TAS 199 Ask Scott Session #58 – Your Amazon FBA Questions

You’ve found the show notes page for this episode of “Ask Scott” – the place where you can ask  your own real-life private label questions and receive answers. But there’s more benefit than just asking your questions – you get to hear the answers Scott Voelker gives to other people’s questions. It’s like learning from the problems and mistakes others are making so that you don’t have to experience them yourself. So make sure you take the time to listen to this episode to get an education from the experience of thousands of Amazon sellers, in one episode.

How can I add my product to different subcategories inside the Amazon interface.

When you set up your product listing on Amazon you’ll be able to choose the individual categories that you feel best represent the niche your product is in. However, you won’t always be able to select all of the subcategories that you see when searching for items on Amazon. Where can you find those mysterious subcategories and how do you get your products listed there? On this episode of The Amazing Seller Scott is going to walk you through the steps he’s taken over the years to get his products into subcategories, and so far they’ve worked every time.

I’m getting overwhelmed by the Alibaba listings. Is there a way to filter the results?

When you are doing product research for private label products to sell on Amazon there are a lot of options. One of the common sources of good products is Alibaba. But when you search for something on Alibaba you’ll often see the same company multiple times in the listings. It’s enough to make your head spin! How can you narrow the search results to get a simpler view of the product offerings that are available? On this episode Scott gives some tips about how to do product research in the simplest ways so that you can avoid overwhelm.

I’ve never done Amazon FBA but want to get started. At what point should I invest in software?

There are lots of software tools out there to help with almost every aspect of running a private label sales business on Amazon. For somebody starting out it could seem like the costs of subscribing to all of the tools will mount up pretty quickly. On this episode of The Amazing Seller, Scott walks a newbie through the steps he would personally take if he were starting all over, and he includes his opinions about a handful of software tools and tells when he’d look into purchasing them for us in his business. If you’re new to the private label game you’ll get a lot out of this answer.

Amazon private label sales is not the only viable online business.

As you listen to the Amazing Seller you naturally are going to get lots of tips and tricks for approaching the private label sales world. But Scott takes a few moments near the end of this episode to point out that much of what he talks about are simple business principles that apply across the board in any online business enterprise. If you want to start your own online business but don’t want to be limited to private label sales on Amazon, you might want to hear what Scott’s got to say about how to transfer many of the concepts he teaches into your other online businesses.

OUTLINE OF THIS EPISODE OF THE AMAZING SELLER

• [0:03] Scott’s introduction to the podcast!
• [0:45] How to get your questions answered.
• [1:10] How to get Scott’s free private label course.
• [2:55] QUESTION ONE: How can I add subcategories to my product listing?
• [10:55] QUESTION TWO: Is there any way to filter by company in Alibaba?
• [15:28] QUESTION THREE: Should a person use Amisuite as a person who hasn’t begun?
• [24:15] Using what you learn as an Amazon seller to build any kind of business online.

RESOURCES SHARED ON THIS EPISODE

• www.FreePrivateLabelCourse.com
• www.Periscope.tv (@ScottVoelker).
• www.TheAmazingSeller.com/143 – Episode about tax tips and business entities.
• www.Alibaba.com – sourcing website from China.
• www.TheAmazingSeller.com/125 – how Scott got started with Amazon FBA.
• www.TheAmazingSeller.com/56  and www.TheAmazingSeller.com/100 – www.TheAmazingSeller.com/161 – product research episodes.
• www.TheAmazingSeller.com/189 – looking at the product depth.
• www.JungleScout.com – Scott’s preferred product research tool.
• www.Amasuite.com – Another product research option.

