EA28 How To Selling On Amazon Common Questions Answered

Back with another Q&A, Todd answers the rest of your burning questions from last week’s Live. If you missed part one, check it out here! Stay tuned for answers and tips on everything from negotiating, co-mingling, post optimization, and more.

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Show Notes

Amazon Antitrust?

First thing’s first, a bit of Amazon news. Jeff Bezos is due to testify before Congress on Amazon’s use of seller data. While the use of seller data is nothing new, if Amazon has altered their algorithm to favor their own products, that would be an incredible violation. Bezos is due to testify in July so we’ll have to speculate until then.

Think Small

The truth is, you can make 50% ROI from any product in any category, it’s just a matter of figuring out what sells. Todd’s advice? Find a category that you’re familiar with and go deep. Search for smaller products with great reviews and poor listings. These smaller products are your golden nuggets when it comes to profitability. Because they’re less competitive, you have a higher chance of securing exclusivity agreements once you improve their listings and get the product selling.

When it comes to Worldwide Brands, the service that provides you with a directory of distributors, don’t worry about how many people are using it. What matters is how many people are actually working hard to find those golden products and following through with the Amazon grind. If millions browse Worldwide Brands, only a small percentage will stick Amazon out for the long-haul. Focus on working hard enough to be in that small percent.

The Art of Negotiating

Most of your negotiation skills will come with experience. However, if you’re looking for ways to start practicing now, buy books on sales, read everything you can, and keep plugging away at phone calls to brands and distributors. Get comfortable talking to strangers, ask them about themselves, and use CRM tools to remember specific conversations so your follow-up conversations are personalized. At the end of the day, the best discounts come from the best relationships.

Ungating Pains

If you’re having trouble getting ungated from certain products, like most things Amazon-related, you just have to keep digging. Try asking fellow-sellers for advice on Amazon Facebook pages.

Amazon Is A Numbers Game

If you’re struggling to find profitable products, suppliers open to Amazon sellers, and sourcing leads…welcome to Amazon Wholesale. When it comes to opening accounts, you should be contacting hundreds of brands per week and if you haven’t opened hundreds of accounts yet, you haven’t opened enough. As you continue on, you’ll have an easier time finding profitable products, but it takes real work to get there (and a lot of accounts!).

If you’re hitting the same roadblocks when it comes to anti-Amazon attitudes, are you doing anything to prove those suppliers wrong? Are you addressing their needs and showing how you can add value and distinguish yourself from the Amazon stereotype? These actionable steps will help knock down the toughest Amazon roadblocks.

Co-Mingling vs. Non-Co-Mingling?

When it comes to co-mingling, Todd doesn’t co-mingle products that have had issues in the past or are easily breakable. Otherwise, Todd defaults to co-mingling because the more inventory you have, the more likely you’ll be to win the buy box.

All About Listings, Outsourcing, & Optimization

Are you looking for a list optimization specialist? Todd recommends onlinejobs.ph to find strong hires. Todd also purchased his VA the Amazon Product Description Bootcamp, an excellent resource for learning about list optimization. In short, you’ll want to improve a product’s title, bullets, description, and keywords.

Using a VA to find profitable products? That’s great! But you may run into a few snags. For instance, you often find more gems going through lists manually and using tools like Jungle Scout and DS Amazon Quick View to weed out Amazon products. Sometimes software systems miss products so manual searching is your best bet.

Stay Positive

It’s true, many things about Amazon are a pain. That includes the ungating process. Some products you’ll need to get ungated for at all three levels: ASIN, brand, and category. While these scenarios are tough, you have to approach it from a positive mindset. If you have to go through multiple steps to access a product, that means the product is less accessible and therefore more exclusive to you.

Overall

It’s a misconception on Amazon that you have to be selling large, brand-name products. However, Todd has found success selling products you’ve probably never heard of. So when it comes to Amazon, think small, think positive, and keep grinding.

Happy selling everybody.

