#444 - Amazon’s Backend Battles—A Deep Dive & Fix with Vanessa Hung

#444 - Amazon’s Backend Battles—A Deep Dive & Fix with Vanessa Hung Speaker 1: Welcome to episode 444, that's right, 444 of the AM-PM Podcast. This week, my guest is none other than Vanessa Hung. Vanessa is a good friend of mine. She's also one of the smartest people in the entire Amazon selling ecosystem. She's a master when it comes to flat files and understanding how to optimize your listings on Amazon. On the backside, on the non-sexy part of things. She's also an expert in AI, but in this talk, we really don't talk a whole lot about AI because there's not much point in you really knowing how to use Amazon's backend and everything on AI if you don't have the fundamentals right. But we talk about some of the fundamentals and some of the things that you need to make sure you're doing when it comes to your Amazon listing and the backend or the flat file aspect of things. It's a very interesting talk. We geek out on a lot of cool stuff. I think you're going to learn a lot. Enjoy this episode with Vanessa. 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: Holy cow. I've got the goddess of Amazon on AM PM podcast, Vanessa Hung. How are you doing? Speaker 2: Great. I love that. Before it was queen, now it's a goddess. Well, I don't know how can I go higher than that. Speaker 1: The goddess is the next level up, right? Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Speaker 1: Queen's on the ground. You're ethereal. You're up in the sky. You're overseeing everybody. I always remember the first time I ever knew, I never knew your name. I remember, I think it was 2020. At the end of 2020, Paul Barron messaged me, Kevin, right around Christmas time, Kevin, you got to get on this new app, this new thing that's going on. Everybody's on it, but you need an invite. I'm like, what is it? It's this thing called Clubhouse. I'm like, okay, send me an invite. So he invites me and I get on there and then For like the next year, it seemed like anybody in the Amazon industry that was sitting around bored because we couldn't do anything, we couldn't go to events, we were all on Clubhouse. I remember seeing this one little icon of this pretty Latina girl on there. I was like, who is this? And you hardly ever said anything for a while, but you were always on like every important room, always like in there. I was like, is this some VA? Who is this? And now look, now we're good friends. Now we hang out all the time. Now we do. Who would have known? Speaker 2: That's crazy. I always think about those years and I remember, so I was already in the Amazon space when I joined Clubhouse, but I didn't know that there was a whole industry around, or I guess not only industry, but also a bunch of people that get together to share not only insights, but also talk shop or have a bunch of software or things like that. That to me was eye-opening. And that was the place where I got started in this kind of like circuit in the industry, because that's where I got my first client outside of my little bubble in Miami. Like I had clients in Miami, but there were people that knew me. And then from there to Prosper to, you know, now sitting here, like, In Austin, it's just like crazy. It's been a wild ride. Speaker 1: You've been involved with Amazon, so 2020 is when you said you kind of found out there's a whole new, another world out there. When did you start actually messing around with Amazon? Because you're originally from Venezuela, right? Then you came here. Can you walk me through that story, how you got here and how you ended up doing this Amazon stuff? Speaker 2: Yeah, so if I need to go back to the first time that I heard about Amazon FBA was back in 2015 when I was building two brands in Venezuela. So my brand is a balance board brand and I was thinking, okay, now that I'm producing this, this is amazing. It's going well, the business, now I want to launch on Amazon and maybe send it to the US. That was kind of the dream, right? So I started watching a bunch of people in YouTube that they did exactly that, like the dropshipping model pretty much. It's like, oh yeah, you sell it and then you dropship it. And that's what I thought of, okay, I'm going to do that with my brand. And I learned all of the things, like watch all of the videos, thousands and thousands of hours of content until it got to a point where it's like, okay, let's just create the Seller Central account. And I couldn't do it back then because first, business in Venezuela was not allowed to have an Amazon account. I think that have changed. I'm not sure. So I need an LLC. And I'm like, okay, how can I get that? And I couldn't figure that out. So that was kind of my dream. I guess entrepreneurship in the FBA thing, that's how it ended back in 2015. Fast forward, I did what I did back in Venezuela. I was studying, I was building brands, doing all of that, then moved to the US in 2017 and I knew about it. I mean, I knew about the concept, but that wasn't on my mind until I got an interview to work at a company that have multiple stores, like physical retail stores, sell clothing. And at one point they are like, yeah, we want to start selling online. We want to do Amazon. And I'm like, yeah, for sure. Amazon FBA. And that line, like Amazon FBA, that's what got me the job pretty well. I guess I had it before that, but it was just like the cherry on top of like, oh, she knows what she's doing. In full transparency, I knew what I learned from the YouTube videos back in 2015. Probably some of those things were obsolete. Back in 2017, the dropshipping model was kind of buying. Amazon was getting strict on those type of things. So not a lot of the things that I learned apply to my job by the time. But then Yeah, that's what I did. So I did it for three years and it was just me in an office, like kind of in a very tiny, tiny office full surrounded of a lot of products, a lot of in the clothing and accessories category. And it was just me doing it. And I didn't know there was other people kind of in my position. I thought that my thing was very unique. I don't know why us humans think that Our problems or our issues or our like, I don't know, I guess state are unique to us. It's like not really that unique. I was like along with millions and millions of sellers doing the exact same thing. And yeah, we scale that business to seven figures in very little like it was It took me nine months to get the first account. Then we had three accounts because they divided on different brands and different stuff. So I started going to events in South Florida, met a bunch of people in the community there in the ecosystem and then, you know, start getting like some freelancing and consulting gigs. And that's when pandemic happened. Everybody was in their house and then everybody was in Clubhouse. And I met everybody there. And to me, when I was starting, When I learn a little bit by going to these events, I'm like, oh, wow, Kevin K. Unknown Speaker: Oh my God. Speaker 2: And then the other person is like, oh, well, this guru is like these people that know so, so, so much. So for a long time, you know, Not that I'm not doing it right now, but I look up to you for a bunch of the things that you've done and it's so crazy how the world or the, I don't know, life works that now we get to hang out. So I'm like, if Vanessa from 2020 sees me now, she'll be like, wow. Unknown Speaker: You made it. Speaker 1: You made it. You watched the Superbowl at my house. You've made it. Speaker 2: Exactly. Exactly. So yeah, it's funny. And yeah, a lot of it, Yeah, I don't know if this is super relevant, but. I think we, sometimes as entrepreneurs, we kind of separate ourselves a lot from those heroes or those people that we look up to. And, and at the end of the day, they're not that far. It's crazy. Like if you put it in perspective, it's not that