191 – Why Amazon Over Ebay with Amy Feierman of Mommy Income

Gift biz unwrapped episode 191 Amazon is about Amazon,

is about Amazon At Tinton,

gifters, bakers,

crafters, and makers.

Pursuing your dream can be fun whether you have an established

business or looking to start one now you are in the

right place.

This is give to biz unwrapped,

helping you turn your skill into a flourishing business.

Join us for an episode packed full of invaluable guidance,

resources, and the support you need to grow your gift biz.

Here is your host gift biz gal,

Sue moon Heights.

Hi there,

it's Sue And thank you so much for joining me here

today, particularly because it's holiday season and I know how busy

we all are right now.

So know that I recognize and really appreciate you taking the

time to listen to the podcast.

The holiday season is a great time of course,

to capture all the sales that you possibly can,

but also to get more visibility on your business.

People are looking for gifts in places different from the usual

paths that they take when they're making normal purchases throughout the

year. So it's a great opportunity to show your products to

people that you otherwise might not be able to get in

front of.

Towards that end,

I want to make sure that you're aware of what we

have going on over in my free and private Facebook group

called gift biz breeze.

There's a holiday product showcase happening for everybody who's part of

that group where you can promote your product,

the best sellers of the season or the products that you're

the most proud of that you want everybody to say.

I love this concept if I don't say so myself because

it's a great opportunity for us to find ideas to fill

our holiday lists so that we can be done and at

the same time be supporting fellow makers.

I'd love for you to join us over there because quite

honestly, I still have a long list to complete and I'm

pretty sure others do as well.

If you're interested,

just jump over to gift biz breeze.com

and request to join.

Of course,

I'm going to let you in.

Oh, do I have something wonderful in store for you?

Today, we're going to talk about a company that we all

know. Perhaps it's kind of a love hate relationship that we

have with Amazon.

We love it because we can get everything we need there

pretty quickly and easily and maybe we hated a little bit

because there's a tendency to pick up more than you intend

when you go online,

but today we're going to talk about Amazon from an entirely

different angle.

What about using Amazon for your business?

Have you ever even thought about it?

Could it play a role in your business?

Amy's going to share with us a side of Amazon that

you've probably never considered.

She talks about the opportunities this platform and how it could

potentially be a valuable component within your overall marketing strategy.

I'm not going to keep you waiting any longer.

Let's hear from the expert.

It is my true pleasure to introduce you to Amy Fearman

of mommy income.com

Amy is a podcaster educator,

an entrepreneur who has been selling online for almost 10 years.

Well, she started on eBay.

Most of that time was focused on Amazon.

how to sell on Amazon.

This has become her area of expertise and now she co-hosts

the Amazon files show that you can watch live every Monday

night at 9:00 PM Eastern replays are available on YouTube or

a podcast of the same name.

Amy's goal is to help others start and grow their Amazon

businesses so they can build lives.

They love Amy.

It is so great to have you here on the show.

Welcome to the gift biz on wrapped podcast.

I see.

I am so excited to be here on this show.

I am a product of two makers.

Both of my parents are artists and so it's really cool

to come and share this space with you and your audience

as well So you completely get where we're all coming from.

I completely get where you're coming from and I am a

creative at heart so I totally get it.

I want to share with our listeners that Amy and I

are mastermind sisters.

I met you just shy of a year ago actually cause

we really met face to face in January.

So little less than a year.

I fell in love with you right away.

You're so fun.

You're so cute.

You're so bubbly.

And I love the topic of Amazon because it's not something

I know very well.

So I'm learning a ton from you as all of our

listeners as well.

So really excited.

Once again,

I know I've said it already,

but really excited that you're on the show to have you

share with us in a little bit of a different way.

As we get started here,

I'd like for you to create your very own motivational candle.

So if you were to envision a candle that speaks just

about what you're about,

Amy, what color would your candle be and what would be

the quote on the candle For the makers out there?

I have a very distinct visual in my brain of a

particular type of candle.

I have no idea what it's called,

but it's a multicolored candle,

meaning it's when you peel off the layers of it,

it has different colors on it.

So I look at myself as multicolored,

multifaceted, multiple layers,

all sorts of different things going on at all times.

That is the entrepreneurial brain of mine.

So I have this candle that I've seen them and they're

like, peel off the layers on the outside so you can

see the inside colors.

That's me.

And on that candle for me is a quote that I

go back to time and time again.

Especially when I get into a negative mindset by Henry Ford.

It's whether you,

you can or think you can't,

you're right.

And that really helps me when I get stuck in those

situations mentally to say,

well if I'm going to be in that mindset,

then of course I can't get anything accomplished.

Of course I can't do that.

Cause that's where my brain is.

It's amazing the power of the mind and how much control

it has over us.

Yeah, for sure.

And sometimes we just need somebody else or something else to

help us shift that focus away from the negative and onto

the positive.

I mean,

that's why being part of a mastermind with you and with

others has been so beneficial for me because you guys helped

me see what I'm going down that hole and help me

turn back around.

Well and vice versa.

Right, exactly.

I mean the power of community and having support,

right? It's huge.

Yeah. And I use scene because it can be so hard.

You dwell on the negative and negative and then that's all

you think and then that becomes your reality.

Are you seeing that you're able to change it?

