An Epic Amazon Australia seller journey

In the realm of Amazon. I would highly suggest watching Paul Savage videos. for me, they are the best by far. He gets into the dynamics of a good listing and how to tweek existing products and things like that. far different than the rest of the Amazon sellers on YouTube.

Best of luck with this man! I know you will knock it out of the park!

A couple of my reasons for looking at Amazon in Australia was to move inventory and byproduct from one of my businesses and to hopefully drive some traffic from supplying some of those byproducts to one of my primary businesses.

As we move forward there may be other additions but primarily in the early days I'll try to focus on getting a broad range of some of my existing products listed so that I can test demand and refine my product offerings.

Initially my thoughts were to fulfil my orders through our existing systems and NOT use FBA until there is some useful data to indicate what might move best from what we already sell.

Freight in Australia is expensive.

Amazon freight rates in Australia for FBA is quite reasonable so over time I expect some inventory will eventually move into FBA system.

For now we are going to test a few product offerings and variations.

Over the last 12 months we've discussed internally the possibilities of adding some of our range to Amazon but I knew until I actually committed to the financial subscription very little would happen in regards to preparing to sell on Amazon.

- No skin in the game equates to no action -

Once the credit card was charged I knew it would provide the deadlines I need to make progress.

Anyway TODAY.

I spent maybe 30-40 minutes going over some competitor listings with my graphics guy talking about how we could best display some of our products and look better than was on offer.

One of my primary concerns in the product listing area was the quality of image as a number of the products we sell are WHITE so "white on white" was the topic of the discussion.

Graphics guy spent a portion of the day maybe 2-3 hours working on some "secondary" packaging shots and in developing a structure for producing a good "MAIN" image.

Amazon guidelines want you to have an actual product shot against a white background.

When looking at competitor shots it became apparent they were not particularly good and the higher rated sellers did not have particularly good product shots.

Throughout the day we produced a graphic in Boxshot.

This was not a photo so potentially goes against what Azon requires but the end result would challenge anyone to pick the design from an actual product shot.

We will see.

The reasoning in this development of the graphic was we then have the flexibility to adjust colours and the product accordingly to match descriptions precisely.

At the same time we did take some good photos and scans of some of the product range to include in the product listings.

I expect the listings will have 4-6 images including some real images and some product use and virtual packaging shots. - Once we have a few listed I'll share some of the boxshot 3D created images so you can make your own judgements.

All of the products at this stage are modified or manufactured in house so we have great control over sizing, packaging, bundling which we figure might give us a bit of an edge when it comes to the product offering.

In the event we need to barcode the ranges I grabbed a small bundle of codes from Speedy and we have set them up into a spreadsheet to we can keep some records as to which EAN we will use with which product.

Being in Oz I'm assuming we will assign EANs rather the UPCs to the product range.

Now I'm going to go and take a look at the Savage YT videos and also go over the Jim Cockrum material I've collected over the years.

I fully expect we will make several stumbles along the way.

One thing I hadn't done but I expect I will do over the next few days is lay out a business model canvas on a large sheet of board with post it notes and then go over the value propositions to make sure I get a visual display up to guide where I'm up to on things.

Although I use trello for a number of projects I always like the chart type approach so I have some visual cues as to what I'm trying to achieve. It will be on 48" x 36" white foam core board.

I only had about an hour today to dedicate to this project as I spend the first 2 hours of the day filming content for my monthly club members and then the following few hours finishing off that project coupled with manning Live chat and dealing with a few courier shipping issues.

This week I've had one staff off having had a small operation to remove a BCC from near their eye mid last week (hopefully back at work tomorrow) plus I also have another staff of on a 10 day vacation with another staff returning from a 3 week vacation so lots of juggling this week. - anyway that's what happens when you have employees.

The upside at least is having at least some progress because of delegation of tasks

Side note:

Got home to find 8 year old asking me about a book he found and had started reading "Get off your DUFF and make your own @#$! Cheese" by Sean Roach and another kid telling me he was rich because he had opened his money tin.

I expected the 5 year old who had opened the tin had used a can opener but I was impressed because he told me he used a hammer. Patted him on the back for his industriousness.

When I asked him what he was going to do with the money I got another surprise when he told me he was going to help his sister start saving and share it with her..Asked me to get two new tins.

When I asked 8 year old about book he said he wasn't going to make any cheese because we had some in the fridge which he promptly went and got and eat a few slices.

