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New Niche, New Brand - Amazon > eCommerce > Retail

A detailed account of a Fastlane process...

DrkSide

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Time for an update:

2nd Product launch is going well. I received 5 reviews so far from the 10 coupons that I gave out. I was hoping for a couple more and I will be following up with the buyers that did not leave reviews already. I priced this very low (still making money though) to get it kick started with the reviews. Currently it is sitting at about 25k BSR. I am just going to leave the price where it is and once I get 10-15 reviews start moving it up.

The 2 star review that I got is now a 5 star! They ordered a replacement instead of just returning and updated it when the replacement got there.

I am trying a different route with the 3rd product launch. I priced it at 30% of where I want to end up and turned on paid ads. I am going to let this grow organically and let the reviews come in from the follow up emails that I am sending. Currently I lose about $2 on each sale depending on what the ad spend is. As with the other product once I get 10-15 reviews I will start increasing the price. It is currently sitting at around 9k bsr.

I have decided that it is finally time to have a logo created. I want to add it to my products instead of just having the brand name printed on them. It will help me further protect the brand as well as create identity. At this point I am leaning towards 99designs to have it made but I am still open to other options.
 
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Nrr

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Hi DrkSide

I will have my first 500 units ready in amazon, and I have a High capital to running promotion . Can you recommend me what was your marketing technique more effective ? I want bet hard in giveaway. What is % of reviews that you get ? Any type to improve that?

About the month of December , how you can estimate that inventory have ready to this month?

Regards
Nir
 

DrkSide

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@Nrr Thanks for asking. I think I covered the answers to your questions below but if you have any others please let me know.

Marketing/Promotion - I set up a landing page offering the product for $4.95 in exchange for a review. The page has information on the product and a place for them to give their email address. The last promotion run I got 50% reviews left (previous was 70%). The reviews that I get from this method are a much better quality than what you normally get from review groups or paid services. Instead of just getting people that want free stuff I am able to reach people that will actually test and evaluate the product. To get people to the page I use Facebook Ads.

Reviews - You need to be running some software to solicit product reviews when a customer buys a product. I have an email that is sent out 3 days after delivery to let the customer know that I am available to ask any questions and also asking for them to leave a review on the product. I use Feedbackz.com which is actually owned by a fellow board member.

December - Without having some historical data it is hard to guess what sales will be in December and the months leading up to it. Normally I have heard that sales will double each month from October to December. So October is 2x September, November is 2x October, etc. I have also spoken to a friend that is a buyer for Sams Club. He said that they will do more sales between Black Friday and Christmas than the entire rest of the year.
 

Nrr

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@Nrr Thanks for asking. I think I covered the answers to your questions below but if you have any others please let me know.

Marketing/Promotion - I set up a landing page offering the product for $4.95 in exchange for a review. The page has information on the product and a place for them to give their email address. The last promotion run I got 50% reviews left (previous was 70%). The reviews that I get from this method are a much better quality than what you normally get from review groups or paid services. Instead of just getting people that want free stuff I am able to reach people that will actually test and evaluate the product. To get people to the page I use Facebook Ads.

Reviews - You need to be running some software to solicit product reviews when a customer buys a product. I have an email that is sent out 3 days after delivery to let the customer know that I am available to ask any questions and also asking for them to leave a review on the product. I use Feedbackz.com which is actually owned by a fellow board member.

December - Without having some historical data it is hard to guess what sales will be in December and the months leading up to it. Normally I have heard that sales will double each month from October to December. So October is 2x September, November is 2x October, etc. I have also spoken to a friend that is a buyer for Sams Club. He said that they will do more sales between Black Friday and Christmas than the entire rest of the year.

I was thinking in use a paid service .... and a software for the email too... But after search information the conversion buyer > Review is only 10 % ... in my opinion very low ... I need get around 20-25% of conversion here . About Feedbackz.com they have templates for the email ? or you write all the emails?

I have experience with FB ads but I would like know... what type of text you put in the ads to get the right people "for example you put that cost 4,95 USD to filter people"? I can target people with interest in my niche ... but know if they are buyers is difficult
 
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DrkSide

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@Nrr There are many different ways to launch a product on Amazon. Just try one way out and see what works and what doesn't.

Feedbackz does have built in templates. I have not tried them as I already had written email templates that are converting well.

You need to target your end customers with the facebook audience. I went broad with my first ads and then took a look at the metrics and tweaked them for the demographics that were converting more. Text can vary depending on who I am trying to target.
 

prof

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I have decided that it is finally time to have a logo created. I want to add it to my products instead of just having the brand name printed on them. It will help me further protect the brand as well as create identity. At this point I am leaning towards 99designs to have it made but I am still open to other options.

