#307 - Leveraging User-Generated Content For Amazon Brand Growth with Ian Sells

#307 - Leveraging User-Generated Content For Amazon Brand Growth with Ian Sells Speaker 1: Welcome to episode 307 of the AM-PM Podcast. In this episode, my guest is Ian Sells. Ian has been selling on Amazon since before it was a popular thing to do. He goes back to 2012, I think it was, like so 10 years ago, he started actually selling On Amazon with a buddy of his ended up selling a couple businesses along the way and he's had a major influence in the space whether it be with a million-dollar sellers group or his latest adventure which is all about user-generated content which is one of the big hot topics right now on driving traffic and awareness to your brand on Amazon. We're gonna be talking about all of that and more in this episode. Enjoy it! Unknown Speaker: Welcome to the AM-PM Podcast. Welcome to the AM-PM Podcast, where we explore opportunities in e-commerce. We dream big and we discover what's working right now. Plus, this is the podcast where money never sleeps. Working around the clock in the AM and the PM. Are you ready for today's episode? I said, are you ready? Let's do this. Here's your host, Kevin King. Speaker 1: Ian Sells, welcome to the AM PM podcast. How are you doing, man? Speaker 2: I'm so good. Thanks for having me, Kevin. It's Friday, so I can't complain too much. Speaker 1: I know it's a Friday. People are, who knows when they're listening to this, but today it's a Friday and I know we both have obligations to our wives right after this podcast. So, but you know, we can't, we can't miss an opportunity to talk shop. So it's, it's, this is always, always a lot of fun. How are you doing, man? Speaker 2: I'm doing good. Yeah. Just busier than ever. And you know, a lot of irons in the fire and just trying to get around and help out sellers basically. Speaker 1: I think we met was about 20, I've known about you, I think I first knew about you like 2016, 2017 because I tried to join something called MDS, which stands for Million Dollar Sellers and I got rejected. I like went into there and I like tried to, back then I think it was even free. And there's this website, sign up, we're going to do this vetting call with you or something. And like I filled it out and then I was like, I got this email back saying, sorry, you're not allowed. You are like a teacher in the space and we only want sellers. And I was like, damn it, man, this looks like a pretty awesome group. And then I remember meeting you like a few months after that. I think we're in Orlando at a party in Orlando and I was like, that's the dude and you're so cool. You're like, so like, you're like, man, I'm just sorry, you know, we don't, we don't allow people that have courses or anything into the group. We want to keep all the content together. And then I remember meeting you and I think Eugene, I think might've been there too at this, it's like as a ClickFunnels event or something at some party that Athena was, was throwing or something at there. Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah. Speaker 1: There's a lot of cool people in that house, and I got to know you, and this is a pretty cool guy, man. So no hard feelings at all for not being allowed to join. Speaker 2: Totally. It was an interesting time. That was the Wild West of Amazon, right? Almost anything goes at that time. Getting reviews was easy as pie, right? Launching products was 99% off coupon codes. It was just like find any product as long as it had a 4X margin. It doesn't matter what it is. There was no brand needed. You just launch a product and you got some reviews and you're off to the races. I don't even think PPC was around then. Speaker 1: Yeah, there was just a little bit of PPC, but yeah, it was, everything was just, it was crazy. That was the Wild Wild West days. I remember those well. So you were, you got into this space, you were a seller, right? I mean, when did you start actually selling on Amazon? Speaker 2: So I actually started selling with a friend of mine in like 2012. Speaker 1: Oh, wow. Speaker 2: My background is in real estate, so I was doing that and I was just investing in a buddy's business from college. And we quickly blew it into something and we had a good product and we went to China together and all that stuff. But he was running mostly Amazon stuff and I was trying to help us get into retail. Because at the time, it was like, yeah, you need a patent, go into retail, raise money. That was the strategy back then. And we had even had some advisors that were like, oh, yeah, you need to do all these things and get your pitch deck and all that stuff. You know, I wish we didn't listen to that advice back then because it was like, that was the glory days. We were selling speakers and battery packs and solar chargers before Anchor was. Speaker 1: So were you selling before even Amazing came out? Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: So you were actually, you predated them. Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I wasn't, you know, helping other people at the time. I was just trying to find a new niche for myself and I liked the Amazon space and my buddy, you know, discovered it essentially. But I have a background in computer science and stuff from, you know, earlier years building websites and stuff. So it was right up my alley and I was able to make money while I was sleeping, which I couldn't do in my real estate career. Speaker 1: That's awesome. So are you still running that business now or have you moved on from that? Speaker 2: We sold that initial business and me and him split ways and started our own things. And he kept going. He now has a really nice agency called Sunken Stone. I'll give him a shout out there. And I started up MDS as a group just trying to learn from other people who are doing the same thing as me. And I started another brand, which is a fitness brand, which I later sold to Thrasio just before COVID. Speaker 1: Awesome. Have you started another brand since selling that one or are you just concentrating on the other stuff that we'll talk about? Speaker 2: Yeah, I've still got a couple of brands that I've had for like legacy and I love being a part of it and keeping up with what's going on. Plus, because of Million Dollar Sellers, I always have to know what's going on with our software that we're doing. So yeah, I've got a couple other brands and different niches that I had and they're just kind of cruising. They