Selling on Amazon – how to set yourself up for success

Selling on Amazon – how to set yourself up for success 0 (00:00:00):

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Welcome to the Bring Your Product Ideas to Life podcast, practical advice and inspiration to help you create and sell your own physical products. Here's your host Vicki Weinberg.

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Hi, thank you so much for being here and say today, I want to do an episode all about Selling on Amazon and specifically we have Amazon's white for you and how to set yourself up for success. So, a few months ago, I put out an episode about all the different places you can sell your products online, and the pros and

cons of each of them. Selling on Amazon is how I got star team, which I'll talk about a bit more later on. And it's a channel where I know best. And it's also marketplace. I know lots of people that are interested in, I work with people on getting it set up on Amazon or on how to sell better. When I was in every single day, I never really obvious attractions to sell your products on Amazon. And so there are 40 marketplaces worldwide.

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There is a huge built in customer base. I mean, how many of us, you know, want to buy something? And it's the first place we go to. And also there are built in fulfillment options. So Debbie, you know, there are definite, reason's why people want to say it on Amazon and I can definitely see the attraction, but I guess part of the purpose of this episode is to say that it's not necessarily right for everyone or for every Product. So what I want to talk a bit more stay about is selling on Amazon and wherever How and how you can find out whatever it is, a marketplace for your product, whether there is a better fit. I'm not going to go into the pros and cons again, as I covered those in the episode I mentioned before, which is the best place to sell for the skull product online.

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That's the Episode fair to say. And I'll link to that in the show notes. And I'm also going to talk about, if you do decide, you want to go ahead and sell your products on Amazon or the things you can do to help set yourself up for success. I am, and I guess I'll start this by saying, I quite often get contacted by people who want to sell their products on Amazon. And sometimes it is just that they know that they want to sell an Amazon, but we don't have a product if that's you. That's okay, that's your choice. And you know, you'll still in the right place. And I'm going to talk about How to set yourself up for success on Amazon, how to get these initial sales. So you we'll find this episode useful, but I just want to caveat that with, I do quite often tell people that I don't think Amazon is the right channel for them for various reasons, which I'll go into later in this episode.

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And sometimes they listen to me and sometimes they don't and sometimes I'm right, maybe sometimes I'm wrong. But what I do, you know, for Saturday, it is, it isn't the best marketplace for every product. And let's

start off by talking about the attraction. So, as I mentioned before, there are a few reasons why so many people look to sell on Amazon is well-known and is trusted. And there is a whole lot of customers that are there already. So I looked it up and according to what I could find online, there are well over hundred million visits to amazon.co.uk alone. And every month in 2020, aside from a slight dip in February and March, that's huge.

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And that's just one of Amazon's 14 marketplaces. And of course, if you decide to send on Amazon and you don't just, even if you're based in the UK, you don't have to just sell on amazon.co.uk. In fact, you don't even have to sell in the UK if you don't want to be, you know, all of these market places open to You, which is why it is such a good opportunity. And it is fantastic that there are so many customers on Amazon. And in some ways, of course, for, you know, it would be nice if everyone's shops independently and show up to a small businesses. But as a seller, as a brand is good that the customer is on there. But if you intend to sell it yourself, that is just because there are so many people shopping at Amazon. It doesn't mean that when I say to everybody about how to find your products, or even if they do find your products, they're going to buy your products.

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So something clients often tell me is that they can't find their own products on Amazon when they search for it. So they'll create their product listing. They'll go on to the Amazon and search bar. They'll look for it and nothing comes up. And there's a reason for this. Most of the time, when you get searched on Amazon, you get pages and pages of search results. So I just searched for a bamboo baby, but I was just, just an example to share it with you now. And I got seven pages of results. Now I don't know about you, but I don't go any further than page one when I'm shopping on Amazon. And actually a lot of the time, I probably make it halfway down the page. And you know, most customers are the same. If you're not on page one or perhaps even page two, Nope, nobody is seeing you're listing.

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So therefor getting on page one of Amazon is key, but it's hard. It is hard to do Amazon rewards sales, and the more sales you make, the higher up your list in we'll show them in the search results. So the listings that you see on page, one of Amazon have either the one's that are doing really well or they've paid to be there. And we'll talk a bit more about Amazon paid advertising or a bit later. So what you have to remember is that for every sale that you make, Amazon make money to you, they will take a percentage of every product that you sell. And we'll see if there are fulfilling them for you. If you're using Amazon FBA, they get an even more money for every sale. So therefore the more sales you make, the more money they make.

