EcomCrew | Actionable eCommerce Shopify and Amazon FBA Advice

Having your products in the shelves of the big chains might have a lot of allure in it, but there are headaches that come with big box retail that you might not be aware of. In this episode we invite Bill D'Alessandro again, this time to talk abut why he will no longer pursue the big box retail route.

Jacquelyn, our new Director of Ecommerce, has been with us for 3 months now and she has already made huge improvements in our business, streamlining many of what used to be "brute-force" processes. I invited her to be a guest on this episode to talk about the hiring process and what it's like to be on the front seat running our ecommerce company.

This is Part 2 of last Monday's Under the Hood pilot episode. We get down into the meat and potatoes and discuss in detail the strategy I developed for Brad in Part 1 and how to execute it properly. If you're interested in getting at least an hour of free coaching too (and getting featured in a podcast episode), sign up to be an Under the Hood guest at ecomcrew.com/underthehood.

This is an episode I wish we didn't have to record. Today we discuss in detail how black-hat tactics work on Amazon. I invited three Amazon sellers who actually went through the grueling experience of being victims to competitors who have no moral compass. We are doing this in the hopes that we spread awareness of what is happening, especially since Amazon doesn't seem to care much.

We're excited to do something new at the EcomCrew Podcast! Today we are releasing a brand-new podcast segment which we believe will tremendously help you wherever you are in your ecommerce journey. The segment is called Under the Hood, where we do a one-hour free coaching call with one of our listeners. We turn the coaching call into a podcast episode so other listeners can benefit as well. It's a win-win! For our pilot Under the Hood episode, we interview and coach Brad Bernhart, owner of an online business sellling hardwood kitchen utensils. If you're interested in becoming an Under the Hood guest, just sign up at ecomcrew.com/underthehood.

2018 just rolled in and there's no better time to set goals for the fresh year than today. I think everyone should be doing something like this, as having clear and sharp goals keeps you from getting distracted by seemingly important but meaningless things. It helps you focus your time and resources on the things that truly matter. I put together 18 goals (yes, I did 18 to be cheesy) that I'm going to work towards achieving this year. It's a collection of goals for Terran (our holding company for ColorIt, IceWraps, Tactical, and WildBaby), for EcomCrew, and for my personal life as well.

  Merry Christmas everybody! We just want to thank you guys for an awesome year, it never would have been possible without you. We did a lot of things that are new to us this year (insert shameless plug for our course) and you’ve stuck with us through the hiccups, providing us feedback along the way which helped us improve immensely. We can’t thank you enough for that. Since everyone will be on holiday mode for the next couple of days, we figured we’d do the same and take a break on the podcast. This is not a long term break, we’re just going to skip 3 episodes and resume on the 4th of January, kicking off the new year with a goal planning episode. We hope you have a blast during the holidays, and see you again next year!   Full Audio Transcript Mike: This is Mike, and welcome to episode number 108 of the EcomCrew Podcast. It is Christmas Day, Monday the 25th of December. And what the heck are you doing listening to an ecommerce podcast on Christmas Day anyway? The reality is that not many of you are probably going to listen to a podcast today, or on the 28th or on the 1st. Those are the days that we do our podcast, on Mondays and Thursdays. So the reality is that we should probably take a little bit of a break here with the EcomCrew Podcast. Just for three episodes folks, we are just going to skip three episodes here and get back to it on Thursday January 4th when everyone is kind of back from the holidays and had their fill of turkey and ham and whatever else you might be eating over the holidays, and liquor on this first, and you’re more sober and more interested in the podcast. But in all seriousness, I want to put a little episode out today, very abbreviated to thank everybody for their support of the EcomCrew Podcast. We have done just a tremendous job this year growing the podcast because of people like you. It’s crazy to look at our statistics. It’s amazing when I go to a live event how many people come up and shake my hand, and thank us for the EcomCrew Podcast. And I just want to take a minute to thank everybody. It’s been just a heck of a year, a heck of a ride. It’s also been a heck of a ride with the courses that we released this year. I had just a bunch of people sign up for those, and we’re just new with this. And the comments we got have been amazing, and we’re looking forward to growing that content as well in 2018. And also our reading content, all the free content we put out, Dave has been doing just an amazing job with that. If you guys haven’t had a chance to go to the EcomCrew blog and check that out, I highly encourage you to do that and join our mailing list, and get some of the free content we’ve been putting out there, not only the reading content but lead magnets and just free downloads and PDFs. It’s just – I mean again I’m biased, but to me it’s a super high level really great content that you guys should be able to consume and use to improve your ecommerce businesses. So with that said, again I hope you guys had a healthy, happy, fruitful 2017. I can’t wait to get back at it on Thursday January 4th with episode 109. Again we’re just taking a short break here. In fact as I record this, we’ve already got most of the month of January already recorded and in the can because I’m going to be doing a bunch of traveling heading out to Vegas for a week to visit some friends that I haven’t seen in a while and talk about our Wild Baby project. They’re going to be in town, and we’re going to go visit them there. And then we have the Los Vegas SHOT Show. We’re going to be going to do that to get some more research done for Tactical, and then another trip out there to visit some friends of the Super Bowl.