Like just having that quote in your mind and consciously recognizing

that you need to switch your thoughts.

Are you able to do that?

Yes. I'm not saying it's easy.

It's still a struggle and I think it always will be.

As an entrepreneur,

there's always things and roadblocks in what feels like giant mountains

that come up in front of you and it's so great

to be able to look back on the other side and

see like,

well, I was able to do that.

And whether you think you can,

you think you can't,

it just really solidifies that.

Well, if I'm just going to sit here and wallow in

my own misery,

then I'm just going to stay here and be miserable.

And is that how I want to live my life?

Nope. I don't want to live there.

And on my show,

we always talk about not getting stuck in your own pity

party. Like you can have a bad day.

That's okay.

Just don't set up camp there.

And being able to make that shift and that adjustment say,

okay, bad day that didn't go the way I want it

to. What can I learn from it?

How can I shift?

How can I adjust so that that doesn't happen again?

Or I can learn from what did happen.

I love that.

I heard someone say once if you need to wallow in

your misery,

set a stopwatch or put a timing on it,

like you have the morning or you have an hour and

then that's it done over and consciously shift.

Yeah. I love that idea because sometimes we can just get

sucked in and a timer or a set amount of time

that you give yourself to be in that space.

Okay. And even if you need to have somebody else be

that trigger for you,

if you have trouble pulling yourself out,

ask for that accountability with somebody else.

Say, Hey,

I'm having a really tough moment right now.

Can you check back with me in a couple hours and

see if I'm still there?

And being able to have that accountability really helps you work

towards resolving yourself to get out of that.

That's a great idea.

Okay, so Amy,

I'm really curious.

I want you to share with everybody how you got started,

but the thing I'm really interested in is your choice of

Amazon over eBay because you were using both and then you

definitely made a choice.

You made a commitment all in on one team.

I did.

I did make a commitment and so I will take you

back to the beginning because basically what happened,

I got laid off 10 years ago when I was six

months pregnant with my son.

Oh, timing was great Timing great.

It didn't feel great,

but it was the perfect time for that to happen.

I didn't have to make a decision as to whether or

not to go back to work.

So that laid the foundation for me to be able to

do my own thing and I tried a lot of different

things. I did extreme couponing,

I did wedding invitation design.

I give a lot of credit to anyone out here who

does that for people because that was so not I'm a

creative, but doing things for other people just wasn't my thing.

I did blogging for awhile and I happened to be following

a blogger who was buying things at yard sales and consignment

sales and reselling them on eBay.

I was like,

I love to thrift,

I love to yard sale now I can make money on

doing it.

Okay, I can try that.

I'll go and see what I can do.

So I would take $25 and go out and listed on

eBay and see where it would take me.

And over two years I really built up,

I had 400 items on eBay.

I was doing well.

The problem was as my son got older,

I still 90% toys on eBay.

And guess what my young son wanted to do with all

of my toys.

Oh yeah.

You would dive into your inventory all the time.

I'm sure.

All the time.

So not only did he want to play with my inventory,

I also was running out of space in my house because

you had all fulfillment to do.

I had all the fulfillment to do so it was,

although things all of the place,

and I had bins everywhere and my office was closing in,

I'm like,

I need to see what else is out there now.

I'll be brutally honest with you guys.

When I first heard about Amazon,

I was like,

there is no way that this Amazon thing is a sustainable

business model.

Yeah, that was me about six years ago.

Why don't you thinking that way?

Because I was watching people do retail arbitrage,

which is going into stores,

buying things at retail prices and reselling them on Amazon for

a markup the market.

And my mind was eventually going to get the better of

that and that goes away now while retail arbitrage isn't what

it was six or 10 years ago,

it's still a viable business model.

It's also not the business model that I currently do.

And so over the years I've been able to see what

other options are out there on Amazon,

not just the one that I was initially brought into.

So I initially took baby steps into it.

I tried a little bit here,

I pick new unboxings,

I'd picked up thrifting or used books and send them into

Amazon just to see what would happen.

And I started making sales and doing it consistently and it

was easier for me than eBay and having to try and

pack 20 to 30 orders a day by myself.

But you still had to send your products over to Amazon.

I was doing fulfillment by Amazon,

so I was sending them,

but all I would have to do is instead of sending

30 items individually to different addresses,

I was sending 30 items to one location.

Got it.

Okay. It was a big switch for me and then I

built it from there.

Slowly over the first two years I went from 20% Amazon

to 50% Amazon and then eBay started taking a back seat

and then at one point I was like,

I can't do both.

So I cut the ties with eBay and have not turned

wholesale and from wholesale.

I am now doing what are called wholesale bundles,

so wholesale bundles are taking multiple items that are complimentary together,

putting them in a set and selling them that way.

You can think of that in the same way in the

makers world as if you are doing note cards with envelopes

and stickers to go on the back of the envelope for

ceiling. That is a considered a bundle.

That's kind of what I do.

Yeah. So you're virtually creating a new product with multiple products?

Correct. Okay.

All right.

And so apart from the shipping portion where you're just shipping

all of your inventory over to Amazon for them to sell,

was there any other reason why you chose Amazon versus eBay?

Still back in the beginning stages.

So one of the other components of all of this and

making the switch was the EBA customer is very price conscious.

