PricingScan Podcast

Making seven figures in 2021 and beyond this decade is not impossible. There are rapidly growing industries and technological advances, and plenty of individuals and businesses will experience growth and financial gain. Remember these habits and strategies to help you attain financial freedom.

1. You must have multiple streams of income.

This is one of the oldest lessons in the book. The more streams of income you create, the more likely your chances of earning seven figures. Sure, one income stream can potentially reach the million-dollar mark, but it can be a bit risky to put all your eggs in one financial basket.

Aside from earned income, where you’re exchanging time for money, you must invest in other streams to free up time while also reaching financial freedom. Passive income is the main way to do so, which you can generate by creating digital products, as one example. Residual income from affiliate marketing or rental-property income can also get you closer to your seven-figure goal.

To successfully manage different income streams, one must learn the skill of delegating. As Richard Branson has expressed, “As much as you need a strong personality to build a business from scratch, you also must understand the art of delegation. I have to be good at helping people run the individual businesses, and I have to be willing to step back. The company must be set up so it can continue without me.”

2. Create products and services people need.

The products and services you offer have a direct effect on your earnings, and seven figures is attainable if you focus on price, value and demand. Consider high-ticket products, services or packages to appeal to some of your most dedicated clients. Regardless of high ticket prices, new products and services are a good way to earn more money in the new year and decade. Provide more valuable options to your customers and they’ll appreciate it, all while you scale your business.

3. Scale properly.

Before scaling your business, be sure that your customers will want what you’re building. Beginner entrepreneurs often make the mistake of overlooking this step. From there, be sure to maintain enough inventory to satisfy demand, and bear in mind that most businesses keep popular items at a higher supply.

4. Media exposure is key.

Utilizing the media is important when showcasing your business and what you offer to a wide range of possible customers and clients. Target as specific an audience as possible, and don’t be afraid to refine the audience your ads are targeted to. Be clear and confident in what you offer, and revenue will likely increase.

5. Invest in your business and yourself.

To scale your business, you must reinvest by outsourcing more tasks to focus on growth, equipment for more efficient operations, marketing, etc. As mentioned earlier, investing in other areas of income is crucial, but it doesn’t stop there. Be sure to invest in your education to increase your skills and your health to stay active and on top. Not only do you have to do what’s best for your business, but also for yourself.

6. Avoid burnout.

As much as people would like to think otherwise, it’s not healthy to be working all the time. Lack of rest will decrease performance, and experiencing burnout imposes additional health risks. You can lose focus of the goals you set, and little to no progress will be made in the upcoming year.

Manage time to achieve goals, and set aside time to rest and grow. As successful business mentor Merel Kriegsman states, “If you attempt to pull a ‘just keep swimming’ strategy, your ability to receive awesome things in your life starts to lag behind the results you’re seeing in your business, and that’s when self-sabotaging behavior will come and bite you in the butt.”

7. Hang around other seven-figure earners.

Almost every successful entrepreneur has advised this, but that’s because it really is important. If you hang around five millionaires, you’ll be far more likely to become one yourself...

How do you calculate ACoS?

Amazon ACoS is how much you spend on Amazon advertising in order to generate $1 in revenue from that spend. Similar to Google’s ROAS, ACoS is a great metric for PPC marketers to see if advertising campaigns are profitable.

Your Advertising Cost of Sales is calculated by taking your ad spend and dividing it by your number of sales. For example, if you launch an ecommerce campaign that generates $600 in sales, costing $168 over a certain time period, you would take $168, divide it by 600, and get your Advertising Cost of Sales of 28% cost for every dollar of sales you make. This means you spend $0.28 on Amazon Advertising for every $1.00 of revenue from that advertising.

Why is ACoS important?

Your ACoS will help you determine how successful your ad campaigns are on Amazon and how much it costs to be a profitable seller. Of course, you’ll first need to define an ideal target for your Advertising Cost of Sales so you can see just how much profit you’re making. To do this, you’ll need to look at the cost (and break-even point) of your products.

What is a good Amazon ACoS?

