TAS 253 Ask Scott Session #76 – Your Amazon FBA Questions

This is the podcast that teaches you, step by step, how to find, source, purchase, list, and sell your own private label products on the Amazon sales platform. It’s The Amazing Seller with Scott Voelker. This is one of our Friday episodes where Scott answers real life questions from private label sellers like you. If you’d like to ask Scott a particular question about what you’re experiencing, the challenges in your business, or the Amazon sales platform itself. If you’d like to ask your own question, you can listen to this episode and hear how you can do that!

Why you really need to figure out your “why” if you’re going to move forward.

Scott has found it incredibly helpful to keep a clear sense of why he’s doing his Amazon business in  mind at all times. A clear and compelling “why” fuels your business and motivates you to keep working on the things that really matter. On this episode, you’re going to hear Scott riff on why his “why” is important – and he’s going to tell you how you can develop your own compelling why that will keep you moving forward and taking action.

Two separate listings for variations, one sells better. How can you increase traffic?

A listener has a pretty interesting situation – he’s got two products that are identical in all other ways except that their colors are different. One of those colors sells very well and pretty consistently. The other doesn’t. His question is this: How can he optimize or promote the product that is not selling as well to get its sales numbers higher like the other product. Scott has a great set of suggestions for this listener and there’s a good chance that you’ll hear something that’s helpful for your business as well.

I’m launching a product in a gated category that doesn’t allow PPC.

One of the best tools provided on the Amazon sales platform is the pay per click tool that can help you drive sales to your products. But there are some product categories that do not allow sellers to use PPC. What do you do then? Scott’s got a handful of suggestions that center around optimizing the listing, researching your top 5 competitors, doing some sales promotions, and running ads on Facebook that go to a Leadpage. If you don’t know what all that means – you need to listen to this episode. Scott breaks it all down for you.

What is your daily routine to run your private label business, Scott?

Running a business of any kind can be quite a challenge. And if you’re a solopreneur or solo entrepreneur like Scott is (and many of you are), it can be especially tough. That’s because when you don’t have anyone telling you specific things to do in order to move the business forward, you’ve got to figure all of that out for yourself. On this episode, Scott is asked what his daily routine looks like, and in typical Scott style he doesn’t answer the exact question – but what he does have to say is worth its weight in gold. You’ll want to hear this one.

OUTLINE OF THIS EPISODE OF THE AMAZING SELLER

• [0:03] Scott’s introduction to the podcast!
• [1:15] Why it comes down to figuring out your “why.”
• [5:57] QUESTION ONE: I have two identical products of different colors. I’m trying to increase traffic on the one that sells less. Can you help?
• [11:55] QUESTION TWO: I’m launching a product in a category that doesn’t allow PPC.
• [20:13] QUESTION THREE: Could you share your daily routine with me?
• [28:20] QUESTION FOUR: Can you tell me details about the Amazon Brand Registry?

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TRANSCRIPT TAS 253

TAS 253 : Ask Scott Session #76 – Your Amazon FBA Questions

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:03] Scott: Well hey, hey what’s up everyone! Welcome back to another episode of The Amazing Seller Podcast. This is episode number 253 and session number 76 of Ask Scott. This is where I answer your questions here…

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…on the podcast and you guys know this is the highlight of my week. I’ve said that well 76 times I think now because every time that I do these episodes I get more fired up because I get to reach you at a different level. To hear your voice and who I’m talking to is really, really awesome to me and also everyone listening gets to benefit.

If you have a question I’m going to tell you again to go over to theamazingseller.com/ask and you can do just that. You can ask a question there. I really, really love being able to interact with you and do my best to help you, at least answer a question, give you my opinion or give you my thoughts on a particular thing as we are having that cup of coffee which I am having a cup of coffee right now currently as we’re recording this so we’re having that cup of coffee together. We have Brody snoring below me with his stuffed animal, I just did a little Snapchat of him, the dog life. I wanted to kind of bring this up as well because I get a lot of people that say to me or just themselves there’s just so much to understand or so much to learn, I’m feeling overwhelmed.

If you guys didn’t listen to the last episode, episode 252 with Jared talking about how he was overwhelmed and he was getting to that point where he just didn’t know what to do, he came to our live event, he got it all figured and now he’s doing about $20k a month so he figured it out. My thing to you now, again just on a side note here we’re going to get into today’s question but I kind of like to give you guys my thoughts from hearing from people but then also just observing. It really comes down to not overwhelming yourself.