hard. Um, or, or not, not to say that the journey is not hard and you don't need to go like do a bunch of things, but it's just like, yeah, they're just another human and they are, yeah, I mean, reachable, I guess. I don't know. That makes sense. Speaker 1: Yeah, they're real. I know. I agree with you. I've never been starstruck by celebrities. Some people are like, oh my God, I got to meet so-and-so, their favorite singer or their favorite athlete or their favorite whatever. I got to take a picture with them. I could care less. They're just, I couldn't care less. I mean, they're just regular people. I've been, I've been in a hotel room with Michael Jordan. I've been in places with John Elway. I've been in, you know, all these things. And to me, they're just normal people. So that's part for me, you know, when I go to events, because like what you said, a lot of times people, they've been watching me for years and you forget sometimes how many people you reach and how many lives sometimes you change. I've had a girl, Crying on a zoom call on a group zoom call because I was on the call and she was like couldn't just couldn't believe it Which is kind of cool. And but it's also It's also a responsibility and then people at events they come up and want to take selfies with me Which is which is totally cool, too Just like the Prosper show last month, I don't know how many selfies and stuff that took at that in the MDS show. But you forget sometimes when we're sitting here behind the computer how many lives we're impacting, how many businesses we're affecting. And that goes for you too. I mean, because now you've become someone that there's a lot of people that highly respect you and are following you and you and your companies have really changed their trajectory and their path or helped them get out of problems. And it's a cool position to be in but it's also a lot of responsibility. Speaker 2: A hundred percent. It's like the hero has that responsibility so a lot of A lot of our gifts come with that responsibility. And it's funny, I remember the first time that I realized that I had it, that I realized that I'm like, oh, wow, people are actually watching. It was at Accelerate in 2021. A lady came to me and said, are you Vanessa? And I'm like, yeah. And then she's like, I've been looking at you. And I will say that it's very inspiring because you're opening up the path for women in this industry. That just hit me so hard. It's like, oh, wow. So I guess when you do that, I took my work more seriously. Not that I'm not taking it seriously, but my, I guess, outreach and my things that I put out have way more weight than before. It was just me having fun and educating people. Now it's just like, okay, I pay attention. Speaker 1: For a long time, especially back in 2015 when I started doing the FBA model, I've been doing Amazon since 2001, but when I got into this kind of game that we're playing now with the FBA model, it was all dudes and there's still some groups out there just a bunch of bros and there's a lot of little masterminds that are just a bunch of bros and it's a male-dominated industry. You go to pretty much any Amazon-oriented event except for Titan, It's almost 80%, 90% dudes, which is good for a woman, I guess. But there's a lot of smart women in this space, but a lot of them either intimidated or they don't want to come forward. It was a struggle in the beginning for me to get speakers for my Billion Dollar Seller Summits that were women. But you've kind of led that way, but you're even more unique because usually the women are talking about the more glamorous things, more talking about the marketing and the sexy packaging and this kind of stuff versus you're like Down there geeking out on flat files and Excel files and like just like how does Rufus how does Rufus bark? Yeah, I want to know exactly you know, what did he what treat did he eat to make him bark up this? These keywords. I mean you're like down there in the In the weeds and there's not a lot of women that are, there's a lot of women that are probably doing this behind the scenes, but not that are actually educated. And you're kind of on the cutting edge of that, I would say, as you're like the flat file queen or whatever. How did that evolve? Have you always been into tech stuff or you always liked coding or programming or where does that come from? Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. I mean, it comes from the, I don't know, I cannot, it's just, I was little and I already had that thing. Like I wanted to understand what, how things work, like the backend. Speaker 1: Were you one of those little girls that was like taking apart your toys, just been putting them back together to see how the little wheels inside worked and all that kind of stuff? Speaker 2: Not that much. Like I, I wasn't that, practical, like I was in like this, like, yeah, pulling things apart to make it how it work. But I paid attention to those things. So I grew up with cousins. So they were, they were the ones that broke things apart. And I was just observing how things work. Like, yeah, I was not necessarily doing it. So, yeah, I guess I was never on the sexy glamorous things. I'm like, yeah, I don't think so. I'm more like, Practical, Excel. I like those things. And it's funny because we normally attach those two things to, you know, maybe women are the ones that are doing the marketing and the design and the sexy things. And then, you know, the world of numbers are for men. And I don't I don't believe that. And, you know, growing up, that was a challenge because the things that I like were the same things that my cousins like. And it's just like, no, Vanessa, go and play Barbies. And I'm like, no, no, I want to build this car with you, you know? It's like, no, we're building this thing together. So yeah, it's no different. I don't think my personality has changed. It's just the tools that I have right now at my disposal are like, okay, more interesting, I guess. And yeah, that's how It played out. It's so funny because people sometimes talk to me and say like, oh yeah, you wanted to do flat files. Did you know that you were going to go into Amazon and learn this? And I'm like, I have no clue. I had no clue. It was just an opportunity that was presented and then I took it and now I'm in love with the backend. So yeah, it's not It's not that different, I guess, just different stages of life. Speaker 1: So how did that evolve? Were you doing flat file stuff when you're kind of just keeping your head down before you knew there was this world for this clothing company and just figuring stuff out when you're having your own issues? Is that where it evolved and you just became a master at it? Or how did you get this unique talent that a lot of people don't have? Speaker 2: I guess, obviously, I was not intimidated by Excel in any way. So I went to school to study economics and, you know, you do a lot of Excel and accounting and things like that. So to me, that was fine. And then when I was the e-commerce manager for this company, I was pretty much doing everything. I was making the list of what we needed to order, putting together the inventory and putting together the catalog. And that's where I learned and I went super deep on this because These guys had a massive catalog. We're talking thousands and thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of SKUs because they sell clothing, they sell variations, different colors, different sizes, like all of the dance with that. So the only way to manage a catalog like that is to get good at flat files. There is no other way, honestly. There is no other way to manage a catalog that big without using flat files. So it's either, if I want to get good at my job, I have to get good at flat files, And it was like hours and I guess thousands of hours in a span of years, just doing it, right? And once you do it enough, you get