#481 - How to Stay Profitable on Amazon in 2026

Today we are talking about how to stay profitable on Amazon in 2026 and how one of our guests got reimbursed $100,000 this past year. Hello everybody and welcome to the AM podcast. My name is Carrie Miller and I'll be your host and this is the show where we discuss all things Amazon Tik Tok shop and Walmart private label and how to generate recurring revenue streams 24 hours a day during the AM and the PM. Hence the name of the show. Get it? am pm podcast. And as a matter of fact, this last weekend I was playing pickleball and had a few Christmas parties and even though I wasn't working in the e-commerce, I was making money. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. My name is Carrie and I'm here with Leo Siggoio. So, today we're going to be talking about profitability uh and just some ways that we can be more profitable in on Amazon or just e-commerce in general. It's been kind of a challenging year with some more, you know, price increases and things like that. So, we're really excited because we've got some guests coming on that are sellers that are going to share some of their strategies that they're working on to m maintain profitability. We'll also give you some more just ways to help with profitability um just on our own perspectives as well. The first person though I'm going to bring on is actually uh Ryan Kramer. So, I'm going to go ahead and bring Ryan on. Hey, welcome Ryan. >> Hello everyone. Thanks Carrie and thanks Leo. Yeah. So, a little bit about Ryan. He's actually been in the industry for a while because you started out working at Viral Launch, correct? A long time ago. >> Yeah. Back in 2019. Yeah. >> Feels like forever. >> Yeah. So, so yeah. And now you've been selling. Can you tell us a little bit about what you're doing right now? >> Yeah. So, for the last year, I've been working exclusively with this uh brand called Gen Y Hitch. They are a automotive hitch manufacturer. Um an RV uh hitch manufacturing company in Indiana. So, we actually manufacture all of our products here in the United States. Um, for anyone who's looking into or looking to do that and uh exploding on Amazon even more so than you know years past when they were passively just throwing stuff up there and we're excited for the growth opportunity on not just Amazon but Walmart and beyond. >> Awesome. I guess my first question for you is going to be it's 2025, this year's almost over. What's been the biggest challenge for you in staying profitable this year? >> It's a great question. I think we are constantly because we're lucky enough to be able to manufacture and distribute all of our products here in the United States. So, we do have a lot of control over our manufacturing costs. Um, sourcing our materials here in the United States is also super important. So, with the consistency across the board with our pricing, we we try to make sure that even we might have a large uh like a lower uh margin on one of our skis, we want to make sure it's consistent on Amazon, on Walmart, and all of our channels so customers can trust our brand and make sure that, you know, wherever they want our products and uh can find us in retail or online that they know they're going to get the best price out there. So quality is super important, but also um you know making sure that we are negotiating um in bulk because we do such a large volume of a business. We're able to negotiate in bulk and uh make sure that our pricing strategy stays across the board and communication's key, right? So if promotions are going on for certain products, um we're making sure that our sales team knows if it's in retail or online and uh no one's just kind of rogue. So that's kind of our strategy. the constant communication making sure that um we have a uh we're we're looking and forecasting 6 to 12 months down the road uh new product launches and then suns setting ones that are not profitable and then um yeah those are the main focuses that we're working on 2025 and moving forward. >> I think that's um pretty awesome that you are uh manufacturing in the US. I think that's a huge benefit because you got a lot you know you're avoiding all the tariff drama that we've had this year. So I think that's a big been a big challenge for a lot of us this year was dealing with tariffs especially at the beginning of the year when they were like what 160% or something crazy like that. >> There was a lot. Yeah. And unfortunately you know that's a business opportunity. It could be for for other businesses to increase costs potentially but it's always important to um but we since we manufacture it all it's it's good to know how fast our turnaround times are. um it's not on a boat or it gets delayed. And like you said, if something is coming on a boat or if it's coming on rail or however it's getting into a marketplace, we have a shorter window that we can get it out the door into a fulfillment center or uh just manufacturing and uh fulfilling it directly from our our warehouse in Indiana. So, that's a that's a really nice thing about a brand. If you're able to do that and able to control all those different variables, it's it's definitely a nice thing to keep uh in your back pocket and build a business around. >> How about you, Leo? What do you um what have you been focused on this year for profitability? >> Well, overall, I mean, we are in um we sell card games. Um well, games in general. Like, it used to be mainly cards. This year, we launched another game. It's