They want the best deal.

They can get like the cheapest price is what they're looking

for and they're going to bid lower and you're not going

to make as much because of the mindset of the buyers

on eBay.

Amazon on the other hand,

the buyers are less price conscious and more time conscious.

They have less time and are willing to spend more to

get the product shipped to their door in two days or

less. So you've got your Amazon prime customer,

you've got customers on Amazon wanting it yesterday and are willing

to pay that premium to get it delivered quickly.

So it's a completely different mindset of your buyer,

which means you can sell your items for more than you

could on an eBay marketplace.

Do you need a certain number of items to get started

on Amazon?

No. You can start with one item.

Now there are two ways you can start an Amazon.

You can start as an individual seller,

which means every item you sell has a 99 cent additional

fee above Amazon's general fees attached to it.

Once you start selling 40 items or more a month,

there's a 39 99 fee that you can update.

You can go up to 39 99 a month and then

you don't have to pay that extra 99 cents a month

and you're basically anything after that.

There's no additional fee of 99 cents above the Amazon other

Amazon fees.

Okay. I want to get into how someone would do this

in a minute,

but the reason I asked that is one of the strategies

that I talk with people about,

especially people who have physical stores or inventory that's not moving,

but they're selling all either face to face at craft shows

or out of a brick and mortar shop or something like

that, that if you have onesies and twosies that aren't selling,

throw them on eBay just to get rid of them.

Instead of them taking up space on your sales floor,

making your inventory look stale because they just stay.

You know when a customer visits after visits,

they see the same thing.

Would that be something to use Amazon for instead of eBay?

It depends on what the item is.

The challenge with,

well, the other platform you have to create a listing and

you can do the same thing on eBay or on Amazon

and it really depends on if that is something that is

being searched for on Amazon for people to buy.

And the easiest way to do that is to go to

amazon.com into the search bar and type,

don't type the entire title,

but type the keywords that you'd believe people would search for

to find that item.

And if they're popping up in Amazon search.

So if you see you type it in and things start

populating below,

those are things that people are searching for actively on Amazon

related to those keywords.

Got it.

So that'll tell you is their search velocity on Amazon for

this product.

If you're not getting anything,

it's not saying it's not there,

it's just not as strong of a search as other things

are. Okay.

So if you think of the people who are listening to

this show,

most likely they already have another site.

So they have their own website where they're selling or maybe

some newbies who haven't put together their website yet are just

selling right on Facebook,

heaven forbid.

And I say only heaven forbid,

cause you certainly can't be running ads on your personal pages

on Facebook.

Hopefully it's a business page.

The right.

Correct. I love the fact that you have separated this so

clearly for us E-bay price and Amazon time.

So if they're selling on a separate site,

let's just call it a website.

Okay. Would there be a reason that one should go from

one place to another?

Not going from one place to the other,

but my recommendation is always to diversify.

In business it is better to have multiple different places to

sell your product than just one because if for whatever reason,

if you're selling on Etsy and Etsy goes away,

or the craft show circuit that you're on happens to not

be available or you are not available to travel to the

craft shows anymore,

having that other platform or multiple other platforms to sell on

gives you the ability to continue to sell your product if

this component disappears.

Perfect. Yeah,

and that's what we talk about a lot.

Just you have to have your home base online to be

at a website,

which is preferable.

Yeah. I mean,

having a website for a maker of a product is essential

because that's where you want to gear people to,

but if you want to broaden your audience and broaden your

audience to people that aren't necessarily looking for a niche site

like yours,

Amazon is a great place to be able to do that.

And let me throw some facts and figures at you.

I found this very interesting.

billion last year.

If we compare that to Etsy,

who has 35 million buyers and is 3.2

step down to look at your own sales figures on your

website and how many buyers you've had over the past 12

months. Right?

So built in visibility,

hands down,

correct. Built in visibility.

The search on Amazon is amazing as long as you optimize

your listing with keywords that people are actively searching for,

then tapping into an audience of 300 million buyers or the,

you start with one or two products and put them out

there to see what happens,

what's the worst that could happen.

Nobody buys it and then you go,

okay well that test wasn't lucrative and didn't turn out right.

But if you do and it does turn out to be

a benefit to you,

you learn something new and you can have a new direction

in your business.

Absolutely. Or different angle,

a different area where you're able to make money.

Okay. So it's really good that I don't know a lot

about Amazon cause I can ask you some very basic questions.

Thinking about the platform,

let's start with if someone was interested in testing,

what would they need to do to get started?

So these are just the very basic action steps that you

would do to get onto Amazon.

The very basic steps are you have to sign up for

a seller account.

Now if you have an Amazon account,

which most of us do,

you can sign up under that.

You don't have to,

you can have it be under your business name.

You can have your buyer account and your seller account be

two separate things.

I will tell you the Amazon will not let you have

more than one seller account,

so you want to be thoughtful about that and how you

go about doing that.

You don't have to be as strict about the name you

call it because you can constantly be changing it on Amazon.

It's a whole nother murky area there,

so that's the first step is to sign up for an

account. If you're not sure of how much you're going to

be using it,

sign up as an individual.

That just means you're not going to be selling it the

volume as a pro account.

Now there are certain things you get with a pro account

that you don't get with an individual account,

but if you're just testing the water,

that really doesn't matter for you.

