What I’d do differently if I started on Amazon again

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. Hi. Thank you for being here.

So today, as you will know if you listened to last week's episode, I'm going to talk about something slightly different and that is what I would do differently if I were to start on Amazon now. So some of you may know that I used to sell products on Amazon. It was nine years ago. I had to look that up so I could be accurate for this recording.

So nine years ago, I launched my first product on Amazon. I then went on to launch a range of products in the baby area.

So I'm sure I've shared my story before, so I won't go into great detail here, but I designed and had manufactured my own range of bamboo baby products.

So I started with a bamboo baby swaddle, sort of a gift pack, and then I launched other products, including towels and bowls and plates and spoons, and I had a whole range of products. I sell my products on Shopify, but I also sold on Amazon. And Amazon is where I did really, really well.

I put a lot of work into getting traffic on Amazon and sales, and I did very, very well, which is, you know, how I ended up with this business today, really that, that really was the start of it. I got to know Amazon really well. People would come and ask me for help and then the rest, as they say, is history.

But what I want to talk to you about today is while I did really well nine years ago, things are different now than they were nine years ago. For one thing, there's a lot more sellers on Amazon because selling many more sellers join all the time. There are a lot more.

There are a lot more features on Amazon, some of which are positive, but other things maybe make things a little bit more complicated. And I saw what I wanted to talk about is if I were to launch on Amazon today, what I would do differently.

And some of it will be things that I learn, not necessarily things that have changed on Amazon, but I just thought it'd be interesting for you to share.

And of course, these are the things that I think about now when I launch for clients, because I have what's called an Amazon launch package, which you can find more about. Vickyweinberg.com where I basically get you set up and off to a great start on Amazon.

And these are all things I consider when I do that for my clients. And part of the reason I want to share this episode is as I say, things have changed on Amazon. It is not the same as it was nine years ago.

Definitely, definitely not. It's probably not even the same as it was five years ago. But some of the advice I see out there hasn't.

So I just really wanted to be really open about about how Amazon is today and the things I would think about were I to be launching now. I actually really enjoyed thinking about this for today's episode. One I think has took me back. We all like to reminisce, don't we?

Made me think about what I was doing then and as I said, I think I also liked it because it was a simpler time. I think it was a lot easier to get going on Amazon then. So I'm going to start this episode by being really honest about that.

I think if I were to launch the same products on Amazon now, I would find it hard because there would be a lot more competition.

However, saying that perhaps I would wouldn't because I have so much more experience on Amazon now and I would be able to do it, you know, to a much higher standard because I'm going to be honest and I'll talk about this a bit as we go through. Not everything I did was amazing. There were definitely, definitely things I could have done so much better and obviously I would do now.

And that's what we're going to cover today. So I'm going to start with, before I start berating myself some of the things I think I did wrong. Right.

So before I launched my products on Amazon, I had my own website. As I mentioned, I had a Shopify site. I had some sales already, so I was taking sales on Shopify.

Not as many as I would eventually get on Amazon, but I was selling my products. I also used to sell on a few other third party marketplaces and I used to sell in person. So I would do markets and pop ups shops.

So I knew I had a great product and I knew people wanted to buy it and people who did buy it were saying nice things about it. So I kind of had a bit of social proof that, you know, I knew that my product was good, my first product and it was the same for subsequent products.

I knew these products were good. I knew the people like them and wanted them and needed them before I launched on Amazon and I'm really pleased that I did that.

And I think that's something I always recommend people now is it's really great to know you've got a viable product before you spend all that time and effort getting started. I also did loads of research.

So I, before I launched my product on Amazon, I actually ordered other similar products from other sellers because I wanted, wanted to sort of get an idea of what they were selling and how my product was different to help me with my product listing, my photography, thinking about how I could differentiate you. Also, you don't have to go into that much detail. Part of the reason I did this was part of my sort of product design process as well.

So when I was considering fabric for my products and designs, I just was really in packaging. I was just really keen to see what others were doing. But obviously that then did help me when I went to launch on Amazon.

I also really looked at the competitor, the price of other products because I obviously wanted to make sure that when I launched my product I could make it and sell it and still make a profit. That was really important to me and I wanted to see, okay, what a similar product selling for on Amazon.