more like one of those uh you know, challenge games with a lot of accessories you play with large groups. So uh you know we are kind of lucky because the niches that we try and find have been fairly stable and we see that even this year with us going into like the new um kind of market uh our competitors tend to not compete on price. And so even though some have you know higher number of reviews some have less uh reviews we try to keep the prices. At some point I even took a screenshot because all of us were selling for $29.99 the same product. And so we really um play with uh obviously the listing the images and things like that. And I think we try to be really good at um you know the perceived value especially considering that on Amazon people buy images right and so or the images anyway what sells um first and so we we have been trying to focus a lot on that a lot of like pricing strategy my business partner just messaged me yesterday it's like hey this year we killed it and I think it's because of the pricing strategy we tried not to discount too much and you know leveraging a lot of the um best deals like mean deals all of that um um that can increase the conversion rate and clickthrough rates on our listing. So um that's primarily what we have been focusing on like we we can go into more details later on like the PPC stuff but um that has been um mainly what I've seen and again I'm speaking like it's probably not the best use case here because I don't have a lot of Chinese um competitors that are just driving the prices down but ultimately people want it's always the same thing quality products. >> That's actually really encouraging because I think a lot of people have been kind of pessimistic about Amazon. They're like, "Oh, the fees are going up. It's just they're they're struggling with the opportunity." But there's, you know, still a a reasonable opportunity on Amazon. There's still a lot of opportunity actually, and you can still be profitable. You just have to kind of maneuver some things around, maybe change your pricing. So, I'm going to go ahead and bring on Shirona now. Um, Shirona is another seller. Hi, Shirona. >> Hi. >> So, Shirona has been in our elite group for many, many years. And so we've had lots of roundt discussions and we've talked a lot about things going up and down. And so um can you tell us a little bit about yourself and just your background in selling on Amazon? Chenna. >> I've been selling on Amazon since 2016. Um seriously I actually was 2015 but I didn't know what I'm doing. Um I' I'm in a category of clothing. So it's a little bit uh it's a tough category. It's not an easy one. Um I've been doing it since um I mean all those years um the first few years was up to I I believe like 2022 it was kind of easy but 20 from 2023 or or 2022 and on uh a lot a lot of competition so it's very very challenging right now. Yeah. >> What what kinds of things have you done this last year or maybe challenges that you've had that you've tried to overcome to stay profitable on Amazon? We lost the market share uh in 2024. Uh we used to be organically in position 1 to 10 in quite many keywords but we lost it uh for competitors that uh produce direct um I mean it's actually manufacturers that selling directly on Amazon. We cannot compete on the price. It's very very difficult you know we can't um so we're trying to position oursel more as a brand. uh we try to position oursel in a higher quality and it's not always easy because we are similar. Um our competitor are becoming more and more clever you know and um meeting those uh qualities uh issue as well. Um I have something that I learned it from um when I used to do the street fair. You have a product that you make um a very good you have a product that sell a lot but the profit margin is low but then you have product that uh more expensive the profit margin is um is um much higher but you sell less so I still have the product that I sell a lot with lower margin but I also um because it's bring it's it's called in French like the appela so they bring the customers but then if they like my brand they looking for other stuff. So I always keep the things that are higher margin and they're more special. Uh PE other competitor cannot really um compete. So that's kind of balance. So I have like and I have a lot in in apparel you have a lot of asin. It's not just five or 10 acing, it's thousands of acing. So that's helped me somehow to balance. It's not always easy. It's a struggle but yeah it's definitely helped me. Yeah, that's definitely a good >> I have a follow-up question to you though. Um, Shona, like you said you have some uh inventory. Well, I'm assuming that you have some inventory then it moves fast and then some that moves slower, but you have more like higher profit margin. So I wonder how that you know how the economics work cuz you know you have these inventory sitting in the Amazon FBA warehouses I'm assuming and so if the you know units are moving slower do you calculate the profitability um like the microeconomics I will say there so that you know uh at the end of the day if you're still profitable considering that Amazon might be charging you long-term storage fees or incurring to that type of cost. That's a great question actually and this is something that we were struggling and we're trying to fix. So my advantage is that I really uh we are we have our own warehouse and we're doing um we I have a whole I mean I have a team who helped me here and we're doing FBM. Okay. So