How To Start An eCommerce Business On Amazon | Akemi Fischer
- If you have any type of marketing skills, I mean, for sure you should have an E-commerce brand. - Should I sell on Amazon? How do I get started? Is it too late? You know, is the market too saturated? What would be your advice for like beginners some of the step by step things that they can do? - You get so many messages about people who aren't even really good at this, and they're crushing it right now, because no one is leaving their houses and that's not gonna let up for a while. - When you wanna inventory out of stock on Amazon, that's a killer. You don't want that? - Well, there's a hack to that.
- Okay, tell me, tell me, I wanna learn, I wanna learn. Actually, that's a good question. I wanna ask, this is the million dollar question, Shopify or Amazon, which one I should start off with? Welcome to another episode of "The DanLok Show," I am super, super excited.
Today we are gonna talk about Amazon. How do you make money on Amazon? How do you make money with E-commerce? I have so many of my friends from all over the world asking me about questions on Shopify and all these things, and today I'm bring you an expert. She's known as the Amazon Queen, the Amazon Queen. Not only does she's helped 1000s and 1000s of brands to scale their brands through E-comm, but over $2 billion, write this down $2 billion in sales she's helped her clients generate.
So Akemi, I'm so excited to have you. We're gonna talk about Shopify and E-comm. Now first of all, let me ask you this question. What is your superpower when it comes to business? - Ah, Amazon.
Amazon is definitely my superpower. - And how did you even get into this whole business of setting up an agency and helping businesses to scale and grow through E-comm? - Yeah, it's interesting I ended up here on accident. I was actually doing influencer marketing, and in the same week, this is in January of 2015, just to kind of give you guys relevance of how quickly this shifted for me.
And three Amazon sellers got referred to me in the same week. And I'm like, what the hell's an Amazon seller? You know, I'd never even heard of that, and then I was like, well, they definitely can't afford my services. I don't even know what that is, you know. And so, one of the one of the gentlemen happened to live in Tampa, where I live, and he was an ex cop, in his 50s, making millions of dollars a year selling bike lights on Amazon, okay. And I went, wow, this is kind of interesting.
And then I went to his office, and saw kind of how he was doing it. And he said, "Look, if you help me get out there in the social media world influencers, I will get you a speaking spot at a amazon seller summit." And I said, "Okay, why not, right?" So two months later, I went and spoke on stage about influencer marketing to these Amazon sellers, and I walked out of there with 200 new clients, okay. - Oh wow.
- And I remember driving home from Fort Lauderdale, so it's like a four hour drive, and you know, I didn't even have at the time, I didn't have enough people to serve 200 new clients. And so I started calling people, are you for hire? Can I hire you? Hey, are you, you wanna get trained on how to do the stuff that I'm doing, you know, helping these Amazon sellers? And so that's how I got started. And of course, you know, I had to get in the game. So when I started helping them market their products off of Amazon, I then started going, you know, I think I could probably use some of my skills to learn how to really get a product to the page one of search on Amazon, like what does Amazon really care about? And so, that's kind of how I got dubbed the Amazon Queen is I put over 30,000 products to page one of Amazon with my system that I created just diving in and figuring out what made Amazon happy and what made them not happy. - So, in some way, you have the skill sets in here, but you niche it down and you somehow found this kind of blue ocean, on Amazon sellers-- - Blue ocean. - Who'd need help with Amazon.
Now, maybe they are more products focused obviously, they may not understand marketing as much, they may not understand search engine as much or cooperating as much but you by adding value and you can help them scale. Now I do have a lot of people asking me, Should I sell on Amazon? How do I get started? Is it too late? You know, is the market too saturated? What would be your advice for like beginners some of the step by step things that they can do? - I love this question because I get asked it probably every, no, I do get asked it every single day. The answer is there's always a good time to sell on Amazon. I mean, we saw this massive shift from quarantine, right? From March and April, they were only allowing non-essential products in, there's a little bit of panic setting in they're blocking our stuff going into warehousing, more panic setting in. And then May, June, July, and now we're having record months, okay, a lot of my clients have done what they would usually do for the holidays, they did that in July, right? Christmas literally in July for Amazon sellers. And so this is a still a blue ocean, it will continue to grow, there will be continued to be 1000s and 1000s of new Amazon Prime members every single day.
In fact, I think during the holidays, even last year, just during December, there was 10 million new Amazon Prime members. 10 million, right? So I am a very data-driven girl, that's my thing. I always look at the numbers. And so we are just continuing to build things-- - Trending up, like that. - Yeah, I mean, and everything that, you know, I learned over the last five and a half years, right? I have just now, just we've got the systems in place, we can turn out a brand in a week, literally sourced, branded, Shopify sites on, everything, get the ads up, get our community running, and start going, that it's kind of not fair.