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TRANSCRIPT TAS 199

TAS 199 : Ask Scott Session #58 – Your Amazon FBA Questions

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:02] SV: Hey, hey what’s up everyone. Welcome back to another episode of The Amazing Seller podcast this is episode number 199 and session number 58 of ask Scott. This is where I answer your questions that you submit via voice mail and I do my best to answer…

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…here on an episode like this one right here. You guys know that I love, love, love doing these and it’s like us just sitting around just talking business whether it’s at the coffee shop or wherever it is it's just awesome. I like being able to do this and this is the closest thing that we get to do it here and that’s why these are so awesome and you guys love them so much as well because I get a lot of feedback from these. Keep them coming, all right. If you guys have a question that you want me to answer on an upcoming ask Scott session just head over to theamazingseller.com/ask and you can do that.

You can record a voice mail just include your first name, maybe where you are tuning in from and then a quick question or a brief question and then I’ll go ahead and try to air that on the show and give you my answer. The other thing real quick I want to do is remind anyone that is brand new or maybe just someone that’s seeing if this is the right business model for them or even if they want to entertain the thought of it because I get a lot of people that do that which I think is great because you should know what you are getting yourself into. I created a free ten day course it’s called the free private label course and you can find that at, get this, get this it’s going to be a really clever name, freeprivatelabelcourse.com, easy to remember freeprivatelabelcourse.com.

It’s a ten day free course I deliver it through email so you’ll get an email every single day for ten days and it will have a video and it will have instructions inside of that email of what to do and really explain everything in a whole and I’ll give some examples and all that stuff. Definitely check that out if you are brand new and you are looking to get started in this and you want to see if it’s the right fit or not. All right. The other thing is real quick I want to give a little shout out to my Periscope and Snapchat peeps. You guys know who you are. Thank you so much hanging out with me over there and if you are not hanging out with me over there we can do a little bit of this kind of ask Scott session on Periscope or Snapchat. Again Periscope is… You can find me there at periscope.tv just find me @ScottVoelker or Snapchat my user name there is @ScottVoelker1.

You can find me there. Would love to connect with you. I’m getting a lot of people snapping me over there and showing me where you are listening or showing me what you are doing and it's really awesome to be able to see how you guys are taking action. It’s really awesome. Alright let’s go ahead and, oh wait a minute, before we go ahead let me remind you guys one thing. I’m sorry but I have to remind you this. We have transcripts. If you guys want the transcripts of this episode or the show notes head over to the show notes page which can be found at theamazingseller.com/199. Alright. That is it alright let's go ahead and listen to the first question and I’ll give you my answer.

[00:03:01] Edgar: Hey Scott my name is Edgar. First of all I want to appreciate what you are doing for the all advice for trying to make things happen on Amazon FBA. I have a question, how I can add one more or two more subcategories to my product. Right now I’m selling my product and it’s in home and kitchen and what I want to do I just want to add one more subcategory. My question is how I can add this second category to my listing. Thank you so much I really hope you help and have a great night. Bye, bye.

[00:03:48] SV: Hey Edgar thank you so much for the question and this is a good question and I do get asked this quite often so I’m going to answer it here and I think I’ve already answered it before but I’m going to answer it again because there is a couple of different things we have to think about these categories or these subcategories. All right. Because what you are doing is you are trying to list your product into the main category which we talked about right. What is your main category? And then you want to have subcategory of that or even in a completely new category and there is advantages to that.

Now, I don’t think there is a ton of benefits of just being listed in categories because I don’t think people search for products through categories but it can help you in search and it also can help you once someone has already done the initial search and now they are in that category and now they are doing more searches inside of there.

