Amazon Black Friday Tips LIVE With Kevin King | Kevin King | Ep. 224

Amazon Black Friday Tips LIVE With Kevin King | Kevin King | Ep. 224 00:00:01 Hey everyone, it's Norm Farrar, aka The Beard Guy here, and welcome to another Lunch with Norm, the Amazon FBA and e-commerce podcast. 00:00:22 All right, you're in for a Black Friday treat. We are going to be talking about a bunch of things as well as Amazon product research methods for 2022. My guest today, this is crazy, but it's all true. He has mentored more than a half a billion US dollars per year for Amazon sellers. That's crazy. And that's on his Freedom Ticket as well as his Helium 10 Elite Masterminds. He also runs one of the best – the best events that I've ever been to, called Billion Dollar Seller Summit, and I highly recommend that anybody who is an advanced seller go to the next event, which I believe is in February. Anyways, it's Mr. King; Kevin King is going to be joining us today, but before we get to that, just a quick word from our sponsor. 00:01:13 I wanted to give a quick shout out and say thank you to Global Wired Advisors for sponsoring this episode of Lunch with Norm. Global Wired Advisors is a leading digital investment bank focused on optimizing the business sales process. For more information, please call Chris Schifferling and his team over at globalwiredadvisors. com. There we go. Alright, Kelsey, where are you? Hello, hello. Happy Friday, everyone. Happy Black Friday. I see you're dressed in an appropriate color. Exactly. As everyone should be today. Everyone should be, right? And we're, I can't wait to. Oh, it's a side joke. Just wait. But yes, welcome everyone. Welcome Mark and Mir, and we have Manny from Germany too – thanks for joining everyone um yeah we we convinced Kevin to come on today which is awesome for Black Friday, there were terms and conditions yeah yeah and we did have to supply the green M&M's, you know, to his uh to his house yes yes of course. 00:02:28 But welcome, Rad and Jessica Rabbit. So if you're new to the show, we start off by smashing those like buttons, sharing this episode out to your friends and family that are interested in Amazon selling and e-commerce selling. It's good to see everyone. Let us know where you're watching from in the comments section. Also, I want to give a big, big thank you to everyone who voted for us at the seller poll. Uh, for those who haven't heard, we came number three, we came third, uh so yeah, that's three when you went like this, three, yeah, yeah, yeah, oh that's Kelsey count, but anyways, thank you everyone, uh we really appreciated it, uh we got the message from Andy in the Facebook group and uh yeah, it was great to hear, um so thank you so much for the support, everyone. 00:03:17 Also, we have a fun little calendar coming out from the Private Label Legion. It has all the Photoshops that you see of Tim and Norm put together into a calendar. We also have six brand new photos just for the calendar, that we don't even know about. Yeah, you don't even know. So go check that out. I'll drop the link in. It's just on the Private Label Legion website. If you go to the shop, you'll see it. So yeah, perfect for a little Christmas gift for your Amazon seller friends, and yeah, enjoy the episode, everyone. Okay so yeah, I can't wait uh we just did that calendar for sort of a fun thing we were talking one day and all of a sudden yeah why don't we take those pictures and put it into a calendar but you know it's quite appropriate that we're talking about calendars because we're talking to the Calendar King today, Mr. 00:04:04 King, so why don't we sit back relax grab a cup of coffee enjoy the episode, Mr. King, where are you? What's up, hey, hey? You're competing with me, man! What's this calendar business, man? Well, you know. One-star review to truly knock you down, man. You're going to compete against me. Yeah, you black hat. You'll get some of our friends to do that. So how you been? I've been busy, man. Excuse me. I'm glad the terms and conditions before you join. Just in case people don't know who you are what you do, can you just give us a quick blurb? Sure. I've been selling stuff online for over 30 years on Amazon since 2001, actually. I have several different Amazon businesses. I have some businesses off Amazon. 00:05:21 I do training for beginners and advanced people, run the Billion Dollar Seller Summit, and partner in Product Savants with Steve Simonson. All right. About eight different businesses, I think it is. All Amazon-related, all seven of them are Amazon-related. One on stock and you know that's an interesting question because or statement because how do you run eight different businesses and you know some people are running one business and they're having a really tough time. How do you handle the size of the businesses that you're you're running as well? Um, what I have uh, I mean I partner smart so uh, some of them I'm still doing a lot of work. You know, one of my my calendar businesses, you know, I actually still actually, I'm the guy putting some of the stuff in the boxes sometimes. 00:06:12 I couldn't believe that when we got together last time, you actually do the packing of those calendars right? I'm the guy that I actually go and ship them into Amazon like uh, I'm monitoring the Uh, the levels of Amazon and I go, and I have a big warehouse, uh, well not big but like one of those big huge private uh storage kind of places down the edge of town because it's a lot cheaper down there. And I go down, like today, I got to go down there and get about 20 boxes and put the little labels on them and take them over to UPS to keep the inventory. So I still do a lot of that. I like that. It gets me out of the chair, gets me change of pace, keeps me in tune with everything. 00:06:52 So, I mean, if you're teaching this stuff, a lot of people that are teaching this stuff aren't doing it. They're sitting back in a chair and just looking at reports or whatever. So I like to be. I like to be the guy pushing the buttons uh sometimes um and you know it's a good way uh I also do for my own private uh list I also do the shipping so I have a garage down here I mean you've been to my place and yep down the uh fourth floor we have a garage for cars but I have it set up as a shipping warehouse so it's got the big bubble bubble machine and you know a computer set up down there I have to go down there's no internet so I have to use my phone as a hotspot to connect to ShipStation. 00:07:29 And then I ship out the calendars myself, and my wife is always helping me with individual customers. And sometimes it's a hundred orders. I do it like twice a week. So I'll go down there and I spent about, and I'm so fast at it. I'll spend about three hours, three, four hours, and I could ship out 150 orders, 200 orders. And I listened to podcasts. So it's kind of like my man cave. You know, my wife is always like, just hire someone to do that. And I was like, no, it's a nice break. And I go down, I listen to. I listen to, like I know this guy podcast, caught up on all those, Serious Sellers, and just mindless work, you know, and then other ones, I partner with, you know, like with Helium 10, with the Freedom Ticket, and the Helium 10 Elite, they I just show up and do my job, they handle all the customer service, all the marketing, all that kind of stuff. 00:08:16 Um, and Product Savants, you know, I'm with Steve, Steve's an expert at finding products, they've got a whole team in China, so I just have to do my little part. Um, and uh, with my other Amazon businesses, it's the same thing, I partner with people that they handle certain things, um, and then I handle certain things, so each day is, I wear different hats, right? But I like it because you've got, multiple revenue streams, you know, and they, I think it's someone says it's um, I forget who actually said some if you don't most people. That are multi-millionaires, uh, have or they're millionaires, have multiple revenue streams. So I don't depend on just one thing. So if one thing goes down, if one of my Amazon accounts gets something bad happens, I'm not up a creek without a paddle. 