- So if let's say I'm a beginner, I come to you and say, hey, I want to launch this product. I don't even know what product I should launch like, should I go search on Alibaba, AliExpress? Should I source some products from China? Do I need a private label? Like what means to it? If I was a client? What would you walk me through the view? - So I typically have two types of clients, I have clients who already know what they wanna sell, right? They've already, they've got it sourced, they are, they have an idea of what they wanna create, and they need help to just, you know, help grow and market that brand and manage it on Amazon. And then the other type of client is someone who says, hey, I've got some cash, I wanna get in this E-comm game, I have no clue where to start, right. And so we actually have what we call a business in a box. And so what we do is, we take data, right, from our software that tells us, well, these are the trending products, these are the products that have been around for a long time, and they just keep getting, you know, more and more search for, more and more volume of sales. And then we put together really like a pro forma of those products that could be a brand, and then we deliver those to our clients, they choose what they want, we brand it and boom, we launch their new brand.
So those are really the two types, we work only with private label companies, right? We don't do any of the drop shipping, we don't do any of the wholesaling stuff, those are still great business opportunities. But the reason I have stuck to private label is that I like brands that you can sell. So this is building it customer acquisition, you know, growing it off of Amazon as well. And then, you know, flipping it in two years for 10 million, you know, those are the kinds of businesses that we create versus the one-off wholesale, you know, drop shipping that you could just make some quick cash in.
- What is more it's almost like a side hustle, right? - Yeah - You acting as a middle person, and you make some cash and that's it, but we're talking about building a brand that it's, you can exit with a brand. Would it be-- - Exactly. - Would it be, is there any certain category that you see in on Amazon that you felt, okay, these are these are good categories? Is it a consumable that people would buy again and again? Or is it sometimes there's one-off like, what do you say to clients most of the time? - Well, health and personal care is the most competitive as well as the most cash on the planet, right.
So, obviously, a lot of my clients are in health and personal care, meaning you know, your supplements, your beauty products, we have massive clients that are just crushing it in home and kitchen, garden, which has really taken off during COVID. Okay, I started my own garden, I would have never thought, right? So, you know-- - Are they growing their own tomato? Is that what it is? - Yeah, I'm growing, I'm growing my own kale. - Oh wow. - And so with no dirt, it's hydroponic. And so be ready because you'll see my new gardening brand coming out in the spring of 2021, right, so...
- Love it - I love data, I also love, I do a lot of market research, even myself to just kind of be in the know of the trends and what are people talking about. And sometimes trends turn into products that we use every day or products that aren't going away, right? And so, I kind of use my skill set in marketing and just connecting online and seeing what people are talking about as well to kind of create you know, like gummies for example, anything that is a gummy is a massive, massive niche right now. It can be anything you've probably all seen, you know, an apple cider vinegar gummy, it could be a gummy for your child's vitamins and so, you know, somebody came to me and wanted to get into health and personal care, I would say, well, you can't lose in gummies, because everybody now wants gummy. It's a thing that's not going away, right? It's growing every single year. - And then let's say, I've done my research, I've used a software, I found something that's good.
It's private label, we've got a good brand. Now this process, it could take a few months, it could take more than a few months, right, it makes sure that we get it right. Once I have that, to get it listed on Amazon, that's not hard. Everyone can get a product listed. It's out of the gazillion products out there. How do I make sure I'm not on page 100? Like I can get on page one.
So how do we do that? I know that we can advertise within Amazon network, of course, we can run some ads to get some paid traffic going. But what do you help clients to do? - So for us, it's all about you know, Amazon is a search term platform, right? It's search driven, right? Just like Google-- - Kinda like mini Google, Yeah. - It's just like Google. So number one, you always have to think about, okay, what are the top keywords, right? So again, we use our software to tell us what are the top keywords people are searching for, as well as reverse engineer our competitors, and see what they're ranking for, and what's driving them the most traffic and the most sales.
Right? So the biggest secret really to Amazon is to quickly out of the gate, either a build your community or b use somebody else's. - Okay. - Right? And so what we've done over the years is we have millions and millions of customers that are inside our Messenger bots actually, that's how we have crushed Amazon. I actually I went, my first million took me three and a half years, my second took me half the time because I used AI, used Messenger bots to do it. And so that is a huge, huge secret to any amazon seller right now is using Messenger marketing, we use Minichat, and we're acquiring customers for less than $1, and then we're putting them into communities based on their interest. - Got it, when you say communities, is it also a Facebook group or it's just Messenger? - Yeah, it's a Facebook group as well.
So we get them into Messenger, we run an ad to Messenger, we get them in, we pixel them, we get their email, we get their text, their number to text them, and then we put them into Facebook community. So we're literally hitting them everywhere. They see us everywhere, right? And then we build that community, though, so that every single day we are offering them some sort of product, right? And so if you're a shopper like I am, right? I love shopping, I'm a woman, I think we all love shopping. - We all love shopping, I love shopping. - We all love shopping. Yeah, my husband loves to shop, too.
