Q1 David
PRICE TESTING: Hi Guys! I have been doing a lot of price testing. Does anybody know if the price changes in the shopping cart? For example, if somebody added my product to their shopping cart as price X, but did not check out. Then, I change to price Y. Does the product, in the shopping cart, change to price Y or does it remain at the original price X as it was when it was added to the cart? Things that make you go Hmm!!!
Michael Veazey David, interesting question. I admit I don't know the answer.
However I wouldn't recommend changing price that swiftly or often! I've been guilty in the past. Problem is that you can't make objective statistically significant measurements of the effects of price changes.
Michael Veazey I've recently been testing out www.amzsplit.com
Www.Cashcowpro.com also looks promising although I've not used it yet. It also does profit calculations to some degree. Hello profit may be better for the latter.
I am tracking down the creators of all of these things for the podcast...
Q2. Anila
So... I went on Jungle Scout to find the niche product
Started with Home & Kitchen -> Kitchen and Dining -> Kitchen utensils -> Cooking utensils:
A lot of Silicone spatulas came up as you would expect but what JS ran was a completely different story.
It would seem that there still is market for those wishing to sell Silicone Spatula...
Or am I reading the data wrong
According to Greg Mercer's guidance:
1st 5 listing have under 50/100 reviews (Further down a few names dominate)
And the revenue for is good for all the top sellers and very high volume of sales
Wade I might be wrong, but I've always been sorting the results by rank, and then those are my top 10 ones to look at and assess. Please someone tell me if I am wrong!
Michael Veazey Well, this is the first phase or first filter of any sensible product picking system.
First of all quite a few results are for steel tongs so those need to be eliminated as irrelevant.
Then you need to be aware of giveaways.
Look at the top ranked seller.
With just 23 reviews, I don't believe they are doing 3000 organic sales a month in this market.
Next and most important, price. At $6.49, you have to wonder what the profit is.
let's look at ad costs which are frightening with a very competitive keyword.
If we guesstimate PPC costs per click on such a competitive keyword at say $2 per click, and if we are optimistic and say 33% conversion, that gives a cost of $6 as cost per ad driven sale.
Even if say 1/2 of sales are organic that would give an overall average ad cost of $3 per sale.
That leaves $3.49.
I don't know what the fulfilment fees are but let's say $1. Referal fee is $0.97 so basically $1.
So that leaves $1.53 to:
1. buy your unit, 2. inspection, 3. freight, 4. duty and customs costs 5. Receiving warehouse in USA 6. Amazon inbound shipping.
Sales can be achieved if you drop the price, spend a lot on giveaways and spend aggressively on PPC.
That's a good set of launch tactics.
The issue is whether after that, there is profit to be made.
Q.3 Sergei
Hello Amazing FBAers!
How do you pay your freight forwarder to ship your goods to Amazon USA? Do you pay 100% directly before shipping?
I have been trying to get freight forwarders to use Escrow or to pay them 30%/70% through Alibaba's Trade Assurance but they won't agree to it….
Is there a way how I can be safe? Because if you pay them 100% of the sum at the beginning, then you are at their mercy and they will not put a lot of effort because they have already been paid
Btw Michael, keep up the good job, one of the best podcasts out there!
