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

A quick breakdown of a cardboard box for packaging Vegan burgers.Today I talk about the Vegan Burger packed made by Beyond the Meat. The episode’s show notes are a bit short today but we have a couple nice pictures

The Importance of Packaging in Private Label Brands Private Label the beautiful love of mine. I honestly really enjoy building private label products and PL brands. It is probably the single biggest hobby of mine. Yes, I consider it a hobby and not work, because I enjoy it so much. From picking a product, designing the label, writing the sales copy, and see the product gain life is a beautiful process. Today I want to talk about the importance of packaging in private label! Actually, packaging is super important for any kind of product that has a “Shelf Exposure” Shelf exposure means the product will be displayed for sale at a physical location, like brick and mortar or even a hipper store like Walmart, Target, Lowes, etc. Why is product packaging important in retail? It may be the number 1 factor that will make people find you on a shelf. When someone is walking down aisle at Walmart the one thing that is NOT on their mind is: – “I need to find brand name Quin Butter” If they need butter, they will be looking for the butter they used the last time, the cheapest or the healthiest! Not, your brand name So, to help them see your “butter” you need to have a packaging that will catch their eye. Sidenote: I like how the “noisy” butter stands out in the image above! What we will do in future episodes will be buying different items with amazing packaging, opening it and seeing what works and what doesn’t. I will call this the “package Hacking” This one after a few episodes about packaging I can create a cheat sheet about packaging, rules and laws of packaging and best practices. Today we will leave it at this, and I will get into the “meat and potatoes”  of Private Label packaging soon. Now, before you go, please have a listen to episode #37 where I tell the story of the most expensive pizzas in the world. Thanks QA        

From Cold Weather to Social Media Marketing Before it Was Called SMM Social Media Marketing! Yes, I was doing social media marketing back in 2010 and I never even thought about it until I got today’s question. I started by letting everyone know how happy I was to have plus 10 weather. When I say plus 10, I mean Celsius, not Fahrenheit, that is about 50 F Having such a high temperature this time of the year is not normal in this part of the country. For 10 years I worked in Fort McMurray, Alberta where the winter has an average temperature of -40. Yes, minus 40. Actually for those that don’t know, – 40 is the same temperature in Celsius or Fahrenheit! I remember being on an Oil site rigging in some water pumps with -56 degrees C, and it was very windy! Wind is a real killer when it starts blowing at temperatures like -56. Well, that was a very hard day of work, trying to work in 5-minute intervals and running back into the pickup trucks that were left running 24×7! Well, enough about the cold. I still have time to read a question today. The question comes from Erich: I would like to start a free WordPress blog on the WordPress site (not my own domain) but I don’t like the themes they provide. Can I use a downloaded theme on there? I have seen some WordPress hosted blogs with different themes, so it looks like it’s possible… Back in the day, I used to run a blog like that… Actually, I went and pulled up that blog and realized I had a few! One, from 2005 about me and my friends doing crazy stuff and partying a lot. Another from 2006 about Poker And finally, a DJ blog promoting me, as a social media promoter for a website I used to own in 2010. The website was called Idol Booster and the domain was Idolbooster.com Wow, I just checked and the website was completely changed but it still offers the same services! What I did back then, is now called Social Media Marketing, or Social Media Promotion. I would rank bands on Myspace and through comments, mentions, and glittery landing pages, promote them to all audiences. I remember one band named Until Dawn, that I was able to generate 19,000 new fans in 1 month on myspace. These days that is not unheard of, but back in 2010 to promote businesses or even products, we had myspace, Google and a few million people on Facebook This brings back so many memories that I even forgot to reply to Erich. Since I don’t really know the answer to that question Erich, I will get you to contact me again and we can pick a domain name for your blog, I’ll buiy it and host it on my server for free. Let me know if you like that idea, and please get back to me   That is all for today Please don’t forget to listen to episode 45, where I talk about Merch by Amazon. That was some of my SMM Social Media MArketing experience back in 010, I may talk about some experiences I had back then, in a future episode.   Thanks Quin  

