Online Empire Academy

Why most Amazon sellers fail to make the jump to selling information products?

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Okay, today we're going to be talking about something that's near and dear to my heart, and that is selling information products. We're also going to be talking about why it's very hard for Amazon sellers to make the jump from selling physical products on Amazon, to selling information products.

First off, what is an information product? An information product is a product that's based around information that you know. It could be information on how to sell on Amazon, how to cook an amazing pot roast, or how to ride a motorcycle backwards blindfolded. It doesn't matter what you are teaching. An information product is based around knowledge that you have, or knowledge that you are able to get from somebody else and put into a productized format. Now there's a lot of mystique that goes into the idea of creating information products, and it's very alluring to think that you could create something that has no cost of goods associated with it, and sell it for a lot of money.

This is especially attractive to Amazon sellers who always have a cost of goods associated with their physical products that they're selling. The problem is not understanding that the two types of products, physical and information, are completely different, and customers see them in very different ways. Why are Amazon sellers so bad at making and selling information products? Well, typically Amazon sellers are not bad at creating the information product itself. Often the courses that they make and the products that they create are very in-depth, they are extremely valuable. The problem is really that they don't know how to sell the actual information.

The key to understanding this whole dilemma is understanding how physical products are sold and seen by customers, as well as how information products are sold and are seen by customers as well. Physical products have an inherent value in them. Somebody can see them, touch it, they can feel it, they can look at it and determine whether or not it's something that they need, want, desire or will relieve their pain. For example, if I have a need for a laptop computer, I'm going to go out and I'm going to go to a website to go and buy a laptop computer. I can see the picture of the computer. I know that when I get it I'm going to be able to touch it, feel it. I know what the speed is going to be. I know a lot about the product because it is physical and has its own inherent value just in the fact that it's physical.

webinarHowever, with an information product, there is no physicality to it. Everything is based off of whether or not the information that this product has is going to solve a particular pain or pleasure that I have or need. For example, a $5 e-book about how to sell more products on Amazon does not have any type of physical essence to it. The human brain, because it doesn't have that physical essence to it, has to convince itself why spending $5 on this particular e-book is going to benefit them when there's nothing physical about it. It's only the information that's inside of it that's going to benefit in some way.

Now all that being said, you'll notice that when you are an Amazon seller and you're selling a product, you never have to convince your customer. How often have you had an e-mail from a customer asking you questions about a product that you are currently selling? Probably never. You just see e-mails coming in from Amazon letting you know that you sold a particular product. Well with an information product, typically if you're not selling via a webinar or a long-form sales page, you're going to get a lot of questions from customers, even if it is a $1 e-book. They need to know that there is value in the information that's going to solve their particular problem, or give them the pleasure that they need or desire.

I can't tell you how many times I've sold a $697 course and had a ton of questions. Even more hilarious is selling a $20 e-book and getting 10 times as many questions from customers, as to why it will solve their particular need or pleasure. Any time you are selling an e-book or information product or online course, you are going to have to convey a ton of information. That requires good copywriting. It doesn't require good copywriting to sell products on Amazon. Amazon has a ton of [eyeballs 07:57], and by sheer statistics, you are going to be able to sell your product. Whereas with an information product, everything is on you to persuade the customer, to get the customer to the page, and to show them why they need your product.

This is where a lot of Amazon sellers fail.

  • They don't understand sales and marketing.
  • They don't understand copywriting.
  • They don't understand customer needs and desires, and don't know their customer enough to be able to convey why their course, as opposed to every other Amazon course out there, is the one that the customer needs right now, and will benefit from in the long run.

If you're going to sell a course, you need to really understand your customer, as well as you need to understand how sales, marketing, persuasion and copywriting work. It doesn't matter if you're going to be selling a $1 information product or a $1,000 information product, you're going to get questions from customers why they should spend their money on this information.

Yes, I know it doesn't make sense, but that's the way it works… and that's at least some reasons why most Amazon sellers fail miserably when it comes to selling their products.

What is Good Profit Margin for Amazon Sellers?

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Today let's talk about profit margins. One of the questions that I get over and over again as I'm trying to teach people how to drop ship on Amazon, is whether or not smaller profit margins that you typically find with drop shipping and wholesale are better than the margins that you get for retail arbitrage and other ways of selling on Amazon. In order to really answer this question I really think there needs to be a huge mindset shift when it comes to understanding profit margins and what it means in a long term sustainable business.

Thrifting and Retail Arbitrage Skew Margin Expacations

If you're like me, you probably started selling on Amazon by going to different types of thrift stores, garage sales and retail stores. Typically, when you are selling products from places like that, you are used to seeing margins anywhere from 30% all the way to 300% from the items that you sell. Now, that can be absolutely awesome but it also excuse how you look at selling products on Amazon altogether.

