In this special episode, a couple of key players from Amazon Corporate join us to discuss some brand new functions released for sellers, including one that gives us unprecedented ability to identify and target our repeat customers. What if harnessing the power of Amazon’s vast data pool could revolutionize your e-commerce strategy? In this episode recorded live from Amazon Accelerate, we introduce a couple of cutting-edge tools, Amazon Business Planner, Customer Loyalty Analytics, and Customer Journey Analytics, designed to transform Amazon brands’ approach to their operations marketing. Our special guests, James Casazza and Wei Li, prominent figures from Amazon Corporate, share how these new tools offer brands the ability to set goals, receive personalized action plans, and effectively manage their business data with self-service capabilities. This episode unpacks how brands can gain confidence and clarity amidst the overwhelming flow of information, aligning their strategies seamlessly with their business objectives. Discover the magic of artificial intelligence as we explore a revolutionary business planning tool that’s setting new standards in the e-commerce landscape. This tool provides brands with AI-generated plans, pinpointing impactful goals like boosting ad-attributed sales and enhancing profitability. By offering step-by-step recommendations—from campaign strategies to keyword optimization—the tool updates dynamically, suggesting fresh opportunities and strategic enhancements beyond advertising. Join us as we dissect its ability to deliver transparent progress tracking with detailed visualizations, historical comparisons, and a focus on profitability through cost-reduction strategies and content optimization. Get ready to dive into the world of customer analytics with Amazon’s latest tools aimed at understanding diverse shopper behaviors. We spotlight the Customer Loyalty Dashboard and Customer Journey Dashboard, key innovations that offer brands deeper insights into customer behavior. Our guest Wei, shares her role in developing tools like the Search Query Performance and Product Opportunity Explorer. These analytics resources empower brands to tailor promotions, prevent churn, and boost loyalty among customer segments. By leveraging predicted customer lifetime value and promotional strategies, brands can enhance engagement, conversion, and ultimately, customer loyalty. In episode 602 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley, James, and Wei discuss: 00:54 - Amazon Accelerate New Tools Announced Overview02:00 - Amazon Launches New Business Planner05:07 - Simplifying Data for Amazon Business Planning11:16 - AI-Powered Business Planning Tool12:39 - Dynamic Business Planner Features and Benefits16:42 - Data-Driven Amazon Customer Loyalty Analytics20:08 - Amazon Department Provides Key Seller Tools23:20 - Understanding Customer Audience Types28:26 - Understanding Buyer Behavior and Cart Abandonment35:13 - Unlocking Valuable Amazon Data Insights37:29 - Thanking Amazon for Launches at Accelerate ► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast ► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension ► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup  (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life) ► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft ► Watch The Podcasts On Youtube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos Transcript: Bradley Sutton: Today's a special episode, as a couple of key players from Amazon Corporate are with us on the show to talk about some brand new functions released for sellers, including one that gives us unprecedented ability to identify and target our repeat customers. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think Sellers have lost thousands of dollars by not knowing that they were hijacked, perhaps on their Amazon listing, or maybe somebody changed their main image, or Amazon changed their shipping dimension so they had to pay extra money every order. Helium 10 can actually send you a text message or email if any of these things or other critical events happen to your Amazon account. For more information, go to h10.me forward slash alerts.    Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that is a special episode recorded live at Amazon Accelerate.    This was done in Seattle a few weeks ago and, as you probably have seen from other episodes, we had a lot of new releases, of new data points and new functionality that Amazon is releasing. Shout out, first of all, to Addy from Amazon, who helped us hook us up with some of these interviews but we had the privilege of being able to interview a couple of the key people that are involved in the ideation and implementation of some of these new tools, and so in this episode, we're going to go over a couple of things in from Business Planner, which is something new, and also customer loyalty analytics, which might blow your mind as far as the kind of targeting ability and being able to understand, you know, how your customers go through the funnel. I think it's going to be interesting because, you know, a few years ago we would have never thought that Amazon would release this kind of data to sellers, so it's really awesome that they're doing that and we get to talk to the person responsible for the creation of this. So let's go ahead and hop into the episode   Bradley Sutton: So I'd like to first start off with just getting your background. We're obviously here in Seattle right now. Where were you born and raised?    James: So I'm from New York originally. I grew up about an hour outside New York City, really close to my grandparents' dairy farm. But for the last 20 years, I've lived outside Detroit. After college, I moved up there.    Bradley Sutton: Hold on a quick second. This is an important question. Somebody who lives in New York. They move somewhere else. Are you a New York sports fan or a Detroit sports fan?    James: So I've kept loyal to my New York teams. It's a little difficult because especially now the football season started, keeping up after the Giants and Jets is keeping your head low and the Lions finally have something to be excited about. But I'm a proud father to three boys and I will say they all have their Aiden Hutchinson jerseys on. We're really excited last season and looking forward to this one.    Bradley Sutton: Awesome, awesome. So you were talking about. You graduated university. What direction did your career take you in that?    James: So early in my career, I worked in automotive, digital marketing, and then in the social media industry, and I really found a passion for using software and technology to help independent businesses reach their consumers, really connect, and ultimately drive their success, and that led me to Amazon. So I've been with Amazon for just over six years now. I'm currently a senior manager of product management in the Selling Partner Experience organization, and, while that's a bit of a mouthful, what it means is that I'm really working on building the tools that sellers are using to run their business and ultimately thrive in the Amazon store. Recently, my team worked on a complete redesign of the Seller Central homepage, which rolled out late last year, and today I'm excited to join you and talk about the next exciting tool that we're building, called Business Planner, which brings self-service capabilities to sellers to plan their business, set goals and objectives and receive a personalized action plan that will help them attain their goals in the store.    Bradley Sutton: Awesome. Now, I think that most brands would agree with me in that there is no other mechanism of selling whether we're talking brick and mortar, whether we're talking online that provides as much data as Amazon does to its brands. It's really incredible. I think sometimes we're spoiled, those who start on Amazon. They don't know how it is or how it used to be when you're trying to make money, and so I can totally understand that. Hey, with all this data, there's going to be some insights that can come from it. So what about the timing? Why did you decide, hey, now is the right time to go ahead and launch this new tool.    James: Yeah, so the idea for Business Planner actually started at Accelerate in 2023. I was talking to a number of different sellers and really this theme came out about the data that you're talking about. One seller likened it to being dying of thirst they're just so hungry to know what to do, and yet they're standing next to a fire hydrant. It's just spouting all this data at them. And so the question they had was like help me organize this, help me decide what's most important so that I can act confidently and know that that's aligned with the goals that I have for my business.    And so, while Amazon is providing plenty of reports and recommendations, it's really difficult to summarize or interpret that and get to an action plan. And we know that because sellers are working with account managers or even finding really productive partnerships with third-party software providers to help make sense of this data. And so our goal is to help democratize this access to data and bring the type of planning that sellers do offline when they're setting quarterly or yearly objectives and then want to track that and some may have teams that are doing customer acquisition or operations. They might be the individual's performance goals. We want to bring that offline planning into our tools so that sellers can easily keep track of where they're at and act confidently to drive their success.    Bradley Sutton: You know, obviously, as brands, we have a lot of our own data, but I believe that this tool is also bringing in aggregated data from other sources, not just what's happening with your own listings. Is that correct?    James: That's right. So throughout this process we've talked to so many sellers and I've just been impressed with the passion they have and the interest and the different opportunities that they're taking to bring insights and data analysis to really help them decide how to act. So with Business Planner, we're bringing together the power of data from thousands of different listings and all the customer activity in the Amazon store to create personalized action plans that will help sellers to achieve their goals. So they'll have a single place to go to benchmark their performance, identify their largest opportunities and then to generate a step-by-step action plan that aligns with the things that matter most to them. So, whether you're a new seller just getting started out in the Amazon store or you're an established brand with a healthy business that is ready to go to the next level, they can get a personalized plan that's specific to them and the goals that they want to achieve in the Amazon store.    Bradley Sutton: Now, you mentioned you worked on the Seller Central homepage. Now on the homepage there's already kind of like recommendations that might come through. There's a whole growth opportunity section. So how does this new feature here compare to what's already out there, and is it better?    James: So we're trying to take a best of both worlds approach. So when I think about the recommendations on the homepage and growth opportunities, it makes me think of a buffet where there's so many different options and there'll be like lots of tasty treats and plenty of nourishment there. So there's lots of good things there. But if you're trying to take like a structured plan, maybe instead you work with a nutritionist who's going to first ask you some questions about what's important to you. Are you training for the Olympics? Are you trying to slim down by a few pounds, like what is really your goal here?    Bradley Sutton: That's what I'm going to say. I'm going to say, hey, I'm training for the Olympics. That's why I'm eating so much food at this point.    James: Exactly, exactly, no-transcript in those other experiences and then also providing you with detailed tracking so you can see as the days and weeks go by, are you actually getting towards that goal?    Bradley Sutton: Let me piggyback on something you just mentioned there pulling data from some of those other recommendations. What exactly is driving other than just raw data? That's what does a lot of data there. I'm assuming maybe AI has some component of it, absolutely so.    James: I think AI is a really powerful tool because it can crunch massive amounts of data and identify patterns and discrepancies. So perhaps the seller is underperforming in their ads campaigns. We might be able to come back with specific keyword optimization recommendations and then they can increase their ad attributed sales and grow revenue. Or we might spot a change in demand for key ASINs that would require a different inventory strategy and it might be an opportunity for the seller to reduce their FBA fees and reduce costs of maintaining their current business. And so by applying machine learning and AI to that massive amount of data, we can kind of slim that down into a specific plan of action for the seller and by starting with the goals that they set. We're no longer in this business of kind of predicting what the seller might want. We start by asking the question and then we have a lot more confidence that, because the seller has set the goal, that when we come back with an action plan it's actually right for them and where they want to take their business.    Bradley Sutton: Awesome, awesome. Now for those who maybe haven't seen it yet in their Seller Central dashboard, where can they find this? Walk us through a little bit of a scenario, maybe, how they can see yeah, absolutely.    James: So Business Planner is going to be rolling out in the US store in just a couple of weeks. So later this month you'll start to see a tile on the homepage in that recommendation section that you talked about. It'll also show up on the left side menu of growth opportunities. From there you can access Business Planner, which is your dashboard for action planning. When you first visit, we'll have some recommended goals. So that's where we've assessed how the seller's performing, set some benchmarks and looked for the strongest opportunities where they can improve their performance. We'll rank those based on how big the impact is. So the most impactful goal will be at kind of the top left of that page and if that goal aligns with the objective that the seller has, they can click on it and see details about the plan. So maybe it's a four-week plan or a 12-week plan to increase their ad-attributed sales, because we see that as the largest opportunity and they'll be able to review the details and if they want to move forward, they just click to create a plan.    And this is where the really exciting part happens. That's where the AI steps in and kind of scans across all those different recommendations, opportunities, and where we see the most potential to achieve that goal. So in this case seller is trying to increase their ad-attributed sales. We might come back with some specific product level ad campaign recommendations or keyword optimization. We put that into like a step-by-step plan and so the seller from the Business Planner can then look into that plan. There'll be graphs right on the page where they can see their current performance, what the target's going to be, and then a list of those recommendations that's organized and sorted for them.    One of the special things about Business Planner is that it's constantly updating as much as once a day. It'll pull in new recommendations or reprioritize what's there because of progress that the sellers made, new opportunities that emerge Perhaps all of a sudden keyword traffic and customers are searching for new products on Amazon and that might change.    The order of recommendations will reflect that in the business plan. So it's a it's a living thing that they can check back to and and going to show them that next best action they can take to ultimately achieve that objective. And then you know, once we've reached the end of the plan, we'll show that completed goal right and the experience with a record of all the things they did, and I think that's really important to sort of earn trust with the sellers that you know some of these things might require a little bit of an additional investment or might go against the common knowledge of how to be successful in the store. But I'm confident that, as we, you know, offer these plans because we're starting from what's most important to the sellers, that they'll see that that's helping them achieve their unique objectives and make their business as successful as possible in the store.    Bradley Sutton: Okay. Now, when I was looking over some of the notes on this new tool, you mentioned a scenario with advertising, but I believe there's also another scenario where even it could get to something that has nothing to do with advertising, but like your A+ content. So I was trying to wrap my head around how that would work. So if I already I mean obviously, if I don't have A+ content the suggestion would be hey, get A+ content going. And now there's AI tools that help with that that we've talked about here at Amazon Accelerate this year. But if I already have A+ content, is this AI detecting like, hey, this might not be the most optimized and you need to tweak it, or what's it doing then?    James: Yeah. So it's going to look throughout the sales funnel that you might see for a product. It might look at search activity glance views at the detail page and then I think a key lever for sellers is are they converting those views and visits to their products into sales? And so it might come back with a recommendation to tweak that content to better align with the search terms that customers are using. Or it might see a strategy where they could increase their featured offer win rate and ultimately convert more of those customers into buyers. And that's where the AI is powerful.    It's going to look across those different opportunities and see where can we create the most leverage, and it was important to us as we were building Business Pointer. It's not just going to come with recommendations that might require some additional investment from sellers. So at launch, one of the things that we're including is a set of cost reduction goals, and that's where we might look at inventory levels and fee structures and recommend either promotions and deals or a different stocking strategy to the seller that can help them reduce their costs to serve and be more profitable in the similar All right, excellent.    Bradley Sutton: So, regardless of what it is, whether we're talking A+ content, whether we're talking advertised I set a goal, I implemented it. You mentioned tracking the progress. How can I see how I'm you know my road to that?    James: Yeah, absolutely so. This is where we want to bring in some like detailed data visualization. So when you come back to Business Planner, you click into the goal that you're tracking against, we'll have a big chart on the page with your progress, the projection of where you're going to end up, and also allow you to do some comparisons against a historical period so that you can see am I really outperforming, am I getting the gains? So back to your training for the Olympics. We want to see that your sprint times are coming down or your weight lifts are increasing in weight, and it's the same thing here. So if we're trying to improve our ads attributed sales we want to make progress on that metric. If we want to reduce our costs, we should expect to see our inventory performance index improve and by providing that granular view into the metrics, we can show that the seller is progressing towards their objective.    Bradley Sutton: Excellent, all right, so now I'm inspired by listening to this podcast and I'm ready to go in. Maybe by the time they're listening to this, maybe it is available already in Seller Central. If I'm just getting started, what's maybe the first thing I should do, or what's the best way to get started with this?    James: Yeah. So we want Business Planner to be a regular thing and we think that sellers will start to use it as it aligns with their monthly or quarterly business planning. So my first recommendation is check it out. Either go through the recommendations on the Seller Central homepage or go to growth opportunities and look for Business Planner in that left menu and you can start browsing those recommended goals. Those will update at least once a week with the latest and greatest opportunities that we see for you as a specific seller and based on, like your business and your opportunity, and then, once you find the plan that makes sense to you and you kick that off, you know, check back regularly. Those action plan items might update as much as once a day. So we want this to be a kind of like a regular part of your journey as a seller and a regular part of the tools that you might use on Seller Central.    Bradley Sutton: Well, thank you so much for bringing this tool, thank you so much for coming on the show and talking about it, and I'm excited to use it myself, and I'm sure a lot of the brands out there will be excited. And I can empathize with you about the New York teams. I mean, I'm a Chargers and Clippers fan, so I'm a glutton for punishment myself. So thanks a lot for doing it. Yeah, thank you so much for being here. This was fantastic actually. This she doesn't know I'm going to say this, but this was the highlight for me, for actually Amazon Accelerate was being able to interview our next guest, who I am super excited to meet her, not only her, but also especially what she's going to be talking about. So, Wei, welcome, welcome, thank you. Thank you for meeting with me.    Wei: Thank you for having me.    Bradley Sutton: Now let's what I do with all of my guests. I like to get the backstory a little bit, so where were you born and raised?    Wei: Definitely. I was born and raised in Beijing. I moved from Beijing to Chicago actually in 2003 for graduate school, so before Amazon, I worked for some of the big names like Merrill Lynch, KPMG. I have also worked for a number of startup companies in the fintech, pharmaceutical and supply chain companies. I joined Amazon in 2011. I have spent most of my time here with a selling partner services organization. Currently, I lead the selling partner growth analytics team, and our team built a few that I was on.    Our team built a few seller-facing applications in Seller Central and your comment earlier. I actually I'm a mom of three outside of work and I have a seven-year-old, a six-year-old and a baby under one.    Bradley Sutton: Yeah, wow, that's awesome, awesome. I miss those days. My kids are both. My kids are both in their twenties now and so, like I talked, when I talked to parents, when I talked to parents who still, I was like, oh man, you don't know how lucky you are to have kids at that age, because I wish I could go back in time Now, going back, one thing you said. You said you came to graduate school in Chicago. Which school did you go to?    Wei: Yeah. So I got two masters, one from Illinois Institute of Technology and got my quantitative finance degree there.    Bradley Sutton: And that's also Quantitative. I don't even know what that means.    Wei: And then I received an MBA from UChicago.    Bradley Sutton: Okay, excellent, excellent. You talk about your career there and on Amazon. You're very humble about the department you work at, but, guys, this is the department that I think not just me but every Amazon seller is so thankful for, which you're responsible for things like the search, career, performance and all these other amazing things that I think is so important, because brands, I think, have been spoiled by Amazon in the last couple of years with all the data that they get. They don't realize that if you were selling on Amazon, maybe like five, 10 years ago, some of the stuff that you guys are providing, you actually had to pay like thousands and thousands of dollars and most didn't even qualify to get it. So, first of all, again, thank you so much for what you do at your department. Now let's just talk about that a little bit Like how do you guys approach, what kind of analytical tools, what kind of information you're going to provide brands in?    Wei: a few different domains. So, first of all, we provide a traffic and sales data through Business Report, which is one of the most visited tools in Seller Central. Additionally, we also provide this tool called Opportunity Explorer. So Opportunity Explorer is a selection analytics tool. It helps sellers identify new selection to sell in Amazon store. Additionally, we also provide this tool called Search Analytics Dashboard. That is where we can provide some of the data on traffic, with an emphasis on search keywords. Lastly, but not the least, is the Customer Analytics Dashboard. For Customer Analytics Dashboard, I'm actually very excited to announce some new launches here.    So we started out by building dashboards about customers and their purchase behavior. We have demographic dashboards to tell you who your customers are. We have repeat purchase dashboard that tells you how often customers purchase from your brand. Additionally, we have this third dashboard called Market Basket Dashboard. It tells you what products your customers would purchase together with your brands. It unlocks some of the cross-selling opportunities. Since then, we have also received feedback from your brands. It unlocks some of the cross-selling opportunities. Since then, we have also received feedback from the brands. They want to take a customer-centered approach. So last year we launched a customer loyalty dashboard. It gives the brand a segmented view to understand who are your existing customers, from top tier to promising to at risk and hibernating customers. And then this year we're launching customer journey dashboard that allows a brand to understand your customer's entire shopping journey, from first moment they start to search for your brand to the moment when they make that final purchase. With these two dashboards, our goal is to lower the customer acquisition cost as well as increase the customer lifetime value.    Bradley Sutton: This is really important because actually, this part of all the analytical tools I probably know the least about. I'm so obsessive about search query performance and search volume and keyword data, but I think now 2024 and then going to 2025, brands really need to understand the customer and people are thinking too much just about the algorithm or things like that, but at the end of the day, we're not selling to the algorithm, we're selling to a human being, and so some of these data points that you're talking about is really important. I'm happy to, I'm really excited to learn about them today. Now, one thing you mentioned, you know, about different customers, like you mentioned, like top tier and things you know, like this might be familiar to some out there and I know you're probably going to talk about it, but we had the brand tailor promotions and we could see some of these different audience groups, now, those who might not be familiar with it. Can you talk a little bit about these customer audience types? You mentioned top tier, but there's a lot of other ones out there too.    Wei: Absolutely so. We help brand segment your existing customer base and we actually use a pretty standard methodology, is called RFM. R stands for Recency it describes when did your customer make the last purchase from your brand. F stands for Frequency it describes how frequently customers purchase from your brand. And lastly, m stands for Monetary Spend it talks about how much does the customer spend purchasing your products.    We use a quantile-based approach and equally divide your customers into groups along these three dimensions recency, frequency as well as monetary spend. This allows us to group your customers into four segment top tier, promising, at risk, as well as a hibernating. By top tier customers those are the customers who purchased from your brand recently, but they may be purchasing at varying frequency and they spend varying amount. At risk customers they made a purchase but they don't purchase frequently. They also spend varying amount of money on your brand. And hibernating customers are those customers who have already churned. Equipped with this knowledge, brand can then deploy different promotion and marketing tools to re-engage these customers and thereby encourage repeat purchase and drive customer lifetime value.    Bradley Sutton: Interesting.First of all, I was today years old when I heard the word quantile, so you're already teaching me new vocabulary lessons.    I realize how not smart I am when it comes to math and this kind of things, but what you know, I think the main thing that people can take away is how important it is to kind of like bucket your customers into these different brackets, because you know, somebody who's hibernating is obviously a different kind of customer, a different value to one as one who is at risk or some of the others that you mentioned, and so it's important to be able to just not consider all of our brands customers. Hey, they're exactly the same, and I think that's what a lot of brands, or especially newer brands, might be doing. Like, all my customers are the same, but no, not all customers are created equally. Let's talk about the new and potential customers. We've got the ones we've had existing, like Hibernating and things like that, and who have been part of your brand. But I think all brands are really especially concerned about hey, how do I bring new customers into the fold? And so talk to us about the new and potential customers.    Wei: We show the new and potential customers in the brand view of the customer loyalty dashboard. New customers are the ones who have made the first purchase in the last 12 months and potential customers are those customers who have not made the purchase but has engaged with your brands in some ways. For example, they may have viewed your product detail page, read customer reviews or added your products to their shopping cart or save them for later. The idea there is we want to allow brands to set up uh promotion tools to target these potential customers and convert them all All right Now, about 40 years ago.    Bradley Sutton: if we use this term cart abandoner, somebody might think of somebody who went to the grocery store and then took the cart home and then left it in the street. But when we're talking about cart abandoners on Amazon completely different meaning it's actually my favorite group of customers. For those who aren't familiar with that term, can you explain who that refers to?    Wei: Yes, absolutely. It is actually one of the new audiences that we launched this year. Cart abandoners are those customers who added your products into their shopping cart but has not made the purchase in the last 90 days.    Bradley Sutton: Now it's amazing, because this is why I think it's so important that somebody thinks, uh, more holistically about customers, because we can't think that everybody's like us as a buyer, like me, as an Amazon customer I am. I am never a cart abander, like if I add something to the cart, I buy it, like I add it to the cart and then I check out. But then I thought everybody was like me, but actually not. You're not like me, probably I'm the opposite.    Wei: I actually, I actually added to the cart and I observe uh, when does the price drop?    Bradley Sutton: and so many people are like you. Yes, I heard other people. You tell me if this is you too, but other people they're searching for like a teacup or something like that, and they'll actually add five different ones to the cart and then make the decision about do you do that one too? Sometimes, see, I don't do any of this, and so I was thinking when I first saw the numbers of this, it was just flabbergasting. I was like I cannot believe how many people are cart abandoners. And then I just started asking friends and family and I guess I was the weird one and you guys are the normal ones. But yeah, that is a huge audience and a very valuable audience. So all of these audience types, at the end of the day, what we're talking about here is we're trying to send promotions to them in different ones. So how do we send promotions to these different audiences?    Wei: Absolutely so. Today, you're able to send tailored promotions to these different audiences, and promotions are then become available to customers through search result page. I do want to share with you that as a team, we're constantly thinking about new tools that sellers can leverage or brands can leverage. So in the future, we might incorporate new tools such as coupons, Amazon buying, A+, detail page, and Manage Your Experiments, so that brands can leverage different tools to engage with their customers and help them convert.    Bradley Sutton: Excellent, excellent. Now I think one question I've gotten a lot before from different brands is hey, if I set up a promotion that's going to one of these audiences being the cart abandoners or some other audience, how do they actually see the promotions?    Wei: Promotions will show up for these customers in the search results page or the product detail page.    Bradley Sutton: Okay, so now we're looking at an example of one of these graphs here, and there's a part here that says trends. So can you explain what is this representing?    Wei: Definitely. The trend graph actually allow you to compare different metrics, for example, your total customers, total sales, new-to-brand customers, new-to-brand sales. Brands can then compare and contrast and observe how these metrics change over time.    Bradley Sutton: All right, next question. Here I can see we have a Segment view and a Brand view. Can you explain the difference between those?    Wei: Absolutely so earlier we mentioned that we will share with brands about their existing customer base top tier customer, promising, customer at risk, as well as a hibernating customer. Brand view gives you data for the entire brand, and segment view actually allows you to dive deeper into each segment. On both brand view and segment view, we will provide recommended actions that you can take to drive conversion and increase repeat purchase. Additionally, one thing I would love to call out is segment view actually gives you a predicted customer lifetime value. We use a science model to predict how likely a customer is going to purchase from your brand again and we further segment each segment based on whether the customer lifetime value is going to grow, maintain or decline.    Bradley Sutton: Wow, that's interesting. Let's talk a little bit more about this, because I think there's some brands out there who might have a product where you know what it's a vacuum. Maybe they're just going to buy the one vacuum and 10 years later maybe they'll buy another vacuum. There's others who have maybe are in the supplements, the health and household category, the beauty category, where they're very reliant on repeat purchases. So this, this lifetime value, is definitely something near and dear to their heart. But you're saying that using uh models, you can actually kind of predict some of the potential lifetime value. Can you talk a little bit more about that?    Wei: Absolutely so. We use this size-based model, and the model input considers a variety of features such as customer's profile, their browsing behavior, how they have interacted with your brands or product in the past, and then the output of the model is how likely they're going to purchase from your brand again in the next 12 months, and we will then be able to say whether the customer lifetime value is going to grow, maintain or decline as a result of that. Brands will then have further segmentation within each customer segment each customer segment. So now brands can actually launch tailored promotion specifically targeting, for example, the top tier customers, those top tier customers where their lifetime value is predicted to decline. This will allow brands to prevent these customers from churning. Bradley Sutton: Interesting is that available already or that's coming later?  Wei: This is available already today.    Bradley Sutton: I've been missing the boat on that one. I need to go ahead and start implementing that, because that's very definitely invaluable. So what are the actions that brands should be doing that we do have available? I'm obviously missing that last one, but what are some more things that we need to be leveraging right now?    Wei: So brands can achieve a number of different goals through customer loyalty dashboard, for example, if you're a brand who are trying to drive conversion and acquire new customers, it would be a good idea to think about advertising campaign and boost awareness. You can also launch a tailored promotion, as we talked about earlier, focusing, say, on cart abandoner to encourage customers to convert and make their purchase. And if your goal is to drive loyalty and encourage repeat purchases, it would be a good idea to focus on top tier customers as well as promising customers. And, additionally, we have these promotion tools where you can focus on those customers whose lifetime value is predicted to maintain or decline and encourage them to purchase more from your brand your brand.    Bradley Sutton: Now I just want to take a moment to talk to the listeners out there who might not understand how crazy it is that this kind of data is being available. This is the kind of data that companies who are selling on

We’re back with another episode of the Weekly Buzz with Helium 10’s Senior Evangelist, Shivali Patel. Every week, we cover the latest breaking news in the Amazon, Walmart, and E-commerce space, talk about Helium 10’s newest features, and provide a training tip for the week for serious sellers of any level. Amazon Multi-Channel fulfillment (MCF) can now automatically fulfill orders placed on social commerce channels like TikTok, Instagram, and Pinterest using your FBA inventory. You can now offer Subscribe & Save and Reorder coupons on an ASIN at the same time. With this change, you can now offer both Subscribe & Save and Reorder coupons on an ASIN at the same time. Effective September 30, 2024, if Amazon requires you to submit product compliance documents, these must be submitted and approved before you can list the product. Amazon Pharmacy customers can have their medications pre-sorted into packets using this new PillPack feature https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/retail/amazon-pharmacy-pillpack-feature Inbound shipping is now easier with the Amazon Partner Carrier Program’s smart carrier options https://sell.amazon.com/blog/announcements/partner-carrier-program-smart-carrier-options Amazon marketplace sellers sue Walmart https://www.nwaonline.com/news/2024/oct/01/amazon-marketplace-sellers-sue-walmart/ Amazon seller-fulfilled heavy and bulky returns https://channelx.world/2024/10/amazon-seller-fulfilled-heavy-and-bulky-returns/ Amazon’s recyclable packaging push https://www.packaging-gateway.com/news/amazons-recyclable-packaging-push/ Digital Domain Teams Up with AWS to Scale Autonomous Virtual Human Technology and Introduces Generative AI-Powered Features https://press.aboutamazon.com/aws/2024/9/digital-domain-teams-up-with-aws-to-scale-autonomous-virtual-human-technology-and-introduces-generative-ai-powered-features Amazon is launching its own Shark Tank where winners get to be Amazon sellers https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/30/24258276/amazon-buy-it-now-show-trailer-shark-tank-jb-smoove With the holiday season approaching, we arm you with strategic insights to capitalize on events like Prime Big Deals Day, including essential tips on using Cerebro for effective keyword research. Tune in and stay ahead with these buzzing news and strategies that help your business thrive in the competitive e-commerce landscape. In this episode of the Weekly Buzz by Helium 10, Bradley covers: 00:49 - MCF Expands to Social02:04 - Dual Coupon Boosts Promotions03:28 - Compliance Deadline Approaching04:17 - Holiday Peak FBA Fees Set05:48 - Pharmacy PillPack07:00 - Smart Carrier Options Introduced08:19 - Sellers x Walmart Lawsuit09:54 - Updated Returns for Bulky Items11:51 - Sustainable Packaging12:58 - AWS Powers Autonomous Virtual Humans15:04 - Shark Tank but for Prime16:30 - Training: Finding Keywords Your Competitors Top Keywords ► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast ► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension ► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup  (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life) ► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft ► Watch The Podcasts On YouTube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos Transcript   Shivali Patel: Amazon's MCF fulfilling orders for popular social channels, incoming holiday peak fulfillment fees and, finally, that dual coupon feature you've requested being implemented. This and more on this week's episode of the Weekly Buzz.   Bradley Sutton: How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I am your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show. That is our Helium 10 Weekly Buzz, where we give you a rundown of all the new stories that are going on in the Amazon, Walmart and e-commerce world. We highlight the latest new feature alerts from Helium 10, and we review a training tip of the week that will give you serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. Today, our host is going to be Shivali Patel and so Shivali, take it away and let us know what's buzzing.   Shivali Patel: First up, we have a few news pieces directly from Seller Central News To start. An exciting enhancement to Amazon's Multi-Channel Fulfillment, or MCF. Amazon's MCF now enables sellers to automatically fulfill orders from popular social commerce platforms like TikTok, Instagram and Pinterest using your Fulfillment by Amazon inventory. This means, for those of you that were perhaps manually fulfilling orders up until now for TikTok shop can now transition to more effortlessly expanding your brands, maintaining accurate inventory tracking and quicker order processing. Or imagine just running a promotion on Instagram knowing that your orders are being handled seamlessly through Amazon's system. This can help you capture even more sales opportunities across different channels, keeping you ahead of your competitors. To streamline this process, amazon recommends that you utilize tools like Webby LingSing or Connector by Silk. These platforms can help you connect your social media accounts to your Amazon Seller Central with ease and, in my opinion, a great strategic move to enhance your order fulfillment capabilities, position your business for growth and encourage you to meet customers where they're most active, and that is social channels.   Shivali Patel: Then we have Amazon actually just announced its new dual coupon feature that many of you have been requesting. You can now offer both subscribe and save and reorder coupons on the same ASIN. Previously, sellers could only use one coupon per ASIN, which limited promotional strategies, and now eligible customers can choose between a 10% off free order coupon for a one-time purchase or a 20% off subscribe and save coupon for those who want to subscribe for regular deliveries. I can see this making a dent in impacting the quantity of repeat purchases and facilitating brand loyalty, as well as, if you are a seller, the ability to now cater to different purchasing behaviors. This will help you effectively engage your audience. For instance, if a customer is hesitant to commit to a subscription, that reorder coupon can persuade them to try your product without long-term commitment. Meanwhile, customers who value convenience can opt for the subscribe and save option, benefiting from a greater discount. Remember, guys, at the end of the day, promotions are a really great way for you to attract new customers and retain existing ones. By leveraging these dual coupon offerings, you can enhance your marketing efforts, drive sustained sales growth and, at the end of the day, it's about making your customers feel valued and giving them the options that suit their needs.   Shivali Patel: Okay, moving on, let's talk about an important compliance update that you need to be aware of, effective September 30th 2024, which is already passed, amazon will now require that any product needing compliance documentation to have these documents submitted and approved before it can be listed in order to uphold the highest safety standards for products sold on Amazon. This is just one additional way for them to ensure that customers are really receiving safe and compliant items. While existing product listings will remain unaffected, new listings cannot go live until the proper documentation has been approved. So make sure that you guys manage this process through your manage all inventory dashboard on seller central and, since they can ask for additional information to verify product safety and compliance at any time, you'll want to check back time to time.   Shivali Patel: Speaking of time, as we gear up for the holiday shopping season specifically, there are upcoming 2024 holiday peak fulfillment fees for FBA that you will need to be aware of. From October 15th to January 14th of 2025, you're going to see these seasonal fees applied to all products, reflecting the increased fulfillment and transportation costs during this busy period. This fee structure is similar to what other major carriers charge and it will be consistent across items within the same size band, and this will affect US FBA, Canada FBA, north America remote fulfillment, us multi-channel fulfillment and buy with Prime. I recommend that you guys factor these fees into your pricing strategy. Okay, and especially during the holiday season, when consumer spending typically peaks. The average holiday peak fulfillment fee will remain consistent with last year. However, a new peak fee will apply to products priced below 10 USD. This is for US FBA specifically. While these fees might seem like a hurdle, I want you to keep in mind that Amazon's average FBA fulfillment fees are still about 70% lower than the comparable two-day shipping options offered by third-party logistic providers. And, if needed, the new section does have the detailed rates linked by size and weight on the relevant help pages. So check it out to plan out your inventory and maximize sales during the holiday rush, if you have not already.   Shivali Patel: In other news and in an exciting expansion of its services, amazon Pharmacy is enhancing the way that customers manage their medications with the introduction of a new pill pack feature. This service allows customers to have their eligible medications three or more pre-sorted into convenient pill packets, which will then be delivered straight to their door. This updated offering continues the service from PillPackcom acquired by Amazon in 2018, but introduces new savings and a simplified sign of process. Each PillPack is organized and labeled by date and time, making it easier for individuals to adhere to their prescribed routines without the hassle of multiple pill bottles. I don't think any of us like that. Plus, customers can enjoy fast, free delivery right to their homes. I wanted to mention this as part of this week's buzz because, while perhaps it's not directly relevant to you as an e-com seller or service provider, this new service from Amazon Pharmacy could open avenues for partnership or product integration, especially if you offer health-related products. Later down the road, by keeping an eye on how the service evolves, perhaps you'll be able to identify opportunities to align your offerings with Amazon's growing healthcare initiatives.   Shivali Patel: What else we also have? Amazon introducing new smart carrier options for sellers using FBA and Amazon Warehousing and Distribution, known as AWD, giving sellers more choice and flexibility when sending inventory to the Amazon network. Available through the Amazon Partner Carrier Program, these options allow sellers to choose their preferred partner carrier and transport method based on dynamic freight-ready dates and cost estimates. This update aims to help sellers like you and I optimize our logistics and expenses, and these new features are integrated into step four of both the send to Amazon workflow and send to Amazon warehousing and distribution workflow. That is a tongue twister when you're trying to say it all in one sentence For less than truckload and full truckload shipments. The Amazon partner carrier program, known for offering reliable shipping services, includes small parcel delivery, LTL, FTL and intermodal shipment options, with savings of up to 25% lower compared to alternatives. So sellers can benefit from lower costs, while those delivering to AWD received additional discounts of 25% on storage and 15% on processing and transportation. I hope that you guys can see this as a valuable opportunity to streamline your inventory management and reduce costs, improving efficiency.   Shivali Patel: Okay, then, we have a significant legal development. Four Amazon Marketplace sellers have filed a class action lawsuit against Walmart, seeking $5 million in damages. The lawsuit alleges that Walmart has enabled organized retail crime and racketeering through its third-party vendors by not sufficiently vetting its Marketplace sellers. The complaint filed on September 17th, as written here in US District Court for the District of Delaware, claims that certain third-party sellers on Walmart's platform are engaging in fraudulent practices, buying and reselling products from Amazon vendors in a sophisticated scheme. This practice harms legitimate sellers and allows Walmart to profit from the fees that it collects from these sellers. So I think that this case really underscores the ongoing challenges in maintaining marketplace integrity and the responsibilities of platforms and managing selling ecosystems. So I hope that you're able to recognize, with this case, the importance of just being transparent and ethical in your business practices. It's vital that you guys keep up with the guidelines that these platforms have, and this way you can really protect your brand but also contribute to a healthier marketplace overall. Walmart has until October 10th to respond to a summons that was issued on September 19th and in their statement they indicated they're reviewing the complaint. So, regardless of the outcome, the lawsuit serves as a reminder of the potential risks and the need for the platform to maintain a robust vetting process.   Shivali Patel: Reporting hot from channel x. Starting on October 30th 2024, we also have amazon updating the seller fulfilled returns policies for heavy and bulky items in Germany, France, Italy and Spain stores. This aligns with changes already implemented in the UK since August of 2024, and heavy and bulky items are defined as those that weigh over 31.5 kg or have a longest side exceeding 175 centimeters when packed. Sellers will now be required to offer a prepaid return label and home collection service for these returns, along with issuing refunds to customers, while the responsibility for covering return shipping costs remains unchanged. The refund amount will depend on the return reason and timeline, in line with Amazon's existing returns policy. So the introduction of home collection for heavy and bulky item returns aims to provide a consistent returns experience for customers across all those stores. As the service is already available for FBA and seller flex returns, amazon recommends that we review our carrier contracts to ensure that home collection is included and make any sort of necessary updates.   Shivali Patel: As a seller, you may want to offer partial refunds or part replacements as an alternative to home collection, provided that it's shared the tracking ID of the replacement part with the customer and that you close out the return request with the reason code return request canceled. To avoid A to Z guarantee claims or impacts on order defect rates, sellers must authorize or deny return requests within 48 hours where the auto is not auto authorized. You also have these additional things to keep in mind, but as you can see here, you can just pause the screen and have a read. Otherwise you can reference this channel X article. I'd love to know do you guys think this will help reduce unnecessary customer claims and improve seller performance across amazon's European stores? Let me know in the chat. We do have just a few more things here.   Shivali Patel: It's been a packed week of news as the e-commerce industry continues to expand. Concerns about packaging waste have come to the forefront, prompting amazon to take significant steps towards sustainability. And, in response to the mounting pressure from environmental groups and regulatory bodies, amazon's introduced various recyclable packaging initiatives, one of those being the Frustration-Free Packaging Initiative, designed to ship products in easy-to-open, recyclable packaging, often eliminating the need for additional boxes. Since its launch, amazon reports having removed over 1.5 million tons of waste. I mean that is impressive and it shows a tangible effort for them to reduce waste. Amazon has shifted towards recyclable materials, introducing paper-based mailers that can be easily recycled, curbside, and this shift is part of Amazon's broader commitment to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2040. As a seller, you can adopt sustainable packaging practices to align with Amazon's initiatives, but also appeal to eco-conscious consumers who prioritize environmental responsibility.   Shivali Patel: Up next, we have an article directly from Amazon. According to Amazon's press center, digital Domain, a leader in visual effects and virtual human technology, has announced a collaboration with Amazon Web Services, AWS, to migrate its autonomous virtual human AVH technology to the cloud. This partnership aims to expand the reach and capabilities of AVH technology across industries such as entertainment, gaming, healthcare, hospitality and commercial applications, leveraging AWS's advanced cloud infrastructure, including Amazon's Bedrock for high-performing foundation models, amazon Polly, amongst others, for voice enhancements and for facial recognition. Digital domain is really poised to enhance real-time interaction with virtual humans. Aws's robust security and compliance features will also ensure the integrity and scalability of the AVH platform. This collaboration represents a significant milestone for digital domain following the success of Zoe in 2022. And, with the support of AWS and its cloud infrastructure, I think it's really going to offer AVH technology greater speed, efficiency and global accessibility in many sectors.   Shivali Patel: This collaboration does offer potential relevancy for Amazon sellers, particularly in enhancing customer engagement and support For sellers who operate in industries such as e-com, hospitality or any customer-facing business. Integrating virtual human technology can revolutionize how we interact with customers, and so Amazon sellers can really leverage AVH technology for real-time, ai-driven customer interactions, offering personalized and immersive experiences similar to virtual concierge services. This can help improve the efficiency, manage inquiries, provide product recommendations, offer after-sales support. Even so, by utilizing this advanced technology, we can really, as sellers, go in and enhance our brand experiences, boost customer satisfaction and stay competitive in this growing market where AI and machine learning are really taking on a very pivotal role in customer interaction. Lastly, I figured you guys could also appreciate some fun news how many of you have ever watched Shark Tank and how many of you have seen the new trailer for Amazon Prime videos, buy it Now, hosted by JB Smoove?   Shivali Patel: The Verge reports that in this unique competition, you're going to have contestants having the opportunity to present their product ideas to a panel of investors and an audience known as the 100, representing potential customers. If a contestant's product is well-received, it's going to be featured in a new section of the Amazon store called Buy it Now. The panel actually includes celebrity guests like Gwyneth Paltrow, Jamie Siminoff, who's the CEO of Door.com, serving as the resident judge, and others. Each episode features a $20,000 prize for one contestant, adding an exciting incentive to the competition. Viewers can access the buy it now store via a QR code shown during the episodes, allowing them to purchase featured products directly. The first three episodes will premiere on October 30th, with a total of 13 episodes airing weekly until January 8th of 2025. Additionally, a companion podcast this is Small Business Behind the Buy will be available starting the day after the show's launch. This initiative not only engages viewers, but also aims to drive sales on Amazon, showcasing products with greater transparency about their origins, their names, their brand story, and creating buzz and excitement around new product launches as the holiday shopping season approaches.   Shivali Patel: With that. That is it for this week's news. And, by the way while I didn't mention it, since Bradley's already talked about this in a previous episode Amazon's Prime Big Deals Day sale is also coming up on October 8th and 9th. So I hope that you guys are all squared away to rank at the top of all the keywords you hope to generate sales from. In case you're not, let's just run through one strategy that you can use to capitalize during this time. Let me show you how you can find keywords where your competitors are outranking you. Let's say you're ranked on one of the lower pages, like pages four, five or even just the bottom of page one. Sure, customers searching for niche specific items like coffin shelves underneath the keyword gothic decor may ignore irrelevant results and focus only on the similar products. But also, most people don't even really scroll to page two, which is a clear indicator of why you would want to pay attention to the keywords where your direct competitors might be outperforming you and where you may want to tweak your strategy if you care to be listed at the top half of page one, where all that traffic is. Here's how You're going to want to pay attention to your relative rank against competitors. You can find this metric inside of Cerebro, which is our reverse ASIN keyword research tool, and you are going to begin by putting in a multi-ASIN search. So find a bunch of the Amazon standard identification numbers inside of your niche and go ahead and click get keywords.   Shivali Patel: The second thing you're going to do is set a minimum for search volume. I went ahead and inputted in 300. Now the product I'm looking at is actually this automatic chicken water cup. In doing so, I can now filter out those keywords that don't have a lot of search volume associated. There's no right or wrong number for search volume. You can put in something that you feel is good for your niche. The next thing I'll do is input in a relative rank. I went ahead and added in three for minimum, and this is telling me that and this is basically saying that I'm at least number three amongst my competitors. Then go ahead and input in anything else you want and click apply filters. I actually added in a minimum for word count as well as the phrases containing chicken, because I was seeing some additional terms here.   Shivali Patel: In doing so, I had a output of 38 filtered keywords and you guys can scroll all the way over to the right hand side and check out the relative rank. If you hover over the number for relative rank, it's actually going to showcase to you where you are stacked up next to your competitors as well as what ranking you are at. For example, for this particular keyword, which is automatic chicken watering system, you can see that our relative rank is position number six compared to our competitors. This means that your product ranks sixth in relative rank for this keyword, and this is the sort of thing that can help you identify keywords where competitors are ahead and make adjustments like increasing sponsored ad spend to improve your ranking, or adding that keyword to your title to rank a lot faster, to prepare for a day like Prime big deals day, or even just put in a CPR campaign into motion where you're selling those products at a discounted rate to rank. Happy sales, you guys.