Is a pro account,

a seller account?

Well, they're both seller accounts,

but one is just less volume and one is higher.

Volume. One is have quote unquote free.

You don't have to pay anything upfront to have an individual

account. You just pay Amazon fees.

Once your product sells with a pro account,

you're paying a fee up front to have that account and

have the additional benefits and can you change,

you know how on social media you can change a personal

account to a business account.

Can you do that here too?

Or let's say someone starts as an individual seller account and

then they decide they want to go to a pro account.

Can they just flip it or do they really start from

scratch again?

No, they can just flip it.

Okay. And you can actually,

if you decide to,

you can flip back again as well.

If you decide that after a while this is not what

you want to be doing,

you can flip back to the individual setting and stop paying

those fees.

Okay. Is there any advantage or disadvantage to using your business

name? To be honest,

you can use your business name,

you can use a DBA when you sign up for an

account. That's not what the Amazon customer sees.

They're going to see your screen name and that can be

your business name or that can be another name.

Unlike on eBay or on Etsy.

Your quote unquote door name is basically irrelevant on Amazon because

if you think you can't actually go to a store page

on Amazon and look at my store,

you can get there,

but you can't unless you know the URL of my store.

You can't go there directly.

Like you couldn't type in my store name and find the

products I sell,

which is the way Amazon's built.

They do that to minimize competition and yanking things from other

people, I guess.

And that makes sense cause you're searching by actual product.

Correct. If you're looking on Etsy or eBay,

if somebody sells a particular type of product,

you want to go to their store over and over again,

or you want to go back and look at what new

stuff they have that's not as relevant on Amazon just because

of the way Amazon is built.

Amazon people don't go and look into categories.

They go to the search field and they type in,

I want a mother of Pearl pin lapel pin or whatever,

and that's what they're going to see.

They're not going to go to every individual store that you

know and look for those stores.

Got it.

That's important to know for your strategy of how Amazon integrates

into what you're doing overall.

Correct and well,

I don't know that we want to go down this rabbit

hole, but I do want to bring up the topic.

I've had people approaching me at trade shows.

I mean,

people are hounding me from Amazon to get on and I'm

resisting for a number of reasons,

but the biggest reason is you don't get to know who

your customer is.

Correct. You do not own your customers on Amazon.

Amazon 100% owns your customers.

So if you have somebody buy a product from you,

the name,

the email address,

the phone number while you have,

we don't have access to their email address while you have

access to that information,

you can not use it for promotional purposes.

That's against Amazon terms of service.

So in a maker community where you are very close to

your customer and you send out coupons and you communicate with

them regularly,

it's a very different space on Amazon.

So I'm thinking a workaround could be let's say someone who

is selling something that they make so they're packaging it.

I would then think that a good way to handle this

would be to put something else inside the packaging when it's

already sealed up.

That gives that customer some opportunity to get back to you.

Maybe like an opt in or something that we could be

valuable where you could then make it connection directly,

but the customer has to initiate that action.

Correct. And you do have to be careful with how exactly

you go about doing that in your packaging because there are

things that you are allowed to do and things that you

aren't, that's all written out in Amazon's terms of service.

You definitely can have your URL for them to go to.

You have to put it in specific places and be careful

about how you go about it.

Amazon is very protective of its customer base.

The man doesn't want you spamming or whatnot.

So they just are very conscious of how you are able

to communicate.

So it's a different playing field.

Amazon is about,

Amazon is about Amazon,

and so if you're selling on Amazon,

you have to be conscious of what their rules are.

Don't want to scare people away from Amazon.

I make them sound like this big scary thing and it's

not, but you just have to be conscious of what they

expect from you as a seller on the platform.

Very interesting.

So I'm kind of thinking,

and again,

Amy, I am so in the dark about all of this,

but that's good because of the questions I ask.

I guess I'm thinking if this was me and I was

looking at putting a product on Amazon,

strategically, what I would be thinking within my business is this

is a revenue generator.

I'm not going to necessarily ever be in contact with these

customers again,

although I might,

because if they really like the product they might go back

to Amazon and search the same thing and find me again

and buy again.

But it's really a revenue generator versus a customer nurturing potential,

I guess in terms of the strategies of your business,

is that correct?

Thinking That is 100% correct thinking it is definitely a revenue

generator and it's one of those things where you can test

it out and see what happens.

And while we like to have that communication with our buyers,

right, and honestly I remember making that switch from eBay to

Amazon and having that be one of those things that I

didn't like as much.

I've obviously gotten over that now cause now I sell a

hundred percent of Amazon,

but I did all of the packaging.

I did all of the how everything looked when I sent

it to eBay.

When I sent my eBay sales out.

It was different with Amazon.

No, you do have the ability to package everything the way

you want it packaged.

Depends on how you sell.

On Amazon there's two options.

You can sell merchant fulfilled just like eBay or Etsy.

You ship those products out so you still have control over

that or you can do fulfillment by Amazon where you send

your product to the warehouse and then they will ship it.

Once it sells.

They're both options.

There's different fee structures for each.

You do the second I do the second.

Yeah. So question here in terms of masking customer information,

if you are going to do the fulfillment yourself,

how do you have information to send to that customer?