00:09:09 I'm fine. I've got other revenue streams coming in. Okay, so I'm just going to go down a different rabbit hole right now because I want to make sure I saw the post correctly. And I'm so jealous if this is the truth. And I'm sure it is. Did I read properly that V's birthday was last week and you decided to fly to Lima, Peru to have a bite at a restaurant and flew back? Yeah, it was my wife's birthday last Friday, a week ago today. She loves Peruvian food; it's her favorite food. And you get Peruvian food in the U. S., but it's just not the same as when you eat it in the country. It's just like Texas barbecue: You go to New York, it says 'Texas barbecue.' Hey, Texas barbecue! 00:10:00 So, yeah, I said, 'Hey, you want to fly down to Peru to eat?' She's like, 'Yeah, sure.' You don't have to ask me twice. So we booked a flight. We were there on the ground 36 hours. Fantastic! So we flew in on Friday. But Lima-actually, a lot of people don't realize this-Lima is actually a foodie capital. We're both foodies. We like to eat at top-tier restaurants and eat nice food. So Lima has five of the top 100 restaurants in the world. So it's not just some third-world country, you know, where you're just going eating some street food. They have some really highly recognized restaurants. Like in the U. S., the French Laundry is one of the top restaurants. There's several in New York and Chicago and a few other places. 00:10:43 The number seven restaurant in the world is actually in Lima. We had lunch there last Saturday. Almost a four-hour lunch. You just basically sit down and say, it's called the Nikkei Experience. You just sit down and they just serve you. We didn’t order from a menu. I don’t eat a lot of fish, but I ate a lot of fish and it was freaking good. It was just one thing after another. They had a little thing that looked like an egg, that had sausage and some other stuff inside. Just take one bite, it's like your eyes roll back in your head; it's just amazing, you know! I had something similar because, uh, last week I went out and I had the McDonald's experience-it was good, yeah, yeah! 00:11:25 But, uh, the reason I said that it wasn't just to talk about Lima Peru, which was really cool, but it's about the customer experience. And we talk about that a lot, you know? You just have an experience, and then you talk about going out and enjoying these experiences, right? And that's the same with an Amazon uh, seller or sorry, Amazon buyer-if you can, you know, show that customer experience, especially if you're trying to build a brand. They're going to keep coming back for more, so especially if you have a recurring product, like it might be... I don't know it could be a food product, it could be soap, shampoo, stuff like that! But if you can present that higher-end or that quality customer experience, not only can you get them coming back, referring friends, but you usually can charge a bit more too-as long as the listing looks good point, Norm, I Mean and it doesn't have to be an experience; it can be taking care of the customer. 00:12:25 I mean, for example, in my in my uh calendar business that that business actually started out as selling trading cards, you know, like baseball cards. I didn't know that um back uh 1990, three, '94, I guess is where that started. It evolved into a calendar business, but our product, as you know, some people may not know it features a pretty women. And so we had based back in the mid-nineties, there's a big fad, just like Pokémon or anything else with baseball cards with pretty girls on bikini girls and, you know, swimsuit models and whatever. I mean, I think it Playboy did it. The strip clubs did it. Everybody was getting into it. So that's where it started. And what we would do is There was a magazine that my company kept getting that specialized in collectibles. 00:13:11 And we kept getting voted the number one company. And what we did is when customers bought from us, they bought by mail back then. There wasn't a whole lot of Internet. There was a little bit of Internet. About 95, I think we started taking orders online. But we would actually, on our customer list, we would get their birthday, you know, because you're buying supposedly adult stuff or whatever. So you've got to be 18. So they'd have to sign something that says they're 18 and we'd get their birthday. And on there, what we would do is every year, we'd collect these are collective collectors so we got into the mind of the customer. What do these guys mostly like? 00:13:41 Guys, what do these guys like and they like to collect things; they'd like to have something unique, one-of-a-kind, you know, they're after that, after that chase. And so we created a birthday card where we'd have a girl, you know, with some candles and, uh, sexy or whatever, and we would number them one of, uh, I forget the numbers, one of two thousand, two of two thousand, three or three thousand, special edition. And on, uh, we would time it so that on usually a day or two before their birthday, this would show up in the mail, and it would just thrill the heck out of them. We did the same thing at Christmas. They got a Christmas, a special Christmas card. It was mounted on a special little case. 00:14:15 And, you know, that cost us, I don't know, 10, 20 bucks a customer probably to do that, but it endeared those people to us. And they just, some of those people still ordering today from us. I mean, we don't do the cards anymore. We do calendars now, but they're still ordering from us. And it's, it's kind of sad. I recognize a lot of these names, you know, we still get people sending in checks and money orders through the mail. And you see the name, oh, there's Johnny Smith from Wisconsin. Yep, that's going to be a $200 order every year. There's Alex Jones or whatever his name is from Seattle. And then some years they don't come and you get the mail because we also send out a flyer. 00:14:55 We send out something that looks like this, a little postcard in the mail. And sometimes we get these back and it says deceased. Oh, from the post office it's returned to sender deceased and it's scary when you recognize the name like this is a guy that's been buying from us for 25 years, uh, poor guy, you know he finally, uh, finally met his maker, and but that's that's how you can take a company, that's how this company is still doing that company still does well. We have a very loyal base of customers because we get into their mind, what do they want and what can we give them as an experience that's different, that sets us apart, that they appreciate. That's great. 00:15:36 Now, before we get into the next question, I just wanted to let everybody know that we do have a special giveaway today. Actually, Kelsey doesn't know about the second one yet. But the giveaway today is, since it's Black Friday, it’s not one month, but it’s two months free of. The Centurion League, which is a 400 value, and then we're going to have a second one; we never discussed this with Kelsey, but again, it's a Black Friday podcast, so let's give away one of the calendars the new calendars that as soon as they come in, we'll send it-I don't know when it'll go go out the door, but we'll also give a coffee mug and a lunch with Norm t-shirt, so that's up not that's one full package for the merch, and then there's one full package for the Centurion, so we're two prizes today. 