The Smartest Amazon Seller

Latest Episodes:

Episode 69: Robert Wright | Protecting Your Business in a Modern Warzone Sep 22, 2020

Show notes

Today I speak with Robert Wright, a private label protection lawyer who has helped hundreds of clients across the globe protect their intellectual property on Amazon, Shopify, and other e-commerce platforms. We discuss how the business of Amazon is a warzone and you need to protect your assets, doing what’s necessary to limit your liability. We talk about bulletproofing your brand, which means choosing a trademark that functions as a trademark and that’s available. We mention domains and that you should see if your name is available as a domain, and then Google your brand name to see if anything pops up there. Copywriting is another important step of protecting your business necessary to keep you from future trouble. I tell a story about when I got sued and ended up just reaching a settlement with the plaintiff because of how much goes into a lawsuit, making that the better option.
Robert’s blueprint to help sellers 1:21
First and second steps of the blueprint 7:55
Where to check if a trademark is available 10:40
Third step 11:58
My story of being sued 22:23
“So many people when they launch a business, an Amazon business in particular, they think it’s just a set it and forget it sort of thing. ‘OK, I got the account, I got the trademark. Now I’m just adding products and I don’t need to do anything else.’ Nothing could be farther from the truth. If you’re not always kinda managing and tending your business, making sure that the rights you’ve secured aren’t being infringed upon, aren’t being stepped on by other people, what are you doing? Business is war and it’s death by a thousand razors out there.” 21:40
https://www.privatelabelprotection.com/welcome
https://www.facebook.com/groups/830794267074638/
https://www.instagram.com/smartestseller/
https://www.buyboxer.com/
Send Scott an Email: scottneedham@buyboxer.com

Episode 68: Stef Van Boekel | Operating in Europe Sep 15, 2020

Show notes

In this episode I talk to the founder of marketplacedistri.com, a European company that helps brands reach their potential without investing in infrastructure, Stef Van Boekel. He works in the European market in countries such as the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and soon they will be in Sweden and Poland. We discuss the advantages of working in the European market place and what Stef does to focus on his market in these various countries. We talk about what this market needs and the different issues that rise up, such as the language barrier between countries and how to tackle that. You also have to have people that understand the different cultures so you can work together more fluidly.
The importance of customer experience 7:15
Active buyers in the market 9:52
Some real opportunities for listeners 15:30
“Amazon or Marketplace are not a side project. They require different skill sets. So don’t try to find a European manager or marketplace manager because they won’t be able to understand everything. Next to that you have the translation side of things, etcetera. So my advice is to work with a local experience partner that has already everything for infrastructure and is focused on building brands on marketplaces. Then you are ten steps ahead. Your investments are much more at the end. The chances of succeeding are also higher.” 12:33
www.marketplacedistri.com
https://it.linkedin.com/in/stefvanboekel
https://www.instagram.com/smartestseller/
https://www.buyboxer.com/
Send Scott an Email: scottneedham@buyboxer.com

Episode 67: John Ghiorso | Tips from the CEO of Orca Pacific Sep 08, 2020

Show notes

Today I talk to John Ghiorso, host of the podcast called E-Commerce Deep Dive and founder and CEO of Orca Pacific. John started his agency in 2008 and has been able to see a lot of changes and see the whole business evolve over time and therefore has a lot of experience with Amazon. We talk a bit about rules that Amazon sets and that ultimately they make the calls, so we have to abide by their rules or deal with suspensions. John explains the differences between larger brands and smaller brands and how some brands can be undervalued, which is where he can come in to help the company grow to the value at which they ought to be. We talk about advertising and what videos should show, avoiding long dialogues that don’t get to the point. We also discuss product placement and the things you have to do in order to get your product ranked at the top of the competition.
How John has felt with all the recent Amazon success 1:24
How he helps different sized clients 7:53
Two big issues that John sees with brands 11:37
His favorite advertising placements 14:33
“There’s no hack where you can spend this much and automatically get the first spot. You have to do everything else right, or as well as the competition. So you’re right, you need to have the same engagement rate, conversion rate, add to cart rate, amount of reviews. Amazon still factors all of that into the relevancy ranking, but then if you’re able to sufficiently bump up glance views via paid, assuming everything else is equal and all of the sudden you have more glance views than a competitor, that should put you above them.” 19:59
www.orcapac.com
https://www.instagram.com/smartestseller/
https://www.buyboxer.com/
Send Scott an Email: scottneedham@buyboxer.com