Resources From This Episode

Outline Of This Episode

[00:19] Todd’s introduction to this episode

[02:52] The latest Amazon news

[08:03] Why it’s important to think small

[13:20] The art of negotiation

[20:15] Getting around gated products

[21:34] Why Amazon is a numbers game

[24:56] Co-mingling

[28:44] How to optimize listings

[36:48] Why it’s essential to stay positive

[42:33] Todd’s closing thoughts on this episode

Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome fellow entrepreneurs to the entrepreneur adventure podcast, where we talk about Amazon wholesale and how you can use it to build an eCommerce empire, a side hustle or anything in between. And now your host, Todd Welch,

Todd (00:19):
What is going on everybody? Welcome to episode number 28 of the entrepreneur adventure podcast. So happy you could join me once again today, you guys are all awesome out there. The community has been growing. More and more people asking me questions and liking the videos and commenting and subscribing and things like that as well. So I really appreciate it. It’s really awesome to see this growing and that I’m actually able to help other people out there and growing their Amazon businesses and selling and stuff like that. Just by sharing my experiences and my knowledge from stuff that I’m gaining. I’m learning from other people, people are learning from me and hopefully, you guys out there as you learn to sell wil l also pass on this knowledge and help other people. That’s basically why I’m doing this because I may not be where I am today. If I didn’t get help from other podcasts and other sellers in this game and pushing me towards my goals.

Todd (01:24):
And so I’m doing the same for you. So definitely keep on passing that along. I think, you know, what goes around comes around. I don’t really make a lot of money off of doing this kind of stuff, but I like to help you guys out there and maybe in the future, I’ll make some money off of this or something like that. Speaking and stuff like that. I love to do that kind of stuff as well, but I’m really just doing it to help you guys out there and move you guys forward. Share my knowledge, things like that. So again, really appreciate you guys listening, watching, subscribe like this, make sure you share it to all your friends and stuff out there. It just helps it grow. And you know, it makes me feel good because I see that you guys are getting benefit off of it and makes me want to keep doing this so whatever you can do out there to help spread the show, I really appreciate it.

Todd (02:18):
Now, today, we’re going to be doing some more listener viewer questions that we didn’t get to last week on the live that we did. So we have some remaining questions. And then I also have some voice questions as well that we’re going to dive into some really good ones that you’re gonna want to stay tuned for this. If other people have these questions, I guarantee it. You will probably have these questions if you haven’t had them already. So stay tuned. Definitely. And one thing I wanted to note here is a little bit of Amazon news that we talked about a few weeks back as well. So we talked about Amazon using seller data from product on Amazon to then create their own products to compete with them. Now, a lot of people were really upset about this and my point of view on it was kind of like, well, yeah, that’s been going on forever, right?

Todd (03:16):
With Walmart and every other big retailer out there, it has been collecting data and creating their own generic products. I mean, every grocery store has generic set of products based on what they know sells well. So it’s common practice, but this news article from in gadget, the headline is Jeff Bezos is willing to testify about Amazon’s use of seller data. So apparently in July here, Jeff Bezos is going to appear before Congress, along with a few other CEOs, Apple, Alphabet, and Facebook about how they’re using their customer’s data and whether they’re breaking any laws or what’s going on. So, you know, my take on that, it’s kind of a political thing, but I definitely understand the need to use data, right? Like in Facebook’s case, they don’t charge us for using Facebook. They take your data, they sell it to advertisers basically, or they use it, I should say for advertisers to be able to target you.

Todd (04:22):
And that’s not a real big deal. As long as those advertisers don’t have any way to know who it is that they’re actually targeting until, you know, maybe you click over and subscribe to something or something like that. Amazon’s is a little bit different because there, they’re using their data to compete with sellers, which like I said, has already been done. So I don’t have a big issue with that, except that Amazon then creates an unfair advantage for themselves. So for example, we have to pay advertising to show up in ads at the top Amazon doesn’t when we sell our products, we have to pay Amazon fee to sell our products, Amazon doesn’t so they can sell there’s cheaper. And how is exactly is their algorithm working, right? So are they just automatically putting their stuff at the top because if they are, and they’re not running it through the exact same algorithm as our products, then that to me would be a violation of, I don’t know what exactly would be a violation of, right?

Todd (05:35):
If they’re a private company, but it’s anti competitive or maybe monopolistic practices, I guess, is what that would be. I’m never a fan of government really getting involved in things too much. I prefer an extremely small government. I’d rather them stay away, let do our own thing, the free market and capitalism we’ll figure it out. But there’s some situations like this where they may need to step in and be like, okay, this is no problem that you’re using their data to create your own products because anyone can do that. Right. We can all go on Amazon and see what’s selling well and create products of that. That’s kind of the way private label works, but are you treating your products equal to those other products in your algorithm and the way they’re showing up in search and things like that. That’s one area I think maybe needs to be looked at and see if we can come up with some kind of solution that would even the playing field for everyone.

