What happens after you go live on Amazon?

Welcome to the Bring your Product Idea to Life podcast. This is the podcast for you if you're getting started selling products or if you'd like to create your own product to sell.

I'm Vicki Weinberg, a product creation coach and Amazon expert. Every week I share friendly, practical advice as well as inspirational stories from small businesses. Let's get started.

Hello and welcome to Bring your product Idea to Life. Whether you are watching this on YouTube or you're listening on audio, whether you're walking your dog, that's what I do.

And listen to podcasts or anything else.

And thank you so much for being here.

So today's episode is super exciting because I'm going to talk about what happens after you go live on Amazon. So what happens after you create your product listing?

You either put it live because you're doing FBM and you're fulfilling it yourself, or you've sent in stock for fba.

Get at the warehouse and your listing becomes active.

Because this is super exciting.

It's a real milestone and congratulations if you've got there. But it is the start of a bit of a learning curve.

And so I think we talk a lot in this podcast and in lots.

Of places about what's involved in getting.

Set up on Amazon and what you need to do and all the different stages. But we haven't actually spoken much about what next.

So, you know, your listings there. What now? And that's what I wanted to cover today. So let's start us off talking a bit about expectations, expectations of the sales you might get.

So I'm trying to think of the really delicate way of putting this. So even though it's amazing to get your first listings up on Amazon, it.

Doesn'T mean that you're going to get your first sales necessarily straight away.

It might take a little bit of time. And I was trying to word that really gently because getting your listings live feels like a real milestone.

It is a real milestone.

But then if a day goes by and another day goes by and you haven't had any sales yet, it can, you know, it can feel a bit like a bit of a downfall. You think, oh, you know, some of the shine starts to rub off, it becomes a bit less exciting. So you might find that you're really lucky or, or.

And you get sales straight away, and that's brilliant. And if that happens, that's amazing and well done. However, for the majority of people, and.

Definitely the majority of people I've worked.

With, have needed to do something to get their first sales.

There was a Time, a really long.

Time ago, probably when I was selling on Amazon, which is about 10 years ago, that you could put list of.

Products on Amazon and you don't actually.

Have to do that much if your listing was really good. You didn't actually have to do that much to get traffic and then to get sales.

Thing now is there are a lot.

More people selling on Amazon, you know, thousands of thousands of sellers, more joining every day. Lots of people have been on 10 years or more. So they've got sales history, they've got reviews.

Lots of people now have great product.

Listings because there are more people understanding.

What it means to have a great product listing.

People are taking advantage of features like A plus content.

They're working with experts to help them have listings convert really well.

And so it actually gets a lot, lot harder.

So unfortunately, the days of listing your product on Amazon and waiting for sales.

To roll in aren't here anymore.

And we do have to do something to drive traffic.

So let's think about what those things are.

You can either run some ads on.

Amazon, we've spoken about ads in previous episodes.

You can set up a really simple.

Product targeting ad to get some traffic to your listing. And obviously that's something you need to have a budget for if you are running ads elsewhere.

So let's say you're running Facebook ads or Instagram or anyone, I guess they're called meta ads now or ads anywhere else that are doing well for you.

You could think switching those, they point.

To Amazon for a short period of time, just diverting your traffic there.

Or if you don't want to spend.

Any money, you could do lots of free things. So you could, you could use your email list, you could use your social.

Media, you could use just your networks, you could use family and friends, you.

Could just talk about, talk about, talk about the fact that your products are on Amazon and, you know, let people know that they're there and get your first traffic that way.

You might also want to combine this with running a promotion.

So I'm working with a brand at.

The moment in the food area and for the first week we're offering a.

25% discount on Amazon, which is an.

Incentive for their existing customers to come.

And buy on Amazon rather than buying on their website, as they would do now. Also, because that offer has gone out.

To existing customers, we know they like.

The product so they're likely to leave a positive review. And we'll talk about reviews a bit more later. And that's just a really nice way of getting things going on Amazon. So hopefully that.

So hopefully that is. Is helpful in terms of what you should do once you, you know, once you're live on Amazon and sales start coming in. So let's go there now.

So let's say we've driven traffic, however you've done it, and now you're starting to get your first sales. So what, what do you do?

People ask me this a lot.

Do I need to be in there every day? What am I looking at? Okay, so let's cover that.

So once you're live on Amazon and.

You'Re starting to get sales, you need to make sure you're monitoring your inventory.

So if it, if you're using FBA and it looks like you might run.

Out of stock, send in more.

Because if you sell out, your ranking immediately drops. All that hard work you've done to.

Build up visibility, you know, it goes. And you're starting from scratch again when you send stock in.

This is a really tough one.

And I'm working with a brand now who've just launched on Amazon and we're speaking daily about when to send stock in because it's a really hard juggling act.

When you first, when you're first there.

