AM/PM Podcast: LIVE! Amazon FBA with 7-Figure Amazon Seller Manny Coats.

•7 Product Types To Avoid When Starting Out Your Amazon Private Label Business•

Product selection is critical to the success of your private label brand. There are several considerations to make when choosing a product. In the last episode of the AM/PM podcast we discussed several ways to come up with product ideas; today we go over which products to avoid, and we also discuss some ninja research tactics that will help you hone in on killer products.

One of the easiest ways to select the right item to private label is to focus your search rather than to keep it wide open. By eliminating some bad categories you will quickly be able to pass on bad ideas and dedicate more productive time to good ones.

A category you should cross off your list immediately is that of bulky and heavy products. When it comes to making money selling on Amazon, size and weight are of crucial importance.

As far as the size of your item is concerned, it is important you choose a product that can fit inside a large standard size box (18” x 14” x 8”). Shipping costs increase dramatically if you exceed that size. An added benefit of small products is that inbound shipping will be lower too.

Weight is equally important. When selecting your product, be sure that the total weight of the unit does not exceed 20 pounds, but make an effort to select products that are much lighter than that.

Amazon considers oversized items all the items that exceed any of these size and weight specs. To be clear, an item can be light as a feather, but if it cannot fit inside a large standard size box, it will be deemed oversized. The same is true the other way around, if the item is small but heavier than 20 pounds, it’s still oversized. To learn more about what Amazon considers oversized items head over to their Product Size Tiers page.

Because of the fact that Amazon has to store millions of products in their multiple warehouses, they put a limit on some seller accounts that determines how much inventory that individual seller can store there at any given time. That limit is significantly higher for regular-sized items than it is for oversized items. You can learn more about the Inventory Storage Limits in the FBA help area.

I’ve tried to make it crystal clear for you, but in case I’ve failed and haven’t been clear enough, I’ll say it point blank: DO NOT start out with oversized items.

Now that we have oversized products out of the equation, let’s talk about other products you might want to avoid. The following list should get you thinking on the right track, but before we go into it I want to stress that the reason we’re avoiding these products is not because they don’t sell well or they don’t make money; what we’re trying to do by avoiding these products is to mitigate the possibility of problems that may arise.

For example: Amazon recently recalled thousands of “hover-boards” because of safety concerns. They gave sellers a deadline to remove the items from their inventory; items that were not removed on time were destroyed. Having to remove inventory or having it destroyed is never a good day for a seller.

Let’s get started with the list. In no particular order, you should try to avoid the following:

Products with Moving Parts

You should avoid selling toys and gadgets with moving parts. Products that have moving parts are more likely to be assembled incorrectly and be broken by the final consumer prompting returns.

~Download the transcript for this episode: https://www.ampmpodcast.com//ep6-7-product-types-to-avoid-when-starting-out-your-amazon-private-label-business/

*Outline of this episode of the AM/PM Podcast:

00:48 Episode Introduction.

01:21 Why you should choose small and light items when you’re starting out selling on Amazon.

03:47 What products you should avoid when you start selling private label products on Amazon.

07:08 How to use the Amazon Best Seller list to find great product ideas.

09:00 How to spy on competitor brands to mine for product ideas.

10:

•How To Analyze Your Competitors On Amazon To Penetrate Their Market With Surgical Precision•

In this series we’ve covered why and how you should get started with selling private label products on Amazon, finding product ideas and what products you should avoid. Today we dive in deeper by scoping out the potential competition.

If you’ve been following along, by this time you should have a nice list of product ideas to research. The next step is to log onto Amazon.com and search for each of the products in your list in order to filter out the duds and bring out the cash cows.

When you conduct your search the first thing you should look for is how many reviews your potential competitors have. Why are reviews important? Glad you asked! Amazon’s rank algorithm is secret, but the general consensus is that the number of reviews a product has, has no impact on how high a product ranks on the search results­—at least not directly.

Amazon rewards sales conversions; they are interested in helping consumers find what they’re looking for so they can buy it and so we can all laugh all the way to the bank.

Reviews are a fantastic tool to provide social proof; all things being equal, a product with more reviews will almost always outsell a product with fewer reviews. So even though the algorithm doesn’t seem to care about the number of reviews products have, the conversion rate is directly affected by reviews—this is what Amazon cares about.