So um, yeah, I mean, that's really what it is. It's almost like a shopping club, right? For people who love to be on Amazon and that's what we've created over the years, to really very quickly be able to get our products as the top search for because we have people who we brought awareness to like that. - Yes, and what do you, what do you think of the people and they say I've seen strategy, like it's a new product, and then they wanna get some reviews, because Amazon is such reviews driven, they will send out some some free products to people, to get some reviews, or some of those more highly rated reviewers like what like what's been your experience with that, like for someone who's like brand new, what, how to get reviews going? - So reviews have been an absolute rollercoaster when it comes to Amazon, they change their terms all the time. But what they actually just recently launched is, you can now request reviews through your seller central on Amazon. Now you have 30 days to do that, but they're now allowing you to request them through their system. And so the reason being, is people were, of course, using outside software's to try to - Triple it.
Hack the reviews, and so Amazon just keeps laying the hammer, right? But the solution that they have today, in fact, makes it a lot easier than we did in 2019, to be honest, to get reviews. And so and most people look, if you have a really good product, and you have really great customer service, okay, you have really great branding and packaging, and you put them inside a community, they will leave you reviews anyway, right? So sometimes people overthink this, like, ah, how do I get reviews? - What's a trick, right? It's no trick. - Right, and like you gotta have some crazy hack to get reviews. It's like, no, if you actually build a brand the proper way, and you focus on that customer connection and community, people will actually go leave you reviews.
In fact, when people leave you a bad review, your raving fans will go comment on the bad review and say we don't agree with this at all. This product's awesome. I think you should reach out to them.
They're such an awesome company. And they always care about their customers. And so we find it easier than ever right, and I think we've cracked the code on how to very quickly get reviews but also consistently keep reviews coming in. - And is the community more industry or category based or is it like a big general community, like there are certain products that you-- - So we niche them down by lifestyle. So inside of our Messenger, we ask specific questions about them, right? We don't talk about us, we want them to talk about themselves, right?` - If they are interested in skincare or kitchenware, or-- - Yeah so tell me what, you know, when you wake up in the morning, what are the first three things you do? Oh, well, I do that, you know, and so we've programmed our bots, literally 1000s of keywords, right? That they might say in a response and so we keep the conversation going, and then we find out what is their lifestyle look like? Well, what do you do typically have breakfast, or do you skip? Well, no, I skip it. Okay, why is that? Why, I do fasting? Okay, are you do you also do like paleo, keto, vegan, are you vegan? You know, we ask questions about their lifestyle, and then we put them into specific communities, based around them telling us, not us going, you need this, right? They tell us about their life, we now care about them, because we've asked them to talk about themselves.
And now they're gonna buy from you, because you already did that instant connection with them. - So instead of pushing products they have no interest in, they are they like, they like they already consuming this kind of product, now you put them into a like minded community, right? - Exactly. - And they connect with other people, and they use, oh, I'm using this product, it's good. Should I buy some and then they go buy some and then they introduce each other.
Got it. With Amazon seller, I do hear from sometimes Amazon sellers, that the challenges were 'cause Amazon doesn't give them the client data information, right? You know they can capture that. So how do you take that someone who purchased something for let's say, from my Amazon store, go now I have an order, but I don't I don't know who they are? How do I extract that and build a community? - So there's actually software's out there now that do get the data. There's also ways you can get the data through Amazon, it's there, it's you really have to go searching for it.
But I'm sure those that are listening can if you go search for it, you can find out how to do it. It's just, it's hidden, right? Like it's not, they're not shouting it but there are software Sellerise is one of them, that now pulls that data for you. It's actually owned by a really good friend of mine, and I've known him since I started in the Amazon game and so he built that out for all of you know I think back to when I started, we didn't have all these cool software's, right? And so now they have software for everything. And so that is a really good one, that if you really want customer connection, go look up Sellerise.
- And then from there, you can put them into your community, and then your chat bot and all that to build a relationship? - Yeah, and then you can run custom audiences on Facebook, you can pull them in, you know, an easy way to do that is to say, show the product that you know that they bought and say, how would you ask and then put in the picture, another product that you have? And say, how would you like to get our probiotic for free? Click here, right? And so then you're bringing them into the community, they're getting something for free, you're building that customer loyalty, you're getting them in, and so you know, what is that one click worth to you, right? To get them into that community by giving them that free product? Well, it's a lot cheaper than you'd spend on Amazon advertising let me tell you, so. - I love this approach because I think a lot of I can see beginner Amazon sellers, they're thinking of Amazon is beyond and all and they're very transactional, they're very product focused, versus your approach is awesome. 'Cause it's about building a community, it's customer centric, right? It's taking this massive machine that got millions and millions of millions of customers. Let's go there, right, that's where the fish is. Bring them into your kind of your leg in some way. Right? - Yap.
So from there and then from here, then this is your business, right? This is what a business is, I love that approach. Would you say that for for someone, like what, what would be a good realistic goal, if someone wants to get into Amazon for the first 12 months, like how much they could make? Of course, it's like no, not a promise of anything like that. What's-- - Yeah, it's just, it's really hard to say, you know, if I had, things change all the time, right? I will tell you this, I put all of my money back into E-commerce because the return that you can get on your investment, you can't find anywhere, okay? And it's controllable. If something ever happened, you could always sell off your inventory to discount sites and still turn a profit, right? And so, for me, there's no real golden number but you can definitely easily make 5, $10,000 a month very easily, that's easy to accomplish, and you know, it just depends on what how much capital you have to start with, you know, if you don't have $50,000 don't go after the number one category, which is supplements and beauty right? Go find yourself somewhere in you know, outdoor, you know, maybe you're selling camping equipment, or camping tools, or life straws, right? They have all different types of life straws. I mean, you know, there's tons of software out there, that also gives you the data, but I always encourage people, you know, make notes in your day to day, what are you seeing that you use every day? What are your children using? What's your wife using? What are your pets using? These are all perfect examples of the types of products that everyone is searching for on Amazon.