Episode 66: Matt Wiklund from Ad Advance | Promote Your Own Brand With Your Own Brand Sep 01, 2020

Show notes

In this episode we talk to Matt Wiklund, co-founder and COO of Ad Advance. We talk about how Ad Advance combats other companies coming in on your product page and leaching potential customers from your products by showing and only promoting the same brands for a specific product in order to increase their own sales. We discuss separating your different ad campaigns to test different strategies and see what works best. We talk about substitute products versus complement products, where substitutes are products that can replace the products people are searching for, and complements being products that can go with the product for which customers are looking. Matt tells about the strategy to show lower priced products first, and then to show similar/related products of a slightly higher price and quality to upsell customers.
Listing Defense Strategy 2:38
Segmentation 6:10
Example 11:10
Ads vs targets 15:28
Get a hold of Matt or his team 24:24
“We have ads, and then we have targets. Our goal is to have ads for our products, or our other products, which show up on their product detail pages. Choosing which ads are going to be displayed on which product detail pages is an important part of this process. So there’s product grouping. That would be choosing products with similar attributes like the substitute model that I spoke about. And then the targets under a substitute model would be equivalent to your ads essentially. So you got 20 pairs of black sunglasses and you target your 20 pairs of black sunglasses. And they’re very similar, so you tend to see a really high conversion with that approach.” 15:32
https://www.reddit.com/r/FulfillmentByAmazon/comments/hjenkp/listing_defense_cross_promotion_using_product/
https://adadvance.com/
Social
https://www.instagram.com/smartestseller/
https://www.buyboxer.com/
Send Scott an Email: scottneedham@buyboxer.com

Episode 65: Working Smarter | Three Things to Scale Your Business Aug 26, 2020

Show notes

Today I talk about some of the ideas that can really get the creative juices flowing and about some of the things that I’m implementing and never thought I would have done. There are certain times in business when we say “Wow, I should have been doing this a long time ago.” That’s something you want to be saying often. In past episodes, I go over many things that will help you in your business and one of the words I use is scale, which is something you should be focusing on often. I discuss the three categories for working smarter in your business. 1) Education 2) Technology 3) Delegation. Don’t stop learning and the fact that you’re taking the time to listen to this podcast is a step in that direction, but don’t stop there. Research, google things, watch Youtube, reach out and get connected by networking with people that are educated already in this space. I talk about the different technologies I use to help my business such as Perpetua. Getting the right technology and tools to market and run your business isn’t any less important than education because it can really make things run smoothly and help your business grow. I use a tool called Loom that helps me record and upload trainings for my employees, and I never have to give this training ever again because the recording will always be there. The bigger your company, the more your time is worth, making delegation crucial for the growth and scale of your company. Consider paying other people to do what they do best in order to make your company smarter, so that you can focus on the bigger tasks and portions of your business.
3 categories for working smarter 6:21
Technology 10:15
Delegating 12:01
“I don’t think anyone can argue that this isn’t a form of working smarter, which is doing these three things. Educating yourself, implementing technology, and then delegating. You’ll be able to avoid what I felt in 2014. A fatigue, a lack of focus, because at that time I wasn’t creating value.” 17:36
https://www.instagram.com/smartestseller/
https://www.buyboxer.com/
Send Scott an Email: scottneedham@buyboxer.com

Episode 64: Perpetua | Optimizing Your Ad Campaigns with Joseph La Selva Aug 18, 2020

