Sponsored products, it’s a relatively new part of the amazon marketplace, it’s only five years old.  Sponsored products was launched in 2012. In 2013 Mike Ziegler joined the sponsored products team at Amazon and this week Mike joins us as our Amazon insider. You can contact him at Marketplace Clicks - https://www.marketplaceclicks.com/

Keywords are one of the many back end components that have to be properly optimized or else customers won’t be able to find your products. The most important thing when it comes to keywords is to think like a shopper.

Eric Heller of Marketplace Ignition is the episode's Amazon "Insider."

Eric recruited some of the first sellers to the Amazon Marketplace. Now he helps some of the biggest brands grow their brands on Amazon. One of the things he helps his customer with is keywords.

Amazon wants to be a platform for everyone and that includes people who make their own products. Things like custom woodworking, purses,  jewelry and more. The popularity of Etsy proved there was demand.

That’s why Amazon launched a competitor to Etsy called Amazon Handmade.It’s a marketplace for those kinds of sellers, Amazon calls them Artisans.

“Senior leadership has always seen Etsy as an opportunity for Amazon that had never been explored,” says former Amazonian Marell Morel.

Marell actually helped launch Handmade when she worked at Amazon. Now Marell works for Cascadia, a company built to help Amazon sellers grow their Amazon business. You can find them at www.thinkcascadia.com.

Amazon’s Prime Day is back and set for the second week of July. Sellers need to be preparing now to take advantage of one of the biggest shopping days on Amazon each year.

Amazon is back on the podcast talking about a program they’ve started to help sellers give back to their own communities. It’s called Local Love: https://amazonlocallove.com/

Sellers interested in being involved with Local Love can contact the team at: [email protected]

Erica Takeuchi, Senior Marketing Manager, and Amy Scott, Marketing Specialist, are this week's "Amazon insiders." 

The head and vice president of amazon’s Prime Now, Stephenie Landry, tells us three things Amazon merchants should know about Prime Now.

This week we have something special. You’ll hear from the Vice President of the Amazon Marketplace, Peter Faricy. He’s the most senior executive at Amazon directly involved with the Marketplace and has run the business since 2009.

“I think every day about how can I help these small/medium businesses be successful all over the world,” says Peter, “We think about what it’s like to be an entrepreneur and how we can help them be successful.”

Peter was recently at the Shoptalk Conference in Las Vegas, which is where the audio for this episode is from. Peter has been at Amazon for 11 years and he’s run the Marketplace for 8 years. At Shoptalk he shared five ways brand owners can build their own brand on Amazon.

Brand Registry is expanding to provide more tools to help sellers dealing with counterfeit products. Peter Kearns with eGrowth Partners joins us. He’s talked with Amazon about the updates and he tells us what we can expect.

This is a breaking news episode. Amazon has made changes to Buyer Seller Messages and now shoppers can opt out of receiving messages from sellers. We’ve reached out to Amazon and haven’t heard from them yet so we don’t when this update was rolled out. Sellers started telling me about it on Tuesday, March 28th.