Archive for category: Blog

The Supply Chain Situation

It’s mayday for global supply chains. The world has never seen a crisis this widespread before. The disruption is especially evident in the record high rates of container freight.

The COVID-19 pandemic for one has contributed to the unprecedented rise in consumer goods demand from Asia. The few available ships, closure of Chinese factories, and shortages in the labor force of the importing countries resulted in significant delays, considering that China accounts for around 12% of global trade.

The Ever Given blockage of the Suez Canal during transportation caused great economic loss, with an estimated daily damage of 1$2M to $14M to Egypt alone. It halted trade operations in the canal for six days, causing a daily global damage of $10B.

Who can deny the massive negative impacts of the Russia-Ukraine war on the global supply chain? The flow of goods was greatly impeded, causing dramatic rise in prices and product shortages. Both Ukraine and Russia produce about ⅓ of the world’s wheat, ¼ of the world’s barley, and ¾ of the world’s sunflower oil—all critical commodities for food. The blockage of ports to and from Ukraine and Russia, coupled with the states’ sanctions resulted in high freight costs and surging gas prices for all modes of transportation. There was a crazy competition among the train routes connecting the warring regions, namely Belarus, Poland, Germany, France, and other European countries.

All of these global events led to port congestion, which necessarily reduced effective container logistics capacity.

The Crisis Ripples

The scale of the impact was incomparable. The escalation was so fast that companies had to ensure end-to-end assessment, monitoring, and optimization. Supply chain disruptions are already a known phenomenon, but it seems that when the world faced it big time, not even the economy giants were ready.

Nobody saw this coming.

We’re not just having a pandemic, or a trade canal blockage, or a war. We’re having a scarcity of the most common commodities. International markets, and soon the global economy, plunged as the catastrophic events hit one after the other.

The world helplessly watched as international supply chains were disrupted. And the most beat sector of them all? The shipping industry.

The Shipping Industry

We know the shipping industry is indispensable for the continuance of global trade. It’s the backbone that connects regions, carrying 90% of all internationally traded goods. No wonder why it is worth trillions of dollars.

Together with the rising demand for freight comes the increase in maritime trade volumes which are predicted to triple by 2050. This only means that lack of alternatives will eventually prolong the current pressures the shipping industry is facing.

The ongoing crisis has forced global manufacturers to outsource some of their raw materials from different countries at the same time, with a view that one delivery would most probably get delayed at sea. But the hardest question to ask is, “Is this sustainable?”

Practically, no. This kind of method is way too expensive for most shippers. A study conducted by Censuswide found that 45% of the 750 UK brands selling consumer goods online claimed that shipping costs are their toughest challenge to global expansion. According to the same study, shipping a shoebox-sized parcel from the UK to the US costs about £20.56, triple from its original price of £15.73 in a span of 12 months.

This is the reality of the shipping industry today.

For most manufacturers, reshoring might not be an option. While it can help boost the national economy, you can’t afford to risk having negative implications, not now when the supply chain crisis is still ongoing. And if you don’t find ways to cut your shipping costs, can you find a future for your business?

Let’s Help You Out

If there’s a two-word solution to all this buzz, it’s “shipping resilience.” But that’s too broad of an answer for a global supply chain crisis. We can narrow it down to the ultimate remedy—technology.

Forceget

The supply chain is an industry process that is so complex and time reliant. It is critical for you to be able to address potential issues as they come. No worries! There is a digital freight forwarder that helps you with exactly that problem.

With Forceget, you can get full control and visibility of your global supply chain via their intuitive digital platform.

They give you options like ocean freight, air freight, shipping to Amazon FBA, warehouse & distribution, customs brokerage, and even cargo insurance.

It’s the one-stop-shop for your goods, containers, exceptions, clearances, and more!

If you’re looking to get a comprehensive and real-time view of your supply chain, quote for your offers, book your shipments, pay your bills, and track your inventory levels—all at the palm of your hands, connect with them now!

VAA

The global economy has become paralyzed for so long that even catching up to consumer demands feels like catching your breath in a vacuum-sealed room. There’s just so much work to do! But that’s a good thing. It only means you are continuing to thrive despite the adversities.

So how do you address workload congestion? The answer is obvious, and that is delegate. It’s never not a good idea to get some helping hands. But you have to be careful—helping hands don’t have to mean many, they just have to be reliable and efficient.

As you transition into digital logistics with Forceget, you will need help from people who can facilitate the end-to-end processes to substantially lessen the hassles on your part.

Virtual Assistant Academy (VAA) can provide you with virtual assistants who are not only trained to support your needs, but are also experts in specific areas of business processes.

You can focus on scaling your business, and your VAs can do the rest.

Many retailers and Amazon sellers source their products from China. China is well-known for being a manufacturing powerhouse and having very inexpensive labor costs. This combination results in products that are relatively cheap to produce. However, once those products have been manufactured, retailers need to get them from China to the USA so that they can be sold. Shipping costs can be very expensive and eat into profits, so it’s important to know how to save on shipping when sourcing products from China. This post will provide some tips on how to save on shipping costs when sending products from China to the USA.

There are a few methods of shipping goods from China to USA: by sea, by air, or by truck.

Shipping by sea is the cheapest option, but it takes the longest amount of time. It usually takes between 4 and 8 weeks for goods to arrive when shipped by sea. If you are not in a hurry to receive your goods, this is a great option. Just keep in mind that delays can sometimes happen with shipping by sea, so it’s important to account for that possibility when planning your inventory levels.

Shipping by air is more expensive than shipping by sea, but it’s much faster. Goods shipped by air typically arrive within 2 weeks.

Shipping by truck is generally less costly than shipping by air, and trucking can also provide more flexibility in terms of delivery times. trucking is also a good option for large or heavy shipments, as trucking companies offer a wide range of vehicles to accommodate different size and weight requirements.

Now that we know the methods to choose from, let’s compare them in terms of cost-efficiency and quickness and get the best service to have a smooth shipping experience to save time and money for your budget. Here are what we recommend:

1. Use Air Shipping Instead of Sea Shipping

If time is not a concern, then shipping your goods via air will be the more expensive option. However, if you need your goods delivered quickly, air shipping is the way to go. Air shipping from China to the US typically takes about 5-10 days, whereas sea shipping can take anywhere from 2-8 weeks. So, if time is of the essence, choose air shipping and pay a bit more for the faster delivery time.

2. Consolidate Your Shipments

Shipping costs are based on weight and size, so consolidation can save you a significant amount of money. If you have multiple vendors in China that you use, try to consolidate your orders into one shipment instead of having each vendor ship items separately. This will reduce your overall shipping costs since you’ll only have to pay for one shipment instead of multiple shipments.

3. Use an Experienced Freight Forwarder

An experienced freight forwarder can help you save money on shipping by ensuring that your goods are properly packaged and loaded onto the right type of vessel (air or sea). They can also help you navigate through the maze of import/export regulations so that you don’t run into any costly delays or penalties. Oftentimes, the savings that a freight forwarder can provide will offset their fees many times over. So, if you’re looking to save on shipping costs, using a freight forwarder is a great option.

Saving on shipping costs when importing goods from China to the USA doesn’t have to be difficult—if you know what steps to take. By using air shipping instead of sea shipping (if time permits), consolidating your shipments, and using an experienced Amazon freight forwarder, you can minimize your shipping expenses and keep more money in your pocket.

Lastly, to give an idea you can check out the lates prices of September 2022 as the effects of COVID-19 and inflation are going down.

If you’re struggling with poor Amazon ratings, it may be time to take a closer look at your inventory practices. Having a strong inventory management system in place can make or break your success on any sales platform, but especially on customer-obsessed Amazon.

Here, products with higher numbers of positive reviews are rewarded with more search visibility and, subsequently, more sales. You simply must keep your buyers happy, and it all starts with the products you source and how well you can replenish them.

To help you out, we put together six inventory tips that can lead to better product reviews and seller ratings on Amazon.

Sell a Great Product

It seems rather obvious, but you’d be surprised how often this is overlooked in the mad dash to start making sales. Sourcing the wrong products can be incredibly costly and damaging to your brand reputation.

Buyers are much more motivated to share their thoughts when they have an overwhelmingly positive or negative experience. If the product quality is inherently poor, chances are people are going to have a lot to say – and none of it will be very good. Today’s buyers don’t do well with disappointment.

Research the market, make test buys, and vet suppliers very, very carefully. Sourcing a quality product that you know something about is also another good rule of thumb.

Then, when it’s time to create your listing, make sure your page clearly communicates the value of your item and sets the right buyer expectations. If either of these is off the mark, your reviews will also suffer.

Don’t Stock Out

It happens to the best of us, but you have to keep in mind what a big deal this truly is. Even one day without inventory can have huge consequences on your listing’s ranking and sales. And nothing makes a shopper more unhappy than landing on your listing and seeing that awful out-of-stock message. This is an almost guaranteed way to increase your negative feedback and lose many of your hard-earned customers to competitors.