Todd (06:43):
So we’ll see what comes of that. These congressional hearings. A lot of times, it’s just a kind of a dog and pony show, right? They’re just yelling at the bad guys quotes and that’s really all that ever comes of it, but we’ll see, at least they’re starting to look at it. It’s something that we’ll see how it plays out. And at least they’re starting to look at it. Right. That’s the main thing. So I just wanted to bring that up, let you guys know about that. I thought it was some cool news that I seen just a follow up to news that we talked about previously before with that, let’s go ahead and dive into some of the questions from our live that we didn’t get to last weekend and or last week, and make sure if you’re not already subscribed to our YouTube channel, you head on over to entrepreneur, venture.com/youtube and subscribe.

Todd (07:38):
And if you’re watching this on YouTube, hit that subscribe button down below, and then click the little bell. So you get notified the next time we go live on YouTube and then you can get your answer to your question live right there when you want to ask it. So definitely do that. And also the show notes and transcript for this episode, make sure you head on over to entrepreneuradventure.com/ 28 for those as well.

Todd (08:03):
Now this question was from Sheriff Hasani. He asks what kind of category in wholesale can make ROI of 50%. So pretty much any of them, sheriff, that you can find products that are making 50% ROI or higher. That’s not really an issue. The issue is more finding 50% ROI with products that are selling well. That is more of an issue than finding 50% ROI product. So the big thing is just like I’ve mentioned in the past, go into a category that, you know, like I do a lot of sporting goods and outdoor kind of stuff, because I’m really into that.

Todd (08:46):
I have hobbies in that area. So I go down that route and I sell products in that area. And what I’ve been doing, as I’ve mentioned before, going really deep, you know, I’m not just looking for those products that are selling two, three, four, 500 units per month. I’m also looking for those products that are selling four or five, six, 10 units per month, but they have maybe 20 or 30 reviews and maybe they’re four or five stars, but the listing is really horrible. Maybe they have no FBA sellers only FBM, or maybe nobody’s selling it currently. Or the price is super high. That’s why it’s not selling well. So I’m looking for those because then I can get in there, maybe be the first FBA seller slash the price, clean up the listing, optimize it and get that product selling to that maybe 40 5,000 units per month or whatever case may be.

Todd (09:44):
So instead of finding those one, a big home run products, I’m looking for those singles or bunts or whatever you want to call them. If you’re in the baseball and I’m just loading the bases, right. And keep walking people in knocking people in running people in kind of thing. So you have to dig a little bit deeper to find those higher ROI products. Most likely if it’s selling like 500 units a month, it’s going to have an ROI of like 10, 20, maybe 30%. If you’re lucky, you can get the higher percent too on some of the bundles combo packs and things like that. So that’s something to look at as well. And we talked about that a little bit in the previous Q and A session also. So if you didn’t watch that head on back and watch episode 27, EntrepreneurAdventure.com/27, you can listen to some of the answers there as well. So hopefully that answers your question, sheriff, let’s go ahead onto the next one here.

Todd (10:44):
Dennis asks. How many of us wholesalers are using worldwide brands, do you think? All right. So worldwide brands is a wholesale directory. For those of you who are not aware, you have to buy access to it. I have a video review of it, which I’ll link in the show notes of this episode. If you want to check that out, but basically you buy a membership, a lifetime membership and they have lots of different distributors and stuff like that. How many people, I’m not sure. It’s really hard to say. There’s probably a ton by now. I’m sure. And how many good products are you going to find on there? I’m not sure anymore on that either. It’s been a while since I’ve actually recorded that review and was finding suppliers on there.

Todd (11:36):
I actually probably need to revisit and go back in there and look at new ones that have been added and find them. So it doesn’t really matter how many people have access to it. It matters more how many people are actually digging into it, opening accounts and doing the work to go through those products and remember a lot of products. And you’re not going to find going through the automatic route with the software that’s out there, right? You need to do it manually and find those products that are not showing up in the automated systems, because that’s where you’re really going to make the gold in the wholesale game. So I don’t think it really matters how many people have access to it because there’s going to be a small amount of people that actually take the initiative and go through all of them. And there’s going to be even smaller amount of people that follow through and make an order.