[00:02:03] Scott: Yes you have to know what you need to know but it really also comes down to figuring out what you guys have heard me talk about before and that is your ‘why’. What is the reason you’re doing what you’re doing? It’s really important that you understand that. I covered that extensively in episode 200 and I really broke it down. I just said how do you simplify the process and how do you take action? How do you create that success plan? What drives that is that ‘why’. For me it’s lifestyle, it’s all about lifestyle. You guys have heard me say this, if you guys are new to the podcast you’re hearing it for the first time. It’s all about lifestyle for me, it’s not about being rich. I’m rich in life and it was funny because I had someone on a workshop not too long ago said, “Scott are you rich? “

I’m rich in life because I get to come and go as I please. I get to do what I want when I want with my kids and my wife and my family and I get to go to events. Whatever I want to do I can do technically pretty much when it comes to timing things out because I’ve chosen to have a lifestyle. That to me is when you are rich in life. A perfect example, kind of funny story here, we’re living in a pretty laid back community. It’s a little bit different than where we are before and people own golf carts like souped up kind of golf carts not just like a golf cart you would drive on the course, kind of decked out. They’re driving them around, they’re driving their kids to school. Well guess what, I’ve got a golf cart now.

It’s pretty cool, I love it. This morning we’re driving my daughter to school on the golf cart and we’re just like this is just so strange to us. It’s awesome but it’s just so strange that we’re able to get up and actually do that. Hop on the golf cart together, she’s in between us where we’ve got the backpack and away we go. We’re down the road and we get to go to school. She goes to school not that far from us so we take the golf cart in.

[00:04:01] Scott: It’s pretty cool. It’s all about that stuff for me. That to me is living. Being able to enjoy those moments. Depending on what yours is you have to figure that out like what is it because if you can have that clear picture, you can do anything. I do believe that. I believe that you can do anything. I’m not here giving you that motivational spiel right now I’m giving you reality as far as like what it takes to succeed is really about figuring out the why then figuring out the what and then creating that plan. That’s really what it’s all about. I cover that like I said I did a podcast on that on episode 200.

‘Simplify the process and take action’ was the title, your success plan and basically you’re creating that. Don’t overwhelm yourself and understand that there’s going to be obstacles but you have to have that why and I’m going to keep saying that over and over and over again. I would be saying it to the person that I’m sitting with right now my friend in a coffee shop I’d be like dude men you have to figure out your ‘why’ or you’re not going to move forward. You’re going to just get so overwhelmed. I see a lot of people struggle and that’s why I just wanted to highlight, I just want to take a second here, well actually a few minutes here on this podcast episode to just remind you of that. I think we all need to be reminded.

If you don’t hear episode 200 you’re not going to hear me say that again so I’m going to have to inject it here where I can so I’m going to do it here. Do that, figure out that ‘why’. Before we jump into today’s question let me just remind you once again if you wanted to download the show notes or the transcripts or read them you can head over to theamazingseller.com/253, that’s episode 253. Again I’ll remind you if you want to ask a question and have it aired on an upcoming show head over to theamazingseller.com/ask. Alright guys I’m fired up, I’m ready to listen to the first question and give you my answer so what do you say? Let’s get to it.

[Q&A SESSION]

[00:05:59]Chris: Hi Scott. I have two products, one red and one black. They’re the exact same product but they’re just different colors so I put them as different listings. The black one has sold really well and I am having trouble moving the red one. I have lowered the price and I have a 20% coupon on the page and the conversation rate is off the charts, it’s above 50%. The problem is I’m getting no traction otherwise and I’m not getting exposure to the listing.

Now I’ve done PPC and the limit there is the black listing converts extremely well, the ACOS is below 15% weekly but I still switch some of the keywords over to the red and I even pause some keywords just to try to get the red but the red one does not convert well on ads and the red one doesn’t show well on Amazon. They just don’t show it, advertise it as well so that’s another problem with the red. Also the main keywords I don’t rank well for and I think that may have something to do with the giveaway I did and I used the super URL but either way I don’t rank well for the main keywords but long tail differentiating keywords I rank well for.

The point of all this is I cannot move this product even though it sells well. I just I’m not getting the exposure to my listing. The buy one get one free have me showing as other products purchased on my other page but still it’s not giving me the traffic and I know if I just had the traffic I would convert. My question to you is what am I missing? What else can I do to get this product to move? Thank you very, very much.