Great thread! It's pretty much the first one I've read here on these forums and I'm thoroughly enjoying the depth and detail of your posts.

As an alternative to 99designs I can recommend you take a look at 48hourslogo.com. I have used these for a previous business logo and the quality of designs was excellent at a much more agreeable price point.

The only slight annoyance was having to pay an additional $30 or so after fact to turn my listing private. The business had a rather unique name so typically the logo contest would rank highly in search results which we didn't particularly like. Nice little upsell for them but still significantly cheaper than other sites.

Looking forward to your future instalments!
 

Nrr

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@Nrr There are many different ways to launch a product on Amazon. Just try one way out and see what works and what doesn't.

Feedbackz does have built in templates. I have not tried them as I already had written email templates that are converting well.

You need to target your end customers with the facebook audience. I went broad with my first ads and then took a look at the metrics and tweaked them for the demographics that were converting more. Text can vary depending on who I am trying to target.
DrkSide , My inventory will be ready in amazon in 1 week.

Can you share your statistics of yours ads in fb? Budget , ctr,cpc,clicks in your ads and conversion of your squeeze page ? What type of message you write to the first message that your subscriber will get with the "coupon of amazon" ? How many message do you have to send to the buyers and after how many days ( only with 1 you get around 50 % - 70 %) ?

I have read a little about the new policy of amazon.. what happen if I offer a high number of free way (200-300 units ¿? ) is safe ?
 
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DrkSide

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@Nrr - I don't track any stats on my facebook ads besides what the clicks cost. I am not running this to be profitable so I don't care about anything except for signups and what the clicks cost me. I probably should but I don't.

For the new Amazon policy. Take it as you wish. That is up to you to decide what will be excessive in Amazons eyes and what your threshold for risk is.

Both new products are sold out! Past 30 days I moved 100 of product 2 and 200 of product 3. I am trying to reorder but had some issues with my bank so I am trying to clear that up. Reviews on both are coming in and are mostly positive. Product 2 had a couple (roughly 2%) that were defective out of the box. I have talked to my manufacture and they are going to be testing the next batch better.

All I am doing at this point is trying to shore up inventory for Q4 as much as possible. I am placing a large order now and then will follow up with smaller orders as money comes in from Amazon. I did take a $10k loan out to be able to purchase more inventory that will be paid off in the next couple months.
 

DrkSide

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End of Month Update

Total Sales: $20,769

Highest sales month so far. Product 2 & 3 are still out of stock with more on the way after the Chinese holiday. Product 1 has enough stock for about 6 days so it will stock out before my next replenishment.

Product 4-7 samples are en route and I will slowly add them to the offerings over the next couple months as money permits.
 

phenom4hire

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DrkSide,

Ive really enjoyed reading your thread and following along with your success. It seems you are seeing repeatable growth in a month to month basis which I think is fantastic. I have a feeling you are going to surpass your expectations for the holiday season, so congrats on your progress thus far. Can you share some info about your margins/profits without going into specific prices and why you felt that this niche looked like an opportunity with said margins. Also if its not to much detail, is this more of a one and one product for most customers or something that will need to be replaced/improved regularly. Thanks again for sharing your progress.
 
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frankh

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Drkside, really appreciate the thread. Really inspires me and makes me believe that I can do do this.

I am looking to get my product up by next month, I am still talking to manufacturers.
The manufacturer has agreed to send me 20 samples.
My question is, how would you go about testing?
I understand you have created a brand, but is that as simple as putting your brand name in the title?

Thank you.
 

BlakeIC

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Awesome to see you are still going strong!

Has the thought of pushing traffic to a website of your own occurred?

To get more reviews/traffic to your own website, you could through in a small flyer in each shipment
 

DrkSide

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Ive really enjoyed reading your thread and following along with your success. It seems you are seeing repeatable growth in a month to month basis which I think is fantastic. I have a feeling you are going to surpass your expectations for the holiday season, so congrats on your progress thus far. Can you share some info about your margins/profits without going into specific prices and why you felt that this niche looked like an opportunity with said margins. Also if its not to much detail, is this more of a one and one product for most customers or something that will need to be replaced/improved regularly. Thanks again for sharing your progress.
@phenom4hire I aim to make about 30% on margins. I do not make it with all of the products but it is my goal when I introduce a new product (however, I am looking at products now that I know will not have a 30% margin but the profit potential and other factors make these viable for the market). All of my products at this point do not need to be replaced but people still often buy more than one.