Confused? Think of it this way. Let’s pretend you go to a town you’ve never been to before and you’re starving. You see two restaurants across the street from each other; one has a two cars in the parking lot and one has a full parking lot and people lined up outside. Chances are you will end up standing in line to get into the busy restaurant than risking food poisoning at the empty restaurant none of the locals eat at.

The same is true with on Amazon. There are thousands of people “starving” for your product, but it is your job to make sure you look like the full restaurant, and not like the empty hole in the wall. The way to do this is through positive reviews. Once you have positive reviews you conversion rates will increase and better rankings will follow.

When you’re researching your product ideas, it is recommended to look at the first 5 products that show up on the search results for the main keywords the average Joe looking for your product would type in. If all of the top 5 results have over 300 reviews, I would highly recommend you pass on this. Competition will be tough to beat. If you see that at least a couple of the top 5 products have less than 300 reviews, then you might be able to stake your claim on this market.

It’s important to emphasize that it is not the reviews what’s giving them the ranking; reviews are merely an indication of the number of sales. To compete with these products, it’s not just a matter of getting more reviews than they have, but actually being able to sell more units.

While you’re conducting your research your goal should be to find products with low BSR (which indicates frequent sales) and a low number of reviews. These products are what dreams are made of.

Going through this research process should help you narrow down your list of ideas even further. The products you have left in your list when you’re done are the ones you can start tracking for stable performance.

The importance of tracking your product candidates with tools such as CamelCamelCamel is that there are instances in which BSR could be skewed. You might encounter a product with good BSR and low reviews, but this could be just an indication of a new product that is being promoted (probably at a heavy discount). If you track the product’s performance for a week or two, you will get a better sense of its true potential.

~Download the transcript and full description for this episode: https://www.ampmpodcast.com//ep-7-how-to-analyze-your-competitors-on-amazon-so-you-can-penetrate-their-mark

•Everything You Will Need To Find A Supplier On Alibaba•

• Have product idea ready

• Search for Product on Alibaba

• Tick Gold Supplier (Filters out scammers, leaves long-time companies)

• Tick Trade Assurance (Episode 3) – Insurance on Order

• Tick Assessed Supplier (Company has been assessed by a third party vendor)

• MOQ or Minimum Order is negotiable

• Create a Spreadsheet on the results and whom you’ve contacted

• Contact at least 5 suppliers

• Use email template (Download the email template here)

• Start out email saying you’re the purchasing manager so you can later play good cop bad cop.

• Make sure you don’t sign as CEO or Owner so you can later use the “CEO” as the bad cop and get a better deal

• After everything is narrowed down, request samples

• Make sure your samples are good quality, you don’t want to have bad products, these will only cause headaches

• Expect to pay a higher price for samples and about $25-$30 on shipping (depending on the size of your items)

~Download the transcript for this episode: https://www.ampmpodcast.com//ep8-everything-you-will-need-to-find-a-supplier-on-alibaba/

*Outline of this episode of the AM/PM Podcast:

00:47 Episode Introduction

01:33 What is Alibaba.com?

02:25 How to contact suppliers on Alibaba and which suppliers to contact

12:42 Email template to contact suppliers on Alibaba.com

14:37 Breakdown of the logic of the email template

29:45 Why you shouldn’t sign as CEO or Owner

32:05 When to request for samples from suppliers

35:25 A story of how ordering a sample saved Manny from a bad deal

38:07 Some insights on shipping your samples to you

҉ Links mentioned in this episode:

Learn more at: https://www.ampmpodcast.com/

Connect with us: https://www.facebook.com/groups/AMPMPodcast/

•Shipping Your Private Label Products From Your Chinese Supplier To Amazon•

Now that you’ve researched your product and found a supplier, we need to talk about getting your product from your supplier to Amazon. Let’s get started!

Before you wire the money to the supplier from Alibaba always be sure the company name you’re wiring the money to matches the name of the company you’ve been negotiating with. If it doesn’t, be sure to contact Alibaba about the discrepancy and use Trade Assurance for extra protection.

Now that you’ve chosen a product and researched it, you’ve contacted suppliers and narrowed them down to one; here is what you need to do:

Check if your product is going to be in a box or a poly bag. If it’s in a box you’re OK. If it’s a polybag, make sure it meets Amazon’s standards. If the bag is over 5 inches wide make sure you put a suffocation label.

Suffocation Label:

If you’re importing from China, make sure the product has been labeled as MADE IN CHINA.