Many sellers rely on the Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) service because it handles the lion’s share of order fulfillment, something that can eat up a lot of your time and cause you to not keep up on inventory. But understanding how much inventory to send to Amazon can still be challenging, especially if you sell a seasonal product or have multiple suppliers for your brand.

Regularly analyzing your FBA inventory with software such as RestockPro can stop you from overbuying or not carrying enough. A thorough understanding of what to reorder and when is the key to keeping your inventory moving and your products continuously available for customers.

Ship On Time or Early

Late shipments are another leading cause of negative seller feedback. And, unfortunately, your product reviews may even be influenced by a buyer’s unhappiness with your shipping performance. This is a one-two punch that’s hard to recover from.

Amazon wants you to delight buyers at every turn, and early package arrivals are one of the best ways you can do this. Expediting your internal order processing and upgrading your shipment methods can certainly help. This may take some extra effort at first, but you’ll likely be rewarded with much better feedback.

If you’re an FBA seller, Forceget can help you start out on the right foot by fast-tracking your shipments to Amazon’s warehouses. You’ll get reliable, worry-free delivery to Amazon FBA and access to a custom shipping portal with resources to meet all of your needs.

Focus on Your Profitable Products

As you build out your brand and begin carrying more products, it’s important to periodically check in on their performance. Are any of your items (or even certain SKU variations) seeing significantly more sales and positive reviews?

These are your superstars, and you want to do everything possible to protect them. It’s not uncommon to have the majority of your order volume and ratings come from a select group of products. Some goods will just naturally rank – and sell – better than others.

Don’t be afraid to stop selling an item if it’s costing you more than it’s worth. Simplifying your inventory helps you cut down on costs and focus on the products that actually are profitable.

Before you make any big moves, it’s in your best interest to learn why these items aren’t performing well. Can you turn a bust into a bestseller?

Luckily, everything you’d ever want to know about a product is just a click or two away when you use FeedbackFive. Amazon shoppers love to share their opinions, and FeedbackFive’s review monitoring feature makes it easy to see what buyers are saying about your products and how they’ve performed over time, from order volume and refund percentage to the number of reviews received. These key trends can help deliver some much-needed context for making more informed inventory decisions.

Plan Promotions Very Carefully

Running coupons and sponsored ads are tried-and-true ways to drum up interest for your items and grow your business. However, you must ensure that you have enough inventory to account for the influx of sales. If you see too big of a spike, you could easily wipe out all of your inventory, resulting in unhappy customers and unpleasant reviews

Take care to plan your deals in advance and stop promotions for items experiencing supply chain problems or that already have markedly lower margins than your other products. In both of these cases, rapidly increasing your sales will likely end up costing you in the long run.

Better Inventory Practices Lead to Better Rating

Once you refine your inventory practices, it’s time to really ramp up your feedback and review efforts. The best way to get new ratings is to ask for them. You can do this by clicking on the Amazon Request a Review button in Seller Central, sending a request through Buyer-Seller Messaging, or by using software such as FeedbackFive.

FeedbackFive is trusted by sellers all over the world to request and manage Amazon ratings. It also sends you alerts for new feedback and reviews and helps you optimize your requests for more engagement. Find the #1 ranked feedback and reviews software on the Seller Central Partner Network today!

In episode 303 of the AM/PM Podcast, Kevin and his guests discuss:

• 02:00 – Shawn Hart Shares His Topic At #BDSS6
• 03:20- Seth Stevens Talks About A Mistake Most Amazon Sellers Make
• 07:30 – What Michelle And Izabela Love About BDSS
• 08:45 – Why Is It Important To Attend Actual Events?
• 10:45- The ROI You Get When You Attend The Right Events
• 11:45 – How Do I Choose From All These Events?
• 13:40 – Rob Stanley From Getida Sits Down With Kevin
• 15:35 – Recovering $700,000 From Amazon
• 16:00 – Rob Shares Something Amazon Sellers Need To Pay Attention To
• 22:30 – Ryan Cramer Talks About A Big Growth Opportunity Around The World
• 23:20 – Matt Altman Talks About Staggering Numbers On His Business
• 25:15 – Kevin Met Norm Farrar After Attending The Illuminati Event
• 25:50 – The Alaskan Cruise Trip And Cigars Story By Kevin King
• 27:00 – Meeting Lifelong Friends In Amazon Seller Events/Conferences
• 28:45 – You Are Nothing Without A Network
• 31:45 – Valuable Tips From Norm Farrar
• 32:45 – Talking About The Sell And Scale Summit To Learn And Network
• 34:00 – From Attendee To Speaker, Ben Webber Shares His Story
• 34:40- How To Build Your Team And Scale Your Business
• 39:00 – What Does Bradley Sutton Like About BDSS?
• 41:00 – The Current Trends With New Sellers That Bradley Sees
• 43:15 – Looking Forward To The “S3” Event On September
• 47:00 – Use S3BS100 To Get $100 Off Your S3 Ticket
• 47:45 – Tyler Greg Shares What Ampd Is All About
• 49:30 – Google Ads For Amazon Sellers
• 50:15 – The Beauty Of External Traffic To Your Amazon Listing
• 53:55 – Burak Of Forceget Talks About The Current State Of The Supply Chain
• 56:11 – Tips On How To Save Money And Maximize Your Shipments.
• 57:22 – Digitalization Of Their Shipping Service
• 59:52 – This Week’s Golden Nuggets Of Wisdom

Kevin King:

Welcome to episode 303 of the AM/PM Podcast. This episode is being released on August 18th. And right now, as we speak, there’s about a hundred or so Amazon sellers on a party boat, listening to music by two Amazon sellers who used to be DJs in their former life, Leo Sgovio and Danny McMillan. And for the last four days, these guests have been at the Billion Dollar Seller Summit in Austin. That’s my event that I put on twice a year, once in person, and once virtually the next virtual one’s coming up in February of 2023 and the next live one is coming up in the summer of 2023 in Puerto Rico. So what I wanted to do in this episode is while all these great sellers were in town in Austin, I wanted to corner as many of them as I can and get some really cool nuggets of information from them and I wanna share those with you today. So I recorded as many of the guests as I could while they were checking in earlier this week for the event. I asked them to share something with you. That’s pretty cool. So I’ve gathered the best ones here. So I hope you enjoy this collage of wisdom from some of the top sellers in the Amazon space. Enjoy it. All right. I’m here with Shawn and Seth from Post Purchase Pro, Shawn is one of the speakers at the Billion Dollar Seller Summit. Shawn, why did you decide to come and actually speak at this event?

Shawn:

Well, because you invited me, Kevin, I had to twist your arm a little bit, but I’ll tell you honestly, the virtual event was so much fun. I had so much great feedback that when you sent me an email with the sub recline Shawn Hart, spewing gold in Austin, I literally made my nipples hard, man, seriously.

Kevin King:

Well, I know you got some good stuff to share. And you’re here with your business partner, Seth, what do you guys actually do?

Shawn:

So what Seth and I discovered was that our ability to build a real customer list from our Amazon business allowed us to grow a lot more quickly and a lot more profitably and at the end, when we exit our businesses, which we sold 17, now we’re able to command a higher, multiple than our peers, because we don’t only have an Amazon business, but we actually have a brand and a customer list that we can easily tap into for ongoing sales. So when we sold our last brand, Kevin, we decided to make an effort to help other Amazon sellers build a customer list and show sellers how to tap into that list to create more sales and higher rankings, and more reviews.

Kevin King:

So what are you gonna be talking about here, or what’d you talk about this week at the Billion Dollar Seller Summit?

Shawn:

I’m gonna be talking about my strategy called the Amazon launch domination.

Kevin King:

So what’s something someone’s gonna miss someone that didn’t come here? What is just one little quick thing? Just share just one little small thing really quick of what they missed by not seeing your whole presentation.

Shawn:

Well, if they’re not here, first of all, they’re missing out on cash prices because I plan on handing out a bunch of hundred dollars bills. If that’s okay with you, I get your buy-in on that. I’m gonna show folks how they can eliminate all the risks associated with launching a new product on Amazon and we do that by using fundamental old-school marketing practices without giving away the farm there.

Kevin King:

So Seth, what’s something that in today’s world and that Amazon sellers really need to be aware of whether you’re new or you’re experienced? What’s a big mistake you see a lot of ’em make, and that if they just made this one little tweak or this one little change, it could make a big difference for ’em.

Seth:

So Kevin, what I’ve seen over the years is that people spend so much time trying to like find the perfect product or launch the perfect product. And then once they find that product, what they do is they say, okay, let me go back to the drawing board, let me go, try to find a completely new product. And it’s crazy. So what Shawn and I have done over the years is when we find a good product, we do a process that we call creative cloning, and we clone ourselves in that same market, Kevin, so we can take up more and more of that market share. So for instance, when we were selling bamboo pillows, we found that we could easily rank our product and we started selling about $30,000 per month. Well, what we did was we started targeting like sub-nitches. So we started targeting side sleepers and back sleepers and stomach sleepers and we created brand new separate listings for each one of those types of sleepers. So we had multiple listings on page one, all creating $30,000 a month in sales.