00:16:26 One is launch hashtag 'Lunch With Norm' and tag two people; you'll get an extra ballot, and then the other one is #Hashtag Kevin King, there we go, and then that one will be all the merch, all right! And the reason I said #Hashtag Kevin King is I'm limited with my brain capacity today. It's an easy one to say-Kevin, let's talk about what's going on right now with this whole kerfuffle. That's a good word. This kerfuffle with the seller conduct. There's all sorts of buzz going on in all of these chat rooms about the sky is falling. You want to give some clarity on that? Yeah, I don't think the sky is falling. Amazon is just trying to close some loopholes. 00:17:16 As most of us know, this whole rebate thing that's been going on for a few years is riding on the edge. Technically, rebates have been around for 300 years or whatever the number is, and other people do it, but we all know. Uh, wink, wink, you know what the purpose of this is um and and so I think that's and most of these rebate and search find buy search run by is the same as rebate basically um call it whatever you want but um the most of them have been pretty good at making sure there's no reviews left and you know that's been a big thing that Amazon has been against, is don't, don't give something away or give them the money back and then have them leave a review. 00:17:58 And so most of the companies that are out there that have been doing that and the services have tried to, I'm not saying all, but most of them have tried to make sure that doesn't happen and tried to abide, you know, skate by that edge. But Amazon, it's become pretty clear to Amazon. I think, you know, they probably did some deep investigations on some of the companies that are a little bit more public about it. And they decided, hey, look, you know, this is pure manipulation. It's pretty clear to us. And so they've come out and changed the terms of search. First, it showed up in one of the seller forums on Amazon, yeah, and now it's become more official. 00:18:32 Um, I think that was a shot across the bow when they posted in the seller forums just to get some feedback to see if they need to tighten up any of the words or clarify anything before they made it more official, that's what I believe. And so now it's been made more official and there's it's very specific and what it says in there and what you can and can't do and it names some stuff, it's some of it's not great, you know Amazon usually a lot of times has things gray and so you kind of kind of read into it but this is like, no, you cannot do this, this, and this for example, this, this, and this. Um, is that gonna eliminate it? 00:19:03 No, it's still gonna happen um it's still gonna be but you're Just gonna have to be careful, and Amazon knows someone, I think it was the Econ crew podcast I was listening to the other day about a week ago and they were talking about something where they said that most people don't realize this, but you can actually write to Amazon and ask them to give you a document, it's like a PDF document or something of your entire search history on Amazon, and it's like goes back since you ever signed up for an Amazon as a buyer, and so they did it a test and it went back uh one of the guys 10 years or something like that, and so he got this multi-page document showing every single search he's ever done on Amazon. 00:19:42 The exact source of that search the exact everything is like this came from Facebook. It came from this post on Facebook. It was like insane detail, he said. So they know. It's just a matter of people and horsepower. They know what's going on. We're not pulling the wool over anybody's eyes. Sometimes they may choose to look the other way. But with all the FTC stuff that's coming down and all the threats of breaking them up, they're having to at least put on a good face and make some changes. They would rather you spend money on advertising to get positioning than to do all this other gamemanship. And they're rewarding you right now for that too. Yeah, I think the next thing you're going to see is some changes to the A9 algorithm. 00:20:34 They're saying don't do these, but there's probably going to be some additional changes that occur that make it even harder to rank organically doing the stuff we did in the past. I think that's coming. And so these changes that they're making, I think you have to adapt, but is that the end of the world? No, there's still lots of ways to actually sell your product on Amazon. I mean, as you know, in my calendar business, I don't do any advertising. I don't do the only launch that I do is I go out to my customer list and I get about 20 of them to actually go buy the product. And that's mostly because these are old loyal customers that I know will buy all; we have four calendars this year on Amazon. 00:21:13 They'll buy all four. So that gets them in the frequently bought together altogether. So I get all that cross traffic and cross promotion. And these guys also buy other calendars at the same time usually. So they will go and buy, you know, I don't know, a Sports Illustrated swimsuit calendar or something like that. So that gets me and the customers who viewed this also viewed that. That's the only thing I do. And today, you know, we'll probably, I don't know what we'll hit today, but we might hit. Six to ten grand in sales on those calendars, uh, just today. Um, what's going right now, I was looking a little bit earlier and so that's it's still possible to sell and on highly competitive niches it's going to be a little bit harder, but I think. 00:21:58 I used to do this actually five years ago, and Bradley at Helium 10 and I were talking, I think he did a little test on this, but I'm like why can't you could go in and just lower your price and you know if you if you have a 20 product that you're about to launch, instead of doing a coupon or one of those clippable, either a promotional coupon or the little clippable coupons, why don't you just do the $20 for a strikethrough and put 99 cents and sell it for 99 cents. And people, I think, it's a straight 99 cents, not with a coupon. Don't make them go through hoops. It's just straight 99 cents. And yeah, you're going to lose money on every one of those. 00:22:33 Your fulfillment cost might be three or four bucks. Your cost of goods might be $3 or $4, you might be going to hold $10 on every single one of those sales. But I think you can gain some. I used to do this, and it worked. Like I said, I have not tested it since this change came in place. I haven't launched anything. I'm about to in January. And then generate those sales. That'll be organic sales. Someone that's doing a search, run ads on it. You're going to have to run ads to get the visibility up to the top of search placement. And you're going to be spending $10 or $15 negative, losing $10 or $15. 00:23:08 on every single sale but you're doing that anyway if you're doing a using one of these services and paying a search find buy you're going to pay way more than that in some cases way more than that so you're that you're losing that money anyway to do it so this is natural it's real and then slowly raise your price up and people are like well if i do that i can uh i can lose the buy box i'll lose price you know but no go set your pricing plans on seller central you can go into the back end And there's a little preferences box and you click that and it'll make different columns show up in seller central and your manage FBA inventory page. And then you can set your minimum and maximum price. 