The Ecomcrew Ecommerce Podcast

Hey everyone! Dave here going solo for this episode. Mike is down with a terrible cold after a couple of Las Vegas speaking engagements, so he might miss the podcast for a while.

For this episode, we'll uncover the mystery that is Amazon A9. If you've been selling on Amazon for a while, you probably have a basic understanding of how SEO for Amazon works. But with the crazy competition from prominent companies and obscure Chinese sellers alike, how do you really propel your products to the top?

This episode ties in with a recently published article that dives deep on how Amazon A9 SEO works and the strategies to take full advantage of it.

As a sneak peek, here are some discussion points for this episode:

• How rankings are most often determined by relevancy and conversions
• What makes a listing relevant to Amazon with respect to keywords
• What the "hall pass" of new listings is
• How to create converting listings
• How to optimize your Amazon product listings

If you want a deeper look at how this all works and how you can apply it for yourself, check out Dave's article on advanced Amazon A9 SEO strategies. In the article he shares a bunch of advanced SEO tactics for Amazon, strategies even the "courses" won't teach you.

If you liked this episode or found it helpful, we'd be stoked if you left us a review on iTunes.

Thanks for listening to this episode! Until the next one, happy selling.

A brick and mortar business can be vastly different to owning an ecommerce one. Each offers a unique selling experience and would require different kinds of resources. Having said that,it can be challenging for traditional entrepreneurs to make the transition.

Today's guest is poised to make that very transition. Wilson Lee has been a traditional entrepreneur for 10 years. He'd previously dipped a toe at an ecommerce venture or two but is now ready to get both of his feet wet.

Initial Plan

Wilson is looking at two potential brands to sell online. The first is a green tea brand which he will source from a farm a business partner owns in Taiwan. The second is a baby brand. The plan is explore other online channels to sell on apart from Amazon. He also intends to set up a free plus shipping offer for these brands to test the waters and collect information on his potential target market.

Mike's Input

Mike stresses the importance of taking the focus off Amazon when looking at online marketing channels. Diversification is important in order to develop and scale an ecommerce business.

He offers this play-by-play strategy for getting Wilson's ecommerce business off the ground.

1. Start with brand name and URL
2. Design a logo - this will inform other branding elements like font style and colors to use
3. File for a trademark - a crucial requirement if you plan to sell on Amazon
4. Make the product - focus on creating that free plus shipping offer

A product belonging to a highly competitive niche can make an impact by having a premium look and feel about it.

Great packaging is more important in other niches than others. For example, new moms or moms-to-be would be more discerning about product packaging than tea aficionados.

Under the Hood is a segment where we do an hour-long coaching call with one of our listeners. We take a look at their businesses, provide honest feedback, offer our best business advice, and answer whatever questions they have. In exchange for the free coaching, we will turn the call into a podcast episode so that our community can benefit as well. It's a win-win!

Registration to EcomCrew Premium is closed indefinitely. But, you can still learn from us through our suite of free courses. There's a total of 20 videos covering ecommerce topics like Importing from China and Building a 7-Figure Business. Find more information on the link below.

Free Video Courses

As always, thanks for listening to this episode! If you enjoyed listening and think this episode has been useful to you, please take a moment to leave us a review on iTunes.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below. Happy selling!

For this episode, we bring on Sebastien Taché, an ecommerce entrepreneur from Canada. He is facing a problem a lot of ecommerce entrepreneurs with blogs do: experts who produce high-quality work are too expensive but generic freelancers who charge on a per article basis will most likely produce mediocre work at best.

I reveal to Sebastien how we got around this problem, ultimately resulting to our content being consistently on page 1 of Google search.

It's been a while since we've had an Under the Hood episode! For those of you who are new to this segment, we sometimes bring on podcast listeners to the show where they can talk to us about their businesses and ask us for advice. It's essentially a free 1-hour business coaching session turned into a podcast episode. It's a win-win!

If you'd like to be featured on the podcast and get advice from us, just send us an email at [email protected] with the subject line: Under the Hood application.

For this episode, we bring on Sebastien Taché, an ecommerce entrepreneur from Canada. Sebastien holds a full-time job while running an ecommerce business that nets him $170k in revenue. His ultimate goal is to be able to grow that revenue to $700k-$1.2M by 2020.

Get high-quality articles without breaking the bank

One of Sebastien's first steps towards this goal is to improve his content. However, he is facing a problem most ecommerce owners with blogs do: experts who produce high-quality work are too expensive but generic freelancers on sites like UpWork who charge on a per article basis will most likely produce mediocre work at best.

We faced this problem too early on in our business and we found that the best way to get around it is to hire a full-time content writer.

Granted that it takes longer to find a good content writer than finding a freelancer, and that you'd have to pay them a monthly salary, the advantages are tremendous. As a result, number of articles writter by our content writer has consistently been on page 1 of Google search.

