Newbie Importing and Selling on Amazon

[Deleted2BB3x9]

Trying hard to resolve it!
Interaction is amazing right now!

 

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[Deleted2BB3x9]

Does anyone know what this error means? "The promotional code you entered cannot be applied to your purchase"

 

[maximus20895]

It seems that the code might not be valid. Is there a way to activate it?

 

[Deleted2BB3x9]

I ended up creating a new discount code, not sure what happened with the first one. The second code worked though.

 

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[Deleted2BB3x9]

Up to 7 orders right now and 3 reviews.

Now my rank on amazon jumped to #15 on page 1 of my subcategory!

Excited as F*ck!

 

[MoneyDoc]

Up to 7 orders right now and 3 reviews.

Now my rank on amazon jumped to #15 on page 1 of my subcategory!

Excited as F*ck!

Good job Ben.

I was following your journey from your previous venture, the fridges. You failed, but you didn't quit. And now look at you.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Arguin]

I'm following you too now, I'm starting on ebay first and then I will go to Amazon. Is there a reason you are skipping ebay?

 

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[Cembo]

I'm following you too now, I'm starting on ebay first and then I will go to Amazon. Is there a reason you are skipping ebay?

FBA

 

[Arguin]

I read somewhere you can use FBA for ebay as well

 

[Deleted2BB3x9]

I'm following you too now, I'm starting on ebay first and then I will go to Amazon. Is there a reason you are skipping ebay?

Cool, and i'm not sure. I'll probably expand to ebay soon, I was just more familiar with amazon.

 

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[Deleted2BB3x9]

I read somewhere you can use FBA for ebay as well

You can but my reason for using FBA is because of the advantage on amazon.com it gives you. If you want to use a fulfillment center with ebay I would choose another one since FBA is more expensive than some other options.

 

[Cembo]

Amazon takes the sharper retail tack, and as a retailer itself Amazon provides tools to help third-party sellers become part of a seamless shopping experience, including FBA, which involves shipping your inventory in bulk to Amazon and letting them handle shipping.

Ebay, on the other hand, is essentially a massive marketplace. Where Amazon focuses on the Amazon shopping experience, eBay offers seller tools and features that make it easier for you to feature your brand, as well as sell non-standard items.

 

[Dinho7]

Inspiring thread. Keep up the heat!

 

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[Deleted2BB3x9]

Might need a bit of help from those with experience...

So I just did my launch on Instagram, I sold 20 items for a dollar and got 5 reviews so far. My rank quickly went to #5 in my subcategory's bestseller ranking, and now it's slowly coming back down, #14 right now. This wouldn't have bothered me other than I'm still on page 7 when I go browse amazon.com

It seems like the bestsellers ranking and the organic rankings are different...
I also turned on paid ads after my boost but haven't gotten any sales.
I'm gonna see if I can give it another boost to stop my rankings from dropping but I'm wondering if I did anything wrong?

This tactic doesn't seem effective. I'm still on page 7, I only appear as #14 if I click the link below my description.

 

[Deleted2BB3x9]

@Vigilante @AllenCrawley @biophase

 

[Deleted2BB3x9]

Got a sale with PPC!

Rank didn't budge.

 

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[Vigilante]

Got a sale with PPC!

Rank didn't budge.

Rank is not going to move with a single sale. @JAJT do you have any advice for him? I am not an expert in how to impact ranking.

 

[Deleted2BB3x9]

I was thinking of doing an email broadcast but I'm not sure if my list is warmed up yet. I've only sent two emails.

I just started optimizing on adwords now too, I'll probably have to do the same with amazon. I've only been using the automatic targeting so far.

I'm curious do you use the automatic targeting or manual? Or both?

I might also post something on facebook, I have about 370 fans.

 

[JAJT]

Your rank isn't going to budge from a single sale (from any source) unless you are literally sitting at zero sales for a few days and your rank is like 200k. Then it might jump to 90k before plummeting back down to 200k if 1 sale is all you got.

Your category rank increases almost 1:1 with sales volume. More sales, more rank. Less sales, less rank.

Keyword ranking however is something a bit different and not a visible metric on Amazon. You need to calculate it. You can use a tool like amzshark or amazontracker to track this stuff for you (my preferred way) or you can do it yourself by typing into amazon.com your keyword, and then seeing what page your product shows up on.