00:23:46 And as long as you stay within those bands, you won't lose the buy box. And that's really important. So let's go back to that because I get a lot of questions about, oh, I lost the buy box. All of a sudden, you know, I tried to bump it up $2. It didn't work. So let's, let's. What you just said there was to go back to your inventory page. Sorry, go into inventory, go down, select your product, and set your min-max. Yeah, I can tell you the exact, just so people can do it on my side. So you go into sellercentral. amazon. com. You go in the second from the left tab, manage inventory. It's the top option. And then up in the top right corner, there's something called preferences. 00:24:29 And it'll say something like mine right now says 10 columns are hidden. And I click on that preferences, a little badge, and then it gives you a column display with some boxes that are checked or unchecked. Right. And some of those are your minimum. One's called your minimum price and one's called your maximum price. Make sure those are checked. And then once those are checked, then then it'll you go back to the grid you know back to manage inventory and the grid where it shows you available and inbound and estimated fees per unit your price and all that and you'll have two two more boxes there it says your minimum price and your maximum price fill those in so if your price is 20 bucks or 19. 00:25:09 95, I would put you know my minimum is a dollar or whatever it is and my maximum is 40 or something I put. I put a big range and then as you adjust your price as long as it's in that range, you're usually going to be okay, and now the only time you will lose the buy box if you're selling on your... You raise the price too much and Amazon's doing doing their uh searches on Walmart or they're doing their searches somewhere else and they see that it's cheaper over there. Uh then then you could still lose the buy box if they're they're cron jobs they're you know they're spiders catch it um but on Amazon itself, I've never lost the buy box when I've set these if I don't... 00:25:46 That's a great, I don't set them, I'll lose the buy box sometimes because I think they must use some pricing band so they like they know like most items. In this category are in this price um and and now I've never tested this to put my maximum price at a thousand dollars when it's a twenty dollar item and see if it you haven't got that extreme there might be some sort of fail-safe in there that just make sure you don't make a typo but make sure you set that and then you can slowly raise your price up so if you launch a product with no reviews And you do a heavy top of placement PPC, which is all within the Amazon ecosystem. It's what they want you to do. 00:26:22 They want you to spend money. And hopefully people will click on your listing. If you get a good listing, even if you don't have reviews, if you're $1. 99 and everybody else is $20, most people are going to take a chance. They're like, what's $2? And then get your momentum going. You should have a high conversion rate on your ads, which is going to help you lower your bids and get your ads going. And then slowly raise your price up over some period of time, and you should be fine. So there's still ways. That's why, I mean, the sky's not falling. There's still other ways to do it and be successful. Okay. And outside traffic, you know, influencer traffic. Like you said, they're rewarding that now. 00:27:03 And so that can be another good way to do it. But, you know, that's hard. A lot of people-they come on, they do podcasts, they come on and speak in different things, and they say, 'oh, yeah, influencer marketing is great.' But there is a science to it. It's just not, you know, it fails for most people, honestly. Most people fail at it. Because they're not doing it right. Exactly. They're not doing it right or they're not working it correctly. If you do it right, it can be very, very powerful. And it takes time too, doesn't it, Kevin? It takes time. Yeah, it takes time. And, you know, you've got to cultivate relationships. You've got to cultivate people. But it can be very effective. 00:27:45 Just before we came on today, my other son, Hayden, he's the producer for the people. You won't understand that, but some of these people will. Anyway, we were talking about launching just organically without doing rebates, without doing anything that could cause any reason for Amazon to suppress, suspend, or stop you from selling on Amazon whatsoever. And if you just take a look at it, just typical marketing, go in, have a good listing, or do your competition research rate, competitive analysis, go in and put in that proper listing with the images, with the pricing. Pricing has a lot to do with it, like price optimization. Lower your price to get started or have a digital coupon and take a few points off. Then you get into brand analytics and all that whole suite of products that Amazon allows you to have. 00:28:43 And then outside of Amazon, you've got, well, with the attribution program and with the referral program that they have right now, you can save a little bit of money. You can grow your brand, like and grow, and this does take time too. But your posts and your live will get you a start on your brand community which you can email through customer experience. There's so many things you can do: gift guides, social media, a good website. Now, don't have to do this all at once and I don't want people that are new freaking out when I'm talking about this. You can start and I don't know if you agree with this Kevin or not but you know some people when when you start you might want to just start very like more of a soft start where you make all your mistakes, you learn, and then you can improve either on the listing or come in with a new product where you can bring in a bit more of what we're talking about today. 00:29:43 What do you think about that? Yeah, I think you should start with a certain thing don't try to do everything at once right? You know, start with the lowest lying fruit, the easiest. Thing, uh, and work up from there, and a lot of times that's going to be not the big keywords you know, that's people do their research and like oh look at this, keywords 30, 000 searches and this one's 10, 000. i want to target that no you should be targeting the ones that have 100 or 200 and that using the tools like you said that uh brand analytics and helium 10 uh tools and stuff that show you how many people have that that keyword in their title and you go make sure you put your that keyword that's only got 100 searches in your title or 00:30:19 only one other person has in their title you're almost almost guaranteed to be on page one uh without any reviews or without a launch and yeah you're not going to make very many sales off of that but if you're pricing at 99 cents versus a 1995 you actually the conversion rates on a term that has 100 searches a month are typically especially if it's a long tail keyword three or more words in the in the search term um that that's gonna You usually have a much higher conversion rate. So probably out of those hundred people, maybe 50, 60 of them are buying versus the keyword of, you know, that's 50% of the people that are searching for that are actually buying something off of that search result versus a much more popular keyword that has 30,000 searches. 