I um I what I'm doing is like I'm sending to Amazon very small amount. Okay. I don't send a lot. And then if I'm missing something in Amazon, they can always um um they're going to send like if there is a zero inventory in uh FBA, Amazon going to send it to FBM. So, you know, you have to have FBA and FBM to do this uh this strategy. >> That's really good. Another advice that I would give is like I look at my um I use the system of accounting the CM1 CM2 CM3 and I don't know if everybody familiar with this but this is really great once uh I got introduced to this I really like it because I can see very clearly where is my issue so if I see that my CM1 is not like uh let's say you have a threshold if my CM1 uh my contribution margin is less than 70% I know that the problem is my price. I need either to uh increase my price or lower my um supply, my cost of good, which is not so easy most of the time, but increase the price. Uh CM2 is going to tell me like if I have a high return or if I have a uh issue like high fees from Amazon or so it's it's like each stage of the of the finance of it. It's showing me where is my problem. CM3 is like I will see like if if let's say my CM3 is less than 20% this is a problem you know so I would check where is it and most likely it will be the PPC I spending too much money. >> I love that. >> Yeah. So you're not making emotional decisions like I'll just maybe increase it a dollar or whatever it is. You actually have a calculation then it sounds like. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Very good. Yeah. That's very very helpful. All right. Uh let's go back. Um because I think the next thing is I know you said market share was lost but I want to ask this to anyone who has an answer to this about um PPC. So um how has everyone stayed profitable with PPC? I know for myself I also lost market share so we had to kind of balance the growth with the tacos not going out of control. So um any any kind of strategies or thoughts about PPC for anyone that you've done to to help with profitability? I think it's a it's a balance that when you're looking at holistically starting out like the structures that helium 10 talks about starting with auto seeing what are your most you know profitable keywords that are converting the highest you want to look at conversion rate versus like overall spend so there's a lot of for formulaic things to consider for a brand that's a little bit more mature I would say but we look at conversion rates compared to our market share and also what our competitor's conversion rate is. So if you're looking at if we're looking at um for example, if we're at a 5% for a certain skew and then our competitors are at a 6% well we know that there is either a higher spend that we need to operate at or if we are outpacing conversion rate we can maybe uh keep that uh that that spin for that keyword if you will. So we look at it on a conversion rate basis compared to our uh market share but then also we're looking at um different parts of uh not just skew level but on a um but on a holistic level for branded versus non-branded. So branded you obviously if someone's searching for your brand um which we've done a excellent job for for our team on Adidas uh like direct to consumer or in retail stores if they're searching for our brand you want to have the a cost as low as possible. Um, some people like to say like, "Hey, I would like to spend higher and to make sure I'm brand have a brand map around my uh my brand." But in all reality, if they're searching for your product and a and a phrase match or an exact match um for your brand, you want to make sure that that bid is competitive but not spending as much. So, I think that's a lot of the things that we we take a look at is a lot of our spend was on our branded side of search and it was kind of on its head a little bit. We're spending so much on branded search that have an excessive amount of mode and uh we're spending so much on our conversions. They look so great on our branded uh on our branded searches, but for maybe a broad match um term um for some of our product categories weren't as great. So, we were we're finding more of those longtail keywords where we can start to get market share, kind of boost that up a little bit more, spend more on those ones that are converting higher. Um, and even though the branded search is wonderful, it looks great on your Amazon ad console, uh, to have such a high conversion rate on your branded terms, typically, uh, you don't want to just pull out all your your spend on those, but you want to make sure you dial it back a little bit. So, that's still profitable in that regards. So, >> yeah, that's that's a good point. People are looking for your brand, they're going to look for your brand and buy your brand, even if even if they didn't find it on Amazon, they'll probably go to a website if that's the brand that they're looking for. So, that's a really good good point. >> Yeah. And we shoot for like 10%. I mean, obviously the lower the better, but 10% a cost on that just uh if people are new to the to the Amazon space if they're searching for it, 10%'s >> a pretty good one that we're searching for um in that regards. But um yeah, profitability, it's going to vary on keyword and then conversion rate. So, because we have a higher dollar item, um we look at the the the strategy we go off of is clicks to conversion. So, how many clicks it takes to convert a product. And because we look at how many, you know, the conversion