And I'll be very honest, my products were some of the more expensive in my category. But I knew I could justify it because I knew the market and I knew what made my product different from other products.

And I really felt my products justified the higher, the higher price point.

And of course I had listings that helped to justify that as well because I would talk about all the features and the benefits of my product that other listings didn't have. And of course I had a really great product listing. So I had a really good, well optimized text. I have fantastic images. I even had lifestyle images.

So for every product that I launched, I would do a photo shoot with actual babies with my products. That was really great, showing babies with my products, showing them in actual home environments.

I also had video, which was great and something not a lot of people did then either.

I think I, when I, when I added video to my Amazon listing, it was right whenever videos were first available because I had a video and it was on Shopify, so I was able to add it on Amazon. And I really think videos do such a great job of selling a product. So those are all things that I did, in my opinion, really, really well.

And I wouldn't change and I wouldn't suggest anyone else change. These are kind of the fundamentals, I think.

I think those are the things you have to do if you want to get off to a great start on Amazon in terms of things I would do differently. So I mentioned that I had really great product listings. I did. I even used A plus content.

When A plus content was first was first launched, I thought, great, I'm going to add this to my listings. However, I don't think I did the best job with A plus content. Despite having amazing text and great images.

I think the A plus section of my listing didn't look amazing. Mainly because I used Amazon's templates and if I was going to launch on Amazon today, I would not use Amazon's templates.

So I don't know whether you've set up A plus content on your listing, but if you have, you'll see there's all these different sort of design options you can have. So you can add in different images of different sizes.

You can add in ones where there's some text, there's the bullet points and a small image here and a bigger image there. I don't do that now what I suggest to my clients is that they instead create their own images and I think the dimensions are 970 by 600 pixels.

What geek I am to know that. But anyway, that's the biggest size image you can use.

I suggest they create five or six images to that format and then we add them to Amazon one on top of the other. We basically stack those images to create the A content and we do not touch Amazon's templates because it just looks so much nicer.

You can use your own colors, you can use your own branding. I always, if I'm creating these for a client and I have to say I'm not a designer, I will help people with this, but I'm not a designer.

But I can go in Canva and I can create something that looks half decent.

But if you can, you know, if you have the budget to pay for someone to do this for you or you have those skills, obviously always suggest doing that yourself. But you can in Canva create some A plus content which is a series of images that looks really, really nice.

I actually found one of my old listings a while ago and I had a look at it. I don't know how I found it on Amazon. Somehow it's still there. Anyway, I found it and I was looking at what I had and you know what?

It wasn't awful, at least I was using it. But that old fashioned style of a content looks so, so bad. And you know what? This was before the days of comparison tables as well.

Although this was something I did well because you may know you May have heard me say before, I think having a comparison table on the bottom of your A content is a great idea if you sell more than one product.

And I don't mean if you sell your product in multiple colors because if you sell in multiple colors or sizes, if you, if it's a variation that should be available from the top of your listing.

I'm talking about if you are a hair care brand and you sell shampoo and you sell conditioner and you sell a curl cream or you know, that's just one example. You sell products that complement each other.

Have those in a comparison table at the bottom of your listing so customers can see everything you sell in one place. I actually tried to do that because I had, I think one of the old templates was you could have four little boxes and a little bit of text underneath.

I had a heading that said this is my whole range and then I had all of the pictures. But you couldn't add links and things like are you doing comparison tables now?

So if I was going to launch Amazon now, I would definitely have added a comparison table to my listing. But unfortunately back then you just couldn't. The next thing I would do differently is I would drip feed in my stock to fba. So I used FBA solely.

That was the only fulfillment method I had. I didn't have an FBM option, which I suggest to everybody now.

Although I didn't need one because I was never going to go out of stock because I sent in so much stock. I think for my first order I sent all of my units directly into Amazon.

Didn't send any to me to, to home, which is where I was fulfilling my website orders from. So I ended up having to then send myself some stock from Amazon to fulfill website orders.

You can also fulfill orders on Shopify or other sites from Amazon. There wasn't an integration then, so I like had to do it manually, like go in and type it all in. It wasn't, it wasn't the best.

