The David Aladdin Show - Building Billion Dollar e-Commerce Companies, Amazon Private Label, FBA, Shopify, Woo, Retail Products - AmzSecrets

The David Aladdin Show - Building Billion Dollar e-Commerce Companies, Amazon Private Label, FBA, Shopify, Woo, Retail Products - AmzSecrets

By David Aladdin: A fan of The Amazing Seller, Amazon Private Label Podcast, FBA Seller, Amazon, Silent Sales Machine, Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Scott Voelker and you.Business
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The David Aladdin Show - Building Billion Dollar e-Commerce Companies, Amazon Private Label, FBA, Shopify, Woo, Retail Products - AmzSecrets episodes

  • AS 18: Secrets to Protecting your Product
    I think Amazon has its hands everywhere. Being the data center behind Netflix, is a job in itself. It’s ensuring that it’s servers never go down for one of the biggest companies in the world. But not only that, Amazon is playing against them at the same time, building its’ own live streaming service for prime members. Amazon is one of the fiercest business nesses, both supporting its competitors, building millions of brands around the world, and achieving impossible feats. If Amazon can build a streaming service, launch rockets into outer space, own 15% of every pc, jump into logistics and run an international shipping company, deliver fresh groceries in under a day, and much more, then should we ask ourselves, is running a private label company even comparably hard.

    Podcast 18 – is all on advanced -aka legal ways of protecting your product. It’s on trademarks, patents, and copyrights in which you need to know.

    * You can’t protect ideas themselves, but you can protect expressions of ideas.
    * Copyrights are for “books, photographs, or recorded songs. Once you create an original work, you own the copyright.
    * Trademarks are for business more than creativity, which helps prevent confusion between goods and services of one brand and another. Officially registering it with government, gives you additional rights, including nationwide protection of your mark. It can also help other brands selling similar goods under a similar trademark.
    * Patents -
    Utility patent – protects the way something works

    In order to get a U.S patent – you have to be the first one to apply for it. Being the first one to invent it doesn’t count. Filing a provisional patent, saves your spot for 1 year. And gives you the ability to become patent pending.

    So what does this all mean!? If your product becomes a hit success on Amazon, and you see no one else selling it, and you do a bunch of google searches looking for if this product has been patented, and that doesn’t exist, you better fricken patent that idea.

    The goal isn’t to go gung-ho suing everyone who might private label the product you found. Technically you didn’t invent the product, and I am by no means a lawyer, or giving legal advice, buy according to Legal Zoom, if you are the first one in the United States to apply for it, then you are essentially the inventor. So yes, someone in China could have designed it. And yes, there could be existing sellers. But if no one patented the design, or the utility, which is rare, but DOES happen, then you could hold the patents to your super successful private label.

    Why would you want to do this? For obvious reasons. Let’s say a big corporation see’s you’re doing well, not only that, you’re starting to cut into their sales with a better, competing product, and because of their enormous resources, i.e money, employees, lawyers and such, and the amount of money on the line, they also decided to build that product, and file the patent of the product your currently selling. Then technically they beat you to the punch. Not only can they sell it, if their patent goes through, they can sue you for selling it, and earn money for every unit you sold of it. So in my opinion, file that provisional patent as soon as possible, if you deem its possible, which will allow you to sleep a little better at night.

    Filing these patents isn’t necessarily for attacking other companies. It’s for protecting your product, your company, and your company’s future.

    The other big advantage to filing a patent, is being able to put “Patent Pending” on your product. In my opinion, that gives you a leg up against anyone who considers selling your product. I personally would not private label a product where a competitor has a patent pending on it. Why create something, if someone has patents on it. Its’ asking for trouble.
    10 min
  • AS 17: Someone stole my Amazon brand name and logo
    I for one, am okay, with competition among Amazon marketplaces. Although this is in India, perhaps SnapDeal can come to America one day. I believe, that because Amazon is the only dominant player in the U.S. it potentially puts a lot of sellers at risk, if they mainly sell on Amazon. The risk of suspension is always looming above our heads, and nobody likes that feeling. We sellers are trying to not only sell and be merchants, we are trying be kings.