rate of that based upon how many searches are it and how many clicks and then the conversion our products are anywhere from it could be $15 to $2,000 products. So the higher price point items, you can have more clicks and your a cost can be a little bit higher because once it converts, there's $2,000 in pocket. So the spin is going to vary based upon the price point. A lot of people keep it, you know, similar. We have a varying degree of price points which is a fun formula like problem to have on our advertising strategy. >> Storage fees, you know, if you're leaving your inventory in storage for a long period of time, you're going to have a lot of fees there, too. So, you know, I think people kind of ignore that sometimes. So, making sure that that is um you know, something you look at as well and not just let that accumulate in the background. We've we've actually had some people in our elite group who've had some challenges with storage fees, sending too much inventory in at once. Um so kind of balancing that is another another way to increase profitability. Any thoughts Leo? >> No, one thing we did actually this year um which played obviously um at scale in our business was renegotiating with our supplier the the cost right to to make the actually we changed supplier. We were able to find another supplier which was able to charge us $1 almost $1 less than the previous one. And you know when you're selling um a product that where the cost is three $4 to manufacture, you're saving a dollar. It's like 25% saving just there. It goes straight in your pocket. Or you can, you know, obviously use it for like PPC and trying to compete. So I think that alone was um big big obviously improvement for our business this year um in general. And so I would say that's definitely something that I will do if um you haven't done it yet. And um you know when it comes to BPC to your question earlier like we we we were so like trying to be kind of meticulous about every single thing and looking at all the the different keywords and the campaigns and trying to drive always these campaigns are like obviously a profit but the truth is that it's is not easy. It's very challenging to do that. So I we stopped kind of like overengineering and as long as our um campaigns drive profitable or even a break even right now I take it all day long like obviously we do look at the like uh true contribution margin right per uh the unit. Um so this way we look at pretty much everything after um the sale happens like what the cost even for like if you pay if we pay affiliates like the PPC the FBA storage fees. as long as uh at the end of the day our campaigns are helping us uh keep the rankings high because you have to um keep that in mind like the recent the most recent product we launched we did not do any giveaways it was just purely PPC >> uh with PPC I think at the we have about 30% like I would say gross uh margin on the product but um I was very happy to spend 30 35% just on uh PPC even lose some money because if we put that money into giveaways is going to cost you a lot more. There are some, you know, companies right now that charge you just $10, $8 just per unit. So, so that's that plus your cost of good. Plus, um, obviously, if you are trying to get some feedback, stuff like that. We don't want to get into these details, but it ends up being quite expensive. Just PPC alone helped us rank higher. We did a very good Q4 and um so I think you know there are ways to play this but um PPC for us is another vehicle to make sure that we are always visible. We can we keep visibility >> on uh on Amazon and um yeah so we we don't stress anymore too much about that a cost unless you have very tiny profit margins. Um, just a side note for anyone who's maybe struggling with PPC, I actually just did a a series with Destiny with Sean about it's called Outsource to Optimize and where I kind of took over my own ads because I had some big struggles this year with ads. Um, we had to basically take ads back from an agency that kind of tanked our sales. So, we kind of went through a lot of this stuff and it's in our um ads academy that's in your when you log into Helium 10, you can actually see um this the series. towards the end of PPC Academy, but it's called outsource to optimize and it's it's she gives a lot of really good advice too about PPC and just um growth versus profitability, especially because I had lost a lot of organic rank too. So, I had to kind of regain that. >> Yeah. >> And that's kind of an investment. And then, you know, you also want to not overdo it. So, there's some balance there. So, definitely check that series out if you need some help with PPC. Um but I want to go ahead and get into another thing that happens when uh with Amazon, and that's with Amazon. sometimes they lose your inventory or things happen and Amazon has to reimburse you. And so, um, basically just wanted to see Ryan, what has your experience been with, uh, getting reimbursements and, uh, just manage refund services >> when we had there's plenty of agencies and technologies out there that will claim that it's automation and it's really not. There's a lot of I think it was at the beginning of this year or um maybe it was at the beginning of Q3 when Amazon changed their policy when it was hey we're going to reimburse you for the cost of goods instead of the retail of your product which is really big um for a lot of sellers. It used to be hey if I had $100 item they were reimburse me for $100. Now, if your cost