Please note that the transcription below is automated and may contain errors. Please listen to the audio episode for correct text.

Hey, what's up? This is Carlos from Bluebird Marketing Solutions and the Wizards of Amazon and my tip for you today is has to do with tools and how you decide whether you can afford that tool. I think a lot of sellers make a mistake in saying that they are paying x amount per month or they're going to buy this tool because in reality when you look at it like that, it just seems like money going out.

And what I like to do is I like to refer to this as hiring tools and when you do that, it changes your mindset. So, let's say that you were looking at a tool and you were saying and I pay $100 a month for this tool. I don't know that seems like a lot. Well let's figure that out. I would run that through my thought process, I'm hiring this tool and it forces me to actually itemize all of the things that this tool does and then I'll go beside those things and put, okay, how much would this cost per hour? How much would this require me in time and other resources to train and create SOPs? What's the skill set that would be required here to do this? And when I do that, I realize that in most cases of that $100 had I hired it would actually be six or seven hundred percent more on the low end if I needed to hire it and then when I look at it that way I'm like wow, you know you paying $100 a month for this tool is actually not bad at all. Because if I had to hire it it would be significantly more expensive. I hope that tip really helped it helps me do an audit all the time on the tools that I have and it's something that I encourage my team to do anytime there in the thick of it and they want to recommend a tool to me. Before they recommended, I always ask them to run right through that filter and say approached me and say I want to hire a tool to do blank and then we have the conversation based on that. So, hope that's it helps.

Here is some insighful data about consumers and online grocery shopping. Coresight Research released its “US Online Grocery Survey 2019”, finding that 36.8 % of United States consumers bought groceries online over the year, which is a jump of 23.1 percent from 2018 survey. This is an increase of roughly 35 million more consumers buying groceries online. When consumers are buying groceries online, Amazon.com is their first choice to shop. 62.5 % of who bought groceries online did so through Amazon, which leaves their competition like Target and Walmart behind

Did you know that you can get shipping supplies for free? The tip I am about to share with you will be especially helpful to small size businesses. Not many ecommerce entrepreneurs know that many shipping supplies like envelopes, boxes, shipping labels and packing materials you can get for free. Let's start with USPS who offers free Priority service supplies, and they will also deliver them to you for free. To order you need to create an account with USPS and go to usps.com/shop The are a lot of supplies available including my favorite Flat Rade padded envelope which allows you to ship anything that fits for about $7. UPS also offers a variety of free supplies including free thermal shippig labels. You can even get a thermal labels Zebra LP 2844 printer, also for free or for a nominal charge. You will need to create new UPS ID account and call UPS customer service center. eBay offers eBay-branded shipping supplies too! For example, every quarter Basic shop subscribers get $25 of free credit to spend on shipping supplies such as polymailers, boxes, shipping tape. Head to Manage my Store / Subscriber discount and see if you have a coupon code waiting for you to buy the supplies.

Online spending represented 16.0% of total retail sales for the year, according to the United States Commerce Department retail data. Amazon.com accounted for more than 1/3 of all ecommerce in the United States.
Consumers spent $601.75 billion online with U.S. merchants in 2019, up 14.9% from $523.64 billion the prior year. That was a higher growth rate than 2018, when reported online sales rose 13.6% year over year.

Hello my name is Ramon Gonzalez, and I'm an amazon seller who has been selling since 2015. the main business model I follow is the wholesale model. For those of you that dont know what the wholesale model is, I essentially buy branded products at wholesale prices, and I sell in Amazon at retail prices. Think buying Barbies and adidas shoes at wholesale pricing, and sellign them in amazon at full price.