    Todays’ podcast, episode 17 - is titled: Someone stole my Amazon brand name and logo. Aaron Dick posted: ok so big problem, it looks like someone stole my brand name and logo. They emailed me on Instagram saying that I needed to change my name and logo or they would take legal action… my designer had posted a mockup of the logo before on his Instagram (friend who did the work) and they stole my whole concept. I checked the trademark and there isn’t even one that exists. They don't sell on amazon and they don't even sell the same exact stuff but logo/concept is like dead on. Please help!

    That is a big problem. It is a major problem. If this user had listened to earlier episodes such as episode – 9, and episode 10 of this podcast, this apocalypse would have easily been avoided.

    I will outline his pitfalls, so you can avoid them. In accordance to Episode 10, you are supposed to be the Amazon Seller Entrepreneur – meaning you should never, ever outsource your designs, especially to someone you don’t trust. If someone has the .PSD, aka, the Photoshop design, and then they release it online, it creates zero boundaries to copy to your logo. Furthermore, in encourages would-be brands to use your logo, style, as there is minimum work to do so. It is very questionable as to whether this person who stole your whole concept, actually stole your whole concept. Many times, “so-called” designers, grab .PSD’s of other people’s brands, as well as “white-label” .psd’s, where you can buy them from designers, and they modify it to your brand. This is more likely the case. You have a logo created from a template, that many other brands use.

    In episode 10, I describe the Amazon Entrepreneur as a an entrepreneur who creates his designs, and brings them to the manufacturer. He learns Photoshop, and deploys his skills on the fly. If you were this Aaron, then you definitely would not be in the situation where someone else has your design and logo on their brand. But hold on David, are you saying not to hire a design. Of course not, sometimes, when you master skills, it’s great to outsource designs, and other tasks. Please keep in mind this is the DESIGN of your brand, your logo, that shows on every product. So if you do decide to hire someone to do it, then you must trust them with your business.

    Now for the other MAJOR issue, which I mention in episode 9, is registering your Amazon brand in brand registry and applying for trademarks on day 1. Yes, trademarks cost money, but being the registered trademark for your brand, prevents this situation from ever happening. It prevents lawyers from hitting you up one day, and potentially suing you for using someone else’s brand. The trademarks protect you from being sued, as well as protect your brand from anyone using it.

    Now another very odd part of this story, is this seller had only purchased 100 units of said product AND he has already a potential brand conflict. I find that very odd as that is very early in the game. It’s hard enough promoting your brand in a global market, yet alone your competitor, or conflicting brand recognizes you guys have the same brand. The odds of this happening are fairly astronomical in my opinion. Such a small world we live in that this would happen.

    So what do you do about this, because solutions are way better than just worrying about it. Aaron mentioned he checked the trademarks on said product,
    11 min
  • AS 16: The Secret to Getting Five Star Reviews, and Less 1 star Reviews on Amazon
    I believe within the next 3 years; we will have Amazon Fulfillment Prime 1-day shipping or less. If amazon is able to pick and pack our FBA products with robots, which is their end goal with Amazon, then their savings would be huge. Currently they employ 222,400 employees. I’m guessing at least 200,000 of those employees are FBA Fulfillment related workers, opening pallet shipments, stocking shelves, picking and packing, at their distribution systems. Now if each of those employees are payed $40,000 dollars a year, x 200,000, that’s 8 billion dollars in savings every year. A FULLY autonomous warehouse means zero mistakes in distribution, means faster distribution, means zero competition is fulfilling products. And as for FBA sellers, means our pick and pack fees will go down drastically, I think.

    This is: The Secret to Getting Five Star Reviews, and Less 1 Star Reviews on Amazon.

    This is not the same as podcast 4, where I explain in detail, what I do when you get a 1-star review. Episode 16, is full of golden nuggets, that if applied right, your business will be rocking and rolling!

    So, one of my products, was experiencing bumpy roads. Even though I knew it was a great product, many of my customers we’re having issues. And issues on Amazon ALWAYS need to be dealt with. The best way to deal with it is at the source.

    * You could make direct improvements to your product. This happens only in between inventory cycles – where you must buy more inventory, and you go to your manufacturer to improve the design.
    * The other area, is in your product copy and email flow. And here’s the secret. Everyone always says, have great product copy, and have an email sequence following the sale of every purchase. And so you do that. But what is left out is what exactly is great product copy, and a great email sequence.