There is benefits to that and there is also benefits to finding, and this is kind of another strategy that anyone listening can do, find that second category even if it’s a sub, sub, subcategory, find that category and then see if you can dominate that category. Then what will happen is if you get number one in that category as far as ranking goes you’ll get a best seller’s badge and if you get a best seller’s badge that can help your conversions. Now you really should test that to say for sure, I still say it can’t hurt but I don’t think that you should spend all kinds of time and effort figuring out a way to get that best seller’s badge although I have done it. I have seen a slight increase but not as much as I would have thought but it is another option there because if you find a category that is really like a sub, sub, sub subcategory of your main category so you could be listed in the same category but then want to be listed into a sub, sub, subcategory

All you need to do to make this happen is let Amazon know that you want to be listed in that sub, sub, subcategory so all you need to do is let them know. You contact seller support you tell them that you want to keep your main category but you also want to be in this other sub, sub, subcategory. By doing that it will allow you to be placed in there and they’ll usually do it no problem. Usually within twelve hours you are able to get that change made alright? There are advantages to doing that I really wouldn’t focus too much on the second category as being more of a driver of sales more as if you can get into a sub, sub, subcategory and then get like a best seller’s badge and dominate that or even show up higher in the search for that in that category. Because here is how it works too for anyone that is listening that might not know this but let’s say you go to Amazon, you haven’t even gotten to Amazon for the day, you haven’t even logged in or you haven’t even went on to your computer today.

[00:06:39] SV: You walk up to your computer, imagine this, you are walking up to your computer or on your phone and then you type in amazon.com or maybe you had a bookmark. You go there, you have a search field. The search field now is going to show all the departments you are not in a category you are just going all departments. Now let’s say that you go and search garlic press. You search garlic press it’s going to show all of the listed things that come up for garlic press. Ninety five percent of them most likely are going to be in home and kitchen so once you click on one of them now you are in home and kitchen, now you are in that category. Now when you do another search if you look up by your search bar it’s going to say, “search in home and kitchen”.

The only way that you are going to go back to the main page, which most people aren’t going to do, is you are going to go back and click on that Amazon logo and it’s going to take you back to the main page that says “all departments” or you can just click on that little drop down that says “all departments, home and kitchen”. You can directly search in a category. Most people are going to just go to Amazon, go to search field and search. Once they are in now they start to follow or start to drill down into these categories not even knowing it so that’s where being in another category could be of benefit to you because now once you are in that category if you are there and you are ranking higher you will be more visible. All right.

Hopefully that makes sense but it really is as easy as finding that category and then just letting seller support know about it and letting them know that you want to do that. One thing you want to make clear to them though is, do not remove me from the main category, I just want to be added to the secondary category and that’s how you do it. That’s how I’ve done it and it’s worked every single time. Hopefully that’s been helpful. Good luck to you and let’s go ahead and listen to another question and I’ll give you my answer.

[00:08:27] Philip: Hey Scott this is Philip [inaudible] I loved your podcast with Josh Bauerle and myself like many others went to Google him find out how do I use his services but you spelled his name wrong in your description and its Bauerle with an E at the end not a Y. Just thought you may want to fix that in your product or whatever your podcast information for that one episode at least on your blog. Love your stuff man I created a business myself with a friend out here in California and we’ve been doing just fine every single month so you rock. Thank you.

[00:09:08] SV: Hey Philip thank you so much for the heads up and congratulations on your business success and thanks for being a listener. The reason why I aired your heads up because at first I was like, “Do I really need to air that I guess I can just fix the link, not even the link, the name of Josh,” but what I wanted to do is bring attention back to episode 143 and that was killer tax tips and what business type to form LLC, do I do an s-corp? That was the episode 143 with Josh Bauerle who’s my CPA also John Lee Dumas’s for EOFire, CPA on Fire is what he calls himself so it’s Josh Bauerle and what we are going to do is we are going to update that show notes page.

I’m also going to drop the show notes or the link in this episode this way anyone that does want to reach out to Josh can do so and they can find him. Just to let people know that the show notes was done by my show notes guy so he must have just misspelled it by accident. We’ll go ahead and get that fixed and I will leave the links obviously in the show notes episode or the episode, the show notes to this episode I think that’s what I’m trying to say. That’s what I’m going to do here. I just wanted to bring attention back to that episode because it is a really good episode if you guys want some killer tax tips and also if you’ve been thinking to yourself, “What type of business entity do I form?” That is going to help you this particular episode that we did with Josh that is episode 143 really, really great episode, a lot of feedback on that. Definitely check that out.