After that he gave the book to his Mum telling her she really should read this.

Great to get a few moments to yourself to post this as they've all hit the sack.

(excuse typos)

I'll update this thread as things come together.

best regards,

Ozi

Thanks for sharing your experience with selling on Amazon.
If you want to make money quickly, selling on Amazon is my number one recommended business you can do.
On the other hand, if you want to earn passive income, promoting products with recurring commissions is my number one recommended business you can do.
I wish to everybody good luck and more success!

Just a quick update because being the weekend I've taken the family to the beach for a bit of RnR.

Watched some of Paul Savage's videos yesterday and checked out the Junglescout resources pages where I watched one of their video introductions "The complete guide to selling on Amazon in 2019".

Although the JS video was part product promotion as a whole the presentation was good.

At this stage I'm not going to venture into any paid tools for research because I'm only going to list some of the products I already have on hand and once those are listed I may look at expanding into some other areas.

I've set up a spreadsheet and added the various barcodes and products with description fields and other necessary info so I don't get lost when I start to add products to Amazon.

I won't be doing any bulk uploading of products from our ecommerce database but adding specific products individually and gradually as time permits.

Started generating the Names and product descriptions and pasting them into the spreadsheet so that everything is complete for an individual product or product range before I start to list.

One thing I took on board from the videos I've watched is the importance to improve or add to existing product listings so your product is perceived to be better value than the competitive products.

One of the columns in the spreadsheet is the product improvement or difference I think we can add to differentiate our offerings.

I have been using a template to create product headlines, descriptions and bullet points etc.

Spent about 4 hours today on setting up the spreadsheet and generating four product listings with descriptions and point of differences.

Tomorrow will be back in my day job so to speak but will have time to get several images my graphic artist has been working on and add links to them to the product listings in the spreadsheet so hopefully tomorrow I'll list one product in its entirety to just go though the whole process and see if there is anything I've missed or need to refine before going further.

Going to spend a couple of hours maybe late this evening checking on one or two comparable products and seeing if I can work out a few things in relation to the volumes that those products are doing and how I can make a better listing for now.

Anyway it's predicted to be a heatwave here for the next 7 days or more so will hit the ocean this afternoon for a cool down and a lazy evening meal to tire out the kids so they sleep early - school tomorrow.

Will update when I have something to add.

Best regards,

Ozi

Bloody Aussies, never working, always feet up at the beach and a beer in hand. With more summer to come this could be a long wait.

Yeah nothing like work getting in the way of kicking back with a coldie and enjoying the lifestyle laid out on a plate we have in Australia.

Geez if I gave up work with the family situation I'm in with 3 kids I'd probably get up to $600 a week and free health cover, subsidised rates, $2 odd dollar prescriptions and I'd only have to attempt to find work every now and then.

At one point there was a baby bonus where if you had a kid you got like $4500 to buy baby stuff
(codename drugs) or flat screen TVs - was good if you were selling the right items.

Problem is $600 doesn't get you much so most people have to work - anyway it keeps the beaches clear so the hardworking amongst us can enjoy a bit of surf and sand without issues.

Anyway back to work.

Today after going over a couple of competitive products I identified a few little easy to add items to make what I was going to sell a bit more attractive.

I was looking through reviews of products looking at the 1 star reviews in particular.

Found a very simple fix to one of my products that will cost around 60 cents to add to the package but answers a good 20% of the negative reviews.

Found another product a competitor is selling as a stand alone product that works with the main product but doesn't offer it as a package. Cost of this addition is at a max about 85 cents.

These additions are on a product that sells an an individual price of between 14.85 - 19.45 and most of the listings bundle these in quantities of 6-12 at a time.

Raw cost on this product before packaging is under $2.80 and we currently sell bulk quantities in the 11.50 - 12.85 range.

My figuring is we will make a variety of bundles and offers of this product both on its own at a competitive price but also add the 60 cent enhancement and another bundle with the standalone product and the enhanced product bundled together.

I should be able to offer the bundled product easily at the lower end of the price spectrum for the product but will test something on the higher end given the added value.

The other area I identified from the reviews in some confusion over quantities offered with some people feeling short-changed because they may have read 1 carton expecting 6-12 items and those suppliers sent 1 item.

Also there were some quality and packaging complaints.

From items we already send everyday I'm aware of the courier damage and packaging issues.