The main advantages of the wholesale model is that it is a very scalable model. Unlike private label, you can start with small purchase orders and scale up to huge ones with the right supplier. Another advantage would be that you dont necessarily have to learn marketing when comparing to private label.
Some of the disadvantages of the wholesale model would be that your margins are usually less than both private label and retail arbitrage.
If you spoke with many wholesale sellers, the vast majority would tell you that the most important thing about this model is buying right to guarantee a profit, and that you make your profit when you buy, not when you sell. Although I dont disagree this is important, I would say the most important thing is establishing long term relationships with the right suppliers.
Finding the right suppliers will absolutely guarantee success or failure in this business model, and when it comes to finding suppliers, by far the most effective way of closing a supplier and having them approve you as a seller would be to meet them face to face in a conference or expo. Far too many sellers try and fail to open accounts by email only, and most good suppliers receive dozens of cookie cutter emails that they automatically disregard. Although we still email suppliers to try and get more product to purchase, the best ones we have are the ones we have met in expos and got our foot in the door by talking to them there.
There are many expos all over the United States you can attend if you have an established business. The main tips I can give you in terms of attending expos would be:
1) come prepared. Dont just show up to roam the isles. Do your due diligence beforehand. Go to the expo website and download the exhibitor list. Most suppliers in an expo will not work in Amazon. Only visit those that you know will work for you
2) be personable and flexible when talking to suppliers. Listen to them talk about their product line. Make small talk with them and appear comfortable. Be willing to offer advice and ideas on how to sell their products, such as fixing their amazon listings or creating bundle ideas.
3) dont be afraid of rejection. Most sellers that fail in this model fail because they're too afraid to strike up a conversation with a stranger, and quit before they even get a chance to fail. Understand that there is no success without failure, and if you avoid failure, you also avoid success.
I hope these tips will get you on your way to a successful year with the amazon wholesale model.

Here are some interesting stats about Facebook messengers and why Ecommerce sellers need to pay close attention to them. Did you know that Facebook is the most popular mobile app? Well, do you know what is the second most popular app? Facebook messenger. There are 1.3 billion people / month who are actively using their Facebook Messenger. Facebook Messenger users send 8 billion messages a day. In fact, 11% of the world’s population use Facebook Messenger every month. Every day, there are 260 million new conversations launched over Messenger. Why else messenger is so important for ecommerce professionals? Average conversion rate for marketing emails these days is usually 15-33%. However open rate of messages sent using Messenger is 84%. That makes Facebook messenger is the ultimate conversion winner of marketing communications. The data according to several sources including Techcrunch, Statista and others. For the full list of sources please visit sellertoolset.com

Hi, this is Galyna Parker from Ecommerce Brief and this is my expert tip. Did you know that Free shipping is one of the most important conversion factors for online shoppers? It has been proven by multiple studies that look at the bvehaviour of online shoppers. Product price in general is the main conversion factor for the majority of products. To capture more buyers you should utilize free shipping, and also consider pricing your products comparably to your direct competition. And don't forget to use promotions and coupons to seal the deal and convert shoppers into your customers.

Average conversion rate in ecommerce is 2%-3%. However Amazon's conversion rate is 13% for non Prime members and 74% by Prime members. This is according to a 2015 study from Millward Brown Digital.

So Many Options In Amazon 

Why Pick You?

Here Are Some Tips For Pulling Customers In.

You can find Alfred Fontanez on pixelwavesonline.com

56% of online consumers say they always look at ratings and reviews and usually base their purchases on them. 41% say they sometimes look at reviews and only 3% say they never look at reviews. These stats are provided by a Digital Commerce 360/Bizrate Insights consumer survey. So to put it in other words, online sellers should pay close attention to what customers are saying in reviews because most potential customers always look at them.
Sellers should also respond to negative comments promptly and learn more about what customers like and dislike about their product. Another interesting piece of information for you to think about is that during their annual sellers conference, Amazon representatives themselves have mentioned that in fact it is better to have at least one 3 star product rating than no rating at all. Use this knowledge at your own risk :)

Hello! This is Galyna Parker from Ecommerce Brief. And this is a tip about how to get more Amazon product reviews. Did you know that only 2-5% of buyers actually leave product reviews? Which is why its important to follow up with them and ask if they are happy with their product. If you are selling on Amazon however, be careful with the excessive messaging as Amazon does not like it when THEIR customers are being bothered. When asking for a review bare in mind that only 11% of buyers will be ready to leave a review after only 1 day of receiving it. The majority will need at least a week to a month. So before asking for review, it might be a good idea to give the buyer some time before asking them about their experience with your product.