My first product was a wash, pack a washcloth, right? And so you know, I mean hundreds of 1000s of dollars selling a six pack of washcloths. That's how I got started. So I don't, I try and tell people don't overthink it and don't try to create something new, because this is not, you know, an infomercial, right? Like, this is stuff people are already searching for, and that as long as you have a really good brand, a really good product, good reviews, 'cause your product is good, you will sell, you will sell.
And I think right now I'm trying to really encourage everyone to get in the E-comm game, because I've had so many messages about people who aren't even really good at this, and they're crushing it right now, because no one is leaving their houses and that's not gonna let up for a while, right? And I don't think now we've kind of shifted even more consumers behaviors and how they're gonna shop, because they realize how much time it was taking out of their lives to go do the shopping in person. - Correct. - So I think this is just gonna keep skyrocketing. - Yes, even me and my wife, Jenny, we always shop on Amazon, right? We have Amazon Prime, you know, Prime members for many years, and because of COVID we buy more things.
And now and once you get used to it, I think we probably compared to before COVID to now we spend probably by four to five times more in terms of transaction volume on Amazon, right? And it's like now you're not gonna go back. It just-- - Yeah you're not. - You're not just gonna not gonna go back and I can buy the consumable the day to day stuff that we use all the time.
Oh, yeah, just now even you know, Jenny and I we, I'll just Amazon it, just Amazon it. It's like let's google. - Alexa order this. - Yeah just Amazon it like it boom and then a couple of days its boom its there and we love it. And I think like you said, consumers behaviors are changing. Walmart is going way more E-comm, Amazon of course is E-comm.
Consumers, I don't think a lot of them want to they will still wanna go back to the store, but I my guess is they will spend less money in the store and more on... - Oh, absolutely, because guess what, when I go to the store, they 90% of the time don't even have my size for things. - That's it, exactly. - So I just did avoid a trip to the store or they're out of stock and so I get frustrated. So I've been online shopping for a long time.
And I'm the same as you, you know, I think most people, a lot of people listening might think, yeah, we probably drunk and add to cart, right? Drinking and adding oh, I need this, I'm gonna do this, then, um, you know, and I turned my even my guest room into a full on meditation room. And guess what I decided that day, I went on Amazon, I bought everything I needed. And in two days, I've got a meditation room.
You know, like, that's incredible. If you went to store, I'd have to probably gone to 15 stores. - Store by store by store and you try-- - To get all of that stuff yeah, yeah. - Yes. And you already can go on Amazon, to see the reveals, you can see some videos of demonstrations, and you can even check out just Google and then you you make your purchase on Amazon. - Well, and then if you don't like it, you just send it back.
- Yes. - You know what I mean? It's like no hassle, and you know, I think to kind of going back to the customer centric communities that I build, well, really, I'm just duplicating the Amazon model. You know, Amazon is customer centric.
And honestly, sellers are last to them. So I'm thinking to myself, when I started creating this and imagining, okay, if Amazon cares more about their customers than me as a brand, I need to care more about my customers, right? And I need to put my money into not trying to get the most customers I possibly can, but building a true like community of people who are connected to me, even as a founder of somebody who's created the brands. A lot of Amazon brands and why I think over time, they're not gonna grow the way they should is because they're not willing to come out as the face of their brand. And people want to connect with the face, and they wanna know about you and how'd you start this? And if you're willing to do that, then you're going to crush your competition. - And that's where you combine Amazon with influencer marketing, now you've got a double superpower.
- Yeah, so we do that, we do Pinterest, we obviously do Shopify too. Shopify, I mean, I've been in Shopify game-- - Actually, that's a good question I wanna ask, this is the million dollar question, Shopify or Amazon, which one I should start off with? - Oh my gosh, they're so different, right? They are so different, because Amazon is already giving you a platform where people are searching, whereas Shopify you have to pay to get traffic to your store, right? And so they're totally different. - Would you say for beginners, beginners that Amazon maybe once you are more established, you can now invest in building your own Shopify store and then drive traffic maybe? - Yeah, I mean, I it's hard, right now we do all of it, right? And so when I take a step back, and I think, well, where would I tell people to start today? It's pretty easy to do both, you know, because you can very quickly find influencers and even Facebook groups that are niche specific, and pay the admins of that group to promote your product, right? And so the real difference comes down to your numbers, okay? And so Amazon typically takes if you're FBA fulfilled which is Prime 30%, right? Shopify even if Amazon still fulfills which you can do that through an app called Shipstation, it's about 15%, right? So if you wanted to just have them go to Shopify, you could take that 15% margin and go hire yourself influencers, right? And build your list that way. So there's a lot of ways that you can kind of look at it, you can't go wrong either way.