Todd (12:29):
And then an even smaller amount of people that continue on in this business because a lot of good people get sold on selling on Amazon as like a get rich, quick scheme. And they think it’s going to be easy and it’s not easy, not even a little bit, it’s a regular business. If you’re not ready to build a real business, you’re probably going to fail in Amazon. There’s a lot of factors that go into that. Whether I would buy worldwide brands today or not, I don’t know. I bought it. I think it’s been a couple years now and I found some good products on there and it got me started and going. So I’m happy I bought it. I’d have to dig into it again though. And I haven’t looked at it in a while. So to answer your question, I’m not sure how many people are actually on there though, but what matters more is how many people actually follow through.

Todd (13:20):
So next up we have Ash who has a really good question. And it’s one that we get actually spend probably a whole month worth of episodes, if not a whole year worth of episodes on. And it’s how do you go about negotiating? So negotiating is definitely an art that you learn as you go along and learning how to talk with people, how to get people to like you and things like that go a long ways in negotiating, because the key is to get them to know like, and trust you and see you as more than just someone who’s buying products and see you more as a friend or an acquaintance and things like that. So the basics though, of like a distributor, if you’re opening an account with a distributor that part’s going to be very easy and then usually you’re going to get like a sales person.

Todd (14:23):
Who’s going to be your go to person to make orders. And if you have questions and stuff like that. So the first thing that I would do is jump on the phone and start talking with that person and find out about them, get them talking about themselves. You know, you could be like, Hey John, how’s it going? I see you’re going to be my sales rep for X, Y, Z distributor. How long have you been at the, in that position? And then just be quiet. Listen Jada, you like working there is everything pretty good. It’s a good place to work. And let them talk about that a little bit. And where, where are you based at? Where are you from? Oh, I’m from Florida. And so then you can talk about Florida a little bit. Oh, how’s the weather down there, you know, as a, doing a, as raining out or it’s really hot it’s June’s I must be getting really hot down there.

Todd (15:15):
How do you like the heat? And just let them talk about that and be like, no, do you like like the Miami dolphins or anything like that, you in any sports and just let them talk about that. And of course he’ll probably, or he, or she will probably ask you questions back and forth and just like having a conversation, think about, you know, if you’ve been on a date before you’re getting to know that other person, right. You’re asking questions, having a conversation, trying to feel each other out, trying to get the other person to like you and things like that, the same kind of thing with developing that relationship with your sales representative. So, and I make notes of all this stuff in my CRM as well. So that next time I call them, if I find out that he has a dog and his name is Bernard, I can be like, Hey, how’s Bernard doing, you get out and play fetch with them recently or something.

Todd (16:14):
You know, if I, they talk, we talked about them playing Fetcher, whatever. Basically just building that relationship now with the brands, it’s going to be very similar to building that relationship with the distributor. You’re getting to know them, trying to find out, you know, how did you come up with the idea for this product or how long you’ve been running the business? How are things going? You guys still growing during the craziness that’s going on in 2020, that’s like an instant connection thing, right? Because everybody in the entire world is going through this virus. So we all have an instant connection, as I mentioned before as well. So that’s really what it comes down to. I would highly recommend some books on negotiating and just do a search for on Amazon for, you know, negotiating or sales books and find some of the top rated ones, start reading those, look up YouTube videos and things like that to learn different tactics and stuff that you can do.

Todd (17:16):
But it really is just all about getting comfortable, talking with another person and getting to know them. That’s really what it comes down to. And once you get to know them, that’s when you can start negotiating getting additional discounts and stuff like that. Now, right up front, I always ask, this is a list of everything that I want to buy from you. This is how many I think I can buy. What is the best pricing that you can give me on that? And they’re going to come back with a number now that may or may not be their bottom dollar. As you build that relationship, you can get more comfortable to ask, you know, do you guys have any additionaldiscounting that you can do? Maybe there’s an association that I can join to get additional discounts, or do you guys ever give exclusives on products and things like that.

Todd (18:05):
But it really starts with building that relationship. You know, if you just call up and be like, yeah can I get 50% off of this product? I want to buy some from you. Then you’re going to get less of a positive response. But you know, I do that in the beginning just by listing all of the products that I want to buy from them, how many I think I can buy per month. And then I ask them, what’s the best pricing you can do on this. And just see what they say. Maybe they’ll say nothing. Maybe they’ll say 20% or whatever the case may be. You never know. It doesn’t hurt to ask. Just, don’t ask too soon and build that relationship first, jump on the phone and talk with the sales rep or talk with the brand owner or whoever you’re going to be buying from and build that relationship first so that they know who you are. You’re not just some guy off the street asking them for a big discount or something. So hopefully that helped let me know if you have any more questions on that one, Ash.

