The Ecomcrew Ecommerce Podcast

Latest Episodes:

E156: Diversifying Ecommerce Businesses Beyond Amazon US Jun 21, 2018

Show notes

"...I think under a million dollars, personally. I don't think that you should be trying to 'squeeze that lemon' much harder until you've re ally optimized Amazon. I think once you get beyond a million dollars, give or take, in sales that's when you really need to start looking at other sales channels, whether its outside of Amazon.com and other marketplaces within Amazon or other sales channels totally outside of Amazon."- Dave Bryant on evaluating when an ecommerce business should diversify and get sales off of Amazon US

Amazon US is widely regarded as the ecommerce platform to be in for sellers online. However, an ecommerce business that's growing at a steady pace will eventually be confronted with the need to expand and diversify outside of Amazon US.

Dave and I both agree that ecommerce businesses below the million dollar mark should not jump into diversification too quickly. "I think under a million dollars, personally. I don't think that you should be trying to 'squeeze that lemon' much harder until you've really optimized Amazon. I think once you get beyond a million dollars, give or take, in sales that's when you really need to start looking at other sales channels, whether its outside of Amazon.com and other marketplaces within Amazon, or other sales channels totally outside of Amazon.," Dave says.

However, that's not to say that online entrepreneurs earning below seven figures should not do anything to boost their Amazon profile. List building off of Amazon and having an intuitive and user-friendly website can go a long way in increasing sales.

If you have reached that threshold, however; then it's time to rethink your strategy. Having all your eggs in the Amazon.com basket can be risky, especially since your account can easily be suspended for one reason or the other. If this happens, you will need to have another way to liquidate inventory.

On that note, ecommerce businesses may also do well to explore one or two of the following verticals:

Amazon Canada
Ebay
Niche type platforms like HOUZZ
Amazon UK
Amazon Europe (particularly Germany)

The platforms above have been ranked according to a number of factors — dealing with taxes, ability to do Fulfillment by Amazon, cost of shipping.

Other resources mentioned:

How to Lose Money Chasing Champagne Dreams of Retail Distribution

Thanks for listening to this episode! If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below. Happy selling!

E155: Where to Start with Building a Product Brand - Under the Hood with Richard Phillips Jun 18, 2018

Show notes

Building a product brand is no easy task. When you don't have any experience selling physical products, where do you start?

Richard Phillips is facing that dilemma. Richard has been in the affiliate marketing business and his shift into actually selling a physical product to make money has proven to be very challenging.

Richard and I have a lot in common, one of which is the fact that we both got burned when Google dropped the hammer on affiliate marketing years ago. Just like me, he also realized that the way to make money sustainably is to actually offer something worthy of people's money, and his idea of building a brand selling quality products was born.

In this episode Richard and I talk about how to best approach building a solid product brand. Some conversation highlights:

How to handle physical inventory, i.e., how to accurately forecast how much inventory to order and avoiding running out of stock
The pitfalls of relying on data from product research apps
How to get market share in a very competitive niche
Which one to focus on--product development or marketing
How much money to allocate on product development and marketing
Maximizing an email list and decreasing cost per email

If you enjoyed listening to our conversation and would like to be featured in your own Under the Hood episode, just fill up an application form here. We will contact you for further details.

Resources mentioned:

EcomCrew Premium Under the Hood BuzzSumo Ask Us Anything!

Thanks for listening! Until the next one, happy sellling.

E154: How to Hire Quality Filipino Virtual Assistants with John Jonas of OnlineJobs.ph Jun 14, 2018

Show notes

OnlineJobs.ph is a database of Filipino workers with a wide variety of skill sets. It has proven to be an invaluable resource for our company as many of the talented people now working for our company were found using the site.

Our guest for today's episode is John Jonas, the founder of OnlineJobs.ph. He and I talk about how he turned a significant business need into something that's helping hundreds of ecommerce entrepreneurs and freelance workers alike.

Here are some of the highlights:

What OnlineJobs.ph is and how it became one of the largest Filipino online job sites with over half a million resumes in its database
Why a series of interviews done via email is more effective that a Skype interview
The reason why many Filipino VAs suddenly "disappear" and how to avoid this from occuring

The last point underscores the key takeaway from this episode. According to John, success in hiring someone from the Philippines hinges on trust. You need to let them know that you're there to help them succeed in their job. "It's really important that you build their trust. I know that often we think, 'Oh, I don't know if I could trust this person.' They think the same thing and their feeling is stronger than yours," he explains.