    If you happen to get above a 1% negative feedback turnover from your customers, this will help you drastically improve your reviews. I’ve found that by taking the biggest pain points in your product and clarifying it in your product description, goes a long way to ensuring customer happiness. Furthermore,

    EVEN MORE IMPORTANT – Your email follow-ups on every product purchase. For me, I use sales backer, which works perfectly in this case. Don’t just use the template based follow ups. There is a ton wrong with it, I’m not even sure why it’s setup the way it is.

    “Okay David, what’s wrong with sales backer email templates?” Well even if you’re not going exactly to the T, which obviously you should not do, as they probably have a lot of subscribers to their service, here’s what’s wrong.

    The existing sequence has no information about your product, no warm feeling from the founder, no quality advice for the buyers.

    “So what do you put then David?” you ask. The key in this sequence will make ALL the difference, ALL THE DIFFERENCE, in how your customers view your product. For me, I put every fricken detail that they need to know in terms of usage. The biggest pain points, I’ve written solutions to their issues. For example, if I was selling pencils, but for some reason the tip of the pencil would break to easy, I would recommend that they need to tilt the pencil less of an angle as that causes too much stress to the lead of the pencil. I would clear state what lead point the pencil was. I would add frequently asked questions to in the first email. I would be extremely informative and provide every answer to negative feedback in my email sequence. And I would reiterate that in the second and 3rd email.

    Now there’s also something very wrong with the software template, and if you have been getting over 1% negative reviews, here’s another big thing you need to adjust. In the email template, there is a link to contact Amazon support, as well as leave a review. Both these links,
    12 min
  • AS 15: Quadruple Your Amazon FBA Seller Revenue with This Secret
    Amazon is doing what it always does. It dominates anything it wants to. From ecommerce, to IT Cloud storage, services, from Smart electronics and now to Home Made. For Amazon sellers, this is only good news, especially if you’re in homemade items. A lot of mom and pop shops who create their items with their hands will see explosive growth with Amazon’s advantage in easy check out, distribution and traffic volume.

    Etsy is here to stay for now, but I think it will be another ebay, second player in the fight of homemade goods over time.

    Today’s episode is: Quadruple Your Amazon FBA Seller Revenue with This Secret

    Amazon is a battleground, and in order to defeat the other warriors, especially when some of them have bigger wallets or “the most muscle”. No matter where you are at in your journey, this episode applies to you. The key is, you need to be strategic. With less money the big timers -and the big timers have million-dollar bank rolls, every single decision you make moving forward leads to a different path. Think about it. After your first product, you can then launch product 2, 3, and 4. But the thought process of choosing 2, 3, and 4 all lead to different pathways.

    Should your product #2 be a variant of product #1? Should it be an add-on item to product #1? Should it be a completely new product, in your niche? Should you create a different product in a different category? Slow down David, hold the breaks, this is mission critical, and the can of worms you opened up, is

    Perhaps you can do all 3. But is it smart to do all 3 products, a variant, a new product, and a different category product at the same time? Is it better to buy more volume of product #1, before going to product #2.

    I believe the secret to this answer is as follows. First, ensure you have enough volume to support product #1. Don’t going into a new product, without being able to support the sales velocity of product #1. And this takes time, depending your bank roll. If your pushing 1000 units a month, or selling 33 units a day, then you’re going to need a lot of inventory replenishment.

    Once you have product #1 fueled properly, I believe the next step is to weight the opportunity of adding a variant, which will convert better versus a “specifically related product” which can have a massive new effect on your business.

    “What do you mean David?” - by specifically related product. Let’s say I was selling pencils on Amazon. Every pencil needs an eraser. By selling both, they complement both. The major advantage of this is, buyers will check what else your selling, and purchase that eraser. As you get more sales of pencil and erasers together, then your pencil listing will “eraser” as frequently purchased together on your pencil page.

    Let me re-iterate. Your eraser will eventually also be added in your pencil listing under “Frequently Bought Together” The advantage of this is astronomical for your Amazon Business. In a simple click, your customer can add TWO products at the same time to check out.

    THAT’S HUGEEEEEE.

    That literally doubles your sales on the pencil page. Then after a short while, your eraser page has your pencil being on that page in “Frequently Bought together”. Now you have two areas of traffic, where you are selling both pencils and erasers, giving you 4x the sales as you once did.