Todd (19:09):
So here’s one from J Willis912. Scam distributor list. And a lot of items I found profit are only one to two sellers on listing. One of the items only the brand is on it. I feel alert is good. I still do a test order. You can do a test order if the brand is selling, if at your own risk, it’s very possible that they are going to get upset when you come on and try to get your removed, especially if there’s not really any other sellers, if it’s the brand and there’s like two, three, four other sellers, then you’re probably fine. I’ve got some products that the brand sells I sell and other people sell.

Todd (19:46):
And the brand is just kind of on there as a backup kind of thing. So it’s definitely possible that you can sell that, but you just want to be careful, make a small order because you might get it in there. And then the brand tries to get you shut down or something like that for selling their product. If you want to be really careful, you can always call the brand, but usually I just make a small order, send it in and see what happens a lot of times. But you play at your own risk there. How much risk do you want to take?

Todd (20:15):
J D Blackbelt. Hey Todd, I know you advise against using ungating services. Do you know how to get ungated in dietary supplements? I cannot find one with one of the extra required FDA forms. I have not sold any dietary supplements before.

Todd (20:34):
So I do not really know on that. There’s gotta be some out there that have the extra FDA forms. You might just have to keep digging until you find one that doesJust keep mind the dietary supplements are going to be extremely competitive. So just keep that in mind. Yeah. That’s not one that I’ve really dove into. I would probably jump out on some of the Facebook groups that are out there. If you searched for Amazon FBA and just make a post in there, like one of the ones that I really like is Amazon FBA, wholesale sellers and see what other people have found out about that. Again, I don’t like using ungating services. I know people have, and they’ve gotten away with it and it’s been fine, but I would rather stay as far away from that line as possible to not put my account at risk. If at some point Amazon starts cracking down on that and the supplier or the company I should say that you used is one of the ones that cracked down on.

Todd (21:34):
Next up is Maria. She says, I have, I would say plenty of wholesale accounts and access to thousands of products. However, I don’t have products to sell because when I scan those lists, Amazon or the brand is on the list or they barely sell. Yeah, basically that is kind of the name of the game. I would say that you just need more wholesale accounts, find more hounds, open new accounts. Uyou’re just don’t have the right distributors. There’s going to be a lot of times where you get these big lists and there might be one or two decent products, or like you said, some of them don’t sell well, is there the opportunity, like I just mentioned earlier to optimize those listings become the first FBA seller or whatever the case may be to get them selling.

Todd (22:26):
Well, I do a lot of that now, so you can get some really high ROI that way and be the only seller for the time being until someone else eventually jumps on there. But if you’re not finding that as well, then you’re just going to have to open more accounts. I mean, literally you need to open hundreds. So if you have an open hundreds and hundreds of accounts, then you definitely have not opened enough yet. And you should be opening like 10 a week, you know, just to keep opening more and more finding more new products, constantly feeding that process, constantly bringing in new product lists to find new products and stuff like that. It’s just part of the game. As you get going and you find a category you’re going into, you might find areas that you get more products than not but you gotta find those areas that you’re working towards.

Todd (23:25):
And so really it’s just all about opening more accounts. I know you say that you have plenty of wholesale accounts, but literally unless you have hundreds, then you don’t have enough money to open more accounts. All right.

Todd (23:36):
Let’s see, Dennis says, thanks, Todd. I love your teaching style. I appreciate that Dennis. And,George, I just started and having a really hard time finding brands, willing to sell to Amazon sellers. Any advice most get back and say they aren’t adding Amazon sellers at the moment. Yep. 100%. That is basically how it’s going to go. You just need to start contacting a hundred different brands per week. And if you can do that, then you’re going to get that two, three, 5% that are going to allow you to open up accounts. Now, distributors that sell lots of different brands. They’re going to be easier to open those accounts and find a brand.

Todd (24:15):
So you might want to go that route just so you’re not getting burnt out, mix it in there that way you’re getting some wins in with the nose. But that’s just basically the way it goes. You’re going to get a lot of nos and you got to figure out how to work around that. What are you doing to try to work around that? Are you talking to them on the phone and asking them, you know, do you mind if I ask why you’re not allowing any more Amazon sellers and see if you can find a solution to whatever their problems are. But you just have to keep working and moving forward and figuring out a way to get around that, but also just keep opening up different accounts, contacting different brands.

