at that first page bid estimate. I think you need to go at least 50% higher than that first page bid estimate. I bid at the first page bid estimate for a lot of keywords that I ultimately want to rank for. No traffic. I'm like, what the heck is going on? I know what some of you are going to say. Well, if I increase it by 50%, 200%, isn't that going to kill my ACOS? Yes. It is possible. However, the only way you will know that is by testing. Don't forget that, not [inaudible 00:29:09] the ACOS, but those keywords that you are spending money on is going to have an impact on your organic rankings. It's something that you have to monitor. The one thing that I don't want people to fall in and say, “You know, I was at the first page bid estimate of $1.00, I'm bidding $1.00. I'm not getting any traffic.” You're going to have to increase that bid. You're going to have to increase it to $1.50, $2.00, $2.50. See what happens. See if the traffic's coming in. See if you're getting sales. Then, you can adjust accordingly from that standpoint.

The last thing that I tell folks to do is, before you launch, this is sort of a do and a don't. I'm going to couch it this way. Don't have a crappy listing on Amazon and you're trying to do sponsored ads. That's going to hurt your average cost of sale. If you think about it this way, it's all about conversion rates. If I have a good listing, good copy, good images, that's only going to have a positive impact on my ACOS. You don't want to start at a low bar. You don't want to start at a place where my images are not great. Particularly in comparison to my competitors. Or, I'll have the right keywords speaking to the searchers intent. I'll have the right benefits within the bullets. My description doesn't have any html, it's all crap. All of that's just going to impact your, it's only going to impact your sponsored ad program where you're not going to have the best ACOS possible. Don't come into this game with a terrible ACOS. The same conversation holds true with reviews.

I typically tell people, don't get started with Amazon sponsored ads unless you have at least ten reviews. Just have recent reviews. If you think about it, I'm sure, Joshua, you probably look at different restaurants, different places on Yelp versus other spots. You're typically looking at the places that have reviews. Have a five star rating, right? Folks that have at least four or five, boom, you're going to probably do business with them. You're probably going to go to that establishment, spend some money and grab a meal there. The same concept holds true. It's essentially what has been the foundation to Amazon's success among many other things. Have some of those reviews set up initially so you're not wasting so much money on sponsored ads where you don't have at least five, ten, fifteen, twenty reviews getting started.

Those are sort of my dos and don'ts. We'll just leave it at that. I have a lot of stuff that I can talk about. I believe in the power of threes and sometimes fours. We'll just leave it at that.

Joshua:
I love it. For those of you, we're running right up on time. I want to just be respectful of your time and make sure our audience gets the most content as possible. You guys, Justin's actually created a course all about PPC and it's a you to me course. You can go to the onlineempireacademy.com forward slash zoncommerce. Again, the onlineempireacademy.com forward slash zoncommerce. That's where you'll get his course. I'm not sure the pricing of it. I think you said it was like $20.00?

Justin:
I think it's 20 bucks, was $25.00. We give a 20% discount to all the listeners there. So, 20 bucks and literally, the course goes through soup to nuts advance level stuff, basic level stuff and also, how to build a campaign. Also, how to use some of the different tools. Whether it's Google Keyword Planner. Another tool that I use called Keyword Inspector, talk about how to use that tool. Just everything that you need so you can get started and know how to utilize sponsored ads successfully for your business.

Joshua:
That's fantastic, man. Again, guys, go check that out. 20 bucks to figure this whole thing out. You can't beat that. Thank you so much for coming on. I so appreciated the content.

Justin:
This was a blast, Joshua. Thanks for taking the time and reaching out to me. This has been a lot of fun. I really look forward to keeping in contact with you as well.

Joshua:
Absolutely. Hopefully we can have you on again.

Justin:
Absolutely. Thanks so much.

Joshua:
Until next time, Empire. Have a fantastic day.