Everyone’s started to sell on Amazon, it’s the gold rush of ecommerce. But I believe, you shouldn’t purely rely on Amazon’s traffic and source of revenue. The real gold is building your off -site authority website that builds your brand. I mentioned this in the previous podcast, but today I’m going to go into in detail.

Building your authority website is extremely important. Noticed how I emphasized Authority. This is the site that represents your business, yourself, and EVERYTHIGN YOU HAVE ON THE LINE. Make sure it’s very high quality, it says what it does, it delivers what it says, and helps build your business.

I believe Amazon is the main ecommerce platform. I’ve built my authority website to redirect users to amazon’s platform as that keeps my prices uniform across sales channels even when I change prices, run low on inventory etc… my prices are all the same across the board, and it makes things simple.

What’s the whole point of creating your off-site authority brand website you ask? Ahhhh where to start.

* Customers will do a background check on your site. They will go through to see its professional. Then they’ll check your competitors, and see who has the better site. This happens a lot.

* The main reason is for gathering lots of traffic organically and having some control in your business outside of Amazon. All amazon sellers are scared of getting suspended on Amazon. It’s the biggest fear and I mentioned that in Episode 6 – How to Avoid an Amazon Suspension. In that podcast 61% of sellers stated they feared being suspended even though they had no reason to fear that.

So let’s focus on pointer 2 – driving traffic organically. I’ve noticed my articles on my brand authority site are starting to gain traction, approximately 200-300 views each. Each article is 2000 words long, and they are of high quality. They are articles with at least 2 pictures, and are very highly detailed about their topic detailing in some way something related to the product I’m selling. The article doesn’t have to directly mention the product, but sometimes you can refer your product directly.

For example, if your sell toilet plungers, your typical customers are looking at how to plunge their toilet. Your articles should be around “The best way to plunge your toilet” Top 10 plungers in 2016 for your toilet and so on. These are things people need to know, and you need to accurately provide that answer to them… and as long as you provide the best answer, and also THE best product for that answer, then BOOM you have a solid business in the making. Your articles are not only providing educational value, but they are leading your customers right to the product they need. Its double value proposition for you.

Now, I personally am passionate about soccer, and passionate about this podcast, but product articles can be duller. If you don’t have the excitement to write them, find someone who can. I have a part-time contractor who I found on freelancer to help build my content base.

At this point, I recommend that be very careful in selecting your freelancer. Sure you can go with a cheap one, where you pay $5 per article, but obviously the value is probably going to be terrible. Don’t expect a highly qualified, educated person to write for you at $5 per article.

There are two things you need to know when getting your content team ready. How much you’ll pay per article, and what you want in that article. For my business, I pay $20 per article and require 2000 words at least. Not only that I provide the exact titles that I want to appear on my website and I ensure everything is polished to the T. There is no point in releasing garbage to the archives of Google. If you won’t read what your article writers are writing about,