How much margin do typical retails stores make on their products? This is a very important question to understand if you're going to really be aware of whether or not your profit margin is going to help sustain your business over the long haul. The typical retail store has a profit margin anywhere between 8% to 20% and more often than not, it's closer to the 8%. That being said, one thing that you find at the retail store, as opposed to people who sell thrift items and garage sale items, is consistency. The retail store has suppliers that they can consistently reach out to and buy product from. They never have to go out and spend hours sourcing that product. They simply have to put in purchase orders for products that they're selling within their retail store.

profitmarginConsistency and Sustainability Always Trump One-Time Big Margins

All that being said, when you factor in the time it takes to source products even if you are selling a product that has a 300% margin because that one product, typically, is only going to sell once, meaning that you're not going to be able to sell it ever again because you're only able to find that product one time. The fact that it has a 300% margin diminishes in value overtime. Personally, I would prefer to have a product that sells at 10% but sells multiple times over a year period. Because it's able to sell multiple times, over the year I'm going to sell more from that product if our price is same as the other product. I'm going to sell that product much more than I would. I'm going to be able to make a profit far more than I would with the other product that I was only able to sell once at the 300% margin.

When you're thinking of profit margin, you have to think of it as how long am I going to be able to sell this product overtime? For me, this is one of the reasons why I chose drop shipping over any type of retail arbitrage, private label or online arbitrage because I want to be able to have something that can sell multiple times throughout the year.

A Quick Example…

Let me give you one more example of this concept. Say you had a product that you found for $10 that you are able to sell for $100, that is a ten times markup on that item. On the flip side, say you also found a supplier that was able to sell you a $10 item and you're only able to make $1 out of that item but you sold 10 of those a day. With the first item you made your cash right away. You were able to profit $90 in one shot, good for you. However, it would only take you ten days with product to reach the same amount of profit from the item that you sold at a ten times markup. On top of that, after those 10 days if you're still able to have your supply replenished overtime you are going to make far more profit than you would with that one item that you're going to sell at a huge markup one time.

All of these being said, I prefer having the lower profit margin but high sustainability and consistency as opposed to finding items at high margin but only able to sell once. In my opinion, it's far more preferable to sell wholesale private label or drop shipping on Amazon than it is to use the retail arbitrage and online arbitrage model.

Sure, the profit margins are very high with retail and online arbitrage or with finding items at garage sales and thrift stores, but overtime I can far surpass the amount of profit for product with wholesale or drop shipping and continue to grow my revenues and profits by stacking replenishable products on top of replenishable products overtime

 

Beginning Copywriting for Amazon FBA Sellers

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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

pencilNow 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.

 

Do You Want a Virtual Assistant That’s Entrepreneurial or Task-Oriented?

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I've been hiring virtual assistants for over six years now, and one thing I always try to do is, find virtual assistants that have very good English. The reason being is that it's much harder to teach the English language than it is to teach task and processes and even very complicated technical stuff. In fact, it takes years to master the English language. If I could find anyone that has that skill it's very, very important to me.

However, within Amazon business there is something else that you need to consider. Do you want someone who's more task-oriented or more entrepreneurial on your team? In this article I'm going to show you some of the thoughts and ideas that I have based around this, and really what I look for when I'm looking for a virtual assistant for my Amazon business.

Two Very Big Factors in choosing a Virtual Assistant for Amazon

All right, so the two biggest factors that you have to consider when hiring a virtual assistant aside from English is, are they entrepreneurial or are they task-oriented? Each one of these factors has their pros and cons, and so let's go through each of them.

First, the entrepreneurial type of virtual assistant.

The entrepreneurial virtual assistant can be really good on your team, but there are some things that you need to consider. First, let's look at some of the pros. The first pro is that they will own their own work. What I mean by that is, they will actually take ownership and responsibility of the work that they do, they see it as a means to grow, to challenge themselves, to move up in the business, and to really become a better entrepreneur.

Virtual AssistantThey don't see it merely as a means to get a salary, they actually see their work as more of something that betters them and makes them grow as a person. Second thing is, that they will actually make suggestions and improvements for your processes and your business. If you have a process where you're teaching them how to list items on Amazon, and if that process is taking them a lot longer than they want to, they will more than likely suggest improvements to that particular process, either of that or they will actually update the process themselves and make it run better, faster, cheaper, and easier.

They also, number three, they don't like being static. They don't like having the same job over and over and over again, they don't like doing the same thing repetitiously. They are not going to settle for a job where they are almost treated like robots or machines, they want things that are going to challenge them and give more of a variety of tasks that will help them to grow.