You don't really have an idea of how many you're going to sell and how quickly you're going to sell. Whereas once you've been on Amazon for.

A while, you will start to see a pattern and you will start getting.

An idea of how often you need.

To replenish stock in the early days.

It's hard, I always say, don't send.

In lots of stock for your first.

Shipment anyway, because if it doesn't sell quickly, it's hanging around, you're paying more for it. So I do advocate for sending in small or, you know, small quantities of stock frequently. But of course, you want to be.

Still sending enough that you're not going.

To sell out in a couple of days. So my advice here, and this is.

What I'm advising my client at the.

Moment, is to send in stock a bit earlier than you think you need to. Because let's say you sent in 20 units and you might be thinking, okay, I'll wait until I'm down to five and then I'll send in more.

Actually, thing with Amazon is that it can take up to a week potentially.

For your stock to get checked in.

It should happen a lot sooner. But I've just worked with someone recently and it did take a week. It's not a particularly busy time of year. I don't know why it took that long.

It just did. And there's every, you know, in a week, let's say even if you sell.

One a day, in five days you.

Could be out of stock. So I, I'm recommending that as soon as, as soon as you start getting.

Any sales and you can see your.

Product is selling, it's a good time.

To send in more, even if it's another small amount, just to keep things.

Ticking over because you really don't want to go out of stock.

If you are using fulfilled by merchant.

Just make sure that you sync your.

Inventory with anywhere else you're selling.

So lots of platforms.

So Shopify is one where you can sync up your Amazon Shopify inventory. So if you make a sale on.

One, it updates it on the other. Because if you go out of stock, say on your website, but it still looks like you've got stock on Amazon, you then don't want to receive an.

Order you can't fulfill.

So make sure that if you're using fbm, I've everything syncing manually or you're doing something to make sure that you know you've got, you've got the stock. Amazon is showing stock for the products you have stock of.

And if you go out of stock.

Anywhere that's, you know, you're reflecting that as well because otherwise you're going to end up getting some issues.

Other things you can do is I would be, if I was you on Amazon, I would be checking my reviews, I'd be looking for those early reviews and seeing what customers had to say about the product.

These are really useful in the early days.

In our last week's episode, we spoke about product listings and reviews can be a great source of feedback for your listing. So for example, if in your early reviews it's clear that there are things.

That customers love, think okay, how well.

Have I highlighted these in my listing? Can I mention them a bit more?

On the other side, if you're getting early listings and people, there's things people don't like or they weren't sure about.

You could again use that to update your listing text. And I think using your reviews to update your listings, particularly brand new listings.

Can be really good.

And actually I've done a whole episode about how you can use your product.

Reviews, which I'll link to in the.

Show notes and you can go over and have a listen to that. But those early reviews will really give.

A good indication of what customers think about your product.

So do keep an eye out for those. As a Bit of a tip actually.

If you would like some early reviews and you don't have any and you're struggling to get them from your mailing list because reviews on Amazon are notoriously hard to get, you could try Amazon, vine. And I have got a whole episode on vine, what it is, how it works, which again I will list, I will link to in the show notes.

You can go and have look at that as well, listen to that. But basically it's where you sort of give away some of your products to Amazon reviewers and then they leave reviews on your listing.

You can of course use your email.

List and friends and family and people.

Like that to leave reviews.

But do know that you can't incentivise.

Reviews and you can't ask for positive reviews.

So do make sure that anything you do to actively go out and get reviews on your listings are within Amazon's guidelines or you could get yourself in.

A bit of trouble. Other things you can be keeping an.

Eye on are your analytics. So if you go into reports, you will see there are so, so many reports that you can look at.

You can get reports on everything. You can get them on your orders.

Your return rates, your inventory management, all sorts of things. But I think the numbers that I think are important now are your impressions, your click through rates and your conversions.

And you can get all of these under business reports. This is just really useful.

Impress will tell you how many people.

Are finding your product. And if you're running ads, by the.

Way, you can get all of these just specifically for your ads.

That can actually be quite nice if.

You are running any Amazon ads to.

Look at the impressions, click through rates and conversions for your ads versus what.

You'Re getting organically because then that will start to tell you, okay, so 50% of the impressions I'm getting are via my ads and 50% of organic or whatever it is you can see if your ads convert better than organic traffic, all of these kinds of things.

But these are the basics that you need to know. And these are under your business reports. I will do a whole episode I.

Think in future about, about, about reports and the different reports you can get on Amazon and how to look at them. So stay tuned for that. But this, this is just really useful information to have.

Don't get too hung up on them.

Though because it is early days. As I've said in previous episodes as.

Well, you can tweak your product listing if you think there's something that's not working.

You can change your text, you images, you can you can change anything about.

Anything at all about your listing that.

You think might be hurting your conversions.

It's going to be hard first of.

All to work out what these things are. If sales are slow initially, that is to be expected on Amazon, I should say it can take a little while for things to get going.

