The Ecomcrew Ecommerce Podcast

While many of us attribute the success of Chinese sellers to black-hat practices, Zack Franklin of AMZKungFu argues that successful Chinese sellers are doing a couple of things we are not... and these are not TOS violations.

Over the past few weeks we've been posting updates on Chinese sellers manipulating Amazon. While black-hat practices are particularly pronounced in China, not all Chinese sellers rely on these methods to be successful on Amazon.

In this episode we are joined by Zack Franklin of AMZKungfu. Zack currently lives in Shenzhen, China, and he is a popular consultant for Chinese Amazon sellers. He has worked with a number of big Chinese companies helping them with marketing, software, and training. These companies rack up $150+ million in revenue individually, with one even getting acquired for more than $1 billion.

The majority of sellers Zack works with do not rely on shady business practices. While many of us attribute the success of Chinese sellers to black-hat practices, Zack argues that successful Chinese sellers are doing a couple of things we are not... and these are not TOS violations.

Chinese work culture

One glaring difference between the Chinese and westerners is their work culture. The Chinese practice the so-called 9-9-6, which means that people work from 9AM to 9PM, 6 days a week. It's not uncommon for Chinese sellers to keep working into the night without a day off, until they see their products on page 1 of Amazon search results.

The Chinese also work very fast. Most of the companies Zack works with have their own photography studio so they could get images for listings blazingly fast.

Smart and efficient marketing

If there's one thing we'd like you to take away from the episode, it's this: you can get 400 clicks to your Amazon listing for only $30 with Google Ads. Zack's clients were able to leverage a very simple technique to get PPC costs down and he talks about how to do it in detail in this episode.

He also talks about YouTube pre-roll ads, best ad practices, and the virtues of not giving discounts to customers too early.

Another tool in Zack's arsenal is Facebook Messenger. His clients find it to be a great way to get reviews and continue interacting with customers. If you want to know how we grew our Facebook subscribers to 50,000 people in less than a year, join our free Facebook Messenger webinar on September 25th.

Connecting with fellow Amazon sellers

Zack emphasizes the importance of meeting up with fellow Amazon sellers in order to learn from them. Chinese sellers are very aware of this and use it to their advantage.

If you want to reach out to Zack, you can do so by going to his website at amzkungfu.com, or emailing him at [email protected]

Resources mentioned:

EcomCrew Facebook Messenger Webinar AMZKungfu

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

I always look forward to joining ecommerce conferences. It's a great place to meet up with old friends and network with new people. Many of those I've met at these events have become guests on this podcast. Phil Leahy is no different.

An ecommerce veteran, he built one of the largest eBay businesses retailing CDs & DVDs. He was the #1 eBay seller in Australia for a number of years. Somewhere along the way, he founded the Retail Global conference. Today, his company Retail Global Events is hosting these conferences in Australia and the United States.

Phil and I met at the Global Sources Summit in Hong Kong. He approached me after my presentation and invited me to come and speak at Retail Global Las Vegas next month. In turn, I've asked him to come on the show to give us information about this much-awaited gathering of ecommerce influencers, sellers, and online marketplace representatives.

With that, here are some takeaways from the talk that we had.

How did Retail Global start?

Retail Global, formerly known as The Internet Conference, started around 13 years ago to address the need of having a local conference in Australia where online sellers can share information freely. Its initial aim was to help people sell successfully on eBay but has since morphed into ecommerce, eventually including discussions and workshops for today's biggest marketplace, Amazon. It wasn't until four years ago when Phil was able to bring Retail Global to American shores. The year 2012 marked the first Retail Global Las Vegas conference.

Now more than a decade later, both Retail Global conferences in Australia and the United States are attended by hundreds of ecommerce entrepreneurs from across the globe. The biggest influencers and success stories in the industry speak at these events.

Stats for Retail Global Las Vegas

• 75 speakers
• 50 exhibitors
• 5 different sessions running concurrently
• 2 marketplace streams centered around eBay and Amazon
• Keynote speakers include Sean Dollinger, CEO of Namaste Technologies and Bob Schwartz, Founding President of Magento & Nordstrom.com, who will serve as the conference MC
• Amazon and eBay will be speaking at the event and will set up exhibition booths as well
• 20% average increase in turnover for ecommerce sellers who have attended the event and used what they learned to scale their business.

We wrap up this session with Phil offering listeners a simple ecommerce tip but with the potential to have a massive impact. He urges other online sellers to include a small gift when shipping out a customer's purchase. "Surprise, delight, aftersale and don't advertise it." he says.

Retail Global Las Vegas will be happening at Planet Hollywood on October 9-11. Use the code for ECOM200 to get $200 off your ticket.