We discuss this strategy in detail on the podcast, but aside from that, here are a couple things Sebastien and I discussed as well:

• Whether outsourcing PPC is a good or bad idea
• How to develop your own brand in a competitive niche
• Is it a good idea to go to China when you're bootstrapping your business?
• How to use available line of credit
• How to approach a product that's potentially patented

Tips from the conversation

Here are some of the tips I gave Sebastien during our conversation:

• Aim for low-traffic, more-specific long-tail keywords that will yield better coversion rates
• Put your writers through a digital marketer training course
• Never, ever outsource SEO
• DO NOT rely on the manufacturer telling you that a product is not patented

I enjoyed this conversation with Sebastien and I look forward to talking to him again in 12-18 months and see where he is in his ecommerce journey.

If you'd like to be a part of the show and be featured in your own episode, send us an email at [email protected] with the subject line: Under the Hood application. Looking forward to hear from you!

Thanks for listening to this episode! If you found this helpful, please leave us a review on iTunes.

Until next week, happy selling!

The avid listeners of this podcast would know that I don't do interviews with people I don't actually know in person, with the exception of one business-savvy MMA fighter.

As it turned out, the guest on this episode is another worthy exception.

The person I'm referring to is Mikael Yang, the co-founder of ManyChat. By some fated scheduling twist, Mikael and I ended up on the same call. After an awkward start, we finally figured things out.

Being a fan of the software, I was excited to have Mikael on the podcast and ask all those ManyChat questions I had tucked away. Here's a preview of our discussion.

How did Manychat start? ManyChat traces its roots back to a messaging platform called Telegram, one of the first messengers to open up their APIs. Mikael and his partners thought that people would want to use the platform to broadcast marketing messages. By October 2015, ManyChat was already at 20K bots and enjoyed 50% growth on a month per month basis. In November, it was able to scale up to 30K bots. This steady growth led to the opportunity to join a startup accelerator program that helped the company scale and grow.

ManyChat for Facebook Messenger was launched on April 2016. Mikael and his co-founders had to make a very hard decision to migrate to Facebook since they were already getting good traction on Telegram but they took the plunge. "And obviously if you wanna be the biggest and best marketing platform, you have to work the biggest social network." , he explained.

Today there are 400K Facebook Business pages connected to ManyChat in over 100 countries worldwide, with 150 million subscribers to those pages. Why is Facebook Messenger the "future" in terms of messenger marketing? There are two billion people using messaging apps. Most of your clients are probably using one; it's where all the consumer communication is already happening here. Businesses need to adapt and use the platforms that they're customers are using.

Statistics indicate that 50% of people prefer text over other communication mediums like video or voice.

If you're serving a younger demographic (18-44 years old), the stats for text increases to about 61-62 %.

According to Mailchimp's data, email open rates are about 20%, on average. For Messenger, it's about 84% percent. Doing the math, you can say that "...there's a 10x engagement on Messenger that makes it appealing as a channel…"

Tips for creating non-promotional messages that add value to your list. Do not include a link in the first message. Do not use words like "sale" and discounts". Add an unsubscribe button to avoid being blocked or tagged as spam.

Businesses need to adapt and use the platforms that their customers are using. If you're a marketer, you'd want to take advantage of this because this is where businesses are going to go to talk to reach their consumers.

For those who want to start using ManyChat, you can download the software here. You can connect with Mikael on his Facebook and Twitter.

Listen to other podcasts about Facebook Messenger and ManyChat. Dave and I also talked at length about these topics on a recent webinar.

Registration to EcomCrew Premium is closed indefinitely. But, you can still learn from us through our suite of free courses. There's a total of 20 videos covering ecommerce topics like Importing from China and Building a 7-Figure Business. Find more information on the link below.

Free Video Courses

As always, thanks for listening to this episode! If you enjoyed listening and think this episode has been useful to you, please take a moment to leave us a review on iTunes.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below. Happy selling!

It’s been a hot minute since Dave and I sat down and did a podcast focused solely on discussing news and updates from Amazon. And so that’s what we did for this particular episode.

It's been a hot minute since Dave and I sat down and did a podcast focused solely on discussing news and updates from Amazon. And so that's what we did for this particular episode.

Here's what we covered.

Amazon Raises Employee's Min Wage to $15 (for US and UK)

The company's move to raise the minimum wage was lauded by critics but there's a fear that the cost will trickle down to third-party sellers by the beginning of next year.

Increase in long-term and Q4 storage fees

Amazon storage fees appear deceptively cheap but if you do the math, they could potentially cost 10 times the amount of what a 3PL would normally charge. You'll find a table comparing the old and new storage fees here.

If possible, we recommend using a 3PL and Amazon fulfillment.

Update to reviews policy

The latest announcement basically clarifies on the sanctions a seller can receive for violating the updated review policy. Log in to your Seller Central account and read the verbiage.

States collecting Sales Tax

A couple more states have joined South Dakota in pursuing sales tax collection for online sellers. We are actively fighting this via the Online Merchants Guild and have plans to take the fight for this "undue burden" to federal court.

A hope in the horizon comes in the form of a Congress bill specifying that compliance should be restricted to $10 million dollar sellers and more.