[00:07:50] Scott: Hey Chris thank you so much for the question. That is your name I believe because I’ve seen that in the email but you didn’t put your name in the question which is okay but please guys if you are asking a question do me a favor and just leave your first name so I know who I’m speaking with but in this case I was able to read my email so Chris thank you for the question. You’ve got a really good question. If I think I’m understanding this correctly it sounds like you have two separate listings not a variation. I see this happen and I’ve even thought of doing this myself because now we can take up more real estate.

Anyone that’s brand new or that’s thinking about adding more product, if you have two separate listings you have a chance to take up two spots. If you have a listing with variations you’re only going to take up the one spot and then you’re going to have different variations inside of there. Usually the one variation that shows up the most as far as the image goes is going to be the most common one that is selling or the one that is selling the most. That’s kind of how it works as I see it. The first thing is and you’re making it sound as though the red is selling well when people go there but you can’t get people to see it.

The other question here then would be then well maybe there’s not enough people searching for that keyword. Do we know that people are searching for the red version of yours? Even though you only have 50 people that are seeing your page but it’s converting at like 20% that’s phenomenon but maybe they're just not enough people out there searching for the red one. Is there any proof from competitors that a red one is getting tons and tons and tons of traffic?

Again, with the pay-per-click I would want to make that as targeted as possible to say red garlic press, red stainless steel garlic press whatever and then I would want to see the impressions because the impression is going to tell me how many people are actually searching for it or how many times it’s being displayed. That’s a great way to first off see if there’s enough traffic there.

[00:09:48] Scott: There just might not be enough traffic for that particular keyword unless I’m missing something. My other thing that I would probably do here is I would probably list the red one on the black one as a variation, why not do that?

Because you already have the traffic coming there from the black one so why not then piggyback off of that traffic and then allow the red one to be seen when click in there and go I may want a black one and a red one or maybe I want just the red one. I like the black but I like the red. You’re giving them options, you’re giving them choices but if you’re doing this just to show up in two different spots that’s not going to work. Now you could, and I would have to see how this would work, you could just create that other SKU and then launch it underneath that listing as a variation and then still keep the other one on its own listing.

I believe you can do that as long as it’s got a separate UPC or a separate SKU but you got to be careful with that type of stuff as well because then you don’t want it to look as though you’re selling that same product on two different listings. Although if it’s a variation it is a difference because it’s a different color to that one so maybe look into that. I would say that if your listing is converting well but you’re not getting the traffic it might be a traffic issue all the way around.

You might not be able to get enough traffic unless you’re seeing that there’s ton of traffic then you have to dig in deeper, you have to do some more refining your pay-per-click, maybe do another give away with the red one. Again I wouldn’t, moving forward the super URL type thing, the keyword loaded URL I’m not really sure that we need to do that. If your listing is well optimized, like if red is in your title or red is in the back end you should start to rank regardless if you did a super URL or a keyword loaded URL.

That would be my recommendations, maybe variation look at your traffic in pay-per-click if you’re getting impressions and if not then I would probably focus more on the variation side of things. Hopefully this has helped you, let’s go ahead and listen to the next question and I’ll give you my answer.

[00:11:58] Marvin: What’s up Scott. This is Marvin from Germany. First of all I want to thank you for all the good stuff you do and I just love it, keep doing what you do. Since you’re offering Q&A I want to ask a question about a product launch that’s kind of differently. I have a product coming my way from China that I want to sell in Germany and this product falls under a gated category. In this category I cannot do PPC and since PPC is a big part in product launch, it has to look kind of differently. I want to ask you about your opinion how would you launch this product if you cannot do PPC? Would you drive outside traffic or something else? I would love to hear your opinion, just keep doing what you do, I love it. Thanks a lot, bye, bye. Marvin.

[00:12:48] Scott: Hey Marvin from Germany. What’s up man, thank you so much for the question. Every time that I get an international listener that phones in I get really, really excited because we’re reaching each other globally. To answer your question, good question too by the way, first off understand anyone else that’s listening that’s saying that you’re going into a gated category and you can’t use pay-per-click because that’s not allowed well everyone else is dealing with that in that same category. That’s first thing so don’t think that anyone else has an advantage over you inside of Amazon technically.