Kevin King:

It’s the exact same product?

Seth:

Exact product

Kevin King:

A lot of the same images, maybe the main image is slightly different or something?

Seth:

The main image is different because you want to attract a different customer. But imagine Kevin, you go to Amazon and you search bamboo pillow, and then on the page you see all the listings look different, but eight of them are ours. So we’re sucking in $30,000 per month from each one of those listings and that business ended up doing about $300,000 a month and we sold it, but it never ever, would’ve been nearly that big if we wouldn’t have stuck with that one market. So my tip for sellers is once you find something that’s working, expand into it and clone yourself into that market. And so, Shawn, I know we talk about how Tylenol does this by taking up more shelf space, right? So if you walk into any CVS, Kevin, you look at the shelf and you’re like, oh, I have a headache. Do I want Tylenol or do I want Tylenol headache or Tylenol migraine? Well, which one is it? Well, if you look at the ingredients, the ingredients are the same. They just have more shelf space. So they create a lot more sales because of that.

Kevin King:

That’s awesome. That’s an awesome tip. So what about people? There’s someone listening right now says, “ah, that’s gotta be against the terms of service you’re selling the same product, you’re just tricking the system or something.” How would you answer that?

Seth:

Well, it’s definitely not against terms of service because you, as the brand owner get to decide. And the only thing that creates a new product in Amazon’s eyes as from you as the brand owner is if it has a different UPC. So if you think about like Nike, for instance, if you bought a pair of shoes off of Nike from Amazon, and then you got the shoes and you’re like, “oh man, these look similar to, you know, the old air force ones or whatever.” Well, when Amazon views that they don’t say these, these shoes are similar to what Nike already released. They say Nike released the new product. How do I know that I scan the UPC and Nike says that they have new shoes? So definitely not against ToS because you get to decide what’s a different product in your catalog.

Kevin King:

Now you guys have a webinar coming up in October or something about some sort of hacks or something. Tell me a little bit about that. What?

Shawn:

Well, first of all, last June, it’s, it’s been taken out of the public eye now, but we did a 31 hacks webinar. So my goal is 49 hacks in October. I’m setting the bar high. I think even you when you go out, you do 15 or 20 hacks?

Kevin King:

No, I do 50 to a hundred sometimes.

Shawn:

You do a hundred sometimes ways to go. So I’m only half as good as you. Okay.

Kevin King:

You’re not there yet. I got a 99 hacks PDF that we created.

Shawn:

We get a copy of that without an NDA if you don’t mind. It’s all good.

Kevin King:

We’ll trade.

Shawn:

I’m gonna put me in coach. That’s what we’re here for. So basically we’re gonna come on, Seth and I are going we’re JV with a bunch of other agencies and service providers in our space, and we’re gonna do we’re shooting for 49 hacks. A lot of JV partners will be submitting hacks, but these are rapid-fire, three to five minutes, max per hack. It’s like, here’s the hack. Here’s how it works. Here’s why you should pay attention. Here’s how to implement it. And then onto the next one.

Kevin King:

How do I get it? How do I find out about that? How do I follow you to find out about that?

Shawn:

pppro.co/49hacks, number 4, number 9.

Kevin King:

Awesome guys. I appreciate you being here, man, at the Billion Dollar Seller Summit, looking forward to having some great times together. I’m here with Michelle and Izabela, Michelle and Isabela, welcome to the BDSS. How are you doing?

Michelle:

Thank you.

Izabela:

What’s up, what’s up Kevin?

Kevin King:

So excited to have you here. Now you’ve both been to one of these before, so why are you back? What is it about these that makes it different?

Michelle:

I think it’s the quality of the speakers and it’s different every single time, also different networking settings and setups that make it really memorable. You do a great job with that.

Kevin King:

I appreciate that

Izabela:

For me. It’s all, but the fun baby. No really guys, well, one, I come here because I get to see my family. It’s my friends, my extended family, the way I see it in this Amazon space, you know, we have each other because it’s a huge world out there and we have each other and it’s like, ah, I know him and then I know him more and then I know him more. And next thing you know, you go to each other’s wedding, but I’m here for the people I’m here, definitely for the knowledge that I think it’s one of the best in the, in our industry and it’s always up to date and you always bring amazing faces and new energy and just always staying on top of what’s current and I think that’s what I appreciate most about you. You always go and get it and you bring it to us. So how can I not be here? Where would I be?

Kevin King:

So what is it about going to events? There’s a lot of people that they watch you Izabela on the podcast, the seller sessions that you do, they hear you speak on some virtual event or some, what’s the difference in doing it, coming to an actual event where there’s other, like-minded people, other people that kind of get you and understand you.

Izabela:

Yeah. Well, I think the answer is literally in your question is I think as we get older, we do find comfort in knowing other people who are similar to us and in our like-mindedness and Amazon is what attracted us together. However, look, at how many friendships and relationships have been built outside just Amazon. I mean, how many people in the industry already have different careers and different connections and relationships with other people? So it’s even beyond Amazon. So coming here is basically that it’s like you make friends, but friends that can turn into possible future relationships as well.

Kevin King:

And sometimes it’s just the things you like Norm, for example, me and Norm become good friends. He and I, and our wives just went on an Alaskan cruise together and you know, and every night we’re shooting the, smoking a cigar. I smoke cigars nine nights in a row with Norm.

Izabela:

That’s not your voice is–

Kevin King:

I’ve never done that.

Izabela:

Your voice is so sexy. It’s so sexy today, Kevin, I can see why now.

Kevin King:

But stuff comes out of that. Like just I’ve talked to him. I’ve known him for years, but just last night, we’re sitting there talking about some business idea and he’s like, oh, I know this guy that can help you. I’ll make the introduction. He will never thought of that. That we’ve never happened any other place, but it happened just because we were just hanging out and just, we happened to be talking about something like, oh, wait, I know a guy from like 10 years ago that can help you with that. Let me make the introduction. He sent the email and we’re already talking.

Michelle:

I was just gonna comment on your point about that. Like getting out of your bubble, the opportunity to reflect on what you’re doing versus what other people are doing. You can really reach out and see what’s going right for other people. And they can also see that for you and that helps

Kevin King:

Well, a lot of people say it’s expensive to go to an event, or this event’s one of the most expensive out there. And so people don’t understand the ROI you can get if you really go to the right events and meet the right people. And so I think that’s something a lot of people have trouble with. It’s like, I can’t afford $700 for a ticket. I mean, this one costs a lot more than that, but for like a Helium 10 event and then the hotel and then the airfare, by the end of it, I’m gonna spend two grand. I just, I just don’t know if that’s worth that.

Michelle:

I think you have to be smart about it. I remember the first year I was in e-commerce, I went to every single event I heard about it’s like, then what’s the next shiny event to go to. And after that year, I became really, really selective with the quality of the speakers, knowing that those people are gonna be available at the networking sessions. I think you have to be really selective in how you spend your time when you go to these events, because there is a cost, but if you’re in the right group that you can benefit from, which is BDSS, you can see a huge ROI, something you would never think with,

Kevin King:

Well, if I’m new to the space or maybe I’m just getting started, how do I know? There’s so many events, I’m getting so much stuff on Facebook, I’m getting emails, there are so many different virtual events and in-person events. How do I, how do I choose?

Michelle:

Yeah. I think that is true. You see a lot of ads pop up, you see a lot of advertising and you have to dig in and see who’s involved. Who else is going? What did they contribute? What else have they been a part of? Because that’s gonna tell their story, right?

Kevin King:

So Michelle, tell the audience a little bit about what you do.

Michelle:

Oh, well, I am in a few different industries. E-commerce is one of them. I’m a seller on Amazon and I have promotional products, business, austinatxpromotionalproducts.com, and I just enjoy having a lot of diversity and being involved in a lot of industries real estate I’m really passionate about as well. So, in e-commerce, the opportunities are endless. Your ability to scale that business is beyond nothing that’s existed before.

Kevin King:

Awesome. So Izabela, your company RankBell is one of the sponsors of the Billion Dollar Seller Summit. I really appreciate that and you’re also one of the speakers. So you gotta double whammy. You go on stage twice.

Izabela:

I know, that meant double work for me. I’m like, this is the most work I’ve ever done in the past eight years. Thanks, Kevin.

Kevin King:

How do people get in touch with you or find you if they wanna know more about what you’re doing?

Izabela:

rankbell.com, Facebook, Isabella Hamilton, you guys can Google me, find me on Helium 10, they’re my favorites. You can probably find some posts related to Kevin King, so you can find me probably on his page, but yeah, I’m just here trying to make people happy and give as much value as I have and hope to get more value from others who know more than me. So let’s go.