the principles of, oh, this is what I'm going to do now. And you start understanding, ultimately, that flat files are a system, right? And you want to I guess play the system. So there are ways to do things faster, do it better, like make things to go through when they don't supposed to go through. Like there is all of these little hacks and tips and tricks that you only gonna find out if you are doing it. So yeah, I mean, that's how we evolved. And to that, then from the company, from that job, then to launching my own brand and then to manage catalogs for other people. And that was the biggest thing for me, the biggest realization, Kevin, was at the point when I got into the industry, like officially, like the debut of understanding how this role, I learned that there's nobody talking about the things that I knew. Nobody talking about the, and if I think about it, I remember in trying to look in the internet for answers for things that I, issues that I have, error codes that I have, there was nothing. Absolutely nothing. And I remember back then, the people that knew flat files were all like gatekeepers of this information. They were like, oh no, this is our hack and we're not gonna share it and this is a private community and we are not gonna tell you the things. And I'm like, no, no, no. I'm going to talk about it and I'm going to teach people how to. And right now I feel that flat files are yes, unglamorous, but I don't think there are a secret anymore or it's not a mystery. It's pretty much a very straightforward. And I hope not only what I've done with my content, but also other people getting like to say like, Oh yeah, this is not that sexy. This is not that unsexy. Then let's go out there and give the information. It's way more accessible than it was before. So I'm proud of being part of that movement. And yeah, for everybody out there, you should leverage those tools because they are available. Speaker 1: For those listening, there are some people listening, they don't understand. What are you talking about? Flat files? What is that? A piece of paper? Can you explain what a flat file is? Just give a couple examples of some of the things you can do with a flat file that you cannot do just typing into the GUI or the graphical user interface that most people know as Seller Central when they go in there and update their photos or they update their bullets. Can you explain what they are and a few of the things that you can do maybe just to make it clear for everybody the difference? Speaker 2: Yeah, so flatfiles are an Excel sheet template that Amazon gives you with the structure of what a listing needs to have. And those are attributes, right? The attribute like title, bullet points, description, those are attributes. And some of them are in the front end, in the UI, in Seller Central, you see it. And some of them are not there. And that is the biggest opportunity that flat files give you, right? So it's an Excel sheet with a bunch of columns. Each column is an attribute and you are allowed to put information in all of the attributes that are presented to you for a specific category. There is one thing, probably the most powerful for storing information and things like that, which is the category listing report. That is a file that is available to you in Seller Central. If you go to your inventory reports, there is a drop-down menu and you should see there the category listing report. If you don't see it, then you need to open a case and ask Amazon to allow you to download it. And that is all of your catalog information. We're talking on every single input that you have put in all of your SKUs, all of your listings. Speaker 1: Like a blueprint, like a master blueprint. Speaker 2: Exactly. So that is the first one. You should probably start working with just as a matter of safety. It's just downloading that and now you know that you have a backup for your data. Because the moment something happens on Amazon, which is pretty common, then things go down and then you lose your data, you lose your information. But if you have the flat file, the category listing report, then you're good. You can use that to bring your things up and have all of the information. Right now, which is something interesting and I honestly wish that I could speak more about it. The thing is that Amazon hasn't like really They give us a lot of information, which they never do, but they integrated AI into the flat file world. So if you ever hear one of my interviews or podcasts before, you probably know that I'm very big into using the category listing report to update attributes, to make changes, things like that. Right now, like we're talking 2025, The category listing report is kind of useless as a template itself. It's good to have the story and the information, but to use it to make changes is not that good, just because Amazon is changing the structure of the file. So the attributes look different. The columns look different. Even though it's the same information, it looks different. So I believe that at one point, the category listing report might be a legacy file, which like throughout the years, there are many, many legacy files. There are many files that I have. That are from 2018 that they don't really work anymore just because that's a different structure and they have a new one and the new one is with AI. Right now Amazon is even saying just give us your information in an Excel. You don't need to tell us what is what and we'll put it together and piece it together with AI. Which to me, it's ultra exciting. But the state of the art of the technology right now is not even close to what they say that it can do. And I'm super big into AI, so I think the worst day for AI is today. Tomorrow it will be better and the next day it will be better. So right now that doesn't work, but in the future, maybe we'll have an opportunity for sellers to interact with these complex files Just very simply just putting the information in their own way, in their own format without much intricate columns and things that Amazon have. Speaker 1: So there's a lot more information, a lot more columns. Sometimes there's hundreds of columns of data that you can fill out that you don't see if you're just using the traditional sellercentral.com, right? Speaker 2: Correct. Speaker 1: And the new AI and the new Rufus and that's all used in indexing and there's advantages to being in there. For two reasons, one to help you potentially rank better and show up more and also to keep your competitors by filling that stuff out from someone from overriding it. Can you talk about those two things a little bit? Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So when you download the file, and right now the category listing report is a perfect example, but if you are like, oh yeah, this sounds interesting, I want to start using it for my catalog management or doing all of the things that we're going to talk about, you should use the category-specific template. A category-specific template is a template that is about your category. So as the name, it's very obvious, right? So if you're selling pet supplies, you're going to have a very different file than somebody that's selling electronics. And the way it's different is that those columns that you're going to see have different names. So for example, in electronics, you will see model number, electric circuit, format, format, whatever, like all of those things. But for pet supplies, you will see dog breed or target, you know, target animal or, you know, color and shape, things like that, that are more suitable for that category. And when you account for that, again, you see hundreds of different columns. Those are different attributes. And if you count them down, most of them are not in seller central or a lot of them, a lot of them, not most, but a lot of them are not in seller central. And that's a hidden opportunity. That