5 Organic Sales Before Order Was Unloaded at Amazon FBA Amazon FBA generating organic sales! Normally when you have a shipment arriving at Amazon FBA, they will email you as soon as the cargo enters the unloading docs. They send you an email saying ” we started receiving your Amazon FBA items and will update you soon” This normally can take a few hours to several weeks, during the busy selling season of the 4th quarter. Well… my sea can had been delayed and finally arrived, but… Amazon didn’t email me! I actually had sent an email to the freight forwarder last night before bed, asking for updates. So, this morning when I woke up and looked at the phone I had an email from Amazon saying ” FBA full shipment received “ I was a bit stunned trying to figure out what shipment they had received but assumed it was one of the reoccurring Amazon FBA Canada shipments.         Next, I open the Amazon Seller app, and when I go throw the items sold I see something new! Customers had been buying a product I didn’t know was live yet! Not only it was selling, but it was selling organically, without any Pay Per Clic Advertising (PPC) Without a single review and, over 2 times the sale price. I had increased the selling price a lot due to Amazon losing lots of units every time now! Rushed to my computer, where confirmed every single unit was received and 5 had been sold organically in a matter of hours. Since then I turned on my Pay Per Click Campaign on automatic (discovery campaign) to find the search terms that people are using and gather as much info as I can. The day isn’t over and I and currently looking at 28 sales without a single giveaway or a single email blast. PPC cost so far is $8 and I have 10 clicks, so it doesn’t seem that the advertising is the one bringing these sales! I am super excited about this product launch on Amazon FBA USA I can’t wait to receive this same private label product at Amazon FBA Canada Have a listen to my Black Friday Cyber Monday Episode  Thanks for listening or reading   QA

How To Find The Biggest Pain Points In Every Single Niche The Biggest Pain Points In Every Single Niche Today’s question is from Andre, who has a blog about FBA. Andre wants to know how to go about getting exciting content for his blog that will help solve peoples problems. There is an amazing free tool that I often use. It is a website called Answer The Public. You can search for any niche you want, and it will give you the Biggest Pain Points, or the most asked questions on the internet, about that niche. All of this info is presented to you for free.   You can visit the website at Answer The Public can be found at www.askthepublic.com   Answer The Public  

Do You Brand All Your Products – Where Do You Make The Logo Carl asked if I brand all my products and if I do, where do I place the logo, and where do I make the logo? The answer is very simple, NO! I always test my products, even if the tools tell me I will be able to sell a ton of them every day. I have 2 accounts, one is the “test” account where I do exactly that. Test the viability of the product and if it doesn’t fly I either kill it or slowly let it sell out without PPC. All products that pass the test are sent to the main account, where they will live happily ever after. (until they sell haha) Products that pass the test, WILL BE BRANDED on the package and the products, except in some cases where the product can’t be branded for some reason. My logo is not always new, as I have a Main brand, where I sell a large variety of different items, so most cases will just get branded with my main brand logo. If the product is part of a speciality (like for instance, medical devices) it will have its own branding, and it’s own website, preferably with the dot-com domain related to the brand name. About, where I make my logos, I have tried almost every place online, from 99 designs to software to help me do it myself, and Fiverr. To be honest, a lot of people mention how Fiverr sucks and the work is cheap… well, that is not correct, there are lots of very talented people on Fiverr. Actually, all designers that provide services at 99 designs are selling on Fiverr. You don’t have to pick a $5 design for your logo, but you certainly don’t need to spend thousands anymore like we did back in 2010. Saying Fiver sucks because it is cheap is like saying everything made in China sucks! Remember, you are probably reading this from your Made in China Smartphone. My designer is on fiver, and of course, he does not cost $5. I have been dealing with him for a long time, and have requested several logos from him, all 5-star logos.   That is all for today. Please leave a review on the show if you find any value Thanks QA      

How do you pick what email to use in your Shopify store If you mean during the creation of the Shopify Store, That is very easy to answer. I always use the same email when creating any Shopify Store. I have 6 stores all under the same email and have a second email which I use when testing products on trial stores for 2 weeks. I use the same technique on Amazon FBA, I also have 2 accounts there ( approved of course) And when a product isn’t performing like I was expecting, I transfer that product to the second account and let it run out slowly. I even share my second account on Facebook, so friends and competitors can check it out and make offers

Lighting deals during Black Friday and Cyber Monday I set up several lightning deals during Black Friday and Cyber Monday (18 in Dot Com and 6 in dot CA) During the lightning deals, I sat in front of the computer and juggled the numbers constantly so it always looked like the deal was about to run out of stock. I did this by opening every single lightning deal during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, on all my screens. Now I carefully pay attention to all deals and see what % of the deal has been bought. I try to maintain the % above 70% and as close to 90% as possible. I do this by adding small amounts of units to each live deal. Some products that were selling very fast would require a higher amount of units to be added at once, therefore it was a bit more risky to keep the deal at above 90% One was selling up to 140 units per hour during the LD on Black Friday So, this is what I did almost all weekend. Coffee, internet, sunflower seeds and lots of screens      