There is no perfect Advertising Cost of Sales on Amazon that you should strive for, it can vary by company, product, and goal! So then how do you determine the best Advertising Cost of Sales for your ecommerce campaigns? Ideally, you’ll want to get the highest sales revenue possible, combined with the lowest ACoS possible. Because low ACoS means high profitability and high ACoS means low profitability, sellers tend to push for low ACoS unless they are working on a specific awareness or sell-out strategy.

Determine target Amazon Advertising Cost of Sales

To determine your ideal Amazon Advertising Cost of Sales, you’ll want to find your ideal profit margin and work backwards. The average ACoS that advertisers strive for is between 15%-30%, but remember that every company, product offering, and marketing strategy is different, and can affect the ideal ACoS.

Related Resources

Would you like to win a Free Lifetime trial of PricingScan + a cash bonus of $ 1,000 ?

Also Take advantage of PricingScan’s 15-day trial, the First Amazon Sellers Platform with Zero fixed Fees.

The post What is ACoS (Advertising Cost of Sales) on Amazon? appeared first on PricingScan.

Retail/Online Arbitrage

Retail arbitrage works by buying products from retail stores, thrift stores, and other online marketplaces like eBay and then selling them at a higher price on Amazon.

If you check sales and clearance bins often you can usually find products selling for less than they’re listed on Amazon. Books are a popular item to sell with this strategy. To make the process a little easier you can download the Amazon Seller App. This will allow you to scan products that you find in stores with your mobile device to see if they’ll be profitable to sell.

Retail arbitrage is a great way to start selling on Amazon. Just keep in mind that it can be quite time consuming and isn’t very scalable.

Wholesalers

Wholesalers are businesses that buy products from manufacturers in order to resell them to retailers. They offer lower per product pricing than retail stores allowing you to make a profit on each sale. They also generally have lower minimum order amounts than manufacturers.

If you find an existing product you want to sell you can locate a wholesaler that offers the product and purchase it in bulk to resell on Amazon. This is a solid strategy assuming you have enough money to buy wholesale and can find the right product to sell.

However, keep in mind that you’re selling existing products in their original package. This means other sellers will likely be selling the exact same product, which leads to more competition and can result in price wars as you battle with other sellers for the buy box.

Private Label Products

If you’re looking for the strategy that offers the most potential revenue then this is it. A private label product is one that you designed and branded yourself.

The process is actually easier than you think. Once you’ve found a product and niche you think will be profitable, start thinking about ways you can improve on that product. Then go to the Alibaba or Aliexpress sites, find manufacturers and vendors that make those products, and speak to them about your ideas. Most companies will be happy to work with you and create products with your desired alterations. They’ll also let you choose colors, send you samples so you can test the quality, and put your branding or logo on the product.

This strategy can be very successful, but it does require quite a bit of work initially. However, once you manufactured and developed your product you can easily reorder it just like you would from a wholesaler.

Related Resources

Would you like to win a Free Lifetime trial of PricingScan + a cash bonus of $ 1,000 ?

Also Take advantage of PricingScan’s 15-day trial, the First Amazon Sellers Platform with Zero fixed Fees.

The post What Amazon selling strategy fits you the best? appeared first on PricingScan.

Are you Ready to win Free Lifetime Trial to PricingScan and a cash bonus of $ 1,000?

What is PricingScan ?

We are an US/French geek team who have noticed that Amazon selling game is more and more competitive. And there is no tool which have a community building approach for sellers.

PricingScan, a new web based App, is The First Amazon Sellers Platform with Zero Fixed Fees which aims to facilitate Amazon Seller’s life and grow their business. App is different from competitor offers in three ways:

First we have Zero Fixed Fees and instead use a percentage fee of 1% on Amazon transactions. It’s a fair pricing adapted to Amazon sellers use and also to seasonal sellers.

Second we are focusing on SEO to improve product ranking, listing quality but we also extend to the product research to have a complete platform.

In the future, we want to create a community for Amazon sellers by linking to Facebook and other social media for promoting their products widely.

What I get in participating to Beta Testing?

Beta testing is now open will last until the end of the year 2021 (12/31/2021). But don’t wait, spots are limited to the first 50 applicants.

If we select you and you participate actively in beta testing phase, we offer:

Free Lifetime Subscription on PricingScan App

Cash bonus of $ 1,000.

It’s a gift of several thousands of dollars for active Amazon Sellers.