Long term storage fees also add up. While I did really well on Amazon, obviously it takes a while to get sales going, particularly for my first product.

So I did find there was a point where I reached like the long term storage fee threshold because I sent in so so much stock. That wasn't ideal. Also I didn't realize again because I'd sent my stock directly from the manufacturer to Amazon.

What I didn't realize is that the boxes for this order, and apologies if you've heard this story before, but the boxes weren't of Great qual quality. There was like a quality control issue with them. And. But I didn't know. The first I knew of this was when customers were complaining.

Had I had that stock or at least some of that stock sent to me, I would have noticed this and I would have fixed it. And of course, as I was on Amazon longer, like I did get better at this, you know, I ended up.

But you know, first of all, I would send the stock to me and then down the line I had a fulfillment center as things grew and you know, I did, I did all that really, really well.

But when I first started, I would not suggest to anyone for your very first order, to send all your products straight to Amazon without at least having it direct from the manufacturer, without at least having a look for it. That was a silly idea. And also wouldn't send in too much stock. I think drips feeding in stock is the way to go. And this is something I suggest.

All of my clients now, especially when you're starting and you're not sure how many you're going to send, just send in 10 or 20 or whatever you think is a reasonable number. And then you know what, the very next week or even the very next day, depending how well you're doing, you can send in more stock.

Amazon don't penalize you for how often you send in stock. There are definitely times of year where they'll say, okay, we're not going to be receiving any more deliveries. That sometimes happens.

The warehouses get really busy. They'll say, you know, you can't create shipments for a while. But on the whole, for most of the year you can just drip feed stock in.

Until of course, you get to a point where you, you know, you've got, you've been established for a while and you've got a really good idea of how many you're going to send. But that just might mean drip feeding means you're sending 200 units rather than 20 units. Do you see what I mean?

You don't need to be sending thousands and thousands units into Amazon. There are definitely ways around it and I would definitely change that.

So also, the other thing I would do differently is I would have an FVM option because I mentioned that I didn't need it because, you know, I had so much stock.

I'm actually being a little bit facetious because further down the line when I had all of this in order and I had a fulfillment center and I was drip feeding stock into Amazon because I did get there eventually there was an issue where Something went wrong with my shipment. Basically, I was.

My new stock had been manufactured and it was in a boat on its way over to the UK day and it got stopped at customs because it was in a container with someone else's stuff and their stuff got pulled by customs and I just happened to be in the same container and there was a massive delay.

I did still have some stock in the fulfillment center and a little bit at home as well, so I could have still fulfilled those Amazon orders, but I didn't have an FBM option, so I couldn't from memory. I think I must have set that up eventually, but wouldn't it be nice if I just had it ready to go?

Because I do remember that time looking at my stock numbers going down and down and down and going, where's my new stock? Where's my new stock? And, you know, panicking quite a little bit about that.

And I'm probably thinking back, probably I let myself go completely out of stock and then went, oh, I should set up an FBM order, whereas realistically I should have done it sooner, even if it was when I was down to like 10 units or whatever. But I didn't do that. So that's something I would definitely do differently.

Now, something else I would do differently is I would use Amazon vine to get my early reviews.

I worked really, really hard to get reviews and back then I would say it was actually a little bit easier because there weren't quite so many restrictions.

Although I also did get into trouble because my mum purchased a product from me and she left a review and then Amazon sent me an email saying, you know, I'd violated their terms or something. I can't remember the wording they used. I don't even have those emails anymore. I don't have their email account.

But basically I was in trouble, somehow they could link her to.

Now, whether that's because maybe I had sent her something to Amazon, to her home address, you know, from my Amazon account, maybe I sent her something.

We don't have the same surname, so that's all I can think of is maybe I had ordered her something from Amazon and sent it from my address, which of course was linked to my Amazon account. But whatever I did, somehow they knew and I got a warning and it was quite scary, so I wouldn't do that.

Again, I'm not saying don't use your friends and family to get reviews, but, you know, be smart about it.