Now the first thing that I would do is make sure that my listing is really, really well optimized, like really well. Make sure your title is good, make sure your images are killer, make sure that your bullets are great, make sure your description is great, your search terms fields in the back make sure that those are very, very targeted and very relevant. That’s the one thing that I would say that’s what you have to do, that’s number one. Now number two, in order for this to work we’ve got to get you some sales. You can do a promotion as we’ve done in the past and what’s going to happen here is that’s going to help you to rank organically.

Whether you put a keyword loaded URL, super URL whatever you want to call it which I don’t think you need to do that, I think that you can just do a promotion and then from there you can start to rank because your listing is optimized. I would go and look at my competitors, my top five competitors that are ranking on page one and I would figure out what they’re averaging per day in sales.

[00:14:49] Scott: Then I would match that and maybe even bump it a little bit. Let’s just say for example they’re selling 20. Then I would make it I sell 22 to 25 per day for 5 days and I would let that run.

You might have some days depending on the review group that you’re using, you may have a few days that you have 23 you might have some that are 28, you might have some that are 20, you might have some that are 21. It’s going to vary a little bit but you want to at least have that number that is the target in this case it could be 20. Maybe it’s only 10 a day that you have to do, that’s fine but that’s going to really get the momentum started. Then from there you can wait to see if you’re going to start ranking and you’re going to start to get those reviews coming in naturally as long as you are following up with your customers which we talk about in this podcast so that’s number two.

That’s like step two in this process, optimize listing, promotion, standard launch type stuff. Externally what I would probably do is I would start finding my audience out there on Facebook and I would start running ads from Facebook not directly to Amazon. I would direct them to a landing page, I would use something like LeadPages. If you guys want to find out more of those tools and stuff like that you can head over to theamazingseller.com/resources and I’ve got that stuff kind of linked up there as far as that type of stuff, as far as setting up a landing page.

On that landing page you’re going to say, “Hey receive 50% off,” so maybe you give $50 off discount versus being a 100% discount or a 99% off discount as you would with a promotion in the initial phase. This way here you’re covering your cost pretty much. Get 50% off to your ideal target audience and then from there you would have a one time use code be generated whether you have to manually send that to them or if you can have some type of back end system that will do that.

[00:16:51] Scott: Then from there you’re able to send them to your listing after that they’ve raised their hand and if they’ve opted in with an email address to do that then they raise their hand. They’ve got a coupon code now, now there’s a better chance of them to go over to Amazon to buy the product because you’ve given them the link inside that email, that first email. You’re going to need something like Mail Chimp or Aweber that can allow you to give them an email as soon as they sign up or on the thank you page as well that gives them instructions on what to do next.

You need to make this kind of happen like one, two, three. Here’s the offer, here’s what to do next and then from there after that happens then what to do next after that. It’s like enter your email address, they enter it, they click submit or claim code, they go to the next page, that thank you page is going to have the directions as far as like go look at your email for that or look for an email from us with the coupon code and you should receive it in the next 30 minutes or something like that. If you’re manually going to do that you’re going to be watching your emails so that’s where it can get a little goofy but it’s worth it because instead of just sending Facebook ad traffic directly to an Amazon listing what’s going to happen there is if you do that and 90% of people go there but they don’t buy that’s going to hurt your conversation ranking or your rating.

You don’t want that. That’s why if you intercept it with an email address and then give them a coupon code and then you have a better chance of them following up with them to make sure that they use the code you’ve got a better chance of them converting to a sale. That’s what I would do to really fill in that gap as far as if I’m not getting organic sales rate yet I can’t use my pay-per-click. That would be my pay-per-click in a sense. That’s what I would do. Give it a shot and let me know if it works for you. There’s other things we can do externally again not to get too advanced here but we can do stuff like a free plus shipping offer and then from there we can give them an upsell after they commit to a free plus shipping offer.

[00:18:54] Scott: Let’s say they buy or they say I’d love to receive that free garlic press and then they click yes or buy and then it charges them $5.95 for shipping and handling because you’re going to have to ship to them physically but then on the next page it says, “Well I’ve got a special offer for you to go right along with your garlic press. Here receive a month's supply of garlic,” or “Here have a chance here to buy a garlic storage bag,” or system or whatever. You get what I’m saying it has to go along with that first product or sometimes it can just be an additional one of that product.