Remember that it’s a win/win partnership because you can influence development to your needs, to be a creative force and consequently provide your business with an Free Lifetime indispensable tool.

What do we expect from you?

You must:

be an active Amazon seller

have a professional plan of Amazon seller central account

have a monthly revenue of at least of $5,000 in Amazon

be active in participating PricingScan App testing which mean:

be responsive to our communication,

follow our instructions

produce feedback on issues and/or suggest improvements

How to join our beta-testing team?

First you apply on this link

Second you receive an email inviting you to fill out survey

Third if you are selected you receive in the next few days an email to announce it and the NDA (Non disclosure agreement) to sign with DocuSign.

More features will follow in the next few months

We will launch PricingScan Chrome extension on product research for end October / early November : it will bring new features browsing on Amazon marketplaces product pages.

Those features are already in development and testing right now.

Not convinced yet ?

You can book a demonstration on PricingScan App using this link. It will take no more than half an hour. Together we will see how useful this Application is for your Amazon business.

Conclusion of “Are you Ready to win Free Lifetime Trial to PricingScan and a cash bonus of $ 1,000?”

Don’t wait, spots are limited to the first 50 applicants.

Related Resources

Would you like to win a Free Lifetime trial of PricingScan + a cash bonus of $ 1,000 ?

Also Take advantage of PricingScan’s 15-day trial, the First Amazon Sellers Platform with Zero fixed Fees.

The post Are you Ready to win Free Lifetime Trial to PricingScan + a cash bonus of $ 1,000? appeared first on PricingScan.

Sell or Be Sold ?

SELLING IS A WAY OF LIFE

To succeed, a person must be able to sell. Every person needs to be able to sell others on their ideas to advance their goals and their own life. Salespeople make the world go round and drive entire economies. Indeed, all professions rely to some extent on sales.

“.the only people that are getting promoted in life are those that are able to most successfully sell their ideas to others.”

SELL YOURSELF

The greatest sale of all is to sell yourself. Conviction is the make-or-break point in any transaction. Without conviction, the sale will not happen.

“Customers do not stop sales. It is salespeople who stop sales from happening. You, not the customer, are the barrier to the closed deal.”

Commitment is essential to making a firm decision; it allows the salesperson to stop wondering and to follow through with actions.

THE PRICE MYTH

Price is almost never the stumbling block to a sale. If a buyer hesitates over the price, they are not saying “this is too much money for me to spend,” they are saying “this is too much money for this particular product.” If the customer really wants the product, then money will be no object. In this situation, it is better to try to sell a more expensive product and judge the customer’s response. In other words, always move up, rather than move down. Once a customer discovers a product that s/he loves, the price will not be a barrier.

“When I can’t close a sale, I’ll always try to move the buyer up to a bigger or more expensive product as the first solution to price objection.”

It is also important to bear in mind that Second Money is easier than First Money. In other words, once a customer has already committed to spending something, they are more likely to return to spend again on further products. It is likely, too, that at the end of the day the more they spend, the better they will feel.

ALWAYS AGREE WITH THE CUSTOMER

A salesperson is really in the people business, not the ‘selling’ business. As a result, it is essential to start any sale from a position of agreement. Disagreeing with the customer’s viewpoint creates an adversarial relationship that is unlikely to lead to success. If a customer says “this product will not work for us,” instead of responding “Yes, it will!” take a step back and try to find common ground. “I can see why you might think that, but here is some additional information.”

To put it simply, the customer is always right! Similarly, never criticize the customer by bringing up unreturned phone calls or something they should have done differently. It is up to the salesperson to make the process work.

THE IMPORTANCE OF TRUST

In any sale, it is important to establish trust. An essential part of this is to show, rather than tell. People tend to trust and believe what they see, rather than what they hear. It is always better to show how the product will benefit the customer, rather than demand that they take your word for it.

“When you’re documenting facts for your customer, it’s preferable to use third-party materials that support what you’re saying. Remember, people believe what they see, not what they hear.”

GIVE, GIVE, GIVE

Always make the customer feel serviced, rather than sold.

“People will pay more for an agreeable, positive, and enjoyable experience than they will for a great product.”