Todd (24:56):
It’s Jared says, what are your thoughts on co-mingling versus non co-mingling FBA Inventory. So I do both. I do some co-mingled, some knots. It depends on what it is like if it’s a food or something that I am worried a little bit about that if somebody screwed up, it could potentially hurt someone. Then I do not commingle those for sure. I’ve put my own FN, SKU, barcode label on there. So only my inventory is going out to my customers. And then, you know, if, if it’s a product that I’ve had problems with maybe getting returns of bad product or something like that, and I know all mine were good, then I will start doing, not commingled on that as well. Otherwise I try to default to commingled which is probably the opposite of a lot of other people out there. But Amazon gives the buy box to people who have more inventory. You’re more likely to get the buy box.

Todd (25:58):
So if I’m doing it co-mingled, then everybody’s inventory is my inventory until I sell out or whatever quantity I have in there. So you’re going to get more, be more competitive for that buy box. So that’s something to keep in mind. But I kind of play a product, a product, depending on what I think if I’m going to have problems and I’m going to do nonco-mingled. If I don’t think there’ll be any problems and it’s not a glass product or a product that is easily breakable or that if somebody screwed up and it could hurt someone, if they ate it or something like that, then I’m going to do the, you know, the commingled. If it is one of those and I probably do more non commingled so that I can have more control over my own inventory.

Todd (26:45):
All right, let’s see tycoon again. I had a hard time sourcing leads. I spent a lot of time every day. Have you found it easy? No, definitely not easy. I’m finally to the point where I’ve actually got more products and more accounts open than I have money to buy stuff with. So that’s a really good problem, but it gets to, it takes time to get to that. As you get more experienced at this, it’s going to be easier and easier for you to find those products that you’re looking for and hoping accounts and stuff like that in the beginning, it’s hard. It’s just the grind. That is the grind and that’s where most people give up. So if you can get through that, keep going forward and work your butt off until you find those products, then you’re going to be a mile ahead of everybody else. Who’s just looking for the easy thing out there and you know, they’re going to be shiny object.

Todd (27:42):
Let me go check out this drop shipping, or let me go check out the Shopify stuff or whatever the case may be. Right? You have to just stay focused, put your head down, keep going forward until you start seeing that reap some rewards for ya.

Todd (27:56):
Hey Todd, how do you deal with and deflect, bogus IP complaints, any useful tips would be great. Thanks. So if I get an IP complaint, basically you just click that little button to dispute it. And usually they’re asking for an invoice. You need to show an invoice that you purchased legitimate product. I do that. I wait for them to come back from, to me most of the time, they just clear it and you’re good to go. Sometimes you have to keep going back and forth. Maybe get a letter from the distributor or something like that, and just work with Amazon to get them what they need to get that cleared up.

Todd (28:37):
Most of the time, if you actually purchased legitimate product from a authorized distributor, you should be able to get that cleared up.

Todd (28:44):
Where do we find list optimization specialis? Ask Maria. So I just put a posting out on online jobs.ph, looking for someone who was knowledgeable with Amazon and knew how to optimize listings and a marketing and sales experience as well. And just did interviews and found a lady she’s really good at it. She’s doing well. And I’m teaching her. And I also purchased a course for her. So it is called Amazon product description, boot camp over on marketing words, it was made by Karen Faxton. And she does a really good job in that course. You can buy it for 229 and I will actually have an affiliate link down below. I just signed up for an affiliate program with her.

Todd (29:45):
So if you’re interested in that, you can buy that through the link down below. That is the course that I bought. And I went through at first to learn how to optimize my listings teaches you how to write a title and a description and your bullets and things like that. And then I use that as a course for my virtual assistant so that she could learn in addition to what she already knew. So training of course is really important with any employee. You can’t expect them to know exactly how you want to done. And then you can go through it as well and help them be like, Oh, I would’ve done this differently and this differently and train them as you go along. So if you want to check that out, I’ll have that affiliate link down below. If you want to buy it through there, that would be awesome. I’ll get a small cut of that. Otherwise you can just head on over to marketingwords.com/ bootcamp as well. And you can check that out.

Todd (30:40):
What can you do to improve an existing listing? Everything I just talked about about the optimization specialist. So the title, the bullets, the description, the pictures, the backend keywords, those are the main ones that you’re going to focus on. And a lot sometimes depending on your account, sometimes you can do this stuff yourself. Other times, you’re going to have to work with Amazon support to get them, to make the changes for you. Or if the brand is registered, then you would have to work with the brand to get it done. So you can definitely do it, but sometimes it’s harder than other times.