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So it's in their interest to get more visibility to the list instead of being proven to convert well or make them or money. So when I talk about conversions, I mean a high number of people who look at your products, go on

to buy it. So if you don't, if you have a a hundred people come to your page at 90% have them buy it, you've got a 19% conversion rate. And, and that's important to as if you have a higher conversion rate, it tells Amazon a new product. It must be relevant to the search term they used. And then you start to rank higher for that search words. So in basic terms, if everyone who searches, you know, if, if 90% of people who type in bamboo baby bowl, let's use that as an example. So 90% of the people who type in that key word, and it goes to your listing, purchase, your product, they'll think, Oh, this is obviously a really relevant result for Bambi Bay people and say, next time, someone types, pamby, baby, go into the search bar.

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And your list is going to be the one that pops up because you're making good sales and you're conversing, wow. And you're making Amazon or lots of money. And it tells them that you're relevant. But this all means the getting started on Amazon. And particularly in those first sales can be really hard because if you are selling Bambi baby bowls, it was, you know, carrying on with this example and you're a new seller and they have a, people are already on Amazon selling products, these products, and they've already, you know, they've got a sales history and they're converting well, it's going to be really hard to, for you to get to Paige one of those first results, at least initially. So we are going to talk about some of the things that you can do, you know, to help yourself out when you're launching your products in a moment.

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But first I just wanna talk a little bit about where the Amazon is, the right market place for your products. And that's something I really want you to look in and say, as I said, you know, it already in this podcast, I definitely can see the attraction or sell it on Amazon. And I don't think that's helped by the hundreds of articles and blog posts and podcasts and courses all about selling on Amazon and particularly Amazon FBA. And you know, how you can make a lot of money doing that. I'm well aware of the irony that I'm recording a podcast about selling on Amazon, but you know, hopefully mine is a bit more balanced. I'm not promising. You are going to make a lot of money from doing that. You know, I'm trying to give you both sides of it, but there are, you know, if you Google selling on Amazon and you'll find so many results, so many stories, so many things you can buy and courses, you can invest in about how to start selling on Amazon and make a lot of money.

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And I'll be honest. And this is what got me interested in this study too. I don't know if you remember my backstory. Some of you may have had that obviously listening to a podcast and there are some people on there who was selling yoga products on Amazon. And that's what got me interested to know that that's what sparked the first seed in me starting to sell my own products. However, I also launched a website and social media alongside it, which in hindsight is, you know, one of the things I did, right? 'cause it means that from day one, I've been able to grow my own email lists and also get some, say it was on another channel. There is an Amazon because something to remember is that Amazon can block your account and can close down your listings.

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And while I am saying, this is a bit of a cautionary tale, it happens. So I have clients that this happened to justice week. It can be for really minor things. I have your account gets blocked, or your listings get taken down. I have a client now who's had their listings down for a couple of weeks. And while I'm absolutely sad for him, we're going to get it yourself. There are going to get back up those a weeks where, because they were not selling their products anywhere else. They're not making any sales because there was no where else that people can buy them. Whereas if you have another channel, it was back up that really does help. And I we'll link again in the show notes, episode 20 team, which is all about the things you can do when you started your business. And it talks in there. So we had Gemma Whates founder of all by mamamama Episode.

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And she talks about some of the things you can do when you're setting your business up your product's business overall, that we'll help you. And some of the things he talks about on the importance of having a website in an email list and social media channels, and not relying solely on a third party marketplaces, but the reason I've just outlined because it is never as simple as it sounds. So I would do a little bit of research initially on to wherever the Amazon might be a good a fit for your Product. So you can sell these things on Amazon, although the are restrictions. So there is something that there are some things you can't sell and for some products and categories, you need to apply for approval. And this list, the list of restricted products, listed products, it requires approval category surprise for evil can and does change.