Show notes

Today I interview Joseph La Selva from Perpetua, an optimization and enablement tool for Amazon advertising. Perpetua tries to combine the power of human intelligence and always-on optimization to drive the best performance in advertisement campaigns. Joseph tells us a bit about how it works, starting with a goals based software, which first will identify some strategic parameters, outline a few constraints, and then allowing the ad engine of the software you’re using to work toward maximizing your sales within the parameters within which you have set. We talk about Perpetua figuring out how to ramp down on your ad campaign spend within the first 48 hours of creating new campaigns. It takes a lot of the pressure and stress off of you because you don’t have to worry about your ad campaign. We discuss bid adjustments and what Perpetua does to adapt and how it optimizes toward your customer base. This system is really algorithmic focused rather than formulaic, which reduces your bid price over time. We talk about keyword boosts allowing you to identify the keywords that are most strategic to you so that you can pluck them out of that broad 30% A-cost bubble and allows you to apply placement multipliers for those specific keywords that you’ve added to the keyword boost.
Guest intro 1:06
Perpetua uses a goal oriented approach 3:43
Bid adjustments 11:12
One of the strongest features of Perpetua 16:19
Key word boosts 21:10
Coupon code for 50% off your first two months 24:49
“For the first time I get to stop worrying about the weeds of managing advertising. The idea of creating a new set of campaigns feels enjoyable, whereas with other tools it feels like work. It feels like something I have to check in on, or that when I do I see things that I have left.” 19:19
https://ca.linkedin.com/in/joseph-la-selva-73a12055
https://www.instagram.com/smartestseller/
https://www.buyboxer.com/
Send Scott an Email: scottneedham@buyboxer.com

Episode 63: News On Amazon | The Explosive Growth Of This Year Aug 11, 2020

Show notes

Today I start off by discussing how important it is to educate yourself and that the purpose of this podcast is to help you learn and be prepared for your own business. I discuss what’s going on right now in our economy. Amazon fulfillment centers are overflowing and products are getting restrictions on what we can send in to Amazon. I talk about how much the centers have grown this year versus how much they have grown in the past. I talk over what you should be doing right now to react to this explosion of growth. I give advice on some things you should be doing, such as checking on your inventory frequently so that you don’t forget what you have and miss opportunities to sell. I discuss the pandemic and that it isn’t going to go away soon, but we at least have a few more months, meaning Amazon likely will continue to grow and E-commerce will continue to do really well. I talk about the buy box and how things have been changing in favor of larger companies. I bring up the issue of how much power Amazon has gained and equality in the marketplace.
Recap of how we got where we are with restrictions 2:12
What you should be doing to react to the explosive growth of Amazon 5:12
Larger sellers with larger feedback scores get more of the buy box 10:15
Equal marketplace and the congressional hearing 12:10
“Understand that Amazon this last year has opened up 50% more fulfillment center space in just a year, and it’s already filled it up. I don’t know if that rings a bell to you, because it should. We’re talking about the best logistics network in the world grew by 50% percent in a single year.” 3:58
Social
https://www.instagram.com/smartestseller/
https://www.buyboxer.com/
Send Scott an Email: scottneedham@buyboxer.com

Episode 62: Improving Your Amazon Seller Business | Eric and Sebastian of Amazonlit Aug 04, 2020