Todd (31:17):
All right, let’s see. Timothy Sullivan asks, how do you change listings that are selling that you are selling on? How does that work? I’m not sure what you mean there, Timothy. So you are going to have to clarify in the comments of this video that I’m recording now. And let me know, explain a little bit more about what you’re asking there, cause I’m not exactly sure. Let’s see, Maria, do we need permission to optimize a wholesale listing? We did not create and if not, how do we go about improve it? So like I just mentioned those are, that’s how you’re going to go about improving it. And a lot of times, no, you don’t need permission. Most brands on Amazon are not registered. And if the brand is not registered, it’s a public listing that Amazon owns and anyone can change it. Your changes may not take effect automatically. You may have to contact Amazon support and work with them to get it open.

Todd (32:17):
But if you go into opening a new ticket, one of the options there is to make changes to listings and you can go through the little wizard it has there. It may just update it automatically for you. If not, it’ll open a ticket and see if support will be allowed, open it for, or be able to make the changes for you. Let’s see Sha Hadin Ali. How much does prep centers cost? So it varies anywhere from like 75 cents per item, all the way up to a couple bucks per item. It can be more expensive for like larger items and things like that. Or if there’s more prep that has to be done, but it depends on the prep center. So you’re just going to want to search around, find a prep center that will work really well for you. I’ve used automated FBA in the past that actually, I think they’re called automated three PL now, and they’ve done really good at scale. They get down to like 80 cents, 75 cents, something like that per item.

Todd (33:19):
All right, next question. Vacation, judge. Notice a lot of the products I have been finding from distributors are the same price on Amazon. I’m thinking a lot more are selling on Amazon now, where can I find distributors? So I think you’re asked saying that when you look at the price from a distributor it’s selling for that same price on Amazon and you wouldn’t make any money, that’s going to happen a lot that either vets, you’ve got a really bad distributor that has bad pricing, you need to get bigger discounts from that distributor. Maybe people are going direct to the brand and buying it cheaper from there, but they’re getting it cheaper somewhere. So you’re going to have to find more distributors of that product or go brand direct and see if you can open up an account to get the better pricing, to be able to sell that product.

Todd (34:09):
Ricardo B you mentioned you used a VA sometimes to manually look up products previously, rather than looking them up via a scanning tool. Have you found many gems using this method? Oh yes. A hundred percent. You’re going to find a lot of gems by going through a list manually and just searching for a brand. So for example, if the brand is Nike, then I just go on Amazon typing, Nike hit enter, start going through all the products. Use either jungle Scouts or DSM, Amazon quick view to weed through the ones that Amazon’s selling and find the ones that potentially could be gems. Open them up in a new tab when I’ve got like 20, 30 tabs open. Then I go back to the product sheet and see if I can find those products on the product sheet and see what the price is. If it makes sense buying it because sometimes the UPC is don’t match up sometimes as automated systems, don’t find those products. They, a lot of times don’t find the multi-packs or the combo packs or things like that, where you can really get a lot of gold when you’re digging through there manually. So definitely want to go through your list manually. In addition to the automatic.

Todd (35:27):
Tammy asks, have you done any videos on how to scale your wholesale business? Well scaling. I haven’t done any videos specifically on that, but basically taking all this introductory stuff or everything that I’m talking about, all the answers to all these questions and just repeatedly doing it, and then getting someone else to repeatedly do it for you and just keep growing up. The number of skews you carry and your sales will keep going up. Your profit will go up ROI and everything else and just keep growing. That’s basically how you’re going to scale it. Just keep growing it, adding new products, finding sources of funding to buy those products that maybe you can’t afford and things like that.

Todd (36:12):
So there’s not really a big secret as to how to scale it. You’re pretty much just keep adding products until you get to the point where you can’t do it yourself. So you bring on an employee who then you hand off some of the tasks that you don’t want to do, and that frees you up to do it or more, and you can keep growing in that way.

Todd (36:35):
All right. So that is the last question on the live from last week, we’ve got a couple voice questions here and then we will wrap up this week’s episode.

Maha (36:48):
Hi Todd. My name is Maha. I just got approved for a brand and I sent the letter to Amazon. They approved me, but they still did not. When I start listing product is still gated when I reopened the case and some of them, they said, well, you have to start submitting for each category. So that’s mean it doesn’t matter if I got approved for brand or not, then I have to go for each ASE and do that. It just it’s so painful. Thank you.