What if you were missing out on hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars in reimbursements from Amazon? Join us as we reveal the game-changing strategies for reclaiming lost and damaged inventory funds from Amazon's FBA warehouses, just in time for the crucial update on October 23rd. We highlight the indispensable Helium 10 Refund Genie tool, providing you with a step-by-step guide and real-life success stories from sellers who have maximized their refunds without any commission fees. Uncover the secrets to boosting your profitability by making the most of Helium 10's full suite of features. We'll walk you through how to handle active and suspended product listings, ensuring accurate and timely reimbursements for damaged items. Learn practical tips and tricks, including a thorough explanation of size tier optimization. By tweaking your product packaging and leveraging Helium 10 Alerts, you'll discover how to reduce shipping costs and significantly increase your bottom line. Imagine saving $10 per unit with just a 0.2-inch reduction in packaging size. We provide compelling examples, such as a floor lamp that moved from an extra-large to a large bulky tier, saving $2 per unit. Through personal anecdotes and expert insights, we demonstrate how monitoring dimension changes and enabling alerts can lead to substantial financial recoveries. Don't miss this opportunity to reclaim your funds and optimize your Amazon business for greater profitability. In episode 601 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley talks about: 00:00 - Maximizing Amazon FBA Reimbursements With Refund Genie01:31 - Amazon Lost and Damaged Claims Guide04:35 - Amazon Seller Refund Process10:29 - Getting Refunds Using Helium 10 Refund Genie10:48 - Amazon Refund Process and Strategies19:54 - Maximizing Amazon FBA Reimbursements and Savings22:41 - Helium10 Alerts for Size Tier Optimization25:02 - Optimizing Packaging for Amazon Profits29:26 - Identifying Dimension Changes for Amazon Reimbursement31:18 - Amazon FBA Reimbursement for Dimensional Changes ► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast ► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension ► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup  (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life) ► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft ► Watch The Podcasts On Youtube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos Transcript Bradley Sutton: Today we're doing a live workshop on how to get money back from Amazon and on this live broadcast there are four people on the call who are going to be able to get back over $30,000 live on the show back from Amazon. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Important message guys. On October 23rd, Amazon is changing the window for which you can look back and claim that they owe you reimbursements for lost and damaged products at FBA warehouses. It used to be 18 months, but now it's going down to only two months. So, if you have never used the reimbursement service or Refund Genie, now is the time. Last week I ran Refund Genie on two different accounts and got a total of over five thousand dollars back for those sellers. And don't forget, unlike a lot of services out there, Helium 10 doesn't take any commission on what we get back. If we say you're owed ten thousand dollars and you get back ten thousand dollars from Amazon, you keep ten thousand dollars with no commission to Helium 10 at all. Refund Genie is now available to anybody who has a Helium 10 Platinum annual plan or higher. So to get an estimate about on how much money you could get back, go to h10.me/refundgenie. If you've never used a Helium 10 coupon, use the code SSP10 to save money if you need to upgrade to a Platinum annual plan. Bradley Sutton: Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that's completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world, and today is our monthly live training that we do, along with an ask me anything, where we go over a certain aspect that can help you on Amazon, and then we take all your questions live, and we've got a great session for you today. Let's go ahead and hop into it. Let me just kind of like level set here what the situation is, so, for a lot of you, you might have seen the message already that you know, on October 23rd, Amazon is changing the look back period of when you can claim lost and damaged, so what that means is Amazon sometimes loses products at their warehouses of yours, they sometimes damage it, and they're supposed to, you know, refund your money when that happens, and you know, a lot of times they do. So what the problem is, though is sometimes, for whatever reason, they don't always refund the money like they're supposed to, and so when that happens, it's okay. It's not Amazon necessarily going and stealing all of your money. They allow you to like file claims if you are missing the money, all right, and then you know once, once they do their investigation sometimes it's instant then they will say, all right, yeah, we will give you the money back, and then they refund you like within days. Bradley Sutton: Now, if you have never used a service before, you know whether it's Helium 10, whether it's an outside service, if you have never used a service, uh that audits, or you don't audit your account completely to like look at all the uh, uh disbursement reports and the reimbursement reports and what Amazon has uh returned to you, what Amazon has lost. If you've never done that, you could be owed thousands of dollars, like, in my experience, half of your half of 1% of like what your gross revenue is. You could get back. All right so to 1%. I've seen some accounts get 1%. So let's say you've sold in the last 18 months a hundred thousand dollars worth of inventory. Basically that means that you might be owed a thousand dollars, potentially, all right. Or I should say 500 to a thousand dollars. If it's a million, you know you could be owed up to $5,000 if you've never audited. That's how much. And a lot of services out there, uh, which are great, the issue is that they'll take um, a percentage. They'll file all the claims for you and then take a percentage, like 25%, of whatever they find they keep. Bradley Sutton: Now the way I'm about to show you guys is a 100% free, as in whatever we find that Amazon owes you you keep. I wish I could take a commission on that. I'd be a rich man if I could just take 1% of what we find for you, because we've found millions and millions of dollars that Amazon owes you. So I'm going to show you guys how to look at the report. First of all, all right again, if those of you with a Diamond annual plan or Platinum annual plan, you've got full access to it. If not, well, just you know, stay watching this, because you'll need to know it. You need to like at least get the account. Those of you have done a lot of money and then you're going to need to know how to do this later on in the future. I saw a couple of you are newer sellers. You're probably not owed that much by Amazon. But guess what? Hopefully, you get to the point where you are owed money, not because you want Amazon to be taking the money that's owed to you, but because you're doing so much revenue that inevitably things are going to get lost things might get damaged and Amazon might owe you a lot of money. So this is important, no matter what stage of the journey you are on. All right, so now hop into your Amazon account and then some of you might have a banner at the top. Does anybody have a banner on the top that says, hey, you might be owed this amount of money? I don't have it on my screen because I already kind of like started this process already, but that banner would show up at the very top, all right. Bradley Sutton: So I am in one of the UK accounts that I have access to, and so, whether you have or not the banner again, this is if you're Platinum annual or Diamond annual, if not, just watch, all right, there's nothing for you to do. If you're not this, you're not gonna be able to do anything, but just watch, all right. So this is important. I'll give you, like, a coupon code. You can get it again, I'm not trying to sell you some service where we're going to take a percentage. We take zero percent. We actually have a service for those of you who are like $50 million sellers and you don't have the time to go one by one and do what I'm about to show you guys how to do. No problem, you can go sign up for that service and we'll take like 25% of it and we do all the work for you. That's h10.me/mrs. But that's not what I'm trying to talk about here. I'm just talking about how you can do it for free, all right. And then I'm going to give you three other ways that I have also gotten thousands of dollars back from Amazon. Okay. So let's go ahead and go for those of you who have the banner, click the banner. For those of you who don't have that banner, I want you to click on the tools and then go to Refund Genie. Neal says he's got a message here on his computer. It says last chance to claim 1600 bucks. All right, Neal, you are, you are set to go. So if you have a Platinum manual, Neal, you're going to be able to get $1,600 today in the next 30 minutes, potentially. All right. So Neal's got his Helium 10 account covered, almost right there. He's got anybody else have a message like that at the top of their screen. I'm just curious what message you guys are showing. Bradley Sutton: All right, now I'm going to go ahead and go into this Creative LG account. Okay, I'm going to hit details. You want to go to the ones that have stars and, as you can see, this account is selling in a lot of platforms. Selling in Germany, UK, Spain, France, Italy. Some of you might only be selling in one platform, doesn't matter, the process is completely the same. Now, as you can see, for a lot of these I have already requested reimbursement. You can see I hit processed. So I'm just going to go to the UK one. Let me see if I have any open. I hope I can find one that I have open. Yes, perfect, all right. So, as you can see, I've got a whole bunch of what's called uh, FN SKUs. All right, where Helium 10 found, where Amazon owes me money, all right. So if you're auditing, if, let's say, you don't have Helium 10 and the how, how can you get this? Well, you would download your transaction reports and the ledger report and then you're going to look back at any event that happened where you've got damaged or lost inventory, okay. And then now you're going to go back into your reimbursement report and you've got to cross check if Amazon already reimbursed you for that exact FN skew that went missing. And that's what Helium 10 is doing. Helium 10 has automated that process and that's why we are giving this report here in Refund Genie. All right, so you know there's nothing for you to do other than copy and paste. All right, so did anybody find an ASIN that has it? Bradley Sutton: Inbae says I see the screen lost items, but can't see damage items. Well, for you, if you don't have damage, that means Amazon hasn't damaged. That means Amazon has already refunded you for everything that they've damaged and, for whatever reason, Amazon is pretty good at reimbursing sellers with what's been damaged, but there's a lot more money that is owed to you from what's lost. All right, so don't worry if you have nothing damaged. All right, wow, oh, my goodness. Brad Dassow says he's got 24 guys. We might have a winner here today. Brad Dassow, I am going to help my namesake out there gvet $24,000. Live on the air. All right, Brad, you with me. Brad, what, what? What level of Helium 10 plan do you have? Do you have a Platinum manual or Diamond A plan? If so, you are going to get $24,000 potentially today. That are going to get $24,000 potentially today. That's crazy. I love it. I love it. We're making big dents, in a good way, to your bank account today guys. Maria, wait, look at Maria's here. Maria is owed $18,000. Wow, all right, Maria. What plan do you have, Maria? Guys, two people that are live on this call are going to learn how to get almost $40,000 back from Amazon 100% for free, and I don't get a commission on any of this. Gursharn says he's owed $7,600. Wow, you guys should be happy. You tuned in live today. Excellent, excellent. Joe says he already got 20,000 back per year. Great job, Helium 10. All right, Brad is Platinum Annual. You are good to go. Maria is Platinum Annual? Perfect, all right, now we're going to do this all together, all right. Bradley Sutton: So what I want Brad, Maria, anybody else who's doing this, and go and open in Seller Central. All right, go to your Seller Central account of whichever one that is, your owe the money in Helium 10. And then I want you guys to hit help and then get help and resources. Okay, Marie and Brad are ready on Platinum Annual. You guys are good to go. Look at that. They don't even have to pay any extra money and they're going to get all this money back. I love it. All right, Maria and Brad, I'm doing this with you. Oh, my goodness, Inbae Park. Inbae Park beat everybody. Inbae Park is owed $60,000. Guys, we're getting $100,000 live on this podcast today. Inbae, do you have a Platinum annual plan or above? Inbae, you're ready, all right. So, Inbae, Brad, Maria, get it ready. Lori says it, says they found it. Yeah, sometimes Amazon will say some of the ones they found, but for me, on my US accounts, 95% of what Helium 10 found, they returned to me. Yeah, and then contact the associate. Lori says it shows. Contact the associate, I'll show you what to do for that. All right, I'll show you what to do. Okay, Tony, you're good to go to. Tony, set this up. We Joe's on Diamond Set this up. All right, we're going crazy here, guys, we're getting a hundred thousand dollars live, all right. Bradley Sutton: So now, as you can see, I'm just going to do a couple of the small ones. Uh, by the way, if you are owed for one ASIN, any big amount, guys, I almost guarantee Amazon is going to require you to open a case, but they solve it within like 48 hours. Some of these little ones I'm going to get like it looks like 10 euros here, seven euros here. They're going to refund my money immediately. You're going to say hey, yep, we agree with you, you're good to go. But other ones, especially the bigger ones, or if some of my items like this, like this account. This account is a beauty account, and so there's a lot of products that are no longer on Amazon for whatever reason, like it got suspended in this account. If you have a product that is not currently live on Amazon, Amazon will deny your money. So that's what I said today, guys. Today we're not just talking about how to use Helium 10 Refund Genie. This is general information. Even if you're not a Helium 10 member, it's important. So just keep in mind. Usually, if you had a product that was suspended or is not active on Amazon, a lot of times they are going to use that as an excuse to not give you your money back. So if there's any way for you to get your product back on Amazon, do that first before making a claim on that product. I hope that makes sense, all right. Bradley Sutton: So, Brad, Inbae, Maria, the ones that I want you guys to start with are the ones that you know are pretty much active on Amazon and you're not going to have issue, all right. So let's go ahead together, guys, you three and whoever else, Tony, whoever's on this copy one of the first FN SKUs. All right, that's on one of your reports. Okay, you just hit this button that has copy and then, once you do that, hit processed, so that you know it is done right here in Refund Genie. Now switch over to your Seller Central tab and you are looking for something that might say inventory lost in FBA warehouse. If you see that, just click this and that's what you need to look for. Now if anybody's listening on the podcast or watching this on YouTube and you do not have a button in Amazon Seller Central support that says inventory lost in FBA warehouse, don't worry, some marketplaces, you don't see it. All you have to do is hit this button that says my issue is not listed and then just type in inventory lost in FBA warehouse and then the widget is going to show up. What shows up. Let me just show you by hitting this. All right, so, Brad Maria, paste. When the window comes up that says enter FN SKU, you paste the FN SKU that you copied from Refund Genie and then you hit continue. Bradley Sutton: Now here, as you can see, I have multiple SKUs. So if you have multiple SKUs, you have to pick which SKU. So I'm going to go back to my Refund Genie. Refund Genie has that here, too. I see which SKU it is. Let me copy that. And it is this SKU right here. So I'm going to hit this SKU and let's see what it has. Aha, this one got. This is one of those ones. I told you this is a restricted product, so I this is not my account, so I didn't get my money back on this one. Why? Because this product got restricted on Amazon. I told you this is a beauty product that I'm in. For Brad and Maria and Inbae. What did you guys find on yours? Did you guys get it? I'm going to try another one. I might have to do a few of them here. This account has a lot of restricted products, so I am going to go ahead and get help with a new issue and watch. I'm just going to do this really quick. I'm going to copy another one and I'm not sure the a lot of these. This is why they're probably not here. A lot of these might be already restricted, so let me just copy another ASIN in here. Hit inventory loss in FBA warehouse. Paste the FN SKU. Hit continue. Please don't be a restricted product. Let's see here. Boom goes the dynamite. All right, look what I just did in three seconds. Here I paste an FN SKU. This was not a restricted product that I had. How many units did Helium 10 say I was owed? I don't know if you guys caught that potential units one right here. And then how many did I get reimbursed right now? One unit, Helium 10 was a hundred percent accurate on that one. All right, perfect, perfect, all right. Next one let's see what did. Oh see, look at Brad. Brad did it Said. Brad said these items have been processed for reimbursement. Brad, how much was that one that you just did? I just did one that got me 10 euros. How much did you get? Who's done? A big one so far? Neal got $75 and he's got another one that said invalid, all right, so Neal might have some products that were not eligible, but Neal just got his whole month almost of Helium 10 covered. Bradley Sutton: Alright Inbae says I've got a difficulty on damage item reporting. All right, so I don't have any that's damaged here. But the difference, guys, on damage reporting, let me just show it for Inbae or anybody else who is trying to reconcile their damage you have to do the transaction ID. Okay, so this is. I don't have any here so I can't do it, but I'm just going to pretend I do, all right. So if anybody ever finds that Amazon owes them money from a damaged item, instead of the FN SKU, what Refund Genie has is the transaction ID. So, Inbae, if you have the transaction ID, you copy it. You go to Amazon, you get help with a new issue and, as you can see, there is not one for inventory damaged all right. So Inba, what you or anybody else, what you do is you hit my issue is not listed. And then you put here investigate inventory damaged at FBA warehouse All right. And then you hit continue, okay. Inventory damaged at FBA warehouse all right. And then you hit continue, okay. And then you select right here inventory damaged in FBA warehouse all right. So hit that one Inbae and look here it says enter up to 25 transaction IDs. So in Helium 10, again, I can't show this to you because this account I didn't have any damage that was owed, but there'll be just a button to select a whole bunch of transaction IDs together. You paste them here at once, no commas, no punctuation, things like that. You can paste up to 25, and then you hit continue and then that's how you get your money back on the damaged. So Inbae the transaction ID is in Helium 10 as well. So right here, as you can see, I am looking at the lost. But you need to go to the damaged section of Refund Genie and it will show the transaction ID. It's not on the same page as lost. All right for everybody else. While you're looking for that in bay, let me go to another, uh, another couple ones here, just to make sure everybody's got the process for lost inventory. Here's another one where it says I'm owed seven euros, about 10 bucks. Let's copy this. I'm going to hit processed and I go up here back to seller central I say get help with new issue Inventory lost in FBA warehouse, paste the FN SKU and this is either going to be. So this one it says create a case. So sometimes if it gets denied you have to create a case. Bradley Sutton: So everybody don't just go copying and pasting these and not reading what it says. If you ever see one that says create a case, hit that button. Okay, sometimes you have to take an extra step with Amazon to get your money back. So I'm going to hit create a case and then they'll get back to me if I'm owed that money? Ah! Neal says I just noticed that I was not clicking the copy and just highlighting the FN SKU and pasting. It pastes with a space. Yes, make sure to hit the button that just says copy and it'll highlight the right one. Maria, you did the exact right thing. That's exactly what I just did. Maria says hey, I got a message that said resolve your issue. It requires additional investigation in the case has been transferred. That's exactly what you need to do. So, guys, do not, when you guys are trying to do this fast, whether you're using Helium 10 or not don't just blindly do it and then go to the next one. Read the message, because if there's a button that says a new case needs to be made, you have to hit that button or else Amazon will say oh, too bad, you didn't say you didn't, you didn't do the case. Dmytro says I got a message that says upgrade to a plan that includes refund. Yeah, so, Dmytro, you need to get on the Platinum annual plan. How much money are you owed, Dmytro? All right, how's it going? Inbae, Brad, Maria, how much money have you guys got so far? Neal says when it says that one is found, do you have to choose my issuers. No, the only time you ever need to hit something is if you see if there's a button that says create a case or you might have to create a case. They're doing an audit on everything. Helium 10 just tells you how much you're owed, but then they'll let you know how much was lost, how much was found and how much was never reimbursed. And then you're looking for the one that says, oh, this is reimbursable, but they'll tell you how many they found too. Just to you know, try and be proud of themselves. I guess on Amazon, here. Bradley Sutton: Dan says what do you suggest for sellers who are on Platinum or a few hundred, Dan, if, if you're on the regular Platinum plan, you'll be able to see how much money we're estimating your owed. And if it's like 400 bucks or 600 bucks, you know I'm not going to sit here and tell you, oh yeah, you need to go ahead and upgrade to the Diamond or to the Platinum annual plan. No, because that's going to cost you money. So you know, I'll tell it to you straight. You have no need to upgrade to the Platinum annual plan. You just kind of like I would say, try and take the time to figure out how to do those reimbursements on your own by doing all those reports. But if any of you are seeing something, I mean. That being said, Dan, if you're planning to be a Helium 10 member for a long time and you're paying monthly right now $99 a month, don't forget, if you do go to the annual plan, you get two months free. All right, you're getting two months free if you switch the annual plan. So if you're planning to be a Helium 10 member for a while, even if you're only owed $400, I mean theoretically I guess it's still worth it for you, Dan, to upgrade, because you're gonna be paying us anyways and now you save two months and now you get $400 back. So that's like getting four months for free or six months for free, because you're getting two months free plus the four months if you're over 400 bucks, all right. So yeah, it's up to you, Dan. But anybody out there who has a message where Refund Genie says hey, you're owed $1,500. You're owed uh, you know 2000, $10,000. It's a no brainer just instantly upgrade and then you're going to make that money back and more. Bradley Sutton: Maria says I have two reimbursements, so far, $178, and the others need cases. Excellent, Maria, did you have any line item where just one item was like a really big amount? Usually if it's like $300 or more for one item. Amazon says oh, I got to investigate it. Neal says I assume that means everything is good. If it says these items were found, if they're always going to tell you which one is found, but there should be one or two, if Helium 10 says so that's reimbursable. Oh, Brad said I've got a couple thousand dollars so far. Very easy process. Thanks, Helium 10. That's great. Brad just made just got two years of Helium 10 subscription paid for. It's like he never has to pay Helium 10 for two years because he just got that money back in the last 15 minutes. I love it. I love to see it. Inbae says I've done a few hundred so far. Excellent, excellent. Look guys, how many live calls do we actually literally make people money on the call for free? And people are making thousands of dollars out there that they're going to get in their account. I love it, I love it. Maria says our items are a bit expensive. Just one is over $300 and an expensive one is around two grand. Yeah, I almost guarantee Maria. I bet you. Amazon said oh, we need to open investigation for those expensive ones. Let me know. I bet you they did. Bradley Sutton: All right, Neal says I'm about 10 out of 12 process, perfect, all right. While you guys are still doing that, Brad, Maria, Inbae, keep going. Let me give you remember. I said I was going to talk about different ways you can get money back from Amazon. Here's another way, and this I've never done any of these accounts. I have no idea what I'm about to find. All right. So for the rest of you guys, and this is plan of Helium 10. The Refund Genie. You got to be on a Platinum annual plan at the least. All right, and again, really quick. If anybody was like hey, I am not a Platinum annual member and I want to take advantage of this, don't pay full price. Use the code SSP10 to upgrade to that Platinum annual and then you'll be able to get those Refund Genie reports SSP, as in Serious Sellers Podcast 10. All right, now I want everybody else, regardless of what plan you have, to go into Helium 10 Alerts. That is, in Operations, okay, operations. And then hit Alerts oh, my goodness, there is. Oh, this is juicy stuff. See, this is not an account I manage all the time. So take a look here, guys, all right. So here at the top, does anybody else see this? I would say most of you probably don't have this, but this account does. Does anybody at the top left of your alerts see a message that says products with size tier optimization suggestions? This is rare, but this is the number two way that I've gotten thousands, or I'm getting thousands of dollars back from Amazon. Bradley Sutton: Wow, Brad is just like making money left and right from Helium 10. He's got seven suggestions. All right, let me explain what this is. So anybody with any Helium 10 plan who has Alerts, go to your Alerts and on the top left, if you see products with size tier optimization suggestions. This doesn't mean 100%. Oh, you're going gonna be able to take advantage of this and make a lot of money. But let me explain what this means. This means that we detected one of your items that has a package size that is within like one or two inches on just one side. That will help you go from one size tier to another. Let me give you a quick anecdote of what I did recently In one of my accounts one of the coffin shelves I sell I had this message and my package is fine, like the package that I have is like hey, it's not like I have a whole bunch of empty space in there, but I saw that if I take away one inch off of one side, guess how much money I save per package on my shipping fees. Guys to Amazon? $3 and 50 cents. All right, let's just calculate that out here. All right, so if I sell 10 units a day of this coffin shelf, that means that if I make this package adjustment, I'm going to go from large standard size to standard size and save 350 per unit. Times that by 10. Every day I'm going to save in Amazon fees $35. Now I can't just snap my fingers like I did with Refund Genie and get this money back from Amazon. No, that means the next time that I am ordering this product from my manufacturer in China. I redesigned the package and redesigned the actual product a little bit. Not everybody can do this, right, but I. You know the coffin shelf is like you know. I can make it an inch smaller and it's still a good coffin shelf, right? So that's what I did. And then this I did this two months ago. This order is now on the water, on the way to me, okay. So remember I said that's $35 a day. Might not seem like a lot. This is only a product. I sell 10 units a day. Now times that by 365. Bradley Sutton: Guys, this one alert that I got. How much is that saving me? Anybody? Do the math right there $12,700 guys. I am going to get extra per year on my profitability for this product because I was able to reduce my packaging by one inch on one side. All right, so how does this come up? Helium 10 is analyzing your account and if they see you have a package that is really close to one of the big size here, I mean, one inch doesn't always make that, um, doesn't always make that big of a difference, but we are looking for the ones where it's the literally the difference of going from one size tier to the next size tier. That's why not all of you are going to have something here Alerts. Hopefully none of you I mean not none of you. Hopefully most of you don't have this, because that means you've been kind of like throwing away money for a long time right. But if it is so, those of you who have this, Brad and the others, click on it and let's go to those products and let's just take a look here, it is right here. This is a floor lamp, right, this is a floor lamp here. And what is the message saying? You see here how there is a big red info sign. Okay, so this one, I could go from extra large to large bulky. What about this one? This one, I can go from extra large. Look at this. If I just take width by 1.1 inches, I go from extra large to large bulky and the FBA fulfillment cost goes from $21 to $19. Boom, in this account they will get $2 back if they can change their size by one inch. Okay, oh, my goodness, Brad, are you sure you're reading this right, Brad? That's crazy. Brad says on one of his he just has to reduce the height by 0.2 inches good grief, 0.2 inches and he can go from large bulky to large standard size, decreasing FBA fulfillment from $17 to $7. What in the world by 0.2?, Brad, are you sure you copied and pasted that right? That's insane. How many units, Brad, do you sell of that product? Brad is making ridiculous money off of Helium 10 today. He's making thousands of dollars from refunding. He already did thousands of dollars. He got back. I think he said or was that Inbae? I forgot, but now he might have somebody ask how many units of that do you have? Bradley Sutton: Rob. By the way, Rob asked a great question does Amazon remeasure the dimension automatically or do you have to ask them to do it? You have to ask them to do it. Alright, so once your new inventory with a new dimension is in Amazon, you have to ask for remeasurement and just say you change your package. Going back to a question from Inbae, he says I downloaded the damage item spreadsheet. Inbae, that tells me you're doing the wrong thing. You might be looking at the old Refund Genie. The new Refund Genie has zero downloads. So if there was nothing that had a star that allowed you to go to see the damage, then you're looking at the wrong thing. That means Amazon already, uh, reimbursed you for everything. All right, the only thing you guys should not be downloading anything in Refund Genie. Everything is in the app, the, the downloadable things. Those are from the old Refund Genie, all right, so those are. The time is probably already ended on when you can get your money back on those, or Amazon already reimbursed. Well, Brad, how many units of that do you sell a month or a day? Brad might have just made thousands of dollars here I'm not sure if Brad's still with us here, but that is another way you get money back and that I am getting $12,000 back from Amazon because I saw that I could change my package by such a tiny bit and it's going to save me $3 per unit. Now I've never, ever seen one like Brad's where he says he has a message where he is so close, only 0.2 inches away, and then he can go down to $7. That's insane, um for his packaging fee. So that would be crazy if he can do that, all right. So that's number two. Bradley Sutton: Number three, another way, is just Alerts by itself, all right. So one of the alerts guys, one of the things that Alerts is doing, it's monitoring if Amazon changes your dimensions, okay, if Amazon is changing your dimensions. So pay close attention to this, everybody. I once got $5,000 back from Amazon, but I never should have given Amazon that money in the first place. Helium 10 helped me get $5,000 back, but it never should have happened, because the instant that Amazon changed my dimensions erroneously, like some random employee in some FBA warehouse, I don't know, they were like drinking on the job or something, and they measured it in a ridiculous way and they increased my package size by like two inches, right. And so I'm like, okay, I just expect Amazon to do the right thing. All the time I wasn't paying attention and Helium 10 gave me the alert, but I didn't notice it. I don't know what I was thinking. This was like three years ago, and then what happened was I was looking through my alerts and then I looked here in event history. So, guys, go through your event history, okay, and then see, did something change for your dimensions? And then, if it is, and it's the wrong dimensions, you can go and file a claim. Bradley Sutton: This part has nothing to do with Helium 10. Helium 10 tells you what happened. But the next part, you go on your own and just open up a case and just say, hey, Amazon, you guys changed my dimensions erroneously on this date. That's the beauty about Helium 10 is it's going to tell you the date that this happened. Like, look at this we sent this person a message that on October 23rd, their product description changed, all right. So when, when something happens, an image changes, a product description changes, dimensions change. Helium 10 is notifying you on that date. So then let's just pretend that in this situation they had a dimension change. That was wrong and it happened October 23rd. So what I'm doing right now is I have a limited time. I'm not going to be able to get money back all the way back to October 23rd. You can only get money on dimensional changes within the last six months. So what I would do in this make-believe world where Amazon changed this whatever the heck, this is this piece of furniture here I would say, hey, Amazon, on October 23rd, you changed my dimension from this to this, causing me extra Amazon FBA fulfillment fees. Please reimburse me for this amount and remeasure, because this is the wrong dimensions. And then, obviously, you have to be a hundred percent correct. Like you, you gotta be sure that you've got the right dimensions and you can't like just tell them that it's this size, because what is Amazon going to do? They're going to go and remeasure it and then to check if what you're saying is true and then, if it is, then yeah, they're going to refund you, like thousands of dollars potentially, if that's how much extra they've been charging, and, of course, depending on how much extra, you know how much your sales have been. If you're only, if you only sold 10 units, well they're only going to charge. You know, they're only going to reimburse you the 20 bucks or whatever is the difference. But on this one product it was my main coffin shelf I was selling hundreds and hundreds of units and I was you know doing it at a price that I was getting charged extra every single unit for shipping because they had the wrong dimensions all right. So that's a third way that you can look and where Helium 10 can help get you money back by notifying you if that's happened. Bradley Sutton: Now, let's say you've got lots of products and you're not sure you didn't have Alerts on. By the way, guys, the only way you're going to get notified is if you hit this on button for your product. So what everybody should do right now who has a Platinum plan. You don't need an annual plan. Just, even if you're on the monthly plan, go into Alerts one by one guys, turn it on all right, otherwise this tool is useless to you If you don't turn it on. You got to turn it on, all right, for all your products so that you will get notified if you have a dimensional change. But let me show you something on how you can, um, how you can do it just on the fly. All right, this is like a little hack, all right, and this is the fourth way that you can kind of like, look and get money back. Watch this, go to your, go to one of your products on Amazon. I'm going to go to this one right here. Let me see if this even works here. Yeah, this product, this product is not even being sold right now. But watch this, go to any product, guys, on Amazon. I'm going to show you a little hack right here, a little Helium 10 hack. That's kind of hidden. All right, now, watch this. You see how, right here, under the BSR chart, it says revenue calculator and sales estimator. This is a hidden thing. This is like a. This is like one of those video game hacks where you have to like hit a couple buttons to release something. So hit revenue calculator and then hit sales estimator again and look what happens. Look what comes up. All of a sudden, this new little widget shows where it shows the package dimensions and the item dimensions. Now, this, this guys, is only going to work if you have a product that is very close in size to the package size, right? Like, for example, it's not something that you have to assemble or

Join Bradley Sutton, as he explores the intricacies of Amazon product launches with the updated Maldives Honeymoon Launch Strategy. He’ll walk you through optimizing your product launches during Amazon's critical honeymoon period, sharing his hands-on experience and the latest insights from his recent testing. Learn how to utilize Helium 10's Blackbox tool for effective product research, identifying opportunities with low title density to give your product a competitive edge. We address the evolving landscape of AI and algorithm changes in Amazon, reassuring you that the fundamental principles of successful launches remain robust. Discover advanced keyword research strategies using Helium 10's Cerebro tool to enhance your product's visibility from day one. We explain how to identify crucial keywords by examining competitors' rankings and uncovering hidden opportunities through niche keywords. By focusing on keywords where top competitors are already advertising, you'll ensure comprehensive keyword coverage and improve your product's relevancy signals on Amazon. Additionally, Bradley shows you how to leverage thematically related products frequently bought together with your competitors' items to optimize your listings and advertising efforts. Finally, he'll guide you through creating compelling Amazon listings that resonate with potential buyers. Learn to prioritize relevant keywords based on competitor performance, avoid keyword stuffing, and craft emotionally engaging content. Bradley emphasizes the importance of customer reviews and the effective use of images and bullet points to highlight product benefits. Plus, he shares his experiences with test listings to ensure a smooth launch and offers strategies for balancing expenditure and maximizing ranking during the critical launch period. Whether you're launching a new product on Amazon or optimizing an existing one, these insights and strategies are designed to help you succeed in the Amazon marketplace.   In episode 600 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley talks about: 00:00 - Maldives Honeymoon Amazon Product Launch Strategy08:33 - Keyword Research for Amazon Launch Success16:16 - Utilizing Cerebro Historical Trends for Keywords20:30 - Identifying Related, Non-Competing Products20:37 - Strategic Keywords for Amazon Product Optimization23:57 - Effective Amazon Listing Optimization Strategy28:04 - Optimizing Amazon Listings for Success28:54 - Launching a Test Listing Strategy34:04 - Setting List Price Strategy for Sales36:13 - Amazon Product Launch Strategy and Pricing37:10 - Amazon PPC Strategy and Optimization41:18 - Strategies for Amazon Discounts & Price Management45:13 - Amazon Listing Relevancy and Ranking Strategy49:36 - Product Launch Success With Amazon Relevancy 53:26 - Annual Amazon Launch Strategy Review ► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast ► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension ► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup  (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life) ► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft ► Watch The Podcasts On YouTube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos Transcript Bradley Sutton: All right, guys, it's episode 600. You know what that means. It's time for another Maldives Honeymoon Launch Strategy. I'm going to be giving you guys, step by step, what you need to do in order to have the best launch that you can have for your Amazon products. How cool, is that? Pretty cool, I think. Black Box by Helium 10 houses the largest database of Amazon products and keywords in the world. Outside of Amazon itself. We have over 2 billion products and many millions more keywords from different Amazon marketplaces, from USA to Australia to Germany and more. Use our powerful filters to search through this database for pockets of opportunity that you might want to get into with your first or next product to sell on Amazon. For more information, go to h10.me/blackbox. Don't forget you can save 10% off for life on Helium 10 by using our special code SSP10.   Bradley Sutton: Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that's completely BS free, unscripted and unrehearsed, organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers, as of any level in the e-commerce world. All right, and for you guys watching this on YouTube. You saw me do a dramatic transition from the pool. I'm here in the Maldives at a new resort that I've never been in, and I'm recording this as I do every year the Maldives Honeymoon Launch episode. This is now like the eighth version, I think. We used to do it every 50 episodes on the on the like the hundred and the 50. Uh, now we only do it every 100 episodes. So about once a year I come out here to the Maldives on my own dime I'm paying for this myself, and then I just take a couple of day’s vacation and also record the episode for Maldives Honeymoon Launch Strategy. All right, so if this is your first time listening to one of these, you don't need to go back and listen to the others, because every year I update it.   Bradley Sutton: But basically, just a brief history is I started really focusing on what can give you the best bang for your buck for launches, and we all know about the so-called Amazon honeymoon period, where you get a little bit more bang for your buck when your product is just coming out. But then I started noticing things that gave me like that extra oomph, like a very special honeymoon, which is how I came up with the name Maldives Honeymoon, and that's why I am here and, for dramatic effect. I always come here to Maldives. I'm here at a resort I've never been it's the Huvafen Fushi Hilton, I believe it's called, but really great resort out here. And I'm here on my last day and I wanted to go ahead and share with you guys the new strategy.   Bradley Sutton: So what we're going to be going over today is I'm going to go over, first of all, this is like version 6.0 of this strategy, where we are going to just break down what are the steps. And this isn't just me coming up with these steps. I've been testing it the last year. I've been testing stuff this month, last month, the previous month. I'm constantly doing tests to make sure, hey, what is the best strategy? And guess what, guys, if you listen to episode 500, the last time I did one of these episodes it's different than what I'm going to talk about today, because things on Amazon do change over time and that's why I do these every 100 episodes. So we're going to first go over the list of what makes up this strategy right now and then I'll give you guys, I'll show you guys, some examples of some things that I did, you know, show how I even came up with this, why it works. All right.   Bradley Sutton: So first let's talk about product research. You know, the Maldives Honeymoon Strategy actually can doesn't always have to, but it can start with your product research when you're finding a new product to operate. I don't always just have the Maldives Honeymoon Launch Strategy in mind, but it's something that allows me to kind of like, pick the cream of the crop. Okay, so one of those features that I look for is a low title density. In Helium 10 Black Box, you use the filter under keywords for a title density. That means how many listings on page one, um, have this exact search keyword in the title? Uh, now, first of all, hold on.   Bradley Sutton: Let me just back up really quick, and one elephant that's in some people's rooms, not in everybody's, is hey, wait a minute, isn't launch and creating listings and things completely different now, here, towards the end of 2024, because of Cosmo Algorithm and Rufus and this and that. And first of all, just spoiler, no, 100% the same. I'm not doing anything differently, differently. That being said, I'm going to go deep into I might have already been dependent on when I'm recording this, but I'm going to go deep into another episode where we talk about, uh, what the future holds because of you know, AI and different things. But the beauty is that don't listen to people who are trying to say that, hey, everything has changed right now because it hasn't, I am not doing anything differently because of AI and I'm having the exact same successes now.   Bradley Sutton: The reason is because I have never been one somebody just focusing on keyword stuffing or keyword relevancy as the be all filter and stuff. If you're doing that, yeah, your launch strategies would have gone out of fashion years ago, because Amazon searches evolved before AI, before so-called Cosmo or Rufus and things like that. No, you got to do more than just stuff your keywords or your listings with keywords. Right, we've been teaching that you have to have the customer in mind when you guys are coming up with your listing, when you're choosing keywords, and not just have the Amazon algorithm in mind. Okay, and that's what we've always, even though the kind of strategies have changed. That's what we've always focused on in the Maldives Honeymoon Strategy is you're balancing Amazon algorithm with the customer and, again, nothing has changed, even though there's Rufus now and there's, you know, develop algorithms. If you're still doing that, you are a hundred percent fine. So don't get confused with people telling you that, hey, you've got to completely change everything you do or else you're completely irrelevant to the Amazon algorithm. Now, that being said, I hope nothing changes in the three weeks that from the time I'm recording this to the time I am releasing this, because I actually am recording this before Amazon Accelerate. Who knows, maybe something will come up from Amazon Accelerate that completely changes this.   Bradley Sutton: I was teaching the Maldives Honeymoon Strategy to do refunds and giveaways for a year, year, for like two years. So the Maldives Honeymoon Strategy, you do a giveaway and you rebate them. Why? Because that was allowed by Amazon until the. I was teaching that till the very day it wasn't um. So, like I don't like to be the one who speculates about what could change, what does change. I'm going to tell you what's working, and you know we can, you know, kind of have in mind, hey, well, what could, but not to the point where it distracts you from what is working. And so that's what I'm always going to do. I'm going to give you the facts, guys, without speculation or things about what might change. And then the instant that something does change, or Amazon announces some policy shift or they announce something that you know the different way that you have to make your listings, we'll go ahead and shift them all these honeymoon strategy, right. So just keep that in mind. Everything I talk about right now has nothing to do with AI and different things, because these strategies are working right now, even though there's, you know, Rufus and different things like that. All right.   Bradley Sutton: So again, going back to the product research, low title density is something I look at because that gives me an idea. If some of the main keywords in a niche have a low title density number, that means it's going to be really easy for me to get to page one of those search results, because that's just one of the ways that Amazon algorithm works. How it says that something is relevant for a keyword is like hey, is that keyword in the title? And if there's not that many listings that have that keyword in the title, well, it's like okay, well, maybe this listing isn't that important for this keyword, all right. So that's one of the factors I look at. Another thing I could look at again, not like I'm only looking for this, but it's just stuff that gives me more confidence when I do launch, especially if I have like five or six options and I'm like all right, I only want to launch one or two products, which are the one or two that I'm going to do first. Well, these are the things I'm looking at. So another one is I look at Brand Analytics and I'm looking total domination of one or two products, you know, because they're getting the majority of the clicks, the majority of the purchases, or, on the flip side, is the top three clicks. Do they only make up like 10% of the conversions, meaning 90% is wide open. I can go either way and it'll give me some confidence. It says, hey, if just one listing is dominating the clicks and the purchases, that that and I don't think that listing is that great or that product is that great that gives me some confidence that, hey, maybe I can go in right away and from day one, maybe dominate a little bit. Right On the flip side, maybe, if it's wide open, I'm like, oh shoot, people are just buying all kinds of products here on page one, the top three click products only make up 10% of the sales. That could give me some confidence too that, hey, I can have a lot better conversion share than these top three click products. That's just one of the things I look at as well.   Bradley Sutton: Another thing I like looking at is in Amazon not even Helium 10, but in Amazon product opportunity explore. I look at the conversion rate for the keyword. All right, so in the conversion rate, if it has like less than 1%, I'm like, wow, this is great. That means that out of every 100 searches, less than one person actually buy something when they search at that could be an indication that there's opportunity, that people aren't finding what they're looking for. I can actually I said not in Helium 10, but for those of you who don't have Helium 10, yeah, use Product Opportunity Explorer. You can do that inside of Helium 10 with the keyword sales metric. All right, so we have estimated sales, and so if you have a huge differentiation between search volume and keyword sales, guess what? You found a keyword where it not many people are seeing what they're looking for and thus people aren't buying it. And so that means, if you can figure out what's the gap, why are people searching for this, but why aren't they buying anything on the page? Now, all of a sudden, you've got a huge advantage and that could be a great opportunity to get in a certain niche. So these are some of the things I look at, even before we're talking about launch, even though I know this is a launch episode. Those are some of the things that help me decide which keywords I'm going to launch.   Bradley Sutton: Second step, before we even get to the launch, is the keyword research, and this is the key right. This is super key, and this is where I really think that you know, even though you can do launches without Helium 10. Guys, if you're using another tool that doesn't have these things I'm about to mention, you are leaving lots of money on the table with potential keywords, and so let me go over those. Now. The first thing I like to do is I'll put in 10 or 15 of the top competitors into Cerebro. Okay, so I'll take a baseline product, throw in 10 competitors, 15 competitors, minimum five, unless I'm in a brand-new niche where there's not much to look at. Let's just pretend that we're talking about something where there are at least five competitors that I can look at.   Bradley Sutton: First thing I do is I just hit the one click button top keywords in Cerebro. That gives me all of the keywords that most of the top competitors, or most of these top competitors are all ranking for, and they're ranking highly for, instantly. These, I know, are my keywords and so I'll take that, put it to you know, like a keyword list, that I have my keyword list. Next thing I do is I look at the opportunity keywords. It's another one click button. I hit opportunity keywords and now that shows me, hey, where the keywords were a maximum of only one or two products are crushing it and the others, like, are not even in the ballgame. Because that gives me a list of keywords that you know I'm going to go ahead and not have some. You know as much competition. You know those top keywords, everybody's competing for it. That's great. I need to know that. Those are the most relevant keywords, usually to a niche. But these opportunity keywords the reason why we call it opportunity is because, hey, these are getting sales for maybe one, max, two products. The others might not even know about this keyword. They're not even ranking for it really. So that could be an opportunity for you to come in.   Bradley Sutton: Instead of having a keyword that you're competing with all 10 or 15 top competitors You're just competing with, you know, like three or three, one or two, right, all right, so that's another one, Now, by the way, guys, I like setting up two different keyword lists. I put everything into a main keyword list, all right, inside of Helium 10. But then I set up a second keyword list. Now, this is something new, I haven't done this in the past but where I'm putting in some of my like outlier keywords, where I'm like hey, this is not going to be one of the top keywords, but I want to make sure I have this in phrase form, all right. So, like I'm looking for another like 10, 15 keywords that I'm going to put in this special list, 15 to 20, maybe even more, maybe I can go up to 30. I still want to put my main keywords in phrase form, but these are the ones where it's not going to have a highly competitive performance score. I'll talk to you a little bit about that later, but I still want to make sure it's like making a mental note hey, these are the keywords I want to put in phrase form, even though they might not be one of my main keywords. I'll explain a little bit more why later.   Bradley Sutton: Now the next step I do in Cerebro again. I do in Cerebro again, we're still looking at those keywords where I did 10 to 15, is. I want to look at where one competitor is ranking in the top 10, at least just one. Forget about what the other guys are ranking for. What are all the keywords where one guy is ranking the top 10 out of those 5, 10, 15 competitors? Copy those keywords to my keyword list because hey, those are keywords getting sales for one of my competitors. Why can't I get sales for it? It's not always going to be the most relevant keyword, right? So some of them are random. Obviously, a lot of brand names are going to come up. I'm not putting in brand names, keywords into my  listing. I would obviously exclude those. The next step is hey, where is just one competitor ranking in the top 50? It's making it a little bit more broad, like it's not going to be hated for it. And, by the way, the more keywords that you put in your listing that you share ranking with these other competitors, it's setting you up for success from day one as far as relevancy to the Amazon algorithm, because Amazon remember, if you have a brand new product, amazon doesn't know what your product is, it just can go by what's in your listing, and so the more that you can relate yourself to other products with established histories. It means from day one it's going to be like, okay, we're going to give a shot to this product for these other keywords, because it looks similar to this other listing, right, but uh, you know it, or because it has the same keywords, but you know, we're not exactly sure it's relevant for this. But let's give it a try. That's. That's kind of like how the honeymoon period even works.   Bradley Sutton: Uh, the next step is I'm going to go for, uh, something new-ish I've been doing just to get more keywords is 75% of the top competitors are ranking for a keyword, just ranking at all, all right, so obviously this is some keywords. I could have some completely off the wall keywords here, but here's the thing 75% of the top competitors. That means if I had 10 competitors that I put in Cerebro, I need at least seven or eight competitors all ranking for it, anywhere between one and 306. And the reason is maybe people aren't getting sales for it, but there's a reason. Most keywords have 1,000, 10,000 products indexed for the keyword. That means searchable, but only seven pages of search results come up. Right, only 306 listings come up. Now, if you can find keywords where maybe nobody's even ranking that high for it, but they're all in the top 306. Now, all of a sudden it's like, hey, this is probably somewhat relevant. Maybe it's not to the customer yet, but to Amazon. There's signs that Amazon has said, hey, this deserves ranking.   Bradley Sutton: Now there's where Helium 10 comes in. You use other tools like Jungle Scout or Data Dive, which is driven by Jungle Scout. They're only looking at the top, I think, 100 or 150 ranks, so you're going to miss out on tons of keywords. I'll be doing another podcast later where I talk a little bit more about how many keywords you miss out if you're using another tool. But that's one of the main advantages or not one of the main, but one of the many advantages I should say of Helium 10 is we're looking at all the ranks, all right. So if you're only looking at the top 150, you can miss out on some valuable keywords, on some valuable keywords.   Bradley Sutton: Next thing is another Amazon or Helium 10 only metric of Amazon recommended rank. Remember, Helium 10 has a direct connection with Amazon for the relevancy score, which we call Amazon recommended rank. It's because it's what Amazon recommends that you advertise for due to relevancy, all right. So I want to see what are the keywords that 75% of the listings again, seven out of 10, three out of five, you know, 10 out of 15, uh, 11 out of 15, actually I should say are all have or are all on this Amazon recommended rank. That means they're all on Amazon's relevancy radar and it's a top 200 average. All right. In helium 10, you can pick the Amazon recommended rank average. So that means across the board that on average it's one of the top 200 keywords that Amazon thinks is relevant, all right. So again, these are keywords that you're not going to find in other tools, but these can help you get these little sales, like one or two sales here or there. With some of these keywords. That's really going to help you get ahead of the competition.   Bradley Sutton: The last thing I'm doing in Cerebro with those top 15, 10, 5, 10, 15 listings is I'm looking for where 75% of the competitors are all advertising for the keyword. Now I might go take it a little bit narrow and say, hey, show me where at least three competitors are advertising in the top 10 positions. Then I know they're spending money and sure I'll run that. But at the very least I want to see where, hey, at least seven out of 10, at least 11 out of 15 of my top competitors. They're all showing up in the sponsor results, right up to 105 locations. Again, this is not something that all tools have. Some tools are only showing you where the top 40 or top 50 sponsored ads, but again, I'm looking, I like to look at the top seven pages, because if they're showing up in the top seven pages, their bid has got to be somewhat high, where it's even in the in the ballpark, and so if you're not looking at all seven pages, you could be leaving money on the table. So by now, at this point, I've got like a good two, three hundred or even more keywords. Not all I'm gonna be able to get in my listing, not all, definitely in phrase form, but this gets me on a good start.   Bradley Sutton: And one more thing that I like to do is I like to look at the historical trend. All right, this is another Helium 10 exclusive where, like, let's say, I'm doing looking into egg racks. Maybe, I think that in February, march, when Easter is coming, a lot of people are searching for different keywords. So I can hit this show historical trend and then I could look either at the product level or the entire niche level. Hey, what's going on in like February of the last couple of years and where were these products getting sales in February? And then it's kind of like taking a time machine in Cerebro, going back and looking all right, let me go ahead and pull all the important keywords in February and then I can see, oh, there's a whole bunch of keywords maybe that are not showing up right now. So, super important. This is something that is going to get you a lot of the historical keywords and the seasonal keywords that other tools just aren't going to show you, because it's only showing you what's going on now.   Bradley Sutton: Now the next thing I do is I'll take maybe three or four of those top keywords, the ones that had the highest competitor performance score in Cerebro. What I'm going to do is I'm going to go ahead and throw those one by one into Magnet and then I'm going to filter down for Smart Complete. Smart Complete is showing me the long tail versions of that keyword in various forms. So in other words, for example, coffin shelf. All right, so that's for my coffin shelf. That's the main keyword. I put that in Magnet. Hit Smart Complete. It's going to show me probably not that many, because coffin shelf is in a huge keyword, I'm going to get a good 15, 20 keywords where it'll be like coffin shelf for men, spooky coffin shelf, Halloween coffin shelf, whatever things like that. But those ones might not have a lot of ranking yet for whatever reason. But I'm going to go ahead and copy those keywords. A lot of it probably came up in my Cerebro, but there's always going to be like two or three keywords that probably didn't come up in Cerebro but that there's searches for, especially if I'm using a search volume filter, and I want to get those in my listing too, because, hey, if my product is a coffin shelf, I want to know what are the different forms of coffin shelf that people are searching for. Let me get those in my listing as long as they're relevant. So I'll go ahead and do that in Magnet.   Bradley Sutton: Next step is I can do this either in Helium 10, which is actually easier, or I can do this in top search terms Brand Analytics in Amazon. I'm going to take some of those top competitors all right, those top five, those top 10, and I am going to go back in history and I want to see any time that they were one of the top three clicked and they had purchases. It's not just a matter of being one of the top three clicked. They could be one of the top three clicked forever, but if they never had purchases, well, is that really a valuable keyword for them? Most of the keywords I'm going to come up with here are going to have already been what I found in Cerebro, but every now and then you'll find some random keyword because maybe they just randomly were ranking for it one day, or they just randomly got shown in an auto campaign. They never even realized it, so they never had you know, other sales again other weeks. But I'm going to go back and look a week by week for the past six months or so. Now this is kind of a tedious task. Now, soon, Helium 10 in our Brand Analytics Black Box tool, you're going to be able to look at multiple date ranges, so it's going to be just a couple of clicks, a button. But right now, whether you're using Helium 10 or Amazon, it's going to be kind of tedious. You're going to have to go week by week over the past six months. If you really want to do this right and just look at all the keywords where they were one of the top three clicked your top competitors maybe only your top five and where they actually had more than 0% conversion share, meaning they actually had purchases for it. I'm going to put that to my keyword list. Some of those I might actually put to that special keyword list where it's my top keywords.   Bradley Sutton: Next thing here is something that's been in my Maldives Honeymoon for a while very unique once again to Helium 10, is you want to look at the frequently bought together of some of your top competitors? I'm not going to do this to all 15, but I'll put in my top five competitors into Black Box product targeting. Now, what this is going to do is it's going to show me for these products I can do it one by one or I can put them all in where what other products have shown up in the frequently bought together for these products. Remember Amazon, frequently bought together is showing you products that people bought in the same purchase experience. So, for example, it's not like the old metric that was customer also bought, you know where. Like maybe Monday I bought a coffin shelf and Wednesday I bought diapers, right, you know like, yeah, sure, that's one competitor or one competitor, one customer who bought those two things. But are those relevant? No, but then if something is frequently bought together in the same shopping cart experience, it's usually because they're kind of relevant towards each other, like maybe it's a coffin shelf plus like a spider web shelf or something like that, or it's a coffin shelf plus some spooky decor item, because somebody's you know like decorating their Halloween haunted house or something like that. Right? So what I'm looking for is not other coffin shelves and other coffin shelves are going to come up, because sometimes people buy two of the same products or whatever your product is.   Bradley Sutton: I'm looking for what are the products that are showing up and frequently bought together with my competitors or my future competitors that are completely different? Not, I don't want to say completely different, but I mean it's not a coffin shelf. So, in other words, I want to look for a product that's like a coffin shelf with a you know, bat shaped bath rug or something, where it's like oh yeah, obviously this person is buying this kind of themed stuff, but it's not a competitor. You know, a bat-shaped bat rug is not a competitor with coffin shelf. All right, it's two separate products, but there's relevance, there's a history of people buying the two. Now, the reason I'm doing that is because now I'm going to take those products. Maybe there are five products that are commonly showing up with my competitors, maybe it's 10. It's up to you, and then I'm one or two keywords of each of those products, all right.   Bradley Sutton: So let's say that, to my coffin shelf, one of the other top products that showed up in frequently bought together was a coffin-shaped light cover, like a light switch right, or a coffin-shaped toilet paper dispenser, whatever. It is right. What is the main keyword of that? Well, it's going to be coffin-shaped light cover or something like that. Right, I want that keyword in my listing. They're number one and they're number two keywords, like the most relevant keywords. If I were to flip this and somebody had a coffin bath mat and my product is a coffin shelf, what keywords are they going to choose for me? Well, they would choose coffin shelf, right, you know for them. Now, why is this? This is something unique. All right, I want to be related to these products from day one. I don't I'm not making some wild guess that people who are interested in coffin shelves are also going to be interested in this coffin shape, like I know Amazon is telling me people are buying these products together.   Bradley Sutton: So how does it benefit me by having this kind of, this other product, which is doesn't describe my product, being indexed for that keyword? Well, it just sends that little relevancy signal to amazon saying, hey, Amazon, you know this, this product has this keyword in here. You know when I'm doing now, when I'm doing my product targeting, from day one usually I'm going to be able to target that other product. You know those are the products you want to target. If you just have, if you, if I have a coffin shelf and I don't have any of those, uh, coffin, you know light cover keywords in my listing eventually will I show up pin product targeting. You know sponsor display ads and things like that probably. You know when I went in an auto campaign, you know Amazon might one day just show it or you know, in some other kind of product targeting maybe you know I'll get impressions. But I want to start getting those impressions from like day one of my list and then, if I actually am indexed for that keyword, it's like it's going to give me a lot better chance from day one to start showing up in product targeting and then, uh, you know, I I'm hopefully going to get sales from those product targeting ads because I see a history of frequently bought together. So that's another uh set of keywords that I'm going to go ahead and want to put in my listing.   Bradley Sutton: Now another part, uh that doesn't have to do with Helium 10 is using Product Opportunity Explorer. Probably 98% of the keywords I'm going to see in product opportunity to explore I already got from Cerebro or Magnet or Brand Analytics or one of these others, but every now and then there's maybe some new up and coming keyword that might not be in the other ones. So this is kind of like a nice little bookend. And obviously, for those of you who don't have Helium 10 for whatever strange reason out there you're one of the few top sellers who don't use it Well, you kind of have to use only Product Opportunity Explorer. But I'll put my competitors into Product Opportunity Explorer and check what niches they're in, or if my main keyword has a niche on Product Opportunity Explorer not all main keywords do. I'm going to look at the other niche keywords and I'm going to get that and go ahead and put it in my keyword list as well.   Bradley Sutton: All right, next up is the Listing Optimization. This is key. All right, all those keywords from my two lists I'm throwing into Listing Builder. Okay, it could be 300, 400 phrases, I'm not sure. Well, Listing Builder immediately is gonna break down my phrases with my individual keywords. Now, remember the top keywords. By the way, at the same time I'm gonna bring in all of my competitors, those 10, 15 top competitors. I'm importing them into my Listing Builder. I think this is only a diamond in a plan so that you can see those competitor performance scores that you see in Cerebro. So now I know what are the most relevant keywords. What are those top keywords is because those probably have a CPS score of like eight, nine or 10. And how I'm going to prioritize this now is hey, even though it says 400 phrases or 300 or 100, there's no one number that's right or wrong. But however, many phrases I have, now I know, hey, I'm only picking, like a top 10 or 15 phrases, the ones that are the most relevant with that high score, to make sure I have in phrase form, plus any of those other keywords that I'm like.   Bradley Sutton: Hey, I you know, maybe I found this keyword in Brand Analytics, or maybe it's one of those opportunity keywords, or maybe it's something I'm going to go ahead and, you know, make sure those get in phrase form. The rest of it, guess what? All I have to do is make sure that those individual keywords are in there once. And where am I listening? Because if I have 300 phrases, they're probably you know, that's probably. You know three, maybe let's just say they have three words each. There's probably 900 words in those 300 phrases, right? It doesn't mean I have to put 900 different individual words. Those 900 words. There's probably only like 200 or 300 individual words that are unique. The rest are just duplicates of each other, right? So then what I would do is, hey, the Helium 10 Listing Builder is already taking out those duplicates. I just got to make sure each of those individual keywords I have somewhere in my listing. Now, at this point I can have AI and Listing Builder, kind of just like you know, make me a rough listing, or I could just write the listing.   Bradley Sutton: A couple things, remember when you're making the title all right, pick, put your best keyword in the title for me Coffin Shelf. Coffin Shelf is going to be there. If it's an egg holder, maybe egg holder countertop. But then what I'm going to do is there another top keyword like Gothic Decor? I'll stick that. It's the Coffin Shelf and Gothic Decor. They're not even nested keywords. But if I've got two top keywords I can usually find a way to put two top keywords in my listing. But here's the thing Once you do that, now use the helium 10 to see what are those root phrases. That, if it's a two-word root or more, now what happens is now I'm going to be like hey, what are some nested keywords I can use? You know, an example I've always used is maybe I have my main keyword is egg holder and then additional keyword egg holder, countertop. Egg holder, countertop for kitchen. Rustic egg holder, rustic egg holder, countertop for kitchen. If I put the keyword in my title rustic egg holder, countertop for kitchen, I've got like five, six phrases in phrase form right there, because Amazon is not making me you know it looks at those phrases just in the order of the words that it's at. It's not. It's not making me put those phrases all separately. So that's what you should do. Pick your two top keywords and then see what other nested keywords can you put in there, so you can kill a couple birds with one stone, for you know, sending those relevancy signals to Amazon that, hey, this is what my product is about. Now the rest of my listing again, I'm focusing on trying to get those key phrases in phrase form in my listing.   Bradley Sutton: But again, do not just keyword stuff. It's not just about, hey, I need to put these keywords this many times, et cetera. Listing builder we have some tool or some scoring that will help you to know what kind of score you have, but you have really got to write to connect to the customer when you're ranking your listing. This doesn't have to do with the launch per se, but again, this isn't necessarily about it. This is nothing new, guys. We've been taught. I've been talking about this for six years since I've worked at Helium 10. You have got to use review insights in Helium 10 to look at your competitors, reviews. What do people like about it, what do people not like about it? Talk about it in their coffee, right? Is that a keyword? No, but I'm going to write about that. I'm going to put that in my image. I'm going to show if I had collagen peptides, somebody at a kitchen table, you know, pouring it into their coffee, because that's how people are using. I'm going to talk about that in the bullet points.   Bradley Sutton: Again, not to send a relevancy signal for a certain keyword or to rank for in my coffee. I'm not trying to rank for in my coffee, but I'm trying to connect with the customer. And, by the way, guys, going back to what I said before, if something changed, you know, as things change with