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So I'm not gonna go into detail here, or would you say that was something that is head over to the Amazon seller site in the cup for your own self? And once you've ascertained, actually this is a product that you can sell on Amazon, even if you have to get approval for a bit, but you know, as long as you've got all the paperwork to show that over, this is your product, or it's a product that you're for permission to sell, or we shouldn't have any problems get any approval. So assuming you mean, no, you have gone through that stage. Or the next thing to look at is do people buy similar products on Amazon or is this a product you have to go to Amazon for? Because while there are many, many things that people sell on Amazon and many, many things you can buy on Amazon, or it might not always be the first choice.

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So to give you an example, I was recently looking for a personalized Christmas bauble and I didn't go to Amazon for that. I went to Etsy because I felt that for that product, that was, you know, that will be the best place to me to go. So have a think. And at first of all, about whether, if you were looking at yourself in the product, similar as to talk to your Selling, would you go to Amazon to buy it? So we just do that gut check festival, and that was a good place to start. If you, you know, you feel Actually yet, this is Amazon is somewhere that people will go for this product. You can actually do some work to find out I'm a freeway, or

you can do this by using something called the jungle Scouts free Amazon sales estimator.

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Now I have written a blog post all about how to use this. So I'm not going to go into great detail here as always, it will be linked in the show notes, but this is a free tool, which basically gives you a rough estimate of how many sales a product makes on Amazon per month. So it might not be a a hundred percent accurate, but I think it, you know, it's a free tool and it will give you an idea. And there's also another free tool that you can use, which is actually an Amazon tool, which I would recommend using a alongside this, which gives you an idea of the fees you'd pay on Amazon because at that point, so I guess another part of this, which is, okay, so it might look like your product is something that you can sell on Amazon. There were similar products are doing really well.

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Actually, lets get an idea or a rough idea at this stage or at least of how much you'd be paying on Amazon for the privilege of listing and selling your product on there. So you can work out if you know, profit-wise, it works for you. And if you want to go into a little bit more detail, there are some paid tools you can use. So I use something called jungle scout, which for any products or niche tells me how much competition and demand there is for that product. And what I'm looking for here is for products that have a medium or high demand. So there's a lot of people after them and low or medium competition, as I say, that is a paid tool and I will still put a link to it in the show notes because it's a tool that I use all of the time, because there are lots of other features on there, including track and your profits, you can send follow up email automations.

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I also used it for my keyword research or you use it to keep track of products. So we have, I want to see how well their ranking is. It there's all kinds of things. And perhaps that is for another episode, but that's a paid tool you can use to see if your product might potentially sell well on Amazon. So if it looks like competition with your product is high. So let's say I view or using the prey too, or like jungle scout or you are using free tools and your seeing the Actually product similar to yours are making good sales, but you can, you know, you can already see this if there's pages and pages of search results. So there's a lot of competition. Then it is going to be harder for your product to stand out. Particularly if they've had other sellers already have an established sales history and if they have good reviews and equally, if your product is really unique, then it might be that people won't be looking for your products on Amazon.

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And I mean, if it, and assuming that, you know, your product is really a unique, it's a great product, it's meeting a need, something that is absolutely key to do it in that situation is to do some research, to figure out what they'll be typing in to the search bar or what you'd want them to be type it into the search bar to find a product like yours. And so you can include those kinds of key words in your listing. And when I say what you want them to be type it into the search bar, I'm thinking, for example, if your product is site, because I'm

kind of a very innovative Product to do with the baby's bath time that, you know, you may be a CA a customer might be looking for things like a baby bath or baby towel or something like that. And you to be wanting your product to show up because your product is relevant to people who are looking for that kind of thing.

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I'm going to talk about keywords a little bit later because on Amazon keywords, it just say import him S. And now I want to go into in more detail is How to set yourself up for success on Amazon. So we've, let's assume that you have a great product, which I'm sure you do. You've done some research. So it may be, you've gone through the steps above. Maybe you've done something different, but your at least fairly set and Amazon would be a good fit for your products. If you're not certain, if it wasn't a good fit for your product, do you go back and run through the steps that I've outlined above? So lets say that you've ascertained that Amazon is going to be a really good

market place for you or at least a marketplace worth trying it out and you're ready to start selling.