Shopify is not going anywhere. I don't think big commerce will ever come and take them down. I know you didn't ask me that, but I'm giving my opinion.
So no, I don't own their stock, I own Shopify stock, and Shopify for the win. - Yeah, and I have a Shopify for The DanLok Shop, as you know, as well, and thought it of as like, oh maybe we'll test it, it turns into be a pretty good decision, right? And I am actually quite surprised how consistent it is, every single day we're getting sales, of course, paid traffic, organic traffic, but it's very, very, very consistent. Is there a healthy profit margin that we should consider for any product? 'Cause you mentioned above the 30%, like, if anything if it's just not enough margin, then we have a problem. Like what's it from your experience, what's the minimum? - For us, it's 30%, that's the minimum. That's just how we roll. That's how, you know, I look at products in fact, I just reviewed some new skews that we're personally doing, you know, landed in the United States are costing us $17, and we're gonna sell them on Amazon anywhere from 69 to $89, right? Like those are great profit margins once you take off Amazon fees and, you know, if we have to do any type of marketing or anything like that, as far as Amazon ads are concerned, which that is kind of the key to a little hack for you guys is, anytime you're launching a new product, that's when you go heavy on Amazon marketing, which is their PPC platform, they wanna see that you're spending money and that people are clicking and buying.
- Do you see that maybe in the beginning or the first the launch or how many months, we go heavy, heavy on paid, and then after a while you get more reviews, maybe you're, maybe you're on the first page, right now you're getting more organic, you kinda shift the focus, maybe you can lower the ad spend a bit and just kind of let that let that grow? Is that kind of the case-- - That's it, that's absolutely what we do. - Okay. - I mean, and we do that, because we already have millions of customers on list, right? But again, you have to feed the Amazon algorithm, okay. And to feed that algorithm, you have to make sure that you're paying, they like the people who pay, right? And so then you can drive customers and literally say, hey, feel free to click on our ads, and buy through our ads, right? So now you're feeding their algorithm, you're having people go buy through your ads, yeah, maybe it's costing you $1.50 for the click, but you're feeding that so where Amazon is happy, they keep ranking you and moving you up, and you're gonna stick right, you're gonna stay there more than if you didn't spend any money on marketing. - Do you have a couple of stories that you could share that let's say you're working with a client who is doing quite well on Amazon, and suddenly they face some kind of challenges, right? Maybe their rankings gone down, or something that's happened with the product, and how you've helped them to overcome that? - Sure, so I would say the number one problem we run into is people who get their listing shut down. So it could be from a hacker, right? Somebody a competitor, right? Basically has the same product, and there's ways to get your, you know, it's dirty.
I don't do that but like people do it, right? Or let's say, you know, somebody complained and said, you know, you sold them a probiotic, and it was used, right? And so that's a health supplement. And so that can literally tank your entire business because you lose your ranking. And so we do those honestly, daily, like there's always a problem on Amazon system.
Like I said, it's not for sellers, it's for customers, and so even their support for sellers is horrible, and getting listings back up is the hardest thing. People give up actually. They give up that they'll never gonna get their listing back up because whoever read the customer service rep who read that today, declined them. You know what I mean, and so that I would say, gosh, a specific example. We have so many of them, but it goes down more in health and personal care and beauty, because if it's anything that's ingested or put on the skin, as you know, it has the highest right, standards of like how you know what you're allowed to do and what people can complain about you for before you just get taken down. And because that can be manipulated by anyone, you know, it's constant at risk for people to shut you down.
I mean, don't get me started on the whole hemp industry on Amazon, like that is the dirtiest game I've ever seen, and I never got into that space, because I could have less of a headache over here still making really good money, if not close to what they're making and not being attacked every day. - Yes, yes. It's also so when they get shut down, you basically have a, you have some experience, not experience, but also a process on kinda how to talk to Amazon, or maybe get that list listing up there again.
So this is this is this reminds me a lot like the Facebook ads, right? You get ads disapproved, you get to ads shut down. But if you know how it works and how to talk to Facebook, you could approve the ads again, or you create a new ad, I assume that's similar to Amazon. - You have to yeah, you have to have you know, now they have actual, you know, like representatives that you can pay for that will help you, you know, get things back up, thank goodness, because they didn't have that either, right? But a lot of times people just don't have the belief or the skill or know, you know what they're supposed to do and so they give up. But we you know, typically find that persistence is key, right? And we don't give up and we try every which way to get the listing back, and... - And does it take long? Does it take long, let's say a listing-- - You know, sometimes you can have it up in a day and sometimes it can take a month, you know, so imagine you have no sales for a month, right? - Wow. - Yeah, I mean, one of the biggest things it's happening right now is just warehousing limitations.