You’ve seen that on the infomercials I’m sure all of us have. The one where it says, “But wait if you order now you’ll receive two of the squeegee something,” or whatever that thing is on the infomercial, you understand what I’m saying. Again that’s a little bit more advanced but the first thing I would do is the offer on Facebook, I’d find the audience, I would target them, I would send them to land page for a 50% off discount.

I would have them enter their name and email address, I would then deliver the coupon code manually or find a way to have that automated. Then from there I would start getting those sales coming in that way as well. That would be my pay-per-click. All right so hopefully that helps good luck, keep me posted let's go ahead and listen to the next question and I’ll give my answer.

[00:20:17] Ben: Hey Scott my name is Ben Laboon. I just want to thank you for all that you do. I feel like I’ve finally found that business model that works for me and I have you to thank for it. My question was about your daily operations and running your private label business. First time you spent working on your day on your business do you have a daily routine such as you spend X amount of time doing product research or you spend X amount of time tweaking your listings to improve your conversion rates. I just wanted to get a better idea of how you run your private label business every day. Again, thanks for all you do and I hope to hear from you soon.

[00:20:51] Scott: Hey Ben thank you so much for the question. This is a great question and I wish that I can give you like an exact number of what happens on a daily basis. I do have a schedule. I have recently, well I say recently, I’ve been doing this for a long time but sometimes I fall off from the schedule then I come back to the schedule or I recreate the schedule. Perfect example my daughter is now back in school so because of that I had to readjust my schedule. To me it’s all about planning your day and then executing on that day.

Currently right now as I’m recording this it’s before 9 o’clock AM. My daughter’s to school, I came home and now I am scheduling myself this time to record these episodes and nothing else will get in the way. Again it works the same thing with private labeling. I have certain tasks that I go to or that I look at or I do the research at certain times that I allow myself that time for Amazon because I’ve got a bunch of things that I’m juggling. Amazon is just one of them. Because of that I have to divide my day up differently. If you are working a 9 to 5 job and I get this question a lot like, “If I’m working a 9 to 5 job how do you do it?

How do you find the time Scott?” Well first off you have to go and I talked about this at the beginning of this episode is finding your ‘why’ because that’s going to motivate you and get you through those tough times but also getting you to pull yourself out of bed an hour early or stay up an hour later, whatever it is. You have to have those times. For me personally it’s kind of random of what I work on and what I do, it depends on what’s happening then. We just got done doing a product launch for two SKUs and really that was a lot of back and forth with someone that I’m working with in my business that’s helping me along with that so we were managing that and then also we were also looking at the data then we started up some new pay per-click-campaigns.

[00:22:50] Scott: Again there might be an hour or two in my day and then I will decide what is the most important thing that has to be done in that time period? If we’re talking about like maintenance kind of maintenance mode, well I would say an hour really gets me everything that I need to get done to just maintain and run the operations, like an hour will pretty much do it. Now, if you’re dealing with a supplier and you’re going back and forth with them that can change but if we’re talking about just daily operations like looking at the inventory, looking at the sales data, looking at your pay per click campaigns and making sure nothing is too far out of the line there.

Again you might spend an hour just on pay-per-click. You may allow just an hour to really go through and start weeding through and looking at the data because that can take some time and you’ll find that. Same thing with product research. Now just two days ago I spent probably about an hour and a half just kind of digging through because I haven’t been really doing a ton of that in the past month. I said I kind of wanted to kind of see what… Kind of like a fresh point of view or a fresh I guess start because a lot of times when we’re getting that product research and any of you that are listening right now that’s in that product research stage, it can get to the point where you just feel like you got to walk away.

Have you ever like, I don’t know I guess musicians would feel like this. I’m a musician, I play guitar for those of you that don’t know. I was in a band when I was 17 years old. It’s kind of like you’re working on this thing and then it just starts to sound all the same and until you walk away and sit back down and kind of regroup. Sometimes you got to take a week or two off and then you can come back with a fresh set of eyes or ears or a perspective so it’s really important to do that as well. Again product research the other day I spent about an hour, an hour and a half had fun though, had fun doing it.

[00:24:52] Scott: Again really the way that I break up my day is I’ve got certain chunks. I’ve got certain chunks for different parts of my business whether it’s the private label or whether it’s my photography stuff or whether it’s real estate stuff or whether it’s the podcast or a partnership that I’m working on. There’s different parts of the day that are divided up. The one thing that doesn’t ever change really is my morning routine. That’s pretty much been consistent now and then I’m trying really hard to turn things off at around 4:00 or 5 o’clock so then it’s just family time and I’m not popping in and checking emails and stuff like that.

