Q&A Selling Online - From Amazon FBA to Shopify, Digital Marketing and Facebook Ads

Amazon seller Ninja tip to get keyword indexed and ranking. Today I will just give a quick Ninja tip to be able to make Amazon give you a perfect canonical URL. How can we do this? Well, before you list your product you will do keyword research and find the top 6 search terms for your product. Now that you know what they are, enter them in your title, but make sure to enter a maximum of 6 words on the title! These 6 words are what Amazon will use to create your product URL so it will look like: Amazon.com/rubber-silicone-spatula-kitchen-turner/something else goes here By only giving them 6 words that will force them to create that URL for you. Now it will be easier to rank for those keywords and the URL will match the title and content of the page (Google SEO tricks) A day after you do this, you can go back and edit your listing to have the full title you wish! I hope you like this little Ninja tip for Amazon sellers, and please let me know if you want more like this>   Thanks Quin Amorim

Today we will be talking about how to create a listing that will help you sell your products faster and easier, how to get keywords and where to use them. I want you to remember that this series of 4 episodes is not an in-depth training, it’s just a quick explanation how to do things work and needs to be done to start. I still recommend doing research, listening to other episodes of the podcast and even getting second opinions on things. Sometimes what works for some doesn’t work for others Here are some of the tools we can use for this. Keyword.IO  – this is a free keyword tool that can pick keywords from Amazon, eBay, Google, etc Google keyword planner –  this is also a free tool for those that have a Google Adwords account (Adwords is Google’s advertising platform) Sonar – This is a free Amazon  Keyword research tool from Sellics. Sellics is a paid software that will do several things to help you, like track your expenses, PPC costs, sales volumes, profits, keyword tracking, indexing and position of the index (Meaning what position you show up when you search for silicone spatula) But we don’t need this yet, just the free tool called Sonar.  Find it at Sonar-tool.com Amazon Giveaway – This can be found at Amazon.com/giveaway and it can be used to get products for free or give away your products for free. The reason you would do this is to create sales velocity. Also on today’s podcast: How to create your tittle    

Part 3 of sourcing products, with Retail Arbitrage, Wholesale, private label and creating listings to sell on Amazon Fba. Just to recap, I started by explaining in part 1, the differences between Retail Arbitrage, Wholesale, Private label or simply by selling used or unwanted items you have around the house. Yesterday I touched on the free and some paid software to track products, measure demand and even competition. Then I also mentioned some of the sites I use to find manufacturers of the products. Now I will let you know some best practices on how to use those websites. Then we’ll discuss how to ship to Amazon and start selling.   Let’s start with how to deal with vendors in China. It is very important to know that these vendors are getting messages from everybody all over the world. So, your message may be one of 350 they received that day. You better make sure that you don’t just sound like a tire kicker that will just waste their time. At least have a signature with your company name. And this company doesn’t really need to exist yet. They will call you by “Dear” doesn’t matter if you are a man or a woman. Its a way they have of being polite and respectful. If you need to ask them several questions, make sure to number them. This will make sure they don’t skip any. But, before you even start messaging the vendors, make sure to filter them a bit. There are options on Alibaba to filter by a Gold supplier, assessed supplier, and trade assurance. Basically, this means they have been around for a long time, the assessed part means that their factory has been verified to be a real location, and trade assurance means they are willing to use Alibaba as the middleman for escrow services. You pay Alibaba, and they will hold the money until you get the product. Talking about paying, there are a few more things that you need to know: Every supplier will have an MOQ, this stands for minimum order quantity, and its the minimum quantity that they will allow you to order if you are personalizing the product (Like printing logos and etc) Next is the 2 payment plan, the norm is paying 30% up front when ordering, then after getting the inspection done, you pay the remaining 70%. By the way, this “inspection” is a crucial factor in making sure your order has the quality you need to sell on Amazon and not risk your seller account. You know, lots of sellers try to lower the costs, by negotiating the price to the minimum possible, and contrary to what people believe, China can make the highest quality of anything… but you need to be ready to pay for quality, just like you would anywhere else. If you try to lower the cost of a $5 item to $3, the quality will suffer and your product will be cheaply made. So, before lowering to much make sure you know exactly what kind of product you want. For instance, I have one vendor that gave me a quote, and I didn’t ask for a single cent discount… instead, I said, I would accept the price if they guaranteed I would have the highest quality of anyone, and every single return or refund would be discounted on my next order. This product is currently the only product of mine that has 100% 5-star rating and not a single review was incentivized or given by friends. It’s actually so good that it’s Amazon’s choice and they put on the listing that it has 60% fewer returns than comparable products on that sell on Amazon.   So, now that you have found the manufacturer that has the product you want, is a gold supplier, assessed, and has trade assurance, you will need to negotiate the MOQ, to please your wallet and at the same time be able to fill the supply without running out of stock. You place your order, and of course, to do so,