We’re back with another episode of the Weekly Buzz with Helium 10’s Sr Brand Evangelist and Walmart Expert, Carrie Miller. Every week, we cover the latest breaking news in the Amazon, Walmart, and E-commerce space, talk about Helium 10’s newest features, and provide a training tip for the week for serious sellers of any level. TikTok Search Ads Campaign launch in U.S. https://searchengineland.com/tiktok-search-ads-campaign-launch-us-446927 Tariffs Targeting Chinese E-commerce Brands https://www.freightwaves.com/news/tariffs-targeting-chinese-e-commerce-could-dampen-demand Google Search Tests Shopping E-Commerce Card https://www.seroundtable.com/google-shopping-e-commerce-card-card-38105.html Experience Amazon Accelerate 2024 on demand https://sell.amazon.com/blog/announcements/amazon-accelerate-on-demand-content Target Circle Week 2024 https://www.today.com/shop/target-circle-week-details-dates-deals-2024-rcna171858 Lastly, in our training tip of the week, Carrie walks us through how you can take an FNSKU and create a custom barcode labels to give to your factories. In this episode of the Weekly Buzz by Helium 10, Carrie covers: 00:51 - TikTok Search Ads02:48 - New Chinese Tariffs05:59 - Google Search Tests07:09 - Accelerate on Demand07:50  - Target Circle Week09:39 - Walmart Lending10:14 - Walmart Repricer Dash11:14 - Helium 10 New Features13:07 - Easy Barcodes ► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast ► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension ► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup  (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life) ► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft ► Watch The Podcasts On YouTube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos Transcript Carrie Miller: TikTok shop ads launch in the US new potential tariffs targeting Chinese e-commerce sellers, and Amazon, Walmart and Target are battling it out for deals in October. All of this and more on this week's episode of the Weekly Buzz. Bradley Sutton: How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show. That is our Helium 10 Weekly Buzz, where we give you a rundown of all the news stories that are going on in the Amazon, Walmart, e-commerce world. We highlight the latest new feature alerts from Helium 10, and we review a training tip of the week that'll give you serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. Now, today, our host is going to be Keri Miller. So, Keri, take it away and let us know what's buzzing. Carrie Miller: Okay. So the first story is that TikTok search ads campaigns have launched in the US, and I'll go ahead and show the article here. It's basically allowing for keyword based search ads that target users directly in the search results. Now if you're a TikTok user, you know a lot of the ads actually come on your For you page when you're kind of scrolling. So it's kind of a more generic approach. But now sellers can actually target keywords when consumers are actually searching in TikTok for something specific. So this is potentially stepping up competition with Google Ads, as TikTok is becoming a go-to search engine, in addition to becoming a social media platform. So let's go ahead and take a look at this article. If we scroll down a little bit, it says previously ads on the TikTok search page were more generic, but now brands can tailor their ads to align with specific search behaviors. Now it goes on to further say why this matters. It says that TikTok has a growing role as a search engine for younger users. 57% of users use the app's search function, according to internal TikTok data, and this new feature lets you capture attention at critical moments of intent. TikTok's move could threaten Google's dominance, as younger users are increasingly using social media for search instead of traditional search engines. So, if you recall, last week Bradley actually did talk about this on the Weekly Buzz and he said that there's a report that says over 50% of Gen Zers are going to be shopping on TikTok for the holiday season. So that's very interesting and very good numbers if you really wanted to start targeting on TikTok. And let's talk about the actual numbers of these actual ads. TikTok's testing shows that combining search ads with in-feed ads boost conversion by 20%, with users who don't engage with an ad initially more likely to interact with after seeing a related ad in the search. So that's very interesting information. So definitely something to consider when you are going into Q4 and wanna really boost your sales this holiday season. Carrie Miller: Okay, so let's go ahead and get into the next article Now. The next article is interesting and it's titled Tariffs Targeting Chinese E-commerce Could Damp Demand. Okay, so this is definitely something that is gonna be very interesting for a lot of e-commerce sellers because, as I don't know if anyone remembers if you've been watching I actually mentioned that Amazon is launching a direct-to-consumer program for Chinese sellers to sell directly to consumers in the US through the Amazon platform, and I mentioned this might make some US sellers a bit upset, you know, because a lot of the small parcels they're not taxed the same, you don't have to deal with the same logistics charges and things like that. So you know this basically gives Chinese sellers a much higher margins because of the lack of tariffs. You know, no warehouse and distribution costs associated with the traditional kind of container imports. There's a lot of other things that kind of go in with these small parcels. I know, for example, me as a consumer, I did order something on TikTok that I thought was gonna be great quality and it was actual garbage. It actually was shipped directly from China through customs. So really kind of is an interesting you know thing that we should really be considering for consumer protection as well as well. As you know, for US sellers, when you're providing quality, then it's going to help boost you a little bit more because it's going to kind of close off this way of kind of things that are come low quality coming into the US without having to even pay those taxes or being searched. Carrie Miller: So in this article, if I scroll down here, it says the White House this month said it would soon tighten eligibility and increase information requirements for low value imports that qualify for duty free status in an effort to prevent businesses from evading duty payments. It goes on to say a little bit further down it says the proposal is expected to result in higher consumer prices for small shipments. So that actually could be a better thing for US sellers who are offering the quality. But then if we go down further, this is really where it gets interesting for the consumer. Let's scroll all the way down. It says. Over the last 10 years the number of shipments entering the US claiming the de minimis exemption has exploded from about 140 million to more than 1 billion a year, according to the CBP figures, and the US is on track to import nearly 1.5 billion parcels in the current fiscal year, 4 million per day, and that is actually going to end on September 30th. Carrie Miller: The overwhelming volume of parcel shipments has made it difficult for us customs and other agencies to enforce trade laws, health and safety requirements, intellectual property rights, consumer protection rules and to block illicit synthetic drugs such as fentanyl and clothing made from forced labor from entering into the country illegally. That's kind of an interesting thing to to take a look at, especially as a consumer. You know, like I said, I actually it was like a hair oil that I ordered from TikTok and the quality was just garbage and it smelled funky. So you know, this is a consumer protection issue. You think should you know that shouldn't be coming into the US, are coming into the US because there's just an overwhelming amount. So this is definitely something that you know hopefully will happen and you, you know we can continue as our. You know, other sellers who are providing quality products can kind of beat out these sellers that are not doing the high quality products. Carrie Miller: Okay, the next article that we have here is about Google. Google is doing search tests in the shopping e-commerce card. So if we take a look at this article, you can actually see a little bit of what they're kind of testing. So the article is really stating that you can actually see a little bit of what they're kind of testing. So the article is really stating that you know Google's testing. It's using its top card format for shopping and ecommerce related queries and information and this shows product results with pricing on the left, with popular stores on the right and then some review content in the form of content and videos on the right side. So they're kind of moving maybe towards more video content and I'll scroll down a little bit more in this article because this is what it usually looks like, and you can probably Google this right now and still see this. But we've got, you know, the actual, the product with a picture and the price, as well as the reviews, whereas I think they're kind of moving more towards the kind of video reviews, since a lot of people are into seeing that kind of stuff on social media, so they might be kind of testing this out to see how they can compete with social media, and I think that's a really smart move on the part of, you know, Google’s, you know, just for Google, just because they are competing with these other social media platforms that are becoming more like search engines. Carrie Miller: All right, let's go into the next article, and that is basically, if you missed out, on Amazon Accelerate. I know a lot of people had FOMO because they didn't make it to Amazon Accelerate. You can actually experience it on demand. They are actually making all of the different sessions and everything that was recorded is available for on demand and it's for free. So you can just register, you can just download, you can just download all that stuff and kind of watch it as you're doing other things and, you know, just to kind of keep yourself up to date on the latest and greatest announcements from Amazon. So go ahead and register for that if you wanted to see some of those sessions and take advantage of that great content. Carrie Miller: And then next is another interesting thing and that is that Target is just launched their circle week Target Circle Week and it's going to be for seven days in October, from October 6. Okay, so it's starting October 6. And this is basically, you know, a seasonal seven day sales event that is going to feature holiday essentials, seasonal favorites, all this, that kind of stuff. What's really interesting is that you know, because of the dates, you know, this is going to be competing with Amazon, which is the eighth and the ninth, and then also Walmart that is going to be starting up that that week as well. So it's going to be interesting because Walmart starting up a little bit after Amazon. But if you're selling on target could be kind of interesting Because you might not get the buy box if you are selling at a discounted rate on target the few days before the big Prime Day event happens. Carrie Miller: So that's kind of an interesting thing to consider how you're going to be balancing out the pricing. And then there's also Walmart, because everyone wants to make sure that we have, you know, price parity along, you know, on all of the platforms, and that could cause you to lose the buy box. So could maybe be something to consider if you want to tighten up your strategy with any discounts or make sure you have the same exact discount across the board, kind of even before the Prime Day deal event starts. That could be a strategy. So I'm curious to know if anyone knows a strategy to deal with this and what you maybe did last year. If you want to put that in the comments below, I would love to hear your thoughts on that, because I think that's going to be kind of a big issue, especially as more sellers are in on Target, on Walmart, on Amazon, on TikTok, on all the different platforms. So really need to strategize when it comes to these big deal days. Carrie Miller: Okay, and the next thing, I actually don't have an article to share, but Walmart actually has announced that they have some cash advances with discounted fees going into Q4. I think mostly to help prepare for the holiday rush and to help with working capital. Especially, you know, cash flow is kind of a really challenging thing for sellers. So Walmart is going to be making some capital available through Capital by Paraffin and Payoneer and so, if you're eligible, you can actually go into Seller Center and you can, you know, figure out how to kind of get access to that funding. I think it will actually kind of pop up in there if you are eligible for it, but if not, you can also message seller support and see if you're eligible for some of their funding. And then they also have a pricing insights dashboard and I think that this is going to be very helpful going into the holidays. It's basically going to help you regularly monitor your pricing throughout the holidays and that is, you know, just to make sure that you stay competitive, and it's going to help kind of give you an insight on the pricing insights dashboard. That gives you, you know, pricing metrics, metrics at the SKU level, to help you make good decisions If you need to kind of discount your products further or, you know, if you're in, you know, in good competition with other sellers. Um, the dashboard is actually going to be refreshed regularly so that you can act quickly to update an item pricing, either individually or in bulk, and the dashboard also gives you flexibility to add items to the repricer or make price updates in the dashboard without having to submit spec files. So they're making it easy and fast for you to kind of see what you need to do in terms of pricing and then make those changes as quickly as possible. So that's kind of the latest and greatest updated news for Walmart. Okay, so we have a new Helium 10 update, which is very exciting. Carrie Miller: If you are in France, Germany, Spain, Italy or the UK markets, we are releasing keyword sales data in Cerebro, magnet, listing Builder, listing Analyzer, keyword Tracker, insights Dashboard and Product Launchpad for all of those countries. So again, those European countries are France, Germany, Spain, Italy and the UK. So I'm going to show you what that actually looks like. So here is a picture of. This is actually the US market, but this is what it'll look like in any of those markets that I just mentioned. You're gonna be able to see the keyword sales in the dashboard. So in your insights dashboard, right when you log in, you'll also be able to see them in Cerebro. So this keyword sales data for, again, all those other markets in Europe the France, Germany, Spain, Italy, in the UK, you'll also be able to see it in Magnet, as you can see here. So we've got magnet right here. You can see the keyword sales right here and then listing. So this is listing analyzer and at the very bottom, where you see the keywords, you can now see the keyword sales there as well. At listing builder, now when you go to open competitor comparison, when you actually look at this, you can see the keyword sales here. So that's really helpful for you to kind of like basically decide which are the most important keywords based on the keyword sales when you do that little competitor listing comparison there. And then you can also see it in product launchpad. So when you have your product launchpad open, you can actually see the keyword sales for all those different keywords that you added into your product launchpad idea. There's definitely a lot of really good stuff in there If you are in those markets. Those are. Those are huge updates for us to give you that data, especially because it's going to help you to kind of make sure you're targeting the most important keywords that have, you know, the higher keyword sales, maybe lower search volumes. So definitely take a look at that if you're in those markets. Really, really helpful information. Carrie Miller: Next, I'm going to be showing you portals in Helium 10, I'm going to show you how you can take an FNSKU and create a custom barcode label to give to your factory in China or other you know countries, and I'm going to walk you through the flow and show you how to do this. So the first thing you want to do is you want to log into Helium 10. And then you're going to go to this tools button at the very top and then we're going to go down and we're going to click on portals and then, once you're in portals, you're going to be able to see a bunch of different things, but what we're going to show you today is this barcode labels, and this is going to be how we're going to be able to create these labels for our factories. So click on new barcode and what you want to have in here is you want to have either an FN SKU, an ASIN or UPC code. I have a FNSKU here. Carrie Miller: I'm just going to paste in there, and then the next thing you want to do is you can put the product URL if you already have it launched, or you can create a custom product URL so you can put the product name, you can upload an image, you can say the condition, you can put the ASIN and the SKU in. But I'm just going to go and take our URL from Amazon here and I'm just going to go ahead and do it that way because it makes it a lot faster and then it's going to pull up all the information here so you can see it has the picture of the actual product it has, and then you can fill in the SKU. If it doesn't show up with the SKU, you can fill in your SKU there. But I'm just going to go ahead and hit save and continue and then we're going to look at the size. So you can actually choose the size, how you want to show it. You want to show it in inches, centimeters, millimeters. You can choose the different sizes here, and then you can do either portrait or landscape, and then hit save and continue and then you're going to choose the template. So I'm just going to choose this generic black one and since I already have I actually, in portals, have uploaded my logo here. Carrie Miller: You can see that we have all that information in here already and you can actually provide more information right here if you wanted to. Whatever it is that you want to type in there, if you need to, and then what you can do is hit save and finish, and then, if you want to download this, you can just hit the download button and then they we always recommend that you, you know, test these out before you send them. So make sure you test it out with a smartphone or you know any apps that you can scan any of these just to make sure that it's it works properly. And double, you know, always test before your mass produce, and then you can just download it and you'll see that as you download it here and there, it is right there. So that is basically super easy. How you can just create those little barcode labels. We made it super easy for you to do so go ahead and check that out If you haven't ever done that before. It makes it super fast and easy. Carrie Miller: Thank you all for joining me this week on the Weekly Buzz for all the latest and greatest news stories, as well as the Helium 10 updates and the training. We look forward to seeing you again next week. I do believe Bradley will be back next week for the Weekly Buzz, so we'll see you next week to see what's buzzing. Bye, everyone.

Howard Thai, the legendary "Professor of Amazon," is back to share his game-changing insights straight from the playbooks of top Chinese Amazon sellers. Curious about the secret tactics that can revolutionize your Amazon product launch? He'll reveal how to optimize your listings, uncover top-performing keywords, and navigate the surge of Chinese sellers on TikTok Shop following recent policy shifts. Plus, get a glimpse into Howard's unique journey, his time in the US, his return to China, and his passion for the epic anime Naruto. Our conversation doesn't stop there. We'll dissect the global selling opportunities on TikTok Shop, highlighting the stark differences in ease of access for Chinese sellers compared to others. Learn the proven strategies for success on the platform, including the importance of daily multiple video postings, leveraging affiliates, and smart ad usage. Discover the potential of live shopping and the groundbreaking impact of AI influencers in China, and how US sellers can adopt these innovative practices. Lastly, we'll tackle the escalating challenge of ranking products on Amazon amidst soaring PPC costs and the growing emphasis on external traffic. Howard shares actionable insights on using external deal sites like DealNews and Woot to drive traffic and boost product rankings. Dive into practical advice on securing initial reviews and sales through varied promotional tactics, including social media and PPC. Plus, get an insider look at different deal strategies to maximize visibility and sales, and hear about exciting travel plans to China with Howard, promising new adventures and networking. In episode 599 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Howard discuss: 00:00 - Strategies From Top Chinese Amazon Sellers05:13 - Global Selling Opportunities on TikTok Shop07:33 - Strategies for Amazon-Selling Success10:24 - Strategic Launch Using Outside Traffic11:03 - Ranking Products With Deal Sites21:03 - Inventory Management in Sales Transactions23:05 - Amazon Inventory Strategy and Temu Marketplace31:30 - Mastermind Event in China ► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast ► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension ► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup  (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life) ► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft ► Watch The Podcasts On YouTube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos Transcript Bradley Sutton: Today we're going to talk to a seller who used to be one of the top 100 sellers all time at Amazon and even has the nickname Professor of Amazon. He's going to give us some inside strategies from top Chinese sellers, what they're using for launching that you've probably never heard of before, like using what deals and more. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Do you want to see how your listing or maybe competitors listing rates as to best practices for listing optimization? Or maybe you want to compare a group of ASINs or Amazon products to see how they compare to each other? Maybe you want to see within seconds the top keywords for a single listing or a group of listings? You can do that and more with the Helium 10 tool listing analyzer. For more information, go to h10.me forward slash listing analyzer.   Bradley Sutton: Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers podcast by Helium 10. I am your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that's completely BS free, unscripted and unrehearsed, organic conversation about serious strategies or serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. We are going on the other side of the world, completely different time zone, a different day. I think it's like Saturday over there. It's Friday night here at Helium 10. The whole entire Helium 10 had the day off today. Like, sometimes they give us random days off like a recharge, so they're like you know what? Everybody in the whole company, you guys, get the day off, but I'm having Howard have to record again because there's technical difficulties. So you know what? I'm coming in on my holiday, on my, my vacation day, at uh, what time is it? 8 pm on a Friday night and I'm like I'm here for you, Howard, because I need the world to know what you have to say. The professor of Amazon. Guys, Howard, welcome back to the show.   Howard: Thank you very much Bradley. Nice to be back on.   Bradley Sutton: You notice my shirt here?   Howard: Oh wow, yep, Naruto. Well, I love Naruto.   Bradley Sutton: You and I are about the same age, like literally months apart, and so I think we both grew up with some similar things. So you were probably in your UCSD really close to me days when you were into Naruto here, and I believe you went even to Japan and even got more into it, right?   Howard: Yeah, I'm really into Naruto and I'm side by side with Japan when they released the translated version of it.   Bradley Sutton: You're back in China. How long have you been back in China?   Howard: I left the US on June 10th so I came back here around June. I was traveling around with uh in Beijing for the family, and then uh Xi'an for my mom, my wife's side. Then uh, I went to um, I went back to around like July 4th or 3rd or something like that and I'm here to stay.   Bradley Sutton: So I've been back, been back like for good, back like like for good or like for a year, or what would you talk?   Howard: well before before the whole covid stuff. I've been in China since 2009, so I'm like one of the first Chinese Amazon seller here, like I mean basically a China-owned company that is selling on Amazon.   Bradley Sutton: Ah, that's right, I forgot about that. You were always based out there after you for a long time, but then you came back here because, yeah, China was not exactly a great place to be during COVID, so that's why you're out here, okay, okay. So yeah, in your honor. Anyways, you see I'm wearing my Chinese baseball team hat, even got the Chinese colors on the side here. So, yeah, there we go. All right, I'm right on theme with the Naruto and China hat. Now, first thing I want to ask you I've seen you talk a little bit more about it, um, lately is now that you've been back in China, maybe your eyes have been opened a little bit more uh, about the strength of Chinese sellers on TikTok shop. Because I think in the beginning, like TikTok shop was mainly like all right, us companies a little bit harder for foreign companies to get on. But now correct me if I'm wrong TikTok shop has kind of like opened up the floodgates where now, all of a sudden, there's a lot more Chinese sellers on there. Is that right?   Howard: Okay so before, like TikTok shop was only for in China, right, US was only for sellers that are selling in Amazon over $2 million. Then after, like recently, like last month, like early, early last month, they opened a floodgate to everyone. But there is still requirements, so there are little requirements, they have to be a seller and so on. But uh, it was like it's like wide open kind of you could say.   Bradley Sutton: And for like for you know,USs customers it's pretty strict, you know, not not too strict. Like team I've been trying to get on Tmula. That's just ridiculous. I got to take pictures of me holding up signs and the 17 different addresses have to match. It's crazy. But TikTok shop was not too too hard to get signed up for. I think I got denied the first time because an address didn't match but I got it hooked up pretty fast. But foreigners, you know, like if I'm in Estonia, if I'm in Argentina or wherever, it's impossible to sign up for TikTok shop unless I've got like a friend or a family member who's got a social security number who can tie to the account. But if you're Chinese they get to skip that requirement.   Howard: Well, no, they get registered as a Chinese to get in.   Bradley Sutton: That's what I mean. They don't need to have a friend or family who has a social security?   Howard: So if you are a Chinese Hong Kong or Taiwan then you don't need that. Um, you know, you can just use your own nationality to get in and sell on TikTok shop US. And actually the good thing is about this. Oh, I'm not sure if it's good, but let's say, in China, I mean, it's always like, oh, everyone favors China, right, but the TikTok shop in China is global selling, meaning they open all the countries up US, UK, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam and also Thailand. Was it Thailand or Malaysia? I forgot, it was like all of the list of TikTok shop that you can actually sell on. So it's not just one and US is only for one right now, and I don't even think we can even open TikTok shop UK.   Bradley Sutton: Yeah, yeah, I know UK was there before US, but I they're not. Really. It's not like Amazon, where your Amazon token is connected and then it's kind of like you just switch and then now you're on your UK token or something. You can't really do that on TikTok shop, that's. But you're saying Asia, you can, Okay. So now, now lot of uh sellers out there. Hey, that's not fair, why? Why is TikTok shop giving uh, giving advantage to Chinese sellers? Hey guys, it's a Chinese company, they can do whatever they. They can do whatever they want. Um, what are the majority of the Chinese TikTok shop sellers doing? Are they shipping from like Amazon inventory warehouses in US? Or are they doing the kind of like Temu-ish direct shipping, using those subsidies, uh, to customers who buy the product?   Howard: So there was the old-fashioned TikTok. So right now mostly it's based in the US inventory for TikTok shop or fulfilled by TikTok mainly it's all fulfilled by TikTok. Or if you are a seller to open, probably just like a seller-fulfilled TikTok in the US, though You're not supposed to be. Yeah, mainly that's what it is.   Bradley Sutton: Any like little mini hacks or or TikTok shops. You know, before we get onto our Amazon stuff, uh, that you can. You know that you've learned since you've been back there, like like, uh, I'm wearing my red hat today, but I could be wearing my white hat. No, I'm definitely not wearing a black hat. So no black hat strategies, but but what is a one you know quick? You know, I know we usually do 30 seconds, 60 seconds strategy at the end of the show. We'll do an Amazon one then. But what's a 30 60 second tip you can give us about TikTok shop?   Howard: I'm not sure what level people out there are, but uh, from what I know is uh in the US they're pretty much getting started. So there's just, it's just like Amazon you got to spend money to get the velocity. You need to start making sure that you get a lot of uh affiliates and you're also making sure that you're posting, making sure that you're uh having more videos a day continuously and doing ads.   Bradley Sutton: So that's multiple videos a day. Somebody should be posting uh to their like brand page and then, at the same time, don't just rely on that, but use, use affiliates, what? What about live Like? Like you know, should we be in the live streaming? Is that? Is that like a? I know it's obviously not on a level of of China, like I saw that one lady in China who has like this I don't know what, what you call it, but like a, like a conveyor belt, and then products are coming and she literally shows her product for two seconds, throws it away two seconds and she's making millions of dollars. I know America's not at that level yet for live shopping, but what should sellers be doing for live shopping? As far as TikTok shop goes?   Howard: China still doesn't have the culture for the US side live shopping. So we still have in the US. We still have a chance to US. We still have like a chance to like really do a really good job on the live because the way they uh speak and so on. But right now it's getting more and more uh sophisticated in China they're doing using AI influencers, doing all the lives, so in 24/7 they could be doing live every single second. So that's something that we need to catch up on. And things like tools. All the tools you think about TikTok is made by China. Right, Douyin is from China, and then TikTok is a version of Douyin with a little less functionality, and all the tools out there that you can think of for TikTok is made by Chinese companies. So if you really want to learn more TikTok, you should probably learn from the Chinese first and see what you can get out of it.   Bradley Sutton: Yeah, and then now, like I said mentioned before, Temu is also trying to recruit US sellers. I don't have much to say there, but I know Temu is actually last month was in some trouble. Chinese sellers were actually upset with Temu. They were storming the offices and stuff like that. So I'm not sure what the future is for Temu, but it's still a very strong marketplace. It's like number number two or three as far as app usage and stuff. So that's a that's one to to be on the lookout for too. But mainly we like to talk about Amazon here and uh, I didn't. I didn't get to see your last mastery call that you did in your Elite Sellers Society, but I saw the outline of it and it looked like it was all about how to use deals. So, first of all, what deals are you talking about? Is this like lightning deals, deals of the day, prime, exclusive discounts, all of the above? Or what was your major focus for this?   Howard: topic. So the master call that we had regarding deals was mainly talking about outside traffic deals, because Amazon right now is. Why is it getting harder for it to do Amazon? It's because Amazon wants you to push external traffic. That's why it's harder. People are doing the old way. They're doing only the one that yo go to BBC and everyone's does BBC. Bbc costs are going up so you have to do outside external traffic and what the deal was talking about is using the high ranking, all the stick deals, deal news woods and those kind of deal sites to help you rank your products. Let me just talk about it. So those are deal sites. Probably most of you guys heard of it before. So these deal sites are where Anchors starts coming in right. Anchor is the first people that came in with the deal sites to rank products back in like the days uh. So what it is is that you put your product on the on the deal sites. You push it to. Either you push it to your uh uh Amazon or you push it to your website. So when, if you put it, put it on, if you push it on uh on Amazon, then you will be able to rank your product on Amazon with the sales velocities and so on, keywords as well, um, and you can even put uh. And then, if you put it on your website, you're able to make sure that your product is either, when people go onto the website is, either to buy it from your website or to Amazon directly, because there's a go to I won't buy on Amazon kind of like little tag or little uh, a little button so they can. Depending on if you are matured or not. If you're already matured, you're just going to go, uh, directly to Amazon. But if you're like already pretty well off and you're like kind of, um, not, you're not sure if you need to rank or not, they can turn on and off the button to go to Amazon. So based on if you need to..   Bradley Sutton: Let me ask a quick question Is that going to the canonical URL or is it just going to the ASIN-based URL?   Howard: It could be anything, any URL you want.   Bradley Sutton: That's one thing I haven't tested, but whenever I tested it for years and years, it's not like, oh, I'm going to get to page one for keywords that are in my canonical URL. But you could always see if you ever did a deal site or some outside traffic or in Google just going to your base canonical URL, then if you had some good keywords in there, like coffin shelf or something, you would see a bump just on the velocity. Have you done any testing on that recently to see if, like, those words in your canonical still matter or it doesn't matter as much anymore?   Howard: Canonical probably what matters, but we're talking about the URL in general, right? what you can put like some kind of special URL in there that would be able to uh to rank your product as well.   Bradley Sutton: Well, yeah, I mean, once you start doing that, though, where were you? I mean? Yeah, I mean you could put a fake canonical URL, potentially, or even a two-step URL, but now you run the risk of getting on Amazon's bad side if you're doing that for the purpose of ranking, but then Amazon could never say anything about your regular canonical URL. Amazon is the one who provides that. You're all just curious to see if you still saw some residual bump. Okay, so then when you launch a new product, let's just say you don't are. Uh, let me give you a scenario. Let's just say that this is a new product for a new brand. Whether I'm a new seller, I'm a old seller, whatever, this is a new product for a new brand. So I don't have too much outside traffic. I don't have a huge email list that I can say go to this listing. What would your launch strategy be? Leveraging these deal sites and, if any, internal Amazon deals?   Howard: So we could use we call it a strategic deals ranking style to get onto, to rank your Amazon product. First, we look at it, we have to make sure that we have at least 10 reviews and 10 uh, uh, 10 sales a day or something. So that goes from like doing like promotions, uh, social media, like those Amazon influencer coupons, uh, and also PPC. So as long as you get that 10 orders a day, we can actually put you into a special program. It's on Woot, right? So being able to first list..   Bradley Sutton: W-O-O-T?   Howard: Yeah, Woot is an Amazon-owned company, so they're able to be able to put your products on Woot. And Woot can do four things Like. One of the things was talking, was you talking about launching a product? The second thing is to be able to like uh, this, uh, uh, clear, clear on all the, all the discontinued items, uh. Third is, if you were like ranked top five you want to be, be, be aggressive and rank number one, or if you're stale, stagnant on like bottom of the page, or like on bottom of the BSR, 100 BSR or something, then you can do something to give yourself some momentum and kickstart the algorithm again and be back up and movable, you know, be able to be ranked again on those old listings. So if you qualify from the requirement that we just talked about, then we could be able to push you into a Woot kind of a special program. What it is is that Woot will be like buying from you, like a wholesaler, right? They're going to be buying your product and, based on your Amazon's average two weeks of sales, they will use that as an average and, with that said, they will then look at it and said, okay, we are able to do three best deals consecutively. So best deals is normally seven days, right? You could either pick seven days or 14 days. So if you want to rank your product on launch wise, we'll do a 14 days best deal, and so. But then in between each best deal, it has to be a seven day rest period. So all three of the all three of the best deals with 14 days could be um, the same price, right? I I mean the best deal price, right? Usually 15% off the normal price you're really selling on. So at that they're looking at oh, two weeks ago, how much sales have you gotten? And they're going to be holding your inventory most likely for 56 days of the for 56 days, meaning that 14 days, seven days, 14 days, seven days and 14 days. So there's three actually 14 day best deals. So then, within those times you are able to do, if you have option to do, deals like lightning deals, within that that seven days, you'll be able to do it with your own account. So they will take the buy box, they will be able to take the buy box from you. They'll take your.   Bradley Sutton: Woot we're talking about?   Howard: Yeah, what will take your buy box from you and it's just like moving your inventory to their account, right? So um.   Bradley Sutton: So if they're using my FBA inventory, it's not like I have to send them inventory directly to some Woot warehouse or something.   Howard: No, you just have to confirm and let them move those inventory over to their account and it'll just come off of your FBA inventory. From there it could be. So that's a lot of inventory, right? If you're looking at the average two weeks ago and then you have 56 days worth of inventory, that might be a lot. So they will then negotiate a price with you and if you're okay with it, there it is, they're going to start doing your best deals and then your best deals you will not get the buy box?   Bradley Sutton: What do you mean by negotiate a price, what price the product is going to sell at, or what price we're kind of like selling to what?   Howard: Selling to what? That's the wholesale price, right?   Bradley Sutton: What do they? What do they usually like? Like, what's the range? Like, like percentage wise off of your retail price that they're they expect?   Howard: So it matters a lot about velocity, how much sales you're getting and how much the price point of the product is. If the product is like a hundred dollars, then the percentage uh, like, uh, you're like it costs like uh, say a hundred dollars, right, your cost is a hundred dollars then they'll probably say, hey, I'll take like 70, I'll give you 70 of that. But if your product is a 10 item or 20 item, very cheap, they'll probably lower that to like uh, uh, making it like 40 percent, 30 percent, 40 or something like that. Uh, depending on I'm sorry the price of the deal the price of the deal, not not the cost of your product, but the price of the deal they'll lower it to down to 30 percent. So, depending on how much you remember you don't have to pay anything when they, there's no other extra cost.   Bradley Sutton: So you're not paying Amazon fee and you're not paying the shipping and and stuff like that?   Howard: Nothing. It's not even storage right, storage is on them, but the but the problem is PPC is on you. You still have to pay for your PPC, because if the product of brand is, it's still yours right.   Bradley Sutton: But if they have the buy box? If Woot has the buy box? I'm still able to run the PPC, though it's still going to give me impressions and stuff?   Howard: So a sponsored brand uh, you can always do, but the thing that you have to do special is you have to use Woot’s portal for PPC in order for you to see. But the great thing is that you can copy over, download your PPC uh report. You know how you like upload the PPC file. You can also download it and then upload it directly to Woot system using same format, the same campaign structure and so on. So it's pretty much like you're copying and pasting it.   Bradley Sutton: So then let's say I had, you know, an ASIN or an FBA SKU, had 3000 units, and now I close a deal with Woot. I don't have to close my SKU, it just automatically transfers to Woot all 3,000, at least during the time that they're running the deal?   Howard: They will agree on the amount of quantity to take from you based on your moving average of the two weeks, and you negotiate, say hey, I'm going maybe do more PPC at the time or I'll do other external traffic or something. Then they'll give you a quantity after the quantity and the cost that you're going to be selling to them. Then they will be using that to uh to push traffic and so on. So at the same time you can also use Woot’s website to post your product there. They will automatically be sending external traffic from their website to Woot uh for, to your deal on what uh on Amazon. So there's all that. So let me give you an example. Okay, you have a thousand pieces that you are selling to Woot at $10. And all of a sudden, everything sells out, except they only sold 900. You have 100 left. They will put that 100 back into stock in your inventory and that 100 that they put into stock will start from zero, zero storage date.   Bradley Sutton: So even if it was there like three months or four months, it kind of resets after Woot gets their hands on it in other words?   Howard: Yeah, so if you have like old inventory, that's great, because then it's like you can reset the storage date for those for the image getting held back and from the 900 pieces then they will. They will times uh, ten dollars that you're selling to them, so that that will be $9,000, right that they're going to give it to you after 20 days.   Bradley Sutton: Some of these discounts. It's, it's, it's pretty heavy. It might be like what's your target when you help sellers do this Like, are you trying to pick a price where they can break even or where they only lose 20%? You know, let's say we don't use this strategy and we just do a traditional one like me, like just PPC launch, you know, like, of course I'm still losing money because I'll do like a 40 % off discount code or 50 % out, you know, just to get that momentum now with what you don't have to get that momentum because they're pushing so much. But, but what's your like, how do you help sellers budget for, for, hey, you're going to lose 20 % on this Woot deal but don't worry, it's going to make up for it, or are you actually trying to find a break-even point or what are you trying to do?   Howard: Most of the time I would say that you would probably break even or lose money right, because you're trying to launch a product, you're going to do PPC, you're going to do hard, so that's not going to really make you money. You're just trying to get rid of inventory or doing velocity of sales for launching. And for the other side, where you're talking about like you're just trying to sell it and not do PPC, then I've seen the cases that you're actually making money because it's like an outlet deal, turbocharged. You have three of them and in between those seven days you can add extra lightning deals in there to even spike up the algorithm even more.   Bradley Sutton: So Woot’s deals last seven days or?   Howard: Woot's best deal lasts 14 days each time, right? So it has three of them.   Bradley Sutton: And then you have to have a break for seven days?   Howard: Within that seven day break, you can have lightning deals too, your own, or Woot's? That means that there's two lightning deals you can put in there in between. Huh, if you qualify for the deals at the time, you know.   Bradley Sutton: Now you mentioned some other deal sites. So, like this lounge, like it just works by itself, all right, you go Amazon Woot, Amazon Woot, back and forth. Uh, but then like, in what situation would I use another website, like Slick deals or some of these others that you mentioned?   Howard: Um, Slick deals is great, uh. If you even go to uh Slick deals and search your competitor, or search that, your keyword, you'll see a lot of your competitors are on there already that are selling you're talking about like tea or coffee, even like supplements are all in there. Like on on like uh Slick deals. Even Woot uses Woot, which is an Amazon company? Amazon also goes to Slick deals to advertise their products on there. The reason why is like the deal of the day or best top deal right now. They also use that to bring in traffic. That's where the traffic is coming from, right. Yes, they put you on a better position on their deal page as well as they bring external traffic into Amazon through like deal sites such as Slick Deals, deal news and Woot and Woot and themselves and other deal sites. Aggregator deals, aggregating sites.   Bradley Sutton: What else is working for you on the Amazon side, be it advertising, if we're still talking about launch or you have more to talk about deals, what other nuggets can you give us today?   Howard: Why we have this Temu thing right here. Right, Temu themselves. You can make money and you can also, if you want to really clear out inventory, which everyone else out here that does Amazon or does internet selling, e-commerce or something, has a problem. This is called overstock or like dead, discontinued items. You're using Temu to push out your dead, discontinued items. So, look, if you, if you just post it up there, it's not going to sell, most likely it's going to just be whatever. Right, but you have to work out a special agreement with with Temu. Hey, Temu, I want you to help push this product. I'm going to be at this price, a low price. So please, let's work out a deal, send traffic to this page and they will send traffic to this page, and we've seen 20,000 orders a day on that product, just almost like a top deal or deal of the day, which it's not as on Amazon, which is not as good as before. But now this is like really doing a really good job on clearing out your inventory. We're doing this with a lot of clients right now. The thing is Temu, yes, they're getting very a lot of criticism back in the day or last couple months ago. Uh, these are mainly factories. These are many factories that does not know how to sell. They're giving cheap products. So there's two ways. There's two problems that are that Temu had with those uh sellers. Those are the first generation sellers we call it uh first generation. And then those are the ones that are factory. They're giving Temu bad inventory and they're also very slow at giving shipping or something. So those are the two where they charge the supplier or the factory cost on that. That's why people are complaining.   Howard: Second generation people which are based in the US that are selling and using their inventory in the US warehouses here now. So those are not having that kind of problem because they are like Temu has all most uh are are getting all the Chinese Amazon sellers into Temu right now to help themselves. So they getting ready for all the inventories in the US to sell on their website. So, yes, Amazon is trying to do the old-style Temu where they ship from China, but right now Temu is in US and recruiting all the Chinese sellers to put their products into Temu at a lower cost than on Amazon, because Amazon they and Temu they have to be 15 percent less than Amazon. That's one of the deals. So that's how they're rushing in and trying to get all the all the people to come in to uh sell on Temu, especially right now.   Bradley Sutton: It's all all Chinese sellers yeah, like I said, I've been trying to get on there. Um, I know they're pushing, you know they approach me and, um, even me who they're trying you know, they know who I am and stuff and and they wanted to to help me get some accounts up so I can do some content on it and even despite that, so, so they already know I'm just like this is. So you know you would think that this might be a little bit better service. Uh, I still can't get approved. So so you just imagine if, if you know like you're trying to go to them, like it might be even harder. Um, all right, now you know a lot of your, your advanced strategies. You give out your special masterminds and you know, every year you try and do it, it seems like a little bit better. You know, like I remember, uh, first year I think you did it in Vegas you rented a mansion it was funny it was the exact mansion that we were about to rent a different year for for a Helium 10 party I saw it in the same place, probably that you did. And then the next year you like rented this huge castle in France. And then the next year, like, okay, we're gonna go ahead and rent an island in Thailand, and so this year, I believe you're taking the show to China. So tell us a little bit about what you have planned and where people can go to get more information.   Howard: Uh you find the information on our website Uh, it's elitesellersociety.com/ess2024. It's two zero two four. Um, we're actually doing it in Ritz Carlton, Sun Zhen, Fu Tian Uh. So it's going to be really really cool. Uh, we're we're trying to get you into one of those. Uh, this is our third time, I believe, in Sun Zhen and we had it where we were thinking. Right now we're trying to plan where we can bring our attendees to some Chinese big Chinese seller's office and show them around as well as taking them out, as well as this two-day main event. Of course, it's on the 22nd and 23rd of October, so that's gonna be really good. We have like Temu there. We have TikTok there. We have uh, uh, other big, uh big people. I'm right now we're talking to Alibaba and and and Seller sprite and stuff. They're they're coming and stuff like that. So there's like so many like really cool people that that or not, people that you should network with there. So that's like uh, I believe we're getting the co-founder of uh Temu. That's gonna be there. So what I would say is there's a lot of opportunity. Uh, in China, everyone is doing the 996 or doing a lot of. It was really learning a lot. Okay, so they're like, doing like they're already at TikTok level. They're mastering that. They're going into, like Facebook, Google ads, they're going to the Shopify side.   Howard: So, uh, as, as a seller e-commerce it's not just only Amazon you need to expand yourself to social commerce. We're talking about social commerce. It's in TikTok and YouTube, YouTube has their own and also like Shopify, because you need to have Shopify, because people will bounce to your website to try to check you out and also multi-channel marketplaces such as Walmart and Amazon, and, uh, Ebay and other Etsy or or whatever it is. There's a lot of other channels that you should put in there yourself, as well as other countries, right, they, each country has their own, so you can expand. That way. You need to start looking into different channels, because it's getting even Amazon scared of TikToker. You see there were Temu, right? Yeah, they're trying to like, do their, do whatever they're doing, trying to catch up, because they're eating a big chunk of their pie and Temu is supposedly number ranked number two now as second marketplace.   Bradley Sutton: Howard, I hope to see you. Maybe in China. I should be going to China sometime this year, I'm positive. Maybe I might be in Shanghai, but I have to take a trip down to Zhenzhen and we can go to Macau again or some other place. But it was great talking to you again and I hope to see you either here stateside or in China real soon.   Howard: You do.