For the salesperson, this means giving energy, attention, and suggestions to the customer. It is also important to give the customer full information so that they feel in control of the process and the purchase. At the end of the day, providing a sense of service is more important than the act of selling.

“If someone asks me for a drink, I get it for them, open the bottle and bring them a glass, ice and a napkin.”

CONCLUSION

Whatever the product or situation, the perfect sales process has five steps.

Step one: greet and welcome.

Step two: determine wants and needs.

Step three: present the product as a solution to a need.

Step four: make the propo...

How to Write a Killer Sales Copy on Amazon ?

A killer sales copy is a copy that persuades, no doubt about it. On other platforms, sales copies can be ineffective for consumption since customers tend to dislike salesy language. On the Amazon Marketplace, it’s a different story. Your target audience is ready to buy products in real-time, so a well-written sales copy can make the difference between you and your competitors.

Typically, an optimized sales copy should include the following key elements:

Product Title

As the first piece of text your customers will read on your product listing, the product title should be straightforward and contain the most crucial information about your item. Amazon Seller Central uploaded Style Guides to help sellers structure their titles better, and a well-crafted title normally provides the product’s unique characteristics and benefits.

While product titles highly depend on what type of product is being sold, entrepreneurs generally include the following details:

Brand

Model type and number

Product type

Size and quantity

Power output requirements

Color

Design

Trademarks or patents (if necessary)

It’s important to note that each product type has a corresponding Amazon title formula, so you cannot randomly mix these details on your title. For instance, Amazon suggests the following templates for these popular product types:

Kitchenware: Brand + Model Name + Model Number + Size + Product Type

TV Sets: Brand + Model Name + Product Type + Color

DVD Players: Brand + Model Name + Size + Product Type + Screen Type

Jewelry: Brand + Product Category + Sex + Metal Variation + Shape + Material + Product Type

Video Games: Brand + Product Type + Type of Platform

By optimizing your product title, you will immediately catch your customers’ attention and increase your business’s likelihood of producing sales.

Product Description

Since Amazon is an entirely online platform, the only way that entrepreneurs can make a sales pitch to customers is through a clear product description. Think of it as an opportunity to persuade the customers with the right words in time for their purchasing decision. Below are some of our Amazon SEO tips on how you can optimize this part of your product listing:

Do not rewrite. A well-crafted product description does not merely mimic what was written in the product title, but expands on its details and makes the benefits a focal point of the text.

Tell a story. If you want to take it to another level, feel free to tell a story of how exactly the products came into existence. It is a real-life testimonial about the product that presents a unique viewpoint on why people need it in the first place.

Make it readable. Customers on Amazon typically hate reading large chunks of text, so you have to make your product description as concise as possible. We recommend maintaining three lines for each paragraph and separating them using the line break HTML code.

Utilize Amazon SEO tools. The product description tab has a set of tools to choose from, including the ability to put bullet points, lists, and bold/italicize/underline texts. Take advantage of these tools to make your descriptions stand out.

Product descriptions provide an avenue for you to talk to your target audience. Why not make the most out of them?

Bullet points

Bullet points are yet another way to make a compelling case to your target audience that they should purchase your product. As a matter of fact, most Amazon customers prefer reading concise bullet points over lengthy descriptions. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that they contribute positively to a business’ increase in conversion rates.

We have compiled a summarized list on what you can do to write bullet points that convert:

Outline. It’s your job as an entrepreneur to make sure bullet points are written differently from your title and description. Instead of being straightforward or telling a story, make a clear outline of the product’s best attributes.

Focus on one ...

As a new Amazon entrepreneur, it can be overwhelming to think about how your products will rank higher. You will face fierce competition and a continuously developing A10 search engine algorithm, and it is for this reason that most companies hire an Amazon SEO consultant for help. For now there are no exact ways to pinpoint how Amazon A10 targets customer queries and results. However there are hints that can help make your products more noticeable.

After all, you can utilize the A10 search engine to your advantage when matching your products with the right customers. These two ranking factors are classified as follows:

Selling high-quality products at a fast pace, and

Mastering the art of Amazon keywords.