Resources mentioned:

Ask Us Anything! OnlineJobs.ph Our Philippines Team - Hiring and Maintaining a Team of Rockstar VAs

Thanks for listening to this episode! If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below. Happy selling!

E153: How to Get Amazon Product Reviews in 2018 Jun 11, 2018

Show notes

In October 2016 Amazon laid down a rule that's a double edged sword--incentivized reviews are no longer allowed. On the one hand, it gives sellers with higher quality products a more level playing field, but on the other hand, it makes getting genuine reviews increasingly hard.

In this episode Dave and I talk about what you can do to generate reviews after Amazon banned incentivized reviews. We talk about all the possible ways to get reviews, i.e., legal ways, illegal ways, and those we think might be in the "gray area". We're not in any way encouraging you to use the "black hat" and "gray hat" ways of getting reviews--we simply want to give you some awareness and it's up to you to decide which strategies you want to use in your own business.

The review strategies we discuss in this episode are all taken from Dave's blog post on How to Get Amazon Product Reviews in 2018. We also discuss which methods we actually use in our own businesses to provide examples.

The strategies that we discuss in detail are the following:

Amazon Early Reviewer Program
Request Reviews from Customers Who Have Left Positive Seller Feedback
Request Reviews from Customers You've Provided Customer Service To
Friend and Acquaintance Reviews
Product Inserts
Discounted Products
Launching Products to an Email List
Review Grooming – How Small Sellers Dominate Large Sellers

From the list you can clearly see which ones are definitely illegal in Amazon's TOS, but ironically those are the ones that are easiest to do. While getting reviews gets definitely tougher, keep in mind that the risks of using black hat strategies are far too great and the end results too costly.

Resources mentioned:

EcomCrew AMA Update on customer reviews How to Get Amazon Product Reviews in 2018

Do you have any questions about this episode? Just leave a comment down below or leave us a voice message.

Thanks for listening! Until the next one, happy selling.

E152: New Amazon Developments Jun 07, 2018

Show notes

Amazon is the 800-pound gorilla in ecommerce and when they announce something new, it's bound to make the waves. But just in case Amazon news missed your inbox, Dave and I are here to recap them for you.

This will be a recurring episode in the podcast with Dave and I regularly updating you with big and exciting announcements from Amazon. This series is going to be chock-full of value even if you're not selling on Amazon, as it seems that almost everything Amazon does tends to affect all of ecommerce.

In this episode Dave and I talk about the following updates:

2018 Boost with FBA event on June 20th in New Orleans
Inventory Performance Index and how to optimize your inventory
Amazon App Store
Amazon remarketing data
Amazon media group
New Amazon video ads

In conjunction with Amazon updates, we're also excited to announce new stuff from EcomCrew.

As part of our commitment to add new content every month, we will be releasing a course on Facebook Messenger in July. Sign up for an EcomCrew Premium membership to get access to this when it launches, plus access to ALL of our content--all of our courses, talks, webinars, spreadsheets, contacts, etc.

If you're not sure about joining us yet but you need help with your business, just go to AMA (Ask Me Anything), ask us whatever question you have and I (or Dave) will answer your question and give you advice for free.

Resources mentioned:

Ask Me Anything EcomCrew Premium What is Amazon's Inventory Performance Index & How Is It Calculated?

Thanks for listening to this episode! If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below. Happy selling!

E151: SEO Tactics for eCommerce with Katrina McKinnon Jun 04, 2018

Show notes

Getting into ecommerce is tough--it's a low margin business and it's saturated with competition from big and small names alike. In order to break into the game you need to have a lot of resources, with cash being one of the most important.

But when Katrina McKinnon started her ecommerce business 10 years ago, she didn't have a lot of money. There were already big names operating in her niche and not having money for paid traffic is a huge disadvantage. So she did what she knew she can do well--attract organic traffic using excellent content.

In today's episode Katrina shares with us some SEO techniques she used to drive traffic to her content over the years in her business. These techniques are so effective that her business was able to afford her a nice house, nice cars, and good education for her kids--all through organic traffic.