Don't use anyone with the same surname as you, the same home addresses, you maybe somewhere where you shipped to before because actually they're a lot more strict on it now than they were then. So I was really surprised and scared when I. When I got a warning. Nothing actually happened, but still quite scary.

But what I would do now is, as well as if you wanted to use friends and family, email list, all of those other things, if it were me, I would do all of that, but I would probably use Amazon buying as well.

So you can submit up to two units, which I know isn't that many, but you can spit up to two without paying a fee other than of course, you're giving them two items of stock. I've got a whole episode on Vine I'm linked to in the show notes, but I just think it's a really nice way to get some verified reviews. Fair.

You know, I say easily. Nothing on Amazon is easy, as you know, but fairly easily. It's a pretty easy way to get reviews and it's a lot less work than some of other methods.

So that is something I would do. Speaking of reviews, I would make sure I had a decent number of views before I started spending on ads.

Because what I did, me being me, especially me being me back then when I was into everything, is I think the moment my listing was live on Amazon, I went, great, let's turn the ads on. Not a single review. It's obviously a lot harder to convert a product listing that doesn't have any reviews. So, you know, that had a bit of an impact.

I wouldn't do that now. I would.

I would get a decent number of views, at least double figures, and then I would switch on the ads because they just convert so much better, such a much better use of money. I would also, speaking of ads, take things a bit slower and give things a chance to work.

Because what I've learned over the years is that when you set up ads, whether that's Amazon or anywhere else, there's a bit of testing involved.

You don't know which search terms are going to convert, which ones are going to convert profitably, which of your products are best to place in ads which, you know, drive through more, which get more clicks. There's a lot involved and I think you really need to give things a chance to work. I didn't. I used to switch up campaigns a lot.

I would give up on things quite easily. I would do a sponsored products ad and then go, oh, this isn't getting the sales I want. I'm going to stop this and start a sponsored brands ad.

I didn't really have much Of a strategy, obviously.

Now I do when I work with clients to manage their ads, I do explain at the beginning, okay, this is what I'm going to try for the first month and this is what we're going to do. And then I review and I optimize. I was really good at optimizing. I would say I was, was really good at keeping an eye on my ads.

I knew my ad spend, my return on ad spend, my say. I knew that data. I was looking at my ads every day, which is what I do for my clients now because I like to stay on top of things.

So I did that really well. But I think back then I didn't really have the patience to see how things panned out.

And the truth is, advertising anywhere, then your ads aren't always going to be profitable from day one. I know that now. Nine years ago, I didn't know that. I was quite impatient and I don't think I gave things enough time.

And of course, eventually my ads did start performing really well, but I think it took longer than it could and should have done because I was so impatient and because I wasn't giving anything a chance. So I would suggest don't, you know, don't do that. And that's definitely not something I would do if I had my time.

Again, something else I would do is once I had a range of products on Amazon, which eventually I did, I think I had over 20 SKUs in the end is I would set up a storefront. So I didn't do this on Amazon. And I'm. I can't actually remember, to be fair to myself, whether Amazon stores were a thing.

When I was selling on Amazon before, you know, before I stopped, probably they were, but I didn't have a store. And I think having an Amazon store is a really good idea when you have a range because customers can go and see all the things that you sell.

You can also put a bit more information about your brand because on your product listing, let's face it, even if you're using A plus content, there's only so much you can tell people about about the brand. And it might be that you have a really, you know, you have a really strong message you want to share about.

Maybe it's charitable giving, maybe it's about your founder, maybe it's about the mission and the values of your brand, but you only have so much room for that on your listing. Whereas a store is a great place, that sort of information as well.

So if I were to be starting on Amazon again, Today, once I built up a range, I would definitely have a store.

And in fact, even with one product, I probably still would have a brand store because it could be very simple and it could expand as your brand expands.

But as I say, it just gives you a bit more, a bit more of a chance to share some more brand information that you might not be able to fit into your listing, which would be useful for your customers.

Another thing I would do differently, I can't believe how many things I would do differently but you know, you live and learn is I would get the UK up and running really well before expanding into Europe. So what I did, I didn't do that.

I listed my products in the UK and you know, switched on ads about getting reviews and all of those things I mentioned earlier. And then almost immediately I was like, I'm also going to list my products in France, Germany, Italy.