    Now, there’s another cool little secret. And I have yet to apply this, but it’s going to happen. In total, Amazon can put 3 frequently bought together items total, underneath the main listing. How crazy, epic, awesome, amazing, would that be if you we’re those 2 items + your main listing.

    In other words, your main listing is a pencil. Frequently bought together is “your pencil + your eraser + a pencil sharpener” Let’s just say you’d be rocking and rolling,
    14 min
  • AS 14: Epic Amazon Chinese New Year Seller Strategies
    Chinese New Years is a pin-droppingly, slow time of the year for Amazon & manufacturers. On December 1st, my manufacturer let me know well in advance that Chinese New Years comes in February, and according to Wikipedia – it last from Feb 8th -13th. Chinese New Year is also known as the Spring Festival. It was created on honor deities as well as ancestors. Cool fact: It’s celebrated by not just China, but Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. That fact is important because, if your sourcing outside of China, you too could be affected by if your manufacturer belongs to one of those countries.

    When my manufacturer notified me, I immediately placed an order of 4000 units. 8 days later I watched my units moving fairly fast and placed another 4000 units. My manufacturer assured me that my order will be ready before the big holidays.

    As February came closer, I told my my manufactuer I would be okay if they shipped my units after the holiday. In episode 11-13, I mentioned the AIG Gamble, where I calculated my future earnings and placed orders based on that. Because the Chinese holidays we’re soon upon me, I told them, “Hey guys, I know your extremely busy over there, so it’s okay if the shipment comes after the Chinese Holiday.” My manufacturers we’re indeed loaded with work. And I was short on cash. They must have told other suppliers the same thing in December, and everyone frantically placed orders, and they had more than they could handle.

    So my manufacturers we’re relieved to have a slight decreased weight load, I was relieved that I’d have more time to come up with $35,000 dollars.

    With China though, what if this scenario played out, What if I had Fully paid for inventory in December, but due to the overwhelming manufacturer workload, and farmers going back to their home towns in early Februrary, and then that delivery could not make it for that whole month as well. That would be bad. I would be out of stock for an entire month. So what does this all mean?

    Always carry 4-5 months of stock. Always. Don’t rely on your manufactuer finish deadline times. Expect them to be 2 months late. This has happened to me every time I order. And it could happen to you too. Order 4-5 months in stock.  Running out of inventory is one of the worst things that can happen for a thriving business, your best seller rating goes down, much of your marketing efforts, ppc, fb advertising,  would be wasted. I’ve realized, its very easy to sell  stock if you have too much, by decreasing the price. Worst thing that happens is you break even.

    However, at this stage in the game, it’s not “as easy” to get stock quickly in, from China. Having lots of stock is better than having too few stock.

    So perhaps my suppliers could have been February’s time crush, but maybe not. For your business, this holiday can allow you to gauge your manufacturers response time, production time, and output on a realistic level. I’ve seen far too many sellers, mention that their manufacturers did not meet their proposed finish time.

    Another major strategy I deploy, that is critical to my businesses success is continually building my 1 to 1 relationship with my manufacturer, especially during the holiday. I believe this is often overlooked, by money-hungry, sellers, forgetting that their endpoint connection of their business is a human being.

    The importance of being respectful, and understanding of one of the biggest chineese holidays is critical to building a solid foundation to your business. For example, one of the last things I said to my manufacturer was, “ Enjoy your Chinese holiday! Stay healthy and safe!” And I continually reiterate without directly saying, I do care about the personal things going in your life. I’m not just some American trying to reap the rewards of your manufacturing company.
    12 min
  • AS 13: I saved 19,500 dollars on Amazon in one day with this secret
    AS 13: I saved 19,500 dollars in one day with this secret

    What’s up guys, your listening to The Amz Secrets Podcast, with your host David Aladdin. ACUNA MATTATA, What a Wonderful. IT’S TME TO BE KINGS. This is the podcast, where nothing gets left out, EVERY Amazon secret gets discovered, where we turn our businesses from from 5k a month, to 20k a month, and 20k a month to 300k months. I see 60k months ahead, and in a year or so 100k and 200k months. Amz Secrets lifts the darkest questions into light, we discover game changing secrets that will elevate your business to the highest level.