have lots of reviews and I do about one hour a week on it. So that's nice. Speaker 1: So MDS or Million Dollar Sellers is like this little kind of like secret group that a lot of people probably never heard of. They're listening to this podcast. So tell me how that came to be. How did that actually start and actually what is it now? Speaker 2: Yeah, well, we're not a secret group by any means. We just don't do any marketing or advertising and it's funny because A lot of the way we got members in the beginning was our members would be in MDS and they'd be also in Helium 10's group and also in Scott's group and also in every group out there, right? And they were contributing to both groups essentially. And then they would reference MDL. Yeah, we talked about an MDS in those other Facebook groups. And so people would be like, what's MDS? And then the members would tell other people about it. It was interesting because now a lot of people just go, well, I don't check any other groups. I just go to MDS. And that's kind of where we get the high level information. That's kind of where we share ideas. And so we don't have a lot of presence anymore, which is interesting. And so it's all referral only and everybody is pretty much referred in by somebody else. Speaker 1: So to get into it, you have to be doing what, seven figures? Speaker 2: Yes. Speaker 1: You have to go through like a vetting process. You can't be like an educator or a service provider or something like that. It's like for sellers only and for sellers only to share like high-level information with each other in like this private group, right? Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a bit more than that. We're really trying to build the most business professional e-commerce organization that has prestigious notoriety, that people respect. And we have now over 520 members. And collectively, the group does about $6 billion in revenue. So technically, MDS is the biggest aggregator of Amazon sellers out there. But we have a really unique process. We only let in 8 to 10 people a month. So we've never Open the floodgates. Even if we have a backlog, we make them wait another month just because we like to keep it very consistent. So we're not trying to grow super fast, but we interview everybody for core values and make sure they fit the mold. They go through two personal interviews and make sure that we understand the person and what their goals are. And then once you're in the community, we have events, we have investments, we have life group where people talk about depression or things are bothering them. And we just really stimulate engagement at a high level. Speaker 1: You're talking earlier about the old days of launching on Amazon. You go back to 2012. Let's just talk about the journey for those of people that maybe they started in 2019. They don't realize how different things selling was in 2012, 2015, 2016. Basically like from about 2012 to 2015, you could just find anything on Alibaba. Just stick your logo on it. You don't have to change anything and just throw it up on Amazon and head to the beach. Basically, is that pretty much fair to say back in those early days? Speaker 2: You call a couple of buddies, say, hey, buy this product, leave me a review, right? Friends and family, obviously, it was like easy, get 20 reviews. There was no ad, so it was all organic ranking. They were pushing listings that had good reviews, so you just really had to have a quality product and good customer service. And I had some background in Facebook ads and things like that. So we were able to drive some additional awareness. And it was off to the races. You were just selling. And it was growing. But you could see the competition coming. You could see it getting harder. And you could see Amazon making changes. And so that's why it was really important to have a network. Speaker 1: I remember around 2015, 2016, it was like you said. It was Zonblast or Viral Launch or I Love to Review. And you could get reviews in exchange for a product. It was fine. Remember, you could even write that? Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: Until I remember the date it's almost like you know certain dates in history you remember and I remember October 3rd 2016 that was the day that it was like D-Day I remember Manny calling me the AM PM podcast was his podcast back then because he was still Growing it and he was like dude. You got to come on. You got to come on you hear the news. I'm like No What happened? He said Amazon just banned incentivized reviews starting today effective immediately. We got to do like an emergency podcast And then everything started changing. It became a lot of black hat stuff. People were buying reports from people in Asia where you could actually buy reports of other listings and see their PPC and you could see all this backend stuff. Now a lot of it's public. Speaker 2: All the data leaks. Speaker 1: Yeah, all the data leaks and a lot of black hat and add to carts and just people were going crazy. And then something else came around that time to help people get the word out there about their product. It wasn't for reviews or anything like that, but it was something that I think the Million Dollar Seller group actually had a big role and they pulled together some resources and created something called RebateKey. Was that correct? Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a funny story because I just randomly had that idea. I used to work at Circuit City when I was a kid and I was selling like printers and stuff like that and you'd have a mail-in rebate. And I was driving to my office one day and I was like, wow, Amazon's going to block coupons. Of course, any 99% off coupon, they're going to be like, no rank juice. That makes no sense. Probably everything over 50%. And coupons was all the rage, right? We had Zon Jump, which was made by my partner, Leo, in my software stuff. And you have Sixth Leaf, and you had Viral Launch. They were just pumping coupons. And I just said, this can't last. Amazon's not making money. And in those days, we'd always say like, well, do what's best for Amazon, right? Because Amazon always thinks about themselves. And so it was like, well, they're not making money, so this is silly. And so I just posted a group like, what if we had a rebate program where we could like, you know, help shoppers discover our products and get a rebate, you know, for doing that, right? And taking a leap of faith on our new product. And