Philip I wanted to just say publicly congratulations on your business success that you and your partner have I’d love to hear more about it sometime so yeah definitely keep me posted. Let’s go ahead and listen to another question and I’ll give you my answer.

[00:10:55] Brandon: Good morning Scott my name is Brandon and I’m a long time listener and first time caller about taking action and I’ve been researching a product on Alibaba. I’ve noticed when I’ve been doing my research that the deeper I get into Alibaba further from page one that I’m noticing that companies are coming up multiple times and the MOQs are different. I feel that in my research process that I’ve sent multiple emails to the same company asking the same questions. Do you know if there is any way to filter that out by company or do I just have to go through and hand write notes for all the companies that I have contacted? Thanks and looking forward to future podcasts.

[00:11:47] SV: Okay. First of all Brandon thank you so much for being a long time listener that means so much because when I was first starting this podcast I didn’t know if I was going to have two people listening or a hundred people listen. Now this has grown into thousands which has just been amazing and I owe it to all of you first time listeners that started with me from the beginning. Thank you, thank you and yeah. What I want to say here is on as far as taking action is you are listening, you are getting all this information I just want to say this to everyone that has been doing that, “We need to consume the information but we need to take action on it.”

Pick one thing that you can do to really move yourself forward and I know that it gets overwhelming at times because we have a lot of things coming at us but the one thing that I’d like to insert here into this session of ask Scott is really, “Take this information that you are learning or that you are absorbing and then pick something that you can do.” In this case we are talking about sourcing, we are talking about you are at a stage where you’ve done your product research. That’s great, let’s give you a round of applause on that, that’s awesome. Now you are into the product sourcing stage, now you are into Alibaba, now you are starting to get a little bit confused which is fine but now we’ve got to get you through that. How do we get you through that?

Well this particular question that you are asking I really don’t pay too much attention to that stuff I’ve got to be honest with you. Yeah you might be wasting a little bit of time but I’m just copy and pasting to anyone that has a product that is related or that looks like it’s the similar product just to get that conversation started, that interview process started as you guys have heard me talk about before. Yes you are right, what they are doing is multiple agents are listing for that same manufacturer so you may be sending five or ten different emails to those different agents or maybe one agent has gotten clever and created ten different listings in Alibaba with the same product. That’s fine. So you are going to show up in their inbox five times or ten times. It’s going to make them say, “Hey you better get a hold of this person.” Right.

There might be a way to filter that out inside Alibaba but I’ve got to be honest, I haven’t really paid too much attention to that because I’m just firing off emails. I’m just like contact and then just copy paste, copy paste and then waiting for the results to come back to me with whoever emails me back. Again it’s one of those things that I don’t spend a lot of times figuring out a way that I can eliminate that from happening I just keep trying to drill down and trying to find that one supplier or two suppliers that I’m going to be able to work with. It is a numbers game at that point but then once you find that agent then from there you can start drilling down in their catalogue, you can start drilling down into their resources and all of that good stuff. Hopefully that has been helpful to you but again I just want to go back to talking about consuming the information and we have so much information out there, so much information.

There is something that I heard from Pat Flynn who actually he learned it from someone else and basically was talking about “Just In Time” learning. Whatever stage you are at in your business right now learn that, do that and then move on to learning the next thing. Right. This way you are not trying to learn the entire process and then being overwhelmed by it. Yes you want to know the overall picture so this way you know where you are going towards but then once you do that don’t worry about figuring all the things that could potentially come up when they might not even come up. That makes sense, hopefully it does. Alright so let’s go ahead and listen to one more question and I’ll give you my answer.