Show notes

Sometimes requesting for a refund can get you a lot of money. This is one of the things Scott has learned as he has been an Amazon seller. Amazonlit made their first million in 2015, which was all retail arbitrage. Trademark infringement has become a bigger issue over time. Now they pay more attention to this problem and they have drastically reduced those claims. 9 times out of 10, people you talk to over the phone will not be a jerk. If a certain brand complains, you can get them on the phone and sell the products back to them or work out a deal. Having a little bit of personality doesn’t hurt when trying to sell. Never take a no as a hard no. Brands can turn into your suppliers years down the road after having said no to you. Their sales have gone up as their inventory has increased. As companies have been growing online, they need more sellers, so keeping a positive communication with them has caused them to reach out down the line. Erik and Sebastian have created a mastermind group for Amazon sellers to provide the knowledge they need to become successful. Amazon is large enough that everyone can get a piece of the pie. Their mastermind group covers everything an Amazon seller will need to make their business as efficient and lucrative as possible.
Their first million 2:53
Pivoting - the word of 2020 16:44
Sharing secrets doesn’t negatively impact your business 20:56
“We use keepa and we look at that third chart, the offer listings. And when we see that there’s a dramatic decrease that happens and the sales rank hasn’t decreased as well at the same time… if the sales ranks stays the same, or goes up and the offers slide down drastically, then that tells us an IP was filed at that time.
Follow Eric Castellanos and Sebastian Quik:
Instagram: @Amazon_lit
amazonlit.com
https://www.instagram.com/smartestseller/
https://www.buyboxer.com/
Send Scott an Email: scottneedham@buyboxer.com

Episode 61: Building Relationships With Suppliers | Scott’s Tips Jul 28, 2020

Show notes

You make money on the buying side. Scott has been profitable from the start. From day one, they have been making purchases that are more valuable on the streets than from where they bought it. Scott went to China and spent a lot of time with a Chinese supplier. This built a strong relationship and made them eager to do business with one another. Don’t give people an out, or an opportunity to say no by posing the wrong questions. Think about what they care about. If you can solve your suppliers’ problems, then there’s no reason they will say no. Invest in relationships with your suppliers if you want the best results. People like to think they’re unique, so let them prove it to you. Ask yourself how you’re adding value to their brand. Write yourself a script to help you hit your best points and help them talk about themselves. Get talking a lot on social media. People are often willing to share their suppliers. Go back and listen to previous episodes. They have proven very useful and lucrative for Scott’s listeners.
Trip to China 2:38
Don’t make this mistake 6:35
How to get the best prices 8:08
Something to help improve your calls 14:51
Using Instagram to get suppliers’ names 16:36
“You should not forget this. If you are hungry for someone’s products and their business, you can prove to them that you will make their product pages better. You’ll invest in their brand, you’ll create bundles, and kits, and variations. And all of that to increase the exposure. The likelihood of shoppers purchasing that brand.” 11:31
https://www.instagram.com/smartestseller/
https://www.buyboxer.com/
Send Scott an Email: scottneedham@buyboxer.com

Episode 60: Scott Topic | Exciting Announcements and Tools to Help Scale Your Amazon Business! Jul 21, 2020

Show notes

In today’s episode, we hype up our upcoming episodes and invite the listeners to stay tuned. We talk about how scaling and growing your business is made easier on Amazon. We talk about how we’ve scaled our own business. Scott announces a tour of BuyBoxer’s warehouses, facilities, and distributions teams in Logan, Utah and Indianapolis at the end of August (reach out to Scott at scottneedham@buyboxer.com, or find him on instagram). We’ll explain ways we cut our shipping costs, as well as explain our software and ordering systems. We then discuss scaling your business with Amazon FBA within 4 categories: sourcing, inventory management and ordering, Amazon marketing, and distribution. We explain how we have built custom software to scale our business from $2 million in sales to $60 million. We announce that we are going to start licensing that software out. We compare our software to the Bloomberg Terminal, and explain how useful it can be to anyone trying to scale within Amazon FBA. It works well for larger teams trying to save on time. We finish by sharing the features of the software, announcing that if you mention this podcast, you’ll receive 10% off the beta suite.
Exciting Things To Come On This Podcast! 0:27
Scaling Your Business; Come Tour Our Warehouses! 1:31
Amazon FBA Announcement: We’re Licensing Our Software Suite!! 7:07
“Once you start to use it and see it in action, you will start to see these efficiencies, and how you can manage dozens, hundreds of skews across different suppliers and really see what’s going on. You can find out what’s your worst performing inventory and how you can improve it. How do you do reorders on a timely basis, and get inventory just in time?” 11:51“
Social
https://www.instagram.com/smartestseller/
https://www.buyboxer.com/
Send Scott an Email: scottneedham@buyboxer.com

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