On the previous episode, I explained the 4 ways you can use to start Selling On Amazon. Today I want to let you know how to find the products, where to find the products and how to select them.   First, I want to start by letting you know of the free tools available to help you start. There are several tools that can make your life easier, so I will let you know of the free ones and also will mention the equivalent in a paid tool. None of the links I share with you are affiliate links. I could use my affiliate links for Jungle Scout or Sellics, etc. But I won’t because I want full transparency that I am not recommending these because I will get a few bucks back. So, let’s start with a tool that you can use to track the number of sales, from other sellers or any product in the Amazon catalog. Actually, let me explain why you would want to know how many units of each product is currently selling. You would want to know this because it allows you to know what people are interested in, what is currently being sold in high quantities, so you can source a product that you know almost for sure, will sell. So to start with the free one: * Unicorn Smasher  – This is a Browser extension, so all you have to do is search for the name Unicorn Smasher, it has an option to download and after you download it will attach to your Chrome browser. Now open Amazon.com find any product you can think of, and when you have the product page open, click on the extension to open it and see all the info.   Paid tools that do the same thing are: * Jungle Scout and  Amaze Howl – Jungle Scout is the most used of all for sellers. Now before I tell you about more tools, I need to let you know that these tools are pretty accurate, but none have official numbers from Amazon. They are estimates by measuring the BSR changes and the 999 trick. For those who don’t know the 999 trick, its a technique used to know how many units of something, another seller has. You ad the product you are looking at, to your cart, then go to your cart and click on the quantity until you see a drop-down, that goes from 1 to 9 and 10+, now click on the 10+ and enter a quantity of 999 units. Now Amazon will tell you something like, “sorry but the seller only has 126 units available…” or whatever the number is. This lets you know how many units the seller has right now so you can take notes and check again in a day or 2 and see how many he (or she) has sold per day.   Next, we’ll talk about a couple tools (both free) that allow you to see the history of each product. So, why do I need to know the history of a product, you may ask? Well, its because if you are looking at a product that is selling, lets imagine 200 units per day, you need to know if this product has a proven history of selling for a while, or if the seller just launched a week ago and gave away a bunch of free units to create sales velocity to excite the algorithm. Another reason could be because the product is a seasonal product… like something that only sells during winter, or only during summer, or a mother’s day item, or even a Halloween item… So, you want to make sure you either stay away from those products or you control your inventory to run out at the end of that season. But, if its seasonal item and you are already looking at a spike in sales with Jungle scout or unicorn smasher, then you are already too late to this year’s party. The tools are: * Keepa you can find it at Keepa.com * Camel Camel Camel – You can find it at Camelcamelcamel.com After you source your product there are a few more tools you can use, some free and some paid tools… but when we get to that point I will let you know about them.