    We’re not about building short term, crappy Amazon businesses. This is the real deal. My advice has led me to where I am today, but I will take you with me with sound advice, BACKED by hard statistics, so you too will make sound decisions in your business. So join me. This journey won’t be easy. No ever said it would be. This journey won’t be short. But if you stick with me, together, we will be kings of Amazon.

    Today’s podcast is on: I saved 10,000 dollars in one day by expanding my Amazon knowledge

    But before we start, your morning Amazon News Flash, to get you primed up on Amazon, as I believe Knowledge is power, and these related tidbits from news, can assist you in your decision making.

    Today’s Podcast, EPISODE 1-3 is titled I saved 19,500 dollars in one day with this secret

    . This isn’t some gimmicky trick or joke…. it’s Amazon. When your moving mass units, making even the smallest adjustments, are hard, but when you do them, they can make all the fricken difference. This is why I read Amazon News every day to you guys, its’ not to expand the length of the podcast, its to keep us informed, knowledgeable to the K, about the ever so changing landscape of Amazon, between their futuristic drone program, their in-a-sense monopolized -cloud network, their invasion of smart home devices, and their dominance in e-commerce.

    The more units we sell on Amazon, the more complicated our logistics get. It becomes a jungle, and no matter where you are at in your journey, this podcast episode in itself will save you tens of thousands of dollars one day.

    So. When I first started selling, I chose speed over cost savings, I chose air freight over sea freight. Your probably like, “okay David, everyone knows sea freight is a lot cheaper than air freight. “Your absolutely correct. Air freight, for those of you new, is typically handled by UPS international, DHL, or Fedex. You can ship anything from China to the U.S using any of these air freight companies. The typical cost for me, is for every 1000 units I send, it cost me $3000 dollars, in air freight, whether DHL, or Fedex. Interesting. Yes, I know. Now Sea freight, has a very interesting change. You’ll need to know your total Cubic Meter Volume and weight in kilograms. The interesting change is, you can buy containers by 20 foot and 40 foot, and the price is relatively the same, as long as you fill the container. A container can go anywhere from 3k-5k on average.

    Now, here’s where it gets even MORE interesting. After spending $9000 on air freight in my last payment, I knew I needed more knowledge on Sea Freight, and just logistics in general. My scourge of the web was vast, destructive, and all consuming. I spent days mapping out how sea freight worked on white boards, from how FOB, brokerages, freight containers varied. This time around I’m sending 12,000 units and everything had to be perfect. With a 12,000-unit shipment, if I went my previous route, that would have costed $27,000 dollars. 27,000 dollars. If you ever seen the Italian Job, the guy yells “27 million” when they pull of their heist. The only thing was, I was saying… “27,000 “in a not such happy voice. The heist was on me.

    Okay, so “How’d this all pan out DAVID?
    13 min
  • AS: 12 The Amazon Million Dollar Question
    Today is a very, very important podcast, The Amazon Million Dollar Question – Strategic Positioning of Brand.

    Do you position it as a highly premium brand and sell for higher perceived prices, or do you position it as a low cost brand, affordable to your users? No matter where you are at in your private label this question applies to you, whether you’re making a 10k a month, or 500k a month, the ability to reposition a brand is fairly easy on Amazon, so listen up!

    But before we start, your amazon news flash - because I believe knowledge is power, we all build our decisions based on the knowledge we know, we weigh and measure subconsciously and consciously our decisions.

    Today’s podcast is: The Amazon Million Dollar Question

    I recently had this interesting debate over skype with a fellow Amazon Seller, Dale, on this subject matter. He positioned his product as a high premium product, whereas, I positioned my product, as an affordable product.

    So how do I position my brand?

    My current strategy is as follows. I’m positioning my brand as very affordable, yet, of the highest quality in my niche. By doing so, I attract a broader range of customers, thus higher sales velocity. As I said in my last podcast, podcast 11, in order to complete my next inventory order, which is a big one, I need to pay the other 70% of my quote, which is approximately $30,000.

    Surely I can price high and increase my margins, but my strategy is to increase best seller rank. The higher my best seller rank is in my category, meaning the closer it is to 1, then the faster my units fly off the shelves, and the greater my revenue is.

    In other words, by increasing my BSR, I’m increasing my revenue. By decreasing my price, I’m increasing my BSR. By decreasing my price, I’m however decreasing my profit margin. But that’s completely fine.