You have all the information you need,

you have access to all of that information but you are

not allowed to use that for promotional purposes.

And what happens if someone didn't know that and by accident

did, If they did,

Amazon will slap you.

Amazon tends to remove rights and ask questions later.

They are not a democracy,

honestly. They will take away your ability to sell and then

you have to prove that what you did or tell them

what you were going to do to get your rights back.

So understanding the platform and what the rules are is essential.

So one of the things that we encourage our students to

do before they start selling on Amazon is read through the

terms of service.

Read through the guidelines,

ask questions if you don't understand,

because we don't want anyone to be put in the situation

where they said,

well, I just didn't know.

I just didn't know.

It doesn't fly with Amazon.

As a responsible business owner,

you have to know,

you have to know the rules of the platforms that you're

using. Correct.

Okay, so read the rules and know.

Okay. Couple of other questions for you.

Amazon prime.

Does that affect,

I mean I know that from the buyer's standpoint,

your classification of what kind of an account you are as

a buyer,

does that affect sellers in any way?

Yes. So we all know Amazon prime.

You pay a fee for the year and you get your

product shipped to you in two days or less,

or you get other special discounts.

So that being what our buyer wants,

they want it shipped yesterday.

They're going to either upgrade to have it shipped same day,

next day or in two days.

The nice part is if you participate in the fulfillment by

Amazon program and you send your products to Amazon to be

fulfilled, then you get to participate in that program as a

seller. So my products sitting at the Amazon warehouse,

if somebody buys that today,

they get prime.

So they will get it in two days And with no

additional cost you with no additional Cost to me.

Beautiful. Okay,

so this gets into reporting.

How do you know what's sold?

If they're doing fulfillment,

there is a dashboard you can go in and look at

everything that has sold.

You can see how frequently itself,

if you are an individual buyer,

this is one of the difference between individual and pro.

You don't have access to all of the reports.

You will be able to see what you sold.

You will not be able to see a lot of the

more detailed analytics of all of that,

but you will know what you sold on what day and

in what quantity.

Okay, but you have no additional information to understand who those

buyers were to try and attract some more of the same.

That's all blind.

The reality is on Amazon,

you want to understand what keywords they're searching for.

It's less about understanding them as a whole.

I mean I guess you are understanding them as a whole,

but you really need to understand how they're searching for your

product and that's all about keywords and what they're typing in

and what is making Amazon's algorithms say,

Oh, these keywords that they're searching for relate to this product

and they'll put that product up on page one of the

search. We're going to hear all about keywords as they apply

to Amazon.

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Are there any resources or places people can go?

I know with Instagram everyone has a heart attack about hashtags

and I think I apply the same thing to keywords too.

Is there anywhere someone can go like are there little Amazon

trainings or something right on line,

they're on Amazon where someone could go to understand how to

do keywords.

Is it keywords by product?

I'm assuming it's keywords by product.

This basically optimizing a listing,

basically putting the keywords in without keyword spamming so that when

Amazon's algorithm scans your listing,

they are able to see which keywords and partner them up.

It's a very complex algorithm and nobody really knows how it

works. There are guesstimates on how it works,

but what I do to find keywords for Amazon,

there's actually three ways that I go about it for my

particular product line.

One is I go to Amazon,

go to the search bar and look at what's being searched

based on the keyword or phrase that I enter in and

see what other things.

So let's look at flash drive.

If I type flash drive in,

it can populate flash type 16 gigs,

flash drive,

red flash-drive,

stainless steel,

whatever those other search terms that are being searched for that

particular phrase pop up.

That's one place I'll collect it.

I also use a keyword search provider called merchantwords.com

absolutely love them.

They show you the 30 day trend for a search term,

so if it's being searched it'll show you an estimated volume

of traffic for that particular search on Amazon.

That's one of the biggest ones I use.

I also like to use Pinterest because as a search engine

in the creative space can see a lot of keywords that

work with the niche that I'm in to be able to

see what other people are talking about and using when explaining

that particular thing.

Okay, so keywords are completely completely,

I mean that's the driver.

Yes. If you don't have it,

put it this way,

if you are not keyword optimizing your listing on Amazon,

it's not going to be found by your buyers.

So one of the examples we always give is what is

the bag that women carry with them?

What is it called?

It's called a purse.

It's called a pocket Berg.

It's called a tote.

It's called a satchel,

it's called et cetera,

et cetera,

et cetera.

It's got like 40 names.

If you are selling a purse and you just call it

a purse in your listing,

but this woman who's searching types in pocket book,

your listing isn't going to show up for pocketbook because that

keyword is not in there.

In the business realm,

we talk about the value of niching down,

right? and that's for business positioning.

Does that fly on Amazon?

I'm almost thinking that you want to be broader to show

up more in search versus narrowing down because you might not

show up in some of those other searches.

I disagree.

Okay, so here's why.

So I'm niched down pretty significantly in my space and by

niching down,

you can focus on the segment of the audience.

It's actually going to be looking for in buying your product.

If you go too broad and people end up on your

page, but don't buy that actually negatively impacts your search in

Amazon's algorithm.

Plus, if you're too broad,

you might be on page 10 of the search versus one.

Exactly, and your goal is to really find what people are

searching for.

I will have bundles that I will list on Amazon that

just don't move.