I think it was France, Germany, Italy and Spain were the other options at the moment. Anyway, so I went ahead and did that, but I didn't understand the tax implications and that was a really costly mistake.

So I just went, okay, I can listen all these products. And I did it. And I got my products listings professionally translated, which I, by the way, I definitely recommend. I did that right.

At least I got them listed translated professionally. So I wasn't just fake of relying on the automatic translations that Amazon do, which in my opinion aren't great. I got them translated really well.

I set all the listings up nicely. Even like the A content, it was all translated and it all looked really good and I was making sales and that was all fantastic.

But I hadn't taken the time one to think about the fulfillment. So first of all, I was fulfilling all of those orders from my UK stock, was I? I think I was, I think I was filling all the orders in my UK stock.

I'll be really honest, some of this is a little bit hazy because it was a long time ago. My memory isn't great. But I do know that at some point something changed.

I was holding stock in Germany and then suddenly I was liable for tax in Germany and I hadn't realized that. I immediately stopped. So I pulled everything out. And then I had a tax bill that I had to pay, which is quite unfortunate.

And I had to hire someone to help me unravel all of this because I needed to hire an accountant who had a really good understanding of of all, you know, selling products aboard and the implications because I didn't have that at that time, because I didn't know I needed It So I was so naive. And so now if I was going to start on Amazon one, I would start on one marketplace and do it really well.

That doesn't have to be the uk, might be the US depending where you're listening or Ireland. But I would pick a marketplace and go, okay, I'm going to start there.

And I would get up running, I'd have my great listing, I'd have the A content, I'd have a store, I'd have reviews, I'd start running ads, I'd have my fulfillment set up, everything will be going really, really well. And then only then I would think about, okay, I'd also like to sell in this marketplace and I would expand there.

I would take it slow before expanding. I would make sure I understood the tax implications.

I would make sure I understood if there were any additional requirements or legislation for selling in those countries. So for example, if you're selling in Germany now, there's new legislation around Packag that wasn't in place when I was selling, but it is now.

I would make sure I was aware of that sort of thing. I would look into the fees and see what's it going to cost me. Because there are different ways you can sell in Europe.

So you can ship your products from the uk, from your FBA stock. You can obviously fulfill orders yourself.

You can send stock to a warehouse in Ireland or Germany or somewhere else to fulfill orders in in Europe that way. But I would just look into all of this really, really carefully and make a really well informed decision, which is not what I did back then.

But you know, as I say, live and learn. What else would I change? Two more things I'm going to share with you. The first one is I wouldn't bother emailing customers to request reviews.

This might sound strange because maybe you don't do this, but back when I was selling you could actually email customers so you could send them an email from your you as a brand, first of all thanking them for their order, maybe giving them the tracking details. Maybe you remember getting some of these. If you weren't selling back then, you might remember seeing some of these orders emails.

Then you could send them an email when they'd received your order. I used to send a really nice email that said now your order's arrived. Here's some additional information on how you might want to use.

I had like a PDF that people could get from going to my website but to make it easier I just sent that as a PDF on these emails. I had an email if anyone requested A return. It was like an automated thing. I can't remember the platform.

I used to do this, but it's like an automated thing. If someone requested a return, they would get an email from me saying, I'm really sorry, request a return. Is there anything I can do to help?

9 times out of 10 that actually stopped the return and any negative reviews.

And then I had one that went about a week after they'd received their order asking them if they could leave me review and it had a link through to it. You can't do any of that now. Apart from you can email customers manually from your orders.

I think it's two weeks or a week after the order's been received and you can ask them to leave you review. I wouldn't bother. I mean, you couldn't do all the things I was doing now. All the things I was doing back then. Sorry, you can't do now. Anyway.

The one thing you can do, as I say, is that email to customers saying, please leave me review. I wouldn't bother with that now. I spent a lot of time and effort doing that. But you know what, as we said before, it's really hard to get reviews.

And also something you may not know if, and maybe this is something you're doing, maybe you're emailing all your customers and requesting reviews is that 99% of customers have opted out of those reviews. Out of those emails, I've opted out of them. I think most people have.