One of the things we set up in the middle of last year was to get a higher starch content cardboard to pack some of our products.

This carton material is really tough and on 6' x 4' sheets by the pallet is about $1 more per sheet than the cheapest corrugated cardboard.

We have a CNC machine that we use for a number of cutting jobs but one of the features is a box making component. Since using the denser and stronger boards we've had very little damage so I'm pretty confident we can compete on the packaging alone.

Given that we are primarily listing on Azon Australia we should also get some advantage over a few of the competitors shipping from the US in regards to timeframes for delivery but obviously we've got to get the listing in front of buyers first.

The other thing I noticed was there were several "sponsored" listings that matched the search terms so it gives me some confidence we might be able to get listed via PPC at least to get going.

Graphics were held up today when I suggested we list a 50 pack as our first listing on one of our smaller products and the graphics guy tried to render a complex number of layers in boxshot.

I was just going to set up our lighting and backdrop and photograph the images but they insisted once we got this render worked out we could then vary and modify colour etc. He is a perfectionist.

Anyway I left them experimenting on blender and in the morning I think we will have something looking good from a combination of a render and actual product.

We already have some product use shots and good package shots it is just the primary individual image we want to get right.

Mostly because we might get extra scrutiny from whoever checks those things out given we haven't listed in Australia before.

One of our issues is our first batch of products I want to list are white so my graphics guy wants that perfect image that is better than what he's seen, so I'll give him another day as I respect his ability to produce excellent work.

I'm hoping we have a least one, if not a few listings, complete tomorrow.

Best regards,

Ozi

My graphics guy spent maybe 3-4 hours working on images and rendering packaging shots yesterday.

Several of those graphics and photos will be used across multiple products so we are building up an image bank to associate to groups of products.

I spent about an hour and a half getting two products listed and live.

Some of that time was in updating and adjusting the spreadsheet we'd set up to work with each barcode and product.

I can see why there are advantages of the bulk upload feature as it is clunky going back and forth between the listing page and the content you want to paste.

I'm sure I'll get quicker with the individual listings but I'm going to take a closer look at the bulk importing methods even if I don't make each product live I'm sure having it already uploaded with fields pre-filled will make it a ton quicker over time.

That or I'll try to get one of my fantastic staff to do a bit of copying and pasting.

Will check that out later today.

Best regards,

Ozi

The last few days I've spent about 2-3 hours per day on getting a few products uploaded and listed.

Initially to manage the process I set up a spreadsheet in Excel with about 9 columns and pasted my list of barcodes and then added other data like SKU and ASIN product names, description and bullets etc.

This was rapidly becoming an unwieldily spreadsheet that I started to hate rapidly so I thought how can I go about making a better system to make the process work quicker.

I just read Savidge's post in his Ebay 30 day journey and I'm looking forward to the next post he makes about streamlining the upload processes for listing on Ebay because I'm sure there will be good stuff going on there when he posts next.

if you haven't read that thread already and you are considering selling anything online I strongly suggest you bookmark the thread here:
https://www.warriorforum.com/warrior...days-ebay.html

Anyway back to some sytemization.

remember this.

Spend time designing the system THEN find someone to operate the system.

This is the way to scale any business.

So I decided to go back to the drawing board with the spreadsheet idea to try to make it simpler and so I could share it easily with my team.

Today I set up a project in Ora - If you don't know what this is it is a project management tool a bit like Trello or Jira etc but it is really nice to use and collaborate with others on.

Inside that project I set up a very basic system.

My first column or card was "How to List on Amazon"

Then I just added a simple checklist and a link to the amazon sellers login page.

The second column I added one card " Barcodes"

Linked that card to a file of the barcodes I set up in google sheets.

The Google sheet has three columns only. Barcode, SKU, ASIN

Then back in Ora I set up a 3rd column called "DONE"

Then as I use a barcode and make an Amazon listing I just paste a copy of the barcode as a new card in the DONE column and in the description for that card I past the product details SKU, ASIN Description features etc.

Paste the ASIN back into the google sheet and I'm done.

There a bit more to it but that is basically the listing part but what I'm going to show you below is the template I set up for getting the product ready to list.

Not the images just the written content. Photos and graphics we manage in a folder we have in our dropbox.

The is the basic template I use to create the listing for each product.

It doesn't contain everything you need but it does contain all the important parts.