Again it’s different for everyone but just to understand that if you are at this part time you have to be really, really focused on the time that you’re going to allow yourself and know what you’re going to do for that time to really make it most effective for that you’re going to spend. I can’t stress that enough because if you don’t do that you’re going to be distracted, you’re going to be dabbling in a bunch of different areas.

I know this was a little bit different of an answer maybe because maybe you wanted, “Okay for 15 minutes I check my seller central account and I look at my sellers’ feedback and then from there I move on to step two and that is I look at my pay-per-click campaigns. After that then I contact my suppliers at 11:45.” It’s not like that it’s more like blocks of time.

Like 9:00 to 10 o’clock is Amazon time so however I want to allocate that and then what I might do is I might then make notes the night before that I want to be designated for product research or I want to be for sourcing or I want it to be overview of the past launch that we just did or ranking or something like that. It’s really chunked up into bits and pieces throughout the day but each block is designated for a certain business or a certain thing in that business. Hopefully that makes sense, hopefully I didn’t confuse all of you.

[00:27:00] Scott: Really it’s simpler than I made it sound. It’s really like just themed so just like one day or one part of the day is themed is themed for one thing that I’m working on and I only work on that one thing. Like right now I’m recording this podcast. It’s allocated. On my schedule it’s even color coded like that’s the color and that’s what’s happening during that time. Hopefully this has helped you and understand that everyone is going to be a little different but the one I will say is anyone that’s out there that’s saying “but Scott you work from home and this is all you have to do so it’s easier for you.”

It wasn’t always easier for me, it’s still not easy because being your own boss is sometimes harder because you’re not told what to do. You got to be your own boss and really take your day and make details about your day so you get stuff done but you got to rewind a little bit in time. I mean I worked a full time job for years as a construction worker and I built a photography business on the side with my wife and I built a house on top of that in that one year which was kind of crazy now that I look back at it but I did it because I was hungry and I wanted to do it and I wanted to have what I have now.

Then going through to where I am now it’s just… I worked my butt off and I still work my butt off but I just do it now differently. Hopefully that helped you. Anyone else out there that’s struggling with this hopefully that’s helped and hopefully in the future I can come up with something a little bit more structured maybe even like a little template that you can look at. Anyway let's go ahead and listen to the next question and I’ll give you my answer.

[00:28:30] Mike: Hey Scott it’s Mike. I’ve got a few quick questions. We’ve got a product picked up, we’ve got samples coming. If they’re good we’re probably going to place an order for 500 to get the ball rolling but when I went to do the unique product page for this product and maybe I have it backwards, I found out that you should be a member or you need to be a member of the Amazon brand registry to sell your own branded products.

If you know anything about that kind of maybe give me an idea if you need to do that or is that not necessary. Then they talked about the UPC codes not to buy it from a third party that they need to come from the GS1, again what do you think about that? Any help would appreciated. That’s all, thanks.

[00:29:31] Scott: Hey Mike. Thanks for the question man. I really do appreciate it and hopefully I’m going to be able to clear some of this up for you. Currently, at least I’m aware of you do not have to be brand registered to sell a product on Amazon. Now they may be coming out with some new rules and regulations that in order to sell certain products you have to be brand registered. That could be happening. I think that it’s probably a good idea to brand register and at least if you brand register, again because people they’re like, “Well I think I want to sell something in home and gardening, I think I want to sell something in sports and outdoors, I want to sell something in pet supply,” so they’re all over the place.

That’s why I think too when we kind of go back to picking that market. If you picked the market, then you can sell multiple products in that market. Whether you’re selling something in the outdoor space then you want to brand register in the outdoor space but you could launch fishing gear, you could launch hiking gear, you could launch survival stuff, you can launch backpacks. You’re all under that one umbrella necessarily for that brand versus saying like I’m going to sell garlic press and then over here I’m going to do a football and then over here, if you do that then you got to be a brand that encompasses all of those different categories which makes it a little bit more difficult.

Now to brand register it’s not that difficult. You do need a little mini website, which isn’t that hard at all but you do need that. Actually we discussed that on episode 158 and that was with John Havre so you can find that by heading over to theamazingseller.com/158, pretty good stuff there. Then also we talked about ungating so if you’re talking about maybe you’re going into a category that you’re needing to get ungated that could be the case as well and if that’s the case then you have to get ungated. We broke down that process in episode 212 so that’s theamazingseller.com/212. Now, that was with my buddy Chris Shaffer.