Can your brand truly stand out in the crowded Amazon or e-commerce marketplace? This episode features Kevin King, a master of product differentiation, marketing, and branding, who shares game-changing strategies to elevate your business beyond the basics. Kevin walks us through the creation of his innovative Basecamp Apple Watch charging dock, illustrating how identifying market gaps and blending functionality with aesthetic appeal can help you craft a premium product that demands attention. We then uncover the critical role of visual storytelling and emotional appeal in successful product marketing. Kevin shares compelling real-life examples, including a groundbreaking product launch during Christmas 2015 and the branding triumph of Liquid Death. We dive into the challenges and rewards of rebranding, drawing lessons from Kevin’s experience with his dog product line transformation. The conversation underscores the importance of innovative packaging and impactful imagery in driving sales and maintaining a brand's identity. Finally, we explore unconventional marketing strategies that can turn an ordinary product into a thriving brand. Kevin recounts the phenomenal success of a hand sanitizer brand during the 2020 pandemic, revealing how creative tactics like catchy jingles and engaging public interactions led to remarkable sales figures. Whether you are an aspiring Amazon seller or a seasoned seller, this episode is packed with valuable insights and strategies to help you achieve a standout presence in a saturated market. In episode 598 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Carrie and Kevin discuss: 00:00 - Product Differentiation Secrets With Kevin King04:36 - Multi-Functional Charging Dock Design06:57 - Product Development From Scratch10:16 - Illustrating a Product's Transformation With Cartoons10:54 - Product Innovation and Differentiation Strategies14:33 - Brand Identity Success Through Innovation15:48 - Premium Bully Sticks Differentiation Strategy16:50 - Researching and Deciding on Bully Sticks21:35 - Listing Strategy for Niche Keywords27:09 - Differentiating Products for Marketplace Success27:36 - Pet Product Influencer Partnership31:24 - Building a Brand With Differentiation35:19 - Hand Sanitizer Market Frustration and Innovation41:52 - Unconventional Marketing Strategies for Brand Success42:45 - Successful Million Dollar Marketing  Strategy Transcript Carrie Miller: In today's episode, Kevin King is going to be sharing his secrets on how to differentiate your products so that you stand out from the competition.   Bradley Sutton: How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Are you a six, seven or eight figure seller and want to network in a private mastermind group with other experienced sellers? Or maybe you want to take advantage of monthly advanced training sessions with Kevin King, an expert guest? Do you want to come to our quarterly in-person all-day trainings at Helium 10 headquarters? Or do you want the widest access to the Helium 10 set of tools? For all of these things, the Elite program might be for you. For more information on Helium 10 Elite, go to h10.me/elite. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Serious Seller’s podcast by Helium 10. I am your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show. That's a completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world.   Kevin King: You know, a lot of times people don't in the space, don't like to share their products. They're afraid people are going to copy them. I'm afraid like, oh, if I share this, this cool thing I found, I'm going to have a hundred different copiers on it. And that does happen. You know, Bradley’s had that with the coffin shelf, you know, here at series, and now there's I don't know how many coffin shelves that are A lot, a lot. Yeah, so it does happen. But I'm going to show you some ways to make that almost impossible today. I mean not to say that someone can't mimic you, because sometimes when people copy, that's a nice way of flattery. But there's a lot of things that you can do to differentiate your product and it's becoming super important. You know the days of when I first started. I know you've been doing this for a while 2015, 2016. You just go to Alibaba. You'd find a product look at Helium 10, see where the gaps are and just stick a different name on there and maybe create a logo, put it on there and put that up and sell it. Those days are long gone. I mean, can that still happen? Occasionally, someone can have success doing that, but it's extremely, extremely difficult. And branding true branding and true product differentiation is where it's at. And some people think, well, I'll just add a warranty or I'll add an eBook to my product or I'll bundle it with something else and that'll make it different enough. And that's usually not enough. And in today's world, you got to change your approach and that's what I'm going to show you today with real-life, real-world examples of my actual products. Some of these I'm not selling anymore for different reasons. Pricing got priced out of the market with raw supplies or something like that. But I'm going to show you exactly what I do and to try to give you some insights and some perspective on how you can approach this differently for what you're doing.   Carrie Miller: Very nice, I'm excited.   Kevin King: When it comes to business, there's really only two things that matter, and when you cut it to the core, that's innovation and marketing. I mean, yeah, there's all the details of finance and money and all this kind of stuff, but really, if you look at any business look at Apple, you look at Microsoft, you look at Tesla, you look at any of these. It's innovation and marketing. Those are the two fundamental things that you should be focusing on first. So, I'm going to start off with innovation. So the first thing I'm talking about is innovation. This is a product on screen called Basecamp. This is an Apple watch charging dock. It also charges your iPhone, charges your iPad. It has a night light on it. This is a really, really cool product that came out in 2015. It was launched in 2015.   Kevin King: So almost nine years ago, right when the first Apple Watch came out, and where this product, how this originated. This is a product that I sold and I actually created this product from scratch. This was my actual product and I created it from scratch right when the first Apple Watch came out. And what happened is I went on Amazon to try to find some ideas for products and I saw that Apple Watch charging docks were trending at the time and most all of them were like these cheap bamboo kind of wooden docks for 15 to 20 bucks, all coming off of Alibaba, with just different names on them. Each one looks exactly the same, just had a different name, and I was like, if I'm going to spend 500 bucks for a watch or whatever the watch costs back then. I don't want some cheap, cheap stand to put it on, I want something that looks cool. So I developed this that I would want and I was like I don't want something where there's cables hanging across my desk, cables hanging across my nightstand, so I want to hide all the cables and I want to be able to charge like three things at once. And so that's what I developed, and so this particular product you can see here has a little light on it.   Kevin King: I later added a Bluetooth speaker to it in a version two. It put the watch up on top, the phone would sit on the side and it had a. The charging was buried inside all the cables. Um, the back actually had two additional USB ports so that you could actually charge an iPad or put something else on the back of it. It had. The cables were all hidden underneath, so you'd wrap the cable around underneath so it's not like just all messing up your, your desktop or your, your nightstand or whatever the night light there you can see it. You can hit that button a few times and adjust it up in different levels. I created a really nice box for it and I had all the different adapters. I was prepared to sell this in the US market, and so I created one charging dock and then had them make the different adapters that go in the end, depending on if it's for the UK or for Europe, or for the US or for Australia the bigger markets. I later added a Bluetooth speaker to it. I changed that nightlight to not just a nightlight but actually a Bluetooth speaker so that you could this is the days before there was beats or any of that kind of stuff so it actually was a cool, cool thing to be able to have your phone sitting there charging and have a little speaker that would play your sound music or your wake-up call or whatever. You can see there are the little nightlights turned on. As an example, these are actually some of my listing photos that you're seeing on this. You can see that it would fit all kinds of different watch bands. I created a really nice box for the outside of it to differentiate it so that when you got it felt like you're paying 80 bucks for this thing.   Kevin King: This was a little video that I had made. I found the way I got this made is I came up with the idea. I found a factory on Global Sources Comm. So I didn't even use Alibaba. I use a company called global sources comm, which is another alternate sourcing place. It's not as big as Alibaba, but you can find some better factories sometimes on there. So if you haven haven't checked that out, check it out. And I found a factory in Shenzhen, China, that would do this and I ended up paying them a thousand dollars for the design and so they had their internal guys do all the design and then the molding and everything. It was expensive. It cost me about 30 grand to do all the molding because it's electrical parts and USB and there's a chip in there. So this is not for everybody, but I spent about 30 grand on that.   Kevin King: We've created all kinds of prototypes and they would send me these files, these 3D rendered files and these like SFP files, I think they're called. And then I took that actual file. So before this was ever manufactured, didn't even exist, there wasn't even a prototype yet. I sent it to a guy in Eastern Europe and he made this rendering from me from those files and this is a video. He made this entire video, this. The product did not exist so I could see it exactly as it was gonna be. He made these 360 degrees, basically before there was AI. AI video of the actual product. You can see this one only has one charging dock on a USB on the back.   Kevin King: I had a second one, but I did this and then I sent this out and did some testing, like what do you guys think of this? And I was able to get the people at one of these big Apple insider blog posts. They're like, when this comes out, let us know, we'll publicize it. So right there I was, like they thought it was cool. So, I had my launch ready to go. Like I said this didn't come from Alibaba, this didn't come from the Iwo market or the Canton fair.   Kevin King: The idea for this, this came from my head, and so I created this from scratch from my head. I've done that for a dog bowl and for some other products as well, and so I also. At the same time, back in 2015, I launched five different brands at once. Some of them were the traditional find something on Alibaba, change it up a little bit, change the packaging, put your logo on it and then send it out. But this one I actually designed from scratch. I think that's where you need to start thinking more and more about is designing things from scratch, and it's not always about a better mousetrap, it's about what the people want.   Kevin King: With today's technology and with the AI, you can do so much that I couldn't do nine years ago when this was launched. That you can do now with iterations and these renderings, that you could have 20 different types of this and do all kinds of testing on PickFu. You can do so much more now with this. So this was the renderings that they would send me. So I would open this up, these EASM files, and I could play around with it on my computer and spin it and everything and say, oh, let's modify this or let's change this, or I don't like where this is positioned, put the logo over here. So this before we even made a prototype.   Kevin King: And then what I did is I did 3D printing. So I had there's a guy in Austin where I live that had like 30 different 3D printers in his garage, literally, and so he had all kinds of different sizes and machines. I just took it. They followed him and he made this. This is a 3d printed uh sample. And then I took this to the Apple store in Austin and I said can, can you open up the drawer of all the watches. Uh, I want to make sure every watch, every band, fits on here and doesn't touch the light, and we'll make sure the cable fits through the, the fits through the, the channel on the back and everything. So, I had a total like piece of crap, basically, but 3d printed, but it's actually at least something that's I can hold and touch and feel, kind of get an idea of how it's going to be. And then we made modifications. So after I tested it with this, then I went through and I made modifications oh, we need to make the cable doesn't quite fit, it's not quite snug enough or it's crimping in the corner. So we went back and I, I, we made some modifications to it and then this was a prototype. So then they do what's a machine prototype? Um, there's a specific name for it, but it's a machine Like it's. They make like 20 of them before they make the mass run, and then I could actually test it and so I took it and that's what we created.   Kevin King: This is one of the product photos for the actual that I used on Amazon that I had taken. This is one in my guest room and so we just put it on a nightstand and just showed it. They're actually charging three different devices and how it works. It works like magic. And for the listing also, I actually showed. You know, I create cartoons. I found someone on Upwork.com that would do this for 50 bucks and I had them actually said I want a before and after. I could shoot this with photography and it would be expensive. So I just had them make a cartoon and say, look, show the before. Because every product you need to be trying to solve pain points. I mean there's three or four different things you want to focus on when you're developing a product. One of those is solving someone's pain point. So you want to show them what it's like before your product and what it's like after your product. So that's what I did here. Instead of using photos, I used these cartoons.   Kevin King: So I show on the left how you got all these cables everywhere and stuff all over the place taking up your whole nightstand just a mess. You're having trouble sleeping over there, the person you know. There’re all kinds of little hints all throughout this thing. You got a light that's flashing on it instead of a night light. That's all bright, keeping you up. And then then you got the one on the right. That's like you having a peaceful sleep, everything's organized, everything's nice, and so these are things that you want to think about when you're actually creating your images is show the before and the after. You can do it in photos, you can do it in, or you can do it in cartoons and like this one and this, it worked really, really well. You're going to see another example of this in a minute. So this is the way you can do an example of how you can do innovation.   Kevin King: This product on 2015, Christmas of 2015, I was selling about $30,000, $40,000 a day of it at $89. And then what happened is the reason. I and I did a second version, I did a version two with feedback and put the Bluetooth speaker in, did some other changes, and then in March or April of the next year this is before there was Gatita, before there's any or Helium 10 that had the refund ability, and someone posted on a Facebook group, on the FBA High Rollers Facebook group on Helium 10, saying, oh, did you know that Amazon will refund you for damages and lost items? And so, I was like, oh, that's cool, they lost some of these things when I shipped them in. So, I filed a claim. And when I filed that claim for like 10 missing units, amazon suspended the listing and said, oh, we're going to do what's called a bend check. And they went and they actually said we're going to stop all sales. And we got to do a total inventory across all of our warehouses and I was like no, no, no, don't do that, don't do that, I don't care about the 10 units, just forget it, forget the claim. You're killing, you're crushing me on my momentum. Well, I was down about 10 days while they did this quote unquote Ben check worst decision I ever made and that basically killed the momentum of the product. But I was able to bring it back up, but never back to that level, because there's all kinds of other competition coming in. Um, and I sold this on uh, uh I forget the name of the website. Now it's kind of like a sharper image uh, website for dudes. I sold this in the best buy. I sold it a lot of places, but then the market started changing and I was able to ride this for a couple of years and it was good. So that's a way that you can think about doing innovation. That's an example of one that I did.   Kevin King: Now let's talk about something on the marketing side. On the marketing side, you can differentiate with your packaging. A lot of people do that, you know. You could have just a generic bottle that you see on the right or a really nice bottle on the left and put your differentiating bullet points in your image how they're showing one's made from bamboo and no plastic or biodegrade super-fast. The other one's going to take hundreds of years, and so on. These are great ways you can do it in your, in your image, in your image stack, to actually show the difference. Because it remembers, on Amazon, people, people buy, buy photos. They don't buy products. My buddy, Perry Belcher, is actually the one that actually said that. But they can't touch the product, they can't hold it in their hands, so they're buying based on the photos. So you got to remember that so many people skimp on their photos or they don't spend enough time creating the right photos to create the right emotions. People buy on emotion and they buy on photos, and so by differentiating like this, you can do a lot of cool stuff in your infographics and your stack.   Kevin King: Look at another one. I mean this is someone selling a commodity Liquid Death is water, it's just water. But look what they did with the branding and the way they actually packaged it. They put it into a can instead of a bottle. They had this liquid death name. All the graphics it's just most of the cans are actually oversized. Liquid Death is a great case study if you want to go and look at how someone actually has developed a brand on something that everybody else is selling and actually stand out. Now it's over a billion-dollar company and there's crushing. It's a really, really good case study. At some point I'll go into deep detail on this, but I want to show you one of my products where I did this. I had a brand that was originally called Tailwaggles and I made a mistake on this brand. I filed for trademarks to get brand registry and all that kind of stuff and about three months into the trademark process I get a note from the trademark office saying oh sorry, your name, Tailwaggles, is too close to something else. This is three months after filing and I'd already done the homework, but they found something in the system so I had to change it to Wag Haus. So I had to. Actually, I was already in production on some dog bowls and I actually had to call the factory, said throw away all those old molds and those imprints. We got to change the logo and logo and to change the whole name mid-production. It cost me a lot of money to Wag Haus, but one of the products that I sold under this this is the Wag Haus logo. Here it wore bully sticks.   Kevin King: If you're not familiar with what bully sticks are, they're still popular today. It's a dog treat. It's made out of the penis of a cow, so they use every part of a cow to maximize the value when they when they butcher it for meat and they take the penis and they actually make bully sticks for dogs. It's a very popular dog treat. So, there's six inch versions, there's 12 inch versions. Those are two typical sizes, and it in 2016, 2017. I was doing some research of what's selling on Amazon. I saw that these things are just crushing it. I already had a dog bowl out, so I was looking for another type of product to accentuate my slow feed dog. Well, and bully sticks came up and back then there’s Helium 10 didn't have what was just getting going, so they didn't have Magnets and they didn't have Cerebro and all that stuff. So, I had to use this old program called amazing product validator. And so, I punched in bully sticks and look there, I was like boom, big green result thing saying that's a really good keyword, excellent BSR. You know, look at that search 359,000 search volume. I was like, all right, I'm going to do bully sticks.   Kevin King: So I started researching bully sticks and I looked at these. This is another tool back then where it was popular, called merchant words, and these are results from Merchant Words. They showed these search volumes actually are probably not right but it's the best we had back then. We didn't have much more accurate stuff like Helium 10. So it showed 7 million. I was like, all right, all the different keywords are based off of that free range and those are beef bully sticks and bully sticks for dogs and all had some decent search volumes. So I like, all right, I'm going to go into bully sticks as my next product on this brand. So I pulled up and did a search and I see that, um, there's all these different brands that are selling bully sticks and a lot of them, this are selling for around 20 to 30 bucks and it's a pretty much a package like a plastic bag full of 20 30 bully sticks, all for around 30 bucks, so somewhere around a dollar and a half a stick is basically the cost to the consumer for these. And I was like, okay, that looks good. So I started calling some factories and I was like I need to differentiate. I don't want to be just another guy selling 30 bully sticks for 30 bucks. What can you do? What can you make special?   Kevin King: And I started reading all the reviews on all the products and the reviews were coming back with like, oh, these bully sticks stink because you can just imagine it's the part of the cow that you know that area stinks sometimes and so people the it. My house has an odor to it. After my dog chews it or some liquid drips out onto my couch, my dog jumps up on the couch. It's just. And then people were worried about where are these bully sticks from. Is it US cows or is it some? There's a big scare of like Chinese beef back there. Are they Chinese cows? Are they from Brazil? Where are they from? And so, I was like I need to differentiate this product and I don't want to just put it in a plastic bag either. I want to put it in something really cool, and so the way I differentiated the product is I found this through tracking down. I wanted to make sure it was US made US beef, not imported, and I wanted to set it apart. And so, I found this guy who was a classically trained French chef, like worked in Michelin star restaurants and he was up in the New England area and I got in touch with him and said you make bully sticks. He's like oh yeah, I don't, but I don't do them on machines, I hand carve them, we smoke them in a certain way. We have a 15-step organic process that we do. I'm like this sounds perfect. This is like I can differentiate this from all these little cheap bully sticks.   Kevin King: I was like, well, they cost. He said you're not going to like this part, they're very expensive. So, I ended up having to sell three bully sticks, three 12-inch ones for $54 and 95 cents, so 55 bucks for three bully sticks. Now remember everybody else on Amazon selling 30 for 30 bucks roughly. So, I'm like way crazy overpriced. I was like I don't know if this is going to work. You know everybody, everybody always says on Amazon it's all about the price, all about the value. And I'm like I don't know if this is going to work. But I'm like you know what? I think there's people on Amazon that don't care about the price. If you know the avatar of your customer, you know that there's a lot of pet owners that a pet is just a farm animal. You know they keep the dog out in the backyard and it's just a farm animal. But for other people a pet is part of their family, it's their best friend, it's their compadre. I just saw a story my dad just forwarded me a couple days ago about how people take care of their pet's health better than they take care of their own health. And it's true and I was like I can market to that. There's people that have dogs that are willing to spend really good money for their dogs to give them the best. So this is classically trained French chef. That's a good story. It's organic. I'm solving all the problems of the juice because the way he cooks these and he does the smoking and stuff. They don't have all that extra liquid in them, they don't stink. They're organic. It's from the US, I can solve all the review pain points, and this is before all the AI tools existed to analyze reviews.   Kevin King: I was having to read reviews, so I was looking at how can I package these different, and so these were some of the packaging ideas I came with. But what I ended up doing is putting them in a cigar box. So I had a custom cigar box. I found a company in Brooklyn, New York, that's close to this guy, so I didn't have to pay shipping across the US or across the world. They'd make these boxes for me. I'd put a sticker on the outside with, like a cool textured label on the outside of it, and then we put them in the cigar boxes. So this is the six inch version. So there's five, six inches and those sold for 40, uh, 44, 95, I think it was. And the 12-inch version was only three sticks and sold for 54, 95. But I packaged it. So when you got it, you felt confirmed. You're like, if you just spent 44 bucks for five of these bully sticks, you're like, did I just get ripped off? But when it comes in the, in the, in the Amazon box, and you open it up, you're like, oh, this is a cool box. It's got a cool texture to it. It's all about the sensation when you feel the box. There's like a little edge on it, like a texture. The label had like a texture on it, so like, oh, this is kind of nice. So it helps justify in the mind that I'm getting value here. These are premium.   Kevin King: I created the listing. This is actually the bullet points and the title for the listing. All the keywords are in there and what I focused on is I couldn't compete on the word bully sticks, because the word bully sticks, as you saw earlier, was super popular and almost everything on that page is cheap, and so I could do a launch. Back then you could do all these coupons and all these giveaways and rank to the top within a day or two. It's crazy stuff you could do back in the day and I would get there. But then as soon as I stopped doing these promotions, I would fall off to page two, page three. But on long tail keywords like bully sticks made in USA or bully sticks no odor or premium bully sticks, those I could stay on page one for and there was enough keyword depth on all those where I could stay ranked for those and it worked because there's enough niche, enough variation in the keywords where it actually worked.   Kevin King: And so, then I created pictures. I went to a dog place, a dog kennel, where my dog would stay, sometimes like hey, can you get permission from some of the owners, I want to come in here and do a photo shoot with dogs? So we did a little cute little dog with a chef hat on, did another dog holding it. So actual, real pictures, not my iPhone, because a lot of other bully stick people were taking their iPhone, just taking a picture of a dog sitting on the ground or something. Just horrible pictures. So I create all these kind of cute pictures. Remember, selling is about emotion and so this creates emotion of oh look, how cute he is. And then I did a whole series of image stacks to show the difference. Because if you see something on Amazon for 50 bucks, you're like and it's three sticks, and you're like this guy's out of his freaking mind, $50, $55 for three sticks. I can just go buy 30 for 30. So I had to show the difference. Remember what I said people buy photos on Amazon, they don't buy products. And so, I showed them in the box to show that these are big. You know these aren't little skinny little things, they're like big honking sticks. I listed all the reasons people wouldn't buy, all the objections basically, and all the things that were important in all my research. You know these are kosher. You know you don't think about that, for a dog, I mean, but some people. That's important to them. So everything that was important I put on here. These are kosher sticks.   Kevin King: I showed the comparison look, ours are full. The other guys they stretch theirs. That's how they can sell 30 for 30 bucks because they're stretched and they're hollow. I showed look, ours are wide, the other guys are skinny. I showed look, ours has no odor, it's glossy and smooth, but the other ones stink. I showed look, ours are with a knife and there's something sitting on the table there. They're hand cut. The other ones are on some nasty ass machine that's never cleaned. So I showed all the reasons why you don't want these cheap ones and why you want mine. And then I showed a comparison of ours versus others just to keep.   Kevin King: I kept driving at home Like you're going through this image stack. You're like, all right, all right, all right, I get it, I get it. I showed them on a scale, like look, this is what they weigh. Don't just trust my, trust me. I mean, yeah, you could Photoshop this, but don't. I showed them. It validates it. So I showed everything. At the top here's some dogs driving through like a fast-food place and they're just getting some cheap, cheap, you know happy meal type of cheap hamburgers or something. And then I show in the bottom if you want Wag Haus sticks, you'd like go into a nice steakhouse where there's a maître d' with a bow tie on a serving these on a platter and just connotates that image and creates that emotion, creates that feel and helps justify why you should give these a try. And then I did another cartoon. I tested different cartoons, so I had another one go from fast food to Wag Haus Premium similar concept. Now it's still in a car, they're inside the restaurant and you look at the sign there. If you look at it, there's all kinds of details. If people blow this up, I know you can't see it very good here on the screen, but on Amazon if they blow it up, they would see. You know other, all these kinds of like making fun of the other sticks all in the menu and stuff. It works.   Kevin King: And then I created, you know a put back. Then I was called EBC but now it's called a plus content. So I created a plus content and I used pretty people. You want to use pretty people. You want to use faces whenever you can, even though you have the dog use and faces. There's science that shows that's a 35% lift in conversion rate when you use faces. A lot of people don't use faces in their photos. They just show the hands or they show the dog. But you need to have people and showing that they're having fun, their dogs happy. You're creating that emotion. I went out. This is before. It was popular to find influencers, influencer. The whole influencer UGC game was just getting going at this time. But this guy I found him on I think it's called Fame Kit. I forget the name of the website. I don't even know if it still exists, but you could go and you could hire people to create UGC.   Kevin King: I'm just going to play you a little bit of this video. I did not script this. I sent this to the guy. I sent him my bullet points to say, hey, this is kind of what I'm looking for. Can you do something? But I'm just going to play the first part of this because it's pretty cool what he did and you're going to see where he actually sniffs these things. He actually pulls them up to his nose yeah, they're right there. He actually pulls them up to his nose and does a demonstration of showing, look, there's really no smell, and I mean it just creates that trust and that yes, it's true. And then he's got playing with his dogs and he just did a really good job. Then I take a look at my reviews. Now these are some of the real reviews that were coming on the products. You know I was getting some fives and fours highly recommended. I would get the occasional one-star review. Someone like this is the biggest rip-off ever Three sticks for 50 bucks. You've got to be freaking, kidding me. But look, I got constant reviews. I had a 4.6, I think, average overall and it just worked really well. And I had one guy I subscribe and save. It had just begun back then, so I was on subscribe and save. One guy I think he did 86 or 87 times on subscribe and save Just kept buying them over and over like every, every. Every time that he would get renewed, he'd buy them. And he'd buy them in between too because he needed more. It just this work.   Kevin King: This is how you differentiate a product, uh, and how you approach a market where it's saturated differently and don't always think it's always about the price. As long as there's long tail keywords, you can do some amazing stuff. There's just a few more the lifestyle pictures the on the right there's my actual dog, Zoe, when she was a little much younger, and what happened is the guys that owned the best bully sticks, which is the biggest brand on Amazon. They saw what I was doing and they're like how's this guy, this guy in Texas, selling $50 for three sticks? We need to reach out to him. So they reached out to me and they said hey, why don't we partner up? Why don't you actually sell some of our stuff? You can basically private label some of our other treats. We've got duck feet and we've got, uh, pig's ears and we've got all these, uh, you know, antlers and all this other kind of stuff. Why don't we, why don't we partner up and you just, you just use your brand and private label from us. We manufacture here in the States, we'll ship it to you. So I tried it and it didn't work. I actually I need to package it differently. So, instead of putting in a plastic bag. I had these custom bags made and we tried this. It just didn't work. But my other bully sticks because of differentiation, the way I marketed it, the opportunities there and appealing to the rabid pet owner wanting to take care of their best friend, their member of their family it worked. This is an example on pets.   Kevin King: Now, if you want to get some ideas, if you're trying to ideate this oh, Kevin, this sounds good, but how do I do this? This is a really good link here that you can go to actually get an idea on how to position. This is a positioning, marketing positioning. I'm positioning the product against everybody else and this five-step process it's free at aprildunford.com that link there. Take a screenshot of this or maybe someone can post it in the chat. And this is a good five-step process to help you brainstorm through and to know how can you truly differentiate your product. So, I recommend you at least take a gander at that or have someone on your team take a gander at that. So, when you're trying to come up with your next product or differentiate what you've currently got, maybe something's kind of on the down and outs right now, but if you just re-engineer that product and come up from a different positioning point of view. You can do really well. So that's a resource for you there. That should be really good.   Kevin King: Now let's take a look at another thing on differentiation how do you turn a commodity into a brand, a commodity? You got Temu coming in that's selling all these cheap things on Amazon. You got Amazon now going to start allowing factories to ship directly from China under this Amazon whatever. It's called Amazon Direct there's a name for it but where they're going to basically have their own version of Temu on Amazon. That is going to kill some people. You're going to see some people go out of business on Amazon because of this, because they're not differentiating. They're just another me too product. There's no differentiation other than maybe the price, and it's who can sell the cheapest price is going to win, and if you're competing on price, you you're playing a losing game. You're going to lose against these Chinese factories. They're going direct because they're going to sell it on Amazon for less than you're buying it from them for. Let me repeat that when Amazon launches this section, which is basically a Temu type of section, your factory will sell it for less on Amazon direct to the consumer for less than what the price they're willing to give you to buy it from them. That's going to happen.   Kevin King: So if you don't differentiate your products or you're not thinking in terms of some of these examples I've given you, you're going to be. You may be in some high water and maybe going out of business, or if you're just starting, you may not have a chance to actually succeed. You've got to approach this game differently now. It's more complicated, it's harder, it's a real business. It takes thought, it takes effort. In some cases, it takes money, but this is how you can do it with a commodity product. This is a periodic table. It's a really good thing take a screenshot of this that when you're creating a brand, it's a periodic table of branding. You always remember most of us from school, you had to learn the periodic table of elements. This is a periodic table of branding and this is some of the things that all go into creating a brand.   Kevin King: A brand is not just a logo. A lot of people think, well, I've got my brand on Amazon. You don't have a brand, dude, you have no brand. This is no brand. This is a logo and a name. A logo and a name does not make a brand. A brand connotates a feeling. It connotates a message. It connotates an identity, an affinity for people. There's a

We’re back with another episode of the Weekly Buzz with Helium 10’s Chief Brand Evangelist, Bradley Sutton. Every week, we cover the latest breaking news in the Amazon, Walmart, and E-commerce space, talk about Helium 10’s newest features, and provide a training tip for the week for serious sellers of any level. Amazon just announced dates for its October Prime Day sale — here’s what to know https://www.nbcnews.com/select/shopping/amazon-october-prime-day-2024-dates-rcna171355 Walmart announced an anti-Prime Day sale and it’s no joke—learn about Walmart Holiday Deals now https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/reviewed/2024/09/19/walmart-holiday-deals/75289574007/ More than half of US Gen Zers are headed to TikTok Shop this season https://www.retaildive.com/news/gen-z-tik-tok-shop-social-media-holiday-purchases/726139/ Amazon small oversize FBA fee reductions https://channelx.world/2024/09/amazon-small-oversize-fba-fee-reductions/ Maximize your brand goals efficiently with goal-based bidding in Amazon DSP https://advertising.amazon.com/en-us/resources/whats-new/amazon-dsp-goal-based-bidding/ 5 new generative AI tools to accelerate seller growth and enhance the customer shopping experience https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/innovation-at-amazon/amazon-generative-ai-seller-growth-shopping-experience In this episode of the Weekly Buzz by Helium 10, Bradley covers: 01:07 - Prime Big Deal Days03:31 - Walmart Holiday Deals05:14 - Gen Z Shopping on TikTok06:25 - FBA Fee Reductions?07:23 - Goal-Based Bidding in DSP08:16 - Amazon Supply Chain Updates09:50 - Buy with Prime Integrations12:33 - Amazon Shipping App13:00 - Faster MCF Shipments13:37 - New Amazon AI Tools22:11 - New Amazon Analytics Tools23:24 - More Accelerate Updates28:17 - Meet Bradley in South Korea28:30 - More Upcoming Events ► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast ► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension ► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup  (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life) ► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft ► Watch The Podcasts On YouTube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos Transcript   Bradley Sutton: Prime Big Deal Days has been officially announced for specific dates. In October, amazon Accelerate had more than 20 new releases and announcements and we're going to go over almost all of them today. This and more on this week's Weekly Buzz. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Series Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I am your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that is our Helium 10 Weekly Buzz, where we give you a rundown of all the new stories and goings on in the Amazon, Walmart, e-commerce world. We also give you training tips of the week and let you know what new things that Helium 10 has that will give you serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. Let's see what's buzzing. As a matter of fact, today I don't think we're going to be able to get to any new releases or training tips, because this was the week of Amazon Accelerate. I just got back a couple hours ago and I want to try and like get everything out there while it's fresh in my mind. Hopefully I'm not going to miss anything, but we have got tons and tons to go over today.   Bradley Sutton: Let's actually first hop into just non-Accelerate related news. All right, let's go ahead Now. The first news story is from NBC News and it's entitled Amazon just announced dates for its October Prime Day sale. Here's what to know Now. You guys remember a while back, a few months ago, I had predicted when the regular Prime Day was going to be. Somehow, you know, I like use some just I used some just common sense and mathematical things based on dates that Amazon had, and I hit the exact date two months in advance, actually, three months in advance, I think. I hit it Now again. A month ago, I was like you know what, I'm going to go out on a limb and try and guess when Prime big deal days are. Take a look at what I said in August. If, again, I had to pick a date, it would be around October 9th. Now let me show you why. I noticed here that one of my products was eligible for prime big deal days window. So when I went in there, you'll notice and you guys probably have seen this yourself is that there's weeks for regular deals right All the way up to October 6th. Okay, and then the very next one it says is prime big deal days window. So first of all, it pretty much guarantees that prime big deal days is not going to be before October 6th.   Bradley Sutton: Now, historically prime big deal days, I think there was another it was called something different in 2022. It was kind of like on the second Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday of the month. So that's why I'm thinking that, hey, it could be around October 9th, 8th, 9th, 10th, around there We'll see. You've got a lot of time to plan, but at least, again, it is now confirmed. There is another prime big deal days coming. Well, guys, Nostradamus Bradley back at it again, because, look at this prime big deal days was. Well, guys, north stardom is Bradley back at it again, because, look at this prime big deal days was announced on October 8th and 9th.   Guess what? I'm gonna make another prediction. I think I know when Black Friday is gonna be hint, hint, wink, wink. That's not a great, uh prediction. I think my prediction days are over two for two, that's it. But anyways, prime big deal days, guys.   Bradley Sutton: It's kind of like the second prime day of the year is coming on October 8th and 9th and hopefully you have gone ahead and applied for some deals. If you're going to do it, this might be the time to do Prime Exclusive Discounts. Don't forget, prime Exclusive Discounts aren't free anymore, as we reported on the Weekly Buzz. But whatever the case is, there's going to be a lot more traffic shopping online, and when I say shopping online, it is not just shopping on Amazon for this special day, because take a look at this new story from USA Today. It says Walmart announced an Anti-Prime Day sale, and it's no joke. Learn about Walmart holiday deals now, all right.   Bradley Sutton: So this is a new or special kind of discounts that Walmart is putting on. What date is going to be for these deals that will have up to 70% off? You guessed it starting October 8th. So it's kind of funny. Sometimes this Amazon and Walmart are going back and forth, trying to one up each other and make sure they don't have special days. But I think this is actually good for sellers that it's on the same day, because if you're doing deals on one site, you almost have to do deals on the other site because of price matching and things like that. So when Amazon and Walmart dates coincide, it allows you to go ahead and put the same discounts on both, and now you don't have to worry about things like buy box suppression and things like that. Now one difference, though, between prime big deal days and Walmart holiday days is this article says that it starts on the 8th, but it's set to continue through Sunday, October 13th. Now, this is important because, just like I just said, while the first couple of days are going to coincident have to worry about buy box issues. If you keep your Walmart deals going after the 9th and you have like the same maybe product identifier, like a UPC or something like that, it's possible that your buy box on Amazon might suffer if Amazon is price matching Walmart or price checking Walmart, I should say, and they could see that you have a special going on a Walmart but not on Amazon. So something to keep in mind. First couple of days you're good to go. It's kind of good that it's coinciding, but after the 9th, definitely check if you're going to stop your deal on Amazon but not on Walmart.   Bradley Sutton: Speaking of holiday deals, there's an interesting article from retaildive.com I guess they did this kind of survey and it says more than half of US Gen Zers are headed to TikTok shop this weekend. It said about 43% of Gen Z shoppers are planning to spend more for their holidays this year compared to 37% of millennials. However, going down deeper, it says, in the US, nearly 54% of Gen Z will find gifts on TikTok shop alone. A third of US respondents will shop for gifts seen on Facebook and Instagram ads. I don't know how that's a poll Like. Do you actually answer a poll saying yes, I plan on buying stuff from ads? So that was kind of weird for me. But however they got this information sounds pretty exact. So they're putting it out there and it says almost a quarter 24% of US Gen Zers will make their purchase through influencer recommendations. So just you know, it's kind of interesting how much the whole landscape of holiday shopping has changed. You know, a couple years ago there was no such thing as TikTok shop, right, you know. So the fact that a lot of people are going to be you know, more than half of a certain demographic are going to be looking on this platform that literally didn't even exist last year is just kind of interesting to me.   Bradley Sutton: Next article is coming from Channel X World. It actually has to do with Europe and it's an FBA fee reduction. All right, yeah, I did not say that wrong. It is an FBA fee reduction, not an addition. You know, usually when you hear me talking about FBA fees, it's about some new fee that we're going to have to do. That we're going to have to do. But if you're in selling in pan EU fulfillment, you're going to be able to save from 1.60 pounds up to 1 pound 87 for small oversized products across UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain. So in those locations, what signifies a small oversize? So Amazon's definition of small oversize is 61 by 46 by 46 centimeters and unit weight has to be less than 1.76 kilograms. And then in Germany there's another set. But hey guys, take a look at this If your product is in this small oversize, you might actually be getting a reduction in fees, believe it or not.   Bradley Sutton: One more non-accelerate announcement this week was done by Amazon Advertising, so entitled Maximize Brand Goals Efficiently with Goal-Based Bidding in Amazon DSP. All right. So now when you're doing your brand awareness campaigns, you're going to be able to specify reach and frequency goals and DSP is going to optimize bids automatically in real time to maximize these goals. So, for example, how you get started is you set the goal in DSP to awareness, you set your KPI to reach or frequency, and then you're going to choose a weekly target frequency and then you set your optimization strategy to prioritize spending, full budget and then you hit save. So now you're going to be able to, you know, test out this goal-based bidding. So, um, I know not too many of you are using DSP, but something that maybe talk to your amazon rep to get more information on. Or, if you're using an agency, talk to them to see if this might be good for you all.   Bradley Sutton: Right now, let us get into amazon accelerate. Uh, this was my second accelerate um, and there was just tons and tons and tons of things that were released over the three days. Now, on some of these, we're actually going to get a little bit more in depth. I was able to interview some of the product managers at Amazon responsible for some of these, so we're going to go in depth on things like the customer loyalty dashboard and gen AI videos and different things like that in future episodes, but for now, let's just give a brief overview of a lot of the updates.   Bradley Sutton: Now, first up, we had supply chain by Amazon updates, all right. So first they were talking about hey, they're unlocking faster delivery speeds that increase sales an average of 20%, they said and now there is an Amazon fully managed option for US sellers to automate the entire supply chain process, so I'm not going to go too much into detail about that. We've talked a little bit about this in previous episodes. Now, multi-channel distribution for Amazon warehousing and distribution, also known as AWD it says it now offers the ability to do custom labeling, allowing you to distribute products in bulk to different sales channels, including other marketplace services. All right, so you know this is something that before you know, like you might not have thought that Amazon would be down to do like helping you, kind of basically like drop ship to other channels, and they're cool with it, with it going to other marketplaces. That's going to be a kind of a theme on some of these announcements I'm going to talk about from Amazon Accelerate.   Bradley Sutton: Now, speaking of Amazon logistics and supply chain, there is a lot of MCF and buy with prime announcements. All right, a lot of different enhancements. First of all, if you are using buy with prime on your website, now you are going to be able to accept PayPal payments. All right, you can't do that yet in Amazon, but if you're using the Amazon Buy With Prime, like on your Shopify, WooCommerce, you're going to be able to accept PayPal checkout. So that's going to be pretty cool. And then, actually, starting next year, if you're a Prime member, they're going to be able to link their Amazon account to their PayPal account so that Prime free shipping benefits are available automatically. Another update was, if you are doing Amazon DSP, like we just talked about, you're going to be able to now run ads on Google Shopping ads and TikTok ads all right to drive more traffic to your Buy With Prime enabled options. All right.   Bradley Sutton: So here's how this works, if I'm understanding this correctly. So let's say you've got Buy With Prime listings set up. Now, if you recall, buy With Prime it's been around for a while. It's so you can have on your website a literal Buy With Prime badge and you are able to see the shipping time. So, basically, your Shopify customers, if they purchase on your website, they're going to get it delivered from your FBA inventory or MCF inventory. But now if you're running DSP ads the cool thing is they showed a couple examples of this is like in the Google shopping. You know what? You can't link directly to an Amazon listing, all right, you can't put Amazon listings per se into Google shopping. But if you've got your Shopify or WooCommerce or whatever listing there that has the buy with Prime, which basically goes your Amazon inventory. Anyways, you're going to be able to see the shipping time, all right. So, like you know, two, three days shipping. It's going to actually show up in Google Shopping Right, which has not been done before, and also in TikTok advertising. All right, not TikTok shop. We're not talking about buy with Prime inside of TikTok shop. We're talking about that. If you run a TikTok ad, it'll overlay onto a TikTok right. You're going to see that Prime badge right there where it'll say like two days, three days shipping and people can just go ahead and buy it right from that TikTok ad and again, that's going directly to your Amazon Prime inventory. So, pretty cool enhancement.   Bradley Sutton: You know, like a few years ago you wouldn't have thought that Amazon is down to like help sellers. You know, sell on other platforms and things like that. You know, like last year, amazon accelerate. The big announcement was how you could have, you know, Shopify integration. You're like that was would have been unheard of just two years ago, you know. And then now we're talking about, you know, integrations now with google shopping, integrations with TikTok shop. So this is, I think, a move in the good uh, in a good direction here.   Bradley Sutton: Another supply chain announcement. You know we've talked on the weekly buzz before about how amazon's really pushing their own shipping methods, and so now Amazon has released a new Amazon shipping mobile app. So you know, with these you're going to be able to schedule pickups from your warehouse, oversee inventory across multiple warehouses, receive real time updates on delivery, delivery vehicles and everything. So that's like for those of you who are kind of like using Amazon now, as like you maybe have used UPS or something like that before. Another update was if you're using MCF multi-channel fulfillment you know, historically I think that like the fastest shipping was like four days, but usually five days or more. Now MCF is going to qualify for three day shipping, so pretty cool. If you're using MCF is going to qualify for three day shipping, so pretty cool. If you're using MCF to maybe run your TikTok shop or for your Shopify website, and that's how you're shipping you can now get three day shipping, which is a huge update.   Bradley Sutton: Now, that was the main announcements for day one. Let's go skip to day two now, which had a lot more announcements. Go skip to day two now, which had a lot more announcements, and the first one was like five new generative AI tools that are going to be designed for sellers. Let's go over them Now. The first one was a Amazon code name. Right, it says Project Amelia. It says adds a personalized Amazon selling expert for every seller.   Bradley Sutton: Now what this new app is going to be doing inside of Seller Central is it's going to be a generative, ai based tool where you can like have conversations with it, like you can say, hey, amazon or Amelia I'm not sure if you have to call it Amelia or you call it Amazon, or whatever the case is. You can be able to ask simple questions like how is my business doing? Which products of mine have sales been down year over year? You can be able to ask simple questions like how is my business doing? Which products of mine? Have sales been down year over year? You're going to be able to ask questions like what is the status of the shipment that I sent to Amazon yesterday? So basically, the things that you would normally do in Seller Central that you would just have to go around on menus to find, and things. A lot more of it now over time. You know it's not going to be rolling out all these things at once, but you're going to be able to start asking this Amelia, uh, project Amelia app, uh, these questions that it's going to go ahead and respond just like generative AI does. Now, not everything is something that I think that all sellers are super excited about. But hey, I'm, I'm, I'm here to just report the news and let's you know, let's give some honest feedback on it and let's see how things play out Now. And let's give some honest feedback on it and let's see how things play out Now.   Bradley Sutton: The next thing it was entitled Expanding Generative AI Product Listing Capabilities to Get More Products in Front of Customers Faster. So this is nothing new per se. Amazon had announced last year generative AI ability to just get a picture from a picture or from a brief description, make a listing. Now, the last time I tested it, let's be honest, let's keep it real. Well, this is a no BS podcast, right? Well, it was not that great and I would never actually recommend somebody using that, because you know, like we know, how important keyword optimization, listing optimization with the right keywords is for getting indexed, for being able to run ads, and you're you know the ai back then when it started. There's no way it was going to be able to ever get all of the right keywords from day one in your listing if you're just using it right now. That being said, that was a while back that I use it.   Bradley Sutton: I'm very curious as to how it has uh, perhaps improved over time. I still don't understand. I guess can't picture any world in which you, uploading just a picture or two of a product and maybe even one line of text, is going to make sure that Amazon gets all the right keywords. I just can't imagine it, you know, knowing what the status of Gen, you know Gen AI is now, but I got to give it a fair shot, so I'm going to go give it a try in like a little mini case study soon. But anyways, what was released yesterday at Accelerate was now you're going to be able to, even if you do trust the Amazon AI listing creator, instead of just making one listing, you can like have some minimal information on a bulk upload file, and then you can create up to like 10, 20, 30, 50 listings or more, all with generative AI.   Bradley Sutton: The next gen AI thing that they talked about was A plus content automatically creates brand storylines that attract customers. So with this, it's actually allowing you to take, like, maybe just your images or your listing, and it's gonna use gen AI to create a plus content just from an image, so like, for example you can see here those of you watching this on YouTube it just took a couple of pictures of some shoe and then now it like put it in these lifestyle setting kind of images, automatically designed directly for your a plus content, for your listing. Not only that, it's generating the text that comes in on the captions inside of A-plus content. So you know, like for people like me, who you know, I use agencies like professionals like AMZ One Step, to make my A+ Content and you know, some people might not be able to afford that. So if you're not able to afford professional agencies to shoot specific content, now you might be able to dabble into this A-plus content. Don't forget that even in Helium 10, we have an A-plus or not an A-plus content generator, but an image generator that you can output in the format of different A-plus content modules as well. But now Amazon is going to have this completely for free. So this is kind of like a cool update that Amazon is going to offer Now.   Bradley Sutton: The next one I think most sellers I talk to, and myself too, are the most skeptical about basically it's an announcement where they're saying, hey, they're going to use gen AI to personalize product recommendations that part is cool and descriptions for customers including the title. So, as far as the recommendations go, you know that that's totally fine. Like, like, I don't think that's going to affect us negatively. I think it might be a positive thing. Like, for example, it's going to start basing more things off of the customer shopping activity instead of just offering customers more, like this. Like you've probably seen that when you're shopping on Amazon, it's going to give more specific recommendations, such as gift boxes for Mother's Day or cool deals to improve your curling game. That's the example that they give. Who in the world outside of Canada needs improvement on their curling game? But anyways, this is something that's going to be interesting for their recommendations.   Bradley Sutton: But as part of this, there was a kind of like a demo, given that Amazon is going to kind of like redo titles in the search experience. Okay, so it's not necessarily rewriting your titles. You know that that was an announcement done before how Amazon is going to sometimes, you know, change up your title if it doesn't think it's, it's good enough and you can opt out of that program. But this is different. It's like if somebody searches a certain keyword, the way that it sees your title in the search results. Again, this is just the way it's displaying in the search results. It's not actually changing your listing. It could change some words around based on if it thinks that it could cause the customer to be more likely to purchase.   Bradley Sutton: Now, this is the one where people are like I'm not sure if we can trust Amazon, you know, to change the title of my product that I spent a lot of work on. So this is one I think we're definitely going to have to see an action, start tracking it to see you know once this starts rolling out. Is this going to negatively or positively affect sellers? Is it going to help your conversion, your click-through rate, or could it potentially hurt it because it just starts putting these random, hallucinating AI words there? This is one of those ones that we're going to have to wait and see the A+ Content. I'm like, hey, go ahead and start using that right now. Guys, I think it's available in most people's accounts. Let's start playing around with that. But anything that has to do with changing titles and keywords, obviously I think a lot of us sellers are a little bit more skeptical about. So let's see how that one works out. Now, another cool thing that you know maybe you're skeptical or not, but I think it's pretty cool because I saw some of it in action is the fifth thing that they're using.   Bradley Sutton: Ai is creating highly engaging video ads. So it gave a couple examples, like there was just like a speaker and then it put it in this crazy background with, you know, like a beach, and then not only that, it actually made a video like with waves crashing on the shore. The other example that I really like that it gave was it showed a cup of tea, a pitcher just a pitcher of a cup of tea, with steam coming out of it. Showed a cup of tea, a pitcher, just a pitcher of a cup of tea, with steam coming out of it. But then it totally made it a video Like the background was dynamic and the steam you could actually see it coming out of the cup. So you know, for those of you doing like special video ads sponsor display, sponsor brand ads this is going to be cool. You know like videos work better than just still images. It really conveys emotion better. And now, instead of having to pay tons and tons of money to an agency or have some special 3d modeling. You're going to be able to use generative AI to generate these ads, so that's definitely going to be pretty cool.   Bradley Sutton: One thing I neglected to mention from day one I forgot was the drone delivery. All right, so that was a pretty cool announcement where they're like hey, by the end of this decade I'm assuming 2029 or 2030, whatever they assume is the end of the decade they said they expect to have done 500 million drone deliveries. I mean, there hasn't been barely any yet because it's not fully launched, but they're aiming for one hour drone deliveries and to be able to make 500 million of those in the next five years or so. So that's going to be pretty cool to see your you know, maybe coffin shelves being delivered by drone to people's porches. All right, that's going to be pretty cool. Release Next up is something that I'm not going to go too in depth today on, because I actually interviewed the product manager for this tool and it's going to come out in a future podcast in a few weeks.   Bradley Sutton: But there's a few new analytical tools that Amazon is launching. You can see some of this information in your dashboard. But one of the cool things is customer journey analytics. It says it helps you spot trends and pain points so you can create strategies to optimize the shopping experience. It says this tool maps an end-to-end view of the customer journey, from awareness to consideration, to intent and purchase. Right, there's going to be enhanced audience tailoring. Right, we've been doing brand tailored promotions for, like you know, abandoned cart customers and different things like that, but now there's going to be even more opportunity to tailor make your promotions to certain audiences. And then the last tool that they announced under this was business planner, an AI power tool that helps you identify opportunities for sales growth. And again the first two like hey, let's go for it. This next one is probably the one that some sellers are a little bit more skeptical on until they actually see it in action, the one that some sellers are a little bit more skeptical on until they actually see it in action, but it's basing it off of what Amazon is going to recommend, that for actions that you might take to help your account.   Bradley Sutton: Now there's some other various announcements made after this. I don't have a bunch of slides on it or news articles, but there was somebody who talked about. You know how the counterfeit crimes unit are really cracking down on a review. You know manipulation and sellers who are, you know, opening up fraudulent accounts and attacking other sellers and fake reviews, and it was really cool. A lot of people were applauding over some of the announcements that they made about how they're really trying to crack down on a lot of these black hatters out there, so that was pretty cool.   Bradley Sutton: Another department that came up on stage was the customer service department. You know the for seller support, the support department, and you know, at the first part, you know, I think a lot of sellers like, oh, brother, you know what are these guys going to say? This is like the one of the most I hate to use the word, but almost hated departments at Amazon. But I think they got probably some of the most applause during their presentation because they launched a few things where, like now, you can 100% of the time do these chat customer supports where you can get resolution right away instead of going back and forth making emails all the time, and this is going to be pretty cool. Along with the live chat, you're going to be able to share your screen, even live, with an Amazon customer support rep, instead of them asking you to take a screenshot, then you send it and then five hours later you get a reply and they ask for another screenshot. You're going to be able to take care of that stuff live, because it is going to be right there with a share your screen. So that's going to be something I think pretty cool.   Bradley Sutton: A lot of sellers were excited about that, and then probably one of the biggest announcements was that there's going to be the ability to connect to specialists. All right, so from what I hear from people that have had a bit in the beta, it's almost like going to Amazon Accelerate and having a seller cafe appointment. By the way, that's like one of the reasons to go to Amazon Accelerate. You can get some of your issues solved in real time with like a specialist, like somebody who really knows what they're doing, as opposed to somebody who I'm sure we've all had experience with, where they're just copying and pasting answers from a knowledge base or something right. But you're going to be able to connect with a specialist and it's going to be able to connect with a specialist and it's going to be way more likely that they're going to know what you're. You know how to fix your problem, because that's like all they deal with, as opposed to they're trying to be jack of all trades. They're going to be specialists with a certain thing, like maybe compliance or something else. By the way, there's a lot of announcements based on compliance too, but that I think a lot of sellers were really applauding about, because you know how many of us have had that frustrating situation where we're trying to get our point across to a customer support rep and it's obvious they have no idea what the heck we're talking about. And then we're having to, like go back and forth over days where now you might be able to get your stuff resolved in minutes with just one person from start to finish. So that was something definitely really cool to look forward to. So that was something definitely really cool to look forward to.   Bradley Sutton: Other things is like generative AI, where there's going to be potentially again I talk about good things where it's like, hey, show me the money, like this is great, let's start on this right away. And then there's, you know, some things that are kind of like hey, we maybe need to take a wait and see approach, but there's going to be some generative AI things where you might be able to get stuff solved with just a bot, kind of right, and I know that kind of like is a turnoff for some people. But you know, ai is helping bots get a lot better. But one of the examples they gave was you could like say, hey, I need to change the product dimensions on my product to this by this, by this, and then that gen AI bot, as it were, is going to say, oh yeah, let me go ahead and take care of that for you, all right, without even having to open up a case, without even having to maybe go into your listing to change it there. So that could be pretty cool, but let's see how that works, all right. So that's about it.   Bradley Sutton: I probably knocked out about 15, 20 of those announcements. Like I said, in the future, two or three podcast episodes, we're going to go a little bit more in depth on some of these. I also did a recap video with Andrea Marquez, who is the host of the this Is Small Business podcast that's the Amazon hosted podcast and we went over a couple more of these in depth. And then I brought on some Amazon product managers, thanks to the Amazon team, and we're going to go a lot more in depth on some of those analytical tools and some of the gen AI tools. So a lot of exciting things coming to the podcast, a lot of exciting things coming to Amazon.   Bradley Sutton: Right, highly recommend guys, if you've never been to an accelerate, mark your calendars. I'm sure it's going to be around the same time next year, maybe around September. You have got to go to this event to like be the first to hear about these, to hear about these special things that are being released by Amazon, to be able to network with 4,000 other sellers. It's kind of like a really unique experience and I had a great time thanks to the Amazon team and thanks to all of you. I met so many of you out there at our Helium 10 booth, and just walking around is really great to connect with a lot of you. So I hope to see you at some future events.   Bradley Sutton: Don't forget, next week I'll be at the seller kingdom event in Seoul, Korea, h10.me/sellerkingdom. You'll be able to register for that event at the at the end of October. October 31st, there's going to be an Amazon advertising event in Sydney, Australia, so make sure to come out to that. And then November 11th, we're doing an elite workshop in Milan, Italy. So mark your calendar. If you're in Europe, that is another event you can go to. So, guys, thank you so much for joining us this week. We'll be back next week to see what's buzzing.