Think about when did you last get an email from Amazon asking you if you know if you could review a product you've bought recently? It's probably quite a long time ago because I believe they auto opted everyone out and you had to opt in. That's my understanding.

So you're probably not getting them. Your customers probably aren't getting them.

It's most probably a waste of time and I'm so sorry to say that, but I think as we said, getting reviews is really hard.

You will get some organic reviews, obviously at the beginning I mentioned earlier, it's really great to use vine, friends and family, existing customers, whatever you can to get you started with reviews. But customers will still leave you reviews. I still leave reviews for everything I buy on Amazon.

Maybe not immediately, often, maybe once a month I might go, okay, what have I bought this month? And I'll go through and review everything.

People still do leave reviews, but I think asking asking them to isn't going to help, especially if they're not even receiving the email. So that is something I wouldn't do. And the final thing that I definitely would not do if I was no, definitely would do if I'm selling on Amazon now.

We're talking about things I would do differently, but a lot of this seems to be a list of things that I wouldn't do again. But one thing I would do differently if I was to launch on Amazon now is I would make sure I had a really solid launch plan in place.

Because as you may have been getting the impression back then, nine years ago, I did used to wing it quite a lot and just hope for the best, which is so different to how I am now. It's really interesting.

I think maybe in my personal life I'm definitely a wing it person, but in work, no way in work, I'm so organized, honestly, I have everything scheduled in. I can tell you what I'm going to do on every day and you know, I never miss a deadline. I'm good. I'm very good.

Hence me recording this episode going out the end of September, in August, because I like to be ahead, I like to be scheduled, I like to be organized, I like to have a plan. But back then that wasn't really me. So. And I was very, you know, I was young, very. I wasn't young, but I was young to having a business.

So I was very early in my business journey. I think I'd have my business much, you know, less than a year. When I decided to launch on Amazon, I didn't really know what I was doing.

I didn't have much of a plan. Whereas now I would have a really solid plan. I would think about, okay, when my listing goes live on Amazon, how are people going to know about it?

You know, am I going to use my email list, website, social media? Am I gonna have a link for my website, website?

Am I going to give my customers, my website customers a special discount on Amazon, like a launch price? Am I going to offer a promotion for everyone when I first launch on Amazon?

What I'm basically, I would think through all the options and make a plan of, okay, this is what I'm going to do. For the first week, I'm going to do this. For the second week, I'm going to do this.

And I would have maybe for the first four to six weeks a plan of all the things going to do to drive traffic to Amazon.

And that might include, okay, at this point, you know, when I hit this many reviews, I'm going to switch my ads on whatever it is, I would have a plan. And I think that's really really important because getting set up on Amazon now is much harder than it was then.

It was hard then, but now it's a lot of, you know, a lot of time and effort goes into getting set up on Amazon and you don't want to do all that and then just sit back and just wait for the sales because they're not going to come.

And you've probably heard me say that so many times, so I'm so sorry to repeat myself, but honestly, I think you need to have a plan in place for how you're going to drive traffic to your listing. And I spoke with a client about this recently about the fact that your listings can be absolutely amazing.

You can have, you know, the most well optimized text. You can have fantastic images, beautiful A plus content. You can have all of a great storefront, all of this.

But it doesn't mean people are going to see it. You still have to do something to drive people to your listings.

It's great to have that, by the way, because when people do find your listing, you want to have beautiful images and, you know, really well optimized text and you want to tell, you know, all of this needs to be there for when people find it. But having that alone doesn't mean people will find it. You need to think about what you're going to do to drive traffic.

And that is definitely something I do differently. So I really hope you've enjoyed this episode. I've really enjoyed enjoying it, if you can tell from my voice. I've really enjoyed talking about this.

It's probably been one of the most enjoyable episodes I've done for a while and feel like I can talk a bit more off the cuff with these as well because I'm talking about my personal experience, so it's a little bit less structure. If you like this type of episode, Let me know.

Vickywineberg.com if you don't, let me know forgiveweinberg.com and of course I will be back next week with another episode. So I look forward to seeing you then.

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

Do remember that you can get the Fullback catalog 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.