of goods, if it's if it's not input to Amazon, you are getting the uh the I guess they're guessing what your cost of goods is and you can kind of change it, but you have to provide proof. So, what if I'm sending 25 units to Amazon because of big bulky items and they lose five of those, that's a lot of um potential loss and margins that we are getting. Plus, you have to re-ship new products there. Amazon has an automated solution, but when we use managed refund services, it was taking over from an agency who was charging I want to say anywhere from 15 to 20% of anything they recovered, which is really high um in that regards. So, what I took over and heard that Helium Tim actually was doing a manage refund service, it was something where it has hands-on approach, but also there's an automation to it, which is pretty easy. I I'm in it constantly every a couple weeks trying to make sure that hey if there's some uploads of um you know shipping invoices or anything that are needed it's uploaded is really easy and then the team actually um sends there's discrepancies on inbound placements or just lost items they cross reference our inbound shipments uh to what Amazon receives if there's a discrepancy or less than they file right away um a case to Amazon so if they don't miss if they Amazon misses it, which they're bound to at some point. Um the team at managed refund services in T10, they actually have helped us recover six figures this year, which is >> Oh, wow. >> Yeah. Um I don't I don't know how many other people in that in that category, but we've recovered um quite a bit of funds. And this is this is the difference in margin of anywhere from you know 3 to 5 to 7% of our overall revenue for the year. So if you don't think that it's not worth your time um I would rather have that in our uh balance sheet than it's just lost inventory. You're not getting recovery and you know whatever the the fee is to have a service like that. It's definitely worthwhile. So, at the end of the day, it's putting that that money back to our bottom line, and you could spend more on advertising, you could spend more on product development. Um, you could take that those funds at a at a scale and um really do some really fun things with it. Invest in your team, um, expand to a different market. Um, but that's just lost money that's back in our pocket. And it's nice to see that balance sheet. Um, but Amazon owes us more money if they lose a product or not. It's great to sell it. Um obviously, but um but when it something is mis uh mismanaged on their end, it's their fault. They take full responsibility. We get proof of hey, this is how much we sent our delivery was sent there and it's on them. That's that's huge for a lot of sellers who are maybe going shipment to shipment or um you know um you know monthtomonth, whatever their profitability looks like. But if you can put that to your bottom line, it's certainly nice. >> That's amazing. A six figures. I mean, that probably would have been more if they were reimbursing the full retail price. A lot more, huh? >> It's a little sad. Yeah, the numbers do drop off after uh April or excuse me, August, but um but it's consistent, right? So, if it's a couple thousand every month that we're getting back, that's certainly nice on our end to to know that you're within that wiggle room and it's going to your bottom line instead of just lost to the ethers. >> That's amazing. Yeah, and I like what you said about, you know, just having visibility and kind of more control of that whole process, seeing it in your dashboard with Helium 10. So, um, something I wanted to mention is there actually is a really cool, um, deal right now with Helium 10's managed refund service if you haven't done this. And if you aren't doing this, you definitely are leaving a lot of money on the table. You're losing money really because you're not getting reimbured for things that are lost. Um but um if you sign up for Helium 10s or basically you just activate Helium 10's managed refund services in your Helium 10 dashboard, it'll be um only a 10% fee um through February 28th of 2026. So you get basically a a pretty good discount on the on the fees for doing that manage refund service. It is a manual process and there are people who are working on that for you on the back end. So um it's definitely a really good uh service to uh take part in. So, if you haven't, you're definitely missing out. Uh, again, just go ahead and go to your dashboard and just basically activate your manage refund services and and then you'll get that lower 10% rate, which is amazing deal. Like he was saying, a lot of people are taking like 20% or higher. So, definitely a great great deal there. All righty. Um I wanted to um just ask another question too. Said when it comes to um increasing retail pricing, is there a specific a specific formula or should I rely on competitor analysis? That's a really good question. I know everyone has different strategies. So any advice you guys have for Stephen? >> If you're going to increase pricing and you're on different channels, increase Amazon last. Uh they're very finicky and there's a lot more marketplaces that Amazon is scraping to see if you are uh the featured offer. So, we have this we have this happen all the time. Um, a lot of companies if they do it at year end or whenever they decide to increase pricing, there's a strategy if it's an API or whatever your your company is sending out to people, you want to make sure that if Amazon targets and sees