    I’m in camp #1, where I believe achieving the highest best seller ranking, is the key to growing your business up and expanding to other products to diversify your risk. There’s a whole butt of info in that one sentence alone, so I’ll repeat –I believe the key to growing your business is moving high volumes and thus being able to expand to other products to diversify your risk.

    Whys that such a big deal. Well there’s many strategic reasons. The more volume I sell; the more customers I have. Okay, yeah there’s less of a profit margin, but my audience, my feet on the ground promoting my business, sharing my business with their friends, family grows much faster. It becomes a surge. As they share, I get an organic word by mouth about my product, and more buyers going to Amazon to buy it. This is something that you can’t pay for.

    Did you know that the music service, Pandora, was a completely organic word by mouth company, and as of today has more than 85 million listeners – meaning people loved what Pandora had to offer them, and they told their friends and family about it. I’m not going to lie, Amazon’s PPC is a necessary evil, and if I could save thousands of dollars a year with the help of a raving fan base on my company, yes, I choose that any day.

    By selling high volume, with low margin, I can achieve a potential fan base.

    Let’s also consider the fact that you can be a premium product and sell high volume, and this is camp #2. This camp is completely correct in a sense, yes you can sell a premium product at a high volume. For a high profit margin. Apple does it, so why can’t you?

    Whew – I just switched that 360 degrees on you. I believe there comes a time for camp #2, and it all depends on where you’re at in your business. If you’re just starting out, you have no fans on the ground talking about your business. If you’re just starting out you have no blanketed marketing like Apple, or brand known name like Apple.
    10 min
  • AS 11: The Amazon Inventory Gamble – AIG
    Today’s podcast is the big Amazon Dilemma, and a cool trick, that could get you in a hotspot, or ahead of your competition.
    Today’s podcast is called The Amazon inventory Gamble, and I’ll abbreviate it as “AIG”.

    If your starting to see some sales, and I mean good sales, you’ll be presented with the Amazon inventory gamble. This is a high stakes game folks, and for some of you listening out there, I’m sure you probably have done what I’m about to say, so hold onto your chair tight, grab that coffee out, and let’s explain.

    I dub it the Amazon Inventory Gamble/AIG, because you will get to the point where you are selling well, around 50 units a day. With those 50 units a day, lets say you earn 16 dollars per unit per day.  That turns out to be revenue of $800/day going back into your bank account. Now in order to support your business, and also be a crazy, near death entrepreneur, you need to be willing to take calculated risks. At an average of  $600/day, that an average of $8400/two weeks, and $16,800 every month.

    In order to plan for the future, I ordered 3000 units of variant 1, 1000, units of variant 2, 1000 units of variant 3, and 2000 units of a new product. In total, my costs and shipping will be around $45,000. With my money tied up in various businesses, I didn’t have 30,000 in liquid cash just laying around to pay for the inventory. And that’s when the Amazon Inventory Gamble comes into play. No matter where you are at in your business you’ll hit this point, whether its 30,000, or 150,000, or 1 million dollars.

    Most suppliers will accept a 30% payment up front, and 70% payment upon completion and shipment of goods. I had 30% of the payment ready, or about $14,000 to pay my supplier and so I did. The other 70% I didn’t have, and I would need to earn 30,000 from Amazon, within a month and a half. Yes this is risky, and yes I don’t recommend every entrepreneur do this, specially if they aren’t good with numbers or a tolerance for risk.

    So currently on track to earn $30,000 in revenue from my existing sales within a month and half, yet I continually have this nervousness that, I hope all goes well, my sales stay relatively consistent, and that my manufacturer won’t get pissed at me if the worst situation happens.

    This is a situation I am sure others have faced. Where you have so much money tied up in inventory, but you also want to expand, and expand as fast as possible. You have this situation where, if you run out of units you lose money, if you don’t have variations properly set up, you lose money from lack of choices, if you don’t expand to other units, you can get overrun by competitors. These thoughts are normal for the typical entrepreneur, don’t you worry.

    However, I will admit, I’ve never encountered a period in my life where I was forced to figure out a way to come up with $30,000 dollars within a short month and half. Is that even normal. Sounds like its from some gangster criminal movie, where the bad guy borrowed cash from a king ping, and somehow is drug deal went bad.