Amazon Business Trying to help my Amazon Business, didn’t help at all After my sea cans got super delayed, I thought all the bad news was gone, but unfortunately, there was more to come. One of my vendors tried to help me, by adding an extra box of items to my existing order. This box was supposed to be a free surprise, to let me see how great the item would look in RED! Well… I don’t sell red, and my order went straight from China to Amazon USA. So recently I started receiving more reviews than usual, and for a change, they were all bad! I thought it could be a competitor trying to attack my Amazon Business, by giving a bunch of bad reviews. But, they were all verified, and from different areas of the country! Until I received the first message from a customer telling me they received the red item, when they had ordered black   So, I called the manufacturer to find out what was going on, and she tells me they offered me 40 red units! Now those 40 are mixed with all the other black ones spread across all Amazon’s warehouses! I had to remove all inventory and send to a 3rd party warehouse to sort, re-tag and send back. Not only that but I had to refund al the buyers that received the wrong color (1 didn’t even remove the review.   And I thought that was bad too! but… There was a bit more to come. My Amazon Business now almost looked like an amateur operation. Amazon Canada decided to put an end to selling foldable hunting knives! Yes, my number 1 best seller in Canada now was not allowed on the platform anymore. I fought as hard as I could, but every single unit was put under Unfulfillable inventory and I had to make a removal order. Now I will be sending all these units to Amazon USA, where they sell for half the price. And, I did a search on Amazon Canada where the big players like Browning still have their items listed ( all other competitors are gone)   What else can go wrong? Let me know how it is going for you?How is your Amazon Business going during this 4th quarter?   Thanks QA    

How to increase your own BSR on Amazon FBA You can manage your own BSR on Amazon (Best Seller Rank) This is a unit of measurement that Amazon created to determine where your product is located in the number of sales. The Amazon Best Seller Rank is a number, and the bigger this number is, the worse the product sells. For example, a  product with a BSR of 10 is the 10th most sold product on Amazon, while a product with the Best Sellers Rank on Amazon of 120,500 has 125k others that seller better. So if you have a product with a BSR of, let’s say 600k you can lower that rank without even getting any real sales! I will explain how you can manage your own BSR without getting any real sales. This technique can be used to get the best sellers badge, confuse competitors or anything else you can think of.   This is how it’s done: – Pick a product with a very high BSR ( high means its a bad seller, so it has a big number) – This product doesn’t even have to be yours! – Create a giveaway for this product ( you will not need to give away anything) – Make sure you select the maximum option to give away ( 30 each time) (you can do several per day) – Make sure you select the option for a Random Instant Win – Make the biggest ods possible (it changes according to your product price, but minimum is 1- 2000) – Make the giveaway end after 1 day or 2 – You can make your giveaway private, or allow Amazon to share it with their list – Click next, and the next page is where you will enter some copy (text) – Now you will pay for the items in advance (and shipping if not prime) – After a few hours, Amazon will make this giveaway live, and each item will be considered 1 sale, giving you a huge BSR boost – After 48 hours you should receive a message saying you giveaway ended and you will be given a refund for the products. – If you are not in the US, you will still have some exchange fees *They is always a small risk of giving 1 away, but that is not an issue for you, is it?   Please listen to the podcast, and if you learned anything, send me a message   Thanks QA

What are Facebook Ad Messenger Bots and what can I use messenger bots for? Facebook messenger bots are in my opinion the next big thing in the advertising world! It may even be the email killer! These Facebook messenger bots can be used for fun and/ or for business. I programmed a bot today, to interact with my wife and give her a few laughs. programming a bot is super easy, as these days everything is meant to be used “drag and drop” style I got my bots at Many Chat and you can also try it 100% free (no credit card required and no affiliate)   Thanks QA  

How I spent $27 on a Facebook ad and generated $118k and ad a reach of 34 MIllion people. The $27 viral facebook ad campaign that everyone was talking about in June 2017, was created by me. In June 2017, I was working on a new brand of private label products. In order to have a great launch, I had created a new website, and new Facebook page and was trying to create a new following on my Facebook page. After creating the facebook page, I needed to create some content and share some cool pictures. One of the pictures I posted, I liked it, then liked, shared and commented on my other pages. By the time I received 500 impressions, Facebook would have my ad as a 10  in the 1 to 10 scale of likability (relevance score) After this, I had an option by default to boost it for $27, and that is what I did. After carefully selecting the perfect audience I pressed the boost button and there it goes. After 3 days here are the results (see picture below) Since it is very late, I will leave it at this today. Have a look at the pic and leave me a comment   Thanks QA      