00:31:03 It's conversion might be two or three percent right it's more. sales in the long run but but it's much much more competitive and much more difficult so start small and build up i think a lot of people are used to the old days of you know zon blast and and viral launch and all that stuff where you could go to page one and you know within days of launching your product on amazon and start off and just start crushing it right away and those days are pretty much over for the most part you've got to work it it's got to ramp up it's it's got to be a three to six month process to ramp this ramp it up 00:31:36 unless you have a strong customer list a strong following a strong brand already then you can use that internal list and your internal stuff to really kick something off really fast but if you don't have that if you're brand new it's your first product it's just don't you're gonna have to have some patience it's a real business uh it's not a get rich quick thing and that's a mentality that a lot of people have is that they're so ready to quit their job or support their family or do something and they're like i need this to work now i gotta pay rent next month And that's the wrong way to enter this Amazon business. It needs to be kept working, doing what you're doing. 00:32:11 This should be a side hustle, unless you're coming to it with a lot of money. You know, if you've got tons of money and you've got a bunch of money saved, you can pay all your family bills and pay everything that you need for six months to a year. And you're coming into it with 50 or 100 grand, then you could have a different strategy. But for most people, they're taking $5, $10, $ 15, 20 grand from their life savings and trying to make this work. And you can do that. But it's going to be slower. So don't quit your job. Don't do this on the side until it reaches that point where you can quit. Right. So before we get into anything else, remember #WheelOfKelsey, tag two people. 00:32:50 You'll get two months of Centurion League and our special today as well, #KevinKing, and you'll get a bunch of bling. Kelsey, can we have a word from our sponsor, please? Thank you, Celerize, for sponsoring this episode of Lunch with Norm. Celerize is your comprehensive solution for your everyday business needs. Everything you need to grow and scale your Amazon business is just one click away. For more information, contact Dima and his team over at Celerize. com. And remember, Celerize is with one R. There we go. Now, let's talk a little bit about Black Friday's happening right now. Nothing you can do about it. What about post Black Friday? Do you do anything or do you have any advice for people after Black Friday's done? 00:33:44 I mean, you got Cyber Monday coming up on Monday, which is typically a pretty big day too. But I look at it, you know, Black Friday for me, a lot of people do a lot of special stuff. I've done that. I have in the past where I'll run sale to my calendar. buyers that are off amazon i used to run sales and i was you know black friday saved 20 or whatever and i did the math on it and it's not worth it actually um i actually don't do any sales to those people not right now at all i might send a reminder email but even this year i didn't send anything out because i'm getting so much spam and my everybody's got a black friday sale right now i'm like there's so much clutter yeah i'm not even gonna worry about i'll send something out next wednesday 00:34:24 And when nobody else is sending out their Black Friday BS, I'll send something out next Wednesday or something and say, hey, don't forget to stock up on your calendars or whatever. But I did the math on it. And if you take something as simple, let's say you have 100 customers that are going to buy something. If I run a Black Friday sale and say I'm going to give, say my average order is $60, like 100 people buy. So that's $6 ,000. Six thousand dollars, potentially, and I give them and save fifteen percent off, so what's that? It's nine bucks, let's call it fifty. So they end up spending fifty bucks. Those thousand a hundred people spend fifty bucks, that's five thousand dollars in that sale. 00:35:07 But versus if I, and let's say that because of the sale, I got ten percent of the people, and I don't believe it's more than that-ten percent of the people who bought would buy that wouldn't have otherwise bought, you know, because I gave them an incentive or their own tight budget. They bought because of the sale, the Black Friday sale, that would not have otherwise bought from me. But if all the rest of them, the other 90 would have bought anyway out of 100, and they would have spent $60. I make $5,400 in gross revenue versus $5,000 in gross revenue. So why do a Black Friday sale? It's pointless. And I have the same philosophy on Amazon. I'm not going to run any kind of discounts on Amazon for Black Friday. 00:35:46 the only advantage i can see is you know some people like to put graphics or change their listing black friday today 10 off on amazon i think you're cannibalizing yourself in some ways the only time you're not is if it's highly competitive and someone's going to pick you because your price is lower over somebody else and that would be the only case but even then i'm not sure the work it it's worth it to create the graphics to change your listing uh it depends on you if you're going to sell if you normally sell 100 units a day and be solely because, not because of the increase in traffic that you sell 50% more, but let's say you sell 50% more, another 50 units because you're offering a discount only. 00:36:27 Is it, maybe, that's worth it to spend the money to do all the graphics and to change everything, and to risk having your listing every time you make a change go through some sort of auditing again from Amazon like they flag you for something. But if you're going to do that and you're selling 10 units a day and because you did a Black Friday discount you put something your first bullet point a little graphic now today you sell 12. It's not worth it, uh, in my opinion, so I i'm i believe that every every day from here until December 22nd 23rd is a Black Friday. Now today, the sales typically will be a little bit higher just because a lot of people are at home, a lot of people you know, some mentality in the US to let's go do all my shopping. 00:37:09 But every day from here till the 23rd is Black Friday. And then from the 26th of December until about January 10th are also Black Fridays. Sales are way up. I mean, I'm looking at mine today on one of my accounts. Let me see. What's it up today? Someone posted. Yeah, I'm already. Let's see. So the day is October [number]. We're [number] hours into the Amazon day right now. Uh, California time, and I'm on, yeah, I'm up; I'll be probably double or triple today, a normal day, uh, but from here on out, I'll be at least 150 to 200 over what it was leading up to this. So that's my philosophy on it: is you got to do the math and you know in the past I would raise my prices; you know, sometimes I would, I had a makeup mirror that was $19. 00:38:01 95, usually, and this time of year I raised it to 24. 95, and then I did a five-dollar coupon so I'm back at the same thing. It's, it's, it's a lot of Black Friday, a lot of marketing, a lot of psychology to it, but I don't think it's uh just do the math on it and see if it makes sense for you; that's what you know. It's really interesting hearing what you're saying because uh you know Tim, Tim, and I, Tim Jordan, um, we've talked about this and exactly what you said: put your prices up and then take that digital coupon or something that makes it look like there's a special. Again, it just comes down. If you go one extreme to the other, it's got to be believable. 00:38:44 So if you're taking a $20 price and raising it up to $45 and then taking a $5 coupon, people are smart. They're not going to fall for it. But, if you do it, and also going back to just thinking about PPC, a lot of people just just blow any profit whatsoever because they're out there just throwing everything against PPC and one of the things that we do here is we'll only start really going after PPC sales; we won't do anything right now, and we won't. We'll start to build it up later on today, and then we'll start to get back to the normal bidding, only in the evening. So if people's inventory have run out, then at least we'll have a chance to grab it. 00:39:37 That's something a little bit different than what Amazon tells you what to do, which is, you know, bid high and um give us all your money. Yeah, yeah, it's, yeah, everybody's gonna have their own different approach, and I'm just, I think it just takes Amazon; it takes care of itself in most cases. And like the raising price thing, one of the marketing selling and marketing is a lot of psychology, and so if you're 1995 and you raise it five bucks to $24. 