I chalked it up to like, You know, how do consumers test new products, right? You go to the market or Costco, they're handing you out free samples, right? There's no way to do that on the internet. So how do you get a product in the hands of somebody so they can try and go, oh yeah, I like this product, I would recommend it to a friend. And so this is what rebate, this is actually why rebates exist and manufacturer rebates have been around forever. And it's pretty sad that Amazon changed their terms of service to go against like Literally, rebates exist everywhere. You can buy a car, you get a manufacturer's rebate. You can go buy wine and get a rebate at the market, a little hang tag. So, I think they crossed the line there, but I put up the idea and then all of a sudden, everyone's like, that's a great idea, let's do it. And within a day, we had raised $100,000 and started building it as a side project. And then it quickly became the biggest rebate platform out there, essentially. Speaker 1: And then, yeah, rebates have been around forever. I mean, I remember as a kid just collecting box tops from cereal. You know, and sending them in, you get a $5 coupon or something, or even, you know, sometimes you buy, I could be buying, Best Buy, I could be buying a TV and it says, if you buy the speakers with the TV, we'll send you a $50 gift card from Visa or whatever. So there's nothing wrong with rebates. And the way you guys were doing, it wasn't just Amazon, you could do it on Walmart, you could do it, you know, everywhere. This wasn't some, it's like, just, you know, way to skirt around some rule on Amazon or something. It was like, it was just rebates. There's nothing wrong with it. Speaker 2: And everybody was against it too. Everybody was saying, well, Coop, rebates don't work better. And eventually the tunes changed, right? And rebates became the de facto way. And the funny thing is that RebateKey was approved by Amazon to be in their app store as a rebate service. So they allowed it. And that was actually beneficial for us in the beginning because people who didn't know, you're always wondering, is this okay with Amazon? And so by being in the Amazon app store, it gave us the clout to say, hey, Amazon approved this, you guys can use it, and that really helped us take off a lot too. And so by Amazon changing terms of service and just yanking that out was pretty bad on their part. I mean, to this day, I wish they would just come back and allow the right type of rebates because what happened is rebates started getting abused by other people and using them for manipulation tactics and paying additional money on top of it and all that kind of stuff. So I get why they stopped it, but they didn't, I don't think, did it in the right way. Speaker 1: Yeah, there was a lot of knockoffs and it led to like a lot of bandy chat things and search find buys and all these other companies popping up that and some of them were skirting the good intent of rebates. Speaker 2: Right. Speaker 1: And that caused a lot of problems. So what happened? It just basically had, it was, it grew so big and then you just had to basically shut it down? Speaker 2: No, I mean, we never needed Amazon in the first place to operate. So RebitKey still exists. People still use it for different reasons. And, you know, service works just fine as well. Obviously, we experienced a giant drop in growth and things like that and, you know, took a big hit. But, you know, we're looking to revamp it eventually and bring it into something else because really the idea was to become the biggest deal site, coupon site for third-party merchants. You know, there's a Rakuten for enterprise level, but there's nothing that supports the Small and medium size and we have tons of consumers looking for great deals. So we still think that there's opportunity there. We're just, you know, waiting for the right time. But you know, I wish Amazon would reverse their decision on that with the rebates because We were doing everything right. We never talked about launching or we were a launch platform. We didn't allow reviews. We're just a third-party rebate service. We help people get great deals and tons of consumers would be like, oh man, this was the best Christmas I ever had because I got free toys or nearly free toys on rebate keys. Speaker 1: So how did that work? So if I was a seller, I would list a product. I would say, hey, I'm willing to give a rebate. Some people will try out my product, give me some feedback or whatever. I would list it, and then I would either offer some sort of 50% or 100% or whatever the number was. And then I would go buy the product. And then people would prove that I, you'd have to prove in some way that you bought the product. And then like 30 days later, I get a check in the mail for whatever the rebate was or something. Is that kind of? Speaker 2: That's exactly how it works, right? Yeah. We had the order ID from Amazon or Walmart or whatever is your key. You're basically your coupon key for the consumer. And so they put it on our platform. And when we had connection with Amazon, we use that to automatically check and make sure the order wasn't canceled or, you know, like some, some people try to scam, right? So they'll, they'll try to re return the products, you know, 30 days after they buy it to try and get the rebate and to get the cash and not have to be out, you know? And so we would catch those things and that's why we need that. We wanted that connection. So now you have to just do it manually. But that was the whole point was Amazon, we operate outside of it and it wasn't specifically designed for Amazon or for any purpose, just to provide an e-commerce rebate platform. Speaker 1: So people are always saying, you know, as we just talked about the way to launch products or the way to get visibility or the way to get people trying your products, whether it's Amazon or Walmart or whatever marketplace it is, has been changing. And so people are now asking, so Kevin, so if we can't Do search find buy or rebates. How are we supposed to launch our product or get some visibility on Amazon? And a lot of people are just ramping up their PPC. Some people are still doing things that they shouldn't be doing, I'm sure. And now Amazon has said, look, we like this outside traffic and we noticed a lot of sellers are using that. They're using Facebook, they're using social media, they're using other platforms to drive traffic. Over to us, why don't we even reward