Listen to the full episode where I explain how to start selling online

Becoming the Ferrari of Kitchen Cabinets in Fort McMurray. Forest City Inc, is one of the top kitchen cabinet makers currently manufacturing and installing 100% custom cabinets. Fort McMurray is a Canadian city in the province of Alberta. Today I am asking you the questions? Should we aim for the low quality and bulk quantity or focus on high-end quality? Contact me with your opinions   Quin

Quin Amorim started selling products online in 1997 DropShipping on eBay. Yes Dropshipping Quin was living in Europe when he first discovered the power of selling online. While working at Daimler Chrysler he walked outside to look at some stores and found wooden hand carved statues that looked like they could sell for more, but people would not find them at that physical location. He then thought he could bring a camera from home the next day and take pictures to try to sell them on eBay even without owning them. The reason for bringing a camera was because back then cell phones didn’t have cameras yet, or at least cameras with good quality. He took the camera to work the next day and after taking lots of pictures he went home and uploaded them to the computer and then to eBay, where he created the listings to start “Dropshipping ” these items. The term Dropshipping may not have even existed back then, so he just called it “Selling The Picture” because the only thing he had was the picture. After these wooden handmade statues started to sell on eBay, he found a big issue… Each one of the statues was unique, and if someone bought one at the store, he would not have it to dropship. Also, eBay wasn’t built for dropshipping at first, so they didn’t have software that would automatically calculate shipping fees, and He would have to get the real shipping costs from the post office itself and only in person.   Now, many years later Quin Amorim creates private label products and sells on Amazon with fulfillment by Amazon, Shopify self-fulfilled and on some shelves. He also has a marketing agency, since he created the $57 Facebook advertising campaign that attracted 34 million visitors and generated $118K in sales in less than 5 days. Now he has his own agency where he manages and creates online advertising campaigns for other businesses.   That is all for today. I am Allison and I transcribed this for Quin Enjoy    

Coleen asked if I avoid the Low BSR (Best Seller Rank) products on Amazon when doing product sourcing for FBA. It depends on the product category and then I will look at what the competition is like. If it has a tiny BSR and the category is food I will stay away from it right off the bat But there is something that is super hard to measure. This is, how many people since the beginning have decided to pick and source that same product. There is a chance that 1000 people have sourced that same product and by the time yours arrives at FBA now you have 1000 more competitors. There is a tool out that that attempts to tell you how many people are looking at those products but I think it only works for their own platform. One thing you can do is stay away from top 100 of every category and focus only on subcategories. Find a product that is a bit less sexy and that doesn’t follow the rules everyone is looking for, the lightweight, fits in the shoe box, etc. If you do what everyone else is doing you will be selling the exact same product as everyone else. Go deeper in the BSR and see the 100 to 200 in that sub-category.   Hope this helps   Thanks QA  

Do Your Kids Follow Your Steps? Today’s special episode has an introduction by my daughter. She says she wants to sell online FOOD TO POOR PEOPLE AND GET IT DELIVERED. Please contact me and tell me your stories and let me know if you want to tell them on the podcats Quin@qasellingonline.com   Thanks QA  

Dropship with Amazon Drew sent in a question by email: I’ve been drop shipping from China to eBay, and it’s working great. Although I hear it’s not possible, I know someone dropshipping with Amazon, is it ok to do so? Well, this doesn’t have a straight yes or no answer. Drop shipping to Amazon is allowed but, not the traditional dropshipping we all know. You need to be the seller of the product. before I type any more, have a read below: Amazon’s Drop Shipping Policy “Drop shipping, or allowing a third party to fulfill orders to customers on your behalf, is generally acceptable. If you intend to fulfill orders using a drop shipper, you must always: * Be the seller of record of your products; * Identify yourself as the seller of your products on all packing slips and other information included or provided in connection with them; * Be responsible for accepting and processing customer returns of your products; and * Comply with all other terms of your seller agreement and applicable Amazon policies. Examples of drop shipping that is not permitted: * Purchasing products from another online retailer and having that retailer ship directly to customers; or * Shipping orders with packing slips, invoices, or other information indicating a seller name or contact information other than your own.” dropship with Amazon   Amazon’s TOS for dropshipping  HERE