95 and you put a five-dollar coupon on it one of those clippable coupons that basically puts you back at 1995, you know some of the people aren't going to actually click the coupon right or make sure that your your listing justifies that price but well a lot of people if your competition's all in 1995 they when they look at that They're going to look at that, okay, Norm's product is $19. 00:40:25 95, Kevin's product is $24. 95, but Kevin's got a $5 coupon, so they're basically the same price. Kevin's product must be better because it sells for more. It sells for $24. 95, so if I can get the better product at the same price as Norm's, I'll just go ahead and get Kevin's. So that's the logic behind that, but you've got to make sure the listing and everything else supports that, the quality of your photos and everything, and your reviews and all that. So before we get into the listener questions, you got any holiday nuggets for us? Any holiday nuggets? Yeah, anything new, anything exciting, any updates? I'll put you on the spot. Yeah, I don't have any. No, I don't have anything off the top of my head. 00:41:13 Okay, well maybe you'll think of something by the end of the podcast, yeah sorry I just thought I threw against the wall okay Kelso, why don't we go and uh take a few questions all right so the first question from Manny, I just want to preface this uh we are getting lots of questions right now so Don't think we'll be able to get to all of them. It'll be a two-and-a-half-hour podcast if we do that. So if you do have questions, we do have our Facebook group. You can throw the questions over there and we've got a great group of Uh, the community is great over there and someone will get you that answer whether it's Norm or another expert in the group so um this one is from Manny. 00:41:53 Can I maintain the organic rank for best seller if it's a variation runs out of stock and another variation performs nearly as good as the best seller like a placeholder? Um each individual variation is going to have its own rank and own own uh for a bestseller, but yeah, it's going to have, as soon as that bestseller runs out of stock, you're going to start losing rank on it. Even though if you have a variation, the variation can help maintain the listing and help people still find things. But yeah, I think, yeah, the other variation is not going to be a placeholder for the one that ran out of stock. It'll be a placeholder for your general listing. 00:42:42 And keep helping people find your listing, and hopefully you have other variations that they're buying, but it's not going to preserve the one that went out of stock, if that's what you're asking. I think that covered it, yeah. All right. This one is from Nathan. What measures does Kevin do to protect his IP when dealing with Chinese suppliers? It depends. Some companies, I do nothing. Nothing. Some, I actually have them sign an NNN agreement. And if it looks like it's going to be very successful, like on my Apple Watch charging docs, I actually hired a Chinese lawyer to actually do everything in China. The only true way you can protect yourself is to actually do it in China. It has to be in Chinese. 00:43:32 It has to be filed in a local district, kind of like the state or province or whatever. It has to have certain seals and stuff on it, that's the only way to really truly have a leg to stand on if something goes awry. Um, and I've had problems with with suppliers stealing my photos. I don't let the suppliers do any of my packaging; I never send them like here's my photos, please help me with my packaging. I send them the final product, but I've had them like take pictures off of my box artwork and like put that on Olibaba, you showing my product to help sell, you know their line of stuff. And when that's happened, I've sent them a cease and desist. 00:44:11 And if they didn't pull it down immediately, I will never do business with them again. But I'm not buttoned up like a company like Apple or somebody would be. But I do some basic stuff. In some cases, I don't do anything. Right. Okay. This one is from Brad. Any recommendation for freight forwarders which you use for your Amazon business? Yeah, I can't give out recommendations. I mean, mine is kind of like a, I mean, Unicargo would be the one that I would probably recommend. You know, they're not the cheapest, but I've had good experience with them. Some people, you know, occasionally something goes awry and they blame Unicargo, but a lot of times it's not Unicargo's fault. It's something else in the system. You would have the same problem with anybody else. 00:45:03 But Unicargo would be the one that I use the most and I would recommend. I use a couple others, but they're in partnerships with another company, so I can't share those. But Unicargo, U-N-I-C-A-R-G-O . com. Kelsey, throw that up there after the next question. Yeah, the link is going up. All right, from Olga, what strategy do you recommend for creating my first product's title based on search volume and what number, low competitors or low density score? Based on low density score, six or less without that keyword on that low density score. So that means that if your keyword is vanilla icing, No, that's a bad one. What's a better keyword? Your keyword is Christmas tree topper. 00:46:00 So if that's your keyword, Christmas tree topper, you're going to want to do a search and see how many people have the word on page one on Amazon, which is typically, you know, like if you use a tool like X-Ray, it's typically about 60 results or so. How many of those 60 people that show up in that first page of X-Ray have the word Christmas tree topper in the exact phrase order in their title? And if it's less than six, that could be a good keyword to target for your initial launch. If it's greater than six, it's going to be more competitive. It doesn't mean you shouldn't do it necessarily. It just means it's going to be more competitive. 00:46:33 So I would look for keywords that convert, that look like they're making some sales, and that are six or less people have them in the title. That's what I shoot for. And then I work myself up. So it's not based on keyword search volume. That's an important number. You need to know that for long term. You need to know that search term volume. You need to know how many keywords are related to this product. I look for roots as well. So that keyword that you put in there, if you want to get the root in there. So Christmas tree topper is the root. There's also Christmas tree topper angel, Christmas tree topper Santa Claus, Christmas tree topper LED. Artificial tree, Christmas tree, topper, or whatever. 