that, encourage that because these people might not buy the person's product that's doing the promotion but they might remember they need some toilet paper or they need something else and they'll buy it so why don't we give them a little kickback so they introduce the The 10% basically, the referral bonus for outside traffic. In the old days, people were like, I need to create a really nice video. I need to spend a lot of money on marketing to really have this polished, professional-looking commercial like you'd see on TV. And I think a lot of people are realizing, no, that's not actually what works. It's everyday people. It's everyday consumers. It's people like me and you that ...can relate to where it doesn't look like it's produced, it doesn't look like it's something the company's behind, and that's becoming a big way for people to actually promote themselves and to launch their brands and products. Some people call it UGC or user-generated content. That could be anything from a video on Instagram to a TikTok to whatever, and so you're kind of doing something in that space now. Can you talk about that a little bit? Speaker 2: Yeah, so we don't stop over here at building software, right? But yeah, we really saw the need and of course, I have a good ear of like what's going on in the market because of MDS. And, you know, and myself, obviously still a seller, but like one of the issues that we saw was how do you, how does a brand actually get their customers to give them pictures and videos of themselves using their products, right? You have, you sold, you know, many hundreds of thousands of units, but how many people are actually sending you an image going, Hey, I love this product, right? And giving you a testimonial. So, you know, what, what, what brands were doing was having a VA or a team member to like reaching out to people and TikTok on Instagram and trying to, you know, track them down and get them to, you know, do a video for you, whether it's in exchange for money or for a free product or what have you, depending on their influence. And then, you know, negotiating the contract and making payments. And also, another thing we could talk about is content rights. Who owns the content, right? So you have to have all these things in play to actually do it properly. And that's where we came up with the idea of Join Brands, which is our new platform that basically connects brands and content creators and micro-influencers to help scale up their content needs. And also, eventually, we're going to launch the TikTok module that will allow people to push their products out into TikTok. Speaker 1: There's been stuff like this for a while. There's Famebit was one of the early ones. I was using some of these in 2016, 2017 where I could go up and say, I'm willing to pay $200 and I want a beauty influencer to, I'm going to send you my makeup brush set that I'm selling. I want you to do a review of it and make a little video for me and send that to me that I can use in my social media or maybe go post it, you know, on different marketplaces or whatever. What is different about what you're doing now versus what's out there? There's hundreds of these platforms. Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot of them. A lot of them, the good ones, are focused on enterprise. So a company like Grin is one of our competitors, but they're like $3,000 a month to access. And they're not as simplistic as ours. What we've been able to do is really make a marketplace easy for both buyer and seller. We did it on RebateKey. Now we're doing it for joint brands. And basically, there is no cost to sign up with joint brands. There's no cost to create a campaign or to view the creators that apply to your campaign. You only pay for the job once a creator accepts your invite. So it's pretty cool how that works. And so you get to see the profiles and all the things in the past work that these creators have done. And then we also changed the game because we're basically setting Initial prices for content. So you can get images done for $15 an image or videos done for $60 a video. And that's like the base pricing, but we really make it really easy. And then that's why we don't really care necessarily how much following the creators have. Although we're finding that tons of creators have actually good followings and they want to help promote products on TikTok and Instagram essentially. Speaker 1: It's not big celebrities, like you just said. They're not people that have necessarily hundreds of thousands of followers. These are up-and-coming people that maybe want to have hundreds of thousands of followers at one point, or just people that just like trying out new products and like showing themselves on video, basically. They're everyday people, right? Speaker 2: Yeah, everyday people, but they do have followings is the interesting part, because content creation, basically there's 50 million people now that consider themselves content creators in the world. The content creation industry is basically at $100 billion industry right now. So this is according to Forbes, you can look it up. And it's just interesting how not many people are making full-time livings at it, but because it's hard. Because you have to find brands to work with, you have to negotiate rates, you have to do contracts, you have to get paid. You have to, you know, redo content. So it became very challenging for a lot of creators. And so our platform is making it very easy to make those connections and then eventually maybe a name your own price and other things where if you have a following, you know, let's say you have 5,000 average video views and you get to charge, you know, $50 for your video versus, you know, $10 or whatever to promote it, right? And if you have 100,000 following, then you can charge $100. It'll be based on their followings for that, but we have creators of all different types, not just people who are stay-at-home moms doing this. We advertise and sign up thousands of people who consider themselves content creators. Speaker 1: Are these people creating on YouTube or TikTok or Facebook or Instagram or is it all of them or is it really focused on one or two of those that are performing the best? Speaker 2: No, so we advertise for content creators and influencers and so we're getting all different types. And when the creators sign up, we do a pretty rigorous process there too. So there's a whole application process they go through. They actually have to take a