Make sure your product has a UPC if you’re going to be selling your products outside of Amazon. You don’t need a UPC printed on the product if you’ll only be selling on Amazon, although you will need the UPC number to get it listed. Amazon requires the FNSKU to be visible on the products. Amazon will provide you with a PDF file with these numbers; it’s recommended you have your designer incorporate those bar codes in the product’s packaging so you can save the costs of having Amazon apply the stickers for you.

You will need to create a listing for your product on Amazon before you order the packaging from the supplier. Amazon will then provide you with the FNSKU and ASIN. You will need to give these to your supplier for the to apply on the packaging.

It will typically take 15-20 days for the manufacturer to produce your products (longer on more custom orders), and it will take about 5 days to ship the products to you if you use express shipping.

If you plan on registering your brand with Amazon, it is important you take the time to register your website domain and create a website for your brand.

At this time you should also be optimizing your listing and making sure you have good titles, descriptions, bullet points, etc.

An important decision you’ll have to make is how many products to order. Keep in mind that you’ll need at least an extra 50 to 200 units to give away or to sell at a deep discount in order to get a good number of reviews fast.

Once you’re ready to ship your products to the U.S (or wherever your closest Amazon warehouse is), you can ship your products with express shipping, by air or by boat. Express shipping is the fastest, but most expensive. Shipping by boat is the most inexpensive, but it takes the longest. If you’re shipping by anything except express shipping, you might want to use a freight forwarding company to facilitate the process. We’ll cover freight forwarders in a future episode.

~Download the transcript for this episode: https://www.ampmpodcast.com//ep9-shipping-your-private-label-products-from-your-chinese-supplier-to-amazon/

*Outline of this episode of the AM/PM Podcast:

00:49 Episode Introduction

02:30 What you should always do before you pay your supplier from Alibaba

04:30 Manny goes through a checklist for the first order with a supplier

05:12 Making sure the packaging complies with Amazon’s requirements

09:55 What you should do while you wait for your first shipment to arrive

14:55 How many products should you order at first

16:00 How to ship your product from your manufacturer to the U.S.

18:18 The advantages of using a freight forwarder

҉ Links mentioned in this episode:

Learn more at: https://www.ampmpodcast.com/

Connect with us: https://www.facebook.com/groups/AMPMPodcast/

• Pricing Strategies, Getting Reviews And Setting Goals•

Are you wondering what price range to shoot for when choosing products to private label? In this episode, we discuss pricing strategies, how to get reviews early on after your product launch and setting goals for your private label business.

The price point of your product depends on how much profit you want to earn per sale. In most of my products, I aim to get at least $10 profit per sale if my product price is around $30. If my product’s sale price is higher, around $60, I aim to get $20 to $25 profit. I highly recommend you keep the price point of your first private label product below $30. At $30 or below most purchases will be impulse buys. The higher the price goes, the more research will go into a purchase and conversions will inevitably drop. Lower price points also help reduce the number of product returns, people, in general, are less likely to take the time to return a $20 product than they are to return a $100 product.

When creating your product it is very important you discuss with your supplier all the small costs that could drive the final price up. These costs include (but are not limited to): Cost of the product itself, cost of shipping to the USA, cost of shipping to Amazon warehouse, cost of labeling, cost of placing FNSKU, inspection costs, product placement costs, sample/review copies, pay per click advertising, creating a website for your brand, trademark registration, suffocation stickers, Amazon fees.

Amazon FBA revenue calculator

Now that you’ve set the pricing on your product it is the time we start getting reviews for your product.

The old way of doing this was to ask friends and family to review your products for you, unfortunately, Amazon frowns upon this practice because it is very unlikely for these reviews to be unbiased.

Another option is to create a group on Facebook where you give away your products for free or at a steep discount in exchange for a review. This could be effective, but it takes lots of time and effort to get these groups large enough for them to work as needed.

Last, but not least, there are review services. These review services charge a fee to sign up, or to place your product on their lists, their users will then sign up to receive a coupon code they can use to purchase your product for a very low price or for free; in return, these individuals have agreed to review your products for you.

Although there is no guarantee that these people will review your product (it’s against Amazon’s TOS to force people to post a review), it’s likely that about 70% of the people who use your discount codes will end up reviewing your stuff. It’s important to mention that these reviewers must mention they got the product at a discount in exchange for a review. Keep in mind review services cannot and should not guarantee 5-star reviews; these reviews must be real and objective, so if you’re product is sub-par, you run the risk of getting bad ratings on the products you give away.