I am looking to get my product up by next month, I am still talking to manufacturers.
The manufacturer has agreed to send me 20 samples.
My question is, how would you go about testing?
I understand you have created a brand, but is that as simple as putting your brand name in the title?
Do you know how to test the products yourself? My niche is one that I am familiar with so I knew how to test my products and had some friends that were willing to test. The biggest thing is to get them in front of some ACTUAL USERS and have them test them. I find that the reviews/feedback from real customers is always leaps and bounds above others.

Awesome to see you are still going strong!

Has the thought of pushing traffic to a website of your own occurred?

To get more reviews/traffic to your own website, you could through in a small flyer in each shipment

@BlakeIC I have thought about doing paid traffic to my website as well as the brochures in products to drive people there. However, I am still having major inventory problems with Amazon. I cannot afford to keep stock there so I am reluctant to build out another channel at this point. It is in the near future but just not ready to pull the trigger. I will be sharing updates once I do.

Also, for anyone watching. I started with a purchase of about $320 almost 2 years ago (1 year, 8 months to be exact) and just in the past 30 days I have purchased $20,000 of inventory. It has been a wild ride and continues to be. At first I thought it would be a "quick" process but it has proved to be a much more methodical game of chess. This is a very, very capital intensive game that I didn't understand at all when I jumped in and still don't completely.

I have an update coming but it won't be as grand as I had hoped for certain reasons.
 
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Omni

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Wow, amazing progress @DrkSide! In your first post, you mentioned your product is not saturated and easier to transition off Amazon. What indicators do you look for to decide if a niche is not saturated? And what qualities would a product need to be easily transitioned off Amazon (I'd think any product can be transitioned off)?
 

DrkSide

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Couple days late for EOM update but here it is.

Total Sales - $12,776.34 (one sale from website)
october sales.PNG
You can see from the graph that I was out of stock for 10 days. Had a few sales due to others cancelling but I am not counting those.

Stock issues came from both a bank error and not ordering soon enough. I know that I will not have enough inventory to make it through the holidays so I am just going to get everything that I can.

Amazon is running pretty hands-off at the point besides having to answer customer emails. Beginning to work more on the website and get it setup to push some traffic to it.

Starting my first pre-order ads for a new product today to see if I will be able to sell some before I even have them in my hands. I took pictures of my samples and added logos to them for stand ins on the product page. Since I don't have any data for the ads yet I set up a pretty general audience and will take the data from that and fine tune.
 

DrkSide

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Wow, amazing progress @DrkSide! In your first post, you mentioned your product is not saturated and easier to transition off Amazon. What indicators do you look for to decide if a niche is not saturated? And what qualities would a product need to be easily transitioned off Amazon (I'd think any product can be transitioned off)?

Omni, I was already familiar with the niche prior to entering it. While there were some people selling the product there were not 20+ listings for the same product available and the ones that were there had high sales. Most of them had high review numbers too but that didn't stop me from outselling them with 1/10th the reviews.

My products are sold in many online stores both by manufactures and stores such as Amazon (and other niche specific stores) so I knew that there are people buying. They are also something the people can't go down to Walmart and buy. In fact if they do have a store that specializes in this area they are still not likely to be able to buy them there.
 
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DrkSide

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Congrats, what percentage are you netting? If you dont mind me asking

And do you operate as sole proprietor or something else?

I average around 30% give or take depending on a number of factors.

I incorporated earlier in the year to take advantage of taxes and other benefits.
 
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DrkSide

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November ended up being the best month so far which I had suspected would be the case. Cyber Monday was actually a bigger day for me than Black Friday. Note: I ran no specials, no sales for either day. I did not have enough inventory to run any sales.

Amazon: $39,733.70
Website: $719.68

Total: $40,453.38

Product 1 was a good seller and I managed to keep inventory all month and finally ran out on Dec. 2nd. Product 2 and 3 were in stock most of the month and actually went out of stock on Thanksgiving day. Product 1 restocks are en route to me, product 2 restocks are in production (changed a few small things that extended production times but increased quality), product 3 restock is being checked into Amazon right now.

Product 4 launch is in process. They are checking in the inventory right now. Plan for this one is to price at break even and sell through 400 or so units like that. Depending on sales I may/may not solicit some reviews. It will really just depend on how it progresses. I did do some advertising for pre-orders for this product. I lost money but got some good data I hope to turn around and use for other ads.