Amazon FBA Extra Sales From Losers A tip for Amazon FBA sellers to generate extra sales. Today I will teach you a cool trick that is so simple, people forget about it. We’ve all heard about the Amazon product giveaway option. You can access the Amazon giveaway tab inside you Seller Central, or by visiting Amazon as a customer. Find your product, scroll all the way down until you pass the reviews. Now click the Setup a Giveaway button and we are ready to start. Find the option that says sweepstakes, then scroll down to the option of setting up a poll. Ask a question about your item while sharing the link to it. Also, you will receive the poll’s feedback and you can use that insight.   Then make sure to choose the option for Amazon to show the giveaway to everyone in their email list (I’m in that list) next page is where you will write your giveaway copy. almost as writing ad copy. You will have a tittle, welcome page, a winning page, and a loose page. The most important is the loose page. This is the page with a message you will show only to all the losers. ( the ones that didn’t win your giveaway.) Show them a congratulations message saying yo won 50% off the product x, click the link to redeem. Make sure to add a bit of urgency to the copy! Something like ” you have 12 hours to buy, or the discount will be gone forever” This should bring an additional flock of traffic to your listing and normally I get a few sales from the technique too. I receive between 1800 and 4000 participants in my giveaway campaigns, so for every 2000 participants 1999 will lose, therefore for every 2000 people, 1999 will see my Congratulations message. Hopefully, this Amazon FBA seller trick works for you, and if it does please let me know   Thanks QA                

Online Business Mentoring Online Business Mentoring, Learn from someone who has done it before! Facebook ads, Internet marketing, Google Adwords, Affiliate marketing, selling on Amazon FBA, eBay, Shopify, how to create sale funnels and use click funnels. Preferably from someone who has done it successfully! You don’t need to pay for everything! Don’t waste your money buying every online course just to fill the pockets of the course creator! If you need the training and you know it is worth it, take it, but don’t use all the money you had to invest in your business, and then not start your business or your dream! Every bit of training you can think of is out there for free, you just have to search it and do it!   But! don’t waste your time and money trying to learn by yourself. Failing is part of life and part of the business so we learn, but if you avoid some failures do it. Some people decide to do it themselves, without online business mentoring and then, after failing they go to FB and complain how FB ads are a scam, and selling on Amazon is a scam. Well, the reality is that none of them are a scam, but that person is the one stopping himself from succeeding and has to find someone or something to blame. Further to that, this person will stop a few others from even trying to start anything, because of his/her negative post. If you want to succeed in business or in life, you need to stop giving excuses, stop blaming everything and everyone, and stop complaining! You know that when you complain 80% of people you complain to, will not care about your problem, and the other 20% are actually happy that you have a problem?! So go out there, be strong, learn fast and learn from the best. Negativity takes you nowhere but down Before I go, I need to enter my SEO keyword one more time. I’ll even use a H3 Tag to surprise some: Online Business Mentoring If any of you need any help or have questions, please feel free to contact me at Quin@quinamorim.com or above on the contact me form  

How To Avoid Amazon Long Term Storage Fees For 1 Year – Amazon FBA Amazon Long Term Storage Fees How can we avoid these Amazon long term storage fees as a seller? It is very simple Amazon charges the long-term storage fees twice per year. On February 15th and on August 15th So the trick is to make sure you send you inventory in, after February 15th or after August 15th. This may seem like an easy thing to do, but in reality, it isn’t that simple. It depends on a few factors: – How much inventory do you have left – How long does your inventory take to arrive at Amazon FBA – How many units you sell per day   But like I said on the Podcast, that is just a matter of inventory management. If you are selling very slow it is easier to do, and if you are selling very fast, more than likely you will not have a product at Amazon for more than 6 months. The perfect inventory management, in my opinion, will be to have enough units in stock as I sell in 45 days, plus the number of days it takes my inventory to land. And the time it takes for the inventory to land depends on the time of the year and the season.   So, again the tip to avoid Amazon FBA long term storage fees ( yes this is the seo part of the text) Is to make sure to send you shipments after the 15th of February or August, so that way when 6 months later Amazon checks your inventory, it will be there for a maximum of 5 months and 20 something days. Therefore they will only check your inventory again 6 months later on the 15th, and by then your inventory has been in stock at Amazon FBA for 360 days and you only have to pay the long term storage fee for the 6 months. Now if you have your inventory in storage at Amazon for more than 1 year without selling… the problem is not the storage fees, but your product research!   Please let me know if this has helped you   Thanks QA