picture of a product in their house and do a product selfie and hold it up as if they were doing it for a brand. And so we can see what they look like and how they present, how their camera looks, right? So they upload that. And if they pass that process, then they get access to our site. So you can't even access our site unless you've done a test project. And then after that, every different, we have six different types of, from video and video, like a testimonial video versus a product demo video, a selfie photo versus a lifestyle photo, right? So each one of those requires the creator to do another certification to get access to that job type. So, we constantly are making them actually do work and that's why we're having higher success and higher quality because if you're reaching out to a bunch of people and you're asking them to do something, hey, I'll send you a product, what happens? Half of them don't respond, half of them you send a product to, they don't respond and then you get a couple of contents back and they're not always that great. FameBit was good. I actually used that and had a really good video from there back in my old business But the creators were setting their own prices. So for now, we decided we'll be different by setting really low prices and letting the creators go up in tier. So there's tier one, tier two, tier three. So as they do jobs, they get reviews like they do on Upwork or Fiverr or whatnot. And every brand will leave a review for that creator. And so by being able to get higher reviews, they can get paid more. Speaker 1: So, how do you make sure that a bunch of brands don't have the same person doing videos for them? Speaker 2: So, the way it works is that you create a job as a brand, right, and take about five minutes, you fill out all the details, post the job up there. The creators see the job and they apply to your job. And so then you go log in and you go, oh wow, there's like 50 people that have applied to this and I get to look at all those creators' pictures and profiles and choose the ones that you want. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's on you. We have automatic mode where you can just say, I want 50 creators and it'll match instantly with 50 of them. But most people do manual where you actually get to say, okay, I want this person, that person. I like the way this person looks. I like the content this person makes. And the creators are making their own profiles as if it was their own sales page, essentially. So it's pretty unique in that way. And the other cool thing is that we enable creators to basically upsell brands. So what makes us different is that each creator, you might post an ad, I want a job for, I want a video, right? Well, the creator can upload 10 videos and you can pick one or 10. So they can keep selling you more videos on the content, which is cool. So you're kind of building your own shutterstock for your brand essentially. Speaker 1: So is this US only creators or are they all over the world? Speaker 2: U.S. only currently. Speaker 1: So to use this, you need to basically ideally be selling in the U.S. and that way you can easily ship them products maybe from Amazon or Walmart or from your own fulfillment or whatever. Speaker 2: Yeah, you can have them. We have two ways. You can ship the product to them right or you can do a reimbursement where they buy it on your Shopify store or whatever and then part of the job and they get reimbursed for that product purchase. Speaker 1: And how long does it take them to typically turn around a video? Speaker 2: Good question. So we have time limits. So when creators have it, they have a certain amount of time they have to deliver the video. And so it really speeds it along. It takes about maybe five to seven days from once they receive the product to get the video on average. Speaker 1: And they can do elaborate stuff. Some of this is not just like sit in your house in front of the mirror, but they could, you know, maybe it's a dog product. You need to take it out to the lake or the beach or something like that. You can do all kinds of cool settings and scenes, right? Speaker 2: I've seen people set up, go to the beach with the product, like do a whole picnic set up. I mean, they go above and beyond. It's pretty amazing what these creators are doing and it's because they take it seriously. They want a career as being content creators and they believe in it. I've seen people go to Walmart and buy an inflatable pool to test a pool product. And we caught these videos of people in their backyard in an inflatable pool. Or people with dogs or people that have kids, right? They're like, hey, I have a kid. I can do a baby product or I can do an afterbirth product. I saw a lady demonstrating a tummy wrap for her pregnant belly, right? So it's pretty cool to see and we have filters. You can search by age or by ethnicity and eventually we'll add in more filters like if you have a pet or a kid or whatnot. Speaker 1: So how's the IP and copyright stuff work on that? So do I own it? Can I do whatever I want or do I negotiate that with them? Or is it built into your contract on your side that says you guys own it and you're licensing it to me? How does that work? Speaker 2: Yeah, so we transfer the copyright to you once you purchase every picture or video you buy, you own the rights to it. So every other video up there you don't have any rights to except for the ones that you purchase, kind of like Shutterstock. And it's unrestricted rights. It's all part of our terms of service. So you don't have to do any negotiations or contracts. We already have it on both sides of the platform. And so that really simplifies that process. And you can do whatever you want as long as it's legal. You can't do illegal things and doctor up photos and silly stuff like that. You know, you can use it for your ads, your marketing. And this is an issue because I've heard of plenty of brands that have taken like content posted by creators or influencers like on Instagram, right? And then put on their website and then they get sued because you don't own the rights. Just because they're using your product doesn't mean you get rights to use that content. So you actually have to contact them, negotiate a rate, and this happens all the time. So you got to be really careful. Speaker 1: So why user-generated content? What are some advantages of that versus creating, hiring one of these video companies that are out there that do, you know, nice