Join us for an insightful TACoS Tuesday with Amazon PPC expert Destaney Wishon of Btr Media, as she shares her expertise on Amazon advertising strategies. We explore the key benefits and features of Adtomic, a powerful tool for managing Amazon PPC campaigns, focusing on bid management, keyword research, and holistic performance tracking. Destaney emphasizes the importance of understanding market dynamics, competitor actions, and customer behavior to effectively manage ACoS fluctuations. She also offers strategies for handling high CPC in competitive niches, including evaluating repeat purchase rates and the impact of ad spending for organic placement. Next, we cover essential Amazon PPC campaign strategies tailored for businesses of all sizes. Discover how to kickstart your keyword research with low-bid, low-budget auto campaigns, and the importance of profitability-focused campaigns optimized for ACOS or ROAS objectives. We also discuss organic ranking campaigns, the nuanced application of sponsored brands and sponsored display ads, and the comparison between CPC and CPM models for sponsored display. Learn about optimal product launch strategies and effective product targeting strategies that focus on competitive advantages and thoughtful ASIN grouping based on budget and objectives. Finally, we dive into advanced Amazon PPC optimization strategies, especially for those with limited budgets. Listen as we discuss the benefits of using broad and phrase match keywords over auto campaigns, targeting long-tail search terms, and leveraging customer demographics. Destaney also addresses challenges such as campaigns not receiving impressions and the effects of pausing campaigns versus lowering bids when using day parting. Additionally, we highlight the importance of bid management during off-peak hours, understanding customer purchase behavior, and using the refine feature in category targeting campaigns for more precise ad placements. Don’t miss our interactive Q&A session with Destaney, where she answers a range of insightful questions from our audience. In episode 597 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Carrie and Destaney discuss: 00:01 - Amazon PPC Strategies With Destaney Wishon01:52 - Maximizing Amazon Advertising With Helium 10's Adtomic06:15 - Optimizing External Traffic for E-Commerce07:43 - Essential Amazon PPC Campaign Strategies09:19 - Choosing Between CPC and CPM12:27 - Optimizing Keywords for Amazon Sales13:35 - Amazon PPC Optimization Strategies20:50 - Optimizing Bids Frequency and Bulk Strategy24:32 - Interactive Q&A Session With Destaney ► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast ► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension ► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup  (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life) ► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft ► Watch The Podcasts On YouTube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos Transcript Carrie Miller: On today's episode we have PPC expert Destaney Wishon and she's going to be answering all of your PPC related questions. Bradley Sutton: How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is a show that's completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed, organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. And this episode is our monthly live TACoS Tuesday show, where we talk about anything and everything Amazon and Walmart, PPC and advertising related with different guests, and today's host is going to be Carrie Miller. So, Carrie, take it away. Carrie Miller: We have back with us Destaney Wishon, who is an expert and everyone loves asking questions too. So welcome again, and her kitty. Destaney: Destaney and Luna today. Carrie Miller: I'm really excited to see you know, to have another TACoS Tuesday with you and ask you some great questions. First question I had for Destaney today is for anyone who might be starting out with Adtomic to manage their PPC ads, what kind of things do you think that they should pay attention to? That are kind of benefits and features of Adtomic or just kind of strategies to get started with it? Destaney: It's funny when you have a conversation around Amazon advertising softwares in general, it's always going to be bid management and keyword research. That's what it comes down to in order to drive success. No tool can provide a huge competitive advantage in those areas because we're all given the same levers to pull. But, that being said, I think the area that I've seen drive a lot of success for brands and sellers is having everything in one portal, so like something that we've been playing around with a lot and done a few presentations on is like something like Market Tracker 360. Being able to directly influence your Amazon advertising based off what you're seeing within the market. Same thing as utilizing, like brand metrics, conversion rate data or I know a lot of people use Helium 10 for tracking performance and BSR and organic rank. You can easily track that and then open up Adtomic and make adjustments and allocations based directly off what you're seeing in some of the other categories. That, in my opinion, is like the biggest value add. Beyond that, I think some of the features that I think really stand out are just the utilization from like an ad type. Expansion standpoint is really important because I think with an ad console it can be a little bit complicated when you get into sponsor brands and sponsor display as well as some of the day partying mechanisms of really being able to understand time of day and hour performance. Bradley Sutton: If you're like me, maybe you were intimidated about learning how to do Amazon PPC, or maybe you think you just don't have the hours and hours that it takes to download and sort through all of those sponsored ads reports that Amazon produces for you. Adtomic for me allowed me to learn PPC for the first time, and now I'm managing over 150 PPC campaigns across all of my accounts in only two hours a week. Find out how Adtomic can help you level up your PPC game. Visit h10.me/adtomic for more information. That's h10.me forward slash A-D-T-O-M-I-C. Carrie Miller: I'm going to go ahead and get into some of these questions from the audience. I noticed a ton are flooding in because they let's go ahead and start with the first one. My ACOS over the last month on a week-to-week basis has fluctuated between 21% on some weeks to 35% on other weeks. I haven't changed or adjusted bids much at all. Is that normal to have that type of fluctuation? Destaney: I would say 100%. Yes. The problem with PPC is it's a pay per click model, so that can be fantastic because we're only getting charged when someone clicks. But it also means that if the industry or your audience changes, there can be fluctuations. A good example is, let's say, your number one competitor goes out of budget during one week. That means that the overall CPCs in the category could decrease because your competitor is no longer bidding them up. And if your CPC decreases and you're paying less for a click, then you could see a lower ACOS. So it's pretty normal to see fluctuations, either from changes in CPC that's kind of the first thing you need to look at or changes in conversion rate. If your conversion rate changes, that typically means your customer habits have changed. If your CPC changes, it typically means your competitor habits have changed. Carrie Miller: What is your strategy for this. You've got a relatively popular $20 item which is in a competitive niche. CPC is often over $2, giving COGS, my max bid is set around $125. Looking at Amazon's SKU economics over the last six months, on a per unit basis, the sponsored product cost is $18.25. Click-through rate is 0.81%, Cost per click $2.20. Conversion rate 7.85% on one campaign average of all campaigns. So that's a lot of numbers. Here ACOS is 90%, Click-through rate is 0.61. CVR 6.10. And then CPC is $1.23. Looks like a very expensive hobby. What would you do? Destaney: I have three quick call-outs for this. One do you have repeat purchases? If you have high repeat purchases and high LTV like maybe you're selling trash bags and they come back every six to eight weeks then this is completely different. You need to view all of your metrics on what that lifetime value looks like. A lot of people in the supplement space, for example, will pay $20 a click and have a 200% ACOS because they know that customer is going to return four to five times and not click on an ad the fourth, fifth time. If you don't have a high repeat value, I think there's kind of two other options you need to consider. One if you spend more on ads, does your organic placement improve? If the answer is yes and you have that dialed in really cleanly because there is direct correlation if you run your ads appropriately, then sometimes it's worth spending on your advertising and taking a loss because you know you're going to move up on the page and when you get ranked in the top eight you can pull back slightly on ads, focus on profitability, but you're going to drive so much overall revenue because your organic ranking improved. That's the second thing you ask yourself. The third if you're not in a position of focusing on organic rank and it's more of an expensive hobby than a brand building exercise for you. I would consider looking at external traffic and see if there's cheaper avenues to drive traffic to your listing outside of PPC, because PPC can be relatively expensive because it is the highest intent traffic we see in e-commerce. Carrie Miller: An interesting question that he has, because I've actually seen a lot of people with this kind of question after they've launched and so that product research is a really, really important part of the whole process and just determining if you have the money to kind of compete in those. But I have seen kind of a shift in this because of TikTok. I've seen people launch in really competitive categories but do extremely well because of that outside traffic from TikTok and like that promotion on, you know just content. So those are all different, different things to look at and you know consider as well. All right, next question is from Eric. He's asking for brand tailored promotions. Do you recommend applying a coupon for top tier audiences? Destaney: There's hundreds of different conversations we can have and it really depends on your product. I think in general we've seen a lot of success with brand tailored promotions. I think that there's been some arguments that that customer maybe would have already came back, depending on what audience you're selecting. So you're just giving them a coupon or a discount, but we don't have to get into the psychology behind that. I think in general we've seen a lot of success applying them. But you can also consider some of these applications on the DSP side of targeting those same audiences without a coupon but serving them another ad, depending on their purchase habits. Carrie Miller: All right. Sean asks what are the essential PPC campaigns that you'd recommend getting started with? Destaney: Great question. I believe Helium 10 as a whole we're working on solving some of these questions in the space with a more actionable education. I think for this purpose the things that we really look at is we do typically recommend running a low bid, low budget auto campaign. Auto campaigns do win more unique placements than manual campaigns, but you can't control the bid and budget. So we run them for keyword research and unique placements. We typically run profitability focused campaigns where we're optimizing our bids solely for ACOS or RAS objectives and we focus on our keywords that we know have already converted through our auto campaigns or the work we've done with helium 10 keyword research. We recommend running some level of organic ranking campaigns as well. So we'll take our two to three keywords that we really care about improving our BSR on and we'll run them at a more aggressive, higher ACOS targets but focus on conversion rate and maximizing impression share. As we get into sponsor brands and sponsor display, it really depends on the stage of business that you're in. We almost always recommend running sponsor brands, especially if you have video assets, if you have lifestyle images, but brands don't always have those. We do recommend running sponsor display, product targeting in a really granular fashion and views remarketing. But if you only have a $500 a month budget, don't invest in those and all of these ins and outs and expectations is where it gets difficult in recommending what campaigns are essential. For a big brand. All of them are essential. For a small brand. Start with the first three I mentioned. Carrie Miller: All right. Pedro asks for sponsor display, when should we choose CPC versus CPM? Destaney: Great question. So there are two very different models and typically two different levels of targeting. CPC is the format we typically recommend starting with, so we like to run just CPC product targeting ads. When you start moving into retargeting and some of the other initiatives, CPM is an option. There will be a lot of people who will post view CPM results with a $29 return on ad spend or a 5% ACOS. But that's not actually that accurate. A CPC ad a customer clicked on it, so you know the ad did its job. A view CPM ad a customer can view it for one second and then purchase your product later and Amazon will give it credit. That doesn't mean it's bad. That just means the results sometimes look inflated or better than average, because think about how many times you scroll a product detail page and glance at an ad. You don't actually remember the ad, but you glanced at it and then maybe you bought it. Amazon's going to give that ad credit if it's view CPM. So they're both fantastic. They both have different targeting types, but understand that a view CPM can sometimes frequently be inflated. Carrie Miller: All right. The next one is what is the best launching strategy for a new product? Destaney: Yep, there's a ton of different opinions on this as well. Some people recommend doing auto campaigns so you can collect a ton of data really fast. An auto campaign will cast a really wide net and it'll rely on Amazon's algorithm to figure out where your product needs to be showcased. They're going to review your listing, review your backing keywords and say, hey, I think this product needs to be shown here, here, here. It can be really good for expanding your keyword research, but it's also casting a wide net, so sometimes they're not profitable during launch. So we recommend starting with a low bid auto campaign to collect data on the side and then taking all of the keywords that were prioritized from when we wrote our listing using Helium 10. And we put those in a specific campaign, typically an exact match. So we're really really controlled. And then, depending on our budget, depending on review acquisition how many reviews we get we'll start looking at expanding to broad match phrase match. We'll start looking at expanding into product targeting or into sponsor brands video, but it really depends on your review acquisition strategy at that point. Carrie Miller: Andrew asked when you're running a sponsored products product targeting campaign, is there an optimum number of ASINs to target and related? Can you have too many or too few ASINs in a product targeting campaign? Destaney: I love this question. Great question. So we typically recommend like 5 to 10 ASINs to target. Again, it also depends on our budget. What we've seen if you put in like 100 different ASINs, your budget's not distributed evenly and one to two drive the majority of your traffic, similar to keywords. We also find that if you were to do a sponsored product category targeting campaign, it almost goes too broad. It's very similar to an auto campaign again. What we recommend doing is grouping our targeting by competitive advantage. So we'll create a product targeting campaign targeting everyone with a higher price point than us. We'll put higher price in the title. We'll target everyone with worse reviews than us and put that in the title. Maybe I sell chocolate protein and I want to target everyone else who sells chocolate protein. We'll create those groups so we can understand our competitive advantage and create our copy in our images if it's sponsored display and sponsor brands to align with that as well. Carrie Miller: Namesh says for the product launch, should you go exclusively with the core 1520 keywords that you know, drive sales for sure for your competitors initially, or have auto broad phrase campaigns too for keyword research or keyword sourcing? Destaney: Great question. Another it depends on budget. And the reason it depends on budget is we always recommend going after those 15 or 20 core keywords, because you need to prove to Amazon that your product is relevant. That's how you're going to get ranked. The problem with that is those 15 to 20 keywords are almost always your most expensive If you're thinking to bid on them. So is everyone else, so your ACOS is usually poor. So we recommend creating those campaigns for organic rank purposes but then creating other campaigns and broad phrase and auto that are going to find your long tail terms that are cheaper, more profitable for you. So example if I'm selling a water bottle I know water bottles can be expensive. Everyone's going to think to target water bottle, but I have to bid on it because that's what's going to improve my organic rank, it's my most important keyword, so I'll create one campaign for that, but then I'll create another campaign where I'll target things like travel water bottle, cooler travel water bottle for kids, right, those long tail broad phrase terms that are more profitable for me. Carrie Miller: What do you think about especially for people who don't have good budgets just doing keyword research in Cerebro and instead of doing some of these like broad and phrase and auto campaigns? Destaney: I think instead of an auto campaign 100%, especially with a low budget, I do always recommend still typically running in broad and phrase if possible, because you're already going broad with your keyword research, so then putting it in broad match, we'll just go a little bit more broad, right? So sometimes it's okay because it's going to continue to find those long tail terms. I mean, I've seen some of the craziest search terms, like water bottle for preschool kids in Pennsylvania. I would have never been on that, but the person who selected it and saw my ad it's got like two clicks and maybe two orders. So it's really long tail and really cheap is typically what happens. Carrie Miller: Is there a way or a technique to target ads at customers by the year of birth? Say, I wanted to target people who were born between or in 1989, is there a way to do that? Destaney: With display. Yes, you may have too small of an audience, depending on like, let's say you wanted to use DSP and say I want to target everyone that was born in 1989 and loved whiskey. Like, maybe you're selling a whiskey glass with the name, your audience may be too small and Amazon won't allow you. But in general you can target based off that. Yes, it's just depending on the audience that you want to. How broad you want to go with your audience, I guess, may limit you? Carrie Miller: Why do some campaigns not have impressions? Destaney: If it's eligible, which we kind of discussed earlier. Check in your ad group. It's typically because you're bidding too low that you're not showing up anywhere. Carrie Miller: Does pausing a campaign with day parting temporarily affect its performance when it's reactivated? Is it better to pause campaigns or to lower bids with this feature? Destaney: Great question. Huge debate in that arena. If you're hourly parting throughout the day, we recommend lowering bids. If you are day parting as in, no ads on Saturday or Sunday. We've tested both. We don't see a huge detrimental effect. I personally prefer relying on bid management. If you have the capabilities to. I think bid management's the better recommendation, but I think pausing is the easier recommendation and they both drive a 5% difference from what we've seen, if that. So whatever you have the systems to do. Carrie Miller: Okay, what strategy would you advise for implementing day parting rules, especially during off-peak hours? Destaney: Really, again, bid management is the best solution, is to see where your conversion rate's decreasing and optimize your bids. For that I go on this soapbox every time. But the other thing to consider is that people don't buy the moment they click. So a lot of people will look at their ads and say, hey, I have a ton of clicks at 1am, turn off my ads at 1am. In reality, people are shopping and adding to cart at 1am but potentially not buying until 9am when they wake up again. So a day parting is really beneficial because Amazon marketing stream, from an API perspective, does allow you to optimize for these areas. But also I recommend like not getting incredibly caught up in it because of the length and purchase times. So, that being said, focus on conversion rate and optimizing your bids based off the conversion rate in certain hours. Or, if you need to oversimplify method, go ahead and turn them off if need be, but just test. Carrie Miller: That's a really good point that I haven't thought about is that people are browsing and they're saving them for when they're like oh, I can get my credit card tomorrow, or something. Destaney: Yeah. My question always is why did they click on your ad then? Because I personally don't go to Amazon unless I'm looking at purchasing something, whether then or in the future, like, oh, I have a birthday party coming up in two weeks, I'm looking now, and if I look now I'm still interested in buying. I just may not purchase until two weeks later. And I think people forget that part. Carrie Miller: All right, can you explain the refine feature in the category targeting campaign? Destaney: Well, we have some very hands-on keyboard. These people know what's going on in ad console. I don't typically get this level of detail and questions. Yeah, the refined feature basically takes the category and refines it. So I always explain a category targeting campaign is similar methodology to an auto campaign. Amazon's saying hey, this is Chapstick, let me serve an ad to everyone in the Chapstick aisle. Is what they're doing with the category targeting campaign? Right? The refine feature lets you get a little bit more precise. They're saying let's not target everyone in the Chapstick aisle, let's target every ASIN in the Chapstick aisle who is higher priced than me. That could be beneficial, right? If you're showing an ad on your competitor and you have a lower price point, that's competitive advantage. So that's one of the refinements. You can refine by reviews. You can say hey, I want to target everyone that has two-star reviews, because you know, if someone's looking at a two-star review listing, they're not going to buy it, but if they see your ad, they may buy your product. So the refine feature is just a really fantastic way to get a little bit more specific around the ASINs that you are targeting within your category targeting campaign. Carrie Miller: If the cost per click is $2 and the current bid is $1, should we wait until CPC is very close to bid, until we can increase or decrease the bid? Destaney: If your CPC was lower. Yes, you're on the right train of thought. Your CPC being higher than your bid tells me that you probably have some weird placement modifier applied that's causing your bid to be even higher than what you want it to be. Or you're looking at a different time frame, like maybe you're looking at two months, so your CPC is $2, but you lowered it over time because it wasn't working, and now your bid's a dollar. So maybe look at a smaller timeframe. Maybe look at what the performance was like after you made the bid change to $1. And then your CPC is closer. That'll help you understand the math quite a bit better. So I think you're on the right train of thought, absolutely. Carrie Miller: How long does it normally take to see ad performance improvement once you start using Adtomic, using Travis's full bid rule once? Destaney: That's a great question. I think it really depends. I think that it depends, as with everything else I'd said, if you're bleeding money, then it's going to be really quick. If you are running everything just to profitability, then it's not going to make a lot of changes upfront. It really kind of depends on the absolute structure. I've seen bid management take 24 hours to make a difference in an account but it's because they were hemorrhaging money at a 200% ACoS. I think the other thing that needs to be considered is PPC's only job is to drive clicks, like if someone clicked they were interested. People don't click into listings just for funsies not we do like as sellers and brands, but not actual customers. So the other thing you have to consider is like how your conversion rate affects your performance. I think that's always missed. One thing I'll see is, like I mentioned earlier, is a competitor will come into the category with a much lower price point. That's going to hurt your conversion rate because people are going to click into your product detail page and see a cheaper price and click out. So when something like that happens in the market, your PPC is now going to change, because your PPC is going to continue to drive the same amount of clicks, but now maybe they're not buying, so your ACOS is going to increase. So that's why it's really important to understand when there's a change in your performance. Is it a bid or is it a category conversion rate issue. So that was a little bit of a tangent, but I think it was kind of related. Carrie Miller: A lot of good questions and we don't have. We might not have time to do all of them, but maybe we can just do a few more. So how frequent should we optimize and what is the best look back window? Destaney: Look back window depends on how quickly you're collecting data. For example, I have worked in some very high traffic categories the term protein it would get 20,000 clicks in one day, which means their look back window needs to be almost every 30 minutes, pretty much, to optimize really quickly for all the clicks they're getting. If you're bidding on something that takes two weeks to get 10 clicks, then your look back window probably needs to be two weeks right. So I think it's more important to look at how frequently you need to check in. I usually baseline every 48 hours is a really good start and then, as you increase your traffic, make accommodations, sooner or slower depending on how many clicks you're receiving in that timeframe. Carrie Miller: All right. How can you optimize bids in bulk or manual? Destaney: Great question. The targeting tab is probably one of the best places to start nowadays. With an ad console that's really powerful. If you're using bulk, that is a whole YouTube lesson that I would recommend going to. There's a ton of content on YouTube for this and a ton of people teaching bulk. It's a lot more complicated than just a webinar response, so you can find that easily on the internet. Carrie Miller: Okay, for a mature listing. What percent of sales should come from organic, first PPC? What do you do when most sales come from PPC and PPC sales have no profit? That's a really good question. Destaney: So in general we recommend like a 50-50 split. If more than 50% of your sales are coming from ads, you're too reliant on ads and you probably have an organic ranking issue or poor organic rank, which is why you're having to rely on the ads at the top of the page to drive your visibility. That's the baseline. If I see that you know I have less than 50% of my sales coming from ads, there's an opportunity to grow. More than 50% of my sales coming from ads, opportunity to improve my organic rank. That's kind of my baseline question. What do you do when most of your sales come from PPC and PPC sales have no profit? You have to focus on your organic rank. That is why you're having to rely on PPC, because customers aren't scrolling to the bottom of the page where you are ranked. They're having to see it from an ad which is at the top of the page. So that's kind of the secondary thing that you need to focus on. The problem with that is is when you focus on organic rank, you're probably not going to have profit because it is very expensive to rank well organically. So you have to decide that line. You want to walk between long term increasing your organic rank and lowering your profit until you kind of hit that balance of I'm ranked really well, I can profit and pull back on ads. Carrie Miller: All right when starting to use Atomic. What criteria do you recommend for keyword harvesting rules and negative rules? Destaney: Great question. On the negative side, I typically don't negative aggressively because, again, if they clicked on it, it was a good ad, more than likely it brought them into my listing. Why didn't they purchase, is the question. Now, if I am selling an Apple iPhone charger, I would negate Android charger because maybe they look the same and that's why the customer clicked, but it's obviously not going to work at all. So that's kind of the rules I use for negating. I don't like basing my negating off conversion rate. I would rather lower my bid. So I'll throw that out there. When it comes to harvesting in general, though, we typically recommend harvesting based on orders. That's our biggest metric that we use internally. If a search term drove an order, we're going to put it into a manual campaign and harvest it, and we're just going to set the bid that's appropriate. If it's doing really well and converted on credible ACOS, it's doing really well and converted on Credible ACOS, it's going to be a high bid. If it was 100 clicks in one order, I'm going to set a 10 cent bid to make it profitable. Carrie Miller: Awesome. Well, that's the last question. I want to say thank you to everyone for asking really awesome questions. I think this was a really good discussion, and a special thanks to Destaney, too, for answering for about 42 minutes straight all those questions. That's a lot to answer those questions without really pausing. So thank you so much for doing that and everyone. We will have TACoS Tuesday again next month, so we hope you join us again. But again, thank you all for joining, thanks for participating and we'll see you again next time. Bye everyone! Destaney: Thank you all, see ya!

innovative strategies from Gulsen Berkin Cinar and Michelle McLean, who are back after five years to share their secrets. From capitalizing on Amazon influencer opportunities to selling seasonal products, they reveal methods where people are earning up to $70,000 a month with no investment. Join us as we explore the incredible journey of a family-run Amazon business that skyrocketed from modest beginnings to a seven-figure revenue before being sold. Gulsen shares the thrill of launching a new brand and expanding into platforms like Shopify and Walmart. Michelle, driven by her passion for seasonal products, recounts her success with Amazon products during Christmas, illustrating the excitement of spotting and profiting from trending items. Dive into the world of Amazon influencers and affiliates with Michelle's expert tips on maximizing commission potential by reviewing higher ticket items. Discover how you can earn substantial income through Helium 10’s affiliate program, even if you’re just starting out. We’ll also guide you on signing up for this lucrative opportunity and highlight the benefits, including lifetime recurring commissions and other rewards. Don't miss this episode, which is packed with actionable insights and real-life success stories designed to help you thrive in the e-commerce world. (Time Stamps) -  In episode 596 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley, Gulsen, and Michelle discuss: 00:00 - Boss Ladies Making Money Online03:09 - Amazon Influencer Affiliate Program03:47 - Amazon Business Exit and Brand Scaling Success10:23 - Influencer Program and Earning Commissions14:17 - First Amazon Product Review Videos20:08 - Product Sourcing and Market Research22:48 - Amazon Affiliate and Reviewer Earning Potential29:02 - Helium 10 Affiliate Earning Potential32:47 - The Power of Consistent Growth34:29 - Helium 10 Affiliate Discount Opportunities38:01 - Affiliate Program Sign-Up and Benefits ► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast ► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension ► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup  (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life) ► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft ► Watch The Podcasts On Youtube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos Transcript Bradley Sutton: Today we've got a couple of boss ladies on the show who haven't been in the podcast in five years and they're going to be talking about cool ways that they're making thousands of dollars in their spare time by being either an Amazon influencer or selling seasonal products, along with a way that some people with no investment are even being paid $70,000 a month from Helium 10. How cool is that? Pretty, I think. Important message, guys. On October 23rd, Amazon is changing the window for which you can look back and claim that they owe you reimbursements for lost and damaged products at FBA warehouses. It used to be 18 months, but now it's going down to only 2 months. So, if you have never used a reimbursement service or Refund Genie, now is the time. Last week, I ran Refund Genie on two different accounts and got a total of over $5,000 back for those sellers. And don't forget, unlike a lot of services out there, Helium 10 doesn't take any commission on what we get back. If we say you're owed ten thousand dollars and you get back ten thousand dollars from amazon, you keep ten thousand dollars with no commission to Helium 10 at all. Refund Genie is now available to anybody who has a Helium 10 Platinum Annual Plan or higher. So, to get an estimate about on how much money you could get back, go to h10.me/refundgenie. If you've never used a Helium 10 coupon, use the code SSP10 to save money if you need to upgrade to a Platinum Annual Plan.   Bradley Sutton: Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I am your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show. That's a completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world, and we've got a couple of people here that are super, super old school here at Helium 10, including the one person, the only person who has been at the company here in United States side longer than me, and then another person who was one of my first hires here at Helium 10 just a couple months after I got started. So, Gulsen and Michelle, welcome back to the show.   Michelle: Hello   Gulsen: Hello   Michelle: wow, I feel so old.   Bradley Sutton: Well, hey, that's why I'm also I'm wearing the old school Helium 10 logo shirt here to kind of like reminisce about our old days, you know, way back then in the WeWork. Now I say welcome back to the show because there's been a huge gap since Michelle and Gulsen have been on the show the word now in episode I don't know like 580 something or 590 something. Their first time on the show was episode 86, way back in December of 2019. So, if you want to get a little bit more of their backstory, go ahead and see if you can find I don't even know if you can find such an old episode, but episode 86, where we had them and some of the other members of our crew all together on one episode. But I was like you know what? It's been years since you guys have come on and each of you have interesting things to talk about. So, let's go ahead and have you guys uh back on. So, first of all, um, let's start with uh, Gulsen. Now what about you? And you know you've since before you even worked at Helium 10. You know you've had like a family Amazon business. Um, ven offline, obviously you're my co-worker, but we've never really talked about that in a long time. Like, are you guys still selling on Amazon? You selling on other market? What have you guys been doing with that side of your things?   Gulsen: Yes, so you don't know this, but you know we were running that Amazon business with my husband and last year December we sold that one and the first call I received. Now my husband is building another brand.   Bradley Sutton: Well, hold on. I want to talk about that. I didn't know that you were right, I had brand and I want to talk about that. I didn't know that. You're right, I had no idea. So how did you find a buyer for the business? What was it like through an aggregator? Did you use a service or just networking?   Gulsen: Yeah, he was with a partner and um, he was always getting those questions like, um, if he ever likes to sell his shares and stuff, but at the time it was very good season to do that move last year December. So yeah, and it. You know it was very stressful and long journey for years but I'm so happy that we came to that ending and he took like a few weeks refresh and now he's on top of it another brand by himself right now.   Bradley Sutton: Okay, so what did he scale that brand to like? what was the peak yearly sales like approximately?   Gulsen: Yeah, so by the time he started it was about four hundred dollars per month.   Bradley Sutton: Four hundred thousand dollars ?   Gulsen: Four hundred Dollars.   Bradley Sutton: Four hundred. Oh, when he started, you said yeah, okay, I was like about to say well, who is buying an amazon business that grosses $400 a month, like good grief? Okay, that makes sense now. So that was when he started, and then he scaled it to what?   Gulsen: Yeah, the time he moved out that they were at monthly six figures.   Bradley Sutton: Oh wow. So definitely a seven-figure brand, oh yeah, that is pretty cool and then and then. So now he's starting from scratch or like something similar, or, and he's already launched, or he's just in the planning stage right now.   Gulsen: From scratch it's already launched and now, um, this time we just wanted to want it to be more on like brand side. We still use, of course, amazon and we will try to start selling on Walmart as well, but now we're just trying to be so heavy on Shopify, building the brand awareness, and then, of course, the goal is the goal again, selling it. But to me, you remember my Amazon account. I was so like a Grand Bazaar Amazon account. I still have it and still is my passion to find those seasonal items.   Bradley Sutton: But you're not still. Have you been off and on selling products on that account?   Gulsen: Yes, yes.   Bradley Sutton: Oh okay, I didn't know that. Okay, cool, but only seasonal.   Gulsen: Only seasonal and I know you don't really like it when you do Amazon for patient. But that account you saw that it's such a passionate account only the products I really like to spend my time on and not really that profitable, but still nice. And I feel like I still like to spend a lot of time on Black Box trying to find products and then search them on Alibaba, even if I'm not going to invest. I think it started to be like a habit for my life. And, yeah, the last time I found something it was a toy product. I never recommend anyone to, you know, join a toy business, but this one was crazy because, like it was selling on Amazon about like $26, the price to import and everything was about 450. So now it's just, you know, um, making my mind so busy like should I really launch a toy product? But it's so competitive and, yeah, I might be needing to pick your brain about it very soon.   Bradley Sutton: Okay, I thought you were saying you already did this. I was waiting for the results. This is what you're planning. What is something you've already done in the last year or so that really was a good experience? When you just found some random product and then it was able to sell during the season. Can you give an example?   Gulsen: Yeah, I can give you an example. What's so funny is I really like to look around a lot while shopping, like actual shopping, Like I'm touring the Costco, Sam's Club, these places and like Bluetooth Beanies. I don't know if you remember them.   Bradley Sutton: It's like you have a beanie, but then there's like headphones or something inside. Oh, okay.   Gulsen: Inside the beanie there were headphones and the first time I saw them like we were shopping on Sam's Club. The first time I saw them, we were shopping on Sam's Club and Charlie, my husband, he was telling me you know what? This product will go viral. And then we sourced it and, oh my God, it was such an amazing experience because that product really went viral.   Bradley Sutton: So, you sourced it, not to piggyback on the listing, but you made your own listing a brand new. You just found it in Alibaba. So how much did you sell of that product?   Gulsen: Yeah, during Christmas time we sold close to 1,000 units   Bradley Sutton: 1,000 units at what price?   Gulsen: I believe it was about $14,000, $14,000, $15,000.   Bradley Sutton: Okay, so a nice little five-figure a month there on one product or two.   Gulsen: yeah, it was amazing but, like I said, it was seasonal and now like I don't even think anyone is going to search for Bluetooth beanie, but we were one of the first listings on amazon selling that product.   Bradley Sutton: Nice so finding products at Sam’s Club in Costco. I just go there for like free samples and a dollar 50 hot dog and stuff. But now, now I know I need to start looking out for products. All right, let's switch to Michelle now. So, Michelle, you know, in the beginning at Helium 10 and the last time you were on the podcast you like, like your experience with Amazon was pretty much just interacting with Helium 10 and interacting with, interacting with our customers. But now you're not necessarily an Amazon private label seller. But tell us what you are now in that definitely has to do with the Amazon ecosystem.   Michelle: Yeah, of course you know really quick. I wanted to say how far back I've been, you know, just to give some clarity for people listening. When I first started Helium 10, my daughter was eight months. She's going to be seven years old in November. So, this just goes to show like how old I am.   Bradley Sutton: I don't need any reminders for that.   Michelle: Yeah, I was just thinking about that and I was like, oh my gosh, it's been almost six going on seven years, so that's insane.   Bradley Sutton: That's crazy, that's great. And then I remember how it was like your desk was like behind mine, so I need to check on what you're doing. I just like turn around, we're all in that little, we work there. And then I got to move to like this little, literally a closet. You know, the affiliate team office was like this little that used to be a storage closet and then it became my office.   Michelle: And then what? Six or been very exciting, and I honestly love building relationships and speaking with different people around the world. It's awesome. So now what I'm doing is I've learned and I've kind of just jumped on ships with the Amazon. Influencers program is something that you don't need to really invest money in. It's more of just investing your time and basically you are reviewing products and then when you review them, you upload them to Amazon and Amazon does all the work for you and you just earn commission off anyone that watches your video.   Bradley Sutton: How do you even find out about that people are doing that, because I think nowadays some more and more people know about it, but like I didn't really know about it until somebody like I don't know maybe I saw a video on it or something but how do you even know that this was something that people do?   Michelle: Yeah, it's actually really funny. So, I was just searching, looking for new influence affiliates to join Helium 10 and you know, the algorithm just picks up and all of a sudden, you're seeing like people selling you courses and it's like, hey, the Amazon review program. And I was like, what is this? So, I dived into it and I just started following and I was like you know what? I've never been one to just like jump and, you know, spend a lot of money on products, but this seems like something I can do. And I did it kind of just more of like as a test and, um, it was, yeah, I got like approved right away and then I did the second approval and I got approved in that and now it's just putting videos up on Amazon and the more videos you put there, the more commission you make. And you know it really just depends on the type of video you make as well, of course, the quality and everything. But it's really fun and I feel like for me being like a really busy full-time mom um, and you know, working full-time this is something that I can do, that I don't have to just like run a business. It's just more of yeah fun on the side.   Bradley Sutton: yeah, like even us, you know amazon sellers, like we all have families, like this is something, and maybe your daughter is a little bit too young still, but you know this is something, is something that you know you got like teenagers or even, um, you know, maybe preteens a little bit. You could almost have them like make some of these uh videos and it's like something super simple. Obviously, you know adult needs to set it all up, but it's not like rocket science where you have to be a pro influencer. Uh, you know, in order to make these review videos, a lot of them are just like kind of like unboxing and how you're using it right.   Michelle: Yeah, you know what Funny thing is? My daughter got her first brand deal.   Bradley Sutton: Oh well, okay. Well, maybe she is old enough, I guess. Okay, my bad.   Michelle: Yeah, so there's. There's Amazon sellers looking for people to or, you know, other people to review their product. And one was a mom who just came out with a kid's face wash and she was like hey, I saw your daughter on Instagram. I would love for her to review my product. My daughter is all about skincare because of YouTube and she absolutely loved it. She did it and I just got another email yesterday from another seller who saw her video on that listing asking if they can review her skincare product now and I'm like wait, she's starting to get all these deals, she's only six.   Bradley Sutton: Wow.   Michelle: It is really cool. Of course, you know you need to be in it as a parent, but it is really fun and I've seen a lot of married couples, even like a husband will have his own and then the wife has her own and they just capitalize on that extra income.   Bradley Sutton: Interesting. Now, what's the? I mean, there's a difference, necessarily, between like, almost anybody can sign up to be an Amazon affiliate but then to be an Amazon influencer. Do they still require that you have some kind of social media account that has X number of followers? And then, if so, like what is that requirement?   Michelle: Yeah, so that's a great question. So many people get confused between the Amazon Associates program and that is basically offsite commission. You have to have a website; you get the affiliate link and then you basically drive traffic from your website to Amazon with the Amazon reviewers’ program. That's onsite commission and you necessarily don't need a huge following on social media. You just need to have good engagement for the first two steps. So as long as you get engagement, you build your, your engagement, you sign up and you get approved, you don't even need to worry about that social platform anymore. It's just like building up that reviewer’s videos and then just letting Amazon do that for you.   Bradley Sutton: Okay, excellent, excellent. Now, um, what was the very first video that you did Like? What was it for? Do you remember what it was?   Michelle: Yeah, so, amazon. In order for you to get approved for the second step you actually need very first video that you did like what was it for? Do you remember what it was? Yeah, so amazon. In order for you to get approved for the second step, you actually need to submit three product review videos. So, it's not only one, it's three. So, I did a dog uh feeder, so it's basically a dog bowl but like it has a puzzle inside for your dogs, um, to slow their feeding. And then then I did a Spanish book, and then I did a I don't want to say dupe, but I did a smart watch that you know looks like a brand name like Apple, and that actually got approval. So that got me three. That got my first three approvals for the Amazon reviewers’ program.   Bradley Sutton: Your style of doing Amazon business, like why do you think this is kind of good? Like it's obviously not for the kind of person who's like trying to build up a brand and, you know, be able to exit like your husband did with his brand. But what kind of person is what your model is of? Like these seasonal products in here or there? Like are you even putting it on a brand registry or you're just doing generic brands? Or how are you doing these listings?   Gulsen: No, no brand. How are you doing these listings? No brand registry. And I think that what I'm doing is great for who is working like typical 9 to 5 that would like to get extra site income. And also, like you know, before working at Helium 10, I did supply chain my entire life, so I'm so close to those sourcing agencies or the places in like. I'm originally from Turkey. I know a lot of Turkish manufacturers. Plus, I have very good experience in Far East so it's so easy for me to source products. So, I feel like it is mixed for me. If you really like sourcing trying to find new people on the manufacturing end or sourcing end and if it's giving you pleasure, then that's great because then the money comes itself. But it's not something that you can quit working on your corporate and rely on those seasonal items.   Bradley Sutton: now, for example, that, what do you say? beanie, Bluetooth, Bluetooth, beanie, whatever it's called? Um, you know, you, you grossed I don't know fifteen thousand dollars, twenty thousand dollars or whatever from it. Yeah, was that all one order from the manufacturer and you only did one? And then, if so, like what was that initial investment? Like landed to amazon, like the price of the products and then the importation, and landed to Amazon, like, how much did you invest in that project?   Gulsen: It was like we created two orders the first order, it's like it was gone like in the very first month and a half, and then, since we foresee it, we had to place another order and we did the same quantity and I think we invested about maybe $7,000 in total.   Bradley Sutton: In the first order and both orders together.   Gulsen: The first order, like both orders together, could be around 14K, but it includes everything. Everything like it's includes about two thousand of those Bluetooth beanies and the import and the shipping. So, we had to act quick so we couldn't really do a vessel.   Bradley Sutton: Wait, the first order was 2,000 units   Gulsen: It was 1,000 and 1,000.   Bradley Sutton: Okay so you have, you sold all of them?   Gulsen: yeah, so the first.   Bradley Sutton: I thought you only sold 1000 units. You actually sold 2000 units.   Gulsen: it was during Christmas time. We sold about 1000 and that's why we were so high and excited. We ordered the second order and then those um the remainders. I think we have left about like 300 pieces left and then we started to get orders, maybe once a week and like bi-weekly.   Bradley Sutton: No, not so yeah you sold way more than like 20. You know like we're talking more like 20, 30 000, so seven thousand dollars to invest. And then are you just doing the regular private label ways to get on page one like, hey, I'm gonna run some PPC and try, I mean like that's how you did it.   Gulsen: Yeah, we were so lucky because we were one of the first listings, as I said, and organic, we were already on the page one for that Bluetooth beanie. But then of course you know how it goes Competition comes so crucially and we had to run PPC but still it wasn't that competitive because we were there at the beginning and we sent all inventory to FBA but then we had to take some inventory back and started to sell the rest as FBM.   Bradley Sutton: You should see me about those. I'll start shipping them for you. You can pay my kids to do that. Okay, so then I mean, that's fascinating. I don't know how I didn't know all of this stuff that you're doing. Yeah, you know what.   Gulsen: Funny enough. Actually, it's not about me, but again, like with my husband. Do you remember those fidget spinners?   Bradley Sutton: Yes, yes.   Gulsen: Yeah, he was also like one of the first listings with those fidget spinners on Amazon. Like I think he has a good sense of finding what will come to be a buy.   Bradley Sutton: Well, how did you and he validate that thing? Because you know like it's different when you're trying to be the first kind of like we were kind of like the first coffin shelf. You know there's not like a bunch of data where it's like oh, I know all the main competitors and what they're ranking for and stuff. So, what did you guys use to validate? Like, did you buy some from Costco and just put it up and do a test listing to see how it goes? Or how did you have the con? I mean, cause $7,000 is still $7,000. You know that's a lot of money. Like you got to have some kind of confidence that you're going to be successful. So, if you couldn't see other beanie uh, Bluetooth, Bluetooth beanies, people having confidence what numbers or what were you looking at that made you go ahead and pull the trigger on that order?   Gulsen: Yeah, the thing is I can source those products so quickly because of my connections. So, with that fidget spinner we didn't really do any drop shipping. We just found the manufacturer and I still doubt it was the manufacturer. I still feel like we were talking to a trader at that time. But we got the products in like in 10 days when we decided to go.   Bradley Sutton: Oh, no, the beanie, though that's the one I'm wondering. Yeah, the beanie, you saw it in Sam's Club. It's not like hey, let me go to. Oh, there's a nice product Sam's Club, let me go ahead and drop $7,000. I'm sure you must have done some kind of research or something to take a look.   Gulsen: Yeah, so, uh, what was really very surprising to me when you go to Alibaba or like, let's say, DHgate, and search for some products, you would see tons of manufacturer putting the same picture of the product and selling them. That time, when we check for the Bluetooth beanies, we only sold two, two manufacturers on Alibaba and at that time I was like wow, like this is amazing, because the manufacturers are not just saturating the market. Yes, so it was one of the insights for me. And the second one was it was I believe it was right before the Halloween and you know, like during Christmas times. It's amazing product that you can put in those stockings and not very expensive, but still, it would make your grandchildren so happy to have a gadget like that. It's great if you're like, if you do ski, snowboarding and stuff, you don't really worry about you. So, we believe in the product too.   Bradley Sutton: But was there a search volume at the time, like was anybody searching that at all in Helium 10? Or there wasn't even search volume for that keyword yet.   Gulsen: I don't remember that we saw a huge amount of search volume.   Bradley Sutton: interesting, all right. So, hey, like that's really getting ahead of the, you know, similar to like what we did with the wooden egg tray in project X, where there was nobody searching for wooden egg tray but we're like, hey, I think this is going to be a hot product. All right, that's very interesting, I like that method. Now going back to Michelle, um, let's say I start my, my um influencer account. Would you suggest the first thing to do which actually is me I've had, because, I don't know, I'm lazy, I guess, but like should is the first thing I should do is just go around my house and look at stuff that I bought from Amazon or that stuff that exists on Amazon and start making videos of those things? Is that like a good first step for somebody just getting started?   Michelle: yeah, so not a lot of people know this, but Amazon has it. Use your phone, the Amazon scanner app, and you can go around your house and scan anything and then you find stuff that are actually being sold on Amazon. And I do that. And when I first started, I did a lot of my higher ticket items. So, like my bed frame I got on that wasn't on Amazon and I checked and it was. I'm sorry I didn't get it from Amazon, but when I checked it was on Amazon and so I reviewed it. And then I reviewed like my sofa. My couch was there. I got my couch from an outlet and my couch was also on Amazon. So, I would say to focus on like your higher ticket items, but then also mix it up and do some mid-level, like $20, $30, $40, because those are what's going to give you commission. And if you start a lot of people focus on like really small items, like $10, $12, you're only going to see change. So, you want to have a mix of both and the more videos you bring in, the better. I would also say to look at your like how many influencer videos are there right? Like you don't want to review a product and there's so many review videos that you're not even going to be seen, so that's something else to look out for.   Bradley Sutton: Like what's the best opportunity? Like obvious, it's like, is it something that's selling really well, so that you know there's a lot of you know people getting on that page, and at the same time, maybe like there's not that many influencer videos on that page? Like, is that how you prioritize it? Like, let's say, you could do like 30 things and you're like, okay, how do I know which ones I should do first Because I can get the most money? Would that be what you're looking at, or is there other factors involved too?   Michelle: Yeah, so I try to see how many product listings there are. So, I'll give you an example. Like the smartwatch that I did, that was one of my like it's still actually selling really well and because there's multiple, actually there's only like 50 or 100 people buying it per month from what Amazon showed, but there's a lot of sellers that had it as well, and so I realized that people were watching my video and then they were going on to another listing and then they were like, okay, I really want to get this watch, and then they were just purchasing it. So that's one way. So, you also just want to make sure that there's demand for it, like people are buying it. Right, if you have a rug and you're going to review it and you go in and like there's bad reviews, it says from Amazon, this product is most likely going to get returned, probably not the best one you want to start with.   Bradley Sutton: My next question, uh, would be is just, you know, to give people an idea of the potential here? um, what are some success stories you've heard about, like how much money people are making? And then you, your exact example. You obviously work full-time for Helium 10, so it's not like you're just sitting in your house all day doing video I hope not, otherwise our boss might not be happy about that but you're just doing it here and there in your spare time. Since you already have a full-time job, how much are you grossing every month from this?   Michelle: Yeah, so Amazon's commission is uncapped. You can basically make as much. I just recently started, June, and I'm already about last month I made $600 and then all together it's probably about a thousand, but it hasn't even been a full three months. So, you know, with and I only have a hundred and like 60 videos on my Amazon storefront. So of course, the more videos I'm going to have, the more I'm going to be able to make. I I'm in a lot of Amazon reviewer groups and people make who've been there for like 12 months a year two years can make at least three to $6,000. So, like my goal is to put as many videos as possible and I'm trying to get to like 500 videos for Christmas, because I know that during Christmas time it's going to be really busy. So, I'm really excited to see if I can get at least up to two to three thousand dollars by Christmas in a month.   Bradley Sutton: How much time does it take you to make these videos? Because I know like they actually don't necessarily need like super crazy professional video production and seven different scenes and Steven Spielberg quality. But it's like you just use your cell phone, if I'm not mistaken, right, and then and then what program are using for like cut it up and then put some like captions, and is that basically it? So, what's the time constraint? And then, what are the tools you're using to, to, to put it all together?   Michelle: So that's a great question. Because I'm such a you know I'm busy, everything. I try not to put as much time into this and you really don't because people want to see reviews that are very authentic. They don't want to see like commercials or advertisements, they want to see real people making reviews. So, I just scan it. If I see that it's on Amazon, I will quickly get my water bottle, or if it's a product of a water bottle, quickly get it. Put my phone, place it so I can see myself in it and make a quick 30 to 45 second review video. Make sure the audio is good and I use CapCut. Capcut is free. You can also purchase it and I purchased it because you can enhance your audio, you can clean it up and you can also slice it up. So, in all, it takes me maybe like five minutes per video per product, because you get better as you go and then you just float.   Bradley Sutton: Awesome, awesome, okay, cool, I'm going to get my kids started on that then. Now let's switch gears and talk about what you guys do here, because this is another way that people can make money without having to invest too much money and that's being an affiliate. And so, let's just talk about the extreme, just to get people excited here. Some affiliates here at the company how much money are they grossing? How much money is Helium 10 paying them per month in additional things like cars and stuff like that? So just like get people excited about this subject.   Gulsen: It's really crazy, because some affiliates are making about $70,000 per month.   Bradley Sutton: From Helium 10? Okay, I might be in the wrong position here. What in the actual heck? I had no idea.   Gulsen: But it's not that, so we also pay for their cars.   Bradley Sutton: What are some cars that we're paying for people.   Gulsen: What I remember, we have like one, I believe, Tesla Model S and G-Wagon and a Mercedes, RV minibus and yeah, these are the ones.   Bradley Sutton: In addition, making tens of thousands, even up to 70,000, that okay. Now I think we have you got my attention already, like I didn't even know that we were at that level yet, and so okay. So, what about you know what? What are the ways that that that people are getting to that level? Obviously, no, we're not going to sit here and say, hey, anybody can just make $70,000 a month from Helium 10. But basically, how are they doing something like that? Either of you can answer this.   Gulsen: Yeah, it is. If you have an audience this is only what matters engaged audience you can be a very popular YouTuber, you can be running a course, you can be a great blogger, or you're just someone spreading the word about how to sell on Amazon and the software that's helping with it. Because we pay lifetime recurring commission 25% and on top of the commission we have extra rewards. I'd like Michelle to talk about them yeah.   Michelle: So I will say, some of our top affiliate, like producers, that we pay out high commission, it's because our program is so lucrative and, again, it's 25 lifetime commission. So, some of our affiliates have been here for three, four years and they're still making commission with us on top of the extra bonus program rewards that we're paying for their cars or we're paying for their restaurant dinners, like we pay for so many things. And I also want to clarify, like we don't only pay out top affiliates, like we have a bonus reward program that also pays our smaller guys, like if you're just starting out, we're actually going to update our program, so you're going to receive $500 just for bringing in 10 new subs.   Bradley Sutton: I think what you know, one thing that I want to double click on right there that you said is like the lifetime commission. So, theoretically, you know, let's say, I have this channel where I'm talking about Amazon, but, for whatever reason, I'm like you know what? YouTube shut me down. I no longer have a YouTube channel; I'm just going to stop this. But I had signed up 100 people to Helium 10. Let's just say it's the cheapest plan, so they're paying Helium 10. Those 100 people are paying Helium 10 100 times $100. Okay, all right. So hey, wait, wait, hold on, I'm going to. I'm about to do some advanced math here. So those customers are paying helium 10, $10,000 a month, but every month the affiliate is getting 25%, right? Yeah, so then that's a wait 0.25 times 10,000 is they're getting a check for $2,500 a month. But let's say, today my YouTube channel shut down and it shut down for a year, next year. Let's just say, if those hundred people are still paying Helium 10, they never even did anything, they didn't make one more video, they didn't like help these people at all. They're still getting a check for $2,500 a month, every month from now until infinity, as long as those members. So that that that's that. That that's what I think is really good about our, our system.   Bradley Sutton: Now, uh, Michelle, you know, we obviously talked about one side of the spectrum where it's big influencers or people who have this big course or big YouTube channel or something. Obviously, it's a no brainer to sign up, you know, to be an affiliate, because instantly they're probably going to start making tons of money just because they're going to be able to sign up people. But again, we're talking this episode is kind of like about making money without too much investment. What if I'm just an average Joe? Maybe I'm just an average Joe Helium 10 user out there I know Helium 10 well or I'm just listening to this podcast somehow and I don't have a YouTube channel. I don't have a big popular blog or, you know, Instagram, with a hundred thousand followers. What's a way that I can scale up? I mean, I can still be an affiliate even if I have nobody just at least get started. But how can I scale up my platform in order to start building up? How much Helium 10 is paying me?   Michelle: Yeah, so that's a really good question. I would say consistency, and that goes for everything that you do, right. If you are an average girl, like we've seen this. Like we have people sign up and they don't have like a big platform. However, like they're consistent with growing their audience, whether they you know what I decided I'm going to be a YouTuber. Now I'm going to start posting YouTube videos consistently and on top of that, I'm going to start posting Helium 10 demos, because I am a Helium 10 wizard, so why not share my knowledge? Or I'm going to start my own community on Facebook. Um, and they're consistent with growing their audience. They can eventually start growing commission, because all it takes is one person to get inspired and sign up for Helium 10 with your affiliate link and then, all of a sudden, it's three months in, you're like 10, 15, 20. And you're already, like you said, grossing like $2,500. And you haven't even done much. And you know, like I said, it's really about consistency and it's really fun, because I