Other Useful Resources:

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!

It's becoming increasingly difficult to sell on Amazon.

I know I share the same sentiment with many listeners of this podcast. These days, you need to position your brand in a way that it can effectively differentiate itself. Only then will you be able to sell products effectively. So it's downright frustrating and disheartening when you encounter imitators online who hijack and duplicate products for monetary gain but at the original creator's expense.

That being said, it's crucial to have your brand and your products protected by a trademark. And in today's podcast, we not only get to pick the brains of a lawyer who assists clients with protecting their brands. He also has his own ecommerce business to boot.

Steven Weigler is someone who's certainly seen both sides of the coin. A former prosecutor and technology law practitioner, he has been running an ecommerce business for a decade. He is also the founder of EmergeCounsel, a business legal services provider.

Steve sheds light on what a trademark is and how many different kinds are there. He also talks about the Amazon Brand Registry and a relatively new program within it called Transparency.

Here are some highlights from our discussion.

• Brand Registry is a way for Amazon to identify legitimate brands and help the sellers of these brands weed out imitators.
• Filing for a trademark yourself with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is not advisable because it is a tedious process that requires specific legal knowledge and expertise. Any error that could be incurred while doing it on your own will leave a mark and its effects can be potentially irreversible.
• Going down the DIY route will also end up being more costly than if you had an experienced lawyer doing it on your behalf.

On that note, EmergeCounsel has a business service package that's right up this alley. For an $875 all-in fee you can get the following:

• Strategic discussions about branding and trademark needs
• A comprehensive trademark search using multiple sources
• Suggestions for proper trademark categorization to minimize the costs and maximize a trademark's protection
• Phone-in or in-person consultations as needed
• USPTO trademark application preparation
• Responding to technical official actions issued by the USPTO
• Filing all forms and paperwork throughout the process
• One year of defense monitoring alerting clients to any possible threat to their trademark
• Assistance and advisory on the registry process
• Discounted rates for Emerge counsels

For more information, you can get in touch with Steve via his email address: [email protected]

Other Useful Resources:

EcomCrew Premium

Give us your 5 Minute Pitch and Win $50,000

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!

During our last visit to Montreal to film new course videos, we came upon a new gathering for Amazon sellers called the Orange Hat Summit. Unfortunately we weren't able to actually join the summit due to time constraints but we did meet a Chinese seller who was a speaker at the summit. Ours was one of the most brutal conversations I had, and it spawned an article written by Dave, and this podcast episode.

Although we were already familiar of the nefarious acts done by some sellers on Amazon, our conversation gave light to just how heinous some of these strategies are.

We should point out though that these tactics are not exclusive to Chinese sellers, but it is with little doubt that China is often at the forefront of formulating these strategies.

The following strategies are the most commonly used by Chinese sellers:

Opening multiple seller accounts

Some sellers have upwards of 20 accounts, some even under the name of their employees. This pads the risk of Amazon suspension--as one account gets closed, they just set up shop using another one.

Rampant review manipulation

Chinese sellers know that reviews = sales. Some sellers do something as innocent as rewarding buyers for 5-star reviews, while others buy reviews from review farms outright. Worse, however, is how they buy fake negative reviews against their competitors' products.

Stolen buyer and seller data

This one is the biggie. We've heard of Chinese sellers using stolen buyer addresses in America to send them products as part of a fake review campaign, but we had no idea just how huge this strategy has become. Apparently, you can pay some rogue Chinese Amazon employee (or someone who has access to a rogue employee) and request reports on any buyer AND seller. If a seller can find out certain information about a competitor's product, such as their sales and page view history, it can be extremely valuable.

All these strategies has made the playing field extremely unfair, especially when Amazon doesn't seem to care at all. Add to this the fact that Chinese sellers don't have the pressure of sales taxes, don't have to conform to high safety and quality standards, and are pretty much immune from lawsuits, and the entire Amazon atmosphere looks pretty depressing for the average American seller.

With everything that's happening, it's tempting for any seller to try to dip their toes into the realm of black-hat strategies. But we know that a business built on sketchiness will not last long, and if and when Amazon finally drops the hammer, those who play by the rules will be left standing.

If you want an in-depth detail of these strategies and how Chinese sellers pull it off, make sure to read this blog post written by Dave.

Thanks for tuning in to this episode. Until the next one, happy selling.

It takes more than a great idea to achieve success in the ecommerce ecosystem. As Ryan O'Connor will tell you, there have been plenty of hits and misses after he got his 'lightbulb moment' four years ago. Ryan is the co-founder of One Tribe Apparel and the guest for today's Under the Hood segment. His goal is to boost monthly revenue so that he can transition to doing the business full time. He's also looking for insights on how to launch new products successfully, particularly now that the company is selling on Amazon FBA. He also runs an SEO consulting business.