It is recommended that you get five to ten reviews before turning on pay per click advertising; this way potential customers will have some idea of how good your product is and they will be more likely to hit the buy button.

~Download the transcript and full description for this episode: https://www.ampmpodcast.com//ep10-amazon-private-label-pricing-strategies-getting-reviews-and-setting-goals/

*Outline of this episode of the AM/PM Podcast:

00:45 Episode Introduction

00:26 What price range should you shoot for when selling your products

07:53 Why it’s a good idea to price your products under $30

12:18 What are the small costs that will add up and affect your pricing

16:05 Running Pay Per Click ads to your Amazon products

17:52 How to get reviews and ratings for your Amazon products

27:50 Pricing strategy for Amazon product launches

30:30 Setting sales goals and when to expand

҉ Links mentioned in this episode:

Learn more at https://www.ampmpodcast.com/

Con

•Are Hijackers Stealing Amazon Product Sales From Under Your Nose? How To Protect Yourself•

Hijackers could be taking over your listings, costing you sales and causing your products to get bad reviews. In this episode Manny will show you how you can deal with hijacked listings and what you can do to prevent that from happening in the first place.

~Download the transcript for this episode: https://www.ampmpodcast.com//hijackers-stealing-amazon-product-sales-nose-learn-protect-hijacked-listings-ep12/

*Outline of this episode of the AM/PM Podcast:

00:37 Episode Introduction

01:18 Manny updates us about his very recent experience with hijackers

03:37 What is a hijacker and how do they hijack your accounts?

05:09 How to prove Amazon your product listing has been hijacked

05:32 What to do if you’re product has been hijacked

06:38 What precautions you can take to keep your listings from being hijacked

҉ Links mentioned in this episode:

Learn more at: https://www.ampmpodcast.com/

Connect with us: https://www.facebook.com/groups/AMPMPodcast/

Learn more about brand registry: https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/200955930

Brand registry application: https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/sign-in/sign-in.html?destination=https%3A%2F%2Fsellercentral.amazon.com%2Fbrand%2Fcatalog-brand-application%2Fbrand-application-wizard%3F_encoding%3DUTF8%26referrer%3Dag_xx_cont_200955930

•Introducing Scribbles: The Ultimate Amazon Listing Optimization Tool•

SCRIBBLES is the ultimate Amazon Listing Optimization tool! SCRIBBLES helps you ensure all of your juicy keywords are included in the title, bullet points, and your keyword fields. SCRIBBLES saves you TONS of time and keeps you organized so you don’t forget any of your valuable money keywords.

~Download the transcript for this episode: https://www.ampmpodcast.com//introducing-scribbles-is-the-ultimate-amazon-listing-optimization-tool-scribbles-helps-you-ensure-all-of-your-juicy-keywords-are-included-in-the-title-bullet-points-and-your-keyword-fields-scrib/

*Outline of this episode of the AM/PM Podcast:

00:39 Episode Introduction

01:11 Manny discusses why Scribbles is such a time-saver

01:55 The old way to optimize listings

02:13 The new way to optimize listings

02:31 What is SCRIBBLES?

҉ Links mentioned in this episode:

Learn more at: https://www.ampmpodcast.com/

Connect with us: https://www.facebook.com/groups/AMPMPodcast/

SCRIBBLES: http://www.helium10.com/

•13 Products You Should Avoid If You're Just Starting Out Selling Private Label Products•

When you’re starting out selling private label products, it’s recommended you take the path of least resistance. In this episode I go over 13 products I would recommend avoiding and how I came about that list.

In episode 2 I went over how competitors could use review services to take your ideas. Another way to use review services is to figure out what products are getting over-saturated. If you pay attention to the listings in these services you’ll notice patterns start to emerge. Multiple sellers asking for reviews for very similar products can mean that there too many people jumping on a trend. The list below is made up of 13 products I have recently seen on review services over and over again. The list will change over time; the strategy will help you for years to come.