New consumer survey from Comscore has revealed the list of the most popular stay-at-home activities during COVID-19 quarantine. I wanted to share about the activities that have a significant surge in younger age group (18 to 34 years old). While you may guess that watching TV and playing video games is among them, I wanted to mentioned the activities that could have an influence on your ecommerce business. Cooking food is one of such quarantine activities. Browsing for interesting recipes online and buying the ingredients on the Internet adds on to a surge of online grocery shopping. Buying items online in general is up, and that includes everything from clothing to supplies. Many seem to get inspired and started exercising and working out, lead to an increase in demand for various home workout equipment and supplies. And last but not least is an increase of demand for online courses and classes. Many sports gear and athletic apparel companies and even gyms have been trying to stay relevant to their customers by publishing engaging home exersise content. Company like Peloton that offers $2,000-plus stationary bike has been streaming free yoga and body strength classes in their Peloton app. Many workout mobile apps are reporting a surge of a demand for their services. Another athletic apparel giant Nike has waived their monthly fee to their training app indefinitely trying to attract more customers.

Please note that the transcription below is automated and may contain errors. Please listen to the audio episode for correct text.

Hey, what's up? This is Carlos from wizardsofamazon.com and bluebirdmarketingsolutions.com . And my tip today has to do with purging your lists. I'm a huge fan of email marketing, yes email marketing, email is not dead. But whether were talking about email marketing or a messenger bot list on many chats, purging your list is extremely important.

These tools first of all charge you based on the amount of people you have in them or on your lists and I've seen time and time again clients friends fellow wizards of Amazon of the Meetup Group all bloated lists of like 10,000 people on my 10,000 people you must be doing really good, but they haven't opened right that's next to nothing. So, the way I approach purging my lists to simultaneously realize actually how many active people and quality leads I have on this list, but also to keep my costs down on many chat and whatever email marketing tool you're using is I use automation specifically scoring. So what happens when somebody gets on my list, they will have a score of let's say 5 based on whatever action they took to get on that list and then as time goes on they based on every time I send an email to they open it to get five more points, if they don't open it they maybe get - 2 points and if I send them a link to get on a trivia quiz polar contest and I'm running it might give them 20 points or if it's something or I'm selling something and they actually buy it which is a big deal for me, I might give him a big chunk of points, but even though somebody can really run up high on a bunch of points maybe they lose interest with my brand. And if you don't do the minus side of the point, let's say they don't open your next 150 emails for the next 2 years, you just have a super expensive Excel sheet. You don't have an in an email marketing lists are already email list that you can mark it too. So, you have an overpriced the glorified Excel sheet is what you have at that point. So, what I do is when somebody reaches negative 30 points, they're automatically removed from my list. So that does two things it calls the people that are not active and it also lowers my cost per month and keeps my lists very lean. I really hope this helps me a huge fan of email marketing and a messenger bot list, so I look forward to maybe giving you some tips in the future surrounding this topic. So, I hope that helps.

Please note that the transcription below is automated and may contain errors. Please listen to the audio episode for correct text.

For this series of podcast episodes I interviewed Alex Leal, a very experienced ecommerce seller who specializes in selling on different platforms including a very big Latin online marketplace.
To watch the video recording of the interview, please visit our website.

My name is Aleksejs Leal. I've been selling over 7 years different marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, Mercado Libre for 2 years of experience and I also have a Fulfillment Center which basically fulfills for all my Amazon stores. I also have few private labels, some supplements, some other categories.

In this interview Alex is sharing why it's so important to diversify and sell on multiple platforms.Sometimes it's overwhelming but the time we are right now in prices or huge changes it's always works up for me. Because now let's say I am in a different category, I am in a different platform so some platform doing well, some categories do it really well, some of them are not doing well and that because I'm diversifying, I'm basically I'm good, I'm not suffering in any. So, when everybody's doing well doing diversification kind of overwhelms you because it's to many things in to many niches, to many categories, to many platforms and you can get overwhelmed, but are you still good. Maybe not doing extremely good because it's to many things but when the downside comes like in this case this pandemic because I've been diversifying to so many things I'm doing really well. Because one of the categories one of the platforms are doing really well so it covers all the losses on their side and it happened to me many times in my business experience. Always there is up's and down's when you are well diversified. It's like very similar to compare with a portfolio stock. There's always advisors recommend you to have a bond some percentage of your portfolio bonds so when stocks goes down you have something that leverage that. Same thing with the business. You should always diversify into different products, different categories, different platforms. So, when something goes down in one of the things you have something that covers.