So while your BSR (best selling rank) indicates all sales to your product and is indicative of any sales from any source, your keyword rank is specifically tied to sales of your product generated from that keyword. Keyword rank is the MUCH MORE USEFUL METRIC. And the reason is simple - people don't look up products based on their BSR or the "top 100" lists when shopping. They type in "water jugs" and check out what's on page 1 of the search results, or maybe page 2/3 if they are really hunting.

Seeing a product is #1 in a category should obviously tell you that they are killing it in sales, but the reason they are killing it is almost always because they are a top search result for big keywords on amazon. You can actually carve out a nice little section of any category for yourself by being smart with keywords and driving sales to your listing based on long-tail keywords. Use a tool like merchantwords.com to get an idea (it's not perfect, just an idea) of the kinds of search terms people are using to find products. You may see that "water jugs" is the huge honcho at 1 million search results a month, but "water jugs with floral patterns" still gets 50k searches a month - well shit, if your product has a floral pattern, send some sales to your listing using a "super url" (more on this in a sec) for that keyword and get to page 1 for that keyword. Might as well throw some money to PPC as well for that keyword.

To fully explain why this is so important, consider this. Let's say you have 100 people on the hook for buying your product (an email list, coupon site, whatever). You give them your plain-jane url and give them a wicked deal ($1 for the product, or whatever). You generate 100 sales, your keyword jumps to top 50 in all of the "water jugs" category. Holy shit, you're going to be rich, you're one of the top 50 sellers in all of water jugs! Except over the next few days you drop back down to 200k. WHY!??!?! Simple - nobody was finding your product organically through search. They weren't before and they weren't after. Much like holding a thermometer, seeing it rise 10 degrees and wondering why it's still cold outside. But let's say you did the SAME THING except you loaded up a super url to your product. A super url is created (in a nutshell, I won't go into everything I know about amazon urls but this is the "101" version) when you search for your product on amazon.com's main search bar, type in "water jugs", click page after page after page until you find your product (and hope it's in the top 250 products for that keyword or you won't find it), then click into your product and copy the url which will have your keywords appended into the url itself. When you give this url out amazon will think someone found your product by searching that term. If they buy, they say "hmmm... they searched for water jugs and found this guy and bought, better bump him up a bit in rank for this keyword". Do this 100 times and what have you done? You've told amazon you are THE PRODUCT people want to see when they search "water jugs". Now when people type that in, they see you on page 1, 2 or 3 and as a result are more likely to buy from you. The more people who find you, the more buy, the better your overall BSR rank is. It stays high because they keep finding/buying from you.

Repeat.

This is a huge subject but hopefully you get the idea.

 

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[Deleted2BB3x9]

Your rank isn't going to budge from a single sale (from any source) unless you are literally sitting at zero sales for a few days and your rank is like 200k. Then it might jump to 90k before plummeting back down to 200k if 1 sale is all you got.

Your category rank increases almost 1:1 with sales volume. More sales, more rank. Less sales, less rank.

Keyword ranking however is something a bit different and not a visible metric on Amazon. You need to calculate it. You can use a tool like amzshark or amazontracker to track this stuff for you (my preferred way) or you can do it yourself by typing into amazon.com your keyword, and then seeing what page your product shows up on.

So while your BSR (best selling rank) indicates all sales to your product and is indicative of any sales from any source, your keyword rank is specifically tied to sales of your product generated from that keyword. Keyword rank is the MUCH MORE USEFUL METRIC. And the reason is simple - people don't look up products based on their BSR or the "top 100" lists when shopping. They type in "water jugs" and check out what's on page 1 of the search results, or maybe page 2/3 if they are really hunting.

Seeing a product is #1 in a category should obviously tell you that they are killing it in sales, but the reason they are killing it is almost always because they are a top search result for big keywords on amazon. You can actually carve out a nice little section of any category for yourself by being smart with keywords and driving sales to your listing based on long-tail keywords. Use a tool like merchantwords.com to get an idea (it's not perfect, just an idea) of the kinds of search terms people are using to find products. You may see that "water jugs" is the huge honcho at 1 million search results a month, but "water jugs with floral patterns" still gets 50k searches a month - well shit, if your product has a floral pattern, send some sales to your listing using a "super url" (more on this in a sec) for that keyword and get to page 1 for that keyword. Might as well throw some money to PPC as well for that keyword.