Without further ado, the products are:

• Selfie Sticks

• Phone Accessories (Cases)

• Screen Protectors

• Apple Watch Cases

• Ear Buds

• Silicone Wedding Rings

• Car Mounts for Phones

• Skin Creams

• Supplements

• Yoga Towels

• USB Chargers

• Digital Meat Thermometers

• LED Head Lamps

If you’ve found this strategy helpful, please share this page with other sellers who might appreciate it. (They’ll thank you for it.)

~Download the transcript for this episode: https://www.ampmpodcast.com//13-products-you-should-avoid-if-youre-just-starting-out-selling-private-label-products-on-amazon/

*Outline of this episode of the AM/PM Podcast:

00:45 Episode Introduction

01:20 Using review sites to see what NOT to sell

03:07 What are review services

04:03 How to use review services to figure out what everyone else is selling

05:21 Top 13 products to avoid

҉ Links mentioned in this episode:

Learn more at: https://www.ampmpodcast.com/

Connect with us: https://www.facebook.com/groups/AMPMPodcast/

•How I Lost $144,114.49 On Amazon In Under 30 Days•

~Download the transcript for this episode: https://www.ampmpodcast.com//how-i-lost-144114-49-on-amazon-in-under-30-days-ep-15/

*Outline of this episode of the AM/PM Podcast:

00:46 Episode Introduction

01:22 Why Episode 15 Took So Long…

01:58 How to Join Our Facebook Group

02:12 Why I Lost Over $144K According To Amazon

02:33 Why I Ran Out of Inventory In December

03:20 What I’m Doing to Prevent Running Out In the Future

04:22 What Happened to My BSRs After I Ran Out Of Inventory

06:38 How I Miscalculated On My Sales Forecasts (Again…)

11:32 To Run Out Of Inventory Or To Raise Prices… That is The sales forecastQuestion!

15:19 What Net Profit Should You Look For?

16:30 Update On My “Secret Weird Product”

19:22 An Special Announcement Of Something Really Cool (Coming Soon)

҉ Links mentioned in this episode:

Learn more at: https://www.ampmpodcast.com/

Connect with us: https://www.facebook.com/groups/AMPMPodcast/

•Pricing Strategies For Your Private Label Products On Amazon•

Pricing your private label products will be some of the most important decisions you’ll make in your business. In this episode of the AM/PM Podcast I go over a few different pricing strategies I’ve used in the past and I go over different pricing experiments conducted by well renowned universities.

We’ve seen prices ending in 9 for several years now, but a recent study conducted by MIT students determined there is a significant benefit to pricing items with numbers ending on 9. These prices even outperformed lower prices ending in 4.

A clothing catalogue agreed to publish multiple variations and distributed them amongst their subscribers. The control had a dress priced with a number ending in 9, one variation had a price that was 5 dollars cheaper, and the other variation had a price 5 dollars more expensive than the control. The control, the item priced ending in 9, outperformed both others.

Another experiment wanted to prove the effectiveness of a discount. In this case they had a product priced at $40 and the same product priced at $39. By split testing these two price points they showed that, as expected, the product priced at $39 produced more sales. Later they introduced a variable. The product that was priced at $40 was presented as a deal by showing a $48 regular price and a $40 sales price. By having that comparison the $40 product outsold the $39 product. This doesn’t contradict the great power of a price ending on 9, after finding the power of the deal the experimenters tried another variation of a $48 regular price and a $39 sales price. This last variation outperformed all others.

~Download the transcript for this episode: https://www.ampmpodcast.com//pricing-strategies-private-label-products-amazon-ep16/

*Outline of this episode of the AM/PM Podcast:

00:46 Episode Introduction

01:22 Why Episode 15 Took So Long…

01:58 How to Join Our Facebook Group

02:12 Why I Lost Over $144K According To Amazon

02:33 Why I Ran Out of Inventory In December

03:20 What I’m Doing to Prevent Running Out In the Future

04:22 What Happened to My BSRs After I Ran Out Of Inventory

06:38 How I Miscalculated On My Sales Forecasts (Again…)

11:32 To Run Out Of Inventory Or To Raise Prices… That is The Question!

15:19 What Net Profit Should You Look For?

16:30 Update On My “Secret Weird Product”

19:22 An Special Announcement Of Something Really Cool (Coming Soon)

҉ Links mentioned in this episode:

Learn more at: https://www.ampmpodcast.com/

Connect with us: https://www.facebook.com/groups/AMPMPodcast/

Study conducted by MIT students: http://web.mit.edu/simester/Public/Papers/Effectsof$9.pdf