Question from Sarah: What makes a brand successful? Thank you for the question, Sarah. A brand is not what a lot of people think. A brand is not the logo and the tagline. Actually, a logo has a small impact on a brand. There are several things that make up a brand. I’ll tell you the most important things in branding, in no particular order: Consistency: A CEO of a company I used to work for, always told us he wanted to be the next Starbucks or the next McDonalds. (It’s funny because we were not in the food industry, we were a service provider in the Oil and Gas Industry) But, he used to say that in order to do so we need to be consistent. For example, he could be in -40C temperature in Canada one day, and the next day in Hawai, or Brasil and every time he walked into Starbucks anywhere in the world he knew what the smell would be like, the look and exactly what the coffee would taste like. So being consistent is one of the top ones   Purpose: This may be the top branding tip – Why do you do what you do? Who do you do it for? Whats the real reason behind it? And, is there a cause or movement people can join by having your product. Customer support: This one should be a no-brainer, but many entrepreneurs will have zero support, no guarantees, and even worse is not caring. It is very important that customer support doesn’t sleep or take a vacation, and response time should be always in less than 24 hours. Loyalty: You need to develop some sort of loyalty program with your customers. Discounts and giveaways are one way to start a loyalty “cult” Some brands give you the sense of belonging Be Different/ Unique: The easiest way to stand out is if you are or have something unique. If you have a vision, product or service that is different than everything else, you are already creating a special brand.    

A TED X talker who didn’t know what it meant to Fail Forward. Fail Forward! I am an official translator for TED, TED X, and TED Global talks, translating from English to Portuguese and Portuguese to English. By doing this, I get to memorize lots of talks because I have to hear the talk several times. But recently I came across a TED X talk about failure, and the speaker said he didn’t know what it meant to Fail Forward! So I had to comment and let him know

Sales Velocity About 7 months ago I launched 2 products on Amazon FBA that don’t sell. I’ve already been charged long term storage fees and I don’t want to pay for that again. I have a couple more products in the same brand, and I think these slow selling ones can give me a bad name. I want to get rid of them without losing my shirt, whats the best way? Sales Velocity on Amazon FBA Let me start by telling you that the normal amazon buyer doesn’t care if your product sales fast or slow. they look at reviews and they never use any kind of software to see if you are selling fast. Actually, some buyers still think that Amazon is the only seller on the platform. Since you also have 2 other products in the same brand, in my opinion, you should use the loser products to boost sales for the existing good ones. To do this you just have to create a promotion. Create a promotion called buy one get one, and give away the loser products to the buyers of the good products. This will boost sales of the good products, increase sales velocity and help you rank higher and sell more organically.   Now the only issue with this is if your products cost you a lot of money or if you have lots of stock, because in that case, the best option may be to find a buyer on an FBA group on Facebook.   Or another way could be just like I do with some loser products I transfer then to a second FBA account where they will live for another 6 months while trying to sell.   I hope this helps   Thanks QA

Now that my order is ready to ship to Amazon I get hit with a Hazmat review. Am I in trouble? Silvia had this question about Hazmat review on Amazon Lots of Amazon Hazmat review are triggered by a bot and sometimes it can be a false positive. This means that sometimes it may capture keywords from your listing and assume it is a product that requires a review but in reality, it may not! Other cases actually may require a review but the seller isn’t even aware of the requirements for importing the product. Always make sure to look up any product or source it out to someone who knows. Here are some links to help you out All you need to know page HERE Exemption sheet for hazardous cosmetics and products not regulated as dangerous goods HERE Exemption sheet for batteries and products containing or sold with batteries HERE    

Today’s question is from Nico about creating Amazon listings in other countries. Hey man, quick question for ya. I’ve been selling in the dot com for a while and I’m thinking of selling in Canada now. Whats the easiest way to re-create all my listings again? What tips do you have for selling in Canada? Hey Nico I have some good news and some bad news for you. First off, thanks for the question and for the FB add. The good news is you don’t need to copy and paste or even type your full listings. The North American platform shares the same Amazon catalog, so when you enter the UPC or the Asin number the previous listing will populate. Now there is something weird about this… before you get asked if you want to use the existing listing you will have to enter a couple mandatory lines into a new listing. Another good thing is that you are allowed twice as many characters for the same product because Canada is bilingual and they have to give you the option to enter you copy in french too. But Canada market is only 10% of the size of the US. Also, you need to have labels in English and French when selling on FBA Canada and the measurements need to be metric! Hope that helps and good luck   QA