Amazon launches new Amazon Saver private label to help shoppers save, take on Walmart, Target https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Food/amazon-launches-new-amazon-saver-private-label-shoppers/story?id=113581546 US seeks to slam shut Shein, Temu trade loophole https://asiatimes.com/2024/09/us-seeks-to-slam-shut-shein-temu-trade-loophole/ Brand Registry Protection https://brandregistry.amazon.com/protection/dashboard?ref=brnav_to_impactdashboard Etsy Offers Subscribers Free Shipping While Aiming for ‘Tremendous’ Growth https://www.pymnts.com/news/ecommerce/2024/etsy-offers-subscribers-free-shipping-while-aiming-for-tremendous-growth/ Finally, maximize your Amazon FBA reimbursements with the newly revamped Helium 10 Refund Genie tool — a resource that could potentially reclaim thousands of dollars for your business. In this episode of the Weekly Buzz by Helium 10, Bradley covers: 01:00 - 1P Account Termination02:13 - Ads in Amazon Rufus03:25 - Amazon / Temu Brushing05:10 - Amazon Coupon Update05:37 - Etsy Seller Updates07:14 - Amazon Export Central08:47 - Amazon 3D Images09:54 - Amazon Saver Groceries11:35 - No More Cheap Chinese Imports?13:24 - Brand Registry Protection14:55 - Etsy Insider16:10 - Walmart Ads Update17:12 - How To Get Reimbursed By Amazon FBA ► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast ► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension ► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup  (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life) ► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft ► Watch The Podcasts On Youtube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos Transcript Bradley Sutton: Amazon is terminating a lot of one-piece seller accounts, rufus is going to start showing Amazon ads, Esty is adding new features to its Prime-like service. These stories and more plus State of the End, to find out how I'm getting $6,000 back on a couple of accounts from Amazon for free how cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show. That is our Helium 10 Weekly Buzz, where we give you a rundown of all the new stories that are going on in the Amazon, Walmart, TikTok shop and e-commerce world. We also give you training tips of the week and let you know what new features there are at Helium 10 that will give you serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. Let's see what's buzzing. I'd said a few weeks ago that, leading up to Accelerate, usually there's not much articles and, yeah, for a couple of weeks there were slim pickings for news, but today, all of a sudden, a bunch of stuff coming out of the woodwork. So we've got a number of stories to get into. Let's go ahead and hop right into it.   Bradley Sutton: First story is just something you probably saw on LinkedIn all over the place the last week. I'll go ahead and highlight a previous podcast, guest LinkedIn, right here. Grace, she talked about it here where it's hey, there was a message that went out to a lot of 1P sellers that said hey, we're going to stop sourcing products. This is from Amazon. You know the way that 1P works. You know like Vendor Central is. Amazon actually buys product from vendors and then you see it says shipped and sold by Amazon. So, effective November 9th, our vendor relationship will be terminated. So a lot of people had noticed and gotten these messages. So that means it might be time, as Grace says here, to hey start getting your ducks in a row for those who want to keep selling Amazon and move to three P. You know seller central. Um, you know some of you might reach out to an agency to do that or just start on your own. Obviously, hey, if you, if you're going to be controlling more of your own stuff instead of Amazon, definitely going to be really intense help. So make sure to utilize our tools to help you with that transition to controlling more of your own listings and things like that. Did anybody out there get a notice? I'm just curious Were your sales down or why do you think Amazon sent that notice?   Bradley Sutton: Next article up here is from Amazon Advertising, a little message that came out early last week and it said sponsored ads may begin appearing in Rufus-related placements. Okay, rufus related placements. Okay, rufus, is that AI tool that it's still tripping out for me? Like I don't think I can use it as a buyer. I saw a couple listings this week where it says the reviews state this and I'm like there's only one review here. It doesn't even say anything, it's only a rating. Like how could the review state something? But anyways, that's a side note for now. It says Amazon ads might start showing up in Rufus related placements. It says Rufus may generate accompanying text based on the context of the conversation. But here's the kicker your campaign reports won't include Rufus metrics. I guess you won't even know what's showing up in Rufus or not. So just you know, I haven't seen it in the wild yet. Again, I'm not using Rufus too much as a buyer, so maybe it is showing up out there, but that's going to be interesting. What part of this is going to be showing up in ads? And, like, how is it going to display if this is supposed to be an organic experience to help the seller or to help the buyers. We'll see, I'm sure, in the coming weeks. I'm sure Amazon Accelerate some things might be announced about that in the future.   Bradley Sutton: Now, you know, a common thing that comes up every couple of years is brushing. So for those who don't know, brushing is what happens when all of a sudden you start getting these Amazon packages or other packages and you didn't even order it. And usually what happens is these you know sellers out there on Amazon, other platforms. They want to build up the reviews. So they get, like these you know fake buyer accounts. They have addresses and they just send to you know free product, to, to to people out there so that they can, you know, set those accounts up to leave them fake reviews. Right now this seems to be making a case, or a comeback.   Bradley Sutton: This news nationnow.com article says that, hey, more Americans are receiving delivered package containing goods they didn't order and this is a scam known as brushing. Now something interesting says here in Illinois, one family told a local TV news station they receive one or two packages a day from Temu. So it looks like Temu is now getting in, or Temu sellers are getting in on brushing and so they said at first the constant deliveries were like experiencing Christmas every day. But then over time the family said the daily delivery simply became too much. Another customer, like a woman in Minnesota it says she received a box full of baby reveal balloons that she didn't order Packages delivered from Amazon and also included cupcake stands she didn't order. So like people are just getting random products here and there, didn't order. So like people are just getting random products here and there. Now you know sellers or amazon has said, hey, if you get brushing packages, first make sure that it's not just like a friend or relative giving you a gift you didn't know about, but says, hey, report the delivered package to the company, include the number of packages were delivered, along with the tracking number from the shipping label and any other information that could be pertinent, and that amazon investigate this. So I'm not sure how you can report it with Temu, but Amazon has a availability to report brushing scams. So something that came up early last week on your dashboard, if you in case you missed it, is the duration for coupons is going to be updated, all right. So, starting in last week, the maximum duration of three different kinds of coupons are going to be changed from 90 days, which is previously the max you could do, to now for standard coupons 30 days, reorder coupons 180 days, subscribe and save coupons 365 days.   Bradley Sutton: Next article is actually from payments.com, from Etsy says Etsy's new search tools aim to elevate quality listings and enhance seller success. All right, so now you know, Etsy has been trying to make a push to become a little bit, I guess, more relevant in the, the e-commerce game. And now that they have, uh, it says we are optimizing our search results to showcase a broader range of items for more sellers. We also want to make it easier and more fun to explore the depth our marketplace has to offer. And they say, hey, these changes that they've been making for Etsy listings have led to approximately 70% of shops on Etsy having more visibility in search. And sellers also now have a Etsy search visibility page and this basically gives sellers more insights into recommendations on how they appear in search. And they said, hey, you know, sellers have told us they want more transparency into what goes into Etsy search. So, guys, if you haven't, if you're selling on Etsy like myself, I haven't looked at this thing you probably should go in and look for your Etsy search visibility page. Get more information on this link to this article here that we have in the comments below. But you know you got to keep up on whatever platform you're selling on. Obviously, with Amazon you've got Helium 10 at the forefront giving you all kinds of tools, and Amazon itself is giving you tools for how to show up and search better. But don't sleep on these other platforms as well. You got to go on these other platforms to make sure that you still stay relevant and Etsy is trying to make some moves out there in e-commerce and so you can benefit from it.   Bradley Sutton: Going back to Amazon, actually going to Europe, now there's an article released by Amazon says Amazon launches Export Central, allowing sellers to export to 39 countries in Europe with just three clicks. All right, you know. So Amazon is not in. There's not an Amazon marketplace in every country. You know you've got Spain and UK and France and some of the major ones and some of the newer ones like Sweden and Netherlands, Belgium, et cetera, but now you can ship to those other countries, all right. So this article says sellers can reach millions of customers even in countries without an Amazon store. Today, amazon announced the launch of our Export Central tool, which allows sellers who are part of MFN Merchant Fulfilled Network to expand their reach to customers in 39 countries in Europe. Now, some of these you know places that don't have Amazon stores as mentioned here, like Austria, Portugal and Greece. Now you're going to be able to ship there from your inventory, that is, in your existing marketplaces, like UK and Germany, et cetera. Now this is going to be available to all sellers, even if they're not even FBA. If you're just part of the Merchant Fulfilled Network or FBA, you'll be able to utilize this service. Now FBA sellers are automatically enrolled into this program at no extra cost, and says that, hey, sellers who have enabled export from their EU stores have seen an average sales uplift of up to 10%. So if you guys are selling in Europe, take a look at this article that I have linked below and check your own Seller Central to see if you're enrolled in it and the implications if you're not, and, if you are, and see if it's right for you and let me know how it works out for you.   Bradley Sutton: Now, going back to the Seller Central dashboard, there was another update last week. It talks about uploading 3D models to help drive conversions. All right. So in some categories, such as home furniture, consumer electronics, shoes and eyewear categories, it actually supports 3D content and so you can go to Catalog in your Seller Central, hit Upload Images and then go to the Image Manager tab and then now there is going to be those products you have eligible for 3D. You can select your product and then check for the Register Brand Owner icon and then on the right page it says go to 3D models and select upload 3D model. All right, so you know, for some of these categories, you know having a 3D image there is very good for helping you know drive conversion. So take a look in Seller Central if you are eligible for that, and then obviously, your next step is you know there's a button there that talks about well, what are the 3D model? You know requirements for getting you know these images up there and you'll be able to get that information.   Bradley Sutton: Next article is from ABC News and at first glance it might not seem like it's impactful for Amazon sellers. Let me explain why I'm including this article. It says Amazon launches new Amazon saver private label to help shop shoppers save. Take on Walmart and Target. So you know how Walmart and Target have like their own brands. You know, like Costco's got Kirkland right. Well, amazon now is going to have Amazon saver right. Almost looks like Target products because it's all red here, but basically what the definition is it says Amazon's new private label brand, amazon saver, will offer an array of grocery staples, from crackers and cookies to canned food and condiments, and most Amazon saver items will be priced at $1,000. Under $5 and prime members will get an additional 10% off of these products.   Bradley Sutton: All right, so you might be wondering like well, that's terrible. Like, if I'm selling in this category, I'm never going to be able to sell again with these cheap products. But here, here's why I put this is Amazon historically has not done great in the grocery category. You know, like Walmart, I think, has them beat there. But then if Amazon is providing more of these cheaper products, you know like some of the products here is pancake syrup and sweet peas and coffee creamer and things like that for cheap, if more people are looking, are going to, you know, go ahead and start buying those things. Well, maybe you are in the grocery category and you have some other products, like some Korean snacks or Vita cup coffee out there, and, and maybe the people who wouldn't have bought your product just by itself. But now they're like, hey, I'm buying groceries anyways, let me go ahead and add these others to the cart. That's how I think it could potentially help Amazon sellers who are selling in the grocery category.   Bradley Sutton: Next article is from asiatimes.com and it's entitled us seeks to slam shut sheen and Temu trade loophole. So this is talking about the, the uh de minimis trade loophole hole that allows Chinese e-commerce firms like sheen, Temu and others to not have to pay tariffs. And then, you know, it allows them to just like ship stuff to the us where sellers are paying like three, four dollars and there's no tariffs, no, nothing, and that's why team machine are so popular, that's why Amazon is even opening this up, but there's some, uh, us representatives uh who are calling on us president to try to end this loophole. All right, so you know, check out this article if you want to go into into details. But a lot of us-based sellers probably would like that, because they're like man, how are we going to compete with some of these Temu products where it's just factory shipping direct? They don't have to ship their item to FBA? Temu has like minimal fees, and so that's why you know like you'll see a coffin shelf for like 10 bucks. I haven't seen my sales go down. You know too much, but you know other sellers might be affected by it.   Bradley Sutton: But an interesting thing that this article said was it quoted a professor at Shanghai University who said that if this is tightened, this loophole it actually could long-term benefit Chinese manufacturers by pushing them up the value ladder, it says. It said hey, if they tighten this rule in the future, they're going to have to change their strategy from selling low-priced items to high-quality ones. This is going to create new opportunities for many Chinese consumer brands. So what do you guys think out there? Do you want the US to close this loophole or do you feel like this Chinese professor says? You know what that actually could cause Chinese companies to up their game and be even more competitive in the future? I'm kind of leaning personally on the let's just close this loophole and make it a fair playing ground between US sellers and foreign sellers. But curious to see what you guys think. Let me know in the comments below.   Bradley Sutton: Next article is not really an article but it is again highlighting a former podcast guest here, leo Segovia. In his LinkedIn post he said he reminded sellers hey, you guys can actually see how many infringement and copycat attempts are on your listings, all right, so he showed some of them. He had like 2,000 attempts in the last six months on his products and 151 in September. This is like what's happening is like people trying to do something to your listing or create listings that copy yours, et cetera, et cetera. So he gave a link here that you guys can go to in order to see this. Like, this is not some special link. Everybody has access to it, but most of you probably didn't even realize you had it. So check the links in the comments section of this podcast and you'll be able to go to your dashboard. All right, it says it's called the Impact Dashboard, proactive Protections.   Bradley Sutton: Here's one of my accounts, the how Cool Is that? For Project X. I stay under the radar and I don't sell in niches that are super, highly competitive and that kind of keeps me away from some of those attempts. You know like, right, like if I'm trying to sell a product that's selling 500 units a day, I guarantee it's probably like Leo is going to have thousands of people trying, bad actors trying to attack me. But take a look, you know, like for me, from April to September, I've only had 110 cases, total for 2024. I've had 410, but still that's kind of crazy. For just my coffin shelves and an egg trace, 410 people have tried to do something. But that probably pales into comparison to some of you out there who have much bigger accounts than the. How cool is that account?   Bradley Sutton: Next article, going back to payments.com and going back to Etsy, it says Etsy offers subscribers free shipping while aiming for tremendous growth. Like I said, you've been seeing signs that Etsy is trying to like, you know, like hey, I see Amazon, Walmart, TikTok shop pulling away. We got to, we got to catch up Now. First of all, the funny thing is, if you read this article, it says CEO and CFO of Etsy said at a conference that Etsy seeks to distinguish itself from rivals like Amazon. But one of the company's recently launched initiatives is Etsy Insider, a paid subscription that will provide free shipping to members. I don't know how that's distinguishing. You're literally doing the exact same thing as Amazon, which is fine. I mean you should do free shipping, but it's funny that that statement came right after. Oh, we're trying to be different, you know, um than amazon. But one thing they are unique on is check this out something that does distinguish them from amazon, says. Other new efforts include an Etsy gift mode that lets shoppers send a message to the recipient before the gift even arrives. A plan to raise the percentage of shoppers using the Etsy mobile app from 40 to 75. All right, so take a look at this article. There's more interesting things, but, yeah, Etsy's trying to go ahead and up their game.   Bradley Sutton: Next article for those of you selling on Walmart.com you probably got this email from Walmart connect and it says unlock new brand term strategies to help increase your share of voice. So Walmart connect brand term targeting is now available for sponsored search automatic campaigns, in addition to exact match keyword campaigns, which launched earlier this year. Says that brand term targeting helps you to increase brand visibility by empowering you to strategically bid on keywords associated with your brand and those of your competitors. All right, so take a look at that email. If you guys are selling on Walmart and do Walmart advertising, I guarantee you've got that email somewhere. Check your junk if not, but make sure that you know what's going on. What's the new features? Walmart is always adding new features to its advertising platform and we implement as many as possible as well. For those who want help with Walmart advertising, we have atomic for Walmart, we have, obviously, research tools for Walmart, but make sure you're taking advantage of these things to you know. Keep your share of voice high on the Walmart platform.   Bradley Sutton: All right, that's it for the news this week, guys, but now I've got a question for you how to get reimbursed by Amazon FBA. This is a question that a lot of sellers are asking, because they got that notice they heard here on the Weekly Buzz. That window is closing could cost you thousands of dollars. All right. So you've probably seen ads from different services from saying, hey, we'll, we'll help you get those. You got to take action now, which is true, but almost all of those ads are for companies that are going to take 20, 25% or more of any money they find for you.   Bradley Sutton: How would you like to know how to get your money back for free? Now, don't get me wrong. Even Helium 10 has a service where we'll do the work, like all of the work, for you. It's called MRS, and if you're a big company who's owed maybe tens of thousands of dollars and you don't have time to submit all the claims yourself, yeah, we'll go ahead and do it for you for a fee. Go to h10.me/mrs, and you'll get a quote on that. But what I'm about to show you is 100% free for Helium 10 Platinum annual members and above, and this is the best way to get Amazon FBA to reimburse you money that you are owed. And it's your last chance to do it, because in October 23rd, that timeline is going to go away, costing you potentially thousands. In October 23rd, that timeline is going to go away, costing you potentially thousands.   Bradley Sutton: Let me show you a couple of the accounts I have access to and how I'm going to be able to get over $6,000 in just a couple of counts back from Amazon FBA, how I'm getting them to reimburse me, all right. So, first of all, the next time you sign into your Helium 10 dashboard, take a look at this banner on the top. All right, it'll say, hey, it's your last chance to claim. I look at this. This is one of my accounts here. I got $5,000 because I haven't been keeping up to date with my Refund Genie. So for those of you who have never used a FBA reimbursement service, you're going to see probably a big number right there. All right, so go there and hit open Refund Genie. Now, when you hit that it's going to go up to your regular Refund Genie dashboard. But you need to look at the stars, all right. So in this account I've actually got a few accounts connected and actually I had more than $6,000 original. I've already refund. I've already got a lot refunded by. I kept a few here's just so I can show you guys the process. But I've got like three accounts connected here. So let's go ahead and open up this first one creative, lg, household and healthcare.   Bradley Sutton: But what you guys need to do is look for the ones that say loss and damage and has a star next to it. Forget about all the old ones. If you see that there now really, really quick. If you guys don't have access to this, it means you're probably on like a like a Helium 10 free plan or starter plan or maybe just a platinum monthly. All you need this it's this is a completely revamped Refund Genie tool. So that's why this is like actually our training tip of the week and our Helium 10 new feature request. This is a newly revamped tool to get this. You can have access to it now if you're a platinum annual above. So if you're on a platinum monthly um. You can just upgrade to a platinum annual and you'll get instant access to this.   Bradley Sutton: So, anyways, what I'm going to do right here is click on this EU one. So I'm going to show you one from EU. I click details on one of these ones that have star, and then now I have all the marketplaces show up in this account. I'm selling in Germany, Spain, France, Italy, UK, Sweden and Poland, and so let's go right here to the UK one. All right, so now I have to open up seller central into the UK account. So go ahead, I'm going to go ahead and do that right now.   Bradley Sutton: And then what I need to do is I'm going to hit help and then go to get help and resources, and then now this is different for different people, but sometimes on your page you'll see a widget that says inventory lost in FBA warehouse. All right, that's what you have to click on to get your amazon reimbursement from Amazon FBA. But if you don't see that, you can just hit my issue is not listed and then just type in investigate inventory missing in FBA warehouse, and then it's going to come up. What's about to come up right here? If I hit this button, it's basically just a FN SKU button and then now all I have to do is copy the ASIN or the FN SKU. I should say, and this one is going to be a potential refund of 600 euros, I'm going to get 600 euros back in like a couple seconds here, and then I'm going to hit continue. Once I paste the ASIN or the FN SKU into, I either get the money back instantly or I have to open up a case, and so in this one I'm going to open up a case because this was 600 euros worth and so they require a case to be open. So I hit create case and I create the case and they're going to get me back that money probably within a couple of days.   Bradley Sutton: I go back to Helium 10 and then I hit processed. And then let's go ahead and go on another one. Let me just find one of these smaller ones Like here's, one that is only three items and 28 euros, all right, so let's go ahead and copy this one. Let's go to Amazon. I'm going to go back to get help with a new issue. I hit inventory loss and FBA warehouse paste the FN skew. I hit continue and let's see what it says. Boom goes a dynamite right here. You remember how Helium 10 told me that I was owed three units and 28 euros. Well, look what Amazon just told me. In this case, yes, you are right, three units reimbursable. These items have been processed for reimbursement. I'm going to get that money. I just made 28 euros in about five seconds here. So I'm going to go one by one on all of these cases and I'm going to get hundreds thousands of dollars back on this one account.   Bradley Sutton: Let me just show how it looks in a US account. So I'm back here on the Refund Genie page and here's one of my North American accounts. It says Dial Cash let's go ahead and hit the details here and here we go. And it says US I got nine lost items, potential refund of $1,223. Oh, my goodness gracious. Again, I need to go to the correct seller central account and then I hit the help button and I hit get help and resources. And then how do I ask for reimbursement from Amazon FBA? Let me go ahead. And oh my goodness, let me open up this one. Here's one where there's five conference chairs that looks like Amazon lost and that's a total of $1,100. Oh, my goodness gracious, I'm going to copy that FN skew and go ahead and paste it over here.   Bradley Sutton: Inventory loss and FBA warehouse. Let's paste that FN skew, hit continue and let's see what Amazon says. I almost like want a drum roll right here or something. Boom, it says, hey, this you know, probably cause it's a thousand dollars I'm about to get back in one click. It says here well, we opened up a case and this can be transferred to an associate and there's a case already open, but I guarantee I'm going to get that money back.   Bradley Sutton: I everything that the new Refund Genie has been showing, I've been getting it back a hundred percent of the time. Sometimes even more I'm getting back than Refund Genie. Let's go ahead and do one of these smaller ones that they can refund me instantly on. Here is one product that is for $29.99. Let's go ahead and copy this FN SKU over. I'm going to hit get help with a new issue Inventory loss in FBA warehouse. I paste the FN SKU, I hit continue and let's see if Amazon instantly refunds me. Boom, there it is.   Bradley Sutton: Remember Helium 10 said I was owed one unit and Amazon says you are absolutely correct. Allow four to five days for this reimbursement to come into this account. So, as you can see I've got a lot more I have to do. I said $6,000. It's actually going to be across all my accounts about $8,000. And that's in two of my accounts. I've already been keeping up with the Refund Genie so it probably would have been been over $10,000 for me if I wasn't. But, guys, this is money in your bank account.   Bradley Sutton: Now, how much can you possibly get? It depends. If you've only been selling for a couple of months and you've sold maybe $20,000, amazon might owe you $20 or $100 or something like that. Probably not that much. But if you've been selling for 18 months and you're a six figure seller, you could be owed thousands of dollars. You know, potentially we are a seven figure seller. It's almost guaranteed If you've never done a audit, you it's almost guaranteed that you're owed thousands of dollars by Amazon of what they owe to you. And Refund Genie can help you know what that is. So if you have never used Helium 10 at all and you want to do a free calculator to see how much potentially you might owe, just go to h10.me forward slash Refund Genie h10.me forward slash Refund Genie. We've got a calculator here where you can just enter in your you know rough estimate of your sales and then we'll calculate how much could be owed for you.   Bradley Sutton: But again, how to get reimbursed by Amazon FBA? It is super easy. You just have to open up a case with Amazon, copy and paste the FNSKUs that were lost. There's also another thing that Refund Genie does is allows you to see the transaction IDs of damaged items. All right, so if products have been damaged at Amazon FBA warehouses, you can enter in all the transaction IDs and get reimbursed for those, for the ones that Amazon hasn't reimbursed for you. So you could get thousands of dollars back from Amazon FBA reimbursements on stuff that they have lost and they didn't reimburse you, just by submitting these reports. But you don't have to go searching, hey, what could you be reimbursed on or not? Helium 10 is doing all that work for you. And again, remember, this service is 100% free. We are not taking any commission on it because you're the one who's doing half of the work. All right, if you want Helium 10 to do all the work for you, like some of the other services, go to h10.me/mrs, and you know for the.   Bradley Sutton: You know I saw some. I was looking at a report. There's a lot of you guys out there who are owed potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars, like literally, like I'm like looking at Helium 10 customers like, guys, you are owed hundreds of thousands of dollars and you haven't asked for reimbursement yet. So you have like thousands of transactions and maybe you want you don't want to do one by one what I was just showing you how to do go to h10.me/mrs, we'll take care of all of it for you and, uh, you know we'll charge your fee, but for what I showed you today, guys, there is no fee at all. So make sure those of you who have a Helium 10 Platinum annual account or higher get in there and start getting your money back. And then let me know in the comments below how much did you guys get back Thanks to Helium 10 Refund Genie from Amazon FBA reimbursements. All right, guys, that's it for today's episode. We'll see you in the next one to see what's buzzing.

In our latest episode, unlock the secrets to skyrocketing your e-commerce success with TikTok advertising! We chat with Tamara Zeravljev of Add to Ads, who shares her incredible insights into the booming TikTok phenomenon, offering unparalleled strategies whether you have a TikTok Shop or not. Also, hear some of her personal anecdotes about Serbian weather and sports culture, adding a touch of warmth to our conversation. Discover how a high-budget TikTok brand awareness campaign can transform your business. With a minimum starting budget, we break down the mechanics of using TikTok's reach and frequency feature to amass brand visibility in just one day. Learn how to leverage multiple engaging videos and influencer content to maintain an organic feel while collecting invaluable data for future campaigns. Don't miss our deep dive into the importance of product showcases and influencer partnerships to maximize your brand's recognition. Finally, arm yourself with actionable tips for starting and growing a TikTok brand channel. We guide you through the process of using both original and user-generated content to keep your profile fresh and engaging. For Amazon sellers, we offer practical advice on working with influencers, starting with product exchanges before moving to monetary compensation. Whether you're operating on a tight budget or ready to invest more, our strategies will help you build a robust brand presence on TikTok. Join us for this comprehensive guide to mastering TikTok advertising and content strategy! In episode 595 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Tamara discuss: 00:00 - TikTok Advertising Success Stories03:11 - Passion for Sports in Serbia06:31 - Focus on TikTok Advertising Strategy08:33 - Advantages of TikTok Advertising for Amazon Brands09:57 - TikTok Brand Awareness Campaign Success12:57 - Brand Awareness Video Strategy15:41 - Starting a TikTok Brand Channel21:35 - Creating Brand Identity on TikTok22:02 - Using TikTok Videos for Advertising 26:48 - TikTok Advertising Strategy and Conversion Campaigns31:09 - Creating Effective TikTok Content Strategy

Join us for an inspiring episode where we feature two incredible guests, Chris Zurcher and Sarah Chung. Sarah shares her unique journey from a small port city in South Korea to the bustling South Bay area of Torrance, California. Her story is filled with determination and resilience, reflecting on her family's move to the US for better opportunities and her professional growth at Helium 10 over the past three and a half years. Sarah's first appearance on the podcast gives listeners a heartfelt glimpse into her personal and professional life. Chris, a familiar voice from previous episodes, reconnects with us to discuss his fascinating transition from an Amazon seller to a valuable member of the Helium 10 team. With a background in acting, photography, and Division One basketball, Chris shares his reasons for moving away from Amazon selling and his passion for supporting sellers through Helium 10's platform. We explore the current challenges Amazon sellers face in 2024, such as increased fees and competition, and how Helium 10's data-driven tools can provide the necessary insights for success. We also dive into the advanced features of Helium 10's Supercharge plan, which offers enhanced tools and customizable options to meet the specific needs of businesses. From market data and consumer behavior analysis to custom plans and dedicated customer success managers, Helium 10 provides comprehensive support for sellers. Finally, we highlight the benefits of connecting with experts like Sarah and Chris for enterprise-level assistance and share fun, creative ways to make your interactions with them memorable. Don't miss out on these engaging stories and valuable insights that can help take your Amazon selling to the next level! In episode 594 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley, Chris, and Sarah discuss: 00:00 - Amazon Sellers' Success Stories Helium 1007:16 - Amazon Business Principles and Surprises09:49 - Scaling Brands Using Helium 10 16:01 - E-Commerce Brand Scaling and Consolidation18:55 - Custom Plans and Supercharge Benefits21:45 - Customized Plans Offered For Huge Brands by Helium 1026:23 - Enhancing Helium 10 Platform Features30:49 - Personal Customer Success Manager34:32 - Helium 10 Sales Support Options ► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast ► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension ► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup  (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life) ► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft ► Watch The Podcasts On Youtube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos

We’re back with another episode of the Weekly Buzz with Helium 10’s Chief Brand Evangelist, Bradley Sutton. Every week, we cover the latest breaking news in the Amazon, Walmart, and E-commerce space, talk about Helium 10’s newest features, and provide a training tip for the week for serious sellers of any level. Amazon checkout process hits technical snag during Labor Day sale https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/30/amazon-checkout-process-hits-technical-snag-during-labor-day-sale.html Walmart wants to beat Amazon at its own e-commerce game https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/walmart-wants-beat-amazon-its-own-e-commerce-game Walmart to Compete Directly with Amazon on Marketplace Logistics https://www.webpronews.com/walmart-to-compete-directly-with-amazon-on-marketplace-logistics/ Most retailers not prepared for a TikTok shut down https://www.retailcustomerexperience.com/news/most-retailers-not-prepared-for-a-tiktok-shut-down/ Amazon launches AI shopping assistant Rufus in the UK https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon-launches-ai-shopping-assistant-121706169.html? Temu and Shein packages are flooding delivery networks. Will the surge persist? https://www.retaildive.com/news/temu-shein-shipping-delivery-industry-impact/725707/ For Amazon sellers, we've got game-changing strategies up our sleeves, featuring a deep dive into Helium 10’s  BlackBox tool Competitor tab. Learn how to pinpoint your closest competitors through shared keywords, supercharge your product listings, and fine-tune your Amazon PPC campaigns to stay ahead in a fiercely competitive market. Don't miss out on this invaluable news and insights! In this episode of the Weekly Buzz by Helium 10, Bradley covers: 00:53 - Amazon's Technical Snag02:03 - Walmart Levels Up03:17 - Using WFS Beyond Walmart04:59 - TikTok Contingency Plan07:00 - Faster Delivery for MCF07:45 - Rufus Launches in UK09:14 - Temu & Shein Changes?10:36 - Training Tip: Black Box Competitor Tab ► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast ► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension ► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup  (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life) ► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft ► Watch The Podcasts On YouTube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos Transcript Shivali Patel: Walmart now offering competitive rates to fulfill orders beyond its platform, Amazon, rolling out faster delivery options for multi-channel fulfillment and potential regulation changes that could affect pricing on Temu and Shein. This and more on this week's episode of the Weekly Buzz.   Bradley Sutton: How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show. That is our Helium 10 Weekly Buzz, where we give you a rundown of all the new stories that are going on in the Amazon, Walmart and e-commerce world. We highlight the latest new feature alerts from Helium 10, and we review a training tip of the week that'll give you serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. Today, our host is going to be Shivali Patel, and so, Shivali, take it away and let us know what's buzzing.   Shivali Patel: First up, we have this news article from CNBC discussing the technical snag Amazon faced during its Labor Day sale. On Friday, customers were unable to complete purchases due to some technical issue in the checkout process. Sometimes the consumers would encounter error messages featuring Amazon's famous dog photos. This glitch occurred just as Amazon was rolling out major discounts for the holiday weekend, frustrating those customers eager to grab deals, leading to it quickly becoming a topic of conversation for social media. For sellers on Amazon, this should serve as a reminder for you guys of the impact that technical challenges can have on sales, especially during big promotional events. While Amazon saw a robust $148 billion in the second quarter, things like this can really damage both sales performance and consumer trust. So, as that holiday season peaks around the corner, make sure that you guys are staying vigilant during peak sales periods to manage your customer interactions and monitor any potential issues that could affect your business.   Shivali Patel: Next up, some Walmart news. We have Fox Business reporting on Walmart stepping up its e-commerce game with bold new strategies aimed at expanding its product offerings. Currently dominating brick-and-mortar retail, Walmart has only a 6% share of the online marketplace, compared to Amazon's commanding 38%, but they're working hard to close that gap. Walmart's leveraging its vast physical store network as fulfillment hubs, while increasing its focus on its online marketplace. The company's actually been rolling out new categories, such as the premium beauty category. This is gonna feature brands like T3 and CauseRx if you've heard of them and they're launching initiatives like Resold at Walmart for pre-owned goods on the Walmart marketplace, which is designed for sellers like you and I, not to mention that Walmart's marketplace has achieved over 30% sales growth for four consecutive quarters and while it's not at Amazon's level, this expansion is only one more reason for you guys to begin considering Walmart as a viable e-commerce platform. If you're not actively selling on it. Increase competition or new opportunities to diversify sales channels and take advantage of Walmart's lower fees and growing customer base. You decide. And this leads me into the next news piece from WebPro News.   Shivali Patel: You guys, if you didn't know, Walmart now has a Walmart's multi-channel solutions program, which allows sellers to fulfill orders from any e-commerce site using Walmart's fulfillment services, offering competitive rates that are 15% lower than its competitors. I mean talk about making the platform an even more attractive option for third-party sellers. Starting September 10th, sellers will be able to use Walmart's extensive warehousing, delivery and return services to fulfill orders from other e-commerce platforms, including Target, Etsy and even Amazon itself. This initiative expands Walmart fulfillment services and directly challenges Amazon's fulfillment by Amazon model, allowing sellers like you and I to manage logistics with Walmart's resources For sellers, using Amazon or other platforms. So if this is you, this means you will now have an alternative fulfillment solution that offers cost-effective logistics, helping you streamline operations while reaching customers across multiple channels. Walmart's logistics services will feature plain, unbranded packaging and two shipping options expedited and standard, though there are going to be some limitations for specific products, like multi-box orders, so just make sure that you read up on those things. Despite these challenges, Walmart is aiming to reshape the logistics landscape and offer more flexibility for sellers across the board. This, you guys, has really big implications for e-commerce and, as a seller, I would just encourage you to keep an eye on how this logistics network evolves over time and provides even more opportunities for growth.   Shivali Patel: Okay, let's switch over to TikTok. A news report from Retail Customer Experience has revealed that, while a majority of retailers 68% of them believe that a potential ban or sale of TikTok would negatively affect their business, only 28% actually have some sort of contingency plan in place. TikTok has become a crucial platform for product discovery, with over two-thirds of the actual consumers finding products on the app and then purchasing them elsewhere. So I would say for Amazon and Walmart sellers, this sort of uncertainty around TikTok's future could potentially pose a disruption in customer acquisition, particularly as 81% of retailers are actually using TikTok to sell directly to consumers. I think we all recognize how monumental viral content can be for a business, and it's no secret that viral content on the platform has led to issues like stockouts and delays. So are you prepared for any impact associated to a possible shutdown? According to the article, 73% of consumers plan to use TikTok as inspiration for their holiday shopping and 59% intend to make purchases directly through TikTok shop, whereas 39% of consumers named Facebook as the platform where they will spend a majority of their time if something happens to TikTok, meaning that there is going to most likely be increased competition for attention on those platforms, on the social media platforms that are not TikTok, where people are finding inspo. Consider diversifying your marketing channels from now and create those contingency plans to prepare for the potential loss of TikTok as a sales tool.   Shivali Patel: Now I'm not saying that it's gone just yet, but be prepared is what I'm getting at. Of course, quite a bit of things are category dependent, but as the holiday shopping approaches, I really think it's important to have a robust strategy across multiple channels, and that will be paramount to maintaining visibility and customer engagement. All right now directly from Amazon and you can find this inside of Seller Central News. But Amazon just rolled out faster delivery of multi-channel fulfillment orders, and this gives sellers a big advantage in meeting customer demands. The updated delivery speeds come at no additional cost, and standard delivery has improved to three business days, which is down from five business days. Expedited delivery has improved to three business days, which is down from five business days. Expedited delivery has improved to two business days, down from three, and priority delivery has been discontinued. Any new orders will be charged at the expedited rate. This improvement means your customers can enjoy faster shipping, helping you boost satisfaction and sales across your channels. Take advantage of these updates to grow your business by providing even quicker delivery. For more information, you guys can just go in and tap this link right here.   Shivali Patel: In other news, amazon just introduced its newest tool in online shopping an AI-powered assistant named Rufus. Are any of you guys familiar with it? Let me know in the chat. I feel like I've mentioned this before on Buzz, but I was in the UK just a couple weeks ago and actually got to see this during my shopping experience in the app, so it's now in beta for select UK customers. Rufus is designed to enhance the shopping experience by answering your customer questions, offering personalized recommendations. Like, let's say, you say I'm preparing for a camping trip. It would give you recommendations based off that and just helping in general with product discovery. So, using Amazon's vast product catalog and web data, rufus can assist with everything from suggesting the climbing gear, the camping gear, to comparing products like lip gloss versus lip oil, and I think for sellers, this represents an interesting and exciting development in how customers can find our products. So, with Rufus, shoppers can save time and make more informed decisions, ultimately improving the overall experience and potentially driving more sales. This AI integration really highlights the future of e-com, you guys, and it's only going to continue to evolve. As Amazon continues to roll out this tool, I anticipate that more AI-driven features will come out that can change how customers interact with our products, which is why, of course, you'll want to keep tuned in to weekly buzzes to ensure maximized product visibility.   Shivali Patel: And finally, let's talk about Temu and Shein, as they've surged in popularity, now sending about 900,000 packages daily. That is insane. That is a lot of packages, and I know a lot of you are concerned on whether this signals incoming price wars. These packages enter the country using the D Minus exemption. Now this helps keep shipping costs low, which allows the company to offer highly competitive prices. However, increasing scrutiny from lawmakers could actually impact this exemption and potentially affect both companies and the carriers that depend on their volume. What I mean by this is parcel carriers like UPS have seen notable growth with the rise of Temu and Shein, and both rely on low-cost shipping rates, which help them keep their product prices affordable, while slower delivery speeds 6 to 22 days for Temu and then 10 to 13 for Shein are the trade-off for shoppers. The high volume of packages keep those carrier trucks full and routes efficient. However, if regulatory changes alter the shipping process, costs could rise, impacting the current delivery boom. So keep an eye out for any potential changes in regulations. With that, that is it for this week's news.   Shivali Patel: Now let's talk strategy. Let me show you how you can easily find your closest competitors for any Amazon product. Now, why is this important and how can it help you make money? Well, if you're researching a new niche, you need to understand who your competition is. Who do you need to watch out for? Who should you study at the keyword level to understand where they're getting their sales from? This tool will help you do just that. Using Black Box's competitors tab, you can input any ASIN that has some sort of history, something that's sold decent volume, and you'll want to avoid new products that aren't ranking yet, because the tool works best with established products. What it does do is it shows you the closest competitors based on how many keywords they rank similarly for. So, for example, let's say I were to input something in like an LED makeup case, I would see other products that are ranking high for the same keywords that that LED makeup case is ranking for, such as lighted makeup case or LED makeup bag.   Shivali Patel: Let me actually share my screen and show you how it's done. You're going to navigate over to the fourth tab inside of Black Box, which says competitors. You're going to input in your own products ASIN or, let's say, a competitor's ASIN, which is what I'm doing, and then click search. In doing so, in my case, I got back 187 products here. So in my case, I got back 187 products here. If you are unfamiliar with the P index that's listed right here. This is what it is sorted by default. It tells you how closely related the products are based on shared keywords. So a product with a higher P index, closer to 10, means that the product is ranking for many of the same keywords as the one that you entered. Now. This is useful because you can immediately gain insight into how relevant these products are compared to yours.   Shivali Patel: A lot of what we're looking at here in these results is makeup cases. They're just a bunch of additional makeup cases. However, you really never know Like. When I run the same search, typically with coffin shelves, I see other products like makeup shelves, spiderweb shelves or even goth themed items. So, depending on your niche, running the search is really really great for understanding what other products are closely competing with yours. From there, the next step would be to take these and jump into Cerebro to check out exactly which keywords these products are ranking for. From here, the next step would be to jump into Cerebro to check out exactly which keywords these products are ranking for. From here, the next step would be to jump into Cerebro to check out exactly which keywords these products are ranking for, or even take one of these products and start a fresh competitor search inside of Black Box to dive a bit deeper. Or let's say that you need to discover which products to target for your sponsored display or sponsored product campaigns Products that you know have a better offering or maybe some incentive over, so that if you appear on their product pages, you could potentially capture the sales.   Shivali Patel: You can just use the filters at the very top to narrow down your search, and that is going to be these filters right here. So let's say, for example, you are looking for products that have fewer reviews than yours you would input in a max for review count. Or maybe you're looking for products that have fewer reviews than yours you would input in a max for review count. Or maybe you're looking for the ones where your product is actually priced a little bit lower you can type in a max for price point. So, in short, guys, this tool is invaluable for competitor research, generating PPC targets or identifying product opportunities in your niche. If you're seeing irrelevant products after the top five or so, then that's a sign that there are not many close competitors, giving you even more insight into the market space. Okay, that's a wrap. Hope you enjoyed this week's episode. We'll see you next week to see what's buzzing.

Can selling on Walmart.com be your new secret weapon for e-commerce success? Join us as we welcome Ryan King from BlueRyse, a true Walmart marketplace expert, who shares game-changing strategies for boosting your sales on Walmart. Ryan explains why diversifying your online presence beyond Amazon is not just a smart move but essential for long-term growth. He details how to establish a strong foundation on Walmart early, from crafting compelling listings to amassing reviews and maintaining brand consistency, all while catering to the unique preferences of Walmart shoppers. For those new to the world of e-commerce, Ryan offers a comparative analysis of Amazon and Walmart, shedding light on why Amazon is often the go-to starting point due to its extensive tools and higher volume opportunities. He shares insider tips on navigating Walmart's international selling stipulations and highlights the importance of brand registration to unlock exclusive advertising opportunities and protect intellectual property. Misconceptions about Walmart’s technology and algorithms are debunked, providing you with a solid understanding of how to effectively optimize your presence on this evolving platform. Optimizing your product listings on Walmart isn't just about slapping on a few keywords. Ryan emphasizes the importance of new product type level attributes and backend attributes for better search visibility. He also discusses the benefits of the Walmart Pro Seller badge and why re-uploading listings using the latest item spec 5.0 can make a difference. Learn how to craft clear product descriptions, optimize image stacks, and leverage sponsored product campaigns to skyrocket your sales. Plus, get the scoop on exciting new developments like sponsored brand shops and shelves that can significantly enhance your offsite traffic and ranking. Don't miss this episode full of insights to elevate your Walmart selling game! In episode 593 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Carrie, Kevin, and Ryan discuss: 00:00 - Advanced Strategies Q&A for Walmart Sellers02:56 - The Importance of Selling on Walmart07:33 - Organic Shopping Shift Towards Walmart10:51 - Maximizing Profits While Avoiding Price Wars12:41 - Optimizing Sales on Walmart Marketplace16:47 - Managing Duplicate Listings and IP Claims22:28 - Optimizing Walmart Listings for Conversion27:22 - Walmart Pro Seller Badge's Impact on Ranking29:32 - Optimizing Walmart Listings and Advertising33:03 - Optimizing Walmart PPC Campaigns for Efficiency ► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast ► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension ► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup  (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life) ► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft ► Watch The Podcasts On Youtube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos

Is your Amazon product logistics strategy ready for Q4? Join us as we sit down with Burak Yolga, Co-Founder & CEO at Forceget, a leading expert in global supply chain and logistics, who reveals crucial strategies that Amazon sellers need to thrive in the fast-approaching holiday season. Burak unpacks how to save money on logistics and explore new marketplaces amidst the rise of new players like TikTok Shop Temu, and Shein. As a special treat, Burak shares his favorite restaurants in Istanbul, just in time for Bradley who is heading to the upcoming conference in the city. We break down the factors driving up international shipping prices, from reduced vessel schedules to container shortages and shifting market demands. High inflation and the growth of platforms such as Temu and AliExpress are reshaping e-commerce, creating new challenges for Amazon sellers. Learn how to navigate Amazon Global Logistics’ practices, adapt to the new fees, and optimize your shipment strategy to stay competitive in today’s volatile market. This episode is a goldmine of insights for those grappling with the costs of selling large items on Amazon. Discover why more sellers are turning to third-party logistics providers and exploring multi-channel selling to maximize profitability. We highlight the benefits of early inventory planning, the impact of Amazon's new delivery rules, and the critical need for flexible fulfillment options. Plus, find out how expanding into physical retail stores like Walmart can be a game-changer for your business. Tune in for expert strategies that can transform your logistics approach and boost your bottom line this Q4. In episode 593 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Burak discuss: 00:00 - Global Supply Chain Insights and Tips04:11 - Impact of Rising International Shipping Prices07:20 - Impact of New Amazon Fees12:26 - Amazon Global Logistics vs Independent Freight Forwarder16:38 - Maximizing Amazon Seller Profitability17:31 - Expanding Sales Beyond Amazon 23:00 - Diversifying Sales Channels and Maximizing Profits24:03 - Saving on FBA Fees and Freight30:11 - Benefits of Investing in Your Brand’s Website ► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast ► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension ► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup  (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life) ► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft ► Watch The Podcasts On Youtube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos Transcript Bradley Sutton: Today we've got one of the world's leading experts on global supply chain and logistics and he's going to talk about a wide variety of topics, like things Amazon sellers can keep in mind for Q4, how they can save money on logistics and expanding to other marketplaces. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Black Box by Helium 10 House is the largest database of Amazon products and keywords in the world. Outside of Amazon itself, we have over 2 billion products and many millions more keywords from different Amazon marketplaces, from USA to Australia to Germany and more. Use our powerful filters to search through this database for pockets of opportunity that you might want to get into with your first or next product to sell on Amazon. For more information, go to h10.me/blackbox. Don't forget you can save 10% off for life on Helium 10 by using our special code SSP10. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I am your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show. That's completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed, organic conversation about serious strategies for Serious Sellers of any level in the e-commerce world.  And we got somebody who helped Serious Seller all over the world, I think the third, maybe fourth time he's been on the Podcast. Burak, how's it going? Man? I'm great. Bradley, Thanks for having me again. Burak: I'm great. Bradley, Thanks for having me again. Bradley Sutton: Are you in Miami right now? Burak: Yes, Miami Florida. Bradley Sutton: Okay, I'm wearing my Miami hat. This is, like, I think, an older minor league baseball team or something. That's why I'm wearing my Miami hat today in your honor. But you're originally from Turkey. Did you know that I'm going to Istanbul in a little bit? Burak: I think you mentioned. Yes, I'm very excited. I wish I was there to take you to the best food restaurants, you know. Bradley Sutton: You'll have to tell me what the good ones are. Are there any in Istanbul that for sure I need to go to so I can maybe even by myself I can go? Burak: I think you should definitely visit Galata Port. It's a new place. It's right by the water. There are some good Kebab places and also definitely Baklava. You should try Gülolu, the best Baklava in the world. Bradley Sutton: Perfect, all right, I'm going to those places. By the way, I'm not sure when this podcast is going to go out, but if anybody is in Turkey and is down to meet me on September the 4th or 5th and you want to go with me to one of these restaurants or take me there. Conference I'm speaking at, you can get a link to it at h10.me forward slash Istanbul. H10.me forward slash Istanbul. It will forward you to the conference I'll be speaking at. So, I'd love to do like a little mini-Helium 10 meetup over there. Now. We're not here just to talk about Turkish food and Turkish delights. I'm sure we could spend a whole episode. You know as much as I love food to talk about that. But you know you're one of the leading experts in the world about, you know shipping and logistics and things like that, so let's just hop right into it. You know the last time you were on this show was episode 457. So, by the way, if anybody wants to get Burak's more of his backstory, actually go back to the very first episode he was on, which is episode 324. You can learn about his origin story. And then 457, we talked about some other topics, but what was 457? I think it was around, like you know, May, June of last year. So obviously you know things in logistics change month by month, even. What are some of the biggest changes that sellers should be aware of, just in general? First of all, in the logistics world, whether it's about pricing or taxes, what can you tell us has been different since the last time you were on the show? Burak: You know you're right, things sometimes change its daily base and you know, when we started ForceGet, it was probably five years ago, we were mainly focusing on international shipping, but we became more like a supply chain. Now there has been a lot of changes within our company as well as in the world. In the industry, with the e-commerce, especially with the Amazon FBA plus, the new players are coming into the market TikTok, Teemu, Shein and Shopify. According to the reports, they have lost some revenue. However, a lot of companies they're trying to enter omnichannel. That's something that I mentioned before we start recording. When it comes to international shipping, actually, international shipping prices increased. Compared to six months ago. I think we have seen the lowest shipping prices last probably a few decades. Full container price was almost uh 1500 dollars from China to Los Angeles. Now it went back up to seven, eight thousand dollars. Now we see the range of five thousand, five thousand, five hundred dollars, which is, I think, a hell to range for both um shipping lines, freight forwarders, as well as for f the um e-commerce and amazon sellers. Bradley Sutton: Prices went down but then prices have been going up again for different things. Obviously, there was that thing that happened last year in the Red Sea and things like that. So obviously there's always random things COVID, or there's a container ship blocking the whole Suez Canal or something like that. Those would obviously have an effect. But the recent price increases in shipping, like what is that attributed to? Because, like, is that because of the, the war that that's happening, or is it something else? Burak: Actually, this was uh sort of uh happened, I would say, inorganically. Uh, one of the reasons was the shipping lines. Uh, you know all these worldwide companies like Hyundai, Zim, Evergreen. I'm sure everybody's familiar with that big logo block less US channel they have canceled a lot of scheduled vessels because maybe 30%, 40% of the container vessel was not 100% fulfilled, vessel was not 100 percent fulfilled. Basically, they were losing a lot of money so they decided to roll over one of the week's shipping schedules to the next one. So basically, there was not enough demand but there is a lot of supply. Obviously then the prices start going down, basically in order to save money on the fuel, maybe the crew, maybe the insurance. So, they started to cancel a lot of scheduled vessels and obviously this caused a big chaos in the market. A lot of containers went, uh from China to other places like Europe, us did not come back. Then we start having container shortage. So, this is something uh started organically. Uh, there was not enough demand in the marketplaces, like in the US, like North America, USA, Canada, because of, I would say maybe, high inflation, or companies like Teemu, AliExpress start to do very cheap price Drop shipping from China, which is something interesting that we maybe talk later. Teemu is start entering US market. Start working with local 3PLs to acquire Amazon sellers to start selling the ones which are qualified OEC. Start selling on Teemu so they will start doing local deliveries with a shorter period of delivery times, which I believe they will try to attract Surplus. What is Surplus? The product that already has been sitting in the US for a long time. Amazon sellers or their wholesalers they cannot sell it, so they need to liquidate the product. So, Teemu was basically saying that hey, use our platform to liquidate them, not on the retail price, but heavily discounted price, maybe 60%, 70%. So, I think all these things happening last two years after COVID, when we saw a very big peak when the Amazon sellers were making really good money but then the sales dropped a couple of different reasons, and I see that it's the same thing is affecting the international shipping prices and fulfillment prices. Things are really very different right now compared to even six months ago. Bradley Sutton: Obviously, this has been the year of crazy Amazon, new fees and new announcements, you know, be it inbound, placement fees, and so I want to talk just a little bit about that. First, like in your you know you're handling both sides, you know, be it. You know shipping side, be it logistics side, warehousing and things. What have you seen as far as how this has changed, what Amazon sellers are doing, like, for example, me, I've got my own warehouse, but still now I'm being very mindful of how many you know, like, how many, you know what kind of boxes I'm putting in. Like, like, maybe before I was only trying to do you know a certain number of shipments, but now I'm like, no, I got to have minimum five, you know of one box or, oh, I need to try and increase a 15 because I got to avoid that placement fee. But what have you noticed as far as your clients? How are their practices different because of some of these new fees? Burak: Man. It's a really, really long topic actually when it comes to make it shorter version. When Amazon came up with this, the idea was start charging sellers for all those distribution fees that they need to ship to many small warehouses across fulfillment centers across the nation so the end user can receive the products not in two days but one day, even maybe sometimes half day. But we have seen a lot of case studies actually our customers. They created five shipments and when, let's say, 100 cartons, Amazon asked you to ship 50 cartons to Texas, we saw that the final delivery address Amazon distributed these products were still Pennsylvania or Florida or still North Carolina maybe. So what? Amazon was actually telling sellers in theory hey, split the shipments to five locations because that's going to be closer to the buyers. That was not really the case. Yeah, I guess they're still working on a lot of Optimization, uh structure. Obviously, this was like a new project for them. But there has been a lot of confusing for sellers. A lot of seller’s kind of felt like they have to use Amazon Global Logistics to avoid those uh placement. But then when they tried to book the shipment, amazon Global Logistics did not arrange to pick up. Three weeks, four weeks’ time Then they have charged people wrong HDS code. So, a lot of sellers they paid very high tax and duty instead of some other lower charges that they're supposed to receive. I mean, obviously we talked to a lot of people, some people they have good experience with Amazon Global Logistics, some people have bad experiences. But in my opinion that was not really fair for Amazon to tell people, hey, if you use AGL, then you will not be paying any of these fees, but then if you don't, then you have to pay for it. I guess I understand they have invested billions of dollars into this fulfillment center supply chain logistics, so they want to leverage the power of their seller the seller power, I would say. But I think I would not put all my eggs in the same basket, so I would not just use AGL and AWD, you know AWD also a new program Amazon has launched like two years. But since they're pushing a lot harder right now and I think the fourth quarter will be very tough uh test for Amazon with all the check-in processes, transferring uh products between the fulfillment centers and making sure that they become available and one of my I believe most of our customers now start looking into FBM options. Number one very high FBA fees. Number two all these delays with AGL, AWD, fulfillment center transfers. Obviously, amazon is going to prioritize. The products are already sitting in the fulfillment centers. They will prioritize to ship the products first, not receive the products first. So that always has been the case. So, if you ask my opinion, it's going to be a tough year for a lot of sellers to get and understand these FBA fees. But also try to be profitable. You know that's something that we've been talking about. It doesn't make sense anymore to say, hey, I'm seven, eight figure seller, but how much profit I'm making? So, I believe to make plan B, plan C is very, very important, Bradley. Bradley Sutton: Me having my own warehouse and obviously I can repack things and I do smaller quantities. I can easily make sure to send to four or five locations to get that, you know to skip the low inventory fee. But if I'm sending in containers and before I would send to Amazon directly, I pretty much have no option, right, like I am going to get that low inventory fee no matter what unless I send to a 3PL first and they divide it. Or am I thinking of that wrong, since I don't send containers directly to Amazon? I don't know, but is that correct? Like pretty much anybody who's sending full containers or containers that can't be broken up or shipments that can't be broken up, they're forced into this fee. Burak: Yes, kind of. But we have done some case studies to see what really makes sense, if it makes sense to ship, because Amazon Global Logistics is also not charging sellers the market fees. They're charging actually higher, a lot higher. So, if you're looking at door-to-door shipment from China to one of the most popular Amazon FBA fulfillment centers, let's say ONT8, which is in Los Angeles, California Riverside, if you use us it's going to cost $6,000, but with Amazon Global Logistics they're charging $8,000 or $9,000. So basically, they're kind of charging a little higher so that they can use probably that money to distribute the products within three to four different locations. And if it is LCL, then less than full container. Yes, you can actually choose to use your own freight forwarder and price is very similar. But one of the things that we realized; their FC transfer times a lot longer than using an independent Freight Forwarder. So, which means if you ship with AGL it will maybe be fully delivered to Amazon, fully check in, all received 90 days, versus you use your own Freight Forwarder, probably it will be delivered and checked in 45 to 50 days. So, does it matter for you? Maybe it doesn't really matter because the sales are not that fast right now, unfortunately, I don't see really much Amazon sales recently saying that, hey, I'm running out of inventory all the time. I hope it's a good problem. I hope some of the people having that problem. But majority of the people are saying, hey, I'm not in the rush, so I'm okay to take these fees. But then you should really understand the cost of actually paying everything in advance and your cash tied up to. If you're using a loan, if you're not using just cash, if you're, you know, withdrawing some money with, I don't know, amazon financing or third-party money, you get funding. So, you need to understand you may be paying monthly two to 3% because these are short term funds, so probably charging 20, 25% annually. So, every month you're paying two to 3% something that you're not selling. So that's basically three percent minus from your actual margin. So, there are so many things to consider. You know trying to explain as basic as possible. So definitely understand and see what is better for your business. And if I were a big seller, I wouldn't send all of my inventory FBA. I would keep some of my inventory in a 3pl close to amazon and send it in a you know, smaller batches and more frequent. This way I'm not going to be paying high inventory fees, the storage fees and, more importantly, I can test other marketplaces. You know, I can try to drive traffic. I will do FBM, I can do Tic Tac Shops or maybe even Walmart. So, it will give you more flexibility instead of sending everything to Amazon, FBA. And if one day somehow your listings get suspended or hijacked or your sales is down for some reason, then you'll be like, oh my God, what I'm going to do versus you have some inventory in a different location and you can start considering some other options. Bradley Sutton: We talked about new inventory fees that Amazon sellers are having to do, and then the question about whether to go AGL and things like that. But you also mentioned Fulfilled by Merchant. Now, for me, I do all of my products both. I have two SKUs for every product. I have FBM and FBA, and I always tell people to do that. Not necessarily anything to do with logistics, but just because there's still some people out there who don't have Amazon Prime and then, especially if we're talking about products that are priced below $25, they actually prime prices them out of it. So, like, if you're only FBA and you've got like a $24 product, when that person checks out, it's going to add like $8 shipping and now that $24 product became $32 product and you just lost that sale, probably you know, to somebody else and then so for, for that person, I can. I always have a skew. The buy box is actually the FBM skew, because it's only I'll do 2497, you know, with shipping, free shipping, I can, I can fulfill, uh, for almost the same as Amazon, considering that I don't have to pay, I don't have to send it to Amazon. I have to send Amazon pick and pack fees, but that's my reason for doing FBM, but are you saying that you're actually seeing some sellers go to Seller Fulfilled Prime and not do FBA, or you're just saying they're just forgetting Prime at all and having a listing that's strictly FBM? Burak: For larger items. We see sometimes only FBM, because some people say that, hey, Amazon is taking 50% to 55% of my sales price for large items. FBA is extremely expensive and I feel like a lot of people, a lot of buyers, are more price sensitive recently compared to two years ago. That's real. Most of our customers, they have both FBA and FBM. They do most likely what you do. Because you're right. I mean, some people they don't need the product in one day, they want to do the cheaper version. So why wouldn't you add an additional strategy to your listing? And it's your own money versus paying Amazon and 3pl will handle that a lot cheaper and then, if it is not a big item, your shipping price is not going to be that expensive. You can still buy the shipping within Amazon, which is great. You don't have to have your own ups FedEx account. But majority of our customers, they want to test new marketplaces. I  know that our some of our customer they're investing into their own websites and when they get the order, they drive traffic, they convert. Then it's much easier to launch a product with your own email marketing, like with your own email database which you've been talking about. You know how to launch a product, like all the honeymoon period, amazon changing the algorithms, a lot of our customers also they have problem with launching a brand-new product on Amazon. It's not that easy as it used to be like a few years ago. So, people are testing different marketplaces and different channels to see if they can get a better ROI. Obviously, amazon still has. It's very interesting actually, when we see the Amazon's quarterly earnings report, we see that Amazon is keep growing their profit, number of buyers, their revenue. We see a big part of it from the seller's fees revenue. But there is a fact that Amazon does not want to leave the market share to other players that aggressively come in, especially out of China. We see that a new Amazon program is going to roll out which is Dropshipping from China. I don't think that's a great idea, but I think just Amazon wants to keep it. Bradley Sutton: I don't think any Amazon seller is based in the US thinks that's a good idea. Burak: Not only Amazon sellers, but I think it's also not fair for other traditional importers who have, like a warehouse people in here. They're paying tax and payrolls. That's my personal opinion. Obviously, it's not a yes or no, white or black topic. A lot of people have their own opinion. But eventually I know that we have some importers, like traditional wholesalers, that their business is down 30 to 40% just because a lot of people buying products directly from China and those companies. Of course they have a cheaper price. They don't have local expenses, all these utility fees, the warehouse rents and et cetera. We all know that it all adds up. So, I think it's going to be a tough uh year for next year for a lot of amazon sellers. That's why I think it's a really good idea to start considering uh different strategies and different plans for uh increasing the revenue and profitability.. Bradley Sutton: We're heading close to Q4. Um, amazon's made different announcements as far as hey, have your inventory in by. I think one of them was like, if you want it for Black Friday, you got to have it in by October 19th, or something like that. They had said what are your predictions as far as like? Is this year the same thing as every year, where Amazon has a deadline and you got to kind of stick to it, or do you notice anything from some of these announcements where you think there's something that sellers need to be aware of going into this year's Q4? Burak: I think last week they announced a new Q4's delivery structure and delivery rules. Some of them are the restriction with FBA delivery appointments, reduction in capacity limits, holiday peak fulfillment fees. So, all these are basically saying that the amazon sellers uh, need to plan better when they're going to send their inventory, how they're going to send it. And you know the thing. What amazon wants you to do is actually send your inventory as early as possible. So, this way they can charge you a lot higher for the fourth quarter, with the maximum amount of, you know, the low inventory fee. Because even if you don't ship it to Amazon, you still pay in that inventory because inventory fee, because Amazon thinks that, hey, I, I allocate some space for you according to your sales history. Now, whether you ship it or not, I'm going to still charge you that. So, we have a lot of sellers. We I think they still don't know exactly how this fee structure is going to work for seasonal products. We had a client they shipped like four or five containers for Christmas lights, Christmas tree decorations. So, they don't have enough space right now in Amazon FBA. So, I think that is a problem for sellers, like they sell seasonal products. So basically, like what amazon is saying versus what they are doing. I think it's a little bit opposite, um, because you cannot really ship as much as you want, but then amazon is saying, hey, send me all this product. I want to charge you more, but same time you cannot do it. So, I don't think there's going to be a big solution for these people. The best to do is create an FPM auction to make sure you don't get charged all these high FBA fees, especially for the long term, and, God forbid if you miss that season. You can't sell out everything and you have some inventory left over. In January you definitely need to take the product back, otherwise your fees are going to be very high. Bradley Sutton: In the past you've talked about ways that, without even doing anything, major Amazon sellers can possibly save money, like they're probably doing something wrong or not taking into consideration the right tariff and or you know they're letting their freight forward or take advantage of them in a certain way. Can you remind everybody out there what are some easy steps they can take to save money? You know, without having to completely overhaul their entire system of where they could save a little bit of money potentially here or there, just by maybe doing a little mini audit on their SOPs or something like that. Burak: You know, I really think that they should go download their FBA fees and to see how much they're spending on their storage. That's one thing that Amazon is going to hit everyone really bad this year, especially in the fourth quarter. And what is the average age of their inventory stays in the FBA before they sell out. I know that there are a lot of people their sales decrease. I think one of the best ways to do is have a 3PL option. Ship everything to your 3PL and then ship it frequently to Amazon FBA. Because, yes, you will be maybe paying that placement fees but at the same time you can manage your listings somehow. We have seen last year, last quarter, that a lot of shipments delivered to Amazon but Amazon took way longer to check them in. So, we had some clients that they ship product to Amazon FBA. It's delivered but Amazon never checked in. They waited the busy season to pass. So that was pretty bad for some people and they were selling like toys or I remember we had a client that we shipped for them puzzles but Amazon checked them in like very late, so they had to like sell it for a cheaper price. So, you should plan it. Send in your inventory as early as possible on FBA and keep constantly shipping to Amazon FBA to avoid the fees. I think the big saving this year can be from the FBA fees. Obviously check the Freight prices. Compare AGL with other Freight Forwarders to deliver the products instead of one place to five locations. That's a good way to do it. HTS code is a great way to check that. But I think this year's big jackpot is going to be FBA fees. Bradley Sutton: We've been going over some beginner strategies, some advanced strategy. But if some of this is a little bit over your head or you want to just get a nice overview for you or your team about logistics and shipping, Burak actually is in Freedom Ticket 4.0. So, if you guys want to have your team go over some of the basics and some advanced stuff, to go into your Freedom Ticket inside of Helium 10 and then click on the week or the group of modules called supply chain and logistics, and then you're going to see some different modules here that Burak has done. That will help you with that. So, make sure anybody who's a Helium 10 member make sure to go into Freedom Ticket and be able to see it. Do you remember some of the other things that you talked about in that module? Just to let people know what to expect in there. Burak: I think yes. One of the things that relates to FBA fees are the product size, whether you can make your product smaller so Amazon will charge you smaller tiers. I know that we used to do some free audits for the FBA fees that what we realize is actually customer products are a different size than what Amazon is actually charging them, so Amazon is supposed to charge them lower. So definitely, order your competitor's product to see their packaging so that you can redesign your, maybe package. This is a little bit of my background. I lived in China eight years. I've done a lot of sourcing so I'm kind of familiar with like how to make things like lighter, maybe smaller, maybe if you're paying too high for the duty and tax because your product has a different material. So definitely I would say, order your competitor's product to see the size of the box. Maybe they fold the product, they maybe made it smaller. It's definitely helping to see what are the product sizes, mustard cartons and maybe even labeling and maybe inserting some special cards from the competitors. Obviously not asking five-star reviews, but you could see some other maybe conversions that they are doing, maybe because you have other products in the same category. You don't know whether your customers have them. You know they love your brand or not, but you can actually let them know that you're selling some other products that can be related. So, I think it's a good idea to order a competitor's product to see if you can save anything on the size of the product which can save you money on shipping fulfillment in the 3PL as well as Amazon FBA. So, it could be up to 10% to 15%, which is going to be, when you look at it, annually. It's a huge saving. Bradley Sutton: What else do you have for us? We've got sellers of all levels here and I think nowadays maybe people are thinking about some of these newer marketplaces, like TikTok Shop, which now you know, has fulfilled by TikTok and then, and then Teemu is now trying to recruit, you know, US sellers. You know I'm trying to get on the Teemu platform just to just to see how the process goes myself. But what are some things you think you know? When we think multi-channel, you know, gone are the days where people can just say, hey, I'm only going to sell on Amazon, and then maybe there are some days where it's like, oh no, I only need to worry about Amazon and Walmart. So, 2024, 2025, we live. I think it's the year of the many marketplaces trying to make a name for themselves. What are some trends that you're seeing? What is some advice you have for other sellers? Burak: You know? I think the Teemu strategy is very different than Walmart. If I want my products because, if you think about it, Walmart has thousands of stores across US and Canada and even in Mexico. Now they're trying to acquire sellers and they have been very active. You know we go to a lot of different events Prosper Show and others. You see that all the time Walmart's booth there. They're trying to acquire D2C brand events like a shop talk and stuff. What I see is, if you want your products to be in a long term, maybe one day a big brand acquires you because you're in a niche category. Let's say you're in a cosmetic, you're doing something maybe just special for lips or for some special type of skin. I don't know. You could be acquired by a big brand if your product can be on the shelves like physical stores. We have so many customers in the past that they started only online but then they were invited to as a test run to start selling on the retailers. Like you know, it could be Dick's Sports, it could be Walmart. If you're in a sports category, you know those retailers are trying to get some good brands on their shelves which can add a lot of value to your branding and people who see you actually on the physical store. They can go and buy online, because I personally love to compare the price in a retailer versus online. It could be Target. It helps you to find and give your brand a big shout out and people can go and find you and then wholesalers can find you. Maybe, like a retailer chain can find you. So, there's actually both options. I think you're right. I mean, there's so many options. It makes really sense to enter all of these platforms to have reached out the maximum amount of audience. But obviously you need to understand how to manage that inventory because different market channels require maybe different UPC codes, which one of our customers? They had an issue. What the UPC codes the factory is putting actually has not been scanned by the retailer. So, the UPC codes was not valid, so they had to bring the products back, relabel it. Uh, baby steps are good if you're a brand-new seller. Amazon FBA is very good way to start, but maybe it's not that profitable as it, as it used to be. Definitely look for the fpm options and then whatever makes more sense. But I would definitely keep one more sales channel, one more marketplace. Teemu is not the great one yet, because either you need to have a special invite, we have so many people actually asking about the Teemu. Either you have to be invited by a friend or referred by Teemu team directly so you can actually send an email to Temu. But I think in the long term it will be great to invest into your own website because you can easily launch different products. Great to invest into your own website uh, you can do it on Shopify and you know you will have definitely better margins in that and some people they have their own website. They even never want to go to Amazon because they want. They don't want to compete on the price. You, we all know that how amazon works, so it's really a long-term plan. I don't think anyone can really get rich that fast anymore through the e-commerce. I think it's all about branded strategy and it makes more sense to invest in your own website and Shopify. Obviously, amazon has the traffic. It's very hard to bring in traffic. It's not hard but it's going to be expensive in that converting. But, I know that Shopify is working a lot on how to convert more on the products they left in the cart how they can have better conversion. It's very interesting. Recently, I see that installment options pops up on many websites If you're selling an expensive product and I was going to buy a kayak for summertime, it was like $800. I'm like I don't want to pay $800. Then it pops up, hey, you want to pay six times. I was like, okay, but I still didn't buy. But it made me think about okay, that's doable, Bradley Sutton: You're a little bit more hesitant. Burak: Yes, exactly, you're a little bit more on the fence, exactly so looking for different channels definitely is a good strategy and eventually it's your own business. You know we have seen a lot of changes with Amazon algorithm. Maybe this new AI tool that Amazon is offering actually messes up a lot of people's listings. Have you heard? Have you tried using Amazon AI? Did it affect your ranking on keywords? Bradley Sutton: No, I'm not touching that, I don't want. I opted out of that immediately because I don't want Amazon doing anything, because the Amazon AI is nowhere near where it needs to be. All right. So, before we get into your last strategy of the day, just heads up for everybody out there. You want to get some more information about what ForceGet does. Go to h10.me forward slash ForceGet. That'll take you right to our hub website where you can open up a contact with them right there. How else, other than your website, can people find you on the interwebs like Instagram or LinkedIn you want to promote at all? Burak: Yes, absolutely, and they can subscribe to my YouTube channel. We are recording a lot of real case studies and scenarios, what's going on and we're going to a lot of different in-person events. We will be in Amazon Accelerate in Seattle. We will go to other events throughout the year so they can come and meet us in person at most of the events, as well as find us on forescan.com. Bradley Sutton: All right, what's your last 30 or 60 second tip for our sellers out there? Burak: Be careful about your lending costs. That's something that a lot of people they don't really pay attention. Profit is everything. Bad profit means bad cashflow and bad cash flow means that you can't be sustainable in your business. So, understand your lending cost. Look at your FBA fees, how you can save and what is the strategy. Are you paying too much for your international shipments? Are you paying too much for FBA fees? Are you paying too much for long-term storage? So, find out where you can make optimizations, where you can make savings. I believe this business is open to different optimizations and every different aspect you get closer you can find 1% or 2% saving, and if you find three to five different ways of savings, you can save up to 10%. So, talk to the experts. Don't forget to subscribe to the Helium 10's newsletter. I see a lot of interesting topics actually about that. So being part of the community, it's the most important things and whenever you have a problem, ask the right people, get the right answer to fix your problems. Bradley Sutton: Awesome. Well, Burak, thank you for coming on here. I'll let you know what I think about those restaurants you told me and then I'll see you at Amazon Accelerate in Seattle and hopefully some other sellers that are listening to this episode, and we'll definitely have you back on in 2025 and let's see what else has changed in the world of shipping logistics. Burak: Looking forward to see you, Bradley.

We’re back with another episode of the Weekly Buzz with Helium 10’s Chief Brand Evangelist, Bradley Sutton. Every week, we cover the latest breaking news in the Amazon, Walmart, and E-commerce space, talk about Helium 10’s newest features, and provide a training tip for the week for serious sellers of any level. Amazon's revamped Alexa with generative AI to roll out in October https://www.zdnet.com/home-and-office/smart-home/amazons-revamped-alexa-with-generative-ai-to-roll-out-in-october/ Walmart Marketplace Accelerates Growth; Launches Category Expansion, Multichannel Solutions and Omnichannel Innovations for Sellers https://corporate.walmart.com/news/2024/08/27/walmart-marketplace-accelerates-growth-launches-category-expansion-multichannel-solutions-and-omnichannel-innovations-for-sellers How customers are making more informed shopping decisions with Rufus, Amazon’s generative AI-powered shopping assistant https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/retail/how-to-use-amazon-rufus How Amazon is using AI to detect fake product reviews and ensure authentic customer feedback https://www.aboutamazon.eu/news/customer-trust/how-amazon-is-using-ai-to-detect-fake-product-reviews-and-ensure-authentic-customer-feedback China fast-fashion retailer Temu soared like a rocket for two years—in just a few hours, its parent company lost more than $50 billion in market value https://fortune.com/2024/08/26/temu-pdd-stock-plunges-government-scrutiny-amazon-rivals/ Amazon India to cut down its selling fees by 12% ahead of festive season https://www.livemint.com/companies/amazon-india-to-cut-down-its-selling-fees-by-12-ahead-of-festive-season-janmashtami-2024-11724471866431.html Join Bradley and other Helium 10 Members for an informal meetup in Mumbai early in the morning on Friday the 6th! We will be in the Crystal Lounge networking and would love to see you there! For more details go to: h10.me/mumbai Catch Bradley at the Istanbul Global E-Export Summit 2024 h10.me/istanbul and at the Amazon Global Selling Community Event PH Seller Bootcamp in Manila h10.me/manila Lastly, are you leveraging Helium 10 to its fullest potential? We break down the newest features of Helium 10's Chrome extension, including the X-ray tool's suggested PPC bid column and clickable brand insights. Learn how to split-test product images and ideas with real Amazon buyer feedback using Helium 10's Audience tool powered by PickFu, and listen to a special use case from Kseniia that showcases its power in product development. Tune in for all these valuable insights and more to keep your e-commerce strategy ahead of the curve! In this episode of the Weekly Buzz by Helium 10, Bradley covers: 01:17 - Alexa With AI03:13 - Walmart Big Announcements09:09 - Amazon Rufus12:19 - Amazon Fake Reviews12:55 - Shipping Time Settings13:32 - Temu Trouble14:21 - India Fee Reductions14:54 - Meet Bradley on the Following Events16:03 - Helium 10 New Feature Alerts18:06 - Training Tip: How To Use Helium 10 Audience

Join us on this episode as we explore the exciting new updates to Helium 10's Keyword Tracker tool. Our host, Bradley Sutton, takes you through the revamped interface, showcasing features like customizable columns and the ability to add notes for tracking changes over time. We also highlight the importance of adding competitors and introduce new functionalities such as the instant index checker and automated Cerebro runs on competitors. Discover how to monitor organic and sponsored keyword ranks over time and leverage brand analytics for top keywords to enhance your keyword-tracking strategy. Additionally, we navigate the advanced functionalities within the keyword tracking tools, focusing on features like boosting keywords, tagging them for various phases of product launches, and examining keyword sales metrics versus search volume. Learn about the significance of the CPR number tailored to your product, and explore new features like Amazon Brand Analytics for click and conversion shares, as well as tracking keywords by department. We also tackle an open AMA session, answering questions about managing inventory during the honeymoon phase and strategies for maintaining sales momentum. Tune in for valuable insights and practical tips to optimize your Amazon selling experience using Helium 10's powerful tools. In episode 591 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley discusses: 00:00 - Helium 10 Keyword Tracker Revamped!03:00 - Tracking Product Changes in Keyword Tracker06:30 - New Helium 10 Keyword Tracker Feature Updates07:06 - Managing Keywords and Notes in Tracker11:08 - New Keyword Tracker Features Introduced13:58 - Automating Competitor Analysis in Keyword Tracker17:27 - Ask Me Anything with Bradley Sutton22:53 - Adtomic For Amazon KDP25:38 - Competitor Keyword Sales Analysis With Cerebro ► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast ► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension ► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup  (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life) ► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft ► Watch The Podcasts On YouTube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos Transcript Bradley Sutton: Did you notice something new lately in Helium 10? Keyword Tracker got a complete makeover with exciting new features like instant index checker, a list of your top brand analytics keywords, automated Cerebro runs on your competitors in Keyword Tracker, and more. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Did you know that just because you have a keyword in your listing, that does not mean that you are automatically guaranteed to be searchable or, as we say, indexed for that keyword? Well, how can you know what you are indexed for and not? You can actually use Helium 10's index checker to check any keywords you want. For more information, go to h10.me/indexchecker.   Bradley Sutton: Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that is our monthly Ask Me Anything and special training, and this month we have a special reveal about phase one of our new Keyword Tracker launch. So let's go ahead and hop into this. This was recorded live, so I'm also going to have some of the questions that you guys answered. Let's go ahead and hop into it. We are going to now get into the new Helium 10 Keyword Tracker. This is just the beginning. All right, I've been teasing this for months and months. Now there's some symbolism going with my wardrobe today for those watching this on YouTube or watching this out there. You'll notice I have the OG Helium 10 logo. Okay, so this is the original Helium 10 logo from you know that got started in 2016, 2017. And then my hat is the new Helium 10 logo right? And that's symbolic, because Keyword Tracker is one of the first tools that came out in 2017 and hasn't had, like any earth shattering design changes or things like that for a long time. And now you know, now we're bringing it to the new Helium 10. What are the new features? Let's go ahead and hop right into it.   Bradley Sutton: Let me go ahead and share my screen, okay. So here we go guys, you should already have this new Keyword Tracker window. All right, this is how Keyword Tracker should look. What is new? The first of all, obviously, the whole look and feel of Keyword Tracker is different. If you don't have that, you should have a button up here that says try the new Keyword Tracker or something like that. All right, for a little bit of time. You're going to see a button that says go back to the previous Keyword Tracker. I wouldn't recommend doing that, because you know it's, you're going to have to go to this new one. Anyways, you can see up here at the top, just like before, how many keywords according to your plan you've used, and I have 30 out of my 500 boost used. You still have similar buttons up here like customize. Actually, this is new. If you hit the customize button, you can now choose which columns. You see you couldn't do that in the old Keyword Tracker, so I right now I have everything included. All right, I'm looking at all columns and there are some new columns that Keyword Tracker has never had. All right, so that customize button put what you want, like maybe you don't care about when, the date that it was added, all right, well, you can go ahead and take that column off now with the new Keyword Tracker. If you want to add a new product to Keyword Tracker, just right here, at the very top right of Keyword Tracker, there's a button that says add products. All right.   Bradley Sutton: Now, once you have all of your products here, without expanding it out, you've got a lot of information. First of all, something that I highly recommend, something brand new you can add notes, okay. So adding notes is important because now you can like tag it on a certain day, all right. So I could say, hey, today is 8/13 on this ASIN, I am doing a certain kind of test in PPC, or I lowered my price and then I can make a description here. And so now, later on, if you're tracking your keyword ranks and things like that, now you can see oh, on this date, I raised my price. What happened to my keyword rank after? Oh, on this date, I increased my sponsored ad target bid and did that improve my sponsored rank? Did it make my sponsored rank worse? You can start tracking a lot of these things. I mean, hopefully you guys were tracking this stuff already, but now it's a little bit easier because you're going to be able to graph it. All right, this is going to show me the track keywords. If I want to add more keywords, I just hit this edit button right here. Adding competitors all right. This is if you didn't add competitors before. Guys, I highly highly recommend adding competitors to your Keyword Tracker. It doesn't cost you any more money and I'm going to show you why that is so important.   Bradley Sutton: Moving forward, here's something that is still the same as the old Keyword Tracker. It's going to show you the number of organic keywords in the top 10 and their combined search volume, and the number of organic keywords in top 50. You can actually now hit a graph and see the history over time. How many top, how many of your track keywords have you had in the top 10 over over time? How many have you had sponsored over time? You can see that right here. Now, here's another thing you can see now how many Amazon's choice keywords you have. The last time Helium 10 checked that's something that's net new, I believe, where it's going to let you know hey, for this product, six of your keywords have Amazon's choice badge for that keyword. Pretty cool, right. Another cool new thing brand analytics top click keyword. How many of your keywords that you're tracking, were you last week one of the top three clicked in all of Amazon for that keyword? That's pretty cool, right. And then not only that, now you hit this button you're going to see a history of that for your product and the keyword. So now you can see, like all right, hey, every week I'm usually one of the top three clicked on 10 products or 12. And now, all of a sudden, one week, you see you're down to three. Well, what would that make me do? I'm going to go in there and see where did I lose being one of the top three? Click what's going on? Did I lose my keyword rank? That's brand new. Another thing is going to be keyword suggestions. I'm going to talk about that in a little bit. That's something new and that is why you guys need to put your competitors in there. I'm going to talk about why.   Bradley Sutton: Now, another cool thing you're going to start seeing now the category and subcategory BSR of your product. If you're tracking your product or your competitor's product as the seed product, you're going to now see the graph of BSR right here and you're also can now tag your keywords here with different tags. This is a tag for product. Okay, there we go, guys. This tag here is for the product. So maybe, watch this. I'm going to be like hey, Manny's mysterious oddities, I want to add that tag. All right, so now I'm going to be able to tag this coffin letter board as Manny's mysterious oddities and then, with this one click at the top, now I'm going to be able to go to those products. All right. The other thing I can have here and I can sort by is the date that I added this product to Keyword Tracker. This is another thing that's kind of net new. Okay, now let's dive into the actual keywords. All right, so you hit this button right. Or, by the way, you could actually run Cerebro from Keyword Tracker. Now you just hit these three dots that are right next to the picture and you can actually run in Cerebro. All right, and you can run your product in listing analyzer as well. But right now we're going to hit this down arrow so we can see all of these new tabs right here in the keyword details.   Bradley Sutton: Okay, and here we go. All right, so first of all, you'll see, I don't know why it's blue. I've been telling him to change that to red, so hopefully they're going to change the boost back to red. But you can see, here in blue I have a few keywords on boost. Boost is still working the same way. Now, another thing you notice is do you see that there's a number here for each one? What this is is like the number of when I added this keyword to Keyword Tracker. If I want to change the order of how it is and I don't want it to go by alphabetical or I don't want to sort it by this, I don't want to sort it by that. This is pretty cool because now I can just change this number right here. Okay, and then now that is going to change the order in which the keywords appear in Keyword Tracker. All right, so pretty cool. Another thing I can add the notes at the keyword level. All right, so I can add notes at the product level. I showed you guys that I can add notes at the keyword level now. So again, marking when I change something on a certain keyword, like maybe sometimes I'll do tests where I'm like you know what I want to insert this keyword into my title and then does that help my rank over a week or so. Well, I'm going to add that as a note, the date and time that I actually did that, so then I can go back and graph and see what happened.   Bradley Sutton: I mentioned tags for keywords. We had tags for products. This is tags for keywords. So this is a product. This is a coffin letter board. You guys can see this on Amazon. Now I'm going to do a whole podcast about it in Maldives, about the Maldives honeymoon strategy. But you can see, I'm literally in launch right now in my fate, what I call phase one launch. So I gave a tag to all of these keywords. So then later I could just hit this button right here this is my tags and then it's only going to show the keywords that I have a certain tag on it. So maybe I have phase one launch, maybe I have a group of keywords that I'm doing a PPC test on, or whatever. This will allow you to quickly go and go directly to whatever group of keywords that you have Search volume, competing products, organic rank history these are all pretty much the same. The graphs might look a little bit different, but it's basically the same thing. Let's go in and take a look at one of the graphs here just to see how different it is. All right, yeah, it's pretty much the same. You can see here I can click and drag and zoom in. It's pretty much the Keyword Tracker that you guys know and love. We've got keyword sales. Remember, guys, last week I talked in depth in our weekly buzz about why this keyword sales metric is more important sometimes than the search volume metric.   Bradley Sutton: We've got the CPR number here. The CPR number is based on your product, your exact product. This is where the CPR number is based on your product. If you look at CPR and Cerebro, it's just a general CPR number. This one is based on your product. We've got the suggested PPC bid in here, and then something new we've got the brand analytics total click share and total conversion share. Okay, so this is directly from Amazon brand analytics. Now you can see the history of what are the top three clicked products for this keyword that you are tracking in Keyword Tracker. What was the top three click products share of the conversions? In addition, another net new thing here is the department. So you know how sometimes you're on Amazon and you type in a search. You know what. Let's look at that now. Let's actually type, or let's go to Amazon. Let's hit Gothic Decor. By the way, guys, if you guys were watching, if you want to look at the search results of any keyword that you're tracking, just hit this arrow button right next to the keyword and it's going to take you to the search right there on Amazon. Okay, now you can see here how, in Gothic decor, it now shows which departments the results are in. Well, we are now showing that in Keyword Tracker. And so what happens is is we are taking that into consideration. Right here on the last column you will see it say under departments how many categories it's under and which categories those are. So it gives you a little bit of extra kind of like you know information there.   Bradley Sutton: There's a whole bunch that's coming. I'm not done here, but we're going to have an index checker button. Like, for example, if you notice all of a sudden you are not ranking organically, you are not ranking and sponsoring, what is the next step? Well, the next step is usually hey, I need to see, did I lose indexing for this keyword? Have I lost indexing? Well, there's going to be a one-click button. Instead of having to copy those keywords, export it to index checker, you are going to have an index checker right here in Keyword Tracker so that you can, within seconds, know is it just that you lost ranking or did you lose indexing as well? Super, super important. All right, so that's coming, we're going to have. I told you guys, a long time ago people were asking for those heat maps of ranks, just like our Market Tracker 360 tool has. Well, heat maps are coming here. But one thing that's important oh, by the way. There's a customize for which columns you want in your Keyword Tracker and watch this. Here is something that is new for organic rank. Maybe you want to see the rank, like you always have. Now you can toggle what page are you showing up. Maybe you don't care about your specific rank, but you're just like hey, I want to see how many keywords I have on page one, how many are on page two, how many are on page three. Take a look, you can toggle your rank to go from rank to page. That's pretty cool, right? That's something that a lot of our not a lot, but you know, otherwise we would have done it earlier, but a number of you were asking us and it finally got done. It was on our list for a lime, all right.   Bradley Sutton: So one thing that I want to go over is the suggestions, all right. So first of all, here's, let me go to a product that I actually have suggestions for. Yes, here we go. I've got one competitor for some reason. Here's. Here's one that I have five competitors. This will be a better one, all right. So, again, make sure to add the competitors. That should be one of the first things you guys do. Here we go for the bat shelf. I've got compared. Let me just take a look at who my competitors are Other bat shelves. Okay Now, by the way, remember how I told you that we are showing you which keywords, or how many keywords, you have. That is one of the top three clicked. Well, the way that you know it is, there's going to be an ABA and a number one, number two or number three. That's the symbol that lets you know if last week you were one of the top one, two or three products that were clicked from that search page. But anyways, this is showing me the ranks of all of my competitors. You guys see that here, all of my competitors, I know it's kind of hard to see, all right, so this is my bat bath mat and here are all of my competitors, and now I can see if they are ranking or not. Where is their average rank? How many of them are ranking? Like, for example, this is a keyword that's pretty important, right? Bat mat. This is a bat shaped bath mat. Bat mat obviously is a keyword I want to check and so I can see only three out of my six competitors are ranking for it, but the average rank is 25. So they're pretty much maybe most of them are on page one, if not all.   Bradley Sutton: Okay, I also have the competitor performance score. This is the key. This is the way that I can see which are the most important keywords to my niche. Right, it's the same metric that comes from Cerebro, and so the high competitor performance score means that most of your competitors that you entered are all ranking for that keyword, and they're all ranking highly. That's what gets you a 10 out of 10. All right, so look at that. These are all completely new things that Keyword Tracker has never had. Okay, now let's go right here to suggested keywords. By the way, you saw that I was looking at organic rank for my competitors. I can also look at their sponsored rank too, under suggested keywords. This is going to be something pretty cool. This is very similar to what we had in our insights dashboard. Once I add my competitors, now I can customize my settings and I can almost kind of like automate Cerebro guys right here in Keyword Tracker. So I could be like hey, you know what my competitors? I got five of them. I want to know if there is a keyword that has at least 500 search volume and my rank is between zero and zero meaning I'm not ranked at all and at least one of my competitors right here minimum one has the organic rank between one and 20. I want a suggestion. So, in other words, what this means is I'm basically automating Cerebro and I'm telling Keyword Tracker hey, watch my competitors, so I don't have to run them in Cerebro, and if they start ranking for a keyword on the first page in the first 20 positions and I'm not ranking at all, give me a notification. That's just an example. I could put any anything in here. I could be like hey, give me a notification if my rank is between 40 and 300, but but their rank is one in 40 or one in 39. Right? So in other words, hey, show me the keywords where I'm not on page one and where they are right. I could do a lot of those options.   Bradley Sutton: Another thing is I could run Cerebro on my own product in the background, like I. Obviously, when I started Keyword Tracker, I probably had a good idea of what my main keywords are. But, as you know, I hope you run Cerebro on your own product like once every two weeks or once a month to see hey, you run Cerebro on your own product, like once every two weeks or once a month, to see, hey, am I ranking for new keywords that I didn't even realize I was relevant for? Is Amazon showing me highly in sponsored rank, where I didn't even know that the auto campaign was showing me for? Well, you know what? Go ahead and set this notification in Keyword Tracker where you can say hey for any keyword that has at least 300 search volume, where my organic rank is between one and 30, give me a notification that tells me that I should probably track this keyword and we'll give you that notification as a suggestion. All right, so that's what suggestion means. And then. So now I can look at the suggestion, knowing that the only way that it was triggered is if something hit those rules that I put. All right, but right here I'm going to be able to see hey, which keywords do I want to start tracking? There's probably some, some more things that I'm missing here, but this is just the beginning. Make sure you are using this new Keyword Tracker and the new features. Every single one of the new features I went over is designed to give you insights that can help you make more money, help you optimize your listing more, help you track what is going on with your competitors. So I want you guys to make sure to use all of those features.   Bradley Sutton: Now, this part of the show when we do this once a month is a completely open AMA. So you guys can ask me anything about Helium 10, maybe even a couple Amazon questions, if you, if you want, if I, if we've got the time, um. Or it could be about this new Keyword Tracker. Okay, let me see we've got one from Jay here. It says for someone starting again selling on Amazon after five years oh, wow, what a what a long time between selling Um, where would you recommend to start from in order to learn how to use a software? I'm really lost with this. All right. So, Jay, if, if, if you're talking about where to learn how to sell on Amazon, we just barely launched a brand new Freedom Ticket. So even if you were selling five years ago, trust me so much has changed on Amazon I highly recommend going through the Freedom Ticket. So if you're a Helium 10 member, which I'm assuming you are it sounds like when you say software, there you have access 100% to Freedom Ticket. Five years ago when you remember you probably had to pay a thousand dollars for Freedom Ticket. Not anymore. You have. You have it covered for free. So go into Freedom Ticket. Take that to see what's new on Amazon.   Bradley Sutton: The second thing to learn how to use the tools, go into the learn button in every tool. All right, just take a refresher course. Or if you just want to knock it all out in like three hours, you can go to a completely free website, academy.helium10.com. academy.helium10.com it has all of our tool software training videos all in one place. You could probably knock it out in two hours. Maybe three hours if you're just watching at one X speed, uh, but if you're two X in me, you can probably watch it in like one hour or an hour and a half. All of those videos and I'll give you a good refresher course on how to get reacquainted with Helium 10. And then, like I said, Freedom Ticket is going to give you a nice uh refresher course on how to get reacquainted with selling on Amazon and Walmart, and we even have now stuff that we definitely didn't have years ago, when you were around, Jay, like um, lessons on how to sell on tick tock shop, so pretty cool. Christopher says what's the best strategy for running out of inventory, especially if you're still in the honeymoon phase? Is there a module about it in the new Freedom Ticket? I don't remember if I put a module about it. But basically, um, obviously you don't want to run out, but do not try to slow your sales and slow your momentum or raise your price if your conversion rate goes down Now. If you can raise your price and still get the same amount of sales I mean regardless of if you have inventory now of course you should raise your price and get more profit, right. But don't be the kind of people who try to raise your price in order to slow sales because you're shooting yourself in the foot just to not run out of stock.   Bradley Sutton: Amazon is really good lately. If you run out of stock and you're only if you're out of stock for like eight months, I mean, first of all, slowing sales down. To run out three weeks later than you would have is not going to help you anyways. But yeah, if you're going to be out of stock for eight months. You're kind of screwed anyways because, yeah, you know Amazon, it might not put you back to where you were, but if you're out of stock for a couple weeks a month even I've been out of stock for two months, even recently because I just had a crazy amount of sales that I wasn't expecting or I had some shipping delays Amazon remembers what you've done. All right, if you're in your forties or fifties, you remember that song from Janet Jackson in the eighties what have you done for me lately? Amazon asked that question. They know what you've done for Amazon lately. If you are a high performing keyword or a high performing product for a certain keyword, Amazon remembers that and you're not. If you're a page one, position three and you're out of stock for a month and a half, does that mean you're immediately going back to page one position three? No, probably not. But it just takes a couple of orders, like in PPC, at the top of search, and Amazon will put you like right back up. A lot of times Now, on some of those products where it might be like 300,000 search volume or some crazy amount of sales, right Okay, that one might be a little bit hard to get back to top. It's not going to get to the top with just two or three orders, but, yeah, like it's not as critical as it was in the past where you lose your ranking permanently or something crazy. That would happen to some people, like five, six years ago, if you went out of stock.   Bradley Sutton: Another thing to keep in mind, too, is you run out of stock fast. It's not always a bad thing, remember, if you have a lot of sales, you have a period of time where you have low stock. That's actually a bad thing. You are going to get a low inventory fee. That's one of the new fees that Amazon put out is, if your inventory total for a certain time period dips under a threshold, you're going to get charged for every order that you have. Okay, if you have zero inventory, you run out. Well, at least you're not being charged. You know that fee. Again, don't get me wrong, don't run out. You know you should not run out, but don't do things to slow your sales. If you're going to run out, go ahead and run out at the whatever velocity you have, because that's what helping your keyword rank, how you convert for that keyword and then, um, as soon as you get back, you know, do a big push like don't put your, your product live until it's distributed across the country. So make sure to use Helium 10 inventory heat maps so you can see as Amazon distributed amongst other warehouses. And then go live, go heavy on PPC, maybe have a big discount a little bit to like really get that momentum going to remind amazon who you were and you should get back to page one for your keywords that you were page one for before.   Bradley Sutton:   Kyle says can you talk a little bit Adtomic and how I can use it as KDP? So I don't think you can use it yet on KDP, but when you can, as long as the API is very similar, it's going to be very similar. Like I run 200 campaigns on my Adtomic for regular products, not KDP products, regular physical products. And the beauty about it is I can have suggestions where I'm like hey, if I have an auto campaign going and I get two keyword conversions at a certain ACoS, I want you to tell me to move that to my manual campaign. Hey, if I get, I can put rules. Or I can be like hey, if I get 20 clicks on this keyword and no sales right and I've spent more than ten dollars, you know what I want a negative match that keyword. I can automate that or I can just have it, uh, set a rule where it tells me hey, you got 20 clicks over this period of time that you specified. You wanted me to let you know that this happened. Do you want a negative matches, yes or no? I just hit one button and I say yes, now it's negative match.   Bradley Sutton: I can run analytics across all of my campaigns. You know, like I said, I've got 200 campaigns where I can put a query saying, hey, show me all of the search terms that I have less than four, or all the targets where I have less than 4% ACOS. Right, with at least one sale. Obviously you have to have a sale to have ACOS. But you know, then, now, instantly, all of those keywords across all 200, 200 of my campaigns will show up. I can just go ahead and just blanket re increase the bid on all those I'll be like ahead and just blanket re increase the bid on all those I'll be like you know what, raise the bid on all of these that I'm below 4% a cost. Raise my bid by 20%. Two clicks of a button, I mean, these kind of things take forever to do by yourself or something kind of stuff. You have to pay agencies, you know $1,000 a month to do. You can have that kind of like all inside of Adtomic. So that's how I use Adtomic and I would assume that once it's fully integrated with our KDP community, you're going to have very similar features as well.   Bradley Sutton: All right, what other questions, guys? We got about five minutes left here I can go. It's 11.15 PM, so if anybody's in the US at this time of day? Thank you so much for joining. I used to do this back in the day. We used to call it midnight madness. I would just go randomly live at like midnight. Um, today was half accident. This was supposed to be at 10:15 am and my team said it at 10:15 pm. So that's why I'm up at this at this time of day. But I'm happy that I could uh talk to different people, because usually it's a lot of the same people I see in the chat, but today's all new people. Kyle says can you tell me a little bit about the CPR score and how accurate is is in Cerebro. So the CPR is basically the number of units over eight days that you should sell after somebody finds your product in search for that keyword either organic or sponsored over eight days, that gives you the best chance to stick on page one. Doesn't guarantee it, but it gives you the best chance. It was a formula that I came up with, uh, two years ago. The latest version I I did, or no, it was last year, uh, a year ago was the latest version. We've updated it three or four times in the last six years, um, but basically it's gives you a guide of like, hey, what is it going to take to get on the top, as close to the top of page one as possible for the keyword that you're trying to rank for? That's as easy as I can kind of like dumb it down of what it is, and it's a number over eight days. So if you have a keyword like I'm looking at a keyword right now, um, batmat and the CPR number is eight, that means you know the search volume is so low. If I get eight purchases, if somebody searched the word batman and bought a product eight different people over eight days I have a pretty darn good chance to get to page one. That's basically what it means there.   Bradley Sutton: Here's a question from Instagram. Grow with Daniel says is there a possibility to check on which keyword per competitor is getting sales? Which keyword per competitor? Yes, so I mean, if I'm understanding Daniel, your question is like hey, uh, which keywords are driving sales to your competitor? Absolutely, you just run Cerebro. Okay, there's two, there's two ways you can. You can know about it. You run Cerebro for your competitor and look at anything over 500 search volume where they're ranked between like one and 10, you know they're getting sales for that keyword or they have gotten sales for the keyword, unless it's a brand new product. You don't get on the top 10 search results without at some time having you know some sales and the higher the search volume, the more sales it is that it took to get there. You can also run it in brand analytics. We have that in Black Box, brand analytics, where you put the ace in and now you can see, hey, your competitor, where were they one of the top three clicked? And then, if they were one of the top three click, did they have conversions for that keyword and how much percent of those conversions? You can have that fully in Helium 10 as well. Oh, and now he says, except using Cerebro I mean Cerebro and Black Box. Uh, those are the two ways to do it inside of Helium 10.   Bradley Sutton: Jeffrey says, like Cerebro, Black Box, Magnet to see the ABA and keyword sales sold now for ABA. You now have access to that, Jeffrey. Like that's, we always bring stuff down to platinum. So that used to be diamond. Only the brand analytics data in Cerebro and Magnet now is in platinum. So you've fully got access to that. Now black. There's one tool in Black Box, yes, that that platinum members don't have access to, and that is the Black Box brand analytics tool. So, yeah, that is not available separately currently, but you know, who knows, maybe in the future it could be. And I swear that keyword sales also was brought down to platinum. I think you might check it, Jeffrey, you might have keyword sales. If you're based in the US and you're looking at Amazon USA data, you might have the keyword sales there.   Bradley Sutton: This presentation is what we do once a month where we have a training on some kind of aspect of Helium 10. And then we have an open. Ask Me Anything. So when you guys see the invite to this. Make sure to join up next time those of you listening to this on the replay or watching this on the podcast or on YouTube later on. We'll probably do one or no, probably. We will do one in probably late September or middle of September, so make sure to sign up early. That one will probably be like in the AM Pacific time instead of PM, like this time, but we, you know, make sure to join live so you can get your questions answered. This is what I do for Helium 10 Elite twice a week at times, but once a month we go ahead and open this up to everybody. So I really appreciate everybody joining us at this time of day and I wish you guys the best of success and please let us know what you think of phase one of our new Keyword Tracker. Thanks a lot, guys.