00:47:20 And so the root is the main three words, Christmas tree, topper. And you can use brand analytics to filter this too. It's what I do. The more times that exact phrase and exact order, not just the keywords, but the exact order appears in different keywords in brand analytics, the better that root keyword is. And so those are keywords that I'll be focusing on to put into my title. You can find some of those that convert that have less than six people using that in their title. You can often get to page one really fast. Okay. Okay. This one is from Yajun. Some of my listing has price that says 'see price in cart.' Does that mean I lost the buy box? 00:48:08 Doesn't necessarily mean you lost the buy box, but that probably sounds like you're selling somebody else's product. Maybe it sounds like you're doing wholesale or arbitrage or something. It should not say that if your private label shouldn't say that. That's usually related to MAP pricing, minimum advertised price. So if you’re selling someone else’s product and they have a minimum advertised price and your price is not that price, it’s lower, then that’s usually when that will appear. Okay. Let me see from Jessica Rabbit. Do you think the U. S. federal consumer protection laws threatening Amazon's operation has influenced its sudden enforcement? I think it does play a role. Yeah, I think it does play a role. I think it has been influenced. Amazon, that’s why brand analytics came out. 00:49:00 Amazon a few years ago was getting accused of having all this data and proprietary and not sharing it. So they did brand analytics. A new one, the product opportunity explorer. So they’re slowly sharing more of this information. And I think a lot of that is to say, look, hey, we're good guys. We're giving them data. I think it does have something to do with it. Have you used the Opportunity Explorer? I've played with it a little bit. It's pretty incomplete to me. So I've backed off using it right now until they kind of flush it out. It's in beta. So I think they're just, it doesn't go real deep and I'm not finding it to be, super accurate on a few things. 00:49:40 And I like some of the aspects where you can see the conversion share for more than just the top three. You can see Amazon's telling you exact search volume. Those are cool, but Helium 10 is pretty close to that as it is anyway. And then they have the sales per keyword, but they're not telling you exactly. It's more of a range. It's between 10,000 and 20,000. That's nice. There's other ways to get that information more precise. Okay. Yajin, I just noticed, said, no, I'm the brand owner. So if you're the brand owner, maybe you have a map price in your listing. When you set up your listing in Seller Central, did you set up a minimum advertised price in one of the fields? It's usually in the advanced tab. 00:50:30 If you set a price in there and then you're selling it for less than that, that could be causing it. All right. So just let us know, Yajin. This is from Tony. I think actually this is one of the last questions. So we went through those quick. From Tony, do I risk getting suppressed if I have been removing my brand name in the front? Hard to say if sales have increased enough to be worth the risk. yeah amazon the rule of amazon says it should be brand name first and then product name and then title um i if you can get away without using putting a brand name in the far left side of your title i would do it um i don't know that if you get suppressed on it if something happens and uh just change it and you should within 15 minutes it should be back it's a slap in the hand it's not like you're going to lose your account if you're using any kind of sentinel program 00:51:26 uh like norm's talked about uh something that he he likes i'm hitting 10 or whatever um they'll tell you you know i know one of the sponsors of sellerize they have a tool that does that too that will notify you almost instantly when something changes on your listing and so if you're not putting it there and something and amazon does decide to suppress it for some reason just put it back and you should be back up in business really fast but i i recommend leaving it out 00:52:01 All right, and I think this is the last question from Rad. Do you think the cost of selling on Amazon will increase next year for storage and commissions? Yes. They've already announced that, haven't they? Yeah, they have. I don't know about commissions, but storage and fulfillment fees is usually where they – storage and fulfillment fees is usually where they – The commissions have pretty much stayed pretty consistent over the last several years. It's usually from the fees and storage, some of the other add-on fees, you know, labeling fees and that kind of stuff that they modify. Yeah. 20 to 30 cents. That's a nice little bump. Yeah. Okay. So I think that was the last question. 00:52:48 Just before we go over to the wheel, are there any things that you can think of, Kevin, any mistakes that people are making right now that they might not know that they're making? Any mistakes? Yeah, something like maybe an example. A lot of people don't know all their numbers. They don't know. Okay. They don't know. They know their fulfillment cost, and they know their Amazon commission, and they know maybe what their factory charged them, but they don't really factor in all the little nickels and dimes that get added up, including by Amazon. If you ever take a look at one of your reports that comes out every two weeks or every time you take a withdrawal on Amazon, really look at that. There's a lot of extra fees in there for box cutting fees. 00:53:39 When you ship your stuff in, if something was not counted right, there's fees. There's all kinds of little things that nickel and dime you. I think that's a a big one that a lot of people miss that can add up to some real money, especially if you're working on pretty tight margins. That's a major area I think a lot of people aren't really dialed in on. And there's so many little costs ranging from, you know, the freight costs, packaging costs, insert costs. It could be fulfillment costs. I mean, there's tons of little things that you have to take into consideration. And you know what? You might miss a few. So have a spreadsheet, have the cost there. And then when you think of it, you can always add it. 00:54:25 I'd rather add it later and then know it on the next time I order something just to make sure that it's there. But if you don't know these numbers, you could be losing. I told you about that huge account that we were looking after, an eight-figure account that was actually losing money, but they were selling eight figures. They were happy about that until they found out they were losing. And check and make sure Amazon actually measured and weighed your products right too. A lot of times, guys, when the first time you put it in Seller Central, you'll enter my product weighs 10 ounces and it's these measurements. Amazon doesn't really go by that. They might display that on your listing, but actually in Seller Central, whenever they first receive a product, they actually measure it. 00:55:13 And a lot of times they screw it up. I have a product right now that I have calendars, for example. And I can tell you, I'll just look here and make sure I tell you the exact numbers. It's crazy what they did. These are all calendars. They're all way the exact same. There's four different titles. So there's four different graphics, but they all weigh the same, the exact same size, exact same number per box. But on my four, the FBA fee, this is not the 15% commission, just the M is on FBA fee. One of them is $2. 84, which is a little bit low. One of them is $3. 64, which is what it should be. Another one is $6. 58. Another one is $8. 08. 00:55:56 That's a huge, they're all the exact same size, the exact same weight, four different skews. Wow. There's no difference, zero difference in them, not even a millimeter. And that's how bad it is. And so right now. I'm going to be getting on one of these probably, I'm having Amazon correct it. You only have 90 days, I believe it is, to have them correct this so they don't they will only go back in time 90 days, so if it's been going on for a year, you're there's not going to refund you for uh you know nine months of the year, only the last nine days. So as long as you catch it, you can have them re-weigh it and they'll use these like there's a turn for these little red laser lights or something they do and and reclassify it and they'll refund you the money but on this one that's uh eight dollars and eight cents when it should be 364. 