EcomCrew | Actionable eCommerce Shopify and Amazon FBA Advice

Hey everyone! Dave here going solo for this episode. Today we'll uncover the mystery that is Amazon A9. If you've been selling on Amazon for a while, you probably have a basic understanding of how SEO for Amazon works. But with the crazy competition from prominent companies and obscure Chinese sellers alike, how do you really propel your products to the top?

A brick and mortar business can be vastly different to owning an ecommerce one. Each offers a unique selling experience and would require different kinds of resources. Having said that,it can be challenging for traditional entrepreneurs to make the transition. Today’s guest is poised to make that very transition. Wilson Lee has been a traditional entrepreneur for 10 years. He’d previously dipped a toe at an ecommerce venture or two but is now ready to get both of his feet wet.

For this episode, we bring on Sebastien Taché, an ecommerce entrepreneur from Canada. He is facing a problem a lot of ecommerce entrepreneurs with blogs do: experts who produce high-quality work are too expensive but generic freelancers who charge on a per article basis will most likely produce mediocre work at best. I reveal to Sebastien how we got around this problem, ultimately resulting to our content being consistently on page 1 of Google search.

Businesses need to adapt and use the platforms that their customers are using. If you’re a marketer, you’d want to take advantage of this because this is where businesses are going to go to talk to reach their consumers. ManyChat for Facebook Messenger is a software that can help you do just that.

It’s been a hot minute since Dave and I sat down and did a podcast focused solely on discussing news and updates from Amazon. And so that’s what we did for this particular episode.

I was fortunate enough to have some financial advantage when I first got into ecommerce, having achieved success as a poker affiliate a few years back. Dave, on the other hand, had to pool capital from different sources. He used $5,000 of his money, got a $20,000 cash injection, and had to be approved for a $40,000 line of credit from HSBC Canada. Our varying experiences have taught us a thing or two about how to effectively deal with cash flow. This forms a central part of our discussion on this podcast.

So, why did we turn the phone off? Mostly because it was just too much effort for very little money. In Terran’s case, we found that we were actually losing money. Dave sold his first ecommerce business in 2016. When he started another one, he consciously made the decision to do away with phone support altogether.

In this episode, Dave and I discuss the implications of Trump's new tariff increase on our respective businesses, what our preparations are for its coming, and what our predictions are for these new regulations in light of the November 6 midterm elections.

While many of us attribute the success of Chinese sellers to black-hat practices, Zack Franklin of AMZKungFu argues that successful Chinese sellers are doing a couple of things we are not... and these are not TOS violations.

Retail Global, formerly known as The Internet Conference, started around 13 years ago to address the need of having a local conference in Australia where online sellers can share information freely. Its initial aim was to help people sell successfully on eBay but has since morphed into ecommerce, eventually including discussions and workshops for today’s biggest marketplace, Amazon. It wasn’t until four years ago that Phil was able to bring Retail Global to American shores. The year 2012 marked the first Retail Global Las Vegas conference.

It’s crucial to have your brand and your products protected by a trademark. And in today’s podcast, we not only get to pick the brains of a lawyer who assists clients with protecting their brands. He also has his own ecommerce business to boot.

During our last visit to Montreal to film new course videos, we came upon a new gathering for Amazon sellers called the Orange Hat Summit. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to actually join the summit due to time constraints but we did meet a Chinese seller who was a speaker at the summit. Ours was one of the most brutal conversations I had, and it spawned an article written by Dave, and this podcast episode. Although we were already familiar with the nefarious acts done by some sellers on Amazon, our conversation gave light to just how heinous some of these strategies are. We should point out though that these tactics are not exclusive to Chinese sellers, but it is with little doubt that China is often at the forefront of formulating these strategies. The following strategies are the most commonly used by Chinese sellers: Opening multiple seller accounts Some sellers have upwards of 20 accounts, some even under the name of their employees. This pads the risk of Amazon suspension–as one account gets closed, they just set up shop using another one. Rampant review manipulation Chinese sellers know that reviews = sales. Some sellers do something as innocent as rewarding buyers for 5-star reviews, while others buy reviews from review farms outright. Worse, however, is how they buy fake negative reviews against their competitors’ products. Stolen buyer and seller data This one is the biggie. We’ve heard of Chinese sellers using stolen buyer addresses in America to send them products as part of a fake review campaign, but we had no idea just how huge this strategy has become. Apparently, you can pay some rogue Chinese Amazon employee (or someone who has access to a rogue employee) and request reports on any buyer AND seller. If a seller can find out certain information about a competitor’s product, such as their sales and page view history, it can be extremely valuable. All these strategies have made the playing field extremely unfair, especially when Amazon doesn’t seem to care at all. Add to this the fact that Chinese sellers don’t have the pressure of sales taxes, don’t have to conform to high safety and quality standards, and are pretty much immune from lawsuits, and the entire Amazon atmosphere looks pretty depressing for the average American seller. With everything that’s happening, it’s tempting for any seller to try to dip their toes into the realm of black-hat strategies. But we know that a business built on sketchiness will not last long, and when Amazon finally drops the hammer, those who play by the rules will be left standing. If you want an in-depth detail of these strategies and how Chinese sellers pull it off, make sure to read this blog post written by Dave. Thanks for tuning in to this episode. Until the next one, happy selling. Like big ecommerce revenue? Then Like us.

Ryan is the co-founder of One Tribe Apparel and the guest for today’s Under the Hood segment. His goal is to boost monthly revenue so that he can transition to doing the business full time. He’s also looking for insights on how to launch new products successfully, particularly now that the company is selling on Amazon FBA. He also runs an SEO consulting business.

This episode centers around a checklist of what Mike and his staff do in the days leading up to a product launch and immediately after that. Dave rounds up the discussion and adds his own inputs at the end.

Mike shares what it was like to start an online poker affiliate business and scale it to become a highly profitable company. Aside from the highs, he’ll also delve into the lows of being in this industry and reveal the reason why he finally decided to retire.