As 2017 comes to a close, it’s only fitting to devote our last episode of the year to 2018 ecommerce predictions. Dave and I listed what we think will happen in the ecommerce world next year, from sales tax to Bitcoin. It’s always fun to make these predictions and then revisit them by the end of 2018 to see how many of them actually happened. It would’ve been great to have Dave on the episode as well, but he is still in China as of recording this, so I will just cover his predictions here. This will also be our last full-length episode for the year and we will resume with new episodes twice a week next year. I also recorded a short special for Christmas Day next week, stay tuned for that! Here are our predictions for ecommerce next year: * Amazon will start collecting sales tax for sellers in multiple states (it will begin collecting sales tax for merchants in Washington State early next year) * Shopify will continue to dominate hosted ecommerce platforms but its stock will dive when investors realize there’s a finite number of ecommerce store owners to grow their customer base with * Facebook will start to monetize messaging near the end of 2018 * Amazon will continue to get bad press for counterfeits and knockoffs, do a major crackdown which will benefit brand owners but probably hurt sellers selling third party merchandise * China will continue the crackdown on factories heavily contributing to pollution * Facebook ads will continue to get more expensive – way more expensive * Amazon will increase fees substantially (Amazon has just announced fee increases beginning February, probably with more increases to come) * Amazon will actually do something about the review debacle * More sites accepting Bitcoin in ecommerce–especially international * Amazon will continue to grab market share * Amazon will start or acquire a transportation network Many of these predictions bring terror to us sellers–especially Amazon FBA fee increases and sales tax–but ecommerce in general is expected to grow over the next few years and we are hoping to ride along on that growth. Resources mentioned: Stamped.io AsiaInspection Amazon FBA’s Largest Ever Fee Increase Coming in 2018 – How Will it Affect You? 2-Hour EcomCrew Q&A Webinar Registration for our first-ever webinar is still open. You can ask us anything under the sun about ecommerce for 2 hours for FREE. Go here for more details. Thanks as always for listening. Until next year, happy selling! Full Audio Transcript Mike: This is Mike, and welcome to episode number 107 of the EcomCrew Podcast. You can go to EcomCrew.com/107 to get to the show notes for this episode. And this is going to be our last full length episode of 2017. It’s crazy how quickly the year has gone by. But the way that the holidays fall out this year, our Monday episode which will come out would actually be on Christmas Day and then the following one is on New Year’s Day. And it’s like why have a podcast in the middle of all that since it’s the holidays and everyone is on holiday brain. I did record a little special message that’s going to go out on Christmas Day.