Factor #1: Sales Velocity

Amazon uses Sales velocity as a metric to reflect how fast a product sells on the Marketplace. And it’s not only to let sellers know how they are performing. The connection of sales velocity with Amazon SEO is relatively straightforward: the more money you generate on the Amazon platform, the higher your rankings will be. If you establish a compelling sales resume for Amazon, it will be more than happy to give you a little special preference.

Apart from an effective SEO strategy, sales velocity can also be reinforced by launching pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaigns. But also analyzing product conversion rates, and increasing customer reviews can improve sales velocity. Some well-connected entrepreneurs also establish a network with other Amazon sellers to collaborate and help each other’s businesses through “referral traffic.”

Determining and increasing sales velocity rates are vital to your success on Amazon. If you want to make some noise and get noticed on the platform, consider investing in these useful techniques.

Factor #2: Keyword Mastery

Amazon keywords are crucial to the entire SEO process. They are Amazon SEO tools that help your eCommerce business connect with your audience on the platform based on what they are looking for. If you fail to use the right keywords, how else will the A10 search engine understand your products and boost it on top of the platform’s search results page? A10 may be a smart piece of technology, but it won’t detect what your product is unless you use the appropriate language to speak to it.

For starters, these are some useful tips to optimize your Amazon keyword usage:

Determine and concentrate on your target audience. The first step in choosing the right SEO keywords is to determine who you are trying to reach. Are you in the business of selling fitness supplements? Then try targeting relevant keywords for the fitness market, and refrain from using general keywords like “gym” or “fit” on your webpage.

Include your keywords in product listings. To rank high on Amazon searches, you should include carefully-chosen keywords in all product listings. Remember, you only need to use a keyword once to rank higher. If you use the same keyword only wasting word space that could have been used on other keywords.

Learn how to use backend keywords. Simply put, backend keywords are keywords the customers cannot see on the platform. If you already have a long list of keywords and don’t want to put all of them in your listing, you can instead place them as your back-end keywords. This way, you will be able to rank for other searches and maximize your leads.

Conclusion

Implementing these common strategies can help the A10 search engine know your products better. Subsequently it places your products higher on the platform to connect you to your customers.

Related Resources

Maybe want to win a 1-Year trial of PricingScan?

Also take advantage of PricingScan’s 15-day trial, the first Amazon Sellers App with Zero fixed fees.

The post Understanding The Two Essential Ranking Factors on Amazon appeared first on PricingScan.

What is Amazon Inventory Performance Index (IPI) Score & How to improve it?

What is Inventory Performance Index?

The Inventory Performance Index (IPI) is a score Amazon assesses to determine how well sellers are managing their inventory. You can score between 0 and 1000.

You can see it at : Inventory Dashboard within Seller Central

How Amazon calculate the IPI?

The most frustrating thing about the IPI is that Amazon refuses to comment on how it is calculated.

Currently, though Amazon says there are three factors that affect your IPI score:

Reducing excess inventory to increase profitability

Increasing sell-through to balance your inventory weeks of cover

Ensuring inventory is buyable by fixing listings that are stranded

Amazon explicitly states that “IPI points are not deducted for running out of stock”. This point bears repeating as it is a very common misconception: being out of stock will not negatively affect your IPI score.

Stranded inventory will affect your IPI score but it’s an easy fix. So, in other words, the key factors in improving your IPI is to avoid having over-stockages at Amazon and improving your sell-through rate. To the last point, Amazon calculates your sell-through rate as follows:

Sell through rate = Units sold/shipped over the past 90 days/average number of units available at fulfillment centers of the past 90 days.

So, for example, if you sold 100 units over the last 90 days and had an average of 200 units in stock during that time your average sell-through rate would be 0.5. My other sneaking suspicion is that Amazon heavily punishes products with zero sales over 90 days.

Amazon calculates your IPI score weekly on Monday.

What are the punishments for a bad IPI Score?

The punishments for a poor IPI score (varies between 400 to 500 – check Amazon for the most current thresholds) is inventory storage restrictions and higher storage fees ($10/CFT to be exact).

Amazon does not disclose how much your inventory storage limits will be until you fall below an IPI of 400 but in the one instance our account did fall below the threshold (previously 350) we had potential storage limits of roughly 5x our current storage. In this case, the storage limits would not have been very punitive; I’ve heard of cases when storage limits were very prohibitive.