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So now I want to talk about is some practical things that you can do to really set yourself up for success. So the first one is to make sure you have a professional Amazon seller account. Now this might seem really obvious, but you can actually add listings and make up to 35 sales a month. We have a free basic seller account. The professional account is 25 pounds plus VAT. So that's the first few pounds a month, but it is actually worth it worth it. One of the key differences between the basic account and the professional account is you'll be able to set up a sponsored products campaigns. And we'll talk about that a little bit later. So at that basically means you can pay to advertise your listings on Amazon.

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You can also set up discounts, you can also set up promotions and all of these things can help with your initial sales. Also, the difference in having the professional counters, you are not kept on making 35 sales a month because hopefully we'll get to the stage where you're making much more than that. I mean, that's just over one sailor day and I'd love to think that, you know, even fairly early on, you'll be making more sales than that. So other things to think about to set yourself up for success on Amazon is to insure you have a really well optimized product listing. I've written an article all about writing great Amazon product listing, which I am going to link to in the notes. So I do, I'm not going to go into great detail here apart from, to say that on Amazon, your listing is super important.

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Cause your product list in wherever you sell your product is important, but on Amazon, it has even more relevant because, and Amazon product listing has the result in a certain way. I'm so you basically have field's that you can take advantage of. So you have your title, you have five key features or bullet points. Then you have a product description, which you can form it into HTML. So if you want it to look nice, and then in the

back end of your listing, you have a search terms fields where you can enter at a string of keywords. Mmm. So you can fill out all of these fields. A common mistake I see is people, you know, not, you're not taking full advantage of all of these fields, perhaps not fitting any of them in, at all, just putting in the title and, and that's it, which is basically a bare minimum you can save.

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And, but you have such an opportunity here. You see your texts, your images, your keywords all have to be the best they can be because you will be competing with some fantastic listings on Amazon. I can assure you even back when I first started selling on Amazon, which is probably about four years ago. Now, if I look at the quality of listings on the site now, so what was on there, then they, you know, everyone is up in their games. So you need to make sure you have a fantastic listing. It might mean that that's where finding someone to help you. So maybe you want someone to carry out some keyword research for you, or maybe you want someone to actually like your listing. If you do decide to write your listing yourself and make sure you do Amazon keyword research and your use a tool that is designed for Amazon listings because Amazon and Google keywords won't necessarily be the same.

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If you decide to use Google AdWords to, or any other sort of a free tool to look at keywords for your Amazon listing, you might find that they are not the same and they're actually not relevant, what people type into Google and what people so open to the Amazon are two different things. So you want to make sure that your keywords you've researched, I've been researched based on the Amazon marketplace that you are looking to list your products on. So don't look on amazon.com. If you're looking to sell your products on Amazon or keto at UK, for example, again, I like to use jungle scout for this. So the next thing you can do to really set yourself up for success is to invest well in your images. It is worth investing in some really good Product vatos and graphics to show you a product that is best.

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So I remember when you go to an Amazon search results page. So as a customer, you type something into the search bar and then you get the list of results. You can see two things for each listing. You can see the product image and you can see the title. So I've already spoken about, you know, the importance of writing a great listing and say your title and, you know, released, reflect what your product is, but your image has to entice people to click for you to your listing. You know, it has to be goods. I also suggest if you have the budget or perhaps I can do this yourself, do you know you've maybe you something like Canva or you could get some graphics made up. If you fail your product. The benefit from that, say, for example, perhaps highlighting dimensions or key features.

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So let's say you sold that's how you sell cars or packing boxes. So maybe you have an image shows with little arrow's, the height and the width and the length of, of a box. Maybe you could show one, you know, with

the box and angle where you can see how it's constructed. You know, maybe it's got two layers and it's got some cards in the middle to make it really strong. M and P. And also if you can always recommend getting some lifestyle images. So images of the product in your ear, say, for example, someone packing in some boxes back in them, up Kerry in them. If you wanted to listen to episode 44, that is all about product photography and specifically how you can take really good to put up photos of yourself.

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If you don't have the budget to pay for professional, to take them four usage, find that Episode really useful. This is episode 34. And again, links everything that I talk about Here you can get them to tell you it will be in the show notes. So if you were driving or running or doing anything like that, and don't worry about it, you don't need to write this all down, go to the show notes for this episode at the end, and you'll be able to get all the links. So the fourth thing I suggest you do is sign up for the Amazons brand registry. And now you may or may not be able to do this to do so. You need to have your brand needs to be a registered trademark. And I completely get that in the beginning. Particularly you may not decide to read this to your brand is a trademark. I think I did my, and when I was about a year in thinking back, but if you do have registered trademark for your brands, which doesn't actually cost to much to do for them, I can't remember the memory.