Product 5, 6, and 7 are in the works. I have samples of all of them and will launch as funds allow. This has been the biggest hurdle is financing new inventory.

I have had higher than normal returns for product 1. Not exactly sure what is going on but I had additional QC done at the factory on the latest restock and will be QCing every unit when they arrive to me instead of a normal spot check.

Have some offline stuff in the works for a few retail shows and events but nothing concrete yet. I still need to have inventory to be able to show it off and get orders.

The Bad: Facebook shut my ads account down due to complaints about some of my ads. They would not give an specifics and every attempt to get them to reinstate it has failed. I have a plan to get around it for the little that I need the ads for.
 

BlakeIC

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November ended up being the best month so far which I had suspected would be the case. Cyber Monday was actually a bigger day for me than Black Friday. Note: I ran no specials, no sales for either day. I did not have enough inventory to run any sales.

Amazon: $39,733.70
Website: $719.68

Total: $40,453.38

Product 1 was a good seller and I managed to keep inventory all month and finally ran out on Dec. 2nd. Product 2 and 3 were in stock most of the month and actually went out of stock on Thanksgiving day. Product 1 restocks are en route to me, product 2 restocks are in production (changed a few small things that extended production times but increased quality), product 3 restock is being checked into Amazon right now.

Product 4 launch is in process. They are checking in the inventory right now. Plan for this one is to price at break even and sell through 400 or so units like that. Depending on sales I may/may not solicit some reviews. It will really just depend on how it progresses. I did do some advertising for pre-orders for this product. I lost money but got some good data I hope to turn around and use for other ads.

Product 5, 6, and 7 are in the works. I have samples of all of them and will launch as funds allow. This has been the biggest hurdle is financing new inventory.

I have had higher than normal returns for product 1. Not exactly sure what is going on but I had additional QC done at the factory on the latest restock and will be QCing every unit when they arrive to me instead of a normal spot check.

Have some offline stuff in the works for a few retail shows and events but nothing concrete yet. I still need to have inventory to be able to show it off and get orders.

The Bad: Facebook shut my ads account down due to complaints about some of my ads. They would not give an specifics and every attempt to get them to reinstate it has failed. I have a plan to get around it for the little that I need the ads for.
I hate brain dead support teams that give only vague responses, LIKE AMAZON! YAY!

Are all your products related in some way or another? (as a brand) or are you just selling individual things?
 

DrkSide

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Are all your products related in some way or another? (as a brand) or are you just selling individual things?
Currently all of my products are related and fall under the same brand.
 
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BlakeIC

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With your sales increasing what do you find you are shifting your time more towards? (customer retention, fulfillment, anything)
 

Aaron W

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Amazing, I kind of wish I lived in the US to get into Amazon it seems really interesting.
Will be keeping up with this thread and congratulations of your hard work payoff!

Question: You mentioned you started with $380 for your first product 1 order. However how much money did it actually require to start what you are doing, business wise and not living? For example if I wanted to start tomorrow, what kind of cash would you recommend a good starting point?
 

Sunscreen

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Amazing, I kind of wish I lived in the US to get into Amazon it seems really interesting.
Will be keeping up with this thread and congratulations of your hard work payoff!

Question: You mentioned you started with $380 for your first product 1 order. However how much money did it actually require to start what you are doing, business wise and not living? For example if I wanted to start tomorrow, what kind of cash would you recommend a good starting point?

You don't have to live in USA to use FBA or opperate an ecommerce store in the USA. If u purchase an INSIDERS pass you will see that others from Canada and even Australia or making it in the US market. There are extra hurdles obviously but it's still possible.
 
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Aaron W

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You don't have to live in USA to use FBA or opperate an ecommerce store in the USA. If u purchase an INSIDERS pass you will see that others from Canada and even Australia or making it in the US market. There are extra hurdles obviously but it's still possible.

Canada is unfortunately very costly on the shipping.
 

Aaron W

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Amazon has a partnership with UPS so you get way lower rates

Behave! Time to start looking in to this then, there's so many valuable posts on this forum about Amazon.
 
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Nrr

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Hi DrKside

12308196_534055550095600_425685214400173876_o.jpg




How is going all ? That is the result of my first promotion and 500 inventory ... What do you think ? Can one product make 3000 or 5000 sales per month ?

My goal is hit 30-50 sales per day as soon as possible ... After my promotion My product was in top1 in her category and much of my keyword was page 20 to 4

In this moment 1500 units will go to Amazon ... I hope before of day 25 and I will put 300 units in freeaway and put money in PPC ... My reviews at this moment are 20
 

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