BARCODE:
SKU:
BRAND:
WEIGHT:
NAME of Product:
TYPE of Product:

Target Audience:
Keyword Theme:
Keywords:
How does this product help the target audience?:
#1 benefit:

Customer's main pressing need?:
A Negative person, thing, or circumstance (hurdle):
Why is this hurdle such a huge deal?:
HOW does this hurdle hurt them or keep them from getting results they want?:
What's an idea your target audience believes is true, but is actually completely wrong?:

#1 FEATURE:
BENEFIT:
#2 FEATURE:
BENEFIT:
#3 FEATURE:
BENEFIT:
#4 FEATURE:
BENEFIT:
#5 FEATURE:
BENEFIT

Product Description:
Call to Action:

I work through the whole list in a text editor and just create the listing before moving to Amazon.

I'll paste an example of how the template looks when it is filled out but if you have any questions for now take a look at it and let me know.

Best regards,

Ozi

Couple of things I've been doing in the last few days.

Continuing to create product listings and bundles. Usually doing 2-3 per day as time permits.

One thing that interested me about selling on Azon first was to get some of my educational DVDs listed in Amazon US but getting approved to sell DVDs is not particularly easy as you are required to show purchasing history with your DVD publisher and I suspect this is to check who you are using to produce your content.

The likes of Kunak and Trepstar who produce replicated products and most likely filtered as the powers that be would like to see master pressed copies rather than replicated burnt copies.

This might be in a effort to reduce piracy but more than likely to protect publishing interests going on behind the scenes.

It might be easier if one has some long history of selling various products and then adds CDs or DVDs etc to the mix but for now I'm not sure.

If anyone has got their DVD or CD content listed I'd appreciate any comments in this thread.

I know the DVD media is getting old but Blue Rays and other digital publishing media are also potentially likely to be restricted in someway if it suits the bigger players.

One bundle I made up to test whether I could include a DVD as a bonus addition to a bundle I created.

So far this has not been removed or any comment made about its inclusion.

i've made a up a few other bundles ready to move with additional digital content bundled with physical packages so we will see how that pans out.

Had a lengthy to and fro conversation with a representative regarding the PPC opportunities with Amazon in Australia and at this current time you CANNOT run PPC on the platform in OZ.

They did say it was on the roadmap for inclusion later this year.

Promotions were available but no PPC.

This was a bit of a disappointment because I expected to be able to put a bit of money behind promotion for a couple of reasons.

One to get data about the search terms and some of the volumes.

Secondly to try and sell some stuff to generate feedback and reviews.

I'm thinking I'll need to send some traffic externally to Amazon to push some of the products along and get the ball rolling.

With some additional taxes placed on goods coming into Australia that are under $1000 in value it affected what Amazon was doing in regards to even allowing Aussies to buy from the US site but this seems to have been relaxed a little but one of the issues I am facing with the Aussie Azon site is . . .

They are listing US listings with options to ship to Australia and although the shipping is in some circumstances excessively high they are still listing "higher reviewed" products ahead of better deals or offering from local supplies inside Australia.

The comment I got back from Azon in regards to this was "You can compete on shipping times".

This is all good and well but if a US Seller is running steady PPC in the US and generating good reviews then they get priority display on the Aussie platform it is discouraging for local businesses to list.

Anyway we will see how soon PPC comes to Amazon Australia.

I'll also see whether some of the products start to get traction given it appears heavily bias to US sellers.

I'm going to run few tests with my US seller account running some PPC on a selected range where I'll opt to fulfil the product at discounted shipping to Australia just to see if we can push a particular brand and then gain traction that way.

Will update you more when I hav something else to add.

Please comment below if you have comments or suggestions even if they seem like something simple to you it may help both myself or other readers of this thread in the future.

Best regards,

Ozi

Yesterday I got our first request to add a different pack size (smaller) to one of the product I had listed.

So I replied to their request and cloned the product into a new product with the smaller quantity as they had asked.

Sent them the reply with the link to product in the size and quantity details to them and answered their other questions which were mostly related to shipping costs and shipping information for the smaller quantity.

Thus far I haven't spent anything on promoting the products so it is at least reassuring that someone had searched out the item and then took the time to ask a few questions.

Also received a notification from Amazon that their referral fees will be going up on the 31st March.