Here are some conversation points:

How Katrina and I met
Her background and how she started in ecommerce
How Google is moving away from plain old search results
How to leverage different types of content to get to the first page of Google's search results
Image pack and featured snippets

Aside from being an SEO expert, Katrina also works on connecting business owners with virtual assistants who are vetted and trained in ecommerce. She runs eCommerce University where aspiring virtual assistants learn about ecommerce. Successful graduates of the program are then vetted and listed on eCommerce Expert where business owners can hire them. If you're in need of someone to help you in your business without having to train them in ecommerce yourself, check out eCommerce Expert.

Resources mentioned:

Facebook Messenger Webinar EcomCrew Premium Schema App

Thanks for listening to this episode! Until the next one, happy selling.

E150: Rebuilding a Million Dollar Company - 12 Month Update May 31, 2018

Show notes

Last year Dave set out on a goal to rebuild another million dollar company in a span of one year. It has been a little more than 12 months since he set out with that goal, and today we have him on the podcast to talk about his results. Did he make it to that $1 million mark? Let's find out!

But first, here's a bit of a backstory. In October 2016 Dave sold his first ecommerce company, which was doing just under $2 million in revenue per year. He had a number of reasons for selling his company but one of them was that he felt it would be easier to recreate a million dollar company using the knowledge he's gained running his first company over the past few years. He detailed his year-long journey building his second company in a blog post series you'll find here.

In today's episode Dave and I talk about his journey, and whether he was successful in rebuilding a million dollar company or not. We also talk about the challenges he encountered along the way, and what his plans are moving forward.

Some conversation points:

How profit margins differ significantly during the first months of product development
How much money a physical products business should devote to inventory
Risk aversion
His bad luck getting caught up in the effects of China's first big snowstorm in years
How big he wants his business to grow

Whether Dave succeeded in his goal or not, what he accomplished within 12 months is nothing short of amazing. It's a great example for those just starting in ecommerce, whether they want to reach $1 million in revenue within a year or not.

Resources mentioned:

EcomCrew Premium Part 1: Rebuilding a $1million Ecommerce and Importing Business from Scratch Part 2 – Rebuilding a $1m Ecommerce Business – Finding Products and Suppliers PART 3 – REBUILDING A $1M ECOMMERCE BUSINESS First 60 Day Results Part 4- Rebuilding a $1m Ecommerce Business – 6 Month Results Million Dollar Update – 12 Month Update

Thanks for listening! If you have any questions about this episode, feel free to leave them below.

Head on to EcomCrew Premium if you liked this episode and would want to get more content like this. We have courses, webinars, video tutorials and more to help you in your ecommerce business.

Until the next episode, happy selling!

E149: Traction Part 4 - One Year Plan and Quarterly Rocks May 28, 2018

Show notes

This is the fourth and final episode of the series I'm doing on the book Traction. In Episode 1 we discussed setting the company's core values and communicating them to the entire team. We followed that with Episode 2, where we talked about defining the company's core focus and setting the company's 10-year goal. Since the 10-year goal is ideally a BHAG (Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal), we'd need to break it down into a more achievable 3-year goal, which is the topic for Episode 3. We close everything by further breaking down the 3-year goal to a 1-year plan and defining quarterly rocks, which is what we'll talk about in this episode.

Obviously, your one-year plan needs to be in harmony with your bigger goals. For example, one of your 3-year goals is to develop a total of 100 new products and in order for us to achieve that, we set to develop 50 new products as one of our 1-year goals. We know how hard it is to constantly develop new products, so developing 50 this year will give us a running start for the following years.

In order to make sure every person in the team is working towards the company's goals, you need to set quarterly "rocks". Your quarterly rocks determine what each employee's priorities are and govern where they spend their time and effort on. These are specific action items for each of your employees to make sure they all work towards the company's goals.

This episode also covers the following:

Setting one-year goals (our company has 8 goals for the year)
Identifying and setting quarterly rocks
Examples of quarterly rocks and individual goals of some of our employees

To end this series on Traction, it's important to point out the ultimate purpose of the steps lined out here and in the previous episodes. In many companies only C-level employees know what "the plan" is, leaving all the other employees unaware of where to actually focus on, apart from what's currently on their plate. Letting them know exactly where the company is heading and the role they have to play to get the company there makes them accountable, proactive, and empowered to do their part.