You may find Alex on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and also at Wizards of Amazon facebook group

Please note that the transcription below is automated and may contain errors. Please listen to the audio episode for correct text.

For this series of podcast episodes I interviewed Alex Leal, a very experienced ecommerce seller who specializes in selling on different platforms including a very big Latin online marketplace.
To watch the video recording of the interview, please visit our website.

My name is Aleksejs Leal. I've been selling over 7 years different marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, Mercado Libre for 2 years of experience and I also have a Fulfillment Center which basically fulfills for all my Amazon stores. I also have few private labels, some supplements, some other categories.

In this interview Alex and I were talking about different aspects of selling on Amazon including reselling products bought from wholesalers. And this tip is about creating exclusivity contract with brands that are new to Amazon or need some serious improvement on the platform. So basically, if you want to help a brand to improve their product listings and promote their products on Amazon, it is important to create some sort of exclusivity contract with them.

- What is the most important thing that you going be putting in the contract?

- One of the things number one - to have a control over the transparency legal. You want to make sure that it's transparency legal. It's a little bit kicky? because transparency legal is the record for brand but there is the way to basically you can tell the brand to the communication with the transparency legal department you going have, so that's one control. Second - make sure that you have a three-year contract because first 6 month it's going to be all work and no money. So are the one of people just have a one-year contracts - six-month work and then six months making some money doesn't work for me. So, three-years contract. Of course, I have two platform and I'm going say one year I'm not going sale anything that need to be some numbers, which is also, protected to your brand. Thay can walk away there is no sales. I also going do which I didn't do with the Private Label thing all the images that you going to do for the brand optimization, all the images that you provide, all the images going be using in the listing the mine. So, anybody jumped to a listing they cannot use my images. So that's the only thing I want to make sure it's in the contract.

You may find Alex on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and also at Wizards of Amazon facebook group

Please note that the transcription below is automated and may contain errors. Please listen to the audio episode for correct text.

For this series of podcast episodes I interviewed Alex Leal, a very experienced ecommerce seller who specializes in selling on different platforms including a very big Latin online marketplace.
To watch the video recording of the interview, please visit our website.

My name is Aleksejs Leal. I've been selling over 7 years different marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, Mercado Libre for 2 years of experience and I also have a Fulfillment Center which basically fulfills for all my Amazon stores. I also have few private labels, some supplements, some other categories.

- Let's talk about tips for sellers who would like to start selling health supplements on Amazon. Maybe somebody would like to launch their own brand and they're thinking that then going also sell their product on Amazon. Any tip that you can share about it?

- The tip I would give for the people let's say Private Label, in the Private Label sector for the supplements. To be successful on Amazon first of all, you need to also have your audience outside the house. If you are just launch product and just be a 100% on Amazon you not going be successful. You need to have social media presence, you need to have your own website, you need to have your email list, all that before you basically launch on Amazon for the supplements. Because it's very very competitive category. Now other tip is if you doing that and you don't have all the component at least get the product that is unique because if you going be just any protein, there's so many brands and so many brands with so much money that it just going to a beat you and you're not going be successful. You need to have something unique that you can advertise let's say any special keyword, ingredient that you can add onto your product that can be very different from everybody else if you want to compete in that category. So that would be my advice for anybody who want to start Private Label. If it's a wholesale make sure you have a good contract with the brand that you going work with because there's a lot of work also believe you or not and if you have exclusivity and you working on and ranking the brand and if you don't have a solid contract the brand can just start selling to other people and a lot of people going to jump into your listing and they just piggybacked all the work you've done. I'm talking about based on my experience because it was a brand that I was wholesaling, I did a lot of work on ranking the products. All the work that being done like an optimizing the listing, the pay for click, some external traffic products really well by we didn't had a written contract. It was based on verbal contract. And they start wholesaling outside the Amazon as well and there's a lot of people start jumping to my listings, technically my listings because I'm the one who created them but it wasn't my brand. They start jumping to the listing, basically a lot of people's to piggybacking all the work I was doing I was paying pay per click they were not, you know, there's a lot of money that was spending on my own and then when I start saying to the brand, why you doing this, you need to control who you sell, they basically didn't care and I told them if you're not going to control that all the sales going drop. They didn't want to listen to me they basically were thinking about today and anything for a long run and what happened to them from the hundred thousand I was selling on a monthly basis on their brand. That was done by our team. They went down to like $10,000 a month.