How Ryan got his start in ecommerce

Ryan and I followed the same trajectory early in our ecommerce career. Playing poker also led him to affiliate marketing and by 2008 he had a small poker site. But it wasn't until 2014, while leading the life of a digital nomad in Thailand, that he got the idea that has now evolved into a bohemian apparel and accessories company.

Company Profile

One Tribe Apparel is an LLC company that started in 2014. Ryan originally started selling his Thai inspired pants through an online store created on the Big Commerce platform. The following year he moved to Shopify. Today, One Tribe Apparel also has merchandise on Etsy and Amazon, with 25 wholesale accounts. From an initial revenue of $2,500, the company capped 2017 with $200,000 in revenue with 50% net margin.

Goals and Challenges

In the past year or so, One Tribe Apparel has been adding new products to expand its existing line and boost revenue but the efforts have been unsuccessful. Ryan personally would like revenue to reach half a million USD to justify working on the business full time. He also wants to do a serious Amazon launch as there's potential demand for yoga accessories in the marketplace.

After getting a sense of where his business is at, here are some of my recommendations

• Get on Google Shopping and get those ads to be profitable.
• There's a huge audience surrounding yoga and the living a holistic lifestyle on Facebook that One Tribe Apparel can capitalize on. Upping engagement on the business page and launching a free plus shipping offer can be great marketing initiatives on this social channel.
• Complement awesome product photography with detailed information. It would be good to talk about eco-friendly materials that go into the product's construction.

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!

Other Useful Resources:

EcomCrew Premium

Give us your 5 Minute Pitch and Win $50,000

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!

Greetings from Montreal! In the midst of shooting course videos and planning new content, we sat down to record this podcast. Both of us have considerable experience selling on Amazon and over time we have refined our strategies to be able to derive the best possible revenue potential from the products that we sell.

This episode centers around a checklist of what Mike and his staff do in the days leading up to a product launch and immediately after that. Dave rounds up the discussion and adds his own inputs at the end.

To make things easier, we have broken down the entire process into three phases. So, read on and take note!

Phase 1: What to do before the product goes live

• Build that perfect listing at the get-go. Create a really great title with a bunch of keywords that you want to rank for (mixing in some long tail ones). Use about 2-3 keywords in the title.
• Put the start selling date way in the future to allow for sustained sales over a 10-15 day period through the launch sequence timing. This hack also lets you avoid accumulating bad data.
• Set up Amazon PPC in advance.
• Airship a dozen units. 10 of which are given to YouTube influencers to help with the actual launch. In Mike's case, the rest is divided between the offices in the California and Philippines. Promotional videos and images are then created out of these products.
• Make headline search ads. These require a minimum of 3 'like' products. Product listing ads are usually added at a later date. Data for which products to target are taken from automated sponsored ads campaign.
• Make sure products are already available for purchase. Once they are, you can then pick a launch date. Terran does this on a Monday so if there's anything that's needed to be corrected or fixed, that can be done within the next 4 or 5 days.

Phase 2: Preparing for the product launch

• The goal is to produce equal results over a 10 to 14-day period. Look at the existing assets for the brand and map that out within this time period.
• Break up the email list in preparation for running the email sequence for the launch
• On the launch date, launch a Facebook ad to fans that can also be shared on other social media assets (i.e. YouTube). This Facebook ad goes to a landing page for this new product, so our emails and even ManyChat. This helps build social proof.
• Start advertising to everyone else.
• Turn on Amazon's Early Reviewer Program.
• Do Amazon Giveaways to get that initial traction.

Phase 3: Sustaining traction after the product launch

• Send a ManyChat broadcast but at only do so at really opportune moments, like a product launch.
• After gaining traction on Amazon, you can then focus on directing the traffic to your own Shopify store.

Other Useful Resources:

EcomCrew Premium

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!

Hello everyone! It's Dave again bringing you what is perhaps our most special episode yet. Today we have Michael Jackness on the other end of the microphone. In these podcasts, we often hear Mike talk about his real-life experiences in running an ecommerce business. What many don't know is that he got his start in digital marketing as an online poker affiliate business back in the early 2000s. On this particular podcast, Mike shares what it was like to start this kind of business and scale it to become a highly profitable company. Aside from the highs, he'll also delve into the lows of being in this industry and reveal the reason why he finally decided to retire.

Mike had a personal interest in poker from an early age. His grandfather and uncles gambled and he grew to enjoy it as well. Gambling. He got started as an affiliate in early January 2004. While playing on an online poker tournament one night, he was also surfing online poker websites. While browsing within the site's terms and conditions, he stumbled on the affiliate page. Essentially, the website was offering $50 per person for people who can bring in 1-9 players in a month and $70 per person for those who can bring in more than 10 people.