So they're limiting, either based on sales. So if you're a new product, you may only get to send in 200 pieces of inventory, where we used to be able to send in 10,000, right? And so that's kind of the biggest hurdle I would say right now, and there's tons of you know, 3PL warehouses that can do it for you. And you know, the golden ticket, I always say for that is you can easily get your customer data, because they have to give it to you 'cause you're shipping them the product. - Yes, yes, and also one of my friends who also does very well on Amazon, he told me that he said, "Dan, you never wanna run out of inventory. Because when you when you run an inventory out of stock on Amazon, that's a killer.
You don't want that." - Well, there's a hack to that. - Okay, tell me, tell me. I wanna learn, I wanna learn. - So if you have an FBA listing, then you just duplicate your listing and create an FBM listing, which means Fulfilled By Merchant.
And so basically what that tells Amazon is that you have inventory somewhere in a warehouse, and look you might or you might not, but you can actually put the parameters in there that it's gonna take two to three weeks to get your order, three to four weeks to get your order. So what happens with that is you don't lose your ranking, you don't lose where you're at in search, it shifts to FBM, and if you let's say have inventory on the way, and it's just not checked into Amazon yet, then once the inventory gets checked in, you just go print out the orders and ship it to them. - Got it, got it. So it's kind of a way to let Amazon know, I do have the products, don't worry.
Keep my ranking, keep the sales coming in. - Keep my ranking, - Its happening. - Don't put me to page two, 5000. Yeah, exactly.
- That makes sense. And is do you see like in terms of those skincare, consumer products, supplements, of course, highly competitive, but industries like let's say kitchenware, I assume I'm just guessing those listings are safer, quote, unquote, like, they don't get shut down as easily. Is that correct? - Oh, yeah, 100%. Unless you have a blow dryer, I've seen some nightmares with a blow dryer client we had, but yeah, absolutely.
I mean, you know, again, if you have any type of marketing skills, I mean, for sure, you should have an E-commerce brand. You know, even if you have one skill, if you know Pinterest well, if you know, Instagram well, if you know Facebook ads well, I find it mind blowing that all of these marketers don't have E-commerce brands. - No they don't. - Right? - It's crazy, because you're doing it for other people, you know, like you already know how to get customers. So build your own brand with the skill that you have, and then you could sell it right for, you know, four to five times EBIT up, right. So, for us, that's the model, we're on rinse and repeat right now is just building those out and scaling those out and then growing brands that are existing, to get to where people can have an exit.
- And when they have an exit do they sell to a another E-comm shop owners or do they sell to even a maybe a private equity, or something like that. Like who do they sell to? - Yes, so it's interesting what's happening, they sell to everyone, I mean people who are looking to just put their money somewhere. They want a turnkey business that's making them, you know, if they invest half a million dollars, they're making, you know, $50,000 a month, you know, they just want something that's existing and turnkey. So I'm seeing a lot of that as well as yes to some private equity groups, as well as just some funds.
Yeah, I mean, all over the board right now. But I would say more than ever, I've never had so many messages about people like, how do I get in the E-comm game? You know, especially people who did events, right? - Interesting. - If you did an event and you've got a customer list, you should for sure be selling them a product. - 'Cause they have a customer base already.
And I always, - Yeah. - Like even with Shopify, where like, I no way I'm an expert in that, I think I'm an expert in social media. But it's a lot simpler than I thought. - So simple. - Because a lot of the tools is already there, compared to if you talk about influencer marketing, as you know, funnel, email, pay traffic, like all the things that we do, you do a fraction of that with E-comm... - Yeah. - And it's, it works.
You just kind of... - You could literally have I'm not even joking, you can go to Fiverr, you can get your logo, your branding in a day or two, your Shopify store up, create your ad, contact a few influencers, boom. - Yes. - You know, find a supplier. - And one thing that also it's, it's, it's fascinating to me, and now I understand, but before I'm like, hmm, we need to have, like let's say I'm selling a low ticket $49 digital product, right? - Yeah.
- I was selling it through a long sales page and a funnel and all the things that we always do. I'm like, you know what, I'm just gonna put in a shop had a have a lot like, not long page, image, short description, and people would buy the product. And I was like, am I doing this the hard way? What's going on? And I thought about I really thought about it. It's because when you look at a landing page, for most people, they're not thinking of buying anything. They're not thinking of purchasing.
Right, right. But when they go to a store, they're there to... - They're looking to shop. - Buy, there's a buyer intent. You and I we don't go to Amazon to, oh, let me go to Amazon and watch some videos.
No, you go to Amazon, I wanna buy something here. - Right? - And you wanna go in and out and boom, or sometimes we spend way too much time. But we do it to shop. - Right, we do it a lot. - Yeah, to shop. - Yeah, what is up, it's so true. - So I think psychologically,
that there's a difference. There's a difference. - Yeah, it's interesting you know, I've never done landing page and funnels and all that, that's not I've never built them.
And we have massive success. I know people who do the VSLs and all that and they have massive success. But I have to say when I asked them what it costs them to acquire a customer, and they tell me like $45.