Resources mentioned:

Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business (Amazon afiliate link) E138: Traction Part 1 – Company Core Values E140: Traction Part 2 – Company Core Focus and 10 Year Goal E143: Traction Part 3 – Marketing Strategy and 3-Year Plan E147: Amazon PPC Strategy – Step by Step Guide on Saving Thousands of Dollars EcomCrew Premium

Thanks for listening! Leave a comment down below if you have any questions about this episode. Until the next one, happy selling!

E148: EcomCrew Premium and How Digital Products Can Bolster Your Ecommerce Business May 24, 2018

Show notes

Many of us starting on the ecommerce entrepreneur route debate between selling two types of products: physical or digital.

It's relatively easy to demonstrate the value of a physical product, and it tends to evoke the feeling that you're running a real business. Physical products however require higher overhead, as you need ample amounts of inventory and money on shipping operations to keep the business running. On the other hand, digital products require almost no overhead and creating them doesn't tie up any money. On the downside, digital products are far more difficult to create and creation is very time-consuming.

Between these two, what would be best for someone who wants to foray into ecommerce? Our answer - Both.

In this episode Dave and I talk about how a combination of both physical and digital products is excellent for ecommerce businesses. We use Tactical.com and Coloring Club case studies to demonstrate this. In particular, we talk about the following:

How Dave's entrepreneurial journey started with digital products
How Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income inspired Dave to integrate digital products into his physical products business
The challenges of selling digital products
Types of digital products that are good complements to physical products
The secret to creating home-run digital products
Getting the help of experts and influencers to establish authority
Tips and tricks for those who want to sell digital products

This episode is a great way for us to officially announce our new membership plan called EcomCrew Premium.

Over the past few months we've been releasing courses with individual pricing and we plan to keep on releasing new ones in the future, and selling content on a by-course basis has proven to be difficult and unscalable. We've been giving course discounts to those who bought our previous courses, and keeping track of who gets X amount of discount has become a bit of a headache. That has led to a decision to scrap the by-course pricing model and use a subscription model instead.

With EcomCrew Premium you get access to ALL of our courses for a very cheap monthly price. Aside from that, you also get access to exclusive monthly webinars, monthly Q&A's, templates and swipe files. And of course, there's the private email coaching with both Mike and Dave so you can reach out to them anytime you hit a roadblock.

Click here for more information about EcomCrew Premium.

Resources mentioned:

E117: How an MMA Fighter Built a Multi-Million Dollar Company Selling Digital Products EcomCrew Premium Tactical.com Coloring.club

Thanks for listening! Until next week, happy selling.

E147: Amazon PPC Strategy - Step by Step Guide on Saving Thousands of Dollars May 21, 2018

Show notes

While Amazon PPC is one of the most important tools for any Amazon seller, it's also one that's very expensive. It can potentially drain your profits if left unchecked.

Case in point: In January we spent roughly $33,000 on Amazon PPC, generated sales amounting to around $104,000, with ACOS at 30%. Deducting Cost of Goods and other Amazon fees, we incurred a net loss of $537.

You might ask what's the point of running ads if it's a loss anyway, and the answer is what I call the "Amazon flywheel effect". It's okay for me to take a hit on profits if it means getting more traffic and better conversions, because in the long run it will get me better search positions, in turn driving more sales.

While I'm generally okay with this, it would be nice to get the same results with a little less money--even if just to break even. So early this year I decided to sit down and take a good hard look at our PPC campaigns and see if there's something we can do to save some money here and there. What resulted is an Amazon PPC strategy that after a couple of months of implementation resulted in the rough stats below:

Spend: $25,000 Sales: $103,000 ACOS: 24.1% and dropping Net profits: $6000

Yes, you read that right. We actually gained profits when we implemented this Amazon PPC strategy. The beauty of it is this strategy does not require you to monitor PPC campaigns all the time. You don't even have to do this yourself. We assigned one of our Filipino VAs to this task and it just takes her a couple of hours per week.

One of the tools that hugely helped us achieve this is Sellics. We trained our VA and taught her how to use the software and it has helped her drastically reduce the time needed to monitor our PPC campaigns. Click here to explore Sellics (affiliate link).

In this episode I discuss how we were able to do this and how you can do it too. This episode is quite technical and we might do a screencast in the future to better explain the numbers in our Amazon PPC strategy. Subscribe to our Youtube channel to get updates.

Resources mentioned:

Million Dollar Sellers Sellics (affiliate link) EcomCrew Youtube channel

Thanks for listening! If you have any questions, feel free to comment below.

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