Mike thought he didn't know enough people personally to make money out of this venture so he gave away a book through a penny auction on Ebay. Around this time he reached out to PartyPoker and struck a deal that he would be paid $200 per person if he could have 200 people sign up on a monthly basis. This was how PokerSource was born.

The company Mike founded with his cousin a friend would reach profits in the seven-figure range. The trio would move operations to Costa Rica in 2006 but would suffer a setback shortly after due to the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act. He would retire from the industry at the end of 2010, which is great timing as the infamous Black Friday would take place on April 15, 2011.

Other Useful Resources:

EcomCrew Premium

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!

If you're new to importing products from China, wiring money to a supplier you've never met face-to-face can be a scary prospect. Well, you can rest easy because the likelihood of you being scammed out of hundreds or thousands of dollars is low.

But, resting easy doesn't mean you can be totally lax or just partially involved. Scams might be rare in China but they do exist and in today's episode, we're going to talk about some of them.

To get you warmed up for the actual podcast, here are the highlights.

• Two of the most well-known scams in China is a phishing scheme where you end up wiring money to a different entity altogether and receiving a low-quality version of the product you ordered.
• Safeguard yourself and your business by getting to know your supplier. If it's not possible to meet them in person, set up a video chat. By establishing a relationship with your supplier, you're also building trust. Over time, you will eventually be more comfortable in doing business and reach a point where you can fully rely on each other.
• If you receive an email from your supplier informing you that their bank information has changed, don't wire the money out immediately. Call the supplier to confirm that the email is legit.
• Communicate your expectations from the get-go. Tell the supplier that you intend to have an inspection for each shipment or order. Let them know what your tolerances are for manufacturing mistakes (e.g. 100 minor, 50 major, 2 defective). Make sure they understand that if they don't meet these criteria, they won't get paid in full.
• Another way to avoid receiving defective products is to provide your supplier with an actual sample. That way, they'll know what materials a product should be made of and what it should actually look like.
• Don't leave any room for interpretation. The provisions of the contract with your supplier should be clear and both parties should have a good understanding of the conditions within it. It's also good to have a paper trail of your communications with your supplier so you have something to go back to should problems arise.

Don't be afraid to assert yourself when the situation calls for it. Being clear about your product and shipping expectations will save you a lot of grief in the end. For a detailed guide of avoiding scams, check out Dave's blog post that's linked in the Resources section below.

Other Useful Resources:

Free Course Videos

The Ultimate Guide to Avoid Being Scammed On Alibaba And When Importing

Asian Inspection

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!

The topic of today's podcast is something that I talk about a lot. You've probably heard free plus shipping offers being mentioned across the board - from podcasts to webinars to course videos. It's such an integral part of our marketing strategy that we feel it deserves its very own episode on the podcast.

So, here we are. For the next half hour or so I will be talking about how we have sold products and grown the business with the help of our free plus shipping offers.

Backstory

When we first started ColorIt back in 2015, we wanted to differentiate our coloring books from all the other options available in the market. We wanted a good quality product that adult coloring enthusiasts can enjoy.

To achieve that (and find out if our coloring books would sell at all), we needed consumer input. And getting genuine and constructive input meant we needed to get the product into people's hands. So we had 10 of our designs printed on artist quality paper, added a hardback cover, and sent them out to people who only paid for shipping costs. Back then, this wasn't a tactic that many people selling online knew about, let alone used. We had our "Aha!" moment and so did our customers. Our order retake rate was over 50 percent.

We've launched many free plus shipping offers for our different brands since then. We followed up those coloring books with three random markers. Currently, we're building our email list for our outdoor brands Tac9er and Tactical.com by giving away credit card muti-tools. Our willingness to use this tactic, again and again, means that it works. It also means that you can replicate it in your own business.

In this podcast, I'll be sharing with you tips on how to set up your own free plus shipping offer and provide some other real-life examples. However, the key points have already been outlined below.

What makes a great free plus shipping offer?

• Choose a product that has a high perceived value, but you can get at places like AliExpress for a cheap price.
• The item should weigh less than 13 oz (around 6 oz) so you can get your shipping cost as low as possible. For example, use a product that costs you $1 or $2 dollars to acquire and ship out but has a potential resale value of $10.

What are the things you need to set it up?

• A product that's closely similar to the product you want to sell
• A special landing page with details about your offer, including an upsell option
• A special follow up sequence for the product being sold

Other Useful Resources:

EcomCrew Premium

GIVE US YOUR 5 MINUTE PITCH AND WIN $50,000!

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.