I'm like,

I can't figure out why.

I'll have one of my colleagues look at and be like,

you forgot this keyword or this keyword or have you tried

these keywords and I'll twist something out,

change it up and see by adding a keyword that I

hadn't thought of.

All of a sudden a product can start moving,

so it's really understanding what is being searched.

I mean this is not just Amazon,

this is Google,

this is your own Shopify store.

Whatever. Having those keywords that people are actually searching for is

what's going to bring them to your product and are there

a certain number of keywords you're allowed per product.

So that gets complicated.

Yes and no.

There are not a certain number of keywords.

You have a number of different sections within a listing.

You have your title,

you have five bullet points,

you have a description,

and then you have backend search terms for like the keywords

that don't really fit into your description,

but you don't want to write a pocket book purse tote

that at all into your keywords.

So there's no separate line that says keywords.

You know how like on a blog article it says keywords

or tags.

There's nothing like that.

It's all just in the description.

It's in the description.

There is the search term section in the backend,

but you only have 250 characters in the backend.

So your goal is to really make sure that the keywords

you're doing are in your title,

your bullet points,

and your description.

Got it.

Okay, perfect.

So Amy,

you teach all Of this,

but you specialize in bundles.

I do.

On Amazon files,

you talk about overall Amazon selling,

correct? Correct.

We talk about getting started on Amazon all the way through

advanced models on Amazon as well.

Okay, so anyone who's listening,

who wants to know more about all of this,

the Amazon file show is absolutely where you want to go.

What are the biggest challenges you're seeing from people who either

are responding to Amazon files?

So you're figuring out what topics you want to talk about

or when they're coming to your classes and they're just challenged

overall, what are you finding are the biggest issues?

Um, the biggest issue that we find often is there is

so much information out there on Amazon about what to do,

what not to do,

et cetera,

et cetera.

They're an information overload usually.

And so what we do is we try and make it

as simple as possible to say,

here are the steps that you need to take to get

started. Here are your first five things,

or they're seeing what people are accomplishing.

They're looking at us and seeing what we've built up over

the past 10 years.

I want to be where we are today and we helped

bring them back to don't look at my chapter 25 when

you're on chapter one,

work on where you are today and what you want to

accomplish. Look at your last month,

last six months,

and build from that.

Yes, it's nice to have a goal in the future,

but really be able to focus on where you are right

now in the moment and take those baby steps one step

in front of the other to get you towards that end

goal. Beautiful.

Okay, and the first thing we've already talked about is you

open your account,

you know,

whether you're an individual seller or a pro.

Is there any other direction?

Just on the setup,

we kind of got off that topic and I want to

make sure people leave at least knowing how to take the

first actions right away.

We always encourage people,

and this is business in general,

not just on Amazon,

making sure that when you are doing this,

whether you are a hobby still or you and you're starting

to look towards moving into a business,

is separating out and having that separate bank account.

Making sure that you have a business set up,

that you're building this around,

whether that is a sole proprietor or an LLC or whatever

your CPA recommends for you in the business that you're deciding

to grow,

but making sure that you have a business foundation.

Because trust me,

when you have built this and whatever business you have starts

to take off and you don't have that foundation,

it's a little more of a struggle to go back and

get it all in place.

You want to have that so you're solid to start and

then go from there.

Amen, Amy.

That's what I talk about in maker's MBA.

We're on the same page and that's a good thing And

those are just really basic business building,

like laying the foundation,

making sugar stable,

so I love that you bring it up because I don't

want people to think that you know,

just Amazon,

Oh, I'll just throw some stuff up on the fly and

money is going to come in and everything is going to

be groovy.

I'll keep doing that over and over again.

Okay. This is not a get rich quick scheme.

They don't exist.

We have people coming in wanting to say,

I want to spend $500 and in three months I want

to make 5,000

the reality is it's a slow roll.

Yes, there are people out there who've gone to a millions

dollars in sales in a year.

Is it possible?

Yes. Is it the norm?

No small steps,

incremental steps,

calculated steps moving forward.

It's not about throwing a product up.

It's about taking calculated risks,

doing the research to see that it makes sense for your

business where you are at right now,

and it may be that you find out after putting a

product on that it isn't where you need to be right

now and you need to focus on product development so that

it can fit for this market.

It's part of the research.

We are all about research.

Don't do something without having a reason behind why you're doing

it. Take the step because you've done the research to say,

this is why I'm taking that step or that it's a

sell on Amazon or whether that's to build out this new

product. If you don't have a reason,

then you don't have a goal and therefore you have nothing

to build on or understand.

Beautiful, perfect.

100% agree with you on that.

Okay. This is just a random question that I thought of,

so I'm just going to put it in here.

What happens if you have a product that you've sent over

to Amazon,

it's just not selling.

Do you ever take it back or just let it sit

there for eternity or what do you do about that?

Oh, Sue,

if you saw my office right now,

well, I've seen your office,

Amy. The reality is yes,

you can pull it back.

You can not.

You have two options on Amazon.

You can pull it back for 50 cents an item or

to have them dispose of it for 10 cents an item.

I often pull stuff back,

especially because I do bundles.