Todd (37:27):
All right. What is up Maha? Thank you so much for that question. And it is a good one. I actually have a video on getting ungated. Let’s see. I called it how to get ungated on Amazon, Amazon restricted categories. So that kind of dives into the different ways of gating and yes, it can be pain, right? Because you have ACE gating. So that’s on a per product level. Then you have brand gating, which once you get on gated for that year on Gator for that whole brand on the ASEN level, you’re only on Gator for that single level. And then you have a category level and you could have to get all three of those depending on a product, right? So you may have to first get ungated in a category, let’s say watches. So maybe you got to get ungated in the watches category, and then you want to sell a Rolex watch.

Todd (38:22):
So you have to get on gated for the Rolex brand and then that particular ACE in may of gating on it as well. So you have to get ungated for that exact ACE. And now that’s not all that common that all of them, but the category gating and the brand gating are going to be more common. It’s a pain. Yes, I know, but it’s just kind of the way Amazon tries to protect itself and protect us from bad apples, right? Bad sellers out there that are selling knockoffs and things like that. So it can be a pain, but think of it as a good thing, not as a bad thing, right? You can take things either way. So think of it as it’s difficult to get in that. So less people are going to be selling in that category or for that brand or for that ACEN.

Todd (39:13):
And also I’m protected because it’s going to be less likely that people are selling knockoffs and maybe I’m going to get a bad strike on me because Amazon grabs the knockoff and sends it out my inventory if I’m doing the co-mingled side of things. So just switch your thinking and look at it as a good thing. It’s more hoops that you need to jump through. So therefore once you get through it and there’s going to be less competition, more profit, more money for you. So it’s all in how you think things. think about things. You really gotta change your mindset. Sometimes don’t view things necessarily as a bad thing, think about them and try to see the good side of them as well. And so it can really help you then to kind of move through these things and not get so frustrated. I know there’s a lot of things you can get frustrated with Amazon, but I do my best to try to stay and think positive. It just makes everything so much easier when you look at things in a positive light and look for the good side of things rather than the negative. Alright, next question here.

Sumara (40:25):
Hi Todd. I have a question as per my understanding wholesale FBA model requires us to choose well established brands. So why must here? We, we are choosing normal brands, normal brand products that are not so famous.

Todd (40:45):
All right. So that question was from Sumara hopefully I’m saying your name, right. And make sure when you leave a question, if you could leave your name and where you’re from, it would definitely be appreciated. But yeah, I think that is a common misconception selling Amazon wholesale that we need to sell name brand items, stuff that we would know like Nike or oyster, or I don’t know, Adidas or whatever. Like I said, I always think of shoes when I try to think of brands, but that’s not the case. Most of the products that I sell, you probably have never heard of the brand before, but they sell really well on Amazon. They’re making me really good money. So I would first that thought out of your head that it needs to be named brands that you have heard of, because that’s definitely not the case.

Todd (41:40):
In fact, if you’ve heard of the brand, it’s probably more likely that it’s not going to be very profitable because there’s going to be a million other people that know of that brand have looked for that brand and has started selling that brand. So the less name brand, it is the less known that the products are, the more likely there’s going to be profit and less sellers on that listing. So definitely need to get rid of that idea that you want name brand sellers. You definitely can find those. And you might find some those in the process of looking, but that’s not the only ones that we’re looking for. Those ones that you’ve never heard of are probably going to sell even better for you. So hopefully that helps you. If you have any more questions on that, shoot me another message. And let me know.

Todd (42:33):
And if anybody else out there wants to leave a voice message, I really love the voice messages head on over to entrepreneuradventure.com/ask, hit that record button and record a question for me. And I will answer that for you on upcoming episodes. All right. So that wraps up this episode. Again, if you want the show notes, head on over to entrepreneur adventure.com/28, and the transcript is over there as well. And any of the links, affiliate links or whatever we talked about in the show, you can get those here as well. And some really awesome show notes that my show not writer has written up for you guys. So check that out and make sure if you haven’t already hit subscribe. If you’re on the podcast, if you’re on YouTube, subscribe hit that little bell to get notified of more videos, just like this one. And this is your host Todd Welch, but the entrepreneur adventure signing off happy selling everybody.

Speaker 1 (43:37):
This has been another episode of the entrepreneur adventure podcast. Thanks for listening fellow entrepreneur and always remember success is yours. If you take it.