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It maybe it's around 50 lbs. Something like that is not excessive. It will be once you register your brands is a trademark. You can sign up a brand registry and this base it, it gives you an opportunity to do all kinds of things that you can't do for a basic seller account. So you can create enhanced content on your listings. So when you look on Amazon listings, now you might see some where you have your picture section at the top and your bullet points. And then when you scroll down, there's lots of more images. There is text or maybe there's comparison tables compared to in that product. We have others. This is all what's called enhanced content. And if you are an Amazon registered brand, you can create This. You can also set up an Amazon storefront.

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So almost like a little website for your product or products on Amazon. And this also, this is fantastic because this gives you an opportunity to add things like Product videos, which you can add to standard listings, but you can add on store pages. So if you have a product that would benefit from having, you know, video is showing results or how to use it, then this is definitely an advantage. And you can advertise your brand as well as advertise your products. So you might of seen on Amazon sometimes when you go to search for something, you, you know, you'd get a barbed wire at the top of the search results, and you see a logo in a little bit of a text about a brand, like a selection of there products. So that means that brands is applied for brand registry.

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And then the final thing that's great about having brand registry is it gives you a bit of a protection as well as

the seller. So it, you know, it makes it harder for somebody else to decide. They're going to start reselling your products, or maybe jump on your listing and, and try and sell counterfeits. There's lots of protection for you as a brand owner as well. So I definitely can suggest that is worth looking at. And then the final thing that I suggest everyone does when setting up a new Amazon listing is think about setting up some sponsors, products, campaigns. So Amazon sponsor products is paid, basically pay-per-click marketing within the Amazon marketplace, and there are all kinds of things you can do with Amazon sponsored products.

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It's a huge topic. And I think one for another episode of, so you can target keywords. So you can basically bid on keyboards that you feel are relevant for your products. You can even pay to advertise on other product listings. So when you look at the listing on Amazon, or sometimes at the bottom, you know, it used to, if you scroll down towards a better reviews, AR and you might see as a sponsor products on that list in a basic, those brands have paid to be there. So what sponsor product basically means is that your paying to be on either on someone else's listing or your paying to be paid, one of the search results, perhaps you even paying to be right at the top of the search results.

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And obviously the first thing you need to do to help your product sell is to get it found in the first place. So, you know, you've got a fantastic listing, but if you're only showing up on page deaf and that was not helpful, but Amazon sponsor products, you know, insurance, or at least helps you get to page one. I always think it's worth testing out what works for your products in terms of, you know, what type of campaign might work. So are you better targeting keywords that you're better at targeting products or categories, you know, and which keywords, which products, you know, this is, there's a lot of work that you can do. And I think in the early days, it's always worth testing. You don't necessarily need to spend a huge amount of money on this. And I something often get asked to you to know how much should you spend.

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I'll be honest. This is part of it is how much can you afford to spend? But I would say, you said for the first month you are going to spend somewhere between five and 10 pounds a day. I think that's always a good place to start. That's always what I recommend a clients. And of course, if you can spend more of this and you know, you're comfortable to do that, then do. So if you're unsure, I would start small. You could start with a five pound daily budget because that's how Amazon. And in sports products, budgets, where do you don't set them buy the week or by the month you set them by the day. So, you know, you might start by saying, okay, I can spend five pounds a day. And then once you started seeing sales and you start seeing some success, then you can increase that budget. If you wanted to say and things where if knowing, why are we talking about sponsor products?

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Just to get things to bear in mind is that you will pay for it on top. So if you are spending five pounds a day,

that's five pounds a day, plus the VAT and the VAT gets charged at the end of the month, when they bill you for your marketing and other things it's worth you knowing is that initially you might find, you have quite a lot of spend on your campaigns, but you are not necessarily converting. And I'm going to talk a bit more in a moment about some of the other optional things that you could do to help your listings convert. And it, so it might be that you don't want to run your comeback campaigns until you've got a certain number of reviews. For example, because reviews are always helpful. Or if you are running ads straight away, just be aware that at least in the early days, it can be a bit harder for them to convert.