that the price is higher on Amazon versus uh in our, you know, it could be a Walmart, it could be anything like that. We actually had an issue where we were opted in automatically for a pricing um automatic pricing uh strategy for for Walmart and it was seeing the press on Amazon. It was dropping it by 3 to 5% or something of that sort and all of a sudden we were losing featured offered um status on our own listings at Amazon and we were just fighting ourselves. So it was back and forth of like well Amazon's matching it, Walmart's matching that and it kind of fights itself. So, I would say uh if you can try to do both Walmart and Amazon at the same time. If not, Amazon's your last changeover and the pricing updates in 15 minutes. So, make sure that's your your uh strategy there. But, um in terms of competitor analysis, um I think it's important when we launch new products to look and see what's our average. Helium does a good job too when um the Chrome extensions if you're looking at a category says like average um average sales price for this search term or for these products in this page one or two. We look at that and it actually informs us, hey, what we should price our some of our new products in that that space, right? We might be needing to uh price it a few dollars higher just to to gain some margin in that capacity. Uh but we're not always racing to the bottom. you want to have that wiggle room especially if you want to drop it for promotions. Um that that's really the biggest strategy is what's that buffer that you are going to 100% play with um later on and uh if we need to drop it or have a strike through or promotion then we're not hurting ourselves um based upon our velocities there. So certainly look at the average try to be as competitive as possible. All the things are going to set you apart is probably your your creatives, your main image and uh basically the product listing itself. So once you get that click, the conversion comes with how your how you stand apart from the rest of your competitors price should be also competitive, but it's a formulaic process for us in there. >> Shirona, I know you had more you had a more you have more uh calculations, I guess you could say. >> I don't know if it's calculations. I don't have a formula. Uh I know for sure now that I'm less afraid to I mean actually let's start with this between my competitors from China and me there's a big gap of price. I'm talking about like $10 gap. It's big right for similar item. So I'm trying to um and and I'm not afraid anymore to raise my prices because hey I'm here to make a profit. I'm not here to lose. So um not necessarily like the customer is not necessarily going by the cheaper price. we have to remember this you know so I'm trying to be a middle price you know um and I I'm even above the middle price um so I don't have any formula I'm doing it um I'm not I can't look at what my competitor from China doing because I cannot um uh compete with them uh but I'm trying obviously as I mentioned before to position myself in a higher um higher level but what I keep hearing from um different people don't be afraid afraid to uh raise your price. Don't be afraid to raise your price, which I was. So once I did it, I you know, it was okay. I still have sales. Now the only issue is that yesterday or two days ago, I saw something with Rufus. I'm trying to learn as much as possible. Rufus. Rufus actually recommend by price, which is not good for us. No. Yeah. So I noticed like why they don't recommend me and I realize the pattern of the people that the um the customer that the sellers that they recommend it's similar price you know very little of the competitor that higher price you know so that's something that I need to learn more cuz the roof is changing the game right now you know >> one thing I would say first of all is when you try to increase your price if you are planning on obviously doing that is to be very careful with the way you do it because the yeah the Amazon algorithm is very very um kind of like um judgmental when it comes to increasing prices and the way it happens there is that if you have you know historically sold for $19.99 uh Amazon knows that your conversion rate and expected sales from your product at that conversion rate is this much the moment you increase your price there is no historical data that Amazon can rely on to understand how much money they can make from your product. And Amazon is obviously algorithm is is trained uh to make money, right? And so when you do increase your price uh very quickly, then uh you tend to lose ranking almost immediately because Amazon doesn't know where to position you in order to maximize profitability from your product. But if you do this slowly backed by PPC and so you can just you know play the game until when they have at least seven days of data then um you might make it through you can break through that kind of like um relearning phase and I think that's also why Rufus is probably recommending products within that price range because it knows that you know these are the this is the expected conversion rate from this group of products and so when you are like off that range for the same type of product in the same category under the same leaf node, you might not be getting the same um obviously attention because the Rufus expects a lower conversion rate from you. And so um you either get placed in a totally different category um maybe more together with luxury brands or or or something that is around