Kevin King:

You’ll be at the Sell and Scale, Helium 10’s event next month in Vegas. And you’re speaking there as well. I am awesome. Thanks, ladies. Appreciate you stopping by. All right. Now I’ve got Rob Stanley, Rob’s from GETIDA. Sometimes you might not recognize this guy if you saw him because he, a lot of times he’s wearing like an outfit with all money on its like a money suit when you see him in events, but he’s not wearing that right now. He’s just wearing a black shirt that says GETIDA, you know, GETIDA is one of these companies. That’s been a sponsor of the Billion Dollar Seller Summit since the very first one. They’re one of the OG’s they’ve been there. They’ve even already signed up for next year to actually sponsor. Rob, I’m so happy to have GETIDA and have you here at the Billion Dollar Seller Summit, welcome, man.

Rob:

Yeah. Thanks, Kevin. It’s great to be here. Absolutely amazing event. One of the top events, as you know, I go to a lot events. I mean, I think I’m on event number 18 this year already and always recommend Billion Dollar Seller Summit. The content here. Of course, I’m not allowed to give it away, but there’s some amazing content that even it’s though, it’s been several years since I’ve actually sold. It’s just amazing to hear some of the information that people give here that stays right within the room. It’s content that is not given anywhere else. It stays right here and the tips are walk-away type tips that you can put into action immediately and that is one of the most amazing things I’ve seen at any event. A lot of times you see recycled content or you’ll see things that are, I don’t wanna say generic, but they’re things that are kind of already information already available and here the information here is not available anywhere else.

Kevin King:

When you get it, you see a lot of GETIDA. I mean, so if you’re not familiar with GETIDA it’s getida.com, they help you recover money. That just kind of sitting on the floor at Amazon, you know, Amazon sometimes misplaces things, they lose things. Customers say they’re gonna return something. They don’t return. There’s a whole litany of things that damage stuff and don’t reimburse you. So GETIDA comes in and they got a really good process of humans. This is not something like automated software, but humans that go in and actually find these problems and work it on your behalf, and then they get a little small piece of whatever they recover. But in the end, you know, I’ve known people that have recovered. I remember a seller. I was in New York and they said that there’s like over a million dollars, there’s a big seller, over a million dollars that Amazon owed them that do all their previous efforts that were still left sitting on the table.

Kevin King:

You guys came in and you weren’t able to recover all 1 million there sometimes there are little hiccups or little delays or it’s out of the range of when you can file a claim or whatever, but you got them back like some crazy amount, like $700,000. Or something like that. And they were just tickle pink. So you see a lot of stuff that sellers are making mistakes on or maybe not taking advantage of what would you give advice to the AM/PM Podcast Audience here on something they need to really pay attention to that you just see it’s over and over that, a lot of ’em are just missing?

Rob:

Yeah, the one we see the most is the weights and measurement issues. With the weight and measurement type issue, we can only go back about 90 days from your sales that have incorrect weights or measurements. And we do have actually a tool in our dashboard that allows you to download the current weight measurements of your items in Amazon. What they say, what Amazon says, the weights and measurements are.

Kevin King:

So wait, wait, wait. So when I fill up my listing, just so everybody understands. It asks you like how much is your item weigh? And you’ll say, I don’t know, 17 ounces or whatever. It’ll say, what are the measurements? And you put in 20 cent centimeters by 10 centimeters, or maybe by six centimeters or an inch or whatever. And, but that’s not what Amazon actually always uses, right? So you may think I’m good and you may not be to paying attention, but when a product first comes in, Amazon, re-measures it and re-weighs it. And sometimes they, they make some pretty big mistakes, and sometimes even one centimeter or one ounce because of, of packaging or, or whatever can just shoot the cost up and so that’s what you’re talking about, right?

Rob:

Yeah. Because you know, the weight or the measurement could put you in the next category. So let’s say maybe something is shipping out at $10 from Amazon’s FBA when it really should be shipping out at $5 because somehow the weight or the measurement got incorrect when it got to the warehouse and they used the cubic meter machine or whatever, it’s called to measure it and check the weight on it. So what you’re allowed to do is kind of audit them, audit them on the weights and measurements. So what we usually recommend is keeping track of your product’s weights and dimensions ahead of time before you ship ’em in and then check back probably once every couple of months download the current weight and measurements, take a look and see if you see a discrepancy, put the correct one in hit submit GETIDA takes over from there.

Rob:

And we basically go back and try to get every item that was sold in the last 90 days. If there’s a discrepancy. So let’s say it shipping out $10 and it should been shipping at five. There’s a $5 discrepancy. Every single item that shipped out at that incorrect one will try to get you that $5 back now during Q4, that could be thousands of items. I mean, you’re talking thousands of dollars. Now, if you don’t take advantage of that and do that within that 90 day timeframe, Amazon keeps that money. So you only have 90 days worth of shipments that go out, or we can only go back 90 days basically to get you those.

Kevin King:

Yeah, that exact problem happened last year, one of my businesses’ calendars. I’ve talked about this before, you know, they’re flat, they’re like 12 inches by 12 inches by, I don’t know, a quarter inch thick or something they’re shrink-wrapped. I have four different titles that we send into Amazon as FBA. We sent them all in last year. All four of them are exactly the same paper, same everything. Just, you know, there’s different artwork inside it, but they all had different measurements. It all had different weights. And one of ’em was a $20 item, they were charging me an $11 FBA fee on this when it should be $2 and 48 cents.

Rob:

Dang, that’s a big discrepancy.

Kevin King:

And it is a big one. I didn’t catch it for about a month, cuz I’m looking here and seeing the deposits come in. I’m like, man, our sales are up this year, but the amount of cash coming in is a little bit lower. What the heck’s going on here? So I started diving deep. I was like, holy cow, look at this and I was thankful it was in the 90 days. So I was able to file a claim myself and get ’em to fix it. But then it didn’t fix everything. They only just corrected it going forward. And then so what I did is I went with GETIDA and GETIDA went back and actually got all those for like, it was six weeks worth or something, but it was like $13,000-$15,000. Something like that. It was a crazy amount of money that I was just one of those been burning in a fire, if I didn’t have someone like GETIDA, so I really appreciate you guys helping on that.

Rob:

Yeah, absolutely.

Kevin King:

Just one other note I wanna make is a lot of people listen to this, if you have access to Helium 10. Helium 10 has a tool within it that you can actually go and you can and get some of this money back. It’ll help you create some of the forms and GETIDA will be the first to tell you, Hey, go do that first. You know, go do that first, cuz it’s not gonna cost you a dime, go get what you can use Helium 10. Then once the Helium 10’s got you, they can then let GETIDA come in and they’ll pick up all the scraps. And sometimes those scraps are like really, really big. So using those two in conjunction with each other can be an extremely powerful thing. So if you haven’t gone to GETIDA.com, make sure you do that, go to Helium 10 first. Get what you can use the tools. If you have access to Helium 10, because it’s not gonna, you know, GETIDA charges about a 25% recovery charge of absolutely. But it’s worth it, but go get what you can first for free, basically Helium 10. Try it yourself and then let them come behind you and take care of all the ones that you can’t get.

Rob:

Yeah. And we’re actually partners with Helium 10, just so everybody knows Refund Genie. We absolutely recommend you use that. Again, if you submit it yourself, we’ll see that you submitted it. We won’t resubmit it for you. But for some reason, if it gets kicked back from Amazon we’ll take a look at it. Maybe you filled it out incorrectly. Maybe we could help you with it and resubmit it. If we help you resubmit it, we’ll obviously charge a fee. But if you submit it yourself and we see that you submit it, we will not touch that. You keep all that money from Refund Genie. We’re on helium ten’s partnership page and everything. So we love Helium 10 and absolutely do it yourself and if you don’t, if you get too big, we’re happy to take over and help you with that,

Kevin King:

Rob. Thanks so much, man for your time.

Rob:

Thanks, Kevin, appreciate it.

Kevin King:

All right. We’re back with our next guest here at the Billion Dollar Seller Summit. I’ve got Matt and Ryan, Ryan Kramer. How are you doing man?

Ryan:

I’m doing well, Kevin, how are you?

Kevin King:

Good, Ryan, is this your first Billion Dollar Seller Summit to come to?

Ryan:

First one in person, been to two or three virtually. So I’ve been to all the ones virtually, which is nice to see people, not in the screen for the first time.

Kevin King:

And, and you just recently made a change, I think, right? What are you doing these days?

Ryan:

I did. I’m now head of marketing and growth over at First Choice Shipping.

Kevin King:

So First Choice is based in the New York area, right?

Ryan:

Correct. Brooklyn.

Kevin King:

Yep. And, and Brooklyn they’ve been around a while and they really specialize in helping e-commerce sellers, not just in the US, but like you said, all over the world. What is it about First Choice? That’s different. Why should someone take a look at them?