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And you, you might have to do a bit of testing. It might be that the key word that you fought was to be the ideal thing to target gets you laser clicks, but not any sales. And that is simply something that you can look at should that happen. But yes, I always do. You recommend that you do some kind of Amazon sponsor products, however, some of your budget, or however long you can run it for. So say if you've got a tiny budget, maybe work on getting more views and drive in external traffic and free traffic first, and then I then started it, but I would, I would aim to, if you can run it for a month and see how you get on, because it would really help kickstart your visibility on Amazon and hopefully your sales as well. So there are the things that you can do to help yourself get started.

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and that's actively asking for reviews because reviews a really important, because, you know, if you, you know, you, you know yourself, if you go on to Amazon or anywhere else to look at products and you know, you'd get a copy of the results in one of them has got 25 star reviews, and one of them is called zero reviews. Which one are you going to trust? But having said that there are important, but then also quite hard to get an it is something that you have to work at. So kind of things you can do to get some views for your products. Well, first of all, I ask your family and friends', now you can ask you a family and friends to leave your favorite ball of view, but there was nothing wrong with telling your family and friends.

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I have this product on Amazon. Here's the links where if you're interested, please buy it. Please review a review. What are you, can't say at least a positive review, because that is outside of the terms of service. But you know, if someone who knows You is genuinely interest in your Product chooses the buy it, and she uses to leave a review. I'll let you know if they're in the back, that's fine. You know, you can also use Product. So you might have a little card in your product packaging that asks very nicely for a review and explains where to leave it. This is something that I've done if for quite a while, and it works for me, somebody, well, you know, if you ask in your packaging and if you don't want to use a separate insert, maybe you have a few lines of text on the package and for your product that says view is a really important, and here's what you can leave it at.

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Maybe if your debt, you are fulfilling your own order. So you're packing and shipping them yourself. You can write a little note. So when anyone buys, so my website, for example, I includes a handwritten letter that fax them for their purchase, ask them if they can please leave me a review. You can also email customers. So on Amazon. You are allowed. Now the rules have changed. You can send one follow-up review to customers asking for review. There are some rules around what you can, and can't say in that email, you can't offer any kind of incentive for a positive review or Amazon conclosure offer and block your account. As long as you are within the Amazon guidelines, you can do that. You can always do it manually. From within seller central, you can sort of click a button and each customer gets like a standard email.

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We've texted AMZ and have a pre approved, or you can use a tool like jungle scout and set your own email with your own logo and branding and own wording. But as I say, the key thing to remember, as you can not incentivize reviews on Amazon or that you can, in other places, I do have a blog page, which is 20 ways to

get more reviews, which again, I will link to. And, you know, you'll see some of them will be okay for us to get an Amazon reviews. Others are just ideas to use for maybe your own website or other places because they violate Amazon in terms of surface. So another thing that you can do is drive external traffics, your Amazon listing.

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You don't just need to apply on Amazon traffic. You can share you're listing yourself so you can share your listing on social media. You can share it on email and that's like your personal media and, and a business one, if you, if you have that set up. So, you know, if you think you have something to sell that people might want to buy, tell them about it, you know, post in Facebook groups. So I've just launched this product. Here's a link post on your personal Facebook page, post on your Instagram, text, your friends, the link, email people. If, if, if you had, if you know that you have a product that we'll be of use to people, tell them about it because you're doing them a disservice. If you don't. And if your product has been designed with a customer in mind, which I really hate it, it has, you know, find those people and tell them it is now available.

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Let's say at the outset, you are going to have a Facebook groups and you are asking questions. If your research, there was nothing wrong with going in to that Facebook group and say, And thank you so much for that input. You gave me a couple of months ago. My product is actually now available and heres where you can buy it. And even better, you could always offer a discount as a thank you. And I'll talk in a moment about setting up discounts within Amazon, which you can do. And that might be a really nice way to get you to know your first couple of purchases, but also to, you know, thank the people who had a part in the process. And you can also even pay for Facebook ads that link to your Amazon product page, if you wanted to is absolutely nothing wrong with that. And I have clients that I've had really good success with that and have actually found that it costs them less money than using the Amazon specific marketing.