that price range. But if you're trying to compete with these lowpriced products, um I think it's going to be a hard battle to uh to fight unless you're really good at like you become a doctor or surgeon almost you go and look at all the back end and what they're doing and if there's something that is maybe different that is helping Rufus, you know, recommend your product. But I I think I shared this um last week on our training. Use Rufus also as your assistant. Ask Rufus why do people buy this product? What kind of questions people ask before buying this product for your competitors in order to understand what makes the decision? What's helping Rufus drive the decision? Because if you understand the uh psychology or or the data that goes behind it, then you can probably improve your listing so that you can get feature too. So um that's what I would recommend doing. >> Yeah, absolutely. And I did it actually yesterday. It's >> yeah I ask questions and it's telling me like yeah you have to make you have to position yourself like as a higher quality because to justify the price and you talked about uh um um how and to raise the price obviously we have to do it like slowly slowly you don't jump you you have to do it like 50 cent at a time or you know slowly slowly you know that's um that's another >> that's what I'm doing currently as well we're very slowly raising the case. Um I wanted to go back to um this question. Uh Britney asked, "Is there a path of escalation that you usually take when Amazon denies losing or receiving inventory although you have provided all the documents for proof?" Um the cool thing about the Helium 10 manage refund service is that they do it all for you. So it otherwise you are going back and forth and it's a lot of time taking away from you focusing on your business. That's why I I've I've used the manage refund service as well because it's it's time that I don't want to spend going back and forth. Um I don't know if that's your your uh u experience, Ryan. Is that how you're thinking about it as well? >> Yeah. Uh anytime I cannot be in uh my cases, that's that's time back I can use to increase our listings or doing something else that is a more of a fire. Um again, uh a lot of it is Amazon saying, "Hey, we're we're still researching this." It's a lot of cander uh back and forth, but when they do, it's it's so quick and easy to like just upload my um my bill of in bill of lighting, which is a B um that's needed for Amazon. That's your proof that you by the carrier that hey, you shipped out this many units um on that end. And then the the trucking company or whoever is moving your freight, they also have that that proof, too. So they're on their end providing those documentations. And so if it's leaving and it's signed by them, all of that is on either the shipping company or Amazon. So yeah, they they look at all that. And if I had to do back and forth and provide more documentation and search for it all and upload and download a bunch of documentation, I would go crazy. So my team has been awesome. It's a it's a training to your shipping department. Make sure that you have all those resources. not always the case when we used to um you know getting them scanned in having it organized and having those bills of lighting and because ours are big and bulky we we shouldn't send pallets at a time um not full truckload but LTL and any sort of a documentation that you don't have is an excuse to to not get money back so uh overdocument in the beginning if you're just launching or making sure that your warehouse team has this on file um making sure that everything's is consistent across the board. Um any shipments you're doing to FBA, uh FBM obviously is is completely different, but um lost inventory is is a bane of everyone's existence. >> Definitely. And that's not something I want to spend time doing for sure. >> No. >> I think we'll take another question here. And this is about PPC. And this I think this is again going back to that question of like growth versus um you know kind of reducing keeping your tacos down. He's uh Jason asked what is more important at the current moment prioritizing sales to help with conversion or teaching Amazon's PPC algorithm to learn stable stabilize and improve for the long term. So any any thoughts anyone? >> Well, it depending what position you are, where are you starting like if you're established seller. Yeah, you have to, you know, obviously looking at for me uh at the tacos, you know, um because I have already like a lot of reviews and I I have a good position, but if you're just starting out, you definitely need to um spend more money on prioritizing sales, prioritizing uh ranking. So, you're not going to make money in the beginning. Yeah. to Leo's point, conversion rate. If Amazon is being trained that you're converting at a certain percentage and you're outpacing your competition, Amazon will move you organically up its ranking. So, it wants the positions 1 through 10 to 12, it wants the highest conversion possible. Um, I saw there was another question on there of do you increase uh do you run coupons uh on the algorithm? I I think it's I look at it this way. When you're launching at 100% conversion, whether it be like giveaways or you're doing coupons or whatever the strategy is, if you're starting at such a high conversion rate and then all of a sudden you decide to like abandon the coupon or abandon uh, you know, drop in price, Amazon's going to red flag that too, right? So, if you go from 