If it's been a bit longer than that and your sales are still slow, still not where you'd expect them to be, then it is probably worth looking at trying to dig down into why that's the case and seeing is there anything you can change.

Some common things are if you are.

Doing fulfilled by mail merchant and the shipping price is quite high or the.

Shipping price plus the product price combined makes your products maybe more expensive than.

Others in your category. That can be a factor if your product is quite highly priced in your category, but your listing isn't reflective of that.

So customers can't see why why the extra price.

They can't get a sense of the extra value.

That can be another reason. If your shipping times are very long.

Sometimes Amazon will do something silly like.

Put a handling time on you haven't necessarily set up and it will look like customers are going to get your product in a week or something, you know, two weeks, something really long. That can also stop people from buying. So have a look out for things for things like that.

It might be there's something in your listing isn't quite clear.

It might be there's a question that people have about your listing isn't answered. So they're looking not buying.

So if you see you get a lot of people clicking through to your listing but then they're not purchasing, then that would suggest that there's something they're missing, there's something that they're not finding out about your product. There's a question that's unanswered. Obviously it's gonna be you're not necessarily.

Going to know what that is, but.

If that's something you can find out and you can update your listing, that should really, really help you. So in terms of going live to just to summarize this episode, do not worry in the first couple of weeks if you're not getting sales, it can take time.

I really don't, I can't stress enough. I don't want you to worry if.

You'Re not getting sales some days or getting low sales some days.

It can take time to build up.

On Amazon and it will and things will be will build.

Keep tweaking your listing if you feel.

You need to Test keywords if you think that you need to. Although obviously don't go in and change everything every day.

That's, that's a little, that's probably a little bit much.

If you're running ads, keep an eye on them, check how they're doing, make sure you're continually monitoring, you're optimizing where needed. Try and build your reviews. And I would actively try and build my reviews.

Whether it was by using Amazon, vine, whether it's by using friends and family, existing customers.

However you're doing it, trying to get.

Some reviews on your product listing is.

Great, particularly if you're running ads, because.

It'S much easier to run ads to.

Listings that already have reviews because the social proof is there. As I've said, don't tweak your listings.

Too much, but if there's anything that's.

Not working, do tweak it. And just to say that while all of this might sound a bit daunting, it really is worth it.

So I've worked with a brand recently.

Before they went live, before the listings.

Even went live, we had a plan.

Of what we were going to do. We've had some different promotions set up. They've used their email list to drive some reviews.

Then once we had the first sales and once we had a decent number.

Of reviews, we were looking for 10 initially. Once we got there, we switched ads.

On and it's just worked out really, really well. And now the sal are the still sales are still slow because we literally.

We'Re literally talking weeks here.

But they're increasing every day organic sales as well, which is brilliant. That is possible too. So just remember that putting your product listing live is just the beginning.

There is more work involved, as hopefully.

I've outlined in this episode. You can't just set and forget.

You.

You do have to be actively looking at what's going on. But it is a really hard balance because I want you to look at what's going on, but I also don't want you to stress about going on.

So I appreciate there is quite a fine line there, but hopefully you found this episode useful. Hopefully it's given you an overview into.

What it's like what happens once you.

Hit live on go live on Amazon.

If nothing else, I hope you've realized two things. One is that you'll need to do.

Something to drive traffic and getting your listings there isn't, you know, that isn't like the end. If anything, it's.

It's the beginning.

There's still some work to be Done.

But two, I hope the second thing.

You take away is honestly not to panic. It is normal for sales to be slow in the early days. It is normal to have days where, you know, where you're not getting anything.

It's normal to question all of this and wondering if it was worth all of the effort.

But I promise you, if you've done a great job at listing your products on Amazon and you're doing all the things you can to drive traffic, whether that's paid traffic or free traffic, you know you will get, you will get there. It can take a bit of time. It's not as fast as some of the other channels, but I've got so much confidence in you.

And if you have done all the things needed to get your product uplisted, yeah, you're going to be absolutely fine. And if you're listening to this a.

Bit ahead of time and you're not quite there yet, and you're still in the setup stages on Amazon and you would like my free Amazon setup checklist.

Then I will link to that in the show notes. You can get, go over and get.

That for free and that will talk to you about all the things you need to do to get up to.

This point and then beyond. So that should be really helpful.

Well, thank you all so much for listening to this episode.

I will be back on Friday with.

Another interview and then next Tuesday with another Amazon made easy specific episode. For once I remembered to say that in the right order. So have a lovely rest of your day, rest of your week and speak to you soon.

Thank you so much for listening Right to the end of this episode.

Do remember that you can get the Fullback catalogue and lots of free resources on my website, vickyweinberg.com Please do remember to rate and review this episode if you've enjoyed it, and also share it with a friend who you think might find it useful. Thank you again and see you next week.