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So that's just a novel idea to keep in mind. So talking about discounts and promotions, so you can do it is within Amazon and it can be a really useful strategy to get started. So for example, you might decide that for the first month for you are going to discount your products by 20% now, a customer usually won't see your deal, or unless they click for you to your listing. So discounts sometimes are shown on the results page, but usually it's just, you see the full price, a product price that you'll see a line of through it. And M you'll see it, the sale price, but is not always the obvious. So I would suggest doing whatever you can to promote it. So, for example, if you have to fight, if you're going to follow my steps above, and you were going to email your list and your friends and family and share it on social media, why not share?

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Not only do I have a product to sell, and here's the link, but actually if you buy it in the next week, there's 20% off or whatever, you can also set up deals where you have a code is needed. So which you can share out with people. So, you know, you could say, you could say to your friends and family or people who've helped input or your, or your product or whoever you want. I'm, I'm going to offer a discount on this product just for you. It's not for everyone. So it's not something that advertised on, on the Amazon page, but you know, I'm going to, I would like to thank you. So I'm going to give you a discount and here's the code that you can, and he's a K that you can use. So those are some nice ideas of things you can do to kind of get things going.

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And I guess my main point here is you used to tell people, don't buy your product on Amazon. And we felt like, okay, it's there. And you know, now people are going to buy it. It really doesn't work that way. You do need to have a lot of work in to let people know your product there, and now it's available to buy, but that

you're missing out on a lot of free opportunities. If you don't tell people. So I tell people, this is my main message here. And the final thing that you could do to help your product get, get, this is more about getting an early reviews rather than sales, really, but as I've said, we've used a really important, and that is registering your products or products, but I've Amazon vine or the Amazon early reviewer program. So I buy for these programs, encourage customers to have a purchase or review your product by off in them, an incentive you do pay to enroll in these are the price, does it vary, but it's, you know, it was relatively tho and in the early days, if you can afford to do it, I suggest doing, or you can, because as I say, it's a hard place to get started.

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And I guess in summary, I do think Amazon is a great opportunity to get your products in front of lots of customers. But I don't know. I know we said this is right at the beginning. I'm going to say that again. I don't believe it is for everyone. And it does take a lot of work to succeed the days of putting up a listing and waiting for the sales to role in if that ever happens. I don't know if you know, if it's a belief that you used to happen. I, I haven't seen that happen, but even if those days ever existed, they are long gone. Now.

However, if you have a product that's a great fit for, as in and you put the work in, once we start getting consistent sales, or it can be a great platform for you. I can tell you from experience at the first couple of months, the first month, a month, the three to six months, it, you know, it varies based on the product, but the first couple of months of having your products on Amazon and ready to sell are the hardest getting those initial sales, you know, are hard, but once you start ranking for key words, you know, you started getting some consistent sales and then it's quite nice.

2 (00:34:25):

So the way our usually do, but it's often those first couple of months, I turn off the Amazon sponsored products, ads. I might turn it on again, it's, you know, points during the year, if perhaps there's a certain product that I want to sell for a bit quicker, or, you know, in certain times of the year. So some of leading up to Christmas and things like that, but, you know, for a good chunk of the time now, I don't pay for any ads because my, my products have started to rank organically and they appear on such on page one for the, for some key words. And yeah, and it becomes a little bit more passive. I don't want to say it is entirely passive because hopefully you've got a sense. And this podcast episode is about just how much workers involved too, you know, launch a product and that sales and Amazon.

2 (00:35:07):

But I don't know. I just want to say that the, you know, the hard work really can pay off. So I hope you found this episode useful as always. I hope you've enjoyed sort of going into Amazon in a bit more detail. If you have any questions about selling on Amazon or, you know, anything in general, you can always contact me. It's Vicki outside of the chipmunk.com or you can find me on Instagram, Vicki Weinberg product creation. Thank you so much for your time. And yeah, I really hope you've enjoyed this episode. We hope you find that useful. Please do subscribe. So you don't miss out on any future episodes. And finally, if you're listening to this, Episode when it comes out. Well, the way, you know, I'm not sure if you will be, it will be Christmas day in and 20 or so, maybe

3 (00:35:51):

Christmas, and I

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Hope you're having a lovely time and really looking forward to speaking to you soon.