means that if that is in your category specific file, it's real estate that you can use to put information about your product, right? So let's say that in the front end in Seller Central, you don't see form type and you want to use that. You want to say, well, the form is as a leash or long or whatever that is for your specific product, right? And that leveraged, obviously, the real estate that you have in the back end and helps those systems to rank you better. In the past, and this is something very interesting, Kevin, and I think I have shifted a little bit from teaching a lot of the hacks on getting the most real estate. In the past, I'll say if you listen to some of the stuff, I'll say use every single attribute possible and fill it out with information because of two things. First, so there are three options that could happen, right? First option is that you put information and that shows in the front end in your Pro Detail page, right? That's fine. It's perfect. That's what you want. That's, for example, the title and the bullet points. You put information, it shows up. Speaker 1: Great. Speaker 2: The second option is you put information and that doesn't show up in the front end, meaning there is no change in the Pro Detail page, but that attribute is helping you to rank better, right? So, for example, you put a keyword in the backend, like in the search terms, and that keyword helps you rank, right? We already know that ranking system of day nine. That's perfect. You also want that. And then the other option is attributes that are not gonna show up in the front end in your detail page and they're not gonna help you rank. Regardless, you should put information there because even though they don't help you rank, they're attached to the information on your listing. So if somebody wants to hijack you and comes to the back end of your listing and put something, let's say, And I've had many, many sellers that come to me with this issue that, oh, now I have pesticide claims or sexual claims or whatever, drug claims in some attributes that were not relevant, that were not helping you index, that are not showing the front end, but my competitor put nasty keywords there. Therefore, my listing will go down. So that is one thing that if you are using flat files, you will see all of the space you have and then you need to fill it out with information. But here's the caveat, right? Here's where AI have changed the game with flat files as well. It's because you shouldn't put irrelevant information that could drive the AI or, yeah, Give the AI a different direction for what your product is or something different. For example, and this is a very common one, and it's probably from all of the history of hijackers that I've seen, this is the one that they go to. It's called Batteries Required, right? So it's like batteries, and then if they're required, yes or no, you put yes or no, but then there's other columns. When those batteries are required, you need to explain what the battery is. So what people do, even though you put no, it's not required, people can still fill out things about the battery. And that's where they put the nasty keywords. Right now, like, or the way to protect it is just to put NA or things like that, not applicable or things like no, no, no. So you protect those spaces. But that can also trigger something with the AI, which is like, you don't want to signal the AI that you have batteries. So it's kind of like a trade here of what is the risk that I'm willing to take versus what is the misinformation that I'm going to put in the flat file to signal the AI something that my product is not, right? So I am testing right now that I like balance to see where you stand. But for now, the biggest ones that I protect is batteries, pesticide. That's the one that's super easy. And the reason why those are easy to hijack is if your products are in FBA and if you don't have that information, anybody that is contributing to the listing will be able to put information there. So you want to protect those. And every other thing that you see like, oh, this is empty. I should fill it out, but it's not relevant, like completely not relevant or irrelevant to your product. I'm not putting information right now just because the AI might see it as a signal for something else. So now I think about the attributes in the backend of a list or of a template of a flat file as the factors that are influencing the AI. So yeah, the strategy is changing a little bit. You should still protect it, and those are the places. If you go to a flat file, those are also, the columns are color-coded. The color that is purple in most categories, like purple-brownish, that is the compliance section. Compliance should always be filled out with information so you protect yourself from people hijacking you. Those are very easy to hijack if you don't have information there. Speaker 1: So if I leave one of those fields empty, I don't know, materials or something, or something that's not relevant for the AI, Can someone still come in there and put a nasty word or put a sexual toy and kind of manipulate me or get the listing shut down? Or are they not able to change those? And maybe you can talk about the levels of permissions, how it's open and then the brand has permission and the catalog team can talk about the levels and one cannot overwrite the other. And sometimes if a change doesn't happen, it's because it's kind of locked by someone with a higher level permission that's got a lock on it. Can you talk about that as well? Speaker 2: I love this conversation. We're getting deep into this. Okay, so the first part of the question that you mentioned, what if I leave material empty? Well, I will say that, and I know this is just an example, but I say material, it's something that everybody should have. Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a bad example. Speaker 2: But something, yeah, something for example. Speaker 1: There's probably a better one. Speaker 2: I know there is one that's called form type. Speaker 1: Yeah, that's, yeah. Speaker 2: It's like, what is form type? So, well, for the supplement category, that is like capsules or soft gels or things like that. That's the form of the supplement. But there are categories that have the form type and you're like, well, but this is like, I don't know, a toy or something in the beauty space where it's like, okay. Speaker 1: You want to look at the catalog tree and sometimes get suggestions. If you open the catalog tree file, sometimes for these weird fields, you're like form type, what the hell does Amazon want in form type? In some cases you download the catalog, the catalog tree report. Keepa uses that. A bunch of people use that. You can actually see suggested values or it might actually be one of the, tabs down there now on the spreadsheet. Speaker 2: Valid values. Speaker 1: Yeah. Valid values. Speaker 2: It is the tab there. Yeah. You, in the, In the category tree or the browse tree guide, that's how it's called. Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. I can't remember the name. Speaker 2: I don't think there's valid values. There might be some examples, but not all of them. Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. Speaker 2: So that is the difference. So there are some attributes that you will see in a template that are, I will call it open or close. Open means that you can put whatever you want there. You can write, this is the best gift ever, whatever, you know. And the closed ones are the drop down menu where you cannot say anything that is outside of the drop down menu. For example. Speaker 1: Various required, yes or no? Speaker 2: Yeah, various required. Yeah, I'm trying to think about one. For example, audiences, target audience or season. Season is one that is so annoying because it's like a drop-down menu, but sometimes it's like, yeah, but my season is not here, you know? So those are the ones, yeah. Those are the ones, the different type of files, sorry, the attributes, right? Then it comes back to, okay, I'm contributing, I'm putting all of the information that's relevant for my product, but I'm leaving some things empty. When you are a Brand Register owner, meaning you have your trademark and you have Brand Registry access, You have a level of contributions that prevent other people from contributing to your listing. Other people that are at the same level like other brand owners that have the ownership of different brands and also people that are just resellers. That's why the majority of brands are protected this way because the resellers cannot come in and change the title. That's called a catalog contribution privilege, right? So you're a level as a Brand Registry owner. Speaker 1: The base level is anybody can make a change, any seller. But then if you go the next level up, basically, is if I get brand registered, then that protects me against the people below me from making changes. So some random dude that's drop shipping my product or that's reselling it can't go in there and change the title. Is that correct? Am I explaining that correctly? Speaker 2: Yeah, that has changed a little bit. So the bottom is, so they're very, very, very low at the pyramid. Like I don't even know how many points they have. It's the people that don't have a professional account. Like, they cannot do anything, right? Like, they can barely create their listings. And I don't know anybody that have that. Speaker 1: That's 50 cents per thing. Speaker 2: Yeah, $1 per. Speaker 1: Or $1, whatever it is now. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 2: Yeah. $1 per order. And then there's other people that have the professional account. Those are anybody that is doing private label without a trademark or they're doing the reselling model, right? Those people have in their contribution pyramid, which is like a point-based system, that they have 39 points. With 39 points, you can create listings for certain things, not for everything. For example, a reseller cannot create a Nike listing, for example, or an Adidas or whatever, whatever other brand that you can think about because those brands are protected, right? Speaker 1: They're gated, right? Speaker 2: Yeah, not only gated, but sometimes even if the brand is not gated, because gating only happens for big, big brands, the system is not letting random sellers just create things. Speaker 1: I heard it's like 585 or maybe it's, is it 585? Some big number of like, they're on like a list. They might not be necessarily gated, but they're on a list of like, you need special. Speaker 2: And right now it's even worse. So that is kind of the big brand name protection thing. But right now if you're a reseller, or I wouldn't say reseller because not everybody that is in that tier is a reseller, but somebody that doesn't have a trademark and you want to create a listing, you will encounter in every single moment that you try to create a listing for a new brand, an error call or error number 8541. The AeroCode A541 is a new code. Well, it's not new, but it's a new enforcement that Amazon is putting for people that are creating new things in the catalog. So right now, if you want to create something, if you're not a brand owner and you want to create a listing, you will need to prove that first you have the product. So they're going to ask you for pictures of the real product, like the physical product. You cannot send renders. And they will ask you like, what is your relationship with the brand? So you might say like, oh, this is my new private label, but I don't have a trademark yet. Or you will say like, oh, I'm a reseller for this brand. And this is my letter. And that is the way to overcome the 8541 error. So everybody that is in that tier, Kevin, right now, it's going through that error. So they cannot even create things, let alone changing things. So for listings that are already created, that have been in the catalog for a long time, it's very hard for them to change information. And that's what, I guess, the biggest struggle for resellers that don't have a direct relationship with a brand. They cannot change information. So they end up like creating listings or selling on listings that are not fully optimized or creating listings on their generic, which is another very bad practice for people that are like They're trying to game the system and they create listings with a generic brand name, which again has its complications and they get suspended pretty easily, meaning the listings. Because Amazon, like if you create a listing of a brand name, let's say Colgate, and you create a generic, the system triggers that or shuts that down super fast. I mean, we're talking about maybe weeks. So that's kind of where you fall if you don't have Brand Registry. Then when you have Brand Registry, that's a different tier, that's 52 points. And with 52 points, you're protected for anybody below you. The only team in Amazon, or, well, let me phrase it differently. The only way that things are able to change for you or if, yeah, if somebody wants to hijack you, they will either need to be higher Above you, which is only Amazon, Amazon Retail, 1P. Yeah, 1P. Yeah, exactly. 1P, Amazon Retail or the Brand Registry team, which is one thing that maybe people know about this, but sometimes When you're a Brand Registry owner and you try to open the case to change, let's say, your title, like if that's not changing, you will need to open a case with the catalog team. But then the catalog team will tell you like, oh no, we need to transfer you to Brand Registry because we don't have the permissions to do this. That is exactly the thing that we're talking about because the catalog team is below the 52 points that we're talking about. So only the Brand Registry team is the one that has access to override those things. Speaker 1: So what happens sometimes when I can't, I change, If I'm Brand Registry and I go in there and I try and change my title, maybe my listing just recently got suspended or maybe, or in some cases not, and the title just doesn't take. I can see it in there and it's like, you know, the line, it shows what I entered and shows it in a little box, but still it shows a little gray. That's what's, you know, the little, I think it's gray or whatever color, actually displaying. And I'm like, gosh, damn it. Freaking change my damn title. It doesn't push or whatever. It doesn't refresh. Is that one of these points-based things or is that something else that the listing's locked? Because I know, I don't know if they still do it, but at one point Amazon employees would just, their job was sit around the computer and play around, look at stuff and like recategorize things. And then if someone did that, then they would have a higher permission than me and I couldn't change it without going through God. We're calling the goddess like you or something. Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly the role of a data augmenter. But before we get there, this is really getting deep. Before getting into data augmenters, you need to understand one thing. And this is around things that are very, like main image, I would say, that are part of the search results. This is a better way to phrase it. Main image and title. Main image and title are obviously the most important things because that is what people look or see before they click on the listing and see everything else. So Amazon is very jealous or guards really highly that area. I think titles are less and less, I guess, independent of what Amazon wants to have in the listing. We have seen, you know, with the new policy of changing, and I don't know if you saw the post that I posted, I think last week, I encountered another error in the flat file, which is repeated keywords. I think it's 100471. I think that's the code of the error. And it's pretty much saying like any title that has repeated words. For example, if you're selling coffee, you say roasted coffee, best coffee ever, coffee for your morning. Like coffee is repeated three times. That is not compliant. So they're narrowing down the possibilities of what you can have in the title. And in some instances, Amazon owns the title. And that means that every attribute in the listing could be the title, could be the bullet points, could be the description, could be the item form, the size, the color, that has different points and different contributions. Obviously, when you create your listing, you own them all and you have your contribution points. But then if Amazon says like, this is the title for this product, they will lock it. So it will belong to a data augmenter. So data augmenters are, I don't know if at this point in time, they are people like watching things and deciding what to get. I think those are systems. Like it's automation. I don't believe it's a person behind the screen. It's literally an automation saying, this is the title that converts better. It's locked. Like we're not going to let anybody change it. So in order for you to change it, you need to scale, you know, create a ticket and do an escalation to get to that team so they can override or take the lock and then you can change the title. That's pretty much how it works. But yeah, like it is pretty common for those big front-end things like title and main image to be something that Amazon takes as their own and they log their contributions. And at the end of the day, Amazon is always higher than anybody else, right? Amazon will own, honestly owns the catalog, actually. And if you go to terms of services, you will see that When you create a listing on Amazon, the information of the listing is owned by Amazon. So technically, it's their listing. You're just managing it. That's why. So let's say that you want to solve it. First, your first, I guess, step into the process is using a flat file. So you're going to use a flat file and you're going to use the flat file in a mode called update. Speaker 1: Flat files have priority over you typing in the backend, right? Or do they? Because you say that all the time, like, just use a flat file. That'll fix it. Because is there some sort of like higher priority or higher way that the system processes that versus me typing something in the backend? Speaker 2: Yeah. It's like the closer you get to a source, the better. So I guess what is further to the source is the UI. Closer to a source than that is the flat file, and closer to the source than a flat file is an API. But APIs are software, right? And we don't have that. The majority of people don't have software. So the way for us, for mortals, to get access to or get closer to a source is through a flat file. Will that fix it if Amazon owns the contribution? No. That will never happen. Not even with whatever you do with flat files. If Amazon is locking the contribution, the only way is just to do escalation and get into a team that is contributing. Most times it's a day-out mentor. And that's just a generic name of the team. Each specific Data Augmenter has, or yeah, each specific team has its name, but I'm talking about the hierarchy of contributions. So it is possible to change it when something is locked on your end. And this happens pretty often when people are, let's say, changing SKUs. Let's say that you create a SKU for your product and then you're not using that SKU anymore. You're creating a new one for some reason. Maybe you have an expiration date. And then you want to change the title. The reality is that the first SKU that you created is the one that holds the contribution. So the moment that you try to do it in the second SKU, you will need a flat file to process that change. So, yeah, it's that's your first line of support always before opening a case. And these guys is a trick because these will help you diagnose if this is an account problem like a you problem or is an Amazon contribution problem. As soon as you upload that and if that doesn't go through with a flat file, then you know. It's pretty much the byproduct of not changing. You know that Amazon is contributing to your listing and you need to escalate this. So that's what you will do. But if you don't start there and you go directly to escalation, then you might be losing time because it was something else, right? So yeah, that's kind of the process. And then on the other part, I think you, maybe like three or four questions ago, you asked, what are the other things that people can do? My favorite one is diagnosing things. So what I do and I tell people to do is download the category listing report, right? And once you have that database, you upload that into Amazon again without making any changes. Don't change anything. Don't touch anything. You don't need to do anything. And what you're going to get back, majority of the time, like if you get back success, then you're so good and your catalog management My team or skills are like top-notch, but most people will get back what is called a processing report. And a processing report is a report with errors. So it's the same template, it's the same flat file, but there is a new tab called Processing Report. And when you click on it, there is a list, could be like long or short, depends on how good your catalog is, with errors on your listings. That is another thing that happens and the reason why we leverage flat files so much because sometimes Amazon, as I mentioned, they're changing the structure of the backend. Speaker 1: That's really smart. That's really smart because you have something stuck in there from 2018 that was good then but now it hasn't been checked and so by downloading and just re-uploading without making any changes, that's actually really good. That's a really good hack. You'll find all the problems because it'll spit out that error report. Speaker 2: Exactly. And ultimately, because you're not changing the status, so there are three things that you can do in a flat file. You can do update, full update, what's called update, I will explain in a minute, and partial update and delete. Obviously, if you click delete, then you're deleting that from your inventory. That's pretty much straightforward. Then there's two things, partial and ultimate. Speaker 1: That's what scares everybody. They're like, I don't want to mess with these fly files. I'm like a surgeon with an open heart messing with the blood vessels and I don't know what I'm doing. So a lot of people are always afraid they're going to mess something up. Speaker 2: And they probably will. And that's okay. No, seriously. Seriously. That's how I learned, like messing up. Obviously, I wouldn't advise you to mess up with your bestseller. Yes, start small. Start with a role that you don't really care much about. But the difference between partial update and update, when you do a partial update, nothing that is There will be no changes, more than the things that changed from what it was before. For example, let's say that you're uploading your whole flat file with all of the attributes, all of the columns, but you only changed the color name. Instead of blue, you put navy. Speaker 1: You leave the other fields blank. If they're blank, it's not going to override those with a blank. If you do update, it will override them with a blank, right? Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. But not only blank, it's just also the same things that are there. So you can leave the exact same title. Speaker 1: A partial update. Speaker 2: On partial update. Speaker 1: On partial update, if you want to change the color, you don't have to refill out, correct me if I'm wrong, you don't have to refill out everything. You just got to fill out, I think the skew, there's like three or four basic ones you got to fill out and then you just do the color and you can leave the rest blank and those won't get touched on a partial update, right? If you do a full update and you only put in the color and you leave all the other stuff blank, then it's going to wipe some stuff. Speaker 2: That is the one that makes the most amount of damage if you want to say. But it's also the one that helps you the most because it's the one that actually changes things, right? So it's like a dance. Sometimes you do partial, sometimes you do full. Because I've been doing this for a long time, I'm very, I wouldn't say risky, but I know what I'm doing, so I use update all the time. I don't like to use partial update, but if you're starting, then you use that. And the reason why I say this is on the diagnostic phase, when you upload that file, that column will be in partial update always. The default is partial update, not update. So you upload that and you get your report with all of the processing issues. One thing that is pretty common right now, that if you haven't done this exercise ever, you will encounter things in case that you sell these things with, let's say, size. And this is a question that I get asked all the time and a lot of people, yeah, reach out for this. Size, for all of the, I will say, maybe 80% of all categories on Amazon, it's a normalized attribute. And what I mean by normalized, that is the information in the size It's a result of different attributes. For example, when you go to the supplements, you will say that they will say the unit count. So let's say the unit count is 30 because it's 30 capsules, right? 30 and then unit count and then package quantity. So you will say the size will be the result of the unit count and the package quantity, which is 30 parentheses pack of one. Meaning that you have 30 capsules in a pack of one. Maybe you have a variation of that product, which is 30 capsules, but then there is a pack of two. So it's a two pack. And then the same way if you go. So there is a policy, there is a thing in Seller Central where basically it tells you what the formula is for the size. It's for your specific subcategory and all of that. When you run the diagnosis and upload the category listing report, you will probably encounter that those type of attributes, the attributes that are normalized, are not correct in your catalog. So Amazon already normalized it for you and that is already changed in the Pro Detail page, but in the backend in your information, in your catalog, that is not correct and there is a discrepancy. So that is what, those are type of examples that you are gonna go and work and align with what the information is. Because, and this is the important thing, like why do you wanna do the unsexy work? It's because the moment that there is a discrepancy like that, Amazon will own the attribute. So the size will be owned by Amazon. And the moment that you wanna make some changes, you won't be able because Amazon owns it. That's why you need to align and you need to make sure that these discrepancies don't exist because ultimately what you want to do is own the contributions for your own information, right? So that's pretty much how the whole kind of system works and what you should do. First thing is doing that. Then, you know, you can get going to making changes, changes, adding more information in attributes that are relevant. And I still don't have a strong, super solid opinion on whether we should put information in things that are not relevant. Just because the way that I'm seeing the AI interpret certain things, I don't want to signal things that are not true, right? So if my things don't have batteries, then I don't want to have information in the battery components, just because that kind of like, it doesn't work well with AI. AI is not capable of interpreting those things or the reasoning behind why I'm putting information there, which is pretty much Avoiding to get hijacked. Speaker 1: People are using flat files to to. Either creates parent-child relationships or split them up. Maybe someone's done a bunch of children to get the 30 Vine reviews on five different ones and they want to combine them and stuff. What type of more advanced stuff are you seeing people use flat files for to kind of game the system? Speaker 2: Right now, if you want to create a variation and you want to have a good skew on the parent ASIN, you will create it through a flat file. Because otherwise, if you create it through Seller Central, then the parent SKU will have weird names or weird letters that don't mean anything. It's just a system thing. So that's the first thing in the catalog management, making sure that the parent is aligned on all of the variations and the variation themes and things like that. So it's a great way to use it. It's pretty much the only way to create variations with a well-structured, clean parent ASIN. Then the other thing, and this is kind of more in the hacky part, and again, I don't know necessarily if this is something that right now with the change to AI and that type of ranking and indexation that's happening through those systems will apply, but people are doing what I call borrowing sibling category attributes. So this means at the end of the day, the bigger your flat file is, the better that's for you. Because the more attributes you have to fill out, the more information you can put on your listing, right? Like that's pretty obvious. And what I said in the past where there could be moments where the attribute or the information that you're inputting is not necessarily showing up on the Pro Detail page, but it still help you rank, then people are borrowing those attributes from other categories. Example, let's say that you're selling Pet a dog leash, okay? This is the simplest example. Then that is a specific category template, a specific browse node, all of that. And they are attributes that are only for that browse node. Then what you will do, and this is, you can do it from the Browse Tree Guide. That's one option to get that information. Or you can download other templates. But when you combine sibling categories, for example, if it's in the dog leash, You will say dog toys, dog accessories, dog water bowls or things like that that are similar. They're not the exact same product, but you could say they're kind of siblings. Then the more categories you add to that template, the more attributes you will get. And sometimes even it duplicates the amount of retail space that you have. So that means that you're gonna have material and prototype and product shape and product form and product color and then audiences and target and this like adding and adding and adding and adding more and more and more attributes. So what people do is that they use those attributes to input keywords and input information to help them rank better, right? That is kind of on the. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: I wouldn't say that this is not black hat at all. I wouldn't even say that this is a greyhide thing. It is allowed. It is available because it's information that you're there. The thing is that you're taking things that are not necessarily designed for your category to be part of your listing so you can rank better or indexing more keywords. So that's how people are using this. I don't know if that makes sense. I'm trying to think about other ways to hack. I mean, if we're going to get nasty, which I don't recommend, and I'm not saying this for people to do it, but ultimately, when you start understanding the power of the flat file and when you understand how the things in the catalog work, then you can damage your competitors. Right. So with the same principle, I just talked to you about how you can protect your listing and how you can protect your files. But if you can reverse that script, you could say like, oh, What Vanessa is saying, which I'm not saying for the record, but if you want to be mean, right? If my competitor is not listening to this podcast and is not optimizing these flat files, that means they have space open. And that means that if I upload a file with nasty keywords in their backend, they will be shut down. Yeah, that's what happens. Speaker 1: And how do you fight that? When one of your clients has that happen, what do you do? Do you upload a new flat file and have higher permissions and overwrite it? Speaker 2: Yeah, unfortunately, and that is another thing of the hierarchy of... So Amazon as a platform is a holistic system, even though sometimes the right hand doesn't speak to the left hand. Once you get a trigger or an alert in account health, that locks everything else. So you need to first address the account health issue. For example, let's say that you have some sexual claims. Let's say if sexual, because that's an adult product that's different. Let's say that you have drugs, like you have some nasty drug terms in your file. That will restrict your listing, like the dog page, and it will say, you're selling a restricted product according to TOS, you're selling this, this, this, that. And the reason is because you're having those, like a hijacker just put in the back end, I don't know, cocaine, like that's terrible. So what you do first is that you need to open the case. And unfortunately, there is no flat files, there's no update, there's not save and finish that you can click that will make that change happen, even though you are doing it. So you're gonna first get a flat file that is clean, which is your category listing report, because you should have that legacy information, like you need to know what was there before, right? And then you open a case and you will say, This is my information and I know that there is in the listing, I'll say that you can also first, okay. Let's rewind. The first thing that you need to do is open a case to ask them where in the listing are those keywords. And Amazon will tell you like, yeah, we have it in the battery or you have it in the subject matter attribute or you have it, I don't know, wherever it is. Now that you know, you need to make sure that in your file that's clean or changed to whatever it should be. And then you open another case and escalate it and say like, this is the right information. Somebody hijacked my listing. Then I need to change it. I need to clear that information because that's not accurate. So this other case, what they will do is go there and go to the backend and say like, oh yeah, we see that Kevin was the one that contributed, but this is Vanessa's listing. So we're going to change that, revert it back. And that's how you, with that case, with that result done, that you need to appeal to the account health suppression because Removing the claims alone will not leave the account held suppression, okay? So then you need to open the case or appeal with seller, sorry, account performance, and you will say like, hey guys, I already removed the, I guess, restricted claims. This is my case where I remove it. Everything is good. And within hours, your listing should go up again. So yeah, that's pretty much the flow. The flat file is useful because you need to have that legacy information because let's say that they change something, they completely change all of your bullet points and you didn't have it saved somewhere, then you need to rewrite everything again. That's not what you should be doing. Don't waste time doing that if you can just save it. Speaker 1: We've been talking over an hour. We haven't even got to the fun, sexy stuff that we both love of AI. But we'll have to do another podcast so we can just geek out on AI because you and I both presented on that at a couple of events and we're both on the cutting edge of that. We'll just have to do another podcast, I guess. Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, whatever. You know what I find interesting is that what I just shared with you is not new. Truly, it's basic catalog management. What I think right now is basic catalog management and for a lot of people, it's still news. I love that we have this conversation because you never know the state of the catalog of somebody. I hope this was helpful. There are some tips and tricks for other people that are more advanced, but good foundation for catalog management is key. Let's say that next month we do another podcast and talk about AI. If you don't have this clear, like if you don't understand these parts, if you don't diagnose your catalog and don't understand the discrepancies and how the system works, nothing that we tell you to do with AI will really go through or have a meaningful impact if the foundation is not. Speaker 1: I agree 100%. That's what we'll have to do. We'll have to do another one in a month or two with the latest and just geek out on some cool AI stuff. But if people want to reach out to you, if they're like, this is just blowing my mind. I don't want to deal with this stuff. And I just want Vanessa to just take care of this for me. I've got a problem that I need solved. You've solved problems for one of my accounts before where I was going round and round with self-support and I just called you. Vanessa, help. All right. I got you. I got you. Don't worry. And you fixed it like overnight. I really appreciate that. So how would people find out if they want to learn more or reach out to you to get some help on anything? Speaker 2: Yeah, sure. So go to the website OnlineSellerSolutions.com. That is the way to learn what we do. If you have questions, there is a contact button. If you want to reach out, you listen to this and you're like, okay, I have a problem. Let me just tell Vanessa. You can also email me at vanessa.onlinesellersolutions.com. And if you want to learn more because you're like, okay, this was too much. I don't understand. It's been overwhelming or whatever. But you want to keep learning about the unsexy stuff, you can follow me on LinkedIn. So LinkedIn is one of my favorite platforms right now. And I put a lot of content every single day about what's happening in the Amazon space. Not only, not the sexy stuff like, yeah, I talk about AI, but sometimes about the errors and catalog issues and policies that are being enforced and implemented. So if you want to stay up to date, that's probably the best way. And also reach out there. I'm always checking the DMs. Speaker 1: Well, Vanessa, thanks for coming and hanging out on the AM-PM Podcast today. It's been cool. I'll see you around Austin somewhere sometime soon. Speaker 2: Yep. Speaker 1: We could have kept talking for probably another hour or two just on flat files with Vanessa and learned a lot of cool stuff. So be sure to check out online seller solutions if you need some more help with your flat files or want to learn more on flat files and how you can really use these to your advantage to optimize your listings and hopefully make a little bit more money. I'll have her back on in a few months where we'll talk about some AI. Remember, you can get my newsletter at BillionDollarSellers.com. BillionDollarSellers.com. Every Monday and Thursday, a brand new issue comes out. We'll be back again next week with another awesome guest. I should have Palak on, I believe. Palak went from 1.5 million per year and now she's on track to do 5 million this year just by coming to my Market Masters event. So we're going to talk about that and a lot of other stuff on her journey. So we'll see you again next week with another awesome episode. Just before we leave, got some words of wisdom for you. You know, as Wayne Gretzky's father says, you always want to skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it has already been. So you always want to skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it is or has already been. See you again next week. Unknown Speaker: Thanks for watching.