[00:15:32] James: Hey Scott, my name is James and I’m a total newbie at FBA and when I say newbie I’m only at the starting phase where I am thinking of getting into it. I’ve been binging on your podcasts and I’ve been stumbling over a lot of things but I stumbled upon you through a podcast. I’ve been listening to a lot of sports stuff and I said, “I’ve got to do something that’s like being creative and bring some value to my life.” and of course how can you do that by being in a monetary aspect of things? I really appreciate your show and the time that you put into it just like everyone else I really appreciate it but let me just ask my question based on for me being a total person who was only reading about FBA.

All my life I’ve been a consumer and now it’s time for me to take my family to the next level. I asked a few questions online to a few folks but I didn’t get the answers but like I said prior to this I stumbled upon you and I love your podcast. My question even in your resources tab on your webpage you have a resource called AmaSuite and my question is, should a person use Amasuite even though I see all the value in it but at $297 with a hundred dollar discount is a smart for a person like me who is just about to get into it, add that to his resources. Thank you.

[00:17:03] SV: James what is up thank you so much for the question and I love it how you described how you are a consumer of content and you are receiving that content and you weren’t even looking for a business type thing right but you were listening to a podcast. You were in that space and then you got curious and you started to look around and you stumbled across this. Right. I love it that right now what you want to do is you want to see if this is the right thing for you and I think you’ve discovered that through the podcast. Now you can see all of the different moving pieces, everything that it’s going to take to get started here because that’s what we are doing. We are getting started and then from there we can see where it goes.

I would be lying to you if I told you that you are going to start this business and that’s where your business is going to end because I don’t believe that. What I believe is that you need to start somewhere and whether that starting on Amazon and then growing from something else that opens because of that well then that’s where it leads you but you have to get started somewhere. I go all the way back to when I started and if anybody hasn’t heard that episode, that's episode one twenty five so theamazingseller.com/125. You’ll hear how I started from working for my father to then starting a photography business and then from there teaching people online about photography and then that got me introduced to the online space and dabbling in eBay and then starting a little bit of real estate then going back to the online space.

There is always twists and turns but you have to get started and I can say this, that as you move forward and I’m going to get to your question in a minute by the way but I think it’s really important for people to hear this. I think it’s really important for people to understand that this isn’t the only way but it is a way to get started and to me it’s a simpler way to get started so this way here you can start to get some momentum and you can start to learn the process. Alright so you are at that stage where you want to get started this is what I would say especially because you are in the product research stage, you are at that point you have to start there. Episode 56, again guys these are going to be listed in the show notes and the transcripts for this episode, these episodes that I’m going to give you right now are going to be there linked up so you don’t have to remember these if you are driving or riding your bike alright?

Episode 56 that’s theamazingseller.com/56, episode 100 which was really good because it was myself, it was Rich Kibble, it was Chris Shaffer and Danny Brewer talking about what product research and what different ways we are looking at moving forward in 2016 and beyond for product research and I guess launching products in that new year because things are changing. Right. The other episode is 161 so theamazingseller.com/161 that was one which I recently did with Greg Mercer who is also an Amazon seller but also the creator of Jungle Scout. The other one is episode number 189 so that is theamazingseller.com/189. That’s a more recently one but that one there was more or less how to look at the depth and the demand of not just looking at the surface numbers…

Those are the ones that I would say to start with. Anyone that's in the product research stage. Now, when you're talking about software tools and the resources to use. Let me just break those two down real quick. They are both valuable but in a little bit of a different way. If was to just pick one. I get that question a lot. “Scott if you're going to just pick one to start with which one is it going to be?” For me personally it's going to be Jungle Scout. It's going to be the WebApp and it's going to be the Chrome Extension, okay. They both serve a couple of different purposes. Okay. Number one, when you're looking at the Webapp, the WebApp brings products to the surface so you can see by certain criteria and it brings into the surface you can kind of get ideas without actually having to scratch your head and wonder what is selling and kind of like what should I look into for markets.