If a bundle didn't work,

80 20 rule guys,

80% of your bundles or products are likely to not work

the way you expected them to,

20% you're going to stick with,

so what I do with the 80% that don't work the

way I wanted them to,

I'll pull them back,

I'll repackage,

I'll rebundle them with something else.

I'll look at things differently and adjust from there.

So yes,

you have the ability to bring stuff back.

And this is a great segue,

talk a little bit more about bundles because we do have

a section of our audience who is just getting started,

so they're not quite sure exactly what they're going to do

yet. A lot of our makers do so many different things.

You know,

they're makers,

they're knitting and they do embroidery.

You like all these things and they're trying to narrow in

on what they're doing.

So for the person who's just starting out,

just kind of thinking about,

well, I'm going to start my own business,

but I'm not sure what it is.

This bundling thing sounds interesting.

Expand on that a little bit just for people to understand

what you're up to with this.

Okay, so bundling is basically thinking about your buyer and what

problem that you're trying to solve a problem for them.

So I'm going to go out of a non,

let's think you are learning how to knit.

Okay, what are the things that you would need to learn

how to knit?

You need needles,

you need yarn,

what are the other parts and pieces that you need to

learn how to do that and you can put together a

bundle of learning how to knit.

That's a bundle.

That's things that they need.

They're complimentary to each other.

That gives them what they need to be able to learn

how to do a skill,

which makes that more valuable than if they went out and

bought needles themselves and everything else itself.

Correct. As the seller on that,

you can not only combine those products,

you can also provide them with a,

here's how to start knitting ebook,

info card,

whatever it is that allows them to have that more connection

with you and that's,

this is my bundle.

This is how I teach.

Here's the information so that they can learn how to do

it as well.

It endears them to you because they learned a skill through

something they purchased from you.

I think you're also separating yourself,

although I don't know,

you'll have to give me your comments on this,

Amy, if it matters as much on Amazon given all that

we've just learned now,

but I think you're separating yourself if you're the one who

provides bundles on those types of projects versus other people who

don't. Correct.

You can do that.

There's also,

if you do crochet,

I was actually looking in the homemade store earlier today and

I was looking at crocheted Thanksgiving decor,

and if you have this crocheted pumpkin's,

crocheted cornucopia,

and something else,

I don't know that you could put together as a bundle

of these are three different products that I can sell individually

or I can put them together for somebody to use a

centerpiece of their Thanksgiving table,

and so looking at it from a different perspective,

there's a problem I'm solving.

They're looking for a table centerpiece for Thanksgiving,

and here's an option that I provide for them that has

all the pieces that they would need to make this happen.

Perfect. And you've brought up a topic that I'm glad I

would have skimmed over this by accident.

Talk a little bit more about the homemade section of Amazon.

Oh, there's two great sections that I think are really great

for makers.

So amazon.com/handmade

will take you to the handmade market where you can look

at all the other makers out there that have their wares

on Amazon,

and it's anything from homemade journals to candles to anything.

The market is growing by the day and it's Amazon trying

to have it take of what Etsy is doing and what

other marketplaces are doing,

but it opens your homemade items up to a much broader

audience. Now,

the handmade marketplace,

isn't it?

You have to app apply to be part of it.

I have not gone through the process.

That is not,

I mean,

I am a creator,

but I am not at that level.

So if you go to amazon.com/handmade

you can actually look at that and then you can apply

to be part of it as well and it's just going

and looking at what their requirements are to be handmade.

I have a number of students that actually sell on handmade

successfully, so it's a very interesting space.

Amazon's only been doing it for about two years,

so it is very much ground floor on Amazon and that.

I've actually found that ground floor is a great place to

be because you get to grow with the platform then for

sure. Is it still searchable in Amazon overall or do buyers

have to go into handmade specifically?

You can search it in Amazon overall,

it depends on what your keywords are and how they show

up in search.

If people are looking directly for something that's handmade,

they can go to the handmade store,

but you can get the search overall.

The other part of Amazon that I want to bring up

to makers is you also have Amazon custom,

so you can customize any number of things,

whether you're customizing a scarf with somebody's name on it,

you're customizing some kind of embroidery,

you're a tee shirt,

whatever is,

you have the ability to sell Amazon custom or they just

like on Etsy,

here's what I want for this.

And then you can send that to them customized.

So that's obviously you fulfillment is through you because you've got

to customize it once the order comes in.

Correct. Okay.

And similar to handmade,

go onto that site.

See what it's all about.

Amazon.com/custom you can see what it's about.

It is also an application process.

They just want to see what you're able to do to

make sure that you're a good fit for the program.

Well. Right.

And if they don't keep the integrity of either of those

sites, then it's going to just become muddled.

It'll become another part of Amazon.

If someone's trying to,

let's say cheat the system.

Exactly. You're not really handmade,

but you want to go into handmade cause it's a smaller

group or whatever.

Exactly. Alright.

Anything else we should share with everybody about selling on Amazon?

Any big,

I mean,

I know there's a million things of course,

but anything else just in terms of this overall that we're

doing here?

The two things I want to have everyone take away about

Amazon is yes,

Amazon's big.

Yes, Amazon feels overwhelming.

Take it one step at a time to see what it

can do for your business.

Don't let fear take over business potential.

It would be number one and number two,

go after Amazon with a plan.

Don't just do Amazon for the sake of doing Amazon because

everyone's on Amazon and you think it's where you should go.