Ryan:

Yeah. So Matt was just telling me before this, he said anytime goods or services or movement cross border, no matter what level of business, if you’re a starter or if you’re an international expert and growing your business to nine figures, a lot of people have that headache of taxes, rebates, or any sort of like getting money back from the government if they’re sending goods into a different country. But with that headache, why we’re so important is because we put the customer first. I think having that hands-on approach, makes it very simple for people to get their goods into a different country. Actually, I learned about half of the top 1000 sellers aren’t even selling in different countries worldwide. So they’re selling one market and that’s it. So it’s a big growth opportunity for sellers around the world. As long as there’s no headache there. So they’re trying to make it simple, and straightforward. And I think that’s what we’re all here is trying to streamline processes, find where growth is in the world, and go from there.

Kevin King:

Awesome. And, and Matt this is like your first Billion Dollar Seller Summit, right?

Matt:

Yeah, first in person, second I think in total.

Kevin King:

Awesome. Well, I’m glad you’re here, but what are you looking for out of an event like this?

Matt:

You know, honestly, I think it’s just the meeting of all of the top people in the space. Like if you wanna know what’s going on, what’s working for others, and kind of share that knowledge, there’s no better place to be.

Kevin King:

You run some serious numbers in the Amazon space. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Matt:

Yeah. So outside of my personal stuff, we also run an agency where we’re pushing about 300 million a year in sales, on Amazon across like 40-45 brands. So a lot of volumes, a lot of knowledge, and work on just about every single category.

Kevin King:

So what’s something that you’re seeing out there? I mean, you’re running 300 million on your agency side, plus the stuff that you do personally, what’s something that you see and that people really need to pay attention to right now that’s just a lot of sellers are just like overlooking or maybe it’s something that’s coming that you know, that’s gonna catch everybody’s by surprise or I don’t know, what’s some good little nugget that you could share?

Matt:

Yeah, no, I think the biggest thing is really brand building on the platform as a whole, and on Amazon now for 13 years and you used to be able to just throw whatever the heck you wanted up and sell it. And I mean, honestly up until a few years ago, you could still do that very successfully. And now where we’re actually seeing that growth, like we can get products to a million dollars a month, but like getting from a million to two is almost impossible without that brand behind it. And now we’re launching sequential products under those brands and using that as kind of our leverage to scale out our width of customers that are coming in and also upselling them into our other products, which is kind of like the case study I shared at, I think, Helium 10 and Howards, where we took a single client from around 700,000 in revenue a month to about 4.5 million in six months with two new products.

Kevin King:

And what’s the name of that agency?

Matt:

Right Side Up.

Kevin King:

How do you spell that?

Matt:

Right Side Up

Kevin King:

Awesome. Yep. Well, gentlemen, I appreciate you coming on and I appreciate you being here.

Ryan:

Yeah. Thanks, Kevin.

Kevin King:

Norm Farrar is the next person sitting down here at the table on the AM/PM Podcast at the BDSS. Norm, how are you doing, man?

Norm:

I am doing awesome.

Kevin King:

I haven’t seen you, what’s been in like two weeks, three weeks or something like that.

Norm:

Yeah, we were freezing the last time I saw you.

Kevin King:

So I met Norm back in 2017 at the Illuminati event, which is a Helium 10 event. But it’s now called Helium 10 Elite, but in Cancun, and didn’t really get to know him there. You know, I just saw this guy with a beer and like, that guy looks interesting but didn’t really probably set five words to you or something the whole place there. But now that now, as we’ve gone to a lot of events found out, he’s a huge cigar aficionado. And so now we see each other all over the place. We Hangouts, and we’re doing a couple of little projects together. In fact, he and me and both of our wives just recently did an Alaskan cruise together where every night for nine nights in a row, I’ve never done this before nine nights in a row.

Kevin King:

It was cigars and Coke zeros on the deck of this cruise ship in Alaska. And you have to picture this. So this is a big cruise ship. And we’re cruising up in Alaska where it’s bloody cold. You know, it’s a summer, but it’s still pretty cold. And the smoking area is like the tailless ship. It’s like the back of the ship, you know? And the back of the ship is getting all this wind. And it’s like this one little area that you can go. And it’s like, it’s a very small area where you can go and it’s dripping drizzling. It’s like icebergs floating by. And we’re out there shivering. Like our teeth are chattering, smoking our cigars and drinking some Coke, zeros. And people are like, why don’t you drink coffee or something? Well, we like Coke zeros and shooting the, you know, just about business and life and everything. It was a ton of fun. It’s always good to see you, Norm.

Norm:

And you too, Kevin, we, yeah, we did have a lot of fun. And some of those nights, I don’t think you’re counting the nights we had two cigars.

Kevin King:

That’s true. That’s true. That’s true. Sometimes we actually did a second one. We were you know, that’s one of my favorite things about this kind of event is you come out and you meet people like yourself, you know, I would’ve never met you in real life somewhere else. So, but because we went to events you get to know people and, and yeah. Sometimes you make business partnerships. Sometimes you learn something from ’em, but other times you just hang out. And I was just telling the story earlier to Izabela and Michelle, that last night, we’re sitting there talking, you know, you and I have seen each other for, I don’t know how many times spend a lot of time together. And last night we’re sitting there talking about something and you’re like, you know what? I’ve got a guy for that.

Kevin King:

You know, I said something, you’re like, you know what? I got a guy for that, that I need to introduce you to, right? Something personal and something business, both. And you just don’t get that. If you don’t come out to this type of stuff, you gotta put yourself in the situations to create the opportunities. And that’s what a lot of people, I think, forget in the space is they just stay, be home. They just watch, you know, Lunch with Norm your great podcast, which is an awesome podcast three times a week that he does at noon Eastern time on Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays. So check that out if you haven’t checked that out, but they just watched that they don’t get out to the event. So why is it important to come to things like this?

Norm:

You know, education is one thing. Education especially at BDSS and I have to say it is a premium, awesome event. Whenever I talk about great events, I do talk about BDSS. But beyond education, it is networking. It’s getting to know people. You know what’s the difference between zoom and coming to a live event? It’s breaking bread. You don’t get the same experience sitting back and going into a networking room on zoom. When you come here and you can sit across from somebody and you can just have dinner with them, see what they’re like, see their personality. That’s a whole other ballgame and you build relationships and it’s all about your network. Like, you’re nothing without a network. You might think you could do it all your own, but you won’t, you need a network. And the more you come out to these, especially the advanced ones, you get to meet more advanced sellers. And that’s what I say is part of my success is just getting to know people like yourself.

Kevin King:

That’s expensive, I mean, some events are cheap, you know, four or 500 bucks. You know, Helium 10’s got a big event coming up that’s under a thousand dollars, which is gonna be a great event. But this event cost a little bit more than a thousand dollars. Quite a bit more, actually not a little bit more like six times more, plus your airfare, plus your hotel, plus your time commitment to come out. So what is it about something like this that makes it different than another event or should people just, they’re crazy for paying this kind of money? I put stuff on Facebook, I always get some, some smart comments, like yeah, billionaires, right? Yeah. Just you’re scamming people quit scamming people. What is it about this type of event that costs this much and there’s a reason it’s a high-end event? There’s a lot of costs that people don’t realize, but it also is a barrier to making sure that the right people are here. So what do you think about that?

Norm:

Well, I’ve always heard this and you have to believe in it. You have to invest in yourself. So a lot of the time there’s a lot of information. That’s out there in the marketplace. You can go to YouTube, you can go to social media channels if you want to do it for free, but you don’t know how accurate it is. Like at least on our podcast, we try to get, you know, experts in that know what it’s all about, but you never know where you’re getting that information from when you pay for events. Well, it’s great for somebody starting out and getting to know people, you build your network there, but when you go to the next level and then to the next level, I mean, we’ve gone to some $20,000 – $24,000 events together. There is quality people there to increase your network.

Norm:

And in fact, I was talking about this the other day about taking the event, the Illuminati event and saying, oh, who did I meet there? And where did that lead me? Where go to the next event? Like Elena Sarahs, I met her there. I met Todd Snyder there. Of course you and Manny. I mean, Manny, Gui, and your relationship really came from that event. And then you take a look at where did they get introduced to? Who did we get introduced to? Man, it is worth the money. You know, it is just worth the money, but if you don’t have it right up front, then just go out and seek, you know, like a meetup, go out to meetups and meet people. There are other events out there. But if you can go, when you get to that midrange and you want to get to the next level, I highly recommend coming out to a more advanced event like this.

Kevin King:

So you host the Lunch with Norm podcast. Yeah. Which is an awesome podcast. Check that out look it up on YouTube. You can find it on all the podcast channels. On Facebook. You talk to a lot of people, every week you’re talking to a lot of people from all walks of the e-commerce kind of field. What’s something that you’re seeing that’s Hey, you know, that rang a bell with me. Sellers need to be paying attention to this. Now, if they’re not paying attention to something, or haven’t been doing something where, where you, it could be a trend, it could be a tactic. It could be, what do you think that would be? What people need to really sit up and pay attention to?