In the majority of the categories I've got listings in that goes from 9% to 12%. Good for affiliates but that is an added cost for sellers. I think the only category that dropped was White goods by 1%. Everything else seemed to have some significant increases.

Best regards,

Ozi

Whatever stage you're at in your business.

You might be starting out.

You could be highly established with great systems in place.

But here's the thing.

There is always grunt work.

Last week was tough in many ways. Not so much to do with Amazon or other online business but to do with two primary things.

Emotions and Grunt work.

I had an employee retire / resign after 12 years of service. They gave notice a month ago but that notice period flew by and the inevitable FINAL day approached.

Before Xmas we were run off our feet and all the staff had different commitments so we skipped our usual Xmas Party in favour of doing it in the New Year.

Originally it was anticipated we'd do a Chinese New Year type party and celebrate then but as the new year kicked off in a busy fashion it wasn't until said staff member's departure was publicised that we decided to celebrate their time and combine it with all the staff getting together - read Rapid cash extraction.

Anyway the big day was last Friday and I spent the week on some compliance issues, payments , long service calculations etc coupled with the vacuous effect of compounding expenses and it totally took the wind out of me.

We had a great party.

There were some good benefits in regards to discussions about how good it was to work in my business and the team building will undoubtedly repay the costs in the weeks ahead.

Anyway here's what has been going on with Amazon.

Maintained an approach of uploading core products and then "copying" those products into various similar variations to build out a branded approach.

Also one of the staff asked the question: "Why are we not doing this on Ebay?"

I said "That's a good question"

So it is likely I'll replicate my efforts across into Ebay also in the near future leveraging the artwork. images and descriptions I'd put together for Azon.

The question also became a "call out" to me to take a closer look at what similar products we were listing on Amazon were doing on Ebay.

That research gave me some of what I wasn't getting from Amazon.

I started to look at the listings for some of what the competitive vendors were saying on Ebay and I started to look at some of what I perceived to be the products and sizes that were getting the most sales and attention on Ebay.

After some research where I looked at a few Australian competitors on Ebay I added some new offers to Amazon that matched the more popular Ebay offerings that weren't listed on Amazon.

I started with getting a couple of basic products listed and that gave be the "bones" to copy into new listings and expand the product range listings more quickly.

There hasn't been any direct sales on Amazon of any of the products as yet but there has been some enquiries via one of my branded websites for products that we haven't got listed anywhere other than Amazon. These enquiries have generated sales both directly over the phone and via referral to some alternate product listings.

We survey all purchasers via a followup system we've implemented across multiple sites. I'm modifying those surveys and will make a few personal followup calls to the people and businesses who have purchased the products recently with some conversation around how they "found us"

I'll wait until I have some evidence of the link from the Brand listing on Amazon and the purchases made directly via the websites before I share those results here.

I suspect we might be getting some pricing comparison going on and some shipping speed enquiries going on and once someone is on live chat or on the phone with us they are converting directly rather than purchasing on Amazon but I'll find out more i the post purchase followups we do.

I've listed a broad range of things we sell quite successfully already and I'm testing a few different quantities and a variety of prices to see what might trigger a sale.

I'm still reluctant to divert any existing purchasing traffic we have away from our ecommerce sites but that might change when I have a little more fuel back in the tank.

Anyway I'll hopefully update this thread with some methods I've cobbled together for faster Azon listing.

Will update as I have some content or results for you.

Best regards,

Ozi

Not much to add at this stage.

been a rough few weeks with one staff having left and I've had one other staff member in hospital which really put a spanner in the works.

Things fortunately have been somewhat quiet with schools on Easter holidays and we are in the middle of an Australian Election campaign. Things always drop off for the weeks leading up to the election.

Anyway have set up some pinterest strategy around some of the product ranges and have set up two business accounts with Pinterest so I can start to advertise via the platform. It may suit the products we are offering given the demographics from Pinterest.

It may be of interest to people that Pinterest is showing good analytics and you can look at analytics for the entire pinterest users collectively which show the platform is great in the DIY, crafts, home decor and women's fashion etc.

Other thing I'v been looking at is Zontracker.

They have some cool tracking software for tracking Facebook ads through to Amazon conversions.

They can track conversions from facebook even if the ad isn't clicked and they have an add-on to the facebook ads manager.

If anyone is interested check them out at zontracker.io

I don't think there is any other software doing what they do right now.

Will update with some other stuff soon.

Best regards,

Ozi