[00:31:49] Scott: We broke that down in detail and I believe we even gave like a little checklist to get ungated but you will need a simple little website, you’re going to need some invoices from your supplier. Sounds like you already have the supplier just have them break them up into three different invoices and you should be good to go. You don’t necessarily have to in all cases but they may be changing the rules here eventually. We’re playing on Amazon, Amazon is going to tell us what they want and we have to abide by those rules period, we have to. That’s what I would say. I would look into that.

As far as your UPC codes we have to acquire one in order to list our product. GS1 is going to be the one that you want to go to if you want to make sure that you’re covered and you’re safe from day one and in the future if you ever have any problems with that. Now I am speaking with another company right now who I’ve recommended before that they do buy UPC codes that are, they’re allowed to and they’re legit. The problem is that there’s a lot of companies out there selling fake UPC codes or they’re buying them off of one person and then reselling them off to another person and then they’re selling them again.

It’s like this whole chain of who really owns this UPC. We are going to have someone on here soon whether it’s a podcast episode or maybe just a blog post, we’re going to try to break that down. I would say if you want to be safe GS1 but I still think there's some quality UPC third party companies that they’ll work just fine. I’ve had people tell me right now that they’re still using the third party ones and they’re working just fine but then people are saying, “What in the future if they say they’re not fine and they’re just going to take my listing?”

[00:33:48] Scott: That would be crazy because right now there’re so many people that have third party not just GS1 and their whole catalog would be deleted. I don’t see that happening but if you want to play it safe, GS1. Hopefully this answered your question. This was a little bit of a longer episode guys I think I went on a couple of tangents there and I apologize but you guys know that’s what the Ask Scott session’s all about, me just kind of free flying here and drinking that coffee and really just getting to know you but then really giving you some of what’s on my mind because I hear a lot of people struggle, I hear a lot of people make excuses and I want to help.

I want to help you be able to get through those obstacles that might be holding you back or that you might be frustrated because you launched your first product and it didn’t do as well as you thought it would. That’s going to happen and there’s going to be a lot of people out there they’re going to start, they’re going to stop. My job here is to hopefully get you to, whether it’s this business or any other business that you’re starting to really just let you know that there’s going to be obstacles, there’s going to be struggle, there’s going to be frustrations, there’s going to be time limitations, there’s going to be all of that.

As we talked in the beginning too, if you want a rich life of lifestyle, of you being able to do what you want to do whether it’s going on a new vacation every six months or whether it’s spending more time with your family or working less hours whatever that is you have to get clear with that. Your homework assignment here for sure is to definitely go back and figure out that ‘why’ and then from there we can work backwards to get you to be able to create a plan and then execute on that. Guys that’s it, that’s all I have for you.

I want to say thank you so much for all the questions that you guys submitted. Keep them coming theamazingseller.com/ask and I’ll do my best to answer them on an upcoming episode. Just a little reminder here if you guys want to hang out with me live, in person head over to theamazingseller.com/live and you can get details on that. We are going to be doing another event here and I believe it is going to be in Scottsdale Arizona the last I checked. We are still confirming that 100%, maybe by the time you listen to this it will be confirmed but go over to that page if you’re interested. You’ll actually be able to see a highlight of our last event.

[00:36:11] Scott: It’s going to be very, very limited. There’s definitely not going to be 100 spots available at all. It’s going to be smaller than that. Definitely go over and just sign up to the interest list if you want to just hear more about it when we do announce that. Like I said by the time you listen to this it might already be on that page. Definitely head over to theamazingseller.com/live. You can find out all the details on that page.

That’s it guys, that’s going to wrap it up. Once again 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, come on now, “Take action.” Have an awesome amazing day and I’ll see you right back here on the next episode. Oh and have that ‘why’ come on go do it, go do that one thing.

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LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

• www.TheAmazingSeller.com/ask – ask your question
• www.TheAmazingSeller.com/252 – episode with Jarret
• www.TheAmazingSeller.com/200 – Episode about “why”
• www.TheAmazingSeller.com/resources – find out about Leadpages
• www.TheAmazingSeller.com/158 – episode with Bill
• www.TheAmazingSeller.com/212 – episode with Chris
• www.TheAmazingSeller.com/LIVE – the next live event

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