Norm:

Well, there are two things, and one is just their listing optimization, thier listings. People think it’s one and done, and it’s constantly evolving. You have to go, you have to check out your competitors. You have to go and check out your competitor’s listings, go to Google, and check it out everywhere. And then the second thing. So check out the Amazon internal tools. Most of them are under the catalog, but the other thing is don’t stick to just Amazon. There are all sorts of other platforms and retailers, but I’m going back to retail. I’m taking a look at the Mom and Pops. I’m going into the bricks-and-mortar. They can make up a ton of sales. Much more than Amazon.

Kevin King:

Those of you listening. If you haven’t been to an event, get out to the Sell and Scale event, Helium 10’s event that’s happening in September in Las Vegas. You can check that out. I’ll be out there. I think norms seeing if you can clear his schedule and maybe he’ll be out there, but a lot of other, it’s gonna be a great event more than a thousand people I believe they’re expecting and just get out and network rub elbows with other people that like you, and it can really help you in your business.

Norm:

What I like about that one too, is that it is more affordable. It’s roughly around a thousand bucks and there are a ton of speakers. I don’t know how many there are.

Kevin King:

Yeah, I’m not sure exactly, 30, 40 something like that.

Norm:

Something like that. So there’s a lot of knowledge that you can get from going to an event like that. And if there’s a thousand people or 1500 people in the crowd, start talking.

Kevin King:

Exactly. You never know what’s gonna come outta the hallways.

Norm:

Exactly.

Kevin King:

Well, Norm I really appreciate it, man, looking forward. I know you’re not speaking at this one. You spoke at previous Billion Dollar Seller Summits, but you’re just here to absorb, and just be a sponge. So it, it’s great seeing you, man. And thanks for coming on.

Norm:

All right, and good luck this weekend.

Kevin King:

Appreciate it. Ben Weber, thanks for sitting down here at the AM/PM Podcast table. Welcome to another BDSS for you.

Ben:

Thank you. I’m happy to be here.

Kevin King:

So you’ve, you’ve come in the past as an attendee. How many times have you been as an attendee?

Ben:

I’ve been to two in-person and one or two virtuals.

Kevin King:

And then this time you’re actually speaking, right?

Ben:

Yeah. Apparently, people wanted to hear something.

Kevin King:

So how does that feel actually going from attendee to speaker? So is it like extra pressure now or is it extra like, okay? I can’t just relax.

Ben:

It is definitely more pressure. I just wanna make sure that I’m actually bringing real actual information to people and make sure that it’s good enough to live up to the reputation and the experiences I’ve had here so far.

Kevin King:

Yeah. So there’s like a standard, I guess there’s like a bar here at this event and so what are you talking about?

Ben:

I’ll be talking about hiring and building a team to scale.

Kevin King:

And you got some really interesting things that you do with your company. I took a look at your website for one of your companies and I was just laughing off I’m I was just like the way you hire people and the tongue in cheek and the pictures. And I mean, it’s, it’s really, really cool. What you do. How did you come up with that system or is that just evolve over time or?

Ben:

It kind of evolved over time. We looked at what we didn’t like and what we liked about what other companies had done and kind of decided we wanted to do something truly original because to build the culture that we wanted with the employees that we have, we needed to have a website and have a hiring process that matched the team and the culture that we wanted to build.

Kevin King:

What’s the hardest thing you think for like e-commerce sellers that are starting out, you know, with five, 10,000 bucks and they’re doing outta their house, and then they’re successful? And then they gotta like a holy cow. I gotta hire somebody and then hire some more people. And then I gotta go get aware. What’s that like for like it’s scary or is it challenging?

Ben:

It is challenging. It’s a lot of fun, but until you realize you have to have systems, you have to have processes in place. There’s no way to train people. There’s no way to scale. And I think that’s the hardest part, like the, a lot of the training that you can watch and listen to, and see, talk about how to sell, but people don’t really tell you how to grow and manage. Like I’m about to stick out. What should I do? And things like that. It’s just not as that level of information or that type of information isn’t shared at the same level as kind of the entry-level stuff.

Kevin King:

It’s not as sexy. I don’t think it’s not the fun stuff. It’s the, it’s the get down in the weeds and dealing with people and hiring and firing, and it’s almost, and sometimes people are afraid to make us mistake, you know, just like they’re afraid to make they have paralysis by analysis when they’re trying to pick their first product or their first couple products. They’re like, am I making the right decision? I’m investing my life, my life savings. It’s kind of similar when you’re hiring employees, is this person gonna be able to do the job, right? Are they gonna be able to actually do what I’ve been doing or I’m just gonna have to babysit them and fix all their mistakes all the time? I just do it myself. Right? How do you get over that mental block that a lot of people might have?

Ben:

The same way you do with your first product. You kind of just have to treat it as a learning experience. Like the first hire may not go, right? And if that’s the case, you have to kind of get back on the horse and use it as that caused me money, but it was a lesson learned. And from that, I’ve learned, that this is the type of person I want to hire versus what I hired at that time and what kind of traits and characteristics of the employee that you actually care about. And that actually is going to make it so that they can do the job and can learn what you want them to do.

Kevin King:

Awesome. Well, Ben, I’m so happy to have you here. I’m looking forward to your presentation. I’ve seen it. It’s really good. I think people gonna really enjoy it.

Ben:

Thank you. I appreciate it.

Kevin King:

Look who it is. It’s Bradley Sutton. Bradley, you’re like you bouncing everywhere. One minute. You’re sending me pictures of eating pizza in Brooklyn. And then like two days later, you’re sitting on a beach in Hawaii and then like–

Bradley:

Well, I don’t know about that part.

Kevin King:

A few days later, you’re in the Maldives doing Maldives version 22, for making keyword strategy.

Bradley:

And now I’m here in Austin.

Kevin King:

And now you’re here in Austin with the Billion Dollar Seller Summit. What’s up, man?

Bradley:

It’s great to be here. I don’t know how many virtuals and in-person there’s been, but I’ve been to all of them. I think.

Kevin King:

So it’s six, this is number six. This is the fourth in person and there have been two virtuals. So, and I think you’ve been to or participated in all of them I think. Sometimes I remember the first one you were sleeping. Out the F1 track. It’s a part of what we do in this is not just presentation, but we have a networking day, this, that we actually have a day and a half of networking stuff, some pretty cool stuff happening on Tuesday that Bradley that you’re gonna wanna stay awake for it’s. It’s pretty cool. It’s like a little amazing race kind of meets Amazon kind of thing. It’s pretty cool. So I remember the first one Bradley. He is bouncing all over the place and we’re out at the F one track and people are racing, you know, Manny, Guillermo, and that’s back where they’re still on Helium 10, and everybody’s racing cars, and we have lunch and everybody’s chowing down on this lunch.

Kevin King:

And I look over and here’s Bradley had found a little corner and was curled up on the couch. Just sleeping because he had been bouncing all over the place doing meetups and everything. But man, I’m, I’m happy to have you out here. You’re here on behalf of Helium 10. Helium 10’s one of the sponsors of the Billion Dollar Seller Summit. What do you think is cool about coming to this? You said you’ve been to them all. What is it that you like about the Billion Dollar Seller Summit?

Bradley:

Well, first of all, you’re probably one of the best event coordinators, you know, you and mark out here, like you mentioned the F1 thing and every year it’s different things. This was my first ever time ax throwing. And now I do that all the time, like back home, like I never would even know that there was such thing as ax throwing if it wasn’t for doing that here and you always put on a good show and that’s the first part, because you can go to a show with good people, but if everything’s Mickey mouse, the way it’s operated and stuff, it’s like not, you’re not gonna have a good time, but this is on point and then the caliber of people that come here, it’s just amazing. You know? So I love coming here and meeting people, I’ve met probably a good 10, 15 people that eventually were on the podcast, but where I met them was here at one of the Billion Dollar Seller Summit. So just, just love, love coming out here.

Kevin King:

I mean, this is an expensive event you know, it’s a pricey ticket, so what is it that someone’s gotta be thinking of? Like, why the heck would someone pay five or six grand plus their airfare plus their hotel to actually come to something like this? I mean, why there’s so much free stuff online. There’s so much YouTube training. There’s free summits. Why the heck would you actually even consider going to an event that’s this expensive?

Bradley:

Yeah. The kind of stuff you get at an event like this is not what people say and podcast, you’re not gonna get this on the Serious Seller’s Podcast, you know, or others, because as matter of fact, the stuff that people say here is under NDA. So literally by contract, they’re not supposed to be mentioning these things, you know, outside. And, and it is just different when, when you’re rubbing shoulders with like seven or eight-figure sellers, you know, you can’t do that on a free YouTube video when you’re about three, four drinks in with another or seven-figure seller, they’re a little bit more liberal with the kind of secrets they give out. And that you just can’t replace that you know, with a virtual event or online, unless it is kind of cool during the pandemic, I know you started the virtual event and you actually had these like breakout rooms. Almost with virtual tables, round tables. So it kind of like duplicated that, but for the most part virtual events, you really can’t duplicate the kind of networking that you can do at event like this.