You can see your current storage limits and potential storage limits at the bottom of any shipments planning window.

Amazon calculates your IPI each quarter (March 31, June 30, September 30, and December 31) and also 6 weeks prior to the quarter’s end. If it’s below 400 either at the quarter’s end AND 6 weeks prior then Amazon penalize you.

What Should You Do?

As the algorithm used to calculate IPI is a mystery, we can only hypothesize some firm action steps you can take to avoid a penalization by a poor IPI:

Look at your IPI score now

Make sure you have an IPI above the minimum threshold (between 400 to 500) either at the quarter’s end or 6 weeks prior

Better utilize 3PLs for storage and increase the frequency of sending inbound shipments into Amazon

Maintain 30 to 60 days of stock and not more

Fix stranded inventory immediately

Remove excess inventory

Create shipments in advance if you think you will fall below 400 for both reporting periods

Related Resources

Maybe want to win a 1-Year trial of PricingScan?

Also take advantage of PricingScan’s 15-day trial, the first Amazon Sellers App with Zero fixed fees.

The post What is Amazon Inventory Performance Index (IPI) Score? appeared first on PricingScan.

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Find out the rules for the mostly used products Identifiers.

A single product can have many associated codes.

If you’re a retailer, which of the many product codes should you be using? UPC, ISBN, ASIN, EAN- there are several to pick from.

How do you map these codes back to the products and ship the right one? Most importantly, why do we need codes, and can we sell without them?

Indeed, until the time when stores used manual billing only, having product codes was not a prerequisite for selling. It was redundant even, to take a product that both the retailer and customer can recognize and then proceed to attach a code to it.

However, with the advent of mass manufacture and several stores selling the same product, we need codes, much like names, to identify each product.

Codes, or product names, are a way to uniquely identify your products and this is often considered to be an inventory management best-practice. Before you get into the codes, it is worth spending some time to understand inventory management better and see how you can do business better with it.

What is ISBN – International Standard Book Number

Just as products are uniquely identified by UPCs, books, magazines, e-books and other published media can be uniquely marked using ISBN. Every book that goes into publishing must have an ISBN code attached to it. (Edit: A reader has just brought to our attention the fact that self-published books need not mandatorily have an ISBN, although it is definitely recommended. Thank you, Mike!)

What’s more, different editions of the same book will have different ISBNs. For example, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone has the ISBN 0-7475-3269-9 while its illustrated edition has the ISBN 0-5457-9035-2.

Why is an ISBN so important? Books and published media often travel and sell all around the world, hence the ISBN is a good way for a publisher to keep track of how much it is selling and where.

As opposed to using the name- the first book in the Harry Potter series sells by the title of ‘Sorcerer’s Stone’ in the United States and ‘Philosopher’s Stone’ in the UK and some other countries – using an ISBN is a better way of identification and tracking.

How do you register an ISBN?

Each country has a national ISBN agency. Depending on where you live, you need to approach the agency with information about the book and author.

If you’re publishing your own work, it is possible to apply for a single ISBN and cut costs. Here’s a detailed look at the procedure.

What is UPC – Universal Product Code

As the name implies, this coding is universal, in that every retailer and every marketplace would use the same code for a certain product. This is the code that goes into barcodes and helps stores keep track of sales. This is the code that helps a manufacturer identify how much of a product he has sold worldwide.

A UPC is typically 12 digits long and represents attributes such as the weight of the product, the product type, name, etc.

Why are these attributes important? Because a machine (barcode reader) ‘reads’ this code and links its attributes to a certain price. Indeed, the advent of UPC has made possible the use of computerized billing and faster checkouts.

A UPC applies to virtually every category of products you can think of, from electronics and clothing to food, medication and even services.

In order to get a UPC for your products, you first need to register with GS1 and obtain a company code. You prefix this code to all your products to help identify you as the seller.

Once you have this code, you have to assign unique numbers to each of your products. You can then order as many barcodes as you like. Here’s a link to where you can do it.

What is EAN – European Article Number

For a long time, we assumed that products manufactured within US and Canada would sell in these territories alone. We also thought that manufacturers would produce these goods locally as well.

Common knowledge and time have shown that this is often not the case, ...