And I tell them that I've never been over $1 to acquire a customer. They are like, mind blown, and can they have my secrets. - What is going on. Yeah. - You know, you know and I think sometimes you don't really realize what you have or what you know, until you go out you, you're like, oh, let me just try and see what this whole groups doing over here and how they're making money. And when I started going down that whole funnel, everything, I'm like this is way too complicated, I don't need to, we don't need to write all this copy to, you know, convince them to buy anything, they're already searching for our products.
- Yes, what a concept. - You know. - Sell them they already buying. - Sell them what they're already are looking for. - Yes, no, that's brilliant, that's brilliant.
And I do think in terms of starting a internet business, E-comm is very solid, if it's, is either product-based or service-based, right? Service-based, I recommend some sort of agency 'cause that's my first successful business. A product E-comm, Amazon, Shopify is the easiest way versus could you make money with affiliate marketing? You probably could, but it's a lot harder compared to before, right? - Yap. - Versus buyers, people looking to buy. - People are already looking to buy and I think the reason to, you know, right now with E-comm is everyone is sitting home, they're bored.
If there's, they're on their phones more than ever before. And you know why we've gone so heavy into Messenger marketing is because if you look at the click through and the open rates on Messenger versus email, it's there's no comparison, right? You're at like 2% click through versus 68% on Messenger, and the same with their cell phones. So if you're texting them, you're in their, in their DMS literally selling them something and now we're, you know, getting into the Instagram dming game. And so, you know, we're everywhere that we know that our customers are the most, right? And that there's a higher chance of this converting if we just get really good at this being literally in the DMS. So that's what we've been focusing on for like the last two years now.
- Do you recommend clients to run lets say Facebook ads, drive them to Amazon listing or run Facebook ads to drive something drive them to something in between before they go to Amazon, to capture the emails? Like, what do they do in terms of paid traffic? - No, so I recommend, you know, Facebook ads, - Okay, Into Messenger, right? - Okay. - That way you're getting there, you're pixeling them number one, you're getting their email-- - Again low cost. - You're getting their phone number, and then you can kind of split test from there, you could ask them questions, and then drive them to Amazon, if they say they already have Prime and they want things quickly. Or no, I'm patient like I don't care if it's coming in a week, you know, then maybe you click them through to Shopify to save 15%, right? So you can really test that in Messenger and nail down even the buying experience for your customers so that you're making more money based on their shopping habits. - I love that, I love that, and then from there if they say appropriate group, they can also join the group. - Exactly.
- So if this way, this is so brilliant, so this way, if this all ready, a ready to buy audience, any product that you launch, if it's based on what they want, chances that failing is pretty low. Like it's almost-- - Pretty low. - Yeah, it's pretty low, unless we completely like missed the mark. But I don't think that would be the case, 'cause you know the customer so well, right? - Well, and also, I mean, let's be honest for a second, have you ever gone to Amazon and you search something and you saw branding and you're like, that is the worst branding I've ever seen? Holy cow, they have 10,000 reviews? - Yes, yes.
- You know what I'm talking about? - Yes, yes. - And so I always when people have doubts about these things, I send them on the goose hunt, like, go search Amazon and put in like five things around your house, and then tell me what you even see on page one, report back and then tell me if that built you some confidence that you could do this. Because a lot of times it's people overthink, right? How simple it is. And I think people think it must be either too good to be true or it's too late in the game.
where I'm going, well keep thinking that 'cause I'm just gonna keep swimming in the cash. - I totally agree. I totally agree.
It's either I don't know, somehow, oh, this is too early, no one is using it, and then one day, oh, this is too late. I'm already too late to the game. There's no in between, it's never a good time. In the meantime, just get into it. Same thing happened to me when I got into YouTube, is the same idea.
Because ah it's too late, it's no, keep thinking that-- - Yeah. I'm sure I could start YouTube tomorrow and figure out what they care about and get 100,000 subscribers in a year probably, right? I mean, if you really, I think what you know, people always say, what do you what is this real secret to Amazon? Well get really good at one thing, get really good at one thing. I mean, I became the best, and I knew everything about Amazon. And so when people think an expert, they think of me, you know, then I started going into all these different marketing tactics and trying, well, I'm always trying to be two steps ahead of Amazon, right? So right now we're planning on what's Amazon gonna do to us in you know, 2022? So we're planning always to be ahead of them 'cause they're constantly changing, right? What they care about. And so, if you're doing that, you're gonna succeed. - Actually, that's a good question.
What do you think is happening in the next few years? Like in terms of the whole Amazon landscape? Are they gonna have drones? Are they're gonna have, you know, the delivery, like, what's gonna happen? - You know, I'll never forget, it was 2017, and I went to do you know, Peter Diamandis? - It sound familiar. - Do you know who he is? - No, no. - He's all about, you know, the SpaceX stuff, and he's got two really - Oh, yes, great books. - Yes. Anyway, so I was actually gifted a ticket from one of my clients, to his mastermind event.
- Yes. - And I was checked in by a robot, okay. And they went through the, and this is in 2017, they went through the eight biggest trends in the world and how things were gonna change, right? And I'll never forget I called my husband in complete panic.