To fully explain why this is so important, consider this. Let's say you have 100 people on the hook for buying your product (an email list, coupon site, whatever). You give them your plain-jane url and give them a wicked deal ($1 for the product, or whatever). You generate 100 sales, your keyword jumps to top 50 in all of the "water jugs" category. Holy shit, you're going to be rich, you're one of the top 50 sellers in all of water jugs! Except over the next few days you drop back down to 200k. WHY!??!?! Simple - nobody was finding your product organically through search. They weren't before and they weren't after. Much like holding a thermometer, seeing it rise 10 degrees and wondering why it's still cold outside. But let's say you did the SAME THING except you loaded up a super url to your product. A super url is created (in a nutshell, I won't go into everything I know about amazon urls but this is the "101" version) when you search for your product on amazon.com's main search bar, type in "water jugs", click page after page after page until you find your product (and hope it's in the top 250 products for that keyword or you won't find it), then click into your product and copy the url which will have your keywords appended into the url itself. When you give this url out amazon will think someone found your product by searching that term. If they buy, they say "hmmm... they searched for water jugs and found this guy and bought, better bump him up a bit in rank for this keyword". Do this 100 times and what have you done? You've told amazon you are THE PRODUCT people want to see when they search "water jugs". Now when people type that in, they see you on page 1, 2 or 3 and as a result are more likely to buy from you. The more people who find you, the more buy, the better your overall BSR rank is. It stays high because they keep finding/buying from you.

Repeat.

This is a huge subject but hopefully you get the idea.

Amazing wisdom bombs.
Thank you so much JAJT. I'm so grateful.
I wish I would have known that sooner.

 

[JAJT]

Just remembered this, check it out: http://moz.com/blog/amazon-seo-organic-search-ranking-factors

 

[AllenCrawley]

@BusinessBen I've been out of town visiting family but see @JAJT shared some killer info and I really can't add much more to that, lol.

 

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[QDF]

click page after page after page until you find your product (and hope it's in the top 250 products for that keyword or you won't find it)

Any way to do this if your product isn't within the top 250? Can you just edit the URL of a product that is ranked to suit your product?

 

[Deleted2BB3x9]

Any way to do this if your product isn't within the top 250? Can you just edit the URL of a product that is ranked to suit your product?

He mentioned you could use amzshark to track your ranking for different keywords.

 

[JAJT]

Any way to do this if your product isn't within the top 250? Can you just edit the URL of a product that is ranked to suit your product?

This happened to me and what I did is find the product in a sub-category rather than the entirety of amazon, keep digging until you find yourself. Throw some sales at it (10-20), then track your top-level rank until you appear in the top 250 - if you get 10-20 sales in a day or so you WILL show up there, almost guaranteed. Then use your new link from the top level to throw the bulk of your sales at it.

 

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[Deleted2BB3x9]

This happened to me and what I did is find the product in a sub-category rather than the entirety of amazon, keep digging until you find yourself. Throw some sales at it (10-20), then track your top-level rank until you appear in the top 250 - if you get 10-20 sales in a day or so you WILL show up there, almost guaranteed. Then use your new link from the top level to throw the bulk of your sales at it.

So are you suggesting to first use the superurl for your subcategory, then once it is ranked high enough use the superurl for a bigger category?

If I were just to use amazon ppc and adwords, would that count towards my keyword rankings?

Also I'm on page one of my subcategory, no keywords. Do you know how many people buy from just browsing categories?

 

[JAJT]

So are you suggesting to first use the superurl for your subcategory, then once it is ranked high enough use the superurl for a bigger category?

Only if you can't find yourself in "all"

If I were just to use amazon ppc and adwords, would that count towards my keyword rankings?

Any sales resulting from the keyword you are targeting counts, so yes. You could theoretically target just 1 keyword on amazon ppc and use your entire daily budget on it - hopefully it converts and you'll get a bunch of sales to boost rank this way.

Also I'm on page one of my subcategory, no keywords. Do you know how many people buy from just browsing categories?

Do you buy by browsing just subcategories? I don't. I might use them as a filter but very, very rarely do I dive down more than 1 level. 2 if it's an oddball item.

 

[krtw]

Excellent thread, at the moment I am researching as much as humanly possible about this business project before I order some samples. I also listened to Ryan Moran's youtube video at the weekend coincidently enough and found it very informative, especially the part about creating a facebook page in the same niche and using that as a platform for advertising the product. Very motivating reading through your journey. Thank you for sharing.

I wish you the best of luck!

 

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[James Fake]

I'm following you too now, I'm starting on ebay first and then I will go to Amazon. Is there a reason you are skipping ebay?

Better question is: Is there a reason you are skipping Amazon?

 

[James Fake]

@JAJT - read through your posts; you are a wise man. I'll be reaching out to you here soon in a couple weeks.. we have to extract that info out your brain onto words! lol...