Image non-compliance

We have recently been receiving emails from Amazon about this and have taken steps to clean up our listings and improve our images. Otherwise, they'll suppress ASINs that don't meet their guidelines.

Supply Chain Connect

This is a new FBA feature that essentially gives manufacturers some level of access to a seller's account on Amazon. With this, there's a real danger that Chinese suppliers themselves will start selling on the marketplace.

European Union takes legal action Amazon over antitrust issues

Margrethe Vestager, the European Union's competition commissioner, said concerns had been raised over how Amazon was using data from third-party sellers and whether it was helping the company predict the 'new big thing.'

That's our roundup for the month. We'll hopefully do another one in November or December. You can check out our previous podcast about Amazon updates on the link below.

New Amazon Developments - June 2018

Registration to EcomCrew Premium is closed indefinitely. But, you can still learn from us through our suite of free courses. There's a total of 20 videos covering ecommerce topics like Importing from China and Building a 7-Figure Business. More information here.

Free Video Courses

As always, thanks for listening to this episode! If you enjoyed listening and think this episode has been useful to you, please take a moment to leave us a review on iTunes.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below. Happy selling!

I was fortunate enough to have some financial advantage when I first got into ecommerce, having achieved success as a poker affiliate a few years back. Dave, on the other hand, had to pool capital from different sources. He used $5,000 of his money, got a $20,000 cash injection, and had to be approved for a $40,000 line of credit from HSBC Canada.

Our varying experiences have taught us a thing or two about how to effectively deal with cash flow. This forms a central part of our discussion on this podcast.

You may find this surprising, but Dave and I don't have a dedicated phone support for our respective businesses.

Well, we used to.

Dave's first ecommerce business had it for five days a week. I used to have 24/7 customer support via telephone for treadmill.com. We also had it for a while here on Terran until late last year. After the person who did this for us sent in his notice, we finally decided to remove it permanently in the last week of December 2017.

So, why did we turn the phone off? Mostly because it was just too much effort for very little money. In Terran's case, we found that we were actually losing money. Dave sold his first ecommerce business in 2016. When he started another one, he consciously made the decision to do away with phone support altogether.

Is phone support useless?

That depends. There are businesses that benefit, even need, phone support to obtain leads that will convert into sales. However, for a transactional volume business like ours, it's hard to justify in that vacuum.

Why we love email support

Turning off the phone allowed us to focus on other customer support methods. We think email is the best of the lot. It's easy to outsource (i.e. our team in the Philippines answers customer emails, along with other tasks) so that brings the cost down. Unlike a ringing phone, it's easier to resist the lure of the inbox.

Customer support alternatives

In addition to email, EcomCrew utilizes a few other channels to help out both students and non-students. We answer questions via Messenger and on the EcomCrew Premium Facebook group. We also host three webinars each month where participants can interact with us and ask questions. You can register for the next one using the link below.

Importing From China: Everything You Need to Know

EcomCrew Premium registration is open for a week! Be one of the first to have access to our new Facebook Messenger course.

Sign up here and get insights on how you can grow your business.

As always, thanks for listening to this episode! If you enjoyed listening and think this episode has been useful to you, please take a moment to leave us a review on iTunes.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below. Happy selling!

By the time this podcast airs, part 1 of the latest round of tariff increases would have taken effect. Approved by President Trump on September 17th, it effectively slaps a 10% tariff on $200 billion in Chinese goods. Part 2 will be another 25% increase expected to take effect on New Year's Day 2019.

In just the same year, the Trump Administration has announced three tariff increases. Here are the details on the first two.

• Round 1 - July 6, 2018 - 25% on 16 billion worth of goods (basically everything but non-consumer products)
• Round 2 - August 23 - 25% on 23 billion worth of goods (targets industrial, electronics and tech products)

In response to this attack, the Chinese government provided a counterpunch by adding a 5% to 10% on $60 billion of US goods including meat, chemicals, clothes and auto parts.

The move only served to escalate tension between these two economic giants. Unfortunately, since round 3 covers just about everything imported from China that's being processed and sold on US shores, it's the little guys who are caught in the middle.

In this episode, Dave and I discuss the implications of these new tariffs on our respective businesses, what our preparations are for its coming, and what our predictions are for these new regulations in light of the November 6 midterm elections.

Here's a rundown of some of the things that we discussed.

• These new tariffs won't just mean paying higher duties, it will also result in an increase of shipping fees as ecommerce sellers clamor to get the stock sorted and shipped before the 25% increase on January 1st next year.
• The upcoming midterm elections could potentially have an effect on the full implementation of tariff increase at the beginning of 2019.
• China won't be backing down any time soon.
• Round 4, should we come around to that, will slap tariff increases on all other goods that haven't been affected yet

Other Useful Resources:

Facebook Messenger Webinar

EcomCrew Premium

As always, thanks for listening to this episode! If you enjoyed listening and think this episode has been useful to you, please take a moment to leave us a review on iTunes.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below. Happy selling!