professional videos? Speaker 2: Well, there are a couple of reasons. As you talked about, creating these nice professional videos, it's like putting all your money on black. It's like you think you know what is going to work and it doesn't always work, right? Or you're trying to copy what some big brand did. Well, in the real world, and digital marketers know this, and people who do DC, they spend a lot of time testing ad creatives and different Types of ads for different types of audiences and trying to resonate different ways of doing things. So spending $20,000 on one giant commercial, unless it's for brand awareness, don't expect it to do a whole lot. You really got to scale up your content. We see brands now ordering 10 or 20 images of people holding their products in their hands so they can create a collage on their EBC or on their listing that says, oh, we have thousands of happy customers. A great example. From our platform, getting 10 images is only going to cost you $150, essentially, of actual creator money plus the products and our fee is only 10% to brands. It's really cool to watch how brands are using the content that they're getting. And getting a lot of content is actually really important to go viral and to figure out the ways to make your brand speak to the audiences that you're trying to target. Speaker 1: So where are some great places to use this content? So I'm like, okay, this sounds cool. I would like to have a video made. I just use it in my Facebook ad or do I use it in my Amazon post or what are some great areas and some tips where you would recommend people take this and actually use it where it can make a difference in their business? Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, we have nine ways just on Amazon alone that we've found that you can use it. So, in your listing, images, right? In your EBC, in your customer reviews, in your responses to questions. Right. There's also video ads. So we see people creating like three or four or five videos on our platform and then they'll create a compilation and turn that into a video ad on Amazon. I just heard that video is, you can also create a video ad that goes on like Firestick and in Twitch ads and all that stuff. Like you can run in-stream ads there. Now through Amazon platform, some people are getting access to this right now. So, video is super important. Amazon Post is another great one. This is a thing that we see countless sellers not taking advantage of, which is basically like utilizing the free traffic that you can get from Amazon Post. So, I can give out a nine-page PDF on the hacks on joinbrands.com, or our blog or something like that, or give it to Helium 10 to post up. Speaker 1: Great. That'd be great to share. Speaker 2: We'd happily share it. We have the SOPs already written out how to do it, essentially. So, I'm happy to share that. But sellers needed to realize that consumers are getting smarter and they want to buy products that they believe they can use, that it looks like them. There's trends going on in the fashion industry, right? Everything's changing. Kardashians are changing things on how people see themselves and stuff like that. So it's really important to like have real users because people understand that stock photos with an image slapped on top of it is just like, that's not real, right? And so by connecting and building that brand affinity and audience, people will actually, you know, really resonate with your brand. Speaker 1: I think one of the cool places you just breezed by just a second ago, and when you're saying some of those places you could use it, but a lot of people don't realize you could put video as the answer on the Q&A section on Amazon. You could do it yourself, but a lot of people, they don't want to go on camera, but you can answer your customers' questions there by using a user-generated video, like from someone like yourself and say, hey, look, I want to go to a service like yours, say, this is a question someone answered, here's the answer, or maybe you give your opinion as well, and have them record a video and post that there. And they can do amazing things to your conversion by having that video there. Speaker 2: Yeah, and it takes up a lot of space in there. So it really like stands out. So yeah, I mean, all those little, little hacks that, you know, you guys probably talk about the Billion Dollar Summit, like having good creative is important. And I can share some information because I'm working on a case study for TikTok on how to go viral. And I'm finding some pretty important stuff, you know, and I'm writing up a blog post right now for joint brands. But essentially what I've found is that it's luck to go viral. It's not really a, there's not really a straight strategy. It's about creating a ton of content and even the same content over and over and over and reposting it until it gets picked up at one point in time. So I have case studies of brands actually putting the same product video, like imagine taking a beach ball and you're going to different beaches and everything is the same. You're just taking the beach ball and going like this, but you can see the waves and the waves are different in every picture, right? Times 100 times on one product page, sorry, one TikTok page from a brand and one video does a million and a half views and the rest of them are doing 5,000 views. So it's very consistent that you'll just see so much content. I guess what I'm trying to say is it takes a lot of time and content to go viral. It's really hard to get lucky the first time you do it. Just like anything, right? It gets harder over time. It used to be easier, I'm sure. But now what I'm seeing is like, you just have to catch that right, right timing and right, you know, music or right, whatever, or right hashtag. But generally they're all the same. They're just changing. They're just adding video every day. And eventually the algorithm chooses yours to push out and see if it goes viral. Speaker 1: Yeah, we have a guest coming on next week on the AM-PM Podcast, Manuel Suarez, that's crushing it right now on viral videos. And he talks about exactly what you just said. He's like, it's luck. You know, there are some things you can do to influence that luck with the hashtags and some stuff like that. But it's like, just throw it out there. You just got to throw it out there. And you know, sometimes it might take 50 videos before one just goes crazy. And he said, but if that goes, that's all it takes