And again,

Please note that the transcription below is automated and may contain errors. Please listen to the audio episode for correct text.

For this series of podcast episodes I interviewed Alex Leal, a very experienced ecommerce seller who specializes in selling on different platforms including a very big Latin online marketplace.
To watch the video recording of the interview, please visit our website.

My name is Aleksejs Leal. I've been selling over 7 years different marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, Mercado Libre for 2 years of experience and I also have a Fulfillment Center which basically fulfills for all my Amazon stores. I also have few private labels, some supplements, some other categories.

-What is your tip on selling on Mercado Libre?

-The platform is growing a lot. But I would recommend people to sell the product that already have like a global demand. If you selling soda, I would start selling the Pepsi, Coca-Cola and know that the brand that is already global, it's much easier that way, so basically wholesaling. Then start like a just a private label a little bit harder because they don't have a tool yet, like PPC they do have some marketing but not as a specific for like just say private label. So that would be my tip.

- Is there is a way do you see in Mercado Libre which brands are more popular which are not?

- There is nowhere ranks, but there is a there's a platform called Nubimetrics. So basically, gives you the amount of cells for SKU, for store you can segment like that and it called Newbie Metrics. So, you can select the country you want to start selling because Mercado Libre is all over the South America so you can select let's say Argentina, Colombia, Mexico and is going to give you a specific number that sell that product sells in that market.

You may find Alex on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and also at Wizards of Amazon facebook group

Big news in retail industry: Jet.com is officially no more. Launched in 2015 by Marc Lore (who had previously sold Diapers.com to Amazon) and then bought by Walmart a year later for $3 billion cash in 2016. Jet has existed for only 5 years. In their very short email note to their customers, Jet addressed this with the following: Dear Jet customer,

We’re seeing the Walmart brand resonate regardless of income, geography or age, and have made the decision to discontinue Jet.com and fully integrate with the Walmart eCommerce business. This move is a natural evolution of our eCommerce strategy, which has been focused on building the best assortment and removing friction from our customers.
On their website which no consists of only one page, there is another note:
We want to thank for your past business and support throughout the last five years. Without your support, Jet would not be able to make this progressive move. All of Jet’s awesome merchandise is now on Walmart.com, including Uniquely J! Head there to complete your order.

Walmart is claiming that aquiring Jet helped them to propel into the Ecommerce market. The question I am still wondering about is whether this was worth 3 billion dollars or could have been acomplished without the aquision for much much less cash.

Here are the top 3 product categories on Amazon. The most popular products on Amazon are electronics (44%), followed closely by clothing, shoes, and jewelry (43%) and home and kitchen products (39%).

This is according to Feedvisor consumer survey 2019

Hello this is Galyna Parker and this is a tip for Amazon sellers about Amazon's Subscribe and Save feature. If your product is the one that should be reordered again and again (for example, health supplements, skin care products, dishwasher liquid and such), it is important to help your customer to understand how OFTEN he or she should be reordering from you. Amazon's feature Subscribe and Save makes it easy for buyers to sign up for recurrent orders, but not many buyers will make such commitment unless they understand how often they will need the product. Providing a useful guide to how often they should reorder based on their usage, will help your buyers to commit for Subscribe and Save more readily. The best way to show to your customers how often they should reorder is with easy to read graphics. Amazon sellers can utilize one of 7 available image slots to create an easy to understand infographics about how often they need the product to be delivered and even how much money they can save by subscribing to Subscribe and Save. For example if you sell health supplements and it is recommended to take two pills daily, and you sell a bottle which contains 60 pills, you can recommend your buyers to reorder your product every month.