    On the bright side, if my AIG goes all according to plan, where that the timing of The Chineese New Year finishes, my manufacturer comes back and finally finishes my product, AND I have successfully earned a ridiculous 30k in the 1.5 months, then, I will have a very strong position going into the summer months ahead, and be able to realign and re-purchase for 4th quarter.

    So will this 30k come into fruition? And if it doesn’t do I have a backup plan to pay the manufacturer. Of course I do. Business is about taking calculated risks. Its’ about planning for all possible scenarios.

    As an entrprenuer, when you get put in these tough scenarios, YOU always find a solution, and by taking the AIG, I foresaw that I would figure it out, no matter what happened. I always have.
    10 min
  • AS:10 Amazon Seller Entrepreneur – Are you one?
    So what’s the big secret that gets you ahead. How do you gain advantage over your competitors? This topic is about the big secret that gets you ahead…being the Amazon Seller Entrepreneur.

    What is the Amazon Seller Entrepreneur, you ask! It’s the entrepreneur that can do every step of his private label. EVERY fricken step. I’ll term the work Amazon Seller Entrepreneur, and call these folks ASE. An ASE can and will do all of the following:

    1. Source his product
    2. Communicate and build solid relationships with his manufacturers
    3. Design his product after teaching himself how to use Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator
    4. Go to the bank and setup his business bank account. Set his LLC up. Register using legal zoom for his trademarks to get things moving faster.
    5. He will receive his product samples from his manufacturer and the before buying his full batch, make slight modifications after finding slight improvements and tweaks where necessary.
    6. He will constant keep checking how he can improve his product so he can sell more ultimately
    7. He will learn PPC tricks and secrets constantly, without outsourcing it to someone else. He understands that the key to success. If his PPC efforts fail, he will find someone with higher skill at it but only after looking at every possible resource there is on PPC.
    8. He takes criticisms and negative feedbacks serious, responds graciously and pushes for 5 star feedback all the time.
    9. When he gets his products, he does the photography, the Photoshop tweaks and teaches himself how to improve photos etc.
    10. He teaches and analyzes successful product copy, and applies noticeable things other great sellers are doing.
    An ASE will learn every aspect of his business just in case he needs to expedite, or get something done faster. By knowing every area of the business, you can get launch a product from A to Z, efficiently, and also to your expectations. You don’t need to wait a week for a turnaround time.

    For example, when my products came in, and I needed to do photos for them, I didn’t pass them off to some photographer and he’d charge me $200. Why the heck would you pay $200 for photos, when you can get a high end Nikkon 3300 to take very high quality photos of your products for $299. I got this camera refurbished from Ebay, and this cost is one time. Not only that, I’m not waiting weeks on my photos to have turnaround. I also can get the exact angles and lighting I want.

    BY knowing all the phases – like Photoshop, which isn’t even a hard program to learn, I can adjust photos based on performance, remove negative areas, and tweak based on how I expect them to be.  Turnaround time goes from 1 -2 weeks to 30 minutes. That’s crazy, that’s important, and if my competitor, your screwed. You can’t compete against that.

    You need to train yourself how to learn photoshop, and cut corners that drag your timeline out. Sure you can pay others to do it if you are doing wildly successful, or you don’t care about your product that much, but ask yourself, What would Steve Jobs do. To be at the top, you need to be #1. Not #2, or #3.

    Everyone always says, Amazon is super oversaturated. I believe every category, EVERY category, is up for the taking. I jumped into a very, very competitive niche, and I’m slowly dominating, because I put my 150% into the game. I know I’m better than them. I’m building an authority site. I’m constantly improving my product, and my product listing, and I’ve become an expert in my product label.

    Build to be great and build by envisioning your product as #1. We are here for such a short time on this planet, let’s leave our mark in sands of time.

    Hope you guys enjoyed this podcast… and if you did, you can help give back by answering some questions on AmzSecrets.com.
    8 min
  • AS 9: How to Boost your Amazon Sales with An Authority Site
    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,
    11 min

About The David Aladdin Show - Building Billion Dollar e-Commerce Companies, Amazon Private Label, FBA, Shopify, Woo, Retail Products - AmzSecrets

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We interviews top notch guests on his quest to build a billion dollar e-commerce business, Amazon Fba, private label, Woocommerce, Shopify, retail, private label bus