It's going to kind of give you just an idea of what you could potentially sell. Then from there you're going to take those ideas and then you're going to start drilling down and that's where you'll start using the Jungle Scout Chrome extension. That's what you'd do. Now, talking about Amasuite, Amasuite is great for a lot of different reasons. They do have a product research module in there which it does something very similar to the WebApp which it brings data back in looking at the BSR, looking at reviews, you can search it by different criteria but I found that the WebApp is a little bit more visual, that you can see the stuff but I would say Amasuite for me personally I use it for the keyword research. They have a keyword research module in there which will help you discover and find keywords around your C keywords

[00:22:15] SV: If you're looking for Garlic press what's it's going to essentially do it's going to take garlic press and then it's going to add a letter to the end of it and then give you everything with that letter. It's kind of hard to explain but basically it's like if you typed in garlic press in the search and then you hit the spacebar and the you put an A next to that, everything with a word that begins with an A after garlic press it's going to scrape and find all those keywords. Then it's going to go to B and then it's going to go to C, then it's going to go to D, all the way through the alphabet. It will even do it with the numbers. That's a really, really useful tool for just finding keywords. The other module inside of that that they have, that I like, that I use is finding reviewers, top ten thousand reviewers.

It's a easy way for you to go out and find these reviewers and then you can reach out to them manually and then start building your own email list of these top reviewers. All right. Again, if I was going to recommend you a tool in particular the I'd say you are at a stage where you are just going product research. I would say Jungle Scout would probably be the one to go to. Now if you're looking at down the line you want to add another piece to your tool box or another tool to your toolbox then Amasuite would be great because it's not only going to do the product research which then again you can piggyback on that as well, you can use that as another way to discover products and you can use those other components inside of Amasuite.

Again, to answer your question the first tool that I'd put in that toolbox for you in particular James would be Jungle Scout. Okay. Then from there you can add other tools down the line if you want to. All right. Hopefully, this has been helpful but I did want to share a little bit more of the mindset that goes into this business or any business for that matter because it is to me a starting point. From there it will help you get moving. Once you get moving then it's up to you to decide okay when's the time that I'm building a website? When is the time that I'm going to build my own ecommerce store? When is the time I'm going to start building an email list. All of that stuff and then as you're learning that stuff, guess what, you're the learning stuff that you can take with you to another business model. All right.

[00:24:27] SV: Again, I'm not going to keep talking about this too much. I can go on forever. It's so important. All of these things that we're learning right now to start this type of business can be carried over to any other business online. All right guys.

That is going to wrap up this session of Ask Scott. I want to remind you that all of the show notes, all of the transcripts, all of that stuff is ready for you on the show notes page. All you have to do is head over to theamazingseller.com/199 and you'll get all of those show notes. All right. Just a little reminder for you. Also, if you guys wanted the free resource that I talked about in the beginning, the ten day free mini course you can head over to freeprivatelabelcoursel.com and you'll get access to that. All you have to do is register and you'll start getting lessons every single day for ten days and it will walk you through the entire process, start to finish.

All right guys. That's going to wrap it up. Remember I'm here for you, I believe in you and I'm rooting for you but you have to, you have to… Come on, say it with me, say it loud, say it proud,
“Take action.” Have an awesome, amazing day and I'll see you right back here on the next episode.

[END]

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[divider]

LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

• www.FreePrivateLabelCourse.com
• www.Periscope.tv (@ScottVoelker).
• www.TheAmazingSeller.com/143 – Episode about tax tips and business entities.
• www.Alibaba.com – sourcing website from China.
• www.TheAmazingSeller.com/125 – how Scott got started with Amazon FBA.
• www.TheAmazingSeller.com/56  and www.TheAmazingSeller.com/100 – www.TheAmazingSeller.com/161 – product research episodes.
• www.TheAmazingSeller.com/189 – looking at the product depth.
• www.JungleScout.com – Scott’s preferred product research tool.
• www.Amisuite.com – Another product research option.

[divider]

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