100% to let's say 75%, that's still a drop of 25% of conversion. So, it's best to stay as consistent as possible with your base if you can um price point and then any sort of drop um is going to be the exception, not the rule. So, I'd rather have the highest conversion rate possible with my baseline price and uh incrementally and slowly increase it over time if needed um than have constantly a coupon going or some sort of promotion where it's an arbitrary up and down. Um, and especially with the look back window now that Rufus is showing what 30 days and 90day uh pricing history, it's training the consumer to be smarter about pricing and when it drops um whether it be your list price or just via coupon or promotion. So, that's another thing to consider. >> I think is um like you made a good point there, Ryan. Um, but I think in your niche it's a little bit easier to play that game uh cuz you you don't have probably a lot of competition especially like on the high ticket items. But if you look at who's winning on average uh on Amazon today like probably 70% or maybe more I don't know but is Chinese sellers that are playing a totally different game. And if you use, you know, the Elim 10 extension or even like Keepa, you you can see that they're running lightning deals every week. Every week. That's the whole game they play. And the reason why that works is because you have obviously a higher click-through rate on your listings when there is a badge that shows whether is a lightning deal, whether it's a discount price discount, whether is the best deal or the coupon. But when you have something on the search results page that your competitors don't have or if you have, the first click is going to go to you. And if you have a good listing, if you have a decent, you know, review rating, um if if your listing is built to convert, designed to convert, you're going to get the sale. So that's basically what we play decide to play this year. This year I had since September all the way until now I'm running lightning deals best deals pretty much every week and because of a very consistent pricing strategy I haven't discounted my product too much like we're talking about cents week over week. So that's how I kept my profitability high this year without going last year I sold on average during this period a product normally would sell for $24.99. And it was like between anywhere between 15 and 19, right? That was the price range. We we sold very well, but from a profitability perspective, we made probably a couple of dollars per unit. This year, we sold on average at $24.99 with, you know, with lightning deals with best deals, right? Um why? Because we were able to increase the average list price. And so we either showed always the strike two price. So the customers always had uh perceived value that they were getting a deal. They were getting they were buying the product on sale. Now with Rufus obviously they click on uh price history they can see that historically we've been selling pretty much around the same but how many really are going to check that. Um and so I think it's a totally different strategy to play. you're really going to master that, but it's probably the best way long term to win in the space where you have a lot of Chinese sellers that are doing the exact same thing. >> Does it make sense? >> Yeah. Yeah. And Rufus, I noticed they are actually recommending the the deals before the regular price products too. So, that is maybe something else to look at. >> Yeah. But lighting, I mean, they they giving you they giving you the price that they want you to sell, right, in the lighting deals. I usually don't do this because they're giving me such a low price. I cannot make profit. >> Yeah. It's because your your lowest 30-day price has been historically low, right? And so in order for you to run deal, they say, "Oh, you have to discount for at least like 30%." Whatever that is, right? The recommended price is because of your lowest 30-day 30-day. And right now, to Ryan's point, if you add coupons or anything else, um it does affect your lowest price, your lowest 30-day price. Before, coupons wouldn't affect that. So, if you add the list price and let's say $40 with a $10 coupon, Amazon will still uh consider the the sale at at $30 uh $40, right? But today is actually 30. So, that everything today that you can run as a promotion affects your uh lowest 30-day price. And so, that's what the mistake that most sellers make that don't understand how the pricing um strategy or structure works in the back end. And so you end up basically running this engine like it's like running a car always on reserve, right? That's not from a cash flow perspective, liquidity perspective, it's not healthy. It's not healthy for your engine. And so that's what I think people should focus more in order to figure out the profitability in the back end. >> All righty. I think that's all we have for everyone today. I know it's been a lot of discussion. Um, but I just want to say thank you to uh Leo, Chirona, and Ryan for joining this call just to share your own experience with profitability and just ways that people can, you know, maintain profitability. It's really challenging and um definitely doable and still a very good business. So, I just want to make sure everyone understands that. But thank you guys for all your advice and for being being willing to come on and share all of that. And we will see you all again on the next webinar. Bye everyone. >> Thanks guys. It's a pian.