Things to consider with an entrepreneurial virtual assistant

Now, here are some of the cons when it comes to hiring someone that's entrepreneurial. The first is, just like we talked about before is that they don't like being static. If you have tasks that are only going to be the same thing over and over again, you're more than likely going to burn out your virtual assistant if they are entrepreneurial. You're going to need to find something that's going to challenge them overtime, or else they're going to either get disgruntled, or they might even leave you.

The second thing that you need to consider is that they can sometimes stop following processes. Even though you might have working procedures that needed to be followed exactly every time, they will sometimes not follow them. It's not because they are trying to be disobedient or they don't like working for you, the fact that it's monotonous makes it so that they will cut corners, or they won't be as detailed when it comes to doing the process.

You have to really consider that when you're hiring someone who's entrepreneurial, the last thing that you need to consider is overtime they're going to want more compensation. Compensation doesn't always mean monetary compensation, it can be better responsibilities, it can be growing more in their skill set through training, it can be access to new type of software that help them to do their work better, or it could be pay raises or promotions.

All that being said, they're not going to be happy with their job very long if they're doing the same thing over and over again. Even if they're doing a variety of different tasks, eventually they're going to want to be a part of something more. That could even be to where they ask for share in some of the profits of your business. It's something that you need to be open to.

The task-oriented employee pros

What about the task-oriented virtual assistant? Some of the pros with the task-oriented virtual assistant include the fact that they follow processes very well. If you have working procedures that are extremely important for your Amazon business that need to be done the exact way every single time, the task-oriented virtual assistant is definitely the choice for you because they will without hesitation do the same task over and over and over again.

The more working procedures that you have that are repetitious the better it is to have someone who's more task-oriented on those procedures. The second thing that's great about task-oriented virtual assistants is that they like structure, so the more of an infrastructure that you can build for them with processes, procedures, and even structure in their daily schedule the more that they're going to love working for you.

Entrepreneurs on the other hand do not like structure for the most part. Having a task-oriented person you want to make sure that you have things in place that allow them to know when they're going to be working, when they're going to have vacation, when they're going to have sit time, and also be able to have something in place to where they can judge whether or not they're doing a good job.

The last thing that's great about the task-oriented virtual assistants is that they don't like change. If you have someone who is much more into the details than a virtual assistants that is entrepreneurial you will find that they don't like change very much, they want to be able to do the same processes over and over again. Even if a process needs to be updated they are more than likely going to ask you to update them or seek your approval before they get updated.

Not everything is all roses with somebody that's task-oriented

Now, let's look at some of the drawbacks of a task-oriented virtual assistant. The first drawback of a task-oriented virtual assistant is that they don't take ownership of the work that they do very often. More often than not they are working for you because they want to be paid. Don't take it personally but they are really in it for the salary, and they'll do whatever you tell them to do as long as they get that's job security and monthly salary for their family.

The second thing that you need to consider is that they don't like change, so we talked about this before but I really want to emphasize that they do not like change. The more that you change things on them the harder it is for them to adapt. If you have processes they need to be very specific, they need to have pictures, they need to have videos, they need to have very specific things especially if you're going to change them on a regular basis for whatever reason that might be. The more that you change, the more stress your virtual assistant is going to become.

Lastly, if you don't know and document the processes in your business then they're not going to be able to work. If you don't know what you're doing in your business, hiring someone who is much more task-oriented is going to be a very bad situation because they're looking to you to be able to figure out just about everything. On top of that, if you do know what you're doing in your business but you don't document your procedures and your processes very well you're still not going to be able to guide them in a direction where they're going to be successful.

Task-oriented people need to have clear direction in order to be successful, and if they don't have clear direction they're going to shut down. The only person to blame is yourself.

So who do you pick to be a part of your business?!?

Who is the right person for your Amazon FBA business? If I have my choice between the two for an Amazon business I would definitely choose the task-oriented virtual assistant, why? Well, it's because a task-oriented virtual assistant will follow all of your processes and procedures to a team, and because of that it's very helpful in an Amazon business to have someone like that because they are able to do a lot of the administrative tasks that come along with in Amazon FBA business.

The majority of task within in Amazon business are very repetitive and very process oriented. To have someone who's much more on the entrepreneurial side it could potentially be detrimental to your business overall, because they'll get bored very quickly. In my opinion, if you're going to be hiring someone to help you with your Amazon business I would definitely go with the more task-oriented type of person.

I hope this article helps, and if you have any questions please don't hesitate to contact me. One thing is for sure, that if you're not already hiring someone to help you in your Amazon business you need to start seriously thinking about it.

 

Amazon Sponsored Product Campaign Tips and Strategy for Beginners

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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.

marketing strategyThe 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.

 

131 OEA Podcast – Cynthia Stine Shares How to Protect Your Amazon Seller Account from Suspension

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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.