Look at it for your business where you are today and

you might determine that I need to work on my product.

I need to develop something further before this makes sense for

me, but really go about it and do the research and

have a plan before you jump all in.

Make it part of the strategy,

not the only thing you're doing right,

and do it with intent.

Wonderful. Okay.

Amy, at this point I would like to offer you to

dare to dream.

I'd like to present you with a virtual gift.

It's a magical box containing unlimited possibilities for your future.

So this is your dream or your goal of almost unreachable

Heights that you would wish to obtain.

Please accept this gift and open it in our presence.

What is inside your box?

What is inside my box is a business that runs itself.

So my goal with my Amazon business is to work myself

out of the day to day so I can focus on

teaching others,

being involved in enough of the business to stay relevant in

my education piece,

but also having it so that I'm not dealing with the,

making sure that my product gets from the vendor to my

warehouse. My goal is to really be able to step outside

and look at the big picture and not as much in

the nitty gritty day to day.

And I think,

you know,

I've seen this obviously,

you know I have a little bit of a different view

since we've been in a mastermind together,

but I see how logistically heavy Amazon can be,

but you've done it and you know it,

so therefore now you can share it.

You can pave the path for others,

I guess would be the way to say it.

Now it's one of those things that anybody can do that

anyone can decide to teacher or whatnot,

and I find a lot of joy in being able to

take all the things that I've learned and put them into

teaching others how to be able to make this a possibility

for them as well.

Perfect. And so let's talk about that right now.

Let's talk about the courses that you do and also Amazon

files. So share both of these with us.

So if you're interested in learning more about mom income,

head over to mama income.com

that talks about all of what we're about.

The best thing I think for your audience is to head

over to the AC files.com

that you can look at our podcast there,

our YouTube channel.

From there we'll also allow you to sign up for our

next show if it's something that's interesting.

We do teach live on Monday nights,

so if you are interested in coming and joining us,

we would love to have you there.

We do answer questions live as long as they're relevant to

the topic,

so we would love to have you there.

The other place that we encourage people to join us to

ask questions is in our Facebook community.

If you go to mommy income.com/join

us with the code word MBA maker,

we will ask you a few questions and let you in

the group so that you can communicate with us and our

audience about selling on Amazon.

We have a lot of people who've sold in various different

parts from homemade to FBA,

all of the above and can help you on your way

to knowing what makes sense for your business and Amazon.

Perfect and gift biz listeners.

If you haven't caught some of those links,

you know there'll be over on the show notes page,

so just pop over to gift biz unwrapped.

I'm not sure what the extended link is going to be,

but you'll have that in an email that comes out to

you every week.

All those links are going to be there.

Amy, you completely 100% know your stuff.

I have learned so,

so much from this show today,

things that I never knew even though we've been talking about

your business together for all this time,

but we're more talking strategy than some of this other tactical

stuff. So interesting,

so valuable.

I am not surprised that you're such a success because you

present everything in such a clear way and it's attractive.

Like I'm really interested now in knowing more about Amazon.

So for that,

I really,

really appreciate you sharing today with our audience.

Well, I have had a blast.

Thank you so much for having me on.

This has been wonderful.

Did Amy and I do it.

Do we have you thinking about Amazon in a little bit

could be something that you could incorporate into your business?

It's not for everybody,

but if it's something that you should be considering,

I'm glad to have provided the information for you and now

I have one other thing.

It's a little bit of request.

Guess what?

This coming week is my birthday week.

My actual birthday lands on Saturday,

which is really fun,

isn't it always great when your birthday is on the weekend

when you can really celebrate.

Given that,

I'd like to request a birthday favor if you will,

if you haven't already.

Would you be so kind as to go over to iTunes

and leave a rating and review of the show?

If you listen to podcasts regularly,

you hear a lot of people asking for reviews and the

reason they're so important is it helps build visibility within the

iTunes platform.

We've already been talking about how visibility is so important for

your business,

right? It's the same thing with podcasts,

so if you'd be able to go over and write a

review for me,

just be honest and talk about what you think of the

show, what value it brings to you,

that helps bring visibility to the podcast.

Therefore, more listeners are able to find the show and then

listen as well.

I would so much appreciate it and I would consider it

a very,

very special birthday gift.

Let me thank you in advance and if you've already given

a review previously,

you're only able to do one ever in the whole life

of iTunes,

only one review,

so if you've already done so,

thank you for that as well.

Finally, to close out the show,

I'm going to run the promo of my book that was

released earlier in the year maker to master find and fix

what's not working in your small business.

This would be a wonderful stocking stuffer.

If you have a friend or a relative who has a

hobby or a craft and they've been thinking about turning it

into a business or they've gotten started and they're stuck.

Actually, they should be listening to this podcast if that's the

case too.

But if you're looking for more ways to help your friends

succeed in their businesses,

this could be a possibility and a great holiday gift.

Let's run that promo.

Are you discouraged because your business is not performing as you

had envisioned?

Are you stuck and confused about how to turn things around?

Sue's new bestselling book is structured to help you identify where

the holes are in your business and show you exactly how

to fix them.

You'll learn from Sue and owners just like you who are

seeing real growth and are living their dream maker to master,

find and fix what's not working in your small business.