Kevin King:

So what’s something out there you’re seeing right now in the Amazon space where people just some mistake or some sort of thing that people are just really messing up people, whether they’re a new listener listening to this, or they’re an experienced seller, what’s something that you’re seeing that’s maybe shifting in the industry or something that people need to pay attention to or something that you’re seeing. A lot of people goof on that they need to wake up.

Bradley:

Yeah. Just one interesting thing is, I don’t know of it, I wanna say I use the word lazy, but I get that vibe nowadays. You know, like it seems like four or five years ago, people are just hustling and grinding and trying to figure stuff out and just asking questions nonstop. But like half the questions I see sometimes in the Facebook groups is, oh, you know, who can I hire to take care of this for me? And yeah, if you’re an eight, nine-figure seller, you can’t be doing stuff on your own, but I’m seeing like brand new people from like almost day one, like wanting to hire out to do like their product launching or to even find them a product or to manage their PPC. And I’m like, yeah, you know, eventually you have to build a team very important, but I don’t know what’s going on. Where people, I don’t know if they’re scared or if it’s laziness, but I think too many sellers are, are trying to like hire out and they don’t even know what they’re doing in the first place. So like, I don’t even know how you’re gonna be able to judge who you are hiring when you don’t know if they’re doing a good or bad job since you’ve never done some of this stuff yourself.

Kevin King:

And that’s one of the things that we cover here with the Billion Dollar Seller Summit, it’s we actually have someone speaking about hiring and the processes and how to hire properly, because yeah, it’s not sexy. It’s not something that a lot, everybody always wants to know the latest hack or the latest trick or whatever, but that’s when you get to the 7, 8, 9 figure level, you got to know those things as well. And so that’s something that is very important. And so the events like this, I cherry pick the people we have the Helium 10 Elite where we have people come on every month. You and I both go to a lot of events and we know who can deliver. And because we put the pressure on here, I’ve seen all the presentations and it’s not the same old stuff like you said and they’re, they’re up in their game. Some of these people are like spending, someone told me they spend a hundred hours on their presentation, just like another person told me they’ve run through it like 13 times and like tweaking it, tweaking it, tweaking it, tweaking it. And then, you know, sometimes I and you just get up there and wing it.

Kevin King:

They’re like, it’s important. And it’s I’m very selective and who I, I choose to speak. So the content is, is topnotch, but speaking of top notch, I mean, Helium 10 is doing an event in just a few weeks in Las Vegas Sell and Scale. Or as you told me earlier, S3

Bradley:

Like what’s S3 like, well, there’s three SS in there. I’m tired of writing, Sell and Scale Summit all together. So let’s just shorten it.

Kevin King:

Yeah. So, I’m looking really forward to that. Helium 10’s really trying to make this, not just another Prosper Show, another convention, but there’s nothing wrong with prosper. It’s a great show. But they’re really trying to put a spin. I mean, you’re gonna be doing Zumba classes. Janelle’s gonna be there doing yoga. You got Nelly. You got Gary Vaynerchuk coming in, who knows what the hell he’s gonna have to be talking about how much cussing he’s gonna be doing? You think I cuss and you’re gonna have to like–.You got Neil Patel, you got, I don’t know how many speakers, 30 or 40 of the top speakers that are out there in the space, and it’s organized in a unique way. I know a lot of people already have their tickets, but if you don’t have a ticket, you need to come out to, if you’ve never been to an event, or if it’s been a while since you’ve been to an event, this is the place you need to go. I mean, it’s gonna be an amazing event. And I’m, I’m really looking forward to it. What, what are some things that people may not know or something that like, maybe some little insider thing, like, Hey, publicized this, but on this day, this is cool things happening.

Bradley:

Well aside from just, you know, having these different speakers where you come to a Billion Dollar Seller Summit, some of the best speakers in the industry, you go to a Prosper Shows, some great speakers there, but we want to do something a little bit different. We’re gonna have some speakers that, that are speaking here, Billion Dollar Seller Summit, you know, some prosperous speakers, but then, like you said, Gary Vee, Neil Patel people that you’ve never seen at an Amazon event because we didn’t want it just to be about Amazon and one of the cool things is it’s actually sponsored the principal sponsor is Walmart that, you know, they’re really pushing, you know, their marketplace. And so they want to meet in person. So think of like an apple genius bar.

Bradley:

Walmart’s gonna be there. And you can like, just go up there. Like you, maybe you haven’t been able to get your Walmart account approved. They might be able to approve you on the spot. You know, you’ve got some questions about WFS, that’s the version of FBA. You can ask that department on the spot, in addition to Walmart, even Amazon advertising is gonna be there. They’re gonna have like a genius bar. They’re gonna have actual Amazon advertising employees. And you can ask them questions about what you want to know. And then we get a little bit of a different vibe too, on the speakers we’ll have some time probably a good half of these speakers, not you, you know, you’re a solo act, but we actually have two competitors on the stage at the same time, like people who are both like service providers or experts in one kind of genre, like for example, will have two listing optimization experts on this not taking turns, but like literally sharing the stage.

Bradley:

So sometimes I think in these conferences, sometimes people like, okay, yeah, here’s this person saying something, I respect them, but maybe there’s a little bit of doubt. Like, okay, well, who’s fact checking, you know, like they could just be talking stuff and I’m gonna take it all in because they’re smarter than me, but you know, is it really a hundred percent accurate? Now you’re not gonna have that kind of idea because you’re gonna have somebody who’s a literal competitor of the other person. And so if that person’s BSing, the other, person’s gonna call them, right? Oh, no, I’m sorry. That’s not the way things work with A+ Content, bro. You know, so you’ve never really seen that at like an Amazon event. So we’re just trying to do a little bit different I go to conferences a lot prosper show like you said is great. I’ve been a seller con it’s great Billion Dollar Seller Summit’s great. I went to powwow a couple of months ago. I love going to conferences, nothing against those. We just want to do something different and in a Helium 10 way.

Kevin King:

It’s gonna be like more than a thousand people are expected, right?

Bradley:

It’s gonna, baring, knock on wood that there’s, no kind of, Omicron theta version 75, that comes now and then, but yeah if everybody who says they’re gonna come come, then should be, it is gonna be over a thousand. Yeah.

Kevin King:

So if I’m on the edge and I’m thinking about coming, I go to sellandscalesummit.com, sellandscalesummit.com. And is there any kind of code I can use to get a little discount or anything?

Bradley:

Yeah. You can use S3 BS the BS for Bradley Sutton not the other BS S3BS100. And that S3 is what you learned about the other day. So that’ll save you a hundred dollars off.

Kevin King:

Awesome. Bradley man stoked to have you here. It’s gonna be some great times looking forward to seeing you again in Vegas in just a few short weeks.

Bradley:

Yep. All right. Thanks a lot for having me.

Kevin King:

All right. We’re back here with our next guest at the Billion Dollar Seller Summit here in Austin, Texas, we just wrapped up the speaker meeting and we’re getting ready to do the first welcome cocktail hour, but I’ve got another guest here from Ampd. How you doing man, introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what Ampd is

Tyler:

Doing well, thanks so much for having me, Kevin. My name is Tyler Greg head of operations at Ampd. Ampd is a Google ads to Amazon service. So we have a technology platform. First of its kind to ever be able to connect Google and Amazon together, allowing two systems that have never been able to communicate to each other can now talk to each other through Ampds, providing full attribution, full keyword level data and automation on your Google campaigns.

Kevin King:

And that’s spelled Ampd so not the traditional way, but Ampd if you wanna look them up. But one of the cool things about Ampd is that, you know, a lot of you know, that there’s the new attribution where you can get that extra 10% back for sending outside traffic to Amazon, where you can run ads on Google. And it works on social media and some other places too. But what Ampd specializes in is, you know, setting up Google ads sometimes can be a little daunting, cuz it is pretty sophisticated programming. It can be very powerful, but for someone that’s new to it, it can be a little bit overwhelming and it’s easy to mess up something that can just burn some money really, really fast. So what amp has done is they’ve actually just simplified that process and made it almost dummy proof to where you can just really go in there and you can link straight to your Amazon account, start running your Google ads right away. And you may get a credit, I believe still with Google ads, just for signing up with them. And then it tracks everything. So you can see exactly you get the back side, cuz if you just post a link up, say on Facebook, you see the Amazon side of things, but you don’t have the real data from the primary source. And so they link everything together and it’s really, really powerful that I said that. Right, right.

Tyler:

Yeah. That’s really well said the way I like to describe it is a one-track path through Google ads. Google ads, is obviously an incredible platform, but it’s not built for Amazon sellers. It’s built for traditional DSC stores. So what we’ve built is basically Google ads specifically for Amazon sellers, understanding the nuances of how to actually successfully send Google traffic to Amazon and actually see what’s working so you can actually scale it up.