I just did a podcast about my 2017 biggest struggles in our last episode and today I will cover the biggest news to ever explode in the ecommerce world this year. It definitely seems like 2017 flew us by but not without leaving news bombs that left a lot of people in ecommerce amused, worried, hopeful and wondering what’s going to happen next. We compiled a list of the biggest news in ecommerce this year, ranging from the Bitcoin explosion to the ever-so-perplexing sales tax. The items on this list are not written in any particular order. Listen to the podcast for my discussion of each. * Amazon acquiring Whole Foods * Massive Single’s Day sales * Record-breaking Cyber Monday sales * Soaring Bitcoin price * Shopify once got accused as a “get-rich-quick” scheme * Sales tax amnesty * Marketplace tax collection in Washington * Factory crackdowns in China * Amazon’s quest for HQ2 * Amazon and Google’s feud * Launching of Amazon Australia * Controversial Amazon Key * Net Neutrality * Walmart buying Jet.com Resources mentioned: Stamped.io AsiaInspection Free 2 hour webinar How to Hire Virtual Assistants and Open an Overseas Office in the Philippines As part of our goal to get more reviews on iTunes, we are hosting our first-ever 2-hour Webinar on December 21st where we will answer any ecommerce questions you have and give you tips you need. I usually charge $500/hr for consulting but this webinar is free, the only thing we ask in return is for you to leave us an honest review on iTunes.

“In general, I think that people spend too much time talking about their wins, and gloating, and how well things are going and never talk about the disarray or things that are going on behind the scenes, or things that they’re struggling with. I think it’s important to talk about this stuff; I think everyone goes through these types of things.” – Mike Jackness on the business and life struggles he faced this year This is that time of the year when people talk about “best-of”, “top 10 of the year”, and all those things that highlight the most significant things that happened to them this year. It’s a great way to look back on the successes and lessons of the year that is about to end and to get ready for the year that is about to come. In this podcast I will not do a “best of”. Instead, I will talk about the struggles and the challenges I faced. Too many people talk about the glory of being an entrepreneur and sweep the mess under the rug. Being in ecommerce is not all roses and the bigger your business grows, the more problems you encounter.  So in this episode, I will talk about the hardships, the confusions, the worry and all the uncertainties that we faced head on this year, and what we did to get overcome them. I elaborate the following challenges my company and I faced head on: * Having to reinvent myself as we adopted a new launch strategy (I talk about our new launch strategy in detail in this episode) * Keeping up with explosive growth and the tough high-level decisions I had to make * Hiring a C-level employee for the first time and how scary that moment was * Trying to get our non-Amazon sales to catch up with our Amazon sales and the constant dread of something terrible happening to our account * Being able to systematize everything * Staying focused and keeping myself away from pet projects * Working with my wife (happy wife, happy life right?) It definitely has not been an easy year but with all the struggles came the fruits of our labor: explosive business growth, a great team, and happy customers. We don’t expect problems to let up anytime soon since we are gearing for more growth next year, but we do know that we will be giving it all we’ve got. And you should, too. Resources mentioned: Stamped.io AsiaInspection Our Amazon Product Launch Strategy for 2018 Free 2-hour Webinar If you enjoyed listening to our podcast, please leave us an honest review on iTunes. We badly need reviews to help us get discovered by other ecommerce entrepreneurs out there looking for our content and we need your help. In connection, we are having a 2-hour coaching webinar on December 21st and attendees can ask anything under the sun and we will give our honest unbridled advice that will be really helpful for your business. Normally I charge $500/hr of my consulting time but this webinar will be for free. The only thing we ask in return is that you leave us an honest review of the podcast. You can check out the details here. Thanks as always for tuning in. Until next episode, happy selling!   Full Audio Transcript Mike: This is Mike, and welcome to episode number 105 of the EcomCrew Podcast. You can go to EcomCrew.com/105 to get to the show notes and leave any comments you might have about this episo...