is that one to go crazy and then you're off to the races. Speaker 2: Exactly, and I've seen some really cool brands and I'll have links to all that stuff, but it's just like, it just takes a lot of shots, you know, and that's really what it is. It's like you can't hit a home run on your first batting, right? Good for us, obviously, the results are coming out good for us because, hey, we can help you create 100 videos of your products, right? We can help you actually get creators to post on their TikTok. So that's the other thing is what I found was, you know, we all think that we need an influencer to do this, right? They're the ones that are going to get lucky for us because they already have a big following. You can go look at tons of TikTok creators. They don't all go viral either. And so what was cool to find was that actually brands were posting their own content and If they have a lot of content, some were going viral. Speaker 1: When these user-generated videos, when they're creating them, is it more education? Is it more entertainment? Is it a combination of the two? Is it more just the person needs to look like you? You need to be able to identify with them and relate to them. What are some of the four or five super important things? I remember back when I was doing a lot of influencer stuff in 2016, 2017, I always wanted people to show their face. Because if you just saw their hands touching the product, The conversion rate was less than if you saw a human face in the product. I used to have some influencers reshoot it. It was like a 32% difference in conversion. So what are some things that when you're working with these creators that you want to look for or hope that they do or when you're trying to select, like you said, you might have 50 of them applied to your job. What are some important things to keep in mind? Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's a good question. I'm not an expert. I don't do enough of that, right? I'm just doing some research on it. But the videos I've seen, some of them don't have people's faces in it, right? It's literally just an ice cream scoop, scooping ice cream, and like 100 videos of ice cream being scooped. And one goes viral because it's the color of the ice cream or because it was that right day and timing, right? And it's just like, people are pleased, but they're like, that's the smoothest ice cream scoop I've ever seen, you know? And so it's just like, it's so silly. But then there's ones where, you know, it's somebody being silly or funny or, you know, in TikTok marketing, they talk about having hooks, right? Or having something happen in screen. So like, while we're talking, a cat runs behind me in the first second. So everyone's like, what's going to happen next, right? So you have to have that hook that catches them. And so you can think about what your hook's going to be. And I think you just need to know what your goals are. Are you trying to build a... Are you trying to do too many things at one time? So I can imagine somebody signing up for Join Brands and creating a video campaign and going, I want a video testimony and I want to go viral. Well, no, those are two different types of videos. One, a viral video is probably most likely something showing how the product is working in an interesting way. I saw one of, there's a guy that sells these cooler cans, right? A bag for your cooler, sorry, a bag for your 12 pack of beer. And the video that went viral is him taking one of those rectangular cans of cases of beer, right? Or like the sparkling water. And he breaks it open on his knee, folds it in half and sticks it in there. So it was just him showing how to like put, you know, like you can't fit this rectangular thing in this like 12 pack holder, but he did because he broke it in half and put it in there. So it was just like, and that's what went viral. And I don't know if it was timing or, you know, the right video or the right audience, whatever, but the rest of his videos didn't. So it's really interesting. And you just, I think you need to know what your goals are and separate those things out and then, and then don't be too scripted with it, but maybe have a, if you have a clever idea, you can get these people to do it and then you can put that in your campaign. Speaker 1: And the power of viral is, it's amazing. I remember back in January of this year, I was doing some research for Product Savants, one of the companies that I have, and I came across a product that was just crushing it. And I'm like, what the heck? And it was transparent post-it notes, transparent post-it notes. And you look at the history on like Helium 10 from like November of last year, and you know, most of the sellers were doing about a thousand, $2,000 a month. You know, the top 10 sellers were, I think the top guy was like four or five grand a month or something like that. But then in January, people were doing like $300,000 a month of these transparent post-it notes. And I'm like, what the hell? You know, you're looking at Google Trends and doing all the stuff to try to figure this out. And it turns out, I just went to TikTok and searched for it. It was a massive viral thing on TikTok. And so all these sellers that weren't probably even trying to actually do anything, they were benefiting because people were seeing these transparent Post-it notes and going and just searching it on Amazon and Walmart and just buying the living crap out of them. So viral stuff and user-generated content, if done right, I think is the next big wave. But it is tricky. I mean, you can't control it. You can say, I'm going to run a Facebook ad and I'm going to spend $100 and I want to show it to this many people. And you'll either convert or you're not. On trying to go viral on TikTok or something like that, you don't have as much control. I mean, you can do some advertising on TikTok, but it's a different animal. But I think it is something that's going to be huge. And I think it's something that people need to be paying attention to. And it's going to be the next big way to actually get your name out there and get your brand out there. Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, that's that's just maximum brand awareness right there for, you know, not much money, right? But like, again, you got to be consistent. And if it costs you, you know, a couple videos a week or whatever, that's what you got to do and make some videos on your own. But like, it doesn't you don't have to have yourself in there. You don't have to, you know, have any set requirements. There's no framework and specific requirements to go viral. And you don't have to go viral. If you get 5,000 views, that's pretty good, right? Or 2,000. But you have to be consistent. And that's, I think, what I'm learning from my research is that it's just consistency. It doesn't happen right away. And so don't give up. Speaker 1: Have you seen the new AI stuff that they're doing now? There's a couple tools called Dolly, D-A-L-L-E, and another one called Mid Journey, and they do imagery, but there's someone I just saw on Twitter just yesterday, they did a case study where they took, it was a girl, and she was just walking down the street, and she was able to combine Dolly, With video and with some other animation tool that does a bunch of smoothing and she was able to have her shirt like change out like as she walked down the street. It looks so freaking real. It was all AI generated stuff and you could use that kind of stuff for like testing. You could use that kind of stuff for like it's almost like a video PICFU kind of thing. It was amazing what she did. I think that's the next thing that's going to happen with this user-generated content, where you're going to have someone that creates something, and you're going to then be able to put into this AI generator that will completely change out her shirt, or completely change out her hair, or completely change out everything. And you're going to be able to run split test instantly without the person having to create 20 different videos. One video and then test it in maybe 100, 200,000 different scenarios and find the one that works and run with it. I think that's where it's headed with this AI. It's pretty impressive stuff. Have you seen any of that at all? Speaker 2: Yeah, I actually just saw a post in MDS about creating images with AI. It's pretty cool. Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pretty cool stuff. So check that stuff out. We always have to be on the cutting edge. What's the next cool thing? Because you don't want to be the last guy. You want to be in the first. But you've got to be careful not to follow too many shiny objects, too. But there's a lot of cool stuff, and the technology is moving quickly. Right now. And e-commerce, as we talked about earlier, it's constantly changing. So you can't just say, this is how you launch. There's not just one way to launch products or one way to get your brand out there. It's constantly evolving. And that's what you have to pay attention to. And user-generated content, I think, is one of the big ones right now that's going to make a difference for a lot of people. Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. I mean, you got to keep at it and get videos and you can put a team together and go out there and find it yourself or you can sign up for Join Brands and start working with creators today. So it's pretty cool to be able to offer that service and in about 60 days, we're going to have our TikTok module integration where basically you'll be able to pay people to help promote your products through TikTok. Speaker 1: So what do you think is the biggest channel out there right now for this? Is it TikTok? Speaker 2: I think that's the step one. That'll be Instagram. We're going to go after all the platforms, so we'll just have a format for each one like TikTok, Twitter. Instagram, YouTube, YouTube Shorts. So there's just a lot of opportunity there. I want to eventually be able to be a platform where people can run ad campaigns through influencers on a regular basis on our platform. So imagine having a creator that you contract with for four posts a month. So once a week, they're posting about your product. And you can run that through joint brands as an opportunity. Similar to hiring an Amazon Influencer, which we also have Amazon Live Influencers on the platform too. So we're kind of going at all angles. We're not focused on just Amazon. This platform has legs way beyond just creating content. Joining brands is synergistic with having your best customers wanting to represent you And share that, you know, share their love for your brand, right? I imagine like a Starbucks being able to go on our platform and getting, you know, buying photos of people at Starbucks with their stuff. So instead of posting on Instagram where they can't buy it, post it on Join Brands where a big brand can actually, you know, purchase it. Speaker 1: Awesome. Well, Ian, I really appreciate you coming on today and sharing and good luck with everything that you're working on. It's always good stuff and always nice to speak with you. Speaker 2: Yeah, I really appreciate it too, Kevin, and I'm super impressed with what you've been able to achieve over the years and watching you, you know, grow and building that relationship with each other. So it's awesome. Speaker 1: Awesome, man. Well, I'm sure I'll be seeing you at some event or someplace soon. Yeah, for sure. Take care, man. Speaker 2: Have a good one. Bye. Speaker 1: Ian's really onto something there with the user-generated content and what he's trying to do to help out sellers generate that kind of content and really get some brand awareness out there. If you like what he had to say, you've got to tune in to next week's episode of the AM-PM Podcast because my guest is using this exact strategy with user-generated content to generate $75 million per year in business on one of his brands. It's amazing and he's going to be talking about the four different places you got to do it, what you got to do to get stuff to go viral, some very actionable stuff. So don't miss next week's episode of the AM PM podcast. We're going to extend on this topic and really go into the weeds on it. It's a, it's a great episode. You cannot afford to miss. Those of you who are at or just left the Sail and Scale Summit in Las Vegas, I hope you had a great time and made some good connections. And don't forget, Helium 10 is here for you with a Freedom Ticket, with Helium 10 Elite, and with all the greatest tools in the space. One last thing before we go is the little words of wisdom I like to leave you with as a parting shot. And this week, here it is. Sinners often speak the truth. And saints have led people astray. Always examine what is said, not the one who says it. Remember, sinners often speak the truth, and saints have often led people astray. Always examine what is said, not the one who says it. We'll see you again next week.