Kevin King:

Awesome. What’s something that you’re seeing in the sellers that you’re working with out there at Ampds, specifically the Amazon sellers, that’s something they need to start really paying attention to, or maybe something they’ve been doing wrong. And if they just make this little tweak, it can just make a huge difference. Can you share some actionable thing that the audience can actually take away from this? The people that aren’t here at the Billion Dollar Seller Summit?

Tyler:

Definitely. One of the things that we’ve always loved about external traffic is the ability to send it to wherever you want. And we’ve always taught, to send it to your Amazon storefront because you can build a page without competition. When you think about your product listing page, there’s a lot of competition on that page, but what’s actually really cool just happens this last week August 10th. So I guess that was last Monday, we’ve been working with Amazon’s ads team for about six months on this to where we said, Hey, we’re helping so many people and sellers bring in Google ads, and traffic, but the second they hit the product listing page. Amazon shows a widget with three competitive products at the top of the page. Like that’s not fair to the brand. You’re trying to encourage external traffic. Why are you then immediately reselling that and trying to sell ads on that traffic?

Tyler:

And so over six months of working with Amazon, the Ampd team, and Amazon together, we’re able to get that widget removed for external traffic that is properly tagged with attribution. So now if you’re a seller and you’re thinking about how you get more traffic to your page and traffic that converts, if you send traffic with an attribution tag on it, to your products listing page, there’s less competition than if you send that from a sponsored ad. Now don’t get me wrong, Amazon ads is that’s where dollar one goes to, but now dollar two can go to external traffic and if you have attribution taking on there with the 10% brand referral bonus, you also get less competition on your product listing pages.

Kevin King:

So what kind of difference are you seeing some of the people that have used your service? What are some results that you’re seeing as far as RoAS and things like that?

Tyler:

Sure. So we see RoAS, ACoS, or whatever you want to call it all over the board. Sometimes 5% pre-brand referral bonus, which is a negative ACoS, which is pretty incredible. And sometimes we’ll see it higher too. But what the biggest thing about external traffic is as Amazon’s encouraging it, and they’re giving you the 10% on average brand referral for a bonus it’s additional sales that you wouldn’t otherwise get. So when you’re thinking about how do you continue growing your business, or maybe we’re coming out of the kind of pandemic error, when so much went on to e-commerce and sales are slowing, you have to find new channels of growth and Google provides the next best product intense search engine right behind Amazon. So it’s a great place to find new customers and new sales that maybe you’ve tapped out what you’re able to get on Amazon. You gotta keep growing. It’s a great channel for, to do that.

Kevin King:

I saw some statistics, correct me if I’m wrong. That’s something like 25% of all Amazon searches start on Google.

Tyler:

The last time I saw that stat, it was 34% and I just saw someone Google it last week on a call with me. And they fact-checked me and it was like 34-33%. It’s a tough number to actually measure. But the point of it is it’s pretty high. It’s like 25, 30, 35%. It’s a lot of traffic is still coming from Google.

Kevin King:

Awesome. Well, Tyler, I’m happy to have you guys here. Thanks, man.

Tyler:

Awesome. Thanks, Kevin.

Kevin King:

Hey Burak, thanks for sitting down here at the AM/PM Podcast table at the Billion Dollar Seller Summit. How are you doing, man?

Burak:

I’m great. So excited to be in Austin.

Kevin King:

You are one of the sponsors here at the event, and you’re also sponsoring Helium 10’s event Sell and Scale. Your company Forceget is kind of an unusual name there, but one that you can remember why don’t you tell everybody what you do?

Burak:

Absolutely. you know, my background, I lived in China for eight years, I’ve done a lot of sourcing, a lot of trade shows, and all of my customers wanted me to help them with the international shipments. And seven years ago, I started Forceget digital freight forwarder. And we are the only Amazon FBA logistic company now with an MUCC license that offers real-time tracking on our platform.

Kevin King:

Awesome. So shipping, that’s an interesting space to be in right now with all the craziness that happened with COVID and some of that’s settled down a little bit. But has it really actually settled down or is it still, still just a very fluid, crazy place to be right now?

Burak:

You know, last two years most of the delays and most of the problems in the industry were like organic. It was more about like supply and demand issue. What we see now this year with the port congestions with the strike, with the truckers all the prices increase with the inflation in the economy, in the United States and the rest of the world. Most of the craziness still continues in a different way. We see that the container prices are coming down, but the delays keep going. And then, you know, what is going on, especially in the far east you know, political issues between China and Taiwan started in new issues in the Chinese ports with the departure and the arrivals, because there are a lot of like military activities happening right now.

Kevin King:

So what’s something that people can do right now, if they’re affected by what’s happening with Taiwan or they’re affected by high rates, what are some good options that they can do?

Burak:

I really think that you know planning their inventory and now being the brand owner and on Amazon, or e-commerce, requires a lot of planning, especially with the supply chain now. A couple of years ago, door-to-door deliveries were taking included production time, may up to four to five to 60 days. Now we see five months. So there are a lot of other facts that people need to be careful about like such as cash flow inventory management, and planning their inventory, especially for quarters coming. You know, August is a great time to place the new order right after the fourth quarter, right after Christmas Chinese year is gonna start this year pretty early. We are expecting the 20th to the 25th of January. Most of the factories will be going to vacation holidays. So definitely place an order in advance planning and adding at least two to four weeks of additional time for the inventory is a key to not running out of inventory and not running out of stock.

Kevin King:

What’s something people can do? You know, a lot of people that are in this business, they’re new to shipping, they’re new to maximizing a container. What’s a common mistake you see where people do, where they could just really get their cost per unit for their, for their freight down. If they just did, maybe it’s a change in a slight change in the packaging or the way the cases get to put together or do a little bit of calculus, on how something goes into a container to maximize that can really drive cost down. Can you tell us a little trick or something that people should be looking at on that?

Burak:

Absolutely. One of the things, I think if you’re a small seller or like a new starter, definitely trying not to ship anything with the pallets, just try to lose cartons, otherwise, you’ll be losing at least 10 to 15% on the volume. If you’re shipping a full container if you’re not oversized items try to target ship to the west coast instead of the east coast, if you’re a seller in the United States. One of the hacks that actually I will be sharing in the Billion Dollar Seller Summit is the ship from address.

Kevin King:

Now, Forceget, you guys are kind of unique and where you have some pretty unique software where people can track and like they can see where the ship is, you know, it’s 300 miles off the coast of Hawaii or whatever. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Burak:

Absolutely. Digitalization is something that every industry is highly affected and there is great software in the world such as Helium 10, like Force get where you can maximize your profit bar, and more importantly, understanding your grand count of where your immense is located at as a 3PL when your shipment is gonna coming in. And what we are working on one of the keys is the AI technology that we are planning to actually you don’t need to worry about anymore your inventory when you’re gonna place an order. Our platform is gonna track how long it takes for door-to-door delivery. How long is it’s gonna take your manufacturing time? Basically, our platform is starting offering you free of charge when you need to be placed in order, according to the data that we are actually keeping in the background, and this is gonna be I think really important in a couple of years where the aggregators are aggressive in the market, they want to acquire more brands.

Burak:

And I think managing your inventory never runs out of stock. It takes a lot of time and a lot of detailed orientation. So a platform like ours is gonna help you to track your shipments, track how long it’s gonna take, which port or which even vessel which ship line is the fastest slowest, so that our platform will automatically start giving you recommendations when you should be shipping, where you should be shipping, and you might see the prediction, how long it’s gonna take, but all those predictions is gonna be very accurate because it’s all about the data.

Kevin King:

Awesome. Well, Burak, I hear the music starting. I think the party’s about to start here at the Billion Dollar Seller Summit. So thanks for stopping by the table, man. I really appreciate it, it’s great to have you here.

Burak:

Thanks for having me.

Kevin King:

When you get out to events like the Billion Dollar Seller Summit, or the upcoming Sell and Scale in Las Vegas the Helium 10’s event, you get to meet amazing people. Like what you just heard. It’s one of the best things you can do for your business. Get out, listen to some of the presentations, but more importantly than that mix and mingle with the people you just heard who just shared an amazing amount of information with you on this podcast live from the Billion Dollar Seller Summit this week. I hope you got a lot of good value from this. Hopefully, I’ll see you at a future event, hopefully at Sell and Scale in Las Vegas next month, or maybe I’ll see you at a future Billion Dollar Seller Summit next year, but anyway, enjoy the rest of your week or your weekend or wherever you may be.

Kevin King:

I’m looking forward to seeing you again next week. But before we leave, I’ve always got a little golden nugget of wisdom for you. So today I’ve got this one, the teacher learns more than the student. The author learns more than the reader, but the speaker learns more than the attendee, the way to learn is by doing. Once again, the teacher almost always learns more than their student. The author always learns more than the person reading what they wrote and the speaker at an event like Billion Dollar Seller Summit, or Sell and Scale learns more than the attendees. The way to learn is by doing, see you next week.