Okay, number one, I was excited I'm totally the dumbest person in the room. But I was in panic that like, everything's gonna turn into like AI and robots and autonomous cars, and like, we gotta get ready, and we gotta stack the cash, you know, I had like this whole, whatever. And so what's interesting is like, then I went on to really embrace AI and that's how I got into Messenger bots, right? Because that's the future like, you don't need employees to run a bot. Like once it's set up, it's set up, right? And so the future is certainly anything that replaces a human. It's just the way it is, right? It's what they're doing because it's all about the money. So I think there'll be tons of drones.
I think there will be tons of robots and all kinds of things, autonomous cars just like launching our package, you know, out the door. It's all coming, and if you get a chance, you're in California, right? - Vancouver, Canada. - Oh, no, you're in Canada, I forgot.
So anyway, but if you get a chance, I would look up and start reading his stuff, because, and read his book, "The Future Is Faster Than You Think," it's good. - "Future Is Faster Than You Think", awesome. - It's really really good. - Put it down on my list. - If you're, I'm nerdy though I like day, I like to be I like thinking about that stuff. So.
So you think so any jobs that will be replaced by robots or machines will be replaced, which I absolutely agree, and I think it's gonna happen faster than we thought. One of the one of the things I tell people is, you don't need to look very far, just go to McDonald's. McDonald's before how many cashiers they have, and you can see the shrinking and shrinking.
And then it's like, before you have one kiosk, and then you have two, you have three, and you can see, and before you know it, there will be no cashiers. - Now... - Before-- - And all the malls and everything, they're just gonna be warehouses. - Yes, yes. - I feel when you order-- - Fulfillment homes-- - Something from your phone, right? It's gonna be pulled by a robot from you know, the old mall and delivered to you by a robot, then it's the same day, in an hour, right? Like, that's where the future really lies.
And so one of the things I always tell my clients do is, look, if you look at Instacart, and Shipt and all these delivery apps for your groceries, in the next five years they predict and this is probably, this is pre-COVID numbers, okay? The next five years 87% of people will buy their groceries through an app, okay? Which is delivered, right? Don't you think you want your supplement, your shampoo, your products in these retailers? Because now everyone is going to order for same day delivery and guess what? Amazon can't deliver everything the same day, they don't have the ability to do that. But what you can do to kind of start thinking bigger, right? Is get in the whole foods, 'cause you before it was like everyone get out of retail, everything's moving online? Well, I think yes, everything's moving online, but these major retailers will have a huge massive influx of people that just want things delivered, and so if your product is not there for the same day for them to get it, you're missing out on sales. - And also, people are now used to it, right. Before, think about the Postal Service.
Okay, you know what we accept that's the way it is. But now, Amazon kind of we're spoiled by Amazon in some way. Right? - Oh yeah. - What do you mean I gotta wait a week? This is not acceptable, right? - Right, yeah.
Rage, the rage in people if they have to wait a week for sure. And like, Listen, what did they say it takes some, you know, 30 days to make a new habit, right? Well, how long were we in lockdown and quarantine? We created that habit. I mean, none of us went anywhere.
We had to go online. - Yes. - To get, right? To get our groceries, to get anything, to get medicine. I mean, you could no one's going to the store. So it's here.
- Yeah, it's um, it's, it's fascinating. I'll definitely read that book. So for my listeners if they want to, two question if they want to learn more about E-comm, do you have resources that can help them? Number one, if they want to work with your agency, if they want to launch a product, or they have a product they wanna scale? How can you help them to do that? What's the best way to get in touch with you? - Yeah, sure. So my website, my agency is loveandlaunch.com.
So loveandlaunch.com, and I'm actually launching my first ever academy. So I'm really helping people, teach them what I know, and what I've experienced, and help them continue to, you know, not only just start a new business, but grow what they have, in an effort to get an exit, right, because I'm a start at the end kind of girl, and I wanna you know, sell my business for 20 million. Here's what we need to do over the next two years to accomplish that and then we go do it. - And then so they could take the academy, take the program, if they kinda wanna do it themselves, kinda learn the fundamentals, and the event strategies. If they want to hire your agency, they want more kinda hands on advice, and you can help them do that as well.
- Yes. - Perfect, I love it. - Yap. - Love and Launch, Love and Launch is so easy remember. What's one piece of advice for all my listeners listening in, I think I know what that is. If they are on the fence, I don't know this is for me, can I actually do this? Am I too late? What's one, one piece of wisdom you wanna leave them with? - Oh my gosh, well, I've named that person in my head that is negative and likes to scare me out of things that I know in my gut are good.
And I would just say you know, listen to an expert. You know, I've been doing this for five and a half years, I've worked with 1000s of brands. I know the ins and outs of it and I'm telling you right now, there's no greater time than to launch an E-commerce business. In fact you should have multiple. You know, it's so easy to do right now. Like you should have different niched E-commerce brands, even if you just start out on Shopify or on Amazon.
Very easy to do. - Thank you so much Akemi, appreciate it, love and launch.com. - Thanks, Dan. - Thank you.
2021-03-04 11:54