00:56:43 that's almost a five dollars it's crazy per unit difference and this this this particular unit calendar will sell probably 10 000 units in the next uh three or four weeks so that's 50k right there so that make sure you're paying attention to that don't just take them at their word that can add up to a lot of real money too that's some great advice kelse did any other questions come in and then we'll go to the wheel yeah yes uh let me see from olga so if density equals one but uh competitors are greater than or less than 70 000 still go with it the competitors that are greater than 70 000 that's a meaningless number you know if you that that's only that means 00:57:33 how many people are indexed for that word that does not competitors competitors you got to look at the at the results and go through the first two three four five pages maybe and see who is similar to what you're selling those are your competitors a lot of times other random stuff will show up in there that's that's not your competitor so 70, 000 um you know it just means 70, 000 people are indexed for that that phrase that's not competitors So, yeah, so if the density is one and it says 70,000 competitors, if the density is one, that means only one person has that keyword in the title. That's probably not going to drive a lot of sales, but it's a start there and string together a bunch of those and it can add up to real sales. 00:58:19 Okay, very good. All right, Squire, where are you? All right. Yeah, just one last thing. I think this is a good point that Simon made. One of the biggest things sellers don't do, pay themselves. So do you have any thoughts on that? Yeah, there's a really good book called Profit First for E-commerce. You can buy it on Amazon. I would highly recommend everybody take a look at that book. It's a short read. You can read it in a couple hours. But it actually breaks down and makes some really good recommendations on how you should. Do your budgeting and how you should put different monies in different brackets. But yeah, you do need to pay yourself. And they say pay yourself first. That means you're going to grow slower, maybe. But the system that they recommend can save your butt in a lot of cases and really help you on your cash flow management. Yep, 100% agreed. Good point, Simon. Okay, let's get to the wheel, Kels. All right, here we go. Thank you everyone who entered and enjoy. It's time for the Wheel of Kelsey. 00:59:36 All right, this is for the Wheel of Kelsey. This is the two months of Centurion. So here we go. Three, two, one. All right. Ah, Nir. Fantastic. All right. Congratulations, Nir. And just to share my other screen now. So, if you are the winner today, just please email me at lunch with norm. com. And we will get to you. So, next one this is for the little swag bag that we're giving out, yep, these up three, two, one. All right, and the winner is Christina A, perfect! So, YouTubers, this is important: uh, you need to reach out to us. We can't reach out to you um if we don't hear back within 48 hours of today um; we will have to redraw uh just because we're not sure if you saw it or not. 01:00:49 So, Christina A, uh please email us at k at lunch with norm. Com and congratulations, okay not k-a-y right that's just Kevin, Kevin, Kevin, yeah someone's English is not their first language they may think it's a name like that's your d-a or something oh all right K as the letter K, yeah at lunch with Norm, yeah there we go, all right Mr. King, we will talk to you soon I hope before Christmas maybe before Christmas or not I'll see you next year, you absolutely will I'll have some nice cigars for us and uh we'll uh no I can't wait I said I mean uh I don't I think you are scheduled in December but I have to say thank you so much for being a regular guest on the episode just dropping all sorts of knowledge and just being there you're awesome, I appreciate it man it's always fun to come on here and uh and shoot the breeze with You guys all right, Kev? 01:01:54 We will talk to you soon, we will see you later, take care everybody, all right! Happy selling, thanks and all right everybody, I hope you enjoyed the episode-on uh, next Monday, I believe we're going to be having Lauren Petrullio on, and we're going to be talking about taking advantage of Q5. If you don't know what Q5 is, you'll learn more about it and you I mean this is a great, really great time to sell! And it's just a little area after the holidays where you can pick up a ton of sales. All right. But before we get to Kelsey, last word from our sponsor. Alright, he's just making me stand here. Thank you, E. Co, for sponsoring this episode of Lunch with Norm. Are you looking to take your e-commerce business from local to global? 01:02:53 You can with the help of Zee and their brand new app. That's right. You can track live shipments with push notifications, get detailed lead times for each stage of your shipment, and store all compliance and VAT reclaim documents in the palm of your hand, all while listening to Lunch with Norm. Ready to expand your e-com empire and take your Amazon FBA business global? Use the link in the description to learn more about Z's new app that's now available on desktop and mobile. That's z . co, Z-E-E dot C-O. All right, Kelsey, now you can come back. Are you just going to make me stand here looking again? No, I'll come back. I'll come back. All right. 01:03:42 All right, so again I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who uh voted for us on this other poll uh we came third in that so just thank you again we really appreciate the support um also smash those like buttons uh if you haven't already um you can join our community lunch with Norm Amazon FBA and Ecommerce Collective we've got a bunch of fun stuff happening over there we've got contests we've got questions we've got fun little memes we're going on it's a great place to ask your questions and just be part of the community we've got a great uh crew over there and it's uh growing every day so that's great to see um and one other thing we have the Private Label Legion calendar That we just announced today. 01:04:25 So if you're if you ever see those Norman Tim photos the photoshopped of like Lord of the Rings and The Pilgrims that was that was a nice Titanic yeah yeah there's a lot of great ones so we put those all into a calendar with six never-before-seen images as well so that's only going to be available if you buy the calendar so if you visit the Private Label Legion. Com and go to the shop, you'll see everything there. So thank you everyone. And I apologize. I think I missed some names today. So Simon and Manny, I'll, I'll make it up to you guys. I'm not sure how, but I'll maybe throw in an extra couple of votes. The next wheel. There's a lot of. A lot of names happening. 01:05:11 And it's crazy when Kevin King is on. So thank you, everyone who entered. I really appreciate it. And I think that's it. I think we nailed everything else. You did. Very good job, Kels. Very good. Okay. So join us every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, Eastern Standard Time at noon. And. We just wanted to say, Kelsey already said it, but again, thanks for uh, voting for us, uh, that was kind of unexpected, uh, to see that we landed in third, so thank you and thank you for being part of the community; we really couldn't do this without you, so thank you. And, enjoy, it's Friday! Oh my gosh, enjoy your weekend!