Join Bradley Sutton in this episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast as we explore the vital importance of search volume metrics for Amazon sellers. We'll reveal why accurate search volume data is crucial for making informed decisions on listing optimization, PPC campaigns, and more. We'll discuss how to gauge demand in a niche and prioritize keywords effectively, while also addressing the limitations of Amazon's own search volume metrics. Listen in as Bradley addresses the misinformation circulating in the industry, particularly a misleading LinkedIn post comparing search volumes from Helium 10, Data Dive, and Jungle Scout. The episode highlights the flawed methodologies used in such comparisons and the significant differences between normalized and denormalized search volumes. Bradley clarifies the historical changes Amazon made to its search volume data and emphasizes the importance of fact-checking and accurate representation in tool comparisons. Lastly, we'll highlight the importance of maintaining civility in discussions about Amazon tools, particularly when it comes to the accuracy of search volume data. After conducting comparison tests, where we matched Helium 10's data against Amazon's only normalized search data, Brand Analytics, Helium 10 achieved an impressive 93.5% accuracy rate. In comparison, Jungle Scout scored 41.9% accuracy when evaluated against Search Query Performance, which uses a denormalized search metric. It's crucial that we provide our audience with reliable information. We are committed to addressing misleading information in future episodes, ensuring that our listeners receive the most insightful and accurate information. Thank you for your support, and stay tuned for more in-depth analysis. In episode 590 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley talks about: 01:52 - Accurate Amazon Search Volume Metric Importance06:30 - Keyword Sales Is The Best Metric07:11 - Addressing Misleading Information12:19 - Debunking Jungle Scout’s Blog On Keyword Accuracy Analysis17:30 - Search Frequency Rank And Why It’s Important20:27 - Normalized vs. Denormalized Searches20:58 - The History Of Search Volume In Amazon21:22 - Understanding Normalized and Denormalized Searches25:31 - Stop Comparing Apples to Oranges26:20 - Let’s Do A Real Test27:42 - How Accurate Is Helium 10’s Search Volume?29:18 - Jungle Scout and Data Dive vs Search Query Performance Data32:20 - Confusion Over Jungle Scout Search Volume History35:45 - Bradley’s Final Message ► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast ► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension ► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup  (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life) ► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft ► Watch The Podcasts On YouTube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos Transcript Bradley Sutton: Search volume is one of the most important metrics for Amazon sellers to help make decisions like Listing, Optimization, PPC and more. Now, who has the most accurate search volume out there Jungle Scout and Data Dive or Helium 10? Well, spoiler alert in today's case. Today I'm going to show you that Helium 10 wins with a 93.5% accuracy, with Jungle Scout coming in second at 41.9%. How cool is that? Pretty cool. I think. You want to know what keywords are driving the most sales for listings on Amazon. To do that, you need to know what highly searched for keywords the product is ranking for, maybe at the top of page one. You can actually find that out in seconds by using Helium 10's keyword research tool, Cerebro. Now, that's just one of the many, many functions that make this tool my favorite tool in the whole suite, and it's the most powerful keyword research tool ever created for e-commerce sellers. For more information, go to h10.me/cerebro. Don't forget to use the Serious Sellers Podcast discount coupon SSP10. Bradley Sutton: Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I am your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show. That's a completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed, organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. And today, guys, we are going to have a special episode where I'm going deep. I spent a couple of nights without sleep working on this because things got me real riled up on this. All right, this is an important topic to me, and there's just so much misinformation out there that I was like I got to set the record straight. Bradley Sutton: Now the question is who has the most accurate search one? Well, of course, the first answer would be Amazon itself has the most accurate, because they're the ones who are providing information. Now, sometimes, though, it's not always the most useful though, like, for example hey, I'm trying to do research into a niche that I'm not selling in. Yet you're a little bit limited with being able to see search volume in Amazon. Search Query Performance for an existing listing. Great, all right. Uh, that shows you denormalized numbers. We're going to talk about what that means a little bit later. But if you're looking at, hey, well, the keywords that I'm getting traction for already, what is my search volume? There's nothing better out of a great apples to apples comparison as that. Now, the drawback there is you can only see what you're already ranking for you can't really like, put in your competitors and see their search volume. But again, obviously this is Amazon's platform. They've got the most accurate search volume. I'm sure they have multiple search volume metrics, some of which Amazon sellers can get at. Bradley Sutton: But let's just talk about this. Take a step back. Why is search volume important? Why do Amazon sellers rely on this metric so much? Well, there's a lot of different reasons. Maybe you're just looking for demand in a certain niche, for example. Hey, I'm looking into selling in this category. I don't see many products here with sales, so I can't really estimate demand because there's not enough sales. Maybe it's something newer, but there's a lot of search volume, right, because you could have a lot of search volume for something, but no sales yet because there's no competitors yet. All right, so that's something exciting. That's where search volume could be important. What about you've already decided to make a product right? The number one reason that we need search volume is prioritization. What do I mean by that? Let's say I've identified 200 equally relevant keywords. Obviously, all keywords aren't equally relevant. Let's just play devil's advocate and say we've got 200 keywords. That we've done in all of our keyword research and I need to put them in my listing. Bradley Sutton: Now, can you put 200 unique phrases in phrase form in your listing to send those relevancy signals to Amazon, to let Amazon know hey, this is my product. You know, you always want to put your most important keywords in phrase form in your listing. No, you don't have room for 200 separate phrases. You maybe have room for 15, 20, 25. Well, how do you prioritize? Which ones you're going to put in phrase form, which ones you're going to concentrate on? Right, if all things were equal, the one thing that is different is search volume, right? Hey, my most search ones of these equally relevant keywords. That's what I'm putting in phrase form. The most search ones of the most relevant. That's what's going in my title, right? Similar with you. Know, when you're deciding what you're going to do for PPC, hey, am I going to try to equally target all 200 words? No, I might try and like target 20 words at first, 30 words at first. Again, relevancy is the most important. But then the next metric is search volume. All right, you know, I'm not going to try and put a whole bunch of 1 million search volume keywords in one campaign and then another campaign with an equal number of keywords that have 100 search volume. That just wouldn't make sense, right? So, I'm sure all of you would agree with me that a search volume is something that is important. Helps us in many different ways as Amazon sellers. Bradley Sutton: Now here's the interesting thing. It's not always the number itself as the most important. When you think about search volume for prioritization, it's really the order in which they're in, right? That's one of the factors, not just the number itself, like, for example, um, you look at google trends, uh, google trends is not search volume, right? People have been using google trends for years and it's a scale of one to 100. Helps you prioritize, right? Brand Analytics, which you guys know I love. You know there's no search volume number in Brand Analytics. That's the data point that amazon gives and has been giving for like what, four or five years now. There's no search volume in there. It's just giving you an order. It gives you search frequency rank. Bradley Sutton: You're totally able to prioritize keywords not based on a search volume number. Like, if all you had was Brand Analytics and zero search volume number, guess what You'd be able to do almost everything you do right now, right? Even if there was no Helium 10, no Jungle Scout, no, anything. You just had Brand Analytics, no search volume numbers at all. That's enough information to prioritize. Now you might have to make your own little formulas or something like that to try and see hey, I only want the search frequency rank from, from, you know, 500,000 and up, or 500,000 below, I should say, you know. Or a hundred thousand and below, you know. Of course, you know you might have to do something, but still, you could get around, uh, get along without the actual search volume number. So, it's not necessarily the search volume number that's the most important. Again, it is which ones are searched more in comparison with whatever other keywords you have, right? Bradley Sutton: Now, of course, the best way to prioritize even more than just search volume itself or search order, is keyword sales, right? Not all keywords are created equal, right? You could have a 500,000-search volume keyword that generates, you know, the products on the page generate a hundred sales only because there's low, low buyer intent. You could have another keyword that's 500,000-search volume and it could generate a thousand sales because there's a lot more buyer intent. So actually, the best metric, of course, to prioritize if you're talking about, hey, what's going to potentially bring me the most sales is keyword sales. Bradley Sutton: Now, are you able to see estimated keyword sales by keyword? Yeah, Helium 10 can help you with that. Jungle Scout doesn't have that. I would assume that Data Dive doesn't. I have access to a Jungle Scout account. I don't have access to a Jungle Scout account. I don't have access to data. I can only monitor the biggest competitors out there. So, Jungle Scout, the last time I checked, no keyword sales. I would assume data doesn't. But if I'm mistaken, I apologize. Bradley Sutton: Now, why am I even doing this episode? How did this drama all get started and why am I so worked up?  Now, before I even get into this, let me just give a kind of disclaimer here. I'm pretty passionate about this subject. I might get a little worked up in this episode. I hope nobody takes anything personal. I'm even going to blur names over here. People can probably figure out by looking at posts and stuff where the party's involved. But again, I'm not trying to call somebody in particular out. So, I hope this doesn't come off as oh, I'm trying to like fight somebody in the backyard or something like that. All right, I just really get worked up about this kind of topic and when people are throwing Helium 10 under the bus, or when people are misleading others, intentionally or not, who are you know? Known figures like it just bothers me, all right. So again, I'm not going to try and throw any name, drop here personal names. I apologize if anybody ahead of time, if anybody gets offended. I'm just stating the facts. All right, just the facts, ma'am. All right. Bradley Sutton: Now, how did this all get started? It all got started with this LinkedIn post. Uh, that's somebody. I have no idea who this person is, I'm not connected to them, but somebody I think they tagged me. Uh, people tag me all the time on LinkedIn. I'm not that great on LinkedIn. I don't do the whole, you know, interaction with other people's posts, like I'm supposed to. But anyway, somehow this post did get on my radar and I have nothing against this guy who made this post. He, he's not an influencer in this space where I could say, oh, he should definitely know better, whatever. But anyways, here is how this post looks like on LinkedIn. Bradley Sutton: He was like hey, Helium 10 versus Jungle Scout versus Search Query Performance, comparison of search form. So, when I saw it, I barely skimmed it, because I get so many of these tags every day. I don't interact with hardly any of them, but he was like hey, why does helium 10 display three to four times lower search volume compare to Jungle Scout and Search Query Performance? Bradley, what are your thoughts? Blah, blah, blah. I use 80 keywords to compile the data, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Now, at the time I didn't really even look very closely at this, because I think I saw this graph that he gave and it didn't even show the keywords or anything. I'm like okay, it is what it is. This is just one of those things that I get tagged like on a million times. Bradley Sutton: But then what happened later is at the top of my feed, somebody who I am connected to and again is at the top of my feed. Somebody who I am connected to and again who I think is a very, one of the most respectable, uh, respected, people in the space, put out this message where he reposted it and was like hey, this, this dude did an analysis where he did 80 keywords that analyze with Data Dive and Jungle Scout compared to Helium 10. And he was questioning which one is most accurate and I told him to check Search Query Performance. All right, so there's strike one. I'm like why would you do that? What does Helium 10 have to do with Search Query Performance? All right, we're going to talk about that. Why? Why, this is such like a no brainer. Like why in the world is this person doing that? But let me keep going here. He says oh, after doing this, he found that Data Dive was within 5% accuracy for this keyword and Helium 10 had a deviation of 70. All right, this data is crucial. Bradley Sutton: So now, all of a sudden, I'm starting to get pissed. I'm like this this is ridiculous. Helium 10 has nothing to do with Search Query Performance. Uh, you know whether Data Dive or Jungle Scout is. You know, we'll talk about that in a little bit. But like, why are you even bringing Helium 10 into this conversation? It's ridiculous that this other guy had mistakenly compared the two, thinking it was the same. But again, he doesn't work for a SaaS company. He doesn't know. You know the ins and outs of he's not monitoring. You know other companies and knows what they base their search volume. But I wouldn’t expect this individual to have no. And I even, when this like, I think you probably want to delete this post, you know, couple of times. I said, I was like, I don’t think this is a good look you know for you to like put out misinformation like trying to say that, oh Data Dive, Jungle Scout is 5% off of this amazon data point, but Helium 10 somehow has that 70% off. But they never took down the post. I’m like alright, that’s when I started not sleeping, like two nights in a row of just like data crunching and preparing for this episode. I'm like all right, you asked for it. Now, again, I told you guys, I wouldn't make it personal, but I get worked up about this. Bradley Sutton: Anyways, it wasn't just this, things were escalating even more. Like a high-level executive from Jungle Scout hops on this thread and says, oh, we consistently see similar results in our own validation and hear similar feedback from customers, you know, basically talking about, oh, that Jungle Scout is so close to this Search Query Performance, but then Helium 10 is so far off. Supposedly they validate this all the time. And this is what and they hear this from customers all the time. Like what is going on? More misinformation from somebody who's respected in the industry. Like why are you saying this nonsense? This is happening now. Bradley Sutton: But then a couple of months ago, uh, somebody forwarded me a blog, uh, on March 21st, that Jungle Scout put out Jungle Scout versus Helium 10, a comprehensive review. Uh, march 21st, 2024. You see it right here, dun, dun, dun. Like you see the big logos you know, versus each other. Now this blog, anyways, was just, oh, my goodness, there were so many inaccurate things in there, it just boggled my mind, really got me upset, but like I never did anything at that time, it was just all of this now together, kind of like put me over the edge. Bradley Sutton: But the one part, that of that blog that has to do with this, was a big section they had on Keyword Accuracy Analysis. Who is more accurate Jungle Scout or Helium 10 for search volume? Keyword search volume information? And look at what they said in this blog. They're like hey, amazon provides Search Query Performance and we found that Jungle Scout was way more accurate than Helium 10's keyword tool. On average, keyword Scout showed a positive 10.93% difference from the search volume provided by Amazon and Helium 10 showed a negative 58% difference. See the info below. And we chose keywords from Search Query Performance. And again, so like hey, if Jungle Scout wants to compare themselves to Search Query Performance, fine, if that's what they're basing their search volume on, go ahead. But why are you bringing Helium 10 into this conversation? Helium 10, uh search volume has nothing to do with Search Query Performance search volume. Bradley Sutton: But then I'm looking at this, this, this case study that they supposedly did, and it just didn't make sense. It was like potty pads Helium 10, 11, three, 93 search volume. All right, this is, this is like their big expose to show how Helium 10 is different. Now, first of all, the number is just super weird here. Even according to them, uh, Amazon had 10,000, Helium 10 had 11,000, but somehow the difference was negative, 8%, like we were under. Like that, that's not right, like we're over according to this, but anyways, that's not important. Bradley Sutton: I was trying to find out okay, in in Helium 10, we, we have history that goes back five years for a search volume. Okay, I think Jungle Scouts got only has two years, but anyways, Helium 10, 393. I was like, let me try to find where that is. And I kept having to go back and back in time to try and find out when in the heck they were pulling this data. And, lo and behold, I found this 11,393 number on 9/24, wait for it, guys 2022. So, this is a new blog. The date is 2024. And they're pulling some data point from September, like two years ago, two years, literally two years ago. So, I was like, well, that's weird, it did really Jungle Scouts numbers uh, you know, look like this way. Bradley Sutton: Back then. Now that's where things started getting weird. I was like this whole article just doesn't make sense because, uh, again, you know, they were saying that, hey, Jungle Scout said 10,800. And so, if they were taking Helium 10 in September of 2022, I was like, well, what really Jungle Scout said, such a close number to search, create performance. So, I look back in Jungle Scout to that same date of September of 2022 and started adding the numbers up. I was like no, look, these are weekly search volume that Jungle Scout is giving and it's like 6,000, 6,000, 5,000. I mean, we're talking like 20, 30,000. Where in the world is Jungle Scout saying that they were 10,800. Bradley Sutton: Now I think maybe what happened was, later Jungle Scout changed, you know, after 2022 changed our whole search volume a model, because they made announced that they were trying to follow the search, create performance. So, I'm assuming they did go to like the denormalized number. I didn't realize at the time that they actually backdated and went back in time and maybe changed all their search volume numbers from before Helium 10 numbers don't change once we have the search one. That's there permanently. But anyways, I'm not sure that's the reason, but I could not find where Jungle Scout was 10,800. Because if I went back in time right now using Jungle Scout, it's way more than that. Bradley Sutton: But anyways, these things were just like oh, really making me mad. Like LinkedIn, a bunch of people saying these crazy things, and then here's Jungle Scout blogs again. That's what kind of upsets me when people with authority you know who people trust is putting out misinformation to try and pump themselves up. Like, no, if you want to pump yourself up, pump yourself up with facts. Like why are you pulling in wrong information? So now that's when I was like, ok, fine, let me go and do a deep dive no pun intended, on this original guy's post. Well, again, I don't know who he is, I have nothing against him personally, but I'm looking here and, like I said, there was no even keywords mentioned here. So, I was like, well, I can't even double check this information and then just weird things were happening. First of all, you know, remember the other individual who I respect was trying to say, oh yeah, Helium 10 is off by 70%. That's not even what this guy was saying in his post. He was saying Helium 10 was off by 70% from Jungle Scout. I'm like why are we even doing it? Why are you comparing Jungle Scout with Amazon? But then you're just comparing Helium 10 with Jungle Scout. Bradley Sutton: And then take a look at this, the way they were calculating the numbers for some of these. He's saying Search Query Performance says zero and Helium 10 and Jungle Scout are saying a certain number, but then somehow that means a Jungle Scout is a hundred percent off. So, if Search Query Performance is saying zero and Jungle Scout says a certain number, that's infinity percent off. You know, like you shouldn't even have counted that, bro, like I don't even know what. That's not the way you do. I'm not a data scientist, I'm not a mathematician at all, but I'm pretty sure you can't just say it's 100% off when you're comparing something with the number zero. But anyway, so his numbers of 5% off for Jungle Scout and 70% off of Helium 10, the whole thing is bogus, right. Like it wasn't an accurate test and he shouldn't have even done it anyways, as I'm going to show in a little bit, because Helium 10, again has nothing to do with Search Query Performance. Now Jungle Scout has said multiple times, even in this thread hey, you know, we're close at Search Query Performance, so go ahead and compare Jungle Scout to Search Query Performance. Guess what I'm about to do that you know in a few minutes here. Uh, so that part was fine. But again, why are you all trying to bring Helium 10 into this conversation? Now you might be wondering well, what is Helium 10 search? I'm going to get to that in a little bit. Bradley Sutton: Now, another funny thing about this one you know graph that this guy came up with is the numbers. Instead of showing that, you know, Jungle Scout is so close If you can take this numbers for granted it actually shows that Jungle Scout is way off. Remember I told you, what's more important than the actual number is the order in which, uh, the number of searches is presented. Right, the order, the search frequency, rank. That's the important thing. Take a look at this guy's own graph, like, for example again, I don't know the keywords here because he didn't put it but look at this keyword a, let's just call this keyword a. He's saying Search Query Performance was 6,000. Okay, and this keyword B was 5,000 something. Okay. Bradley Sutton: So, you know, if you were going to prioritize one keyword over the other, which one would be the priority. With the actual Amazon data, it would be keyword A right Because it says it has 6,000 search volume. But then look at in his own chart, the Jungle Scout numbers. Or for those same keywords, keyword A only 3,000 search volume. So, the number is far, way, far off. But again, nothing wrong with a number being off. That's not what's important. The importance is the order. But his keyword B Jungle Scouts, keyword B was 4,000 search volume. So, it actually not only was way off in the search form. It was prioritizing the wrong order. So, if you were going by Jungle Scouts, you would have prioritized keyword B, because keyword B has 4,000 search volume and keyword A only had 3000, but guess what? Search Query Performance was completely opposite. So, he thought he was like maybe trying to hype up Jungle Scouts supposedly 5% accuracy but actually he was exposing something where it's off. Bradley Sutton: Now, as I started reading this more and I found you know what this entire thing was off because he was taking Jungle Scouts search volume from right now, or you know the last time Jungle Scout checked, which was August 10th. Okay, he was comparing it to Search Query performance all the way from July 1st through the end of July. So, we're not even talking about an apples versus apples comparison here. So, like again this whole original post, kind of like a waste of time here. But what happened was is people started jumping on this and that was what. That was what made me mad and nobody, nobody checked this. Bradley Sutton: It's like all these people jumping on this post and say, yeah, this is exactly what we see and we find the same numbers ourselves, and another person said, you know is reposting this and saying look at you know, uh, how accurate Jungle Scout and Data Dive are. But this whole thing was just a ridiculous post in the first place and none of these respected people should have been posting this information. I'm sure maybe I'll do that sometimes, maybe I'll just get so happy that somebody is hyping up Helium 10 and maybe I don't fact check, fact check, uh. But if it has to do with, like throwing a competitor under the bus, you're never going to find me throwing a competitor under the bus If I haven't, like, fact checked everything, like I literally spent the last 48 hours fact checking all of this before I make this podcast here to make sure I'm doing my due diligence and I'm not putting out misinformation, and that's what I would expect others to do as well. But again, you know, regardless of all these numbers being wrong, the whole premise of this was wrong, even if he picked the perfect numbers, because he's trying to compare things to Helium 10, which is based on normalized searches, and Search Query Performance is based on denormalized, and Jungle Scout is denormalized too in day to day because they've been open to say, hey, we're comparing ourselves to Search Query Performance, so they actually said that they were changing to denormalized a couple of like about a year and a half ago. Now let's get a little bit more into the history of search volume on Amazon so you can kind of understand how we got to this normalized versus denormalized. Now Amazon years ago like 2018 around there actually made a search volume that is normalized the actual number that Helium 10 designed its algorithm after it was available in the API to like software tools, and Helium 10 was the very first one to get access to it, and so we've got the most historic search volume data out there Now. Bradley Sutton: Normalized means how many times pretty much somebody typed in a search term. So, if I search coffin shelf right now, that's one search. But then if I search that same keyword 10 hours from now, you know within 24 hours the search volume that Amazon counts as normal. Normalized means it still only counts as one. If I click to page two, it only counts for one. If I click back on my browser after I was on page two, it still only counts as one. There's only one search that somebody did in 24 hours. Bradley Sutton: Now, denormalized means hey, I search coffin shelf right now, there's one search. I click on a product on that page, I click back on my browser. Guess what that's? Another search. I click another product and I click back. There's another search. There’re three searches. Now I click to page two of the search results. Guess what that's counted as a search. Now we're up to four. Five hours later I come back to my computer and I search again that same exact keyword. Guess what that's five? I hit refresh on my browser for whatever reason. Guess what that's six? So, D? Uh, norm, denormalized means it's counting six searches, six search volume for that one individual, whereas normalized, which is what the original Amazon search volume is based off of, it's only counting one. Bradley Sutton: Now, before, when Amazon first started product opportunity explore and Search Query Performance, amazon still was basing their search volume on normalized searches. But then they made this big announcement all over the place in about April May of 2023, that says, hey, we are changing our model. This was plastered all over the place in Search Query Performance we're changing our model to be denormalized, and they explained exactly what denormalized meant, and that was like what I was talking about. And so, what was the difference in the search volume number Once Amazon moved it? I actually have some screenshots. Take a look at this. This is from a post I made because I used to talk about denormalized and normalized all the time. So, here's a post I made in one of our Facebook groups If you look at the coffin shelf niche, all of the keywords put together for 360 days was 85,000 searches. That's the normalized search volume. But then Amazon changed Search Query Performance and opportunity explorer to denormalized and now what was a 360-day search volume? Take a look at this screenshot here 406,000. It was like a five to one difference. Almost you see how big of a difference that made it. When they went to the Dean uh, normalized. And so again, this is why I was thinking that hey, like, hey, every all these respected, you know executives in the industry, they know this stuff. I mean that was all over Amazon. Um, I'm sure they've got to know these things and we weren't keeping, we were not hiding this. Bradley Sutton: I would just talk about this nonstop Episode 433 of this podcast. You'll see I talked about the normalized versus denormalized Episode 435 of the podcast, episode 485. I actually had the Search Query Performance team from Amazon come on the podcast and they did a complete breakdown of what normalized versus denormalized meant. Even up to like a month ago I had Mansoor on the podcast he was talking about normalize versus denormalized in episode 584. So, this is not like some industry secret. All right, everybody should know what normalize versus denormalized means and that Helium 10 has always been based on the normalized. Bradley Sutton: Now you might ask me like which one is better? Now, that's a subjective thing. Everybody can like their own kind of search volume. But for me I like the normalized searches better because to me that's more of an indication of what I'm trying to get at. I want to, I'm trying to find out how many customers are searching for this product and the normalized will count that one, that search volume, as one, but the denormalized counts it as five or six, just because they're clicking around on the browser. So, to me the more accurate number is the normalized search because you know it tells me hey, in this one instance there's one customer who is looking for it, or there was 100 customers who are looking for it, whereas on the other one I'm not sure how many times somebody was clicking around. That number just is kind of inflated. So that's why I personally like normalized. But hey, if somebody might have a use case for denormalized, I'm not sure what it would be, but let me know why you think that one might be better. Either way, you're still going to be able to prioritize it's. It shouldn't be that far off. But yes, Search Query Performance is going to be different than Brand Analytics, Amazon versus Amazon data, even though it's both from Amazon, because it's normalized versus denormalized. That's why the order is actually different, even when you're comparing those two. Bradley Sutton: So again, that's one of the reasons why I was getting so upset that they were all posting about this is because it's not. We're not even talking about comparing apples to apples. It's kind of like in this post, everybody was jumping on the bandwagon and saying, hey, look at, Jungle Scout is a tangerine orange, very close to a blood orange, right, ooh, that's very nice that they're close. Great, you're comparing an orange to an orange, good on you. But then they're coming in and saying, oh, but look, Helium 10 is an apple or a Granny Smith apple. Look how far off it is from this blood navel orange. Like, why are we even comparing this Granny Smith apple? We're not even trying to be an orange, or if there were Jungle Scout orange. Bradley Sutton: Anyways, where not even trying to be an orange, were just trying to be an apple that’s all were tying to do. So, why are you trying to bring us into this conversation about oranges, right. So, that was when I became so upset. But now, looks like, you know what, let’s go and let’s do a real test. You know like here, ah, I think we all agree that how bogus is this test that was done was and how useless it is. But like, all right, let’s go ahead and take Brand Analytics. Let’s compare that to Helium 10. Let’s take Search Query Performance, let’s compare it to Jungle Scout. And who has the most accurate search volume. Who has the most actionable search order. Bradley Sutton: So, what I did was I spent like much of the last 48 hours just like diving deep into their information. All right, I pulled in the Brand Analytics search frequency rank for 31 keywords that have to do with like coffin shelves and stuff. All right, I took the Search Query Performance from each week though the exact week that matched the Brand Analytics, and then, four weeks, I pulled out all of these keywords one by one, because I'm an idiot who doesn't know how to use pivot tables and V lookups and stuff. So, I took these one by one, the search ones, because remember that one guy's test was based on a number from July. I'm like, no, let's make it apples to apples. Here's Jungle Scouts number as of eight, 10, which is a full month number. Let's take the eight, three to eight, 10 search rate performance. Let's take the seven, 28 to eight, three. Let's add up those four weeks and make it a month and let's compare it. All right. So, I took all of that, I went in and I took all of the Jungle Scout numbers. Bradley Sutton: I went into Helium 10 and I took all of the magnet numbers for the search volume and I was like, all right, let's go ahead, put this stuff to the test and then so let's take a look, all right. So, first of all, why do I say, where did I get that 93.5 accuracy for Helium 10? Well, remember, there is no public search volume that you can compare one V one, the number of Helium 10, but what kind of normalized search do we have in Amazon that we can compare with Helium 10 Brand Analytics? So here, the first test I did was I took the Brand Analytics 31 keywords that have to do with coffin shelves and then I took Helium 10 and I got all the search volume of those same exact keywords. And then I sorted Brand Analytics keywords in the search frequency rank order, because that means you know the higher or the lower the number of search frequency rank, the more that it's searched Right. And then I ordered the Helium 10 one in the order of descending search volume order and guess what? It was almost identical. The first 29 keywords was 100% the exact same order. Only on the 20 or the 30th keyword here did things, uh, get out of whack and two of them were flipped coffin pet bed and glass coffin. Helium 10 had in the wrong order compared to Amazon Brand Analytics. So that is a 93.5% accuracy. How cool is that? All right, only two off. So, can you trust Helium 10 search volume? Is Helium 10 accurate a hundred percent? Well, maybe not a hundred percent 93.5%, all right. So there that part of the story is done. Helium 10, 93.5% accuracy. If you're comparing it to the only normalized data point we have, which is Brand Analytics. Bradley Sutton: Now what about Jungle Scout? With Jungle Scout, what I did was I took the all of the Search Query Performance for four weeks. Right, I took four exact weeks and added it all up, so we have a full 30 day or one month search volume number uh goth, uh 121,000. Uh, gothic decor a hundred thousand, so on and so forth. And then I took the Jungle Scout search volume from the tool, their 30-day search volume. So here in Jungle Scout you can see where I got that information of 83,903. This is the exact search volume 30 day for the keyword goth. And if I actually click on their details, I can see when that date was from, because the very last date that they have in the system is August 10th. Okay, so we are like on a apples to apples comparison here, because search group performance was also based on the week, the month ending October or August 10th. Bradley Sutton: And so, the first thing, remember Jungle Scout data dive. Everybody loves to compare. Jungle Scout is so accurate compared to a Search Query Performance. Let's look at the raw number. Remember, spoiler, like I said before, like I don't think the number is the most important thing, but if you guys are going to flaunt your uh accuracy, is that really true? Let's take a look. If you compare the month search volume of Search Query Performance versus Jungle Scout, on

We’re back with another episode of the Weekly Buzz with Helium 10’s Chief Brand Evangelist, Bradley Sutton. Every week, we cover the latest breaking news in the Amazon, Walmart, and E-commerce space, talk about Helium 10’s newest features, and provide a training tip for the week for serious sellers of any level. YouTube takes on TikTok Shop with expanded Shopify partnership https://techcrunch.com/2024/08/20/youtube-takes-on-tiktok-shop-with-expanded-shopify-partnership/ Walmart adds a Burger King benefit to its membership program https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/22/walmart-plus-burger-king-benefit.html Shein sues Temu over copyright infringement, alleges rival loses money on every sale https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/20/shein-sues-temu-over-copyright-infringement-trade-secret-theft.html FTC finally makes a sneaky online shopping tactic illegal https://www.thestreet.com/retail/ftc-online-shopping-tactic Temu’s Semi-Hosted Japan Site Will Officially Launch on August 27 https://pandaily.com/temus-semi-hosted-japan-site-will-officially-launch-on-august-27/ 50% of Amazon Prime, Walmart+ Subscribers Step Up During Sales Events https://www.pymnts.com/news/retail/2024/50-of-amazon-prime-walmart-subscribers-step-up-during-sales-events/ How Amazon supports Black-owned businesses during Black Business Month—and all year long https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/small-business/how-amazon-supports-black-owned-businesses-during-black-business-month-and-all-year-long Make sure to watch this week’s training tip in our Helium 10 Alerts tool, this is something that could potentially save you thousands, if not tens of thousands, of dollars. That's how valuable this tip is. Lastly, don't miss our insights into Helium 10 Adtomic's new features for creating custom bid rules in PPC management, designed to optimize your campaigns effectively. In this episode of the Weekly Buzz by Helium 10, Bradley covers: 00:50 - Big Amazon Coupon Change03:05 - Youtube x Shopify04:47 - FBA Inventory Deadlines05:36 - Walmart x Burger King07:07 - International Return Update08:08 - Temu vs. Shein09:48 - FTC vs Fake Reviews12:48 - Temu Japan13:11 - Prime / Walmart+ Stats14:33 - Black Business Accelerator15:10 - Subscribe to Helium 10’s YouTube Channel15:40 - Training Tip: An Alert That Can Save you $1000’s19:07 - Helium 10 New Feature Alerts ► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast ► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension ► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup  (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life) ► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft ► Watch The Podcasts On YouTube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos Transcript Bradley Sutton: Amazon has made a big update to coupons and promotions that could save you from some expensive mistakes. YouTube's trying to pull off some TikTok shop type moves. Walmart's giving away free Burger King Whoppers these stories and more on this edition of the Weekly Buzz. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that is our Helium 10 weekly buzz. We give you a rundown of all the news stories and goings on in the Amazon, Walmart, TikTok shop and e-commerce world. We let you know what new Helium 10 features have and also give you a training tip of the week that will give you serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. Let's see what's buzzing. I've got a number of articles this week, so let's go ahead and hop right into it. First one coming up here is actually I was adding a coupon to this new product launch I'm doing of a coffin letter board and look what we found here on the coupon page. Anybody else notice this? In your browsers when you're trying to do coupons, there's this section that says stack promotions and it says do you want to allow this coupon to stack with percentage off or buy one get one. Promotions yes, allow stacking or no? Allow stacking. Now, this is pretty important because, as you know, in the past, like promotions stack with coupons and vice versa, meaning like let's say you had like a 20% off coupon on your page but then you had a 20% off promotion, that customer who's savvy could pick up both of those and apply it to your order, get 40% off right. But now, finally, you have the option to have it not stack If you're creating the coupon. Next, in the new help document about this, under stack promotions, amazon says here, based on your input provided on if you are going to stack or not, either one or both of the coupons or percentage off or buy one get one, free promotions will apply at checkout. So, for example, gave an example here it says let's say that you create a coupon 10% off and a percentage off coupon 20% off on the same ASIN, same duration. Now, if you say yes, I'm going to allow stacking during this promotion creation. Now both of these promotions are going to stack and the customer is going to get now 30% off at the checkout, right, the 10% plus the 30%. But if you select. No, I do not want them to stack. These promotions won't stack, and so the customer maybe they might see it and try and clip the coupon and do the promotion, but it says they're only going to get the higher benefit of the two promotions. So, like in that case there was a 20% off coupon and a 10% off promotion, they would get the 20% off coupon. So that's something that's pretty cool. I highly recommend doing that, for you know, usually people don't want to stack, and then when people have had stuff stacked, it's by accident and they end up losing a lot of money that they didn't realize. So if you're one of those who do not want your promotion stack, make sure to always click that no stacking.   Bradley Sutton: Next article is from TechCrunch and it's entitled YouTube takes on TikTok shop with expanded Shopify partnership. All right, we talked a little bit about this, oh, I want to say, about four or five months ago, but now it looks like YouTube is ramping up efforts. It says, as TikTok shop is gaining traction, YouTube is expanding its partnership with Shopify to onboard more brands for its YouTube shopping affiliate program. All right, so now creators and influencers are going to get access to 1000s of new brands. It wasn't, like you know, before. We're just like 10 brands or something like very small number of brands you could actually promote for in a shopping experience on YouTube. Now it says 1000s of new brands are going to allow those products to be tagged in shopping videos. So you know, generating a lot of affiliate commission for these YouTube creators. Now if you're wondering, hey, what is the potential of this, well, YouTube actually had a pretty interesting stat. They said that people watched more than 30 billion hours of shopping related videos on YouTube last year and that the platform saw a 25% increase in watch time for videos that help people shop. And so you know, traditionally, the only option is okay, here I'm an influencer, I'm going to make a video about something and I'm directing people to Amazon, or I'm directing people to TikTok, or I'm directing people to Walmart or whatever, right. But now the YouTube influencers are going to be able to create content and then, right in there, link directly to Shopify products and people are going to be able to buy directly from YouTube or in the YouTube platform. And then these influencers are going to be incentivized because they now can get affiliate commission on YouTube.   Bradley Sutton: Next article is from your Seller Central dashboard. Just a reminder of some important dates coming up. All right, prime big deal days is coming up in October. So now they announced that, hey, the last day that you can get inventory in to make sure that you have the Prime Ready badge is going to be September 13th. And then they reiterated again we already announced this a couple weeks ago Black Friday and Cyber Monday you've got to have your product in by October 19th. One other update they gave was hey, if you are using, you are going to get 25% off the base rate for e-storage fees and 15% off the base rate for AWD processing and transportation fees. All right, so this is going to be a limited time offer. If you're using a, amazon is giving putting some money back in your pocket for a change. What, what? What a novel concept. That is all right. Usually we're used to the uh, the other, the other side of things, right.   Bradley Sutton: Next article is from CNBC. This one gave me a chuckle here. You know we've talked before about how amazon will come out with something. Wal. Walmart will come out with something. Vice versa, Walmart is now a pioneer in doing something new. Now we've always talked about the benefits that Amazon Prime starts adding, the benefits that Walmart Plus starts adding et cetera. Because the more Walmart Plus, the more Amazon Prime members, the better it is for us sellers, right, the more likely it is that we're gonna get sales increase. Well, now Walmart is doing a first. They're the first ones in this. They're adding Burger King as a benefit to the Walmart plus program. All right. So now, if you've got Walmart plus, you're going to be able to save 25% off of any Burger King order made through the Burger King app. All right. In addition, members will also be eligible for a free Whopper every three months, starting in September with a purchase. All right.   Bradley Sutton: So first of all, you know it's painful to do this article. I've been on a crazy diet this week before I go traveling, lost already like eight pounds, and I'm looking at these hamburgers and fries. I'm like, oh my goodness, my stomach is growling. But anyways, I digress. What I really want to see now is all right, amazon, the ball's in your court. Let's see you make a similar deal with, like a fat burger in and out, Jollibee, something like that, and I'm going to be there. I need something for my Burger King. I'm not too much of a fan of, so. So, amazon, please hook us up with some good fast food and I am there to take advantage of it.   Bradley Sutton: Next article is going back to the amazon dashboard. It's an update just on international returns, all right. So seller fulfilled international returns is going to be updated starting September 16th. So if you're an international seller who's selling in the US but you're overseas and you don't have a default US return address in Seller Central, now you are going to be required to issue a return less refund or provide a prepaid international return shipping label. So this is kind of interesting. This might seem like one of those articles. Maybe you just completely skip over, but read this in detail. But read this in detail. You know, those of you who are overseas, check do you have a U S return? Because, trust me, guys, that's going to get expensive. All of a sudden, you know your customers start getting you know returned without even you being consulted, and you don't realize it. Or you have to go pay for some international shipping which is crazy expensive, all right. So take a look at this article in your dashboard, see if that affects you, those of you overseas sellers out there.   Bradley Sutton: Let's go back now to CNBC for another article, and this one's entitled Sheen sues Temu over copyright infringement, alleges rival losses money on every sale. So you know people are talking about oh man, Temu is trying to be like Amazon, you know, because they're trying to recruit US sellers and fulfilled in the US. You know, amazon trying to be like Temu. You know, trying to get Chinese sellers to ship directly with subsidized shipping. And then you know they're scared of each other for taking market share. You know, stories like that here and there have been coming up. But now it's Temu versus Sheen. All right, so this is something that was actually filed in the US. All right, this isn't some internal battle going on in the streets of Beijing or something right in China. This is happening in the US, in Washington DC.   Bradley Sutton: A civil complaint where Sheen accused Temu of stealing its designs and also that an employee stole confidential trade secrets. They also say, hey, Temu is losing money on every single sale it makes and it uses trademark infringement to make up for the losses. This, this fight, you know, talks about a lot of different things, but it's kind of interesting because it kind of paints a picture of how sheen and Temu are making money and it makes you wonder, like, is that model sustainable? Like, if they are losing money in every order. How in the world can they keep that going, right? So, if you're interested in in these other marketplaces, I'm trying to get my Temu account set up just to test it out. I'm having a heck of a time getting approved on there, so so I'm still working on. I still want to be able to give you guys an update about Temu. So we'll see how it goes and let's see what if this lawsuit, ever you know, results in anything.   Bradley Sutton: Next up article from the Street. It's entitled FTC finally makes a sneaky online shopping tactic illegal. Now, this article kind of confused me a little bit. I need to do some more research on this, because I'm not 100% sure that this article is going to happen the way it thinks it's going to happen. Okay, but this is a step in the right direction, all right. The article starts out hey, if you've ever read an online review for a product and thought, hey, this is too good to be true, you're probably right. It says that 30 or 40% of online reviews have been fake. But then here we go. But that will soon change, as the era of fake online reviews is about to come to an abrupt end. No, guys, I'm sorry. I don't care what FTC or Amazon or anybody, there is no way that you're going to clean up bad reviews, you know, like super fast, all right, it's just I'm sorry it's not going to happen. But again, I'm not trying to badmouth this. This is a move in the right direction, all right.   Bradley Sutton: Now this new rule that's going to go in effect in October from the FTC, it's going to ban fake online reviews in several different ways. All right, the first rule says it's going to prohibit reviews from people who don't exist. Like wait, how can people who don't exist make review? No, obviously, what it's referring to is people making fake, you know. Can people who don't exist make review? No, obviously. What it's referring to is people making fake you know, profiles and leaving reviews, doing brushing and things like that, and also reviews generated by artificial intelligence. It's kind of saying that it's inferring that it's not going to be allowed. And now the interesting thing here maybe the most interesting for me is it says reviews from individuals who never experienced the product, business or service will be banned as well.   Bradley Sutton: Now, why do you think I found that interesting? Because to me I'm now wondering does that mean that they're going to require Amazon, you know, Walmart, other platforms, to not accept any reviews other than verified reviews. You know, right now I can just go on any product and leave a review, right. But that almost makes me think, right that that Amazon might, or FTC might, ban that. The non-verified review is interesting. Now the rule also blocked businesses from providing compensation for positive or negative reviews. Okay, so I mean up until a few years ago that was even allowed on Amazon. It's still not illegal per se. Like I if I have McDonald’s, I can go pay somebody right now to leave a good review on my google profile. I guess you know, but that that's not going to be allowed anymore. So it's not just amazon's getting bad. It looks like that's going to be banned across the board. It says insider reviews, like by those who work for the company, is going to be prohibited. And here's a funny one, a funny statement. It says businesses will also no longer be allowed to use legal, groundless legal threats, physical threats, intimidation, to prevent a negative review. It says no longer be allowed. Does this mean that until now you've been allowed to use physical threats to get people to change? I don't know what this article is trying to say, or the FTC, I mean it is supposedly it was just quoted here but interesting stuff coming to the world of reviews.   Bradley Sutton: Next article up here is from pandaily.com. Quick note Teemu is opening up a new marketplace in Japan on August 27th. Go look up information on that. Take a look at this article. It might be a good opportunity to get in a brand new marketplace. You know, right before it gets too big, who knows? If you're selling in Amazon Japan, you could probably get your stuff on the new Temu marketplace pretty fast if you hurry.   Bradley Sutton: Next article is from payments.com. It was another one of these surveys. Some of these surveys are pretty interesting. It says 50% of Amazon Prime and Walmart Plus subscribers step up during sales events. Now, based on this study, they had some interesting data points here, all right. For example, it says shopper spending climbed 11% to 14 billion on this Amazon prime day. Now, 40% of all consumers participated in prime day. 20% participated in Walmart plus week, which is like their version of prime day. Now, this is pretty interesting because that Walmart number is still lagging way behind Amazon, but that surged 71% from 2022. It was only at 12% in 2022. So interesting Walmart Plus might be catching up. Walmart Plus subscriptions have increased 30%, especially among millennials and individuals earning less than $100,000 annually. But it says here Walmart Plus still lags way behind Amazon Prime, and both events saw a 50% participation rate from their subscribers. So interesting little stats that maybe you want to check this article out. Walmart plus is is still way, way, way behind amazon, according to this article, but they are catching up, maybe at a little bit faster rate than you might have expected.   Bradley Sutton: All right, the last article of the day is just from amazon. Remind sellers that this month is black business month, all right. And then it talks here in this article about the Black Business Accelerator, a program that we've talked about right here on the podcast. It talks about a lot of the features they have for black owned businesses. It has some quotes here from Rod. You might remember right here he used to be. He was on the Serious Sellers podcast before. So if you have a black owned business, make sure that you get certified so you can get that badge, and then you're actually going to qualify for some special programs inside of the black business accelerator that Amazon has. Make sure to check out the article link to below for that.   Bradley Sutton: So I want you guys to do is to go to YouTube search Helium 10, and make sure to hit this subscribe, the subscribe button right here at the top, and then make sure that you put notification on all, all notifications, so you know when we come out, weekly buzz and other articles. If you guys are watching a video right now, you're watching this on YouTube itself. Right under the actual video there's that subscribe button. Make sure to hit it, make sure you're subscribed, make sure it says all so that you get notified when we have new videos.   Bradley Sutton: All right, let's get into our training tip of the week, and this is something that could potentially save you thousands, if not tens of thousands, of dollars. That's how valuable this tip is, all right. So a lot of sellers have said oh man, you know, I wish that I could be able to know if I'm on the border, what am my packaging on the border of one of these size tier changes like bulky to standard size, you know, or small oversize to just regular oversize? If I'm on the border, that could actually mean a lot of dollars to your bottom line. How are you going to find that? Whether you have a Platinum Diamond, whatever plan you have, watch this, what I want everybody to do right after this video or you can do it right now If you're at home. Go to Helium 10 Alerts. So go to your Alerts page you can find it in the tool menu and it is under operations hit Alerts and then check out on the top left-hand side under the overview section.   Bradley Sutton: Normally, under overview, most sellers only have three lines of notifications talking about the buy box, monitoring slots et cetera. But if you have a package that is near the border of one of these size tiers, you are going to have a fourth line of Alerts here and it's going to say products with size tier automate optimization suggestions. And, as you can see, it says I've got three. So I click this button and it's going to take me to those suggestions. So take, you can see it says I've got three. So I click this button and it's going to take me to those suggestions. So take a look here. It took me to the place that has my dimensions and there's a big red little icon and then it's giving me a message. It says we've identified an opportunity to optimize your FBA fulfillment costs. By reducing the link by one inch, you could potentially move from size tier large bulky to large standard size, decreasing the FBA fulfillment costs from $10.75 to $7 per unit.   Bradley Sutton: Guys, do the math really quick. All right, let's that. That's a whopping $3 whopping. You see, I was thinking about the Whopper that I talked about in the weekly buzz earlier. Yeah, $3.75 is nothing to scoff at. Let's do some math here. All right, so let's say I sell of this product 15 units a day, and now on my next shipment or maybe I can just change the packaging now on my next package and I can go take that one inch off, and now I save $3.75. Let's say, what did I say? Let's just say I sell 15 units a day, all right, so $3.75 times 15 units a day, that means every day. This could mean $56.25 to my bottom line. Times that by 365.   Bradley Sutton: Guys, this one alert from Helium 10 has the potential to get me $20,000. I think that's a pretty valuable thing that Helium 10 is offering. So I hope everybody rushes to their computer. Check your Alerts page, check If you've got that size to your optimization active. Go to it and then take it. Take a look Now. You know some of you who are selling products that are a set size like because you have a mold or something it's not like. You can just snap your fingers and change your packaging. But, like me, if this is like one of my coffin shelves, I can easily redesign my next shipment where I can just shave off a half inch off the product itself and maybe shave it another half inch off of the packaging inside so I can cut down to that size All right. So that's a really cool update. Guys, make sure to go check that out. I said update. This has actually been around for about three or four months, but I think a lot of you guys didn't realize we had that. Now we are going to get into our Helium 10 new feature Alerts. Last week we had a huge one with a completely redesigned keyword tracker. This week I've got a lot of Adtomic updates for you.   Bradley Sutton: All right. The very first one is the ability for ad Adtomic now to run sponsored ad TV ads. The first one here is now ad Adtomic is pulling in your sponsored TV campaigns. You're gonna be able to make rules in Adtomic for your sponsored TV ads. You're going to be able to see the metrics and run analytics. All of you can see me like I don't have any sponsored TV ads. It’s going to be able to see the metrics and run analytics. All of you can see me like I don't have any sponsored TV ads. It says zero right here, but now it is importing. How many of you guys out there are using sponsored TV? I'm just very curious. I'm not sure you know, like how much this is being used out there in the Amazon world. Let me know, are you, are you running sponsored TV ads? Have it? Has it worked out? Well, regardless, if you're using Adtomic, you can now make AI rules and bid rules and a whole bunch of cool keyword harvesting and things from those campaigns directly from Adtomic.   Bradley Sutton: Another thing we have in Adtomic is a new way to make bid rules. Okay, so in Adtomic you can create your own custom rules. You can say, hey for my bid. If, if my ACOS is over this amount and my ROAS is less than this amount, then I want you to take the bid and increase it by 10%. Like it can get super, super granular and very complicated, and rightfully so. I mean PPC is complicated. A lot of our customers out there use a lot of different methods when they're running their PPC, so you need this level of granularity to be able to make rules. But other people you might be like overwhelmed, like oh man, I don't got time to make all these rules. I really like some templates and so you know, now we actually have some templates. So if you go to add Tomic and hit add new rule, you know you choose all the products that you want to apply to this rule. Now, on the right hand side, you choose all the products that you want to apply to this rule. Now on the right hand side you are going to see this button that says apply template. So hit that and you'll be able to choose from some bid templates that we have, and we're going to keep adding more.   Bradley Sutton: Like I believe destiny from better media is working on some. But, for example, you've got one that says high a cost bid window and current bid safety net set up to lower a cost. That sounds like a mouthful right there, but basically what it means is like hey, you're decreasing bids on a high a cost target within a window based on certain kinds of criteria. Another one is decrease when cost per click is lower than the bid. So some people are like hey, I've got a bid that's $4, but if I'm getting cost per click for only three, I don't need to be at $4. You know somebody could bid me up and I could lose money. I want to go decrease it. You can just create a rule and all the little algorithms instead of having to, you know, come up with the actual rule step by step, it's going to just automatically create that for you. You've got an automatic bid rule, that's that takes away your wasted spend who doesn't want that? And then another automatic or another template that increases your exposure and resets your bid if you feel that there's a certain you know threshold that you're not reaching.   Bradley Sutton: So a couple cool updates right there in Adtomic. Now, the coolest one of them all is now you can do paw. You can set a rule to pause your targets. Okay now, why is? Why is this important? I have rules in Adtomic where, for my search terms, I'm like, hey, if I get 20 orders and, by the way, guys, you know whether you use Adtomic or not this is something that I hope you guys are doing with your own software or with your own spreadsheets but basically I have rules where I'm like, hey, if I get 30 clicks or something like that 25 clicks, 30 clicks, 20 clicks with no sales I want to pause this or I want a negative match, right, this search term.   Bradley Sutton: Now, I've always suggested do not negative match search terms in your performance manual campaigns, your, your exact manual campaigns, because now it's going to look like you have a target active but you really pause it in the background and then you might be like, oh no, I can't add any more keywords or targets to this campaign, cause I have so many, but in actuality you had pause all of them. You just don't realize it. So because of that, now we have the ability to make a rule. Let me show you guys how to do that here in Adtomic. I can go in here and I can select a new rule type and I'm going to put bid. All right, I hit next. Now it's going to take me to the new bid rule page and then watch this from here.   Bradley Sutton: Under the criteria, I can say, hey, if my ACoS is greater than I don't know, 50%, right, I can actually now choose to pause targeting. All right, so it's going to pause the target. So if you've got an exact manual product targeting, ASIN targeting campaign, a keyword, exact campaign, and you've never and you always had to pause the targets manually, one by one, because you couldn't do a negative match or you didn't want to do a negative match. Now you can set that as a rule in your Adtomic. Another super cool thing that saves you tons of time and, as we know, time is money. So if you guys haven't gotten into Adtomic, make sure to go to h10.me/adtomic and sign up now, because this is what I use to manage all my campaigns and it's just getting better and better as we go along. All right, guys. That's it for this week. Thank you so much for and tuning in. We'll see you next week to see what's buzzing.